Remember This by SelDear

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Story Notes: EMAIL: SelDear@bigpond.com

STATUS: complete

SPOILERS: A little one for 'The Curse'

SEASON/SEQUEL INFO: future season sometime

SERIES: None

ARCHIVE: SJA, Heliopolis, anyone else wants it, please ask...Ruthie, if you want this one, you can have it...

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hopefully this piece is evocative enough to conjure the ideas I want to. I don't think it's too sad or bittersweet - but then it might just be that I'm so used to reading it by now. Oh, and I claim dibs on the ring - that was a stroke of brilliance AFAIAC!

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Remember This
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I wake suddenly, tiredness falling from me like a sheet unwound from the body and left to drop to the floor in a soft flutter of material. Beside me, Jack stirs. One hand rests heavy on my hip, fingers curving over the skin-sheathed bone with warm possession.

In the dark, my smile is hidden.

We've been coming to this point for years. Slowly and uncertainly, but with an inevitability about it, as if we knew the destination - each others' arms - just not how to get there or with what timeframe.

The scent of him is like a perfume, entirely his own, entirely mine. Any woman lying beside the man she loves - the man who loves her in return - will understand. It has nothing to do with sex. The scent of him is unmarked by the musky aroma of that passion.

No, this perfume that swirls around me, jumping between his flesh and mine like electricity, has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with love and contentment and belonging.

"Sam?" The breath whispers over my hair and I turn into him and rest my forehead in the hollow of his throat.

"Mmmm?"

"Are you awake?"

My body shakes with a laugh, "No."

"No giggling," he murmurs. "Remember?"

I remember. "Yes, sir."

Once I used his title as a barrier between us. A reminder, if you will, that what I felt for him wasn't allowed by the rules. It worked well enough - a protection against the temptation to want more.

Now, it's a joke between us.

He shifts a little, draws me closer in to him and I feel his nose brush my hair with the softest of movements. "Have I told you before how nice you smell?"

"Nope."

"Nice." He snuggles closer, "Very nice."

"Tell me how nice."

"Mmm.like gardenia flowers and summer apricots. Early-morning coffee and late-night hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. The spring breeze when I'm on my roof staring up at the stars. Hot summer rain and crisp new snow."

I laugh. I can't help it. If anyone had told me Colonel Jack O'Neill was a closet romantic, I would have booked them in for a session with Dr. MacKenzie. For at least a week.

Still, the analytical thinker in me responds: "That would be a very confusing scent, I think."

"Yeah, well, all those things make me think of you. Those, and travelling through the Stargate."

Yes. He'll always remember me in terms of the Stargate. The project over which we met, and worked, and became friends, and fell in love. The project that defined our lives and twined them inextricably around each other.

And that's why what I ask of him will be so hard.

"I did like you once I got to know you, didn't I?" He kisses my ear and I feel a thrill of delight course over my skin.

"You have to keep going, Jack."

"Hmmm?"

"You need to keep going through the Stargate."

"Why wouldn't I?" he asks, not understanding.

Then it bursts in on him in a wave of grief and pain and loneliness and loss.

He is of the living.

I am of the dead.

His arms close around me, crushing me against him.

"Sam." His cry is a horrible, yearning thing. A living grief that will swallow him whole with regret and pain if he lets it.

"I know."

I brush my tears away, and find myself having to brush his away, too.

*Don't make this harder on me, Jack.*

I made my plea bargain for tonight.

Daniel spoke once of the legend of Osiris and Isis. Not the Goa'uld that were found in their jars in Egypt, but the legends of the gods. Osiris was killed by his brother Seth, and Isis mourned so hard that her tears were heard by the earth, and Osiris was returned to her alive and whole for one night.

Just one night.

It's all we'll have, but it's enough.

He needs to know that I love him. That I don't regret a moment of the six years we gated through the galaxy with Daniel and Teal'c. That I don't regret what we did together, or what we didn't do together.

I have no regrets.

He does.

So I run my fingers over his face, and pull his lips to mine. For a little while, the universe folds down to just the two of us and nothing else matters.

But when we can breathe again, there are things that need to be said.

A promise needs to be made and kept.

"You have to keep going, Jack."

His arms tighten around me. "I can't."

"You must."

"Without you?" He asks huskily.

"Yes. Promise me."

"No."

"They need you. Earth needs you to be there."

"Not me. Anyone but me."

"Only you."

"Sam."

"Promise you'll keep going." I'm merciless in this. I never let him close because there was a job to be done, and there is still a job to be done - but not by me. Duty and honour before all else; remember, Colonel? "Promise."

"I love you."

"I know." I brush my cheek against his, "And I love you."

"Will you come back to me?"

"I will come home to you. Always." It's the only promise I can make to him. "Remember this."

He sighs, tiredness and the aching loneliness of stretching years swallowing him whole, "God, Sam." Then, very quietly, "I promise."

He's a man of honour. He keeps his promises. I trusted that through six years. He led us through fire and water, and to hell and back again, and never let us give up on each other - however much he sometimes failed to believe that we would never give up on him. He never touched me as anything but a friend and a CO. I don't think we kissed once - of our own accord, no viral influences or anything like that. We wanted more, but we held back.

From the other side, I can see that it was right. The hard decision, the tough choice, but it was right.

And this is all we'll have.

Just one night.

My time is running out.

His mouth is pulled down to mine, and now there is no gentleness. Something in us rages against unkind fate. All that we had in us was focused on keeping our world intact and we had nothing left for each other. Not then. Only now.

In spite of the breathless passion, and the aching need, something else curls between us. The delight in each other's company that spanned six years of disagreements and fights, orders and explanations. The habits we hated in each other and the expressions we loved, the techno-babble and bad jokes; his women, my men, and the kindred alignment of souls.

*That* is what made us special. That is what bonded us so tightly, and although it could have been lost, it could never have been forgotten.

"I'll always come home to you," he murmurs when we've resettled ourselves. As much of a ceremony as there will ever be between us.

"I love you, Jack." Is it because of death that the words come easier? Or because I have no fear of what may come to pass with my speaking them? I don't know.

"Love you, Sam," he echoes, his mouth brushing past my cheek as he curls around me again.

My fingers lie heavy on the muscles of his thigh, and the heat of his body sears my skin where we touch. The scent of belonging - marked, this time, by intimate passion - clings heavily to the air around us. *Mine.* *His.*

*Ours.*

I lay my head against his shoulder and close my eyes, listening to the sound of his breathing, a steady rhythm that lulls us both into darkness.

Death reclaims me.

·

I wake up in my bed with a jolt.

She was here.

There's the scent of her all over me, all through the sheets.

I switch on the light and look wildly around. No. She's not here.

Sam's not here.

Sam's dead.

I dreamed it. So desperate to have her just once, that I dreamed her here, in my bed, in my arms.

The loss folds in on me again, closing in on me like a prison.

Six years of her life, as her friend and CO, and I don't know that she ever knew how much she meant to me. I never told her, trusting that she knew. Trusting that although we couldn't cross that line, that someday there would be a time when we could - when the lines no longer mattered.

Stupid, Jack. Stupid and short-sighted! Everything else you loved has been taken from you - why not her as well? You should have seized the moment. Spent the coin while you had it, not saved it for the rainy day that would never come.

Recriminations lock around me, one by one; bitter, brutal chains that jangle against my soul. Memories of moments when I could have said something, done something. When we should have spoken and taken what that brief moment offered, even if it was stolen from the usual order of the world.

My fists clench, and as they do, my left hand feels the gentle press of something against the fingers and palm. Slowly, disbelievingly, I open my fingers and stare at the hand.

A gold wedding band gleams on my ring finger.

I haven't worn a ring there in years.

Plain gold, perfectly fitted; no circle of paler skin beneath it - it's new to my finger.

I take it off and look at it.

Inside the curve of the band are eight little inscriptions, evenly spaced. Six chevrons, a letter, and a dot to mark the start and end of the sequence. It's the Stargate address for Earth - the way home. But there is no chevron for the point of origin. Instead, the character there is an S.

*I will come home to you. Always.*

Sam.

She *was* here.

I made her a promise, and she made me one in return.

The ring slips back on my finger, fitting as snugly and comfortably as if it's been there for years. Perhaps it has.

*Remember this.*

I remember, Sam.

·

Feed me! Oh Feed me! SelDear@bigpond.com

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