DISCLAIMER - None of this is mine.....the Alias characters and world belong to the superbly talented JJ Abrams, and the lines "The avalanche has started, and it is too late for the pebbles to vote", as well as "We know only that it is always born in pain" both come from Babylon 5, and as such are not owned by me either.....drat.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THEN AND NOW

It is about to begin

It has started

It has ended

Is it the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

who can tell?

Everything has fallen, everything has shattered

Broken men litter the way

One thing we know

The avalanche has started, and it is too late for the pebbles to vote

* * *

He rests his head on his arms on the flight back, a broken man.

Jack watches him carefully, seeing in Michael Vaughn the man he was twenty years ago [
angry broken desperate hurt betrayed unbelieving].

He knows what he's thinking, what he wants to do [burnangerfirerageletitoutletitoutexplodeimplodeburn]…..but he also knows that it doesn't help.

He knows that rage doesn't make the pain go away….it just replaces it for a little while, substitutes the dark ache of betrayal with the cool relief of a temper appeased [for a while, at least]…..It's as addictive as any drug, but in the end it's just a temporary fix, and every time you shoot up [every time you let go/lose control], you need a stronger hit [you need more chaos to fill the hole where your heart once was].

He knows these things because he's lived this life [this nightmare] before. He's lived with the lies and the pain and the guilt and the hole in the chest where his heart used to be before it got ripped out and torn to shreds by the only woman he's ever loved.

He's lived what Michael Vaughn's living now, and he knows every corner of the dark, dank hellhole he's trapped in.

* * *

Jack Bristow killed his first man in cold blood the week after his wife died, on a quick mission in Washington.

It was an easy mission, a simple one. In and out, they told him.

Just retrieve some information from a senator's aide who'd been passing information to the KGB.

Easy. Quick. No mess, no blood, no one gets hurt, right?

What awaited Jack in Washington was an assassination.

He killed the man who was never a senator's aide to begin with but a Russian sleeper agent, while he lay asleep next to his wife.

He didn't know why it felt so good to hurt someone else, but it did.

Maybe it just felt good to know that someone else had a hole in their heart as well.


* * *

"I'm sorry for your loss, Agent Bristow, but we simply cannot afford to devote any more resources to this mission. Not with the recent wars in the Middle East. Right now our priority has to be on getting quality HUMINT intelligence from inside the terrorist groups."

Kendall stands at the head of the conference table, looking precisely as pompous as normal, Jack reflected. He's always been an absolute ass, but this really does take the cake.

"I'm sorry, but I missed the part where you explained how we were supposed to gather HUMINT from Arabic terrorist groups, since none of us seem to have an appearance suitable for infiltration…..sir."

He squeezes out the word 'sir' like it has had to be forced through his lips by a bulldozer.

"Agent Bris-"

"Or how exactly Arvin Sloane and Irina Derevko are less of a risk to national security now with our attention focused away from them?"

"Jack, if you would just listen-" He's angry now, and more than a little frustrated, Jack reflects with great satisfaction.

[Now you know what I feel like every f****** day of my life…sir.]

"No, I will not listen! Is my daughter dead, or missing in action? Is she in a location where she can contact us and simply chooses not to? Does she have amnesia and know nothing of her previous life? Or is she in collusion with Sloane and my wife?"

"Jack, our officers are still trying to analyse the material you brought back from France and Scotland-"

"I do not care what your officers are or are not trying to do, Kendall. Tell me where my daughter is, and what she is doing right now, and I will work on whatever insane and reckless scheme you like."

"I'm sorry, Jack, but we simply cannot devote any more resources to Sloane's operations right now. And that includes Agent Bristow."

"I'm sorry?!-"

"However, I can tell you that analysts have concluded that wherever Agent Bristow is, she is operating under her own free will and is apparently happy. Dr Barnett would be pleased to talk to you and Agent Vaughn about these conclusions if you wish."

"I can't believe this." And he really can't. What sort of games is this man trying to play with me? Where does he get this rubbish?

"Jack, you may not appreciate this, but we are at war right now. Every day more people die in the Middle East, and every day we intercept more traffic about enemy agents crossing our borders. There's another 9/11 coming, and we have no idea how, where, or when. All we know is that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
We don't have the personnel, or the resources, or the money, to hunt for Agent Bristow. Sydney was a very talented agent, and I'm sorry for her loss. But I have a job to do, and a country to protect. I don't have time for personal vendettas or agendas."

Jack stands, and walks to the door, turning at the last minute to ask a question of Kendall.

"Who, in your opinion, is the most dangerous man alive in this world right now?"

For the first time in this little "interview", Jack obtains the upper hand.

"Well, I'd have to think about that for awhile….all the various heads of the terrorist-"

"If you have to think about it, you don't know. There's only one man with the power to destroy this world. His name is Arvin Sloane."

"You're out of your depth, Mr. Kendall."

Jack's parting words echo in the room as he leaves disgustedly.

* * *
Now begins the reconstruction of the shattered

Now we rebuild that/those who have fallen

Now we bury the pain [with an empty casket] and try to live again

Now we try to do what we cannot ever achieve

Now we try to forget the sun and her light

Now we try to forget the way things were

Now we try

Now we fail

* * *

Vaughn throws himself into his work, now, bent on reconstructing the perfect life he had before.

Before her.

Before Sydney walked into his office and shattered his world-

[a spinning snowglobe drops slowly to the floor, shattering into pieces where it falls and smashes, the little white snowflakes evaporating into nothingness]

Before his life began to fall apart because he no longer wanted what he always thought he'd wanted [centre could not hold].

Before his life was consumed by her.

He works twelve hour days, usually. Eric worries about him. He doesn't drink. He barely even watches hockey anymore.

He just works…he doesn't even go home most nights, because all his home has is an empty bed without her – his dog lives with Eric now, as a result of an argument between the two of them, if you can call it that a few months after it all fell apart…he had just stood there looking blankly while Eric had shouted at him, trying to get him to speak, to shout…to react. But in the end he had simply told Eric that he should look after Donovan, as he clearly wasn't cut out to look after him anymore.

He's disintegrating, coming apart at the seams, and trying desperately to pull himself together by throwing himself into his work.

Because his work is all he has left of his once-perfect [once-normal] life.

So he works. He sleeps. He eats a little. And he works some more.

He finds it no longer matters what he works on, be it illegal immigration or customs duties. He does it all steadily, methodically, almost robotically.

Because it gives him something to fill his days, fill the time he used to spend with her [thinking of her].

He works by day, surrounded by concerned friends and co-workers.

But he faces his demons [faces her, the one who called him her guardian angel] alone in the dark at night.

He works.

* * *

Jack retires after burying his daughter next to her dead fiancée, both, he's convinced, victims of Arvin Sloane.

He doesn't believe she's dead [doesn't know what to believe, really], but the CIA won't help him search for her.

Jack Bristow in retirement, Eric Weiss reflects with some amusement, is more active than most twenty-year-old agents.

He carries on destroying Sloane [continuing his daughter's work], slowly but surely, driven only by the thought of one day killing the man who destroyed his daughter's life.

He takes over Irina's organisation, becomes the Man, goes down into the underworld and becomes king where his wife was once queen.

He sees the irony in it as well, but he knows that to bring down Sloane, he needs power. Real power, the kind that the CIA could never provide.

He hunts his prey carefully, building his power cautiously.

He eats away at Sloane's power carefully, indirectly, small surgical strikes at insignificant facilities…..a thousand small ant-bites, eating away at the extremities of Sloane's operations and slowly but steadily working their way inwards.

He lures away the best of Sloane's mid-level operatives, and then begins to steal their superiors.

One day, nearly two years after she disappeared, there sits a man in front of his desk, a man that Jack Bristow has been waiting for for what seems like an eternity.

He tells of a pretty brown-haired woman, an investment banker, married quite happily to a paediatrician, living in London.

They call themselves the Hechts, and Arvin Sloane is her employer.

They have found her.

* * *
the future surrounds us,

waiting to be born,

waiting for us to give into what must/what will be

we know nothing of what it will bring

we know nothing of what it holds for us

we know only that it is always born in pain

* * *
many things are born in pain.

pain is born in pain.

but so is a new born child.

so is new life.

without pain, there is no life.

without life, there is nothing.