Chapter Two
Chloe took her eyes of Jack long enough to glance longingly at the phone. This would all be so much easier if she could just talk him through it with a hunk of technology in her hand, except, of course, Jack was incapable of holding one and she still didn't know what to say. She knew one thing, waking up in restraints, even padded ones, was not the way to bring him back to reality. He'd be a bigger danger to himself if he thought more of what the Chinese had done to him was coming. No amount of reassurance was going to be as convincing as the fact he could move.
She jumped when he did, just tightened his right hand more closely to his chest, but with too many years spent in front of computers, her eyes went to the monitor next to the bed. She knew his heart was beating faster compared to when she had first come in; her analyst's eye had taken an absent snap-shot of the readings. She looked from the small display to the leads running to it and scowled. He wasn't going to understand all that business either. Knowing she should move before he roused further, she lifted his arm again and undid the blood pressure cuff, then slid deft fingers down the front of his gown and released the sensor leads attached to his chest. Winters had said she was only monitoring him; they weren't serving any critical process. Jack stirred again as she did, more strongly. His breathing deepened and a trace of color began to darken his drawn face.
Bill Buchanan scowled ironically at his lead analyst. "Of all people to disconnect a computer."
Gwyneth Winters' expression remained neutral, her voice edged toward approval however, contrasting the head of CTU's. "I think… she knows what she's doing. He's going to wake up warm, comfortable, out of pain and most importantly: free. I thought she might do this. When I've had other trustees engaged in this, they usually do."
"And that turned out how?"
"Depending on the depth of residual psychoses anywhere from borderline euphoria to catastrophe. The trust element mitigates the paranoia but not the sudden fear that they've brought their trustee into danger also. Forgetting four weeks of beatings, sensory deprivation, attempts at brainwashing, etc, there are also the other …" Winters stopped herself and shook her head. "Never mind, where I was going was that, assuming she might fully release him and that they weren't personally involved before now, I ordered his catheters removed this morning. She wouldn't have had the comfort zone to disengage those."
Bill nodded and said nothing, his lip jutting slightly as he watched Chloe sit back and tentatively lay a hand on Jack's arm, not wanting to restrict his hands even to hold one.
Chloe looked at the phone on the wall again and realized what was missing, the element that linked them most often, their voices, but right now only hers was operational. "Jack, it's me. It's Chloe. No phones this time."
Eyes still closed, he nevertheless turned his head in the direction of her voice and stilled, either at peace or straining to hear more of what was ironically so close and his at no effort regardless. Chloe frowned and wondered if he had fallen back to sleep more deeply, drug or no drug. "Jack, don't do this. You gotta' get back here. The world still sucks. Big surprise." She smiled herself at that. Work, that's what they talked about, bad guys, satellites, infrareds like the ones she had used to find him. Chloe sat down on the bed again, suddenly realizing how much weight Jack seemed to have lost. "Okay, Mr. Field Agent, here's the deal. You got a life to save, yours, and me to get out of this mess with your girlfriend. I usually don't care if someone hates my guts but I care if I can't do my job. Come on, Jack, wake up, everything's okay out here now, a lot better than in there, I bet."
Chloe leaned forward and awkwardly began brushing his hair back, suddenly wishing there was no one watching them. It wasn't privacy for the two of them she wanted, just privacy for him. He'd been a thing to use and abuse for the Chinese for weeks, no privacy, no dignity, and then here, whether it was for his own good or not, poked, prodded, injected, and finally drugged to keep him from harming himself while they worked out what to do. Now that they had and she was part of it, she didn't want to be one of the people who were part of his being on display. Bauer was the most private person she knew. For no other reason, she suddenly wished they were alone.
"Jack, come on. It's me. We won this one, too, but you gotta' finish it. Hassan's getting ready to move on a U.N. summit and two new cells we can't find in Houston need somebody to set up an undercover profile. I give 'em paperwork but you can make them real. I can't tell you anymore until you get your classification updated then I can stop putting up with these kids who don't know a Level One from a ---." Her eyes intent on his face, Chloe O'Brian instantly fell silent when Bauer's eyes opened, if only to slits, pained by the light, glassy even by what little she could see, and suddenly watering. Chloe froze, letting him adjust on his own time, taking a slight gasp of air nearly thirty seconds later, her breath having locked in her lungs. She still didn't speak but she did move her thumb above Jack's scarred eyebrow. His eyes closed again but he turned toward the touch and she took her cue.
"Jack, it's over. We found you. You gotta' focus."
Chloe scowled as his breathing quickened, too fast now, and a hand shot up to grab her wrist. She could have evaded him, could have twisted free and fought his arm down in his weakened state. Instead she let him grab her and winced just a bit. His strength hadn't left him completely. It was the realization that he even could that stopped him, just as she'd hoped. Jack kept hold of the analyst's arm and sought her face with still-blurred vision. His head was pounding and he wanted to throw up. He was sick again, so sick it didn't matter if he were free. He rolled over instinctively, however, as the bile rose in his throat, fear he would choke overcoming hope that he might.
Chloe slid off the bed but stayed close to Jack, grabbing a bowl and holding it as he threw up little more than acidic bile and fell back gasping and dry heaving until he was too weak to continue. There were tears on his face and thin traces of vomit, and he was still gasping for air. One thing hadn't changed in the last few seconds, however, his grip on Chloe's wrist never weakened for what it was worth. Chloe made sure it remained in his hand as she took the water pitcher off the table and used its still cool contents to clumsily soak corner of the cotton blanket. She used the wet section of cloth to wipe Jack's face, last of all his mouth.
"Jack, it's over, please. You don't have to fight. Do you know who I am?"
Jack Bauer looked up at the woman before him. He'd not seen a blond before now. The Asian woman with the geisha outfit and the long needles had been the only female he'd seen. His legs closed reflexively at the memory and he realized he could move them, too; he was free. The cold cloth touched him again as his knees curled upward as far as he could manage; his grip on the wrist of the stranger tightened and he heard a frustrated puff of air.
"Jack, hold onto me just not so tight. I can't help you." Chloe flapped the wet end of the blanket in the air to cool the soaked fibers. She had soaked a new corner, drawn from the bottom of the bed. She stroked him with it again, his face, his neck. She stayed away from his throat. "I guess I'm going to have to keep talking. That's okay, you're the only person I haven't totally pissed off in two months, pretty weird since you're the one who gets me in most of the trouble." She smiled lopsidedly and kept stroking him with the wet fabric. He was hot, she could see that, on top of everything else, his system awash with adrenalin without being able to exert it away.
Jack listened to the voice above him, no word of threat passing the lips that gave form to it. He fought relaxing. He was free, he should find a way to fight. He had hold of someone but they weren't fighting back. There was no way to use their own force against them, besides if he didn't stay quiet they might stop with the cold cloth. It was the first pleasant thing he had felt in weeks. First there had been pain, and then numbness that brought a hazed fear he had been forcibly trapped by the heroin again. Nothing like this. The voice was a woman's. She wanted something. The tone was calm but needy, edged with an emotion that he knew well: fear. Whoever was with him, she was afraid, too. They just hadn't harmed her yet or she was a trick. He knew what they would do to break him.
Individual words began to emerge from the flow of quiet chatter. Protocol. Satellites. Reroute. Directive. Phrases came next, "regrouped and retreated", "realigned the southern grid", "not as easy as when", … and then … then 'and I still miss Edgar so bad." A shock wave erupted through Jack Bauer that shredded the slowly fading fog of his perceptions. He opened his eyes again; someone had gotten rid of the blinding light but the new darkness made things difficult in its own way. All he could make out was a slender figure, her arm held at an awkward angle, and a softly lit outline of dark gold hair. He pulled her forward, and she moved easily but then had to balance herself by leaning on the bed. The cool cloth in her other hand landed near his shoulder, another tiny touch of comfort he didn't dare believe. Jack Bauer worked to focus, as the woman kept begging of him, her voice calm, insistent, and familiar, growing more so as the seconds passed and traces of frustration and impatience began to color it.
Chloe was still leaning over Jack with some awkwardness when the moment came, when he let go of her arm and clutched her face, and then her name escaped his lips in a terrified gasp.
She covered his hand with her own and nodded, unaware of her tears. "Yeah, it's me, Jack We found you."
The tortured blue eyes left her face long enough to take in the cold, sterile, darkened surroundings without comprehension. 'They got you. I'm sorry. I broke. I led them to ---."
"No, you didn't. Jack, listen to me." Chloe returned his grip on her jaw, taking his face in her hands and sitting down. "You listen. No one's got hold of me. You're home. We… I found you. Curtis and the Navy got you. We're in CTU, the infirmary."
He continued staring at her, unable to put so much together as yet. Chloe released one hand and picked up the wet corner of the bed cover, stroking him with it again, hoping it would help him focus. "Okay, Jack, then just one thing at a time. Trust me; we're free. Nobody's got us. If someone had us both, would I be alive? They wouldn't have put up with me for five seconds."
Jack stared up at the woman holding his head and cooling his fevered skin, wearing the face of a woman who had never once lied to him, had committed high treason with him, who had put the first shots in the man who had killed one of his best friends. She'd been arrested for him, undermined her own ambitions for him, lost her best friend in front him, and then saved their lives when he'd pulled her together. This was the woman who had enabled him to destroy a President. If she said they were safe, if she said they were was free, it was true. … and on top of it all, she was trying to make him smile by telling him the truth again. She would have been the world's worst hostage.
Chloe was glad he'd lost a little weight. Jack summoned the strength to pull himself up on the edge of the bed and when that strength was immediately gone sagged into her chest, crying without shame, not noticing she was crying as well. She stroked his back and his sweat-matted hair but made no effort to stop him. "Don't cry" was about the stupidest thing she could think of to say and totally hypocritical at the moment. He was too exhausted to do it for long, however, too weak and dehydrated, even with the IV line that was the one thing she hadn't removed.
Chloe left him long enough to cross the room, refill the pitcher and pick up a glass. She held his head and forced him to take it slowly, mindless, familiar complaints and office gossip they never usually repeated spewing from her, hoping she could divert his attention from his own state and her discomfort. If Jack was uncomfortable for the same reason he gave no sign, a shaky, almost-smile on his lips. Chloe guided him back down and he was content to let her support his head and lift his legs back onto the bed; it was now no tormentor or even a stranger who was touching him, the person who so watched over him from afar was now simply watching over him here.
Chloe O'Brian wasn't exactly the most nurturing person on the planet but she had the presence of mind to toss off the white cotton blanket with the soaked corners and pull the blue sheet back up over him as he lay on his side. Her awareness of what was going on around her was at peak however, enhanced by the fact that Jack was out of commission. Chloe immediately saw the doctor when she came to stand on the far side of the room, beckoning to her, about an hour later, just as she had begun to wonder how long she was going to be watching Jack sleep and if they could just run a computer line in here for her. She smirked as she stood up to cross the room; if Jack would to find anything reassuring, it would be the sight of her fingers flying over a keyboard and swiping around a mouse. Closing the distance, O'Brian saw that the doctor was alone.
"Where's Mr. Buchanan?" Chloe asked, her voice instinctively low.
"He left to brief Ms. Raines and a few others. You did very well, Miss O'Brian, although I had my doubts about the chance you took releasing the restraints. He did better than I thought in terms of his response. I'm going to revise my expectation for the next few days."
Chloe's eyes flashed upwards. "Well, who'd want to wake up tied up after all that or at all?" She glanced back at Bauer and folded her arms over the pink sweater. "So, what comes next?"
Winters folded her clipboard against her chest and gave her patient a considering look, using her focus to keep Chloe O'Brian's on Bauer as she summoned up the nerve for the next suggestion. As uncomfortable as she'd been around Audrey Raines before, well… , she could only hope Raines would eventually understand the method of what she would think madness. Right now she needed O'Brian to understand much sooner. "Jack needs to find his equilibrium, to learn to function again in the rest of the world, to reconnect with his sense of self and his very well-honed instincts, providing, of course, he wants to remain in this professional field. It would be understandable if he wanted to retreat from a job that makes him and his acquaintances targets."
Chloe nodded once and sharply. "Well, Jack will do what he wants. That's up to him but you're not answering me again."
Winters rebuked herself for fencing around the woman before her. It was unprofessional but she was only hesitant because of the personal complications that the job she was to ask of O'Brian would certainly create. "You're right, I didn't, and in and of itself, what we need is not that extraordinary. I just want you to spend the next several days with Mr. Bauer, helping him to reattach himself to his surroundings, grounding him. Eventually, once he asks, we'll bring his daughter to see him but not yet. He needs… simplicity for now, not the intense complications of their relationship. He needs a situation without any doubt associated with it. When he's ready, Wayne Palmer has also put in a request to visit, as have Aaron Pierce and Martha Logan. They've all been very concerned. They lobbied to use the extraordinary means to retake Jack Bauer, I think seeing them would do him a great deal of good once you and he think he's ready."
"Me… again. Aren't you the shrink?"
"You, Miss O'Brian. Jack is going to be unsure about anyone else, or too caught up trying to be everything to everyone, making them believe he's fine, especially me. I'm his "captor" as it were for now. With you he can doesn't have complications. You've seen him at his best and his worst and you don't judge and over the past few weeks, you were the one friend not used against him because you never became a public figure in all of this."
Chloe felt suddenly sick herself. She knew about the altered voice recordings, played at Jack while they deprived him of sleep, of food, of sight, of balance, of everything but pain and mocking voices of friends telling him he would break or that he had. Martha Logan had become a huge public figure, lauded for unseating her corrupt husband and glad to talk about it, all over the media the first week of Jack's capture. There had been plenty to alter. The same for Wayne Palmer after his brother's assassination, and to a lesser degree Aaron Pierce. He was making public appearances with the now ex-Mrs. Logan. He didn't talk much but he had talked enough for them to use a trusted friend's voice against Jack Bauer's tormented mind as it coped with a battered body. And, of course, they had found the "recording" of President Palmer asking how Jack could have let someone kill him.
Chloe rubbed the remnants of tears and fresh ones from her face, her lips giving a savage twist. "Crap. Okay, so I'm persona non gratta with the Chinese, good for me, good for Jack. That means what? How am I supposed to help?"
Winters took the plunge. "We've set up a safe-house, less than a mile from here. We want you to stay with Jack, just the two of you. We want you to remind him of his friends, and show him the reports on how he and they were used. I've laid out a sort of guideline for you, but you should rely on your instincts just as much. I'll also be available to you anytime, along with a pair of guards trained to handle persons with violent potential. I'll give you both a few days and then I'll start seeing him."
Chloe leaned back on the bed near the door. "Ditch the goons. Jack's not gonna' hurt me," she replied, not snapping now, just sure. It took her a moment more to backtrack the pieces prior to the remark about the guards. "Wait, a minute, hold on, you want me to live with Jack, not just… visit long?"
Winters frowned and raised a finger to her lips as Chloe's voice rose. "Not in those terms, no. It would be no more than simply staying with a very troubled friend. In fact that's all it is. Toward the later stages, if he makes any indication that he'd be receptive to sex, it probably wouldn't be in his best interest, not coming out of a radical dependency."
Chloe's temper got the better of her in half the instant it usually took. "I wouldn't use something like this for sex, especially not with Jack. That's why you picked me, right? What kind of a quack are you?"
Winters bit her tongue, knowing what she was asking was extraordinary and admitting to herself she had misjudged the need to say what she had. However…. "Miss O'Brian, what I am is the best qualified… quack in the world to help him. And your response was exactly what I assumed. You're not going to create or engage in any situation that would compromise him, even if it's something he starts. He'll trust you if you back out of it or guide him to do so. In any case, after some days, we'll start trying to bring others back into his equation."
Chloe looked back at Jack Bauer and suddenly knew his life was in her hands. Good thing she was used to it. She'd just never thought of it happening as more than keys, screens, and bandwidth, never allowed herself to do so. She didn't think about the string of hokey men in dangerous professions who floated in and out of her life and were jerks or weren't jerks and got pegged it anyway. "Okay, I'll do what he needs, but get me a computer with full protocols in this safe-house and a secure link. He's going to be sleeping a lot I'd guess and I'm not some moony school girl who's gonna' sit and stare at him while he does. I've got a head full of current tactical on two operations that are set to go live in days."
"All right. We can do that, in fact, in fact it might be good for Jack to see you in action but if something happens that induces a stress reaction as a result of ---."
"I'll run a slave protocol on my computer and do a simultaneous feedback with somebody I pick at CTU. If Jack gets upset, I'll run a dual parameter, pull the plug at my end and transfer the operation. I need to uplink my take on both ops but I'm not gonna' compromise anybody."
Gwyneth Winters smiled. "I can see why you and Jack integrate so well. Stay with him now, let him get some natural sleep and I'll look him over once he wakes up, nothing intrusive. I'll want you to be here though. He'll find most of the physical damage we've relieved or healed and then I'll brief him about what we'd like to do and that you want to go along with it."
"If he says "no", I won't let you use my agreement with this against him." Chloe O'Brian gave the other woman a look that would have dropped a bull elephant but in return received only a confident smile.
"That's why you can help him, Miss O'Brian. Any last concerns?"
Chloe glanced at Jack again and then out into the dark steel corridor. "Three: call me Chloe, then send someone go to my apartment and pick up my "Harry Potter" books and, I won't be there when you tell Audrey Raines, got it?"
