He knows what he's feeling. He's felt it before – not often, it's true, but enough to be sure. It's strange, he thinks, that he can be so objective about it, so detached, despite what it means. There's something liberating in accepting the inevitable, Jack realises, in just giving in. It's not as if he hasn't expected it. Something had to give.

Arched above him, she's outlined by the sun. In this moment, it glows around her like a halo, a perfect light glancing off her perfect skin. If he could have his way, this moment would last forever, or at least some semblance of it would: a snapshot, sealed in time, sent out into the black void they have spent so much time crossing together. It would survive long after his blood had soaked into the soil of this moon, long after his body has crumbled into dust.

He's dying. He can feel it. He's felt it before, the heavy drag of desperate injury, the slowing of time, the loss of heat, the absence of sensation, of pain. He knows what it means. All he's aware of is a slow, unhurried unspooling into unconsciousness as he fades out.

Her, too. He's aware of her.

He focuses on her face. She's crouched beside him, and in between bursts of gun fire she's shouting at him. He knows she's shouting because when she looks at him her mouth is stretched wide around whatever words her lips are forming, but he can't hear a thing. They say the hearing is the last to go, but that's not so in Jack's experience, at least not from a combat perspective. Although perhaps right now it's just because time has slowed to an inexorable crawl. He can see each bullet in each spray she looses, careening one-by-one out into the brush on which they are pinned down.

More light, brighter, a flashing glow that burns the horizon, and she ducks towards him, eyes screwed shut. He watches the creases that pass over her forehead beneath her dusty cap. They travel slowly, so slowly, like ripples in water.

He feels his eyes getting heavy. He's cold, so very cold, and growing colder by the second.

Carter opens her eyes, and she's still shouting at him, and he still can't hear a thing. Somewhere in the split second of that flash she's discarded her weapon, and now she's focused solely on him.

Sir, he reads on her lips. Hold on. Hold on.

She's doing something to his chest – he works that out because she keeps glancing down at his tac vest and her hands are fumbling there, but all he feels is the movement, nothing else. He wants to tell her to stop, that there's no point, that all he wants is this last chance to look at her, just look at her face this one time without having to pretend he isn't, but he can't hear himself speak and anyway, she wouldn't hear him, and anyway, there is no time.

Hold on, she's screaming, Sir, please, please just hold on.

He's almost gone now. He knows there's barely any more left of him to unravel. He lifts his hand, weightless as smoke, towards her face. She's still working on his chest when his fingers touch her cheek. She jerks her head up, lips parted, eyes wide, looking at him, just at him.

We have been to so many planets, he thinks. But the most wonderful thing I ever saw on any of them walked out of the gate beside me.

He strokes his fingers along her jaw, and as he does he sees the moment that her desperation turns to grief. It's a veil that draws down over her eyes, a shade that dims their brilliant blue. Abject and eloquent and all for him, it's as clear as all the things he's never said aloud, and he wants to tell her he's sorry, but there's not enough of him left to form the words.

Sir, say her silent lips, whispering now. No. Please, no. Don't. Please. Jack.

His name on her lips is the last thing he sees.

And then, nothing.

When he comes around, he finds himself staring at the infirmary ceiling. There is a huge weight on his chest, as if someone has parked an 18-wheeler directly on his sternum. His head is thick, the blood in his veins slow. He knows drugs when he feels them. Breathing is slow and difficult, but he has the sense that he's lucky to be taking air at all. His mouth is dry. He tries to move his head, but there are tubes up his nose. Still, he shuffles slightly, feeling pressure that would probably be pure pain were he not under the influence.

She's scrunched into a chair beside his hospital bed. She's pulled one knee up and has rested her forehead on it, arms wrapped around herself as if they can hold the rest of her together while she sleeps. To his eyes her hair holds the essence of that halo she'd picked up out there on wherever it was he died, and his heart has been drugged nine ways to Sunday but this glimpse of her flays it raw. He knows without having to be told that she's been there a long time. Too long. Far too long.

There comes a smart click-click-clicking of heels and Fraiser appears at the end of his bed.

"Colonel," she says, softly. "It's a relief to have you back with us, sir."

Jack can't drag his eyes away from Carter, because he knows that when he does he should find a way to never look at her again. He'd thought he was the only one in trouble, but he can remember the grief in her eyes when she thought he was gone and it's not right, and sooner or later someone will gossip about how long she's been sitting there and there won't be a good enough answer to explain it away. She's brighter than any star in the universe and she can't go down because of this. He won't allow it.

Fraiser holds up a glass of water with a straw and he sucks at it, grateful but broken. He wants to fade out again. He wants to let the drug-fuelled darkness take him, suck him under and keep him there. He shuts his eyes and says the words he has to say.

"She can't stay," he says, voice hoarse. "She can't."

There's a silence. He opens his eyes again, looks at Fraiser. The Doctor is looking back at him with sadness in her eyes but understanding on her face.

"I'll see to it, sir."

He lets himself fade.

[TBC]