Time

Takes place during and after Day 5.

After (Wrath)

Tony


After I woke up at CTU, after I found out Michelle was gone - my sweet Michelle and our baby boy to be, my whole family in one foul swoop - I went faintly mad with grief. She was my wife, she was my responsibility, and I failed to protect her. Failed to protect a son who wasn't even born yet. I cursed what had happened that day, cursed that I'd let her leave the house without me. I could have shielded her somehow, I could have figured out about the bomb, I could have done something, anything to save her.

I'd failed her.

Grief and rage were all encompassing, and shamefully, I hardly thought of Jack in those moments. Even when he called and begged me not to kill Henderson, like he somehow knew what would happen. I could only think of my own pain, and think that somehow, killing the one behind it would end my agony.

I didn't think of Jack until I stood over Henderson with the syringe. I was ready to do it until that moment, until I stood there and looked at him and realized that murder meant jail, and to jail meant... losing Jack, again. I'd made the mistake of using my pain to shut him out before, to push away his support and his love, and I'd regretted it every moment since. Maybe this time could be different. Jack could help me heal, selflessly love me and pull me through this, give me something in life beyond the emptiness in my heart where my little family had been.

When I thought about Jack, I knew for sure that I couldn't kill Henderson.

My rage, and my hesitation, proved my undoing. That was true agony - the syringe plunging into my chest, the chemical burning white hot through my veins, almost eclipsing my entire world. But all I could think about was Jack, on his way, coming here to see this.

I saw him, felt him take me in his arms, heard him calling my name. I tried to speak, to tell him everything in my heart, but it was so hard to speak through the pain, through the blackness that was swimming at the edge of my vision. "Couldn't... do it...." I couldn't kill him, I didn't want to leave you, I didn't want to lose you, and now I'm --

He was panicking, and crying, begging me not to leave him, and god, I never wanted this kind of pain for him. Michelle was dead, Michelle was gone, and I couldn't have done anything about that, couldn't have done anything to bring her back. But in my rage, in my thoughtlessness, I'd thrown away the only thing I'd had left, the most important thing to me, and now I'd lose Jack too. No... Jack would lose me.

She's gone, I wanted to say. She's gone and I was wrong and I'm so sorry and I need you and I never, ever want to leave you. But only the first few words managed to come out, and with my last bit of strength, all I could do was gasp his name, and pray that he'd know, like he'd always known, everything I wanted to say to him, everything that I felt, even without words. That I loved him, that I'd always love him, even in death. And how sorry I was, how very sorry, that I'd brought us to this end.

Just like Michelle, I'd failed him.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack


After I let go of Tony's body, I didn't have time to mourn. There was work do be done. So I wiped the tears and set aside my emotion, pushing aside the feeling of utter devastation and loss, like I always did, to save America once again.

I could never decide if it was a relief or a torture to be captured by the Chinese. At home, I could have put off the reality of his death indefinitely. I could have thrown myself into my work, kept myself busy doing something, anything, to keep from thinking, to forget about him. Or maybe I would have turned to vice again, to alcohol like I had when Teri had died, or to the bittersweet siren call of heroin, turned to anything to escape the crushing feeling of loss. Now I had nothing, just darkness and my own thoughts, and pain that couldn't touch the ache inside me. It was almost laughably easy to withstand the days of physical torture. Nothing could touch the agony, the emptiness in my heart from losing Tony. It hurt more than anything I could have imagined, more than being away from Audrey, more than Kim denying me, and perhaps even more than losing Teri. Over and over I wished they'd kill me, just to get away from it all, until it almost became a mantra. Let me escape this, let me join him, let me die.

I hated, I cursed, I wept, I screamed. I blamed god. I even blamed him, for insisting on revenging Michelle, for dying in my arms even as I begged him not to leave me. But in the end I could only blame myself, hate myself. Maybe not for his death, but for everything I'd wanted and now could never have. For the love that I felt and denied for so long. For feeling him die and not being able to do anything about it.

Looking back at my life, at our time together, I only saw lost opportunities. A few bright, hot, passionate moments of love, of Tony, of really living, spread too thin throughout so many years. So many times I could have seen him, and didn't. So many times I could have asked him to come with me, to be with me, and didn't. Why? Was I afraid? All the reasons seemed empty now, empty excuses uttered time after time. Stupid, meaningless excuses that I never should have said. And I could only hate myself more for them, for all the could have beens that now would never be.

Now the other half of my heart had stopped beating.

They said I was cold before. But part of me died that day. It didn't matter what happened to me, what the Chinese did to me in the dark, godforsaken hole they called a jail.

I was already dead.

~~~~~~