This is the last chapter of this story. I'm sorry it's taken so long to get it out to you! :) Enjoy
Disclaimer: I own Nothing, no copyright infringement was meant by writing this story.
He looked in the mirror and the man that stared back at him was as unfamiliar to him as the harsh alien landscape around him... when had he changed so much that the mirror became his enemy. When had he walked away from himself and failed to come back. His hand shook as he brought it up to his mused hair... his fingers were covered in new and old scars, his nails cut down to the quick, the pads of those long battered fingers were thick with callouses. He rubbed his hands across his face feeling those same callouses scrape across his tired eyelids and catch in the thick stubble across his strong jaw... some days he felt like he'd missed out on his own life... he'd missed out on all those experiences that the world said were important. He felt that He was alone, surrounded by the unseeing masses, sadness carefully hidden behind careless smiles and half heart-ed laughter.
He'd never meant for it to be this way... all those years ago when he'd chosen this life, he hadn't counted on so many things... he hadn't counted on alien priestess both friend and foe... He hadn't planned on time dilation fields and thousand year old Wraith... or DNA altering bugs...
Still if he was asked give it all back and start over, he'd have to kindly refuse...
He knew that when it was all said and done, at the end of the day when he finally made it back to his quarters and laid his head down, he had well and truly lived.
He though back to his childhood, to his mother and his father and he felt that burden ease.
His mother had loved him unconditionally, she was a kind soul with a smile that could warm a room in seconds. he hated that the thing he remembered most about his mother was how she smelled of antiseptic and medicine... but he loved his mother and her sad eyes. She told him that he could anything, that nothing in the world was beyond his grasp if he worked hard enough. When she died his world had been shattered, it was as though he had been holding on with nothing more than his finger tips and looked up one day to realize that the cliff face had crumbled under his grasp. His beloved mother was gone, his father was more distant than ever, and his brother, who had been his only friend, was absent. John remembered the depression that followed. The struggle to breath, the fear that he would never be whole again...
It had been almost two years before he started writing letters to his uncle... it was those letters that saved him. He believed for the first time in a long time that he could in fact do something more with his life... something more than what his father wanted.
It was his uncle who'd told him that he could not only pass high school, but get straight A's. It was his Uncle who'd filled his head with dreams of flying and the glory of serving your country. It was his Uncle who he secretly confided in when he fought with his father... it was his Uncle who showed him the importance of family... when he would have walked away halfway through High School.
John remembered the fight when he'd told his father about joining the Air Force... he remembered feeling ashamed... feeling like a failure. He remembered the burning pain in his jaw and the crushing loneliness.
Maybe it was that loneliness that had drive him in Nancy's arms... he never really knew what it was about her that grabbed his attention and held it... but he knew it wasn't going to last... he'd known it from the start, but he had wanted the approval of his father so desperately, he'd gone through with the marriage, feeling sick the whole time. It hadn't taken long for her to leave, longer than he'd though but... he knew that she deserved better so he hadn't tried to stop her.
He'd fought longer and harder in his black-ops career than most people did in a lifetime... he'd given it all up for friendship...
Gained fame and prestige and lost it all just as quickly. He'd had wings, flow the fastest plans on the most dangerous missions... only to end up grounded in some shit-hole in Antarctica... At least that's what he thought at first.
Still the more time he spent looking out over that desolate white nothing, the more he felt a peace with the death that plagued his soul and the darkness he saw in himself.
It was there that John met Jack O'Neil.
He hadn't wanted to be a babysitter for some big shot General at first... but he knew as soon as he laid eyes on the man that he was a kindred soul.
Alone... battered inside and out, but always ready for more.
Maybe that was why he'd agreed to go on the mission, never mind that he was sure it would be a hell of a lot warmer where ever he went and that he had nothing left to lose or win here on earth. John like to think that it was Jack who'd convinced him, it was there in the way he spoke about it, there in the way that he carried himself... John knew that he wanted that.
Atlantis had been more than he ever expected...
the friendship, the fights, the love, the death...
it wore on a person...
it changed a man...
but as John looked in the mirror he considered that perhaps he was not so different from how he remembered... instead he looked for the first time in his life vaguely comfortable in his own skin... happy to be exactly who he was... that was the real different that showed in the mirror.
Love to all my faithful readers, leave a nice little note for me... it would make me smile!