Title: When there was

Relationship: Jack/Sky

Rating: PG-13? Language

Warning: Um, indirect spoilers for the series end?

Note: Title taken fromAuden's The Unknown Citizen

15 peace

There was a time when he didn't always have control of himself. When he would lash out and spread his emotions so messily over everyone around him.

It shames him, to think back on those days. That younger self who thought it was all right to impose himself on others, to just say everything he was thinking and damn the consequences.

After his father—died. After that, he wasn't sure there were any heroes left. Their world had revolved around his dad, his and his mother's, and once he was gone, there was this gaping hole. Like a song that suddenly had no singer, just someone banging out a rhythm with no direction. She tried her best to cope and he tried his best to understand, but the connection wasn't there any more. He was too angry, too confused by his own sudden abandonment, and she was too tired, too worn down by being a cop's wife, then a widow. Her empty eyes would watch him listlessly, reacting to him but without any real heart. Even when he yelled and screamed just to see what she would do, she just looked at him with so much weary disappointment. Like she had already given up on living.

They tried to get along for a few years, but once he got to that age where it was easy to slip away, to not come back until after dark and spend the day with friends who had no respect for authority… Well, she did what she had to do, to keep him from slipping further.

It took him a while to realize that there were still heroes out there. That there were people who protected the world and other families, and they were still fighting, even if his father's helmet lay above his bed at night.

The military school his mother had chosen was the same one that had groomed his father for the SPD academy, and after being there a few months, his stopped getting that horrible tightness in his chest whenever his father's name was mentioned. Being there, he started being proud of his father again. Because the man might have left him and his mother, but he had saved so many others. Just because they had been devastated by him didn't mean the rest of the world had been, too.

Besides, they had survived, and the world went on even though there was this gap, this void.

But he didn't decide to join SPD for his father alone. Honoring his father's memory the best way he knew how was only part of his reason, maybe because he wasn't sure how else to measure his worth as a person. He'd never had any other example by which to judge. But he knew what he wasn't going to do—He wasn't going to make any promises, break any hearts. He wasn't going to make a life for himself outside, where he would have people relying on him, depending on him and looking up to him. Not when he knew how quickly life could change. He wasn't going to get attached to people—Just look at Dru. The first best friend he'd ever really had, and then he gets transferred, then he's listed as MIA. Then he turns up a year later and betrays everything they had.

No, he didn't plan on getting attached to his new teammates or any of the other cadets. He would focus on what he did best—Fighting and strategy. Strip away all his facades, all his walls and pretenses, and that was what he did best. He could subdue and injure and maim, all with great precision. And maybe part of him was afraid of himself for that, clung to the regulations and guidelines as a way of keeping himself in check. Because he could remember those angry days, those days he hated everything and wanted other people to hurt just as badly as he did. Days he thought he had outgrown, but stayed nestled in his heart. A warning, perhaps, that his strength was as capable of devastation as it was protection. But it was his best offering to his chosen profession—his skill in combat, his strict control—something that he could perfect, something that others could see as being worth something, since he couldn't seem to offer much else.

But then a routine assignment changed everything, and he wasn't sure what to feel. What to do or be.

A carefree grin and a lazy drawl. Hardened resolve and the ability to accept his own faults. To admit his own faults, once confronted with them.

Sky had never wanted to get close to anyone again, but somehow… Somehow, the other man wormed his way in past Sky's defenses, and Sky was left—Open. Vulnerable. Laid out like the wreck of a human being he was, judged and found lacking. Yet still accepted with all his flaws.

And for once—For once he felt like he could be more than who he was without losing himself. Like maybe he could let someone in and not tear them apart with his abrasiveness, his defensiveness. Because Jack was tough. He could take it, and he gave back as good as he got.

And he still wanted to be around Sky afterwards.

Then the world looked a little different. Subtle changes he understood in his head that he never could have thought would make such an impact on him. Suddenly it wasn't as hard to think of something nice to say about his roommate or his other teammates. It wasn't hard to appreciate what they brought with them, what they were so easily willing to give. It was. Humbling. Very humbling, to realize what had been offered to him all along and he had carelessly thrown away, was still being offered despite his past attitudes.

Even when he thought Jack had left for good, had disappeared without telling them where he was off to now—Even then, something had remained in him. Some fundamental part of him had changed. And when Jack was there again, like he hadn't left at all, Sky thought that maybe that was true.

That maybe you could carry the people you loved deep in your heart, and it didn't have to hurt. It didn't have to be a gaping hole to fill with anger, but instead could make you be even more of what you are inside. That maybe you didn't have to give up on living to survive.