In all of ten years, her scent hadn't changed.
Aschenn advances in health and hygiene be damned - she was still using the same body soap, the same shampoo. And although the artificial aromas had waned in the hours it had taken her to come this far, they were still there, laced with the body scent of Sam Carter.
It wasn't a perfume - not quite.
But as she walked by him, nearly pushing by him, he caught the tang of her sweat, the bitter salt of her disappointment in him. Or maybe that was his own imagination conjuring up the impression of how he wanted her to feel - the same way he'd felt when his friends had deserted him. A part of him grumbled, reminding him how much he had trusted his team to back him up - and how little they had trusted his instincts. In the end he'd been vindicated.
His own bitterness rose in him, sour, like bile.
He'd been betrayed by his team - by his *friends* - the people he'd trusted above all others to put their trust in him.
He was betrayed by his own feelings.
They stirred even now as the scents around him were swept away on the fluttering breeze. Emotions he'd left behind, memories he'd put away, a life and a hope he'd never dared to contemplate because at first there'd been the Goa'uld to fight, then there'd been the Aschenn to prove wrong and then there'd been the other man in her life.
They'd never had a *relationship*. But they'd had hope - until that hope had been betrayed and the future as it might have been had dissolved into the past as it had been.
As she vanished down the hill, a creature of beauty and sunlight, he turned back to the house and went inside. He shut the door closed on Sam Carter and the people she represented: everyone Jack O'Neill had trusted to back him up and who had left him hanging out on a limb.
Carter, Daniel, Teal'c, Hammond. It was a litany in his mind - bitter shards of resentment and regret that sliced too deep when he thought of them and so were rarely faced.
Jack flung himself down on the couch, resentment simmering within him. An unidentified emotion pushed at his gut, making him squirm.
He'd been betrayed by his friends; left to look down a road that stretched endlessly ahead without dreams, without a future, without hope.
And again the emotion prodded him uncomfortably, twisting his mouth as he thought of her words. *I'm talking about the future of the human race.*
According to her words, the human race didn't *have* a future ahead of them. No parents, no children, no hope.
No hope.
In his mind, Jack replayed her walk away from him - again. He'd let her go because there was too much between them for him to call her back. Too much and not enough history.
She'd never looked back as she departed - Sam Carter to the core of her soul. Doubt would be banished, fear would be conquered, and heaven help anyone who got in her way until she saw her mission accomplished.
Sam would see it done.
Or she would die trying.
That much had been made clear from their conversation.
*Our chances are a lot better with you than without you.* Implied in her words was that she would go ahead and do it with or without his help - but she wanted his help.
And it had been a long time since anyone had wanted anything of Jack O'Neill.
In his memory her scent floated past him and the emotion he hadn't been able to identify bit deeply into him with sharp fangs.
Guilt.
The discovery was unwelcome. Jack launched himself from the couch in a furious lunge. He pulled a beer from the fridge, twisted the cap off, and drank angrily.
*I'm not the one at fault! I told them that the Aschenn couldn't be trusted! I told them...*
They hadn't laughed at his theories - Daniel at least appreciated what it meant to believe something nobody else believed and the other two were too polite - and too close to him - to just write him off as whacko. In a way it would have been easier to take than the earnest but disbelieving arguments they put forward. Easier than the slow severing of the bonds between them, torn between what they thought was best for Earth and what he thought was the best for Earth.
In the end, he had challenged them, asked for their trust that he was right. It had been a plea which was ultimately ignored.
Daniel had shut his eyes as if the request was too heavy to be borne, weighing up the Aschenn's lies against his friend's pleas. And when he opened his eyes, Jack saw the lies had won and the friend who had believed so fervently in the truth had been lost to him forever. Daniel walked away from Jack.
Teal'c had merely said, "I am sorry, O'Neill." And he had left. He had hesitated by Jack's shoulder on his way out, almost as if he would have put a hand out in friendship and camaraderie but read in Jack's face no desire for any kind of sympathy and passed on by.
And Carter...Carter had stood there the longest, struggling the hardest. The links which bound them were more than just their work on SG-1 - or so Jack had believed. Their shared training and from that the implicit trust between them as CO and 2IC over the years linked them on different levels than Daniel and Teal'c. And the uncertain, unmentioned *thing* between them; once admitted, never thereafter referred to.
"Sir...the Aschenn...I *have* to believe they're what can help us. Since Anubis arrived on the scene..." She saw his face and trailed off helplessly. "I'm sorry."
"So am I." And Jack walked away from her because he wasn't sure he could stand to watch her walk out of his life.
She didn't call him back.
And so the bonds which bound them were severed and the time of SG-1 passed into history.
*They* had refused to believe *him*. So why the guilt?
*Because they're still your team.*
No. They *weren't.* They'd rejected him, they hadn't trusted him.
*They trust you now.*
Only because everyone else trusted the Aschenn.
*And if you don't help them, if you leave things the way they are...*
He'd be happy.
*Really? So, you haven't spent the last six years holed up here watching the world go by and wishing things had been different? What if they could be different? What if she's right - she has a fairly good history of it, remember? - and they can change what happened?*
*Life isn't about 'what if',* Jack snarled, *It's about 'what is'! Then what is turned out to not be what they wanted so they just want to flip the clock back again and erase all mistakes - and boy, they don't want to do it by halves!* The anger and bitterness of years poured out of him as he flung the beer bottle into the fireplace, just to hear it break. The noise cut through the sunlight and shattered the serenity of the afternoon, ending what had begun from the moment Jack looked up from his hands to see her standing before the shack.
And, in a peculiar way, it freed him. That one act of vehemence released the chains which had held him in stasis over the years and he made one of the lightning-fast decisions which had marked his career in the Air Force.
*If you let them go into this alone, Jack, without you - if you let them do this and they fail, you'll have an eternity of regret to mull over. Ten years was long enough. Eternity is longer.*
Leaving his team - *his* team - to do this alone would be a betrayal as great as the one they'd done him. And having lived the last ten years in bitterness and regret, Jack decided he didn't want to spend another ten years in regret and self-recrimination.
So Jack tidied up the bits and pieces of the last ten years. He wouldn't be back one way or the other.
He closed the door but didn't bother locking it - he had nothing worth stealing.
The past was history and the future was changeable.
Jack was going back to help his friends.
SG-1 would ride again.
And they would win.
* * *
feed me! Oh feeeeeed me! SelDear@bigpond.com
Story Notes: DISCLAIMER: (To the tune and rhythm of "His eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad..." - for my sister Louisa!)
These characters don't belong to this fic-writer,
And this line of writing don't pay;
I wish they were mine - they're really divine,
To archive, please ask me, okay?
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Inspiration for this came from the scene where Sam goes to see Jack up at his cabin, she pleads, he refuses, she leaves. She passes by him as she leaves and he turns to watch her go - and I thought of the evocation of memories that a scent can bring. This touches on the Sam-Jack relationship, but is ultimately non-shippy.
SPOILERS: 'Divide and Conquer', '2010',
These characters don't belong to this fic-writer,
And this line of writing don't pay;
I wish they were mine - they're really divine,
To archive, please ask me, okay?
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Inspiration for this came from the scene where Sam goes to see Jack up at his cabin, she pleads, he refuses, she leaves. She passes by him as she leaves and he turns to watch her go - and I thought of the evocation of memories that a scent can bring. This touches on the Sam-Jack relationship, but is ultimately non-shippy.
SPOILERS: 'Divide and Conquer', '2010',
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]