SUMMARY: How can the world be a vampire? Jack wants to know.
SEASON/SPOILERS: Six/none unless you don’t know that Daniel’s ‘gone on vacation.’
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Standard – no money, no profit, blah, blah, blah.
NOTE: The first and last lines of this piece are by the Smashing Pumpkins from the song Bullet with Butterfly Wings. Don’t ask me how I came about the visual in the opening paragraph, but when the muse runs it’s difficult to keep up.
THANKS TO: Deanie, SaRa and Allie for the beta. I may just have found my dream team!
“The world is a vampire . . . sent to drain . . .”
In shock, Jack stopped outside what was once Daniel’s office. From within came the sound of singing, and Jack winced as he realized it actually sounded good. Was there nothing that SG-1’s newest member was not good at? After a brief debate as to whether or not he should actually ask Jonas what was going on, he shook his head and continued down the corridor. He had a commissary to go to and a major to meet.
“Hello, Sir” She smiled as she looked up from her plate.
“Carter,” he acknowledged, taking the seat opposite her. She was always smiling, he realised. What was it with half the members of his team he asked himself, that they had to be so damn cheery. “Carter?” he said again.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Why is the world a vampire?” It had been puzzling him ever since he’d passed Jonas’ office.
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
Well, damn it, she was supposed to be the smart one around here. “Something I heard,” he muttered, unwilling to disclose his source. “The world is a vampire sent to drain.”
“Oh.”
She blinked at him.
He waited.
“Well, I suppose it makes sense.”
“It does?”
“If the world is a vampire, then it makes sense that it would drain. What it actually drains is debatable, but that is what vampires are supposed to do. Right?”
“I wouldn’t know, Carter,” he replied sardonically. “We’ve never actually been to a planet with vampires.”
“They could be on this planet, Colonel,” she told him.
Now she was humouring him. He still hadn’t decided whether or not he liked her doing that. “Don’t vampires suck blood?” he continued. “How the hell can the world suck blood?”
She grimaced. “Well, you only have to think of all the wars being waged to answer that question.”
He supposed she was right. It didn’t mean he liked the answer though.
She hadn’t finished.
“Of course, it could be a metaphor for something else.”
“Huh?”
“The world could be draining life from us. Each day that goes by.”
Suddenly, he got it. The world, his life. Every facet of it was wearing him out on a daily basis, from saving the universe while avoiding the local Goa’uld to . . . to sitting here with Carter and knowing that this was as far as it could ever go. “Sapping all the fun out of life,” he muttered.
“You got it, Sir.”
She smiled at him, and he attempted to return that smile in an effort to please her. But he was tired, so tired of fighting every day. The Goa’uld weren’t the only ones he fought; he constantly fought himself – his emotions, his forbidden feelings towards his second in command. Sometimes he felt as though they were more difficult to beat down than the snakes. The snakes were a tangible enemy, something he could touch and destroy with real weapons, but emotions couldn’t be disintegrated with three shots from a zat gun.
He wondered how she felt about it, really, if she could possibly understand it as he did. But she didn’t share the same cynicism he possessed, despite the years they had spent together. Her eyes still gleamed with each new discovery, each new world, and each new toy. Who was he to take that from her? She still believed that the enemy could be defeated. When the rule of the Goa’uld ended, their time together would begin.
Until then, he could fake it.
For just one more show.
FINIS