Trust
When they got back from Catalina on Sunday evening it was dusk. After bringing the packages and luggage in from the car Kate checked her machine. She had over fifteen messages, mostly from other members of the committee who were busy finalizing the plans for the fundraiser planned for the latter in the week. It was to be a cocktail party in one of the museum galleries, and they needed to know if Kate had heard from somebody and if she knew whether somebody else was coming and was she willing to call so- and-so, and of course somebody else had neglected to deal with the final decision on the floral arrangements so could Kate...
Jack had been checking his cell all weekend and had already dealt with the few things that had come up. Luckily it had been pretty quiet and it wasn't his on-call weekend anyway. When he understood what Kate was trying to plow her way through he decided to make himself scarce. He'd gotten new running shoes on Saturday and Kate had also talked him into buying some new sweats and some spiffy shorts, to replace his old ones, the ones that she had finally declared 'obscene' because they had so many holes in them. He'd go for a run and she'd be off the phone by the time he got back and then maybe they'd throw together a salad and they could watch TV or read and just get ready for the week. Just a normal Sunday evening, winding down from the weekend.
He pulled out the clothes and the shoes but couldn't find a pair of scissors in the bedroom to cut the tags off with, so he wandered into the kitchen to ask her where the scissors were. But she was on the phone already, deep in conversation with her friend Patty, so he took himself off to the study to see if he could find a pair in a desk drawer. When they weren't in the middle drawer he sat down and started to try the others, until he got to the middle drawer on the left side. As he rustled down through the loose papers and the extra boxes of pens he uncovered a thick accordion file folder, tied up with those little ribbons. His name was on it. He weighed it in his hand for a moment. Then he opened it.
She was finally done about forty-five minutes later and Kate had a vague recollection that Jack had come in at some point and wanted her to find something for him. But the house was still. Maybe he'd found what he was looking for and headed out to run, but just in case he hadn't...
Kate entered the room, stopping just inside the doorway. Jack was sitting at the desk, her papers spread out in front of him. Reprints of the newspaper articles about the assassination he had planned and carried out. The translations from the Spanish language press reporting other "highlights" of his tenure as chief enforcer for the Salazars: bombings, hijackings, shoot-outs with other cartels and with the police, executions. Witnesses who suddenly lost their memories, or who disappeared. The timeline she'd drawn on a legal pad. Pictures. He was looking off at the far wall, hadn't yet realized she was there. Looking off in the distance. What was he seeing? He turned to her.
"How long have you known?" he asked mildly. Kate hesitated, her heart pounding and her mouth dry. She didn't want him to find out what she knew, not this way. Now it was all laid out in front of him.
"Since the night you called me. Since the restaurant". He looked puzzled. "I don't understand". She walked over and, pulling up the footrest, sat down next to him.
"I had to know what happened to you, Jack. You were so sad, so worn out and unhappy. I didn't know if you'd ever tell me. I had to find out for myself."
He continued to look at her, still confused.
"Then tell me, what have the last few weeks been about?" He paused.
"I wanted to tell you, a million times, I wanted to tell you. But I couldn't do it. When things were good I was afraid of ruining them. And when things weren't, I just didn't want to make them any worse. I didn't know where to start, how to begin. But to find out that you know, anyway, at least some of it..." He tilted his head, honestly perplexed.
"Kate, what are you doing with me?"
"Jack, I'm telling you, this doesn't matter".
"Not matter? How can it not matter? Kate, look at what I did. Innocent people. How can it not matter?"
"I mean, it doesn't matter between you and me. I told you it didn't matter before, on the beach."
He reached over and traced the line of her cheek.
"Kate, it was all for nothing. It didn't do any good." He looked back at the papers "I did all this, and more besides. And there's nothing to balance it out. Nothing to make it worth something. Don't you understand?"
"No, you're the one who doesn't understand, Jack. I don't care if it worked or not. When I said you could make mistakes and I would still love you, I meant it. I'm not ashamed of you or disappointed in you. I don't want you to have to do things like this. But I know you do. I understand, Jack, and it's all right".
He went on, shaking his head, not hearing a word she said. "I'm sorry Kate. I didn't want any of this to come back on you. But I've brought it back anyway. I blew it. And there's nothing to show for it. Nothing."
It was very quiet for what seemed like a long time.
"So you think that, as long as things work out ok, it's fine, and its ok for me to be with you?" Kate said, finally. "But if they don't, and something doesn't work the way you wanted it to or expected it to...if you fail...then I'm supposed to leave you? Do you think it gets turned off and on like that?"
She paused, seeing it clearly now. To Jack it was as simple as a mathematical equation. And what was wrong was that blank space on the right side of the equal sign, which couldn't mitigate or balance out what he'd done for Ramon, which showed up on the left side of the equal sign. And the other piece of it was, how badly he needed to talk to her, and how much he risked if they actually had that conversation.
"Jack, did you really think that keeping all this secret was the only way we could be together again? And that, if I ever knew, I would send you away? That I wouldn't love you anymore?"
He avoided her eyes, staring at his hands, and then off to the side, and then back to his hands again, Because of course the answer to her question was "Yes". That was exactly what he expected her to do.
She was a civilian, a woman, she wasn't supposed to know what really went on, how absurdly cheap human life was, how violent and pitiless his work was. That she had seen it for one day, that it had reached deep into her own family, to her sister, well, that was an aberration, even more of a reason why Kate shouldn't have to learn any more about it. Why she should be protected from it. It was his job to go out and deal with it so people like Kate didn't have to even know it existed. And he was supposed to be strong enough to keep it to himself once he came home. Those were the rules; that's how things were supposed to work.
But this time...he couldn't even do that part of his job anymore. First off he was barely protecting her, barely keeping her from being hurt. His performance in that area was pitiable. If he hadn't gone to score, if they had gone for Kate first, or for both of them at once, there was no telling...
And now she was going to know about all the rest of it. Because something was starting to go off inside of him. He was sitting there, next to her, and he could feel the pressure building. He was losing the struggle to keep it in, to keep it from exploding. He wasn't strong enough, not this time. What had happened with Hector and Ramon...he couldn't deal with it by himself anymore. Not when she was sitting there, waiting patiently for him, looking at him, saying she was ready to hear him, he could tell her, it would be all right.
"Doesn't it matter at all?" she said, in the face of his silence "that I knew and I still wanted to be with you? That I love you, and I also know what happened?" She smiled at him, a little, almost sad smile, and touched his cheek. "Can't you understand what that means?"
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead wearily. "This isn't everything," he warned her. "It isn't even the worst thing."
"We have to start somewhere, don't we?" she said softly. He looked at her.
"I've been lying to you," he added. "I've been lying and lying and ..."
"Its not going to work, Jack" she interrupted, gently. "You're not going to scare me off"
"I'm sorry, Kate. I'm sorry you have to know all this about me." The tears were glistening in his eyes, but his expression was bitter, ironic "What was it Marie used to ask you? What was it like to sleep with a paid assassin? A murderer? I guess she had my number, didn't she."
"Its ok, Jack, I can do this. I can handle whatever it is you need to talk to me about." She took his hand in both of hers. He squeezed it tightly. Kate noticed, for a split second, how that always seemed to help him, if he could just hold her hand he seemed to be able to talk to her a little more. "I'm scared, Kate". "I know. Its ok to feel scared". "I'm scared you're going to...please don't leave me, Kate." "I'm here, Jack. I'm not going to leave you". She put her arms around him. He buried his head in them, and let himself cry.
Kate went into the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face. Even though she'd only slept for a few hours she was wide awake now, and she knew sleep wouldn't come back. She patted her face dry, hesitated for just a moment, and then she looked in the cabinet under the sink and pulled out, from the back, his old leather travel kit, zipped up tight. It was where he kept his travel toothbrush and his spare razor and also, apparently, his drugs. What a strange phrase: "Jack's drugs". She stared at it for a moment and then she opened it. There was a silver case inside. And inside that there was everything else she expected to find, just like in the movies. One bag of white powder was almost empty and the other was bulging full. There were also some small, brown bottles. Well, now something else made sense.
The other morning when she'd picked up his pants from where he'd left them the night before, on the back of a chair, his wallet had fallen out, spilling its contents on the rug. There was a wad of bills, twenties and a few hundreds. Jack was in the shower and she'd reached down to pick the money up and realized that he was carrying almost twelve hundred dollars in cash. He'd come out of the bathroom to get dressed and she'd asked him, as casually as she could, if he expected to go shopping that afternoon. His back was to her but he had stopped putting on his shirt for a split second...just for a fraction of a second...and then asked her why she asked, turning around and reaching for his tie, looking at her
She'd explained about the wallet, adding "You've got quite a wad of bills in there. Going jewelry shopping, by any chance?" She'd tried to sound playful, unconcerned. But seeing him carrying that much money around made her uneasy. What could he possibly need that much cash for? He gave her the lopsided smile.
"No, actually, Kim needed a loan, she needs to get some work done on her car. I didn't have a check on me yesterday, so I took it out in cash." And then, very smoothly, he'd changed the subject. "Are you teaching tonight? Do you want to meet somewhere after work, to get a bite?"
And that was all. But now she knew what the money was really for. How frequently was he spending that kind of money, how long was what he had now going to last him? How bad of a habit did he really have?
She looked at him on her way to the kitchen, asleep on his side. He hadn't moved since she'd finally turned out the light at four am and now it was seven. She forced herself to look down, at his arm, though it felt wrong, like she was invading some kind of privacy. The small, occasional blood stains on the arms of his shirts, first the left one, and now, sometimes, the right one too. She'd only noticed it a few times, since he insisted on taking the shirts to the laundry himself. That was something else she had been uneasy about, like the cash in his wallet. Something that was not quite right, though she couldn't put her finger on what it was, exactly, that was just a hair off.
She looked at his arm. And now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see that it wasn't a rash, or prickly heat, or poison ivy, or mosquito bites, or anything else she'd told herself was there. They were called tracks and they were right there on his arm, where she had refused to see them before because it didn't make any sense to see them there before. And if the blood stains were on both sleeves, it meant he'd started branching out, learning to do it with his left hand into his right arm, so it wouldn't get too bad in this one, to delay reaching the point where he'd have to find a vein that was less convenient and less conspicuous.
And then there were the times he'd come in at one, two o'clock in the morning, coming from 'work', wearing sunglasses in from the garage, as if the few lights she'd still have on in the house hurt his eyes. Pitch black outside and he'd be wearing sunglasses. Because he must have been high and his eyes looked like what she'd seen last night, and the light hurt them. And he'd want to go right to bed. Of course he'd want to go right to bed. He'd worked all day. But he was also trying to get there before he nodded off in mid-sentence. Because it was probably in the car, too. And in his office. And at the apartment he still kept. It was probably everywhere around him, always someplace handy, because, with his job, he never knew where he would have to be and when. Why not keep it all around him, carry it with him everywhere he went. It was in him, wasn't it? She decided to let him sleep. She knew she couldn't face work today, not after last night. They still had so many things to talk about. Let somebody else protect the country for a day; he needed to sleep.
She mechanically fed the cat and poured herself some juice, taking it to the table. And when she got there it was like it hit her all of a sudden and she needed to sit down; she felt dizzy, and her legs couldn't support her weight. She sat down quickly. The enormity of what he'd told her last night hit her. It took a long time for him to tell it, off and on into the early hours of the morning, because he couldn't get it all out at once, he'd had to stop and pull himself together along the way. Especially to get out what he'd said at the end
She had thought she knew a lot, but now she understood that what she'd known was nothing. She had thought she was prepared to hear it, but she really wasn't prepared. How do you prepare to hear the things Jack had told her? She'd thought she understood what he faced, perhaps some of what he felt, what he made himself do, and why he made himself do it, but she'd never imagined, never conceived of, the alternatives he had to choose among.
Jack had molded himself into this person she didn't recognize. He had taken on his role as convincingly as any actor who had ever stepped upon any stage. Ramon Salazar demanded absolute, unquestioning obedience, and Jack had given it to him. Ramon Salazar demanded tangible, measurable results, and Jack had produced them. Ramon Salazar had no pity, knew no limits, would do anything, absolutely anything, to get what he wanted, and Jack had become his right arm. And, with all that, she had the sinking feeling that last night they had just scratched the surface of what Jack could tell her about just what people like Salazar will do for money and power. Jack was still holding back, still hadn't told her everything, not by a long shot. And yet she felt stunned and completely overwhelmed by what he had already said.
And then, during one of the pauses, when his head was in her lap and she was stroking his hair, and he was finally quiet, and thinking, he'd told her, in addition to what he'd done with and for Ramon and Hector, that he needed to tell her about something else, about something he had brought back with him; a little remembrance of his time with the Salazars. Some thing that made the tattoo on his arm so insignificant it was laughable.
Jack had sat up next to her and put his arm around her, and pulled her close, holding her for a good ten minutes before he started to talk again. "I need to tell you something else," he said again. She started to say something comforting and reassuring, but he'd gently stopped her. "This is one" he continued "that's going to hit you out of left field. It's something you had a right to know from the very beginning, from the very first night we were back together". He paused, and then went on "If I were a better man, a more honest man, I would have told you this long before now". He let her go, ran his hands through his hair uneasily, and then continued, starting in what sounded like the middle of his story.
"You have to understand that drugs were everywhere down there. They were as easy to find and buy as a quart of milk. Easier, really, because of course we were the people who were selling them. I found out pretty quickly that using them made the rest of it easier. The booze helped too, but the drugs did the job better. And the more things I did for the Salazars, the deeper I got into it, the more I was using.
"I'm not talking about smoking a few joints here and there, Kate. That was like taking three aspirin for a headache instead of two. I'm talking about the heavy stuff". He stopped for a minute, to let what he was saying sink in. "I'm talking about coke and crack and heroin. I tried them all". He stopped. And then forced himself to get to the point.
"After a while, I was using so much, and so often, it got so I had to use them. Just to do some of the things I just told you about. Or, more exactly, to stop thinking about them afterwards". Kate followed him with her eyes, keeping herself outwardly calm, but inside her head she was reeling. Was she actually hearing this, or was it just a bad, awful dream???
"What are you saying, Jack?" she heard someone ask him, woodenly. Was that her voice?
He'd turned and looked at her, reaching up to tuck a strand of her hair back in place before he answered her. "I'm saying I got hooked, Kate. That's what I brought back with me," he said, with finality. "I brought back a drug problem. A big drug problem. An addiction, actually. To heroin." And now he had to say it flat out, so there wasn't anything left that either of them could hide from. "I'm addicted to heroin, Kate".
She looked at him in total, absolute, disbelief. not comprehending anything of what he had just said. Why was he joking about something like this? But Jack was looking at her so calmly, so steadily.
"How is this possible? It's not possible. You would never do something like that".
"Kate, its true".
"How can you, how did you...do they know about this at work?" Wasn't it ironic, she thought later: of all the millions of questions she could have asked him at that point, this was the first one that she managed to get out.
"No. they don't know. Chase was getting suspicious, I think, but I took care of that. And Tony...sometimes I wonder about Tony, he picks up on a lot more than you would think he would. But as far as officially, no, they don't know anything. I've been careful".
"But when do you...how do you...Jack, tell me this isn't true".
"Kate, I would give anything, just about anything, to tell you it's not true. But I'm sick of lying to you. I'm sorry for having lied to you. I don't know which one I need your forgiveness for more, for the lies or for the truth".
"How, Jack? How did you hide this from me?" And the second she asked the question, she knew the answer. All the nights when she'd wake up around one or two, and he'd be coming back to bed, and fall back to sleep so quickly, so completely. No wonder that he always turned from her if she approached him then, begging off that he was too tired. 'Wait until the morning, Kate' or, trying to make a joke of it: 'God, woman, you're going to kill me'. It wasn't just sleep; he was nodding off, so high that it was as if he'd passed out. He'd done what he needed to do here, in her house, in the bathroom, a few steps from their bed.
He didn't answer for a while, then said "Out in the car, before I came in, if I had to. Then, while you were asleep. I tried to do it here as little as possible. But when I started sleeping over more and more..." his voice trailed off.
"You haven't had any nightmares," she'd said, now understanding what had made her uneasy about that, too. "Especially after you came back from an assignment, you used to have them once, twice a week, it was almost predictable; by the way you were acting, I could almost tell, but you've been back five weeks and yet you haven't had one, not one". "I can't believe this" she went on, almost talking to herself. "It isn't anything you would do. It isn't like you at all".
"Remember when I told you I'm somebody you don't know?" He had that hard edge to his voice again. "Everything I've told you tonight should show you that I'm a different person than I was before I went down there". He looked at her.
"I came back here, looking like this Jack Bauer guy, but sometimes I really think he's dead". "Jack, no..." "I think he's dead." He said firmly "And there's somebody else, me, who's parading around, pretending to be him. I don't much like this new guy, Kate. I don't think you'll like him either, once you get to really know him".
He took her hands, looking at them. "Sometimes, when I'm with you, I feel like the old version of him. When I saw you that first night, when we went out to dinner, I felt like I'd found myself again. I felt like I was finally, finally, home. And when we went to the beach, remember what it felt like, to be together again?" he smiled, wistfully.
"But that feeling doesn't last too long, I've found. And then this new guy shows up again. The junkie. And all the rest of it".
"I'm sorry, Kate, for bringing this crap into your life".
He'd stood up and leaned over to kiss her cheek. "I should go now".
"No, I don't want you to go. I want you to stay with me". She was gripped by an overpowering fear, a premonition, that if she let him go now he would truly be lost, so lost he'd never find his way back to her again. She kissed him and hugged him, folding her head against his chest. He hung back from her, his arms at his sides. For half a minute, maybe longer, he kept himself away from her. But then he gave in again, and he held her, taking what she offered him.
"I'm sorry, Kate, I'm sorry," he told her softly. She leaned back to look up at him. "We have to talk about this more, but I'm too tired to go on now, and you must be exhausted. Let's get some sleep, and we can talk some more in the morning, about what we're going to do".
A cloud passed over his already drained face, and he started to tell her something, but then he decided not to. She pulled away from him. "I have to pick up some things in the kitchen, put some food away. Why don't you go on ahead? I'll be there in a little while".
By the time she got to the bedroom, he was already fast asleep. She climbed in beside him. "Jack?" she asked softly. He didn't respond. "Wake up, Jack". She shook his shoulder, gently. After several tries he finally opened his eyes. The light was still on. His eyes were open briefly. The pupils were huge, unfocused, vacant, dull. "Kate, turn out the light" he said vaguely. And then his eyes closed, and he was gone again.
And now it was the morning and here she was sitting at the table, trying to map out what to do next about this immense problem that was facing them. Because he needed help. She had to get Jack some help. This was way too big for them to deal with on their own. By his own account he had been using for months, not casually or on occasion, but regularly. It was a planned for and accommodated and necessary part of every day of his life, a routine as ordinary as brushing his teeth.
Rehab would mean taking time off from work. It meant taking extended medical leave. It meant everyone at CTU would know, and then all of his contacts in the alphabet soup of agencies he worked with...the FBI, LAPD, the DIA, the NSA, and the CIA proper...everyone whose regard he valued, his entire professional community, would know. She knew how he thought, how he would want to handle this. Alone. By himself. In private. Because doing it any other way would expose a weakness, and the embarrassment he would experience doing it any other way would be excruciating.
But the biggest stumbling block, the one that dwarfed all the rest, was that his daughter would have to know. And he would have to tell her. Avoiding that conversation would be sufficient in and of itself for him to absolutely refuse to do anything at all. Kate knew there were no words to describe Jack's love for his daughter, or how frightened he was of ever losing her. She was his only family, the only piece of Teri that was still alive, the only artifact he still had of almost seventeen years of marriage. Besides, in his eyes she was still a child who needed above all to be protected. And he was supposed to be the father she could worship. Tell Kim? Jack would, literally, rather die.
And in some way that was the choice he had already made. Because, as foreign as the drug world was to Kate, she knew that if he kept at it, the heroin would kill him. It would gradually take over his entire life, or one day he would misjudge how much he could handle. Or he would be working, and need to be as alert as possible, his reflexes as quick as ever. And either or both would fail him because he had a buzz on, or he was a little too close to having had some, or a little too close to needing to have some. And Jack would be dead.
None of this could possibly be any news to him. He'd spent twenty years figuring out how things would go and understanding where they would end up. He had to know what was in store for him if he didn't stop. Off the top of his head he could probably lay out the odds of an overdose versus getting shot versus the likely, cumulative impact of months or years of drug abuse.
"Kate, aren't you going to work? Are you ok?"
She looked up and he was standing there, dressed for work, his gun and his badge clipped to his trousers and his suit coat over his arm, looking at her with a worried expression on his face. She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't even heard the shower going.
"I thought you'd want to sleep in today, so I didn't wake you. And then I thought I'd stay home so we could spend some time together".
He started rubbing her shoulders and bent down to kiss her good morning. "I know last night was hard on you". He moved in front of her and knelt down so he was looking up at her, visibly worried. " I think it was too much, wasn't it. I'm sorry, once I started talking I couldn't stop, Kate, it just took on a life of its own and I should have managed it better because you're not used to it, how could you be used to it. I'm sorry, I should have saved what I told you at the end for another night. But I've wanted to tell you so much for so long that it just...and at the same time I didn't. I tried not to but then"... "
Shhh, don't worry, Jack" She put her finger over his mouth, to quiet him. "I just need more sleep than you do. I've always wondered how you can get by with so little. I'll go back to bed in awhile, and then I'll be fine".
He gave her a quick smile and moved off to pour himself some juice. He left the smell of Bay Rhum aftershave behind him and also the smell of soap and of that cheap shampoo he insisted on using instead of just using what she used. His hair was still dark from the shower, glistening. And she noticed again that she'd have to get him to take that suit to the tailors. He was eating now but he still wasn't gaining any weight and the pants were hanging on him, scrunched up around the belt and not draping properly at all.
He was telling her he had so much to do today that he absolutely had to go in, he didn't have a choice, it was bad enough he would get in late, it was nine o'clock already, but they would talk some more tonight. Unless that thing they had to go to at the museum was tonight? He'd call her in the afternoon and they would see how things were going then. On his way to the garage he stopped to kiss her again, but he was also suddenly serious, and totally focused on her face.
"I know there are other things you think I should do. I promise you we'll talk about that, if not tonight, then tomorrow.
"Its just hard now," he continued. "I've always had a hard time coming back, you know that, its just worse this time. Did I do wrong, to tell you all that? I don't want you to be upset about it. And I don't want you to worry about me so much". Kate smiled at him again.
"Jack, I'm fine. I told you, if you need to tell me something, anything, I'm ready to hear it. You don't have to worry about that. I'm tougher than you think. Let's talk more tonight". His eyes were bright, clear, alert. The tiredness, the sadness, were gone too, at least this morning they were gone, for a little while.
As she heard his car pull out she asked herself if this was the man who had told her, not more than six hours ago, that he was really dead, or might as well be? Which Jack Bauer had she just been talking to?