The Mustang
Author: BadgerGater
Email:
[email protected]Category: Angst, big, honkin' giant-sized angst
Season: Season 6
Summary: Jack's POV as he remembers his son
Warning: Kleenex, Puffs, tissues and hankies alert. Do not disregard this warning.
Pairing: None really, even though Sara makes an appearance
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Stargate, and no copyright infringement intended.
Author's Note: You know I just can't let Jack let go of his grief and guilt over Charlie...
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The sun was just peeking over the horizon when I arrived, parking the truck, sliding out carefully and picking up the small box from the seat. Reluctantly, I began the long walk.
Okay, it only seems like a long walk, like forever.
I hate coming here.
I have to come here.
I don’t want to be here.
God, please, this place… it makes me…
Sad.
Angry.
Breathless.
Cold.
Empty.
The grass is damp with morning dew. The sunlight is filtering through the trees. How much they’ve grown in six years.
How much would you have grown?
Oh, Charlie.
Six years, and the pain is right there, waiting to drown me with its intensity. It doesn’t fade. Doesn’t leave. Won’t go away. You get dimmer. The memories of you all run together in my mind. I can’t quite remember what your voice sounded like, or your laugh.
The sound of that gunshot never fades, though, or your Mother’s sob; the horror never goes away. The grief. The guilt.
You’d have been 16 today, a young man.
I try to picture you as you'd be now, but my imagination fails me. I see only a shadowy glimpse of the tall, lanky frame, the broad shoulders, the deep voice...
My heart wants to stop when I think of all you were denied, all you missed, all your Mother missed. All I missed.
All you would have been.
Would you still love baseball and hockey? Or would you have given that up for girls and cars? Maybe you’d have taken after your Mom, and loved books and learning? Maybe you’d be a computer geek?
Would you still let us call you Charlie? Or would you have demanded a more grown up name, a cooler, trendier name, Charles or Chaz or Chuck or CJ.
It wouldn’t have mattered.
Whatever you did, it would have been okay.
No, Jack, be real. It wouldn’t have been okay. Hindsight is 20/20, but you’d have wanted him to be what you wanted him to be: athletic, bright, perfect...
You can tell yourself it wouldn’t have mattered, but you’d be lying to yourself all over again. And you’re done lying to yourself. You promised him and you promised yourself.
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I’ve tried to rationalize his fate. To imagine that somehow, what happened to him was better than the alternative fate held in store for him. That, if he had lived, something worse would have taken place.
Except you can’t imagine anything worse than your ten year old son, your only child, killing himself with your gun. You can’t imagine anything he could have done that would have made *this* death more preferable… that would have made you regret the life he missed in these intervening years… what if he had killed someone else’s kid with that gun? If he’d taken it out to play with and accidentally shot his best friend, Josh? If he’d taken it to school and killed half a dozen classmates? If he’d grown up to be another Timothy McVeigh or Lee Harvey Oswald? If he'd been afflicted with some hideous disease that killed him painfully bit by bit, day by day, so that he and we saw it coming and welcomed the end of his agony.
It doesn't work. My mind just won't take me there, won't find any more acceptable alternative to the horrible truth.
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My hands are shaking as I stand there, beside the plain stone marker, stand on his grave, as close as I can get to him in this life, and open the box I’ve brought for him.
My stiff fingers fumble with the heavy cardboard, and frustrated,
I pull apart all the plastic covering my gift. Sunlight glints off shiny metal, a 1/16 scale model cherry red Mustang convertible. Perfect in every detail, the best I could find.“I wouldn’t have bought you the real thing today, Charlie. You know that? I’d have gotten you something sensible, something,” my voice chokes, “something safe.”
“Because I’d have made you get him something safe.”
I spin around at the voice behind me. I hadn’t even heard her approach.
Sara looked… haunted.
I wiped a hand across my face and stared at her.
“Hello, Jack.”
I nod. The words are all caught in my throat, stuck, unable to be said. What can I say to her, to the only other person I’d failed as miserably as I’d failed my son?
Her hand is reaching out to touch mine, to take hold of mine, grasping my hand so tightly my fingers turn bloodlessly white.
White. That’s how Charlie looked, in the hospital, his body… impossibly white.
Impossibly still.
Charlie had been like me in that way. Never still. Always moving.
So alive.
So very much alive.
God, it was so grotesque.
Why is that the image I remember best, the one I wanted most to forget, that of my son dead and gone? Why couldn’t I focus on him alive? On the good times? On him laughing or smiling or running or skating or fishing or playing baseball or sleeping peacefully?
Because you are hopeless, Jack, that’s why.
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I’d all but forgotten Sara, despite her hand crushing my fingers, when I heard her draw in a deep, shaky breath.
“You got it wrong, you know.”
I’d gotten a lot of things wrong. Which one was she reminding me of this time? I wondered.
“What?”
She nodded at my gift. “The car. He wouldn’t have wanted red.”
“Every boy wants a red sports car, glaringly bright red.”
“He never liked red. Blue was his favorite color, Air Force blue.”
I shook my head.
“He loved the color because it meant you.”
“Well, that was stupid,” I said bitterly.
I felt her flinch. “He loved the color because it reminded him of you. When you were gone, he always wanted to wear blue, only blue. So he could be like you. He spent a lot of time wanting to be like you, copying the things you did. He idolized you.”
“Yeah, right. Look…” I said, bitterly, “copying what I did, and see what happened…”
She swung around to look at me. “Jack, stop. Enough. It’s time to let go of the guilt.”
“I can’t,” I choke out the words.
“Yes, you can. He loved you. He wouldn’t want to see you hurting like this, torturing yourself over what happened.”
“He wouldn’t want to see a lot of things that have happened in the last six years,” I answered, knowing how his parent’s divorce would have shattered his world. But then, if he’d lived, Sara and I wouldn’t have…
“Jack,” her hand was on my arm, shaking me gently. “Jack, you have to forgive yourself. It’s time. It’s time to quit blaming…”
I shook my head no. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let it happen. I shouldn’t have brought that gun into the house, shouldn’t have left the drawer unlocked, shouldn’t have gotten home late… God, there were a million shouldn’t haves, a million choices that brought him and me and us to that moment.
“Damn it. If you can't do it for yourself, then do it for me. How can I stop blaming myself when you can't do the same?"
"You?"
"Don’t you think I’ve blamed myself, too?”
“For what? What did you do, Sara? I bought the gun. I brought it into the house. I put it in that drawer and I forgot to lock it.”
“And I let you bring it into our house. I *let* you teach me how to use it because I wanted to feel safe. There were times I was glad it was there, when I was alone in the house, glad because it made me feel *safe.* Don’t you think I blame myself for that? For wanting it there in my house?”
“You wouldn’t have needed it if I was home more.”
“God, O’Neill, you’ve thought up a million ways to blame yourself, haven't you?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“So have I. And the blame isn’t all yours, Jack.”
I shook my head.
She glared at me through her tears. “It is *not* all yours, Jack. How dare you take all the blame. How dare you deny my feelings? Huh? Do you think I’ve not kicked myself around for not making you get rid of that damn gun? For not checking the drawer to see that it was locked that day? For not making Charlie stay outside with me? For not following him into the house instead of staying outside? Jack, there’s more than enough blame to go around for both of us…”
Taking a shuddering breath, she went on. “Do you think it hurts any less because I can blame you? I was his *mother*. It was *my* job to protect him, too. It was my job to keep my house safe. It was my job, too, Jack. Not just yours. It was *ours*. Our loss. Our failure. Our fault. Not yours, not mine, ours. He was ours,” her anger suddenly vanished, and she sobbed, collapsing against me.
I reached out and pulled her close, holding her shaking body next to mine, and wished I could cry with her.
But I couldn’t. I never would.
Some losses never end.
Some grief knows no boundaries.
Some wrongs can never be righted.
Some tears can never be shed.
I’m a simple man.
I take life as it comes.
I do what I can, and I try to do my best, and I move on.
But each time I do, I leave a part of me behind.
And the best part of me is here, buried with him, locked away and lost forever.
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