It's never really over.

You might tell yourself it will be, soon. You might make plans to take a family trip to Canada or have a talk with your nephew. You might hug your daughter and whisper promises into her hair that no one is going to hurt her anymore. But you'd be lying, because it's never really over.

You can trade CTU for a cushy desk job on the other side of the country, find a woman you love, start to settle down. But the monster will still be there inside you, and at the first opportunity, it'll claw itself free and scare the hell out of anyone who hasn't seen that side of you before. Because no matter how much you hate field ops, how much it's cost you, how badly it's hurt you, you need it, and it needs you.

You can fake your own death, change your name, break contact with all the people you care about. But someone will find you. Someone will kill as many of your friends as it takes for you to surface again, and next thing you know you're back in the thick of things, and the president himself is begging you to stay and help instead of disappearing again. And even when all the nerve gas has been destroyed, it's still not over, because it turns out the president is corrupt, and you're the only one who can bring him down.

You can say you can't do it anymore, silently begging them through your sobs to please understand that you can't, you don't know how to, you're so screwed up you don't know up from down or right from wrong — but when you see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance, you know that you no longer have the luxury of can't; you simply have to.

You can travel all over the globe dodging the subpoena that you're sure is going to put you back in prison, but somehow you'll end up in a war-torn country, responsible for a schoolful of innocent children, and you'll have no choice but to turn yourself in to protect them.

You can try to walk away, but eventually even your daughter, who's been forced to go through unimaginable things because of you and your goddamn job, will give you permission to go back, because she knows what you do; she knows who you are and who you're not. She knows that it's never really over.

An affair is never really over. Once you've polluted yourself like that, you're never clean again. And then you find out that the woman you slept with is a terrorist psycho, and she murders your wife and unborn child. You don't just forgive yourself for something like that. The guilt stays with you forever. You hate yourself, and you hate her, and you tell yourself that you'll kill her the first chance you get, but instead you let her slip away to North Africa on a presidential pardon. It eats at you, but you let it happen because you know it's necessary. Well, you tell yourself, at least you never have to see her again. At least it's over.

You're wrong.

You find yourself in Mexico, tied to a chair while she looks at you with that evil sneer you once thought was a smile. She gives you a choice that's not really a choice at all: kiss her like you mean it, or fail your mission and lose God knows how many innocent lives. It's all you can do not to vomit into her mouth as you feel your body reacting to her hands on your thighs, because dammit, it's revolting that you're letting her toy with you like this. What would your wife think if she could see you? But you know it's what has to be done, so you force yourself to keep kissing her. Until she smirks and admits she doesn't believe you, and you realize that you never even had a chance, that she was just taunting you, humiliating you for the fun of it. And you break out of your chair and take back control of the situation, and then you're even more sick with yourself because you wonder what was stopping you from doing this earlier instead of fucking making out with her, and you're not sure you want to know the answer. And even after you pump three bullets into her body later in the day, it's not over, because you still wake up sometimes and feel her phantom touch on your skin, and you hate that it's not your wife you feel but this… this creature who has brought nothing but pain and suffering to your whole family.

An undercover mission is never really over. Sure, eventually you come back to Los Angeles and you get back your name and your badge and all those other little things that don't really make you who you are, but it's never the same. You're jumpy and paranoid and have to fight the urge to punch everyone who comes within a foot of you, because it's too damn close and you feel like you're suffocating. You pull away from your daughter because you don't remember how to have a normal human relationship that's more than you using them for information and them using you to do their dirty work.

Dirty is an understatement, really. When you've seen that kind of filth, that kind of darkness, you can't just slide right back into a world where you have to take your suit to the dry cleaners and get gas for your car and remember to have dinner with your daughter at least once a week, making sure to act like nothing is wrong and you're happy, whatever the hell that means. It's more than culture shock — it's more like you're putting on a mask, pretending to be the man you once were even though that man died long ago. You tell more lies than you ever did while you were undercover. Part of you wants to rip the mask off, to stop being someone you're not, but you don't know how. When you're wearing the mask, at least, you know how to act, even though you make so many mistakes that you're sure someone will realize, any minute now, that you're not who you say you are.

You get strangely angry at people for being so damn innocent, for having no idea how good they have it. You want to shake them by the shoulders and warn them about the dangers that are lurking out there, just a few miles away. And the part of you that wants to protect them from the darkness is whimpering softly and you're terrified because it used to command, to speak in a booming, confident, unshakeable voice, and now it's barely strong enough to be heard, yet somehow also strong enough to pull your heart in a thousand different directions.

Doing your job, interrogating the prisoner that you carved off half your soul to put there, only makes everything worse. You're paralyzed with fear because at any time he could unveil the things you had to do to maintain your cover, the things you never want anyone at CTU to find out about. He enjoys your fear; he's always taken pleasure in riding you, and he's not about to stop now. He's always getting in these barbs at you that should roll off your back like the thousands of other insults you've had hurled at you throughout your life, but there's so much truth to them that they cut to your very core, and you can't help but be shaken because somehow this monster — who's only ever seen you when you were undercover, supposedly playing a role — knows you better than you know yourself.

Then you come up with some asinine sting operation that will put more people in danger than you can count and probably won't work anyway, but you want to do it, you need to do it, because you have to go back undercover. You have to prove that you did this to yourself for a reason, that you have something to show for it. And won't it be nice to be able to blame someone else for a change? Won't it be nice to tell yourself that you smiled while you threatened to send an innocent college student into a virus-infested hotel, and then to force her father to watch her die, because it's what Jack Roush would have done, and not because it's what Jack Bauer chose to do?

An incarceration in a Chinese prison is never really over. No matter what you do, you can never leave a place like that. Even if your body is freed, your mind is still somewhere between the four dirty walls of that damp, rat-infested cell, being mercilessly abused by your tormentors. One minute you're walking along the streets of LA, feeling perfectly normal, and the next you're back in the interrogation room, and you can hear your own half-choked screams coming from somewhere outside your body and smell ammonia and gasoline and charred flesh that's probably rotting all the way to the bone, and it's just as bad as when you were really there.

It's even worse at night, when your dreams take you back, because your imagination is much more powerful than any tool your abusers have at their disposal. Especially when it's not constrained by the laws and logic of the real world. In a dream, your daughter can be there with you, or your wife, even though she died nine years earlier; your captors can hurt them, or force you to hurt them, or force them to hurt you. Things can be done to you that should cause you to bleed out within minutes, but you stay alive because it's a dream. And you have no control over whether or not you talk. Sometimes, when they're hurting your family, you want to, but no sound will come out. Other times, you're working so hard not to, but the words spill out anyway, and you know you just sentenced innocent people to death.

You'd think the guilt and pain and fear would go away once you wake up and realize it was just a dream, but they don't. That kind of panic and anxiety is so deep, so primal, that once it sinks its claws into you, you can't beat it with something as detached as objective reasoning. It's like you're in a different world. You're trembling uncontrollably, gasping for breath, unable to rub warmth back into your freezing body even though you're sweating. You're terrified, absolutely out-of-your-mind terrified, and you couldn't have explained why even if your mind was capable of thinking anything except Oh God, I'm going to die here, no one will care enough to find my body, someone please help… By the time your heart rate is finally back to normal, you have a migraine like you wouldn't believe, and you feel like you just ran a marathon with eighty pounds on your back while solving four-digit multiplication problems in your head. You can't summon the energy to do anything more than rock back and forth and hug yourself. Even then, the back of your neck is still prickling; you still jump a foot in the air when the phone rings or a car drives by; you still don't feel safe. You never feel safe. And you still can't explain why. Maybe it's because you know it wasn't just a dream. For twenty months, it was your reality.

Most of all, the fight against terrorism is never over. You can't relax, not even for a second. And it's far from a fair fight. First of all, you don't play by the same rules as they do. Even if you're known for stopping at nothing, doing whatever it takes to save as many lives as possible, there are still lines you can't cross, because you have a conscience. For the terrorists, that line doesn't exist. So it's like you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back, because they can do things to you that you can't do to them.

As if that weren't enough, your goals are much harder to accomplish than theirs are. You have to stop every single thing they throw at you, whereas they only need to succeed once to achieve victory. So not only are you fighting with one hand behind your back, you also need to get a knockout to win, while your opponent just needs to land one punch. And if you somehow still manage to get your hand raised, you get thrown back in the ring against another guy who's fresh and rested, while you're tired and sore and aching all over from the last fight.

So, you see, you can't win; you can only stop them from winning for as long as possible. And they will win, eventually. Part of their plan will succeed. One hotel full of people will die in a bioweapon attack; one nuclear reactor will melt down. Other terrorists will see the news and be inspired to wreak even more havoc. It's like fighting a hydra; every time you cut off one head, two more appear. But no matter how hopeless it is, no matter how big a victory the terrorists achieve, you have to get back on your feet, swallow down the anger and the grief and the crushing guilt, and keep fighting. You have to delay their next victory by as long as possible; you have to save as many lives as you can. Of course, you'll never remember how many lives you saved, only how many you lost, and each one will settle like a stone in your stomach, adding to the weight you'll carry around with you for the rest of your life.

It's so hard, living like this, when every mistake you've ever made, every bit of harm that's ever come to you or your loved ones or the country you've sworn to protect, is playing in a constant loop in your mind and it just won't leave you alone. I want so badly for it to stop, just for a moment. But it won't stop. Because it's never over.

I've tried to make it stop before. I've shot heroin into my veins. I thought it would be a temporary crutch, just so I could have a few moments of peace for once, so I could pick myself back up and find a way to keep going. How dumb was I? I should have known the addiction would never really be over. I should have known that more than a decade after the fact, there would still be days where I would curl up in a ball and cry like a baby because I wanted the drug so badly.

I've put a gun to my head; I've gotten into a plane with a nuclear bomb on board; I've looked down at the cliff behind Heller's house and thought how easy it would be to jump. But I couldn't, because it still wouldn't be over. Maybe it would for me, but not for the rest of the world. And then someone would need me and I wouldn't be there, and how selfish would that be?

When I was infected with a weaponized prion variant, they told me one of the side effects was memory loss. The treatment I was given was experimental, so they didn't know how extensive the damage would be. Maybe I would lose a little bit of my long-term memory, maybe everything. Amidst the fear of living the rest of my life as some kind of vegetable, I found myself thinking that there were some things I wouldn't mind forgetting. Not my wife's death — I knew I didn't deserve to forget that — but maybe some things about China, or the fact that Tony, my best friend, turned into a terrorist, or so many other awful things that have happened. After all, it's my memory that stops things from being over. The reason I can't move on is because I remember all the ways I screwed up, and with the benefit of hindsight I know exactly how to fix them, and it tears me apart that I didn't see it at the time.

I went through months of invasive treatments and grueling physical therapy, and in the end, nothing was over. The prion didn't erase any of my memory. And, ultimately, I think I'm glad. Moving on can't be as easy as simply pushing the delete button. I want things to be over, but I also want to know how they ended. Otherwise, Cheng and those assholes from District can accuse me of giving up Marcus Holt, and I won't even know whether or not what they're saying is true. I guess even if I forget, it still won't be over. I'll just spend my days and nights wondering what I've done, instead of remembering it. And as much as it hurts to know, it hurts more not to. The imagination is a powerful thing.

If life hadn't beaten the optimism right out of me so many years ago, I might have told myself that maybe memory keeps the good things from being over, too. I do have memories of happy times, with my wife, with my daughter, with my granddaughter, with Audrey. They've faded over time, like old photographs, but I still remember every detail: what she was wearing, what the weather was like, the sound of her laugh. The part the optimist doesn't realize, though, is that when you lose someone you love, the good memories are almost as painful as the bad ones. Whoever said "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" probably hadn't lost as much as I have. Or maybe he had, but it wasn't his fault. When you're the one to blame for a loved one's death or suffering, you wish you had never loved them, because then they'd be alive now, and happy, and it's not fair that you took that away from them.

Someone once told me that I'm cursed, that everything I touch ends up dead. He probably doesn't remember saying it — he has dementia now, and sometimes I think of him and wonder if he's happy, if he feels like it's really over — but he was right. Half the people I let myself get close to end up stabbing me in the back, all the way through to my heart, and the other half end up stabbed through the heart by somebody else. Or killed in an explosion, or shot, or tortured into catatonia and then shot. Usually, they're shot. Always, it's my fault. And I just keep letting it happen. Hell, even Morris and Prescott O'Brian, who didn't have much of a direct connection with me, who were just the family of my friend — even they ended up dead because of me. It never stops. It never ends. I'm the only one who stays alive, every time.

I try to put up walls of iron around my heart. I try not to let anyone in. I tell myself that I don't have any friends, because I want it to be true, because I don't want anyone else to get hurt because of me. But somehow, my heart is always pried back open. Somehow, I always end up meeting someone I can't help but care about — and then I watch that person die and I swear it won't happen again, and the cycle starts anew. It's never over.

Dammit, what do I have to do? What the hell do I have to do? I can't kill myself, I can't go live alone somewhere in the wilderness, because I need to serve my purpose: I need to be on hand to do the things no one else will do in order to stop terrorist threats. Is it worth it? Have I saved more lives than I've lost, or should I just rid the world of the threat that is Jack Bauer? I couldn't even begin to balance that equation. But I guess maybe life hasn't beaten all the optimism out of me just yet, because I always choose to stay alive in the end.

At least in this Russian prison, I can't meet anyone I'll start to care about. Everyone here is evil and abusive. It's the same thing I tried to do when I went undercover with Rask: surround yourself with awful people and you no longer run the risk of starting to care about someone. But I know my journey doesn't end here, just like it didn't end there. One day, I'll be released, and then I'll go back into the field and someone else I love will die.

I'm sorry, Kim. I'm sorry beyond what words can express that one day, you and your beautiful family will be dead because of me. I hope you know that I never meant for this to happen. I was young when you were born, and there were a lot of things I didn't know about myself and the world I lived in. I know them now, and I'm so indescribably sorry. I hope with every fiber of my being, I pray to any god who will listen that you'll find a way to break the curse and live a full and happy life. You and Stephen and the kids — Teri probably doesn't remember me anymore, and little Jonathan will never even meet me, but even though that rips my heart to ribbons, I know it's for the best. They'll grow up away from me, and hopefully away from all the suffering I leave in my wake. Maybe one day, when I'm long gone and you're happily holding your own grandchildren in your arms, you'll find a way to forgive me for what I've done. Then my hopeless story will end on a hopeful note.

Sitting in my prison cell somewhere in Russia, I visualize it over and over and over again. The perfect ending. Kim, Stephen, Teri, Jonathan — a happy family. But if I'm honest with myself, I know that it will never happen. Because I know, deep down inside, that it's never really over.