samandjack.net

Story Notes: EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com

ARCHIVE: SJD yes. All others fine, just let me know, please.

CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Jack

SPOILERS: Through Season 5's "Last Stand"

TIMELINE: Take places a few days after the events of "Last Stand".

AUTHOR'S NOTE: To avoid confusion, let me state now that this is NOT an established Sam/Jack romance fic, it is meant to be canonesque Season 5 Sam/Jack, so when you read that wisecrack from Daniel, it is just a joke, not meant to imply anything literal.:D

Endless thanks to my betas: Fulinn, Teddy E, and AnnaK


Teal'c had volunteered to remain Offworld, continuing to gather information about the local way of life, the native customs; anything that could help repair the damage before the upcoming negotiations. Jack had returned with Carter and Daniel to report in to Hammond, to explain what exactly had gone down and try to give him the scope of the present state of affairs. First there had been shooting, then there had been semi-coherant communication, and after several hours of treating the wounded, beating down feathers and calming panics, SG-1 and the native residents of P2C-957 had begun cautious discussions. Now they were tentatively approaching the idea of future trade talks. So much for the standard clockwork meet'n'greet.

Jack O'Neill was grateful for the rush of warmth that greeted him on the familiar side of the event horizon. The gate room normally felt cold, but everywhere on P2C-957 had run about ten degrees colder than native Earthlings find comfortable and the chill had started to grate on his nerves.

In all fairness, everything had been grating on his nerves from the moment Carter had turned the first icy and disapproving gaze his way following his order to fire. By now she had stopped making eye contact.

"Greetings, General!" O'Neill called up to Hammond, offering a full arm wave. The General nodded, subdued, from the control room and headed toward the stairs. "It's good to be back on this side of the sun, don't you think?" Jack quipped, turning to the rest of his team.

Daniel offered a tolerant smile and brushed some of the loose bramble from his boots. O'Neill turned his gaze toward Carter who was moving purposefully down the ramp. She lowered one eyelid, a subtle brush-off, and kept her gaze straight ahead. "You should know, sir," she said. And she was past him, handing her weapons off to the armory airman.

O'Neill slowed to a halt at the foot of the ramp, heavy boots clanging on the metal grating. Carter disappeared around the hallway corner without a glance his direction.

Daniel's soft chuckle torqued O'Neill's ear as his friend moved to stand at his side. "Looks like someone will be sleeping on the couch tonight."

On another occasion, Jack might have tossed his friend a sarcastic look, telling him to shove off, but not really minding the tease. Today, his attempt at sarcasm refused to rise above a glare. Because Carter's brush-offs had taken on an edge that shouldn't have been there. And the coldness she was throwing off was frosting his skin worse than the Eskimo planet.

Jack caught the surprise and concern in Daniel's eyes when the coolness drifted in his direction, but O'Neill couldn't deal with the fallout right now. He walked after Carter, just as Frasier accosted Daniel with a barrage of questions about the medical advances they had hinted at in radio contact. Daniel wouldn't be following for a while.

Carter was in the gear-up room, locker open before her. She barely spared her CO a glance as he stopped in the doorway.

O'Neill moved into the room, circling toward his locker.

"Something you want to talk about, Carter?" he asked, deliberately cool, noncommittal.

Carter shook her head, focused on the clasp of her wristwatch. "Nothing much to say, sir."

O'Neill reached for his own watch, slid it over the back of his hand, wincing as the links of the band pulled the hairs on the back of his wrist. "Oh, somehow, I doubt that, Carter." He forced the lightness into his tone. "If there's one thing I have never pegged you as, it's a woman of few words."

Carter tossed her watch into her locker; it landed with a sharp clang. She set to work on her GDO strap. "Which would prove you don't know everything, sir." She spoke the words too quickly. As though if she bounced the reply back at him fast enough she couldn't be held responsible for the insubordination.

O'Neill let it slide. He unzipped his jacket and released a heavy sigh, scrubbed a hand down his face. "Come on, Carter." He flicked a goading hand. "Out with it."

He was surprised by the vehemence when she whirled on him. "What do you want me to say, sir? That I'm happy with our actions? That I agree with you? I don't. And I'm not. And I will not justify the means based purely on the end result."

He shrugged out of his jacket and propped his hands on his hips. "I'm not asking you to. You disagree with my assessment of the situation; I get that. But you followed my orders anyway, and I will note that for Hammond. What I *don't* get is what you want from *me*?"

She looked away again, unbuttoned the sleeve of her blouse with a sharp snap of her arm. "I don't want anything from you, sir."

That hit. He felt like he was 8 years old, back in Mr. Spaulding's classroom the day he had been caught giving test answers to Jimmy Harlin. Jack's once favorite teacher had never again held his bright and feisty student in high esteem.

"Well, that's becoming pretty obvious," he said quietly.

He watched Carter's back, the silvery-blonde of her hair beneath the artificial lights. That flash of color amidst all the green and brown usually meant friendship and warmth and welcome.

For a long time, Carter didn't speak. She shrugged out of her vest, loosed the buttons of her blouse. He should have returned to these menial tasks himself, readied for the debriefing, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to move.

Carter turned to half-face him, moving on the tide of an unexpected flood of words. "I just...after as long as we have been doing this, after all that we have seen and learned, I guess, I expected more of you. I expected you to at least...*look* at other options before you landed on 'blow it up'."

"You're assuming I *didn't* do so."

Her jaw hardened and she met his eyes for the first time since they'd entered the gate, and he almost wished she hadn't. "In the fifteen seconds prior to you giving the order, yes, I'm assuming that."

"Believe it or not, Carter, even *my* brain can work pretty fast when it has to. And in my job, sometimes, it *has* to."

She shook her head, she'd already run through it all in her mind. Worth your life to think a step ahead of Carter. "We didn't know for certain they were hostile. We didn't even know the severity of the damage their weapons might inflict, particularly judging from the less than technologically advanced appearance of the architecture we had so far observed. We knew it *appeared* they were of hostile intent, as have many alien cultures we have encountered in the past who then turned out to be powerful and worthy allies. If we never take the risks, we never find out the truth. That is part of our mission, is it not?"

"Obtaining means of defense of our planet and our people is our standing order, Major. Running around making all the right friends in the galaxy can work toward that end as well, I'm not denying that. But not everything can be solved with a little chat. You can't take weapons out of the picture and expect us to last more than a week out there. Most of the universe is just not that evolved, Carter. We're military. We defend our own."

Carter let out a sharp breath, nose wrinkling in an expression of suppressed disgust he had seen a dozen times, but had never been on the receiving end of. He didn't like the new view. "Don't tell me that," she snapped. "Don't talk to me as if I have no respect for the value of armored defense. I am not Daniel and don't argue with me as if I am."

He watched her through narrowed eyes, taking the hit of her harsh tone and tamping down on his own reflexive anger. The Colonel in him was pushing to the forefront, ready to temper the situation. He lifted an eyebrow, angled his head expectantly. "...'sir?'" he prompted.

Carter scoffed and turned back to her locker. "Fine. You don't want to have a real discussion, that's fine with me. *Sir.* I have a debriefing to prepare for."

Anger won. "Hey. You want a real conversation, you don't duck out the minute I push you."

"Well, maybe I don't want to be pushed right now."

"I didn't start this."

"Well, I'm asking you to stop it." She wasn't looking at him anymore. Something was off. But she had pissed him off too much already, she had crossed the line.

"They had us surrounded," he said, weary repetition in his voice. "We said we were peaceful. Daniel did his 'we're just explorers' bit, 'we want to trade'. They trained more weapons on us. What the hell was I supposed to do?"

She shook her head, gaze lowered, face hidden. "I don't know. Sir, can we not do this now?"

But he refused to let the moment go, refused to get jerked around, then let everything melt away. "No, Carter, now *I* get to decide. We're gonna do this. If you're gonna be pissed at me, and in front of the rest of my team, then we're damn well gonna have this out. You don't agree with my orders, that's your right, but that does NOT give you the right to undermine my authority in front of my team."

She almost looked his way, jaw hard again, back muscles tensing as she worked the buckle of her belt, whipped it free. "Yeah, it's all about the image, isn't it? Colonel O'Neill has to stay cool, be everybody's friend, so they'll follow him off a cliff when push comes to shove. You and your gun."

Jack O'Neill stepped back like he'd been struck, hands lifted wide in surrender and deflection. "Okay, what the *hell* was that? What are we talking about, *Major*?"

"Nothing. We shouldn't even--can we just stop this, please?"

"Stop--," he waved his hands in a gesture of desperate bewilderment, "--*what*!?"

"Stop...yelling. I don't want to be...yelled at right now." Her voice was quavering.

"You yelled first!"

"Yeah, well, now, I want to stop."

Silence settled over the room. Echoes of harsh words bounced off his eardrums. Carter stood, one hand on her open locker door, face turned away. A single, careful breath, and he heard her silent tears, felt her struggle not to cry. He'd known her too long not to see it all in the set of her shoulders.

And all the anger and resentment that had charged through his veins ran off of him like water. He stood, defeated and deflated. Lost. "Carter?" he said softly.

She tried to speak, but failed. She kept her face turned away and fought to breathe. Her tears were thick. He felt it in her breath.

Jack tried to speak, faltered, then finally said simply, "Okay. Well. Obviously, I've missed something."

Carter sniffed hard, brushed her nose with the back of her hand. "It's just...just to lose him *again*..."

He scrambled, racing to catch up. "Him...Lantesh? We're talkin' about Lantesh, here?"

His words broke the dam and suddenly Sam Carter was really crying, mourning a friend, no more than two feet away from where he stood and he felt like his heart had been sucked somewhere around his stomach. "Well, hey, I...well, why are we yellin' about..." He reached out and rubbed her back, and she didn't move away. He placed a simple, guiding hand on her shoulder. "Sit down," he said, kindly.

Carter sank to the bench, forearms propped on her knees. He sat beside her, hand continuing steady circles on her back.

After a moment, she lifted her head and said softly, "It's just...I managed to deal with it the first time. But then to almost have him back only to... Everyone who starts to care about me..." but she lost her voice into quiet sobs. And there was this whole other layer of pain he hadn't had the chance to comprehend.

"*What?* Hey..." Gut response took over. He pulled her into his arms and she came.

Her fingers dug into his shoulder as she buried her face in his neck. He locked his arms across her back, cradling his hand to the back of her neck.

"Hey..." he breathed. "It's all right." Her body shook against his, and he tried to remember the last time he had held her like this, the last time he'd seen her cry so deeply. He came up empty. "What are you talkin' about?" he prompted, never expecting a real reply. His mind was already working through it all as fast as he could with Sam Carter breathing against his neck and her tears soaking into his shirt. It was all there. Martouf, Orlin, Narim, even that Faxon geek with the muddy shoes. And maybe this one, maybe this really was one too many to ask of anyone in such a short span of time.

So easy to believe Sam Carter could handle anything. A quick flash of raw pain, a hand on her shoulder, and then she was back on the track and good to go. She was tough, that much was real. But the pain had to be there somewhere, no matter how well she dealt with it, and he felt like a consummate jackass for letting himself take the easy way out so often, accepting her facade.

She was quieting in his arms. Sobs fading to tight sniffs. Too soon, probably, but that was Carter around her CO. She edged gingerly back. He held onto the last seconds of intimacy and warmth he could grasp. Smoothed fingers down her cheek as she withdrew, brushed the dampness from her skin.

"You all right?" he asked softly.

She nodded, gaze down, pale cheeks blotched with pink. "Yes, sir," she whispered. "Thank you."

No apology. He loved that about her. Officially, he probably should have been reprimanding her for those jabs she'd failed to retract, but hell if that was going to happen.

"We should be at the debriefing," she said, sounding like she had a head cold. And he wanted to hold her again. Sam's body...*fit*...so damn well. Always hard to let go. Always.

"Give yourself a minute."

She nodded.

He didn't move from his place on the bench as she gathered the last of her necessities from her locker.

"I'm headed to the women's showers," she said, testing a weak smile. She closed her locker door, pushed it again to make sure it latched.

Jack nodded. "Yeah."

Carter held his gaze a moment, make-up smudged at the corner of her eye, then she turned and started toward the door.

As her hand touched the exit, he said simply. "Not everyone."

She turned, guileless and painfully open. "What, sir?"

He shifted his weight, gripping the edge of the bench. "Not...*everyone*...who cares about you."

She let that soak through the layers, gaze on his and she never looked away. Then she gave a slight nod and turned to go.

He sat alone in the empty room. Until her scent had faded from his skin. Until his armor was firmly back in place.

***




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