A/N Thanks to amacma and Jaudreylover24 for the reviews! I'm starting a new job next week, so updates might be a little slow for a while, but I'll do my best to keep them coming!
I struggled a lot with the tenses in this chapter. Present tense made more sense for some of the segments, while past was better for others. Hopefully it's not too jarring.
…
1.
He loves those little half-popped kernels at the bottom of a bag of microwave popcorn. But he's never told Teri, because she loves them too. So, every time they watch a movie together, he tells her that he prefers not to crack any of his teeth, thank you very much, and that once the bag is three-quarters empty, it's all hers. The childlike joy on her face is worth more than all the popcorn in the world.
2.
He's always wanted more kids. Three or four, and maybe a dog too (because, honestly, sometimes it would be nice to get a little affection from someone who wouldn't ask him to talk). There's something so precious about a child's innocent wonder and joy at the simplest things in life; it helps him believe in the good side of humanity, even after all the atrocities he's forced to confront (and sometimes inflict) in his line of work. When Kim was little, nothing made him happier than her lopsided smile as he scooped her up in his arms, or her wide-eyed questions and the feeling of her little ice-cream sticky hand in his as they walked down the beach. The thought of coming home from a long day of work to a house full of children's laughter, to messy crayon drawings pinned up on the fridge and alphabet blocks strewn across the carpet, to hugs and snuggles and high-pitched cries of "daddy!" in different voices with adorable different personalities, makes his heart swell with so much joy it almost hurts.
But he always kept it to himself. Because, most of the time, he wouldn't be the one changing the kids' diapers, or cleaning up after they wet the bed, or playing bad cop when they were in a rebellious phase. He wouldn't get them ready for school in the morning or take them to the hospital when they got an ear infection or struggle to get them all in and out of the bath before the hot water ran out. More likely, he would stumble through the door a few minutes before their bedtime and read them a rushed story from across the room because he wouldn't want to leave traces of gunpowder on their beds. He would miss their birthdays and soccer games and school plays to go on secret undercover missions somewhere overseas, then try to smooth things over with a matchbox car or a Little People figurine when he got back. And then, one day, someone from Division would come to the door and present his family with an American flag, and Teri would be well and truly on her own. No, if they were going to have more children, the idea had to come from Teri, not from Jack.
She never brought it up, which was why, when she told him she was pregnant again, he didn't know if she considered it good news or bad. It was a bittersweet moment, finding out about the son or daughter he would never meet, but he took comfort in the legacy he'd be leaving behind. Not just Kim, but another child, another perfect little beacon of innocence and light.
The reality was worse than he could have ever imagined, the light snuffed out before it ever got a chance to shine. Rocking his wife's lifeless body in his arms that night, imagining he could feel the weight of the child in her womb, Jack Bauer decided he would never have more kids. He hadn't even been able to protect the ones he already had.
3.
He cries, a lot more often than she would think. Sometimes, when he comes home after work, he goes directly into the bathroom, turns the shower to the highest possible temperature and flow rate, and watches his tears blend with the shower water as it circles down the drain. Other times, he parks his SUV on a small side street or in an empty lot and pounds on the steering wheel as he sobs. He's even done it in the driveway of their house in Santa Monica a few times, when he'd thought he had a decent enough grip on things, only to be proven wrong when, as soon as he turned off the ignition, unwelcome memories suddenly bombarded him like a hail of bricks. Each time, he pulled himself together and waited for the redness in his eyes to go down, then slipped into the house, hoping Teri hadn't heard him pull into the driveway almost thirty minutes earlier.
He cries when he's been pushing everything down for too long, when he knows he needs some kind of release. Once he gets it all out of his system, he's ready to leave Special Agent Jack Bauer behind and walk through the door as Dad (or, when Kim is in bed, just Jack), clean and happy and ready to dote on his family. He's willing to allow himself a few moments of weakness alone in his car, so that he can be strong when it really counts.
He never lets himself cry in front of Teri, not if he can help it. Actually, he doesn't let himself cry in front of anyone, but especially not Teri and, even more so, Kim. His job brings them enough hardship of their own, without him dumping his demons onto them. And anyway, he doesn't want to talk about his job when he gets home. He'd rather hear about the meaning of Teri's new painting, or what Kim decided she wants to be when she grows up, or which of them beat the other at Scrabble today. It's the only way he can get up in the morning and do it all over again.
4.
A few days before his first deployment with Delta, he bought Kim a sparkly purple notebook with a pony on the front and told her to write in it whenever she did something kind for her mother while he was away. Any act of kindness, he said, no matter how small — a compliment, a kiss, an "I love you," an offer to help out in the kitchen. If there were at least five items on the list by the time he came back ("one, two, three, four, five, like the fingers on your hand"), he promised to take her to the bakery across from her school and buy her one of those pink cupcakes with sprinkles and a plastic mermaid tail on top, the kind Teri never let her have because they were all sugar and food dye.
Over the years, mermaid cupcakes became Disney princess cupcakes, then dragon cupcakes. By Jack's last deployment, Kim was writing in the notebook in overly rounded cursive, spelling every word correctly, and picking out an Oreo cupcake because she was "too big" for anything with a plastic topper. As Jack watched her lick the last of the cookies and cream frosting from her fingers, he thought about how much he was going to miss this secret tradition of theirs, and how pleased he was that they would no longer need it. He was never going away again.
Years later, when he and Teri separated, Jack tried to use the same tactic on Kim once more. She asked him for spending money for her next trip to the mall, and he replied, "only if you're kinder to your mother this week." He was met with an eye roll and a comment along the lines of "Dad, why do you do this? She treats you like garbage and you still take her side!" No matter how hard he tried to insist that the separation was his fault, how earnestly he pleaded with her to show some understanding towards her mother, there was no changing Kim's mind.
Of course, it would have helped if he stopped speaking in vague euphemisms, if he sat her down and explained how he'd pushed Teri away with his walls, his short temper, and his inability to focus on anything that didn't have to do with national security. But he couldn't reveal that side of himself, especially not to his daughter. Not when he'd poured his heart and soul into hiding it from her for the past year and a half.
Sometimes he wonders if he ruined Teri and Kim's relationship with those cupcakes, if he unwittingly taught his daughter that the only reason to be kind to her mother was to earn a special treat. But then he knows how hard it was for Teri when he was away, and he knows that a little appreciation goes a long way. And then he remembers Kim's beaming little face as she opened her notebook, revealing a list that usually contained much more than the requisite five items… and he just can't bring himself to think of it as a mistake.
5.
A lot of the things he doesn't tell her about his job aren't actually classified.
It's not exactly a state secret that he blames himself every time something goes wrong on a mission, or that he feels guilty just for being alive when so many of his peers are not. But if he tells Teri, then she'll worry about him even more than she does already. She'll try to comfort him, and that's the last thing he wants because dammit, if he has to hear the words "it's not your fault" one more time, he's going to put his head through a wall.
It wouldn't endanger national security to tell her that he's sick and tired of career bureaucrats raking him over the coals for simply doing what's necessary, because they care more about their rule books and career trajectories than the fate of the nation they've sworn to protect. But that would be childish. He's a grown man; it's not like he can't handle some pencil-neck jawing at him. Besides, Teri would probably suggest leaving CTU, and he doesn't want to have that argument with her. It would be a waste of time; no civilian could ever understand why the very job that hurt him is also the best analgesic for his wounds.
He could even tell her about some of the terrible things he's been forced to do, if he leaves out dates and locations and doesn't refer to the people involved by their real names. But that's even more out of the question than anything else about his job. No one likes federal agent Jack Bauer when he's in crisis mode: not his friends, certainly not his enemies; not even Jack himself. It's a side of him that he wishes didn't have to exist, that he unleashes only because the alternative is to allow innocent people to suffer. That side gets tucked away, somewhere deep inside the darkest catacombs of his mind, as soon as he comes home. He's a different Jack when he's with Teri: warmer, kinder, more considerate. Happier. That's the Jack that Teri knows and loves. Jack likes him better, too.
Teri wouldn't like the other Jack. He knows because she met him — after Operation Nightfall, when the switch that banished him to his rightful place was seemingly broken. She'd kicked him out of the house eventually, but she hadn't filed for divorce, because she'd been convinced that the cold, moody grouch that had come home from the 'training exercise' wasn't her Jack, and that her husband was still in there somewhere and would return one day.
And he had. But he'd brought the other Jack with him, wrangled back into his cage but very much alive. To tell Teri about his missions would be to let her peek through the bars of the cage and see the man that she hated, to prove to her that he would never be separated from the one she loved. Jack could never do that to her. If he did, he'd be as cruel as the Jack in the cage.