Revised slightly because I'm writing more and decided to add some things.

I'll be going on vacation for a few days tomorrow, so please give me a nice present for when I get back and leave a lot of reviews.

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"I won't give up my job, my career, Daniel, not for the vague uncertainty that Carter will decide her doubts about the wedding are big enough and break it off. Not for the slim chance that she'll decide what she wants is me. I've been career military all my life, the only time I retired I almost went bonzo. I'm not doing that again, Daniel, especially not if there's a chance it will all be in vain. And after she started boffing that buffon, my job is all I have left."

"So what are you going to do?" challenged Daniel "You're just gonna give it up? Throw in the towel? Say 'screw the 8 years you've wasted on the woman' and be a loner?"

He had only meant it as a tool to get Jack to say more, but when the man just continued to look at him with that level gaze, a cold wave swept through Daniel. He had suddenly realized that was exactly what Jack was planning.

"Don't tell me you're giving up on happiness with a woman, Jack." Daniel gasped horrified. "You're not a loser. Losers give up! You're a fighter! Fighters fight! Fighters always find another way, another battle, a reason to live."

"I'm not giving up, I'm just conceding defeat in a fight I was never meant to win. I'm conducting a strategic retreat to a new defensive line." Jack replied firmly and ignored his friend's snort. "I'm too old to be starting over for the 4th time, Daniel, I have to face the fact that what I had with Sara is all I was meant to have in this life. I had hoped to have a new lease on life with Kerry after Sara and Carter, but that didn't work out either."

"What was Kerry to you, anyway?" inquired Daniel "Was she just a warm body to snuggle up with, a body to relieve your basic urges with? Or was she something more?" He knew the answer, he just wanted to hear Jack say it, to acknowledge it. He wanted Jack to admit it to himself and outloud.

"What do you think, Daniel?" growled Jack, but then subsided. After a minute he started reluctantly, after so many years of solitude sharing his feelings was even harder than before. But the situation was too far gone and he knew he needed to share his burden or collapse from the weight of it. And with his responsibilities to the world not sharing it would be selfish and irresponsible. "She was more. I really thought we had a chance, that I had a chance for happiness. I really thought I had it all together, but then Kerry takes one look at Carter and I together and calls it quits. And now, after only a few hours, I'm realizing I'm already missing her. Looking back now I see that we moved too fast, she was living with me within weeks, but I was just so pathetically grateful to have a woman who loved me and had no qualms about giving me that love that I was drunk with it and simply lost my head. But, even though I lost control of myself and let it continue too fast it wasn't an affair, it was a relationship. I wanted it all with her, Kerry, I just didn't know I wasn't over Carter yet and so I hurt the one person I swore to myself I never would."

Daniel thought about it and decided to give his friend an advice. A brutally honest and painful advice, but there was no easy way out of this. Either Jack gets a hurtful truth and has then a chance for happiness, or he doesn't and ends up alone and miserable. Sam wasn't obviously going to wait for the man, even if the wedding to Shanahan wouldn't happen, she had obviously moved on from Jack and would find some other man to warm her bed, yet again not Jack.

"What you need to do is get over Sam and find someone better for you." he caught the look Jack was giving him. "Don't misunderstand me, Sam is my friend, but I'm honest with myself that she never made you really happy, the way she could've had she wanted to, she only ever made you sad and miserable, longing for what you couldn't have, for what she wouldn't give you. I know I wasn't there for the second Za'tarc testing, but Janet told me about it. I know Sam ordered you to keep it in the room and you followed her order."

"I did." Jack admitted. "But I thought there would come a time where we would take it out of the room and try for a life together. And then she got herself Shanahan..."

He paused.

"Don't misunderstand me, Daniel, I've forgiven Carter for that because I know I never had any kind of hold on her and I don't blame her for going out to look for someone else. Well, at least not anymore. Okay, not that much anyway. What I do hold against her and can't forgive her for is the way with which she did it and the way she told me about it. She could've at least given me some fore-warning, met me privately and told me that she's voiding the silent agreement I thought we had of waiting for each other. Considering what we had that was the least I deserved - the decency of her to tell me in private before she went out to look elsewhere and started dating that moron. And not tell me by humming in the goddamn elevator!" shouted Jack and slammed his fist on the table. It was a testament to how he was hurting that he'd said so much. Much more than he'd ever shared.

Daniel winced at how Sam had told Jack. It was a definitely very insensitive way of telling a person you know has feelings for you that you found someone else, it's like rubbing their face into the fact that you got laid last night.

"Then what you need to do is to move on, Jack. You've already admitted to yourself that it would never work with her, that's a big step."

Swallowing he continued, ignoring the truth that by trying to make his best friend happy he would make Sam angry at him. He didn't know if the consequence of what he would say would make her miserable, since she'd always kept her feelings closer to the chest than anyone else he knew, but there was enough evidence to say there were no more romantic feelings for Jack there that would break her heart if he moved on. You don't get engaged to someone if you love someone else. And if there were... And if you do go to someone else when loving one person, then you obviously don't love that person much. Actually, both, the fiancee and that other man. Because then you wouldn't do that to either of them.

But the reason why he suspected Sam would be angry at him for telling Jack this was because he knew Sam considered Jack her fallback guy, the second choice, the safe bet, the one to go to when she screwed up with everyone else, the one to settle for and that because she had always been smugly confident that Jack would be there waiting for her if she screwed up with everyone else.

It had never been Jack who had kept them apart, it had always been her.

Sam had no problems, no mental or emotional blocks that were preventing her from finding happiness elsewhere, while Jack did have them and thus Daniel knew he had to make Jack tear those blockades down, otherwise Jack would never be able to be happy because he would never be able to move on from Sam and find happiness with some other woman. A woman more receptive and appreciative of his feelings for her than Sam had ever been.

"I love Sam, she's like a sister to me. But, even with that, I can't escape the truth that when it came to deciding on how and whether to proceed with a relationship between you two it's always been just about her needs, her wants, your needs or wants were never of any consequence at all. When she decided that you have to keep it in that iso room it had been she who had decided that, without even asking for input from you. What you felt or wanted or needed didn't matter to her. The only thing that mattered to her was what she wanted and her career. You were never among the top 5 on her list of things and people who's opinion or wants mattered or were actually important to her personally. So she ordered you to forget it and then never spoke about it again. I've watched you go through so much, sometimes together, but most of the time apart and secretly I've always hoped you two would get it right one day and find happiness together. But then Sam hooked up with that clown and you just sat there like a bump on a log. I was really disappointed in you, Jack. I know you followed her orders, but damnit when did you take off your balls and give them to a woman!? Tell me that, Jack! You've become one of those guys, those spineless creatures who allow their women to trample all over them, in whos relationship the woman has all the say and I gotta say, Jack, with that most of the men on the base, me and Teal'c included, lost a lot of respect for you. There's a difference between loving a woman and being her lap dog, her doormat. Even in relationship, while in love with a woman, you still have to keep your pride, your spine and your balls."

Hammering the final nail into this coffin he concluded. "What you need to do is to get back your balls and put them back on and be a man again. Sam is my friend, but you're my best friend so your happiness is more important to me than her wishes. You and I were friends even before she knew I existed and likewise. What you need to do is move on, let go of her and the hold she has on you and, when you're ready, you need to go to Kerry and see if she's willing to give you a second chance."

Jack looked at him dubiously, still a little overwhelmed by the truth in Daniel's words.

And through all these years he'd been patiently waiting for her to decide she finally wanted a relationship with him, unknowing that day would never come.

It hadn't been Sam waiting for Jack, but it had always been Jack waiting for Sam. He'd put his feelings for her on his sleeve, told her in his own way that he loved her and, after she'd told him to keep it in the room, he'd patiently and silently waited for the time she'd decide to take it out of that room, instead of going to Hammond and talk to him about the situation, ask the man for permission to have a relationship with his own 2IC. While he'd still been on the team and until she had "told" him (if one could call it that) about Pete, he'd always been ready and willing to retire, if there would be no other choice, he'd just needed a good reason to retire for, a guarantee that he wouldn't just end up alone and with nothing, but Sam had never given him even a little sign that she wanted anything with him, so he'd never talked to Hammond and never did anything about his feelings for her.

Before Hammond had reactivated him the unbearable loneliness and guilt had been the reason why he'd many times ended his evenings with the muzzle of his service weapon in his mouth, trying to psyche himself up to pulling the trigger.

He'd never managed it and after Sam's hooking up and later engagement to Pete, he'd regretted that lack of courage many times. Had he known that he would continue living just to experience that kind of pain and betrayal back then he was sure he would've pulled the trigger and prevented going through it. But now he was too high up the food chain, too many people depended on him, Earth depended on him, that's why he could no longer consider blowing his brains out. Even if he didn't see a reason for living past keeping Earth safe.

When he'd realized that nothing would ever come out of his unrequited love for the blonde his priorities had changed, his career was all he had left, and then he had slowly tried to move on. Granted, it had taken him months before he'd been capable of starting anything with another woman, but he had tried. And failed miserably, hurting a good woman in the process. A woman who had given him her heart and trust and who had believed he had given it to her too.

But, if what Daniel was telling him was the truth, then he just may get a second chance...

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