Sunny's Request #1
"Where were we? I've forgotten.
He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.
Right. Yes. The usual choices." - The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood.
It was only fitting that their relationship ended as it had begun: with a lie. Irina Derevko might die, but the lie would live on in the hearts of those who survived her; and it would sustain them over the trying times ahead. The ones she loved might make it through these troubled times, by holding on to that lie. She suddenly wished that she had called Katya -- told her the truth, just so that someone would know it -- but she dismissed the thought quickly. Foolish fancies of a woman on her deathbed, nothing more.
She checked her watch. Jack was late. How uncharacteristic.
Perhaps she should have been wishing for him to never arrive, to forever postpone the inevitable, but all Irina wanted was to get this over with. To be done with all the lies, and betrayals and prophecies. There was no joy in her life, now that she knew the truth. She wondered idly if this was what had happened to Rambaldi himself, that knowing what was to come only made him want out of this life.
Sitting back on the bed in the cramped hotel room, she thought back to the previous week, when she had received the test results that had shattered her life. The medical tests had proven that she, not her daughter Sydney, was beyond all doubt Rambaldi’s Chosen One. This had staggering repercussions for not only her, but both of her daughters as well. Especially Sydney. Her poor, beautiful, lonely Sydney, who still believed that she was Chosen. Sydney now had a much larger role to play than anyone had imagined.
They all knew the prophecies, the true meaning behind the symbol that scholars had been calling the Eye of Rambaldi. The two brackets on the outside were the Passenger and the Chosen, doing great battle. If it came to that, both would be destroyed. The question for the Agency was: what was the object - the circle in the center - over which the two would fight? Irina now knew the answer, and she was taking it with her to her grave: Sydney. Sydney was the driving force behind all of Rambaldi’s prophecies and she had more power than she could even dream of. That power should be coming to light soon, and Irina felt a slight pang of sadness that she should miss such an important transition in her daughter’s life.
However, she reminded herself harshly, this needed to be done. If this knowledge came to light before Sydney was ready, one of the many fanatical followers of Rambaldi would kill her, and all that everyone had suffered would be for nothing. Not only that, but if she did not die before the appointed time, then she would be fated to destroy her other daughter. Nadia had been born into suffering, and from what little information Irina had been able to glean from her sources, her life had only been a series of horrors, one after the other. Nadia deserved to live, and to have a real life with family. Sydney was a good girl; she would take care of her sister.
Irina sighed. She didn’t even know what Nadia looked like.
When she had read the test results and destroyed any record of them, Irina had been forced to make a decision concerning the manner of her death. She had briefly considered suicide, but that would raise too many questions, and she worried that it might actually lead them to the discovery quicker, as they tried to figure out what had happened to her. Also, she felt that Jack, Sydney and Nadia deserved some closure where she was concerned. If they could cut her out of their lives completely, they could move on and do what needed to be done. There would be no room for grief in the days ahead.
So, six days ago, Irina Derevko had hired a hitman to kill her oldest daughter.
The man claimed to be the best, but she knew that Sydney could easily take him down alone. The point was not whether Tamazaki could actually kill Sydney, but the fact that she had hired him, using her own name. Sure enough, three days after she had ordered the hit, Irina was getting communications from Jack, requesting a meeting. She had worried about being so difficult to find, but when it came to Sydney’s well-being, Jack was remarkably persistent. She had agreed to a meet, pretending to know nothing of his knowledge of what she had done.
And now she waited. Where was he?
She was beginning to worry for his safety by the time the knock sounded on the door. She stood and opened it, allowing him into the small room without a word. He watched her close the door behind them, and then shifted from foot to foot awkwardly. An absurd stab of pity pierced her heart. This would be difficult -
Before she had even registered that he was moving, she was lying face down on the bed, with a knife at her throat. Against her will, her pulse started to race. She was never going to leave this ugly little room alive. She forced herself to laugh, to put on that sneer that Jack hated so much.
“Hello, Jack. Obviously, you are happy to see me.” The cold metal bit into the tender skin of her neck, and she wondered how long he would let her go before she died. Would it be quick and merciful, or would he want to sit back and watch her bleed? She had certainly hurt him enough to deserve the latter.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled back, exposing more of her neck, and also forcing her to look into his eyes. They were so full of pain that Irina was tempted to call off the charade, to tell him everything and make him understand why this had happened. All of the betrayals from her had turned his heart to stone, she’d thought, but now she saw that he could still be profoundly hurt by them.
She closed her eyes, as he said the one thing she had least been expecting, “Why?”
He wanted an explanation. He had come here, not to kill her immediately, but to make her tell him why she would try to kill their daughter. She wanted to scream at him, to hit him, for how could there be a rational explanation for what she had done? How could he think that this act was anything other than cold-hearted malice, with the information he had? And why, why did he have to give her an opening where she could save her own life, and keep his heart, and just forget about this attempt at sacrifice?
She opened her eyes, and focused on his. She needed him to see that she was hurting him like this intentionally, that there was no explanation. She needed him to feel, at the core of his very being, how completely evil she had become. Drawing on her last reserves of courage, she prepared to utter the most difficult words of her entire life.
“Sydney,” she said, slowly, deliberately, “deserves to die. That is why.”
She didn’t even have time to think about what would happen next before it was done, and Jack Bristow had quickly and efficiently slit his wife’s throat.
He cleaned the room, and disposed of all evidence in the way he had instructed Agent Vaughn only weeks before. He then surveyed the room to make sure that nothing looked out of place, or would point to his presence in the room. Before he could stop himself, he had stepped over to the bed again, and gently closed Irina’s eyes. Blinking away the sudden blurriness, he strode out the door, wondering in the back of his mind what he was ever going to tell Sydney.