Endings
Endings
by Vanessa Nichols
TITLE: Endings
AUTHOR: Vanessa Nichols
EMAIL:Nessi_Anne@Yahoo.Com (Please tell me *which* story you are replying to. Thanks.)
CATEGORY: SJR, Angst, Future Story
SPOILERS:
SEASON / SEQUEL: "Reality" Trilogy - 1. All Good Things by Vanessa Nichols; 2. Endings by Vanessa Nichols; 3. The Final Beginning by Vanessa Nichols.
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNINGS: Slight Profanity, Ref to Character Death
SUMMARY: When hope comes full circle... and ends.
STATUS: Complete
ARCHIVE: Heliopolis yes. All others, please ask first.
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters and places are the property of MGM, World Gekko Corp and Double Secret Productions. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment not monetary purposes and no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. Previously unrecognised characters and places, and this story, are copyrighted to the author. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hmm... what to say? After the sappy-sweet-happily-ever-after of "Twelve Years" I just had to create a little angst and Jack-emotional-whumping seemed the best forum to do so. :) Feedback will, more than likely, create a happily-ever-after for this story so be sure to send some. Dedicated to Alli, 'cause she's making me retalliate. :)
Copyright Vanessa Nichols; November, 1999
Funny how things end, when you think about it.
In the movies it's always so dramatic, or melodramatic as the case may be... lovers, families, friends all torn apart by death or a forced separation of some kind. The audience leaves feeling saddened by that emotional climax and the knowledge that the 'people' on the screen will now have to live on without their partner's by their side...
I've had my fair share of 'endings' in my life. My son dying, my wife leaving me... two pretty dramatic endings when you look at them; though I suppose the latter could have been considered inevitable after the former.
As for more recently, I guess I'd have to say that the demise of my SG1 team is at the top of the 'endings' list. You know, I always thought that I'd be the first to go from SG1. I figured that one day I'd simply bite the bullet and be gone, nothing more needing to be said. After two retirements, it seemed unlikely that I'd ever approach a third.
Of course, reality never seems to live up to my expectations. That much, at least, has been well proven over the years.
Teal'c went first--god damn I miss that guy. He was such a good friend, you know? And for him to die in a *car* *accident*... the mind whirls. He was a warrior through and through and warrior's *don't* die in car accidents, it just doesn't happen that way. Except in reality, of course.
And then Daniel leaving--another guy I miss like crazy. Oh sure, LC and I still see him now and then; tomorrow, in fact, is the next date on the calendar. But still, even without the corresponding Goa'uld, he's a Tok'ra now and the visits are few and far between. To be honest, I never really thought he'd find Sha're and rescue her. Hell, after the first couple of missions I began to doubt ever rescuing Skaara again as well. But... that's Danny-boy for you, always ready to prove you wrong at the last possible moment.
But did SG1 end there? Really? In some ways, I guess it did. Yeah, LC and I were still on the team and doing our stuff but our uniqueness, Danny and Teal'c, they were gone.
From the very beginning we were the only team to ever employ non-military members. Other's would regard it as a disadvantage, and sometimes I guess I might have thought so too, but by the end of the day I saw it not as a drawback but more as our calling card. We were *special*. We were the one and only human/alien, military/civilian team in the *universe* and it enabled us to accomplish things that no other team has been able to do. We could gate to a planet and within seconds have an analysis going as to standard military threats, alien threats, cultural indications, and scientific evidence.
We were the best, and deep down we all knew it. When Danny and Teal'c left... well, to be honest, LC and I simply became a team. We were SG1, yes, but we weren't the *best* any more, we weren't *unique*. I never thought that in all my years as an officer in the military, I'd one day regret the day that my team became one-hundred-percent military. My old drill-sergeant would roll over in his grave if he heard me say that, but it's true.
Ah, nostalgia. Hits you where it hurts *every* time without fail I've discovered over the years.
So SG1, the original SG1 that is, ended when Danny left with his wife. Strangely enough, I always figured the archaeologist would leave the team over some dig or rock... never thought the geek had it in him to flit off with a woman... then again, that 'woman' *was*--and *is*--his wife.
SG1 Take Two, the 'training unit', began after Danny left. LC and I really had no choice in the matter when it all came down to it--there was no way a two man team could be justified, and possible team mates that we could envisage joining us like Ferretti or Castleman were already in command of teams of their own. In the end, turning us into a training unit was the most beneficial utilisation of our skills.
I have to admit though, that year that LC and I spent training our disciples was as fun as we could make it. After three and a half years of being the team that went everywhere first and encountered race after race--and enemy after enemy--it was kinda nice to be able to kick back and simply 'play'.
Every month LC and I would receive two new grunts--some of them so young that I wondered if they'd done basic training whilst in diapers. We'd take them through the Stargate a couple of times--inoculating them against weak stomachs and numbness from the cold--then we'd take them on a couple of missions. First to planets with no civilisations so we could make sure they knew how to study their surroundings, then to planets with races we'd already met and befriended so we could see how they interacted with other civilisations, and finally on a mission to a planet that hadn't been explored before. On all occasions, LC and I would play second fiddle to the grunts, making them take charge and lead the missions.
LC also had this thing where the grunts had to be able to power and use the Stargate without a DHD and I liked them to know where other teams were headed in case they needed to rendezvous with another team and use their iris remote to get home again... plus we had about a hundred other things on our 'things to know and do' list that the original SG1 had had to know or do in the past.
But don't get me wrong, it wasn't all work. As I said before, these missions were fun... at least, for LC and I they were. At night, after we'd supervised the grunts setting up camp and monitoring the perimeter, LC and I would kick back and just enjoy ourselves. And then there was the comic relief instances, where one of the grunts would stuff up--accidentally of course--and send us into gales of laughter.
But... even that had to end. LC shattered her leg, putting her on base for six months and when she finally returned to SG1, it was only for a couple of missions before I transferred out to help SG3. By the time I returned, LC was off to the Asgard homeworld, Othala, and we wouldn't see each other for three months. When she returned to Earth, it was straight into the lab's and she never did return to SG1, at least, not full time. As for my own ending on SG1, well, that came eventually--my promotion to General coinciding with my transfer from SG1 CO to SG*C* CO.
I always swore I'd never take a desk job, and for one very good reason--I hate paperwork. Unfortunately, I had little choice--the only other contenders in line for General Hammond's job were Colonel Maybourne and Colonel Samuels and there wasn't a chance in hell I'd let myself work for either of them. Paperwork was the lesser of three evils... by a *long* shot. Of course, there was *one* advantage to running the Base... I got to run it with LC.
LC.
She hates that nickname, I know, but ever since her promotion I've found myself unable to resist the bastardisation of her new rank. It suits her--short and sweet, straight to the point yet also an enigma. Of course, until the 'training' missions, I'd never have thought to refer to her like that. Hell, up until then, I didn't even *know* her.
Seems strange to say that, I know. You'd think that after three and a half years we would have known each other inside and out... but we didn't. LC and I had always socialised, yes, but on a casual basis and always with a group. The only instance I can ever think of when she confided in me, and me alone, was when she told me about her former fiance, Captain Jonas Hanson.
That year of training missions... I got to know her, I really did. At night, when our grunts were doing their nightly mission routines, we'd sit around the campfire or go for a walk, and we'd talk and talk and talk... Not only did I learn about her, but I let her get to know me as well. We'd always been friends, but... I don't know. For instance, did you know that LC was a republican? I didn't. I always figured she'd be more of a democrat but... that's LC, always an enigma. Those conversations... it was like I got to know her, *really* know her, and to become friends with her all over again. I told her stuff about me that I'd never told anyone before, and I know she did the same.
I think it was that whole 'loss of Danny and Teal'c from the team' thing that really did it. Right after Teal'c's death Danny, LC and I, well, we all went pretty haywire--got real dependant on each other. In that first week of downtime together she and I must have fucked each other mentally a thousand times over, the two of us moving closer and closer to that point of no return. If she hadn't turned and left we would have crossed that line and gone from mental to physical in a heartbeat.
I never thanked her for leaving that day. It was about the only ending in my life that I have ever truly appreciated. If we'd crossed that line back then... hell, I would have regretted it. I would have regretted it because we didn't know each other, because we were only trying to feel alive, because we were trying to replace loss with a physical substitute, and more importantly... because it wouldn't have meant anything.
But by the time Daniel had left, and our training missions had started, we'd moved past that. Completely. I can still remember how that first conversation started... that first conversation that allowed us to move past the well-worn roles of CO and 2IC...
And it started because of a mud fight.
Our first pair of grunts, our third training mission. It had just rained on the planet we'd gated to and the world was still dripping when we started 'exploring'. One of the grunts, Lewis I think his name was, had tripped and fallen into a mud puddle, knocking LC off her feet as he went down. Standing beside the puddle I'd started laughing--unable to stop--as LC glared at me, splattered in mud. Of course, the next thing I knew, I was coughing up wet dirt as LC grinned. Peters, the second grunt, had quickly rescued Lewis but LC and I had begun an enthusiastic and *literally* dirty game of mock wrestling.
We should have been ashamed of ourselves, I know, especially when we finally stopped and found that Lewis and Peters had already set up camp. But for those fun filled minutes... hell--I've never laughed so much on a mission in my life. Afterwards, both of us having washed in a nearby river, we'd sat by the fire and talked and chuckled well into the night. It was a good thing Lewis and Peters knew what they were doing because LC and I were useless for the rest of that mission. We recovered from that bout of madness, naturally, but our nightly conversations had begun.
I think that was what I missed most after she broke her leg. Another 'ending' had begun and those eleven months of 'talk' had suddenly disappeared. We still saw each other, yes, and we still talked, but that had migrated into the occasional chat. She was always working in the labs or I was out on missions... that close partnership we'd orchestrated had dissipated in intensity and I missed it. For two brief months it returned but then I was shipped over to SG3 to take Makepeace's place and by the time I returned she'd left for that Asgard exchange programme.
If I had missed her when she was off duty with a busted leg then I sure as hell missed her when she was off with the Asgard's. Suddenly there wasn't even the opportunity to talk to her. We communicated once or twice during those three months, both times the 'conversations' taking place during correspondence from our Base to hers. Deep and meaningful conversation topics weren't exactly an available instance. Some nights though, I have to admit, I would stare at the stars with my telescope and even though I knew I wasn't even seeing the same stars that she was, I'd pretend that she could hear me and I'd whisper a one way 'talk' with her.
Reality, however, has a way of coming full circle and sometimes those circles--despite the curve-balls they have a tendency to throw--can actually be a good thing.
LC had married Simmons after Daniel left--a weird match in my eyes if truth be told but they seemed happy together. I never did quite see what she saw in him but by the same token, he initially did right by her and so I never saw any reason to dislike him. That is, until she was with the Asgard's.
I found out about the affair before anyone else but then, that wasn't too surprising. After they'd married they'd moved to a neighbourhood about a block away from my place and one night I'd been out jogging and I'd seen him with some other woman. I'd been furious--how could he do that to LC? Of all people, how could he do it to her? Even now, months on, I'm still not over my intense dislike of the man nor am I ashamed of my actions. If I hadn't restrained myself he would've gotten a lot more than a broken nose and dislocated shoulder from me when I discovered that it wasn't a 'kissing-cousin' or some such excuse.
Simmons had told her all of about thirty seconds after she got back, no doubt cowering from my threats that if he didn't tell her, I sure as hell would. When she rocked up on my doorstep that night, I'd been overjoyed to see her but slightly surprised. After all, it had been three months since I'd seen her and even longer since we'd sat and 'talked'.
It hadn't taken long for her to realise that I'd known that Simmons had been having an affair and that's when *I* had gotten it. For not telling her, for hitting her husband... she wasn't impressed to say the least. But like I said, full circle, and we'd talked through the night and well into the morning. When we eventually paused for sleep, I took the couch; and when we awoke we continued talking like we hadn't stopped--for the night, for all those months.
It was like those training missions all over again, us talking about anything and everything... I realised then and there that I was in love with her and that I never wanted those conversations to stop again. Ever.
Of course, reality's a bitch and endings in my life are seemingly inevitable.
By the time I'd left SG1 and joined the ranks of pencil pushers in the Base, our nightly conversations at either her place or my place had faded away. We saw each other every day at work--our office's only a couple of door's apart--and I guess we both thought that everything that couldn't be said in the office had already been said. For awhile we had lunch each day, the occasional dinner, but even that gradually dissipated.
There was a comfort factor that had entered our lives, the knowledge that every day we'd see each other without fail, and that if we ever needed to talk, the other would be there. But by the same token, we got to the stage where we never did need to go and talk. Some say that familiarity breeds contempt, I say it breeds complacency.
I was--am--still in love with her; my feelings carefully hidden. After all, I *know* her, and although she cares for me deeply, I know that it's not to the same depth of feeling that I have towards her.
But still the circle turns, and yet another ending is always on the horizon.
Tonight she showed up on my doorstep, out of the blue for the most part, but it was one of those surprises that you never knew how much you wanted until you got it. I'd let her in, and we'd made and ate dinner together, and then afterwards we'd gone out to my telescope where we had stared at the stars and talked. Give us a campfire and it would've been history all over again.
She'd been thinking, she told me quietly after awhile, about how SG1 was gone; about Teal'c and Daniel and Janet and Cassie and Hammond and... hell, she'd been thinking about the past and she'd wondered when it had all ended. Joining her in the past, we'd mused for what seemed like eternity over our shared history.
And as she had smiled at me, talked with me, laughed with me... I thought the moment was perfect. I thought that right then and there, despite all the endings, that right then we could start a new beginning.
I asked her to marry me.
No roses, no ring. No champagne or kisses. It was perhaps the most unromantical thing I'd ever done in my life when attempting a romance and I'd held my breath like an adolescent geek asking a cheerleader to the prom.
She laughed and told me 'sure, I'll marry you'.
I almost blacked out.
And then she realised that I was serious.
I don't know what I should have done. Not asking her was pretty high on the list, closely followed by refuting her whispered 'you're serious'. But I didn't say anything, I just sat there, listening as she babbled incoherently for a moment that she was flattered, and that she loved me... but not in the whole 'marriage-eternity-forever-and-ever' type of way.
I recovered, silencing her words, and telling her that it was ok, that she 'couldn't blame an old guy for trying his hand with a pretty lady'. She'd smiled then, nervously, but in an instant our conversations had ended.
Again.
Perhaps forever?
Tomorrow we leave for a rendezvous with the Tok'ra. LC and I are going with SG1, naturally, and it's been on the calendar for weeks now. Up until tonight I'd been ecstatic, a chance to see Daniel and Sha're and 'Dad'--LC's father--and all the rest of the gang... and a chance to sit by a campfire with LC. Now, however...
It's not like she suddenly upped and left after that; we'd kept talking and drinking our beers, and *eventually* she'd left. But there's a strain of awkwardness now that wasn't there a couple of hours ago. I've unwillingly placed a new spin on our relationship and the circle is all but turning wildly. I just hope that when it stops, we'll still be able to eventually progress back to that point of closeness, that point of 'talk'.
Everything ends, I know that fact well. My son, my wife, SG1... everything ends eventually. Some dramatically, some melodramatically, some just from evolution--change. I just hope that LC and I haven't ended, because after everything we've been through, after everything we've become in relation to each other...
I always kinda figured that one day we'd eventually get together, LC and I. But what can I say? Reality's a bitch, endings are inevitable... and I guess 'hope' has finally run its course on the circle.
Kind of a let down, huh?
The End.
Mwahahaha... hope you enjoyed it! Remember: enough feedback will induce sequel tendencies. :)
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Vanessa Nichols
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