Personal History by Chris Anderson

Disclaimer: Alias is the property of other people, including J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot productions.

She would like to sit down to dinner with her family- with her sisters, as if there were not years and so many old wounds and so much mistrust between them. She does not trust Katya past a certain point, sometimes does not trust Elena at all, but she misses them. They are sisters, women in a world where still there are fewer of them than there are men...

She would like to make things clear to Katya. She appreciates what her sister did for Sydney that Irina herself could not- but not that much. She would like to...explain.

Jack Bristow is hers.

Katya plays her games, of course; her beauty and the ways she uses it to keep men off balance. And she can well imagine his reaction- the things he didn't tell her, the ones he didn't have to. Katya would have been amused, of course, but...

Irina shakes her head. She used to wonder, when she was Sydney's age, what it would have been like to have a normal family.

Sydney...and Jack. To see them again, have a meal with her own little family, as if it were all alright again...

She sighs. Historical figures are really more likely dinner companions than any member of her family.

Rambaldi, then. She has been chasing enigmas her whole life, enigmas that are at times intimately related- to her, to her daughter. For once she would like the truth- to sit across the table from him, to ask him what it was really all about. All the mysteries, all the fragments of obscure pages, invisible ink... When she was younger the chase amused her more, but now she is tired. If the enigmas stay this obscure she will never have time to learn all of the answers.

He would tell her, she's sure of that. One look at her, and he would tell her everything.

And if he did not, well... The woman he has so callously thrown into the maelstrom is her *daughter*. If there were any doubt that she would go to any length to find the truth... She would explain that, too.