O’Neill
An illustrated scene from ‘Lost City’
By Gumnut
1 Oct 2004

The ship was breaking its own laws in its attempt to get where they were going, and a fine shudder ran through the bulkhead he was leaning against.

He ignored it. His concentration was solely on the man kneeling in the centre of the room, oblivious to his presence and anything else other than what he was working on.

They were losing him piece by agonising piece and there wasn’t a thing any of them could do for him.

Teal’c swallowed, briefly touching a finger to the tattoo in the centre of his forehead. The gold just under his skin was smooth and warm with his body heat, and the tracing of the symbol reminded him, as it always did, of what he owed the man he now followed.

He would forever remember the look on O’Neill’s face as he beckoned the First Prime of Apophis to save himself and his team, beckoned him to desert a life he loathed yet saw no escape from, to save himself. Somehow in the few short minutes O’Neill had, he had seen what Teal’c had been hiding from the world for so long. Seen through the façade he had been forced to wear, to the man underneath. Those dark eyes had pierced him to his soul, and he had given them everything he had.

That gaze was now turned from him, but through the muddle of what had been forced on the man’s mind, O’Neill was still fighting the fight, still saving his team, his planet. His mission objective was still the same, and with his last breath, Teal’c knew O’Neill would give everything he had, because that was what he was. Nothing could change that.

But despite the need, despite the stakes, despite the meaning behind what O’Neill was willing to sacrifice, there was something in Teal’c that was simply tearing asunder as he watched the Colonel fall towards the inevitable.

He was losing O’Neill.

He was losing a friend.

Behind the soldier, the duty, and the mission, there was a person that Teal’c had connected with. A man who had introduced him to pizza, beer, and the many other oddities of his planet. He had offered with grace and good humour, laughing at his faux pas, goading him into situations he would otherwise had avoided, but at all times understanding, listening, being there both as a commander and a companion.

The world just wouldn’t seem right without him anymore.

There had to be a way.

Teal’c had regrets, but at the moment the one that haunted him the most was the fact he hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been decisive enough. Hadn’t stopped O’Neill from making the ultimate sacrifice.

Hadn’t sacrificed himself.

He no longer possessed a Goa’uld symbiont, there was no reason why the Ancient device would have not have accepted him as a substitute.

But he hadn’t thought quickly enough, hadn’t realised O’Neill’s intentions until it was too late.

Of the four members of the team, he considered himself the most expendable.

So why hadn’t he taken that step?

His attention was drawn back to the centre of the room.

O’Neill was mumbling to himself.

Teal’c could not understand what he was saying, but had no doubt that it was Ancient. He still understood brief snatches of the language from his episode with the looping time device, and he knew that, despite his denials, O’Neill did too, but he did not know enough to decipher what was being said.

He had no idea what O’Neill was saying and, at the same time, no idea what he was doing either. It was most frustrating at a time when the one thing he did know was that O’Neill was dying.

He moved away from the entrance way and walked into the room. The Colonel didn’t react to his motion, still busily fiddling with equipment the man didn’t normally know how to pronounce the name of, much less use.

“Are you preparing a weapon for battle, O’Neill?”

A brief shake of his head, uncoordinated with his expression. A lost look in his eyes as his personality was muffled by the knowledge crowding his brain.

Teal’c tried again.

“Sensors have detected an armada of Goa’uld ships in orbit around Earth.” An appeal to the soldier within.

This time there was no response at all. Tinkering fingers. Teal’c squelched the urge to catch those hands and force the man to look at him. His stomach knotted and he frowned, a desperation building inside him, fighting against the inevitable.

“Can you understand anything that I am saying, O’Neill?”

Nothing.

Inside Teal’c, something broke.

Had he lost the man he so admired already?

He bent down, crouching to reach his eye level, to perhaps distract him by proximity. The hope of a last thread of the man he called friend hanging on against the onslaught, one he could reach before all was lost.

“O’Neill, I wish for you to know tha-“

Suddenly those eyes latched onto him, their darkness piercing him to his soul. A hand reached up and touched his cheek, its warmth seeping into his skin.

And he knew.

He knew why.

He knew what.

And he knew there was no other way.

A sensation, not of his own making, passed over him, catching him in its current. O’Neill’s touch flared with warmth and the last seven years of friendship were simply illustrated in emotion.

O’Neill already knew.

And he should have known.

The moment snapped and the hand fell to his shoulder. Teal’c was forced to watch as the man behind those eyes was swallowed under by the assault on his brain once again, but for a moment he did all he could to express a response.

He bowed his head in respect.

The touch briefly tightened on his shoulder and then O’Neill was gone once again.

The hands were tinkering.

Teal’c could do little but watch.

But he knew.

And it would have to be enough.

Because in the end it might be all he had left.

*************
FIN.