AU: When an exploration mission goes way off the left field, Jack and Sam are left to patch up their lives. Will that door stay open?
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are the property of MGM/Amazon. No copyright infringement intended. I am once again taking my favourite two Gaters for a walk in an Alternate Universe. Takes place after 5.05 Red Sky with some canon episodes skipped (overlooked) and others referenced.
Rating: Mature. Contains sexual situations and maybe a few tears.
Trigger Warning: Contains sexual intercourse between Sam and Shadow Jack. Watch out for the OoOoOoOoOoOo if this is not your thing. Though, you should read the last separate little paragraph for ongoing story context.
Chapter 27: Fading Away
Tuesday morning – Sam
Walking out of my adjoining bathroom, I found him pacing, hands clenching and unclenching. I had a faint memory of him doing that before. On the planet. He looked up, his dark eyes burrowing into mine causing the memory to hit me full frontal. The first time I saw him after the Colonel had been zapped. "Something's wrong. She should back." He muttered more to himself than me.
"Nothing's wrong Jack." I replied with a sigh. He'd been on edge 0300 this morning, waking me up with his concerns. "It hasn't been 24-hours yet. Reynolds won't do anything until 1030 hours. You of all…" I was going to say people, but stopped myself when I didn't know whether to classify my CO's shadow as a person.
"It's starting." He murmured.
"What is starting?"
"Look at this!" He said holding up his hand. It looked like a hand, albeit a little fainter than yesterday. "I'm fading, he's been gone too long. Not even the Gate is sustaining me now." He complained as he continued pacing.
"Look at what? You're a shadow, a manifestation… whatever, you're a ghost of Jack O'Neill. You're not solid." I replied waving my hand through his to prove my point.
"I was last night." He stated, giving me a look that sent the butterflies in my stomach racing.
"No, last night you were… different."
"I was able to change. Able to do other things."
"Yeah." I breathed. He was hard, very hard, very energetic, and very vocal. "Wait, I thought you said you couldn't…"
"I'm not supposed to be able to." He interrupted. "Unless I am joined with him."
"But you did." I replied, remembering how his voice had reached a whole new high as he finished without being in a dreamscape after he had given me three spectacular orgasms, but this version of him was nothing but a collection of thoughts, impulses, and memories. It wasn't scientifically possible. I shook my head, his entire existence should not be possible, but here he was. Existing.
"Something's wrong." He muttered.
"Nothing is wrong, Jack. You're fine, he's fine, she is also going to be fine." I repeated trying to put him at ease since being unable to control his interactions with this... err realm, space, existence... was clearly a problem. He could control pretty much everything about his form as he had proven to me last night when he changed his age, hair colour and clothes on a whim. Well, actually on my whim. I could not stop my mind from wandering back to last night.
"I am not bound by the conventions of your existence. I can be whatever you need or want me to be." He had said while he laid beside me on my bed wearing not much more than a smile.
"Younger, older, dressed, undressed…" He paused and kissed me slowly, "…bigger, harder." He said with a raise of his eyebrows and a smile. My breath hitched as a myriad of Jack O'Neill images from my dreams assailed my mind.
"Dressed, your uniform, older, a General…" I asked breathlessly outlining the parameters of one of my favourite dreams, one where I found myself riding an older Jack in full dress uniform wearing stars.
"A General. You have a thing for authority don't you Samantha?" He replied as he stood up from my bed and transformed himself. Hair a little greyer, face a little more worn, uniform crisp and perfect with his cover perched on his head. I remembered standing up and taking his cover off, perching it on my head before he leaned in and kissed me hard, his hands on my body when I pulled back breathlessly and asked for something new...
"Oh my. Younger, BDU's, like when we went to Argos." I requested, nearly losing my mind when a young brown-haired Jack in a tight black shirt, olive drab BDU pants and boots appeared sporting a cheesy grin before he engulfed me again, my legs hitting the edge of the bed...
"Samantha!" His use of my full name jolted me out of the memory.
"What?" I said with a jump, almost ashamed of how turned on I was. Almost.
"Can't you do something?" He asked. I looked at him with a frown.
"Do what? I'm a Major on medical leave." I replied incredulously, "I can't exactly walk up to Colonel Reynolds and tell him that I've had a conversation with Jack's shadow and that SG-1 are in trouble. They'll think I'm crazy. I'm already on MacKenzie's radar." I admonished him.
He scoffed, "No, but you can think of something. Thinking of ways out of bad situations is what you do. This should not be happening, not yet." He held up his hand again, this time it moved as if he was relying on some kind of antenna to receive his signal.
"Not yet? What do you mean 'not yet'?" I asked, seeing him turn his face away from mine. "Jack." I walked up to him and placed my hand on his shoulder. Now that I was closer, I could see anomalies in his form. Areas that were fainter, fuzzy or translucent. Almost like holes in the fabric of his existence.
"I thought we'd be OK apart. It was only supposed to be a short mission." He whispered as I ran my hands over his back, dipping my fingers into the empty spaces that peppered his shoulders. "It won't be long before I'm completely incorporeal, even to you. Not long after that, I'll be invisible, then a merely voice in your mind… then I'll be gone." My heart lurched at his final words. He couldn't... we need him. Jack... oh God, my heart sank.
"But Jack needs you. Without you he won't…" My words fell away. Without this Jack, the real Jack would only be my CO. He wouldn't love me. Without my other self, I wouldn't have the confidence to chase him. We needed our incorporeal versions of ourselves to be together, or so this Jack had told me. They were part of us. The parts of us that loved each other, the parts that fought against our rigid psyches, driving us to yearn for our one day.
I had tried to instigate things last night, but something undefined held me back. Something in my mind telling me I could not have what I wanted. I was constantly fighting the thoughts spiralling through my brain telling me to pack up, to leave, to move somewhere else away from Jack. To raise my child as a single parent. I hadn't even told this version of Jack that I was pregnant because I was scared of what he would do or say even though he was not the real thing.
"You can, I know you can." He turned to me. I could not hide my sudden intake of breath when I saw the anomalies in his handsome face, that - somehow - I had missed mere minutes ago. He was disappearing, bit by bit. "I told you to let go, Sam. You have to let go. Promise me you will not give up on him, on us."
"OK. OK. I will, I promise. Jack, please… please don't leave me." I begged. Looking into myself, I pictured the things that held me back – rejection, fear, disappointment, and failure – then boxed them up and imagined firing on them with a zat until they disappeared. No more. I would not be ruled by my fears. I would take what I wanted, what I needed to live the life I craved. I would show Jack how much I needed him. Pulling his head down to mine, I kissed him the way I did in the locker room all those years ago. He groaned as his fingers ran up into my hair causing a faint buzzing to ripple over my skin, as if his fingers tips were electrified.
"This is better, much better." He told me into my lips as we kissed while I walked him backwards. "God Sam, I want you." He groaned, making me smile against his mouth. Giving him a shove, he fell onto the bed, his hand sinking through the mattress unexpectantly.
"Off." I motioned to his clothes. I watched as they flickered but did not disappear as they did last night.
"I can't." He said, his eyes showing alarm at his inability to do something that had been so natural to him mere hours ago.
"Looks like it's the old-fashioned way then." I replied as I tackled his belt, destroying his buckle in the process. Looking at his BDU pants, I slipped my fingers under the waistband and pulled, the seams coming away as if they were joined at the sides by Velcro, the material disappearing almost immediately. It made a certain amount of sense that even though he could not will his clothes away, they were still an illusion and would react as such when met with force.
OoOoOoOoOoOo
Licking my lips when I saw him large and imposing, I quickly shed my own clothes, wishing for the first time in weeks that I had continued wearing my easy to remove scrubs rather than jeans. At least, my shoes were easy to heel off. Reaching for the waistband of my black lacy underwear, I started to push them down.
"No. Leave them." He ordered, reaching out for me, his fingers causing frissons of static electricity across my thigh wherever he touched.
"Oh wow. That feels… different." I said as I slipped my sweater over my head to reveal a matching black lacy bra.
"Different?"
I nodded, "Different good." I replied as I climbed aboard, ready to ride the express into unadulterated bliss with him. It was hard to believe that it had been barely six weeks ago that this version of Jack forced himself on me. How things had changed in that time. Pulling the material of my underwear to the side, I lowered myself slowly then jerked upwards when his cock caused the same static zapping to arc across my labia making both of us cry out 'Oh God' at the same time.
"Slowly Sam." He coaxed, his tongue dancing across his lower lip, one hand sitting on my hip, the other with fading fingers reaching up to apply the electrical sensations to my nipple. "Tell me."
"What?"
"Tell me you're mine."
"Oh… oh Jack." I cried and threw my head back when his fingers brushed their target. "I'm yours!"
"Try again, don't stop." He begged, his breathing picking up. I obliged and eased myself down allowing the static to fill me. "Fuck, I can feel that. Ahh…" He groaned, his hips bucking up to fill me.
"Me too, oh Jack… Jack… mmm…" I moaned on the up motion before sinking down again. "Oh God!" I cried when the touch of his skin to my clit ignited my nerves causing the feeling of my first orgasm to wash over me.
"Jesus Sam, I've barely tou… ahhh… touched you." He faltered mid-sentence to cry out when the tingles got too much. Rising again, I could feel the tingles increase two-fold, tickling the inside of my thighs. Looking down, I could see why. More of him was disappearing with each stroke. Leaning one hand on a part of his chest that was still solid, I dropped myself down pulling another cry from my lips as I climaxed again. The tingles of dual climaxes combined with his static effect and his muttered words of possessiveness tumbling from his lips were almost too much, but I refused to stop. I was his and he was mine. I wanted all of him. If this was the last time I had with this Jack, I wanted it all.
"Are you OK?" I asked as I lifted myself slowly before dropping heavily again.
"No… yes… definitely yes! Ahhh… ye… ahhh… Sam!" He cried, his hips bucking up to bury himself deep within me. I closed my eyes as the overpowering flow of static from his incorporeal body flooded into me when he climaxed for the second time in his brief existence pulling a frenzied moaning version of his name from my own lips when my third climax reverberated through my body.
OoOoOoOoOoOo
Opening my eyes, the first things I noticed were that he was completely translucent, and that I was straddled on the mattress through his body. The second thing was the smile on his face, half way between happy and sad.
"Jack. Please, stay." I begged, reaching my hand out to his face. There was nothing, no feeling of skin under my fingers and no static when my fingers passed through. He had given me everything he could. Everything he had left. Reaching his hand up to my face, I watched as he disappeared before my eyes causing a deluge of tears to descend. "No. Jack." I whispered as the feeling of loss threatened to consume me.
"It's OK, Sam. I'm here with you." He projected into my mind. "Always. Bring us home." His words turned my tears from ones of sadness to ones of hope. He was here, with me and that was all the mattered.
