Disclaimer: Not my characters, alas.
A/N: For alias500 challenge "normal".
Sometimes she fools herself into thinking this is really her life. With each day that passes, she becomes Laura more, and loses just a little of Irina.
This is her life: the American Dream. (In the beginning, she wished she would wake up and discover she was still in Moscow and Katya was there to laugh and tease her for her foolishness. Now, Moscow seems like the dream, and there is no one to pinch her and tell her this is not real.)
Before, a normal day meant the Academy and vodka and laughing Russian boys who kept trying their luck. Irina didn't waste her time with them; she had bigger plans.
A normal day in Laura's life means pancakes for breakfast and marking essays, a pig-tailed little girl and a husband who tells her he loves her every day.
(She believes him, and it scares her, because she echoes the words and there's truth in them.)
Of course, this cannot last. There are three dead men who remind her of that. She knows there will be more dead men, more blood on her (Irina's? Laura's? Whose?) hands before she goes home.
The problem is, home is no longer Moscow. Home is in the laughter of her brown-eyed child. Home is in the embrace of her husband. Home is this life she had never imagined living.
(Katya, if she were here, would tell Irina to stop being an idiot. There are more important things than love.)
(Of course, it might be Laura she'd speak to, and Laura would say: who's Irina?)
Every Thursday night Laura goes to choir practice with Emily Sloane. Emily tells her she's got a beautiful voice, and Laura ducks her head shyly and changes the subject. (Thursdays in Moscow were spent at Gorky Park. Ice skating or debating with friends. Irina hardly remembers those people now.)
Sydney has ballet every Tuesday afternoon. Laura always arrives before the class finishes so that she can watch her child dance. (Irina has a vague memory of being told she was too tall to be a ballerina. She didn't cry; she stole Natasha Levin's ballet shoes and cut them to pieces with Babushka's scissors.)
What Laura – Irina – she loves about Jack is the romantic side she hadn't expected. The psych profile missed a lot when it came to Jack Bristow. Friday night – unless he's out of the country – is date night. Sydney spends the night at the Sloanes and Jack spoils his wife. Sometimes they go to dinner, sometimes to the movies. Once, he took her stargazing, and she cried for a reason she couldn't explain.
Sometimes they don't go out at all.
(Years from now, she'll look back and wonder how she could have ever been so naïve. There are no happy endings for people like her. And she'll think her life was never normal.)
For now, she's content to be Laura. And though she'll never admit it, there's a part of Irina that hopes the dream will last.
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