Renewal
Thirty Years

Your Daddy loves you, or did at one point in his life, before your mother ripped out his heart and left him to bleed and die. [he lifted you up on his shoulders, and you felt like the queen of the world/saved you when you needed saving/held your hands in his, told you that your mother was dead]

She was a black widow spider, devouring those who loved her [like mother like daughter?]...

She killed your Daddy. [Daddy, daddy, what's wrong? Why are you crying?]

Your Daddy was a good man, a faithful and loving father, a patriot. [he lived his life by these words - Love. Duty. Honour]

The man he was died the day that they told him that his wife was a Russian spy [did she ever love him? Did she ever love you?]

The man who has lived inside the shell that your mother created is a killer, a ruthless man. A spy, a double agent. [You knew that they were going to kill Danny! You knew, and you did nothing!] He kills men and he feels nothing.

For this alone, you think, you could hate your mother.

But for what she did to the man who has rapidly become the reason you get up in the mornings ["taking down SD-6 is the only reason Sydney gets up in the mornings... Or did you think it was those meetings she has with you?" your father told him once. If only he knew.], the man who gives you hope that someday you will be free [to be with him, to live a normal life], you want to kill her. [what sort of daughter sees her mother and wants her dead?]

Irina Devreko while playing the part of Laura Bristow [the pretty, educated literature professor, the wife of a charming husband with a beautiful daughter] killed twelve men [twelve stars on a marble wall]. "The Man" was responsible for the deaths of countless others.

Your mother has had three lives.

[Irina Derevko.]

........one day, some men came to my school, gave us a test, then told me that I could serve my country, serve the Party in the KGB. They flattered me. The best a poor farm girl like me could hope for was a job as a menial secretary, serving some petty politician...if I was lucky. Most of us ended up as factory workers...

You wonder idly if she liked school, if she remembers anyone she knew there, if she had any friends. You remember your excitement at your first day of school, the way your classroom looked, the way you adored your kindergarten teacher...you remember your first best friend, a blonde haired girl called Abby...you remember the way your mother looked at you on your first day of school, and you wonder if she was relieved to see you off to school so she would have more time to fulfil her mission.

....so, I left my family [my mother cried at my departure] and I went to the KGB academy. I did well, and a few years later, my superiors told me that I was to receive my first field assignment shortly. I was so excited to be doing something to serve my country...

You remember your own excitement at receiving your first field assignment, the pride you felt at serving your country. You felt like you could have fought a thousand men and won. You thought you were serving your country, just as she did.

....they told me that I was to pose as a young literature student from Wisconsin, a pretty young thing away from home for the first time. My name was Laura Young, and I was studying to become a teacher. I wondered what possible use a literature student could be to the KGB. It was then that they told me my mission. I was to meet a man, Jack Bristow, one of the CIA's brightest rising stars. And I was to make him love me, make him believe that I loved him in return....and then I was to steal his secrets. I was to use any means necessary to force him into forming an emotional attachment with me...

Were you part of these means? Was her pregnancy, her daughter merely a means to an end, a way of tying your father closer to her, trapping him closer in her web? [web of lies spun by a black widow spider, deceitful until the end]

...and I succeeded. I never failed. Not even when every inch of me screamed that it was wrong to sell my soul like this. I was always a model KGB agent, dutiful and respectful to my superiors, polite to my teachers...all the while planning to be free of them eventually. You never suspect the one right under your nose, do you? I smiled charmingly while planning to put a knife in their backs.

[Why, Ms. Derevko?]

I didn't like the person they'd made me.

[Would you care to elaborate?]

Not particularly.

And that's where that section of the interrogations finished, and where they started analysing the person of Laura Bristow.

She was always a model wife. She always played her part well....

[Laura Bristow.]

At the mention of her name, your mother became warmer, and lost her Russian accent. Her words became those of an American housewife. She was the quintessential American housewife.

Yes, she always played her part well.

Laura Bristow [she took her husband's name, according to tradition] was a happy woman - happier than Irina had ever been. She had had enough food all her life, and parents that loved her, but most importantly she had had choices in life - choices as to what she would do in her life - she was free like Irina never had been.

I rather enjoyed being Laura. Laura had never been taught forty seven different ways to kill a man while leaving his face unobscured...never been told as a child that she must say goodbye to a mother who loved her dearly...

Laura was happy, carefree. Laura wasn't a killer.

My happiest memories come from my time as her. My husband was a good man, and slowly I began to feel myself loving him as well. He was kind, and caring, and utterly enchanted by me, it was clear to see. He was a good husband, and treated me well, unlike any Russian man had ever done. He had respect for me. My daughter was.....my daughter was at first a tactic suggested to me by my superiors, concerned that I hadn't tied my husband down enough. They eventually persuaded me to have a child.

Your shoulders tense as you reach this part of the tape of her interrogation. So, you think bitterly. You were the result of the orders of some paranoid KGB handler. There's still a part of you that wants to know more. [did she ever love me?] So you watch on. [you've always been a sucker for pain, haven't you?]

[did she ever love the daughter she was ordered to have? did she grow to love me like she says she did my father?]

...My daughter. Sydney. When I gave birth to Sydney, when I saw her eyes watching mine as I fed her for the first time, I began to wonder if I could stay as Laura forever. Because I didn't want to go back, didn't want to leave my family. That's what Laura had that I was denied. Family. People that loved her.

Yes, I loved my daughter. After Laura died, I would sit for hours, wondering what she was doing, if she was happy or if she was sad, if she was cold or lonely, if she was wondering where her Mommy had gone...yes, I loved my daughter.

Her voice grows softer at this point, and your shoulders sag. She says that she loved you. But she's lied to you so often, and about so much...it's hard to take her word for very much. Not when she's committed so many sins and hurt so many people.

I loved both of them very much.

[Why, then, Ms. Derevko, did you leave them? You could have turned yourself in.]

This is the question you want answered more than anything in the world. [Yes, Mommy, why did you leave us? If you loved us, why did you go? Why did you abandon your little girl?]

Because the KGB left a teddy bear in her bed one night with a letter attached telling me that if I didn't abandon the operation, the next present my daughter would receive would be a knife in her chest as she slept. They saw the emotional attachment I was forming with my child and my husband, and worried about me doing exactly what you proposed. So they gave me some added incentive for doing what I was instructed to do.

You don't know what to think at this point, to be happy [relievedreassuredloved] because your mother didn't leave you as a child because she didn't love you, because she did, and she left to protect you, or to be angry at yourself for feeling any sort of compassion for the woman who put Vaughn through so much [You look like him, you know], for the woman who put your father through so much [I made him believe that I loved him, and I knew he loved me], for the woman who left a little girl alone in the world and with a father who turned to alcohol [he drunk so much in those first few years...] to drown his pain at his betrayal [ripped his heart out, left him to die] and his hurt [he mourned his dead wife while he hated her] and his guilt [he fell in love with the enemy, and she killed twelve men with information she stole from him] in those first few years, leaving his daughter alone in her room, crying at how alone she felt, and praying for her life back.

[She loves you, yes, but she's caused you and those you love so much pain.]

The interrogation continues. Laura is abandoned for awhile, and we move onto your mother's life as an international criminal mastermind.

[The Man.]

...when I was extracted from my mission, when Laura died, I was taken back to Russia and put through months of debriefing....they questioned me for hours, about my husband, my daughter, the emotional attachment I was forming with them, the information I had discovered, any possible weak links in the CIA, anyone possibly open for recruitment...the questions were endless, and the sessions long. But I played my part well, as always. I've often thought that a more peaceful and certainly more lucrative profession would have been acting. I slipped back into Irina, all the while missing Laura, mourning the loss of her optimism and innocence. I was every inch the obedient KGB agent. They believed it when I told them that I was relieved to be away from the capitalist scum and back among the Party, doing my duty to the People. I lied to them about everything, and they believed my every word, or so I thought.

After a few months in confinement, I began to worry that they had received information contradicting some of my statements. And so they had.

They sent me to Kashmir, to a KGB prison and torture facility.

Here she points to a scar on her wrist, and you wince, knowing how she received that sort of scar. You have a similar one on your own wrist.

They put me in water, and ran an electric current through it. This is where I pulled at the restraints so hard that I made myself bleed. They tortured me for what seemed like years. They tortured me until I lost track of days, until my life was separated into the time when I was being tortured, and the time that they would leave me on the floor of my cell.

I never broke.

Eventually they began to believe that maybe I was telling the truth, and they released me and sent me back to Russia. That was where I escaped using my contacts in the intelligence world and began working for a international crime syndicate known as the Group, doing arms sales, intelligence gathering and the like to pay my way in life, to give me enough money that one day I would destroy the people who turned me into a killer, the people who forced me away from the only people I can ever remember loving - the only family I can ever remember having.

And I did. I killed every one of the KGB agents who recruited me, trained me, were my superiors...I took especial pleasure in the death of the man who left the teddy bear in Sydney's bed. No one threatens my family.

You thought your father was ruthless. This woman is on a completely different level. You don't know if you've ever seen someone so ruthless and yet so...in a strange way, protective.

Eventually I became the head of the Group. I became the Man. I was utterly immoral in this role. My teachers would have been proud, I think.

But the power and resources I had as the Man allowed me to protect Jack and Sydney better. And that was the only thing that mattered. They may not have seen what I did for them, and I may not have been able to be there when they needed me most, but I was there in one way or another.

I just wanted to protect my family. So I did.

[Ms. Derevko, you killed countless numbers of people through your actions as the Man. Would you have us believe you did this out of some misplaced sense of family responsibility?]

You are watching in some mixture of awe and shock and almost love as well as amazement by now, almost shaking at the thought of it all. It's almost too much to bear. But you can't bring yourself to turn off the screen...you're drawn to her face on the screen.

She becomes angry at this question, or as angry as you've ever seen her.

I will not sit here and listen to you question my love for my husband and daughter!

I did what I had to do to protect them, and that's all that matters to me.

You're in tears now, transfixed between wanting to hate her and wanting to love her. She did all of this, killed so many, hurt so many people, committed so many sins, for you and your father.

[Ms. Derevko, what did you believe that this "protection" of your family would result in?]

I hoped that one day I would be able to see them again, talk to them again...and that maybe they wouldn't hate me for the things that I've done.

You're crying now, as she bares her soul, the layers and masks and lies gone, and it's just the woman who desperately wants the two people who she loves most in the world not to hate her. It's not Irina [girl?/killer?], and it's not Laura [mother?/betrayer?], and it's not the Man [protector?/criminal?], but some crazy fusion of them all, the mother and the girl and the protector....and she's crying now, as she finally reveals it all.

She just doesn't want you to hate her.

In the end, it's as simple and as complicated as all that.

* * *

Vaughn sees you as you leave the viewing room, sees your tears.

"Syd, I told you that you shouldn't have watched those!"

He can be just a little bit overprotective sometimes. You appreciate the thought, but some things have to be done regardless of the pain.

"We're going to see her."

He blanches a little bit at this [he dies a little inside every time he sees her] but nods and doesn't push the subject.

You walk down into her glass cage, and she's there doing her meditation, her face once more a mask.

She sees the tears on your face, and you walk over to her. Vaughn hovers in the background, unsure of what's really going on.

You hug your mother for the first time since you were six years old, and her hugs feel the same as ever, and at that moment you're a daughter in her mother's arms, the little girl and her Mommy, and the daughter reunited with the mother who left her so many years ago, and you whisper to her "I don't hate you."

She's crying now, and so are you, because you can finally see all of your mother's pain and guilt and torment and responsibility and love and fear and protectiveness, and you know that your mother loves you, and you love her, despite the pain that she has caused you and all those around you.

Eventually you step away from one another, and she asks, tears streaming down her face,

"Would you like to know how your father died, Mr. Vaughn?"

[the families are never told how their loved ones died, only that they were killed serving their country]

Vaughn just gives a terse nod, the emotions [angerconfusionhateworryneedregretwantconfusion] playing across his face.

"I met your father once before he died, at a CIA family barbecue. Jack had worked with William for a number of years, and so he made certain to introduce us. You were there as well, Sydney, and so were you, Michael. Sydney would have been, oh, a year old, you about seven.

Almost a year later, my handler informed me that I had another assignment. These assignments were generally assassinations or intelligence gathering operations in the Los Angeles area.

When he handed me the file, I knew I couldn't, or didn't want to go through with the mission.

William Vaughn was a good man, a man I knew, a man with a family he loved very much. This much I gathered from one meeting with him, and nothing I had heard of him since indicated otherwise. He was a man I knew, with a family, a son just a bit older than my daughter, a loving wife...I couldn't kill him.

So I made plans to sabotage the assignment somehow, to make my handler believe that Vaughn had been tipped off by someone, and had changed his plans accordingly, or to make him believe that it had just been a unlucky set of coincidences that had resulted in me being unable to complete the mission.

Everything was going according to plan, until I reached the location where I was to kill him. I told him to leave immediately, that he was in severe danger. I was wearing a balaclava, but he recognised my voice.

He stepped towards me, and then asked, 'Laura? Is that you?'

Then the gun went off.

My handler had followed me to the location, and had heard him ask who I was. Then he shot him once.

He told me to finish the job, and he watched as I put two shots into your father's torso. I had been left with no choice but to complete the job....I could obey his orders, and fire two shots that would not necessarily be fatal, or have him kill me and your father.

Then he left.

I held your father's head, and I let him see my face.

'Laura,' he said. 'I don't know what you're doing here, but....tell them I love them. Promise me.'

I promised him I would, and then I called an ambulance before leaving the scene."

She swallowed.

"I have never felt so wrong or so guilty in my life as I did when Jack came home and told me that William had been killed. I cried for days when no one was watching...I had hoped that the shots hadn't killed him, but they did..." Her voice trailed off at this, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

"It's been over 25 years since your father died, Agent Vaughn, but I always keep my word. Mr Vaughn, your father loved you very much, and he died thinking of you and your mother."

Vaughn's in tears as well, but he blinks back his tears long enough to choke out the words, "Thankyou...thankyou for finally telling me how he died."

"I'm sorry." The words are so fickle, and will never be able to bring him back, and yet they're everything that he needed to hear.

"I know." It's not forgiveness, and it may never be, but it's a start.

You're still in tears, crying for both of them - for the mother who has killed dozens, done unspeakable things, committed grievous sins to protect you and your father in the hope that maybe they wouldn't hate her, and for the man who loves you enough to face his father's killer, and who has just finally heard his father's last words. You cry for the little girl whose mother had to leave her to save her, and for the little boy who lost his father, and for the woman your mother always wanted to be...

And you cry because you finally know the truth. Your mother loves you, and she loves your father, and that's really all that matters in the world to you at that moment besides the fact that the man [guardian angel] loves you more than life itself, as you love him [he's your promise of freedom, of better things to come.]

Truth takes time.

Thirty years is long enough.