He’s gone.
I can still smell him. A slight lingering scent of aftershave, the blood and fear of battle, the sweet smell of relief… all mixed with something that could only be described as the essence of Jack O’Neill.
Her husband. Gone. Never returning to her. The Asgard could only save those who had been dead less than twenty-four hours. Jack had been gone… too long.
She had to find the strength to go on alone. There was an entire planet to rebuild after the Goa’uld invasion, and she knew she would be needed more than ever. Somehow, though, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She absently supposed shock must be finally setting in.
Her quarters inside the main base for the SGA remained miraculously intact, a fact for which she was immensely grateful. She knew she couldn’t go back home yet and face the memories there. At least her quarters were all hers; her own private retreat from everyone and everything, even Jack, when he came bugging her about some gismo or gadget he’d pilfered from her lab not working after he “fixed it”.
The thought brought out a small chuckle, but it quickly dissolved into bitter, desperate tears. She thought she’d wept her soul out already, and yet this fresh deluge seemed as strong as any before. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold it back at all. Great heaving sobs wracked her body for what seemed an eternity. She thought she might very well never stop crying.
At that darkest moment, that moment when you know you will either break completely and permanently, or find that elusive strength to pick up the pieces of what’s left of your life and go on, when she cried out for him. She was met with only silence.
Then, she felt something… a touch, on her shoulder. She rolled around on the tiny bunk, but she was still alone. Then she caught a whiff of… something…. Something that was unmistakably Jack O’Neill.
“Jack?” she whispered.
Still only silence. The tears continued to stream down her flushed and swollen cheeks, now softer, quieter sobs burbling past her lips. She pulled out their wedding photo once more. She had kept this shot in her lab until the attack. Some unknown instinct prompted her to take it with her when she and Kowalski decided to use the quantum mirror with or without Hammond’s blessing.
As she held it gingerly between two fingertips, her other hand gently traced the outline of the happy, laughing image of her husband. A fresh set of tears threatened to come tearing out of her once more, and she set the picture down on the nightstand, much like she had in that alternate universe, grabbed herself a pillow, and curled up for another sleepless, tearful night.
As she had every night since the Asgard left, she dreamt only of Jack; Jack somehow miraculously returning to her. And every morning, she awoke to the cold reality of a lonely, empty bed. And the whole day would begin again. Rebuild, reinforce defenses, pretend not to be devastated that her husband was… gone.
She would never accept his death.
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