Author's Note: This is a post-ep for "Terror." It's my take on what was going on in Sam's head during and after the episode and a little glimpse into Jules. This takes place in the same fandom as my other Flashpoint stories and at this point is first chronologically. Spoilers for everything up to and including "Terror." This is a bit angstier than I've done in a while, but I felt like dabbling strictly in canon for a little while. If you'd like some smut check out my fic "Whipping Boy" and stay posted for a playful and zesty counter balance called "Mating Colors" that should be hitting the site within the next week. Hope you enjoy the ride!
Disclaimer: I have no ownership or property rights in Flashpoint or the poem contained within this story, "Puedo Escribir" by Pablo Neruda (translation by Merwin). I make no profits from this work and any copyrighted material contained herein is meant for entertainment and critique purposes only.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: La noche está estrellada,
Y tiritan, azules, los Astros, a lo lejos.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the night sky and sings.
One of the only things Sam Braddock missed about his special ops days in Afghanistan was the stars. He had sprawled in the dust next to his best friend countless nights and stared up at them, infinite and intimate all at once, and been able to believe that his soul might not be irreparably stained with the blood he'd spilled. When that friend's blood had been added to the patchwork, it seemed fitting that the solace they'd once sought together had been taken from him too. But tonight, he needed the stars.
He knew he shouldn't have, but he saw himself in Davis's haunted eyes. As he drove into the country, he absently ran his fingers over the tags around his neck. For a long time – Jules time – he'd stopped wearing them. Hadn't realized he didn't feel the need for them anymore… a good thing, since he'd never noticed she'd pilfered them from his dresser at some point. He never knew where she kept them, just that he'd left work to meet her at that coffee shop and seen them hanging in his locker. The moment he'd realized she'd made her choice. For some reason, he couldn't take them off again.
There was plenty of soft grass in the open field he'd fled to, but he managed to find a patch of dirt before easing himself slowly down to rest. The stars were just as infinite as he remembered, but the intimacy was lost.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como está la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
Jules had found the field with him what might as well have been a lifetime ago. He came home from the airport and Volcek and she had just known. Checked him over, made sure he wasn't about to drop where he stood, then bundled him back in the jeep. They drove until they could see the stars and compromised by perching side by side on a large rock. Although they were both tender from their battle wounds, he'd carefully wrapped his arms around her and held her against him.
He loved that she never felt like she had to say something to fill the silence. Leaning up to kiss his cheek, she settled in the cradle of his body and stared up at the stars. It wasn't the same as before. It wasn't supposed to be. They'd returned a handful of times before things went south and she'd run. In his head, all the darkness was pushed aside by the three words he knew she wasn't ready for him to say: "I love you, I love you, I love you…"
He'd been back once without her, after he'd failed Darren Kovacs, but he'd been unable even to sit down. Came the closest he'd ever been to eating a bullet. Part of him had hoped that she'd be there that night, knowing where his head would be – she hadn't been and that was the final straw. The next time he'd tried out Ed's support group instead.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
He had tasted panic in the back of his throat today when he realized how precarious her position was. The anger and bitterness that lingered around her memory had been shoved aside by the fear that she would be taken from him without him ever telling her he loved her. Greg's insinuation that he didn't trust her to do her job had infuriated him. He'd clenched his jaw and toed the line when he'd wanted to lash out with impatience. Sam had always trusted her, with the team's lives, with his own, and most importantly with hers. But she was trusting him to have her back, something he couldn't do standing around arguing with their Sergeant.
Entering the building, a part of his mind had lost track of where he was, who he was. Constable Braddock of SRU fought for control with Master Corporal Sam Braddock, Special Forces. Greg in his ear helped, but he settled for real as his eyes locked with Jules'. She didn't need the point-and-shoot guy, she needed the man she had painstakingly coached through negotiation techniques and held through the nightmares that never seemed to go away. So he'd done what he did best and gave her what she needed.
Somehow, as their eyes met over the cuffed subject, he'd thought things would change – that they already had changed. But then her lips and hands had lingered on Steve as his eyes lingered on her, and he wondered if his heart was breaking all over again.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The ground under his back felt harder than he remembered. Logically, he knew that had something to do with the lack of sand since he no longer lay in a desert halfway around the world when his greatest worries were that he'd be taken down or disappoint his father. He'd managed to avoid one of those, but the other one had always been his downfall. Sometimes he wondered if the alternative would have been easier.
Despite everything, he'd still instinctively searched for her after his shower. He wasn't sure what he'd expected from her. Yet, whatever it was, it hadn't been her sad smile before turning and walking away.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
He'd sworn to himself more times that he could count that he would stop loving her. It's not like he hadn't had relationships end before. The lie came easier when he chose to forget the nights they'd lain together – in their beds, on the couch, in this field – and let himself think that she might actually be The One. How they'd whispered in the darkness, his golden skin against her exquisite paleness, saying everything in the world without saying anything at all.
Grimacing he clenched his fists and tried not to flinch as he thought of her, right now probably stretched out on a hospital bed next to a man who wouldn't demand her patience, would cherish the innocence he remembered in her rather than being selfishly grateful for the hints of darkness so compatible with his own. Hands that had only ever been stained with blood as they moved deftly to begin the healing process and impart comfort trailing across her curves and making her moan. Maybe even finding those spots that had made her gasp his name – only it wouldn't be his name on her lips.
He wondered bitterly if any other name could ever fall from his mouth without tasting like sacrilege. Sam thought he'd maybe never missed Ben more than he did in that moment. Now he'd lost two best friends to a job that was meant to make him a good guy, a hero. Maybe in the last year he'd become broken… maybe they all had.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
But the hand not wrapped around his tags clutched the piece of paper that he could almost imagine still smelled like her perfume. "We make a good team," she'd said. She couldn't just have been talking about the job. Eyes fixed on the sky, he could almost admit that she still held the largest piece of his long cracked heart.
Every minute he'd spent with her had been like a second chance at a real life. A life where he could be something more than a government sanctioned butcher. A life with a future. Right now, he'd keep the fantasy over the reality of his life. Today had been a reminder that every victory would fall before the next wave of failure. He had sacrificed pieces of his soul and the brother he never had so that the world would be safe to allow this carnage of retribution he had been forced to witness.
Being broken was doubly unbearable when you'd had a taste of what whole could be like. He sighed deeply, allowing himself to fall into the sky and drift into a state of lowered awareness to escape the turmoil in his head – and his heart.
This could explain how a normally hyper-aware man missed the battered jeep pull into a shadowed space at the edges of the field. Tear tracks still lined her cheeks despite the two hours since she'd left Steve in the peaceful sleep of pain killers. She wasn't sure who or what the tears were for, only that they were cleaning grime and cobwebs from her soul. Driving on autopilot she'd come to a place that represented the closest thing to peace in her life. The thing that she'd sacrificed for the job and the status quo.
The question now was whether to go to him and unbalance them again, muddy the waters that were just beginning to clear between them at a time when she missed him more than ever. He would be hurting and it would be because he'd made himself vulnerable in order to help her. Again.
Just as her hand drifted to the ignition, she saw him lift a hand above his prone body to his mouth, a glimmer of white brushed wistfully across his lips.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
Y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verses that I write for her.
She slipped the keys in her pocket and started across the field without a second thought. Dropping to the dirt beside him, she lay back, their arms brushing as she stared up at the stars.
And he discovered that the intimacy was not as elusive as he'd feared.