Title: Now Or Never
Rating: PG
Pairing: Reader's Choice
F.Type: Vignette
Summary: It takes time for her to accept it; time, and pain.
Warning: Character death.
Now Or Never
-Vignette-
They think he's dead.
Of course, there's not really a definite way to know. The planet's Stargate was destroyed in the super-nova's blast, Prometheus is on a far off, prolonged mission, and even if they managed to get a cargo ship close to M0R-483's remains the heat and radiation left over would fry any living being within light years.
So they can't say for certain that he's dead, but it's a pretty good bet.
That's ignoring the fact that SG-1 has always had a talent for not dying; among the SGC, they're damn legends.
But they are human.
And finally the SGC… the shattered pieces of SG-1… accept that. Memorial ceremonies became obsolete years ago; now they simply engrave his name onto the Earth-metal Stargate down in Washington, next to hundreds of others who also gave their lives in the service of their universe.
His true legacy, however, lives on in the memories of the people whose lives he touched, in the Stargate Program itself, and the tiny being now growing in her mother's womb.
Kayla is born on New Year's Eve, coming into a strange and inexplicable world with her father's eyes.
Smiling through tears, her mother holds Kayla close and looks out the window of Prometheus' med-bay.
She has been given one of the greatest gifts today; it is a gift only rivaled by that of her life, which he died to save.
Her life, and that of their child.
"Thank you."
And when there is no dramatic entrance, no impossible return upon the utterance of those words, she bites her lip, ducks her head, and finally, finally, lets go.
fini