When Audrey woke again, the room was dark, and she was alone in bed. She sat up, listening, but heard no sound to tell her Jack might have just gone to the bathroom or to the kitchen. The apartment was quiet.

She threw the covers off, got out of bed, and walked down the hallway, trying not to panic. Please, please, she begged silently, tell me he's not gone. Again. But her fears were laid to rest when Audrey turned the corner into the living room and found Jack leaning up against the window, looking out. She stopped.

Just the faintest light of day was still visible, and the city was already lit up, silhouetting Jack in the window. He had his arms crossed and his forehead against the glass. Audrey was hard-pressed to recognize any movement from him whatsoever, just barely able to see his chest rising and falling with steady breathing. For all intents and purposes, he looked like he had fallen asleep standing up.

Audrey padded up behind him, not sure if she was going to startle him or not. But when she touched his arm, he didn't so much as flinch, and she was reminded once again who was standing in front of her. Of course he heard her coming. She slipped her arms around him, one hand higher on his chest, the other at his waist, and pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Hey," he replied, and Audrey could hear a tension in his voice, in just that one word. He covered her hand that was on his chest with his own.

Audrey laid her head against his back.

"Did you sleep at all?" she asked.

"Yeah, I did. Thank you."

Audrey wasn't sure whether to believe him. She had slept so soundly, she didn't know when he got up. And she was concerned about what she was sensing in the clipped manner he was answering her.

"Come back to bed with me," she tried to encourage, lifting her head and putting some backward pressure on his chest with her hand. But his body stiffened and he leaned away from her. Audrey dropped her hands.

"Jack, what's wrong?" she asked, stepping to his side, trying to look at him.

Jack shook his head, and said nothing. Audrey lightly touched his shoulder.

"Don't do that," she said. "Talk to me." When he still didn't answer, she stepped even closer, so he was pretty much forced to acknowledge her. "Hey, it's me. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere, so you might as well –"

"But why are you here?"

The question came in a hard tone, and Audrey was taken aback.

"Excuse me?"

"I think you heard me." His voice was bitter, not the voice she had heard just before they'd gone to sleep, the one that made her feel everything would be okay.

Audrey had no idea where this was going, but she was beginning to feel frustrated.

"I heard you just fine. What I don't understand is why you're asking me that or how I'm supposed to take it. Why am I here? I could give you the smart-ass answer that I live here. But I suppose you're asking, why am I here with you. So I'll give you a very honest answer: I don't know. But what I do know is up until I saw you through the window at CTU yesterday, I've felt like I haven't been able to take a complete breath in the last year and a half. Right now I can breathe."

Jack's eyes flicked toward her briefly, listening, and then he resumed looking out the window. Audrey couldn't let this go now.

"Jack, why are you asking me this? What's going on?"

When he still didn't say anything, Audrey grabbed his forearm, and pulled.

"Jack!"

He finally turned toward her, quickly, and Audrey took an involuntary step back when he looked at her. The pain in his eyes was tremendous. He clenched his jaw once, twice, and then spoke.

"I hurt you."

Audrey held his gaze.

"Jack, what are you –"

"I. Hurt. You." Jack reached out, and it took everything Audrey had not to flinch away from him. She stood still as his right hand came up and grazed her bandaged arm, and for a second she thought he was blaming himself for Henderson's handy work. But then his hand lifted higher, and he brushed away her hair covering her shoulder and neck, to reveal the dark bruises Audrey knew were starting to appear there. The bruises he had put there only hours ago.

Oh.

Audrey cursed silently to herself.

"Jack, listen to me. I don't blame you for what you had to do."

Jack gave her an incredulous look.

"How can you say that?" he asked. "After what I did to you?"

"Because you were in the middle of a terrorist crisis, that's how. Because I know that you've been betrayed more than once by people you've trusted. And at the time, you didn't know who you could and couldn't trust anymore."

Jack shook his head.

"That's no excuse. I should have listened to you, listened to what my instincts were telling me."

Audrey was not going to let Jack go down this road.

"No. That wasn't Jack, the man who cares deeply for the people in his life. That was Jack the CTU agent, trying to save his country. I love both, but I also know the difference. It took me a while, but I learned – both of them live in you."

And Audrey knew, given the option, which person he would like to be. But she also knew there would never be a choice for him. He would struggle with the dualities that lived inside him for the rest of his life.

"I know you would never hurt me intentionally," she said.

Jack framed her face with both his hands.

"Everything, everyone, I touch gets hurt somehow," he informed her. "And then they're gone."

"Well, then, I guess we're beating the odds. We've already crossed that bridge. And I'm still here," she replied earnestly.

"Can you forgive me?" Jack asked, looking down at the floor.

"Oh, Jack," Audrey sighed, touching his face, bring his eyes back to hers. "I already have. It's not my forgiveness you have to ask for. You have to ask for your own."

Audrey saw tears at the back of Jack's eyes.

"I don't know if I can," he admitted, his voice choked.

Audrey immediately drew him into her arms.

"Yes, you can," she said as he pressed his face into her neck. "I'll help you." Audrey heard him take a deep breath and let it go.

"Why are you here?" she heard him ask again, his voice muffled against her. But this time when he asked, she sensed he was actually asking for an answer.

Why was she here? Audrey didn't have the first idea how to answer him.

Audrey had long ago stopped analyzing the connection she and Jack shared. Right after Jack died, she had thought about it every day, trying to make sense of the deep loss she felt, a loss not many people around her understood given the relatively short time she had known him. However, as weeks turned into months, she came to accept that she might never understand it completely. But she also understood that that hardly mattered. She trusted it. And she had at last come, if not to peace with his death, to accept it with the knowledge that they'd had something deep and real, and that she'd been lucky for the time they'd had together.

"I'm here because I trust us," she said simply. "Because I trust you. Because I love you."

Jack straightened up, and looked at her. His hands were again sliding along her neck, his thumbs brushing her cheeks.

"I'm not sure what to say."

"Then don't say anything," she replied. "It's okay."

Jack returned her steady gaze, and then nodded. He leaned forward slightly, and pressed a kiss to her forehead, and then one to the tip of her nose. As she closed her eyes briefly, she felt his lips brush both her cheeks.

When Audrey opened her eyes again, she saw that Jack's face was mere inches from hers, and that his gaze had dropped to focus solely on her mouth. Audrey shivered involuntarily, wondering how this man caused such a reaction in her simply with a look.

But Audrey had little time to explore the question or the answer because Jack was leaning forward again, and after a slight pause, pressing his lips to hers. He kissed her twice, two soft kisses that just sipped at her lips, that just barely hinted at what was to come. And they might have satisfied Audrey, but she knew what was Jack's kisses promised. There was more, so much more.

And so when she smiled and reached for him, Jack pulled her fully against him, and his mouth at last firmly connected with hers, gentle yet insistent. She opened her mouth to his willingly, her tongue meeting his. Audrey moaned softly and wrapped her arms around Jack. The last time Jack had kissed her like this was the night before he'd died. Audrey tightened her hold on him, perfectly content to kiss him all night.

But Jack apparently had other ideas. Easily disengaging himself from her, he took her hands and led her to the couch, sitting and tugging her down next to him. As soon as she did, his hands were tangled in her hair, and he was kissing her again, this time harder. Audrey bit back another moan, and kissed him back, her hands coming up to explore his chest, her fingers tracing over the well-defined muscle of his abdomen, over his ribs, until they came to rest on his shoulders. A second later, and Audrey was digging her fingers into his skin as his lips left hers to kiss her down the right side of her neck, above her breastbone.

"Jack…." she sighed as he nipped at her shoulder before smoothing the same spot with a kiss. How had she ever lived without this?

Jack looked up.

"Audrey…I missed you…every day I missed you. You don't know how many times –"

Audrey silenced him with a kiss.

"I missed you too." She never wanted to think again about how much. She pressed her cheek against his.

Except that as Jack leaned forward and began guiding her backwards, his weight shifting over her, a similar moment suddenly came to Audrey's mind that made her gasp. It was a moment from a night mere months ago, in another room, on another couch, with another man. A moment that reminded her exactly how much she had missed Jack.

Jack heard her, and immediately stopped.

"Okay?" he asked. Audrey forced the stray thought out of her head, and nodded.

"More than okay," she assured him, stretching up, kissing him. But as Audrey's shoulders settled against the couch cushions with Jack stretched out next to her on his side, and the fingers of his right hand skimmed her hip until they just barely slipped under the hem of her tank top, another flash came to Audrey. This time it was of the other man's hands on her skin, pressing her underneath him.

Before she could control her reaction, Audrey shoved at Jack's chest, pushing him away. Jack sat up, giving her space.

"Audrey, what is it?'

Audrey saw the confused look on his face, and shook her head. She sat up, tucking herself against the opposite end of the couch, her arms around her knees.

"Nothing. I don't know."

Jack said nothing, waiting patiently while she avoided his gaze and tried to make sense of her thoughts. Finally she looked up.

"I think I need to explain something to you," she said.

Jack nodded once.

"Okay."

"I need to explain Walt Cummings to you."

Jack was immediately shaking his head.

"Audrey, you don't owe me any explanation. It's none of my business."

Audrey felt tears prickling at the back of her eyes.

"The thing is, Jack, it is your business. It had everything to do with you. With us."

Jack searched her eyes.

"Okay."

And Audrey began to speak.