Bluenose- yep i guess its just me and you on that front. I will eventually get around to writing a proper one- eventually. Have you done any that I can see??
Kezz- this is gonna be the last chapter about Jack- he's gone after this- but I needed him so he could say what he says in this chapter
Kita- Thanks- I'm paranoid sometimes about my writing- quite often I think I've missed the point entirely
Anyway- next chapter- took longer than I'd like cos I didn't want to write it. Hopefully I should have a new one up soon too. Please review- will be much appreciated.
One more thing, that was all he had to do. Exhaustion of a new kind gripped at him. He was used to the mental exhaustion, its clawing hold on him was rarely gone. The physical exhaustion was nothing new to him either. But this, this he didn't understand. An aching numbness, painful even to breathe. But a pain that he couldn't feel, was able to identify, but couldn't react to.
His arm itched, his body called for him to repeat last night, needing the boost that only the heroin could provide any more. His mind was lost somewhere that he wasn't even sure existed. And although he was aware that he was still there, still putting one foot in front of the other, still drawing the stubborn breaths of air, he wasn't sure how he could still be alive.
These memories vaguely rang with recognition, the death of his wife had had a similar effect, a similar gnawing pain. But at least then he had been able to feel, an agony of guilt and pain, loneliness and hatred. Now there was nothing.
He wasn't sure if the drugs had burnt the ability to feel from him, or if he simply had nothing left to feel anything for. His daughter was still there, but the distance between them was a gulf that widened with every breath he took. She had a new life, a hard life, no time for worrying about things she couldn't comprehend, and his drug use was certainly something that she didn't comprehend.
Friends were an odd concept for him, never forming the bonds of friendship that tied people together, never being able to trust enough to get that far. Tony was a friend, of sorts, and Michelle could even be considered in that category. But he didn't know either of them, and they certainly didn't know him, although Michelle's ability to see through him earlier with a perceptiveness he had never seen before shocked a respect for her out of him, an attachment he clung to. Her pain was like his, and although he couldn't quite comprehend it, he guessed you needed to actually care about yourself before you could bring yourself to care for anyone else, he recognised it, seeing it as a common bond that he shared with nothing and no one else. That was why he was here now, that was why he hadn't run, yet. He needed to do this, if for nothing else, then at least to confirm that he was still alive, that there was still a point.
So ignoring the craving that was so desperately crawling inside of him, he kept going, one foot in front of the other. That was all it took. The craving, he would see to that later.
Jack registered the shock in Tony's demeanour with a small start of surprise. The man he knew, who even in the few months that had passed, had been considerably larger, both in actual size, having lost a large amount of the muscle tone necessary to maintain his position, and in air. Tony's presence, the one that made him so good for the office he had dominated, was all but gone. But that was not what surprised Jack. Instead it was the way his emotions played out for all to see. Tony had always been guarded, keeping layers where no one could find them. Eyes blank regardless of the situation. Jack had never seen an actual response from him unless Michelle was involved, and even then he had been able to lie to her for an entire month, her not suspecting anything.
Whereas with most men he knew, prison created a strong façade behind which everything could be hidden, Tony was no longer even able to maintain the façade he had put up at work. Tony was, if possible, almost as much as a mess as Michelle had been.
Registering the aching eyes, hollow with nights of painful sleeplessness and days of drawn out agony, Jack felt reassurance in knowing that the man before him understood the very pain that was consuming him.
Silence dominated, broken only by the footsteps of the guard, hushed as the magnitude of the situation he didn't quite understand nevertheless resonated with him, and those same stubborn breaths uttered into air that was slightly colder than was comfortable.
Eyes, Jack's blank, a reflection of himself in so many ways; Tony's not moving from the broken tile that suddenly captivated him. The eventual discomfort of their proximity to each other, pain the other felt acutely resonating from both of them, caused Jack to break the silence, feeling almost guilty as he did.
"They told me, about your plea. Why?" Voice level, no betrayal of the turmoil and desperation within himself.
"Why not?" A wry smile appearing as his answer amused him more than it did Jack. This was pointless, it was done, nothing made a difference anymore. His life had had so much purpose to it, so much to live for. He had loved it, it had been hard but more than anything he missed the challenge it had presented, his minding calling for a relief from this imposed period of sedentary numbness.
But catching Jack's irritation, his powers of perception not yet completely eroded by the length of inaction he had had to endure, he continued. "I'm not going to say that I'm not guilty, Jack. I am. I know that, I knew it even then." More quietly, more to the ghosts within himself than to the shadow of the man he once knew hovering in front of him, "I won't let her hear me say that."
"Tony, the penalty for treason if you plead guilty is death. You know that." His head nodded, no emotion, there was no more. Jack's whisper was filled with something he no longer had the strength to recognise, the strange pressure in his head associated with the tears forming behind his eyes a million miles beyond anything he was able to feel. "She doesn't believe you're guilty."
Tony's head snapped up, eyes casting themselves from the broken tile on the floor laced with a dull brown caking of dry blood, to Jack Bauer, seeing immediately the void in him, but not comprehending it as his mind begged him for any details of Michelle that he might be able to glean. "What?" Voice surprisingly level, maybe there was still some control left in him.
Jack said nothing, leaving him to work it out for himself. Tony's mind fell into overdrive. "But she thinks I'm guilty, she asked me for a divorce, she thinks I'm guilty, she has to."
"Why do you think she asked you for a divorce Tony? Did you not see her? She's falling apart so quickly that I'm surprised that there's anything left. She didn't want a divorce Tony, she wanted you to fight for her, to tell her that it was ok, that you didn't blame her. She thinks this is her fault." Voice quivered this time, he may as well have been talking about himself.
"But she didn't do anything. She knows how I feel, why would she think that?" He really couldn't see, this theory being so radically different from his own.
"She fed suicide pills to children, she killed a man, she got kidnapped. What didn't she do? She doesn't even know what she feels herself anymore, let alone what anyone else feels."
Eyes filled with grief and self-loathing, "But... What do I do, she'd gone, I let her go... What am I supposed to do?"
Jack would have laughed at Tony's echo of the question he had been asking himself for so long if it had still been possible for him to laugh at anything. "She'll come back. She will. She doesn't have anyone else. You're who she needs."
Tony saw the truth in this, but also heard the message behind his words. "You're leaving her?"
"She's not my wife Tony." She wasn't, and any closer than this would be dangerous, it was dangerous enough already, he wouldn't be here otherwise. "Don't tell her." Aimed at Kim this time, tapping his arm before he left, the man he had come to see still broken, but at least now there was hope.