Title: And a Day
Author: Anna S.
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through The Telling
Distribution: Asking is polite, but not required
Disclaimer: The characters contained in here are merely my playthings. In reality, they belong to JJ and ABC.
Author's note: Thanks to Jo for the suggestions, and to Eli for the excellent insta-beta.
*
The knife slid in cleanly, hitting its mark with practiced precision. Jack didn't hesitate as he pulled it back out again in one fluid motion and stole the key from the guard's pocket.
It wasn't until later, on the plane back home, that he recalled the guard's face, mouth frozen into a perfect circle, eyes glazed over.
His first target died in the jungles of Vietnam, with bullets raining down on his head. When the young soldier fell, he felt nothing but relief.
But that was war, with all of its implications and this was something else entirely. He glanced at his hands, over and over, as if he expected bloodstains to appear.
"Looking for your lifeline?" joked his partner, Evans from across the aisle.
Startled, Jack looked up. "I wouldn't worry about that," continued Evans. "From what I've seen, someone would have to be invisible to catch you off guard. I wouldn't be surprised if Sloane had you transferred to fill that position in L.A.- in fact, that's the rumor going around at the office."
"Considering that you're a member of an intelligence agency, Evans, you would think that you wouldn't feel the need to gossip the way you do," Jack said in a brittle tone
Looking both perplexed and affronted, Evans returned to working on his laptop and Jack returned to staring at his hands.
It makes no difference, he assured himself, whether it's a war in name or in spirit. Death was the price he paid for serving his country; the price he paid for doing his job well. He would have to get used to it.
*
Callused hands and a loud, insistent voice intruded on her dreams. Irina struggled against them, but she felt herself being shaken out of her sleep. "What is it?" she asked in faintly accented English, barely managing to hide her annoyance.
"A test," Sergei said blandly. "I'm afraid you failed."
As her sleepiness slipped away from her, she became more aware of where she was and the respect automatically filtered back into her voice. "What sort of test?"
"You have an impeccable accent, Irina, but you don't think in English. If you want to successfully complete this mission, that's going to have to change. Do you think your husband won't notice if you slip into a Russian accent whenever you're tired?"
"I apologize," she said, without a trace of Russian.
He waved her off. "Don't give me apologies, Irina. I expect more from you." His face softened slightly as he met her eyes. "Cuvee has already given me the date for the beginning of your operation. You're running out of time, and I wouldn't want all of my lessons to be wasted on a dead agent."
"I'm not planning on wasting anything," she said.
Irina didn't tell him that Cuvee had given her the operation details the night before. For all of his expertise, Sergei didn't like the messier details that came along with working in the field. The one time she'd tried to move close to him, sliding her fingers along his arm, he'd given her a look of complete disgust.
If he had been someone else, he might have become one of her challenges. Given enough time and leverage, Irina refused to believe that there was anyone out there she couldn't seduce. Men were too simple, too easily swayed by their belief in her desire.
But in retrospect, she'd realized that it was lucky that he was too squeamish to think of sex as just another weapon. If Cuvee had ever looked at her face while he was busy grunting, he would have seen a sneer.
Even after all of her lessons in marksmanship and ciphering and language, this was the greatest one she had learned: that power was just the same as anything else. It could be traded or earned, or lost with something as simple as a kiss.
*
A sharp cry from the TV startled Jack awake. He clicked the power button on the remote and settled back down again, smiling at Sydney, who was fast asleep in his lap.
He stroked the top of her head, and felt a fierce rush of tenderness. His friends had talked about their almost irrational love for their children, but he had expected something gentle. Not this love that bordered on pain.
When he was young, he remembered fighting with his brothers for space on his father's lap, marking each inch of territory. Every act of affection had to be earned, every free minute had to be battled for.
Sydney snuggled deeper into his chest and his arms tightened around her. Her face was delicate and perfect; not the mini-replica of Laura, as his wife often said, but a melding of their features, with something unique of her own.
Even if Laura had wanted another child, he wasn't sure he would have agreed. Sydney deserved everything her parents could give her; not whatever free arms or sacrifices they could spare.
There were very few guarantees he could make to his daughter. But he could promise her that she would always have his full attention.
He could love her from here, or from a distance, it made no difference.
And he would ask for nothing in return.
*
When they first gave her the execution assignments, she'd assumed that the difficult part would be the death itself. As it turned out, her natural espionage abilities extended to murder.
The part that she dreaded was after the adrenaline faded away, and she was left with a room full of possible clues. It took hours to scrub all the residue from the floors and even longer to feel sure that Sydney wouldn't give her a hug and step back with her palms sticky with blood.
This one had died quickly, but dead, his eyes glared at her with righteous indignation.
The name in his file had been familiar, and now she remembered meeting him at an agency function. He had a wife with a sweet smile, and a couple of young, blonde boys who spent the night scowling and tugging at their collars.
Her fury, which had been simmering ever since she received the assignment, caught in her throat. Irina retrieved her gun from the table and considered the agent's face, the line of furrows etched into his forehead, and the strength in his jaw.
She let her fingers go and watched as all of that strength disappeared in an explosion of flesh and hot metal.
The force of the shot's kick almost knocked her off her feet. Bruises were already starting to form around her knuckles, like dark, broken rings.
Jack would ask her questions about them, but she wasn't sure maintaining his trust mattered anymore. The KGB wouldn't assign her this type of risky assignment unless they were moving up her extraction date.
Before she left, she'd been warned about the potential dangers of living undercover for long periods of time. She knew about the loss of self and the power of illusions, but none of that prepared her for the reality of his hand resting casually on her knee, or the reverence in her own voice when she called Sydney her daughter.
Her handler had watched her carefully from the beginning, seeking for signs of attachment in her masked expressions. Once, he even asked her outright if she cared for them. "Didn't we teach you better than that, Derevko?" he had asked, eyes narrowed.
"It doesn't change anything," she had said and it was true.
Love had nothing to do with it. Even the kind of love that left her broken, shooting at ghosts, paled next to survival.
She was what she was, what she had been trained to be.
*
Jack started to doubt everything in his life.
He retraced each moment of the ten years they'd been married, examining all of the small minutiae of her habits, from her crushing hugs to her preference for European vacations. Like getting subtitles after the fact, his life only made sense in retrospect.
On an impulse, he even took Sydney in for genetic testing, but when the results returned, he was shaking too badly to open them. And even after he tucked the envelope in the back of a closet, his hands only stopped shaking after a glass of vodka.
He rarely slept, but when he did, he slept in the same position, his body curled into the emptiness where Laura should have been.
*
She said no to the peanuts and the drink. It occurred to her that for the first time in ten years, she could answer to her real name and if she dreamed in Russian, no one would care.
In the seat in front of her, a child started to bawl. Irina tried not to picture Sydney, sitting on the curb with her backpack in her lap, waiting for her car to pull up.
When the attendants came around again, she asked for vodka and when she inhaled, the scent reminded her of Jack.
It was what she signed up for. They told her how it would be. They told her it would hurt.
*
"That was a foolish risk to take. You would almost think you were trying to get yourself killed," said Arvin, his eyes not leaving Jack's face.
"I thought the risk was worth it. That's a concept you should be familiar with," Jack replied, anticipating what form Sloane's retribution would take.
The following day, he discovered the terms of his punishment: extracting the location of a database from a scientist they'd taken into custody. Playing the role of torturer wasn't one he would normally have embraced, but he wasn't in a position to argue.
Jack's first punch grazed the prisoner's thigh, but the next one made contact with bone. He was rewarded with the crack of a broken rib and a sharp cry of pain.
The chain's around the prisoner's ankles clinked against the floor as Jack shoved him against the wall, twisting the man's behind his back.
Still avoiding looking at his face, Jack asked him for the information's location. One more sharp tug on his shoulder and the scientist told him in a torrent of broken English, punctuated by sobs.
When Jack released him, the prisoner collapsed into a heap, his arm still bent at an odd angle; a testament to the body's fragility.
A cold anger rose in Jack and he slammed his foot into the soft flesh of the man's stomach. There was a grim pleasure in the prisoner's bark of pain and the dull throbbing in his own foot.
He turned away, walking towards the door, where Sloane was standing with an approving smile. Here was another way to work himself into the good graces of SD-6.
It was just another task in a job that was, by its nature, distasteful. Nothing more than that.
Sloane's eyes crinkled, the usual mixture of malevolence and kindness in his expressio. "See, Jack? There are always alternatives."
*
Later, Irina knew that she would claim that it was one night in honor of the past. Familiarity waved its flag and she had known all along that it could only help her cause.
But right then, with his hands pinning her arms to the wall, she knew only her own desire. Jack drove into her with a fury she barely recognized. One part lust, two parts anger. She marked his back with her fingernails, drew blood and he didn't flinch.
When he knew her as only Laura, he was gentle with her, almost too gentle. But this was the man she made when she left, and he kissed her with the same empty expression he used when holding a gun to her head.
"Jack," she said lifting his chin up to meet her eyes.
"Don't," he warned and then his mouth was on hers again, searing hot and insistent.
When he called out, he didn't call her by name.
She woke up to find his arm thrown around her possessively. That's something else she'd forgotten, that Jack slept without any sense of borders or sides, arms and legs sprawled in every direction.
The blankets fell away from her as Irina slid out from under the weight of his body. She stood in front of the air conditioning, letting the chilled air cool her skin.
"Laura?" he asked from behind her, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Yes," she said, turning towards him. He blinked once before freezing and forcing his face into an impassive mask.
"We should get going. Our rendezvous is only two hours from now," he said, reaching for his shirt, looking anywhere but her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I should not have let it happen." His lips narrowed into a razor-sharp line.
"It was not your responsibility," he replied, in a tone that indicated that he was the one who should've known better. Which, she supposed, was true.
"I'm still sorry," Irina replied, catching his gaze. Later on, he would understand. It would be no comfort, but he'd know. At least this time, she could do that much for him.
*
Her memorial service quickly turned into a mourning competition. Dixon sat in stony silence, his eyes fixed on a single point on the ground, Vaughn's shirt turned dark with tears, and Will stayed in his wheelchair, guilt written all over his face.
Jack could not bring himself to extend sympathy to any of them. Their loss would be painful but short-lived. Sydney would fade away into just another memory.
That would not be the case for him.
Already, he could feel his self-control slipping away. With Sydney, he had occasionally found moments of happiness, and now, there was no reason not to succumb to his old demons.
At one point, Vaughn placed his hand on Jack's shoulder and it was all he could do not to snap his wrist. From experience he knew that the crunch of bones would be satisfying, but when he found Sydney, she probably wouldn't be too pleased.
He grunted something mundane at Vaughn and hoped that the others wouldn't approach him. To his relief, they started to leave, some of Sydney's braver colleagues meeting his eyes, but most of them happy to pretend he wasn't standing there, bent over Sydney's grave.
Night started to fall, and exhaustion set in. In his mind's eye, he pictured a glass of scotch, the crack of the ice cubes, and then a long, numbed night's sleep.
Tempted, he started to move, when he heard light footsteps by the edge of the cemetary.
*
Her first mistake was one of carelessness. She almost tripped over a CIA sentry and it was only through quick reflexes and a well-placed kick that she wasn't caught.
From a distance, the funeral looked like a sea of black. Irina stood on the edge of the grounds, her face wrapped in a dark mourning shawl, bent over the grave of a stranger. The words of Sydney's friends were beaten to a dull murmur by the distance.
As the sky started to darken, they began to leave in twos and threes until there was only one person left.
Her second mistake was assuming that Jack's senses were dulled by grief. Irina walked up behind him confidently, but when she was close enough to touch him, he quickly spun around.
The safety clicked as he aimed the gun between her eyes.
"It was you who arranged for the guards around the periphery, wasn't it?" she asked, allowing a smile to play on her lips.
"It was a precautionary measure. I didn't really think you would dare to show your face here. Now give me a reason not to pull this trigger, Irina," he said in a deadly, flat voice.
"Because you know as well as I do that Sydney is not dead and I'm here to make you an offer." His hand didn't move as he stared her down.
"For all I know, you are the one responsible for Sydney's kidnapping. For all I know, you've been orchestrating this all along."
"No, Jack," she interrupted and the vehemence of her words surprised even her. "Would I be here if I had Sydney? All I want is to find her, and the best way to do that is to form a temporary alliance."
He continued to gaze evenly at her. She supposed that was he was trying to find a more insidious motive. After nearly a minute of silence, Jack lowered his gun.
"If she's dead, I'm going to kill you," he said, almost conversationally. She didn't bother to repeat that she wasn't responsible. It had a certain kind of logic; somebody would have to pay, and she still owed him a debt of pain.
"If she's dead, you won't have to."
*
As a proof of trust, Irina let him stay in one of her apartments. He noted the type of neighborhood she preferred for future reference.
The house itself gave him a permanent sense of déjà vu. It was decorated in the same dark burgundy and cream colors that she'd painted their house in. On the table by the door, there was even the same picture of the two of them with Sydney held between them, wide smiles trapped on all of their faces.
The first time he saw it, he turned to her and said in a quietly voice, "if you're expecting some sort of domestic scenario to take place, you're mistaken."
"I'm not expecting anything," she replied, walking past him.
As it turned out, he wasn't entirely right. Some days it was like the last thirty years had fallen away from them entirely. She folded his laundry into even squares, they worked side-by-side, carefully reading through thousands of documents, and at night, he could hear her breath.
Other times, it was all he could do to be in the same house as her. Just her smile at the right angle or a lingering touch of her hand could make the ghosts of his old scars ache.
"We're getting nowhere," he told her in the eighth week, after analyzing data for five straight days without discovering a single shred of new information.
"We know where she isn't, Jack. It's a start," she said.
"Perhaps you prefer it this way," he said, letting his frustration seep into his voice. "With everyone concentrating on finding Sydney, you can take your time to track down Sloane's Rambaldi artifacts."
"Jack," she said in a calm tone. "My priority is finding Sydney. I would never allow someone else to cause her pain to further my goals. I may not be a perfect parent, but that doesn't change my love for my daughter."
"You have a strange version of love," he said, masking his anger with contempt. The muscle in his jaw twitched.
"Everything I ever learned about love, I learned from you," she said, no longer bothering to hide her irritation. Eyes slanted in cold fury, Irina stood up and left.
Jack carefully closed the door behind her and stood there. Then his fist smashed downwards. Pain. Sharp, jagged pain to balance the ache in his chest.
He looked down, saw the shard of glass embedded in the side of his hand, and his eyes fell on its source: the picture, their smiles now smeared with blood. He left it like that and walked back to the table and its files.
*
She watched him for almost a full twenty minutes, noting the faded bruises on his arms and the exhaustion etched into his forehead. It made for a strange image, the lone man staring out into the desert sands.
Sark turned around then, and paused when he saw her standing by the fence. "I'd noticed a presence during the last week-- I should have guessed it was you," he said, meeting her eyes with a masked expression.
Something steely in his voice made her think that sympathy would be a mistake, but she couldn't resist asking him how he was. "I know how the CIA treats its prisoners," she added.
"In that case, you shouldn't have allowed them to capture me." Irina started to deny it, but he cut her off. "I spent over a year sitting in a cell, Irina. I had plenty of time to think this through. No doubt you had your reasons, but you'll have to forgive me for not wanting to hear them."
He started to hobble past her, but when she ordered him to wait, he stopped.
"Just promise me that you didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, Sark."
His lips curled up into an ironic smile. "My respect for my well-being is greater than that."
Coming here, she hadn't truly believed that he was involved. She knew every aspect of his character and training, and revenge was not included in either. Looking at him now, barely able to walk, with the slightest hint of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, she was positive that he had not orchestrated Sydney's kidnapping.
Irina moved closer and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Take care of yourself, Sark. You're valuable to me."
The familiar combination of disgust and need appeared in his eyes. "The CIA believes that you've entered into a partnership with Jack Bristow. Is their intel correct?"
"Jack and I are continuing the search that the CIA so quickly abandoned," she said.
"I see," he said, hesitating, "and when you find her. You'll simply allow her to return to her old life? Let Jack take her back to the CIA?"
She froze for only a moment, but he must have sensed that she didn't have an answer, because he gave her a victorious smile, and continued walking.
*
Jack had known from the beginning that this couldn't end well. All of the possible permutations ended in mutual destruction.
A girl had smiled at him once, a lifetime ago, and he'd seen something he recognized in her, and since then his entire life has been a march towards disaster.
He kept waiting for things to come together or fall apart. When it happened, he wondered if he would be able to tell the difference.
*
Americans, Russians, everybody talked about sacrifice and they waved flags and cheered and she remembered the gun, recoiling into her hand, the specks of gunpowder under her skin.
Memories emerged in snapshots: a jail cell with walls stained a deep rust, a sliver of a manuscript, a gold band lying on the open palm of his hand, and the sudden wail of an infant, piercing the silence.
Irina thought about the scar on her daughter's shoulder, and she wanted to say, this is love. Look what we've done.
*
Fin.
Feedback is a girl's best friend. W_squirrel@yahoo.com
Author: Anna S.
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through The Telling
Distribution: Asking is polite, but not required
Disclaimer: The characters contained in here are merely my playthings. In reality, they belong to JJ and ABC.
Author's note: Thanks to Jo for the suggestions, and to Eli for the excellent insta-beta.
*
The knife slid in cleanly, hitting its mark with practiced precision. Jack didn't hesitate as he pulled it back out again in one fluid motion and stole the key from the guard's pocket.
It wasn't until later, on the plane back home, that he recalled the guard's face, mouth frozen into a perfect circle, eyes glazed over.
His first target died in the jungles of Vietnam, with bullets raining down on his head. When the young soldier fell, he felt nothing but relief.
But that was war, with all of its implications and this was something else entirely. He glanced at his hands, over and over, as if he expected bloodstains to appear.
"Looking for your lifeline?" joked his partner, Evans from across the aisle.
Startled, Jack looked up. "I wouldn't worry about that," continued Evans. "From what I've seen, someone would have to be invisible to catch you off guard. I wouldn't be surprised if Sloane had you transferred to fill that position in L.A.- in fact, that's the rumor going around at the office."
"Considering that you're a member of an intelligence agency, Evans, you would think that you wouldn't feel the need to gossip the way you do," Jack said in a brittle tone
Looking both perplexed and affronted, Evans returned to working on his laptop and Jack returned to staring at his hands.
It makes no difference, he assured himself, whether it's a war in name or in spirit. Death was the price he paid for serving his country; the price he paid for doing his job well. He would have to get used to it.
*
Callused hands and a loud, insistent voice intruded on her dreams. Irina struggled against them, but she felt herself being shaken out of her sleep. "What is it?" she asked in faintly accented English, barely managing to hide her annoyance.
"A test," Sergei said blandly. "I'm afraid you failed."
As her sleepiness slipped away from her, she became more aware of where she was and the respect automatically filtered back into her voice. "What sort of test?"
"You have an impeccable accent, Irina, but you don't think in English. If you want to successfully complete this mission, that's going to have to change. Do you think your husband won't notice if you slip into a Russian accent whenever you're tired?"
"I apologize," she said, without a trace of Russian.
He waved her off. "Don't give me apologies, Irina. I expect more from you." His face softened slightly as he met her eyes. "Cuvee has already given me the date for the beginning of your operation. You're running out of time, and I wouldn't want all of my lessons to be wasted on a dead agent."
"I'm not planning on wasting anything," she said.
Irina didn't tell him that Cuvee had given her the operation details the night before. For all of his expertise, Sergei didn't like the messier details that came along with working in the field. The one time she'd tried to move close to him, sliding her fingers along his arm, he'd given her a look of complete disgust.
If he had been someone else, he might have become one of her challenges. Given enough time and leverage, Irina refused to believe that there was anyone out there she couldn't seduce. Men were too simple, too easily swayed by their belief in her desire.
But in retrospect, she'd realized that it was lucky that he was too squeamish to think of sex as just another weapon. If Cuvee had ever looked at her face while he was busy grunting, he would have seen a sneer.
Even after all of her lessons in marksmanship and ciphering and language, this was the greatest one she had learned: that power was just the same as anything else. It could be traded or earned, or lost with something as simple as a kiss.
*
A sharp cry from the TV startled Jack awake. He clicked the power button on the remote and settled back down again, smiling at Sydney, who was fast asleep in his lap.
He stroked the top of her head, and felt a fierce rush of tenderness. His friends had talked about their almost irrational love for their children, but he had expected something gentle. Not this love that bordered on pain.
When he was young, he remembered fighting with his brothers for space on his father's lap, marking each inch of territory. Every act of affection had to be earned, every free minute had to be battled for.
Sydney snuggled deeper into his chest and his arms tightened around her. Her face was delicate and perfect; not the mini-replica of Laura, as his wife often said, but a melding of their features, with something unique of her own.
Even if Laura had wanted another child, he wasn't sure he would have agreed. Sydney deserved everything her parents could give her; not whatever free arms or sacrifices they could spare.
There were very few guarantees he could make to his daughter. But he could promise her that she would always have his full attention.
He could love her from here, or from a distance, it made no difference.
And he would ask for nothing in return.
*
When they first gave her the execution assignments, she'd assumed that the difficult part would be the death itself. As it turned out, her natural espionage abilities extended to murder.
The part that she dreaded was after the adrenaline faded away, and she was left with a room full of possible clues. It took hours to scrub all the residue from the floors and even longer to feel sure that Sydney wouldn't give her a hug and step back with her palms sticky with blood.
This one had died quickly, but dead, his eyes glared at her with righteous indignation.
The name in his file had been familiar, and now she remembered meeting him at an agency function. He had a wife with a sweet smile, and a couple of young, blonde boys who spent the night scowling and tugging at their collars.
Her fury, which had been simmering ever since she received the assignment, caught in her throat. Irina retrieved her gun from the table and considered the agent's face, the line of furrows etched into his forehead, and the strength in his jaw.
She let her fingers go and watched as all of that strength disappeared in an explosion of flesh and hot metal.
The force of the shot's kick almost knocked her off her feet. Bruises were already starting to form around her knuckles, like dark, broken rings.
Jack would ask her questions about them, but she wasn't sure maintaining his trust mattered anymore. The KGB wouldn't assign her this type of risky assignment unless they were moving up her extraction date.
Before she left, she'd been warned about the potential dangers of living undercover for long periods of time. She knew about the loss of self and the power of illusions, but none of that prepared her for the reality of his hand resting casually on her knee, or the reverence in her own voice when she called Sydney her daughter.
Her handler had watched her carefully from the beginning, seeking for signs of attachment in her masked expressions. Once, he even asked her outright if she cared for them. "Didn't we teach you better than that, Derevko?" he had asked, eyes narrowed.
"It doesn't change anything," she had said and it was true.
Love had nothing to do with it. Even the kind of love that left her broken, shooting at ghosts, paled next to survival.
She was what she was, what she had been trained to be.
*
Jack started to doubt everything in his life.
He retraced each moment of the ten years they'd been married, examining all of the small minutiae of her habits, from her crushing hugs to her preference for European vacations. Like getting subtitles after the fact, his life only made sense in retrospect.
On an impulse, he even took Sydney in for genetic testing, but when the results returned, he was shaking too badly to open them. And even after he tucked the envelope in the back of a closet, his hands only stopped shaking after a glass of vodka.
He rarely slept, but when he did, he slept in the same position, his body curled into the emptiness where Laura should have been.
*
She said no to the peanuts and the drink. It occurred to her that for the first time in ten years, she could answer to her real name and if she dreamed in Russian, no one would care.
In the seat in front of her, a child started to bawl. Irina tried not to picture Sydney, sitting on the curb with her backpack in her lap, waiting for her car to pull up.
When the attendants came around again, she asked for vodka and when she inhaled, the scent reminded her of Jack.
It was what she signed up for. They told her how it would be. They told her it would hurt.
*
"That was a foolish risk to take. You would almost think you were trying to get yourself killed," said Arvin, his eyes not leaving Jack's face.
"I thought the risk was worth it. That's a concept you should be familiar with," Jack replied, anticipating what form Sloane's retribution would take.
The following day, he discovered the terms of his punishment: extracting the location of a database from a scientist they'd taken into custody. Playing the role of torturer wasn't one he would normally have embraced, but he wasn't in a position to argue.
Jack's first punch grazed the prisoner's thigh, but the next one made contact with bone. He was rewarded with the crack of a broken rib and a sharp cry of pain.
The chain's around the prisoner's ankles clinked against the floor as Jack shoved him against the wall, twisting the man's behind his back.
Still avoiding looking at his face, Jack asked him for the information's location. One more sharp tug on his shoulder and the scientist told him in a torrent of broken English, punctuated by sobs.
When Jack released him, the prisoner collapsed into a heap, his arm still bent at an odd angle; a testament to the body's fragility.
A cold anger rose in Jack and he slammed his foot into the soft flesh of the man's stomach. There was a grim pleasure in the prisoner's bark of pain and the dull throbbing in his own foot.
He turned away, walking towards the door, where Sloane was standing with an approving smile. Here was another way to work himself into the good graces of SD-6.
It was just another task in a job that was, by its nature, distasteful. Nothing more than that.
Sloane's eyes crinkled, the usual mixture of malevolence and kindness in his expressio. "See, Jack? There are always alternatives."
*
Later, Irina knew that she would claim that it was one night in honor of the past. Familiarity waved its flag and she had known all along that it could only help her cause.
But right then, with his hands pinning her arms to the wall, she knew only her own desire. Jack drove into her with a fury she barely recognized. One part lust, two parts anger. She marked his back with her fingernails, drew blood and he didn't flinch.
When he knew her as only Laura, he was gentle with her, almost too gentle. But this was the man she made when she left, and he kissed her with the same empty expression he used when holding a gun to her head.
"Jack," she said lifting his chin up to meet her eyes.
"Don't," he warned and then his mouth was on hers again, searing hot and insistent.
When he called out, he didn't call her by name.
She woke up to find his arm thrown around her possessively. That's something else she'd forgotten, that Jack slept without any sense of borders or sides, arms and legs sprawled in every direction.
The blankets fell away from her as Irina slid out from under the weight of his body. She stood in front of the air conditioning, letting the chilled air cool her skin.
"Laura?" he asked from behind her, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Yes," she said, turning towards him. He blinked once before freezing and forcing his face into an impassive mask.
"We should get going. Our rendezvous is only two hours from now," he said, reaching for his shirt, looking anywhere but her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I should not have let it happen." His lips narrowed into a razor-sharp line.
"It was not your responsibility," he replied, in a tone that indicated that he was the one who should've known better. Which, she supposed, was true.
"I'm still sorry," Irina replied, catching his gaze. Later on, he would understand. It would be no comfort, but he'd know. At least this time, she could do that much for him.
*
Her memorial service quickly turned into a mourning competition. Dixon sat in stony silence, his eyes fixed on a single point on the ground, Vaughn's shirt turned dark with tears, and Will stayed in his wheelchair, guilt written all over his face.
Jack could not bring himself to extend sympathy to any of them. Their loss would be painful but short-lived. Sydney would fade away into just another memory.
That would not be the case for him.
Already, he could feel his self-control slipping away. With Sydney, he had occasionally found moments of happiness, and now, there was no reason not to succumb to his old demons.
At one point, Vaughn placed his hand on Jack's shoulder and it was all he could do not to snap his wrist. From experience he knew that the crunch of bones would be satisfying, but when he found Sydney, she probably wouldn't be too pleased.
He grunted something mundane at Vaughn and hoped that the others wouldn't approach him. To his relief, they started to leave, some of Sydney's braver colleagues meeting his eyes, but most of them happy to pretend he wasn't standing there, bent over Sydney's grave.
Night started to fall, and exhaustion set in. In his mind's eye, he pictured a glass of scotch, the crack of the ice cubes, and then a long, numbed night's sleep.
Tempted, he started to move, when he heard light footsteps by the edge of the cemetary.
*
Her first mistake was one of carelessness. She almost tripped over a CIA sentry and it was only through quick reflexes and a well-placed kick that she wasn't caught.
From a distance, the funeral looked like a sea of black. Irina stood on the edge of the grounds, her face wrapped in a dark mourning shawl, bent over the grave of a stranger. The words of Sydney's friends were beaten to a dull murmur by the distance.
As the sky started to darken, they began to leave in twos and threes until there was only one person left.
Her second mistake was assuming that Jack's senses were dulled by grief. Irina walked up behind him confidently, but when she was close enough to touch him, he quickly spun around.
The safety clicked as he aimed the gun between her eyes.
"It was you who arranged for the guards around the periphery, wasn't it?" she asked, allowing a smile to play on her lips.
"It was a precautionary measure. I didn't really think you would dare to show your face here. Now give me a reason not to pull this trigger, Irina," he said in a deadly, flat voice.
"Because you know as well as I do that Sydney is not dead and I'm here to make you an offer." His hand didn't move as he stared her down.
"For all I know, you are the one responsible for Sydney's kidnapping. For all I know, you've been orchestrating this all along."
"No, Jack," she interrupted and the vehemence of her words surprised even her. "Would I be here if I had Sydney? All I want is to find her, and the best way to do that is to form a temporary alliance."
He continued to gaze evenly at her. She supposed that was he was trying to find a more insidious motive. After nearly a minute of silence, Jack lowered his gun.
"If she's dead, I'm going to kill you," he said, almost conversationally. She didn't bother to repeat that she wasn't responsible. It had a certain kind of logic; somebody would have to pay, and she still owed him a debt of pain.
"If she's dead, you won't have to."
*
As a proof of trust, Irina let him stay in one of her apartments. He noted the type of neighborhood she preferred for future reference.
The house itself gave him a permanent sense of déjà vu. It was decorated in the same dark burgundy and cream colors that she'd painted their house in. On the table by the door, there was even the same picture of the two of them with Sydney held between them, wide smiles trapped on all of their faces.
The first time he saw it, he turned to her and said in a quietly voice, "if you're expecting some sort of domestic scenario to take place, you're mistaken."
"I'm not expecting anything," she replied, walking past him.
As it turned out, he wasn't entirely right. Some days it was like the last thirty years had fallen away from them entirely. She folded his laundry into even squares, they worked side-by-side, carefully reading through thousands of documents, and at night, he could hear her breath.
Other times, it was all he could do to be in the same house as her. Just her smile at the right angle or a lingering touch of her hand could make the ghosts of his old scars ache.
"We're getting nowhere," he told her in the eighth week, after analyzing data for five straight days without discovering a single shred of new information.
"We know where she isn't, Jack. It's a start," she said.
"Perhaps you prefer it this way," he said, letting his frustration seep into his voice. "With everyone concentrating on finding Sydney, you can take your time to track down Sloane's Rambaldi artifacts."
"Jack," she said in a calm tone. "My priority is finding Sydney. I would never allow someone else to cause her pain to further my goals. I may not be a perfect parent, but that doesn't change my love for my daughter."
"You have a strange version of love," he said, masking his anger with contempt. The muscle in his jaw twitched.
"Everything I ever learned about love, I learned from you," she said, no longer bothering to hide her irritation. Eyes slanted in cold fury, Irina stood up and left.
Jack carefully closed the door behind her and stood there. Then his fist smashed downwards. Pain. Sharp, jagged pain to balance the ache in his chest.
He looked down, saw the shard of glass embedded in the side of his hand, and his eyes fell on its source: the picture, their smiles now smeared with blood. He left it like that and walked back to the table and its files.
*
She watched him for almost a full twenty minutes, noting the faded bruises on his arms and the exhaustion etched into his forehead. It made for a strange image, the lone man staring out into the desert sands.
Sark turned around then, and paused when he saw her standing by the fence. "I'd noticed a presence during the last week-- I should have guessed it was you," he said, meeting her eyes with a masked expression.
Something steely in his voice made her think that sympathy would be a mistake, but she couldn't resist asking him how he was. "I know how the CIA treats its prisoners," she added.
"In that case, you shouldn't have allowed them to capture me." Irina started to deny it, but he cut her off. "I spent over a year sitting in a cell, Irina. I had plenty of time to think this through. No doubt you had your reasons, but you'll have to forgive me for not wanting to hear them."
He started to hobble past her, but when she ordered him to wait, he stopped.
"Just promise me that you didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, Sark."
His lips curled up into an ironic smile. "My respect for my well-being is greater than that."
Coming here, she hadn't truly believed that he was involved. She knew every aspect of his character and training, and revenge was not included in either. Looking at him now, barely able to walk, with the slightest hint of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, she was positive that he had not orchestrated Sydney's kidnapping.
Irina moved closer and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Take care of yourself, Sark. You're valuable to me."
The familiar combination of disgust and need appeared in his eyes. "The CIA believes that you've entered into a partnership with Jack Bristow. Is their intel correct?"
"Jack and I are continuing the search that the CIA so quickly abandoned," she said.
"I see," he said, hesitating, "and when you find her. You'll simply allow her to return to her old life? Let Jack take her back to the CIA?"
She froze for only a moment, but he must have sensed that she didn't have an answer, because he gave her a victorious smile, and continued walking.
*
Jack had known from the beginning that this couldn't end well. All of the possible permutations ended in mutual destruction.
A girl had smiled at him once, a lifetime ago, and he'd seen something he recognized in her, and since then his entire life has been a march towards disaster.
He kept waiting for things to come together or fall apart. When it happened, he wondered if he would be able to tell the difference.
*
Americans, Russians, everybody talked about sacrifice and they waved flags and cheered and she remembered the gun, recoiling into her hand, the specks of gunpowder under her skin.
Memories emerged in snapshots: a jail cell with walls stained a deep rust, a sliver of a manuscript, a gold band lying on the open palm of his hand, and the sudden wail of an infant, piercing the silence.
Irina thought about the scar on her daughter's shoulder, and she wanted to say, this is love. Look what we've done.
*
Fin.
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