Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate, much as I'd like to. Just this story.

Memories of Yesteryear

The ghosts haunt the base. They are always there, always watching her. She isn't sure when they appeared, but now they seem to have been in existence forever. And maybe they were; only she was not looking. No one else can see them, no one else knows they are there, and she hasn't told anyone. None of them would believe her; they would tell themselves that she is an old woman, no longer right in the head, irreparably distraught by the cards life has dealt her.

The young – to her, they seem young, though to their own eyes they are no doubt mature and wise to the ways of the world (if only they knew) – men and women of the base would doubtless be too polite (honouring her age, and maybe even her experience, if nothing else) to speak their thoughts to her face, but they would think them regardless.

They are too young to remember the ghosts as they once were, so vibrantly alive. They cannot see her ghosts, and possibly there is nothing to see; but she sees them all the same. She is not insane, she knows; she has a feeling that if that were so she would have no hesitation in telling others of what she sees, though that could simply be paranoia rubbing off on her at long last.

Sometimes even she wonders what she is doing here, in this underground base that still remains a secret to the public, if a badly kept, leaking-at-the-edges secret. There exist here minds far brighter than hers, youths far more able than she to defend the planet, and those with sharper memories, recall, and attention to detail. She feels increasingly that she is of no help, that she is allowed to stay only due to her past actions, not her current; and yet she continues to work here, day after day, year after year. Maybe it is this which has, indeed, finally turned her mind; maybe it is the long years of living in this base that are causing her to hallucinate past days.

And they are past days, not those of the present, nor yet even the recent past. It is the past of long ago that she sees, or at least it seems so to her weary mind. She is not so old, not in comparison to some of those still alive; but she has been through, as the young people gossip to each other about her, a very many awful events indeed. And, oh, but she feels her age. She is not infirm in body, nor yet in mind – but how would you know? – but her thoughts are tired. She sees the ghosts of her past, memories grown visible and tangible; her ghosts appearing as they were in life, as she first knew them, not as they were when she last saw them.

She thinks that is how they would like to be remembered, if it is only her memories she sees; that they should be thought of as in the prime of their lives, not as old, or crippled, or wounded. And not be remembered as tired. Were they tired, or is that her, imprinting her thoughts upon her memories? They must have been tired, by the end, she tells herself. And she doesn't want to believe it, wants to believe that her childhood heroes – and they were, no matter what else they were, they were her heroes – could never feel defeated, or give up hope, or become too tired to continue. But common sense, and the wisdom of old age, tells her otherwise. But whatever their emotions, their thoughts, at the times of their deaths – and she thinks she is able to say that without shuddering, but apparently she is wrong – those do not appear to be visible as she sees them now.

They crowd the corridors, the stairs, elevators, each room. But, however it may sound to someone else, they do not crowd her. How could they? They surround her, but give rather than take. The ghosts...no one else, she feels, could understand them, or understand what she feels for them; others could not understand how it is that they help her continue. But the ghosts of her past keep her on her feet, remind her of the great achievements of the past, encourage her in all hours, even when the world seems sure to be lost, that there is yet hope, that there will be a way, that there will be another alternative.

When there's a will there's an 'or'.

Her ghosts haunt her, haunt the base where they dedicated their lives; the base they gave their lives to. They didn't all die defending it, but they all lived defending it, which is really far more useful. Her adoptive mother haunts the infirmary, as she did in life; her team of guardian angels – why have one when you can have four? – appear everywhere in the base, sometimes singly but far more often together; the relative newcomers, the fighter pilot and the alien, also appear, though less frequently – she knew them well, but they could never quite replace the original team she knew. Near-anonymous airmen and Marines occasionally put in an appearance, though rarely; the gate-room techs are more common, as are the positive hordes of linguists and scientists.

She never mistakes them for the living; if nothing else, she recognises the ghosts far more easily than she does the living. She does not believe them to be real, not in the everyday sense of "real", knows that her ghosts are invisible to others; but if they are real to her, then does it really matter? And it was a well-known fact that there was much unknown about the universe they lived in; much still to be discovered, which excited the young people working here to no end.

No one is truly gone until those that remember them are gone.

And she remembered them; so they were alive, if only to her.

And for her, that was enough.

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