[Alias/HDM] After He Burned to the Ground

Aberdeen, she was called, but she rarely ever heard that name from anyone. It was Deena back when she was still shifting forms and it was Deena now, because Jack never got it in his head to call her anything else.

 

"Aberdeen."

 

Until this moment, that is. She whined, indicating she'd heard him, and wondered how far gone he must be if he was calling her by her real name. Not that she didn't know. She was dying right along with him and it scared her. She didn't want to be torn away from him- didn't want that rending pain of separation as he died and she vanished into nothing. If she could cry, she would have been doing it now. She settled for throwing back her head in an agonizing howl of pain that might have shook the heavens or at least alerted someone to their position, but that alerting the locals was of little consequence at this point. What could they do that hadn't already been done to them?

 

"Aberdeen," he repeated when her cry had petered off, sounding for all the world like he'd forgotten he'd called her already. She snuggled just a bit closer to him and gave him an affectionate lick on the cheek just to let him know she was here and not going to leave him- couldn't if she wanted to, after all, although even the mere thought of leaving him rattled her to her very core with just how wrong it was. "We did the right thing, didn't we?"

 

"We always do," she whispered, wishing to God or whoever that his voice didn't sound so far away- maybe hers did too and she didn't realize it yet. She laid her head on his chest, ignoring the way the sticky, matted mess of blood there stained her gray muzzle. They were true too- her words. There were things he would do that she didn't like- that he didn't doing either- but they were always for the greater good. Protecting the pack, if you wanted to get into a wolfish mentality about it and Jack was just as much a wolf as she was- it's why she'd settled this way, after all. Sometimes he'd go too far and she'd look at him with baleful eyes and tell him what she thought of that, and he'd respond coldly (and not mean to), and she'd pretend to be irritated, but would eventually curl up at his feet like a loyal hound and comfort him as best she could.

 

Something occurred to her and she nudged him gently with her head. "Jack, there's something I need to tell you."

 

"Better say it now then," he murmured, half-heartedly, and she nipped him lightly on the shoulder.

 

"None of that, Jonathan Bristow." If he was going to call her by her real name, she'd be damned if she wasn't going to call him by his when she meant business. "You listen to me now, you hear?"

 

Jack would have laughed if he had the strength left in him. Oh Deena. His Deena- his strong, capable, sensible Deena. Laura used to joke that she was his true better half.

 

Except Laura wasn't real, was she?

 

"I'm listening," he finally whispered, pushing Laura and Irina and everything about that damned woman and the fact that he just sent Sydney to her out of his mind. He was dying and he wasn't going to spend his last moments worrying and fretting. Sydney was stronger than most people realized- sometimes stronger than he realized- and Irina wouldn't win against her. Even if she wasn't, he had to have faith in his daughter or else he had nothing to cling to in this darkest of hours.

 

Deena weakly got to her feet, her legs wobbling as much as a newborn foal's, but she could walk if she had to, and she was going to have to. Jack too, but she had faith that he could manage it. "Chava," she said, gravely serious.

 

Jack blinked his eyes blearily, meeting the wolf daemon's eyes. "What about her?"

 

"She didn't vanish. When Sydney shot Sloane. She didn't vanish." Deena shook herself all over, and nearly fell over in the process. Something about that concept had disturbed her- Chava still coiled to strike even after Sloane had been killed. Maybe she had imagined it, but she wasn't sure she had, and apparently Jack was getting the bigger picture now, because he groaned.

 

"I was afraid of that." He started to get up, taking sharp, hissing breaths, and calculating distance in his head to distract him from how much everything hurt while beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. Deena whined and flattened her ears against her head, but didn't tell him to stop. Maybe this surprised him, because when he finally staggered to his feet, still applying pressure to his chest (which was pointless at this point, but he didn't seem to care), he gave her a look that might have been the closest he could get to amused in his condition.

 

"Are you going to tell me not to go?" He asked. His voice was coming back, rejuvenated by a sense of renewed purpose, but still weak and distant like the voice of a man already dead. For all practical purposes, he was. His heart just hadn't gotten the memo yet.

 

"We don't want to die out here," she told him and meant it. They were soldiers, warriors, and they were not going to die lying in the middle of a Mongolian desert because of a gunshot wound- it wasn't dignified. If they were going to die, it was going to have to mean something and that was the only way she'd accept this ending.

 

Jack shook his head and rested his hand on her wolfish head as he always did when he felt compelled to draw strength from her- he wasn't a man of weakness by a long shot, but that was because he had her there with him. She was his anchor, his rock, his pillar of strength, and together they would crumble and take down the whole goddamned regime that had nearly destroyed everything they held dear. If they died, Sloane was going down with them once and for all, and there was only one way to do that.

 

"No. We don't want to die out here," he repeated and then started walking, taking weak, sluggish steps with his daemon limping along beside him towards the place that would come to serve as a tomb to a hundred deadly sins and the men who brought them forth.

 

Arvin Sloane had all the time in the world to plot his little schemes. All Jack Bristow needed was ten minutes to burn them to the ground, and then he and Deena would burn together, unable to watch the towers fall for good, but it wouldn't matter at that point. So long as it ended, their deaths will have meant something. Neither of them could argue that.