Old Friend

By BadgerGater

E-mail: [email protected]

Summary: Jack thinks about the past when he visits an old friend

Category: Drama

Season: Five

Spoilers: A couple of very brief references to happenings over previous seasons

Rating: PG

Warnings: None

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: For Veteran's Day 2001:

Dedicated to the men and women of our Armed Forces:

Their sacrifices should never be forgotten

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I walked a long time, searching for him. Sure, I'd gotten directions, but the place was pretty damn big and somehow I'd gotten turned around and suddenly found myself just walking.

And reading.

Names.

So many names.

Row after row.

Name after name.

Grave after grave.

So much sorrow. So much lost potential. So many shattered dreams and broken lives. The air was thick with it, with loss and heartache and life denied.

I kept walking. Something seemed to be drawing me on, some need to see each one, to somehow connect, to whisper aloud each name as I passed, to be sure someone remembered and acknowledged their sacrifice.

Hartnet. Weaver. Longworthy. Ryan. Neeley. Robinson. Lee. Schultz. Wendell. Reedley. Neuland. Cantwell. Rodriguez. Draeger. Denman. Moscetti. Bailey. Lenz. Washington. McClaren. Bronstead. Lewis. Nilanski. Garland. Greer. Holzman. Smith. Ruiz. Carletti. Reamer. Davis.

Albert. Walter. Steven. Robert. Gerald. Roger. Allen. Ward. Scot. Michael. Ernest. Leonard. Lowell. William. Mark. Luther. Morris. David. Gary. Darnell. Owen. John. Gregory. Mathew. Thomas. Andrew. John.

Did they know, lying there in the cold ground, did they know someone passed by and whispered their names? That someone wondered who they were and how they died?

Some had been here a long time.

Vietnam.

Korea.

World War II.

World War I.

I stopped before the grave of Pfc. Joseph Woods. He'd died in the war to end all wars. Did he know it had been futile? That no war could end all wars? That war continued now, more than a hundred years after he'd been born, eight decades after he died?

War went on, but he didn't.

It was quiet here in the cemetery. It was Veterans' Day, the real veterans day, 11-11, not the convenient one we move around to whatever day suits our busy lifestyles. Holidays should be left alone, left where they belong, on the days they are supposed to be. There was nothing convenient about Veteran's Day, nothing convenient about dying. No one wanted to die for his country. They all wanted to live for their country, for themselves, for their families.

Yet they died for their comrades, their brothers, their duty and honor; in the effort to achieve a goal, or just because they were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some brave, some frightened, some sudden, some slow, some in the arms of a comrade, some alone, some in agony, some peacefully, but all dead and gone and none of them deserving it, however it came to them.

Good things, right things, like Veteran's Day, should be honored. Noticed. Cherished. Kept where it belonged, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, like it was supposed to be.

I snorted. 'Yeah, right Jack,' I told myself. 'Just because you're getting old and set in your ways, averse to change, wanting things to be the way they were.' Sure, I wanted things to be simpler. I wanted things to go back to the days when you knew who the good guys were and you knew who the bad guys were. In the days when combatants wore uniforms instead of hiding among civilians, when there were front lines that delineated, 'the war starts here.' In the days before people crashed airplanes into buildings, targeting civilians and calling it war.

Back in the days when wars had rules.

Sheesh.

The weight of the place was crushing, the weight of all those lives lost.

I kept walking, and finally, I found it, the place I'd been looking for, the place I dreaded, but needed to be.

Major Charles Alan Kawalsky.

I hadn't been back here since the funeral.

Five years now.

It seemed like the right time.

"Brought you something, Kawalsky," I said. I took the small American flag and stuck the handle into the ground near a small bunch of faded flowers by the simple gray headstone.

I folded up my long legs and sat on the ground, leaning back against his marker, the paper sack in my lap. For several minutes, I looked around. "Nice spot you got here, buddy," I said, looking down the long slope of the hill, past the neat rows of gravemarkers, down toward the valley. "Good view. Nice shade trees. But then, you always were one to find the best place to take a nap."

I opened the paper bag and pulled out a long necked beer, twisting off the cap. "Here's to you, Charles Kawalsky, a good man, a good soldier, a good friend." I hoisted the bottle to the empty air, and then took a long drink. "Tastes good. I wish..." I choked up. I wished a lot of things. I wished Kawalsky wasn't here in this cemetery, wished there was no war and no Goa'uld and no need for any of these sad graves.

"Crap," I said softly, and looked up at the cold November sky, blinking the moisture away from my eyes. "Aww, damn, Kawalsky, why'd you have to let that damn snake get you, huh?" I took another pull on the beer, set it on the grass between my feet, bent my knees and wrapped my arms around them, letting my head rest there and let the minutes slide slowly away.

"One of them almost got me, too, well actually it did get me, if it hadn't been for that Tok'ra. Oh, sorry, you wouldn't know about them, they're our allies. Sort of. I don't trust them much, but the Tok'ra doctor, she did save me from it. Froze me crya-, cryan-, cryo-something. Just think of it as O'Neill Popsicle. Killed that snake." Without thinking, my hand strayed to the back of my neck, to the small scar there. I shivered.

"God, Kawalsky, I had no idea how that could hurt. How they scream inside your head, how they're in there with you. How they root around in there, through everything, through every part of you." I shuddered. "I hope to hell that the one that got you didn't do what that one did to me. I think the one that got me didn't like me, you know, I've kind of managed to piss off a few of those snakes over the last couple years. They know me. So maybe that one that got you was just looking for a hideout. I hope so." I pulled my hand away from my neck and wrapped it around the neck of that beer bottle instead. "God, I hope so. I wouldn't want my worst enemy to go through that." I took another long pull on the beer.

"Freakin' snakes, Kawalsky. We're still fighting them. The snakes. Sometimes I think we always will be. We kill one, but half a dozen more pop up. And they're not the only nasties out there. There are these mechanical spider things, Replicators. Blow 'em apart and they just glue themselves back together. Scary, huh?

"Five years now, we've been going through that gate and you know what, the universe is an ugly place, Kawalsky. You know, you look out there, out at the stars and it looks so clean and perfect and beautiful, but it's not. It's nasty. There are hostiles everywhere, telling us we're young punks, treating us like unimportant nobodies. We're like the new kid in school, and nobody wants to be our friend, and everybody wants to bully us.

"Sure we've found a few friends along the way. Even met another you from some other alternate reality mirror place, but I'll tell you, what we've found out there so far it's been mostly damn disappointing. Lots of enemies, not many allies, and not a one of them a man can trust to watch his six.

"And if we're not fighting the bad guys out there, we're fighting among ourselves. The world's gone to hell, Charlie, terrorists blowing up buildings and sending letters full of anthrax. We can't get along with ourselves, how the hell are we supposed to fight them?

I smiled suddenly, remembering there was one bit of good news. "Hey, we did rescue Skaara, remember him? We had a little help, sure, but he's snake-free. He's not a kid anymore, all grown up. A good man. I haven't been back to Abydos for a long time, but the rest of those folks are doing well. Except we lost Sha're. We found her, you know, but she died. Damn near killed Daniel, but he's hanging in there. Amazing he's still alive, isn't it? I think he's responsible for every one of these gray hairs I've got. He grew up a lot since you knew him." My smile turned sad. "He's not so innocent as he was, but he's still smart. And speaking of smart, Carter, she's a major now, and I'll never admit it, but she's as damn good an officer as I've ever served with. 'Cept for you of course. Then Teal'c, well, he's still with us, we've had our ups and downs, but hey, that's how it goes on most teams.

"You were right about General Hammond, you know, guess I do owe you those twenty bucks. He set us up, about what happened back on Abydos, on that first gate trip. Sneaky but smart. Good man. Keeps me on the straight and narrow. Always on our side. Protects us from the politicians and the bureaucrats and that's another whole battle.

"The rest of the guys, the ones that went on that first ride through the wormhole with us, they're all scattered around now. Ferretti was the last one, but he got reassigned a couple of months ago. We've got a lot of teams now, but I hardly know any of them. They're all strangers, lots of scientists and doctors and not many like us. There aren't many warriors like us left, anymore, Kawalsky, not many at all.

I finished the last swallow of my beer and climbed stiffly to my feet. "By the way, Charlie, I've still got that stereo. Not a bad piece of equipment, you know. You always did have good taste."

For a moment, I let my eyes drift across the peaceful scene. The cemetery was still empty, the late afternoon sun shining through the barren leaves of the trees. I felt a cold wind creep in around the edges of my jacket, and I shivered. Across the rows of graves, in the center of the cemetery, the flag snapped in the breeze.

Without thinking, my right hand snapped up, saluted. I know it's just a scrap of colored cloth, but it stands for something, for the things I believe in, for my country, for the men and women who died to protect it, who sacrifice still to protect it and keep it free.

I picked up the empty bottle and walked away, back to my own cold and dark and lonely place, my own war yet unwon.

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