Just a little something responding to a prompt challenge issued by @amaradangeli

Five word prompt: I said I love you

Forgive me if this is wonky… it's my first time posting on tumblr!

I Said I Love You by MissAnnThropic

“What?”

The deer-in-the-headlights look on her face made Samantha Carter appear impossibly young.  It was almost funny to think that amid all the advanced astrophysics that she fielded without falter, this was what drew her up short.

“I said I love you,” Jack repeated, easily and without fanfare.  Like he had said it a thousand times before.  In a way, he had.

But not in a way that Sam would understand.

Sam looked a unique blend of panicked and confused as her eyes darted around the bustling embarkation room, toward General Hammond standing well within earshot of the two officers, at her teammates who were just as agog as Sam.  Daniel’s owlish eyes and ‘o’ of a mouth, Teal’c’s single raised eyebrow.  The witnesses.  All those witnesses.

Jack couldn’t muster the energy to worry about any of that.  It was hard to imagine he ever had.  He felt older than his years.

“General…” Sam began.  The one word was almost an appeal.  ‘Don’t listen to him!’

General Hammond looked concerned more than he was angry, which was probably for the best.  “Colonel?  Are you all right?”

Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets, gave an ambiguous head tilt, and moved his eyes back to her.  When she looked his way again, he offered a small smile.  A smile with more heart that he’d ever dared before.

It seemed to freak her out as much as his declaration of love.  “General, something happened to Colonel O’Neill on the planet… we’re not entirely sure, but we got separated.  When we found him, he was disoriented.  It might even be a concussion!”

Jack’s fond smile twisted.  Trust her to find the out, the way to dismiss what he’d said.  Throwaway words.  Nonsense.  The ramblings of a head injury.  Never anything real.  Perish the thought.

General Hammond nodded.  “Colonel, report to the infirmary immediately.”

Jack felt the world start to hang off his bones, heavy and old.  “Yes, sir.”  His eyes didn’t stay on Hammond long.  When he moved, Sam almost jumped back to clear a path for him.

All traces of Jack’s smile vanished.

**********

Given Jack’s proclamation in the gate room, Jack’s medical exam and debrief were conducted separate from the rest of his team.  It meant he’d have to repeat himself when the rest of SG-1 hunted him down for details, but not being there when he told Hammond what had happened was no doubt easier on Sam.

The things Jack had to say would have made her uncomfortable.  Especially in front of the general.

Jack was in the infirmary and then Hammond’s office so long that it was into the early morning hours when he was finally released.  His team was nowhere to be found.  Part of Jack was glad for the reprieve.  For him, it was as though the mission had lasted years instead of days. 

And he was not surprised Sam had bolted. 

And yet, he was also not surprised to find Sam perched against the hood of her car in front of his house when he got home.  Despite the hour.  Despite everything, really.

“Sam,” he said softly when he got out of truck.

Sam was already starting toward him but hesitated at her name.  She frowned.  He knew why, but after everything, he couldn’t bring himself to call her ‘Carter’.

“Sir…”

Jack winced and looked toward his house.  “You sure you want to be here?  After the gate room and all… someone might get the wrong idea if we’re seen.”

He knew he sounded bitter, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

Sam narrowed her eyes.  “Are you mad that I care what the general thinks?”  The spaces between her words accused him of being just as guarded and mindful of their reputation as she.

Once upon a time.

“No.”  He sighed.  “Anger would imply there was a possibility you might react any other way, doesn’t it?”

Sam looked confused.  He couldn’t blame her.  That didn’t mean it hurt less, though.

“Come on,” he said in resignation.  “At least let me tell you what happened.”  She might not understand, but at least she’d know why.

Sam looked wary of being alone in his home with him at night, all things considered, but her curiosity won out.

Some things never changed… like Sam’s need to solve a puzzle.

**********

They ended up sitting on the steps of Jack’s back porch with beers in hand and a tense silence between them.  The night was cool and the world asleep but for them, as though the universe had withdrawn to give them this time.  The stars they traveled dotted the sky above, a moving passport they could never hold.

Sam was staring up at them in studied silence.  Jack wasn’t sure if she was truly that engrossed or just avoiding looking at him.  It might have been because he was staring.  He couldn’t seem to help that, either.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, cleared her throat, and took a gulp of beer.  “So…”

“So.”

Sam’s lips twitched in annoyance and she finally turned to look at him.  “What happened on the planet?”

Jack steeled himself to tell the story twice in one night… though Sam would get details he’d omitted from his debrief with Hammond.

“You remember that Macaw Moron?”

Sam huffed a laugh.  “That wasn’t his title.”

“Hey, a guy wears a costume made out of feathers every color under the sun, he has to expect some ridicule.”

Sam rolled her eyes.  “Colonel…”

“Right.”  Jack looked down intently at his beer, picking at the label with his thumbnail.  “I tracked him down while the rest of you were at the banquet.  I had some concerns about his errand boys.”

Sam frowned uneasily.  “They didn’t seem mistreated.”

“Those kids were scared of him, and I was going to find out why.”  Jack scowled at the memory, then shook his head.  “I found him in some kind of lab.  Not like yours or Daniel’s… way more mad scientisty.  Think Frankenstein’s laboratory and a Sherman Williams paint store had a head-on collision.”

“Sir…”

Jack flinched.  “Do you know what the locals called Macaw Moron?  It’s not that lame-ass title he told Daniel.”

Sam looked intrigued.

“Pathbender.”

“Why?” Sam asked.

“He can… I don’t even know how to explain what he does.  All I can tell you is what he did.  I never left that room, but somehow I lived a different version of my life.”

“Like you were a different version of you?” Sam asked.

“No.  It was me, but things kept veering farther off course from this reality.  First in little ways, then in big ones, too.”

At Sam’s silence, Jack looked over and found her justifiably confused.  “I don’t understand.”

The second attempt at recounting the story was no easier than the first with Hammond.  The poor man had looked like he was nursing a headache by the time Jack left.  “Do you remember Dr. Carter from that alternate universe?”

Sam tensed in obvious discomfort.  “Of course.”

“Well, you know how you explained it to me?  Forks in the road and all that?”

“Yeah…”

Jack nodded.  “That’s what it was.  Whatever this Macaw guy did, wherever it was he sent me, it let me go left where I’d normally go right.”

“And to the left was…” Sam trailed, as if she already knew.  As if she would have always known what the left would hold.

“Us.”

Sam went dead silent.

Jack couldn’t bring himself to look at her.  He didn’t want to know if there was denial written all over her face.  If she was flat-out rejecting the mere idea of what he’d lived.  “It was every moment we’ve ever had to choose,” and god knew there were so many of them, “but in this other reality, every time there was a choice, we didn’t choose the Air Force.”

He fell silent to let that sink in.  To let her remember all the rights they had made and what it would have meant if they’d gone left instead.

“I…” and there it was, the great Sam Carter lost for words.

Jack peeled off a piece of the beer label where he’d worked up a corner.  “It was terrifying how easy it all was.  Maybe it was designed to be.”  Jack shrugged and tossed the rolled bit of paper into his dark lawn.

“So you and I, in this other reality…”

“Figured out how to make it work.  We made it work.  Dated.  Eventually, we got married.”

Sam startled and her beer clunked to the deck step below her.  She scrambled to right it before it made too much of a mess.  “We… married?”

“You could act a little less surprised, Sam,” Jack groused.

Her mouth opened and closed without sound a few times before she croaked, “Colonel, I…”

“Stop.”

“Sir…”

“Please, Sam.”  The pain in his voice quieted her.

Jack looked over at her with an apologetic grimace.  “Sorry, I just… I got used to you calling me Jack.  It’s hard to hear you using ‘colonel’ and ‘sir’ again.”

For a moment, Sam was speechless.  Then she was practically whispering.  “It wasn’t me.”

“I know… but it was so real.  You were so real.”

“But it wasn’t real, Colonel.”

Jack shot her a beady look.  “It was.”

“No, sir. I’m sorry, but whatever that man did to you must have caused some kind of vivid, detailed hallucination, and while it may have seemed very real to you…”

While she was talking, Jack kicked out one leg to dig into his pocket.  His hand came out fisted and he held it out to her.  Absently, mid-lecture, Sam held out her hand.  Jack dropped something into her palm.

Sam’s words died on her lips as she looked down at a woman’s wedding ring in her hand.

“It was real,” Jack insisted.  “For whatever else it was, I know that much.”

Sam gaped down at the ring in her hand, still warm from Jack’s pocket.  She looked from him to the ring.  “Is… was this…”

“Yours.”  Jack downed the rest of his beer, set the bottle aside, then reached over to fetch Sam’s abandoned one from between her feet and chug from that, too.

Sam pinched the ring between her thumb and forefinger to examine it more closely in the porch light behind them.  He could tell the moment it clicked.  “This is my mom’s.”

“I know.”

“Sir!  How did you…”

“Dad gave it to me, when I told him I was going to propose to you.”

Sam’s eyes were tearing up as she traced her thumb over the familiar piece of jewelry.  “Holy Hannah…”

“It was real,” Jack repeated.  He needed that to be fact.

Sam nodded mutely.  She clutched the ring and sniffed.  “How long…”

“Twelve years passed for me in there.”

Sam let out a stunned breath.  “But how is that even possible?  You’re not twelve years older.”

“I don’t know how it’s possible… all I know is I have years of memories with you.  Whatever he did, coming back didn’t undo that.”

Sam looked like she wanted to protest the science, the impossibility, but she was holding her mother’s wedding ring as damning proof.  There was no way Jack could have it, dinged and scuffed with wear only an unaccounted-for twelve years could explain, unless it was somehow true.

“You never wore your ring to work in the labs,” Jack muttered as though to himself.  “You always left it in the nightstand in the morning.  I took it so I could get it engraved with our initials.  Tenth anniversary surprise.  We had plans to go out to dinner that night, then you were getting a week of vacation so we could head up to the cabin.”  Jack took in a slow, deep breath.  “Then everything was gone and you and Daniel and Teal’c were pulling me out of that psychedelic bathtub.”

Sam raked her free hand through her hair and rubbed her eyes against her shirt sleeve.  She didn’t even bother trying to hide the fact she was crying.

Jack closed his eyes and waited a beat before he gathered the nerve to say what was weighing heavy on his heart.  “I don’t think I can do this anymore, Sam.”

“Do what?” Sam asked in a small voice.

“This.  Our endless game of chicken.  Whatever you want to call it.  I’m done.  I’m out.”

“What do you mean ‘out’?”  Sam straightened and her voice gained steel.  “You don’t mean out of the Air Force.”

“Maybe.”

“Colonel…”

Jack flinched.  “Please, Sam…”

“What about the team?”

“They’ll find someone else to lead it.  Hell, Hammond might even give it to you.”

“I don’t want it!”  Sam closed her fist around the wedding ring, her tears transformed.  “You can’t do this, we need you.”

“Daniel and Teal’c will be fine,” Jack said with certainty.  He cut a sideways look at her.  “And you don’t need me the way I want you to.”

Sam surged off the steps into the grass and rounded on Jack.  “That’s not fair.  You can’t just quit and expect me to fall in line with whatever fantasy you lived.”

Jack looked up at her calmly.  “I don’t expect you to.  This isn’t about trying to have that life.”

“Then what is it about?”

Jack sighed and looked off into the darkness, gathering his thoughts.  “Regulations, I guess.  Which, isn’t that a kick in the ass.”

“What?”

“Fraternization within a chain of command is against regulations because it could compromise someone in the field, right?”

Sam nodded warily.

“Well, I’m compromised.  Full stop.  I love you.  And I know it’s not fair, because it wasn’t you you who let me, but close enough.”

Sam’s hands hung at her side, her expression dumbfounded.

“And I don’t expect anything from you,” Jack assured.  “And I understand if you can’t love me back.”

“It’s not…” Sam started, stopped, then lowered her voice miserably.  “My ability to love you was never the problem.”

That didn’t feel as good as Jack was hoping.  Not when Sam looked so dejected at the loss of her commanding officer on SG-1.

Jack stood and carefully approached her.  When they were almost toe to toe, she finally looked up at him. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“Don’t leave the team.”

“I have to, Sam.  You know I do.  If I can’t stop feeling this way about you… it’s a liability, and you know it.  Besides, I don’t want to stop feeling this way.”

Sam looked up at him, startled.

Jack gave a lopsided smile.  “You know I hate clichés, but that whole ‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…?  Sort of applies here.”

Sam shook her head.  “I’m not lost.  I’m right here.”

“Not the way I want you.  And that’s okay.  But I just can’t go back to the way we were before and act like nothing’s different.”

“You’ve been through rough missions before… you always came back.”

Jack shrugged.  “Turns out there’s no coming back from loving you.”  And he was okay with that.

Sam sagged.  “Then I guess that’s that.  No more SG-1.”

It felt awful and good at the same time.  “Hammond will find someone to replace me.  He was probably going to have to do it sooner than later, anyway.”

Sam eyed him.  “You’re frighteningly okay with all of this.”

Jack smiled.  He woke up that morning with Sam in his arms.  As far as grand finales goes, they didn’t get any grander.  Even if it was ripped from him.  He offered only a nonchalant shrug in response.

Sam looked down at her hand, uncurling her fingers to ponder her mother’s ring again, then she chuckled.  “I still can’t believe you said that in the gate room.  In front of Hammond.”

Jack snorted.  “Not one of my finer moments,” he conceded.  “Though in my defense, I’d just spent a decade where I didn’t have to stop myself.”

“I can’t even imagine…”

“You can’t?” Jack asked, a little hurt at the idea.

Sam winced.  “Well, maybe I can.  But I shouldn’t.”

“Yes, well… that won’t be the case much longer.”

Sam heaved a breath and stepped back.  He should have expected that would be too much too soon.  “I should go.”

“Sure.”

He meant to let her leave, but when she reached the deck steps he turned toward her.  “Sam?”

She turned back.

“No matter what happens, please tell me that we’ll still be friends.”  He would never not need her, and he’d take having her in his life any way she’d allow.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy, sir.”  When Jack flinched again, she deliberately corrected herself.  “Jack.”

Something aching in his chest eased.  “Thank you.”

Sam cocked her head as she looked down at him, a question practically bursting to be asked by the expression on her face.

“What?” he prodded.

“Were we good together?” she asked softly, as though it was scandalous to even speak it.

Jack smiled roguishly.  “What do you think?”

For a moment there was only that familiar tension between them of too much held back, then Sam grinned, teeth and dimples and everything.  She looked down at her hand thoughtfully a second, then she descended the steps again and marched up to Jack, holding out her hand.

“Here,” Sam said as she placed the wedding ring in his palm.  “Hang on to this…” her eyes flicked up to his, “maybe one day you can give it back to me properly.”

Jack’s head came up at once, his eyes locked on Sam in unbridled hope.

An unmistakable glint twinkled in her eye.  “You decided to change everything, so you damn well better make it count.”

Jack grinned.  “Oh, I intend to.”

Sam smirked, and it felt like a new direction.  It felt like finally going left.