Irina Derevko Fic Recs (with bonus Jack Bristow)

[pellucid]

I think I promised recs and musings on Irina and Jack/Irina, but you'll have to content yourself at present with recs (which have taken enough time on their own, since I'm one of those people who has to read ALL THE STORIES before I feel like I can make a recs post).

Let's start with some gen Irina-focused stories:

Snow by kangeiko is everything

Comments

[pellucid]

I'm not sure how you'll feel about Yahtzee. I really do like the way she writes the two of them--unable to get out of each other's orbits, no matter how hard they might want to, yet also unable to resolve all their issues. I think the thing I find most compelling about the two of them is the fact that no matter how much they hate each other, they love each other at least as much (the scene in your icon notwithstanding), but that love doesn't do them much good; it's a nice subversion of the whole "love conquers all" thing. I do see her stories as dealing pretty well with both sides of the coin. But they're also long, plotty stories that are also about Rimbaldi and other characters and seasons I haven't seen, etc., and I'm not sure I would have gotten quite as into them as I did had I not spent the past however many weeks feeling too ill to want to do much besides sit in front of the computer. (On the other hand, I do sometimes go through phases where I want plotty fic, regardless.)

Among the two I recced, I think I actually like "Irenicon" a bit better, even though it's really ensemble-y. I almost quit, though, early in the story, when it was too much of other characters. But then every time I was ready to bail, Irina showed up again, so I kept reading, and by about 1/3 of the way through I was hooked on the story enough to stick with it. I'd be a little surprised if you had quite that much patience, though.

"The Prophet's Right Hand" is much more thoroughly about the two of them--possibly a little too much, at least at the beginning, in the sense that we get a kind of reverse version of Jack and Laura, which has never particularly interested me. But if you persevere through the love stuff, there's lots of good hatred to come, and an excellent plot twist that very nicely absolves several of what I had previously thought were several of the story's faults.

Among the other Yahtzee fic, No for Yes has what to me is a convincing take on the missing years. (Paired with flashbacks to Jack and Laura, which I find less interesting.) And I have no idea whether you'd like Escape in Three Directions. I had quite mixed feelings about it: loved, loved, loved Jack and Irina doing the spy thing together (accidentally) and reading each other's minds and sort of tag-teaming (there should totally be more stories where they work together!); didn't particularly care for the way she used sex in the story, and I found Katya's presence to be relatively useless to the story as a whole. So it didn't make the list, but you might enjoy at least the first three or so chapters? *shrugs*

I do suspect that overall, though, that the non-Yahtzee (and non-ff.net) stories will be more to your taste.