A/N Sorry it took so long to get this chapter out. I want to give a big thank you to anyone still reading, and an even bigger thank you to Jaudreylover24, helenawrites, and Namarie for your reviews of the previous chapter!

This is the last chapter of this story for now. But if anyone has another character they'd like to see another chapter on, please leave a review and I will do my best to publish one! Thanks again to everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoy this chapter about Renee.

1.

During the week he spent in a coma as he recovered from the prion variant, he dreamed.

When the atmosphere in the hospital was tense or chaotic, he dreamed of war: of explosions, of rifle fire, of the blood of his brothers staining sand and snow, and of the wide eyes of the young Iraqi he'd killed on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The first in a long, long trail of corpses and blood.

When he was comfortable (sheet wrapped tightly around his waist, fresh air wafting in through an open window), he dreamed of home. It wasn't so much a place as a feeling: a sense of warmth and safety, refracted through a lens of deep nostalgia. He wondered if he would ever again have a place like that to go back to.

When the nerve pain got so bad that, even unconscious, he could feel it pulsing underneath his skin, he dreamed of China: the rattle of rusty chains, the dissonance of wails cutting through musty darkness, the itch of insects crawling over open wounds. He could almost feel the all-too-familiar agony of cold and hunger contracting his withered, bruised muscles and grating together the ends of his broken bones.

When, even comatose, his body twitched and trembled as the prion stood its final ground, he dreamed of Sangala. The village of the locals' hushed rumors, the sense of danger lurking under a peaceful facade. He wondered how Willie and the other boys were doing in their new homes. If Desmond had healed enough to play soccer again.

When the nurses increased his dosage of drugs, his dreams turned hauntingly bizarre: flying saucers, walking headless corpses, disfigured hags and hideous demons that cackled hauntingly as they sank their claws beneath his ribs.

Most of the time, though, he dreamed of the dead. Sometimes they cursed him, blamed him, but other times they comforted him, offered him peace and forgiveness. Gave him permission to keep fighting.

Then, one day, he woke up.

One minute, he was dreaming; the next, his heart was pounding against his sternum as the blinding whiteness of the hospital room flashed his eyes and the chemical smell of antiseptic assaulted his nose. By the time Chloe and Kim had calmed him down enough to keep him from ripping the IV needle out of his arm, all the dreams that had minutes ago been so vivid had faded to a hazy blur.

All the dreams, that was, except one: the one he remembered so clearly that he wasn't sure if it was a dream or a memory. In it, a red-haired woman sat at the edge of his bed, playing nervously with the folds of his blanket.

He remembered every freckle on the woman's face, the way the air in the room moved with every breath she had taken, the sound of every creak of the hospital bed as she fidgeted, seeming to struggle for the right words to say. He remembered every crinkle in the black blouse she was wearing, every errant strand in her messy ponytail, and every line on her tired face as she frowned, partly in concentration and partly in self-doubt.

He remembered that, though she'd cleared her throat twice and opened her mouth six times as if she were going to speak, she'd ultimately decided to say nothing. Instead, she'd smoothed his blanket where she'd wrinkled it, tucked his bedsheet tighter around his body, then turned on her heel and left. She'd turned around once, hesitated for a few moments… and then the receding echo of her boot heels on the sterile linoleum was the last thing he remembered.

What he didn't remember — not yet, at least — was who this woman was, or why she was so important. But he knew that, somehow, he missed her; and it hurt him more than anything to think that she might never come back.

2.

He read Marika's obituary in the newspaper.

Every sentence hit him like a sucker punch in the kidneys. By the final line, he felt sick to his stomach, there was a grapefruit-sized lump in his throat, and something was squeezing his chest until his breastbone scraped his spine.

He'd been angry when Renee yelled at him in the hospital, when she slapped his cheeks and prodded the still-festering wound of Teri's death in order to test the limits of his pain. But the more he'd thought about it, while he sat on the steps behind the Capitol and watched the sun set over the towering stone monuments of the nation's capital, the more he'd realized it wasn't Renee he was mad at. He was mad at the world. He was furious at the evil people who forced law enforcement agents — many of them goodhearted people like Renee, who just wanted to prevent others from getting hurt — to perform heinous acts of violence and exploitation. And he was enraged at himself, for having become such a cold, heartless son of a bitch. Could he really blame Renee for not wanting to end up like him?

He hadn't always been as aloof as he had that day. There was a time when he, too, might have shed a tear or two when Marika's heart stopped beating. But over time, every new trauma and heartbreak he'd endured had jaded him, increased his threshold for pain until new wounds to his heart barely even registered — because what was one more gash, stab, or laceration among the hundreds that tormented him every day?

It had all come to a head when he was subpoenaed to appear before Senator Mayer's subcommittee.

Mayer had always been a zealot. Jack remembered him as a once relatively unknown congressman who had risen to prominence as one of the biggest opponents of David Palmer's treatment of Ron Wieland. He had then made a name for himself as a fervent isolationist and critic of the United States military and law enforcement agencies. He had risen meteorically to the very top of the senate, where he had rallied the opposition to Wayne Palmer's detention of Muslim Americans, called for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and gone after BXJ relentlessly after the nuclear detonation in Valencia. He had become known for his uncompromising moral standards and his penchant for extracting concessions out of even the toughest political opponents.

The moment he read Mayer's name on the subpoena, Jack had an idea of what to expect. Clearly, the senator wanted to make an example of Jack: to catch him in some verbal trap so that he looked like a fool, dress him down in front of the entire country, then throw him behind bars and proclaim himself the savior of human dignity. Jack knew that when he walked into the lion's den to spar with the man, he wasn't just representing himself; he was standing in for Richard and George and Ryan and Gael and Lynn and Edgar and Tony and Michelle and, through a carefully woven thick veil of plausible deniability, President Palmer; and all those others who had lost their lives because they believed in the fundamental necessity of a place like CTU.

Jack also knew the hearing wouldn't be like any other battle he'd ever fought. But he prepared for it just like he had for every other. These days, war and hardship were all he knew.

He analyzed his opponent. He watched videos of Mayer's speeches, scrutinized his voting record, and skimmed his biography. He researched the other senators on the panel and read transcripts of the subcommittee's past proceedings.

To train himself even better, he sat uneasily through hours of news coverage of the upcoming hearings. He became familiar with every trick in the book. Sometimes they would bring on experts: lawyers who analyzed the legal definition of "war criminal," historians who compared Jack to the likes of Himmler and Beria, psychologists who diagnosed him with all manner of mental illnesses and personality disorders. Other times, they would put Jack under the microscope in a different way, narrating for their millions of viewers every mistake he had ever made. Jack squirmed as the anchors discussed in excruciating detail (and often colored with sensationalisms or outright slanderous lies) experiences so intensely personal that he wouldn't have shared them even with his own family, and he had to turn off the TV when he realized CNB News had begun to use his heroin addiction (how did they find out?) as a tool to humiliate and discredit him. Then there were the news shows that would blast photos of Jack's face superimposed on top of the American flag, proclaiming him the paragon of patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice. Those made him the queasiest of all, and he shut them off as soon as he heard the first few notes of the Star-Spangled Banner.

He came up with a plan of action. He decided early on not to hire an attorney. It was bad enough preparing to re-live some of his most horrible memories under the prying eyes of the nation; the idea of paying another person to watch him do so — and to give him advice on how to get off, as though Jack were unwilling or afraid to face the consequences of his actions — made his flesh crawl. Especially when he'd never once hesitated to pump a terrorist full of hyocine pentathol without any kind of lawyer present. No, if he was doing this, he was doing it his way: honestly, directly, and with none of those sordid tricks a lawyer would use to win cheap sympathy. He didn't want any sympathy. And if that got him clapped in irons, well, then it was no worse than he deserved. At least that was what he tried to tell himself.

He also coached himself on the psychological aspect of the coming battle. Don't let them get away with acting like they have power over you — even though they do. Don't let them see that you're quaking in your perfectly shined dress shoes at the thought of going back to prison. Don't let them know that the questions they ask you are the same ones that have kept you up at night for decades, while they lay safe and sound in their fancy beds in their mansions that they financed with insider-traded stock earnings. Don't let them break you.

Then, just like he'd trained himself to compartmentalize in the field, or to divide his mind in China, he'd taken each and every doubt and insecurity about the morality of his actions, and he'd locked them all up somewhere in the deepest, darkest dungeons of his mind. He had to. The American people deserved a debate where both sides presented their point confidently, effectively, and articulately, and then left it up to the public to decide who had won. He knew Mayer would hold up his end of the bargain, and Jack could afford to do no worse.

When Renee pulled him out of the hearing and brought him to the Hoover Building, he was still in that frame of mind. It didn't help that the first person he met upon his arrival was Larry Moss, who condescendingly told him that he'd be surprised if Jack was of any help with the investigation. Jack kept his demeanor firm and resolute, but really he felt numb and empty. After all the grief these people had given him for his methods of catching terrorists, they'd fished him out of the meat grinder and hauled him here to… what? Teach them how to catch more terrorists? And when he was done, no doubt, they'd toss him right back into the wringer without so much as a thank you. The hypocrisy might have made him chuckle if he'd had an ounce of emotional energy to spare. As it was, it all felt so surreal that he barely had it in him to be annoyed.

What the hell did he have left to give them, anyway? What part of him hadn't been broken during months of abandonment in China, lost while he wandered aimlessly around the globe searching for a reason to live, or worn away by the relentless hounding of the mainstream media? God, he just wanted to do what he had to do here and then go lie down, close his eyes and rest his heart and mind for about a week. He had no patience left for anyone who stood in his way.

It wasn't until he walked away from Renee's tearful tirade in the hospital that he began to worry about the bland nothingness in his heart. That he thought about whether, maybe, he'd locked up his troubles and fears and emotions for good. That he wondered if he was trapped forever in this languid and anesthetized world, where the colors were faded and dull, the people were pale shadows, and the experiences were distant and artificial, as though he were watching them happen to some character in a movie he was barely paying attention to. That he looked in the mirror and saw the hard-hearted sociopath in the media reports — the one he'd been trying all this time to prove didn't exist. Those thoughts upset him, each one more so than the last, and oddly enough, that was a good thing. It was the first time in weeks he'd felt something new — an emotion that wasn't rooted in the wounds of his past.

So when Marika's obituary weighed on his heart and stirred up an ache in his chest, he was relieved, in a twisted way, that he could still feel the pain. It wasn't as strong as it might have been ten years ago, but it was there, digging and pinching and reminding him that he was still alive.

When he called Renee to thank her, she didn't pick up. But he wasn't mad at her. He was only mad at the world.

3.

When he called CTU and had them send someone to take her to his apartment, he also instructed them to comb the place beforehand and remove any sharp object they could find.

He'd hoped she wouldn't notice. He had a bag packed near the door, for the flight to LA he hadn't quite managed to board. It would be easy to assume that all his knives, his scissors, and his razor blades were stuffed somewhere inside the bag, ready to accompany him on the next chapter of his journey.

He felt guilty about it — about handling Renee with kid gloves, when he was sure that was the last thing she would want, and about going behind her back like he had. But he he'd have felt much guiltier if he'd walked in to find her bleeding out on his carpet.

He knew all too well, when one's soul was suffering, how strong the temptation of relief could be. It had had him by the balls too many times to count. More than once, it had come close enough to crushing his willpower in its iron fist that he still wasn't sure how in the hell he'd managed to wriggle free. Even when he'd still had a teenage daughter sleeping in the next room, he'd been mere inches from giving in.

After seeing the scar on Renee's wrist, after hearing her daring — or was it begging? — Vladimir to kill her, he knew that she, too, felt that temptation. Maybe she felt it even more strongly than he had. He could practically see the emptiness inside her, the same kind of unfeeling void for which, not two years ago, she'd taken him to the woodshed.

He wanted to do for her what she'd done for him — to break through that void, to help her feel again. Not by yelling at her, though that had worked like a charm when he'd been the one hiding his heart under a shatterproof shell; he was sure nothing could be further from what she needed than another man raising his voice at her, no matter what his intentions were. No, what he planned to do was to take her by the hand and show her, kindly, gently, lovingly, what she was missing.

And if she was angry at him for treating her like she was made of glass, then he could live with that. At least it would give her something to feel.

4.

On that morning he brought her to his apartment, he was planning on closing the blinds.

He still remembered what he'd seen in her eyes on the day they met, when she'd walked in on him changing his shirt and caught a glimpse of the mangled flesh on his chest. Horror, shock, sympathy; maybe even newfound understanding of why he behaved the way he did. He'd stammered "sorry," and until he pulled a shirt on he hadn't quite been able to meet her eye.

Pain — both past and present — was nothing he couldn't handle. He knew how to respond to it; he had training, experience. What was harder was watching others react to his pain, or to the marks it had left on him. Here he never quite knew what to do. Should he comfort them? Tell them that it didn't hurt anymore, or that it hadn't been as bad as it looked? Pretend he hadn't seen their reaction? Most of the time he couldn't decide, and he just stood there, discomfitingly tongue-tied, flooded with a bizarre sense of guilt and shame — as though if he were stronger, he could have somehow protected everyone around him from his own vulnerability. He usually tried to avoid the situation altogether by hiding his injuries. He'd always hated being pitied, anyway.

That was what made the cover of darkness so appealing. It wouldn't make the scars disappear completely — Renee would still feel some keloid ridges on his back and some rough contractures on his chest — but touching them wasn't as upsetting as seeing them, and besides, the reaction on her face would be hidden too. That would take care of most of the awkwardness.

On top of that, there were a few other things he'd rather not show: the grade three bruising on his chest, the electrical burns, the mountain of gauze on his upper arm. Even more so, the bloodstained dressing on the puncture wound in his stomach. It would only make Renee feel guilty, and that was the last thing either of them needed right now.

But just as he was about to move to the window, he realized that no matter how enticing darkness was, it wasn't an option. After all, Renee had scars, too. And as hypocritical as it was, he never wanted her to feel ashamed of them. What kind of message would he be sending if the first thing he did before undressing her was to plunge the room into darkness?

So he didn't close the blinds. It was easy, really. Her body was warm and comfortable against his, and the bone-deep ache of exhaustion had long since set in, and all he wanted to do was lie down and hold her and… well, maybe a little more than that.

And for a while, he did. Then he got up for a glass of water.

And

his world

shattered.

As his bare feet thudded down three flights of polished emergency stairs, the first thought to cut through the thick haze of shock and denial was if I had just closed the goddamn blinds…

He'd just wanted her to feel comfortable. That was all. He hadn't wanted this. He hadn't prepared for this, hadn't foreseen this, hadn't…

How the hellwas I supposed to know?

He choked back tears, arranged his features into what he hoped was an expression of reassurance, even though it hurt every muscle in his body and he just wanted to hold her in his arms and weep. "You'll be all right."

But he'd been lying. And as he walked into the austere white hospital room where her still body lay, as pale as the sheet he'd wrapped her in, the dam broke. The tears welled up, hot and salty, in his eyes. Another beautiful soul — another person he'd let himself get close to — ripped from the world in an act of senseless violence.

His lips brushed her forehead and he began to cry — reallycry, the kind of ugly sobs that hurt his chest and made his eyes puff up because the grief was swelling behind them and, after all, it had to go somewhere. Just minutes ago Renee had been safe and sound in his bed, and now she was gone, forever and for always gone.

If I'd only closed the goddamn blinds.

5.

There were so many things she didn't know about him, because she never got the chance to find out.

She didn't know that he loved to play chess, especially with Kim. That for years his favorite opening had been the Scandinavian Defense, because his dad had taught him never to move his queen early, and in the Scandinavian he could bring her out on move two. But then one day he'd blundered his queen, leaving her to bleed out from a stomach wound in the server room at CTU. Since then, he'd switched to the Caro-Kann.

She didn't know that he wore glasses when he read (and, yes, he read; he read newspapers, he browsed rifle catalogs, and those books on the shelves of his apartment weren't just there for decoration, either). He was too proud to wear the glasses unless he was alone — accepting help, even from an inanimate object, had never been his strong suit — but he had to admit they helped with the headaches that had beleaguered him for far too many years.

She didn't know that, when he woke up from one of his nightmares, the two things that helped him more than anything were a fresh sea breeze ruffling his hair and a pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen. Sometimes, the smell of the coffee alone was enough to calm him down; other times he guzzled a mugful, did five sets of push-ups, and prayed he wouldn't fall asleep again for the rest of the day. Often, he was too exhausted to get his wish. It was better, though, when he had someone to share his bed; then, when he awoke, he felt safer, more grounded. He had wanted so badly for Renee to be that someone for him, and to return the favor for her.

There had been so much he wanted to share with her. Sunrises and sunsets, dinners and movies, days on the beach with a bottle of wine. Birthdays and holidays, anniversaries, long weekends, and just regular mornings spent sleeping in and enjoying each other's warmth between the soft sheets of the bed. Triumphs and defeats, joy and sorrow, memories old and new. Kinship. Intimacy. Trust.

Secrets.

He would have told her things he hadn't told another living soul. He'd been prepared to tell her about all the times in his life he'd come within inches of ending it all. He'd been willing to get off his chest the story of the day he'd given up poor Hong (even though he hadn't spoken a word) and admit that he couldn't forgive himself for it, no matter how much duress he'd been under. Given time, he'd even have told her about the time he'd had to kiss Nina in Mexico, and unraveled the tangled, knotted web of emotions that had plagued him all throughout that day. But he hadn't been given time; theyhadn't been given time. And so he'd never told her.

He'd also never told her that he was falling head over heels in love with her. But on the rare days when he let himself hope, he liked to think that she had known. After all, no matter how many little things she didn't know — she knew him. He just wished he could have gotten to know her, too.