always
I Will Always Love You
by Sherrill C. Martin
TITLE: I Will Always Love You
AUTHOR:Sherrill C. Martin
EMAIL: bosco4@gte.net
CATEGORY: Angst, romance
SPOILERS: None
SEASON / SEQUEL:
RATING:
CONTENT WARNINGS: This is a future story and some might not like the content, which includes the peripheral death of a main character.
SUMMARY: Sam's life has moved on.
ARCHIVE: Heliopolis
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. We have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the authors. Not to be archived without permission of the authors.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I know the story is sad, but, it's happy too, because one day Sam will be with Jack and the rest of their family. So it can be for you, too, the reader! All you have to do is trust in Jesus and accept the fact that God so loved the world that he gave up his only son to die on the cross as an atonement for our sins. I'm not perfect. Far from it, but I am forgiven and that makes all the difference.
"Grannie Sam?"
"Yes, Darlin'?"
"Tell me, again, how you used to travel to different planets when you were younger."
Retired General Samantha Carter smiled a very special smile as her memories lingered on her exploits in her younger years. The Stargate teams. She hadn't thought about Stargate traveling in a long, long time. Not since... Sam shook her head, her soft white hair floating momentarily over her left eye, causing her young granddaughter to giggle when Sam blew the irritating hair out of her eye.
Leaning over her grandmother's lap, her sharp little six year old elbows digging into Sam's muscles, the child looked up hopefully at her grandmother. Lifting the child into her arms, Sam gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and settled her back against her and set the rocking chair to moving with a push of her foot.
"Well, Baby," Sam began, only to be interrupted by a small and covering her mouth.
"No, Grannie Sam, I'm not the baby any more," the child insisted, pointing a small finger across the room at a crib against the wall. "Baby Jack is the baby now." The little girl wriggled around in Sam's lap until she could look up into her grandmother's face. "Right? Ain't Jack the baby now?"
"Yes, Alisha," Sam agreed. "Little Jack is now the baby of the family. And we don't say ain't, Alisha." Alisha gently patted her grandmother's soft, wrinkled cheek and left her hand there, as if keeping the contact made her feel better.
Popping her small thumb into her mouth, Alisha settled against Sam's chest, laying her blonde head against Sam's shoulder. "Tell me about gate travel, Grannie," Alisha reminded.
Cradling her granddaughter against her, Sam smiled. "It was long ago... Why, nearly thirty-five years," Sam began, surprised at how long it had been since her first step through that stargate. She had been working on the inactive stargate for years, extrapolating thousands of theories of how the system might work and why it had been buried for thousands of years in Egypt. Nothing could have prepared her for the realization of actual travel through a hypothetical wormhole that could take a being trillions of miles away from home in a matter of seconds.
"Grannie?" Alisha's small, slightly irritated voice brought Sam out of her reverie.
"I'm sorry, honey," Sam apologized, then launched into a tale right out of a fictional storybook, but had actually taken place with her team. When she was done Alisha looked up with a sleepy look on her face and grinned around her thumb. "That was a good one, Grannie. Tell me another."
"No, little one. It's time for you to brush your teeth and get into bed." Sam slipped the sleepy little girl off of her lap, giving her a playful swat on her flannel pajama covered behind. "Now, scoot."
Alisha giggled and scooted off down the hallway to the bathroom.
Watching the younger version of herself as she disappeared from sight, Sam felt a tear form in her eye and reached up to wipe it away. Tonight wasn't a night for tears, she thought to herself as she pushed herself out of the comfortable rocking chair and moved over to the crib to check on the baby. He was sound asleep, his tiny hands curled up into tight balls on either side of his pink face.
"Hi, sweetheart," Sam cooed softly, so as not to awaken the infant. She reached a slightly trembling finger down to smooth the baby's soft cheek. A tear, unstoppable, fell from her cheek and landed on the baby's left fist. Moving her hand to gently wipe the hand dry, Sam stepped away from the crib and over to her dresser where she picked up a handkerchief and quickly blotted the tears from her eyes before Alisha could come back and see them.
Sitting on the dresser was a picture of an elderly man in his eighties. Sam picked the picture up in her hands and lightly traced the man's features and sighed. Holding the picture to her breast she turned to watch Alisha as she hurried back into her grandmother's room and hopped up onto the bed.
"Grannie, can I sleep in here tonight?" Alisha asked as she kicked off her slippers and dove under the turned down covers on her grandmother's bed. "I promise I won't snore if you don't," she pledged with a sleepy grin. She sounded so much like her grandfather that Sam had to bite back a sob and chose to laugh instead.
Sam laughed loudly, startling the baby enough that he awoke and began to whimper. Hurrying over to gently rub the baby's stomach, Sam breathed a sigh of relief when he settled back down and went back to sleep.
"Young lady, you have a perfectly wonderful bedroom just down the hall that you haven't even slept in yet." Sam had intended on letting the little girl stay with her, but apparently her military background had come through in her voice. She watched in stunned silence as Alisha quickly slipped out of the bed and grabbing up her slippers hurried out of the room to disappear into a room down the hall.
"Alisha!" Sam called after the little girl. "I didn't mean it." Following Alisha's path down the hall, Sam found her huddled beneath the pastel-colored bedspread on the canopied bed. Sam stopped, mesmerized as she always, by the frills and bows that practically filled the little girl's room. Sitting on the dresser, however, was a figure that Sam had given Alisha from her own childhood. Major Matt Mason. At least the room wasn't all frills and bows, Sam thought as she walked to the side of the bed.
"Sweetie, I didn't mean to upset you. I was only kidding." Sam gently pulled the coverlet from atop Alisha's head. "You can sleep in the bed with me..." Sam let the sentence hang for a minute. "As long as you don't snore," she concluded with a mock stern look.
Smiling at her grandmother, Alisha scrambled out of her bed and jumped into Sam's arms. "Let's go then, Grannie!" She cried excitedly.
"Well, if you're very certain that you don't want to sleep here..." Sam let the words trail off as she took a long, suggestive look around the room.
"Grannie?" At the serious sound to Alisha's voice, Sam looked back into the little girl's eyes.
"Yes, baby?"
"Grampa isn't coming back, is he?" Alisha watched her grandmother carefully for her answer.
"No, Sweetheart. Your Grampa has gone to be with Jesus." Sam's heart broke at the expression of grief that crossed over Alisha's face. "But, it's okay, Sweetie," she said softly. "Because one day you and I will see him again."
"We will?" Alisha's hopeful little voice fairly squeaked with the words. "When?"
Sam was hesitant to speak more to a six year old than the girl could understand, but she knew that Alisha would only keep at her until she gave her a satisfactory answer.
"When you and I die, like your Grampa, we'll go to be with him in Heaven with Jesus and the angels," she explained gently.
"Can we go now?" Alisha asked in a whisper, as if to speak louder would break some kind of spell held in the room. "Can we, Grannie Sam? Can me and you and baby Jack go to be with Grampa in Heaven?"
Feeling as if her heart were breaking in two, again, Sam pulled her granddaughter close to her chest and held on tight. "Baby, we've got to wait and go when it's our time to go," she said, her voice cracking as she tried to hold her tears back.
"Grannie Sam?" Alisha's muffled voice called urgently to Sam.
"Yes, Sweetie?" Sam asked as she loosened her hold on the child.
"You was smothering me," Alisha exclaimed as she drew in a huge breath of air. "And I ain't the baby no more."
Sam smiled at the precocious child as tears coursed down her cheeks. "Well, young lady," Sam chuckled. "If you are so grown up, then why aren't you carrying me?"
"Oh, Grannie Sam!" Alisha laughed, throwing her arms around Sam's neck and kissing her loudly on the cheek.
"Oh, Alisha Jacqueline O'Neill!" Sam laughed as she buried her nose against the soap-clean neck of her granddaughter, nibbling on it softly and making Alisha almost wiggle out of her arms. Carrying her precious burden back into her bedroom Sam tossed her gently onto the soft bed. She turned off all of the lights except for the night light in her bathroom and climbed into the bed herself, after checking to make sure little Jack was still asleep.
"Good night, Grannie Sam," Alisha's small voice whispered from the pillow beside Sam.
"Night, sweetheart," Sam whispered back.
"I love you, Grannie Sam," the little girl said between jaw-popping yawns.
"I love you more, because I'm bigger," Sam automatically returned.
"Grannie!" Alisha chastised her grandmother. "That's what Grampa Jack always said," she reminded gently.
"I know. But, Grampa Jack told me that it was okay for me to say it. Besides, I am bigger!" Sam smiled into the darkness surrounding the bed.
"Can I say it to Jack, then?" Alisha asked hopefully as she squirmed around to find a comfortable spot in the bed.
"Yes, ma'am, you sure can," Sam assured her, reaching out to gently ruffle her soft curls. "You sure can."
Silence filled the room and Sam sighed. "Well, Jack," she said softly, looking up at the dark ceiling above the bed. "It's been two months and I still miss you. I've got these precious grandchildren to remind me of you. Alisha has your sense of humor and your deep brown eyes. Baby Jack is so little right now, but he has your strong chin and jaw, and if the cries he belts out when he's hungry are any indication, he's going to rival your singing ability." Sam chuckled at her generous praise. Jack O'Neill couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but that hadn't stopped him from singing at the top of his lungs, especially after downing a few. "I still love you, Jack O'Neill," Sam whispered sleepily. "Wait for me, okay?" Sleep settled over her then, but not before she thought she heard Jack's voice singing from a long distance away.
"I will always love you."
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Sherrill C. Martin
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