SUMMARY: Perhaps she was never a child. Perhaps she never grew up.
Sequel to "Cry of Orphans"
RATED PG
GENRE: Angst
SPOILERS: None. This is a Future-Fic
DISTRIBUTION: I'd rather this is not distributed anywhere without my permission. I'll put it where I want it. But you're still welcome to contact me and try to convince me that my story should be in your fine archive.
A/N: I've finished writing the first sequel. If you liked this stand alone, that's fine, (I like it that way too). You don't have to read on. Once the sequel gets going the story becomes a little less finished. Slowly, one story at a time, I'll fill in the missing pieces. So the sequel stories aren't meant to be as standalone as "Cry of Orphans".
This one's for all of you. :)
PLEA OF ORPHANS
by Aliasscape
Copyright 2003
The second the phone rang, he knew it was her.
It was well past midnight. In his CIA days, he only got emergency calls at this hour. Since he'd left, only she called at this hour. He let it ring twice more anyway. Then, slowly, he lifted the receiver to his ear. He said nothing. He didn't have to. She spoke immediately.
"She's there, isn't she? In LA." Her voice was accusatory as if he had lured her there himself.
"Yes," he responded simply, refusing to be affected by her tone.
"You've seen her."
"I saw what's left." It was Jack's turn to sound accusatory. He had insisted upon being first to see her, though it wasn't as if people had been lining up.
"They've finished processing her. She's in the cell downstairs where--"
"I know the way." He walked down there calmly. He waited patiently for all three gates to rise. He stepped beyond the final gate and stopped, just to look at her. To see her in the flesh for the first time in eight years. As if looking at her could answer all the questions.
She looked upon him with perceptive brown eyes that took in everything and revealed nothing. She had grown her hair into a wild mane that extended halfway down her back. He stepped closer. She shifted, tucking her hair behind her ear and he immediately noticed several long scars, extending vertically up from her wrists to halfway up her forearm.
His stare hardened and he searched her face. She wore a smile that meant nothing a smile should mean.
"She came to me that way eight years ago."
"You should have sent her home."
"She wouldn't have gone. You know that."
He sank into the leather chair next to the fireplace.
It had been a time exactly as this that he had heard from his daughter the day after she'd disappeared. He had just arrived home after spending hours checking flight records. It had been no use. Sydney could have been going anywhere, looking like anyone. But as he'd stepped in the front door, he'd heard the answering machine clicking on.
"Dad, I...I didn't want you to worry. I just couldn't stay there anymore. Not with him. I tried, please believe that. And please...just let me go."
He'd grabbed the phone then. Called her name. The line was dead. He had the call traced to a pay phone at an airport in Chicago. He sent agents there, but they came up empty. It didn't make any sense. With Sloane no longer an active threat, she had seemed so happy to be married. To be with Vaughn. To quit the CIA. He needed to know what had happened. He tracked down Vaughn at the rotunda.
"She didn't tell me anything. She just said things weren't okay. Things slowly started to get worse from the time Taryn was born."
"What did you do to help her?" Jack demanded.
Vaughn looked up from his desk with sad eyes. "There was nothing I could do. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong."
He stared down at the younger agent, disapprovingly. "This has been going on for nine months, and you didn't tell me." Jack kept his voice quiet, restrained.
Vaughn shook his head. "Because I didn't think that was what she needed."
"You obviously didn't know what she needed." Jack turned and walked away from Vaughn's desk.
Irina's voice on the opposite end cut through his thoughts. "She was so lost."
Jack stood, angry that she could sound so surprised. But then, only he could recall the lost six-year-old that had repeatedly asked him,
"Where's Mommy? When will she be home?"
"You only took advantage of that."
That answer got him a minute of silence on the other end.
The reports that had to be Sydney doing unauthorized espionage had turned his stomach. His daughter. The bright-eyed child with so much ability and promise. How could she have become as ruthless and deceitful as her mother? Sydney had been his reason to live. She'd kept him sane. She'd inspired him with her courage and strength.
And he'd failed her in every way possible.
Vaughn gave up on the search for Sydney. It was his prerogative. She was only his wife, not his daughter. Vaughn had custody of the only blood that bound them together. Nothing required him to keep looking.
"It's been over a year, Jack. She hasn't even tried to contact me."
"You want to give up."
"No, I don't want to. But, Sydney's gone. She's not coming back."
As Vaughn spoke, he'd walked around the house, gathering each and every photograph that he had of Sydney. He grabbed jewelry, clothes, home videos and stuffed them all haphazardly into boxes. He'd watched how thoroughly Vaughn searched the house for anything too reminiscent of Sydney. Anything that Taryn could use to figure out who her mother was. Vaughn claimed it was to save her from the pain of knowing that she'd been abandoned. Jack wondered if Vaughn simply wanted to pack up his memories of Sydney.
"Would you have me tell my daughter that her mother abandoned her? You think it'd be healthy for her to grow up knowing that?" Vaughn looked at him with pain in his eyes. It was definitely too painful for him.
"Then, what will you tell her?"
"About Sydney. Nothing. No names. No pictures. We have no idea if Sydney will turn up all over the news as wanted in this country. I can't have Taryn exposed to that. Sydney is not going to be a part of our lives anymore."
Jack had left the house without another word. If Sydney wasn't going to be a part of their lives, then obviously he couldn't be either. He refused to shut out Sydney. Not when he knew she hadn't shut him out.
There were late nights the phone would ring. He knew it was her. She wouldn't say anything. He would just hear her breathing. He thought he should say something comforting or important to her at first. She would hang up after he said only a few words. All she really wanted was to hear his voice. Sometimes he would tell her how things were going back in L.A. or how concerned he was for her. One night, he'd gone so far as to express regret at not protesting her marriage to Vaughn more at the time. He'd been startled to actually get a response on the line.
"Don't blame him, Dad. Whatever you do, please don't blame him." She paused. "They need you."
"They need you, Sydney."
"I have to go now."
She didn't call for a long time after that.
He didn't give up searching for her. He would have continued to use his CIA channels, but then he got a call from an old enemy.
"She's as remarkable as ever, Jack. Everything I always knew she could be and more."
Then, he hoped she could accomplish what he never had. A bullet to the brain of one Arvin Sloane.
Sydney had been gone five years. He stopped hoping the CIA could find her. The reports of the crimes of an enigmatic protege for Derevko became increasingly atrocious. He recognized a pattern to her missions that he didn't share with anyone.
"You're keeping things from us."
He didn't deny it. He simply retired. His former superiors might have pressured him more, but by then they had lost all trace of Sydney, or whoever she had become. It even worried him at first. She could have been killed. She could be an unidentified body somewhere. But after six months, came the calls after midnight. Calls that weren't from Sydney.
"She's taken charge of her destiny."
"What did you let her do?"
"It was her choice." The pain in Irina's voice frightened him.
"Where is she?"
"Sloane has her now."
And for the first time since Sydney had disappeared, he truly felt as though he had lost her. Lost her to Sloane. Nothing could be worse than that.
It was another six months before she resurfaced again. She didn't contact him. If she contacted her mother, Irina never told him. But they began to share the reports they had. The destruction of a lab in Budapest. The disappearance of a prototype from China. Their conversations were drenched in regret, but had an undertone of detached pride as they analyzed how she'd done and gotten away with each mission.
He had always believed Irina caused him to lose his sanity. But even he had to admit, after losing Sydney, the conversations with Irina were all he had to hang onto. He didn't speak to Vaughn. Their only contact was a yearly envelope that contained nothing more than a picture of Taryn with her new age written on the back. He would take the old picture he kept in a frame beside his chair in the living room, put it in an album, and replace it with the new one.
And then, only several months after placing Taryn's seven-year-old picture in its frame, he received a strange late afternoon call.
"Jack, it's me, Vaughn..." He waited, trying to figure out why Vaughn was calling for the first time in five years. "I just...I thought you would want to know, I'm up at the hospital...with Taryn." Vaughn sighed.
"Is she alright?" Jack asked, calmly.
"She had an accident. She has a concussion, they're going to keep her overnight. I thought--"
"Which hospital?"
"What?"
"I'll come immediately. Which hospital?"
Vaughn had sounded so grateful as he'd rattled off the hospital and Taryn's room number. The only awkward moment was when he first arrived at the room. Vaughn stopped him in the doorway with a question on his face that seemed to ask what had suddenly changed. What he was doing there.
Only several weeks before, Irina had been on the phone scolding him for not visiting Taryn.
"You're not protecting her. You're only punishing her for my mistakes and for Sydney's."
Vaughn wore a defensive, protective look that told Jack he wasn't getting through the door without an explanation for his sudden presence.
"I don't want to repeat the same mistakes."
Vaughn's face had softened instantly. He nodded and walked into the room and Jack followed. The girl in the bed was more alert than Jack had expected for a child with a concussion. She'd looked at him curiously.
"Taryn, this is your grandfather."
She'd clung to her father. She wasn't up to meeting new family members. But the exhausted look his son-in-law wore kept Jack from leaving the hospital. Vaughn was able to grab several hours sleep knowing someone was watching over Taryn. He was reminded of how he had felt the time Sydney had broken her leg when she was five years old. Sydney had come home with her cast and he had stayed beside her bed and read to her.
He realized how long it had been since he'd truly thought about Sydney. Not the spy. Not the woman. His daughter, Sydney. His chest literally ached. For two days after the visit, he thought there was no way he could spend time with Vaughn and Taryn ever again. But as he looked at the picture of the smiling seven-year-old beside his favorite chair, his chest ached again, with a need to see her.
He was on the Vaughns' doorstep with a carton of ice cream the next day. Taryn studied him like he was out of place. She accepted the ice cream politely, but lapsed into silence when Vaughn disappeared into the kitchen to get bowls and spoons.
"Ice cream was always one of your mother's favorite things to eat," Jack explained, not liking the silence between him and his granddaughter.
Her brown eyes lit up as if he had given her a most precious gift. She grinned, and when her father returned ate two bowlfuls.
When it had been time for him to leave, Taryn seemed disappointed. She asked him to visit again soon. He waited a week before doing so. She wasn't shy that visit. She asked him every question that came to her mind, wanting to know everything about him. She gave him a farewell hug at the end of that visit. He actually began to feel like the grandfather title actually fit in him in someway. She seemed very adult in many ways, but as he got to know her better, he realized how much she was an insecure child. While his normal serious expression didn't bother her, she took immediate notice to whenever he seemed displeased.
Jack fixed up a room in his house so Taryn could visit whenever she wanted. She had her own bedroom and spent the night whenever she could. When there, she would cautiously ask him questions about her mother. Jack abided by Vaughn's decisions regarding what to leave out of any information Taryn was given about Sydney. But whenever possible, Jack would tell Taryn as much as he could. Not about the spy, not about the woman, but his daughter, Sydney. She was mesmerized by his stories. His memories.
He thought she was contented with the stories until one day when he found her snooping through his study. She quickly tucked something behind her back when he caught her. She knew she wasn't allowed in his study. He demanded to know what she was doing.
"Grandpa, please don't hate me."
"What did you find?"
She held the picture out to him slowly. "Is this my mother?"
Taryn had indeed located a picture of him holding Sydney, six-years-old, on his shoulders. She wore a bright smile and her hair was in pigtails.
He nodded. "Yes."
Taryn turned the picture back towards herself and studied it. "Do you miss her?" she asked, softly.
"Every day."
Jack let Taryn have the photograph. Vaughn hadn't been pleased.
"She needs to know who she is and where she came from."
"She needs to stop focusing on the past!" he said angrily, glancing out the front door to where his daughter was waiting by the car.
"It would seem, Vaughn, that even you are unable to do that. Why should you expect her to?"
Vaughn walked back to the car.
Taryn was hugging the picture to her chest with a defiant look on her face. "Daddy, please don't be angry."
"Get in the car, Taryn."
The matter was forgotten rather than resolved--as most disagreements between Jack and Vaughn were. But upon Jack's next visit to the house, the picture of him and Sydney had found a frame and been placed on the nightstand beside Taryn's bed. It reminded him of how Sydney had clung to photographs of her own mother following Laura's "death". It was the first time he was truly upset with Sydney. For damaging her daughter, the same way her mother had damaged her. For leaving her to carry the insecurity that went with knowing anyone, even her own parents could disappear and leave her behind. She could be angry when she was having a good day.
And she could be lonely, even when surrounded by people that loved her.
Jack realized Vaughn had to live with that truth everyday. So he wasn't surprised by Vaughn's reaction to Sydney turning herself in. Jack had been privy to the CIA briefing as Kendall thought his insight on the situation might be useful.
"You could lock her up and throw away the key," Vaughn suggested, bitterly. "There's no reason to even be discussing this. We can't trust her. It's history repeating itself. She's a traitor to this country and likely her only reason for being here is to get something she wants from us."
"She's also still your wife."
"And I'll resign before I become a pawn in whatever game she's come back to play." Vaughn had shot Kendall a pointed look.
"Jack." Irina's voice gently pushed into his thoughts. It was the inviting call she had used to gently wake him from sleep early in their marriage. "What happened when you went to see her?"
He couldn't explain. He didn't have the words to describe the strange feeling as he'd had the cell opened so he could step inside. Sydney had looked back at him expectantly. He wanted to be angry with her but found he didn't have the strength.
She looked him in the eye, her head tilted. She looked like just like her mother. Confident and dangerous.
"Sydney...." He couldn't finish his thought. Instead, he blinked back tears.
She swallowed and melted. She looked just like her daughter. Lost and lonely.
"Daddy?"
He moved forward and embraced her. She hugged him back. Killing the lost eight years.
And then he had whispered, so the cameras monitoring couldn't hear.
"I'm glad you're home."
To Sydney. Not the spy, not the traitor.
But to his little girl.