SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS LAW

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Thoughtfully, Jack leant against the frame of the large windows in his living room. The past evenings, whenever Kim and Teri hadn't been here to visit him, he had opened up a bottle of beer to get his thoughts to a rest and to kill the loneliness that come back into his life. Yesterday, and the day before, his mind had been filled with so many thoughts that he hadn't even thought of a beer. But today it was different. What he had seen today made the difference.

It had been the third day of interrogating the ‚beast', how the guards called him. The more time he spent with him, the less he believed that man to be a beast, how even the Colonel had called him. It was no wonder why all his inferiors thought the same.

I need to read his file. I need to know who I'm up against. It's not a who you are up against, Captain, it's a what. The colonel answered, This is not a human being. Reluctantly he handed him the file. That's all we got. Jack opened up the file, it's outside plainly said ‚the wolverine'. He leafed to the first page with a picture, that showed a black haired, strong, young man. Looks like a human being to me, Jack commented. Don't let the picture fool you. This is an animal. You should have seen what he's capable of. Jack leafed through the pages. The main part of this file was old stuff, it went as far back as WWII, under the name of James ‚Logan' Howlett.

As Jack looked out of the window and sipped at his beer, he thought about what to do next. Today he had gotten the ultimate proof, that this guy was human and nothing else. He felt like he couldn't go on with that interrogation. The colonel had invited him, because of his known past with interrogations. Actually the colonel had thought that he would be able to break that prisoner, either mentally or by pain, but neither had happened. They had tried numerous interrogation techniques - poison, shooting him, caging him and powering up that magnetic field until his metal coated bones would bend. The colonel had hoped that Jack Bauer, the most feared interrogator of all times would take this to the next level. I am biased, I shouldn't continue this, Jack thought, but he was way past the point where should have made that decision. He inadvertently had started to make friends with that guy. He had known on the very first sight that he would never be able to break him physically. There was nothing that this guy was afraid of, neither death nor pain. At the first day, he hadn't even bothered asking questions off the Colonel's list. On the second day, their conversation had continued, from one topic to the other, but again, none of the Colonel's questions. And then, today, he that guy had turned his whole world upside down.

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earlier, in the prison during interrogation

„What was that Malicious deception, that Stryker fooled you with?", Jack asked him, and for the first time in three days, his interrogation came back to it's original topic: why had this assassination happened.

Logan looked at the hand grenade in his interrogator's eyes. The pin was back in. A sign of trust, but not enough. This question was too personal to be answered without getting something in return. „What's your name?", he asked back.

Jack made the decision in that very moment. „I am Jack Bauer.", he answered, and knew that the Colonel out there was raging. No names, was what the Colonel had ordered, days ago. Up to now, he had kept to it. Nobody of them had told their prisoner any name. They all feared that they'd end up on his to-kill list, eventually, and they tried to make it as hard for him to track them down as possible.

„He ordered a guy to kill a person very dear to me.", Logan silently began. He trusted that man over there. But he wasn't sure how often that guy would return. Every time that he left, he heard the angry voice of that Colonel out there. They seemed to be arguing about this whole interrogation. Even if he wouldn't return - he actually wanted him to know his true reasons. „I didn't know by then that he had ordered this. He came to me and told me that he'd help me, that his treatment would give me the power to bring the killer down. He didn't keep his promise."

Jack hadn't expected to hear something personal like this. He just sat there and stared at the ground in between them, not knowing how to continue this interrogation. Logan's voice caught him in his thoughts-

„Jack?"

He looked up.

„What would you have done?" He knew that this man understood his reason. But he wanted to get it confirmed. „If you had held someone at gunpoint who had killed a loved one, huh? I guess you wouldn't have let them walk away." Although he had asked him a direct, personal question, Jack didn't even look at him. Logan watched him stand up, slowly, then he slid the chair back over the red line again and went over to the door.

He really needed to get out of here. This was getting too personal. Logan was breaking him - and not the other way round. He felt him stare at his back, and it was almost as intensive as if his claws were long enough to stab him from over there. It had been ten years - five of them in which he had really had it under control, those pictures. Now she was back: Nina.

Wordlessly Jack opened up the door and left.

Logan sat at his place, wondering what had happened. It didn't take long until the field was back on, pushing his bones back to the wall, and unfolding that immense pressure on him that nearly caused his chest to implode.

What have I done wrong, Xavier?, he thought.

Nothing. But you aren't the only one on earth who went through that, Logan, the soft voice answered to him.

So how did he did the same thing as I did?

Ask him, when he comes back.

No, you tell me! Why the hell isn't he in prison though he made just the same decision as I did, huh? Is this your goddamn picture of justice, like you always told us?

Xavier's voice stayed silent for a while. Calm down, Logan. Ask him when he comes back.

For the first time in weeks, he felt really lonely. The professor's voice had been there for him, patching him up after their tries to torture him, guiding him back to line, when he feared to snap. He didn't want to argue with the only friend he felt he still had.

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just outside the interrogation room

„Bauer! What the hell was that!?", the Colonel yelled at him and ripped the grenade out of Jack's hands. „This is meant to be an interrogation, and not an afternoon coffee party."

„It's a give and get.", Jack spat back at him, though he knew that the Colonel was right. He should have never let this come down to such a personal level. Especially not with this guy. And now even Nina's picture was all over his mind, the only thing he could really think of.

„You are here to ask questions.", the Colonel shouted, „Not to give away your name but to make him give us some names!"

„I think that's not gonna happen. He did the attack on Stryker's team alone, as you heard, and I have every reason to believe that. He tracked them down, one by one."

Angrily the Colonel looked at him. „So tell me, Mr. Jack Bauer, the glorious one to tell a monster his real name: what are you gonna do when that beast finally tracks you down and starts to ask you for our names?"

„That won't happen, Sir."

„You can never know. Read his file. We had him in 1943, in Vietnam and several other times. He always escaped."

Jack had enough of this. „You called me, Sir, to interrogate him. I'm not responsible for somebody else's fail in guarding him." And I gave him no reason, Jack thought, I gave him no reason to do anything to me. He had the chance, he didn't.

„Well, I'm not so sure, Captain, if that was a good idea to ask you to interrogate him. Right now you don't really live up to your reputation." He had wanted a bloody monster to interrogate the beast - Bauer's file had been promising. „When did you change that much?", he derogatorily remarked and left Jack standing there, alone, as he paced away.

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in the evening

Jack exactly knew when he changed that much. He took another gulp of the beer to stop his thoughts from going there, but it was already too late. Nina's face was replaced by Cheng's, just for a moment. He felt the pain come back. The helplessness. Quickly he went back into the kitchen to get something stronger. A couple of sleeping pills and a glass of Whiskey. That helped, most of the times.

Then he sat down on the sofa again, looking out into the dark.

There's no law beyond a certain point. A trial. A visitor. Something as simple as a bed. Something as simple as to stop the torture.

He knew exactly when he had changed so much that he didn't fit the Colonel's expectations any more. He had been at the exact same spot as his prisoner was now. Not a glimpse of hope ever to leave this place again, not a simple glimpse of hope to be treated in a fair way - knowing that the only way out of there was to escape.

The Colonel had made him the person that he had never wanted to become: Cheng. He couldn't do this. He couldn't go back there and do this. He couldn't stand to see this guy in chains, treated like an animal. Not after what he had been through.