A/N Sorry this one took so long! As you can see, it's much longer than all the other chapters so far, and it took me forever to get all the wording the way I wanted it. Hopefully it's worth the wait!

As always, thanks to those who reviewed the previous chapter: amacma and helenawrites. And a special thanks goes to amacma for coming up with the idea for part 1 of this latest chapter! It was a great idea and really helped me tie this part of the story together.

1.

He never stopped carrying his gun.

Except at work inside the Pentagon, of course — and boy, did he hate being without it. Walking in unarmed on his first day on the job, he'd felt naked, exposed. Without the familiar weight pressing into his hip, ankle, or shoulder — sometimes all three — it had been like he was missing a limb. He'd even considered carrying an empty holster to help ease him into the civilian world, but quickly rejected the idea. He was decades too old to have a comfort object.

He'd wanted to put CTU behind him. After he'd poured enough blood, sweat, and tears into the agency to fill a swimming pool, after he'd sacrificed everything he owned, up to and including his soul, they'd thrown him out on his ear and called him a liability. It made him sick just thinking about it, and yet, he couldn't let go of that part of himself, that federal agent that still lived like a parasite in his brain. He still chose the seat closest to the exit in every conference room, restaurant, and bar, sitting with his back to the wall to better observe his surroundings. He still woke with a start almost every night, panting for breath and fighting with tangled, sweat-soaked covers as he blinked away the afterimages swirling before his eyes. And, no matter that he worked in one of the most secure buildings on the planet, he still thought nearly every day about what he'd do if an armed intruder breached the facility, about how he'd get close enough to grab for the gun and how he'd quell the rising panic of those around him. Somehow, the words take cover and let the cops handle it still hadn't made their way into his vocabulary.

He'd never quite managed to shake the feeling that this — this white-collar, suit-and-tie, dot-the-i-cross-the-t office job was all some elaborate sting operation, and that so much as mentioning his trusty H&K USP would blow his cover. He imagined that, if Audrey ever looked down the sleek polymer frame of his piece, she'd see the corpses of the people it had killed, waxen and gray except for the dark red holes where the bullets had entered. Maybe she'd even hear Ryan Chappelle, whimpering I can't… I can't as he pressed this very muzzle to his temple, and then the thud of his body hitting the ground as a train whistle blew faintly in the distance.

Audrey, having read Jack's file, already knew about all the things he'd done for his country. But he knew that for her, just like for anyone else, words and numbers weren't so palatable anymore once they turned into images. Audrey hadn't so much as flinched when studying the casualty estimates ahead of the troop surge in Afghanistan. But when she and Jack had gone home that night and watched Once Upon a Time in America, she'd buried her head in his shoulder every time a blotch of fake, poppy-red movie blood blossomed on a character's clothes or skin.

Once, early on in their relationship, he'd toyed with the idea of bringing Audrey to the firing range. He'd thought that maybe, in a controlled environment, with safety rules and paper targets and eye and ear protection, he could show her how to defend herself in case… well, in case something happened and he wasn't there. He'd done that with Teri, and even with Kim, and God knew they'd both found use for the skill.

With Audrey, in the end, he'd been too afraid. Afraid that she'd be repulsed by his dark side and, maybe even more so, afraid that she wouldn't be. Afraid that if she accepted that part of him, he'd get too comfortable and let the federal agent off his leash just an inch. Except it wouldn't be just one inch; it would be another, and another, until the inches became feet, the feet became yards, the yards became miles, and before he knew it, he would be sucked back into the field, and everything he and Audrey had worked so hard for would be destroyed. No, better to squash it all down, tuck it away, and become the man he'd failed to be when he was with Teri. Even when he questioned if that man really existed.

No! he'd snapped at Chase once, when the younger man had suggested that the reason all Jack's relationships had failed was Jack himself. No, it's the job! It was one of the few times in his life when he'd ever deflected responsibility. Now, more than ever, he needed to have been right. With the job finally behind him, he couldn't let it get in the way again; he needed to make this work. Audrey was too special to let go.

So he'd locked his gun in a little box, and he'd fought like hell to keep his demons in that box, too. Something in his gut told him that, if he failed, there would be no more second chances.

2.

It wasn't just the gun that reminded him he didn't belong in her world.

It was the small circle of skin around her finger where he knew a ring should be — even though in all the time he'd known her, he'd never seen her wearing it — and the incessant phone calls from Paul (safe, well-bred, unproblematic Paul, who had no idea how good he had it) that she picked up far more often than Paul would have, if roles were reversed.

It was her reluctance to tell her father about them, and how it forced the two of them to hide, evade, and even lie to the man for whom they both worked, whom they admired, who had given Jack a chance when so many others had turned their backs on him in disgust. It was Jack's fear that the secretary wouldn't want someone like him dating his daughter.

It was the way his forearm — half-hidden under layers of ink and faded track marks — clashed with her smooth, tan one in a bizarre constellation of darkness and light.

It was the small talk with high-society senators that he could never quite manage without Audrey stepping in to rescue him, the charity balls and benefit galas, the art gallery openings that he could barely stomach because he knew Teri would have enjoyed them more than he or Audrey ever could, the trips to restaurants where he chose his entree not based on what looked appetizing, but based on what he was most confident he could pronounce without embarrassing himself.

But no matter how many insecurities crept into his mind and threatened to bring him down, he wouldn't let them. Because Audrey, who could have any man in the world, had chosen him. And he'd be a fool to let anything stand in their way.

3.

He never let things with Diane go as far as she had wanted.

It was true what President Palmer had told him over the phone: for all intents and purposes, Jack Bauer was dead. He would never see Audrey again. And yet, when he so much as thought about touching another woman, he felt the same kind of raw, gnawing guilt he had felt when he was dating Kate. Because even after more than a year had passed, he still wasn't over Audrey.

He was glad he'd gotten a chance to tell her, in that last hour before everything had gone south, how much it meant to him to be able to make a connection. Because, now that she was gone (or rather, now that he was gone), he realized more than ever how important she had been to him.

They had connected on so many levels that, when he lost her, it was almost like he'd lost several people. The hopeless romantic whose wide-eyed optimism was a balm to his scarred soul, who lit up when he brought her flowers and admitted shyly that her ideal date was a picnic under the stars. The intellectual sparring partner, as convinced of her ideas as he was of his; during the rare times when those ideas misaligned, they would debate until their tongues, tired of forming words, wrapped around each other in a hungry kiss. The faithful comforter, the only person in the world who could ask if he was okay and get a real answer, from his heart and not just his mind. The ray of sunshine who could make him smile just by walking into a room, when for a while before he met her he wasn't so sure he would ever smile again.

The worst part was that all of them — every one of the Audreys he had come to know and love — were now buried next to Paul Raines, underneath layers of grief and anger at the man who had taken him away.

If his last memory of Audrey had been a tearful goodbye like the one he'd shared with Teri, this would all have been more bearable. He would have had closure; he could have made peace with the fact that their story was over, wished Audrey all the happiness in the world, and slowly, painfully, moved on. As it was, he'd left her hurting, hating him, and every instinct he had was screaming at him to do something about it. It just wasn't in him to leave a loved one alone to suffer.

At the same time, his existence on the run — existence because it wasn't quite a life; he wasn't truly living — was taking a toll on him. He was nervous and jumpy and paranoid; he barely slept because the slightest noise jolted him awake so violently that it would sometimes take him hours just to breathe normally again. He made a living off of hard manual labor that left him with aches and pains which would have gone away with a little rest, but which were instead aggravated by the tension in his body. When his only human contact was "hello" and "goodbye" to his fellow roughnecks and the occasional thirty-second coded phone call with Chloe, it was easy to look at everyone around him with great suspicion. Every man selling newspapers on a street corner was a potential threat; every old lady at the gas station could have been planted there by the Chinese. He recognized that, if this went any further, his paranoia would drive him insane.

So he allowed himself, ever so cautiously, to get attached to the Huxleys. He fixed the clog in their sink and then allowed himself to be coaxed into staying for dinner. He showed a disgruntled Derek how to change a lightbulb. He made small talk with Diane about the weather and what was good on TV. And, yes, when she flirted with him, he flirted back.

But whenever he was with Diane, his thoughts were elsewhere. He couldn't stop thinking about how quaintly domestic this all was, and how it should have been Audrey sitting across from him as she stirred milk into her coffee. Derek even reminded him a little of the way she had described her brother, Richard.

It wasn't really a relationship. It was nostalgia and fantasy, maybe a little wish fulfillment. The only reason he didn't feel more guilty about it was that he knew Diane felt the same way; you don't owe me an explanation wasn't exactly something you said to a potential husband when what he'd told you about his past didn't check out. Even though Diane signaled a few times that she wouldn't mind taking their little courtship to the bedroom, Jack preferred to keep playing house in the kitchen, pining for his lost love. As usual, Diane didn't ask him to explain.

By his sixth month renting a room from Diane, Jack was almost starting to get used to the routine self-deprivation of being Frank Flynn.

Then the phone call came.

4.

The morning after Audrey got back from China, he paid her father a visit.

He led with his gun.

Restraining order or not, he had no intention of letting Audrey go. She'd gone into the mouth of hell to look for him, and he would bring her back if it was the last thing he did.

But he made a mistake. He saw the blank, almost bored expression on Heller's face, and suddenly he couldn't resist getting things off his chest. How many times in his life had he been encouraged to "talk to someone," and how many times had he refused? He'd always hated shrinks; their pity made him feel weak. But this was different; with his gun in his hand, he felt stronger than he had since the day he'd brought down a corrupt president and shot Christopher Henderson in cold blood.

He'd survived China because Cheng's men had attacked him where he was strong: his body, his conscience, the power of his will. The spots where he was truly vulnerable were well-hidden behind his tightly sealed mouth. When he was standing in the living room with Heller, he broke that seal, giving Heller an opportunity — one he never would have given to the Chinese.

He would later realize, with something approaching begrudging respect, how well Heller had played his hand. He'd prodded and pried in all the right places, and with just a few short sentences, he'd split Jack Bauer wide open. That was how Jack ended up sitting on the edge of Audrey's bed, saying goodbye, while drops of seawater glistened on his face like the tears he was too empty or too exhausted to cry. Then he stepped into the strangely oppressive California air, and for a while he stared down at the waves crashing against the cliffs, wondering what he still had to live for. Finally he decided it didn't matter, because didn't have anything to die for, either.

Later that day, he woke up in a bare motel room he hardly remembered checking into. His heart was pounding violently against his injured ribs and his jaw was sore from grinding his teeth in his sleep. His mind, though fatigued, had found the energy to taunt him with a nightmare. In the dream, he was running through a mazelike dungeon of prison cells, hearing Audrey scream for his help. With each turn he took, he seemed to get closer, could hear her voice get louder, and yet no matter where he ran, which cell he opened, she wasn't there.

With his phone in his clammy fingers and Audrey's address on his lips, he was halfway to calling a cab when Heller's words came back to him.

Simply getting your life back, Jack, isn't going to change who you are.

All of a sudden, he heard his own hoarse croak of a voice: I don't know how to do this anymore. He was looking into Assad's eyes, knees feeling watery, bile rising in his throat, and silently begging the man to let him off the hook. No such luck. You'll remember. Less than four hours later, he was staring at Graem's fogged-up glasses through a layer of tightly stretched plastic, his own face an impassive mask as he heard, but didn't listen, to his brother's strangled pleas.

He closed the phone and lowered himself gingerly onto the worn carpet, curling into a ball and closing his eyes. At least in his nightmares he had a chance at seeing Audrey again.

A few days later, he called Chloe, for the first time taking her up on an invitation she'd made that he call her if he needed anything. He named the one thing he needed badly enough to swallow his pride and ask: to know how Audrey's healing process was coming along. Chloe told him she'd see what she could do, leaving out her standard dose of sarcasm; he noted a little resentfully that ever since his return, she'd been treating him like he was made of glass. He spent the next few hours sitting by the phone, staring at a small section of blank wall where the paint was beginning to chip. When the long-awaited ring came, he flinched, startled, then grabbed the phone, and—

He stopped. Abruptly, discomfort had begun to wriggle under his skin like a cold worm, burrowing deeper into his gut with each ring of the phone. He was suddenly flooded with memories of his short stint in rehab. He'd done everything he could, back then, to avoid calling Kim, because he didn't want her to hear how rough he sounded, didn't want her to ask if the chills had gotten better and whether he'd been able to keep down any solid food. How much worse would it have been if she'd read his charts, with the detailed descriptions of every degrading symptom he'd endured and every answer he'd given to the clinic psychiatrist? And now here he was, doing the same thing to Audrey. Stealing her privacy and her dignity, just like the Chinese had. Feeling dirty, he closed his fist around the phone and flung it across the room.

If he could only look at her, just for a second, just to see if she was getting any better. It wouldn't be hard to arrange. He'd broken into consulates, terror cells, diplomatic flights; sneaking into Heller's beach house would be child's play. But it would be too cruel, coming back to Audrey only to leave her again.

Maybe he didn't have to leave.

No sooner had he had the thought than Heller's words prickled his ears once again.

You can't walk away from it. You know that. You've tried it.

He felt the sting of Audrey's hand on his cheek (you son of a bitch, Jack, you son of a bitch!) and he couldn't move, couldn't defend himself, didn't even want to (you killed him! He saved your life!) The scar from that slap was deeper than any of the marks on his back, chest, or his gnarled left hand. He'd tried so hard to leave CTU in the past, had moved across the country, taken a new job, and yet (how could you do this? You killed him!) as soon as the old demons and ghosts had reared their ugly heads, he'd looked back, and his future with Audrey had been reduced to a pillar of salt. I hate you, Jack! Audrey wailed, and all he could think was me too.

It chilled his spine how close he'd come to doing that to her again. He'd had her father in the sights of his Beretta, and his trigger finger had itched like a mosquito bite over sunburnt skin. If he'd gone through with it…

No, he couldn't break in to see her.

And so it went. Every day he would think about calling her, visiting her, writing her a letter at the very least. And every time, Heller's voice, and his own harrowing memories, got in the way. Finally, he decided to leave the country for good. It was the only way to make sure he didn't cave in one day and break down Audrey's door, scooping her up and never letting her go.

He chose Switzerland as his destination, because something about breathing cool mountain air released the tension in his back and shoulders just a tad. In a cruel twist of fate, he ended up with a layover at Dulles, just outside of DC. He couldn't stop himself from checking the departure board for return flights to LAX. As it turned out, there were two: Delta 411 and United 624.

This time, Heller's voice was so real that he looked reflexively over his shoulder to make sure the old man wasn't standing there.

Sooner or later you'll get back in the game, and my daughter is going to pay the price.

He was kneeling next to Audrey, who was rocking back and forth, filthy and scared. She looked straight through him with eyes devoid of everything that made her Audrey, while she begged him to come to her aid. All because she'd gotten on that plane to China. All because of him.

Like your wife did.

He was in the server room at CTU, and his world was spinning. Sobbing useless apologies, he cradled Teri in his arms, feeling her go cold, wishing he could do something, anything, to bring her back. It should have been him…

You won't be able to take care of her the way you want to.

He saw Kim, looking strikingly grown up with her hair longer than he'd ever seen it, wearing a black blazer that covered the new scar on her wrist. You know, there's something wrong with people like you. You can't hold on to anything. And then, in the situation room, with that creep of a psychiatrist looking on in encouragement: there's nothing left to say except I don't want to be around you. Every time I am, something horrible happens. People die.

Then Heller again: Jack, I beg you to stop for a moment and think.

Ever since leaving Audrey behind, he'd been doing nothing but think. He had no family, no job, no home; nothing to distract him from thinking and thinking and thinking some more.

Think, Jack.

He had to bite his tongue to keep himself from breaking down in tears, right there in the waiting area at Dulles International Airport. I don't want to think, something inside him screamed. Why can't I stop thinking and just be happy?

He answered his own question: because, to do that, I need Audrey. And as he watched United 624 take off through the airport window, he doubted he'd ever be happy again.

Audrey never found out that it was her father who had driven Jack away. She didn't know what James Heller had said to him, or the damage his words had done. But she always felt there was more to the story of Jack's departure than what she had been told. Somehow, in her gut, she knew that he missed her as much as she missed him.

5.

It was complicated, but I killed those people. I'm sorry.

When he said those words to her that fateful day in London, it was the first time he'd ever apologized for the New York fiasco. Even in his final message to Kim — Kim, whom he'd already abandoned so many times and to whose daughter he was doing the same thing — he'd made it a point not to apologize. He knew the words would have rung hollow, because he didn't regret what he'd done, not really. He regretted that his granddaughter wouldn't remember him and that he wouldn't watch her grow up, that he would never again hear his daughter's voice or hold her in his arms, and, most of all, that both of them were now on a list somewhere in Moscow; but he certainly didn't regret living in a world with no Dana Walsh, no Pavel Tokarev, and no Mikhail Novakovich. Nor did he regret that he was the one who'd made it that way.

One look at Audrey changed all that.

When the twin wooden doors swung open to reveal her, after the first wave of shock had passed, he took in everything about her in one dizzying instant: the slight wrinkles creasing her mouth and forehead (frown lines, he realized with a pang of guilt) that somehow made her even more beautiful than he'd ever seen her; the delicately applied makeup that didn't quite manage to fully hide the bags under her eyes; the way her face looked thinner than he remembered it; the necklace that had belonged to her late mother and the white blouse that he didn't recognize but could tell, somehow, that she had picked out for herself.

But most of all, he found himself drawn to her eyes. There, if he looked past the heavy tint of melancholy and the thin film of tears, he saw a look that was so familiar it made his chest ache, like an invisible hand had grabbed hold of all his muscles and was tugging them toward Audrey — toward home. It was the look he'd seen her give him, oh so discreetly, in meetings at work and, not so discreetly, over dinner at her favorite little Italian place in Georgetown; the look he'd tried so hard to hold on to as he fought the thick haze of chloroform that bore down on his limbs and brain; the look he'd yearned for on long, cold nights listening for footsteps in his filthy little box of a Chinese prison cell. The look he thought he'd lost forever when Paul Raines' heart went still.

Only Audrey could look at him that way. The last time anyone else had come close was when he'd met Renee's eyes as he was getting out of bed, before the deafening bang had shattered his bedroom window, and then, seconds later, his heart. Since then, he'd given up on anyone looking at him like that ever again. In fact, he hadn't wanted them to. For the past four years, the agent in him had taken over, allowed out of his cage and given truly free rein for the first time in his life. No sooner had the agent gotten his freedom than he'd assembled all the things that made his job more difficult — all the hopes and wishes, the emotions, the memories — and crumpled them into a tiny ball that he hid away from the world. He'd buried the ball down so deep, behind so many walls and padlocks and layers of armor, that even he wasn't sure it existed anymore. He hurt so much less that way.

But Audrey saw right through him. With one look, she'd knocked down the walls, opened the padlocks, melted the armor. She saw something in him that no one else could: in a word, she saw humanity.

Suddenly, he really was sorry. Sorry he'd turned into the very man whom, all those years ago in DC, he'd promised himself Audrey would never meet. Sorry he hadn't seen the way back, when it seemed so obvious now; just by looking at him, Audrey had laid it out, her eyes guiding him like street lamps in the dark.

Being human hurt.

It throbbed, it stung, it wrenched and bit and chafed. Four years of repressed emotion poured into his blood like water from a broken dam; splinters of wood lodged themselves in his flesh, between his bones. He couldn't have the familiar cold numbness back, wasn't sure he even wanted to, now that Audrey was looking at him like that. But he had to do something to release the pain that was suffocating him. What could he do? Cry? Scream? Tangle his fingers in Audrey's golden hair and press his lips against hers? He wanted to do all three, but it was too late. He couldn't pull Audrey back into the past, not now that she finally had a future.

So he did the only thing he could do, if he was to have any chance at building his walls back up.

Audrey, you need to go. You need to go now. NOW.

The last words he'd ever said while looking into her gorgeous eyes. To Renee, his last words had been you'll be all right; we're almost there. To Teri, he'd said don't worry, okay? I'll call you as soon as I can; and then, over a crackly cell connection (even if a phone call wasn't quite the same as seeing her face), he'd gotten the chance to say goodbye. With both of them, he'd ended on a comforting note, reassuring them, even if his reassurances had turned out to be lies. But with Audrey, he'd spent the closing lines of their chapter pushing her away.

He didn't let himself cry for long. He had work to do.

This is for Audrey, you son of a bitch, he snarled as he separated Cheng Zhi's head from his shoulders in one smooth thwack.

He wasn't sorry.