Misfire
Too long for a drabble, but who cares :D
By Twitchy & Nutty, a collaborated first.
Oct 2003

He held up his hand.

It seemed like a stranger's, glistening, blood lazily dribbling down his wrist. His eyes following the trickle as it dripped off his arm.

His mind was dazed.

How had it happened, how had space become the reality where his first two fingers had been?

A gasp beside him deflected his attention as a set of blue eyes suddenly entered his vision.

"Colonel!"

"Sam?"

Other hands took his own. Desperate movements to stem the flow of red.

His trigger finger had gone. It’s implications echoing in his mind.

White flashes of cloth, muttered curses of friends.

Pain.

"Colonel? Colonel!"

Stay with us.

Reality began to shift. The world began to teeter, slip sideways, falling from his grasp.

Fading.

Arms grabbed him, and the world settled as he felt his body lowered to the hard ground. Voices still demanding his attention.

He found it too hard to listen. He was drifting, drifting away.

But something in him resisted, something urgent, something important.

He remembered.

There was a responsibility.

Blue eyes bore into the back of his mind.

"Carter?"

Was that his voice? It was faint, cracked, like an old scratched record.

"Colonel, can you hear me?"

"Carter." He tried again, this time with a bit more force, but the effort took his breath away.

“Sir?”

"I really shouldn't have put those fingers in the end of that gun, should I?"

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