Blood, Enemies
by
Chris Anderson

Disclaimer: Alias is the property of other people, including J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot productions.

Written for the Theatrical Muse 'trust' challenge.

---

Trust is a luxury which Irina Derevko can ill afford. Hers is a life of secrets, intrigues, complex emotions and relationships; it is often an act of balance, and placing trust in anyone may tip the scales.

The greatest of the secrets and mysteries Irina possesses is the truth, and in the end she exists not to hold these secrets safe and close, but to share them- with the proper people, and in the proper time. That time, she feels, is not yet. They are not ready.

Or so she says. So she answers her sister when Katya asks. She tells her that there are still yet plans to lay, moves to make. That none of them are yet ready to know the truth.

She says this because, despite their temporary alliance, she does not trust her sister. Irina Derevko rarely trusts her own blood, remembering all too well its many betrayals.

She does not trust her blood- will not trust Katya, and can never trust Elena. But she trusts her kin. Sydney, Nadia... Jack. Especially Jack, her shadow, her light, as she is his. She trusts Jack because she knows beyond doubt that she can- their bonds were formed in darkness, in fire and blood and anguished grief, in the years they believed their daughter was dead. And nothing now can shatter those bonds.

She trusts no one with this truth.

To the world these bonds do not, cannot exist. She is dead to the world, dead and buried, and so she will remain, until it is time.

No one knows she is alive. No one but Jack, and kin who understand what ties of blood mean, and what they are worth. Kin who will never betray her, who will, if they must, guard the secret of her survival with their lives.

And Jack- for so long now they have played their game of lies and betrayal. She knows that it is over now, that the reason for her death has united them, rendered the old betrayals, the old secrets, meaningless, unimportant.

It is who she trusts, and who she does not, which has brought her here, to this fiction of her demise.

And it began here, where it will end, in the small village in Siberia where so many are kin. Where she learned the secret that would begin it, this journey and this, the greatest lie since Laura Bristow. Here, where she learned the extent of blood loyalty, and blood's betrayal...

"You are certain?" she asks her cousin Vasily, though she knows he would never have called her here if he were not certain.

"Da. I am sorry."

Irina turns, silently pacing the furrowed earth of Vasily's farm. He is a simple man, for Derevko kin, for her mother's kin. A simple man, yet kin, and a colleague from days of old.

"Elena learned Mama's lessons... too well," she says at last.

"Illeyna would not have done this, Irina. Not to kin."

It is true. Her mother might very well have used the girls, as she had once used her own, but had Illeyna wished to see Irina's daughters destroyed, she would simply have had them killed, and had done with it.

She sighs. "Is the thought that my sister is more ruthless than our mother intended to comfort me, Vasily?"

He shakes his head slowly. "Nyet. Illeyna was dangerous, but she was an adherent of the old ways. With family, there were lines not crossed. Elena... does not believe this."

"No. Elena serves her own interest above anything else. Show me everything you found."

There are two files; thick, extensive, going back decades. She turns pages, eyes scanning past her daughters' school pictures, candid photos taken with friends; Sydney's grad school transcripts and Nadia's arrest record... There are detailed reports on her daughters' friends and acquaintances, notes on everyone from Sydney's murdered fiancé to Eric Weiss.

Irina closes her eyes, but when she opens them, the images and the documents remain.

Nadia's driving record. Sydney's credit report...

She turns the pages more quickly. Paper clipped photographs draw her in; images she has not seen in years, and some she has never seen. She has forgotten some of these things, but they come back to her now, clear as glass. She brushes her fingers along the edge of one photograph. Emily and Arvin smile back at her from over thirty years ago, her own image and Jack's beside them.

Irina turns to the next image.

The ground seems to fall from beneath her feet. Her hands upon the file begin to shake. She remembers this day, could not possibly have forgotten it. Long before Nadia's birth, some time before Sydney's... Months before her wedding.

She can almost feel Jack's hands in hers, the chill rising up from the ice upon which they skated. He had tried, but he must have fallen half a dozen times in the first hour alone. Once she had made the mistake of trying to steady him. Irina smiles. Jack had ended up pulling her down to the ice with him instead. She had laughed and laughed, until he drew her closer, and the laughter stopped. The cold was not something they noticed for a long time, nor did they pay any mind to the whistles of the other skaters...

"Irina."

She has all but forgotten Vasily's presence, he had stood so still and so silent while she studied the files.

Irina tears her gaze from the picture. Her hand shakes as she turns the page, and she forces it to hold steady.

Jack's CIA ID photo stares back at her, beside aptitude test results, memos on CIA letterhead.

Project: Christmas.

"Irina?"

"Nadia's file. Let me see it again."

She knows what she will find before she turns the pages.

Arvin. ID photos, college transcripts, summary of his CIA record, activities as head of SD-6...

"This," Irina says at last, "is not about Sydney and Nadia."

Vasily curses sharply in Russian. "Is she truly such a fool? She must know you will bury her for this."

"She believes she can pull this off, that I can't stop her."

Vasily smiles thinly. "And so?"

Irina returns the smile. "She'll learn." She snaps closed the files, tucks them under her arm as she begins to walk back towards her cousin's home. "This needs to be dealt with. I need to see Jack."

Vasily falls into step beside her. "I had thought you might say that. I contacted him a short time ago. I told him you had need of him. He swore he would be here within twenty-four hours. You are lucky to have him, Irina."

"Thank you, cousin."

Vasily shrugs. "There is little time to waste, and I thought you would want him here."

She spends the next day pouring over reports and speaking with the members of Vasily's team who had found the files. Nothing they can tell her gives any clue to where Elena might be now, and she finds this more than frustrating- she finds it troubling as well. From all accounts, the only items of note found in the safe house were the files on Sydney and Nadia, and Irina cannot imagine that Elena would have left them by accident.

It is nearly sunset when she returns to the village. She pauses on her front step, shaking the snow from her boots. Through the gathering dusk she sees a figure moving towards her. Shadows blur his features, but she would know that silhouette anywhere.

"Hello, Jack."

He moves slowly up the porch steps to join her. "Irina." He gives her a tired smile. "It's good to see you."

"And you. I'm glad you're here."

Jack nods. "Vasily said you needed me. What is it?"

Irina sighs. "Come inside, Jack. There is something you need to see."

She shows him the files, and as he reads, turning pages of his past as well as her own, she tells him all she knows of the files, how and where they were found. It seems remarkably short background for such revelations.

And then they begin to plan. Their first priority was the safety of the girls. As long as Elena was watching them, they were not safe. How she had acquired so much detailed information, Irina does not know- she will find out, but not now. Later, later there will be many questions she would ask of her sister, many answers she will demand. But not now.

She nearly laughs, a hysterical denial, when Jack suggests enlisting Arvin Sloane's help, because he cannot be serious- because she does not trust Sloane, will never trust Sloane. Jack believes that an arrangement, an understanding, can be reached between them. He swears to her that he will not rely exclusively upon Sloane's assistance, and she nods slowly, accepting this promise. She refuses to trust Sloane, but if she did not trust Jack, he would not be here now.

It is a beginning, but it is not enough. She knows it, cannot doubt it, when the first whispers come, reaching her through old family contacts.

Jack confirms this, with evidence provided by his own contacts. Word is making its way through the world's community of spies and freelancers, word that Irina herself has placed a contract upon Sydney. Elena has made her primary target clear, and that target is Irina.

"It's time to end this," Jack says one night in Venice. "You won't find her like this, Irina."

She nods slowly. "I know. I need your help with something."

"Of course."

"Elena won't make her next move until she believes I can no longer protect Sydney and Nadia."

"Yes, I realize that."

"As long as she is operating this way, I will never find her."

"Most likely not. And?"

Irina sighs. "You know what I need, Jack. I alluded to this in Abakan, if you'll recall."

"Yes, I remember."

She quirks a brow. "You didn't think I was serious."

"I didn't think it would come to this."

Her brow arches further. "Didn't you?"

Jack sighs. "I had... hoped that it would not. I still have reservations about this, Irina."

"I understand. But you are the only one I trust to help me do this."

She's given this a lot of thought- perhaps too much, for something she knows must be done. She has weighed the costs, the price of this, and she believes that it is worth paying.

She plots each move, each step of the game, carefully, meticulously. There is no margin here for error.

This will require much from both of them- the greatest masquerade they have ever played together. It will be hard. She, who lived a life of lies for so long beside him, knows this well. They will need to remember the truths of where they stand, will need to be reminded of them.

Fictions, lies they spin for the world. Together at last in this, rather than opposed, and it amuses her greatly. It has taken so very long...

Fiction, and she trusts him with the truth, trusts him as she does no one else.

Fiction: Irina Derevko wishes her eldest daughter dead. (Things necessary for this fiction, expedient lies.)

It needs to be real, and there is risk in that. So real that the world believes it.

Fiction: Jack killed her to save their daughter's life.

Truth: The life he saved with her death was Irina's own.

Truth: She waits in Abakan, hidden amongst kin; she waits, she watches, and occasionally acts, subtle, quiet. The knife in the dark, doing what needs to be done in silence. The night is her weapon, darkness shrouding her, sheltering her as she moves.

She walks the Underworld, unseen until she wishes to be.

There are, she has found, advantages to being dead.

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