For AU-Bingo challenge "Criminals"
AU, obviously, and therefore not too spoilery for any but the basics. And why am I still warning for spoilers? Is anybody watching this comm who hasn't watched the full show in the four years since it went off the air? Who still intends to watch the full show? OK, end of ruminations, start of story.
"Shades of Gray"
Parking garages were much the same the world over. Gray, impersonal, confusing, vaguely threatening: No wonder Jack Bristow felt at home in them.
And they were always an appropriate setting for his meetings with Irina Derevko.
She walked boldly from the elevator wearing a white winter coat and a red scarf around her neck that could easily serve as a target, or a garrote. She felt confident, or wanted him to think she did. He waited in the shadows for her to see him, then to acknowledge that she had seen him. “Jack.”
“Irina. You’re looking well.”
“You aren’t.” She was honest to the point of brutality … when it suited her. He was all too familiar with how well she could lie when that suited her in turn. “I heard about Marrakech. An operation that sloppy isn’t like you.”
The operation had been less sloppy than deliberately sabotaged, by an operative Jack wouldn’t work with again. Nobody else would be working with him again either; a couple of well-placed shots had ensured that. “You didn’t come here to discuss Marrakech. This is your meet, on my time. What is it?”
“When you snap at me, you hope that you sound - official. Cold. But you only reveal how vulnerable you are.”
That vulnerability worked both ways. Jack took what comfort he could in that.
Irina stared slightly past him toward the thin sliver of night sky this level of the parking garage permitted. Her voice remained even as she said, “Sometimes - if intel is needed badly enough - governments will do almost anything to get it. They’ll provide full pardons. New identities. New lives. Ways to start over.”
“Depends on the intel.”
“And on whether the operative in question wants to start over.”
“Why would I believe anything you say to me?”
Her old betrayal crackled between them for a moment, exposing them for what they were - a severed wire with the power still flowing, always trying to complete the connection.
Irina said, “I did what I thought was right. And I’m doing that now. Aren’t you ready to do the same?”
And he was. He was. He had been for a long time. Jack closed his eyes.
She stepped closer - he could hear that, feel it - and she said, “Come in, Jack. Start over, with me.”
When he opened his eyes again, Irina stood directly in front of him, between them only the veil of their tortured history. He’d been an angry, impoverished teenager shunted from foster house to foster house too much to ever establish the kind of school records that would get him a scholarship to college - his only chance of going. At the time, he thought he’d fallen into crime after meeting Arvin Sloane, never realizing that he had been deliberately chosen.
Arvin had chosen well. Jack’s ruthlessness fueled him in his work; his cool, calculating mind kept that ruthlessness from ruining him. Together they’d built a syndicate known and feared on five continents. And when Irina had taken her place in the organization - in his bed, in his life - Jack had thought he could want nothing more.
But after years together, and a child, Irina had been exposed as an Interpol agent. She fled just in time to prevent Arvin from having her killed.
For decades more, Jack had hated her. Not as much as he hated Arvin for finally turning himself in and going legit to placate Emily - but it was hate all the same. Then, in the turbulent intelligence situation of the past few years, Interpol had come to need his help. As far as Jack was concerned, Interpol, and the turncoat they’d sent to persuade him, could go fuck themselves. But then Sydney needed Interpol’s help in return - and one cooperation became another -
--and now here they were. Tangled up in each other, both desperate to break free and desperate to tie the knots tighter.
“Jack,” Irina said softly. “I’ll never be able to get you a better deal than this. It’s a free pass. A real new beginning. And we won’t have to live these lies any more.”
Even Jack’s considerable defenses weren’t entirely equal to this. “It wouldn’t work. No matter how badly a - how inviting the idea of a new beginning might be - ”
“Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“Irina, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Sydney,” she said, and the heaviness of it settled over them like a shroud.
Sydney had been raised in his world from the beginning. She reveled in the violence, the deception - the adrenalin of it all. Jack had chosen a life of crime, but he’d never experienced the sheer exhilaration that his daughter did.
Their daughter stubbornly saw everything in black and white, and she preferred the blackness. Jack and Irina had each tried, in their ways, to convince her about the shades of gray that really defined the lives they led. But she would never believe. Never change. And never accept her father’s change.
Jack would never leave Sydney, not even for Irina.
Irina said, “I should have taken her with me.”
“I would’ve killed you.”
“You would have tried.”
There were times he himself had wondered if Sydney wouldn’t have been better off with her mother. That more than the old betrayal was why he still hated Irina, despite loving her, and always would.
"Shades of Gray"
Parking garages were much the same the world over. Gray, impersonal, confusing, vaguely threatening: No wonder Jack Bristow felt at home in them.
And they were always an appropriate setting for his meetings with Irina Derevko.
She walked boldly from the elevator wearing a white winter coat and a red scarf around her neck that could easily serve as a target, or a garrote. She felt confident, or wanted him to think she did. He waited in the shadows for her to see him, then to acknowledge that she had seen him. “Jack.”
“Irina. You’re looking well.”
“You aren’t.” She was honest to the point of brutality … when it suited her. He was all too familiar with how well she could lie when that suited her in turn. “I heard about Marrakech. An operation that sloppy isn’t like you.”
The operation had been less sloppy than deliberately sabotaged, by an operative Jack wouldn’t work with again. Nobody else would be working with him again either; a couple of well-placed shots had ensured that. “You didn’t come here to discuss Marrakech. This is your meet, on my time. What is it?”
“When you snap at me, you hope that you sound - official. Cold. But you only reveal how vulnerable you are.”
That vulnerability worked both ways. Jack took what comfort he could in that.
Irina stared slightly past him toward the thin sliver of night sky this level of the parking garage permitted. Her voice remained even as she said, “Sometimes - if intel is needed badly enough - governments will do almost anything to get it. They’ll provide full pardons. New identities. New lives. Ways to start over.”
“Depends on the intel.”
“And on whether the operative in question wants to start over.”
“Why would I believe anything you say to me?”
Her old betrayal crackled between them for a moment, exposing them for what they were - a severed wire with the power still flowing, always trying to complete the connection.
Irina said, “I did what I thought was right. And I’m doing that now. Aren’t you ready to do the same?”
And he was. He was. He had been for a long time. Jack closed his eyes.
She stepped closer - he could hear that, feel it - and she said, “Come in, Jack. Start over, with me.”
When he opened his eyes again, Irina stood directly in front of him, between them only the veil of their tortured history. He’d been an angry, impoverished teenager shunted from foster house to foster house too much to ever establish the kind of school records that would get him a scholarship to college - his only chance of going. At the time, he thought he’d fallen into crime after meeting Arvin Sloane, never realizing that he had been deliberately chosen.
Arvin had chosen well. Jack’s ruthlessness fueled him in his work; his cool, calculating mind kept that ruthlessness from ruining him. Together they’d built a syndicate known and feared on five continents. And when Irina had taken her place in the organization - in his bed, in his life - Jack had thought he could want nothing more.
But after years together, and a child, Irina had been exposed as an Interpol agent. She fled just in time to prevent Arvin from having her killed.
For decades more, Jack had hated her. Not as much as he hated Arvin for finally turning himself in and going legit to placate Emily - but it was hate all the same. Then, in the turbulent intelligence situation of the past few years, Interpol had come to need his help. As far as Jack was concerned, Interpol, and the turncoat they’d sent to persuade him, could go fuck themselves. But then Sydney needed Interpol’s help in return - and one cooperation became another -
--and now here they were. Tangled up in each other, both desperate to break free and desperate to tie the knots tighter.
“Jack,” Irina said softly. “I’ll never be able to get you a better deal than this. It’s a free pass. A real new beginning. And we won’t have to live these lies any more.”
Even Jack’s considerable defenses weren’t entirely equal to this. “It wouldn’t work. No matter how badly a - how inviting the idea of a new beginning might be - ”
“Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“Irina, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Sydney,” she said, and the heaviness of it settled over them like a shroud.
Sydney had been raised in his world from the beginning. She reveled in the violence, the deception - the adrenalin of it all. Jack had chosen a life of crime, but he’d never experienced the sheer exhilaration that his daughter did.
Their daughter stubbornly saw everything in black and white, and she preferred the blackness. Jack and Irina had each tried, in their ways, to convince her about the shades of gray that really defined the lives they led. But she would never believe. Never change. And never accept her father’s change.
Jack would never leave Sydney, not even for Irina.
Irina said, “I should have taken her with me.”
“I would’ve killed you.”
“You would have tried.”
There were times he himself had wondered if Sydney wouldn’t have been better off with her mother. That more than the old betrayal was why he still hated Irina, despite loving her, and always would.