After everyone had left, long after the funeral was over, he stood staring in frozen shock at the grave.

They weren’t much to sum up a life, the few lines of type imprinted on cold stone. A name. A birth date and a death date, with no mention of what lay between.

First smile. First tooth. First word. First step. First day of school. First boyfriend. First kiss. First broken heart. First day of basic training. First mission. First promotion. First time of saving the world.

This silent stone could never tell the story of a little blue-eyed broken-hearted girl who had had to take the place of the mother she had adored. It could never tell of an intelligent woman who had fought mankind’s greatest enemy and who, more often than not, had triumphed.

She had never received the public acclaim she had deserved, not for her work at the Pentagon, not for her brilliant solutions to impossible problems, not even for her skill as a warrior. He meant to see to it that she got that credit someday. Maybe, in that act, he could somehow begin to make up for the fact that he had never really told her how proud he was.

His eyes slowly drifted over to the headstones near hers. There were three, all of them as plain as hers, bland tributes to unrecognized heroes.

Colonel Jack O’Neill, 1957-2001. Dr. Daniel Jackson, 1966-2001. Murray Teal’c, 1965-2001.

The birth date on that last one was as fake as the name, of course. Someday he’d see to it that the stone was replaced by an accurate one. Whatever he might once have been, Teal’c had dedicated his heart and life to the Tau’ri, and his heroism deserved recognition every bit as much as the others’.

Jacob Carter stood alone in the bright Colorado sunlight beside four fresh graves and mourned his daughter, who had died alongside her teammates to save a little, beautiful planet called Earth.

Their sacrifice will be known, Jacob vowed silently as the tears finally came and he fell to his knees beside Sam’s grave, hardly hearing the soothing words of his symbiote, Selmac.

“I love you, Samantha Carter,” he whispered, and reached out to touch the headstone, as if by touching its surface he could feel the warm, smooth skin of his daughter’s face.

The stone was rough and cold, and Sam was gone.