There was blood in his arms.

There, under the skin, it moved. Not too fast, not too slow, not too thick or hard or thin or weak... it just moved. And, for that, Jack was grateful.

Rain continued to stream down the glass but Jack didn't turn on the windshield wipers. That would mean noise, a loud, steady swishing noise that would drown out the blood he was watching through the living room window across the street, though it was invisible. Instead, he sat still, breathing softly, letting the water amoeba the sight. He didn't need to see too clearly anyways. There was blood in his arms, moving. That was all Jack needed to know.

There was a baby in his arms.

There, held in arms that had pumped his dead heart, hands that had shook his, shook in his, but not now. Now, he held a baby, his baby, blood not too fast, not too slow, not too thick or hard or thin or weak. And for that, Jack was grateful.

The rain came faster and his wife drew closed the inner, sheer curtain. Jack thought he looked now, with the gauzes of drape and rain, silken.

There was his daughter in his arms.

There, six months old. Maybe seven. Or eight. Time is of the essence no longer but Jack now knows, more than anything, that nothing else but time can be measured. Everything else is liquid. Transient. Malleable.

Time is blood.

There was time on his arm.

Strapped to his wrist, that stupid, fucking watch.

Jack could still hear it tick, could swear that even though it was impossible, the tick of that watch had been different, always, from all other watches. Through the gauze, the man tenderly shifted the baby in his arms, the right having fallen asleep, and Jack's heart pounded. The man's blood had slowed. Jack watched as he carefully rested his daughter's head on the dead forearm and, with his free hand, unbuckled his watch. It was dropped unceremoniously on the coffee table, blood circulating back, time forgotten.

It was this that caused Jack's heart to slow, his breath to slow, and the one tear he allowed to slowly slide down his cheek.

Jack heard a shy laugh, some Division meeting break, then. Ten years ago? Nine? God, as many as twelve? The man's hand coming up to scratch his face, the leather strap of that watch lightly scraping day-old stubble. He had looked tired. Jack had suddenly thought then of the calendar Kim had made up for the office, the one on his desk with all the birthdays. The things they had forgotten, the personal things-- Kim took care of those. Jack remembered that meeting, that chuckle, that scratch of watch on stubble, that hand on his hip, and remembered realizing then that he looked tired. That it was his birthday. That he was thirty-five. That they were lying to his wife. That it wouldn't be long now.

Jack recalled a handshake, perfunct and cursorary, a formality not a commitment. Richard Walsh-- God, Walsh...-- introducing them. Jack had offered a hand since that's what bosses do, that's what men do. The guy had a good handshake; a dry hand; strong palm; noble wrist. Cool skin and a warm, leather-strapped, big, wide, round ol' Freudian symbol of a watch. If Jack hadn't been wearing one of his own then, he would have silently laughed.

There was another handshake, a few years later, all Jack could do not to pull the blood out of his arms, out of those long, artist's fingers that seemed somehow at home on the hands that supported such strong matter. He was molecules, seventy-five percent water, would scrape and bruise, his life transitory, he one man, liquid and malleable. That watch ticked under Jack's fingers and he let Jack feel the silken hair around the band, the metal buckle shielding his pulse. "I'm glad you're okay," he had said, seeming softer when it was just them, when they were both supposed to be dead but Jack could still feel him warm under his watch.

He had been dead but hands pumped his chest, pulled him back, blood rushing into his head, pounding in his ears, rushing his sinuses and filling his chest with consciousness. He had blinked-- no, it's wrong. Nothing left. Another life would be wasted on me... -- but the metal buckle had brushed his earlobe and he fought the urge to lean into it, the tick better than the air filling his lungs. "Do you know where you are?" Jack had nodded. Yes. I'm alive. Only because you're still wearing your fucking watch.

The watch lay on the table though he saw Tony jump at the break of thunder. Time is blood. Instinct would never die-- the baby would slow his blood, yes, but not stop the periodic jump. They had spent too much time, spilt too much blood, in places now that their bodies would remember, even if their minds tried to forget. Tony's bare wrist bent, fingers stretched, hung loose like a mobile above his daughter's head, fingertips brushing hair that Jack knew, somehow, was wispy, thin as a spiderweb. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain... sang Kim in his head, four years old and attempting to hula-hoop to the rhyme's rhythm in the backyard.

Jack started his car and was gone before Michelle took the sleeping baby from Tony's arms, before she left him alone in the living room while she put the baby in her crib, before Tony stretched his arm, the blood back and calm, and strapped on his watch, feeling naked as always without it.

~~~

He speaks French now, albeit still a bit broken. Lives in Montreal. Plenty of people.

He's invisible.

He works, of all places, in a bakery. Up before sunrise, watching it come up, different shades, a blend of light pink and yellow and orange, through the glass window at the top of the kitchen door. He makes bread, pasteries, kneads, everything with his hands, air of rising yeast and sugar. The sun is halfway up every morning when his solitude ends with the door opening, with Sarah. She is half his age, the fucking baker's daughter, his boss's daughter... he really has to stop doing that. She is in love with him, with the fact that she can make him blush, with his tethered voice, his quiet eyes, the books he stacks along the wall in his room. She teases him about his "nomad dwelling", his sparse, studio apartment above the bakery, with the lack of shelves and knick-knacks but the presence of the bed in which she often wakes up. She wants him to stay and feels that he might leave, though he's given no indication that he will. He came out of nowhere and she fears, silently, that he'll disappear back there someday. She calls him John. She paints and, lately, he's been able to look at them for what they are, see Sarah for who she is, and not think of strolling through the art museum with Kate, of watching Claudia show Sergio to draw a tree, of doodles in Audrey's work notes and not, almost not at all, of Teri, not of how Sarah has some shine to her eye when she looks at him that Jack remembers because he cannot forget. And isn't sure he wants to. Though he's haunted by dead man's thoughts.

For John's birthday, Sarah gave him a watch. He let it weigh on the scale of his palm as she teased him gently, wondering aloud how he was always up for work, always knew the time, though she'd never seen him wear a watch.

She thinks he was a teacher before Montreal. She knows nothing of his ingrained, military sense of time, of the watch he threw out the first time he changed clothes in his new life, as if he could throw out the past and truly start again. She knows nothing of the hands that skim her breasts and thread through her hair, of the necks they've snapped and bones they've broken, the gun they've held, the needle, the dead wife, the dead lovers.

The daughter he aches for, the granddaughter he doesn't know, the others she has now, maybe.

He slips the watch onto his wrist. The buckle is cold, the holes in the strap spaced so that it's either just too tight or just too loose, the face, he can already tell, will leave a mark. He smiles at her and neither of them know he's lying when he thanks her with his saddle-leather voice and kisses her and, yes, he reassures, it's perfect. Thank you.

She has no idea that his real birthday was a month before.

~~~

He doesn't have a television or a phone, intentionally, and has almost ignored the anxiety that buzzes in his stomach for the last two years over the fact. If they find him, they find him. He keeps a Sig under his bed, where Sarah won't have to see it. He tries not to acknowledge that he feels safest when her hand finds his lower back, warming the spot that feels as vulnerable without a gun as his skin does under her eyes.

It's because he doesn't have a television or a phone that he goes downstairs to bake his bread, to try to quell his restlessness, on the day he disappears.

Sarah has wanted to disappear. She keeps brushing him with romantic fervor ever since her father died-- we could just disappear, John (Michelle, handing him his new id...)... we could just run off...sell the bakery and move to Italy...(Teri, showing him the Uffizi in Florence on their honeymoon...)... I just want to start over ("Kate... I can't anymore...I'm sorry...")... I love you, John... ("I'm going to tell you something, Jack, and I don't want you to panic...") and that's why it kills him, why only pride keeps him from shooting himself instead of writing her the note, of disappearing without her and breaking another heart.

Sarah, bringing fruit and the paper back from the market, finds the note on their bed. She turns on her side, curling her legs up to her chest, tears blurring the newspaper, darkening the picture of the slain David Palmer.

He came down the stairs to bake his bread, to try to quell his restlessness, on the day he disappeared.  Tony leaning against the worktable, hands supporting his weight on the table behind him. He considers asking how he was found but it doesn't matter enough to him to know. Tony looks tired again, looks older, Jack's stomach turns as the sun begins to come in through the glass of the kitchen door and flickers over the stray, grey hair that Tony's hand scratches through. They haven't said hello. They haven't said anything. Three minutes go by and then Jack says, "What time is it?" And Tony stares at him for a moment and then consults his watch.

"I, uh... time difference," he rubs his face, the absurdity of the question sinking in. "I didn't change my watch."

No, Jack thinks. You didn't.

"Jack...," God, yes, call me that, that's my name... Before Jack's been able to take his eyes off of Tony,  from beneath the table, behind Tony's legs, emerges a shy head of dark hair. She says hello in a barely audible but, Jack thinks, heavenly voice. That perfect, angelic tone of little girls. She is four, he thinks. Maybe five. Tony rubs his forehead and then looks him straight on, the desperation of fatherhood underscoring a delibrately calm tone. "I need your help."

Jack leaves the watch with the note for Sarah.

~~~

They are upstairs, in the apartment above the used bookstore, and Jack is peeling an apple, needing to do something with his hands, needing to eat, even if he has never been less hungry. Through the open door to the tiny bedroom, he watches Tony tuck his daughter into bed.

Her name is Isabella. Bella. Jack likes saying her name, though it seems not possible that she is five, not when she was just a baby in Tony's arms, back when time was still the only permaneance.

Tony sits at the worn, oak table and doesn't know where to start so he says nothing for a few minutes. Then, he talks. Michelle is dead. It's been almost a year. Palmer had called him a few days ago, to warn him that the government had caught onto the fact that Jack was still alive. Tony has Milo helping them, they'll be able to get out of the country in the morning with his computer-altering help.

They're quiet after awhile and, after dark, when Tony's too exhausted to stay awake any longer and falls asleep, when the store below has closed, Jack goes downstairs and wanders amongst the books, fingers softening from stroking through aging pages.

"Read me this one, please," says an angel behind him. Shaking himself silently from a stare, Jack sits on the stairs and watches, immobile, as Bella folds herself into his arms on no other faith than that her father trusts him and that meaning he must be safe.

Jack can't recall the last time he felt safe.

He pushes aside the irony that is only feeling safe while being hunted and opens the book and starts to read until it's clear that both of them are bored to tears. Not wanting to shake this feeling, he moves through the children's shelves, determined to find a more riveting story. His hands find a timeless one.

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines

lived twelve little girls in two straight lines

"And what's that one?" Teri quizzes good-naturedly.

"The Eiffel Tower!" announces Kim, five years old and stabbing her placemat proudly. "Daddy!" she calls, as if he isn't just across the kitchen. "I can *read* that!" And she can, by recognition, and her beaming smile leads to much verbal congratulations. Jack focuses on Kim and tries not to think of the man whose head he blew off the week before, and whether or not that man had a daughter.

In two straight lines they broke their bread

and brushed their teeth

and went to bed.

"Dad, c'moonnnn...," she drawls, eyes rolling. "I know the tooth fairy isn't real."

It's ridiculous, he thinks, but even though he's had an incling that she'd outgrown the fantasy, his heart is breaking. He's always had trouble lying to her, though, and now that she's called him on it, he can't bring himself to not move forward with her. If she's too old, she's too old. Time moves on, that's the only permanent thing he knows after all. He doesn't deny her her age and leaves some cash on her nightstand while she's brushing her teeth. She seems him leave and nothing is ever the same.

They smiled at the good

and frowned at the bad

and sometimes they were very sad.

Some punk kid that Jack wants to pummel hit Kim at recess. That kid hit a girl, hit *his* little girl... She sits on the couch, Teri on the phone with the mother and apologizes to Jack. He puts an arm around her and asks what *she* has to be sorry for?

"I hit him back," she whispers, a lifetime of anti-violence promises to her parents broken. She stares in shock when Jack can't quite help himself and laughs.

"Kim, sweetheart... don't say you're sorry... Promise me that if any boy or man or *anybody* ever tries to lay a hand on you again, that you'll do exactly what you did to this Bracken kid." Kim glances towards her mother, who can't hear this father/daughter sinful discussion. "Kim." She turns back to look at her father, knowing that there was no denying that tone. "Promise me."

"I promise."

They left the house at half past nine

in two straight lines

in rain

or shine--

the smallest one was Madeline.

"Susie let Mark feel up her breasts."

Jack overhears the phone conversation from the hallway and grits his teeth to keep from locking his daughter in the attic until she's ninety. He decides that it's his house and he's her father and that somehow justifies his listening in from outside her door.

"I don't know... she said it was weird but she thought it was okay... his hands were cold though.... yeah... ewww! I don't want to go out with Ben, who said that? Sandra? What the hell, Janet, I NEVER said that! I mean, he's kinda cute, okay but... ugh, not like that... yeah... oh, like I have any breasts he'd want to grab anyways..."

Jack sighed, couldn't take anymore, and went to go find his wife and pray.

She was not afraid of mice

she loved winter, snow and ice...

Kim fell down sixteen times in one afternoon but that didn't stop her from getting back on the ice. Teri looked at her watch, knowing they were going to be late to dropping her at her grandmother's if they didn't get going soon and said so. "Mom," she reasoned. "I can't leave until I make it all 'round once! I cannnn't."

Deciding that encouraging her determination was the most important, Teri consented, catching Jack's eyes, full to the brim with pride.

~~

Jack carried Bella back to bed, knowing they'd have to move in the morning and not knowing where or how long they could sustain this way or what would become of them. But there was a gun against his spine, he could protect. He is himself and no longer invisible.

Tony's dozing on the small couch, exhausted enough to pretend to be more asleep than he is, to assent to Jack pulling his shoes off, tossing a blanket over him and, oddly, taking off his watch.

"Goodnight, little girls!

Thank the lord you are well!

And now go to sleep!" said Miss Clavel.

Jack came home from Benin at just after six in the morning, paying the cab driver and trying not to stumble from exhaustion up the stairs. He sat on the couch to take off his shoes and got them off before his body decided that the couch was a good enough landing spot and he stretched out, just barely hearing the women scurrying around the house, just barely hearing Teri say something as she kissed his forehead, just barely hearing her remind him to wish Kim good luck on her first day of high school before he fell asleep, dreaming of Kosovo.

And she turned out the light

and closed the door--

and that's all there is--

there isn't any more.

Jack leaves Tony's watch on the coffee table, long fingers closing gently around his wrist.

"Missed you," Tony murmurs and lets him go, falling into a deeper sleep.

Jack watches him for a second before whispering into quiet.

"Missed me too."

END

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