On Death Row

His face is cold, mean, bitter, all the things he’s made a point of to be for the last six years. Infuriated, disgusted, driven only by hatred and betrayal. There’s dark stubble with tinges of grey creeping across his face and his throat. His skin is dry, calloused, scarred. He embraces it proudly, a testament to his suffering. There’s no squirming, no hesitation or anxiety as he lies on the gurney, leather ties holding him down. His arms bulge, a sign of his strength, a sign of the battles he’s fought. The tubes connecting to his purplish veins follow a neat stream to the vials. One of the men standing over the gurney says something and he spits at him.

To anybody else, Tony Almeida looks ready to embrace death.

But still Jack knows a part of him is scared. 

Jack knows there is a part of Tony aching, longing, regretting, wishing things hadn’t gone this far. He knows that there’s still a part of Tony that wants, no, needs, to cry and scream and just feel the grief and the pain that’s festered in him all these years. Everybody had said this was his way of grieving, that revenge was how Tony coped with his pain, but Jack knew that wasn’t true. Jack knew the truth was he never grieved. He never allowed himself to mourn her, and their child. To mourn the life they’d lost. Instead, he’d woken up and been indoctrinated to fight. To hate. To scorn. 

He doesn’t look the way he did when Jack cradled him in his arms after Henderson had injected him. Another part of his brain notes the irony, that he would be sentenced to die in such a similar fashion. But at that moment, his face still charred from the car bomb, his eyes still so full of sorrow, the healthy, youthful glow of someone living a normal not-CTU life evident in his complexion, Tony was ready for death. He was ready to walk into the light and let himself go. That’s what he deserved. But instead a man had jolted him awake ten minutes later and fed off of Tony’s vulnerability and confusion like a parasite. David had manipulated Tony into abandoning his principles and believing that revenge was right, that saying ‘fuck it’ and being impulsive, greedy, selfish was right. That it was the only way to make up for what he’d lost.

And that difference in philosophy had lead him and Jack to opposite sides of a two-way mirror.

Renee’s standing a little behind him, further from the glass. If she’s feeling anything, she has no intention of showing it. She doesn’t dare come closer to look at Jack. For as much as she knows their history, for as much as she knows that Jack’s been a brother to Tony far longer than David has, Renee knows that the man on the gurney has done repulsive, unforgivable things. And while a small part of her sympathises for his loss, the remainder of her is adamant that he suffer, that his life end by way of a needle, as he is wholly responsible for the losses of so many others, including herself. She blames him, partly, for the way she lost herself. The way she tortured Wilson without flinching, without feeling. But Renee blames herself more. They still offered to let her testify at Tony’s trial, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Simply because she didn’t know whether to speak for or against him. 

The concoction is finalised and Jack focuses on watching it shoot through the tubes and into his body, because on the off-chance a glimmer of fear creeps into Tony’s eyes, Jack knows it would rip him to pieces. Tony tenses, as though he wants the drug to consume him on his terms, his time. As if to say ‘I choose when I want to die’. Then he relaxes, his eyes fluttering shut, Jack using the opportunity to capture the memory of his brown irises one last time, the two little spheres being the only way Jack can read him. But truth be told, since their reunion, Jack has concluded that he no longer can, that the silent, physiological bond between them has truly severed. Jack feels a tear form at the corner of his right eye, but quickly wipes it away under the guise of an itch because no, he won’t cry now. He’ll keep his poker face up, make it known that his stance on the matter still aligns with the judge whose gavel sanctioned the execution.

But Jack knows that when he gets home, home currently being a tiny hotel room in Washington until his flight to LA beckons him in three days, he will cry. He will weep. He will drown his pain in a bottle of Johnnie Walker and weep. Weep for him. Weep for her. Weep for his fallen hopes again. Weep because he remembers convincing himself on the day of their wedding that maybe this job didn’t always bring misery. Heller’s words will come back to him again, now further cemented with truth. Most of all, he will weep in anger. Anger towards himself because somewhere inside him is nagging, taunting, ‘maybe if you’d found him earlier you could have stopped him’.

Renee’s tense too, feeling the weight of finality hit her as the weight of his body settles into the gurney. She doesn’t know how to feel. She wants to feel satisfied. Satisfied knowing that the man who killed Larry, someone she’d cared so much for, was no longer able to hurt anybody the same way. She wants to feel sorry for him too though. Sorry that someone who was once considered a hero let himself fall so far down. Her initial interrogation of him replays in her mind, and she can still feel the wince that had coursed through her when Larry had shoved the photo of Michelle’s body, all burnt and bloody, in his face and she swore, she swore, he’d reacted then. Renee had sworn that Tony’s humanity had returned to him for that split second. Her contemplations are interrupted by a gravelled whisper, so soft you’d have to be an inch away to hear it. 

“I’m sorry.” The words fall from Jack’s lips.

But what Renee does know, is that she won’t mention Tony Almeida around Jack for the rest of time.