Alias Ficathon Entry
So, yahtzee63 started this awesome fanfiction challenge where you have to resurrect one of the characters the stupid monkey writers killed off. At first, I didn't want to participate because...seriously, why the hell should we fans who got screwed over try to fix what the writers messed up? But it is still an awesome idea, and also, you will notice that I make it kind of easy for myself. No clones involved! :P
Title: Untitled so far
Written for: gentilhomme
Requirements: Resurrect Jack, good/non-psycho finale Irina (in a shippy way if possible), Sark (not shippy!), Arvin.
NOTE: My muse was eaten by the plothole and the awful exams that are getting closer and closer (only one week to go), so this is only the first part of god knows how many. *blushes*
Also, english is not my first language and this is unedited because there was nobody around to beta it for me, so...bear with my grammar.
The barman furrowed his brows and regarded the man who was sitting on the far end of the wooden bar a bit more closely.
His right hand was following the scratches on the old wood as if they were trails to long forgotten treasures, while his other hand was wrapped around a glass filled with scotch. He appeared lost deep in thought, and yet he sensed the barman scrutinizing him and sent him a look of cold hardness that caused the poor fellow instinctively to walk a few steps backwards.
He watched as the barman got the silent message, and only when he had started to work on cleaning up glasses on the other end of the bar again he allowed himself to stare back into the glass of golden liquid.
The barman was forgotten within seconds, and he was lost in another replay of the events that led to his presence in this old bar. Ironic, that it had to be a bar, wasn’t it?
The smell of a perfume all too familiar had him stiffen. No, it couldn’t be. Impossible.
He sensed her presence behind him and wanted to bang his head against the next wall when he felt her hand lightly on his shoulder before she slipped into the chair right next to him.
Only then he looked up and eyed her warily. Of course she looked beautiful. Of course did she meet his glare with an amused expression. Hell, it was his brain that was playing tricks on him. Or did he even still have a brain? He wasn’t sure.
She didn’t say anything, just looked him up and down, so he took it upon him to start the conversation. Or maybe he could just wait and she would disappear? Probably not.
“I should have known it.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. What? Said the eyebrow.
“That you wouldn’t even leave me alone here, Irina.”.
“What do you mean, ‘here’ ?”
There, she had spoken. He congratulated his brain on matching her tone that well.
He gave an exasperated sigh.
“Irina, this is MY afterlife, and you aren’t supposed to be here. I thought I was safe from you at least here.”
He watched in irritation when she laughed, that light airy sound that had always made him want to kiss her. Did she know about that, he thought? Oh wait, his brain did know about that. Of course.
“Jack, doesn’t this” -she waved a hand around- “look a bit… inconvenient for paradise?”
“How do you know my own personal paradise is not an old, dirty bar with an infinite supply of scotch?”
“Because you don’t look happy?” Her tone was softer now, even a bit tender.
“Well, maybe I am in hell? That would at least explain why you are here.”
“Maybe. But I am not dead. Neither are you.”
He just looked at her. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to. He was tired of trying to make sense out of everything she was saying, or doing…or not doing for that matter. Change of topic ahead.
“How-“
“Jack, stop this. You need to come back. You can’t stay here forever.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. The scotch was taking an impact, and he felt slightly light-headed. Looking up, he noticed that she had moved closer. One of her slender hands moved and he watched numbly when she stopped his right hand from drawing lines on the bar and placed her own over it.
He wanted to jerk his hand away, but something prevented it from him. Great, she was taking over his body now. At least his voice still worked.
“How…how did you find me?”
She smiled a sad smile and her grip around his hand became tighter.
“Don’t be silly, Jack. I’ll always find you.”
“Is that a threat?”, he asked, feeling ready to slump down from the chair.
Her eyes turned to dark, huge pools and her second hand came up to caress his cheek.
“No. It’s a promise.”
And then she leant in and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
Everything turned black and he felt like falling into a dark hole, and he wanted to scream. The only thing he knew was her hand, her hand that was holding his in a tight dead grip that he returned in his panic.
Then he couldn’t breathe. He struggled, tried desperately to get some air in his lungs, but something was over his mouth, something wouldn’t allow him to.
Suddenly it was gone, and Jack Bristow took the first breath on his own in a long time.
4 MONTHS EARLIER
“I can’t allow you to be such a complication in my life anymore.”
Slash, cut, kick, a broken wall, blood, stars falling from the sky….
And then the skylight.
She lay on it, a one hand stretched out towards the red ball, the red little bulb that had to hold a promise of everything.
“Mom, please. Please, the glass won’t hold you, please.”
She turned around, took in the tear streaked face of her daughter, her whole appearance…..there was no going back now, she knew.
She stretched farther, not caring about the little cracking sounds the glass made - it wouldn’t matter anyway, could she just get her hand on the sphere…..
And then her fingers closed around it, and she fell. NO! she wanted to scream.
She watched in horror, now somehow from outside her own self how her body crashed on the floor…..and the sphere rolled away, far away, out of her reach.
She saw how her daughter turned away from her dead body, didn’t look back, not even once, and threw herself in the arms of her boyfriend. And then someone screamed.
The scream became louder and louder, but they didn’t hear it. Never looked back.
And then she woke up, but the scream was still there. Only then did she realize that it was herself screaming, and at last the tone died when she sat up and forced herself to stop.
The next second she felt her stomach turn and ran towards the bathroom, hung her head over the toilet pan and vomited until there was nothing left that could get out.
She curled up on the cold tile floor and tried to stop her body from shaking.
This hadn’t been the first dream. They had been haunting her ever since Vancouver, ever since that look she never wanted to see any member of her family wearing again. Ever since she had seen it first in Jack’s, and later in Sydney’s eyes. Betrayal. Disappointment. Desperation. Regret. All mixed up together.
Since then her sleep had been restless, often she’d wake up in the middle of the night because the dreams seemed so real that she screamed or hurt herself involuntarily because she tossed around wildly. All those dreams had different, vivid details, but they all had in common that there was some Rambaldi artifcact and either she, one of them or they all died because she, because she….because of her.
She placed a hand on the cold floor, needed to feel that it was still there and that she wasn’t trapped in another dream, trapped in another horror. Only then did she notice the fresh blood on the while tiles and got aware of the throbbing, soft pain in her left arm. A fresh cut. Now how the hell had she done this again?
Irina sat up and looked through the open door over into the bedroom. Shattered glass on the cupboard and on the floor told her enough. She had probably knocked the glass over and added an extra vivid detail to her nightmare. Now she just needed to determine wether it had been the sound of her and Sydney crashing through the glass or her alone falling through the skylight later.
She surpressed another shiver, gave herself a mental shake and got up to clean up the mess she had produced. Seemed like a premiere anyways.
The last shard wandered into the wastebasket, and she wanted to weep when she looked down into it. Glass shards, a little blood and torn paper. Nothing ever changed.
What had she done? Maybe she sould have told the truth.
A strange feeling shook her out of her reverie.
Something was wrong.
Irina got up, turned her computer on and made a fast check. No sudden movements, no unusual activity. But there was still something wrong. She chewed her lower lip while staring at the screen, made a decision and reached for the phone.
Five minutes later she got a call back.
“What is it?”, she almost spat into the mouthpiece.
“It’s the cave.”
No. Oh God no not the cave. How, when? It was impossible. Wasn’t it?
She dropped the phone and started running. Door, hallway, stairs, another wooden door. Hit one light switch after the other on her way, missed the last one and had to run back a few steps. Typed in the combination with shaking hands and opened her safe room.
One quick look around had Irina stumbling, reaching for the wall for support.
It wasn’t there.
Good lord, it wasn’t there.
She left the door open, flew back up the stairs, stumbled and fell at the top. Left another bloody mess but didn’t care. Back in her room, she started typing on her computer before even sitting down and then tapped an unsteady rhythm with her fingers on the screen until it finally came to life.
She entered the code for the satellite and a few seconds later, she was presented with a few aerial shots of an almost godforsaken desert. A quick jolt went through her limps when she thought they had been wrong. But then she zoomed in and saw a few tiny little black points that were moving, without a doubt. Moving fast.
No, it’s too early!, she wanted to scream. It wasn’t planned!
An hour later, Irina Derevko was airborne, on her way to Mongolia.
*****************
I promise to write more as soon as possible, planned for the rest of the fic are:
- [INSERT PLOTHOLE that ate my muse]
- Jack/Irina
- Sark being his own sarcastic self
- Sloane getting visitors
- Irina must make a final decision between Rambaldi and her family.
- maybe some other stuff to fill the plothole. *sighs*
I hope you people won't punish me too much for...er...procrastinating and not writing more and splitting this up and so on. =(
Title: Untitled so far
Written for: gentilhomme
Requirements: Resurrect Jack, good/non-psycho finale Irina (in a shippy way if possible), Sark (not shippy!), Arvin.
NOTE: My muse was eaten by the plothole and the awful exams that are getting closer and closer (only one week to go), so this is only the first part of god knows how many. *blushes*
Also, english is not my first language and this is unedited because there was nobody around to beta it for me, so...bear with my grammar.
The barman furrowed his brows and regarded the man who was sitting on the far end of the wooden bar a bit more closely.
His right hand was following the scratches on the old wood as if they were trails to long forgotten treasures, while his other hand was wrapped around a glass filled with scotch. He appeared lost deep in thought, and yet he sensed the barman scrutinizing him and sent him a look of cold hardness that caused the poor fellow instinctively to walk a few steps backwards.
He watched as the barman got the silent message, and only when he had started to work on cleaning up glasses on the other end of the bar again he allowed himself to stare back into the glass of golden liquid.
The barman was forgotten within seconds, and he was lost in another replay of the events that led to his presence in this old bar. Ironic, that it had to be a bar, wasn’t it?
The smell of a perfume all too familiar had him stiffen. No, it couldn’t be. Impossible.
He sensed her presence behind him and wanted to bang his head against the next wall when he felt her hand lightly on his shoulder before she slipped into the chair right next to him.
Only then he looked up and eyed her warily. Of course she looked beautiful. Of course did she meet his glare with an amused expression. Hell, it was his brain that was playing tricks on him. Or did he even still have a brain? He wasn’t sure.
She didn’t say anything, just looked him up and down, so he took it upon him to start the conversation. Or maybe he could just wait and she would disappear? Probably not.
“I should have known it.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. What? Said the eyebrow.
“That you wouldn’t even leave me alone here, Irina.”.
“What do you mean, ‘here’ ?”
There, she had spoken. He congratulated his brain on matching her tone that well.
He gave an exasperated sigh.
“Irina, this is MY afterlife, and you aren’t supposed to be here. I thought I was safe from you at least here.”
He watched in irritation when she laughed, that light airy sound that had always made him want to kiss her. Did she know about that, he thought? Oh wait, his brain did know about that. Of course.
“Jack, doesn’t this” -she waved a hand around- “look a bit… inconvenient for paradise?”
“How do you know my own personal paradise is not an old, dirty bar with an infinite supply of scotch?”
“Because you don’t look happy?” Her tone was softer now, even a bit tender.
“Well, maybe I am in hell? That would at least explain why you are here.”
“Maybe. But I am not dead. Neither are you.”
He just looked at her. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to. He was tired of trying to make sense out of everything she was saying, or doing…or not doing for that matter. Change of topic ahead.
“How-“
“Jack, stop this. You need to come back. You can’t stay here forever.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. The scotch was taking an impact, and he felt slightly light-headed. Looking up, he noticed that she had moved closer. One of her slender hands moved and he watched numbly when she stopped his right hand from drawing lines on the bar and placed her own over it.
He wanted to jerk his hand away, but something prevented it from him. Great, she was taking over his body now. At least his voice still worked.
“How…how did you find me?”
She smiled a sad smile and her grip around his hand became tighter.
“Don’t be silly, Jack. I’ll always find you.”
“Is that a threat?”, he asked, feeling ready to slump down from the chair.
Her eyes turned to dark, huge pools and her second hand came up to caress his cheek.
“No. It’s a promise.”
And then she leant in and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
Everything turned black and he felt like falling into a dark hole, and he wanted to scream. The only thing he knew was her hand, her hand that was holding his in a tight dead grip that he returned in his panic.
Then he couldn’t breathe. He struggled, tried desperately to get some air in his lungs, but something was over his mouth, something wouldn’t allow him to.
Suddenly it was gone, and Jack Bristow took the first breath on his own in a long time.
4 MONTHS EARLIER
“I can’t allow you to be such a complication in my life anymore.”
Slash, cut, kick, a broken wall, blood, stars falling from the sky….
And then the skylight.
She lay on it, a one hand stretched out towards the red ball, the red little bulb that had to hold a promise of everything.
“Mom, please. Please, the glass won’t hold you, please.”
She turned around, took in the tear streaked face of her daughter, her whole appearance…..there was no going back now, she knew.
She stretched farther, not caring about the little cracking sounds the glass made - it wouldn’t matter anyway, could she just get her hand on the sphere…..
And then her fingers closed around it, and she fell. NO! she wanted to scream.
She watched in horror, now somehow from outside her own self how her body crashed on the floor…..and the sphere rolled away, far away, out of her reach.
She saw how her daughter turned away from her dead body, didn’t look back, not even once, and threw herself in the arms of her boyfriend. And then someone screamed.
The scream became louder and louder, but they didn’t hear it. Never looked back.
And then she woke up, but the scream was still there. Only then did she realize that it was herself screaming, and at last the tone died when she sat up and forced herself to stop.
The next second she felt her stomach turn and ran towards the bathroom, hung her head over the toilet pan and vomited until there was nothing left that could get out.
She curled up on the cold tile floor and tried to stop her body from shaking.
This hadn’t been the first dream. They had been haunting her ever since Vancouver, ever since that look she never wanted to see any member of her family wearing again. Ever since she had seen it first in Jack’s, and later in Sydney’s eyes. Betrayal. Disappointment. Desperation. Regret. All mixed up together.
Since then her sleep had been restless, often she’d wake up in the middle of the night because the dreams seemed so real that she screamed or hurt herself involuntarily because she tossed around wildly. All those dreams had different, vivid details, but they all had in common that there was some Rambaldi artifcact and either she, one of them or they all died because she, because she….because of her.
She placed a hand on the cold floor, needed to feel that it was still there and that she wasn’t trapped in another dream, trapped in another horror. Only then did she notice the fresh blood on the while tiles and got aware of the throbbing, soft pain in her left arm. A fresh cut. Now how the hell had she done this again?
Irina sat up and looked through the open door over into the bedroom. Shattered glass on the cupboard and on the floor told her enough. She had probably knocked the glass over and added an extra vivid detail to her nightmare. Now she just needed to determine wether it had been the sound of her and Sydney crashing through the glass or her alone falling through the skylight later.
She surpressed another shiver, gave herself a mental shake and got up to clean up the mess she had produced. Seemed like a premiere anyways.
The last shard wandered into the wastebasket, and she wanted to weep when she looked down into it. Glass shards, a little blood and torn paper. Nothing ever changed.
What had she done? Maybe she sould have told the truth.
A strange feeling shook her out of her reverie.
Something was wrong.
Irina got up, turned her computer on and made a fast check. No sudden movements, no unusual activity. But there was still something wrong. She chewed her lower lip while staring at the screen, made a decision and reached for the phone.
Five minutes later she got a call back.
“What is it?”, she almost spat into the mouthpiece.
“It’s the cave.”
No. Oh God no not the cave. How, when? It was impossible. Wasn’t it?
She dropped the phone and started running. Door, hallway, stairs, another wooden door. Hit one light switch after the other on her way, missed the last one and had to run back a few steps. Typed in the combination with shaking hands and opened her safe room.
One quick look around had Irina stumbling, reaching for the wall for support.
It wasn’t there.
Good lord, it wasn’t there.
She left the door open, flew back up the stairs, stumbled and fell at the top. Left another bloody mess but didn’t care. Back in her room, she started typing on her computer before even sitting down and then tapped an unsteady rhythm with her fingers on the screen until it finally came to life.
She entered the code for the satellite and a few seconds later, she was presented with a few aerial shots of an almost godforsaken desert. A quick jolt went through her limps when she thought they had been wrong. But then she zoomed in and saw a few tiny little black points that were moving, without a doubt. Moving fast.
No, it’s too early!, she wanted to scream. It wasn’t planned!
An hour later, Irina Derevko was airborne, on her way to Mongolia.
*****************
I promise to write more as soon as possible, planned for the rest of the fic are:
- [INSERT PLOTHOLE that ate my muse]
- Jack/Irina
- Sark being his own sarcastic self
- Sloane getting visitors
- Irina must make a final decision between Rambaldi and her family.
- maybe some other stuff to fill the plothole. *sighs*
I hope you people won't punish me too much for...er...procrastinating and not writing more and splitting this up and so on. =(