Title: Sisters
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own the DVD's, but as much as I would like to, I don't own the actual show.
Summary: A short ficlet that takes place during Marie Warner's interrogation in episode 2x14. Kate Warner thinks about her sister, promises, and memories.
Sisters
The gunshot was surprisingly loud.
There was a strangled yelp and a howl, and Marie clutched wildly at her right arm as she fell. Her gun flew from her grasp and clattered uselessly across the pavement. Kate stood frozen in place, her feet rooted to the ground, as a team of CTU agents surrounded the two of them.
Jack Bauer looked back and forth between Kate and the retreating agents who held Marie, struggling and crying, between them. "I take it that's your sister?" he asked dryly, cocking his head towards Marie. Kate nodded mutely. Jack shook his head. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and followed the agents and Marie into the brightly lit airport hangar.
"I take it that's your sister… your sister… your sister." The words echoed hollowly in Kate's head, over and over.
Yes. That is my sister.
As Kate stepped through the door of the hangar, she immediately spotted Marie sitting in the center of the room, flanked by three armed agents. There was a metallic clanking sound as she shifted slightly, and Kate realized that she was handcuffed to the chair.
Jack strode briskly into the room and went immediately to Marie's side. "Where is the bomb?" he asked curtly.
Marie lifted her head and met Jack's gaze. Her eyes were cold and dark, with an expression that Kate had never seen before. She sneered at Jack. "I'm not going to tell you anything."
Without a word, Jack grabbed her injured arm and pressed his thumb against the bloodstained bandage. Marie's cry was instantaneous, a high-pitched primal shriek of pain and surprise. Kate recoiled in horror.
Jack was still talking, saying something about the wound being particularly painful because of the bullet's position in her arm, and that Marie would be treated and given something for the pain if she told them what they wanted. Kate cringed.
Gritting her teeth, Marie shook her head defiantly. "No!" The volume and explosiveness of her shout made Kate flinch. "I'm not afraid to die."
Jack shook his head. "I don't believe you," he said calmly. "I've seen people willing to die. I've looked them straight in the eye, just like I'm doing with you, and you are not one of them."
The words struck Kate like a physical blow, leaving her breathless, and she could only stare. "What have they done to you?" she whispered, so quietly that she was unsure if Marie had heard. If she had, she gave no indication.
I take it that's your sister.
No. Kate shook her head, crossing her arms tightly in an effort to stop her trembling. No, this is not my sister.
As the surreal scene played out in front of her, childhood memories flooded her mind, mingling with the images of the present in a jumbled collage.
A short brown wig lay in a heap on the table, and Marie's blond hair was disheveled and tangled... Kate remembered gently combing tangles from Marie's fine hair and braiding it with ribbons and barrettes.
A bandage had been hastily wrapped around the profusely bleeding gunshot wound in Marie's arm, and a crimson red stain was slowly spreading across the white gauze... Kate was standing next to eight-year-old Marie in a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, holding her left hand as a cast was applied to her right arm.
A medic knelt next to Marie's chair. "He's giving you a dose of Demerol," Jack told her curtly, watching as the man prepared the syringe. "Just enough to take the edge off the pain. If you tell us what we need, I'll let him give you some more." Marie turned her head away from him, focusing instead on the medic. She had always been terrified of needles, but Kate watched curiously as Marie now accepted the shot without flinching or making a sound. Again, she wondered what those people had done to her sister... Kate offered a hand for six-year-old Marie to hold, smiling at the nurse's obvious attempts to distract her with small talk and offers of pink Band-Aids. Fiercely blinking back tears and gritting her teeth, Marie managed a weak smile.
Marie responded to a question from Jack with a snarled Arabic curse... The two young sisters sat at the kitchen table of their house in Riyadh, studying a book of beginning Arabic phrases while their mother quizzed them.
The armed agents hovered over Marie's chair, reminding Kate of angry vultures... Kate ran to Marie's aid in the schoolyard after two much bigger boys had pushed her off of the swing. The shove and the fall left Marie with a scraped chin and bleeding lip, but Kate's angry retaliation left both boys with a black eye and bloody nose.
Jack was reading from a folder of information, holding the pages so Marie was forced to look at them... Kate sat cross-legged on the couch with a book of fairy tales, holding it so four-year-old Marie could see the colorful pictures.
Marie's eyes were cold and hard, filled with hatred and contempt, and her mouth was set in a firm, unsmiling line... Kate remembered Marie's laughter, her shining eyes, and her face lighting up with a radiant smile.
Kate bit her lip.
Her eyes were glazed and her words slurred from the hefty doses of strong painkillers that dripped through her IV line, and her frail body was lost amid the starched sheets of the hospital bed. Still, their mother managed to grip Kate's hand tightly. "You've always watched out for Marie. She'll need you even more now, Katie. Promise me that you'll take care of her." Her throat was too choked with tears for her to speak. Kate nodded wordlessly. A wan smile flickered on their mother's gaunt face. "Thank you."
Kate shook her head, closing her eyes as pain seared through her body at the memory. Hot tears stung her eyes and made her throat ache.
This isn't Marie. I don't know what happened to her, Mom. I'm so sorry.
-End-