Pausing
for Death
by Catch22Girl
Summary: Post season four. A moment.
Disclaimer: Characters not mine, belong
to Real Time Productions and FOX.
No one would stop him.
It wasn't a 'you'll be sorry when I'm gone,' last scream
at an uncaring world or a man feeling sorry for himself -
it was just the simple truth. Everyone who would stay his
hand either thought him already dead or had no way of
contacting him. After years of serving others, protecting
others, spending time with the worst people imaginable
and sinking below their level to get the mission done, he
was on his own, alone, and without a future.
He was already older than his dad was when he'd died in
Vietnam. Jack would have managed that even if he'd died
on that night six years ago. In some ways, his mom was
never the same after she got the news, and until he held
his wife's body in his arms and saw all the color bleed
out of the world, he couldn't relate to how she felt.
By then, she was gone, taken by cancer a few years
earlier - and he'd been so wrapped up in his career that
at the end his wife spent more time with her than he did.
It was a few months before Nightfall and her death
followed by the death of his men - he'd thought that had
crushed him. He'd thought there was nowhere lower, and
all the eight years since proved was that he was wrong.
Back in DC, he was barely holding it together with a
lover, friends, a support system, a highly respected job,
and bi-monthly psychiatric visits. Because of events
beyond his control he was starting from scratch but with
a different name, a pieced together backstory, and he
wasn't sure if he had the strength or desire to really
put effort into it.
All he knew was that he was beginning to wish Tony hadn't
been able to bring him back. Living with his past was
hard enough. Remembering everything and being incapable
of fixing a single thing, that was just about killing him.
He was starting to get nightmares about events he thought
he'd finally put behind him and the new memories were
twisted around. He'd had one a few nights ago that was so
bad that he woke up drenched and thought about how easy
it would be to get a fix. He'd almost done it too, had
slipped on his shoes and stood in front of the closed
motel door, eventually just leaning his head against the
metal and taking a deep breath.
His friends didn't risk their lives for him to go on a
bender or slip back into an addiction. That knowledge
didn't make the guilt go away and it didn't make life any
more worth living. After all, if he got up the nerve
tonight, they'd never know what happened, they couldn't
be in contact, their lives were now completely separate.
He looked at the gun in his hands, not even his gun,
because that had to be left with the body. An untraceable
weapon although he wasn't planning on having to kill
anyone. He was important for a few hours and then, he was
sure, they promptly forgot he existed. Hit squads and
conspiracies around one man only happened in fiction. In
real life, it was easy to disappear, it was the not
losing yourself that was the most difficult part.
It would be easy to pull the trigger, all those
safeguards and rationales for staying alive, they didn't
mean much when fear and sorrow ruined nights and made
days seem interminable.
Six years ago he sat with a gun, and no matter how much
he drank or how much he hurt, his hand still trembled and
something kept him from death.
For all his bravery, when there was no reason to die, he
couldn't overcome his will to live.
END
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