Topic 39: Jealousy
Sep. 18th, 2006 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sloaneIn my entire life, I never met a man who managed to be as simultanously brilliant and dense as Jack Bristow did. Jack made me face certain truths about myself I was unaware of or had clad in a more convenient robe... and then, just as I was stunned and infuriated by his insight, he finished his analysis by managing to miss the entire point. The most glaring example of this habit of his happened some years ago, when I was about to be executed for something I had not actually done, an irony I was not in a position to appreciate and did my best to avoid. We had a blistering conversation along with a perfectly chosen (and drugged, but I was not to find this out until later) wine, in the course of which he said something I cannot forget:
Irina Derevko affected your life every bit as much as she affected mine. I knew the possibility existed that Sydney would be drawn into our world, but I often wondered why you were the one who sought her out, why you showed such paternal affection toward her. Now I know. You did it because you were angry and jealous and wanted to take away the one thing that was important to both Irina and me, the symbol of what we had and you didn't: Sydney.
Now. Being jealous did not fit with the image I had of myself. I could have retorted that if anyone was behaving in an obviously angry and jealous manner, it was Jack. (And over a twenty five years old affair, no less.) But that would have been too easy a dismissal of what was far more true than I wanted it to be, and yet was entirely mistaken in its application. I never saw Sydney as "the symbol of what Jack and Irina had", but I did recruit her out of jealousy, at least in parts. It wasn't the reason I would have named myself at the time; as I said, Jack had and has a talent for making me face what was unknown or unacknowledged. The core of the matter is this: I wanted her to be my daughter then, and this was the one way I knew how to make her into at least my creation. The only daughter I was aware of had died shortly after Emily had given birth to her, and I did not yet know there was another daughter. But I did know Sydney, knew her since her birth, even though I had not seen her since her early childhood. Why her, and not an adopted child, or any of the young people, female or male, at SD-6 who did look for a mentor figure as much as Sydney at that stage did? Because she was Jack's daughter. (Irina, at that point, was out of the game, and had not been heard of for years.) I was jealous, yes. And yet not in the way he later thought I was.
You see, the point wasn't to take Sydney away. In fact, had I known the entire affect her recruitment would have on Jack's relationship with me, it might have been the one thing which would have made me either change my plans or at least hesitate for a long time. (And then again, had I known what Sydney was to become, I would have recruited her anyway, but back then, she was still mostly a child to me.) Taking Sydney "away" would have implied removing her and myself from Jack, and that was positively the last thing I wanted. What I wanted was what I had, for several years at SD-6 and later for a precious year at APO: both Jack and Sydney with me.
Which brings us back to the matter of jealousy. Jack, in his simultanously brilliant and dense analysis in that cell, seemed to be under the impression that I had been jealous of his relationship with Irina because I had wanted Irina for myself. Now, to give credit where due: Irina was and is one of the most desirable women on the planet. I might never have had the kind of schoolboy crush on her Jack did, but I can still remember some of the dresses she wore in the Seventies and the expression she had when winning a game, which I always thought was Irina at her most alluring, because you could see that devious mind transforming her from beautiful to stunning. But it wasn't Jack I envied, living with Irina, or Laura as we thought of her then, for those six years, then being broken by her and hungering for her for the rest of his life. No. Preparing for what turned out to be not just my execution but my first resurrection, I stared in the mirror after he left, and found myself thinking: Irina, you splendid bitch, how do you do that? He still loves you. Now I might have made his daughter into a spy, but I was there all those years. Before you. After you. And you weren't. But he'll still kill me because of you, and the stupidity of letting myself get into this situation aside, that is the most infuriating aspect of the whole affair.
It was quite cold in that cell. Dead men, walking or contemplating their fate in the mirror, are not coddled. I didn't notice the lack of temperature, though.
I was jealous enough to burn.
Irina Derevko affected your life every bit as much as she affected mine. I knew the possibility existed that Sydney would be drawn into our world, but I often wondered why you were the one who sought her out, why you showed such paternal affection toward her. Now I know. You did it because you were angry and jealous and wanted to take away the one thing that was important to both Irina and me, the symbol of what we had and you didn't: Sydney.
Now. Being jealous did not fit with the image I had of myself. I could have retorted that if anyone was behaving in an obviously angry and jealous manner, it was Jack. (And over a twenty five years old affair, no less.) But that would have been too easy a dismissal of what was far more true than I wanted it to be, and yet was entirely mistaken in its application. I never saw Sydney as "the symbol of what Jack and Irina had", but I did recruit her out of jealousy, at least in parts. It wasn't the reason I would have named myself at the time; as I said, Jack had and has a talent for making me face what was unknown or unacknowledged. The core of the matter is this: I wanted her to be my daughter then, and this was the one way I knew how to make her into at least my creation. The only daughter I was aware of had died shortly after Emily had given birth to her, and I did not yet know there was another daughter. But I did know Sydney, knew her since her birth, even though I had not seen her since her early childhood. Why her, and not an adopted child, or any of the young people, female or male, at SD-6 who did look for a mentor figure as much as Sydney at that stage did? Because she was Jack's daughter. (Irina, at that point, was out of the game, and had not been heard of for years.) I was jealous, yes. And yet not in the way he later thought I was.
You see, the point wasn't to take Sydney away. In fact, had I known the entire affect her recruitment would have on Jack's relationship with me, it might have been the one thing which would have made me either change my plans or at least hesitate for a long time. (And then again, had I known what Sydney was to become, I would have recruited her anyway, but back then, she was still mostly a child to me.) Taking Sydney "away" would have implied removing her and myself from Jack, and that was positively the last thing I wanted. What I wanted was what I had, for several years at SD-6 and later for a precious year at APO: both Jack and Sydney with me.
Which brings us back to the matter of jealousy. Jack, in his simultanously brilliant and dense analysis in that cell, seemed to be under the impression that I had been jealous of his relationship with Irina because I had wanted Irina for myself. Now, to give credit where due: Irina was and is one of the most desirable women on the planet. I might never have had the kind of schoolboy crush on her Jack did, but I can still remember some of the dresses she wore in the Seventies and the expression she had when winning a game, which I always thought was Irina at her most alluring, because you could see that devious mind transforming her from beautiful to stunning. But it wasn't Jack I envied, living with Irina, or Laura as we thought of her then, for those six years, then being broken by her and hungering for her for the rest of his life. No. Preparing for what turned out to be not just my execution but my first resurrection, I stared in the mirror after he left, and found myself thinking: Irina, you splendid bitch, how do you do that? He still loves you. Now I might have made his daughter into a spy, but I was there all those years. Before you. After you. And you weren't. But he'll still kill me because of you, and the stupidity of letting myself get into this situation aside, that is the most infuriating aspect of the whole affair.
It was quite cold in that cell. Dead men, walking or contemplating their fate in the mirror, are not coddled. I didn't notice the lack of temperature, though.
I was jealous enough to burn.
