Irina lay with her head pillowed on Jack's chest, trying to make sense of the last few hours. She had swung from despair to rage to relief to joy to passion; only her feelings for Jack could have whipsawed her so badly. It was a weakness, she knew, in a business where any possible vulnerability was exploited.

She saw herself in her mind's eye lunging for Jack with the dagger. She shuddered. A half second slower and Jack would have died, her knife through his heart. And she might never have known the truth.

Jack felt Irina's shudder and reached up with one arm to cradle her. He knew she was working through the emotions she had carefully compartmentalized. He said nothing; words weren't needed. She knew he was there.

Irina snuggled gratefully into the enveloping warmth, her mind still working. "Jack?"

"Hmmm?"

"Who would have had access to those interrogation tapes?" Relieved as she was that Jack had had no hand in the assassination attempts, it did not eliminate her immediate problem. Someone was trying to manipulate her.

Jack tensed beneath her.

Irina rolled over and looked at him, startled by his sudden shift in mood.

"Jack?"

Jack's eyes were closed, his stomach knotting. His interrogation after she had left him had been the most heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, and humiliating time in his life. Even 20 years later he couldn't suppress his reactions. He opened his eyes and looked up at her, struggling to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Dozens of people," he replied. "Interrogators, to plot their next move. Analysts, to determine what information I had compromised. Counter-intelligence experts, to understand how I was so easily duped. Psychiatrists, to decide if I was lying." And he thought to himself cynically, a large number of voyeurs who had just watched to see the famous Jack Bristow go down. For years afterward he had overheard snatches of conversation referring to the most intimate details of their lives together.

Irina felt sick. They had never discussed his imprisonment. Every detail of their lives together was on those tapes? She felt violated, now, many years later. How had he felt then? "Jack-," she started, her voice choked with remorse.

"Forget it," he said tightly. He saw the look in her eyes and sighed, trying consciously to relax. "I realized, much later, that Sloane had intentionally prolonged the interrogation in an effort to alienate me from the CIA. He was already at that time planning to go rogue, and wanted me completely disillusioned." He had certainly been successful, Jack thought.

"Sloane. Of course." Bastard, thought Irina. He was the one. He had set her up to try to draw her more tightly into his web. Just as he had done 20 years ago, with Jack.

She looked over at him. His jaw was still clenched, lost in his own memories. Their pasts were like minefields, each stumbling through the other's, accidentally setting off explosions. And unwittingly causing pain.

"Roll over," she said, giving him a push. If she had helped him remember, she could help him forget. He looked at her distractedly, but obeyed, rolling onto his stomach. She straddled his back and began to massage his muscles, willing them to relax, willing him to let go. He gasped as her fingers plunged deep, working out a knot, then moving on. Her strong hands and supple fingers traveled along his neck, down his spine, across his rippling muscles. Unconsciously Jack began to unwind, the dark memories floating away under her rhythm. He sighed with contentment. She was a musician, and he her instrument.

Slowly, he began to sense her fingers change rhythm, begin to explore more widely, moving sensuously across his body. He felt a spreading warmth and a growing ache in his groin. The lassitude that had filled him evaporated with his growing arousal. He flipped over onto his back so that she was straddling his lap, and gazed up at her face, seeing his need reflected in her eyes. His heart swelled as he read the compassion and love there as well. He reached up with his hand and pulled her lips down to his, no longer able to recall what had upset him. Knowing that having her here with him, now, was all that mattered.