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Topic 11: A simple twist of fate (ficlet)
Mar. 7th, 2006 11:16 amThink about a big decision you made in your life, now pretend there was a twist of fate and you acted differently. Write a fic showing us the different you, or just tell us how you your life would be different now.
In retrospect, he's fairly certain that what ruined his life, and so many others, was the attempt to do the right thing.
Things have always been a bit uneasy between him and Laura Bristow, more so because as Jack's best friend and his wife, they basically had no choice but to get along, and neither of them, he suspects, ever liked having no choice about anything. But when Laura makes a pass at him at a party, so subtle and yet so clear that neither Jack nor Emily, who both are in the same room, ever notice, he does have a choice.
All uneasiness aside, Laura is beautiful. She is also clearly in love with her husband, or the best actress in the world. Arvin Sloane is not a modest man, but his vanity is intellectual; he's quite aware that he's not attractive. So whatever motivates Laura, it can't be a sudden passion. And Laura herself can't be that perfect doting wife she pretends to be, because that woman wouldn't have dreamt of doing something like this. Even if he were not married and in love with his own wife, even if he didn't count Jack as his best friend, there is a very good reason to find all of this suspicious and to act on this suspicion. There are only bad reasons to respond to her pass, to meet her a week later in an anonymous motel. It would be partly for curiosity, as he can never resist a puzzle. Partly because he wants to prove something to himself, and something to Jack, even though Jack must never find out, about Laura-The-Perfect. And partly because she is beautiful, and quite simply one of the most magnetic woman on the planet, and when she looks at him while making her pass, he realizes, for the first time, he's not the good man Jack believes him to be, either.
But he makes the right choice, the sensible choice. He pretends not to notice Laura's signal. And he puts her under surveillance, 24 hours a day. A week later, he doesn't have an assignment with her in a motel, he knows that she's meeting another man, and not for adultery, either. Two weeks later, he has her identified as Irina Derevko, KGB agent.
As this discovery is bound to ruin Jack's life in every imaginable way, Arvin decides to act on it alone, all the stronger motivated because of that single moment of temptation. So Laura Bristow has a car accident. The other driver dies instantly, too. And the body of Irina Derevko's KGB handler, Cuvee, rots somewhere in the desert where it will never be found.
Jack is devastated, but nobody suspects him of having betrayed the CIA to his wife, and thus he's able to be there for little Sydney. For a while, all goes well, or as well as they can under the circumstances. Then things start to unravel. Because Laura-who-was-Irina, it seems, has two sisters, Katya and Elena, both working for the KGB as well, and not inclined to believe in an accident. They think Irina's husband must have found out the truth. They come to America, Katya to avenge her sister, Elena pretending to want that, too, but really to get her hands on Sydney for her own purposes. Jack survives Katya's first attempt, but it reveals the truth to him. Which leads him to certain conclusions. Once he figures it out, he shows up at Arvin's house at night, fairly drunk, and asks, point blank.
"Yes," Arvin whispers, and as his ill luck would have it, Emily overhears them. Jack looks at him and nods, slowly, then leaves. It's the end of their friendship, because while Jack can intellectually understand what Arvin did, and why it was for the best, he can't possibly forgive. Add to this that in the same night, while Jack is at Sloane's house, Elena Derevko strikes and abducts Sydney, never to be seen again, and it's not really that surprising that Jack Bristow, after two years of looking for his daughter in vain and having lost both his wife and his friend, wakes up one morning and decides to let Katya Derevko shoot him. Not many people show up at his funeral.
Arvin still has Emily, but ever since she heard what he did to Laura, she's looking at him with different eyes as well, for all the knowledge that Laura was a KGB agent and that the woman she believed to be her friend didn't really exist. She withdraws from him. When Jack dies, Arvin decides that the best thing for Emily would be if he divorced her, since clearly, he only does damage to those he loves, and besides, she doesn't seem to want him anymore.
Years later, when Emily is diagnosed with cancer, she's too proud to contact him, and dies in solitude.
By this time, Arvin Sloane has become utterly absorbed in Rambaldi. Without Emily, without the Bristows, there is nothing and no one holding him back. There isn't the discovery of a daughter waiting for him, either, because he killed the woman who would have been her mother.
He dies on a planet utterly transformed by the work of Rambaldi, but in truth, what was human in him died many years before that.
It all started with an attempt to do the right thing.
In retrospect, he's fairly certain that what ruined his life, and so many others, was the attempt to do the right thing.
Things have always been a bit uneasy between him and Laura Bristow, more so because as Jack's best friend and his wife, they basically had no choice but to get along, and neither of them, he suspects, ever liked having no choice about anything. But when Laura makes a pass at him at a party, so subtle and yet so clear that neither Jack nor Emily, who both are in the same room, ever notice, he does have a choice.
All uneasiness aside, Laura is beautiful. She is also clearly in love with her husband, or the best actress in the world. Arvin Sloane is not a modest man, but his vanity is intellectual; he's quite aware that he's not attractive. So whatever motivates Laura, it can't be a sudden passion. And Laura herself can't be that perfect doting wife she pretends to be, because that woman wouldn't have dreamt of doing something like this. Even if he were not married and in love with his own wife, even if he didn't count Jack as his best friend, there is a very good reason to find all of this suspicious and to act on this suspicion. There are only bad reasons to respond to her pass, to meet her a week later in an anonymous motel. It would be partly for curiosity, as he can never resist a puzzle. Partly because he wants to prove something to himself, and something to Jack, even though Jack must never find out, about Laura-The-Perfect. And partly because she is beautiful, and quite simply one of the most magnetic woman on the planet, and when she looks at him while making her pass, he realizes, for the first time, he's not the good man Jack believes him to be, either.
But he makes the right choice, the sensible choice. He pretends not to notice Laura's signal. And he puts her under surveillance, 24 hours a day. A week later, he doesn't have an assignment with her in a motel, he knows that she's meeting another man, and not for adultery, either. Two weeks later, he has her identified as Irina Derevko, KGB agent.
As this discovery is bound to ruin Jack's life in every imaginable way, Arvin decides to act on it alone, all the stronger motivated because of that single moment of temptation. So Laura Bristow has a car accident. The other driver dies instantly, too. And the body of Irina Derevko's KGB handler, Cuvee, rots somewhere in the desert where it will never be found.
Jack is devastated, but nobody suspects him of having betrayed the CIA to his wife, and thus he's able to be there for little Sydney. For a while, all goes well, or as well as they can under the circumstances. Then things start to unravel. Because Laura-who-was-Irina, it seems, has two sisters, Katya and Elena, both working for the KGB as well, and not inclined to believe in an accident. They think Irina's husband must have found out the truth. They come to America, Katya to avenge her sister, Elena pretending to want that, too, but really to get her hands on Sydney for her own purposes. Jack survives Katya's first attempt, but it reveals the truth to him. Which leads him to certain conclusions. Once he figures it out, he shows up at Arvin's house at night, fairly drunk, and asks, point blank.
"Yes," Arvin whispers, and as his ill luck would have it, Emily overhears them. Jack looks at him and nods, slowly, then leaves. It's the end of their friendship, because while Jack can intellectually understand what Arvin did, and why it was for the best, he can't possibly forgive. Add to this that in the same night, while Jack is at Sloane's house, Elena Derevko strikes and abducts Sydney, never to be seen again, and it's not really that surprising that Jack Bristow, after two years of looking for his daughter in vain and having lost both his wife and his friend, wakes up one morning and decides to let Katya Derevko shoot him. Not many people show up at his funeral.
Arvin still has Emily, but ever since she heard what he did to Laura, she's looking at him with different eyes as well, for all the knowledge that Laura was a KGB agent and that the woman she believed to be her friend didn't really exist. She withdraws from him. When Jack dies, Arvin decides that the best thing for Emily would be if he divorced her, since clearly, he only does damage to those he loves, and besides, she doesn't seem to want him anymore.
Years later, when Emily is diagnosed with cancer, she's too proud to contact him, and dies in solitude.
By this time, Arvin Sloane has become utterly absorbed in Rambaldi. Without Emily, without the Bristows, there is nothing and no one holding him back. There isn't the discovery of a daughter waiting for him, either, because he killed the woman who would have been her mother.
He dies on a planet utterly transformed by the work of Rambaldi, but in truth, what was human in him died many years before that.
It all started with an attempt to do the right thing.
