Title: What the Future Holds
Author: Melodie
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: PG
Summary: Future tense. The relationship of Jack and Irina.
Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, I just borrowed them for a little while.
Notes: This little vig was inspired by a discussion of future-tense fics at the board of a different fandom, and a bunnie bit me. ;) It's an experiment that I enjoyed writing, and I would love some comments.
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Someday, she will betray him. Rip herself from his world, and leave him with a shattered heart. She will cradle a bundle of blankets and soft, pudgy flesh in her arms and realize her daughter will be the only token she can safely leave behind to remind him of her.
Someday, the phone will ring at his desk, and the sympathetic voice on the other end of the line will tell him thereÕs been an accident. He will run blindly for the door, his best friend will follow and drive him to the scene, trying to comfort him.
It won't be until he sees her favorite leather purse dangling from a bush on the embankment below him that it will begin to sink in. Memories of hasty business trips, delayed flights and too many term papers he had always overlooked will flood to mind and he will realize that he should have known all along she did not love him. That she would betray him in the end.
He will seek out his daughter and search for comfort in raising her. Alone. But it won't work. The innocent, motherless little girl will remind him too much of her, and he won't be able to raise her properly. He will raise her the only way he knows how, without becoming too attached. Just in case.
When his precious little girl wants to go dress shopping for her high school graduation, he will catch himself wishing shewere here to help their daughter. He will squash that impossible wish and drive a final blow to his fragile relationship with this daughter. His daughter will leave him too, and even though he'll want nothing more than to make her love him, he knows she couldn't if she ever found out his secrets. So he won't follow her out the door when she goes.
Someday he will walk through the high security hall and stand on the other side of the glass from a woman named Irina. He will hide his surprise behind a stoic mask when he feels a long forgotten flutter in his stomach at the sight of her. In that moment he will realize that after all his practice of hatred, he still loves her. Then the old bitterness will overtake him and he silently promises to make her see how he's changed--how she made him change.
She will watch his unreadable face from the other side of the glass and painfully wonder if he would remember the time they had sipped lemonade on a pier together, animatedly arguing over literature. So many years ago...she has never forgotten.
In a moment of selfish desire, she will wish she could leave her meticulously planned operation behind and give him just one kiss--even just a feathery peck on the cheek. Instead, she will bait him and wait for him to fall into her trap. She will know that he will bite.
Right now she can't spare a thought for the future. She's far too caught up in the sheer joy that is radiating from her husband's eyes as he swings her around their living room. "We're having a baby Bristow!" He shouts, twirling them both into the kitchen. Her laughter fills the room. She can hardly believe the good news herself!
"I love you, Laura," he says sincerely. As he punctuates his profession with a kiss, she knows he means it, that he would never leave her side.
If it were up to her, she would stay in this minute of perfect happiness forever.
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Advice and comments? Pretty please? :)