Fic: Things That Never Were, 1/1, Alias, Jack/Irina
Title: Things That Never Were
Author: Jade Okelani
Email: jadeokelani @ gmail.com
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: big honkin' finale ones! If you haven't seen it, don't read this.
Summary: There were whole worlds lived and ended inside every single moment.
Notes: Wow, this is my first real Alias fic, and it was a blast to write! Hopefully it's also a blast to read. The inspiration (beyond the awesome request of eirina, which can be found at the end of the fic) comes from the George Bernard Shaw quote at the front.
Thanks: Big love and thanks to yahtzee63 for time, effort, and general reminders so I didn't forget I was writing this. Written for the Alias: Dearly Departed Ficathon.
Things That Never Were
by Jade Okelani
~
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" -- George Bernard Shaw
~
Sydney stood on top of the slide, arms at her side, calmly contemplating the ground below. This was how Jack saw her for the first time in nearly two months, dressed in a brown jogging suit that looked slightly too small for her tiny frame; he recalled Laura telling him that she'd grown attached to certain clothes in his absence, that she refused to let go of them no matter how many pretty new things they went shopping for.
Jack was tired of depending on Laura to tell him everything about their daughter, tired of playacting at home when he didn't remember something Sydney had said or done and desperately had to pretend that he did. Mostly, he didn't like the unease he felt at how high off the ground his daughter was, and how she didn't seem in the least bit afraid. He took a step forward.
"Welcome home, sweetheart," Laura said, her lips pressing against his cheek as her hand firmly enclosed one of his.
"She's a daredevil now?" he asked. "What happened to being afraid of playgrounds?"
"We've adapted a new routine," Laura said.
"She's going to hurt herself."
"She's going to learn her own limitations," Laura argued. "Or find that she doesn't have any."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Just like her mother?"
Laura did not respond, and Jack took the opportunity to study his wife for a moment, the subtle lines in her face that were growing more pronounced each time he returned home from wherever he'd been. The changes in Sydney were always more obvious, being a growing girl, but Laura was easier to overlook. He brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed the gold band on her left ring finger.
Sydney stretched her arms high in the air.
"She'll fall," Jack said, and tried to step forward again.
"She'll jump," Laura said. "That's the only thing we know for sure." She looked up at him and tried to tell him something he could not quite understand. "We won't always be there to catch her. She has to learn to catch herself, to know herself, really know." She forced a smile. "Besides, you'll be able to pick up the pieces afterward, if it's necessary."
It was a logical argument, but Sydney was the one area in Jack's life where he had not been particularly logical. Still, he trusted Laura's judgment, and he let her stay his action with a gentle grip.
Sydney jumped.
~
Jack had often contemplated the reality of his own mortality. In his line of work, to not recognize the certainty that he would most likely lose his life, painfully, suddenly, would be the height of foolishness. After Sydney was born, he took measures to plan for her future, to ensure that she would be safe when -- not if, he always thought of it as when -- he was taken from her.
Their relationship had suffered over the years, had been less than he'd wanted it to be, more than he was prepared to handle, but always, there had been a thread holding together the loose fabric: it was his duty, not to his country, but to his daughter, to keep her safe. If it meant sacrificing her happiness in the moment, it was worth it, and his happiness had hardly been worth accounting for at all.
He had spent a lifetime sacrificing the little moments for the big picture, and as he slowly bled to what he was certain would be death, real and true this time, he could remember nothing but tiny snapshots of insignificance.
There was Sydney, barely a month old, blinking wise little eyes toward the ceiling, trying to focus on hands he reached out toward her.
There was Laura, holding their daughter to her breast, a look on her face he had never seen before, or would ever see again. If he'd been an agent at home, instead of a besotted fool, he might have recognized it for blind panic, but in the right light, blind panic could almost pass for bliss.
There was six-year-old Sydney having tea with Emily, tiny hands precisely handing out hardened clumps of white sugar. He'd spent months being questioned by a government he'd devoted his life to, had been painfully aware of just how deeply Derevko had betrayed them, and for a split second, he'd considered leaving Sydney where she was. Emily would be a loving mother, exactly the kind she deserved, and Arvin, though faulted, would die for Sydney. But then his daughter had froze, sensed his presence in the room, and thoughts of abandoning her were knocked away with a full body blow as she hurled herself into his arms. It was the last time she allowed him to hold her like that until she was fully grown.
There was twenty-six-year-old Sydney, the first time he'd seen her in the field, surveillance footage from their days at SD-6. He was torn between horror and pride as she worked her way through a room full of armed men, never pausing, never hesitating. Her intentions were pure, but she was so much like her mother, so much like what he imagined Irina to be, that his breath caught, and he stopped watching her mission tapes.
There was Isabelle, staring up at him, and she was proof that he had perhaps not failed so completely as a father. Isabelle would be his future, and as Sydney had been his redemption, little Isabelle would be his reward. He had lived long enough to be someone's grandpa, and the idea was enough lighten his steps, just a little; just enough. This, then, was a little girl who would never, never be touched by Arvin Sloane.
And at the very end, there was Sloane's face, but all Jack could see was Sydney, smiling, happy, safe; he did not close his eyes. He wanted this moment, his last moment, to matter. He and Arvin would be the only witness to it, and he had long ceased trusting Arvin's vision.
The world ended with a bang.
~
There were many things Irina had imagined herself as a little girl, many things she had never dreamed possible, but the one thing she'd never thought of being was a housewife.
"I've been thinking," Jack had said that morning as they drank coffee and watched Sydney's school bus pull from the sidewalk, "that perhaps it's time for a change."
"What sort of change?"
It was easy to read his moods, and recently he had been restless, an emotion she had rarely seen in him. Jack was a man who firmly believed in his place in the world, which had always made deceiving him both greatly challenging and infinitely simple.
"A change of position," he replied enigmatically. "Something that might keep me at home more often."
Something like fear clutched at Irina's belly, and stayed with her the entire day until she was sliding into bed next to her husband. It was ridiculous, of course, because fear was the one thing she should not have been feeling. This had been an inevitability, the end of her assignment, but she had begun to hope, if she was honest with herself, that it would go on for just a little while longer, that Sydney would be just a little bit older. She would have to be supportive, respond to any positive change in Jack's work schedule with joy, because she would be seeing him more, and not sorrow, because soon, she would not see him or Sydney at all.
Irina saw no point in feeling sorry for herself, sorry for the way things were. She hadn't pitied herself when she'd been freezing nearly to death as a child, sharing a small bed with her sisters, glad for their warmth to keep her company in the night. This was her life, the one she had chosen, the one she felt destined for. She was not a housewife, or much of a mother, though she did an admirable impression of both.
She rolled to her side to watch her husband as he fell asleep. It was the only time he allowed such open appraisal without comment and she found it curious that he let his guard down around her, that he trusted her so completely that her assignment was less a test to her skills at espionage than a testament to her ability to perfect the meals Jack had eaten as a child, to make love to him so thoroughly at night that he was able to overlook any mistake she might make during the day.
Would she miss him? Irina knew she would miss Sydney, but while the years had blurred her certainty that her agenda came before her family, she could not be as certain what she truly felt for her husband. She loved him. It had been a realization that had shocked her at first, and given her some measure of comfort later, but it could not be denied. It would cost her the family she'd grown accustomed to, but she was glad of Jack's change in job -- though she would worry over what her absence might do to his heart, at least he would finally be safe.
"It'll be good," she said softly as he slipped into sleep, "to have more of you to myself."
There was a thunderstorm brewing outside; she'd felt it in the air earlier. Sydney would crawl into bed with them before the night was out and Irina would not sleep at all, kept company by two warm bodies, her thoughts, and the thunder.
~
Irina stared at the perfect round sphere that represented almost forty-five years of her life and felt something like madness clawing inside her. She suspected it was being so close to something she'd searched for so long, but deep inside, somewhere she was sure Jack would swear was her gut, she knew what it really meant. With Sydney, it had always been a double-edged sword of want and need, distrust and desperate, desperate love. Family made you weak; Irina had always known that, and the danger in Sydney, the danger in Jack, was that they made her feel strong.
There was nothing more dangerous than the illusion of strength when the only person you were fooling was yourself.
One thing she had sworn to herself above all others was to be no one's fool, but as Sydney's cries began to penetrate the haze, she wondered just how blind she might have been.
There was a moment she remembered more clearly than any other with her family. It was not a moment she had ever been comfortable sharing with them, as it held too much truth to be used as a tactic in gaining their trust. It had been a thunderstorm, and Sydney had a nightmare and crawled into bed with them, all shivering limbs and lack of boundaries. Jack had woken once in the night, and reached for Irina's hand over their daughter's stomach, and she'd stared at him, wondering at how much he loved her.
If she had known then how deep that love ran, that it would outlive even his hate, she might have found her voice that night, might have told him everything and trusted him to find a way around their lives. But she hadn't known, and they stayed in the silence, where they were most comfortable, until sleep claimed Jack and she was as alone as a woman could be pressed against husband and child.
There were whole worlds lived and ended inside every single moment; small choices made that changed the course of things, that altered the way things were, the way they could of been. Irina had contemplated these little worlds the day they put Sydney in her arms, the day she realized she would have to make a choice. Her choice would define the world her daughter grew up in, would bring darkness to the world she left behind. Such power, and every person who had drawn a single breath had left their mark.
As the glass began to shudder with all the weight of her sins, Irina began to fear that she had chosen the wrong world.
There was a crack, and Sydney's voice, begging, in tears now, no more anger, just a little girl, Mommy please, just one more time, Mommy, please and Irina knew, she knew that this was the end, but still she reached for it, because if it wasn't real, if Rambaldi didn't have the answers, then it had all been for nothing, and she was a monster after all. It was the one thing she had always had in common with Arvin -- after awhile, their belief became an act of desperation to justify all they had sacrificed in its name. Recognizing it was so easy now, when it was too late to do anything but reach.
"I'm sorry," she said, and she wasn't even sure for what; she was just so sorry.
It was a three and a half second freefall to the ground below, glass slicing, piercing, ending Irina, but all she could hear was Sydney, all she could think was Sydney.
The world ended with a crash.
~
"Sydney's dead."
They were the only words he had, the only words he'd thought of in all the months he'd put off tracking her down. Irina already knew, of course; she had probably known a few hours after Jack himself had. With her connections, it was possible she'd known even sooner. Still, it was the only thing that had any weight to him, any sense of reality: Sydney was dead, and what more could there possibly be to say?
"Have you been able to locate--"
"No," he said, and the surprise reflected on her face. "I didn't... I didn't believe she was dead. I couldn't. I've wasted time looking for her."
"So have I," Irina admitted.
Such a simple bond, but the idea that Irina had been as much in denial about Sydney's death as he had caused him to feel closer to her than he ever had. It was like bonding with a fellow terminal cancer patient: no one else could understand their sickness, what it felt like to know for certain that your life had lost its purpose and nothing would ever be all right again.
He'd found her living in a small but well decorated apartment in Prague and they spent the rest of the day in awkward silence going over the documents Irina had assembled and decided a search for Sydney's killers would be well aided by the work they'd put into searching for Sydney's ghost.
It was disturbingly natural to reach for her when neither could see clearly any longer, terrifyingly easy to kiss her and be kissed by her in return. Jack couldn't remember if he cried that night; Irina hadn't. Sydney's loss was too big for tears, she was just an aching hole in both of them, gaping and open as they slowly bled to death over the next few years of searching.
As they lay in her bed later he felt almost disloyal, as though Sydney would be angry with them, for being together at all, or waiting until she was dead to do it, he wasn't sure, but the thought kept him awake longer than Irina. When he finally slept, he did not dream, but there was a space between them the entire night, just big enough for a child to crawl inside.
~
When Irina saw him face to face for the last time, he was holding Sydney and their granddaughter. Irina thought it was a sight she had never deserved to see, that perhaps she wasn't really meant to see, but like a thief in the night, she'd stolen it like she'd stolen so much from them, and she couldn't be sorry for it, even as it didn't change anything.
She was an object in motion, and she couldn't stop now; she could pause, though, and call someone else to make sure her family was safe. It was the last thing she would ever do for them without an agenda attached and if that had once troubled her, it had lost its power to do so. Irina had built a world for herself where she lived in a house of glass and the choices she had made might not be perfect, but they were hers, and she would not be sorry, not to anyone, not even to Sydney.
~
The next time Jack saw Irina, they were on a beach. Irina wore a white dress, and it did not suit her at all. The look on her face seemed to agree. Jack thought it would be incredibly disappointing if this turned out to be heaven, because it bore more than a slight resemblance to Morocco.
"Nadia's dead," Jack said, because it was something he'd wanted to say to Irina from the moment he'd found her daughter cold and alone.
"I know," she replied. Her voice was lacking any of the sadness he'd expected. For all she'd betrayed them, he had still thought Irina a mother first.
"Milo Rambaldi," Jack mused. "Is it safe to assume that you consider any life an acceptable sacrifice in his name?"
"You ask a more difficult question than you know," Irina said. "You condemn those who believe, but we would not be here at this moment if their belief was in vain."
Not heaven, then. One thing to be grateful for. Jack had always considered himself something of an Atheist and the last thing he needed was an I Told You So from St. Peter.
"Sloane's belief was rewarded, I suppose," Jack conceded. "But I wouldn't say it was worth it. He sacrificed everything, his wife, his daughter, and for what? Rambaldi's end game seems rather anti-climactic as far as I'm concerned."
"Immortality," Irina mused. "Only Sloane could look at the breadth of Rambaldi's works and come up with a solution so…. simplistic."
Jack quirked an eyebrow at her. "Immortality is simplistic now?"
"To live forever is not the goal I ever sought." Irina looked at him, and Jack felt it was the first time she'd ever really seen him, the first time she'd ever really wanted him to see her. "To live forever would mean never knowing what lay beyond. I wanted to understand, though I still didn't, not really, not even at the end. The truth of it is nothing I could have imagined."
"Arvin believed he was immortal," Jack said hesitantly.
"And so he was," Irina replied easily. "Thought is powerful, Jack."
"Thinking something doesn't make it true."
Irina smiled. "You're always so sure of yourself." Something shifted behind her eyes. "You're right, of course. Thinking something doesn't make it real. Unless you take into account something else you can't explain."
"You want me to believe Milo Rambaldi was able to… what?"
"We're energy, Jack," she said, and she moved to touch him, and he was mildly surprised they were capable of physical contact wherever they were. "It's all we are. Bundles of it weighed down by our own insecurities. The sphere brought Sloane back from the dead, unmade the fabric of time just enough so he would never die. But that was not its original intent, not the reason I sacrificed more than half of my life to find it."
"Then why?" He was desperate now, and he hated it, absolutely despised what she turned him into, but he was beyond denying it to himself. Death had, at least, cured him some degree of hubris.
"I didn't know," she said. "Not really. The only thing I was sure of was that it was important, more important than anything, than you, than Nadia, than Sydney, certainly than me. Don't you see, it didn't matter what I had to sacrifice, because none of it…" She seemed at a loss for words. Irina Derevko, at a loss for anything. It was decidedly uncomfortable to witness. "By the time I began to understand the power of Rambaldi's works, it was too late, but not too late--"
"Irina, you aren't making any sense," Jack said.
Her palms pressed against his cheeks suddenly, and she gripped him tightly. Jack tried to pull away, but she held fast, forcing their gazes to stay trained on one another. Eyes almost black bore into him, bringing to mind the monks he'd left in charge of Vaughn these past months, men who'd devoted their lives to a cause in service of their beliefs. It had never truly occurred to him just how deeply Irina believed, and of all the things he'd thought her, foolish had never been one of them. Arvin had been blinded by his beliefs; Irina had been driven by them.
"I always thought you wanted power," he said quietly.
"You weren't wrong," she said. "There weren't grander reasons for everything I did, but that doesn't mean it's too late. I can still make it right. But I can't do it alone. I've come this far, but I can go no farther without you. You must help me, or it will have been for nothing. Everything we've put Sydney through, Nadia..."
His hands were wrapped around her wrists, neither pushing her away nor keeping her in place. He pressed his thumbs to the pulse points in her wrists, and found them oddly still.
"Are we dead?"
"No."
"Are we still alive?"
She smiled. "Not the way you mean, no."
"How...?"
"You touched the sphere, Jack," she said quietly. "You were inside that cave when you died, the right place, at the right time. And now, you have to trust me. You have to find a moment in your mind, some point where it wasn't too late yet, when there was still time. That's all we need, Jack, is to find enough time..."
"You're not Irina," he said, realizing it as truth the moment the words passed his lips.
"Irina wasn't in the cave," she said. "If she had been, this would be easier, you wouldn't have to be involved. But she wasn't, and so it's up to you."
"I don't understand what you expect of me," he admitted. It was difficult, admitting his own uncertainty in this... place.
"Just try," she begged. "Find a moment where, if I had said the right thing, at just the right time, we might have been able to..." Doubt clouded her eyes, and he tried to reconcile what, exactly, he was looking at.
She was Irina, but not, and his brain began an intensive line of questioning. Was she inside the sphere? Was she an angel (he almost choked)? Was she his own mind's interpretation of Irina, the woman he'd always wanted her to be, who'd had reasons, damn it, for everything she'd done, reasons he could understand, even forgive?
"What?" he asked, when he realized she had not spoken for some time.
"It won't work," she said, "unless such a moment exists."
"What moment?" he asked.
"A moment where we were both ready. Me to speak, and you to listen.
"I still don't understand--"
"You still don't have to." She grasped his head in her palm and drew their mouths together fiercely, and whatever she was, she knew Irina's passion, knew the way they had always fit together like this. "You just have to love her," she said against his mouth. "You just have to love her more than you hate her."
"Regretfully, that's always come easier to me than I liked," he said, and instead of the reaction he expected, it made her smile.
"Good." She cocked her head to the side, and her smile grew. "Perfect," she said, and as she spoke, it was as though the sun exploded behind her, and all he could do was stare into her eyes and wonder what had made him think of thunderstorms.
The world ended with a final breath.
~
Jack felt Sydney shift in her sleep and looked down at her little body. She was growing more every day, and getting too old to take comfort in her parent's bed when she had a nightmare, but Jack felt himself unable to deny her anything when she tugged on his pant leg and said Daddy, please.
Laura turned to her side and he saw that she was awake. Their hands met over Sydney's stomach and entwined. Her thumb made soft caresses against his wrist, and he felt unease in her he'd never picked up on before.
"There's something I have to tell you," she said, and he felt it before she spoke, before she opened up and poured her whole self out before him. He held onto her hand the entire time and tried not to dwell on why he was not wholly unsurprised by her shocking admissions.
His world ended with a truth. It began again with her name. Jack practiced the feel of Irina on his tongue, and found it to be something he could live with.
~
"Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." -- Arundhati Roy
~
END
My request:
The character you most want resurrected: Jack. Because that harridyn
at the end of season 5 was not Irina.
Up to three (3) other elements you'd like your story to contain:
Jack/Irina, actual closure (as in 'the resolution of issues' , not an
ending necessarily!) for the spyparents, Sydney.
Author: Jade Okelani
Email: jadeokelani @ gmail.com
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: big honkin' finale ones! If you haven't seen it, don't read this.
Summary: There were whole worlds lived and ended inside every single moment.
Notes: Wow, this is my first real Alias fic, and it was a blast to write! Hopefully it's also a blast to read. The inspiration (beyond the awesome request of eirina, which can be found at the end of the fic) comes from the George Bernard Shaw quote at the front.
Thanks: Big love and thanks to yahtzee63 for time, effort, and general reminders so I didn't forget I was writing this. Written for the Alias: Dearly Departed Ficathon.
Things That Never Were
by Jade Okelani
~
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" -- George Bernard Shaw
~
Sydney stood on top of the slide, arms at her side, calmly contemplating the ground below. This was how Jack saw her for the first time in nearly two months, dressed in a brown jogging suit that looked slightly too small for her tiny frame; he recalled Laura telling him that she'd grown attached to certain clothes in his absence, that she refused to let go of them no matter how many pretty new things they went shopping for.
Jack was tired of depending on Laura to tell him everything about their daughter, tired of playacting at home when he didn't remember something Sydney had said or done and desperately had to pretend that he did. Mostly, he didn't like the unease he felt at how high off the ground his daughter was, and how she didn't seem in the least bit afraid. He took a step forward.
"Welcome home, sweetheart," Laura said, her lips pressing against his cheek as her hand firmly enclosed one of his.
"She's a daredevil now?" he asked. "What happened to being afraid of playgrounds?"
"We've adapted a new routine," Laura said.
"She's going to hurt herself."
"She's going to learn her own limitations," Laura argued. "Or find that she doesn't have any."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Just like her mother?"
Laura did not respond, and Jack took the opportunity to study his wife for a moment, the subtle lines in her face that were growing more pronounced each time he returned home from wherever he'd been. The changes in Sydney were always more obvious, being a growing girl, but Laura was easier to overlook. He brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed the gold band on her left ring finger.
Sydney stretched her arms high in the air.
"She'll fall," Jack said, and tried to step forward again.
"She'll jump," Laura said. "That's the only thing we know for sure." She looked up at him and tried to tell him something he could not quite understand. "We won't always be there to catch her. She has to learn to catch herself, to know herself, really know." She forced a smile. "Besides, you'll be able to pick up the pieces afterward, if it's necessary."
It was a logical argument, but Sydney was the one area in Jack's life where he had not been particularly logical. Still, he trusted Laura's judgment, and he let her stay his action with a gentle grip.
Sydney jumped.
~
Jack had often contemplated the reality of his own mortality. In his line of work, to not recognize the certainty that he would most likely lose his life, painfully, suddenly, would be the height of foolishness. After Sydney was born, he took measures to plan for her future, to ensure that she would be safe when -- not if, he always thought of it as when -- he was taken from her.
Their relationship had suffered over the years, had been less than he'd wanted it to be, more than he was prepared to handle, but always, there had been a thread holding together the loose fabric: it was his duty, not to his country, but to his daughter, to keep her safe. If it meant sacrificing her happiness in the moment, it was worth it, and his happiness had hardly been worth accounting for at all.
He had spent a lifetime sacrificing the little moments for the big picture, and as he slowly bled to what he was certain would be death, real and true this time, he could remember nothing but tiny snapshots of insignificance.
There was Sydney, barely a month old, blinking wise little eyes toward the ceiling, trying to focus on hands he reached out toward her.
There was Laura, holding their daughter to her breast, a look on her face he had never seen before, or would ever see again. If he'd been an agent at home, instead of a besotted fool, he might have recognized it for blind panic, but in the right light, blind panic could almost pass for bliss.
There was six-year-old Sydney having tea with Emily, tiny hands precisely handing out hardened clumps of white sugar. He'd spent months being questioned by a government he'd devoted his life to, had been painfully aware of just how deeply Derevko had betrayed them, and for a split second, he'd considered leaving Sydney where she was. Emily would be a loving mother, exactly the kind she deserved, and Arvin, though faulted, would die for Sydney. But then his daughter had froze, sensed his presence in the room, and thoughts of abandoning her were knocked away with a full body blow as she hurled herself into his arms. It was the last time she allowed him to hold her like that until she was fully grown.
There was twenty-six-year-old Sydney, the first time he'd seen her in the field, surveillance footage from their days at SD-6. He was torn between horror and pride as she worked her way through a room full of armed men, never pausing, never hesitating. Her intentions were pure, but she was so much like her mother, so much like what he imagined Irina to be, that his breath caught, and he stopped watching her mission tapes.
There was Isabelle, staring up at him, and she was proof that he had perhaps not failed so completely as a father. Isabelle would be his future, and as Sydney had been his redemption, little Isabelle would be his reward. He had lived long enough to be someone's grandpa, and the idea was enough lighten his steps, just a little; just enough. This, then, was a little girl who would never, never be touched by Arvin Sloane.
And at the very end, there was Sloane's face, but all Jack could see was Sydney, smiling, happy, safe; he did not close his eyes. He wanted this moment, his last moment, to matter. He and Arvin would be the only witness to it, and he had long ceased trusting Arvin's vision.
The world ended with a bang.
~
There were many things Irina had imagined herself as a little girl, many things she had never dreamed possible, but the one thing she'd never thought of being was a housewife.
"I've been thinking," Jack had said that morning as they drank coffee and watched Sydney's school bus pull from the sidewalk, "that perhaps it's time for a change."
"What sort of change?"
It was easy to read his moods, and recently he had been restless, an emotion she had rarely seen in him. Jack was a man who firmly believed in his place in the world, which had always made deceiving him both greatly challenging and infinitely simple.
"A change of position," he replied enigmatically. "Something that might keep me at home more often."
Something like fear clutched at Irina's belly, and stayed with her the entire day until she was sliding into bed next to her husband. It was ridiculous, of course, because fear was the one thing she should not have been feeling. This had been an inevitability, the end of her assignment, but she had begun to hope, if she was honest with herself, that it would go on for just a little while longer, that Sydney would be just a little bit older. She would have to be supportive, respond to any positive change in Jack's work schedule with joy, because she would be seeing him more, and not sorrow, because soon, she would not see him or Sydney at all.
Irina saw no point in feeling sorry for herself, sorry for the way things were. She hadn't pitied herself when she'd been freezing nearly to death as a child, sharing a small bed with her sisters, glad for their warmth to keep her company in the night. This was her life, the one she had chosen, the one she felt destined for. She was not a housewife, or much of a mother, though she did an admirable impression of both.
She rolled to her side to watch her husband as he fell asleep. It was the only time he allowed such open appraisal without comment and she found it curious that he let his guard down around her, that he trusted her so completely that her assignment was less a test to her skills at espionage than a testament to her ability to perfect the meals Jack had eaten as a child, to make love to him so thoroughly at night that he was able to overlook any mistake she might make during the day.
Would she miss him? Irina knew she would miss Sydney, but while the years had blurred her certainty that her agenda came before her family, she could not be as certain what she truly felt for her husband. She loved him. It had been a realization that had shocked her at first, and given her some measure of comfort later, but it could not be denied. It would cost her the family she'd grown accustomed to, but she was glad of Jack's change in job -- though she would worry over what her absence might do to his heart, at least he would finally be safe.
"It'll be good," she said softly as he slipped into sleep, "to have more of you to myself."
There was a thunderstorm brewing outside; she'd felt it in the air earlier. Sydney would crawl into bed with them before the night was out and Irina would not sleep at all, kept company by two warm bodies, her thoughts, and the thunder.
~
Irina stared at the perfect round sphere that represented almost forty-five years of her life and felt something like madness clawing inside her. She suspected it was being so close to something she'd searched for so long, but deep inside, somewhere she was sure Jack would swear was her gut, she knew what it really meant. With Sydney, it had always been a double-edged sword of want and need, distrust and desperate, desperate love. Family made you weak; Irina had always known that, and the danger in Sydney, the danger in Jack, was that they made her feel strong.
There was nothing more dangerous than the illusion of strength when the only person you were fooling was yourself.
One thing she had sworn to herself above all others was to be no one's fool, but as Sydney's cries began to penetrate the haze, she wondered just how blind she might have been.
There was a moment she remembered more clearly than any other with her family. It was not a moment she had ever been comfortable sharing with them, as it held too much truth to be used as a tactic in gaining their trust. It had been a thunderstorm, and Sydney had a nightmare and crawled into bed with them, all shivering limbs and lack of boundaries. Jack had woken once in the night, and reached for Irina's hand over their daughter's stomach, and she'd stared at him, wondering at how much he loved her.
If she had known then how deep that love ran, that it would outlive even his hate, she might have found her voice that night, might have told him everything and trusted him to find a way around their lives. But she hadn't known, and they stayed in the silence, where they were most comfortable, until sleep claimed Jack and she was as alone as a woman could be pressed against husband and child.
There were whole worlds lived and ended inside every single moment; small choices made that changed the course of things, that altered the way things were, the way they could of been. Irina had contemplated these little worlds the day they put Sydney in her arms, the day she realized she would have to make a choice. Her choice would define the world her daughter grew up in, would bring darkness to the world she left behind. Such power, and every person who had drawn a single breath had left their mark.
As the glass began to shudder with all the weight of her sins, Irina began to fear that she had chosen the wrong world.
There was a crack, and Sydney's voice, begging, in tears now, no more anger, just a little girl, Mommy please, just one more time, Mommy, please and Irina knew, she knew that this was the end, but still she reached for it, because if it wasn't real, if Rambaldi didn't have the answers, then it had all been for nothing, and she was a monster after all. It was the one thing she had always had in common with Arvin -- after awhile, their belief became an act of desperation to justify all they had sacrificed in its name. Recognizing it was so easy now, when it was too late to do anything but reach.
"I'm sorry," she said, and she wasn't even sure for what; she was just so sorry.
It was a three and a half second freefall to the ground below, glass slicing, piercing, ending Irina, but all she could hear was Sydney, all she could think was Sydney.
The world ended with a crash.
~
"Sydney's dead."
They were the only words he had, the only words he'd thought of in all the months he'd put off tracking her down. Irina already knew, of course; she had probably known a few hours after Jack himself had. With her connections, it was possible she'd known even sooner. Still, it was the only thing that had any weight to him, any sense of reality: Sydney was dead, and what more could there possibly be to say?
"Have you been able to locate--"
"No," he said, and the surprise reflected on her face. "I didn't... I didn't believe she was dead. I couldn't. I've wasted time looking for her."
"So have I," Irina admitted.
Such a simple bond, but the idea that Irina had been as much in denial about Sydney's death as he had caused him to feel closer to her than he ever had. It was like bonding with a fellow terminal cancer patient: no one else could understand their sickness, what it felt like to know for certain that your life had lost its purpose and nothing would ever be all right again.
He'd found her living in a small but well decorated apartment in Prague and they spent the rest of the day in awkward silence going over the documents Irina had assembled and decided a search for Sydney's killers would be well aided by the work they'd put into searching for Sydney's ghost.
It was disturbingly natural to reach for her when neither could see clearly any longer, terrifyingly easy to kiss her and be kissed by her in return. Jack couldn't remember if he cried that night; Irina hadn't. Sydney's loss was too big for tears, she was just an aching hole in both of them, gaping and open as they slowly bled to death over the next few years of searching.
As they lay in her bed later he felt almost disloyal, as though Sydney would be angry with them, for being together at all, or waiting until she was dead to do it, he wasn't sure, but the thought kept him awake longer than Irina. When he finally slept, he did not dream, but there was a space between them the entire night, just big enough for a child to crawl inside.
~
When Irina saw him face to face for the last time, he was holding Sydney and their granddaughter. Irina thought it was a sight she had never deserved to see, that perhaps she wasn't really meant to see, but like a thief in the night, she'd stolen it like she'd stolen so much from them, and she couldn't be sorry for it, even as it didn't change anything.
She was an object in motion, and she couldn't stop now; she could pause, though, and call someone else to make sure her family was safe. It was the last thing she would ever do for them without an agenda attached and if that had once troubled her, it had lost its power to do so. Irina had built a world for herself where she lived in a house of glass and the choices she had made might not be perfect, but they were hers, and she would not be sorry, not to anyone, not even to Sydney.
~
The next time Jack saw Irina, they were on a beach. Irina wore a white dress, and it did not suit her at all. The look on her face seemed to agree. Jack thought it would be incredibly disappointing if this turned out to be heaven, because it bore more than a slight resemblance to Morocco.
"Nadia's dead," Jack said, because it was something he'd wanted to say to Irina from the moment he'd found her daughter cold and alone.
"I know," she replied. Her voice was lacking any of the sadness he'd expected. For all she'd betrayed them, he had still thought Irina a mother first.
"Milo Rambaldi," Jack mused. "Is it safe to assume that you consider any life an acceptable sacrifice in his name?"
"You ask a more difficult question than you know," Irina said. "You condemn those who believe, but we would not be here at this moment if their belief was in vain."
Not heaven, then. One thing to be grateful for. Jack had always considered himself something of an Atheist and the last thing he needed was an I Told You So from St. Peter.
"Sloane's belief was rewarded, I suppose," Jack conceded. "But I wouldn't say it was worth it. He sacrificed everything, his wife, his daughter, and for what? Rambaldi's end game seems rather anti-climactic as far as I'm concerned."
"Immortality," Irina mused. "Only Sloane could look at the breadth of Rambaldi's works and come up with a solution so…. simplistic."
Jack quirked an eyebrow at her. "Immortality is simplistic now?"
"To live forever is not the goal I ever sought." Irina looked at him, and Jack felt it was the first time she'd ever really seen him, the first time she'd ever really wanted him to see her. "To live forever would mean never knowing what lay beyond. I wanted to understand, though I still didn't, not really, not even at the end. The truth of it is nothing I could have imagined."
"Arvin believed he was immortal," Jack said hesitantly.
"And so he was," Irina replied easily. "Thought is powerful, Jack."
"Thinking something doesn't make it true."
Irina smiled. "You're always so sure of yourself." Something shifted behind her eyes. "You're right, of course. Thinking something doesn't make it real. Unless you take into account something else you can't explain."
"You want me to believe Milo Rambaldi was able to… what?"
"We're energy, Jack," she said, and she moved to touch him, and he was mildly surprised they were capable of physical contact wherever they were. "It's all we are. Bundles of it weighed down by our own insecurities. The sphere brought Sloane back from the dead, unmade the fabric of time just enough so he would never die. But that was not its original intent, not the reason I sacrificed more than half of my life to find it."
"Then why?" He was desperate now, and he hated it, absolutely despised what she turned him into, but he was beyond denying it to himself. Death had, at least, cured him some degree of hubris.
"I didn't know," she said. "Not really. The only thing I was sure of was that it was important, more important than anything, than you, than Nadia, than Sydney, certainly than me. Don't you see, it didn't matter what I had to sacrifice, because none of it…" She seemed at a loss for words. Irina Derevko, at a loss for anything. It was decidedly uncomfortable to witness. "By the time I began to understand the power of Rambaldi's works, it was too late, but not too late--"
"Irina, you aren't making any sense," Jack said.
Her palms pressed against his cheeks suddenly, and she gripped him tightly. Jack tried to pull away, but she held fast, forcing their gazes to stay trained on one another. Eyes almost black bore into him, bringing to mind the monks he'd left in charge of Vaughn these past months, men who'd devoted their lives to a cause in service of their beliefs. It had never truly occurred to him just how deeply Irina believed, and of all the things he'd thought her, foolish had never been one of them. Arvin had been blinded by his beliefs; Irina had been driven by them.
"I always thought you wanted power," he said quietly.
"You weren't wrong," she said. "There weren't grander reasons for everything I did, but that doesn't mean it's too late. I can still make it right. But I can't do it alone. I've come this far, but I can go no farther without you. You must help me, or it will have been for nothing. Everything we've put Sydney through, Nadia..."
His hands were wrapped around her wrists, neither pushing her away nor keeping her in place. He pressed his thumbs to the pulse points in her wrists, and found them oddly still.
"Are we dead?"
"No."
"Are we still alive?"
She smiled. "Not the way you mean, no."
"How...?"
"You touched the sphere, Jack," she said quietly. "You were inside that cave when you died, the right place, at the right time. And now, you have to trust me. You have to find a moment in your mind, some point where it wasn't too late yet, when there was still time. That's all we need, Jack, is to find enough time..."
"You're not Irina," he said, realizing it as truth the moment the words passed his lips.
"Irina wasn't in the cave," she said. "If she had been, this would be easier, you wouldn't have to be involved. But she wasn't, and so it's up to you."
"I don't understand what you expect of me," he admitted. It was difficult, admitting his own uncertainty in this... place.
"Just try," she begged. "Find a moment where, if I had said the right thing, at just the right time, we might have been able to..." Doubt clouded her eyes, and he tried to reconcile what, exactly, he was looking at.
She was Irina, but not, and his brain began an intensive line of questioning. Was she inside the sphere? Was she an angel (he almost choked)? Was she his own mind's interpretation of Irina, the woman he'd always wanted her to be, who'd had reasons, damn it, for everything she'd done, reasons he could understand, even forgive?
"What?" he asked, when he realized she had not spoken for some time.
"It won't work," she said, "unless such a moment exists."
"What moment?" he asked.
"A moment where we were both ready. Me to speak, and you to listen.
"I still don't understand--"
"You still don't have to." She grasped his head in her palm and drew their mouths together fiercely, and whatever she was, she knew Irina's passion, knew the way they had always fit together like this. "You just have to love her," she said against his mouth. "You just have to love her more than you hate her."
"Regretfully, that's always come easier to me than I liked," he said, and instead of the reaction he expected, it made her smile.
"Good." She cocked her head to the side, and her smile grew. "Perfect," she said, and as she spoke, it was as though the sun exploded behind her, and all he could do was stare into her eyes and wonder what had made him think of thunderstorms.
The world ended with a final breath.
~
Jack felt Sydney shift in her sleep and looked down at her little body. She was growing more every day, and getting too old to take comfort in her parent's bed when she had a nightmare, but Jack felt himself unable to deny her anything when she tugged on his pant leg and said Daddy, please.
Laura turned to her side and he saw that she was awake. Their hands met over Sydney's stomach and entwined. Her thumb made soft caresses against his wrist, and he felt unease in her he'd never picked up on before.
"There's something I have to tell you," she said, and he felt it before she spoke, before she opened up and poured her whole self out before him. He held onto her hand the entire time and tried not to dwell on why he was not wholly unsurprised by her shocking admissions.
His world ended with a truth. It began again with her name. Jack practiced the feel of Irina on his tongue, and found it to be something he could live with.
~
"Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." -- Arundhati Roy
~
END
My request:
The character you most want resurrected: Jack. Because that harridyn
at the end of season 5 was not Irina.
Up to three (3) other elements you'd like your story to contain:
Jack/Irina, actual closure (as in 'the resolution of issues' , not an
ending necessarily!) for the spyparents, Sydney.