(no subject)
1.
There is something to be said for doing things right.
She didn't know before- she'd forgotten what it was like to go through the steps-
(boy meets girl. boy and girl dance awkwardly around dating. boy gets courage to ask girl out. girl accepts. happy dating ensues.)
- because with the second one (the one that counted) she jumped over steps and wound up right in the middle, the happy part.
(They were not without awkwardness. It wasn't in her to do things gracefully in her own life. She stumbles and stutters sometimes when she says things, and she almost breaks her own coffee machine the first morning he's there- water in the front, coffee in the back. He's smooth and doesn't stutter, but sometimes he falters and when the other does that, then things turn funny.)
The happy part was just that: happy. They cuddle in bed and hold hands in the park and fix one another's toothbrushes at night (because what good does sleeping apart do if you can't sleep anyway?) and these are the warning signs. Things can be too good to be true, but you don't realize this until it's too late.
3.
His marriage is fake.
(Certain things just aren't coincidences.)
2.
Too late: Not arriving until after an expected time.
There is no expected time for her, she is gone, one with the indiscriminant dust, the one who is lost. (She's gone in the sea, ain't she? says Ben the idiot on the shore. She envisions them spreading her ash into the sea, forming under the waves back into her shape, tangled in seaweed. In this dream, her hair looks fabulous.)
She arrives simply too late to do anything. She can picture this too in her mind: arriving in the back of a church, the doors flying open just as the priest asks if there are any objection. She strides in, sure and strong, and her voice is the same. She objects, and loudly too, and she gives no reason but he steps down from the altar. Seamlessly she transitions to happiness again, time spread smooth like silk.
Instead time is marked in a gold band and gold hair and she thinks maybe, just maybe she can survive this.
(It might require certain amounts of her own kind of gold to counteract theirs- tequila is nice sometimes, though she doesn't let that become a habit. Hope is also gold, but she doesn't allow that kind. Her hope is the bad kind, false and gold-plated. Damn Boy Scouts and Honor, the antique, tarnished gold that gleams like old watches.)
1.5.
She missed him, she knows that much.
There are two reasons she has extrapolated this: 1) There is no way she couldn't have missed him, seeing as she is pretty damn sure she loved him them as she certainly does now (dammit.) and 2) in the safe house the desperation she felt- the strange kind that she didn't have a reason for- it disappeared when he walked into the room, gold with promise and the dim lighting and exhaustion and, she knows now, his own hope that he had branded false.
This means that while she was out doing whatever she was doing (golden haired with an iron constitution, just like her daddy taught her,) there was something shining in a dark compartment of her brain, pushed down.
(She knows she was like a magpie with that feeling- she could pick out its glints with no problem.)
4.
They try the steps. And by "try" they really just thought about it before falling into bed together.
(Which, actually, is a mistake. It throws the whole set-up out of whack. There can be no first date, technically, if you've been on a hundred before, and there certainly can't be one if the first evening he's back you invite him in for a glass of wine and suddenly you're undressing in the living room. There are rules for this- no sleeping together on the first date- but this isn't the first date, this is, technically, a mistake, but also date one hundred and one in the grand scheme of things. Also, who's counting?)
They are slower this time- he lives in his own apartment, mostly, and this time she gets to see it. They go on dates sometimes and sometimes they stay home and really, she knows better than to take any of this for granted.
The steps are there to guide, and now they're three days off from the trail but they still have provisions and they're following a nice stream.
3.5
She wonders what would have happened if things had been different: no deception and no lies, and instead just... she doesn't quite know. Faltering love? She likes to think that theirs is the kind that can move mountains, stop rivers and lift them up where they belong, but she doesn't know if she wants to believe that she would have sirened him away from his wife. What would have happened, if he hadn't been forced to hate his wife?
(It doesn't matter now, does it?)
As a teenager, Nadia had been a rebel.
It was what she was good at: distracting, darting, snatching, lying. She would flaunt her talent in the face of authority and literally run away laughing. 'The face of an angel,' Cesar had once called her after she had distracted a police officer and two clerks with an incomprehensible sob story while he emptied their cash register, 'No one would ever believe the things you do.'
She had hit his arm then, and then kissed him, but she had long since reflected on his words. She had known she was pretty, but that she could deceive people with nothing more than her face was a new concept. This was a concept Nadia decided she could employ.
It was a device that had served Nadia well for years. A short dress, a sweet smile, a quick wink. Magic she worked to make others miss what was coming. It was a ploy she took for granted.
It was not one that would work on Jack Bristow.
Nadia had resigned herself to the fact that she would never have anything more than Jack his grudging tolerance, and that this in itself was more than she should have ever expected. She did not intend to betray him- no more than her presence did without her intention- but she did wish that she could distract him from that, if not with her face, than at least with her performance in the field.
When she had been paired with Jack Bristow, no one had bothered to ask if she would be uncomfortable. It was her job to adapt to new partners and scenarios. It was Jack they wanted assurance from- that working with Irina Derevko's daughter was alright, that it wouldn't be a conflict of interest.
I'll be fine, Jack had bitten out. Nadia would have replied the same, had anyone asked.
The mission to Santiago started out smoothly. It wasn’t until Nadia was on comms and in the actual nightclub that communication became a problem.
‘Raptor,’ she had murmured smoothly, ‘Change of plans. Following Figueroa outside.’
It was a logical move. Breaking into his room through the window, balancing on the thin ledge Sydney had so worried about- getting an invitation to the room was much easier.
‘Do not proceed, Evergreen. We do not have sufficient intel-’
She ignored him, slinking out of the nightclub and into the cool Chilean night air. ‘Evergreen. Abort. Evergreen, abort, do you copy?’
She had considered turning off her comm then, knowing he wouldn’t leave her alone until she listened to him. She flicked the switch once she had Figueroa in her sights, all the better to stalk her prey.
She started hearing him again when she was running towards the van, a gash in her temple and a dull ache in her head. Twenty feet away from the door she tripped and twisted her ankle, and she briefly considered staying on the ground until she died. Never had one of her improvisations gone so horribly awry.
He jumped out of the back, and without making eye-contact, lifted her from the ground, carrying her to the van. Adding insult to injury, she thought miserably as he deposited her in the back, before climbing forward to drive away.
She was several shades calmer by the time he stopped the van, but his shadow frightened her. Disobeying Jack Bristow was not something that occurred often.
“Let me see your ankle.”
“It’s fine.”
“I did not ask.”
She pulled her leg back spitefully, embarrassed of her actions. She felt bold- rebellious, her curse- and glares at him. Her attempt withered under his practiced stare. “Your actions were rash and uncalled for.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You ignored a direct order.”
“I know.”
He stood there, waiting, she knew, for an explanation. It was something she would rather die than do- admit to the great, untouchable Jack Bristow that this had been a misguided attempt to impress him, to make him see her as something more than the product of an indiscretion or his daughter’s bastard half-sister. She was grateful for the shadows, because her cheeks were hot with shame.
As she cringed into the shadows, she realized that this was not helping her case any. All but shaking, Nadia sat forward and tilted her head back to look at him. “I underestimated Figueroa,” she started, knowing that what she’s saying is pitifully inadequate. “He takes home girls from clubs all the time. I thought I could convince him to take me. It was a lot easier than waiting and breaking in later.”
“Bravado is a certain way to an early grave.”
It is his condescending tone that made her stand up, her injured ankle singing with pain, and she had never felt more poorly-composed in her life. “I made a mistake. I wasn’t trying to be brave or daring; it was a stupid error in judgment. I can be punished when we get back, but do not patronize me.”
His expression was unreadable. “Let me see your ankle.”
She wanted to scream; she snarled instead. “My ankle is fine.”
“You are favoring your left leg. You hurt yourself.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Did you miss the day your training went over partner co-operation? Or did you choose simply to ignore it, as you are so obviously above it?”
She sat down, her skirt flouncing up, settling high on her thighs. He sat opposite her, and she lifted the injured ankle.
He took her leg gently, carefully placing one hand on the underside of her calf, spanning the curve of muscle easily and so warm they all but burned. He felt her ankle carefully. “There’s some swelling.”
“Not bad.”
“Obvious enough,” he said. “At least a sprain.” He started to tug at the silver laces of her shoe. “These have to come off.”
Nadia swallowed hard as Jack unwound the silver straps that shone in the dark, his fingertips callused and rough enough to make her shiver. He was very intent upon his work- the thin straps did not tangle, just loosened, and he removed the sandal gently. Her toenails, candy apple red, caught the dim light. He put the shoe down and bent to find the first aid kid. He removes a bandage.
“The pressure will be uncomfortable at first,” he warns.
“I know how this works, Jack.”
Nadia can tell by the way he stares that he's thinking of her.
It's the same look she's been receiving since before she knew what it meant- the look given to her by the orphanage's repairman, the potential fathers dragged by wives to the orphanage, on the street and in stores- the hungry look that crackles with heat. Men always think they aren't noticed- that they can give these stares without being caught, without giving chills of fear or desire- but she always knows.
Jack is the same as other men. He is more careful than most, more covert, making sure she's distracted or, at the very least, not facing him, and when she turns to catch his eye, a mask of studied disdain is already in place. His look is more than mere interest, it's scrutiny and nostalgia and resentment (no, not resentment, but something darker than the others, dark and feral.)
With the other men (those who acted on it and those who didn't) they treated her differently- rougher or gentler, depending on the man. Jack treats her the same as he always had- with the respect he gave to another agent, the clumsy kindness she occasionally earned as Sydney's sister, all still the same. She usually talks herself out of thinking he could possibly be looking at her that way. Jack is hardly perfect, but he has a sort of honor, and she is his daughter's sister and his wife's daughter and too close for anything.
She has an innate power over men that she now knows is her mother's legacy, the ability to blind and blur boundaries, to control and command, the gift of a siren's call that they don't recognize until it's too late.