A/N: Thanks again for reading my story. And thank you for everyone who still stuck with this after the last chapter. I'm sorry this chapter is a little short, but I'm going to be pretty busy for the next several days and I really wanted to post something to clear up that evil cliffhanger so it wasn't hanging over my head any longer.
Chapter 28 – No, Really, The Answer Is...
Sam sat by the waterfall for a while after Jack had left, her mind spinning with his proposal. Sure, things had been going well. Sure they had finally let go and admitted to each other what they felt for each other. Sure they'd been enjoying getting closer over the past couple of weeks. But... married? She'd never expected that.
She slowly rose from the ground and decided to take a long walk through the woods to clear her head and think things through.
She wandered about for several hours, not quiet paying attention to where she was going, but also not allowing herself to get completely lost either. How would that look? Leader of the Earth's premier off-world team getting lost in the woods and not being able to get to her own wedding... if that's what she wound up deciding to do.
In the back of her mind she still had that little voice that kept saying it would never work. After 8 years of denying her feelings for Jack, the habit was hard to break. She did have things she needed to clear up at home. Jack was still her CO in the Air Force, the joke with the radio really didn't get them off that hook. Although, it could be argued that she did tell her CO she was resigning, even if the requisite paperwork never made it up the chain of command. She would also hate to be the type of person to come home to Pete and dump him after already marrying Jack. She had been looking forward to a more traditional wedding. Now that she was close to her dad again, she had been looking forward to him walking her down the aisle. She had wanted her friends to celebrate with her.
But, Jack made her realize something when he had mentioned they could say 'local law' was just that they needed to say vows in front of a witness. All that extra stuff really wasn't necessary. All that was necessary was that she and the man she loved vowed to love each other for the rest of their lives. And she truly loved Jack, there was no question in her mind about that, she didn't need to think about it for 2 weeks to know she wanted to marry him. Their friends would still celebrate with them when they got back. She could still have a traditional ceremony when they got back, if she still felt the need. Her dad would still... well... he might beat the crap out of Jack... bad example. But all the things she had thought she needed when planning with Pete, she really didn't need, did she?
She was lost in thought, still arguing the pros and cons with herself when she absently looked at her watch and saw she needed to head back quickly to meet Jack by 1800. It was then that she realized the decision was made – she had to get back to Jack. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him and she wanted to start immediately.
She stopped along the way at a small stream to get cleaned up a bit. She didn't have the beautiful dress and veil, and in fact she felt she looked pretty bad with bandages on her hand and shoulder and a burned out hole in her shirt, but it wouldn't do to show up with the grime of walking through the woods all day still on her face, so she tried to do her best. She saw some flowers and picked a bunch. She used her knife to trim some down to arrange in her hair, laughing at the sight of using this big military knife to cut flowers. The rest of the flowers she arranged in a sort of bouquet and saw she was really late and picked up her pace to the waterfall.
Jack waited until 1810 and decided that Sam wasn't showing up. He didn't blame her, it was kind of sudden for him to ask after they'd just spent several years denying their feelings for each other. He turned towards the woods to go back to the cave and stopped short. Sam had just run into the clearing and he felt like he couldn't even breathe. She was holding a small bouquet of flowers and had some tiny white and blue flowers arranged throughout her short golden hair. She had even woven a kind of a necklace of the small white and blue flowers, which hung loosely around her neck. There was a flush on her cheeks from the run, or from embarrassment at being late or from something else, it really didn't matter. All he knew was that she was glowing. He didn't see the bandages, the burned hole in her shirt, or the combat boots. All he saw was the most beautiful vision he had ever seen in his life.
