Title: "Wings"
Author: Sokerchick
Rating: K
Spoilers: Fragile Balance, Stargate: The Movie
Season: Future
Category: Vignette
Warnings: None
Pairings: None
Author Notes: Short and sweet, but I couldn't sleep until I put this down on paper (computer screen?) so it was written at 130 in the morning. I hope I can get into work in six hours.


"Once you have tasted flight you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been and there you will always long to return." Leonardo DaVinci

He'd had years of practice. It was a simple matter to box up the pain. He was lying flat on his stomach, the needles digging into the flesh of his back. He winced silently as they hit a particularly sensitive spot.

He forced himself to relax and shut his eyes resting his forehead on the surface in front of it. He could almost imagine the wind brushing past his face, the complete freedom the sky allowed.

The needles hit another nerve, and his eyes popped open. The wind was just his imagination; the breeze artificially created by the air conditioner of the dingy tattoo parlor.

His friends sat in other chairs. Each wanted to mark this day. JJ. Well, he just wanted to mark himself.

Yes, the day was important. He had finally graduated from the Air Force Academy, something he had wanted to do for the past forty odd years. Well, that is if you counted before. He had gone to a regular four-year college and done ROTC the first time around. This time he had decided to graduate from the Academy. Something his now long dead parents had not wanted him to do.

There were benefits to getting the chance to redo life. This was just one of them. However, there were pitfalls as well.

Hence the tattoo.

As he lay shirtless and face down on the chair, he thought about the irony of the whole situation. Most people had a hero, a mentor or someone to guide them. And they grew up wanting to be like that person. But JJ, he was living in his own shadow and he wanted something that allowed him to step out of that darkness.

Everyone expected him to be the same person he had been before, but he had a newsflash for them. They wouldn't have done things the same way either if they had been Jack O'Neill for a lifetime. Sure it had turned out pretty well in the end. The Stargate program. His team.

Well they weren't his team anymore anyway. And people tended to forget the fact that when he had first been assigned to the Stargate program he had been suicidal.

So this, this was just a way to tell the world to shove it. To mark himself skin deep. To make sure no one would mistake the two individuals who happened to have the same DNA.

"You're done. Make sure to keep it clean and put lotion on it. Don't expose it to harsh sunlight for a while." The tattooist stared at his handiwork. "Take a look."

JJ sat up and looked at his back through a pair of mirrors. A smile slowly spread across his face. "Perfect."

A pair of wings graced his back between his shoulder blades. They matched the glistening, golden ones that had been pinned on him that afternoon.

This time around there would be no special ops. Just JJ, and the sky.

Once, a lifetime ago, he had been a colonel. Now he was looking to associate himself with a different kind of bird. The image of rows of gleaming, metal planes flitted across his mind's eye.

Ya. This time, he was going to do it differently.