Okay, so y'all liked the other one? Great. Here's what happened afterwards.

"Do you need anything Jack?" Riley asked as she kneeled down beside the older man.

He shook his head, "Nah… 'M good…"

The fact that his shirt was thorn open revealing a big square dressing which was gradually becoming more and more red wasn't mentioned. Or the fact that his right arm was firmly tied to his chest with a couple of triangular bandages. His left hand was covering his right one, gently attempting to rub out some tension from his wrist and hand.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, just gonna need a little peace and quiet…" he drawled, his Texan accent thicker than usual.

"Okay, I'll head back to Mac and the others…" Riley nodded, but stopped moving when she saw Jack shake his head.

"Not what I meant…" he shook his head gently, "I meant, my shoulder's gonna need a little peace and quiet… Just stay…"

"Okay…" Riley answered with a smile and sat back down against the bench that acted as a temporary bed for Jack. "How are you feeling tough guy?"

"Great… A little sore…" Jack answered, trying to lighten the mood. He knew that Riley worried for him, you didn't have to be a Mac-level genius to understand that much. "Gonna be just fine in a couple of weeks…"

"Jack…"

Jack hummed his acknowledgement, and let Riley finish what she was about to say.

"You're lying…"

"Yeah, I'm lying on a piss-poor excuse of a bed…" Jack nodded, almost earning himself a shove in the shoulder from Riley, but she stopped herself before she got to that point. Luckily for him.

"Are you sure you don't need something for a pillow? Maybe something to use as a blanket?"

"It's a little chilly here…" Jack admitted.

Riley nodded, "I'll see if I can do something about it. It's probably got something to do with all the blood you left back on Goat island…"

Jack offered her a weak smile as she stood up, "Got plenty left…"

Riley nodded again, "That might be, but it would have been better if you still had all of it inside your body…"

"Yeah, I don't have that kind of luxury today…" Jack winked at her as she headed off to find something to give Jack in place of a blanket.

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She came back a couple of minutes later with Bozer's zipper hoodie, one of the medic's sweater, Mac's leather jacket (which had been on the plane all along). She quickly placed all of it on top of Jack and spread it out, similarly to a mother tucking in a child. Then she headed to the back of the plane and found the bag she had left on the plane for after the mission. She took out a thin, worn, fleece blanket and a wool undershirt before she shouldered the bag and returned to Jack.

"Are your feet cold?"

"No…" Jack shook his head, "But my hands are freezing…"

"Okay, then we do something about that…" Riley nodded as she lifted Mac's jacket off of him. She moved his left hand next to his right one and then she wrapped her wool shirt around his hands. She draped the blanket over him and topped it all with Mac's leather jacket once again.

Then carefully, very carefully, she slid her own hands in under all of it and found Jack's hands. They were cold to the touch, and probably felt even colder to Jack. She smiled at the content little sigh Jack let out as her warm hands met his cold ones. "What did you do? Stick these in the freezer?"

Jack chuckled, "Sure feels like I did…"

She kneaded his hands for a few moments, then she went on to wrap her hands around his wrists as far as they would go anyway. Her hands were a little too small to actually wrap fully around his wrists.

"What's that?" she asked as she felt something strange under the fingers and palm of one of her hands.

Jack looked down, but he didn't see anything as everything was covered with things to keep him warm. "On my wrist?"

Riley nodded with a worried frown.

"That's scars."

"Scars?" Riley repeated, "I haven't seen any scars on your wrist…"

"Well…" Jack took a deep breath, "It's usually covered by the wrist cuff… But that got really bloody, so I got Mac to take it and rinse off it a little bit. And I don't think I'll be needing it before my shoulder has been taken care of…"

Riley nodded, "Do you mind if I take a look?"

"My arm is full of crusted and dried blood right now. Don't you want to wait instead?"

"I'm curious right now."

"Go ahead then, but it might look worse with all that caked blood…"

"There's not all that much left that'll make me cringe anymore. That train left the station when I was covered in someone else's blood a few months back…"

"-Yeah. Sorry 'bout that…"

"Why, it wasn't your fault…"

"It was." Jack cleared his voice before he continued, "I was the one who left you there alone. And you wouldn't even be in that whole mess if I hadn't told Patty about you and your skills in the first place!"

"Not your fault…" Riley said once more, "And I thought we were blaming Cairo day for that…"

"Yeah… Totally Cairo-day's fault for that one. But a man still feels guilty for bringing stuff like that on to someone he cares about."

Riley smiled and squeezed Jack's wrists a little, before removing one hand to uncover Jack's right wrist.

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Riley felt a knot form in her stomach as she unveiled Jack's bare right wrist. There was a broad, raised, welt-like scar running down the middle just above his wrist, right between the radius and ulna. Right beside it, a little bit more towards the pinky finger side of his wrist, there was another scar. But this one was more of a crevasse. A deep furrow, almost 1/10 of an inch ran parallel to the thick protruding scar.

She gently ran her fingers over the two first scars. Then she brought her fingers over to a thin white line running from the base of his thumb and all the way up to the second edge of the tan line Jack had around his wrist from the cuff. She hadn't noticed that scar before even though she had secretly studied his hands many times.

"What happened there?"

"Same as most of the others… Attempts to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. That one's from the first big surgery. Don't really know what they did in there, but I wore a cast for 14 weeks afterwards. My thumb is pretty much all good though."

"Pretty much?"

"Yeah, acts up whenever the rest of the wrist acts up badly, and grip strength ain't what it used to be…" Jack drawled as he tilted his head to look down at the scar. "There's more scars on the inside of my wrist…"

"How did it get like this?"

"There's a lot of reasons, really. Broke my wrist a few times growing up. I was an active kid. Then there was the time I landed really badly on it when a horse bucked me off, it wasn't even at a rodeo… And back in the sandbox, back when I was still only with the Delta I had a tiny piece of metal go through my wrist…"

"A bullet?"

"Nah, a little bigger than so, you know those three-sided rulers?"

"Draft rulers?"

"Jeez… You're old enough to know of them? No… I mean the ones that go like this…" Jack answered as he drew the form in the air with his left hand.

"Triangle ruler…"

"I guess…" Jack nodded, "A piece of metal, roughly that size, just pointier… Like if you fold the short side…"

"Are we talking the small ones, or the big ones…?"

"The ones where the straight, long side is about 10 inches…"

"Technically all the sides are straight…" Riley smirked.

"You're spending too much time with the Brainiac…" Jack scrounged up his nose, "You know what I meant, the long side from the straight edge…"

Riley nodded, "Yeah, I knew what you meant. But I just had to tease you a bit. And just to be clear, that doesn't qualify as a 'tiny piece of metal' that's a large piece."

"Okay, a large piece of metal then…" Jack nodded.

"Did you have all those scars back when you lived with us?"

"I had some. But it's really just turned into a blur when I got them and all that."

Riley nodded and covered Jack's upper body again and stuck her hands back in to warm up his hands and wrists.

"Why haven't you told us about this?"

"Same reason Cage won't tell us her fears. I don't like broadcasting my weaknesses." Jack winked, "But hey, it's no big deal…"

"The wrist cuff…" Riley started, "Is it just to hide most of the scars, or is it for support too?"

"Honestly, it's mostly for support." Jack sighed, "You see, the bones near my wrist have been messed up so many times that it's no surprise it aches from time to time, but the real problem is the tendons and stuff. Soft tissue you know."

Riley nodded.

"Main reason for the cuff is to make sure the bones in my forearm doesn't shift away from each other…"

"Wait, they can do that?" Riley frowned.

"Yeah, when you've torn the thing that is tying them together, they can…"

"That sounds like all sorts of no fun…"

"You're right about that." Jack nodded, "I haven't really dislocated my wristbecause of that, but I've almost done it a lot of times. You know that thing where you have a dislocation, but it's not a complete dislocation. While doing ordinary everyday tasks, so that's the reason why I ALWAYS wear the thing."

"Subluxation?"

"Yeah, I think that was the word…"

"Everyday tasks?"

"Yeah, like playing sports and just living like a regular human."

"Okay, so active things?"

"No… The most embarrassing one was when I tried to lift an empty pot out of the dishwasher. I've never felt older, or more useless." Jack explained as he made eye contact with Riley, who was currently biting her lip not to laugh, "Don't laugh!"

"I'm trying not to!" Riley chuckled, "I'm just picturing you being taken out by a pot, that's all…"

"I don't really see the fun in that…"

"Big, strong, Jack-freaking-Dalton versus a kitchen utensil?" Riley cocked a brow.

"Okay. Maybe you're right…" Jack smiled, "It was pretty pathetic…"

"Something like that…" Riley nodded, "But for now you need some rest, no big macho show offs…"

"Oh, don't worry…" Jack frowned, "I won't be up to that for some time…"

"And no fighting with pans or pots either…"

"To be fair, it started it…" Jack grinned.

"Sure it did…"

"Shut up…" Jack chuckled and smiled.

Okay, we'll see how many tags I end up with for episode 2x05. I mean, that episode needs tags. Loads of em…

Hope you enjoyed!