Disclaimers: Not mine, not mine, not mine... if Stargate was mine, do you think I'd be living in this dumpy apartment that's making my allergies react an make me miserable?

Spoilers: Season 1, through "Singularity".

"You're very brave."

Three times she said it, and each time, I thought it was more of a lie. I was never brave at all. I was scared out of my wits.

First, there was the disease. Watching my whole family die, my friends, my neighbors- everyone- die: it was horrifying. It was frightening. But after a while, I started to feel numb to it all. I just wanted to die myself and get it over with. And then Sam came, and she wanted me to leave it all. Leave everything I'd ever known, to go to a world I couldn't even imagine. It was almost more terrifying than the idea of dying. But she told me I was brave, and I so wanted to keep holding on to her, holding on to my anchor. She hadn't just let me run away into the bushes and hide; she had come after me. She cared. So I held her hand and went through the icy roller coaster of gate travel.

Then when my chest hurt, and she took me to the doctor. Again, with the "You're very brave" routine, while she tried to pretend not to be scared by what was happening. And I took her hand and let her lead me out of the room, because I had grown to trust her.

And then, in the missile silo. She wanted me to go back to sleep, because she didn't want to leave me there. Leaving a body- okay. Not nice, but okay. Leaving a little girl who's screaming for you... It was too much, too hard.

Whatever he says, whatever he might have tried to order Sam to do... I don't think Jack would have really been able to leave me there either. Not if he had been down there with us when it happened.

Not even when I asked if we were going to die, and Sam said, "No, we are not gonna die," with a sniffle in her voice did I think it true. I just thought that she cared enough to stay with me when I died.

So I took up the lie, and told Sam, who had her arms wrapped around me, "We're very brave."

I didn't feel brave then, either. I was scared, I was sure I was gonna die... but I wanted to make it easier for her. So I lied, and said, "We're very brave."

It was a long time before I realized that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the decision to keep going in spite of it. And that every time she told me that I was brave, she was also telling herself to be strong. We made a choice. She chose to be brave for me; I chose to trust her... to be brave for her, because of her.

Now, sitting beside her bedside decades later, I don't want to admit that she's dying. Certainly not of old age. Sam's been a warrior and a scientist most of her life. We used to joke about it, whether she'd blow herself up in the lab or be killed by aliens. But to be laid low by time... well, time and the pneumonia she'd caught from puttering around too much when she had the flu- it's still hard to grasp. I don't want to admit it's happening.

But I want- no, need- to make it easier for both of us. So I fall back on the old standard- Jack's standard. When in pain, joke.

"When you get to heaven, don't go exploring it all without me, okay? And don't blow it up with one of your experiments, either."

She gets a chuckle out of that, but starts coughing. I pull her up against me and pat her back. She smiles weakly at me as I ease her back onto the pillows. But her eyes sadden.

"I'm scared, Cassie. I don't know if there's a heaven. And even if there is... I've done so many things..."

I squeeze the hand I am still holding and close my eyes. Time for another lie. No, not a lie. A choice. "You're very brave."