soldier's widow
by angela
stargate sg-1
april 2006
The ceremony is hard enough to get through without her mother-in-law's sobbing, without Charlie tugging at her hand, asking her where Daddy has gone. She comforts the former as best she can—ineffectually, in a tiny, stumbling voice—and bends down to Charlie's height, smoothing a hand through his hair. The officers standing at attention tip their hats, and one of them gives her a respectful nod. Soldier's wife, soldier's widow; she's marked for life now.
She doesn't know what to do with the flag. At first it sits on the coffee table, gathering small talk and dust; after a month she puts it in the attic, next to the rusted-out lawnmower he'd promised to fix. It's undignified and unglorious, but so is her life, so are the lies she's told Charlie, fending off his questions.
Her husband's Air Force buddies come over when they can, fixing the pipes and the gaping hold in the fence where the kid next door stuck his foot through it (little bastard, Feretti says, searching his pockets for a nail). They fill her refrigerator with beer and tell her stories of daring escapes and dashing rescues; and finally, of his last mission, of a life buried under shrapnel and false hopes.
Kowalsky sometimes reads to Charlie about heroes, and she listens, remembering strong, steady hands, the clomp of boots across the tile. She listens, and realizes it's hardly a life at all.