Title: Lost
Author: moonie
E-mail: jmm@abts.net
Date: 20 Jan 00
Archive: If you wish, please just let me know
Disclaimer: I've just borrowed them.
Summary: Missing scene from before the series began after Jack O'Neill returned from four months imprisonment in Iraq.
"You son of a bitch! You come out of there!"
Sarah O'Neill rammed her clenched fists into solid, unforgiving wood. The pain only intensified her anger. Helpless tears stained her pallid face with the remnants of makeup applied oh-so-carefully hours ago. Her breath rasped in her chest, choking sobs pounding at her aching ribs, fear, rage, hopelessness stealing the soul out of her impotent words.
She collapsed against the closet door.
Gentle pleading hadn't worked. She had worked her way through an entire roster of escalating emotions. Encouragement, invitation, frustration, irritation, fear, great gasping gulps of terror. All punctuated by love, her love for the man who had blocked her out, both figuratively and literally. Five months ago, an entire ocean spanned between them. Now... now two inches were an impassable gulf in their own home.
The wood was harsh and cold against her wet cheek. Exhaustion pulled with the weight of gravity on leaden limbs and she melted to the floor, her face still resting against the door. The one door... the only damn closet door in the entire house that locked from the inside, some architectural goof that had struck them as funny -------- years ago when they bought this house.
"Please... please, oh, please." Her voice was so soft and hoarse that she doubted he could even hear her, but she was too exhausted to try to force the words out again.
Her breathing eventually settled down to a normal rhythm, the tears dried into streaks on her cheeks and painted lines down her chin. Her hands began to throb, or maybe she was just only then noticing it. Impossibly, the lure of sleep stole over her.
Her life was shattering all around her and she needed a nap.
If it hadn't been so tragically human it would have actually been funny.
At least Jack would think so. Jack, with his warped, dry sense of humor. It had been one of the first things that drew her to him. Stiff and starched in his uniform, military scowl on his craggy features, every line in his body on full parade alert-and that wicked little gleam in his dark eyes, the gleam that made her fall in love with him long before common sense could warn her that she was marrying a man who was married to the military. Fortunately for them both, Sarah Holcombe O'Neill carved out her own place in her husband's heart. The Air Force could have him, but it would damn well share him!
And then Charlie came along and their world was perfect.
Never trust perfect.
Four months and nine days of hell had wedged between them, stolen Jack out of her arms, almost out of her life altogether. MIA. A useless euphemism for the cruelest form of Purgatory.
They wouldn't let her know exactly what horrors her husband had survived imprisoned illegally in a war-torn country that had really been nothing more than a blotch on a globe until Captain Jack O'Neill had gone missing on what had been slated as a routine mission. A procession of uniforms had drifted in and out of the silent house while Charlie slept in blissful ignorance in his bedroom upstairs, offering reassurance, making noises about Geneva Conventions, military actions, exploratory reconnaissance... words that meant nothing to a young wife who was next in line for widowhood.
Sarah didn't think she would have been able to accept that precisely folded flag. She told herself that she wouldn't have to face that. Jack would come back. He had promised her that he would return and Jack O'Neill did not break his promises.
Nor did he break this one.
Against all odds, he had clawed his way to safety from a hell that she was quite sure he would never tell her about, nor would she push for him to do so. She had no illusions that she was being noble. She simply didn't think she could stand to hear the details. Especially not after than first glimpse of him when he was returned to her.
His face was paste-white blotted with still-livid bruises. His perfect military bearing was scarred by a noticeable limp, his right arm... hung 'funny.' There was a faint tremor that would slither through his entire body without warning. His lips thinned as he fought pain that he wouldn't acknowledge.
He was being brave.
Brave for her. Brave for their small son whose innocent face beamed up at his father and who didn't understand why Daddy couldn't pick him up into those strong, safe arms.
When he was ready... the Chaplain had assured her that he would talk to her about it when he was ready, when he thought 'she' was ready. The doctors had assured her that he would be fine, physically, just expect some anti-social, perhaps 'disturbing' behavior. The Brass had assured her that he just needed a little R and R and then he'd be back on full time duty and the world would drop back into its orbit and the sun would shine through her kitchen curtains again. The other Air Force wives assured her that she could be strong for him, she could help him heal.
So many assurances. So very many.
And not a one of them had told her what to do when her husband pushed her away and locked himself into their bedroom closet.
"I'll work it out, Sarah." He had actually sounded like he believed those words... what was it? Three, four hours ago?
How long since she'd finally let her own tightly reined in emotions lash out at him? He'd been home three weeks now and she'd been as supportive as she could be, but he'd only withdrawn further and further away. They didn't make love. They didn't sit down to meals together. He didn't go anywhere. When Charlie left for school, Jack watched him go from his chair in the living room, his eyes silently tracking the child's trek to the bus stop a half a block away. When Charlie came home from school, his father was still there, watching him.
He watched. But he didn't talk. Not to Sarah, not to Charlie, not even to the well-meaning friends who had come in a flurry of support and hot meals and imported beer. Slowly the visitors had trailed off, back into their own lives, lives that were moving forward.
Sarah was left wondering when 'their' lives were going to move forward again.
It wasn't fair. She was a selfish bitch. She was his wife, a military wife. Her husband had been imprisoned, starved, beaten, tortured-since he wouldn't talk to her about it, her mind conjured up all sorts of horrors-and she was supposed to be the rock he could anchor himself to. But she was tired, so very tired.
Her tears were gone, a mere memory of stain on her cheeks, her sobs were silenced, her breath had slowed almost to a state of sleep. She had given up trying to hear any possible sound from within the closet. She had given up trying to draw him out, draw him into her arms. She would do anything for him but she had to know 'what' to do. If he'd just tell her...
The clink of the lock made her startle.
It took her an instant of disorientation to recognize the sound for what it was, then realization knotted a spasm of fear deep within her and she nearly gagged.
The door knob became the focus for her entire world. She willed it to turn, she begged it to turn. An anxious voice tapped at the back of her mind reminding her peevishly that she had no idea what to do if he actually did come out. She tamped it back down with all the other doubts that waited there.
A tiny twitch of the knob brought her up to her knees and she backed away just enough for the door to open. Please, please, please, the unspoken words were a mantra of hope. It rattled, then turned and the door opened just a crack, then more and she prayed through each fraction of an inch that brought her closer to the man she loved.
She had only one tear-fractured image of his face before she enfolded him in her arms. There was such pain, such devastation there that one moment of hopelessness nearly overwhelmed her, then his body was warm around hers.
And that really was the only thing she could do. Love him. She would love him through all the things that couldn't be said, that could never be healed, for all the parts of him that had been lost in that far away place. She would hold him. And she would love him.
