TITLE: RSVP
AUTHOR: Vid Z.
PAIRINGS: Jack/Sam UST, Sam/Shanahan
WARNINGS: angst, NOT a happy SJ fics. It's a sad fic. There is Sam bashing, so if you don't like it stay away. You've been warned so don't come crying or flaming to me if you didn't like it and don't leave reviews complaining about it, you'll just look like a fool. There is no death, but you may need kleenex at the end. This is all the warning you get.
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc of the TV show Stargate: SG-1 are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this fic. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
SUMMARY: Jack is a survivor, always has been, and for the good of the planet he has to remain a survivor.
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"You haven't RSVP-ed yet, sir." Sam said calmly.
"No, I haven't because I'm not coming." Jack said, avoiding her eyes, because it just hurt too damn much to look into those beautiful blue eyes and know that another man knew how they looked when she climaxed. The man who had everything Jack had wanted for 8 years. The man who didn't deserve any of it, much less had earned it.
The only thing the man had honestly earned with his actions was a bullet to the brain and a deep grave in some dark forest or a "traffic accident" or any number of the ways the NID and other intelligence agencies and the numerous nameless death squads of the US government like to use to deal with threats to security and leaks. The NID had killed that reporter in DC, where had they been when a single man was as equally big a threat to this world?
Jack had thought that he had moved on and healed since he'd found out that she had left him behind without a thought, threw him away like yesterday's trash for just sex with another man, thereby breaking the creed of SG-1 to never leave a man behind. By having gone to another man and not telling Jack that he was waiting in vain for them to finally be together she had practically cheated on him. He had felt pain like this only once before in his life, the time he was looking at his little boy's lifeless body and knew that his own child was dead.
He had thought he was over her, but the shattering of his heart in his chest when she'd showed him the ring and then the final crumbling of the pitiful remains of his heart a couple of weeks later when she'd given him the invitation to her wedding to the moron cop, had showed him just how much wrong he'd been.
"What!? Why sir?" Sam asked, her chin trembling.
"Because I don't want to watch you pledge yourself to some other man for eternity. If I was the one getting married to another woman, would you want to be there?" he finally looked into her eyes, the full magnitude of his hurt too obvious for her to be able to deny it's existence again. But no matter how much he was hurting it just wasn't enough to make her reconsider the course of action she'd taken.
She had always let her head lead her and suppressed her heart until she was almost incapable of feeling feelings, incapable of identifying and expressing them. But when it comes to the matters of the heart, the brain should be ignored and the heart should be allowed to speak and lead the way. But Sam wasn't capable of that anymore. Which was why they were in this situation now. If only she had listened to her heart and not her brain, especially that small brain between her legs...
"But, sir! I need you there!"
Jack walked to the door and put his hand on the doorknob. "Sam, if you need me at your wedding to make it work, then maybe you should really reconsider who you're marrying in the first place." he said with a voice that broke on the last word and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind himself.
He was keeping his emotions in check, though barely, just as she'd ordered him to do after their Za'tarc testing and he didn't know what the hell she was doing, messing with his head, again, only days away from her wedding.
Was she trying to force out a confession of love out of him and for him to persuade her not to get married?
He'd always thought she had more integrity and honor to do that, to him and to Shanahan. Obviously, he'd been wrong.
Obviously he'd been wrong about a lot of things for the longest time.
Like her feelings for him, for example, but her involvement and subsequent engagement to the intelligence-that-of-a-rock cop had set him straight. But she was now trying to shake him and he didn't know why she was doing something like that. He knew only that he would not cave in once again and make himself vulnerable to her. He'd been rejected by her just too often during the years.
He was not a dumb man, he learned from experience, which had come from her always hurting him with a rejection when he made himself vulnerable to her. Either by an invitation to lunch or an invitation to the cabin and fishing. And while he would still be willing to trust her with his life he just wouldn't trust her with his heart. Ever again. She didn't know how to appreciate his heart and didn't know how to take care of it.
He was a survivor, had survived every possible horror, even the death of his own child and the death of his marriage. The planet needed him to be a survivor as he was the leader of Earth's first line of defence and this time he needed to be a survivor for himself.
Samantha Carter was going to get what she'd wanted of him so long ago, what she'd always told him she wanted, from now on he was namely going to treat her like he treated every other subordinate, which was what she'd wanted him to do for years, ever since she'd made it clear that his feelings for her were unwanted after the Za'tarc testing.
He was going to survive life without his heart because people depended on him to survive. He was the leader of the most important base in the world, of the first defence of humanity against the horrors from space and the safety of the planet rested on his shoulders.
Duty came first, had always come first, before everything else, before life and love and happiness. Before life because what he'd been doing for the past few years hadn't been living, it had been merely existing. And Sam's selfish decision to get what she wanted, no matter what the cost to others, and especially to him, had forever robbed him of the chance to experience life, love and happiness ever again. He'd rarely hated military more than he hated it now.
Two weeks later Samantha Carter stared at the empty spot in the crowd with a heavy heart as she pledged her life and love to some other man for the rest of her life, knowing full well that she was making the biggest mistake of her life, but just like always what Samantha Carter got into her head to do she always did, even when she knew she was doing the wrong thing. She was just too headstrong and proud to admit that she was wrong.
So with just a few words she sealed the door on a love that she had not allowed to live and condemned herself and the man who loved her, the man for whom it had been too painful to be there, to misery and unhappiness for the rest of their lives. The man at her side just didn't know her well enough and lacked the intelligence to realize that Samantha Carter was not happy and that she hadn't chosen nor married him out of love. She was doing the worst mistake unfortunately so many people do.
She was settling.
And on the other side of the city a lonely, gray-haired General was drinking himself blind, saying goodbye to his dreams and future, in a crowd of people that didn't know him, nor cared about him.
Alone and lonely as he always would be from now on.
END
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