Disclaimer: Not mine, hang on some of then are mine, but only the made up ones…or are they all made up ones? Heck, I make no money, please don't sue.
Authors note: Weird little thing, gotta stop eating high sugar foods at three am.
Dear Jason,
I have a lot I need to tell you. It's been so hard while you've been gone to think of anything except how much I miss you, it's so strange after so long you'd think a tough military girl like me could have bounced back, could have let you go. But I can't, so I feel I need to tell you all this, maybe then you'll understand why I could never let you see some of my life.
I work for a section of the airforce that deals with interplanetary travel through a wormhole network called the Stargates. We also deal with the impending threat of an attack by an alien race known as the Goa'uld. That's it. That's the big secret. The one I would never tell you. I can just imagine your face right now, googly eyed with shock, wondering if I've gone back to some of my bad college habits. It's true though, and I'm sure one day it'll make for a short but colourful résumé. But for now you can see why I could never tell you the truth. I don't expect you to forgive me for that though in any way, I chose this, I knew what it could mean, though there was no way I was ever expecting what I got. Don't put the letter down Jason, I know it seems odd, but I really have got a good excuse for writing this to you now. Ok maybe not a good excuse, but an excuse none the less.
My life has turned into the twilight zone and I'm not talking about the whole aliens and stargate thing. Believe it or not that's become an accepted fact now. You' be amazed what you'll accept when your faced with irrevocable proof and I've seen it, experienced it myself. The thing is that the SGC (stargate command) forms links with people. I'm in a team, with some really great people and I know them inside that building like no one else. Yet outside I only know a few, choice individuals who've managed to remain in my orbit even outside that pile of rocks. Everyone else is a friend, a comrade a fellow soldier inside the SGC, but barely a face to nod to outside. It's very unusual, but then I guess that just about matches up to everything else around me. That's why the past few months have come as something of a culture shock. Imagine living like that all the time, then being thrown suddenly and violently into the depths of someone else's life without them even realizing it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Ok, the first thing you must understand is how the SGC works. I said a team, well with the exception of medical and support staff we all have a team. But the primary, the top cats, the first contact travellers, are SG-1. Curiously there are only four of them and two aren't even military, but then again the stargate is a highly unusual project, so it's only logical it's set up should be just as eccentric. They're CO is a Colonel called Jack O'Neill. A man I once foolishly admitted to finding 'quite attractive'. I have regretted that ever since, with almost constant ribbing from Dr Fraiser's nurses (the closest human equivalents to a budgerigar colony you'll ever meet) about it, his current 'availability' and the presence in his team of a woman named Major Samantha Carter. This is where it gets a little tricky to explain. O'Neill is widely believed to have feelings for her. (By widely believed I mean the nurses accept it as fact, which means everybody who visits the infirmary hears further and further embellished versions of it, I think they're onto their third kid now) but whether she reciprocates is a little more hazy. It is of course deeply against all regulations, but the incurable romantics among us cheerfully glaze over this fact. Not difficult yet, but that's the simple end of the situation. Throw into the picture now the rest of the team. One Dr Daniel Jackson, with a PhD in something or somethings, I can never quite tell. The only thing I do know is that he speaks 23 languages, which I think is more than enough for anyone. Then there's Teal'c, he is, for lack of more detail and 24 extra pages on which to write to you about it, an alien. That team are different, they live in a much smaller world than we do and they know each other better than I think I've ever known anyone. That's the difference between being at the front and being in the middle I suppose, they live all the colour and excitement first hand, where as we follow on behind picking up the pieces. That's the sort of stuff that really builds bonds. By now you're probably scratching your head in the way you always do, wondering why on earth I'm bothering to tell you all this. Well it's this situation I find myself in. No, actually it's the situation I'm about to describe that I find myself in.
You see I barely know Sg-1. I'm aware of what they look like, I'll nod in the corridor, they'll nod back, if I se them outside the SGC They'll be that dim glimmer of recognition. So how do you tell someone you barely know that you know intimate details of their life that no one conceivably should? It doesn't exactly fall into conversation does it? To be fair it's not my fault, it's not like I followed anyone, it's just this stream of coincidences that's starting to make me hear spooky music every time I see them. Twilight zone I tell you.
It was one of the first times I'd seen them out together without it being the whole team. I was in O'Malleys, you must remember it, you took me there a bunch of times. Well I was drinking shots and trying to avoid playing pool and simultaneously the proposals of a man who had quite calmly, ten minutes before informed me he was Jesus. It was then that I spotted them, Sam and Daniel in some dark corner of the bar trying their best to have a quiet argument. You must remember arguing with me Jason, I'm airforce, she's airforce, and do you remember us ever having a quiet argument? Well it looked like he was having much he same problem. Sam looked about ready to smash the glass in her hand and Daniel's hands were twitching near his face, a sure sign of nervousness or impending and probably confusing speech. I just made out
"Dan--" before a swift movement of his hands to shush her at least a little obliterated the rest of the words. The combination of curiosity, pool and the Son of God convinced me to move closer, fairly sure of being inconspicuous.
"Daniel" she said softly, "I thought we'd agreed…"
"I don't want to ignore it." He responded, I had a fairly good idea by now what was going on and I was seriously regretting sitting on a barstool, since I was now required to keep my balance and deal with this new rush of information. She sighed and I saw it, the same tired look that affects all military personnel when faced with something in their job they don't like, we're all far too schooled in following orders.
"But what would happen to us, to the team if we, if we…"
"Stopped dancing around this whole thing, gave up, went home and did what we've been longing to for months?"
"Yeah." She sounded rather weak after his last statement. Strangely I found myself willing them to go and do it, I'm by no means a romantic, you know that better than anyone, but here I was silently begging them to prove everybody wrong.
"But what would happen to everyone else?" Sam asked, her voice almost plaintive.
"That's their decision." Daniel responded, "this is ours and right now, what we decide affects no one but us." She looked speculative for a moment, then she leapt gracefully off the bar stool. 'Go go go' I was muttering silently, the rest of me wondering where my rational thought processes had gone. He held his hand out to her and she gently took it, leaning forward to kiss him almost chastely. The two of them left the restaurant.
"Yes! Go Desire!" I said softly. It was a pity I chose that moment, because my friend the Messiah had just walked up behind me. He looked at me oddly and I swore that if he though I was mad this would be the last time I ever touched alcohol. He just stared for a second then drifted away and shrugging I downed the rest of that shot and asked for another.
That was it, I thought. Very nice for them but as I said and you know so well, I'm not exactly an incurable romantic. Still it did occur to me there might be something in this, money to be exact. No, that's nothing like what it sounds, I'd be terrible at Blackmail even if I did attempt it, I don't understand bank accounts and I can't cut up a newspaper straight. But you have to remember that I work in a very confined environment and invariably people will begin to take small wagers on events in the base (think Vegas in the '50s). Like I said Sg-1 are the top dogs so their relationships had some pretty high stakes. As you can probably guess, with the help of the swab squad most of the bets lay in one direction. Imagine betting against those odds and knowing you were right, the prospect was enticing. But I held off, not so much out of any sense of duty, but more because I've seen these relationships start before, they can be a quick flash in the pan and I'd hate to have to withdraw a bet. That's what I liked about you, you were about as far removed from the military as you could get, 'no danger there' I thought. Still I left the gambling and carried on, trying to avoid their lives as much as possible. Doesn't work though. I could see it everywhere, I'm human, I still remember what it was like and I could see it all, the small gestures, the looks, the beginnings of that instinctive understanding that surpasses anything else in my experience. They were subtle, very subtle, if I hadn't known I would have continued in blissful ignorance like the rest of the base. Not noticing he gave her half his dubious canteen pudding, that she took a second's extra care to stand beside him when they headed through the gate. It's bizarre. Like seeing a layer no one else does. I think I have a vague idea what telepaths feel like now, knowing something's going on whilst it passed over the heads of everyone around you. I kept seeing them too, that's what's becoming truly odd. I can't help it, we just seem to be tied together, no matter where they go, I go. I was there in the restaurant when they kissed over wine before fighting over the bill. I was there when they both took the mask off for a few seconds in the SGC and I was there when they both fell out of the tree in the park. I was also there when they used a rather dubious excuse to try and explain away the injuries. Are you beginning to see what I mean? Some deity somewhere must think this is very amusing. The world's first unintentional stalker, but it becomes almost addictive anyway and try as I might its difficult not to live just a little vicariously. I remember being that in love Jason and it's getting painful to watch it happening to someone else because I can't have that any more.
Anyway, it's been almost 4 months now and it's finally happened. I could see it and I knew that with my current track record, I'd be there. Of all the places he could have he chosen it was the locker room at the SGC. Not a man great at romance but he gets all the points for sincerity. She smiled at him, then wrapped her arms around him like she never wanted to let go. I remember that. Whatever he said to her was lost behind my own self-consciousness; there are some things that should remain private, even from your own shadow. She wears the ring around her neck. I used to do that, for me it was fear of losing it, for her it's the secret that's got to come out one day. I've given up trying to avoid it now and I've succumbed to the temptation. Five hundred bucks should do fantastically at those odds.
So that's it, that's my life, or rather my life and the lives of people who barely know I exist. That's rather odd really, but then these days for me, what isn't? I still miss you my love, please don't forget me whatever you're doing now.
Forever Yours,
Claire.
She stared at the letter. She couldn't send it, she knew that, despite the obvious things like secrecy and indefinite jail terms, she had nowhere for it to go. Sighing she dropped it into her fire and watched it burn. It was the only way to send it to him anyway and it had served its primary purpose. She stretched back, watching the last of the paper disappear into the encroaching flames. A letter to Jason, her Jason. The sweet man who'd loved her and told her he would always be there. The man who had found the romantic side in the tough as nails military girl. The man who through some bitter twist of irony had been hit by a car while his fiancée was doing the most dangerous job in the world. She leaned back in her chair. Maybe for all that, her life was fairly ordinary after all.
End