Without a Trace

She's eight years old when the world comes crashing down on her.

First, the conversations are kept civil, but Irina can tell that they are strained. Then, one day, voices are raised. They scream at each other, and her mother's dinner plate is thrown onto the floor, breaking into a million pieces. Irina stares at it, suddenly frightened, and jumps down from her chair at the dinner table. Silently, she excuses herself.

It's too much for a second grader to handle, she decides, and eats her dinner in her bedroom from there on out while watching black-and-white cartoons. It's safe and comforting there, and it's the only place where she can tune out the horrible yells.

Later, the voices become hushed. (Sometimes, Irina hears her mother crying, but she keeps quiet and pretends to ignore it.) One day, Irina presses her ear against the thin wall to eavesdrop, and she listens in. Lots of big words are thrown around, like "custody" and "trivialities" and a bunch of other ones she doesn't understand. She's absolutely positive that they mean something important, and it frustrates her, how she can't understand any of it.

Something big is right under her nose; she can feel it. But she can't comprehend, and when she does, it's already too late.

-o-

Divorce. The word is never spoken inside her house. (Her mother likes to say "spending time away from each other.") But she's much older than before (she's nine now), and all the puzzle pieces finally fit together: the arguments, the broken plate, and that wretched night when her father confessed, her mother shrieked, and her father went outside casually as if he was going for a stroll in the park, but his eyes said different.

Her mother uselessly pelts her with excuses (it's for the best sweetie darling don't worry this doesn't concern you in any way), but it goes in one ear and out the other for her. She's heard these words many times, and now she knows them by heart.

Her friends tell her relentlessly that it will all be okay, but she doesn't believe them. How can it be okay, with her family torn apart? How will it ever be okay?

It's not that bad, she manages to convince herself.

But there's a nagging voice in the back of her head telling her that it's not that good, either.

-o-

Three years later, her mother dies of breast cancer.

She can't handle the pain that comes with her death, and she knows that she never will. The pain is searing hot, flooding every inch of her, reminding her that her mother is dead, her mother is dead, her mother is dead, and it is absolute torture, so all she can do is cry, cry, cry and hope that all her problems and pains and burdens will wash away in her tears.

(They don't.)

So she is forced to leave their house, their beautiful brick house, to go live with her father and his new wife in an apartment in the other side of the city.

It's hard living with her stepmother, who is twenty years younger than her thinning father. She doesn't love like her mother did. There's a block of ice where her heart should be, and her tongue is gilded with lies. Her father cannot see through her sly tongue, and Irina wonders why he even married her.

(Then again, when has he ever been a good decision maker?)

She's coerced to transfer schools, to one in the neighborhood, and she instantly hates it there. The people there only judge on appearances, and she cannot fulfill their needs. She's the gangly girl with mousy, blonde hair and thick, purple glasses that could stand to lose a few pounds. She blends into the background easily, and no one pays attention to her. They don't want criers, whiners, or a wet blanket that makes their day worse. They want conversationalists, jokesters, and nice friends.

Irina is none of those things.

So she walks on her own, stabbing the cement with every forced step. Every thought is of her mother, who wouldn't care if she isn't great at conversation (she'd fill in the blanks herself), or if she messes up the punch line to a joke (she'd laugh anyway).

She is utterly alone.

-o-

One day, she looks up from the ground, gloomily scanning the sea of students. Happy faces. Delighted faces. Talkative faces. Hands moving excitedly as girls converse. Feet stomping on the ground as boys race each other.

She catches the eye of another girl. She has brown hair with blue eyes, and her lip is set firmly. She is alone, but her expression says, I want to be alone. Irina forces herself to smile wryly.

To her surprise, the girl smiles back.

To her even bigger surprise, the girl walks up to her.

"Hi," she begins. "I'm Nadia Boricov. You're…" She thinks for a moment, trying to recognize Irina's face. "Oh! You're Irina Spaskaya! …Right?"

Irina mumbles a garbled "yes" in return.

"Oh, that's cool," Nadia babbles. "I mean, I was all like, I know you from somewhere! But your name was slipping from my mind. It really was at the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember! You know how that happens sometimes, right?"

Irina nods mutely. (Inside, she contemplates whether or not this girl is insane.)

"Yeah, so it was like that. So then, when I remembered your name, this wave of relief washed over me, like 'I finally remembered your name, thank goodness.' But I feel really bad about not remembering. Sorry!"

"It's okay," Irina returns politely, silently listening to the girl talk.

"Anyway, so sorry for that. On another matter, what do you think of your teacher? Isn't she a menace? I mean, she means well, but—you know what I mean?" She pauses. "So, like, your teacher she was being all mean to one of my friends, Natalia; do you know her? Long, blonde hair, blue eyes? Once—this is a funny story—she was in class, and—"

It's the beginning of a beautiful new friendship.

-o-

It's only been three months with her new friend when her father decides to spring it on her.

Her stepmom is pregnant.

At first she's indifferent. Her stepmom could have a million babies for all she cared. But then her father gets to the real news: they are moving. Again.

"Our family needs a larger house to accommodate the baby's needs," her father justifies firmly. "Anyway, we could all use an environment change." Even though he sounds convincing, Irina knows that his excuse is longhand for "Your stepmom wanted it, so be quiet."

So now she has to move away from St. Petersburg, where her mother raised her and where her best friend is.

Irina can't help the tears from spilling out of her eyes.

-o-

When she's fifteen, she decides to take up pole-vaulting.

Track-and-field is her calling, she knows now. The buildup of anticipation as she races forth, the exhilaration as she is airborne, the relief as her body hits the pit…every second—pure bliss.

So then she's known as the track kid in high school, certainly a step up from the quiet kid in elementary school and the unpopular girl in middle school. Those girls were not her. This girl is her—track is her.

She never competes in non-school competitions, though. She just quietly earns first place at meets, and she scans the crowd every time.

(Her father is always nowhere to be seen.)

-o-

She hates school beginning in her tenth grade.

"Hey, Spasky!" Eva Petrenko taunts, her cronies surrounding her, as Irina unsteadily speeds through the hallway. "Why are you going so fast? Do you have somewhere to go?"

She doesn't respond.

Eva raises an eyebrow, amused, then runs to catch up to her. Her little posse follows. She grabs her shoulder, and Irina freezes. Involuntarily, her eye starts to twitch.

Eva merely laughs. "What's wrong with your eye, huh, Spasky? Why's your eye spazzing out?" Irina tries to hurry away, but Eva's bony hand grips her shoulder tightly. "Why are you such a spaz, huh?" Eva's friends begin to snicker and surround Irina.

Emma Pavlov, the one directly to the right of Irina, pulls at her schoolbooks. "Let me have those." Irina holds onto her books tightly, but then Dariya Shalberov punches her on the side. She doubles over, and Emma grabs her books, victorious. "I'll take these, Spaz." She runs away with them and turns to go into the girl's bathroom. Irina wants to follow, but Dariya holds her back.

Soon Emma returns with a toothy smile. "I threw them in the trash, Spaz. Go fetch. Good luck finding them before the janitor gets there."

Irina flashes Emma a murderous glare, but she just smiles back. With as much dignity as she can muster, Irina runs to the bathroom and rummages through the trash. She can hear girls mutter, but she pays no attention to them.

At last she finds her books, splattered with water from the sink and chicken broth from today's lunch. Slowly, she picks them up and, with a paper towel, begins to wipe off the stains chicken broth stains.

She has made up her mind: she will get revenge.

-o-

Right after school, she runs to the principal's office. No one is present. She then remembers that there is a meeting today in the teacher's lounge, and she breathes a sigh of relief. There will not be the hassle of forging an excuse to have Mrs. Ponomarev, the principal, leave.

Quickly, Irina moves toward the file cabinet and pulls it out the bottom drawer. She shuffles through the student files. Parolow, Pavlov, Pavlovskii, Pechatnoff, Petrov, Petrovskaia…wait. Irina goes back one file. Petrov, Eva. Irina flips back three, then there's another one. Pavlov, Emma. She goes on to the "S" section, and finds Shalberov, Dariya.

Her hands tremble as she slips the manila folders out of their drawer. She's never done anything like this before, but in a way she's excited. First, she opens Eva's file. A neat column of 5's and 4's line up on the paper, standing for "Excellent" and "Good," respectively. Irina plucks a pencil out of Mrs. Ponomarev's pencil cup, and slowly erases them, one by one, replacing them with shaky 1's and 2's, meaning "Poor" and "Unsatisfactory." She does the same with Emma's and Dariya's.

When she's about to place the folders back in their rightful spot, she hears the sound of high heels approaching the door. Hurriedly, she shuts the file drawer and crawls under the principal's desk.

Someone enters the office and sits down at the chair. Their feet are two feet away from Irina. She tries to breathe as silently as possible.

The phone rings, and Irina hears the sound of a person picking it up. "Zdravstvujtye?" the person greets, and Irina immediately recognizes the voice as Mrs. Ponomarev's. "In the teacher's lounge? But I just arrived at my office after the meeting—oh, fine." Mrs. Ponomarev curses, but stands up and leaves.

Salvation! Irina hurriedly opens the drawer again and shoves the folders back where they are supposed to be. She looks out a crack in the blinds and sees office ladies milling about.

Blin! Irina scans the room for a way to escape. After a quick glance, she decides that the window is the best escape. She opens the windows and climbs through. She turns around to close it, but it's locked from the outside.

Oh well, she thinks, and she runs back to her family's apartment, already formulating an excuse for being late.

-o-

She is recruited into the KGB at the age of sixteen.

At first, she is caught off guard when they invite her to join. Why would they want her? She is just a petite young woman who managed a B average in school. She easily blends in, and she isn't the star student or athlete or pretty much anything. Then they tell her that they know all about the grade-changing incident. She doesn't know how they know about it—perhaps Mrs. Ponomarev found out later?—but doesn't dare ask.

She catches on quickly in training. After that, she's assigned a unit, and soon her life is only filled with missions and spying. She runs into trouble with the Interpol a few times, but, really, it's all part of the fun.

While the rush of every mission is exhilarating, the life of a spy is rough. You have no time for love, friendship, all those trivial matters. All that's important is a mission accomplished.

She is satisfied. It's simple—not like her family was.

-o-

She manages to graduate from high school and is sent to Oxford by the KGB.

There, she doesn't fit in. Her English is choppy, and her classmates sometimes snicker as she attempts to answer a question. (Then she realizes that she will always be a misfit, and she feels like crying. It's at times like these that she misses her mother more than ever.)

Life in Oxford, besides the downs when she is teased for her clipped English, is amazing. She meets Vikram Kabra, one of her colleagues. They quickly befriend each other, but the friendship seems more business-like than casual. Later, he introduces her to Isabel Vesper-Hollingsworth. From the beginning, she doesn't like her. Isabel always teases everyone and seems to have a large ego, but at least she doesn't tease Irina.

One day, he invites her to a party, and of course she's ecstatic. It's the first party that she's been invited to in ten years. She dresses up nicely and arrives at the designated location, but only a smattering of people is present. Vikram emerges from the center of the small group and guides her to one of the tables. In a low voice, he tells her about the Cahills and the branches. He also informs her that she is a Lucian.

Of course, she's excited to be related to Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and all those famous names in history, but she is perplexed on how Isabel and she can be related. Is she that sinister, and it is just that she has never realized it? Then again, she had changed people's grades…but that was just poetic justice. She shakes the thought away.

What comes next is what might have been the biggest mistake she has made in her life.

Vikram suggests an alliance.

Irina hesitates for a fraction of a second. Her conscience tries to pull her back, tries to remind her of morality and thinking before speaking.

"Think about it," Vikram urges. "It's you on your own in the clue hunt. I have everything you need." Isabel, who is standing next to him, looks at Irina patronizingly.

Then Vikram takes out a wad of money from his wallet, and slightly waves it in his hand. He tells her that this can cover everything that she wants to buy, including a new house, which means I'm bribing you, and I know it, but you have to be stupid not to want this.

She looks back at the money Vikram holds loosely in his hand, as if she is bored. She bites her lip. It's hard not to be tempted by it.

"Come on," Isabel deadpans.

Irina sighs resignedly, and then shakes Vikram's hand.

What's left of her conscience disappears.

-o-

He waltzes into her life silently.

Of course, he was always there, she just hadn't noticed him before. He had never crossed paths with her, so he wasn't a matter of concern. Another agent, another enemy, she really couldn't care less.

He introduces himself one day as Viktor Kiselev, another KGB agent, and she hates how casual and informal he is. Spies are supposed to notice everything and never relax, and he is the exact opposite of that.

She really doesn't know what to think of him, so she ignores him. He's meaningless to her.

Then, while they're both climbing up the side of a building, he finally swallows his pride to compliment her.

"You look really beautiful when you're on a CoveOps mission," he tells her. When she raises an eyebrow, he quickly adds, "You're always beautiful."

She smiles, for real, for the first time in a while.

-o-

After the Cold War ends, she and Viktor drop out of the KGB and marry.

It's a small ceremony. Most of the party consists of his relatives—she'd never liked hers much. And it's a wonderful one, and she loves every second of it.

(It is a ceremony that her mother would've enjoyed.)

Her father and step-mom come, along with Katia, Irina's half-sister, the one that forced her to move away from St. Petersburg—uninvited.

She had considered giving them invitations (They are still her family, after all. They just don't act like it.), but had backed out at the last minute. She did not want to be pained on her wedding day when she saw them—the ones that never really seemed like part of her family.

She stiffens when Katia comes up to hug her, and almost winces when the girl looks up to her. But then Katia lets go, mouths congratulations, and gives her a slight smile.

She smiles back, and for a moment, her life doesn't seem so complicated.

-o-

When she's thirty-one, Nikolai is born.

He's a chubby, blonde, blue-eyed boy that she cherishes more than anything in the world. He has his mother's hair and father's eyes, and she's truly happy.

But a month later, Viktor decides that he wants to go back into the KGB unit. She protests, of course; how can a mother toggle work to sustain the family and handling a toddler on her own, with the father traipsing around the world? He protests back, and she gets an awful flashback of twenty-one years ago.

She doesn't sleep that night.

The next morning, his face is expressionless at breakfast. "The KGB is my life," he roughly asserts. "After Nikolai is ready to take on the world himself, I'll be too old to do any spy work. A once in a lifetime opportunity, gone."

"Why would you give up a family for a job?" she shoots back icily.

"A job can get you a family, but a family can't get you a job," he returns coldly, and just sits there in his chair, like that should explain everything.

And so she stiffly nods, as if she comprehends, and goes up to their room.

Outwardly, she is as solid as stone. Inwardly, she is weeping.

She moves out with Nikolai the next day. Viktor is never heard from again.

-o-

All her love belongs to Nikolai now.

"Mama!" he shrieks with delight, clapping his pudgy hands together. "Look! Look at the animals!" Earnestly, he points to one of the monkeys doing a jig in the middle of the stage.

She nods at him lovingly. "I see the animals, Nikolai."

Nikolai guffaws as the elephants, holding hands, prance around the dancing monkey. "Do you like the animals, mama? I like the monkey the best, because it is funny. What about you?"

"Me too, Nikolai." (Truthfully, she thinks people dressed up as circus animals are ridiculous, but if Nikolai loves it, she loves it too.)

Her son grins and sings along with the animals in Russian, "We are the circus animals, come and play with us…"

Irina can't help but marvel at how innocent his life is.

-o-

She regrets going to Helsinki.

From the beginning, she knows that it's not a good idea. "But, Isabel, my baby boy is sick," she attempts to counter. "He is in need of care. I need to be with him."

Isabel only laughs, and tells her that her tickets are waiting, and Irina obeys, like a dog would to its master.

Is she even in control of her life anymore?

She makes sure to buy a stuffed monkey for Nikolai, but tries to focus on her job. She is a spy, and spies do not have time for family and stuffed monkeys. She can't get her mind off of Nikolai, though, and she has that creeping feeling that she got when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer…

…Something is terribly wrong.

-o-

He is dead.

He is dead, he is dead, he is dead, and there is nothing that she can do about it.

She contemplates suicide.

Nikolai is cremated, and she puts his ashes in a small ceramic jar that she keeps on top of her fireplace at home.

Sometimes she talks to it, and she worries that she is slipping into insanity.

(Maybe she is.)

Then there's only her. There's no mother, no father, no husband, and no son to be with, to be comforted by.

There is no love in her world anymore.

-o-

The clue hunt officially begins when Grace dies.

Irina doesn't care—Grace was better off dead anyway. She was a worthless family member—there was no information to squeeze out of her.

She inspects the crowd carefully and picks out the teams that actually stand a chance. Ian and Natalie are on her side, thank goodness. The Holts are oversized pigs who cannot stop exercising, so they are of no importance. Alistair, while clever, is a frail old man that she can kill in seconds. Jonah is an arrogant fool with a father to think for him, and Irina dismisses him. The Starling triplets, however, are quite intelligent, and Irina quickly devises a plan to eliminate them. Perhaps an accident could keep them out of the hunt for good, she muses. And then there's Amy and Dan, who she thinks nothing of.

So when the Clue Hunt starts and everyone begins filing out the doors, Irina makes it a point to listen in on Amy and Dan. She realizes they are quite smart too, and begins to strategize their elimination. She learns that they are going to the Franklin Institute.

Naturally, the other teams will follow them.

Discreetly, she brings a sonic detonator there, about to carefully place it so that she is sure that either the Starlings or Amy and Dan will set it off. Really, anyone can. Either way, it's a win-win situation for her.

Just when she's about to leave, she bumps into a team. The Holts.

Eisenhower eyes her detonator. "Give it to us," the big oaf states. "Now."

Irina quickly assesses the situation. If she gives it to them, she knows that they will plant it here. She will also have no chance of being caught. On the other hand, if she refuses, the Holts may attempt to seek revenge on her.

"Sure," she says smoothly and hands it to them.

Eisenhower snatches it out of her hand. "Let's go, team!" he roars. His family dutifully follows, and Eisenhower places it just around the corner. The family marches away, military style, and Irina scoffs.

She turns to leave the museum, but a rough hand grabs her shoulder. "Irina," a voice says.

She turns and sees a tall man, clothed in black. "Fiske," she returns evenly. "You have been well?" Looking for a change in the topic that she knows is going to come, she adds, "You look as…handsome as always."

"Thank you," Fiske replies. "But that's not why I am here. I am watching over Amy and Dan. And your reason for being here is?"

"T-To look for clues," she stammers, and her eye twitches. "Obviously." (Inwardly, she curses herself for being so obvious.)

Thankfully, Fiske doesn't realize what she has done. "All right then," he responds. When she doesn't move, he raises an eyebrow. "Well, carry on with whatever you were doing."

"Right," she blurts out, and walks out the door. When she is out of his line of periphery vision, she breaks out into a run.

-o-

Her mission is accomplished, and the Starlings are in the hospital.

One team down.

Her next victims are Amy and Dan Cahill. She knows their weakness—caring. Their belief is to treat others with respect and kindness, the useless things in life. She herself had once associated herself with those things, but now she refuses to. Love had softened her, made her weak. And eventually, it came back to stab her in the heart.

She trails them, obeying Isabel's orders, and learns of their past. She learns of their plans.

After spying on them for so long, she realizes that maybe Amy and Dan are not so bad after all. They are not evil, just contenders in a race that everyone is participating in. There is no ruthlessness in them. They can't even hurt a fly. They are so innocent, not unlike…

Nyet! Irina pushes the thought away. She scowls, and continues on her way.

-o-

Isabel enters the hunt, too, and fear strikes her heart. Suddenly, a feeling of dread overcomes her, and she knows what Isabel is going to do:

Kill Amy and Dan.

A wave of…something washes over her. It feels soothing, yet makes Irina feel weak. She thinks it's sympathy for the children.

Irina shakes her head, refusing to go soft. But the feeling comes again, and Nikolai flashes before her eyes.

And she cannot think, not with his image in her mind. Her eye twitches, and she thinks of Nikolai. How would he feel if he knew that she was ruthlessly hurting people, planning to kill people? She hears his voice whisper "No, mama" in her ear, and that is when she snaps.

She cannot keep this up any longer. She cannot block feeling from her heart anymore.

And so she promises herself—and Nikolai—one thing: she will do anything to keep Amy and Dan alive in the hunt.

-o-

She surprises herself when she goes into the fire.

It's quite funny, though, how she willingly sacrifices herself. She would die anyway, of course, but here, right now, she dies for a cause.

She remembers asking her mother why the divorce ever happened. "It was for the best," her mother had responded. Then she had taken Irina's face into her hands and whispered, "Do everything for the best, sweetheart. Don't make the mistakes I did." She had nodded mutely in response.

Irina thinks that she finally lived up to that promise.

Memories flit by her. Her mother. Her father and stepmother. Nadia. Oxford. Viktor. Katia. Nikolai. The Hunt. The Starlings. Amy and Dan.

She looks up into the night sky.

And, without a trace, she fades away.

Goodness, that was long. Cookies for anyone who made it this far without skimming. ^^"

…I worked on this one-shot since September 4, 2010. o.O

By the way: the (don't worry sweetie darling don't worry this doesn't concern you in any way) was meant to have no punctuation. This emphasizes the fact that, during this time, Irina's thoughts were confused, and I tried to quote this as how Irina would remember it: all in a rush and blurred. Same with the run-on sentence in the part about Irina's mother's death. Irina's in pain, so her feelings are portrayed the same way: rushed and blurred.

Thanks so much to Sun Daughter, aka Summer, and Syberian Quest, aka Sy, who are both amazing betas. I am so thankful for both of them. Without them, this story wouldn't be this good. Joelle8, aka Jo, has all the credit for the Irina/Fiske reference. I used her crack!ship because it was so amazing. Hopefully, she forgives me for using it without permission. ;)

Please review; if you are going to fave it, please tell me why in a review. Constructive criticism is needed, and flames are accepted.

Thanks for reading!