Four Times Jack Cried…, by Niamaea (PG-13)

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Rec Category: Jack O'Neill

Pairing: none
Categories: Jack O'Neill, gen, episode related, character study, angst
Warnings: language, reference to canon character deaths
Author on LJ: niamaea
Author's Website: unknown
Link: Four Times Jack Cried, and One Time He Didn't

Why This Must Be Read: Niamaea gives us four moments of strong emotional anguish for Jack O'Neill, when he was moved to tears – and one time that he wasn't, despite the wishes of others. All of these are based satisfyingly in canon, and they're written with a sparse intensity that simply breathes Jack.

While my personal favorites are the fourth (the snippet below) and fifth, all of these are powerful and well worth reading for as an excellent character study on Jack O'Neill.

Jack got through the memorial service all right; the wake. He did his job and turned up for the meetings to discuss a replacement, which happened pretty much as soon as he was up and moving again. He pushed through the recovery, the physical therapy. He was fine fine.

Except, weeks later, he was sitting on a bed getting a blood pressure check, and it was someone else, some new woman, brisk, methodical. Very good, actually. Jack had 15 minutes before they were due in the gateroom, and he took the time to excuse himself to his office and engage is some wonderfully senseless violence that left only damaged drywall, a good-sized collection of brutally slaughtered desk accessories, and that choked feeling he hated.

Right on time, he was in the gate room, ready to go, and no one the wiser for it, which had become a particular specialty of his.

Jack had seen a lot in eight years, and it was beyond him how, for a woman like Janet Fraiser, there was no sarcophagus, no Nox, no Oma. But the universe wasn’t a nice place and death, he'd learned, was a greedy bitch.