It's nearly two o'clock when Jack returns. I've been fidgeting in my boredom, trying to read my book, but it's hard to concentrate on a story you know by heart when your dirty lover is calling for you. I kept reminding myself that I only need one cigarette a day…and "myself" kept asking, "Why are you lying?"
But Jack's back, looking somber, and somber or not, I'm relieved to see him. "Hey," I say. I'm sitting against a bare wall in the living room, somewhere near where he's been sleeping.
"Hey," he says. He sounds tired, like some mysterious force zapped the energy out of him.
I get up and go over to him. "What's wrong?"
"It's n…" He stops. "It's not nothing, but I don't think I can talk about it right now."
I know how that feels. My family comes to mind, and Wilson, and Vladimir, and the smoking… So instead of pushing it, I just say, "A package came for you while you were out." I nod at it, and he frowns.
"Yeah?" He goes to it and picks it up, carries it to the counter. I find a knife in the drawer and start to hand it to him, but he's already sliding his key down the middle of the tape. I put the knife away, and watch him.
He pulls out an envelope from the top of the opened package and opens it. "'Jack,'" he reads, "'I heard you were finally settling down in L.A. again, so I took the opportunity to get some of your crap out of my place. I've been lovingly holding it for two years, plus tax. Take it back. Yours, Fitz.'" Jack shakes his head with a laugh. "Gotta love Fitz." He sees my look of confusion, I'm sure, and says, "After David Palmer and my friends helped me fake my death, I sent this box to Fitz for safekeeping."
"But, I thought everyone that knew about your survival was dead, except for Chloe?" I'm familiar with the incident. I'm familiar with everything on government record about Jack Bauer, and many things off the record, too.
"He didn't know it was from me at the time. I forged Chloe's handwriting and wrote him a message, saying that I was dead and wanted him to keep the box. When David Palmer was assassinated, I came back, and he inevitably found out. He's been keeping tabs on me ever since. I lost him for a while, when I was in Africa, but he found me again when I surrendered for the hearings."
"How do you know him?" I ask. I've never heard of this "Fitz" character before.
"He's someone from my old military days. His real name isn't 'Fitz,' but I'll be damned if I can remember the man's actual name."
Meaning he knows fully well who his friend Fitz is, and everything about him, but can't or won't tell me. I won't interrogate him about it, though. There are some things you just don't tell anybody, especially when they have to do with mysterious friends that hold onto packages for you for years.
Jack sets aside the letter and reaches into the box. I feel like I'm an intruder on a private reunion, bur I'm fascinated with the moment, so I don't budge. He doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he seems to have entirely forgotten I'm here, as he pulls out stacks of papers and photographs. Envelopes bound together with twine, some bulging, some looking empty. Newspaper clippings. An old dusty metal.
But the photographs are what's most interesting. He starts to flip through them. All of them are of Kim. Kim as a baby, naked, in a tub fitted into the kitchen sink. Kim taking bold first steps. Kim as a toddler, holding an ice cream cone and waving, her nose smudged with chocolate. Kim as a kid, maybe nine or ten, clutching a stuffed dolphin and a dolphin-shaped balloon in front of a dolphin tank at the zoo.
I wonder if she likes dolphins. I smile.
My gaze flickers between Jack and the box, as the box grows steadily more empty. Finally, hesitantly, Jack pulls out an orange-brown envelope, which is bulky. Out of it, he pulls a 4x6 frame, and several unframed pictures.
All are of Teri.
Not Jack's granddaughter Teri, but Jack's late wife Teri. The woman is tall, with dark, short curly hair, a pixie nose and a radiant smile in each picture…except for one. The framed one. She seems to be leaning toward the camera in that one, as if she could jump right out of the portrait and say hello. Her eyes are clear, her face relaxed, her lips curled upward just slightly in the most serene smile.
I envy this woman, I realize. Not because she was Jack's wife. Not because she's Kim's mother. But because she has a kind of peace about her, a kind of innocence that I'll bet was untouched even in her horrible last day on this earth. Not to say that she was naïve or anything…I don't really know anything about her, except that she and Jack hit a rough spot in their marriage that they were working on repairing shortly before her murder.
I don't gamble, but if I did, I'd bet that their rough spot had something to do with Jack's work. Either she knew all about it and resented it, or he kept it from her, and she resented the secrets.
Out of all the things our line of work has taken from me, I'm glad it didn't have the opportunity to take away a marriage.
"Jack?" I say softly.
I've startled him out of his thoughts, not enough to make him jump, but enough for him to realize that I'm still here. He looks between me and the box, and the photos. "Sorry," he says. He starts to put the photographs of Teri back into the envelope. I put a hand on his arm, stopping him. He looks at me again, confused.
With the same hand, I reach over and pull the framed photograph of Teri Bauer from his fingers. I take it, and walk with it into the living room. As I walk, I realize that Teri and I have one small thing very much in common: we've both been loved and hurt by Jack Bauer.
I take the picture and look at the mantle in the living room. The mantle is a shelf that would traditionally be over a fireplace, but apartments don't typically have fireplaces. But this apartment has a mantle anyway, and mantles are places where you put pictures of your family. That is a family memory that doesn't hurt – the image of our old house with its fireplace mantle, covered end-to-end in pictures of Mom, Dad, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, cousins, greats…
One day, this mantle will have pictures of Kim and Stephen, and little Teri, and me and Jack, and maybe, at one point, even my family. But it ought to have this picture, too. I place the photograph of Teri onto the mantle – not in the center, by any means, but not at the very edge, either. She's somewhere around a quarter into the shelf, smiling that serene smile. It feels good to see her there.
I turn around to see Jack gaping at me. My stomach plummets. Oh shit. I didn't think about how Jack would feel about having a picture of his late wife on display. What if it's too painful to see every day? Have I just made a huge mistake and caused another jagged rift between us?
"Renee?" he asks hoarsely.
I swallow. "Mantles were important in my family," I say. "Every family member was represented, no matter how crowded the mantle got. And, well…" I shrug awkwardly. "She's Kim's mother. It seems like she should have a place."
Jack continues to stare. Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. I'll give up cigarettes and…hell, I'll quit swearing too, if I can undo whatever damage I've just done. How much more can one relationship take, anyway, before it shatters?
I rush forward and squeeze his arm. "I'm sorry, Jack. We can take it down if you want. It was just a thought. I didn't mean –"
He cuts me off with kiss, just like he did when I was babbling about promises he didn't have to keep. Funny, how both situations were sparked by the memory of his late wife. Maybe she's up there rooting for us. The thought that the angel of his late wife might like me gives me some measure of comfort, even though I'm not sure angels exist and I'm not sure Teri Bauer would have approved of me at all.
Instead of continuing to kiss me like the last time, though, Jack pulls back, resting his forehead on mine. If this were a soap opera, he would say something profound, cheesy, and melodramatic, like, "Oh, Renee, you are the woman of my dreams!" But this isn't a soap opera – thank god – and Jack says, "Most women would feel insecure about having a picture of their boyfriend's late wife in the house."
I grin. I'm just too happy that he's not upset. "Well, I'm not most women." Besides, what's there to feel insecure about? Teri Bauer is dead. It's not like she's going to rise from the grave to start a catfight over who gets Jack. "I thought you were upset," I say.
"No," he says with a short laugh. "I'm just…shocked. You're truly amazing."
He squeezes his arms tighter around me. My sling hangs awkwardly between us, but the hug has never felt more right. I return the hug, the fingers of my left hand trailing over his back. I inhale deeply. One thing hasn't changed: being held by Jack makes me feel like everything – the cigarettes, my wound, my past – will be okay.
Everything is definitely not okay.
It's the middle of the night. Jack's out in the living room, still sleeping on the floor, although the situation has been made slightly better by the addition of a sleeping bag. He's probably sound asleep anyway, despite the discomfort he must feel from the floor. And I'm here in the bedroom, on the comfortable mattress, and I can't sleep a wink.
Because I want a…a blasted smoke.
I start to fidget in place, because I can't roll over or flop over. I consider the painkillers, but that's a bad idea. I'm not in any pain right now and those things could easily become addictive. I think one addiction is bad enough, right now.
Although, being addicted to painkillers would be a lot more understandable than cigarettes… No. Christ. The need is making me think crazy. And it's not even real need – the drugs from the cigarettes are just making me feel like I need them.
It's hard to believe that the tobacco companies aren't richer than the gas companies.
Tomorrow, we are buying a lamp. A tall one, to stand over this bed so I can read when I'm up at god knows what hour trying to convince myself I don't want to smoke. Suddenly, an idea hits me. Quietly, I get out of bed and grab a book – in the dark, I'm not sure which one – trying to ignore the cigarettes that are just inches from my hand. I tiptoe to the master bathroom before I can change my mind and grab the pack. I wince as I close the door a little harder than I intended, and lock the door and flick on the light.
The light burns my eyes for a moment, and I blink furiously to open them up again. I look down at my hand. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer looks innocently up at me. I sigh. Fantastic. Family issues can substitute in for the cigarettes in keeping me awake at night.
I suppose that's not really fair, I muse as I flick through the worn paperback. My family wasn't that bad. They were great, for a while. Until my dad died. I loved my dad, up to and beyond the day he died. My mom did too – too much. That was the problem.
Someone knocks softly, and Jack speaks, in his tired gruffness, through the locked door. "Renee?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you okay?"
"…Does something have to be wrong for me to be in the bathroom?"
"No," Jack says, "but usually you don't slam the door when you need to use the bathroom at one in the morning."
Is that how late…early…it is? I could kill the inventors of cigarettes. If being a tax collector in the American Colonies was a tar-and-feathering offense, making those addictive little death sticks sure as hell should be, too. "I couldn't sleep," I admit.
"…Was it a nightmare?"
Yes. It is a nightmare. A freaking ridiculous nightmare. I keep thinking the mantra of the accidentally-pregnant teenager: "But I only did it once!" – Well, I guess if once is enough to get pregnant, then it's enough to get addicted…especially if you've already been addicted once before.
I would prefer being pregnant.
"Something like that," I whisper.
I'm not sure if Jack heard me until he says, "Can I come in?"
I lean over and rub my forehead onto the book in my lap, ignoring the stabbing pain that suddenly pierces through my wound. Then I get up and unlock the door. I step back as Jack opens the door. He's half naked, with black sweatpants on and no top. I'd think he looks sexy if I weren't so…well…tired. Pained. And seriously craving a freaking cigarette.
I look at him standing there, with tinges of worry in his equally tired expression, and suddenly I want to tell him. I should tell him. I mean, we're talking about a former heroin addict. But…the moment passes as swiftly as it came, for I remember why he became a heroin addict. He did it to sustain his cover.
I started smoking back then because Vladimir was managing to piss me off and scare the shit out of me at the same time. I started smoking now because I thought I lost Jack. Both times were because of a guy. Not because someone was making me. Not because I had to. But because of a guy.
Forget understanding it. Would Jack even look at me the same way?
I can't help it anymore. I start to cry, and Jack guides my head to his shoulder, his arms wrapping around me. The wound burns in protest, but it's a weak protest in comparison to the storm of worthlessness raging inside my conscience.
Writer's Note: Oh, dear...things are looking grim for our favorite Walker. Hmm. Someone should hand her a box of chocolate. Chocolate is the cure for everything. Anyway, I wish I could write a more insightful note but I need to go pick up dinner. Hope this latest installment doesn't make you lose faith in this story, I have plans for these minions - I mean characters. ;)
