Title: Broken
Author: Jaymi
Rating: K
Disclaimer: I wish to god I owned something like the Stargate franchise, or had the creative talent to write and sing a song like Broken, but sadly they both belong to Double Secret productions, Gekko Productions and Seether, and all I've got is this and a handful of other unfinished fics, so please don't sue me…I'm just a poor, lowly uni student taking the characters out for a spin every now and again.
Spoilers: Post ep for Hero's
Author's Note: This damn fic has been sitting on my computer for months half finished and wouldn't you know it, two exams tomorrow and inspiration struck. So here it is…finished product. I realise it's probably been done and its cliché as all hell but I had to…
I wanna dedicate this to my friend Nicole (my go that sounds so corny…sorry Scratchy!)…if she wasn't around I would have no one to gossip and giggle with and this probably wouldn't have gotten written…thanks!
Broken
I wanted you to know I love the way you laugh
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away
I keep your photograph; I know it serves me well
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain
It was ironic really, over a year ago he had died in this room, died a slow and painful death, ascended. And yet here he was, sitting in the dark, in the same room, mourning the woman who had worked the hardest to help him in his last hours, to save him. She couldn't save him then and he sure as hell couldn't have helped her when she needed it.
He supposed it should be comforting, consoling, that he had been there for her last moments as she had been for him more than a year ago. It wasn't comforting nor was it consoling, she was still dead and here he was back in this room again.
How long was this going to continue? How many more people would have to die? She was a doctor for Christ's sake, she saved lives, was saving a life when she died. How many times had she saved him? Him or his friends, his family. Janet Fraiser was a good person and she didn't deserve to die the way she did, taken down by some anonymous Jaffa who just happened to get lucky, she didn't deserve it, and yet it had happened.
It had been a day since she had died on that planet, kneeling in the leaves, calmly helping Airman Wells in the middle of a battlefield. A whole day had gone by, with so much chaos that no one really had time to stop and grieve for the loss of the SGC's chief medical officer. Daniel didn't know whether he was grateful for that or not. In the events that had followed they're return from that planet he had been too busy to think, too distracted to remember what he had witnessed off-world. Now though, now it was coming back to him, with nothing to distract his thoughts, he began to remember, and feel.
From almost the very beginning, Janet had been his friend as well as his doctor. She was one of the few people who had been there for him, genuinely concerned about his wellbeing. His bad luck on missions, resulting in all the time he had spent in the infirmary under her care had led to a strong friendship. He trusted her with his life, after all what kind of doctor would she be if he didn't? She was always there to listen to him bitch about the latest argument with Jack, how narrow minded the air-force, the government could be. She had been there to listen to enthusiastic descriptions of his latest finds when no one else could or would.
He loved his friends; they were one of the closest things he had had to family in a long time, not counting Sha're, but Janet had been something different to him. She had been a great friend, but there had been something more there, something he had never been able to define, some potential that he had never been able to address. And now he wouldn't get the chance. He had squandered his opportunity to investigate the unknown connection between himself and the doctor and now she was dead and he was left with only his memories of her and his regrets.
Not for the first time that day, memories of those last moments on the planet played through his mind. The pained moans of Airman Wells as he fought to stay conscious; stay alive. The flash of the staff weapon discharging in the periphery of his vision, and the shocked cry that fell from Janet's mouth as she was thrown back from the force of the blast.
It was a cliché, but it all happened so quickly, one minute Janet was kneeling next to him, the next she was sprawled across the leaves, the wound to her chest and abdomen smoking slightly.
He had hardly heard the airman on the hill telling him that the Jaffa was dead. He couldn't even make sense of the frantic words he had shouted to those surrounding him. He was focused on Janet, on the wounded body of his fallen friend. But he couldn't help her no one could. The damage had been too extensive, she had died the instant the charge had struck her body, ripping apart her delicate flesh, taking her life and leaving an empty shell.
He had witnessed Janet's last moments and so would Bregman and his flunkies, and maybe in the future, millions would experience the horror he had seen on that planet. He was sick to his stomach at that thought, more so than he had been for most of the day. To think that complete strangers-who had no idea who Janet was, the things she had done in her life, at the SGC-could someday watch avidly as one more person he cared about was taken from his life.
They wouldn't understand what she had meant to the people she worked with. If Bregman's reaction to the SGC and its people was any indication as to the public's perception of the program, people would not understand that Janet was a hero amongst hero's, that she had done something great with her life. They would blame her, blame everyone at the SGC for taking the fate of Earth into their own hands, they would criticize, and they certainly wouldn't appreciate the memory of this woman.
It was bad enough Bregman was watching the tape now. That he had been forced to hand it over. The smug look of victory on Bregman's face was enough to make him want to punch the reporter, to work out the rage and grief that was slowly simmering beneath the surface with a little physical exertion.
But no, instead of giving into the violent impulses he was having troubles controlling, he had isolated himself- returning to the same room in which he had naively thought he was escaping the indecencies of life the year before- hoping to once hide from the grief that was threatening to smother him.
He had never before been successful at isolating himself from the strong emotions that he felt, not when his parents had died, not when Sha're was taken from him, and not now. The only thing he had successfully done was removed himself from every person and everything that would distract him from the pain, only serving to make it more pronounced in the quite darkness of the room.
He wanted to move, wanted to leave this room and find something to do to keep his mind off his feelings but he couldn't. This room held a lot of pain for him, but he still found himself drawn to it, it was ironic that this room, held some of his strongest and, oddly some of his fondest memories of her. Serving to remind him, not only of how she had died but the compassion with which she had lived.
'Cause I'm broken when I'm open
And I don't feel like I am strong enough
'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away.
You've gone away; you don't feel me here anymore.
The worst is over now and we can breathe again
I wanna hold you high, and steal my pain away
There's so much left to learn, and no one left to fight
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain.
She wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been standing there just staring at his door, it had to have been well over ten minutes, and yet she could not bring herself to turn the handle and go in.
One of her closest friends had died yesterday, numerous others had been injured, some critically, he had almost died. She wanted to see him, needed to see him, just to reassure herself that he was still breathing, still with them. He had never been far from her mind since they had returned to the SGC, and she really did want to check on him, but she just didn't think she could enter that room, plaster a fake smile on her face and pretend everything was ok, that she hadn't almost just lost him.
It was ridiculous really, he had been in danger plenty of times, he had almost died any number of times in the field, executing a mission, and while she had been shaken up she had always managed to pull herself together. To fall back into Major Carter mode and pretend that his wellbeing didn't affect her on a more personal level than that of a friend.
She had tried, tried to concentrate on the damage control that was feverishly taking place all over the base. She had tried to distract herself from the seemingly slow motion recollection of him falling in the field that occurred every time she closed her eyes or let her mind wander, but it had been no good.
She could not get the thought out of her head that he could have died, been taken away from her so quickly and easily. Janet, someone she had loved dearly, had died on the same battlefield yesterday and she couldn't get the realization-that it could have just as easily been him-out of her head.
She realized that should have made her feel bad. Janet was an outstanding doctor, and friend and an amazing person. And she was leaving so much behind, friends, family, and infirmary full of staff lost without her guidance, and her daughter, Cassie. Janet's death had affected Daniel more than she cared to admit, he had withdrawn in on himself, and she was more than a little worried that this was more than he could take. But while Daniel seemed overwhelmed in his grief for Janet, she could only think of the man behind the door, and how very close they had all come to losing him.
Snapping out of her thoughts at the sound of quite movements behind the door, she told herself to make a decision. If she was just going to stand there rather than go in she'd better leave now. There was no sense in wasting time standing there trying to psych herself up if she was just going to chicken out. She forced herself to take a deep steadying breath. Looking, what she hoped to be strong and collected, she rapped gently on the door, grasped the handle without waiting for a reply and swung it open.
He had been halfway through pulling a clean T-shirt on when she entered. The sight of the pristine white bandage being quickly covered from sight was enough to make her falter. She didn't need another reminder of how close they had come; seeing him like this had just served bring her emotions bubbling back to the surface. But she had come here for a reason, she had come to make sure he was alright, and she had to be strong, even if just for the few minutes here with him.
"Sir, heard you were up and around," she said, trying not to let her voice tremble.
He finished pulling on his shirt before he addressed her, and when he looked at her he had pain grimace on his face. "Yeah, still a little tender but they said I could go home."
She noticed that he had intentionally forgone mentioning exactly who had told him this. He must have been told what had happened to Janet, and she wondered who had been responsible for informing him of the death of one of his friends.
"We're lucky that staff blast hit you where it did. The new vest insert works well."
"Didn't help Fraiser much."
There it was, he definitely knew about what had happened on the planet after he had been hit. She didn't think she could talk about this. She really didn't want to be going over with him how something had saved his life and yet had failed to protect hers; she just couldn't, because while she was struggling to understand how it could happen, she was just so damn glad that it had in his case, and the guilt would come flooding back.
She wasn't sure what she could say that would be appropriate for both his grief and hers so she just quietly agreed with him.
He too was silent for a moment before he asked how Cassie was handling things.
Thinking about Cassie and everything that she had lost really did put her over the edge. Cassandra Fraiser was one of the strongest people that she had ever known, to have lost everything at such a young age and then to come to a completely different world and make something of herself required inner strength that most had never witnessed.
The young woman was a credit to her mother, who may not have been hers in blood but was most certainly hers in every other way. They had all lost people important to them, every single one of them knew what it was like to live their lives unsure of how to move on after losing someone, but Cassie was by far the strongest of them all in this regard, and she would survive.
She almost didn't hear his next question, as he moved to gingerly pull on his outer layer of clothing. But she did catch what he said, and that coupled with another grimace of pain from him caused the tears to well up again. Before she even realized what she was doing she was stuttering out everything that she had wanted to keep to herself when she had come to see him.
'Cause I'm broken when I'm open
And I don't feel like I am strong enough
'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel light when you're gone away.
You've gone away; you don't feel me here anymore.
"Sir…I, I just wanted to say…when you were lying there…" That was as far as she could get without completely losing it, she still had enough control not dump everything she had been feeling on him, but she had to say something, to communicate how scared she had been when she had seen him hit the deck on that planet, to somehow tell him how glad she was he had cheated death yet again. So she simply said…
"I'm really glad you're ok."
For anybody else that wouldn't nearly be enough, but she knew he understood her, understood her need to say something but still stay well behind the line they had drawn in the sand years before after the Za'tarc incident.
She looked away from him, tears silently leaking down her face. She had to be strong, she had to be Major Carter, if she let this overwhelm her she wouldn't be able to stop the rest of the hurt from pouring out of her. And she certainly wasn't going to fall apart in front of him after what had happened to him in the past two days.
He didn't say anything, just stepped closer to her, drawing her eyes back to his face, and muttered, "C'mere."
She fell into his arms, clinging to him as tightly as she dared, still wary of his injury. He buried his face in her neck and she felt a thrill go through her. He was alive, she had lost a very dear friend and she would never forget Janet Fraiser, and she would mourn the loss of such an amazing woman, but he was safe and alive and breathing, and just for the moment he was in her arms and it felt so good.