samandjack.net

Story Notes: The second in my Season Six episode addition series. What do you know? Two weeks in a row! I apologise for the dubious quality. I've been up since 2 a.m.!


Water, like ice creeping up his legs. A suffocating coldness. Relentless, ruthless. Unstoppable.

He couldn't move. Trapped. Held under by frozen fingers as panic rose with the water. Higher. One last breath. Then fire in his lungs. But it turned to ice as her face, dead and cold, drifted into view. Lifeless, slack mouthed, her sightless eyes staring. He couldn't get away as the corpse floated closer, fleshless now. Terrifying, closer and closer as he--

"NO!"

The word hung in the warm darkness, torn from a raw throat. The sweat on his skin was cold, icy, and he shivered. He wanted to turn the light on, but the nightmare was too real and his limbs were still frozen with fear and cold.

Carter. Dead.

Beneath the door, light seeped in. Like the water, silently coming to claim her. With a jerk, Jack reached clumsily for the switch over his bed, flooding the room with neon.

Three o'clock. And the second nightmare in as many hours. Closing his tired eyes, he dropped back onto the pillow. But his t-shirt clung to him, sweat-damp and chill. And he knew sleep wouldn't come again, or if it did the same horror would plague him.

So he rose, pulled the shirt from his back and slouched into his BDUs. He picked up a book, but he was too antsy to read. The room was too small, too claustrophobic to be comfortable. So he grabbed his jacket, still shivering from the dream, and headed quietly into the empty corridors of the SGC.

The dreams didn't surprise him. He often got them, a few days or weeks after some traumatic event. After Iraq his shrink had told him it was a healthy expression of his sub-conscious, a way for the mind to deal with the terrors survival had forced it to repress. It didn't make them any easier to live with, but long experience had taught him they were a passing problem. A few weeks, progressively less frequent. He'd get through it. He always did.

"Colonel," Siler passed him with a nod, not appearing surprised to see him haunting the corridors in the middle of the night. Nothing seemed to surprise Siler. But the scent of coffee lingered after he passed, and bent Jack's steps towards the cafeteria. It was the heat he sought, rather than the caffeine. And it was a place to go. Suddenly he wished he'd brought his book with him, but he couldn't be bothered to go back for it. There'd probably be a paper there, something someone had left behind.

Only two small lights shone in the cafeteria as he pushed through the swing doors, giving the room an oddly intimate feel. And the quiet was strange too. No pans clanging, no people talking. Just him, the vending machines and his--

"Sir?"

Holy crap! He nearly jumped ten feet in the air!

"Sorry," came the voice again. Carter's voice.

He turned, struggling to restore his dignity. "Jesus, Carter," he groused. "You trying to kill me or something?"

Even through the darkness he could see her small smile, from where she sat alone. "Sorry, sir."

Returning his attention to the machine, Jack tried his best to hide his pleasure at this unexpected encounter. Carter. In the cafeteria, in the middle of the night... He cleared his throat as he fed quarters into the machine. "You working late again?"

He expected a stream of excuses, but what he got was a long pause followed by a subdued, "No. Trouble sleeping."

Oh.

The plastic cup that held the coffee - or what passed for coffee - was very hot. It burned his fingers as he hurried to set it down on the nearest table. "Me too," he confessed, sucking hot coffee from his thumb and not quite meeting her gaze. "You want one?"

A chair scraped and she stood up. For a horrible moment he thought she was leaving, but she was just moving to join him. "Why not?" she asked, setting aside her empty cup. "I can't seem to stay warm."

She wasn't the only one, and he felt a shiver run through his limbs as he pulled another hot coffee from the machine. Sitting down next to her, although not exactly close, he pushed a cup towards her and sipped at his own. He knew he should say something. But for the life of him, he didn't know what. Glancing over at Carter, he saw her gaze drifting aimlessly in mid-air and wondered what she was thinking. He was about to ask, when she spoke.

"Can I ask you a question, sir?"

"Sure," he nodded, still watching her stare into nothingness. "You never know, I might even answer it."

There was a flicker of a smile. "Do you ever have bad dreams?"

"Sure," was the honest answer that sprang instantly to his lips. "All the time."

"Really?" She was surprised. "I didn't think... I mean. Nothing seems to bother you."

He looked away, studying the steam rising from his coffee. "Plenty of things bother me. I just... I don't talk about them like some people."

He could see her nodding. "I used to--" She stopped so suddenly, he looked up hurriedly. Right into her eyes. And his chest tightened at what he saw. A deep, heartfelt need for comfort. Something he couldn't give her. Had things been different, he would have pulled her into his arms and held her. It was how he working, acting not talking. But he couldn't. He couldn't touch her. Yet she needed something. She needed to talk. He set his jaw, determined. "You used to what...?"

She just shook her head.

"No, I want to know," he persisted. "You used to what...?"

Sucking in a deep breath she frowned, then shrugged as if to say 'what the hell?'. "When Daniel--" She stopped again, turning away and fiddling with the pepper pot that stood on the table. "After something bad had happened we'd always talk. He'd come find me, or I'd go find him. It helped. I guess..." She sighed heavily. "I guess I miss that."

An absurd jealousy bit Jack hard. "I didn't know that," he said, sounding waspish. Daniel had always been a hundred times better at this heart-to-heart stuff. He knew it, but hearing Carter point up his inadequacies so baldly didn't help. He cleared his throat and tried to imagine what Daniel might say in the same situation. But all he could come up with was, "You, ah, having bad dreams?"

His question took her by surprise and a small smile touched her lips. She seemed to appreciate the effort he was making, however clumsy. "I keep dreaming about that corridor."

"On the ship."

She nodded. "At the time, I was more angry than anything. But now..."

"Me too. Twice tonight," he confessed, rubbing at his tired eyes. "It usually hits a week or so after the event."

Carter took a deep breath. "I'm at the door. I'm trying to override the controls, but there's no time. And it's so cold. My fingers are numb, I can't move the crystals properly. Teal'c's there too. And...and you." She frowned, scrunching up her fingers into a fist on the table. "And I can't save you."

"That's the worst part," he agreed. "The water goes over my head, and all I can see is you and you're..."

"Dead?"

"Yeah. That's when I wake up."

In the darkness her eyes glittered brightly, capturing his own. And her hand jerked impulsively towards his, where it rested on the table. But she stopped herself. After a moment she spoke. "I was scared," she confessed quietly. "When the water came up I thought I was dead."

"Yeah," he nodded, unable to tear his eyes from hers but still acutely aware of her fingers so close to his. He wanted so badly to touch her. "It was a close call."

"I always thought," she whispered, "I always thought that if it happened, if we died, that I'd say something. But..." She trailed away, shaking her head and lifting her hand away from his to press against her eyes.

"What's to say?"

"Ha!" she snorted through her fingers. "Pretty much everything."

But she was wrong. It didn't happen often, but this time she was wrong. Completely wrong. "No. We don't need to say anything. That's not what we're about."

Her hand fell from her face, brow creasing into a frown. "Well, if you mean we've never discussed--"

"Because there's nothing to discuss." Seeing her face fall, he reached out to catch her hand before she misunderstood. And suddenly he was touching her. His heart turned over. "What I mean," he said as his fingers closed around hers, "is that we...know. We've never had to say anything, we just know. Don't we?"

Slowly, she nodded. "I guess we do."

"I can't-- You know I can't say it," he carried on, feeling those three little words building on his lips but biting them back. "But it doesn't mean--" He shook his head, tightening his hold on her fingers. They felt soft and warm in his hand. "Words are cheap. Saying something doesn't make it more real."

She smiled at that, but it was a sad smile. "Sometimes it helps."

"Sam, I swear to God, if I could--"

"I know," she interrupted, her fingers squeezing his in return. "I know. And you're right, we don't need to say anything. We can't."

Their gaze locked, unspoken words moving easily between them as their hands lay entwined tightly on the table. He smiled, and saw the expression reflected in her eyes, dark in the shadowed room. It was a short, but endless, moment that drove the chill from his heart. He felt warm again, for the first time since the water had closed over his head so many days before.

And then she looked away, her hand sliding from his. The parting left him bereft, but the warmth didn't diminish. She sighed and pushed herself to her feet. "Think I'm gonna try and get some work done."

He nodded. "They'll stop soon," he assured her as she rose to her feet. "The dreams. A week or two, no more."

"You're the expert?"

"Yeah. You could say that." Her raised eyebrow, half-amusement and half-curiosity, provoked him to say more. "It was kind of a feature of my life for a while. After Iraq."

Her amusement fled. "Right. I'm sorry."

"It's no biggy," he assured her. Although it was. It was a huge, dark stain on his life, second only to the death of his son. "But I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to bad dreams."

Sam just nodded. "It must have been bad."

"Yeah."

"It won't happen again," she assured him with a vehemence that was startling. "Nothing that bad."

"I hope not. But you can't--"

"No," she assured him flatly. "Never. Because we don't leave people behind, do we, sir?"

He had to smile at her conviction. "No. We don't." And then, with a deep breath, he rose to his feet and changed the subject. "So, what you working on anyway?"

Her glance held his a moment longer before she turned away and said, "Nothing exciting, really."

"Good," he nodded, following her as she headed for the door. "I could do with a little boredom right about now."

"I'm actually going contact Doctor Michaels in Antarctica today."

"Really? That does sound...boring."

"If you remember, sir, her team have been excavating the site where we found the Russian gate--"

"Oh, I remember," he assured her. "And that was another fun trip. You know, next time we get trapped someplace, Carter, lets make it a whole lot warmer. And dryer."

She held the door for him as they walked out into the bright corridor, her smile more dazzling by far than the lights beyond. "Yes, sir."

"So," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets, "looks like we're in for a quiet few days, huh?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "I think so. I mean, there's nothing in Antarctica that could cause us any problems, is there?"

"No," he yawned. "Nothing at all..."

~End~




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