Prompt #3: I was taught to win, taught to fight, I never thought I could fail – 'Don't Give Up', Peter Gabriel
She looks in the mirror for traces of the woman she used to be. She mouths the name of the dead, afraid to give voice to it, as if acknowledging it aloud will bring the woman back to life.
Laura.
She is thinner than when she left America; time in Kashmir has taken its toll on her – she cannot sleep more than fours hours at a time, and her appetite is practically non-existent. They gave her a month after they released her. She could hardly return to Russia looking as if she's spent time in prison; that wouldn't look good for the Party.
Tonight there will be a celebration in Moscow, and Irina will smile and laugh with her comrades. She will tell them how awful America was and how glad she is to be back home at last. She will tell them what a fool Jack Bristow is and how she despised him. She will say her child is a brat and she's glad to be rid of her.
(Those who watched her in Kashmir will watch her closely tonight. But she will say nothing of a baby, of unexpected tears as her wedding rings were ripped away, of nights where she dreamed her name was still Laura. And those who are watching will nod and smile and congratulate themselves on a job well done.)
Tonight they will toast her successful mission, and Irina will dance and laugh and drink, and go home with one of the men who are sure to come on to her. She will fuck him, and try to forget the life she lost.
But that is tonight. Now, she sits at the dresser, a shell of the person she wants to be. She closes her eyes, and Jack is in the room with her. "Why didn't you tell me?" he says. "We could have disappeared."
"I'm sorry," she says. When she opens her eyes the room is empty and Katya is knocking on the door.
Irina tells her sister to come in, then picks up the eyeliner. Her hands do not shake as she adds kohl to her eyes, and if she notices that the tan from the rings on her left hand has faded, she won't say.
"What the hell did they do to you?" Katya is as blunt as ever.
Irina continues applying make up, the colours darker than anything Laura ever wore, and she wonders what Jack would say if he saw her now. She tells herself not to think of Jack.
"Ira, look at me."
Irina turns in her seat and smiles. It is not Laura's smile; it is the smile of the woman who will become The Man, and as Irina stands to leave for the party, she leaves Laura at the mirror, and tells herself that the dead woman will be her last failure.