New Stargate Fic: "Refraction"
FINALLY! A moment online to post!:D Many, many thanks for all the birthday glee! Will reply to everyone properly once we're home, but you're all awesome.:)
DISCLAIMER: Yeah, the SG-1 guys are all property of MGM, World Gekko Corp and Double Secret productions. This is all in fun, no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. All other characters, ideas, etc., herein are copyrighted to the author.
TITLE: REFRACTION
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Jack, Stargate:SG-1/SGA crossover
WARNING: There is a minor spoiler for Harry Potter Book 7 in here. No, this isn't a crossover, just a throw-away remark.:D Apologies if this creates a problem for anyone, but it just needed to be here.:)
Mucho beta thanks to the fabulous helenhighwater7 and annerbhp!
REFRACTION
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2010
He realizes everything's wrong when the prism in his window throws colored lights across his kitchen counter. He starts to ask Carter to explain the physics of it all -- how the light splits apart and why the colors always come out in the same order if you just break it all up like that.
His hand is resting on the phone when he realizes Carter's in the Pegasus galaxy.
He thinks the knowledge would have soaked in sooner if he hadn't taken the job in D.C.. Because he's gotten used to her not being an inch from his shoulder (he hasn't liked it, but he's gotten used to it). But she's been on the other end of the phone line most days (when she wasn't Offworld), and he has to admit he's been wearing out her number for a while.
She actually called him when they found ice on Mars because she knew he'd be about to call.
He realized things were somewhat wrong when Carter got hit by a staff weapon Offworld and almost died before Mitchell got her to the gate. Jack caught a red-eye the moment Landry phoned, but Carter had already woken in the infirmary by the time he arrived.
Carter admits things that hurt in the first sixty seconds after she wakes. Jack's timed it. The only other window comes before the pain killers kick in or the cavalry arrives, when she's sure she's going to die. He learned this on an alien glacier that turned out to be on Earth.
He missed the fear of dying part completely, this time. He missed the first sixty seconds by three hours. She told him it was all fine now and Cameron had done a great job. She was just sore and wanted her laptop.
He resisted the urge to pull the privacy curtain and crawl into the infirmary bed with her, wires and all, and hold her until she admitted she'd been scared as hell. Until he did, too.
He sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand and tugged on her hair and played with the Teddy Bear Siler had dropped off. She smiled when he put his reading glasses on the bear and made it talk like Daniel. He brought her laptop and she said something about changing a password and got to work.
Jack takes the prism down from his window. Then he hangs it up again.
He writes the word "prisms" on a magnetic notepad on his refrigerator door. The next day he writes "what's a flvvy file and how did it get on my desktop?"
He realizes things are still wrong when he's sitting on his balcony with his telescope that doesn't really work in the city, and there's a crack and pop near the door to his apartment. For a moment he thinks it's Carter and her key (she has a key, because they're friends, and it makes sense...right?). She's shown up unannounced a few times. Sometimes for good days, sometimes just to break his heart. When he realizes neither could be happening tonight, and his guest room is growing dusty, the wind falls out of his lungs and he feels flatter than he's felt in many years. He can't explain exactly why.
He misses the end of a Simpson's episode when he's caught by a nonsequitor of a memory. She's walking through waist high grass on some planet he can't remember and she turns around and points a teasing and accusing finger at him, pulling off her cover to let her blonde hair glow in the sun, her smile bright and wide and rank forgotten for a glimpse of a moment. He watched her grow and learn and form and change for eight years. Watched her go from a bright-eyed young Captain with brilliant ideas and a shining wonder for the universe into a seasoned soldier with a quiet awe for the beautiful and an understanding of the darker hallways. He went from feeling like she was one of the kids he had to look out for, to glancing beside him to soft crinkles at the corner of blue windows to an old soul.
He writes "do you need more Simpsons DVDs?" on the refrigerator notepad.
*****
Samantha Carter understands she's away from home; that these feelings are completely normal. She understands that when everyone's mad at her or disappointed in her and she feels more alone than she has since her mother died, that it's purely homesickness and it will logically pass. She's isolated from her friends and time will change that. These people around her will become her friends, and eventually, if she's feeling sick or if someone she cares about dies Offworld and she slips off to her rooms to cry -- someone will notice. Someone will care. (Someone besides McKay.) This part she understands and is patient with.
She's taken off on her own for a new life once or twice before. She understands the stages.
Samantha Carter realizes everything's wrong the first time she wakes up from memories of a cold stone floor and a staff weapon burning through her flesh, reaches for her phone, and remembers she can't just call. She thinks of hopping a MAC flight and showing up on his doorstep with her key at the crack of dawn, then realizes that's not going to happen either. Even a gate trip would entail a 24 hour quarantine stay. If she could even find a way to justify gate activation for a really bad dream.
She feels indefinably hollow in the grey of her quarters, staring at the ceiling with tears in her eyes and no way to reach him (because they're friends, and friends reach out to one and other in these moments...right?). The complete inability to hear/see/reach/touch is a little like losing someone to death. The darkness in that thought scares her a little and she curls on her side and doesn't feel like the commander of a star base at all. She drinks some water, switches on a light, grabs her laptop, and reads a little about the security system protocols and makes notes and tries to fall back asleep. She wonders how Mark and the kids are and what Daniel's up to and thinks about Teal'c's smile. She sleeps on her laptop and wakes up to it beeping at her about a false command.
Then she's okay for a while. She gets to know people and grasps the rhythms of how things work. She starts calling her doctor "Jennifer". She hears "Sam" again as much as Colonel Carter, and warm voices tell her "go get some rest, you've been at this for hours". Her confidence builds and she tells herself this is all she was working toward. Her doubts in her ability to command were unfounded; she was merely learning. She couldn't be a quick study at everything in the world. The people of Atlantis become real friends. Even if the awareness of her superior position is ever present. But she starts to expect hands to appear under her if she should threaten to fall.
She's been in this new life for four months, when she falls asleep at the end of a relatively nondescript day and wakes up in her quarters from one of the worst, most vivid nightmares of her life. She can't remember the details, but she remembers Daniel's flesh burning and the smell of Replicator blocks and blinding staff blasts and blood on Teal'c's dark skin and the rough drag of Jack's breath as he fights for air, slumped against her chest. She can't hold onto the chronology of the disaster, and she doesn't really want to, but she knows she was losing them all, watching them die beneath her desperate hands.
She's sitting up in the dark, back against her headboard and knees pulled up to her chest and crying so hard her stomach muscles are shaking. Her skin is hot and cold in patches and she can feel the headache that will take her in the aftermath.
She snatches up the digital sound recorder from her nightstand, the one she uses to make memos to herself during the workday, and she hits record. She talks to Jack for a long time, tells him in barely comprehensible words through her tears all that she remembers of the dream and how much she misses him and how his touches feel like no one else's and it's kept her alive more times than she can count; how she misses Daniel and Teal'c and everything about her old life and her old family and how she's never been so far away from the people she loves and how she's falling apart right now, this night, in her quarters all alone, and she wants his arms around her so badly it's a physical ache, and she's never loved anybody like she loves him.
Then she presses stop. And she deletes the file. She wipes the drive to remove any trace. She pads across to the bathroom and washes the dream off her skin. She tries for a few more hours of sleep before dawn, and exhaustion blessedly obliges.
Life goes on. Late night emotions fade in daylight. She even smiles and laughs.
Two weeks later, one of Jack's regular Care Packages arrives.
*****
He knows he has a desk. He knows where it is and what the piles on it mean (more or less), and how many reports he has left to read and write. This upsets him. He's never been in a job where he couldn't find a way to forget where his desk was. He thinks this is another thing that is wrong.
He also thinks his knees feel kind of okay, and he doesn't really want to hike twenty-five miles from the Gate on a sweltering planet to collect plant samples and have to use ice packs afterward.
This confuses him.
He drives through his favorite donut shop on the way home and discovers they've discontinued the apple cinnamon.
Back in his kitchen, he writes on the refrigerator, "Discontinued apple cinnamon donuts, dammit!"
A week later, he wakes up at 4am for no good reason. He calls Daniel to see what he's doing. Daniel swears at him sleepily and hangs up. At which point Jack remembers the time zone change goes the other way. He stares at the ceiling a good hour, then dozes off until his alarm blares.
Over his morning coffee and donut, Jack writes on the refrigerator, "You sleeping okay? Bad dreams?"
*****
Colonel Samantha Carter is at the end of a shift too long to have counted the hours when the package appears on the corner of her desk.
She finishes signing off on the last of the medical waivers from Jennifer, tells McKay she'll look at it in the morning (whatever "it" is, she only knows the sound of his voice, and it's more about him than about saving the base). She closes up shop and carries the package back to her quarters. She takes her time, package resting on her dresser. She showers and combs out her hair and slips into yoga pants and a tank top with a long cardigan to warm her arms. She sits alone on her balcony, the starlight dappling the backs of her hands as she pulls open the envelope. A disc inside says, "Stupid Pictures of Daniel". A package of gummy bears spills onto her lap that she discovers has been compiled from many multi-packs until it contains all lemon. This makes her smile, and she pops one indulgently into her mouth. She fingers a Cary Grant DVD with a couple of his best movies squished on together.
Then she pulls out a narrow piece of paper that looks like it came from one of the magnetic pads Jack keeps on his refrigerator for grocery lists and reminder notes. The ones where she used to walk by and write, "Read My Report!" in purple letters when she dropped by his house.
She tucks her legs beneath her in the deck chair, leans a bit closer to the ambient light spilling from her quarters, and reads.
Prisms. Sam frowns at the word, wondering if Jack's asking if she's seen any, if they work in space, or if he saw some he wanted her to do something about. She finally decides he wants them explained again.
what's a flvvy file and how did it get on my desktop? She smiles. She has no idea what a flvvy file is, but she's pretty sure how it got there, and she can talk him through what he's doing wrong one more time. It would be easier if she could do it face to face, though. Probably.
Do you need more Simpsons DVDs? "Yes," she whispers to the air. "Not that I have time to watch them. But send them."
My vacuum cleaner exploded. She frowns at this for a moment. She's never been asked to fix a vacuum cleaner, per se, and she thinks this is just something he wanted to tell her about and imagines it must have been rather dustily spectacular and decides she'll ask about it next time they are together.
Next time they are together.
Discontinued apple cinnamon donuts, dammit! "Oh, crap!" The words fall out of her mouth before she plans it. She knows he means the donut shop around the corner from his apartment, and she loved those apples cinnamons. They were the first donuts she'd ever really gotten to like.
Why doesn't my cell phone get reception in the parking garage but works in my basement?
Will I get fired if I beat McGruder to death with a club? She laughs and says softly, "Yes, sir. You will get fired. Don't do that."
Teal'c says 'hi'. I guess he thinks I talk to you more. Do I talk to you more? She stares at that for a while. Before she left for Atlantis the answer would have been clear. Now she is not sure.
Have you read the last Harry Potter yet? I thought you said Hermione would end up teaching at Hogwarts?
You sleeping okay? Bad dreams?
Her vision blurs a little and she looks out across the brilliant view, lets the breeze cool her skin and breathes with the shifting of the water.
When her gaze returns to the crinkled paper, she sees the arrow directing her to turn the paper over.
The writing on the back is in pen and seems to have been scribbled with the paper just resting on his other hand or some other unreliable surface, the page already torn from the notepad.
Are you okay? 'Cause I couldn't be more proud of you. Honestly, Carter, you're rockin' this whole commanding officer thing, nothing but glowing reports on this end. And isn't this what you've always wanted? But I just...I guess...I don't want to say I want you back here, because I want you to do what you love, Carter. I always have. But I feel like I've been saying that for too many years and I just want to make sure you know I want you here. Or me there. Or...I really...want..YOU. I want you to do what is right for you, and we'll all be okay. But I care about...you...Carter. I always did. Probably should have said that a year or...seven or eight...ago. I think I did, actually. And we forgot. Jack
The stars melt into flares of liquid light, and she hugs her knees to her chest and disappears behind the cascade of her hair.
*****
He's late for work because the package arrives on his doorstep first thing on a Thursday morning, and he's never been the most patient person. The package is small, a simple thumb drive containing a single video file. He brings up the file on his laptop and sits on his couch, already fully dressed for work, coat making him too hot in the stuffy apartment.
She appears before him, settling back into her seat after hitting a record button, and she gives the camera a shy CarterSmile and he can't help but grin back at this woman who is a heroine of the universe and gets shy talking to an old friend on video.
"Hey, there, sir," she says. "I got your package. Thanks. Tell Daniel and Teal'c I miss them and I'll write soon. I, um..." She glances down at something in her lap, and he realizes it's the refrigerator note. Sam clears her throat. "Prisms. It's the speed of the light waves. They're arranged by frequency, by the speed they travel, that's why they can't...get mixed up."
Jack frowns, thinks about this and then decides he'll ask her to elaborate next time he sees her.
Her hair's in a pony tail, which is cute when she's running around the control room and it bounces, reminds him of how young she was when they met, but he likes it better when she lets it hang free, and he thinks he'll pull out the fastener next time he sees her and see what happens.
He realizes he hasn't really listened as the image on the screen went on to explain how that flvvy file got on his desktop and he decides he'll rewind for that part later.
"I have a wonderful team here," she's saying. "My people are amazing, and... I mean, obviously I can't be too close to anyone, because...," she pulls a classic Sam face and he wishes he were close enough to nudge her with his shoulder, ".... I'm the boss lady. But I do have friends here, and they're great. And they look out for me. I just..."
She falls quiet for a long time, her gaze eluding the camera, the small familiar paper flipping in her fingers. Jack's attention deepens. Sam tries to speak a couple of times but the words don't come, and he realizes with a slow burn that she's starting to cry. A zillion light years away and maybe several days ago. She works a while at speaking, at maintaining her Colonel's demeanor, then says shakily, "I'm good at my job. This isn't where I belong forever, but...I'm gonna stick it out while I'm needed here. I think I'm helping. But..." She looks up at the camera then, and bites her lip and he feels like those blue eyes are seeing across the galaxy into his soul. Like always.
"I should have said a lot more things to you before I left," she says. "And I would...I can't really get away right now. There's so much going on. I'll try as soon as I can, but...if you have a chance...I'd really like it if you came for a visit." Her last words are barely a whisper. She takes a moment to breathe. Looks from one side to the other, finally settles her gaze on the floor. He thinks for a moment there's something more she's going to say, but she just gives a miniscule shake of her head and the moment is gone.
She looks up at him with a sweet sad smile. "It'd be good see you," she says simply. "Oh, and, thanks for the lemon gummy bears! That was really sweet, they're really good." She hesitates another moment, so much more in her eyes than on her lips. The story of their lives. Then she nods and turns off the camera.
He's really late for work.
*****
She knew she had fallen far and hard when just after her fortieth birthday she was beaten to a pulp by a band of Jaffa, then attacked by the single remaining guard set on having his way with her. She fought admirably, no question of her physical prowess. But after a lifetime standing on her own two feet, saving her own ass and everyone else along with, Jack O'Neill blasted into the room just in time to save her, shouting, "Get off of her! Get the fuck off of her!", and she felt safer and more loved than she had in her entire life.
She wakes to stale coffee and malfunctioning CO2 scrubbers on jumpers and a murky alien sky, then gets called to the gateroom for a meet and greet and finds herself welcomed by sparkling brown eyes and a troublemaker's smile and a Simpsons DVD held in her direction. She feels like the woman on the floor of the Jaffa stronghold, looking up through blood stained vision at her Colonel in Shining Armor. He shouldn't be here, yet. She only sent the video a couple of days ago. He slips a hand lightly around her waist to guide her down the hall, and it feels like the arm lifting her from the dusty floor of the Jaffa base. When he turns to her behind closed doors and draws nimble fingers down her face and whispers nothing but, "Hey," she realizes home isn't a planet, anymore.
When she takes the initiative, after only a moment's hesitation and a nervous tongue across her lips, she presses her lips to his and he responds like there's nothing he's wanted more in years. And she feels like she's not a lost kid, anymore. Maybe coming full circle means proving you can do it on your own, and then realizing you don't have to. Don't want to.
She breaks away and looks up at him with furrowed brow. "Really? No more apple cinnamon?" she says.
He shakes his head with a look of equal distress. "I know! I mean what the hell?"
The distress melts into deeper smiles, and they're kissing again and he tastes like vanilla cake.
She wonders if she's dreaming.
They talk about prisms and light bouncing around the universe and how videos "stick to thumb drives" but if there's a magnet around they can fall off.
He asks about the nightmares. And she nods. And finally talks. And cries.
His fingers cool warm cheeks.
He tells her he's never minded living alone. But somehow his apartment is really...empty. And nothing makes as much sense as it used to. Except now.
He asks her if they have good cake in the Atlantis mess.
He tells her her long hair is really pretty. He pulls out her ponytail fastener and twizzles blonde locks around his fingers.
The sun moves too fast through the sky.
She's sure she has a report to write or a scrubber to fix. But for the first time in her life, she can't remember where she left her desk, and for what may be the only time in her life -- Sam Carter doesn't care.
*****
#
DISCLAIMER: Yeah, the SG-1 guys are all property of MGM, World Gekko Corp and Double Secret productions. This is all in fun, no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. All other characters, ideas, etc., herein are copyrighted to the author.
TITLE: REFRACTION
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Jack, Stargate:SG-1/SGA crossover
WARNING: There is a minor spoiler for Harry Potter Book 7 in here. No, this isn't a crossover, just a throw-away remark.:D Apologies if this creates a problem for anyone, but it just needed to be here.:)
Mucho beta thanks to the fabulous helenhighwater7 and annerbhp!
REFRACTION
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2010
He realizes everything's wrong when the prism in his window throws colored lights across his kitchen counter. He starts to ask Carter to explain the physics of it all -- how the light splits apart and why the colors always come out in the same order if you just break it all up like that.
His hand is resting on the phone when he realizes Carter's in the Pegasus galaxy.
He thinks the knowledge would have soaked in sooner if he hadn't taken the job in D.C.. Because he's gotten used to her not being an inch from his shoulder (he hasn't liked it, but he's gotten used to it). But she's been on the other end of the phone line most days (when she wasn't Offworld), and he has to admit he's been wearing out her number for a while.
She actually called him when they found ice on Mars because she knew he'd be about to call.
He realized things were somewhat wrong when Carter got hit by a staff weapon Offworld and almost died before Mitchell got her to the gate. Jack caught a red-eye the moment Landry phoned, but Carter had already woken in the infirmary by the time he arrived.
Carter admits things that hurt in the first sixty seconds after she wakes. Jack's timed it. The only other window comes before the pain killers kick in or the cavalry arrives, when she's sure she's going to die. He learned this on an alien glacier that turned out to be on Earth.
He missed the fear of dying part completely, this time. He missed the first sixty seconds by three hours. She told him it was all fine now and Cameron had done a great job. She was just sore and wanted her laptop.
He resisted the urge to pull the privacy curtain and crawl into the infirmary bed with her, wires and all, and hold her until she admitted she'd been scared as hell. Until he did, too.
He sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand and tugged on her hair and played with the Teddy Bear Siler had dropped off. She smiled when he put his reading glasses on the bear and made it talk like Daniel. He brought her laptop and she said something about changing a password and got to work.
Jack takes the prism down from his window. Then he hangs it up again.
He writes the word "prisms" on a magnetic notepad on his refrigerator door. The next day he writes "what's a flvvy file and how did it get on my desktop?"
He realizes things are still wrong when he's sitting on his balcony with his telescope that doesn't really work in the city, and there's a crack and pop near the door to his apartment. For a moment he thinks it's Carter and her key (she has a key, because they're friends, and it makes sense...right?). She's shown up unannounced a few times. Sometimes for good days, sometimes just to break his heart. When he realizes neither could be happening tonight, and his guest room is growing dusty, the wind falls out of his lungs and he feels flatter than he's felt in many years. He can't explain exactly why.
He misses the end of a Simpson's episode when he's caught by a nonsequitor of a memory. She's walking through waist high grass on some planet he can't remember and she turns around and points a teasing and accusing finger at him, pulling off her cover to let her blonde hair glow in the sun, her smile bright and wide and rank forgotten for a glimpse of a moment. He watched her grow and learn and form and change for eight years. Watched her go from a bright-eyed young Captain with brilliant ideas and a shining wonder for the universe into a seasoned soldier with a quiet awe for the beautiful and an understanding of the darker hallways. He went from feeling like she was one of the kids he had to look out for, to glancing beside him to soft crinkles at the corner of blue windows to an old soul.
He writes "do you need more Simpsons DVDs?" on the refrigerator notepad.
*****
Samantha Carter understands she's away from home; that these feelings are completely normal. She understands that when everyone's mad at her or disappointed in her and she feels more alone than she has since her mother died, that it's purely homesickness and it will logically pass. She's isolated from her friends and time will change that. These people around her will become her friends, and eventually, if she's feeling sick or if someone she cares about dies Offworld and she slips off to her rooms to cry -- someone will notice. Someone will care. (Someone besides McKay.) This part she understands and is patient with.
She's taken off on her own for a new life once or twice before. She understands the stages.
Samantha Carter realizes everything's wrong the first time she wakes up from memories of a cold stone floor and a staff weapon burning through her flesh, reaches for her phone, and remembers she can't just call. She thinks of hopping a MAC flight and showing up on his doorstep with her key at the crack of dawn, then realizes that's not going to happen either. Even a gate trip would entail a 24 hour quarantine stay. If she could even find a way to justify gate activation for a really bad dream.
She feels indefinably hollow in the grey of her quarters, staring at the ceiling with tears in her eyes and no way to reach him (because they're friends, and friends reach out to one and other in these moments...right?). The complete inability to hear/see/reach/touch is a little like losing someone to death. The darkness in that thought scares her a little and she curls on her side and doesn't feel like the commander of a star base at all. She drinks some water, switches on a light, grabs her laptop, and reads a little about the security system protocols and makes notes and tries to fall back asleep. She wonders how Mark and the kids are and what Daniel's up to and thinks about Teal'c's smile. She sleeps on her laptop and wakes up to it beeping at her about a false command.
Then she's okay for a while. She gets to know people and grasps the rhythms of how things work. She starts calling her doctor "Jennifer". She hears "Sam" again as much as Colonel Carter, and warm voices tell her "go get some rest, you've been at this for hours". Her confidence builds and she tells herself this is all she was working toward. Her doubts in her ability to command were unfounded; she was merely learning. She couldn't be a quick study at everything in the world. The people of Atlantis become real friends. Even if the awareness of her superior position is ever present. But she starts to expect hands to appear under her if she should threaten to fall.
She's been in this new life for four months, when she falls asleep at the end of a relatively nondescript day and wakes up in her quarters from one of the worst, most vivid nightmares of her life. She can't remember the details, but she remembers Daniel's flesh burning and the smell of Replicator blocks and blinding staff blasts and blood on Teal'c's dark skin and the rough drag of Jack's breath as he fights for air, slumped against her chest. She can't hold onto the chronology of the disaster, and she doesn't really want to, but she knows she was losing them all, watching them die beneath her desperate hands.
She's sitting up in the dark, back against her headboard and knees pulled up to her chest and crying so hard her stomach muscles are shaking. Her skin is hot and cold in patches and she can feel the headache that will take her in the aftermath.
She snatches up the digital sound recorder from her nightstand, the one she uses to make memos to herself during the workday, and she hits record. She talks to Jack for a long time, tells him in barely comprehensible words through her tears all that she remembers of the dream and how much she misses him and how his touches feel like no one else's and it's kept her alive more times than she can count; how she misses Daniel and Teal'c and everything about her old life and her old family and how she's never been so far away from the people she loves and how she's falling apart right now, this night, in her quarters all alone, and she wants his arms around her so badly it's a physical ache, and she's never loved anybody like she loves him.
Then she presses stop. And she deletes the file. She wipes the drive to remove any trace. She pads across to the bathroom and washes the dream off her skin. She tries for a few more hours of sleep before dawn, and exhaustion blessedly obliges.
Life goes on. Late night emotions fade in daylight. She even smiles and laughs.
Two weeks later, one of Jack's regular Care Packages arrives.
*****
He knows he has a desk. He knows where it is and what the piles on it mean (more or less), and how many reports he has left to read and write. This upsets him. He's never been in a job where he couldn't find a way to forget where his desk was. He thinks this is another thing that is wrong.
He also thinks his knees feel kind of okay, and he doesn't really want to hike twenty-five miles from the Gate on a sweltering planet to collect plant samples and have to use ice packs afterward.
This confuses him.
He drives through his favorite donut shop on the way home and discovers they've discontinued the apple cinnamon.
Back in his kitchen, he writes on the refrigerator, "Discontinued apple cinnamon donuts, dammit!"
A week later, he wakes up at 4am for no good reason. He calls Daniel to see what he's doing. Daniel swears at him sleepily and hangs up. At which point Jack remembers the time zone change goes the other way. He stares at the ceiling a good hour, then dozes off until his alarm blares.
Over his morning coffee and donut, Jack writes on the refrigerator, "You sleeping okay? Bad dreams?"
*****
Colonel Samantha Carter is at the end of a shift too long to have counted the hours when the package appears on the corner of her desk.
She finishes signing off on the last of the medical waivers from Jennifer, tells McKay she'll look at it in the morning (whatever "it" is, she only knows the sound of his voice, and it's more about him than about saving the base). She closes up shop and carries the package back to her quarters. She takes her time, package resting on her dresser. She showers and combs out her hair and slips into yoga pants and a tank top with a long cardigan to warm her arms. She sits alone on her balcony, the starlight dappling the backs of her hands as she pulls open the envelope. A disc inside says, "Stupid Pictures of Daniel". A package of gummy bears spills onto her lap that she discovers has been compiled from many multi-packs until it contains all lemon. This makes her smile, and she pops one indulgently into her mouth. She fingers a Cary Grant DVD with a couple of his best movies squished on together.
Then she pulls out a narrow piece of paper that looks like it came from one of the magnetic pads Jack keeps on his refrigerator for grocery lists and reminder notes. The ones where she used to walk by and write, "Read My Report!" in purple letters when she dropped by his house.
She tucks her legs beneath her in the deck chair, leans a bit closer to the ambient light spilling from her quarters, and reads.
Prisms. Sam frowns at the word, wondering if Jack's asking if she's seen any, if they work in space, or if he saw some he wanted her to do something about. She finally decides he wants them explained again.
what's a flvvy file and how did it get on my desktop? She smiles. She has no idea what a flvvy file is, but she's pretty sure how it got there, and she can talk him through what he's doing wrong one more time. It would be easier if she could do it face to face, though. Probably.
Do you need more Simpsons DVDs? "Yes," she whispers to the air. "Not that I have time to watch them. But send them."
My vacuum cleaner exploded. She frowns at this for a moment. She's never been asked to fix a vacuum cleaner, per se, and she thinks this is just something he wanted to tell her about and imagines it must have been rather dustily spectacular and decides she'll ask about it next time they are together.
Next time they are together.
Discontinued apple cinnamon donuts, dammit! "Oh, crap!" The words fall out of her mouth before she plans it. She knows he means the donut shop around the corner from his apartment, and she loved those apples cinnamons. They were the first donuts she'd ever really gotten to like.
Why doesn't my cell phone get reception in the parking garage but works in my basement?
Will I get fired if I beat McGruder to death with a club? She laughs and says softly, "Yes, sir. You will get fired. Don't do that."
Teal'c says 'hi'. I guess he thinks I talk to you more. Do I talk to you more? She stares at that for a while. Before she left for Atlantis the answer would have been clear. Now she is not sure.
Have you read the last Harry Potter yet? I thought you said Hermione would end up teaching at Hogwarts?
You sleeping okay? Bad dreams?
Her vision blurs a little and she looks out across the brilliant view, lets the breeze cool her skin and breathes with the shifting of the water.
When her gaze returns to the crinkled paper, she sees the arrow directing her to turn the paper over.
The writing on the back is in pen and seems to have been scribbled with the paper just resting on his other hand or some other unreliable surface, the page already torn from the notepad.
Are you okay? 'Cause I couldn't be more proud of you. Honestly, Carter, you're rockin' this whole commanding officer thing, nothing but glowing reports on this end. And isn't this what you've always wanted? But I just...I guess...I don't want to say I want you back here, because I want you to do what you love, Carter. I always have. But I feel like I've been saying that for too many years and I just want to make sure you know I want you here. Or me there. Or...I really...want..YOU. I want you to do what is right for you, and we'll all be okay. But I care about...you...Carter. I always did. Probably should have said that a year or...seven or eight...ago. I think I did, actually. And we forgot. Jack
The stars melt into flares of liquid light, and she hugs her knees to her chest and disappears behind the cascade of her hair.
*****
He's late for work because the package arrives on his doorstep first thing on a Thursday morning, and he's never been the most patient person. The package is small, a simple thumb drive containing a single video file. He brings up the file on his laptop and sits on his couch, already fully dressed for work, coat making him too hot in the stuffy apartment.
She appears before him, settling back into her seat after hitting a record button, and she gives the camera a shy CarterSmile and he can't help but grin back at this woman who is a heroine of the universe and gets shy talking to an old friend on video.
"Hey, there, sir," she says. "I got your package. Thanks. Tell Daniel and Teal'c I miss them and I'll write soon. I, um..." She glances down at something in her lap, and he realizes it's the refrigerator note. Sam clears her throat. "Prisms. It's the speed of the light waves. They're arranged by frequency, by the speed they travel, that's why they can't...get mixed up."
Jack frowns, thinks about this and then decides he'll ask her to elaborate next time he sees her.
Her hair's in a pony tail, which is cute when she's running around the control room and it bounces, reminds him of how young she was when they met, but he likes it better when she lets it hang free, and he thinks he'll pull out the fastener next time he sees her and see what happens.
He realizes he hasn't really listened as the image on the screen went on to explain how that flvvy file got on his desktop and he decides he'll rewind for that part later.
"I have a wonderful team here," she's saying. "My people are amazing, and... I mean, obviously I can't be too close to anyone, because...," she pulls a classic Sam face and he wishes he were close enough to nudge her with his shoulder, ".... I'm the boss lady. But I do have friends here, and they're great. And they look out for me. I just..."
She falls quiet for a long time, her gaze eluding the camera, the small familiar paper flipping in her fingers. Jack's attention deepens. Sam tries to speak a couple of times but the words don't come, and he realizes with a slow burn that she's starting to cry. A zillion light years away and maybe several days ago. She works a while at speaking, at maintaining her Colonel's demeanor, then says shakily, "I'm good at my job. This isn't where I belong forever, but...I'm gonna stick it out while I'm needed here. I think I'm helping. But..." She looks up at the camera then, and bites her lip and he feels like those blue eyes are seeing across the galaxy into his soul. Like always.
"I should have said a lot more things to you before I left," she says. "And I would...I can't really get away right now. There's so much going on. I'll try as soon as I can, but...if you have a chance...I'd really like it if you came for a visit." Her last words are barely a whisper. She takes a moment to breathe. Looks from one side to the other, finally settles her gaze on the floor. He thinks for a moment there's something more she's going to say, but she just gives a miniscule shake of her head and the moment is gone.
She looks up at him with a sweet sad smile. "It'd be good see you," she says simply. "Oh, and, thanks for the lemon gummy bears! That was really sweet, they're really good." She hesitates another moment, so much more in her eyes than on her lips. The story of their lives. Then she nods and turns off the camera.
He's really late for work.
*****
She knew she had fallen far and hard when just after her fortieth birthday she was beaten to a pulp by a band of Jaffa, then attacked by the single remaining guard set on having his way with her. She fought admirably, no question of her physical prowess. But after a lifetime standing on her own two feet, saving her own ass and everyone else along with, Jack O'Neill blasted into the room just in time to save her, shouting, "Get off of her! Get the fuck off of her!", and she felt safer and more loved than she had in her entire life.
She wakes to stale coffee and malfunctioning CO2 scrubbers on jumpers and a murky alien sky, then gets called to the gateroom for a meet and greet and finds herself welcomed by sparkling brown eyes and a troublemaker's smile and a Simpsons DVD held in her direction. She feels like the woman on the floor of the Jaffa stronghold, looking up through blood stained vision at her Colonel in Shining Armor. He shouldn't be here, yet. She only sent the video a couple of days ago. He slips a hand lightly around her waist to guide her down the hall, and it feels like the arm lifting her from the dusty floor of the Jaffa base. When he turns to her behind closed doors and draws nimble fingers down her face and whispers nothing but, "Hey," she realizes home isn't a planet, anymore.
When she takes the initiative, after only a moment's hesitation and a nervous tongue across her lips, she presses her lips to his and he responds like there's nothing he's wanted more in years. And she feels like she's not a lost kid, anymore. Maybe coming full circle means proving you can do it on your own, and then realizing you don't have to. Don't want to.
She breaks away and looks up at him with furrowed brow. "Really? No more apple cinnamon?" she says.
He shakes his head with a look of equal distress. "I know! I mean what the hell?"
The distress melts into deeper smiles, and they're kissing again and he tastes like vanilla cake.
She wonders if she's dreaming.
They talk about prisms and light bouncing around the universe and how videos "stick to thumb drives" but if there's a magnet around they can fall off.
He asks about the nightmares. And she nods. And finally talks. And cries.
His fingers cool warm cheeks.
He tells her he's never minded living alone. But somehow his apartment is really...empty. And nothing makes as much sense as it used to. Except now.
He asks her if they have good cake in the Atlantis mess.
He tells her her long hair is really pretty. He pulls out her ponytail fastener and twizzles blonde locks around his fingers.
The sun moves too fast through the sky.
She's sure she has a report to write or a scrubber to fix. But for the first time in her life, she can't remember where she left her desk, and for what may be the only time in her life -- Sam Carter doesn't care.
*****
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