A/N: Thank you again to Reckless. Anyone who wants to PM me any thoughts, comments or suggestions please feel free! I'll love any advice or suggestions, or if you just want to review without posting it for everyone to read. Thanks again to everyone reading.


Chapter 13: The Exposed/Exposé

Taiwan

"I wanted to kill you when I saw you in France."

Jack looked over at Vaughn and said, "Funny, I'm having a very similar thought about you as we speak. Except with me, you know I'm serious."

"You don't think I would've done it?"

"No, I don't. I've been watching you. You're not impulsive. You don't jump to conclusions. You hold everything close to the chest until you're absolutely certain."

Vaughn, who was acting as point man and lookout, lowered the night vision goggles as he told him, "I thought you were the KGB agent who killed my father."

After he had been notified by Marshall that he'd received the signal from the transmitter, he'd sent him and Dixon out to recon the area as they left to meet Irina. It was literally on the way anyway. The GPS tracker wasn't following Will's signal at the moment, though it was on the monitor, but Dixon's.

Sydney was behind them, having taken up the rear to ensure they weren't being followed as well as covering their tracks. She was probably still a good quarter mile behind.

"You need to explain that to me," he said as they stepped over a fallen tree. "How did you find out about how your father died?"

"I located the books you'd gotten as gifts for your wife and Sydney had NSA analyze them. They deciphered the cyrillic codes that were inside. They were code names for CIA agents. Those code names were given to a KGB spy who assassinated those agents, my father included. We didn't know about Irina until tonight. So, yes, Jack, I thought you were not only a traitor, but the murderer of over a dozen CIA agents."

He took all that in and then asked, "Why wasn't I notified about any of this sooner?"

"Sydney. She still wanted to believe there was good in you. That maybe the intel we had was wrong. She told me to not say anything. I respect her enough to honor her wishes. You know what really annoyed me, Jack. You don't know who I am and you made the assumption that I wouldn't be good enough for her. That I would break her heart if we got together."

He stared at the back of his head as he said, "I offended you?"

Vaughn stopped walking and turned to face him. "Yes, you offended me! You do that a lot. I also take offense to the fact that you didn't tell me the truth about SD-6."

"I don't have to explain myself to you," he told him. "Whatever you feel about my non-disclosure is entirely up to you. Don't make it my problem to solve," he told him as he started walking again.

Vaughn was close behind. "Is that how you think about everything? It's not your responsibility how someone feels despite how you make them feel? And to be clear, I'm not going to ask your permission to be with her because quite frankly, Jack, you have no authority to give her away. You haven't earned that respect or courtesy."

"That's something we can actually agree on." Jack stopped and looked up from the GPS tracker and said, "This is it."

They were deep in the forest between the Jinshan and Wanli Districts, honestly he had no idea where they were in relative relation to either one. All he knew was that it was hot, humid, and he was about ready to shoot Agent Vaughn.

Vaughn looked over at him and said, "You wanted to kill Irina. I heard it in your voice. How you kept setting her up. You wanted her to give you an excuse. I don't get you. You told us we could listen in but not interfere. She had backup and if we didn't come in when we did, you'd be dead."

"She had no intention of killing me."

"Then why-"

"Why does it matter? Irina's the reason your father has a star on the wall at Langley. If I hadn't had killed her, what would you have done, Agent Vaughn?"

Vaughn glared at him and then looked away.

"You're no better than I am if you're willing to make those moral compromises that will undoubtedly keep you up at night. And that's why you're not good enough for Sydney."

"That's her choice to make, not yours. And you're a hypocritical son-of-a-bitch, you know that? Do you honestly think you deserve Will? I don't know him, but if making moral compromises prohibits someone from being "good enough", you don't deserve anyone."

"Oh Lord, will you two shut up already!" Dixon said as he suddenly appeared out from behind a tree. "Do you want to give away our location?"

"What took you so long?"

"What's our status?"

Jack and Vaughn glared at one another before he looked back at Dixon as he waited for him to answer.

Dixon addressed his question first as he said, "They've got this place surrounded. CCTV cameras. Guards. It's a compound. There's a rock and stone wall with a guarded gate at the main entrance. A total of four guards in the front, and more in the house. I counted at least five. The wall ends at the tree lines on both sides. Five guards patrol the tree lines with AR-15's. Two stationary, flanking, and three rovers. Did you rendezvous with Marshall?"

Jack gave a nod.

Marshall sat inside the van, took a deep breath, then told them, "I narrowed down Mr. Tippin's location to the, uh, the second level at the far west corner of the house. I can't get a hundred percent lock on it due to uh, inter-you know, interference but it's well within yeah, uh, ten, or five, or ten-five feet. There are no online security systems to hack into, it's all battery operated motion sensors that are rigged to sound an alarm, as well as turn on lights. Should be easy for...you guys, and girl, you all look so cool, by the way, with the-the uh, black gear and face paint," he said as he looked around at them. "As I told Dixon, be stealthy, be the Black Panther. He was stealthy in the jungle...You know that superhero, right? Black Panther? He's great, one of my favorites...Wakanda...I have the comic books if any of you want to borrow them-"

The turnoff where Marshall was located, with the van and the rental car, was 2 miles due North through the forest and over a river. They were currently standing a mile away from the tree line on the northeast side of the compound. To make it worse, it started to rain.

"I'll acquire Mr. Tippin," Jack told Dixon as he looked over at him.

"Power is run on generators," Dixon told him, "One of us is going to have to get to the shed that's on the east side of the main house where it's located and turn it off manually. I'm volunteering myself for that task."

Jack looked at him as he said, "I should have said this sooner, Agent Dixon, but...I understand the risk you and Marshall have taken here and you both have my utmost respect for that."

Dixon gave him a nod and asked, "Where's Sydney?"

"I'm here," she said as she suddenly appeared through the darkness.

They were all dressed in black with night vision goggles, black knit caps and face paint. Jack wondered how long Sydney had been standing there. Maybe she hadn't been as far away as he thought.

She looked at him and then pulled her gun. "Are we ready?"

Jack stared at his daughter; her confidence, the skills she exhibited, but what made him most proud was her courage. Her audacity. She would always be the first one in the room and the last one out. It terrified him. Yet, he was so proud of her for it. "When Dixon cuts the power, that will be our signal. I want you," he told Vaughn, "in position to take out the guards in the front. Dixon, you'll flank the East side of the house. Handle any guards that want to try to take a pop-shot at Vaughn. Sydney, you and I will approach from the rear. You'll flank to the West. I'll approach from the East and enter the house through the side."

"You're going in alone?" Sydney asked.

"Initially, yes. I'm assuming once you have cleared the area, you'll want to help clear the house, that is, if I leave you anyone," Jack said as he pulled his gun and twisted on the silencer. "Ready?" When everyone gave a nod, he said, "Let's move."

Jack approached the tree line and watched as Dixon headed off to his left with Vaughn right behind him. Sydney was on his right.

They didn't say anything for a long moment and then he heard her say, "You would kill yourself to save my life?"

Looking over at her, he said, "Of course I would. I'm your father." He thought he saw a smile but then the lights to the compound cut out and by the time he pulled the night vision goggles down over his eyes, she was already heading across the yard.


Will had never hurt so much before in his entire life. His face no longer hurt; it'd gone numb hours ago. His chest burned as he fought to breathe through his mouth. Blood clogged his nostrils, and there was blood dripping from the hole in his mouth where his top right molar had once been. His head was pounding. It screamed at him with pain that it was hard to focus on anything else but the open. He couldn't open his left eye and kept his right one shut against the light.

The last thing he'd remembered before the pain was being at Jack's apartment. He'd been watching the movie, and missing his partner, and then nothing. Next thing he knew, he was waking up strapped to a chair with a sadistic fuck who wore glasses, and got off on torturing people, using him as a human test dummy. He fought through it all. The beatings, the papercuts against the bottom of his feet, and the water. What was the deal with waterboarding anyway?

He'd given up nothing because he had nothing to tell them. He didn't know anything about the prophecy. He knew nothing about Jack either, other than that he was great in bed. He told that to Glasses. The asshole just laughed in return.

"This is a truth serum a gentleman I know made special for me. I must warn you, Mr. Tippin, one in five men who receive it have suffered unfortunate reactions. Paralysis as a side effect."

Will felt the pinprick in his vein and his head dropped forward. His head was swimming in liquid, it was light and heavy. Floating like in water. He was floating in a sea of relaxation. It cured his headache. God bless the sick fuck and his truth serum. His breathing slowed and leveled out as he kept his body as still as possible.

He had to be Jack. Think like Jack. Move like Jack. Be still. Be like the calm water on the ocean. He remembered being on the water with Jack that first night they met. How smooth the water was; how still. It was like they were sitting on top of a sheet of glass instead of a body of water.

Glasses tested his reflexes and when he didn't move, said, "Good."

There were fingers on his right wrist, undoing the restraint. Then on his left wrist. He was free.

He opened his one good eye and watched as Glasses turned his back. On the tray table next to him was the syringe. He reached over, grabbed it, and moved swiftly and silently out of the chair.


Jack moved through the rooms like a well-trained machine. Eyes forward and when they swept the hall or a room, his gun went where his eyes went. He dispatched three guards on the lower level before starting up the steps. He went straight up the steps, turning his body along with the gun as he swept right and up along the stairs until he was turned with his back to the wall. A guard came around the corner of the stairs and he shot him square in the chest. The guard fell forward, over the railing and hit the steps below him as he continued up to the second floor.

He stopped at the wall; looked right, straight, and then left. He had to go left. Crossing the hall, he put one foot in front of the other and swept the rooms as he passed. Every five steps he checked behind him, then every third, then fourth. He kept that pattern going as he neared the room at the end of the hall.

Dixon said there were five guards in the house that he'd seen, but so far he'd only encountered four. That left at least one more that was known. As he approached the door, his night vision goggles blinked, then blinked again, and then went black.

Jack pulled them off and tossed them. They were cheap government issued anyway. Getting to the door, he stood to the side, grabbed the handle, took a breath, and then opened the door.

He charged forward, sweeping from left to right and behind the door and saw no one. It was empty. Where the fuck?!

He was about to leave the room when he heard a noise. It was screaming. Loud screaming. And it was coming from behind a wall. Jack went over to the far right wall and searched around for a way to access the room. It had to be a panic room or...He opened a panel that was behind the painting and saw a keypad.

"Marshall," he said as he hit the coms piece in his ear, "is there a way to open a secure room that uses a keypad access code with the power out?"

"You should be able to manually override. I'll walk you through it."

Jack did everything Marshall told him and he heard a "click" as a portion of the wall moved. There was light peeking through the slit between the wall. The panic room must have had a separate generator or power source. He pulled open the wall and stepped inside as the screaming grew louder.

He drew up his gun but then stopped dead in his tracks as he saw the scene before him.

Will was on top of a man, screaming at him as he hit him over and over again. His fists were bloody along with his shirt. "How'd you like it you little bitch," he yelled as he punched the man in the face. "One in five," he yelled as he punched him again. "One in five!"

Jack holstered his gun as he took a step forward. "Will." When he didn't stop, he said again, louder, "Will!"

Looking up, Will froze as he stared at him. Jack swallowed hard at the sight of Will's face. It was all bruised, his left eye was swollen, mouth split open, and he was completely covered in blood. He had to refocus as he blinked back.

"Jack?" Will asked in confusion, like he didn't trust his own eyes.

He pulled off the knit cap as he stepped toward him. "It's me."

"Jack," Will said again as his voice broke. He staggered up to his feet, swayed slightly but didn't fall over as he took a step over the man. Jack was next to him in seconds, steadying him with his hands and then Will collapsed against him. "Thank you. I knew it. I knew you'd come for me. Thank you," he said again.

He held him tightly in his arms and closed his eyes. "I've missed you." The words were out of his mouth before he even realized he'd thought of saying it.

Will hugged him tighter and then tensed. He felt him suddenly reach down and grabbed his gun out of the holster as he yanked him to the side. Jack heard the gunshot before he saw the guard outside the doorway drop to the floor. He stared at the dead guard that Will had shot and then at the man who Will had beaten.

He was impressed.

Reaching out, he took his gun from Will's hand then pointed it down at the man with the glasses on the floor. The man stared up at him as he gasped for breath. Jack squeezed the trigger. Looking at Will, he asked, "How'd you know to do that? I never got around to training you on gun handling."

"I just...did it."

"You're okay?" he asked.

Will leaned into him and said, "No. I want to go home."

"I know the feeling."

He felt Will move up against his back as a hand pressed against his right hip. "Where you go, I go," Will told him.

Jack shook his head at him as he felt the shifting tightness in his chest. Will stayed behind him as they moved together out of the house.

He kept his gun at the ready as they went through the room, down the hallways, and toward the back of the house. Will never dropped his hand from his waist the entire time. They got to the stairwell at the back of the house and started down to the first floor. All the rest of the guards should have been out the front, being taken care of by Dixon and Vaughn. The back should be cleared by Sydney but that didn't mean some lone guard didn't get by.

As Jack swept the stairs, he told him, "There's someone here helping and when you see her I don't want you to panic."

"Who is it?"

"Me," Sydney said as she appeared behind them.

Will turned, saw Sydney, and panicked. "Sydney?! Oh my God! What are you-How are you-"

Sydney pulled Will into a hug as she told him, "I'll explain later. I'm so glad you're okay."

Jack looked back at her and asked, "Is the back all clear?"

"One guard left. You were taking too long and I wanted to make sure you got Will," she said before they started moving again.

Getting to the kitchen, a sliding door that led to the pool area was to the left. "Stay away from the windows," he told Will as he saw the large windows that spanned over the back wall.

Moving through the kitchen, they got to the wall next to the sliding door and stopped there. He really hated that it was a sliding glass door. It didn't offer cover, but they could use it to see into the back yard and if there was a guard roaming the area. There was another door further down the hallway that exited out into a garden. The garden was enclosed with ten foot high walls with no doors to exit through. This was their only option.

Looking back at Will, he couldn't see how tense his face or eyes were but he felt him press his body fully into his back. He felt the unsteady breathing in his chest and the trembling of his hand on his hip. They only lost touch a few times while going down the stairs.

"There should be one guard, if any," he tried to reassure him. Truth was, he had no idea what awaited them in the backyard. "Sydney, do your night vision goggles still work?"

"They died on me before I got into the house."

Jack sighed heavily as he peered around the wall and out into the yard. He wasn't looking for the guard, per se, but movement. Any movement, or odd shape in the yard, against the background of the trees. Or any light that glowed-

He saw a small bright orange glow in the distance before it dimmed. Then again a few moments later. A cigarette. A guard was having a smoke while his buddies were busy with intruders out front.

He saw the glow move downwards, disappear, and then reappear up higher. Although he couldn't see the guard's face, he knew exactly where it was and how he was standing. The guard was facing toward the west, but his focus was toward the front of the house. They would be almost directly behind the guard once they were outside.

Taking another quick glance around, he didn't see anything else. "Stay close behind me."

"Exactly my plan," Will whispered as he pressed harder against his back.

Jack felt Will's hand grab his belt as he gripped the handle. He took a breath and hoped the door didn't make a sound as he gently slid it open only enough for them to slip through. He moved immediately to his right to keep himself and Will behind the guard and out of his peripheral vision.

Will was right with him, staying hunkered over with his hand on his right hip, as they rounded the edge of the pool and up and over the divider wall as they dropped into the flower bed that was below. Sydney was right behind them.

There was nothing between them and the guard. No walls, no trees, nothing but open air from where they landed next to the divider wall and to the trees forty to fifty yards away. The only thing on their side was the fact that there were no lights. It was dark with the cloud coverage. Looking up, he saw the coverage about to break as the moon grew brighter in the sky directly overhead.

This could get complicated.

Jack then realized he didn't hear anything. Nothing. The gunfire had stopped out front. Had stopped since they exited the house. "Run," he suddenly said, "the both of you, toward the trees as fast as you can."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to make sure the guard doesn't get a shot off." Will didn't move. Turning to him, he told him, "Go. I'll cover you both."

Sydney grabbed Will as he hesitated, but then Will grabbed him and kissed him hard before breaking away. "We'll be waiting for you in the trees."

Jack gave a nod. The moment Sydney and Will started running toward the tree line, he was moving toward the guard. He stayed directly behind him, gun trained at his back. Moonlight filled the backyard, casting shadows across the big open yard.

The guard turned suddenly to his right as he raised the rifle. Sydney's and Will's movements had caught his attention.

Jack didn't let him get off a shot as he fired directly to the left of the orange glow. The guard dropped; the only sound made had been his body hitting the ground. He looked around, and when he didn't see or hear anyone else, headed toward the trees.


Northern Coast of Taiwan

Jinshan District

Jack turned onto the thin street that was wide enough for only one car at a time and spotted the three story square building at the top of the winding hill. Sydney and Will were in the backseat and the van with Vaughn, Dixon, and Marshall was right behind him. After he parked in front of the big red house, he got out and stopped the van by holding up his hand.

Vaughn rolled down the window as he asked, "Is this it?"

"Yes. However, you can't park the van here. That garage directly behind you across the street. Back it in there."

Vaughn eyed the garage in the side mirror, then stuck his head out the window and then looked back at him. "That's not a garage. That's three stone walls and a tin roof being held down by bricks and tires."

"It gets windy. Park the damn van in the garage," he told him before going back to the car to help Sydney get Will out and into the house.

A Taiwanese man greeted them at the door after he'd knocked. Wen-je smiled at him as he stepped out. "Jack. It's good to see you, my friend, come in."

He gestured for Sydney to enter first before him and Will followed her in. Will was literally wrapped around his body because it was hard for him to move his legs. In the car, he'd told him how the torturer, "Glasses" as Will called him, injected him with a truth serum that causes paralysis. It hadn't completely paralyzed Will, but the effects had caught up with him and slowed him down considerably.

He got Will up the stairs and to the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet seat. Jack leaned him back until his head was resting on the wall and stared down at. Will had been so strong, so brave. He touched his face and Will opened his right eye and smiled at him before closing it again.

Jack took his time cleaning the both of them up. He rinsed out his mouth, washed his hair, face and body, getting all the blood and grim off him and then into clean sweatpants and a t-shirt. By the time he got himself dressed, Will was asleep against the wall. Picking him up in his arms, he carried him out of the bathroom and into a bedroom at the end of the hallway.

There was a twin bed by the wall and he eased him down onto it. Sitting on the bed, he ran his hair through his hair as he saw the cuts on his face, the swelling, and the bruises. He had checked him over in the shower and had been surprised by the tiny cuts over the bottom of both his feet. Will never complained once about the amount of obvious pain he was in.

Jack watched as Will slept peacefully and knew the peacefulness was an illusion. Every time he turned, Will winced and his breathing was shallow. Will had been punched in the face, including the nose and he was having to breathe through his mouth.

He heard a noise at the door and looked up and saw Sydney standing there. "Wen-je made some sam-poe-koe and I wanted to see if Will felt like eating. He's always hungry."

"He's asleep," he told her and he hadn't realized how tired and rough his voice sounded until he spoke. He was exhausted.

"Why don't you get some sleep too," she told him. "We'll talk in the morning."

He stared at the empty space at the door after she had walked away and shook his head. Pulling the sheet up, he slipped under and wrapped his arm around Will's body. He slid his hand up under the shirt, pressing his palm against his chest, feeling the steady heartbeat, and closed his eyes.

He gasped out loud as he awoke to be staring up at his bedroom ceiling. His heart was pounding, lungs burned, as he fought to breathe. There was a clenching pain in his chest as if something was pressing down on top of him. He blinked up at the white ceiling, the orange glow of dawn breaking through his window, as his head pounded.

The pounding fueled by more than just the assaulting memory, but the alcohol he'd consumed the night before. He felt tired, and sore, and in pain. Most of all, he felt like he was dying.

"Your hand shakes."

He blinked back and turned his head to the left. Laura was in bed next to him, staring at him without a sense of concern. Just there with him.

He went to speak, but found he couldn't pry his jaw apart. It was tense, not only because his body felt as if it was in a frozen state of panic, but because he couldn't find the words. He couldn't get the memory of being tortured out of his head. This wasn't supposed to be his life.

"It's like you know I'm here with you in bed, so you compound all the trembling and thrashing your body wants to do into one central location so not to accidentally hurt me." She looked down and then back up to his face. "Jack. Your hand. It's shaking."

At the sound of his name, he flinched slightly as he tried to focus. He pulled his left hand up and laid it on his chest as it violently trembled. He willed it to stop but couldn't force it to obey. It was like it was a separate limb on someone else's body, completely out of his control.

He turned away from his wife as he tried to steady his breathing, to ease the pressure out of his chest, and to stop the shaking. His right hand grasped hold of his left as he tried to stop it by applying pressure or to massage it, but it still shook.

Closing his eyes, he told his mind one word: still. A silent mantra he used to refocus his thoughts, to quiet his mind, and to ease the shaking in his body.

Still.

Still.

Will's screaming woke him from his dream. Jack held onto him and settled him down as best he could, but Will didn't stop shaking against him. "It hurts," he said in a quiet whisper.

As he held him in his arms, he started talking, "In January of 1973, I, along with several other members of my team, were taken prisoner by the Viet Cong. There were about fifteen or more Viet Cong soldiers and seven of us. For four weeks, we endured psychological and physical torture so brutal that it broke the strongest men that I have ever known. One by one, I saw them drop like flies, either by their own hands or someone else's. That was when I first learned that every man had his breaking point. I also realized that I was different than they were. Not because I held onto the belief that I was going to escape, but that I didn't let the emotional responses to fear take control. I was afraid, but I forced myself not to give into that fear. I could disconnect my emotions and focus on what I needed to do. Out of seven, only two of us got out alive. Myself and Arvin Sloane."

Will's breathing was smoothing out and his shaking had stopped. Moving against him, he kissed him and asked, "How did you get over it? How did you stop it from hurting?"

He ran his hands up and down Will's back as he told him, "I met Wen-je. He invited me here to Taiwan. I don't know if you're aware, but we are in Buddhist country."

"You're Buddhist?"

He laughed a little. "No, but I learned zen meditation from the Buddhists monks and incorporated those techniques into a method to combat the effects of torture."

"For the CIA?" Will looked at him and said, "I figured it out."

"I'm not surprised," he told him, "you're incredibly smart."

Will continued to stare at him. Reaching out, he touched his face. Jack closed his eyes against the touch and then turned to kiss his palm. "Can I ask...What happened to the Viet Cong soldiers who took you prisoner?"

He stared at Will as he thought about that day twenty-eight years ago. He had to force out a breath before he spoke; not because of what he had to say, but who he was saying it to. Will would truly know and understand who he was in love with. And that scared him more than anything. "I killed them."

Will was quiet for a moment then asked, "...All of them?"

He couldn't get the word out, so he gave a nod as he waited for Will's response.

"I'm sorry you were forced to do that."

Jack let out a breath as he looked at the man he loved. "You're okay with knowing that I am capable of such things?"

"Jack, if this experience has taught me anything, it's that people will do anything to get home alive. As long as I'm the home you're coming back, I'm okay with that." He then laughed and said, "That was cheesy, wasn't it?"

He didn't mind how cheesy it sounded, he liked hearing it. He really loved hearing Will laughing again. Leaning forward, he kissed him. Then again, and again as their kisses grew in desperation, got deeper, as he pushed Will into his back.

"We are alone in this room, right?" Will asked.

He looked around suddenly and after he confirmed that they were alone, he bit and licked over Will's neck, inciting a deep moan.

"Good God that feels so good. No wonder you like that so much."

He smiled into his neck and did it again before leaning back to pull his shirt off. Will sat up and did the same before his mouth attacked his chest. He closed his eyes and held back a groan as he shivered at the pleasure Will was giving to him.

Will then said, "You got shot?"

Jack opened his eyes and looked to his right shoulder as Will's fingers touched the inflamed skin around the gunshot wound. "It's okay. I'm okay," he told him as he pushed him back down and flipped him over onto his stomach as he continued to kiss, lick, and bite at Will's shoulders, down his back, and over his thighs until he was squirming under him. He loved the taste of Will's skin in his mouth. Loved the way he gasped and moaned in pleasure.

He kissed and licked him all the way back up his body, all the way to his ear. He licked and nipped at Will's ear, causing him to moan. Wrapping his right hand around his neck, he gripped Will's hip hard as he moved inside him.

As the dawn broke, he made Will scream out for an entirely different reason.

Jack couldn't remember the last time he was in a kitchen full of people. It was insanity. There were three different conversations going on between all of them at once as food was eaten and cups were refilled with coffee or tea. Wen-je's table wasn't big enough for all of them so Will was literally sitting on his right leg. He didn't mind and no one minded either.

He didn't bother to try to pay attention to any of the conversations, he was lost in his own chaos at the moment while he sipped on the coffee. He knew he had to inform everyone of what was going on. Full disclosure. The last twenty years he'd been alone with only a few contacts, like Lafayette, that he used for his dead drops for intel transfer.

Looking around the table, with all the people including his daughter who helped him to get Will back, he knew he owed them all the truth and the knowledge of what exactly was going on. Once there was a break in the conversations and it was relatively quiet, he said, "I need to address all of you."

The entire table fell silent and Jack suddenly felt afraid. He didn't know why, it wasn't the fact that all eyes were on him, but he had never spoken the words he was about to say out loud to anyone in twenty years. He took a sip of the coffee and felt Will's hand suddenly on the small of his back.

He nearly smiled but held it back as he said, "I guess I should start with my real name. It's Jonathan Donahue Bristow. I had once been a well-respected CIA officer, and then in 1981, my wife, Laura, was involved in a car crash with an FBI Agent and presumed dead. During the investigation, it was discovered that she was a KGB spy and her target, her assignment, had been to marry a well-respected CIA officer…" He shook his head and rubbed at his head as he continued, "I had confirmed to the agency that I had confided in my wife some aspects of my job. That was my mistake. I was arrested and held in solitary confinement in federal prison until 1982 when I was approached by the Director of the Department of Clandestine Services, Derrick Xander, to go undercover on a solo mission that was classified as Operation Rubicon. I was to become, for lack of a better word, a criminal. Since I had already been dubbed a traitor and imprisoned, it wasn't hard to convince other criminals that I was one of them. All this was to attract members of the Alliance into offering me a job. In 1991, I was offered a position with SD-6 by none other than Arvin Sloane." He glanced over at Sydney as he said, "We knew each other prior. In fact, he had been my best friend. Since '91, I've been gathering intel about the Alliance in order to not only stop them from succeeding in their goal of world domination, but to render them obsolete and powerless. Thanks to everyone in this room, we are extremely close to succeeding. Server 47 is the final nail in the coffin. It will bring them down." When no one said anything for a long moment, he said, "I know I shouldn't expect any of you to immediately trust me. Just know that I did give thirty years of service to the CIA, twenty of which has been on this assignment alone, and if that's not enough to convince you that I am without question one of the good guys then I don't know what will."

"Do we still call you Jack," Marshall asked.

"Jack is what I prefer, so, yes, Marshall, you can call me Agent Bristow."

The deadpan delivery of that got a laugh out of most everyone. Vaughn was still tense. They would have to talk about it later. For right now, Jack didn't know what to say to him. Vaughn had been working for the better part of a decade for the Alliance, not against it.

Will's hand was still on the small of his back and it didn't once stop it's movements of rubbing his tense muscles. Then he said, "Server 47, that's a plane."

Everyone looked at Will as he asked, "What's a plane?"

Will looked down at him and said, "Server 47. It's a 747. When you were in France, I started going over everything I had. I'm a journalist, I didn't know what else to do. I researched everything and wrote an exposé. I saved it to my email, just in case something happened to me. Anyway, I went over all the real estate priorities and financials, I noticed there was a purchase of an airplane, a 747, in 1997. I traced it to a hanger where it received extensive re-modifications to house a powerful mainframe computer, a single server, within the plane itself. That has to be it."

Jack thought about it and then said, "I'm having a hard time finding a flaw in your logic."

"Thanks, Spock," Will said sarcastically as he picked up his cup of coffee and took a drink.

"That did sound very Vulcan-ish," Marshall said.

Dixon looked at him and asked, "Is there anything else we need to know."

Jack looked at Sydney and said, "The only other relevant information is that Hayden Chase, the current Director of the DCS is believed to be working either for the Alliance or personally with Arvin Sloane. There were only two people who knew I was going to Bordeaux. Hayden Chase, and Will."

Will looked around as he said, "I...Wait, what happened in France? You weren't able to get anything from Banque Citadelle? Oh my God, is that why you were shot?"

"He was ambushed," Sydney told Will and then looked at him.

"Another thing, "Jack said, "is that Sydney Sloane was adopted by Arvin and his wife Emily. She was born Sydney Bristow."

"You're his daughter!" Will said suddenly and then "You're her father?!" He then turned back to Sydney and said, "That's why you wanted me to break up with him?!"

Jack looked to Sydney as she looked at him. They stared at one another until Sydney said, "I thought you weren't any good for him...Jack, I thought you were a mercenary terrorist."

Looking around at the other people at the table, he shook his head, grabbed his cup of coffee, and stood. Will stood with him and watched as he walked out of the room. He could feel his eyes on his back as he left the house.


Sydney ignored Will as he tried to apologize for his outburst. It wasn't his fault, it was hers. She went after Jack and walked out onto the porch. She saw him leaning on top of the wall. He was looking out over the street with that same look on his face that had been in James' painting of him back in his study in Bordeaux. Leaning on the wall next to him, she went to speak when he cut her off.

"You're always assuming things, Sydney. You assumed in France that I was embarrassed about who I was. And now I learned that you assumed that I was a terrorist and went to Will to try to get him to leave me? I thought you would know better than to draw simple conclusions-"

"Don't talk to me about how I should be Jack. I thought my father shouldn't be a man who programmed me as a child to be a sleeper spy!"

"Again you are assuming," he snapped at her as he glared into her eyes. "I didn't train you to be a spy because I wanted this life for you! Your mother was a KGB agent who manipulated me. I didn't want you to fall for the same…" he looked away and rubbed his head. "I didn't want you to be vulnerable. I wasn't going to be around and I...I was afraid. I wouldn't be there to protect you, so I wanted you to be able to protect yourself."

She felt the pain in her heart at his words and looked away. He was right. She was always jumping to conclusions. It was what she did. She acted on gut reactions and her emotions rather than on logic and rational thought. Then again, Jack could say the most logical thing on the planet and then turn around and act purely on emotion. He was a walking contradiction.

Changing the subject, she asked, "What are we going to do about Hayden Chase. You can't go back until you're able to prove she's a traitor and you're not."

"There is a very easy and quick way to alleviate my problem."

Sydney turned and leaned her back on the wall as she said, "Remove Chase from her seat as Director of the DCS. How are you going to do that?" she asked before her head jerked up and stared at him in surprise. "You intend to kill her."

He looked away and shook his head. "If you have a problem with the possibility of killing someone, you shouldn't be a field agent."

"You're talking about murdering the Director of the DCS, Jack."

"She's a traitor, Sydney, and she betrayed me."

"An unproven traitor. There will be an extensive internal investigation and if you're discovered to have killed her, with no proof, you'll be executed. How is even considering murder so easy for you?"

He looked back at her and told her, "Because I'm a killer. It is that easy for me." He looked away as he said, "It was just a momentary lapse in thought anyway. An illogical, purely emotional response to the sense of betrayal I'm feeling. I wouldn't actually have gone through with it."

"You mean you were having a normal human reaction...Spock."

Jack glanced up at her and smirked. "It's bound to happen from time-to-time. My concern with that scenario is there's an enemy I don't know who could come in right behind her. For all I know, those who appointed her are also involved. I'm beginning to wonder...Sydney, twenty years ago, I was accused and found guilty of being a traitor with no evidence. Then the next thing I know, and before the Alliance even became a fully developed and known organization, I'm put on an assignment where the main objective is to get me into a position to infiltrate it. And of all the CIA agent's assigned the task to locate me, it's Arvin Sloane who is a member of the Alliance."

She stared at her father as she said, "You think this has been a setup from the get-go?"

"It's possible," he said. "I have to consider the possibility that every Director of the DCS could have been involved. The Alliance is a global superpower with 12 SD mercenary terrorist cells and that I was the only covert operative within the CIA working a solo mission to take them down. That is the most highly illogical scenario I've ever heard. In the past ten years, they've only gotten more powerful, not weaker. All three of the options I had been given was a death sentence."

"You had three options?"

"Yeah. Life in federal prison. Death. Or, Operation Rubicon. No matter what I chose, I was going to lose you."

Sydney remembered a conversation she'd had with Jack years ago. Turning to him, she said, "Sounds like you were in a zugzwang."

His eyes lit up a little as he looked over at her. "You remember that?"

She smiled at him slightly as she told him, "I love that memory. You saved me that night."

Jack swallowed hard and looked away.

She turned back around to lean on top of the ledge of the wall. "We'll take them down, Jack, once we locate the 747."

"Even if you take down the Alliance, I'm still out in the cold. Hayden Chase isn't a known associate. My file, this operation, they might not exist anymore. I won't be able to clear my name." Jack suddenly cursed and covered his head.

"What? What is it?"

He shook his head and said, "I'm such an idiot. Oh God, what did I do?"

Sydney stared over at him as she watched the pure fear overtake his face as she waited for him to clue her in on what was going on inside his head.

Dropping his hands, he said, "Irina."

"What about my mother?"

Jack pushed off the wall and let out a breath as he told her with little emotion in his voice. "Vaughn told me that you found books that the KGB used to pass along CIA code names for assassination."

"Yeah, so? We know that Irina Derevko was that KGB agent and those books-"

He shook his head as he looked over at her. "They never linked those books to Irina, Sydney. And if Hayden Chase can say that I was found to be a traitor, she can say that those books were for me. That I was the one who killed those CIA agents. The only person who could have cleared me of those charges, was Irina."

Sydney realized the situation Jack suddenly found himself in and felt like hitting the man. He errored, all right. He made a big error. "And you killed her."

He dropped his head in defeat and leaned over the wall. She felt sorry for him, but at the same time, she was furious. Not only did he mess up, but he also was the reason her mother was dead. Even though Jack was right, Irina was a KGB spy and a CIA spy killer, she still felt oddly bitter about the whole situation.

She then looked over at him and told him honestly, "I hate the fact that Will's in love with you."

Jack lifted his head and stared at her. In his eyes she saw so much pain, but also anger at her for that declaration. "I'm not. For so long I had to shut myself down, turn my heart off, that I never expected to fall in love with anyone ever again. I had opportunities, like with James. I love him as a friend, but...he never had my heart. Then Will came along and-...I don't know what happened-"

"He's loyal. He's going to want to go with you if you have to go on the run."

"And as Vaughn and James have both reminded me about choices, it's one Will is going to have to make on his own."

"You can tell him no," she demanded.

"I can tell you not to date Vaughn," he shot back.

"It won't matter."

Both her and Jack looked behind them and saw Will standing in the doorway. He walked out onto the balcony with a cup of coffee in his hand.

Will pulled her into a hug first and said, "I don't remember if I thanked you or not last night. If I didn't, thank you."

Sydney felt the tears in her eyes as she said, "You're my friend. I'll always have your back."

Will let her go and then kissed Jack as he asked, "I have your heart?"

She watched Jack's eyes as he looked over Will's face in concern. There was a lot going on but the one emotion she was for certain she saw was love. His eyes had lit up when he saw Will, and he nearly smiled.

Damn it, she thought as she watched them. Not only was Will in love with Jack, but Jack was in love with Will. She decided to leave them alone as she went back inside and informed the others of this new development.


Will looked out over the buildings, toward the green mountains, and then toward the direction of the ocean that he could smell in the air but couldn't see. Taiwan was a very beautiful country when he wasn't getting tortured. "You have to go on the run?"

"Possibly. Will, you have options."

"What options?" he said as he looked over at the man he loved. Leaning against the wall, he said, "Witness Protection? No thanks," as he sipped at the cup of coffee.

"What about your sister?"

He thought about Amy and felt his chest hurt at the thought of leaving her, but it was something he had to do. She would understand. "She'll be okay. I'll release our parents' life insurance to her. She'll go to school, get a great job...Marry Ethan. She'll be fine."

Jack stared at him as he told him, "I don't know how long it'll be until I'm able to return home without fear of persecution. And it won't be like a vacation. I'll be actively trying to get all the intel I can in order to bring down Hayden Chase and Arvin Sloane-"

"And I will be there to help you every step of the way. Jack, I already told you...Where you go, I go," he told him as he stared into his eyes. He wasn't going to let Jack get rid of him that easy. Not now that he knew the truth.

Jack reached out and touched his face, bringing him toward him so he could kiss him.

Once he broke the kiss, he asked Jack, "Where do we go now?"

He stared at him as he took his hand in his and answered, "Back to L.A.. We have to get something first."

Will thought about that before realization hit him. He smiled. "The Rendezvous."

Jack smiled.

TBC…

PS: It's with great sadness that I added Marshall's lines referencing the amazing comic book superhero Black Panther in dedication to the brilliant and amazing real life hero Chadwick Boseman. RIP King.