1975

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Jack lay in his room, staring up at the ceiling, counting the fiberboard tiles that covered it for the hundredth time. Fifty-six. Five of them had tiny holes to let out the conditioned air. He had tried a few times to count the holes, but there were too many. Every time his thoughts drifted, he found himself starting over, as if the repetitive task could somehow keep his mind from spiraling. It was a silly, stupid occupation, but it was something for his brain to latch onto in the quiet of the room, when the cravings came back.

Now he wasn't counting, just staring blankly at the ceiling. The tiles blurred together as his focus drifted. He was so drowned in Audrey's voice that, if he tried, he probably wouldn't even be able to count to ten. Her words had a way of pulling him out of his head, offering a strange comfort.

He'd been clean for two weeks now, the cravings still there and from what they had told him, they'd stay for a long time, maybe years. Rehab was worse than torture. It never stopped. The struggle wasn't just about staying off the drugs it had led him to facing things he'd spent years avoiding.

At least the phone calls with Audrey had become a part of his routine, a relief, something he could look forward to.

Tonight, Audrey had told him more about Paul, about seeing him again on Saturday, in just three days. Jack listened, trying to focus on her words, but his mind kept drifting off to Kim. He'd shared with Audrey that he and Kim had finally had a real talk, one that didn't end in arguing, her blaming him for whatever, or complete avoidance. Tomorrow, Kim was going to visit him here, in rehab, and while Jack knew it was a step in the right direction, he dreaded the moment. He knew Kim needed to see him really getting clean, not just hear it. Promises wouldn't be enough. Tomorrow was his chance to show her he was serious, but the weight of that responsibility gnawed at him. Since she was out there, he had an obligation to stay clean, not only become clean for a while. That meant fighting the cravings forever.

Audrey, meanwhile, was lying in bed in her D.C. apartment, curled up under her blanket as she spoke. It was past her usual bedtime, but she didn't care. Talking to Jack had become something they both relied on. For her, it was a chance to escape the loneliness of her evenings. She loved hearing his voice, even if they were miles apart. It made her feel less alone, and she suspected it did the same for him.

Earlier that day, Audrey had spent time at the office reading up on PTSD. She wanted to understand what Jack was going through. She'd spent hours on the Department of Veterans Affairs website, trying to wrap her head around the symptoms and treatments. When she'd mentioned it to Cassandra, a psychiatrist friend of hers at the DOD, Cassandra had practically laughed. Helping someone with PTSD wasn't something Audrey could just do on her own, she'd said. That was a job for professionals. The dismissal had stung, but it had also made Audrey more determined. Sure, she wasn't a psychologist, but that didn't mean she couldn't help. The VA homepage had suggested talk therapy, encouraging people to focus on the positive aspects of their lives. Audrey wasn't sure how to implement that, but she was willing to try. Jack didn't need a psychiatrist to pick apart his memories, he probably just needed someone who cared enough to know when to go easy. He wasn't someone who opened up easily, and if she pushed too hard, he'd shut down. He'd joked before about adding her to the list of people he didn't want to talk to anymore if she pried too much. And while it had been a joke, there was truth behind it. She didn't want to be just another person asking too much of him.

"You still owe me one, Bauer," Audrey said, breaking the brief silence that had fallen between them.

Jack frowned slightly, his mind trying to catch up. "What do I owe you?" he asked, the confusion clear in his voice. He knew he owed Audrey in more ways than one, but he wasn't sure what she was referring to right now. She had saved his life twice already - both times not with a gun, but that didn't make it worth any less.

"Earlier, when you made me talk about the worst part of my day," she reminded him, her tone light but expectant, "do you remember?"

Jack remembered now, feeling a small sense of relief. "I fear I do," he said, though there was still a hesitation in his voice. He wasn't one to dwell on the worst parts of his day. Most of them were too dark, too tangled up in memories he'd rather not touch.

"You owe me an honest answer to a question," she clarified, her voice soft but firm. She wasn't going to let him off the hook easily.

Jack's stomach tightened. There were so many questions he didn't want to answer, things he didn't want to talk about. Over the years, people had tried to pry into his life, wanting to know about his time in the military, at CTU, all the operations he'd been part of. They were curious about the stories he carried. But Jack wasn't interested in rehashing the past and confidentiality had always been a blessing. "What do you wanna know?" he asked, already bracing himself for something difficult, putting together the words how to say 'no'. Based on what grounds? She had a security clearance so high above his, he'd not be able to pull the usual confidentiality card.

Audrey paused, careful not to push him too hard. She knew how fragile these conversations could be. "I'll give you an easy one," she said, her voice warm, almost playful. She could sense his wariness and didn't want to scare him off.

Jack felt the tension in his body ease just a little. He could hear the smile in her voice, and it made him relax, even if only slightly. "Go ahead," he said, feeling more prepared now.

"Think back to when you were young. What is your most beautiful childhood memory?" Audrey asked.

Jack had been prepared for a question that related to his job, maybe something about his undercover work in Mexico or even one of the darker CIA missions. He frowned slightly, his mind trying to catch up. That simple question didn't sound like something worth cashing in the promise that he'd given her earlier. "Why do you want to know?" he asked.

"You owe me an answer, not a question," she replied, her tone light but insistent.

"Sounds like a question a shrink would ask," Jack muttered, distrust lacing his voice. Audrey could hear it clearly—he didn't have much faith in therapists or the kind of soul-searching they demanded. He'd been through too much, and he wasn't interested in being analyzed.

But Audrey wasn't letting him off the hook that easily. "Come on, Jack. You still owe me. What's the one good thing that comes to your mind when you think back?" she asked, nudging him with a gentle persistence.

Jack didn't need to think long. He rarely visited his childhood in his mind, but the best part of it had always been clear to him. "My mother," he said simply, his voice softening as he spoke the words. He had promised her to tell the truth. That was the simple truth.

Audrey smiled to herself, her heart lifting slightly. She could hear it in his tone—this was a good memory for him. "What's her name?" she asked, curious, happy just to hear him open up like this.

"Marianne. Marianne Callahan," Jack replied, his voice filled with a rare warmth. The sound of it was so different from the wary, guarded tone he usually carried. Audrey could feel the love he had for his mother, even after all these years.

"Sounds Irish," Audrey said, smiling softly.

"I guess one of my great-great-grandfathers was from there. They've been in the US a long time," Jack responded, his tone still gentle, but the thought of his distant Irish roots had never really crossed his mind until now. Nobody had ever asked him about Irish roots—most didn't know his mother's maiden name. When people asked about his heritage, it was always a German side they assumed, tied to his last name, Bauer. He remembered one kid at school who had even called him a Nazi once. He hadn't even known what that meant back then, but he instinctively had known it wasn't good.

"So, your parents weren't married?" Audrey asked, intrigued by the difference in last names.

"They were. But you asked me what her name was. That was her maiden name," Jack explained, his voice steady but thoughtful. Why hadn't he said Marianne Bauer? Why had he instinctively told Audrey her maiden name? He couldn't say why. It just felt more like her, somehow. Audrey had asked what her name had been. He took a deep breath, remembering his mother and imagined how her life could have been if she hadn't married his father, Philip Bauer. As much as he owed his existence to that marriage, he couldn't shake the belief that her life might have turned out better if she had gone different ways.

"Does she know where you are right now?" Audrey asked, though she had a feeling she already knew the answer. Jack was too private. If he hadn't even told Kim exactly what was going on, it was unlikely he'd told anyone else.

Jack's voice dropped, and the warmth that had been there vanished. "She died when I was nine." The grief was unmistakable, creeping back into his words, the weight of that loss still heavy after all these years.

Audrey's heart sank. The lightness from before was gone, replaced by the familiar sadness that seemed to follow Jack. She could feel his pain, not just from what he said, but how he said it. It mirrored her own past in a way she hadn't expected, reminding her of her own mother's death when she, too, had been nine years old. The connection felt almost eerie.

"How?" she asked, the question slipping out before she could stop herself. She knew this wasn't what the psychology playbook had suggested—she wasn't supposed to make him dig into something so painful. She was supposed to guide his mind to a good memory. But she couldn't help it. This was personal now, a shared wound between them.

Jack paused before answering, his voice quieter now, weighed down by the memory. "It was a car crash. She died instantly."

Audrey closed her eyes, absorbing the weight of his words. The simplicity of the statement didn't mask the depth of his grief. She could feel it radiating through the phone, and after a while, he just began to talk.

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1975

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She gripped the steering wheel, her hands trembling as she drove aimlessly through the rain-soaked streets of Los Angeles. It was past nine at night, the rain coming down in heavy sheets that blurred her vision. The headlights barely cut through the darkness, and her tears only made it worse. She wiped at her eyes furiously, but the sadness of course stayed, blinding her.

She hadn't meant for it to come to this, but the pressure had built to the point where she couldn't stay in the house any longer. She had grabbed the escape bag she always kept packed in the garage—two thousand dollars and some essentials—then told Jack and Graem to come along, while her husband was in the shower. There had been no time for questions, no time for explanations. Jack, her nine-year-old, had followed without a word, sensing that this wasn't the time to ask "why" or "where." Graem, her six-year-old, had protested, whining about being hungry, tired, and missing his toys. But Marianne had pressed on, fleeing from the house, from her husband, from everything. She could take no more.

Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. Jack sat behind her, fiddling quietly with his toy car, one of the few things he had managed to take along in the rush. She could see his calm, composed face, and she knew he understood more than he let on. He had always been like that—quiet, strong, trying to be brave for her, that's why she had always called him her "brave little one." Graem sat in his child safety seat next to Jack, strapped in tightly, while Jack, as usual, had slipped out of his seatbelt, which got her angry. She snapped at him to put it on again, but all it did was awaken also Graem's voice, asking her again where they were going.

Marianne clenched her teeth as Graem's voice grew louder again. He was complaining, asking questions, his voice cutting through her already frayed nerves. He was hungry. He had to pee. He wanted to go home. He didn't understand what was happening, didn't see the desperation in his mother's eyes.

"Here," Jack said to him, handing Graem his red toy car—the one he always treasured. Jack had hoped the car would silence his little brother, if only for a few minutes. Graem took it, but even that didn't quiet him for long.

Marianne glanced again in the rearview mirror, watching Jack closely. He was quiet, watching her every move. She knew he was scared, even if he wasn't showing it. Jack had always been strong, trying to hold it together, from the time when the cracks in their family started to show to the time when they had become unbearable. It broke her heart to think about how much he had had to shoulder, even at his young age.

The rain pounded harder. She didn't know where she was going. She just wanted to get away. The escape bag had been a start, but the longer she drove, the more she realized that she should have had an escape plan, too. Philip would come after them. He'd be furious. His revenge would be bigger than anything she'd ever faced from him, and it frightened her to the bone. She had seen his anger before, but this time, it would be different—worse, because what she had just done – taking the kids and leaving the house – was worse than anything else she had ever done. She knew what he was capable of, and the thought of what might happen if he found them made her hands shake even harder on the steering wheel. She stuck to the side streets, avoiding the highways where she feared Philip might be looking. The city was big, though. She prayed L.A. was big enough to just swallow them up and hide them.

Her thoughts spiraled as Graem's whining started again, this time louder and more insistent. The toy car had been thrown to the floor, and Jack, visibly frustrated, started to protest. The backseat was filling with the sounds of their argument. Jack tried to reason with Graem, but Graem just screamed back at him. Jack clenched his fists. He wanted to hit Graem, to make him be quiet. He hated how Graem didn't seem to understand the seriousness of the situation. If Graem kept bothering mom, Jack swore he would just beat him, anything to stop the noise that was clearly pushing her to the edge.

The noise from the backseat grew louder, a jumble of screams, arguments, and Graem's crying. Marianne's patience snapped. She turned her head sharply, yelling at them both to stop. "Jack, put your seatbelt on! I've told you a hundred times!"

Jack froze, caught halfway under the seat, looking for the red car. He had to find it.

Marianne wiped at her tears again, turning back to the road. Her eyes were blurry, not just from the rain but from the flood of emotions and exhaustion.

And then, it happened.

The sedan entered the crossroads, the truck barreling toward it from the left. They connected in an instant, neither slowing down.

Marianne Bauer was dead in the very same moment.

Later on, people would argue whether she had run the red light. Those few who knew her well would quietly wonder if she had done it on purpose, though no one ever dared say it aloud. Others would insist she had simply missed the light in the heavy rain, distracted by the unfamiliar streets she was driving through. The truck driver would later complain that she hadn't even braked, that her car had just appeared out of nowhere and collided with him at full speed. He'd complain about his bad concussion and the broken arm.

Jack's voice silently concluded the story, but the weight of it lingered in the air between him and Audrey. "If Graem hadn't thrown my toy car around, I would have died too. He practically saved my life with it." It was the quiet conclusion to the story of how his mother had died in a car crash, back in 1974, when he was just nine years old.

Audrey listened in silence, the tears that had welled up in her eyes falling softly onto her pillow. She hadn't made a sound, but Jack's story had cut straight through her. He had spoken about how his mother had driven aimlessly through the rainy streets that night, with him and Graem in the back seat. There had to be so much more to it than the facts he was recalling—she could feel it. Something deeper, something far more devastating.

"Were you hurt badly?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

"No." Jack paused, his words measured. "I was so lucky—I practically wasn't hurt at all. Being hunkered down behind her seat was the safest place to be in that moment." Jack let out a deep breath. The memory of that night hung heavy, as vivid as ever. He never saw the red toy car again after the crash. Not that he had wanted to—it would have been a constant reminder of everything that had happened, tied forever to the moment his mother died. After that night, toys no longer mattered to him. That was the night he grew up.

Audrey, on the other end of the line, closed her eyes, trying to imagine it—Jack, just a little boy, in the wreckage, with his dead mother. She could hear in his voice how much that night had scarred him, even if he didn't say it out loud.

Jack's thoughts drifted deeper into the past. From the moment his mother was gone, he knew there was no one left to protect him. She had always been the shield between him and the world, between them and Philip. After that night, he felt the weight of protecting Graem fall onto his shoulders, even though he was only nine. He'd try to be strong for his brother, to fill the role his mother had left behind, but he was just a kid himself. How should he have managed to do what even she hadn't been up to.

"I woke up a few hours later, in the hospital, in the middle of the night. Concussion. Bruises. Nothing serious," Jack said, his voice turning cold. "Child safety seats in the 70s were a joke. Graem had been hit a lot harder. He was in the bed next to mine, still out." Jack's breath caught as he remembered lying in that hospital bed, staring at his brother's still form. "I didn't know if he'd make it. I was too young to know how bad it was. I just lay there, awake all night, praying that he wouldn't die too."

Audrey's heart broke at the image of young Jack, lying awake, terrified of what might come next. He had already lost his mother; the thought of losing his brother must have terrified him. "I didn't even know Mom had died," Jack continued, his voice tight with the memory. "But I had this feeling... She wasn't there. I just knew."

He paused, and Audrey held her breath.

"In the morning, Dad came," Jack said, his tone hardening. "He was wearing all black. That said it all."

The way he said 'Dad'—it was so different from how he had spoken about his mother. Where there had been warmth and love in his voice when he talked about Marianne, now there was only coldness, bitterness. Audrey noticed the shift immediately. The Jack who had been on the verge of tears while talking about his mother had suddenly become someone else. Hardened. She could almost picture him—his jaw clenched, his blue eyes distant, the frown lines deepening on his face.

Audrey swallowed the lump in her throat, feeling the gravity of what he had just shared. She knew, instinctively, that this was one of those moments that had shaped him, one of the defining experiences that had made Jack Bauer who he was today. The weight of it was almost too much to bear, and yet here he was, sharing at least part of it with her—a piece of the whole truth, that he had carefully carved out, just big enough for them to handle, because no one could bear it all, not even he himself. Maybe that's why he didn't want to share.

She stayed quiet, letting the silence settle between them, waiting to see if he would continue, carve out a little more. If he wanted to. She sensed there was more, so much more.