Torn Asunder

Author: BadgerGater

Email: [email protected]

Category: WordAMonth, Torn

Season: Indefinite

Summary: A simple thing brings bad memories for Jack

Pairing: None

Spoilers: Nothing specific

Warnings: Very dark, Jack's thinking; you may want a Kleenex, Puffs or hanky

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 without the author's consent

Author's Note: I guess I always see the dark side of Jack's soul.

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It’s just a piece of paper, I tell myself, a bit of, damn I don't know, tree bark or something… how do they make paper? Doesn’t matter. It’s paper. Common, everyday stuff. Not dangerous in the least. Sure, you could get a paper cut or something, but nobody’s ever died of a paper cut, right?

Right?

Now, bullets, knives, grenades, arrows, spears, that’s stuff that can wound you, put big huge honkin’ holes in the human body.

But this bit of paper has torn one honkin' great hole in my heart, in what’s left of my soul.

I wasn’t going to let this happen. I wasn’t going to let this get to me. I was beyond it. Passed it. Ready for it. Prepared for it. Braced for it. Expecting it.

This shouldn’t happen.

After all, it’s just a piece of paper, telling me something I already knew, not some deadly force that can rip a man in half, tear him to pieces, knock him down and flatten him like being rundown by a bull or a bulldozer.

It’s just a piece of paper.

I’m Jack O’Neill. Colonel, United States Air Force. Special Ops trained. Toughest son of a bitch on this or any other planet. I’m a warrior, a military man, a man of action, a man of steel, a man who lives to fight, who gets knocked down and bounces right back up.

I’m too tough to cry.

I want to, though.

Maybe that would make it easier.

I wish I could cry.

I should have cried then, then maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

I couldn’t cry then, and I can’t cry now, at least not on the outside.

I want to hit something. Or someone. Mostly myself, stupid son of a bitch that I am.

God, how can one man be so blind? So pathetic? So hopeless? So heartless? So soul less?

So stupid.

If ten years ago someone would have told me I’d do this, feel like this, let this happen, I’d have called him ten kinds of a liar. I loved my wife. I loved my son. I loved being married. I loved being Dad and husband. I loved taking care of them. I even loved letting them take care of me.

I loved them.

And now they’re gone.

Finally,

Irrevocably.

The paper’s here in my hand, signed, sealed, delivered. Divorced.

Jack O’Neill, free man.

Aren’t I supposed to feel free?

Don’t most men feel happy when the divorce papers come through? When they’re out of a marriage gone empty and bitter?

Not when it’s your own fault. Not when you hurt her, hurt her so bad that no matter how much she loved you once, she can’t possibly love you anymore.

You turned her love to bitterness and anger. You pushed her to it. You did this. You deserve this.

No one deserves this.

I thought I was beyond the hurt. I built those big, tall, wide walls all around my heart, buried what little was left of my soul under layers of concrete so thick not even a direct hit from a nuke could break through.

So I thought.

So I deluded myself.

The hurt is still there, still here inside, raw and fresh, burrowing under my defenses, climbing over and around and under my walls, seeping through my barriers like the Mississippi River ten feet over flood stage.

Tearing me apart.

God, I still love her.

Imagine the one thing you wanted more than anything. That pony when you were five, that bike when you were ten, the hottest red sports car when you turned 16 and got your driver’s license, the cutest girl in school when you were 17, playing shortstop for the Cubs or wing for the Blackhawks or being the fifth member of the Beatles…

Take your nearest and dearest dream/fantasy/wish, hell, take every wish and every dream and roll them all into a bundle, and you can’t even come close to how I wished…

To undo the day that ruined our lives.

To undo my failings that brought us to this.

If only I’d been able to talk to her, comfort her. I’d wanted to, God, how I’d wanted to, but I couldn’t. I was afraid to. I didn’t deserve to touch her. I destroyed her, destroyed us, destroyed him. My stupidity, my stubbornness, my failure… it was all my fault.

She deserves better.

She’ll find someone better, someone who’ll be good to her. Someone not filled with horrible nightmares, memories so hideous even I can’t stand to remember them, someone with a regular job who’ll be home with her, for her, every night. Someone who will give her the good things in life she always deserved and never got from me.

I didn’t deserve her then and I deserve her anger, her hated, her enmity, her loathing, now and forever because of what I did.

Here in my hand, the final act of our lives together.

Divorce decree, the paper says. Final.

The words blur on the page, and I clench my teeth, my hand shaking, my vision blurring with a lifetime of unshed tears.

We grow up thinking life will be good and fair and just, if we study hard and work hard and play by all the rules… and then it turns out like this.

My hands move of their own accord, ripping the paper in two, watching the tattered pieces flutter to the floor and lie there, the words accusing me.

Divorce decree. Final.

Final.

Over. Done with. Finished. Ended. Gone. No more.

Lost.

Gone.

Torn away.

I remember what happy was. I was, once. I remember how it felt, to know I mattered, not as a soldier, not as an officer, but as a man, to have worth as a human being; I know what it’s like to love someone, two someones, more than life itself. To feel your heart so full with happiness you want to burst. I felt that way on the day Sara married me, on the day Charlie was born, on the day I made Major.

And then it all went to hell.

I went to the Gulf. When I came home, I bought a gun. I made a stupid mistake.

One gunshot, tearing a hole through three hearts.

Ending three lives.

God I miss him.

I miss her.

I can’t stand to sit still.

I get up, and wander around the house, unable to stop, unable to sit. I can’t eat, and I know I can’t sleep, and I can’t cry and I can’t even get mad.

I can only hurt, this ache so deep inside it leaves me breathless.

This is what it felt like then, right after… when Charlie… when Charlie died, when I wanted to die. Like the grief could simply carry me away, away into nothingness; when all I could feel was numb, because if I let any of the pain touch me, I’d have run screaming into the darkness. When I wanted to run and run and run and run until my heart burst; when I wanted to just order my heart to stop beating so the pain would go away; when I wished I’d never been born; when I wished I was dead; when I knew I should have died in Iraq so my son could have lived.

The pain is with me always, a dull ache that’s replaced where a man’s heart is supposed to be. Nobody much notices. Most of the people I work with don’t know about Charlie or Sara. Maybe they know I’m divorced. I’m not blind, I’ve noticed some of the women looking at me. I’ve heard the whispers behind my back, a few giggles, recognized the flirting words from the checkout girl at the grocery store and the clerk at the movie rental place.

But if they knew me, they’d know better; they’d know about the darkness in my soul that time cannot erase, that nothing can erase, that will always be there because of what I did to him, and thus, to her.

The walls of the house are closing in on me. I’m suffocating, there’s no air in here. I have to get out.

I grab my coat from the hall closet and bolt out the door.

And realize there’s no where to go. No one I can talk to, no place for refuge, no end to this horror of my own making.

For one mad moment, I contemplate going down the street to the bar, and then I remind myself that will solve nothing, only give me a headache and another truckload of regrets in the morning. Drinking doesn’t solve a thing for me, never has, never will. It only darkens an already dark mood. There is no solace in a bottle.

There is no solace anywhere.

Not for a man who killed his son.

Not for a man who ruined the life of the woman he loved.

Not for a man with no soul and a heart torn in half.

I walk through the night, in the wind and the rain, going nowhere, anywhere, somewhere, elsewhere, just moving. The rain soaks my hair, runs down my neck in a chill trail, puddles in my shoes, and I barely notice. My legs grow weary, my hands grow cold, but that doesn’t matter, because neither is as weary or as cold as my soul, as empty or as barren as my heart.

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I know it was the right thing, to sign those papers, to set Sara free.

So why does it feel so wrong?

Why does it hurt so much?

Why can’t I let her go?

Why can’t I accept my fate?

Stubborn fool you are, Jack O’Neill.

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My wandering footsteps have brought me to a familiar place where once I was welcome, where once I belonged, and now, I can only stand outside and look in. I have no standing; am nothing; just the -ex.

This house was my home.

The silhouette I see against the window was once a woman who welcomed me home, who nourished my soul.

I stand alone in the wind and the rain and pretend the raindrops on my cheeks are the tears I cannot shed, the tears for him and for her and for me and for our family and the life we once had, and the life we should have now and in the future.

Can you break your own heart in grief?

I don’t think so, or mine would be shattered by now, lying in a million tiny, bitter, blackened pieces.

They deserved so much more from me.

And I never deserved them.

Can the rain be my tears?

Is the rain his tears? Does Charlie know what happened to his family after he...left? I hope he doesn’t know. I tried to shield him from the ugly things in life, from the sadness and the sorrow, from the horror and the pain.

And I failed him like I failed her, failed myself, failed my own dreams.

This was nuts, standing out here, in the night, watching from the dark like a freakin' peeping tom. What I wanted to do was walk up to the porch, ring the doorbell, take her in my arms and beg for her forgiveness, tell her how much I missed her and loved her and how empty my life was without her; implore her to tell me what I could do to show her I'd changed, that I'd realized how I'd wronged her, and what a horrible mistake this was.

I knew I couldn't. Wouldn't. Wasn't capable of doing it. Wasn't capable of being who she needed, being someone other than who I was, someone who couldn't say all the things trapped here in my head, couldn't reveal the real me, if there was a real me anymore.

Couldn't stand to see the despair, the disappointment, the hurt I'd find in her eyes.

God, how had I ever made such a mess of things? To be standing out here, a voyeur.

Damn.

What I really wanted was to walk up to that door and just go in, walk in and find my wife watching TV and my son upstairs, asleep... what I wanted was my life back, his life back, what I wanted was for the past two years to have been a nightmare, a fever dream, a bad plot in some silly TV show that could be undone by the next episode, not my life and her life and our son's lost life.

What I wanted was impossible.

But that couldn't stop me from wanting it.

Oh God.

I took a deep shuddering breath, wiped the rain from my face, and buried the despair of this night deep down inside, behind those big walls, next to my guilt and self-loathing.

I began the long walk home. When I finally got back to my own door, the sky was brightening in the east, a brightness that was not mirrored in my soul.

Turning the key in the lock of the door of my house, my footsteps echoing through the empty rooms, I walked in and picked up those pieces of paper.

Paper.

Common, ordinary thing. Not dangerous at all.

How could paper hurt you?

I picked it up, gathering all the pieces, and found the tape dispenser and mended the sheets where I’d torn them in two.

Torn in two.

Like what was left of my heart.

Too bad I couldn’t mend *it* with a couple pieces of tape.

But some things, once torn asunder, can never mend.

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END