She'd always wondered about it.
It was that feeling she'd get, a tingling in the back of her mind, followed by flashes of recognition…sometimes just a stray, familiar emotion, sometimes a split-second movie clip…and sometimes, on rare occasions, an entire five second memory, complete with thoughts and feelings and sensations. Like she'd been there, exactly where she was, before.
Sometimes, she felt like she'd been there, and it had gone differently.
As a child, her mother had explained it away as "just remembering something you just did." But it was more than that. As she grew, as she learned how to think effectively, she began to associate the things she experienced with the things she felt. It helped her to recall the details of a particularly vague problem, or the solution to an issue she'd already had once before…and sometimes, something as simple as where she'd left her car keys. Feelings and emotions, like memories, had ages. They all had tiny little timestamps on them that helped to place them properly. All these memories were older than just a split-second. They were days, sometimes weeks old, even though she could never recall ever actually having had the experience.
It was the same for this moment, this very mundane moment. She'd needed breakfast, and was compelled while rounding the endcap to look up and take notice of the brightly-colored off-brand froot loops box on the top shelf, then plucked it from its place. She'd looked at it, sinking into pleasant memories for a second, then smiled wistfully before placing it in her cart.
It was then, right then, that she had been hit by a wave of déjà vu.
She had never been in this grocery store before. She had never seen that particular brand of cereal before. She had never, ever bought a box of it before.
And she had no memory of being sad over cereal, though her cautious and logical mind intuitively knew that there could be a million reasons why she would be.
She bought the froot loops, as well as something more sensible, and some milk to go along with it. Then she drove home, on the outskirts of the tiny town, her incredibly agile mind doing floor routines over this newest aberration of reality. The timestamp on this memory was…not too far off. A few weeks, maybe? It was recent, but not too terribly recent. Almost like…like something that came along with a life-altering event.
Again, not so much helpful. That kind of thing sort of happened to her all the time.
She arrived at her destination, took her finds into the kitchen and poured a bowl of the damned froot loops. Then another. Then she sat them both down on the kitchen table and stared at them for a long time.
"Ooo! My favorite!"
Her train of thought was instantly derailed. She smiled.
"To what do I owe this…act of generosity."
Jack plopped himself into the seat across from her. "Saw it. Remembered you. Bought it."
He frowned, finally seeing the bowl she had in front of her, then looked at her with his eyebrow raised. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Oh, yes…sorry. I knew you wouldn't eat anything healthy so I just went ahead and bought something that would make you happy. We're on vacation, after all."
Jack half-grinned at her. "Yes. That. " His scrutiny was expert-level. Years of spending time together almost every day had made him an expert at reading her. " So… stop thinking, Carter. You get a vacation from that, too."
She laughed slightly. "Yes, sir."
"And quit that. Here, I'm just Jack."
"Yes, Jack."
He wasn't convinced, and as much as she'd tried, she knew he wouldn't be. He got up and rounded the table, coming to a halt on his knees by her side. "Hey," he said, taking her hand in his, "what's wrong?"
She sighed. "it's really nothing. Just…I just had a little déjà-vu in the store. It was…for a second, I felt so sad, Jack. I don't know why. I have nothing to be sad about, but for the briefest of moments, it was like I was…mourning my life. Or you. It was very strange."
She was afraid that had come out wrong, but he didn't seem to care. Instead, he kissed her hand, then rubbed his thumb across the top of it.
"I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."
She leaned down, her lips a breath away from his. "Promise?"
He grinned. "Oh, yeah."
She closed the distance for a moment, enjoying his presence, before finally pulling back just far enough to whisper to him.
"Then I won't wonder about it anymore."