AN:Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt. — ABRAHAM LINCOLN; It must be verry difficult to spend one's life feeling persecuted each and every time one's ignorance is corrected. Have the courage to post other than anon or quit trying to prove you're the victim. When two people with the exact same experience of living a reality tell you this IS how it is... presume their personal experience trumps your deeply held belief. Oh and that's laughter you hear not animosity honey. I'm not going to dignify your nonsense with even approving your comment. lol
Chapter 2
"Walter, I can't make heads or tails of this crap." Glaring at the papers in front of him, Jack admitted to his very own Radar O'Reilly.
"You just need to write up an explanation of the events and your reasons for requesting the annulment, sir." Walter called back from his office.
"I didn't request it." Jack grumbled too low for Walter to hear.
Walter had professed innocence in the matter, claiming some POG clerk in personnel must have misread someone's notes and assumed the marriage was signed off on by General Hammond. As at least one of the requisitioned pieces of paperwork was, in fact, signed by Hammond. Walter reminded Jack that George also often just signed things he was handed if he was in the middle of something else.
Walter knew he'd be in fairly hot water right now if any of them figured out what had happened. That it had been Hammond's off the cuff comment to Walter one day that one of these fake weddings was going to get filed wrong and 'those two idiots would be stuck with each other' that had given Walter the idea to enlist an innocent pencil pusher POG into writing up the papers. He then convinced Siler into distracting Sam about some repair to her motorcycle that when Walter offered the folders to sign. She'd done so without even looking at said documents.
He told himself that he'd done it almost as an insurance policy for them. He really did think that, at some point, they might get caught slipping up. If they had a wedding on record signed off on by their CO, well then, there wasn't much the USAF could do to Jack and Sam because they had a marriage of record and had not acted unprofessionally for years.
It had seemed like a really good idea at the time too. Walter had not been counting on Jack stubbornly refusing to tell Sam he still loves her and Sam subsequently dating that idiot cop. He'd honestly thought waiting two weeks to say yes the marriage proposal was a sign for Jack to get his act together. Jack had not. That had led them down this path. And now there was a new fiasco.
Fortunately the office grunt was long gone on another assignment and wouldn't remember the specific paperwork anyway after all these years. That left Walter free to plead innocence as it was not his signature on the processing papers nor was it someone they would waste the time to track down and question.
"Walter!" Jack growled.
"Sir?" Walter called back patiently.
"Why are they asking about my first marriage?" He muttered something Walter couldn't hear. "These questions are really personal."
"Yah, I hear the Catholic Church is really thorough about this stuff."
"That's why I stopped going, Walter." Jack said emphatically. "This stuff is none of their business. Get the chaplain down here. I wanna ask him if me already being divorced might cut this whole thing short."
"Yes sir." Walter said agreeably knowing it would not. He'd called a specialist in Catholic annulments last week. There was very little Jack or Sam could do to cut corners. The church didn't take bribes unless the bribe was very VERY big these days, and they would struggle to prove their relationship has been platonic for eight years. This might take long enough that the cop would give up in disgust. Walter smiled to himself. One could hope.
"Yes sir?" Mike asked the SGC base CO as he sat down across from the clearly annoyed man.
"Mike, what the hell am I supposed to do with all this… crap." Jack asked, waving in annoyance at the paperwork in front of him. "I don't even know how to answer half of these questions honestly and not have it look like we've spent the last four years actually married." He admitted in frustration.
Mike gave Jack a sympathetic look. He'd been chaplain when Jack had come through the first time. Lost. Broken. He'd stopped by the chapel to pray one last time before leaving on a death mission. He'd come back still damaged but no longer looking to end his own life. Jack was not an actively religious man but even he sometimes prayed when he was desperate. To a god, Mike suspected Jack no longer believed in.
"What is it you want to do with it, Jack?" Mike asked him gently.
"Throw it in the trash." Jack growled. "But I can't because Carter wants to get married and because of a stupid clerical POG cockup, I have to help her get a wedding we never had annulled first." He said in frustration as tellingly, the cheap plastic pen that he had been gripping in his hand snapped in half.
Mike really didn't think that was the reason Jack didn't want to go through the annulment. They had talked off and on when Jack was willing. He'd wanted a 'someday', but they just couldn't manage to get around the frat regs so Sam, at least, had apparently given up… And Jack loved her too much to fight her. The past six months had been hell for him as he believed Sam's feelings for him had changed and not because she had simply given up hope since he did not make a move forward for them. She never understood that it was her decision all along.
"I can help you write it if you need me to. It's the least I can do for you, Jack." The base chaplain for NORAD and the SGC the obviously frustrated man sitting across from him.
"Yah… yah okay. That would help." Jack agreed quietly. He would not give in to his feelings on this. Sam wanted to marry that guy. He had no right to stand in her way or in the way of her happiness. It didn't matter how he felt. It didn't matter if he liked the guy or not. He wasn't going to like any guy at all.
"All right, let's start at the beginning and see what the questions are." Mike said as he gathered the papers on Jack's desk and started reading through them.
"I don't get it, Sam. You don't go to church, why does it matter if you get married in one?" Daniel asked Sam as they had coffee in his lab.
"It's tradition." Sam said with a shrug. Daniel gave her an unconvinced look. "Fine, Pete wants a big wedding for his family and probably mine too, to show what a great match we are."
Daniel didn't think a big wedding was what made you a good match. He wasn't about to tell her that though. If this guy was what made her happy, he wouldn't fight it any longer. He and Teal'c had tried but Sam didn't seem to hear them. They wanted to press some more but she kept saying she was happy. But to them, the problem was… Sam didn't honestly seem all that happy. He'd been delirious happy with Sha're most of the time and still thought of her extremely fondly even though he'd worked hard to move on. Sam just seemed to be trying to kill her feelings for one man by sleeping with another.
Daniel thought Sam's method of trying to forget one man with another wasn't really working, and in the end she'd end up hurting both men. He truly believed that Sam didn't realize that she was already hurting Jack. Daniel couldn't remember the last time Jack had been this out of sorts for this long. He'd shown resigned acceptance to the loss of Sara after she filed for divorce, and he'd been married to her. Jack was grieving like a part of him was dying… and Daniel wondered a bit if that was exactly the case for Jack.
"There's nothing wrong with big weddings if it's what you both want." Daniel hedged. "I just think you guys should have rented a hall or something." He said with a shrug.
"Oh, he's doing that too." Sam said under her breath.
Daniel hummed in absent reply. Sam didn't seem to be heavily involved in her own wedding. But she had clearly thought that she had moved on and she steadfastly refused to call Jack by his name anymore. They avoided each other like estranged ex-lovers who, Daniel suspected they were, whether they admitted it or not.
"I know it's silly and a huge waste of time but the priest won't even let us consider a church wedding until the General and I annul this thing even though we had no idea the government misfiled it."
"I still don't get how, Sam." Daniel said in confusion.
"Well…" Sam hedged. "Walter seems to think some POG read the mission file and assumed one of the 'make the natives happy weddings' was legitimate and filed the proper paperwork." She said with a shrug.
"That doesn't explain how you, Jack, and General Hammond all signed off on it without noticing. Okay… Jack, I could understand. He'd sign his own death warrant to avoid actually reading requisition forms. But how did it get past you and General Hammond?"
Sam sighed. "Walter thinks it got shoved in with other stuff and we both must have been too busy to pay attention to the contents." She gave him an embarrassed smile. Never in a million years would she suspect Walter or General Hammond of such duplicity. It was only when Jack and Sam were in counselling when Jack finally put the pieces together and figure out Walter had hoodwinked them all. Only a casual comment from Jack later would make Sam realize what happened as well.
"So, if it's all just a dumb clerical error?" Daniel was confused.
"The church doesn't care." Sam said with a sigh. "They consider any marriage as valid."
Daniel mulled over that thought for a long time. That meant her boyfriend, who was also divorced, needed one too if he remembered correctly. He almost told Sam then thought better of it. He didn't know how long an annulment took but the longer it dragged out the more likely Sam and Jack were likely to come to their senses and just stay married to each other.
"Anyway I'm supposed to have witnesses to the marriage testify on my behalf that I never intended to be married to the General." Sam continued.
"Oh, yah. Sure. I can do that." Daniel agreed absently even as the back of his mind percolated. She'd forgive him. Eventually. "What do you need me to do?"
"Just tell them the truth." Sam said with a frown.
"Scouts' honor." Daniel agreed readily. She'd be mad at him if she found out but he had every intention of telling the truth. But the actual truth and not the fiction Sam told herself as a bedtime story every night to get through being engaged to a guy she didn't love the way she should.
"Thanks, Daniel." Sam said in a relieved tone. "Do you think you could help me translate the writing on this thing now?" She asked, picking up the alien piece of equipment she'd brought to him.
"Um, sure. Let me take a look at it."