II. Dealing with the Devil
He caught up with her in a little café on the outskirts of Vienna, put a dart into the guard waiting outside, slipped a sleeping draught in the coffee of the one sitting two tables away. She expected nothing less. With a lurch in her chest and an easy smile on her face, she let him approach.
Less than five minutes later, he had crashed into a delicate table, shards of glass splintering around him. Crowds of people gasped at the sight of the woman with the blazing eyes, tumultuous hair, staring down at the man sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from his nose.
She had absolutely no rational explanation as to why she chose to blame him upon hearing the news. If Irina had taken the time to remove her emotions, consider the situation clearly, she would not have hit Jack Bristow.
At the moment she was not capable of rational thought. She simply wanted to kill him.
"You were supposed to take care of her," she managed, seconds before her eyes began to burn, and her heart raced inside of her, pounding against her chest. She could not think of Sydney, could not consider placing her face into her mind, even as the softer part of herself begged to be allowed to remember one smile, one laugh.
Earlier that year, she had admitted to herself, to her daughter, that she loved Jack Bristow.
Now, she would have gladly taken the knife from beneath her shirt, and stabbed him through the heart.
It was an altogether emotional reaction from a woman known her impassive cruelty, and if the outburst was unexpected, Jack did not show it.
A waiter came forward, babbling in Austrian, palms gesturing emphatically.
"It's all right," Jack responded, smiling as best he could, voice tinny and distorted from the redness that seeped from behind his hand, waving off the Good Samaritans who tried to help him up. "It's all right. I'm fine."
A spark in her subconscious warned against making a scene. She knew better than that. Jack was being smart, trying to ward off the attention from the crowds at her very violent reaction. She understood that. Irina was simply past caring.
"You were supposed to take care of her," she whispered again. Fingers curled in unmistakable fists, glare so ferocious that even the babbling waiter found himself pausing for breath.
"Irina, this is not the place to discuss this." Jack's tone was easy, calm. With a methodical easiness she found maddening, he reached for the white cloth napkin lay flopped on the ground next to her overturned table, and gently placed it on his nose. "I approached you here because I didn't think you would want attention called to you-"
His meticulous callousness nearly drove her to attack him again. Sydney was gone. Sydney was gone, her beautiful daughter with so much love and forgiveness in her heart, and Jack was concerned with making a scene?
"If this is not the place, then you should not have told me here," she whispered harshly.
"It's allright, everyone, my wife and I will pay for the damages. It's just a little spat," Jack announced, forcing a smile on his face as he folded bills into the frazzled waiter's palm, perfect Austrian rolling off his tongue. Moving closer, Jack's glare was now set on her, plastic grin holding his expression as he switched to an effortless Japanese. "Now, dear, perhaps we can find another place-"
"My daughter is dead, Jack! There is no other place!"
"Sydney is not dead."
It was enough to bring reality to a halt. A choking sob caught her words in her throat, and her eyes, wide and dripping with tears that she did not notice until the cold Vienna air hit the salty moisture on her skin, bore into his own.
Her daughter was her weakness, her daughter was her life, and she understood just how her preoccupation with her daughter's death could cause her own destruction when Jack smiled, a gun suddenly placed underneath her coat, muzzle pressed up against her side.
He cocked it with a barely audible click.
"Calm down," he instructed, low and soft in her ear. "Irina, listen to me. We cannot afford to have you make this more difficult. Do not resort to old habits. There are things I need to explain to you, but we can NOT do this out in the open."
A cacophony of emotions that had flooded through her body in a matter of minutes left behind a quiet woman. Jack's tone, methodic and urgent, brought back the rational mind, and it battled with her instinct - the image of her daughter burned and mutilated in her home.
Around them, people began to speak, whisper. Two feet away, her bodyguard was beginning to stir.
With a low, quiet, civil tone, she turned to her husband, cocking her head with a loving glance. "Unless the explanation satisfies me, Jack darling, I will kill you for the pain you have caused me."
It was a double-standard. After all, she herself was responsible for the death of his wife, whom she knew he had dearly loved. The hypocrisy was not lost on her. Judging by the half smile, the blazing anger in Jack's beautiful orbs, it was quite clear it was not lost on him, either.
But she meant every word.
"Meet me tonight," he whispered. "I'll phone you with the rendezvous-"
"Impossible," she said glibly. "I do not trust you, Jack. We will meet according to my terms."
"Because I have any reason to trust you?"
Her glance was riddled in steel. "You sought me out, Jack. Not the other way around. I have no intention of hurting you at all, you knew that the moment you found me here."
His chin clamped, strong features made even more defined by the frustrated gesture. There was nothing he could say to that. His loving wife knew him too well.
Only a small smile detected her smugness before it slipped, and she moved away from the gun, allowing him time to readjust the weapon so it hung out of sight before turning toward him. Palms carefully slid up the trench coat, and in a role that was almost too easy to slip back into, she played the loving wife, adjusting his collar, staring deeply into his eyes. With an apologetic smile, she replaced the bloody napkin with a fresh one, gently wiping at the blood.
"Get out of here, I will call you."
For the benefit of the audience, he leaned forward, and once again, she felt the feather light brush of a kiss from Jack's lips.
Her weakness for his touch was difficult to hide. Her breath was almost ragged as she pushed him away, just as her second guard crashed through the crowd.
"What happened?" he demanded, glaring at the waiters and the manager, all who irately waited their turn to share their grievances at being the unfortunate hosts of Jack and Irina's latest marriage spat.
Leaning down, Irina gathered her bag and slipped on her sun glasses, offering Antonio a grim shrug.
"I tripped."
--
He found her in the back room of a tavern in Ireland, sitting on a rickety wooden bench, palms wrapped daintily around a large mug of something unmistakably alcoholic.
"Good evening," she said softly. "Nose is better, I hope." As usual, Jack had no expression. Dressed in his trademark suit, he seemed unchangeable: an intimidating man with a glower that could freeze anyone.
And yet, for ten years, she had been the one with the key to melting his heart, to the point where she could make him burn.
The thought put a smile on her face, and she welcomed it. Since his appearance in Vienna, it was all she could do to keep from going insane, heading back to Los Angeles on the first flight, CIA be damned, to find the truth about her daughter. Her obsession with Sydney, she found, was only nearly matched by two others: Rambaldi, shaken once her daughter had been lost, and Jack Bristow, who was standing in this room, not attempting to kill her.
Well, she amended. Not yet.
"Come in." She was polite enough, motioning to the empty chair beside her with a graceful sweep of her palm.
"Interesting place," he said finally, adjusting his grip on his briefcase and coming forward, closing the door behind him. His nose wrinkled at the smell, and it caused a smirk on her face, nearly hidden when she took another drink.
"It has its purposes."
"Such as?"
"It's safe, for one," she answered matter-of-factly, implication clear. No one here was loyal to the CIA, and while Irina could not say they were loyal to her, the tavern owners knew very well who she was, what she was capable of. An awkward silence that passed, much too slowly.
Irina was a subtle woman. She never demanded, she never gave ultimatums or threats - she simply asked. Sometimes nicely. The consequences then, were always then the fault of the person being questioned. If they chose not to cooperate, she made them understand why they should.
But she never demanded.
At this moment, she wondered, as another mouthful of burning alcohol seared her stomach, how long she would last before she fell on her knees and begged Jack for information concerning Sydney.
Licking her lips, she brought down her drink, taking in a short, hasty breath before glancing up to meet his gaze. "I assume, since you have not tried to kill me, you have something you would like to discuss?"
"Do you love our daughter?" The answer was direct, to the point. Pure Jack. "If you lie, I'll know."
Silent for a moment, she shook her head slightly. "You may find this hard to believe, but I swore after ... " her eyes flickered to him, and he glared, almost daring her to say it. She chuckled grimly, glancing away. "... certain events that I would not lie to you again. I never did, concerning Sydney."
"You're right. I find that hard to believe."
"I love my daughter, Jack," she whispered.
Finally, his bitterness made an appearance. A low, grim laugh that made her shake her head as well. Reaching beside her, she found the bottle she had saved, locating his brand and sliding it across the table to his fingertips. "Your love is not worth much, Irina."
It would have stung, had she not been consumed with thoughts of Sydney.
"Is this your payment, then?" she asked quietly. "Making me sit here, near panic, broken hearted at the news of the death of my daughter, while you toy with me?" He glanced at her, glare impassive. "Would you have me beg, Jack?"
His smile faded. "No," he said finally, pushing the beer away and shifting in his seat. "I'm here because if you love your daughter, then you're the only one that can help me."
Irina could not make sense of that. Fingers fell away from her cup, and her eyes narrowed in intensity. "I do not understand."
"You've been out of the country a good long while, Irina, I know you haven't kept track. You would have found out sooner, had you kept in touch- "
Irina blinked, looking away. He held no accusation in his tone, but it did not assuage the bitterness that sank into her belly. "I could not endanger Sydney by attempting to keep contact, I assumed that with you there to take care of her, she would eventually forget me and-"
"I know." His clipped assurance made her swallow, as a briefcase clapped on the wooden table and he released the clasps. "Sydney is alive, Irina."
"How can you be so certain?" she whispered. He pulled out a tape, black and ominous, unmarked. Her glance was unsure. "What is that?"
"It's proof. No one will help me, they've all given up on her. But if you love her. If any part of her mother loved her for more than the ten years you pretended to love me, then you will help me."
It was a challenge, and yet, it was something else. Something she never expected to hear from Jack.
It was a plea.
A desperate man was capable of so much. Even strike a deal with the devil, his personal incarnation of all that was evil. He had hated her for so long. Had this been any other time, she had no doubt he would have tried to kill her. And yet, here they were, being polite and civil.
She took a moment to gather her words, tried so very hard to say them without slipping. "You're wrong," she clipped. His mouth dropped, and his hand began to fall, when she suddenly continued, "I never pretended to love you. That emotion was quite real. For you and for Sydney. It was the one thing I did not lie to you about. Even if I lied to myself."
That confession left him at a loss for words, and later, Irina would tell herself that that was its purpose.
"Working with me could get you arrested."
"I don't care."
They shared a glance. Any other time, she would have described it as smoldering, remnants of passion that refused to fade to anything lower than a soft simmer.
But that was not what this glance was. It was a glance between a wife and her husband, parents who desperately loved their daughter above all else.
Nothing else mattered.
"Show me the tape."
--
He caught up with her in a little café on the outskirts of Vienna, put a dart into the guard waiting outside, slipped a sleeping draught in the coffee of the one sitting two tables away. She expected nothing less. With a lurch in her chest and an easy smile on her face, she let him approach.
Less than five minutes later, he had crashed into a delicate table, shards of glass splintering around him. Crowds of people gasped at the sight of the woman with the blazing eyes, tumultuous hair, staring down at the man sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from his nose.
She had absolutely no rational explanation as to why she chose to blame him upon hearing the news. If Irina had taken the time to remove her emotions, consider the situation clearly, she would not have hit Jack Bristow.
At the moment she was not capable of rational thought. She simply wanted to kill him.
"You were supposed to take care of her," she managed, seconds before her eyes began to burn, and her heart raced inside of her, pounding against her chest. She could not think of Sydney, could not consider placing her face into her mind, even as the softer part of herself begged to be allowed to remember one smile, one laugh.
Earlier that year, she had admitted to herself, to her daughter, that she loved Jack Bristow.
Now, she would have gladly taken the knife from beneath her shirt, and stabbed him through the heart.
It was an altogether emotional reaction from a woman known her impassive cruelty, and if the outburst was unexpected, Jack did not show it.
A waiter came forward, babbling in Austrian, palms gesturing emphatically.
"It's all right," Jack responded, smiling as best he could, voice tinny and distorted from the redness that seeped from behind his hand, waving off the Good Samaritans who tried to help him up. "It's all right. I'm fine."
A spark in her subconscious warned against making a scene. She knew better than that. Jack was being smart, trying to ward off the attention from the crowds at her very violent reaction. She understood that. Irina was simply past caring.
"You were supposed to take care of her," she whispered again. Fingers curled in unmistakable fists, glare so ferocious that even the babbling waiter found himself pausing for breath.
"Irina, this is not the place to discuss this." Jack's tone was easy, calm. With a methodical easiness she found maddening, he reached for the white cloth napkin lay flopped on the ground next to her overturned table, and gently placed it on his nose. "I approached you here because I didn't think you would want attention called to you-"
His meticulous callousness nearly drove her to attack him again. Sydney was gone. Sydney was gone, her beautiful daughter with so much love and forgiveness in her heart, and Jack was concerned with making a scene?
"If this is not the place, then you should not have told me here," she whispered harshly.
"It's allright, everyone, my wife and I will pay for the damages. It's just a little spat," Jack announced, forcing a smile on his face as he folded bills into the frazzled waiter's palm, perfect Austrian rolling off his tongue. Moving closer, Jack's glare was now set on her, plastic grin holding his expression as he switched to an effortless Japanese. "Now, dear, perhaps we can find another place-"
"My daughter is dead, Jack! There is no other place!"
"Sydney is not dead."
It was enough to bring reality to a halt. A choking sob caught her words in her throat, and her eyes, wide and dripping with tears that she did not notice until the cold Vienna air hit the salty moisture on her skin, bore into his own.
Her daughter was her weakness, her daughter was her life, and she understood just how her preoccupation with her daughter's death could cause her own destruction when Jack smiled, a gun suddenly placed underneath her coat, muzzle pressed up against her side.
He cocked it with a barely audible click.
"Calm down," he instructed, low and soft in her ear. "Irina, listen to me. We cannot afford to have you make this more difficult. Do not resort to old habits. There are things I need to explain to you, but we can NOT do this out in the open."
A cacophony of emotions that had flooded through her body in a matter of minutes left behind a quiet woman. Jack's tone, methodic and urgent, brought back the rational mind, and it battled with her instinct - the image of her daughter burned and mutilated in her home.
Around them, people began to speak, whisper. Two feet away, her bodyguard was beginning to stir.
With a low, quiet, civil tone, she turned to her husband, cocking her head with a loving glance. "Unless the explanation satisfies me, Jack darling, I will kill you for the pain you have caused me."
It was a double-standard. After all, she herself was responsible for the death of his wife, whom she knew he had dearly loved. The hypocrisy was not lost on her. Judging by the half smile, the blazing anger in Jack's beautiful orbs, it was quite clear it was not lost on him, either.
But she meant every word.
"Meet me tonight," he whispered. "I'll phone you with the rendezvous-"
"Impossible," she said glibly. "I do not trust you, Jack. We will meet according to my terms."
"Because I have any reason to trust you?"
Her glance was riddled in steel. "You sought me out, Jack. Not the other way around. I have no intention of hurting you at all, you knew that the moment you found me here."
His chin clamped, strong features made even more defined by the frustrated gesture. There was nothing he could say to that. His loving wife knew him too well.
Only a small smile detected her smugness before it slipped, and she moved away from the gun, allowing him time to readjust the weapon so it hung out of sight before turning toward him. Palms carefully slid up the trench coat, and in a role that was almost too easy to slip back into, she played the loving wife, adjusting his collar, staring deeply into his eyes. With an apologetic smile, she replaced the bloody napkin with a fresh one, gently wiping at the blood.
"Get out of here, I will call you."
For the benefit of the audience, he leaned forward, and once again, she felt the feather light brush of a kiss from Jack's lips.
Her weakness for his touch was difficult to hide. Her breath was almost ragged as she pushed him away, just as her second guard crashed through the crowd.
"What happened?" he demanded, glaring at the waiters and the manager, all who irately waited their turn to share their grievances at being the unfortunate hosts of Jack and Irina's latest marriage spat.
Leaning down, Irina gathered her bag and slipped on her sun glasses, offering Antonio a grim shrug.
"I tripped."
--
He found her in the back room of a tavern in Ireland, sitting on a rickety wooden bench, palms wrapped daintily around a large mug of something unmistakably alcoholic.
"Good evening," she said softly. "Nose is better, I hope." As usual, Jack had no expression. Dressed in his trademark suit, he seemed unchangeable: an intimidating man with a glower that could freeze anyone.
And yet, for ten years, she had been the one with the key to melting his heart, to the point where she could make him burn.
The thought put a smile on her face, and she welcomed it. Since his appearance in Vienna, it was all she could do to keep from going insane, heading back to Los Angeles on the first flight, CIA be damned, to find the truth about her daughter. Her obsession with Sydney, she found, was only nearly matched by two others: Rambaldi, shaken once her daughter had been lost, and Jack Bristow, who was standing in this room, not attempting to kill her.
Well, she amended. Not yet.
"Come in." She was polite enough, motioning to the empty chair beside her with a graceful sweep of her palm.
"Interesting place," he said finally, adjusting his grip on his briefcase and coming forward, closing the door behind him. His nose wrinkled at the smell, and it caused a smirk on her face, nearly hidden when she took another drink.
"It has its purposes."
"Such as?"
"It's safe, for one," she answered matter-of-factly, implication clear. No one here was loyal to the CIA, and while Irina could not say they were loyal to her, the tavern owners knew very well who she was, what she was capable of. An awkward silence that passed, much too slowly.
Irina was a subtle woman. She never demanded, she never gave ultimatums or threats - she simply asked. Sometimes nicely. The consequences then, were always then the fault of the person being questioned. If they chose not to cooperate, she made them understand why they should.
But she never demanded.
At this moment, she wondered, as another mouthful of burning alcohol seared her stomach, how long she would last before she fell on her knees and begged Jack for information concerning Sydney.
Licking her lips, she brought down her drink, taking in a short, hasty breath before glancing up to meet his gaze. "I assume, since you have not tried to kill me, you have something you would like to discuss?"
"Do you love our daughter?" The answer was direct, to the point. Pure Jack. "If you lie, I'll know."
Silent for a moment, she shook her head slightly. "You may find this hard to believe, but I swore after ... " her eyes flickered to him, and he glared, almost daring her to say it. She chuckled grimly, glancing away. "... certain events that I would not lie to you again. I never did, concerning Sydney."
"You're right. I find that hard to believe."
"I love my daughter, Jack," she whispered.
Finally, his bitterness made an appearance. A low, grim laugh that made her shake her head as well. Reaching beside her, she found the bottle she had saved, locating his brand and sliding it across the table to his fingertips. "Your love is not worth much, Irina."
It would have stung, had she not been consumed with thoughts of Sydney.
"Is this your payment, then?" she asked quietly. "Making me sit here, near panic, broken hearted at the news of the death of my daughter, while you toy with me?" He glanced at her, glare impassive. "Would you have me beg, Jack?"
His smile faded. "No," he said finally, pushing the beer away and shifting in his seat. "I'm here because if you love your daughter, then you're the only one that can help me."
Irina could not make sense of that. Fingers fell away from her cup, and her eyes narrowed in intensity. "I do not understand."
"You've been out of the country a good long while, Irina, I know you haven't kept track. You would have found out sooner, had you kept in touch- "
Irina blinked, looking away. He held no accusation in his tone, but it did not assuage the bitterness that sank into her belly. "I could not endanger Sydney by attempting to keep contact, I assumed that with you there to take care of her, she would eventually forget me and-"
"I know." His clipped assurance made her swallow, as a briefcase clapped on the wooden table and he released the clasps. "Sydney is alive, Irina."
"How can you be so certain?" she whispered. He pulled out a tape, black and ominous, unmarked. Her glance was unsure. "What is that?"
"It's proof. No one will help me, they've all given up on her. But if you love her. If any part of her mother loved her for more than the ten years you pretended to love me, then you will help me."
It was a challenge, and yet, it was something else. Something she never expected to hear from Jack.
It was a plea.
A desperate man was capable of so much. Even strike a deal with the devil, his personal incarnation of all that was evil. He had hated her for so long. Had this been any other time, she had no doubt he would have tried to kill her. And yet, here they were, being polite and civil.
She took a moment to gather her words, tried so very hard to say them without slipping. "You're wrong," she clipped. His mouth dropped, and his hand began to fall, when she suddenly continued, "I never pretended to love you. That emotion was quite real. For you and for Sydney. It was the one thing I did not lie to you about. Even if I lied to myself."
That confession left him at a loss for words, and later, Irina would tell herself that that was its purpose.
"Working with me could get you arrested."
"I don't care."
They shared a glance. Any other time, she would have described it as smoldering, remnants of passion that refused to fade to anything lower than a soft simmer.
But that was not what this glance was. It was a glance between a wife and her husband, parents who desperately loved their daughter above all else.
Nothing else mattered.
"Show me the tape."
--