BLISSFUL IGNORANCE

Eyghon

Author's notes: This story has nothing to do with 'Collateral Damage' but it's another Sydney/Irina story; apparently, I can't write anything else. Set right after the episode 2x13, 'Phase one', in which SD-6 is taken down.

Summary: One of Sydney's missions goes bad and she turns up with amnesia. Irina is the only one who can help her recover her memories, but she's stuck in a CIA cell and Jack won't listen to her.

Prologue

"Jack I can help!"

"Unless you have a degree in medicine that I didn't know about, you are not getting out of this cell. There is nothing you can do. This is not about Rambaldi, this is about science."

Of course, it was about Rambaldi. Wasn't it always? However, as much as she wanted to help Sydney, Irina couldn't tell Jack what she knew.

"I'm her mother," she protested.

"And she doesn't remember you."

She could still picture Sydney's relieved expression in her head, when her daughter had come to tell her that they destroyed SD-6. She felt something was wrong though, Sydney should be ecstatic and she was not. Irina had called her on it and Sydney grimly explained Sloane had disappeared. It was one week ago, and so much had changed in seven days.

First, four days ago, a man had come to talk to her, introducing himself as 'Agent Weiss'. The CIA knew she would not talk to anyone other than Sydney or Jack so he was not surprised when she ignored him. This was until he told her that he was a friend of Sydney's and that something had gone terribly wrong on her last mission.
He seemed distraught, and the fact that neither Jack nor Vaughn had taken the time to come down and talk to her personally spoke volumes.

The young man had calmly, but not without emotion, informed her that Sydney's team had been killed, execution style, and that she was reported MIA, Missing in Action. Three little words to say so many things. She had been captured and was probably being currently tortured for information.

Most operatives reported MIA were not expected to surface ever again after four weeks in absentia. Presumed dead, a shiny, tiny star on a wall was their epitaph.

Agent Weiss left after assuring her that everybody at the CIA was looking for her and that she would be informed as soon as her daughter resurfaced. The man had acknowledged Sydney's connection to her and it warmed her heart to hear Sydney mentioned as 'your daughter'.

Now, Jack had just announced to her something even more terrible and was ignoring her pleas to help.

Sydney had been found.

She had amnesia and couldn't remember a thing.

TBC