BURN TOGETHER

by wd

Reviews will be much welcomed.

AU. J/I Sydney's missing years.

There is something innately wrong about them; so wrong as to be worth remembering a time when they thought they were just so right.

It had been either fate what brought them together, or perhaps the apparent miscalculations of mutual necessities. Neither is sure which one. Neither cares. Life defied fate, at least for a while.

Moth and flame they became; a kiss of dead and the smell of dust in the air the proof of the passion they court in those lonely, lonely nights, when they would remember the light of the only thing indisputably right between them: their legacy.

She knew she would leave him from the moment she saw him; she also knew that she would hate him for making her do it. (That eventuality being the only thing allowing her to fall for him.) And she has to ask herself why -while the warmth of his body is still close- she could never hate him, and why -againandagainandagain-, despite this, she could never bring herself to stay, to tell him the truth.

His digits feel her pulse pressure increase and he tightens up his hand over her neck, invited by the hidden message flowing through her veins. His mouth so close to hers, they both breathe in whatever there is left of them in an attempt to posses as little as they can from each other; survival in the most primitive state. He easies his grip.

"Why?" he whispers over her open lips, while his other hand travels through her leg resting it behind her knee.

"Because I had to" a sharp intake of breath; she can feel him grounded against her, and she has to close her eyes to stop arching her body beneath his.

"Liar," he roars while he parts her leg even further, "you chose to." He is inside her now, fighting to keep control.

Her cries silenced by his mouth, she gives up on words, instead her hands urge him on. Maybe the friction of their bodies will be enough for tonight, enough to fill the void inside them both.

Yet a moment later he stops with the same violent precision with which he began, hand holding her chin so she would look at him in the eye.

"And because of your choices, I lost my -" his words left unspoken by the impact of her hand against his jaw.

"Get the hell off of me" she mutters dangerously while shifting under him, suddenly too vulnerable.

He complies and sits in the edge of the bed, his back to her while she locks herself in the bathroom of that cheap motel. He can hear the desperation in her sobs, and there is nothing fulfilling about it. When he enters, he finds her bent over the toilet emptying her stomach, and he realizes that he has never seen her so broken since the time she had a miscarriage when Sydney was only three.

"Leave me alone!" her yells are throaty, sincere and filled with desolation. She doesn't look up but rather stays still, her knuckles white from holding the seat too tightly in attempt to hold back the tears.

From that position Jack can see the faint scars on her bare back, "I wasn't an officer here... I was a prisoner..." the thought resonates and he tastes bile. He hastily grabs a towel from the rack and lowers it to cover her body, if for his sake, he doesn't care to dwell. He instead settles behind her and in a semblance of a caress, he pulls her hair back.

"I'm sorry..." he offers while arranging her hair. He involuntarily thinks about all the times he did something like that for Irina, when she was still Laura, and his hands still on her back.

Irina is empty, emotionally and physically. She knows that Jack is right, they lost their daughters because of her: one, when she was still a baby and knew nothing of her mother's sins and the other...

"Oh Sydney..." He's holding her now, his face buried in her hair and his arms around her. He cries too, softly, just for a minute, and then he stands up and turns to the bedroom, needing the space, needing the darkness to compose himself.

She watches him leave from her position besides the toilet, and tells herself that this is how things are supposed to be between them. Neither trying to understand the other, neither acknowledging that they just don't need any trying.

When she goes back to the room, he's gone, and a folded note is on the bed. She takes it between her hands and hesitates before reading. When she does, her heart skips a beat.

"I'll find her killers, and Nadia."