i. for her eyes
"Sydney won't forgive you."
Jack wears glasses now. Little square, wire-rimmed spectacles that would make another man look grandfatherly. They're a badge to Irina. Most field operatives, particularly double agents, don't live long enough to need glasses.
The parking lot they're standing in is dark, the lights out. Here and there, distant lights shine off wet windshields and chrome. It rained earlier. Quicksilver beads of water glint on the cars. The moon reflects off the lenses of Jack's glasses.
Jack looks at her over those glasses, that slow turn and gaze without expression that she knows well, as menacing as a bull. He is bullheaded too. He doesn't understand that she's only done what had to be done. All he cares about is Sydney.
"She's never supposed to find out."
Irina shakes her head.
A tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth acknowledges everything they both don't say: that Sydney may find out and he won't let that change anything. Sydney will just have to believe they have both betrayed her if that happens.
"The assassin may not receive word."
"He will."
Jack must know who she hired, but even if he doesn't, he can make sure word of her demise reaches someone who will tell Tomazaki. Without a client, the contract will be void.
He pulls the trigger.
She has time to think that she can't see his eyes, the moon is in their place, like two coins to hold them closed, only it's her eyes that are closing.
ii. the ferryman
The bullet sears into her shoulder and she's only alive because she moved; she's only hit because she looked back. Coming up from the underworld, she should have known better.
Drop drop drop, running down her arm too fast, much too fast, the bullet has hit an artery. It's all just pieces of pain.
A shadow rushes over their pathetic threesome of should be, were, will be dead, Sloane and Emily and she herself : the escape helicopter, like a cloud between the earth and the sun. The grass flattens under the rotor wash and the bullet that should come and finish another one of them isn't fired. Instead a mini-gun chatters from the side of the helicopter, Sark covering them, her loyal hunting dog.
Emily's blood is a maroon dark stain across her green silk-covered chest and Sloane is in shock, more from seeing his manipulations gone awry than in grief for his wife.
Irina's blood is crimson and bright on the bent leaves of grass, very red against that different green.
She grabs at Sloane's shoulder, as much to help herself as to draw him away. She yells something lost in the roar, the helicopter, the head rush of blood loss, the steady gunfire, the white noise agony of the bullet wound.
Sydney is a good shot. She's proud Sydney took the shot. Her daughter is strong. Jack has done a good job in that and Sydney's learned the lessons Irina wanted her to.
She staggers toward the helicopter hovering close.
Emily's body is left behind. Sloane's stumbling beside her, hurrying now, a rat abandoning ship.
Her day is darkening at the edges, strength running out of her in a scarlet rush. Her hair whips free and slaps and stings her face. Over the barrel of the mini-gun, she sees Sark's pale face, professional and expressionless, as he keeps Sydney pinned down with casual cover fire. Her knees bend and fail as though she's being dragged down by the rope of blood falling from her arm to the earth.
Her hands hit the earth. Moist and dark. She feels it under her fingernails. Someone else's hands touch her waist, then snake inside her vest before they're gone. It's a touch that still makes her shudder.
She's on her hands and knees, head hanging, and it's all so distant, her limbs too heavy, her head too light, to push back up and keep going.
She shouldn't have looked back. She's turned to salt and crumbling.
Irina lifts her head far enough to see Sloane sprint the rest of the way to the helicopter. He's clutching the genetic database.
The edges of her vision are dissolving.
Blood loss.
Sloane scrambles onto the helicopter.
Sark meets her eyes.
He swings the muzzle of the mini-gun up as he says something into the microphone of his headset. Sloane's hand is on Sark's shoulder, steadying himself as the helicopter lurches and rises, angling away from the grassy Tuscan meadow with the blood like poppies scattered over it. Some day, Sark will bite that hand.
She swings her head to the side and sees, through the curtain of her hair, Michael Vaughn and Marcus Dixon sprinting toward Emily.
She's not going to make it to her feet again, so she lets herself sink down and down and down and rolls onto her back. The grass is cool beneath her.
She watches the helicopter recede into a dark speck against the sky.
Sydney is a beside her now, eyes hard and unforgiving as Jack's ever were.
Her mouth curves into a smile, because Sydney is determined and beautiful and in some way hers too, and because she knows the smile will be a last mystery to leave behind her.
The grass feels wet. Perhaps it's red.
Blood is blue until it touches the air, until the air touches it. It's hard to breathe.
There in the air, the helicopter is going away, and the air is blue too.
There in the sky, the sun is a golden coin for the ferryman and the light is white.
iii. the obverse
"My God, Jack, I never dreamed she would be there," Sloane insisted
Jack suppressed the desire to roll his eyes. After years of working as a double agent within SD-6 he'd grown adept at suppressing impulses like that. Nothing showed on his face beyond calm disinterest.
"Who, Arvin?" he asked.
Sloane had called and insisted they meet for lunch. Jack had debated refusing, but he'd heard certain noises from the DDO's office about a new black ops division being formed and Sloane's name had been brought up along with his own and Sydney's. Sloane might drop a few hints. He couldn't trust anything Sloane told him, but it was useful to know what Sloane wanted him to think. Then he could consider the obverse.
He picked up his glass of water and sipped.
They were dining outside. Droplets of condensation slid down the side of the water glass.
"Irina."
Swallow the water. Don't blink. He set the glass down precisely on the dark ring of damp where it had rested before.
"How is she?" he asked.
"Dead, Jack, she's dead," Sloane said in a low tone. He leaned forward. Two days growth of beard blurred the line of his jaw and neck. His eyes were bloodshot, Jack noticed.
"Interesting."
Sloane gave him that faux earnest look, the one he'd learned to be wary of years ago, even before he realized his 'friend' had slept with his wife - or for a that matter that his 'wife' was a KGB agent. Jack gave him back the flat look he'd perfected in prison.
"You know that Nadia came to me with the real coordinates for Rambaldi's Sphere of Life," Sloane stated. "We found it."
So that was what Sloane had traded to buy himself into the CIA's good graces. He waited for the rest. Experience had taught him that even an expert like Sloane felt compelled to fill a silence, particularly one accompanied by eye contact.
"Irina had found it as well. She was in disguise."
"You killed her?" He raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking for my forgiveness or worried what Sydney will do when she finds out?"
"Neither. Jack, I didn't kill her. Nadia did."
A heartbeat.
"Nadia."
"She doesn't know, Jack. She must never know. Knowing she had shot her own mother would destroy Nadia," Sloane said. "I can only imagine your own concern for what this would mean to Sydney."
"What do you want from me, Arvin?"
"I want you to approach the CIA and convince them to authorize the terminal sanction of Irina Derevko and let it be known that you have used the authorization."
"Why me?"
"I can't take responsibility, it would violate my pardon agreement. Who else could believably get that close to her, Jack?"
"Explain why I should assume responsibility for killing Irina."
The sun reflected off the blade of a butter knife. He didn't move it. He ignored it and watched Sloane.
Explain why I should believe in her death this time.
"If someone doesn't remove her from the equation, the assassin I hired in her name will execute a contract on Sydney's life."
Sloane is utterly confident that his ploy will win Jack's cooperation. Sydney is the pivot point and Jack the lever he'll use to move the world. They are little more real to him than that and it does not occur to him that it is his own actions that have made them loathe him.
Clever Sloane. Much as I would like to shoot you right now, that won't help Sydney.
If Jack refuses or the assassin proceeds, then Sloane is rid of Sydney and Irina takes the blame. Alive Irina cannot have been killed by Nadia.
"I could make it known you had killed her. The effect would be enhanced by the withdrawal of your pardon, your imprisonment and possible execution," he pointed out.
"But you would lose my help in finding the Sentinel, Jack."
"Very well."
He might prefer to shoot Sloane, but there are other obligations he must meet first.
"Sydney is not to know of this."
Sloane smiled. "Of course. It would negatively impact her performance in the field."
"It would hurt her."
"As would learning that Nadia had killed her mother. She will forgive you, Jack, once you explain you had to stop Irina to save her. She doesn't have the same ties and relationship with Nadia."
"Where is Nadia?"
"Argentina. She was ... upset."
Jack snorted.
"Jack, this is for the best," Sloane said. "I've arranged for Irina's body to be held. I thought you might want to ... make arrangements for it."
Sloane thought he needed to see the body as proof.
"I see."
He set his napkin on his still empty plate.
"I'll arrange the paperwork through Lauren Reed. That should get the word out expeditiously."
Sloane toasted him with his glass of water, half draining it.
"It's good to work with you again, Jack. I think that this is only the beginning."
He'd never be free of Arvin Sloane. The man just kept showing up like a bad penny.
iv. thirty pieces
Her fingers fumble at the window crank. Pressure won't let her open the door. The pressure pushes, pushes, surrounds and seeps inside, into the cracks, slipping in, sliding over everything.
Blood tastes like the sea, bodies are briny things.
The glass slides down. The car fills in a rush. The shock steals her breath. She gasps, then slides out into the cold cradle of the dark womb wet.
Go down to the sea. Down and back. Salt and water.
Water, water everywhere.
Inside and out.
What are we made of?
The cold floats inside her.
She twists through the water, finds the tire and the valve she means to nurse from. Chill of rubber, threaded brass. Her fingers are numb. She can't depress the release pin. She tries to tear the valve open. It won't, won't, won't work. Khasinau told her it would work. He sold her out. For how much, how much, for thirty pieces? She claws uselessly at the rubber with her nails, feeling them break.
The pressure is inside her now. Water smothers fire.
The bubbles are beautiful, rising up through her hair, like bright darting fish in seaweed.
Her eyes are open. They do not see.
Above, light spangles through the water, like a jangle of Judas' silver.
v. last year in your garden
A year after her mother went away, when Sydney was seven, her father planted a garden in the backyard. He let Sydney help him, carefully planting the flowers they'd chosen at the nursery together.
It wasn't quite as good as getting the puppy she'd wanted, but he pointed out that a puppy would have dug up all the flowers.
In one corner he planted a bush that he told her was called Orange Mock.
Three years after her mother went away, he came home from a business trip when the toilets all backed up and they had to have the septic tank dug up. He stayed home all day, watching the work being done to make sure they didn't dig up the wrong end of the garden. It was Saturday, so Sydney stayed home and watched too.
The septic tank smelled horrible. Half the backyard had been torn up and ruined before the job was done, but the Orange Mock and the orange lily and the purple hyacinths were still there.
The next year they replanted everything and the garden was prettier than ever. The Orange Mock bloomed in its corner, adding its fragrance.
Five years after her mother went away, Uncle Arvin left Aunt Emily. No one wanted to talk about what had happened, but Sydney stayed with her all summer.
Her father faithfully took care of the garden that summer too.
Eight years after her mother went away, Sydney asked her father about her mother. Did she leave, the way Uncle Arvin left Emily? Didn't she love them? Love Sydney?
Her mother was dead, her father told her. He choose to believe that. He choose to believe she'd loved Sydney.
He sat out in the garden until late that night, long after every other house in the neighborhood had gone dark except for porch and yard lights and the street lamps. Sydney didn't ask him about her mother again.
Twelve years after her mother disappeared, Sydney moved out of the house. She shared a dorm room with Francie Calfo. She brought her home and showed her the garden one day after Francie called her father a cold fish. Her father didn't talk much, she explained, but he made sure they spent time together and the garden was the result.
Thirteen years after her mother disappeared, a developer offered to buy the house from her father. He refused adamantly. When the developer came around once too often, her father told him to leave or he would shoot him. He said it in a voice so flat and devoid of emotion, Sydney thought the man would wet his pants. She laughed and laughed when she told Francie about it. Her father, kill a man? Her father sold airplane parts and gardened.
Twenty years after her mother disappeared, Emily Sloane succumbed to cancer. At the funeral, she overheard someone whisper that Emily had never gotten over Arvin going to prison.
Twenty-two years after her mother disappeared, a man came to her apartment to tell her that her father had died. Bill Vaughn explained that her father had been an employee of the CIA all these years, not an airplane parts salesman. He wouldn't explain what had happened to her father, only that Jack Bristow had been a good agent. The Agency quietly took care of all the funeral arrangements, even brought his body back from Cuba - for years afterward, Sydney would wonder what exactly had taken him to Cuba, but there were never any answers - and Bill Vaughn quietly stood beside her at the gravesite with Francie on the other side.
She inherited the house, but stayed in the apartment she shared with Francie.
The garden in the backyard, unattended all summer, quietly died back.
Later that year, Sydney put the house on the market. She'd started dating Danny Hecht and decided it was time to move on. It sold quickly.
The new owners decided to take out the remains of the garden.
Twenty-three years after her mother disappeared, Sydney found out her father had been right.
Her mother was dead.
He'd buried her in the backyard under all the bright flowers Sydney helped him plant.
vi. for luck
"Sydney won't forgive you."
Jack wears glasses now. Little square, wire-rimmed spectacles that would make another man look grandfatherly. They're a badge to Irina. Most field operatives, particularly double agents, don't live long enough to need glasses.
The parking lot they're standing in is dark, the lights out. Here and there, distant lights shine off wet windshields and chrome. It rained earlier. Quicksilver beads of water glint on the cars. The moon reflects off the lenses of Jack's glasses.
Jack looks at her over those glasses, that slow turn and gaze without expression that she knows well, as menacing as a bull. He is bullheaded too.
"She's never supposed to find out."
Irina shakes her head.
A tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth acknowledges everything they both don't say: that Sydney may find out and they can't let that change anything. Sydney will just have to believe they have both betrayed her if that happens.
"Tomazaki will receive word?"
"Yes."
Jack nods. The contract on Sydney's life is real. But without a client, the contract is void.
"I've placed the papers in a safety deposit box in Wittenberg. Reed thinks she was clever, uncovering something I'd hidden from Sydney. I'm sure she's already let the Covenant know you're dead."
"I've arranged for a body."
"Will it pass?" Jack asks.
Not where did it come from, who was it, how did she die? Jack doesn't let things like that bother him. He's as ruthless as Irina is pragmatic. Where Sydney got that idealistic streak is a mystery to both of them. It makes her a liability.
"It's a genetic duplicate of me."
"You used Marcovic's process."
Dead bodies don't need drug therapy, so there will be no telltale prescriptions to reveal the deception.
"Sloane will stop looking for me. So will the Covenant and the CIA. Well worth the price. You're too close to Sydney, there are too many eyes on you. I need to be able to operate freely to keep both her and Nadia safe."
"I wouldn't be helping you if I didn't agree."
She tips her head and lets her smile widen. He thinks that.
Let him.
She offers up an Americanism she learned in training. "In for a penny, in for a pound?"
He almost smiles.
"Yes."
She kisses him before she walks away, careful not to step in an oil-slicked puddle of rainwater, distracted momentarily by the smear of illusory, iridescent color on its surface. Beneath the surface, she spots the copper glint of a fallen coin. She stoops and picks it up, tucking it in the pocket of her coat.
For luck.
* From the Language of Flowers: Orange Mock - Deceit, Orange Lily - Hatred, Purple Hyacinth - I'm sorry, Forgive me, Sorrow.
"Sydney won't forgive you."
Jack wears glasses now. Little square, wire-rimmed spectacles that would make another man look grandfatherly. They're a badge to Irina. Most field operatives, particularly double agents, don't live long enough to need glasses.
The parking lot they're standing in is dark, the lights out. Here and there, distant lights shine off wet windshields and chrome. It rained earlier. Quicksilver beads of water glint on the cars. The moon reflects off the lenses of Jack's glasses.
Jack looks at her over those glasses, that slow turn and gaze without expression that she knows well, as menacing as a bull. He is bullheaded too. He doesn't understand that she's only done what had to be done. All he cares about is Sydney.
"She's never supposed to find out."
Irina shakes her head.
A tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth acknowledges everything they both don't say: that Sydney may find out and he won't let that change anything. Sydney will just have to believe they have both betrayed her if that happens.
"The assassin may not receive word."
"He will."
Jack must know who she hired, but even if he doesn't, he can make sure word of her demise reaches someone who will tell Tomazaki. Without a client, the contract will be void.
He pulls the trigger.
She has time to think that she can't see his eyes, the moon is in their place, like two coins to hold them closed, only it's her eyes that are closing.
ii. the ferryman
The bullet sears into her shoulder and she's only alive because she moved; she's only hit because she looked back. Coming up from the underworld, she should have known better.
Drop drop drop, running down her arm too fast, much too fast, the bullet has hit an artery. It's all just pieces of pain.
A shadow rushes over their pathetic threesome of should be, were, will be dead, Sloane and Emily and she herself : the escape helicopter, like a cloud between the earth and the sun. The grass flattens under the rotor wash and the bullet that should come and finish another one of them isn't fired. Instead a mini-gun chatters from the side of the helicopter, Sark covering them, her loyal hunting dog.
Emily's blood is a maroon dark stain across her green silk-covered chest and Sloane is in shock, more from seeing his manipulations gone awry than in grief for his wife.
Irina's blood is crimson and bright on the bent leaves of grass, very red against that different green.
She grabs at Sloane's shoulder, as much to help herself as to draw him away. She yells something lost in the roar, the helicopter, the head rush of blood loss, the steady gunfire, the white noise agony of the bullet wound.
Sydney is a good shot. She's proud Sydney took the shot. Her daughter is strong. Jack has done a good job in that and Sydney's learned the lessons Irina wanted her to.
She staggers toward the helicopter hovering close.
Emily's body is left behind. Sloane's stumbling beside her, hurrying now, a rat abandoning ship.
Her day is darkening at the edges, strength running out of her in a scarlet rush. Her hair whips free and slaps and stings her face. Over the barrel of the mini-gun, she sees Sark's pale face, professional and expressionless, as he keeps Sydney pinned down with casual cover fire. Her knees bend and fail as though she's being dragged down by the rope of blood falling from her arm to the earth.
Her hands hit the earth. Moist and dark. She feels it under her fingernails. Someone else's hands touch her waist, then snake inside her vest before they're gone. It's a touch that still makes her shudder.
She's on her hands and knees, head hanging, and it's all so distant, her limbs too heavy, her head too light, to push back up and keep going.
She shouldn't have looked back. She's turned to salt and crumbling.
Irina lifts her head far enough to see Sloane sprint the rest of the way to the helicopter. He's clutching the genetic database.
The edges of her vision are dissolving.
Blood loss.
Sloane scrambles onto the helicopter.
Sark meets her eyes.
He swings the muzzle of the mini-gun up as he says something into the microphone of his headset. Sloane's hand is on Sark's shoulder, steadying himself as the helicopter lurches and rises, angling away from the grassy Tuscan meadow with the blood like poppies scattered over it. Some day, Sark will bite that hand.
She swings her head to the side and sees, through the curtain of her hair, Michael Vaughn and Marcus Dixon sprinting toward Emily.
She's not going to make it to her feet again, so she lets herself sink down and down and down and rolls onto her back. The grass is cool beneath her.
She watches the helicopter recede into a dark speck against the sky.
Sydney is a beside her now, eyes hard and unforgiving as Jack's ever were.
Her mouth curves into a smile, because Sydney is determined and beautiful and in some way hers too, and because she knows the smile will be a last mystery to leave behind her.
The grass feels wet. Perhaps it's red.
Blood is blue until it touches the air, until the air touches it. It's hard to breathe.
There in the air, the helicopter is going away, and the air is blue too.
There in the sky, the sun is a golden coin for the ferryman and the light is white.
iii. the obverse
"My God, Jack, I never dreamed she would be there," Sloane insisted
Jack suppressed the desire to roll his eyes. After years of working as a double agent within SD-6 he'd grown adept at suppressing impulses like that. Nothing showed on his face beyond calm disinterest.
"Who, Arvin?" he asked.
Sloane had called and insisted they meet for lunch. Jack had debated refusing, but he'd heard certain noises from the DDO's office about a new black ops division being formed and Sloane's name had been brought up along with his own and Sydney's. Sloane might drop a few hints. He couldn't trust anything Sloane told him, but it was useful to know what Sloane wanted him to think. Then he could consider the obverse.
He picked up his glass of water and sipped.
They were dining outside. Droplets of condensation slid down the side of the water glass.
"Irina."
Swallow the water. Don't blink. He set the glass down precisely on the dark ring of damp where it had rested before.
"How is she?" he asked.
"Dead, Jack, she's dead," Sloane said in a low tone. He leaned forward. Two days growth of beard blurred the line of his jaw and neck. His eyes were bloodshot, Jack noticed.
"Interesting."
Sloane gave him that faux earnest look, the one he'd learned to be wary of years ago, even before he realized his 'friend' had slept with his wife - or for a that matter that his 'wife' was a KGB agent. Jack gave him back the flat look he'd perfected in prison.
"You know that Nadia came to me with the real coordinates for Rambaldi's Sphere of Life," Sloane stated. "We found it."
So that was what Sloane had traded to buy himself into the CIA's good graces. He waited for the rest. Experience had taught him that even an expert like Sloane felt compelled to fill a silence, particularly one accompanied by eye contact.
"Irina had found it as well. She was in disguise."
"You killed her?" He raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking for my forgiveness or worried what Sydney will do when she finds out?"
"Neither. Jack, I didn't kill her. Nadia did."
A heartbeat.
"Nadia."
"She doesn't know, Jack. She must never know. Knowing she had shot her own mother would destroy Nadia," Sloane said. "I can only imagine your own concern for what this would mean to Sydney."
"What do you want from me, Arvin?"
"I want you to approach the CIA and convince them to authorize the terminal sanction of Irina Derevko and let it be known that you have used the authorization."
"Why me?"
"I can't take responsibility, it would violate my pardon agreement. Who else could believably get that close to her, Jack?"
"Explain why I should assume responsibility for killing Irina."
The sun reflected off the blade of a butter knife. He didn't move it. He ignored it and watched Sloane.
Explain why I should believe in her death this time.
"If someone doesn't remove her from the equation, the assassin I hired in her name will execute a contract on Sydney's life."
Sloane is utterly confident that his ploy will win Jack's cooperation. Sydney is the pivot point and Jack the lever he'll use to move the world. They are little more real to him than that and it does not occur to him that it is his own actions that have made them loathe him.
Clever Sloane. Much as I would like to shoot you right now, that won't help Sydney.
If Jack refuses or the assassin proceeds, then Sloane is rid of Sydney and Irina takes the blame. Alive Irina cannot have been killed by Nadia.
"I could make it known you had killed her. The effect would be enhanced by the withdrawal of your pardon, your imprisonment and possible execution," he pointed out.
"But you would lose my help in finding the Sentinel, Jack."
"Very well."
He might prefer to shoot Sloane, but there are other obligations he must meet first.
"Sydney is not to know of this."
Sloane smiled. "Of course. It would negatively impact her performance in the field."
"It would hurt her."
"As would learning that Nadia had killed her mother. She will forgive you, Jack, once you explain you had to stop Irina to save her. She doesn't have the same ties and relationship with Nadia."
"Where is Nadia?"
"Argentina. She was ... upset."
Jack snorted.
"Jack, this is for the best," Sloane said. "I've arranged for Irina's body to be held. I thought you might want to ... make arrangements for it."
Sloane thought he needed to see the body as proof.
"I see."
He set his napkin on his still empty plate.
"I'll arrange the paperwork through Lauren Reed. That should get the word out expeditiously."
Sloane toasted him with his glass of water, half draining it.
"It's good to work with you again, Jack. I think that this is only the beginning."
He'd never be free of Arvin Sloane. The man just kept showing up like a bad penny.
iv. thirty pieces
Her fingers fumble at the window crank. Pressure won't let her open the door. The pressure pushes, pushes, surrounds and seeps inside, into the cracks, slipping in, sliding over everything.
Blood tastes like the sea, bodies are briny things.
The glass slides down. The car fills in a rush. The shock steals her breath. She gasps, then slides out into the cold cradle of the dark womb wet.
Go down to the sea. Down and back. Salt and water.
Water, water everywhere.
Inside and out.
What are we made of?
The cold floats inside her.
She twists through the water, finds the tire and the valve she means to nurse from. Chill of rubber, threaded brass. Her fingers are numb. She can't depress the release pin. She tries to tear the valve open. It won't, won't, won't work. Khasinau told her it would work. He sold her out. For how much, how much, for thirty pieces? She claws uselessly at the rubber with her nails, feeling them break.
The pressure is inside her now. Water smothers fire.
The bubbles are beautiful, rising up through her hair, like bright darting fish in seaweed.
Her eyes are open. They do not see.
Above, light spangles through the water, like a jangle of Judas' silver.
v. last year in your garden
A year after her mother went away, when Sydney was seven, her father planted a garden in the backyard. He let Sydney help him, carefully planting the flowers they'd chosen at the nursery together.
It wasn't quite as good as getting the puppy she'd wanted, but he pointed out that a puppy would have dug up all the flowers.
In one corner he planted a bush that he told her was called Orange Mock.
Three years after her mother went away, he came home from a business trip when the toilets all backed up and they had to have the septic tank dug up. He stayed home all day, watching the work being done to make sure they didn't dig up the wrong end of the garden. It was Saturday, so Sydney stayed home and watched too.
The septic tank smelled horrible. Half the backyard had been torn up and ruined before the job was done, but the Orange Mock and the orange lily and the purple hyacinths were still there.
The next year they replanted everything and the garden was prettier than ever. The Orange Mock bloomed in its corner, adding its fragrance.
Five years after her mother went away, Uncle Arvin left Aunt Emily. No one wanted to talk about what had happened, but Sydney stayed with her all summer.
Her father faithfully took care of the garden that summer too.
Eight years after her mother went away, Sydney asked her father about her mother. Did she leave, the way Uncle Arvin left Emily? Didn't she love them? Love Sydney?
Her mother was dead, her father told her. He choose to believe that. He choose to believe she'd loved Sydney.
He sat out in the garden until late that night, long after every other house in the neighborhood had gone dark except for porch and yard lights and the street lamps. Sydney didn't ask him about her mother again.
Twelve years after her mother disappeared, Sydney moved out of the house. She shared a dorm room with Francie Calfo. She brought her home and showed her the garden one day after Francie called her father a cold fish. Her father didn't talk much, she explained, but he made sure they spent time together and the garden was the result.
Thirteen years after her mother disappeared, a developer offered to buy the house from her father. He refused adamantly. When the developer came around once too often, her father told him to leave or he would shoot him. He said it in a voice so flat and devoid of emotion, Sydney thought the man would wet his pants. She laughed and laughed when she told Francie about it. Her father, kill a man? Her father sold airplane parts and gardened.
Twenty years after her mother disappeared, Emily Sloane succumbed to cancer. At the funeral, she overheard someone whisper that Emily had never gotten over Arvin going to prison.
Twenty-two years after her mother disappeared, a man came to her apartment to tell her that her father had died. Bill Vaughn explained that her father had been an employee of the CIA all these years, not an airplane parts salesman. He wouldn't explain what had happened to her father, only that Jack Bristow had been a good agent. The Agency quietly took care of all the funeral arrangements, even brought his body back from Cuba - for years afterward, Sydney would wonder what exactly had taken him to Cuba, but there were never any answers - and Bill Vaughn quietly stood beside her at the gravesite with Francie on the other side.
She inherited the house, but stayed in the apartment she shared with Francie.
The garden in the backyard, unattended all summer, quietly died back.
Later that year, Sydney put the house on the market. She'd started dating Danny Hecht and decided it was time to move on. It sold quickly.
The new owners decided to take out the remains of the garden.
Twenty-three years after her mother disappeared, Sydney found out her father had been right.
Her mother was dead.
He'd buried her in the backyard under all the bright flowers Sydney helped him plant.
vi. for luck
"Sydney won't forgive you."
Jack wears glasses now. Little square, wire-rimmed spectacles that would make another man look grandfatherly. They're a badge to Irina. Most field operatives, particularly double agents, don't live long enough to need glasses.
The parking lot they're standing in is dark, the lights out. Here and there, distant lights shine off wet windshields and chrome. It rained earlier. Quicksilver beads of water glint on the cars. The moon reflects off the lenses of Jack's glasses.
Jack looks at her over those glasses, that slow turn and gaze without expression that she knows well, as menacing as a bull. He is bullheaded too.
"She's never supposed to find out."
Irina shakes her head.
A tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth acknowledges everything they both don't say: that Sydney may find out and they can't let that change anything. Sydney will just have to believe they have both betrayed her if that happens.
"Tomazaki will receive word?"
"Yes."
Jack nods. The contract on Sydney's life is real. But without a client, the contract is void.
"I've placed the papers in a safety deposit box in Wittenberg. Reed thinks she was clever, uncovering something I'd hidden from Sydney. I'm sure she's already let the Covenant know you're dead."
"I've arranged for a body."
"Will it pass?" Jack asks.
Not where did it come from, who was it, how did she die? Jack doesn't let things like that bother him. He's as ruthless as Irina is pragmatic. Where Sydney got that idealistic streak is a mystery to both of them. It makes her a liability.
"It's a genetic duplicate of me."
"You used Marcovic's process."
Dead bodies don't need drug therapy, so there will be no telltale prescriptions to reveal the deception.
"Sloane will stop looking for me. So will the Covenant and the CIA. Well worth the price. You're too close to Sydney, there are too many eyes on you. I need to be able to operate freely to keep both her and Nadia safe."
"I wouldn't be helping you if I didn't agree."
She tips her head and lets her smile widen. He thinks that.
Let him.
She offers up an Americanism she learned in training. "In for a penny, in for a pound?"
He almost smiles.
"Yes."
She kisses him before she walks away, careful not to step in an oil-slicked puddle of rainwater, distracted momentarily by the smear of illusory, iridescent color on its surface. Beneath the surface, she spots the copper glint of a fallen coin. She stoops and picks it up, tucking it in the pocket of her coat.
For luck.
* From the Language of Flowers: Orange Mock - Deceit, Orange Lily - Hatred, Purple Hyacinth - I'm sorry, Forgive me, Sorrow.
-fin
- Summary: Five deaths Irina didn't die.
- Fandom: Alias
- Rating: mature
- Warnings: character death
- Author Notes:
- Date: 1.27.05
- Length: short
- Genre: gen
- Category: drama, angst
- Cast: Jack Bristow, Irina Derevko, Sydney Bristow
- Betas: rez_lo
- Disclaimer: Not for profit. Transformative work written for private entertainment.