Spoken.
Father/daughter
Beginning of season 3.
After making sure his daughter was comfortable in his bedroom - he insisted that she sleep in his bed - Jack Bristow sank onto the couch in his living room and breathed deeply. At last, he could breathe. It seemed to him that he hadn't breathed properly in two years - since that night, with the fire, and her disappearance, and everything falling apart in his world. He could inhale again, and exhale, and repeat it, over and over. The world was beginning to move in the right way.
He leaned back into the couch, his back relaxing slowly, and closed his eyes. Sydney floated before him, smiling and waving. He finally had his girl back. She didn't even know how much he had missed her, how he searched everywhere, how happy he was to see her again. He didn't tell her how much he loved her - stupid, stupid - but he will. The moment she wakes up. He'll tell her.
His eyes fluttered open and locked on the picture frame that stood on the TV. His family. They were happy in that picture - he, Irina, their daughter. They were both holding Sydney, and her smile was radiant. Both their smiles.
He closed his eyes again, thought about his daughter. The night Laura died, he broke down. Standing in the shower, he let the water run down his body, and the tears spilled out. There were so many. He hated her. Hated her with such passion that he wondered why his insides weren't burning. Only they were - with the love he had for her. An extraordinary woman, Irina Derevko - he knew her real name by then - and what a way to go. A stupid car accident. He would expect her to die with thunderstorms and world wars, and it was such an ordinary evening.
He came out of the shower that night, and Sydney was sitting on the king sized bed waiting for him. She was only six, and those big brown eyes checked him, wondering. He saw the questions in them - where's Mommy? Why are you crying? - but she was a smart girl even back them. She asked nothing. He touched her hair, briefly, and got into bed. They pain was making him physically ill. He was tired - should have thought of his daughter but didn't - and wanted to sleep for three days straight.
Sydney left the room quietly, and Jack Bristow thanked the Lord, because he sure as hell needed some time alone. But she came back, a few minutes later, and he watched amazed as she placed a cup of tea on his nightstand and crawled into bed with him. She found his hand under the covers and squeezed it tightly. His arm went around her and he hugged her to him, holding the one thing Irina Derevko had left him. And he cried into her shoulder, the tears running quicker as the seconds passed. His daughter fell asleep that night holding his hand and pressing into him, trying to give him comfort the best she could.
A faint noise jerked him awake and he looked down the hall to find the light on in his bedroom. Sydney.
She came into view moments later, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her hair messed up from sleeping and covering a yawn with a tired hand (she had never looked so beautiful as she did that moment, to him).
She sat down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder, finding the comfortable spot - just as her mother used to, he remembered. A lone tear slipped down her cheek and he wiped it away with a shaky finger. He hated seeing her cry.
"I keep waking up," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
"It's natural, with what you've been through," he replied, touching-not-touching a strand of hair that fell to her face.
"You think it'll ever go away? The pain?"
He understood what she wanted to know, for they shared a pain now - a betrayal of a significant other, a heartbreak, a body in love and a mind knowing it'll never be. And he told her the truth; it never goes away, neither the pain nor the love.
She cried then, for the first time an honest cry, he knew, and that time he found her hand, squeezed it, and did what a father could - be there for her (there was another option, of course, but he didn't want his gun and the stupid boy near each other).
The following morning he woke up on the couch in the living room, and after taking a few moments to open his eyes, he looked down and saw Sydney lying next to him, the warm body of his baby giving in to the tiredness.
He ran a hand down her cheek, remembering that night twenty-five years before, and smiled to himself. "I love you, Sydney."
Her eyelids moved a little. She heard.