Hold Me, Like You Held On To Life

Chapter Eleven:

Like you love the sun...

~*~*~*~*~

Jackie weakly opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by darkness. No hallway like Jack said there was when he died, no bright light-or any trace of light for that matter. She was all alone here.

"Jack?" Jackie called out in slight fear.

Silence.

"Jack!?" She called louder as tears stung her eyes. "Jack, please, answer me!"

"Jackie!" She heard his voice resonate behind her but it sounded far away.

"Jack!" Jackie cried as she spun around. "Jack where are you?!"

After a minute, she felt his arms snake around her waist and reaching up behind her, she felt his face and leaned back into his chest, blinking out her tears as she whispered, "I'm so sorry, Jack...I'm so sorry."

"Shhh, Jackie," Jack whispered as he turned her around and placed a loving kiss to her mouth, Jackie drowning in him as she kissed him back.

Finally breaking away, Jack took her hand and said, "Come, I'll take you back."

"No," Jackie said firmly as she pulled him back. "I'm not going to let THEM kill me. They'll go after our kids, Jack!"

"Who?" Jack replied confused as he turned back to her. "The men who shot me and Bobby?"

"That's EXACTLY who!" Jackie shouted. "They'll hunt down my children to get to me. I won't let them do that and I don't want to put my children through the hell of always needing to watch their backs."

"Jackie, you all have protection..."

"So did you Jack!" Jackie spat. "It's not enough. I was thinking about fleeing the country, marrying..." she stopped and Jack looked at her with soft eyes.

"Onassis?" He asked, tightening his grip on her hand.

"How did you..."

"I figured he'd be the one you pick. Not out of love or anything but because he has protection, privacy, and enough money to provide to you and the children over there," Jack explained as he pulled her back to his chest.

As much as he dreaded the thought of that pirate touching his wife, much less marrying her, he knew it was a better way to go than to kill herself. If she was just paranoid or her intuition about being "targets" was actually true, Jack didn't know. But he did know that everything that has happened to them in this era had been too strange to not be cautious.