Dearly Departed Alias Ficathon: Chances.
Title: Chances.
Author: Fan'
Disclaimer: they're all JJ's. I'm poor. Don't sue.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: spoilers for the series finale.
Feedback: yesplease.
Author's notes: Many thanks to shadesofbrixton for the beta job and more generally for being awesome in so many ways. Written for jade_olekani for the Dearly Departed Alias Ficathon. She wanted me to bring Jack back, write him interacting with Isabelle and Little Jack, to have Sydney be surprised at something, and Weiss with a mohawk. This is what happened.
Chances.
Jack is dreaming.
In between dreams, Jack is vaguely conscious.
By all accounts, that should mean that Jack isn't dead.
Now that's when his mind shortcircuits, when the wirings between neurons fail, when synapses direct information the wrong way and his brain goes blank. Incomprehension on too massive a scale for his pain-saturated cells to handle. He is bound to be dead; he was dying, and explosives and the collapse of the cave made sure that he would reach his destination. Hell. He has no doubt about that; for all the good he might have worked for he was nowhere near a good man, and the heaven he was hoping for for his daughter, and granddaughter, is well out of his own reach.
If the dreams were more like nightmares, he might've thought that this was, indeed, hell. But they're the same kind of gibberish dreams usually are, populated by family, colleagues, near-strangers, closest enemies and complete creations of his subconscious, all of them mingling in ever-changing, uncanny landscapes and all manners of situations possible.
"Daddy," Sydney says, wearing Lauren's body.
Jack goes to her, hidden under the wrinkles of Agent Vaughn, and wraps his arms around the fake body. She goes limp and he carries her to the bed, lays her out and inspects with impossible calmness the flower of blood that stains her white shirt, expanding over her heart.
"You did this," a voice says, and he can't be sure if it is Arvin or Irina.
"I did," he replies, standing back up when all he wants to do is cry over Lauren's corpse. There is no smile on her fleshy lips, a vague moue twisting them scornfully instead. "Where is Sydney?"
"I'm here, daddy," she says, and she's seven years old again, and his whole world, and he laughs as he picks her up and clings to her. "Daddy, you're hurting me," she says.
"Daddy, you're hurting me," echoes Lauren's voice, but it is still Sydney.
"Daddy, you're hurting me," echoes Danny's.
Sydney has been stolen away from him. In her place, in his arms, he holds an illuminated manuscript of the bible.
When the dreams recess, the pain strides back in.
Maybe it is hell after all, he thinks, at one point. The dreams only serve to remind him what it is to be without pain, only crystal clear confusion, and each awakening, if such can be called the moments spent in utter darkness, nothing but the faint sound of his own breathing, darkness and pain searing over any other sensation, each awakening is rendered harder to go through by the knowledge that there is hope, that the dreams will come, and with them a respite.
Thirst, starvation, weakness, those are well beyond his grasp, unable to get through the pain. He does not know how much time has passed, only knows that he will soon go insane. He is not sure what soon means anymore.
He learns to welcome the dreams.
Penumbra. Shadows flickering on the walls of the interrogation room, candle lit in the centre of the table. Jack is handcuffed to the metal chair, and the voice of his interrogator rings familiar, but he can't recognize it.
"You don't want to lie to me, Jack. Where is Sydney?"
"I don't know," he says, and it's the truth, so they must've drugged him.
His face smashes into the table, hard, he hears his nose break and doesn't care. He lifts his head as soon as the hand in his nape relents its iron grip, nails digging into flesh, and when he cranes his neck it is Vaughn he recognizes by candlelight. His features seem softer than they are.
"Don't look at me," Vaughn tells him in an English accent. "It's all his fault."
He nods ahead, and Jack follows his gaze. Weiss is sitting across the table from him. He is fitter than Jack remembered, and his hair is greener, sculpted up as it is into a Mohawk. His arms are on the table, sleeveless, beringed fingers threaded in front of him, eyes underlined with kohl, and when he looks away from Jack to shake his head and stand up with a frustrated sigh, Jack is surprised to acknowledge that Eric Weiss doesn't look that bad in leather.
"Jack, I don't think you're listening," Vaughn scolds him in the same voice, but Jack won't look away from Weiss, who just punched the wall with all his strength.
The wall is intact, Weiss's knuckles aren't. His voice, when he speaks, is laced with as much blood and grit. "I don't know, Jack. They never tell me anything."
At his most lucid, Jack knows he shouldn't trust the dreams, knows he should cling to the pain. When he does, he can remember some things. Sydney, Rambaldi, and Sloane, and things almost make sense. But the pain wracks through his body and the almost-thought escapes him, nerve endings shrinking away in agony, except there's nowhere to run to. The pain is everything.
So he clings to the dreams to try to forget the pain.
Her eyes are everything. Soft and warm and he knows, with the certainty of one who has lived this dream before, of the cold, hard edges hidden under the velvet love.
There might be a toaster, or it might be another time. He sinks in her arms all the same, because he did, and will again, sinks in her arms and expects to drown, expects the love and the lies to stifle him, expects a pillow pressed on his face, expects a hand over his mouth and fingers pressing his nostrils closed, expects a slash across his windpipe.
Instead, he gets a lie. He gets the warmth, the softness, he gets words spun like silk and it's a web he'll always get caught in. He gets fate.
And then there was light.
Voices, and he wonders if it's a dream or not, because the pain is just as acute and the dreams have been a respite, until now. But there are voices, and a ray of light, time passes and it sweeps over him, exclamations and "he's alive!" and "not Sloane" and "radio in."
The bright light flashes in his eyes, glaring white, and he slips into another dreamscape.
"There's no escape," Arvin is telling him. "There's no truth. Just the lies of you and me."
Jack stands tall, knowing he can't afford anything else in front of him. Stand tall, show no weakness, he'll exploit them all. Nadia is there, hovering silently at Arvin's back, and Jack only wonders how he does not see her. Her hand is clutching a knife, beautiful features - she is Irina's, no doubt about that - beautiful features distorted by confusion and pain. Blood is seeping through her dress, and any second now her resolve will not matter, she will be dead, and Arvin alive.
"I know she's here," Arvin says, because apparently Rambaldi has made him a mind reader. Or maybe he can only read Jack's mind. "I owe her that."
Jack raises sceptical eyebrows and strides over to Nadia, extends his hand. She puts the blade in it, and cuts deep. Jack does not pull his hand back, lets her, lets Arvin, lets himself look at the blood - black, not red, the result of a lifetime of sin.
"Give me the knife, Nadia," and she does.
He turns to Arvin, who extends his arms on either side of him. "I owe you that."
"No more lies, Arvin."
"Then there is nothing."
The knife goes in deep, straight to the heart, sliding in between ribs, ramming home with a cry torn from Nadia's lips.
"You did this," she accuses him.
"I did."
In and out of dreams and dreams that hurt, no more reality. What is reality? Reality is pain, and nothingness, but the pain comes with colours and life now, sounds and smells and light. A concerned voice, pragmatic tone but an edge of urgency under it.
"Oh, god, Jack." "Don't try to move, Jack." "We've got you, Jack." "We're gonna take care of you, Jack."
His name, inflected by someone that knows him, movement and something outside of pain. It's a waking dream, and he doesn't know who the voice belongs to, too exhausted, too weak, too pain-wrecked to put a name, a face to it, only feelings: trust, and guilt, and reassurance. It's surprising, but it brings him hope, too.
Little by little, he realises that this is no dream. The pain relents and he figures that it might be one, but this is not the painlessness of dreams, it is the floating sensation of drugs. Sometimes he sees the white aesthetics of a hospital room, a needle in his vein, hears the beeps of machines that monitor him. Those slowly come with the assurance of reality, maybe, logically, and reality means Sydney. He wants to believe that it is no dream. Once he sees a shape by his bed, a man, elbows on his thighs and hands clasped in front of him, head hanging down, and he thinks, he is the voice, and almost knows who he is.
He tries to speak, faint moan past his lips, and closes his eyes as the man looks up, as the voice says his name. Too much to open his eyes for, needles pricking at the back of his eyeballs and he thinks there might be tears running down his cheeks.
There is the sound of a door, and another voice, one he doesn't trust. "You shouldn't be here." A frustrated sound by the voice he trusts, and the other voice speaks up again, severity melting into surprising care and concern. "What if he sees you? You have to stop coming."
Acquiescence, reluctant, and Jack forces his eyes open just in time to see the taller man walk out the door, burning eyes open and seeing the other one, the untrustworthy voice, English-accented, blue eyes and blond hair, angelic features, older than he remembers them. How long has it been?
"I do hope you'll recover soon, Mr. Bristow. I'm looking forward to having a long chat with you."
Mr. Sark walks out of the room, after the voice he trusts, and Jack wishes he could believe that this is still a dream.
He progressively stops hiding in the dreams. Mr. Sark does not come back for days, weeks, Jack still has trouble measuring time. He gets stronger, little by little, tended to by a doctor that never speaks an unprofessional word to him. Only the nurse, a young blond thing in her late twenties, speaks to him of life outside. She won't answer the questions he needs answered but he knows that she is engaged, and happy, and that she needs the money for her honeymoon.
One day she stops coming, replaced by a tight-lipped old maid, and Jack wonders if she is on her honeymoon, or in her coffin.
And one day when Jack wakes up, Mr. Sark is on the chair next to the bed. He raises his eyebrows at Jack, as if he's been patiently waiting for his awakening, when it's probably been drug-triggered.
"Mr. Bristow. I'd ask how you are, but I've had enough medical reports to have a fairly good idea of your impressive recovery."
"Sydney?" he asks, because nothing else matters.
"She's well," Sark assures him. "So is Mr. Vaughn," he adds, and sounds disappointed about that. "And their two children. They named the boy after you."
"How long?"
"It's been seven years, and you don't look a day older. Who'd have thought? Rambaldi does more wonders than the best plastic surgeons."
The humour falls flat, not that Sark looked as if he were expecting otherwise. Seven years, Jack thinks, over and over again. Seven years, seven seven seven seven years and Sydney has another child, and Isabelle must have grown, seven years seven seven seven years seven. Years. Sark is saying something, and Jack quiets down the whirlwind in his mind.
"...only recently been able to access the tomb. We have retrieved Mr. Sloane as well, although I'll admit that he was treated much less hospitably than you have been. We only need one lab rat, after all. Lucky for you."
"What do you plan to do with me, then?" Jack asks, pragmatic, and thinks of Sydney still.
Sark ignores him. "You were a frightful sight, when we picked you up. Fractured all over by the cave walls that collapsed on you, and the explosives had cut into your flesh, slashed your skin open, intestines dangling, and... I'll pass you the details. But here we are, only a few weeks later, and you're back to your usual, imperturbable self. You've even regained your muscular mass already. If not for the drugs we're pumping your system full of, you'd be on your feet trying to take me out right now." A pause, the shadow of something in the younger man's gaze. "Irina died that day, you know."
Jack shuts down. Don't give him the pleasure of showing any sort of response, and his voice is levelled, cold. "Did she."
Sark leans forward on his elbows, clear eyes fixed on Jack's face. No words pronounced, but little by little Jack sees the grief unveil itself in his eyes, and knows that it finds its reflection in his.
Sark stands up, hands thrust in the pockets of his expensive suit pants. The mask is back in place, for both of them, and his tone is offhanded, casual; the use of Jack's first name as he answers his earlier question, however, says more than they can afford to let looks convey. "I'm going to let you go, Jack."
Barely a question, thinks he knows the answer. "Why?"
Sark shoots him a look. Sardonic, amused, and oh-so-you-think-you-know-me. "Not in her memory. Not for Sydney either. I like to work in mysterious ways."
"The man that was here," Jack says.
Sark purses his lips in a moue that could mean a thousand things. "Goodbye, Jack."
The next time Jack wakes up, he is in a bed he doesn't know, and a little girl is peering at him curiously. She looks entirely too much like Sydney at the same age, but he doesn't dare move as she studies him, for fear of scaring her away.
Her name pushes past his lips before he can help it, though, a murmur, a sigh. "Isabelle."
She is studying a photograph in her hand, eyebrows knitted in concentration, eyes flickering back and forth between it and him. Then she hands the framed picture over, and he sees that it is a picture of him with Sydney, holding her in his arms when she was a tiny little thing. Irina took that picture. Laura did.
There is a question in Isabelle's eyes, and he nods his head, his sight blurring with tears at the intelligence in her gaze, tears he holds back because even after seven years spent in dreams, he is still Jack Bristow.
"Mom! Grandpa's in your bed!"
Sydney runs into the room a few seconds later, a baby in one arm, a gun in her other hand, pointed at Jack. There's strength and weakness in her eyes both, and she's as beautiful as she ever was. He's now sitting on the edge of the bed, but he knows better than to move.
"Get away from him, Isabelle. Your grandfather's dead."
"No, mom, it's him," Isabelle says as she obeys, walking behind her mother.
Gun still aimed at him, Sydney lowers herself enough to give the baby over to her daughter. "Here, take your brother and go wait for me in your room."
"Sydney," he says, and his voice is trembling. But it might be alright, because he did spend seven years in dreams, and Isabelle is holding Jack in her arms but standing her ground behind Sydney. "I... put Isabelle's bed together in the wrong room. With much difficulty, I might add."
Surprise, disbelief. "Dad?"
The only word that can explain it, and yet it makes no sense. "Rambaldi."
Tears are running down her cheeks, surprise and shock, thankfulness and relief, disbelief cast away for faith, and she slowly lowers the gun. He pushes to his feet, unsteady, learning how to stand on his own again, and she rushes forward to help support him. But then her knees buckle and she clings to him as they sink to the floor. Her head buried in his neck, he can feel the hot tears rolling on her skin.
Isabelle comes forward, a step at a time, and Sydney and he make room in between them for her and Jack. Tears lead the way to laughter. Jack holds his namesake in his arms, and wonders when he can teach him to build paper planes. Isabelle challenges him to name any country, go on, go on, any country at all, and she will tell him its capital city. She even knows Ouagadougou.
When Vaughn gets home, he scrambles back in shock at the sight of Jack feeding Jack. Sydney laughs, and runs over to hug him.
Jack doesn't know what's going to happen. He doesn't know what it means, immortality, only that he didn't want it. But he knows that he has been given his second chance. He looks at the children, and that's what he sees.
But then he looks at Sydney, and he figures he didn't do all that badly with his first one.
~ fin ~
Author: Fan'
Disclaimer: they're all JJ's. I'm poor. Don't sue.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: spoilers for the series finale.
Feedback: yesplease.
Author's notes: Many thanks to shadesofbrixton for the beta job and more generally for being awesome in so many ways. Written for jade_olekani for the Dearly Departed Alias Ficathon. She wanted me to bring Jack back, write him interacting with Isabelle and Little Jack, to have Sydney be surprised at something, and Weiss with a mohawk. This is what happened.
Chances.
Jack is dreaming.
In between dreams, Jack is vaguely conscious.
By all accounts, that should mean that Jack isn't dead.
Now that's when his mind shortcircuits, when the wirings between neurons fail, when synapses direct information the wrong way and his brain goes blank. Incomprehension on too massive a scale for his pain-saturated cells to handle. He is bound to be dead; he was dying, and explosives and the collapse of the cave made sure that he would reach his destination. Hell. He has no doubt about that; for all the good he might have worked for he was nowhere near a good man, and the heaven he was hoping for for his daughter, and granddaughter, is well out of his own reach.
If the dreams were more like nightmares, he might've thought that this was, indeed, hell. But they're the same kind of gibberish dreams usually are, populated by family, colleagues, near-strangers, closest enemies and complete creations of his subconscious, all of them mingling in ever-changing, uncanny landscapes and all manners of situations possible.
"Daddy," Sydney says, wearing Lauren's body.
Jack goes to her, hidden under the wrinkles of Agent Vaughn, and wraps his arms around the fake body. She goes limp and he carries her to the bed, lays her out and inspects with impossible calmness the flower of blood that stains her white shirt, expanding over her heart.
"You did this," a voice says, and he can't be sure if it is Arvin or Irina.
"I did," he replies, standing back up when all he wants to do is cry over Lauren's corpse. There is no smile on her fleshy lips, a vague moue twisting them scornfully instead. "Where is Sydney?"
"I'm here, daddy," she says, and she's seven years old again, and his whole world, and he laughs as he picks her up and clings to her. "Daddy, you're hurting me," she says.
"Daddy, you're hurting me," echoes Lauren's voice, but it is still Sydney.
"Daddy, you're hurting me," echoes Danny's.
Sydney has been stolen away from him. In her place, in his arms, he holds an illuminated manuscript of the bible.
When the dreams recess, the pain strides back in.
Maybe it is hell after all, he thinks, at one point. The dreams only serve to remind him what it is to be without pain, only crystal clear confusion, and each awakening, if such can be called the moments spent in utter darkness, nothing but the faint sound of his own breathing, darkness and pain searing over any other sensation, each awakening is rendered harder to go through by the knowledge that there is hope, that the dreams will come, and with them a respite.
Thirst, starvation, weakness, those are well beyond his grasp, unable to get through the pain. He does not know how much time has passed, only knows that he will soon go insane. He is not sure what soon means anymore.
He learns to welcome the dreams.
Penumbra. Shadows flickering on the walls of the interrogation room, candle lit in the centre of the table. Jack is handcuffed to the metal chair, and the voice of his interrogator rings familiar, but he can't recognize it.
"You don't want to lie to me, Jack. Where is Sydney?"
"I don't know," he says, and it's the truth, so they must've drugged him.
His face smashes into the table, hard, he hears his nose break and doesn't care. He lifts his head as soon as the hand in his nape relents its iron grip, nails digging into flesh, and when he cranes his neck it is Vaughn he recognizes by candlelight. His features seem softer than they are.
"Don't look at me," Vaughn tells him in an English accent. "It's all his fault."
He nods ahead, and Jack follows his gaze. Weiss is sitting across the table from him. He is fitter than Jack remembered, and his hair is greener, sculpted up as it is into a Mohawk. His arms are on the table, sleeveless, beringed fingers threaded in front of him, eyes underlined with kohl, and when he looks away from Jack to shake his head and stand up with a frustrated sigh, Jack is surprised to acknowledge that Eric Weiss doesn't look that bad in leather.
"Jack, I don't think you're listening," Vaughn scolds him in the same voice, but Jack won't look away from Weiss, who just punched the wall with all his strength.
The wall is intact, Weiss's knuckles aren't. His voice, when he speaks, is laced with as much blood and grit. "I don't know, Jack. They never tell me anything."
At his most lucid, Jack knows he shouldn't trust the dreams, knows he should cling to the pain. When he does, he can remember some things. Sydney, Rambaldi, and Sloane, and things almost make sense. But the pain wracks through his body and the almost-thought escapes him, nerve endings shrinking away in agony, except there's nowhere to run to. The pain is everything.
So he clings to the dreams to try to forget the pain.
Her eyes are everything. Soft and warm and he knows, with the certainty of one who has lived this dream before, of the cold, hard edges hidden under the velvet love.
There might be a toaster, or it might be another time. He sinks in her arms all the same, because he did, and will again, sinks in her arms and expects to drown, expects the love and the lies to stifle him, expects a pillow pressed on his face, expects a hand over his mouth and fingers pressing his nostrils closed, expects a slash across his windpipe.
Instead, he gets a lie. He gets the warmth, the softness, he gets words spun like silk and it's a web he'll always get caught in. He gets fate.
And then there was light.
Voices, and he wonders if it's a dream or not, because the pain is just as acute and the dreams have been a respite, until now. But there are voices, and a ray of light, time passes and it sweeps over him, exclamations and "he's alive!" and "not Sloane" and "radio in."
The bright light flashes in his eyes, glaring white, and he slips into another dreamscape.
"There's no escape," Arvin is telling him. "There's no truth. Just the lies of you and me."
Jack stands tall, knowing he can't afford anything else in front of him. Stand tall, show no weakness, he'll exploit them all. Nadia is there, hovering silently at Arvin's back, and Jack only wonders how he does not see her. Her hand is clutching a knife, beautiful features - she is Irina's, no doubt about that - beautiful features distorted by confusion and pain. Blood is seeping through her dress, and any second now her resolve will not matter, she will be dead, and Arvin alive.
"I know she's here," Arvin says, because apparently Rambaldi has made him a mind reader. Or maybe he can only read Jack's mind. "I owe her that."
Jack raises sceptical eyebrows and strides over to Nadia, extends his hand. She puts the blade in it, and cuts deep. Jack does not pull his hand back, lets her, lets Arvin, lets himself look at the blood - black, not red, the result of a lifetime of sin.
"Give me the knife, Nadia," and she does.
He turns to Arvin, who extends his arms on either side of him. "I owe you that."
"No more lies, Arvin."
"Then there is nothing."
The knife goes in deep, straight to the heart, sliding in between ribs, ramming home with a cry torn from Nadia's lips.
"You did this," she accuses him.
"I did."
In and out of dreams and dreams that hurt, no more reality. What is reality? Reality is pain, and nothingness, but the pain comes with colours and life now, sounds and smells and light. A concerned voice, pragmatic tone but an edge of urgency under it.
"Oh, god, Jack." "Don't try to move, Jack." "We've got you, Jack." "We're gonna take care of you, Jack."
His name, inflected by someone that knows him, movement and something outside of pain. It's a waking dream, and he doesn't know who the voice belongs to, too exhausted, too weak, too pain-wrecked to put a name, a face to it, only feelings: trust, and guilt, and reassurance. It's surprising, but it brings him hope, too.
Little by little, he realises that this is no dream. The pain relents and he figures that it might be one, but this is not the painlessness of dreams, it is the floating sensation of drugs. Sometimes he sees the white aesthetics of a hospital room, a needle in his vein, hears the beeps of machines that monitor him. Those slowly come with the assurance of reality, maybe, logically, and reality means Sydney. He wants to believe that it is no dream. Once he sees a shape by his bed, a man, elbows on his thighs and hands clasped in front of him, head hanging down, and he thinks, he is the voice, and almost knows who he is.
He tries to speak, faint moan past his lips, and closes his eyes as the man looks up, as the voice says his name. Too much to open his eyes for, needles pricking at the back of his eyeballs and he thinks there might be tears running down his cheeks.
There is the sound of a door, and another voice, one he doesn't trust. "You shouldn't be here." A frustrated sound by the voice he trusts, and the other voice speaks up again, severity melting into surprising care and concern. "What if he sees you? You have to stop coming."
Acquiescence, reluctant, and Jack forces his eyes open just in time to see the taller man walk out the door, burning eyes open and seeing the other one, the untrustworthy voice, English-accented, blue eyes and blond hair, angelic features, older than he remembers them. How long has it been?
"I do hope you'll recover soon, Mr. Bristow. I'm looking forward to having a long chat with you."
Mr. Sark walks out of the room, after the voice he trusts, and Jack wishes he could believe that this is still a dream.
He progressively stops hiding in the dreams. Mr. Sark does not come back for days, weeks, Jack still has trouble measuring time. He gets stronger, little by little, tended to by a doctor that never speaks an unprofessional word to him. Only the nurse, a young blond thing in her late twenties, speaks to him of life outside. She won't answer the questions he needs answered but he knows that she is engaged, and happy, and that she needs the money for her honeymoon.
One day she stops coming, replaced by a tight-lipped old maid, and Jack wonders if she is on her honeymoon, or in her coffin.
And one day when Jack wakes up, Mr. Sark is on the chair next to the bed. He raises his eyebrows at Jack, as if he's been patiently waiting for his awakening, when it's probably been drug-triggered.
"Mr. Bristow. I'd ask how you are, but I've had enough medical reports to have a fairly good idea of your impressive recovery."
"Sydney?" he asks, because nothing else matters.
"She's well," Sark assures him. "So is Mr. Vaughn," he adds, and sounds disappointed about that. "And their two children. They named the boy after you."
"How long?"
"It's been seven years, and you don't look a day older. Who'd have thought? Rambaldi does more wonders than the best plastic surgeons."
The humour falls flat, not that Sark looked as if he were expecting otherwise. Seven years, Jack thinks, over and over again. Seven years, seven seven seven seven years and Sydney has another child, and Isabelle must have grown, seven years seven seven seven years seven. Years. Sark is saying something, and Jack quiets down the whirlwind in his mind.
"...only recently been able to access the tomb. We have retrieved Mr. Sloane as well, although I'll admit that he was treated much less hospitably than you have been. We only need one lab rat, after all. Lucky for you."
"What do you plan to do with me, then?" Jack asks, pragmatic, and thinks of Sydney still.
Sark ignores him. "You were a frightful sight, when we picked you up. Fractured all over by the cave walls that collapsed on you, and the explosives had cut into your flesh, slashed your skin open, intestines dangling, and... I'll pass you the details. But here we are, only a few weeks later, and you're back to your usual, imperturbable self. You've even regained your muscular mass already. If not for the drugs we're pumping your system full of, you'd be on your feet trying to take me out right now." A pause, the shadow of something in the younger man's gaze. "Irina died that day, you know."
Jack shuts down. Don't give him the pleasure of showing any sort of response, and his voice is levelled, cold. "Did she."
Sark leans forward on his elbows, clear eyes fixed on Jack's face. No words pronounced, but little by little Jack sees the grief unveil itself in his eyes, and knows that it finds its reflection in his.
Sark stands up, hands thrust in the pockets of his expensive suit pants. The mask is back in place, for both of them, and his tone is offhanded, casual; the use of Jack's first name as he answers his earlier question, however, says more than they can afford to let looks convey. "I'm going to let you go, Jack."
Barely a question, thinks he knows the answer. "Why?"
Sark shoots him a look. Sardonic, amused, and oh-so-you-think-you-know-me. "Not in her memory. Not for Sydney either. I like to work in mysterious ways."
"The man that was here," Jack says.
Sark purses his lips in a moue that could mean a thousand things. "Goodbye, Jack."
The next time Jack wakes up, he is in a bed he doesn't know, and a little girl is peering at him curiously. She looks entirely too much like Sydney at the same age, but he doesn't dare move as she studies him, for fear of scaring her away.
Her name pushes past his lips before he can help it, though, a murmur, a sigh. "Isabelle."
She is studying a photograph in her hand, eyebrows knitted in concentration, eyes flickering back and forth between it and him. Then she hands the framed picture over, and he sees that it is a picture of him with Sydney, holding her in his arms when she was a tiny little thing. Irina took that picture. Laura did.
There is a question in Isabelle's eyes, and he nods his head, his sight blurring with tears at the intelligence in her gaze, tears he holds back because even after seven years spent in dreams, he is still Jack Bristow.
"Mom! Grandpa's in your bed!"
Sydney runs into the room a few seconds later, a baby in one arm, a gun in her other hand, pointed at Jack. There's strength and weakness in her eyes both, and she's as beautiful as she ever was. He's now sitting on the edge of the bed, but he knows better than to move.
"Get away from him, Isabelle. Your grandfather's dead."
"No, mom, it's him," Isabelle says as she obeys, walking behind her mother.
Gun still aimed at him, Sydney lowers herself enough to give the baby over to her daughter. "Here, take your brother and go wait for me in your room."
"Sydney," he says, and his voice is trembling. But it might be alright, because he did spend seven years in dreams, and Isabelle is holding Jack in her arms but standing her ground behind Sydney. "I... put Isabelle's bed together in the wrong room. With much difficulty, I might add."
Surprise, disbelief. "Dad?"
The only word that can explain it, and yet it makes no sense. "Rambaldi."
Tears are running down her cheeks, surprise and shock, thankfulness and relief, disbelief cast away for faith, and she slowly lowers the gun. He pushes to his feet, unsteady, learning how to stand on his own again, and she rushes forward to help support him. But then her knees buckle and she clings to him as they sink to the floor. Her head buried in his neck, he can feel the hot tears rolling on her skin.
Isabelle comes forward, a step at a time, and Sydney and he make room in between them for her and Jack. Tears lead the way to laughter. Jack holds his namesake in his arms, and wonders when he can teach him to build paper planes. Isabelle challenges him to name any country, go on, go on, any country at all, and she will tell him its capital city. She even knows Ouagadougou.
When Vaughn gets home, he scrambles back in shock at the sight of Jack feeding Jack. Sydney laughs, and runs over to hug him.
Jack doesn't know what's going to happen. He doesn't know what it means, immortality, only that he didn't want it. But he knows that he has been given his second chance. He looks at the children, and that's what he sees.
But then he looks at Sydney, and he figures he didn't do all that badly with his first one.
~ fin ~