TM # 268 - The End
Feb. 13th, 2009 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elementof_riskIf there is one thing that those who knew Julian Sark would tell anyone who asked, it was that he lived for himself. He played the game for himself, was in it for himself, was always looking out for himself. You could only trust him as far as you knew you could keep his self-interest aligned with yours. He knew what they said. Hell, he agreed with them.
"Not a problem; my loyalties are flexible..."
He'd learned self-reliance, independence and ambition all very young. There was no one else who was going to have his back, no one else he could truly rely upon in this world. When his parents abandoned him, when his teachers were distant, when his classmates were cruel, he learned to depend solely upon himself. He lived for himself. His dreams, his goals, his aspirations. If he'd thought that perhaps he had a place where he had found trust and loyalty with Irina Derevko, that vanished the moment she sold him out, and it shriveled up as he spent two years in a C.I.A. cell. He might love her, but he learned well to watch his own back. Empires came and empires fell and endgames played out and failed and those who launched them disappeared, but he was there at the end, last man standing, as it were, watching them all crumble to dust. He walked away, free to keep moving forward his own way, and far richer for it, like a cat who always manages to land on his feet. There were still clients, new empires, new endgames, new plots to play in, and schemes to dangle through, and he kept going, slipping in and out of them with a smirk, collecting his fee and going on his way. He took care of himself, first and foremost, because no one else was going to, no one else cared enough to. If it was a lonely life, always on the outside looking in, he didn't mind so much, because he'd never known anything else.
And then that world ended.
She was there, expecting him, at the end of the day. When decisions needed to be made, it was "us" not "me". When things hurt, there were arms that slid around him and held him tight. For the first time, somewhere felt safe. People--things--hurt her, and he wanted to destroy them. She cried, and he wanted to make her smile again, even if it meant swallowing something he didn't feel ready for. He actually, God help him, put on Mickey Mouse ears, and let there be photographic evidence taken of this fact. Cautiously, he trusted, and he felt that trust hold. Increment by increment, he found himself thinking of her, first, instead of himself. And then "her" became "them" -- her and his child, his child inside of her that he was more terrified of than anything he had ever faced in his lifetime. A child he had no idea what to do with, no idea how he could possibly be expected to raise and not royally fuck it up, no idea how he could even begin to know what it took to be a father. But he watched her sleep, sliding down in the bed to wrap an arm around her, his hand pressing over her still flat stomach, and he kissed her shoulder softly so as not to wake her, and found himself keeping watch. No matter that they were in a ridiculously themed resort in the middle of Florida in the Happiest Place on Earth. He wasn't going to let anything happen to them, her and it...her and the baby. Because he had someone else to live for now.
It was a whole new world.
"Not a problem; my loyalties are flexible..."
He'd learned self-reliance, independence and ambition all very young. There was no one else who was going to have his back, no one else he could truly rely upon in this world. When his parents abandoned him, when his teachers were distant, when his classmates were cruel, he learned to depend solely upon himself. He lived for himself. His dreams, his goals, his aspirations. If he'd thought that perhaps he had a place where he had found trust and loyalty with Irina Derevko, that vanished the moment she sold him out, and it shriveled up as he spent two years in a C.I.A. cell. He might love her, but he learned well to watch his own back. Empires came and empires fell and endgames played out and failed and those who launched them disappeared, but he was there at the end, last man standing, as it were, watching them all crumble to dust. He walked away, free to keep moving forward his own way, and far richer for it, like a cat who always manages to land on his feet. There were still clients, new empires, new endgames, new plots to play in, and schemes to dangle through, and he kept going, slipping in and out of them with a smirk, collecting his fee and going on his way. He took care of himself, first and foremost, because no one else was going to, no one else cared enough to. If it was a lonely life, always on the outside looking in, he didn't mind so much, because he'd never known anything else.
And then that world ended.
She was there, expecting him, at the end of the day. When decisions needed to be made, it was "us" not "me". When things hurt, there were arms that slid around him and held him tight. For the first time, somewhere felt safe. People--things--hurt her, and he wanted to destroy them. She cried, and he wanted to make her smile again, even if it meant swallowing something he didn't feel ready for. He actually, God help him, put on Mickey Mouse ears, and let there be photographic evidence taken of this fact. Cautiously, he trusted, and he felt that trust hold. Increment by increment, he found himself thinking of her, first, instead of himself. And then "her" became "them" -- her and his child, his child inside of her that he was more terrified of than anything he had ever faced in his lifetime. A child he had no idea what to do with, no idea how he could possibly be expected to raise and not royally fuck it up, no idea how he could even begin to know what it took to be a father. But he watched her sleep, sliding down in the bed to wrap an arm around her, his hand pressing over her still flat stomach, and he kissed her shoulder softly so as not to wake her, and found himself keeping watch. No matter that they were in a ridiculously themed resort in the middle of Florida in the Happiest Place on Earth. He wasn't going to let anything happen to them, her and it...her and the baby. Because he had someone else to live for now.
It was a whole new world.
