24: All the King's Men
Fandom: 24
Characters: Jack Bauer, Kim Bauer
Rating: PG
Summary: A somewhat AU possibility for a series-ending twist.
Warnings: None
Originally written: December 9, 2004
"I don't hear anything," Andrew Taylor, head of Field Ops at CTU, whispered beside him. Jack gave a quick nod in agreement. No sounds--Cartwright might have escaped already, or he might be holed up somewhere, waiting it out. Cartwright had patience--he'd proved that yesterday. It had doubtless taken a great deal of patience to wait three years to enact his revenge on the justice department, three long year of waiting and planning just how he would gain access to department headquarters, three years of planning where to place the bomb for maximum effect.
Patience. Jack just needed to have a little more patience.
Glancing back at Taylor and the CTU SWAT team, he gestured for them to fan out, check for booby traps. If Cartwright was here, he may have set up incendiaries to take out anyone who came after him, maybe to take himself out as well.
They crept in, each step as silent as possible. Jack swept the hall with his firearm and flashlight, ready to shoot should there be any hint of a target.
He never heard the gunshot, just felt the impact in his head, as though someone had just punched him just above his left ear. For a second he staggered, before his knees gave way and he slumped down the wall to the floor as gunfire erupted around him. Down the hall, he saw a body flop to the floor, red blood oozing from innumerable wounds. Cartwright. They'd got him.
He could feel something warm on his face and lifted his hand to his temple, surprised to see blood on his fingers when he pulled them back.
"Jack? Jack?" Taylor hovered over him and Jack looked up, tried to respond but he couldn't force his mouth to make the words. Everything was fuzzy, dreamlike, and he had the oddest sense of watching everything from outside himself.
"Someone get a medic in here now!" Taylor turned to the SWAT team, and one of them picked up a radio. Jack tried to get Taylor's attention; there were more important things right now, things he wanted to say, but he felt numb all over, couldn't move, and suddenly he just felt so tired.
The light was fading, and a voice in his head urged him to try and stay awake, but there seemed little he could do to stop himself from falling asleep. Taylor's voice calling his name faded, leaving him in silence.
Kim Edmunds looked up at the familiar plain, unadorned windows with the same feelings she always did: dread and hopelessness. The grounds were well-kept as usual, patients and their families going for walks in the late afternoon sun. It should have looked peaceful, should have been reassuring, but somehow the trees and bushes couldn't liven up the sterile concrete and glass. So many visits, and yet so little had changed. Sometimes she had to wonder why she even bothered. There were always other things she could be doing on a Sunday afternoon, but somehow she could never stop herself from coming.
Reflexively, she checked her watch: four-forty-five in the afternoon; precicely on time. She always arrived promptly for the last fifteen minutes of visiting time. Fifteen minutes every two weeks; it seemed so awful to spend so little time with her father, but then many people probably wouldn't have bothered coming at all.
The routine was the same: sign in, take the elevator up to the third floor, then the familiar walk down the hall to her father's room. Never a variation. Had he known about the routineness of these occasions he'd probably have approved. He'd always had his routines, she'd always assumed it was his military background. Some of it had rubbed off on her, some hadn't. She was always punctual, never late for anything, but she wasn't quite as particular as her dad had been.
Now his whole life is one big routine, she thought, Awake at the same time, asleep at the same time, meals at the same times every day, physiotherapy with the same person at the same time, the same rooms, the same people, day in day out. The thought was oppressive and she mentally shook herself, trying to appear natural, not wanting her father to know how she felt. Though again, she had to wondered why she even bothered hiding her emotions; chances were he'd never notice the difference.
As she walked in the room, one of the technicians was just packing up the EEG machine. Electroencephalography: the measurement of brainwave activity, and a process she was fairly familiar with. There had been a few times her father's doctors had asked her to speak to him, while he was hooked up to an EEG, to see if her presence had any effect. It was another of the words she'd become uneasily familiar with, thanks to her father's condition. There had been a time when she couldn't even pronounce it, and there were times she wished she still couldn't. When she wished that she didn't have to know these things.
The tech turned, and she recognised him: Kerry. He had talked her through that first time she'd seen her father with electrodes stuck all over his head, like some creature from a science fiction movie.
"Hey," he said, with a smile and nod in her direction, before addresing her father as he wound the EEG's power cable around the cart. "Hey, Mr. Bauer, your daughter's here to visit." Turning back to her as he pushed the cart out of theroom, he said in a lower tone, "He was pretty active for a while, but about ten minutes ago his activity dropped. It looks like he's in one of those dormant periods." He shrugged apologetically. Kim just nodded in response. It didn't seem to matter whether her father's brain activity was "active" or "dormant"; she could never tell any difference between the two. She waited for Kerry to leave before tunring back to her father; she preferred to face him alone.
He was sitting in his chair as he always was, staring at his hands folded in his lap. Kim took the chair across from him, taking one of his hands in hers. She sat there for a moment without speaking, the silence heavy around her. There were no noises in the room except the whirring of the machine that pumped liquid nourishment directly into his stomach through a feeding tube. In the hall she could hear the squeaking of an orderly's sneakers on the tile floor, the footsteps a steady, regular rhythm in the background.
"Hi, Dad," she said, clearing her throat, "I hope you're feeling okay. I see you're wearing the sweats I brought you last time, they look comfortable. Chase wears his whenever he's hanging around the house, so I knew you'd probably like them.
"Work's been pretty busy--we had a hacker try to break into our server last week, which locked up the entire system as it tried to keep them from getting access. They didn't get in, but no one got any work done all day--we were all trying to put up firewalls and re-route information so they couldn't do too much damage. Things have been pretty quiet since then, though. It's just...well, work, you know?
"Uh...Chloe and Angela couldn't come today. Chloe had a ballet practice, and I've told you about Angie--she wants to do everything her big sister does. They said to say that they love their Granddad though, and they'll come see you next time, I know they will." Her mouth felt dry, as it always did when she lied, and she wondered if he could still tell when she was lying as he always had when she was little. She couldn't understand why she always made up these elaborate excuses why no one but her came to visit; the doctors said he probably didn't hear or understand anything she said. But she always felt she needed to explain. Maybe it was her own guilt for not telling the girls about their grandfather, but really, how do you explain something like catatonia to five- and three-year-olds? How do you introduce them to a grandfather that doesn't know they exist?
She swallowed, her fingers running over his wedding band. "I...I got a Christmas card from Mr. Chappelle last week. He said to say hello. I called him to let him know about the card and we, uh...talked about you for a while. He's doing better, still on inhalers, but he can go for long walks again. He said it's helped a lot now that the military has finally recognised Gulf War Syndrome as a disease--they're paying his medical bills now.
"I know you and he never really got along very well, but...I don't know, I think everything that happened just...changed him. I mean, he told me that he was just a stupid kid back then. He stood up for you all through the hearing about the incident. Didn't really help much, but he did what he could. He said that he still doesn't understand how they could blame it on you. You'd think in a friendly fire incident they'd blame the ones that did the firing, especially as you were injured, but I guess it was just easier to blame the person who couldn't answer back. I mean, a lot of commanding officers probably reported the wrong co-ordinates for their units, only nothing bad ever happened, so they were never reprimanded for it." She swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat.
"Oh, he also said he's been emailing back and forth with Sergeant Palmer. He's back in the Gulf--he was supposed to come home last month, but they're holding his unit over for a while, as an added security force in Baghdad. He's not too happy about it, but what can he do?"
Kim looked at her watch: four-fifty-five. Five minutes before she could leave, go home to her family and try and put this behind her for another two weeks. Looking back at her father, she squeezed his hand. She wasn't sure why she did it--she'd long given up getting any kind of response--but if there was any way he could tell that she was there...well, she wanted him to know. All the years she'd been coming, she'd never received any kind of response from him. It didn't matter what she told him about: the death of his wife--her mother--in a car accident, her marriage, the birth of his grandchildren; there was never a response of any kind. No movement, no sound. He barely even blinked. Somewhere inside that hollow shell was the man she'd run to with scraped knees, teddy bears and storybooks, the one she'd planned on walking her down the aisle on her wedding day. The one who'd gone off to war when she was eleven, and who had never come back.
Letting go of his hand, she gently touched his face, ruffled his short hair with her fingers. She traced the line of the three-inch scar that ran in a horizontal line back from his forehead, two inches above his right ear. They'd been able to remove the bullet from his skull, but they hadn't been able to unlock whatever door had closed between him and the world. Humpty Dumpty, forever broken despite the best efforts of the king's horses and men.
Her hand dropped, finding his once more. She followed his gaze to his wrist, to the watch she'd bought him years ago for Christmas, when she still had been struggling to accept that he wasn't going to come back to her. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. He'd always been so concerned with the time, with being punctual. She'd thought it would drive him nuts to be in a room with no clocks, to never know the time.
She watched him for a moment, watched him blink slowly, watched him breathe in and out. Routine. It never seemed to matter what was going on inside his head, there was never any changes in his breathing, his heart rate, in any physiological response. It was the same whether his brain activity was going wild, or whether it was slow and sedate. There was always at least some activity in one spot near the creative centre of the brain, even during those times the doctors called "dormant"; as though his mind had gone to sleep for a while.
From what the doctors had said, there had to be something going on in there, and perhaps some of the outside world was getting in, though it was impossible to tell. A long time ago, she'd hoped that maybe that meant he'd start to react to the outside world, but years of unresponsiveness had taught her not to hope.
"You know," she said quietly, conspiritorially, "Sometimes I have to wonder what goes on in that head of yours as you stare into space all day. I can't imagine that there's just nothing--no thought, no sound, nothing. Is there a whole other world in there? And don't you ever notice that it's not real?"
She jumped as his watch beeped, and she glanced at it. Five o'clock. As though on cue, one of the nurses knocked on the door and popped their head in. Kim recognised her: Michelle, the senior floor nurse, and a favourite. Michelle seemed to understand that while she and Kim could discuss their families and their jobs, Kim never liked to talk about her visits to her father.
"Hi, Kim. Visiting hours are up," Michelle said, with an apologetic smile. Kim nodded her thanks and Michelle retreated, letting Kim have a final moment alone with her father.
Picking up her purse, Kim kissed him on the cheek and squeezed his hand one last time. At one time she would have held his hand a moment longer, hoping to feel his fingers closing around hers in response, but she didn't do that anymore. Instead, she gently placed his hand back in his lap and stood up, closing the door softly behind her as she left with only a single look back.
Signing out, Kim pulled her car keys from her bag, taking a deep breath to try and calm herself. She never cried after these visits. Instead, as she walked to her car she thought of what she'd do when she got home. She'd get dinner for Angie and Chloe, give them baths and put them to bed, after curling up with them and reading them a story, listening to how their day had gone. She'd hug them tightly, hoping they knew how precious they were to her.
Then she and Chase would sit down to a late dinner together, talk about things, before snuggling on the sofa and watching a movie before bed. She'd be with her family, she'd be surrounded by love and comfort.
And she wouldn't let herself think about her father.
"Dad? Dad?" Jack felt as though he was drifting awake after a very long sleep, the throbbing pain in his head helping to break through some of the mental fog. Opening his eyes, he could see Kim looking down at him, concerned. Taylor was right behind her, and he realized he was moving. Of course; they were still at the warehouse, and he was probably being taken to a waiting ambulance. Kim had been co-ordinating the data transfer between the insertion team and CTU headquarters from a support truck, she would have heard the entire thing.
He tried to talk, but there was something covering his mouth: an oxygen mask. But he needed to let her know everything was going to be fine, that he was going to be all right. He always was, in the end. She need to know that. She worried too much, particularly after Teri's death.
He felt her take his hand, and he squeezed it as hard as he could, trying to tell her all the things he couldn't say aloud. She gave him a teary smile in response, and he knew that though he couldn't say those things at the moment, she knew them already.