Author: wyoluvr
Title: The Sisters Derevko
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I definitely don't own Alias.
Summary: "At school, she and her sisters were the Derevko sisters, nearly always together, nearly always a unified front." Alias Femme Fatale ritten for: Vanzetti. Hope you enjoy. Pairing/scenario requested: Irina and what she was up to in Season 3. I didn't really hit the mark, so much as flirt with it, but I tried.
Irina winced as a rough piece of bark scraped her hand. She brought the reddened skin to her mouth, annoyed that Elena's choice of rendezvous was never a well-equipped, perhaps seemingly remote Chalet or country cottage. Not, it was always a basic cabin. She'd be lucky if it had indoor plumbing.
According to the letter Elena had left for her, she was to leave the Hummer at the bottom of a hill, marked by a chestnut tree split in two. She wondered if Elena or Katya had chosen this rendezvous, really, whether love or justice were lurking. Irina put the truck into park at the tree and rolled her eyes which followed the 'hill' up into murky darkness. She killed the engine, checked the gun in her shoulder holster, grabbed her pack, and began to climb. It wasn't a cold night, but it wasn't really warm, either. The air brushed tree branches into her face. Irina shivered, aware that she was quite alone on this hillside.
As a young girl, Irina had slept four to a bed, lying between Elena and Katya, their grandparents framing the girls. Mama and Papa and the new baby, Sergei who died when he was 2, slept in their own small bed. They'd cuddled tight together in the middle of the bed, creating a warm barrier against the chilly apartment.
Irina's fingers scrabbled for purchase against a too smooth rock, but finally they settled into the crevasse of a boulder.
At school, she and her sisters had been the Derevko sisters, nearly always together, nearly always a unified front. If you hurt one, you hurt all of them. Papa would pull them aside at home and sternly tell them that nothing, absolutely nothing on this earth was more important than family. They were sisters and should never betray each other. Papa made it seem worse than death, to betray a sister.
This stayed with Irina.
Irina had remained at home through university, as first Elena and then Katya joined her, and it was not until the KGB recruited her that she'd spent her first night without a family member by her side. She had wept all night, waking at dawn to an hot, aching face and a wet pillow. The loneliness forged a sour place inside her heart that Irina could never forget. Still, life moved on. Irina was not foolish enough to regret the KGB, or accepting without question the assignment to infiltrate Jack Bristow's life, and definitely not the decision to carry through with both of her pregnancies.
Elena once asked her if she'd considered abortion. Irina never answered. She recalls clearly the day she realized that she was pregnant with Sydney. Jack had left early that morning for Vancouver; Lisbon, actually, not that it mattered that time. It was a lazy, slow morning. Jack must have opened the drapes before he left and the sun heated the bed and Irina's skin. It had only taken a slide onto her back to make Irina's stomach rebel and she bolted for the bathroom, falling to her knees and retching into the porcelain toilet. She'd immediately informed Khasinau, but regretted the telling seconds later. It was the only time in her life that she'd ever acted hastily.
Perhaps, perhaps if she'd waited and aborted Sydney before. Before her superiors informed her that a recently translated Rambaldi prophecy foretold that her daughter would be "important." They'd given her only that much information to consider for the next 6 years. There had been too many times, smoothing Sydney's fine, wispy hair away from her forehead, when Rambaldi became for Irina nothing more than a myth. A madman who had nothing to do with her or her daughter or this candy-shell life that she'd created.
Ah, Irina laughed to herself. Or perhaps really at herself. No one was safe from nostalgia.
The cabin was in sight now, but there were no lights. Silently, Irina took her gun from its holster. A few steps closer and Irina saw a yellow flutter against a tree, nearly hidden in shadow. It was a note, attached to the tree by a small knife. She took the note down and pocketed the knife.
Dear sister, it read, I have business elsewhere. The cabin is stocked. – Elena.
Dear Elena, never where she was supposed to be, rarely on time and always full of apologies. Sydney reminded Irina of her baby sister, but not because Sydney wasn't punctual. No, Elena had never lost her veneer of hopeful determination, her earnest belief that everything would work out for the best, in the end. Neither Katya nor herself had ever disabused Elena of that belief. It was better to have someone believing that, than no one at all.
Soon, a cup of tea in hand (happily, the cabin had both indoor plumbing and a decent selection of teas...and red wine), Irina sat at a table next to the small kitchen and took a thin, battered book out of her knapsack.
The book was all she had of her second daughter. It's a diary, of sorts. Irina found it, still warm or she so had imagined, hours after someone had whisked her second daughter away from her. Nadia's precise hand-writing spoke stiffly of silly, common things, such as what she'd had for breakfast or a walk outside the compound. But there were three or four posts about her dreams. Dreams where she had a beautiful older sister who protected her, brushed her hair and tied it up in pink ribbons, and took her out to a carousel, something Nadia could not have had first-hand knowledge of, locked up in the middle of Russia.
Irina closed the book, pushing it away from her. Stiffly, she got up and poured her now cold tea down the drain before rinsing out the mug. The door latched, the journal lodged safely in her bag which she hauled closer to the bed, off to one side of the large main room, Irina stripped down to her underwear and slipped between the covers.
Her hand stilled with her fingers touching the bedside lamp's cord. The dark seemed so oppressive tonight, and it reminded her. Of a five year old Sydney, begging Jack to leave the lights on. Of Nadia, wishing for her brave older sister to defend her against her waking demons. Of Elena, whimpering with fear until Katya pulled her tight against her body. With a sharp snap, Irina clicked the cord, plunging the tiny cabin into darkness. She cradled the covers to her chest, closed her eyes, and rested.