What Fate Decrees - Part Thirty-seven
They reached home and by mutual consent collapsed onto the sofa just holding each other, not speaking. They lay down full length, Jack spooned into Sam, clutching her close and relishing the comfort the contact gave him. He kept going over and over in his mind what he had been thinking on the way home. The worry that his inability to discuss his problems might drive Sam away finally drove him to break the silence.
"I'm sorry about last night," he whispered.
"You've nothing to be sorry about. We all get bad dreams Jack. You've seen me through enough of them."
"I wish it were only a bad dream. I know what I put you through last night." He spoke softly, holding her tightly. "I should have warned you before we … well, they've happened before and they'll keep on happening."
"Shush, it's okay," said Sam, turning to him and putting a hand to his face.
"No it's not. I thumped poor Daniel the first week I got out of the infirmary, knocked him over the coffee table." Jack paused to watch the effect his words had on her.
Sam just smiled. "Good job it's not a glass table."
"Point is, it can get … violent. The nursing staff …."
She interrupted him before he could go on. "It's okay. I really do understand. You can't help what you dream, what you see, it doesn't make me love you any less." She ran her fingers over his cheek, tracing a line down to his lips with a light touch. "I know you'd never hurt me on purpose."
Jack needed to say more, needed to make her understand. "I'd sooner kill myself than hurt you, but I can't control the flashbacks. They're so real, it's like I never left Iraq. Sara went through hell for months and months after I got home. It got so bad I was frightened of going to bed for days on end - I'd stay downstairs away from her."
Sam listened without saying anything, just stroking him, her hands soft against his skin.
As he spoke his eyes blurred as he remembered - fresh pain seemed to be gathering inside him. "I went for the Doc once in the infirmary when I was drugged up. I could so easily have killed her."
"She's never spoken of it."
"She said not to worry, that she understood, but I still feel like hell about it. I could have …" He broke off.
"But you didn't."
"Only by sheer luck. That I didn't know what I was doing wouldn't help bring someone back to life, would it?" His voice was ragged now, almost a whisper. "Those bastards put me through hell, gave me scars, but it's up here" he tapped his forehead "that won't heal. Sometimes just a word or an action brings it flooding back. When I'm awake I can deal with it, push it back where it belongs, but sometime I can't and it happens all over again. I've never really told anyone all of what they did; even the shrinks never got the full story. I gave them enough to clear me, get me back to active, but that's all."
"Sometimes what we imagine can be way worse than the truth."
Jack shook his head. "I doubt it. Even before it happened I'd heard stories about what they did. Hell, I'd even got POW's out and saw some of it, but to live that hell day after day…you can never imagine the horrors, never ….." He moved until his face was almost buried into her neck. "Sam, what I went through is beyond me to describe to anyone." He couldn't help shuddering and felt Sam hug him tighter. "The physical hurt stopped, but what they did to my head never went away. It's always there waiting." He stopped speaking, his breath coming in distraught gasps.
Sam still said nothing, she just held him tightly, stroking his hair, just quietly listening. It was exactly what he needed and he finally let the words he had kept hidden for so long come out.
"It wasn't just the physical stuff - the ways they tortured us, the beatings, burnings, electric shocks - it's what they did with their mind games."
Jack's voice was hoarse with emotion, but he made himself continue. "I watched so many die. They enjoyed it. They watched for anything they could torment you with, frighten you with. Even children weren't safe. They put…" His voice broke and he took a breath to steady himself. "They put a boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen, in front of me. Every question I didn't answer, they hit him. In the end I gave them stuff to stop it, old information, anything to try and put a stop to it …." Jack stopped speaking and raised his head to look at Sam. "You know what they did … they blew his head off. Laughing, they just blew him away."
Sam's eyes widened in horror and a sob came from her throat.
Jack was watching her reaction closely. "They laughed, Sam. I screamed. Christ, I didn't think I had a scream left in me, but they made me scream when they did that." Tears began to slowly make their way down his cheeks, but he barely felt them. "They untied me to clean up. I had to put his body into a bag and mop up the blood." He took a deep breath, and focused once more on Sam's face. "Christ, there was so much blood. Then they took me out to bury him - no grave, just whatever I could dig with my hands. No name, Sam. I never knew his name. I couldn't even say a prayer for him. I wanted to kill them for it, I was so angry, what they did to me … and all the others … I still see his face. I can still see the terror in his eyes as they beat him. I still see the blood. It's all over me and then it mingles with Charlie's blood and I see Charlie like that." His voice broke completely and his head went down as he pushed his face into her neck, the tears flowing freely and his body shaking violently.
Sam was crying now too. "Oh Jack, I'm so sorry. You didn't kill that boy, - you didn't. They did it. You're not responsible for their evil." She shivered as she held him to her.
Jack lifted his face. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. I don't want to hurt you."
"Don't be sorry for me. I'm crying for you, what they did to you, not for me. I'm okay. It's okay to be sad and hurt for someone you love, isn't it?" she demanded tearfully.
Jack's hand lifted to wipe at Sam's wet face. He searched her eyes - for what? Reassurance? Love? Then he realised he'd found what he was looking for, because Sam's eyes gave him the comfort he craved and he found the blood in his memories fading more than it had ever done in the past.
They lay together, holding each other tightly for a long time, each giving and receiving comfort from the other and with it the strength to find peace.
Eventually they went to bed and Jack knew that for that night at least, he wouldn't be seeing that boy's face in his dreams. Distant memories of Charlie, good memories he'd stowed away but had never allowed himself to dwell on, came to him as he lay with Sam and, for the first time in many, many years, he was looking to the future with a lighter heart.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
They woke together in the first light of dawn. Sam cautiously inspected Jack's face, unsure how he was feeling after the emotions of the previous night but, as he moved above her to kiss her, she saw his eyes were clear and untroubled. His face seemed less worn, with fewer lines. There was to be a sense of peace about him that had been lacking before, and as he began to slowly make love to her, she revelled in his touch.
xoxoxoxoxoxo