Trigger warning - this is set early in Stargate, the movie. Jack and Sara are in a very, very dark place. If their... situation (recall Jack's plan upon reaching Abydos) is triggering for you, please find something else to read. I recommend one of my usual fluffy fics.
I may be going overboard with the M rating, but again, we've got dark themes here.
Speaking of, I'd told myself at the beginning of my fanfic era that I'd only write the fluff I wanted to read. Then this started rattling around in my brain. What the heck happened?
I own nothing, etc.
It was late when Jack returned. He hadn't told her where he was going or when he might come back. Sara, in turn, hadn't bothered preparing anything for his supper. He'd eaten so little lately that there really wasn't a point in cooking anyway.
It had been hell since Charlie died. Sara had sobbed more than she had in the rest of her life combined. She couldn't believe her smiling, bright-eyed boy was gone, and in such a horrible way, too.
She'd taught Charlie to look both ways before he crossed the street. To not talk to strangers. To never eat anything given to him by a stranger. All those dangers she had prepared for, only for her child to die right beside her bed. She had to push these thoughts out of her mind quickly so she didn't lose her mind from the horror of it all.
Jack was both better and worse off than she. He'd only wept over their son's body for five minutes before morphing into the somber man who now haunted their house. His smile was gone, as was the man who would tease and play as if he were a twelve year old boy. He'd once joked about a Colonel O'Neil who, even though he essentially shared his name, did not share his sense of humor. Now, Sara doubted she'd be able to tell the difference between the two. She, of course, had been suffering with her share of pain and guilt, but she was slowly learning to get up and keep moving. Jack was still stuck in it.
He'd gone to an old bar multiple times in the early days of his mourning, drinking himself stupid. Even drunk, he would still call her to drive him home, his innate sense of morality keeping him from risking others' lives by driving home himself. When she finally tired of his three a.m. calls and self-destructive behavior, he used taxis. It wasn't long before he simply stayed home - doing nothing and saying nothing.
She understood, to a certain extent, that his sense of guilt ran more deeply than her own. It was, after all, his gun, his lockbox that hadn't been properly secured, and his bullet, always in the chamber in case it was needed, that had played a part in ending their son's life. She could tell him until she was blue in the face that Charlie's death wasn't his fault, but she wasn't sure he would ever truly believe it.
Honestly, she had inwardly blamed him for it herself a few times. After all, the gun should have been locked up, as it usually was. And maybe, just maybe, if he had taught Charlie about gun safety and, possibly, let him try his hand with it every once in a while (under careful supervision, of course), the boy might not have been tempted to pick it up that day. Jack, however, had firmly decided that their son wouldn't ever touch a gun, as he never wanted him to have to live with the result of killing something or someone. That had been effective at keeping Charlie safe - until it suddenly wasn't. One day, when she just couldn't take Jack's withdrawal from her and everything else anymore, she had almost spewed her accusations at him. Thankfully, she refrained. Later, she realized that even if she had spoken about it, she couldn't hurt Jack more than he was already hurting himself.
The two of them didn't talk anymore. She'd tried to engage, tried to help, tried to grieve with him and love him. But he was out of her reach, and she didn't know what to do.
If she hadn't seen those Air Force officers arrive earlier, grimly attired and very business like, she wouldn't have tried to ask him anything this evening. But she had to know what was happening.
"Where were you, Jack?"
He was rifling through their filing cabinet, slowly and methodically. If he hadn't been giving her the same damn silent treatment for the past few months, she might have simply thought he hadn't heard her.
"Why were you gone so long?" she tried again. Louder. More forcefully.
He finally glanced at her, his face stoic and unreadable. "Business."
The abbreviated response only served to irritate her more. "What kind of business?" she pressed. "Are you being deployed again, Jack?"
Tight-lipped, he pulled a folder out. "Yeah."
Why did I go for someone with a strong, silent side? she thought with a slight huff. "Damn it, Jack, why? I thought you'd given all that up for good."
"So did I," he admitted, straightening up and removing a document from the folder he'd just opened. "But Uncle Sam needs me back for this one."
Sara scoffed. You've got to be kidding me. "You? Why, Jack? You're barely functioning, and your knees are going. And now, somehow, you're able to just pick up and go out to who knows where again?" She could barely contain her irritation - with him and the Air Force. Didn't they know a broken man when they saw one? "Why couldn't they get some younger, active officer to handle this?"
Jack shrugged. "Needed my skill set, I guess."
She'd known him long enough to be able to tell when he was spouting bullshit. However, she had also been around long enough to know that the Air Force had its secrets, many of which she was not allowed to hear. Dropping the subject of the Air Force's decisions, she turned to Jack's. "Don't you have a choice here at all, Jack? Why are you going back?"
He sighed. "I don't really have a choice here, Sara."
Lie. Or, at least, a partial lie. He had decided on his own to go on this mission, for some indiscernible reason. She was sure some general or other had put some pressure on him to accept it, but she didn't buy that this was purely the Air Force's decision here.
Before she could continue, he spoke. "I updated my will. It's in our safe deposit box." He began shredding the document that he had pulled out of the folder. A quick glance confirmed - it was the copy of his old will. "You get everything, of course," he continued. "I just went in to remove the stuff about..."
Charlie. Jack didn't finish his sentence, but he didn't need to for her.
This situation begged the question: "You think you're going to die on this one?"
Before the worst day of their lives, she had only seen his eyes look like this once. He had gotten one of those calls from work, and his eyes had gone black as he listened to whatever the person at the other end of the line was saying. The look was so dark. It wasn't cold exactly, but anything one might call warmth was devoid of any happy or light feeling. It was a fiery despair.
"I might," he admitted, keeping his eyes on his work as he replaced the folder in the cabinet.
Her heart sank. This had been a possibility for every op he had ever gone on, of course, but he had usually downplayed the danger. He always firmly decided that everything would be okay and that he would be coming home to her. This time - he seemed to have actually accepted the risk. Maybe even... welcomed it?
"Jack," Sara began. I don't want you to die - please don't do this. "You've never said that before. Should you really be doing this?"
He looked up at her again with a huff. "Look, I'll probably be fine, Sara. I just wanted everything to be all straightened out in case I don't come back."
"In case you don't come back?" she asked accusingly. "Or when you don't?"
The anger that flared in his eyes was the most emotion she'd seen from him in a while. "What, you think I'm committing suicide here?"
"Is that such a wild stretch of the imagination, Jack?" she nearly yelled. "You seem to be hell bent on self destruction here!"
"Gah - Sara! You're worrying too much!" he objected roughly, turning away and walking into the kitchen. His weather beaten jacket and keys were still on the counter. He picked them up quickly.
Sara was really mad now. "Avoiding the conversation like always, are you?" At least this time, she supposed, he had actually shown some emotion and spoken a few words. In the end, however, they were still getting nowhere fast.
He sighed once more. Clearly reining himself back in, he paused. "I'm not committing suicide. I just..."
He trailed off, throwing his hands in the air before wiping his face, and she knew - this was all she was getting out of him.
Jack turned to her for one last moment. "I'll come back, Sara," he said firmly, meeting her gaze head-on.
She wanted to believe him.
His voice sounded convincing this time. She'd give him that. But she couldn't read his face like she once did.
His return wasn't guaranteed even in his good days. Now, she really didn't know if he'd make it.
She was afraid the bone chilling truth was that he didn't want to come back.
"I'm going out for a few hours." It was the first time he'd bothered to tell her that in a while.
He walked out the door. She let him go.
Sara heard his truck's engine turn over. As she saw the headlights pull back and away, she suddenly couldn't stand being inside the house either. She made her way to the back door and stepped out into the evening air.
She let out an angry shriek, unable to hold it in anymore. Picking up Charlie's old bat, still on the ground where he'd last played with it, she beat the tree he used to climb. With each stroke, she began to release the choked sobs she'd been holding back for way too long.
She sank to the ground in tears.
Charlie's death had wrecked Jack. Hell, it had wrecked her, too. But where she'd tried to talk about it, Jack had retreated within and set up such a tight barricade that she couldn't break through to him. Her dad had told her that losing a child was one of the worst kinds of loss and urged her to keep going, to not give up on the broken man she'd promised to love for better or worse. How was she supposed to do that when Jack wasn't giving her anything, and, in fact, couldn't seem to do anything for or with her?
"I can't do this anymore," she admitted aloud. She'd been trying so hard to fix Jack, to rebuild their relationship as it crumbled around them, but this was officially the last straw.
She couldn't save him. And she couldn't stay within reach of the toxic maelstrom that surrounded him, lived in him. While she was sure it wasn't Jack's intention to hurt her, the black grief that engulfed him threatened to pull her under, too. If she sat there until he drank or fought himself into an early grave, it might kill her.
She loved him, she knew. Probably always would. But she couldn't just stick around for the dissolution of his estate, which seemed to be coming sooner rather than later.
Turning back to the house, she set her shoulders. It was time to see what Yellow Pages offered by way of divorce attorneys.
