Author: Amy/pie, pie_girly@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing Alias-related is mine! Except my Alias obsession – I own that one.
Spoilers: Through 2.5 – The Indicator
AN: (Original) Just a little one-parter I thought up while listening to Ben Harper's "Please Bleed."
AN2: (May 16) Edited and updated.
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Jack Bristow sits alone, his gaze locked on the glass of amber liquid in front of him. He lifts the glass, swirling its contents around, breathing in the heavy scent of peat and wood. In one quick move, the remainder of the drink is gone. Without hesitation, he signals to the bartender to bring another.
"What are you having, sir?"
"Lagavulin, neat."
These are the only words Jack will speak tonight. He wishes he had the ability, or the courage to speak others, but tonight, his only audience is the bartender, and he certainly has little interest in the confessions of Jack Bristow. All he inquires about is the nature of the poison. Lagavulin, always Lagavulin.
Jack lifts the glass to his lips, pleased by the weight of the glass in his hand. The acrid taste of the scotch burns his throat and sends a warming comfort through his body. However aesthetically soothing, the sensual comfort of the drink cannot mask his pain. Jack knows this, but he also knows that the drink will help him forget, if only for a few hours, the gaping hole in his heart.
It had started out as a small tear, but like all small tears it eventually was pulled until it was a hole the exact size of his heart. She had been the reason for the initial tear. Her death, his subsequent detention – finding out his entire life was a lie – it was the beginning of the end. The beginning of the tear, the end of his heart twenty-five years on.
Another Lagavulin brings clarity. Repressed anger flashes to the surface like a sudden storm in the desert. He wants to hurt her like she had him. He wants her to bleed, to feel his pain, to understand what it is to be damaged, to have a gaping hole in her chest instead of a heart.
For many years, the opposite forces of his love for their daughter and his hate for his late wife worked to create a sort of equilibrium. The tear in his heart did not go away – that was impossible – but it never grew. That did not mean that Jack forgot. The wound from Laura's betrayal was a constant reminder of the purgatory that his life had become.
Along with the fourth Lagavulin, come the memories. The happy ones – Laura, Sydney and Jack together, before… These visions of his family lead Jack to the truth that he has hidden away deep in his soul. If given the chance to relive his life with Laura, knowing what she was, what she would become, he would. If only for Sydney.
Sydney. All those years, she had helped Jack without knowing it. Even in the most difficult moments of their relationship, Sydney was the reason that the tear in his heart didn't engulf him entirely. What she does not know is that she is also the reason the tear became a gaping hole.
Jack does not blame her. Sydney could not have known how her words would conspire with his dead wife's return to rip wide open the wound he had so carefully tried to hide. He understands that she may never forgive him for trying to keep her safe, but after having his entire life taken away from him, there was no way Jack Bristow was going to let that happen to his daughter.
However, he should have seen the fundamental truth of the situation. The sins of the father will be delivered upon the child. Just as his life had been turned inside out by a lie, so had Sydney's. His culpability in the matter is undisputed.
He beckons to the bartender for another. The reality of the truth is too much to bear. He was once a husband and a father. He then was just a father. And now? And now, he is no one.