A/N: Spoilers for Fragile Balance, again.
Disclaimer: I own nothing that anyone recognises.
A Second (-Hand) Life
The body has fallen to the ground before the echoes of the gunshot have faded. Blood, thick and dark, begins to spread outwards, mixing with the shallow dirty puddles left by the rain.
Standing quietly in the shadows, a young man - looking young enough to be called a boy, really - watches calmly, expressionless, lowering the gun held loosely in his right hand. The young man, whose dirty blond hair looks as though it could use a cut, steps forward quickly and silently until he stands beside the body. There's no real need to check for signs of life, not with the hole in the centre of the dead man's forehead, and its match over his heart, but habits like these are best to keep.
He doesn't know why he's here, in this position, why he doesn't just plain up and leave. Leave the distasteful to someone else; leave the government to take care of themselves; leave that other life – this life – behind him as he thought he already had. But he's always done the government's dirty work. Some things don't change, and some it's easier not to change. At least, that was what the government thought.
We are the product of our experiences, he can hear them say, and a man is the sum of his memories.
He's not another person, a new person, with a soul of his own. He's just a rejuvenated Batshit Jack O'Neill, here for whatever use the government cares.
He drops the gun by the body, seemingly careless about where it lands. No fingerprints, on an untraceable weapon. Nothing here can link him to the scene. And why would there be? He doesn't exist, officially. There's nothing to link him to anything.
And he's always – Jack O'Neill has always – been good at this. Good at leaving no evidence, at being a ghost in the night; there and then gone with no sure sign of his passing but the dead.
His existence is merely an unexpected, unasked-for opportunity here to be taken advantage of and exploited, if but the slightest of effort is lent to the task. And the government are nothing if not opportunists.
And they are pragmatic also, he has learnt anew. While to others the apparent innocence of youthful looks may serve as deterrence against putting him to such uses as he is, his deceptive exterior is nothing to the government but another tool in the arsenal.
He starts to wonder who will investigate the death, and then stops bothering. It's not his problem. He steps serenely around the body of the dead man, deftly avoiding the growing pool of blood. Walking down the alley and away from the scene, he heads steadily further into the warren of dimly-lit streets.
He can't help but think this death should stand out, somehow. It is after all the first person he has killed in this new existence of his. But there's nothing extraordinary about it.
It's nothing special.
It's just another dead body.
-end-