Title: Looking for a Light
Author: Abigor
Spoilers: nothing specific
Summery: What happens when you're trapped in the shadows?
Rating: PG, but character death. Kinda.
Email: Shunt511@aol.comAuthors Notes: This is completely different to my last piece; it's more of an introspective, freaky thing. Originally I wrote it as English coursework, but I thought 'hey, with a little re-writing this could be a fanfic' and so here it is. Again, please, please read & review. Pretty please? With a cherry on top?
And by the way the title of this piece is in no way connected to the episode 'The Light' or somebody looking for a cigarette lighter
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Looking for a Light
It's strange, you know? Well I suppose you can't can you? I admit it, I could be shallow, but less so than other people. Go to work, save the world, go out with SG1; it was all so trivial. Apart from the saving the world part. Obviously. But even then it's just one world among millions. Six billion people among trillions. And all interspersed with those little choices that seemed to matter so much more; what should I buy Cassie for Christmas? Which report should I write up first?
But then life is (was) made of those. Choices I mean. In all the variation though, we tend to lose track, of what's important in life. I did. Until I lost it.
I'm dead.
Now there's a statement you don't often hear.
Unless you work at the SGC. In a way, it was kinda a choice I made that led to it all. It had been a 'normal' day, almost in a 'you know something had to happen because otherwise it would all be too average' way. After leaving the SGC I decided to swing by the coffee shop, grab some concentrated caffeine and watch the world go by. They don't do that anymore. I would have thought it was impossible. I don't know how the team will survive without it. There's practically a coffee addiction. Not naming any particular names. But now they say it holds too many memories for them. It holds too many memories for them? How do they think I feel?
That's the other bizarre thing. I'm still here. Oh I'm not here, here, as in living, breathing, carrying out the seven signs of life. All that stuff you learnt in Biology in Junior high. I suppose I'm a ghost.
Again another statement you don't often hear.
A ghost, that's me now. A spectre, a ghoul, a wraith, a spirit, a phantom. Maybe I'm not even that. Maybe I'm just a wisp of consciousness. I dunno. It's not like there were books you could read up on the subject. Even when you are living.
I got distracted. That happens a lot now, to my train of thought. It goes off on a detour down that dark tunnel. Must be the lack of functional grey matter, letting my thoughts escape out from their prison. Probably because I can't escape from mine. It's not a prison I suppose in the traditional way (who likes clichés anyway?), but it's still my hell.
Just like you see in a film. I can see my adoptive family, my friends, complete strangers, all carrying on with their lives. Without me. It can't have been that long. I know they had to move on, but did it have to be so soon? Maybe I'm just jealous. I want to move on, but I don't know where to go, how to go. There's no light at the end of the tunnel, hell, there's no tunnel. There's not even a glint of a pearly gate, not even a trickle of a river and at this point I'd be glad if I could just see the tail a three headed dog.
I want to move on. But I don't know where to go. Do all souls go through this? Or is it just me? Tragic circumstances and all that. It certainly never happened before. Trust me, I know from experience. They always said I never paid enough attention to what was going on around me, when I was tired. Shouldn't work so late. If only I had crossed that road two seconds later, I'd still be with them. Rather than so, so alone. They surround me, but I'm still alone, because none of them notice, let alone talk to me.
At first I ached so much to talk to them, show them I'm still here. In a way at least. Then I became angry and upset when they seemed to ignore me, like they were walking right through me. And now? Now I suppose I've accepted it. I'm not who I was, I've gained a whole new perspective on life, hindsight and all that. Which is nice, but I can feel this isn't right, this isn't where I'm supposed to be, but I don't know where to go.
All I want to do is go home. What's that saying, you never know what you've got till you've lost it? Well I've lost it and I want it back. If I was there properly, I would kill to get it back to have another chance.
You never think it could happen to you. That's what they always say they say, but you don't. You honestly don't. Oh I know SG1, well most of the SGC have had near misses, but you never actually think this is the time. When it all stops. We thought how we were invincible. About how unlikely it is, what's the chance of you ending up a statistic? Because that's part of all I am; a soul, a broken shell of a body and a statistic in some military book of unfortunate accidents.
I'm a bit hung up over this entire death thing, if you hadn't noticed. I find it preoccupying. Although as things go, I think it's a pretty good reason for being preoccupied. Better than most reasons anyway. Even the chocolate cream frappachino that the cute server makes. Who can never know me now, while I'll never know them.
I thought there was so much time to stuff like that, but there wasn't not for me anyway. Snatched away in their prime and everything, like they said at the funeral. Gone on to a better place. But I'm still here. I'm still certain I shouldn't be, that this isn't the 'average' thing for someone to do. I even have a reason why I know (other than a tingly feeling in the area where my stomach was). If everybody became like this, then why aren't they here? Surely I'd be able to see them? So it looks like I get to be a freak in death. An outcast like in life. But so much more alone. Wonderful.
When things die, as their last breath is taken, this swirl of bright golden sparks whorls and twirls away, spreading and dissipating around into the air particles. After I saw Cassie's dog get run over I left my 'family' for the first time, stopped following them and went to a hospital instead. The casualty department, to see if it was real, not just a post death hallucination. But it wasn't. So did something go wrong with that for me? It's not like I chose to stay. I chose to cross that road, not to pay attention, but I didn't choose not to leave, not to go down that tunnel.
I hadn't expected that I'd need to look for that tunnel for years. Life isn't like that. You don't die now, even on SG1, you die when you're old and wrinkly and at some home that smells of pee. But not like this. Not so I can't fade away into oblivion, but stuck in this land of limbo, like Shroedinger's bloody Ghost.
I wasn't in a limbo when I crossed that road. I was in a land of cotton candy and dreams. Of what my future held. For me and us and the world. So wrapped up that my eyes never opened, never saw that guy running from that bank. Didn't notice as he swung that piece of slick black metal. Honed skills my ass. Checking I had those notes as I knocked into his shoulder. I didn't notice until I was dropping to the ground, keening in agony, as waves of white hot fury rolled from the epicentre of my stomach. As my hands desperately clutched, trying to stem the flow of thick, clogging redness. As people shouting, screaming and comforting slowly faded out, like the mute button has been pressed. Seeing myself, at a distance from the pain, lying on the pavement while the ambulance arrived, too late to do anything but wash the blood off the pavement and down the drain. The military vehicle pulling up, and them piling up, aghast looks and tears.
While he slipped away in the crowd, unlikely to be caught. A horrific act they said, while I just felt so sad, so lonely, so angry. And so filled with a thirst for revenge. Always a good reason to stay that, revenge.
But then that would be a cliché.
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So there ya go. Who do you think it is? I did try to be deliberately ambiguous. For a while I thought about writing a companion piece, forming an actual story around it, but I never quite got round to it. But hey, if anyone else out there wants to, you are welcome. Or if they want to flesh out the outline I had then contact me. Or tell me to bugger off. Whichever you think is appropriate.