This story is inspired by amacma's ongoing story "The Prequel" and discussions we had surrounding it. I highly encourage everyone to check out "The Prequel"! And a huge shoutout to amacma for all your ideas and encouragement!
This story will cover Jack's childhood, from his birth until the point when he leaves for the army. The title is inspired by a quote from Jonathan Wallace, the Coral Snake mercenary in S2, who says his boss described Jack as "a born killer."
If there was one thing Phillip Bauer hated most about grocery stores, it was waiting in line at the checkout.
The toddlers screaming and kicking their feet, throwing tantrums because their mothers hadn't bought their favorite soda. The old ladies who, having left the house for the first time in a week to get themselves a box of Raisin Bran, suddenly turned hell-bent on showing Phillip photos of their grandkids (can you believe they're in color?). The homemakers in pearl necklaces and high heels who always took twice as long at the cash register because the cashiers were busy checking them out in an entirely different sense. It was all a colossal waste of time and brainpower. Phillip had only stopped by for a pack of cigarettes, because the nearest drugstore was five blocks away. He reminded himself to stop being so lazy from now on, and to leave the grocery shopping to his wife.
My wife. Phillip grinned to himself, staring down at the shiny new ring on his finger. He was glad he'd gotten the courtship phase out of the way so quickly, so he could focus on bigger and better things. It really couldn't have turned out any better — he'd gotten Nancy pregnant after only a few dates. Now she was his forever, and the next in the Bauer line was on the way.
His spirits lifted, Phillip lazily scanned his surroundings, spotting the usual breath mints, candy bars, and trashy tabloids detailing which B-list actor had slept with which third-rate fashion model this week. Among the drivel, Phillip spotted an old edition of Parents' Magazine with the words "Charting Baby's First Year: A Charming Weekly Guide to Every Milestone!" in thin yellow letters on the cover, accompanied by a picture of a wide-eyed baby boy sucking his thumb.
Suddenly, Phillip Bauer — the same man who refused to turn on the air conditioning in his office unless a potential investor was dropping by — felt his wallet calling his name.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching him, Phillip snatched the magazine and concealed it behind a copy of the Wall Street Journal.
As illogical as it was, there was something exciting about the silly little article. Phillip could imagine himself coming home from work every day and quantifying Baby Bauer's achievements, seeing how he (in Phillip's mind, the baby was always a he) stacked up against the general population. Phillip could feel the thrill of competition already. He was sure his baby would make him proud.
A few months later, Phillip was weaving through Los Angeles traffic in his white Impala, while Nancy groaned in agony in the backseat.
This wasn't supposed to happen so damn early, Phillip thought for the thousandth time as he blared his horn at a long-haired teen trying to weave into the faster-moving left lane.
They hadn't even decided on a name for the baby yet. "Phillip" was one of the only options they'd even discussed — and even that had been a hard no. Phillip himself was already Phillip Bauer III, and he didn't want to be just another cog in the wheel, passing down the family tradition because it was what his father and grandfather had done before him. Nor would he consider any of the other options Nancy had suggested. Each one was too long or too foreign or too close to the name of someone Phillip detested.
And why did this have to happen today, when tomorrow he had a big negotiation for a couple of rigs over at Graham Oil Field? Although, he reconsidered, he might be able to turn this to his advantage. The longer the negotiations went, the greater the chance that Phillip's rival, Warren Hargrove, would get the nod instead. A passing comment that he hoped to get this meeting done quickly so he could see his newborn son might just be the little push he needed to win the Graham contract.
Graham, he thought just as Nancy cried out in pain from another contraction. Now there's a fine name for a baby.
Some hours later, Phillip was cutting the umbilical cord off of a squirming Graem Bauer (so spelled to pay homage to Glen Graeme Scotch Whisky). The boy was born underweight but appeared otherwise healthy.
Phillip gave Graem the benefit of the doubt: he decided that week 1 in his parenting magazine would map to the first week after Graem's due date, not the week after he was born. With this adjustment, it sometimes seemed Graem's developmental clock had been wired directly into the pages of Phillip's magazine. At four weeks, Graem began cooing when he saw Phillip's five-o-clock-shadowed face staring down at him after a long day at work. At eight weeks, Graem managed to lift his little bald head roughly 45 degrees, high enough to see his blue rattle, a gift from one of Phillip's investors, lying on the carpet a few inches beyond his reach. At the start of his third month, Graem began cautiously wiggling his fingers and sticking out his thumbs, mostly for the purpose of putting them in his mouth. Nancy was thrilled, as were the doctors. "He's a happy, healthy baby," they gushed at every appointment.
But Phillip was growing more impatient by the day. It irked him that, all around the world, there were babies Graem's age who were developing at exactly the same rate he was. Worse, many were developing faster. Meanwhile, everything about Graem was the epitome of average — everything, that was, except for his size. Graem consistently scored below the tenth percentile in both height and weight. It was almost enough to make six-foot-seven Phillip question whether the boy was really his. He finally decided that having a mediocrity for a son was less embarrassing than being cuckolded by a girl who'd been a virgin when she and Phillip began to date.
At fifteen weeks, for the first time, Graem missed one of his milestones. Phillip's magazine showed a picture of a grinning baby rolling over next to the number 15 in block print. But no matter how many times Phillip grabbed Graem and rolled him from his back to his stomach and vice versa, no matter how many times he ordered him to roll over the way one would a trained dog, his son wouldn't cooperate. Soon, Graem started to whine and cry, and Phillip's voice rose and rose until Nancy was begging him to go take a walk before he did something he would regret.
Two weeks later, Nancy called Phillip at work — annoyingly, in the middle of an important meeting — to tell him Graem had rolled over all by himself. But that didn't matter to Phillip. Late was late, and Graem was starting a dangerous spiral, falling further and further behind every week.
At nine months, while in the hospital with a bad cold, Graem's doctor suggested that he might have asthma. That was the last straw. Not only was Graem's speech months behind where Phillip had hoped it to be, but he now seemed destined to live the rest of his life as the small, weak child who would always be picked last for every game at recess. The class wimp.
It was then that Phillip cemented what he had already suspected for so long: he needed another child.
There was just one big problem. Midway through her pregnancy with Graem, Nancy's health had begun to deteriorate. She would wake up in the morning with her joints swollen like barnacles, feeling so fatigued that she could barely drag herself out of bed. Phillip had dismissed it at the time as a normal, if unpleasant, side effect of pregnancy; but even after Graem's birth, it persisted. Phillip was forced to come home early from work to care for not only Graem, but also Nancy; money that should have been pumped back into his business was instead spent on appointments with countless "specialists," each of whom seemed to diagnose Nancy with a different autoimmune condition and prescribe an expensive new drug. Several professionals had counseled Nancy not to have any more children, fearing that another pregnancy would tax her beyond the limits of her strength.
Still, Phillip was persuasive. Graem would be so lonely without any siblings, he argued. And if anything, God would protect their little family from any harm. He patted himself on the back, after that one, for having chosen a girl who believed in those fairy tales. Religious girls were easy. All you had to do was show them a Bible verse and they'd be tripping over themselves to give you what you wanted.
A little after Graem's first birthday, Phillip and Nancy announced their second pregnancy to the world. But less than two weeks after that, Phillip's white Impala was making the now all-too-familiar trip to Saint John's hospital, while he barked at Nancy to use as many paper towels as she needed to avoid staining his leather seats red with blood.
The loss of his second baby was a rare moment of defeat for Phillip. Part of him almost wanted to give up, focus on the company and let the chips fall where they might. Besides, what if the second baby was even worse than Graem? What if he (no matter what happened, the baby was still always a he) inherited Nancy's chronic pain and became just another liability for Phillip to take care of?
But Phillip wasn't one to settle for anything but the best. When he saw Graem, well past his first birthday and still struggling to say his first word, he knew his company was destined for something — for someone — greater.
Soon, he got his wish.
Jack Bauer, like his older brother before him, was named after two of his father's most beloved things in life: his company and a good whiskey. Just a week prior to his second son's birth, Phillip's company had expanded from onshore to offshore drilling, purchasing its first set of self-elevating oil units — also known as jack-up rigs due to their extensible legs. Phillip had celebrated by buying himself a bottle of Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Barrel Proof. If Graem was the name of the past, then Jack was the name of the future. And as Phillip held little Jack for the first time (having arrived three days later than his due date), somehow he knew that the future was bright.