Title: Checkered Past

Summary: Jack's sins catch up to him. Set between seasons 2 and 3.

Spoilers: through the first episode of season 3.

Disclaimer: Alias and associated characters obviously aren't mine. ABC and JJ Abrams hold that honour.

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Season 3; She was a KGB spy who cared nothing about you or me. I've always thought that you understood your relationship with Irina was nothing more than that. But now that your schoolboy crush on the woman who destroyed your life is preventing you from saving mine, I will have to revise that assessment. (Sloane)

Season 2; Irina may have wanted to save Sydney's life. (Jack)

I doubt that's the case. (Sydney)

Season 1; What? Do you mean did I engineer it somehow? No, Sydney, of course not. (Jack)

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He had been in his office when they came. Kendall dropped in first, ostensibly to discuss a new development for the mission briefing he was supposed to give later that afternoon, but two other agents were around the corner, and more were on standby with tranquilizers at each of the exits. There was something in Kendall's stance that warned him of what was coming, so he double clicked an icon on his desktop before turning off his monitor and following the Assistant Director out of the office.

"Where are we going?" Jack had asked, eyeing the two beefy agents and recognizing their purpose immediately.

"Interrogation room three," Kendall had replied, the note of challenge in his tone daring Jack to make a break for it, urging him to give any excuse for laying a charge of resisting arrest on him.

If one of the agents guarding a side corridor hadn't drawn his tranq gun when Jack looked past him, he might have been tempted. "Who do you want me to question?" Jack asked falling into step beside Kendall. Appearances only. Kendall wasn't fooled and didn't answer. Jack took comfort in the fact that he wasn't being perp walked through headquarters.

When they reach the cell, however, Jack balked. The chair dominating the center wasn't the ordinary metal folding chair that usually occupied its place. "You are not drugging me," he refused, dropping all pretenses that he wasn't the target. Kendall must have made a signal to the two heavies, because one of them stepped forward and sprayed something in his face. When he awoke, he was on the bunk in Irina's cell.

Looking around, he saw Kendall standing on the other side of the glass. Jack's eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together. He didn't know if he'd been drugged while he was out, and he wasn't going risk talking.

"You failed the first test, Jack," Kendall said after a few moments of exchanging glares. "An innocent agent would have agreed to sit down."

Jack bit down on his first retort that he hadn't been an innocent agent in over twenty years. "Everyone has secrets, Kendall."

"Sure, Jack, but most folk don't have secrets that are felonies." Jack continued to return a stony glare, but he made no verbal response. "Jack, I urge you to cooperate with me. Tell us where you were on November twenty third."

"I was at home," Jack lied, easing his mind that at least he wasn't under any compulsion to speak the truth yet. The date given, however, was less than reassuring. "And no, I haven't any witnesses. My only company was a bottle of bourbon." Given his patterns, it would almost have been more suspicious for him to have an alibi on the date in question. The idea of securing one had been discussed and rejected. After Will and Sydney had both confronted him in the same bar, he'd decided his schedule must be too predictable and had begun to do his drinking alone. It gave him a convenient time window where he wasn't expected anywhere.

"We have reason to believe you were Mexico."

Shit.

"What sort of reason?"

Kendall opened a folder that he'd been holding tucked under one arm. He seemed to consider what he was looking at for a moment, then dropped something that might have been a small memo or a photograph into the slot that would allow Jack to have it. Jack rose from his cot and opened the slot on his side, drawing out the surveillance photo. He said nothing.

When it became obvious he wasn't going to comment, Kendall broke the silence. "That was taken from the security camera in a restraunt in Mexico City. I expect you know the name of it as well as I do." Los Gonzalez Hermanos. Not the most imaginative name that Gonzalez brothers could have come up with for their establishment, but the food was good. Irina said their salsa dip was the best in world. She'd made him try it, reaching across the table to insert the salsa loaded tortilla chip into his mouth.

That moment was immortalized in the picture held in his hand.

"Do you make a habit of reviewing the security footage of Mexican restraunts or were you tipped off about this? I suggest you consider your source." If Sloane or someone associated with Sydney's disappearance was trying to get him out of the way, it was possible they'd believe it was forged.

Kendall was not amused. "As it happens, Jack, we were reviewing the security footage of that Mexican restraunt. You happened to be there a half hour before a guns trading deal was scheduled to begin. The surveillance crews were doing a scan to see if any of the players had shown up yet. The recognition software flagged Derevko."

"Crap." Such a small word to express everything wrapped up in the mild explicative.

"She's number six on the CIA's most wanted, Jack. What were you doing there with her?"

Jack's eyes narrowed. "I was having a date with my wife, what does it look like I was doing?"

Kendall slammed an open palm against the glass separating them in frustration. "Dammit, Jack! This is serious! They want to charge you with treason!"

Jack did not reply, only continued to glare at Kendall. Inwardly, he felt his heart clench. A brief recap reel of all his crimes over the past twenty years flashed momentarily through his mind and he knew the judge would not be lenient with him. That he was innocent of the stated charge hardly mattered.

Kendall sighed, further evidence of his irritation with Jack's lack of cooperation. "Fine, Jack. Rot in there." He turned to leave.

"I'll speak to Ben," Jack conceded.

Jack wasn't sure what reaction he expected from Kendall, but the one he got wasn't it. "What is it with you and your family only talking to certain people?! Dammit, Jack, you know the whole Agency will know what you said in a few hours anyway!"

Perversely, Kendall's outburst reassured him. Jack raised a steel-coloured eyebrow and calmly repeated, "I'll speak to Ben." The point, after all, was not to keep information from the Agency. The point was to assert some control on the situation. Irina had understood that.

That, and Ben was infinitely easier to talk to than Kendall. Kendall was an ass.

Kendall left, muttering under his breath. About a half hour later, Ben Devlin arrived in front of Jack's cell. "Jack," Devlin said, his disappointment obvious not only in his voice, but also his expression and stance. They had been friends once, but Jack knew that would be the wrong card to play now.

"Ben," Jack returned neutrally. He considered several opening statements for his defense and rejected them all. "What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with why you were meeting with Irina Derevko. Give me that cock and bull about dating your wife, Jack, and I will hand you to the executioner myself." There was nothing in his delivery that belied the impression that Devlin thought he was dealing with a traitor.

Truth takes time. Irina had said that a lot, to both him and Sydney, while she was trying to earn back their trust. He hadn't thought he would ever look at it from her side. But he was finding an uncomfortable number of parallels already. He was even in the same damned glass cage.

Jack met Ben's condemning gaze unflinchingly. "Sydney's alive. Irina is helping me find her."

Something changed in Ben's eyes, and the Director was suddenly impossible to read. "When did you begin contact with Irina Derevko? Who initiated the correspondence and how?"

Jack searched his former friend's eyes, trying to get some sense of where he stood. The fact that he couldn't gave him an unexpected stab of uncertainty. "At Sydney's funeral. A man dressed as one of the pallbearers passed me a slip of paper with a phone number on it. I recognized Irina's handwriting and called. We arranged a meet in Tokyo in three days. Six days later, we met in a bar in India. We had established the location and code when we had the mission together there."

Surprise cracked through Devlin's mask. "I thought you still hated her then."

"I did at the beginning. Ever seen a couple going through divorce, Ben?"

The question was as much to keep Devlin too off-balance to replace his walls as because Jack had a point to make. It succeeded. Jack read confusion in Ben's expression. "Yeah."

"Irina and I were worse. Frankly, I'm surprised Sydney didn't shoot us both and do the mission alone. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had; lectured her, yes, but blamed her, no. But she didn't and having your life saved twice in one day by the woman you've sworn to despise does tend to lessen your ire marginally. We ended the mission in a truce, and that's when we arranged the location and contact protocol."

"Why? She was in CIA custody. You could meet her whenever you wanted to." Devlin's expression gave away enough to show he was both suspicious and curious.

Jack ran a hand through his hair. "From the very first day she walked in, what was the one thing I have always maintained about Irina Derevko's purpose at the CIA?"

"That she wanted something," Devlin answered immediately.

Jack nodded. "And once she got what she wanted, whatever it was, she would have no reason to stay. I never doubted that she had an exit strategy."

"Did you have sex with her?"

The question came so bluntly and from nowhere that Jack could not cover his surprise. "Did I what?"

Devlin's expression was closed off again. "It was a straightforward question, Jack. Were you and Irina Derevko intimate? In Panama?"

Jack felt his blood pressure escalate and forced himself to calm. He never blushed, so he was safe from that tell. He maintained eye contact and let none of his anxiety show. That question would break everything, take away any credibility he might hope to have. It had to be a bluff. If there was evidence, it would have appeared before now. "Of course not."

He felt he should add in something along the lines of 'I'm not stupid' but feared that it would not only be too much like the lady who doth protest too much, but patently untrue as well.

Devlin nodded, not necessarily in belief, but in acknowledgement that Jack had given an answer. "Where is she now?"

"I don't know."

"How could we contact her?"

"You can't."

Devlin shook his head. "Jack, you have to cooperate."

Jack's stance closed into mulish stubbornness. "I am."

"Give up Irina Derevko."

"No."

Devlin's eyebrows shot up. "No?"

Jack shook his head. "No. She's looking for Sydney, which is more than this Agency is doing."

Devlin closed his eyes and apparently counted to ten, because it was that many seconds before he opened them again. "Sydney's dead, Jack."

Jack turned his back on his old friend, so he couldn't see the defeat that suddenly overwhelmed him. "Leave, Ben."

"Jack."

Jack turned back toward him, anger replacing the defeat of a moment before. "As long as you believe my daughter is dead, the best you can possibly believe of me is that Irina has duped me again."

For a second, he saw it in Ben's eyes before the mask took shape again. For a second, Jack's eyes reflected the same bleak look he'd seen. "That is what you think," Jack observed.

They stared at each other for a full minute without a word passing between them, neither willing to drop their stoic silence first. Devlin broke first. "It is either that, or Sydney's death caused you to loose touch with reality."

Jack's only response was a small shift of his jaw.

Devlin nodded, as if he had said or done something significant. "Good night, Jack."

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Judy Barnett was his next visitor. Her welcome was more than a little hostile. "I assure you, Dr. Barnett, that my grip on reality was not sundered by my daughter's apparent death," he said in lieu of a greeting. He did not rise from his seat on the bunk, nor even look at her after his first glance confirmed her identity.

"How long did it take you to compose that opening remark, Jack?" she asked, unperturbed. "Was it designed to start the session on a confrontational tone, determine how much your previous interviews have influenced the decision to send me here, or establish that you believe your daughter is alive?"

Jack pressed his lips together and did not shift his gaze toward her. It would be better all around for him to simply not talk. Though she frequently misread him, she did occasionally have a gem of insight, and that was more than he was willing to risk. The very last thing he needed was for the staff psychologist to determine that his relationship with Irina Derevko was other than a professional alliance to determine the location of their missing daughter.

"Jack," she probed again, "tell me why you think Sydney is alive."

This was another thing he could not divulge. While the video would prove his point, it would also establish Sydney as a freelance assassin. Not something the CIA would take kindly. But he had to clear up the misconception of 'belief' versus 'fact'. "I do not 'think' she's alive, Doctor, I know she is," he said, recognizing even as he did that it was a worse than weak argument. He should have stuck to his original plan to keep silent.

"How?" she prompted.

He shook his head.

"Do you 'know', Jack, or do you simply want to believe that she's alive?"

For the first time this interview, he met her eyes with an angry glare. "I know."

Barnett smiled encouragingly, "Tell me how you know, then."

Jack looked at the floor again, swearing to himself not to speak another word.

"During our very first session, Agent Bristow, I said that you were a man so skilled in deception that you were in danger of deceiving even yourself. After a year of covert association with Irina Derevko, I expect that assessment has only become more true."

It was with more difficulty than he was willing to admit that he did not ask 'What has Irina to do with my deceiving myself?' The answer was obvious, anyway. Had he asked, he would have played right into Barnett's trap. 'You tell me,' she would have said, and he'd be back to staring at the floor with even more ground lost.

Over the next few minutes, Barnett introduced a few more leading questions and statements, each one a little easier to ignore than the last. Eventually, she lost patience talking to the wall and left. Jack congratulated himself on his victory.

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Kendall returned after Barnett. Jack immediately recognized the 'bad cop' routine and refused to cooperate as a matter of principle. The accusation that Marshall had found a program on his computer that had sent a large amount of data to an outside server then overwrote all the local copies with garbage was met with silence. In fact, during the entire interview, Jack never said a word.

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Weiss was apparently elected as the 'good cop'. "Hey, Jack," the young agent greeted him cheerfully when the gates stopped clanking.

"Agent Weiss," Jack said, "I will say one thing, and one thing only. Everything I have done was in an effort to find my daughter. Including supplying Irina with information that I will no longer be able to use."

Weiss nodded, seeming to believe him, but that might just be Weiss's version of a mask. Jack didn't know the man very well. Of course, Weiss had been one of Sydney's friends, so he may very well believe it in truth. Vaughn, at least, had understood there was nothing sacred if Jack thought his daughter was threatened. "So," Weiss drew out the word, "you think you'll be in here a while?"

Jack scowled. "Don't patronize me."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir."

There was an awkward silence during which Weiss wouldn't look at him. Eventually, though, he did, and picked up more or less where they had left off. "I expect you don't need me to tell you that unless you give us some leads on Derevko, you're not leaving there."

"I don't have to tell you a thing about Irina."

Weiss made an indifferent shrug. "We could make you."

Jack gave an almost imperceptible smile as he slowly shook his head. "Not legally. She's my wife."

The expression on Weiss's face was priceless, worth the all the flack that bombshell would cause. His only regret was that Kendall hadn't been in the room to hear it, too. "Your ex-wife," Weiss tried to correct him, in obvious denial.

"My wife. It's still legal. I never annulled it, never divorced her."

"My God, why not?" The honest reaction was refreshing. Jack decided he liked Weiss.

"For the first twenty years, it was because I thought she was dead, and because I had appearances to keep up for Sydney. When I found out she was alive," Jack tried to think of how to explain it without sounding either masochistic or . . . unprofessional. "It seemed like cheating."

That was apparently the wrong way to put it. Weiss gave him a look that could only be described as 'weird'. "Hang on," Weiss held up a hand, shook his head as if to clear it, opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. "You are Jack Bristow, right? The guy who plays fast and loose with every law, rule, and guideline the CIA is supposed to adhere to? You expect me to believe cheating bothers you?"

Yes, Jack decided, he did like Eric Weiss. Jack smirked. "Normally, no. But with Irina, all bets are off. Up is down, right is wrong, and fair is cheating."

"All's fair in love and war?" Weiss quipped and it was obvious he regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. His eyes went round, and he glanced at Jack as if expecting him to somehow smite him through the glass wall.

Jack merely raised an eyebrow. "Essentially."

Weiss looked satisfactorily smited.