A/N: Written as dues for the SA list. I haven't put anything together for this genre in years and was just seeing if I still could. Very short...so very, very, VERY short. Also, it's a sad snippet. You have been warned. (I now return to writing SGA)
It Only Takes One
(What if those first few days together had ended differently?)
Today was the anniversary of the single most important day that had changed his life forever.
With utmost care and reverence, he spread the aging yellowed newspaper slowly open across his desk. Carefully leafing through the dry pages until he found what he was looking for, what he'd looked at every year on this date for the past 20 years, he stopped on the page with the list of names.
Obituaries seemed so cold, so impersonal; just black type, little words that turned a lifetime into a paragraph or two.
His eyes scanned the page knowing exactly where to look to find the small photograph.
And there it was just as he knew it would be. It hadn't changed, it never would. For a moment he rest his fingers beside the name, tracing across the letters in search of something that might somehow change the ache that still resided in his chest after all these years.
Would anyone else remember what he'd done? How he'd saved the bus load of strangers, but lost his own life in the process? How he'd risked his life to help; first a stranger and then a friend? How he'd provided a link to sanity when none could be found?
The words on the page remained the same. The smiling photograph never changed. But one life had been made whole, if but for a few brief moments.
"Thanks Chief. You did good, kid."