Title: Lost
Word count: 500
Notes: Written for the rewind challenge at alias500: one night. Companion piece to Ghosts. Set during Sydney's missing two years.
Irina is sprawled out on her stomach on the living room carpet, nose to nose with a large grey tabby. The cat's tail thumps once, twice, three times on the floor, and then the cat flops onto its side, its green eyes still fixed on Irina.
It's a somewhat surreal image, Jack thinks when he arrives home from work to find his wife petting the cat. It is a scene that belongs to a life long in the past and when Irina looks up and smiles at him, he thinks Laura.
"You didn't tell me you had kittens," she says accusingly. On cue, one of them darts out from under the couch to pounce on its mother's tail.
"They're not mine." Jack loosens his tie and sits down. "She's not really my cat either."
"She has a collar." Irina scratches the tabby's chin. "And you feed her. Does she have a name?"
Jack sighs; he might as well humour her. "Anna."
Irina sits up then, giving him one of her full smiles. It's been a long time since he could take pleasure in seeing her look so delighted. "I once had a cat called Vronsky."
"Does this story have a happy ending?"
Irina leans against his legs and rubs Anna's fur. The other kitten, an orange tom, has also come out and is sitting at Irina's feet, staring up at her. Irina scratches his head, then chuckles when he jumps onto her lap and nuzzles her. "Oh! Hello!"
In moments like these, Jack reflects, it is easy to pretend that nothing ever went wrong, that she is not a wanted woman, that their daughter is not lost to them, that they are who they always were. In moments like these, Jack sees how they could have been, and he wishes they were.
Perhaps that is why he says, "Do you want him?"
Her smile is all the answer he needs.
The kitten seems to understand; he makes a small chirping noise and his purr is loud enough for Jack to hear. Irina lifts the cat to her face, rubbing her cheek against his fur.
"Hello, koshka." Irina uses the same voice she would to speak to a child.
Jack smiles.
Irina looks at him again; her expression changes and she puts the kitten on the floor and slowly crawls up to straddle Jack. "Spasibo," she says, so close that her lips brush his.
"You're welcome."
They sit like that for a moment. She looks at him as if she's searching for something but he's not sure what that is. He wonders if he should be concerned that he's no longer worried about what she sees in him. He doesn't think he could hide from her again if he tried.
He slides his hands through her hair as he kisses her. She tastes of wine and cigarettes; her kiss is as familiar as it is foreign, but it is Irina he whispers, not Laura, and he knows that he is lost.