Summer Breeze: Fallen Embers A Prologue
Summer Breeze : Fallen Embers A Prologue
by Aenea67
TITLE: Summer Breeze: Fallen Embers A Prologue
AUTHOR: Aenea67
EMAIL: aenea67@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: Thoughts, Romance
PAIRING: Sam/Jack
SPOILERS: 100 days, Shades of Grey, any Jolinar eps and the First Commandment
SEASON / SEQUEL: 4; **Clears throat, shuffles speech notes and adjusts glasses** After much deliberation, I have decided to make a 'Summer Breeze' series. I don't how long their gonna go for, so just sit tight and enjoy the ride.
RATING: PG-13
CONTENT WARNINGS: angst, male/female relationship, depressing
SUMMARY: Sam remembers some childhood memories while trying to get over Jack
STATUS: Complete
ARCHIVE: SJA, Heliopolis. Anywhere else is fine just email me first.
DISCLAIMER: Now, now, what would you gain from suing me? All I have is my computer, and, trust me, if I didn't have that the world would fall of its axis.
The song's 'Fallen Embers' by Enya, (who'd ever think I'd use an Enya song in my first fic??) and I don't own that, either, despite the fact the words do sound kinda cheesy.
FEEDBACK: Yes, yes, yes, yes please! This is my very first fic, and I'd love to know what you think of it.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: First, I'd like to dedicate this story to Mrs. L, (even though it's highly unlikely she'll ever read this) because she always believed in my writing and me;) And to the S/J list, 'cause you guys are just great people, really :o)
By the way, // = song
The world was about to shatter into a million pieces. There was no time to stop it, and no way of knowing, but as the oceans raged and crashed into violent waves onto the shores of pain, and screams rang throughout a darkened abyss, perhaps they felt it.
There was still forever left to them, and forever never ended.
And maybe, that was why they didn't notice.
Because they couldn't.
But the earth was crying out in silent tears, and no one heard it.
Soon it was be gone, like forever...
The night is cold.
Colder than most and, even though it isn't even winter yet, the wind pricks at my skin and I just can't help feeling icy, like a body who has been dead too long. Tonight, God, tonight, the moon shines in the sky, brighter than a million of the stars that hangs above my head, playing with my mind, knowing that, on this night, I'll go to sleep with nightmares instead of dreams.
"No man is worth your tears, and the only one who is, will never make you cry."
A saying that my mother used to tell me before I fell asleep at night, but my mother is twenty years dead, and she had my father to comfort her, hold her when she cried, tell her how much he loved her. Times have changed, and even if you're lucky enough to have someone to whisper those oh-so-sweet-nothings into your eager ears, whether or not they really love you is something that doesn't happen too often.
I should know.
Only blind fools spend a lifetime and a million eternities searching for their soul mates, and, unlike me, even they must realise at some point that the "Perfect One" is not so perfect, and turn around before they get so far down the track that it's impossible to come back to reality.
Jack came to me like a summer breeze suddenly and without warning. I know it wasn't something I was expecting, and I'm sure that it's probable that he didn't expect it either. One day he just... turned up. Said we had things to discuss...
I open another beer, which is almost as cold as I am, and I take a lingering sip, my lips moist as I lick the soothing drink away with my tongue. I close my eyes, and the silence is perfectly frightening.
Is this the how I'm going to spend the rest of my life?
I nod my head in solitary agreement. Yes, I think, alone.
As ever.
Life has never been (for me anyhow) picket fences and magic candy castles rising up into the painted sunset sky, white knights on white horses, who came straight from the story books to rescue the damsels in distress.
I didn't have the best childhood, I had gone to six different schools by the times I was in grade seven, and then, when I was twelve, two days before my birthday, my dad told me my mother had died.
I remember shaking, crying, and the anger that I don't think ever really left me. I remember hating my dad for letting this happen, and hating God for taking my mother from me.
I can still see myself climbing down the side of one of our houses when I was sixteen, to go and see my boyfriend, Blue. Dad had gone and left Mark to look after me, but he was never 'round much those days. It was midnight, it was wrong, the summer breeze warmed me immensely and I felt independent.
I got home at seven in the morning; my head hurting so badly that I didn't get up for the rest of the day, but nothing ever stopped me from doing it again.
Blue was a big guy older than me, had tattoos up his arm (the biggest was a dark blue dragon with red eyes, hence his name), a real tough looking face. And he had a motorbike.
Something's always attracted me to guys with power, and when I was sixteen, a guy who had a 'bike had power and my upmost attention.
I've always been naive, even more so when I was young. I ignored warnings from friends to drop Blue, but I wasn't going to listen to them. By the time my brother found out warning, warning, hurricane Mark it was only three days 'till dad got back. That night, Blue asked if I wanted to go for a road trip with him and his mates 'we'll be back by Tuesday, and your dad gets home on Wednesday' he told me.
Of course I went, and nothing happened to me (nothing much, anyhow), but when I got home, I found that dad had gotten back early.
I was grounded for three months, three weeks and three days.
He never forgave me.
We moved the next week, and I never saw Blue or his friends again.
In a way, Jack reminded me of Blue he's older than I am, he's got power, and if my dad found out, he'd never forgive me.
I wish I could remember my early childhood.
Sometimes I find myself wanting to see the world through a child's eyes: the pure innocence of one who doesn't know what it's like to kill a man, a living being, someone who may appear as innocent as the one who sees them. A child enters the world seeking knowledge, with no idea of the evil horrors that befall people everyday on this earth, in this lifetime.
The first time I met Connie Mathews when I was ten; my father and mother taking me to one of their friend's houses and work colleague of Dad's or something and once we got there, I was sent up to her room to "play".
The bedroom door was slightly open, and the bright light poured out into the corridor. I leant against the wall to try and see inside.
She was crying. The memory is as fresh as the morning to me; her small sobs coming under the door to her bedroom. I knocked, but she didn't hear me.
Or was ignoring me; I don't know.
I pushed open the door so I could get inside. She looked up at me: her brown eyes watery and long red hair falling around her face. Her knees were pulled up to her chin, and arms wrapped around her legs.
"Who are you?" She asked me; almost spit the words out between her sobs. Wiping her eyes, Connie's glare never left me.
"My name's Samantha Amanda Carter." I told her, "But you can call me Sam." It was stupid, believe me I know, but I was eight and trying to be polite.
"Sam." She left the floor, and kind of circled me. "I'm Connie." My eyes shifted as she stopped moving and stood watching me, waiting.
"Why are you upset?"
"Because I just am."
"That's not a proper answer."
"It's the only one you're gonna get so stop bugging me!" We turned to silence. The conversation was over.
"So you're the General's daughter?" I nodded, biting my bottom lip (a habit I still have today) and we sat on the bed, Connie still wary of me.
"Do you get told off all the time?" she asked me.
"Not all the time. But he is really strict. Once I said shut up to my brother Mark, at this dinner party he was having, and he went ballistic and I got sent to my room. You should have seen him, he was like this." I waved my hands in the air and stuck out my tongue.
We both giggled.
"Like my dad in the morning," she told me, and I wrinkled up my nose.
"No way!"
"Way," she confirmed, and smiled at me.
My family moved a year and a half after my mother died, and the next time I met with Connie was the last time I ever saw her.
We were both sixteen.
She traced the scar with her fingers, over and over, hands shaking as she did so.
"... And he came towards me with the piece of broken glass pointed towards my face. I screamed and screamed and screamed, but Jaz didn't seem to hear me. He grabbed onto my arm, and told me he'd pay me back for cheating. But, Sammie, I never cheated, I never did! I swear!"
I reached a hand onto her left arm, and I don't think she even realised how much she was trembling. "Shhhh, Con, it's okay, it's okay, no one's gonna hurt you, I believe you... Shhh, it's okay..." I tried to comfort her; a freak had attacked her only a week ago... Her boyfriend, Jaz or Jason something, had done it 'cause he thought she was cheating on him.
And he was drunk.
"He ditched me at the side of the road... It was raining, and it was cold. I could see the blood on my hands, Sammie; I could feel it running down the side of my face..." I shuddered as her word's cut into me, leaving some sort of a mental scar. Connie's voice, God her voice was so translucent, like an echo throughout the bare room. Ghost like, even.
"It's gonna be alright, Connie. The asshole's going to jail and he won't come back." My reassurance was short lived on my friend.
"It's all shit Sam, he won't leave me until I leave him." Even then, I suppose, I knew what she was saying. Pointing to her head, she looked me straight in my eyes. "It won't stop here 'till I'm gone."
During my relationship with Jonas, the mental scars Connie had created suddenly came through into my consciousness, how she was walking along the side of that road, no one to help her and the blood pouring to her hands from her face.
I started having nightmares, this was after the first time Jonas had beaten me, and I remember being afraid, a fear I've never felt before.
Jonas could really suck me in, I was scared of him and he knew it, and used it for his own advantage.
Never let them take advantage of you...A voice would whisper to me.You're stronger than that...
Somewhere, I found the strength to leave my estranged fianc, and somewhere I'll find the strength to get over Jack and move on with my life.
Connie was leaving. I sat on a park swing and watched as my best friend waited for the bus. Seeing it coming around the corner, Connie looked at me.
"Sam," she started, "You're a good person, and good things happen to good people."
"Really? You really believe that?" I asked her, a smile tugging at my lips.
"No way, Sammie, it's all bullshit but you better make the most of it when it comes 'round, 'cause it's not gonna last forever."
I looked at my feet, then back at Connie. Lifting my head, I smiled.
"Here ya go Sammie," she told me, and handed me a cigarette box. "This one's on me." I looked at the gift, then back at her, but she had already started walking away.
"Connie..." I started. She turned around, impatience drooling from her eyes. I froze then, for some reason, about to tell her not to go, but decided against it. "Good luck." I cringed at my humble farewell. But she smiled, reaching into her pocket and throwing me a small object.
"Promise me Sam, that you'll never let a guy physically hurt you if you are able to stop him. Never let them take advantage of you, you're stronger than that."
"I promise..." I whispered, almost to myself.
Here's something to remember me by." She blew me a kiss, I smiled, and then, I guess, she was gone.
I felt a sudden summer breeze brush past me, almost as if to say I had done something I would regret. Shaking my head, it disappeared and I took a cigarette out of the box and lit it with the lighter Connie had just thrown me.
The flames licked up the cool night air, the soothing taste of the warm smoke running down my throat made my body tingle with a strange temptation, and the smoke rose into the stars.
I gave up smoking around two years later, mostly under the pressure of my father, who told me a General's daughter should have such a disgusting habit. It wasn't like he never smoked himself, he did, cigars like a house on fire, but he didn't like me doing it. So I stopped.
I never heard from Connie again, and I suppose that was for the better.
I suppose.
I don't know.
Jack said I think too much, that I should slow down because the rest of the galaxy is still six hours behind me, but Jack's gone, and I have all the time in the world.
//Once, as my heart remembers,
All the stars were fallen embers,
Once, when the night seemed forever,
I was with you...//
I take a deep breath, and another sip of my beer. Almost empty. My arms are frozen now, I swear, and I pull my light jacket over me. It's the one Jack brought me for Christmas last year.
That was the same year he got marooned on Edora for three months, and didn't even thank me for working my ass off twenty-four-seven, living on coffee and only going back to my apartment once for some files.
//Once in the care of the morning,
In the air was all belonging,
Once when that day was dawning,
I was with you...//
The jacket still smells of him, 'cause he used to hold me in it, and whisper those oh-so-sweet nothings into my eager ears. Janet reckons that I don't need him; I never needed him and I never will.
Maybe she's right.
//How far we are from morning,
How far we are,
And the stars shining through the darkness,
Falling in the air...
Jack didn't have to tell me what he'd done when he got back from Edora. I already knew. He had left me for that bitch Laira, just brushed past me to go to her.
And then, then he expected me to forgive him; to want to love him the way Laira loved him. If she did, I should say, if she did love him.
I don't know what he thought of me then, especially after he went undercover to get Maybourne and Makepeace... I think, maybe, he thought I hated him, or couldn't forgive him, although he expected me to.
The truth was I wasn't strong enough to forgive and forget. Memories are there to remind us of our past and to remind us what traps not to get caught in, like mental scars...
I just couldn't face Jack honestly, the way I did when we made love, the way I did when I told him I loved him, the way I did when he gave me an order, the way I had done everyday since we had met, without seeing the betrayal somewhere in his past.
He thought we'd never see each other again, he lost hope and went against every belief he had taught us, and that was his excuse.
"I'm sorry, Sam, I never thought I'd see you again." Just like that.
I don't know what he expected me to tell him, maybe, "Oh, sweetie, that's okay. I mean I never lost hope, I just worked for three months straight and trusted that you'd have faith in me. Never mind about it."
It was never that simple. It's *never* that simple.
We got back together. It makes me sound pathetic and weak, but after a month and two weeks, we started over.
If Jack had never left me, we would still be waking up next to each other, I can promise you that.
//Once, the night was leaving,
Into our dreams we were weaving,
Once all dreams were worth keeping,
I was with you...//
I'd have nightmares. Memories I should say, memories that weren't mine, that I shouldn't be having, none that are happy, just winds and storms and devils.
Sometimes I wonder if Jolinar had any joy in her life at all, any love or laughter.
Jack would hold me and tell me I'd be all right.
And I'd believe him.
I honestly thought that we would work.
I never lost faith, and scars turned into memories.
For once it seemed like we were building picket fences, and painting sunsets in the afternoon sky.
//Once when our hearts were singing,
I was with you...//
I had a nightmare the other night. It's the same one I'll have tomorrow, and the same one I had last night, and the same one I'll have tonight.
It's like my mind's going crazy, there's flashes of colour against heavy black. I'm trapped in the depths of an abyss only I could have fallen into to and it's the only place where I can hide away from anyone; covered by the shadows of my past, and the screaming agony that will be come my future.
Soon I can't hold on any longer, I can't keep on fighting, they're pulling me apart, there's nothing left inside of me and I think it's then I know, time has stopped and is leaving me behind.
Pushing like the endless waves raging on shores that I now walk along and I'm alone...
Always alone.
//Once when our hearts were singing,
I was with you...//
The moon is so bright, but I can still feel that cold prickling at my skin.
Lifting my beer, I notice that it's only got one sip left in it. I should go inside, before I catch something.
Sighing, I stand from my not-so-comfortable position, and make a beeline for inside.
But something stops me. Turning, I lift the glass before bringing it to my dry lips.
Here's a toast to all those Jacks out there. Have a nice life, bastards. But don't worry 'bout me, 'cause I'm always gonna be here, wishing and waiting for that summer breeze to come.
~FIN~
Okay... If you've made it this far, you get all get sunshine smiles and chocolate Colonels. This was my first fic, so I'd love to know what you think...
Copyright 2001 Aenea67
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Aenea67
Heliopolis Main Archive
A Stargate: SG-1 Fanfiction Site
Summer Breeze: Fallen Embers - A Prologue
by Aenea67Site Navigation
Support Heliopolis