Jack could tell, as soon as Vaughn came to work that morning without Sydney by his side, that something was amiss. He'd reluctantly left her at the airport the night before, at her urging, even though Vaughn hadn't come to pick her up as they'd arranged. He'd felt a strange vibe from her after her hour alone with Irina, the entire way back in the plane from Berlin; there were tearstains on her cheeks but she refused to discuss that anything might not be right. He'd finally convinced himself that the stress of seeing Irina—never a dull moment—and of hiding her secret pact with Sark was starting to get to her.
But then this morning, she hadn't come to work. Vaughn had stalked in, glared in the general direction of his corner office, and sat down angrily at his computer terminal.
Jack called Sydney's cell phone five or six times, but finally settled on just leaving a message, "Sydney, it's…" He never called himself 'Dad,' not even to her. "It's your father. Please call me. I'm worried about you."
Vaughn had left for work with her sitting on the couch, hair wet, in her bathrobe. They didn't speak again after she hadn't answered his question about Sark, about their way with each other, and he couldn't think of what to say, anyway.
Then halfway to work, he called her cell phone but there was no answer. He listened to her voice on the message, "Hi, you've reached Sydney's voicemail; I can't take your call, so please leave your name and number and I'll call you back when I can. Bye."
It didn't sound like the voice of someone who would cheat on you. He dialed it back several more times, hoping she wouldn't answer, so he could hear the message again.
He was in the middle of one such hang-up call when he noticed Jack standing at his elbow.
He slammed the receiver down and stared up at Jack.
They had never been on easy terms with each other. The first attempt Vaughn had made at doing the respectful thing and asking Jack's permission to marry his daughter, Jack had started to turn him down, saying something about how while Vaughn wasn't as useless as he'd previously thought, he wasn't really the kind of man who…
Jack had never gotten to finish that sentence. Someone had stormed into his office and interrupted them. Vaughn wondered to this day what Jack was going to say to him. Of course later he'd revised his judgment, and grudgingly given his blessing to them.
Which, Vaughn thought pissily, might not have been the better outcome in light of this morning's events.
"Come with me," Jack said, and turned on his heel.
Vaughn had no choice but to follow his father-in-law like a whipped dog through the ops room, into the stairwell and up onto the roof of the building. It was literally the most private place they could talk, outside, exposed to the sky.
"Where is Sydney," Jack began, but Vaughn interrupted him.
"No, I'm the one who gets to ask the questions," Vaughn said, one of the few times he'd ever contradicted Jack. "How about you start by telling me why you really went to Berlin?"
"Irina." Jack wasn't going to sugar-coat it.
Vaughn stood, hands on his hips under his suit jacket, and stared at the pebbly concrete near Jack's shoe. Jack had been in on this, somehow, this proved it. To take his wife to meet her mother. It was a sentence which would have sounded so reasonable and innocuous if they had been pretty much any other family besides this one. Her mother, who had been working with Sark. Who he had established, beyond a shadow of doubt, had fucked his wife six ways from Sunday. Make that plural--wives.
"What do you know about this?" Vaughn reached into his jacket pocket and drew out Sark's note. The piece of Scotch tape fluttered in the wind as he handed it to Jack.
"This is for my shoulder," Jack read out loud. His brow creased into several wrinkles, like he was confused. Vaughn was nearly certain this concern was fake.
"It had Sydney's engagement ring taped to it." Vaughn's voice broke a little when he said her name.
"Sark," Jack said, and the one-syllable moniker hung there, like a balloon waiting to be popped. Vaughn now knew for certain that Jack had known about something, that there was more to her trip to England than just surveillance. Vaughn had decided long ago that Jack was the least normal father he'd ever known; what kind of dad tests government brain-washing experiments on a 6-year-old, under the guise of protecting her from her mother?
"Very good," Vaughn's sarcasm was palpable. "It seems your little girl arranged herself a deal with Mr. Sark while she was away. And by a deal, I mean she agreed to suck his coc—"
The back of Vaughn's tongue never met the roof of his mouth to form the 'k' at the end of the word, because Jack's punch sent him sprawling face-first onto the roof of the building.
"Don't you dare take that tone of voice with me when you talk about Sydney," Jack's voice said, high above his head. He heard Jack pull his suit coat back down. Were her entire family sadists?
Vaughn drew himself onto all fours, then onto his feet. He stood up and looked Jack square in the eye. "Did you know she had an affair with Sark?"
"No." Jack wasn't lying.
"What did you know, then?"
"Only that they made a deal for intel. That he's trying to track down someone, and wanted our files."
Ok, that jived with what she'd told him.
"She said Sark threatened to send you the rings if she didn't deliver," Jack didn't meet Vaughn's eyes, "Which I thought wouldn't be particularly effective."
They stared at each other. "Unless there was already reason for you to mistrust her."
Vaughn looked away, out over the city. The smog wasn't too bad today, all things considered. He'd wanted to move away from LA. Someplace quieter. Cleaner.
"Michael," Jack's use of his first name caused him to turn back, "I had hoped that after all you two had been through, that you would be able to make each other happy. But the heart…" He hesitated, uncertain what to say, "The heart is an unpredictable organ. It doesn't reason well, it doesn't have the temperance of a brain, or a lung that breathes without you telling it to."
"I lost her a long time ago," Vaughn said, his voice breaking Jack's heart a little. "If I ever really had her."
It actually did cause a pain in Jack's chest, seeing Vaughn so hurt by what Sydney had done. He hadn't known she had… been with Sark. He tried not to think about his daughter, about her predilections, but he couldn't help but hope that Sark had less tolerance for pain and abuse than Sydney did. It made him extremely uncomfortable, thinking about his older daughter at the hands of a man who had no compunctions about torturing his own father, no matter what the circumstances of Lazarey's involvement in Sark's life had been.
He knew exactly what Vaughn was feeling. It was a feeling you hoped you would never have to endure once in a lifetime, let alone twice. Let alone 3 years apart. It had nearly killed him to find out that Irina was, in fact, not American at all, but Russian, and that their marriage had been plotted out in a conference room in Moscow years before he'd ever laid eyes on Irina.
Irina. Had she known about Sydney and Sark? About their deal? What had she said to Sydney, in that hour they spent alone?
Shit. There was so little he knew, even when he knew so much more than Vaughn.