Sometimes she can't remember the life she had before she began working at CTU, before she met him.
It's not just him. Most people think so. They think that she does what she does because she's in love with him. That she's pathetic and believes that if she does enough for him he will love her in return.
It's not true. Nor is it true that she thinks he's perfect. She knows better. Jack Bauer is a complete and total mess. An emotionally unavailable, untrusting, guilt ridden man who will never be able to escape the past. Will never find the peace he wants more than anything, more than he wants love, more than he wants his daughter's forgiveness, she knows that what he wants most is just to be.
Despite all of that she loves him. She loves every scar, emotional and physical. She loves every single thing about him.
Because he made her something. He helped give her life meaning.
A few years ago she was floating from one consultant job to another with no purpose. She made money, she was friends with Chase, she helped him with his daughter, and that was about it. It never even occurred to her that there was anything more out there.
He'd given that to her. When she came here it was just another job, but working with him, learning from him, she's found something worth doing. Fighting, risking everything for something bigger than life, bigger than her tiny little byte on life's hard drive.
And what he'd done, what she'd helped him do had made her life worth something. And loving him, loving him had opened her heart. He would never return the feeling, but, for her, it was enough that she felt it. Enough that it existed.
Enough that she was someone.