SG1 ficlet: Lost
P2X-639 was a three day mission, because the UAV found something twenty miles from the stargate Carter thought looked promising, possibly a vein of naquadah, so it was a long day's hike out, a day to explore, and a long hike home. Jack was bored and the planet was creeping him out. There was no evidence of animal life, only the occasional tree, twisted and tormented, with swiss-cheese leaves, to punctuate the endless grassland. Carter swore up and down that there was nothing dangerous - no toxins, no radiation beyond the slightly elevated UV they protected against with hats and extra sunscreen - but his stomach had been flip-flopping since they stepped through the 'gate, harder than when they walked into a fortified Goa'uld stronghold.
By late afternoon on the second day Carter was scanning the ground, grumbling in disappointment but stubbornly continuing her search, when Daniel stumbled across what looked like a human thigh bone. By the time Teal'c was heating up the MREs for dinner Daniel had found a veritable graveyard, some bodies properly buried, some scattered - all long dead. Jack found him standing on top of a rise, tall figure a dark silhouette against the bright red sunset. Daniel held what was once a child's doll in his right hand, something bowl-shaped in his left, and stared open-mouthed far off to the horizon, where a ruined city crumbled into dust.
"They're all dead," he whispered, while Jack was still reaching a hand to his shoulder.
"I know," Jack told him. Somehow, deep in his gut, he knew this planet was void of life, had been for a long time. They all knew it.
"An entire civilization gone." Daniel gestured vaguely with his right hand, sweeping across the distant, ruined city, and Jack watched the doll's stringy blonde hair float on the air. "An entire people - their religions, art, music, philosophy, history, science - all gone. No one to remember them. The entire planet is a graveyard."
"C'mon, Teal'c's making us Thai chicken," Jack said gently, placing an arm across Daniel's shoulders to steer him away. Daniel squatted down to give the doll and bowl back to the ground before following him back to the campfire.
That night they needed no ghost stories to raise the hairs on their necks and the campfire was uncharacteristically quiet as even Jack could find no jokes to crack. Daniel offered a few punctuated sentences about the fragility of life, the losing of everything, and Carter speculated about meteors, plague, nuclear war, and climate change until Jack shuffled everyone into tents because the earlier they got up, the quicker they could get away.
The walk back started before dawn and barely six words passed between them by the time they reached the stargate. Jack had never been so glad to see the stark, concrete walls, and breathe the recycled air, of the gateroom. He took the hottest shower possible - the sting on his skin reminding him he was alive - and sat through the debriefing, after typing up a report that gave all the military reasons to never return and none of the emotional ones. When he was ready to head home, he wasn't surprised to find Daniel, Carter, and Teal'c waiting for him at the elevator.