Last chapter…..

Again, there was silence. Really, this was why neither she or Jack was the person picked to do PR. They kinda sucked at interacting with people. Chloe was a computer person and Jack….well, the powers that be tended to frown upon using extreme intimidation as a way to communicate with the public.

As her neighbors stared at them in shock, she considered her last thought and realized that was probably one of the reasons neither of them had many friends outside their professional circles. Or, you know, people who didn't think they were completely insane.

TBC……….


Charles Richards gave them both a considering look and asked, "What agency did you say you were with?

Since, technically, he wasn't with any particular agency, Jack shrugged while Chloe replied, "CTU."

A whistle of admiration came from Danny, who peered at them from behind wire frame glasses. "My wife's LAPD and she says you guys are bad ass! Completely freakin nuts, but bad ass!"

"Danny, Emily's nuts," Sofia Kennedy, a striking brunette with a Columbian accent chided lightly. "Not to speak badly of her, but she's out there, you said, helping evacuate the area around Valencia. Getting people to hospital. Very dangerous."

The young man gave his fussing kids a gentle bounce as he replied, "It's her job. Sure, I'm scared as hell for her, but I gotta respect what she does."

"They'll try to rotate teams going into exposed areas and everyone will be given Potassium Iodide pills. They help," Jack offered the younger man, eyes drifting off to the side. "Region 9 RERT will be running things, local LEO's providing support and helping evac civilians to hospitals. Decon showers in and out of hot…"

A car backfired and Jack trailed off, body tensing and eyes narrowing, darting sharply from side to side.

"Jack!" Chloe said his name sharply to snap him out of whatever the hell sort of fugue that was. He had been rambling about the EPA's Radiological Emergency Response Team's general practices. Not that they were classified or anything and, though she didn't like the odd, detached tone he was using, she liked this reaction to the backfire even less. She figured the only reason Jack was still more or less functional was that he was a big believer in gathering up all the pain, darkness and trauma in his life and bottling it up. Probably not the best thing for his long term mental health, but it worked for now.

He jerked, then blinked at her. By this point, Chloe was pretty sure her neighbors probably thought they were more than a little crazy and were wondering if theses were really the people who were tasked with protecting them from terrorists. "Sorry," he murmured, crossing his arms and visibly pulling himself back together.

"Anyway," Ryan Shaw said, politely ignoring Jack's little…issue. "We were just talking earlier about when we thought most businesses would be opening again and the schools and day cares."

"I told you, dear," Mrs. Nomberto said, "I can watch your little one if you need me to. Anthony and Marie are on call at the hospital, so I've got the grandkids."

"Businesses should be open in the next couple of days….schools probably not till next week," Chloe said, knowing disaster response plans of most corporations wouldn't allow for too many days shut down. The economy depended on businesses being operational to survive. Schools were a bit more lenient, as the children's safety was priority.

Discussion immediately commenced among the Richards and Shaws, who had children, and Lee, who was a middle school teacher. Mrs. Nomberto offered occasional advice while Sofia, Chloe and Jack observed and Danny continued trying to quiet two cranky kids. With all the tension and fear, everyone was wrapped up in their own troubled minds.

So Chloe was surprised when Jack suddenly asked, "Colic?"

Danny blinked, then said, "Yeah, the doc says they should calm down within the next month."

Smiling slightly, Jack replied, "I don't think my daughter stopped screaming till she hit five months. Want a hand?"

"Thanks," Danny said, then managed some complex maneuver that allowed him to scoop one baby out of the carrier while still juggling the other.

Jack took the baby and settled her into an odd hold, stomach-down along his forearm, cheek in the palm of his hand. Gently, he patted the baby's lower back in a smooth, circular motion and hummed. After several squirmy moments, the baby quieted and stopped fussing. Chloe moved a step closer, a little worried that he would zone out while holding the kid, but having something to do seemed to ground him.

Danny stared. "See, when I do that they just cry more."

Nodding, Jack said, "You'll get the hang of it…the day before the colic stops."

With a raised brow, Chloe considered this. On one hand, her baby could be colicky like these two. On the other, Jack seemed to have some, previously unknown to her, skills with tiny humans. For some reason, namely Kim, she had assumed he and Teri had been fans of the TV-as-a-babysitter method of child rearing.

This was interesting.


Sitting in Chloe's kitchen, Jack looked down at the sandwich on his plate. He knew Chloe wanted him to eat, decreeing it lunchtime as soon as they managed to get away from her neighbors, but for some reason, all he could do was stare.

White bread. Tuna fish. Baby carrots and celery sticks. Dressing. A small pile of potato chips. A big glass of milk sitting beside the plate.

It looked good. Wholesome. Like the lunches Maria, his family's cook, had put in brown paper bags and sent to school with him when he was little.

As Chloe settled herself onto the chair beside him, she gave him a funny look and asked, "I thought you said you like tuna."

He did and he had enjoyed watching her prepare it. A domestic goddess, Chloe was not, but she showed a broad and varied vocabulary of creative curse words. Jack could respect that. Maybe later he could offer up a few choice phrases in Russian, German and Spanish…and Chinese. He was darn sure he'd picked up some interesting words over the past eighteen months.

"I do," he replied, picking up half the sandwich and taking a bite. It was almost easier to cope when there was a crisis, something to focus on so he didn't get lost in his own head, with the memories and demons that haunted him. He knew he wasn't processing things quite right, letting his attention be caught by random, odd things, retreating inward. While it wasn't a happy place, it was sometimes nicer than what the Chinese had done to him.

Now, he didn't have to do that and the world around him was far nicer than what he faced when he turned inward. But it wasn't the easiest habit to break. Normal social interactions hadn't been his strong suit for a long while, but now, well, he had looked to Chloe for cues on how to interact with her neighbors and she wasn't exactly known for being a people person. It was far simpler, far better to be around Chloe, who understood him…even when the quiet allowed him to think too much.

The tuna tasted wonderful, fresh, full fat mayonnaise, little bits of chopped up onion and celery mixed in it. Maybe he'd stuff some chips in the other half. The crunch would provide a contrast to the rest of the smooth, soft sandwich. Most of what he'd been fed during the course of his incarceration had been a sort of unidentifiable, nasty paste. He was pretty sure he'd rather lick the inside of Chloe's stove than eat anymore of that crap.

They only fed him cause it was a lot more fun to torture someone who had some substance, as opposed to someone wasting away from starvation. At one point, during a very rough patch, he'd refused to eat all together, an action which prompted them to shove a feeding tube down his throat, none too gently.

Every day they found new ways to make him hurt. All the ways he thought possible and then some. He was sliced, carved and torn. Beaten, burned, violated. They threatened to cut off extremities, scoop out his eyes, whispering words of horror in his ears, often while dripping acids onto his flesh, the smell of bubbling skin filling the room. All the training, the conditioning and resistance his life had seen fit to teach him was strained beyond measure.

He was not the only one there, not by far, just the one there the longest. They made him watch as they tortured others, saw the suffering on their faces, heard them screaming out their agony, howling and pleading for mercy. Even in his cell there was the constant background noise of wailing and suffering. It made his skin crawl the day he got here and the sensation never eased.

The smell of burnt, rotting flesh was a constant there. Sometimes he thinks the smell is worse than the other, physical tortures. Every breath has the smell of sulfur and death and stinking, charred flesh. And those poor people being burned still moaned and begged for forgiveness, salvation.

They got none. Jack had no illusions about the things he had done over the course of his career. He had hurt people, torture them, but it was not something he relished. The men there, he couldn't understand how they derived pleasure from doing what they did. Jack had always wished he lived in a world where his particular brand of interrogation was unnecessary, but he was sure his captors did not feel the same.

Every day they tried to break him just a little more. Not all at once; that would have been a kindness and kindness didn't exist there. No, they dragged it out. Because they knew they all the time in the world, because Jack going anywhere, there is absolutely no escape, because….

"Jack!"

A hand on his arm made him pull away, harder than he would have if he had been aware that he was unbound. He flailed, heard a small crashing noise and suddenly had the sensation of falling, which was explained when he hit the floor, hard, on his side. He curled reflexively, but looked around, searching for an escape.

Soft beige walls. Pale woodwork. Overturned stool on the floor. Milk dripping off of the counter top. Small, bare feet approaching, denim clad legs bending…Something didn't fit….

"Jack!"

He knew that voice. Chloe. Chloe was in LA, not China…so help him, if those bastards had managed to get their hands on her, sick or not, he was going to do some damage. Ripping off their arms and shoving them so far up their that asses they could taste the crap under their fingernails sort of damage. Jack did not like when people messed with his friends.

"It's okay, it's okay. You're safe."

At once, things came into focus. He wasn't in a cell or anywhere unpleasant, he was on the floor in Sophie's kitchen. She was on her knees beside him, face worried, hands hovering, unsure if touching him again would send him scrambling away.

He realized he was shaking and, as his breathing steadied, he raised his eyes to meet hers. With a breath, he reached out for her hand, pausing to unclench his fist. He saw her grimace at the bloody crescents his ragged nails had gouged in his palms, but she grasped his fingers gently.

Her hand was blessedly warm against his cool skin and provided an anchor to pull him back into the moment and out of the darkness. "Chloe," he rasped, throat still tight with slowly ebbing panic. "Chloe, I…."

"Don't worry about it," she replied softly, peering down at him for a moment before scooting awkwardly towards him without releasing his hand. Settling against the wall, she pillowed his head in he lap and, with her free hand, ran short, keyboard friendly nails through his hair.

He closed his eyes, soothed by the contact and the tingles on his scalp. It was silly, but he'd always liked having his head rubbed or scratched. It could be either sexy or soothing (this was the latter) and he sighed as he relaxed against her.

The house was quiet, a lone fan stirring the air. The room was lit only by light filtering in from outside, as rolling brown outs were still frequent and they were sitting in the shadow of the kitchen island. He knew that, even if she could see the tears leaking from his eyes to drop onto the thigh of her jeans, she wouldn't begrudge him the release, just as she had understood his breakdown.

In the quiet, lying on the cool kitchen floor, Chloe nearby, he felt safe. He felt home.


She'd been waiting for a breakdown of some kind since she'd seen Jack striding into the CTU, driven by adrenaline and anger and sheer force of will. Chloe fully expected this wouldn't be his only moment of distress before he started to get better, but it was still painful to witness. She couldn't even imagine what was going on in his head, but, whatever it was, she'd be there to try to help him get through it.

As she sat there, butt going to sleep on the hard wood floor and leg slowly cooling as the tears streaming from Jack's eyes made a damp spot under his cheek, she just hoped she'd know what to do. Trying to take Jack's mind off of whatever horror had sent him reeling, Chloe attempted to make non-threatening small talk. Not a simple task, considering she generally sucked at any kind of pointless chatter, but she was willing to try.

First, there was paint. She had been contemplating painting the walls, but had never gotten around to actually doing it. On one particularly motivated Saturday, she had picked up a bunch of sample chips at the local Lowes. So far, she found herself leaning towards a pallet of pale blues and soft greens, something markedly different from CTU's gray and glass color scheme.

By the time she worked her way through most non-sensical topics and on to baby names, he'd stopped trembling and occasionally nodded as she mused. Until the CTU doctor had told her she was pregnant, she'd never really given any serious thought to having children and thus had never given baby names much thought. It seemed like some women felt the urge to carefully plan and select such things, pretty much from the onset of puberty. Chloe was not one of them. Not at all. And now she only had like eight months to think about it or else the poor kid would be saddled with whatever God awful name her epidural addled brain though sounded like fun.

Honestly, who let exhausted, drugged new mothers choose their baby's names moments after the trauma of pushing something the size of a watermelon out a orifice the size of a tennis ball. You'd think some genius would have heard a few of the more insane choices and had the epiphany that perhaps waiting till mommy wasn't quite so stoned would be a bright idea.

"Teri tried to kill me with her IV pole," Jack murmured during one of the lulls in her ramble. "I don't think anything that came out of her mouth during the hours surrounding Kim's birth was anything but a curse."

Chloe giggled and could feel his smile against her leg. Maybe she wasn't a trained psychologist, but they seemed to be doing okay, all things considered. Considering Jack shared her disdain for shrinks, they were probably doing better together than any shrink could have hoped for.

TBC……….

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