The Hardest Thing
A quick one-shot based on the words at the very end.
Just something on my mind for the past couple of days… A little unoriginal, but I couldn't help myself…
Set in the episode Chimera.
Jack leaned back in his chair in the cafeteria. His milk and cereal didn't look nearly as inviting as it had earlier. Moodily, he grabbed the bowl, deposited it into the trash, and moved to get some coffee. Coffee usually made him feel better.
It was a simple tune she had hummed in the elevator. Yet it gave away everything.
He wandered off down the hallway with no real destination in mind, coffee in hand. Seven years they had worked side-by-side. They had grown close, as all four of them had. But she and him had something… special. Something more. And now this.
It was to be expected, he reprimanded himself as he turned a corner. Seven years and they had never made a move… well, an intentional, purposeful move. She was free to see other people, as was he. But did he really want to? No, he knew, he didn't. And she was the reason why.
He found himself in the vacant briefing room, one of only a few places where you could see the Stargate perfectly. So many times he had gone through that big ring… right beside her. Ready to face unimaginable danger, the unknown. She seemed to revel in the unknown, he thought to himself. The mystery of space and time and paradoxes… the stuff he was completely puzzled by, she gloried in. And that made him love her all the more.
There. He had said it. Not quite aloud, but close enough for now.
He loved her.
And the hardest thing… Was to watch the one he loved, love someone else.
