Pray Me Home (3/5)

[starandrea]

One of the difficulties inherent in writing fanfic for someone else’s fanfic is that you’re no longer dealing with just the Canon World and Your World, you’re dealing with the Canon World, Their World, and Your World ::nods:: scifislasher noticed this after reading the first part of this story, and it took me until the third part ^_^ All I can say is, that’s why she’s the master of the AU ::grin:: Love!

Also! Erin appears in this story, name and rank suggested by tktrix ♥

Pray Me Home (3/5)
by *Andrea

Day 9

He didn't wake up screaming. He barely woke up at all until the effort to figure out where he was trumped exhaustion and odd comfort--the skin on his face was stiff and hot and there were tears still sliding down his cheeks, but there was something there. Right there. His hand?

Jack was holding his unbandaged hand. Fingers twined loosely through his, slack in the semi-darkness while Jack dozed against the near wall. He'd been crying... crying long enough that Jack had fallen back asleep since it started. The light left on by the door was enough to cast weary shadows over the man who must have figured it was better than screaming.

"Jack," he whispered, unable to stop himself. He needed... something.

Jack's eyes opened like he hadn't even been asleep, but the way he winced when he lifted his head told another story. "Hey," Jack said softly. He didn't pull his hand away. "You okay?"

"No," he said. "I dream that--it's all disappearing. Everything in the world is disappearing, and I'm the only one left. I... I fall. I always fall."

Jack just squeezed his hand, resettling himself against the wall. "You're not the only one left, Sky. You won't fall."

"I know that," he said irritably. "Do you want me to bare my soul or not?"

Jack smiled at that, and something in his eyes glowed in the dim light. "Sorry. Go on."

"Maybe I won't," he informed Jack. "I mean, if you're just saying that. It's not like you really want to know."

Jack's fingers twitched, and his smile broke into a grin. "I want you to bare your soul," he said solemnly. "Please, Sky. I'm begging you to tell me what your dream was about."

He scowled at Jack. "I hate you."

"Uh-huh." The words had slipped out, but they didn't seem to faze Jack in the slightest. "I've heard that before."

His frown deepened, but that comment was probably best left alone. "They hold me down," he said abruptly. "They just--they won't let me up. I can't move. And I can't... I can't move, and I can't think. Everything just goes away. It's all gone."

Jack was quiet for a long moment. "Everything?" he asked at last.

In the dream, it was everything. "Yeah," he said. "I don't--I can't--it all disappears. Like the whole room collapses in on itself."

"Room?" Jack repeated neutrally.

"Like a..." Hospital room, he wanted to say. Like the infirmary on base. But then Jack would assume that he was remembering it, and it was just as likely that his mind had superimposed an image he knew over a concept that he was imagining.

"I always seem to want you," he said instead, eyeing Jack. "Why is that? Do you suppose I've imprinted on my captor?"

Jack's mouth quirked again, but this time the smile didn't encompass his whole face. "Ducks imprint, Sky. Not humans."

"Well, thank god for small favors," he muttered. He lifted his other hand without thinking about it, frowning at the silver below the remarkably clean bandage. "You didn't really put your initials on this."

"No," Jack agreed, after a brief hesitation.

He couldn't account for his sudden feeling of disappointment.

"You did, though." Jack leaned over to adjust the bracelet on his right wrist. "Right there. Look at it in the light; you'll see."

"Where?" He sat up, letting go of Jack's hand as he impatiently tugged it off. Tilting it this way and that, he couldn't get enough light on it to make anything out. So he rolled off of his pallet and took it over to the light by the door.

"You did it with a rock." Jack's voice sounded amused, and he hadn't moved from his position on the floor. "It's not exactly a masterpiece."

He would have stamped something he didn't want people to see right... there. "JL," he read wonderingly. He still knew something about himself, it seemed.

"You said," Jack told him, "that people put the things they care about the most on there."

He remembered Dru saying that to him. Vaguely. Not the precise, word-for-word memory he had of the SPD manual, but the hazy, undefined memory of something not often revisited.

Or of something partially obscured by a larger shadow.

He shook his head, but it didn't help. It just distracted him from a thought he couldn't quite hold onto. "Why would anyone do that?" he blurted out. "All this--about mindwipes and suppressed memories... it doesn't make any sense."

Jack didn't answer, and he turned.

Jack was still sitting against the wall, knees drawn up in front of him so he could brace his elbows and rest his head in his hands. He wasn't looking anywhere but at the floor. Dark braids stuck out between his fingers when he buried his hands in his hair, obscuring his face completely.

"No," Jack mumbled, apparently talking to the floor. "No, it doesn't."

He didn't know what to say.

Jack didn't move for a long time, and he started to wonder if the man could actually fall asleep like that. He stood beside the light, still, quiet... just in case. He didn't know what he was going to do. He just knew that now, right now, at this moment, he didn't want to disturb Jack.

Finally, Jack lifted his head and offered him the shadow of a smile. "How you doing?"

He would never know what prompted him to say it. "This isn't easy for you," he said, uncomfortable, and against his better judgement. Whether it was true or not, there was nothing Jack could say in response that he would want to hear.

Jack just looked at him for a long moment. "Not so much," he said at last.

That was all he said, and perversely, it wasn't enough.

"Tell me," he said.

Jack closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall. "Imagine waking up one morning," he said, "and no one in the world knows who you are. That's pretty much how I feel."

He barely kept himself from scoffing. "Everyone knows who you are," he countered. "Except me, apparently."

"Well, without you, the others don't really matter." Jack's voice was soft and serious, and he didn't lift his head. "Until I saw you, I thought you were still out there, you know? The whole time I was at Nebula, I couldn't talk to you, but I knew you were there. I was sure of it.

"Then I come home," Jack continued, "and hey, it turns out that whole time you weren't there. You were gone, and no one bothered to tell me."

He tried to fold his arms, stabbing pain into his cut hand when he forgot. He rested the bandaged hand on top of his arms awkwardly. Maybe it was the dim light, or the darkness outside, or the surreal little hut they found themselves in... but the words didn't sound quite as crazy when Jack wasn't looking at him.

"The thing is," Jack was saying softly, "you made me, you know? It was like I existed in you. I didn't even realize how much until you were gone. Now, it's like, if you're not Sky anymore... maybe I was never really Jack."

If Jack opened his eyes right now, he didn't know what he would do. He couldn't handle a responsibility like that, deserved or not, and he never should have asked. He shouldn't even be here. He should have made the Mirinoan Rangers send him back--Jack could stay as long as he wanted, he could go back to SPD, and everything would be the way it was before.

Except that SPD would want to know what happened. If he went back and told them it was all a misunderstanding, he would be under suspicion for--among other things--conspiracy and dereliction of duty. Possibly even treason, depending on what was going on in the war right now and what kind of evidence they could mount.

If, on the other hand, he told them that Jack had abducted him, they would be able to extradite an accused criminal no matter how sympathetic Morgan was... and he was surprised that somehow this seemed to weigh evenly against the possibility of being accused of treason.

"I hate your nightmares, Sky." Jack's voice drifted to him, landing lightly on his frozen shell of indecision and somehow melting straight through despite his best efforts. He found himself taking a step in Jack's direction.

"I hate that you have to go through this," Jack continued. "I hate that you can't sleep, that you don't know what's true anymore, that you... everything. I hate it.

"But you know what I hate more?"

Jack did open his eyes, then, and he was caught by a gaze that was as angry as he'd ever seen it. He'd been expecting pain, longing, some sort of sorrow that he couldn't answer. Instead what he saw were eyes full of fury that stopped him where he was.

"I hate that they did this to you," Jack said, very softly. Like he kept his voice down, not out of gentleness, but out of fear that if he let it go he would rage.

Like him in his nightmares, he thought distantly. Like there was nothing to hold onto except whatever had kept him going this long--and without knowing what it was, there was nothing to say it would keep working. Nothing to keep him from falling.

Like Jack might not be able to stop screaming once he started.

"I won't kill you to get you back," Jack told him, and there was a matter-of-factness there that should have scared him. Like Jack had considered it. "But I'll let you do whatever you're willing to do to remember. And if that means watching you suffer like this, whatever it does to me, I'll fucking sit by your bed for the rest of my life."

He'd thought he would leave. He'd thought facing... this, whatever it was that drove Jack, real or imagined, would be too much. But now he was facing it, and he couldn't turn away. "You're in my head," he muttered.

Jack just looked at him.

Waiting. Patient in a way that didn't make any sense.

"You're--" He tried again. "Sometimes I hear you. Talking. In my dreams."

That sounded unbelievably stupid, but Jack just smiled a little. "Probably because I do," he said, offering the easy way out. Calm again, bottled rage stuffed back into the shadows. "You probably hear me."

"No." He should just stop there. It wasn't like he could explain it any better than he already had. "I don't think so."

Jack seemed to consider this. Then he asked, very seriously, "Is this another baring your soul moment, or do I get to make a joke?"

He rolled his eyes, the moment easing, and he shuffled the rest of the way to Jack's side. "Somehow, I doubt the two are mutually exclusive."

"Oh, hey," Jack said lightly, smiling up at him. "You're remembering."

"What if I don't?" he wanted to know. He sat down on the pallet again, darting a glance at the man who had barely moved since he got up. "I'm still not sure I even believe all this mindwipe stuff. What if I never do? Or if I do, and it never comes back? What then?"

"Well." Jack was looking at his hands, now, laced together across the space between his knees. "You're not as obnoxious as my Sky. But you're okay. I'd be willing to maybe work on the friend thing, someday. If you were."

"Someday," he repeated. Trying not to think about the fact that there would be no "someday" for them. Whatever happened on Mirinoi, they couldn't stay here forever.

"Someday" they would have to go home.

Day 9, redux

There was sunlight coming in through the window, flashing in his eyes as he tried to remember where he was. Squinting, he rolled away from the light, pulling his hand out of a cool grip before he realized what it was: Jack, sleeping beside his pallet in the hut on Mirinoi. The other man didn't so much as stir when he moved.

His other hand throbbed the moment he sat up, and he lifted it to his chest absently. Above the heart. Make the blood work to get there. Stare at Jack. It didn't hurt so much anymore... it was just uncomfortable.

No nightmares. Well, wasn't that sweet, he thought, mouth quirking involuntarily. He'd managed not to dream about the end of the world when Jack was lying next to
him. He rolled his eyes, but there was no denying the fact that he was smiling.

Jack made him smile. That didn't seem...

It did seem right, which was a vaguely creepy thought all on its own. It didn't seem logical. That was the problem. He didn't remember this supposed mindwipe at all. And he didn't care if that was the point--there had to be some evidence. Some trace. Something that could tell him, once and for all, what the truth was.

He could interrogate Jack all year and it wouldn't do him any good without corroboration. He could get his own file from SPD, but if any of this was remotely real, he wouldn't be able to trust what it said. He could maybe... see someone, Jack's 'mind healer' or whatever, but... he wasn't sure he believed in that on a good day. Which this definitely wasn't.

He edged around Jack's prone form carefully, scooting off the pallet at the far end and a little surprised when Jack still didn't wake. He'd assumed the man was a light sleeper: he'd woken easily enough last night. But of course, he'd been asleep sitting up. He'd woken every other time, too... but then, according to Jack, he'd been screaming every time. So. Maybe not the best test.

He found his SPD gear folded up on the bench under the window, beneath the civvies Jack had ditched for native wear the day before. They had accepted clean clothes--or rather, Jack had accepted clean clothes for both of them--and he hadn't bothered to change out of them before falling asleep. Now he bothered.

Native clothing was less conspicuous, he told himself. And who knew how clean his squad gear was after the Mirinoans did whatever they did to wash it. Wearing the borrowed clothes was just practical. He dressed with an eye to avoiding the windows and staying out of direct line of sight from the door, should it happen to open unexpectedly.

Jack stayed asleep, even after he rattled around the tiny bathroom and accidentally dropped another one of those stupid glazes on the floor. At least this one didn't break. He wasn't trying to wake Jack. He was just...

For god's sake. He took himself out of the hut before he could start talking, nominally to keep himself from going crazy and really just to get Jack's attention. The man deserved some rest. He couldn't judge whether Jack had been getting more or less sleep than him, but the fact that he was effectively sleeping on the floor and still so undisturbed probably meant that he needed whatever rest he was getting.

He braced his hands on the railing outside the front door, the tiny raised deck shaded by a roof and quiet, even in the midst of several other little huts. There was only one other person in sight. She caught his eye when he glanced in her direction, lifting one hand in a wave.

"Morning," she called, from the next porch over. Their neighbor, he supposed. Perched on her own railing, back against the outside of her hut, she was wearing a floppy straw sunhat and working on an electronic reader.

He lifted his bandaged hand automatically, then wished he hadn't. "Hi," he said awkwardly.

She smiled over at him. "I'm Erin," she said. "Yellow Ranger. Can I get you anything?"

The Yellow Ranger. He hadn't met her yesterday.

"Uh... I'm just going to--" He pointed in the general direction of something. "Food?"

"Sounds good," she agreed, swinging her legs off of the railing and hopping down. As though he had issued an invitation. "I'll go with you."

He wasn't sure he was allowed to protest. He and Jack had been given complete autonomy the day before, but he hadn't tried to go anywhere alone. Erin had clearly been stationed outside their hut. And he hadn't missed the fact that all important questions so far had been directed at Jack. It was entirely possible that they had decided he was too much of a head case to be allowed out by himself.

"Fine," he muttered, as she tucked the reader into a shoulder bag and came down off of her porch to join him. He might as well ask. "You get babysitting duty today?"

Erin smiled, unconcerned. "I prefer to think of it as hostess duty," she told him. "Rangers take care of their own."

"Is that why you're doing this?" he blurted out. "Ranger loyalty?" He'd heard about it, but he'd never actually--well. What did he know about A Squad, really?

"Doing what?" Erin asked, looking over at him as they walked. "Keeping you company until your friend wakes up? That's just basic courtesy."

"No--" He gestured vaguely, trying to take in everything about the planet at once. "This. Helping us."

Erin sounded a little bemused. "Mirinoi is a very hospitable place."

But we're crazy, he wanted to say. We're fugitives.

"And you just..." He tried again. "You just believe Jack, when he says--when he tells you we need help?"

"Please don't take offense," Erin said carefully. She shot him a sideways look, and her voice was gentle now. "We can all see that you need help, Sky. It's your teammate's responsibility to protect you when you're vulnerable. We'll do everything we can to make sure nothing he can't handle gets through."

He started to protest automatically, but he thought better of it and managed to restrain himself before actual words got loose. He supposed they were basing their assessment of his "vulnerability" on his weakness and volatility yesterday. He wondered what she would say if he told her that both those things were because of Jack, not in spite of him.

There was an upside to being thought of as a victim, though. He'd noticed it yesterday, and he was perfectly willing to take advantage of it today: no one tried to make him talk. He didn't know if they thought he was too delicate or simply too unpredictable, but Erin let him be unless he spoke first and no one else they passed did more than offer a friendly nod of their head.

After they had eaten--mostly in silence--he got something for Jack and they wandered back to the little circle of huts and porches. Where Jack was still asleep. Erin didn't actually follow him inside, so he was spared having to explain why Jack was sleeping on the floor.

He was also free to stare. Something he hadn't dared to do since they'd been introduced, and had seemed even less acceptable since Jack had stuffed him into a shuttle and taken off for parts unknown. It was funny, though... Jack drew the eye. He was cocky and unexpectedly kind and bright with energy.

Unfortunately, it was also possible that Jack was crazy. He tried to remind himself that "cute" did not equal "mentally stable," and crazy was really the last thing he needed to get involved with at this point in his career. Or ever.

But what if Jack was telling the truth? As far-fetched as it seemed, Jack had come up with a story that was its own corroborating evidence. Jack said he didn't remember things, and voila: not remembering what he'd supposedly forgotten was its own proof.

Except... there was his mom. Whom Jack admitted he'd spoken to, so maybe the fact that their stories matched didn't mean anything. But if his mom knew something, too, then they shouldn't be the only ones. There must be other people outside of SPD who could say one way or the other.

It was the Drews' shuttle Jack had hijacked--with permission? If there was anyone his mom could have convinced to go along with this, it would have been them. They'd been odd around him for a while now. Though not Syd, which he couldn't figure at all. Syd didn't act any stranger around him than anyone else on B Squad.

On the other hand, two years ago she'd been caught up in her own scandal. Maybe she was out of the loop. Maybe she hadn't listened when her parents talked about his SPD career any more than he listened when his mom talked about her modeling. Or singing. Or whatever she'd been doing when the headlines blew up.

Or maybe she wasn't weird because there was nothing to be weird about, and Jack was either the best, most calculating secret agent he'd ever seen, or crazy as a fucking loon.

He didn't want to think about the secret agent option. It didn't make any sense, and all of the potential implications seemed more disturbing than the Jack being crazy option. If it came down to it, though, he wasn't as willing to believe in that option as he'd once been, either... because yeah, Jack was strange. But it was a devoted kind of strange. He didn't think there was anyone else who cared enough to sit up all night, holding his hand so he wouldn't be alone in his nightmares.

Still. Being lonely wasn't a reason to cater to insanity.

He wondered if the Drews had saved any of their old communications on the shuttle. They took a lot of vacations. Would his mom have mentioned him while they were off touring the galaxies? Would she have said anything about his first... his fellow cadets?

It was better than nothing. He tossed a blanket over Jack, trying not to look too closely at him while he did it, and he strode out the door before he could "accidentally" wake him up. Pay attention to me. Just yesterday, he would have given anything for Jack to shut up. Today, he couldn't take the silence. Without Jack's voice, he was less certain than ever. About everything.

Erin was still outside, on her own porch, when he re-emerged. Of course. He waved her off when she started to put her reader away again. "It's fine," he said, more curtly than he'd meant to. If only that were true. "I'm just going back to the shuttle for a while."

"I'm happy to keep you company," she offered, hovering on the edge of the railing.

Sure she was. "I can't take off," he told her. "It's keyed to his voice. I'm not going to do anything drastic; I just want to look something up."

"Well." She looked torn. "If you're sure."

He just waved again, starting out on the road to the travel market. They did have motorized vehicles here; he'd seen them. But everywhere he'd been so far had been set up in such a way that "walking distance" meant exactly that: they walked.

It was even moderately pleasant. The sun was out, the air was warm enough that he didn't miss his jacket, and people didn't seem to stare quite as readily as they had the day before. When he looked over his shoulder he didn't see Erin following him, so that was an unexpected bonus.

The travel market was busier than it had been the day before, but he walked out toward the landing strip without being stopped. If they had security other than the Rangers--and they must--it seemed to allow people to wander at will among the planetside spacecraft. He wondered if they ever had trouble with vandals.

The shuttle wasn't as bad as he remembered it. With light streaming in through the hatch in back, it seemed almost... antiquated. Sleepy, small, and mostly harmless. Not the automated, futuristic trap it had become when he was stuck on it for a week plus with someone he didn't know and whose actions he couldn't predict.

He left the hatch open, sitting as close to the sunlight as he could while he powered up shipboard data services. Anything personal would probably require some kind of password. He wasn't even sure what he thought he could find here, but it was the one remotely objective source he had. No officer would fail to exhaust every resource available to him.

Including mind healers?

He pushed the thought aside. Comm log: available. Interesting. He asked it to display recent records, just to see what would happen. Somewhat to his surprise, it did. Just a long list of databursts, transmitted and received... no password prompt in sight.

Jack had been transferred two years ago. He claimed they had been roommates for... three years before that? Five years back. When he had first been accepted for training. The same year he had moved to the Delta Base.

The comm log filled the screen, dates five years old scrolling off the top and bottom with no end in sight. Did they keep everything? He shook his head, scanning for his mom's comm code in the mess. There was a search function, and finally he had to use it. Not only were the Drews chatty, they were ridiculously unorganized. Nothing here had been filed in any way.

His mom's messages were displayed, oldest to newest, from the beginning of the year. He tried not to actually read them. It wasn't any of his business, and at the end of the day, there were things he didn't need to know about his mom. He skimmed for his name, for SPD, for anything that would give him a clue--

Sky. In mid-March, probably about the time the Drews would have been going on their spring vacation. Space Patrol Delta... his father; you understand. I'm not sure it's good for him to be without a roommate, but they feel a room to himself is the least they can do.

He swallowed hard, looking away.

That was it, then: he wasn't the one Jack was looking for. Jack had gotten him confused with someone else. That was all there was to it. No long lost childhood friend, no mysterious medical program to rewrite memories... no love he'd somehow misplaced or forgotten about.

He had to skip ahead a little. Just in case. Maybe he'd gotten a roommate later. Maybe his mom had protested, or the base had run out of room, or--something. The Drews' next trip had been months later, and there were two messages from his mom in June: "birthday pictures" and "thank you note."

Sorry to bother you on your vacation... Because the Drews so rarely got away. He shook his head, glancing across the rest of the message, which seemed to deal mostly with the aftermath of Syd's annual party. The boy doesn't even know when his birthday is, so Sky asked for some pictures. I'm afraid I don't have copies of--

He froze, gaze flicking back up the message.

He says Jack had a great time at the lake.

He couldn't move.

He says Jack had a great time at the lake...

Syd's sixteenth birthday party--at the lake. With the car underneath the pavilion and the lanterns and the sun off of the water. He'd gotten the worst sunburn of his life. He remembered that day. No Jack. He remembered the cake and the boat and the music...

Had they had cake on the boat? Or had the cake come after the boat?

He says Jack had a great time at the lake. It was so kind of you to invite Sky's friend. You know he has trouble making friends, and to tell you the truth, I don't know that Sky would have gone without him. I think they may have talked each other into it.

He didn't even go to Syd's birthday parties. They were an extravagant waste of money and time. And the kind of people who went weren't the kinds of people he ever liked to spend time with. Why had he gone to that one?

He told me to tell you thank you: from both of them, if you can believe it. And that's not all. Apparently they're having some kind of decorating war on the cadet levels, and of course Sky plans to win. Over the objections of his roommate. The boy doesn't even know when his birthday is, so Sky asked for some pictures...

"Jack," he whispered, unable to tear his eyes away.

A sound from the hatch made him jump, almost knocking over the chair as he spun around. Jack held up his hands. Seated sideways in the hatch, one foot propped up against the deck and the other dangling over the edge, he looked like he'd been there all morning. "Sorry," he offered. "Didn't mean to startle you."

"When's your birthday?" Sky demanded, staring at him.

Jack shrugged, lowering his hands to his sides. "Don't know," he said. "Never celebrated it."

"Did you--" He says Jack had a great time at the lake. "Did you ever... go to one of Syd's?"

Jack's expression didn't change. "Yeah, but she wouldn't remember it. Didn't meet her once the whole time we were there. Too busy chumming with her rich friends."

Syd was like that. "Which one?" he asked, and even to him, his voice sounded strangled.

Jack's was perfectly even. "Which friend?"

"Which birthday," he whispered.

"Sixteenth," Jack said, watching him carefully. "'Bout a month after we met."

He turned away, shoving the chair back up to the console. So what. So they'd both come up with the same story, so they'd planted evidence in the comm log. Jack was crazy, and the Drews were fucking manipulative. So what.

A search by date instead of comm code revealed fifteen messages sent that day. God, they couldn't turn it off, could they. They had to keep their hand in, even on vacation. The reply to his mom was third from the top.

We were delighted to see all of you at...

His eyes blurred, hot and harsh with the word "Jack" repeated over and over down the screen. Sky's friend Jack, Jack and Sky, Sky and Jack... He didn't know why his hands were shaking when he tried to call up the attached data packet, but he couldn't make them stop.

Jack's image filled the screen. A younger, meaner Jack, with his hair shorn close to his head and a gang bandana around his neck. Baring his teeth in what could have been a smile. Sky next to him, pink with sun, holding a pointy cone hat over his head.

"What is that?" Jack's voice asked.

He couldn't answer, couldn't move, even when he heard Jack getting up and pacing over to stand beside him. "Wow," Jack said after a moment. "That's old. Where'd you find that?"

"Is that--" He didn't know why he had to ask. It was obviously Jack. He pointed anyway, unable to take his eyes off of the screen.

"Yeah, I was young and stupid," Jack said, and the smile was audible in his voice. "Let's move on."

"Why don't I remember?" he whispered.

This time, Jack didn't answer.

He turned in his chair, staring up at the man standing next to him. Jack looked back, a maturity in his eyes that didn't show in the picture. Long braids framed his face. Too long to have grown out since taking a fake photograph, even if short hair could make him look as young as he did on the screen.

"Why?" he asked, his voice gaining strength. "What did I do? Who would--I was mindwiped?"

Jack only nodded.

"Why?" he demanded. "When I was--two years ago? They erased my memory two years ago?"

"Looks like," Jack said quietly.

"How is that even legal!" he exclaimed. "What, did I--did I let them? Why? Where was my mom?"

Jack didn't take his eyes off of him. "Your mom wasn't told," he said. "And judging by the nightmares you've been having, you didn't 'let' anyone do anything."

His mom had filed a fucking lawsuit. And this whole time, he'd been trying to get her to knock it off. Nothing happened, he'd insisted; he was fine.

Except that he couldn't remember three years of his life.

"Tell me," he said, suddenly determined. "Tell me what they made me forget."

Jack hesitated. "That could... take a while."

"It better," he said grimly. "I want it back. All of it."

"You might get it back on your own," Jack pointed out. "You're obviously remembering something when you sleep. And Kat was pretty sure that time off base would bring some of it back--she said they went to a lot of trouble, those first few weeks, to keep you from leaving at all."

"Yeah, well, that was two years ago," he snapped. "Maybe whatever the hell they did was cumulative. Maybe it's built up in my system until there's nothing left. I can't remember, Jack. I can't remember any of it!"

"You will," Jack insisted. "It's just taking longer than we thought, that's all."

"So help me!" he exclaimed. "Tell me what happened!"

Jack shook his head, looking at the picture over his shoulder. "I'm not--I can't take the place of your memories," he muttered. He sounded more uncomfortable than anything, and that was all that kept Sky from snapping at him.

"Jack." Words weren't memories, but they were better than nothing, and it looked like there was only one person who had them. "Please."

Jack folded his arms, turning just enough that he could lean one hip against the console. His back to the screen, he looked ashamed and apologetic all at once. "Look... I'm not--it isn't that I don't want to tell you, okay? I do. I want to tell you everything; I've wanted to ever since--"

He broke off, looking down at the floor. He blew out his breath in a carefully controlled sigh and continued, "I love you, okay? I was in love with you. I mean, you probably got that, right?" Jack glanced up, then away. "You don't even remember. Imagine trying to tell a stranger about..."

It was the first time he'd felt shut out of whatever was in Jack's head. It had been his for the asking, as far as he knew, and Jack had answered every question he came up with. He didn't know how to handle this.

"Tell me something else?" he asked, subdued. "Anything. How we met, or... or the party. Why did we go to the party?"

Jack smiled at that, eyes flicking back up to him. "Because you dared me."

Sky narrowed his eyes. "Did not."

"Did," Jack insisted. "You said I'd never fit in, that I'd hate it. That I wouldn't be able to go the whole day without stealing something. You were terrible back then."

And you loved me anyway? He bit back a question Jack clearly wouldn't welcome, managing to say only, "Tell me."

Jack's smile widened. "With pleasure."

***

"I will be the answer at the end of the line
I will be there for you while you take your time
In the burning of uncertainty I will be your solid ground
I will hold the balance if you can't look down

"If it takes my whole life, I won't break, I won't bend
It will all be worth it, worth it in the end
'Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life"

--Sarah McLachlan
"Answer"