Sydney hung up the phone loudly on the wall, signaling she had finally finished her last call. A few times during her long list of calls, she heard the sound of the elevator doors opening and then shutting, but she didn't have time to greet whoever had arrived. She stood up and stretched her limbs, preparing to finally do just that.
"Hello? Is anyone here?" she called.
"It's just your father and I," she heard her mother answer back.
Sydney walked into the front room and saw that it was really only the two of them. She could feel her shoulders and back relax a little just knowing that they were here and they were going to help her sort this whole thing out. "How did you two get here so fast? I must have called you only about twenty minutes ago."
"We're your parents. It's in our job description to have super human speed when our daughter needs help," Jack said.
"Was that actually a joke?" Sydney teased.
"I'll try to contain myself," Jack said with a small grin. "You were rather cryptic on the phone what this was about."
"I won't give you the whole story, but let me just say that I think that Sark is out there somewhere. And I intend to find him."
"Of course, he's alive, darling. I raised Julian in almost the same way that your father raised you. Both of you were breed to be top of the line spies. He wouldn't let a simple operation gone wrong end his life. A disciple of mine goes out with a large bang or not at all."
"Very reassuring, Mom," Sydney said, staring at her mother in shock.
"Irina, it might not be the best time to be talking about big bangs with what happened in Miami."
"Oh," Irina said, shrinking back into her seat as she realized how her comment could have been taken out of the context it was meant it. "I'm sorry, Sydney."
"No, it's all right. It shouldn't affect me if I know he didn't die in the explosion. The Covenant has him. I'm almost sure of it." Sydney held up her hand immediately to silence the questions she knew both her parents were dying to ask. "I told you that I don't want to get into specifics or anything before the others get here."
"Who is coming?" Jack asked.
"Dixon says he really wishes he could come, but being head of the CIA isn't the type of job you ask for vacation from. So, instead, he said he's sending the next best thing…"
"Marshall," Irina said with a smile. "I always have had an affection for that man."
"And he was always scared to death of you," Jack added.
Sydney couldn't help but smile, thinking about the bumbling man she called her friend. "Everyone loves Marshall. It's something you can't help doing. I called Vaughn, too, and explained to him the situation. He agrees with me that Sark is alive. And he said he wanted to help me as much as he could to make up for his mistake in Miami."
"That's the least that boy could do," Irina growled.
"You two are going to have to play nice with him. Because both he and Lauren are on a CIA jet with Marshall making their way to Manhattan." Sydney stared down her parents for a few moments before they reluctantly nodded their heads in agreement. "Good. I've thought it out. Mom, you and I are probably best utilized in the field, but Dad, I think you should run at least one of the missions from wherever we set up base. It's what you do best."
"One of the missions?" Jack said, picking up on her rather elusive statement.
"Not now. I'll explain later."
"And do you think that we need more agents out there helping you?" Irina asked. "Because I'm might be able to pull some strings."
"Yes and no thank you. I have it under control. Which is why Lauren and Vaughn are critical to this operation. I can trust Vaughn with my life in the field. And he has vouched for Lauren time and again. I don't think they could do anything but aid us in this endeavor."
"Sometimes I wonder why you let her pick up that horrible CIA jargon, Jack," Irina said, looking at her husband.
"Don't start with me."
"Speaking of starting on subjects we really don't want to talk about," Sydney said, "we're going to have to run some damage control when those three get here. They don't know that Dad and I have been in contact with you for the past three years plus. They're going to want answers."
"We don't have to give them any answers we don't want to," Irina said. "My actions are my business alone."
"They're all of our business if everyone is expected to have totally trust and faith in the field. That is something I am not budging on. This is not a mission we will be screwing up in any way."
The phone began to ring, and Sydney got up to answer it. After a minute, her parents heard say, "Send her up."
"What was that about?" Irina asked as Sydney returned to the room.
"It's another member of our team. One that you all might not agree on," Sydney answered cryptically.
The elevator doors opened a minute later, and an unfamiliar face stepped out. "Mr. and Mrs. Bristow, a pleasant surprise. I have always wanted to meet you," the woman said with a mildly heavy Russian accent.
"Dad, I believe you already know Anna, though not officially. Mom, this is Anna Espinosa. She used to be one of my adversaries at K Directorate before you had Sark destroy the organization from the top down. She's been doing some freelance work since then."
"I've always respected your daughter. I owed her a favor for something she did for me last year. She explained the situation, and I agreed to help."
"Simple as that, right?" Irina said skeptically.
"Anna was an old childhood friend of Sark's, Mom. If you remember correctly, when you assigned him the project of destroying K-Directorate, he had a mole inside the organization."
"Codename: Red Hawk," Irina said, acknowledging she remembered.
"That was my codename, Ms. Bristow."
"Call me Irina. It's the least you could do since it seems that you and I have been fighting on the same side for a while now."
Jack looked at his daughter expectantly, and she continued on with her explanation. "When I told Anna about how the Covenant has kidnapped Julian, she agreed to help. Mostly, it's out of her fondness for the man I love."
"He means a lot to me," Anna said simply.
"There's something else, though," Irina said, picking up on Sydney's unspoken words.
"I may have mentioned the fact that you were trying to slowly set up that little black ops division and were in search of a few good agents you could rely on."
Irina nodded. "I wouldn't even consider it if she didn't have at least a small ulterior motive in being here."
Sydney sat down on the couch between her mother and father. "Let's just relax, though. It should be about another hour before the CIA jet lands, and my old friends make their way here."
"Is anyone else coming that we should know about?" Jack said sarcastically. "Any other old enemies who suddenly want to do things for good?"
"There might be," Sydney said, winking at her dad. "We'll have to wait and see. I don't expect everyone I called on to actually show up."
Jack nodded and slid his arm around his daughter's shoulders., relaxing back into the couch for at least a little while.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Sydney hadn't realized she had fallen asleep until the ringing of the phone woke her up. When she reached over and grabbed it off its base on the table, she half expected to hear the words 'Joey's Pizza'. That was how half-asleep she was. It seems like the events of two weeks earlier were finally weighing on her.
"Hello?" she muttered.
"Ms. Sydney, the three people you told me to be expecting are down in the lobby," William said. "I'm about to send them up."
"Great," she said. Her stomach did a little turn as she thought of talking with Vaughn. She hung the phone up and set it on the table. She hadn't spoken to him since the Miami incident. Her rational side had taken over, and she could understand why he made the choice he did. She didn't like it, but she understood.
Looking around, she tried to steady herself. That was when she realized that her father and mother weren't sitting next to her anymore. In fact, she wasn't even in the same room. Someone had taken her into her bedroom.
"Don't look so alarmed. I used to do this almost every night, Syd," said the man who was leaning against the bedroom door frame.
"Will!" Sydney screamed, jumping up from the bed and straight into his arms. "I thought you weren't going to get my message in time!"
"I wouldn't have, but the second I stepped inside my house, Amy was there to tease me. She said that a certain someone seemed to be trying to get me to steal another passport from her. You're not planning on dying your hair bright red again, are you?"
"No," she said. "And when did you start living with Amy?" She smiled at him as she pulled him across the room and down onto the bed.
"Since I moved to Brooklyn and she got a little vacation time from her job. The message you left was forwarded to our new number by the phone company. I got down her as soon as I could." He paused as he saw her eyes begin to well up with tears. "Oh. What's wrong, Syd?"
"I'm just so happy to be seeing you, and I know I shouldn't be. My life is half ruined right now, and all I can think of is how stupid I was not to get in contact with you when I came to Manhattan. I settled down to a normal life."
"Did you really?"
"You had no idea where I've been?"
"Not since you disappeared about two years ago. I knew you were out there, living the crazy spy life somewhere. I never in a million years imagined you had given it up. That's crazy, Syd."
"There's more," she said. She held up her left hand. "I haven't been alone these past two years."
"Is that an engagement ring I see on your finger? You can't tell me that you're honestly marrying a man who isn't me. Don't you believe in kismet? Destiny? Shameless begging?"
Sydney laughed, but sobered quickly. "You're not going to be so full of humor when you find out who I'm going to marry."
"You're starting to scare me, Syd. That was always a talent you had that I could never quite understand."
"It's Sark," Sydney said after summing up the courage to admit it. It wasn't that she was embarrassed to tell him that she was in love with Julian Lazarey. There was some bad blood and bad history between him and Will, though. She had no idea how her old best friend would react to the news that this past they shared didn't have that large of a bearing on her life.
"What's Sark?" Will said, still completely clueless of the severity of the situation.
"I'm marrying Sark. That is, if we can get him back from the Covenant."
"You're marrying that British bastard?" Will yelled, standing up from the bed. "And you called me to come here to help you find him? What Twilight Zone did you step out of, Syd? I love you, but there is no way in hell I'm helping you if it has anything to do with that prick!"
"I think I can help this situation a little," Vaughn said as he entered the room. "Hey, Syd. Will."
"You knew that she was marrying that asshole and you did nothing to stop it?" Will said, holding his hands up in the air and backing towards the door. "I give up. I don't know what's come over everyone, but I give up. I'm tired of being the only rational person alive anymore."
Vaughn stepped in front of the doorway to keep Will from leaving. "Just let her explain."
"You and I need to talk at some point, Vaughn," she said pointing at him.
Will ignored that comment and went on with his tirade. "I bet both of you are going to tell me that he's a changed man. He reformed himself because of your love for him."
"Not really," she answered, avoiding his eyes. "He has changed a great deal, but he's probably the same man you remember."
"Then how are you supposed to justify marrying him?"
"Sark has given Sydney the one thing that none of us could do before. He managed to provide her with a normal life. He has the resources and the dedication to make sure that she stays protected and cared for. That's a whole level of devotion that neither you nor I got anywhere close to." Vaughn smiled weakly at Sydney. "And I'm really sorry for that."
She nodded her understanding while getting up and walking over to where Will was standing. "I have never been able to explain the whats, the hows, or whys of my relationship with Julian. It never made any sense in the past, and sometimes I think it still doesn't. But I love him. That much I know. And frankly, that's all I need to know."
Will took a set on the bed again, and she moved to sit next to him. "I honestly thought when I returned from the dead to find that nothing was as I remembered it, there would never be happiness in my life again. I dedicated myself to a job that I didn't love anymore, to people that I wasn't sure I could trust. I ended up getting shot while saving Sark's life."
"What were you doing saving his life?" Will asked.
"That's a story for another day, one that will probably be real soon. For now, just know that when I needed help, Sark was the one offering it. While I recuperated, I found myself falling in love with him."
"He doesn't deserve your life," Will said simply.
"I thought the same thing, too," Vaughn agreed. "But then he risked everything to save Sydney's life."
"His own sister tried to kill me, Will. She almost shot me directly in the heart. And to make sure I had a chance to live, Sark stabbed his own sister. He killed her just so that I could be taken to a hospital. And when he realized that he didn't have the resources to get me there, he called my father."
"We've both encountered Jack," Vaughn said. "Confronting him, telling him that you let his daughter get hurt, is just about the scariest thing imaginable."
Will nodded. "So, you say he hasn't changed at all?"
"The only things that have changed are all connected with me. We've been living a normal life before Weiss and Stephanie Conway chose to screw it all up."
"What do you mean?" Vaughn asked. Now he was the one confused.
"I figured out that your son was never their intended target. He was just a means to get what they really wanted." Sydney stood up and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Me."
"They wanted you the whole time?"
"Your son is a very important piece to a puzzle I don't think we're ever going to solve. But Weiss's vendetta was more personal than we first believed. Not only does he want to hurt you, he wants to hurt me. I don't know if this is the effect of some suppressed childhood memories and feelings. Maybe he was beat up one time too many when he was young. I'm not sure. All I know is that you and I are the popular kids in his eyes, and all he wants to do is bring us down." She turned her attention back to Will. "Now do you understand a little about what's been happening to me in the past few years?"
"I heard what you've been saying, but it's not going to be easy for me to accept," he admitted.
"I said this same question to Vaughn before. Sark is a part of my life. So are you. He's willing to accept every single hurdle that having you in my life may cause. I would expect the same from you. If you can't commit to that, then I don't think I can stay in contact with you. It would hurt me more than I can say, but I can't have a constant state of hatred and loathing present in my life. I want to be normal, and those feelings are just too much like my old life."
Will nodded and took a deep breath. "I'll try, Syd. I really will." He stood up. "Now I think we need to get out there and start the planning. Amy's dying to know what's going on."
"You brought Amy?" Sydney asked, completely shocked.
"You're not the only person with secrets, little miss know-it-all. Amy is twice as smart as me. She figured out that you worked for the government a long time before I told her. Being a free spirit, she wanted to do the same. She said that it sounded like fun. Can you believe that?"
"No, I can't," she said with a laugh.
"She said that since you've already used her as an alias, she probably has a good standing among her future colleagues."
"Amy has been field rated for the past year," Vaughn supplied. "I was assigned to be her handler. She just got off of a deep cover assignment in Bali right after we returned from Miami. When you called Will's apartment, she was there on a little vacation time."
"I want to help," Amy said from the doorway.
"Would you people stop bursting into my bedroom?" Sydney teased as she reached out to give Amy a hug.
"We should get started before the crying starts back up again," Will suggested. "Are you expecting any more guests, Syd?"
"I think this is just about it. Thank you guys for coming. It means a lot to me."
"You mean a lot to us, Syd," Amy said with a smile. She offered her hand to help Sydney up off the bed. "And don't you forget it."
"I think you guys just might help give me the strength to get through this."
"If anyone deserves a normal, happy life, it's you," Will said. "And if you want that life to be with Sark, then we're just going to have to do our best to find him."
"Hey, guys! You might want to take a deep breath before you go out there," Amy said hesitantly.
"Why is that?" Sydney asked.
"Well, Lauren isn't too happy that your mother is just calmly walking around your home. And Marshall is sitting on the couch darting his head back and forth looking at your father and then your mother and then back to your father. I think he might implode."
Sydney threw her hands up in frustration and then placed them on her hips. "Are any of you going to have a problem with the fact that my mother is alive and helping us and I've been lying to you for the past two years?" she demanded.
Will and Vaughn shook their heads, with the slight fear that if they said yes, she would hurt them. And they knew that Sydney would do it to.
"Good," she said fiercely. "Let's go."
"Hello? Is anyone here?" she called.
"It's just your father and I," she heard her mother answer back.
Sydney walked into the front room and saw that it was really only the two of them. She could feel her shoulders and back relax a little just knowing that they were here and they were going to help her sort this whole thing out. "How did you two get here so fast? I must have called you only about twenty minutes ago."
"We're your parents. It's in our job description to have super human speed when our daughter needs help," Jack said.
"Was that actually a joke?" Sydney teased.
"I'll try to contain myself," Jack said with a small grin. "You were rather cryptic on the phone what this was about."
"I won't give you the whole story, but let me just say that I think that Sark is out there somewhere. And I intend to find him."
"Of course, he's alive, darling. I raised Julian in almost the same way that your father raised you. Both of you were breed to be top of the line spies. He wouldn't let a simple operation gone wrong end his life. A disciple of mine goes out with a large bang or not at all."
"Very reassuring, Mom," Sydney said, staring at her mother in shock.
"Irina, it might not be the best time to be talking about big bangs with what happened in Miami."
"Oh," Irina said, shrinking back into her seat as she realized how her comment could have been taken out of the context it was meant it. "I'm sorry, Sydney."
"No, it's all right. It shouldn't affect me if I know he didn't die in the explosion. The Covenant has him. I'm almost sure of it." Sydney held up her hand immediately to silence the questions she knew both her parents were dying to ask. "I told you that I don't want to get into specifics or anything before the others get here."
"Who is coming?" Jack asked.
"Dixon says he really wishes he could come, but being head of the CIA isn't the type of job you ask for vacation from. So, instead, he said he's sending the next best thing…"
"Marshall," Irina said with a smile. "I always have had an affection for that man."
"And he was always scared to death of you," Jack added.
Sydney couldn't help but smile, thinking about the bumbling man she called her friend. "Everyone loves Marshall. It's something you can't help doing. I called Vaughn, too, and explained to him the situation. He agrees with me that Sark is alive. And he said he wanted to help me as much as he could to make up for his mistake in Miami."
"That's the least that boy could do," Irina growled.
"You two are going to have to play nice with him. Because both he and Lauren are on a CIA jet with Marshall making their way to Manhattan." Sydney stared down her parents for a few moments before they reluctantly nodded their heads in agreement. "Good. I've thought it out. Mom, you and I are probably best utilized in the field, but Dad, I think you should run at least one of the missions from wherever we set up base. It's what you do best."
"One of the missions?" Jack said, picking up on her rather elusive statement.
"Not now. I'll explain later."
"And do you think that we need more agents out there helping you?" Irina asked. "Because I'm might be able to pull some strings."
"Yes and no thank you. I have it under control. Which is why Lauren and Vaughn are critical to this operation. I can trust Vaughn with my life in the field. And he has vouched for Lauren time and again. I don't think they could do anything but aid us in this endeavor."
"Sometimes I wonder why you let her pick up that horrible CIA jargon, Jack," Irina said, looking at her husband.
"Don't start with me."
"Speaking of starting on subjects we really don't want to talk about," Sydney said, "we're going to have to run some damage control when those three get here. They don't know that Dad and I have been in contact with you for the past three years plus. They're going to want answers."
"We don't have to give them any answers we don't want to," Irina said. "My actions are my business alone."
"They're all of our business if everyone is expected to have totally trust and faith in the field. That is something I am not budging on. This is not a mission we will be screwing up in any way."
The phone began to ring, and Sydney got up to answer it. After a minute, her parents heard say, "Send her up."
"What was that about?" Irina asked as Sydney returned to the room.
"It's another member of our team. One that you all might not agree on," Sydney answered cryptically.
The elevator doors opened a minute later, and an unfamiliar face stepped out. "Mr. and Mrs. Bristow, a pleasant surprise. I have always wanted to meet you," the woman said with a mildly heavy Russian accent.
"Dad, I believe you already know Anna, though not officially. Mom, this is Anna Espinosa. She used to be one of my adversaries at K Directorate before you had Sark destroy the organization from the top down. She's been doing some freelance work since then."
"I've always respected your daughter. I owed her a favor for something she did for me last year. She explained the situation, and I agreed to help."
"Simple as that, right?" Irina said skeptically.
"Anna was an old childhood friend of Sark's, Mom. If you remember correctly, when you assigned him the project of destroying K-Directorate, he had a mole inside the organization."
"Codename: Red Hawk," Irina said, acknowledging she remembered.
"That was my codename, Ms. Bristow."
"Call me Irina. It's the least you could do since it seems that you and I have been fighting on the same side for a while now."
Jack looked at his daughter expectantly, and she continued on with her explanation. "When I told Anna about how the Covenant has kidnapped Julian, she agreed to help. Mostly, it's out of her fondness for the man I love."
"He means a lot to me," Anna said simply.
"There's something else, though," Irina said, picking up on Sydney's unspoken words.
"I may have mentioned the fact that you were trying to slowly set up that little black ops division and were in search of a few good agents you could rely on."
Irina nodded. "I wouldn't even consider it if she didn't have at least a small ulterior motive in being here."
Sydney sat down on the couch between her mother and father. "Let's just relax, though. It should be about another hour before the CIA jet lands, and my old friends make their way here."
"Is anyone else coming that we should know about?" Jack said sarcastically. "Any other old enemies who suddenly want to do things for good?"
"There might be," Sydney said, winking at her dad. "We'll have to wait and see. I don't expect everyone I called on to actually show up."
Jack nodded and slid his arm around his daughter's shoulders., relaxing back into the couch for at least a little while.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Sydney hadn't realized she had fallen asleep until the ringing of the phone woke her up. When she reached over and grabbed it off its base on the table, she half expected to hear the words 'Joey's Pizza'. That was how half-asleep she was. It seems like the events of two weeks earlier were finally weighing on her.
"Hello?" she muttered.
"Ms. Sydney, the three people you told me to be expecting are down in the lobby," William said. "I'm about to send them up."
"Great," she said. Her stomach did a little turn as she thought of talking with Vaughn. She hung the phone up and set it on the table. She hadn't spoken to him since the Miami incident. Her rational side had taken over, and she could understand why he made the choice he did. She didn't like it, but she understood.
Looking around, she tried to steady herself. That was when she realized that her father and mother weren't sitting next to her anymore. In fact, she wasn't even in the same room. Someone had taken her into her bedroom.
"Don't look so alarmed. I used to do this almost every night, Syd," said the man who was leaning against the bedroom door frame.
"Will!" Sydney screamed, jumping up from the bed and straight into his arms. "I thought you weren't going to get my message in time!"
"I wouldn't have, but the second I stepped inside my house, Amy was there to tease me. She said that a certain someone seemed to be trying to get me to steal another passport from her. You're not planning on dying your hair bright red again, are you?"
"No," she said. "And when did you start living with Amy?" She smiled at him as she pulled him across the room and down onto the bed.
"Since I moved to Brooklyn and she got a little vacation time from her job. The message you left was forwarded to our new number by the phone company. I got down her as soon as I could." He paused as he saw her eyes begin to well up with tears. "Oh. What's wrong, Syd?"
"I'm just so happy to be seeing you, and I know I shouldn't be. My life is half ruined right now, and all I can think of is how stupid I was not to get in contact with you when I came to Manhattan. I settled down to a normal life."
"Did you really?"
"You had no idea where I've been?"
"Not since you disappeared about two years ago. I knew you were out there, living the crazy spy life somewhere. I never in a million years imagined you had given it up. That's crazy, Syd."
"There's more," she said. She held up her left hand. "I haven't been alone these past two years."
"Is that an engagement ring I see on your finger? You can't tell me that you're honestly marrying a man who isn't me. Don't you believe in kismet? Destiny? Shameless begging?"
Sydney laughed, but sobered quickly. "You're not going to be so full of humor when you find out who I'm going to marry."
"You're starting to scare me, Syd. That was always a talent you had that I could never quite understand."
"It's Sark," Sydney said after summing up the courage to admit it. It wasn't that she was embarrassed to tell him that she was in love with Julian Lazarey. There was some bad blood and bad history between him and Will, though. She had no idea how her old best friend would react to the news that this past they shared didn't have that large of a bearing on her life.
"What's Sark?" Will said, still completely clueless of the severity of the situation.
"I'm marrying Sark. That is, if we can get him back from the Covenant."
"You're marrying that British bastard?" Will yelled, standing up from the bed. "And you called me to come here to help you find him? What Twilight Zone did you step out of, Syd? I love you, but there is no way in hell I'm helping you if it has anything to do with that prick!"
"I think I can help this situation a little," Vaughn said as he entered the room. "Hey, Syd. Will."
"You knew that she was marrying that asshole and you did nothing to stop it?" Will said, holding his hands up in the air and backing towards the door. "I give up. I don't know what's come over everyone, but I give up. I'm tired of being the only rational person alive anymore."
Vaughn stepped in front of the doorway to keep Will from leaving. "Just let her explain."
"You and I need to talk at some point, Vaughn," she said pointing at him.
Will ignored that comment and went on with his tirade. "I bet both of you are going to tell me that he's a changed man. He reformed himself because of your love for him."
"Not really," she answered, avoiding his eyes. "He has changed a great deal, but he's probably the same man you remember."
"Then how are you supposed to justify marrying him?"
"Sark has given Sydney the one thing that none of us could do before. He managed to provide her with a normal life. He has the resources and the dedication to make sure that she stays protected and cared for. That's a whole level of devotion that neither you nor I got anywhere close to." Vaughn smiled weakly at Sydney. "And I'm really sorry for that."
She nodded her understanding while getting up and walking over to where Will was standing. "I have never been able to explain the whats, the hows, or whys of my relationship with Julian. It never made any sense in the past, and sometimes I think it still doesn't. But I love him. That much I know. And frankly, that's all I need to know."
Will took a set on the bed again, and she moved to sit next to him. "I honestly thought when I returned from the dead to find that nothing was as I remembered it, there would never be happiness in my life again. I dedicated myself to a job that I didn't love anymore, to people that I wasn't sure I could trust. I ended up getting shot while saving Sark's life."
"What were you doing saving his life?" Will asked.
"That's a story for another day, one that will probably be real soon. For now, just know that when I needed help, Sark was the one offering it. While I recuperated, I found myself falling in love with him."
"He doesn't deserve your life," Will said simply.
"I thought the same thing, too," Vaughn agreed. "But then he risked everything to save Sydney's life."
"His own sister tried to kill me, Will. She almost shot me directly in the heart. And to make sure I had a chance to live, Sark stabbed his own sister. He killed her just so that I could be taken to a hospital. And when he realized that he didn't have the resources to get me there, he called my father."
"We've both encountered Jack," Vaughn said. "Confronting him, telling him that you let his daughter get hurt, is just about the scariest thing imaginable."
Will nodded. "So, you say he hasn't changed at all?"
"The only things that have changed are all connected with me. We've been living a normal life before Weiss and Stephanie Conway chose to screw it all up."
"What do you mean?" Vaughn asked. Now he was the one confused.
"I figured out that your son was never their intended target. He was just a means to get what they really wanted." Sydney stood up and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Me."
"They wanted you the whole time?"
"Your son is a very important piece to a puzzle I don't think we're ever going to solve. But Weiss's vendetta was more personal than we first believed. Not only does he want to hurt you, he wants to hurt me. I don't know if this is the effect of some suppressed childhood memories and feelings. Maybe he was beat up one time too many when he was young. I'm not sure. All I know is that you and I are the popular kids in his eyes, and all he wants to do is bring us down." She turned her attention back to Will. "Now do you understand a little about what's been happening to me in the past few years?"
"I heard what you've been saying, but it's not going to be easy for me to accept," he admitted.
"I said this same question to Vaughn before. Sark is a part of my life. So are you. He's willing to accept every single hurdle that having you in my life may cause. I would expect the same from you. If you can't commit to that, then I don't think I can stay in contact with you. It would hurt me more than I can say, but I can't have a constant state of hatred and loathing present in my life. I want to be normal, and those feelings are just too much like my old life."
Will nodded and took a deep breath. "I'll try, Syd. I really will." He stood up. "Now I think we need to get out there and start the planning. Amy's dying to know what's going on."
"You brought Amy?" Sydney asked, completely shocked.
"You're not the only person with secrets, little miss know-it-all. Amy is twice as smart as me. She figured out that you worked for the government a long time before I told her. Being a free spirit, she wanted to do the same. She said that it sounded like fun. Can you believe that?"
"No, I can't," she said with a laugh.
"She said that since you've already used her as an alias, she probably has a good standing among her future colleagues."
"Amy has been field rated for the past year," Vaughn supplied. "I was assigned to be her handler. She just got off of a deep cover assignment in Bali right after we returned from Miami. When you called Will's apartment, she was there on a little vacation time."
"I want to help," Amy said from the doorway.
"Would you people stop bursting into my bedroom?" Sydney teased as she reached out to give Amy a hug.
"We should get started before the crying starts back up again," Will suggested. "Are you expecting any more guests, Syd?"
"I think this is just about it. Thank you guys for coming. It means a lot to me."
"You mean a lot to us, Syd," Amy said with a smile. She offered her hand to help Sydney up off the bed. "And don't you forget it."
"I think you guys just might help give me the strength to get through this."
"If anyone deserves a normal, happy life, it's you," Will said. "And if you want that life to be with Sark, then we're just going to have to do our best to find him."
"Hey, guys! You might want to take a deep breath before you go out there," Amy said hesitantly.
"Why is that?" Sydney asked.
"Well, Lauren isn't too happy that your mother is just calmly walking around your home. And Marshall is sitting on the couch darting his head back and forth looking at your father and then your mother and then back to your father. I think he might implode."
Sydney threw her hands up in frustration and then placed them on her hips. "Are any of you going to have a problem with the fact that my mother is alive and helping us and I've been lying to you for the past two years?" she demanded.
Will and Vaughn shook their heads, with the slight fear that if they said yes, she would hurt them. And they knew that Sydney would do it to.
"Good," she said fiercely. "Let's go."