Here we go... another chapter, J&T still have a long way to go... thanks for reviewing, amamca
It had been a rainy day full of normalcy – something that he wasn't used to any more. He was used to having nothing to do, being somewhere in hiding, or sitting in that rotten cell, but he was not used to being free any more. Any other second, he expected someone to come through the front door, pointing a gun at him… or that one of the windows would shatter and that they'd storm the apartment.
At the same time, he also knew that this wouldn't happen. He had left no traces. Nobody but the Chinese knew that he was here in Seattle – after all, they had brought him here. The police had taken a photo of his face, but Teddy ensured him that they hadn't taken his fingerprints. They way he'd looked like, a week ago, he was sure that they couldn't ever use that photo to identify him. He was safe here. He just had to tell himself that again and again, maybe he'd believe it then…. Most likely at the time when he had to leave. He couldn't stay here forever, invading her home and her life like that. He didn't know for sure how much of her life she had already changed, just to hide him here. She couldn't meet any friends, she could basically talk to nobody, invite nobody.
He lay in silence, on the sofa, only the little light on the book shelf was still on.
He couldn't sleep. He had been lying here for days, and he just wasn't tired. What should have made him tired? Lying here? Watching TV? Watching Teddy cure her hangover, first by drinking lots of coffee and then trying to do yoga, watching her do the laundry, reading a few journals and having dinner with him… Every other thing she did – in front of his eyes – reminded him more of Audrey.
She had gone to bed half an hour ago, but he still stared at the door behind which she'd disappeared.
Where was Audrey right now? Part of him desperately wanted to know, but his head told him to forget that right away. She was safer if he didn't even know where she was. And she was safer if she didn't know where he was. He knew her. If she knew that he was here, she would take the next flight to Seattle and knock at this door.
For a while, his thoughts got lost in the dream of seeing her.
Until Teddy opened up her bedroom door.
Silently, not to wake him up, she sneaked to the bathroom and back, after a while – when she finally saw, that he had his eyes open.
"Did I wake you up?", she silently asked.
He slightly shook his head. "No. Couldn't sleep." After a while, he added, "and you?"
"Neither.", she murmured and went back into her bedroom, grabbed that pile of Henry's clothes that she had already prepared for him and took them with her.
"Here are some fresh clothes for tomorrow." She put them down on the couch table, explaining "I guess I'll already be gone when you get up in the morning. My shift starts at six."
He murmured a silent thank you and kept watching her, how she aimlessly looked around in the room, grabbed a few small things and put them back at their places.
"Teddy?"
She turned around.
"Are you okay?" What a stupid question. He could see her blood shot eyes. Probably she had cried when she'd gone to bed.
"I'm okay.", she hurriedly answered. Too quick.
After all that she had done for him, he couldn't stand to see her like this.
"Teddy, come here.", he ordered, and patted at the couch table in front of him, telling her to sit down.
Slowly she came over and sat down in front of him, resting her hands in her lap, looking away. She didn't want to let him see her cried-out eyes, although it was so dark in here that she guessed that he wouldn't notice them anyway.
But he did.
Hesitatingly, Jack stretched out his left arm and put his hand and hers, hoping that she'd be okay with it.
"I don't wanna see you like this.", he silently said.
"It was you who told me that it wouldn't ever get better, remember?" She sniffed and turned her head, to look into his eyes. "You were right."
"I shouldn't have said that." He didn't know what to say, to cheer her up. Maybe there was nothing, that could ever cheer her up. He tried to think back, what had helped him when he had been in her place. "I made such an awful lot of mistakes in my life, Teddy…", he began, "I don't want you to make the same."
Damnit, she had just gotten a grip of herself again, she didn't want to start all over, though it was inevitable. She had to go back to bed, and it would be all the same like it had been half an hour ago. "I don't feel like talking now, Jack.", she said and already wanted to stand up.
He firmly held her hands, holding her back down. "Then just listen."
She looked into his eyes, wondering how strong his left arm still was, even though it was broken and in a splint.
"I abandoned my family, Teddy. I spent most years of my marriage away from home, at places, where most people wouldn't voluntarily go. When I came home I had so many awful pictures still in my head that I didn't want to live the normal life anymore and they never understood why I couldn't talk to them. I brought hell home with me… and I even went back for more and more." He inhaled sharply. "Teri got killed by people who were after me. I could have prevented it. If had made different decisions." He was sure that he could have prevented it, if he had only tried harder. He got lost in what-ifs.
She saw the tears in his eyes. "So what is the mistake that you don't want me to make?", she asked.
He collected the runway thoughts again, looking into her eyes. "I talked to nobody, Teddy. To no one. Not even to my daughter. I quit my job, I secluded myself form anyone thinking it would get better if I just waited long enough, but it didn't. When I found out that this wasn't the solution, I went back to what I had done before and I went on even more dangerous missions, thinking that I had nothing left to lose. I plunged into work, into meaningless relationships and I thought it would be better if I let no one get close again. I tried to drown it alcohol, it didn't work. I ended up on the needle, it didn't make it better, except for those ten minutes. I guess I went on that self-destructive path, because I thought it would make me forget. Make things better. Or keep myself busy while it would go away."
She hadn't expected that much sincerity. He poured out his heart to her, to show her that she wasn't alone. Embarrassedly she lowered her view, staring at his hand at hers. She couldn't picture him drunk or on drugs.
"Are you still on that path?", she asked him, silently.
He slightly shook his head no.
"What made you stop?"
"I hit rock bottom. I lost my job, checked into rehab. I had to face myself there.", he started, "If I hadn't had the drug problem I would have just gone undercover again, for another mission, or would have signed up for another tour of duty." He pressed her hand faster, forcing her to look at him, "You have to promise me on thing, Teddy.", he said.
"What?"
"That you don't go back." He was dead serious.
"Back where?"
"War."
She froze. How would he know? She had never even told him that she'd been in the military. How could he only know about that?
"I saw the pictures over there.", Jack explained, nodding at the wall behind her, "Of you and the other doctor who operated on me." He didn't remember Owen's name. "You were in the army, just a few years ago. Baghdad, right? That's where you learned to improvise like you do."
"I never thought of going back.", she answered brusquely, just to stop the conversation. How did he get that deep into her life, into her thoughts and her past? "Who told you I was there at all?" She thought of the hidden forms, in her bedroom drawer, already filled out to sign up again. Had he snooped through her things?
"Nobody had to. There's a date on that picture. How many wars had we, back there?" He also recognized the building behind her, on the picture, but he decided not to tell her. He had been there, too. "I saw you work out today. Pushups, sit-ups, all that…" He looked deeply into her eyes. "You did exactly the things required for the army re-acceptance test."
He had her. Sometimes she forgot how easy to see through she was. How little detail was needed to get the greatest part of the picture.
"Promise me you won't go back."
"What if I want to?"
"You don't want to!", he hissed, "You just think this is a way to make the pain stop. To forget it all. You have the illusion that things will be better when you return after 6 months or a year." He wanted her to understand him. "It will not be better, when you come back. You run away from the misery, you go through hell and bring hell back home in your head. Then you run again. It gets worse and worse. Don't make this mistake."
They stared into each other's eyes. For an unpleasant eternity.
Jack felt her trembling slightly. She obviously didn't know what to answer.
"You don't have to say anything, Teddy.", he silently added. He hadn't wanted to make her feel even worse. "I just wanted to tell you that."
She had to get a grip of herself again.
Teddy pulled her hands away from his and buried her face in them. God, he was right with every word that he'd said.
"What do you care?", she whispered.
"I just don't want you to make the mistakes I did.", he tonelessly said, watching her in the dark. He knew exactly what was going on inside her – he had been there.
After a few minutes of silence, she got a hold of herself again. She eyed the man lying in front of her. He was a wreck all over. How could someone like him dare to tell her how to live her life, when he was not even able to stay alive without her help? "You said you broke the habit", she started, "but in the end you didn't, right?"
He softly smiled at her. "You don't take advice from a beaten up man with lash marks on his back and two bullets in the stomach?"
For the first time, her tension eased. "Exactly.", she murmured.
"Believe me, I did get out. At least, I broke the habit.", he calmly said. "After rehab, I was done with all the field work. I took a desk job in Washington."
She laughed as she heard that. "What? Black tie and everything?"
"Yeah." He was happy that she somehow cheered up again, even if she was only laughing at him.
She couldn't picture him in a suit, behind a desk, doing something boring. Not after what he'd told her in the last couple of days. "Now how did that go?"
"It was great.", he began, shifting a little bit on the couch to face her. He liked to think back to his time in D.C. "It was the only time in my life that I ran away from nobody. I went home in the evening and the first thing was not to check on my gun, when I left the building. The moment I didn't feel the wish to go back into hell was when it started to get better." He took a deep breath and reached out to grab her hand again. "I swear, that day will come for you as well."
He saw how torn she was. Had she signed up for another tour of duty already or had he still been in time, talking her out of doing it?
"I met Audrey there", he continued, "For the first time in years, I started a relationship the right way. I told her everything I had ever done, I put all the cards on the table. You must do that as well, Teddy, when the time comes.", he told her, "Even if it's hard to talk about it, do it."
She sighed, upon hearing his advice. "In the arms of a man, telling him about how much I loved Henry?", she derogatorily smiled. "What a perfect start."
"You'll see.", Jack silently answered. He had given her enough advice for one day. She'd find it out on her own one day that this was the only right way to start all over again. He remembered his first nights with Audrey. It hadn't taken them long to start dating, after they met in the office for the first time. One night, just after he had brought her home, he was walking to his car when he felt like turning around and going back. He knocked on her door again and she was quite surprised that he was back already. Hesitatingly, she let him in.
He remembered sitting down on her living room sofa. He felt the need to tell her everything, before she'd fall for him. She deserved to know who she was getting involved with. She sat there, next to him, quietly listening to his life's story, when he told her about Teri, about his marriage, about cheating on her… there had been quite some occasions. He told her about his time in the army, CIA, CTU. The hardest thing was to tell her about the drugs.
It must have been hours in which he had talked. She sat there all the time, next to him, listening closely. After he was finished she did the same, telling him about her marriage that wasn't yet over, about all the good times and the bad ones.
He had never felt closer to anyone than to her in this moment.
"Henry and I used to talk a lot…", Teddy mused, ripping Jack out of his daydreams. "Above all, about my dates."
"You dates?"
"Yes", she laughed. She knew that she had to explain a lot to make him understand. "As we got married, we didn't do it for love. He was dead sick and had no health insurance." She shook her head, laughing about her own silly decision. She looked at Jack's hand in hers. "Seems like I'm into broke guys."
He was glad that she was smiling again. She started picking at the splint around his left wrist, to give her restless hands something to work on. "I didn't want a relationship with him, I just didn't want him to die in front of my eyes when I had the chance to save him."
Jack silently watched her. She was a kind soul. "But eventually, you fell in love with him."
She nodded, smiling. "It took a while. In the beginning, I was still seeing other men, acting like I wasn't married at all. Then there was a phase when I met Henry after each other date, checking on him, because he had diabetes.", Teddy sighed, "He always asked me how my date was."
"Your own husband.", he remarked. "And I thought my life was strange." Jack saw that she loved to remember this. There was a certain glance in her eyes, and the sadness was gone, for at least a moment.
After a while, her eyes found his again. "That's why I freaked out yesterday night, when you asked me how my date had been."
"Sorry" Jack silently apologized, still spellbound by her eyes.
"Jack…", Teddy began, she didn't know how to finish that sentence. Her heart belonged to Henry. His to Audrey. But still, right now it was just the two of them and she loved his presence. "It is good not to be here all alone."
He didn't feel much different.
He sat up.
Teddy watched him, as he stood up and took the blanket away. Confused, she looked up to him as he stood right next to her, telling her to lie down on the couch.
She did as she was told, lay down and let him put the blanket over her.
"What are you doing…?", she silently asked, cuddling into the blanket. It was strange. It smelled like Henry. Well, he was wearing Henry's clothes, using the bottle of Henry's shower gel that was still in her bathroom. She hadn't had the heart to throw it away.
She watched Jack go over to her bedroom – he turned off the light which was still on in there and then he limped back and sat down on one of the leather chairs around the couch table. Only the little light above her book shelf was still on.
"Where are you gonna sleep?", she tiredly asked him.
"I've lain there all day, Teddy", he sighed, resting his elbows at his knees. "I'm not tired." He looked at the clock next to the kitchen counter. "It's only five hours until you have to get up. You should sleep now."
She didn't have the heart to argue with him about this now. He knew that she didn't want to be alone, and so didn't he. Being alone was worst at night, in the darkness.
She heard him wish her a good night and did the same. Stealthily she squinted at him, one eye closed, pretending to sleep.
Jack leant back and closed his eyes. But from time to time he looked over to her, as if he wanted to make sure that she was still okay ... and above all, still there.
.
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please R&R, thank you