Dear 'guest' - thanks for your reviews! I totally agree... although Teddy meeting Audrey would be a bit... strange, wouldn't it?
enjoy, amacma
For the first time in months, he didn't feel haunted. Even Teddy realized that, because she saw how peacefully he had slept through the night. She helped him get up to go to the bathroom in the morning, but thereafter he already went back to sleep again. It looked like his body really embraced the rest.
Even the color of his skin had changed – from being ghostly pale, back to almost normal.
Before she went shopping for groceries, she had a last look at the sleeping man on her sofa. I will throw him out as soon as he's able to survive it. She was determined now.
Teddy wondered if he realized how much distance she was trying to keep. Do not build up any emotional bond, she kept telling herself. Last night she had clearly realized that she was having a pattern. Guys who seemed to need her… what a pathetic one. As if she didn't allow herself to do any better.
When she came back, she found him sitting there, drinking a glass of water. God, I really have him on my hands, she thought, I have to give him something to eat. It was an awkward situation in which she tried to give him the cold shoulder. It didn't take him very long to notice it.
As he stood up, a few minutes later, he shooed away as she wanted to help him. He wanted to do to this alone. It had probably been a bad idea to let her bring him here… After all, he could see that she disliked him being here.
As he went a few steps, she simply couldn't just stand there and look, seeing how much trouble he had walking. "Let me help you.", she said, trying to support him.
"You don't have to.", he murmured, but he didn't push her away either. "I see that I'm invading your life too much already… I better leave."
"You can't leave.", she sighed, "You won't survive out there." No matter if she wanted to have him here or not, she was determined not to let him die.
Right as they reached the bathroom door, the doorbell rang.
Shocked they looked into each other's eyes, a thousand similar thoughts running through their heads: Police? Agents? The Chinese?
Hurriedly, Teddy pushed him inside the room and closed the door. She ran over to the sofa, threw all the medical supplies that were standing on the table onto the blanket that he'd used, rolled it up into a ball and rushed to bring the 'evidence' of his presence away. As the bell rang a second time she shouted I'm coming and threw the stuff into her bedroom.
All tensed up, she went over to the door.
As she looked through the spy hole, she let out a breath of relieve. It was only Mark.
"Teddy?", he called.
"I'm here.", she said to him through the closed door and opened the lock and removed the chain. Slowly, to get a few moments to catch her breath again before talking to him.
"Hi."
"Hi.", he replied, smiling her, and slowly brought his right arm to the front, showing her a bottle of red wine. "Won't you let me in?"
"Mark….", she sighed, "… we were there, it didn't work out. And it's way too early."
"I'm not here for that.", he answered, even though he was very well aware that it was a lie. "We both have the evening off and I saw how stressed out you were, the last days… if you want some company…?"
She could hardly say no… and she could hardly tell him that there was already someone here, that it was their John Doe from the hospital and that she was helping a stranger hide from whoever was after him and that she was breaking the Hippocratic oath because he actually belonged in ICU and not on her sofa…
Mark went past her, over to the couch and put the bottle of wine down on the couch table.
She followed him, glancing at the bathroom door, praying please don't come out.
Somehow she had to get Mark out of here, before he'd open up that bottle of wine.
"Why don't we go out?", she asked him. She didn't really want to but it was the only way out that she saw.
He was surprised to hear that. During the past weeks, after Henry's death, she had made such a sad impression that he would have loved to ask her out much earlier, just to cheer her up. Common decency had told him to wait and to go slow. It was a welcome surprise that she suddenly wasn't going slow.
Teddy let him help her into her coat. As he went out of her apartment in front of her, she was saved. For now.
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Teddy came home alone. Hours later. She had a look at her wristwatch. Past midnight. She'd been away for 9 hours!
She put the key into the lock and cautiously turned it, not to make a sound, not to make Jack wake up, if he was already asleep.
She stepped into her apartment and found it dark. No single light was on.
Slowly, she went over to the living room and found the couch empty. Had he stayed in the bathroom? She opened that door, finding it empty, too. Now she was getting worried. She rushed into her sleeping room. As she turned on the light, she found it empty as well. To her surprise, the blanket that she had thrown in here, to hide the medical supplies was folded together neatly and lay at her bed. On one of the drawers stood a box, she guessed that the things she'd hid in the blanket were in there now.
But no trace of him. He had wiped out all traces of his stay here and had disappeared.
She went back to the couch and let herself fall down.
Not even a note.
Even though she had told herself not to get emotionally involved, she was disappointed now. The whole evening, though she had spent it with Mark, she hadn't been able to get that guy out of her head.
The doorbell rang again. Probably it was Mark… trying to finish, what he had started in the car.
Sadly smiling, she stood up and went to open up. "Ma.." she halted in the middle of the sentence.
It was not Mark.
"He left ten minutes ago.", Jack said, as if he felt responsible to explain where the one whose name she was calling was. He was a goddamn intelligence agent - of course he'd have a look if that guy was still around.
"What are you doing here?", she stammered, caught by surprise. "I already thought you had left."
Jack slowly shook his head and nodded at the staircase just outside her apartment door that lead to the attic. "No."
A small smile lit up her face. "You waited out here because you thought I'd bring him home?"
He shrugged. "Yeah. How should I know?"
She let the door swing open. "Come in.", she softly said. Right now she was actually glad that it wasn't Mark. If it had been Mark… would she have let him in? Most likely, yes… then they'd be already on the way to the bedroom by now.
To be here with Jack was a real relief, compared to Mark.
She helped him walk over to the sofa. "I didn't want to ruin your evening", he said, "I would have stayed away if you…"
"You didn't ruin it.", she interrupted him. Actually, he had saved her from making a big mistake which she'd regret in the morning.
She helped him sit down. The bottle of red wine which Mark had brought earlier still stood there.
Jack watched her, as she went over to the kitchen and got two glasses and a jug of water. She put them on the table between them and sat down on the leather chair to his left. He didn't say a word, while she opened up the bottle and poured herself a glass of wine. She took the jar with the water and filled water into the other glass that she then put in front of him.
He skeptically eyed her. "Water?"
"You're on painkillers, mister.", she smiled, "And I'm still your doctor."
"Right, ma'am." They clinked glasses. He had to admit that he was really quite thirsty after waiting out there for such a long time. If she had brought that guy home with her, he would have spent the night here in the warm staircase and would have disappeared in the morning hours.
"So, how was your date?", he asked.
The simple question felt like he had stabbed a dagger into her hear. "Don't ever ask me that question again, Jack.", she spoke. He couldn't know how much he reminded her of Henry by asking something that trivial. "You need to know… I lost someone, not long ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that." She looked so sad that he would have loved to go over there and just hug her. But he decided not do. He had invaded too much of her privacy already. "I know how that feels.", he silently added.
Teddy watched him sip at his glass of water. He balanced the glass in his bandaged hands. "Will it ever get better?"
Jack stared at his own reflection in the water. He looked horrible. After a while, he slightly shook his head. "No.", he spoke under his breath, "But you'll forget that it happened. And the intervals when you remember it get longer and longer."
Whoever he had lost, he was clearly not over it. "Audrey?", she silently asked, hoping that she wasn't asking too much.
He shook his head again, saying "No, I was married." He looked up from his glass of water, over to her, "she died six years ago. Her name was Teri."
They both sat in silence for a while, sipped at their drinks and thought of the ones who they had lost.
As Teddy put the empty glass down to the table, Jack reached out for the bottle and gave her a refill. "You don't need to work tomorrow morning, right?", he asked. Otherwise he would have had a bad conscience, giving her even more alcohol than she'd already had. He didn't know how many glasses she'd already had, but this one clearly hadn't been her first one today evening.
"This won't make it go away but it'll make you forget it for just one evening.", he murmured as he put the bottle down again, in reach for them both.
She shook her head and watched him. It hurt him, for sure, to lean over the table. But either he'd had a few painkillers too much or he just didn't let it show. "What happened to you?", she silently asked.
Their eyes met. He wasn't ready to talk about this, she saw.
"You saw that all...", he sighed, referring to the wounds all over his body, and took a deep breath. "Doesn't that speak for itself?"
"It does.", she whispered. They went back to their silence, back to their drinks.
"Whatever we say…", Teddy began, "we seem to step one another landmine."
He smiled upon her choice of words. "You could be right with that." As he put his empty glass down he had an eye on the bottle of wine. "Maybe we shouldn't say anything at all, then."
Teddy had already seen him squint at the bottle. No matter how painful it was to step on all these landmines, she loved his company. He was different than Mark. His was a calm person, but his simple presence was enough to make her feel not alone.
She leant over, took the bottle and poured a little bit of wine into his empty glass.
Wordlessly he smiled at her and then took it. In silence, they clinked glasses.
Jack didn't even remember any more when he'd had his last drink. Must be more than one and a half years ago. He was sure that that little bit of wine wouldn't take long to kick in.
Teddy watched him drink. He was musing about something. She really wanted to know what he was thinking about, but she guessed that it would only be another landmine. "Tell me something.", she said.
"What do you wanna know?"
She shrugged. "Something which isn't another landmine." She wanted the silence broken.
He finished his wine, put the glass back onto the table and slowly leant back, slow enough to make his abdomen hurt. "Let me think.", he said, staring at the ceiling. It wasn't that easy to find something that it was worth talking, something that wouldn't be another sore spot. Going through the possible list of topics he quickly came to the conclusion that his whole life only consisted of landmines.
Kim? She hated him and he didn't even know where or how she was. Family? No good memories… why else would he have joined forces. Army times? Not worth talking about. CIA? Couldn't talk about. CTU? Neither. The past one and a half years? He threw the thought away as quickly as it had appeared.
There was nothing that wasn't horrible.
He slightly turned his head and looked at her. She sat there, her legs drawn to her body, her glass of wine in her hand and looked at him, expectantly.
"You remind me of someone.", he said. It was the only thought that came across his mind.
"Really?", she laughed, "Of who?"
"Audrey."
"Why?"
"You look a lot like her. Really." She was out there somewhere. First he had thought that speaking of her would be like stepping onto another landmine, but actually it wasn't. To think of her made that warm feeling return to his chest, that he'd already started to miss.
"Is that why you grabbed my arm when you woke up?", Teddy asked.
"What? Did I?"
"Yes.", she laughed. "I was already getting of afraid of you.", she lied.
"Sorry…", he apologized, smiling back at her. "I don't remember that. I remember seeing you in my room, and I thought she was there."
Teddy saw that his thoughts got lost in 'what-ifs'. "Why don't you contact her?"
"It's complicated."
"Why?"
He took a deep breath. "You know that I'm on the run.", he began. "She wouldn't accept that." Before Teddy wouldn't understand in a wrong way, he added, "She'd put herself in danger trying to be with me and I can't let that happen."
Now he felt the alcohol kick in. It made it possible to think about Audrey without wanting to start crying. Remembering her virtues, her determinedness, her will to be with him, that she'd move heaven and hell to get what she wanted.
"You love her a lot, don't you?", Teddy whispered.
He slightly nodded his head yes. With a smile on his face. Not a sad one.
Then they sat in silence again, drowned in their own thoughts. After a while, Jack poured himself another glass of water. He didn't want to get drunk. If Teddy got herself drunk, that was okay with him. But he knew what was on the stake for him. He didn't know when he'd be back on the run. It was safer to be cautious. He had to use every second to get well again. It could decide over life or death.
She laughed, as she sat him with the water bottle. "Good as gold.", she joked.
"My doctor ordered it this way.", he said, adding, "You're drunk, Teddy."
She knew that herself. Mark had bought drinks, the whole evening long. Stiff drinks. A wonder that he had dared driving her home. The two glasses of wine were only a drop in the bucket. Yet, she poured herself a third glass, Jack watching.
"Your turn, now.", he said.
"With what? Pouring drinks?"
"No, with telling me something.", he leant back and closed his eyes. "We're still circumnavigating landmines."
She took her time answering.
Finally, she found something.
"My date was horrible.", she began. "He told me he only wanted to comfort me but after the third drink he couldn't really conceal it any more what he really wanted." In the end, now, she could even laugh about it. Maybe just because she was drunk?
"God, in the end I even kissed him! Stupid!", she laughed out loud and dissolved into giggles.
Jack was glad that it wasn't him who was drunk. "Just tell me his name, I'll kill him for you.", he joked.
That made her giggles even worse. "Stop it, Jack… you're killin me!" She bent over, laughing.
Now even she realized, that she was really drunk. Mark would have already taken advantage of that. But that guy over there didn't. Because he was in love with the woman named Audrey? Because of his state of health? Or because this wasn't his character?
Even though she didn't know him at all, she felt safe here.
She looked into his eyes, deeply. "Thank you, Jack."
"For what? You saved my life."
"For just being here." Goddamnit, had she really said that? The alcohol made her say the silliest things. She was talking before thinking again.
"You're drunk, Teddy.", he repeated, softly smiling. "And I guess your gun would be safer out here with me than in there with you.", he nodded at her bedroom door.
She started to giggle again. "I don't own a gun.", she laughed. Yesterday night she'd just said that to scare him away from her bedroom door.
"Have another glass of water with me, Jack..." she sighed, "I haven't felt this good in weeks."
Obediently following her orders, he refilled his glass with water and poured a little bit of wine into hers. No matter if she was drunk… no matter that he wasn't… she was right with what she'd said. He also hadn't felt this good in weeks. Even in months.
He leant back and enjoyed the simple normality of her talking about everything and anything. Except landmines.
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please R&R