INCORRIGIBLE
A Word a Month fic
By BadgerGater
E-mail: [email protected]
Category: Angst; A word a Month fic: Incorrigible
Season/Sequel: Almost anywhen, follows Jack's family as introduced in my fics His Father's Son and Five Years After
Spoilers: None, really
Rating: G
Warnings: None, really. A gentle little fic
Summary: Jack learns an unexpected truth about himself from an old acquaintance
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the property of the author and may not be posted elsewhere without the author's consent.
Author’s note: Another wonderful Word a Month word, so yes, I'm a couple months behind, but I'm working on 'em. Thanks TK and Chrisbod for such great inspiration.
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The phone call was a real surprise.
"Hi, Joe."
"Jack?" Father Joe O'Neill was more than surprised, more like shocked to hear his brother's voice on the line. Colonel Jack O'Neill never called his younger brother, and Joe's first thought was that something was wrong. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. I, ah, well my meeting in Washington got cancelled and now my flight back to Colorado got delayed, and I'm stuck and thought maybe I'd come visit..."
"You're in Chicago?" Joe asked hopefully.
"Yeah. My flight back to Colorado Springs is on hold until tomorrow, so I'm free for the rest of the day. I've got the next 24 hours actually before I have to report. I know it's short notice. You don't mind?"
"Don't mind?" Joe smiled in delight. "Jack, I can be there..."
"Well, uh, I'm in a cab and about 10 minutes from your place, actually..."
"Great!"
-----------------
Joe was dressed casually, only his priest's collar betraying his profession. He was surprised to see Jack emerge from the cab in full Air Force dress uniform.
"Hey, dressed up just for me?"
Jack grinned. "No, for the Secretary of---, ah, for the brass. In Washington. Where I never got to anyway, and now Rumsfeld is off somewhere."
Joe did a double take. He knew his brother was involved in some important USAF project, but going to Washington and meeting with the Secretary of Defense? Not that Jack would ever explain, and most probably couldn't. Joe didn't know much about his brother's career, other than the man was involved in some sort of top secret and highly dangerous work. Jack had the scars to prove it, that was for sure. The priest knew his brother was no ordinary soldier.
"I don't even have a change of clothes. My luggage is God only knows where--" Jack suddenly shot his brother a look. "No offense meant."
"None taken."
"Look, you don't need to entertain me or anything, I'm sure you've got things to do."
"Actually, I've got one visit to make this afternoon, and then I'm free for the rest of the day. We could go the ballgame tonight. Wrigley Field."
"The Cubs? That would be great. Ah, it's okay for you to go to the ballgame? Lots of drinking and swearing and stuff goes on there, you know," Jack ribbed.
"Of course. And the Cubs could use a little divine intervention," his younger brother said with a laugh. "So, I thought maybe you'd like to ride along while I visit."
"On one of your priestly rounds? Nah..."
"Actually, I wish you would. There's someone you know who would be glad to see you. Asks about you all the time, in fact."
"Someone here asks about me? Why? What did I do? I don't think I still owe anybody here any money. And it was you, not me, who beat up Davey Murchison..."
"That was 35 years ago, Jack..."
"Some people have long memories."
"Obviously," Joe laughed. "But really, she would enjoy a visit."
"She?" Jack's mind immediately brought up several old girlfriends. He wasn't sure he wanted to see any of them, of course, as far as he knew they were all married and mothers and probably even a few would be grandmothers by now. "Well, uh..."
"Sister Mary Margaret."
"Oh for crying out loud, Joe, my sixth grade teacher? Why would she even remember me?"
"Oh, she remembers you all right. Apparently, you made quite an impression on her. Something about locking her in the boy's bathroom?" Joe chuckled.
Jack began to laugh, recalling the incident all those years ago, at St. Patrick's Grammar School. He'd been a bit of a practical joker, okay, most adults had called him a trouble maker. And, well, Mikey Murchison had dared him, he seemed to remember. Jack was smiling.
"You really did that? You were the one?" Joe asked, surprised. "That was like the most famous prank ever done at St. Paddy's. It's legendary."
"Mikey Murchison got the detentions, but I did the deed. I never knew that Sister knew the truth, though," Jack recalled. "Of course, I guess I should have known. I never could put anything past her. Is she still teaching?"
"No, she's been retired for a couple of years now. Lives at the Sister's home on Keeley Ave. She's got cancer, I don't know how long she'll still be with us. But she loves company, loves talking about the old days, and the school..."
"Joe, I'm no good at small talk. You know that," Jack reminded his brother.
"You don't have to say much. She'll ask you a few questions..."
"You know I can't talk about my work, either," Jack added, not needing to say he had no private life to talk about, none at all.
"She'll talk, let her reminisce about school, the other kids. And she's proud of you."
"Proud of me? Huh. She hated me. I was always the troublemaker. Barely made it through sixth grade. You were the smart one, and the one the sisters all adored. Priest material, even then."
Joe nodded at the collection of decorations on his brother's uniform. "Right, they give you those eagles and all those medals for troublemaking."
"The military isn't a Catholic school, thank God."
Joe laughed. "Look, I won't leave you alone with her for very long. I have to visit with a couple of my regular stops at the home, and then I'll come rescue you. Although I think a combat veteran Colonel should be able to handle one 70 year old Sister."
"Okay. Half an hour. Any longer and I'll be sending for the Marines."
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The Sister's Retirement Home was down the street from the old school Jack and his brothers and sisters had attended. Jack had never much liked school, truth be told, too confining. Too strict. Sure the military was strict, but in a different sort of way. They liked adventurous young men with tons of energy. And he'd found in the USAF that using his physical skills could make up for his classroom failings. That didn't happen at St. Patrick's, especially not in Sister Mary Margaret's classroom.
The home was better than most nursing homes he'd ever had to visit, cleaner, brighter, but still, a sad place, a place where people came to live out there final days, a place of death, not life. But at least here, from what he could see, they died with dignity intact.
-----------------
All too soon by Jack's reckoning, the brothers found themselves at the sister's door. The Colonel took a deep breath and stepped inside, side by side with his brother.
"Sister, I've brought someone to visit," Joe informed her. "I hope you're feeling up to company."
The frail elderly woman, sitting in a wheelchair, turned from the window to stare at the two handsome men who had walked in her door. She smiled at the familiar cheery greeting from Father Joe. He was one of her favorite people, one of the students she had been proudest of, from her long career in teaching. She'd known him since he was just a headstrong boy, but she'd seen him always as someone special, someone who early on had known he had a calling to serve God. The man with him looked so much like him, he could be Joe's twin. Except...
"Sister, remember my brother?"
"Johnny O'Neill? My word!" she exclaimed. Joe had told her how his brother had risen through the ranks in the Air Force and was a much decorated senior officer. He looked splendid in the bright blue uniform, rows of colorful insignia on his chest.
Jack smiled. No one had called him Johnny for a very long time. Just hearing Sister's voice brought back vivid memories of the echoing hallways of his long ago school days, days when he'd been a carefree kid, when he thought life would be full of good things, that the future could hold nothing but excitement and adventure. Well, he'd had plenty of those, though there had been way too much of the bad outweighing the good in his life.
As Joe waved a cheery goodbye and promised "back in an hour," Jack pulled up a chair to sit with the old woman, sitting close. He could tell her eyesight wasn't strong anymore. "Hello, Sister Mary Margaret," he said, uncomfortably.
She looked up at him with eyes still bright and perceptive, and patted his hand. "John O'Neill. I always knew you would turn out to be someone special."
"I'm not."
"You are," she said, reaching out to touch the rainbow of brightly colored decorations adorning the uniform. "These say you are." She reached out an unsteady hand to his broad shoulders, and touched the gleaming silver eagles. "And these say you are." And then she looked him straight in the eye, "and your eyes say you are." She laughed. "Surprised you, didn't I?"
"Yes," he answered softly.
"You were one of the best students I ever taught."
"I was?" there was genuine surprise in the Colonel's voice.
"Yes. Not the easiest, by far. Maybe even the most difficult. But I could always see you were a bright boy, you just didn't know it, didn't know how to use it, how to be smart without being 'smart'," she said with a smile. "You didn't like the classroom..."
"You got that right," he agreed quickly.
"But you could do anything you set your mind to. When you tried. The challenge with you was always getting you to try."
He sat silent, dumbfounded by the things this woman knew and understood about him.
"Always the ringleader, always into mischief. Too much energy to sit still, too little patience to wait for the others to catch up with you, too much pride to let anyone beat you, and when you did fail, you shrugged it off and pretended you didn't care. But you did. Always. You always wanted to win, wanted to be the best. And you never, ever wanted anyone to know how much it mattered."
Jack couldn't say a thing. Sister was right, so right, so very right, about him, about the way he'd been then, and the way he still was, now, 35 years later. He hadn't changed, not at all. He was still little Johnny O'Neill, troublemaker, with his hidden agenda.
He couldn't meet her perceptive eyes. "Wow. I guess you did really know me well."
She smiled. "Every good teacher does."
"And you were a good teacher," he admitted.
"You made me a better one. You challenged me."
"I defied you."
"You defied everyone. Father Timothy always said you couldn't handle authority. He said you were incorrigible, that you'd end up in jail, or worse."
"It was a near thing," he said, softly.
"Father, and the Mother Superior, they were going to expel you, several times over, especially over that incident with locking the bathroom doors. But I insisted you weren't a bad boy, just an energetic one, one with so much energy that needed to be channeled into the proper direction. And that if we gave up on you, there was no one else in your life who would help you. And that was what we were there for."
"When I heard you went into the Air Force, I wasn't surprised. I was probably the only one who wasn't, because I knew you'd do well. I knew, if that was what you truly wanted, that you would succeed, because you have a need in you to help and protect, almost as strong as Father Joe's."
"Joe and I aren't at all alike."
Her laughter echoed through the room. "Oh, no, Johnny, you are very much alike, you and Joe. You take care of people, in very different ways, but you care about people, you care about doing an important job well. You always had a calling, one as strong as Joe's, just a calling in a different direction. God chose you as much as he chose Joe."
Jack shrugged uncomfortably. He didn't want to talk about God to Sister Mary Margaret, just like He was a topic Jack didn't talk to about Joe. Not since Charlie... He swallowed.
"Tell me about these," she said, suddenly, reaching again to touch the bright medal on his vivid blue jacket.
"They're badges, and ribbons, decorations, awards for various things."
"Tell me.
"You'll be bored.
"No, please." She touched the silver badge highest on his chest. "This, it's a parachute, right?"
"Yes."
"You like jumping out of perfectly good airplanes?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye.
He chuckled. "Yes. Used to do it a lot, not so much any more. I'm not as young, and unbreakable, as I used to be."
"None of us are," she said sadly. "So do you fly?"
"No. Only as a passenger these days. I do, ah, other work. Deep Space Radar Telemetry, actually, in Colorado."
She was silent a moment. "Sounds like a fancy title for something," she looked at him assessingly, "for something you can't really talk about."
He said nothing.
She nodded.
"This?" she asked, touching the other silver badge.
"Scuba."
"I thought you were in the Air Force."
"Yes, but military service requires lots of skills."
"I imagine you enjoyed that, as well, the scuba diving."
Jack smiled. "Yes, I did. Don't do that much anymore, either."
"Hmm," she answered, and waved her hand at the salad adorning his chest. "A lot of medals, here. I don't see so many on lots of the big wigs I see on TV."
"I've been around a while, tried a lot of things, been a lot of places," Jack said, cautiously.
"And you've been successful at what you've done..."
"Yes."
"What are they for?"
"Boring stuff mostly."
She looked him in the eye. "Don't lie to me, young man. I may no longer be your teacher, but I know a fib when I hear one. The military doesn't give out awards like that for doing routine things."
"They're unit awards, a lot of them, I've served with good people. The others are the usual, marksmanship, length of service, places I served." He shrugged. "The military likes to give these out. Makes itself look good."
She just smiled, knowing better, knowing he would never brag. "Be proud of who you are, Johnny. You used your gifts well. I wish my other students had done so well. Not many of them used the potential, the gifts that God gave them. I'm glad you did. Are you?"
He thought for a moment, wanting to give her an honest answer. "I made a good choice, the Air Force was the right place for me."
"You love what you do."
"Yes," he answered, with a small smile.
"Good. That's important. Not many people can honestly answer yes to that question. I'm glad that you can." She put her hand on his arm, and he could feel the tremors in the thin fingers. "I know other things in your life have been difficult, but God gives us each according to our gifts. You were given some hard things in your life, Johnny, because you were strong enough to bear them."
He nearly shook his head no, remembering a time when he hadn't been strong enough, when he'd been a hair away from giving up, when he'd wanted to die, when he'd left the Air Force, when he'd contemplated retirement, because he hadn't been good enough to protect the most important person in his life.
He couldn't look her in the eye, not wanting her to see the hurt that was still there, always, just below the surface, the pain he carried in his heart and managed to hide from almost everyone, almost all the time, pain he knew he couldn't hide from her.
She reached her thin hand to raise his chin, to make him look at her. "You were one of the gifts in my life, John O'Neill. I didn't always think so. For a time, I agreed with Father Timothy, that you were incorrigible. And then one day, I still remember it, I assigned a page of math problems to the class. You finished yours in minutes, and then you were bored and about to get into more trouble. So I took you aside, and paired you up with Georgie Cheevers. Do you remember him?"
Jack remembered Georgie, a geeky kid with glasses, an outsider, and the last kid picked for sports teams, the one kid no one ever wanted on his team, or to hang around with. O'Neill nodded.
"I told you that you had to help him, because whatever grade he got on the test was the same grade you were going to get on the test. The two of you were going to be a team. And you helped him, you showed him how to do things, how to figure out those problems." She shook her head. "You would have made a great teacher. I can see why you're a great officer, because you are a team player."
The elderly woman had to pause to catch her breath, and went on. "The challenges you presented me made me a better teacher, taught me things I would never have learned from students who were less difficult. You didn't make my life easier, Johnny, but you made it more interesting. Thank you."
Jack O'Neill didn't know what to say, so he reached forward and gently hugged the frail body of the elderly woman.
"Than you for coming to visit, young man," she said, with a twinkle in her eye. "I haven't got much time left here. I'll be going on to a better place soon, and I'll keep an eye out for your boy. I imagine even up there he'll need a steadying hand, if he's at all like his father."
Jack said nothing, just blinked away the tears he felt gathering in his eyes.
"Remember, Johnny, don't be too quick to judge. That's what you taught me, to look more deeply and to see beneath the surface, to realize that we want to label those who don't meet our expectations. You were never incorrigible, just unchallenged and undirected. You've found both and made me proud, John O'Neill."
"Thank you, Sister," Jack didn't know what else to say.
"Go now, I see Father Joe is waiting. You're a good boy, Johnny O'Neill."
Jack gave her a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek, and a blush colored her thin face. She watched him go, her mind's eye seeing once more the gangly, awkward boy he'd been, a boy who'd touched her heart and her life and made her proud. "God bless, Johnny," she murmured as his footsteps faded away down the hall.
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The first bouquet of flowers arrived at her room the next day. She didn't need a signature on the card to know who had sent them. A fresh bouquet arrived once a week for the next 13 weeks, brightening her small room, until the day Sister Mary Margaret was called home.
#####FINISH#####