Decade, by Nomad (G)
Rec Category: Sara O'Neill
Pairing: Jack/Sara (vaguely)
Category: Jack O'Neill, Sara O'Neill, Jack/Sara, character study
Warning: none
Author on LJ nomadicwriter
Author's Website: none
Link: LJ post announcing the fic
Fic on FF.Net
Why This Must Be Read:
Nomad gives us a Sara O'Neill ten years after the death of her son, moving to Washington DC to get a fresh start on her life, and, of course, running into a Jack O'Neill recently promoted and transferred there. The ghost of Charlie is strong between them, and yet enough in the past for them to have scarred over the wound and be able to move on.
Nomad writes a fantastic meeting between the two, with surprise and palpable emotion. You can feel their history, their pain, and their hope and you can feel how much they truly loved each other. This story is very real and very worth the read.
She hadn't even known that it was him at first. She'd thought that he looked like Jack from the back, but then every man in a uniform looked like Jack, even the short, fat, bald ones, and near-white hair and a General's stars had been enough to shake the stray thought.
Until she'd crossed the floor to visit the restroom, and on her way out looked up and just seen him there. A ghost made flesh, so much unchanged and yet so different, long eyelashes slanted down as he stared into his coffee cup.
He looked old.
He looked good.
He looked... melancholy.
It was that last that swayed her, killed the first impulse to hurry away before he glanced up and saw that she was there. He looked sad, and it struck her with a strange and terrible truth that she'd never seen Jack O'Neill sad. She'd seen him angry, and hurting, and devastated beyond the point where there was room for human emotion, but never honestly, nakedly sad. It was nothing he would show where there was any possibility that somebody he loved might chance to see it.
It carried the connotation of such loneliness that Sara had sat down in the seat across from him before she had time to consider.
It took him a moment to look up, and when he did he stared at her with a kind of confused awe, holding very still as if to move too fast might startle her away. She must have been just as much an unexpected ghost to him as he was to her.
Wit failed her, so she just offered a soft smile. "Hello, Jack."
"Sara." He still looked vaguely stunned. She'd never figured out how one man could be at once so expressive and so closed.
She felt suddenly shy, and wished she had a coffee of her own to hand so she could stir it and look down at it. "I saw you sitting here, and I, er- hi." The words tumbled out as if she was a crush-entangled schoolgirl.
The corners of his mouth lifted, a trace of the boyish grin she remembered so fondly. "Hi."
It chased the melancholy from his face, and Sara saw more of the man that she'd married than she had since the day their worlds both ended ten long years ago. She gestured at his uniform. "So when did this happen?"
"The hair?" He lifted a hand to it and scrunched his eyebrows in the deliberately obtuse pout that was so familiar. It felt like resuming a conversation that they'd left hanging only yesterday, and she had a startling, dizzying urge to let a giggle bubble out of her.
"The rank," she corrected, a small fragment of the laugh escaping.
"Oh." He primped his hair for a moment anyway, then gave an uncomfortable little shrug. He pointed at the stars on his left shoulder in turn. "This one, they blackmailed me into taking a year and half ago. This one, I think somebody stuck on me when I wasn't looking." He looked over both his shoulders as if to catch a lurking culprit in the act.
Pairing: Jack/Sara (vaguely)
Category: Jack O'Neill, Sara O'Neill, Jack/Sara, character study
Warning: none
Author on LJ nomadicwriter
Author's Website: none
Link: LJ post announcing the fic
Fic on FF.Net
Why This Must Be Read:
Nomad gives us a Sara O'Neill ten years after the death of her son, moving to Washington DC to get a fresh start on her life, and, of course, running into a Jack O'Neill recently promoted and transferred there. The ghost of Charlie is strong between them, and yet enough in the past for them to have scarred over the wound and be able to move on.
Nomad writes a fantastic meeting between the two, with surprise and palpable emotion. You can feel their history, their pain, and their hope and you can feel how much they truly loved each other. This story is very real and very worth the read.
She hadn't even known that it was him at first. She'd thought that he looked like Jack from the back, but then every man in a uniform looked like Jack, even the short, fat, bald ones, and near-white hair and a General's stars had been enough to shake the stray thought.
Until she'd crossed the floor to visit the restroom, and on her way out looked up and just seen him there. A ghost made flesh, so much unchanged and yet so different, long eyelashes slanted down as he stared into his coffee cup.
He looked old.
He looked good.
He looked... melancholy.
It was that last that swayed her, killed the first impulse to hurry away before he glanced up and saw that she was there. He looked sad, and it struck her with a strange and terrible truth that she'd never seen Jack O'Neill sad. She'd seen him angry, and hurting, and devastated beyond the point where there was room for human emotion, but never honestly, nakedly sad. It was nothing he would show where there was any possibility that somebody he loved might chance to see it.
It carried the connotation of such loneliness that Sara had sat down in the seat across from him before she had time to consider.
It took him a moment to look up, and when he did he stared at her with a kind of confused awe, holding very still as if to move too fast might startle her away. She must have been just as much an unexpected ghost to him as he was to her.
Wit failed her, so she just offered a soft smile. "Hello, Jack."
"Sara." He still looked vaguely stunned. She'd never figured out how one man could be at once so expressive and so closed.
She felt suddenly shy, and wished she had a coffee of her own to hand so she could stir it and look down at it. "I saw you sitting here, and I, er- hi." The words tumbled out as if she was a crush-entangled schoolgirl.
The corners of his mouth lifted, a trace of the boyish grin she remembered so fondly. "Hi."
It chased the melancholy from his face, and Sara saw more of the man that she'd married than she had since the day their worlds both ended ten long years ago. She gestured at his uniform. "So when did this happen?"
"The hair?" He lifted a hand to it and scrunched his eyebrows in the deliberately obtuse pout that was so familiar. It felt like resuming a conversation that they'd left hanging only yesterday, and she had a startling, dizzying urge to let a giggle bubble out of her.
"The rank," she corrected, a small fragment of the laugh escaping.
"Oh." He primped his hair for a moment anyway, then gave an uncomfortable little shrug. He pointed at the stars on his left shoulder in turn. "This one, they blackmailed me into taking a year and half ago. This one, I think somebody stuck on me when I wasn't looking." He looked over both his shoulders as if to catch a lurking culprit in the act.