Kaylee bounced Grayson on her lap as she and her sister waited for the others to join the meeting. Sydney hadn't been surprised when her sister refused to wait in the car when they arrived at CIA headquarters. She was surprised however that her sister was able to get into the facility with such ease. She was sure that at least someone would protest her bringing a civilian and her child into the offices, but not one person paid them any more mind than normal.

"Sydney," Jack said as he entered the meeting room. "Why did you bring them in with you?"

"The runt wouldn't stay at home," Sydney joked. "Let me rephrase that. Neither runt would stay at home."

"I resent that remark," Kaylee said. She feigned annoyance.

"Kaylee, you and Grayson really shouldn't be here," Jack said. "Your sister needs a little space right now."

"Fine," Kaylee said. She was beginning to get frustrated with the way everyone seemed to want to protect her and her son from anything that may potentially upset them. "I'll go show Grayson some of Marshall's new toys. But I'll have you know that I'm not made of glass. I can take hearing a little bad news. Please don't exclude me from things that probably have an effect on my life."

"Here comes the rest of the crowd." Sydney pointed through the glass doors at as she watched Kaylee walk away from the room they were sitting in and noticed a handful of people making their way across the office. "This must be pretty important. There's Weiss and Vaughn, Marshall. And of course Dixon. At least they didn't try to bring my mom in again."

"Sydney, haven't you heard?" Jack asked. "Your mother has evaded CIA detection for the past week."

"God. A person goes on a mission and almost gets kidnapped, and she finds herself out of the information loop. Doesn't anybody think to clue me in on these things?"

"Feeling out of it?" Weiss asked sitting in the seat next to Sydney.

"Did you know that my mother has gone awol?"

"Yeah." Weiss couldn't understand what was wrong with the fact that he was aware of Irina Derevko's defection.

"Figures." Sydney probably would have gone on to rant at everyone if Dixon hadn't chosen that moment to get to the point of their meeting.

"I called you all here because we received some anonymous intel today about the past two years for Sydney. It seems that you were working with the Covenant. My theory is that they were using some mind-altering substance or psychosurgery to get you to comply with them. We still don't know everything you did for the Covenant. We do however know that you murdered a Russian diplomat by the name of Andrian Lazarey."

Sydney couldn't help but be shocked to find out that she had been used as a tool to murder by the Covenant. She had several horrifying ideas about what this new development would do to her life, including a particularly nasty one in which she gets locked up for life. "What does this mean for me?"

"It's okay, Syd," Vaughn reassured her. "Dixon has been fighting for you with the big bosses since we received the intel. He got them to agree not to press charges on account of you having been brainwashed."

"And there was also the fact that it was really the CIA and Director Kendall's fault that you got abducted in the first place," Dixon added. "It's all right now. The only thing holding you accountable will be your conscious. I know that you're probably going to start feeling guilt about what you've done. I just want to assure you that you weren't yourself when you killed Andrian Lazarey."

"We don't know what I was," Sydney said. She was beginning to get angry at the lack of real information they had on her disappearance. These small baby steps weren't cutting it for her.

"There's more, Sydney," Jack informed her. "This Russian diplomat, he has a connection to one of your enemies."

"He is Sark's father," Vaughn said. "We haven't ever been able to learn Sark's origins, but this anonymous source obviously knows them. He explained that Sark hasn't seen his father in fourteen years since the day he got kicked out of his home."

"Obviously Lazarey didn't care much for his son," Weiss joked. "I'm sure most of us share that feeling."

"That's a little mean, don't you think?" Sydney said in defense of Sark. "His father abandoned the guy emotionally. That can't be a fun thing to go through." Sighing, she hoped that no one paid much attention to her outburst. "Is there anything else, Dixon?"

"No. You can leave if you want Sydney. I know that you probably need some time to relax and unwind after that whole ordeal in Cairo."

Sydney smiled in gratitude at Dixon and nodded a goodbye to everyone. She didn't make it very far from the meeting room before she heard someone calling in her name from somewhere behind her. "I'm so not in the mood to talk to anyone," she decided and proceeded to ignore whoever was calling out to her.

Vaughn caught up to Sydney quickly. He grasped her arm harshly and spun her around to face him.

"Were you actually defending Sark in there?" Vaughn accused. "I thought you hated him, but obviously you thought differently. It's odd, you defending Sark. It's about as odd as those flowers you had in your hospital room."

"First off, take your hands off of me, Vaughn. It hurts." Sydney smacked his hand away. "Second of all, what the hell are you accusing me of?"

"You and I have been involved with Sark for years now. I've never once heard you come even close to defending him or feeling sympathy towards him. I just want to know what happened to change that. And when it happened. Was there something between you two involving Cairo? You weren't very forthcoming with the actual events that transpired there. I wouldn't be surprised if he was connected with that somehow."

"Why, Agent Vaughn. Are you jealous of Sark?" she said in a mocking tone. She quickly switched to a more aggressive, pissed off tone. "You have no right to be jealous of him. I'm not your girlfriend anymore. You have a wife. That's painfully obvious because of the way she's constantly mentioned in my presence. So don't scold me for defending Sark." She paused in her tirade as a thought dawned on her. "Besides, isn't he dead? I mean, that's what I heard from Dixon and Weiss."

Vaughn sighed realizing he was being irrational. "I'm sorry, Sydney. I didn't mean that to come out so harshly."

"It's all right." She gave him a smile. "I shouldn't have brought your wife into the conversation. I seem to do that a lot. Can't figure out why."

"So, tell me why you defended him in there. I'm just curious. It's an awfully large change from the way you normally seem towards him."

"My whole near death experience, being stranded in the desert, got me to thinking. I mean, the man was going to be a part of my family. I was trying to see where my sister was coming from. To you, that whole situation happened years ago. To me, it was only weeks. There were a few things that occurred to me which really made a lot of sense. I kind of found myself relating to him on a different level than before."

"What could you have possibly realized to make such a dramatic shift?"


"I came up with a theory. Something I cooked up about him being an evil me and I'm kind of like a good him. It sounds crazy but it makes sense to me. I mean, if my mother had taken me with her when she staged her death, I really think I would have grown up to be a lot like Sark is. And if Sark hadn't been raised by a horrible father and loved by my mother, I think he might have had a chance to do some good with his life."

"Do you think he could have ever made a change like that? If he was alive still, that is."

"I believe that he wanted to change, Vaughn. He had a very powerful motivator to keep him on track."

"And what would that be?"

"The potential of having love in his life. It's not something that's he was used to, but it's something that he had for at least a little while when he was with my sister. If he were alive, he'd want that potential back. I wouldn't blame him for doing whatever it took to succeed in that quest."

"I don't know where this change is coming from, Sydney, but I respect you enough to take it at face value."

"Thank you," she said grateful that he wasn't going to press her any more. She didn't want to reenact the part of the conversation where she and Sark found common ground on the fact that they were both in love with people they couldn't have, let alone admit to Vaughn that Sark was alive. Both were just too awkward a subject to breach with him. She had a feeling after their 'conversation' in that Al Fayyum hospital that Vaughn knew exactly what she felt for him, but it was still dangerous ground to be treading on. "Vaughn?" she called as he began to walk away.

"Yes, Syd?"

"Would you kill me if I asked you to do me a favor?"

"No," he said with a laugh. "It's practically routine for me to be doing you favors. What do you need now?"

"I want you to make sure that the few days off that Dixon is probably going to force me to take aren't spoiled. There's a friend I have. Please don't ask me who. I really need to talk with him. Don't let Dixon do anything on the discovering my missing two years front."

"I'll do what I can, Sydney. If you're leaving the country, try not to get yourself kidnap."

"Funny!" she yelled as he walked away from her. "Very funny, Vaughn!"