Fic: The Thirty Years War (The White Space Remix) SG1 Clone!Jack
Reveals for this year's remixredux are being made today. My contribution was as follows:
Title: The Thirty Years War (A White Space Remix)
Fandom: SG1
Characters: Clone!Jack
Original Story: The Thirty Yeas War by spiralleds
Summary: Your shrink says that you have to let him go and be fully yourself. You don't know what that means.
You could have fixed it then and there. The names Carter and Carrie are close enough--especially with you moaning and groaning the way you were--that you could have played it off, let her think you'd just mangled her name. Hell, there was a whole lot you could have done in the moment, and you know what every option is because your body might be fifteen but you have decades of practical experience.
But you didn't, which was a really shitty thing to do to pretty blonde Carrie with her lovely brown eyes, and so you deserve whatever she wants to toss at you because, hello, decades of practical experience and all you did after saying the wrong name was apologize and leave. Also? You remember your first time through high school and forget women; hell hath no fury like a teenaged girl scorned.
The funny thing is that you didn't even think that Carrie would assume Carter was a male name, even though you once assumed that very same thing.
*
Back in your day--his day--the day--whatever. Back then, it would have gone differently. But things are different nowadays and there are some looks, sure, but there's also an invite to join the on-campus GLBT group.
"Thanks, but I'm not gay," you tell the kid who tells you about the Monday after-school meetings.
He just gives you an understanding nod and says that the group will be there when you get your head out of your ass. Or, you know, your ass out of the closet.
You hear the whispers during lunch a few days later and you literally bang your forehead against the table because, yeah, with decades of experience you are still nothing but a stupid fifteen year old. When you look up you see Carrie looking at you from across the room, seeming both satisfied and hurt.
Right. Okay. It's not like it matters, really, because you've sworn off dating, much less any further making out with teenage girls. You kind of feel like a pervert lately, even though your shrink (Air Force mandated weekly sessions, and thank you very so much for that, Frasier) says that you have to let him go and be fully yourself.
You don't know what that means, even though you thought you did when you made this decision.
*
You study a lot and it's not because you have to. You've always liked being underestimated, even by your own team, but learning is something that's come easily, just as retaining that knowledge has.
Sometimes when you read through your science books your hear Carter, babbling on and on about things light years more advanced than the vectors you're learning about in physics. You see her face, lit up and glowing, and her eyes, sparkling and vibrant, and you remember the overall impression it gave, not of innocence but of delight.
There's a lot you remember about Carter, that you noticed and tucked away in the back of your mind without giving it much conscious attention because you never could cross that line even in your own head.
You take all of those things out one by one, now, and you enjoy each one, and you start blowing off your shrink appointments.
*
For a history class assignment you get partnered with Tommy Muldoon, a pale kid with dyed black hair that covers half his face. He likes retro t-shirts, is really scrawny, and calls himself emo.
You meet at Tommy's house because it's easier. The government set you up as an emancipated minor, and you have a nice one bedroom apartment that you call your own, along with a bank account and an accountant who was supposedly appointed by the court to watch out for your best interests, but is in reality an Air Force captain assigned to keep a close eye on you for the time being.
So far you haven't had to explain your cover story to anyone and you'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible, and that's why you suggest Tommy's house.
Tommy is a nice kid, pretty funny when you get him to forget that he's unimpressed by the world at large, and the walls in his room are covered in large paintings that he's done. They're all black paint strategically applied to white canvas, pictures and even portraits defined not by the paint but by the lack of it.
Some of it is really impressive, like the pair of feathered wings that take up a floor to ceiling canvas on one wall, brought to life in negative space in painstaking detail.
The second time you meet up he absently uses a felt tip black pen and a napkin to draw you.
You're front and center on the napkin, surrounded and outlined by black ink that makes the edges blurry and that's seeped through all the layers of the napkin and bled onto the page of the open library book that Tommy was leaning on.
*
Captain Reynolds shows up at your door at seven in the morning on a Saturday, grabs you by the scruff of your neck, and drags you to your shrink's office. You're in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, you haven't brushed your hair or teeth, and you're barefoot.
You apologize to Doctor Smythe for missing six sessions in a row and are subjected to a three hour session in which you catch the good doctor up on your life and your emotional and mental states.
You don't tell him about the napkin-portrait, which you put in a cheap frame that you set on your nightstand. You don't say anything about how you weren't allowed to bring even one picture with you into this new life. Not even of Charlie.
*
After the history assignment is done and submitted (and you pass with a respectable B+), you and Tommy keep hanging out. It takes you a whole month to realize that you've become friends.
Tommy tells you about the painting with the wings. He says it took him almost a year to do and that he painted one feather at a time, careful and patient and slow, and that he spent more time planning the strokes of his brush than he did wielding it.
You tell him about fishing, about spending hours on a lake's edge, waiting for something that might never happen, and about standing hip deep in rushing water, casting a line long and far, and reeling fish in despite their resistance, despite the current.
*
One day, when you're about to leave Tommy's, he pushes you against his door and kisses you. His lips are dry and nervous against yours, and his hands are clammy and shaking where he's holding your biceps, and you hold yourself still for all five seconds that it lasts.
Tommy pulls away and stares at you with fear and panic and nausea, then runs to his bathroom and locks the door behind him. It only takes a minute to pick the lock open, and you find Tommy curled up in the bathtub, shaking and gasping.
You wet a washcloth with cold water and kneel by the tub so you can wipe his face, and you tell him that you're into girls, and you remember Danny crying in your arms while detoxing from the sarcophagus and it's enough to break your heart.
Tommy gasps out apologies and looks lost and scared, and you tell him it's okay, it's okay.
Eventually it is.
*
You meet Melissa the following year, when she transfers in from out of state. She's in half your classes and she has dark brown hair, green eyes, and she's an inch taller than you (though you're due for a growth spurt in a year).
She's a literature geek and you join the school newspaper to spend time with her, and Tommy teases you without mercy until you're beet red and ready to hide under a table. But he's a good friend, a best friend, even, and he has your back and helps you dig yourself out of a few embarrassing conversations in which your sixteen year old brain chemistry trumps your decades of experience.
You and Melissa start dating near the end of the school year and by the time senior year draws to a close you're both set to start at the same college in the fall, which is only two hours away from where Tommy will be.
*
You don't do it when you graduate high school, or on your eighteenth birthday, though you think about it both days.
In the end, you do it on a random day at the start of your sophomore year of college, on something like a whim.
You lay on your bed, staring at the napkin-portrait you took to college with you, even though Tommy's done some larger and better paintings of you since then, and dial your cell phone.
You lost decades of your life, lost them so well and truly that all you have left are memories, and maybe you've built something new for yourself, something all yours, but you still feel that loss, will always feel it. You're no longer Jack O'Neill's white space but that doesn't mean you want him to keep throwing away something that you know he wants to hold onto.
"So, you and Carter," you say by way of a greeting. And it's odd how, a few years go, you would have been talking about both yourself and him, but now it has nothing to do with you at all.
You don't say anything else and for a long time there's nothing but silence, and then he sighs and says, "Yeah, I'm working on it. What about you?"
The apartment door opens and Melissa comes in. She's nothing like Carter, or even Carrie, and sometimes she prefers to hang out with Tommy rather than with you, but it's good. Better than good, even, and it's all yours.
"I'm there," you say and hang up.
*
.End
Title: The Thirty Years War (A White Space Remix)
Fandom: SG1
Characters: Clone!Jack
Original Story: The Thirty Yeas War by spiralleds
Summary: Your shrink says that you have to let him go and be fully yourself. You don't know what that means.
You could have fixed it then and there. The names Carter and Carrie are close enough--especially with you moaning and groaning the way you were--that you could have played it off, let her think you'd just mangled her name. Hell, there was a whole lot you could have done in the moment, and you know what every option is because your body might be fifteen but you have decades of practical experience.
But you didn't, which was a really shitty thing to do to pretty blonde Carrie with her lovely brown eyes, and so you deserve whatever she wants to toss at you because, hello, decades of practical experience and all you did after saying the wrong name was apologize and leave. Also? You remember your first time through high school and forget women; hell hath no fury like a teenaged girl scorned.
The funny thing is that you didn't even think that Carrie would assume Carter was a male name, even though you once assumed that very same thing.
*
Back in your day--his day--the day--whatever. Back then, it would have gone differently. But things are different nowadays and there are some looks, sure, but there's also an invite to join the on-campus GLBT group.
"Thanks, but I'm not gay," you tell the kid who tells you about the Monday after-school meetings.
He just gives you an understanding nod and says that the group will be there when you get your head out of your ass. Or, you know, your ass out of the closet.
You hear the whispers during lunch a few days later and you literally bang your forehead against the table because, yeah, with decades of experience you are still nothing but a stupid fifteen year old. When you look up you see Carrie looking at you from across the room, seeming both satisfied and hurt.
Right. Okay. It's not like it matters, really, because you've sworn off dating, much less any further making out with teenage girls. You kind of feel like a pervert lately, even though your shrink (Air Force mandated weekly sessions, and thank you very so much for that, Frasier) says that you have to let him go and be fully yourself.
You don't know what that means, even though you thought you did when you made this decision.
*
You study a lot and it's not because you have to. You've always liked being underestimated, even by your own team, but learning is something that's come easily, just as retaining that knowledge has.
Sometimes when you read through your science books your hear Carter, babbling on and on about things light years more advanced than the vectors you're learning about in physics. You see her face, lit up and glowing, and her eyes, sparkling and vibrant, and you remember the overall impression it gave, not of innocence but of delight.
There's a lot you remember about Carter, that you noticed and tucked away in the back of your mind without giving it much conscious attention because you never could cross that line even in your own head.
You take all of those things out one by one, now, and you enjoy each one, and you start blowing off your shrink appointments.
*
For a history class assignment you get partnered with Tommy Muldoon, a pale kid with dyed black hair that covers half his face. He likes retro t-shirts, is really scrawny, and calls himself emo.
You meet at Tommy's house because it's easier. The government set you up as an emancipated minor, and you have a nice one bedroom apartment that you call your own, along with a bank account and an accountant who was supposedly appointed by the court to watch out for your best interests, but is in reality an Air Force captain assigned to keep a close eye on you for the time being.
So far you haven't had to explain your cover story to anyone and you'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible, and that's why you suggest Tommy's house.
Tommy is a nice kid, pretty funny when you get him to forget that he's unimpressed by the world at large, and the walls in his room are covered in large paintings that he's done. They're all black paint strategically applied to white canvas, pictures and even portraits defined not by the paint but by the lack of it.
Some of it is really impressive, like the pair of feathered wings that take up a floor to ceiling canvas on one wall, brought to life in negative space in painstaking detail.
The second time you meet up he absently uses a felt tip black pen and a napkin to draw you.
You're front and center on the napkin, surrounded and outlined by black ink that makes the edges blurry and that's seeped through all the layers of the napkin and bled onto the page of the open library book that Tommy was leaning on.
*
Captain Reynolds shows up at your door at seven in the morning on a Saturday, grabs you by the scruff of your neck, and drags you to your shrink's office. You're in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, you haven't brushed your hair or teeth, and you're barefoot.
You apologize to Doctor Smythe for missing six sessions in a row and are subjected to a three hour session in which you catch the good doctor up on your life and your emotional and mental states.
You don't tell him about the napkin-portrait, which you put in a cheap frame that you set on your nightstand. You don't say anything about how you weren't allowed to bring even one picture with you into this new life. Not even of Charlie.
*
After the history assignment is done and submitted (and you pass with a respectable B+), you and Tommy keep hanging out. It takes you a whole month to realize that you've become friends.
Tommy tells you about the painting with the wings. He says it took him almost a year to do and that he painted one feather at a time, careful and patient and slow, and that he spent more time planning the strokes of his brush than he did wielding it.
You tell him about fishing, about spending hours on a lake's edge, waiting for something that might never happen, and about standing hip deep in rushing water, casting a line long and far, and reeling fish in despite their resistance, despite the current.
*
One day, when you're about to leave Tommy's, he pushes you against his door and kisses you. His lips are dry and nervous against yours, and his hands are clammy and shaking where he's holding your biceps, and you hold yourself still for all five seconds that it lasts.
Tommy pulls away and stares at you with fear and panic and nausea, then runs to his bathroom and locks the door behind him. It only takes a minute to pick the lock open, and you find Tommy curled up in the bathtub, shaking and gasping.
You wet a washcloth with cold water and kneel by the tub so you can wipe his face, and you tell him that you're into girls, and you remember Danny crying in your arms while detoxing from the sarcophagus and it's enough to break your heart.
Tommy gasps out apologies and looks lost and scared, and you tell him it's okay, it's okay.
Eventually it is.
*
You meet Melissa the following year, when she transfers in from out of state. She's in half your classes and she has dark brown hair, green eyes, and she's an inch taller than you (though you're due for a growth spurt in a year).
She's a literature geek and you join the school newspaper to spend time with her, and Tommy teases you without mercy until you're beet red and ready to hide under a table. But he's a good friend, a best friend, even, and he has your back and helps you dig yourself out of a few embarrassing conversations in which your sixteen year old brain chemistry trumps your decades of experience.
You and Melissa start dating near the end of the school year and by the time senior year draws to a close you're both set to start at the same college in the fall, which is only two hours away from where Tommy will be.
*
You don't do it when you graduate high school, or on your eighteenth birthday, though you think about it both days.
In the end, you do it on a random day at the start of your sophomore year of college, on something like a whim.
You lay on your bed, staring at the napkin-portrait you took to college with you, even though Tommy's done some larger and better paintings of you since then, and dial your cell phone.
You lost decades of your life, lost them so well and truly that all you have left are memories, and maybe you've built something new for yourself, something all yours, but you still feel that loss, will always feel it. You're no longer Jack O'Neill's white space but that doesn't mean you want him to keep throwing away something that you know he wants to hold onto.
"So, you and Carter," you say by way of a greeting. And it's odd how, a few years go, you would have been talking about both yourself and him, but now it has nothing to do with you at all.
You don't say anything else and for a long time there's nothing but silence, and then he sighs and says, "Yeah, I'm working on it. What about you?"
The apartment door opens and Melissa comes in. She's nothing like Carter, or even Carrie, and sometimes she prefers to hang out with Tommy rather than with you, but it's good. Better than good, even, and it's all yours.
"I'm there," you say and hang up.
*
.End