Untitled and Unwritten
by ALC Punk!

This didn't start out sick and twisted, at least, he thinks it didn't. In the beginning, it was all about loneliness and the need to feel something that wasn't stupidity or high school. She climbed into his bed, called him 'sir', and sucked his cock like there was no tomorrow.

He didn't think there was, then.

When he recovered, he pinned her hands above her head and lost himself in every inch of her, listening as she moaned and whimpered while his hands and fingers and tongue drove her over the edge.

He didn't take her until she was insistent on it, begging and pleading for him. It wasn't consideration for her virginity, it was simple power. The feeling that he made *her* need, as much as he needed her. And then it was both of them needing each other, and her nails left scratches down his back that got him teased in gym the next five days.

They got better at not leaving visible marks, but he still made her beg.

When he wants to make a point, he calls her 'major' while he fucks her from behind. She likes to bend over the couch and wave her ass at him.

Sometimes, he wonders if they would have been this twisted if they'd still been their respective ages. Then he remembers that their older counterparts are so far apart you could float Australia between them and they wouldn't notice.

When she's pissed off, she re-enacts their locker room encounter, pinning him to the bed (and she likes silk scarves, to his displeasure, even if he does come harder when she's strapped him down), and making him wonder if there are other women out there as alpha female as she is. He kind of doubts it.

He likes how flexible she is. It means he can fuck her against the wall anytime, and anywhere. Even in the middle of the boy's bathroom during the day, as long as they're quiet. His knees aren't doing too bad, either.

They aren't happy. He knows this like he knows the way she tastes when she's been drinking too much -- more acidic, less butterscotch. And sometimes he wonders if she would have been this self-destructive the first time around, or if it's just having been forced to return to a teenaged existence that's made her like this.

She never blames him. He wishes she would.

It still doesn't stop him from having sex with her, from making her scream and moan and cry for a God neither of them believe in anymore.

It's too often, he knows, that they forget anything resembling protection.

She never cares.

Until it's too late, and he wonders if he should have made her call him 'Jack' when they first met again. Or if this is in some way fitting for their new life. "I can't do this."

The white stick falls onto the table, and he stares at it for a long time before looking up at her.

She let her hair grow (he likes it long, gives him more to play with after sex, and maybe there is some tenderness after all, but he pretends there isn't), and with her head forward, he can't see her face. "This --"

"It's real." Her tone is brutal.

"You'll have to stop drinking tequila."

Blue eyes meet his, and there's something wrong with the way they look. "Why?"

"Carter, you know biology, alcohol and babies don't mix."

"I was unaware I'd decided to keep this child."

Something inside him freezes. She is completely serious, her eyes colder than the frost three months ago that left them without water until the pipes were fixed. "You wouldn't have let me know if you didn't want something."

"Wouldn't I?" Her tone is brittle, and she looks away.

"No." He moves, catches her hands. "You are not killing our child."

"Our." Ice cracks in her voice, and she jerks away from him. "I suppose it is, isn't it."

"Carter -- SAM." Jack wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her neck. "This is our child. We both made it. Him, her," his hand slides down her belly, catches at the top of her jeans. "You can't want to destroy ..."

"Yes I can." But her voice is breaking, and she's shaking in his arms. Sam Carter is coming apart in a hundred thousand pieces, stark terror coloring her world. He gets that. It's coloring his, too. "Jack. What are we going to do?"

"Take this one step at a time. First, you need a pre-natal exam."

"I'm seventeen and pregnant." There's bitterness lacing her tone, the loss of control is gone, and there's iron and steel under his arms. "Where do you suggest I go?"

They hit Planned Parenthood. She looks resolute when they leave, but he catches her eyeing the bottle of vodka when they're home, and makes a decision. The tequila is the hardest thing to pour down the drain, the golden liquid bringing back memories of a numbness he doesn't like to lose.

"Why?"

"Because neither of us should be drunk our whole lives."

It's hard. There are days when they can't stand each other. This whole living without something to make it all fade away is worse than boot camp, fighting for his life, or watching Charlie die all rolled into one. Not that he thinks about Charlie -- thinking about Charlie leads to remembering his failures as a father, which makes it that much worse.

They still have sex. It's the one comforting thing they have. She still calls him 'sir', though sometimes, the tone is vicious, as if she hates him.

That's ok. He's beginning to hate her just a little, too.

She chose, after all, to be here. With him, as a teen. She didn't have to, she could have stayed an adult and never given him a second thought.

And so he takes a strangely masochistic pride in making her scream 'general' when she shatters beneath him or above him or to his side. After she begins to show, he's less rough, but he still works at it.

He remembers Sara having cravings. If Sam Carter has any, she never says.

Sara also had morning sickness three months running. Again, Carter never shows signs of it, though he wonders at the dark circles under her eyes some days.

The other kids don't even seem to notice the pregnancy -- oh, there are a few who make rude comments, but teenage pregnancy has become common-place, and slides by with only a wrinkle here and there. By the time she's due, he wonders if she hates him almost as much as she hates the child growing inside of her.

She never vocalizes it, but the child seems to be the one thing she never wanted.

He wonders, also, if she's having it to please him in some sick and twisted way. Not that he cares. He keeps having to convince himself of that, when she calls him 'colonel' and 'sir' and rakes her fingernails down his skin.

Sex is different, with the pregnancy, less easy to shove her over the back of the couch, but they manage, each pretending the other is a different age and body until they orgasm or get frustrated.

And then it's time.

The hospital is sterile and impersonal, and she's whisked to one room, and he's whisked to another. He spends the first two hours pacing, worried. Time blurs, hours pass. Other expectant fathers arrive and leave (none of them as young as he is -- but he doesn't feel young, he feels ancient), until finally, a nurse appears.

"Mr. O'Neill?"

He knows from the strain around her eyes that there is something wrong. "Is she ok?"

"Come with me, sir."

It's bad. Really bad. She leads him to the nursery, and he watches tiny babies squall and cry, tended by two duty nurses who look run off their feet. They stop in front of a pink draped crib, and she says, "Mr. O'Neill, I'd like you to meet Catherine Carter-O'Neill."

A mouthful for such a tiny child. "She's dead, isn't she."

"Ms. Carter is currently in surgery to repair ruptured tissue."

"But the prognosis isn't good."

Silence.

"It's all right." He is comforting her. At some level, this is fucked-up, but fits right into his current world view. "You did the best you could."

"Never enough." Now she's bitter.

"Can I hold her?"

The procedure for holding an infant is more complicated than it was before, and it's nearly twenty minutes before he's dressed in scrubs with booties on over his socks. And then he's holding her. She's perfect and tiny, head misshapen (and he remembers Charlie being all red and blue, too), but something he can claim to have had a hand in. "Hey."

Tiny blue eyes stare at him without comprehension.

"Mr. O'Neill?" The doctor in the doorway doesn't have to say anything, but Jack nods. "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, there was just..." His voice goes on, but Jack stops listening. He hears phrases, like "arrested during operating" and "unable to revive", but he is concentrating on something else. The tiny scrap of child in his arms is suddenly all he has left in the world. It's a sobering realization.

"I want to see her."

"Sir, I don't --"

"No. You don't. I want to see her." Need to see her. She's SG-1 after all, no body, no truth to death. He wants to be hysterical, suddenly, but that would be pointless.

The doctor nods, "This way, sir."

It isn't until he's inside the operating room, watching them efficiently clean things up that the doctor notices he's still carrying his daughter. "Mr. O'Neill, I don't --"

"She should say goodbye." Jack moves to the table and looks at the sheet-draped figure for a moment before reaching one hand out and uncovering her head. In life, Samantha Carter was beautiful and full of life. In death, she's merely another corpse. Tubes still connect to her, some disappearing down under the sheet. He can smell her blood and skin and other things. "Hey." His hand brushes across her forehead, tangling in the fringe of her bangs. "I don't know if I want to do this without you, Carter."

The words aren't a miracle. She doesn't wake up and smile at him or smirk, or look irritated that he still can't call her 'Sam'.

He shifts, turning Catherine to face her mother. "She's beautiful, Carter." He looks down at the kid, those blue eyes staring at him without blinking. "Hey, kid."

"Mr. O'Neill." A firm grip on his elbow draws him away from the table, and he lets them lead him from the room again. They try to insist on Catherine staying overnight, but he refuses. Then they give him advice. Lots of it. He wonders if they'd believe him if he told them he's done this all before. But he doesn't try, and they finally let him go with a bag of freebies and the number for the nursery. In case he finds he's wrong.

The first week is like one long, extended, op. He doesn't sleep, Catherine wakes him if he even tries. And she's not a completely happy baby. But he remembers Charlie was fussy, too, and doesn't worry. In the two seconds of sleep he gets a night, he doesn't dream.

It's another week before he begins to have the energy to miss her. Sometimes, he starts to turn and say something, and she simply isn't there.

School falls to the wayside (and he was about to graduate, anyway, so he really doesn't care). His daughter turns three months old, and gets the croup. The Air Force has apparently stopped paying attention to him (of course they have, no one was at the sad little memorial service for a 17-year-old unwed mother who died giving birth. The hospital paid for her cremation, and Jack and Catherine scattered her ashes through the Garden of the Gods).

The money runs out two weeks shy of his 18th birthday.

He's staring at his messy apartment, clutching a crying three-month-old, when he realizes that this is not his life.

It takes a few days to learn to swallow his pride, and when he does it, he finds the house empty. A newspaper clipping on the kitchen table catches his eye, and he almost laughs hysterically at what it is.

The church isn't that far away, and no one notices when he slips into the back and stands, watching the proceedings.

Sam, his Sam, would have looked just as beautiful.

He watches the vows, the way she smiles at him. It's all wrong. She isn't happy and content, although she is trying desperately to believe she is. He wonders if Daniel would have read her this well, but thinks not. He knows, that if *he* were here, he would have. He could have stopped this, and that makes him angry.

"...speak now..."

The words he's been waiting for ring through the church.

He's already standing. "I object."

Rustles of movement, as everyone turns to stare at him. Daniel, Teal'c, Hammond. He thinks he sees Cassie, too, but he's not paying them anymore attention. Blue eyes stare at him.

"You don't love him." He doesn't know why, but he starts up the aisle, voice loud and carrying. "You don't love him, Sam. I don't know how you've convinced yourself you do, but you don't. You can't." He's close enough to see the lines around her eyes. Laughter and sorrow have etched them there. Would have etched them there, and it hurts to see her how she would have been. "He's never going to get off his ass and tell you, but he does love you. And if you didn't love him, you wouldn't have --"

Catherine takes advantage of his faltering to let out a soft wail of irritation.

Her blue eyes widen further, and she takes a half-step towards him, "Jack?"

"She's dead, Sam." Catherine wriggles again.

"Oh, God." The words are strangled, and she's moving closer, uncertain, almost staggering steps. "I don't --"

It's harder to hand Catherine over than he'd thought it would be. "You have to tell him, Sam." He allows himself to touch her nose, her cheek, then yanks the hand back and stares at it. "She deserves to have both her parents."

"Jack, I --"

"Her name is Catherine Carter-O'Neill. A mouthful, I know." He shoots off a lopsided grin, as if this isn't tearing him into tiny pieces. "But she's born to do great things, Sam."

"Excuse me."

Shanahan never sees the punch, but Jack doesn't care as he stares down at him. "You don't fucking deserve her."

"Jack."

"Goodbye, Sam."

He's a statistic, he thinks that night. Two bottles of vodka roll through his system, as he flops in the middle of his floor.

Unwed teenage mother. No. That's wrong. Unwed teenage father.

Was a statistic. Now he's just another drunken teen.

There's no knock, but it doesn't surprise him. Just the stomp of booted feet, and an irritated snort, "Drinking yourself into oblivion?"

"Seemed like a plan."

General Jack O'Neill lounges against the wall, hands in his pockets. "So. Quite an entrance there."

"You were going to let her marry that asshole."

"Didn't have a choice, kid."

"Oh, like FUCK you didn't." He looks away from himself. "You disgust me." The wall tilts slightly, and he wonders if it's the alcohol.

"Why now?"

"I'm being evicted in two days."

He hasn't asked about Catherine, but Jack figures it's just a matter of time. He, of course, has long since dispensed with pretense. "Catherine is ours, you know. Sam Carter and Jack O'Neill both had a hand in creating her."

"Oh."

"She never told you."

"Frankly, I'm not sure I want to know."

"Thor cloned her, then shrank her."

His elder self stares, then snorts, "Carter as an unwed teenage mother? Now that's a sight to see."

"She's dead."

"Oh."

"How's the kid."

"Carter's taking care of her until a decision is made."

"And Shanahan?"

"I think you scared him. He's sulking, or something. His family is vocal about Carter dumping the kid and marrying their precious boy."

"You should kidnap them."

The general moves, pacing restlessly. "It's her own life."

"Catherine is both of yours."

"Both of yours." But the statement is feeble.

"What's the matter, Jack, afraid to be a father again?" The taunt slams home.

"Yes."

"Then don't be. Let Shanahan raise our child. Or someone who doesn't even know how special she is."

A hand over his face, and Jack knows he's won. This battle, at least. The general slowly nods, "I'll talk to her, then," he suddenly looks old. "I don't..."

"Tell her, you idiot. What do you think she's going to do, run the fuck away? She shrunk herself for you, damnit."

When he's gone, Jack stares at the ceiling, and wonders when his life became one massive cliche.

Three weeks pass before he finds out what decision has been made, and that only because he's been scouring the newspapers looking for a job (he's still got his apartment, and he's not really surprised. The general wouldn't let him starve. Probably). There's a tiny notice about the dissolution of an engagement. It makes him happy.

He leaves the state two days later, once he's made a call confirming that Catherine is in safe hands. As he disappears, Jack wonders about the statistics behind it all.

Then he simply stops caring.

-f-

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© 2005 ALC Punk!