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Topic 37: Define your weakness
Sep. 11th, 2006 09:21 amIf asked, no matter by whom, Arvin Sloane would tell you either a lie or at best a half truth. If, on the other hand, you asked his enemies or friends - who sometimes amount to the same thing - or even the people he worked with, they would not tell you the truth, either. They would tell you what, in their opinion, made him detrimental to their lives.
Take Ariana Kane, former head of Alliance Intelligence. Ms Kane thought Arvin Sloane was ridiculously sentimental when it came to Jack and Sydney Bristow, to the point of getting senile, and that he was overlooking the obvious signs of their disloyalty because of that. Of course, Ms. Kane ended up being framed by Arvin Sloane for a crime no one had committed - the murder of his then very much alive wife - and only then realized he had been using both Bristows in addition to herself.
On the other hand, Marcus Dixon, who did kill Emily Sloane in the end, accidentally as he was trying to kill her husband, would argue that Arvin Sloane had no weakness because he had no genuine feeling for anyone at all, safe for Rambaldi and himself. He would tell you that Sloane's obsession with Rambaldi was a trait that could be counted on as persistent, but to call it his fatal weakness would imply that Arvin Sloane had some good points as well, the capability to be a good man despite all his crimes, and that this meant giving Sloane too much credit. Arvin Sloane, Dixon would tell you, was evil to the core. There was nothing in him that could have been redeemed, and never had been.
Of course, Marcus Dixon was hardly what you could call unprejudiced.
Judy Barnett, closing his file after his reported death in Mongolia, looked back on her years of studying the man and the brief time during which she had been involved with him, and came to the conclusion that Arvin Sloane's fatal weakness was his inability to let go of anything that ever meant anything to him, even if this resulted in two very different desires. Looking over the various testimonies, she did not think his actions during the last weeks of his life meant he finally had made a definite choice as much as one had been made for him which he had been unable to come to terms with, with the result being a course of thinly disguised self-annihilation.
Of course, few people and causes did genuinenly mean something to Arvin Sloane. And Dr. Barnett had been known to be wrong before.
But then again, anyone who could confirm or contradict her diagnosis was dead. Or were they?
Take Ariana Kane, former head of Alliance Intelligence. Ms Kane thought Arvin Sloane was ridiculously sentimental when it came to Jack and Sydney Bristow, to the point of getting senile, and that he was overlooking the obvious signs of their disloyalty because of that. Of course, Ms. Kane ended up being framed by Arvin Sloane for a crime no one had committed - the murder of his then very much alive wife - and only then realized he had been using both Bristows in addition to herself.
On the other hand, Marcus Dixon, who did kill Emily Sloane in the end, accidentally as he was trying to kill her husband, would argue that Arvin Sloane had no weakness because he had no genuine feeling for anyone at all, safe for Rambaldi and himself. He would tell you that Sloane's obsession with Rambaldi was a trait that could be counted on as persistent, but to call it his fatal weakness would imply that Arvin Sloane had some good points as well, the capability to be a good man despite all his crimes, and that this meant giving Sloane too much credit. Arvin Sloane, Dixon would tell you, was evil to the core. There was nothing in him that could have been redeemed, and never had been.
Of course, Marcus Dixon was hardly what you could call unprejudiced.
Judy Barnett, closing his file after his reported death in Mongolia, looked back on her years of studying the man and the brief time during which she had been involved with him, and came to the conclusion that Arvin Sloane's fatal weakness was his inability to let go of anything that ever meant anything to him, even if this resulted in two very different desires. Looking over the various testimonies, she did not think his actions during the last weeks of his life meant he finally had made a definite choice as much as one had been made for him which he had been unable to come to terms with, with the result being a course of thinly disguised self-annihilation.
Of course, few people and causes did genuinenly mean something to Arvin Sloane. And Dr. Barnett had been known to be wrong before.
But then again, anyone who could confirm or contradict her diagnosis was dead. Or were they?
