Glory Linnemann (glorylinnemann) wrote in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} chlack,@ 2007-03-07 14:16:00 |
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Fic: Past, Present & Future part 2
Title: Past, Present, & Future
Rating: PG 13, I suppose
Setting: Chloe helps Jack pick up the pieces after Day Six
Chapters: 4 to 6 of 7
Spoilers: None, though one can hope
chapter four
Chloe was in Jack's small kitchen later on that day heating up a TV dinner when a knock at his door made both of them jump, Jack a little more so.
"Relax, I'll get it," she told him, motioning for him to stay seated on the couch. She hated the almost paranoid look on his face.
She looked through the door's peephole and couldn't believe who was waiting for her to answer. Angrily, she swung open the door and immediately started in. "Morris, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Is that really any way to greet me, darling?" he said, slurring a bit as he tried to get a look inside.
She scowled and pushed him farther into the hallway, closing the door behind her. "Why are you here? Why would you show up to Jack's apartment drunk?"
"I followed you here, that's why," he replied nonchalantly.
"You drove here, that's great," she rolled her eyes. "What do you want, Morris?"
"I wanted to see how things are going with you and your beloved Jack," he continued, "seeing as now you're now practically living with him."
"Morris, there is no 'me & Jack'," she replied. "You know that. Do you even remember who broke up with who? You broke up with me, Morris. You have no right to come here like this."
"I would beg to differ," Morris started to reply before being interrupted by Jack's opening the door.
"What's going on out here?" Jack asked worriedly.
"Nothing," Chloe replied, "Morris just decided to show up drunk and bother me, that's all."
Jack glanced over at Morris, who quickly seized the opportunity at hand. "Jack, good to see you, mate. I'm glad you've gotten to enjoy Chloe's company so much lately. I'm not surprised in the least, I saw it coming a mile away," Morris babbled, ignoring the tortured look on Chloe's face. "In fact, did she ever tell you why we broke up? You were the reason, Jack."
"Ignore him, he's just trying to get to you," she advised to Jack, who was actually listening to Morris, to her horror.
Morris then turned his bloodshot eyes to Chloe. "If I were you, love, I'd watch my back - Jack's women tend to turn up dead."
"Son of a bitch," Jack growled before snapping like a twig and lunging at Morris, taking him into a choke hold before slamming him against the wall of the hallway. "Jack, don't!" Chloe squealed to no avail.
"That was a mistake," he seethed, continuing to squeeze while Morris tried not to suffocate.
Chloe then rushed and stood just to Jack's right, putting her left hand on Jack's shoulder and her right hand on his straining wrists. "Jack, let him go," she said simply and quietly.
Jack looked away from Morris' reddening face to Chloe's and slowly felt his sense return. His arms soon fell to his side,and Morris coughed painfully as Jack walked back into the apartment and closed the door.
Chloe stood idly for a moment before pulling out her cell phone. "I would apologize for Jack, but you deserved it," she muttered as she dialed a cab service. Morris held his throbbing neck and suddenly felt very sober.
"I don't have the slightest clue as to what you see in him," Morris muttered between deep breaths.
"You don't have the slightest clue to a lot of things, Morris," she replied in her usual snarky tone. She hoped Jack wouldn't take Morris' words seriously, but a part of her knew he would. He blamed himself enough as it was - she hated that he had to hear the words come out of somebody else's mouth, Morris' of all people.
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When Morris was safely in the care of a yellow cab, Chloe headed back inside the apartment without knowing quite what to expect. It was true, Morris did leave her over Jack, and Jack was the last person she wanted to find out. No matter how deeply she felt for him, she was convinced he would never return her feelings. She tried to satisfy herself with their friendship, but it wasn't easy. She had decided a long time ago that she would strenously avoid anything that could jeopardize her feelings' secret status, especially around Jack, something Morris appeared to have shot to hell.
Closing the door behind her, Chloe entered to find Jack sitting silently on the couch, leaning on his knees with his elbows and staring at his feet.
"I'm sorry about Morris," she sighed, walking towards him as he failed to react to her presence. "He's just going through a lot of stuff right now, and he doesn't know who else to take it out on."
She took a seat next to him, prompting him to finally raise his head to her. His eyes locked with hers, and something so painfully obvious finally became crystal clear in Jack's mind. Maybe it took the actual words coming out of someone else's mouth for it to register in his mind. He knew why Chloe was there. He knew why she had been for so long. And most surprising of all, it felt right to him. It made sense.
"It's okay," he smiled.
And maybe it was okay. Maybe what he had been looking for for so long had been sitting in front of him all along. And maybe he was a complete & utter dolt for not seeing it sooner.
He offered her right shoulder an affectionate pat before saying goodnight and heading off to bed. Chloe felt relieved, though a bit confused as to what just happened. But no matter - she wouldn't question what appeared to be a good thing.
----------------------------------------
After Jack drifted off to sleep, a nightmare came to visit him.
Audrey, bleeding from the gunshot in her head that had killed her, sat alone in a dark room on a cold floor as she wept tears that mixed with blood on her cheeks. "Why did you do this to me, Jack? Why did you let me die?" she asked.
Teri soon joined her, asking the same question. Many followed, joining the crude scene. Finally, a similarly blood-soaked Chloe appeared, telling him, "You killed me, too. You let me die."
He awoke in a cold sweat, his breathing labored, just as he always did following one of these nightmares. But no dream had been this graphic, this real. Sitting up in bed, tears fought their way out of his eyes as he failed to calm down. He couldn't do this again. He wouldn't do this again. He was done hurting the people he cared for.
So he rose out of bed, knowing exactly what he had to do.
chapter five
On autopilot, Jack tore through his apartment like a storm, snatching up everything of Chloe's he could find. He wouldn't stop to think, or to notice how late it was.
Nor did he seem to care that Chloe was sound asleep on the couch when he burst in the room and bellowed, "Chloe, get up."
The newly turned on light combined with his booming voice made for one heck of a wake up call. Automatically assuming something must be horribly wrong, she immediately popped up and searched his face for a clue as to what the heck it was. "What is it, Jack?"
"You have to leave," he replied matter of factly, handed her a small pile of her belongings.
"What? Why?" she demanded, taking the pile reluctantly.
"Because I said so, Chloe, now get out," he replied, opening the door for her to leave.
"Jack, I am not leaving this couch until you tell me what's going on," she replied firmly.
Leaving the door open, he walked to her and said as calmly as he could, "It's for your own good, Chloe, please."
She stood up and tried to look him in the eye. "If this is about what Morris said, it's not true, I swear."
Noting what a bad liar she was, he simply ignored it. "Go."
She watched him turn his back to her, confused beyond belief. But one thing she knew for sure: she wasn't going anywhere. "No."
He turned quickly and began to shout. "Did you hear me?" he yelled, grabbing her clothes out of her clutch and taking them to the door, where he threw them into the hall. "Get out!"
"No," she countered, her voice rising to match his. "This doesn't make any sense!"
She braced herself as he came charging at her, not knowing what to expect. He grabbed her shoulders and said in a growlish tone, "Chloe, do not force me to make you leave, because I will."
Chloe looked in his eyes and saw that they deceived him. She knew him far too well to not catch on. "Jack, I am not going to let you 'protect' me," she replied shockingly calmly. He realized he couldn't affect her like he could others. "I'm not Kim. And you know I'm not Audrey. They needed you to protect them from your life, but damn it, Jack, you know I don't." She took his now limp hands and took them off of her, adding, "You should know that by now."
His eyes began to shimmer as he stared into her disappointed expression. "I...I don't..." he stammered before Chloe pulled him into a tight embrace.
"It's okay, Jack," she muttered, trying not to roll her eyes at her standard pathetic comforting skills. It wasn't okay, and she knew it.
Unapologetically, he let his tears flow freely into Chloe's shoulder. He couldn't believe what he had just tried to do - it was the furthest thing from what he wanted.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said into her sweater. "Please, don't let me hurt you the way I've hurt them."
She closed her eyes, knowing the "them" he was referring to. She pulled away and looked him square in the eye. "Fine. Here's how you can make sure you don't hurt me: don't push me away anymore. I mean, here I am every single day, telling you over & over that I want to help you, but you just don't get it. You need to get over this protection thing."
"It's not that simple," he replied, sniffing back his tears. "Morris was right, Chloe. I'm barely managing as it is, and if I lost you..."
"First off, I'm not going anywhere, and second, no, Morris wasn't right. I know you blame yourself, but if Audrey and Teri were here, I seriously doubt if they would blame you. You did everything you could for them. I can't imagine them wanting you beat yourself up like this."
He was silent, trying to believe her words. "In China, I accepted that I'd never see her again, but it was okay because she could move on. I could have lived with that," he tearfully recalled.
She responded by pulling him back into her arms, wishing she knew some magic word, anything that would fix him. But she knew time was his only real remedy - along with her presence.
She then walked him to the couch, where he sat as she left to close the still-open door and fetch him a glass of water.
Handing Jack the glass as she sat beside him, he glanced at the clock and felt yet another twinge of guilt. "I should try to go back to sleep now," he said quietly. "I know you have to get to CTU in a few hours."
"It's fine. I'm not tired anymore anyway," she shrugged, lying through her teeth.
"Sorry I lost it," he said as he stared into the glass. "Although to be honest, I'm pretty sure I lost it a while ago."
"Jack, sometimes I wonder if you really understand everything you've been through. You're allowed to lose it. You're allowed to be a mess. I don't know why you'd think anything else is expected of you."
"I don't want to be like this. I don't know how to be like this," he replied.
She shrugged. "We'll figure all of this out eventually," she said, immediately regretting her use of the word "we".
His eyes found hers and almost sparkled a little bit like they used to. "We will?"
"I didn't mean - " she blurted, eyes reverting to the floor.
"It's fine," he quickly assured her, allowing a bit of a smirk to cross his lips. "I know what you meant."
And thus fell silence - the same silence that tended to fall when both of them wanted to say something important but just couldn't form the words. But neither knew quite what it was they wanted to say.
Taking a last sip of the water, Jack finally broke the silence. "I'll see you in the morning," he said as he rose from the couch, forgetting it already was morning.
"Yeah," she muttered, watching him return to his room. Lord, did she want to follow him. He could throw all the guilt-infused fits he wanted - nothing was going to keep her away.
chapter six
Chloe wasn't sure what she was doing in Bill's office. He rarely called her there, except for when she'd pissed him off, which wasn't an uncommon occurrence. She tried to think of what she'd done to earn an office sitdown this time as he finished up a call from behind his desk, but she drew a blank. "Take a seat, Chloe," he motioned, finally resting the phone back on its hook.
"What did I do this time?" she asked, easing into the chair opposite his desk.
"Nothing. That's not what this is about," he paused. "How's Jack doing?"
She took a breath, her anxiety level dropping. "How about you call him and find out?"
"Because he'll tell me he's fine even if he's not. In my judgement, you're in a much better position to know what kind of state he's in."
"He's not fine. He's struggling. You would be, too," she replied, growing more annoyed by the second.
"I realize that, Chloe."
She watched him cast his eyes downward and started to wonder why she was even there. "If that's all you wanted to ask me, I've got work to do," she muttered, rising from the chair.
"Chloe."
She scowled and turned. "What."
"Keep up the good work," Bill said quietly.
She paused, unsure if he meant her work with Jack or CTU. "Yeah," she muttered under her breath before heading back down to the floor.
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The ringing of the phone violently awoke Jack from a rare dream-free sleep. Begrudgingly, he slipped off the couch and walked the short distance to the kitchen, where his home phone sat cradled on the wall near the entrance. "Yeah," he answered.
There was a pause on the other end. "Is Chloe there?"
Jack immediatly recognized the accent. "Morris?"
Morris sighed quietly. "Yes, it's me."
"She's at CTU. Where else where would she be noon on a Tuesday?"
"I...I knew that. I called to apologize about my making an ass of myself. Saying it to her, I thought, would be a bit easier."
Jack fell silent, wondering if Morris was calling from rehab.
"But I am sorry. I had no right to dump my problems in your laps. But I've had a hard time dealing with everything that's happened. And I'm used to dumping things on Chloe for her to fix...you know, 'old habits die hard'."
"It's fine, Morris, don't worry about it," Jack replied. This was a very sober Morris, in more ways than one. He wasn't sure how to respond.
Then Jack remembered Morris' words and how they had stayed in his head, making him wonder if, in fact, they were as true as they seemed. "Did you mean what you said about me, how I caused your breakup with her?"
Morris didn't have the energy to lie for Chloe. Besides, it was time Jack was alerted to the obvious. "God, yes. You know, Jack, you're the last person on this earth to realize this about Chloe. Let me enlighten you."
Jack took a deep breath.
"When you were in China, she never dared to speak your name. If she ever heard anyone speak of you, she would pretend she didn't. I knew exactly what that meant. I'd ask her hoe she was dealing with it, and she'd mumble something about being fine and change the subject. She could share everything with me except for anything involving you."
Jack closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He hated the thought of how deeply she had hurt for him.
"Seeing the look on her face when she saw you for the first time at CTU, well, that was the nail in the coffin of our relationship," Morris continued.
Jack recalled the moment, the truth of his words obvious.
"But this is nothing new, Jack. I saw it a long time ago. So did half of bloody CTU. You're truly the last to know."
I'm an idiot, Jack thought to himself. But he wasn't an idiot. He was merely blind.
"I'll tell her you called," Jack said, hanging up the phone before Morris could reply.
He soon found himself back on the couch, wide awake, replaying the memories he & Chloe had created over the years since he first hired her. Out of everyone he'd known in his lifetime - even Audrey, Kim, and Teri - she was the only one who had never let him down. No matter what he threw at her, no matter what insane lengths he'd asked her to go to with him, she had been more than equal to the task each time. He'd never once been able to give her anything in return, and she never asked for anything, either.
But taking her for granted and overlooking her was not a mistake he'd ever make again, he vowed. It was too early for him to quite know what that meant, but he could feel the spark of excitement begin to take root in his mind. Maybe he had a future to look forward to after all. Maybe Chloe was that future.
Title: Past, Present, & Future
Rating: PG 13, I suppose
Setting: Chloe helps Jack pick up the pieces after Day Six
Chapters: 4 to 6 of 7
Spoilers: None, though one can hope
chapter four
Chloe was in Jack's small kitchen later on that day heating up a TV dinner when a knock at his door made both of them jump, Jack a little more so.
"Relax, I'll get it," she told him, motioning for him to stay seated on the couch. She hated the almost paranoid look on his face.
She looked through the door's peephole and couldn't believe who was waiting for her to answer. Angrily, she swung open the door and immediately started in. "Morris, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Is that really any way to greet me, darling?" he said, slurring a bit as he tried to get a look inside.
She scowled and pushed him farther into the hallway, closing the door behind her. "Why are you here? Why would you show up to Jack's apartment drunk?"
"I followed you here, that's why," he replied nonchalantly.
"You drove here, that's great," she rolled her eyes. "What do you want, Morris?"
"I wanted to see how things are going with you and your beloved Jack," he continued, "seeing as now you're now practically living with him."
"Morris, there is no 'me & Jack'," she replied. "You know that. Do you even remember who broke up with who? You broke up with me, Morris. You have no right to come here like this."
"I would beg to differ," Morris started to reply before being interrupted by Jack's opening the door.
"What's going on out here?" Jack asked worriedly.
"Nothing," Chloe replied, "Morris just decided to show up drunk and bother me, that's all."
Jack glanced over at Morris, who quickly seized the opportunity at hand. "Jack, good to see you, mate. I'm glad you've gotten to enjoy Chloe's company so much lately. I'm not surprised in the least, I saw it coming a mile away," Morris babbled, ignoring the tortured look on Chloe's face. "In fact, did she ever tell you why we broke up? You were the reason, Jack."
"Ignore him, he's just trying to get to you," she advised to Jack, who was actually listening to Morris, to her horror.
Morris then turned his bloodshot eyes to Chloe. "If I were you, love, I'd watch my back - Jack's women tend to turn up dead."
"Son of a bitch," Jack growled before snapping like a twig and lunging at Morris, taking him into a choke hold before slamming him against the wall of the hallway. "Jack, don't!" Chloe squealed to no avail.
"That was a mistake," he seethed, continuing to squeeze while Morris tried not to suffocate.
Chloe then rushed and stood just to Jack's right, putting her left hand on Jack's shoulder and her right hand on his straining wrists. "Jack, let him go," she said simply and quietly.
Jack looked away from Morris' reddening face to Chloe's and slowly felt his sense return. His arms soon fell to his side,and Morris coughed painfully as Jack walked back into the apartment and closed the door.
Chloe stood idly for a moment before pulling out her cell phone. "I would apologize for Jack, but you deserved it," she muttered as she dialed a cab service. Morris held his throbbing neck and suddenly felt very sober.
"I don't have the slightest clue as to what you see in him," Morris muttered between deep breaths.
"You don't have the slightest clue to a lot of things, Morris," she replied in her usual snarky tone. She hoped Jack wouldn't take Morris' words seriously, but a part of her knew he would. He blamed himself enough as it was - she hated that he had to hear the words come out of somebody else's mouth, Morris' of all people.
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When Morris was safely in the care of a yellow cab, Chloe headed back inside the apartment without knowing quite what to expect. It was true, Morris did leave her over Jack, and Jack was the last person she wanted to find out. No matter how deeply she felt for him, she was convinced he would never return her feelings. She tried to satisfy herself with their friendship, but it wasn't easy. She had decided a long time ago that she would strenously avoid anything that could jeopardize her feelings' secret status, especially around Jack, something Morris appeared to have shot to hell.
Closing the door behind her, Chloe entered to find Jack sitting silently on the couch, leaning on his knees with his elbows and staring at his feet.
"I'm sorry about Morris," she sighed, walking towards him as he failed to react to her presence. "He's just going through a lot of stuff right now, and he doesn't know who else to take it out on."
She took a seat next to him, prompting him to finally raise his head to her. His eyes locked with hers, and something so painfully obvious finally became crystal clear in Jack's mind. Maybe it took the actual words coming out of someone else's mouth for it to register in his mind. He knew why Chloe was there. He knew why she had been for so long. And most surprising of all, it felt right to him. It made sense.
"It's okay," he smiled.
And maybe it was okay. Maybe what he had been looking for for so long had been sitting in front of him all along. And maybe he was a complete & utter dolt for not seeing it sooner.
He offered her right shoulder an affectionate pat before saying goodnight and heading off to bed. Chloe felt relieved, though a bit confused as to what just happened. But no matter - she wouldn't question what appeared to be a good thing.
----------------------------------------
After Jack drifted off to sleep, a nightmare came to visit him.
Audrey, bleeding from the gunshot in her head that had killed her, sat alone in a dark room on a cold floor as she wept tears that mixed with blood on her cheeks. "Why did you do this to me, Jack? Why did you let me die?" she asked.
Teri soon joined her, asking the same question. Many followed, joining the crude scene. Finally, a similarly blood-soaked Chloe appeared, telling him, "You killed me, too. You let me die."
He awoke in a cold sweat, his breathing labored, just as he always did following one of these nightmares. But no dream had been this graphic, this real. Sitting up in bed, tears fought their way out of his eyes as he failed to calm down. He couldn't do this again. He wouldn't do this again. He was done hurting the people he cared for.
So he rose out of bed, knowing exactly what he had to do.
chapter five
On autopilot, Jack tore through his apartment like a storm, snatching up everything of Chloe's he could find. He wouldn't stop to think, or to notice how late it was.
Nor did he seem to care that Chloe was sound asleep on the couch when he burst in the room and bellowed, "Chloe, get up."
The newly turned on light combined with his booming voice made for one heck of a wake up call. Automatically assuming something must be horribly wrong, she immediately popped up and searched his face for a clue as to what the heck it was. "What is it, Jack?"
"You have to leave," he replied matter of factly, handed her a small pile of her belongings.
"What? Why?" she demanded, taking the pile reluctantly.
"Because I said so, Chloe, now get out," he replied, opening the door for her to leave.
"Jack, I am not leaving this couch until you tell me what's going on," she replied firmly.
Leaving the door open, he walked to her and said as calmly as he could, "It's for your own good, Chloe, please."
She stood up and tried to look him in the eye. "If this is about what Morris said, it's not true, I swear."
Noting what a bad liar she was, he simply ignored it. "Go."
She watched him turn his back to her, confused beyond belief. But one thing she knew for sure: she wasn't going anywhere. "No."
He turned quickly and began to shout. "Did you hear me?" he yelled, grabbing her clothes out of her clutch and taking them to the door, where he threw them into the hall. "Get out!"
"No," she countered, her voice rising to match his. "This doesn't make any sense!"
She braced herself as he came charging at her, not knowing what to expect. He grabbed her shoulders and said in a growlish tone, "Chloe, do not force me to make you leave, because I will."
Chloe looked in his eyes and saw that they deceived him. She knew him far too well to not catch on. "Jack, I am not going to let you 'protect' me," she replied shockingly calmly. He realized he couldn't affect her like he could others. "I'm not Kim. And you know I'm not Audrey. They needed you to protect them from your life, but damn it, Jack, you know I don't." She took his now limp hands and took them off of her, adding, "You should know that by now."
His eyes began to shimmer as he stared into her disappointed expression. "I...I don't..." he stammered before Chloe pulled him into a tight embrace.
"It's okay, Jack," she muttered, trying not to roll her eyes at her standard pathetic comforting skills. It wasn't okay, and she knew it.
Unapologetically, he let his tears flow freely into Chloe's shoulder. He couldn't believe what he had just tried to do - it was the furthest thing from what he wanted.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said into her sweater. "Please, don't let me hurt you the way I've hurt them."
She closed her eyes, knowing the "them" he was referring to. She pulled away and looked him square in the eye. "Fine. Here's how you can make sure you don't hurt me: don't push me away anymore. I mean, here I am every single day, telling you over & over that I want to help you, but you just don't get it. You need to get over this protection thing."
"It's not that simple," he replied, sniffing back his tears. "Morris was right, Chloe. I'm barely managing as it is, and if I lost you..."
"First off, I'm not going anywhere, and second, no, Morris wasn't right. I know you blame yourself, but if Audrey and Teri were here, I seriously doubt if they would blame you. You did everything you could for them. I can't imagine them wanting you beat yourself up like this."
He was silent, trying to believe her words. "In China, I accepted that I'd never see her again, but it was okay because she could move on. I could have lived with that," he tearfully recalled.
She responded by pulling him back into her arms, wishing she knew some magic word, anything that would fix him. But she knew time was his only real remedy - along with her presence.
She then walked him to the couch, where he sat as she left to close the still-open door and fetch him a glass of water.
Handing Jack the glass as she sat beside him, he glanced at the clock and felt yet another twinge of guilt. "I should try to go back to sleep now," he said quietly. "I know you have to get to CTU in a few hours."
"It's fine. I'm not tired anymore anyway," she shrugged, lying through her teeth.
"Sorry I lost it," he said as he stared into the glass. "Although to be honest, I'm pretty sure I lost it a while ago."
"Jack, sometimes I wonder if you really understand everything you've been through. You're allowed to lose it. You're allowed to be a mess. I don't know why you'd think anything else is expected of you."
"I don't want to be like this. I don't know how to be like this," he replied.
She shrugged. "We'll figure all of this out eventually," she said, immediately regretting her use of the word "we".
His eyes found hers and almost sparkled a little bit like they used to. "We will?"
"I didn't mean - " she blurted, eyes reverting to the floor.
"It's fine," he quickly assured her, allowing a bit of a smirk to cross his lips. "I know what you meant."
And thus fell silence - the same silence that tended to fall when both of them wanted to say something important but just couldn't form the words. But neither knew quite what it was they wanted to say.
Taking a last sip of the water, Jack finally broke the silence. "I'll see you in the morning," he said as he rose from the couch, forgetting it already was morning.
"Yeah," she muttered, watching him return to his room. Lord, did she want to follow him. He could throw all the guilt-infused fits he wanted - nothing was going to keep her away.
chapter six
Chloe wasn't sure what she was doing in Bill's office. He rarely called her there, except for when she'd pissed him off, which wasn't an uncommon occurrence. She tried to think of what she'd done to earn an office sitdown this time as he finished up a call from behind his desk, but she drew a blank. "Take a seat, Chloe," he motioned, finally resting the phone back on its hook.
"What did I do this time?" she asked, easing into the chair opposite his desk.
"Nothing. That's not what this is about," he paused. "How's Jack doing?"
She took a breath, her anxiety level dropping. "How about you call him and find out?"
"Because he'll tell me he's fine even if he's not. In my judgement, you're in a much better position to know what kind of state he's in."
"He's not fine. He's struggling. You would be, too," she replied, growing more annoyed by the second.
"I realize that, Chloe."
She watched him cast his eyes downward and started to wonder why she was even there. "If that's all you wanted to ask me, I've got work to do," she muttered, rising from the chair.
"Chloe."
She scowled and turned. "What."
"Keep up the good work," Bill said quietly.
She paused, unsure if he meant her work with Jack or CTU. "Yeah," she muttered under her breath before heading back down to the floor.
----------------------------------------
The ringing of the phone violently awoke Jack from a rare dream-free sleep. Begrudgingly, he slipped off the couch and walked the short distance to the kitchen, where his home phone sat cradled on the wall near the entrance. "Yeah," he answered.
There was a pause on the other end. "Is Chloe there?"
Jack immediatly recognized the accent. "Morris?"
Morris sighed quietly. "Yes, it's me."
"She's at CTU. Where else where would she be noon on a Tuesday?"
"I...I knew that. I called to apologize about my making an ass of myself. Saying it to her, I thought, would be a bit easier."
Jack fell silent, wondering if Morris was calling from rehab.
"But I am sorry. I had no right to dump my problems in your laps. But I've had a hard time dealing with everything that's happened. And I'm used to dumping things on Chloe for her to fix...you know, 'old habits die hard'."
"It's fine, Morris, don't worry about it," Jack replied. This was a very sober Morris, in more ways than one. He wasn't sure how to respond.
Then Jack remembered Morris' words and how they had stayed in his head, making him wonder if, in fact, they were as true as they seemed. "Did you mean what you said about me, how I caused your breakup with her?"
Morris didn't have the energy to lie for Chloe. Besides, it was time Jack was alerted to the obvious. "God, yes. You know, Jack, you're the last person on this earth to realize this about Chloe. Let me enlighten you."
Jack took a deep breath.
"When you were in China, she never dared to speak your name. If she ever heard anyone speak of you, she would pretend she didn't. I knew exactly what that meant. I'd ask her hoe she was dealing with it, and she'd mumble something about being fine and change the subject. She could share everything with me except for anything involving you."
Jack closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He hated the thought of how deeply she had hurt for him.
"Seeing the look on her face when she saw you for the first time at CTU, well, that was the nail in the coffin of our relationship," Morris continued.
Jack recalled the moment, the truth of his words obvious.
"But this is nothing new, Jack. I saw it a long time ago. So did half of bloody CTU. You're truly the last to know."
I'm an idiot, Jack thought to himself. But he wasn't an idiot. He was merely blind.
"I'll tell her you called," Jack said, hanging up the phone before Morris could reply.
He soon found himself back on the couch, wide awake, replaying the memories he & Chloe had created over the years since he first hired her. Out of everyone he'd known in his lifetime - even Audrey, Kim, and Teri - she was the only one who had never let him down. No matter what he threw at her, no matter what insane lengths he'd asked her to go to with him, she had been more than equal to the task each time. He'd never once been able to give her anything in return, and she never asked for anything, either.
But taking her for granted and overlooking her was not a mistake he'd ever make again, he vowed. It was too early for him to quite know what that meant, but he could feel the spark of excitement begin to take root in his mind. Maybe he had a future to look forward to after all. Maybe Chloe was that future.
