His left shoulder ached miserably, despite the codeine and the immobilizer and the whiskey. Maybe it was the day, one in which the gray dampness permeated everything to its core.

Maybe it was the reason why he stood here, among so many others, in the chilling drizzle.

Maybe it was the reason his shoulder had suffered a dislocation in the first place.

<><><>

His hands cramped as he held his team leader's head.

"Jack, take care of Barb for me, man." The last of life burbled from John Michaels' throat.

Jack forced in a hard breath past the loss and anger in his own throat. He gently laid John's head on the ground before grabbing a strap on John's gear again. He called out a harsh, "Fall back!"

He saw the shadow coming, but not soon enough to have his gun in hand.

The rifle butt crashed into his chest, taking his breath. He fell back yelping, his left shoulder popping out of place. His hand finally opened only because it no longer had a choice.

The soldier wielding the rifle now straddled the dead colonel. With a triumphant sneer on his full lips, he began swinging the weapon back to firing position.

Survival and revenge easily overpowered Jack's pain. His right hand rapidly drew the knife from his boot. In the next instant, he rammed the blade deep into the left knee of his attacker as he stared into the barrel of the rifle.

The enemy shrieked but did not move-except for the finger that wormed closer to the trigger.

Jack twisted the knife with every ounce of energy he could spare. Then it was his turn for a sneer when the soldier stumbled backwards, mouth open in a soundless scream, the knife still protruding from his knee like a handle for a wind-up toy.

Lurching to his feet, Jack cursed his useless arm. Immediately, he snatched his sidearm from its holster. After a temporary trace of awkwardness resolved, he aimed the Colt at the enemy. He held his breath and pulled the trigger.

The soldier fell dead.

Jack fired into the body again. And again.

Then he saw Kawalsky running toward him at break-neck speed. Jack took off, only steps ahead of his teammate.

Finally reaching the edge of the property, Jack clambered over the low stone wall. Two heaving breaths later, Charlie was beside him. Jack hissed in pain when Charlie unwittingly tapped his injured shoulder twice.

"Oh, man, Jack, better get you back to base," Kawalsky said when he saw the unnatural lump.

"No!" O'Neill rested his head on the wall. "We are not leaving them back there, Charlie." He took a deep, resigned breath and closed his eyes. "Do it."

"Jack -"

"Do it." O'Neill's quiet command carried an air of threat.

Charlie's will was no match for Jack's. "Another fine day in East Kawalsky," he muttered. "Okay, here goes nothin'."

O'Neill's scream covered the sound of the bone popping back into place and of Charlie's swearing...

They would return after a brief rest, to avenge their dead and bring them home.

And he would leave the base hospital in Frankfurt a few days later for home and recovery from a mission gone horribly sour. And he would blame himself for not having paid more attention to the alarm sounding in his head even before they had started advancing on the house.

<><><>

Now he stood in front of one panel of the black-mirrored monument, alone in a crush of hundreds, if not thousands. Everyone with memories. Including him, though he tried to forget. Or deny.

He would catch sight of the name whenever there was an opening in the crowd between him and his memory because he was unable to look anywhere else. He tried to move his eyes, his head, his body, but paralysis had set in.

Charles P. O'Neill flashed at him erratically, each time irrationally unexpected, each time evoking a tiny gasp.

His kid brother. Altar boy from the first moment he was old enough for it. Eagle scout. A tenor whose voice brought tears to many Irish-immigrant eyes, both male and female, whenever he sang. Winner of the school spelling bee four years running and of Mary Colleen Mahoney's heart. National Merit scholar. Object of big brother Jack's protection and pride.

Now he was just a name on some damn wall in a slash of earth, another hole in the ground.

The Viet Cong weren't responsible for the name being there, or for that ravaged body in a grave in Minnesota.

Lies were responsible. Lies the government told, supported, enforced, wove into the very fabric of its existence.

But worse, it was the lies Jack wrote in letters home. Lies he told about his part in the war--to cover his reprehensible though necessary actions as a sniper, to mask the imminent danger he was always in no matter where he was in-country.

So Charles Patrick O'Neill--the gentle, ever-happy Charley who worshipped his big brother--volunteered for the Marine Corps and service in Vietnam as soon as he had graduated from high school. On the day he was inducted, he declared that he was now a man, grown up like Jack, his hero and a cadet at the Air Force Academy.

Less than a year later, Charley O'Neill was walking point in a patrol near Da Nang. An ill-prepared newbie distracted him and he missed seeing the wire. A fragmentation grenade ripped into his body in a hundred places.

The corpsman shot him full of morphine but he was dead before it could take effect.

No crying out for Mama, no asking forgiveness for his sins, no last song, no condemnation of Jack for his lies--then or even before.

There had never been the need. There already was someone condemning him. And he was good at it.

The ache in his shoulder climbed as the alcohol and narcotic faded, yet he gave no thought on moving from his post. He no longer tried to move his eyes from the etched marble; he had accepted his fate as permanent sentinel.

"Excuse me."

Jack didn't move, the words barely registering on his consciousness.

"Excuse me."

This time, the words were more forceful but no less respectful. Slowly, he turned to their source, unaware that he had broken the paralysis imposed by the wall. His brown, slightly glazed, yet fully wary stare focused on the older man standing to his left. "Yes, sir?"

The man, well into middle age and depending heavily on a cane, smiled upon recognizing the eyes that were automatically assessing and evaluating him despite their glassiness. "Jack? Jack O'Neill, right?"

Jack studied the man more closely. He wore a decorated green boonie hat and fatigues, like many of the men here. His eyes spoke of many sleepless and pain-filled nights. Slowly, the identity of the man came to him. Jack snapped to attention. "Commander."

The man laughed. "I'm retired, Jack. Medical discharge, remember? Deep six the military posturing. Besides, it's me." He let his eyes stray briefly to the immobilized arm.

O'Neill allowed his lips to curve into a small, half-hearted smile. "Pete. Good to see you."

Pete Hamilton laughed again. "Guess it would be rather hard to forget the Navy gimp you and Steve hauled back to Pleiku. How long did it take?"

Jack recalled slogging through marsh and jungle, over mountains, hiding from NVA patrols determined to find the downed aviator, sharing silences and precious water, whispering hopes and dreams when the enemy was not nipping at their heels, fighting mosquitoes and leeches and more serious blood loss and despair. "Six days and nights, Pete."

"Six of the longest days and nights I ever spent, Jack. Can't seem to forget 'em. How about you, son?"

"I hadn't thought about that for years," he lied easily.

"Well, some people can do that, I guess," Pete said softly. Looking away, he quickly swiped water from his face. "So, what's become of Steven?"

O'Neill smiled a bit more broadly. "Last I heard, Steve was assigned to the Pentagon, fighting paper cuts."

"Good for him! And you, Jack? Did you get into the Academy?"

"Yes, sir, I did. I even managed to graduate."

"God help the U.S. Air Force, then." He paused, barely suppressing a chuckle. "God help us all."

Jack snickered at that. "What are you doing, sir?" he asked out of courtesy.

"One word, Jack. Computers. I don't have to walk at all to do that."

O'Neill couldn't detect a trace of bitterness in Pete's voice. You're a better man than I, he thought. "Sounds...interesting."

Pete snorted. "No, it doesn't. I miss flying those jets, Jack. But when I think I could be dead, well, flying a desk seems pretty damn good." He sighed and changed the subject. "That hurt wing of yours. That hasn't grounded you, has it?" He knew how much Jack wanted to fly. He had spoken of little else in their travail together over a decade ago.

Jack looked at this shoulder then back at Hamilton. "Only temporarily, sir."

An uneasy silence ensued, though neither was wont to part company yet. When the crowd thinned enough to reveal the panel in front of them, Pete first scanned the names then looked back at Jack.

The younger man's gaze, steady on one spot, had turned introspective, tight, almost cold. It wasn't hard to figure out that there was a name with deep meaning for the younger man on that slab. Pete wasn't one to offer comforting words or a shoulder to lean on, but this was Jack, who had carried him piggyback through tall, knife-like grass whenever the enemy got too close, had taught him to think of the stars in the inky sky as more than navigational tools when the pain from his shattered leg kept him from resting, had gotten him safely out of Hell. He cleared his throat and said in a self-conscious whisper, "Truth is, thanks to you, my name isn't up there. And I bet there are a lot of others not up there because of you."

Jack adjusted his trench coat, as if doing so would ease the pain in his shoulder and the discomfort caused by Pete's words. Being thanked for doing his job just didn't seem right. And in this case, he hadn't done so--Charley was dead. All because of him.

Hamilton sensed Jack's uneasiness but couldn't allow this chance meeting to end so awkwardly. "You did good, Jack. That's the truth."

O'Neill looked at Pete again, with an expression of self-loathing sadness that flashed so quickly the former aviator almost missed it. "Yes, sir," he lied again. Because the only truth there that day was the names of the 58,000 dead. He was a lie and a failure.

Shallowly nodding his head, Hamilton squeezed his rescuer's uninjured shoulder. He felt Jack tense under his hand. Before his self-consciousness could deepen further, he let his arm fall back to his side, smiled, and hobbled slowly away.

Jack watched him for a few moments before his attention once again returned to the wall. There was another break in the stream of visitors. This time, he moved up to the wall, his paralysis completely resolved.

In fits and starts, he reached for Charley's name. First he swept his long, sensitive, trembling fingers across the letters, imagining he was ruffling his brother's soft auburn hair. Next, he began to trace one chiseled letter at a time, each one as cold and hard as death.

Until the last L. That letter seemed to glow and burn, to send heat up his arm and into his chest, to penetrate the wall he'd constructed around his heart, to take his breath away.

Charley? he thought, incredulous, unnerved.

After a long moment, Jack realized he didn't know nor did he much care what exactly had happened.

But something was different, changed. He knew it, yet couldn't define it.

Suddenly and briskly, he backed up a few paces. With eyes unwaveringly on Charley's name, he snapped to attention, unmindful of the increased pain in his shoulder the posture caused. Slowly, with a reverence reserved exclusively for fallen warriors, he brought his rigid arm up to the brim of his cap, let the stiffened fingers linger there for a few moments, then just as slowly lowered the arm to his side.

I guess you did your own growing, Charley.

Jack sighed deeply and walked away and out of the black hole.