whathastobedone | For Jack Bauer -- a MM thread

The pain in his abdomen registers before he realizes its cause.

Oh god, she stabbed me.

He barely notices the look in her eyes changing from one of fear to to one of horror as he staggers backward, his knees buckling. Instinctively his left hand goes to the wound site, his brain distantly noticing warmth and stickiness and the hardness of the knife handle that's still embedded in his gut; the shock of the injury making him feel as though it's some separate part of him doing the analysis.

He grabs for the couch as he falls, but misses, a new wave of agony going through him as he hits the floor. Without really thinking of what he's doing, he pulls off his glasses, hand groping for something in his jacket before he really knows what he's looking for.

Cellphone, need help, more men here, get up, get up--

She didn't think anything could be more terrifying than the thought of Vladimir retaliating -- somehow finding a way to hurt her again -- but when she opens her eyes and sees those steel green irises, pupils small with shock and pain, her whole world seems to shrink.

She lets go of the knife like it's suddenly turned hot, but it's too late. She can see it on his face, and then the wound as he stumbles backwards and falls, and a myriad of thoughts race through her head, but she can't single out and identify just one.

She's searching for her center, searching for that calm she had even when Ziya's blood was hitting her face as she sheered off his thumb. She has to act, she has to fix what she's done somehow -- Jack's hand goes for his jacket and she thinks numbly that she should call for help -- but she's frozen to the spot, staring in horror.

It isn't until Lugo enters the room that her numb stupor breaks. She whips her head up in time to see the recognition in his eyes and his hand searching for his weapon, but her mind is racing so fast with what she's done to Jack that she can't single out a course of action to take.

He catches the movement of Renee's gaze from himself to someone else, hears something drop in the room--

Get up now--

--battles through the pain as he sits up, pulling the knife from his abdomen as he spots Lugo aiming his gun at Renee. Training and instinct take over, hardly realizing he's thrown the knife before it hits Lugo in the throat, the man gurgling as he falls to the floor.

Footsteps outside--how many more men did Laitanan have here again?--he grabs the pistol on the floor and comes up on one knee, every bend and twist and stretch filling his belly with fire.

Shadows move outside the office, and Jack fires at them, the silhouettes falling to the floor and leaving only the sound of Renee's ragged gasps beside him.

It all happens so fast.

Just as soon as one thought clears -- get down, idiot, before he kills you! -- something else happens. She jumps as Lugo hits the picture behind him, glass shattering around his shoulders. She doesn't even register the knife in his throat until he's already on his knees.

She feels mired in molasses when she turns her head to look at Jack -- snap out of it; remember how to treat a field wound -- but he's already moving. He grabs the gun and starts firing, and everything turns to static in her head, ears ringing with the discharge. She fights the urge to cover her ears and hide -- they're coming, find a piece and back him up, damnit! -- but she can't help but flinch.

And when she opens her eyes, it's all over.

Her knees give way as the shock starts to leave her system, just as Jack turns to look at her.

She can't return the gaze.

Jack drops the gun, looking over at Renee in time to see her fall to her knees. The look of shock on her face is starting to crack, and he pulls himself to his feet, propelled by a need to hold her that he isn't going to question or examine too closely at the moment.

Every movement hurts like hell, but it isn't enough to stop him from taking the few steps toward her, then kneeling in front of her and pulling her into his arms.

"It's all right. It's all right," he whispers, rocking her gently as he places one hand on the back of her neck, pulling her into his shoulder. "It's okay."

She feels numb from head-to-toe, until suddenly Jack is there, cradling her against him tenderly. She doesn't remember him moving, but that doesn't matter. What matters is he's there.

Not dead.

She pulls in one shaky breath after another as he rocks her, assuring her everything is all right. It's not, she thinks. It's not all right. Nothing about this is all right.

But, with him there she can't help but think that maybe, just maybe, it will be.

One choked sob escapes her throat as the adrenalin dissipates, and the reality of what just happened begins to sink in. She knows she has to keep it together; she can't break down here, now. But right now, she just wants to believe what he's whispering to her.

It's all right.

It's okay.

Even though he can feel his bloodied shirt sticking to his skin, even though he wants to curl into himself with the pain, he stays where he is. He doesn't feel lightheaded or any shakier than he'd expect considering what just happened. Only the pain, and he's had a lot of experience dealing with that. He can hold her a little longer, let her cry it out. To be honest, he doesn't exactly want to let go of her for his own sake, either. Not with how close he came to losing her.

But the stab wound and the aftermath of the last few minutes aren't things that he can ignore too long. He needs to call CTU, tell them that Laitanan is dead so they can start working other leads. He needs to get checked out by CTU medical, make sure it's just a flesh wound, that something isn't going to appear later.

Suddenly, he realizes there's an option other than CTU. One that will buy them some time.

"Renee?" he asks, once he thinks her sobs are starting to lessen, "Listen to me. When you went in the bar an hour ago, what door did you use?"

She's breathing so hard at this point, trying to keep her tears under control, that it takes a minute for her to focus on his question.

"The bar?" She shakes her head a little, eyes hollow and sunken. "I -- was in the bathroom..."

Maybe it's because she's shaking so much that she doesn't notice the effects of the stab wound right away; or maybe she was just so overwhelmed by her own emotions that she didn't even think, but it occurs to her then why he's asking. She pulls back in barely contained frenzy.

"Jack, your side -- my god," she chokes, shaking fingers moving to the bloody hole in his shirt. "We need to get you help; get this looked at."

Her glassy eyes settle on his face, wide with concern and alarm.

"It's okay," he says, softly and evenly, trying to keep her calm. She needs something to focus on, something to do.

Cupping her cheek in his palm, he says, "Go to the bathroom and get a small towel or see if there's a first-aid kit. When you come back out, close the door behind you. Okay?"

She nods in three quick, jerky motions (ignoring the brief wave of nausea as she's reminded of her own trauma), both hands reaching to cradle and squeeze the hand he has at her cheek before scuffling to her feet, quickly making her way into the bathroom.

She knows she won't find any first-aid; she already searched the bathroom, the instant she had a moment to herself. But she knows where to find clean towels, and a bottle of alcohol.

She returns quickly on legs that feel like jell-o, almost forgetting to close the door behind her.

"Are y-you feeling light-headed at all? Dizzy, or weak?" she asks after yanking the door shut, and coming back to his side. She's trying to force some clarity, and remember what she learned with the bureau. "Where's the pain, w-what kind is it? Does it burn, or ache, or feel sharp? Or--"

Jack quickly unbuttons his shirt as she goes to get what he'd asked for. The wound's still bleeding, but not gushing. Of course that could mean it's pooling in his abdominal cavity instead.

He looks up as she comes back in, reaching for the towel and the alcohol. "No, I'm not dizzy, or anything that feels like I'm going into shock," he says, though he's not entirely sure he'd realize it if he was. "And it's kind of all of the above. I think it's just a flesh wound, but I should go into the bar and get it checked out. The infirmary there can fix pretty much anything."

"Infirmary?"

She had to admit, once she stepped out the door and back into this office, that the place he had referred to as "Milliways" felt a lot more real. No hallucination, drug-induced or otherwise, can just come and go like that. But the concept of a magical bar with an infirmary still has her looking at him like he's crazy.

Or maybe it's you. You are the crazy one, after all -- everyone knows that by now, and if they don't, they will soon enough.

She rubs her brow, leaving a smear of blood -- god knows whose -- on her pale skin, trying to get a good look at the entrance site now that the bloody cotton is out of the way.

"Jack, I don't know, it... it looks deep."

That's what she says. But, what she thinks is that it felt deep, the puncture and slice of his skin still echoing in the muscles of her hand, making her eyes burn with tears of shame.

Jack pours some alcohol on the towel, then presses it against the wound. The resulting sting makes him wince, coaxing a groan from his throat despite his attempts to not show just how much it hurts.

"It'll be fine. Trust me, I've used the bar's infirmary before. They're able to do things there you couldn't dream of here. If we can get in there, that is. If not, we just call CTU." He sure as hell hopes that this works.

Slowly he gets to his feet, hunching slightly as standing straight is just one more way to tug on the muscles in his torso and cause himself more pain.

She can't help but reach for his hand when he winces and groans, covering his knuckles with shaking fingertips as he holds that towel in place.

"I'm so sorry. God, I'm so, so sorry."

She moves with him as he slowly rises, not loosening the careful grip she has on his hand until he's on his feet, and then she's moving to his other side to put her arm around him -- if not for support, then to at least give herself the illusion of helping while they make their way toward the door.

"It's okay, Renee. It was an accident." He glances at the side of her neck, spotting a small, horizontal scar there, then looks back up at her with a forced smile. "I think you could say that we're even."

They reach the door to the bathroom and he says a quick prayer as he reaches for the doorknob. He doesn't realize that he's holding his breath until he opens the door and sees the bar on the other side, letting out a sigh of relief.

She looks at him sharply when he talks about them being "even," clearly not amused.

When the bar opens up in front of them and they've made their way across the threshold, letting the real world fade behind them, she says:

"First you have to heal up all right; then you can start making jokes."

"Thought you'd be used to gallows humour," he says, smiling tightly as they make their way through the bar to the infirmary.

Pushing through the doors, Jack spots a familiar, weathered face sitting at a desk in the otherwise empty room, a cigarette dangling from one hand.

The older, white-haired man looks up, giving Jack a once-over. "What the frak did you get into now, Bauer?"

Jack gives Renee and the doctor a weak smile as he heads for the nearest bed. "Renee, meet Doc Cottle, ship's doctor aboard the Galactica and part-time doctor in Milliways."

It's difficult to not go on sensory overload just moving through the bar after everything that's just happened. Her mind is still reeling, and it will be for a while; Vladimir meant it when he hit her. And the shock hasn't completely worn off.

"Sure I am," she says, following his lead to where the infirmary is, not letting herself get distracted. "But I hear so much less of it ever since trying to kill myself."

She blinks at the doctor once they push through those doors, wondering to herself if a doctor should really be smoking in an exam room, and what kind of message that sends to his patients.

She nods her greeting, too distracted by her need to see Jack through to the exam table, where he can sit and rest, to be more polite (or audibly ask what a mariner is doing here). But she does fix Jack with a look.

"'Bauer'? You've been here before?"

She shouldn't be surprised, really.

"Wasn't like I was talking about that. Besides, you assume that I was joking in the first place."

Jack doesn't say anything for a moment as he sits down on the bed, then lies back; he can't really. It hurts too much, bending to sit down and lifting his legs onto the bed, and he finds himself holding his breath until he's lying down.

"Oh yeah, Jack's been in here a few times; though I thought that infection you had would have broken the habit. What is it this time? Concussion, broken rib--"

Jack interrupts Cottle before he can list off everything Jack's had to seek medical attention for. "Gotta make you earn those supplies somehow," he says, lifting the towel so Cottle can see. "It's a stab wound."

She stays by his side a long while after he's lying flat, concerned and scared by the pain she reads on his features, and the tightness in his motions.

"It was an angular thrust," she mutters, her voice empty like a dry well. "Uh, six inch blade, not perforated. Maybe--maybe, uh, thirty degree angle."

She shakes her head, trying to think it out rationally as she steps back to give the doctor room to work.

(Her eyes stay focused numbly on Jack, though.)

Jack catches the curious, appraising look that Cottle throws Renee's way, but he's not sure whether it's what she's saying or her tone that's caught Doc's interest.

"You should know better than to pull the knife out," he says, turning his attention back to Jack.

"I know, I didn't have a choice. I needed it," Jack grinds out between his teeth as Cottle prods the wound.

"I'm going to give you a local anaesthetic so I can see what's going on in there without cutting you open," Cottle says brusquely, grabbing a syringe from a drawer. "If things don't look good, then I'll have to knock you out."

Jack gives Cottle a tight smile. Cottle might not have much of a bedside manner, but Jack kind of likes it that way. "Stick to the local; we're in the middle of something."

"That's too bad, because this's going to knock you on your ass for a good half an hour," Cottle says, prepping the syringe. Once it's ready, he looks back over at Renee. "You staying for this? Because if you're not sure you can handle it, you'd probably better go now. Or at least grab a chair."

Just because her focus is on Jack, doesn't mean she misses the look on the doctor's face. What it does mean, is that she has a good excuse for pretending not to notice it.

(The lurching feeling in her stomach, however, is slightly harder to ignore.)

She's already backing her way to one of the chairs in the room when he starts talking to her, and under better circumstances he might have gotten a smirk -- or even a laugh -- in answer. Tonight, she simply shifts her hollow eyes to his face and half-shrugs.

"I can handle it."

It sounds uncannily like "I've seen worse."

It takes a couple minutes from the injection of the anaethetic, but soon Jack can feel the pain start to ebb, feel his muscles starting to relax and a kind of peacefulness come over him.

"Feel that?" Cottle asks, and Jack looks down to see him gently prodding the wound.

Jack shakes his head. "Can't feel it at all. Sure there aren't any opiates in this?"

"Totally different chemical makeup; gods only know which world it comes from," Cottle says, dragging over what looks like a small cable attached to a monitor. Though his mind's feeling a little hazy, Jack can put together enough of what's going to happen to look away. He might be feeling pretty peaceful at the moment, but he doesn't exactly want to see Cottle stick the scope inside his wound.

"Let's see what we've got here. Looks pretty deep, but a clean cut. Ah, there's a nick in your small intestine, and looks like you've got a slow leak. Lucky for you, it's something I can fix using this thing, instead of having to open you up. You got your wish, no knockout juice for you. When's the last time you ate?"

Jack thinks for a minute, trying to remember what time it had been when they'd come in the bar, the drugs not making it easy to remember. "Nine hours ago, I think. Hot dog at the zoo with Teri."

"Well you're going to have to stick with fluids for at least 24 hours while this heals. I'll give you a shot of antibiotics to make sure you don't get an infection, but I'm gonna have to suture the skin the old-fashioned way and insert a tube to let the wound drain."

"One more scar's not gonna hurt," Jack says, looking over at Renee as Cottle gets down to business. "Told you I was going to be okay."

Renee is watching everything that's happening closely, and at the same time... not. It's strange, like she's not inside her own head. Her mind keeps wandering to Vladimir's office, to CTU headquarters, to the look in Jack's eyes when her thrust had struck true, to an empty apartment in New York.

She's aware of the shift in Jack's body language and expression, dimly relieved to know he's experiencing some comfort. She's aware of the doctor's movements, and the confident set of his jaw.

(He was at the zoo with his granddaughter I could be on a plane to Los Angeles right now and now he's in a hospital bed again because of you.)

But it takes a second to realize Jack was speaking to her.

She blinks, focusing on his face. Closes her mouth with a hard blink and sighs, before managing a small, crooked smile.

"Not done yet."

"Maybe not, but will be soon." He looks at her carefully, trying to see if she looks hurt, but his brain isn't processing well enough to put any pieces together. "How are you feeling? I heard something fall; was that you?"

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