Author's Notes: The title was a result of a fic challenge on the H/C list. The story evolved from there...
Thanks to Tiffany for the title that wouldn't stay out of my mind!
DISCLAIMER: All characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
My life to that point had supported the theory that death was pretty much a permanent condition. Of course, that was before Ra, before Abydos, before the Stargate, before...everything I'd ever believed in my life was turned upside down inside a mountain in Colorado.
I still don't remember much about jumping in front of that staff weapon..didn't really feel any pain, it was so quick. I remember when the shooting started, I remember jumping out in front of Jack, after that nothing. When I woke up inside the sarcophagus, I remember pain...or maybe just the memory of pain...and then the confrontation with Ra. The so-innocent face belied the evil core of the alien within it; Ra was evil incarnate...possessing no compassion, living only to control.
I remember Jack's face on Abydos...so cold, so distant; he was just as determined to die as Sha'uri's people were to live.
Sha'uri...
My life, my heart, my soul...
Am I ever going to see you again?
The second time I died...I didn't.
Everybody just thought I did.
Nem had left Jack, Sam and Teal'c with such vivid memories of my death that it took them days to work through the inconsistencies and realize I wasn't really dead; days in which they just happened to give me a memorial service and pack up all my Earthly possessions....
It was a frightening thing to be trapped in that underwater...prison, at least it felt like one. No way out, no way to dredge up the long-forgotten knowledge that Nem needed so desperately, no way back to my friends...back to my search for Sha'uri. I think that more than anything else helped Nem to understand my need to help him resolve his quest so that I could go back and continue my own...
At the same time it was very...enlightening... to discover that I meant as much to my friends as they did to me. I'd felt pretty isolated on Earth...cut off from my family...but Jack, Sam and Teal'c had truly grieved my apparent loss. It was humbling.
Aside from the fact that they'd closed up my apartment and Jack was stuck with me for a few days, again, while I got re-established, everything got back to normal fairly quickly. I noticed all of them looking at me a little strangely for awhile after that; I think they felt a little guilty for leaving me behind. It's not like they had a choice, Nem's machine was pretty thorough...it gave me headaches for weeks and all I had to do was remember a passage of Babylonian text I'd read in college...
The third time I died, I really did, die...I mean.
We all did.
The Nox method of raising the dead was far gentler than the sarcophagus. I remembered being dead and then I ...wasn't. I remember seeing Jack and Sam laying there, so still...
That sight frightened me more than almost anything I had seen in my life...I remember flashing back for a moment to another place...another time...two other people who died....
I had to shake off that feeling of sick dread, so much like the first time, and make myself go over to Sam...she was alive! If I was and Sam was...then Jack had to be! I remember not being able to touch him for a moment, afraid of what I might find...then he stirred and woke up.
It wasn't the first time Jack had scared me like that; it certainly wasn't the last, but it was the first time I can recall feeling that same horrible emptiness that I'd felt when my parents died. The first time I truly took a long look at a future that didn't include the team that had become my family....
The fourth time I died...I almost did.
Jack, Sam and Teal'c thought I had...
I know I came closer to it than I ever want to get again.
I remember the staff blast...felt it in my dreams for a long time afterward, a ghost of pain...
I remember Jack's face in the corridor, that frozen stare that was all too similar to the one I'd seen there two years ago on Abydos. Somewhere, in a place beyond my own pain, I couldn't believe that look was there because of me....
I told him to go...he had to go...
Jack was no sooner gone than I thought of another way, another chance....
Later, I saw that look on Jack's face disappear into the widest grin I'd ever seen there. I'm sure mine was just as wide. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry...
So I did both.
The last time I died it was looking into the eyes of my wife as she walked away with Apophis.
We'd had less than a day together, most of which I'd wasted with anger and self-pity. A few precious hours to reaffirm the love that had become our reason for living...what seemed like an eternity ago...
Then the baby came; the baby that was a living, breathing confirmation of the divergence of our lives...of the impossible odds that seemed destined to keep us apart.
She walked away with the only person I have ever truly hated in my life....
But there was that look.....
Among all of Amaunet's gaudy finery...were Sha'uri's eyes....
The eyes that I knew so well, that once knew me better than any other person in the universe...
And then they were gone...Sha'uri was gone, Amaunet was gone, Apophis was gone...and I was alone again...
But then there was Jack...looking at me like he knew what I was feeling..I guess in a way he did. He asked if I was okay, but he knew I wasn't...
Jack's eyes reaffirmed the promise he'd made over a year before. We'd find her again...
Now, if I could just get over this habit of dying...