archiving: alias500 fics, 13 drabbles
Because I saw the "Alias500" comm link on my profile page and thought, hmm. So. Archiving, I guess. 13 drabbles, 7 different character POVS (dude, even Carrie--see, I told you seeing Amanda Foreman in "Star Trek" made me squee like mad), and 8 different challenges, all written between May 2 and June 21, 2005. Enjoy.
In the Line of Duty
--
She can’t remember what her father’s laugh sounds like. A multitude of thoughts are haunting her, but this, for whatever reason, seems significant.
There are moments when she’s reminded of the man he used to be. Never in the office or on a mission, but on the rare occasions that they split a meal, share a cab, she recalls the ways he loved her. It’s never anything as substantial as saying the words aloud—that is saved for whispers through bulletproof glass and above blood-stained hands; but something in his eyes—pride, she thinks, or a softness she can never fit a name to—reminds her of Sunday morning pancakes and the slow spread of his smile.
She understands, for the most part, the things this job has cost him. In her mind, she’s five years old, sitting atop his shoulders, her mother throwing breadcrumbs to the ducks in the pond; she’s twelve, sprained ankle throbbing, in his arms as he carries her from the middle school gymnasium—one of the few games he actually attended, she thinks, but she pushes the thought away. It’s not fair to him, she knows that now. He didn’t want to be missing her childhood any more than she wanted him gone; it’s just one more thing he gave up to protect her.
The easy manner of his speech, the ferocity of his hugs: these are things he forced aside, things they both lost, so he could do his job. He sacrificed so many parts of himself in the line of duty.
Her father is a complicated man, and this is something that took her longer than she’ll admit to understand. There’s a wariness in his tone, in his movements, that hints at betrayal, not his own, but that of the people he’s chosen to love. He’s harder now, in all the necessary places, but there is a part of him, hidden and well-contained, that will always be vulnerable to attack: the place he keeps his love for her.
She can’t deny that he has hurt her, cut her deeper than anyone she’s ever loved, but she’ll admit now that there was purpose behind it, however misguided. He did what he thought he had to, what he felt was necessary, to keep her safe, to keep her alive. The things he robbed her of, a childhood, a normal life; she understands now that his devotion, this unconditional love, cost him even more.
Seeing him like this—cold, trembling, so weak even she feels broken—something inside of her mourns the parts of him that have already died, the things that faded when Laura left, when Irina betrayed, when she herself lashed out. But the hospital room is small, filled with the beeps of machines and the shallow sounds of his breathing; there is little room for her regret.
She understands now, the choices one has to make, the things one has to sacrifice; in the line of duty, she will watch her father die.
----
Babies
--
The handcuffs at her wrists dig into her skin. The restraints keep her from adjusting her body, from finding a slightly more comfortable position. Legs splayed and breathing more than labored, she fights tears, bites back violent words and screams.
It’s a moment she knew would come, something she’d been attempting to prepare herself for. She’s left behind many things in her life, too many things she loved, but this—this is different. It cuts deeper, weighs on her more than all the rest.
Her body, though weakened, is still strong, still steely, but she’s given birth before, albeit under different circumstances. She knows that it shouldn’t be this hard, shouldn’t hurt like this. She didn’t think she still had the capacity for this much pain.
She was wrong.
The room is filled with doctors, nurses, guards. Even now they consider her a threat; if it weren’t so terribly ridiculous and if she didn’t feel so violently betrayed, she thinks she might be able to feel flattered. After spending so much of her life trying to gain respect, worth, esteem, it’s come this: her shackled to a hospital bed as they pry life from her, Russia still fearful of her power. But she’s no fool, and neither are they; they both know that if she could, she’d kill them all with her bare hands.
She imagines Jack’s fingers tangling with her own, remembers giving birth to Sydney, feeling loved, feeling safe. Her hair clings to her sweat-drenched forehead and she imagines Jack brushing it away, his lips at her temple. Of all the things she left behind, she thinks she misses the surety of his touch most of all.
She doesn’t know if this baby is his, doesn’t know if it’s Arvin’s. Her secondary mission with him was an afterthought, an assignment she was willing to take to prolong her time with her family. If it’s Arvin’s child, she’s glad that Jack will never know; if it isn’t, she’s glad she was able to save him at least a little bit of pain. She has no doubt his superiors at the CIA have told him that she was an agent; it’s most of what made her leave.
Sydney’s face floats behind her eyes. She thinks of her as a baby, small and defenseless, being cradled in Jack’s arms, in her own. She closes her eyes, sees pudgy cheeks and sugar-lined lips, messy fingers and dirt-stained clothes. She harbors no delusions that she will raise this child still inside her, that she will ever so much as touch the baby she’s protected so ferociously.
She bites down on her lips tightly enough to draw blood, wills herself to keep from calling out for Jack. The pain and sadness win out over her composure and his name bounces off the cement walls, out of place and jarring. A collective breath is taken by all in the room, by her superiors watching through the window.
They were waiting to break her; now they have.
--
She looks so much like her mother, which is something that fills him with a strange kind of pride, and a strange kind of revulsion. The eyes are the same, hooded and, at times, taunting. He suspects that she has secrets of her own, but he’d expect no less: she is her mother’s daughter, she is her father’s child.
It’s this secret that he keeps from her, an unexpectedly hard burden to bear amid all the rest.
She looks like her mother, at times so much it’s jarring. She doesn’t look like him; he wouldn’t expect her to. He foolishly searches her face for a feature they might share, in the edge of her jaw or the set of her mouth, then reminds himself that, try as he might, there is nothing of his blood in her; there is only his fate.
Sloane raises a hand to his face, rubs the weariness from his eyes, his temples. This role he’s accepted, this part of the repentant, the reformed—it’s a heaviness that drags him down. The weight is unfamiliar, unknown, and some days he longs to let it pass, to let it slide away. But his conscience—something most would be surprised to know he even has—refuses to let him rest. He thinks of the curves of Emily’s back, the feel of Irina’s skin; there is penitence still due.
She is not, will never be, his daughter. But she can be, will be, his redemption. After all this time and all these struggles, he still needs someone to save himself for, someone to prove himself to. He doesn’t have the capacity for it within himself, so he must take the pieces of whatever faith she offers. This child, this woman with Irina’s eyes, will be the only good thing that ever came from his betrayals.
It would be easier, he thinks, if Emily were here. It wouldn’t be so trying if he could be doing this for her, proving himself with his love. Of all the games he’s played, all the lies he’s told, his love for her was his one unwavering truth. He was willing once, now so long ago, to leave it all behind: his obsession, his past, his future. Emily was enough to justify it then.
He thinks of the shadows on her tombstone, the lines of her face as she fell; unbidden, it’s Nadia’s eyes he sees, set against Emily’s curls. He can no longer separate the truth from the lies.
What started as a game, a ploy to win her trust, has become his mission. It’s selfish, he knows, but there are only so many things about himself that he believes can be changed. Nadia has an air about her, a kind of resilience that reminds him of Jack, which is only fitting and more than a little telling. Jack probably ignores it, or attributes it to something in Irina, but Sloane knows better: she is her mother’s daughter, but she is her father’s child.
----
Anticipation
--
Jack is used to waiting. He once spent 6 hours in a crawl space waiting for a Korean general to exit a building; he once stayed locked in a pitch black cell for four days waiting for any signs of rescue. Even chained to a wall and deprived of food and water, he wasn’t suffering as much as he is right now.
The half hour it will take to get the test results back, the thirty minutes of absolute uncertainty—Jack’s almost sure that this time, the waiting will kill him.
Standing in the rotunda, faced with the possibility that Sydney wasn’t really his daughter, Jack’s world shifted in some strange and fundamental way. He found himself desperately searching her face for some echo of his own, gaze sliding over familiar features—he saw in her his ears, his jaw, his courage. It should’ve felt like enough, but it didn’t; for that alone, Jack’s more ashamed than he’s ever been.
Waiting now, he pictures Sloane’s face, sees him taking Sydney’s hand when she was a child, imagines the way he looked at her when she was younger, the way he looks at her now. It’s always unsettled something inside Jack, but now it’s different, more threatening.
He needs her to be his daughter, needs it so desperately that he can’t quite explain it. He needs justification for all the things he’s done, things that are evil and cruel if they haven’t been done for Sydney, for his daughter. He needs her to be his salvation, his absolution.
His eyes wander to the clock, minute-hand passing mockingly slowly. Something inside him catches and breaks, just a little.
He remembers Sydney first coming home from the hospital, the first time she called for him—“dada” in words so beautiful he’s never quite forgotten the sound. He sees her crying, knees skinned and dirty, sees her laughing, pigtails trailing behind her as she flings herself into his arms.
In his mind, she’s sitting at the kitchen counter, 7 years old and tears in her eyes. She’d cut her finger on a shard of glass and was waiting patiently, bravely, for Jack to clean her hand and make everything better. It was something he was capable of then.
The way her eyes filled, the way her voice quivered as she said “Daddy, I’m sorry”—that isn’t something that ever belonged to Sloane. That blood on Sydney’s fingers so long ago, it might not be Jack’s, but the love in her eyes, the feel of her tiny hand in his—those belong to him.
The love Jack has for his daughter, the absolute love and acceptance, cannot be taken away, cannot be altered, cannot be changed. Regardless of what the test results are, Sydney is his daughter. She will be his salvation, his absolution.
He remembers her voice through prison glass—“I love you, too”—and feels her hug, tight and sure; his breath is easier, his head clearer. The wait is easier to bear.
--
You press a hand to your still-flat stomach, imagine the swell and the curves of a pregnant belly. Your throat tightens.
Termination. It’s your only option, you know, the only safe decision you can make. If you don’t, the KGB will be furious and the consequences potentially devastating. Realistically, you have no choice.
Still, your hand lingers. If you can hide it, only long enough to claim Jack noticed before you could take action, the KGB might allow it. If you can conceal it well enough, turn the situation to your advantage, your superiors might accept it.
The room is quiet, still in the night. Jack’s sleeping, not touching you at all, which is unusual for him. He’s possessive, even in sleep. You once found it irritating, but now—now things have changed.
You don’t know how it happened at all, how you managed to get pregnant. The KGB kept you swimming in birth control and you followed protocol to the letter. The first skipped period, the first slight bout of morning sickness, and you froze. There was a part of you that immediately wanted this, that had secretly longed for it, but still…
You are not the maternal type, you know this. But you are Irina Derevko and you can be anything, anyone. Confidence fills you, but fears stays within; you weren’t trained for this. Your body can take the strain; you’re small, but strong. Your mind can take it; practical detachment is something you’ve always excelled at. Jack stirs besides you and you think that’s not exactly true anymore.
Your heart may be your one point of weakness. You’re straight-laced and professional, but you are not cold. Deceiving Jack is one thing, but deceiving a child, your child…there are limits to the things even Irina Derevko is capable of.
Here, you hesitate. Someday, hopefully long after you’re gone, Jack will find out about this, about your mission and your lies. You can leave him with nothing, with emptiness and shadows. Or you can leave him with a child, tangible evidence of your deceit but something to cling to at least. You don’t know which he’d prefer, but you’ve accustomed yourself to making choices for him.
Your breathing quickens; in nearly seven months, you could be a mother.
The wait will be the hardest part. If the KGB is going to act, it will be during the pregnancy, when they can kill the baby without doing serious damage to their asset. It’s something they’d try, both to prevent the birth and to remind you of your place. You’ll have to be on your guard at all times, constantly aware and always fiercely protective. You’ll have to be careful; Jack can never know why you worry like you do.
There’s danger in the decision, something that usually excites you, but this is different—this is real.
You close your eyes, make your choice; your resolve strengthens. Jack’s hand stretches over your stomach, and you close your eyes and wait.
--
He doesn’t know what she’s going to do, but he’s betting that it’ll be dramatic. He knows he deserves whatever it is, which he’s fairly certain will be either an enormous embrace or an even bigger fist to the face. Both are fairly justified, but he doesn’t know which he’d prefer; if he has to guess, he'll go with rage, Irina's default position. He's sure it'll be something to behold; though subtlety is something Irina’s extremely good at, when it comes to her anger at him, she doesn’t conceal much.
He checks his watch, notes the time. They should be here soon, Irina in tow. He tries to picture her, what she looks like now, but all he can see is long-flowing hair surrounding her face, blank eyes and a twisted smile as she sinks into the water. Jack tries not to close his eyes.
He should’ve known, he thinks. He’s gone over the scene so many times in his head, pored over the littlest details. The woman looked like Irina, she smelled like Irina, she fit against him just like Irina always had. She’d kissed like Irina, too—the balance of tenderness and resignation and love and danger he’d always believed to be one-of-a-kind—and that, of everything, is something he can’t quite figure out.
They’d mended in most of the important places during their search for their daughter’s killers, and then their search for Sydney herself. He thinks of her against his shoulder, the first time he ever saw Irina cry. He fell in love with her then, this woman with his wife’s face; it made her apparent betrayal sting that much more. He’d thought she’d deserved to die, and he’d maybe gotten what he wanted: she’s maybe spent the last year and a half being worse than dead.
She’ll be thinner, probably, and not as strong, her muscles weakened from lack of use. She’ll be bruised, most likely, and that sickens him, the guilt twisting in his stomach. She’ll be broken and abused and it’ll be his fault.
He’d known—he should’ve known—that Irina would never hurt Sydney, could never kill her own daughter, but Jack had held onto his anger so long and so tightly that he’d seen this as par for the course. Some part of him knows Katya was right. He took a sick kind of satisfaction in pulling the trigger, a twisted pleasure in the sound of her splashing into the pool. He’d turned the tables, finally, and now they could be even. In death, he could forgive her. The realization came to him too late that he couldn’t forgive himself. After all their time together, he’d still never quite healed in the places he’d needed to, the wounds still raw from where she left him. Since the night he killed her—even though it wasn’t really her, it was, in all the important ways—he’s healed over, formed new scars, new cuts; he’s carried the guilt like a penance.
This time, he won’t be able to blame Irina for her anger. This time, he betrayed her. He got his revenge, now it’s time for hers; they’re on equal footing at last. He doesn’t know what form her vengeance will take, but he’s already started to steel himself against whatever it will be. Regardless, he's glad she's alive, though whether it's for himself or her daughter's he can't exactly say.
He climbs from the Jeep, settles himself against the grill, crosses his arms, and listens for footsteps.
----
Undercover
--
She tells him of a contact she had years ago, possibly still useful to them now—in his mind, this is Irina; she slyly fingers a tear from her eye while he pretends not to be looking—in his mind, this is Laura.
It feels superfluous, this game they’re playing with each other; their daughter is missing, is maybe dead, and still, they’re trying to analyze a history that’s been gone so long it almost can’t be found. She can see it in his eyes, the things he’s cataloguing, keeping track of. It would bother her if she weren’t doing almost the same thing.
She feels his gaze like a weight on her chest, on her mind; he’s trying to look at her and not seem remnants of Laura, trying to separate the lies from the truth, the illusion from the reality. He struggles with it, and she’s no help. Even now, she can’t show her hand, reveal too many parts of herself. They both still have their roles to play.
This man here now is not the one she married, not even the one she studied through the glass of her cell. That man had faith, at first in her and in their life together and then later, after all the betrayal and the lies, at least still in Sydney and most times in himself. Now, his touch is nearly empty, his shoulders mournful, his mouth pained. And his eyes are….she speaks twelve languages and can think of no words to quite describe the emotion in his eyes when he looks at her. There are no words for this thing between them, this almost—not quite—reconciliation, retrial. It’s not romance, couldn’t be romance; there’s too much history here for pretty words and flowery feelings. But there is tenderness and almost—not quite—trust; it’s more than she’s ever had with another man and it’s all too fitting, all too telling, that it’s with Jack.
She thinks occasionally of Rambaldi’s prophecies, of the 500 year old picture of their daughter set against words both frightening and thrilling. Sydney’s face in Rambaldi’s mind, with Irina’s eyes and Jack’s jaw—she thinks of fate, but forces her mind back to the task at hand. There’s no room for sentiment now, only grief and strategy and the occasional fleeting whisper of love.
She wonders sometimes if it could be any other way, if either of them would ever want it to be. It’s not like before, but it’s more than they’ve had in too long a time; it’s temporary, but for now, it’s enough. It has to be.
She crosses to the couch, runs a hand along his arm—in his mind, this is Laura; she sits beside him, tucks her hair behind her ear, speaks of weapons and biometric scanners—in his mind, this is Irina. She will never admit to him, will rarely ever admit to herself, that the line separating the two, even for her, is hard to find.
--
Irina sees him through the sight of her rifle and something inside her freezes.
She’s facedown on a rooftop, running an errand for Cuvee. Their arms supplier out of Prague has found another buyer, one Cuvee doesn’t want him to have, and her orders are to kill the contact to send a message to their dealer. It’s a routine hit, not dangerous, not exciting. It’s beneath her, and she knows it, but she’s still proving herself to Cuvee, still trying to shed the image of her cowering in the corner of her prison cell; she thought she’d do anything to kill that weakness—apparently, she was wrong.
Checking the sight again, she knows she’s not mistaken. He’s standing a few hundred yards away, obviously uncomfortable in such an open, unguarded space; he can probably feel her gaze. She shivers.
He’s gotten greyer, slightly softer around the middle. He’s grown into his features, too; a face once awkward is now stately, and handsome. She recognizes his jaw in the pictures of Sydney she gets several times a year; she never receives ones of Jack. There are limits to the pain she’ll subject herself to.
Immediately, she suspects that Cuvee planned this, sent her here just to see if she would do it, if she could kill the man she bled for. Her interrogation sessions at Muzafarebad, Irina finally breaking, finally screaming out for him; she saw Cuvee’s smile through the haze, remembers the satisfactory twist of his lips. She imagines the snarl on his face as she’s killing him, and a grin in her eyes. Theirs is a strategic alliance.
Jack looks over his shoulder in her direction. She sinks down, partly from fear, partly to keep from being seen. It’s a cloudy day and the alley is clear, cluttered only with the occasional dumpster or puddle. If she fired on him, he’d be dead in less than a second, falling to the ground amidst trash and water. Sydney would lose another parent and, once again, it would be Irina’s fault.
This isn’t the only thing that stills Irina’s hand. Split-second images flash through her mind: Jack nervous on their first date, her hand on his chest after their first night together, him pressing a kiss to her forehead while she cradles a newborn Sydney, her hand on his shoulder as he reads a bedtime story to their daughter. Her breathing slows; she lowers the rifle.
If it were anyone else, she wouldn’t think of their daughters, their wives. If she did, she wouldn’t care. She can be as savage as she is famed to be.
There are advantages to being in a place of power. Their paths will cross after today, and she will again choose when and where and why. He will suffer at her hands, of this she has no doubt.
She sees him getting into the car through her sight, mind already formulating an excuse for Cuvee. She will kill him eventually, but not today.
----
Identity
--
Water runs down her back, water so hot it brings tears to her eyes. The stream from the shower fills the room, fills her lungs, and her breathing hitches slightly as her hands wander over her shoulders, her stomach, her legs.
Running her fingers through her hair, her thumb catches the raised skin on the back of her neck, the remnants of Anna’s branding, of Rambaldi’s sign. She rubs it reflectively, almost fondly, before shaking her hair down her back and reaching for the soap.
She would never admit it to anyone, but he pulls at her, whispering in her dreams. Flashes of the visions she saw when Rambaldi was coursing through her veins, images behind her eyes when she’s lying in bed at night—it’s relentless and constant and somehow comforting.
In Rambaldi’s eyes, she is only one person: the Passenger, the key to his creation. In his eyes, she is not Nadia Santos, not Irina Derevko’s daughter or Sydney Bristow’s sister. Rambaldi doesn’t pull her in a dozen different directions like everyone else in her life does; this by itself is appealing.
To her father, she is a chance for salvation, for absolution; to Sydney, she is an attempt at guidance, at righting wrongs; to Eric, she is a fairytale, a damsel to be rescued. It feels like everyone is trying to prove something to themselves when they’re with her, and she’s long past tired of it.
Squeezing shampoo into her palm, she thinks of Jack’s eyes on her in the conference room at APO, as they pass one another in the hallway. To him more than anyone else she is a multitude of factors, of people, of lies. He looks at her and sees Sloane’s daughter, and Sydney’s sister, and Irina’s betrayal; it’s all she can do not to apologize every time their eyes meet.
She misses the anonymity of the streets, sometimes. There’s a weight on her now that she is not yet used to, does not like. The freedom of belonging to no one is gone, replaced by a constant craving for her attention, her focus, her love, and there is only so much she can give.
She rinses the shampoo away, presses her nails into her scalp; the slight discomfort is familiar and reassuring. The skin on her forearm buzzes, memories of needles and track marks. If pressed, she’d admit to missing the sting; she knows it’s more the elation that accompanied it, the clarity with which Rambaldi saw her. For him, she could be one person, could be the Passenger. Going back is tempting, and she has only so much strength to resist. The ache of her arm pulls her inside herself; nothing is as familiar to her as pain.
She shuts off the water, feels the cold air call her back to the present. Stepping from the shower, she towel-dries her hair, her body, wipes down the mirror with her bare hand.
She meets the eyes in the glass, doesn’t know who she sees.
----
Tricks of the Trade
--
When she imagined retiring, which she often did, at night or in the shower or in a quiet moment, she imagined missing the excitement and the thrill of the spy life. She was wrong; of all the things she misses, she was glad to leave the rush behind.
Wisconsin is quiet, quiet in a way that LA never was. It’s reassuring and refreshing, the stillness. And there is Will, steady and steadfast Will. It’s not the life she imagined having when she left the CIA, but it’s comfortable and she is, most times, happy.
It took some getting used to, the being Sarah Adams, being Mrs. Jonah Adams, but now she answers to the name without forethought, without effort. Slipping into an alias, even one as permanent as this, is something her job taught her. Even though she’s left that world, she can’t leave all those parts of herself behind.
She checks over her shoulder when she walks, watches for tails unconsciously. She always locates the exits when first entering a room, scans faces and body language for suspicious signs. The habits are old and useless now, but hard to break. But there are some skills that still come in handy, that she still uses more often than she’d like, more often than she’d admit.
The moments she’s caught thinking of Vaughn, of her father, of the mission that went so wrong—she’s able to slow her breathing, dry her eyes, smile brightly; these are tricks she brought with her to Wisconsin. She can put on the air of a woman in love, lay sweet kisses on Will’s neck, make her breath hitch just so when his hands are on her; it’s a role she knows how to play. It’s not that she doesn’t love him; she does, always has and always will. But it’s different than it was, than it should be. She tries to hide it and she’s usually successful; she’s good at what she did.
But he is her oldest friend, and he knows her too well to be fooled, knows her better than she thinks he does. He knows she wishes things were different; truth be told, so does he. She smiles for him, curls against him at night, runs her fingers along his arm—but he’s not forgotten all the things he used to know how to do either; he knows how to find the real story, how to sift through the half-truths and the appearances and get at the heart of things.
He doesn’t imagine that he’s the great love of her life, doesn’t fool himself into thinking that what they have is breath-taking or earth-shattering; it’s not. She needs him, and he needs to be needed; it’s not quite love, not quite perfect, but it is comfortable, and it is steady, and it is what they’ve settled for. His hand at the back of her neck, and she breathes easier. Her lips against his palm, and he is content.
----
Heat
--
He stands on the corner watching as what’s left of his life goes up in flames. It’s comforting, strangely; he wouldn’t expect anyone else to understand. The neighbors have come out of their houses and onto their lawns; this is just a show they’re watching, all of them playing spectator to the destruction of his past.
He’d gone through the house thoroughly, taking almost nothing with him when he left; it was all tainted—by her scent, by her memory. He could leave it all behind. He’d gone through their picture albums one last time, trying to preserve in his mind every look, every flaw, every lie. Walking out the door a final time, he hadn’t looked back; he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
He takes a step toward the house, moves closer to the flames. The heat radiates so strongly that sweat beads on his forehead, and fire bites at his skin. He’s drawn to it, which he thinks is somewhat fitting—he’d been drawn to Lauren like this, to the beauty and the danger that lay somewhere inside. He realizes now that he’d been playing with fire for longer than he knew. He doesn’t find it amusing.
There would be questions, of course, on how the fire started, and he’s prepared no cover story. He’s more than willing to let the CIA sift through the ashes, find some excuse for him in the charred remains. They owe him this.
The sirens wail against his ears and the lights beat against his eyes; he inhales sharply, breathes in smoke. The smell brings him back to another time, another fire; he sees himself inside the remnants of Sydney’s house, grief-stricken and broken like he’d never been before. Something inside him gives, and he starts to shake. He won’t let himself think of Sydney now, when he’d let her get so far from his thoughts before. If she saw him like this, she’d hate him; he wouldn’t blame her for it.
He takes small comfort in the fact that he’d never loved Lauren like he’d loved Sydney, like he should’ve. The relationship with Lauren had started out selfishly, a chance for him to heal, and he’d been caught unaware when he’d realized he’d fallen in love; she’d played the game exceptionally well. Every kiss, every touch—lies, and he’d fallen for them all.
This isn’t his revenge. This almost isn’t about her at all.
A loud crash escapes the house and several neighbors jump, but he stands still; he’s on guard, even now. Spine straight and shoulders back, hot wind runs through his hair, against his neck. He revels in the scene, only for a moment. His palm itches, and he thinks of the kick of his pistol against his hand when he shot at his wife, the look in her eyes as he watched her fall. A smile plays at his lips and he steps toward the heat; this is what he’s become—this is what she’s made him.
--
A drop of sweat slides down her forehead as she hears Mitchell call for her—“Mama!” he says, his voice clear and bright. She raises her head, sees his eager smile as he throws dandelions out in front of him. His tee-shirt is stained with grass and his knees are brown with dirt; his hair stands straight up, wispy and curly in the thick summer heat.
Carrie had hated the weather in LA when she’d moved out west not so few years ago. Raised in Vermont, she was used to crisp breezes floating through the sunny days, to small reprieves from the humidity and smog-filled afternoons. California is wet, yellow heat, sticky and full of spice; New England was light, green heat, bursts of rain and full of sweetness. When she’d first arrived, she’d sought out air-conditioning and ice cold drinks, surrounded herself with nursery-bought plants she was barely able to keep alive. Things were different then.
Fingering damp tendrils of hair off of her face, she reaches for the glass of iced tea sitting next to her, lays her book across her lap. Drinking deeply, she watches Mitchell run from tree to tree, tottering so precariously around the yard. Setting the glass back down on the small table near her chair, she hears Mitchell’s laughter, a delighted squeal as a butterfly flies just out of his reach. She’s spending a beautiful Saturday with her son; Marshall isn’t home.
She thinks of leaving him sometimes, usually on afternoons like this when she’s angry and upset; the bitter taste in the back of her mouth settles in deep and refuses to leave. She thinks of long hours, of barely disguised lies—Marshall is not a field agent, is not accustomed to the half-truths and necessary deceptions; she knows he’s not working IT at a bank, not sitting in an office building supervising account security. He’s doing what he’s always done—blindly trying to save the world.
She can’t fault him for it, not exactly. She’d once had the same ideals, the same goals; she was going to make the world a better place, fight evil and further the causes of good. Things were different then.
She wonders how she ended up like this sometimes, sharing her life and her child with this man that she had to talk herself into marrying, into loving. She knows what drew her to him in the beginning—the sadness in his eyes after Sydney died, the inherent goodness that fought his grief. She’d wanted to comfort him, wanted to see him smile. He hadn’t been her best lover, but he’d wanted so badly to make her happy and the effort alone touched something inside her. She was fond of him, at least. She’s still not sure if she regrets getting pregnant, if she still blames Marshall for all the things she gave up.
She’d hated him at first; she’d felt trapped, tied down, with no way to escape. He’d been patient and kind and she’d resented it completely. His touches had made her cringe and she’d just wanted to be left alone, to undo everything they’d created and be independent and free. She thinks—a hot breeze stirring the leaves above her, ruffling Mitchell’s hair—that things were different then.
----
Letters
--
He writes to her at night, when the silence of the country keeps him awake. He tells her of his day, his dreams—really more often nightmares—and his thoughts. Most often it’s hastily flung out words scrawled across printer paper, nonsensical ramblings that keep him sane.
Syd—
Finished construction on a house yesterday. Had exact same layout as the old place we used to live with Francie. Thought of her. Hit myself with a hammer. Swore like an idiot.
—Will
Syd—
Rained yesterday, the kind of rain we didn’t have in LA. It smelled like flowers and spring and I thought of you for some bizarre reason.
The newspapers out here are all jokes. If I could, I’d apply and show them all how it’s done. Make Litvack proud, you know? But I can’t apply, can’t write for a living anymore. And the byline would say “Jonah Adams” anyway and that’d just be too much like giving up, so…
—Will
He signs “Will” always, every time. He knows it’s dangerous, knows if anyone found the letters it would be a disaster, but he’s pretty sure no one will be able to read them from all the pieces of ash in the bottom of his fireplace. He burns them once a month, like clockwork, burns the letters he’s written. Watches the words darken and disappear. He finds it soothing.
The things he writes to her aren’t always snatches of his day or things he finds amusing. Sometimes he waxes poetic or philosophical, goes on about life and love and death and all the things he’s lost.
Sydney—
The woman living next door gave birth to a baby boy last month, and I can hear him crying every night through the apartment walls. She comes in right away—I can hear her footsteps, and then the creak of a rocking chair as she sits with him. It should bother me, I think, but it doesn’t; it’s comforting, knowing that there are people still capable of that kind of love.
I’ve always wanted kids, Syd, boys or girls and one or seven—just kids and a wife and a life I could be proud of. Maybe it’s old-fashioned or boring, but I’d take a nursery and a mortgage over life in the fast lane any day. I don’t know that I’d want that now though, with all the things I’d have to keep from my family. It would always feel like lying, and maybe that’d be worse than not having them at all. But the rest of my life seems like an awful long time to be alone, you know?
I guess the thing is, I miss you.
—Will
He knows she will never read them, but it doesn’t make the writing any less important. He needs a place to put the pieces of himself, of who he really is; he needs somewhere that he can still be Will Tippin, can still be himself.
He writes her letters until the hours of early morning and wakes hours later like he never wrote at all.
--
In the Line of Duty
--
She can’t remember what her father’s laugh sounds like. A multitude of thoughts are haunting her, but this, for whatever reason, seems significant.
There are moments when she’s reminded of the man he used to be. Never in the office or on a mission, but on the rare occasions that they split a meal, share a cab, she recalls the ways he loved her. It’s never anything as substantial as saying the words aloud—that is saved for whispers through bulletproof glass and above blood-stained hands; but something in his eyes—pride, she thinks, or a softness she can never fit a name to—reminds her of Sunday morning pancakes and the slow spread of his smile.
She understands, for the most part, the things this job has cost him. In her mind, she’s five years old, sitting atop his shoulders, her mother throwing breadcrumbs to the ducks in the pond; she’s twelve, sprained ankle throbbing, in his arms as he carries her from the middle school gymnasium—one of the few games he actually attended, she thinks, but she pushes the thought away. It’s not fair to him, she knows that now. He didn’t want to be missing her childhood any more than she wanted him gone; it’s just one more thing he gave up to protect her.
The easy manner of his speech, the ferocity of his hugs: these are things he forced aside, things they both lost, so he could do his job. He sacrificed so many parts of himself in the line of duty.
Her father is a complicated man, and this is something that took her longer than she’ll admit to understand. There’s a wariness in his tone, in his movements, that hints at betrayal, not his own, but that of the people he’s chosen to love. He’s harder now, in all the necessary places, but there is a part of him, hidden and well-contained, that will always be vulnerable to attack: the place he keeps his love for her.
She can’t deny that he has hurt her, cut her deeper than anyone she’s ever loved, but she’ll admit now that there was purpose behind it, however misguided. He did what he thought he had to, what he felt was necessary, to keep her safe, to keep her alive. The things he robbed her of, a childhood, a normal life; she understands now that his devotion, this unconditional love, cost him even more.
Seeing him like this—cold, trembling, so weak even she feels broken—something inside of her mourns the parts of him that have already died, the things that faded when Laura left, when Irina betrayed, when she herself lashed out. But the hospital room is small, filled with the beeps of machines and the shallow sounds of his breathing; there is little room for her regret.
She understands now, the choices one has to make, the things one has to sacrifice; in the line of duty, she will watch her father die.
----
Babies
--
The handcuffs at her wrists dig into her skin. The restraints keep her from adjusting her body, from finding a slightly more comfortable position. Legs splayed and breathing more than labored, she fights tears, bites back violent words and screams.
It’s a moment she knew would come, something she’d been attempting to prepare herself for. She’s left behind many things in her life, too many things she loved, but this—this is different. It cuts deeper, weighs on her more than all the rest.
Her body, though weakened, is still strong, still steely, but she’s given birth before, albeit under different circumstances. She knows that it shouldn’t be this hard, shouldn’t hurt like this. She didn’t think she still had the capacity for this much pain.
She was wrong.
The room is filled with doctors, nurses, guards. Even now they consider her a threat; if it weren’t so terribly ridiculous and if she didn’t feel so violently betrayed, she thinks she might be able to feel flattered. After spending so much of her life trying to gain respect, worth, esteem, it’s come this: her shackled to a hospital bed as they pry life from her, Russia still fearful of her power. But she’s no fool, and neither are they; they both know that if she could, she’d kill them all with her bare hands.
She imagines Jack’s fingers tangling with her own, remembers giving birth to Sydney, feeling loved, feeling safe. Her hair clings to her sweat-drenched forehead and she imagines Jack brushing it away, his lips at her temple. Of all the things she left behind, she thinks she misses the surety of his touch most of all.
She doesn’t know if this baby is his, doesn’t know if it’s Arvin’s. Her secondary mission with him was an afterthought, an assignment she was willing to take to prolong her time with her family. If it’s Arvin’s child, she’s glad that Jack will never know; if it isn’t, she’s glad she was able to save him at least a little bit of pain. She has no doubt his superiors at the CIA have told him that she was an agent; it’s most of what made her leave.
Sydney’s face floats behind her eyes. She thinks of her as a baby, small and defenseless, being cradled in Jack’s arms, in her own. She closes her eyes, sees pudgy cheeks and sugar-lined lips, messy fingers and dirt-stained clothes. She harbors no delusions that she will raise this child still inside her, that she will ever so much as touch the baby she’s protected so ferociously.
She bites down on her lips tightly enough to draw blood, wills herself to keep from calling out for Jack. The pain and sadness win out over her composure and his name bounces off the cement walls, out of place and jarring. A collective breath is taken by all in the room, by her superiors watching through the window.
They were waiting to break her; now they have.
--
She looks so much like her mother, which is something that fills him with a strange kind of pride, and a strange kind of revulsion. The eyes are the same, hooded and, at times, taunting. He suspects that she has secrets of her own, but he’d expect no less: she is her mother’s daughter, she is her father’s child.
It’s this secret that he keeps from her, an unexpectedly hard burden to bear amid all the rest.
She looks like her mother, at times so much it’s jarring. She doesn’t look like him; he wouldn’t expect her to. He foolishly searches her face for a feature they might share, in the edge of her jaw or the set of her mouth, then reminds himself that, try as he might, there is nothing of his blood in her; there is only his fate.
Sloane raises a hand to his face, rubs the weariness from his eyes, his temples. This role he’s accepted, this part of the repentant, the reformed—it’s a heaviness that drags him down. The weight is unfamiliar, unknown, and some days he longs to let it pass, to let it slide away. But his conscience—something most would be surprised to know he even has—refuses to let him rest. He thinks of the curves of Emily’s back, the feel of Irina’s skin; there is penitence still due.
She is not, will never be, his daughter. But she can be, will be, his redemption. After all this time and all these struggles, he still needs someone to save himself for, someone to prove himself to. He doesn’t have the capacity for it within himself, so he must take the pieces of whatever faith she offers. This child, this woman with Irina’s eyes, will be the only good thing that ever came from his betrayals.
It would be easier, he thinks, if Emily were here. It wouldn’t be so trying if he could be doing this for her, proving himself with his love. Of all the games he’s played, all the lies he’s told, his love for her was his one unwavering truth. He was willing once, now so long ago, to leave it all behind: his obsession, his past, his future. Emily was enough to justify it then.
He thinks of the shadows on her tombstone, the lines of her face as she fell; unbidden, it’s Nadia’s eyes he sees, set against Emily’s curls. He can no longer separate the truth from the lies.
What started as a game, a ploy to win her trust, has become his mission. It’s selfish, he knows, but there are only so many things about himself that he believes can be changed. Nadia has an air about her, a kind of resilience that reminds him of Jack, which is only fitting and more than a little telling. Jack probably ignores it, or attributes it to something in Irina, but Sloane knows better: she is her mother’s daughter, but she is her father’s child.
----
Anticipation
--
Jack is used to waiting. He once spent 6 hours in a crawl space waiting for a Korean general to exit a building; he once stayed locked in a pitch black cell for four days waiting for any signs of rescue. Even chained to a wall and deprived of food and water, he wasn’t suffering as much as he is right now.
The half hour it will take to get the test results back, the thirty minutes of absolute uncertainty—Jack’s almost sure that this time, the waiting will kill him.
Standing in the rotunda, faced with the possibility that Sydney wasn’t really his daughter, Jack’s world shifted in some strange and fundamental way. He found himself desperately searching her face for some echo of his own, gaze sliding over familiar features—he saw in her his ears, his jaw, his courage. It should’ve felt like enough, but it didn’t; for that alone, Jack’s more ashamed than he’s ever been.
Waiting now, he pictures Sloane’s face, sees him taking Sydney’s hand when she was a child, imagines the way he looked at her when she was younger, the way he looks at her now. It’s always unsettled something inside Jack, but now it’s different, more threatening.
He needs her to be his daughter, needs it so desperately that he can’t quite explain it. He needs justification for all the things he’s done, things that are evil and cruel if they haven’t been done for Sydney, for his daughter. He needs her to be his salvation, his absolution.
His eyes wander to the clock, minute-hand passing mockingly slowly. Something inside him catches and breaks, just a little.
He remembers Sydney first coming home from the hospital, the first time she called for him—“dada” in words so beautiful he’s never quite forgotten the sound. He sees her crying, knees skinned and dirty, sees her laughing, pigtails trailing behind her as she flings herself into his arms.
In his mind, she’s sitting at the kitchen counter, 7 years old and tears in her eyes. She’d cut her finger on a shard of glass and was waiting patiently, bravely, for Jack to clean her hand and make everything better. It was something he was capable of then.
The way her eyes filled, the way her voice quivered as she said “Daddy, I’m sorry”—that isn’t something that ever belonged to Sloane. That blood on Sydney’s fingers so long ago, it might not be Jack’s, but the love in her eyes, the feel of her tiny hand in his—those belong to him.
The love Jack has for his daughter, the absolute love and acceptance, cannot be taken away, cannot be altered, cannot be changed. Regardless of what the test results are, Sydney is his daughter. She will be his salvation, his absolution.
He remembers her voice through prison glass—“I love you, too”—and feels her hug, tight and sure; his breath is easier, his head clearer. The wait is easier to bear.
--
You press a hand to your still-flat stomach, imagine the swell and the curves of a pregnant belly. Your throat tightens.
Termination. It’s your only option, you know, the only safe decision you can make. If you don’t, the KGB will be furious and the consequences potentially devastating. Realistically, you have no choice.
Still, your hand lingers. If you can hide it, only long enough to claim Jack noticed before you could take action, the KGB might allow it. If you can conceal it well enough, turn the situation to your advantage, your superiors might accept it.
The room is quiet, still in the night. Jack’s sleeping, not touching you at all, which is unusual for him. He’s possessive, even in sleep. You once found it irritating, but now—now things have changed.
You don’t know how it happened at all, how you managed to get pregnant. The KGB kept you swimming in birth control and you followed protocol to the letter. The first skipped period, the first slight bout of morning sickness, and you froze. There was a part of you that immediately wanted this, that had secretly longed for it, but still…
You are not the maternal type, you know this. But you are Irina Derevko and you can be anything, anyone. Confidence fills you, but fears stays within; you weren’t trained for this. Your body can take the strain; you’re small, but strong. Your mind can take it; practical detachment is something you’ve always excelled at. Jack stirs besides you and you think that’s not exactly true anymore.
Your heart may be your one point of weakness. You’re straight-laced and professional, but you are not cold. Deceiving Jack is one thing, but deceiving a child, your child…there are limits to the things even Irina Derevko is capable of.
Here, you hesitate. Someday, hopefully long after you’re gone, Jack will find out about this, about your mission and your lies. You can leave him with nothing, with emptiness and shadows. Or you can leave him with a child, tangible evidence of your deceit but something to cling to at least. You don’t know which he’d prefer, but you’ve accustomed yourself to making choices for him.
Your breathing quickens; in nearly seven months, you could be a mother.
The wait will be the hardest part. If the KGB is going to act, it will be during the pregnancy, when they can kill the baby without doing serious damage to their asset. It’s something they’d try, both to prevent the birth and to remind you of your place. You’ll have to be on your guard at all times, constantly aware and always fiercely protective. You’ll have to be careful; Jack can never know why you worry like you do.
There’s danger in the decision, something that usually excites you, but this is different—this is real.
You close your eyes, make your choice; your resolve strengthens. Jack’s hand stretches over your stomach, and you close your eyes and wait.
--
He doesn’t know what she’s going to do, but he’s betting that it’ll be dramatic. He knows he deserves whatever it is, which he’s fairly certain will be either an enormous embrace or an even bigger fist to the face. Both are fairly justified, but he doesn’t know which he’d prefer; if he has to guess, he'll go with rage, Irina's default position. He's sure it'll be something to behold; though subtlety is something Irina’s extremely good at, when it comes to her anger at him, she doesn’t conceal much.
He checks his watch, notes the time. They should be here soon, Irina in tow. He tries to picture her, what she looks like now, but all he can see is long-flowing hair surrounding her face, blank eyes and a twisted smile as she sinks into the water. Jack tries not to close his eyes.
He should’ve known, he thinks. He’s gone over the scene so many times in his head, pored over the littlest details. The woman looked like Irina, she smelled like Irina, she fit against him just like Irina always had. She’d kissed like Irina, too—the balance of tenderness and resignation and love and danger he’d always believed to be one-of-a-kind—and that, of everything, is something he can’t quite figure out.
They’d mended in most of the important places during their search for their daughter’s killers, and then their search for Sydney herself. He thinks of her against his shoulder, the first time he ever saw Irina cry. He fell in love with her then, this woman with his wife’s face; it made her apparent betrayal sting that much more. He’d thought she’d deserved to die, and he’d maybe gotten what he wanted: she’s maybe spent the last year and a half being worse than dead.
She’ll be thinner, probably, and not as strong, her muscles weakened from lack of use. She’ll be bruised, most likely, and that sickens him, the guilt twisting in his stomach. She’ll be broken and abused and it’ll be his fault.
He’d known—he should’ve known—that Irina would never hurt Sydney, could never kill her own daughter, but Jack had held onto his anger so long and so tightly that he’d seen this as par for the course. Some part of him knows Katya was right. He took a sick kind of satisfaction in pulling the trigger, a twisted pleasure in the sound of her splashing into the pool. He’d turned the tables, finally, and now they could be even. In death, he could forgive her. The realization came to him too late that he couldn’t forgive himself. After all their time together, he’d still never quite healed in the places he’d needed to, the wounds still raw from where she left him. Since the night he killed her—even though it wasn’t really her, it was, in all the important ways—he’s healed over, formed new scars, new cuts; he’s carried the guilt like a penance.
This time, he won’t be able to blame Irina for her anger. This time, he betrayed her. He got his revenge, now it’s time for hers; they’re on equal footing at last. He doesn’t know what form her vengeance will take, but he’s already started to steel himself against whatever it will be. Regardless, he's glad she's alive, though whether it's for himself or her daughter's he can't exactly say.
He climbs from the Jeep, settles himself against the grill, crosses his arms, and listens for footsteps.
----
Undercover
--
She tells him of a contact she had years ago, possibly still useful to them now—in his mind, this is Irina; she slyly fingers a tear from her eye while he pretends not to be looking—in his mind, this is Laura.
It feels superfluous, this game they’re playing with each other; their daughter is missing, is maybe dead, and still, they’re trying to analyze a history that’s been gone so long it almost can’t be found. She can see it in his eyes, the things he’s cataloguing, keeping track of. It would bother her if she weren’t doing almost the same thing.
She feels his gaze like a weight on her chest, on her mind; he’s trying to look at her and not seem remnants of Laura, trying to separate the lies from the truth, the illusion from the reality. He struggles with it, and she’s no help. Even now, she can’t show her hand, reveal too many parts of herself. They both still have their roles to play.
This man here now is not the one she married, not even the one she studied through the glass of her cell. That man had faith, at first in her and in their life together and then later, after all the betrayal and the lies, at least still in Sydney and most times in himself. Now, his touch is nearly empty, his shoulders mournful, his mouth pained. And his eyes are….she speaks twelve languages and can think of no words to quite describe the emotion in his eyes when he looks at her. There are no words for this thing between them, this almost—not quite—reconciliation, retrial. It’s not romance, couldn’t be romance; there’s too much history here for pretty words and flowery feelings. But there is tenderness and almost—not quite—trust; it’s more than she’s ever had with another man and it’s all too fitting, all too telling, that it’s with Jack.
She thinks occasionally of Rambaldi’s prophecies, of the 500 year old picture of their daughter set against words both frightening and thrilling. Sydney’s face in Rambaldi’s mind, with Irina’s eyes and Jack’s jaw—she thinks of fate, but forces her mind back to the task at hand. There’s no room for sentiment now, only grief and strategy and the occasional fleeting whisper of love.
She wonders sometimes if it could be any other way, if either of them would ever want it to be. It’s not like before, but it’s more than they’ve had in too long a time; it’s temporary, but for now, it’s enough. It has to be.
She crosses to the couch, runs a hand along his arm—in his mind, this is Laura; she sits beside him, tucks her hair behind her ear, speaks of weapons and biometric scanners—in his mind, this is Irina. She will never admit to him, will rarely ever admit to herself, that the line separating the two, even for her, is hard to find.
--
Irina sees him through the sight of her rifle and something inside her freezes.
She’s facedown on a rooftop, running an errand for Cuvee. Their arms supplier out of Prague has found another buyer, one Cuvee doesn’t want him to have, and her orders are to kill the contact to send a message to their dealer. It’s a routine hit, not dangerous, not exciting. It’s beneath her, and she knows it, but she’s still proving herself to Cuvee, still trying to shed the image of her cowering in the corner of her prison cell; she thought she’d do anything to kill that weakness—apparently, she was wrong.
Checking the sight again, she knows she’s not mistaken. He’s standing a few hundred yards away, obviously uncomfortable in such an open, unguarded space; he can probably feel her gaze. She shivers.
He’s gotten greyer, slightly softer around the middle. He’s grown into his features, too; a face once awkward is now stately, and handsome. She recognizes his jaw in the pictures of Sydney she gets several times a year; she never receives ones of Jack. There are limits to the pain she’ll subject herself to.
Immediately, she suspects that Cuvee planned this, sent her here just to see if she would do it, if she could kill the man she bled for. Her interrogation sessions at Muzafarebad, Irina finally breaking, finally screaming out for him; she saw Cuvee’s smile through the haze, remembers the satisfactory twist of his lips. She imagines the snarl on his face as she’s killing him, and a grin in her eyes. Theirs is a strategic alliance.
Jack looks over his shoulder in her direction. She sinks down, partly from fear, partly to keep from being seen. It’s a cloudy day and the alley is clear, cluttered only with the occasional dumpster or puddle. If she fired on him, he’d be dead in less than a second, falling to the ground amidst trash and water. Sydney would lose another parent and, once again, it would be Irina’s fault.
This isn’t the only thing that stills Irina’s hand. Split-second images flash through her mind: Jack nervous on their first date, her hand on his chest after their first night together, him pressing a kiss to her forehead while she cradles a newborn Sydney, her hand on his shoulder as he reads a bedtime story to their daughter. Her breathing slows; she lowers the rifle.
If it were anyone else, she wouldn’t think of their daughters, their wives. If she did, she wouldn’t care. She can be as savage as she is famed to be.
There are advantages to being in a place of power. Their paths will cross after today, and she will again choose when and where and why. He will suffer at her hands, of this she has no doubt.
She sees him getting into the car through her sight, mind already formulating an excuse for Cuvee. She will kill him eventually, but not today.
----
Identity
--
Water runs down her back, water so hot it brings tears to her eyes. The stream from the shower fills the room, fills her lungs, and her breathing hitches slightly as her hands wander over her shoulders, her stomach, her legs.
Running her fingers through her hair, her thumb catches the raised skin on the back of her neck, the remnants of Anna’s branding, of Rambaldi’s sign. She rubs it reflectively, almost fondly, before shaking her hair down her back and reaching for the soap.
She would never admit it to anyone, but he pulls at her, whispering in her dreams. Flashes of the visions she saw when Rambaldi was coursing through her veins, images behind her eyes when she’s lying in bed at night—it’s relentless and constant and somehow comforting.
In Rambaldi’s eyes, she is only one person: the Passenger, the key to his creation. In his eyes, she is not Nadia Santos, not Irina Derevko’s daughter or Sydney Bristow’s sister. Rambaldi doesn’t pull her in a dozen different directions like everyone else in her life does; this by itself is appealing.
To her father, she is a chance for salvation, for absolution; to Sydney, she is an attempt at guidance, at righting wrongs; to Eric, she is a fairytale, a damsel to be rescued. It feels like everyone is trying to prove something to themselves when they’re with her, and she’s long past tired of it.
Squeezing shampoo into her palm, she thinks of Jack’s eyes on her in the conference room at APO, as they pass one another in the hallway. To him more than anyone else she is a multitude of factors, of people, of lies. He looks at her and sees Sloane’s daughter, and Sydney’s sister, and Irina’s betrayal; it’s all she can do not to apologize every time their eyes meet.
She misses the anonymity of the streets, sometimes. There’s a weight on her now that she is not yet used to, does not like. The freedom of belonging to no one is gone, replaced by a constant craving for her attention, her focus, her love, and there is only so much she can give.
She rinses the shampoo away, presses her nails into her scalp; the slight discomfort is familiar and reassuring. The skin on her forearm buzzes, memories of needles and track marks. If pressed, she’d admit to missing the sting; she knows it’s more the elation that accompanied it, the clarity with which Rambaldi saw her. For him, she could be one person, could be the Passenger. Going back is tempting, and she has only so much strength to resist. The ache of her arm pulls her inside herself; nothing is as familiar to her as pain.
She shuts off the water, feels the cold air call her back to the present. Stepping from the shower, she towel-dries her hair, her body, wipes down the mirror with her bare hand.
She meets the eyes in the glass, doesn’t know who she sees.
----
Tricks of the Trade
--
When she imagined retiring, which she often did, at night or in the shower or in a quiet moment, she imagined missing the excitement and the thrill of the spy life. She was wrong; of all the things she misses, she was glad to leave the rush behind.
Wisconsin is quiet, quiet in a way that LA never was. It’s reassuring and refreshing, the stillness. And there is Will, steady and steadfast Will. It’s not the life she imagined having when she left the CIA, but it’s comfortable and she is, most times, happy.
It took some getting used to, the being Sarah Adams, being Mrs. Jonah Adams, but now she answers to the name without forethought, without effort. Slipping into an alias, even one as permanent as this, is something her job taught her. Even though she’s left that world, she can’t leave all those parts of herself behind.
She checks over her shoulder when she walks, watches for tails unconsciously. She always locates the exits when first entering a room, scans faces and body language for suspicious signs. The habits are old and useless now, but hard to break. But there are some skills that still come in handy, that she still uses more often than she’d like, more often than she’d admit.
The moments she’s caught thinking of Vaughn, of her father, of the mission that went so wrong—she’s able to slow her breathing, dry her eyes, smile brightly; these are tricks she brought with her to Wisconsin. She can put on the air of a woman in love, lay sweet kisses on Will’s neck, make her breath hitch just so when his hands are on her; it’s a role she knows how to play. It’s not that she doesn’t love him; she does, always has and always will. But it’s different than it was, than it should be. She tries to hide it and she’s usually successful; she’s good at what she did.
But he is her oldest friend, and he knows her too well to be fooled, knows her better than she thinks he does. He knows she wishes things were different; truth be told, so does he. She smiles for him, curls against him at night, runs her fingers along his arm—but he’s not forgotten all the things he used to know how to do either; he knows how to find the real story, how to sift through the half-truths and the appearances and get at the heart of things.
He doesn’t imagine that he’s the great love of her life, doesn’t fool himself into thinking that what they have is breath-taking or earth-shattering; it’s not. She needs him, and he needs to be needed; it’s not quite love, not quite perfect, but it is comfortable, and it is steady, and it is what they’ve settled for. His hand at the back of her neck, and she breathes easier. Her lips against his palm, and he is content.
----
Heat
--
He stands on the corner watching as what’s left of his life goes up in flames. It’s comforting, strangely; he wouldn’t expect anyone else to understand. The neighbors have come out of their houses and onto their lawns; this is just a show they’re watching, all of them playing spectator to the destruction of his past.
He’d gone through the house thoroughly, taking almost nothing with him when he left; it was all tainted—by her scent, by her memory. He could leave it all behind. He’d gone through their picture albums one last time, trying to preserve in his mind every look, every flaw, every lie. Walking out the door a final time, he hadn’t looked back; he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
He takes a step toward the house, moves closer to the flames. The heat radiates so strongly that sweat beads on his forehead, and fire bites at his skin. He’s drawn to it, which he thinks is somewhat fitting—he’d been drawn to Lauren like this, to the beauty and the danger that lay somewhere inside. He realizes now that he’d been playing with fire for longer than he knew. He doesn’t find it amusing.
There would be questions, of course, on how the fire started, and he’s prepared no cover story. He’s more than willing to let the CIA sift through the ashes, find some excuse for him in the charred remains. They owe him this.
The sirens wail against his ears and the lights beat against his eyes; he inhales sharply, breathes in smoke. The smell brings him back to another time, another fire; he sees himself inside the remnants of Sydney’s house, grief-stricken and broken like he’d never been before. Something inside him gives, and he starts to shake. He won’t let himself think of Sydney now, when he’d let her get so far from his thoughts before. If she saw him like this, she’d hate him; he wouldn’t blame her for it.
He takes small comfort in the fact that he’d never loved Lauren like he’d loved Sydney, like he should’ve. The relationship with Lauren had started out selfishly, a chance for him to heal, and he’d been caught unaware when he’d realized he’d fallen in love; she’d played the game exceptionally well. Every kiss, every touch—lies, and he’d fallen for them all.
This isn’t his revenge. This almost isn’t about her at all.
A loud crash escapes the house and several neighbors jump, but he stands still; he’s on guard, even now. Spine straight and shoulders back, hot wind runs through his hair, against his neck. He revels in the scene, only for a moment. His palm itches, and he thinks of the kick of his pistol against his hand when he shot at his wife, the look in her eyes as he watched her fall. A smile plays at his lips and he steps toward the heat; this is what he’s become—this is what she’s made him.
--
A drop of sweat slides down her forehead as she hears Mitchell call for her—“Mama!” he says, his voice clear and bright. She raises her head, sees his eager smile as he throws dandelions out in front of him. His tee-shirt is stained with grass and his knees are brown with dirt; his hair stands straight up, wispy and curly in the thick summer heat.
Carrie had hated the weather in LA when she’d moved out west not so few years ago. Raised in Vermont, she was used to crisp breezes floating through the sunny days, to small reprieves from the humidity and smog-filled afternoons. California is wet, yellow heat, sticky and full of spice; New England was light, green heat, bursts of rain and full of sweetness. When she’d first arrived, she’d sought out air-conditioning and ice cold drinks, surrounded herself with nursery-bought plants she was barely able to keep alive. Things were different then.
Fingering damp tendrils of hair off of her face, she reaches for the glass of iced tea sitting next to her, lays her book across her lap. Drinking deeply, she watches Mitchell run from tree to tree, tottering so precariously around the yard. Setting the glass back down on the small table near her chair, she hears Mitchell’s laughter, a delighted squeal as a butterfly flies just out of his reach. She’s spending a beautiful Saturday with her son; Marshall isn’t home.
She thinks of leaving him sometimes, usually on afternoons like this when she’s angry and upset; the bitter taste in the back of her mouth settles in deep and refuses to leave. She thinks of long hours, of barely disguised lies—Marshall is not a field agent, is not accustomed to the half-truths and necessary deceptions; she knows he’s not working IT at a bank, not sitting in an office building supervising account security. He’s doing what he’s always done—blindly trying to save the world.
She can’t fault him for it, not exactly. She’d once had the same ideals, the same goals; she was going to make the world a better place, fight evil and further the causes of good. Things were different then.
She wonders how she ended up like this sometimes, sharing her life and her child with this man that she had to talk herself into marrying, into loving. She knows what drew her to him in the beginning—the sadness in his eyes after Sydney died, the inherent goodness that fought his grief. She’d wanted to comfort him, wanted to see him smile. He hadn’t been her best lover, but he’d wanted so badly to make her happy and the effort alone touched something inside her. She was fond of him, at least. She’s still not sure if she regrets getting pregnant, if she still blames Marshall for all the things she gave up.
She’d hated him at first; she’d felt trapped, tied down, with no way to escape. He’d been patient and kind and she’d resented it completely. His touches had made her cringe and she’d just wanted to be left alone, to undo everything they’d created and be independent and free. She thinks—a hot breeze stirring the leaves above her, ruffling Mitchell’s hair—that things were different then.
----
Letters
--
He writes to her at night, when the silence of the country keeps him awake. He tells her of his day, his dreams—really more often nightmares—and his thoughts. Most often it’s hastily flung out words scrawled across printer paper, nonsensical ramblings that keep him sane.
Syd—
Finished construction on a house yesterday. Had exact same layout as the old place we used to live with Francie. Thought of her. Hit myself with a hammer. Swore like an idiot.
—Will
Syd—
Rained yesterday, the kind of rain we didn’t have in LA. It smelled like flowers and spring and I thought of you for some bizarre reason.
The newspapers out here are all jokes. If I could, I’d apply and show them all how it’s done. Make Litvack proud, you know? But I can’t apply, can’t write for a living anymore. And the byline would say “Jonah Adams” anyway and that’d just be too much like giving up, so…
—Will
He signs “Will” always, every time. He knows it’s dangerous, knows if anyone found the letters it would be a disaster, but he’s pretty sure no one will be able to read them from all the pieces of ash in the bottom of his fireplace. He burns them once a month, like clockwork, burns the letters he’s written. Watches the words darken and disappear. He finds it soothing.
The things he writes to her aren’t always snatches of his day or things he finds amusing. Sometimes he waxes poetic or philosophical, goes on about life and love and death and all the things he’s lost.
Sydney—
The woman living next door gave birth to a baby boy last month, and I can hear him crying every night through the apartment walls. She comes in right away—I can hear her footsteps, and then the creak of a rocking chair as she sits with him. It should bother me, I think, but it doesn’t; it’s comforting, knowing that there are people still capable of that kind of love.
I’ve always wanted kids, Syd, boys or girls and one or seven—just kids and a wife and a life I could be proud of. Maybe it’s old-fashioned or boring, but I’d take a nursery and a mortgage over life in the fast lane any day. I don’t know that I’d want that now though, with all the things I’d have to keep from my family. It would always feel like lying, and maybe that’d be worse than not having them at all. But the rest of my life seems like an awful long time to be alone, you know?
I guess the thing is, I miss you.
—Will
He knows she will never read them, but it doesn’t make the writing any less important. He needs a place to put the pieces of himself, of who he really is; he needs somewhere that he can still be Will Tippin, can still be himself.
He writes her letters until the hours of early morning and wakes hours later like he never wrote at all.
--