"They keep coming back, don't they?" Dixon said to her as they left the briefing room.
Sydney tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Her thoughts today kept straying to how different everything was now that she knew the truth about SD-6. Even the air seemed different, dirtier. "Who? You mean Navour?"
Dixon didn't seem to notice her lack of attention as he asked how the man was still able to walk after his last fight with SD-6 agents. Sydney answered, hoping she was saying something she would have said before turning double. "If it weren't him, it'd be someone else."
Dixon's reply told her that she still sounded the same, still sounded like she believed in the integrity of SD-6. "Then let it be someone else. We kill ourselves to do the right thing. Meanwhile the bad people keep coming back."
Staring at him, Sydney resisted the urge to tell him that they were the bad people: she and Dixon and their friends milling about them. They were all "bad" people.
Sloane interrupted their conversation. "Sydney, do you have a minute?"
"Yes, of course," she answered, resisting the urge to slap him, to strangle him, to hurt him. It would get easier with time. She had to believe it would all get easier with time. Besides, it would not be long before SD-6 no longer existed.
Dixon left them alone after telling them he would be in Tech Ops. Sloane looked at her in a way she used to think of as caring. "I know it's going to take you some time to adjust to being back. I just want to make sure you're all right."
I'm grieving the loss of my fiancé, a man you murdered. I've found out that I'm working for the people I thought I was fighting against. And I now know that mother is a traitor, and not only to her country. She's betrayed my father by working for you. "I'm fine. Thanks," was all she said.
"Good," was his answer, as if he believed it were true. "I need to show you something." He opened the office door in front of them. Sydney couldn't stop herself from showing her surprise, although she knew the reasons for her surprise were not what Sloane thought they were. "I'll leave you two alone," he said as he left the room.
"I made sure that Sloane wasn't sitting in his office listening to us talk. The room's clean," Laura told her.
Sydney's entire body remained tense. Her fingers clenched into fists, but she forced them to relax. "What is this?"
Laura started to reach out and touch her, but she pulled her hand back. Maybe the look on Sydney's face was not encouraging. "I asked Arvin to let me tell you what you already know. I work for SD-6."
"Arvin?" Sydney flinched at Laura's use of the name. "How high up the chain are you?"
Her mother stared at her, and then pushed her hair behind her ear. "In this office? High."
"Privy to secrets," Sydney realized. Her voice trembled as she realized what that meant.
Laura's eyebrows drew together as if she didn't understand the course the conversation was taking. "Yes. My clearance is high."
"High enough to know about Danny? Did you know that was what they were going to do?" A part of Sydney's brain told her to relax her fingers, that her fingernails were tearing into the palm of her hand. She didn't relax them.
Laura blanched. Then, she glanced down at her feet and crossed her arms. She finally looked up, and Sydney could see the answer in her eyes before she even voiced it. "Yes."
Sydney barely stopped her hand from slapping her mother. Laura stepped towards her, a hand stretched towards her. Sydney stumbled back. "Don't." Tears burned her eyes. "Don't touch me. Don't talk to me. Don't."
She turned and rushed from the room.
***
"That didn't go well," Sloane told Laura a few minutes later.
She was barely holding herself together. She didn't need Sloane pushing her buttons at the moment. He was a master at it; he knew exactly where to hurt her and what her fears were. It was how he kept control of her, no matter how hard she fought against the bit.
"No, it didn't." Laura swallowed. "She asked me if I had prior knowledge about Danny." She had considered not telling him, but Sloane would insist on knowing anyway. He might have even asked Sydney if she refused to tell him.
Sloane walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulder. "What did you tell her?"
"The truth," Laura admitted.
His hands began massaging her. "You could have lied. I would have supported you, told her that you didn't know."
Laura shook her head. "She would have known."
"I doubt it," he replied. "There are a lot of truths about you that she doesn't know. What would be one more?"
Laura almost gasped as the blade of his words stabbed into her. "I need to go," she told him, stepping away from him. "I'll talk to you later."
He took her hand before she could stop him. "You know I'm here for you if you need to talk."
She looked at him, hating him for making the sincere offer, and despising herself for even considering taking him up on it. As sincere as his offer was, it also held danger for her. He was a spider building a beautiful web. He had caught her years ago, but he continued to wrap her tighter into the threads.
The sad thing was that it wasn't personal for him. He honestly liked her and thought that they had a lot in common. An idea that made her shiver in revulsion. But he continued to drain her, to suck the life out of her, because he hated Jack.
"I know, Arvin. Thank you," she forced herself to say before grabbing the door handle and yanking it open. She rushed from the room.
***
It was only through sheer force of will that Jack didn't leave the room running. His feet pounded the floor beneath him as he struggled to control the emotions inside. He still felt the urge to go back and pound in the face of Bill Miles, a man who had been his friend for years.
He wanted to hit him, even though he understood that Bill was acting as a friend. The harder the interrogation, the more details they demanded, the easier it would be for them to clear Jack of any wrong doing.
Only Jack didn't think he deserved to be cleared. He had been betraying the Agency. Unintentionally, but that didn't change the fact that he had been doing it. The only reason he was fighting to be vindicated was because Sydney needed him.
"Jack!" Devlin called from behind him.
"I'm really not in the mood to talk," Jack told him as he continued to head down the hallway.
"I know," Devlin said, matching his pace. "Bill was being a jackass."
"Bill was asking questions that need to be answered," Jack replied as he hit the elevator button. He watched the light move from floor number to floor number as the elevator made its way up to them. The pause between each floor seemed hideously long. The elevator was almost to them when he said, "And I don't have a clue what those answers are, Devlin. I don't know when my wife was recruited."
"You could get Sydney--"
Jack shook his head. "Laura would be suspicious if Sydney started asking those types of questions right now. Sydney doesn't ask those types of questions when she's angry, and Sydney's furious. In a little while, after Sydney has had time to think through some things, she would ask. She will ask. Then, we'll know."
They walked into the empty elevator, and Jack pressed the button for the parking garage. Devlin stretched out his hand, but he did not push a button. It took Jack a moment to realize that Devlin was offering him a file folder. "What's this?"
"You're not supposed to have it, but I thought you would want to read it before you left."
Jack opened it and saw Sydney's familiar scrawl on a crumpled brown paper bag. Looking at it, he felt like he had fallen down the rabbit hole. His daughter used to color him pictures on paper bags, and now she was using them to tell him about top-secret meetings.
He quickly read her comments and Michael's detailed notes about their meet. "Why is Abul Hassein Navour attempting to get twenty-year old intel about nuclear arms? Why was it even stolen from Moscow in the first place?"
"We don't know," Devlin answered as the bell dinged and the door opened onto the parking garage. The cool air surrounded them. "But we hope to know after Sydney passes us the documents at the airport."
As Jack drove back to Jennings' Aerospace, he thought about Sydney's mission. From what had been written in the file folder, he thought it was too risky. Too much could go wrong. Sydney was to give her handler the disks in a brush pass, and then Vaughn was to copy them and give them back to her in another brush pass before she and Dixon left the airport.
However, since he was in the middle of an intense investigation, and they wouldn't let him get officially involved anyway, he would just have to trust Sydney and Michael to do their jobs. And worry.
"Hello, Janet," he said as he entered his office.
She smiled at him. "Hello, sir. Your wife is here to see you."
Jack stopped in mid-stride. "Oh, really?" He forced himself to smile, just as he would have before finding out that Laura was a part of the enemy. He hated the fact the smile was not totally forced. "Thank you."
Laura's back was to him when he entered. Her shoulders were slumped, looking like a stone worn away by the wind, and her head was bowed. "Hello, sweetheart," he greeted her. "What are you doing here at this time of day?"
Her smile was strained when she turned to look at him. "I know you're busy doing damage control, but I really needed to see you."
She walked over and wrapped her arms around him. Her familiar scent caressed his nostrils, and he noticed how vulnerable she looked and felt as her head rested against his chest. She looked and felt like his wife, the one who had always leaned on him. The one he had always leaned on. His arms went around her automatically.
He felt her relaxing. "I'm sorry. It's been a rough couple of weeks, and I really needed a hug," she mumbled into his chest.
As he felt his own muscles relaxing, he silently agreed with her. The last week had been hell, and he had been needing a hug, too. Funny how people notice things after they are gone. Somehow even the terrible days used to never seem all that bad when he knew he could fall into his wife's arms at the end of them. Holding her close, thinking about the truth and the pounding questions he was receiving and asking himself, he allowed himself a brief minute to just enjoy the comfort of her arms.