Title: Ian and Jack Author: callisto24 Fandoms: Numb3rs/24 Genre: crossover, drama, slightly implied slash Timeline: After 24’s Season 6 and Debrief and after Numb3r’s Pandora’s Box. Warnings: I will have no time to go on, I’m sorry. So the idea of Jack/Ian slash is never leaving me, I don’t know if I can do something about it. No Beta, no energy to look up anything in the dictionary. *sighs* Als always, each correction, offer to beta, help is more than welcome! ;)
Authors notes: I’m not familiar with Numb3rs because I’m only watching it when Ian Edgerton is appearing. Last week I’ve seen Pandora’s Box and learned before that Don Eppes had visited a therapist talking about Edgerton and how he had ordered him to torture a suspect. I got the impression that Edgerton himself might have visited a therapist to talk about this event. He seemed to look for Don’s understanding and friendship during Pandora’s Box, meanwhile Don still seemed to be pissed at him. ( Just my impression ). So the picture of a sensitive, vulnerable Ian hadn’t left me and I needed to combine it with the picture of sensitive, vulnerable Jack.
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Ian leant against the wall. He fumbled for his package of cigarettes, but stopped reminding himself that he only carried it with him in order to test the strength of his will. What a mess his life had become? If someone had told him a few years ago that he would end up one day visiting a therapist regularly, he probably would have beaten him up properly. Maybe this had been reason for the stupid bosses in their office seats to recommend him to this action urgently. They had no idea what it meant for him. As long as nobody knew he’d be okay with it. But to learn from the doc himself that he had been visited by Don Eppes, worse – to learn indirectly that Ian, that his person, his story had been mentioned during the session – this had been to much for him. He always had respected the Eppes – brothers, the way they handled their jobs, they dealt with FBI structures innovatively had impressed him each time they met. He had never wanted Don to discover a weakness. Nobody was allowed to. He had never wished anyone to recognize that it wasn’t easy for him to do his work, to follow orders no matter what they meant for him. Some orders were harder to follow than others, though he wouldn’t tell. He did what had to be done and there was no one else he would allow to carry this burden. Therefore he killed, he tortured, even when he noticed that Don hated him for doing it, hated him for allowing to demand the deed, to ask him for crossing this line. Ian knew very well that there was no one who would be able to understand the prize he had to pay, to understand what the showing of this strength cost him inwardly.
Absent mindly his eyes followed the lean man entering the hidden door he just had left. Another patient, no doubt. Therapy his last chance. Though Ian knew how to hide, he could tell that the man had noticed his presence. The stranger gave no sign away, but the tension in his shoulders told everything. He vanished silently and Ian wondered what he thought about him. A slim man, smaller than Ian. The wide clothes didn’t reveal much, but the muscular body seemed to contain a vibrating energy, a certain anger hard to hide.
Jack stroke his dark blond hair back. He hadn’t taken care of it for a while. It fell in long strands over his eyes, covered his ears, an unusual sight. Time to move on, time to stop this nonsense. He had followed Bills advice and visited this place, but both of them knew that it led to nothing. He wouldn’t talk, hadn’t done while quitting drugs. China had killed his last ability to open up, to talk freely to a person. No use in telling another person about his father, about his losses, his guild or pain. No use for any one to get involved in this. Jack remembered the tall man who had caught his eyes when he approached the building, the hidden entrance. Deep in the shadows and knowing about it the stranger had looked at him in a confused way. Jack tried to concentrate on the handsome face, to find out if he knew the guy from his past, but he got no clue.
“So you decided to leave town?” Jack nodded. “I’m heading to Washington, doc. Have seen enough of Los Angeles.” “I know a few addresses. You should continue…” Jack shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m okay now.” The therapist regarded him suspiciously, leant back. “Well. Then there’s nothing left to say.” “No.” Few words exchanged, both of them knowing about their meaninglessness. “One last question”, Jack said ready to step outside. “I’ve never met one of your other clients. As far as I had been told…” “You know I can’t talk about my work. But what I can tell you is that a job like yours, the life you’re leading, would affect most people. To search help is nothing to be ashamed of. A life filled with pain and death is hard to endure and nobody chooses this way at free will. There are more people visiting me with similar problems than you can imagine.” He paused, memorizing. “Just today”, he continued. “I’ve heard about insecurities and pain that hadn’t been pronounced willingly. Without blinking this person is able to shoot someone between his eyes precisely at command. It’s his job and he thinks of himself as a soldier who never had a choice and is destined to make the best out of his possibilities. But when it comes to feelings, he is just a man begging for attention. Not used to exist in a world that goes round without violence, without the measures of life and death. Real life, social connections can be more complicated, more difficult than that.”
A dark figure returned into Jack’s mind. A tall man overshadowed by a fate he couldn’t run from.” “You can stay cool and untouched from the outside”, the doctor spoke. “But what you’re carrying inside will break through one day, sooner or later.” Jack nodded. He hadn’t seen much from the man, but he felt that it was him the doc referred to. A similar fate, a similar destiny. Could this been the reason why he had felt drawn to him? Jack shook his head. No use in thinking about strangers. He had to move on, to change his life, to go away without looking back.