The End

by Kate R.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of them, honest. If I did Sam would get over herself and martin would realize it isn't all about him. Jack would learn what happiness was, Danny would get his head out of his ass and Vivian would stop blaming jack for a decision made by the higher ups.

Warnings: Death Fic, mentions of torture and unpleasant death

Summary: the last member of missing persons reflects on his death bed.


"This is the End
My Only friend, the End."

He hated respirators. Had never wanted to be on one himself, not since every single time he'd heard one in the past he'd lost someone. First Jack, then Fitz, Viv next, Sam by her own gun and now it was his turn. Yeah, he was waiting to go on, to join his team, his family, on the other side. Where he hoped they were waiting for him.

He hoped, on the other side, Jack's body wasn't bullet riddled as it had been the day he died. And he hoped the stroke that had taken Viv was healed there. He hoped Sam had gotten over her grief at losing Martin and that Martin was no longer lost in the depression that had come over him when Jack died.

That depression was what had killed him; depression brought on by guilt. Guilt over the fact that he was late that morning so Jack was in the field alone when the shooting happened. Martin blamed himself since that day; Martin had been the one who'd identified Jack's body. Martin had been the one who screamed Jack couldn't be gone. That he couldn't have been in the field because Martin was supposed to be with him. Martin had died the way they all thought Jack would, saving a child. Not gunned down by a crazy hopped up on drugs looking for his next fix and screaming about how God had said that the man in black had to die.

Jack had been shot sixteen times in the back. He'd been executed, yeah, forced to his knees and shot until he bled to death but only because he took that stupid priest's place. Turns out it was a wasted effort; the priest was wanted for sexual molestation of minors but Jack just couldn't let it happen. He had to try to be the hero. And it had gotten him nothing but a hero's funeral.

Viv had died soon after Martin, a stroke had taken her but at least for her, like for Martin, it was fast. Sam had a fast death too; a bullet to her own brain. But Jack had suffered. Tortured . . . no, he didn't want to think about that. The bullet wounds were horrible enough to think of but what those bastards had done to Jack pre and post mortem had been worse. It made him sick to even think about the burns, the violation Jack had suffered, the flaying of the skin off his chest . . .

His heart monitor went crazy and a hand on his shoulder calmed him. Ah, his nurse. Come to give him his pain medication. Didn't matter any more. Nothing mattered any more. It was the end now. But at least his end wasn't alone, not like Jack's had been. Come to think of it, Sam had shot herself in front of them, Viv had died in front of them, and Martin had the child with him when he died . . . so again, the only one to die totally alone had been Jack.

"I wasn't alone, you know," a voice said. A voice long missed and long yearned for came with the same touch that always accompanied jack touching his shoulder. "You look like shit, Danny."

"Cancer's a bitch, Jack," Danny told him, wondering where the respirator tube was. "I mean, I've had it for years. Hoped it went into remission but it didn't."

"You don't have it any more, kid," Jack told him, extending his hand. Danny looked up at the man he'd idolized and loved. The man he'd have followed in to hell, like they all would have and found himself smiling.

"Not hell," Jack confirmed. His appearance told Danny that. Jack looked nothing like the tortured corpse that had been left on the steps of the church. He looked as he had before the bad times in the office; before the mess had been made.

"Come on, Danny," Jack told him. "It's time to go home now."

Danny found himself on his feet, feeling young and whole again.

"You are," Jack told him. "And the end isn't your only friend. We've been waiting for you, for so long, Danny. Won't you come join us?"

Danny followed Jack into a familiar door that he hadn't seen since he retired after Sam died.

"Morning guys," he said as he followed Jack in. Almost like old times, he saw. Everyone where was where they usually were in the office in the morning.

"Okay," Jack's voice spoke. "Neil Dellar, 25, college student. Missing since four thirty yesterday after noon . . ."

'Yep,' Danny thought to himself. This was definitely heaven.

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