It was July and muggy in Arlington. John took in deep heaving breaths, his lungs as strong as ever, but getting old. He pulled at the collar on his dress uniform, glad to be wearing navy, even though it wasn’t really any better than black.

Sam was smiling her bravest smile, clear blue eyes sprinkled with tears. She looked down at the podium, swallowed, and then stepped down, silent.

She was older now, they all were. But John still thought she was beautiful, even with wrinkles pulling at the edges of her eyes and lips, her hair fading to almost white. She still had a grace about her as she stepped aside, even when here, surrounded by hundreds of people on this stifling midsummer day, she was falling apart. Sam could make you believe even when it was the world that was falling apart. That was what John always loved about her.

John blinked away the tears. He was still an officer, after all. Even long off active duty, he had an image to maintain. It was just that it was so hard seeing Sam like this, feeling her pain, watching her struggle.

And then there was a rustling beside him and several sharp, ‘watch it, hey, I’m coming through’s. John turned to find Rodney pushing his way across a row of people, waddling to the podium the way he tended to do now that his knee had started really acting up. He was due for an artificial replacement in the fall, after Max went off to school.

John smiled as Rodney gave Sam a quick but still familiarly awkward hug before taking the podium.

“Jack O’Neill was a great man,” he said. “Sure, he slept through at least one of my universe-saving briefings, but you know, I make exceptions. As almost every one of you knows, I’m sure, if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be standing here today. Teal’c knows the number of times he’s saved the world, if you’d ask. Me, personally . . . ha, well, I’ve stopped counting. But, aside from galaxy-saving and budget allocation and all the other things Jack was so good at . . . he was a great man. A loving husband,” Rodney looked to Sam and smiled, “a great father, and a friend. He will be missed. And not just by Thor.” Rodney smiled, grinning stiltedly, eyes glittering.

If John hadn’t fallen in love with him a thousand times already, he’d fall in love again right there. As much as Rodney tried to hide it, especially settling into his grumpy old man routine with typical Rodney aplomb, he was a good man. John had never doubted that, even when Rodney kept insisting otherwise.

Then there were the sounds of guns and clapping, and a crowd of suits and dress uniforms standing. Trumpets never sounded sad in the morning, only at sunset.

John wanted to congratulate Rodney on his newfound speechmaking ability, maybe joke a little to loosen this choked-up feeling at the back of his throat, but the crowd swirled around him, and John just glimpsed Rodney and Sam escaping the stoic military men in their dress blues and greens, the senators with the pearly smiles, the aliens, the ordinary people, the masses of bodies to which Jack O’Neill meant so much.

He’d died suddenly, a heart attack that made even his ‘do not resuscitate – especially by snake’ orders completely unnecessary. If he couldn’t go out in the heat of battle, John was convinced that he would’ve wanted it this way. They had been playing catch in John and Rodney’s back yard. John and Jack and Max, and Jack had just missed the pass.

John hoped he’d go the same way, and that maybe Rodney would go with him, so he wouldn’t have to look the way Sam looked now. But then again, that was selfish. He wanted Rodney to be happy, even if that meant that John’d be the next one giving a speech like this. He could do it. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d be strong enough. After all they’d been through, he had to be.

And then there was a presence beside him, a familiar broad grin and blue eyes that had deepened over the years, though the blond head of hair had only gotten worse.

“You seen my Mom, John?”

He turned and smiled, saw his own struggle to keep a brave face reflected in familiar blue eyes. “Give her a little time, Max.”

“Oh . . . okay,” Max looked down at his shoes, polished and cleaner than most anything John’d seen him wear. He’d be worried about how Max was going to survive the Academy next year, if he hadn’t been exactly the same so many years ago. “I should . . .”

“Come here,” John said, pulling Max into a tight hug. He threw in a couple of back pats just to make it feel a little more manly. They’d never had problems with it, but John still knew that a few of Max’s friends were a little creeped-out by the whole two-dads (or three, counting Jack) deal.

The shoulder of his dress uniform came back slightly wet, but John didn’t like the thing anyway, so he didn’t mind.

“I’m sorry, John . . . I just . . . I thought . . . I thought he was invincible, you know? He was Jack O’Neill. And, well . . . now, he’s never going to see me in uniform or take me out to the firing range again or barbecue his famous Jaffa-inspired shish-kebabs . . . and, next it could be you or Mom or Dad, and . . . how do you do it, John?”

John pulled Max aside, walking along the rows and rows of clean white tombstones, extending even further than John would’ve imagined back when he started with the business of war.

This wasn’t his job. Yes, he’d seen the kid grow up, but he was always more like the Cool Uncle than any sort of father figure. He was the one that helped Max strategize his first date, the one that took him to football games and stuff like that. He didn’t do any of the actual . . . parenting. But he was glad to do this nonetheless.

“Hey, I know it’s no replacement, but I can take you shooting. Or your Mom.”

“Yeah, cause that won’t be awkward.” Max rolled his eyes, giving a completely Rodney little huff.

“Hey, she’s a good shot. I wouldn’t mess with her.” Though John was still better. “Or, if worst comes to worst, Rodney could always go with you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re a smart boy and you know how to duck. You’ll be perfectly fine.”

Max laughed as they came over the ridge, stopping to see two figures sitting under a tree, one in a black suit, holding a woman in military dress, her long blonde hair shining like fresh hay in the sunlight.

Max turned away, but John caught his arm and turned him towards him. “You’re lucky. We’re not all going to leave you all at once. And even if we did, you’d be able to live your life. You’d be able to make us proud, even if we weren’t there.”

Max nodded, cheeks damp but tears silent. “Do you ever, you know, think ‘what if?’ What if you and Dad had never gotten together? What if Mom had never married Jack?”

It was something he tried not to think about. ‘What if,’ regardless of time machines and the fabric of space-time and all that, was far too dangerous a question.

“You might not have turned out as sane,” John said with a smirk, though it was half-hearted.

“I would probably going to MIT instead of the Academy. You’d be in another galaxy. Jack would’ve died alone . . .”

“Maybe it was destined,” John said, even though he didn’t believe in that crap. Destiny was just the fact that every parallel universe had to turn out a different way. In one he died in a Jumper accident. In another, Samantha Carter never joined the military. In another the Goa’uld won and in probably countless others, the Wraith did.

“Maybe,” Max agreed, turning to the sunset and watching the two figures making their way up the hill towards them.

“Or maybe we’re just lucky,” John amended.

Then Rodney and Sam were there. His arm was around her shoulders, but John’d long gotten past any jealousy he might have had.

“Oh, John,” Sam said, giving him a quick clinging hug.

And then she was hugging Max too, in this one lucky universe among all the ones where everything went wrong.

As the four of them stood there, overlooking the sea of rolling white made up of rows and rows of spotless tombstones, Sam’s voice broke through tears, shed and unshed, to say, “It was a good life.”

John agreed.

FIN