Bend Low Towards the Dirt (Jack/Cam) Adult
FINALLY. For apocalypse_kree.
I was telling shutthef_up that I can't quite understand why anyone would want to read this fic. It's death and angst and a very rare pairing. But here you go. Do as you wish.
Bend Low Towards The Dirt
by surreallis
Pairing: Jack/Cameron
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-graphic sex/ read the prompt WELL
Cateogry: Apocafic, angst
Prompt: Earth is destroyed and the rest of SG-1 is dead. Jack is angry at Cam for letting the rest of SG-1 go, but they only have each other now. They're sort of each other's link back to the rest of the team. Jack is having a difficult time of it. (No prior romantic interests within SG-1 for either of them, please!)
A/N- Thanks to shutthef_up for giving this the once over. I appreciate it.
++
He rides most of the way east in the back of a Kansas farmer’s old pick-up truck.
The old man has his wife and a half-breed Bloodhound shoved into the cab beside him, so Cam sits in the back amongst the boxes of clothes and the rolling cans of ravioli and dog food. It’s a bleak view of cities and towns made of ash. In the open air of early autumn he can feel the coming chill of winter, and he can smell the wood smoke from campfires. He tries to ignore that other smell, the one that tells him most of the world is dead now.
He pays his fare with the farmer by siphoning gas for him and chasing off any survivors who have designs on hijacking. It isn’t difficult. Most of the survivors weren’t really prepared for all of this. They weren’t ready, and they are scared to death. He tells them to go south, where at least the winter won’t kill them.
At night he has to give up the truck bed so the farmer and his wife (and the dog) can sleep up off the ground. Cam always unrolls his sleeping bag a good thirty yards from the truck. It gives the farmer some privacy, and he’s still in range if something goes wrong.
It also gives Cam privacy, to stare up at the stars and think about how he’ll tell O’Neill, if indeed O’Neill still lives, when he gets to Washington D.C. More than that, the night, with all its silence and slowly ticking moments, lets him think about them. About how they looked and sounded, when they smiled and when they were serious, and even when they were fed up with him. About how they smelled, for God’s sake…
It’s Carter’s teasing grin, Daniel’s pensive expression, Teal’c’s lifted brow, Vala’s innocent mask; all of it pins him down to the ground under a star-filled sky and makes him ache with despair. And when the other images take over, the ones that bring fear-filled cries; heavy, hitching breaths; blood smeared skin… he lets the tears trickle from his eyes and down to the destroyed earth beneath him.
As they get closer to Washington the dread weighs down his eagerness to see a familiar face. He instinctively knows this won’t go well…
++
The farmer drops him on an interstate highway just outside of Alexandria, Virginia, and he walks to Maryland, crossing the Potomac on the Wilson Bridge, which he figures had a better chance of standing than any other in the area. And he is right. It takes him a day to cross and then to walk into the ruins of the abandoned Bolling Air Force base. There he camps until a jeep-load of airmen making the rounds to search for military and political survivors finds him, checks his I.D. and then lets him board the Humvee that follows along behind.
“You have anyone else with you?” A square-jawed tech-sergeant asks him.
Cam shakes his head numbly and pushes away the flickering images at the corner of his mind: blue eyes, broad grins, an amused smirk.
It’s a quiet drive as they motor through the streets of D.C. The airmen don’t make any more stops, and Cam doesn’t see any other survivors out of the back of the Humvee. The city is mostly cleared of human debris, and he sees big signs directing people south.
They drive north.
They pull up to a warehouse, drive through a big garage door, and then through two more; and then they’re driving down into the earth, and Cam feels the weight of the world descend upon him. He hears the airmen talking into radios in the front seat, relaying his name and his serial number. He hears the answering murmur of military chatter, and when the airmen don’t turn and point their guns at him, he figures he’s been approved for entry.
A grim-faced airman takes his pack when the Humvee stops, telling him it needs to be searched and tested before it’s returned to him. Cam gives a curt nod and stands to glance around. He isn’t sure how far they’ve driven underground, but the air is cool and a bit dank. The garage is wide and dimly lit with a low ceiling and immense support columns. A steel door opens ahead of them, and several officers come through, all in battle dress, boots tapping against the cement floor. He stands at attention, waiting nervously, even as he sees a familiar form come through at the end of the procession, silver hair standing out in the gloom. His heart leaps up into his throat, and for a moment he thinks he’s going to be sick.
He bites down into his lip, focusing his mind away from the roiling contents of his stomach.
He recognizes most of the officers. They’ve all been at the SGC at one time or another, and they give him welcoming smiles as they approach close enough to see his face. He remains at attention, watching as O’Neill strides purposely toward him. There is a faint smile on the general’s face as he approaches, but Cam watches the way his eyes shift constantly past Cam, toward the Humvee.
“Mitchell!”
“Sir…” He can barely hear his own voice. He doesn’t dare look at the general.
In his peripheral vision, he sees O’Neill’s glance go to the Humvee again and then sweep around, searching. Cam swallows, hard. “It’s just me, sir.” His stomach flips over.
O’Neill seems to go still, and Cam feels his gaze like a laser. “Mitchell.” It’s a soft command, and Cam swallows again, this time against the heat in his throat and the pressure behind his eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir. They died with the mountain.”
O’Neill stares at him for a long, silent moment, and Cam finally turns his head to look the man in the eyes. To show him it isn’t just a bad joke, and that the rest of SG-1 isn’t going to jump out of the back of the Humvee in surprise. Cam watches the emotion playing across the general’s face-confusion, pain-before his expression goes suddenly rigid and blank, like a wall of stone dropping down between them.
“You left them?” O’Neill asks in a tight, low, dangerous voice.
Cam’s mouth tugs down, his eyes grow wet. He can’t keep from breaking a little. “There was nothing I could do,” he says hoarsely, dropping the protocol because he can sense that this has nothing to do with duty or honor or any of the other people here watching.
O’Neill stares at him, jaw tight, for another moment and then turns sharply on his heel and walks away. Cam wants to call out to him, chase after him, make him understand that they were all already dead when he got there, but O’Neill is halfway across the garage floor already, long legs carrying him quickly.
Cam exhales shakily through the pressure in his chest and wipes quickly at his eyes. A hand squeezes his shoulder reassuringly, and when Cam glances up he sees Major Paul Davis.
“Come on, Colonel,” the major says, eyes knowing. “You’ll debrief and then I’ll take you to your new quarters.”
Cam follows him, mutely.
++
O’Neill isn’t in the debriefing.
Cam tells them what happened to Cheyenne Mountain. He’d had the week off and gone rafting with a couple of marines from SG-3. The attack had been sudden and rapid, and the sky had been filled with smoke before they’d made it back to the truck. On the way home they’d passed towns-whole cities-burned to cinder in seconds. The air is so full of acrid smoke that it blocks out the sun and settles like a fog over the earth. They tie T-shirts over their mouths and noses and cough their way back to the mountain.
The mountain is not burning. The mountain is gone. It’s one big pile of broken earth and death, and the city around it has been wiped from existence.
He and the marines part ways after that, and he holes up for a while, letting the earth cool. Then he drives a dead man’s car east. He only makes it to Kansas before it overheats and gives out on him. The farmer picks him up soon after, seemingly reassured by Cam’s uniform. They make one stop, at his parents’ farm, so Cam can be sure. The farmer helps him dig the graves, and then they continue east.
He hears the rest from Major Davis. How it had been a coordinated attack from space. Whoever they were, they’d had technology way beyond Earth, possibly way beyond the Asgard. Earth had never known they were there, a massive armada hovering above the planet, until the attack had started. It had been sudden and massive and quick, with a pinpoint accuracy that had burned whole towns down to the ground with laser-like precision. The SGC had radioed Washington about the ‘gate activating with an incoming wormhole and then all signals had been jammed.
When it was over, the airwaves had been silent.
Cam scrubs at his face and feels weary. “What now?”
Davis doesn’t seem to have any real answers. “Don’t know. Rebuild. Try to signal the Tok’ra. Unfortunately, the demise of the Asgard came at a really bad time for us.”
Cam thinks about Atlantis, but with the ‘gate gone there’s no way to get there. No way for the crew in Atlantis to get home again. The Daedalus was on Earth and destroyed on the ground, the Odyssey’s fate is unknown.
Davis leads him through winding tunnels lit by sterile white utility lamps. He opens a door to a small room with a bed and a desk, and Cam sees his duffel bag sitting on the floor. His new home. Paul tells him where to find the bathroom and gives him the schedule for meals, but when he leaves Cam collapses down on the bed and stares at the grainy, gray ceiling. It’s reassuring to feel the pulse of other humans around him, but he also feels claustrophobic and fearful.
It’s only the thought of O’Neill that calms him. If there’s one man Cam trusts to get them through this, it’s O’Neill. There’s a reluctant stitch deep inside of him that’s so relived O’Neill survived. I don’t have to worry anymore. He can lay down his burdens now…
++
O’Neill avoids him like the plague.
Cam is debriefed over the next few days, and O’Neill is absent from every single meeting. He’s having a hard time with this, and Cam expected that. Hell, Cam still couldn’t sleep through the night without seeing their faces; it took him a week to sleep at all. What must it be like for O’Neill, who had been their leader, their protector, their friend, for eight years?
Cam had found the same deliverance in SG-1 that O’Neill had, but O’Neill had needed it in a way that Cam hadn’t. That didn’t change the feelings though…
He tries to talk to Jack in the mess hall one evening. He’s been going out with the search parties during the day, and he gets back late every night. He walks in to get a cold dinner and finds O’Neill there drinking coffee. The dark eyes slide up to meet Cam’s gaze, and Cam takes a deep breath, preparing to settle the matter once and for all. Instead, O’Neill rises, leaving his coffee cup steaming on the table, and he walks right past Cam without another glance.
“Sir…” Cam croaks at his back. O’Neill doesn’t even flinch. He just… walks away.
It’s a heavy, raw feeling that settles in his chest and burns behind his eyes. Cam sits with a plate of cold goulash and pushes it around with his fork. He stares at the cooling coffee cup and wishes he had enough whiskey to get good and drunk. Maybe enough to never wake up again…
++
Working with the search parties consumes him from dawn to dusk. It gets him out of the dark tunnels and lets him feel the sun and the rain. The world may be a changed place, an empty place, but it’s familiar and he adjusts. There are long periods of time where they find no one; where they drive from one street to the next, one highway to another, and the only thing they see is the wind in the growing weeds. It’s so silent now, so noticeably quiet from the way it was before, that sometimes he can hear his own breath echoing in his head.
It gives him too much time to think.
O’Neill holds him accountable for the deaths of SG-1, he knows, and he isn’t sure what the man wants from him. Ritual suicide by the side of the road when he realized SG-1 was gone and they weren’t coming back? O’Neill loved them; Cam loved them too. He likes to think they loved him back, if not as much as O’Neill then at least with that potential. He feels like he failed them, and he both hates Jack for that and aches for his forgiveness.
Had there been any sign? Any frown on Carter’s face as she’d tried to tell him about some anomaly she’d seen? Any thoughtful worry in Daniel’s expression as he’d read some new piece of text brought back through the gate?
He couldn’t think of anything. He’d have known if there’d been something. He’d been in tune with them that way.
He works from morning to night everyday, and even though it only involves driving around all day, he comes back to the shelter drained and tired. It’s exactly what he wants.
++
“Do you even want to know what happened?” Cam glances in the mirror back over his shoulder to where O’Neill stands at the sinks behind him, shaving. He’d been studiously ignoring Cam as usual, but Cam can’t take it anymore.
The muscles in O’Neill’s lean back seem to tense, and then he lifts his head, jaw still smeared with shaving cream, and his dark eyes meet Cam’s in the mirror. “I read the reports,” he says, and his voice seems to fill the empty locker room.
“What did you want me to do?” There’s an edge of whine to his voice that makes Cam wince.
O’Neill’s eyes never leave him. “I wanted you to save them.”
“I wasn’t there,” Cam protests.
O’Neill throws his razor into the sink and turns, wiping at his jaw with his towel. He’s wearing jeans, unbuttoned at the waist, and the hair on his chest has gone mostly silver. He still looks wiry and strong though, and he takes two long strides across the room and then leans in, so close that Cam can smell the recently used shaving cream. Cam only half turns toward him, suddenly feeling the room fill with a taut tension that he can’t explain.
“I would have been,” O’Neill growls into his ear. Then he stands there, breathing, and stares at Cam from two inches away.
Cam doesn’t dare meet his gaze. He closes his eyes and lowers his chin and waits, and he’s never been more aware of Jack O’Neill’s presence than at that moment. He can smell the man and feel his body heat, and even with his eyes closed he can feel that two inch difference in their height. Jack is taller. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, quietly. “I wish I would have been.” And he does. “I miss them too,” he says, tightly, and he puts an edge into the words. I miss them too, you bastard. You haven’t been there for the past year and a half. It’s been all me, Jack. Me.
He must be telegraphing his thoughts, because O’Neill’s breath hitches just slightly, and Cam finally glances at him. Just in time to see the flash of inconsolable regret before anger flashes over. O’Neill’s jaw tightens, and Cam feels a huff of breath against his jaw, and then the general is gone.
Cam stares into the mirror as Jack bangs around in the lockers and leaves. He knows this is far from over.
++
O’Neill meets his gaze in the corridors after that, but they still seem to have nothing to say to each other. Until two nights later, as Cam walks into his quarters, bone weary from digging through rubble all day. As soon as he walks in, the door is kicked shut behind him and then hands grab him by the shirtfront, shoving him up against the cement wall. The breath bursts from his lungs, and his heart races as he grabs at the wrists holding him.
And then in the dim light of his battery-operated lamp O’Neill’s face appears before his, eye to eye. “Did you see them?” he demands.
Cam keeps hold of O’Neill’s wrists, but he sags slightly and doesn’t fight. “What?”
“Did you see them?” O’Neill demands again. “Did you see their bodies? Did you go down into the wreckage and look for them?”
Cam blinks at him. “No. I…”
“Then how do you know they’re dead?”
Oh, fuck. “Sir… the mountain blew up.” He meets Jack’s ferocious gaze with one of his own. “It fucking. blew. up.”
O’Neill’s fingers tighten in his shirt and he shoves him back against the wall again. “And Carter is a fucking genius, Colonel. Daniel too. Do you have any idea how many times they-all of us-have survived when we were supposed to be dead?”
“Colorado Springs was completely annihilated. The mountain is gone, sir.”
“They could have gone through the gate.”
Cam treads carefully. “Major Davis said you talked to Carter yourself just before the radios were jammed. There was an incoming wormhole. She was still there when the mountain went silent.”
“They could have taken her prisoner. All of them.”
“Sir, the timing doesn’t work out. The timeline-“
“Goddamn it!” O’Neill shoves him away, and Cam whirls on him.
“What did you want me to do, Jack?" he shouts, anger clouding his good sense. "Is there something in particular I fucked up, or are you just pissed off that I didn't die right along with them?"
"Eight years, Mitchell! Eight years and we were tortured, imprisoned, stranded and even killed, but we never actually stayed dead! I finally leave, and one year later they're..." He trails away, and there's anguish in his expression along with the anger. He turns away, and Cam grabs for him.
"They're dead, sir!"
The fist comes out of nowhere, connecting solidly with his jaw and snapping his head around. Pain stabs through his cheek as his teeth dig into his lip.
"Ow. Fuck!" The room spins just a bit and he goes down to his knees, tucking his head down in case O'Neill isn't finished. He tastes blood on his tongue. No other blows land. Instead, he hears O'Neill make a frustrated sound, and there's a vicious cracking of wood. He looks up to see O'Neill kick out violently at the desk, sending the legs spinning off across the room. He kicks again and then goes down on his heels, hands coming up to cradle his head. He's breathing hard, and Cam can hear the wetness there, the desperation, not from exertion but from restraint. There's something inside of him threatening to come out, and he's trying hard to keep it in.
Something like grief.
Cam wipes at his lip and swallows a mouthful of blood. None of this was about him; it had always been about O'Neill and them.
"Jack," he says, quietly, feeling uneasy at the lack of protocol, but willing to take the risk.
O'Neill doesn't look up. He sniffs and goes still for a long moment, and then he's up like a shot and out of the door, footsteps on the concrete fading in the distance.
Cam touches his swollen lip gingerly and exhales wearily. Fuck.
++
He rises slowly the next morning, lip and back aching. He dreamt about darkness last night. His bed smelled of ashes, and there were arms around him. He'd turned into the warm circle of arms, blind, lips dragging over the sharp scrape of another man's beard. He'd called O'Neill tentatively by his first name, and O'Neill had breathed Cam's back to him, into his mouth.
He walks slowly down the empty, early-morning corridor on his way to the garage to meet the search detail. The dream is slow to leave him; he can't quite shake it. Maybe it's the reason he finds himself walking down the corridor that holds O'Neill's quarters. He isn't sure what he's going to do or say.
The open door and the voices inside stop him in his tracks. He can see General Hauser standing against the far wall. He's the highest-ranking military officer in the shelter, maybe the highest-ranking officer to survive. Major Davis is standing by the door. O'Neill is... walking back and forth, shoving gear into a pack. Cam feels worry start to thread through his gut.
"... sure you want to do this?" General Hauser is saying.
"Yup." O'Neill's words are clipped and almost robotic.
General Hauser furrows his brow. "I don't mind telling you, Jack, I think this is a fool's errand."
O'Neill doesn't answer. He slaps a clip into his 9mm pistol and slides it into the holster on his thigh. He neatly packs the extra clips into a case and slips it into a pocket of the pack.
"Sir, the chances of you finding them alive are..." Davis hesitates, and Cam understands his reluctance. "...remote. To say the least."
O'Neill glances up. "They'd do the same for me," he says, simply.
"I was the one on the radio before the signal was jammed," Davis says, softening his voice. "I talked to both Colonel Carter and Doctor Jackson, and there's no way..." he trails away as O'Neill's gaze hardens and he stills, staring at the major.
"If you're intent on this, Jack, then at least take an airman with you," the top General gripes. “By the time you get there it’ll be mid-November. It could snow at any time and you’d be trapped.”
There's a silence then. O'Neill continues packing his gear.
"I could go," Davis finally says, and Cam is suddenly aware of his feet moving, taking him forward into the doorway of the room.
"I'll go," he says, softly and vehemently.
Hauser and Davis glance at him in surprise, but O'Neill's head jerks up and he glares at Cam "Forget it."
"No," Cam insists, voice steady, keeping his eyes trained on O'Neill. "It's my team too. I'm going."
O'Neill holds his gaze with piercing eyes. The moment stretches on forever.
General Hauser is the first to move. "It's settled then," he says, with far more cheer than the moment warrants. When O'Neill flashes him a disgruntled look, the general clamps him on the shoulder good-naturedly. "He's your boy, Jack. You take care of him." He jabs a look toward Cam that says he considers the two of them a package deal and they're responsible for each other.
Cam folds his arms across his chest and waits as both Hauser and Davis file past him and leave. O'Neill stands and stares at him in frustration. Cam waits him out.
Finally, O'Neill shakes his head and turns away, going back to his packing. "I'm leaving in half an hour with or without you."
Cam runs back to his quarters to gear up.
++
The walk out of the city is a quiet one.
The big Humvees are too impractical to take across the country. They need something fuel efficient and smaller is better. The highways are actually fairly clear, but gas is getting harder and harder to come by as the days after The End stretch out.
O'Neill walks ahead of him, setting an easy pace and a direct path west. Cam shadows him to the left, casting glances his way from time to time. He and this man have had some amazingly deep conversations, about duty and leadership; about Daniel's penchant for touching everything and wandering off, and Carter's wonderful, unfathomable brain. About Teal'c's hidden humor and depth of spirit.
It hurts to find himself shut out after only so recently being let in.
"Are we going to walk the entire way without talking?" he finally asks, feeling a little bit fed up with O'Neill's accusing mood.
"Maybe," O'Neill retorts. "And maybe we'll find a car soon and we can ride."
Ha. Ha.
They find a Dodge Neon with nearly a full tank of gas on the other side of the Potomac. O’Neill folds his long legs into the small driver’s seat, and Cam hears muttered swearing as his knees bump the dashboard. The seat goes back, but O’Neill still looks huge sitting there all geared up. Cam crams their packs in the backseat as O’Neill pries the ignition out and hotwires the car and then he climbs into the passenger seat. It’s a very close space. He rolls the window down.
They start west, and it’s a sunny, breezy day. There are white, slow-moving clouds in the blue sky, and as they drive out of the city on the interstate there’s birdsong and crickets. If it hadn’t been the end of the world it would have been… nice. Cam leans his head back against the neck-rest and breathes in the fresh air that blows against his face. The car has a manual transmission and Jack rests his hand on the shifter between their seats. Cam finds his gaze fluttering back to that hand again and again. O’Neill has elegant hands. Big but with lean, long fingers and sparse dark hair curling delicately beneath his knuckles. They’re such a contrast to the sort of soldier he is: gruff, decisive, reserved; except, of course, when he isn’t.
Cam should probably try and talk him out of this. Seeing might be worse than believing. “There’s a cabin,” he says, into the silence of the car. “In Pike National Forest, just across Bear Creek. I used to share it with a Marine from SG-6. I stayed there for a few days before coming east. We can stay there.”
“We’re going right up to Cheyenne Mountain, Mitchell.”
“I know, it’s just…” Cam hesitates. It’s just… it isn’t there anymore, sir. When you see it… “We’ll need a more permanent place to stay if it snows… While we look.”
O’Neill grunts, and Cam guesses that’s about as good as it’s going to get.
He wishes he’d thought to bring a CD. It’s been awhile since he’s heard music…
++
The Neon lasts all the way to Missouri. It’s a slow, painful process. Where the interstate crosses through cities and towns it tends to be either missing or existing in giant chunks of jagged concrete and steel supports. They try to circumvent big towns and cities by driving on back roads, but then they have problems finding gas to siphon.
They finally can’t find gas anymore in the immediate area, and they put their packs on and set off on foot to find another full tank and another car. It takes days.
The conversation has been sparse, but O’Neill at least answers him in a normal tone of voice now. It’s odd to walk the highways and hear the silence of the world. Odd to know there will be no traffic to interrupt them. The corn and wheat still stand in their fields, struggling against the weeds, the corn going to seed inside the husks. There’s a definite chill to the air as they walk west.
They sleep in a tent, sometimes right on the median of the highway. It’s a cramped affair with O’Neill’s feet pressed right up against the tent wall and Cam’s shoulders invading his personal space. It’s intimate and O’Neill grouses about it in a nervous sort of way, but it’s warm so he seems to sleep comfortably. Still…
Cam wakes some mornings in the muted, blue dawn of the tent, and there’s a solid, warm weight against his back. Sometimes in the night Jack rolls up against him and stays, and his long, slow breaths tickle the short hairs on Cam’s nape. It nearly makes him shiver.
He hasn’t thought about sex very often since the day the world ended, but every so often it creeps up on him, sending sparks over his skin and through his blood. The weight of the world drops away and he sees bare skin and gritted teeth and his whole body wants that release, that moment of distraction. He’s never been immune to Jack O’Neill. O’Neill is an easy man to fall for, but a difficult man to get to know. He has a feeling he wasn’t the only one to have suffered with that over the years.
But there are things between them, people between them, that form a wall as intimidating as a glacier.
They’re on a mission to rescue the dead. So he lies in the dark dawn with O’Neill’s breath against his skin, and he ignores the ache in his chest and his groin. They may as well be the last two men on earth at this point. He has no right to ask for more…
++
The highways around Kansas City are impassable by car. The pavement is cracked and cratered, and gigantic slabs painted with yellow lines rise up into the air like little precipices. Cam climbs them and then leaps nimbly down to the ground again.
“Careful,” O’Neill warns him, absently. O’Neill studiously avoids the craters and the jagged ramps, and every now and then he limps a little, and Cam knows his knees are bothering him. He has a full bottle of Tylenol and has been taking three or four at a time at the end of the day.
“Why did you give me SG-1?” Cam asks suddenly. He walks up onto another slanted slab of concrete. He’s never been sure if O’Neill gave him the reins to SG-1 out of true trust, or because he was sure that Cam would never get the splintered team back together again.
O’Neill glances at him and his brows furrow, but his lips remain closed.
I mean, I’m obviously a huge failure to you now… He would have put his thought into words, if the ground hadn’t suddenly disappeared out from under him.
Just as he opens his mouth, the pavement beneath his feet on the edge of the slab gives way. He drops immediately, thigh falling hard against the ragged edge of the lifted highway before he bounces off and onto his back on the ground. The wind rushes out of his lungs, and he groans, numb with the surprise and the sudden loss of breath.
“Mitchell!” O’Neill’s voice is sharp and panicked. Cam opens his watering eyes and sees O’Neill’s face above looking worriedly down at him. A hand presses down on his shoulder. “Take it easy.”
He relaxes, and the air leaks back into his lungs. His thigh burns. He swears between gritted teeth, and O’Neill’s hand touches his leg gently. “Ow,” Cam grinds out.
“Can you move it?”
He can. It aches, but he can tell immediately that it isn’t broken. “I think I’m okay.”
He finally sits up. The skin on his thigh stings and his pants are ripped. He rips them a bit more and exposes the injured area. They both take a look. Some road rash, and he can feel the bruises already settling deep, but it’s nothing life-threatening. Cam lets out a long, slow breath of relief.
“Goddamn it, I told you to be careful!” O’Neill is angry now. “You get a broken leg out here and there’s no one to help you now!”
“Sorry,” Cam says. “Guess you’d have to carry me to Colorado.”
“Fuck that,” O’Neill gripes, but his eyes still have that edge of worry in them, and Cam realizes that O’Neill would have done just that, if that had been the only way to help him. It makes something deep in his gut catch and hold and burn warmly.
“Well,” he says, softly. “That’s a good sign.”
“What?” O’Neill glares.
Cam meets his gaze. “You apparently care whether I live or die.”
O’Neill looks taken aback for a moment and then he sinks back onto one heel, forearm resting on one raised knee. He stares at Cam, dark eyes as intense as Cam has ever seen them, and he breathes out slowly. “I always have,” he says finally. Quietly.
“If I could have done anything to change things…” Cam trails off, feeling the weight of their shared grief swinging too close.
O’Neill’s head dips. “It wasn’t your fault.” He looks up again and meets Cam’s gaze. “I don’t know what I wanted you to do. I just… they were…” He stutters and stumbles, and Cam thinks that this is probably as bare to the bone as he’s ever seen the man.
“I know,” Cam says, and he watches as O’Neill runs a nervous hand through his hair. “I was only there two years, but I… they were everything.”
O’Neill nods, and then his expression hardens. “Okay. We are not going to sit out here on the side of the road and cry over the end of the world.” He starts to take his pack off so he can help Cam up, and Cam can’t stand it. Can’t stand to take this man further into hell and show him the open caskets of his family.
“Sir…” He swallows, hard, with the weight of the words.
O’Neill glances at him and then quickly away. “Stop calling me ‘sir’. The military doesn’t exist anymore, despite what you saw in that shelter.”
It’s a deflection. Cam is telegraphing too much, but he can’t let it go. “Jack…” he says, softly.
Jack doesn’t look at him, but his jaw flexes. “Mitchell… I need to do this.” When his eyes meet Cam’s, Cam sees the resolve there, and the truth. It’s not so much a search and rescue as it is a pilgrimage.
Cam nods and holds his gaze. “Then I’m coming with, broken leg or not.”
The corner of O’Neill’s mouth tugs upward in the faintest of smiles, but out of humor. His hand comes up and he cups the back of Cam’s head, thumb hooking around his ear and along his temple. “And that… is why I gave you SG-1.”
Cam doesn’t even feel the pain in his thigh.
++
“Tell me something about them that I didn’t know,” Jack says that night as they sit by a small fire. After two weeks of steadily cooling temperatures, November has mustered up a warmer, humid, gusty wind that blows the sparks from their fire into the sky, and feels tepid against their skin.
Cam realizes there’s a part of SG-1 that belongs exclusively to him, and not to O’Neill. He looks up and sees the hint of eagerness and sadness in Jack’s eyes, and it makes his chest ache. Because he feels the same way, wants to ask the same question.
He starts with the time the alternate SG-1 messed up the stargate, causing multiple versions of the team to congregate on Earth. Jack knows the specifics, but he never knew the little details. He tells all the little off-world stories, all the familiar idiosyncrasies they both knew so well. He tells Jack what he’s missed; and as the fire dies down along with the wind, Jack is laughing right along with him, wiping at his eyes as the tears fall, and Cam isn’t sure if it’s sadness or just that he’s laughing too hard. Or both.
When they finally sleep, the harvest moon is huge in the sky. It looks like a wayward planet just off the horizon on a target line for Earth.
++
When he wakes, the air has turned cold and that gusty wind is ripping at the walls of the small tent, just inches from his face. His leg is stiff and it aches. He keeps still for a moment, trying to figure out what woke him, when he hears them: Distant, long, wavering howls: first one, then another answering, and another. He’s heard them enough before to know they’re coyotes, not wolves.
“Coyotes,” Jack says softly, putting Cam’s thoughts into words.
When he turns over he finds Jack awake and sitting up in the dark, listening. There’s just enough moon left to show Jack’s profile and the silver streaks in his hair, the pale flash of skin on his throat as he lifts his chin.
Cam sits up, struggling to find headspace next to him in the tiny tent.
“Shhhh,” Jack says. “Listen.”
They do. The chorus grows for several long moments, and then it fades to sharp yips and into silence. He used to love camping, sleeping in a tent and staying up late to listen to the wolves and coyotes, but that was when he had a warm house to go back to, with power and television and a stocked fridge. Now, that sound is less than comforting. “We used to encounter a lot of wolf-type animals off-world,” Cam says, softly. “Daniel thought the Goa’uld brought wolves with the humans because they feature so prominently in the mythology of so many cultures, and they needed a way to control their spiritual lives.”
“I know.”
Right.
Cam glances at Jack in the silence. They’re close enough that they should feel uncomfortable. Close enough that he can feel breath when Jack whispers, and there’s collected body heat between them.
Cam can only see the barest glint in his dark eyes, but they’re nearly nose-to-nose, and Jack is calm and motionless. As the moment stretches on, it gains weight. And intimacy. And Cam loses it for a moment. He leans forward suddenly, tilting his head, telegraphing his intent all the way.
O’Neill jerks his head back slightly, but he doesn’t get up and his eyes don’t leave Cam’s. The silence grows even more taut.
Cam leans in again, and this time Jack doesn’t move. Cam kisses him with a soft touch, pressing long enough to make sure it can’t be mistaken. Or cast away.
O’Neill is still as a rock for a moment, and then his whole body seems to relax. He huffs out a held breath against Cam’s mouth. Cam hesitates against his parted lips, waiting, mouths barely touching. He feels remarkably calm considering the risk he just took, but he can feel a big tension simmering just beneath his skin.
Jack takes a breath, then two, and then his hand is cupping the back of Cam’s head, urging him forward again. Cam kisses him with intent then, mouth open and wet and tasting, and Jack kisses him right back, mouth hard and slow.
It’s a heady feeling, finally connecting physically with another human again, especially when it’s Jack. God, he’s kissing me back. He’s so focused on the taste and the way it makes him ache way down low that he barely realizes he’s being pulled forward and down until he’s lying on top of Jack, knees on either side of him, hands braced on the ground, mouth still tasting and touching.
“You taste like them…” Jack groans, absently, long fingers threaded in his hair and laying hard against his skull, holding his head.
It should break the moment for Cam, but it doesn’t. To O’Neill everything about Cam is a reminder. Maybe he does taste like them. In the same way they tasted like Jack to him. Does it matter? They’re all part of the same animal, and the two of them are the only ones left now…
He sinks lower, sliding his arms under Jack’s shoulders, moving his mouth to the bristled jaw, embracing him as tightly as he can manage. Jack groans again, wordlessly, into his shoulder as Cam stretches out, settling his hips between Jack’s legs.
It doesn’t take long, and Cam’s breath aches in his lungs and his throat, rushing fast, as their hands cross and fumble in the dark.
It’s intense enough to send him back into an exhausted sleep afterwards, Jack’s bare back pressed up against his in the now over-heated confines of the tent.
For some reason it doesn’t make him feel better. As he’s sinking rapidly into sleep, he realizes he still aches. In deep, tiny places that no one else can reach.
++
It isn’t something that’s repeated in the light of day. Cam thinks it might be awkward the next morning, but they simply get up and get on with things as usual.
Jack goes in search of a car when it becomes obvious that Cam’s leg is going to slow them up for a while. Walking twelve hours a day has him limping severely by nightfall. He makes camp just past Kansas City as Jack gears up and sets off. It takes nearly a day and a half, but Jack finally drives back in a Ford pick-up truck with Colorado plates. It has an extra gas can and tire chains in the back. Cam gratefully climbs into the passenger seat and leans wearily against the door, leg aching.
Between he and Jack they’re rapidly going through the bottle of Tylenol.
As they drive deeper into Kansas, he grows darker and quieter. He doesn’t want to see that farmhouse again. It was different with SG-1, they were actively fighting and they knew what was happening. His parents were innocent and alone, just like the rest of the world. It’s too much for him to handle.
He doesn’t think Jack notices, but when he lays sleepless at night, his memories assaulting him and his brain not willing to shut down, Jack shuts it down for him. Cam eagerly gives up the grief, tries to shed it like a snakeskin, as Jack straddles him on the ground, fingers circling his throat with an easy touch. It’s still all fingers and hands, and Jack kissing him with a warm, open mouth. Still trying to taste them maybe. It’s about forgetting. And it isn’t until they’re far beyond Garden City that Cam realizes they’re only a day away from Colorado Springs, and Jack’s been growing steadily more silent as well.
When they reach the Eastern Plains, they have to alter their course. They can’t go right at Colorado Springs. There isn’t enough opportunity for fuel. They have to go south first, and stock up on fuel and supplies before going north again. Pueblo is a city of ash, and Jack closes his eyes and feigns sleep as they drive around it.
Cam stops far south of the city to camp for the night, and Jack doesn’t ask why or insist that they continue. It’s about gathering strength, and Cam knows Jack will need it.
“We’ll have to walk in on one of the Pike Forest trails,” Cam says as they sit across from each other by a small fire. “The roads are… gone.”
Jack nods. “We should check the academy too. Carter might have…” he trails away as Cam shakes his head.
Jack doesn’t ask for more information, and Cam doesn’t give it to him. He doesn’t understand, and Cam can see now that he’ll have to experience it for himself.
They lay apart from each other that night, as much as the tent will allow. The Colorado winter is approaching, and on the Front Range snow can come anytime. Cam doesn’t sleep well, and neither does Jack.
++
“Why are you stopping? We’re almost there now.”
Jack bumps his shoulder, and Cam still doesn’t move. He stares at the ridge ahead, the trees stripped of their leaves and waving dead branches against a gray sky. The 19 mile hike over forested hills hasn’t afforded them a remote view yet of Cheyenne Mountain, but it lays just over the next ridge now. Still distant and a good day’s hike away, but it will be close enough. He suddenly doesn’t want to be the one to put this image into O’Neill’s head. “We’ve come far enough.”
Jack has insisted on packing in most of their gear so they can camp next to the mountain and search. Cam eases the pack off and drops it on the ground. He’s pretty sure they won’t be going any further. He glances grimly at the other man. “Come on.”
Jack looks wary, but he leaves his pack and follows.
They walk slowly to the crest of the hill. It’s a big ridge, and it’s protected the rest of the forest. Once they reach the top and look out over the sprawling hills toward Cheyenne Mountain it’s difficult to make sense of the scene. The trees are simply gone, as if a gigantic razor had been dragged against the skin of the earth, removing them all. It’s a basin of brown; and in the middle, the mountain. It’s sheared off mid-way down, and its contents regurgitated up and out and over its sides onto the barren ground. Wood, cement, metal and tons of soil mixed and broken and scattered outward in concentric rings of debris. With no shelter from the weather, the wind rips across the new valley sending up shimmering walls of dirt and ash that swirl and dissipate into the clouds.
Cam sees something fall out of the corner of his eye, and when he looks O’Neill is on his knees. He doesn’t make a sound, but he stares, and he can’t hide the despair on his face.
Cam can’t take it. “Maybe one of them…” he tries to gather the will to believe it himself. “Carter has a brother. Maybe she got out and went-“
“Stop it.” Jack’s voice is hoarse and quiet and there’s a savage quality to it. “Don’t do that to me.”
Cam falls silent and waits. As the cold wind buries itself inside of his jacket he folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head down. Seeing it again sends a spear of pain through his chest. Maybe he’d been carrying a spark of hope himself on the way here, bolstered by O’Neill’s undying belief in his team. In their team. Because it was never over until Jack O’Neill said it was over.
In the creaking sound of dead branches, he hears a ragged human sound. Jack lowers his head into shaking hands and there’s a wet quality to his breaths as he says, “Take me home.”
And it’s over now.
Cam helps him up and puts him back into the straps of his pack, and leads him silently back along the trail.
++
The cabin is several hours northwest, just over Bear Creek. It’s isolated enough to have escaped the destruction and is still surrounded by living trees thick with fall foliage, although the cold front is quickly stripping them clean. He stayed there for almost a week and a half just after the big bang, letting the smoke clear and the ash settle, before he started east toward Washington D.C. and Jack. It’s a rental, but it’s well built and it’s well stocked, and best of all, there’s no view of Cheyenne Mountain or its death mask.
The padlock on the door is still intact, the windows unbroken, and he’s relieved that no one has apparently found his hideout. He’s carried the key in his pocket all the way to D.C. and back again.
It’s dusty inside, but quiet and orderly, and his gear is still stacked and folded neatly on the kitchen table. The woodpile under a sturdy lean-to is still dry and ready to burn. The afternoon is cloudy and dark, so he lights a candle and props his pack up against the far wall before turning to see where Jack is.
The cabin door is wide open, but Jack isn’t there anymore. And with a start, Cam realizes exactly where he is, what he found.
He walks into the living room where there are two sliding glass doors leading out to a small, now overgrown yard. Jack is standing there and staring down at four small, rough, imperfect wooden crosses. Cam opens the doors and walks slowly out to him. The Swiss army knife he’d used to carve the names and dates is now chipped and dull and never left the cabin’s kitchen.
Jack glances up as he approaches. “What’s buried here? Who…”
“Nobody,” Cam answers, softly. “I just needed a place… to talk to them.”
Jack stares down pensively, but he looks uncomfortable. Cam tugs at his shoulder. “Come on. It’s fucking cold out here.” He looks up at the darkly overcast sky. “It looks like it might storm.”
Jack says nothing. He just lets Cam lead him back into the cabin.
++
“I don’t know… I thought if I came all this way that maybe…” Jack shakes his head and glances toward the dark windows where the cold wind rattles the glass.
Cam pokes at the fire in the fireplace, sending a shower of tiny burning coals falling onto the bed of ashes below. “I know,” he says.
They have plenty of gear and a good stock of dried goods and MRE’s. Enough to get them through a couple of weeks anyway. If they end up trapped longer than that, they can hunt and fish and he’ll have to hike down to the truck and try and find an abandoned farmhouse with a supply of food. The creek is less than a quarter mile away so water is plentiful, although it’ll have to be purified.
It’s getting late though, and Cam stands and stretches. There’s a single bedroom in the back, but the heat from the fireplace and the wood-burning stove don’t reach it well. He pulls down another bed from the wall of the living room. “You can have the bed,” he says, reaching down for his pack. “I’ll bunk on the floor.”
It’s silent while Cam pulls his sleeping bag out and then starts stripping down to his shorts.
“No,” Jack says, quietly.
Cam stands and gazes at him. “It’s alright, I’ll be fine.”
“No,” Jack says again. He glances briefly at Cam’s bare chest and legs and then away, fingers running over the bristle on his jaw. “Take the bed. I’m not tired anyway.”
Cam hesitates, wanting to bring this thing out in the open and ask. Wanting to tell him he’s… welcome, except it doesn’t seem like the right time. And he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been fooling Jack at all and maybe never has. “Okay.”
He climbs into the bed and stares at the flickering shadows of the flames on the ceiling. In an overstuffed armchair next to the glass doors, Jack blows out a candle and settles in. Cam can almost hear his memories playing over and over.
++
He wakes later, thick with sleep and already rigid, as a hand runs over his chest. He looks up into Jack’s familiar shadowed face and reaches up, pulling him down.
It’s a little bit comfort, a little bit raw desire, but Cam doesn’t particularly want to think about it. Jack comes down on top of him, knee urging Cam’s legs open, and he’s naked and warm and lean. His hands hold Cam’s head while they kiss, and his hips thrust against Cam’s until he finds a slow, almost sinuous rhythm that makes Cam groan and thrust back. In the darkness all Cam can hear is the crackle of the fire and both of them panting, sometimes giving a dry, breathless groan. Cam struggles to strip his shorts off. Jack helps him and then they’re skin to skin and it’s all friction and sliding and pressure that winds him up tight as a bowstring.
Jack sucks slowly at his neck, brushes his teeth against skin, and Cam is lost in it. He’s holding Jack’s hips in an iron grip as they dry-hump in the dark, helping him move, holding him right where he needs to be, and Jack’s breath is hard and hoarse.
It quickly gets overwhelming, and then Jack is groaning in his ear, hips pressing down hard in a short, sharp jerk. “Cameron… ”
Oh… fuck. It sends him right over the edge, and he arches his head back into the pillow, savoring it, feeling Jack splintering in the same way right after him.
He relaxes limply back into the mattress afterward, feeling drained in more ways than one, and Jack collapses next to him, breath still hard and blowing across his chest.
He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again until morning.
++
It’s snowing when he wakes.
The room is full of daylight, and when he sits up he can see the big white flakes through the glass doors, drifting slowly through the air. The space beside him in the bed is empty, but he can see Jack outside sitting back on his heels in front of the makeshift graves. And he is talking.
His lips move silently and white mist puffs out from his mouth in the cold. He touches each cross one by one, fingers tracing the roughly carved names.
Cam lays and watches him for a while, not wanting to interrupt. He had his time to talk to them.
When he finally gets dressed and slides the doors open to step outside, the snow is nearly an inch thick on the ground. It crunches weakly under his boots as he walks toward the little shrine. Jack stands as Cam comes up beside him. “It helps,” Jack says, a little wonderingly. “Talking to them.”
“I know,” Cam nods. “I know there’s nothing there, but…”
“They’re there,” Jack insists. “If there’s something afterwards, then they’re there. They would have found us.”
It makes as much sense as anything else, and Cam lifts the corner of his mouth in a lop-sided smile. “Daniel for sure. He’s had more practice.”
Jack huffs out a laugh at that, and he looks up meeting Cam’s gaze.
Cam holds his eyes for a moment and then steps forward suddenly, hand sliding up onto Jack’s shoulder. Jack doesn’t back away, and Cam embraces him. Jack’s arms slide around his shoulders, and Cam is brought in tight. He exalts in it, burying his nose against the warm skin of Jack’s neck, breathing in his scent. He leans against Jack, arms tight around his waist, and Jack rocks him, slightly. They cling together silently, and in the muted, snow-covered world, Cam can almost hear the snow falling next to his ear. It feels good. Right.
As they pull back, Cam glances up at the pale, concrete sky. “I’ll walk up on the west ridge and see what the sky looks like. It isn’t snowing much now, but that can change. We might not be able to start for home for a few days.”
Jack shrugs, hand still resting on Cam’s shoulder. “Actually, I was thinking we could stay a little longer.” He glances down at the four crosses. “I still have things to say.”
Cam nods slowly. “Take as long as you want. I’ll be here.”
Epilogue:
Cam steps out of the glass doors and lifts his arms toward the sky, stretching with a yawn.
As he walks toward the woodpile, his boot sink into soft ground. The snow is growing glass edges as it thaws, and everything is wet. The air smells of the coming green grass and new leaves, and it sends a ripple of spring fever through his bones. He picks up two good-sized logs from the woodpile and starts back toward the cabin. There’s a sharp whistle from his right, and he swings around, waiting.
Jack’s head appears just over the rise of the hill, and then he’s walking up the path, a smug expression on his face.
Cam smirks. “I take it that means you caught something.”
Jack holds up a line of four foot-long brown trout, and then he practically swaggers up to the patio. “They’re a little lean this soon after winter, but I think they’ll do.”
Cam raises his eyebrows at the fish, mouth already watering. “Oh yeah, I think they’ll do.” Hunting has been scarce in the aftermath of the mountain’s demise; they’ve subsided mostly on canned meat and biscuits from a mix.
“After breakfast we ought to hike out and see if the truck still starts.”
Cam shrugs. “If it doesn’t, we’ll just have to hit Manitou Springs. I bet we find something there. We can gear up too. There’s more than a few outfitters around.”
Jack nods, and then he casts a wistful glance toward the four little crosses. They’ve survived the snow well with a little re-enforcing.
“We don’t have to go yet,” Cam offers, tentatively. The winter has been spent saying goodbye to ghosts and exploring new paths. He’s eager to go, but he’ll stay if Jack does.
Jack pauses, mouth tugging upward as he studies the graves. “This will always be my home now, but… no. It’s time.”
“Yeah,” Cam says earnestly. “It is.”
Jack reaches over and grabs Cam’s head in that familiar way. “Ready to discover the new world?”
Cam smiles into the sun as Jack releases him. “Ready when you are.”
A wry smile slides across Jack’s face. “You always are.” He takes the fish and heads toward the cabin.
Cam hesitates for one more moment, gazing down at the crosses. “It’s okay,” he tells them. “It’ll all be okay.” He gives a wistful smile. “We’ll be a little late to the party, but I don’t think you’ll mind. Save us a seat, all right?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
~end~
Okay, I've gotta write something fun now. Ya rly.
I was telling shutthef_up that I can't quite understand why anyone would want to read this fic. It's death and angst and a very rare pairing. But here you go. Do as you wish.
Bend Low Towards The Dirt
by surreallis
Pairing: Jack/Cameron
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-graphic sex/ read the prompt WELL
Cateogry: Apocafic, angst
Prompt: Earth is destroyed and the rest of SG-1 is dead. Jack is angry at Cam for letting the rest of SG-1 go, but they only have each other now. They're sort of each other's link back to the rest of the team. Jack is having a difficult time of it. (No prior romantic interests within SG-1 for either of them, please!)
A/N- Thanks to shutthef_up for giving this the once over. I appreciate it.
++
He rides most of the way east in the back of a Kansas farmer’s old pick-up truck.
The old man has his wife and a half-breed Bloodhound shoved into the cab beside him, so Cam sits in the back amongst the boxes of clothes and the rolling cans of ravioli and dog food. It’s a bleak view of cities and towns made of ash. In the open air of early autumn he can feel the coming chill of winter, and he can smell the wood smoke from campfires. He tries to ignore that other smell, the one that tells him most of the world is dead now.
He pays his fare with the farmer by siphoning gas for him and chasing off any survivors who have designs on hijacking. It isn’t difficult. Most of the survivors weren’t really prepared for all of this. They weren’t ready, and they are scared to death. He tells them to go south, where at least the winter won’t kill them.
At night he has to give up the truck bed so the farmer and his wife (and the dog) can sleep up off the ground. Cam always unrolls his sleeping bag a good thirty yards from the truck. It gives the farmer some privacy, and he’s still in range if something goes wrong.
It also gives Cam privacy, to stare up at the stars and think about how he’ll tell O’Neill, if indeed O’Neill still lives, when he gets to Washington D.C. More than that, the night, with all its silence and slowly ticking moments, lets him think about them. About how they looked and sounded, when they smiled and when they were serious, and even when they were fed up with him. About how they smelled, for God’s sake…
It’s Carter’s teasing grin, Daniel’s pensive expression, Teal’c’s lifted brow, Vala’s innocent mask; all of it pins him down to the ground under a star-filled sky and makes him ache with despair. And when the other images take over, the ones that bring fear-filled cries; heavy, hitching breaths; blood smeared skin… he lets the tears trickle from his eyes and down to the destroyed earth beneath him.
As they get closer to Washington the dread weighs down his eagerness to see a familiar face. He instinctively knows this won’t go well…
++
The farmer drops him on an interstate highway just outside of Alexandria, Virginia, and he walks to Maryland, crossing the Potomac on the Wilson Bridge, which he figures had a better chance of standing than any other in the area. And he is right. It takes him a day to cross and then to walk into the ruins of the abandoned Bolling Air Force base. There he camps until a jeep-load of airmen making the rounds to search for military and political survivors finds him, checks his I.D. and then lets him board the Humvee that follows along behind.
“You have anyone else with you?” A square-jawed tech-sergeant asks him.
Cam shakes his head numbly and pushes away the flickering images at the corner of his mind: blue eyes, broad grins, an amused smirk.
It’s a quiet drive as they motor through the streets of D.C. The airmen don’t make any more stops, and Cam doesn’t see any other survivors out of the back of the Humvee. The city is mostly cleared of human debris, and he sees big signs directing people south.
They drive north.
They pull up to a warehouse, drive through a big garage door, and then through two more; and then they’re driving down into the earth, and Cam feels the weight of the world descend upon him. He hears the airmen talking into radios in the front seat, relaying his name and his serial number. He hears the answering murmur of military chatter, and when the airmen don’t turn and point their guns at him, he figures he’s been approved for entry.
A grim-faced airman takes his pack when the Humvee stops, telling him it needs to be searched and tested before it’s returned to him. Cam gives a curt nod and stands to glance around. He isn’t sure how far they’ve driven underground, but the air is cool and a bit dank. The garage is wide and dimly lit with a low ceiling and immense support columns. A steel door opens ahead of them, and several officers come through, all in battle dress, boots tapping against the cement floor. He stands at attention, waiting nervously, even as he sees a familiar form come through at the end of the procession, silver hair standing out in the gloom. His heart leaps up into his throat, and for a moment he thinks he’s going to be sick.
He bites down into his lip, focusing his mind away from the roiling contents of his stomach.
He recognizes most of the officers. They’ve all been at the SGC at one time or another, and they give him welcoming smiles as they approach close enough to see his face. He remains at attention, watching as O’Neill strides purposely toward him. There is a faint smile on the general’s face as he approaches, but Cam watches the way his eyes shift constantly past Cam, toward the Humvee.
“Mitchell!”
“Sir…” He can barely hear his own voice. He doesn’t dare look at the general.
In his peripheral vision, he sees O’Neill’s glance go to the Humvee again and then sweep around, searching. Cam swallows, hard. “It’s just me, sir.” His stomach flips over.
O’Neill seems to go still, and Cam feels his gaze like a laser. “Mitchell.” It’s a soft command, and Cam swallows again, this time against the heat in his throat and the pressure behind his eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir. They died with the mountain.”
O’Neill stares at him for a long, silent moment, and Cam finally turns his head to look the man in the eyes. To show him it isn’t just a bad joke, and that the rest of SG-1 isn’t going to jump out of the back of the Humvee in surprise. Cam watches the emotion playing across the general’s face-confusion, pain-before his expression goes suddenly rigid and blank, like a wall of stone dropping down between them.
“You left them?” O’Neill asks in a tight, low, dangerous voice.
Cam’s mouth tugs down, his eyes grow wet. He can’t keep from breaking a little. “There was nothing I could do,” he says hoarsely, dropping the protocol because he can sense that this has nothing to do with duty or honor or any of the other people here watching.
O’Neill stares at him, jaw tight, for another moment and then turns sharply on his heel and walks away. Cam wants to call out to him, chase after him, make him understand that they were all already dead when he got there, but O’Neill is halfway across the garage floor already, long legs carrying him quickly.
Cam exhales shakily through the pressure in his chest and wipes quickly at his eyes. A hand squeezes his shoulder reassuringly, and when Cam glances up he sees Major Paul Davis.
“Come on, Colonel,” the major says, eyes knowing. “You’ll debrief and then I’ll take you to your new quarters.”
Cam follows him, mutely.
++
O’Neill isn’t in the debriefing.
Cam tells them what happened to Cheyenne Mountain. He’d had the week off and gone rafting with a couple of marines from SG-3. The attack had been sudden and rapid, and the sky had been filled with smoke before they’d made it back to the truck. On the way home they’d passed towns-whole cities-burned to cinder in seconds. The air is so full of acrid smoke that it blocks out the sun and settles like a fog over the earth. They tie T-shirts over their mouths and noses and cough their way back to the mountain.
The mountain is not burning. The mountain is gone. It’s one big pile of broken earth and death, and the city around it has been wiped from existence.
He and the marines part ways after that, and he holes up for a while, letting the earth cool. Then he drives a dead man’s car east. He only makes it to Kansas before it overheats and gives out on him. The farmer picks him up soon after, seemingly reassured by Cam’s uniform. They make one stop, at his parents’ farm, so Cam can be sure. The farmer helps him dig the graves, and then they continue east.
He hears the rest from Major Davis. How it had been a coordinated attack from space. Whoever they were, they’d had technology way beyond Earth, possibly way beyond the Asgard. Earth had never known they were there, a massive armada hovering above the planet, until the attack had started. It had been sudden and massive and quick, with a pinpoint accuracy that had burned whole towns down to the ground with laser-like precision. The SGC had radioed Washington about the ‘gate activating with an incoming wormhole and then all signals had been jammed.
When it was over, the airwaves had been silent.
Cam scrubs at his face and feels weary. “What now?”
Davis doesn’t seem to have any real answers. “Don’t know. Rebuild. Try to signal the Tok’ra. Unfortunately, the demise of the Asgard came at a really bad time for us.”
Cam thinks about Atlantis, but with the ‘gate gone there’s no way to get there. No way for the crew in Atlantis to get home again. The Daedalus was on Earth and destroyed on the ground, the Odyssey’s fate is unknown.
Davis leads him through winding tunnels lit by sterile white utility lamps. He opens a door to a small room with a bed and a desk, and Cam sees his duffel bag sitting on the floor. His new home. Paul tells him where to find the bathroom and gives him the schedule for meals, but when he leaves Cam collapses down on the bed and stares at the grainy, gray ceiling. It’s reassuring to feel the pulse of other humans around him, but he also feels claustrophobic and fearful.
It’s only the thought of O’Neill that calms him. If there’s one man Cam trusts to get them through this, it’s O’Neill. There’s a reluctant stitch deep inside of him that’s so relived O’Neill survived. I don’t have to worry anymore. He can lay down his burdens now…
++
O’Neill avoids him like the plague.
Cam is debriefed over the next few days, and O’Neill is absent from every single meeting. He’s having a hard time with this, and Cam expected that. Hell, Cam still couldn’t sleep through the night without seeing their faces; it took him a week to sleep at all. What must it be like for O’Neill, who had been their leader, their protector, their friend, for eight years?
Cam had found the same deliverance in SG-1 that O’Neill had, but O’Neill had needed it in a way that Cam hadn’t. That didn’t change the feelings though…
He tries to talk to Jack in the mess hall one evening. He’s been going out with the search parties during the day, and he gets back late every night. He walks in to get a cold dinner and finds O’Neill there drinking coffee. The dark eyes slide up to meet Cam’s gaze, and Cam takes a deep breath, preparing to settle the matter once and for all. Instead, O’Neill rises, leaving his coffee cup steaming on the table, and he walks right past Cam without another glance.
“Sir…” Cam croaks at his back. O’Neill doesn’t even flinch. He just… walks away.
It’s a heavy, raw feeling that settles in his chest and burns behind his eyes. Cam sits with a plate of cold goulash and pushes it around with his fork. He stares at the cooling coffee cup and wishes he had enough whiskey to get good and drunk. Maybe enough to never wake up again…
++
Working with the search parties consumes him from dawn to dusk. It gets him out of the dark tunnels and lets him feel the sun and the rain. The world may be a changed place, an empty place, but it’s familiar and he adjusts. There are long periods of time where they find no one; where they drive from one street to the next, one highway to another, and the only thing they see is the wind in the growing weeds. It’s so silent now, so noticeably quiet from the way it was before, that sometimes he can hear his own breath echoing in his head.
It gives him too much time to think.
O’Neill holds him accountable for the deaths of SG-1, he knows, and he isn’t sure what the man wants from him. Ritual suicide by the side of the road when he realized SG-1 was gone and they weren’t coming back? O’Neill loved them; Cam loved them too. He likes to think they loved him back, if not as much as O’Neill then at least with that potential. He feels like he failed them, and he both hates Jack for that and aches for his forgiveness.
Had there been any sign? Any frown on Carter’s face as she’d tried to tell him about some anomaly she’d seen? Any thoughtful worry in Daniel’s expression as he’d read some new piece of text brought back through the gate?
He couldn’t think of anything. He’d have known if there’d been something. He’d been in tune with them that way.
He works from morning to night everyday, and even though it only involves driving around all day, he comes back to the shelter drained and tired. It’s exactly what he wants.
++
“Do you even want to know what happened?” Cam glances in the mirror back over his shoulder to where O’Neill stands at the sinks behind him, shaving. He’d been studiously ignoring Cam as usual, but Cam can’t take it anymore.
The muscles in O’Neill’s lean back seem to tense, and then he lifts his head, jaw still smeared with shaving cream, and his dark eyes meet Cam’s in the mirror. “I read the reports,” he says, and his voice seems to fill the empty locker room.
“What did you want me to do?” There’s an edge of whine to his voice that makes Cam wince.
O’Neill’s eyes never leave him. “I wanted you to save them.”
“I wasn’t there,” Cam protests.
O’Neill throws his razor into the sink and turns, wiping at his jaw with his towel. He’s wearing jeans, unbuttoned at the waist, and the hair on his chest has gone mostly silver. He still looks wiry and strong though, and he takes two long strides across the room and then leans in, so close that Cam can smell the recently used shaving cream. Cam only half turns toward him, suddenly feeling the room fill with a taut tension that he can’t explain.
“I would have been,” O’Neill growls into his ear. Then he stands there, breathing, and stares at Cam from two inches away.
Cam doesn’t dare meet his gaze. He closes his eyes and lowers his chin and waits, and he’s never been more aware of Jack O’Neill’s presence than at that moment. He can smell the man and feel his body heat, and even with his eyes closed he can feel that two inch difference in their height. Jack is taller. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, quietly. “I wish I would have been.” And he does. “I miss them too,” he says, tightly, and he puts an edge into the words. I miss them too, you bastard. You haven’t been there for the past year and a half. It’s been all me, Jack. Me.
He must be telegraphing his thoughts, because O’Neill’s breath hitches just slightly, and Cam finally glances at him. Just in time to see the flash of inconsolable regret before anger flashes over. O’Neill’s jaw tightens, and Cam feels a huff of breath against his jaw, and then the general is gone.
Cam stares into the mirror as Jack bangs around in the lockers and leaves. He knows this is far from over.
++
O’Neill meets his gaze in the corridors after that, but they still seem to have nothing to say to each other. Until two nights later, as Cam walks into his quarters, bone weary from digging through rubble all day. As soon as he walks in, the door is kicked shut behind him and then hands grab him by the shirtfront, shoving him up against the cement wall. The breath bursts from his lungs, and his heart races as he grabs at the wrists holding him.
And then in the dim light of his battery-operated lamp O’Neill’s face appears before his, eye to eye. “Did you see them?” he demands.
Cam keeps hold of O’Neill’s wrists, but he sags slightly and doesn’t fight. “What?”
“Did you see them?” O’Neill demands again. “Did you see their bodies? Did you go down into the wreckage and look for them?”
Cam blinks at him. “No. I…”
“Then how do you know they’re dead?”
Oh, fuck. “Sir… the mountain blew up.” He meets Jack’s ferocious gaze with one of his own. “It fucking. blew. up.”
O’Neill’s fingers tighten in his shirt and he shoves him back against the wall again. “And Carter is a fucking genius, Colonel. Daniel too. Do you have any idea how many times they-all of us-have survived when we were supposed to be dead?”
“Colorado Springs was completely annihilated. The mountain is gone, sir.”
“They could have gone through the gate.”
Cam treads carefully. “Major Davis said you talked to Carter yourself just before the radios were jammed. There was an incoming wormhole. She was still there when the mountain went silent.”
“They could have taken her prisoner. All of them.”
“Sir, the timing doesn’t work out. The timeline-“
“Goddamn it!” O’Neill shoves him away, and Cam whirls on him.
“What did you want me to do, Jack?" he shouts, anger clouding his good sense. "Is there something in particular I fucked up, or are you just pissed off that I didn't die right along with them?"
"Eight years, Mitchell! Eight years and we were tortured, imprisoned, stranded and even killed, but we never actually stayed dead! I finally leave, and one year later they're..." He trails away, and there's anguish in his expression along with the anger. He turns away, and Cam grabs for him.
"They're dead, sir!"
The fist comes out of nowhere, connecting solidly with his jaw and snapping his head around. Pain stabs through his cheek as his teeth dig into his lip.
"Ow. Fuck!" The room spins just a bit and he goes down to his knees, tucking his head down in case O'Neill isn't finished. He tastes blood on his tongue. No other blows land. Instead, he hears O'Neill make a frustrated sound, and there's a vicious cracking of wood. He looks up to see O'Neill kick out violently at the desk, sending the legs spinning off across the room. He kicks again and then goes down on his heels, hands coming up to cradle his head. He's breathing hard, and Cam can hear the wetness there, the desperation, not from exertion but from restraint. There's something inside of him threatening to come out, and he's trying hard to keep it in.
Something like grief.
Cam wipes at his lip and swallows a mouthful of blood. None of this was about him; it had always been about O'Neill and them.
"Jack," he says, quietly, feeling uneasy at the lack of protocol, but willing to take the risk.
O'Neill doesn't look up. He sniffs and goes still for a long moment, and then he's up like a shot and out of the door, footsteps on the concrete fading in the distance.
Cam touches his swollen lip gingerly and exhales wearily. Fuck.
++
He rises slowly the next morning, lip and back aching. He dreamt about darkness last night. His bed smelled of ashes, and there were arms around him. He'd turned into the warm circle of arms, blind, lips dragging over the sharp scrape of another man's beard. He'd called O'Neill tentatively by his first name, and O'Neill had breathed Cam's back to him, into his mouth.
He walks slowly down the empty, early-morning corridor on his way to the garage to meet the search detail. The dream is slow to leave him; he can't quite shake it. Maybe it's the reason he finds himself walking down the corridor that holds O'Neill's quarters. He isn't sure what he's going to do or say.
The open door and the voices inside stop him in his tracks. He can see General Hauser standing against the far wall. He's the highest-ranking military officer in the shelter, maybe the highest-ranking officer to survive. Major Davis is standing by the door. O'Neill is... walking back and forth, shoving gear into a pack. Cam feels worry start to thread through his gut.
"... sure you want to do this?" General Hauser is saying.
"Yup." O'Neill's words are clipped and almost robotic.
General Hauser furrows his brow. "I don't mind telling you, Jack, I think this is a fool's errand."
O'Neill doesn't answer. He slaps a clip into his 9mm pistol and slides it into the holster on his thigh. He neatly packs the extra clips into a case and slips it into a pocket of the pack.
"Sir, the chances of you finding them alive are..." Davis hesitates, and Cam understands his reluctance. "...remote. To say the least."
O'Neill glances up. "They'd do the same for me," he says, simply.
"I was the one on the radio before the signal was jammed," Davis says, softening his voice. "I talked to both Colonel Carter and Doctor Jackson, and there's no way..." he trails away as O'Neill's gaze hardens and he stills, staring at the major.
"If you're intent on this, Jack, then at least take an airman with you," the top General gripes. “By the time you get there it’ll be mid-November. It could snow at any time and you’d be trapped.”
There's a silence then. O'Neill continues packing his gear.
"I could go," Davis finally says, and Cam is suddenly aware of his feet moving, taking him forward into the doorway of the room.
"I'll go," he says, softly and vehemently.
Hauser and Davis glance at him in surprise, but O'Neill's head jerks up and he glares at Cam "Forget it."
"No," Cam insists, voice steady, keeping his eyes trained on O'Neill. "It's my team too. I'm going."
O'Neill holds his gaze with piercing eyes. The moment stretches on forever.
General Hauser is the first to move. "It's settled then," he says, with far more cheer than the moment warrants. When O'Neill flashes him a disgruntled look, the general clamps him on the shoulder good-naturedly. "He's your boy, Jack. You take care of him." He jabs a look toward Cam that says he considers the two of them a package deal and they're responsible for each other.
Cam folds his arms across his chest and waits as both Hauser and Davis file past him and leave. O'Neill stands and stares at him in frustration. Cam waits him out.
Finally, O'Neill shakes his head and turns away, going back to his packing. "I'm leaving in half an hour with or without you."
Cam runs back to his quarters to gear up.
++
The walk out of the city is a quiet one.
The big Humvees are too impractical to take across the country. They need something fuel efficient and smaller is better. The highways are actually fairly clear, but gas is getting harder and harder to come by as the days after The End stretch out.
O'Neill walks ahead of him, setting an easy pace and a direct path west. Cam shadows him to the left, casting glances his way from time to time. He and this man have had some amazingly deep conversations, about duty and leadership; about Daniel's penchant for touching everything and wandering off, and Carter's wonderful, unfathomable brain. About Teal'c's hidden humor and depth of spirit.
It hurts to find himself shut out after only so recently being let in.
"Are we going to walk the entire way without talking?" he finally asks, feeling a little bit fed up with O'Neill's accusing mood.
"Maybe," O'Neill retorts. "And maybe we'll find a car soon and we can ride."
Ha. Ha.
They find a Dodge Neon with nearly a full tank of gas on the other side of the Potomac. O’Neill folds his long legs into the small driver’s seat, and Cam hears muttered swearing as his knees bump the dashboard. The seat goes back, but O’Neill still looks huge sitting there all geared up. Cam crams their packs in the backseat as O’Neill pries the ignition out and hotwires the car and then he climbs into the passenger seat. It’s a very close space. He rolls the window down.
They start west, and it’s a sunny, breezy day. There are white, slow-moving clouds in the blue sky, and as they drive out of the city on the interstate there’s birdsong and crickets. If it hadn’t been the end of the world it would have been… nice. Cam leans his head back against the neck-rest and breathes in the fresh air that blows against his face. The car has a manual transmission and Jack rests his hand on the shifter between their seats. Cam finds his gaze fluttering back to that hand again and again. O’Neill has elegant hands. Big but with lean, long fingers and sparse dark hair curling delicately beneath his knuckles. They’re such a contrast to the sort of soldier he is: gruff, decisive, reserved; except, of course, when he isn’t.
Cam should probably try and talk him out of this. Seeing might be worse than believing. “There’s a cabin,” he says, into the silence of the car. “In Pike National Forest, just across Bear Creek. I used to share it with a Marine from SG-6. I stayed there for a few days before coming east. We can stay there.”
“We’re going right up to Cheyenne Mountain, Mitchell.”
“I know, it’s just…” Cam hesitates. It’s just… it isn’t there anymore, sir. When you see it… “We’ll need a more permanent place to stay if it snows… While we look.”
O’Neill grunts, and Cam guesses that’s about as good as it’s going to get.
He wishes he’d thought to bring a CD. It’s been awhile since he’s heard music…
++
The Neon lasts all the way to Missouri. It’s a slow, painful process. Where the interstate crosses through cities and towns it tends to be either missing or existing in giant chunks of jagged concrete and steel supports. They try to circumvent big towns and cities by driving on back roads, but then they have problems finding gas to siphon.
They finally can’t find gas anymore in the immediate area, and they put their packs on and set off on foot to find another full tank and another car. It takes days.
The conversation has been sparse, but O’Neill at least answers him in a normal tone of voice now. It’s odd to walk the highways and hear the silence of the world. Odd to know there will be no traffic to interrupt them. The corn and wheat still stand in their fields, struggling against the weeds, the corn going to seed inside the husks. There’s a definite chill to the air as they walk west.
They sleep in a tent, sometimes right on the median of the highway. It’s a cramped affair with O’Neill’s feet pressed right up against the tent wall and Cam’s shoulders invading his personal space. It’s intimate and O’Neill grouses about it in a nervous sort of way, but it’s warm so he seems to sleep comfortably. Still…
Cam wakes some mornings in the muted, blue dawn of the tent, and there’s a solid, warm weight against his back. Sometimes in the night Jack rolls up against him and stays, and his long, slow breaths tickle the short hairs on Cam’s nape. It nearly makes him shiver.
He hasn’t thought about sex very often since the day the world ended, but every so often it creeps up on him, sending sparks over his skin and through his blood. The weight of the world drops away and he sees bare skin and gritted teeth and his whole body wants that release, that moment of distraction. He’s never been immune to Jack O’Neill. O’Neill is an easy man to fall for, but a difficult man to get to know. He has a feeling he wasn’t the only one to have suffered with that over the years.
But there are things between them, people between them, that form a wall as intimidating as a glacier.
They’re on a mission to rescue the dead. So he lies in the dark dawn with O’Neill’s breath against his skin, and he ignores the ache in his chest and his groin. They may as well be the last two men on earth at this point. He has no right to ask for more…
++
The highways around Kansas City are impassable by car. The pavement is cracked and cratered, and gigantic slabs painted with yellow lines rise up into the air like little precipices. Cam climbs them and then leaps nimbly down to the ground again.
“Careful,” O’Neill warns him, absently. O’Neill studiously avoids the craters and the jagged ramps, and every now and then he limps a little, and Cam knows his knees are bothering him. He has a full bottle of Tylenol and has been taking three or four at a time at the end of the day.
“Why did you give me SG-1?” Cam asks suddenly. He walks up onto another slanted slab of concrete. He’s never been sure if O’Neill gave him the reins to SG-1 out of true trust, or because he was sure that Cam would never get the splintered team back together again.
O’Neill glances at him and his brows furrow, but his lips remain closed.
I mean, I’m obviously a huge failure to you now… He would have put his thought into words, if the ground hadn’t suddenly disappeared out from under him.
Just as he opens his mouth, the pavement beneath his feet on the edge of the slab gives way. He drops immediately, thigh falling hard against the ragged edge of the lifted highway before he bounces off and onto his back on the ground. The wind rushes out of his lungs, and he groans, numb with the surprise and the sudden loss of breath.
“Mitchell!” O’Neill’s voice is sharp and panicked. Cam opens his watering eyes and sees O’Neill’s face above looking worriedly down at him. A hand presses down on his shoulder. “Take it easy.”
He relaxes, and the air leaks back into his lungs. His thigh burns. He swears between gritted teeth, and O’Neill’s hand touches his leg gently. “Ow,” Cam grinds out.
“Can you move it?”
He can. It aches, but he can tell immediately that it isn’t broken. “I think I’m okay.”
He finally sits up. The skin on his thigh stings and his pants are ripped. He rips them a bit more and exposes the injured area. They both take a look. Some road rash, and he can feel the bruises already settling deep, but it’s nothing life-threatening. Cam lets out a long, slow breath of relief.
“Goddamn it, I told you to be careful!” O’Neill is angry now. “You get a broken leg out here and there’s no one to help you now!”
“Sorry,” Cam says. “Guess you’d have to carry me to Colorado.”
“Fuck that,” O’Neill gripes, but his eyes still have that edge of worry in them, and Cam realizes that O’Neill would have done just that, if that had been the only way to help him. It makes something deep in his gut catch and hold and burn warmly.
“Well,” he says, softly. “That’s a good sign.”
“What?” O’Neill glares.
Cam meets his gaze. “You apparently care whether I live or die.”
O’Neill looks taken aback for a moment and then he sinks back onto one heel, forearm resting on one raised knee. He stares at Cam, dark eyes as intense as Cam has ever seen them, and he breathes out slowly. “I always have,” he says finally. Quietly.
“If I could have done anything to change things…” Cam trails off, feeling the weight of their shared grief swinging too close.
O’Neill’s head dips. “It wasn’t your fault.” He looks up again and meets Cam’s gaze. “I don’t know what I wanted you to do. I just… they were…” He stutters and stumbles, and Cam thinks that this is probably as bare to the bone as he’s ever seen the man.
“I know,” Cam says, and he watches as O’Neill runs a nervous hand through his hair. “I was only there two years, but I… they were everything.”
O’Neill nods, and then his expression hardens. “Okay. We are not going to sit out here on the side of the road and cry over the end of the world.” He starts to take his pack off so he can help Cam up, and Cam can’t stand it. Can’t stand to take this man further into hell and show him the open caskets of his family.
“Sir…” He swallows, hard, with the weight of the words.
O’Neill glances at him and then quickly away. “Stop calling me ‘sir’. The military doesn’t exist anymore, despite what you saw in that shelter.”
It’s a deflection. Cam is telegraphing too much, but he can’t let it go. “Jack…” he says, softly.
Jack doesn’t look at him, but his jaw flexes. “Mitchell… I need to do this.” When his eyes meet Cam’s, Cam sees the resolve there, and the truth. It’s not so much a search and rescue as it is a pilgrimage.
Cam nods and holds his gaze. “Then I’m coming with, broken leg or not.”
The corner of O’Neill’s mouth tugs upward in the faintest of smiles, but out of humor. His hand comes up and he cups the back of Cam’s head, thumb hooking around his ear and along his temple. “And that… is why I gave you SG-1.”
Cam doesn’t even feel the pain in his thigh.
++
“Tell me something about them that I didn’t know,” Jack says that night as they sit by a small fire. After two weeks of steadily cooling temperatures, November has mustered up a warmer, humid, gusty wind that blows the sparks from their fire into the sky, and feels tepid against their skin.
Cam realizes there’s a part of SG-1 that belongs exclusively to him, and not to O’Neill. He looks up and sees the hint of eagerness and sadness in Jack’s eyes, and it makes his chest ache. Because he feels the same way, wants to ask the same question.
He starts with the time the alternate SG-1 messed up the stargate, causing multiple versions of the team to congregate on Earth. Jack knows the specifics, but he never knew the little details. He tells all the little off-world stories, all the familiar idiosyncrasies they both knew so well. He tells Jack what he’s missed; and as the fire dies down along with the wind, Jack is laughing right along with him, wiping at his eyes as the tears fall, and Cam isn’t sure if it’s sadness or just that he’s laughing too hard. Or both.
When they finally sleep, the harvest moon is huge in the sky. It looks like a wayward planet just off the horizon on a target line for Earth.
++
When he wakes, the air has turned cold and that gusty wind is ripping at the walls of the small tent, just inches from his face. His leg is stiff and it aches. He keeps still for a moment, trying to figure out what woke him, when he hears them: Distant, long, wavering howls: first one, then another answering, and another. He’s heard them enough before to know they’re coyotes, not wolves.
“Coyotes,” Jack says softly, putting Cam’s thoughts into words.
When he turns over he finds Jack awake and sitting up in the dark, listening. There’s just enough moon left to show Jack’s profile and the silver streaks in his hair, the pale flash of skin on his throat as he lifts his chin.
Cam sits up, struggling to find headspace next to him in the tiny tent.
“Shhhh,” Jack says. “Listen.”
They do. The chorus grows for several long moments, and then it fades to sharp yips and into silence. He used to love camping, sleeping in a tent and staying up late to listen to the wolves and coyotes, but that was when he had a warm house to go back to, with power and television and a stocked fridge. Now, that sound is less than comforting. “We used to encounter a lot of wolf-type animals off-world,” Cam says, softly. “Daniel thought the Goa’uld brought wolves with the humans because they feature so prominently in the mythology of so many cultures, and they needed a way to control their spiritual lives.”
“I know.”
Right.
Cam glances at Jack in the silence. They’re close enough that they should feel uncomfortable. Close enough that he can feel breath when Jack whispers, and there’s collected body heat between them.
Cam can only see the barest glint in his dark eyes, but they’re nearly nose-to-nose, and Jack is calm and motionless. As the moment stretches on, it gains weight. And intimacy. And Cam loses it for a moment. He leans forward suddenly, tilting his head, telegraphing his intent all the way.
O’Neill jerks his head back slightly, but he doesn’t get up and his eyes don’t leave Cam’s. The silence grows even more taut.
Cam leans in again, and this time Jack doesn’t move. Cam kisses him with a soft touch, pressing long enough to make sure it can’t be mistaken. Or cast away.
O’Neill is still as a rock for a moment, and then his whole body seems to relax. He huffs out a held breath against Cam’s mouth. Cam hesitates against his parted lips, waiting, mouths barely touching. He feels remarkably calm considering the risk he just took, but he can feel a big tension simmering just beneath his skin.
Jack takes a breath, then two, and then his hand is cupping the back of Cam’s head, urging him forward again. Cam kisses him with intent then, mouth open and wet and tasting, and Jack kisses him right back, mouth hard and slow.
It’s a heady feeling, finally connecting physically with another human again, especially when it’s Jack. God, he’s kissing me back. He’s so focused on the taste and the way it makes him ache way down low that he barely realizes he’s being pulled forward and down until he’s lying on top of Jack, knees on either side of him, hands braced on the ground, mouth still tasting and touching.
“You taste like them…” Jack groans, absently, long fingers threaded in his hair and laying hard against his skull, holding his head.
It should break the moment for Cam, but it doesn’t. To O’Neill everything about Cam is a reminder. Maybe he does taste like them. In the same way they tasted like Jack to him. Does it matter? They’re all part of the same animal, and the two of them are the only ones left now…
He sinks lower, sliding his arms under Jack’s shoulders, moving his mouth to the bristled jaw, embracing him as tightly as he can manage. Jack groans again, wordlessly, into his shoulder as Cam stretches out, settling his hips between Jack’s legs.
It doesn’t take long, and Cam’s breath aches in his lungs and his throat, rushing fast, as their hands cross and fumble in the dark.
It’s intense enough to send him back into an exhausted sleep afterwards, Jack’s bare back pressed up against his in the now over-heated confines of the tent.
For some reason it doesn’t make him feel better. As he’s sinking rapidly into sleep, he realizes he still aches. In deep, tiny places that no one else can reach.
++
It isn’t something that’s repeated in the light of day. Cam thinks it might be awkward the next morning, but they simply get up and get on with things as usual.
Jack goes in search of a car when it becomes obvious that Cam’s leg is going to slow them up for a while. Walking twelve hours a day has him limping severely by nightfall. He makes camp just past Kansas City as Jack gears up and sets off. It takes nearly a day and a half, but Jack finally drives back in a Ford pick-up truck with Colorado plates. It has an extra gas can and tire chains in the back. Cam gratefully climbs into the passenger seat and leans wearily against the door, leg aching.
Between he and Jack they’re rapidly going through the bottle of Tylenol.
As they drive deeper into Kansas, he grows darker and quieter. He doesn’t want to see that farmhouse again. It was different with SG-1, they were actively fighting and they knew what was happening. His parents were innocent and alone, just like the rest of the world. It’s too much for him to handle.
He doesn’t think Jack notices, but when he lays sleepless at night, his memories assaulting him and his brain not willing to shut down, Jack shuts it down for him. Cam eagerly gives up the grief, tries to shed it like a snakeskin, as Jack straddles him on the ground, fingers circling his throat with an easy touch. It’s still all fingers and hands, and Jack kissing him with a warm, open mouth. Still trying to taste them maybe. It’s about forgetting. And it isn’t until they’re far beyond Garden City that Cam realizes they’re only a day away from Colorado Springs, and Jack’s been growing steadily more silent as well.
When they reach the Eastern Plains, they have to alter their course. They can’t go right at Colorado Springs. There isn’t enough opportunity for fuel. They have to go south first, and stock up on fuel and supplies before going north again. Pueblo is a city of ash, and Jack closes his eyes and feigns sleep as they drive around it.
Cam stops far south of the city to camp for the night, and Jack doesn’t ask why or insist that they continue. It’s about gathering strength, and Cam knows Jack will need it.
“We’ll have to walk in on one of the Pike Forest trails,” Cam says as they sit across from each other by a small fire. “The roads are… gone.”
Jack nods. “We should check the academy too. Carter might have…” he trails away as Cam shakes his head.
Jack doesn’t ask for more information, and Cam doesn’t give it to him. He doesn’t understand, and Cam can see now that he’ll have to experience it for himself.
They lay apart from each other that night, as much as the tent will allow. The Colorado winter is approaching, and on the Front Range snow can come anytime. Cam doesn’t sleep well, and neither does Jack.
++
“Why are you stopping? We’re almost there now.”
Jack bumps his shoulder, and Cam still doesn’t move. He stares at the ridge ahead, the trees stripped of their leaves and waving dead branches against a gray sky. The 19 mile hike over forested hills hasn’t afforded them a remote view yet of Cheyenne Mountain, but it lays just over the next ridge now. Still distant and a good day’s hike away, but it will be close enough. He suddenly doesn’t want to be the one to put this image into O’Neill’s head. “We’ve come far enough.”
Jack has insisted on packing in most of their gear so they can camp next to the mountain and search. Cam eases the pack off and drops it on the ground. He’s pretty sure they won’t be going any further. He glances grimly at the other man. “Come on.”
Jack looks wary, but he leaves his pack and follows.
They walk slowly to the crest of the hill. It’s a big ridge, and it’s protected the rest of the forest. Once they reach the top and look out over the sprawling hills toward Cheyenne Mountain it’s difficult to make sense of the scene. The trees are simply gone, as if a gigantic razor had been dragged against the skin of the earth, removing them all. It’s a basin of brown; and in the middle, the mountain. It’s sheared off mid-way down, and its contents regurgitated up and out and over its sides onto the barren ground. Wood, cement, metal and tons of soil mixed and broken and scattered outward in concentric rings of debris. With no shelter from the weather, the wind rips across the new valley sending up shimmering walls of dirt and ash that swirl and dissipate into the clouds.
Cam sees something fall out of the corner of his eye, and when he looks O’Neill is on his knees. He doesn’t make a sound, but he stares, and he can’t hide the despair on his face.
Cam can’t take it. “Maybe one of them…” he tries to gather the will to believe it himself. “Carter has a brother. Maybe she got out and went-“
“Stop it.” Jack’s voice is hoarse and quiet and there’s a savage quality to it. “Don’t do that to me.”
Cam falls silent and waits. As the cold wind buries itself inside of his jacket he folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head down. Seeing it again sends a spear of pain through his chest. Maybe he’d been carrying a spark of hope himself on the way here, bolstered by O’Neill’s undying belief in his team. In their team. Because it was never over until Jack O’Neill said it was over.
In the creaking sound of dead branches, he hears a ragged human sound. Jack lowers his head into shaking hands and there’s a wet quality to his breaths as he says, “Take me home.”
And it’s over now.
Cam helps him up and puts him back into the straps of his pack, and leads him silently back along the trail.
++
The cabin is several hours northwest, just over Bear Creek. It’s isolated enough to have escaped the destruction and is still surrounded by living trees thick with fall foliage, although the cold front is quickly stripping them clean. He stayed there for almost a week and a half just after the big bang, letting the smoke clear and the ash settle, before he started east toward Washington D.C. and Jack. It’s a rental, but it’s well built and it’s well stocked, and best of all, there’s no view of Cheyenne Mountain or its death mask.
The padlock on the door is still intact, the windows unbroken, and he’s relieved that no one has apparently found his hideout. He’s carried the key in his pocket all the way to D.C. and back again.
It’s dusty inside, but quiet and orderly, and his gear is still stacked and folded neatly on the kitchen table. The woodpile under a sturdy lean-to is still dry and ready to burn. The afternoon is cloudy and dark, so he lights a candle and props his pack up against the far wall before turning to see where Jack is.
The cabin door is wide open, but Jack isn’t there anymore. And with a start, Cam realizes exactly where he is, what he found.
He walks into the living room where there are two sliding glass doors leading out to a small, now overgrown yard. Jack is standing there and staring down at four small, rough, imperfect wooden crosses. Cam opens the doors and walks slowly out to him. The Swiss army knife he’d used to carve the names and dates is now chipped and dull and never left the cabin’s kitchen.
Jack glances up as he approaches. “What’s buried here? Who…”
“Nobody,” Cam answers, softly. “I just needed a place… to talk to them.”
Jack stares down pensively, but he looks uncomfortable. Cam tugs at his shoulder. “Come on. It’s fucking cold out here.” He looks up at the darkly overcast sky. “It looks like it might storm.”
Jack says nothing. He just lets Cam lead him back into the cabin.
++
“I don’t know… I thought if I came all this way that maybe…” Jack shakes his head and glances toward the dark windows where the cold wind rattles the glass.
Cam pokes at the fire in the fireplace, sending a shower of tiny burning coals falling onto the bed of ashes below. “I know,” he says.
They have plenty of gear and a good stock of dried goods and MRE’s. Enough to get them through a couple of weeks anyway. If they end up trapped longer than that, they can hunt and fish and he’ll have to hike down to the truck and try and find an abandoned farmhouse with a supply of food. The creek is less than a quarter mile away so water is plentiful, although it’ll have to be purified.
It’s getting late though, and Cam stands and stretches. There’s a single bedroom in the back, but the heat from the fireplace and the wood-burning stove don’t reach it well. He pulls down another bed from the wall of the living room. “You can have the bed,” he says, reaching down for his pack. “I’ll bunk on the floor.”
It’s silent while Cam pulls his sleeping bag out and then starts stripping down to his shorts.
“No,” Jack says, quietly.
Cam stands and gazes at him. “It’s alright, I’ll be fine.”
“No,” Jack says again. He glances briefly at Cam’s bare chest and legs and then away, fingers running over the bristle on his jaw. “Take the bed. I’m not tired anyway.”
Cam hesitates, wanting to bring this thing out in the open and ask. Wanting to tell him he’s… welcome, except it doesn’t seem like the right time. And he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been fooling Jack at all and maybe never has. “Okay.”
He climbs into the bed and stares at the flickering shadows of the flames on the ceiling. In an overstuffed armchair next to the glass doors, Jack blows out a candle and settles in. Cam can almost hear his memories playing over and over.
++
He wakes later, thick with sleep and already rigid, as a hand runs over his chest. He looks up into Jack’s familiar shadowed face and reaches up, pulling him down.
It’s a little bit comfort, a little bit raw desire, but Cam doesn’t particularly want to think about it. Jack comes down on top of him, knee urging Cam’s legs open, and he’s naked and warm and lean. His hands hold Cam’s head while they kiss, and his hips thrust against Cam’s until he finds a slow, almost sinuous rhythm that makes Cam groan and thrust back. In the darkness all Cam can hear is the crackle of the fire and both of them panting, sometimes giving a dry, breathless groan. Cam struggles to strip his shorts off. Jack helps him and then they’re skin to skin and it’s all friction and sliding and pressure that winds him up tight as a bowstring.
Jack sucks slowly at his neck, brushes his teeth against skin, and Cam is lost in it. He’s holding Jack’s hips in an iron grip as they dry-hump in the dark, helping him move, holding him right where he needs to be, and Jack’s breath is hard and hoarse.
It quickly gets overwhelming, and then Jack is groaning in his ear, hips pressing down hard in a short, sharp jerk. “Cameron… ”
Oh… fuck. It sends him right over the edge, and he arches his head back into the pillow, savoring it, feeling Jack splintering in the same way right after him.
He relaxes limply back into the mattress afterward, feeling drained in more ways than one, and Jack collapses next to him, breath still hard and blowing across his chest.
He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again until morning.
++
It’s snowing when he wakes.
The room is full of daylight, and when he sits up he can see the big white flakes through the glass doors, drifting slowly through the air. The space beside him in the bed is empty, but he can see Jack outside sitting back on his heels in front of the makeshift graves. And he is talking.
His lips move silently and white mist puffs out from his mouth in the cold. He touches each cross one by one, fingers tracing the roughly carved names.
Cam lays and watches him for a while, not wanting to interrupt. He had his time to talk to them.
When he finally gets dressed and slides the doors open to step outside, the snow is nearly an inch thick on the ground. It crunches weakly under his boots as he walks toward the little shrine. Jack stands as Cam comes up beside him. “It helps,” Jack says, a little wonderingly. “Talking to them.”
“I know,” Cam nods. “I know there’s nothing there, but…”
“They’re there,” Jack insists. “If there’s something afterwards, then they’re there. They would have found us.”
It makes as much sense as anything else, and Cam lifts the corner of his mouth in a lop-sided smile. “Daniel for sure. He’s had more practice.”
Jack huffs out a laugh at that, and he looks up meeting Cam’s gaze.
Cam holds his eyes for a moment and then steps forward suddenly, hand sliding up onto Jack’s shoulder. Jack doesn’t back away, and Cam embraces him. Jack’s arms slide around his shoulders, and Cam is brought in tight. He exalts in it, burying his nose against the warm skin of Jack’s neck, breathing in his scent. He leans against Jack, arms tight around his waist, and Jack rocks him, slightly. They cling together silently, and in the muted, snow-covered world, Cam can almost hear the snow falling next to his ear. It feels good. Right.
As they pull back, Cam glances up at the pale, concrete sky. “I’ll walk up on the west ridge and see what the sky looks like. It isn’t snowing much now, but that can change. We might not be able to start for home for a few days.”
Jack shrugs, hand still resting on Cam’s shoulder. “Actually, I was thinking we could stay a little longer.” He glances down at the four crosses. “I still have things to say.”
Cam nods slowly. “Take as long as you want. I’ll be here.”
Epilogue:
Cam steps out of the glass doors and lifts his arms toward the sky, stretching with a yawn.
As he walks toward the woodpile, his boot sink into soft ground. The snow is growing glass edges as it thaws, and everything is wet. The air smells of the coming green grass and new leaves, and it sends a ripple of spring fever through his bones. He picks up two good-sized logs from the woodpile and starts back toward the cabin. There’s a sharp whistle from his right, and he swings around, waiting.
Jack’s head appears just over the rise of the hill, and then he’s walking up the path, a smug expression on his face.
Cam smirks. “I take it that means you caught something.”
Jack holds up a line of four foot-long brown trout, and then he practically swaggers up to the patio. “They’re a little lean this soon after winter, but I think they’ll do.”
Cam raises his eyebrows at the fish, mouth already watering. “Oh yeah, I think they’ll do.” Hunting has been scarce in the aftermath of the mountain’s demise; they’ve subsided mostly on canned meat and biscuits from a mix.
“After breakfast we ought to hike out and see if the truck still starts.”
Cam shrugs. “If it doesn’t, we’ll just have to hit Manitou Springs. I bet we find something there. We can gear up too. There’s more than a few outfitters around.”
Jack nods, and then he casts a wistful glance toward the four little crosses. They’ve survived the snow well with a little re-enforcing.
“We don’t have to go yet,” Cam offers, tentatively. The winter has been spent saying goodbye to ghosts and exploring new paths. He’s eager to go, but he’ll stay if Jack does.
Jack pauses, mouth tugging upward as he studies the graves. “This will always be my home now, but… no. It’s time.”
“Yeah,” Cam says earnestly. “It is.”
Jack reaches over and grabs Cam’s head in that familiar way. “Ready to discover the new world?”
Cam smiles into the sun as Jack releases him. “Ready when you are.”
A wry smile slides across Jack’s face. “You always are.” He takes the fish and heads toward the cabin.
Cam hesitates for one more moment, gazing down at the crosses. “It’s okay,” he tells them. “It’ll all be okay.” He gives a wistful smile. “We’ll be a little late to the party, but I don’t think you’ll mind. Save us a seat, all right?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
~end~
Okay, I've gotta write something fun now. Ya rly.