Hello everybody,
this is the first time in a very long time, that I have published any of my work. And it is the first time, I've written Sam/Jack or anything Stargate. This little story came to my mind out of a mood and here it is. It's mainly Sam's POV with a very little bit of Jack's thrown in.
Be warned: English isn't my first language, so if there are any bulky or weird sentences, it's my German brain kicking in.
Rated T for minor mentioning of adult themes. Just one line, but to be sure.
I'd love to read your feedback.
An Empty Room
Sam looks out over the little pond behind Jack's cabin and swallows hard. The mug with tea, she's holding in both hands to her lips, is still steaming but the fog swallows the small, white puffs of hot steam. For five minutes now, she's blinking against the tears that unwillingly cloud her eyes. A fish in the pond jumps up and causes the black, smooth water surface to dissolve in ripples, bouncing back from the shoreline and mimicking a black version of the Stargate's glowing event horizon when it calmed down with the kawoosh vanished and just silent. She can hear the steps of General Jack O'Neill behind her on the coarse gravel of the path to the small dock.
She'd recognize those steps anywhere in the galaxy. There were times, when the sound of those steps meant rescue, hope, the last resort against science fiction weapons and snake heads in shiny armors. In her world, the enemy wears the shiny armor. Her hero wears green BDUs, a tec vest and a dirty green base-cap. Right now, it feels like that hero never actually was real but a product of her imagination. The steps change from crunching gravel to muted grass and sounding wood. She doesn't look at him, when he stops next to her, when she hears his clothes rustle while he pushes his hands into his pockets. She knows him well enough to guess, that he doesn't have the words to voice his thoughts right now. She knows him inside and out and he knows her inside and out. It comes with years of working together as closely as they did. It comes with opening up over camp fires and team nights. It comes with facing death and the adrenalin high of saving the planet once a week, sometimes twice, for the past ten years together. Yet they took a wrong turn.
When Sam left Colorado Springs five days ago to spend a week, exploring a possibility that suddenly was there, to finally open that room, they agreed to lock all those years ago, she was on edge with excitement. She spent the flight from Colorado Springs to the small regional airport in Minnesota with telling herself, not to expect too much, not to get too excited, not to be too much. When she saw Jack waiting in the arrival area of the small terminal building, his hands buried in his black leather jacket, his hair slightly unruly and his brown eyes searching for her, her heart jumped. When he hugged her hello for the very first time, kissed her cheek in a soft brush of his lips against her peachy skin, she shuddered under the unused contact; not in a bad way but in a good. When he kissed her in the kitchen, that evening, when they spent the next two nights talking, laughing, getting to know each other on that new level, when they hiked around the portion of woods, that belongs to his cabin, slowly almost shyly kindling a new bond that somehow always was there but never had to support the fringes of reality, Sam hoped it would be enough. When he took her to bed the fourth evening, showing her what kind of tender lover he is, when she showed him the side of her, she hides away while being the soldier, the feminine part of her, the sensual part of her, they realized both just how good they could be together. They fit together in every possible sense and that wasn't even a surprise.
Yet, they are standing on the damp dock in the cool fog of an early September morning in Minnesota, starring down into a black pond that resembles a dark version of what was the middle of their lives for the past decade. And Sam wonders, if what was locked away in that room combusted at one point during the past years, imploded under the pressure of a locked door. Or probably evaporated like parfum from a sealed bottle – slow and unnoticed. Sam was scared of the changes, that are about to happen. She was scared of loosing sight of Jack, when he moves on to DC and she to Nevada. When they are not part of each other lives every single day anymore.
When she woke up this morning, she suddenly wasn't afraid anymore. Not because their relationship changed in the past couple of days but because something else changed, too. She broke open that door piece by piece over the last five days, expecting to find the base, she would build this relationship on, just to find an empty room. Grey concrete walls meeting a grey concrete ceiling, standing on a grey floor, totally and utterly empty. Whatever once was in there, was long gone. A memory of a younger version of herself of a younger version of him. A version of them before; before their will they/won't they relationship became routine. A version of them before the weight of their role in the politic fabric of the galaxy came crushing down on them. Picture frames on the concrete walls were everything that was left, a gallery of who they have once been and are not anymore. Just pictures, just memories. But nothing else. "I love you." Sam's voice breaks with the three words that mean so much, that she means from the bottom of her heart. It's just barely a whisper and she feels Jack's nod more than she sees it. This is how much she's tuned into him: she can deduce his movements by the sounds of the fabric of his clothes, by the slight movement of air around her. "I know." Jack answers, equally silently. "I love you too." He means it as much as she does. He has loved her for so long that he can't remember, what it feels like to not love her. And yet: "But it's not enough." Now it is on Sam to nod. "I know." When she takes a shaking breath, cleansing herself with the taste of the cool air, finally letting her hands sink with the mug still warm, he takes it from her, putting it down on one of the poles that hold the dock and pulls her into his arms, tugging away his face into her hair.
When Jack hugs, his hugs are complete and although this feels like home, Sam knows that this is a goodbye. Right now, she doesn't even know, if for good eventually. When Jack let's go of her, putting his hands back into his jeans pockets and Sam taking her mug again, finally sipping the now lukewarm brew, the tears are gone and the room, now left wide open to air out is nothing more than another memory, added to her gallery of life. And she's okay with that. She will be okay again.