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Tears in the Ice

 Tears In The Ice

He hated the cold. Well, he wasn't too fond of the desert either but the cold was the worst. The cold was stagnant, still.... he was a man of action.
Cold seemed to seep it's way into his blood, his soul. It constricted and squeezed, it took something from him each time. Antarctica was cold. Hathor's cryo chamber was cold. The dead of space was cold. The waterlogged hallway of a hat'ak, thousands of feet under the sea was cold. Sometimes even the mountain was cold. His current residence - the sleeping chamber of the ancient's outpost was freezing.
He was alone. Staring motionless out into the darkened room where his team once stood; how long ago? He couldn't remember. Perceptions of time held no grasp here. Actually, the only thing he could perceive was sight of his surroundings.... that and the numbing cold.
In a way it bought an unsturdy peace. The cold stole his pain. The pain of a thousand regrets, a hundred deaths.... the death of his son. But it also pawed at the very being of Jack O'Neill. Though he was willing to die for planet and country, he wasn't ready to let go of himself, to loose who he truly was. If so, what had it all been for? He wasn't a once empty vessel for the ancient's knowledge to be contained. He was living and breathing, flesh and blood. He 'was' Jack O'Neill....'was'.
Was it truly worth it? Was giving up one's entire being a fair price for the salvation of countless others? In another time he would have agreed whole-heartedly...now he wasn't so sure. There was just something so innately wrong with the situation, something unnatural. In that moment (if he could indeed comprehend the objective 'moment') he felt it. 'It' wasn't pain...or what anyone would discertain as 'pain', but more of an ineptitude of truth. Something that was never meant to be. He wanted his chest to hurt, his heart to beat rapidly and his breath to be sharp. He wanted to release the resultant pain, the pain he couldn't feel. He wished for the warm wet tears to cloud his ice-encompassed sight.
But there were no tears in the ice.
The End

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