If this depresses you guys, I'm sorry... It just got stuck in my head and I couldn't let go until I wrote it down...
He was just about to go pick up Audrey when his cell phone rang. He groaned, hoping to God that it wasn't something that would force him to cancel on their second date.
"This is Bauer."
He didn't know why he still answered his phone like that; he was supposed to have put all that behind him.
"Jack… it's Michelle."
He froze in the middle on putting on his jacket. He'd only spoken to her a few times after Tony's release, only to hear her sound more desperate every time he called. She had never called him before.
"Michelle… hey, how are you? How's Tony?"
It was a stupid question to ask, and he was truly afraid of the answer.
"I…"
Her voice cracked, which only increased his fear. Michelle was so strong, possibly the strongest woman he'd ever met. He'd never seen her cry before; even the day they'd taken Tony away she'd somehow managed to stay composed, although the pain in her eyes didn't escape him as she came to him and asked him if he could please try to do something. He recognized pain when he saw it, and now he could hear more of it in her voice than he had ever heard before.
"I left him, Jack."
It was as if his heart stopped for just a second as she finally voiced what they had both seen coming for a while now.
"When?" was the only question he could muster.
"This morning." Her answer was barely more than a whisper.
"How did he take it?" The words were out of his mouth before he realized his mistake.
"Dammit, Jack, how do you think he took it?" she snapped, her voice rising for the first time, "He just won't realize that I can't… I can't…"
"I know," he said soothingly.
There was a silence, and then he asked softly, as if it would soften her answer, "Are you filing for divorce?"
He heard the sharp intake of her breath and hated himself for making her think about that.
"I don't know what I'm gonna do," she said tiredly, sounding pitiful in a way that he had never heard before. Over the last couple of months he had come to see a different side to Michelle that he never would have expected from her. "I mean," she continued, "I might wait a few weeks, but Jack… I can't wait forever. If he doesn't do something…"
He wanted to ask her if she still loved him but he didn't dare, not wanting to upset her further and instinctively knowing the answer anyway. He had the feeling that her departure had been a lot more fierce than Teri's 'I love you but I can't live with you when you're like this' that had chased him away few years before. But then again, he had never started drinking.
Instead, he heard himself asking, "Where are you now?"
"At my brother's."
"So he's still at the house," he concluded.
She laughed bitterly, and he subconsciously shuddered at the sound. It was so unnatural for her, and he felt a flash of anger towards Tony for causing her to be something that was so against her nature.
"He's never at the house, Jack. Not anymore."
He didn't know what to say to that. Again, there was a silence filled with a pain they now both fully understood. Finally, he got up his courage and asked her softly, "You want me to talk to him?"
He sensed her hesitation, and didn't blame her for it. Although she didn't say the words, they still hung in the air, unquestionably present even through the connection of the phone.
It's not like it helped the last time.
He remembered his shock at seeing Tony, just two months before. Gone was the man who had so naturally delegated authority, who had run CTU with ease, potential and professionalism. Instead, there stood a shell of the man he had once been, a shell of the man Jack had always so fiercely depended on to come through for him. He was unshaven, bitter, awkward- and there was a haunted look in his eyes that was so obviously not only the cause of his need for alcohol.
Jack had tried to reason with him, but as usual when the two of them tried to talk about pain or hurt anything personal at all, it had ended in a brutal argument that had left them both fuming.
He remembered yelling as Tony stomped off, "Goddammit, Tony, Teri left me for a lot less than what you've done already. You'd better fix this, or you're going to lose her, do you understand me?"
Tony had turned around with a fury in his eyes that Jack had seen only once before, and his voice was also frighteningly similar to the harsh words he had uttered about Teri's death on the day that Michelle was taken.
"You think you went through hell in Kosovo?" he sneered, "Well, try prison, Jack."
Jack felt the guilt start to well up inside of him, being familiar enough with it to recognize it as soon as it entered his body. And as much as he tried to tell himself it was Tony's fault, Tony's fault for pushing her away, he couldn't quite make the hated feeling go away. He never could.
"I'm sorry, Michelle."
She thought he was merely offering his condolences, and he could hear her swallow hard.
"You know what the worst part of it is?" she asked quietly, the tears in her voice now too obvious for either of them to be able to ignore.
"What?" he prodded her, though he wasn't really sure he wanted to know the reply.
It was a long time before she answered, and when she finally did, her voice was so filled with pain that he cringed even before he processed the meaning of her words.
"I miss him already."
His guts twisted as his heart went out to her. He wanted to smack Tony, shake him back into his senses.
Goddammit, you bastard, don't you see what you're giving up? You were willing to sacrifice the world for her, and now you're letting her go without so much as a fight…
"I'm so sorry," he stammered again, and this time she caught on to his meaning.
"It's not your fault, Jack," she said simply, "You did everything you could."
He still wasn't convinced, but he just said, "Yeah."
Another silence, and he sensed that she was going to pull away. And sure enough, after a few seconds she said, "Well… I'd better go. If you talk to him…"
Her voice trailed away, and he quickly said, "Yeah?" in a fierce hope that there was something- anything- he could do.
"No, never mind," she said, making his heart sink, "It's probably best if you don't…"
He nodded, unaware that she couldn't see him. But one last thing made him speak. "Michelle?"
"Yeah?"
"Take care of yourself."
"Yeah." There was a resignation to her words. "You too, Jack."
As he hung up the phone, he remembered their wedding. He'd never really been a huge fan of big party's with lots of socializing, and initially hadn't really planned going, but Kim had wanted to, and so he had gone along more as a favor to her than anything else. And he remembered thinking as he saw them so obviously happy together, that for once he couldn't imagine anything ever coming between them. Not even the job.
He had been wrong. He was never wrong, he'd always had en inexplicable gift for seeing the truth of the matter, and yet, he'd been so very wrong about this.
They had always been his proof that life could be good- that what he had had with Teri was not just a grey memory he'd idealized after her death, or a figment of his imagination. It had been what he'd hoped for Kim and Chase. It was what he'd hoped, perhaps one day again, for himself.