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When Teddy got ready to leave the Seattle Grace hospital, it was way past midnight. Her shift should have ended around eight, but she was called to help out with an urgent case. Car crash, 6 persons with severe injuries.
When she heard that, she had even been glad, that she wouldn't have to go back home that soon. She would go back to an empty place again, but right now she didn't even know if she was so sad because of missing Henry, or sad because of missing Jack.
She felt like she had cheated on Henry with Jack. Damnit, it was a bad feeling. Henry hadn't even been dead for a month and she had thrown herself into the arms of a stranger, right away.
But the time did come, when her day was finally over. The last one of the crash victims was stable, all the documents and the files were in pristine order,… she just didn't find any other things to do to delay her departure any longer.
And she had to leave before the others around here would get suspicious.
She looked at her watch. 1:30 a.m.
The hospital was almost quiet at that time. There weren't many people left, except for her.
She hated the thought of going home.
She hated the thought of unlocking the door, finding her apartment empty, except for a few used clothes and memories.
Sad, she went down the corridor, to the changing room. She didn't even realize it at first, that somebody followed her. Every other four yards, she saw her own shadow on the floor, when she passed another one of the ceiling lights. She was so tired that she didn't notice that there was a second shadow, one that was following her.
As somebody grabbed her from behind, she wanted to scream out loud, but that man was already covering her mouth. She felt something cold being pressed against her neck… a gun?!
Although she was struggling, he tore her into a room on their left, kicking the door closed behind them. She kept kicking and beating into his direction, trying to struggle free.
"Teddy."
The voice made her freeze.
As he felt how her struggling ceased, he added, "I would never harm you. Do you trust me?"
She hurriedly nodded her head, since he was still covering her mouth to stop her from screaming.
Finally, he let her go.
She turned around, to look at him, still trembling. She had thought she'd never see him again. But here he was, under what circumstances was not sure. "What the hell was that, Jack?", she hissed, watching him stand in front of her, in the dark. He was just about to put the gun back into the holster at his belt.
It had only been 16 hours, but she barely recognized him.
"I would never point a loaded gun at you", he stammered, now racking the slide once to get a bullet into the gun barrel. "But there are video cameras outside and if anyone ever…"
He was exhausted. It had been a long day for someone in his shape. "I just want to protect you from me."
He reached into his pocket and pulled a roll of money out, holding it out for her to take it. "I swore I'd pay you back.", he said.
Teddy didn't want to take the money. "That's too much. You will need it yourself.", she brusquely answered, still not sure if she should be glad to see him or afraid.
He lowered his hand "I won't be needing it where I'm going.", he breathlessly said. He wasn't feeling well. He was sweating. The surgery wounds on his belly hurt from being up on his feet all day.
She stepped closer, grabbing his shoulders. "Where are you going?", she demanded to know. He looked horrible.
He couldn't look into her eyes. He was at an end. After talking to Heller, he had been driving around aimlessly for hours. "I'm going back."
"Jack?", she rattled his shoulders slightly, forcing him to have a look at her, "Going back where?" She guessed that there weren't so many good places at all that he could go back to.
When he had been driving up and down Route 101, crossing the city center, he'd seen the SGMW hospital, passing by. He had stopped on the parking lot behind the main building, finding only few cars left. It was past midnight already, when he stopped there, knowing from his own experience that there was not much going on there.
He had a whole night to think about his life. And there was not much that he could do to change the future any more.
He stopped the car close to the place where he'd met Teddy, a week ago, when she'd taken him home with her.
Her car was here.
He had tried to get rid of the thought of talking to her. There were so many more important things on his mind now. But in the end, he was condemned to just sit there and wait, for the next eight hours. An hour later, he took his few things, and went inside.
Going back where?, he heard her ask him.
It wasn't easy to answer that. He didn't know it himself where exactly they would bring him.
He lowered his view, at a loss, what to say. "China.", he said. It was the first time that he said it out loud, to himself, where he'd be going. "I'm going back.", he added, as if to confirm it to himself that the decision was done.
"You can't be serious, Jack, they'll be …"
"I know what they'll be doing", he interrupted her. He knew that very well. They were going to beat him up. They were going to lash him. They were going to get that bottle of acid again. They were going to electrocute him and waterboard him.
He was tired, but he couldn't sleep. This was his last night in peace, without pain and he should use it to get some strength back, he knew, but there was no chance on getting a minute of sleep. His thoughts were circling around Audrey, around Cheng, Heller, the exchange that he had fucked up. Eventually his thoughts also reminded him of how dark his future would look like.
Slowly he sank down, to sit on the floor, waiting for Teddy to do the same.
A little bit afraid of him, she sat down, too, three feet away from him, facing him.
"I need someone to talk to, Teddy, or I'll be going crazy.", he breathed, burying his face in his hands.
"I was held somewhere in a prison, over in China. About three weeks ago, I was brought onboard a ship.", he began, "It was a Chinese freighter, an agent named Cheng Zhi who had questioned me the months before also came along. I overheard them talk about an exchange, and a name of the one who they wanted to exchange me with. Xian Lei Zen. I knew that our government would never exchange me for that person, I was nowhere near that valuable. I thought all the US government wanted to do was to get me in their field of view, to kill me with a sniper bullet and prevent that I'd ever break under Cheng's torture one day. I heard when the ship reached the port of Seattle and then I took the slightest chance to run. I killed one of the guards and managed to get to the deck to jump overboard when they shot at me."
Silently she sat there, she didn't dare to move an inch. He had changed a lot, in the past hours. This was no longer the man she knew. He was depressed, she could see that he had cried. A lot. This didn't fit the one she knew. "You ran for your life, Jack.", she hesitatingly spoke.
He nodded his head and sadly smiled. "Like a coward", he added.
"There's nothing wrong in saving your own life!", Teddy hissed.
He turned his head, looking into her eyes. "Audrey went to China, searching for me, a few months ago. She got captured." His voice trembled, saying this. "She's Secretary of Defense Heller's daughter and a high level DoD employee. She should have also been exchanged. She was worth giving up a man like Xian. I didn't know that she was there. I didn't know she was in Cheng's custody. I didn't know she was on the ship, too. I didn't know that she would have been the primary subject of the exchange. As I fled the ship, I fucked up everything. The exchange should have happened four days ago. But the Chinese didn't show up, because they thought they couldn't keep their end of the deal, after I was gone." His stomach churned, saying these words. "She's there because of me. She's there because she went there for me and because I fucked everything up."
She sat there and didn't dare to move. She didn't dare get closer to him and neither did she have the heart to touch him. The body part closest to her was his right leg. Sitting there like they were, she could see the holster at his ankle with another gun.
"What are you gonna do now?", she tonelessly said.
"I've talked to Heller and a few old friends. We could locate the ship. Ever since I jumped off it travelled to San Diego and back. It's going to arrive back at the port of Seattle in a few hours and they've set up another plan for an exchange."
Teddy watched him fumble around at his hands nervously. "Xian against Audrey?"
Jack shook his head, in silence. "The government won't give away Xian just to get Audrey."
Teddy didn't dare to speak it out loud. They were exchanging him for her. She wanted to rattle him by his shoulders, screaming run for your life, but she knew that he'd never do that. He did what was expected of him. He did what he himself expected him to do.
"Why can't they just storm the ship and get her out?"
"It would be a political offense. No government agency will engage in this. And if I try to do this I might get her killed." He had thought it all through. He was armed to his teeth. With the things that were in the trunk of his car, he could have started a small war.
Jack laid a knife down on the ground in between them and rolled up his sleeve, exposing the splint around his left forehand. "Can you hide that in there?", he silently asked, showing her the splint.
Hesitatingly, Teddy took the knife into her hands. It was black ceramic knife, flat enough. She had never been asked before to hide a knife in a splint.
"That could work", she inhaled, holding her breath. There was a certain glance in his eyes, one that she saw for the first time. Beneath all the sadness, it said if I go down, I'll go down fighting.
.
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