Empty Circle

By BadgerGater

Season: 6

Episode: Full Circle

Category: drama, epilogue to season ending episode Full Circle

Summary: After returning from ‘Abydos,’ O’Neill contemplates what has been a long and sad day

Pairing: None

Rating: PG

Warnings: None, but beware, it’s sad

Spoilers: Full Circle, of course

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of 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 Note: It seems like S6 was a really rough one for our Jack... injured, sick, Tok'ra'd, captured, tortured, addicted, stranded, and then there were the losses in Full Circle.

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Wearily, Jack O’Neill sat down on the bench in the locker room. Just for a moment, he told himself, just a few seconds to rest his tired bones and then he’d get that shower, and then some sleep.

He wasn’t even going home tonight. Too late for that, too tired to drive.

Looking down, he saw the film of dust that still covered his boots.

The dust of Abydos.

Had it just been this morning when SG-1 had gone there?

God, this was an endless day.

Well, okay, it wasn’t the same day anymore. The clock on the wall read 2:42 a.m., which meant that technically it was the *next* day. Which didn’t change anything.

Abydos and its people were gone.

The Goa’uld fleet was nothing but a billion pieces of space junk.

Anubis had the eye of Tiamet, because he’d given it to him.

And they didn’t have a freakin’ clue as to where the City of the Ancients, and its promised weapons cache, was. And the person who was supposed to help them find it had disappeared.

Crap.

This would go down as a day that sucked big time, beginning to end.

“O’Neill?”

Startled, Jack raised his eyes to meet the puzzled gaze of Teal’c. He hadn’t even heard the Jaffa enter the room.

“Should you not be resting?”

The Colonel waved a hand toward the shower room door. “Never got a chance to wash off the sand,” he explained. After what had happened, his own narrow escape from whatever the hell big giant explosion had happened on that planet, Hammond had barely allowed him enough time for the required post mission medical clearance before he’d started the briefings.

There’d been no time to lose. With Anubis and his powerful device having decimated the Goa’uld fleet, the SGC was on a war footing.

The meetings had gone on hour after hour, with Hammond and SG-1, then with other SG teams, Pentagon reps by phone and then in person. Rumor had it that the Secretary of Defense would be here before morning, er, in a few hours now actually...

And then, already weary and worried, they’d gone back to Abydos.

Or someplace that had looked like Abydos.

Jack didn’t understand it. Carter had postulated some theory about whether or not they’d actually been on Abydos, since the planet didn’t seem to exist anymore, and then she and Jonas had gone off into some weird physics argument that had quite simply boosted O’Neill’s headache exponentially with every eight syllable word they uttered.

He still didn’t get it. He knew you couldn’t go back to a place that didn’t exist anymore, but then he’d talked to Skaara, who was *dead*… shaking his gray haired head, O’Neill abandoned the whole line of thought as impossible and hopeless. Waste of time, brainpower and energy, all of which he didn’t have enough of that he could afford to squander any.

Jack desperately needed some sleep.

Right after a shower.

He had sand in places he didn’t even want to think about.

Raising his glance once more, Jack found Teal’c still standing in front of him, waiting patiently. He’d completely missed whatever the Jaffa had just said.

“Sorry, T. What was that?”

“I stated that I believe you were instructed by both General Hammond and Dr. Fraiser to rest.”

“Yeah, well, ordered to and able to are two completely different things.”

Teal’c nodded in his non-judgmental manner.

Jack ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. They felt dry and gritty. “I just… wonder…”

“There is much we do not know, about the power of the Others.”

“That’s for damn sure,” the tall man leaned back against the wall. He was quiet for a long time before, quietly, he said. “Guess I’ll never get to do the shau-liki thing.”

“Shau-liki?”

“Skaara,” it hurt to say the name. “He wanted me to stand up for him at his wedding.” Jack thought of the laughing boy he’d met so long ago, the one who had helped him recover from his own desperate loss, who’d helped him see the possibilities in the world of the living again. Skaara and Daniel, they’d been the ones who saved him then. And now they were both gone. “Don’t imagine that glowfolks have weddings.”

“It is unlikely,” Teal'c stated seriously.

“Haven’t been to a good wedding in a really long time.” Jack paused, then added softly. “I never even got to meet her, Skaara’s bride to be.” Jack sighed. “He seemed proud and excited. Like something good was finally happening for him.” After a long hesitation he added. “I was sort of looking forward to being there, you know, when his kids were born, bouncing them on my knee, being crazy Uncle Jack.”

Teal’c contemplated his friend for a moment, understanding the Colonel’s sense of loss. “Skaara is not gone, O’Neill, but ascended. He seemed quite happy when we saw him.”

“Yeah, I know. But he said he wouldn’t be seeing me again for a long time…”

“He is in a better place.”

“So it seems.” O’Neill’s tone was skeptical. “Didn’t turn out so well for Daniel, I don’t think.”

“We do not know what happened to DanielJackson.”

“No, we don’t,” the silverhaired man noted sadly. “I talked him into it, I was the one who kept pushing him to defy Oma and the Others. What if they or she…?” He left the question hanging in the air. After all, they couldn’t kill Daniel, since he was already dead, sort of, in a weird glowy sort of way, so… what? They’d banished him, like Orlin? Locked him up? Crushed him to nothingness? Pulled the plug on his glow-light? Maybe Anubis still had him. Or maybe… hell, he didn’t have a clue as to what had happened.

He *hated* not knowing.

That was the worst thing of all.

“It was Daniel Jackson’s choice to act.”

“A choice that maybe got him dead for real this time.” He wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready to lose anyone else, he had so few people left in his life. And now it seemed he’d lost both Skaara and Daniel in one day. His circle of friends grew smaller and smaller, the losses outweighing the gains so heavily he felt like he was being smothered, like the light was being sucked out of his soul, and darkness drew ever closer, day by day.

Another part of him, an important part, had been torn away, leaving another gaping, ragged, unmendable hole.

He felt empty.

Nothing left but the job now, his job, one last effort to save the planet from Anubis’ wrath, which was sure to come, now that whatever the hell he was had all the power of the Eyes. O’Neill was pretty sure that even the Asgaard wouldn’t be able to stand up to the all-powerful being the bastard had become. Poor pitiful Earth was toast. They’d never found what SG-1 had spent the last six years searching for, never found that big honkin’ space gun. Though he’d done his best, he’d failed in his number one mission objective: SG 1 had never managed to find the weapon Earth needed to survive.

The weight of failure settled like a black cloud on his already overburdened shoulders.

Had it all been for nothing? Six long years. So many battles. So many good men and women lost. For nothing.

“God, I’m tired.” He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but he had.

Teal’c understood. “You will be all right O’Neill.”

Jack opened his eyes and stared upward at his friend. “Why is it people keep saying that to me, huh? Daniel did, back…” he waved a hand, “back when I saw him the first time. And Skaara did, when we talked to him. But they don’t know. Daniel said that *he* didn’t know, that the ascended don’t know everything. So they don’t know if any of us are going to be alright.”

“Perhaps, O’Neill, they wish to reassure you, that someday you may join them.”

“I’ve already turned down the offer, T. I don’t want to glow. When I’m dead, I want to be dead, and done, not some cosmic voyeur, visiting friends in the elevator.”

“They are your friends, O’Neill, as am I, and we are concerned about you.”

“Well, stop it,” he snapped.

“I cannot. Our battle is not over. We still have too much to accomplish, for our people, yours and mine, they are counting on us.”

“Like the people of Abydos counted on us? And Daniel?” he asked bitterness in his voice. “And look where it got them. Dead.”

“They are not dead.”

O’Neill waved a hand through the air in concession. “Okay, glowing may not be dead, but it’s not alive like… like… normal *people*.”

“The people of Earth are not dead yet…”

“Yet. That’s the key word, T, *yet.*”

“Then let us make sure it does not happen. JonasQuinn is working on the translation of the tablet. We may yet find the City of the Ancients and a way to defeat Anubis.”

“Right. And then there’ll be someone or something else out there, just waiting for us…” Jack sighed once more, and began stripping off boots and socks. “T, I’m going to shower and then get some sleep. Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.”

And then again, maybe he wouldn’t.

It had been one damn long and painful day.

Jack had been proud when Skaara had asked him to stand beside him, at his wedding,

That pride was turned to dust now, to sand and ash and regret.

For another son lost.

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