Heroes – Part One and Two
Blinking his eyes open, Jack looked up at the ceiling of his room on base and the only thought in his mind was that the grey ceiling paint was perfectly befitting of the place in which he worked, the place to which he gave most of his life. Even with his decreased hours and the heavier workload that he was taking home every night just to escape the grey confines, Cheyenne Mountain still took far too much of his time, his life. It was the same for everyone who worked there and for many of them, the Mountain would end up taking the final breath from them.
Blinking rapidly a few times in an effort to push back the tears, Jack heard a knock on his door. Contemplating ignoring the gentle knock, Jack wondered if he could simply lie where he was for the rest of eternity. It was an impossibility, he knew, because the Mountain never took someone's dying breath in that way, oh no, the Mountain took violent, painful, sad deaths from its victims and Jack had been moments away from becoming the next victim. Forcing himself up to an upright, seated position, Jack winced in pain.
Blinking back the pain from his wound, Jack actually relished in the physical pain as it distracted him from the mental anguish. Not that any distraction worked for long. Jack was going to have face people at some point. The only person he had seen since he had awoken was a nurse who had filled him in on the mission. Forcing himself through the physical pain, Jack had taken it upon himself to get to his quarters and had ordered no visitors at all. That included her. "Come in." There was no need to ask who it was. Jack had known that she would come to him, that orders would pass her by when she needed to disobey them. The door opened and closed behind Sam and Jack's heart broke at her reddened, tear stained face.
Blinking tears out of her eyes and streaming down across her cheeks, Sam simply stood there and Jack tried to take a step towards her. His feet felt frozen. He knew that he needed to say something, but all the words he could think of seemed completely inadequate. Wanting to apologise to her for her loss, all that Jack could think was everyone had lost someone special and that his own selfish hiding away had probably hurt her more than the death. It had been a rescue mission, to rescue an injured airman before it had all gone south. The airman was alive, but Jack had almost died. He could remember Sam's scream as he hit the floor. Even above all of the firing and shouts about covering someone and where the enemy was, Jack had heard Sam scream his name.
"Come here," he whispered and she easily moved across the room and into his good arm. Biting back the wince of pain as she nearly collided with him, Jack held her as she sobbed into his chest. He stroked her back for a few moments before cradling the back of her head, searching in vain for anything to provide a small glimmer of comfort to her. There were no words, so he settled for kissing the top of her head and simply holding her.