He was crying. He didn't like to cry, hated it in fact. When Charlie had died, he hadn't been able to cry. When Carter flat lined because of Jolinar, only a lone tear had been allowed to escape. When his life was ripped away from him, and everything he knew changed, he hadn't even cried then.

But he was now.

Today was an annual rite. In years past he had always arranged it so that SG1 wouldn't have a mission on this particular date. They'd always gotten lucky, and never had a major crisis either. He supposed that maybe God was listening, and had decided that this day had seen enough horror, and in His compassion hadn't allowed more. He didn't really want to think about it too much, though. Cliche, though it was, he had long learned to never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Charlie would have been 18. A legal adult, a graduate of highschool. Jack wondered briefly what his sons plans would have been. He would have been able to vote in the election- not for Kinsey, of course, Jack thought with a wry smile. Every year, he reflected on the little boys short life. And every year, he didn't cry.

Except for this year.

His tradition included taking out pictures of his son. Caressing them gently, careful to not bend them, though frequent handling had made it look well-worn. Sara was often pictured as well. Beautiful Sara. He had gone to see her a few days before, unbeknownst to her. She was looking well, and happy. It appeared she had a new boyfriend, and Jack was glad.

The pictures that he would annually look at showed a happy family. One that was untarnished by the pain yet to come. With the eight-year-olds death, had come the death of his parents marriage, and the near-death of his father.

Jack had wanted to cry. Sara had wanted him to cry, to sit down and just cry with her, but he'd never been able to give that to her. He had closed himself up, grief and guilt intertwined.

And then Abydos. And another little boy. This time, he was successful. This time, he wasn't too late, like he'd been with Charlie. With Charlie, he had held his son, weeping over his bloodstained body, to shocked for tears to come with the loud, frame wracking cries. He'd been left there, alone, clutching his dead sons empty shell, unwilling to accept the truth. Sara had been comforted by her father. Jack had failed both of them. As a father, he'd allowed his son to die, and as a husband, he'd allowed his wife to grieve alone.

And he still hadn't cried. Until now.

There were no pictures spread out on the table, no home videos to watch. Officially, he'd never even had a son. But then, he knew just how blurred the lines could be between the truth, and the 'official' truth. He'd had a son. He'd had a wife. He'd found the love of his life in Sam Carter.

Unofficially.

Officially, he was sixteen years old; two years younger than his unofficially dead son. Officially, he was an orphan, with the Air Force as his guardian, should anything come up. But they knew as well as he that 'official' went only so deep, and they expected his well over sixteen mind to keep him out of trouble.

Unofficially, of course.

Officially, he never married a woman named Sara, never heard of the Stargate, never knew Daniel Jackson, or Teal'c, or...... Samantha Carter. No, he didn't know who these people were. Officially.

And what was worse, was that they didn't know him either.

And so he cried. There wasn't much more that he could do. His under twenty-one body kept him from being able to drink, a vice that had kept him sane in past years on this day. He could no longer drown his sorrows. He had friends, if you could call the delinquents that he hung around with 'friends', who thought it was great fun to sneak a bottle of beer from their parents fridge. They were excited by the cloak and dagger idea. For Jack, former black ops and special forces, it was hardly the stuff movies were made of. He had battled system lords, taken down numerous alien enemies, made countless alien friends, and was now relegated to the position of a highschool senior.

Life sucked.

He had been given no pictures of Charlie, and his pride had kept him from asking. Highschool, as he had predicted, was much easier the second time around. What with Carter's physics, and Danny's history, he was pretty set for the subjects he had hated originally. He had been an Air Force Academy graduate, and you didn't get into the Academy with poor grades. His excuse to his counterpart of not having embraced highschool the first time around was bull, and they both knew it, but he was a survivor, and this was what he had to do. If he was going to live as a young adult, he needed to acclimate himself to world of teenagers. But it wasn't all easy.

The guys thought it was funny, and the girls considered it disgusting, that he liked to check out the female teachers, many of which were too young for him, anyway. He normally wouldn't have made it to obvious, after all, years of working with Carter had taught him how to take a nice long look at someone without being caught, but his raging hormones refused to cooperate.

It didn't matter anyway, though. In his mind, he was in love with Samantha Carter, and what was coming back to bite him again and again, was that there were no longer regulations in the way. Nothing was in the way of having a relationship with her anymore except for, well, him. Whether it be the fact that the original was working with her still, or the fact that he himself looked only sixteen, he was his own competition.

But that wasn't even the reason that he was crying. For the past seven years, he'd been doing something important. It had kept him going, allowed him to come to peace with Charlies death. And now, his all vital mission in life was to survive Mr. Hodgkins advanced math class. Math, like most other subjects, had come easily to Jack. He wasn't a whiz-kid like Carter, but he could hold his own in the basic subjects. But Hodgekins... Jack shuddered. The man was brutal.

And that was what kept him going. School. Highschool, none the less. Hardly a reason to be 'okay' with his son being dead by his own gun.

Jack wept, hunched over himself, on the floor, clutching his stomach as if in severe pain. This must have been what it was like for Carter after Jolinar, he realized idly, gasping for breath amid his cries. Bombarded with all these memories of someone who you're not allowed to be. Except that he didn't know anyone named Carter, and he didn't know anything about alien parasites that took over your body. And he cried, if possible, even harder, his mind enjoying the torment it was putting him through. All he wanted was his life back, and all that life was willing to give him was the expectations that he forget who he used to be, and glibly accept his fate.

There was no Jack O'Neill juinor, and there was only room for one Jack O'Neill at the base, and, tag! he wasn't it. No matter that they were the same person. No matter that he couldn't shut off his feelings for Sam now anymore than he could through all the years he'd tried to. No matter that he longed to spar with Teal'c again, or have a chat with Daniel. Or beat the crap out of a snakehead.

No. Instead, he wasn't allowed to officially know who or what they were. Today was Charlies birthday, and they expected him to not grieve. They expected him to forget, and move on. Well, he couldn't do that! And he wouldn't do that.

He had seen the obituary in the paper; he knew that Janet Fraiser had died. He wanted to go to the memorial, pay his respects to a dear friend, but the notice said it was private, most likely meaning it was at the SGC. A facility that he wasn't supposed to know anything about.

He wanted to give Sam a comforting hug. He wanted to hold Cassie. He wanted to give Daniel the chance to get all of his emotions out. Jack wondered if anyone even knew to do that, after all, it was his unspoken place to go and comfort his friend. He had long learned that if not given a time and place to express himself, the young archaeologist would explode. But even before his thought was finished, Jack knew the answer. It would be Jack O'Neill who would comfort Daniel Jackson. It would be Jack O'Neill who would hold Cassandra as she lost another mother. And it would be Jack O'Neill who would get to comfort Sam, the love of both their lives. They had taken away his existance. He no longer existed as they did; how could he? He was over fifty, and looked just over fifteen. His name was Jack O'Neill, but any similarities they might have had stopped there. His reality had changed. He had stepped through a mirror, into the Twilight Zone, somewhere, where he no longer existed. And as for SG1, well, they hadn't lost his role in their lives, but he had surely lost them.

And he wasn't even allowed his memories. He didn't have any pictures of the blonde boy who was his son. No pictures of SG1. No ability to go through the gate and make sure they were safe. And just as he was unable to protect them, yet were they protected by himself!

Jack wrapped himself into the fetal position, confused by trying to figure everything out. He wasn't Jack O'Neill; he was Jack O'Nothing.

And they expected him to live like that.

SG1SG1SG1SG1SG1SG1SG1SG1SG1SGSG1

Kayla Morgan watched as the sullen teen took his seat. Jack O'Neill, an enigma if she'd ever seen one. He needed advanced classes for his advanced classes, yet he liked to play dumb. And as inappropriate as it was, she felt a pull toward him. She sensed a maturity coupled with an emptiness that she longed to learn more about. He was the class clown, and, though his classmates would have been shocked stiff to know it, he was the top academically; most likely to be valedictorian.

Mondays, like today, were usually the hardest day for her as a teacher, trying to get rowdy students back in line after a weekend. But, though they may have given her a hard time about returning to school, there was usually a freshness, and a relaxed spirit that she saw in them. Not so, however, in Jack O'Neill.

Kayla had been teaching for fifteen years, and had severely berated herself on the first day of school when she had first spoken to young O'Neill and felt a stirring that she hadn't felt since her husband had died five years earlier. Her cheeks burned in shame at the memory of her inappropriate, not to mention illegal, feelings that she had for the child, but as time went on, and he had slowly revealed more and more of his very adult persona, she had grown more and more attached.

Jack was early this Monday morning, and, taking the opportunity before more students started spilling in, she went over to talk to him.

"Jack?"

He looked up from the book he was reading, War and Peace. She nodded toward the thick book as she sat down in the seat across from him.

"Pretty heavy reading you've got there."

He shrugged. "I guess. I hadn't read it in a while..." He trailed off, and clamped his mouth shut, looking for all the world as if he had just revealed a state secret.

Miss Morgan was impressed. Even she hadn't been able to manage through all of Leo Tolstoys classic.

"Did you need something?"

He looked at her expectantly, curiosity written on his face as to why she had come over in the first place.

"Just," she searched for the right words. "I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright this morning. You haven't caused me any trouble yet this morning, so...."

She tried to mask her concerns in a joke, something she had noticed that he did as well.

"Hey, come on Miss Morgan, cut a guy some slack! I've only been here ten minutes. Now if it had been fifteen, then you'd have cause to worry." He light tone made fun of the matter, but Kayla could see something else in his face, well hidden. He had closed himself off completely to her, and she could tell that whatever was on his mind was not something that he was going to share.

"Okay, well, that's good then. Good morning." She stood up and walked back to her desk, pausing when she heard the intercom buzz.

"Miss Morgan to the Principals office. Miss Morgan to the Principals office."

She turned to look back to him.

"Duty calls," she said as she walked out of the door and into the hall.

Watching her leave, Jack sank down in his chair, breathing a sigh of relief. One good thing about being older than you looked was that he'd had years of practice in perfecting a poker face. Her concern was noted and appreciated, but hardly something he would accept. He would have had a heckuva time trying to explain to her what his mood was, and why he was in it. He wasn't sure that he himself understood it completely anyway. Grieving for a son he never had, and a love he'd never experienced.

He felt like a Goa'uld; like he was living in someone elses body. It wasn't his, yet he had full control. A wave of nausea flooded over him at the thought. To be anything at all like the parasites that he abhorred...... Not that he knew anything about snakeheads who ruled the galaxy, of course.

The first bell rang, and students slowly started spilling into the classroom. With a nod to some of the kids, Jack stored his book back into his backpack and pulled out his social studies book. It was going to be another long day.