Monday

March 4, 2002

Santa Monica, California

Jack opened the sliding glass door and slammed it shut. Teri had told him the door's lock might be broken and he had wanted to check it before they went to bed. The door seemed to be fine but it had stuck a bit when he was opening and closing it. He would have to take another look at it tomorrow but for now he was happy that it was locked.

He crossed the kitchen and entered the security code into their home alarm. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Teri sitting at the table with her laptop in front of her. She was frowning and playing with her hair absentmindedly as she worked. It was such a familiar sight he had to smile. He remembered the first time he noticed her, really noticed her. It was one afternoon twenty years ago and he had stopped by her house to see if her brother wanted to go play ball at the park. After searching for a few minutes he found Teri in the backyard sitting under a tree working on a sketch. It was warm that day so she had her long, curly hair pulled back save for one curl that she had wrapped around her finger. It was then Jack realized that someone he had only regarded as Mike's little sister and a pretty good shortstop was also a very beautiful girl.

He had known Teri since they were children and they had been together for almost twenty years. He literally could not remember life before he knew her and it was hard to imagine life without her.

Jack couldn't believe he had come so close to losing her.

Nearly two years ago he had been dispatched on a special operation in Kosovo, the objective was to kill Milosevic's second-in-command -- Victor Drazen. Logically, he had no problems with what he had been assigned to do. Drazen was responsible for the systematic rape, torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of Albanians. He was a homicidal monster, the Himmler to Milosevic's Hitler. No, Jack had no qualms about killing him.

But it was still a little surreal that he was now acting as the US Government's own hitman.

The mission had started well but quickly devolved into a nightmare. Drazen's men had found Jack and his men out in the woods after the Drazen complex had been bombed. His team was surrounded and outnumbered. The battle that followed was short. A little more than an hour after the Drazen complex had been destroyed Jack's entire team was gone. The men that he had personally selected and asked to join him on this operation were all dead now.

He had led them to their deaths.

When he came home he was barely functioning. Jack still went through the motions of everyday life but he felt hollow inside. It was like he was sleepwalking through his days. When he laid down at night, when he closed his eyes, he was right back in Kosovo. The feel of the cold air in his throat and nose, the sounds of the artillery, the sight of blood on the snow-covered ground, the smell of charred flesh -- it all came back to him in his quiet moments.

That's why he tried to keep busy. He threw himself into his work and every spare moment he had he relived that day. He had become obsessed with trying to figure out how things had ended so horribly. Jack had believed he could find some justice for his men and some peace for himself if he could find out who was behind the mission's failure.

The truth, like justice and peace of mind, proved to be beyond his grasp.

Faced with this second failure he really started to sink deeper into his depression. He was too tightly wound to sleep and when he did he was haunted by images of that day. Jack kept having this recurring dream where he was running through the woods of Dakovica, he was being chased by Drazen's men. He would come across this wide but shallow lake which he would have to wade through to escape. Sometimes, as he was wading through but sometimes before he would see the bodies of his men floating in the lake. Usually they were dead and he had to push through them to make his way across the lake but sometimes they weren't. That was the worst because then they would call or reach for him but Jack still had to push past them because he couldn't save them, he could only save himself.

Teri had known there was something wrong almost immediately. She had asked but after a few denials from Jack she had decided to leave it alone. That changed, however, when he had been home for about a month. He came home one Sunday after being called into work for some minor problem. Jack went into the living room looking for Teri or Kim. Neither of them were in there but the tv was on and there was an episode of "Band of Brothers" playing. He had never watched the show but he had seen many war movies before and they usually had no effect on him. Jack wasn't sure if it was the snowy woods or the explosions in the dark night but that episode brought him right back to Kosovo. Teri found him a few minutes later slumped next to the couch gasping for air.

She did everything she could to help him. She was supportive, she was tough. She gave him space, she was always there for him. She became an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. She asked him to go to a psychiatrist. She even asked his family and friends to help. Teri spent a year and a half holding onto Jack but it was no use, he still sunk deeper into the abyss.

Jack insisted that he was fine. He tried to explain away the mood swings, lack of sleep and panic attacks as simple stress. She didn't believe it and neither did he. He didn't know what else to do, he didn't know what he could tell her and more importantly he didn't know how he could tell her. How could he tell her that he was sent to murder someone half a world away? How could he tell her that all those men who trusted him, depended on him, wouldn't be there if it weren't for him were now dead and he couldn't save them. He could only save himself.

Last August, Teri asked him to move out. It was a formality at that point. He was spending more time at work and when he was home he barely spoke to Teri. They hadn't made love in months.

They separated and he moved into an apartment not far from work. Aside from his visits with Kim on the weekend his life continued much as it did before, he woke up, went to work, came home to sleep and repeated the pattern the next day. It wasn't until three months later that he was jolted out of his routine.

In November, Jack discovered that three agents had been taking bribes from an organization with terrorist connections. He had turned them over and turned CTU: LA upside-down in the process. Aside from having District, Division and even Federal crawling all over for the next few months, that action had made him the enemy of most of the agents under his command. His last refuge was no longer welcoming.

Jack still had a few people at work he could depend on, like Nina. She had defended him and put herself on the line for him countless times even though her own reputation was damaged in the process. He had always admired Nina as a fellow agent but now he admired her as person. They had entered into a relationship a few weeks later. It wasn't planned but it just seemed natural for them.

At the same time he started talking to Richard Walsh about what had happened in Kosovo. Jack had been impressed by Richard the first time he met him, the man was a terrific agent, a strong leader and had the kind of integrity that was sorely lacking among the other "suits" in the Agency. Like Nina, Richard was someone he respected as person and one of his closest friends at CTU. It was Richard who helped him see the mess he was making of his life.

Jack had started talking to Teri more and a few weeks ago she asked him to come back home. When he told Nina that he was going back to Teri she had seemed genuinely happy for him but he thought he saw something else there. Jack wasn't sure but sometimes he suspected that Nina might have feelings for him that were deeper than he had suspected. If she did, she'd never tell him. Nina, even when she was involved with him, seemed to keep her heart closely guarded.

He was surprised and a bit relieved that she was involved with Tony. He and Tony didn't get along. He knew Tony didn't care for him and Jack found Tony's attitude and constant need to second-guess him tiring. Still, he was a pretty decent guy and he seemed to care for Nina a lot, she deserved that.

Jack entered the living room and walked over to a bookcase in the corner. After looking for a minute he found what he was looking for and pulled the chess set off the shelf.

Kim had first become interested in chess when she was about twelve. Playing chess had been another way for he and Kim to bond. She had a natural affinity for it and it wasn't long before she was beating him at the game. Now it seemed like chess was one of the few things they still shared. Even though Kim acted like everything was fine he knew their relationship was different. In some ways, he had spent two years away from his family.

It was overwhelming when he thought about everything that had happened and how much his life had changed and how much he had changed. At the same time Jack felt very hopeful about the future and he hadn't felt that for a long time.

He had been given a second chance in many ways and he wasn't going to squander it.