Post-S3: Rehab, Day 6

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Audrey leant back into her chair. Only half-heartedly she listened to the speaker out there. It didn't matter anyway. It was one of those everlasting meetings that she had to attend because someone had the bad habit to put to many people in CC.
While they were vividly discussing budget shifts, her mind had drifted off long ago. It was Thursday. She hadn't heard anything from Jack in the past six days. Last Friday, she had dropped him off at rehab.

Across the table sat Michael Landow and Janice Bukovsky. They had both been in Los Angeles as well, a week ago. Friday evening, they had gone to see the Dodgers game, along with the rest of their delegation.
She had been surprised that they hadn't asked her any further questions on why she hadn't spent the evening them. She had been ready to tell them a long story full of lies, of having visited a cousin of a cousin in Venice. Nice evening, really. Haven't seen her in years. Her name? Sherry. Two children. They must never know that she had gone to Pacoima, to visit a dopehead who she called…. well, what actually did she call Jack? A friend? An ex-lover? A one-night stand? She shuddered on any one of these terms. He was someone she felt responsible for, because she felt partly responsible for his misery.
Thank god they hadn't asked.

After Jack had gone through that door, she hadn't stayed much longer at that rehab facility. The overly friendly lady at the counter gave her some forms to fill out, but she had no idea what to write. Name: Jack Bauer. Date of birth? No idea. Address? Should she really write the address of that hellhole in Pacoima onto that sheet of paper? No. Weight? Too little. Height? Could be anything between 5-5 or 5-8. Occupation? None.
In the end, she left everything but his name blank and shoved her black Visa onto the counter. The lady didn't ask any other questions. Maybe the lady thought she was checking someone in under a fake name, giving her no details about him because they wanted anonymity. After all, this was L.A., the one place in the world crowded with B and C list celebrities who'd sooner or later all end up in such establishments, if they didn't watch out.

It frightened her how little she knew about him. She didn't remember his birthday from back when she'd read his file, but she remembered the number of confirmed kills. 167. She didn't know where he had been born but she remembered the last infantry regiment that he had been assigned to, his last tour of duty.
What a strange accumulation of facts.

Ever since he had come back into her life, three weeks ago, she had experienced some of the strangest moments of her whole life so far. Her first one-night stand. The first time to talk to a guy who had killed over a hundred people. Hearing someone talk about flying an armed nuclear bomb away from the city to save a place that was home to a hellhole like Pacoima. She'd seen him shoot up with heroin, lying in her arms.
After leaving the rehab facility last Friday, she stopped the car somewhere in the mountainous roads leading though Griffith park, after she realized that she still had his gun in her handbag. She could not take it back to the hotel. She could neither hide it, take it with her nor take it back to Washington DC, on the plane. Was it even a legit gun? As far as she remembered gun-laws, drug users were banned from purchasing guns. It had to be an illegal gun that she was holding in her hands.

Of all the strange things she'd experienced in the past three weeks, that one made the top three. She got out of the car, making sure that nobody saw her, wiped her own fingerprints off the gun and buried it in the sand, a few yards away from the road.

Her pulse started racing, even now, when she thought back. Illegal guns. Fingerprints. Drugs. Pacoima. Jack. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

Saturday evening, the wheels of the Boeing 767 had touched down at Ronal Regan Washington National airport. She should be glad that to have put 3000 miles between her and all the problems he came with. She and her two best friends had tickets for a play that night. Though the actors were brilliant, she sat there, not able to get the previous 24 hours out of her mind.
Damn it, she was back in Washington. She had a beautiful life. That hadn't changed, no matter what she'd seen the day before.

Get your act together, Audrey, she told herself and straightened up. Focus on the presentation. At least the few slides with the budget overview are important.

Forget Jack.
At least for a few hours.
She had to admit that she was somehow addicted, too. Her thoughts always found back to him.

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Jack knew what torture felt like. There were scars on his chest that would always remind him of it.
He knew how it felt like, to catch a bullet. There were numerous spots on his body that told stories about his past missions. Over the years, he had stopped to count the bullets that he had caught, the through-and-through wounds or the graze shots. A few were hidden beneath tattoos, but not all of them.

They had all hurt for a while. Compared to a withdrawal, they were as insignificant as a common cold. Even Kingsley's torture, a few years ago, it had been painful, but only for an hour.

The pain, the convulsions, the cramps and the craving that he'd felt ever since last Friday was worse than all the gunshot wounds combined. It never ended, no matter what he did to make it better: get up, walk, lie down, crouch in the corner of the bathroom, take a cold shower, beat himself, sit on the toilet or just scream. He had tried everything. The pain just wouldn't stop.

Of course there was one thing that would have stopped the pain: a shot.

No minute had gone by without thinking about the drug. He'd made up plans on how to get away from here, somehow they all hadn't worked, he hadn't even gotten past the door to this room. The plan to hit another patient up for some heroin didn't work either – the first four days he had met no-one, except for the personnel.
Once the withdrawal symptoms hat set in, he was barely able to get to his feet, anyway.

Being alive was a nuisance.

This place was hell.

On day 3, the psychologist showed up for the first time.

"It's not enough to get the drugs out of your system", she said. "If you want to stay clean, you need to find the root cause of your addiction and fight it."

He sat in the corner of the room now, having hugged himself as if it helped against the cramps that were still there, even though they had gotten a lot better.

"There is no root cause for my addition", he had told her, "I got hooked on drugs because an undercover mission required it. The rest is classified." He brusquely said to her that he wasn't allowed to talk about the details.
Such an easy way out. He really wasn't allowed. It was a blessing. This had always been a blessing, his whole life long, that whenever someone had asked him to share his memories, he could lock them behind the doors of confidentiality. Even Teri stopped asking him about his injuries, after he just told her they were classified, again and again. At first she had been worried. Then she accepted it. A while later, it changed into contempt. He still remembered how she looked at the bandages around his arm, one night, after he'd come home again, after having caught two bullets. He had come home, entirely glad that he'd gotten through that day, ready to leave the memories it behind. She had watched the bandages around his arm, like they were an intruder to their marriage. They stood for every classified, that she'd ever heard out of his mouth.
A few years later, he even refrained from showing her his wounds at all. Their intimacy had gotten lost somewhere along the road anyway. It was easy to hide the bandages beneath a sweater. The few times they still slept with each other, the lights were either off or she probably looked past the fact that the scars on his body got more and more, appearing without a reason.

The psychologist had returned every day, though he already said to her he wouldn't tell her anything about his drug habit.

She seemed to accept that.

On day 4 she started with her usual psychology crap, thought Jack. "How does your mother feel about your drug habit? Does she know about it?"

"She's been dead for more than thirty years.", he told her. So far, that was the easy part. As sure as night follows day, he knew already what her next question would be: "And your father?"

He hadn't answered anything, excusing himself to the bathroom because of the withdrawal symptoms. Eventually she left.

But her question lingered in his mind. Now, two days later, he was still musing about it. It was a bug that he couldn't get rid of. He wished he'd have never heard her say these words. His father. He hadn't thought about him years. It had taken him years to get to that blissful state of forgetting his father. What would the mighty Philip Bauer say if he ever found out that he, Jack, was here, in a rehab facility, thinking day and night nothing else but how to get a shot somewhere.
He'd laugh at him.
He'd once more tell him that if he had chosen to stay with the family, he wouldn't have ended up here.
He'd look down at him with that condescending view that had burnt itself into Jack's memory, from a young age.
He'd tell him that his misery was his own fault, for once he'd even be right. He never expected his son to be so weak as to fall for heroin. His son should have had the strength to be there for the company, the family and wouldn't have left to take a menial job at the army. He owed him and had disappointed him.

Jack could picture him in every detail. That narcissistic voice that expressed disappointment over every other's weakness. His face. His arms, hands, the black belt he always wore.

My boys don't cry, he always used to say, they're strong enough.

He sat there and looked out of the large windows of his room. The windows couldn't be opened, but neither darkened. There were no blinds, no curtains. Mercilessly, the sun shone into the room, half the day.
And during the whole day, he was forced to see the city of L.A. on the horizon, its lights throughout the sleepless nights. Over there, his father lived. He hadn't seen him in years, ever since Teri's funeral.

His father couldn't have found out about his drug problem. Not yet.
He'd do anything, literally anything, to keep it this way.

Jack sat there and wondered, why after all these years, it hurt so much to think back. Why did he still care if his father knew? He should not give a flying fuck. It wouldn't change a thing if he knew. What was he still trying to prove?

He turned away from the window and forced his thoughts away from his family, back to where to get another shot. Every second of craving for heroin was better than to remember his father, his home… that wasn't a home. It was a house that he had lived in, not a home.

His place with Teri, that was a home.
Thinking back to how he lost his home just made him cry.

He was glad that he was alone, when the tears came. My boys don't cry. They're strong enough.
Jack was glad his father would never know how many times he had actually cried. From an early age on, he had gotten really good in hiding it, controlling himself and retreating to a lonely place before he'd let the emotions get the better of him, if they hadn't faded away until then, anyway.

He forced himself to think of the vial, hidden back in Pacoima. It would wait for him, no matter how long he stayed here.
The craving set in immediately. It was almost as painful as the cramps.
But still better than to think about the home he'd once had with Teri. He hadn't just lost it. He had forfeited it, actively participated in destroying it.

Yesterday, the damn psychologist had come back again. "What makes you do a job that has the potential to destroy you like it did?", she asked. She didn't expect an answer because she knew fine well that her job was not to interrogate him, but to get him thinking.

"I have my reasons.", he had answered.

Of course he had enough reasons why he was doing his job. Jack looked out of the window again. Over there, in L.A., was also the CTU building. The world needed people like him. Somebody had to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. There are enough people out there who'd run away upon the first sign of pain, threat or fear. He had sworn himself not to be one of them. He'd face it. He took it because was strong enough to face it.

Then he painfully remembered that he was unemployed. The world didn't need him. CTU chose to get rid of him because we had turned himself into a liability, not an asset.

I knew from the beginning that you wouldn't be strong enough for this, he heard his father say. He even saw him, as if he were standing here, in this room. This was one of the familiar sentences. Was he referring to the company? Or to CTU? To his broken family? It didn't matter.

No matter how many battles he had won, how many enemies he had faced, killed or people saved, a voice in the back of his head kept telling him that whatever he had done, it hadn't been enough to succeed.

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Audrey just couldn't fight her curiosity. She wasn't supposed to call him during the first two weeks, the woman from the rehab center had told her.
But was Jack even still there? She couldn't wait until seeing her credit card bill, six weeks from now, to get an answer on this question.

As soon as the meeting was over, she retreated into her office to make a phone call.