New Jack City: The Beginning
Part III: Pretzel Logic
Love was not the issue; neither denied what they felt for each other. And while they didn’t always agree on who fell for whom first and hardest, the one thing they were unwavering in their acknowledgement of was this: both readily admitted they instinctively knew the moment they met each was “it” for the other.
Yet even after admissions of love had been declared, before the idea of marriage was even entertained, or a single vow could be taken, the couple first had to weather the storms that had the power to destroy their relationship.
For Sabrina, it wasn’t so much Jack’s assignments as a Field Agent at CTU. Early on in their relationship she admitted while she would never be completely ‘comfortable’ with Jack willingly putting himself in harm’s way, she nevertheless had confidence in his ability to prevail in any situation he found himself in. No, the source of contention with Jack’s assignments for Sabrina were those occasions said missions required him to become intimately involved with his subjects.
She knew the spiel almost verbatim. How could she not? On those occasions they argued about the matter, when Sabrina—not out of jealousy or insecurity, but genuine logic—suggested that just as Jack admitted he had done with female partners in the past and mimicked the act of sex, why, short of being forced to have sex at gunpoint, couldn’t he dance any and everywhere along that fine line and not cross it by actually have sex with a mission’s target?
His response, as always, had been to remind her that as an Agent working deep cover, the probability of sex becoming part of a mission always loomed in the background. Unmoved, as always, Sabrina would tell him she considered his explanation bullshit.
During one particularly heated exchange, having tired of Sabrina’s ‘bullshit’ dismissals, Jack, his gaze unflinching, had stepped to her deliberately invading her personal space. His voice, while gentle, held the faintest tinge of warning that his patience was quickly nearing its limits. In a soft, riveting voice he told her in no uncertain terms that the choice was hers to believe him or not when he told her that he never went out of his way to initiate a situation that would lead to it but if having sex meant the difference between him living or dying it was a no-brainer.
Sabrina had calmly, quietly absorbed his scalding response. Lips slightly pursed, her gaze as glacial as her voice was molten she gave a curt nod of her head then advised him to keep that in mind, “when the time comes and it’s a man you have to fuck.”
Later, much later, when cooler heads had prevailed Sabrina admitted to herself she knew sex was in no way a prerequisite for Jack accepting a mission; that the probability of sex as part of his cover was just another part of “the job,” what he did to ensure the success of his mission. He had no more emotional attachment to bedding the woman who could put him in the orbit of his primary target, Jack reminded her, than he did to breaking or amputating the fingers of said target during interrogation.
Depending of what day you caught her, sometimes Jack’s logic made sense to Sabrina. There were times when strangely enough it wasn’t the thought of Jack having sex with another woman that disturbed Sabrina as much as the thought of Jack sharing himself emotionally with another woman did—even if it was all an act.
As a Cassadine, she was no stranger to warped behavior or thinking; oftentimes she privately joked to family their antics and belief system were so twisted that “Cassadine should be Russian or Greek for pretzel.” So it was no great effort to understand, even embrace the perverse logic—that it wasn’t her Jack doing those things—and see the larger picture; that which was all-important to the life and death situations Jack put himself in. The mission. Those were good days. The not-so-good days? Those were the days when she allowed her mind to “go there,” to that place where the thought of him staring down a bullet was far less disturbing to her than that of him staring down at a woman other than her beneath him.
For Jack, his issue was, ironically, with Sabrina’s attachment to the very thing his job had cost him: family.
If the loss of his wife Terri closed Jack off from the world, it effectively crippled his relationship with their daughter Kim. Soft-spoken, at times timid, but in possession of a giving spirit, in Terri, Kim had a silent, long-suffering parent to tolerate her constant acts of rebellion, disrespect, and astonishing stupidity; in her father she knew there lived no such creature. But with Jack constantly away on missions or pulling 12 – 16 hour shifts at CTU, the impetuous 17 year-old rarely if ever bore witness to her father in the role of disciplinarian. With her mother’s murder on the grounds of the very institution that seemingly was forever taking him away from her—and at the hands of Nina Meyers, her father’s colleague and former lover, no less—naturally, Kim directed her anger at Jack, rightly or wrongly blaming him for Terri’s death.
With the one common bond that anchored their family gone, Jack’s subsequent attempts at forging a relationship with Kim were disastrous. For the longest time it seemed the only way father and daughter could connect was in the face of impending danger. Yet when the threat was neutralized, unable to breach the divide created by Terri’s death both, still grieving, would return to their respective corners. Unable to walk away from his duty to the one thing that still gave him purpose, Jack returned to CTU, fully aware the act might very well be a death knell to his and Kim’s relationship. Kim, still filled with anger and pain, was incredulous her father could return to the institution that had cost him so much and opted to put as much distance between them as possible. Their contact was minimal; always initiated by Jack and always returned with a heaping dose of guilt and punishment by Kim. After several painful, desolate years, the two finally managed to begin healing their relationship only to have their efforts falter when Jack and Sabrina entered each others’ orbit. The only betrayal greater to Kim than Jack still working at CTU was the thought of her father starting a new life with another woman; that it was with a woman who neither tolerated her games, especially those of emotional blackmail Kim attempted to engage her father in, nor was threatened by Kim’s relationship, fractured as it was, with her father, did little to endear the strong-willed doctor to Jack’s daughter.
Still his ongoing struggles with Kim and her dislike of Sabrina aside, navigating that terrain was easy compared to dealing with Sabrina’s family. In general he had no qualms with her devotion to her clan, sometimes envying the relationship Sabrina had with her “nephews,” Nikolas and his younger brother, Andresj’; he particularly admired the bond she shared with the latter. However, it was her relationship with Nikolas and Andresj’s father in particular, Stefan Cassadine, that Jack knew would be the greatest obstacle to their relationship. At times Jack believed the relationship between Sabrina and the Greco-Russian billionaire—who, like Alexis, by blood was Sabrina’s cousin, but since childhood had been regarded by Sabrina as a sibling—rivaled even that of Sabrina’s complex relationship with her father Viktor, a man who Jack reasoned was quite possibly the only other person within the family as manipulative and controlling as Stefan.
In possession of a defiant, commanding personality and having grown up in a family of Alpha Males, Sabrina responded to nothing less than serious strength. Consequently Jack knew early on if he had any hope of having a lasting, successful relationship with her Sabrina would have to realize the only Alpha Male in her life was to be him. And while both knew the greater sacrifice had been on her part—she relocated from Port Charles, New York to California, leaving her family home, Wyndemere, and a thriving career as Chief of Neurosurgery at General Hospital—in the end they both agreed the reward, a life together, was worth the sacrifice.
~*~
“Do you remember what we were doing the first time we were in this room, Bri?” Jack whispered.
As he wrapped his wife within his embrace, her tears having given way to exhaustion, Jack gently turned her to face that which he looked upon, the ruins of what was once their home. Reverently, he placed his hands atop Sabrina’s distended belly. Although barely out of her fifth month of pregnancy, her ‘baby bump’ was nonetheless quite noticeable.
“Dammit, Jack!” Sabrina snapped. Spinning around out of his embrace, her eyes were ablaze with disbelief. “Y-y-you can’t seriously be thinking,” she sputtered, “my god, is sex all you can think about...at a time like this?!”
“No,” he replied cradling her breathtaking tear-streaked face in his hands. “Just sex with you.” He smiled through the tears pooling in his eyes.
Author’s Note: The character of Andresj’ Cassadine is the creation of jrsgirl