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When Jack closes his eyes, he’s surrounded by the familiar environs of his room in Milliways, curled in his bed as a few rays of moonlight slant through chinks in the blinds.
When he opens them, it’s to a room which is nearly as dim, just as familiar, but nowhere near as comfortable. Concrete walls, blue lighting embedded in the walls, a one-way mirror dominating one wall.
It’s a room he’s seen so many times in his dreams--his nightmares--but this feels so much more real than it ever has before. The walls close in, the air feels oppressive, like a weight on his chest.
The dreams never go anywhere good from here.
When he opens them, it’s to a room which is nearly as dim, just as familiar, but nowhere near as comfortable. Concrete walls, blue lighting embedded in the walls, a one-way mirror dominating one wall.
It’s a room he’s seen so many times in his dreams--his nightmares--but this feels so much more real than it ever has before. The walls close in, the air feels oppressive, like a weight on his chest.
The dreams never go anywhere good from here.
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She remembers how cold the steel-topped table is to the touch, and the feel of rough concrete at her back.
(She remembers Jack's anger, and bearing the brunt of questions that rang like bullets in her eardrums. And more than that, she remembers being held here without him, an IV in her arm and fire in her veins, sweating and shaking.)
She doesn't like this room, but it's better than the one she left.
(It's safer — this much, she knows. Cheng isn't here; she's not bound to a hospital bed; she's wearing her own clothes.)
She approaches Jack, half a smile curving her lips.
(She's safe, mobile and coherent.)
"Jack."
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“Audrey,” he says, softly, a deep ache blooming in his chest.
This is the Audrey he’d hoped to see, when he got back from China, and he can’t forget that it’s not the Audrey he found.
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He's so familiar it hurts.
She resists the urge to smooth her silk blouse or run her palms down the sides of her pencil skirt.
"We found each other, after all."
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Its shape and weight are familiar comforts, even as the walls bleed to iron bars and back to concrete. This is the place, ever-changing but constant, she can hide. It's the one place she's free of Cheng, from his guards and his needles.
"I don't know how to answer that," she says, and she's more accepting of the fact than she might be in any other situation. "But I'm so happy to see you."
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“It’s really you?” he says, softly. “The last time I saw you...”
The last time I saw you, you’d hardly even look me in the eyes and you didn’t even realize I was there.
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"Yeah," she says, just as soft. "It's really me."
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But if this is real, there’s one thing he should say--one thing he’s been wanting to say to her.
“I’m sorry, Audrey.”
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"Jack, don't." She shakes her head slightly. "You don't have to apologize."
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A beat.
"But I don't blame you for what happened — even when part of me wants to, I can't."
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You’re cursed, Jack. Everything you touch, one way or another, ends up dead.
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Her voice hitches; for one free-falling moment, she's six years old again, wrapped in her dad's arms after scraping her elbow, and hiccuping a watery laugh when he tells her a knock-knock joke they both know by heart.
"He's angry," she says, sadness shading the words. "But that doesn't change what happened. I went to Beijing knowing there could be consequences."
Her eyes never leave Jack's.
"I think that's what upsets him most."
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It’s one of the major things holding him back, even as everyday life in the States gets more and more familiar to him again. How can he move on and have a regular life--how can he even try to be happy again--when Audrey doesn’t have the chance to do the same thing, and might never have it? How can he even think of healing when she’s the one that’s so damaged, all because of him?
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(The questions never end — Cheng's men shout at her in dialects she doesn't understand, and try as she might, she can't block out everything, because it's too much, her brain on fire and her muscles convulsing.)
She pulls herself back to the conversation, refocusing on Jack.
"It wasn't something we could control."
She places a light hand on his shoulder.
"As much as you want me to move on, I want the same thing for you."
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“It’s all right, Audrey. You’re safe now. They can’t hurt you any more.” No more than she already is, reliving everything she’d been through.
“I just want you to be okay. I want you to be happy,” he says, his voice a little hoarse.
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The brush of his thumb is exactly as she remembers, and for a few seconds, it's too easy to lose herself in the ghosts of Christmas past: late dinners, early breakfasts, fleeting, furtive touches between tedious meetings, inside jokes and intimate glances.
("I'm falling in love with you.")
"I know."
She opens her eyes, choosing to smile when she wants to cry; even here, in this in-between, they've lost too much ground to ever recover.
"I know, Jack."
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Not that that entirely helped with the guilt that sometimes gnawed at him for walking away. For ruining her life, and then leaving, even if there were other times he knew it was probably the best thing for her.
“I miss you,” he says softly, his throat starting to close. “But it’s probably for the best that I’m not around. We’ve both been through a lot.”
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She blinks, hard, to better see him — worn and weary, but safe and alive — instead of a Monet blur.
"None of it's been easy, but I don't regret having you in my life. I need you to know that."
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It would be easier for him to live with everything that’s happened to him in the last couple years--not easy by any means, but easier--if she hadn’t been hurt.
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Feeling floods the center of her chest, buzzing like a hundred honeybees behind her ribs. Anger, guilt, regret and frustration war for top billing —
(this isn't fair — none of it's fair, and there's nothing she can do to change or stop anything; she's sorry for China, she's sorry she got caught, she's sorry for failing him and herself)
— but she swallows them down, shutting apologies and platitudes into the same place she locked Cheng and the guards.
With a tip of her head, her eyes close as she brushes her lips against his.
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But somehow, when he feels the brush of her lips against his, it’s not panic or alarm that fill his chest. Somehow here, with Audrey, he wants more. Wants to feel a touch, feel the warmth of a body close to his that isn’t there to make a threat or to hurt, but to comfort.
For a moment he’s too startled by the feeling to do anything, but then he does the only thing he can do: he wraps his arms around her as he has the desperate urge to never let her go.
He knows that isn’t an option. But with the feeling of her lips against his, he’s more than willing to pretend for now.
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She hasn't been held like this, touched like this, kissed like this, for longer than she cares to remember. She presses against the lean line of his body, muscle memory tangling with here and now.
Her hands skim his upper arms, rounding his shoulders, until she's cradling his cheeks between her palms. She's seen his face time and again, in the black behind her closed eyelids, while she transported herself somewhere far away from harsh voices, the pinpricks of needles, learned helplessness and an erratic heartbeat.
("I'll be right back, I promise."
She's flushed when she breaks the kiss, pulling back just enough to lick her lips as she takes in an unsteady breath.
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But in that moment before he opens his eyes he realizes that something about that place has changed, and his eyes snap open, subconsciously realizing what’s different before the active part of his brain can sort out what it means.
They aren’t in CTU any longer: the air is colder, the scent of mildew and damp and something else (blood, fear) in the air. His heart thudding in his chest, Jack turns around, pushing Audrey behind him protectively without even thinking of it.
The walls and floor are concrete, like the CTU interrogation room, but the only light is from a few naked fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. The one-way window is gone, replaced with more concrete, nothing in the room to give any hint about whether it’s day or night, summer or winter. Time doesn’t exist in this place, and neither does the outside world. The entire world is this room, the hallway Jack knows is outside the single door, and a smaller concrete box down the hall
It had been Jack’s entire world for almost two years.
The door to the hall is open, and as he stares at it, part of him expects to see Cheng walk in with that cold, cruel smile of his, and tell him that everything he’s known for the past year--more than a year--had been a hallucination. That this isn’t a dream, the bar was.
That as firmly as Jack had believed he’d escaped Hell, that in reality, he’s never left it.
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Her eyes open a nanosecond before Jack shoves her behind him.
Her chest tightens as the lights hum overhead, the sound multiplying to an ocean's roar in her ears.
She peers over Jack's shoulder, breathing in laundry detergent, focusing on the clean scent of his shirt to center herself.
"It's not real," she says, reassuring him as much as herself, even as she expects Cheng or his men to appear in the narrow doorway before the words leave her mouth.
("I'd like a word with you, Ms. Raines," Cheng says, cheerful and almost sing-song. "Make no mistake, you will talk to me.")
"Jack, it's not real."
She's still in her blouse, her skirt, her heels.
They're still in the safety of this in-between.
It's not real. It's not.
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It’s not real. It’s not real.
But even with the evidence pointing toward this still being a dream, it can’t quite override the wariness and suspicion.
He’s been here in dreams before--is here almost every night, if not more than once in a night--and it’s never been good.
“Stay behind me,” he says, glancing around the room, looking for some kind of weapon and not finding anything. The room is completely bare, all Cheng’s tools packed up somewhere else.
He slowly moves toward the door, trying to listen past the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. It’s quiet, too goddamn quiet. There was always some kind of noise here: guards moving or talking in the hall, the sound of another cell opening or closing, the sound of someone else’s screams. Even when he couldn’t hear other prisoners (had they been moved or were they dead?) he could hear the guards.
Pressing his back to the wall, Jack tilts his head, peering out the door into the hallway.
No one’s there, and all the cell doors are open.
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This place almost was her grave; she didn't have any useful information to hide or to share once she retreated so far inside herself it seemed she'd never return. But even then, it was never silent here.
"It's okay," she says, keeping her voice low as they creep down the hall. "We're still safe. I know we are."
She reaches for Jack's hand, her fingers glancing along his knuckles.
"It's not like before."
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“I know it isn’t,” he says, softly, squeezing her hand. It’s just not that simple to turn off the instincts that have been beaten into him, even as he realizes that this place isn’t that place.
They walk down the hallway, Jack taking quick looks in each of the cells as they pass by, the part of him still expecting some kind of surprise attack warring with the part that doesn’t want to look inside the cells because he remembers all too well what they look like. The smell of the place, the sound of their footsteps on the floor and the familiar surroundings is so heavy he can feel bile rising in the back of his throat.
The door at the end of the hallway is open a crack, light spilling through onto the floor. Something tells him they have to go through it, but they can’t do it together; he’s not sure how he knows, he just does.
But at the same time...
He turns to Audrey, his throat starting to close. “I know we can’t stay here, and I know we can’t leave here together, but part of me doesn’t want to let you go.”
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She's safe, he's safe, they're safe.
Cheng isn't here, the guards won't drag her back to a cell; she won't ever feel the sting of dozens of needles piercing her skin again, pumping her so full of chemicals she can't remember her birthday or her mother's name.
Jack won't be held for weeks and months in a forgotten concrete cube, dying a little more every day for a country that left him behind.
Fingers tightening around his, she attempts a tiny smile.
"But you have to," she says, soft and sad.
She swallows, regret thick on her tongue.
"That's why we're here."
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That doesn’t mean that he necessarily wants to be right.
His eyes and throat are burning and he blinks quickly, clearing his throat in the hopes that she won’t see just how much he’s struggling, but it’s difficult. Walking away from her in L.A. had been difficult, but since then it had been a deep, gnawing ache that never really went away. It’s only now that he has to walk away from her again, now that he knows he really has to move on, that tears start to threaten.
Cupping her cheek in his hand, he looks into her eyes, sincerity in his expression.
“I want you to get better, I want you to be happy. Don’t worry about me. Just...come back to the people that care about you. You’re a strong woman, Audrey. It won’t be easy, but you can do it.”
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This ache is sharper, deeper.
A kaleidoscope of memories whirl and click, bleeding from soft-focus to full relief as her eyes meet Jack's.
("Your name is Audrey Raines. You were born Audrey Louise Heller in Albany, New York. Your father was the Secretary of Defense, James Heller. Your mother's name is Alicia, she died when you were nine.")
She thought she'd steeled herself for this.
("I hope one day you can forgive me. I love you with all my heart.")
Blinking hard, she nods, committing the warmth and weight of his touch somewhere secret and sacred.
"I'm halfway there," she says, closing her eyes to keep any tears from falling. "So don't worry about me."
She lifts one hand, fitting her palm against the back of his at her cheek.
"I want you to live. Don't just survive."
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“I’ll try, I promise.” It’s the best he can do without outright lying. All he’s known for the last two and a half years--maybe longer--is survival. Learning to live, or even feeling that he deserves to, is going to take longer, but hearing it from her just might help.
There’s a moment of silence before he adds, “If you can, find someone you can be happy with.”
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When she pulls back just enough to look at him, the weight of everything said and unspoken fills her red-rimmed eyes.
"You, too."
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Pushing back, he lets go of her quickly and blinks to try and clear the tears in his eyes.. This isn’t going to be any easier by drawing it out; it’ll just prolong the pain for both of them.
“You go first. I’ll be right behind you.”
The words ‘I love you’ are on the tip of his tongue, but he holds them back. They aren’t words that need to be spoken; they both know. This goodbye is difficult enough. If he’s going to do what she asks, he has to put her and how much he cares about her behind him.
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With a small nod, she forces herself not to reach for him again.
Turning, she takes one step.
Another.
And another, toward the light.
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this is the Audrey you need to remember, not the one that wouldn’t look you in the eye and that shrank from your touch, not the one unconscious and hooked up to an IV, remember the one she could be again
--before she disappears.
Without a single glance around him, he grabs the doorknob and steps through the doorway into the light, closing his eyes against the brightness as he pulls the door firmly shut behind him.
When he opens his eyes again; darkness surrounds him, and it takes him a moment to realize where he is: his room, his bed, in Milliways. His surroundings now feel as real as the ones he’d just left, but somehow he knows this isn’t some extension of the dream. There’s no one around, no sound other than the distant low hum of life somewhere nearby, and his cheeks are wet with tears.
He has to get out.
He’s not sure just what prompts the sudden urge to leave. Not wanting to stay in a place that can do those kinds of things to his dreams. A need for space that goes on forever and that he knows doesn’t loop back on itself. Maybe he just wants to get away from the people that know him well enough to ask what’s wrong because he’s certain he won’t be able to hide the deep, hollow pain in his chest and he doesn’t want to talk about this, not now. Whatever it is, he needs out, this minute, and he’s spent so long listening to his instincts that he’s out of bed and getting dressed in an instant, without really even thinking about it.
He’d walked in with the clothes on his back and his wallet in his pocket; that’s all he needs to take with him. In less than five minutes, he’s on his way downstairs, where he slips out the door and back to his world, unnoticed.