more than this

Irina Derevko loved three things in her life.

Jack.

Sydney.

Sark.

It was easy to love Jack Bristow. He was good and honorable and loved her back until he discovered the truth.

It was even easier to love Sydney. Sydney was her daughter, and no matter how cold Irina had been trained to be, no matter the reason she'd given birth was to cement her cover as Jack's loving wife Laura, maternal instinct couldn't be denied. And Sydney was a wonderful, beautiful, sweet child combining all the best traits of Jack and Irina. Everyone loved Sydney. So she left her behind, knowing Jack would take care of their daughter.

Sark was never easy.

Sark was her penance.

She'd found him, curled in a nest of scavenged bedding in a corner of a warehouse where she'd arranged to inspect and purchase a possible Rambaldi document. Dirty blond boy child, blue eyes already too knowing for any age, fragile starved body and choir boy face merely tools he used to survive. She'd thought of her daughter at the same age, still achingly innocent, and taken him with her. The documents proved to be forgeries, but she had been sanguine over the failure, intrigued and curiously protective of the boy.

Two weeks passed before he'd do more than snarl and curse her, kick and fight and bite whenever she touched him. Food and clothes and a warm place to sleep didn't win her any trust at all. Only self interest, mutual benefit, made him tell her his name, so that she could make sure no one tried to take him away. Being with Irina was better than where he'd been before, so he stayed, but from the first she knew he belonged to no one but himself.

It took time and effort to win even the faintest vestige of loyalty from him. At six he'd already been betrayed by everyone who should have kept him safe. His body had been abandoned, beaten, and sold. Hunting down who he was and erasing every record of his existence hadn't been hard. Irina had put a bullet between the eyes of the 'foster' father who had given the boy to one of his 'friends' for a £50. She would have killed the pedophile too, but the boy had already done it, slicing a piece of broken whiskey bottle through the man's throat, before bolting for the street. He'd survived there, with all the amoral tenacity of a starving alley cat, until Irina picked him up.

Once she'd erased his past, she had to decide what his future would be.

The boy was a survivor, smart and quick and hungry.

He was a killer.

She decided there was little use in trying to send him back to that 'normal' life she hoped her daughter might still have a chance at having. Instead, he would be trained.

That was beginning.

He had a gift for the business of espionage, absorbing Irina's lessons along with any other knowledge available. Sark understood instinctually that knowledge was power and everything in his being longed for power. For him there was no good and bad except in the context of success and failure. He was always focused. It was necessary to be the best. Not to please her, but to protect himself. As long as he was the best, he would be vulnerable to nothing, reliant on no one. His tutors were impressed with his intellect, while others easily taught him the physical skills necessary. Beyond his natural talents, his ambition always drove him harder than anyone else ever could, honing mind and body into a weapon.

When he was ten he became her courier, using a cover alias of going to or returning from boarding school or visiting relatives. Sometimes they traveled together. Traveling with a child changed her profile, misled and misdirected security personnel and intelligence analysts alike. Other times, she sent him alone, knowing he would use his youth and angel face and perfectly learned manners to beguile anyone who might have questioned her.

When he was fourteen he accompanied her on a meet in Estonia, brokering explosive detonators in exchange for purloined Russian chemical warheads. When the radicals they were dealing with attempted to renege on the deal, he calmly shot two of them on her order. The cool mask of hauteur he presented never wavered and when they had finished their business she told him she was pleased with him.

He dipped his head at the compliment, but shivered silently in the limo afterwards. Irina carefully didn't touch him, didn't offer the comfort he would have rejected. Only when his hands were steady again did he slide close and lean into her for the remainder of the trip to the airport.

He was like a cat that way too, affectionate and selfish, only wishing for connection when he wished it, on his terms.

She never meant to love him.

She didn't fool herself that Sark loved her or even felt more than specious loyalty that would hold only so long as he believed that loyalty benefited him ultimately.

He was her creation, her tool, her trusted lieutenant, and she kept him at a careful distance, never trying to be a mother to him. He never wanted a mother. He was still feral. He referred to her always as his 'employer' or on rare occasions by name. Sometimes his blue eyes watched her. He'd learned to be still and to weigh his words. His soft voice and courtesy and fairness gave nothing away.

She told herself she was fond of him, no more.

Then she learned that Jack had allowed Sloane and SD-6 to ensnare Sydney in the Game. The agent Sark had encountered in Moscow when he removed the head of K-Directorate had been her daughter. One of them might easily have killed the other.

Sydney was her daughter. She hadn't seen her daughter in twenty-years.

Sark was her protégé. He had been hers for fifteen years.

Irina didn't know which would have hurt worse or how she could ever forgive one for the loss of the other. She tried to keep them away from each other after that. But when it became necessary to her plans, she shot Sydney and abandoned Sark, ruthlessly gambling they would both survive. Sydney couldn't hate her any more than she already did. Sark wouldn't hate her. Sark didn't hate any more than he loved. Sark was a predator, polished and polite, but ice cold.

He surprised her though.

With Khasinau dead too, she'd thought Sark might try to take over her abandoned organization, merge it with his own carefully nurtured network. The possibility existed even that he would take the opportunity to disappear as she apparently had, leaving the Game. With the organization in disarray he could have gutted several of her accounts in Liechtenstein and Aruba and had enough money to live in his preferred style the rest of his life. He'd been free, free even of her, in those months while she sat in a CIA cell and spun her web of lies and truth for Sydney and Jack. He hadn't, instead moving obliquely, manipulating his way into SD-6 and Sloane's confidence, keeping his own.

She knew he'd had several opportunities to kill Sydney and refrained for no explicable reason. He let Sloane use him, making himself indispensable to the man's plans and eventually discovered where Irina was. He deliberately fed Sydney the information the CIA needed to move on SD-6 and the Alliance and used Sloane to arrange her own extraction from CIA custody.

He gave nothing away when he delivered her to Sloane in Panama, nor when he professionally checked her for tracking devices like the one she'd persuaded Jack to remove the night before. Irina couldn't guess if she was more to him than another job for Sloane, though she wondered at that partnership. Did Sloane make Sark choke in disgust? He seldom let his contempt show, any more than his temper or his intentions. Perhaps he'd learned that composure from her.

She smiled at Sloane, despicable creature that he was, and thanked him for freeing her. Just past Sloane's shoulder, Sark regarded her coolly, head tipped just slightly to the side. She let her smile become real, pleased to see him, despite everything.

On Sloane's private jet, winging east across the Atlantic, Irina joined Sark in the jet's lounge after warning Sloane away from Sydney. She studied the slim, pale figure in the dark Armani suit. He was intent on the laptop before him, slender fingers flying over the keyboard. She compared what she felt looking at Sydney with what she felt looking at Sark. The emotions were remarkably similar.

He didn't look up but indicated his awareness of her presence with a quiet question.

"Do you know what he had me do in Mexico City?"

Sydney had been in that church. If she'd been there five minutes longer she would have died with everyone else in it. If Sloane's scientist had miscalculated in putting the experimental Rambaldi device together, Sark might have died when he triggered it. They would have both been gone, lost to Sloane's obsession.

Irina looked forward to the day she would be free to kill Sloane or perhaps simply turn him over to her daughter. Sydney despised the man so fiercely, for his deceit, his hypocrisy, his insane ambitions and for his murder of her fiancé two years before. Justice might just be a crueler fate for Sloane than death.

"Yes."

"Ah."

She sat down beside him, seeing the tension in his body through the expensive tailoring. After a long moment, he turned his face toward her. His face was smooth and almost expressionless, but Irina could read the unhappiness in his eyes. She hadn't known he still had a conscience to haunt him.

Thoughtlessly, she stroked his silky hair, disheveling the ruffled cut further. How she'd wished she could slide her fingers down her daughter's long, straight hair with a mother's touch! But the CIA cell and the armed guards had precluded any casual or affectionate contact between them. Sark froze under her touch, then a tremor ran through his frame and he ducked his head closer, silently asking for more. Irina soothed him silently.

Softly, he said, "I missed you."

"You don't think I believe that, do you, Sark?" She softened her reprimand with a smile. She thought it was the truth though and marveled.

He twisted and smiled back at her, that little boy smile that had fooled so many people. The one that went with the careless mischief in his eyes when he played cat-and-mouse with someone he needed to intimidate rather than kill. The smile that probably looked vicious to Sydney but that only looked wistful to Irina.

"I did. It was extraordinary. I didn't expect to."

"Placing yourself within SD-6 was a risk. With Sydney and Jack there, you were under the eyes of Sloane and the CIA."

"Ms. Bristow provided me with the perfect opportunity. So long as she remained unaware that Sloane had learned of her double agent status, she had a vested interest in concealing my own status within SD-6. So did Jack Bristow. I learned quite a bit while working for Sloane too. He's almost as devious as you."

"I worried about you."

He laughed sardonically.

"Now you're lying."

"Do you think so?' she asked.

He withdrew subtly, then bumped his shoulder into hers, again reminding her of a cat demanding affection.

"I can take care of myself."

"Of course. I trained you."

Irina Derevko had loved three things in her life. Jack Bristow could never be hers because she had come to him as a lie. That love had been lost before it ever began. Sydney, who loved Irina despite herself and might have forgiven her mother for betraying her father, would never forgive her for leaving again. She'd forfeited Sydney's love too. And then there was Sark, who she hadn't known she loved, who wouldn't stop loving her, she had thought, because he never had. Yet he did.

She wondered if he would still love her if she betrayed him.

Somehow, she thought he would.

The same way she would.

He shrugged her hand away an instant later, once more indifferent on the surface, but Irina still smiled.