It is Jack's wedding day, and Irina is walking up the aisle.
"She's beautiful," says Arvin Sloane, from his place as best man. Jack nods, wordless at the sight of her. The scent of lilies is thick in the air, and Saint Saean floats up from the organ, ringing in the rafters.
Something's wrong with this, though. Why are there so many people in the church? They ran away to get married, didn't they? It seems as though he remembers driving through the rain, laughing and jubilant, Arvin and Emily their witnesses, piled in with the luggage in the back seat of the Olds. But here they are, surrounded by their friends - Bill Vaughn and Thomas Brill, Judy Barnett and Francie Calfo. Light streams through stained-glass windows, jewelling everyone in red and blue and green. They're all happy, and why shouldn't they be?
The veil over Irina's face can't hide her smile. A few steps across from Jack, Katya waits for her sister, holding a bouquet of yellow roses. "Don't be nervous," she whispers, a co-conspirator. He winks at her and turns back to his bride.
An arm, sleeved in lace, slips into his own. Jack has never known joy like this - didn't realize he could know it, that his heart was capable of containing so much.
Arvin holds out his hand. "Well, Jack? Aren't you going to give the bride away?"
"What?" Jack stares at him.
"That's your job, isn't it?"
"No, don't!" When Jack turns, Sydney is the bride, and it's Sydney's tear-stained face he can see behind the veil. "Don't give me away, Dad. Not to him."
"I won't, sweetheart. Hold on to my hand."
Sydney's fingers grip his, but he can feel her being pulled away by a force as inexorable as gravity. Sloane just watches, smiling. "She's just so beautiful, Jack."
"Irina?" Isn't she supposed to be here? Can't she help him?
Emily, all of 25 years old, looks up at him puzzled. "Who's Irina?" she says. "And where's Laura?"
Jack awakens - breathes in, then breathes out, steadying himself. He rubs his face with his hands, and so the first things he sees are the dried crescents of Irina's blood beneath his fingernails.
He washed yesterday - scouring his hands until they felt raw, thinking about Lady Macbeth - but it hasn't done the trick. Jack hates being able to look at his hands and see her blood. There was a time, not so long ago, he thought he was ready for that. He was wrong.
What he needs is a shower. Maybe if he could spare the five minutes it would take for just a cursory shower, he'd finally feel clean. But Irina is in danger, and she's going to stay in danger until he gets help and gets back, and that means he doesn't have five minutes to spare. As dawn begins to light the sky, Jack's out of the compound and on the road. The note he leaves behind will allay suspicions if he can get back around noon. Later than that - well. He won't be later.
The trip into Rivas takes less than an hour and feels like a thousand years. With every jolt of the Jeep over the stony dirt roads, Jack thinks of Irina back at the compound, exposed and vulnerable. She doesn't agree, of course; she thinks she's fucking Superwoman. So far she's won every high-stakes bet she placed, but even Irina can't beat the odds forever. And as Jack well knows, it's a mistake to assume your downfall will be at the hands of a superior or an equal. He's seen good agents felled by amateurs, by a stalled-out car, even by tripping as they ran. It sounds like sacrilege to say that a woman like Irina could meet her end at the hands of a two-bit player like Eduardo Reyes, but Jack knows it could happen -- even if Irina doesn't.
It's full light when Jack reaches the Pacific coast. The air is a few degrees cooler here, but it's still tropical, and the humidity makes up for the heat. Low, flat-roofed houses painted in brilliant shades line most of the inlets, and smaller boats fill the water. It takes him several minutes of questioning and one small bribe to locate the Lastochka.
"Lindisfarne," he says to one of the guards, wondering idly if Irina realizes that he recognizes the password's significance. Yes, he is with the Portuguese network. He's asked if he has a name to give; he says he doesn't. On the off chance it's not Katya in there, Jack doesn't intend to give anything away. If it is Katya, she'll follow Irina's instructions and let him in without a name. He understands that, somehow.
When he refuses to reveal his name, he doesn't consider the effect of surprise at all - which is why it's both shocking and somewhat gratifying to see Katya's eyes go wide when he's ushered into her stateroom.
"Jack Bristow," she says, pronouncing his name with as much ceremony and satisfaction as she did the first time they met. "My God. I thought I wouldn't see you again for years."
"It's been a long time. Six weeks," Jack says with a faint smile. She's wearing a loose blue T-shirt and battered work pants; her short hair is soaking wet from her morning bath, combed flat against her scalp. And yet she's still beautiful. He'd hoped Irina's presence would act as some sort of inoculation against his attraction to Katya, but apparently not. "Miss me?"
"To the point of distraction," she says pleasantly, meaning anything but. "The accent's new. It suits you."
"For the time being, I need it." Enough small talk. "I know you're wondering why Irina's not back. I'm afraid she's in trouble." Jack lays out the bare facts without any tact or hesitation; he senses Katya neither needs nor desires it. Katya puts one hand to her mouth as if in shock, but he can see the calculation in her dark eyes.
Only when he's finished the full explanation does Katya speak. "How many vehicles, did you say?"
"Two large trucks, two small trucks, and the Jeep I brought into Rivas. I think he can get access to more, but that's all he's got right now, and with the arms shipment due, he's unlikely to make any sudden changes."
Katya nods, considering. "I can handle that. If I give you some small explosives, can you strike from the inside?"
Striking from the inside will mean undoing all the CIA's efforts - basically, ruining his mission. But Jack's already got pages of intel, so this hasn't been entirely a waste of time. A splinter group could attack Reyes' compound at any point, so he'll have little trouble explaining this away. And even if he couldn't, he'd still do it. "Yes. Just give me a cue."
"Sundown," Katya says instantly. "Do what you can with the explosives. Then, as soon as the strike begins, get to Irina. You know the interior of the compound; that makes you the best one to get her out."
"Agreed." For a moment, he finds himself wanting to thank her - or expecting her to thank him. It's strange to realize that they share the same needs, that they owe each other nothing. Jack's not used to getting anything without bartering.
"Should you go back now?"
Jack would like nothing better, but he covered his tracks too well. "The note I left said I was arranging for false papers. I won't be able to make the necessary contact for another hour or so." He's not sure who he's reassuring when he adds, "Most of them don't get up until noon. They'll leave her alone."
Katya doesn't look convinced, but she accepts his explanation. "That gives us some time to catch up, doesn't it?" She steps forward, hands clasped behind her back, an eyebrow raised. Her proximity makes Jack all the more aware of the sweat that's already plastered his white-linen shirt to his back, of the heat in the room. "I must say, Jack -"
"Yes?"
Her smile widens. "You smell terrible."
What she's said is so undeniably true that Jack can't begin to take offense. "I haven't had a shower in two days."
"And most everyone you've been around hasn't showered in far longer," she says sympathetically. Katya takes the lapels of his jacket in her hands and lowers her face to his chest, breathing in deep. "From the scent of things, you're also the only one who isn't perpetually drunk or high. Or both, perhaps."
"Don't think I haven't considered it." If he had the luxury of letting his guard down, Jack would happily make a chemical escape.
Katya lets go and moves away from him, which is somehow simultaneously a disappointment and a relief. "You shouldn't start back for another hour or so. That gives you more than enough time to map out the compound. Why not take a shower first? I think the experience will be more pleasant for both of us, that way."
Both of us. Jack imagines them both in the shower, and the thought crackles along his skin like static electricity. Then he remembers a hotel bathroom in Oslo two years ago, Irina splayed out in the tub, arms falling to each side like vines, her lips parting slightly as she watched him undress. The nexus of confusion and desire makes him shut his eyes tightly for a moment.
It wasn't an innuendo, he tells himself. You're just - overheated. "A shower sounds great."
**
This is the goddamned greatest shower Jack has ever taken in his life.
The water's lukewarm - not cold enough to jolt, but cool enough to make him feel refreshed for the first time in two weeks. Jack dunks his head beneath the nozzle; the water pressure isn't all it could be, but he couldn't care less.
As his hand closes around the green rectangle of soap, he hears the bathroom door open. Through the whorled plastic that encloses the shower, he can see the blue shape of Katya's T-shirt, the black semicircle that must be her hair. Her face is only a blur, as his own nude body must be.
"Enjoying yourself?" she asks merrily.
"Ah. Yes." Well done, Bristow, he tells himself. Took her a grand total of ten minutes to get you naked. "Everything's great."
Instead of leaving, she leans against the sink. "I thought washing your clothes might alter your appearance too much. But I thought I'd at least give them a good airing out."
"Sounds like a plan." Jack wonders just what kind of a plan now has his clothes outside the boat while he's still in it. But his initial unease is changing into a not-unpleasant mixture of curiosity and amusement. How far will Katya take this? He might as well know.
It also would be a good idea to find out how far he'll take this.
"How is Sydney?" Katya says.
"She's fine. Thank you." They both know the gratitude is not for the courtesy of the question, but for Katya's role in Sydney's continued survival. "After she returned, she was shaken, understandably. But I think she's all right now."
"You say that as if you didn't wholly believe it."
He says only, "She's having a rough year." Here, at least, he finds one boundary between him and Katya; talking about Sydney's deeper emotions feels natural with Irina, but with Katya, it would be a violation of Sydney's privacy. This is solid stone amid all the drifting sand, and he is grateful for it.
Perhaps Katya is as well, because she doesn't pry. "I hope we'll meet someday. I should like to know my eldest niece."
So Elena has children too. Jack mentally files this away for future reference. "I think Sydney would like that too. Are you able to travel freely in the U.S.?" He begins soaping up, wholly conscious of the direction of his hands, of the parts of his body the motion is outlining for Katya: his shoulders, his arms.
"What a tactful way of asking if there are warrants for my arrest! But then, didn't you find that out for yourself?"
Jack feels the cool spray of water against his skin, feels the soap-slippery hair of his chest between his fingers as he lathers. "I know that there are no outstanding warrants for a 'Yekaterina Derevko.' But I don't know if you've taken a husband's name, or what various aliases you might have."
"Come now. You know one of them, surely."
She's dodged his question handily, so much so that Jack can't fully suppress a smile. "I don't think there are any warrants for 'the Black Sparrow.' Call it a hunch."
Katya laughs. "Ridiculous, isn't it? Irina picked it out. I think she'd been watching old Humphrey Bogart movies that night. Of course, it sounds better in Russian."
"I spent more than a decade of my life as 'Blackbird.' My SD-6 codename. I think Arvin Sloane named me after a Beatles song." His CIA codename suits him better, in his opinion, but he has no intention of telling Katya what that is.
"Probably any names we're given have more dignity than the ones we'd choose for ourselves. Choosing a name would mean revealing something, wouldn't it? Whether we knew it or not." Her voice is softer, as if she's only realizing this herself. "Better by far to accept masks made by others than show our true faces."
Jack considers that for a few moments as he turns to let the water sluice along his back, over his ass, down his legs. The boat shifts slightly in the bay, and he has to brace his hands against the wall to remain steady. "What name would you have chosen?"
"Jack. You're asking me to reveal myself. Don't you think that's a little forward?"
"You're talking to a naked man."
The laughter is almost bawdy, this time, and Jack realizes he's mildly embarrassed, as if he'd drawn back the shower door between them. "Turnabout is fair play. Well, then. If I were choosing a name - and as there seems to be an avian motif at work - I would choose 'Magpie.'"
"Not very dramatic," he says, turning his back to her to provide some limited disguise for the fact that his hands have moved lower down his abdomen. Against his better judgment, he adjusts the temperature of the water, making it hot. Steam begins to billow out around him, a better kind of heat than he's known in too long.
"I didn't choose for drama. If I want drama, I have the Black Sparrow," Katya replies. Her voice is slightly muffled, and he realizes she's turned her head from him, allowing him marginally more privacy. Is that consideration for his feelings or a sign of her own? "I chose for truth."
"Tell me about magpies, then." Jack can identify a magpie easily, just as he can ID several thousand species of wildlife. Come to think of it, their jet-silk feathers aren't unlike Katya's hair. But he suspects she's referring to different kinds of resemblance.
"You know the rhyme, don't you? About telling your fortune from the magpies you see?" He doesn't; his childhood wasn't the kind that involved much in the way of nursery rhymes. After a moment of his silence, Katya sing-songs: "One for sorrow, two for joy. Three for a girl, four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret as yet untold."
Doggerel. "So you tell people's fortunes."
"I prefer to determine them."
Jack smiles as he starts scrubbing the shampoo from his hair; he hadn't realized how good that could feel. "I thought magpies were known for stealing."
He says it without thinking, but the pause that follows his words is a half-second too long. "Magpies take what others leave unattended. Have you ever seen a magpie's nest, Jack?"
For an instant he remembers holding Sydney on his shoulders as she gaped at the sky-blue eggs of a robin nestled in the branches of a backyard tree. The memory is one he hasn't revisited in years; it is startling in its clarity and sweetness. Sometimes Jack thinks he and Sydney buried every good experience they ever shared, then spent years pretending they never happened at all. God knows there are too few of those moments, but maybe he and his daughter are beginning to discover them again. "No. I haven't."
"They're beautiful." Her voice is closer; she's stepped nearer to the semitransparent wall of the shower. Only a few inches of space, thin plastic and steam separate them now, and Jack can make out the dark shapes in her face that are her lips, her eyes. "They're not drab little bundles of twigs. A magpie's nest has a door and a roof, and it's woven in with all the wonderful things she's been able to find. Soft fluff and shining wires. Bright cloth. Tinsel. Nothing is ever wasted, not to a magpie. Nothing is ever left behind."
Her words strike at the core of him, as she'd intended them to do. Part of him wants to damn her for saying that out loud; the other part can only think the words, "left behind," and know their hollow echo.
Jack looks over at Katya again, and even through the distortion of the plastic, he knows their eyes have met. At this moment, at the crossroads of pain and anger and lust, Jack is only seconds from pushing the door aside and taking Katya in his arms. The water flows over his body, and he imagines it as her caresses. He can't name exactly what it is that's driving him, if it's revenge against Katya for taunting him, revenge against Irina for leaving him, comfort for her loneliness, comfort for his own, or just the hard curve of desire to be inside a woman again. He's starting not to care.
He lifts his hand to the shower wall. Her hand, a dusky peach shadow, matches his, palm to palm. And then he sees the rind of dried blood beneath his fingernails. Irina's blood.
When Jack jerks his hand away, he sees Katya start, surprised by the motion. Quietly he says, "I need you to go."
Wordlessly, she leaves. Jack remains in the shower until long after the water has turned cold, carefully cleaning out each fingernail, one by one, until the last remnants of blood are gone.
**
Thin bathrobe wrapped around him, Jack emerges from the bathroom with a fair degree of trepidation. He knows he's moving awkwardly, as though he were willing the armor of his suit around him instead of damp terrycloth. Katya is waiting in the bedroom outside, but she doesn't look predatory or angry; instead, her face is genuinely stricken. "I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have done that."
"I shouldn't have encouraged you." Jack sits in the chair next to hers, and when her hand wraps around his, he returns the comradely gesture.
"Life is too rich in complications, don't you think?" she sighs. Businesslike again, she pulls out paper and pen. "The Reyes compound - I need to know every entrance, every stairwell, very pathway. As close to scale as you can manage."
This is all information Jack had memorized by his third hour of masquerade as Ingo Krauss. Quickly, he sketches out what she needs, talks her though the potential dangers, plays up the opportunities. Already Jack has begun mentally tracing the various pathways he will take to the basement to rescue Irina; he's ready to reach her by any route necessary, no matter how far apart they are, no matter what gets in the way.
His accent starts to slip at one point, and Jack forces himself to focus on it, bring it back. He's beginning to feel like himself again, and he can't afford to be himself yet.
For her part, Katya is grimly focused on maximizing the fatalities in Eduardo's compound. Her mischievous smile is absent, her dark eyes set, as she discusses weapons range and shots to the neck. Of course, Jack finds this sort of thing just as attractive as her charm - but they're both thinking of Irina now more than themselves. He tells himself that everything is under control. Jack likes that feeling.
At last she goes to discuss the plans and the map (accurate to scale) with her men, and has his clothes brought in to him. They're still dingy and rumpled, and Jack feels a crawling displeasure in putting them back on his shower-fresh skin. But now, at least, they smell less like smoke and sweat, more like the sea.
He steps out onto the dock as Ingo Krauss again; Katya is waiting there, her air-dried hair frowsy in a few different directions. Jack resists the urge to ruffle it. "I can go back now. Most of them will still be asleep, but the ones who aren't won't be surprised if I show up again now."
"Good." She tilts her head like a watchful bird. It's a habit she and Irina share. "If you can't get to Irina, we're going after her. We won't stop to look for you."
"I won't need it." This is true, because Jack knows the only thing that will stop him from getting to Irina is his death.
Perhaps she sees that in his eyes, because she steps closer, her bare feet padding against the deck. "When we spoke before, about the magpie - we both spoke some truth, there."
"I think so." Jack tries a smile. "You were right. We're better off with the names others choose for us."
She doesn't take the tactful out. "I've taken that which belonged to Irina before. But never before she herself had walked away." Katya is grave as she adds, "Sometimes Irina casts aside the most priceless treasures imaginable - rather than admit she needs them."
It isn't a come-on. It isn't an attack. It is manipulation -- but it's a warning, sincerely meant.
"I know," Jack says. And he does, better than anyone, even if he'd never given the thought words before. "I know."
Katya nods and hands him a canvas satchel; Jack knows without asking that the explosives are inside. She says only, "Until tonight, then."
He takes her hand for one moment before he leaves. "Until sundown."
**