Title: Not Talking. Not Touching.

Author: livlovesyou

Email: freshklouds@hotmail.com

Rating: R

Classifications: Angst, implied violence maybe.

Spoilers: None

Archive: SJD, yes

Disclaimer: Don't sue me. I never claimed to own them.

Author's Note: I can only say sorry for this one.

Not Talking. Not Touching.

He's been watching her for an hour but somehow he can't close his eyes. It's not because he doesn't want to and it's not that he physically can't, he's just got this feeling in his stomach that she'll do something stupid and maybe hurt herself. So he keeps watching her.

He doesn't like the cell. It was set up for accidents. Piping threads all over the ceiling and there's broken glass in a few of the corners. Carter has her back to him but he can still tell she's crying. He'd be crying too if he hadn't taught himself not to a long time ago.

Eventually something stills and he thinks she's asleep. She's still sitting up though.

He crawls over, arm stretching to brush down her arm; softly enough for her to register if awake but not to notice if asleep. Nothing.

A guard bangs past the room, glancing in to catch only the quickest glimpse of a man holding a woman like a father would hold a child. Tears track the woman's face and the man strokes her hair as she moves in sleep. It's like this every night and the guard fingers the last of his gum in his pocket. He'll joke about them back at the rec room.

The man loves the woman, but she doesn't speak. The woman loves the man, but he doesn't touch. If only they knew what happened when they slept.

The woman that talks and the man that can touch.

He'll joke then, but now, as he walks past, the man's face makes him feel cold and he moves on a little quicker.

The cell *is* cold.

He sits and holds her for hours.

Not because she feels so real, so alive and so comfortingly warm but because it's better than sleeping.

He doesn't want to sleep but he knows he should. As he lays her down she murmurs something that he doesn't quite catch, but she's still asleep so it's ok.

Before he returns to his corner he kneels by her feet, taking each boot on his knee. Slowly he unthreads the laces of each, putting the shoestrings in his pocket when he finishes. It's just in case, he tells himself. She'd never do it. The dream wasn't a prophecy just anxiety. And he'll rethread them in the morning and she'll never know. She never does.

But still it scares him. Because every night, in his corner, he dreams of a woman so beautiful that nature can't touch her.

And she hanged from a pipe, as he lay sleeping.

Shoelaces knotted together, tight around her neck.

-fini-

feedback would be pretty and yelling at me in cyberspace would probably be fun too. so gee, knock yourself out.