Jack gritted his teeth and concentrated on his hand, willing his fingers to stop trembling, The sweat was pouring off his brow, and his stomach churned with waves of nausea. He withdrew the needle, put it down and slapped at his arm, bringing more blood to his elbow joint. He picked up the needle again, probing into his flesh, aiming for the vein.

He'd promised himself that shooting up at home would be off limits, but that wasn't really going to make a difference now that Kate was gone. Just as well, because he couldn't have stood a car ride to the park to find a quiet, secluded spot. His hands were shaking too badly to get the keys in the ignition, let alone drive for twenty minutes.

Kate...he knew that he shouldn't have yelled at her, that he shouldn't take things out on her, but his nerves had been rubbed raw, and everything in his path became a target, including her. Despite his cold demeanor, she had remained sweet, and loving. She had tried to comfort him, even when the last thing he deserved was her understanding, her support.

Grunting in frustration, Jack hastily wiped the back of his hand across his brow, mopping off the sweat that dripped into his eyes, stinging and blinding him. He readjusted his grip on the syringe and repositioned it again, cursing his trembling limbs. God, to make all this disappear...if only he could stop shaking...

He had been helping to dry dishes when the shaking had started and he'd dropped a glass, shattering it. Concerned, Kate had asked what was wrong, and he had lost his temper, flying into an unintentional rage. Shocked by what was becoming his more frequent displays of a violent temper, she had demanded an explanation, but he had denied any problem - denials soon turned to justifications, and then to accusations. Kate had tried with quiet dignity to dispel the mounting fight, until finally her resolve broke and the tears came. The well-deserved accusations began to fly back towards him.

The last month and a half since his return had seen the downward spiral of their relationship. He didn't deny it, it had been wholly his fault - his short, single word responses, the extra time he spent hiding at work, often not returning until long after she had gone to sleep. His disinterest when they lay in bed together, and rejections each time she reached out to touch him - the distance had been growing between them, and she'd demanded to know what was going on.

"Maybe I just want you to leave me alone," he had said. He had stared resolutely at the floor, gripping the countertop edge until his knuckles whitened. He'd been unable to look up, to acknowledge the agony painted into the lines of Kate's expression.

She'd fled, telling him she would give him a week to pack his belongings, and would be at her father's house until he was gone. He'd heard her car pulling out of the driveway with squealing tires. He had stalked the house, throwing things, breaking dishes, furniture, and anything else that came in his sights. He'd hurled his phone against the wall and smashed it into electronic dust when it had begun to ring. He'd torn the house apart, trying to find some distraction, to turn his mind away from the nagging, obvious solution to the painful state he was in. He had lasted nearly two hours before his trembling hands sought out his hidden kit.

Sitting on the couch, he heaved a sigh of relief as a plume of blood blossomed in the bottom of the syringe, signaling that he had struck a vein. His stomach turned again, this time in self-loathing at the desperate solace he found in this action. He closed his eyes, urging himself to pull the needle out and fling it away. Instead his thumb crept with a will of its own to the plunger and pressed it down, feeding the drug into his veins.

The habits of months of use guided his hands as he snapped off the tourniquet, tossing it and the needle onto the small tin container next to him. There was a visceral jolt that slammed through him, and he let himself relax into the couch, his body momentarily in ecstatic contentment as it hungrily processed the heroin swimming through his system.

The island of peace, the finite moments between shooting up and coming down were getting shorter and shorter. Since his return from his undercover operation with the Salazar's, Jack had been decreasing the dosage ever so slightly in order to wean himself from his addiction. He had briefly considered entering himself into the methadone program at work, but to do so would mean endless time off, and the suspicion and pity of his coworkers. All that time at home, with nothing to do but think, and remember. He couldn't stand the idea of leaving work again - he had been off for a year after Teri's death, and every day had stretched on into endless oblivion, each impossibly more tedious and relentless than the day before.

So he bore the shakes, the nausea, the constant irritation. As his dosage decreased, so did his relief, and the withdrawal was sharper and sharper. He craved a fix all the time, and when he did finally succumb the amount of time he was left with a clear head and a lucid perspective was limited, and then it began all over again. It was unbearable, to have his body betray him like this.

Jack took an easy breath, and rubbed his hands over his eyes. They had finally stopped shaking.

A pounding noise began to creep its way into the periphery of Jack's senses. He listened without really hearing it, absorbing the sounds, not connecting them to anything.

"Dad?" a muffled voice called.

The voice, Kim's voice, penetrated the haze, and he forced his eyes to open and focus. She must be outside, knocking on the front door. Calling out to him, wondering if he was alright. Goddamn it, why now? His head rolled to the side and he blinked, trying to clear his head, to think. It was so hard to think.

There was a click at the front door. "Dad, are you home?" Kim's voice rang out through the house. She had let herself in.

The kit. It was still out, still lying on the couch next to him, impossibly far away for his leaden arms to reach.

He heard Kim's footsteps down the hall.

In underwater slow motion movements, he placed a hand on the drug paraphernalia and swept it together, cramming it under the seat cushions of the couch. He lay across the cushion, arranging himself as though he had been napping.

Kim appeared in the entrance to the living room, opposite where Jack was lying. She peered in, brow knit in concern.

The living room had taken the brunt of his anger, with coffee table flipped over and knick-knacks smashed. There was a long moment, and Kim examined the scene, and then Jack lying on the couch. Why had she come now, he thought. Mercifully, she hadn't come any sooner, while he writhed in humiliating withdrawal, needle poised to provide relief.

"Kate phoned me, told me what happened." Kim stood awkwardly in the doorway, seemingly unsure whether or not to come farther into the room. "Are you ok?"

A long pause. "Dad, talk to me."

He refocused his eyes on her at her quiet prompting. The conversation felt distant and faintly removed from his reality, but he tried to lock onto it. He couldn't face her, couldn't talk to her while he was like this. He had before, of course, when he'd first returned, when shooting up had been required just to be able to get up in the morning, to be able to stand without curling in pain and sickness, to help him think of anything besides getting a fix. He had tried to hide from everyone, withdrawing from all except those he was forced to face every day - Chloe, his assistant, irritatingly omnipresent, and Chase, his partner. Chase, he suspected, knew that something was going on, but had kept his mouth shut so far. No one else saw him often enough to put the pieces together, to catch him in the act while hiding in the washroom, or his office, or the park, or the basement...Kim had been spared. So far, anyway. That's what he had been trying to do today - to spare Kate, but that had only resulted in losing her.

"I don't want to lose you too," he whispered. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes.

Kim broke out of her paralysis and approached him, knelt by the couch, and lightly brushed a hand across his cheek to sweep away the tears. "Dad, you're not going to lose me - you never are going to lose me, you know that." Her arms came to circle him, and she buried her head against the crook of his neck.

Jack's senses, dulled and unguarded, leapt at the human contact, and he broke down into shuddering sobs, clutching at his daughter and rocking back and forth in her comforting grasp.

Kim held her father with increasing alarm. In the years that they had grown closer, she had rarely seen her father cry, and even then, it had only been a few tears, silently and unwillingly shed through gritted teeth, unacknowledged or denied. The broken, sobbing man before her hardly seemed like the father she knew. At the same time as it scared her, it also gave her hope. In the endless counseling sessions she had finally convinced her father to endure with her, the therapist had continually encouraged Jack to show his emotions, to share his feelings with himself at least, if he could not bring himself to do so with his daughter. And now, it seemed, losing Kate had broken down whatever barrier had been holding it all back. Though it scared her to see him abandon his reserve so completely, she reminded herself of all the times he had held her in this way, comforting her and protecting her through everything they had faced. She lifted her head, bolstering her reserve t o look her grieving father in the face.

"You'll be alright, I'm here, you're going to be okay," Kim whispered, brushing the sweat-plastered hair back off his forehead.

After a time, Jack subsided, and Kim drew back, sitting by the couch, clutching his hand. She watched him for a long time as he stared off into
the distance, eyes boring into the living room wall opposite him, deep in thought.

As her mind wandered idly, she wondered what would have happened if she hadn't come today. For a while after her mother's death, she had feared coming home, wondering if the next time she came through the door it would be to find her father's body. It had begun when one night she had come home to find him contemplating a gun in the study drawer with hypnotic intensity, one hand clutching a well-worn photograph. She'd left the room without him noticing her presence, slipping away to her bedroom to crawl under the covers where she lay shivering in fear.

That night was the first time she dreamed the now-familiar reoccurring nightmare: she was sitting at the kitchen table across from him, and he was holding the gun. He would look up at her and sadly whisper, "I'm sorry Kim," then move the barrel to his lips and pull the trigger. She would scream and scream for him to stop, that he couldn't leave her alone, but he didn't listen, and she would watch as his eyes went dead and sightless, his mangled head rolling back to stare at the ceiling as his body slumped down in the chair. Soon after the dreams had begun, she had started looking for an au pair position. Anything to get away from him, from the overwhelming grief in their house.

Now, losing Kate, she wondered if the balance he had struck in his precarious emotional state had been tipped. For a time, anger had driven
him to continue, but in the last while, that had faded, and he seemed almost happy, and content. He was still not the happy man she remembered from her childhood, who had tickled and teased her, patiently taught her chess, taken her swimming and fishing and biking... he was diminished, a shadow of the man she remembered, but he had been returning.

Then the mission.

Something had happened when he was away. Working at CTU, she was given access to more of her father's undercover activities than she had ever been privy to before, and it helped some. At least she knew where he was, rather than all those years as a kid when he had just disappeared off the face of the earth for six months at a time. In many ways, however, it was much worse. To know what kind of danger he put himself in, the people he was associating with...

Something had gone very wrong when he was in Mexico. He wasn't the same when he came back. It had disintegrated the strengthening bonds Kim had begun to build with him, and she was sure it was at fault for his abrupt split with Kate, too. Still, he wouldn't talk about it. He had been debriefed, of course, but the files were confidential, and above her clearance access. She had asked Michelle to release them to her, just because she had to know, but Michelle had told her no, she couldn't do that, and it was inappropriate to ask. As Kim's face burned with embarrassment, Michelle had said, "Ask your dad. He may tell you what you need to know."

She wanted to know, but she was still afraid to ask.

"Do you want to talk about what happened with Kate?" Kim tentatively offered after nearly a half-hour of silence.

Her dad's blue eyes slid towards her, lighting on her. A small smile graced his lips, then faded. "It's over. I'll be moving out, back to the old
place." The house they'd never sold, despite the fact neither of them lived there anymore. Moving back into the old place, full of memories, full of a life they'd both tried to leave behind them.

"What happened?" she asked. He frowned at her, and she nervously bit at her bottom lip, waiting for the inevitable snap. His temper had been quite short lately, and even with her he had been gruff and disgruntled. With everyone else, he had been intolerable.

He didn't yell. Instead, he answered, "things have been bad lately. I'm not myself. I..." He stopped mid sentence, voice trailing into nothing. He searched her face for a moment. His mouth worked again. He seemed about to say something, but no sound came out. An agonized expression briefly flitted across his features.

Kim held her breath, afraid to disturb this delicate moment of honesty from him.

Abruptly, his mouth closed, and he gave her a sad little smile. "It's just better we separate." As though exhausted by the effort of his contemplation, his eyes drifted closed. "Don't worry about it sweetheart, it'll be fine. I'll be fine."

His breathing became heavier, steadier. She squeezed his hand, but he didn't respond. He seemed to have fallen asleep, despite the fact that it was only the middle of the day. It must have been some fight they'd had, to shake her father this badly - normally, he was an immovable rock, phased by nothing.

"Dad?" she said quietly. He didn't respond.

She sighed, slipping her hand from his. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them. A rare moment of truth from her father, and it was gone. He never really told her how he felt anymore.

She doubted she would find the answers she needed from him today. She would have to wait. She always waited.

Jack feigned sleep for nearly an hour before Kim quietly stood and slipped out of the living room. He heard her scribble a note on the kitchen counter, and then make her way to the front door, closing and locking it behind her.

He rolled over onto his back, sighing. Already he could feel the faint beginnings of the familiar swirling in his stomach and knots in his muscles. He wiped his hand over his face to dry his dampening skin. He cursed himself for his stupidity.

He'd almost told her. He blushed with shame at the memory of it. What good would it have done to tell her? What possible excuse could he think of to burden her with the knowledge that he was a pathetic junkie, filling himself with drugs just to get through the day? That Kate had left him because he was irrational and hateful from the withdrawal symptoms, because he wasn't strong enough to make it through without being an asshole to everyone?

The confession had been on his tongue. The urge to tug out the little kit hidden securely under the couch cushion had danced in his mind, taunting him, convincing him that Kim would understand, would help him, would still love him.

NO.

Jack firmly shoved the idea out of his thoughts. This problem was his own to deal with. He had created it, he would solve it, without placing another burden on his daughter. She had faced enough in life because of him, and more worries and pointless shit because of him was the last thing he needed to hand her.

He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around the room. It was empty, and wrecked.

Like him.

His stomach twinged again, and he gulped down the nausea. He lifted the cushion to find the kit, to return it to its proper hiding spot, but he
paused.

He looked at it. He opened it and stared at the needle, the vial, the tourniquet. So tempting, so reassuring. What could it hurt, he was on half-doses anyway.

It didn't really matter any more, did it?

He loaded up another shot, and was lost again.

THE END

Did you like the story? You have complaints?
How about letting the author now what you think about her work?
Feedback to ChloeO'Brian (Please write in English)