Afterimage (sam/jack)
I already wished rowan_d a happy birthday last week and offered up fic if she had a request. She did, and here it is. J/S hurt/comfort, pre-ep for "The Tok'ra". Realistically, it's not my best work ( I feel it wanders too much), but maybe not so bad for a request that kind of threw me a bit. ;)
Plus, Rowan, you're obligated to love it because it's a b-day gift. Nyah! :p
Afterimage
By Jennghis Kahn
**
Pairing- Sam/Jack
Rating- Teen. Nothing smutty.
Category- Angst, hurt/comfort
Warnings- none really. Het type h/c.
Spoilers- Oh, season 2.
Summary- These aren’t her memories.
A/N- Takes place between In the Line of Duty and The Tok’ra, Part 1.
Thanks as usual to Courser for the once-over and the conversation while I wrote. ;)
**
She knows when they’re there with her. She hears their words and their breath and feels their tentative touches. She wakes in the night to find Teal’c on guard, deep in kel-no-reem on the floor next to her bed. Daniel visits her during the day. Sometimes he stays awhile and tells her about his new discoveries. He doesn’t see the tears that leak into her pillow. She just can’t bring herself to respond. Her heart aches for so many reasons, and she just doesn’t understand what’s happening to her.
It’s in the evenings, when the base grows quiet and her room seems darker even though they’re deep underground and there’s no way to determine time of day, that she sometimes feels the Colonel standing at her bedside. He always starts with one soft word.
“Carter?”
When she doesn’t answer him, he sits quietly for a while. He doesn’t speak to her and he doesn’t touch her and yet she feels him so much more acutely than the others. He has a presence that’s bigger than any room he’s in. People are drawn to him. She’s no exception.
Soldiers would follow him into any hell.
She’s no exception.
He won’t leave her there alone though.
**
She sees a flash, a quick movement, from the corner of her eye. She turns to look, and nothing’s there. It happens again in the next corridor. And then in her lab. And she knows someone is there. She can feel them, smell them, hear them breathing.
But she can’t see them. She’s never quick enough.
**
She wakes in a cold sweat in the damp, quiet darkness of the prison planet. Her heart is pounding and a delicate shiver runs up her spine and into her neck, and her mouth runs as dry as sand.
She’s paralyzed, an abject feeling of terror washing through her. She draws a shaky breath and fights to keep down what little she’d eaten of the miserable prison dinner. Images flash rapid fire through her mind. Fire, sand, sneering lips, bloody hands. The scent of burning flesh fills her sinuses as clearly as if she stands near a funeral pyre. The images wind together until she realizes she’s ‘remembering’ something. Something that shouldn’t be in her memory because it hasn’t happened to her.
It happened to Jolinar.
And it had been terrifying.
She must have be making some faint noise of distress, because when she relaxes and moves her gaze from the rocks above, the Colonel is hunched at her feet, shadowed eyes staring intently at her. It’s too dark to read them, and she feels more relieved and embarrassed than worried.
“Carter?” Jack tentatively touches the toe of her boot. “Bad dream?”
She grasps at the explanation. “Yes sir. Sorry. I’m awake now.”
He shrugs. “It’s all right.”
But he takes up a new watch point for the night where he can keep an easy eye on her.
**
Flash.
She turns to look.
For a moment she sees crystal tunnels, full of sharp points and glittering glass.
Almost…
**
The dreams start while she slowly works herself to death in a naquadah mine. The Colonel and Teal’c labor beside her while Daniel sits above and feasts with a king, his soul draining away in a Goa’uld sarcophagus.
Jolinar talks to her throughout the day. It’s irritating. Sam is sick of listening to her. Her muscles have gone past a dull ache and now each swing of the pick-axe rips at screaming tendons. Her eyes burn with dust and soot.
When she starts telling Jolinar to shut up, Jack starts giving her half of his water. He threatens to throw it on the ground and waste it if she doesn’t take it. She takes it.
It’s enough to produce tears that run down her cheeks during their one hour of rest per day.
It’s worth it when Jolinar gives them the means to save Daniel.
**
Flash.
She looks.
And she remembers a wide, genuine smile, white teeth flashing in the sun. True blue eyes crinkle at the edges and show their warmth.
She was almost fast enough this time…
**
The mission after Cimmeria is the beginning of the end. She dreams of her fingers holding a Goa’uld hand device. Her own eyes glow as she brings Heru’ur to his knees in front of her. He screams with two voices when she breaks him in half.
She wakes in her own sleeping bag, breath hard, body tight, stomach twisting like a snake writhes inside of her. She barely misses putting a boot into Daniel as she crawls frantically from the tent. Her head spins and she falls to her knees outside of their camp, emptying her stomach into the brush.
When she tries to think about the dream again, or any memory of Jolinar’s, she breaks out in a cold sweat and her stomach heaves. She fights to forget. I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I don’t want to think about it. I’ll let it go!
When she doesn’t pick at it, it recedes. Her stomach settles. She spits bitter stomach acid from her mouth and rests her forehead against a trembling hand.
She hears Jack’s knees crack as he lowers himself down next to her. His cool hand comes down on the back of her neck. She cringes, realizing he’s watched her being sick, but the cool hand feels so damn good…
“Okay?” He hands her a canteen of water.
She nods and accepts it, rinsing her mouth, careful not to swallow. She doesn’t trust her stomach yet.
“Carter? What’s wrong with you?” His fingers tuck an errant strand of hair back behind her ear. It’s an affectionate gesture, one she might have gotten an illicit thrill from had she not been so freaked out at the moment.
She shakes her head but doesn’t look at him. “I… I’m just not feeling well. Bad MRE, I guess.”
He studies her, hand still resting on her shoulder, thumb brushing through the mist covering her neck. “If there’s one thing I understand, Sam… it’s nightmares.” He says it softly, and she swallows with difficulty. She knows he’s right, but she doesn’t think what she’s experiencing is the same. She’s not ready to tell him though, and it’s not as if it’s lying to let him believe in the nightmares.
“Please don’t tell Janet, sir,” she pleads quietly.
He hesitates, and she looks into his eyes and holds his gaze until he finally nods.
“Thank you.” She exhales in relief and lowers her head, feeling the headache slip away.
“You’ll tell me if they get worse, right?” His hand is on her nape again. She nods underneath it. They’re not really treading any lines here, but…
He drops his hand from her hair, and he doesn’t say anything, but he sits there with her for a long time. And she can feel his worry.
She’s afraid she’s becoming something horrible.
**
“Jolinar? Come back to bed.”
Sam watches the sun rising in a red sky and feels nothing but dread. When his hand touches her shoulder, she turns into him.
**
It’s in Washington D.C. that her life splits wide open. She still has dreams, still catches those glimpses from the corner of her eye, but the visions haven’t come back. She thinks maybe her body has finally taken care of Jolinar’s remnants. She thinks maybe she’s safe.
Instead, her father tells her he has terminal cancer, and the walls she’s built within herself splinter and explode into a million tiny pieces. The visions come back, and she has no defense against them. They pepper her with fleeting images that flash in her mind and then disappear again. Her head pounds and her stomach knots and all she wants is to forget, but that opportunity is long gone now.
She spends a quarter of the flight home in the small, cramped bathroom of the airplane. Jack comes to check on her twice, and she tries to pass it off on breakfast, but he’s not buying it. When she finally settles in the seat beside him, feeling wrung out and weary, he’s unwilling to accept anything but the truth from her.
“Sam…” He says her name softly. Her real name. And that’s all it takes. She wants to tell him the truth, but not here. Not with so many people surrounding them. She holds his gaze, hoping he’ll understand. He does. He gives her a nod, and they both lean back in their seats to rest. She feigns sleep. She doesn’t know if he’s really sleeping or not, but his shoulder presses lightly against hers and his fingers occasionally brush her wrist, back and forth, a deliberate soothing touch.
She wishes she could just go back to dreaming about him at night.
**
“You will tell me what I wish to know, Tok’ra. You will tell me or you will suffer forever.”
The pain starts, and it never seems to end…
**
She stands in his driveway for a few minutes in the late night and argues with herself about knocking on his door. She knows he’s worried about her, and she needs to tell someone about this. She knows how he feels about the snakes though. She’s heard how he reacted when Jolinar was inside of her, saw through her own eyes when Jolinar used her against him in the SGC.
She trusts him though. Above all others.
And this isn’t inappropriate. Showing up at his house late at night. She’s had commanding officers that were practically therapists to her and her fellow soldiers. It’s nothing he wouldn’t do for any of his other subordinates.
Except… she kind of feels like there’s something else there.
Eventually he opens the door and stands there in the rectangle of light with his hands on his hips staring at her, and she realizes her choice is gone.
“I think I’m going crazy,” she says as she walks past him into his house. The TV is on in his living room and there’s a bottle of beer on an end table next to the chair where he was sitting.
He shuts the door quietly behind her and turns to look at her. He’s wearing jeans and an old Air Force T-shirt, and his hair is sticking up on top, and those dark eyes just bite into her. He always makes her mouth run dry.
“Why do you say that?” He asks.
She tells him about the nightmares and how she doesn’t think they’re really nightmares but memories. Not hers but Jolinar’s.
He sits her down on his sofa and takes the chair closest to her, picking up his beer again. “Doc said your body is absorbing the symbiote and you might have some pretty intense dreams or emotions during that time. Maybe once it’s completely… absorbed… “ He looks a little uncomfortable when he says that word. He doesn’t like the thought of the symbiote in her body. He doesn’t like the thought of it being absorbed into her DNA.
“I don’t think so, sir,” she says. “I’m seeing things I never saw when Jolinar was alive inside me.”
“Like what?”
She bites her lip reluctantly.
He sets his beer down and leans forward. “Carter.” It’s soft, but it’s an order.
“I keep seeing these caves and this horrible, dark place. I feel this fear and pain and… “
“Pain?” His eyes sharpen.
“It’s not bad,” she rushes to reassure him. “It’s not mine. It’s Jolinar’s.”
He doesn’t look convinced. He still doesn’t believe that Jolinar sacrificed himself to save her.
“And I keep seeing a man. I keep dreaming about him. About us… “
Jack grows very still, eyes searching hers. “He’s not someone you… knew?“
“No.” She feels uncomfortable now, and he’s not looking away. Their gazes are locked, and she can feel whatever is between them swinging dangerously close. “But it feels like I know him… so well. Like maybe I could… love him.”
Jack stares at her and doesn’t say anything.
“Sir, it’s getting hard to distinguish between me and Jolinar.” She says quietly and feels the burn behind her eyes. She’s scared.
His eyebrows furrow in concern. “Sam, they’re just nightmares. I know they feel real. Believe me, I know. Maybe if you talk to someone… “
He doesn’t believe her. Her stomach falls. The words tumble out as she tries to explain again. Her heart races, her head aches. And suddenly the images are racing through her mind again, and she’s started it again and it feels like shit, but goddamn it, she won’t stop this time.
She’s seeing everything, right up to her own face as she leans down to give CPR to the Nassya villager.
She hears Jack say her name in concern, but he sounds faraway as she leaps up. She remembers where the bathroom is from Daniel’s premature wake.
She’s sitting on his bathroom floor a few minutes later, when he walks in and stands there. A glass of water appears in front of her. She takes it and sips.
“Thanks.”
“You’re kind of freaking me out here, Carter.”
She sets the glass down and squeezes her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb. “Oh, I think I have you beat there, sir.” Her voice sounds unsteady and she feels moisture against the fingertips between her eyes.
He lowers himself to his heels in front of her, and she bites her lip as his hands cup the back of her head and pull her forward. “Sam… “ She feels his forehead resting against hers and his breath smells of beer. “Talk to someone. Please… “
She nods in his embrace.
**
She has so many wires hooked to her head that she feels like a high-tech medusa. She’s trying to rest and get her thoughts in order while Janet talks to the technician running the machines. She stares at the ceiling.
When she sees the flash in the corner of her eye, she tries not to look. It’s persistent though. Maybe this time…
She looks.
Jack looks back from where he’s just taken a seat by the door. He smiles faintly, brown eyes glittering.
She smiles back. Finally fast enough.
~end~
Plus, Rowan, you're obligated to love it because it's a b-day gift. Nyah! :p
Afterimage
By Jennghis Kahn
**
Pairing- Sam/Jack
Rating- Teen. Nothing smutty.
Category- Angst, hurt/comfort
Warnings- none really. Het type h/c.
Spoilers- Oh, season 2.
Summary- These aren’t her memories.
A/N- Takes place between In the Line of Duty and The Tok’ra, Part 1.
Thanks as usual to Courser for the once-over and the conversation while I wrote. ;)
**
She knows when they’re there with her. She hears their words and their breath and feels their tentative touches. She wakes in the night to find Teal’c on guard, deep in kel-no-reem on the floor next to her bed. Daniel visits her during the day. Sometimes he stays awhile and tells her about his new discoveries. He doesn’t see the tears that leak into her pillow. She just can’t bring herself to respond. Her heart aches for so many reasons, and she just doesn’t understand what’s happening to her.
It’s in the evenings, when the base grows quiet and her room seems darker even though they’re deep underground and there’s no way to determine time of day, that she sometimes feels the Colonel standing at her bedside. He always starts with one soft word.
“Carter?”
When she doesn’t answer him, he sits quietly for a while. He doesn’t speak to her and he doesn’t touch her and yet she feels him so much more acutely than the others. He has a presence that’s bigger than any room he’s in. People are drawn to him. She’s no exception.
Soldiers would follow him into any hell.
She’s no exception.
He won’t leave her there alone though.
**
She sees a flash, a quick movement, from the corner of her eye. She turns to look, and nothing’s there. It happens again in the next corridor. And then in her lab. And she knows someone is there. She can feel them, smell them, hear them breathing.
But she can’t see them. She’s never quick enough.
**
She wakes in a cold sweat in the damp, quiet darkness of the prison planet. Her heart is pounding and a delicate shiver runs up her spine and into her neck, and her mouth runs as dry as sand.
She’s paralyzed, an abject feeling of terror washing through her. She draws a shaky breath and fights to keep down what little she’d eaten of the miserable prison dinner. Images flash rapid fire through her mind. Fire, sand, sneering lips, bloody hands. The scent of burning flesh fills her sinuses as clearly as if she stands near a funeral pyre. The images wind together until she realizes she’s ‘remembering’ something. Something that shouldn’t be in her memory because it hasn’t happened to her.
It happened to Jolinar.
And it had been terrifying.
She must have be making some faint noise of distress, because when she relaxes and moves her gaze from the rocks above, the Colonel is hunched at her feet, shadowed eyes staring intently at her. It’s too dark to read them, and she feels more relieved and embarrassed than worried.
“Carter?” Jack tentatively touches the toe of her boot. “Bad dream?”
She grasps at the explanation. “Yes sir. Sorry. I’m awake now.”
He shrugs. “It’s all right.”
But he takes up a new watch point for the night where he can keep an easy eye on her.
**
Flash.
She turns to look.
For a moment she sees crystal tunnels, full of sharp points and glittering glass.
Almost…
**
The dreams start while she slowly works herself to death in a naquadah mine. The Colonel and Teal’c labor beside her while Daniel sits above and feasts with a king, his soul draining away in a Goa’uld sarcophagus.
Jolinar talks to her throughout the day. It’s irritating. Sam is sick of listening to her. Her muscles have gone past a dull ache and now each swing of the pick-axe rips at screaming tendons. Her eyes burn with dust and soot.
When she starts telling Jolinar to shut up, Jack starts giving her half of his water. He threatens to throw it on the ground and waste it if she doesn’t take it. She takes it.
It’s enough to produce tears that run down her cheeks during their one hour of rest per day.
It’s worth it when Jolinar gives them the means to save Daniel.
**
Flash.
She looks.
And she remembers a wide, genuine smile, white teeth flashing in the sun. True blue eyes crinkle at the edges and show their warmth.
She was almost fast enough this time…
**
The mission after Cimmeria is the beginning of the end. She dreams of her fingers holding a Goa’uld hand device. Her own eyes glow as she brings Heru’ur to his knees in front of her. He screams with two voices when she breaks him in half.
She wakes in her own sleeping bag, breath hard, body tight, stomach twisting like a snake writhes inside of her. She barely misses putting a boot into Daniel as she crawls frantically from the tent. Her head spins and she falls to her knees outside of their camp, emptying her stomach into the brush.
When she tries to think about the dream again, or any memory of Jolinar’s, she breaks out in a cold sweat and her stomach heaves. She fights to forget. I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I don’t want to think about it. I’ll let it go!
When she doesn’t pick at it, it recedes. Her stomach settles. She spits bitter stomach acid from her mouth and rests her forehead against a trembling hand.
She hears Jack’s knees crack as he lowers himself down next to her. His cool hand comes down on the back of her neck. She cringes, realizing he’s watched her being sick, but the cool hand feels so damn good…
“Okay?” He hands her a canteen of water.
She nods and accepts it, rinsing her mouth, careful not to swallow. She doesn’t trust her stomach yet.
“Carter? What’s wrong with you?” His fingers tuck an errant strand of hair back behind her ear. It’s an affectionate gesture, one she might have gotten an illicit thrill from had she not been so freaked out at the moment.
She shakes her head but doesn’t look at him. “I… I’m just not feeling well. Bad MRE, I guess.”
He studies her, hand still resting on her shoulder, thumb brushing through the mist covering her neck. “If there’s one thing I understand, Sam… it’s nightmares.” He says it softly, and she swallows with difficulty. She knows he’s right, but she doesn’t think what she’s experiencing is the same. She’s not ready to tell him though, and it’s not as if it’s lying to let him believe in the nightmares.
“Please don’t tell Janet, sir,” she pleads quietly.
He hesitates, and she looks into his eyes and holds his gaze until he finally nods.
“Thank you.” She exhales in relief and lowers her head, feeling the headache slip away.
“You’ll tell me if they get worse, right?” His hand is on her nape again. She nods underneath it. They’re not really treading any lines here, but…
He drops his hand from her hair, and he doesn’t say anything, but he sits there with her for a long time. And she can feel his worry.
She’s afraid she’s becoming something horrible.
**
“Jolinar? Come back to bed.”
Sam watches the sun rising in a red sky and feels nothing but dread. When his hand touches her shoulder, she turns into him.
**
It’s in Washington D.C. that her life splits wide open. She still has dreams, still catches those glimpses from the corner of her eye, but the visions haven’t come back. She thinks maybe her body has finally taken care of Jolinar’s remnants. She thinks maybe she’s safe.
Instead, her father tells her he has terminal cancer, and the walls she’s built within herself splinter and explode into a million tiny pieces. The visions come back, and she has no defense against them. They pepper her with fleeting images that flash in her mind and then disappear again. Her head pounds and her stomach knots and all she wants is to forget, but that opportunity is long gone now.
She spends a quarter of the flight home in the small, cramped bathroom of the airplane. Jack comes to check on her twice, and she tries to pass it off on breakfast, but he’s not buying it. When she finally settles in the seat beside him, feeling wrung out and weary, he’s unwilling to accept anything but the truth from her.
“Sam…” He says her name softly. Her real name. And that’s all it takes. She wants to tell him the truth, but not here. Not with so many people surrounding them. She holds his gaze, hoping he’ll understand. He does. He gives her a nod, and they both lean back in their seats to rest. She feigns sleep. She doesn’t know if he’s really sleeping or not, but his shoulder presses lightly against hers and his fingers occasionally brush her wrist, back and forth, a deliberate soothing touch.
She wishes she could just go back to dreaming about him at night.
**
“You will tell me what I wish to know, Tok’ra. You will tell me or you will suffer forever.”
The pain starts, and it never seems to end…
**
She stands in his driveway for a few minutes in the late night and argues with herself about knocking on his door. She knows he’s worried about her, and she needs to tell someone about this. She knows how he feels about the snakes though. She’s heard how he reacted when Jolinar was inside of her, saw through her own eyes when Jolinar used her against him in the SGC.
She trusts him though. Above all others.
And this isn’t inappropriate. Showing up at his house late at night. She’s had commanding officers that were practically therapists to her and her fellow soldiers. It’s nothing he wouldn’t do for any of his other subordinates.
Except… she kind of feels like there’s something else there.
Eventually he opens the door and stands there in the rectangle of light with his hands on his hips staring at her, and she realizes her choice is gone.
“I think I’m going crazy,” she says as she walks past him into his house. The TV is on in his living room and there’s a bottle of beer on an end table next to the chair where he was sitting.
He shuts the door quietly behind her and turns to look at her. He’s wearing jeans and an old Air Force T-shirt, and his hair is sticking up on top, and those dark eyes just bite into her. He always makes her mouth run dry.
“Why do you say that?” He asks.
She tells him about the nightmares and how she doesn’t think they’re really nightmares but memories. Not hers but Jolinar’s.
He sits her down on his sofa and takes the chair closest to her, picking up his beer again. “Doc said your body is absorbing the symbiote and you might have some pretty intense dreams or emotions during that time. Maybe once it’s completely… absorbed… “ He looks a little uncomfortable when he says that word. He doesn’t like the thought of the symbiote in her body. He doesn’t like the thought of it being absorbed into her DNA.
“I don’t think so, sir,” she says. “I’m seeing things I never saw when Jolinar was alive inside me.”
“Like what?”
She bites her lip reluctantly.
He sets his beer down and leans forward. “Carter.” It’s soft, but it’s an order.
“I keep seeing these caves and this horrible, dark place. I feel this fear and pain and… “
“Pain?” His eyes sharpen.
“It’s not bad,” she rushes to reassure him. “It’s not mine. It’s Jolinar’s.”
He doesn’t look convinced. He still doesn’t believe that Jolinar sacrificed himself to save her.
“And I keep seeing a man. I keep dreaming about him. About us… “
Jack grows very still, eyes searching hers. “He’s not someone you… knew?“
“No.” She feels uncomfortable now, and he’s not looking away. Their gazes are locked, and she can feel whatever is between them swinging dangerously close. “But it feels like I know him… so well. Like maybe I could… love him.”
Jack stares at her and doesn’t say anything.
“Sir, it’s getting hard to distinguish between me and Jolinar.” She says quietly and feels the burn behind her eyes. She’s scared.
His eyebrows furrow in concern. “Sam, they’re just nightmares. I know they feel real. Believe me, I know. Maybe if you talk to someone… “
He doesn’t believe her. Her stomach falls. The words tumble out as she tries to explain again. Her heart races, her head aches. And suddenly the images are racing through her mind again, and she’s started it again and it feels like shit, but goddamn it, she won’t stop this time.
She’s seeing everything, right up to her own face as she leans down to give CPR to the Nassya villager.
She hears Jack say her name in concern, but he sounds faraway as she leaps up. She remembers where the bathroom is from Daniel’s premature wake.
She’s sitting on his bathroom floor a few minutes later, when he walks in and stands there. A glass of water appears in front of her. She takes it and sips.
“Thanks.”
“You’re kind of freaking me out here, Carter.”
She sets the glass down and squeezes her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb. “Oh, I think I have you beat there, sir.” Her voice sounds unsteady and she feels moisture against the fingertips between her eyes.
He lowers himself to his heels in front of her, and she bites her lip as his hands cup the back of her head and pull her forward. “Sam… “ She feels his forehead resting against hers and his breath smells of beer. “Talk to someone. Please… “
She nods in his embrace.
**
She has so many wires hooked to her head that she feels like a high-tech medusa. She’s trying to rest and get her thoughts in order while Janet talks to the technician running the machines. She stares at the ceiling.
When she sees the flash in the corner of her eye, she tries not to look. It’s persistent though. Maybe this time…
She looks.
Jack looks back from where he’s just taken a seat by the door. He smiles faintly, brown eyes glittering.
She smiles back. Finally fast enough.
~end~