"I…ahm…think I have some coffee. Want some?" I run my fingers through my hair again, looking down as I head into the kitchen. Suddenly, I'm very much aware of the dirty dishes piled on the counter, the newspapers stacked on the table, unread, and the overflowing trash bin. I should be more ashamed about the state of my apartment, but why bother? It's just reflecting my own state of mind.

"Sure," he says quietly. He's only spoken a few words, and yet, that voice sounds so familiar, like I last heard it yesterday. It has this heavy ring to it when he speaks softly, unlike the authoritative ring it has when there's an emergency and he knows he's right.

There's half a pot of coffee left, but it's yesterday's coffee. I take the pot and dump it out, and then I put grounds in a coffee filter and shove it into the machine. To my credit, at least there aren't flies buzzing around. "Have a seat," I say. If you can find one.

I guess that's a little unfair. Only half of the couch has jackets and sweaters piled on it.

Jack pulls out the kitchen chair and moves the dirty socks onto another chair with an air of casualty, as though leaving one's dirty socks on a chair is perfectly normal. I have to give him credit – he's hiding the disgusted shock well. "How have you been?" he asks.

I turn back to the coffeemaker and put the pot back under it. "Let's not beat around the bush, Jack. You know how I've been, or you wouldn't be here." I jab the "start" button and turn around, leaning against the counter. My shoulder blades knock into a cup, sending a plate, spoons, and forks clashing into the sink.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he says. Dipped eyebrows, a quiet "huff" and his half-smile betray his mask of casualness.

"C'mon, Jack. I read your file. I read every published material with your name on it. You have a serious 'knight in shining armor' complex."

"Oh, really."

"Kate Warner. Claudia Hernandez. Audrey Raines. Am I damsel in distress number four?"

His eyes flash, and I know I went too far with Audrey's name. Well, I'm a bitch. A sloppy, careless, hurtful bitch. If you go to a bitch's apartment, you can't expect her to put on her sweet-nanny button-down dress and expect to exchange pleasant small talk over tea and cake.

But the flash of anger disappears as quickly as it came. "Is that what you think you are, Renee? A damsel in distress?"

Normally, his calm, collected, superior attitude would be seriously grating. But I don't care. "Well, I'm not Wonder Woman."

"So, you think that if you're not a superhero, you're automatically some weak, ditzy female that needs to be rescued?"

"God, Jack." I rub my forehead. "Why are you here?" He raises an eyebrow. "Well, I know why you're here…but seriously, why?" Because, yes, he does have a serious hero complex, but somehow, that doesn't feel…it doesn't feel like a complete explanation.

"Why do you think I'm here?"

"To save the weak, ditzy damsel in distress," I retort.

He gets up and seconds later, he's standing a foot away from me. "You're not a weak, ditzy damsel in distress, Renee. But you do need saving."

She huffs and looks around, avoiding my gaze for a moment. Then she looks at me and says, "So you're going to save me, huh?"

"I can't save you," I say. "You have to save yourself."

She laughs bitterly. "You sound like some tragic kung fu master from a bad drama flick."

I feel my lips twitch, and I give her a small smile. "Yeah, I guess that was a little cheesy. But that doesn't make it any less true."

"Uh-huh."

"Renee, I know where you are. I've been there."

"I'm sure," she says.

"Renee."

"So your treatment went well," she says.

Avoiding the issue isn't going to make anything better, but I bite the inside of my cheek. I let her change the subject this once, and I'll probably do it again. Because I lost track of the number of times I blocked issues, changed subjects, avoided friends. "Yes, it did," I say.

"Good. Kim's all right, too." It's not a question.

"She's fine. They only had to harvest the stem cells from her once. They froze them and then used them as they needed." I had to go through several treatments before everything started to work, more or less, like it did before.

Renee just nods, and I feel the need to continue. "She stayed in D.C. with me during my recovery." I smile. "She has a daughter, Renee. A little baby girl, about two years old."

"That's great." Her voice sounds sincere, but her eyes remain hollowed and distant. I can barely recognize her. Her situation I recognize and remember, but…she's so thin. A thin layer of makeup hides the dull, pale skin tone I'm sure it'd have otherwise.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" she asks.

"For what's happened to you."

Renee blinks and steps around me. "It's not your fault," she says, not entirely convincing. "I made my own choices that day, Jack."

"You wouldn't have made those choices without my influence."

She snorts. "What? Those are excuses you make for a five year old that says 'shit' and 'damn' because she hears her older brother say them, not for a forty-year-old with a college degree and life experience under her belt."

"Life experience, field experience – there's a difference."

"I've had both."

"Not as much as I have," I say.

She turns around, waving her arms. "What, and that's supposed to make it okay? There, there, Renee, it was your first time torturing someone, you haven't tortured nearly as many people as Jack Bauer has, so you can have a little silver star?"

"No," I say. "Nothing makes any of what we do okay."

"Then how are you okay?"

To my shock, my voice cracked on that last word, and tears start flowing down my cheeks. No sobbing, no shacking, no hysterics, just a steady stream of tears. They drop from my jaw to one of my last crisp, white shirts from work; I didn't have any clean home-clothes to change into. I really should do laundry someday.

Jack steps up to me again, and palms my cheek lightly. His thumb swipes at the tears, but the river just keeps flowing around it. "Your eyes need wiper blades," he says, swiping his thumb back across until it bumps my nose.

That absurd comment makes me chuckle once against his hand. "I don't think God or nature or…whatever the hell created us really foresaw me fucking up my life."

"You didn't fuck up your life," he says. "You entered one bad stage in this one point in your life. Things will get better."

"Really." Yeah, right.

"Really," he says gently, with an almost urgent edge. "Renee, I didn't get to be where I am now overnight. I've been in a lot of dark spots in my life."

"Maybe you only had one, and you just fooled yourself into thinking you were fine again," I say quietly. Oh, god. Don't go there, Walker. Just don't. Numbness is better than that. I have to say, I have a newfound understanding of alcoholics. I wonder what they went through? Did they get so tired of avoiding their issues and fighting against the memories that the only way to fend them off anymore was to get too drunk to think? Maybe I should pick up some rum or tequila later…

"Maybe," he says. "But my point is, you're going to hurt, and hate, and want to die. But once you get past that…you'll be okay."

"If you say so…" I'm not convinced.

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

The question truly baffles me. "Of course." He's one of the most trustworthy people I know. Well, all undercover pseudo-treason aside. I might regret everything else I did that day, but I don't regret trusting him.

"Then trust me on this." He takes my hand in his. I didn't realize how cold my fingers are until his touched mine. He seems to realize it, too, because he takes his other hand and cocoons mine between them, rubbing gently. His warmth to my cold. His stable to my wreck. How cliché.

As my fingers start to warm, I discover that the cliché doesn't bother me.

Writer's Note: I hope you liked chapter 2. :) Redemption ch. 36 is up, and considerably fluffier than this, if you want something lighter to counterbalance the heavy stuff depicted here. Thanks for reading!