First things first: this fic contains: a lot of references to character death, including death of a child and death by burning alive; fire, including arson; death threats directed towards both adults and (more subtly) a child; implied murder, including of a child; and kidnapping, because this is how the Cahill world rolls.

This fic also contains spoilers for In Too Deep (the book's ending and Irina's personal history) as well as general Cahill history and the Trent fire. That said, most of the knowledge of the 39 Clues series required by this fic boils down to "everyone distrusts/hates each other, and Isabel is evil."

The fic title is from "Last Post" by Carol Ann Duffy, and the chapter title is from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock."

Chapter 1: Time Yet for a Hundred Indecisions (for a Hundred Visions and Revisions)


Irina Spasky wakes with the taste of ash in her mouth. The hotel room around her is beige and bland, one of thousands she's stayed in over the years, and that's reassuring for the split second it takes her to remember what had happened the night before. Irina leaps to her feet, ready to fight her way out of the most benign-looking prison in existence; after what she did last night (if it was last night; her skin's unburned, and her lungs feel fine, but last night she died as smoke burned her lungs and fire licked up around her), she doubts she was put here by an ally. A knife, hidden in the place she always hides hers before she falls asleep, finds its way into her hand, and she spares a moment to unfold and examine it. It's deadly sharp, like every knife she's ever owned, and there's a slight indent where the blade and handle meet as if someone had tried to sharpen the heel of the blade a bit too earnestly. It looks just like Irina's first and favorite knife, down to sports of red nail varnish and divots from her nail needles, but that can't be right, she lost that knife seven years ago-

Irina folds the knife closed again and looks out the window. On the street below her, businessmen are rushing to work, children to school. She can see the Massachusetts State House far off to one side, and that's confirmation enough for her. This could be some sort of extremely strange long game - Irina can't think of a reason why someone would want her to believe she's traveled seven years into the past, but that doesn't man someone else hasn't - but it feels true somewhere in her gut. It is the morning of June 6, 2001, and she's twelve and a half hours away from lodging the knife in her hand into Hope Cahill's kitchen table as an ill-advised threat; Hope will laugh in her face and Arthur will list the knife's make and model in an attempt to threaten her. In thirteen hours, Irina will walk out of the Trent house, this knife still lodged in the table, and within fifteen, Dan and Amy, the two children she's just died for, will be orphans, their parents lost to the fire that claimed most of their possessions.

She can't do that again, not while she knows the consequences of her actions and inactions. None of them - at least no one but Isabel, her nominal ally in this fight - had gone to the Trent house that night with murder on their minds. It had been an attempt to get a clue, an attempt to get the pair to stop, an attempt to threaten them into submission and figure out who they were working for; no one was supposed to die. She just needs to make sure that this time around, no one does, which, considering what happened last time, is probably going to be more difficult than it should be.

Still, if there's a reason she's here, it's to stop tonight. She's far too early for anything else she regrets.

She needs to find Alistair. She doesn't trust the old man - she hasn't trusted anyone in seventeen, now ten, years - but she trusts him more than Isabel or Wizard or the Holts, and that will have to do. At the very least, he loves Hope - she's practically the daughter he never had - and that should persuade him to do something.

Irina takes her go bag, full of tricks and traps and poisons, with her as she leaves the hotel room. She has a sinking feeling she'll need it.

.oOo.

"Hello, Irina," Alistair says as she drops silently into the chair next to him. This particular cafe is a favorite of both of theirs thanks to a difficult-to-surveil seating area and an owner that prides herself in discretion; that, and she makes the best baklava. "Would you like some tea?" He gestures to the pot on the table. "It's raspberry."

"I'm fine," Irina says even though she really is parched and raspberry is her favorite; long practice has taught her not to accept food or drink unless she knows it isn't poisoned. "We need to talk about tonight."

"What about tonight?" Alistair asks as if he doesn't know what they both plan to do that night.

"The confrontation with Cahill and Trent," Irina says, and Alistair's eyes widen a fraction of an inch. "Isabel contacted you, me, the Holts, and Wizard about a month ago to intimidate them out of the hunt, and you agreed."

"And if I did?"

"Isabel plans to kill them both," Irina says, and Alistair's hands shake as he sets his teacup down. "She wants to set the house on fire with Hope and Arthur inside."

"And the children?"

"I don't know," Irina says as she tries to keep her mind on the task at hand. It's no use; there's a little blond boy with a stuffed monkey at the table next to them who doesn't look quite healthy, and the woman by the window is making increasingly frantic calls, and the doctor two tables over is holding his head in his hands… All Irina can think of is long missions and missed calls and coming home to a filled grave and empty house that reeked of death. She'd spent the first few days in shock, but some things didn't quite add up even then; she'd found poisoned chocolate (a half-empty package of Nikolai's favorite) in the cupboard and confused doctor's notes when she'd found the time and the strength to look through his files some years later. "It wouldn't be the first time." Even if it had just been an infection - an incredibly quick, incredibly ugly infection not detected until it was too late - Isabel has filled more too-small graves than Irina can count on her fingers.

"You have a plan."

"I have a scruple," Irina corrects. "No plan. Yet." Alistair sighs and sips his tea.

"I've met the Holts," Alistair says. "Eisenhower is… easily led." Irina snorts; she'd once convinced Eisenhower that there was a clue buried in the fields behind the San Jacinto monument during a (horribly hot, horribly dull, horribly fruitless) trip to Texas using only information she'd found on nearby signage, and he'd almost gotten arrested digging for it. "And his wife has a strong grasp of morality." Irina raises her eyebrows; Mary-Todd had tried to run her off the road before. (Admittedly, Irina had almost gotten her then-fiance arrested, but still. Not exactly a shining example of morality there.) "Her morals aren't necessarily rational, but she sticks to them, and they include not harming children. I trust her more than Cora, at least."

"You haven't trusted Cora since the incident in Mainz," Irina says. Alistair unconsciously rubs his bad leg, remembering how he got one of the poorly-set breaks in it.

"You haven't really trusted Isabel since Niklovana died," Alistair says.

"I didn't think anyone remembered him anymore." From Alistair's perspective, it's been 18 years since her husband had left on a business trip and never come back. 18 years is a long time to remember anyone, especially a man who lived his life halfway in the shadows and who hasn't been spoken of since the Kabras took power.

"No one still within the branch, perhaps," Alistair says, "but certainly not no one. Your husband was a… memorable man, to those who knew him."

"Didn't he try to kill you?"

"Haven't you?" Alistair sips his tea. "If we plan to beat Kabra, we need to start working. Do you know where the Holts are?"

"By the stadium," Irina says. "Let's go." Even if Eisenhower decides to try an all-out brawl again, getting a concussion is infinitely preferable to talking about Nikilovana; there's 25 long, cold years of emotional repression that she'd rather not touch there, especially when she has ten hours to prevent a double homicide.

.oOo.

The Holts, it turns out, are not inclined to start another brawl, if only because they decided to bring their brats with them on an extortion mission. It's not even as if they didn't think that this would turn out as serious as Irina knows it will; neither Mary-Todd nor Eisenhower look at all surprised when she and Alistair turn up at their hotel room with weapons in hand and grim expressions on their faces. (Irina isn't sure how much of her annoyance is the Holts' utterly irresponsible parenting and how much of it is that the boy methodically ripping apart a toy truck on the floor is looks just a little bit too much like Nikolai; she'd never found it strange when Vlad carried in little Nataliya on her less bloody days - she'd only avoided bringing Nikolai in because Nikilovana had had a tendency to make vicious enemies who wouldn't be above poisoning a child. Given that Alistair shares her low opinion of the children being here if the look on his face is anything to go by, she dismisses the thought at irrelevant.)

"We need to talk about tonight," Alistair says over one of the twins' shrieking about Cheerios.

"What about tonight?" Mary-Todd asks, eyes narrowing. She's always been the smarter of the pair.

"Isabel plans to murder the Trents tonight," Irina, not wanting to waste the precious few hours she has left, says, "including, most likely, the children." That's not exactly true - Irina is fairly sure Isabel hasn't even thought about what will happen to the children - but they need the Holts on their side if they're going to do this.

"What can we do?" Mary-Todd asks as if she has no other option but to help, and, for the first time since she woke up with the taste of ash in her mouth and seven years in the past, Irina smiles.


The San Jacinto monument is, in fact, right next to/on top of the San Jacinto battlefield. There are still bodies in that field (according to the tour guides there), and it is illegal to go digging for them. I went on a school field trip there (and to Battleship Texas, which is right next to it), and, like the rest of Texas, it's insufferably hot from at least May through mid-September.

Love it? Hate it? Have any ideas for how this will turn out for everyone involved? Review and let me know!