Author: Six Before Lunch
Recipient: Perri Smith
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Stargate SG-1/Firefly
Spoilers: Abyss, mainly. Incorporates elements from Citizen Joe and Avalon part II.
Summary: It can regenerate your body, make you strong enough to go through that all over again, but all the time, it's destroying who you are.
Author's Note: Written for Perri Smith in Multiverse 2007. Lyrics from "Fallen" by Bree Sharp.
Jack dies.
And then.
Little girl, little girl questioning me.
Jack doesn't put much stock in what the priests used to say, but they did tell him to beware of snakes and, with his luck, they might just be right about the Hell thing too.
It's hot here. Hot and dry. Not like any vision of Hell the priests ever talked about. More like Arizona in the summer.
Hellish enough.
"Why are you here?"
Jack turns and the girl is there, young and pretty in a long green dress, but he can't make her out. She isn't clear; he can't see her when he looks at her, only from the corner of his eye. But he knows she's there.
Maybe.
A mirage in the desert; there, maybe not there.
Daniel came. Daniel didn't come. Daniel's dead. Daniel's not dead. The girl is there. The girl is not there. Jack just doesn't know anymore.
"You don't belong here."
"I--"
Jack lives. The sarcophagus opens. And they begin again.
Jack dies.
And then.
She says, "Why doesn't everyone
Have what they need?"
There's water in a well, lukewarm. It wets his mouth and runs down the back of his throat, so far from refreshing it makes him want to retch or cry or both. He aches for his backyard and a cold beer and a steak on the grill.
"You're lost," the girls says. He sees her clearly now, long brown hair and youthful face.
"I'm Jack."
"O'Neill, Jonathan Jacob, Colonel, United States Air Force. Not Alliance, no brown on your back. You don't belong here."
"Yeah. You mentioned that."
"Why are you here?" the girl asks.
"I don't know." There's no breeze, just the oppressive heat of the sun beating down.
"You want to go home."
"I was thinking I wanted to stay dead," Jack says. "But if this is dead..."
Jack waves a hand, helpless. Damned coming and going. Sounds about right.
The girl doesn't say anything for a long time. There's a town nearby, maybe a mile off in the distance. Jack thinks he could walk it, doesn't know what he'd find there. The girl sits on the well. Her feet are bare and her face is sun burnt and her hair is tangled. Jack looks down and sees that he's wearing the same thing he was when he died, acid holes and all.
"Don't go to town," the girl says. "They don't have what you need."
"What do I need?"
Jack lives.
Jack dies.
And then.
The stars in Lucy's eyes
Run down her cheek
"You're back," the girl says.
Jack slumps down against the well. The sun is almost directly overhead. There's no shade to be had. "Apparently."
The town seems closer now, clearer too. Jack thinks maybe he could make it there and see what there is to see. Maybe there's water. Maybe there's food. Do dead people get hungry?
Maybe he's not dead. Maybe this is just a fever dream, the wild imaginings of a consciousness being brought back to life.
"You can't stay here."
"Click my heels together? There's no place like home?"
The girl is silent. Jack looks off to the town in the distance. Small buildings all in a row. Looks like a nice enough place.
"What's your name?" Jack asks.
"My parents named me because they knew."
"Knew what?"
"Rivers of tears."
Jack lives.
"River," he whispers, but the girl and the desert and the well are already fleeting, and then gone from his mind.
Jack dies.
And then.
Like teardrops of fire still her voice is
As sweet as an angel.
The well is dry. No water, no shade.
"What's in town?" Jack asks.
River looks at him. "Don't go to town."
"Orders that don't make sense make me cranky. Ask any superior officer I've ever had."
"It's not what it seems."
The town is closer now. Half a mile. Less. It looks like something out of every John Wayne movie he's ever seen.
"Seems nice."
River gives him a look that reminds him vaguely of Carter's "how did you get to be a Colonel again?" expressions. "It's not what it seems."
"Yeah. Got that." Jack lifts a hand to shade his eyes. There's sweat dripping into his eyes.
River sits down on the ground next to him and puts a hand on his leg. "Stay."
"Stay?"
"Stay."
Something in her voice. Something in her manner. Something about the town that feels not as nice as it looks.
"Okay."
Jack lives.
Jack dies.
And then.
She says, "Where is the place that
The good souls go, where they take away,
Take away the pain that they know?"
They're sitting just outside of the town and the well is dry and it's hot and Jack thinks it would be easy, so easy, to go into town and get some shade. Maybe some water.
"It's getting harder," River says.
"Always does."
"Every time you come back it gets harder."
Jack wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.
"You need to stop coming here."
"I'm working on it," Jack says. "Not getting anywhere, but, well, you know how it goes."
"Work harder," River says, sounding exasperated. Petulant. She looks away, out across the landscape. "I can't keep him safe much longer," she says and Jack knows she isn't talking to him.
Jack pushes up off of the ground and stands up, brushing sand off of his mostly intact pants. He looks down into the well and sees nothing but sand and a scorpion. No snakes, Earth-native or otherwise.
"I'm thirsty."
"Don't go to town."
Jack ignores her. There aren't even any people there, just shade on the porches and maybe water in the wells.
"This is not your life we're talking about, Jack. This is your soul."
Jack whirls around. "Daniel?"
"Glowy man with the bright eyes."
Jack eyes her, wary. "That's the one."
"Keep him safe. Keep him away from the bad men. He asked, didn't tell, and I said yes."
"Daniel is here?"
"There is no here."
Jack lives.
Jack dies.
And then.
Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.
Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.
He's standing in the middle of the town. The sun isn't any less oppressive here and he's still thirsty.
"River?"
Jack walks along the empty street, peering in windows. The girl isn't here. There's nothing here, no water, no food. Nothing that he was hoping for.
"River!"
Jack sits on the steps of a falling-down store, grateful for the shade and the rest. There's nothing here and there's nothing there and it's probably time to face the fact that Daniel isn't going to do squat to get him out of Baal's House of Fun. He's just going to keep coming here and going back and if this isn't Hell then it's a pretty good imitation.
He's going to go as crazy as the girl, soon.
Jack traces lines in the sand with the tip of his shoe.
"Run."
Jack turns. River stands behind him, scared and wild-eyed. "I'm getting really tired of metaphysical guides showing up and running off without warning. Just so you know."
"Run," River says, and there's urgency in her voice. So much so that Jack stands up.
"Where?"
"They're here."
"Who?"
"Reavers."
"What's a--"
"Not really. Not real, but real enough. Twist you, turn you, make you like them. One look, all it takes. It's destroying who you are."
"I don't understand--" Jack looks around, sees nothing. Her words sink in and Jack understands. "The sarcophagus. You're trying to protect me from the sarcophagus."
"They're here and I can't keep you safe anymore. Run."
How many more times do you think you can go into that sarcophagus before it starts changing you?
This many, apparently.
"There's nowhere to go," Jack says, because there isn't. Nothing but sun and heat and no water for miles and miles. Can a man die of thirst when he's already dead?
"Too late," River says. Jack turns, catches a glimpse of them.
Jack lives.
Jack lives.
If I could take, the world in my arms,
I'd take all the wrong and I'd fly, fly, fly.
"River? River, mei-mei, can you hear me?"
The best way Daniel can describe it is that it's like the first time his dad took the training wheels off of his bike. It's a feeling that he's about to fall over, no matter what he does.
"What is that thing anyway?"
Oma explained once why flitting through alternate universes and running around in the timeline were Very Bad Ideas. It's not that Daniel didn't understand, it's just that he decided to ignore her.
"River. Wake up River."
The problem is, even several hundred thousand universes from home, the Others will know if he does anything but talk. But then, he doesn't think he can do anything but talk anyway. Keeping his pattern cohesive in a universe this different from his own is sucking up most of his energy. If ascended beings could pass out, he's pretty sure he would have already.
"What's in her hand?"
"Some sort of rock."
"Well take it away from her."
"Jack?"
"River?"
"Who's Jack?"
River's brother brushes the hair out of her face and takes the Ancient communication stone out of her hand. If he notices the way it reacts to his Ancient gene, it doesn't show. The Ancient gene is weak in this universe anyway. Several million years of genetic drift that took a course just different enough from the one in Daniel's home universe.
River is...something else, though. Daniel expands his vision so he can see her genome. It's beautiful. Do they know what they have here?
Her brother does. He isn't sure about the rest.
But that's not his business. He's used this girl more than he had any right to.
"River."
She turns, looks at him. The others--her brother and the captain and the pretty red-haired woman who could have given Sam a run for her money if she'd had access to a good education--don't see him. Better that way. They already think she's crazy.
She's saner than any of them, in her own way. But that's not his business either.
"I couldn't. I couldn't keep him away from them anymore," River says.
Daniel shakes his head. "It's okay. He won't be back. He's safe. Thank you. He never would have made it as long as he did if you hadn't been there."
Her brother wants to know who she's talking to. Daniel can barely keep himself coherent anymore. Time to go.
"Thank you River."
And River smiles.
She's lovely when she smiles.