Author's note
Sorry for the short delay. College is getting hectic now that finals are coming around. Here's the next chapter, hope you like it. Don't forget to review! Thanks!
"Syd."
"Dad." Her eyebrows rose in surprise as if not expecting to run into him. Pushing her hair back behind her ear, she gave him a polite smile and crossed her arms across her chest. "Hi."
"You're back for the summer?" He phrased the question more like a statement, remembering she had one more year in college before graduating. Rumors in the office told him that she was planning on going to graduate school to follow what she believed her mother had done.
Sydney shook her head. "I came to get the last of my stuff. I'm getting an apartment with my old roommate. I'm heading off to graduate school next year."
Had he miscalculated her year in school? He tried to go back over the years but could not figure out how he had mistaken what year she was in. Just three years ago he had been sitting in on her high school graduation ceremony.
"I graduated early." She told him, studying his face. "Will is packing the last of my stuff."
Was this the time to tell her about SD-6? He tried to quickly analyze what was happening before him. He thought he had another year to think it over. She had some suspicions, he knew that. She was smart, everyone knew that. Her perfect SAT scores showed it. It wouldn't surprise him if she figured it all out soon.
She looked at him as if knowing that he wanted to tell her something. But her eyes spelled disappointment after a few seconds of thickening silence between them. "Bye dad."
At that moment, he knew he had lost the chance to tell her everything he wanted to tell her. To tell her how sorry he hadn't been around as she grew up, to tell her he was sorry she didn't have a mother to look after her, and to tell her how much he loved her. But none of that displayed on his face as she turned and left. This time there was no peck on the cheek, no hug, no smile. She just left…
"Jack!"
Jack turned to see Marshall trailing him. The young technician waved his hand around crazily as if to draw his attention. He waited expectantly with little patience. The mission had gone horribly wrong, leaving more than half their officers dead. Many of the other agents were still in the ICU unit at a local military hospital under fake aliases. His daughter had fallen unconscious from severe internal injuries and the men who had injured her were going to pay for what they did. The last thing he wanted to do was to talk to Marshall, a man who had the tendency to ramble.
"Look, it's the disk I gave you two weeks ago. Syd… Agent Bristow, she had it in her hand when she came in… Wait, why did she have it in her hand?… ohhhh… Did you give it to her?" Marshall looked down at the small USB thumb drive in his hand and then looked knowingly at him. "It's got files on it relating to the KGB reforming their alliances. There are coordinates to their stations, lists of potential leaders..."
"Have you informed Sloane?"
"No, not yet. I just found it strange that Vaughn gave this to me when I went to visit the hospital. He and Nadia have been there all night and I thought… well why not bring them some food? So I did… and are you going somewhere?"
"Yes, actually, I am going to see my daughter. Give this intel to Sloane. He'll want to know Mission Groundhog was a success." Jack turned to leave.
"Are you saying that all of this was planned?" Marshall asked slightly confused. "Even your daughter… Sydney getting caught?"
Spinning around again, Jack looked back down at the flash drive in the man's hand. He felt the muscles in his jaw tighten. Giving Marshall a flat expression, he could hardly keep the anger out of his voice. "I never planned on my daughter getting shot because of some badly manufactured technology going haywire. Take the drive to Sloane."
With that, he left the underground APO office and drove over to the military hospital. It was easy to enter the Intensive Care Unit with his special access card, so he didn't have to check in with the doctors or nurses. The facility was made up of a couple of large rooms inside a bland building with beds set up in rows so that doctors could get to their patients with ease.
Each section had cloth curtains separating the beds so that the patient and their family had a little privacy. Many of the beds were full of soldiers returning from the front lines in Iraq. The hospital placed all of their special operations agents into a small corner of the room. Right now he was almost sure that the beds were full of APO agents.
He spotted Sydney's bed over by the nurse's station. Striding over to her, he looked around to make sure Vaughn and Nadia were no where nearby. He sat down in the chair next to her bed. Looking down as her pale face, he swallowed hard trying to remember the last time he had spent quality time with her. It had been so long ago… Could he really not remember?
"The mission… it was a success." He whispered gently pushing a strand of hair that had slipped in front of her eyes. "We've got the intel to shut them down for good."
Her eyes opened slowly as if it took too much energy. Her skin, it was so pale. "Daddy?"
"Hey sweetheart." He smiled slightly, happy to see her awake. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired." She replied truthfully. "You said you got my disk?"
"Yeah… You did well."
Her eyes closed for a moment and then she opened them as her lips curled up a little. Those dimples… he remembered when she had just been born and he had held her. It would be the first time that she smiled up at him to show him her tiny dimples. For the most part, she had been a happy baby. Even as a toddler, she would give him the biggest grins as she swung up into the air. She told him she could almost touch the heavens.
Then darkness crept into their home and her mother passed away, leaving him with secrets that he promised he would keep from his daughter. He secluded himself to his study trying to figure out ways to keep her safe. But it only pushed her away and he remembered her returning from boarding school, unhappy and angry at him. No more daddy's little girl. Every time she looked at him her eyes were filled with anger, confusion, and sadness. This was not what he had wanted for her.
"Where's Vaughn?" She asked, her voice slurred slightly. He guessed that it was probably from the morphine they were giving her through the IV in her arm.
"I don't know. You should get some rest though." He kissed her lightly on the top of her head and then he smiled sincerely. "I'm glad your home."
She looked at him and then the sides of her mouth turned up slightly allowing him to see her dimples. "Me too."
He watched her close her eyes… watched her chest as it rose slightly up and then back down in a steady rhythm… as the seconds, minutes, and hours ticked by, he watched her until he fell into a troubled sleep.
Vaughn gazed at the vending machine without being able to tell one bag from the other. Rubbing them, he tried to get his eyes to clear up enough so he could actually see what he was about to eat. How long had it been since he had actually had a good nights sleep? He couldn't remember. Probably not since the night Sydney had been captured.
"You look like I feel." A woman's voice said beside him and he turned his head quickly.
"Nadia." He relaxed. "Hey."
"Two of the most important people in my life are in here." Nadia told him, her eyes lost in confusion. He understood exactly what she meant. Other than Sydney, Weiss was the only other person that he felt really mattered in his life.
"Yeah… I know."
Nadia sat down on a bench behind them against the hallway wall and leaned her chin on top of her hands as her elbows rested on her knees. Unlike him, she had changed out of her dark field clothes into jeans and a loose fitting sweater. "Until a few months ago, I really didn't have anyone that I felt I could really count on other than myself. Then I found out I had a sister… and a father. It was strange, because I've lived so long without having any ties. And now with Weiss… I really like him. He's funny, he's cute… I don't think I could loose either of them."
"You wont." Vaughn said as he sat down beside her.
A tear fell down her cheek and she brushed it away. She smiled sheepishly. "How is she?"
"Syd? Doctors finished with her surgery about four hours ago and she's back in the ICU. She's not out of trouble yet… There was a lot of internal bleeding and they're not sure they fixed it all yet. It's basically a wait and see." He put his face into his hands and let out a long sigh. "I left the room to go get some coffee but I found myself outside running. I ran until I reached that park on Oak Street ten miles away. Then I realized where I was and made my way back. How's Weiss?"
"He's awake." She smiled slightly. "The bullets missed his organs. But I wanted him to get some rest. So I left his room to get a snack and check on my sister."
Vaughn nodded and stood up. Looking at the bags of chemically processed food again, he suddenly didn't feel the need to eat… at least not the need to eat anything from the vending machine. "I'm heading back, want to join me?"
Nadia stood and followed him in silence. They made their way back and had to show their badges as in order to enter the ICU room. The first thing he noticed was a slumped body resting next to Sydney's bed. Walking quickly over, he was surprised to see that it was Jack.
Sometimes it was hard to remember that Jack, a poker-faced man, was Sydney's father. But during the times his daughter was in trouble, the man seemed to turn into a different person… Into a person who you would have thought had spent every waking moment making sure that his daughter was alright. Not a person who had basically abandoned his daughter when they had thought her mother, a KGB spy who used her husband as a conduit to the CIA, had died in a horrible car wreck. His relationship with his daughter was a rocky one at best.
He took a seat on the edge of Sydney's bed and took her hand into his. She had been in and out of consciousness for the past two days and every once in awhile he thought she had squeezed his hand in return. But she didn't this time and he kissed it softly in hopes of waking her up. Nothing happened and he let out a long breath of anxiety.
"She asked for you." Jack's monotone voice startled Vaughn out of his thoughts.
"She was awake?" Nadia asked.
Jack stood up stiffly. "Yes, she was."
"Wait…" Vaughn said just as Jack turned to leave. "Why did Syd have a disk in her hand that Marshall created and given to you?"
The man looked down at his daughter with as much love as he had ever seen the man portray and then looked back at Vaughn with a deadpan expression. "Because we had her on a recon mission to pick up intel on the KGB. At this moment, there are CIA teams all over Russia raiding areas in which she located in their computer files and by nightfall the KGB will no longer exist."
"So this was all planned?" Vaughn asked now standing up and moved towards the older man. "…This whole situation?"
"It depends on what you're referring to."
"Sydney getting captured… was that all part of your plan to take down the KGB?" Vaughn replied, not at all fazed by the diversion tactic.
Jack nodded. "That was planned. However, we received faulty technology and that caused the mission to go south. Four days ago at six hundred hours we lost communication with Sydney. That's why we sent a team in for her. I was in Russia while you were unconscious in the hospital. We couldn't locate her whereabouts and had to use your watch in order to locate her."
"You risked your daughter's life… just to take down the KGB? Not only that, but then you didn't have the decency to brief me on your intentions?" Vaughn felt his face grow hot. Why hadn't Sydney mentioned this to him?
"Keep your voice down Agent Vaughn. What I do is none of your concern… Besides this mission was classified and out of your field rating. I would never put my daughter's life at risk. If you want to blame someone, blame Sloane for putting her in this position. I had no hand in this operation other than following my orders…" Jack growled, his eyes glaring in much of the way they had done when Sydney had first come back after she had been missing for two years. "Surely you can understand the stakes we were under and understand why Sydney never mentioned our operational plans with you.
"When you saw me at the Farm, Sloane had given me a bug in which I was to give to Sydney. She was ordered to place it in a bathroom stall in hopes of finding any information from the mole. We were fairly surprised to find that there were two moles in that department of intelligence and we were afraid that there would be more. So the director ordered Sydney not to discuss this intel to anyone, including you because if anyone had been listening in you both could have been made. So I contacted her again, this time through an untraceable connection. I gave her a contact point in which to meet so that I could gave her the disk.
"A week before the first field exercise, intelligence concluded that the two moles were planning on contacting their superiors. One of them believed they had been compromised by you. However, during their time of contact with their base, we allowed them to find out that Sydney also knew who they were. They had no choice but to take her in as a prisoner in hopes to gain leverage for failing their recon mission. Once they returned to their base, we found out that they were terminated.
"Sydney used her time there to gain some counterintelligence. We hoped that she might find a computer in which she could download intel onto the thumb drive. Once she had finished her reconnaissance work, the plan was to rendezvous at the extraction point. She never made it. We couldn't contact her because her communication link went dead. They caught her just as she was about to escape and we lost her location because her watch broke. They moved her around Russia and I couldn't locate her. So I came back hoping that Marshall would help." Jack told them.
"Then you used Vaughn's watch." Nadia chimed in, understanding what had all gone down.
Jack nodded and seemed slightly surprised as if he had forgotten she was behind him. "Precisely. We used your watch to locate her and extracted her. Marshall said you found the thumb drive in her hand."
"She gave it to me just before they rushed her to the emergency room." Vaughn nodded.
Just then he heard Sydney moving around behind him. He turned and was surprised to see her eyes open studying him. Closing her eyes heavily and then opening them again, she frowned slightly and whispered hoarsely. "I'm sorry… for not telling you. I wanted to…"
Vaughn had been deceived and yet he could only chuckle at their situation. The world of espionage had to be one of the most confusing worlds to live in. He walked over and kissed her softly on her forehead. "Hey… You're awake."
He pushed a stubborn piece of hair out of her eyes and felt relief wash over him. The ton of lead weight on his chest and shoulders that had been dragging on him for days was suddenly gone. It was the first time he had seen her awake since the helicopter ride.
Sydney's eyes turned away from him and towards Nadia. Her lips formed a smile as if just noticing her for the first time. "Nadia… How's Weiss?"
"He's going to be alright." Nadia smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. "How do you feel?"
"Tired." She replied with a long slow drawl, her smile vanishing.
Vaughn looked up at her monitor and saw that her BP was slightly below normal, but still higher then the night before. "They have you on morphine."
She nodded slightly and closed her eyes.
"I love you." He leaned over and whispered to her.
. Her eyes opened and studied him for a bit as if remembering something. After a long moment, a slight trace of a smile reformed on her lips. "I love you too."
His grin reached from one ear to the other and he was almost sure he looked ridiculous. Rubbing her hand, he felt like things were starting to return to normal. As she lay there, he caressed her cheek gently with his hand. She leaned into his palm and her soft lips kissed it.
"Get some rest." He told her as he stood up.
"Don't leave." She pleaded softly to him, her eyes opening.
He looked over and noticed that Nadia and Jack hung back to allow them some time alone. He had forgotten that they were even there. Nadia smiled at both of them and went over to her sister.
"Hey, I'm going back to Eric. I'll be back later." She kissed her sister on top of her head. Sydney whispered softly in her ear and Nadia giggled at whatever her sister had just shared with her. "I'll tell him."
"I'm going to get an update from Marshall. Get some rest." Jack told her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Nodding to the both of them, her father walked stiffly out of the room following behind Nadia.
Pulling up the empty chair behind him, Vaughn sat down and took her hand again. "Where do you want to go?"
"Anywhere." She closed her eyes with a satisfied smile.
"Paris?… Venice?… or Rome? Trattoria de Nardi… if I remember correctly, we still haven't gone yet… It's almost spring there." He spoke softly hoping to lull her to sleep.
"Sounds wonderful." She murmured.
Inhale and exhale, in and out, her breathing was music to his ears. Cradling her hand, he laid his head on the mattress and drifted off to sleep. His dreams were filled with the sweet scents of Italy and he smiled at the sight of those sweet dimples…
THE END
