Samantha Carter pulled into the gravel driveway of the cabin that she had avoided for so many years. It had been almost two weeks since the General disappeared without a word to anyone. He outright refused a psych evaluation and was given his retirement, Sam, like everyone else, had learned through the grapevine a few days ago.
After she broke things off with Pete, she dove back into her work, trying to push past the self-reproach she felt for her treatment of Jack and Pete. She also wanted to give Jack some time before confronting him, giving him a chance to get settled back into his own mind, knowing what that was like after her experience with Jolinar. They had all assumed that he took a couple of weeks leave and was going to be back to work. When they learned that he had no intention of ever coming back, she immediately grew worried, took some leave of her own, and headed up north.
As terrified as she was of the conversation she planned to have with him, she was almost as frightened of what condition she might find him in. She recalled his debriefing after being freed from Kishar. At the time, she had to fight herself to keep from breaking down in front of everyone in the room. When she thought about what it must have been like for him while Kishar killed those children, her stomach twisted in knots all over again. His life had been full of horrors and heartbreak, and the experience with Kishar could have easily been the final straw. That she personally did nothing but add to that burden on his battered heart crushed her.
It was a mild, sunny autumn day in Minnesota, so she figured he would probably be out by the pond. She got out of her rental car and walked to the back of the cabin. She spotted him right away, sitting on a chair on his little dock. As she approached him, the scene shook her to the core. He was unconscious, leaning back with his head flopped backwards over the top of the chair. On the dock to his right were two empty Jack Daniels bottles. To the left was his Beretta. She calmed down a bit when she realized he was unharmed. She crept up next to him and grabbed the pistol, put the safety back on, and tossed it back into the grass.
When the gun hit the ground, ruffling the grass behind him, Jack's bloodshot eyes snapped open. He looked to his left and saw her standing there just staring at him. He shook his head and blinked his eyes a few times before looking at her again. He then reached down for his bottle of Jack, instead picking up two empty bottles.
"Maybe I overdid it a bit this time," he mumbled to himself, inspecting both bottles.
"Overdid what?" she asked him.
His head jerked toward her with his eyebrows raised above his lifeless, red eyes.
"My hallucinations don't usually talk to me. Either I'm even more screwed up than I thought, or you're really here."
"I'm really here, sir."
"Carter, I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't been anyone's 'sir' for a while now."
"Fine, Jack, then you call me Sam."
"Carter, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be getting married any day now?"
She saw the pain in his eyes intensify when he said the word, noticing that he wasn't even bothering to hide it anymore. His voice was gruff, yet dull and monotone. It sounded like he looked. Everything he had been through in life weighed heavily upon him, and he was so close to the edge, he might have already gone over it.
"No, there isn't going to be a wedding."
"Oh. That still doesn't answer my first question. Why are you here?"
"I wanted to see you."
"I'm not much company at the moment, Carter."
"I wanted to apologize to you." She stopped and fought back tears. "I'm so sorry, Jack."
"For what? You didn't do anything wrong."
"I hurt you. On top of everything you've been through, all I've done is add more pain."
He sighed. "Sam, listen. I was hurt, but that's not your fault, it's mine. It's my problem. I'm not angry with you. You can't help who you do and don't fall in love with."
She took a deep breath. "It's you that I'm in love with, Jack."
The shock on his face was clear, even if his eyes were dead.
"No you're not," he replied matter-of-factly with no inflection in his voice.
"You know better than I do?" she shot back.
"What, you just realized this?"
"No, Jack. I've been in love with you for years."
"If you've been in love with me for years, then what was Pete?"
His voice was still flat and gloomy. Sam was expecting some kind of emotion from the man. She wished that he would get mad. Not only did she deserve it, but it would let her know that he was still alive.
"I didn't think you felt that way about me anymore."
He raised an eyebrow before answering.
"You decided this without any input from me. You assumed I didn't feel that way. So why are you here? Can't you just assume whatever you want to from home?"
"I tried to talk to you about it."
"When was that?"
"On the tel'tak, after you had the Ancient download."
"That was quite a while after you started with him. I wondered at the time if that might be what you wanted. I guessed it was either that or 'it was an honor to serve', neither of which I needed to hear at the time. I was dying, and you had your man waiting for you at home. I can promise that we would never, ever have had that conversation under those circumstances. Since Pete was still around when I got back, I figured it was option number two and thought nothing else of it."
"I also tried to talk about it when I showed you Pete's ring."
"Really? I barely remember any of the conversation. It was all I could do not to puke all over your lab. The fact that you were even considering it told me all I wanted to know, and I certainly wasn't in the mood to discuss it further."
It dawned on her that they had talked about it, in O'Neill-speak. No words, just deeds. She gave him his answers without even knowing that he asked the questions.
"It's not like you said anything to me about it."
"I was your commanding officer. What should I have done? Left you roses in your locker? Taken you on your desk? Or would Hammond's desk have been better? I tried to do little things to show you that I cared without jeopardizing your career, but maybe I screwed that up too. What the hell do I know?
If you need to know how to drag out the pain and anguish before killing someone, I'm your man. If you need to know how to wake up in the morning after slaughtering innocent women and children, my own son included, then that's easy. You get up because you deserve the never ending hell you will suffer until the next time you mercifully lose consciousness. That's what I can do. If you need me to spell out how I'm feeling to have any clue about it, then I can't help you."
She finally got a reaction out of him, but the despair and self loathing wasn't what she had in mind. The pain in his voice almost did her in. She knew this wouldn't be easy, but now she was hoping it wasn't impossible. She was going to have to bear her soul to try to get through to him.
"I was scared," Sam blurted out.
"Of what? Me?"
"I was scared of losing myself. I've always been an Air Force brat, or cadet, or officer first, everything else second. If we ever got together, I was afraid of that losing priority in my life, or even losing it altogether."
He just stared back blankly. She wondered if he was even listening.
"I was also scared of the way you could destroy me if things didn't work out."
"Yes, well, it isn't fun. And if there's one thing I'm good at, it's destruction."
"I was an idiot. I rationalized to myself that it was the job that made me happy, and I couldn't give that up for you, so I went and found Pete. He couldn't hurt me like you could, so it was an easy sell to myself. But it turns out it wasn't the job that made me happy. It was working with you that did, being around you. When you were gone, I didn't even want to go to work."
"Carter, missing me when I was MIA is no reason to overturn your life. Maybe you should let things settle down before you decide that your priorities were wrong."
She was amazed at how stubborn the man could be while still showing no signs of fight in him. He refused to believe what she was saying, and really, she couldn't blame him. She'd never done anything to give him a reason to believe her.
"It wasn't just when you were missing, Jack. It was after you got back, too. Really, it's been ever since you took over the base and you weren't around every day, always occupied with everything else going on. I took a couple of weeks leave to come up here. When is the last time I did that?"
"Sam, whatever the case may be, even if I were to buy all of this, I still don't know what you want from me. Before, I was a hard hearted, old bastard that was nowhere near good enough for you, but at least I could function as a human being. Now, you should be scraping me off of the bottom of your boot. I have nothing to offer you. There is no possible way I could ever make anyone happy, least of all you."
"Jack, you don't have to do anything. Being with you, spending time with you makes me happy. I'm not trying to rush into something here, we both need time. But let me be here for you. I know you don't believe my words. Let me show you."
"Ok, but don't say I didn't warn you."
She went and grabbed another chair and brought it next to his on the dock. She threw aside the liquor bottles, set it down, and sat beside him.
"So this is the infamous cabin, huh? It's beautiful out here."
"I'm glad you finally came to see it."
She immediately felt a pang for rejecting his invitations over the years.
"I really am sorry, Jack. About everything."
"Sam, I'm sorry too. Let's not dwell on it any more."
They leaned back in their chairs and were silent for a few moments, regrouping after the emotionally exhausting discussion. Then Sam, feeling the weight lifted off of her after getting all of that out in the open, broke the silence.
"I'm getting hungry, and you look like you haven't eaten, well, in a long time. You want me to make something?"
He looked at her with eyebrows raised high.
"You? I think I'm better off going without."
She chuckled softly. "Jack, I can make a sandwich or something. I've fed myself for a long time now."
"There isn't any food here anyway. Let's go make some coffee, and when I sober up a bit more, we can run into town."
"Sounds like a plan."
