Disclaimer: I own nothing, no creative infringement intended, etc. etc.
AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It is really motivating. This is a long section, but it didn't feel right to break it up anywhere else. I hope you don't mind.
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nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens
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Jack and Irina freeze as they register the new presences in the room, taking in the familiar sound of military boots on hardwood and the cold, well-oiled roll of weapons being primed to fire.
A lightly accented voice cuts across the din of the alarm. "I thought I heard something – and here you are, so much better than the rat-vermin I was expecting." The man's tone is mockingly polite, with the flippancy of someone who knows they hold complete control over a situation. "Please drop your weapons and put your hands in the air."
Jack's eyes flicker towards Irina, who briefly, calmly returns his gaze. She seems untroubled by this interruption to their mission, and Jack relaxes fractionally: they can get out of this. Both turn to face Semyonov and his men, moving apart to give each other some room, and unholster the guns at their waists, tossing them to the floor where they clatter towards the figures in the doorway.
"And the disk, please, as well. You mustn't think that I do not know what you came here for."
Irina drops one arm to reach inside her jacket and pulls out the disk. She lets it fall to the ground – and there is something strangely deliberate about this movement – and kicks it over to the men, where the one unarmed man bends to reclaim it.
Semyonov would be unremarkable in a crowd: close-cropped grey hair, an average build, and thin, angular features. He smiles at his captives, revealing perfectly white and straight teeth. It would be charming, but there is an edge to all of his actions that indicate he would like nothing more than to see them strung up and shot in his yard.
He stands bookended by two guards standing precisely to attention, and Jack chances a glance behind him to check out the second entrance to the room. Three more men with machine guns wait there. He lets his mind half-disengage, calculating the possible escape scenarios and the probabilities of success. He is sure Irina is doing the same thing, her vaguely bored expression shielding the strategic workings of her brain.
Semyonov moves forward casually, pausing to pick up one of the discarded guns on the floor. He stops in front of Irina, standing close enough that they are almost chest to chest. "Irina Derevko," he says with insincere reverence, his lips twisting sardonically. "You come yourself to steal from me. I suppose I should feel honoured."
Irina is smiling dangerously back at him, saying nothing. Jack knows there is some kind of power-game being played out in front of him – must be a Russian thing.
Semyonov pushes the muzzle of his borrowed pistol into her forehead, adjusting it until it aims right between Irina's eyes. "If you play nice, you and your friend may even walk out of here." He lets a moment of tense silence pass. "Who betrayed me?"
"Kirilov." Irina answers without hesitation.
Semyonov stares at her as he weighs this information, then begins to laugh hoarsely. "Ah, yes, of course. It always is the one you depend on the most, isn't it? Dear Konstantin was just advising me that my security measures must be improved – and wouldn't he know!"
Semyonov's amusement disperses as quickly as it came. He jerks his head towards the door Jack and Irina had entered through with a muttered "take care of it." Two of the guards lingering in the other doorway break out of formation, cross the room rapidly, and disappear down the back staircase.
Three guards remain, and Semyonov.
Jack brings his hands together in the air, casually letting his fingers slide down his left wrist until they settle on the inconspicuous detonation strap he tied on before. If they could distract the guards for a minute with the explosives and take one or two of them out, they might just be able to swing a getaway. There is only one guard in front of the door behind them now...
Semyonov is even making things easier by backing away from Irina to create a more comfortable distance between them. He's still got his gun trained between her eyes, but he's given up valuable ground, trusting his advantage a shade too much, and it will be used against him.
"Tell me more, Irina. What exactly in my database is of interest to you? Or are you working for someone?" He finally spares a glance for Jack. "And this man, who is he? Doesn't seem to be your usual type."
Jack is itching to detonate the first explosive –time spent listening to Semyonov's self-congratulation could be time spent getting the hell out of there before reinforcements arrive or Semyonov becomes aggressive. He tries to read Irina's body language to see if she's ready to go. Are they anywhere near being on the same page as each other? It's impossible to tell.
Irina shifts position slightly, redistributing her weight, and shakes her hair back behind her shoulders. Nonchalance and restlessness in one. "So many questions, Ilya, but it is not yet the time to answer them."
It's all the signal Jack needs.
The floorboards rattle satisfyingly under their feet as the first charge blows. Semyonov's head snaps reflexively towards the sound, and Irina uses his second of confusion to lunge for him. In a single continuous movement she wrenches the pistol from him and whips him across the face with it, then pivots and takes out the solitary guard behind them with a shot to the head.
Jack acts in tandem with her, detonating the rest of the staircase explosives and, a second later, the one laid in the doorway above the last two guards' heads. The blasts are stronger than he expected. Wood splinters rain down around them as they run together for the safe set of stairs, the other having (presumably) been blown to bits. Jack slows momentarily to rip the gun from the limp hands of the man Irina killed.
They are unfamiliar with this part of the house, but it hardly matters. They make it to the first floor, entering a room that is almost identical to the one they've just fled. The wall of windows gives them a clear view of the forest, and Jack wastes no time in using the machine gun to shatter the glass. It's faster this way: the path of least resistance. He goes through the window frame first, dropping a few feet and landing easily on the grass, and leads Irina in a sprint for the treeline.
A spray of gunfire breaks out behind them, and Jack is pleased by how distant it already sounds until he hears the shocked gasp and faltering steps behind them. Irina's been hit. His instincts continue to carry him forward, but his pace slows unconsciously as he turns to see how bad it is.
He barely has to cock his head – she's nearly caught up to him, having only weakened for a second, it seems – but it's enough to see her pained, enraged expression. She screams something unintelligible at him, something along the lines of Keep running, you idiot!
And he does. The combination of panic and adrenaline is leaving him deafened by his own heartbeat. He struggles to think as they crash through the undergrowth. Putting as much distance as possible between them and the people that want to kill them is the obvious priority. And he tries to concentrate on that, but his thoughts keep gravitating back to one thing: on any other day, Irina would be outrunning him. He strains to listen for sounds of pursuit, but all he hears is Irina's increasingly ragged breathing.
Neither of them can keep up the pace forever. After a few more minutes, the struggle to keep running is beginning to become more acute for Jack as well. He knows he'll have to be the one to call a stop, as Irina would rather run herself into the ground than admit 'weakness.' And he longs to tell her that she can never be weak; even (perhaps especially) in moments like this she is ferocious and beautiful and unbreakable.
He thinks they're out of any immediate danger, so he holds up a hand and stops, still keeping to the thickest cover of trees and foliage he can find. He watches Irina slow up behind him and, pointedly avoiding looking at him, prop her back against a nearby tree, sliding down into a semi-defensive crouch. One hand is over her heart as she works to steady her breathing. Now he can see the dark mark on the sleeve covering her upper arm where the bullet hit. He decides to give her some privacy, a few moments to collect her bearings, while he checks the area and listens for signs of pursuit.
The woods are as quiet as before. Jack feels somewhat ridiculous keeping his machine gun levelled at decidedly non-threatening leaves and shadows, but he completes the patrol around their temporary shelter, whiling away some extra minutes. When he returns, she is quite calmly probing the wound in her arm.
"You okay?"
She stops inspecting it and hugs her arms into her chest. "Just a graze. It's not even bleeding that much."
He nods, relief flooding through his body with an intensity that surprises him. The moonlight gives a silvery cast to the scenery around them, and he can see her well, but not completely. The shadows obscure her features.
She speaks again, leaning her head back against the tree and gazing upward. "It even helped a bit – the pain let me keep my head during the run."
Jack isn't sure how to respond, tries for levity. "Couldn't you just have bitten your tongue, or something?" He moves closer to her until he too can lean against that tree, looking down at her.
He gets a glimmer of a smile from her for his efforts, but she abruptly drops her head to her knees and groans. "Ugh...it feels like something's trying to bludgeon its way out of my head. That's what's killing me." And she lifts her head again to look at him, and he cannot be sure if it's a trick of the moonlight or if her eyes are really shimmering with the veneer of tears.
He had been expecting something cryptic from her (he always does), some loaded and evasive I'm fine to push him away. And now she's throwing honesty at him, and he just stands there because he can't understand what she wants from him. In the back of his mind runs a thrumming chorus: this is bad, this is very, very bad.
He bends down a little to reach her forehead, in one gesture brushing some hair from her eyes and checking her temperature (hot, growing hotter), and he says the most inadequate, inane thing (he's keeping up appearances for both of them). "I'm sorry this turned out so badly. But I don't think we're being followed."
"I'm sure Semyonov has a lot to worry about right now. And he thinks we left empty-handed."
Jack's nodding his way through her assessment of the situation when – "Wait, he thinks we left empty-handed?"
Irina slides a hand into her jacket again, pulling something out from under her bra strap, and holds a disk out to him that's identical to the one they lost to Semyonov. "You didn't think I only carried one disk, did you, Jack?" Suddenly her lips are curving into a sly smile, and her eyes are alight with triumph.
This is the Irina he knows. He can't stifle a grin of his own, one full of surprise and pride. He has to admit that being a participant in her deception is a vast improvement over being the target of it.
The moment is broken when Irina reverts to business. "We should go. It's still a ways back to the safe house."
He holds out a hand to help her up. And promptly has to catch her when her legs waver and almost take her back down to the forest floor (he sees her eyes close against this new wave of sickness, the deep-core shiver that passes through her like a lightning strike). It happens so fast the panic hits him when she is already in his arms, hugged to the left side of his body. He's holding most of her weight, the little of it there is, but she's still conscious and muttering something into his chest. Her words are muffled by his body but he picks up the odd sound, things like vertigo and fuck and all right. And if she hadn't felt so small and scorching and shaky under his hands, he would have laughed at Irina's self-diagnoses and attempts to comfort him.
Jack is lost in the sensation of holding her, of cleaving to her in this place far removed from the bedroom and the trappings of sex. This doesn't happen, ever. There is worry and need and giving on both sides, and he can hardly let go when Irina comes back to herself, drawing back to stand on her own before him.
"I'm okay."
"Let's move on, then."
And though they slip seamlessly back into professionalism, weapons out, Jack refuses to give up her hand. He holds onto her tightly (she doesn't fight him) and they make their way tiredly and haltingly and warily home.
--
Irina heads straight for the bed, falling more than sitting onto it, and strips off layers until she is down to a sleeveless shirt. The action reopens her wound, and she presses a cloth to it absentmindedly, her eyes focused somewhere beyond. Jack goes to her after securing the house and digging out the med kit. He drops two painkillers into her hand, ones that should help bring down her fever as well as ease her pain, and she swallows them before he can give her the glass of water.
"Drink," he says in the gentle-firm voice people use when they're dealing with the sick. It feels strange, taking care of Irina this way.
He takes over the wound-tending from her as she dutifully sips at the water – it will not fully rehydrate her, but it's all they have. She was right; it's not a bad gash, and she hasn't lost much blood. She hisses a little when he cleans it and stitches it up as carefully as possible (he thinks his hands are too big for work like this). Her eyes are only half-open now, and it's only a matter of time before her exhaustion overwhelms her completely.
The med kit is (typically) rather useless – nothing to deal with hypotension or restore electrolytes, not even a thermometer. Jack makes a mental note to yell at someone for cutting corners on medical supplies before he remembers that the CIA, for once, isn't responsible for this mess. Irina is pretty well beyond cooperating with him to help herself. She's had as much water as she can stand, and what can be easily taken care of, has been. He can't be sure how high her fever is (and he wishes it was much lower), but she is not hallucinating or unresponsive, the indicators of a truly dangerous condition.
He turns down the bed while she kicks out of her boots and fatigues. He pulls the lightest sheet over her, and if his hand lingers a little too long on her back, on her forehead yet again, he tells himself it doesn't matter because she is already asleep, and even if she isn't she will never remember this.
He's planning on sitting up in the chair in the corner so he can keep an eye on her. He might even be able to get through the files they've stolen to see if there is anything useful there (this is a lie; he won't turn his eyes from her). He has already convinced himself of this course of action and is thus wholly startled when her voice emerges from somewhere in the tangle of linen.
"Jack, just get in the damn bed."
He hesitates (just a blink). He doesn't want to make anything worse, flood her with more body heat when she already can't deal with her own. But she asked him to, and that is reason enough. He climbs in beside her, not too close, letting her choose what is comfortable. There is the barest pressure of a hand against his chest before it falls down to intertwine their fingers. Through this single point of contact, they hold on.
--
Jack lies with her, watching her sleep. His thumb rubs over the back of her hand, keeping time like a metronome though neither is aware of this. He drifts into a doze sometimes and reawakens with a sense of alarm until he tests her skin and feels that she is cooler under his fingertips.
She is not sleeping like a spy tonight. She is deep under, still and barely twitching with the usual stirrings of sleep. He tries to drink in everything about her. She never stays this motionless in daylight, never lets herself be observed so unguardedly, and his heart throbs with impulsive protectiveness and love for this woman(just a woman, as he is a man).
He wakes, and the different quality of darkness in the room shows him that dawn is approaching by degrees. He must have fallen asleep. He once again runs the back of his hand against Irina's forehead – and now he is taken aback by her warmth. She's too hot. He reaches for her arm to try to rouse her, and he suddenly notices the heaviness and quietness about her form that cannot be attributed to slumber but to unconsciousness.
His breath catches as he shakes her gently. "Irina?"
No response.
--
Poor Irina, she's getting all the hard knocks in this one. Just one more long section (or maybe two shorter) to go.