"Get to the Gate," he said.
"No," she cried.
"Go," he said with his last breath, his eyes locked on her willing her to go, to survive, to live.
Jon grabbed her, pulled her up, ran with her through the Gate. Daniel lay on the other side. His left leg was severed just below the knee and blood gushed from the stump. "Daniel!" she cried falling at his side.
"Go," he told her. "Get to the Gate."
"No," she said.
"Go," he said again with his last breath, his eyes locked on her willing her to go, to survive, to live.
Jon grabbed her, pulled her up, and ran with her through the Gate. Cam was walking away on the other side.
"Cam," she called after him.
"Carter, get a life," he answered without even turning around.
Jon laughed beside her. "Well, that's a fine howdy-do," he said.
"What?" she asked.
"Don't worry about it. How about some cake?"
"I...I don't know," she stammered.
"What could it hurt?" he asked.
"All right, then," she said. "I'll take a piece." And the world blew up around them.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
She'd never been good at lying and found she was even worse at lying to little boys with deep brown eyes. But she didn't let that stop her. 'Sorry, I don't have time today.' "Sorry, I've some things I just have to get done.' "Sorry, I'm breaking your little hearts, but I can't take the risk spending time with you carries with it.' 'Sorry, I'm terrified I'm falling in love with your Dad and that's why I'm avoiding spending any more time with you than absolutely necessary.' Because spending time with them was necessary. Necessary because she couldn't turn her back on them and hurt them any more than she already was. And necessary because they were all that was keeping her from disappearing.
So she kept the time she spent with them to the barest minimum and wept with relief when the Boys' Home (Cool name, huh, Maggie? Get it? It used to be the Fisherman's Dream but after I was born Dad said no way any fisherman would dream of staying on a boat with all us noisy boys scaring the fish away, so...cool, huh?) set off on its next voyage.
What had she been thinking going over there, spending time with him? No, he wasn't Jack, but he was so many of the things she'd loved about Jack. He was in essence Jack without the bitter core, without the hardness, without thirty plus years of medals pinned to his chest and all that they'd cost burned into his soul, without the guilt of Charlie's death. How could she have loved Jack and been fool enough to believe she could spend an afternoon on Jon's boat without falling in love with him? So what she'd done her best not to talk to him? She and Jack had never needed words either.
Jack. A year later and his loss was still a gaping, bleeding wound. She missed him, oh, she missed him. How could she be falling in love with Jon missing Jack so badly? And what did that make her, falling in love with his counterpart?
If she'd truly loved him (and in spite of her best effort and in spite of all the years she'd fought it, she had truly loved him) wouldn't loving this man who was so not him be...what? Sick, perverse. When he held her in the dark, who would she dream was holding her? A dead man? How would Jon feel if he ever learned of Jack? Wouldn't he always wonder if she would have loved him if not for all those years of loving Jack? Or if she really truly loved him, Jon O'Neill, at all, or just the man he reminded her of?
And what if she couldn't be sure of that herself?
And more than that. Horribly more than that, if she grew to love Jon too much, if she'd choose life with him and his boys on that boat over the chance to right the timeline, wouldn't she knowingly, willingly be letting Jack die? As long as she lived and carried in her the knowledge that this timeline was wrong, as long there was the remotest possibility it might one day be restored and he might live, didn't she owe him that? Wouldn't doing otherwise be in a sense murder?
Because to her, he was out there somewhere very much alive. MIA not KIA. That perceived difference (and perceived it was for she had knelt at his side and watched him die) was a very real problem with her loving Jon. (Or anyone new for that matter.) It was the difference between starting over and betraying their love; the difference between widowhood and adultery.
~*~*~*~*~
"Carter. What are you doing here?" he'd asked in surprise when she'd shown up at his office in the Pentagon. "Aren't you supposed to be heading offworld in-" he checked his watch, "fifteen minutes?"
"I can't do this anymore, Sir," she'd said, and he'd frowned at the desperation in her voice.
"Do what?"
"This," she had answered motioning in the air between them. He'd wrinkled his face in incomprehension. "This three or four feet we always have between us...this distance."
His eyes had widened with awakening understanding. "Ahh," he'd said. " So what would it take to bridge that distance, Carter? And are you sure that's what you want?"
"I don't know, Sir. I just can't do this anymore. I'll resign if that's what you want."
He had taken three steps and closed the distance between them. "That's not what I want--I'll handle the paperwork. I'm wondering more on a diamond or just a band...and what size are we talking about anyway?"
And after all the struggling and denial, it really had been that easy. (Being on a first name basis with the commander-in-chief had its benefits.) Though they'd been asked to keep things quiet, getting the go-ahead hadn't been all that difficult. Distance had continued to be a problem with her either offworld or under the Mountain and him in Washington most of the time, but 1500 miles had proven to be easier to bridge than those few feet that had always separated them before.
~*~*~*~*~
Nothing could bridge the distance between them now; she would go on missing him for the rest of her life. She'd spent the past year trying to figure out a way to get back to him. But he remained both dead to her and erased from time. Would falling in love with Jon really be a betrayal of her love for Jack or simply a continuation? He'd ordered them to the Gate because he had wanted them to go on living after him, not so they would be trapped in the moment of his death for the rest of their lives.
Oh, where was Teal'c when she needed him? He would see through all of her confusion and give her a clear, simplistic answer to cling to. But he was as gone from her life as Jack.
She called Cam.
"I don't know what you want me to tell you. You do what you've got to do," he'd said and hung up. Their inability to act had first embittered him and then...what? Defeated him? Or set him free? She didn't know. He'd stopped railing against their fate, embraced this life, and made a place for himself in it. But she couldn't really believe he'd given up. If the chance ever came, surely he'd be in line right behind her and Daniel to grab it. She could count on that, but until then--Carter, get a life.
He'd washed his hands of her and Daniel. Not that she blamed him. He'd been the mission commander and they were reminders he'd failed (in a spectacular way, through no fault of his own) to bring them home safely. They were a weight he couldn't bear, a responsibility he could never fulfill.
Not to mention they were a mess, both of them.
"So, you haven't disappeared yet." Daniel at his worst. Bitter and angry, striking out. She shouldn't have called.
"No..."
"Still thinking about it?"
"Feeling," she corrected. "I try not to think about it."
"He's dead, S-" he cut off the end of her forbidden name before he went on, "he can't order you not to think too much anymore."
"Daniel, please don't."
"I'm just saying it's an idea worth thinking about. I'm thinking about it a lot lately. Today. Just now when you called in fact." She'd been wrong. She should have called. Today and every day. She should never have left him on his own. Only, they'd given her no choice; too many calls and there'd be trouble to pay. Too many letters, emails, or cards and they'd lose the chance at any contact at all.
His voice now devoid of any emotion, he went on, "Maybe Cam's right. Maybe we should give it up, settle in, get married, have a houseful of kids." She knew what he was saying. If they could do that, they could admit defeat, give up, and die because there was no reason for them to hold themselves together anymore. All hope was lost. They could disappear forever.
And being with Jon would do the same thing. It would mean she'd given up on their world, Jack, and Daniel as well. What had she come to that she could even think it? And how, once started, did she stop?
"It's not time for that, Daniel," she said and was surprised at how much she meant it. "Leave it awhile."
"Haven't we waited long enough? I'm sorry I said it, but it's true. He's dead; everyone's dead. We can't keep pretending otherwise. It's over. Kaput. Finished."
"No," she pleaded with him. "It's not."
"What if it is?"
"Even if it is, we're not."
"Oh? And just what have you done to prove you're not dead already? Maybe you have already disappeared and don't even know it."
She hesitated. She'd called to tell him; whether to beg his counsel or his forgiveness she wasn't sure. But, now...he was already contemplating the ultimate disappearing act, how could she tell him now?
"Well? I'm waiting." Waiting for her to give him permission. But he had to know she never would. Not until she herself was already forever gone.
She couldn't, wouldn't be giving him the go-ahead, not today. Instead, almost defiantly, she said, "I've spent an afternoon on a houseboat."
That answer was unexpected enough it took him a moment to respond. When he did she knew she'd managed to stir his curiosity. "A houseboat, you say?"
"Yeah. I want you to come to Minnesota...come be with me. I'll cross the T's and dot the I's to get it all okayed and arranged."
He ignored her suggestion and asked, "What were you doing on a houseboat?"
"Will you come?"
"Will you just answer the question?"
"I was," she meant to say 'visiting' but instead she said, "falling in love."
"Oh," he said after a stunned moment of silence. And then, he laughed and sounding like the old Daniel said, "Missed my chance again, didn't I?"
"I'll throw him over for you...just come, all right?"
"I'm not coming to Minnesota," he said. "But I'll make you a deal, you do what I said: settle down, marry this guy, and have a houseful of kids, and I'll stick around to see how it all turns out. Cross my heart and hope to die and all that."
"He already has a boatful of kids; and, Daniel, I already married him."
"What? My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail."
"You were there."
"You-you're not serious," he said, his voice low and desperate. Cam had hardly reacted at all when she'd told him she'd met Jack's counterpart, but Daniel...he was as stricken as she was herself. He understood her turmoil without her having to say another word.
"I am, that's why I need you to come. I can't do this. Tell me what to do, Daniel." She was begging, almost sobbing into the phone. Cam would have told her to get a grip and hung up. Jack himself would have snarled, "For crying out loud, knock that off!" but then he would have said, "Come here" and held her while she cried.
Daniel swallowed hard into the phone and said, "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm so sorry," for once not caring whether their handlers were listening and waiting for them to break the rules. And then he waited in silence while she fought for control before asking, "Where's he in all of this? You haven't--he doesn't know?"
"No, no, he doesn't know anything. And maybe he won't ever love me...I don't know-"
"Listen, if it's him, he'll love you, any world, every world. You can bank on that."
"Well, he doesn't yet--he hardly knows me."
"Then you have to decide now what you want to do or get out of there. Come here. Until you know what to do."
And so, she went to Chicago. What choice did she have?
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
Although the agreements they had been forced to sign had made allowances for them to occasionally see each other, jumping through the hoops to do so had required more motivation and energy than she had been able to dredge up before. Or maybe she had just assumed it would. Because given a choice between facing her quagmire alone in Minnesota or with Daniel in Chicago, she managed to wade through the necessary paperwork and interviews within the week.
From his apartment window, Daniel watched her pull up in a small, nondescript, practical car which doubtlessly had an impressive MPG but probably couldn't pull seventy on the steeper hills. It was not the car for Sam. But, then it wasn't Sam Carter he was watching slowly climb out of the car and trudge around to pull out an overnight bag. It was Maggie Clark, and he felt the cold burn of anger rush through him at the sight of her.
How dare they turn Sam who'd lit up every room she'd ever entered into this beaten down, ordinary woman? And how dare she let them? He willed her to look around with even a hint of interest or to at least glance up and see him standing there watching her. But, she didn't.
He shuffled out into the hallway to meet her on her way up, and it didn't help still the anger burning within him when she arrived via the elevator instead of the stairs. It was only one measly flight of stairs up; since when did she take the elevator for one measly flight of stairs?
"What's wrong with the stairs?" he grumbled at her before she'd even exited the elevator.
The smile that had begun to light her face faded at his words and tone. He scowled at her waiting for her to blush and apologize, to tacitly acknowledge that she had allowed them to defeat her. Instead, she met his frown with one of her own. "It smells like something died in the stairwell if you must know," she said. "I didn't want to run into whatever it was."
"Oh," he said his anger dying away at the sound of her voice.
"It's good to see you, Daniel," she said. He couldn't answer because where a moment before he'd seen only Maggie Clark he now could only see Sam and he'd been missing her far too long. "It's been too long," she said echoing his thought. She reached out to hug him and he pulled her into his embrace.
"It's good to see you, too, Sam," he said and was surprised at how true his words were.
~*~*~*~*~*
Daniel's apartment was as empty as her cabin; his life as empty as hers. But she'd known that hadn't she? Separated from each other, stripped of everything that had given them meaning and purpose, captive to a world that held nothing for them but bitter reminders of all they had lost, living with the knowledge that they'd failed their own world--what was left for them to fill their lives with?
There was in the corner of his living room/bedroom, under an ever growing pile of dust, a stack of archeological magazines that matched the pile of scientific journals lurking somewhere beneath the junk mail on top of her kitchen table back at the cabin. Sad testimonies of their feeble efforts to not lose the people they had been.
But they had. Who could have believed that SG-1 would end like this? "There's always a Plan B," Jack had insisted and even though she'd shaken her head and said, "Not this time, Sir," there always had been. Until there wasn't.
Until there wasn't because there no longer ever had been.
~*~*~
'If you lived in this timeline...' Landry had said and what argument could they give against the truth of his statement?
Malikai had stated with all the certainty of his obsession, "It doesn't matter," when they'd told him of the harm he was doing to world after world. And they'd condemned him for it. Teal'c had blasted away his own alternate in a doomed timeline and calmly stated that theirs was the only reality of consequence. And the arrogance of that statement had left even Jack with a bad taste in his mouth.
So under Landry's gaze, she'd had to admit that regardless of Malikai's assertion that it didn't matter, it did. It had been the last thing she had wanted to admit, the last thing she had wanted to act upon, but she was an Air Force officer charged with acting and living with integrity.* Integrity, the act of doing what is right regardless of the consequences. She'd admitted those other lives mattered because it was the right thing to do; but she couldn't live with the consequences.
Because the price of that admission had been their world. She'd sacrificed the countless lives of her own timeline for those of this altered reality. Countless lives that had mattered every bit as much as those others ones. Lives that it had been her job to serve and to protect.
She'd stood before the flag and pledged her loyalty to her country. Entered into an oath to faithfully discharge her duties as an officer of the United States Air Force:
I, Samantha Carter, having been appointed a colonel in the
United States Air Force do solemnly swear that I will support
and defend the Constitution of the United States against all
enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same,
that I take this obligation freely; without any mental reservation
or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge
the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter,
so help me God.
And then she'd gotten lost. Lost in time, lost in heart, and lost in soul. So lost she couldn't even reason within herself just where her allegiance rested. Did she owe it to the country which viewed her as a threat and in which she now lived as an outcast? Or the country from which she'd come...the one which she'd felt morally obligated to turn her back on in that airport hangar at McMurdo?
Did the fact it would not have made any difference to the outcome if she would had continued to fight tooth and nail release her from her oath? She couldn't have stormed the Mountain with nothing but her determination. Not even General Jack O'Neill if he would have made the transition with them could have fought the entire government and might of this nation. There had been nothing she could have done, but still it had been her duty to put the needs of her country before her own well being...had she done so when she'd given up fighting for a chance to right the timeline?
Could she say in all honestly that she had performed her duties well and faithfully? Or had she fallen down on the job, put self before service and betrayed the trust her nation had placed in her? Could she in good conscience embrace this world, accept that the old one was lost, give up the pretense of waiting and watching for a way to make everything right again?
She'd fled to Chicago because she couldn't face the thorny personal issue of loving a man who was and was not the man she'd pledged her life and love to, but in the emptiness of Daniel's life she was brought face to face with the larger issue that she'd been hiding from all along. No wonder she'd spent the last year seeking nothing but oblivion.
~*~*~*~*~*~
That first afternoon and evening they spent discussing very little of any import, as though what needed said could not safely be addressed directly but instead had to be approached carefully and circumspectly. They discussed her drive down (all right, bit windy, but all right), his apartment (bit small, but it was fine), his neighborhood (bit pricey, but it wasn't like he had anything else to spend his money on); they did not discuss the man she was running from or the one they'd left for dead in a time that no longer existed.
He eventually did get around to showing her the book. "Look at this," he said holding it out to her. She turned it over and over again in her hands. It was the book he'd had in him to write before he'd taken a trip to Abydos through the StarGate. The book the StarGate Program had made certain he never published. "Can you believe that picture?" he asked nodding at the back cover. "What a geek."
"Daniel!" she chided with a smile. The smile she'd perfected in this timeline...small, sometimes ironic, sometimes sad, but always a weak imitation of the real thing.
"Well, come on, you've can't tell me I look like that-"
"Weeelll," she said with a laugh that was no more the genuine article than the smile.
He frowned at her and asked something that had been bothering him since he'd found the book. "So you're dead--the you from here I mean, Cam never existed, but what about me? This geek and I are both running around and I'm not turning inside out."
"You mean, why aren't you experiencing Cascade Failure? Simple actually. Cascade Failure results from two separate realities intersecting, jockeying for the same point in time and space. This isn't an alternate universe/reality/whatever you want to call it. This is our world. Turned upside down, altered, perverted; but ours. We belong here."
"And the Daniel Jackson in Egypt doesn't?" he asked.
"Look at him, Daniel...does he look like he belongs anywhere?" she said lightly holding up the book so he could see the picture.
It was later, lying side by side in the dark as they had on a hundred different worlds, he asked, "So this messed up world is our own? I don't get that. There are too many differences. More even than those we've seen in other realities."
"That doesn't matter. It may seem like a different universe, but it's ours. Only altered by changes made in time. This isn't a parallel universe where the StarGate Program never happened. It happened, we've lived it. Not alternate versions of us, but us. What we see all around us, Daniel...this world, it's our world. The changes we see are the direct results of a military strike against the forces fighting Baal. Somehow or another, he went back in time and struck at us where he knew we couldn't stop him."
"But, it all boils down to the same thing, doesn't it?" he asked. "We've got two different realities going on--the one we left and this one."
"No. Not at all. That's true with parallel universes; there are multiple realities going on at all times. But, with this--we didn't leave our old reality behind. It's gone, wiped out, forever lost unless we find a way to undo what he did."
"Vanished," he said in too quiet of a voice.
"Yes."
After a few minutes of silence, he said, "OK. Let's say I understand there is a difference, it doesn't really change things for us does it? Either way we'd still need to get to the StarGate and find a way to put things right?"
"No," she said again. "With our situation, we do...just like the second SG-1 that went back to Giza to undo--or attempt to anyway--what the first team had screwed up. But in an alternate reality, there'd be no putting things right again--unless we started messing around with time there, too. All we could really do would be try to influence the course of events happening while we were there...we might alter the future but the past would remain unchanged. Like when the other Carter and Kawalsky came over from their reality? We helped them contact the Asgard in their universe and put up a defense against the Goa'uld, but the damage their Earth had already sustained wasn't wiped out."
"Gotcha...I guess I knew all that. It's just...it's just I'd like to think the people we knew--their lives were going on like before. I mean I know things would be different because of what has been changed, but I'd like to think they found a way to strike back at Baal..."
"That they're not waiting on us to save them," she wearily finished for him.
"Yeah."
"Me, too, Daniel. I wish it everyday, because I don't know how to save them...I think about it all the time. I know there has to be a way, but I can't find it."
"Maybe there isn't one. Maybe there isn't anything wrong with you going back to Minnesota and letting the man in that houseboat fall in love with you." He spoke carefully, avoiding speaking Jack's name. Because even after a year, they both found speaking the name of their dead much too difficult.
"Maybe that would be true if it all ended there, but the war isn't over, Daniel. Baal isn't done. He's coming and this timeline--they have nothing to stop him or even slow him down. Earth will provide him with a Jaffa army the likes of which the Goa'uld have never imagined. He'll enslave billions, and when they rebel (and they will) he'll destroy them. Landry was right, the lives in this timeline matter, but whether we go back and change them or not, they are lost."
"Then they'll get exactly what they asked for," he said, and the bitterness that had vanished in her presence now came storming back full force. "Because we're out of the battle, Sam. They've made us casualties of this war!"
"Not casualties, Daniel, prisoners. Our world is lost, theirs is dying, and they won't let us do a single thing to help! We're prisoners of war." Bitterness was his trademark response to the pain of their circumstances; depression hers. But, his bitterness was clearly echoed in her voice. He reached out his hand and found hers to offer what comfort he could.
He'd spent a lot of time trying to push her away since they'd been lost in time. His pain made him want to strike out and hurt someone, but not her--he'd done what he could to keep her out of harm's way. Her pain had left her both needy (something he could not reconcile to the Sam Carter he'd known over their years on SG-1) and empathetic (something that she'd always been to a degree though suffering had honed it to an all new level.)
He knew she felt his pain as her own, and knowing that made him hurt all the more which fed the bitterness which made him push her away harder than ever which hurt her more...and around and around they went in a cycle of hurt and pain that never ended. What was the old nursery rhyme? This is the house that Jack built. Only in this case, the house that Jack's death had built.
She broke into that train of thought and pulled him back to where he'd left her, "And the first duty of a prisoner is to escape." And there it is, he thought. The reason she's here, the crux of the matter. Could she admit there was no way to escape, no way to save either their world or this one, no way to keep Jack from dying? Could she stop fighting and live out whatever time they had left before Baal returned as though none of that mattered? Was it all right for her to reach for a little bit of happiness?
"Tell me about the boat," he said gently, carefully as though he were pulling a bandage off of a fresh wound because for all the theory they'd bandied around, he knew facing the empirical truth would be much more difficult for both of them.
"It's called The Boys' Home, appropriately enough."
"Meaning what exactly?"
"Meaning that boatload of kids I mentioned? They're all boys. Ten of them though three are grown and out on their own."
"So. Ten sons. I take it there's not a mom onboard?"
"Not anymore. She died. I don't know how."
"Sarah?"
"No. Well, maybe. But I don't think so. The boys don't look like they are hers."
"Whose then?"
"Jack's. They look like Jack's," she said with a hard and brittle voice. He knew it was only the bitterness still spewing out of her that made it possible for her to say that name.
"And...how is he?"
"Dead. He's dead, Daniel, just like you said." And now the bitterness gave way to sorrow. He turned to his side, pulled her to him, and held her close.
"All right," he said gently. "Then tell me about the captain of The Boys' Home."
"Jon. His name is Jon. And I can't do this, Daniel. Let's talk about something else."
"All right," he said again. "Did I tell you I called that guy--the geek who wrote my book?"
"No."
"I did. Not sure why. It didn't accomplish anything."
"Oh."
"Yeah. And then, after you called the other day? I made another call."
"To Egypt?"
"No, to the Academy Hospital in Colorado Springs...she wasn't there, had never been there."
"No," she said understanding immediately what he was saying just like he had known she would. "The Gate never made it to Cheyenne Mountain. There was no reason for her to be stationed there. She's at Walter Reed in D.C."
"You know that or you're guessing?"
"I know it."
"You've talked to her?"
"No. I looked her up online."
"Still, she's alive--I could go to her-"
"And be in the same spot I'm in. You don't want that. Don't do it!" He'd thought about it quite a bit since she'd told him she'd met the Jack of this timeline. He could be in the same boat so to speak. Only of course it wouldn't be exactly the same because he and Janet had only begun when she'd been killed while Jack and Sam...well, he wasn't sure there had been a time when they hadn't already begun.
"Sam, if we can't save the world--in either timeline--what's wrong with you being with him or me being with her?"
"Everything. Nothing. I don't know!" She wept then, hot, bitter tears that scorched his chest while he held her and she cried against him.
And though, they spent the rest of their allotted time rehashing and reexamining and talking the subject to death, they were as unable to resolve it as they were to get through the StarGate and save the world.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
The boys hit the shore before he'd finished mooring the boat. They'd been subdued, even melancholy at times, through most of the trip. But then so had he. Given their attachment to Maggie, their emotional state was only natural. But his? What call did he have to want nothing more than to leave the boat adrift and join his sons in their headlong rush to see her again? She was nothing to him. Well, time to quit deceiving yourself about that one, O'Neill. He was nothing to her. His name wouldn't be found on her list of friends; he was hardly even an acquaintance. But, she was definitely something to him.
Travis, joining the boys for the trip to shore in order to fetch their pile of mail before the post office closed for the day, shook his head at his eager brothers. "I can understand what you see in Maggie, but what does she see in the lot of you?" he joked.
The boys were too excited to even hear him, but it echoed too closely Jon's own insecurities. He couldn't think what he had to offer that would make Maggie Clark ever see anything in him. Unlike David, he didn't think just getting to know him would do the trick. He was too old for this nonsense...he was not going to make a fool of himself chasing after her.
Travis returned with both the mail and the boys before Jon had made much more than a start at the work.
"What's up?" Jon asked as he secured the dingy in its berth. David, too disappointed to trust his voice, shook his head and pushed past him in a rush to get to his bunk. Jon let him go. "I take it she's not home?" he asked Josh.
"No. We asked at the café. They say she's been gone a week or so all ready."
"Oh."
"Yeah. No one knows where she went."
Jon looked at the disappointed faces of his sons and said, "I doubt that. The folks in town may not, but it's not really their business, is it? Or ours. Maggie's a grown woman and quite able to take care of herself. It's hardly the end of the world that she's not home."
They didn't get the hint. "But, what if she doesn't come back? What if she packed up all her stuff and left for good?" Bryan asked.
"Without telling you all good by when you've been such good friends? That's pretty unlikely, don't you think? Instead of moping about, sort the mail for me, will ya? There's bound to be some bills in there that need paid if we're going to stay afloat."
Her note was there, mixed in with all the credit card offers and bills and reminders of appointments he'd already missed that Travis had carted home from the post office. It was short and said nothing more than they had already learned:
Dear Josh, David, Bryan, Zech, Alex, and Ty,
I've had to leave for a while. I didn't want you to worry
if you came back and I was gone. Tell Josh and Travis 'hi' for me.
Hope you had a great time on your voyage.
Your friend, Maggie.
"See?" Jon said trying not to mind he hadn't even rated a 'hi'. "She's fine...and obviously she plans on being back or she would have said something."
Ty, who had a stack of painstakingly written notes (Maggie, i miss yu. do yu mis me? Love, Ty) that he'd spent a large portion of the trip laboring over, said, "But she didn't even say she misses us."
Jon swung him to his shoulders. "That goes without saying, Ty. Of course she misses you!"
~*~*~*~*~*
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Endless Realities
by OffworlderKapitel Abschlussbemerkung:
* "The Air Force recognizes integrity first, service before self, and excellence as its core values. These are values every member must believe in, and more importantly, must live by." Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Eric W. Benken http://www.usafa.af.mil/core-value/Benken.htmlSite Navigation
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