My eternal gratitude to Sio for her beta. And dedicated to the cool guy that brought Jacob to life.
Shall We Dance?
By
Denise
Death is a rather liberating event. Don't get me wrong; it's not usually something I go looking for. In fact, I normally go out of my way to avoid it.
But Death is a lot like athlete's foot. No matter how far you run, it's always there, lurking, just waiting to jump up and make your life hell.
It's odd, but camping out on Death's doorstep really isn't all that bad. I mean, if you think about it, we're all just a hair's breadth from Death. Any of us, at any time, could die. A slip down the stairs, inattentive driver, unknown allergy, bee sting; hell, there are thousands of people walking around with aneurysms waiting to pop. We're all dead men walking.
The thing is, most people just wander around, totally oblivious to their impending death. I, for better or worse, am rather familiar with the Grim Reaper. He and I have been doing this little dance for years. Thinking back, I suppose the first time we crossed paths was in 1953. Irving and I spent the summer with my grandparent's on their farm. The world was a great place back then. You actually got to grow up and learn and explore instead of the super-protected way kids are treated now.
Of course, that exploration and learning sometimes came at a price. In this case, the price of me learning that 'skating on thin ice' wasn't just a cliché; I nearly drowned then spent the next month sick as a dog.
I never really gave my brushes with death much of a thought until I had kids. Then…then it became important. Then I'd realize that, if something happened to me, my kids would be alone.
Ok, that sounded arrogant. They wouldn't be ALONE. They'd still have their mother. But things were different then. It was harder for a woman to raise kids by herself.
It didn't stop me from doing my job though. I was a pilot and being a pilot had risks. Life was all in how you managed those risks. All in all, I think I did pretty good. I managed to balance the risks that are part of my job with the need for me to make it home each night.
And then, Death decided that I needed to learn a lesson. That I needed to learn that I wasn't the only person on his list. That I wasn't immune and that my balancing act was just that, an act. So he took from me one of the three people that I'd rather die than lose.
Somehow, I fooled myself that I'd never be in this situation again. Never be the survivor and never have to bury one of my own.
Death decided to remind me that I was getting a bit too cocky about a year ago when he decided to take the form of a monstrous nightmare of a creature and tried to hunt my little girl like an animal. I did a lot of praying in those twenty-four hours. A lot of bargaining, a lot of hoping. Fortunately, Death seemed to hit its limit that day and my little girl came home to me. Battered, bloody and looking like hell, but alive.
Of course, that was when I got my first indication that my little Faustian bargain was going to come due. See, six years ago, thanks to Selmak, I got to thumb my nose at the Grim Reaper. I literally told Death to go fuck itself…and it did.
Cancer, not a problem. Arthritis? Just a memory. I was healthy and fit and spry and felt like a twenty…ok, thirty year old. Selmak is a miracle worker, but she can only do what she can with what she had to work with.
And she worked hard. Probably too hard. Sometimes I wonder; if I'd been a little younger, she'd have had an easier time of it. Maybe, if she'd have moved into a nice two bedroom instead of the turn of the century fix-er-upper she wouldn't have wasted all her energy on me and would have had a little more for herself.
I discovered something during those nightmarish twenty-four hours, something that didn't even occur to me until later, when I was sitting beside Sam's bed, waiting for her to wake up.
My leg still hurt.
A full day and a half later and my leg still hurt.
It was still bruised and torn and more than a little mangled. And it shouldn't have been. Not with Selmak. Hell, just a few months ago she healed a staff wound in less than a day, new flesh and all. And here I was, with a simple gash and stitches and it wasn't healed.
She didn't want to admit it, of course. Didn't want to face the facts and fess up. She was old. Old and tired and not quite up to the miracles she used to work.
I think I knew, even if I never admitted it, that ours would not be a long blending. Theoretically, as Sam would say, Sel could live forever. True, she is one of the oldest of the Tok'ra, but there are Goa'uld out there that have been around for ten millennia. Since the Goa'uld and Tok'ra are biologically the same, it stands to reason that Selmak could live just as long.
Of course, your average Goa'uld takes his daily dip in the sarcophagus and doesn't usually have folks trying to kill him on a regular basis. It seems that these things take their toll on a Tok'ra.
Selmak was dying.
Oh, she didn't say it in so many words, but the message was there. She was dying and her body was failing and there wasn't much to do about it. See, it's not like they have doctors. They do have healers, but they're little more than techs. Medics whose main goal is to keep the host alive long enough for the symbiote to heal it, or for the symbiote to move onto greener pastures. They really didn't do much with healing an ailing symbiote.
That's another thing the Tok'ra have in common with the Goa'uld: arrogance. Who needs a doctor to heal a creature that's all but immortal?
Selmak offered to leave then. Offered to let go and move on and let me continue with my life, but I wouldn't let her. She wasn't gonna fall on her sword because she wasn't as spry as she used to be.
And you know, I don't regret it. I know that, had she left then, Death and I wouldn't have a date coming up, but I wouldn't change a thing. She was a part of me, IS a part of me, and I can't keep doing it. I can't keep burying the ones I… love.
God, that's weird. I do love her. As strange and bizarre as that sounds, I love Selmak.
She saved my life and gave me a chance to do something again. To BE something more than a washed up old general waiting to die. I'm not going to abandon her just because she's reached the end of the road.
I'm tired. Tired of living, tired of fighting, tired of surviving.
Death and I are finally gonna have that dance. And I think about the only thing I regret is what I'm leaving behind. When Selmak and I first blended, I kinda had the fantasy that not only would I get to see Sam married I'd maybe get to see my grandkids and, hell, even my great-grandkids grow up.
Guess I shouldn't have started counting my eggs before they were hatched.
I want her to be happy. Really, that's all I've ever wanted, for my little girl to be happy. I thought NASA would make her happy, but I was 'too little, too late' there. She'd already taken care of things herself.
She's good at that; always has been. I used to count on that when she was little, count on her taking care of herself. It made things easier for me. I could justify being late when I knew that Sam was fully capable of getting home from school and making herself dinner. I never had to worry about her getting in trouble or goofing off.
In hindsight, I should have realized that this wasn't a good thing. She never got to be a kid, not really. She grew up way too fast and that was my fault. I can't change that now.
But I can do my best to help her future.
There is only so much I can control. I know that. I can't make her choices for her. In fact, given my track record, I wouldn't dare.
But I don't want her to make the same mistakes as me either. I don't want her to put her job first. It may seem important but…those nifty little insignias are cold comfort in the middle of the night when you're alone with your thoughts.
Sam deserves to be happy. She deserves to have the family that we weren't…that I wasn't.
Which is why I don't feel guilty about pushing her a bit. It's that whole liberation thing. And, I do have to admit; it's fun to push her buttons. She doesn't tend to get flustered much and I kinda like it when she does. Fluster is good for her. Fluster shakes her out of that neat little controlled world of hers.
She's not the only one that needs it. Jack and the rest of her team need to start seeing things a little differently too. Part of me getting her to find a life is them recognizing that they need to give her a push now and again. They're gonna need to do what I won't be here to do, to keep pushing her, to get her out of that rut she's in. She'll listen to them, probably more than she'll listen to me.
They're also gonna need to realize that they're gonna have to let her go. They need to accept that she just might have someone else in her life and they're gonna need to accept whoever that guy is. She's not 'theirs'.
I honestly don't know if I like the guy she's picked. Pete Shanahan seems nice enough. He's a bit of a goof and a bit of a geek, of course, so is my daughter, even if she won't admit it. He'd be good for her, and he certainly does seem smitten.
I just have to wonder if he'll be ok with her job. It's not easy to have so much of your spouse's life a forbidden topic. I wonder if he'll be able to deal with it, accept that, in the grand scheme of things, she's doing something a bit more important than he is.
Not that being a cop isn't important, it is. And I'm sure he's a good one. But, at the end of the day, busting a drug dealer doesn't hold much of a candle to saving the world or blowing up a sun.
I know his heart belongs to her, I just wonder if his ego can handle it. The male ego is a fragile thing, as Selmak used to tell me. And I don't know if his could handle being outstripped by 'the little woman'.
If I had to pick someone for her, I'd pick someone with a bit more of a backbone; someone that didn't have her up on a pedestal and who could take her down a peg or two if she needed it.
In a lot of ways, I wish Selmak was still around. She was pretty good at that relationship stuff. I guess it comes from all those centuries in other hosts.
But she's gone, and I'll never hear her voice again.
And, yes, I do hear her. Or I did. I can't really explain it, but it is possible to 'hear' someone inside your head. She always had the oddest accent, one that I could never place. And, of course, she'd never tell me. She didn't think she had an accent.
Selmak was a pretty classy lady. She was different from the other Tok'ra. I'm not saying that she wasn't arrogant. She was. But she was also practical. She knew that the Tok'ra had flaws. But she also knew that she couldn't do very damn much about them.
I envy her that. The ability to step back, take a look at the big picture and accept that there are just some things that won't change.
It must be the human in me that has this need to stick my nose into things. Which is why I can't just let well enough alone and have to meddle with Sam's life. Before Death and I have that dance, I want to know that she'll be ok. I want to know that she'll be happy. I want to know that she won't end up alone and tired like her old man.
Acceptance was never my strong suit. I can only guess that I picked that up from Selmak too. I never realized how much I got used to having her around. It wasn't always that way, let me tell you.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm glad she cured my cancer and all that, but those first few weeks were rough. Strange food, strange clothes, strange places. Do you know that I wore those damned BDUs for two weeks straight simply because they were the only familiar thing I had?
Sel drove me more than a little nuts during that time. By Tok'ra standards she was considerate. But for this old man who hadn't shared so much as a movie with someone else in decades the togetherness was a bit much.
Now that she's silent, I realize just how much I'd depended on her. Not just for healing the random physical ailment, but simply being there. Someone to talk to, someone to listen to. Someone to just be there.
She's the closest thing to a wife that I've had. And, oddly enough, I'm mourning her as much as I did Sam's mom. The one difference between them is that she was taken from me by force and very unexpectedly while I've known that Selmak's days were numbered pretty much from day one.
Before we blended, she told me that she couldn't just cure my cancer and leave. I thought it was part of the whole bargain, but it wasn't. A Tok'ra – or Goa'uld for that matter – can just heal and leave. Just like Kanan and Jack.
But to do that, a symbiote needs to be young and strong. And Selmak was anything but. Maybe, just maybe, if I'd have been twenty years younger and a lot healthier she'd have been able to hang on a bit longer. Been able to lurk in her new host and replenish her own strength instead of expending it all to heal me.
But I guess I'll never know. I learned a long time ago that 'what might be' is little more than something to keep you awake at night.
I've had a lot of sleepless nights lately. Part of it is, well, that primal fear that if I fall asleep, I might not wake up. The other part, I keep thinking of all that stuff I need to get done. Not for the Tok'ra. I've pretty much washed my hands of them. As soon as Selmak slipped into her coma, I knew that I couldn't go back.
She warned me that I might have days or weeks, maybe even a month or so. But I couldn't risk getting trapped off world when the end comes. I'm not gonna die in some damn crystal tunnel light years from Earth. I'm gonna die on the planet I was born on.
I just wish I coulda held out a bit longer. Actually made it to Sam's wedding. I woulda liked to give her away. To get to see her in her wedding dress. To know for sure that she had someone. To officially pass the reins so to speak.
I think I could just rest a bit easier if I knew that she was going to be ok. That she wasn't going to be alone. I'm not worried about Mark. He's happy and doing great for himself in San Diego. He's always been the strong one; just don't tell Sam I said that.
She's up there alone right now, keeping an eye on me while keeping her distance from the Tok'ra. She's been there for the last three days, keeping her solitary vigil. She looks so alone, so scared. Just like when she was six and got lost in that amusement park.
Hours later, when we found her, she was just sitting in a corner, out of the way of the traffic and the other patrons. She was all curled up, almost as if she was trying to hide from the rest of the world.
Adra's babbling in my ear but I tune him out. He's a good friend and all, but it doesn't matter what he says. He's not taking my body back to the Tok'ra. I already have Jack's word on that. I'm finally going to go lie beside my wife. She's been alone long enough.
Something moves and I look up, just as Jack joins Sam. He sits beside her, his arm going across her shoulders. I wait for her to shrug it off, but that doesn't happen. Instead, she grabs his hand and holds it tight.
Well, whatta ya know? It looks like there is hope after all.
I don't know if they both feel the same thing but…Jack has her under his wing now – literally. He'll take care of her, just like he has for years.
Selmak was right, I shouldn't have worried.
"I'm ready," I whisper, releasing my last, tenuous grip on life. I am ready.
As I slip into Death's cold embrace, a warm hand holds mine and soft lips brush my head.
So, my dear Reaper, shall we dance?
Fin