Author's note: This is my first attempt at writing, so don't blame me if it's not very good :)
"How many of us wouldn't trade everything for the chance to be young again ... live our lives over?"
Possibilities. He could do anything, be anyone. After giving the best years of his life to the Air Force he had a fresh start, yet, standing across from his older self, she was all he could think about.
Despite their positions he had always clung to hope. He would not always be her commanding officer. In every moment of weakness, every stolen glance, it had been that thought which had sustained him. The line between them was one of protection, self-imposed. This was something else. Where once had been a line, now stretched an expanse that he could never in his wildest dreams hope to bridge.
He had been given a clean slate; the chance to live whatever life caught his fancy. He could do anything, but the one possibility that mattered most was beyond his reach. Though they stood mere feet apart, they were separated more than any force field could ever achieve.
She had spoken of his situation as though it were some gift of incalculable worth, and yet he had lost something infinitely more precious. He had lost her.
"Yeah, uh, believe me, if you think it's weird, imagine how I feel being the copy."
Though they were both O'Neill, both Jack, he did not see himself in the face before him. He saw a man who had stolen his life, his career. That much he could live had the man not taken something far more valuable. His dreams.
He could be anyone, but he could never be the Jack who walked beside her under alien skies, who visited her in her lab during late hours at the SGC. He could never be the Jack that she cared so deeply for. In her eyes, he was not the man with whom she had survived impossible odds. He was a child. How could she ever return the feelings he had for her? Not when she had the original Jack, the real Jack.
"You wish your clone to live?"
Now this other version of himself, who had already taken everything he cared about, stood there with the power to decide whether he should be allowed to live. Would the other Jack, like Loki, consider a clone disposable?
"You can't just let me die…"
Did the experiences of the past week count for nothing? Did his origin forever define him as a feeble imitation of the real Jack O'Neill, destined to be discarded as soon as he had outlived his usefulness?
"He's just a kid…"
He felt a flicker of hope but, at the same time, he was afraid of the difficulties survival would bring. What would he do?
"Are you certain O'Neill?"
He could see the hesitation in the man's face, could hear it in his voice. He found himself striking at the taller man, fearful that the measure of his own character may be less than he had believed.
"I'm thinkin' ... yeah."
"Very well. I will attempt to repair his DNA."
He hadn't had much cause to think about it before. At first he had simply expected to be restored to his former self. The discovery of his true nature had come with an expiration date. Though he now found himself with a new life ahead of him, he couldn't begin to imagine how he would be able to move forward.
How could he possibly stay away from the SGC after everything he had experienced? How could he go back? How could he be so constantly reminded of what he had lost? From this point on he was a new man. He couldn't be the man who had spent his days wishing they could be together. He couldn't be the man who had waited for years in hopes that someday they could.
Most of all, he couldn't be the man who kept coming back to the same agonising truth; all the possibilities in the world were a poor substitute for the one that he had lost.