Post-S3: Rehab, Day 12 (continued)

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Calling Audrey was nothing like calling Kim. It didn't come with the tension of not knowing what to say, the prospect of having to lie again or the shame of having to confess that he'd been lying to her in the past.

After he typed in the number and hit the call button, he realized for the first time, that she was (most likely) on the east coast, making it three hours later. On her end, it was eight o' clock in the evening. If that was her office number, the call was probably too late anyway… if it was her private number… the call was probably awkward, too. Was it even her number, that she had written onto that note, or the number of someone else?

It rang three times and Jack's thoughts were all wiped away as he heard her voice say a simple "hi", as if she was expecting his call and already knew the number.

"Audrey?"

"Yeah. Hi.", she said again, relieved to hear his voice, finally. It had taken days.

"Hi." He unwillingly had to smile, as he took the phone with him and crouched down near the windows, looking out. This had become his favorite spot lately.

Though they had both not managed to say much, except for stammering their hellos, the situation didn't feel awkward. He could almost hear her smile, on the other end of the line. She could definitely hear him smile, too, even though it were only two words, which they'd said to each other.

"How are you?", she asked, the inevitable question everyone would ask.

"Better.", he answered, adding "Different."

She knew what he meant, saying different.

He had always hated to answer that question, but right now, that was different, too. It was not like the ten times Dr. Blake had asked him how he was - to have a foot in the door to his mind, or the hundred times he'd heard that question during his last days at CTU, of people who just felt obliged to ask.

"I haven't touched anything ever since you dropped me off here.", he started to tell her, because he wanted to. "They helped me through the worst with some methadone, but I'm off that, too, ever since a few days ago." All of a sudden, it really felt like a little success, being able to say such words.

"Good to hear. I'm glad.", she breathed as an answer.

Jack heard music in the background. She had to be somewhere. "I'm sorry for disturbing your evening. I should have called tomorrow.", he apologized.

"No.", she hastily interrupted him. "No, no, no. You're not." She had been waiting for his call, for three days now. She had always carried around that second (secure) phone, wherever she'd gone to. At night, she had even laid it next to her bed, making sure it wasn't mute. Childish, she had to admit. He would not call her at 3 a.m. in the morning.

"Where are you?", he dared to ask, though – as he said it – knew that it was actually none of his business.

"I'm just at bar. With some friends.", she said, pushing the door open, "Now I'm outside."

The music was no longer audible.

"Listen Audrey, we can talk tomorrow. You don't have to leave your friends waiting."

She heard the gentleness in his voice, that he worried more about her than he'd ever worry about himself. The many phone calls, that they had had half a year ago, they had never left her mind. Ever since then, she had found herself again and again, wishing to hear that voice again in her ear – just to know how he was, because he had never really left her mind completely. Now, she instantly had to smile, instantly felt good and asked herself why.

"No. I've been waiting for your call. For days.", she admitted. She walked up and down the alley. It was dark already, but there were people all around. It was one of the nicest parts of Washington D.C., her favorite bars and restaurants, the places where she and her friends would spend their evenings. She sighed. "Jack, I wanna be honest to you. I already knew that you were doing better. I called them a week ago."

It was no wonder to him, that she already knew. "You called here?"

"Yes, I did.", she admitted. She didn't want to lie to him and she felt like she had to explain why she had sent him the phone. "Sorry for being nosy. I just….", she took a deep breath and held it, "… I just wanted to know if you were doing better, because last time I saw you… you were really down in a hole. In my wildest thoughts I feared you maybe took a chance to get out of that place and ran off."

He felt that she was sorry for intruding his privacy, but actually, she was just genuinely worried about him. "It's okay, Audrey.", he softly said. It was really okay for him. After all, she had brought him here. "Thanks for caring… and I didn't run away."

A warm feeling spread in her chest, as she heard his words. She leant against a wall and looked up into the sky. Thank god, he was two thousand miles away. "It's been a while.", she murmured, "since I last heard your voice over the telephone."

"Seven months, two weeks.", Jack said, and added, "They asked me for how long I've been using. Then I did the math." She was with him, in the beginning of his addiction. Actually, those were the only times that they had spoken over the phone. Not once before, not one single time thereafter.

"I should have stopped you back then.", she whispered.

He could hear in it in her voice that she held herself responsible for his misery. "It was right the way it was, Audrey. It needed to be done."

"Maybe we would have found another way to get that mission done.", she sighed.

"No, we wouldn't have. Anyway, we shouldn't discuss that over the phone."

"It's a secure line, Jack. That's why I sent you the phone. After all… I figured that it would take us only a minute of talking to get to the classified stuff."

He looked at the display. "It took us two and a half."

They both had to laugh.

"I'll be needing it back in about two months from now.", Audrey silently said. "Until then, nobody at DoD will notice that one is missing."

She had really thought about everything. Relieved, Jack closed his eyes and leant back against the wall. This made it easier. With Dr. Blake, he had often just used the word classified, whenever she had come to a topic that he didn't want to talk about. But many of these topics would have really become classified at one point, if he had told her some of the details, leading further and further down the road to the core.
He thought back to these two weeks, seven months ago, talking to Audrey. And to the evening they had spent together at his hotel room in Washington, a month ago. She was right: ninety per cent of everything they had ever talked about was somehow classified. If they couldn't have shared all that – there would have been nothing left to talk about.

"Enough about me. How are you, Audrey?", he asked her. "I'm sorry I didn't even ask you that when I saw you two weeks ago."

"I'm alright. No big changes during the past months.", she answered, and she deliberately left out the part that her father had changed jobs: he was now her boss – and that had changed her life and career more than she would have ever thought. "Tonight we've gone out to watch the quarter finals. Soccer.", she said, forcing her thoughts away from her father. Any topic was better - even her evening plans.

"You watch soccer games?" He was quite surprised to hear that.

"Well… some of my friends do.", she explained. "They were friends of me and Paul and you know – they're also from the U.K., so they're pretty much into European sports. Soccer mainly. Today their home team plays. Liverpool."
Her past months had been work, work some more work and nothing else. Ever since she and Paul had finally split up, it was also a gamble, who of their common friends would stay and who would decide to be on the other side. "I haven't seen them much, lately."

"Then don't leave them waiting too long or their fantasy will run wild.", Jack remarked. He sensed that by 'lately', she meant since she and Paul had split up.

"You could be right.", Audrey smiled. "Maybe they just invited me anyway because they wanted to pry."

"Been there.", he said, thinking back to the times when he and Teri were split up. "Not easy. Do you even like soccer games?" It was a shot in the dark, but something gave him the feeling that Audrey and watching soccer didn't match.

"Hell no.", she laughed and made him laugh, too. Through the window of the bar, she looked inside and saw them cheer, along with three quarters of the bar. "I think Liverpool just scored."

"Then you missed the fun part.", he remarked.

"Why?"

"Ninety minutes and if you're lucky, two or three goals. That's like waiting for Godot.", he expressed his dislike for soccer. "It's boring." It hit him that this year, he had even missed the super bowl.

"Yes, it is.", she agreed. "But the game is not why I'm here."

"Why are you there?"

Why was she? She did nothing but work. She didn't want to admit it – but she felt lonely, most nights. Paul was no longer there. Not that she would have cared about his presence, but something was missing, a partner to come home to. Many nights she had worked late, just to avoid going home to a lonely place. The few friends that she had were mainly friends of her and Paul, she soon found out. Some had disappeared right after they had split up, some had turned out to be not-so-close friends… more than half the rest was gathered here, in this bar, watching the game. Louise, Ron and Christian.
"They are old friends.", she began, trying to answer Jack's seemingly easy question.

He sensed that he had tapped into a sensitive topic here, so he decided to just say nothing and listen to her.

"We were fellows at Yale, them and me… and Paul. I'm surprised they even invited me and not him tonight. Maybe just because he's out of town. I don't know."

"I've been in the exact same situation, Audrey.", he sighed, "when Teri and I were broken up… it didn't take long for most of our common friends to decide on whose side they'd be on." He thought back. Most of them had taken Teri's side. That was fine with him. They had decided against him because he'd been the bad guy back then – the one who had abandoned the family, who had never been there, eventually the one to have an affair, too.
Right now, it wasn't even as painful as he thought to think back. "I got to know Teri at UCLA and most of our common friends were fellow students there, too."

"You were at UCLA?" Audrey was surprised to hear that.

"Yeah. Surprised?"

She immediately felt bad. Had she just – unmistakably – told him that she thought a CTU agent was most likely some kind of a stupid foot soldier, one who surely can't have a degree? Or that someone with a degree would surely not take a job that required to get shot at?
"What did you study?", she asked, painting a picture of Jack at university.

"English literature.", he told her, adding, "and I graduated."

"No way.", she laughed, "you're kidding me."

"Why?"

"Jack… after all I know about you… that really doesn't fit the picture.", she sighed. "Why did you pick that one?"

He unwillingly had to smile, as he thought back. Yes, he had heard that question quite often, in the past. Not in the last ten years, but earlier. And he had answered it so often, that he still remembered the versions that he had carefully put together, depending on who would ask. "Which version do you want?", he teased her.

"Version? There are more versions?"

"Yeah. Depending on who'd ask."

"All of them." Audrey watched her friends through the window. She should really go back in there, but talking to Jack was so much more fun than watching that boring game.

"Okay then. Version A: I chose it to annoy my father. He always hated liberal arts, democrats and useless majors."

"So he's a republican and you're a democrat?"

It drew a smile off his face. "Audrey, I've killed more than 170 people… could also be 200, nobody really counts when you're undercover in a foreign country. Most of my life I've slept with a gun under my pillow. So I guess I'm not a democrat." Actually, he had never seen himself as a political person, most of the times he hadn't even voted, because he hadn't been home and because no matter who had been in charge, things hadn't changed all that much. He knew government work inside out: the middle management was, what mattered most. They were the ones who made things better, like Richard Walsh, or they were a pain in the ass, like Ryan Chapelle. To put a cross in a box every four years wouldn't change a thing about it.
Four months ago, he'd been in Mexico. Four years before that, he had voted for David Palmer. He'd felt obliged to, after all the trouble he had caused him.

"And who did you tell that version? Your dad?"

"Hell no. Mostly comrades in the army, when they started to tease me for being a liberal. Like you.", he said to her.

One of her friends was looking over. They had found her, standing outside, and were waving at her to come back in. She just shook her head and told Jack, "And the next version?" This was making her feel so much better than watching the stupid game.

Jack realized she really wouldn't let up on it until having heard all the versions. "Okay. So, Version B: It was easy. Initially I really enrolled to study Spanish or German… I even took classes in all of them, but English literature was the easiest way to get a degree."

"Let me guess: that was the official version. The one you told everyone. Job interviews. Classmates. Friends.", she concluded. The first one had been emotional, but this one sounded logical, credible.

"Yes."

There was silence for a few moments. Audrey listened, if he'd continue, but he didn't. He was drowned in memories, going back to times that were long gone, probably twenty years.

"There's another version.", she silently said. He was two thousand miles away, but she sensed the sudden change.

"Yes."

That was the version which was private. Not even Kim knew that one, though – of course – he had told her the other two versions, when the decision had come up for her, what to study.
This version had been between him and Teri only. He wondered, if he should let another person into their world. Was it a secret, that he'd be sharing? No. Teri would have even appreciated it, he guessed. It was him, who had always kept that version to himself, though it contained an unspoken truth that spoke volumes about his past. Teri hadn't forced him to share this version with the world, because it had been their dreams, their vision of a future that didn't come true anyway.

Audrey waited for him to begin talking, ever patiently. She walked a few steps away from the windows of the bar, where the people just cheered, because she sensed Jack wasn't really in a cheerful mood when it came to that version.
She stood in the darkness of the night, listening to him.

"When I studied, I was in an ROTC program of the army, I guess you know what that means.", he began.

Of course she knew, she worked for DoD. "Four years of service? So you wanted to leave the army?"

"Yeah. When I started college, I had no idea what I actually wanted to do later on. So Version B is really true in some parts. I initially planned to do Spanish or German as a major, maybe do some time abroad for the army, get transferred to a base in Germany or South America."

She could easily imagine him as a liaison officer somewhere. "So you speak both Spanish and German?" She was impressed. Well, she had already found out that he spoke some Spanish, when he ordered their coffees in Pacoima.

"Not good enough to make it a major.", he admitted. He could have made it his major, if he had really worked hard on improving – speaking it was not the problem. Writing was. These times were so far in the past… he had almost forgotten about them. It was probably a few years since he had last thought back to his times in college.

"So far it still sounds like version B.", Audrey remarked.

"I know." It was way harder to speak about his and Teri's old plans than he had thought. "I needed to give you a little context.", he sighed. "I met Teri at college… she got pregnant with Kim quite soon and before she was even born, I was sent on my first tours of duty. Teri and I made plans on how our life could look like, once these four years were over."

Audrey heard how hard it was for him, to think back. The pauses he made said even more than words. She closed her eyes and focused on what he said, trying to picture him back then, twenty years ago, as the father of a young family.

"There were some really good job opportunities for teaching English back then. I threw away the plans to look for a steady assignment at an overseas army base. They were looking for teachers everywhere since such an awful lot retired. Teri and I planned… that I'd do these four years and then we'd move away from the city… build a house that she had already envisaged in every detail. Just live a quiet life together."
He didn't even realize that while he spoke, silent tears escaped his eyes. He could remember her plans for their house in every detail. She had painted it from every angle.

He had never told that anyone else, not even Kim. She would have only used it as another thing that she could throw at his face: why haven't you made it work. Mom could still be alive.

A cold shiver ran down Audrey's back. She could feel him, through his words, though he was so far away. The versions A and B he had probably told many times in the past. The words were neatly put together, one or two slim sentences, rehearsed and ready to be fired. But this version… she guessed that he hadn't spoken that much about it, in the past. He had drifted from one thing to the other, trying to sort his thoughts as they came, almost as if it were the first time ever that he was trying to find a guiding thread through the story.
She remembered from reading his file that his wife had died, ultimately because of his engagement at CTU. The plans that he had just told her about had gotten interrupted at some point. He had never left the army to take a civil job – he had just traded it for another gun-swinging business.
There was one obvious question: why hadn't he left the army, after these four years?

"Audrey, do you want your coat?"

She shrieked and jumped around. Christian was standing behind her, her coat in his hands, offering it to her. She didn't really know how long she'd already been standing out here, but it must have been a while. Inside the bar, they must already be worried about her.

"Thanks for the coat, Chris.", she said and took it. She was freezing, even shivering from the cold. Talking to Jack had so entirely occupied her thoughts that she hadn't consciously noticed the coldness.

Jack heard their conversation. From the few words on her end and the unintelligible, yet British-sounding other voice he concluded that it must be one of her soccer-watching friends.
"Audrey, go back to your friends. You can't miss all of the game.", he softly said, remembering in what situation she actually was.

"Okay. Thanks again for calling. If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out." she hurriedly said and ended the call, hoping that Jack would forgive her. She was still married, and those people were also Paul's friends. What if they had really just invited her to find out if she was seeing somebody else. She didn't want to get back together with Paul, but she couldn't afford to get rumors going either. The settlement was still ahead of her.

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Jack set the phone aside and looked at the city. The sun was just about to set, the lights already turned the highways into white and red stripes that cut through the endless rows of houses.
He understood her situation and right now he was even glad that she had ended the phone call. It felt good to retreat into some of the memories, of a loving home, the memories of the good times that he and Teri had shared in the beginning. All their problems had started after these four years, when she had to realize that he wouldn't go through with their plans. He wanted more – now, twenty years later, the bad feeling crept up his spine that wanting more had made him end up losing it all.

He had never told Kim about the plans that they had had. Teri for sure hadn't told her either, because if Kim had known about it, she would have cast that stone at him after her death: Mom could still be alive, if you hadn't given up on your both plans.

Would she? How would the world have turned out to be, if he had left all the guns behind, after these four years?

Maybe Kim and Teri would have been killed by Sayed Ali's nukes, if he hadn't stopped that from happening. Or by the Cordilla virus, if that one had really been released.

He got up and wiped the tears away. Stop delude yourself, he thought, someone else could have also stopped that from happening.

Finally he lay down at the bed and stared at the ceiling, his thoughts still racing.

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Audrey was back inside. Her friends ordered another drink for her. Liverpool was already leading 4-0, halftime.
She did her best to cheer up, laugh with them and be the friend they expected her to be.

Chris had unmistakably heard it: the call was business, clearly.

As the game resumed for its second half, she was glad that they all got drowned in looking at the large TV screen again.

She felt endlessly bad, having ended the call with Jack so abruptly and coldly. A minute before, he had opened up and told her what he had probably never told anyone else, and all she'd done was hang up on him. Like slamming a door in his face.

She wanted to call him back, but she couldn't. That would really get rumors going.
As much as she had looked forward to this night – finally an evening which she wouldn't spend alone – she hated to be here now, tangled up in these people's company, unable to do what she actually wanted to: speak to Jack.

She stared at the big TV screen. 5-0 and more than half the time was over. It was impossible to turn that game around. Liverpool would win, as sure as night follows day. What a waste of time to watch that game.

He friends just saw her smile.

Waiting for Godot, she thought back to what Jack had said. Who would have thought the title of an old play was the perfect metaphor for the most boring sport event she'd ever watched. That made it almost bearable to be here.

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I'd like to give credit to one of my faithful reviewers - lavashchips - for the idea with the "ROTC" program. I have to admit that I have no idea about the US school / university system and we've lately discussed how Jack's education could have looked like. Thanks again!