samandjack.net

Story Notes: Email: the_fourth_dimension@hotmail.com

Category: SJ UST, slight angst

Season: 5

Spoilers: D&C, Entity

Archive: SJA, Heliopolis; anyone else just ask

Summary: Companion piece to After. It can be hard, once you know. But was it harder Before or After?

Authors Notes: Hmm. These two loosely related vignettes came to me fully formed just before I fell asleep one night. Luckily, I still remembered the plots (such as they are) the next day, and wrote them in less than an hour, which has to be some kind of record for me. Thanks as always to Sue for betaing, even though she wants *more* to the story. Yeah, try telling my muse that.


Jack was just about to leave the empty lab when Sam entered. As she voiced a greeting and put down her papers he noticed the bandage on her hand and the bruise on her wrist. "What happened?" he asked, reaching over to take her hand in his and look at it more closely.

"I, uh... fell up the stairs."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Fell *up* the stairs? How'd you manage that?"

"I needed something from level 30 and decided to take the stairs instead of the elevator. I tripped on the way back up. Burned my hand with my coffee and bruised my wrist and knee."

He opened to mouth to ask if she wanted him to kiss it and make it better, but then remembered their circumstances and thought better of it. That was a comment that he might have made Before, but not now.

Before. His life seemed to have been divided into Before and After, although he wasn't quite sure what the precipitating event was. Before or After he met Sam. Before or After he'd first realized that his feelings for her went beyond the professional. Before or After they'd been forced to admit the reasons why he'd refused to leave her behind on Apophis' ship. Before or After he'd shot her -- twice -- with a zat gun, proving to not only Hammond but to himself that he could put the safety of the base above his feelings for her. There had been so many episodes in their lives, it was hard to pick a defining point. The only thing of which he was sure, was that the central moment included her.

He found himself wishing for a moment that things were like the way they had been Before. It had been simpler then, when he didn't have to censor everything that he said for possible hidden meanings, and he didn't have to consider that simply stopping by her lab might be misconstrued by the airman passing by as something more than it was. No suspicion, no avoidance.

Of course, Before he had been alone. Before, he hadn't had the knowledge that she returned those feelings. Before, he'd been hiding the truth from everyone, including himself. Now, After, it was like some kind of wonderful secret that they shared.

Jack realized then that the few seconds of silence that had passed had already started to become uncomfortable, doubtlessly because he was still holding her hand. With a quick squeeze -- which was probably nearly as dangerous as the comment he'd been about to make -- he dropped her hand and backed away a few steps. "I assume you've had Doc Fraiser take a look at it?"

She eyed him for a moment, looking slightly confused as to what had just taken place. "Janet's the one who bandaged it. She said it's nothing serious."

"Good."

Silence again.

Sam watched him with that questioning look in her eyes, the one she got when she was trying to figure out a puzzle, but he didn't know what to tell her. While his thoughts were really nothing new or Earth-shattering, neither were they something to be shared. Especially not with the woman in front of him.

She finally gave up and asked him if there was anything she could help him with. Jack remembered then that there was an actual reason for visiting her. "General Hammond wanted the specs for that doohickey SG-6 brought back a few weeks ago. Y'know, that water purifying thingy? I was passing by your lab anyway and told him I'd grab it on my way up to see him." Not strictly true, but she didn't need to know that. He'd seen a legitimate excuse to be here and snatched it up.

Still looking as though she didn't quite believe him, Sam nonetheless dug out the report he was looking for and handed it over. With a quick thank you he left, wondering if her life also included a Before and After. And if so, how she dealt with it.

-End-




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