A/N: I re-watched "Into the Fire" and this story started begging me to write it. Obviously, I couldn't say 'no'. : ) I felt like the Makepeace from "Into the Fire" undergoes some sort of personality transplant before "Shades of Grey," and this is my attempt to explain it away. For better of for worse, here it is… Enjoy!
After The Fire Burns Out
Anyone who knew the details of the last few days would have expected him to let the door slam shut behind him with all the force he could muster.
Anyone who knew the details of the last few days would have been surprised when the door shut with little more than the soft 'swish' of the heavy wood sliding home within the frame.
The only 'thud' that rang out in the otherwise silent apartment was the sound of a weary body collapsing backwards. Keeping his back pressed to the impersonal white wall for support, he toed off his shoes and kicked them away. Once that was done, he stood in the hallway in sock feet, trying to summon either the energy or the interest it would take to move him into the apartment. In the end, he failed to find either and instead, slid down to the floor and rested his head on bended knees.
Four funerals in three days had taken their toll; the physical exhaustion was rivaled only by the emotional and he was relieved that the last of the services were over. There would still be a memorial service on base in two days' time, but those were always different than the funerals themselves. The absence of grieving family members at the SGC made it easier to maintain one's composure, though that was not to say that the base memorial services weren't emotional affairs. There would be watery eyes and probably some tears, but there wouldn't be any wailing mothers or suddenly single parents struggling against their own grief while trying to comfort their distraught children. He'd had more than his fair share of both in the last three days.
Although only two of the four dead had been members of his team, he'd attended all of the funerals. All of them had been under his command at the time of their deaths, regardless of what the patches on their uniforms had said. That responsibility was a crushing weight on his chest, ever threatening to suffocate him with the consequences of his decisions.
They had all known the risks; none of them had been naïve enough to think that a mission to a Goa'uld occupied world would be safe. But at the same time, he suspected that maybe they'd all let themselves believe a little of that infamous SG-1 luck would rub off on the members of the rescue team. After all, the people they'd been sent to retrieve had been missing for three weeks and presumed dead; it only seemed right that the cavalry enjoy even a sliver of protection from whatever cosmic force saw fit to grant that minor miracle.
But life wasn't fair and neither was death. In the end, all three members of SG-1 had been recovered at the cost of four other SG team members. He'd never try to assign value to the lives of his co-workers, but simple math screamed the injustice of trading four lives for three. That there was one less Goa'uld on the loose in their galaxy was of little consolation; it still felt like a waste.
His team had been close enough, having been together for a little over a year. They weren't the closest of all SG teams – they didn't celebrate holidays together the way some did – but they'd had poker nights and team barbeques as often as they could. Sometimes they grated on one another's nerves, but that didn't stop Ramirez from asking his teammates to be groomsmen when he married his high school sweetheart…
But that wedding would never happen now. Instead of standing by while Mrs. Ramirez-To-Be cried tears of joy on her wedding day, he'd held Mrs. Never-To-Be-Ramirez's hand while she sobbed beside her fiancé's grave. There had been no blame, no angry words from the young woman, just the raw grief that accompanied the realization that 'till death do they part' had come far too soon.
Not that Kendrick's funeral had been any easier. The young man's father had kept an arm around his distraught wife's shoulders, as though clinging to the ailing woman would keep the tumor growing in her brain from stealing her away too. More than anything, the calm acceptance in the eyes of Kendrick's father, knowing it was only a matter of time before the man lost the only thing he had left that had ever mattered in his life, had made Makepeace want to scream.
The other two funerals had been just as gut wrenching as the first two, but he hadn't been burying teammates then. The sight of devastated family members had torn him apart inside, but he'd been able to view them from a greater distance.
Linstrom's two little boys had broken his heart, clinging to their mother while they tried to be the brave young men their father had always said they were, but Makepeace didn't know the intimate details of their lives, had never been roped into emergency babysitting duty for the two children who looked so like their father.
Nor did he know anything about Rollston's mother, the elderly woman who'd held herself together admirably until the first shovelful of dirt had landed on her only child's coffin. After that, her shuddering sobs had echoed eerily through the cemetery, sending shivers chasing up and down Makepeace's spine.
He hated himself for it, but he was relieved he hadn't known Lindstrom or Rollston very well. The distance was all that had gotten him through four funerals in three days.
As it always did, thinking about the senseless deaths of people he'd been responsible for brought memories of the circumstances surrounding their deaths to the forefront of his mind.
The initial elation at having found SG-1 alive, taken out Hathor and secured the stargate had soon been tempered by fresh worry. Almost half of the rescue team dispatched to the planet had been unaccounted for at first.
But radio reports had slowly begun trickling in and SGC personnel had begun assembling in front of the stargate, the able-bodied assisting the wounded when necessary. In time, it was just the four dead men and Niedermeyer, his 2IC, who had been unaccounted for.
A quick trip via ring transporter had determined what had become of the missing men, and Niedermeyer – the only one still alive – had been rushed back to the SGC for emergency and, fortunately, life-saving surgery. That he was expected to make a full recovery was of little consolation right now.
Makepeace rubbed a hand over his drawn face, trying to wipe away the images that assaulted him whenever he closed his eyes. Visions of the dead and their grieving loved ones tangled with imagined carnage, his mind turning over the ways in which the rescue could have turned out worse, tormenting him with images of everyone he'd led through the stargate in the throes of death. Images of him as the sole survivor plagued him whenever he let his guard down.
He knew he wasn't the only one burdened with guilt. General Hammond tried hard to hide his, but it was always lurking just beneath the surface. Makepeace knew his own doubts and second thoughts about the decisions he'd made were nothing compared to those chasing through the base commander's head. Hammond took his responsibility for his people seriously; he would never forgive himself for the losses his orders had lead to.
The three human members of SG-1 felt it too Though the rescue mission had been voluntary, the dull eyes and deeply lined faces of the recovered trio made it obvious that they held themselves responsible for every drop of blood spilt in the name of their freedom. They too had attended four funerals in three days, though unlike Makepeace, they had been careful to avoid contact with the other mourners. They'd hung around the edges of the gatherings, staying on the periphery because it allowed them to pay their respects to their fallen comrades and then slip off as soon as the service was over. Irrational as it was, Makepeace understood their guilt; he'd been in their position before.
Even though SG-1 had been safely returned to Earth, he couldn't help but feel as though the mission had been a failure. They'd been experiencing more and more of those lately. In fact, it was starting to seem like they suffered five or six setbacks for every victory they scored against the Goa'uld.
Hathor was dead, but it would only be a matter of time before another Goa'uld stepped in and took her place; in the grand scheme of things, they hadn't really changed anything at all. To top it off, their minor victory was overshadowed by the fact that knocking off another Goa'uld had just painted an even bigger target on Earth.
It was a defeatist approach to take, but he couldn't shake the sense that they would pay dearly for their relatively minor achievement.
Heaving a heavy sigh, he pushed himself off the floor and padded into the kitchen. Rummaging through the fridge, he grabbed a bottle of beer and flicked the cap into the sink before making his way into the living room.
His eyes skimmed over the framed photos of his team that he'd turned face down within minutes of returning home from the disastrous rescue mission. He wasn't exactly a sentimental guy, but his team had been the closest thing he'd had to a family in a long time and the loss was almost a physical ache. He knew he wasn't ready to face those memories yet, and so he left the frames facing downwards.
A few moments later, Makepeace was snapped out of his thoughts by a loud knocking on his door. With another sigh, he loosened his tie and schooled his features into the angriest scowl he could manage. He didn't care who it was; he didn't feel much like dealing with people in general right now.
Makepeace didn't bother looking out the peephole. His reaction would be the same, regardless of who was standing on the other side. Throwing the door open, his eyes raked over the man darkening his doorstep even as they narrowed into thin slits.
"What the hell do you want?" Makepeace growled, his hand fisting around the neck of the beer bottle he was holding, grip so tight he thought the glass might shatter under the pressure.
"Colonel Makepeace, I'd like to offer my condolences for your loss," Colonel Harry Mayborne greeted. His voice was sincere but his eyes lacked either empathy or warmth as he studied the other man.
"Yeah, I'm sure you're really broken up about it," Makepeace snarled, moving to slam the front door shut. This time, he was planning on using all the strength he had.
Mayborne stopped him with a hand on the door and a foot inside the apartment. Ignoring the seething man whose property he was currently trespassing on, he pushed his way inside and moved into the living room, gazing about with mild interest.
"What do you want?" Makepeace ground out through clenched teeth, spinning around to resume glaring at the intruder.
"I'm here to make you an offer," Mayborne explained, squaring his shoulders as he got down to business.
"I'm not interested in anything you're involved with."
"Really?" Mayborne feigned surprise, fishing in his pocket for something. "Well, when you change your mind and decide you want to start scoring decisive victories against the Goa'uld, you can reach me at this number." He held out what seemed to be a business card, however on closer inspection, the slip of paper contained only a single phone number.
"What exactly are you offering?" Makepeace asked hotly, refusing to take the card.
"A chance to better our odds in the fight against the Goa'uld and to protect this planet from the threats that exist on the other side of the stargate," Mayborne replied cryptically. "But be warned, Colonel: once you make the call, there's no going back."
With those parting words, Mayborne placed the non-descript card on the coffee table and headed back into the front entryway, showing himself out.
Makepeace stayed still for several long minutes, staring at the rectangular piece of tag paper and turning the other man's words over. He tried, but couldn't manage to decipher what Mayborne had really meant. Makepeace eventually gave up, conceding that the other colonel had been in the game for too long to slip and accidentally give up the piece of information that would make everything fall into place. With a scowl, he grabbed the card off the table and tucked it away in a pile of unopened mail.
For now, when he was exhausted, emotionally drained and definitely not thinking clearly, he would set it aside. But in a few weeks, when the loss of half his team wasn't so raw, he'd give Mayborne's offer – whatever it was – some serious thought.
After all, anything that kept his people's sacrifice from being in vain was worth considering.
A/N: Ha! I wrote an entire story and I didn't do a single mean thing to Sam! See? I can do it, really I can! ; ) … And yes, I'm working on a post "Desperate Measures" story in which I'm dreadful to poor Sam. But it's not my fault, you people goaded me into it! : P