Fic: We Traded All Our Innocence [Stargate; Jack/Sara]

Jul 20, 2009 23:16

Title We Traded All Our Innocence
Category Jack/Sara
Wordcount 1,300
Notes Written for the jack_sara ficathon, woefully overdue. Thanks to thaddeusfavour and googlebrat for looking it over.

Prompt:

"I said how is it that you come back to me?
You don't need the stories of my scars or in the stars to tell you nothing's free"
- "Right Moves" - Josh Ritter

He’s not sure who’s more surprised to see her at his front door, but he lets her in anyway. She walks in past him but then stands, uncertain, until he nods his head in the direction of the living room. She’s never been here before.

He follows her and they stand, not quite looking at each other, not quite looking at the photo of Charlie between them on the counter. He has no idea why she’s here; it’s not a birthday, or their anniversary, or the anniversary of… anything else.

She doesn’t say anything and he can feel the moment stretching, heading towards an embarrassed silence that neither of them is going to be able to fill.

“Drink?” he asks, to fill the silence.

“I’ll take a beer,” she says, and he stares for a moment before going to the kitchen because that’s new. She never used to drink and drive, but he’s not quite sure what that change means. Whether it’s good or bad or whether it’s just a meaningless change that he’s trying to read too much into. He was never any good at that crap anyway, and she knows it better than anyone.

When he gets back, two beers in hand, she’s sitting on his couch. He hands her the bottle, sits at the other end, and waits. She’s the open one, the one that used to be able to drag confessions from him. He doesn’t know how to do this for her.

“I went on a date,” she says eventually.

“I take it it went… well,” he says, more as a statement than a question. She’s on his couch, after all.

She gives that half-amused grimace that she always used to give when he did something she expected but didn’t particularly like. “Actually, it did,” she says. “We’re seeing each other again. We’ve been seeing each other for a while.”

Whoever this guy is, she actually likes him. It’s a kick in the stomach for all the wrong reasons. He doesn’t hate her for moving on, or resent her for not wanting him any more - god knows he crossed that bridge and nuked it a long time ago - and he’s not even jealous. If it makes her happy, and lets her move on…

He just doesn’t appreciate the reminder that he’s still living in a moment long gone. That he shouldn’t be makes his stomach twist uncomfortably.

“So…” he says instead, waving his beer bottle vaguely in her general direction.

“So I was there with him, having dinner.” She stops then, looks at him, as if she’s reconsidering how good an idea this is.

He raises his eyebrows and makes a gesture with his head that he knows she’ll interpret as, carry on…

“Having dinner,” she repeats, “and he made a joke.”

Jack shrugs. “You’ve got a type.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I don’t think so. It was a good joke. I laughed.”

He almost grins, and then he meets her eyes and he can see that she remembers at the same time as he does that they don’t do this anymore. They’ve forfeited the right to be happy with each other. He looks resolutely at the coffee table and takes a mouthful of the beer.

She’s looking at him - he knows it, even without looking. “Do you ever get tired of pretending that everything’s okay?”

He doesn’t look up. There’s a reason he rarely sees anyone he knew before. He can’t reconcile then and now, one moment separating two Jack O’Neills that share little in common except a history. It’s easier with those that have only known him since; there’s no expectation on him to be somebody he hasn’t been for a long time and never will be again. That guy’s an alien and his life is something that Jack can recall, but not relive.

He puts his bottle on the table and then glances at her sideways.

She huffs, an aborted laugh, and then smiles ruefully. “You never would answer a serious question. Chicken.”

It’s carefully calculated to get a response from him, but he doesn’t rise to the bait and after a moment of waiting, she sighs and looks away, resigned.

“Some days it is okay,” he says then, surprising himself.

Judging by the look she gives him, it’s not something that she was expecting either.

“I mean, not that it is okay,” he hastily qualifies. “It’s just that sometimes…” He trails off, and shrugs helplessly. He’s never been good at this talky feely stuff. “You know?”

The smile she gives him then is one he can label as fondly exasperated. “I know.”

They look at each other, and Jack remembers suddenly that they used to have moments like this - moments where it didn’t matter that there was no way she could know everything he’s done, or thought, or what he’s capable of. They’re two different people now, but it’s oddly reassuring to have that look directed at him again. Somehow, sometimes, some things don’t change.

It’s the rest of it you’ve got to watch out for.

“I told him,” she says. “About…”

“Serious, then?” Jack says, only half a question.

“Yeah,” she replies, then continues. “It changed the way he was with me. Like it had changed who I was over the space of a conversation. Which is sweet, in a way.”

But not what she wanted, and she doesn’t sound convinced. Sara never had wanted the kid glove treatment, only demanded openness and honesty.

He looks at her.

“It’s annoying as hell,” she admits wryly. “I never thought I’d miss the O’Neill surly silence.”

“So you came round here to tell me that I’ve wrecked you for anyone normal?” he quips, knowing that it’s pretty much true and trying not to sound bitter or regretful.

He doesn’t need to sound it though, not with her. “Or because if I say that life stopped there and carried on at the same time, you’re not going to demand an explanation,” she replies. She’s pillowed her head on the arm resting on the back of his couch, now, with her beer resting gently on her thigh. She looks relaxed, and, for the moment, almost like she belongs there.

She doesn’t, though; she’s part of Jack O’Neill before, not Jack O’Neill after.

“Do you still char hunks of animal and call it cooking?” she asks suddenly, a change of subject that should probably have caught him off guard. She’s said what she’s come here to say, though, and found his answers predictably unsatisfying, so it doesn’t surprise him. She’s never pressed the point; it was why he’d told her so damn much in the first place, and why he married her - it had got to the point of that or shooting her for what she knew.

But as it turns out, he does still do that, and she still pokes her damn nose in every little part of it, convinced that she knows better than him. The food poisoning thing was once. Fifteen years ago.

And Guinness brings out the flavour. Or, at least, if it doesn’t, it makes it taste like Guinness, which is possibly better.

They don’t stand and look at the stars, partly because that’s a thing that couples do, and they aren’t any more. They’re just two people with a shared history and a separate future. Partly because it’s still light out.

There’s enough between them that they won’t do this again, despite any hollow promises they make, and enough water under the bridge that he burned. And they’re not okay with each other, not really. But maybe they’re okay with that.

fic, stargate, stargate: fic, stargate: jack/sara, sg-1

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