AU: John attempts to get Sam out of the sunken lounge...
Part of my Lost and Found Universe.
Triggers: Depression, Underage Relationship, Reference to a Major Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Foul Language, Reference to War.
Please note that this story deals with an underage character and a very mature age character. I DO NOT CONDONE this behaviour, but please remember that this is FanFiction, not real life, and the characters are Sam and Jack in other forms. While Jack's clone is 16 in this story, he is still a 52 year old man.
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to Amazon/MGM. I'm just throwing them a curve ball and making their lives a little derentis!
Chapter 6:
Thursday, 12th February 2004 – 8:00am MST – Cascade House – John O'Neill
I was torn.
Should I leave and go to school, or should I stay with Sam?
I wanted to stay, needed to stay to make sure she didn't do anything stupid. Not that I thought she would, but you just never know. On the flipside, I had already taken Monday off after waking up feeling incredibly anti-social and down right depressed after a weekend of solid brooding.
Walking to the top of the stairs, I looked down into the darkened room. She still had refused to open the blinds. A jerky movement punctuated by the crying of a very familiar word sent shivers down my spine.
"Sir." She cried a second time, "Sir, stop! Janet, you have to stop him!" She demanded. I knew what this was. One of my many inherited memories was of Jack walking down that corridor flanked by guards to get his brain fried by Anise while Carter called out to him from her room, guards holding her back as they shared a last endearing look.
"Please…no…nononono!" She cried, making my eyes close knowing that the next part was a confession in a room that never opened for her. Never opened for me either, but there was no point dwelling on the impossible.
Looking down at the phone in my hand, I shook my head and turned to grab my school bag. She wouldn't appreciate my help anyway. Just as I had the bag situated, she screamed long and loud. It was like nothing I had ever heard before and I had lots of memories of lots of times that Carter screamed herself awake to draw from.
Without further ado, I tore down the stairs as fast as my booted feet would carry me. Curled up in an uncomfortable half sitting posture, she fought with the heavy blankets to free her hands, so I kicked several empty cans and a box away from the edge of the sofa, kneeled and reached out just as her hands broke free to grip onto my jacket lapels. The gloves were long gone which meant her hands were freezing.
"Anise! Stop! You're killing him! Stop! Janet! Stop her! Please… no!" She cried out with wild eyes open and glazed while thrashing, her hands suddenly letting go and tangling in her hair while she repeated an agonising 'no' over and over, her body falling into a haphazard rocking motion.
"Sam, you're OK. It's just a nightmare. Jack is fine. He's OK." I tried to console her enough to bring her out of it.
"No, she's killing him. He lied! We lied! STOP!" She bellowed one last time before the sobs started. Whatever was going on in her head, it didn't sound good, nor did it sound real. It sounded… it sounded like the Za'tarc machine killed him. That she was too late.
Suddenly her eyes went dull, and her hands reached out to find my face. Aside from cold, they were soft and gentle, almost caring. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry." She choked out one final hiccupped sentence as she leant her forehead against mine.
He was dead. In her nightmare, she was too late to stop the procedure that killed him.
I could not help but to mirror her actions with my hands. Having the memory of being strapped to that chair meant I was acutely feeling the pain of her imagined scenario, except with our roles reversed.
"Sam." I tried once again to wake her up without resorting to shaking her.
Slowly her breathing returned to normal, and her blinking eyes cleared until they were looking straight into mine.
"Jack… is it… you?" She asked, her voice thick from sleep and sounding a little hazy. Before I could answer, she launched herself backwards and out of my grasp.
"Sam. It's OK. I'm here. You're OK. It was just a nightmare." I said steadily, my hands up showing that I meant her no harm.
"Get away from me. You're not Jack." She replied bitterly, her head shaking side to side vehemently. "I told you to leave." She continued as she huddled herself into a ball wrapping the two heavy blankets around her like a cocoon.
"Sam. Look at you. You're wasting away. This isn't the Carter I…"
"I'M NOT CARTER!" She screamed, bringing her hands up to her ears, and clamping her eyes shut. "Carter is dead! She's dead! She's gone, and you're not Jack. You're not, you're not… you're…" She faltered, her bottom lip quivering. "Please… just go…"
I didn't think it possible that this woman could break my heart anymore than she already had in this life and our other ones. Putting us… technically them… in that room almost killed me, but in true O'Neill style, I soldiered on because that was all I could do at the time. Her contemptuous attitude towards me and her only other living friends was downright appalling, and I was just about done with it. My problem laid with my measurement of 'just about' in that it had no end point.
"No! You can push me away, you can shout and scream, hell you can hit me, but I am not leaving. You hear me, Sam! I will not walk away from you." I ground out, injecting every bit of determination I had left in my words.
"How can you possibly look after me? You're a child. Besides, you have to go to school." She bit off, her voice dripping with scorn and a level of loathing I had never heard from anyone, not even Sara after Charlie died.
"Oh, for crying… Sam, I'm only 16 on the outside and you damn well know it!" I admonished her, coming back to my feet and pacing along the length of the sofa, stopping once to look down at her huddled visage. "Oh, and for the record, you aren't my mother or my CO, so I don't have to do a goddamned thing that you say." I added before turning on my heel and stomping up the stairs. Since I was 16, I figured why not let a little of the petulant child out to play once in a while.
If she wanted to play the long game of who was more stubborn, I'd give her a run for her money. Grabbing the nearest dining chair, I turned and stomped back down the stairs then parked it directly in front of the part of the sofa she was huddled on. Pulling off my heavy winter coat and hanging on the hook by the sliding door, I took a seat on the chair and pulled out my phone.
"What are you doing?" She demanded. I simply smiled, and continued scrolling through the contacts until I found the number I wanted and hit dial. It didn't ring for long.
"Good Morning, Mountain Springs High. Anya speaking." The cheerful voice of our school receptionist, Miss Vlahov, greeted on the other end. I liked her. She was always happy, knew very student by their first name and would always remember the last conversation she had with you.
"Hi Miss V. It's John O'Neill."
"Hi John! Did you change your name back again?" She asked with a mock tone of incredulity. I could just imagine her shaking her finger and smiling – it made me laugh.
She had been the one to sign my detention slip the first time I got in trouble for not responding to my teacher. My detention was supposed to consist of mind-numbing boredom sitting at a desk with nothing to do for an hour. Rather than watching me do nothing, Miss V had me stocktaking the first aid room so that she could place an order for whatever supplies she was low on. Other times, she had me filing paperwork – a task which she considered to be the bane of her existence – or dusting the shelves behind her desk. Either way, she always kept me busy with mundane tasks that she insisted to the Principal were not interesting or fun in the slightest. In truth, I enjoyed the diversion. All I had to do was play along by pretending I hated it. It was our little secret.
"No, Miss V, but since I'm on your computer as John, so thought I'd make it easy for you." I replied knowing she would be using her headset to talk to me while simultaneously entering other absentees into her daily timetable.
"Aww, such a sweet boy. How are you feeling? Do you know when the service is yet?" She asked, the tapping of her keyboard never ceasing.
"I'm as well as I can be. The service is next Wednesday. I was gonna take the day. I'm taking Aunt Sam's 90-year-old mother to the service." I replied with a cheeky smile while looking straight at Sam. She scowled and shot daggers at me for daring to link her to Carter in any way. "In fact, she's not doing so well today, so I need to look after her."
"Oh, of course you do. You're such an angel. You take care and I'll mark you as absent today and next Wednesday as well." She cooed over the top of her incessant typing. "If you need tomorrow, just call through in the morning."
"Sure thing, Miss V. Thanks."
"Anytime, young man. Bye bye!" She said before clicking off the line.
"What did you do that for? I thought I made myself clear yesterday." Sam berated as I leaned back in my chair and placed my phone into my top pocket. "I don't need you here. I don't want you here."
"Oh, you made yourself clear, alright." I replied as I crossed my arms over my chest. "But since – out of the two us –" I gestured between us, "I'm the one with the wherewithal to shower and feed myself properly, I have made the command decision to keep you company for as long as it takes."
"For what?"
"For you to get your head out of your arse." I replied then smiled cheekily in her direction, spying what looked like a book in my peripheral vision. "What is that?" I asked pointing to the book that sat down beside the sofa. She cast her eyes over the hard cover novel and back to me.
"If you don't know what that is, I suggest you go back to school and learn." She replied so snidely I fancied that I could see the venom dripping from her fangs. Everyone knew how I felt about clichés, but this woman was the embodiment of a woman scorned.
What on Earth had Jack done to incur this level of wrath? Well aside from sleeping with another woman. Though, it wasn't like the CIA agent was the first woman he had boned instead of Carter. He had to get his rocks off somehow because some nights his left hand just did not cut it. The funny thing about that… I was pretty sure she knew about the no strings attached arrangement Jack had with the waitress at O'Malley's. The blonde waitress at O'Malley's. The blonde waitress at O'Malley's who didn't care that he called her Samantha or Sam or Carter. Hell, there was one night where he asked her to call him 'Sir' while he hammered into her from behind.
She had a similar arrangement with the barman.
"Pass me your book."
"No. Get your own damn book." She growled then laid down and wrapped herself back up before closing her eyes.
"Fine! I'll do that." I replied with a smirk, then reached into my school bag for a book I had taken out of the library. Book was a loose term for what I had. Settling back, I opened the flimsy cover and turned past the first few fully illustrated pages. I had already read it – multiple times – and was planning on returning it to the library today, but Plan A rarely worked, so this was Plan B.
"There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum…" I read out loud, "'FNAP!' Went the playing card." I sounded out the noise of Joker slapping a playing card down on the table in front of him.
"'Hello! I came to talk.' Batman says as he took his seat opposite Joker." I narrated, noticing that Sam was desperately trying to ignore me. "'FNAP!' The Joker remained silent. "I've been thinking lately about you and me, about what's going to happen to us in the end.'" I continued in my Batman voice even as Sam pulled the blanket up over her head to block it out. "'We're going to kill each other, aren't we?' Batman asked The Joker as he continued to play, not uttering a word." I read, making sure to alternate the timbre my voice between the narration and Batman speaking.
It was funny that the comic I had chosen – The Killing Joke – started with a conversation that could very well apply to Jack and Sam though in a different context. They needed each other so badly, loved each other to the end of time, but were destined to kill each other instead of seeing what was right in front of them.
"'FNAP!'" I said louder to get through the thick blanket. "'Perhaps you'll kill me. Perhaps I'll kill you. Perhaps sooner, perhaps later.' Batman continued to speak. The Joker still said nothing. 'I just wanted to know that I'd made a genuine attempt to talk things over and avert that outcome… just once.'" I finished the next section and looked at the huddled lump under the blanket. Leaning closer, as close as I could go without moving or getting off the chair, I made the playing card sound even louder than before…
"'FNAP!'"
She flew out of the blanket with anger written clearly on her face, "WILL YOU SHUT UP!" She bellowed, red faced, and half crazed. Sitting back in my seat, I smirked.
"Don't you like my book, Sam?"
"That is not a book. That…" She pointed wildly, so I held it up for her to see. Rather than finishing her rant, she took a deep breath, then another and another until she looked up at me with sheer panic written on her face.
"Sam?" She tried to gulp down air, "Carter… shit!" I launched myself out of the chair, relegating my comic to the floor. What the hell had I done?
Idiot! Idiot, idiot!
I should have known better than to push her. Grabbing for my school bag, I rummaged through the front pocket, then the second pocket until my hand closed around a Ventolin puffer. It was Ronny's. I had one on me at all times when we were dating just in case she had an attack. I hadn't given it back.
Kneeling in front of Sam, I grabbed her attention by snapping my fingers, "Carter! Look at me." I said in the best commanding tone I had, "You need to calm down." I said as I shook the puffer up. Holding it up to her mouth, I helped her close her lips around it, then pressed the button. "Breathe in – one, two, three, four – and out - two, three, four." I pressed it again, "Breathe in – one, two, three, four– and out - two, three four". We repeated the process two more times, before I took the puffer away, happy that she was breathing normally.
"Thank you." She murmured, her eyes closing as two fat tears fell down her face. I had never known Sam to ever have asthma in her life. Maybe it was an age thing, or maybe it was a side effect from being on a spaceship breathing recycled air for so many years. Either way, I just knew I had to get her out of this room and back upstairs. I just didn't know how.
Eventually her soft snores told me she was asleep. Even at this age and with her intense anger issues, she was beautiful. I couldn't help myself; I loved her. Running my fingers gently across her moist cheek and up into her silver hair, I made a silent vow.
To her. To Jack. I promised that I would not let her last days be lonely or filled with anger and hatred. I would do everything I could to help her see her next birthday. Settling back on my chair, I began my vigil - a sacred duty that I had taken on whenever she was sick or injured.
Yet another thing that had not, and would not, change.
A/N: The comic that John is reading from is 'Batman: The Killing Joke'. Written by Alan Moore, Illustrated by Bob Bolland. Published by DC Comics. Copyright DC Comics 1988. Batman and The Joker are Trademarks of DC Comics. The PDF version of this comic is available online.