I feel an explanation is necessary... apart from the snippet of preamble, this chapter was the story I dashed off when I should have been revising... I'm not sure if it entirely works within the story that grew up around it, but the previous 12 chapters have been building up to this so I'm darn well keeping it in!! :-P And I faithfully promise, from this point on, things can only get better!

There was always something to live for.

O'Neill had found a not-exactly-new something, and it was Cassie. In the same way thinking of Charlie could take the keen edge off his grief (and it was grief) at losing Carter, playing Dad to Cassie had the same effect. It was only yesterday when Cassie had jokingly talked about birthday presents (her eighteenth birthday was a mere four months away!) that he had realised Cassie and Charlie were almost the same age.

Still adamant she was moving in with him after Carter's wedding, she was demanding decoration of the room she inhabited. Currently he was elbow deep in white paint.

The 'phone rang and he swore, making Cassie smile and tut. His hands were covered in paint. "Let the machine catch it."

Beep. "Jack, it's Daniel. Sam's got a problem on her hands with Jacob off world and uncontactable... and I wondered if we could cut a deal... I'll do the speech if you'll walk her down the aisle. Ring me when you get this message, will you?"

Cassie put her paintbrush down carefully. "Are you gonna do it?" she asked.

O'Neill stared at the wall, at the drying paint. He swiped flat a swelling bead of paint.

A very large part of him wanted to say no. He doubted Carter knew of Daniel's plan, he could easily back out...

But he wanted to make a speech at her wedding even less than walk her down the aisle. He could manage walking, he wasn't sure about talking. He couldn't tell everyone how happy he was for the couple, how he thought they were well suited... it would be perverse.

"I guess.... I guess I'd better ring Daniel."

He sat on the bench outside the church. Behind him the crowds of people gathered to watch the wedding were filing through the church doors until he was alone. The world was unearthly quiet and calm; the slightest of breezes rustling the leaves of the trees in the churchyard, a whispering background to his slow and ponderous thoughts.

He remembered at one time feeling numb about this wedding. He wished he still felt that way. The brim of his top hat passed fitfully through his fingers as he turned it round and round, trying to distract himself. The bride's car was late, but that he knew, was normal.

He tipped his hatless head backwards, gazing at the sky. It was cloudy, but the wind would soon clear the grey banks to reveal a sky of perfect blue, just in time for the bride and groom to emerge.

The quiet hum of an expensive car engine made him turn his head. His heart sunk. The limousine, ribbons stretching from the emblem to the front windows, pulled up before him. He stood up slowly, replacing his top hat and fixing a smile on his face.

The driver cut the engine and he moved forward on legs of lead. His fingers, feeling like a bunch of bananas, clumsily manipulated the door handle. He pulled open the door.

Carter was sat furthest from him. He helped Cassie from the car, the teenager beautiful but awkward in her bridesmaidal attire, and his smile turned truthful for the briefest of seconds. "You look lovely," he told her and she stopped self consciously tugging up the neckline of her dress; nodding her thanks.

He held out his arm to Carter and met her eyes for the first time, the same colour as the afternoon's sky would be. He'd never really seen his former second in command dressed glamourously; the few occasions he had seen her in much make-up he hadn't felt quite comfortable: that Carter wasn't the one he knew and loved.

This was. The make-up artist had made her flawless and somehow maintained the essence of her personality through the falsity. He helped her out of the car and she took his arm, facing the lynch-gate.

Cassie was peeping through the church doors, her back expressively towards them. O'Neill thought he saw Daniel's top hat on the other side, watching them.

"You look wonderful," he managed.

"Thank you." Her clutch on his arm was painfully tight.

He didn't ask her if she still wanted to go through with it, or beg her to change her mind because he knew she wouldn't be standing here if his words would have any effect, he simply stepped forward, legs swinging pendulously; the damn memories of her bubbling to the surface of his turbulent consciousness.

They walked forward to the church door, her heart pounding. The part of her that always remained aloof, watching the rest of her, was sickened. She knew the only reason she could go through with this as the fact she was fully aware that the man beside her was suffering exactly the same pain as herself. Her wedding day was fast becoming something else that bound them together, and she hated herself for it.

The door opened and they walked inside, Cassie falling into place now behind them. They walked on, the sound of the organ loud in their ears but not enough to drown out the whispers of the congregation. Carter felt admiring eyed upon her.

Now O'Neill could see Pete lurking nervously at the altar. He resisted the urge to slow his pace and heighten the slightest shade of suspicion already palpable in the groom's eyes. He was grateful for one small mercy, the exquisitely tailored suit he had hired for the event looked better on his taller frame than it did on the shorter, stockier policeman.

Carter's mind circled the differences also, devoid of emotion and uncritical, simply logging points of data as she would in a scientific experiment: the few inches different in height, the angles of the face, even the minute variations in the colours of the suits... they combined to force the inevitable conclusion: despite his age and the sad weariness in his face: O'Neill looked the part of the groom in her fairytale wedding so much more than the obviously skittish Pete.

They reached the altar and O'Neill let go of her arm, relinquishing her to her nearly-husband. Her fingers lingered for a second too long on his arm. She took her place at Pete's side, as O'Neill took his own on her right. Unconsciously he straightened, his posture becoming more and more military as his eyes fixed on a point somewhere near the ceiling.

Carter glanced right and saw his whole body stiffening, fighting his pain in his own unique way, forcing the terrible tumult of emotions to strengthen his limbs and make him as cold and unrelenting as stone. The knuckles of his hands, held behind his back, were turning white.

Later O'Neill would remember nothing of the service, being able only to describe the small patch of wall he had been studying in minute detail. But he remembered their kiss, the first one of married life, and the dreadful walk back up the aisle behind Mr. and Mrs. Shanahan. Daniel and Teal'c fell into step beside him and the cynical core of his being wondered why.

Of all things, Carter remember the kiss most of all. It had been slightly awkward in the sight of 'all gathered here' and, it felt to her, missing something fundamental. Inevitably she found herself comparing it to O'Neill's and, like everything else, it didn't measure up.

Wasn't that the point of all this? I know I'll always feel that way about Jack, but with Pete things are certain... I know I can make this work. I do love Pete and I won't betray him again for Jack.

She smiled demurely for the photographer, not being able to help feeling that this was an awful lot of philosophising about a decision that should be as easy as breathing.

Sam and Jack. They went together, naturally as breathing.

The confetti suddenly exploded around them and she jumped, much to the glee of Daniel who had just given the signal. Near the back of the crowd now she saw O'Neill dig his hand into his pocket. He withdrew a handful of rice paper. He threw it and the wind caught it, blowing it away. She watched the petals spill through the air until the became ensnared in the branches of a sapling, the few that fell to the ground trampled by guests.

Her car was waiting.

Bride and groom clambered in, turning to wave at the cheering crowds. Daniel and Teal'c were stood shoulder to shoulder, waving as madly as she was. As the car pulled away she felt the solemn gaze of O'Neill upon her.

He raised his hand in a solitary gesture of goodbye, the bitterness welling up inside him, choking him. They were almost out of sight when they finally faced forward again. He couldn't be sure, but he thought they turned to each other and kissed. He turned his face away and stood watching the tombstones under the whispering trees and feeling utterly alone.

He felt the lightest of touches on his shoulder. "Jack?"

He'd been expecting Daniel, or possibly Teal'c. It was Cassie, looking concerned. He swallowed to clear te lump in his throat.

"Yeah?" He sounded casual, unconcerned.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," he repeated. And he was, he realised. She loved him, would always love him. But she had made her choice.

"I had to move on. Don't hate me for that."

He didn't hate her, he realised, he admired her. She had done what he never could; made the choice to accept that Jack and Sam-

It went together as naturally as breathing

-Jack and Sam could never be and she had acted accordingly, with honour.

"Yeah. I'm fine," he said, able now to look away from the graves.

She loved him as he loved her. It was a shared secret he could either drive himself mad dwelling on, or accept for what it was : something the shared.

In the shattered world he currently inhabited he had to make it (and the one stolen moment they had shared together) something he was grateful for rather than hateful for.

And he would. Just not right now. Right now, in this time and place and more than anything else, he wanted to drink himself into dreamless oblivion. The post-nuptial party was going to provide him with ample opportunity to do this.

"Come on," he said, slightly distantly, to Cassie. "Don't you want to go to the party?"