Living Forward
By Midnight Caller
Disclaimer: Oh, how I wish I owned these characters, though I'm sure if I did, they wouldn't have become such lovely, flawed, beautiful people. Instead, Hank owns them, and me, incidentally, as it should be.
Rated: PG-13
Spoilers: Up through Fallout 2
Summary: Although this is a Jack POV, it a J/S-oriented story, so if that's not your thing, you might want to turn back now.
A/N: Thank you to Obsidian – your kind words of encouragement took my breath away.
This is for M – this story wouldn't exist without you. Thank you. For everything.
And finally, thank you to Maple Street – I'm off to print up some "My Forum Can Beat Up You Forum" bumper stickers.
Chapter 1/7
*****
Life can only be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards. – Soren Kierkegaard
*****
"So, Jack what do you think? Do you get a second chance?"
"You gonna give me one?"
If you had a second chance to fix the biggest mistake you'd ever made in your life, would you take it? Maybe, if you thought you had made a mistake. Because that's what people tell you. That's what the rulebooks say. That's what your conscience says whenever you gaze over at the pictures of your kids sitting on your desk, realizing that they can't, won't, shouldn't understand why you did what you did, because the truth is, only you know why.
But what if there are no mistakes, there is no black and white, no right or wrong, just feelings that result from certain decisions? What if life were not a set of choices or paths, but merely a random series of events that is in constant motion? Mistakes are mistakes because someone decides that's what they are, whether it's a judge in a courtroom or an unfaithful spouse in a bedroom.
And that's what I am, aren't I? An unfaithful spouse. A man who betrayed a trust, who did one of the most selfish things one can do in a marriage, and then went another step beyond that by allowing the "mistake" to let me feel happy for the first time in years. But while I felt contentment, others felt grief and sadness and anger. I guess that's what makes it a mistake. But it brought me the first sense of real happiness since my children were born.
Children.
Yes, my wife and I have children together – two beautiful daughters. I've never loved anything as much as I love them, not even my wife. You must think I'm a horrible human being to say something like that, but it's a different kind of love. Those kids loved me from the moment they came into the world. They needed me just as much as I needed them. They may have their feelings for me filtered through my wife at this point -- who knows what she tells them -- but in their hearts, I know they love me.
It's a wonderful feeling, knowing there are people in the world who will love you no matter what you do, no matter what happens in the world to change your insides and outsides – they just love you, without question. My wife is not one of those people, at least where I'm involved. Not that I can really blame her. I break the rules all the time because they don't allow me to do my job the way I see fit, but you're not supposed to break promises. Vows are not made to be broken.
I admit I almost fell in love with her the day we met. Maria - that's my wife - was working at a restaurant in Brooklyn, and I used to go there to grab a bite to eat, or to have a beer. I remember when I saw her, there was just something about her that struck me somewhere inside, something you can really only experience for yourself because it's far too complicated a sensation to try and explain with words.
She's funny, you know. Most people don't really realize that. It's one of the reasons I think I fell in love with her; she made me laugh. She was trying to pay for law school on a waitress's salary while working part time as an attorney's assistant, and she waited on me one night. I gave her quite a tip; that got her to smile. I came back every day for two weeks before I finally got her to share a meal with me. I still remember what she ate – corned beef on sourdough, hold the onion and double the Thousand Island. It's still one of her favorites.
We were married three and a half years later, on June 7th, 1992. Three years later, Hanna was born, and then we were blessed with Kate two years after that. Our family was complete.
I don't know the moment it started to go bad. That's not really one of those things you automatically log away in your memory as a permanent keepsake. It's not like one morning you wake up and suddenly realize you don't love your wife; you wake up one day and realize the feelings have been slowly slipping away and you've only now realized it because they're almost completely gone.
It's pretty terrifying when that happens, actually, especially when you discover that it's mutual. You tell yourself that if it were only one-sided, surely one of us would have noticed, would have tried to stop it, attempted to patch the hole before it became a gaping, irreparable chasm. But that's not how it happens. Something gets sucked out of your relationship and it doesn't even have the decency to name itself so you know how to fix it, or where to go to get more of it for replenishment.
But then love doesn't really work that way, does it? Love sort of decides on it's own how it's going to flow through your heart and influence the rest of you as its pumped throughout your body. It's notorious for disregarding rationalism and logic, far too ethereal to be caught up in the trappings of judicious thought.
Then one day you wake up and ... it's just ... gone. It isn't long before you find yourself yearning for the feelings that it used to bring, as impetuous and unpredictable as they were. In fact, sometimes the more impetuous and unpredictable the better. You just want to assure yourself that you haven't died somewhere inside, along with the feelings you used to have. You need to make sure you're even still capable of loving someone. I guess it gets complicated when your heart decides who that will be, and you decline to challenge the choice.
You're probably wondering what happened, why you should commiserate with someone who would do what I did, someone who continually discards "mistakes" simply as decisions that cause people to feel badly. So maybe I should explain how it happened.
Her name is Samantha.