Author: Christi
Spoilers: Lost City Parts I and II
---
“There is not any memory
with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.”
~James Branch Cabell
---
This place was too
accustomed to the unusual.
No, make that the
downright weird.
He had been trapped inside
of a big block of ice for what, three months? He had been thawed only to find
he had no memory of who the hell he was, and when his memory did return in full
without much preamble, no one even blinked.
Well, except for Jack himself,
but only because the doctor kept shining that damn light in his eyes. If he
didn’t know better, he’d swear that Doc Fraiser still haunted this place and
whispered instructions into the new CMO’s
ear for fun--just to watch him squirm. Jack had always suspected that
underneath all the Air Force professional doctor attitude was one seriously
warped, maybe even a tad sadistic, sense of humor.
But the new doc was talking
to him. Probably best to pay attention now.
“…so they just…came back?
No warning or anything?” he asked the Colonel, obviously doing that scientist
thing where he tried to rationalize the irrational.
Without being able to stop
them, Jack’s eyes slid up to Carter where she stood grouped with Daniel and
Teal’c and General Hammond, waiting for Doctor Marshall’s verdict patiently.
She didn’t look away for once, seeming not to care that between them, a look
could be a much more fatal thing than one would think. So he just looked at
her, and as he looked, he remembered.
The shift of the bed as she crawled onto it.
The feel of her hand resting on his back.
The sound of her tuneless humming ringing in his
ears, calming his raging mind.
The warmth of her as she wrapped him in her arms.
“…Colonel?”
Reality snapped back and
so did Jack, his eyes returning to the impatient doctor in front of him.
“Uh…yeah, more or less,” he managed, reeling a little as the abnormally vivid
memory faded. Had that been her hand resting on his back again? He could have
sworn…but no…she was still there across the room, blue eyes sharp as she caught
his hesitation.
Definitely weird.
---
It was over.
The Colonel had been
subjected to one last batch of tests, but pending their results, he was cleared
for duty. And so she was back in her lab, because habit forced her into
thinking that if she needed to escape from the last three months of her life,
the only way to do it was to go back to work.
Ignore the problem and
it’ll go away…right?
Right.
She could almost hear
Jack’s snort of disbelief ringing in her ears. It made her smile in spite of
herself. But then, most things about him did.
God, he was right. She
could be such a geek sometimes.
Just work, she ordered
herself, forcing one arm to function and then the other and before she knew it
she was lost in the familiar rhythm of science, the delicacy of a test, the
puzzle of a mathematical query. That is, she was until….
“Hey, Carter!”
Her still raw nerves
jumped, tensing in her stomach and instantly returning her to the harried state
of the last few days…months…years. She hadn’t had time to digest everything
yet, so seeing him standing there, hands in his pockets and that slight smile
on his face, was still a little unreal. She blinked once, curbing the impulse
to cross the room and touch him, to assure herself that he was really there,
half-smiling at her. Instead, she settled for a neutral and familiar, “Sir?”
He came into the room and
leaned against a table. “How is it going with the…” he waved his hand at the
contraption she had been working on, “…alien pod piece thing?”
She looked down at it,
then back at him. “Fine, sir. I think I’ve isolated the power source and with
some effort, I might be able to contrive a way of manually turning it on and
off, but it’ll all depend on the circuitry system, which in this case seems to
be parallel instead of series based—“
Jack raised a hand and she
halted her flow of words, grinning at him. His eyes narrowed as he gazed at
her. “You did that on purpose.”
She barely contained her
giggle, but managed. “It’s possible,” she conceded.
He made a rather miffed
sound in the back of his throat. “Evil, Carter,” he admonished, but he was
smiling.
The easy tone was more relaxing
than her work had been. It was so simple to fall into old jokes and patterns
and feel at home again when he was around, which she supposed was part of their
problem. And yet, she couldn’t help but be glad for this moment, for a second
of stability in a world too often shaken. So for a second, she let the rules
bend just enough for her to grin back and ask, “How are you settling back in?”
The problem wasn’t in the question itself, but in the amount of tenderness she
couldn’t quite keep from her voice as she asked it.
He shrugged, sending her
an almost wistful look before replying with a standard Jack O’Neill quip. “Did
you know that when you come back from being frozen, there’s paperwork?”
“There’s paperwork for
everything, sir,” Sam assured him.
“See, I’m starting to
realize that. Seven years into the game,” he said ruefully. “If someone had
told me that when this whole thing started…”
“It’s probably best they
didn’t then, sir,” she said with a laugh, “otherwise we’d all be worse off.” I’d be worse off. Though her admission
went unspoken, Sam could almost swear that he had heard it, and so her words
felt heavy. Silence fell over them. That quickly and they were already toeing
the invisible line of too close and too much. She bit her bottom lip and looked
down at her hands, because looking at him would be too much, and she was
still only teetering on the edge of control.
“Probably…” he agreed
softly, and the tone in his voice was one she knew all too well--resignation. She
bit back a sigh of dejection--here they were again.
Jack broke the moment,
shifting and then he straightened up, wincing a little. “You all right, sir?”
she asked automatically.
His hand waved in
dismissal. “Yeah, just the knees. Been aching a little since…”
Sam nodded, not wanting to
dwell on
He rubbed the left one
absently, and had turned to leave when her ears, like her other senses, always
tuned into the nuances that made up Jack O’Neill, caught his gasp of pain. Her
head snapped up and she was across the room in a flash, catching him as he
tilted sharply. “Jack!” she exclaimed in spite of herself as she took in his
suddenly sheet white face grimacing in pain. Her frazzled mind refused to be
quiet, rearing up in panic. Nonono, I just
got him back, nonono…“I’m calling a Med Team.”
When he didn’t object, the
stabbing fear in her chest spread, a cold wave washing along her fingers and
down her legs. Something was really wrong.
---
This was getting a little
ridiculous.
He had only been back two
days, and the majority of them had been spent being poked and prodded and
scanned and questioned until the urge to throttle Doctor Marshall was so strong
that he actually had to dig his fingers into his cot to assure that he
wouldn’t.
“So explain to me again
exactly what happened?” the little man asked, and frustration clawed at Jack’s
throat.
“For cryin’ out loud…” he
muttered. “Like I told you, I was talking to Major Carter. I stood up and my
knees hurt a little, so I rubbed them, turned to leave and then…pain. Lots of
pain.”
Sam, who was sitting on a
stool next to his cot, fidgeted a little, and he knew she was picturing the way
he must have looked as he began to fall. He had to rein in his instincts, which
were screaming to slide his fingers down the cot to where hers were resting and
squeeze them, to reassure her that he was here, he was okay. It would be too
risky--ever since he had woken up yesterday to her blue eyes, it seemed like
the littlest things were the ones that propelled them perilously close to
forbidden territory. So he kept his fingers where they were and felt a twinge
of regret that he had to.
“Yes, sir, but what
exactly were you thinking about at the time of your collapse?” the doctor
asked, and for once, Jack welcomed the interruption, even if it was for a peculiar
question.
“Uh…” he searched his
mind. “I was just…rubbing my knee and remembering…” When it had first been
hurt.
Sam jumped and put her
hand on his shoulder, trying to help however she could. Her action was useless,
but appreciated all the same. The doctor, however, just nodded. “That’s what I
thought.”
Hissing a breath in
through clenched teeth, Jack nearly did throttle him this time. “What
was that?” he growled as the pain began to ebb back, returning to its normal
ache instead of the blinding flash.
“Your hippocampus,” the
doctor replied a little too cheerfully, pointing at a brain scan he had hanging
up. “See, these just came back. While most of you is perfectly fine, the
activity in your hippocampus is nearly three times what it should be. Why this
is, I haven’t figured out yet. Again, it could just be a side effect of the
thawing or maybe from having your memories all return so quickly. I can’t say
for sure, but I suspect that it’s only temporary, whatever it is. However,
until the activity has slowed back to normal levels, you might want to be
careful what you think about…”
Lost. Completely and
utterly lost. Now, he knew that sometimes he played dumb. It had helped him on
a number of occasions. But really, all he had managed to get out of that was
something about a hippopotamus, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t right. “So…there’s
something wrong with my brain? Besides the usual, I mean.” Good guess,
considering the Technicolor scans in front of them.
Sam frowned, squeezing his
shoulder a little with her hand that still rested there. The feeling sent
little tingles down his arm and he barely managed not to roll his eyes at his
own absurdity. “The hippocampus is responsible for long term memory,” she
explained. “I think the doctor is suggesting that…” she trailed off, frowning
again, deeper this time. “Actually, I have no idea what the doctor is
suggesting.”
Jack blinked, holding his
breath as his eyes darted around the room of their own accord. No, the world
didn’t seem to have ended. Huh. A smile spread across her face as she looked at
him, and he knew that she had guessed his thoughts. He liked that she could.
“I’m saying that I think
that his long term memories are so vivid that he’s actually feeling
them,” Jack heard the doctor say, and he blinked again, disturbed by the idea.
“What, like reliving my
memories?” he asked, trying to keep a tinge of panic out of his voice. There
were too many dark things there, things he had carefully tucked away in favor
of the life he now led. Places he didn’t want to see again, let alone feel.
“Basically, yes,” the
doctor confirmed. Jack tried to swallow, but found the action nearly impossible
around the lump that had formed.
“But it’ll go away, right?
I just have to…wait it out?” he grasped at the hope. If it was temporary, he
could just not think about it all…
His lungs seemed to stop
working all on their own, and the choking sensation was one he was all too
familiar with. It was worse this time because they were all there in his head
at once and he felt it, the pain of torture, the despair of captivity, the
overwhelming grief and guilt of loss….
The world blurred and his
ears rang and he bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood, because at least
that kept him from screaming, though he couldn’t keep back the low moan, a
sound ripe with the pain of a tormented past.
Just as the edges of his
vision started to tinge black, he felt hands on his knees, and heard a voice.
Sam’s voice. Calling to him. He struggled to focus on it, because part of him
recognized it was his link back to the life of the mostly sane.
“…Colonel…Colonel…” she said gently, and it wasn’t as good as her cry of his
name had been when he had nearly collapsed the first time, but it was still
her, and slowly the black receded and the world came into focus again.
She was kneeling in front
of him, brilliant eyes searching his own, heavy with worry and sympathy and a
dozen other emotions he dared not put a name to. But she held his gaze
steadily, unwilling to let him slip away. “Just…look at me,” she said softly,
raising her hands to rest on top of his own and squeezing them, offering him
the comfort he had so wished to give her earlier.
It was sweet and moreover,
it was enough to pull him out of his own thoughts, just the distraction
required. So he gazed at her and slowly remembered how to breathe.
In…out…in…out….
She smiled a tiny little
smile, trying to be encouraging without being patronizing in a way that only
she could manage, and when he was sure he could cope, he smiled a little back.
“Thanks,” he said simply, and she slid her hands away, nodding a little.
There was a silence that
descended over the room, only broken when Doctor Marshall cleared his throat.
“Yes, well…obviously, I can’t clear you for duty in this state. You’ll need to
be put back on stand-down for a few days. When it seems to ease a bit, come
back and we’ll do a follow-up scan, see how things are progressing.”
Stand down. Two words that
boggled the mind. It meant days alone, dealing with this, trying not to think
about…everything. “I…uh…”
“Rest is probably the key!”
the doctor said with an almost chipper tone and a pat on the shoulder that really
made Jack’s stomach churn. “Just get some rest.”
Right. Rest.
The man was obviously
controlled by a particularly sadistic snake in the head. It was the only
answer. He really had to remember to get that checked out.
---
Normally, this was exactly
the kind of situation that would cause her to freeze up, to hesitate, to walk
away. It had in the past and probably would again in the future. But for some
reason, this particular time, she couldn’t just walk away and let him handle it
on his own.
Maybe for the first time,
she was really afraid he couldn’t. Maybe it was because she was still
staggering with the joy of getting him back and didn’t want to give that up
yet. Maybe the very concept of what he was going through was enough to make her
go cold. Most likely, it was just that she was sick of pretending that she
didn’t see him, didn’t feel some part of his pain. It was a precarious
recklessness that filled her now, one that for the first time in years had her
acting with her heart instead of her head.
It was this recklessness
that had her chasing after him into the locker room as he went to change and go
home, because other than being trapped in the infirmary, it was the only option
open to him. “Uh…sir?” she asked tentatively as she walked in. Sam watched as he
grabbed his jacket out of his locker and threw it on, studiously trying to
avoid looking at the box resting in the bottom of the metal cabinet, teeth
clenched so hard that she could see the muscles around his jaw tense from where
she stood across the room.
“What can I do for ya,
Carter?” he asked, trying too hard to be casual. But she’d take it if that was
all he was offering, stepping into the room more fully.
“Uh…I…” she shifted her
weight, uncertainty hitting her with the force of a staff blast. Maybe this was
out of line. Maybe he was fully capable of dealing with this on his own. Maybe
he didn’t need her…not that he ever had….
“Spit it out, Carter,” he
ordered, but it was said softly, almost pleadingly, and it was enough to spur
her into action.
Taking a deep breath that
she tried not to let him see, she looked down at the floor, the wall, her
sleeve…anywhere but directly at him. “I was thinking that…that if you thought
it would help…not that you need it, I mean…but if you wanted to…I mean, if you
wanted…” Come on, just get it out and
over with already, Sam. “…that you could go to my house.” She looked up at
him then, meeting his surprised brown eyes with her own earnest blue ones.
“It’s…just…less familiar?”
He was too raw to hide his
emotions for once, but even when he showed them, it was so quick that they
didn’t do more than flicker across his face--surprise, befuddlement, gratitude.
“I…that’s…” He shouldn’t. He couldn’t. She knew that, of course. She shouldn’t
have asked. And yet…she caught his quick glance down at the box in the locker,
the tightening of the muscles again, and when he turned back to her, her heart
broke a little for him. “That would be…good,” he admitted, and she felt a
strange mixture of shock and relief at his words.
Somehow, she managed to
smile a little. Don’t seem surprised,
don’t scare him away, don’t push too hard… “All right.” She fished her keys
out of her pocket, slipping the house key off and throwing it to him. “Feel
free to help yourself to…whatever. Though it’s probably pretty empty,” she
couldn’t help warning prosaically, because it filled the empty space. “I’ll
pick some stuff up on my way home later.”
Jack just shrugged a
little, rubbing the key in between his fingers, flipping it to one side, then
the other absently. As she began to turn away, she caught his movement out of
the corner of her eye, a step towards her as if in protest of her departure. She
halted automatically, turning back to look at him curiously. “Uh…when would
that be exactly?” he asked, and though he tried to make it sound like a normal
question, his eyes, which seemed more open to her these past few days than they
had in most of the years she had known him, spoke of hurt, of need, of
desperation. And suddenly she saw that the idea of sending him to her home was
only half the solution, because he would still be alone.
Like so many times before,
the world seemed to stop for a moment, currents passing between them that she
couldn’t quite give a name to. “I…can you give me ten minutes?” she asked
finally.
His nod was short and
succinct, and for once he wasn’t bothering to try and deny that that’s what he
had wanted…no, needed all along. She
turned to leave again, only to be stopped one last time, this time by his
voice.
“Sam?”
The sound of her name
coming from his lips made her stomach do a strange little flip-flop, and it both
annoyed and pleased her simultaneously. “Hmm?” She should have said ‘Sir’ or
‘Colonel’, but it would have sounded cold.
He hesitated a little
before requesting quietly, “Don’t tell Daniel or Teal’c?”
No, he wouldn’t want them
to know. He’d be torn up over everything he was putting her through, and having
them know meant more people supposedly wasting their time worrying about him.
Was it wrong that she was a little glad that she’d be able to do this for him
herself? She wasn’t sure. But her reply was immediate and certain anyway. “Yes,
sir.”
---
Sam was a woman of her
word, out of the base and free of all her gizmos and gadgets in under ten
minutes, walking silently with him to her car because it was mutually understood
that it was probably best if she drove. He had to admit he was relieved. Being
in the fresh air with her at his side made it harder to dwell on his own long
list of personal torments--she had that effect on him.
“We’ll have to get some
groceries,” she reiterated as they climbed in the car, and he didn’t stop the
offhanded thought her remark incited from tumbling out of his mouth.
“Your house is really that
empty?”
She glanced at him as she
started the car and pulled out. “Empty or inedible,” she confirmed with a tiny
smile.
Daniel’s voice rang in his
ears without warning, and it was a disconcerting feeling. She hasn’t left the base in nearly two months, Jack. “You really
didn’t go home?” he couldn’t help but wonder out loud.
It was a personal
question, more than he normally would have asked. But it seemed that since he
had returned from his icy state, all rules were off. So when she just shrugged
without seeming shocked or embarrassed by the question, he really wasn’t that
surprised. “I did the first month or so,” she assured him. “To…I don’t
know…keep up appearances, I suppose.”
The confession was more
than he had ever expected from her, and it stole his breath a little. He
couldn’t help it; he had to push a little more because for the first time in a
long time, it seemed like it was okay to. “And then?”
She glanced at him, just a perfunctory look
that had more to do with familiarity than anything else. He wasn’t sure if
she’d answer, but they were further from the mountain now, and the further away
they drove, the easier these things were to say. Not necessarily a good thing
for them, but an all too welcome one. With the wind blowing through her hair
and the sun hitting her face at just the right angle, he could almost believe
that it wouldn’t hurt anything.
“And then…” she repeated
slowly, not really hesitating so much as carefully considering her words to
make sure they were right, “…time passed. And I got tired of caring about
appearances.”
His eyebrows nearly
skyrocketed off of his forehead because he had no other response readily
available. “…I…” He couldn’t think of words. They had spent the better part of
the last four or five years keeping up appearances, so the idea that suddenly,
she just….
She glanced at him again,
that little smile returning, though it was a tad wistful. “It’s not so
dangerous when you’re not around,” she offered by way of explanation.
Words had never been his
strong suit, and this entire conversation was quickly veering into uncharted
territory. “Oh,” was the best reply he could come up with, though he winced
while saying it because it was so insufficient.
“Yeah,” she answered
softly. “Oh.”
They continued the drive
in silence, Jack turning to stare out the window because looking at her was
starting to have the peculiar effect of replaying every glance exchanged and
every word spoken between the two of them. There was a lot of bitter there and he
didn’t want it to taint the sweet of right now yet.
---
She wasn’t exactly sure
when the situation began to spiral out of control. At the grocery store, with
each of them picking and choosing food and throwing it all into one cart. When
they got home, and he had forgotten to give her back her key, so he just
unlocked the door himself and held the door open for her while she carried the
other two bags of groceries in from the car. When he made himself at home on her
couch and flipped on the TV as though he did it everyday. More than likely, the
entire thing had been out of control from the start.
As she sat curled up on
one side of the couch, the schematics of a new artifact on her lap and him next
to her, flipping through channels while she worked, she realized that she
didn’t give a damn if it was.
He shifted slightly and
she automatically compensated for the weight, keeping her and her work balanced
as though they did this everyday. He, however, didn’t seem to be so at ease,
and after a few more shifts, flipped off the TV and stood up, walking around
aimlessly, looking at things.
“Everything okay, sir?”
she asked, managing to keep the concern out of her voice-mostly.
He shrugged, wandering
around. “Yeah. I just…” he didn’t seem to know what to say, so she just nodded.
“I suppose it’s sort of
like someone coming straight up to you and demanding that you not laugh,” she
stated.
The analogy made him grin
because it was about right, and very like her to understand why he was having
problems. “Something like that,” he admitted.
Watching him, she couldn’t
help the wave of sympathy, the urge to just hold him like she could the night before.
“Anything I can do?”
He smiled sadly. “No,
Carter. Just…be here. Company helps.” Your
company helps was what he was saying and yet not. Still, she couldn’t stop the
full blown grin that spread across her face before turning it down quickly,
burying the expression in the work she was sure she’d never get back into.
“Yes, sir.”
---
He peered at her desk,
stacked with more work in a neat, organized pile. His hand traced over the
items she had displayed there: a paperweight that her father had given her,
some kind of astrophysics mumbo-jumbo award, a picture of the team…he paused on
that one, picking it up and studying the photo carefully. It wasn’t the one he
had, but rather one from three or four years ago at a Christmas party. He
remembered….
The smell of smoke, the sound of laughter, the
taste of the punch. Carter surrounded by science geeks, sending a look his way.
A plea for help.
“Excuse me, I need to borrow Major Carter for a
minute,” he interrupted, pulling her away gently by the arm. She pretended to
be disappointed, but when they were clear of the crowd, her hand tightened on
his own briefly.
“Thank you, sir,” she said with relief, and he
handed her a glass of punch which she promptly drank half of.
“Easy, Carter,” he said, laughing a little.
“They’re normally your kind of thing.”
“It’s Christmas, sir,” she replied, and he supposed
that was all the explanation he was going to get as they sidled up next to
Daniel and Teal’c.
“So you see the origin of the Christmas tradition
actually has its roots in…” Daniel was saying to a slightly bored-looking
Teal’c, although it was possible that Jack was just projecting that.
“For cryin’ out loud, Daniel, you’re just as bad as
those eggheads,” he said, gesturing to the group they had just left.
“On the contrary, O’Neill, I asked Daniel Jackson
to explain ‘Christmas’ to me once again,” Teal’c broke in.
Oh. Projection then. Jack shrugged. “Well, don’t.
This is not the time for boring.”
“What is it the time for, Jack?” Daniel asked,
vaguely annoyed.
Jack thought a moment. “Presents! Anyone get me
something good?”
“How good were you hoping for, sir?” was Carter’s
straight-faced reply.
How good…his eyes snapped up to her and he saw the
smirk hiding in her eyes and grinned. “Go ahead and try me, Carter,” he
drawled.
Her grin escaped then, and they all laughed at
their own antics. There was a click somewhere, but they were too wrapped up in
each other to care.
The memory faded, voices
echoing for a moment as he glanced at the picture again, the way the four of
them were all turned in together, their own world in the midst of a huge
gathering, sharing a laugh over something stupid and insignificant.
It never felt
insignificant anymore. Part of him missed the ease of it.
He put the picture down,
turning away from it because sometimes the easy memories pained him as much as
the hard ones. He could feel her eyes on him, watching. “Do you miss it?” he
couldn’t help but ask, not sure what he wanted her answer to be.
“What?” she queried.
He shrugged. “The
simplicity.”
It would have confused
someone else, but it almost seemed to be the answer she was expecting, so she
just tilted her head, thinking. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “It made things
easier.”
He didn’t know whether to
be happy or sad, but then he had been stuck between the two gears for a long
time now. Still, sometimes wasn’t all the time or even most of the time. It was
just…sometimes. If he had to think about it, he probably would have said the
same.
The next question escaped
him before he even knew he was thinking it, and that was when he realized they
were both in trouble. “What about Pete?” Pete, he assumed, had been simple. He
had been easy. Who could blame her? There was no history there, no darkness to
deal with, no rules holding them
back.
Sam sighed, pushing away
her work and looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Are
we really going to do this?”
Do what? There wasn’t
anything to do--futility was part of their problem. “I need to know,” he said,
and he realized as he said it that it was the truth.
She accepted it without
question, because he wouldn’t have asked otherwise. “Pete’s gone,” she said
finally.
Though he had suspected as
much, he couldn’t help the relief that flowed through him. “Why?” It was
surprising how much your existence could hinge on one word.
When Sam looked him
straight in the eye for once, Jack saw how tired she was still, the kind of
tired that seeped through all your defenses and drained your soul. But she was
less broken than before, as though with every passing hour she was gluing the
pieces that made Major Carter back into place one by one. “He was a mistake,”
she admitted finally. “I thought I could let go, that it would be easier…” She
shrugged, sighing. “It wasn’t easier, it was just…wrong.”
She had left him
speechless again, and he wondered absently if it could be blamed on the
abnormal brain activity, though he was pretty sure it was just this strange
wire they seemed to be walking, further than either of them had dared to go
before. “Wrong,” he heard himself repeating. “Why wrong?”
Her eyes flashed in
annoyance, and he wasn’t sure if it was at the question itself, or at the way
they were still talking around everything, or if it was just at him. The last
thing he expected her to do was stand and take his hand, leading him through
the house and into a bedroom--her bedroom. Wow, he was in Carter’s bedroom. A
bit taken aback and not really sure where this was going, he stuffed his hands
in his pockets when she released them and watched her as she crossed the room
and opened a drawer, pulling out…a photograph.
She dropped it on the bed,
almost as though it said everything by itself. “We all have ways of coping,
Jack,” she finally said, voice a little harsher than he would have liked. “Pete
was a moment of weakness because I thought if he was around, then I wouldn’t
have to deal with this.”
Sam brushed past him and
out of the room, an air of frustration now added to the exhaustion. He
understood her aggravation now; it wasn’t because they were talking about this,
it was because he wasn’t quite understanding it all somehow. But if he was
right and that picture was what he thought it was, then maybe he could begin to
wrap his head around whatever it was that was happening here.
He reached down and picked
it up and looked, knowing what it was already because didn’t he do the same
thing?
It was of him.
---
Damned stupid infuriating slow jackass of a man.
Sam let her mind rant as
she took vegetables out of the fridge, throwing them on the counter. Why
couldn’t he just understand? He often comprehended her in ways that no one else
could. Why was this so different all of the sudden? Why did he have to question
everything? She never questioned him. She had never asked him a thousand
questions that she had wished she could have, because it would have been over
the line, shown too much. Did he still think about Laira? Was he still in love
with Sara? Had they ever tried to work things out? Would things be different if
she weren’t in the Air Force? How much, if anything, was he willing to give up?
But she couldn’t ask and
she accepted that and understood that the answers didn’t matter because they
didn’t change anything.
He was standing in the
entrance to the kitchen now, silently watching her chop vegetables. She mentally
dared him to say something, anything.
“I thought you had moved
on,” was what he finally came up with.
Keep chopping. Do not throw anything at his head.
Do not cry. Just chop. “I thought
so too, for a second there. But I couldn’t.” Attack the carrot—it’s better than attacking him.
“But…why?” he asked, and
she turned to glare at him, hurt by the honest puzzlement echoing in his
question.
“Could you?” she demanded. “Just like that?”
The answer was reflected
immediately in his eyes by the near horror at the very idea of walking away
from her, from them, even such as they were. No. God no. It pacified and fed
her anger simultaneously. “Then why the hell do you think I would be able to?”
she demanded. “Why would my feelings be less than yours, easier to turn away
from, to let die?”
There was the real reason
for her anger, the fuel driving this whole thing, laid out in the open for him
to see. The hurt of his faithlessness caught in her throat, made her eyes burn
with livid tears, and so she turned away not because of the need to follow some
regulation, but because of the need for self-preservation.
Chop, tear, cut, do
anything but look at him and have him see how exposed you are, her thoughts
ordered. She did it blindly, desperately, because he wouldn’t leave and he
wouldn’t speak. The silence was hot this time, flashing with the unspoken
emotions of seven years packed into one small space. It wasn’t until his rough
hands slid over hers, stopping their erratic movements forcibly, that she
hesitated.
“Sam…” he said softly, and
it made her shiver because she had wished to hear that tone from him so often
that the reality of it nearly blindsided her. “I know why I…feel the way I do.
It’s nearly impossible not to. But you?”
Her eyes rose up to take
him in of their own accord, and she was stunned to see the shine of tears
there, a mirror of her own pain. “I don’t understand why you…” he paused, broke
off because that veered towards a word they didn’t say. “I’m old, Sam. And
broken. And weak.”
To her, the idea of him
being any of those things was practically laughable, but she could see, could
hear, could feel that it was what he believed, and so her anger melted as
though it had never been and she let her tears fall. Not for her own pain this
time, but for his.
She pulled her hand out
from under his and traced the contours of his face--the lines, the hurts, the
worries. “No,” she breathed, “You’re not.”
A shudder ran through him,
and his head turned towards her palm, nuzzling it as though he couldn’t stop
himself. “How do you know?” he whispered, lips brushing her palm.
“Because…” Because old is a matter of opinion. Because
broken men have no hope and yours is just a little fractured. Because I’ve
never known a man stronger than you. “Because I know you, too,” she finally
answered, and it was the right response.
He did kiss her palm then, a lingering, definite press of his lips
that made her pulse race and her heart break. She could tell he was remembering
and she wished she could remember the way he could in that moment, could be there
with him and point to everything and prove
that what she said was true. But when he opened his eyes and looked at her, she
realized she didn’t have to. “Yeah,” he said softly, with another small shudder
and another brief kiss brushing across the pad of her thumb. “Yeah, okay.”
She drew in a breath of
relief then, dropping her hand because it had been both an acknowledgement of
what she said and a dismissal, a call to return to familiar territory. They
stood facing each other for a moment, uncertain of how to proceed, when finally
the corner of his mouth quirked up the tiniest little bit. “What were you
making, anyway?”
She looked at her mess of
chopped vegetables and then back at him. “I…have no idea,” she admitted
helplessly, a small laugh escaping at her own behavior.
He smiled with her,
because it was all he could do, and it got them back to firmer ground. “Salad,”
he said firmly, turning towards the food and away from her. “We’ll make salad
and baked potatoes and steak.”
Her stomach rumbled a little
at the thought, and she smiled, putting it all back away and concentrating on
normal. “That sounds good,” she agreed, and they began to cook, side by side.
---
The cooking, the meal, the
after-dinner cleanup all proceeded without incident, which considering the way
their afternoon had gone, was nothing short of a miracle. But it was what it
was, and Jack let himself be lulled into the strange ease that had fallen over
them, with her knowing what he liked on his baked potato and him cooking her
steak just right. Sitting across the kitchen table from her, he listened to her
fill him in on what he had missed over the last three months--Hammond’s return
to the SGC, the antics of the scientists over some artifact SG-4 had brought
back, Daniel’s attempt at placating Thor. He let their words from earlier fall
away and didn’t notice when they slipped back into a game that could prove to
be more precarious than their heart-rending honesty--pretending.
It was so easy, so natural
to be here with her that he let himself forget that it wasn’t supposed to be.
He liked the normalcy of preparing and sharing dinner with her, and because
they did know each other so well, as long as they didn’t think too hard or
long, everything fell into an easy sort of rhythm. As he placed the last dish
in the washer, she wiped down the table; when he teased her about her anal
nature, she made a face and threw the damp cloth at him lightly. He laughed at
her, and he rarely laughed at all, but he didn’t deem the action strange
because nothing could be strange when things were this simple, could it?
They ended up in the
living room again, drinks in hands and smiles on their faces. Sam turned on
music when they got there--blues, low and crooning, which surprised him. He
watched her sway back and forth to the melody for a moment, eyes closed and
arms gripping herself as she let herself get lost for a second. He couldn’t
tear his eyes away from her--seeing her that open, that free, took his breath
away. When she came back to reality and her eyes opened, they locked with his
and for a second there was nothing but tenderness before the inevitable
awkwardness fell between them.
“You like the blues?” he
asked incredulously, easing the tension.
She shrugged, taking a sip
of her beer. “Sometimes. Not my normal fare, I suppose, but they remind me…”
she hesitated, aware that memory was a dangerous thing in her present company,
but then continued anyway, “…of my mother. She liked to listen to them
sometimes, after dinner like this.”
It was a nice thing to
share, and so he smiled, glad that she had. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “She’d play
them and sometimes dad would come home, because he was always getting home
late, and if it was a good day, he’d dance with her in the living room. They’d
be in their own little world and I’d sit in a corner and watch and dream…” her
voice died out and her eyes were far away, and he knew she was imagining it all
again. He almost wished it was a picture he could relive like all the other
ones he had been dragged through that day--it sounded like a nice thing to see.
He wished that he was a
different kind of man, the kind of man that could offer to sway back and forth
with her to the low melody. His hands almost itched with the need to do just
that, because it was so tempting and so homey and hadn’t they been playing
house?
He wanted to live in the
illusion.
But it meant too much to
her, and would to him, and they had pushed the envelope enough for one night. So
he resisted, and felt regret for it.
But she understood and let
it drop with a smile, because the moment wasn’t perfect, but it was close
enough. And instead of dancing, they curled up on the couch near each other,
bickered about what Movie of the Week to watch, and when she drifted to sleep,
her head was on his shoulder.
He should have moved,
gotten her to bed.
He didn’t.
---
Sam slept deeper than she
had in months, and even when she awoke with a crick in her neck and a slight
chill from sleeping uncovered, she wasn’t sorry that her head was still on his
shoulder. She turned her head in for a moment, breathed him in because he
smelled like leather and woods and just…Jack. She liked it there, curled up
beside him. She wanted to stay.
But he had left her alone
in his bed the night before, out of respect and out of need, and this time, it
was her turn.
So Sam sat up gently,
picked up the remnants of their drinks from last night, and walking to the
kitchen, wondered why this felt like the morning after. They had pushed each
other, more than they probably should have, and when it had all been done they
had slipped into a strange state of intimacy that was almost worse than all the
confessions and tears, because it had showed them how it could be.
It could be so wonderful,
so easy, so…real.
Was it possible to mourn
for something that was never yours?
After a moment, Jack
entered the kitchen, stretching with foggy eyes and mussed hair. The picture he
made was adorable--it took effort not to smile at it. “Morning.”
He mumbled something unintelligible
and she just shook her head. “Eggs?”
Jack made a face. “Yesterday.
Pancakes?”
“Sounds good.”
Sam made the batter, but
let him flip because she knew it would appeal to the juvenile side of him and
make him grin. There was coffee and the morning paper and it was real for a minute there, because
they let it be even though they knew it would hurt worse when it stopped. She
had the feeling that her kitchen would be a lonely place for a long time after
this was all over. Speaking of which… “How’s the memory, sir?”
His eyes snapped up, and
she regretted the word, or maybe the question. Or both, if it made any
difference. But it was done and said and the illusion shattered around them,
crystalline pieces that she’d never be able to put back together.
She wanted it back.
He put down his mug,
thought for a moment, and there was no jumping, no wincing, no tensing.
Whatever it had been, it, like the memory vacuum that had preceded it, was
gone.
---
It was a relief, to just
remember and not have the words echo in his mind or the feeling flow through
him. Maybe because he had never gotten used to it--for the first time in a long
time, he had been too busy caught up in the present to bother reliving the
past.
Jack knew that he had her
to thank for that--she had spared him God only knows how much personal torment
at a very high cost to her own sense of security, and he regretted now that
this would end up causing her pain. Now more than ever before, he knew that
pain came from just as many unlikely places as it did from the obvious ones.
Still, he couldn’t bring
himself to regret the actions themselves--they were too fresh in his mind, and
with all the bitter was the achingly sweet. He had learned last night that they
were worth sorting through. Not all memories could be tagged and filed away as
bad or good, some just were….
Like the shine of tears in her eyes.
The feel of her hand trailing up and down his face.
The texture of her skin against his lips.
Those he all still
remembered in startling clarity. He didn’t have to wonder if it would last--they
were burned into his mind in perfect, unerring detail. He knew that he would be
able to relive that moment and the moments of sweetness afterward, that he
could recall the feeling of relief that had flooded him when he realized that
for whatever reason, she saw him as a worthy man. Jack knew that this
particular memory wouldn’t be perfect because of some mind mumbo-jumbo, but
solely because it was her, and that idea?
It made him smile.
“Good, Carter,” he
admitted. “The memory is good.”