Waiting in Darkness
by Bil!

Content Warnings: Definitely character death. Several of them.

Disclaimer: Characters all belong to MGM and Showtime and co. No money has been
received for this, a work of fiction.

Author's Notes: Well, this is a cheerful thing. That was sarcasm. Major sarcasm.
This is not a happy fic. You want happy, go read something else.

***

They're dead. All three of them. Dead.

I don't know what went wrong, it was a standard recon mission. Daniel got to look
at rocks, Carter got to play with some gadgets, Teal'c and I got to pretend there
was a reason for us to be there.

Unfortunately, it wasn't all pretend. Hathor showed up, with a gaggle of Jaffa.

We ended up prisoners, Danny-boy was put through the usual 'Our Beloved' routine,
the rest of us were thrown in a cell with the occasional torture to help while
away the hours.

We escaped from the cell, found Danny. He was Goa'ulded. Snake in the brain.

I killed him.

That's our pact, you see. SG1. If we're snaked with no escape, we die. You know,
that whole 'live free or die' thing. So I killed him.

Hathor apparently didn't have a sarcophogus. So, she wasn't particularly happy
with us. Come to think of it, neither were we. He wasn't on his ninth life yet.
Was he? Actually, knowing Daniel, he was probably on his ninetieth. I gave up
counting a while back.

Anyway, we ran for the 'gate.

I thought I'd left my soul back with Daniel's dead body.

Then Teal'c went down. Shot through the heart. Lived long enough to smile and say,
"I die free." My heart broke again.

So we ran, Carter and me, tears falling down our cheeks. We made it to the 'gate,
she dialed up while I laid down cover fire. Then we ran for the wormhole.

She got shot just before we made it, collapsed into my arms as I pushed us through.

She died on the ramp. In my arms. "No regrets, sir," she whispered.

I tried to smile. "No regrets. Sam." She gave me that killer smile, then faded away
with it still brushing her lips.

Janet tumbled into the Gate room too late.

My soul broke again. Shattered. My friends, gone. My family, dead. The cold emptiness
I was engulfed in after Charlie came back, but this time there was no escape. I'd
lost the only people who could bring me out of it.

I looked up at Janet. She was just standing there, staring. No emotion on her face.
Just staring.

And then suddenly she crumpled, stumbled forward to fall to her knees at Carter's side.

She wept, tears and blood mingling on the ramp. My tears were gone. Too much pain.
Too much.

I gently placed Carter fully on the ramp, as though she were a piece of delicate
china. Then I put my arms around Janet, letting her cry into my shoulder. Sam lay
between us. So still. So not alive. No...

Hammond stood in the door. The look on his face. Too much pain. Slowly he came
towards us.

Janet noticed him, we stood, went to him, hugged him. I didn't have to tell them
the other two were dead. They knew. Everyone knew. SG1 was dead. Too much pain.

We stood at the bottom of the ramp, looked up at the silent, harmless-looking
Stargate framing Carter's body.

Too. Much. Pain.

****

That was the worst debriefing ever. Just the General and me. Sitting, staring.

Waiting for a miracle to occur, like it always did, for Carter and Daniel to
bounce through the door, for Teal'c to follow them with a raised eyebrow.

Carter would babble about what had happened, Daniel would explain the cultural
signifiance. Teal'c would simply listen impassively, but we'd know he was smiling
inside.

But Carter was in the morgue. I killed Daniel. I saw Teal'c die.

No more miracles.

****

The SGC was silent. No one laughed or smiled. They were scared. SG1, we were
the team that always came back intact, that always turned up like a handful
of bad pennies. If we could die, anyone could die.

And we were dead. All of us.

Even me.

****

I prefer night time now. The dark is comforting, it curls around me like an
old friend. The stars; sometimes I can't look at them, sometimes I can.
Sometimes they remind me of *them* and it hurts so much I shut down completely.
Sometimes I just *know* that my team is up there on some planet circling on of
those stars and everything's going to be all right. That's worse, to have that
hope, and then have it snatched away by reality.

I don't look at the stars very often anymore.

Janet tells me I have to pull myself out of my despair. That I can't keep on
like this. That she lost her best friend too, and two other close friends.
That they wouldn't want me to go on like this.

I know she lost a lot, and I'm truely sorry for her. But I lost my soul. Those
three, they were my team mates, my friends, my family.

But they were more than that. They kept me alive, not just in my body, but
my heart and soul.

My soul is shattered.

Survivor guilt, the psychiatrists murmur to one another.

But I'm not guilty I survived, I'm angry they didn't. But they didn't. I
killed Daniel. I watched the other two die.

And I miss them.

"Don't give in to the darkness," Janet tells me. "The darkness will eat your
soul." Or was that that psyciatrist guy? I don't remember. It's not important.
Nothing is.

Why do they keep talking about the darkness though? They keep saying it's a
bad thing, a sickness in my soul.

But darkness is the only thing that keeps me in a semblance of sanity. It
wraps around me, silencing the world. I prefer the night, in the dark.

Darkness in my soul. Darkness in the night.

I have found my night.

I have found what will blanket my soul, lock it away from everyone, even me.

They're dead.

I should have died with them.

That's SG1, all for one and one for all. A symbiotic relationship. We were
each other's Goa'uld, in a Tok'ra kind of way. But now I haven't got them
anymore.

And so I don't have me.

My body walks and talks, but I'm not really there.

I'm hiding in here, waiting to join the rest of my soul.

Just waiting.

Fin

Copyright 2001