Chapter Thirteen:

Jack sat at the kitchen table studying the bundle of letters that had arrived the previous day. It wasn't everyday that he received love letters from his wife. His dead wife. His ex-wife. Irina. A smile graced the usually emotionless face, lighting up his features. She had been thinking of him, just as he had been thinking of her. Jack paged through the handwritten pages, slightly amazed at the comfort their presence brought him.

He stood up from the table suddenly; a problem had occurred to him--how was he supposed to write back or send his bundle of letters, if they could even be called that. Jack smirked slightly at the thought of the look of shock that would come over Irina when she opened the package to find notes written on cocktail napkins and in the margins of various documents.

How the hell does she expect me to respond if I don't have a clue as to where she is? It's not like the CIA has any idea, he thought as he ran his hand through his unruly mass of hair. As he paced in the room, straightening his hair as he walked, an idea came upon him, Irina will be happy that my hair has grown longer...not now Bristow, you've got to figure out where exactly she is, before someone else does...

Images of Irina being tortured and violently murdered flashed through his mind. His fists clenched unconsciously, his fingernails almost drawing blood.

No one is allowed to touch my wife but me, he thought, mildly surprised at the amount of possessiveness he felt towards Irina.

While his internal monologue continued, Jack realized that the answer to his problem lay inside his very house--his den. With this epiphany, Jack dashed into his home office, pulling open a file drawer. Inside lay all of the research he had done on his wife--her history, her family, her favourite cities--almost anything he would want to know about her was held within the file cabinet. Most of it was his own private research and files that he had documented over the past twenty years, information that was not necessarily known by the CIA. Flipping through one file in particular, Jack pulled out a sheet of paper listing the location of her various residences that he had recently discovered.

Thinking to himself, he added, That she recently allowed me to discover, a wry smile appearing.

Picking out her residence in Russia, Jack went back to his desk, pulled out the brown envelope that contained his letters, and opened it, examining the different messages that he had accumulated for his wife. He pulled out a piece of paper covered in his meticulous handwriting and studied it, reading carefully.

Opening up to people is a weakness, it is a vulnerability to be exploited.

When this is your belief, you know that you're broken, that you're damaged goods, and that from this point forward, nothing will be the same. All is for naught, and trying to deny the knowledge that all emotion and feelings that you once may have had, have been sucked dry does nothing for you. There is no joy in your feelings any longer. Instead there is only the stony facade that remains. This becomes your shield, your protection from yourself. You know that while a loss of control once left you with nothing, your stern countenance will allow you to go day to day, finding strategic opportunities and exploiting them to your advantage. This continues until you have become the very thing you hated to begin with.

The words from a broken soul have no satisfaction for you. Only utter desolation and the absence of that which broke you might allow a slight glimmer of what once was to escape the grips of your pain. And even then, it is not enough. Nothing ever will be. There is nothing left for you save the frost that has consumed your soul.

Imagine a time when things were better, when lust and love were confused, and the fatal mistake was made. The powerful knowledge that you no longer see the beauty in life that once sang to you, your heart beating in tune, is an Armageddon of sorts. That which destroyed you may still be revealed to be your salvation. Grace has not been bestowed upon you, the path of virtue having been long abandoned. Life is merely a mockery of that which you appreciated. When it is gone, what will remain?

While the future may be lost for you, the power to affect that of others remains in your possession. What will you do?

Often times, hiding one's emotions allows for the truth to also remain hidden. The hidden passions and desires that threaten to drive one insane are typically best not shared. The memory of the trouble revealing your desires once got you in serves as an excellent deterrent to committing the same mistake more than once. However, at the same time, withholding these secret passions may prove to be more damaging than it would be to reveal them. One thing has certainly changed, your need and thirst for an emotional connection no longer fuels and drives your passions. Instead your physical desires are animalistic and brutal. Your humanity is all but lost. Primitive wants invade your mind and only gratification and fulfillment will allow them to be vanquished. And so you become entangled with your destroyer once again. This time, however, you thirst for the most basic of needs, detesting and despising the weakness in you that once would have sought for an emotional connection with your own private Shiva. Your lips curl upwards, almost a smile, the unused muscles in your stony face cracking, but the loss of innocence in your eyes reveals the true nature of your facial expression--a smirk. Realizing now that sexual gratification best comes served without a side of emotional attachment. Thus the twisted tango begins once more, and you and your annihilator dance the same familiar steps with the same familiar faces. All that is different is the tune. It is a bizarre mating ritual. This time, though, your former weakness, your heart, having been stilled, will perhaps allow for a new victor to emerge from the spinning and swirling steps of your sultry and intoxicating relationship.

He stared at the sheet for a moment and crumpled it up; it wouldn't do for him to send his wife a note like that when they were trying to reconcile and find one another again. And he especially did not want to remind his wife of his one-time dream of being a writer.

"Mom may have been right," he thought, "she always wanted me to write the 'next great American novel.'" For a moment, Jack pondered what life would be like had he made that decision, then remembered that he would have neither Irina nor Sydney in his life, and pushed that memory back to a far corner of his mind.

Jack then picked up the brown envelope with his other messages for Irina and addressed it to her home in Russia, which she reportedly shared with her two sisters.

I can see it now; Welcome to Chez Derevko, tonight we have a special on torture with the three sisters, Elena, Katya and Irina, offering up a skilled demonstration of their knife-wielding abilities,' he smiled vaguely at the idea of a circus-like performance with the three women swinging on trapezes, all the while tossing knives back and forth.

Standing up, Jack went out to his mailbox, and after flicking up the little flag that signaled the postman to pick up a letter, began mental calculating how long it would take for her to receive the letters. He frowned for a moment, wondering what would happen if Irina wasn't there when his letters arrived, realizing that she wouldn't be particularly happy with him if her sisters saw...Jack stopped and looked up towards the heavens, beseeching some higher power to help him avoid torture at the hands of his sisters-in-law and maybe help him get his wife to come home.

TBC