# 14 – Kenosha, WI

Rating: K+
Spoilers: up to 5x21
Genre: angst
Timeline & Setting: Post At Rest. Jack's POV.

The fields in Kenosha were bare and desolate. A few lights were scattered across the horizon miles and miles away, and he couldn't help but wonder if this was the only view she'd had in her childhood. So far away from New York, so far away from the city... any city.

When his phone rang, he was staring into nothingness, into the dim glow of sunset and those distant, unreachable lights. It was neither warm nor cold here; the temperature was in between. Everything here was in between, stuck in some still form where you couldn't decide which one applied− hot or cold, close or distant, right or wrong. Just… stuck.

He turned from the dirty windowpane and bland, lukewarm coffee and lights that reminded him that somewhere out there was the rest of civilization. His hand automatically reached to unclip the phone from his belt, and he slowly brought it to his ear.

"Jack?"

Her voice stirred some deep, dormant emotions within him. He didn't try to locate the feeling, but wondered if there would come a time when her voice would stop having this effect on him. He wasn't sure he wanted it to.

"Jack," she repeated the name with more conviction. "Where are you?"

Distracted, he didn't answer immediately. "I'm at a… motel. It's cheaper than the cheapest one you can find in New York and it's…" A discernable smirk danced across his lips. "Empty." With a sudden sense of solitude he added, "I didn't know if you needed a room."

When an awkward silence filled the line, he cringed inwardly, unsure of what she would think of that sentence and ineffectually searching in his mind for an appropriate clarification. Unsurprisingly, nothing came.

"I… I'm staying at my mom's." Her whisper reached him through the line, quiet and uncertain. She added, almost as an afterthought, "If that's fine with you."

"Of course." He supposed it was better, safer, than any alternative. At the moment, though, he wasn't sure which emotion he was feeling. It wasn't relief.

"Are you okay?"

"I think so."

Her reply was quick, short, and simple. She made them simple when they weren't, which was why he knew she was lying. Her apprehension perceptible even on the phone, he hesitated, unsure talking about it was the right decision. "Sam," he said softly. "I wish you'd told me before."

"I wish you'd asked."

The truth, he knew, should have sufficed. He should have been grateful just for that. But the irrational, uncomplicated part of him wanted to believe that the revelation of her crime was irrelevant. That it didn't have to be known. That he could still depend on her, and she on him, the way they always had− that they would keep each other's secrets for an indefinite amount of time, and rely solely on that secrecy to go on with their lives.

"Are you sure you want to tell the Bureau?"

He could hear her breathing through the line, her silence resigned but shrouded with the same sadness he felt since this afternoon.

"You know it's the right thing to do."

Doing the right thing hurt. Their lives, their relationship were a testament to that.

"I just wish I could−"

"Don't, Jack… Don't. I don't want you do cover it up."

He spoke softly. "It wouldn't be the first time."

No… it wouldn't be the first time they crossed a line, breeched a law, or bent a rule for each other.

It wouldn't be the first time.

But it might be the last.

"Samantha," he whispered, wanting nothing more than to go and see her with all the things he needed to say.

He had to say that he didn't know what the place she grew up in looked like. Didn't know that there were magnets on the fridge in the kitchen and a shelf full of spices in the corner; didn't know there was a bell that chimed when you entered the house. He wanted to say that he'd never seen the drawing she'd made for her mom's birthday in fourth grade and that was still hung near the fireplace; that he didn't know that she could draw.

"Jack... I'm not asking you to forgive me."

"I already have."

He heard her sigh quietly and wondered what it meant that his forgiveness was more important to her than any question OPR would ask. He wondered if she could ever forgive herself and knew it mattered more to him than anything the Bureau would find to say.

"I have to go, Jack. My mom's waiting for me."

He resumed his staring through the dirty glass panels as the line grew silent, took in the green scenery and stillness and the quiet obscurity outside. The room was empty, the same emptiness that had rung inside him earlier when she'd told him. It was too quiet for a city to be out there, but if Samantha had been in the room with him, he might have been able to pretend they were still in New York. Still six years in the past.

But now she was… home. Sleeping in the same house she slept in as a teenager until that night when she was sixteen and decided to leave. In the same dark room she'd slept in after she did something unthinkable.

He couldn't let her go back to that life.

He couldn't let her tell the Bureau.

He couldn't let her go.

/ End of Kenosha, WI