There Should Have Been Cake

By Badgergater

Email: [email protected]

Season: Prequel to S9

Category: Drama

Warnings: None

Pairing: None

Spoilers: This fic is based on the most basic spoilers that are known prior to the start of S9. (the fate of Jack, the fate of the SGC following Moebius)

Rating: Any age

Summary: One last sad visit to a place he knew so well: a prequel to the opening of S9

Rating: G

Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Sci-Fi,

Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the

powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no

money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the

property of the author and may not be posted elsewhere without the author's consent.

Author’s Pledge: Honest, accurate and complete information about the fic; no games, no charades, no deceptions.

Author’s Note: A scene we should see, but I know we won’t. It’s the real end of Stargate SG:1. They should have renamed the show--

That his tenure as commander of the SGC had been so short lived didn’t surprise him.

That it ended with a whimper instead of a bang, did.

Jack O’Neill had always sort of figured it would end messily, either with a squad of SFs dragging him out in chains (as if that hadn’t already happened, thanks to Kinsey), or, even more likely, with one big and honkin’ explosion, self-destruct or otherwise.

It would have been fitting.

Entirely apropos.

No mistake, it was a good thing that it had ended quietly. He didn’t wish it otherwise. He’d spent a lot of the last eight years trying his best to ensure that very ‘big bang’ thing really didn’t happen.

Still, the way it ended was a surprise.

At the very least, there should have been cake.

/-------------------\

Actually, no cake was a good thing.

He didn’t need the calories (he didn’t want to end up looking like General Hammond. Great commander. Bad waistline. And he sure hoped the bald head didn’t come with the job.)

And he sure as hell didn’t need all the maudlin emotional gibberish that was bound to go with any sort of farewell party. (He’d done those before, too, and they’d never been fun, not without an awful lot of beer.)

Jack O’Neill had never been one for goodbyes, florid or otherwise. Never. That had been so even before he’d joined Special Ops, where goodbye was just plain not part of the warrior vocabulary. Bad luck, bad omen, just not done.

/-------------------\

If the SGC personnel had considered his ‘welcome’ speech as brief, well, he’d have set a new record for brevity with his farewell address.

Sayonara.

Ciao.

Auf wiedersehen.

Au revoir.

Dos vedanya.

Maybe just the classic, "Hasta lavista, kids."

Even better, he grinned, "So long and thanks for all the gift fish." Now *that* would have left them wondering.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to write that parting speech. Still, it would have been nice to have *someone* to say farewell to, after eight incredible years.

Honestly, he would have liked to thank them all, his comrades in arms. Yes, even the scientists. Well, most of them.

They’d been through some amazing things together.

Then again, even if he’d had the chance, his own reticence would have prevented him from saying what he wanted to say.

Only to Teal’c had he ever mustered an adequate goodbye, and then, it had been with gestures, not words. Gestures borne of the understanding they had forged in years of battle, side by side.

Jack O’Neill could battle Jaffa, Goa’uld, even Replicators, and win.

But his own emotions defeated him.

/-------------------\

As a general, he certainly could have had someone else pack his few personal items but somehow, it wouldn’t have seemed right. Even if he couldn’t say goodbye to the people, he wanted to say goodbye to the place. Walk the halls one last time. Stroll through the briefing room and look down into the gateroom and the immense alien artifact that had changed his life. Stand in the locker room, maybe even stretch out one last time on one of the infirmary beds. Relive the memories, good times and bad. What was it they said, if you’re honest, the good old days usually weren’t so good, and the future rarely turned out to be as bad as you imagined?

Sure, he’d be back.

But he’d be a visitor.

An outsider.

An intruder.

An onlooker.

One of "them" not one of us.

That is, if there ever was another us. Keeping an expensive program like the SGC going for purely scientific reasons during a huge budget deficit, plus a military personnel shortage, was a pretty unlikely possibility.

/-------------------\

The emptiness, the quiet, was disturbing.

Distressing, really.

Jack O’Neill had always loved the life of the place, embodied in the people and in the atmosphere. He’d thrived on the excitement, the life pulsating through the SGC.

It was the best assignment he’d ever had.

Ever would have, he was pretty sure.

There’d been bad times, hell, yes. A lot of lives lost, a lot of good people gone forever, and far too many failed missions.

But there’d been good times, too. A lot of lives saved, a lot of good people doing an amazing job under incredible pressure, and a lot of successful missions.

/-------------------\

God, but he missed the sheer adrenaline inducing, heart-thumping thrill of being part of this place.

Jack knew he was a classic Type A personality, addicted to the adrenaline rushes of military action. (He just wasn’t going to let himself think about how he was going to survive the absence of it.)

A lot of front-line personnel were.

Most, actually.

All the Special Ops guys for sure.

All the SGC men and women.

You didn’t belong here if you didn’t feel that way; at least, you had no business going through the gate if it didn’t get your heart pounding and your blood pressure rising. It was an E-ticket ride, a HALO jump and the biggest, loudest best Fourth of July fireworks all rolled into one.

Yeehaw, as his favorite commanding officer used to say.

/-------------------\

But today, there was no excitement. No anticipation.

Only silence, and echoes.

Being here today was like being at the deathbed of someone he loved.

So many had served here with honor.

So much courage had been expended.

So much blood had been shed.

If he was a man who believed in ghosts, Jack would have been certain that there would be ghosts here, of all places. Not just Daniel’s either, he thought with a smile. Daniel, though, hadn’t actually been a ghost. There’d been his, ah, um, presence after that little incident with the crystal skull and the radiation, and then later, when he’d been ascended, he’d seemed pretty ghostly.

It seemed as if, if he listened hard enough, Jack could all but make out their voices, right there on the edge of his hearing, a faint whisper, muttering in the air. Charlie Kawalski, Frank Cromwell, Martouf. Lieutenant Aster. Lieutenant Barber. Jacob Carter. Mother.

Even Doc, who’d died out there beyond the gate; if her short, gutsy ghost was anywhere, it would be in the infirmary of the SGC, giving orders, giving comfort, giving him hell.

/-------------------\

Jack shook his head. He’d never, ever felt this way about leaving any post, any assignment, before. Then again, he’d never spent so much time, so much energy, so much of himself, in any one place.

The SGC, shut down now because they’d done their job too well and won their war. Shut down because of politics. President Hayes had disappointed him there, disappointed him badly. He’d thought the man understood. And he hadn’t. He’d turned out to be just another politician, focused on his ratings in the polls and intent on winning re-election, willing to deal under the table to get either.

/-------------------\

Stepping out of his office, crossing the briefing room, Jack paused, running his hand along the pattern of the inlay on the conference table. How many mission briefings and debriefings had he taken part in here? How many times had he been bewildered by Carter’s science and bemused by Daniel’s dizzying leaps of logic? How many daydreams and doodles had he concocted while occupying one of these leather chairs?

And how the heck had the SGC ever managed to get this table and these chairs? They weren’t the low budget metal and plastic found everywhere else throughout the base, like his own rarely used former Colonel’s office.

Someday, he’d have to ask George. The general must have pulled a few strings.

With a sigh, Jack turned and started down the stairs, accompanied only by the clanking of his own footsteps on the metal grating of the steps. The control room was dim, lit only by the slight glow of the exit signs. The banks of computer screens were dark, the machinery silent. He’d never really noticed its constant humming before. It was one of those ordinary things you weren’t aware of until it wasn’t there.

Wiping a fine coating of dust off one of the swivel chairs, he sat down in front of the computer console. He’d never had more than a rudimentary, very rudimentary, understanding of how things worked here, mostly because he didn’t want to know more. He hadn’t needed to understand *how* all this worked, he only needed to know that it *did*, and that he could rely on the skills of those who followed his orders.

That was how the military worked, one soldier relying on the one next to him to know his job and carry out his assigned tasks. Trust, confidence, certainty.

All of it gone now.

The lifelessness of the place made him sad.

There was no reaction when he put his hand on the palm identification panel that would open the still-closed iris.

Permanently closed, perhaps.

Sighing, Jack sat back in the chair, dismayed by the emptiness he felt.

The sadness.

The loss.

An ending.

A new beginning, too.

A new assignment for himself, just as there were new posts for all those he’d gotten to know here.

It was ironic. He’d arrived here, that very fist time, as a man broken by tragedy, a walking, talking time bomb intent only on ending his own guilt and grief.

He was leaving, if not whole (definitely not whole, he never could be that again, with what he’d lost on that long ago sun-filled afternoon), at least re-directed, set onto a new path that had taken him places he’d never imagined. No, not just on to other worlds, but even here at home, in the Air Force he served and loved.

A general, for crying out loud.

He smiled sadly at himself.

For cryin’ out loud, the favorite phrase of a man who never did.

Not even today, when something very special ended.