Samantha Carter's strides were sluggish and heavy as she made her way toward the front door of Jack O'Neill's home. Daniel had taken him home earlier that day. Jack's last request, his dying wish: to not die in a hospital bed when there was nothing that could be done to save him. Daniel was still waiting for a miracle, for a flash of light as Thor came to the rescue. Sam hoped for that too, hoped for it with all she had, but she had to accept that maybe it wouldn't happen this time.

Sam stopped on the colonel's porch and stood in silence. The new chief medical officer of the SGC seemed to think that Jack was so far gone this time, too damaged by intellect beyond the capacity of his body to contain, that even an Asgard cure at this point would have slim chances of saving him, to say nothing about returning him intact. 'He doesn't have long, Major Carter,' the new doctor had confided to Sam, and she found herself here, at his door.

She cast a look at the car parked across the street, in which sat the military goon sent to keep ghoulish watch over a dying man's house. He would see Sam here, coming to her commanding officer's home late in the evening, but for once she did not care. Jack didn't have long to live and right now that was the only thing that mattered. Sam could hand her career over to Kinsey herself without batting an eyelash because she couldn't leave Jack alone to face this. He thought he wanted to be alone, but Sam knew better than to buy that. Jack didn't truly want to die alone.

Sam knocked on the door, waiting nervously. When there was no movement from within she panicked to think she'd come too late. She reached down to try the doorknob, startled to find it turn and give way under her hand, unlocked. But then, the greatest threat to Jack O'Neill was from inside the house, festering within his own body; if he locked the door he'd just be locking it in with him. The door inched open as she eased closer. There was no sign of life inside as she slipped into the house and gently closed the door behind her.

"Sir?" she called out, looking around the foyer and down the hall. Still no answer.

Sam moved toward the living room, stopping short when she cleared the hallway wall and took in the scene before her. Jack was dressed in jeans and a collared shirt, sitting on the couch, perched on its edge as he bent over the coffee table. Paper was everywhere. Covering every inch of the table, spilling on to the floor, cant awkwardly on the cushions of the couch beside him. Jack's face was intent, his brow knit and lips tight as he scribbled like a man possessed, jotted and scrawled with fury, eyes wild and alien with things he was never meant to know, knowledge burning to be freed by any means available.

Sam stepped toward him and bent down to look at the papers scattered chaotically through the living room. It was in the language of the Ancients, every mark on every page in sight, not a single word Sam could understand.

"Colonel," Sam's voice weakly pleaded.

Jack continued to madly write. He cast a full sheet of paper aside like a bothersome insect and set upon the fresh, blank sheet underneath, pausing just long enough to rub fiercely at his forehead with the heel of his left hand.

Sam moved to his side and sat down on the couch next to him, heedlessly crushing sheets of the precious knowledge beneath her, and reached out to still his hands. "Colonel, stop."

Jack tugged to free his hands from her, manic. "Ego ineo scriabatos scuricaso."

Sam clutched stronger at his hands, felt the anxious drive in his taut muscles as he continued to tug at her hold. "Sir, please, no more. You don't have to give anything more than you have."

Jack tried to pull his hands free again, frantic to keep writing, and when he was held fast by the major he finally looked up at Sam. He was begging her to let him get it out, as though the knowledge could be bled from him and leave him cured for its letting.

If only it could be that easy, a thousand worlds she'd give if he really could heal himself.

Sam felt herself grimace, the preempts to a cry, as she pulled Jack's hands closer to her, imploring him, "Let it go, Jack."

Jack tried to reach for the unfinished sheet, unfinished thought, but abruptly stiffened, resistance waning as his muscles locked unnaturally, without warning. Sam quickly took the pen from his twisted grip then eased him back against the couch as the colonel's face contorted and his eyes glazed and rolled, neck spasming and spine locked. Neurological dysfunctions had set in only within the last twelve hours, but they were getting worse quickly.

Sam shifted closer to him, resting her hand on his chest as he sucked in uneven, strained breaths, arms moving in jerky motions that had no intention, one leg managing to kick the coffee table and send a few sheets of paper precariously perched on the edge sliding to the piles on the floor.

Sam could feel her voice cracking as she soothed, "Let it pass, Colonel. Just breathe with it, it's okay, I'm here.."

The seizure slowly passed and Jack's stiff posture folded and sank into a lax pooling of weight and limbs on the cushions of the couch. His breathing became even gulps for air and his color returned to normal. The daze in his eyes lifted as he stared up at the ceiling, reeling from the aftermath.

Sam tried to calm her racing heart, stomach sick with fear. Every time she wondered if this would be the episode that stole him away, the last attack before he died. Waiting through each bout was a small version of Netu and by far more harrowing.

Sam turned her eyes away, ashamed to be so afraid and sad and utterly helpless all at once. She had come here because he shouldn't crawl away and die alone like an animal, but now she was questioning whether she could give him the kind of comfort and support he would need. She couldn't be strong enough for this, a fact she was realizing too late. It wasn't fair to Colonel O'Neill to make him see her terrified in his last moments.

She startled when she felt a gentle touch on her face. She felt Jack's fingers all but caress her cheek and she looked back at him. She was scared out of her mind to look at him, knowing what he would see when he looked at her, but she couldn't feel him and not respond. He was looking at her, searching silently, brown eyes fathomless. He saw her, all that she was, and tonight that included the bone-chilling terror and sorrow of knowing he would die.

Sam tried to muster a smile but instead failed and bent down to rest her head on his shoulder. It was inappropriate as hell but she didn't care, she needed to touch him, a tactile memory later, a physical comfort now. She felt him beneath her, his body warm, his chest rising and falling with each breath, his figure strong and still betraying competence that no longer existed. She could feel the staccato of his heartbeat in his neck gently rushing against her skin, could smell him all around her, a scent she would never forget no matter how long she might live after him.

Arms descended around her, looping around her at first carefully then drawing her closer. Sam snaked her arms around his torso, hugging him tightly as she closed her eyes. She couldn't come to accept that she was losing him, and yet he was slipping away with every second, his mind shutting down under the overload. She would kill Anubis for this, and when his death did not satisfy her anger she would kill every Goa'uld she came across... for Jack.

"Colonel," she said into his chest, unprepared to pull away from his embrace just yet, "I can't begin to tell you how much you mean to... to so many people, on this world and so many that we've visited in our time with the stargate program. I almost don't care that we have what we need to destroy Anubis, when it means you.." she felt her throat constrict and she shut her eyes tightly, burying her face in her commanding officer's chest. He wouldn't understand her, anyway; he'd stopped responding to English days ago. It was something she needed to say, to know she'd told him.

Jack pulled her away from him. Sam reluctantly let him pry her from him and sat up to face him. He studied her, recognition of who she was still flickering in his eyes beneath the alien intellect when he looked at her, as was the case with Daniel and Teal'c. It was all she could have asked this time when a cure seemed to be hoping for too much... let him remember his friends. The CMO on base speculated Jack's brain might have recognized the invasion of alien knowledge, like an immune system meeting a virus for the second time, and managed to safeguard a small amount of personal memories that Jack O'Neill was desperate not to lose. It was only a guess because no one knew for certain what the colonel did and did not know, but it was a reassuring thought to believe.

Jack's hand rose to her face, brushing at tears Sam hadn't realized she was crying. She ducked her head, beyond thinking she might yet compose herself.

Quite suddenly, like a gently rising tide, his lips were on hers. Without thinking Sam kissed him back, hand coming up to twine her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. After so many years secretly loving each other, never allowed to touch but longing for it so long, their first kiss was almost familiar. There was a natural rightness to their touches, like he had done this to her and she to him before without either knowing it. With the things they'd seen at the SGC, Sam wasn't about to discount that possibility.

Jack stopped, mouth leaving hers, but his hands remained on her face, physical anchors spanning the scant space between them. Sam didn't open her eyes immediately, lingering with the sensations of him he'd left with her.

"Mea auteamus mecoroses," he whispered to her, his fingers moving lightly over her skin like a blind man trying to learn her face.

Sam reached up to take one of his hands in hers. She finally opened her eyes and looked closely at him. He was dying and he knew it but right now he looked alive, face doing nothing to betray the insidious agent eating through his mind. He was focused entirely on her, even smiling faintly. She'd not seen him smile in days enough that she was grateful he could manage to do so once again.

And though she did not understand his words, Sam did not find herself wishing for Daniel's presence. She wanted to believe she knew what Jack was saying because it was a truth that did not have a language.

Sam reached for him again, kissing him. He slipped his hands around her, readily reciprocating. She had waited so long to feel him hold her like this, and when at last he did it was because it was their last chance to ever be together.

Sam halted their kiss this time, stopping to stand from the couch and pull him after her. If he didn't remember where to find his bedroom she would have to show him.

Sam would remember everything. The way Jack with care removed each article of her clothing, letting his fingers skirt and dance over skin he'd just exposed, from the look in his eyes seeing her as more beautiful than Sam had ever seen herself. She would remember that for a man with soldier's hands, his caress was gentle. She would remember that he was meticulous, leaving no part of her untouched. Her skin would remember every place his lips anointed, every path his fingertips blazed on her. She would remember how his tongue danced with hers, the waltz of old lovers and yet the excitement of the first meeting, touched with the desperation of the last encounter. She would remember disrobing him with slow and loving attention. She would remember every part of him she had touched. She would remember scars and birthmarks. She would remember how he had held still and let her see him, feel him, map him like she would the stars. She would remember how he had laid her back on the bed, and the way his weight had settled over her like coming home. She would remember their rhythm, how they danced and moved as one, a tempo theirs alone. She would remember him, and remember every second of regret that they had not done this until the eleventh hour. She would remember holding him to her after, and she would remember clinging and silently crying.

Sam rose from semi-consciousness, blinking as she fought to get her bearings. She didn't remember drifting off, disoriented as she fought to distinguish memory from dream.

She breathed in deeply and knew at once all that had been real. The scent of her and Jack together lingered in the sheets and the pillows, the thrill of his touch still electrifying her skin. She moved and the feel of the thin sheet gliding over her naked body awakened somatic memories, further chasing away dreams and half-realized fantasies.

Sam rolled on to her back to stare up at the ceiling. From the artificial lamp light slanting in through the blinds of the window she knew it was night. The last moment of time she remembered noting was early in the night hours, when between her and Jack's second and third time together she had weathered him through another seizure, worse than the previous attack in the living room.

Sam turned her head to look for him on the other side of the bed. She found him there, turned on his side facing her, eyes closed. Despite the grim shadows looming in every corner, Sam smiled to herself at the sight of Jack because love could make even an astrophysicist's thoughts silly.

Sam stared at him a minute, perfectly content to memorize his face, the lines of his nude body, remember him sleeping. She'd known him so long but there were still details to remember, always too many things to know and never enough time or recollection ability to keep them.

Sam stopped and frowned when she realized that he was too still even for sleep.

Sam rose to her elbow facing him and leaned closer. There was no stir of motion from him.

Her hand went to his face, thumb pressing against his lips that had hours ago been hers. No soft brush of warm breath against her skin, his chest motionless.

Sam's fingers moved to his neck, searching for a pulse... a search conducted in vain. She didn't know at what point in the night he'd slipped away, and she probably never would.

Sam dropped her hand to the scant distance of mattress between them. She laid there and looked a long time at Jack. He looked peaceful, untroubled and as childlike as a gray-haired Air Force colonel ever could. She was thankful he'd gone quietly when there were so many worse ways Jack O'Neill might have died. She had to be grateful that he'd been allowed to die on his own planet, peacefully in his own bed, no matter what kind of honor-driven desires of being killed in action he might have had. Jack was one of the few people who, more than anyone else, deserved to go in peace if only for the life of war he'd lived.

Sam reached up for her pillow and pulled it down to clutch it to her chest. Her body curled as she laid facing him and she cried. She cried for a lifetime, because she was his second in command and no one, once she left this room, would permit her the tears of a lover for him.

When her tears were spent and her soul broken and laid bare she wiped her eyes and looked once more at him. He remained utterly unmoved. He looked like death was nothing more than sleep where one forgot to breathe. Sam shifted toward him, bent down, and pressed her lips against his for one last kiss. In fairy tales her breath would have breathed life into him, by a nameless miracle brought him back, but this was far from happily ever after, and there was no spark of life.

After a heartbeat of stillness, refusal and inability to move, Sam got up and proceeded to arrange the bed sheet around him. She tucked it around his body with care, stray fingers darting out for parting touches, brushing her hand through his hair for all the times they'd worked together that she'd wanted to but never could.

When he was covered and arranged to her satisfaction, arrayed like a tragic Greek hero at last in his homeland to be laid to rest, she went about the dark room unrushed, gathering up her clothes and getting dressed. At warped, predawn moments, it felt like they were married and she was merely getting dressed for work while he slept. Her eyes drifted to his motionless form time and again. The minutes passed but still he looked like he was only sleeping, and yet Sam resisted the urge to check his vitals one more time to be sure because though her emotions were casting doubt, deep down she knew. Even in the infirmary, drugged up and unconscious, there was an energy to Jack O'Neill, a pulse of life those around him could practically feel. There was nothing now, only cold air and the too-loud sound of her own breathing.

Sam quietly left his room, went to the living room, and almost robotically began gathering up the ocean of paper scribed in an Ancient tongue. Daniel would want them. Once the grief and mourning passed and he could think of work again he'd want to have them, to make sure the last day of Jack's life had not been whiled away in waste.

With the stack of papers in her arms, Sam went to the front door of Jack's house. She turned to look around once more at his home, sealing a last vivid memory of its appearance and essence in her mind. She knew she would never feel comfortable again in a place the way she'd felt welcome and at ease here.

Sam stepped out into the night and looked for the car across the street that she knew would not have moved since last she saw it. As she expected the vehicle was still there, occupant still dutifully attentive to every movement from Jack O'Neill's residence.

Sam hugged the sheets closer to her, partly to hold Jack's legacy nearer to her as well as to fend off the cold, erased the last evidence of a bereaved partner from her expression, and started toward the parked car.

END