A Safe Bet
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Summary/Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate SG-1 or its characters and gain nothing tangible from the writing of this. Story takes place in a season 8 AU wherein Selmak didn't randomly croak and the droning Ori don't exist. Why? Well, why not?
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The hall that the couple had rented for their engagement bash was a nice enough place. Open space, painted walls in neutral colors, non-tacky carpeting; overall a generally pleasant-looking establishment. Beyond that, the groom's mother had obviously spent quite a bit of time and money in decking the area out even further in tastefully colored streamers, tablecloths, and centerpieces.
Of course this many hours later, things were starting to look a little wilted, but since the remaining guests had been very liberally enjoying the fine spirits provided, hardly anyone noticed. General Jack O'Neill did, despite his relative disinterest in all things decorative and bunting-like. As much as thinking about his Sam marrying that – Pat? No, the banner said Pete, whatever – made him want to get stinkin' drunk, he wasn't going to take the risk of making a spectacle of himself here. Both because of his pride and of the people from the SGC here whose respect he desired to maintain – and whose pity he couldn't stand to have. Which left him with very little to think on safely other than the drooping decorations.
He thought he'd put on a pretty good show of being cheerfully congratulatory. Although he had to privately suspect from the pitying looks Daniel had been giving him (before he had started avoiding the tipsy archaeologist) that he wasn't doing quite so well as he'd hoped. Still, Daniel had long been annoyingly more perceptive than the average person especially when one least wished him to be, so hopefully his friend wasn't a good indication of the thoughts of everyone else. He also firmly ignored any potential for implications stemming from Jacob's frequent glances in his direction. It didn't mean anything. Nope. At least Teal'c wasn't giving him looks, whatever the big guy might be thinking.
On the subject of perceptions, Kerry Johnson had seen the two of them together for a handful of minutes, known how he felt about Carter, and promptly dumped him. He didn't blame her, not really. However, it just wasn't as simple as she'd made out. The Air Force wasn't the only thing standing between them. There was still Pete. Whatever doubts Carter had come over to talk to him about that day she'd shown up without warning in his backyard, saying that there was a reason she was coming to talk to him, apparently there was still going to be Pete. A large part of him really wished that Kerry hadn't been there that day, or even that Carter hadn't been called back for some gate malfunction on the base - giving her the perfect excuse to leave the conversation she'd meant to start unfinished. Whatever this thing between them was, he'd always left it up to her to decide on doing anything about it, because it would reflect worse on her if they ever acted on their feelings. Not fair, but true, so it had to be her decision. At least he had thought that they both had feelings, but trying to confirm that by Carter's words and actions left a great deal to be desired.
Whatever she'd been thinking, in the end she'd stuck with Pete. The only change in her plans after that day had been a sudden decision to have a big party celebrating the engagement before the wedding. It was a bit late for an engagement party, since they'd already been engaged for quite a while and the wedding date wasn't that far off now, but she'd babbled on and on about Pete's mother when she'd given him the invitation. He couldn't think of any polite way to get out of it, and so here he was.
He'd mostly been able to stay the hell away from the happy couple all night, but apparently that luck was about to come to an end. The shrub was loudly and drunkenly going on about something in amongst a circle of his cop friends, and Carter was wending her way through tables in his direction, looking a noticeable bit less coordinated than usual. He sighed internally, but put on his best happy face. She should know him well enough to see through it, but even when she hadn't been drinking, apparently she didn't know him as well as a woman he'd barely dated. Or worse, she just didn't care. Either way it was too depressing to dwell on, especially right now.
"Sir." she said as she slung her way into the chair next to him. He tried hard not to think about how great she looked in the dress she was wearing tonight. For all the time they'd spent together over the years, he didn't much get to see Carter all dressed up and ... wow. He was supposed to be just a friend who was happily celebrating her engagement, though, so he tried not to notice. He tried not to fall into those big blue eyes of hers, too. He swallowed hard. Yeah, never worked.
"Nice shindig, Carter."
She beamed at him, but there was something not quite right in the smile - beyond the alcohol. He internally commanded himself not to dwell on it. She was with Pete, her choice. He couldn't leave things in her hands and then complain she made decisions he didn't like. They chatted inconsequentially for a bit, and when she started glancing about the room frequently, he was hoping she was finally going to go back to her fiance so he could legitimately make his excuses and get the heck out of this place. Unfortunately, she seemed to have come over to him for a reason. Despite how long it was taking, she didn't seem inclined to leave until she got up the nerve to say whatever it was she needed to get out of her system. He wasn't at all comfortable with the idea of any conversation a drunk Carter wanted to have with him at her engagement party of all places, but there was no polite way out of it that he could see.
Finally, she stood up and looked almost nervous for a minute, before she resolutely drew in a breath and leaned back down towards the table. Quietly, but all in a rush she began to speak, "I'm so glad you told me I deserve better than –," she paused and crinkled up her nose in frustration. She continued on after a few seconds, even faster, "so I could finally take a chance and really love someone. No more excuses of hanging onto that silly infatuation for you so I wouldn't get hurt by something real. I'm glad you're still always here for me, though. My safe bet." She smiled at him widely, and he was so flabbergasted by the flood of bizarre statements that he couldn't even settle on an expression. She didn't stick around long enough to notice how openly shocked he was, though, before she'd turned away. He watched as she wended her way back to Pete and tried to understand what had just happened. Even the obvious influence of alcohol didn't really explain much of anything.
What the hell was she talking about? was the thought that kept going through his mind when he'd finally returned home for the evening after his fairly swift exit. He hadn't bothered to do more than take off without saying goodbye to anyone after that incredibly weird conversation. What could he have had to say after that anyway? He kept going back over it in his mind as he picked at the label of the beer bottle in his hands. So it turned out she had resolved her doubts after all – she'd just had cold feet or something. She didn't harbor any lingering love for him, despite what he'd quietly hoped. He didn't know what exactly she was talking about, as she'd implied they had some conversation he couldn't remember, but it didn't really matter, did it? It all ran back through his mind in a flash. Pete was something real. She deserved better. Silly infatuation. Safe bet. None of it was anything very far off from what he had privately wondered in his own head, but to hear her say it! God, he was a fool.
The idea of her knowing he was a pathetic lovelorn joke was even more untenable now than it had been just a few hours ago. The thought of having to sit through the wedding, knowing she was marrying that idiot cop not because the regulations meant they couldn't be together and she was forcing herself to move on, but because she didn't love him and apparently never had made him feel physically ill. It was one thing to let her go and be happy with someone else, knowing they both had feelings – he could put himself past that pain and still be there for her. To know she didn't care, though? All those years watching every alien with a decent libido who was attracted to women drool over her in pathetic, unrequited infatuation and thinking he was the lucky guy she actually cared for, even if nothing could ever happen between them. It made his chest ache just to think of all the times he'd contemplated retiring and how if he had she'd have been left scrambling to find some way to let him down easy just like every one of them. He couldn't go to the wedding and watch her actually be in love with someone else, knowing that. He couldn't.
It was much easier to get in touch with Hammond and incidentally have to move to the new post he'd accepted in Washington a week before the wedding. Before now, he hadn't even been sure that he would accept, despite all he owed the other man. When he told Carter, he thought he'd done pretty well in making his apologies sound genuine, and didn't see anything in her expression that indicated otherwise. Sure, she seemed a little disappointed, but they'd been teammates for seven years, that was all. He was done fooling himself where she was concerned. He sent the happy couple a nice enough gift, some impersonal crap off their registry and resolved to get the hell over it. Which should be so much easier from thousands of miles away. He hoped.
As the months passed, he talked to Daniel on occasion, but was as much relieved as anything to never hear from S- Cart – her. Daniel brought her up a little at first, but after her transfer out of the mountain a few months after his promotion, those mentions tapered off and he was perfectly content not asking whether it was because of his attitude when she came up or whether she'd broken off ties with Daniel, too.
It took a while, far longer than he liked, but eventually he didn't randomly think of her. It took even longer for her face not to float into his head whenever he saw her name mentioned on reports crossing his desk. It did happen, though, finally, to his relief.
...6 months later...
Her marriage to Pete had been a mistake, that had become obvious nearly the moment the honeymoon was over. Oh, they'd tried to make it work. She'd agreed to take a reassignment to Area 51 for a while, a job purely in the labs so that she wouldn't be out in the field anymore. After all, she herself had thought about the danger of her job in terms of having a family. With SG-1 disbanding for various corners of the universe she was amenable enough to the idea when Pete kept insistently hinting about it. That wasn't enough for him, though.
Now that she actually spent all her newly-expanded down time with him, rather than just seeing him now and then when he drove to visit from a different city, the man was suffocating her. She placated him for a while, with all the little nudges and demands he made, but while she had been so desperate to make this relationship work originally, the longer it went on, the more she kept doubting it and herself and all the times she had already decided she should just stick it out. Looking back now, with the rose-colored glasses off, there had been so many.
Even from near the very beginning - why had she been so accepting of his showing up on their stakeout of Osiris? He had to have been following her. After she'd told him her work was classified, it wasn't just creepy, it showed a real lack of respect. That was bad enough, but she'd known that Pete had trust issues after his divorce, and while it wasn't right, it hadn't been so crazy. Still, it was just the first of many things to cause doubts she'd willfully pushed aside.
Why had it seemed like gratitude for Pete's help with the charges against Teal'c and him not telling her not to were sufficient reasons to accept a man's proposal of marriage after two weeks of serious doubt? Why had she just let him get away with making jokes - in public, no less - about the job she loved and calling in to the base in the middle of crises for inane reasons? Why had she decided that she should get past her reservations about him buying a house without her input when she'd been so disturbed by it when it happened? All of these doubts had run through her head before the wedding. However, instead of owning up to all the things that were wrong, Sam had convinced herself that she was just being too demanding, that she was too much of a perfectionist for anyone real to live up to. She was happy, she was in love, the rest would sort itself out. Except in reality, the thrill of finally being with someone after those lonely years of pining away had worn off not too long after the wedding, and she had to wonder with the way she felt currently if she had ever really been in love with Pete, or if she'd just been in love with the idea of being in love and any man would have done.
There were a lot of eligible men in this world, let alone the others she used to visit on a regular basis. Not choosing to marry Pete wouldn't have meant she could never get married. Sure, he knew about the Stargate program and that made it easier in many ways, but there were a fair few men out of her chain of command who legitimately knew about it, as well. She had acted like there were only two possible alternatives to spending the rest of her life alone. Sure dating while working at the SGC wasn't easy, but it wasn't impossible. She was an astrophysicist for cry-, point was, she could have managed it.
When they'd begun dating, Pete had represented having a life outside of the SGC like she'd always told herself she should have someday. Even after he'd proposed, rather than actually being sure she wanted Pete, she had simply decided she was ready to have that life. Back then, she'd been so determined to finally be moving on and doing so without letting any more time pass she had put herself on a path wearing blinders. She'd figured she would grow to feel more strongly about Pete as time passed. She'd been sure her inappropriate feelings for the General would be a distant fond memory that they could maybe laugh about as friends years from now. She had been so willing to convince herself that her feelings for Pete were only in doubt because they hadn't been together long enough with their hectic work lives, or because she was trying to sabotage herself again.
Pete was not a bad guy. He could be fun, and he was stable and made her feel like she was the center of his attention. Still, that could be true of plenty of guys, and 'he's not so bad' wasn't the sort of thing that you wanted to be thinking when referring to someone you should love for all their quirks. He couldn't stand not knowing her schedule to the minute, and still made too many not-quite-funny jokes about the classified nature of her job. He wasn't the type to get angry or violent, but he'd pout and whine when he didn't get his way and she vaguely remembered thinking it was cute, once upon a time. Now it just pissed her off.
As much as she'd come to admit to herself that she had serious doubts that had never gone away, she didn't want to admit she'd been wrong, though. Samantha Carter didn't fail at things, and a divorce was an admittance of failure. Stubbornness aside, she had come to realize that she couldn't recall the last time she'd really felt happy about being with Pete, and that nagged at her.
It had all finally been brought to a head just a few days after she'd gotten a call from her old friend Cam Mitchell begging her to come back to the SGC and rejoin SG-1. Despite herself, she was considering it, and she hadn't told Pete because she knew it would be the end. He wouldn't make an ultimatum, or attempt to forbid her or anything like that. He'd just make her miserable with complaints and subtle jabs at every opportunity. So if she wanted to stay with Pete, it wasn't an option. She had almost convinced herself it was an idle consideration when her husband told her he had plans to take her out to dinner and asked her to get dressed up. It was something they occasionally did, so she didn't think much of it. When they got to the restaurant that night, after a little idle conversation about the menu and his buddies at the precinct, he announced with a proud smile that he had finally spent enough time at the local PD that it would be okay to ask for a transfer back to Denver. That's where his family lived, and it would be great to have them around once the kids were born. The kids that he had decided that they were ready for her to quit her job to have now. To be fair, he didn't say it quite so bluntly, but in amidst the joviality and the teasing, that was the essence of what he said.
It wasn't that she didn't want children. She did. She had been contemplating it for a while, and a great deal of the impetus to start a relationship with someone in the first place had come from that desire. It was his assuming she should be ready to drop her career and start on a family now, right now, because he was ready now. It wasn't a discussion of two people in a relationship, it was Pete telling her what they should do, including her leaving the Air Force so she wouldn't be tempted to spend extra hours in some lab he wasn't allowed to see. Oh, sure, he'd said it in that cutesy, joking way of his, but that didn't make it any less an attempt to organize their entire lives without her input. In the same way he'd trailed her to find out her job, and the same way he'd bought a house and talked about the dog they were getting, he wasn't looking for her input. Perhaps she should be more surprised that he'd even asked her to marry him at all, rather than treating it like a foregone conclusion.
It was just as telling that he didn't even seem to notice that her reaction wasn't one of enthusiasm. She wasn't even sure what she did say, the shock and the reinforcement of everything she'd been quietly wondering about were too much.
That night, long after Pete had fallen into a snoring slumber, Samantha Shanahan lay awake staring at the ceiling. Once upon a time, she had doubted that it was right to marry Pete. She had talked herself into it. The humiliation of finding another woman at the General's house had just brought back home how ridiculous it was to continue dwelling on the inappropriate dead end of her feelings for her CO. Even when she'd been thrilled to hear they'd broken up later that afternoon. Even if it had really hurt that he had not come to her wedding. Even if she couldn't help still sometimes dreaming of the man when she hadn't so much as emailed him since the night of her engagement party. Even if part of the reason she wasn't ready to have children with Pete beyond his one man decision-making process was because in her mental picture of what her children would look like they had eyes and a goofy grin that belonged to none but him.
She had only the haziest of memories of the General being there that night at the engagement party, and then he'd left for Washington almost immediately after. She remembered thinking that he was avoiding her that night and talking to him, but she had no idea about what. She'd been nervous – about Pete, Pete's overbearing mother, her friends, his friends, and the fact that they were all in the same confined space – so she'd had more to drink than she really should have. It was no wonder her memory wasn't up to the task. They hadn't exchanged more than a handful of words passing in the hallways of the SGC after that night, and then he'd been gone. It had bothered her, but she'd convinced herself it didn't mean anything, as the card on the gift he'd left for them had been very nice and he'd never said anything to imply she'd said anything wrong or that he didn't want her to be with Pete.
Of course now, when she was reexamining everything, she had to wonder. She'd asked him about the proposal, but she'd done it on base. She hadn't really thought about it at the time, but that was really not a reasonable venue for any discussion of whatever it was they shared. With as often as people came looking for either of them, it would have been terribly inappropriate for him to say anything, even if he had wanted to - and that wasn't even taking the base's security cameras into account. After all the thinking she'd done lately about why she'd chosen to marry Pete, she was now left wondering if she had done it there on purpose. Was there anything about her relationships with both men that wasn't a form of self sabotage?
He had never said anything to imply he didn't want her to marry Pete, but would he have? At the time, when they'd both been at the SGC and she'd been dating Pete, she'd thought that perhaps now and then she'd sensed unhappiness under his joking exterior whenever her relationship had come up. Partly because of that, she'd talked herself in and out of approaching the General about her feelings for him several times, never once allowing herself to contemplate what that said about her commitment to Pete. In the end, though, she'd convinced herself that she wanted a life outside the SGC and that having one automatically meant choosing Pete.
That was the real reason she'd made the choice she had. Not because she was in love with him, not because they had compatible lives, not because she was really okay with his suspicious and affably controlling nature, but because he was there and convenient and she was sure he wanted her. At the time, settling had seemed like a good idea. It was time to face the facts. Her ability to fool herself about Pete was thoroughly gone. It was time to make some changes in her life. She'd start over again tomorrow – even if it meant admitting to failure.
…One Month Later...
She wasn't a divorced woman. Even though she'd moved back to Colorado Springs to take a position at the SGC – though not on SG-1 - and filed for divorce, Pete was dragging out the proceedings. Ostensibly over their shared assets, but in reality because he refused to believe it was over and kept trying to call her and show up in person to beg her to take him back. In the world of Pete, her declaration of their impending divorce had been entirely out of the blue, and that was just one more reinforcement to the theory that he'd never really understood her at all. Her brother wasn't speaking to her again over what she'd done to his friend, but she figured that was a small price to pay to be rid of the dead weight that was her hopefully soon to be ex-husband. Leaving Pete had been like dropping a ten ton weight hanging from her neck; the relief she felt now was indescribable.
Although she'd liked working with the people at Area 51 well enough, there was nothing quite like the camaraderie under the mountain. Even if Cam kept bugging her about becoming the current SG-1's fourth permanent member, it was still worth it to be back home. It wasn't quite the same with Teal'c off-world dealing with the Free Jaffa and the General off in Washington, but she had really missed Daniel and missed the opportunities to rotate onto teams going off-world that she just didn't have out in Nevada. She was also enjoying hanging out with the bouncy space pirate shadow Daniel had managed to acquire.
In a lot of ways, she felt like she was back where she'd started in her private life, but it wasn't strictly true. The time with Pete had convinced her that settling for what happened to be in front of her wouldn't make her any happier than being alone had. At least she was content and in control with her work; she hadn't felt she had even that much going for her since she'd gotten married and left the SGC.
She wasn't sure quite what it was she felt when Daniel mentioned that the General was going to be coming to town the next week to get together for a night with Teal'c. She'd been working on convincing herself that she was perfectly happy not having anything to do with him since he'd decided to ignore her, but now with him planning on being on base and in town, well, she wasn't so sure.
It almost felt like she'd never existed to General Jack O'Neill. He never called or wrote to her. For all she heard from him he might as well have moved to the other side of the galaxy, not just the country. She'd never expected that; she'd always assumed that he would just be there and it made her angry enough at him not to want to contact him herself. He certainly wasn't too busy, she knew he talked to Daniel on the phone all the time. She heard from Teal'c more often, and the Jaffa was living on another planet!
Despite her anger and apprehension before the visit happened, she was surprised at just how awkward it wasn't. There was a moment of nervousness when they all came to stand in the control room together to await Teal'c's scheduled arrival, but it dissipated quickly. It was almost as if they'd gone back in time to before Pete and before the zatarc testing when they were all just close friends on a team and there were no worries about strictly watching the proprieties. It was so nice that she was gratified when Daniel invited her to come along with them to Jack's old house, where Daniel was currently living, for an evening of takeout and movies. Whereas only hours before she'd have begged off, it didn't even occur to her to decline now. Even if she was moving backwards, it felt right in a way nothing had for a very long time.
As the evening wore on, she became even more convinced that she'd been a fool to give this up. It was so relaxing and she had not realized until this very moment how much she had missed hanging out with her guys. They came to a lull in the evening between movies, when Daniel and Teal'c went to rummage in the kitchen and Jack went to use the bathroom. She found herself sitting alone and dwelling on what she'd given up. The moment of awkwardness in the control room hadn't just been because they hadn't talked in months. The sight of Jack O'Neill again after so long had hit her like a physical blow, and it wasn't just because she'd somehow forgotten just how damn handsome the man was. All of the years of feelings had come back in that moment, nearly replaying like a picture show in her mind, and it was doubly astonishing because she had been so sure she was finally over him. Yet apparently she'd only succeeded in ignoring the feelings, not actually getting rid of them.
After all her self analysis, she'd finally realized that she'd decided to stick to marrying Pete because she'd been convinced that after all those years in limbo it was her one last chance to have a normal life with a family and still keep the job that she'd loved. Yet when it had come down to it, she'd ended up giving up her job anyway for Pete and still not getting the life she wanted. What was really standing in her way of having the life she wanted with the man she wanted other than her own fears? It was now or never, really. After this, who knew when she'd see him again? So Sam screwed up her courage and got up to move towards the back of the house, meeting up with the Gen- Jack in the hallway. It really was ridiculous after all these years that she couldn't even call him by name in her own head unless one of them was dying.
"I've missed you."
He gave her a half-smirk of a smile. "Yeah, I'll bet the ol' SGC is much quieter without me around." He tried to move past her, but she moved to block his way and he looked at her questioningly, and with maybe a little, was that nervousness? Whatever the uncertainty in his expression was, it was definitely doing funny things to her heart, that was for sure.
"I- I'm sorry. I should have given us a chance. Do you think," and she reached for his hand, noticing that his eyes had grown progressively wider as she'd been talking.
Sam was totally taken off guard when he all but jumped out of her reach and eyed her like she was a Tok'ra. "Colonel, what the hell is wrong with you?"
She was a little shaken that he was trying to push her back to the formality of ranks, but she'd let her own cowardice drive her to Pete, and she wasn't going to back down now, no matter how scary it was to keep going. "Jack, I love you. Pete was a mist-"
"Stop!" He wildly threw both his hands into the air in an expansive preemptive gesture, as if willing the words back into her mouth. "Carter, I'm sorry that your marriage with Detective Shenanigans isn't working out like you wanted. I'm not your backup plan or your revenge on your husband or whatever crazy idea you've pulled out of your ... brain this time."
She was nearly frantic now, and couldn't have stopped herself even if she'd tried, "but Jack I lov-"
"Don't you lie to me!" He'd looked wary and unhappy since she'd started talking, but now recognizing the anger in his eyes was frightening enough to make her take her own step back. His voice cut from nearly yelling to a tightly controlled fury, "You told me otherwise at your engagement party. You told me you had something real with Petey. I don't know what the hell you're playing at here tonight, but I think maybe you should go home before you embarrass yourself any further." That said, he shoved his way past her and over her own shock, she vaguely heard an unintelligible exchange between him and Daniel before the outer door of the house slammed with a great deal of force.
Her brain was spinning a million miles a minute between confusion and mortification and just plain out and out disbelief. It took her more than a few minutes to gather her bearings together enough to make it back out to the main room where Teal'c and Daniel were sitting in silence. Neither one wanted to meet her eyes, but when she went to sit down in a nearby chair, Daniel cleared his throat and looked vaguely in her direction. "Uh, Sam, I think maybe you should go. I don't know what's going on, but Jack's staying here tonight and I don't think –" he winced a little and repeated himself, "I think you should go."
She was still stunned and even a little bit angry that Jack had lashed out at her, and she couldn't quite help herself from saying so, "He said he'd always be there for me!"
Daniel blinked owlishly at her for nearly a minute, before asking, "When was that? In what sense? I'm sure if you had a problem at the SGC or with your dad or if something -" he paused, as if to collect his thoughts, and became more direct. "If you mean uh, romantically, did you really think that would still be true after you married someone else?"
"When I was on" the Prometheus, she finished in her head. So basically she was pissed off that he wasn't acting like her hallucination of him told her he would. Great. Even worse, she'd just made a mess of things between all of them. She didn't want her two friends to have to feel awkward about what had just happened – any more than they already did. So she nodded and left with a soft, "I'm sorry, guys," as she walked out the door.
At home, alone in the dark of her bedroom, she tried to figure out how things had gone so wrong. Yeah, it had been months, but they'd been so close for seven years. Even if they'd never said the words, surely his feelings couldn't have changed so much in that time? It made sense that he was a little hurt, though, she decided. She should talk to Daniel, he would know more about what was going on.
Jack had mentioned that his flight back to D.C. was in the early morning hours, and so she felt fairly confident just walking into Daniel's place the next afternoon – until she heard his voice. She went to walk back out the door, not wanting to chance his temper after the disaster that was the night before, when the words he was saying in the voice she knew had always been reserved solely for Daniel driving him to the edge of his patience registered. She would have smiled at recognizing the exact tone, except what he was saying definitely didn't make her want to smile.
"She came on to me, Daniel. Seven months ago she tells me her feelings for me were nothing but a sad infatuation that she was over and marries some stalking putz, pretty much breaking my heart - to make it a melodramatic cliché! Then when I'm finally over her and think I can actually stand to be in the same room with the woman and be friendly for the sake of all our years together as SG-1... No, NO, Daniel. I'm sorry if it makes things awkward for you but I don't need this crap!"
"I'm sorry Jack, I didn't know. If I'd had any idea ..."
"Yeah, yeah. Just be glad Marcie couldn't make it this weekend. She knows enough of the story she would have been pissed."
That was more than enough, Sam was sure. She made her way out of the house as quietly as she could, seeing as the only thing more mortifying than overhearing that conversation would be getting caught eavesdropping.
It was funny, she thought, as she dazedly walked back into her own house, she felt more abandoned and alone now than she ever had from her breakup with her husband. Jack wanted nothing to do with her because of the choices she'd made.
They'd never made any promises.
She hadn't owed him anything.
She'd managed to forget that he hadn't owed her anything, either.
.
.
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A/N: While certainly not all fics follow the pattern, there are quite a lot of stories where Sam runs off and marries Pete or someone else, and meanwhile Jack just waits around alone and miserable to blithely take her back however much later she happens to change her mind. While some of them are very good and it's not so entirely out of character, it is pretty pathetic and I felt compelled to write a slightly different outcome to a similar scenario. For exactly that reason, this is meant to have a downer ending and will not be expanded upon. I fully concede Sam may be wandering OOC, but considering that, for me, watching the parts of seasons 7-8 about her relationships was a bit like being dropped unceremoniously into the middle of a Lifetime movie, I can't feel too bad about it.
EDIT: Not sure how I forgot this bit, but I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read, especially those who leave any kind of feedback. Most particularly I want to thank all those who have left or will leave reviews, since it is an extra effort that is much appreciated.