Jack Bauer (
out_of_time) wrote in
capeandcowllogs2012-11-19 05:53 pm
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Heads of state who ride and wrangle
WHO: Jack Bauer and Sue Storm
WHERE: NoHOPE
WHEN: Monday afternoon
WARNINGS: Probable discussion of violence and torture
SUMMARY: As part of Jack's therapy, Susan is going to interview him and work out what makes him tick.
FORMAT: Prose
They were going to make him talk to someone new today. Part of some new therapy they wanted to try on him. Jack didn't exactly like the sound of that. He had generally cooperated with the staff so far, but he didn't want anything experimental anywhere near him.
The first step was apparently an interview. That was manageable, he had done lots of interviews. Some of them had involved acid, beatings, electric shocks. He'd handle this one like the others, Jack told himself as he was led into the room and sat down behind the table. Just like his previous talks with the staff, he'd keep his cards close to his chest on the personal matters. On the things that could hurt the most.
WHERE: NoHOPE
WHEN: Monday afternoon
WARNINGS: Probable discussion of violence and torture
SUMMARY: As part of Jack's therapy, Susan is going to interview him and work out what makes him tick.
FORMAT: Prose
They were going to make him talk to someone new today. Part of some new therapy they wanted to try on him. Jack didn't exactly like the sound of that. He had generally cooperated with the staff so far, but he didn't want anything experimental anywhere near him.
The first step was apparently an interview. That was manageable, he had done lots of interviews. Some of them had involved acid, beatings, electric shocks. He'd handle this one like the others, Jack told himself as he was led into the room and sat down behind the table. Just like his previous talks with the staff, he'd keep his cards close to his chest on the personal matters. On the things that could hurt the most.
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"Hello, Mister Bauer," she said with a friendly smile as she took a seat across from him. His records were in a file in her little briefcase, along with her pad and pen for note taking. "I'm Doctor Storm."
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"I didn't know you worked in counselling as well," he says instead.
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"My role here today isn't as a counsellor. I'm here so that we can discuss your therapy options." It was more or less the truth. "Danger has several different programs designed, so today we'll be deciding which of them would be the best option for you."
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Jack didn't trust Sue's smooth, professional manner of speaking. He could read between the lines to what the core of it was- what he wanted here didn't really matter to the people in charge.
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"I'd like it if you could tell me a few things about your arrival into this world. It can be anything you like, your first impressions, perhaps, or maybe something memorable about your first few days in the City."
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"Well, I should start by saying my own world doesn't have any of this." He waved his hand. "Superpowers, superheroes, the supernatural, any of it. I didn't have any experience with this life before coming here. What I did have experience with was lies, conspiracies, situations where things weren't as they seemed. So when I first got brought here, I didn't buy it at first. I thought I'd been drugged or infected with something, that it was all a play."
He almost chuckled, and shook his head. "Before I was taken, I was... I was playing with my granddaughter. The first thing I worried about was that whoever had kidnapped me could have done something to her as well, or to the rest of my family. So my first post to the Network was about that." He'd threatened to kill everyone responsible if his loved ones had been harmed. Looking back, he could see he had been talking without any idea of what was really happening.
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"You worked for the government, isn't that right?" She looked up from the paper where she'd been jotting down a few notes. "Did you think it was the government that brought you here?"
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He thought back to those initial frantic hours, piecing together what he could find out using his previous experiences as reference. "My main theory was that some well-connected terrorist group had gone to extreme lengths for personal revenge against me. I've..." He paused.
"I've seen it happen before. That's what I thought was most likely, and that's why I was thinking about my family."
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But that was all speculation on her part. And it would make for interesting scenarios for Danger to explore with Bauer.
"Why would terrorists target you personally? Why would they go after your family? Why not... go after the government they've been targeting all along? Why single out an individual person?" An individual of no apparent import, as far as she knew. It wasn't as if he was a politician or religious figure.
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He looked up at Sue, held her eyes. "Putting personal revenge into the equation just makes them go further. They'll do anything if there's enough hate behind it. They'll-"
He broke off and looked away suddenly, swallowed. This wasn't something he wanted to talk about. "Anyway, after I was Ported in I ended up joining the C.P.D. I couldn't stay on the sidelines anymore."
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Their worlds were so different. Not just the builds of them, but the arenas in which they operated. She had no exposure to anything like that in her world, though she had no doubt such people existed. She wondered if Jack had ever seen the things she had, the pure beauty of humanity working as one to solve scientific problems, to search for medical cures, to improve the status of those around them instead of invoking fear.
"You worked your way through the ranks rather quickly. Your department... S.T.A.R.S., can you tell me about them?"
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He sighed and looked off, remembering. "I've worked with a lot of fine people," he said. "People in the military, people in intelligence services. Brave, dedicated, intelligent people willing to die defending their country. The people I commanded in S.T.A.R.S. were some of the very best. It was a good team- while it lasted."
Jack restrained himself from sighing again. Over time, the Porter and budget cuts had not just eliminated S.T.A.R.S. itself, but its former members. He was almost sure Abby was the last member still in the City. There were names there he dearly missed, friends like Yusuke and Seras.
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"And was that the only team you've commanded?" She didn't bother looking up from her paper and she scribbled down her notes. The page was getting messy. She would have to better organize her thoughts later.
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In the City there had been the Dependables as well, and various ad-hoc team-ups to handle sudden crises, but Jack wanted to keep the talk away from those if he could. Questions about his allies could end up dangerous for them.
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Jack took a deep breath, suppressed a sigh. "About two years ago Los Angeles was taken over by a group called the HIVE. They seized the civilian population as hostages, kept them from leaving. I and several other Imports were deputized by the federal government to help with evacuation."
And after days of intense urban combat in one of America's most important cities, that government had bombarded most of Jack's hometown to rubble. It was definitely the kind of thing that stood out in Jack's mind.
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"I think I have an idea of what I'd like to suggest to Danger."
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"Yeah? What's that?" He raised his eyebrows as he asked.
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"You're going to put me in a simulation of that crap? You can't be serious," he snapped. "How the hell is forcing me to relive a war and the destruction of an American city going to help anything?"
Cathartic his ass.
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She tried to look sympathetic, even as she stands up from her chair.
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Maybe she would back off if he could make her understand why he never, ever wanted to do this. "Look, a few months after the battle in Los Angeles, there was an attack on the City. I got put into a... magical sleep, trapped in a nightmare. Reliving my wife's murder-" He swallowed. "Reliving the moment I found her body. I held her and cried for two days before I finally woke up."
Jack looked down, then back up. "I never want to go through anything like that again. But now you're talking about making me relive watching my hometown get burned, by my own government. That's why I'm serious when I tell you that if you put me through this simulation, I will make sure people know what you've done."
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The ideal of owning one's decisions was deeply ingrained in Jack. So much so that he would rather be considered a criminal than be treated as though he wasn't fully accountable for the calls he'd made. He was in the asylum instead of back in Superjail because of the idea that he couldn't be held legally culpable for what he'd done. The entire premise of his treatment here cut against the core of what he believed in.
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Sue trailed off, thinking a moment. She'd seen too many people lose themselves in insanity. Reed had seemed to teeter on it so often. She'd lost and been betrayed by Victor twice. True, she barely knew Jack, but she didn't want to lose another person to the terrors of their own mind.
"If you don't try, you could be here for a very long time."
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"Either way, it was the wrong call. The system you're serving doesn't always work," he continued. "Sometimes it's corrupt, sometimes it's incompetent, and each time there's a price to be paid. That's why I lost my job- because I wouldn't stand for that anymore. Going along with it now, that's what I'd call giving up."
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"The system isn't stagnant. It's changing, Jack. Our presence is altering this world, for better or worse. Giving up isn't going to fix it. It's going to break it and leave us with nothing. Think about that."