Saying Goodbye
Teens
Gen, Angst
Synopsis: Eight letters and two syllables, but one very difficult word to say. Missing scene for Continuum.
Status: Completed August 24, 2008
Saying Goodbye
"Oh, shit."
The words are forced out past lips already cracked and without feeling, but the numbness creeping over the rest of me has nothing to do with the below-freezing temperatures, or the complete lack of sensation below my left knee. I'm numb because I just watched my best friend murdered, another two close friends vanish into thin air, and had to force two more friends to leave me behind to die in the vain hope they might be able to survive.
I'm numb because I had to say "goodbye".
When I was a kid, I swore to myself I'd never be one of those people who would leave without saying goodbye. My parents died without saying it to me, my grandfather left me to foster care without uttering it, and a half-dozen foster parents sent me on my way with less of a "goodbye" and more of a "good riddance". (I admit to being a stubborn heathen, but that's neither here nor there.)
I tried to stick to that practice throughout my early adulthood, but there wasn't really anyone to say "goodbye" to when I graduated with my first degree, and then my second, and so on. When I left Sarah and my position with Doctor Jordan, I did so in the hope that I might one day find support for my theories, and be welcomed back into the fold. I never said "goodbye" to them because I hoped it wasn't the end.
The same thing happened when Jack, Kawalsky, and Feretti left Abydos for Earth. "See you around, Doctor Jackson," Jack said, and we both hoped this wasn't the end. It wasn't, as it turned out, and Jack came back a year later. Before letting me lead the others to the map room, Sha're kissed me and told me "goodbye". I vaguely remember mumbling something in response, but even if it was a half-hearted "bye", it wasn't a true "goodbye".
As it turned out, it should have been. Even as she lay dying in my arms three years later, finally freed from Amaunet by the staff blast which was claiming her own life, I couldn't tell my own wife "goodbye". "I love you," I said, but I couldn't force that painful farewell past my lips.
I died or nearly died many times in my years at the SGC--Teal'c probably has an accurate count, but as I pointed out earlier, he isn't here. For most, I never had a chance to say goodbye to anyone. The one time I did get the opportunity was as my body succumbed to radiation poisoning, when I brought Jack into the dream-world Oma Desala created for me.
"See you around," Jack told me, instead. I never got to tell him "goodbye", but since I thought I was going to be able to do more than I had as a flesh-and-blood mortal, I always thought I'd see him again... and see him again I did.
Saying goodbye is a lot harder than I thought. I make my living, in part, because I am a linguist, but this one word has escaped me time and time again. I even know its origins in Middle English--a contraction of the common phrase "God be with you"--but saying it is something else.
But faced with Sam and Mitchell, knowing I couldn't walk, knowing I'd only slow them down, I found the strength to force those two syllables past my frozen lips. It wasn't just goodbye for me, though, knowing I was going to die alone on the ice, but for them, too. Unless they can get within radio range of an Arctic research outpost, then Sam and Mitchell are as good as dead, and might still be even then if no rescue can be mounted in time.
There will be no rescue for me. Daniel Jackson, the man of a hundred lives, has finally met his fate on a glacier in the Arctic. Watching the fur-covered figures of Sam and Mitchell stagger out of sight over the craggy glacier, I sob out another painful breath and close my eyes.
"Goodbye," I manage again, and this time it's easier. As far as dying goes, freezing to death's not that bad. Soon sleep will overtake me, and I'll never wake again. But for the part of me that wants to rage against how all that my friends and I have accomplished has been stripped away from us, I am ready.
I have finally, finally said goodbye.
Just as I begin to feel myself drift away, a strange sound comes to my ears. Forcing my heavy eyelids to open, I watch in numb fascination as a curiously familiar shape rises out of the water lapping at the edges of the glacier. Ironically, in the last team movie night before Sam took command of the Atlantis base, Teal'c picked The Hunt for the Red October.
It is a submarine, which means I have been found. I'm not going to die.
"Oh, shit."