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Normally, David Sheppard got along well with his father, Patrick Sheppard. Still, certain things made the old man incapable of seeing anything other than what he wanted to see, or whatever his prejudices had already decided. The main problem had always been John, David's older brother. He'd been complaining about it to a woman who had sat down beside him.
The young, attractive blonde smiled charmingly. "Don't you wish you could make him come and work for the company so your father would stop comparing the two of you, and instead see you as the better son?" As she spoke, she leaned forward and rested her hand on his arm.
If he had been raised differently, or perhaps been more inebriated, he might've done something as uncouth as snort or lean toward her, but as it was, he merely shook his head as he moved his upper body in the opposite direction. "John would never leave the Air Force, and even if he did, he would do something and Dad would look at him as if he invented the wheel or the stars, or..." He trailed off, having forgotten where he was going with that thought.
"What would you like to happen to John? I mean, if you don't want to bring him back into the fold, what would you wish to happen to him?"
David stared into the empty air in front of him, not seeing the upscale bar they were currently in. Still, in his mind's eye, he saw his brother, cocky and confident one moment and reserved and awkward the next, and definitely not fitting into their upper-class lifestyle. What did he want for his older brother? The brother who had abandoned him to live his own life while ignoring that David had other plans.
The brother who their father always welcomed back, expecting him to be the prodigal son, only to be proven wrong, over and over again. They would argue, loudly and at length, before Patrick would throw his heir out of the house to prove a point.
The last time they had come to blows had been two years earlier when John had come home and said his wife had filed for divorce. Their father had hoped Nancy would bring some sense into John, but she had failed. David hadn't been home, but between what little their father had told him and what the help had let slip, it had been explosive. Bad enough that John hadn't returned, and barely replied to any of David's emails.
The blonde woman pulled her hand back smoothly after the quiet snub. She picked up her wine glass with calm grace, took a slow sip, and held his gaze. "Your brother sounds irresponsible; perhaps you would wish for him to be," and she considered her words, "Perhaps you would wish for him to be dishonorably discharged?"
David immediately shook his head. As angry as he was with John and the unfair comparisons their father would occasionally make, he didn't want that for him. If nothing else, he believed that his brother loved his job and took it seriously. Losing his career was not something David would ever wish for. Resigning, on the other hand...
"No," he simply responded. "I don't want John to be dishonorably discharged."
Not to mention how bad it would make him, and by extension David and their father, look. The black mark had been buried so it wouldn't disgrace the family.
Impatience flashed briefly across the woman's face, gone before he could really see it. In its place was the same understanding smile she had given him for the last hour. She still held her wineglass and waved it loosely in his general direction."What do you wish for your brother, David Sheppard?"
"I wish the Air Force would send him as far away as they possibly can so I don't have to be compared to him."
The beautiful blonde woman grinned in triumph, and her face abruptly became disfigured and full of veins. "Wish granted." Then she vanished as if she had never been there.
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In Antarctica, General Jack O'Neill suddenly decided to change pilots for a reason he would never question.
It would take the better part of four years before the Sheppard brothers came face to face again at their father's funeral.