Jack finds himself very much alone on an almost-strange world. Could have happened...in any season.

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Alone

Alone. He didn't much like being alone.

Now, that was a funny concept, he reflected. For a good part of his post-Charlie adult life, alone was exactly how he wanted it. And, actually, for much of his pre-Charlie life, alone was just fine, too.

That was how he categorized his life these days. Things like post-Charlie, pre-military, post-SGC.

Or, maybe, it was really two categories: not-alone-and-wishing-to-be alone, and really-truly-alone. Jack thought back to something his mother had always said, "Be careful what you wish for, young man, you might just get it!"

No matter now.

A sigh escaped him as he stood up, resting much of his weight on a hiking staff and taking care to not crush an object in his opposite hand. He smiled when he thought about that staff, which was a cryptic mish-mash of odd marks. He'd started by marking each sunset, then the relative phases of the moons, until he could determine their patterns. There were 37 sunsets per synchronized moon-phases….and it was every 12 synchronized moon-phases for each time that BOTH moons were new. And every one of those really dark nights issued in a significant change in the weather, and every four of these led to an entirely new cycle.

He had thought about calling each sunset a "day", but decided to keep "sunsets"; and then he considered "month" but thought that "smip" was good; but then…well. It was a new calendar for a new planet and he declared them as sunsets, smips, nogs, and georges.

Carter would've gotten a kick out of it and would have figured out that a nog was about an earth year, and then Daniel would've told him about seven ancient civilizations that did the same thing, but Daniel wouldn't have understood why four nogs made a george.

Carter. Daniel. SGC.

For a long time – a george, at least – he had refused to think about them. Well, that wasn't quite true; he had thought about them a lot for the first nog. Then he realized that there was no way that they would find him, no way that they would be able sort out whatever accident of wormhole fate it was that sent him here, let alone actually finding "here", not to mention tracking him down when they arrived. Besides, the DHD at this end was rubble, so….

So he stopped himself from thinking about Carter and Daniel and the SGC and Teal'c and Hammond and Sara and Doc Frazier and pizza and hot showers and cars and hockey and TV and books and classical music and his house and ….everything….for quite some time.

Instead he thought about the good things he did have, and put his efforts into surviving and thriving.

Terran – he'd named the planet "Terran" – wasn't bad, as planets went. No goauld. Of course, no other people either, at least in the time that he'd been there.

There were trees, but also grasslands. Streams and lakes, with drinkable water. Lots of fish. Good hunting, and very few predators, to him, anyway. Lots of edible plants. The weather was mild with no severe quirks and it was easily predictable. There were some really big hills but nothing resembling serious mountains, and lots of flint and shale. Actually, Terran was pretty damn nice, he thought, if you had to be stuck somewhere.

Jack shook his hair back out of his eyes and carefully unrolled the object he was holding, the object that always started him musing like this; his map, the only known map of Terran. So far, he figured that he had explored about 2000 miles in each direction. Hey, he didn't have anything else to do, right? And his map was accurate, too – distances, terrain features, altitudes; ground cover and vegetation; wildlife and fish; edible plants; shelter.

There, in the center of the map, was his home base, the StarGate. In the early days he tried to visit it once a nog; but now, every george or so was about right. He always left a sign that someone from the SGC would recognize (he figured they wouldn't come, but then again, why be stupid about it?), and he always subtly rigged the gate so that he would know if it had been activated.

It hadn't.

Jack re-rolled the map and slid it gently into his backpack. That was another good thing, he thought, his USAF gear. They had made it right, and if you took care of it, it would take care of you. He had been on Terran a bit more than five georges….twenty earth years, he wondered why he still kept up the pretense of georges?….and even though the color had faded and it had had a few repairs, the pack was solid and sound, as were his knives and weapons. His boots, and cloths, well… Well, the hat was still wearable. Sort of, anyway.

He decided to head back to the StarGate now, ostensibly just to check in. Deep down, though, he wasn't sure if he would be leaving the gate area again. Even though he was as fit as he had ever been -- well, except for his knee -- he wasn't getting any younger. Besides, he'd explored Terran from sea to shining sea, and….

He was still alone.

There was a good supply of food and water and shelter and fuel around the gate, he reflected. Maybe it was time to settle down.

Maybe it was the lingering hope that someone would come before he died.

Maybe it was the dark wish that someone would come someday, and find his bones – if the scavengers didn't scatter them, which he was quite sure they would.

Or maybe it was the thought of the last bullet, the one he was saving, stored with his USAF-issued pistol….just in case, of course, that it would still fire, and just in case he needed to end his own suffering, if he ever really got badly injured or sick, or something.

Maybe, Jack pondered, maybe he should just start walking, and stop thinking. Yes, he decided. Stop thinking and start walking. A man of action.

He casually shouldered his pack, leaned on his hiking staff, and limped onward, alone.