A/N
This is set during the seventh season, on my take on what could happen. I've heard rumors that it's going to take place outside of CTU, but that's no excuse not to have a little scene like this at all when people are tortured/debriefed at CTU.
It's a little sappy, but as I.C sappy as the characters would allow me. (Dang it Mike! Be more like Milo! It'd be so much easier if you just had a whine like he did about how much you like Nadia!) Anyways...
There's no details of WHAT Doyle does for/with Jack, so just leave it up to your imagination. I was going to make it kidnapping Wayne Palmer or something, but maybe that's a little too far fetched (even for 24).
This is for Tigerlilly, Cherazz, chipsnopotatoes, LadeeBear, Remembrance Lane, Youngest Rider and all those who have contributed to the awesome archives of Nadia/Doyle that are amassing. You rock!
--- Consequences ---
Consequences were a funny thing - sometimes neither good nor bad, both the start of a path and the finish of one before leading in another direction. For Mike Doyle, consequences are what kept him up at night, thinking over the directions paths could have taken and ways to rectify the situation for the next time they occurred.
The consequences from him losing the majority of his vision left him stir crazy as he sat uselessly at home on a day when once his actions could have made all the difference.
Then the consequences of his restlessness and desire to be of use, was his teaming up with Bauer, the one person who wasn't afraid to use him as he was the one person that Bauer could trust to get the job done - eyesight or no eyesight.
Doyle was a man of action... and Jack never forgot that.
The consequences of Jack's mission now led Mike Doyle to be in a holding cell in the CTU headquarters where he once used to answer to, and had been waiting for all too long to be accepted back in its rungs.
Those consequences led to Nadia Yassir entering the door, guards at her side and barely hearing anything more than the thump of her heart pounding in her ears as she moved to sit down in front of him.
Mike and her were friends.
And now, from when he once held her neck in a room much similar to this, the tables had been completely turned and more awkward than it should have been.
"Mike..."
He turned and squinted at her, making out her small frame as she sat in front of him; although not able to see the details of her face he could tell that she was dressed in plain black, he couldn't help but have a small grin - same old Nadia. He hated to say she was predictable... but really, she was. He could read her like a book... and even though he never told her, he loved her for it.
He felt as though he could hear the sound of her heart breaking in her voice, but to Nadia, she heard naught but her own heart herself, as she tried to pull it all together - yet again - and act professional even if he was going to see right through her act.
"Nadia."
She was there to talk to him, before they resorted to more desperate measures, if it should come to that. Nadia knew it wouldn't. Mike was an honest man, even if others around him (who never knew him) doubted him on his actions today alone.
But she was speechless and silence echoed around them, waiting for the moment it would be broken and the two of them could move on from the shock of possible repercussions of this whole event.
After a moments hesitation and pondering over what to do her hand glided over the table in a quick movement and grabbed his, her thumb grazing over his fingers.
He held onto her hand (her feeble gesture) back, more tightly than he knew he should have done.
"I have to ask you why you did it." she said at last, knowing that every action was being monitored by several people outside the room and even on the floor. She said it emphasizing the 'have to' - this was a mandatory action and she had no doubt in her mind to why he did it, and even if it was the right thing to do.
He'd encouraged her to go back to her job and now that landed her here, in the prosecuting seat opposite him.
The bitter consequences of his good will and forgiveness toward her.
He released her hand and pushed himself up out of the seat, his hand now finding his hair and running through it as if it stressed him greatly to have to answer what she already knew.
She got up too, quite formally and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from moving about and avoiding the question.
"Mike."
She wondered about the times when she would have called him 'Agent Doyle', it felt so open to regard him personally instead of professionally now... but he had no titles. He had been out on severance pay for some time and she knew how insane it had been driving him.
He'd gotten through the first few months fine, but once it started getting past the third month, Nadia wasn't really sure what he'd do... or what she could do for him...
And then there was Jack, who had no other experienced field agents to trust, who knew he could trust Doyle now in a very short amount of time... and who was still missing and partly the reason for their speedy attentiveness to him after being taken back to CTU.
He gritted his teeth. He'd become so bitter after the months of losing his eyesight. Sometimes he joked about it, but deep down she knew it wasn't ok. "Let me guess, you need to hear the words, right?"
Although his voice was light, unquestioning in her authority and submissive by all counts, she could tell this was difficult for him.
Her voice quaked, "you know the protocol, Mike."
'Please don't make this harder than it already is' she kept saying inside her head, as if he could hear her somehow.
"Fine. You want my answer?" he looked as closely into her eyes as he could, even though his vision could barely make out a glimmer of the deep, brown color he remembered her eyes as being. "I was sick of not being out in the field... I was sick of not doing anything... I was sick of not being able to do... this."
He moved his hand up to her face and leaned in to kiss her as softly as he could allow himself, while still getting all his frustrations out of being too physically impotent to do what he had to do, and too emotionally impotent to do what he thought he could never do, up until this moment where it really didn't matter WHAT he did, because the outcome was going to be the same anyway.
Nadia reciprocated, knowing full well the cameras were still on them, and willing to take any consequences of this day this time around, because there was no way she'd make the same mistakes as last time.
A tear soon stirred in the corner of her eye and trailed down, meeting both their lips as Nadia leaned in closer to him, hoping to drink in what she could before the inevitability of the next few seconds of the guards seizing her and taking her to a holding room of her own... where she may or may not be fired for real.
As she heard the opening of the door behind them and the footsteps nearing, Nadia brushed her lips up against his one last time, neither one having broken the inital kiss, but only alternating between passion and gentleness in the last thirty seconds - the two different, vastly confusing sides of their relationship - where each of them couldn't imagine being comforted by anyone else, but couldn't deny the attraction that had been between them all along.
"You're not going to give up Jack." she whispered to him, as more of a statement than a question. She hadn't known this all along, when she first entered the room. But she should have. She knew Mike Doyle by now and she knew his integrity and loyalty, while still to his country, was no longer to the institution - was no longer to the officials and the White House he'd once thought had the answers. He was working for a greater cause. Because now that he'd lost it all, nothing else mattered.
"And I'm not going to give up you." he replied, although meaning it in a different context.
Her eyes softened at the sentiment, one she kept replaying over and over in her head as she waited in holding for the storm to finally blow over.
The consequences of not giving up Jack ended up not being as good or as bad as they expected.
Doyle could never get his job back at CTU upon the improvement of his condition, nor could he get any government position ever again. Although blacklisted, several good things came out of it.
One was his reason to stay in L.A, his relationship with Nadia - for whom he realized was worth throwing everything away for, even if he'd chided Jack once for a similar thing with Audrey.
Secondly, that Nadia's stand on the side of Jack (and himself) helped her to keep her job, when Jack's decisions once again turned out to be impeccably solid.
Oh, and lastly, Jack saved the United States again, although he never got thanked for it.
And the consequences of Mike Doyle's promise that day in the holding room, lasted the rest of their lives, sealed with the very same kiss of tenderness and vulnerability that reminded them there was something more worth living for than the fates of the masses, something more they could put their trust in than the authorities, something worth protecting... with their lives.
Pressing that review button makes Jack spare one person in the next day of 24... unless it's a terrorist... or, y'know... someone who really REALLY deserves it!
Thanks!