response #1 to challenge #63 "sex"
Don't Think Ill of the Dead
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Spoilers: Season 4, early
A/N: Writing smut is hard work, and I am very lazy.
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Sydney wiped a finger across the condensation collecting on her beer bottle, and then flicked the moisture in Nadia’s direction. “I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
Nadia cackled wildly. She was, in her own defense, pretty drunk and drinking made her laugh louder.
They had just returned from Moscow and both had cried themselves hoarse on the plane ride. When they arrived home, she pulled the vodka from the freezer and Syd grabbed a six pack of beer and they walked out to the patio. They needed one evening to themselves, to talk, to laugh, to spin out all the stories they had about Irina Derevko. They barely knew one another, but they had both spent lifetimes making her into a Madonna, a whore, a mutual target of utter longing and contempt. After flying halfway around the world to bury their mother, it wasn’t much of a stretch to compare notes on nightmares and fairytales.
But rather than becoming morbid or philosophical-which is how Sydney usually ended a bender-the discussion had taken an uncomfortable turn.
“Why not? Our mother is… was… reportedly one of the world’s nine living wonders, bringing men across six, maybe seven, continents to their knees--”
“To our mother, the Circe of spydom.” Sydney clinked her beer against the Stoli bottle and took a long drink.
“-and your father is living stone and mine quite possibly is a satanic genius. It’s just natural to wonder what she did--”
“No.” Sydney hoped her look would close the discussion or turn it in another direction--the subject was too weird to talk about with anyone, much less her newfound sister. “Just… no.” It was getting late and she was too drunk, she realized, and Nadia was being stubborn and willful, even more so with alcohol. But you’re not supposed to think ill of the dead, Syd thought darkly.
“Sydney, be mature.” Sydney continued to swing her feet below the balcony, but Nadia grabbed her hand. “Syd.. I’m not trying to stir up something painful here-it’s a very normal thing to talk about, or did you and Jack never have ‘the talk’? ”
Syd squinched her nose. “I am being mature by not sticking my nose into places it shouldn’t belong. Period.”
“All I’m saying is that-“
“I was six when my mother died the first time, Nadia. If I did recall it, I’m sure Dad burned it out of my brain a few years later just for good measure.”
Nadia gave up and looked out across the shadows gathering in the yard. “I can’t even imagine what brought her to Father’s bed. And if he was so in love with this Emily person, then why? Was sex so easy for her?”
“I bet it was blackmail. Or Rambaldi. It sure as hell wasn’t love.”
Sydney polished off the end of her bottle and stood up, wobbily but determined. She looked down and held her hand out to Nadia, whose look was lost somewhere between hurt and anger. Nadia, her brows knit furiously, stood up under her own power and trailed into the apartment. It was so familiar a look, it made Sydney angry and ill to see it on this young girl’s beautiful face.
Nadia turned to Sydney, just after Syd closed the patio door behind them. Nadia stood close, chin out and her hands at her sides as though ready to pounce. There was a dark fury in her eyes, and all Sydney wanted was to keep her sister safe, from hurting herself.
“Are you so sure she loved Jack? Was it love that made you, Sydney? Or was it love for Rambaldi that caused all this? Caused us both to be born into this world only to lose her over and over again?” The tears pooling in Nadia’s eyes brimmed over and she sobbed.
Sydney dropped the bottles at her feet and grabbed Nadia into a fierce hug. There was nothing left of their mother to dissect, to question, to marvel over. She was really and truly gone and would never answer these questions once and for all. The myth of Irina never died, though--it just seemed taller and less conquerable.
“Oh, sweetie….” Nadia clung to her shoulders, and Sydney unsurely held them both up as they cried anew.