BROKEN

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Spoilers: Doesn't give away too much, but I guess you could say all episodes, all the way through Bait.

Summary: "There comes a time in your life, when you have just been so broken, so many ways, this it is impossible to ever be put back together again."

Pairings: Jack/Sam but really angst-y

She remembered when she was really little, and her mother would put her on her knee and bounce her up and down, whispering lullabies and declarations of love in her ear.

She would murmur that she would always keep her baby safe and that she was the world to her mother. As she got older she kept the promise, saying that no matter what she would always be loved.

And she was this whole, pure, innocent girl who believed that fairy tale endings and perfect lives were possible.

Then her dad left.

No goodbye, no kiss, no hug, he just went away.

And her mom told her that he would come back, and I think she really believed that. But then a year went by and he was still gone, and she fell apart.

She started drinking, then getting mad, and then hitting her. She had promised to protect her little girl, promised to love her yet here she was, creating black and blue memories that wouldn't fade away anytime soon. And she was shattered. She stopped believing in white picket fences and ballerinas and love.

She was broken.

Michael put her back together again.

He showed her everything she was missing, and she took it all in. She was insatiable, she couldn't get enough. He showed her the world, and white picket fences, and ballerinas and love, and everything the little girl in her had had ripped away. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth, and she did. He told her to run away with him, to Vegas, where they could get married and start a real life, away from small towns and their pasts.

And she was whole again.

Until she got pregnant.

She was excited, they could start a family and everything would work out; but he didn't want it. He didn't want any of that, and she realized that she was just another score, and he left her saying he wasn't ready for this, that he still had his whole life ahead of him, and a baby would just tie him down. She cried for weeks before deciding to have an abortion. She still remembered going into the clinic and telling the doctor that no, no one else would be coming.

She was broken again.

She wanted, needed, an escape.

So she took her backpack's worth of belongings and headed to New York, where no one knew her or what she had been through, where she could finally start over for real and put her past...in the past. And she went to school and got offered a position in the FBI, and eventually into the missing person's unit, and her life came together. She didn't have love, or white picket fences, and her dreams were no longer ballerinas and butterflies and those of a little girl, but she was happy, and that was something she hadn't been in a long time, and it felt good.

And then there was Jack.

She was whole again.

They started off as co-workers; boss and worker, and then they became friends. Then they became closer, and there was this undeniable chemistry that they had that everyone noticed. But Jack was a married man, and married men aren't supposed to be attracted to their younger, single, co- workers. But he was, and she always remembered that first night that he showed up at her apartment. And it was seconds later they were kissing, minutes before they were clothes-less in bed. And it was right, in a wrong way, but it worked, it was what they needed.

He put her back together.

But then he broke her, too.

On that bench, when he told her it was over, that he was going back to his wife, and sometimes she wondered if he saw how much he hurt her, saw how he built her up, made her believe in love and the good of men and white picket fences, and then he brought her down, and made her feel the way she had only felt when her dad left, or her mom left, or when she went into that clinic alone.

She wondered if he knew he had broken her again.

Now it was two in the morning, and there were only two lights on in the building. One at his desk, one at hers. And she listened to him tell her that he wasn't going to Chicago, his wife wanted a divorce, he was staying, a single man. And she was crying, and she didn't know why. Because this was everything she wanted to hear since that first night at her apartment. Now, he wanted to gather all the broken pieces of her life and repair them, make her whole again. Now he was sitting, waiting for her answer.

"There comes a time in your life, Jack, when you have just been so broken, so many times, that it impossible to ever be put back together again."