Chapter Text
It seems she’s only just closed her eyes when her alarm beeps.
Bleary, weary, she scrunches her face at the day and the lump under her shoulder.
Her phone.
Sam’s heart thuds into the depths of her belly.
Her bed is empty, the house around her dark and silent. Besides, she would have noticed him coming in, no matter how quietly he moved. Her heart beats differently when he’s near.
She was beyond exhausted after a week of nights interrupted by his dreams and then a night off-world with no rest at all. But she’d give up ever sleeping through the night again to wake with him in her arms.
Pushing aside the dull grey solitude, she pads to the kitchen to turn on the coffee machine, scrubs the past away in the shower. Thinking of Cassandra, she applies a thin streak of eyeliner and mascara. She smiles at the thought that arises. She still looks old and washed out compared to Cass’s rosy vibrancy, but this way at least she knows she can’t afford to cry.
She’s fifteen minutes early on base, and heads straight to the infirmary.
“Come here, Major Lifesaver, and give me a hug,” Marozecky beams as he swings his legs off his bed, again. This time, though, the nursing aide standing by his side doesn’t interfere as he levers himself to his feet and walks slowly over to her.
“Toby. You’re — are you sure you’re okay to be walking?” She glances anxiously at the nurse who has wandered in and is also smiling as she watches his progress.
The nurse just nods, as the leader of SG-4 reaches her and wraps her in his arms.
“Doc Fraiser gave me the all-clear herself before she went home,” his voice rumbles against her chest. “And she distinctly told me that part of my rehab therapy would be walking up to the most beautiful woman I know and hugging her, at least once a day.”
“Toby. Stop.”
His body is uncomfortably warm through the thin hospital gown, bringing back memories of another body, one more illicit, and one she may have forfeited the right to ever feel again.
“No, trust me on this! I have to walk. The fact that the gorgeous being who saved our asses happened to be the perfect distance away, was just a bonus.”
“Major, when a fellow officer tells you to stop, you do it. Don’t make me regret not shooting you.”
The words buzz with danger, quiet as they are. Through her shirt, Sam can feel Marozecky lifting his hands off her back in a sign of surrender before unpeeling his arms and taking a step away from her.
“Just some friendly banter, Colonel. My fellow officer knows that.”
Willing her face to stay neutral despite the heat prickling up her neck, Sam daren’t face either man, but her back is suddenly warmed by a presence standing directly behind her right shoulder.
Marozecky turns away and shuffles back to his bed.
“You ok, Major?”
Her C.O’s voice is so soft, the creak and rustle of Toby getting back under the covers hides it from anyone but her. The warning shot his previous statement flung across the room is gone. These three words are spoken in the same way he did in her kitchen, when he lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. I love you, Samantha Carter.
She nods around the colour that suddenly rushes back into the grayness of the morning.
“Thank you, Sir,” she murmurs.
Somehow, as Jack greets the rest of SG-4 and asks about their injuries, even circling back to tell Marozecky he can tell that he’s better but asking if he’s in pain; as every member of the team fills them in on their progress overnight, she can’t bring herself to move away from the space he occupies, drawing strength and hope from his proximity. It probably looks strange, the two of them standing so near they’re almost touching, just inside the doorway to the infirmary, with a gulf between them and the men they’re talking to. As if SG-4 is contagious. But the moment is too close to forgiveness for her to care about anything, or anyone else.
“Colonel O’Neill, Sir, good morning!”
A breezy voice from behind them makes Jack step sideways, even closer to her, to free up the doorway.
“How are you feeling this morning? Did the sleeping pills work, or can I give you something stronger for tonight?” Dr Smith, the new junior, bustles in, clipboard in hand.
All the colour in the day, all the warmth of the last five minutes, shrivel up and clang into a dark corner in her heart.
I’ll talk to the doc, get some sleeping pills, he’d said that first night in her bedroom. Perhaps I’m not fit to lead you if I can’t sleep without a member of my team holding me.
No wonder Cassandra had looked at her as if she was a child last night. How foolish, how naïve had she been, to think her declaration of love could save him? How utterly stupid of her to think he was suddenly cured because — how had he put it in Daniel’s office yesterday? — because they’d fucked?
Her hand rises to her mouth, she ducks her head to hide the red shame that flames across her face.
“Excuse me, Sir,” she stutters at his feet as she races away.
“Carter, y’in here?”
His greeting is enough to spiral her back into mortification, even in the midst of what she and Jonas are uncovering.
The door to Daniel’s lab cracks open, sending a slash of light across the floor and onto the yellowing paper of the palaentological text she’s been referring to.
“Colonel, we’ve found fascinating parallels between the Homo naledi of earth and these graveyards,” Jonas plasters the cracks in her own composure at the inevitable meeting with oblivious enthusiasm. Exactly the reason she’d asked him to help her with the report on the off-world graveyard.
“Oh, hey, Jonas. Ya don’t say?” Jack enquires mildly as he saunters in, coming to rest at her left shoulder, but carefully keeping his eyes trained on Quinn.
“Sure, For example, the smaller cranial cavities. I mean, for the comparative limb-length and age on earth, Homo naledi had brains that would make them no smarter than labradors, compared to their evolutionary counterparts. But in South Africa, just as on this planet, there are these peaceful communal burial sites, clearly protected, definitely sacred, that span generations, whereas every developing human form with a bigger brain exterminated itself fighting a very similar offshoot within a millennium or so. It’s as if having the biggest brain didn’t make you the smartest at life, after all.”
Despite her best efforts to let his excited chatter wash over her, that hits home with a thud. Samantha Carter: top of her class, Doctor at twenty three, Major in the U.S. Air Force. Who got engaged to the first guy she ever seriously dated, and screwed up her chances with the only person she ever wanted to grow old with after just one night.
She barely stifles a groan.
Next to her, her C.O. gives a cough that sounds suspiciously as though it started as a chuckle.
“Imagine that,” he comments instead. “Say, Quinn, I’m starvin’, and I don’t want to miss the lemon chicken they’ve got for lunch today. Would ya mind goin’ on ahead and grabbin’ the team a table? Carter and I’ll be right along.”
Jonas’ footsteps disappear around a corner in the echoing hallway before either of them moves, and then they both talk at the same time.
“Sir, I’m”—
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
His words pull the air out of her lungs.
Slowly, as if she’s an injured animal, he brings his hand to rest beside hers on the ancient text. Their pinkie fingers brush, the touch electric.
She stares at his hand as if it has the power to divine the future.
“I was an ass, Sam. I was hoping you’d be able to forgive me. Tonight, over dinner at my place?”
The rush of breath back into her body is audible. It makes him stop, again.
Slowly, his hand withdraws.
Without a word, he walks towards the door.
At the last moment, he swivels to the left, coming to rest in the spot just under the security camera. The blind spot.
From the shadows, he watches her.
Heart thundering in her ears, she follows, stepping in his footsteps as she did two days ago in a sodden forest a million light years away.
He waits for her to come to rest in front of him before stretching out his hand to take her fingers.
He swallows.
“I’d like it if you wanted to stay, too. But not because I need you to make it through the night.”
In the reflected light, she can just make out the twist of his lips, half bitter, half hopeful.
“I only want you to stay with me because you want to.”