As strange as it may seem death had forced her to consider life.
She had learned so much in her life that sometimes she felt like her head would explode. For her, there was no simple answer—everything was like a math problem that had to be filtered through her internal calculator. But although she knew many things, some things baffled her completely. At least that's how she felt before she killed a man. Sure it was in self-defense, a reflex, and she knew that, but regardless her actions stayed with her. Suddenly she understood what Jack must feel everyday (of course he had it multiplied by 1000) the guilt at taking another's life. She wondered sometimes how he kept himself standing under the force of it all.
At fours years old her parents had her tested and she was deemed "gifted." Whatever that meant. By six she was off to boarding school where she spent 8-10 hours a day in class. Her ability with math and later computers had meant she spent most of her days with numbers and machines. Even in the best school in the country she had been much smarter than the other girls. She wasn't bragging. It was the truth. She always had he answer—always ruined the grading curve. She didn't have to bother avoiding the other girls—they didn't want to be around her. Except to make fun of her.
So she'd concentrated on learning and avoided people. She learned to protect herself with a wall of sarcasm and pushed out anything breathing. She stopped caring about anything that didn't have an escape key on it. That had changed when she began to work at CTU, when she'd met Jack and for once in her life something got through the wall. A slight chink that made her trust him, that made her put herself on the line.
And when she'd killed another human being and a few hours later Jack was gone—her mind began to stray from figures and data and began to think about other things. Life and death. Why one person lived and another died? Why had she survived? Why did others die? Who decided these things? Was she really saved only to return to CTU and punch numbers into a machine? Was that something worth living for?
It was about that time that Spenser Wolf came to work at CTU. He was intelligent and handsome and completely out of her league. Maybe that is why she had said yes when he asked her out—she was just too shocked to say no (most of the other women working at CTU were equally shocked). Next thing she knew they were practically living together—even talking about getting married. He ignored—or didn't care—about the thousands of dumb things she seemed to do everyday. In fact he seemed to love her even more for them.
And that fact had made her blind to who Spenser really was. She never considered that he might be using her. When her computer was hacked into and Jack's location found she never thought about the fact that he was the only one with easy access to her home. Never considered it any of the times that something bad would happen at CTU and he was no where to be found. She never really considered it at all. She trusted him—all the way up until the moment that he held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Even then she was sure it was wrong. Even after Jack saved her and told her the Spenser was a traitor—that he used her—her head still moved side to side, her mouth silently saying "No." "You're wrong Jack," she told him, "Spenser wouldn't do that." She shrugged his hands away as they moved over her shoulders trying to comfort her. She denied it even then—although some part of her knew Jack was right—Jack was always right.
And that led her here. Sitting on one side of a one way mirror and watching as Spenser told Jack what he already knew. That he'd been using her—that he never loved her—that she'd been easy—so pathetically easy to trick because she was desperate. He laughed as Jack's fist clenched and whispered how easy she was to get into bed.
It took three men to get Jack off of Spenser—who only laughed and told them that he would give them all the information they wanted—as soon as he got the deal he wanted. Buchanan stalked off to contact the president and Jack moved into the room. She could feel his eyes on her, but she couldn't look at anything but Spenser.
"Chloe," Jack finally said, "Are you okay?"
She laughed—an empty sound in her throat, "Okay. Sure Jack, my boyfriend just revealed to a bunch of my co-workers that he's been using me for months now, that he never cared about me and, oh yeah, that I'm lousy in bed. I'm just wonderful Jack, how about you?"
She was startled to realize she was crying. She looked up at Jack and for a moment she really, truly hated him. Because really this was ALL HIS FAULT. If she never met him then she never would have let that wall down, she would never have come back to CTU, she would never have killed that man, she would never have met Spenser and she wouldn't be in the pain she was in now. She would be somewhere else with a computer in front of her typing away. Because before Jack all she needed was a computer and now she was filled with need for something she would never have.
He had opened Pandora's Box and now she would never be able to get all the feelings he'd awakened to sleep again. Never be able to get back to the way she was before.
But that didn't mean she couldn't ignore those feelings. She would push them away; concentrate on what she knew again. And eventually it would stop hurting. She wouldn't let anyone hurt her this way again. Would never be this pathetic, or desperate or stupid. And the first step to make this happen was to get away from Jack Bauer.
She took a deep breath, ignored Jack as he called after her and headed straight for her computer. She snapped at Edgar to get back to work when he looked over at her and then began to do what needed to be done to save the country yet again. As she moved her hands over the keyboard she let the sound drown out everything else.