Part 5: Vulnerable
After long hours of discussing tactics and the exact chronology of their plan, Thor beamed Jack down to get a few last minute things worked out and one final night's sleep on Earth.
Some primal impulse led Jack to sit out on his back lawn, somehow needing a last moment of contact with the planet for which he had given everything.
A bright flash poured out of his living room windows and a few moments later he could hear soft footsteps crossing the deck.
Sam settled down on the grass next to him, her legs crossed in front of her. For a while she absently picked at the grass, twirling it deftly between her fingers, and Jack briefly wondered if she had been one of those kids to sit in the backfield making daisy chains while everyone else played soccer. Somehow he couldn't quite picture her as the type.
"I'm glad you're not doing this alone," Sam finally said, breaking into his thoughts. "It's a burden you weren't meant to bear by yourself."
"Neither is yours," Jack said softly, already suspecting the real reason for her visit tonight.
He saw her flinch in the moonlight, her eyes becoming suspiciously bright.
Jack turned away from Sam's profile, instead lifting his eyes to the familiar bright constellations in the night sky. Would he ever get a chance to see them again? He gave himself a moment to say goodbye to the familiar shapes.
A soft rustling next to Jack told him that Sam had recovered her composure enough to continue. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her lift her face to the sky and he wondered if she was making similar farewells.
"I made that bomb," she eventually confessed, almost as if trying out the words for the first time.
Jack nodded silently, taking her words as confirmation for what he had already suspected. He knew they were words she had long held inside, tucked away in her lab somewhere, cut off from her friends, every day wondering what she was doing even as she worked tirelessly to perfect it. She was Carter; she wasn't capable of anything less.
"I think I convinced myself they wouldn't use it," she said lowly and Jack could clearly read self-deprecation in her tone.
"You didn't have a choice either way, Carter," Jack reminded her. "And you know that. Choice was the first casualty of this war."
"They couldn't have done it without me. Nothing changes that fact," she said firmly.
"Sam," Jack rasped softly, reaching out one hand to touch the sleeve of her jacket in an inadequate gesture, not knowing what else to do.
"I killed those people, Jack. I killed them."
Her arm was rigid beneath his touch and part of him wished she could just let go, even for a moment, and let herself cry, let herself rage. Her harsh acceptance of what had happened, her drive to blame herself, fired the anger that had been roiling in Jack's stomach for endless months. He couldn't help but feel that by letting this happen to her, he had failed her somehow.
"I should have gotten you out sooner," he said with self-reproach, driving an angry hand through his hair. "I should have found a way to keep you at the SGC."
Sam automatically shook her head, denying his claim to the blame. "It's not your job to protect me," she said in a painfully cool, even voice. "Not anymore."
Jack wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that statement. All he could register was the stabbing pain in his chest.
Not anymore.
She could just mean that he wasn't her CO anymore. She was no longer a subordinate that he was honor bound to look out for. But deep in his gut he feared that she might mean he no longer had a place in her life. She didn't need or want his protection. Or him.
Jack had no idea what to say, how to respond to the cold words or the burning in his lungs, so he just said the first thing that popped into his mind. Because no matter what she thought, there was only one truth Jack knew.
"I want it to be my job."
Jack heard the soft intake of breath that Sam couldn't quite hide. There was a time, not so long ago, that Jack would never have said those words, no matter how true or vague they were. But those days were long behind them. There really were no more rules to be broken. And Jack had no more energy for games.
For the merest moment, Jack thought she was going to turn to him and smile, but instead, she pushed to her feet and walked a few steps away from him, her back ramrod straight.
"I don't deserve to be saved. I don't deserve…," she trailed off, vaguely making an awkward sweeping gesture between them.
It was such an absurdly abstract statement that Jack couldn't resist automatically quipping, "You know how I feel about Charades, Carter."
Despite herself, Sam let out a soft huff of amusement under her breath even as she shook her head at him in exasperation. He knew they both had to be thinking of the disastrous time Teal'c had demanded a demonstration of the Tau'ri game. They had been lucky no one had lost an eye, really.
Jack watched Sam a moment longer as he tried to think of the right words to say to her, the levity of the moment quickly draining away. "Look, Carter, I don't claim to know much of anything anymore. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I don't know if I could have stopped this war before it started somehow." He stood up carefully and moved to stand by Sam's side, shoving his hands in his pockets. "And I don't know if we waited too long or if, given the chance, I ever could have made you happy."
Sam turned slightly away from him, staring blindly at the lawn stretching out beneath them. Jack could see her swallow hard against something that he could only imagine were tears.
Carters don't cry. He could almost hear her thinking it.
She dug the toe of her shoe into the grass in a motion of frustration, and the fresh scent of earth and loam filled Jack's senses, reminding him of just another aspect of the lives they were going to leave behind.
Jack waited for Sam to decide what sort of moment this would be. Was it time to walk away before things got too complicated? Or were things finally different enough? He honestly had no idea what her reaction might be.
Her silence stretched unbearably long and Jack reached out and grabbed her arm. "Just tell me something, Carter. Why did you really come down here tonight?"
Sam glanced at his hand wrapped around her upper arm, studiously avoiding his gaze. "I…," she stuttered aimlessly, obviously unable or unwilling to explain her actions.
Jack would laugh at them both for their hesitation, even in the face of the end of the world, if he wasn't so goddamned tired. Instead, he dropped her arm with a heavy sigh and turned away. It was only then that she whispered so softly that he almost missed it, "Why do you think I came?"
Jack might have thought she was mocking him if she hadn't sounded so incredibly small. He knew what she was really asking him, though, and there was only one answer for her.
He gently reached over and raised her face to his, knowing that words had never been enough for what was between them. So he just steadily met her gaze, and for once hid nothing from her. He let her see a man who would still die for her. A man who had unshakable faith in her. A man who really saw Samantha Carter, good and bad, and still held her in his heart. Always.
Forced to meet this unexpected revelation, Sam let out a soft sound and finally lost her battle with her emotions, a single tear finding release down her cheek. Jack didn't move to wipe it away; instead he dropped his hand to her arm and carefully pulled her closer. He wrapped his arms loosely around her, giving Sam ample opportunity to pull away, but instead she seemed to melt into him, more tears falling damply against his neck.
He let her cry for a long time, strangely appeased by her emotional release. He held her silently until long after her breathing began to even out again. Eventually he could feel Sam intently wiping at her face, probably trying to erase any signs of what she saw as a weakness. Jack stilled her hands against his chest and pulled back to see her face.
"This isn't about what we deserve, Sam, or how we've changed. This is about not letting go of whatever we have left," Jack whispered softly.
Sam studied his face for long moments before hesitantly reaching up and running her hand through his hair, playing with the mussed spikes. Jack must have looked surprised, because she gave him the faintest half smile and said, "I've always wanted to do that."
Jack's heart was beating too loudly against his chest as he continued to stare at her, not wanting to misread her intentions, part of him unwilling to believe. "Sam," he said softly and it was a question, because he always felt the masochistic need to give her one last chance to walk away, no matter how much it would kill him.
The smile dropped from her face, replaced by a sort of emotional intensity he had rarely seen, at least not directed at him. It made him feel like she could read his every thought.
"Some things never change," Sam said and then in one easy motion she lifted up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.
Some things never change.
Ten years had passed since the first day he met her. Six years since he consciously realized in one jolting moment that he never wanted to live without her and that maybe, somehow, she felt the same. More than two years since he had prepared himself to watch her marry another man, knowing he could survive anything if it just meant she would be happy. Four months since he heard her brokenly holding back tears on the other end of a phone line because of what her government had forced her to become.
And now, standing on his back lawn in the moonlight on their last night on Earth, she was kissing him. So, yes, many things had happened to change them over the years, but one thing was always there. He never wanted to live without her.
And maybe by the way her fingers tangled in his hair and her lips moved softly over his, she was trying to tell him that she felt the same way.
Jack pulled back slightly, wanting to see her face. She was a little startled by his seeming withdrawal, but beneath that he could see the same longing he felt in his heart. The look he had first seen six years before behind the hazy glow of a force field.
He gave her a crooked grin to reassure her. And since they were apparently doing things they had always wanted to do, he leaned down and took his time exploring that one part of her neck that had nearly driven him to distraction in far too many briefings. Sam made a soft, incoherent sound in response, her fingers digging into his back. Then Jack said something he had always had to hold back before, but no longer.
"You're beautiful, Sam," he breathed against her skin.
He wasn't sure she believed him yet, but he had hope that one day she would. Words, after all, had never been what they were about. So instead, he pulled her even closer against his body, feeling her hands slip underneath his shirt, and abandoned himself to the moment.
Exploring Sam's body conjured the confused feeling of the very familiar and the achingly foreign. There were so many facets of this woman that had long lain hidden from him. But even still, her skin was like a touchstone, every scar, every part of her body reviving some moment from their past. A reminder of their sacrifices, their pain and their triumphs. Of the too many times each had thought the other was finally lost, along with any chance for a moment like this one, where all barriers could finally fall away.
It reminded them both that no matter how horrible things had become, this moment was still something to be thankful for.
Whether they deserved it or not.
In the pale light of false dawn, they made love in the grass with the last of the stars wide above them, a final, sacred farewell to the earth that had born them. His name tumbled from her lips as a gasp of marvel and for the first time in as long as he could remember, Jack felt complete.