Aubade: Chapter 19
Betrayal
Jack and Stormare figured it out after a few weeks. Their card nights usually took place on Fridays while her interludes with Vince happened on Saturdays. But as the Def training schedule rotated the card game nights became less predictable and one week it was agreed they would play on a Saturday. Sara did not back out but mentioned she could only stay for a couple of hours at the table.
"What, did Sirta invite you for a game or something?" Stormare immediately quipped. Jack laughed while dealing the cards.
"No, I just have something I need to take care of," Sara responded while hoping she didn't sound too vague. Her reply wasn’t good enough because Jack added:
"Work this late? Not even Meadows would be that stuffy."
"No." Sara pretended to study her cards.
"So what? Are you getting tired of us?" Jack persisted and pretended to sound insulted.
"Of course not, you silly turd! I wouldn't miss our games for anything!"
"Then how come you can only stay for a couple of hours?" Stormare was now gearing up for a long and solid teasing session. Sara smiled a good natured grin and responded:
"I don't have to tell you everything, Mister Snoopy!"
"Eh, wrong! We, meaning Jack and I, would tell you everything, wouldn't we Jack?"
"Of course we would, Frank, of course we would," Jack responded with a teasing smile.
"That's a bunch of crap!" Sara exclaimed in mock outrage.
"First of all, we have always told you the reason if we haven't been able to make it to a game, right Jack?"
"Right, Frank."
"Listen, I have a personal life too..." Sara tried.
"And we want to know about it!" Jack replied. Something in the twinkle of his eyes reminded her of Peter. It made her nervous. It was so comfortable to have him as such a close friend instead of thinking of him as a brother-in-law. She knew it wasn't fair to keep that from him, and yet she did. He obviously was keeping a hook out for her, a slow hook, but still.
"I am sure you do. Now let's play this freaking game or I will leave."
"See, she's eager to leave, unfocused, not willing to argue with us knuckleheads. There is only one thing that must be ailing her. Jack, wanna know what it is?"
"What?"
"This lady here," he waved ceremoniously toward her,"is smitten!"
Sara broke out in laughter.
"What kind of word was that - smitten? How the hell do you find all these words?" Stormare almost looked a little insulted.
Naturally she refused any such thing.
"That is the craziest thing I have heard in a year!" she exclaimed loudly. "What, are you insane?"
"Perhaps, perhaps, but we know these things. Can't hide those things from us Coasters. We know our women," Stormare spoke with confidence and pride in his voice.
"So out with it. Who?" Jack now demanded. Sara blushed at which both of the men shared a good laugh.
"If you weren't so damned good at pretty much everything you do we'd consider you dumb, but who the hell is it?"
"OK, that was an insult." She was actually a bit insulted, but not much.
"What's an insult?" Vince asked as he walked up to the table. Jack and Stormare threw a badly masked irritated look his way before saluting. Sara raised an eyebrow at this formal way of greeting Vince. Must be part of their upped training, she thought.
"Evening and all that, Sir. Just making small talk, Sir, what can we do for you?"
Vince leaned against a nearby table while talking to them. Sara looked at the buttons on his shirt and tried to look neutral. She feared she was completely readable by all three men in the room. Vince did notice her look but quickly brushed it off to maintain the command of himself.
"Oh nothing. Just taking a walk when I heard you noise-makers in here."
"I see. Well, good night, Sir!" Stormare attempted and since Vince didn't have another good response or reason to stay he just nodded a farewell and walked back out into the hallway.
"Jeez, what the hell was that all about?" Stomare rolled his eyes. Jack was staring toward the hallway a long moment before he woke up from a deep thought and said:
"Him," while looking at Sara.
"What?"
"That's who. Him." Jack's face betrayed so much and she could see that he was heart broken. Sara could understand him. He was her closest friend here. Someone she had held good conversations with, very good conversations. Someone who had rescued her, and whom she had rescued. And it struck her, perhaps more. They had shared human contact, even if just a mere hug. They could have been what she and Vince were. She froze in that thought.
"I'm not keeping you here," he said coldly while shuffling the cards. Stormare's facial expressions explained his gradual understanding and processing of the situation and he wisely chose to be quiet. Sara was struck by a lightning bolt of guilt.
"Jack, please, that is not at all what you should feel."
Jack's face became a strained smile.
"And how should I feel? Can you tell me that?"
Sara felt like sinking into the ground. Stormare looked beyond uncomfortable. Jack's feelings were so strong that he didn't care if they had a witness to it.
Sara hated that it had to come out like this. She had never intended to hurt him. She had not even thought that it would hurt Jack. Not in this way. But now, within a few short moments, through his reaction he had explained how he felt toward her. She knew that if Vince had not been the first then Jack would. And he knew it as well. And she regretted that it hadn't been him.
Sara stood up and felt how the redness in her face had spread. Stormare was mute. He knew this was becoming something personal between her and Jack, and he knew it was out of his league. Sadly so.
"I'm not feeling well," was her poor excuse as she collected her cards and gave them to Stormare. He gave her a look of compassion before throwing a glance at the cards.
"Would you bloody believe it!" he blurted out while inspecting the cards she had just pushed toward him, "You gotta see this!" but Jack was not interested.
Jack followed Sara out into the hallway, and after checking to see that they were alone he grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her into an empty storage room. It happened very quickly and she barely had time to register what had happened.
"Jack! What are you doing?" she exhaled.
He was visibly upset and seemed lost in thought while expressing a need to say something. He held her with one hand and pointed with a trembling and furious index finger of the other hand.
"Don't! Don't do this!" was the only thing that came out. It sounded like a cry. It made her afraid and sad to hear him speak like that. To not even be able to say anything because he was so overcome with emotion.
She reached out to grab hold of his arms, and right when she looked up at his face she remembered how he had told her about his mother's distillery. She had to tell him she was Peter's wife. Even after all these card games the topic of his family had never come up since then, but she knew he needed to know.
He grabbed the underside of her lower arms so that they were locking arms and eyes. Sara could sense the immense sadness coming from him. She raised one arm so it now touched his shoulder, and then the other arm, and then held him in an embrace. He immediately returned the embrace and she could feel his rough face against her ear, breathing heavily and sighing. Then she kissed him. And she understood the Cain and Abel comparison.
Jack was the other side of the coin, and they matched in a different but very clear way. It was the kiss that he had waited for and that was now too late. She wanted to undo everything up until then, and felt sadness drench her body.
She needed to say something now, before it became too late and
things would get even more complicated. Her body was waking up to such closeness and she felt the tide of letting go roll in. So she forced herself to whisper into his ear, and with each word she could feel how his body reacted to every syllable and finally froze.
"I am Peter's wife, Jack." Then she waited.
His breath stopped, then resumed and stopped again until finally he almost buried his face in the backside of her neck as if to detect her scent before finally regaining composure enough to hold her at an arm's length. Coldly he replied:
"I have no idea who you're talking about."
"Yes, you do, Jack. Your mother owns a distillery in Westport, the only legal distillery there. Peter's mother owns a distillery in Westport, the only legal distillery there." She saw the effect this had on him. He kept shaking his head in disbelief and recognition.
"What are you doing here?" he finally asked.
"I'm the Historian who gets to climb into death traps and drive insane shuttles with men almost dying in her presence," she quipped sarcastically. He was studying her for a while before asking:
"How did you qualify?"
"I didn't."
"What do you mean?
"Jack, I don't know. I must have been kidnapped from my home in New York!"
"Yeah, right! I tell you what I think, I think you're a liar, I have never seen you in Westport!" he sneered at her.
"I'm not a liar!" she yelled at him. "And you know it! I know you're Peter's brother, you look like him, you talk like him, you even have the same manners! How the hell should I know why you can't remember me! I have no idea why we have never met. I don't understand anything that has happened in my life these past months. Everything is gone, everything! But don't call me a liar. I think you're scared, because you know something isn't right here. You know, just like I do, and wait til I tell you more, that something is off.
"Jack, listen..." she grabbed hold of his arm once again but he almost seemed scared of accepting it. He was staring at her as if she was a foreign object or something that had invaded his reality in a supernatural way. She squeezed his arm to assert herself,"...we
have to talk. But not here." She wanted to hear everything he knew, everything he had lived, just to get some small detail about where Peter might be.
"Do you know where Peter is?" she whispered, almost losing her breath.
"Why the hell would he marry a City girl? Who are you? Who have I spent all this time with all these past few months? And if you're really Peter's wife, then why the hell are you and Stapleton...?"
She was so ashamed she couldn't find an answer. It would be childish to cry, and even more immature to get angry.
"Because we got stuck in this situation together!"
"A lot of us are stuck in this situation together," he emphasized the word together which only made her more ashamed. She recollected all the days in the recovery room, when she did feel so connected to him and wanted to be near him. And now the kiss.
"We're not in love." He laughed bitterly at hearing this.
"And you claim you're Peter's wife! Believe me, I am very entertained. And believe me, he would never have touched you with a ten foot pole. No one with that kind of lack of honor and respect would've been welcome to his house, I know that for a fact!" Jack spoke in staccato syllables with specks of saliva hitting her face. She wiped some of it off with the back of her hand and fought the anger that she knew she deserved.
As calmly as she could she began speaking:
"I am aware that I have destroyed everything I have left in life. I didn't want to do it. But I have nothing left. Nothing. My husband and daughter are gone. I am stuck, alone, with a bunch of fucking freaks here. I've become some bizarre old lab rat that's put into use every time there is a need for a suicide mission. What does it matter what I do, Jack? Really! Jack, I need to show you something. It is in my quarters. I think it will explain something. Jack, you do remember that I didn't come on this trip by choice. I never wanted to join, I never would have qualified in a million years. I wanted to die there, there, with my daughter. Let me show you."
It was difficult for Sara to believe that she was this angry and bitter but also so filled with shame that she could not bear it much longer. Hearing herself speak like this was like listening to someone else. She felt detached from her true self. The person she was came and went and in between she operated on pure automated actions. She was unsure of everything now. Life had torn away everything when she finally had begun understanding how wonderful it could be. She had barely begun giving her love!
Jack followed her quietly. Her shoulder blades were burning through the mere thought of his stare. She wondered if Vince would be waiting there and how Jack would react. She opened the door and found the Library in darkness. Only the dim lights of the library central vaguely betrayed the outlines of the room. She turned on the lights.
"Wait here," she said and went into the bedroom to retrieve the chip.
She was relieved to see an empty room there as well and quickly sent a message to Vince to wait for her call before coming over and that she would explain. Jack was sitting on the couch when she returned. She wanted to run over and sit down next to him and laugh and joke about anything and everything. Instead she sat down on a chair near the AI central and inserted the chip after double securing the visual.
She saw Jack pay attention to every move she made but he remained quiet. He was very tense and nervous, constantly shifting and moving about. Sara had entered a state where everything felt like molasses and she only noticed that her body was capable of moving quicker than she registered it to. She dimmed the room lights and started the movie.
The sight of her daughter and her amazingly joyful laughter felt like soothing warm blankets. It gave her small bursts of peace. She tried to catch Jack out of the corner of her eye and jumped when she saw him stare at her! She scrambled to stop the movie and turn on the light and looked around frantically for something to protect herself with. Jack stood up and slowly moved toward her.
His face exuded a livid rage! Everything she thought she knew about him seemed as if erased. She grabbed hold of a hard cover protector for the holo projector and held it in front of her. Jack continued moving toward her and snapped the item out of her hand and she let out a scream and backed away but he was faster. He grabbed hold of her and held her wrists even if she tried to get away. No tears, she was beyond that now. His voice was barely understandable when he spoke.
"I waited so... patiently..."
"Let me go, let me go!"
"Even when you were alone. I still waited. Because I finally thought something was worth waiting for! And you, you let me believe that you cared!" He was shaking and crying.
"I did! I do! Jack, you need to let me go, you're hurting me!"
"Hurting? Hurting me? You've no idea what hurt is!"
"You've no idea! No idea!" she screamed on top of her lungs.
"This! This is his last idea of a cruel joke! You never knew him!" Jack was shaking his head while his voice trembled in anger. "Everything that mattered he ran away with. She even broke off the engagement after he had played his tricks on her." His grip was lessening and he came to his senses and released her hands but still blocked her from moving.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"... and it happened while I was away, at war. At war! She never wanted to see me again and of course he had dumped her immediately afterward. We were engaged to be married. I had received the blessing from her parents before I left."
"Peter?" Sara asked hesitantly.
"Yes, Peter, your husband. Greatly admired, favorite son, but beware if you get in his way. And don't mess with his desire for women. Not surprised he finally chose a City girl. Guess he ran out of Westport women. No wonder he never introduced us." He gave her a defiant look. She didn't want to respond to such a ridiculous allegation. She kept shaking her head with a mouth tightly shut. But what was that about Peter taking Jack’s bride to be?
"You don't get it do you? This was probably his sense of filthy humor. To send his half-brother to the end of the world with his unknown sister-in-law as some kind of perverted temptation. And you wanna know something? He succeeded, that son of a bitch succeeded!" Jack was now laughing and Sara's body was reverberated by his shakes of laughter.
"And now Stapleton and you! I am disgusted when I think about the ceremony and how you let everyone believe you were honorable! You are just made of the same dirty material Peter was made of. No wonder he found you!"
"You're insane. What makes you think Peter had anything to do with choosing the crew?" she sneered back.
"He sat on the board for ten years for God's sake!" Jack gave her a look and smiled. "But he never told you, did he?" Sara had given up on figuring out what was true or false in the world, and merely shook her head another time.
"Oh, I'm sure he had quite a lot to say about who got on and who didn't. Makes you wanna know why he didn't take his own wife on the same ship with him and his daughter. Cute by the way. Got momma's hair."
She slapped him as hard as she could and she aimed well because he backed away enough for her to run to the door and into the hallway. Cold fresh air met her face and she ran as fast as she could to the end of the hallway and then continued to the end of the next, past the new underground passage and into Defense territory.
She stopped at Vince's quarters and bolted on the door while trying to catch her breath. She hadn't dared look behind her and expected a hard tug any moment. When he opened the door she rushed in through the widening door before he had a chance to say a word.
"Don't let him in," she growled while hyperventilating, and began walking toward his bedroom. "Just don't let him in, no matter what he says!" Vince was trying to interpret the situation but looked clueless.
"Who the hell are you talking about? What's going on?"
"Jack, Jack of course! Vince, listen to me, he knows about us, he knows about Peter and he's furious at me! He knows everything! He knows I am his sister-in-law, and I ran away, I got away just now, but he'll come after me. I can't see him again, not now. He's too angry! He will kill me."
Her voice trembled and she kept glancing at the door. She jumped when she heard the heavy bolting and looked at Vince and shook her head and mouthed: "Don't open!" Vince nodded and went to the door.
"What?" he answered.
"I need to talk to her! Sir!" Jack shouted from behind the door, spitting out the sir part.
Vince and Sara exchanged a look. Both were searching each other for an answer. Sara was slowly shaking her head and whispered:
"He is too upset!" But Vince motioned for her to move into his sleeping quarters, and reluctantly she did. And then waited.
Vince opened the door and found Jack leaning in the doorway.
"I want to talk to her!"
"That's not going to happen. Not now." Vince was short but calm in his voice. He began to close the door at a very visibly upset Jack. Jack couldn't believe his ears or eyes.
"This is beyond protocol, Sir! Either you let me in now or I'll go straight to the Captain. I'm not going to take orders from..." he didn't have time to finish his sentence before Vince grabbed Jack by the throat and shoved him up against the wall. Jack tore himself free but Vince took another grab and pushed him in place.
"Listen, Jack! You're too hot-headed to talk right now. We'll set things straight."
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My sci-fi anthologies: Errante and No End Code
