Fic: Of Duress and Deliverance

[mrspollifax]

Title: Of Duress and Deliverance

Summary: Four ways our Jack and Sam didn’t say ‘I love you’ … and one way that maybe they did.
Rating:  PG

Season: Pretty much anything.

Pairings: Sam/Jack

Warnings: A couple of might-have-been character deaths. 

 

 

 

 

I.  In Solace Torn

 

The voice of the computer calmly and clearly articulated another number that she couldn’t understand. It didn’t matter, because she knew what it was telling her. There was barely any time left. She dropped her hands from the console.

 

“Thirty seconds,” Teal’c said without emotion.

 

Sam closed her eyes. “There’s nothing I can do from here.”

 

Her heart should be racing, she thought; she’d have expected there to be some adrenaline involved. But her body must have conceded defeat at the same moment her rational mind did, because she’d never felt quite so still.

 

She knew without looking that Teal’c would stand stoically, just as he had every time he’d faced near-certain death. The colonel usually argued with her, though, anytime she said things were hopeless. She was surprised that he wasn’t doing so now.

 

Sam discovered that she wouldn’t mind if he did; that, in fact, she’d far rather have the last thing she heard be Jack O’Neill’s inappropriately displaced anger than the silence that was now punctuated by a Goa’uld computer counting down their remaining seconds. It was just as she realized this, but before she could act on it, that he came to stand behind her. 

 

His hands came to rest, tentatively, one on her shoulder and the other at her waist. Without hesitation, without thinking, really, she leaned back against him, and his arms slid around to hold her. His mouth hovered near her ear.

 

“I love you,” he said, his voice soft but his words clear and firm.

 

Sam tilted her head slightly so that it rested against his. “I know. Me too.”

 

 

II. Trips, Slips, and Downhill Momentum

 

Somehow, unbelievably, they’d gotten into a shouting match in his office about the risks she’d been taking lately. He’d just spouted something he knew was incoherent, containing far too many clauses to have any decipherable meaning, and he couldn’t understand the look of shock on her face.

 

Jack took a moment to review what he’d said, and when he ran across the words ‘I love you’, all bunched up together and arranged in that particular order, he cringed and covered his eyes with one hand.

 

Carter’s laugh broke the silence. Dropping his hand from his face, he scowled at her. “What?”

 

“It’s just that this is really not how I imagined hearing you say that the first time.”

 

He raised his eyebrows and waited for her to realize that he wasn’t the only one slipping up and giving things away. He smirked, smug, when he saw it hit her. “Not how you imagined? Which implies that there was, in fact, imagining.”

 

Her eyes met his, unwavering. “There might have been.”

 

Moving swiftly, he crossed the office to stand in front of her, close but not touching. “Just for form, you want to tell me what you imagined,” and he drew out the word, “saying back?”

 

She smiled; she’d managed in some way to retain the upper hand, but he found he didn’t care. “What, you don’t know?”

 

 

III. White Light Refracted

 

 “Are you really going to do this?”

 

Sam tried in vain to comprehend what he was doing in her house. Part of her wanted him to stop her; part of her wanted to hit him; no part of her had been able to turn him away when he showed up at her door.

 

“Love’s a funny thing, Carter. You can love a lot of people at once, it’s true, but tomorrow you’re going to promise to only say it to one man for the rest of your life.”

 

She’d seen this Jack O’Neill many times over the years, but never unleashed on her. His voice was even but very, very hard; his face, expressionless. Silently, with great effort, she stood her ground as he advanced.

 

“Is there anything you want to tell me before you do that?”

 

His question shattered her understanding of the situation; frantically, she tried to put the pieces back together into some kind of order, but she didn’t know how long he’d be willing to wait. Holding up a hand in a silent entreaty for his patience, she searched her mind, gathering up the shards of her hope from all the places she’d discarded them over the years. Then she spoke before her fears, profound fears of loss and rejection and inadequacy, could reassert control.

 

“I love you. I have for a long time. I’ve never been able to stop.”

 

For just an instant, a moment that passed so quickly that she almost missed it, his eyes widened. He hadn’t expected her to say it, and she suddenly realized that what he’d come for was that final rejection that would give him the courage to get through her wedding, a mirror image of a moment over an engagement ring months before.

 

“God. Are we ever going to stop hurting each other?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

“Now what?”

 

“There’s still time to fix this, Sam,” he said, and the hard edge was gone. 

 

 

IV. The Thing Named Made Real

 

“It’s time to say goodbye, Jack,” Daniel said, and it was clear that this time, he would not be swayed. “You owe it to her. You owe it to yourself.”

 

In two years, Jack had never visited her once. There was too much memory, too much regret; too many ways that he wondered if some little change might have made a difference. He’d lost too many of the people he loved, right down to those who meant the most to him. The act of saying goodbye had become impossible.

 

But it had been two years today, and Daniel and Teal’c were here in his office, demanding his compliance. Jack put on his coat and went with them. 

 

He hadn’t attended the memorial service, but he knew where she was.   She’d been laid to rest next to her father in Arlington National Cemetery, and Jack himself had made the arrangements for both of those burials.

 

With his hands shoved into his pockets, he looked down at the headstone that was the last testament to Sam Carter’s life. Teal’c and Daniel stood behind him, just out of earshot. Jack didn’t know what they thought they might overhear. The only words he ever thought of saying to her were the ones neither he nor Sam had found the courage to voice.

 

I always knew I might lose you, Sam. I just wish I was sure you knew I loved you. I still love you.

 

He couldn’t bring himself to say it now.

 

 

V. In These Days Ahead

 

There was no answer to her knock on his front door. Undeterred, Sam returned to the driveway and walked around to the back of the house. Today, she hadn’t hesitated, waiting in her car. She’d had enough time to think this through; more importantly, she’d simply had enough. Nothing was ever going to change unless she took the risk required to change it. Every day, in every other part of her life, she worked out complicated risk-reward scenarios, and then, she took action. She needed to stop treating this as something different.

 

She found him sitting on the porch, legs propped up and sunglasses on. He could have been asleep, but she knew better. Walking slowly, she went to stand beside his chair.

 

He took off the sunglasses and looked up at her. 

 

“I need you to know this,” she said, forgoing any small talk that might distract her. “I love you. Can you please just … tell me what you want me to do about it? I thought you wanted me to stop.”

 

There were so many words that she could have said; questions and answers, apologies and recriminations, and each and every promise she’d ever longed for the freedom to make to him. This, however, was the step that had to come first.

 

He stood up and moved close to her. Her breath caught when he raised his hand to brush a few loose strands of hair back behind her ear. “Never stop,” he said, and almost before she understood the words he’d uttered, he pulled her to him, capturing her lips with his own.

 

“Are you going to say anything else?” she asked when several minutes had passed and the world had finally ceased spinning around her.

 

“Later,” he said, studying her face. 

 

In the moment before he kissed her again, she had just long enough to marvel at hearing in his voice what she felt in her heart, an echo of wonder and of possibility. Later, she thought, was a very good thing to have.

Comments

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

“Just for form, you want to tell me what you imagined,” and he drew out the word, “saying back?”

Absolutely my favorite line. Jack trying to get the upper hand (and failing).

III is a very interesting take--what if Jack were the one who needed to make sure? And what if Sam were honest? Also, I think there's something lovely and honest and vulnerable in his surprise.

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

Jack trying to get the upper hand (and failing).

I, um, love rather stupidly the ever-changing power dynamics between these two.

But you've alarmed me. Did I hide the timeline hook in III too well? It's meant to be a suppositional timeline where she's about to marry, you know, that Pete guy. What you said scans a little differently than that.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

No, no! I definitely saw the time hook. I was just reacting to the turnaround between Sam going to Jack in Threads, and then this, which is the other way around.

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. Color me paranoid.

Yeah, I like the mirror here. And I think that the vulnerability is key -- they're so busy protecting themselves that it takes something pretty significant to force them to be honest.

[(Anonymous)]

Helo~
I happened upon your site and have enjoyed reading your fan stories--especially this set, and the fluffy snow one. Do you have any other stories besides the few that I can find here?

I'm intrigued by your name~I assume you must enjoy the Mrs. Pollifax books, as I do?

Melissa M.

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked them! I have a couple of short things at my FFN page (http://www.fanfiction.net/~mrspollifax) that never got posted here for some reason. Have some more stuff in process, but who knows how long they'll be! =)

I assume you must enjoy the Mrs. Pollifax books, as I do?

Hee. Yeah, I love those books, and the cozy mystery genre in general. Dorothy Gilman, Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters .... I picked the username back when I was just playing around with LJ, and then I kind of got used to it!

Anyway, thanks for looking around and leaving such a nice a note!

[(Anonymous)]

I love cozy mysteries, too! I've always loved to read. I was a librarian for about 30 years, and was the one who chose the books for my library, so I was up on the current ones, then. Nowadays I still follow my favorites at the less adequate library in the town where I live (I worked 30 miles away from home), and luckily they do usually have my favorite authors.

I even have two notes from Dorothy Gilman! When we were expanding our library back in the 1980's, I wrote to my favorite authors and asked for an autographed book for an auction/fundraiser. She wrote back a nice note, as well as sending a book. Later, once we had completed our addition, I sent copies of the news articles about it to those who had been kind enough to send a book, and again I got a nice note from her. So though I think her later Mrs. P. books were not nearly as good as the first ones, I still have a definite bias toward anything she writes, and I own a copy of many of them. Did you ever read her book A New Kind of Country? It's about one stage in her life, living in Nova Scotia, and I found it very interesting. (Feel free to write me at my email, tom@asde.net, if you ever feel like it.)

Nowadays, much of my reading is SG1 fanfiction on the internet. Now I must go look for your other stories--I hope you continue to write them.

Melissa M.

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree, the early ones are the best; that seems to happen with so many of those mystery series. The pressure on the authors from the publishers to write just one more must be awful.

Did you ever read her book A New Kind of Country?

You know, I haven't, but I've been doing more non-fiction reading recently than fiction, so maybe I'll give it a go! Thanks for the recommendation!

Nowadays, much of my reading is SG1 fanfiction on the internet.

After ten years, there's certainly plenty of it! Which is both good and bad .... =)

[(Anonymous)]

It's definitely the case with many mystery writers, alas. I think in her case, probably more due to her advancing age, however. I didn't dislike any of the more recent Mrs. P. books, I just thought they had a lot less plot to them than her earlier, better, books. I always loved the idea of a "little old lady" who had always wanted to be a spy, deciding to go for it. If I recall correctly, she was only in her early to mid-sixties at the time, which seemed old to me, then, as I was in college when I read the first one. Nowadays, I can understand both the desire to change her life, and think to myself that mid sixties is hardly old (not even a decade older than I am now, for crying out loud!)

Do try "Country" as it's an interesting look at her life when I think she was around 50 and had her sons off to college. I just hope you can find it--it's out of print and hard to get--I did finally find a used copy to buy. She told me that she loved that book, too.

Yes, there is lots of SG1 fiction to choose from--of course, it ranges from good to indifferent to very, very bad--and occasionally to excellent. But since I found Stargate Fic Recs, I've been better able to find good stories. Fewer and fewer team or Jack and Sam, though, which are my favorites. I suppose since Jack is no longer (really) on the show, the authors aren't as inspired as they used to be. Which is a pity.

Melissa M.

[(Anonymous)]

May I ask you a question? I just stumbled onto a few fans' livejournals a year or so ago, so I go to the ones I find more interesting and read what they may have to say about Stargate every couple of days or so.

I tend to feel a bit like a gate-crasher when I feel compelled to post something in someone's lj, as I don't have an lj account (because I gathered it costs something, and I won't spend much money on my entertainment, certainly not for something like that--as who would care what I had to say, anyway?)

Do you think it's "rude" to post a comment when I don't have an lj myself? I think I've gathered that you (the owner of the lj) get some notice that you got a new comment posted on your lj, and that you'll therefore see this--I hope! My email is (due to my husband, Tom, setting it up a few years ago): tom@asde.net, if you'd care to write and set me straight on any etiquette. Thanks in advance from a fellow lover of Mrs. Pollifax.

Melissa M.

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, no, I don't think it's rude, especially not someone like you who is putting a name on the comments. I hope I didn't give that impression. I’ll mention also that there are a number of writers in different fandoms that I've followed over the years that I know interact regularly with "named" anonymous commenters such as yourself.

I will say up front, though, that this is one of those questions that if you ask five different people you'll get (at least) five different answers.

It's true that some folks disable anonymous comments to their journals -- this can be for lots of reasons, I think. Some people post on more controversial topics and so they tend to get some harassment via anonymous commenters that they might not get if people had to own up to who they were. Also, I don't know if LJ has problems with spam commenters (automated or otherwise), but I know other blog sites do. I'm sure there are other reasons, too.

If you want a consistent 'identity', there are actually free LJ accounts (mine is); there are just some features you don't get unless you pay for them. If you really want to comment regularly to different journals, that might be a good route, just because it removes some of the barriers.

If you do get one, though, you'll discover that it doesn't actually make the fretting about etiquette go away. Seriously. I think partially it's because there aren't those sorts of social cues you get from face-to-face interaction, but partially it's because there *are* groups on LJ that have unwritten rules about what's acceptable, and it's hard to know when you've wandered into one of those.

The part of the Stargate fandom I've been ... uh, cautiously wandering around in lately doesn't have that problem that I've noticed, and there are certainly folks that have journals but aren't fic writers or anything like that. The lower-than-average amount of drama is actually what got me out of lurkdom in the first place.

Wow, that was long. Does it help any at all?

[(Anonymous)]

No, no, YOU didn't give me the impression you thought I was rude, at all. In fact, it's the fact that I'm guessing that you are not as young as many of the fans (simply because you like Mrs. Pollifax--I know I could be wrong, but that in itself implies you've been reading those books for a few years, so I'm making the possibly false assumption that you are perhaps into your middle years--I'm somewhat past that at age 56) that has made me feel safe enough with you, just to ask the question.

Not that anyone I've left an anon. (but signed!) comment to has been at all rude, in return, but I just often feel like a gate crasher, and I don't want to be someone who's crashing into someone else's party, so to speak, or anything; I just sometimes am really interested in something being discussed, and so I want to leave a comment, but when I do, then I think "do they think I'm weird? Since they don't know me?"

As you say, there are no faces here, so a lack of ordinary social cues to help figure things out.

I'm not new to fandom in general--I was a big Star Trek fan for many years in the 1980's, and overlapped with Starsky and Hutch fandom toward the end of that time, but then I pretty much dropped out of any fandom involvement, though still enjoying all the incarnations of ST on the screen. It was a surprise when I fell in love with SG1 (and then RDA) and found that internet fandom is a whole different ballgame--lots faster and more convenient in many ways. but full of both good and nutso folks, which was certainly very familiar to me from earlier fandom forays.

Any clues on how to go about getting a free lj? Would it be worth it for just an occasional comment elsewhere? I'm certainly not going to post anything myself--nothing of interest in my life!

Thanks so much for your help--and I still want more S/J stories, pretty please, from you!
Melissa M.

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I've mostly been a fandom lurker, going back to usenet days. (Usenet. That dates me a little all by itself, eh?) Now, it's Joe Mallozzi posting on his blog. Ten years ago, it was JMS posting on the B5 newsgroups. Things change, things stay the same, as they say ....

Anyway, where I'd personally draw the line for anon vs. a journal would be whether you're just leaving feedback on stories or are really wanting to jump into discussions. For fic reviews, I think you're good with the anonymous comments. But my gut says you'd have a lower entry barrier to actually participating in discussions if you have a username. I am no expert, so YMMV.

Anyway, here's a link to the place to create a username/lj:

Create a journal (https://www.livejournal.com/create.bml)

[binkii822.livejournal.com]

Or this one either, because I love love love the last bit. ;)

[mrspollifax.livejournal.com]

Look, it's the evidence of my obsession with flashfic! Hee. I'm happy you still like this one too. Thank you!

[wanderingsmith.livejournal.com]

he’d come for was that final rejection that would give him the courage to get through her wedding
ow. sigh. theirs is one of.. the strangest canon 'ships. maybe closest to 'reality' of such a couple.. though that's a saddening thought. like all too many 'real' thoughts are. sigh

I like the first one best. simple and, at the last, utterly automatic

the second.. lol, ok, a tight second favorite. can so easily see him just having one too many stresses and tired with her being in danger and just starting to yell... poor Jack. love how she deals with him though. perfect

arlington was heartbreaking. I always have a hard time deciding which way he'd go if she died... but then I'm over-dramatic and prefer black and white solutions so..

Later... why did it feel sad? strange. it should be hopeful.. with quiet contentment around the corner..