Fic: Decree Nisi (Jack/Sara, PG-13)
Well, nuts. I try to write apocafic, but instead a random fic grabs me, and... well, here you go. I am still working on the apocafic, I swear - I've never been this late for a fic deadline before!
Title: Decree Nisi
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Sara
Warnings: Angstiness
Summary: He packs a suitcase and is gone from the house within three hours of arriving back from another planet.
A/N: For the few but devoted Jack/Sara shippers out there, who said such kind things about Heart Of Glass. With thanks to
aurora_novarum for the super-speed beta.
---
The note is diplomatic, but firm. Only if it's not a problem, it says. I know you've got just as much right to the place, but. And finally, as soon as possible. She's making it quick and clean, like a good break. Like a sharp knife.
He packs a suitcase and is gone from the house within three hours of arriving back from another planet. The hotel feels less homely than Abydos, and he's strangely grateful - in a room with no reminders, it's easier to pretend nothing's happened.
The Air Force allows him to retire quietly, and he slips out of everyone's lives without a fuss. His last teammates were stand-up guys, but he hasn't stayed in contact after that mission. He doesn't want to see them when he gets home. No - he doesn't want them to see him. He still has his pride, it seems. He thinks he might have stayed in contact with Doctor Jackson, if the guy weren't on another planet. And KIA, of course, according to his official report. Pride just... didn't seem as important with Daniel, for some reason.
He doesn't object to Sara getting the house, and doesn't want to, even if he had the energy. Of the eight years they've owned the place - paid for jointly, because Sara firmly went Dutch from their first date onwards - he'd spent maybe a year there, two tops. By all rights it should be hers. So he lets her buy him out with money from her dad, but won't accept her help in finding another place. He puts it in the hands of his lawyer and the first real estate agent he comes across, and, surprisingly, they don't rip him off. Three weeks later he's living in Colorado Springs.
The new place is nice, although there's a month of pure blankness, a month he can only remember moments of, later, before he realizes this. He stands at the kitchen window with a mug of coffee, fraying his socks on a crack in the wooden floorboards, and thinks distantly that Sara would have liked the house, but would probably have thought that the trees shaded the garden too much. She likes sunshine on grass. She'd have got him to cut them back - well, she'd have said he should get a man in to do it, and he'd've insisted he could do it himself, and they would have argued, perhaps playfully, perhaps not, depending on how they were feeling, and ultimately she would have let him make a botched job of it, and brought him ice-cold lemonade whilst he worked, exaggeratedly swinging her hips and blatantly ogling his bare chest.
She'll never look at him like that again, half amusement, half desire, but she let him take the microwave.
He doesn't drink, at first. Then he doesn't drink much. Not during daylight hours. Not until after supper. Not until after lunch. Not until after - ah hell, he wasn't going to eat breakfast anyway. For a while, his life is a blank for a different reason.
Three months into his retirement, Sara phones, out of the blue, to tell him she's made him an appointment with a counselor. He doesn't bother calling to cancel, and by the time it rolls around, he's forgotten about it. She calls him next day to say she's rescheduled. He's pissed off and sober enough to call the counselor's office to cancel, this time. She calls again, a couple of hours later, to say she's rescheduled. The pattern repeats for a few days, and then tails off. He hopes she's given up. She wouldn't have, before, but then he killed their child.
Then she shows up one morning and bundles him, hangover and all, into her sensible car, drives him there, frogmarches him up the steps, and stands with her arms crossed in the waiting room whilst he registers. He doesn't dare leave, with her standing there like an avenging angel. She looks furious.
So he stays the hour, but even guilt can't force him to speak. He lets the counselor talk, the words washing over him soothingly. He likes her voice - it's pleasingly soft and low, with precise intonation like his fifth grade English teacher. It's been a while, he realizes, since he actually spoke to anyone other than the pizza delivery boy and the guy behind the counter at the K-Mart. Next week, same story - Sara shows up, drives him there, waits whilst he doesn't talk, drives him home again. And the week after that. And the week after that. He's endured torture and interrogation that would make this kindly middle-aged lady quake in her neatly polished shoes just to hear - and then she tells him about the reason she got into grief counseling. The child she lost. Hit and run. Six years old.
He'snotgonnacryhe'snotgonnacryhe'snotgonnacryhe'snotgonnacry...
He stays an extra hour. When he leaves, feeling wrung out and humiliated, Sara is waiting to drive him home, and she doesn't say a word. Two days later, he calls to tell her he's cancelled the sessions, and won't be going back. He's polite but firm. Diplomatic. She doesn't argue, and he hears no more about it.
Daniel has usurped Sara as the voice of his conscience. He stands with arms crossed in disapproval as Jack pours that fifth scotch. Jack defiantly holds up a toast to absent friends, but the burn as it goes down somehow isn't as sweet. He cuts back on the drinking, and takes up driving instead, going for miles with no aim, no deadline. Daniel doesn't seem to object to this, but he does hint that it's not a very productive use of his time. Jack, in response, buys himself the expensive telescope he always swore he'd get one day, and spends a week setting it up, relearning how it works, how to find the star systems that first fascinated him when he was a kid and Uncle Joseph told Aunt Helena that he trusted little Jack to be careful up there on his own. He's not lost the knack, and five days later he's absorbed, having just tracked down the Horsehead Nebula, and he opens his mouth to call Charlie...
...He runs. Leaves the house unlocked, lit up, his expensive telescope up on the roof for anyone to take, because none of it matters, none of it, without Charlie, and he's never going to see Charlie again, never going to show him the Horsehead Nebula, never going to pitch him another baseball, never going to come back from a month or so overseas and throw his arms around his boy and pick him up to see how he's grown and hear Charlie laughingly complain, "Da-ad...!", and know he's home... And it's all his fault.
When he can't run any more, he walks, because all he wants to do is go, leave, get away from the pain that's so overwhelming that he can't breathe. But there's nowhere on Earth to go. He stops, several miles out of town, and sits down in a field somewhere, laying back and staring at the stars. Nowhere in the universe he can go to escape this pain, he knows, because he's tried that, too. He digs his hands into the grass, trying to hold on, because he feels like he's about to explode into a million burning fragments. He stares into the sky, holding on to the earth, as the longest night of his life wheels slowly by. He remembers every moment of Charlie's life, burning them into his mind, and wishes he'd been there for more of it. The ache to have Charlie back is so strong, he feels he could almost will him into being. But, of course, he can't.
He watches the dawn break and the sky lighten, and eventually, too tired to feel much of anything any more, he sits up, head spinning dizzily. He walks back to town, back to his house, falls into bed fully-clothed, and sleeps for two days.
When he wakes up, he's missing Sara. For the first time in months, he wonders what she's up to. He makes a mammoth breakfast, and eats it all.
And he's lonely, he realizes. He went out of his way to avoid anyone who knew, didn't tell those who didn't, and didn't give anyone but Sara his new address. He doesn't know how to go about getting back in contact with people, and doesn't want to see anyone who might look at him with pity, anyhow. He's not really in a state of mind to make new friends, either. He thinks about getting a dog, and visits the local pound - but is stopped at the door by a small, brown-haired ghost. He was thinking about getting Charlie a dog for his birthday this year. He turns and walks away.
He thinks about calling family, but there's only really Aunt Helena and his mom, and he can't face them, yet.
He goes to one bar, is approached by one blonde, and leaves in a hurry. He's not ready for that, either.
He wants to call Sara, to apologize, but he doesn't know where to begin, and is afraid of what she might say, because he knows he deserves it. He's even more afraid that she'll forgive him, because he knows he doesn't deserve that. He'll only hurt her, if he calls. He doesn't call.
He does, however, drive past her house a time or two, until he begins to feel like a stalker. He doesn't want to see her getting on with her life - nor does he want to see her suffering in the state of Purgatory that he's in. He wonders if the aliens have some kind of high-tech memory wiping device. He determinedly doesn't think about the sarcophagus, and how that brought Daniel and Shau'ri back from the dead.
For a moment, he marvels that he's walked on another planet, and talked to aliens. Who'd have thought? He'd like to tell Sara about it. He wonders if they'd kill him, if he did tell, or if they'd use the convenient cover-up explanation that he's been driven mad with grief.
He wonders if maybe he has gone mad. Seriously - alien planets? But he's pretty sure that even his imagination isn't that wild.
At some point, he realizes that he missed Christmas, somewhere back in the early days of this. It was October when it happened. He can't remember November or December, and is grateful for that. Charlie's birthday was late January, and that was when he first picked up that gun again and gave serious thought to using it. He suspects the only reason he didn't was because he traveled to an alien world in early February. It's now September, and he's just starting to notice things like the days of the week again. The guilt is ever-present. It's almost welcome, the pain he feels when it occurs to him that, in a few weeks, it'll be one year.
One week before, he pours all the booze in the house down the sink. He wants to feel the pain. In a way, it feels like atonement - a tiny portion of what he deserves. But, horribly sober, he's restless, and he paces, walks around the house, walks to the local park and back, walks further afield, goes out running for hours and hours, returning only when he's numb with exhaustion. Daniel looks worried, and Jack waves his hands. "What am I supposed to do?" he asks, but Daniel has no answer.
He wakes up early on The Day, instantly aware of everything, his instincts and reflexes as alert and wired as they are when he's on a mission to the middle of a death zone. He doesn't look towards his wardrobe, where his gun is locked away, because today, if he thinks about that, he's going to be deadly serious about doing it. Instead, he gets up and makes himself a coffee, every movement precise and measured. He stares out at the garden, watching the wind blowing the grass. It needs cutting, probably for the last time before winter, so he gets out the lawnmower and does it. His neighbor nods at him, and he nods back, feeling like a bad actor.
He walks around his house for a bit. By lunchtime, he's desperate to find things to do. He fixes up a shelf that he'd been putting off. Tapes up the dodgy pipe on the washing machine. Cleans out his mug cupboard. Organizes his junk drawer. Bizarrely, he remembers that his nerves on his wedding day felt kind of like this. He feels like he's waiting for something, but he doesn't know what.
There's a knock on his front door, and it's a familiar one.
"Sara," he greets her, his voice rusty.
She looks at him, eyes wide and fearful. "Jack," she replies. "I..." They stand on his doorstep just looking at one another for a moment. "You're the only one who knows," she says, finally, in a rushed whisper.
So he steps back and invites her into his house with a wave. He's dangerously unpredictable, even to himself, and he's not sure she should come in - but she does.
"You look..." she says, as she walks down the steps to the living-room, and glances back at him.
"What?"
"Skinny," she concludes, finally.
He shrugs. "You look tired," he returns, unkindly.
"I am tired," she says, but he can't tell if she means that metaphorically or genuinely. They've run out of small talk, and Jack's not willing to have that big talk yet, so when she opens her mouth to say something else, he kisses her.
He's missed her, so much.
"Jack," she says, when he stops for a breath, and there's just enough willingness in her voice for him to kiss her again. The next pause for breath, and she has his shirt untucked and her hands on his skin. "This isn't a good idea," she pants against his cheek.
"No," he agrees - and kisses her again.
They fumble their way to the bedroom, and although his heart trips over the fact that she doesn't know where it is, he ruthlessly submerges that feeling in the rush of relief, and the comfort of her arms. She feels right. They make love with a ferocious need they've not had since before Charlie was born.
In the aftermath, they lie tangled in sheets and each other, and the silence stretches out. As he comes back down, he's horrified at the dawning realization that to refuse to listen to her now would be somewhere way beyond unforgivable.
Sara sighs. "Just hold me, you jerk," she says, grumpily, and runs her fingers through his chest hair in that way that always makes him shiver with pleasure. Jack untenses again, and pulls her close, fiercely kissing the top of her head. He's never deserved her endless patience, and he vows silently that he'll make it up to her someday by having the talk she needs.
They doze for a bit, and when they get up and dress, she's endearingly shy. She's got a hickey, but he doesn't point it out. Before she leaves, he makes her a coffee. She stands drinking it, looking out of his kitchen window. "Nice house," she remarks. "Those trees could do with being cut back, though."
For the first time in a year, he smiles.
The weeks pass, and the weather darkens. He sweeps the leaves off the lawn, and notices the approach of Christmas - hard not to, even when you're living like a hermit. Sara hasn't come back, or contacted him, but he didn't really expect she would. He knows her too well, knows that it really is over between them. He misses her more than ever, like a renewed addiction.
When the dark days and the bright lights grow too much, he packs up the truck and heads for the cabin. He's not been there since before, and the drive up that bumpy road is hard. He sits in the truck for a long while, looking at the cabin in the dark, lights switched off, afraid. It's the tension before receiving an injury you can see coming. The Air Force taught him to relax when receiving a blow, but he's not yet learnt a technique for rolling with these punches. Eventually he gathers enough courage to go in.
The first thing he sees is Charlie's wet weather gear, and it knocks the breath out of him. He picks up the jacket with trembling hands. It would've been too small for Charlie, if they'd made their usual trip up in the summer. He was growing so fast...
With jerky haste, he sweeps through the cabin, gathering anything and everything that remind him of his son, piling them into a heap on the couch. That done, he drags out one of the old storage boxes from the junk room, and packs away the stuff, fast but with utter care. It's a random collection - Wellingtons, photos, the odd toy, books, Charlie's fishing rod, a spare kid's toothbrush - he can't throw any of it away, but he can't, he can't see it.
When he's finished, he wipes a dusty hand across his face, because his eyes are stinging. It comes away wet.
Hurriedly, he picks up the heavy box and takes it back to the junk room, throws their old curtains on top to keep the dust off, and slams the door hard on it. Then he grabs a duvet, a bottle of good scotch, and turns the TV on, boosting the sound as loud as he can stand. He drinks and watches a blandly happy presenter on QVC extol the many virtues of diamonique until he falls asleep.
He stays up there through Christmas, New Year, and Charlie's birthday, and feels lonelier than he's ever been in his life. When February starts, he treks wearily back to town, feeling like a shadow, to find a Decree Absolute in his postbox. But it doesn't knock him on his ass.
On an evening two days after he gets back, he grabs a beer and goes up to his deck to look at the stars, wishing he'd taken note of the constellations over Abydos - not that he'd have a hope in hell of finding it. There are voices down below, and then heavy steps climbing his ladder. He deliberately keeps his back turned, annoyed to have his privacy violated.
"Colonel Jack O'Neill?"
What now? he thinks. "Retired."
"I'm Major Samuels..."
---
THE END.
Title: Decree Nisi
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Sara
Warnings: Angstiness
Summary: He packs a suitcase and is gone from the house within three hours of arriving back from another planet.
A/N: For the few but devoted Jack/Sara shippers out there, who said such kind things about Heart Of Glass. With thanks to
aurora_novarum for the super-speed beta.
---
The note is diplomatic, but firm. Only if it's not a problem, it says. I know you've got just as much right to the place, but. And finally, as soon as possible. She's making it quick and clean, like a good break. Like a sharp knife.
He packs a suitcase and is gone from the house within three hours of arriving back from another planet. The hotel feels less homely than Abydos, and he's strangely grateful - in a room with no reminders, it's easier to pretend nothing's happened.
The Air Force allows him to retire quietly, and he slips out of everyone's lives without a fuss. His last teammates were stand-up guys, but he hasn't stayed in contact after that mission. He doesn't want to see them when he gets home. No - he doesn't want them to see him. He still has his pride, it seems. He thinks he might have stayed in contact with Doctor Jackson, if the guy weren't on another planet. And KIA, of course, according to his official report. Pride just... didn't seem as important with Daniel, for some reason.
He doesn't object to Sara getting the house, and doesn't want to, even if he had the energy. Of the eight years they've owned the place - paid for jointly, because Sara firmly went Dutch from their first date onwards - he'd spent maybe a year there, two tops. By all rights it should be hers. So he lets her buy him out with money from her dad, but won't accept her help in finding another place. He puts it in the hands of his lawyer and the first real estate agent he comes across, and, surprisingly, they don't rip him off. Three weeks later he's living in Colorado Springs.
The new place is nice, although there's a month of pure blankness, a month he can only remember moments of, later, before he realizes this. He stands at the kitchen window with a mug of coffee, fraying his socks on a crack in the wooden floorboards, and thinks distantly that Sara would have liked the house, but would probably have thought that the trees shaded the garden too much. She likes sunshine on grass. She'd have got him to cut them back - well, she'd have said he should get a man in to do it, and he'd've insisted he could do it himself, and they would have argued, perhaps playfully, perhaps not, depending on how they were feeling, and ultimately she would have let him make a botched job of it, and brought him ice-cold lemonade whilst he worked, exaggeratedly swinging her hips and blatantly ogling his bare chest.
She'll never look at him like that again, half amusement, half desire, but she let him take the microwave.
He doesn't drink, at first. Then he doesn't drink much. Not during daylight hours. Not until after supper. Not until after lunch. Not until after - ah hell, he wasn't going to eat breakfast anyway. For a while, his life is a blank for a different reason.
Three months into his retirement, Sara phones, out of the blue, to tell him she's made him an appointment with a counselor. He doesn't bother calling to cancel, and by the time it rolls around, he's forgotten about it. She calls him next day to say she's rescheduled. He's pissed off and sober enough to call the counselor's office to cancel, this time. She calls again, a couple of hours later, to say she's rescheduled. The pattern repeats for a few days, and then tails off. He hopes she's given up. She wouldn't have, before, but then he killed their child.
Then she shows up one morning and bundles him, hangover and all, into her sensible car, drives him there, frogmarches him up the steps, and stands with her arms crossed in the waiting room whilst he registers. He doesn't dare leave, with her standing there like an avenging angel. She looks furious.
So he stays the hour, but even guilt can't force him to speak. He lets the counselor talk, the words washing over him soothingly. He likes her voice - it's pleasingly soft and low, with precise intonation like his fifth grade English teacher. It's been a while, he realizes, since he actually spoke to anyone other than the pizza delivery boy and the guy behind the counter at the K-Mart. Next week, same story - Sara shows up, drives him there, waits whilst he doesn't talk, drives him home again. And the week after that. And the week after that. He's endured torture and interrogation that would make this kindly middle-aged lady quake in her neatly polished shoes just to hear - and then she tells him about the reason she got into grief counseling. The child she lost. Hit and run. Six years old.
He'snotgonnacryhe'snotgonnacryhe'snotgonnacryhe'snotgonnacry...
He stays an extra hour. When he leaves, feeling wrung out and humiliated, Sara is waiting to drive him home, and she doesn't say a word. Two days later, he calls to tell her he's cancelled the sessions, and won't be going back. He's polite but firm. Diplomatic. She doesn't argue, and he hears no more about it.
Daniel has usurped Sara as the voice of his conscience. He stands with arms crossed in disapproval as Jack pours that fifth scotch. Jack defiantly holds up a toast to absent friends, but the burn as it goes down somehow isn't as sweet. He cuts back on the drinking, and takes up driving instead, going for miles with no aim, no deadline. Daniel doesn't seem to object to this, but he does hint that it's not a very productive use of his time. Jack, in response, buys himself the expensive telescope he always swore he'd get one day, and spends a week setting it up, relearning how it works, how to find the star systems that first fascinated him when he was a kid and Uncle Joseph told Aunt Helena that he trusted little Jack to be careful up there on his own. He's not lost the knack, and five days later he's absorbed, having just tracked down the Horsehead Nebula, and he opens his mouth to call Charlie...
...He runs. Leaves the house unlocked, lit up, his expensive telescope up on the roof for anyone to take, because none of it matters, none of it, without Charlie, and he's never going to see Charlie again, never going to show him the Horsehead Nebula, never going to pitch him another baseball, never going to come back from a month or so overseas and throw his arms around his boy and pick him up to see how he's grown and hear Charlie laughingly complain, "Da-ad...!", and know he's home... And it's all his fault.
When he can't run any more, he walks, because all he wants to do is go, leave, get away from the pain that's so overwhelming that he can't breathe. But there's nowhere on Earth to go. He stops, several miles out of town, and sits down in a field somewhere, laying back and staring at the stars. Nowhere in the universe he can go to escape this pain, he knows, because he's tried that, too. He digs his hands into the grass, trying to hold on, because he feels like he's about to explode into a million burning fragments. He stares into the sky, holding on to the earth, as the longest night of his life wheels slowly by. He remembers every moment of Charlie's life, burning them into his mind, and wishes he'd been there for more of it. The ache to have Charlie back is so strong, he feels he could almost will him into being. But, of course, he can't.
He watches the dawn break and the sky lighten, and eventually, too tired to feel much of anything any more, he sits up, head spinning dizzily. He walks back to town, back to his house, falls into bed fully-clothed, and sleeps for two days.
When he wakes up, he's missing Sara. For the first time in months, he wonders what she's up to. He makes a mammoth breakfast, and eats it all.
And he's lonely, he realizes. He went out of his way to avoid anyone who knew, didn't tell those who didn't, and didn't give anyone but Sara his new address. He doesn't know how to go about getting back in contact with people, and doesn't want to see anyone who might look at him with pity, anyhow. He's not really in a state of mind to make new friends, either. He thinks about getting a dog, and visits the local pound - but is stopped at the door by a small, brown-haired ghost. He was thinking about getting Charlie a dog for his birthday this year. He turns and walks away.
He thinks about calling family, but there's only really Aunt Helena and his mom, and he can't face them, yet.
He goes to one bar, is approached by one blonde, and leaves in a hurry. He's not ready for that, either.
He wants to call Sara, to apologize, but he doesn't know where to begin, and is afraid of what she might say, because he knows he deserves it. He's even more afraid that she'll forgive him, because he knows he doesn't deserve that. He'll only hurt her, if he calls. He doesn't call.
He does, however, drive past her house a time or two, until he begins to feel like a stalker. He doesn't want to see her getting on with her life - nor does he want to see her suffering in the state of Purgatory that he's in. He wonders if the aliens have some kind of high-tech memory wiping device. He determinedly doesn't think about the sarcophagus, and how that brought Daniel and Shau'ri back from the dead.
For a moment, he marvels that he's walked on another planet, and talked to aliens. Who'd have thought? He'd like to tell Sara about it. He wonders if they'd kill him, if he did tell, or if they'd use the convenient cover-up explanation that he's been driven mad with grief.
He wonders if maybe he has gone mad. Seriously - alien planets? But he's pretty sure that even his imagination isn't that wild.
At some point, he realizes that he missed Christmas, somewhere back in the early days of this. It was October when it happened. He can't remember November or December, and is grateful for that. Charlie's birthday was late January, and that was when he first picked up that gun again and gave serious thought to using it. He suspects the only reason he didn't was because he traveled to an alien world in early February. It's now September, and he's just starting to notice things like the days of the week again. The guilt is ever-present. It's almost welcome, the pain he feels when it occurs to him that, in a few weeks, it'll be one year.
One week before, he pours all the booze in the house down the sink. He wants to feel the pain. In a way, it feels like atonement - a tiny portion of what he deserves. But, horribly sober, he's restless, and he paces, walks around the house, walks to the local park and back, walks further afield, goes out running for hours and hours, returning only when he's numb with exhaustion. Daniel looks worried, and Jack waves his hands. "What am I supposed to do?" he asks, but Daniel has no answer.
He wakes up early on The Day, instantly aware of everything, his instincts and reflexes as alert and wired as they are when he's on a mission to the middle of a death zone. He doesn't look towards his wardrobe, where his gun is locked away, because today, if he thinks about that, he's going to be deadly serious about doing it. Instead, he gets up and makes himself a coffee, every movement precise and measured. He stares out at the garden, watching the wind blowing the grass. It needs cutting, probably for the last time before winter, so he gets out the lawnmower and does it. His neighbor nods at him, and he nods back, feeling like a bad actor.
He walks around his house for a bit. By lunchtime, he's desperate to find things to do. He fixes up a shelf that he'd been putting off. Tapes up the dodgy pipe on the washing machine. Cleans out his mug cupboard. Organizes his junk drawer. Bizarrely, he remembers that his nerves on his wedding day felt kind of like this. He feels like he's waiting for something, but he doesn't know what.
There's a knock on his front door, and it's a familiar one.
"Sara," he greets her, his voice rusty.
She looks at him, eyes wide and fearful. "Jack," she replies. "I..." They stand on his doorstep just looking at one another for a moment. "You're the only one who knows," she says, finally, in a rushed whisper.
So he steps back and invites her into his house with a wave. He's dangerously unpredictable, even to himself, and he's not sure she should come in - but she does.
"You look..." she says, as she walks down the steps to the living-room, and glances back at him.
"What?"
"Skinny," she concludes, finally.
He shrugs. "You look tired," he returns, unkindly.
"I am tired," she says, but he can't tell if she means that metaphorically or genuinely. They've run out of small talk, and Jack's not willing to have that big talk yet, so when she opens her mouth to say something else, he kisses her.
He's missed her, so much.
"Jack," she says, when he stops for a breath, and there's just enough willingness in her voice for him to kiss her again. The next pause for breath, and she has his shirt untucked and her hands on his skin. "This isn't a good idea," she pants against his cheek.
"No," he agrees - and kisses her again.
They fumble their way to the bedroom, and although his heart trips over the fact that she doesn't know where it is, he ruthlessly submerges that feeling in the rush of relief, and the comfort of her arms. She feels right. They make love with a ferocious need they've not had since before Charlie was born.
In the aftermath, they lie tangled in sheets and each other, and the silence stretches out. As he comes back down, he's horrified at the dawning realization that to refuse to listen to her now would be somewhere way beyond unforgivable.
Sara sighs. "Just hold me, you jerk," she says, grumpily, and runs her fingers through his chest hair in that way that always makes him shiver with pleasure. Jack untenses again, and pulls her close, fiercely kissing the top of her head. He's never deserved her endless patience, and he vows silently that he'll make it up to her someday by having the talk she needs.
They doze for a bit, and when they get up and dress, she's endearingly shy. She's got a hickey, but he doesn't point it out. Before she leaves, he makes her a coffee. She stands drinking it, looking out of his kitchen window. "Nice house," she remarks. "Those trees could do with being cut back, though."
For the first time in a year, he smiles.
The weeks pass, and the weather darkens. He sweeps the leaves off the lawn, and notices the approach of Christmas - hard not to, even when you're living like a hermit. Sara hasn't come back, or contacted him, but he didn't really expect she would. He knows her too well, knows that it really is over between them. He misses her more than ever, like a renewed addiction.
When the dark days and the bright lights grow too much, he packs up the truck and heads for the cabin. He's not been there since before, and the drive up that bumpy road is hard. He sits in the truck for a long while, looking at the cabin in the dark, lights switched off, afraid. It's the tension before receiving an injury you can see coming. The Air Force taught him to relax when receiving a blow, but he's not yet learnt a technique for rolling with these punches. Eventually he gathers enough courage to go in.
The first thing he sees is Charlie's wet weather gear, and it knocks the breath out of him. He picks up the jacket with trembling hands. It would've been too small for Charlie, if they'd made their usual trip up in the summer. He was growing so fast...
With jerky haste, he sweeps through the cabin, gathering anything and everything that remind him of his son, piling them into a heap on the couch. That done, he drags out one of the old storage boxes from the junk room, and packs away the stuff, fast but with utter care. It's a random collection - Wellingtons, photos, the odd toy, books, Charlie's fishing rod, a spare kid's toothbrush - he can't throw any of it away, but he can't, he can't see it.
When he's finished, he wipes a dusty hand across his face, because his eyes are stinging. It comes away wet.
Hurriedly, he picks up the heavy box and takes it back to the junk room, throws their old curtains on top to keep the dust off, and slams the door hard on it. Then he grabs a duvet, a bottle of good scotch, and turns the TV on, boosting the sound as loud as he can stand. He drinks and watches a blandly happy presenter on QVC extol the many virtues of diamonique until he falls asleep.
He stays up there through Christmas, New Year, and Charlie's birthday, and feels lonelier than he's ever been in his life. When February starts, he treks wearily back to town, feeling like a shadow, to find a Decree Absolute in his postbox. But it doesn't knock him on his ass.
On an evening two days after he gets back, he grabs a beer and goes up to his deck to look at the stars, wishing he'd taken note of the constellations over Abydos - not that he'd have a hope in hell of finding it. There are voices down below, and then heavy steps climbing his ladder. He deliberately keeps his back turned, annoyed to have his privacy violated.
"Colonel Jack O'Neill?"
What now? he thinks. "Retired."
"I'm Major Samuels..."
---
THE END.