TITLE: In These Shoes
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Jan. 20, 2005
NOTES: A bit of post-Letters From Pegasus thought from John Sheppard.
DISCLAIMER: Read

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He's been the guy looking at the guy in these shoes. He's always been that guy...looking up to, really, because there was always someone higher up on the chain making those decisions that impact everyone's lives. Deaths. One of those is harder to deal with, and he'd almost been sure of which after being officially in these shoes for a while. But now it's one day later, not even that long, and suddenly it's in his head, in deep, how much he is The Guy in These Shoes. They're his. His boots, actually. With the left lace a little lopsided, one side barely longer than the other but enough that he can tell, he just hasn't gotten around to straightening it out yet and hell if he can remember how it got that way. Like it matters. The heel on that boot is scuffed, too. He knows where that came from, though, can't forget being dragged, silent, like a good casualty, through hostile territory back to the 'jumper: Don't, no sinking, no giving into the pain, don't you dare do it, count the those branches, separate 'em, count the shouts, oh shit, get a grip, count that next fucking rock. He's been through life-changing moments before. Tons of them, because that's what happens when you're alive. This one, though, it wasn't one moment or one decision. It wasn't even one person; it wasn't just him. It ends up being him, sure, all him. But it went him, General O'Neill, him, Sumner, him. Lots of decisions in there, made in lots of drawled-out, bark-at, be-damned moments. All his decisions. Forced on him, maybe, a couple, but no one forced him to make them. Still, the thing he can't figure is which one he should've, or could've, refused.

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