The Art of Reincarnation (Sam/Jack) R
For the sjficathon, and it's a little weird, okay?
The Art of Reincarnation
by surrealphantast
Recipient: rowan_d! YAY! :)
Pairing: Sam/Jack (obviously)
Category: Uber-angst. (Well, I'm writing for the Angst Queen!)
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: S4 (The Other Side/ The Light/ Divide and Conquer/ Beneath the Surface), drug-addiction, sort of. Non-graphic sexual situations.
Summary: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.
Prompt: Story Request 1: Sam is having trouble dealing with something
traumatic that happened on a mission (canon or invented; Fifth torture,
Jolinar flashbacks, etc., author's choice), and Jack is noticing and
watching her and trying to be there for the fall. Angsty UST or angsty
romance, whatever works.:)
Story Request 2: Sam fainting and Jack catching her, nightmares in a
tent offworld, and/or Jack trying to keep Sam warm when she's really really
really cold and maybe scared. Again, angsty UST or angsty romance, either
way.:)
A/N- Thanks to my beta peeps, katcorvi and shutthef_up!
++
Her skin is smooth and too-white under the padded rags they wear as clothing. She doesn’t do heavy work, so her belly is still clean, such a contrast to the soot that streaks her neck and darkens her hair. He hates that his own dirty fingers are leaving smudged prints behind, marring that smooth surface.
But he wants her so badly. In the darkness of the mines he’d had no one… had he? No, he’s sure of it. He remembers feeling alone and crushed with sadness. And then she’d come along, and his world had had purpose again.
She doesn’t seem to mind his dirty hands or the bristle of hair on his jaw; her hands slide under his oil-smeared shirt and run warmly up his spine. Her fingers curl into his shoulders, and he leans down, pressing his mouth to hers. The clunk and hiss of the pneumatic machinery is loud in this small, enclosed space, but it’s not loud enough to drown out her moan. It makes his whole body tighten and shift. Her thigh is between his legs, pressing up with care and side to side with small movements. It draws a sound from him that he’s almost embarrassed to hear.
He’s burying his face against her neck, licking at her skin, breathing her in. “Thera…” he gasps, pleading.
And he’s pulled away.
Jack woke with a start, eyes opening in the darkness in confusion. It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t in the mines or the refinery. His skin was clear of soot, his lungs taking in clean air. He stared at the cathedral ceiling of the bedroom, and at the stained glass window set high into the wall. The Goa’uld were nothing if not flamboyant.
Little bits of his dream settled down around him, and he sank back into the cushions of his bed, letting out a long, slow breath. Six months and still the dreams wouldn’t let him go. He wondered if Carter had the same problem. If she woke expecting to see him there beside her, or if she ever woke on the edge of orgasm, his name filling her mouth.
In the silence of the palace’s living quarters he heard a soft sound. He froze, all senses straining toward that one, familiar voice. He knew what it was, but felt obligated to restrain himself, wait for confirmation.
Down the hall, Sam whimpered in her sleep.
He waited; sometimes she woke herself and he didn’t need to do anything. But this time she didn’t. Instead her sounds of fear and distress grew louder, more prolonged, and he slipped quickly out of bed, pressing a passing hand down firmly into his crotch to shift his rapidly quieting desire.
Her room was at the head of the hallway, and when he hesitated in the doorway she was writhing under her sheet. Her fingers were curling into fists and relaxing again, her legs shifting, her head arching back. She was grimacing, and those brief sounds of distress were rising in her throat.
He walked quickly forward and put a knee up on the bed. “Carter!”
She didn’t wake at first, and he braced himself before calling again. He knew bad dreams. He knew the care he should take when waking a soldier…
“Carter!” He shook her shoulder.
She sucked in a breath as she came violently out of the dream. Her eyes jerked open, and her gaze shifted to him, even as her body was reacting: hands coming toward him, her legs coming up. He fell sideways heavily onto her legs and grabbed her hands, a bit slow with sleep and uncoordinated. She struggled briefly. “Carter, it’s me. You were dreaming again!”
She was breathing hard, body tense, and he moved into her line of vision, trying to get her to see him. She did, finally, and she went limp beneath him, eyes widening in recognition and then closing in relief and resignation. “Damn it.”
He eased his weight off of her and let her wrists go, but he didn’t move from the bed. “You okay?”
She was staring at her own stained glass window, and she nodded, mutely, jaw strangely tight, eyes blinking rapidly.
“Carter?” He asked, softly. Her name had always been a language all its own to him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, carefully not looking at him.
He watched his own hand reaching out to touch her, and then…
“What’s wrong?” The voice from the doorway was young and concerned.
Jack glanced back at the teenager standing in the darkness. “Nothing, Loren. Sam just had a bad dream.”
“Is she okay?” The boy chewed worriedly at his lip. Behind him in the shadows, a shirtless Daniel appeared, hair ruffled from his pillow, eyes battling sleep.
“Yeah,” Jack answered. “She’s okay. Go back to bed.”
“Sam has a lot of bad dreams,” Loren said.
“I’m okay, Loren,” Sam said, a little hoarsely, and Loren stared at her anxiously.
Jack met Daniel’s gaze over the top of Loren’s head. Daniel gave him the same worried look that Loren was sporting. Jack simply gave him a nod, and Daniel put a hand on Loren’s shoulder. “Come on, Loren. Go back to bed. Sam will be fine.”
Jack watched as Daniel steered Loren back into the hallway, and then he glanced back at Carter. “Bad one?” he asked, winding his hand into her blanket so it wouldn’t end up on her shoulder, her hip… in her hair.
“Bynarr,” she answered, quietly.
“Mmm,” he grunted, wondering what memories of the hell-bound Goa’uld she had that the rest of them didn’t. And then deciding he didn’t really want to know. “You want one of the sleeping pills the Doc sent along?”
She shook her head. “If I’m going to go that route, I’ll have to take them every night. It’s hard enough trying to detox from the Goa’uld radiation, I don’t want to add depressants to the mix.”
The detox was hitting her harder than it was the rest of them, and neither she nor Janet seemed to know exactly why. Their three weeks were nearly up, and while Daniel and Loren both seemed fine, he and Sam had lagged behind. At least his dreams were of…other stuff. Sam’s seemed to be more nightmarish and violent.
He stared down at her, considering. Sleeping pills could be highly addictive, and while they knew the addiction gene ran in Jack’s family, Sam hadn’t been sure about hers, although it seemed more and more likely as the machine was turned down in increments and she continued to suffer withdrawals worse than the others. “All right,” he said, and he reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Daniel and Loren seem to be doing pretty well. I might send them home tomorrow if it’s okay with the Doc.”
Sam glanced at him and nodded. “Okay.” She studied him with shadowed eyes. “You don’t have to stay with me either, sir. You could go. I’d be okay-“
Jack cut her off, irritated. “Not on your life, Carter.” He took a breath. “Besides, I’m not feeling so hot. Not as good as Daniel does anyway.”
She simply nodded and said nothing, but her gaze met his and held.
He watched her for a while, wanting… what? For her to tell him that she was fine? That she dreamt about the mines too, and about Jonah? That she woke in the night aching for him?
That she wanted him to stay with her, on this planet, in this bed, and curl up behind her and pull her close?
That she wanted what he wanted.
++
“I don’t have to go,” Daniel said, a troubled look worrying his brow. “There are still several carvings outside of the palace that I’d like to study. I could stay…”
Jack shook his head, setting down the last pack they’d made of Loren’s belongings. “Loren is going to need you. Besides, we’ve turned the machine nearly all the way down now, and Carter’s feeling worse than ever. We’re going to have to dial it back up again and take her down slower. If you stay, your recovery will just move backwards.”
Daniel hesitated, but Jack knew he’d been there every night, listening as Sam had cried out in her sleep. He knew she was having a tough time. Jack knew he wanted to stay, but that he’d agree to go. Convincing the Doc had been slightly more difficult.
“We came down too fast,” he’d told her this morning over the MALP’s video conferencing radio. “Daniel and Loren seem fine, but Carter needs to go back up. She won’t tell me how she’s feeling, but I can see it.”
“Sir, you seem fine too. I could send Teal’c back to take care of her, the radiation doesn’t affect him.”
“No,” Jack had stated, rather vehemently, and then he’d simply stared into the camera.
Janet had stared back, and then had seemed to sag a little. He knew what she was assuming; she’d been in the observation room nearly a year ago when he’d been forced into his confession. ”I care about her, a lot more than I’m supposed to.” He let her assume.
“Okay,” she’d finally agreed. “I’ll have more supplies prepared for you both.”
Carter sat on one of the hard-shelled equipment cases going back with Daniel in the middle of the palace’s gate room. She looked tired and she was quiet as Daniel dialed Earth. Jack felt a twinge of fear as he watched her. It came and went, but it was no stranger. What if the radiation affected women differently than men? What if it was a lot worse? What if… He imagined Daniel on that ledge again, moments away from letting his fingers slip, ready for that brief moment of flight before plummeting down to the pavement. It sent a chill through his blood.
She embraced Daniel tightly, pressing her face against his sweater, and Jack looked away.
“I don’t want to leave you, Jack.” Loren faced him with apprehension written all over his face. “Will I see you soon?”
“You’ll be okay.” Jack forced a smile for the boy. “Daniel will take care of you, and you’ll get to see Teal’c again. They’re taking you for ice cream, remember?”
Loren gave a nervous smile. “I do want to see Teal’c again.”
“Sam and I will be there in a week or two.” Jack reached out and grasped the kid’s shoulder warmly. Loren ducked his head a bit, and met his gaze uneasily. Jack softened even more. “This isn’t your fault, Loren. We’ll be fine.”
Daniel took the boy through the gate, along with half of their gear, and Jack walked over to sit next to Sam as they waited for Teal’c to re-dial and come through with their supplemented supplies. “When Teal’c leaves, I want you to turn that thing back up to where it was this time last week, okay? Or until you feel better.”
He thought she’d argue, but she only glanced at him and then nodded wearily. He never thought he’d miss her excited, non-stop techno-babble so much…
++
He had a feeling that she didn’t turn it up quite as much as he’d asked her to, but it was enough to make him feel a heady sense of euphoria the whole evening. The small aches and pains he’d been having vanished, and his mood lightened considerably. Even Sam seemed more chipper, and treated him to a few grins over dinner. He tried to convince himself it was his brilliant sense of humor that coaxed the smiles from her, and not the hot pizza that Teal’c had brought through the gate, packed carefully into an insulated, battery-operated sleeve.
He’d asked for beer, but, unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been any in the supplies. Instead he’d found the supply list printed out on paper with the request for Heineken carefully crossed out. Nice try, Colonel. was written next to it in Janet’s small, neat script. D’oh.
She’d also left a new list of biological tests they needed to do on themselves and send back through the gate. Mostly the collection of blood and other bodily fluids. He never thought he’d miss Janet and her needles, but when faced with the prospect of sticking a needle in his own arm, or letting Sam do it… Ouch. Most of the tests centered around Sam though, and he had a feeling that Janet at least suspected that he’d been stretching the truth about his own slow recovery. He didn’t care. There was no way he was leaving Sam with anyone else during this time.
“I have to admit, the one thing I never thought I’d see was a Goa’uld opium den.” Sam gave him a wry smile as she cleared the pizza box away.
Jack returned the smile; glad she seemed more like herself. “You haven’t seen half the weird shit Daniel found in the basement yet.”
Sam hesitated. “Do I even want to know?”
Jack grimaced. “Not unless you’re into Goa’uld pornography.”
“Ugh!” Sam winced, but there was laughter in her eyes. “Drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll.”
“In a really, really warped sort of way.”
“Do you suppose the altered chemistry only affects the host, and the Goa’uld experience it that way, or does the energy actually affect the symbiote itself?”
“Carter! Stop it.”
“Sorry, sir.” But she gave him another grin that made the bottom drop out of his stomach.
As night fell and rain started to fall, they sat just outside the door of the palace, close enough to still receive their steady dose of energy, and watched the storms roll in, one after another, over the huge fresh-water ocean. They cut a powerful picture, with the lightning flickering against the clouds and flashing in jagged streaks down to the planet, or back up again. The water roiled beneath it, dark as pitch, only visible in patches or as a shiny shadow. It smelled fresh and clean, and the wind blew cool against their skin.
And maybe that, along with the buzzing alien radiation in his head, made him a bit foolish. When Sam mentioned the cold and folded her arms closely about herself, running her hands briskly up her arms, he didn’t think of going in to get her jacket. Instead, he slid closer to her on the wide palace steps, and she turned her head to look at him in the darkness. He realized what he’d done and only sat there, looking back, knowing his guard was down and she’d see everything if only she looked hard enough.
His normal instincts were so messed up lately.
She said nothing and slid the remaining inches toward him until her hip was pressed against his thigh, and her shoulder was slotted in under his. He braced his arm behind her, not quite allowing himself to make it an embrace, but he took her weight and gave her warmth.
He felt such a sense of deja-vu then, of a moment of respite in a quiet corner where the monotony of his life was broken by a heart-stopping smile and the tickle of soft hair against his neck as a head rested on his shoulder. On Jonah’s shoulder, he thought resignedly. And yet that closed-off place inside of him that had opened so wide in the mines hadn’t completely shut down yet.
“When I was rescued from Iraq, I spent a month in a military hospital in Germany. They pumped us full of painkillers and sleeping pills. By the time we were shipped home to America, most of the guys who were rescued with me were addicted to something.” He glanced down at her profile in the lightning.
She stared out at the dark water. “Which one was it for you?”
He paused, knowing he hadn’t mentioned anything about himself, but that she’d picked up on it anyway. “The sleeping pills,” he confessed. “I wasn’t as bad off as most of the others. I caught myself early. Well, Sarah caught me early, and I never quite got enough momentum going to really do myself in. Of course, later on, when she was gone…”
Sam said nothing, but she seemed to lean into him a little bit more. It made his heart speed up.
It was hard to focus on the conversation and not on her closeness, and he knew without a doubt that he was in deeper than he’d ever been, both professionally and personally.
When they stood to go inside, his head swam and he swayed on his feet as the world tilted. Sam grabbed him around the waist, and he felt the palace wall against his back, steadying him. “Whoa, I feel drunk!” he proclaimed. “How much higher did you turn that damn thing?”
Her smile came into focus. She was very close. “Not that much,” she said. “I’m still feeling withdrawal, although it’s better. Maybe if you hadn’t lied to Janet about your recovery…”
He felt a stab of guilt, and surprise, and his head cleared as he stared down at her. She lifted her brows into that long-suffering expression she had that she seemed to reserve just for him. It made him feel warm. “I wasn’t going to leave you here alone, Carter. And I was a little insulted that you thought I would.”
“I know,” she murmured, starting to pull away from him. They really were so close. “It would have been better if you’d gone home and just let Teal’c come back though.”
He caught her as she stepped back, hands around her waist. “Carter.”
She gave him a brief, heated look that was filled with regret, and then she slipped from his arms and went back inside.
He sat back down on the palace steps and watched the rain until the clouds cleared and a big, bright moon came out. He wasn’t quite sure how much of his trouble was the alien energy and how much was just him, to be honest. He hadn’t felt quite right ever since they’d come out of the mines, new memories of a second life freshly imprinted on the pages of their minds. The others had seemed to reconcile the false life with their real one, but he’d had more difficulty.
And still he struggled.
When he went inside, the palace was silent, and he hesitated in Carter’s doorway, watching her still form under the sheets. He could tell she wasn’t sleeping but she didn’t turn to speak to him, and so he said nothing and walked to his own room in the darkness.
Sleep, when it came, was filled with the whine of pneumatic pistons, the hiss of steam, the heat of a coal fire; and the cool, smooth skin of Thera as she stretched out beside him on his cot and let him wind his arms around her until they were braided together like leather rope, and he could feel her heartbeat in every breath.
++
The days went by slowly. After that first wave of thick euphoria, when his addiction raced back to him, he became less aware of the high and went back into withdrawal as Sam tinkered with the machine. His back ached and melancholy settled over him like a hot, muggy summer’s day.
Sam sank further than he did, and he watched her like a hawk, trying to figure out how she worked the machine. She was frustrated by her slow recovery, and he suspected she was trying to leap ahead and take on more than she should rather than let the slow increments work on her with time.
“I know what I’m doing, sir,” she snapped at him one day as he leaned over her shoulder watching her work.
“It takes time, Carter. Let it work for Christ’s sake!”
“It’s working too slowly!”
“You can’t hurry this,” he snapped back, grabbing her hand as she tried to turn the energy level down by 2 increments. “I know.”
She yanked her hand from his grasp and stalked away, sullenly. He let her go. The first rule of addiction was to never trust a junkie, but then who else did they have? Both of them were addicted.
He watched from the palace steps as she walked out onto the long, sandy shore. More often than not the skies were cloudy here, the days cold. She walked along the water’s edge, wrapped in a gray sweater, blond hair and pale skin looking washed out against the concrete sky and silver waves. She sat on the remnants of an old retaining wall, and he watched her narrow back from a distance, wondering what was going on in her head.
He’d had an eventful life, longer than he had any right to expect. He’d done things other people couldn’t imagine, both good and bad. He’d known love and hate both, and both so blindingly that he’d nearly self-destructed. He’d seen more in the past four years than most people would ever see in their lifetimes.
And he’d never met a woman like Sam before. With that exact same brilliance, that same boldness, that same fucked up little girl inside that made him want to hide her away and protect her from all harm, and at the same time keep her at his side everywhere he went. Nothing worth having was easy or free, but Carter was in a class of her own.
It had been so freeing when they’d been Thera and Jonah, and their lives had consisted of survival from dawn to dusk. In the closed, dark, subterranean confines of the refinery it had been impossible to tell night from day. They’d worked by the whistle, lining up for food, for showers, for work assignments. And it’d been hard, but… he’d had a strange sort of happiness. He hadn’t been burdened by his past; by Charlie or Sarah or his rank, not even by those damn distasteful things that blackened his memories. He’d worked and slept and had a purpose in life, and in all those little moments of the day when he’d glimpsed a blond head, or his gaze had been met with blue eyes that filled with warmth and recognition, he’d felt… lighter.
Their identities, their real pasts, had been returned to them, but it didn’t remove the new memories from their minds. Jonah still lurked there, passively, being slowly absorbed into Jack’s core, and Jack still remembered how it had felt to have Thera look his way or lay her head on his shoulder. How in the lack of emotional baggage and absence of regulations, he’d sank to his knees in front of her and laid his adoration at her feet. And she’d embraced it, and him.
He wasn’t quite sure how to come back from that…
++
The dull headaches returned. They scratched at the inside of his skull, signaling full-on withdrawal, and his mood sank.
Sam sank further.
He was beginning to question whether it might be wiser to call Hammond and have him send Teal’c back to watch over them both. Except, that night…
”Thera…” His own voice sounds dreamy and hollow. Her fingers are sliding along his bare hip, and he can barely breathe. She’s pressing up against him, stretching out over him, and the coal fire behind them keeps wavering, shimmering in its heat, orange and yellow; then it changes, and suddenly a pool of water glimmers blue and white and gray, cool to the touch and oddly dry.
“Jonah.” She lays a cool hand against his cheek. “Jack.”
He blinks at her, stares into her blue eyes, wonders who Jack is…
“Sir?”
Jack stared up at her shadowed face above his bed. “Thera,” he mumbled, coming awake with regret as the dream faded.
Her brow furrowed. “No, sir,” she said, gently. “I’m Sam.”
He hesitated, feeling for a moment as if his mind were in two places at once. It was disorienting and overwhelming. “Sorry.”
She sank down next to his bed on her knees and studied him with somber eyes. “You were dreaming about the mines?”
He levered himself up onto his elbows and met her gaze. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She tilted her head in a quick, dismissive shrug. “I still dream about it sometimes too. Probably always will.”
The admission made his chest ache. Not alone. He was not alone. His gaze traced the contour of her face in the stained-glass moonlight as she lowered her chin and stared down at her hands on his sheet. “Carter,” he said, voice rough from sleep. “What’s wrong?”
She shrugged again, and her head dipped lower. The ache in his chest took on a decidedly different tone. “Sam,” he whispered.
“It’s not worth it anymore,” she whispered back.
The breath caught in his lungs, and his throat got tight. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“All of this.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “All of the times we put the Earth in danger. All the times we played judge and jury-“her gaze dropped from his”-and executioner. It’s all wrong.”
He flashed briefly to that day on the ramp, as she stood there before him staring daggers into his soul while Alar chased them through the gate and hit the iris, dead on Jack’s command.
“It’s not wrong, Carter. We’re trying to save ourselves, make things better.”
She rested her elbows on the mattress and then lowered her forehead into her hands, hiding her eyes from him. “Even you’re out of reach…” Her voice barely rose above the whisper, but there was a bitterness to the tone.
“Carter,” he said, voice softening. “This is just the withdrawal, the altered brain chemistry Janet was talking about. This isn’t you.”
She was silent for a moment, and then, “Four years of blowing up planets and killing Jaffa…”
She was starting to scare him. He kept seeing Daniel on that ledge, voice so full of anguish that Jack had barely been able to stand it. ”None of it means anything.”
He reached out before he even realized what he was doing, and wrapped his fingers gently around one of her wrists. “Sam… you’re killing me.” He heard the ache in his own voice.
She seemed to catch her breath, and then he pulled her hand slowly away from her face. She looked at him with wet, anguished eyes. “Are you Jack or Jonah?” she whispered.
“C’mere,” he said, and he tightened his grip on her wrist. She didn’t even bat an eyelash. She simply crawled into his bed beside him and let him pull the sheet up around her. He moved slowly, and fit himself against her back, pressing his lips against her hair and wrapping his arms around her waist. “I don’t know,” he answered her question honestly.
“It was easier when you were Jonah,” she said, and he felt a knifepoint of pain twist somewhere deep.
He didn’t sleep. Sam’s silent desolation eventually gave way to the long, heavy breaths of slumber, but he stayed in a surreal state of consciousness, unaware of time passing, but aware of each move she made as she shifted and sighed against him. It was like giving in to the addiction again, knowing it could ruin him and yet still throwing his arms wide and welcoming it inside. Welcoming Sam inside… like Jonah had welcomed Thera.
His life in the mines had been a life without armor. He’d peeled it away, not knowing in his imprinted mind why it protected him. Putting it back on again had been disheartening.
Sam shifted again and mumbled in her sleep, a small sound of distress. He whispered in her ear and smoothed the hair at her temple, and she quieted. When he finally slept, it was with the uneasy dreams of a man who had something to lose.
++
The next day was blurry, and he didn’t ask for Teal’c to return.
Carter tinkered with the machine, and cotton filled Jack’s head. He started a book he had no interest in, and then spent his day sleeping or watching Carter as she slipped into her own world. Sometimes when he looked he only saw Thera, back bent over the steam-valves, neck curved gently, making him worry. He said her name, and then it was always Carter looking back, brows furrowed in confusion. “I’m Sam, sir.”
Right.
It was hard to focus and tell the difference, even when he dialed home for their daily check-in with General Hammond.
“Are you okay, son?” Hammond’s eyes narrowed perceptively. “You look a little ragged around the edges, Jack.”
“Fine, sir. Just tired. Carter turned the machine down another increment today.”
Hammond accepted that. “By our calculations you should both be home in a few days now.”
A few days? Huh. Jack had no idea if that was true or not. “Okay,” he said.
“We’ll be ready, sir.” Sam appeared at his side, and he watched as she signed off with Hammond and ended the transmission. Behind her a pipe shimmered and broke and sprayed steam into the air. He heard the other workers yelling in confusion and alarm. The voices came from all around them.
”It is an honor to serve.”
“Thera,” he said again, staring at the steam.
She glanced at him. “You’re Jack, not Jonah, sir.”
He shook his head, and the broken pipe vanished. “What did you do?” he whispered.
She took his arm, held him up. “Turned it off,” she said. “We’re so close now… Better to just get it over with.”
He wanted to argue, but the anger wouldn’t come. For weeks he’d been made of anger, and now it was just relief. He pulled her into an embrace, and then the evening became a rippling dream.
She curled up in his bed again, hands slipping beneath his T-shirt onto his bare back, and he shivered without his armor. He tried to resist the warmth of her mouth, but that had never been a fight he was going to win, and eventually he spread his arms wide for her. She had Thera’s skin, cool and smooth, and his felt on fire in contrast. She held him tight as he slid inside of her, and he felt lost and found at the same time. When she moaned Jonah’s name against his chest, he came with dizzying force.
He turned to sleep and she pressed against his back, mouthing soundless words against his skin.
++
When he woke, the room was filled with daylight, and his mind snapped into painful focus.
For a moment he was confused and uneasy, and then he recognized the palace, the stained glass window, the familiar smell of an ancient sea. He turned, and Sam was gone from the bed. He laid there in silence, remembering, wondering if it had been real or a dream.
He still had shorts on, and a T-shirt. Each moment his mind cleared a little more, his senses sharpening. There was nothing left of the alien radiation in his body, and his brain chemistry had corrected itself enough to bring him out the other side okay. The reality of the dream faded with the morning.
He found her sitting on the sparse beach, arms wrapped around her knees, the too-large, gray woolen sweater keeping her warm. He thought he remembered Daniel wearing it once or twice. He eased down beside her in the sand and they watched the cold, iron water lap at the shore.
“I feel better today,” she said, quietly.
“Me too,” he replied, and then added, “Sam.”
She smiled just a bit and dug a heel into the sand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made us go cold turkey like that, but we were so close anyway, and I was so tired of it…”
He heaved a slow sigh and rested his knee against hers. “I guess we can head home now.”
She hesitated, and he watched the pale strands of her hair blowing against her cheek. She glanced at him. “I guess so.”
“It’ll get better,” he stated. “It’s tough right now, but it’ll get better.”
She turned her head to stare at him, and he felt locked into her gaze. “I know,” she murmured. “Today’s the first day of the rest of our lives, right?”
He quirked a small smile, and she looked away. They fell silent. He couldn’t find any more words of encouragement in his heart. He’d been this way before.
The need eventually melted away, but the craving never would.
~end~
The Art of Reincarnation
by surrealphantast
Recipient: rowan_d! YAY! :)
Pairing: Sam/Jack (obviously)
Category: Uber-angst. (Well, I'm writing for the Angst Queen!)
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: S4 (The Other Side/ The Light/ Divide and Conquer/ Beneath the Surface), drug-addiction, sort of. Non-graphic sexual situations.
Summary: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.
Prompt: Story Request 1: Sam is having trouble dealing with something
traumatic that happened on a mission (canon or invented; Fifth torture,
Jolinar flashbacks, etc., author's choice), and Jack is noticing and
watching her and trying to be there for the fall. Angsty UST or angsty
romance, whatever works.:)
Story Request 2: Sam fainting and Jack catching her, nightmares in a
tent offworld, and/or Jack trying to keep Sam warm when she's really really
really cold and maybe scared. Again, angsty UST or angsty romance, either
way.:)
A/N- Thanks to my beta peeps, katcorvi and shutthef_up!
++
Her skin is smooth and too-white under the padded rags they wear as clothing. She doesn’t do heavy work, so her belly is still clean, such a contrast to the soot that streaks her neck and darkens her hair. He hates that his own dirty fingers are leaving smudged prints behind, marring that smooth surface.
But he wants her so badly. In the darkness of the mines he’d had no one… had he? No, he’s sure of it. He remembers feeling alone and crushed with sadness. And then she’d come along, and his world had had purpose again.
She doesn’t seem to mind his dirty hands or the bristle of hair on his jaw; her hands slide under his oil-smeared shirt and run warmly up his spine. Her fingers curl into his shoulders, and he leans down, pressing his mouth to hers. The clunk and hiss of the pneumatic machinery is loud in this small, enclosed space, but it’s not loud enough to drown out her moan. It makes his whole body tighten and shift. Her thigh is between his legs, pressing up with care and side to side with small movements. It draws a sound from him that he’s almost embarrassed to hear.
He’s burying his face against her neck, licking at her skin, breathing her in. “Thera…” he gasps, pleading.
And he’s pulled away.
Jack woke with a start, eyes opening in the darkness in confusion. It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t in the mines or the refinery. His skin was clear of soot, his lungs taking in clean air. He stared at the cathedral ceiling of the bedroom, and at the stained glass window set high into the wall. The Goa’uld were nothing if not flamboyant.
Little bits of his dream settled down around him, and he sank back into the cushions of his bed, letting out a long, slow breath. Six months and still the dreams wouldn’t let him go. He wondered if Carter had the same problem. If she woke expecting to see him there beside her, or if she ever woke on the edge of orgasm, his name filling her mouth.
In the silence of the palace’s living quarters he heard a soft sound. He froze, all senses straining toward that one, familiar voice. He knew what it was, but felt obligated to restrain himself, wait for confirmation.
Down the hall, Sam whimpered in her sleep.
He waited; sometimes she woke herself and he didn’t need to do anything. But this time she didn’t. Instead her sounds of fear and distress grew louder, more prolonged, and he slipped quickly out of bed, pressing a passing hand down firmly into his crotch to shift his rapidly quieting desire.
Her room was at the head of the hallway, and when he hesitated in the doorway she was writhing under her sheet. Her fingers were curling into fists and relaxing again, her legs shifting, her head arching back. She was grimacing, and those brief sounds of distress were rising in her throat.
He walked quickly forward and put a knee up on the bed. “Carter!”
She didn’t wake at first, and he braced himself before calling again. He knew bad dreams. He knew the care he should take when waking a soldier…
“Carter!” He shook her shoulder.
She sucked in a breath as she came violently out of the dream. Her eyes jerked open, and her gaze shifted to him, even as her body was reacting: hands coming toward him, her legs coming up. He fell sideways heavily onto her legs and grabbed her hands, a bit slow with sleep and uncoordinated. She struggled briefly. “Carter, it’s me. You were dreaming again!”
She was breathing hard, body tense, and he moved into her line of vision, trying to get her to see him. She did, finally, and she went limp beneath him, eyes widening in recognition and then closing in relief and resignation. “Damn it.”
He eased his weight off of her and let her wrists go, but he didn’t move from the bed. “You okay?”
She was staring at her own stained glass window, and she nodded, mutely, jaw strangely tight, eyes blinking rapidly.
“Carter?” He asked, softly. Her name had always been a language all its own to him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, carefully not looking at him.
He watched his own hand reaching out to touch her, and then…
“What’s wrong?” The voice from the doorway was young and concerned.
Jack glanced back at the teenager standing in the darkness. “Nothing, Loren. Sam just had a bad dream.”
“Is she okay?” The boy chewed worriedly at his lip. Behind him in the shadows, a shirtless Daniel appeared, hair ruffled from his pillow, eyes battling sleep.
“Yeah,” Jack answered. “She’s okay. Go back to bed.”
“Sam has a lot of bad dreams,” Loren said.
“I’m okay, Loren,” Sam said, a little hoarsely, and Loren stared at her anxiously.
Jack met Daniel’s gaze over the top of Loren’s head. Daniel gave him the same worried look that Loren was sporting. Jack simply gave him a nod, and Daniel put a hand on Loren’s shoulder. “Come on, Loren. Go back to bed. Sam will be fine.”
Jack watched as Daniel steered Loren back into the hallway, and then he glanced back at Carter. “Bad one?” he asked, winding his hand into her blanket so it wouldn’t end up on her shoulder, her hip… in her hair.
“Bynarr,” she answered, quietly.
“Mmm,” he grunted, wondering what memories of the hell-bound Goa’uld she had that the rest of them didn’t. And then deciding he didn’t really want to know. “You want one of the sleeping pills the Doc sent along?”
She shook her head. “If I’m going to go that route, I’ll have to take them every night. It’s hard enough trying to detox from the Goa’uld radiation, I don’t want to add depressants to the mix.”
The detox was hitting her harder than it was the rest of them, and neither she nor Janet seemed to know exactly why. Their three weeks were nearly up, and while Daniel and Loren both seemed fine, he and Sam had lagged behind. At least his dreams were of…other stuff. Sam’s seemed to be more nightmarish and violent.
He stared down at her, considering. Sleeping pills could be highly addictive, and while they knew the addiction gene ran in Jack’s family, Sam hadn’t been sure about hers, although it seemed more and more likely as the machine was turned down in increments and she continued to suffer withdrawals worse than the others. “All right,” he said, and he reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Daniel and Loren seem to be doing pretty well. I might send them home tomorrow if it’s okay with the Doc.”
Sam glanced at him and nodded. “Okay.” She studied him with shadowed eyes. “You don’t have to stay with me either, sir. You could go. I’d be okay-“
Jack cut her off, irritated. “Not on your life, Carter.” He took a breath. “Besides, I’m not feeling so hot. Not as good as Daniel does anyway.”
She simply nodded and said nothing, but her gaze met his and held.
He watched her for a while, wanting… what? For her to tell him that she was fine? That she dreamt about the mines too, and about Jonah? That she woke in the night aching for him?
That she wanted him to stay with her, on this planet, in this bed, and curl up behind her and pull her close?
That she wanted what he wanted.
++
“I don’t have to go,” Daniel said, a troubled look worrying his brow. “There are still several carvings outside of the palace that I’d like to study. I could stay…”
Jack shook his head, setting down the last pack they’d made of Loren’s belongings. “Loren is going to need you. Besides, we’ve turned the machine nearly all the way down now, and Carter’s feeling worse than ever. We’re going to have to dial it back up again and take her down slower. If you stay, your recovery will just move backwards.”
Daniel hesitated, but Jack knew he’d been there every night, listening as Sam had cried out in her sleep. He knew she was having a tough time. Jack knew he wanted to stay, but that he’d agree to go. Convincing the Doc had been slightly more difficult.
“We came down too fast,” he’d told her this morning over the MALP’s video conferencing radio. “Daniel and Loren seem fine, but Carter needs to go back up. She won’t tell me how she’s feeling, but I can see it.”
“Sir, you seem fine too. I could send Teal’c back to take care of her, the radiation doesn’t affect him.”
“No,” Jack had stated, rather vehemently, and then he’d simply stared into the camera.
Janet had stared back, and then had seemed to sag a little. He knew what she was assuming; she’d been in the observation room nearly a year ago when he’d been forced into his confession. ”I care about her, a lot more than I’m supposed to.” He let her assume.
“Okay,” she’d finally agreed. “I’ll have more supplies prepared for you both.”
Carter sat on one of the hard-shelled equipment cases going back with Daniel in the middle of the palace’s gate room. She looked tired and she was quiet as Daniel dialed Earth. Jack felt a twinge of fear as he watched her. It came and went, but it was no stranger. What if the radiation affected women differently than men? What if it was a lot worse? What if… He imagined Daniel on that ledge again, moments away from letting his fingers slip, ready for that brief moment of flight before plummeting down to the pavement. It sent a chill through his blood.
She embraced Daniel tightly, pressing her face against his sweater, and Jack looked away.
“I don’t want to leave you, Jack.” Loren faced him with apprehension written all over his face. “Will I see you soon?”
“You’ll be okay.” Jack forced a smile for the boy. “Daniel will take care of you, and you’ll get to see Teal’c again. They’re taking you for ice cream, remember?”
Loren gave a nervous smile. “I do want to see Teal’c again.”
“Sam and I will be there in a week or two.” Jack reached out and grasped the kid’s shoulder warmly. Loren ducked his head a bit, and met his gaze uneasily. Jack softened even more. “This isn’t your fault, Loren. We’ll be fine.”
Daniel took the boy through the gate, along with half of their gear, and Jack walked over to sit next to Sam as they waited for Teal’c to re-dial and come through with their supplemented supplies. “When Teal’c leaves, I want you to turn that thing back up to where it was this time last week, okay? Or until you feel better.”
He thought she’d argue, but she only glanced at him and then nodded wearily. He never thought he’d miss her excited, non-stop techno-babble so much…
++
He had a feeling that she didn’t turn it up quite as much as he’d asked her to, but it was enough to make him feel a heady sense of euphoria the whole evening. The small aches and pains he’d been having vanished, and his mood lightened considerably. Even Sam seemed more chipper, and treated him to a few grins over dinner. He tried to convince himself it was his brilliant sense of humor that coaxed the smiles from her, and not the hot pizza that Teal’c had brought through the gate, packed carefully into an insulated, battery-operated sleeve.
He’d asked for beer, but, unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been any in the supplies. Instead he’d found the supply list printed out on paper with the request for Heineken carefully crossed out. Nice try, Colonel. was written next to it in Janet’s small, neat script. D’oh.
She’d also left a new list of biological tests they needed to do on themselves and send back through the gate. Mostly the collection of blood and other bodily fluids. He never thought he’d miss Janet and her needles, but when faced with the prospect of sticking a needle in his own arm, or letting Sam do it… Ouch. Most of the tests centered around Sam though, and he had a feeling that Janet at least suspected that he’d been stretching the truth about his own slow recovery. He didn’t care. There was no way he was leaving Sam with anyone else during this time.
“I have to admit, the one thing I never thought I’d see was a Goa’uld opium den.” Sam gave him a wry smile as she cleared the pizza box away.
Jack returned the smile; glad she seemed more like herself. “You haven’t seen half the weird shit Daniel found in the basement yet.”
Sam hesitated. “Do I even want to know?”
Jack grimaced. “Not unless you’re into Goa’uld pornography.”
“Ugh!” Sam winced, but there was laughter in her eyes. “Drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll.”
“In a really, really warped sort of way.”
“Do you suppose the altered chemistry only affects the host, and the Goa’uld experience it that way, or does the energy actually affect the symbiote itself?”
“Carter! Stop it.”
“Sorry, sir.” But she gave him another grin that made the bottom drop out of his stomach.
As night fell and rain started to fall, they sat just outside the door of the palace, close enough to still receive their steady dose of energy, and watched the storms roll in, one after another, over the huge fresh-water ocean. They cut a powerful picture, with the lightning flickering against the clouds and flashing in jagged streaks down to the planet, or back up again. The water roiled beneath it, dark as pitch, only visible in patches or as a shiny shadow. It smelled fresh and clean, and the wind blew cool against their skin.
And maybe that, along with the buzzing alien radiation in his head, made him a bit foolish. When Sam mentioned the cold and folded her arms closely about herself, running her hands briskly up her arms, he didn’t think of going in to get her jacket. Instead, he slid closer to her on the wide palace steps, and she turned her head to look at him in the darkness. He realized what he’d done and only sat there, looking back, knowing his guard was down and she’d see everything if only she looked hard enough.
His normal instincts were so messed up lately.
She said nothing and slid the remaining inches toward him until her hip was pressed against his thigh, and her shoulder was slotted in under his. He braced his arm behind her, not quite allowing himself to make it an embrace, but he took her weight and gave her warmth.
He felt such a sense of deja-vu then, of a moment of respite in a quiet corner where the monotony of his life was broken by a heart-stopping smile and the tickle of soft hair against his neck as a head rested on his shoulder. On Jonah’s shoulder, he thought resignedly. And yet that closed-off place inside of him that had opened so wide in the mines hadn’t completely shut down yet.
“When I was rescued from Iraq, I spent a month in a military hospital in Germany. They pumped us full of painkillers and sleeping pills. By the time we were shipped home to America, most of the guys who were rescued with me were addicted to something.” He glanced down at her profile in the lightning.
She stared out at the dark water. “Which one was it for you?”
He paused, knowing he hadn’t mentioned anything about himself, but that she’d picked up on it anyway. “The sleeping pills,” he confessed. “I wasn’t as bad off as most of the others. I caught myself early. Well, Sarah caught me early, and I never quite got enough momentum going to really do myself in. Of course, later on, when she was gone…”
Sam said nothing, but she seemed to lean into him a little bit more. It made his heart speed up.
It was hard to focus on the conversation and not on her closeness, and he knew without a doubt that he was in deeper than he’d ever been, both professionally and personally.
When they stood to go inside, his head swam and he swayed on his feet as the world tilted. Sam grabbed him around the waist, and he felt the palace wall against his back, steadying him. “Whoa, I feel drunk!” he proclaimed. “How much higher did you turn that damn thing?”
Her smile came into focus. She was very close. “Not that much,” she said. “I’m still feeling withdrawal, although it’s better. Maybe if you hadn’t lied to Janet about your recovery…”
He felt a stab of guilt, and surprise, and his head cleared as he stared down at her. She lifted her brows into that long-suffering expression she had that she seemed to reserve just for him. It made him feel warm. “I wasn’t going to leave you here alone, Carter. And I was a little insulted that you thought I would.”
“I know,” she murmured, starting to pull away from him. They really were so close. “It would have been better if you’d gone home and just let Teal’c come back though.”
He caught her as she stepped back, hands around her waist. “Carter.”
She gave him a brief, heated look that was filled with regret, and then she slipped from his arms and went back inside.
He sat back down on the palace steps and watched the rain until the clouds cleared and a big, bright moon came out. He wasn’t quite sure how much of his trouble was the alien energy and how much was just him, to be honest. He hadn’t felt quite right ever since they’d come out of the mines, new memories of a second life freshly imprinted on the pages of their minds. The others had seemed to reconcile the false life with their real one, but he’d had more difficulty.
And still he struggled.
When he went inside, the palace was silent, and he hesitated in Carter’s doorway, watching her still form under the sheets. He could tell she wasn’t sleeping but she didn’t turn to speak to him, and so he said nothing and walked to his own room in the darkness.
Sleep, when it came, was filled with the whine of pneumatic pistons, the hiss of steam, the heat of a coal fire; and the cool, smooth skin of Thera as she stretched out beside him on his cot and let him wind his arms around her until they were braided together like leather rope, and he could feel her heartbeat in every breath.
++
The days went by slowly. After that first wave of thick euphoria, when his addiction raced back to him, he became less aware of the high and went back into withdrawal as Sam tinkered with the machine. His back ached and melancholy settled over him like a hot, muggy summer’s day.
Sam sank further than he did, and he watched her like a hawk, trying to figure out how she worked the machine. She was frustrated by her slow recovery, and he suspected she was trying to leap ahead and take on more than she should rather than let the slow increments work on her with time.
“I know what I’m doing, sir,” she snapped at him one day as he leaned over her shoulder watching her work.
“It takes time, Carter. Let it work for Christ’s sake!”
“It’s working too slowly!”
“You can’t hurry this,” he snapped back, grabbing her hand as she tried to turn the energy level down by 2 increments. “I know.”
She yanked her hand from his grasp and stalked away, sullenly. He let her go. The first rule of addiction was to never trust a junkie, but then who else did they have? Both of them were addicted.
He watched from the palace steps as she walked out onto the long, sandy shore. More often than not the skies were cloudy here, the days cold. She walked along the water’s edge, wrapped in a gray sweater, blond hair and pale skin looking washed out against the concrete sky and silver waves. She sat on the remnants of an old retaining wall, and he watched her narrow back from a distance, wondering what was going on in her head.
He’d had an eventful life, longer than he had any right to expect. He’d done things other people couldn’t imagine, both good and bad. He’d known love and hate both, and both so blindingly that he’d nearly self-destructed. He’d seen more in the past four years than most people would ever see in their lifetimes.
And he’d never met a woman like Sam before. With that exact same brilliance, that same boldness, that same fucked up little girl inside that made him want to hide her away and protect her from all harm, and at the same time keep her at his side everywhere he went. Nothing worth having was easy or free, but Carter was in a class of her own.
It had been so freeing when they’d been Thera and Jonah, and their lives had consisted of survival from dawn to dusk. In the closed, dark, subterranean confines of the refinery it had been impossible to tell night from day. They’d worked by the whistle, lining up for food, for showers, for work assignments. And it’d been hard, but… he’d had a strange sort of happiness. He hadn’t been burdened by his past; by Charlie or Sarah or his rank, not even by those damn distasteful things that blackened his memories. He’d worked and slept and had a purpose in life, and in all those little moments of the day when he’d glimpsed a blond head, or his gaze had been met with blue eyes that filled with warmth and recognition, he’d felt… lighter.
Their identities, their real pasts, had been returned to them, but it didn’t remove the new memories from their minds. Jonah still lurked there, passively, being slowly absorbed into Jack’s core, and Jack still remembered how it had felt to have Thera look his way or lay her head on his shoulder. How in the lack of emotional baggage and absence of regulations, he’d sank to his knees in front of her and laid his adoration at her feet. And she’d embraced it, and him.
He wasn’t quite sure how to come back from that…
++
The dull headaches returned. They scratched at the inside of his skull, signaling full-on withdrawal, and his mood sank.
Sam sank further.
He was beginning to question whether it might be wiser to call Hammond and have him send Teal’c back to watch over them both. Except, that night…
”Thera…” His own voice sounds dreamy and hollow. Her fingers are sliding along his bare hip, and he can barely breathe. She’s pressing up against him, stretching out over him, and the coal fire behind them keeps wavering, shimmering in its heat, orange and yellow; then it changes, and suddenly a pool of water glimmers blue and white and gray, cool to the touch and oddly dry.
“Jonah.” She lays a cool hand against his cheek. “Jack.”
He blinks at her, stares into her blue eyes, wonders who Jack is…
“Sir?”
Jack stared up at her shadowed face above his bed. “Thera,” he mumbled, coming awake with regret as the dream faded.
Her brow furrowed. “No, sir,” she said, gently. “I’m Sam.”
He hesitated, feeling for a moment as if his mind were in two places at once. It was disorienting and overwhelming. “Sorry.”
She sank down next to his bed on her knees and studied him with somber eyes. “You were dreaming about the mines?”
He levered himself up onto his elbows and met her gaze. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She tilted her head in a quick, dismissive shrug. “I still dream about it sometimes too. Probably always will.”
The admission made his chest ache. Not alone. He was not alone. His gaze traced the contour of her face in the stained-glass moonlight as she lowered her chin and stared down at her hands on his sheet. “Carter,” he said, voice rough from sleep. “What’s wrong?”
She shrugged again, and her head dipped lower. The ache in his chest took on a decidedly different tone. “Sam,” he whispered.
“It’s not worth it anymore,” she whispered back.
The breath caught in his lungs, and his throat got tight. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“All of this.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “All of the times we put the Earth in danger. All the times we played judge and jury-“her gaze dropped from his”-and executioner. It’s all wrong.”
He flashed briefly to that day on the ramp, as she stood there before him staring daggers into his soul while Alar chased them through the gate and hit the iris, dead on Jack’s command.
“It’s not wrong, Carter. We’re trying to save ourselves, make things better.”
She rested her elbows on the mattress and then lowered her forehead into her hands, hiding her eyes from him. “Even you’re out of reach…” Her voice barely rose above the whisper, but there was a bitterness to the tone.
“Carter,” he said, voice softening. “This is just the withdrawal, the altered brain chemistry Janet was talking about. This isn’t you.”
She was silent for a moment, and then, “Four years of blowing up planets and killing Jaffa…”
She was starting to scare him. He kept seeing Daniel on that ledge, voice so full of anguish that Jack had barely been able to stand it. ”None of it means anything.”
He reached out before he even realized what he was doing, and wrapped his fingers gently around one of her wrists. “Sam… you’re killing me.” He heard the ache in his own voice.
She seemed to catch her breath, and then he pulled her hand slowly away from her face. She looked at him with wet, anguished eyes. “Are you Jack or Jonah?” she whispered.
“C’mere,” he said, and he tightened his grip on her wrist. She didn’t even bat an eyelash. She simply crawled into his bed beside him and let him pull the sheet up around her. He moved slowly, and fit himself against her back, pressing his lips against her hair and wrapping his arms around her waist. “I don’t know,” he answered her question honestly.
“It was easier when you were Jonah,” she said, and he felt a knifepoint of pain twist somewhere deep.
He didn’t sleep. Sam’s silent desolation eventually gave way to the long, heavy breaths of slumber, but he stayed in a surreal state of consciousness, unaware of time passing, but aware of each move she made as she shifted and sighed against him. It was like giving in to the addiction again, knowing it could ruin him and yet still throwing his arms wide and welcoming it inside. Welcoming Sam inside… like Jonah had welcomed Thera.
His life in the mines had been a life without armor. He’d peeled it away, not knowing in his imprinted mind why it protected him. Putting it back on again had been disheartening.
Sam shifted again and mumbled in her sleep, a small sound of distress. He whispered in her ear and smoothed the hair at her temple, and she quieted. When he finally slept, it was with the uneasy dreams of a man who had something to lose.
++
The next day was blurry, and he didn’t ask for Teal’c to return.
Carter tinkered with the machine, and cotton filled Jack’s head. He started a book he had no interest in, and then spent his day sleeping or watching Carter as she slipped into her own world. Sometimes when he looked he only saw Thera, back bent over the steam-valves, neck curved gently, making him worry. He said her name, and then it was always Carter looking back, brows furrowed in confusion. “I’m Sam, sir.”
Right.
It was hard to focus and tell the difference, even when he dialed home for their daily check-in with General Hammond.
“Are you okay, son?” Hammond’s eyes narrowed perceptively. “You look a little ragged around the edges, Jack.”
“Fine, sir. Just tired. Carter turned the machine down another increment today.”
Hammond accepted that. “By our calculations you should both be home in a few days now.”
A few days? Huh. Jack had no idea if that was true or not. “Okay,” he said.
“We’ll be ready, sir.” Sam appeared at his side, and he watched as she signed off with Hammond and ended the transmission. Behind her a pipe shimmered and broke and sprayed steam into the air. He heard the other workers yelling in confusion and alarm. The voices came from all around them.
”It is an honor to serve.”
“Thera,” he said again, staring at the steam.
She glanced at him. “You’re Jack, not Jonah, sir.”
He shook his head, and the broken pipe vanished. “What did you do?” he whispered.
She took his arm, held him up. “Turned it off,” she said. “We’re so close now… Better to just get it over with.”
He wanted to argue, but the anger wouldn’t come. For weeks he’d been made of anger, and now it was just relief. He pulled her into an embrace, and then the evening became a rippling dream.
She curled up in his bed again, hands slipping beneath his T-shirt onto his bare back, and he shivered without his armor. He tried to resist the warmth of her mouth, but that had never been a fight he was going to win, and eventually he spread his arms wide for her. She had Thera’s skin, cool and smooth, and his felt on fire in contrast. She held him tight as he slid inside of her, and he felt lost and found at the same time. When she moaned Jonah’s name against his chest, he came with dizzying force.
He turned to sleep and she pressed against his back, mouthing soundless words against his skin.
++
When he woke, the room was filled with daylight, and his mind snapped into painful focus.
For a moment he was confused and uneasy, and then he recognized the palace, the stained glass window, the familiar smell of an ancient sea. He turned, and Sam was gone from the bed. He laid there in silence, remembering, wondering if it had been real or a dream.
He still had shorts on, and a T-shirt. Each moment his mind cleared a little more, his senses sharpening. There was nothing left of the alien radiation in his body, and his brain chemistry had corrected itself enough to bring him out the other side okay. The reality of the dream faded with the morning.
He found her sitting on the sparse beach, arms wrapped around her knees, the too-large, gray woolen sweater keeping her warm. He thought he remembered Daniel wearing it once or twice. He eased down beside her in the sand and they watched the cold, iron water lap at the shore.
“I feel better today,” she said, quietly.
“Me too,” he replied, and then added, “Sam.”
She smiled just a bit and dug a heel into the sand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made us go cold turkey like that, but we were so close anyway, and I was so tired of it…”
He heaved a slow sigh and rested his knee against hers. “I guess we can head home now.”
She hesitated, and he watched the pale strands of her hair blowing against her cheek. She glanced at him. “I guess so.”
“It’ll get better,” he stated. “It’s tough right now, but it’ll get better.”
She turned her head to stare at him, and he felt locked into her gaze. “I know,” she murmured. “Today’s the first day of the rest of our lives, right?”
He quirked a small smile, and she looked away. They fell silent. He couldn’t find any more words of encouragement in his heart. He’d been this way before.
The need eventually melted away, but the craving never would.
~end~