Chapter 61
Sunday, August 12, 2012.
Sam got home feeling something that had accompanied her for the past few years. She hadn't recognized it during the first days of her journey. Now, she was so acquainted with it that she could easily pinpoint what seemed like a surge of fear, threatening to drown her.
For the first couple of years as she and Parker were still under WITSEC, the fear had always followed whenever she was meeting someone new or even outside in the crowd. When they started living under her own rules, it only became worse. The fear of being recognized and having to explain something she couldn't was too big. That encounter with Harper had left her scraping her sanity together for the longest time.
She wanted to believe. That she wasn't afraid of meeting her long-lost friends, but deep down she knew that she was beyond terrified. She knew the encounter had to happen sooner rather than later. Her friends were SG-1 and at some point, they were due to have a briefing. She wouldn't be able to escape.
Even if she could escape them. The way for it to happen would be to face him first. Landry had said, "General O'Neill can come off as a bit of an ass, however, whenever I needed someone to step up and take my place for a few days. He always helped. So, don't be afraid to ask for his insight or help."
As an answer, she had nodded. What could she have said, anyway? Yeah, that sounds like the Jack I knew? Yup, that's just like the husband I remember? Somehow, it didn't seem appropriate to answer that way.
She shook her head and paid attention to parking her car. She was tense. The knot in her stomach was close to becoming gastritis pain. She wanted nothing more than curling up in her bed and crying for her own inability to face people she knew and loved.
The smell of food, once she entered her house, made her hungry. The sound of her keys over the silence brought Parker out of her reading.
"Mommy! Jessica is making lasagna," Sam smiled at that. Somehow, her daughter still had a carefree easiness in her that allowed her to become taken with the young woman she'd brought into their home.
"Hey, General Carter," Jessica said coming out of the kitchen. Sam clenched her jaw at the honorific.
"Sam's alright. I don't want to mix work with home." Jessica smiled.
"I understand. Can I call you Miss C? Sam feels a bit too personal."
"Whatever you like. Just not General"
"Sure, Miss C! You should get changed. My dad's a retired General. He spent a lot of money trying to get rid of tomato sauce out of his uniform. Then a lot more buying one new." Jessica said with a quick smile.
Again, that heavy feeling that she shouldn't trust this woman, no matter how thoroughly her background research had been, swept in. Sam could feel a headache forming behind her eyes. She knew it was from repressed feelings and excessive worry. 'Stress' she decided to name it because it made more sense for a grown independent kick-ass woman to be 'stressed' than paranoid. But as her experience had proved, Shakespeare was right and 'a rose by any other name still smelled as sweet.' Or in her case, just smelled.
She could change names a million times, and she knew the guilt would never leave her. No matter how many people she helped get back to their lives. The first step, her first step, was the one that counted. The one that would change her life for good.
It was a sweet, loving, first step. Kissing Jack, knowing it would be her last chance and gaining her the most wonderful week. She simply hoped she could remember that week as much as she should. But truth was, she barely remembered what it felt like to be held by Jack anymore.
She shook her head. Lately, every thought seemed to gravitate back to Jack. Like a magnet pulling her close to him and at the same time, just showing her just how far away she was from being his other half. She clenched her jaw. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to break. At least not now, when there was a stranger in her home, not when Parker was still awake. Not when she could be easily found out.
Shaking her head, she got changed quickly and joined them for lunch.
At least not now. Later tonight, she could retire to Jack's bedroom and let the shattered pieces of her fall.
Sunday, August 12, 2012.
Everyone at the SGC knew he was far from the joy of any party. However, Jack also knew he was far more taciturn today, that he had been in the past few months or years. His mood was comparable to those first days after Sam had left him.
'No,' he shook his head. 'She didn't leave you. They forced her to go. There's a difference.' He tried to convince himself that at least somewhere deep inside she hadn't left him. That she hadn't forgotten him.
He was every bit as exhausted as before. The weariness from all the traveling around and stupid confrontations that came from the trials. These experiences were far from becoming a memory of a time where he slept little and worried a lot. No, that was still fresh, and it was still his current behavior.
Now, the knowledge that she was in town was driving him insane.
Jack knew by the way Janet and Teal'c were keeping tabs on him, that either Daniel or Vala had informed them about the situation. Sometimes, he hated working with his friends. They always knew when things were wrong. They hadn't really left him to drown himself in his sorrows, not all the time, at least.
It didn't help that whenever he wanted some time to himself. He ended up in his cabin with all the memories surrounding him. Despite the fact that his family, for the most part, was minding their own business. It was clear to him that they had never stopped worrying about him. Harper had popped up at his house after she figured out Sam was alive. 'The boys' as he called Declan, Sean, and Finn, made sure to take him out somewhere so he wouldn't be coddled up inside the whole time. Libby would find ways to get him out of the house. Sharon, Connor, and his parents were the ones there for the silent support or a shoulder to cry on.
All in all, it was difficult for Jack to process things by himself. He knew they all meant well. But what he really just wanted to go home and lick wounds he didn't have. He shouldn't have. She hadn't left him. She was ordered to go. They had ordered him to take her and leave. It was a trap. It was meant as a life sentence. There was a whole horde of people trying to find out where she was. To make her comply and move off-world to some backwater planet. Where she would be used for her mind, to be forced to work as a slave for them. Using Jack as leverage to get what they wanted from her.
Jack saw a chance to escape after failing to deliver a funny farewell toast. He apologized to Landry and made a beeline to the parking lot. 'Well, not exactly a beeline...' He thought. Jack decided he would visit the man later so he could explain his actions. Hank didn't ask the reason behind his mood, but Jack knew he didn't deserve the way he was acting. Hank deserved good memories of the place that had managed to reunite him and his daughter.
He huffed. Turning the engine on, he drove back to his place.
As he watched the mountain from his rearview mirror, he thought that maybe there was some sort of magic juju at the SGC. It had managed to make Sam fix her relationship with her dad. Janet had found Cassie. Teal'c and Daniel had managed to get over the fact that Teal'c killed Sha're. After a bad injury, Janet found Teal'c. It made Daniel find Vala. It made Sam his 2IC and later his wife.
Maybe… Just maybe, the magic juju would work for them after all this time. Maybe they would find themselves part of a weird soap opera. She would run into his arms the moment he opened them. Crying as rain poured down on them, making it seem as if he wasn't crying too. Then, he would embrace her tightly and never let her go. Kissing her senseless until death do them apart.
He snorted then. "What kind of sappy ass are you becoming, O'Neill?" he said to himself.
Home was now even closer to the SGC. There was now only a ten minutes' drive in bad traffic. When it could've taken twenty from his old place. He liked that old place. He had considered buying it back, but memories…. He parked the truck.
Absentmindedly, he entered his house. That after all the years of finding cameras, he had, at last, learned to lock. The only noise inside it was the clink of his keys in the bowl by the entrance. A gift from Cassie, so it would look more home-y than it did.
There were no memories in this place. No team nights, no barbecues, no Sam sprawled over his island or lying naked on his bed. He walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. Before he walked to the backyard and up to the rooftop, he had built. The only place he truly missed from his old home.
Even when he knew his friends knew how bad he must be feeling. He also was aware they wouldn't come visiting tonight. They wouldn't barge into his home demanding that he be somewhat the man he wasn't anymore. Sometimes, he could get away with being that man. But at the end of the day, he would always come back to the empty vessel that was left.
"They're equally shocked, most likely," he said, to no one before he took a sip of his beer. Truth was, there was no preview of what would happen next. There was no short version of how she had jumped from Major to General in a blink of an eye. No public notification of her promotions… Nothing that would give them a heads up. It was as if the reader of their book had just skipped the whole prologue.
"Fuck, Jack… you're fucked up tonight." He mumbled. It wasn't like he thought she didn't deserve the promotions, "Fuck you mind! It's not like she doesn't have what it takes to be a fucking General. You know she did, way before you became one."
If there was anyone who knew how capable she was, having been on the receiving end of her life-saving skills, it was him. He knew she could get there, but boy, he was surprised that she did.
He shook his head, at the same time, he wasn't surprised at all. For crying out loud, she had mounted a scheme that had brought down a whole damn operation! What she had done was far beyond what most Colonel's do to get promoted.
"Goddamn it, Jack. You were Brigadier General for a year before they considered you experienced enough for HWS. You didn't build fifteen fucking companies out of the blue with the help of people you rescued from a fucked-up cabal!"
No, he was still there. They still weren't allowing him to retire. If only because they said they couldn't find someone who could fill his shoes. Carter would, fucking soon. Her fucking shoes would be ginormous besides his. Her ovaries would be exponentially bigger than his own balls, too! He chuckled at this thought. It reminded him of that silly comment about her reproductive organs. He could almost see her in front of him, telling him that all over again.
Almost… because he had forgotten exactly how blue her eyes were, or how blonde her hair was. He had seen her in that footage. Where the woman that looked like the Carter he knew, but wasn't her at all.
He took another sip of his now lukewarm beer and grimaced. There was something lurking in his mind, something weighing down his shoulders. Something knotting his stomach in a painful way. Something managing to make him fight the tears that were forming.
His head began to throb. He was containing it, but the truth was it needed to be released. He wondered if he could admit it. If only to himself, the night sky, and the almost non-existent wind.
"I'm fucking scared." He whispered, and the world didn't end. "Terrified, that's what I am. Terrified, that I'm not enough anymore."
