Title: Live Like You Were Dying

Author: Geonn

Email: neil_j_miser@yahoo.com

Pairing: Sam/Janet

Category: Pre-slash

Rating: PG13

Series: The Jukebox Series

Disclaimer: Stargate and characters are the property of MGM, Gekko, etc. Mainly you need to know no one with the name of Geonn owns the deed to these ladies.

Archive: Yes, just let me know where it's gonna be.

Note: Song is Tim McGraw, "Live Like You Were Dying." Written after being challenged by misssimm :D

Spoilers: "Secrets," "The Tok'ra," "Seth"

Summary: "How's it hit ya when you get that kind of news?"


The drink was sharp, his first in over a decade, but he decided it didn't matter much any more. To stop drinking now would be like using a Dixie cup to put out a three-alarm blaze. Any damage done to his liver was done. He sighed and finished off the bottle, tossing it onto the opposite bed and staring at the lights of the city through the cheap hotel curtain. "Sorry, Jake," he said softly. "Sorry, Jake. Rat bastard calls me Jake like he knows me."

He stood and walked to the mirror, staring at himself. Was cancer there? In his eyes? In his lips? No. It was a coward, hiding deep within. Hiding where they couldn't see it early, where they couldn't slice it out. "Come out," he hissed. "Come out where you'll have to take me down face-to-face."

There was, of course, no answer. He walked back to the bed, sinking down onto it and staring at the phone.

Mark's number?

Sam's number?

Which would hang up on him the fastest? Which would maybe give him a chance to say what he needed to say? Neither wanted to hear his voice. He could picture both of their faces as clear as day when they heard him on their telephones. "Dad? We moved across the country to get away from you. What do you want?" He wondered if Sam had a boyfriend... or a gir-- He pressed his lips together and didn't allow the thought to finish forming. He ran a hand over his cheek, feeling the stubble, and picked up the phone. After a moment's hesitation, he dialed.

"Hello." Sam. Sounding tired, sounding torn. "Hello? Jonas?" He closed his eyes and prayed Jonas was a lover. Someone to hold his Sammy at night. A sigh. "Look, I'm very busy. Who is this?" He opened his mouth, but before he could find his words, his daughter snapped, "Don't fucking call again." The phone snapped down into the cradle, shocking him. He stared at the receiver, wondering if he'd have gotten a nicer response if he had said something. She would've been polite. She would've talked to him. But only as long as necessary.

He hung up and wondered if he should dial Mark's number. After a moment of debate, he picked the phone back up and dialed a number he hoped was still in service.

Two rings and a deep, sharp voice said, "Jeff Bollinger."

"Jeffrey," he said, injecting unfelt levity into his voice. "Jacob Carter."

"Carter?! Heh, well... if that... where've you been hidin' yourself?"

"Oh, you know... trying to avoid NASA's recruiters. They're desperate to get someone who knows what they're doing into a space shuttle."

Bollinger scoffed. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, same ol' Carter. What do you need, bud?"

"Actually," Jacob said, looking down at his wedding ring. "I need to call in a couple of favors."

"A couple? How many you lookin' to cash in?"

"I'm going to need all of 'em, Jeffrey. I know there's a waiting list. I know the... proper channels. But this needs to happen soon. Do you get me?"

There was a pause at the other end of the line and Jacob closed his eyes, praying his old friend would come through. He was dying and he had only this last wish. Everything he had, everything he could ask for, none would come close to the pride he'd feel seeing Sam achieve her dream. He wanted to see his little girl to go into space before he died. Bollinger finally sighed and said, "This is dire?"

"Life and death, Jeffrey," Jacob managed. "Please."

Bollinger said, "I'll talk to some people."

---

Jacob guided Sam across the crowded ball room, explaining what he'd done. "I told him that you'd wanted to become an astronaut since you were a little girl. And that you'd given up...."

"I didn't give up!" Sam insisted.

Jacob held his hands up to stop her argument. "Let me finish. That you'd given up waiting for the shuttle program to be reinstated after the Challenger disaster."

She nodded sadly. "Yeah, it was bad timing."

"Yes, well. I called in a few markers. I filled them in on your qualifications." They stopped and he stood in front of her, making sure she got the full effect of what he was about to say. "You apply again, as an Air Force nominee, young lady, and I think you'll find NASA supportive."

She scoffed. "There's a waiting list a mile long."

"Not for you."

"Dad, you can't do that."

"I did."

"Without talking to me first?"

Jacob was clueless how to deal with this... Sam was angry - ANGRY! - that he had all but gotten her a first-class ticket to Cape Canaveral. "You're telling me you don't want this? They know what you're capable of offering the Space Program, Samantha, they want you!"

"That's not the point! The work I am doing right now is very important to me."

"It's not your dream."

Her face fell. "Let's just leave it at that, please?"

"At least talk to them, then. Do that much for me."

Sam shook her head, looking away before smiling at him. So condescending. Such an 'I knew it' look. "I knew sooner or later you'd make this about you."

Jacob couldn't believe her. Couldn't believe her words or her denial or her anger. So he did what had always worked with Sam. He gave up. "All right."

"Dad, it's not that I don't appreciate it..."

"I said all right. I'll catch up with you after the ceremony." He turned and walked up the steps, a defeated man. He had offered his daughter her fondest dream, her childhood fantasy, what she'd wanted as long as she had known how to speak... and she had turned him down. Without thinking about it. Without weighing the options.

He couldn't help but think that it was solely because he had been the one offering it. A palm branch extended a few years too late. Sam, the one he thought he still had a chance with, the one he had thought there would always be hope of reconciliation.

He had cancer. He had two children who hated him. He needed a drink.

---

"Lymphoma."

The look on Sam's face said it all. "That's bad," she said. Understatement queen...

"Well, it's not good," he chuckled. "But it's not the worst. Don't you worry. I'll be around for a while."

She hugged him, torn between her anger at what he'd done and the news he'd just dumped on her. "Oh God, Dad!"

Now... last chance. He hated himself for what he was about to do, but he saw no other option. Only the cold, hard truth would convince her the importance of what he was doing for her. "I was hoping to stick around long enough to see you become an astronaut. Sweetheart, I don't care what it is you do in that mountain, nothing in the world can live up to the chance to actually go into space. Not for you - it's something you're wanted your whole life. And I admit it, I want to see you fulfill your life's dreams before I die."

"It's my dream," she argued. "Doesn't that make it up to me?"

"Fathers have dreams, too."

She looked into his eyes, regret and sadness and pain written across her features. It seemed almost impossible for her to say the next four words: "I'm sorry, I can't."

"All right." He gave up and walked past her, the conversation ended and the offer gone. Turned down. Rejected. He picked up his things, standing at attention as he addressed her. "Like I said, this thing's going to go on for months, so you don't have to check up on me tomorrow."

Sam was close to tears. "Dad, please don't go like this."

'No emotion,' he reminded himself. Straight business. "Congratulations on the medal. I'm sure you deserve it." He turned and walked to the door.

"Dad!"

He winced, but kept walking. He kept his back straight despite the tears in her voice. 'Just keep walking. I tried. I tried to heal the rift between us, and she turned me down flat. Keep walking. Let her cry.' He made it to the steps outside, veering to the side the police didn't have cordoned off. He dropped onto one of the stone steps, jacket across his lap, balancing his chin in his hands as he thought about his daughter, her dreams... and how he'd failed her so completely that nothing - absolutely nothing - he did now could possibly make up for it.

---

"Dad?"

Jacob straighted his back, setting his lemonade down as Sam joined him on the porch. She smiled down at him, hugging herself against the cold. "What're you doing out here?" she asked, scanning her brother's back yard.

"I'm thinking about what I, in my pig-headed stubborness, tried to cost you." He stood and shook his head, laughing. "I mean... I almost had you strapped to a rocket going to the moon."

Sam smiled and joined him at the handrail. "Yeah."

He looked at her, shaking his head. "What it must have taken for you to say no to me that day. Courage, for one."

"And a little bit of that stubborness you passed down to me," she winked.

"It would've cost you your true dream. It would've cost me my life." He looked out at the yard. "It could very well have cost the world."

Sam grinned. "What are you trying to say, Dad?"

He looked down at his feet. "Selmak isn't pushing me to just make amends with Mark. There's something else that's been bothering me."

It echoed in his mind again: Her voice breaking as she called after him. The desperation for contact. "Dad!" Just a little girl who had just heard her Daddy was dying. And he'd walked off.

"Leaving you alone in that room... walking away when you were crying..."

"It's all right."

"No. It's not. I should've... listened to you."

Sam put a hand on her father's shoulder and pulled him into a hug. "It was a horrible, horrible situation, Dad. I don't blame you. You had just been diagnosed with cancer, I had the entire Stargate secrecy cloud hanging over me... it was increasingly important to stay tight-lipped that day because of the reporter." She closed her eyes. "We can move on, though. I think we've gotten a good start on that, don't you?"

"Ah, you just tolerate me because you like Selmak."

Sam laughed and kissed her father's cheek. "Come on. Mark's kids wanna see grandpa again."

"And Mark?"

"He's actually looking forward to our 'grown-ups only' dinner tonight." They started into the house, but Jacob held her back. She turned and tilted her head questioningly at him. "Dad?"

He brushed his fingers over her knuckles, then said, "Samantha... when I was told I had cancer... that my time was almost out, there was one thought that ran through my head. 'It's too late.' Too late to do anything I might have once dreamed of. I thought of trying to reconcile with you and Mark... there were hundreds of things that I'd left for too long. Getting you into NASA was the only thing I could think of that had the remotest chance of working.

"What I'm saying to you, Sam, is to not make the same mistake your dumb, old Dad did. Don't leave it to the last minute. Don't let a slap in the face be your wake-up call."

"What are you talking about, Dad?"

He smiled softly. "I've known. For years."

Sam tensed and looked over her shoulder. "Dad... I haven't even known for years. If... what you're talking about is..."

He shushed her. "It's unimportant. Sam, don't put it off. Don't go without love just because..." He shook his head. "Don't leave it. Don't tell yourself there's time later, because even at sixty, I was still lying to myself about that. Tomorrow isn't a promise. All you have is today, so make it count."

Sam blinked, tears at the corners of her eyes. "Wow, Dad."

He chuckled. "Yeah. I think Selmak was a poet at one point."

Sam laughed and hugged her father, already working his advice around her brain.

---

"Fraiser residence."

"Hi, Janet."

"Sam! Oh, uh... Cassandra isn't here, but--"

"Actually, I called to talk to you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Janet?"

"Yeah?"

"Those things you said..."

"..."

"...in the commissary. When you touched my... my hand?"

"..."

"Janet?"

Her voice breaking: "Mm-hmm?"

"I'd. I would like to talk about that."

"...Okay."

"You weren't wrong. You... I lied. I felt the same thing. Probably for longer than you had. And... I-I still feel it. If you still do. I mean... it's just that... people change. And it's been so long since..."

"Sam?"

"I love you."

"Sam... Can we... when... when you get home, we can talk."

"Okay."

"And for the record, I love you, too."

Sam wiped her eyes, her lower lip trembling as she ended the call.

end

 

"LIVE LIKE YOU WERE DYIN'," Tim McGraw

He said I was in my early forties,
With a lot of life before me,
When a moment came that stopped me on a dime.
I spent most of the next days,
Looking at the x-rays,
Talking 'bout the options
And talkin’ ‘bout sweet time.
I asked him when it sank in,
That this might really be the real end
How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news?
Man, whatcha do?

An' he said I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying.
And he said Some day, I hope you get the chance,
To live like you were dyin'.

He said I was finally the husband,
That most the time I wasn’t.
And I became a friend a friend would like to have.
And all of a sudden goin' fishin’,
Wasn’t such an imposition,
And I went three times that year I lost my Dad.
Well, I finally read the Good Book,
And I took a good long hard look,
At what I'd do if I could do it all again,
And then

I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying.
And he said Some day, I hope you get the chance,
To live like you were dyin'.

Like tomorrow was a gift,
And you got eternity,
To think about what you’d do with it.
And what did you do with it?
What can I do with it?
What would I do with it?

Sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
And then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I watched Blue Eagle as it was flyin'."
And he said Some day, I hope you get the chance,
To live like you were dyin'."


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