Stars 6: If

Author: Badgergater

Season: 8

Series: The Stars series

Category: Missing scene, Affinity

Pairing: None

Warnings: None, but it's sad

Summary: *That* question gets Jack thinking

Episode: Affinity

Disclaimer: Don’t own Stargate, and I know it, and acknowledge the power of those who do.

Author's Pledge: Be assured this and all other Badger fics are accurately labeled as to content and category; I do not need to suck in the unwary reader by trying to disguise the content, rating, pairing or category of this or any other fic.

Author’s Note: After I thought about it, this fic really should have been posted, before last week's Wedding Plans fic. Not only does this episode take place earlier in S8, but I think the mindset that begins here carries over into the other fic; Thanks Margo, my friend; Sis; Cokie for the beta, and special thanks to all those who feedback.

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If things were different…

How could she ask me that?

"I wouldn’t be here," I answered simply, because it was the truth, in a million ways.

If things were different, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn’t.

I stared at Carter for an endless moment while she looked at me with that wide-eyed look she has, and then, suddenly, I saw the flicker in her eyes, saw the moment she comprehended and her face colored and she realized what she had asked.

Wordlessly, I fled back to my office, vehemently embracing the mountain of paperwork that cluttered my desk. I had never in my life been so glad to start reading reports. The first one I picked up was SG-9’s account of the negotiations they brokered between the Oolons and the Nuffiellers. On a good day, it wouldn’t have been interesting. Even now that I'm a general, diplomacy just doesn’t quite set my heart to racing like a good firefight against overwhelming numbers of Jaffa. But I tried to concentrate. I moved my eyes, scanning across the page, saw the letters, interpreted them into words, fed the words into my brain, made my gray matter consider them and weigh them.

It didn’t last of course, because I didn’t make it to page three before my eyes began to glaze over and I lifted my gaze. Looking out across my desk, I stared straight over to that picture, the one on the little table in my office. The one it had taken me a whole bucketload of courage to set out in such a public place; the picture of me and Charlie the day his Little League team won the championship.

Charlie and me, side by side, smiling genuine smiles, full of the thrill of victory.

Full of excitement.

Full of life.

I think it was the happiest day of his life.

I know it was one of the happiest of mine, in retrospect at least.

From across the room, I studied the photo. God, I looked so young, no gray in my hair, no deep enduring lines engraved on my face, but there was more to the change than just the evidence of the years that had passed. The Jack O’Neill looking out from that moment was unburdened. Proud. Comfortable. Confident. Guilt free. So damned blithely innocent.

The years had humbled me, that was for damn sure.

Taught me all about guilt and regret and recriminations, too.

If only…

I didn’t let myself think about such things, I couldn’t, because I knew I couldn’t deal with the emotions those two little words evoked.

If only things were different, then everything would be different.

I wouldn’t be here.

The past was like a string of beads, some rich and lustrous like the finest, most precious pearls, some phony and cheap as glass; some perfect and priceless, some cracked and broken and rotten to the core; some shiny, vibrant and bright colored; some dull and dark as night. They all fitted together, one after another, making up the days of my life, and I couldn’t go back and change one of them without disrupting the whole string, unraveling the entire pattern.

If things were different, I wouldn’t be here, I’d told Carter.

If things were different…

If I wasn’t a General, I wouldn’t have been in her office, at nearly midnight, needing to know what was bothering the new commander of SG-1.

Despite his claims that he’d done nothing to prompt SG-1 to find me, if it wasn’t for Daniel’s intervention, I wouldn’t have escaped from Ba’al’s clutches, and I'd have died inside before my body died one final time.

Much as I hate the little bastard, if it wasn’t for Kanan’s healing powers, I’d have died of the Ancient’s virus.

If it wasn’t for Thor, Teal’c and I would have died on that replicator infested sub.

If it wasn’t for that Tok’ra operative freezing me, I’d be a Gould, held prisoner inside my own body by Hathor’s snakelet.

If it wasn't for Frank Cromwell, I'd have been the one sucked into that black hole.

If it wasn't for Carter herself, I'd probably still be on Edora with Laira and her people, or still floating around in space in Apophis' rigged death glider; or maybe stranded on that moon with that slimeball Harry Maybourne eating arugula until one of us killed the other.

If it hadn't been for Loren finally telling us the truth, three-fourths of SG-1 would have been stranded for life on that planet with the addictive light thingy.

If it wasn’t for Lya and the Nox, all of SG-1 would have died long ago on their green planet. Okay, wait, we did die but we’d have stayed dead.

If it wasn’t for Teal’c, all of SG-1 would have died in that dungeon on Chulak.

If it wasn’t for George Hammond, I’d never have been recalled to the Air Force.

If it wasn’t for Daniel and Skaara, I would have died, willingly, on Abydos.

But then, if it wasn’t for Charlie’s death, I’d never have been sent on that suicide mission to Abydos, I'd never have been a part of the Stargate program, and I'd never have become who and what I had become.

If things were different, if they could be different, if I could make them different, I would, in a heartbeat, in a millisecond, in the proverbial blink of an eye…

I would trade everyone I had met and everywhere I’d traveled and everything I’d done and every accomplishment I’d gained in the last eight years to change that one day and get back what I had lost. If only I could give back the years that had been stolen from his life. If only I could give back the life that had been stolen from him.

There was only one if that mattered in my life.

If things were different…

If…

If…

If…

Hundreds, thousands, millions of ifs, filling every minute of every day since that black moment in that dark day that had ended the me who once was, and led to the me I had become, the one I had never wanted to be, the one who wasn’t a father, or a husband, but a general who went home to an empty house and an empty life, who walked around with an empty place in his heart that could never be filled, carried around a mountain of guilt that could never be diminished.

I survived because I didn’t think about the ifs.

If I’d never bought that gun.

If I’d taken the time to sit down and explain things to my son.

If I’d locked that drawer.

If I’d gotten home half an hour earlier.

Twenty-nine minutes earlier.

Twenty-eight minutes earlier.

Twenty-seven minutes earlier.

Twenty-six minutes and 59 seconds earlier.

Twenty-six minutes and 58 seconds earlier.

Twenty-six minutes and 57 seconds earlier.

The ifs were endless.

Unable to look at the bright, shining faces in that picture any more, I braced my elbows on my desk and let my face sink into my hands, covering my eyes.

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

Carter.

A damn beautiful woman. I may be on the far side of fifty, but I’m in damn good shape for a man of my age. I would have to be blind as a bat not to see Carter hovering around like a, well, like a lustful woman with something on her mind. And I’m entirely manly enough to be both gratified and a bit pumped by the whole idea. Being wanted does things to a man’s ego, okay?

But I’m also realist enough to know that there’s more to life than doing the nasty.

Especially knowing what it would cost, careerwise.

And knowing what that woman could do to my fragile equilibrium, by asking questions like the one she threw at me tonight.

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

"Sir?"

Speak of the devil, er, think of the SGC's brilliant astrophysicist, and there she is, standing at my door.

"What now, Carter?" God forbid she ask me another painful question. I knew I couldn't handle it, not after the direction my thoughts had been drifting.

"Sir, I just came to apologize. For asking what I shouldn't have."

"You're right, Carter, you shouldn't have."

She ducked her head and batted her eyelashes.

"Anything else, Lieutenant Colonel?" I asked, coldly, deliberately using her title, wanting her to leave. Now.

"No, Sir."

"Good night then, Carter."

"Sir…"

"Carter, good night," I insisted.

She nodded and left.

And I knew she still didn't get it, and wasn't about to spend the time trying to explain it to her.

That’s what the difference is, between her and me. If I could change things, I wouldn’t change the same things Carter would. Carter would change them so she could have me.

I would change things so I could have my family back.

Doesn’t she get it? After all this time, doesn’t she know me well enough to know what the single most important moment in my life was? What it meant? What it still means? What it will always mean?

If.

It was unnatural, against all that instinct and nature and genetics and the heart demanded.

No one should outlive his child.

If things were different…

If only things were different…

Oh God, if only things were different…

/----------\Finish/----------\