Title: Ghosts
Word count: 500
Notes: Written for the rewind challenge at alias500: vacation. Set pre-series.
The KGB has generously granted her one month after her release from Kashmir, and it is here at her family's dacha outside Moscow that Irina seeks refuge. Here, away from the city and Lubyanka and the suspicious glances of her colleagues that she can lick her wounds in private and slowly begin to heal.
It is winter and the garden is blanketed with snow. Inside, Irina wraps herself in a duvet, sipping tea as she stares out the window. She remembers her father chasing her and her sisters around the garden, throwing snowballs at them.
(Sydney was on her back in the snow, laughing as she moved her arms and legs to make an angel. Her mittens were bright red, like blood on ice.)
At night, Irina lies in bed and does not sleep. She knows she is physically safe here, knows that Kashmir is now something of the past – but she is afraid of her dreams.
There is a fat orange cat that lives at the dacha. Irina names him Vronsky and lets him sleep on her pillow. She buries her face in his fur, his belly rumbling softly beneath her cheek.
(Sydney had been asking for a cat; Irina hopes Jack got one for her. A cat will help her broken heart.)
At the beginning of the second week her mother shows up. Larisa Nikolaevna takes one look at her daughter and begins cursing the KGB, America, even her husband for letting Irina leave Russia in the first place. Irina, wrapped in the blanket at the window, stares outside and says nothing.
Katya arrives next, a few days later. She does not comment on how pale her sister is, how sharply her cheekbones stick out, how lifeless her eyes are. Instead, she pours vodka and tells stories of all the people Irina used to know. They are strangers to her now; the only people that matter are a world away and forbidden to her.
One night Irina says, "You would have liked them." When pressed, she refuses to say more.
It will be months before allows herself to speak of her other daughter.
Elena appears in the last week, carrying a briefcase of yellowed manuscripts. Larisa and Katya have returned to Moscow; Irina and Elena sit at the kitchen table, the papers spread out before them.
"You are special," Elena says. "That's why you've survived all of this. You are the Chosen One."
Vronsky winds himself around Irina's ankles. She thinks of fate, of a life that is lost to her now. (Jack, Sydney, Nadhezdha.)
Elena looks almost feline in the lamplights; she smiles when Irina says, "Tell me more."
On her last day, Irina packs her suitcase and searches for Vronsky, but he is gone.
Returning to Moscow with Elena, she leaves her ghosts at the dacha.
(In her mind she holds three images: a man looking at her with love, a pig-tailed little girl, and a dark-haired infant. They will stay locked away for twenty years.)