Title: What's Meant to be
Rating: K+
Season/spoilers: Happens right after the movie so no ep spoilers just the movie
Category: Romance/Angst
Pairings: Jack/Sara
Summary: A song brings back Jack's memories of Sara
Content Warnings: There are a couple of swear words and Jack hurts his hand.
Comments: So this is my first song based fic. The song is She's in love with a boy by Trisha Yearwood. Hope it goes over well.
Jack O'Neill climbed out of the shower. After wrapping a towel around his waist he headed towards his locker toweling his newly military short hair dry. He'd let it grow longer since Charlie had died and had cut it short again when the higher ups came knocking to send him on a suicide mission.
He had already decided what to do with his new found acceptance with life. He had been debriefed on the Abydos mission feeding General West the information he wanted to hear. He hadn't lied… too much. Ra was dead, blown up by the warhead, he had just left out that the population of the planet had survived and that Jackson still lived.
Jack smiled at that. It was good that the geeky archeologist had found some measure of happiness. If anyone had deserved it, it was Daniel. Daniel had given him a new reason to go on, allowed him to find a new purpose to his life.
After the debriefing he had instantly tendered his resignation. There was nothing the military had to offer. Nothing could compare to the adrenaline ride of the Stargate and that was buried now. The Abydonians had seen to that. Jack had made Daniel promise before he had returned through with the rest of his team. No, he was going home to Sara. He was going to do what she had been pleading him to do since Charlie had died. Talk.
So it was with determination in his eyes that he set his sights towards home and his wife.
When he arrived home Jack opened the door and stopped dead. There was a pile of boxes on the floor in the foyer and a note propped up on top with his name written in Sara's unmistakable loopy flowing handwriting.
As he read the note his breath hitched.
Jack,
You knew this was coming. I couldn't live with the silence anymore. I couldn't sit there and watch the man that I love tear himself apart piece by piece. You would sit in his room with that gun and it was all I could do not to scream. Sometimes I wish I would hear it, then at least the waiting would be over and I could mourn your loss. But with you here and gone at the same time I didn't know what to do.
The divorce papers are on the kitchen table. I'm staying in the house, if you want to stay here until you find somewhere to go that's fine. Don't try to call me, I'll know when you leave. I didn't go all those years living with you without picking up on something.
I still love you, but sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes we have to move on. The only way do that is for us to separate. I will miss him every day of my life, but I will never be able to go on while I'm still waiting for you to forgive yourself. I can't say that I don't blame you, but eventually I may be able to forgive you.
I'm sorry we had to end this way. We had it good.
Sara
Jack stared at the letter before him. He let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. An anger ripped from his chest and became a scream as he punched his fist into the mirror hanging on the wall to his left.
He laughed grimly at the sight. The pieces of shattered glass on the floor and his own distorted reflection missing a spot in his chest where his heart would have been. "Yeah, seven years bad luck. Looks like it already started."
With that he moved his pitifully few boxes to his car. He couldn't stay another night in her house, because that's what it was now. Her's. He signed the divorce papers not really noticing the smear of blood his hand left as it tracked across the bottom of the page across the dotted line. He left a note and some money explaining it was for the mirror and then made his escape.
Jack drove aimlessly. He didn't know where to go. He knew she was probably at her father's house but decided to agree to her wishes and not see her. She had made it clear that he wasn't welcome anymore.
In frustration he flipped on the radio. It was set to a country station and slowly a song he recognized floated through the interior of his car.
Katie's sittin' on her old front porch
Watchin' the chickens peck the ground
There ain't a whole lot goin' on tonight
In this one-horse town.
Over yonder, comin' up the road
In a beat-up Chevy truck
Her boyfriend Tommy, he's layin' on the horn
Splashin' through the mud and the muck
The town the two had grown up together hadn't exactly been a one-horse town, but neither was it the sprawling metropolis of the cities. They had grown up in a suburb north of Chicago. At the time a lot of the area had been farms.
Jack remembered going over to her house as soon as he had gotten his license. He had wanted to show Sara his new talent. He had made the mistake of honking to get her to come out of the house so she could see him in his dad's truck.
Rather than getting Sara he got her father. The man had come barreling out of their house yelling at the frightened sixteen year old about how it was rude to honk at a girl to get her attention. If Jack wanted to see his daughter he could damn well come up to the front door and knock on it like a gentleman. Who did he think he was.
The only thing that had saved Jack from a further berating by the angry father was Sara coming out. She had been wearing a sun dress and Jack would have sworn that angels had dropped her right from the sky. Her hair had been long and blonder then and her blue eyes shone with excitement.
Her father had retreated into the house with a brilliant smile for his daughter and a scowl for Jack as soon as Sara had turned her back to her dad.
Jack continued to drive aimlessly as the next verse of the song echoed through the car.
Katie and Tommy at the drive-in movie
Parked in the very last row.
They're too busy holdin' on to one another
To even care about the show.
Later on, outside the Tastee Freeze
Tommy slips somethin' on her hand
He says, my high school ring will have to do
'Till I can buy a wedding band
Jack was leaving for the Academy not long after their senior prom. After the two had danced all night long Jack had pulled a ring on a chain out of his pocket.
Sara had looked at the gold band in awe. It had been his father's before he had passed away just after Jack's sixteenth birthday. His mother had given it to her son in hopes that he would wear it some day when he found someone he loved.
Jack looked down blushing and shy. He knew Sara realized the significance of the ring. "Look, I just wanted to say that I'm going to the academy, and I don't want to get married until after I graduate, but I wanted to give you this. This way in a few years, maybe you could give it back and we could, you know…Get married."
Sara beamed. "I'll wear it until you come back for it." She threw her arms around his broad shoulders.
"Umm could you not tell your dad. I think he might kill me." Jack smiled sheepishly.
"Sure, because he'd probably kill me too." She smiled. The one Jack was sure was just for him.
Jack twisted the gold band that rested in it's customary position on the ring finger of his left hand. Sara had dutifully worn it around her neck for four years. As soon as he graduated the academy they had officially become engaged and married only a few months after that.
Jack sighed. Sara had been in his life since he was ten years old and had moved to the area outside the windy city. What was he going to do without her?
Her daddy's waitin' up 'till half past twelve
When they come sneakin' up the walk.
He says, young lady, get on up to your room
While me and junior have a talk
Mama breaks in, says, don't lose your temper
It wasn't very long ago
When your yourself was just a hayseed plow boy
Who didn't have a row to hoe
They were sure that he wouldn't hear them. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. As the pair of young teens came in the back door hand in hand, late, her father stopped them.
She had tried to argue their point. They were almost adults now Jack was already eighteen and she wasn't far behind. But he had sent her up to her room and left Jack in the family room with her father. The young suitor was quaking in his boots.
The man had sat Jack down and lit into him for brining his daughter home past one in the morning, and didn't he realize that it wasn't proper for a young boy to do that.
Sitting in the car Jack smiled at that memory. It had been one of the few times he had well and truly been scared shitless. Sara's dad had seen the ring and demanded to know his intention. To which Jack had bluntly said he wanted to marry her and was promptly thrown out of the house.
Fortunately Sara had managed to talk some sense into her father and he didn't kill Jack at Church when he saw him the following Sunday but had rather sent obviously hostile looks the young man's way.
Jack listened as the song came to a close.
My daddy said
You wasn't worth a lick
When it came to brains
You got the short end of the stick
But he was wrong
And, honey, you are, too
Katie looks at Tommy
Like I still look at you
She's in love with the boy
What's meant to be will always find a way
She's gonna marry that boy some day
It wasn't until four years after that when Jack had graduated the Academy that Sara's father had grudgingly given Jack permission to marry Sara as well as a mumbled "I'm glad you made something of yourself, because heavens knows I don't know what she saw in you."
Leading up to the wedding Jack had slowly but surely won over the man's respect if not his approval that his baby girl was getting married and leaving.
It had been inevitable. They had known each other and been nearly inseparable for twelve years. They had married and had some great times. They had had Charlie, and despite the way Jack ached at the thought of his son he wouldn't have traded being a father for anything.
But Charlie had died, and now Sara was gone too.
Jack sighed again as he pulled into a grubby motel and asked for a room. Tomorrow he would go looking for someplace to live. Maybe a fixer-upper now that he had retired he was sure to have plenty of time on his hands.
Maybe he reflected his happiness wasn't meant to be.