Renee Walker went down on her knees alongside the river and waited to die. She felt nothing. No regret, no fear, not even relief...that is, until Jack Bauer spoke. She had almost forgotten he was there. It was so intimate, his being inside her head like this. It was like sharing one body, one space, their own private reality. The comm crackled to life. The world blurred and dissolved into static, a chaotic mess. There was just the two of them when he spoke, two particles left to collide or separate across the infinite darkness. "Renee, this is Jack. I know you can hear me." She looked into the black eye of Vlad's gun and listened, the river lapping at her back. Jack would be too late, of course. He would find her floating alongside Ziya in this stinking river and there was nothing anyone could do about that now. And for that reason only, Renee felt sorry. Not sorry she was about to die, but sorry that her death would add yet another stone to that bag of regrets Jack shouldered on a daily basis. He would blame himself, would always blame himself, and for that, Renee Walker felt breathless, unspeakable regret.
In her peripheral vision, Ziya jerked and dropped to the ground. She never took her eyes off Vlad. In reality, she never even heard the shot. Renee was too concentrated on touching that still darkness, that quiet void where Jack listened as the last moments of her life slipped like sand through his fingers.
"Go ahead, get it over with," she told Vlad. And she meant it. She hadn't felt anything, not really felt anything since she interrogated Wilson, and she felt everything then. Her anger had been the fuel. Anger for Larry, for Jack. She was angry at the institutions she had vowed to serve, the oaths she had broken. So she put it all on Wilson and left nothing for herself. It was dark ecstasy, hungry and foreboding. It was justice, leaving her drunk and completely sated. It did not leave her unchanged.
"Please Renee, don't do this. Please," he said breathlessly. Jack's voice was steel-cut velvet. The Jack Bauer Tone of Meaningful Concern was always delivered an octave lower than his normal voice. But she couldn't comply, not this time. She couldn't do what he wanted because her living would only bring him more pain. She remembered seeing him a few hours earlier. He had opened the door to the conference room and said "Hey." He had neglected to knock. She was surprised to see him, almost pleased. She hugged him briefly, awkwardly. He smelled like Jack, faintly of aftershave and a masculine tang that was uniquely him. And he had looked so…well. Apart from maintaining his physique during recuperation, he had apparently acquired some sort of peace, maybe even happiness. The lines around his eyes had relaxed a bit, the usual grim set of his mouth more placid and pliable.
"I had to be sure." Renee blinked, pulled from her revelry. Vlad lowered the gun, licking his lips and leering. She refocused her attention, momentarily severing the tether to that distant voice. She was in. She hadn't died tonight. Strangely, she was relieved. Over the comm she heard Jack exhale sharply...he had been holding his breath. He had been silent through most of the last tense moments with Vlad, listening, willing time to slow. Processing, but not judging.
Back at CTU, Jack had grabbed her arm tenderly, purposefully running his hand up her sleeve. He had neglected to ask permission. Renee knew what he was doing, always knew. Just like he knew she was telling the truth when she told Vlad her life was junk. Gingerly, he traced the jagged purple scar on the inside of her wrist with his thumb, transmitting such heat her insides instinctively coiled and her cheeks flushed. "This is too important," he intoned, his voice dipping low again, his eyes soft and probing. She looked away. She couldn't look at him because if she met his eyes he would know everything. He would know that the scar still stings, sometimes, especially when it rains, and that more than once she'd considered trying again. He would know what his touch does to her.
Suddenly his proximity became dizzying, overwhelming. The fingers that hovered above her wrist might as well have been his naked form melding into hers because his body, scent and touch were TOO CLOSE and no one gets that close to Renee Walker anymore, so she told him off and left.
"Renee, I've got a visual on you." Jack was there, her anchor in the dark. Two particles collided on that miserable plane of existence that constitutes Renee Walker's reality. She breathed more evenly now, blandly contemplating a future just a little longer than five minutes. She didn't die, but she was still broken and he was still so good, so Jack, so undeserving of being tangled up with a wack job like her. She didn't deserve his help or his care, and yet both of those things were freely offered. She wished she had something to give him in return, but there was only the yawning abyss where her soul should be. Something, but she had nothing. Not yet.