You never thought Jack and Sydney would grow so far apart.
They both loved you—you never questioned that—and you loved them in return with a fervor that still surprises you. You had an excellent relationship with your husband during your years as Laura, and your little girl always looked up to you, tried to emulate you.
But there was always an extra-special connection between the two of them that could not be ignored. It was that connection that you recalled every day during your captivity in Kashmir. They had faced a horrific loss—you hoped Jack still thought of it as horrific—but at least they had each other. Somehow they would survive. Together.
It's too bad it didn't work out that way.
You knew he would face problems as a single parent. Some would be caused by his job—What am I going to do when I'm out on assignment?—while others would befuddle even the most committed fathers. Watching his little girl become a woman. Battling her as she petulantly reminded him that for now, she was still a child. Taking care of her every need and want, even if it was something that no CIA manual could prepare him for.
You jerk your head in understanding. Maybe that's why he hired a nanny.
He always was all thumbs when brushing Sydney's hair. It's not surprising she never wore pigtails on the nanny's day off.
By the time you were released from Kashmir, Jack had returned home to your daughter. You had been shocked to realize he spent six months in solitary; you can only hope he has not met a similar fate now. It's been five weeks since you last saw him, and you're starting to get worried.
After your release, you allowed yourself one evening during that first year to spy on your favorite two people, noticing how Sydney clung to Jack, how he clung to her, how lost they still seemed. You wanted so badly to rush to them, to hold them, to make them yours again. But you couldn't. Laura was dead, destroyed as the car slipped into the cold, murky water.
And Jack was doing his damndest to make sure that your country, your beliefs, were destroyed too.
The Agency reluctantly allowed him to return to active duty. They didn't know it at the time, but it was one of the best decisions they ever made. For now he was hell bent on proving himself as an agent, making his accomplishments of yesteryear look pedestrian. You could tell he had only one goal in mind—to destroy the KGB. Since he believed you were dead, he fought to take down the organization that had sent you to him.
By all accounts he was successful. Of course, by then you were working for yourself, not that pathetic excuse of an intelligence organization. But how was he to know that by destroying the KGB he actually strengthened your stronghold in the underground?
He couldn't see that at the time. He was too busy destroying everything in his life that had a connection to you, as Laura or Irina. Too busy destroying the connection with the one person he needed most.
Sydney.
*****
She wasn't supposed to be a field agent.
Or so Jack thought. You always knew otherwise.
No matter what he believed, you never tested her, never trained her in the rudimentary skills of espionage.
You didn't have to. Somehow you always knew who she was destined to become. Maybe it was because of who her parents were. Maybe it was because you could already see the markings of a genius. Maybe it was because you saw what an active little girl she was and instinctively knew that she would never be the type who was satisfied sitting behind a desk in a sterile office.
Even though Jack avoided your daughter, sometimes not seeing her much more than you did—and you were supposedly dead—you knew he had to see what you saw. You knew that no matter how much he tried to distance himself from her, he would always step in to protect her, even if she didn't realize she needed it. You knew he would have a plan.
As Sydney entered her last year of high school, you intercepted a recorded conversation between your husband and an old friend of his. You heard him describe his plans to recruit Sydney and put her behind a desk as soon as she graduated from college. You cringed as he outlined his strategy, obviously proud of his well-thought out plan.
There was only one problem. It would never work.
Apparently Arvin agreed with you.
You knew before Jack did that Sydney had been recruited. You can still remember where you were—one of countless stuffy parties at a Parisian banquet hall—when you saw a tall strawberry blonde enter the room on the arm of a slightly older gentleman. You froze for an instant, watching, waiting, frantically placing her companion and practically seeing the light bulb go off above your own head.
Not only does truth take time, as you told her more than once. Sometimes the truth hurts.
That night the truth pierced your heart like few things had before.
Even knowing that this was what she was meant to do, seeing her parade through the room on the arm of Noah Hicks sickened you. It was no longer just an idea or a plan—Sydney was in.
In a sick, twisted way, that is the moment you always look back on as when you finally realized that your little girl was all grown up. She wasn't a little girl burrowed in her father's arms. She wasn't the quiet girl who hung back while the rest of the girls in her class giggled over the latest pop star.
She was independent. Confident. Self-assured. Deadly.
Just like her mother.
There was only one problem. The Alliance. While her employer didn't matter to you—CIA, KGB, Alliance, they were all the same, really—you hated that she didn't truly know who she was working for. If she had been anyone else, you would have laughed off the concern and brushed it aside. But she was yours—is yours, dammit—and things are different when you're trying to protect your daughter from afar.
It was much easier to protect her when she was employed by SD-6. Now that she's Julia, it's almost impossible to watch out for her. That doesn't stop you from trying, though.
You are her mother.
A mother who left her little girl to save her. A mother who renounced her—"I have no daughter"—when KGB officials offered to bring her to you. "She can always stay with your parents when you're away on business. Your father is in good health, is he not?" A mother who always watched and waited and hoped and dreamed for the best thing she ever created.
A mother who was inexplicably relieved when her daughter learned the truth. "SD-6 is not a black ops division of the CIA. SD-6 is a branch of the Alliance. You work for the very enemy you thought you were fighting."
You knew that the stakes had risen, the danger was far greater than it was before. But for the first time in a long time, the truth was beginning to rise to the surface. The only lie left, the only lie still severing the connection between father and daughter, was you. And that, you knew, would change soon.
Almost against your will, you felt the joy rush through you. Soon. Your day was coming.
You hadn't felt this overjoyed since they placed a wailing, red-faced infant in your arms.
Now, as you receive intel on the latest assassination from the underworld, you can only hope you will feel that joy again soon.
*****
You never thought your walk in would be one of the best things to happen to you.
You had hoped to see Sydney again, talk to Jack face-to-face for the first time in twenty years. You had hoped for the chance to get one of them, both of them, to understand your position. Maybe admit that they had never stopped loving you, the way you never stopped loving them.
Your time with the CIA eclipsed everything you had ever imagined.
Yes, they were both slow to trust you, to even speak with you. Yes, the missions you went on with them were planned out months in advance.
But the tears that threatened to fall down your face when you spoke with Sydney were real. The way your throat tightened and you could only clasp your husband's hand on the aircraft was genuine. As you told Sydney just before knocking her out on the ice rink—you really did regret that—your love for them was never a contrivance. No matter what they believed.
The connections that the three of you shared were unconventional at best, but they were real and raw and painful and . . . wonderful, because only a year earlier it would have been impossible to forge that connection. It was hard to believe that only a year earlier they both thought you were dead, Sydney only knew you as Laura, Jack had not yet told Sydney who she really worked for.
A lot can change in a year. You've been reminded of that again in the last twelve months. Sydney has been missing and found again, although she doesn't know who she is. Jack was found and is now missing—you can only imagine what that pompous ass Kendall has done to him. And you are once again alone, fighting for just a glimpse of your family. Hoping to reunite them once more.
A small voice inside your head points out that your life would have been so much easier if you had never taken that fateful assignment. That your life wouldn't be so shattered. That you wouldn't be standing here in the rain, hoping for a glimpse of a woman who bears your face but a stranger's name. You wouldn't be frantically checking the newspapers for a particular ad; your heart wouldn't race every time you logged on to your computer.
And yet you can't regret the day Jack's case file was placed in your hands. You can't regret your first encounter with him, or your second, or all the ones that followed it. You can't regret the day you held your newborn in your arms.
You can only regret that here you are, thirty years later, aimlessly walking through the park that you and your husband used to visit with your two-year-old daughter. You can still see her, pigtails flying, as she raced towards her favorite spot, the carousel. You can almost see her sitting on a pink pony—her favorite—going round and round, her tiny image, her baby voice, echoing in your mind.
You know she's alive. Tonight's encounter proved that.
But you wish you could get your daughter back. Not this stranger wearing her face, but your daughter.
You'd like to think that it's still possible. It's only been eighteen months since the fire.
But you're not so sure anymore.
tbc