A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, everyone! I'll do my best to take what you say into account. Oh, and, Carr, don't worry, I thought a little more about it, and...what was I thinking?! M/L all the way!

A/N2: I know nothing about putting people into trances, so sorry if I get things wrong!

A/N3: I'm going to try to make a new rule for this fic: starting now, I won't update till I get 10 reviews for the latest chapter. I'm not promising that I'll update right after, but I'll do my best. And, of course, more than 10 would be greatly appreciated. So, that's right: more reviews=more chapters!

Chapter 3
Seattle, December 20th, 2011

Sydney perched on the stairs and eavesdropped on her father.

"Yes," he said into the phone, his voice stony as usual, "Christmas is being taken care of."

She crept back up the stairs to her room with a smile on her face. Christmas! Her daddy was actually going to celebrate Christmas with them this year---and he was planning some sort of surprise ahead of time!

Such had not been the case the past two Christmases. Jack was far from the loving father Sydney used to know. He was never home; instead, he threw himself into his work with frightening intensity. Who knew selling airplane parts could be so receptive to enthusiasm and dedication? The past two Christmases, Jack had been gone on work-related matters. It had been up to Max and Sydney to celebrate as best they could. They couldn't put up a Christmas tree on their own; they couldn't hang lights. But they could buy each other presents and try to cook a turkey, and they did.

Of course, if they had wanted to, they could have celebrated with the Sloanes. A month after the funeral, Jack had managed to convince the Sloanes that he was sober enough to take care of them. This wasn't entirely true, unless by "take care of them" he meant that he could keep the house clean and relatively alcohol-free, and that he could leave them to their own devices. The Sloanes had made it clear to Max and Sydney that they were there for them if they ever needed anything. Nevertheless, the girls had declined to celebrate Christmas with them; while Sydney missed her father, Max, who had needed to have the words "holiday" and "celebration" explained to her, was content to spend the holiday with just her sister. Since Sydney didn't feel as though she needed parental figures there, and Max inexplicable disliked and distrusted Arvin Sloane, they celebrated alone.

In reality, Max was more of a parent to Sydney than Jack was. Max was the one who held her when she was sad or frightened. Max was the one who helped her with her homework. At school, bullies didn't even think about picking on Sydney, since they knew that if they did Max would kill them. She had no tolerance for anyone treating her baby sister badly.

But still, Christmas with only the two of them was invariably laced with lonely melancholy. Having her Daddy home for Christmas would be the best present she could wish for.

December 24th, 2011

Sydney would not let him see her cry. Even though she felt the moisture coagulating in her eyes, she refused to let that salt water form into tears, refused to let her father see just how much he had hurt her. She had heard him talking about Christmas! She had been so sure he would be home with them this year.

"I have to go on another trip tonight. I don't know when I'll be back."

She stared at her father and he looked impassively back at her. She knew what he was waiting for: he was waiting for her to throw a tantrum, to start screaming at him like she did every year when he did this to her. Then, he would keep looking at her with that impassive face, his calm composure clearly telling her "you see why I don't want to be with you? You're an immature child."

But she wasn't an immature child. She had watched the other children at school. She was very mature for her age; her teachers often wished aloud, when they thought she couldn't hear them, that all their children could be as mature and adult as Sydney Bristow. Whenever they said that, Sydney would glow with pride, and she would think, How surprised will Daddy be when he comes to the parent-teacher conference and they tell him I'm not a failure, after all? That hope was always in vain. She couldn't remember the last time her father came to a parent-teacher conference. She couldn't remember the last time he had heard something good about her from an adult. Instead, he saw the way she reacted when he left for his trips, and he came to the only conclusion he could: she was childish and annoying.

This year, things would be different. She would not let him see her cry. She would not let him hear her scream. She would not let him make her feel small or insignificant. I hate him. For the first time ever, the thought ran through her head. She tried to shake it away. He's my daddy. I love him, she insisted to herself. He doesn't love me, that hateful voice insisted. I hate him.

Suddenly, she couldn't hold it in anymore.

Jack was surprised to see that, when she looked up at him, her eyes were dry. No hint of the tears he thought had been forming there. He wished there were; he didn't know how to feel when confronted with this emotionless child. At least when she cried, he could feel free to hate himself. He could say to himself, "Look what you've done to your daughter. You've driven her to tears, when she should be smiling." Then he could say to himself, "You love her, though. She's everything to you; your salvation, your hope. You would never want her to hurt."

He could never say it out loud, though. He could only stare at her, wearing his spy-mask on his face, his every emotion carefully concealed by a façade he had built up over thirty years.

"I hate you." At first, he thought the quiet words were in his head, just another of the times when he blamed himself for all of his sins over the past few years. It was only when his daughter told him, a second time, "I hate you," that he realized who was speaking. She was looking him dead in the eyes, a look on her face he had never seen before, and telling him the three words he had never wanted to hear, not from her.

She said it one last time. "I hate you." Then she turned and began to walk away from him.

He knew at that moment that he could fix everything right then. He could run to her and take her into his arms and tell her over and over again his true feelings, "I love you, I love you, I love you," and she would throw her arms around him and forgive him completely. He could tell Sloane that he had decided not to take that voluntary Christmas op this year, that he was going to spend it with Sydney. Sloane would even encourage him to do it.

He didn't. And he knew, when she was gone, that she had walked out of more than just the room.

It was only after several moments of standing there in silence that he realized another place where he had seen that look that was on her face. It was the cold, detached look he saw every time he looked in a mirror.

January 3rd, 2012

Max heard a noise. A normal person wouldn't have noticed it, the slight creaking in the floorboards, but Max's enhanced hearing easily picked out the noise.

In an instant she had rolled off her bed and landed on the floor next to it in a crouch. Her room was pitch black at night, just the way she liked it; with her eyesight, she could see in the dark, while any potential enemy would be totally blind.

There was another creak. Whoever it was had passed her room. He must be headed towards Sydney's room, Max thought. She was instantly filled with rage. As if Sydney didn't already have enough to deal with; she had been broken up over her father's typical absence during Christmas. Although she had tried to be cheerful Christmas Day, as they burned a turkey and undercooked the stuffing, as she opened the thoughtful presents Max had bought her and watched Max open the presents she had clumsily wrapped, Max had witnessed the haunting pain in her eyes. It had taken all of her self-restraint to convince herself that she wasn't going to kill Jack when he came home.

And now, someone was trying to move stealthily through the house, to Sydney's room. She growled, the sound low and deep in her throat. It was not a human sound, but an entirely animal one. Sydney was her best and only friend, as dear to her as any of her brothers and sisters at Manticore. No one would mess with her little sister.

Max slipped out the door, carefully avoiding each of the creaky spots on the floor, spots which she had meticulously sounded out and whose location she had carefully memorized years ago so that she would never make an unintentional sound while walking in this house.

She stopped when she saw who it was. Jack. She frowned, perplexed, as she watched him quietly open Sydney's door and walk inside. Instantly a thousand horrible possibilities ran through her head, things that had happened to the children at Manticore, things that she had learned were never, ever, supposed to be done to children in the real world. She dismissed that idea nearly as soon as it formed. Whatever Jack was, whatever his shortcomings as a parent, he would never do anything so malicious.

She decided to eavesdrop, and she would decide her course of action from what she perceived to be the situation.

"Daddy?" came Sydney's sleepy voice, and it was clear she had just been woken up.

"Sydney, I want you to do something for me, all right?"

"OK."

"Look very closely at this pendant, yes, that's it, watch it. All right, I'm going to count to ten. When I reach ten, you will be in a trance. One...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight...nine...ten."

There was a pause.

"OK, Sydney, come downstairs with me."

Max backed away from the door, hiding in the shadows, and watched as her foster father led the entranced Sydney down the hallway and stairs, to the living room. She silently followed.

Jack set Sydney up in front of a table. On it were a number of pieces which were obviously meant to fit together, although it seemed like a very complicated puzzle.

"Put the puzzle together, Sydney."

Max watched in fascination as Sydney carefully fitted the pieces together. She finished it in half an hour. Max was surprised at her speed; she wasn't sure she could have done any better herself.

"Well done, Sydney," came Jack's voice again. "Now put this together."

There were several loud clunks, and Max's breath caught in her throat when she saw what he had placed on the table: a high-powered assault rifle. The rage came back. Maybe she should kill him after all. This, what he was doing, was no better than Manticore: forcing young children to become soldiers. The fact that Sydney didn't know it was happening was no consolation. She would be livid if she ever found out that she had been used in such a way; Max could relate.

Sydney put the gun together slowly, clearly uncomfortable handling it, as if she had never held a weapon before. When she had finished, Jack inspected it, then nodded in approval. "Well done again," he told her. "I think that's enough for tonight. Follow me back upstairs."

Max shadowed them once again, listening outside the door as Jack ended the trance.

"I'm going to count backwards from five. When I reach one, you will be sound asleep. When you wake up in the morning, you will remember nothing which happened while you were in this trance. Five...four...three...two...one."

Max crept back to her room and listening intently to the creaking floorboards as he left.

The next night, Max was ready. She waited outside her room, unmoving and invisible in the darkness. This time, she heard him when he reached the foot of the stairs. As he walked past her position, she surged up behind him from her crouch, locking her arm around his neck and tightening enough for him to know that she was completely in control.

"Downstairs," she whispered harshly. "Now."

With no attempt at gentleness, the slight girl manhandled him back down the hallway and stairs. When they reached the living room, she released him, coming around him and forcing him to sit on a chair. She sat stiffly on a chair across from him.

"Make no mistake," she said, her tone deadly. "I can have you back in that position in a blink of an eye, even without the element of surprise."

He rubbed his throat as he glared at her. "I know."

Max couldn't stay seated. She stood up and started pacing, the image of feline grace. "I know what you did to Sydney last night; what you were going to do to her tonight. I won't let you."

"Project Christmas has been sanctioned for testing by the CIA. It has been analyzed, and it won't cause any damage whatsoever," he told her. He didn't sound at all defensive; he was simply stating the facts to her in that stony voice. Neither remarked upon the fact that Jack had just directly told her he worked for the CIA; both knew that Max, with her keen intelligence and incredible observational skills, had figured it out long ago.

"Don't talk to me about sanctioned experiments!" she cried, then started and lowered her voice when she remembered that she was trying not to wake Sydney up. "You forget: I was a sanctioned experiment, and I've been through the hell that came as a result!"

"Don't defy me like this, Max," he said in a soft voice, his eyes steely. "I took you into my home, saw that you were taken care of---don't test me on this matter."

Max snorted. "It's true that you took me in, Jack, but you hardly saw that I was taken care of. You can't even take care of your own daughter. Sydney and I are family; you're barely an acquaintance. Don't you test me on this matter."

His lips tightened when she threw his own words back at him. "Believe it or not, 452---"

In a movement so fast he couldn't follow it with his eyes, she struck him across the face. It was a hard blow...but not half as hard as he knew she was capable of hitting. She was being careful to control her anger.

"452 died when you drove a car into me," she hissed, furious. "I'm Max. Never forget that."

Despite the painful sting on his cheek, Jack felt a moment of triumph. He had gotten a rise out of her, forced her to go on the defensive with his deliberately provocative comment. "Max, then. Believe it or not, Project Christmas is how I'm taking care of her."

Max raised an eyebrow. "Explain."

"I'm training Sydney to take care of herself. I'm imprinting her with skills she can use if she ever finds herself in trouble. I'm seeing to it that she stays safe."

"By making her into a spy? Come on, Jack; some of the things you're teaching her might actually support what you just said, but we both know better analytical thinking, improved spatial relationships, have nothing to do with her protecting herself in everyday life. You're grooming her to be a spy. For some unknown reason, you're trying to make her follow in your footsteps." Her voice was venomous, and the imperturbable Jack Bristow almost flinched at the cool disdain in her voice when she talked about Sydney becoming like her father.

"She'll thank me some day," he said, and there was a wistfulness in his voice when he spoke that revealed his hope that this would indeed be the case.

"She'll hate you for it," Max countered. "You do this---you program her to be a spy, you take away her ability to choose her life---and she'll have every right to hate you."

Jack shook his head, looking her straight in the eyes, and speaking with quiet intensity. "You've lived with her for two years, Max, you have to have seen what I've seen. Sydney is brilliant; she has the potential to be the best strategist the world has ever seen. I want to help Sydney fulfill that potential. Just because she'll be extraordinarily skilled in every field of spying doesn't mean that she has to choose that---this---life. When she's older, I'll offer her a job at the CIA. If she turns me down, then, fine. At least I'll know that she'll be safe."

Max sighed. Perhaps the man had a bit of logic to his argument, after all. That didn't mean she had to like it. "Fine," she said shortly. "But on one condition: I teach Sydney martial arts. Not when she's in a trance state, but when she's conscious. I won't let you bungle that training."

He nodded slowly. "Very well. I'll be glad to know that someone with your skills is training her."

Max turned to leave, feeling that the conversation was over. On the threshold, though, she turned to face him again. "You think you're giving her a gift. You think you're giving her what she'll want eventually, the ability to be a strong, independent woman. But keep this in mind, Jack: the thing Sydney needs most of all is for you to be there for her. She needs to know that you love her. She needs you to tell her you love her, and after you tell her, she needs you to show her. If you don't give her that, nothing else you give her will ever be worth anything."

She turned on her heel and gracefully strode away, leaving him speechless on the chair.

TBC

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