Spoilers:  After Phase One episode.

Pairing:  Jack and Irina.

Disclaimer:  I do not own any of these characters and their thoughts are purely fantastical…only in my Toaster World! :D

Summary:  Irina's POV.  I thought it would be interesting, as most Toasters discussed on the FF thread, to see what Irina's thoughts and reactions would be if she heard about Jack's torture and near death.

Hiding

The gears clank whenever the gate is raised.  Well the two of them.  I'm quite flattered in a way, that they think I need two gates.  Obviously they think that I'm seriously a threat to them.  Foolish Americans.  What can one woman do?

I'm intelligent and skilled in many things, but to think that I could take out an entire agency of officers? …I suppose there's a reason for that.  Someone's coming, I can hear the gears grinding.  I'm not quite sure who it could be at this hour. 

Earlier, I heard a lot of commotion just beyond the glass barrier.  Kendall came to talk to one of the guards at the gate.  I suddenly became curious and decided it couldn't hurt to read his lips.  After carefully watching his lips move as he talked to the green agent, who sat at my gate every evening like clockwork, I realize that they're actually raiding all the SD cells.

It's been an hour since they dispatched all their operatives.  Some part of me wonders what part Jack is playing in all of this.  I haven't seen him all day, and he usually dropped in for a quick chat, sometimes a threat here and there.  Swallowing, I can't help but feel anxiety about the whole thing.  It seemed to be a gut reaction.  I guess time can't erase the amount of time I spent pretending to worry about where Jack was when I knew exactly where he was.  But this time was different.  I was locked in a glass cage unable to even monitor him.

My eyes remain closed as I listened to the click of heels.  Guessing from the resonance, and the amount of weight that was being used to walk, I know it was Sydney.  I open my eyes and rest my gaze upon her lovely face.  Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck.  I could still see her as a five year old looking up at me.  I smile lazily at first, but then looking closer, I could see a wariness in her eyes.

"Hi," I whisper.

Her lips part and the corners of her lips curl up, as she brushes a few stray tendrils from her eyes.  "Hi," she replies.  Sydney opens her mouth as if to say more, but she hesitates.

"What is it?" I ask, my voice low and raspy.  My voice was tight from not drinking enough water that day.  I chide myself for not knowing better.

Sydney lowers her head and begins to tap the floor with the tip of her shoe.  She looks more tired and weary than I have seen her after any mission.  "Uh, it's Dad," Sydney says hesitantly.

I frown.  I knew there was something wrong.  "What about your Father?" I ask calmly, pulling myself up from the floor and walking over to the glass wall.  "Did something happen at the raid?"

Sydney frowned and looked confused.  "How…how did you know about the raid?" she exclaimed.

"Kendall was talking to one of the agents in the hallway and I happened to read his lips," I explained hastily, too focused on the fact that something had happened to Jack.

I don't know why there's this gnawing in the pit of my stomach.  It wasn't like I truly was in love with the man.  He was an assignment.  I close my eyes as I run through the gambit of excuses.  How many times would I tell myself that creating the family that stood before her was a job?

"What happened to your father?" I ask again, resting my hands on my hips.

Sydney looked her straight in the eye.  "He's in the hospital."

I frown and try to hide my trepidation at the news.  "What happened?  Did he get shot?"  The thought that he was in critical condition made me tense up and a gambit of emotions ran through my heart. Looking up at Sydney, I wait for a reassuring answer.  I get none.

Sydney shook her head and swallowed before being able to push the words past her lips.  "He was tortured by Geiger.  We got to him in time before he could administer one that could have killed him," Sydney whispered.  I could see that she was remembering; her eyes were closed and her shoulders were hunched over.  She could barely keep her tears from escaping from underneath her lashes.  "He was so weak Mom."  Sydney looked up at her, the tears slipping down her cheeks.

I longed to reach out and comfort my daughter; once again, the transparent wall separated us, when she needed me the most.  My throat tightened and I swallowed the beginning of my tears, which understood Sydney's pain.  She really had developed such a strong relationship with Jack. 

As I watch her trying to regain her composure, I remember the little wisp of a child who idolized her father.  She wanted to follow him to the ends of the earth.  And now Sydney stood before her a grown woman, traumatized by her father's near death.  I cleared my throat in an attempt to remind myself where I was and that there was no way I could even tend to him as he lay in the hospital, whether I shed tears or not.  "How badly hurt is he?" I asked.

The question was the best way I could control my emotions.  She would be logical about the whole situation.  There was no need to worry herself more than she had need.

Sydney wiped her running nose with the back of her hand and swallowed.  "The doctor says that he's lucky his heart didn't stop when it received the second shock."  Her lips absently lifted and the corners of her mouth curled into a smile.  "Dad just scoffed and told him to send him home."  Sydney's dark eyes twinkled.  "When he wouldn't, Dad told the doctor that he was being obtuse and that he was fine."

The thought of Jack insulting the doctor in his dry way made me laugh.  I tucked my hair behind my ear and pressed my hand against the outline of Sydney's, which rested on the other side of the wall.  "Your Father was always so stubborn that way.  He never went to the doctor unless he was too weak to fight me.  Then I would drag him there," I recalled wistfully.

Sydney smiled.  "Well I made him obey the doctor's orders.  I told him he was going to stay in that bed if I had to have them strap him in," she laughed.

I was glad that she was smiling again.  I think the shock had finally worn off when she came to see me and the rush of adrenaline had ebbed away.  Suddenly she had only been left with the knowledge of what had happened that night.  And I certainly knew what that felt like.

Unexpectedly the gears of the gates groaned again, revealing the weary eyed Michael Vaughn, who was slowly approaching.  "Sydney?" he beckoned.

I watched as these two danced around each other as he asked for her to come to the other room.  A flame that had been sparked from within them from the moment they met, but that had been deliberately clouded, seemed now to shine freely and brightly in their eyes.  Sydney glanced over at me and smiled apologetically.  "I have to go talk with Kendall," she sighed.

I shook my head and frowned.  "You don't need to apologize Sydney.  I'm just glad that you came and told me about your Father."

Sydney raised her eyebrows in bewilderment.  "Of course I did," she scoffed.  "Why wouldn't I?"

I shrugged.  "I'm sure your Father wouldn't exactly want me to know all that happened tonight.  I know that he didn't tell you to come here and announce to me that he is lying in a hospital bed.  He want me to see him like that when I was his 'wife', and I'm sure that's even more the case now." 

Sydney tilted her head slightly and had a curious grin on her face.  "No, that's not exactly what he said when I told him I was going to see you."

"You don't have to make me feel better Sydney.  I know exactly what I am to your Father."  I glanced briefly over at Vaughn, the man my daughter had growing feelings for and who, himself, was in love with my daughter.  "You better get going," I chided.  "You don't want to keep Director Kendall waiting do you?"

I watched Vaughn slip his arm around her waist to guide her from the caged cell I was doomed to spend my life in.  Sydney placed her hand gently on Vaughn's chest, which caused him to slow his stride.  "Thanks for the talk Mom," Sydney said.

My eyes lowered and I smiled lazily.  "You can always come and talk with me Sydney.  I could never turn my back on you again."

Sydney nodded.  "But I just thought you should know.  You're wrong about Dad."

My brow furrowed at her comment and I smiled knowingly at my daughter's wishful thinking.  "I don't think so," I chuckled.  "Your Father know exactly where we stand with each other."

Now Sydney was the one with a knowing grin on her face.  "Well maybe you don't."  She paused a moment, glancing up at Vaughn, motioning for him to go ahead.  "For your information, he asked me to let you know that he was all right."  As she walked away to her appointment with Kendall, all she left me with was a wide grin and a victorious expression on her face.  Sydney had gotten one up on me.

As I sat down on the cold, dusty floor, I pondered on Sydney's admission.  Jack had wanted her to know that he was all right.  She didn't know why that meant so much to her. 

Jack had been a man that she had spent 10 years of her life deceiving and betraying.  She had faked her own death and caused him to hurt in more ways than she could count.  All of it had been done with a separation of sorts in her mind, heart and emotions.

As I sat in that cell that night, it was the first time I let myself think illogically about what had happened to Jack that night.  All those nights when I had been his wife I thought about him as the enemy, not allowing myself to easily fall into the trap of emotional attachment.  But now I felt this sense of relief about Jack and his condition.  And I felt my heart skip a beat as I thought about Sydney's mischievous revelation that Jack somehow still cared about me.

How could he?  I couldn't wrap my mind around it.  I wasn't the woman he fell in love with.  And the woman he married wasn't the woman she claimed to be.

I felt this sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.  It had been like this the past couple of years in hiding.  I couldn't go a day without feeling remorse at what I had done to this wonderful man who had done nothing but love me.  He took care of me in ways that I never thought a man ever would.  A part of me wanted to slip quietly back into the past and live those days again with Jack, except with a different ending.  But I couldn't.  I couldn't relive the mistakes of the past and change them.

You're wrong about Dad.

I bit my lip as I thought about Jack and the possibility that he might still love me.  Maybe she could still have the man she had dreamt of every night since disappearing underneath 'Laura's' murky grave.  The way he looked at her with his eyes, the way they still lingered upon her like they once did; maybe Jack could still love her, except this time, with no lies or betrayal.