Conspiracy
Tony looked at him for a minute, gathering his thoughts before he spoke.
"No one, not even Palmer, has the right to ask you to go back there again".
"I didn't hear anybody asking, that I recall".
Tony paused. "Can you handle it? And don't answer from your pride, Jack Look at yourself, at your real self, not the front and not the reputation and not the way you think you should be, but the way you really are. Because if you're not steady enough to do this, you'll just end up getting killed, and then we'll still have the virus to deal with anyway".
"Tony, I never would have come to you with this if I didn't think I could do it. I can do it." He could have said, "This is my only chance. This is the only way to make that first time be worth something", but he didn't.
Tony wasn't going to let him off easy.
"What about the drugs?"
"Amador knows I'm still hooked. Its part of the whole story I fed him".
"He knows that just based on your say so?"
"No".
Tony waited for the full answer. Jack squirmed a little.
"He uses too, but he's not hooked".
Tony waited for the rest of it, not taking his eyes off Jack.
"It was a social occasion. Like having a drink together".
Tony was more than skeptical.
"Well, I hope you convinced him. Why should he think you haven't kicked it for real, if you're both just sitting there, snorting a line?" Jack sighed, finally cornered.
"I did a full load, a whole syringe. If I wasn't using regularly, it would have killed me. That's how he knew".
Tony just considered him again, while he digested that little piece of information.
"And Kate?" he asked, finally, Jack cut him off.
"We're not going there, Tony".
"No, Jack, we are going to talk about this, at least once, and then we won't have to go back to it again later".
"What's the alternative, Tony? If we don't stop this thing, you know how many people it's going to kill, what that would do to this country. How can I not try?" Tony made his voice quietly emphatic.
"If you're going to convince them you've turned, that you're ready to take the money and run, you'll have to break it off with her. You know that. They have to be totally convinced there's nothing here for you. Absolutely nothing. And that you have absolutely no reason to come back. There's too much history between you and Kate. They know all about her. They know you hightailed it back to her again as soon as you could after you came back two months ago. And if you're still seeing her when this starts coming down, they're going to wonder about the entire line of bull you've fed them.
"Kids are different. They've probably run off on a few of their own. You left Kim once already for a year. You can take a walk from kids, particularly grown ones.
"But if the two of you are together much longer it will make them suspicious about how changed you really are, and about whether you're as ready to turn as you'll be telling them you are".
He stopped. Jack's eyes were darting around the roof, probably looking for some way to escape what was closing in on him. Confirmation of what was needed. He had to hear it, then. Anything he might be clinging to or, since it was Jack he was talking to, anything he was trying to manufacture, had to be killed, right here and right now.
"They will never believe you if you are still seeing her." Tony continued, honing in on Jack's eyes. "You know this. Even if you do it now, it's cutting it tight". He let that sink in for a moment. Then there was the final point, the one that had the power to grab Jack in his gut, and twist it.
"You've got to make a break with her because it's too dangerous for her if you don't".
"I've taken care of that, as much as anyone can. I kept some things back." Jack responded, with a surprising calmness. "If something happens to her, whether we're still together or not, Hector knows the DEA will get information on his operations that will cost him millions. He's too good a businessman to touch her. Even if I get killed, she's covered. So's Kim".
Tony raised his eyebrows.
"There was another shooter I let get away so he could deliver a message to Hector for me". He sighed. "Jesus, Tony, do you have to know everything?"
"And the rest of it?" Jack hung his head for a moment.
"Her Dad engineered her going to London for a week, for work. She comes back tomorrow. There's a guy there she was seeing while I was gone." He paused. "I can play it jealous. I'll find something."
"That's not good enough".
"I told you I'll take care of it" Jack turned on him, showing his annoyance now. This conversation was already way too personal. What they really needed to do was make a decision about the entire plan.
"How?" Tony came right back at him.
"How do you think?" Jack answered through clenched teeth. "I'll lie to her. Same way you'll handle Michelle".
He paused, deflated.
"Besides, we're almost there already. I just have to give it that final, little push".
By unspoken, mutual consent, he and Kate hadn't been in touch with each other since she'd left. No phone calls or e-mails, just silence. Like they were both trying to get used to it. Tony remembered that Michelle had thought as much, the way Jack was alternately moping around the office and snapping everyone's head off.
"You haven't got a hell of a lot of time to get it done in".
"Don't worry," he said firmly. "It will be over in a day or two. And the Salazars will buy it, believe me. No life, no career, fed up, disillusioned, drug-addicted Jack. Jack the wanted man; Bauer, the fugitive from justice. It will sell".
They were both quiet for a while.
"Do you need any more time to think about this?" Tony asked.
"No. Do you?"
Tony sighed. "No. I can't come up with anything better. We have to try it. I'm in".
"Good". He was relieved. They both knew there was no viable alternative, not in the time available, not with what they'd have to go through to get the beauracracy to do anything else. They just had to think it through independently, until they both arrived at the same conclusion.
"Jack, one more thing...
"Tony, enough."
"...and then the topic's closed" Tony continued. "If something happens, do you want me to tell her the truth?"
Jack thought for a moment. What was the truth here?
The virus had to be stopped. That was the central truth, and everything else was secondary.
From that inescapable fact came the truth of what Tony was telling him. Once again his life and Kate's must be severed because of his job. And other things. But basically the job and all the things flowing from the job.
There was also the fact, another truth, that going back, stopping the virus, was the only way for him to atone for everything that had happened with the Salazars the first time around.
And then there was the truth of how much he and Kate were in trouble regardless, but that all lead back to his job, too, didn't it? Or directly back to him and, since he was his job...
There was the truth that, if he really loved her so much, he wouldn't ask her to go through another of his cycles. This was it. If he made it through this time there would be no search for her again, no showing up on her doorstep, again, seriously messed up in some brand new way she hadn't encountered before. Asking her to help him get his bearings, again. Asking her, again, to drop everything she would have built for herself, simply because he needed her. He was getting ready to forfeit any right to do that. Love entitled you to do or to ask only so much.
And of course there was the last and least important truth, the truth of how just the thought, the likelihood, that he would never see her again, made him feel. Like everything inside of him was dead, just totally dead and lifeless and useless.
"Let's do the usual. I'll leave a letter with you for her. Give her that, and tell her..." Jack was silent. He turned his back to Tony. He needed a minute.
Tony looked out at the buildings where the lights were starting to come on. The drivers were just beginning to turn their headlights on, too. People were going home to dinner, before turning on the tube or checking the kids' homework or cutting the grass before it got too dark, or putting the last load of laundry in. He waited a moment or two more, then cleared his throat.
"I understand. I'll tell her. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Come on, we've got things to do".
He walked past Jack and started down the stairs. He knew Jack would follow him in a little while, when he was ready to get to work.
Reprise
"You were at least half right about the purpose of this trip. I needed to be there for work. I was right about that".
She looked over at him. He was holding the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. All the color had drained from his face. He was staring directly ahead, not moving a muscle, his body taunt and rigid. The tension he was radiating had filled the car in an instant.
"You were right about the other half, about what Dad wanted to tell me. I told him that if there was anything I didn't already know, I would wait to hear about it until I could hear it from you" she said. T
hen she added the lie she'd settled upon somewhere over Kansas.
"I didn't listen to him, Jack. I didn't let him tell me or show me anything".
He didn't relax immediately. But there were hints. He shifted in his seat and took one hand off the steering wheel. He glanced over at her quickly, then back to the road. She thought he'd bought it.
"I didn't think he would do something like that. I didn't think he was so callous about what I felt, and so manipulative", she added sadly, after a pause. "I thought he was better than that, and that what I wanted would matter more to him". Jack thought for a moment.
"He's just trying to protect you. He does it the wrong way. But he's just trying to be your father and, when it comes to that, he's on his own. He hasn't got your mother around to rein him in when he's gone too far.
"It's too bad," Jack added gently, to make her feel better, "that daughters don't come with instruction booklets".
She smiled at him, grateful for the olive branch Jack was offering and relieved that she'd made the right decision. The stories in that folder were his to tell. Whether he chose to share them with her, or with anyone else, or decided instead to take them with him to his grave, that was his right.
They were quiet for a while. Then she asked him. "What happened with your plans?"
"I didn't go to Mexico" he said after another short pause. "That's on hold. Some complications". Which was about all he could say.
Kate looked out the window. There was still tension here, but it felt different now. She looked at him again. He wasn't tensing up to deal with an attack. He was worried, nervous. Some bad news.
"There's something you want to tell me, Jack, isn't there".
"We need to talk, Kate".
She stared out the front window. Barely two months. All they got to have was less than two months. How could they think about sending him out, when he was like this? But then again, they didn't know. He was such a good actor.
"You have to leave", she said finally.
"No. I don't have an assignment".
"Just tell me, then".
He was still having a hard time getting it out. Kate waited, watching him fidget, beginning to understand what was coming.
"I don't think we should see each other anymore" he finally said.
When they got to the house he got her suitcase out of the back of the car and brought it into the bedroom. The cat was on the bed, sleeping, but it opened an eye and, seeing who it was, thumped its tail once or twice, and then went off to find Kate. Jack stared out at the pool, now illuminated by the outside lights, lost in thought. She came in and slipped her arms around him.
"Do you love me?" was all she asked.
He closed his eyes.
"Yes".
"Then why are you doing this?" He turned to her.
"I didn't mean to bring this up tonight. But you were in there, reading my mind again, and I...I'm sorry. I should have waited a day or so before I said anything. We need to talk but you're probably too tired from the flight. Why don't you get some sleep, and I'll come by in the morning. We can talk then".
"I don't think I could sleep now". She reached up to touch his face. "Lie down with me. Maybe I can fall asleep that way".
He looked at her for a moment. "Its what I want, Jack. Later, we can talk about what it is you want".
She turned over. "Don't go".
"I'll be back in the morning".
"Don't you have some with you?"
He was quiet. "Out in the car".
"Use the bathroom in the guest bedroom. Then come back to bed", she said, turning over again.
While he was holding her, and before he drifted away, for a little while he thought about the irony that, now that he knew he was going back, he would have to try and quit. He would make himself try, if it helped him reach for this one, last chance which had landed in his lap. But he couldn't make himself try if it was "just" for her, or "just" for himself. And then he was gone.
They both called work to say they wouldn't be in.
He tried to tell her why.
All the reasons and explanations he'd rehearsed in his head. Her safety. His unshakeable feeling, despite everything she tried to tell him to the contrary, that he was less than and would always be less than what she deserved. He couldn't let her life revolve around his comings and goings, or have her wait for him, when it was never certain he would make it back, or be in any kind of decent shape if he did. Look at what he'd brought back to her this time. Wouldn't it just get worse in the future? He couldn't do what she wanted him to do about the drugs. There was nothing more to say on that subject, they'd been over it a hundred times a hundred times.
He took all the blame on himself. He acknowledged that all of their problems were rooted in him. She had completely disrupted her life for him. She had tried so hard, more than could be expected from anyone. She had been patient beyond all telling, understanding, accepting of things that she had every right not to accept. He knew she loved him.
But he wanted out. Before things between them deteriorated even more.
He now realized that he needed to be free, without ties to anyone, ever. Then he could focus entirely on what needed to be done, without worrying about the standards of right and wrong that existed here. Those standards were fine if you were here. But if he tried to apply them in the world where he worked he'd get killed in about five minutes.
He was worried that he was starting to act the wrong way here. That he was acting here, sometimes, in ways that were only acceptable there. He couldn't straddle the two ways of living anymore. Working and acting one way to survive and succeed in the one place and then realizing that the very behavior he had to show there was condemned in the other place. It had become too confusing. He had to be in one place or the other. He chose his job.
One time he put it this way:
"I know I'm good at my job. I'm the best there is, when it comes to that. At least, I'm the best there is now" he said.
"But when it comes to being here, to living on this side of the line, I don't fit in anymore. I don't feel like I really belong here anymore. And moving back and forth is just too hard; each time its harder, much harder, than it was the time before.
At another point he put it this way:
"I think the only place I belong is in the world I work in, not here, not where you live. I'm just a visitor here," he concluded. "When I'm working I go back to where I really belong. And I'll keep doing that, just coming back here for visits, until it's over with."
She didn't say much. What she had to say she had said to him last night and in all the conversations and arguments they'd had leading up to this, all the times she fought to make him understand he was worthy of her love and that she accepted everything, everything that was part of him.
Now she just listened to him, trying to understand how what he was saying had anything to do with the core of their relationship as she understood it. What did any of this have to do with his touch, his laugh, how they felt when they saw each other across that room in the museum? He was staying far, far away from that. Far away from the time he told her she made him feel good inside, like he had a true friend, when she just smiled at him. He wasn't going near how he'd told her that he felt grounded, and steadier, and stronger, and had better things to do than knock off six packs, when he was with her. Miles away from how they always went to sleep holding each other. H
e wasn't mentioning how he would bring her small, unexpected treats, tell bad jokes, rub her shoulders, just to make her laugh, just to please her, just to reconnect with her after they had been apart for a day or for just a few hours. Because it didn't support his arguments he had to stay away from all that.
Because at the core was the fact that he loved her and she loved him and that was where they were truly, permanently connected and where things truly mattered and it was there that they were still as close to and as infatuated with each other as they had ever been.
But one explanation, towards the end of his recital, drew her out, when he told her how fundamentally different he felt he was, now, from everyone else:
"Kate, I'm not a normal person anymore. There isn't anything left in me that's normal. Do normal people do what I do? Do you think somebody who's 'normal' can have dinner with somebody and then..." He stopped himself. He took a deep breath before continuing. "No, I'm not normal. Maybe I used to be...and sometimes I even wonder about that ...but I'm sure as h#ll I'm not normal now.
Then he stopped. He'd finally run out of reasons. They were quiet together for a time.
"Don't say anything now. Just listen to me, Jack", she said. Kate took his hand, looking at his fingers. He was so gentle with her, so affectionate. But despite that he thought of himself as being some kind of a dangerous shell of a man, one who should be kept away from those who were more innocent, for their own protection. And all the love she had shown him couldn't overcome this conclusion he'd reached about himself.
"I will never accept the idea that the only thing you're supposed to have is your work, that work is all your life is supposed to be" she said. "You are just like everyone else. You have a right to have someone love you. And you have a right to have someone to love.
"I may not be the one who can finally make you see this, but it is true. If later on you decide you want to try for that again, and you want to try for it with me, I want you to come looking for me. "I don't care how long it takes for you to decide to try again, or where I am, or who I'm with. You have the right to come and find me. Because we love each other. That's what gives you the right to look for me. Just like you did this time."
She kissed his hand. "You should go now. But don't ever forget what I just said".
He stood up, and then leaned over to kiss her cheek, catching the scent of her, so he could remember it when he needed to. "I'm sorry" he said again. When he reached the door, he told her without turning around, "Please take care of yourself, Kate". And then he left.
She walked through the house, through the living room and the dining room and the study and the bedroom and it came back to her, how empty it all was when he left her before. Poking out from under one of the chairs in the living room was a corner of his jacket. She reached down and picked it up, smoothing it over her arm. She'd have to get a cardboard box to put his things in as they turned up, so she could return them. Even though he'd never really moved back in there would be odd socks and t-shirts and pieces of paper and books surfacing for weeks after he left, if past experience was any guide. But the jacket...she would hold onto that for a while. She went to lie down and she put it on his side of the bed. And that's when she started to cry.
Epilogue
Bob Warner walked quickly down the hall. He wanted to get there and tell her before anyone else did, or she heard it on the news, or switched on CNN. But he was too late. She was sitting immobile in front of the TV screen in her office. The reporter was standing, mike in hand, in front of Downey Federal Detention Center. She was talking about the prison riot that had lead to the escape of Ramon Salazar, the Mexican drug lord with suspected ties to international terrorists. There had been a wholesale riot. At least two prison guards were dead; perhaps more, and dozens of prisoners had been injured, either in the riot itself or as the Federal marshals moved through the complex, cell block by cell block, gradually restoring order, rescuing those held hostage, confiscating weapons. There was live footage of ambulances taking the guards and prisoners who had been hurt to local hospitals.
First indications were that it was an inside job, planned and carried out by a disgruntled Federal agent of some sort whose name had yet to be released. Certainly there was someone else, not Salazar, flying the commandeered helicopter that later landed in the middle of a LA business district. The two occupants of the helicopter had escaped into the subway system, which was now shut down and being evacuated because the two fugitives were assumed to be armed and very dangerous. The station would continue live coverage of this breaking story for the rest of the day. Kate looked at her father, and there was no doubt in either of their minds about who had done this.
"I'm afraid you went to a lot of trouble and expense for nothing" she said to him bitterly. "All you had to do was wait, and be a little more patient".
"Forgive me for assuming that you wouldn't be sleeping with him if you knew he was a drug addict".
Kate ignored him. She would never forget the look of total shock on her father's face when she told him the pure truth: that Jack had told her everything she needed or wanted to know. Then she proceeded to tell him a few details, so he wouldn't think she was bluffing. What she kept to herself was what Bob didn't deserve to know. That the things recounted in that slim, innocent looking folder he'd given her had wounded Jack so deeply that he believed he'd lost his soul. "He's gone back now," she said, almost to herself. "If they don't kill him, and I don't see why they wouldn't, he can't come back here, can he?"
"But why help Salazar?" said Bob, somewhat deflated by her indifference. "He hated Salazar".
"Oh Dad, who knows what the plan is. Maybe he did it to get in even deeper with someone else; it could be six or seven layers deep. Maybe they offered him something in exchange.
"Whatever it is, he's done it to make up for what he did before. It was killing him, you know, the things he'd done for Salazar before. He felt he had nothing to show for it. So he's gone there to make up for it, or to get killed for it. It really doesn't matter which it is, or it could be both. All I know is, he's gone".
She turned to look at the screen again for a moment.
"You know, I talked to him today. You should be very proud of us. We finally figured out how to break up the 'right' way. I hadn't spoken to him in over two weeks. So I came up with this lame excuse to call him, because I just wanted to hear his voice, and I thought maybe..."
"What did he say?"
She looked at him coldly. "If you had the nerve to ask Jack that question, he would tell you that what he said to me was none of your business, wouldn't he?" she said.
"Don't worry, Dad," she continued after a moment, feeling completely tired and alone "you don't have to run get the lawyers. He didn't warn me, or tell me what he was about to do. He didn't even say goodbye.
"The saddest thing is, he didn't really say anything. Nothing he hadn't said to me before. He said I should take care of myself. And that he was sorry".