Topic 24: Without Consequences (Ficlet)
If you could do one thing and there would be no consequence to doing it, what would you do?
ooc: ficlet set firmly within the fourth season timeframe, for obvious reasons.
There aren’t any actions without consequences. Being a strategist, Arvin Sloane is more aware of this than most people. At the same time, a mind that runs through alternate scenarios to most events on a routine basis sometimes comes up with interesting impossibilities.
He loves Sydney as a daughter, and has done for a long while. At some point between realizing she and Jack were both betraying him to the CIA and entering one of the most complicated and risky schemes of his whole life, which demanded fooling Alliance and CIA alike, he also had to face the realization that paternal feelings weren’t all he harboured. Being aware of Sydney as a woman carries its own punishments and rewards. He can never quite separate the two.
Finding his own daughter complicates this even more. She and Sydney are sisters, and the pact he made with Jack to protect them both is not just caused by the appearance of Yelena Derevko as a player. Neither of them has ever said anything about this, but Arvin can’t forget the threat Jack made in a cell over shared wine, poison and memories of the same woman.
Whatever you did to my daughter, I’ll do worse to yours.
When he asks Jack to test Nadia, he isn’t quite sure what results he wants, and not in terms of Nadia’s qualifications as an agent. After this test, Nadia starts to show a certain fascination with Jack. Jack, for his part, keeps watching her intently. Strangely enough, it never occurs to him to fear that Jack might do what Arvin did when recruiting Sydney all those years ago: present himself as an alternate father figure to a young woman troubled about the father she already has. No, that is not what occurs to him at all.
The daily routine of going through briefings with the girls comes to resemble a complicated dance. They both have their beaus present more often than not, Vaughn with his perpetual frown and Weiss with his perpetual grin, and watching them together makes for utterly benevolent and paternal feelings. But sooner or later, a point needs to be made. Then the young men might as well not exist. Jack questions Nadia about some mission she undertook, looks over her shoulder at a map she has unfolded on the table, and her long, dark hair brushes Jack’s hands as she shakes her head. Jack does not pull his hands away. Arvin watches this from his position behind Sydney’s chair. He can’t see Sydney’s face, but he feels the warmth of her skin through the thin layer of clothing as he touches her shoulders.
In a world without consequences, a man might make the mistake of confusing prohibition with permission. Of concluding that if something happens to one daughter, it might as well to the other.
Continuing the briefing, Arvin meets Jack’s eyes as they both return to their own seats. It is just as well that neither of them believes in such a world.
ooc: ficlet set firmly within the fourth season timeframe, for obvious reasons.
There aren’t any actions without consequences. Being a strategist, Arvin Sloane is more aware of this than most people. At the same time, a mind that runs through alternate scenarios to most events on a routine basis sometimes comes up with interesting impossibilities.
He loves Sydney as a daughter, and has done for a long while. At some point between realizing she and Jack were both betraying him to the CIA and entering one of the most complicated and risky schemes of his whole life, which demanded fooling Alliance and CIA alike, he also had to face the realization that paternal feelings weren’t all he harboured. Being aware of Sydney as a woman carries its own punishments and rewards. He can never quite separate the two.
Finding his own daughter complicates this even more. She and Sydney are sisters, and the pact he made with Jack to protect them both is not just caused by the appearance of Yelena Derevko as a player. Neither of them has ever said anything about this, but Arvin can’t forget the threat Jack made in a cell over shared wine, poison and memories of the same woman.
Whatever you did to my daughter, I’ll do worse to yours.
When he asks Jack to test Nadia, he isn’t quite sure what results he wants, and not in terms of Nadia’s qualifications as an agent. After this test, Nadia starts to show a certain fascination with Jack. Jack, for his part, keeps watching her intently. Strangely enough, it never occurs to him to fear that Jack might do what Arvin did when recruiting Sydney all those years ago: present himself as an alternate father figure to a young woman troubled about the father she already has. No, that is not what occurs to him at all.
The daily routine of going through briefings with the girls comes to resemble a complicated dance. They both have their beaus present more often than not, Vaughn with his perpetual frown and Weiss with his perpetual grin, and watching them together makes for utterly benevolent and paternal feelings. But sooner or later, a point needs to be made. Then the young men might as well not exist. Jack questions Nadia about some mission she undertook, looks over her shoulder at a map she has unfolded on the table, and her long, dark hair brushes Jack’s hands as she shakes her head. Jack does not pull his hands away. Arvin watches this from his position behind Sydney’s chair. He can’t see Sydney’s face, but he feels the warmth of her skin through the thin layer of clothing as he touches her shoulders.
In a world without consequences, a man might make the mistake of confusing prohibition with permission. Of concluding that if something happens to one daughter, it might as well to the other.
Continuing the briefing, Arvin meets Jack’s eyes as they both return to their own seats. It is just as well that neither of them believes in such a world.