No Good Day to Die
By BadgerGater
E-mail: [email protected]
Category: Missing Scene, Fifth Man
Season/Sequel: Five
Spoilers: Fifth Man
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Jack's POV-- dark thoughts on a dark night as he waits for morning
Disclaimer: 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: I love the Fifth Man and grubby Jack...
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There's no such thing as a good day to die. Any man who tells you otherwise is a damn fool.
Living is all that counts.
Took me a long time and a lot of dark thinking to come to that realization.
Don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean that I don't believe there are people, even things, worth dying for. Quite the opposite actually. A man needs to have things in his life worth dying for in order to make his life worth living. I know, I know, that doesn't make much sense, does it? But it's true. Family. Friends. Comrades. Your world and your country. Honor, duty and principle. Truth, justice and the American way.
But make no mistake. It's always better to let the other guy die for his country.
Living to fight another day for what you believe in is far superior to dying for even the noblest of causes.
But, sometimes you don't get a choice.
That's another thing I've learned along the way.
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I shivered in the alien darkness, looking up at the unfamiliar stars. I didn't want to die here, impossibly far from home, but then again, I didn't want to die anywhere, at least not yet. Far cry from what I'd felt the first time I'd stepped into the wormhole, when all I'd wanted to do was die, anywhere, to end the agony, to put an end to the unbearable guilt and the pain. A long ways from the here and now, praying I hadn't made my last trip through the wormhole.
Praying. Odd choice of words, praying. Haven't prayed in a long time, since I'm not sure who or what if anything I believe in anymore. That's one of the things I've quit thinking about over the last few years. I try to avoid wasting time thinking about questions I can't answer, and that's one of them.
I looked over at the wounded young airman who shared the ruins with me. I was here because of Tyler. I had come back to rescue him, because I wasn't about to leave anyone behind. Especially not someone so young, someone with a whole lifetime ahead of him. Someone I was responsible for.
I'd done that once already, failed someone young who'd depended on me, and I couldn't live with myself if I did it again.
So I'd sent the others through the gate, and despite knowing the odds, I'd gone back in the face of an overwhelming enemy attack, because the kid was back there and I had a responsibility to go back for him. And if I couldn't figure out a way to rescue him, I'd die with him. In the last couple of hours, sad to say, the odds had gone more and more in favor of the latter rather than the former.
I couldn't understand why a rescue sortie hadn't been mounted for us. Something was wrong back home, I didn't know what but I knew there had to be some problem. Why else wouldn't they be back by now? Nothing I could do about it here, of course, except to try to keep me and Tyler alive, hang on until either the Jaffa gave up or a rescue party showed up.
Since the first didn't seem about to happen, and the second wasn't happening at the quick pace I'd expected, I was one almighty unhappy Colonel.
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"How you doin' Tyler?"
"Fine, Sir," he answered, staring at me with that intense look he always seemed to have. Good kid, Tyler. Sort of odd, but a good kid. Had the makings of a fine officer. If he lived long enough.
I eased my aching knees by standing slowly, sliding up along the wall to peer out into the darkness. Wishing I had a nightscope. Wishing I had a whole line of claymores and a machine gun squad to front our position. Hell, as long as I was wishing, I might as well wish for the whole shebang, an entire battalion of SFs and another of Marines armed with tanks, howitzers and grenade launchers, a couple of Stealth bombers and a big ol' B-52. I always think big.
There was nothing to be seen in the darkness, just the dim outline of the universal constants: trees, rocks and dirt. The moons weren't up yet.
I cautiously made my way around to the other side of the ruins we were hiding in. It wasn't much of a place, but it was the best defensive position I'd been able to find. Hadn't had much chance to look, actually, with Jaffa chasing us, and me carrying Tyler by that point. The kid wasn't big but he was solid, and my knees and back were reminding me that 45-year old Colonels shouldn't be carrying even lightweight lieutenants. Much less not-so-light lieutenants, a 45-lb. field pack and extra ammo. My body was one big ache.
At the moment I was just glad I was alive to feel anything.
I scanned the open ground as best as I could in the darkness. The cliff protected us on one side, but that left three sides open to attack, and there were just the two of us, one of us incapacitated at that, and weaponless. Damn that kid, how he could have dropped his P-90 I'll never know. But then again, he was just a kid, and probably a damned scared kid.
Truth be told, I was one damn scared far-from-being-a-kid Colonel.
The bottom line was worse than the national debt. We were outnumbered, surrounded, cut off from the Stargate, no reinforcements had arrived or seemed about to arrive, half of us were wounded, we were low on weapons and short on ammo, and our position was essentially indefensible by a solo defender, no matter how good he was.
Could it get any worse?
I suppose so, but it didn't need to. This was a situation that could get us plenty dead without anything else going wrong.
I shrugged my shoulders, trying to work some of the stiffness out of my back and neck. Muscle strain, exhaustion, and tension combined to tighten up every muscle, a deep, throbbing ache that wouldn't go away, or let me rest. The kid, though, he seemed to be sleeping again. He was doing that alot, which to me indicated his wounds were probably worse than he was letting on. As if that was something I'd never seen before.
Moving closer to Tyler, I sat myself down again, back against the wall, fighting against the sleep that threatened to overwhelm me. I was exhausted, but the thought of a Jaffa sneaking up out of the dark to slit my throat did a pretty good job of keeping me awake, even without coffee. After that, I counted stars, and once the double moons came up, I counted trees.
It was a long, long night, one I won't soon forget. I spent a lot of time thinking about what might happen the next day. I hadn't come up with any solution to our situation, other than to fight as long as the ammo and my strength held out.
I'd always sort of figured it would end this way, that I'd die on a battlefield. Hadn't wanted it to be so alone, though, without even my friends to send me off. Not that I wanted them here in trouble with me, but no one, not even an old warrior like me, wants to die alone. Goes against what's human, I guess. Not that there was something wrong with the kid, but the truth was I barely knew Tyler. Didn't even remember his first name, come to think of it. I'd have to ask him in the morning.
Sad, that a man's life comes down to this. There wasn't even anyone left at home to mourn me. A few family members I saw so rarely they wouldn't even notice I was gone. Co-workers who'd already lost so much I would just be another name on that memorial wall in the chapel. Sara, I don't know if she'd even shed a tear, or be glad I was finally no longer a source of pain.
To most of the universe, as that old bounty hunter once told me, I was nothing more than a pain in the mik'tah. And he didn't mean neck.
I sighed.
Sad summation of a man's life, that no one would be there to mourn his passing, no one to care that he was gone. Not that it wasn't what I deserved for what I'd done to my family. If I hadn't screwed up I'd have someone at home, waiting for me.
I shook my head, and forced my thoughts out of that morbid path and back to the problems at hand. Hard to do, tired as I was. I rubbed a grimy hand across my equally grimy, stubbled chin, adding a shave, a bath and a hot cup of coffee to that wish list.
Was that a faint glow in the...east? Guess I'll call it east, if that's where the sun's gonna rise. So I guess we'd made it through the night. Wouldn't much matter unless sunrise brought reinforcements, which didn't seem likely.
Sometime after daylight, then, they'd come, not my friends, but my enemies.
I'd take as many with me as I could. I didn't want to die alone, and if I had to die, then I was damn well hauling a few enemies along to Hell with me. It was the least I could do.
The sun edged above the horizon. A new day was dawning. My last? Our last?
Hope not.
I can already tell this wouldn't be a good day to die....
FINIS