Drabble: An Education (Alias/LFN; Sark, Nikita)
Inspired by a line in a very old wip of mine that I was rereading: "You do not get to choose your teachers or allegiances, they choose you."
Set after Season 5 in LFN-verse.
Sark, Nikita. PG.
An Education
'Five years ago,' says the blonde with the husky voice, 'this would be an entirely different conversation.'
'Oh, believe me, I am feeling my good fortune most acutely.' Sark gestures magnanimously with his good arm, the one not in a sling: 'White walls, white furniture, white pajamas. A definite improvement on other prisons that I've been in.'
She corrects him. 'Don't think of it as a prison. Think of it as a test.'
'That's original,' he smirks. The woman give him a priest-like look, the calm compassion of someone about to describe the limited, less-than-appealing options available to you.
'My colleagues recommend your immediate cancellation. They think your loyalties in the past demonstrate too much opportunism for our purposes.'
'I see.' He sits up straighter in the white, plastic chair and takes a sharp breath. Feels battered on the inside, too old for his own skin. 'I hope you informed them of the erroneousness of their assumption,' he manages to say without the words catching in his throat, throwing in a weak, flirtatious smile at the end because, at this point, what can it hurt?
'I told them that they didn't look back far enough.'
'And why is that?' he asks.
'Because for evidence of your enduring commitments, they need to go back to the beginning, the very beginning. To Ireland, Vladivostok, Irina Derevko... Am I right?'
He chooses his next words carefully. 'What if you are?'
She smiles for the first time; leans over him, too close. He can smell perfume in the soft white folds of her blouse, clean and earthy, like a coniferous forest wrapped in layers of winter. 'Prove to me that you can do it again,' she says.
THE END
23 January 2011
ETA: The perfume I imagine Nikita is wearing, by the way, is Guerlain Vetiver (top note: lemon; middle notes are tobacco and vetiver; base notes are nutmeg, tobacco and pepper), with a little Robert Piguet Bandit (top notes are galbanum and ylang; middle notes are leather and jasmine; base notes are patchouli, oak moss and vetiver) layered over the top.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/914109.html and has
comments.
Set after Season 5 in LFN-verse.
Sark, Nikita. PG.
An Education
'Five years ago,' says the blonde with the husky voice, 'this would be an entirely different conversation.'
'Oh, believe me, I am feeling my good fortune most acutely.' Sark gestures magnanimously with his good arm, the one not in a sling: 'White walls, white furniture, white pajamas. A definite improvement on other prisons that I've been in.'
She corrects him. 'Don't think of it as a prison. Think of it as a test.'
'That's original,' he smirks. The woman give him a priest-like look, the calm compassion of someone about to describe the limited, less-than-appealing options available to you.
'My colleagues recommend your immediate cancellation. They think your loyalties in the past demonstrate too much opportunism for our purposes.'
'I see.' He sits up straighter in the white, plastic chair and takes a sharp breath. Feels battered on the inside, too old for his own skin. 'I hope you informed them of the erroneousness of their assumption,' he manages to say without the words catching in his throat, throwing in a weak, flirtatious smile at the end because, at this point, what can it hurt?
'I told them that they didn't look back far enough.'
'And why is that?' he asks.
'Because for evidence of your enduring commitments, they need to go back to the beginning, the very beginning. To Ireland, Vladivostok, Irina Derevko... Am I right?'
He chooses his next words carefully. 'What if you are?'
She smiles for the first time; leans over him, too close. He can smell perfume in the soft white folds of her blouse, clean and earthy, like a coniferous forest wrapped in layers of winter. 'Prove to me that you can do it again,' she says.
THE END
23 January 2011
ETA: The perfume I imagine Nikita is wearing, by the way, is Guerlain Vetiver (top note: lemon; middle notes are tobacco and vetiver; base notes are nutmeg, tobacco and pepper), with a little Robert Piguet Bandit (top notes are galbanum and ylang; middle notes are leather and jasmine; base notes are patchouli, oak moss and vetiver) layered over the top.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/914109.html and has
comments.