a_sloane

Anger can be a very useful motivation for one's employees, and downright invaluable in one's enemies. Naturally, one needs a little finesse and a sense of balance in either scenario. It simply won't do to let the anger in a subordinate reach a boiling point at just the moment where you don't need it to. On the other hand, cultivating a long simmering resentment can be worth it with the right person, say, a young woman with a crusader mentality, a veritable Athena; it can tie her to you as surely as devotion, as she would not let anyone else bring you down.

As for enemies, well, surely I don't have to point out the glaringly obvious: an enemy given to temper tantrums and acting out of rising wrath rarely manages to develop any long term strategies at the same time. Though again, there are rare exceptions, and a thorough knowledge of one's opponent is always advisable.

Or was the question referring to my own anger?

Don't be absurd.


*locked*

Judy Barnett once asked me this question - one of the unfortunate effects of conducting anotherwise pleasant affair with a psychiatrist being these kind of questions - and I gave her a nonedescript answer which failed to satisfy her. She then approached the subject from another angle, singling out certain events in my life and wishing to know how they made me feel. As I wished to continue our relationship at this point, I naturally did not tell her the truth, just enough of it to keep her intrigued, and added the things she wanted to be true.

The banal truth, in as much there is a single truth, is this: I very rarely get angry, and when I do, several decades in a profession that feeds of secrecy and masks allow me to postpone any reaction I feel. I certainly do not let my actions be dictated by it.

There were a few exceptions to this rule. I still remember every single one, much as I don't care to. The event Judy Barnett named first, the death of my wife Emily, was not one of them, at least not in the sense that she meant it; it was easier for Judy to think of my subsequent actions being caused by anger, of course, and so I told her they were. But even though the death of Dixon's wife Diane was the one time I killed someone not for any strategic benefit, not because I was ordered to or because I saw any advantage to be gained for either myself or the various organizations I belonged to during my life, but simply to satisfy an emotion, that emotion was not anger. After Emily had died, I felt nothing anymore. I thought this petty act of vengeance against the man who had shot her might bring me satisfaction. It did not. I did not feel anything then, either, which was why I left Irina and Sark to their own devices and tried to find my purpose again. I only started to feel something again when I saw the prophecy concerning my daughter - the prophecy that simultanously revealed her existence to me - written in that hand I knew all too well, Rambaldi's hand, and what I felt then was not anger, either. It was renewed hope, and yes, grief for Emily, which I realized would never end, but not anger.

But I was angry two years later, when I heard Katya Derevko's voice on the phone and saw Jack come into my office. It was a simple demonstration of power; Irina's, I thought at the time, though given later events, I can't be sure anymore whether Katya was not playing her own game. Be it as it may, the point of said demonstration was to show me that they - or either of them - could make Jack kill me whenever they wished. It wasn't hard to figure out their leverage; it had to be something concerning Sydney. I understood perfectly; as I told Jack later, when Sydney's life was at stake, I never expected him to act differently.

It still left me in a state of burning anger that slowly started to consume me. This was humiliating. I had thought myself to be above such things, at least at this point in my life. But as immaturely as any teenager, I wished to retaliate. I knew that Irina and Jack had reached some kind of rapprochement during the two years that we believed Sydney to be dead, a state I had only just reached with Jack myself. If it was in her power to spoil it by that little demonstration, well. I could do her a similar favour. A few days later Jack, who was in a rare state of embarrassment and actual guilt, which manifests as concern in him, actually sent a psychiatrist to me, dear Judy Barnett, whom I met for the first time then. The point about Judy was that she worked for the CIA and had, probably assisted by strict orders from superiors, even managed to drag Jack to a few counselling sessions. So I told her, quite deliberately and after enough of a struggle to make it believable, what I wanted her to eventually tell Jack, because after having met Judy, I knew she would not be able to resist sharing this particular information sooner or later. I told her the one thing Irina and myself had agreed to keep silent from him forever. That affair of twenty-five years ago.

As an illustration on why one should never let anger govern one's actions, this could hardly be bettered. My little retaliation backfired on a spectacular level. At the time Judy did tell Jack, I was in prison for something I actually had not done, which was why I had not thought of guarding myself against that particular event, and entirely dependent on Jack for my exculpation. He took great pleasure in telling me he would not help me, let the state kill me for him and then resurrected me. (Jack's anger is as personal as his daughter's; he will never let you die unless it is by his hands if you have personally angered him.) The one person on whom this entire sequence of events had no effect whatsover was Irina, and as for her relationship with Jack, he killed whom he believed to be her as well a few months later, but for a very different reason.

There were, regrettably, a few - a very few - other occasions when I let anger get the better of me, but this was by far the most humiliating. I still find it galling to think about. How do I handle it? By not thinking about it at all, if I can help it.

In retrospect, it strikes him that the only person he ever tried to explain it to had been Sydney.

Jack and faith were anathema to each other, so bringing it up with him was pointless. Jack, enviably enough, had never felt the need to justify his existence beyond protecting those he loved, and besides, the language they shared, of pragmatism and games and wary affection, did not not offer the vocabulary for that which had driven Arvin Sloane to allow a dead 15th century Renaissance man to rule his life.

Elena Derevko, on the other hand, was of course a fellow believer, but her own obsession with Rambaldi was strictly limited to what he could do for her. As a consequence, she never experienced periods of doubt. "The only thing I never understood about you," she said to him after he had convinced her to let him join her, "was why you stopped for a while. You had to know the rest of us wouldn't. What did you hope to gain?"

He gave a reply appropriate to his cover. But even without the necessity to maintain it, a genuine conversation with Elena on the subject would have been impossible by the narrowness that made her ask this question in the first place. Elena never sacrificed anything because she never cared enough for anything but herself to make surrendering it a sacrifice. How could she possibly understand?

Sydney, now, that was another matter. She was an idealist; she did need to believe in something greater, but she thought patriotism and the need to protect not just her nearest and dearest, like her father, but just about everyone fulfilled that purpose. She was still young.

She also was the challenge and the doubter who was necessary for any faith. When Ana Espinosa went after Nadia, he told Sydney Ana would not succeed, and she asked him how he could still have his faith after everything. He asked her how he could not. But he hid Nadia from Ana, all the same. The contradiction never left him; either Nadia's life was safeguarded by Rambaldi's prophecies, or it was not. He continued to believe that it was, and to act as if it was not, until her life, and his faith, exploded in glass shards and blood and became one again. It was impossible, against every prediction, and yet fulfilling them all: and not having faith, after, was not an option any more, either.

And yet, and yet. When he was told Sydney was dead, with her life just as safeguarded by prophecies, he did not act on any commandment. "She died, just like anyone," Sydney's own voice said, and he knew he had to kill the person who did this.

It turned out to be the last test. Of course she wasn't dead. Of course it was not for him to either avenge her or kill her by mistake. Her role, after all, was to devastate... and to restore.

She was alive, as surely as she had been drawn four hundred years before her birth. And he had faith, again.

There really was no other choice.

I had not seen her in decades. Photos, surveillance tapes, yes, but not the woman herself. She had contacted me through the versatile Mr. Sark, but in a way, I had felt her presence before. After all, I saw Jack and Sydney on a daily basis at work, and her fingerprints on them were unmistakable.

I, of all people, should be able to recognize obsession.

In any case, observing the effect Irina's return had on them was like a taunt, and childishly I thought: You left. They're not yours anymore. You have no right to take them back. At the same time, I was admittedly burning with curiosity to meet her again, and not just for practical reasons. The last time I had seen her, she had been Laura to me as well as to Jack, though perhaps a somewhat different Laura. If one's profession is deception, one does like tribute to a master - or mistress, as it were. But I could hardly walk into the CIA and demand an audience, and so I had to rely on Julian Sark and the instructions she had given him, the suggestions about an alliance. Now capable as our young friend is, reliance on him should not be anyone's favourite option for anything, and it certainly wasn't mine. Still, I was in a tricky position, needing to deceive both my own employers and the CIA at the same time, so I made the best of what was possible.

Once SD6 was over and done with, along with all other SD -cells, and I had made my escape with Emily, I could have spent the rest of my life in comfortable anonymity, never mind previous agreements. It wasn't as if Irina was in a position to complain from her cell within the CIA if she never heard from me again. But I still wanted to pursue the mystery of Rambaldi; that was the main reason why I did not choose the path which, in restrospect, would have saved Emily's life.

I also, and it took me another two years to admit it, wanted to see Irina again.

Not because I was in love with her. Such foolishness was Jack's to feel. And I certainly didn't feel sentimental about old times. If I had known then what I found out later, my main reason would have been to ask her about Nadia, but at this point I was completely unaware she and I had had a child together. I suppose, in the end, it must have been curiosity, that same curiosity which had initially led me to study Milo Rambaldi. Who was she, really, that woman who had been married to my best friend, with whom I had had an ill-advised affair and who had managed to fool us both completely during all that time? That woman who had become a power to be reckoned with in our profession, so much so that she could devise a plan which allowed her minions to waltz into SD-6 while I headed it, take us all hostage and nearly got us killed?

That woman whose invisible presence had grown more solid each time I had talked to her husband and daughter for three months. Who, when making her offer of allliance through Sark, had done so in a way that demonstrated to me she could get Sydney and Jack to kill me if she wanted. (For the record, I wouldn't have minded being traded over to save the life of either Bristow. But being used as the cash to purchase a cure for Michael Vaughn, of all the people, is somewhat galling. Couldn't it at least have been Dixon or Marshall?)

I came up with a suitable elaborate extraction method - nothing uncomplicated or not elegant for Irina Derevko - and she did bring the Rambaldi manuscript she had promised. Seeing each other again other the space of years, we smiled and immediately wondered when the stab in the back would occur.

But I must admit I also thought that she was an even more fascinating woman than I had assumed her to be all those years ago. And that I did enjoy seeing her again.

Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. - Sappho



"So Irina is alive," I said to Elena Derevko, pretending only mild interest.

"As if I would let my little sister be killed by someone else," Elena scoffed, black eyes gleaming with delight. "She's a Derevko, and neither her fool of a husband nor yourself would be worthy. I'll do it myself."

Those few days I spent with the oldest of the Derevko sisters were among the least agreeable and yet most interesting of my life. She had only been a name before, competition in a race I had made myself abandon; as Sofia Vargas, she had been a lie. But here she was, one of the few people who could claim a knowledge of Rambaldi almost close to mine, if not the same understanding; the woman who had raised my daughter.

I despised her, of course. Because she was using a perversion of my own plans, because she had made it necessary for me to let Nadia believe I had betrayed her, because she had, as a matter of fact, betrayed Nadia, oh, and because she had used a man impersonating me who was responsible for some of the more painful hours of my life. Now there was also the new discovery she had set up Jack to kill who he believed to be Irina, and had held Irina under lock and key the entire time. If there is a Derevko making of fool of both Jack and myself, I would rather have it to be Irina, you know; I might never have been in love with Irina, but I... well, let us just say we understood each other. Her sister, on the other hand, thought she understood me and that I could not possibly be in the same position, which grated.

Most of all, though, I despised Elena Derevko because she was whole in a way I never had been, nor ever would be. There were never second thoughts to her, no regrets. She might not understand the true grandeur of Rambaldi's imagination, believing it to be a simple tool for world domination, but once she had committed to making his inventions her own, she never let anything stop her. It was like looking in a mirror, much as my confrontation with her puppet Ned had been, and seeing what others saw when they looked at me. Of course I despised her.

I am sure the feeling was mutual. Naturally, she did not trust me, no matter how much she respected my knowledge. She did not have time to do to me as she had done to Irina to make sure I was telling her the truth. So she came up with a way of tormenting me which was, I must admit, breathtakingly brilliant. After I had found out Irina was still alive, and that the Irina Jack had killed had been a product of Project Helix - some people would call this the elegance of nemesis, no doubt, given how both myself and Irina had profited from said Project not too long ago - I could not help but wonder at the magnitude of the deception. You see, I was sure that Jack would not have done the expedient think and simply killed Irina once he had determined that this was necessary. No, not Jack. I know him. He would have spoken to her first, touched her, breathed in her scent and then killed her. And yet, despite this closeness, he was deceived.

"Arguably a better proof of the perfection Project Helix can achieve than Allison Doren has been," I said to Elena, as I didn't wish her to speculate on my thoughts. Elena, proving she was the most dangerous of the Derevko sisters, looked at me and said: "Yes. Is there anyone you would wish to see doubled?"

"I've played this game," I said indifferently. "I prefer not to reuse tools. Besides, in the new world..."

"Yes," Elena said a bit impatiently, "in the new world, everything will be different anyway, but not this. I think there is someone. Jack Bristow is not the only one who brought death to his wife, no? Irina told me, and so did her boy Julian. Your wife, she was shot in your place. Her blood was on your hands when she died. And before that, she sacrificed one of her fingers so you would both be safe."

She came closer and whispered in my ear.

"What became of that finger, Arvin, hmmm? You know, that is more than enough DNA for Project Helix. Should this be my welcoming present for you, my new confederate? Your very own Emily to do with what you like, just as I gave Jack Bristow an Irina of his own to kill?"

McKenas Cole, poor amateur, had nothing on Elena Derevko. I said no, of course. It was easy to say. I knew the Bristows and Nadia had to be on their way by now, I knew we would all work together to stop Elena, even if they did not yet. But the idea, once pronounced, would never leave me, and Elena knew it.

To see Emily again, alive. Just once. To talk to her. To hear her voice. To touch her hand, to hear her breathe, alive and safe. It would not be Emily, it would be an illusion, I know that, but as opposed to Jack I have been kown to willingly prefer illusions.

It would also be a betrayal of Emily, the only one I have not committed, and that is what has kept me from pursuing such a course of action. Not the idea of someone else being doomed to live out their life in another woman's skin, as Ms. Doren had been; frankly, I would only care that the woman in question was a good enough actress to disappear into her role. Yes, I do have more than enough DNA, stored in a Swiss deposit. I think about it sometimes, still.

And then I think of Emily choosing to come with me, for the third and fatal time, despite all I had done, and I know I will not do this to her, or her memory.

I wish my subconscious would accept this as well and would stop sending me dreams in which I do it anyway.

It's just one of the questions they ask to get to know each other, father and daughter, complete strangers, in those days of travel that lead them first to China, then Siena.

"What's your favourite art?" Nadia asks. "Music? Painting? Sculpture? Dancing?"

Arvin looks at her, and wonders what she would want to hear. He's keenly aware that whoever she imagined her father to be during those years in Argentina, whatever she imagined him to be like, there was almost certainly no trait he would share with this fictional portrait. Of course, he could pretend to. That was, after all, their profession. His and hers both. If he could deduce what image she had in mind, he could create a persona to fit it, just for her. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Performance," he replies, and the rueful smile she gives him tells him she understands the joke. Perhaps they can continue like this; shared truths in the guise of jests.

Being someone else to get what they want: it's not the only thing they are both trained in. But he is very careful to think of the other art. It's the past; what done is done. He won't allow it to touch her again.

But it is true, nonetheless, that he always excelled at the art of killing.

*locked*

Someone must have helped me.

Which is more disquieting than it is reassuring, considering the results. I cannot remember most of the last one and a half years; the precise flow of my memories ends in Russia, after I shot my daughter Nadia. There are only fragments after this; fragments, and a letter. In my own writing, and using the Rambaldi codes only a very few save myself have been able to decypher.

Remember Julia. Do not look.

A few years ago, a great many people, including myself, were under the impression Sydney Bristow had died. As it turned out, she did not; after her resurrection, as it were, she had a gap of two years in her memories, and tried to find out what had happened in this time. In the end, as I recall, she discovered she had erased her own memories. The name she had chosen during the time she wished to forget had been Julia. This makes me inclined to believe that either I did write this letter to myself, or Irina must have done. No one else would have the necessary knowledge, not of Rambaldi, and not of me.

But if I did this, I cannot have done so on my own. There are several techniques I can think of to achieve this kind of selective amnesia, and all of them carry the risk of reducing the subject to a gibbering wreck. I have seen a man in this condition, a man who was something of a mirror to myself, and it defies belief to imagine I would trust anyone to do this to me. It also is hard to comprehend what could make me wish to forget so much that I would risk this.

After all, I remember Nadia.

I remember her eyes, dull with the red poison infecting her, I remember her struggle with Sydney, something Nadia in her right mind would have abhorred, I remember realizing she would not be in this condition if not for the search that I started. I remember realizing I had to kill her. My daughter. My Nadia. What memory could possibly be worse than this?

You achieved the Horizon.

Still my own handwriting, and yet I would suspect Irina of forging it for the above named reasons, perhaps as part of a game to both avenge the daughter we knew for all too little a time and, always an aim of Irina's, to win... except for something rather obvious. There is a way to test that claim, and I did.

It is not every day a man discovers he is immortal.

Immortality, you understand, is not Rambaldi's final promise, though that is what the dilettantes believe. It is, however, a crucial step. And yet in the memories I still possess, those predating what happened in Russia, I distinctly recall abandoning my quest. It was not easy, and it was, in a way, a betrayal of faith, but it was Nadia's condition for returning and....

I must have taken up the quest again after Nadia died, obviously. And yet. And yet. To obtain the Horizon, you have to die. Not by your own hand, and not naturally; by violent means. It is the ultimate test of belief, of couse, but it, too, is an indication that I must have had help. Now I have always been rather particular about my demise. I always thought that either Jack or Sydney would kill me; anything else would be a rude usurpation by someone not even remotely qualified. I was sure they would see it the same way; I still am.

This would indicate they believe I am dead, of course. And yet I did not find myself buried. One of the fragments of the past after shooting Nadia is does contain the sense of being underground, true, but not in a grave. I remember breathing considerable amounts of air, though I could not move my legs for some reason. I also remember talking to someone, but not to whom. Nothing before or after; just darkness, and talking to someone who was there with me.

Then Paris - why Paris? I like the city, but it was never one of mine in the way Florence was, or Zurich -; a rather mediocre hotelroom in Paris, and the letter. I must have gotten there after whatever procedure was undertaken to remove my memories; must have written the letter before that; someone must have left me behind. Together with a better than avarage letter opener, definitely sharp enough to investigate the Horizon claim, as that someone must have known I would.

I asked the concierge; he remembers me arriving alone, though he says I had a visitor. He can't recall anything about this person, not even whether it was a man or a woman. The night watchman who was on service when the visitor arrived has disappeared. Either I was very thorough in advance, or someone else was.

Never go back.

Back to where? Los Angeles? Russia? That place under ground, wherever it was? Go back to Rambaldi or go back to - but then, if there were Jack or Sydney to go back to, I would not have achieved the Horizon. I cannot believe I would have triggered the necessary circumstances leading to either of them killing me unless something had happened to separate me from them for good.

Well. I have all the time of the world now, it seems; and in the beginning at least, it might be useful to play along. With myself, and whoever else put me on this new path. Aquiescence can be as good a method to unsettle your opponent as any.

I should know. I had help.

Shall we say I believe it an ever after and leave it at that?

Apparantly not.

Well. A wise man once said that the problem of every single story was this: continue them long enough, and they inevitably end in death. It does not matter whether the death in question is a violent one, or a heart attack during sleep, a long, painful torment caused by an illness or indeed the death of a child which never draws more than a few breaths; the event occurs. Granted, it may occur at a point where one feels weary of life, or at least at peace of the series of accomplishments and failures that formed said life. It might even contribute to prolonging someone else's story. Which would make it the least of various possible evils. But it most certainly does not qualify as "a happily ever after".

Interestingly enough, there is no reverse for this. A lack of death does not mean happiness. But then, only someone naive would expect happiness from immortality. What the lack of death does make possible, however, is the chance for change, productivity, new angles, and, in tandem with all of this, what new insights there are to gain. They might come with misery, but then, the Greeks meant to curse a man when they told him to know himself. In any event, all of this means - continuity. Not happiness. But an ever after.

Whether or not I believe in it is no longer an issue. After all, it is an inherent criterium of faith to believe in something that remains unproven.

You have a time machine but you are not allowed to change your past, so what time period do you go to and why?

If anyone ever decodes this journal, it will probably surprise him - or her, but as the most likely candidate is Marshall Flinkman, I shall go with the masculine term, shall I? - that the answer to this question lies not in a trip to the Renaissance and Milo Rambaldi. There is a rather obvious reason: any encounter with Rambaldi, no matter how it would turn out, would irrevocably alter my past, something which is precluded in the condition of this little mind game.

No, if there was a time machine at my disposal - and there might be some day; he has invented so many other things not deemed possible by the rest of the world, so why not this? - I would not visit any of the various periods of history that have always intrigued me, either. I would venture into the future. It is the possibility to escape the limits of one's life, the last mystery, the very thing we aim to shape and form by our every day actions, in large or small measure; it was the last justification which remains for our deeds.

It is the unknown. And in the end, the unknown, the mystery, has been the one thing which remains.

Poof. You just got sucked into a Christmas Carol and are playing the role of Scrooge. One or all of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future come to visit you

( Briault was dead: to begin with... )

When one is young, one tends to try out quite a rich gallery of images. I did not know yet what I wished to be when I joined the CIA, but I did know I wished to suceed. Aside from the obvious requirements - intelligence, skill, dedication, and so forth - showing interest in the various occupations and passions of your superiors was an easy way to do so. When one of them complimented me on my shooting skills, I told him my father had taken me hunting as a boy. His face lit up, and he invited me to a hunting trip in Maine for the weekend.

"That was a bit obvious, don't you think?" said my new partner Jack Bristow later, when we were alone. We didn't know each other very well yet, but he was clearly the most gifted agent of my own age I had been able to discover, which made him either the worst rival or the best ally I could hope for. Getting assigned together might let me find out which it was going to be, which was why I had pushed for it. Now I gave him my best noncommittal look.

"My father took me hunting," he quoted. "Your father is a peaceful record store owner in Brooklyn who never touched a gun in his life."

This was entirely correct, but what was most interesting was this: I had not talked about my family background with Jack. Not out of any desire to hide it, but there were more interesting topics of conversation. Which meant he must have accessed my file. Because he was curious, or because he was looking for a weakness. Either possibility intrigued me, as did the fact he was letting me know what he had done, because there was no way he was not aware of the conclusion I would draw from his little observation. I looked at him and smiled.

"The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination," I conceded.

"Not if your imagination leaves you stuck with Pryors in Maine for the weekend," Jack said, deadpan.

Now I had little interest in hunting or Adam Pryors, other than his usefulness to me professionally. And I was reasonably sure the weekend would be dull, though no more so than having to do standard surveillance for an arms dealer's second cousin once removed, which was the sort of job young and inexperienced agents such as ourselves got. But he had made it just that much more colourful.

"Well," I said, "if it gets too bad, I shall rely on you coming to the rescue. There should be a phone in Pryors' lodge, and you can practice for work by telling him all about my aunt having had a heart attack."

Jack folded his arms and leaned back on the chair he sat on. "What makes you think I don't have anything better to do during the weekend than waiting for your phonecall in case you get bored with cozying up to Pryors?"

"Because we're partners, Jack," I said, and felt it the first time, that electric charge I was going to associate with him. Forget the either/or, I thought, regarding the future possibilities of rivalry versus alliance. Why shouldn't it be both/and? "And my father did teach me never to refuse a favor from a friend."

He looked as if he was going to protest he had not offered any favors, but that would only lead to me pointing out that he wouldn't have brought up the entire subject otherwise, and he knew it. So instead, he gave me one of his narrow long looks. And nodded.

I knew parental lessons would come in handy. Especially if one invents them.