* * *
"And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven." - Rupert Brooke
Jack had a cabin, and a piece of land, in the Colorado mountains. In the winter, snow could fall up to ten feet, and the pond froze over, and Jack skied and pretended he was James Bond. Or, more often as he got older, flew out to Denver and found himself a bar stool. In the summer, the whole mountain turned green, and then brown, and the chemical reactions in the leaves and trees made the air smell sweet.
Sam inhaled deeply. She leaned against her car and looked down at the pond. Jack was on the dock--she rarely saw him in any other place--but instead of lounging in the deck chair, he was pacing. She instinctively checked her cell phone for messages that the world was ending, but the display was clear.
"General," she called, picking her way toward the dock.
He stopped pacing. "Sam," he said.
She stopped short of hugging him, and stood in front of him. "Are you all right, Jack?"
"I am smelling my mortality, Carter, and I have decided this is not where I'd like to die."
Sam's stomach dropped to her knees, and she winced. The notion of Jack dying made her feel sick. A cold tremor shook her, but she bit through it and asked, instead of, "Are you sick?" "Where would you like to die?"
"Out there." He waved his hand at the trees.
"You want a bear to eat you?"
"Carter. I mean, off-world. Haven't I earned it? How can I come back to the middle of nowhere, after I've seen ancient cities and starlight and all that? I'm bored, Sam. I never wanted to be old enough to be bored."
"You've outlived your usefulness," Sam suggested. He'd been limping on the dock. She hadn't wanted to see.
"Exactly. There should be some distant corner of the universe that's forever England, and all that."
"There is."
Jack set his jaw. He said, "I know. I didn't mean that. I just--What the hell is all this, Carter? A pond in Colorado? It was supposed to stay a soldier's dream. Not become all--realized."
"You've earned it. You've done enough."
Jack put his hands on her shoulders. He said, "I don't feel like I deserve it."
"No one gets what they deserve in life, Jack."
"Dark. What have you been reading lately?"
Sam leaned into his grip, close enough to smell his sweat, and see the grey stubble he'd missed while shaving under his chin. She said, "Do you know what quantum physics is?"
"Hard?"
She chuckled.
He smiled.
She said, "It's looking into the vastness of the universe, or into the heart of an atom. And seeing… nothing. Absolutely nothing is out there, Jack, beyond the horizon. Beyond what our instruments can measure."
"That's terrifying," he said.
"Yes, sir."
He looked past her shoulder, at the Colorado mountains, and said, "If you think about it, we're just another planet connected to the Stargate system. If another SG-1 from another world came exploring, we'd be the aliens. And nothing special."
Sam said, "Haven't you fished on other worlds?"
"Yeah. And they all kind of look like this. I mean, sometimes purple. Sometimes there are fish that have legs and once, there was that fish that could talk. But yeah. All kind of the same. What happened to infinite diversity in infinite combinations?"
"That was a marketing gimmick."
"Damn. My whole childhood, ruined."
She stepped forward, leaning against his chest, and his arms slipped from her shoulders and around her back. Jack said, "So. I can pretend I'm dying on some alien world. I mean, I kind of have before."
"Like a hero," Sam said.
"Sure. And you're here. Which is great. But who will save Earth while we're gone fishing?"
Sam chuckled. She said, "The young whippersnappers."
Another car pulled into the gravel lot, and Sam and Jack looked up as doors slammed. Vala ran toward them. Her arms were thrown out wide, and she smiled gleefully. "Hello," she called.
Sam poked Jack's chest. She said, "See?"
"Oh, I'm so confident now," Jack said.
Vala hugged them both, nearly knocking them off the dock. She blocked their view for a moment, and when they pivoted, they saw Daniel and a young woman walking toward them.
"Cassandra!" Jack called. "How nice of you to skip school to join us."
Cassandra grinned. She set down her side of the cooler she and Daniel were carrying. "It's summer. I'm technically skipping my internship."
"Even better." Jack squeezed Sam, and said, "Girl after my own heart."
Cassandra surveyed the pond. "You know, I don't think I've ever been here. Some father you are."
Jack frowned.
Sam said, "Now that she has her own motorcycle, she can visit you whenever she wants."
"She has a what?"
"I got it for her when she promised to get her Ph.D. in Microbiology."
Jack shook his head and sighed.
"This looks like home," Cassandra said as she stepped onto the dock.
"Like Hanka?" Sam asked.
"Yeah."
Vala said, "I went there once. Before the, um. Bad stuff. I'm afraid I swindled them out of a large portion of their grain. Which may have made them more susceptible to Nirrti's offer of improving their existence. Um. Sorry about that, kid."
Cassandra shrugged. She said, "I was, like, eight."
"This is home, Cass. If there is some distant corner of an alien world that is forever Hanka, and so on."
Cassandra glanced at Sam, and asked, "Why is he quoting Rupert Brooke?"
"He feels old."
Daniel grinned. "Wait until I tell him Rya'c's wife just had her first child."
Jack pushed Daniel off the dock.
Vala frowned at Sam, and said, "You said this would be boring."
"I lied."
Vala rubbed her hands together and said, "Excellent."
"It's so cool you're friends with a pirate, Sam," Cassandra said.
"If you become a pirate, I'm taking the motorcycle away."
"I'm just saying."
"Want to see my tattoos, Cassandra?" Vala asked.
Sam pushed Vala off the dock.
Jack waved at Daniel in the water and turned to Sam. He said, "Would you like to see my bedroom?"
"Only if there aren't dirty socks all over the floor."
Jack frowned. He put his arm around Sam's shoulder, and said, "Well. Would you like to fish?"
END