Complete
Drama
Jack/Sara
Spoilers
for Meridian
Season
5
Disclaimers:
Stargate
Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions,
Showtime/Viacom, The SciFi Channel, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This
story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who
may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not
intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.
The original characters,
situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.
Author's Notes:
Blah, blah; Meridian blah, blah.
Acknowledgements:
A toast, to Sho; without whom none of this would have been possible. As well as being my beta reader and my most constant supporter, she is also in this case my muse. Her fan fiction encouraged me to have a crack as a pure character piece, so this effort is triply indebted to her.
The Prophet, May 29th 2003
The woman walked slowly around the kitchen, speaking on the phone while she made herself a cup of coffee. The dirty utensils by the sink told the story of her life: Single plate, single glass; small pans, just enough to cook for one.
"No Dad," she was saying. "I'm fine here on my own; you don't have to do anything and you certainly don't have to come over in this weather." She pushed a hand through her short, blonde hair, smiling indulgently. "Well, it's raining cats and dogs over here," she said, staring out into the mounting storm. "You'd be..." She broke off, alarmed. "What? No; I'm okay, Dad, but I think there's...some thunder on its way. I'd best get off the line. Yeah; I'll call you tomorrow. You take care."
She hung up, hurried to the door and ran out into the pouring rain. The man she had seen standing at the end of the drive was walking away, so she ran after him.
"Jack!" She called. "Jack!"
The man stopped and turned. "Hey," he said. "You're getting wet."
"I'm getting...? Good God, Jack. Come inside."
"No," he replied. "I should get home."
She sighed. "Where's your car."
"It's...at home."
"Come inside, Jack."
"Alright."
They went back to the house, and she opened the door. "Jack," she said. "Is it you this time? I mean, really you. Not an energy thing or a hallucinogenic gas or whatever the hell it was last time?"
Jack had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Yes, Sara," he said. "It's me."
*
"You were in the middle of something," Jack said. "I'll go."
"Oh give it a rest, Jack," Sara said. "I was making a cup of coffee, breaking out a bag of fudge and sitting down to watch Bridget Jones's Diary."
"I'll go."
"I can make another cup and it's a big bag," she insisted. "The chick flick is optional."
"No, no," he assured her. "Bridget Jones sounds good."
"We'll skip the chick flick," Sara decided. "You don't seem like you're in a romantic comedy mood," she added, in a softer tone.
"No," Jack agreed. "And thank you."
"Go through and sit down," Sara said, gently. "I'll bring the coffee."
"Thanks."
Sara watched him go, his big, powerful frame slumped, eyes staring straight ahead. She had never seen Jack O'Neill look quite so tired; so defeated. Even when their son had died so tragically, and he had sunk into himself, there had been a strength to him; battered, self-loathing, turned in against itself, but the strength had been there. That had been the hardest thing for her to see then, but this was almost worse. Sensing, however, that he had not come to her for pity, she hid her feelings as she fetched a towel and carried it in with the coffee.
She found Jack standing by the sofa, dripping.
"You're soaked," she said.
"So're you," he replied, listlessly.
"And whose fault is that?" Sara set the coffee mugs down and sat on the couch, then motioned for Jack to sit on the floor in front of her. Slowly, almost as though in pain, he did so, and she began towelling his hair and shoulders dry. Suddenly, she gave a soft laugh.
"What?"
"You always used to worry that you'd lose your hair," she said, ruffling it gently. "This is no good," she added, dropping the sodden towel. "There're more towels in the bathroom, Jack. I'll get you something to wear."
"Sara..."
"Hurry up," Sara instructed. "The coffee's getting cold."
*
Sara left a pile of clothes outside the bathroom door while she changed out of her wet things and into a baggy t-shirt and an old pair of sweats. When she was done, she found a pile of soggy clothes sitting on a towel outside the bathroom door, took them down to the utility room and threw them in the drier. When she got back to the lounge, Jack was sitting on the couch, sipping his coffee, and had started on her jumbo bag of vanilla-chocolate fudge.
"Hey!" She protested, slumping down next to him. "Leave some for me."
"So how come you kept these?" He asked, tugging at the jeans she had given him, along with a white t-shirt.
"I just...Well, you know how I am about throwing anything out," she demurred.
"You look well," he noted. "You've put on a little weight since I saw you last. It looks good on you," he added, hastily.
"Thanks," she said, sincerely. "I think I've been more at peace with myself since...Well, you know better than I do since 'what'," she finished, with only a trace of bitterness. "Don't worry about it," she interrupted, when he tried to say sorry. "I don't want or need to know. It let me close some doors that needed closing, and I try not to think about the rest too much. You look like crap," she added, affably.
"I...It's not a good day."
"I figured," she replied. "Jack; did you walk all the way here from your place?"
"From the Mountain," he corrected.
"Jesus, Jack. In this weather? What were you thinking?"
Jack shrugged helplessly. He stuffed his mouth with fudge to avoid answering, but Sara just waited, watching until he was done. "I just followed my feet," he told her. "I was preoccupied."
"I'll believe that. You want to talk about it?"
"Not really," Jack lied.
"Jack; you didn't walk all this way to drink my coffee, stain my good rug with rainwater and scoff fudge."
Jack averted his eyes. "Sorry about the rug," he said. "It wasn't raining when I started."
Sara took his hand, gently. "Tell me," she instructed him.
"A friend...One of my best friends...died yesterday," he said. "I gave the word to...to cut off the life support. It was what I thought he wanted, but now I'm not so sure. What if I was wrong?"
"Why did you think it was what he wanted?" Sara asked.
"He told me."
"Well then," she reassured him.
"But what if he wasn't thinking straight? He was dying, Sara, and it wasn't a pretty way to go." He looked up at her, desolate. "Or what if I just imagined it? It was weird, Sara, and I can't be sure of anything. What if I killed my friend?"
"Does anyone blame you? Apart from you I mean," she amended.
"No," Jack sighed. "Well; actually Amy Kawalsky does," he admitted. "She really laid into me this morning when she found out."
"So who was this friend?" Sara asked, changing her tack. "And why does losing him seem to have hit you even harder than losing Charlie?" Jack flinched, and she laid a steadying hand on his arm. "I'm not judging," she promised. "I just want to know."
Jack sighed. "Daniel...Daniel helped me get over losing Charlie," he admitted. "When it all got too much, when I couldn't face myself, he was the one who kept me going. God knows I never told him how important he was to me, but I think he knew and he never said a word. He was like that; he'd never hold anything over you unless he felt you needed your butt kicked – metaphorically speaking."
"Jeez," Sara laughed, kindly. "You sound like you were in love with him."
Jack chuckled, softly. "Apparently there were rumours; but no."
"He was someone you worked with? Air Force?"
"Yes, and no," Jack replied. "He wasn't Air Force. You met him briefly; the guy with the glasses at the hospital."
"Oh; the cute one," Sara realised.
Jack bridled a little. "If that's your thing."
Sara smiled. "So if not him, is there anyone..." Sara broke off.
"No," Jack assured her. "Well, yes and no. There is someone, kind of, but we can't...I have feelings, and she has feelings but Sam – Major Carter – is Air Force, and she's on my team. We're not allowed to get involved, so we don't ever go there." He shrugged. "One of us could transfer, but the work we're doing is too important."
"To her as well as you?" Sara asked.
"Yes."
"Good," Sara said. "I'm glad she's not stuck waiting for you."
"Were you?" Jack asked, suddenly feeling guilty.
"Always," she replied, stroking the fingers of her free hand gently along his bicep. "Even when you were here, you were so distant."
"I tried not to be."
"I know."
They sat in companionable silence for a long time, hands gently entwined, Sara's fingers trailing back and forth along Jack's arm.
"Are you going to be alright," Sara asked.
"I think so," Jack replied, unconvincingly. "I still have a job to do."
"You know," she told him. "Sooner or later, that won't be enough."
Silent tears rolled slowly down Jack's cheeks, the first he had ever allowed Sara to see him shed. "It seems so empty without him," he admitted. "He was our heart. He was the one whose enthusiasm kept us all going; whose idealism kept us pure. A few times Daniel thought about quitting, and I realised: If he went, we'd be lost. We'd end up like those bastards at NID; advancement at any cost and damn the ethics. I don't want to do that kind of work again."
Sara reached up and wiped away his tears. She was not sure who the NID might be, but she knew – in the vaguest terms – the kind of work he meant. "You don't need Daniel for that," Sara assured him. "You're a good man, Jack."
"But I'm not," he insisted. "I make compromises; I bend the rules. I twist my morality to get what I want or think I need."
"And that's wrong?"
"Of course it's wrong!"
"Well, how would you know that for sure if you weren't a good man?" Sara asked him, wiping away his tears. "If you remember him, and ask yourself what he would have done, you'll be okay; he'll still keep you on the straight and narrow."
"I just...He was such a damn geek, and now I just miss him so much I..."
Jack broke off as Sara leaned across and planted a long, soft kiss on his lips.
"Sara, I..."
"Jack. Shut up," Sara said. She kissed him again; harder this time.
"Yes, Ma'am," Jack replied.
*
Jack had always been uncertain about the phrase 'bittersweet'. Bitter he understood, also sweet, and even sweet and sour, but not bittersweet. He supposed it must be something like lemonade, but that was as much as he knew. After that night however, there was never any question in his mind about what bittersweet meant.
As they moved to the bedroom, Jack anxiously imagined some ill-considered fumble, but instead their union was slow and comfortable, their bodies falling easily back into patterns established by long familiarity with each other. For a short time, it was as though they had never been apart. Each of them remembered all the ways and places the other liked to be touched, and they matched the motions naturally to complement each other. It felt good, and it felt safe, but it was not without passion. There was fire there too, long banked down, but still burning; not a fierce, dangerous blaze, but a warming, welcoming heat.
In the seven years since they had parted, Jack had known many kinds of love: The fierce lust for life of a girl with only a hundred days to live; the desperate need of a woman yearning for a child; and the all-consuming embrace of a hungry goddess. Somehow, nothing compared to this, and yet...
And yet, there was the bitter to go with the sweet, for while everything felt the same, only in the brief oblivion of the little death could they truly forget that everything was different.
In the fading afterglow, they lay together, their entwined bodies matching like pieces of a jigsaw.
"Shall I drive you home?" Sara offered.
Jack looked surprised. "How did you know...?"
"That you weren't going to stay? What makes you think...?"
"That you want me to," he finished.
"It would be awkward," she said.
"Yeah."
"Our things will be dry."
"Yeah."
*
They said nothing on the drive back, neither wanting to start the process that would inexorably lead them to analysing what had happened. Only as they pulled up at his house did Jack speak.
"Rain's stopped," he noted.
"Will you be okay?" Sara asked again.
"Sure," he promised. "Although you could come in and make sure."
Sara smiled, wistfully. "No I couldn't," she said. "And you know why."
"What happened?" Jack asked. "It wasn't Charlie; I know that now. What was it that happened to what we had? Where did it go?"
"It didn't," Sara told him. "It never could and never will. Didn't tonight prove to you that what we had will never be gone? You felt it, didn't you?"
"Oh yeah," Jack agreed. "So do you think...?" He stopped, afraid to even ask the question.
"No," Sara replied. "Too much has happened that we can never take back, and besides, the problems are still there. You still can't tell me what you do, and I still can't live with that uncertainty."
"I love you," he said.
"And I love you; I always will do. Love was never our problem; nor was the sex. It was what happened when we weren't too busy being in love and having sex to notice."
"You don't think we can make it work again?" Jack asked. "Sara; we're still good together, and I don't just mean in bed."
"Yes we are," Sara agreed. "But we can't make it work again because we never made it work the first time around. After a lot of soul-searching, I finally realised that, for all the love we shared, we never made it work because we put so much energy into pretending that it wasn't broken; that your job, and the fact that you could never tell me about it, didn't matter."
"Sara," Jack said. "I didn't ask, but do you have someone new?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Oh."
"It's early days yet," she admitted, "but he's sweet and strong and kind, and I think I'm growing to love him."
"Then tonight...?"
"Tonight is just something that happened," Sara said. "Something you needed, and I think I needed it too. It was beautiful, and I will never forget it so long as I remember anything, but I won't dwell on it. It doesn't change anything, and I won't let it consume me; you shouldn't either."
"I'll bear that in mind," he said.
She smiled at him. "And so you know, Jack; nothing that happened tonight has anything to do with Gerry. If I were still single, it wouldn't make a difference."
Jack nodded, and forced a smile. Sara reached across and touched his face. "You're going to be alright," she promised him.
He opened the car door and climbed out, then stuck his head back in. "Thanks, Sara," he said. "For everything."
"Take care of yourself, Jack O'Neill," she told him. "I guess that's what you're best at." She smiled at his blank expression. "Still not seen Star Wars?"
"I tried," he said, with a shrug. "I fell asleep."
"Goodnight, Jack."
"Goodnight, Sara."
The car door closed, and she drove away into the night, leaving Jack feeling somehow refreshed. She had always been able to do that: However dirty he felt after finishing a mission, however much he felt he would never be able to scrub the blood from his hands, however much he might dread to touch Sara for fear that his sins would somehow infect her, she had always made him feel clean again. It hurt that he knew with sudden certainty that he would never find that with her again, but only a little.
"Is that right?" Jack asked of no-one in particular. "Is it right that I feel so much better just for that? Can I just ignore..."
A gentle breeze blew out of nowhere, and drove a sheet of water out of the guttering, onto Jack's head.
Jack sighed. "I guess I asked for that," he said. He turned his face to the sky. "Goodnight, Daniel," he said.