AN: Found this when I was hunting through my old files, wrote it about a year ago, thought I might just throw it up here to make you guys as miserable as I was when I re-read it.
DEFINING MOMENT
Sam stopped short and looked him straight in the eye. "So how do you deal with chaos?"
He blinked, shocked by the sudden change in direction of the conversation. Her hands shot out involuntarily, belying her heightened emotions.
"My world is defined by rules and regulations. Nothing is impossible but some things are improbable. Without order and definition I don't know who I am."
Taken aback his shoulders dropped, he was listening. A deliberate edge drew out her words.
"When my mother died I sought refuge in continuity. Everything and everyone around me had fallen apart. The only thing that seemed to make sense was the safe, sound logic of science, of facts. Hypothesis built around proven constants. Military..." A momentary hesitation. "Military boundaries."
The meaning hung between them.
"I know my place here...I knew my place here," Her voice wavered slightly, she couldn't quite keep the sense of loss from bleeding through.
She cleared her throat and continued, her shoulders as tense as he had ever seen them.
"What's happened between us has...I..."
Unable to continue she gripped her fingers tightly together and stared hard at the ground, her lips almost imperceptible, drawn so thin by the hurt and the need to not cry.
He looked at her. He hadn't stopped looking but somehow he realised his face had gone blank. Her sudden rush of honesty had sent him fleeing inside himself, terrified of the truth. Rebuke gripped him. He wouldn't do that to her, he couldn't. Not again. He sighed but somehow it stayed internal.
Silence. The thing he feared the most threatened, so he bit the bullet.
"Carter I...Sam."
His thoughts caught in his throat. She looked up.
A whisper was all he could manage. "I don't know what to say."
The sincerity of his tone caught them both off guard, her eyes urged him on.
"I wish I could make this better for you. I really do."
He saw confusion and pain cross her face.
"I don't regret what happened but I can't let it...I can't let it change things."
She was glaring at him now, suddenly angry. A spike of panic rose through him, he scrambled to find the words.
He heard his voice thread. "I want you. God knows I do. But I want this too."
He gestured at the purple, off-world sky.
The anger was gone in an instant. It wasn't fair. The rules that defined her world were the same rules that tore it apart. It felt like her heart had just imploded and her life was being sucked into a black-hole.
She made a decision.
One for him.
"I want this too, Sir."
Her words were so thin they almost disappeared instantly. She wished the hurt would.
Jack clung to the ambiguity of the statement. 'I want this too.' Which this? Finally he registered the defining word. He echoed it in a sighed breath.
"Sir".
Her eyes were uneasy pools. Everything he wanted to hear and everything he wanted to say floated there. He hoped his mirrored hers. This time the sigh broke through his clenched teeth. His fingers press so deep into his P90 that he thought he would crush it.
"Okay."
The silence finally drew out as their loss consumed them. They stood both unwilling to move but knowing they had to. He broke first, the need for absolute honesty steeling him.
"You know that I love you right?" His hand was on her face.
"I know" she choked out tears streaming down her cheek. "I love you too."
His thumb wiped a tear away.
The action hurt way too much so she moved from him.
Slowly they both turned and side by side walked doggedly down the path, silenced by the long overdue revelation and their shared personal pain.
AN: **sigh** ;( Reviews welcome.
