Author Notes: Non-combatants aren't the only innocent souls affected by the events of war - Jack O'Neill is no exception.
Feedback is welcome.

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The Weight of a Shadow

mor_tru

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Let's say this is the saddest thing you ever saw.

Let's say you were a stranger in a strange land, which wasn't unusual because that was part of the job. It's what you did, it's what you were trained to do, and let's say you were in this place that had already been violently abused for several years - again, not an unusual thing. You were there uninvited; moving silently through this country that was far from the idea of western civilization, and even further from the ideals of western morality.

Maybe you were there looking for someone or something, just another job, your latest mission, and you'd been inserted into this country in the quiet of a night several long days before. Maybe you were alone because that was frequently the safest on this kind of mission, not just for you but for everyone else, and you were on edge because this particular area of the country was barren. Maybe it was winter and cover was tough, and you'd already endured several days of shelling. You were a shadow, moving silently beneath their radar because that was also what you did to get to where you were supposed to be - because blending out of sight really did mean the difference between staying alive and dying.

Maybe it was cold where you were so you were thinking about food, and sleep, and dry socks and how far you still had to go. Maybe you came through the barrens to the edge of a village, to what had been someone's house; a lonely gray structure in a backdrop of a gray landscape all draped by a gray mourning sky. Only now, this house was just another kind of shell, an empty one because it had already exploded - its broken windows and half-roof looking like just another silent scream in a country whose national anthem had morphed long ago into one endless silent scream.

Maybe this house was different from all the others because there was a woman in what used to be the front yard. But tanks and heavy trucks had turned what might have once been her garden into a tumble of raw blocks where their tracks and wide treads had compacted the clay into bricks that, from a vantage point above the earth, looked zippered. A zigzag map of callousness lain down by an invading army too blind in its destruction to take the time to distinguish between those who were the innocents; an army driven by a collective hate, who saw every living thing in this country as nothing more than another target in an environment filled with living, lifeless targets; an army with a basic mandate to indiscriminately annihilate of all human life. And maybe you knew the truth of it all and that was one of the reasons you were there, because somewhere deep inside you, protecting the innocents is what you chose to do - protecting them because you knew they couldn't do it for themselves.

So you notice this woman - this innocent.

You notice - because that's also something you do, you assess each situation for the minute details, for the hidden threats, and because your skills in observation have kept you alive on more than one occasion. So you notice the woman's clothes are all tattered, but more importantly there are no weapons about her. You notice her dress is just an odd collection of rags that had once been real garments, but are now pulled on in layers with maybe her thought to retain a little warmth around her fragile frame. You notice there are mud covered scarves tied around her feet, wrapping up over her ankles and legs, disappearing beneath a torn coat many sizes too big. You notice under the mud, the coat appears to be military; a non-descript drab-olive with one pocket torn off and the flap of its material still clinging by a thread, waving to you with her movement. You notice, despite the cold, her hands are without gloves, dirt caked beneath the dark nails and on the back of one hand, a streak of blood - from a scratch - you think. You notice her hair is scattering around in the icy wind, a lifeless stringy canopy blowing unheeded across a face that maybe had beauty in someone's eyes. You notice her life, that which may have been herself, has been raped by the ravages of this senseless and never-ending war. But mostly you notice you feel everything and you notice you feel nothing as you silently watch this skeleton draped by the remnants of some whispering sorrow, a transparent frailty, ethereal beneath the weight of her burden.

So you notice...

She's focused and she doesn't see you.

Maybe this was what you were used to - not being seen - but you were careful anyway, because not only did she not see you she didn't appear to see anything beyond what she was doing. She was kneeling down, building something, like a tiny house - like a doghouse - you think. She's stacking pieces of her shattered house, maybe a board from a splintered door, part of a window frame, perhaps half of a cabinet, and she's singing. You can hear her high voice, the sounds blowing your way in the curl of the acrid smoke. You know some of her language because that's part of what you do, part of how you can be there and blend in. You know it's a lullaby she's singing and maybe she's singing to whatever is in that fractured shelter. Maybe you're just a little curious, because from your vantage point you're still too far away to clearly see whatever is holding her focus.

Then you feel it- in the soles of your boots, understand? - the approaching vehicles, before you actually hear them. It's just another one of those tricks you've learned, one of those tricks that have kept you alive. So you feel them, that deep rumble that travels through the earth just below the surface, and at the same time you understand she's not right. Maybe you think, she's seen too much of the world and whatever it is, there's some vital part of her that is no longer in the here and now so she can't protect herself. You know she can't, and you know in your gut she won't. You know it instinctively because you've seen that look a thousand times before.

She's vacant, oblivious to all things around her.

Then she stands up and looks at what she's done, and she frowns and darts away into the rubble of her house. You think - good - she understands the approaching danger and she's leaving, so you get up slowly and move through the yard because by now you can hear the heavy motors and that means they're too damned close and you really need to get moving yourself. You can't be caught, not here, not now, because your mission is vital and completing it successfully is the prime directive. It's one of your prime directives and you do it because it could make the difference, you do it because it will make the difference, you do it because it has made the difference. You do it for them, for all the innocents and then you get yourself safely home.

You move lithely across the torn earth, your intent to move on, to remain unseen. Then you see her in the house as you chess your way quietly across the broken earth. She's a blurred silhouette somberly framed through one of the yawning squares that used to be a window. She's looking for something, still frowning in her concentration and you think - damn, she's not leaving at all, is she. But still you have to move on, because the tanks are getting much closer and your presence in this land is not sanctioned by anyone there.

Then you know for sure she's not leaving, when you cross the yard and you see what she's been doing.

She's building this shelter, see? She's sheltering - because it's raining and the mud is terrible, it freezes into crazy shapes, and you can tell from the dried brick of tracks that the tanks and heavy tires have already come through this yard many times before, tearing up the earth in their violent disregard. So you know, instinctively, she's sheltering something valuable and you know for certain she can't protect herself. Or maybe, you decide, she doesn't want to because here she is, working out in the open, oblivious to the imminent danger, but there is something in this shelter she's compelled to stay and protect.

Then you see as you step closer - the footprints in the mud.

Tiny footprints of a child, and you guess it's somewhere around two - old enough to walk but just barely. You glance quickly around the yard, but there's no child in sight and the hard realization hits you and now you wish you hadn't looked at all because you know the footprints are all that are left.

And you react to the sound of a twig snapping because here she comes out of the house with the back of a chair, and you realize then she's never leaving, she'd just gone in to get more wood. Maybe she sees you near her shelter and she raises the chair-back at you, vaguely, like a weapon, but you stand calmly and non-threateningly and she lowers it because it's worth much more to her as a building element anyway. And besides, maybe she's had enough of weapons and maybe there's no weapon now that can hurt her more than she already hurts.

Maybe you step back with your palms up a bit, offering her no threat and you remain there and watch as she places the back of the chair against her little shelter. Her little barrier against the tanks and the trucks that wont care, because they'll blow right over those pieces of wood and maybe she knows this, but this is all she's got and all she can do is try and save those precious footprints. Because maybe those footprints are like the shadows on Plato's cave; only for her they're all that's left of what used to be her life.

You know you can't take her with you and even if you could you know she wouldn't come, and even though you know enough of the language, your words are useless to her because there's nothing you can possibly say.

So you leave her, alone, singing her lullaby softly into the small fragile shelter. You leave her to protect that memory of her child. You leave her with its innocent soul, captured by the impression of two tiny footprints - all that remain to support the weight of its lingering but slowly fading shadow.

You leave her, as the gray day edges into night and the shadows grow long and all that was life here begins to submerge into war-torn obscurity.

Then you become obscure too - and so move on.

Because by then you've had to move on, leaving her far behind you; knowing the tanks will be there soon; knowing the tiny shelter will be wiped away and another life will disappear into the gray mud; knowing her hushed scream has become one more innocent voice lost in a cacophony of deafening silence. Because you know - because you can feel it in your soul that this land you move through is drenched in the sad and unbearable silence of thousands of murdered innocent souls. All those lost lives forever lurking beneath the cast of every unmoving shadow, their souls wandering aimlessly in the quiet around you, searching for an answer to the madness that has brushed them away. Where that madness has touched you too, and sidled up against the kindness in your soul, leaving its indelible mark on your conscience and your own need to understand why.

And so you moved on...

Maybe you think that's what she really wanted. Maybe you have to think that, because you had no other choice but to move on, needing to slip back into the security of your own fading shadow. So you move on with your mission, you return to the unseen; you become the one living ghost sent to walk quietly through their lives - lives that have been emptied, lives that have lost all life.

You don't belong there. Your life doesn't belong there, but still you leave a small part of yourself behind in the strength of your footprint - a solid footprint, holding the essence of your conscience which will always remain as an everlasting impression in the mud of their turmoil. Your shadow, leaving a silent statement that says the reason you chose to be there was simply because you cared. And maybe you believed your touch could make the difference - because maybe you knew in your heart the ghost of your presence had already made the difference. And maybe the end really does justify the means because when all is said and done its the innocents who will be saved, if not today by you, then tomorrow by someone else who believes, just as strongly as you do, that to fight on the side of right is never wrong.

But later, after you've found what you came for and did what you were supposed to do, you went home. Maybe when you couldn't sleep you'd sit out on your porch and watch the mist rise off the lake on a quiet autumn morning, the swirl of it casting shadows that took on the ethereal shapes of an old memory. Maybe you had wanted to tell someone back then, but there wasn't anyone to tell, because that moment had no strategic importance to your mission; it didn't belong in a report and it felt too fragile to talk about face-to-face, like it might shatter beneath the weight of the spoken word. So no-one knew about it and it weighed on you - until now.

Then someone touches your heart in a place that has never been touched before and says -`Tell me Jack... you can trust me... I'm safe.'

So you do.

fini

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Thank you for reading. Comments are always appreciated.

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