The first thing Sydney saw was the light. It was so bright it blinded her
as her eyelids fluttered open. Her first instinct was to raise a hand to
shield her eyes, but her body didn't seem to be cooperating with her brain.
She forced her eyes open, ignoring how they watered from the bright sunlight streaming in her window and the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. She gazed around slowly. Her world was a blur. She was in a hospital -- hospital bed, too many lights, IV in her arm, hospital gown -- she knew that much. She saw Vaughn seated to her right, in a deeply uncomfortable looking molded plastic chair. He wasn't wearing his usual suit -- just jeans and a light blue button-front. He appeared to be staring intently at his left thumb, rotating it in circles and popping it out of joint.
Vaughn.
Vaughn....behind the window. Everything from Taipei came rushing back, with the full-force of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. A blow like Sydney had never experienced before. The experience was twice as painful the second time around. Vaughn drowning and Khasinau and Vaughn shoving that creep in the club and her mother and Will and Vaughn frozen at the end of the hallway and Sark...
Sydney bolted nearly straight up in bed, eyes wild. Vaughn rose as he gazed in her direction with confusion and concern. He sat slowly on the bed next to her.
"Syd? Are you okay? Are you in pain? What's wrong?"
Not even knowing where to begin, Sydney opened her mouth to try to respond, but no sound came out. She tried again, but eventually just shook her head. The pain in her eyes and the expression on her face made Vaughn's heart rip nearly in two. He reached for hand. She took it, without moving, and then buried her face in Vaughn's shoulder.
"Syd," Vaughn whispered as he wrapped his strong arms around her. The display of affection caused Sydney to burst into heart-wrenching sobs that shook her entire body. Vaughn only held her tighter.
"Syd...whatever happened, it will be okay, I promise...I'm here for you, and I'm not going to leave you. Not now, not ever." Vaughn hadn't even noticed that he had uttered his words in French. Sydney understood, and although his words intended some sort of comfort, if anything Sydney's tears appeared to come with a renewed fervor.
He lifted his chin and looked her straight in the eyes, their faces only inches apart, hers streaked with tears and his wracked with concern. "Tell me what happened," he pleaded, his eyes searching hers. Her sobs slowed to silent tears, and when she reached for him he gladly took her once again in his arms.
"Will is doing fine, Sydney. He's at a safehouse nearby, until he can be entered into the Protection Program. He will most certainly be relocated, but he will be safe. He had written a story, and had one of his coworkers hold onto it in case anything happened to him. It was his story about what he had found out about SD-6. We got it yanked from the presses just in time. Speaking of SD-6, Sloane isn't happy about it, but he isn't expecting you to return to work for a few weeks. I explained to him that you called me one night from the airport, telling me you were going to go look for your mother because you couldn't bear just sitting around any longer." Jack paused. His daughter visibly winced, and the tears that had flowed so many times that day began to run again. He stopped, and squeezed her hand. She didn't so much as look his direction.
Sydney's doctor poked his head into the room.
"Mister Bristow, can I see you for a moment." Jack rose and followed the doctor outside.
"I'm sure that given time, she will make a full physical recovery. But she has been awake for nearly 24 hours and she has not spoken a single word. She refuses to eat. I had originally recommended psychoanalysis for her, but if she doesn't even seem to be mentally and emotionally capable of interaction and communication, it isn't going to do her much good." Jack simply nodded, unable to coherently respond. "Also," the doctor said in a low, secretive voice. "There is pressure being put on me to find out what happened in Taipei. You know the type of methods the CIA will use to extract this information from your daughter if they deem it necessary."
"I understand. I will do what I can." Jack said before returning to his daughter's side.
Vaughn and Jack sat with Sydney long into the night, most of which she spent curled in the fetal position, crying hysterically. At the moment, she was laying her head in Vaughn's lap, who was sprawled across her bed, stroking her hair and clutching her hand.
"Sydney?" Jack pleaded. "Honey, you have to tell us what happened." Sydney looked her father straight in the face and began chewing her thumbnail.
"It's okay Syd. No one can hurt you now," Vaughn whispered soothingly, tucking her hair behind her ear.
"I killed my brother," Sydney whispered. Jack and Vaughn both felt their mouths fly open in shock. But Sydney had no more information to offer. Jack immediately rose and exited into the hallway, cell phone in hand, and Vaughn followed shortly after.
Jack was already on his phone barking orders when Vaughn reached him. He placed his hand over the receiver.
"The CIA team that did a sweep in Taipei brought Sark's body to the lab in the LA field office, didn't they?" Jack questioned.
"Yes, I believe they did."
"Devlin? Call in an order to the lab. Tell to cross-match Sydney's DNA with Sark's." He paused. "Just do it. That's all I have to offer at the moment." He punched his cell phone power button angrily, threw a punch at the wall, and ran his fingers through his hair.
"What the hell do you think is going on, Jack?" Vaughn asked, pacing nervously in the hallway for lack of better ideas.
"If what Sydney said is true, Sark is her brother. Which means that her mother may have been involved with this whole situation somehow."
"Who do you think his father is? Khasinau?"
"That would be my first guess; beyond that, there are a million possibilities."
Jack and Vaughn sat with Sydney once again, waiting impatiently for the lab results to be phoned to them. Despite their prodding, Sydney had not said another word. A million thoughts raced through their minds, trying to make sense of the situation. Vaughn's cell phone rang suddenly, cutting off the quiet in the room, and causing Sydney to jump about ten feet.
"Vaughn," he answered it wearily, rubbing his eyes.
"It's Devlin. I've got the results. I called you instead of Jack because I'm sure how well he's going to take this..."
"Okay..."
"The results for the test was positive for a DNA match--"
"So they are brother and sister?" Vaughn's face showed nothing but frustration. Sydney looked over at him and caught his gaze. He could see tears streaking down her face.
"Yes, it looks like it. And Vaughn, there's something else. Something that I don't think Bristow was suspecting when he ordered the test." Devlin paused, causing Vaughn a severe case of apprehension. He looked across the room at Jack who was just staring at him, with a look on his face that Vaughn never expected to see from Jack Bristow. "I think he expected Sark to be Sydney's half brother, a child that Laura had with someone else after she faked her death. But Sark appears to be Sydney's full-blooded brother. Jack is his father."
Vaughn didn't remember the end of that conversation. He only remembered dropping the phone in shock. He looked at Jack, visibly shaken, and wondered what the hell he could say to him. He looked to Sydney, who buried her head in her hands and continued to cry.
She knew.
Vaughn waited until she raised her head and was able to look at him again. The look on her face said it all, even though she was no longer crying. She already knew this to be true. But there was still more that she knew. More that was painful to her, more that she couldn't find a way to explain. Vaughn looked at Jack once more. He opened his mouth to speak.
"So," Vaughn began in a husky voice. "It looks like everyone was correct. Sark is Sydney's brother."
Jack looked at if he was just been hit by a semi. But Vaughn continued.
"Also, there's something else. I'm not exactly sure how to tell you this, so I think I'll just cut the crap and get to the point."
Vaughn looked at Sydney one more time, then at Jack. Both were looking at him with shell-shocked looks, hanging on his every word. The relation between them was uncanny.
"I know that you already suspected that Laura, better known as Irina Derevko, was Sark's mother, from what Sydney told us earlier. But something I think she knew, but wasn't able to tell us, was that Sark isn't her half- brother. He is her true brother." Vaughn took a deep breath. "Jack, you're his father. The DNA was a complete match."
Before her father could even react, Sydney climbed out of bed and into his lap, like a little kid clinging to Santa Claus as Christmas. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and together they began to cry.
Vaughn left the room.
"That sick son of a bitch," Jack whispered. "I know, honey, I'm so sorry." Sydney looked into his face with questioning eyes. "No one else knows, only the doctors and me," he assured her. She hugged him tighter and they continued to cry. Jack for what he had just learned and how he knew it affected his daughter, and Sydney not only for that but of the knowledge that she knew would come later.
When Vaughn returned several hours later, he found Sydney sitting alone in her room, staring at a picture of her parents and her when she was probably about five years old. He had no idea where she had gotten it, nor did he have any inkling of where Jack had disappeared to. He did figure, however, that Jack did have a lot going on in his head and a lot to sort out of the situation, and believed that he was deserving of some time alone.
He sat in his usual chair, by the corner, and watching Sydney as she studied the picture. Suddenly she began to rip it, nearly in half. Then Vaughn saw what she was doing. She was ripping her mother out of the picture. She reached onto a table next to her bedside, grabbing some sort of black marking pen left there by a doctor who had earlier been analyzing her x-rays.
Vaughn stood and then sat next to her to further study what she was doing. She wrote in fat, angry letters across the picture: THE. Then her hand began shaking and she stopped writing. Vaughn gently took hold of her wrist, and the tremors stopped. He looked deep into her eyes, and she calmed down a bit, enough to continue writing. Vaughn felt his eyes widen in shock.
THE MAN. Sydney had written THE MAN across her mother's picture. The man was not Khasinau after all. It was her mother. And God only knew what the hell she had done to Sydney in Taipei. What she had told her. Vaughn wrapped Sydney in his arms, but only for a few brief minutes. Then he rose.
He had to find Jack. He didn't even know where to begin. He searched the entire hospital, roof and all, but there was no sign of Jack anywhere. Even though he had not been officially released from the hospital (that was due to come the next morning), he walked straight out the doors and into the parking lot. He saw Weiss's car, hot-wired it, and drove away quickly.
First he went to Jack's house. He wasn't there. He drove slowly by Sydney's house, but it appeared that no one was even home, and Jack's car was nowhere in sight, so he continued. Jack wasn't answering his cell phone.
Then Vaughn knew. He pulled a quick u-turn and drove as fast as he could. He parked his vehicle next to Jack's, and leapt from the vehicle. Not wanting to disturb anyone else who may have been there, he walked quickly but quietly across the cemetery. He saw Jack, not too far away, staring hard at the ground.
Vaughn felt himself tripping and reached out to the nearest headstone to steady himself, knocking a fresh bouquet of white lilies off of the top. He respectfully picked them up and returned them to their proper place, before glancing at the headstone to read the name that was chiseled upon it
Daniel Hecht.
Vaughn backed away from the stone as if he had been burned. He looked at the flowers, and then looked towards Jack. He withdrew a single lily from the bouquet, and continued towards him.
He was indeed standing at a grave, where the headstone read Laura Bristow. Vaughn knew that the grave beneath them was empty and that the woman who was intended to be buried her indeed was still alive and kicking. He stood next to Jack in silence for a moment before reaching out to place the lily atop the headstone.
"This woman does not deserve your reverence, for she is anything but dead, nor will she ever deserve your respect." Jack began to reach out to remove the flower, but felt Vaughn grab his wrist.
"Laura Bristow died almost twenty years ago. She was the woman you loved, the mother of your child. She deserves our reverence and our respect. However, that woman was not real. It is Irina Derevko that we are now after. It is 'The Man' that we are chasing for those answers we seek." Jack looked at Vaughn, confused at the apparent parallel he was trying to draw between his former wife and Khasinau. Vaughn sighed, reached into his pocket, and withdrew the piece Sydney had torn away from the picture. He looked at it once last time, pressed it into Jack's hand, and turned to go. He squeezed Jack's shoulder knowingly before departing. He began to trudge across the cemetery.
Jack watched him go, almost afraid to look at whatever it was the Vaughn had pressed into his hand. It was a picture of Laura, torn away from a candid someone had taken of the three of them, oh, twenty or so years ago. He noticed Sydney's angry handwriting crossing the photo like black snakes, bringing nothing but evil, but for a moment failed to register the letters the snakes formed.
The he saw: THE MAN.
She forced her eyes open, ignoring how they watered from the bright sunlight streaming in her window and the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. She gazed around slowly. Her world was a blur. She was in a hospital -- hospital bed, too many lights, IV in her arm, hospital gown -- she knew that much. She saw Vaughn seated to her right, in a deeply uncomfortable looking molded plastic chair. He wasn't wearing his usual suit -- just jeans and a light blue button-front. He appeared to be staring intently at his left thumb, rotating it in circles and popping it out of joint.
Vaughn.
Vaughn....behind the window. Everything from Taipei came rushing back, with the full-force of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. A blow like Sydney had never experienced before. The experience was twice as painful the second time around. Vaughn drowning and Khasinau and Vaughn shoving that creep in the club and her mother and Will and Vaughn frozen at the end of the hallway and Sark...
Sydney bolted nearly straight up in bed, eyes wild. Vaughn rose as he gazed in her direction with confusion and concern. He sat slowly on the bed next to her.
"Syd? Are you okay? Are you in pain? What's wrong?"
Not even knowing where to begin, Sydney opened her mouth to try to respond, but no sound came out. She tried again, but eventually just shook her head. The pain in her eyes and the expression on her face made Vaughn's heart rip nearly in two. He reached for hand. She took it, without moving, and then buried her face in Vaughn's shoulder.
"Syd," Vaughn whispered as he wrapped his strong arms around her. The display of affection caused Sydney to burst into heart-wrenching sobs that shook her entire body. Vaughn only held her tighter.
"Syd...whatever happened, it will be okay, I promise...I'm here for you, and I'm not going to leave you. Not now, not ever." Vaughn hadn't even noticed that he had uttered his words in French. Sydney understood, and although his words intended some sort of comfort, if anything Sydney's tears appeared to come with a renewed fervor.
He lifted his chin and looked her straight in the eyes, their faces only inches apart, hers streaked with tears and his wracked with concern. "Tell me what happened," he pleaded, his eyes searching hers. Her sobs slowed to silent tears, and when she reached for him he gladly took her once again in his arms.
"Will is doing fine, Sydney. He's at a safehouse nearby, until he can be entered into the Protection Program. He will most certainly be relocated, but he will be safe. He had written a story, and had one of his coworkers hold onto it in case anything happened to him. It was his story about what he had found out about SD-6. We got it yanked from the presses just in time. Speaking of SD-6, Sloane isn't happy about it, but he isn't expecting you to return to work for a few weeks. I explained to him that you called me one night from the airport, telling me you were going to go look for your mother because you couldn't bear just sitting around any longer." Jack paused. His daughter visibly winced, and the tears that had flowed so many times that day began to run again. He stopped, and squeezed her hand. She didn't so much as look his direction.
Sydney's doctor poked his head into the room.
"Mister Bristow, can I see you for a moment." Jack rose and followed the doctor outside.
"I'm sure that given time, she will make a full physical recovery. But she has been awake for nearly 24 hours and she has not spoken a single word. She refuses to eat. I had originally recommended psychoanalysis for her, but if she doesn't even seem to be mentally and emotionally capable of interaction and communication, it isn't going to do her much good." Jack simply nodded, unable to coherently respond. "Also," the doctor said in a low, secretive voice. "There is pressure being put on me to find out what happened in Taipei. You know the type of methods the CIA will use to extract this information from your daughter if they deem it necessary."
"I understand. I will do what I can." Jack said before returning to his daughter's side.
Vaughn and Jack sat with Sydney long into the night, most of which she spent curled in the fetal position, crying hysterically. At the moment, she was laying her head in Vaughn's lap, who was sprawled across her bed, stroking her hair and clutching her hand.
"Sydney?" Jack pleaded. "Honey, you have to tell us what happened." Sydney looked her father straight in the face and began chewing her thumbnail.
"It's okay Syd. No one can hurt you now," Vaughn whispered soothingly, tucking her hair behind her ear.
"I killed my brother," Sydney whispered. Jack and Vaughn both felt their mouths fly open in shock. But Sydney had no more information to offer. Jack immediately rose and exited into the hallway, cell phone in hand, and Vaughn followed shortly after.
Jack was already on his phone barking orders when Vaughn reached him. He placed his hand over the receiver.
"The CIA team that did a sweep in Taipei brought Sark's body to the lab in the LA field office, didn't they?" Jack questioned.
"Yes, I believe they did."
"Devlin? Call in an order to the lab. Tell to cross-match Sydney's DNA with Sark's." He paused. "Just do it. That's all I have to offer at the moment." He punched his cell phone power button angrily, threw a punch at the wall, and ran his fingers through his hair.
"What the hell do you think is going on, Jack?" Vaughn asked, pacing nervously in the hallway for lack of better ideas.
"If what Sydney said is true, Sark is her brother. Which means that her mother may have been involved with this whole situation somehow."
"Who do you think his father is? Khasinau?"
"That would be my first guess; beyond that, there are a million possibilities."
Jack and Vaughn sat with Sydney once again, waiting impatiently for the lab results to be phoned to them. Despite their prodding, Sydney had not said another word. A million thoughts raced through their minds, trying to make sense of the situation. Vaughn's cell phone rang suddenly, cutting off the quiet in the room, and causing Sydney to jump about ten feet.
"Vaughn," he answered it wearily, rubbing his eyes.
"It's Devlin. I've got the results. I called you instead of Jack because I'm sure how well he's going to take this..."
"Okay..."
"The results for the test was positive for a DNA match--"
"So they are brother and sister?" Vaughn's face showed nothing but frustration. Sydney looked over at him and caught his gaze. He could see tears streaking down her face.
"Yes, it looks like it. And Vaughn, there's something else. Something that I don't think Bristow was suspecting when he ordered the test." Devlin paused, causing Vaughn a severe case of apprehension. He looked across the room at Jack who was just staring at him, with a look on his face that Vaughn never expected to see from Jack Bristow. "I think he expected Sark to be Sydney's half brother, a child that Laura had with someone else after she faked her death. But Sark appears to be Sydney's full-blooded brother. Jack is his father."
Vaughn didn't remember the end of that conversation. He only remembered dropping the phone in shock. He looked at Jack, visibly shaken, and wondered what the hell he could say to him. He looked to Sydney, who buried her head in her hands and continued to cry.
She knew.
Vaughn waited until she raised her head and was able to look at him again. The look on her face said it all, even though she was no longer crying. She already knew this to be true. But there was still more that she knew. More that was painful to her, more that she couldn't find a way to explain. Vaughn looked at Jack once more. He opened his mouth to speak.
"So," Vaughn began in a husky voice. "It looks like everyone was correct. Sark is Sydney's brother."
Jack looked at if he was just been hit by a semi. But Vaughn continued.
"Also, there's something else. I'm not exactly sure how to tell you this, so I think I'll just cut the crap and get to the point."
Vaughn looked at Sydney one more time, then at Jack. Both were looking at him with shell-shocked looks, hanging on his every word. The relation between them was uncanny.
"I know that you already suspected that Laura, better known as Irina Derevko, was Sark's mother, from what Sydney told us earlier. But something I think she knew, but wasn't able to tell us, was that Sark isn't her half- brother. He is her true brother." Vaughn took a deep breath. "Jack, you're his father. The DNA was a complete match."
Before her father could even react, Sydney climbed out of bed and into his lap, like a little kid clinging to Santa Claus as Christmas. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and together they began to cry.
Vaughn left the room.
"That sick son of a bitch," Jack whispered. "I know, honey, I'm so sorry." Sydney looked into his face with questioning eyes. "No one else knows, only the doctors and me," he assured her. She hugged him tighter and they continued to cry. Jack for what he had just learned and how he knew it affected his daughter, and Sydney not only for that but of the knowledge that she knew would come later.
When Vaughn returned several hours later, he found Sydney sitting alone in her room, staring at a picture of her parents and her when she was probably about five years old. He had no idea where she had gotten it, nor did he have any inkling of where Jack had disappeared to. He did figure, however, that Jack did have a lot going on in his head and a lot to sort out of the situation, and believed that he was deserving of some time alone.
He sat in his usual chair, by the corner, and watching Sydney as she studied the picture. Suddenly she began to rip it, nearly in half. Then Vaughn saw what she was doing. She was ripping her mother out of the picture. She reached onto a table next to her bedside, grabbing some sort of black marking pen left there by a doctor who had earlier been analyzing her x-rays.
Vaughn stood and then sat next to her to further study what she was doing. She wrote in fat, angry letters across the picture: THE. Then her hand began shaking and she stopped writing. Vaughn gently took hold of her wrist, and the tremors stopped. He looked deep into her eyes, and she calmed down a bit, enough to continue writing. Vaughn felt his eyes widen in shock.
THE MAN. Sydney had written THE MAN across her mother's picture. The man was not Khasinau after all. It was her mother. And God only knew what the hell she had done to Sydney in Taipei. What she had told her. Vaughn wrapped Sydney in his arms, but only for a few brief minutes. Then he rose.
He had to find Jack. He didn't even know where to begin. He searched the entire hospital, roof and all, but there was no sign of Jack anywhere. Even though he had not been officially released from the hospital (that was due to come the next morning), he walked straight out the doors and into the parking lot. He saw Weiss's car, hot-wired it, and drove away quickly.
First he went to Jack's house. He wasn't there. He drove slowly by Sydney's house, but it appeared that no one was even home, and Jack's car was nowhere in sight, so he continued. Jack wasn't answering his cell phone.
Then Vaughn knew. He pulled a quick u-turn and drove as fast as he could. He parked his vehicle next to Jack's, and leapt from the vehicle. Not wanting to disturb anyone else who may have been there, he walked quickly but quietly across the cemetery. He saw Jack, not too far away, staring hard at the ground.
Vaughn felt himself tripping and reached out to the nearest headstone to steady himself, knocking a fresh bouquet of white lilies off of the top. He respectfully picked them up and returned them to their proper place, before glancing at the headstone to read the name that was chiseled upon it
Daniel Hecht.
Vaughn backed away from the stone as if he had been burned. He looked at the flowers, and then looked towards Jack. He withdrew a single lily from the bouquet, and continued towards him.
He was indeed standing at a grave, where the headstone read Laura Bristow. Vaughn knew that the grave beneath them was empty and that the woman who was intended to be buried her indeed was still alive and kicking. He stood next to Jack in silence for a moment before reaching out to place the lily atop the headstone.
"This woman does not deserve your reverence, for she is anything but dead, nor will she ever deserve your respect." Jack began to reach out to remove the flower, but felt Vaughn grab his wrist.
"Laura Bristow died almost twenty years ago. She was the woman you loved, the mother of your child. She deserves our reverence and our respect. However, that woman was not real. It is Irina Derevko that we are now after. It is 'The Man' that we are chasing for those answers we seek." Jack looked at Vaughn, confused at the apparent parallel he was trying to draw between his former wife and Khasinau. Vaughn sighed, reached into his pocket, and withdrew the piece Sydney had torn away from the picture. He looked at it once last time, pressed it into Jack's hand, and turned to go. He squeezed Jack's shoulder knowingly before departing. He began to trudge across the cemetery.
Jack watched him go, almost afraid to look at whatever it was the Vaughn had pressed into his hand. It was a picture of Laura, torn away from a candid someone had taken of the three of them, oh, twenty or so years ago. He noticed Sydney's angry handwriting crossing the photo like black snakes, bringing nothing but evil, but for a moment failed to register the letters the snakes formed.
The he saw: THE MAN.