A/N: This is sort of a companion piece to Chapter 23. I know the ending's a bit weird, but I wanted to segue into the next chapter, which will be the angsty one.
Jack always took a large collection of photographs with him on the road during the Pro League season. There were a couple of ones from his childhood and the Team Satisfaction days, but not many, since photo-developing places were difficult to find in Satellite. Naturally, there were none at all from his first time as "King". The vast majority of them were of Carly and their children.
His favorite picture was of Carly, taken in Tuscany during their honeymoon. She was in a ¾ profile pose to better show her baby bump, and her hair was blowing in the wind. Carly was rather embarrassed of that picture, since it was slightly blurry and the camera had caught her with her eyes closed. She had begged Jack to take one of the better pictures instead, but he always insisted that he liked this one. It was spontaneous in a way that the other pictures didn't capture.
Then there were pictures of Jack himself holding his newborn children...well, he was holding the first two at least. With Jackie, the youngest, he had had to settle for posing next to the incubator.
Jack always preferred candid photos to the posed studio ones. He would much rather see his family being naturally happy rather than being forced to smile while dressed up in uncomfortable clothes. He would have been perfectly happy with not doing any of the fancy pictures at all, but Carly wouldn't have it.
At any rate, Jack was very protective of even the posed pictures. If there was even a small crack in one of the glass coverings while they were moved, the people responsible were treated to one of Jack's tongue-lashings. One time one of the less-important pictures had fallen out of the frame and gotten slightly crumpled when it wasn't properly secured. Jack had fired the whole luggage staff, only to re-hire them all after Carly yelled at him.
And when Jack was forced to retire and couldn't travel so much, he just set aside a room of their mansion for displaying the pictures. During his rough times, it was one of the few things that could cheer him up. If everything else was taken away, at least he had these memories.