One Year...and Counting

A/N: This is the very essence of a quick update. I am so sorry it's so short. But don't worry, more Spy-fam reunion is coming up, and some nice J/I moments :smiley: Oh an amussing note, I turned in this fanfic as my free-verse poem for creative writing. It's not my fault that the teacher went on and on about how sometimes prose can be poetry and poetry can be prose, and how poetry is subjective... Anyway, I formatted all 52 pages like a poem and smacked that beast on her desk when I went to turn it in. I wonder if she'll read the whole thing?


Jo Murray nee Rowling, had a bright sunlight kitchen in her home about an hour's drive from London. She had spent hours looking through design books, and House and Home magazines looking for the perfect kitchen. She had felt a thrill of triumph when she had infromed the architect that money was no problem. Top of the range appliances in shiny stainless steel, and beautiful black marbal counters filled the kitchen. Her husband Neil, was something of a cook, and pots and pans of varrying sizes and degrees of oddity hung from the ceiling.

Her refrigerator was hung with her own children's drawings, and drawings that young fans had sent her. Baby David's ten month picture, and Jessie's school picture were hung in prominate places. Sara had taken a polaroid of all four sisters together, and that picture was now hung up on the refrigerator as well.

On the way from the train station back to the house, Jo had stopped at the Grocers and bought ingredients for sandwiches. Fresh bread, cold cut meats, cheese, lettuce, butter. Sara, who had been riding with her, had added crisps and sweets to the list. Jo had indulged her niece and bought those things, and they had surprised Sydney (who had been left at home) with a cake in her honor to have after lunch. It was a chocolate sheet cake with blue icing that read "Welcome home!" in big letters.

Sara was sitting at Jo's kitchen table staring at her bottle of coke and spinning the cap around in circles with her index finger. Jo and Katya stood at the counter making sandwiches as Lena hacked at a loaf of bread with a knife. Sydney was sitting at the table across from Sara, and Irina was pacing. The six Derevko women were silent.

"Who wanted ham?" Katya asked holding out a plate with a ham sandwich and baby carrots.

"I did," Sara and Sydney said in unison.

"Here, Sydney, eat up," katay said setting the plate down in front of her niece.

"Have some crisps too, love.," Jo added passing Sydney a bag of Walkers Cheese and Onion flavored crisps.

"What about me?" Sara asked indingantly, crossing her arms acros her chest.

"You weren't kidnapped and missing for a month. Stop complaining, we're making your sandwich now." Katya admonished her daughter and she added ham to two uneven slices of bread.

Watching Lena struggled to cut another slice of bread, Jo commented, "I thought you were suppose to be good with knives."

Irina stopped pacing and leaned back against the refrigerator. "She is. Bread is softer than human flesh."

Jo blanched.

Shooting her sister a dark look, Lena put the knife down on the cutting board. "Unlike some people in this room, I have never killed anyone, or used a knife as a weapon meant to harm someone. I may know how to use one, but that doesn't mean I have."

"Here's your sandwich, Sara." Katya handed Sara her sandwich over Sydney's head. Sara greedily fell upon her sandwich and finished half in two large bites.

Sydney watched her cousin eat with a morbid fascination. "You'll make yourself sick if you eat it that fast." Sydney bit into a baby carrot. Sara shrugged and contiued to eat.
Lena joined them at the table with her own sandwich.

Down the hall, there was the sound of the front door opening. All six fell silent--make that all five, Sara was happily crunching through a mouthful of crisps and hadn't heard the door open. Irina pulled out her gun and inched along the wall and peered down the hall. There was Jack, inching his way along the wall, his own gun raised.

"Hello, Jack" Irina said in the calmest voice she could manage. No need to scare him into shooting.

Jack turned to the sound of her voice. The black dye in his hair had started to run in the unseasonably warm summer air, and he had a trail of black running down the back of his neck. He was still wearing the kilt.

Damn, thought Irina, He looks sexy in that kilt. I wonder if he's wearing it the traditional way? Bad thoughts, Irina, bad thoughts. Your daughter is in the room. You will not make sweet love to her father until she is far, far away. Wait a minute, did I just say 'sweet love'? I'm going crazy.

"Irina. Is Sydney here?" Jack was walking down the hall with long assured strides towards his wife.

Before Irina could open her mouth, Sydney bounded out from behind her. "Daddy!" she cried and threw herself into her father's arms.

Irina was miffed. Sydney had given her a hug once they'd left the Bakery, and while it had been a tight, long hug with many tears, it was not the same joyous hug that Jack was reciving. Irina had gotten the Thank-God-I'm-Alive-And-Someone-I-Know-Found-Me hug, while Jack was getting the Oh-My-God-Dad!-I-Am-So-Glad-To-See-You-Again! hug. And Sydney had called Jack, "Daddy." The last time Irina had been called; "Mommy" was when Sydney was six.

Jack was holding his daughter tightly in his arms, his eyes were moist, and he looked like a man trying very hard not to sob. Sydney was saying, "Daddy, I've found you. I was so scared Daddy, I thought I was going to die. Daddy, they made me watch my own funeral. Daddy, I've missed you so much!"

Sydney hadn't said any of that to Irina. Irina had gotten a "Good to see you, Mom." Which was better than nothing, Sydney could be calling her 'Derevko'. For goodness sake, I'm her mother and she doesn't care about me

Stepping back from his daughter, Jack ran his hand down her cheek and smiled. "It's good to see you too, Syd. I love you, sweetheart."

Sydney beamed back up at her father. She took his hand and pulled him towards the kitchen, "Come on Daddy, Aunt Katya and Aunt Jo and Aunt Lena are making sandwiches."

Lena pipped up, "Don't call me 'Aunt' Lena, Sydney, it makes me feel old."

Sydney grinned, "And heaven forbid that a 23 year old would feel old."

Pulling her father behind her, Sydney led the way back to the kitchen. As Jack passed Irina he took her hand and gave it a slight squeeze. "Missed you." He said.

"Missed you too," Irina whispered back, and allowed Jack to take her into the kitchen, ignoring the looks Katya and Jo gave each other.

It figured that the two of them would be in cahoots.
 
A/N: More to come soon, but I literally have to type and run!

After finishing their sandwiches, Katya, Jo and Lena (with Sara grudgingly in tow) left to go do some shopping ("What's the point of having a billionaire for a sister if you can't have the ultimate shopping spree?" Katya had asked). Once they had left, the three Bristows had moved into Jo's living room. Jack and Sydney were sitting on the cream colored leather couch, and Irina had resumed her pacing.

Sydney was watching both of her parents carefully. Her father looked tired and dishevled. The hem of his kilt was fraying, and he was toying with an unraveled thread. Her mother on the other had looked perfectly collected, dressed in a smart black shirt and sytlish black slacks. She was looking slightly down at the carpeted floor as she paced. Both appeared to be uncomfortable, her father more so that her mother.

Wondering if they were waiting for her to speak first, Sydney shifted a little on the couch, and then she froze.

My stoic father wants to screw my stoic mother very badly. Shall I freak out now, or later?
Opting for the second option, freaking out later, Sydney decided it was time to get her parent's minds out of the bedroom.

"Remember McKenas Kole, Dad?"

Jack looked up from the thread, his kilt had a run up to his thigh. He hurridly covered it with his hand, hoping that Irina hand't notcied. From the smirk on her face he could tell she had. With the tension of Sydney being gone, their own unresovled angst was creeping up again, in a distrubingly provakative manner. It was also gettting hot in the room.

"Kole?" he managed to ask. Irina sat down in a nearby rocking chair with a grin.

Sydney nodded.

Jack shot Irina a hard look, and she held up her hands in a gesture of innocence. "I haven't heard from McKenas since I turned myself into the CIA."

Sydney raised her eyebrow skeptically.

"I promise. Sydey, I told you earlier that I would never, ever, order any of my opperatives to do anything that would in any way harm you. I promise, Sweetheart."

"Which is why you shot me," Sydney crossed her arms over her chest. She and her mother had had this conversation before. It was what she threw in her mother's face when ever she felt angry, and wanted someone else to hurt with her. Anyone could see that Irina felt guilty (no matter how much she tried to deny it) about shooting her daughter. And like any good child, Sydney had learned her weapons well, and used them with a vicious force.

"Cuvee was in the next room. I was saving your life. If you weren't so stubborm, Sydney, you'd be able to see that."

"Stubborn? You shot me! What kind of mother shoots her only child?!" Sydney spat out.

Irina's breath hitched, but she retruned Sydney's heated scowl, with a cold glare of her own.
"Yes, Sydney, I shot you. And do you remember, you returned the favor." Irina rolled up her sleeve to show off the bruised pink scar on her upper arm. "But you know what, Sweetheat, both times we had the oppurtunity to kill each other, and we didn't. I think that says something about us. The two of us."

Sydney couldn't take her eyes off of her mother's arm. Suddenly she rolled up her own sleeve to reveal her scar. It was a pinkish-white mark on her arm in roughly the same place as her mother's. The two looked at the scars.

"What does it say? That you felt guilty about what you did to us? Or that you had another need for me? Some other part for me to play pawn in, in your game of chess?" Sydney jerked her sleeve back down to her wrist.

"Pawn? That's all you think you are to me, Sydney?" Irina leaned back in the rocking chair, and began to slowly rock. "You're my daughter. Of course I feel guilty about what I did. Sydney, I can count on one hand the number of times I have sleep through the night since I left you and your father."

"When were they?" Sydney challenged.

"In India, on the train, when I knew you wer safe next to me. The night I was returned to my cell after my execution had been called off. I heard you watching over me. In Panama, with your father..." Irina trailed off, and her cheeks were tinged slightly red.
Jack ducked his head.

Sydney quickly broke in. "You're lying."

"Am I?" Irina asked. "Of course, you have no way of verifying if what I say is true of not. But trust me when I say it is. I pray every night to whatever God may be listening that someday you, the both of you, will be able to trust me. And all I hear in return, is the steady cadance of 'truth takes time.'"

"Bullsh*t! Truth's time is up. It's number had been called. It's in center stage. It's time for truth to start singing." Sydney's eyes flashed angrily.

Jack didn't say anything, but he had clentched his jaw and was picking at his kilt again.

"Start talking. We have all the time in the world. And if you try to leave without telling us everything we want to know, I swear to God, I will hunt you down and kill you myself." Sydney leaned forward dangerously.

"Alright, I will tell you everything you want to know," Irina said weakly.

Sydney was right, truth's time was up.
 
A/N: More to come soon, but I literally have to type and run!

After finishing their sandwiches, Katya, Jo and Lena (with Sara grudgingly in tow) left to go do some shopping ("What's the point of having a billionaire for a sister if you can't have the ultimate shopping spree?" Katya had asked). Once they had left, the three Bristows had moved into Jo's living room. Jack and Sydney were sitting on the cream colored leather couch, and Irina had resumed her pacing.

Sydney was watching both of her parents carefully. Her father looked tired and dishevled. The hem of his kilt was fraying, and he was toying with an unraveled thread. Her mother on the other had looked perfectly collected, dressed in a smart black shirt and sytlish black slacks. She was looking slightly down at the carpeted floor as she paced. Both appeared to be uncomfortable, her father more so that her mother.

Wondering if they were waiting for her to speak first, Sydney shifted a little on the couch, and then she froze.

My stoic father wants to screw my stoic mother very badly. Shall I freak out now, or later?
Opting for the second option, freaking out later, Sydney decided it was time to get her parent's minds out of the bedroom.

"Remember McKenas Kole, Dad?"

Jack looked up from the thread, his kilt had a run up to his thigh. He hurridly covered it with his hand, hoping that Irina hand't notcied. From the smirk on her face he could tell she had. With the tension of Sydney being gone, their own unresovled angst was creeping up again, in a distrubingly provakative manner. It was also gettting hot in the room.

"Kole?" he managed to ask. Irina sat down in a nearby rocking chair with a grin.

Sydney nodded.

Jack shot Irina a hard look, and she held up her hands in a gesture of innocence. "I haven't heard from McKenas since I turned myself into the CIA."

Sydney raised her eyebrow skeptically.

"I promise. Sydey, I told you earlier that I would never, ever, order any of my opperatives to do anything that would in any way harm you. I promise, Sweetheart."

"Which is why you shot me," Sydney crossed her arms over her chest. She and her mother had had this conversation before. It was what she threw in her mother's face when ever she felt angry, and wanted someone else to hurt with her. Anyone could see that Irina felt guilty (no matter how much she tried to deny it) about shooting her daughter. And like any good child, Sydney had learned her weapons well, and used them with a vicious force.

"Cuvee was in the next room. I was saving your life. If you weren't so stubborm, Sydney, you'd be able to see that."

"Stubborn? You shot me! What kind of mother shoots her only child?!" Sydney spat out.

Irina's breath hitched, but she retruned Sydney's heated scowl, with a cold glare of her own.
"Yes, Sydney, I shot you. And do you remember, you returned the favor." Irina rolled up her sleeve to show off the bruised pink scar on her upper arm. "But you know what, Sweetheat, both times we had the oppurtunity to kill each other, and we didn't. I think that says something about us. The two of us."

Sydney couldn't take her eyes off of her mother's arm. Suddenly she rolled up her own sleeve to reveal her scar. It was a pinkish-white mark on her arm in roughly the same place as her mother's. The two looked at the scars.

"What does it say? That you felt guilty about what you did to us? Or that you had another need for me? Some other part for me to play pawn in, in your game of chess?" Sydney jerked her sleeve back down to her wrist.

"Pawn? That's all you think you are to me, Sydney?" Irina leaned back in the rocking chair, and began to slowly rock. "You're my daughter. Of course I feel guilty about what I did. Sydney, I can count on one hand the number of times I have sleep through the night since I left you and your father."

"When were they?" Sydney challenged.

"In India, on the train, when I knew you wer safe next to me. The night I was returned to my cell after my execution had been called off. I heard you watching over me. In Panama, with your father..." Irina trailed off, and her cheeks were tinged slightly red.
Jack ducked his head.

Sydney quickly broke in. "You're lying."

"Am I?" Irina asked. "Of course, you have no way of verifying if what I say is true of not. But trust me when I say it is. I pray every night to whatever God may be listening that someday you, the both of you, will be able to trust me. And all I hear in return, is the steady cadance of 'truth takes time.'"

"Bullsh*t! Truth's time is up. It's number had been called. It's in center stage. It's time for truth to start singing." Sydney's eyes flashed angrily.

Jack didn't say anything, but he had clentched his jaw and was picking at his kilt again.

"Start talking. We have all the time in the world. And if you try to leave without telling us everything we want to know, I swear to God, I will hunt you down and kill you myself." Sydney leaned forward dangerously.

"Alright, I will tell you everything you want to know," Irina said weakly.

Sydney was right, truth's time was up.
 
"I told you that I was 18 when the KGB recruited me," Irina began softly. "It was the height of the Cold War, I had been taught that the Motherland was more important than property, religion, than self. Even though I had seen my baby sister taken away from my family for daring to want more, I thought that they had gotten their just due. Even my mother's screams when Natalya, Jo, was taken away, had dulled and faded in my mind.

"I was so honored and pround that I had been asked to serve my country. I thought I would make the world a safer place. I told my parents as much. My mother said nothing, she only stared off into space, my father knew it was useless to presuade me to leave.

"Thoughout my training, my parents betray of Mother Russia was ground into my head. I strove to be the best, so that I could perhaps rid my name of the taint of their 'betrayal.' I was the best with languages, I could learn a new language in six months. I could crack any code they threw at me in under five minutes. I could hit a fly sitting on a table fifteen meters away with a knife. The only thing I could not due is kill."

Irina shifted in the rocking chair, and began to rock harder, lost in thought. Jack had stopped picking at the hem of his kilt, and was now watching his wife through hooded eyes. Sydney had crossed her arms over her chest and said nothing.

"I was 21 when I graduated," Irina continued. "Head of my class. Mama gave me her earrings, she told me that 'truth takes time.' She meant the truth about the Soviet Union. I thought she was crazy. I meant to throw the earrings away, but they were beautiful with diamonds in them; not many girls had diamond earrings so I kept them.

"Less than a week after I graduated, five days I think...I was contacted by my supirior at the KGB, a young officer by the name of Gerard Cuvee. He was very handsome then--you wouldn't know it now--and I had a crush on him at the time. He took me to dinner one night. It was a nice dinner, but Cuvee knew my weakness, by striving, and longing, to be the best. He played on that weakness when he offered me the chance to take a deep cover assignment in America. Of course I accepted. Why would any woman of 21 turn down the oppurtunity to become a hero?

"After a year of training, a year of studyng English Literature at the University of Moscow, a year of learning the ins and outs of American popular culture, I was given a list of CIA agents. I was choose my target off of that list. Do you know what's funny, Jack? You weren't even on that list."

Jack's head snapped up.

"There was a list of 20. They were considered to have the most access to sensitive intell. But you weren't on the list."

"Who was?" Sydney broke in.

"It was a long time ago...I don't know if I remember all of them. They gave me such an extensive list so that I could chose the best target while in the field."

"You remember some of them. Tell me," Sydney ordered.

"Arvin Sloane, Kendall, Develin, William Vaughn..."

"Men who were coming into their own," Jack said quietly.

"Yes," Irina agreed.

"So, how did, Dad end up on the list?" Sydney asked impatiently.

Irina smiled wistfully. "He never was. I met him in our Advanced Composition class. He sat in front and slightly to the right of me in the lecture hall. I was smitten the first time I saw him. Your father was very handsome then, Sydney."

"Was?" Jack asked.

"Still is," Irina said with a smile. "When I was in that class serving the Motherland was the farthest thing from my mind. After a few weeks he stopped me in the library and asked me out to dinner. I didn't even think about my list, my goals, my objectives. I just said yes. That dinner was wonderful. Jack was so charming, and kind. He made me laugh with his bitter sense of humor. That night he told me that he was working as a clerk at the capital downtown. I didn't think anything of it.

"Over the next few weeks we saw each other almost every night. My handler was getting impatient, he accused me of forgetting my mission, he said he would have me sent back to Russia. I didn't want to go, to leave Jack. So I told him to apply at the CIA."

"You didn't know I was already working there?" Jack asked in surprise.

Irina shook her head. "I had no idea. My handler told me a week later, and I spent the next seven months convincing the KGB, that you, as an underdog, was the perfect target. I found out the night before our wedding that they had approved you. They had discovered that your degree in child psychology was being looked into by the CIA. Project Christmas was beginning."

"You have a degree in child psychology, Dad?" Sydney asked,

Jack shrugged. "Keep going, Irina."

"I was so happy when I was married. Every few months I had to snoop through files glean a little information, add a few things to make it seem more important, and send it off. We had been married for, two years I think? When I was stopped in a bookshop in Prague. I was told that I was to act as a handler for a newly recruited agent. His orders would be sent to me in book from that bookshop. I was to decode them, and deaddrop them for him."

"Who was your asset?" Sydney asked.

"William Vaughn."

"What!"

Irina ignored Sydney's comment. "So it contiued. I was happy in America. I started to remember the things my parents use to talk about. Jack and I were happy together, I use to lie in bed every morning, and think about our future streaching out in front of us, endlessly. However, my supiriors at the KGB, particularly Cuvee, felt that I was getting enough valuable information. They began to put pressure on me on all sides. Then, they discovered a Rambadli manuscript, and although Project Christmas was a top priority, whatever was on that manuscript was more important.

"In order to fullfill some prophesy, that higher ups in the Russian goverment believed in, I was ordered to do things I did not want to do."

"Such as...?" Sydney prompted.

Irina took a shakey breath and said, "Sweetheart, there are somethings no child should have to hear that their mother did. Suffice it to say, I would never, ever done those things if they had not threatened your father's life. But I can tell you this, my order to have a child with your father was one of the few things I did want to do. In fact, their order came five months too late." Irina smiled.

"I wondered while I was pregnant if I should thwart their goals, kill my baby. But I only had to feel you kick Sydney, or look at you Jack, and I new I never would. By the time Sydney was six I had had enough of Russia, the KGB and lying. So, one night I asked Jack out to dinner. I would tell him to very important things at dinner that night. One, who I really was, and two, that I was going to have twins inabout seven months time."

"Twins?" Jack and Sydney asked in unison.

Waving their question away, Irina went on: "The accident on the bridge was not something I knew of. The KGB had discovered my plans to deflect to the CIA, and decided that an emergancy extraction was in order. When we hit the water, my only thoughts were getting out alive so that I could see my daughter grow up. When I hit the surface, I was dragged out of the water and knocked unconcious, I woke up in a prison cell in Kashmir.

"Seven months later, all alone I gave birth to twins. I was in solitary. I couldn't even stand up, or lie dow in my cell. I did my best not to cry out. I didn't want anyone hearing me scream. I held those babies in my arms for less than a day, then I was dragged out of my cell. The boy I named Alex, the girl Nadia. Alex was the name we wanted to give you Sydney when you were born, Nadia was my mother's name.

"I watched those b*stards kill Alex." Irina was crying then, shaking. "They snapped his little neck right in front of me and threw his dead body in my arms. They took Nadia with them and said that if I was a good little Russian for the motherland, they wouldn't kill her. I sat there, with the blood of my baby all over me."

Irina was hiccuping then she was crying so hard. Jack stood up and gathered her into his arms and held her tightly in his arms. Vowing he would kill the men who did this to his wife, his children. Irina clutched his shirt, her desperate tears staining it.

Sydney sat shell-shocked on the couch. She didn't know if any thing she said would be of any comfort.
 
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