I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds that I had not heard for well over forty-five years. Anyone who said that silence had no sound wasn't listening carefully enough.
It wasn't silent; it was deafening.
As deafening as the party going on down the in the tunnels, deep below the ground, had been a few minutes ago.
God, I loved it, the silence.
I could stay out here in the cool night forever just listening to it.
I knew I couldn't; my friends below the surface would come looking for me soon, but not even that knowledge was enough to take this moment from me.
I was standing on the surface of the planet that had been my home for the last four and a half years - alone.
No bodyguards. No entourage.
Just me, the silence, and the knowledge that we would never have to leave Tralyn again.
After centuries of war and sacrifice… it was over.
We had won.
The Goa'uld had been defeated.
I still couldn't believe it, not even after a week of celebrations. A part of me kept looking for the next attack, thinking tactics, battle plans, but it was over. The Goa'uld had finally been defeated after so long.
I honestly never thought I would live to see it - WE would live to see it.
//Nor did I,// the voice inside my mind stated, and I found myself smiling.
The fight I had been a part of for the last forty-five years wasn't my fight. It was the fight of the alien symbiote inside me, Sy'lan of the Tok'ra. It was because of her that I stopped fighting the forces of darkness back on Earth and started fighting the Goa'uld.
It was because of Sy'lan that I was alive.
She had been the cure for my cancer, but a cure with a price. I had been given the choice of life and death. A life of fighting the Goa'uld as a part of the Tok'ra resistance, a life where I could no longer live on Earth, or death.
I chose life, Sy'lan.
I couldn't deny it, not even to myself and sure as hell not to Sy'lan, but my life has been anything but easy. Countless times, during the time we've been together, I've regretted my decision. There were times I hated my life, hated the Tok'ra, and hated Riley Finn for doing this to me. But now, now that it was over, I couldn't regret it.
I've lost people I loved, respected, fellow Tok'ra and Tau'ri, who died fighting the Goa'uld for freedom.
And now we have it, thanks to them.
We have freedom, peace… silence.
I won't ever have to hear the sound of another Goa'uld Hatak or Deathglider attacking our base… Or the sound of someone I love being tortured for information about me.
All I would hear from here on in would be silence.
Blissful, golden silence.
//Not complete silence, Xander,// Sy'lan reminded me, and my smile turned into a grin.
She was right, I wouldn't have complete silence and I wouldn't have it any other way. The Goa'uld were defeated but that didn't mean I was going to return to my life back on Earth. I couldn't, wouldn't.
Sy'lan was as much a part of me now as I was. Living without her, in spite of what we've been through and lost, was not a possibility. I loved her too much and… I couldn't go back to the person I had been forty-five years ago. I was too different, too scarred by a bloody war. I was so far from the Xander they knew in Sunnydale that they wouldn't recognize me.
If I were to return home, try to reclaim my life - which wasn't possible - I would be a stranger to them. Well, to those who were still alive. The last report I received about my friends back home had said that only two people were still alive - Spike and Angel.
And neither of them knew my secret. Only one person had known my secret and she had died thirty-nine years ago. Telling my friends about the Tok'ra, the Goa'uld, had been too risky for obvious reasons. O'Neill had been adamant that Willow or Angel, or someone with that kind of power and who had the potential to cross to the dark side, never find out about them or me.
Which meant that unless the Goa'uld attacked Earth directly, I could never tell them. I hadn't wanted to tell them anyway, but it was a little hard when I was never around or when I ignore their call for help during an apocalypse.
After a few years of disappearing for months at a time, sometimes years, it had become difficult to continue to lie to them. So, at the insistence of the Tok'ra and a few select members of the Stargate Command, namely the now deceased Major General Jack O'Neill, I had cut all of my ties with my friends on Earth in a way I had never truly forgive myself for.
No, this was it. Tralyn was my home now. The last home I would ever have. My days of flying - fleeing - all over the galaxy were over. With the Goa'uld gone, a Tok'ra home world was a safe place to be. Besides, it wasn't like I was expecting to raise a family here or anything.
I just wanted to live my life out in silence with the two women I loved, Sy'lan and -
The sound of the transporter rings activating cut off my thoughts and I spun around to see two people standing where there had been nothing a few minutes ago. I couldn't help but grin at the sight of them. That was all everyone has been doing since we received word of the that the last System Lord had been destroyed - grinning.
"Supreme High Councilor!" the familiar voice called out to me. "Your presence is requested in the tunnels."
My grin grew even more. Not only because the man in front of me was as now as free as I was, but because my days of being Supreme High Councilor were over. "It's just Xander now, Teal'c," I greeted my closest friend. "The High Council was disbanded a couple of hours ago. I'm a free man." It was disbanded but not completely gone. If there was ever the need, we'd reform, but for all intent and purposes, the Tok'ra High Council was as over as the war.
If Buff and the others were looking down on me, from wherever they were, they'd be shaking their heads in disbelief at the life I've led.
Me, Xander Harris, Supreme High Councilor of the Tok'ra? Yep, I was - had been - the big cheese of the Tok'ra. Well, technically Sy'lan was the big cheese but basically it was the same thing.
For decades, we were on the Goa'uld most wanted list.
It was a job neither one of us had wanted but, after a devastating attack on the Tok'ra decades ago that had left us with less than a hundred operatives, we had been chosen to lead them.
Something I still resented.
Was it any wonder I was grinning like an idiot?
"Very well," Teal'c bowed respectfully. "Xander, you and Sy'lan are required in the tunnels."
"Please tell me it's to cut the cake?"
Teal'c raised his eyebrow and the woman standing beside him giggled.
Laughing was something we've been doing a lot of as well. Tok'ra and Jaffas… we weren't exactly a happy bunch, and believe me when I say they were an extremely tough room, but now we had something to laugh about.
I really wasn't going to get over this any time soon. I was pretty sure it would take me weeks to fully accept everything that had happened - and to stop grinning.
"I'm sorry, Xander." The woman gave me a warm smile. "We ran out of cake a few days ago."
My heart skipped a beat.
I didn't know how she did it, but the woman standing before me never failed to make my heart race or my mouth go dry. There have been only two other women who have had that effect on me; Buffy, in High School, and Sam Carter, but both of them really didn't hold a candle to this woman.
Both in beauty and in spirit.
She was only five years younger than I was, but she looked twenty years older. With a symbiote, I didn't age as fast as I once did. I still looked like I was thirty seven, but my lover looked her age - fifty-seven. And I can honestly say she is far more beautiful now than she was when I met her at twenty-seven.
If Jack could hear my thoughts he'd be groaning at the cliché, but it was the truth.
Cassandra Fraiser was the most beautiful woman I had ever met.
Both inside and out.
She was also the bane of the Tok'ra.
My love for Cassie was my weakness and countless times she had been used against me in various ways. And, countless times, I had risked my life and the entire Tok'ra resistance to save her.
Most of the Tok'ra High Council hated her, but it never seemed to worry her.
Or me.
She's been my lover for decades and will be for decades to come.
"You didn't bring back anything from Earth?" I asked, reaching out for her hand.
"I didn't have time," she replied, leading me back towards the transporter rings. "My last trip wasn't a social visit."
At her words, I was reminded of the fact that I never asked her about it. I had been so caught up in the celebrations that I never asked her why she had to return to the SGC for a few days - alone. "Is everything okay back home?"
"Everything's fine. I just had to help some friends find their way back home." She glanced at Teal'c and smiled. "The last official act before the SGC was finally dissolved."
I was smiling again, surprise, surprise. "So they've shut down the SGC for good?"
She nodded. "They're moving the Stargate to Washington in the next few days."
Now that the Stargate was public knowledge, and Earth now had more than enough means to protect itself from any threat, they no longer had to keep it hidden under Cheyenne Mountain.
It was really over for all of us; Earth, the Tok'ra and hundreds of other worlds.
She stopped when we reached rings. "So, former Supreme High Councilor, what are we going to do now? After the celebrations."
I leaned in close to her. "Nothing."
She raised her eyebrow in surprise. "Nothing?"
"Nothing," I repeated.
I didn't want to do anything. We'd probably have to return to Earth, to visit Daniel and his family, maybe visit Teal'c in Chulak from time to time, but aside from that I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to live life out here, spend every second I could with the woman I loved before I lost her like I had so many others.
The time for fighting was over, now was the time for living.
The time for silence.
Blissful, golden silence.