AU: Sam finally accepts who John is in the worst ways possible...
Part of my Lost and Found Universe.
Rating Change! Due to the course that this story has taken, I have decided to up the rating to Mature.
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 16:
Thursday, 19th February 2004 – Wee hours of the morning – Lieutenant Colonel Carter
Coming out of the small kitchen, I was surprised to see John standing there in a set of green BDU's.
"C'mon Sam, let's take a walk." He suggested with a flourish of his hand.
"What?" I replied incredulously, looking down at my freshly poured… iced lemonade. In winter. Right. I thought as I shook my head. "It's blanketed in snow outside." I added, looking back to see the Colonel looking at me instead of the young man I had become friends with. Only for split second.
"Carter. I'll make it an order if I have to." He said, wearing the young man's face again but speaking with the voice I spent over eight years receiving orders from. OK. I had to be dreaming. "Sam?" His younger voice echoed as he smiled and walked through the back door and out into the yard.
This definitely had to be a dream, or I was officially nuts. It could go either way. A sane woman would have stayed inside, but as always, my curiosity got the better of me. Maybe if I walked outside, I'd get cold and wake up. Unfortunately, blinking rapidly and pitching myself didn't seem to work, so I put my inappropriate drink down, walked to the door and cautiously stuck my head through it expecting to see… anything but a corridor at the SGC. Deciding this was too strange, I turned to go back to my house, but it was gone. In front of me was nothing but a grey wall. Pivoting on the spot, the familiar lined corridor reappeared with three… no four soldiers escorting… my breath hitched as I took a step forward.
"Colonel?" I called out hearing the shaking tone of my voice. He turned and looked at me, but it wasn't him. It was John, young, but with the same serious look in his eyes. "John?" I took a step forward, and then another and another, but I wasn't getting closer, and he seemed to be marking time while walking away from me. I watched as his face back back into the Colonel. "Sir…" I tried again, then yelled, "SIR!" At length, he looked over his shoulder. The look of a man on death row. He was young again, but this time with his greying visage. I shook my head not understanding who he was supposed to be. Colonel Jack O'Neill, or John O'Neill.
"Carter?" His voice came from my left, his face that of the Colonel, while the younger version of him walked away from me, walked towards his death. "I'd rather die myself than live without you." His voice echoed.
I shook my head, "No. I won't let you do this, Sir."
"Sir? I'm in your head and you're calling me Sir." He replied, now wearing the same blue shirt from my hallucination and a young face.
"No. This isn't real, it's a dream. You… you are not the same." I struggled to say, trying to convince myself more than him. An illusion. "You're an illusion. You're not him. You didn't…" I wanted to say a million things, but all that I could think of was his kiss. He had been on the brink of losing control.
"I remember doing it. I remember, Sam. That makes it real." He said, pointing to his head. "I am him and he is me. You know this. You know it in here…" He pointed to my head, "…and in here." He pointed to my heart. "He needs you. I need you." I felt my lip tremble while the young man morphed back into Jack. The Colonel. My Colonel.
"Jack." I said, reaching my fingers towards him.
He smiled, "There you go, Sam. Not that hard, was it?" Then he smiled again before looking down and walking away. Turning to look down the corridor, I saw John disappear around the corner. Going to his death just like the Colonel did after the Za'tarc test. No. I couldn't… I couldn't lose him, not again. He had become a constant in my life and I had come to rely on him without realising it. As always, Jack O'Neill – any version of him – had been my rock.
Swallowing down my dread, I walked down the corridor focusing on the coloured lines as if I would really lose my way in this place. The bend came up faster than I was expecting, and I found myself standing in a dungeon prison, straw on the floor, but no bars. On the floor, I could see myself. Sweating and delirious, Jack kneeling beside me, his hands on my face, smoothing back my sodden hair.
"Carter! Don't you dare leave me. Do you hear me, Major? You hold on. You hold on." He was begging edgily. Then he was looking at me, the dream me, with the fierce dark eyes I had seen almost everyday for the last week. "That's an order, Major." John demanded, looking at me as if I could do anything about it. I hadn't remembered that. He had never told me how close I was to dying. Slowly the scene turned to mist, his distraught sounding voice echoing through my brain. Did he really feel that strongly? God, had I been so blind?
A few more steps and another corner, and I found a bed. Machines breathing for me. An old me, as I was now, not then. Oh my God. I knew this room. I knew it. John with his head sideways on my bed, hands gripped around mine and tears in his eyes. Then I noticed something was wrong. The ventilator wasn't working. The diaphragm was stationary. All the machines were still with blank screens. A heavy sob came from... the General? My hands covered my mouth as I took in his all grey hair, weathered face and unbuttoned blue jacket. I was dead. I was dead and he was… his brown eyes fixed on mine.
"You left me, Carter. You left me. Why didn't you wait for me?" He asked without accusation or blame, just pure anguish. His face flickered back to John's but the uniform remained as the scene started to fade.
Turning around quickly, I burst into tears as I walked down the corridor once again. Corner after corner revealed another nightmare within the nightmare. Drowning in a Ha'tak – Jack desperate in his fruitless lifesaving actions, the Kull Warrior killing me while John watched helpless to do anything – that one had happened a few scant weeks ago, Jolinar making me flatline while he stood by watching – I had never realised that he cried that day.
With each episode, featuring both John and Jack, my heart ached more and more. The visions began morphing. It was no longer me dying, but Jack dying. A common denominator in many of my nightmares. Except this time, it was different. This time, it was me killing him in a myriad of different ways.
Knives, zats, staff weapons, my P-90, his 9mm, the alien ball. Every time he begged me not to do it, not to take his life. But I never listened.
How could I not have seen what I meant to him? Room after room. Scene after scene. Death after death.
Watching him lying on the ice in Antarctica as I shot him up with morphine, his hand grasping at my arm and dark eyes pleading while I administered a lethal dose. 'I'm here, Jack. You can sleep now.' I had said while he convulsed and struggled to breath. Once he was gone, I stood up, climbed up to the DHD and dialled home. The blue of the wormhole lighting up all corners of the cavern except for the forever darkened area where he lay encased in a sleeping bag and ice.
The tears were coming thick and fast now. I had to get out. Reaching for the door to some random room hoping it would end this torment and allow me to wake up, I roughly opened it and flung myself through… into grassland with a myriad of yellow flowers and remnants of buildings.
Looking down, I found myself in full tactical gear. A noise in the bushes made me pull my combat knife – an automatic reaction – and walk foot over foot sideways closer to the noise. There was a broken wall to my right, straw littered the ground along with long dead human remains. To my left, a low ruined wall with what looked like makeshift bedding. The pristine lake on my far right sparkled under the sunshine. Another noise, a shuffle of feet and I was grabbed from behind, spun around and slammed into the wall. While in motion, I lifted my hands in a defensive move just as the Colonel came into view. A sharp gasp, then blood from the corner of his mouth. He staggered backwards half a step as he released me. That was when I saw the knife buried to the hilt in his chest, right through his heart. This time it had been my hands that inflicted the fatal wound, not some perverted vision of me while I watched from the sidelines.
"Look at that…" He garbled – cough – blood splattered across my tactical vest and face, "…you did it again, Carter." Then he stumbled and fell.
"Oh God, no!" I cried as he continued to fall before turning to mist, my surroundings once again becoming the listless grey colour of the SGC corridor. I'd killed him. I had been there to save him after the Maybourne fiasco, but I killed him.
God, I hated this place. The part of my brain that conjured all this.
Looking up the towards the grey ceiling, I cried out to the vast dreamscape, "OK, this has gone far enough. I want to wake up now. I don't want to kill him! Please… please." I sobbed, face dropping into my hands.
"Why not?" I looked up and into the eyes of my Colonel, no… my General, in his pristine blue dress uniform, hair immaculately cut and neat unlike his finger-ruffled SG-1 hair, two stars gleaming on his shoulders. "You've been killing me for years, Carter. What's one more time?"
"I didn't… I never… It wasn't like that. You left… you…" I stuttered, trying to get the words out but failing.
"I left?" He took a menacing step forward, his eyes dark, his face emotionless, "Let me tell you who left whom. You. Carter. You left me in the room, then you left me for another man."
"But… W-Washington…" I stuttered, fat tears rolling down my face, blurring my vision even as I focused on his stars.
"Self-preservation, Carter. You think I wanted to stay here." He motioned to the grey walls, "You think I wanted to watch you cavort with him… your stalker cop…" He gritted his teeth, "…under my nose. Why would I stay for that?"
"I… I don't know." I whispered, sucking in a harsh breath, wishing that I had had the confidence to say yes to going to the cabin. I had been planning on telling him about the breakup on that trip. Instead, I ran, and I lost my chance.
"Neither do I." He replied, then walked past me. Turning as he walked, I watched as he too disappeared into mist. At the end of the corridor, I could see John – this time alone. Hands on his hips, head tilted to the side. He motioned with his head, and I started walking once again hoping he would lead me out of here. Back to Cascade, back to sanity.
Turning the corner again, I saw him ahead of me and at the end of yet another corridor, the blast door to the gate room on his left and… my breathing picked up. No… not him… a tall willowy figure in a hooded black cloak. Anubis. Looking like the Grim Reaper except for his scythe, or perhaps the ghost of Christmas Past. John stopped and looked at him. I couldn't hear any words, but the cloaked figure nodded, and John turned to walk through the door with the devil on his trail.
"John… John!" I called as I started walking, then running. "John… don't listen to him! Please, JACK!" I screamed his preferred name hoping he would stop, but no matter how much I called, yelled, cried – he did not stop walking through that door. I was tired, but I ran and ran, the corridor seemingly growing longer as if it were stretching with every step I took. Until suddenly, I was there. Walking into the gate room, but there was no gate. Instead, I found John – young and vital – climbing into the Ancient Chair with Anubis by his side.
"Jack." I called. He looked up. John. I swallowed. It was John looking as young and innocent as the day we found him, except the eyes. They were his. It was then that I realised that no matter which Jack he was, the eyes were always the same. John and Jack were the same man. He'd been trying to tell me for so long, but I refused to accept it.
"Avo, Carter." He said before he sat down, closed his eyes, and activated the chair. It was almost a rinse and repeat of the first time. Almost. Anubis took a step closer and waited. What the hell was he doing? As the chair reclined backwards and lit up, Anubis looked directly at me, and I sensed a sick smile on his otherworldly face.
"Leave him alone!" I growled, taking a step closer only to bump into a rippling blue wall. Putting my hands up, I felt the resistance. A forcefield. No. Not again. Looking back at Anubis as he tossed his billowing sleeve back to reveal a ribbon device and held it almost point blank to John's head.
Banging on the invisible wall, I screamed, "John! JOHN!" When banging with the flats of my palms did not work, I tried clawing, then I started kicking and punching, but it refused to give. The electronic whisper and flicker of the blue mocked me, allowing my hand to push almost all the way through before hardening and flinging back into place. The ribbon device ignited making John's body arch off the chair, his face morphing from John to Jack and back to John, all the while silently screaming in pain.
I screamed and screamed, sometimes with his chosen name, sometimes his rank and sometimes his given name all while slapping, clawing, and punching at the wall that kept me from him. At length, Anubis stopped and disappeared, the room falling dark and the wall fizzling into nothing. With burning lungs and a raw throat, I ran to him, mounting the podium with ease. Reaching for his shoulders, I gripped them hard to pull his lifeless form towards me, but he wouldn't move.
"Jack." I sobbed to his darkened form. "Please… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you." I pulled again, bringing him flopping forwards. Dead. My Jack. Placing a soft a kiss on his lips as tears streamed down my face.
Part of me wanted to wake up, the other part wanted to stay here because without him, there was nothing to go back to.