samandjack.net

Story Notes: A/N: I've had the Evanescence CD for months and have been meaning to use it… for months. *shrugs* So, this is the result. If you really wanna get in the mood to read this, listen to that CD as you read.


Now I will tell you what I've done for you
50 thousand tears I've cried
Screaming deceiving and bleeding for you
And you still won't hear me
Don't want your hand this time I'll save myself
Maybe I'll wake up for once
Not tormented daily defeated by you
Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom
I'm dying again
~~ Going Under
~~~~

`What a damned bastard!' Sam rushed up the steps of her house, barely able to control her hands that shook in her blinding fury and empty desolation.

"Son of a BITCH!"

The door was not spared from her wrath and the wall shook with the force of her slamming it. A couple of pictures hanging along the walls teetered precariously close to falling off of their hooks, but settled unstable into silence. Her anger was not spent by her outburst, but was suddenly, uncontrollably overridden by an emotion so much more sinister and evocative than anything that she was prepared to handle.

Loss.

Unbidden tears sprung into her eyes and her complete helplessness of the situation overwhelmed her. Not caring where she rested, she fell unsteadily against the nearest wall and slowly slid to the cool wood below.

"Damn it…" she whimpered to the open air, her eyes staring unseeingly at the beige wall across from her. Not even the pictures looming on the wall nearby could distract her from the complete blankness of the unmoving, silent mass before her. It stared back at her, seeming to mockingly flaunt what it represented in her current state.

Blank emptiness.

Finally, after her knees began to ache and her tailbone had been protesting her unchanged position, she closed her eyes to it's accusations and turned her head to look back to the door, where it appeared as if someone was waiting to knock on her door.

This was more than she wanted to deal with right now. Groaning in abject emotional pain, she pulled herself up from the floor and left the Colonel standing on her doorstep as she entered her bathroom and turned on the water.

Soon steam was enveloping her within the confines of the little, tiled room. A small corner of her mind turned on the water to near scalding in a need to make herself feel… to make her feel anything, even physical pain. The emotional turmoil that was tearing her up was going to feel like nothing next to the reddening heat that would soon be encompassing her entire body. She needed something to get her mind off of the figure that loomed on the other side of her front door. Furtively she glanced over her shoulder towards the front door, knowing full well that she wouldn't be able to see him from where she stood.

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, tightly swallowing against the resurfacing tears that were crawling up her throat.

Driven by her subconscious, Sam navigated her darkened house through tear-blinded eyes, studiously ignoring the presence of her superior officer who was still darkening her threshold.

She didn't deserve any of his attentions now.

Maybe not ever again.

Her fingers tightened impulsively around a book that rested on her end table and she moved through the still dark halls and back into the steamy bathroom. Methodically, unconsciously, she stripped down, and sat quickly in the bathwater, knowing full well that the pain was going to be damn near unbearable.

Tears that had never stopped leaped again to the surface and she let her head fall back to rest on the cold tile behind. She let them fall.

She felt justified about letting her tears fall now. Crying over her physical pain was much more acceptable than crying over her uncontrolled emotional roller coaster.

************

How can you see into my eyes like open doors
Leading you down into my core
Where I've become to numb without a soul
My spirit sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
~~ Bring Me to Life
~~~~

Her blood pounded in her ears as the tingling on her skin died under the continuous heat. Numbness settled over her system and she sank into the tub, leaving her head barely above the water as she released her physical duress. The water rippled under her movement and skin exposed to the cool room air screamed with revived sensation. Nothing she could do, could think of doing would make her feel any more… alive, or anymore human.

So many dead.

So many helpless people, lost forever because of her own blindingly obsessive need to prove herself.

Then, he had the audacity to say that there was nothing she could do about it. `Carter,' he'd said in that maddeningly placating tone, `You did good.'

Fabric tore and fluttered lifelessly to the ground as she lashed out blindly at the air around her, her eyes not even opening. The shower curtain settled to the ground, rustling against the ceramic of the tub. She took another stunted breath.

So many dead.

"Carter?"

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of his voice carrying down the hall. She closed her eyes in defeat. He knew that she was here, had probably seen her moving around before she had gotten into the tub. Idly, she was surprised that he had stayed on her stoop for as long as he apparently had.

"What?" Her voice cracked and she ruthlessly cleared it, feeling its rawness scrape against her vocal chords.

His footsteps were tentative at best, scared at the worst. Unconscious of her own nakedness, she turned her head away from the door so that she wouldn't have to look at him.

He must have removed his boots at the front door; a first, she noted ironically. His socked feet touched the bathroom floor with trepidation as he stopped at the edge of the counter, only feet from her side. There was a pause and then…

"Jesus, Carter…"

Without hearing him, he was at her side; his firm grasp hauling her out of the water by her biceps. Water pattered back into the tub and the onto the floor as he moved her out of it's heat an onto the cold linoleum. In some part of her mind she was shocked at his forcefulness, but the grip that he had placed on her arms had burned, and she welcomed the reality of his presence if only for that. She sometimes forgot how strong he really was. Her head fell forward and her chin rested against her breastbone. She still hadn't opened her eyes and she stood unabashedly naked before him, her arms limp at her sides and her eyes tightly shut.

She couldn't bring herself to feel embarrassed.

She couldn't bring herself to feel.

She did sense his urgency at her state, however, and her eyes cracked open to the sight of him grabbing a towel off of the rack and throwing it around her shoulders; where he proceeded to dab her dry. Even with his gentle touch, the scratchy terry cloth tore at her raw skin and drew a hiss from in between her clenched teeth.

"What the hell were you thinking?" His voice carried a tone that she was familiar with and it took her brain some second to decipher it. He was mad at her, but scared shitless at the same time.

Confusion and anger at the audacity to use that phrase after what had happened just hours ago struck Sam with an almost blinding intensity. The comfort that she had begun to feel at his presence and firm gentleness was ruthlessly squashed.

Her eyes snapped to his, but her mouth stayed closed, a sense of honour framing her face with a frown. His confused gaze met hers and his hands slowed with their movements until they stopped entirely under her cold gaze.

Unbidden she stepped away from his touch, her hands clasping the thin cloth to her body and her eyes narrowing in suspicion. Stiff fingers clenched and unclench methodically as she stood in her bathroom, staring down her superior officer with no small amount of pride coursing through her veins. She stood still for a moment and then turned and went into her bedroom, forcefully closing the door behind her.

Immediately she fell heavily against it, her weight lending to the closing of the door. Her fingers began to tremble at the towel before her and she sank lethargically to the cold, hardwood floor. Shame began to wash over her as the last few moments caught up with her, the memories sneaking up from under the door and crawling up her spine. She shivered.

She felt a small jolt against her back and heard the faint scraping of his jacket as he too slid to the floor on the other side of the door.

"Sam?" The wood muffled his soft voice, but it didn't stop the sound from raising gooseflesh on her skin. "Sam, that water was really hot… Are you ok?"

Her head fell listlessly against the door as she thought of the tingling that was slowly and painfully running over her nerve endings.

No, she wasn't ok. But that wasn't what he was asking.

She opted to stay silent.

She heard a deep breath from through the wood and his clothes rustled as he shifted.

So attuned to the movement of the man behind her that she forgot that she was sitting naked on her bedroom floor, with just a wet towel to protect her from the chill of the evening breezing in through her window. Her eyes fluttered shut as she felt the tentative peace at his presence vanish as a new onslaught of self- hatred and revulsion wrapped itself around her mind. She fell helplessly to the side with a shudder.

"Did I ever tell you about how I got out of Iraq, Carter?" His voice must have lowered to accommodate the sanctity of the topic, but Sam could hear it clear as day through the closed door. "Did I ever tell you of the number of people I've had to kill with my bare hands if only for my own survival?" She heard him move before he continued again. "Did I ever tell you about the time that I had to… I had to ignore the screaming of a four-year-old child because they were torturing her to bring me out?"

Much to her shame, Sam's eyes began to tear again and they fell lifelessly to the floor below her. He'd never mentioned anything about his missions. He'd never even intimated at the kinds of things that he had had to do. So here, now, she was faced with his own feelings of his own inhumanity.

"I was almost comatose for three weeks after that mission. I woke up in sweats, screaming for them to stop. I'd fall back to bed and lie awake until exhaustion dragged me under again. God… I still dream about it sometimes."

Silence fell until it felt like she would suffocate in it. He didn't move and try as she might, she couldn't pick up the rhythm of his breathing. She hated herself for it, tried to talk herself into believing that she didn't deserve to be within feet of the kind, careful and loving man on the other side of the door, but she felt her hands moving toward the crack near the floor. Thin and dissolved light filtered under the wood, splintered by his body but allowing her to pinpoint where he was sitting on the other side. She moved slowly, focusing on his voice.

"But it was me, Sam. It was what I was trained, raised to do. I was fighting for my country, making a sacrifice in the early years that I wouldn't always know the price that it would exact from me. I felt less and less human as my time in the service went on. Each time I saw someone's life drain from him or her, it took some of me too. I couldn't escape it…"

She heard his breath hitch and she felt herself follow his example. Her eyes closed and she was put back to the planet…

************

Catch me as I fall
Say you're here and it's all over now
Speaking to the atmosphere
No one's here and I fall into myself
This truth drives me into madness
I know I can stop the pain if I will it all away
~~Whisper

~~~~

They had known that the Goa'uld were coming; had known with a certainty that Ba'al would not grant any mercy to the citizens of this planet. Still, despite their warnings to the people, they weren't willing to move.

So they had to try and stop the Goa'uld, they had to hold them at bay.

A bomb.

A big, massive, naquadah-enhanced bomb.

That was all that she could come up with.

The moment that she had suggested it to the General at their final briefing, she had felt a feeling begin to gnaw at her stomach, settling and planting seed of doubt and fear. The Colonel, Daniel and Teal'c had all supported her theory and system, and the General had given her the go-ahead to make the system to deliver the bomb.

It was complex. It was risky. But it was nothing that they had never tried before.

Only this time, the horseshoes that they had had in such large quantities before seemed to run out.

From there it went terribly, horribly and irrevocably wrong.

She couldn't have foreseen that Ba'al would anticipate a pre-emptive strike. That he would prepare to work their weaponry against them. Or that all her hard work and knowledge to save those people would ultimately serve to kill them all… she couldn't have known.

They didn't know what happened until they opened the gate on the planet hours later and saw that there was nothing left. Literally.

The plants that had lived within feet of the gate had vaporized under the magnitude of the blast, and that left nothing to say of the city of 500,000 people only a couple of miles from the gate; the city that had happened to be at the centre of the blast.

She had barely restrained herself from leaving her small lunch on the control room floor. The impact of the weapon could only now be understood.

She couldn't have known.

Still, it ate at her, chewed a hole in herself and questioned her ideals and humanity. How could she have developed something so damning?

~~~~

She was brought back to her bedroom with shock not unlike ice water being poured on her head. Someone was calling her.

"Sam? Answer me, Sam?"

She groaned in horror, realizing slowly that it was no dream and she was still lying prone on her bedroom floor. There was still a dead world out there. Brought about by her own hand.

God, she just wanted it to stop hurting.

"Sam? I need you to listen to me now, all right? I need you to know something. I need you to understand why it is that I haven't resigned yet. You know I should have gone out years ago, don't you? You know with my knee and the marks on my record I shouldn't be working on the most top-secret base in the world. I'm willing to risk it, you know? I'm willing to risk my life, and you wanna know why?"

Sam tried to make the effort, tried to turn to face the door. She wanted to hear why he was still human. She wanted to know more than she wanted to continue breathing.

"I get my humanity from you… from Daniel and from Teal'c." He huffed and she could hear him shift again, moving closer to the knob side of the door. "I get it from Hammond who tells me that I have one of the most spectacular teams that the world could have come up with. I get it from all the times that you pause to consider my orders before you follow them. I get it from Daniel completely ignoring my orders and Teal'c's stoic calmness under any circumstance." His urgent tone softened and she saw the know turn and the door slowly ease open, stopping only when it came into contact with her sprawled arm.

She was on the floor, facing him and he lowered himself to her, his darkened eyes moist with his own fears and tears.

"But you wanna know what it really is? Why I still believe I'm human after all that I've done?"

Sam blinked fitfully, her voice convulsing on tears as they clogged her throat. He was so close and so alive and so… real.

Her mind was haunted by images of screaming people and crying babies and burning house and here, right in front of her was the most perfect example of living with death. He'd taken life and given life, saved lives and risked lives and he still managed to go fishing in Minnesota.

He paused and watched her, made sure he had her attention and then continued. "You, Sam. Your patience and intelligence, your care and love, loyalty and trust. You believe in me even when I feel like I can't, and there's no better feeling in the world than knowing that you can solve a big problem and still be respected at the end of the day." He leaned forward precariously and, holding her chin between his thumb and forefinger, made her to look at him. "You did what you had to do, Sam. You didn't kill those people. Ba'al did… hate him for it, Sam. Hate his ruthlessness, his very existence, but don't ever sell yourself short of humanity, cause you're the epitome of mine."

She cracked. Something within her couldn't stand the pain – hers or his, she wasn't sure – and crumpled under the pressure. Great heaving sobs of regret and understanding fell from her lips as she fells to the floor before him. Immediately, he was at her side, hauling her naked form off of the floor and levering her into his arms, allowing her sorrow to vent and release into the chilled night air. His warm hand soothed her back and hair and feathered touches over her face.

Her prided control shattered in the light of his confession and she found herself breathing calmly; by feeling his touch, knowing his thoughts. Something with the tone of his voice and the look of his eye had broken through her mind that had been clouded by desolation and self-pity.

And sitting there, crying her sorrow and pain into the Colonel's shoulder, Sam thought that maybe she could someday feel human again.

~~FIN~~




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