"Sydney is on her way back from Morocco," Jack said as he sat down across from Vaughn.
The disheveled man across from him nodded. Jack studied him as he told the waiter his order. Vaughn muttered his, and the waiter left them alone. Jack noted the rumpled tie, the skewed jacket, and the heavy eyelids. Some men could take an expensive, tailor-made suit and make it look like it was bought off the rack. Others had the fortunate ability to make an off-the-rack suit look like it was tailor-made.
"You look like hell."
Vaughn nodded and played with his napkin-wrapped silverware. "Yeah, I've been fighting with Alice."
"I heard." Vaughn looked up at him. "It has been the talk of the town, so to speak."
"She thinks I've been too distant lately." He spit the words out like a machine gun. "I told her that I've been busy at work, but--"
"She doesn't believe you," Jack finished. It was time to have the conversation he had been putting off.
Vaughn shook his head. "No, she doesn't. She thinks . . ." His voice trailed away, and Jack knew exactly what she was thinking. Alice was a smart woman. She had been good for Vaughn.
"She thinks you are in love with another woman. Or at least thinking too much about another woman."
"I guess you really can read my mind," Vaughn tried to joke. He spun the wrapped silverware around in a circle. "I told her that she was wrong, but--"
"She's right," Jack said bluntly. He really didn't want to have this conversation. "You think you are falling in love with my daughter."
Vaughn's mouth hung open as the waiter put down his water with lemon. "Thank you," Jack said as he placed his steaming cup of coffee in front of him.
He leaned forward. "Get over it," he ordered him. "I admit that at one time, I harbored the hope that you would get together with Sydney. And I also admit that I agree with Elizabeth more than I want to when it comes to the CIA."
"You don't think I should have joined?" Vaughn looked like he had been sucker punched.
"I didn't want you to, but I knew it was your choice."
"You said you were proud--"
"I was. I am." He smiled. "Michael, I was also relieved when you decide on the career path of paper pusher instead of field agent."
"Because of mom," Vaughn admitted. Jack's eyebrows lifted. He had not realized why his friend had made that choice. "I knew she would feel better about it if she knew I wasn't out there every day like Dad was."
"I never introduced you to Sydney because I didn't want her to marry a company man like me. I wanted her to have a normal marriage with a man who could come home and tell her everything about his day," Jack said.
He had yearned to tell Laura everything. He had told her far more than he should have; he had been a fool. His wife worked for the enemy. Vaughn's eyes held a hint of compassion, letting Jack know that he knew where Jack's thoughts were.
He waved down the waiter and ordered a Scotch, and the compassion turned into reproach. Jack ignored it. "I know that you think you are love with Sydney, and I think you probably could be, but you need to get over it. Sydney and I both need you to be her handler, Michael. Cool, analytical. Not an emotional basket case.
"Besides," he admitted. "She's not ready for that, yet. She still cries in the middle of the night for Danny."
"I know," Vaughn replied.
***
I shouldn't be here, Vaughn thought as he looked at the hurt woman in front of him.
"I know I shouldn't have called you," Sydney said. "Especially after complaining so much about Lambert setting up a meet just to talk. Dad would have a fit."
Jack would cut him to shreds if he knew that Vaughn was meeting Sydney to talk about her feelings. Not even feelings about a mission. Feelings about the fact that her mother had cancelled dinner plans.
"I just had so many questions. I wanted--I wanted--" Sydney sighed and ran a shaking hand through her hair. "All my life, I could count on Mom and Dad. They were my bedrock. They were always the same. Only now, I feel like they're both strangers. Neither one of them will talk about their work. Dad won't answer any questions about what he does, and Mom won't tell me anything about SD-6."
She looked at him, and he felt his heart clench. Remember Alice, a voice inside his head screamed. The pounding of his heart almost drowned it out. He had talked to Alice earlier, explained that he had been promoted and put on some important cases. She had accepted his explanation, not even complaining when he slipped from her bed for an unplanned meeting.
He had to stop yearning for what he couldn't have. Jack was right. He needed to be distant, but he wasn't sure he could be. He didn't know how to handle Sydney Bristow without making it personal.
"Maybe your Mom will tell you later."
Sydney shook her head. "Mom didn't have to work tonight, Vaughn." She sniffed. "She just didn't want to answer my questions."
She started crying harder. "You want to hear something really crazy? I want to fix my parents' marriage. I feel like this little girl who doesn't have a clue what's happening, but she knows something is wrong. I want to make it better. I want to find out something about my mother that will make it all better. But what could she say that would make it all better? There's nothing she could say."
Her pager beeped. Vaughn watched in amazement as it flew through the air, arching gracefully over the water before plummeting to its demise. "You just threw your beeper into the ocean."
Sydney looked almost as surprised as him. "I know," she laughed through her tears.
He told himself to leave it there. He couldn't. He wanted her to know how much he admired her. "Okay, listen to me. There's something that you need to know. When you first walked into my office with that stupid Bozo hair, I thought you were crazy. I mean, I actually thought you might have been a crazy person."
And he had resented the assignment. Junior Agents always got to talk to the nuts who knew that their next door neighbor was a spy for the flavor-of-the month country. It wasn't until she told him her name that he recognized her, and even then he thought about poor Jack having to handle a crazy daughter.
"But I watched you, and I read your statement, and I've seen--I've seen how you think. I've seen how you work. I've seen who you are."
And it awed him. He had been around this world of espionage all of his life. He had watched her father, his mentor, with the same awe.
He thought about something his father had written in his journals about the job, and he shared it with her. "In this job, you see darkness. You see the worst in people and though the jobs are different and the missions change, and the enemies have a thousand names, the one crucial thing, the one real responsibility you have is to not let your rage, and your resentment, and your disgust, darken you. When you're at your absolute lowest, at your most depressed, just remember that you can always, you know. You got my number."
He wanted to wince. Jack would kill him for making that offer. He had meant to tell her that her father would always be there for her; instead, he had told her to call him.
When she took his hand and squeezed, he knew he was in trouble. He didn't care. He squeezed back.
***
Francie was going through the newspaper when Sydney got home that night. "Hi," she said. "Just looking for an apartment."
Sydney's heart sank. "Things didn't go well with Charlie tonight."
"He told me I should trust him," Francie said as she used a Sharpie to circle something. "That was all he wanted to tell me."
Sydney winced as the marker squealed its way around another ad. "I'm sorry, sweetie."
Tears pricked at Francie's eyes--Sydney could see the light reflecting off of them--but her friend did not let them fall. "I am, too. I just need to move on. That's why I'm looking."
"You know, I haven't even started," Sydney told her as she sat down next to her at the bar. "We should thinking about renting a place together."
"That would be fun," Francie said with a small smile. Sydney was thankful to see it.
"I think so," she replied as she bent over to see the paper better. "Have you found anything good yet?"
"Are either one of you free at about four o'clock tomorrow?"
Sydney turned to see her mom leaning against the entranceway. "I am," she replied before she could think.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bristow, but I've got to feed 200 hungry doctors tomorrow night," was Francie's reply.
"I'm sorry about missing dinner, Sydney. You know how work is," Laura said as she walked up and hugged her.
Sydney hugged her back and wished she could be the mother she had been before. Normal and fun and--
"Yeah, how does Mr. Bristow like you working all those extra hours on the new job?" Francie asked as Laura went to get a soda from the fridge.
"Jack's been working so much himself lately," Laura answered. "He hasn't noticed. I'm hoping by the time Jack's work slows down again, I'll have caught up and be working 'banker's hours'."
Francie laughed and Sydney tried to smile. "Well, I know Sydney has never worked 'banker's hours'!"
"No," Sydney agreed as she pushed her hair behind her ear.
"But I'm further up on the ladder. It should help me get more normal hours," Laura replied.
"But you have more responsibility than me," Sydney pointed out.
Laura stared at her for a minute. "True," she answered. She took a sip of water and then nodded. "True."
Smiling, she walked back towards them. "Anyway, I have this apartment that I want to show you tomorrow."
"An apartment?" Sydney's eyebrows crunched together.
Laura told her as she held up her hand. "I know you may not like it, and that's fine. I just saw it one day and thought it would be perfect for you. The girl only moved in the place in October, but her mother got sick, and she's moving back East to look after her."
Laura reached out and stroked her cheek. "I knew you wouldn't stay home with us for long. I've loved having you here, but I know that you are your own woman now." She sighed. "You always were independent, even as a baby."
***
"Yes, I am upset," her father snapped as he stared at her. He leaned closer to her as the wind flew around them at the observatory. "Today, I find out that my daughter was driving an ambulance as her partner pulled out the equivalent of 300 pounds of TNT from Dhiren Patel's chest. I also find out that her broken arm from two years ago was not the result of skiing accident like she told me, but rather the result of a fight with a bodyguard."
Sydney looked down at her arm. There was no scar, no hint of crookedness, to mark the one-time break. She wished there were. "I can't regret that broken arm, Dad," she told him. "I wouldn't have met Danny if that man hadn't broken my arm."
Jack knew the story. "You kept missing your doctor's appointment to get it removed."
Sighing, Sydney smiled. "Between work and school, trying to find the time to get across town was impossible."
"I didn't understand why you had chosen a doctor so far from home anyway," he muttered. "Now I know."
"I was supposed to see an SD-6 doctor, and he was the closest." She admitted what he already knew. "Sloane wasn't happy when I went to the University hospital instead to have it removed. He never did like me dating Danny, either; he thought that, as a doctor, he would notice too much." It had been hard to explain her bruises, to hide them away from Danny's observant eyes.
He wrapped his arm around her. "Danny was a wonderful man."
"Yeah, he was," she mumbled through tears.
He kissed the top of her head. "I'm going to miss you living at home. I wish I had told Laura 'no' when she asked about you renting that apartment and moving out again."
She smiled. Her mother had been right; it was perfect for her. Francie was thrilled with their new place. Everything was good. Except--"I'm going to miss you, too, Daddy."