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He was walking quietly down the dirt trail. Trees surrounded him, emgulping him withing the vast greeness of the forest. He wore an old pair of worn blue jeans that had holes in the knees. He had on a white under shirt that was partically tinted off white from wearing day in and day out. A faded navy blue bandana covered his shaved and scared head. He had his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans as he walked. He scanned the area constantly trying to be non-suspicious, making sure no one was around, watching him. Though he stood out like a sore thumb due to his pale complexion. He was so pale someone could mistake him for an albino, unless they had a good look at his face. Mainly his eyes, which were a sharp piercing blue. He followed the trail down to the docks, walking to the edge of the docks. He scanned the area and smiled weakly, perfect, he thought to himself. He cringed as he bent down to sit on the docks. He let his legs dangle down above the water as he waited, and thought.
He took his right hand and ran it across his face, smearing the blood that had fallen from his nose and mouth across his face and also the palm of his hand. He eyed the blood stained palm with his piercing blue gaze with no emotion at all. Is this what I have become? The question ran through his head. He felt nothing, no emotion at all. He felt nothing, and it scared him. What happened to me? Another question ran through his head. He tried to form a tear, but realized there was none. None left to shed. He had shed all of them years back. He had become numb. That was the only way he could continue. He abandoned his emotions long ago, thinking he was just shutting them off for the time being, but he started to realize he wouldnt be able to turn them back on. This was a startling revelation for him. He turned them off anyways, He knew that was the only way he could survive. At first turning them off and on was relatively easy, but it had been increasingly difficult, to the point where he couldnt sleep. His demons riddle his sleep with nightmares, and his thoughts. He was forced to take sleeping pills each night so he would have the energy to go on during the day time. Then finally his emotions just vanished.
Then he reminicsed slightly on that faithful day, the day of his demise. He remembered that day clearly, so clearly that he felt like it was just yesterday, but really it had been 10 years since then. Ten long years. He had to leave the place that he once called home. He had to leave everything for 1 purpose, 1 mission, 1 stupid mistake. One stupid mistake that sent his life down the drain. He took the blame though it wasnt interally his fault, and got the consequences. Spending the last ten years in a high secruity labor camp gave him alot of things to think about. Mainly he thought about his life, and how he spent it. He plagued himself with haunting memories, distorting them to make them ten times worse then they actually were, and down playing his happy memories, the ones that he clung to in the first few years, for hope and santuary. The few he had let him hang on for as long as he could before he was lost in the abyss of pain and suffering. Finally he had broken himself, and became numb. Cold entered his mind and fogged it. He had become a mindless droid of which one could tell him to do something and hed do it without question. He had been stripped of his dignity.
He was set free just a few days after his 10 year mark, allowed to go back to the place he once called home. He didnt know the meaning of being free anymore. He questioned himself in if he ever did know. He had always been fighting for a country who promised freedom to their citizens, but were the citizens really free? He knew the government was corrupt, and the ideals of which it had started from had gone stray. The country needed to get itself back on track, thats what he figured he was fighting for. For a chance for the government to work itself out and stick to its ideals. He was plauged by his memories, his flaws, and his legacy. He knew he could not return to the place he called home. He had no home now, he thought he was viewed as a man who betrayed his country. Who had gone against the rules and crossed the line that shouldnt have been crossed. He knew he had let everyone down, and worst of all himself. He had gone down the path of no return. At first he thought he could make it through this, but he had underestimated what the lack of human companionship would do to him. The lack of seeing the good in humans. He had been left out in the dark, only to be companied by the demons in his head. No one cared, hell they made it worse, they beat him up, pushed him into the mud and grinded his face into it. Spitting on him as if he was some beast. He took it without question or rebellion though, He truely thought he deserved it. He deserved everything they gave him. The daily beatings, the lack of light, the cramp space, the overload of hard labor, and the lack of humanity. He didnt deserve the human rights, he wasnt human anymore, he was a beast. A beast thats only goal was to survive, to live on. If one considers a man just breathing and movie living on that is, but his soul was gone. He was just a shell of his former self, a shell of what was once a human. His memories and demons tore him apart, and his former self and soul had died in only the third year of imprisonment. His hope had died along with his soul and moral belief system.
When he had gotten back to the place he had called home so long ago, he realized he didnt recognize it at all. It was foreign to him, Everything. He avoided the people he once had known. He feared that he would not recongize them, they would not recognize him either. He feared rejection, he thought that they didnt want him. They were better off without him. He had looked them up though, their addresses. Before he had completely lost himself, he had written letters to each of the ones he had cared about. He had dropped each letter off at their designated place so the certain people could read them each personally, explaining to them everything. And apologizing to them for letting them down. Saying good bye.
He knew there was only one thing left to do. He had gotten himself a gun and found a very reclusive place. A forest trail in the middle of no where which led to some docks on the edge of a river that lead into the ocean, on the soil of the country that had betrayed him. He hadnt viewed it as they had betrayed him though, it was just the opposite. He thought he had failed his country, on the ultimate level, and he had accepted the consequences as a proud patriotic man that he was would. He stripped himself of his soul and dignity with the help of those who wanted him to be punished.
He truely thought he was a lost cause now as he sat there on the edge of the dock. He pulled the gun out of the back of his jeans and pulled a bullet out. A single bullet. That was enough to do the job. He took a deep breathe as he placed the metallic killer in his mouth, wrapping his lips around it. His tongue tasted the cold metal of the gun as he fingered the trigger. He had waited and thought of his moment for years now and was now going to do it. He wasnt nervous at all. He simply closed his eyes calmly. 'I am sorry' Were his last thoughts, then he pulled the trigger.
Jack Bauers' body went limp after the shot rang out, as it fell forward into the lake, causing a splash. No one was around, no one heard it. No one knew. It wasnt till 3 weeks later that they found his remains drifting in the ocean around the bay of the river.
THE END