There is a spoiler for 3.01, "The Two," in this part.
Thanks for reading!
~Jennifer
You were never supposed to last this long in the business.
Most field agents don't live to see retirement age, especially those from your generation. Most of the men you trained with at the Farm left years ago. Some grew older and resigned their positions for a desk job so they could live to see grandchildren someday. Others never got the chance, dying in some remote corner of the world, leaving a mourning family and a shining star in their place.
You were told the risks, of course, as you signed your life away in the first of many nondisclosure agreements. Death was a distinct possibility, they admitted, but you would die a patriot, a noble hero dying for the cause of man and country.
Sometimes when you were out on a mission you imagined what your funeral might be like. You knew it was morbid, but you couldn't help but imagine all the different possible scenarios—who would be in attendance, how they would be handling their loss. Would it matter that you had died? Would they really feel a void where your presence had once been?
On a mission in East Germany you concentrated on your wife and daughter's faces, finding that this helped you ignore the searing pain in your arm and leg and the cold ground beneath you. Years later you recalled the last time you had seen your daughter, sullen-faced because you wouldn't let her attend a rock concert on a school night, to help distract you from the blistering heat and mosquitoes that plagued you while you waited for extraction.
Sydney was always forefront in your mind, even during those years when she seemed to be anything but. She was your first and last thought, and many in between, as you worried that she wasn't eating enough vegetables. Contemplated her future. Reminded her to floss. Looked over an old report card. Handed her the keys to her car. Worried about her prom date. Watched a video feed of her graduation. Listened to a young medical student ask for her hand in marriage.
Read her CIA statement.
It really was Tolstoy long.
Being Sydney's father was the most challenging, petrifying, exhilarating experience of your life. The rush when she took her first steps, said her first words, rode her bicycle without the training wheels—it surpassed anything you had ever felt before. It was better than being on any mission.
It's unfortunate that time and circumstance led you to forget that fact for so many years.
Your last few years as a parent were fraught with mistakes, you hasten to confess. Glaring errors that most parents would never commit. A building laced with C-4 comes to mind as you inwardly wince.
But there was progress, a small part of you quickly points out as you park your car and slowly open the door. Working together, on the same side, on numerous missions—successful missions, you proudly remember. Having conversations that lasted longer than two minutes—an accomplishment. You allowed yourselves to be vulnerable to each other—she more than you, you confess—as the results of a car crash so many years ago, long the reason of your separation, became the impetus of your reunion. The woman who had separated you, kept you from truly looking at your daughter for so many years, became the reason you got your daughter back, if only for a short period of time.
You walk through the lightly falling rain to be by your daughter's side once more. You read the inscription in the granite, trace the small image of an angel that is etched in stone. You notice matching bouquets of flowers on the ground in front of her resting place and that of her nearest neighbor to the left. Tippin, you decide. Identical bouquets for the two women who held special places in his heart.
You kneel on the grass, noticing that the hump in the ground has virtually disappeared. Within a week or two the land will be as flat as it ever was, no longer displaying the newness of this untimely loss.
No, not loss. Loss makes you think that there is a chance, no matter how infinitesimal, that Sydney will be found.
But she won't be found. After too many months of searching, following impossible leads, collaborating with both the CIA and your wife, you know the time has finally come.
Sydney won't be coming back. She won't be found. As valiantly as you and Irina both tried, you weren't able to save her this time.
You watch the sun go down, and then rise again, as you contemplate this cold, hard truth.
She wasn't supposed to stay in this business. She was supposed to turn in her resignation, ignore Kendall's threats, immerse herself in teaching kids who thought English was boring. She was supposed to wear a long, white dress and a veil as she vowed to love, honor, and cherish one man for the rest of her life. She was supposed to fill a house with precocious children who would have her smile, or her dimples, or her dark hair, who would run and jump and play and never, ever believe the stories when they were older that they were a part of a family of spies.
Instead her name is engraved on a shining star on a wall at Langley, yet another star representing someone you worked with, admired. And in this case, loved.
This is your punishment, you decide, for too many years of breaking the rules, for loving the wrong woman, for betraying your daughter.
This is your punishment, you decide, as you realize the game is up, as you allow the cold handcuffs to be harshly placed around your wrists, as you trudge to the waiting armored vehicle.
You are not allowed to die. You somehow survive every mishap, every attempt on your life, every rogue agent who comes your way. You will outlast everyone and everything.
This is your purgatory.
~~~fin~~~