Peace – Part 9
Jack stood on shaking legs, one hand gripping the shelf in front of him. The box had been calling him for more than three days now, he'd finally found the strength to crawl the ten feet or so across the room and drag himself to his feet in front of it.
God, he wanted it! Wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. He didn't know how long he'd been standing there, staring at that shiny needle crazily, listening to it as it whispered to him, told him that it didn't matter if he picked it up and filled it with the brown liquid. It was so close he could taste it, feel it running through his aching, pulsing veins, he thirsted for the feeling of weightlessness and relief it would bring. More than anything he craved release from the nightmares, the hallucinations that filled every moment of his life, they had gripped him for as long as he could remember now. It felt like forever. He couldn't recall much that had happened before he came to this house, everything outside of this room had faded into a distant, blurred memory. The prison he was in was his entire world and nothing else mattered. It was as though time had stopped and the world was waiting to see how his struggle would turn out.
It was the gun that was stopping him. Even though his throat was dry and constricted with desire, even though his whole body shook and his vision was blurred, even though his mind was full of the spectres of the dead and his brain screamed for the prick of the needle...the gun was there. He remembered the promise he'd made himself, it was drilled into him that the syringe and the gun now went hand in hand. To pick up one meant picking up the other – even in his state he could focus on that.
He'd only put the gun next to the box on the shelf as a symbol – and for convenience. So that if he'd broken completely, the gun would be close at hand. It had turned out to be a blessing though, because now it was reminding him what giving in really meant. It was aiding his natural stubbornness that was telling him in a weak and tiny voice that he didn't want to do it, he didn't want to get high again.
Heroin was stronger and was getting stronger by the minute. The longer he stood there, the more his resolve crumbled. Jack sweated and shook, tears ran freely from his clouded eyes, he was completely torn. He was freezing again but he couldn't drag his gaze away from what sat on the shelf. Did he want to die? Was that it? Surely the answer was a simple 'no' – if that was the case, then why not just turn away? If living meant walking away from the box, then why not do it?
Because it hurt. It really, really fu(king hurt. The pain was unlike anything Jack had ever felt before and it was a completely different type of pain too – an unrelenting, unmerciful attack on every sense, every muscle, every joint, every thought in his head. Jack would give anything to have it stop, anything in the world – which was why he'd crawled over here in the first place. He had meant to get that needle into his arm as quickly as he could tie the tourniquet. He would gladly have died, just to feel that sweet sensation pouring through him. And then he'd seen the gun and been brought up short by the reality of it. One thought had penetrated the fog of pain in his head – he'd broken. For he first time in his life, Jack Bauer had given in to the pain and let it beat him. He'd said he couldn't take anymore and was willing to let his captor completely into his mind, give it everything, tell it anything it wanted – all so he could get his fix. And just like a terrorist, when this captor had what it wanted, it would kill him. Because through everything, Jack looked at the gun and knew he'd do it – if he went all the way and used the needle, he'd pull that damn trigger - because he was sick. Sick with himself. Sick that he'd ever come to this – a junkie with no strength to control his own actions. And he wouldn't live like that. He couldn't.
He didn't know it but he'd been there for two hours. Time meant nothing to him, he couldn't even comprehend the concept of it. It was him, standing between life and death. That was the only thing that mattered now.
He tried to clear his head. Wouldn't work. A jumbled mess of half-finished thoughts collided with each other, bounced off one another and he couldn't make sense of any of them. It was just noise. He finally pulled his eyes away from the gun and the box, looked down at his shaking legs. The floor seemed to be a long way away and it swam underneath his eyes so he had to close them to stop himself from losing balance and falling over. He lifted his head that felt like it weighed 200 pounds and settled his eyes on the whiteness of the knuckles that gripped the shelf. He vaguely noticed that his hand was aching – and there was blood on it! Where had that come from? He slowly managed to open his fingers and prise his hand from the shelf, standing on his own two feet for the first time in over three days. He pulled the hand up to his eyes and noticed that it was cut open, and blood – both new and old - coated the back of it.
The metallic, sharp smell of the new blood assaulted his nostrils and made him retch, and for a second his mind was clear of desire and pain as he fell to his knees on the hard floor and dry heaved on the floorboards. There was nothing in him to bring up, but his head swam from the effort and his joints screamed in protest at the sudden movement. When he'd done, he sank to one side and rested against the wall underneath the shelf, trembling uncontrollably.
His hand. What had happened to it? Jack looked again, careful not to bring it too close so that the smell wouldn't overpower him again. He could see broken thread to the sides of the gash – of course, he'd had to stitch it up! He couldn't tell if it hurt or not because all of him hurt, his entire body felt stiff and the ache was constant, driving him mad, like his bones were on fire and being squashed at the same time. And he couldn't sit still anymore, he had to keep moving as though that would distract his mind or relieve some of the pressure.
But he hadn't done it. He'd stood there within reaching distance of relief – and he hadn't taken it. That alone was worth something and it gave him the tiniest ray of hope, the most delicate sliver of grass to grip onto while the rest of him hung over the cliff. Jack rolled onto his knees and began crawling back to the mattress, starting the trek that seemed to be miles long, back to the starting line where the struggle not to crawl this distance again began once more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sleep was troubled as before. It had taken all the energy he had to get back across the room and he managed it by focusing on the spots of water on the floor that his falling tears created. He found that by staring at those, he could pull his heavy legs and shift his arms forward without concentrating on how much it hurt to do so. When he'd finally got back to his bed, he'd sprawled face down and immediately passed into a heavy sleep, oblivious to every sound from outside and every feeling in his battered body.
Teri was still a skeleton, his Nightfall team were still dead. Claudia still wrapped her bloody lips around his and he was still left alone to drown in the lake. He'd found himself carrying an axe too, chopping his parents to pieces, he'd been chased by Nina's rotting corpse, had his legs ripped off by giant fish in the lake, Chase and Tony had electrocuted him and tortured him, run him over in his car....and that baby, that tiny baby – his unborn child had killed him many times over, screaming and screaming until his head blew up or he slit his own throat in despair. And always, always the music played, the one constant through it all. He almost came to rely on it, looked forward to it in a sick kind of way. Because even though Kim had never been in any of the nightmares – the music brought her there. He heard it and thought of her.
He was dreaming of her this time though. It wasn't as bad as the others – but in a way it was much worse. She was in front of him, talking and crying but he couldn't hear what she was saying. Every time he moved closer to try and catch her words, she moved further and further back until he was shouting to her over a distance of a football field, his yells lost in the rain and swirling wind and she receded until she was a mere speck in the distance and finally he couldn't see her anymore and that was when he started to scream, calling her name over and over but she was gone, she couldn't hear him.....
Jack woke suddenly and for the first time, he didn't automatically curl into a tight ball, trying to protect himself from the pain. He was aware of the silence around him, aware of the fact that it was dark – but there was a light somewhere...he swivelled one eye up towards the window without moving his head, his vision clearing ....yes, it was getting light outside. It didn't register with him that this was the first time he'd remembered that there was a window there at all, he didn't notice that the pain wasn't quite as bad as it had been the last time he woke. All his attention was taken by the all-too-familiar realisation that there was a gun pointing at the back of his head. Even with what he was going through, he'd recognise that feeling anywhere....
He closed his eyes and didn't move. Maybe it was all part of the nightmare. Maybe it was another hallucination. His grip on reality had become precarious at best...Jack forgot about it, tried to go back to sleep again. He could hardly bear the images that came when he did, but he figured that the more he slept, the quicker he'd get through this. The mattress was wet under his face, from tears or sweat, he didn't know which. Probably both. And the pain was back, although he seemed to be able to think through it a little now – and Kim! Oh...he'd seen her face! He'd been trying to remember her face and now he'd seen it...but she'd been crying, hadn't been able to hear him...Jacks insides curled in a way that was nothing to do with withdrawal, and tears leaked out of his eyes once again and he gasped as his aching muscles gripped him and his throat tightened....
Something prodded at the back of his head. Oh yes, the gun. Jack had had enough. He'd stood in front of his own gun and hadn't picked it up, he'd wrestled himself to the edge of madness trying not to stick a needle in his arm when it was the only thing he wanted to do, he was sick and exhausted and had barely the energy to turn his head...and now someone was prodding a gun into his head. He didn't care why, didn't care who it was. In a way he was relieved – they could make the decision for him. There would be no more fighting, no more pain...he wanted to grin but a shiver ran through him and turned it into a grimace as his muscles protested. Jack licked his cracked lips with a dry tongue and managed to croak:
'Do it. For the love of God, do it...'
He wasn't sure if the person had heard him, he'd barely heard himself. He didn't care anymore...he was done. He felt the barrel of the gun moving off his head and vaguely saw a pair of boots walking to the other side of the room before his eyes closed and he slipped back into a deep, restless sleep.
