Renee is so goddamn out of her depth, or at least she feels like she is. She gets off on the adrenalin of it - she knows she does, has accepted it and it turned it to the best purpose she knows - and it carries her through the hours, but she's never done this without Jack. She hates not having him here and hates that she hates not having him here, and hates him for leaving her alone here when he said he never would.
"Renee," says Chloe. She is holding a folder that probably isn't relevant; covering her midsection with a file folder is one of Chloe's defense mechanisms.
"Sorry," says Renee, forcing herself to snap into the present.
"We've got Gruden in interrogation."
"All right." Renee smiles her thanks, an automatic twitch she doesn't fully understand or know how to stop. She tucks her hair behind her ear, which is the same thing. "I'll handle it."
"Really? Because the last time you were alone with a suspect, you beat him half to death."
God bless you, Chloe. Never a word of comfort when there is unvarnished truth to be said. "I know," says Renee. "Do you still keep spare matches in your purse?"
Chloe lowers her whole head so her chin nearly touches her chest. "Renee, I'm not-"
"Chloe." Renee smiles again. This one is no automatic twitch - this one is all conscious manipulation. She even reaches out to clasp her friend's shoulder for good measure. "I promise I won't use them."
Thankfully, Chloe accepts that and goes to fetch them. Renee collects a few tools of her own.
Interrogation is just another room in the building, here, with a webcam stuck to a corner of the ceiling. This is because they're stuck in goddamn Den Haag which, now she thinks about it, sounds like the nickname for a guy who spends too much time in the study, or possibly what comes after Now Hen. Okay - time to meet Gruden.
Gruden is visibly sweating. His eyes track her, but he is obviously determined to keep cool.
Renee sits opposite him, smiling. "Mister Gruden, I'm Renee Walker. I know who you are. I want to know who hired you, and how you got so close to the President." She produces a pen and a pad of paper. "Because I know who you are, I know you know who I am, and you know what I did to the last guy who sat where you are. So I want you to remember that - " and, as she says this, she produces the rest of her collection one by one: Chloe's matches; a nail file; a Swiss army knife; a roll of duct tape. "I want you to remember that," she continues, "while you take a minute to contemplate the fact that nobody has come barging in here trying to stop me."
Watching Gruden crumble, she thinks how proud Jack would be of her, still utterly in control. He says "Screw that. I tell you what you want, you don't lay a hand on me. The answer is Meier. To both your questions. Ernst Meier."
The floor drops out from under her.
---
"Are you telling me that Jack Bauer has gone rogue?" The President looks even more exhausted today than the day before, and it's an observation Renee has been making for weeks. She had suspended her re-election campaign for this summit. "Jack's the most trustworthy man I know."
Tim Woods, looking as absurdly young as always, raises his hands with the palms upright. It's a gesture of supplication, the sort of thing that makes Renee think instantly of paper-pushers and bureaucrats. In Woods's case, it's not really fair. He's a good man, but she's seen his file, and she knows that his good instincts are backed by an alarmingly limited amount of field experience. He is saying "I didn't believe it myself. But the sketch Gruden provided is definitely Bauer. I understand he's on some kind of black ops mission, but organizing a hit on the President of the United States is way outside anything we allow."
"All right." The President pinches the bridge of her nose while Renee stands, awkwardly, halfway removed from their conversation. "What time is it in - no, I don't care. Wake up the CIA director. I need to know exactly what Bauer's mission was and what it has to do with this summit."
In the corner of her eye, Woods nods and goes back to the netbook on the table in the President's makeshift office. Renee does not turn to watch him.
"Agent Walker," says the President. "Renee. I know this is difficult. I need to know if Jack ever said anything, or if there was ever anything to indicate why he would do something-"
"Ma'am," says Woods. "I have the director now."
And the President turns away to pay attention to the director. Renee half-listens, because she has nothing else to pay attention to. The President's office has no windows - she's in a foreign country where she just came within about thirty feet of getting shot at, and she's lucky Secret Service hasn't found a nice supply closet on level B-3 to keep her stuffed in.
Jack had infiltrated an old network of Soviet agents based in West Berlin that had apparently been recently reactivated. Masquerading as Ernst Meier, he had been providing them with small arms to convince them of his anti-American sympathies. He had confirmed the success of his infiltration and then gone quiet.
If she gets through this day, Renee promises herself, there will be no more like it.
"It makes a lot of sense, Madam President," says Woods. "This agreement will basically neutralize Russia's presence in Europe and the Middle East. Even if the actual government isn't involved, there are a lot of hardliners in the government who could put something like this in motion."
Um. Renee says it. "Um."
Taylor turns. There is surprise on her face, and Renee understands it.
"Sorry, ma'am. It's just - Jack was the one who recommended the security measures that caught Gruden."
"You think Jack set up the assassination, hoping it would fail. To... maintain his cover?" Woods frowns at her. "That's a hell of a gamble."
And completely unlike Jack, and she doesn't need to be told. But the alternative is impossible.
"I'm inclined to agree," says the President. "It's natural for us to want to think Jack's still on our side, but based on the evidence we can't risk it."
Renee's eyes sting.
---
Fassbinder - it takes her a moment to make the connection. "Mister Vice Chancellor. I didn't expect-"
"Neither did I," he cuts in. He's a big, round man with an aristocratic nose and, judging by his suit, a personal tailor.
He also has an honest smile. Renee has always depended on her ability to judge a man's character. Had depended. Back when she had trusted it, she had depended on it too.
"But," Fassbinder continues, "when Madame Chancellor wants something, that is what usually ends up happening. I have learned not to fight it."
In addition to being both Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister, Fassbinder is the head of the second-most powerful party in the Chancellor's coalition and capable of breaking the coalition at any time, and the Chancellor spends almost as much time accommodating his politics as she does governing by her own. "I'm not certain I-"
"The Chancellor wanted to handle this at a high level to maintain security. So I've been fully briefed on this dormant cell and everything we've picked up about Ernst Meier."
"Fine," says Renee. She motions him to a chair. They've given her her own office, here in Den Haag (they tried to coach her into pronouncing it 'properly', with the A's pronounced separately but as part of the same sound, or something like that). The office is a concession to her job title, Special Consultant to the President, which puts her in most of the important meetings and well outside the chain of command.
"We have known about the cell for years," says Fassbinder, "but we never had any solid leads on identities. And we have never had any reason to make this a priority, compared to more present threats." Fassbinder shrugs broadly. "Then Meier showed up, and now they are making contact with several dangerous groups. Russian nationalists and Islamic extremists."
These are not people anyone sane wants to see working closely together.
Fassbinder produces a file folder. Renee's brief stint at CTU had offered her a glimpse at a world in which the file folder was heading the way of the dodo, and she often longs to see that world more. "This is everything relevant, but I don't think it will tell you much more. The people they're communicating with are as secretive as they are, and we haven't had much time." He pauses, delicately, then clasps his hands "This agreement scares me, Miss Walker. My country has just started to discover that it can be a rational, liberal world power. Now you are set to formalize American hegemony. Where does that leave Germany?"
"I don't make policy, sir. I just protect the people who do." If she focuses, she can even say it in a passing imitation of Jack's voice.
"Yes," he says. "Of course. Anyway, we've confirmed the sketch you sent along." He hands her a picture, too, and the picture is a still image from a surveillance camera and also a picture of Jack. The picture frightens her. It's not quite Jack; it's someone else wearing Jack's face, getting the lines and expressions all wrong.
"Renee," says Chloe, standing in the door. Chloe would never - will never - say sorry to interrupt. "We've got something."
---
Amsterdam, though, is too big a city. A single hit on a surveillance camera, an hour old, doesn't cut it for finding someone who doesn't want to be found. Given a few hours, with a full investigation, she could probably track him down.
If he's relocated to Amsterdam, he's on his way to Den Haag and she doesn't have a few hours.
Okay, she thinks, what would Jack do?
Then she gets a text message. Underneath Phone Booth Outside Amsterdam Centraal. And that's it. It's from Jack.
Jack would not have sat around waiting for the sudden intervention of divine aid.
This is when she's supposed to make a phone call alerting someone - someone like Tim Woods - that she's made contact with Jack, or with the enemy, or with both. Woods will bring down a squad of men, and they will interrogate anyone who might have seen anything, and possibly they'll call in the bomb squad to check the phone booth.
She goes to Amsterdam Centraal alone.
Taped underneath the pay phone is a manila envelope (which is better than a file folder and worse than a paperclip). Inside the envelope is a packet of papers and photos. It's everything she wants. Nine names, with photographs; the identities of the members of the cell. It's vindication. Accumulating this undercover would have been a massive risk, one even Jack would have taken only if the stakes were enormous. She flips past the photos. Her blood runs cold.
She calls Woods. "Listen. I just received a pickup from Jack. You need to get the President out now. Out of the city. Off the continent."
Behind the names and photos are schematics she wouldn't understand if she didn't speak Russian. But she does speak Russian, and she knows that she is looking at the designs for a Russian-made suitcase nuke. It's primitive, and small, and it wouldn't be enough to devastate a city. But it would certainly take out, say, a city square, and every diplomat, emissary, and world leader within it.
Over the phone, Renee can't be certain of Woods's reaction to the information she relays. She knows he's good at his job. She can imagine him thinking it over quickly, working through a few possibilities. He says "Fine. We'll begin evacuating the President and the other heads of state. I'll coordinate the response here personally. Renee," he says - she knows what he's going to say before he says it - "Obviously, send me pictures. But - I need you to give me the originals, as soon as you can. In person."
And throw herself into the blast zone. For the first time in her life, she thinks about saying no, about running and never looking back. But Woods is staying there. She can't leave him to die, even if she couldn't have changed things.
And there's Jack. She promises herself that this is the last time, that she'll never have to do this again, and gets on the train.
---
The Netherlands, so far as Renee can tell, is composed of a few very old cities and a metric assload of marshland and old, broken-down windmills. She understands the President wanting to meet her allies halfway, but she could have chosen Paris, or London, or Rome. No, it had to be Den Haag, all two and a half syllables of it, just to tie the tongue of every foreign policy expert across the next half century.
It isn't a long train ride, but she is able to catch twenty minutes' sleep, and is only woken when her phone chimes as they pull into the station. She answers.
"It's Chloe. We just got four members of the cell on a surveillance camera outside the station."
"All right. Direct me." She steps off the train, patting at her jacket for the concealed weapon there. She doesn't need to, really - she knows its weight so well it is a part of her wardrobe.
Then she turns a corner and there they are, loading two gigantic duffel bags into a white van. "I could use some backup," she says to Chloe.
"Three minutes," says Chloe.
"I've gotta go." Then, having hung up, she shouts "Hey!" Possibly not her most eloquent moment.
They turn to look at her, then one of them starts shouting and waving his hands at the others. They don't stop; they hurry.
So she shoots out the tires. The screams around her remind her she just pulled out a firearm in the middle of a train station in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of Den goddamn Haag. The man is still screaming, but now it sounds more like cursing. They've got weapons too, and for a while she loses track of what's happening.
"Walker. Walker!" She becomes aware of herself, and she thinks perhaps ten minutes have passed. I'm Renee Walker, she thinks. Jack Bauer loves me, and when we're done we're going to go home and never answer that goddamn phone again. It's Cole Ortiz who's shouting, holding her shoulders. She looks at her sidearm, now free of ammunition.
"What?"
"It's over. We got the others, too. It's done."
Just like that.
On the way back, Ortiz explains: it wasn't just like that. The cell had split into two groups. When Jack, with the others, had realized that the first had been taken out, he had shot the driver of the second van and run it off the road. He'd been shot himself (she held her breath), but he'd managed to call in for assistance and it had turned out to be just a graze (she lets it out).
She doesn't even realize that she isn't fully aware until she finally reaches Jack. He smiles at her, the lines around his eyes and his lips rearranging in that way, those ridiculous glasses discarded on the table in front of him. The world snaps into focus. She hugs him. He laughs.
"I can't do this again," she says.
"Never," he says.
They take a helicopter to London to see the President personally, and during the two hour trip a series of quiet arrests are made based on Jack's statement. Renee knows none of the names except by reputation, but Jack says one of them is a friend to Chloe. She'll tell Chloe to get out, too, when next they speak.
And the President waits for them in the small evening light at the helipad. Even there, Jack won't let go of her. She might confess she's not exactly pushing him away either. There is a look of familiar pain in the President's eyes, of recognition of family lost.
And the President smiles in that honest way she does, and extends her hands to clasp theirs. Jack takes the President's right, with his left, and Renee takes the President's left, with her right.
And the President says "It's been an honor to know you both. I wish I could give you medals."
"There's no need, ma'am." That was probably Jack, but it could have been her.
"Thank you," says the President. "The truth is I've never known two people who have served their country as well."
Hearing her say that, Renee knows utterly why Jack keeps doing this, and why she keeps doing this. They will never stop doing this.
There will be more days like this, he and her desperately shoving back against the encroachment of barbarism. These days will stretch on to the end of time, and they will be in all of them. They will be remembered for these days. They will define themselves in these days. They will do it together.
---
Fin.
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