Fic: 'Rusted Wheel' (Sam/Jack) Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Day Eleven
Like most bullies, Tess doesn’t do her own dirty work. There are women of much more uneven tempers and greater physical skill who will get there much faster on their own with just the right encouragement. Sam knows to watch her back from the moment she hands over the shards of glass carefully wrapped up in a piece of cloth.
“Clumsy, are you?” Tess says, something like pity in her eye. “The owner won’t be happy.”
“Seven years bad luck,” Sam says with a careless shrug. There’s nothing she can do to fix it now.
Tess smiles. “Oh, you have no idea.”
It’s the one loophole in this entire system. The men can’t fight, and it’s assumed the women won’t. That it isn’t inherently part of their nature. Just like the women won’t run.
But even the women can be pushed too far.
Sam doesn’t even realize how much she is spoiling for a fight until they come for her. There are three of them, so they get a few good shots in on her here and there, but Sam is more than a match for them. She has the benefit of two important things on her side-an even temper and the best hand to hand training the Air Force has to offer.
She has two of them on the ground and the third well on their way when Tess finally steps in to stop it.
“That’s enough,” she says, looking at Sam with something close to admiration. “I think she got the message.”
For the first time in days, Sam smiles, really smiles, feeling the pull on her bruised face. Someone certainly got a message, but Sam doesn’t think that’s her. She lets go of the third woman and she scurries back into the crowd.
By the doorway, two guards are grumbling at the end of the fight, money exchanging hands over the outcome.
“Show’s over!” Hattie shouts. “Get back to work!”
Sam ignores Hattie. She decides she’s earned a bit of a break. And even if she hasn’t, who’s going to stop her?
Young Beth darts forward, her eyes wide. She surprises Sam by holding out a cold cloth. “For your face,” she says, and Sam can see it, the awe and gratitude in her young face. Sam wonders if she’s the first person to keep her word, to stick up for Beth in her short, rough life.
“Thank you,” Sam says, taking the cloth and pressing it to her cheek.
As she walks out the laundry, the women silently step aside to let her pass. For the first time since setting foot here, she doesn’t feel the need to watch her back as she goes.
She’d almost forgotten what it feels like not to be a victim.
She doesn’t plan on forgetting again.
* * *
Sam has the beginnings of a black eye when the wagons pull in that evening. If it had been anyone else, someone a little less able to protect themselves, she thinks it could have been much worse.
All she knows is that Beth would have paid a hell of a lot more in her place.
Jack steps up next to her, his eyes on her bruised face. “Carter, what happened?”
“You should see the other girls,” she quips.
“Carter,” he says, touching her arm, but somewhere raised voices break out, easily filtering through the cloth walls. He sighs. “Let’s get out of here.”
She follows him outside, walking away from the bunkhouse until the sounds fade to gentle background noise. At the edge of the stream he stops, turning to look at her.
“Your back,” he says. “That’s why they’ve all been staring at me like I’m a monster. Why the men won’t meet my eye.”
“Yes,” she says.
They’re pariahs, both of them. The men here, for all their backwards thinking, are still innately programmed with a sense of chivalry, as some might call it, an instinct to protect their own. This whole skewed system wouldn’t work otherwise.
“And this?” he says, his fingers stopping just short of touching her cheek.
“For the broken mirror,” she admits.
He swears under his breath, turning back to look at the stream. “I’m sorry, Carter. I’m not dealing with this particularly well am I?”
“It’s okay, sir. I understand.” Neither of them have been dealing with this very well.
He’s trapped here in more ways than one, and right on the tail of an unwelcome blending with a Tok’ra? She gets it. He shouldn’t even be here. They all fooled themselves that Jack O’Neill can handle anything, even weeks of torture and painful withdrawal. Each of them had been too willing to accept his front.
But out here? Having to deal with this impossible situation? Someone, no matter how unwilling, digging into his mind, stealing his thoughts? He’s falling apart, no matter how much he’s trying to hide it, even from himself.
“God,” Jack says, looking over at her. “You probably actually do understand.”
It’s not a relief for him though. It scares him. She tries not to think too hard about why.
* * *
“Because I will find the answers. Even if I have to *dig* them out.”
Sam slaps her hands over her ears as the sinister, symphonic voice fills her mind. It doesn’t help though, because it’s coming from the inside, echoing outwards.
The connection is getting louder. She doesn’t know if that is Jack making it worse by trying so hard to hide things from her, or if it’s her, if she’s just getting more receptive. Weaker.
The long, quiet night hours of watch are no longer the safe haven they had once been because she sees it all now. Feels it all. The nightmares that chase him every night without fail. It’s too much. She can’t just sit and watch, wait to see if he might actually accept her meager attempt at comfort just this once.
In his sleep, he twitches against the remembered horror and Sam gets to her feet, shoving through the canvas door cover, stumbling out into the cool night air. The temperature plummets dangerously here at night, but not even the bitter bite against her cheeks is enough to shake the memories that chase her.
He lied. Lied to all of them.
Everyone at the SGC knew that what happened to Jack in Baal’s fortress must have been bad, but even in her darkest imaginings Sam couldn’t have come up with something as twisted as the truth, a truth Jack so carefully hid from all of them. The horror of physical pain that is easily outstripped by the psychological game Baal played on him-the careful, seductive pull of the sarcophagus, the incessant splintering of everything Jack could lay claim to in himself as good, as human.
All for answers Jack didn’t have, and one tender secret that never should have been his to keep.
She understands so much better now the flicker of distaste in Yu’s flat eyes at the mere mention of Baal’s name, an evil even something as twisted as Yu couldn’t stomach. She understands the edge of fear in the Tok’ra’s gestures when they said rescuing Jack from Baal would be impossible.
He is far beyond our reach.
They knew. They all knew what Baal was capable of, what Jack would have to endure.
Sam slides down the rough wall of the building, sits there and listens to the ache of Jack’s troubled sleep, acid and knives and bright white light. She draws her knees tight up into her chest, hands pressed over her lips, trying not to make the slightest sound when all she wants to do is scream, “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
But the images don’t end, just morph into new horrors, longer days dragging on, the penetrating certainty that no one is coming, that this will never end. She’s gently rocking now, back and forth, back and forth, refusing to acknowledge the bile burning the back of her throat.
“Carter.”
She starts violently at Jack’s voice, no longer in her mind, but ringing in her ears. She doesn’t know how he’s managed to sneak up on her. She must have missed the dream ending, his shift towards consciousness, too lost in what she’s seen to notice.
He steps out of the darkness of the doorway, into the meager light of the moons.
Hastily pushing back up to her feet, Sam swipes at the moisture on her cheeks, trying to slow her breathing, anything to hide the fact that she knows now. Knows his secrets. Not just supposition and echoing hints anymore, but tangible truths in the harsh Technicolor of memory burned forever into his mind. And hers.
She can feel the knife now, just like he can. Over and over and over again.
She wants to rub at her chest, dig out the aching spots where the scars should be, scars he doesn’t have. Nothing but phantoms.
“You know,” he says, his voice hollow. It isn’t really a question.
She doesn’t want to. God, she doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, trying to bite back her horror, not wanting to add the weight of hers to his already unbearable load.
She feels his reaction, the tightening of his gut at being caught out with these particular memories, the resigned understanding that he can’t keep anything from her, the impotent anger that his privacy is being so relentlessly violated, and by her of all people. ‘Fuck,’ she hears ring clearly in her mind.
She turns away from him, her nails digging painfully into her palms.
“It’s my fault,” she says, her ever-present companion guilt rising unexpectedly, far too quickly for her to remember the lies she’s supposed to cling to, the things she should never admit, no matter what. “Everything he did to you is my fault.”
Everything hiccups for a second, a wave of disorientation through her brain like a clumsy shifting of gears and she knows that despite everything, Jack hadn’t expected her to be that blunt, to remind them both of how the whole mess started in the first place.
Over my dead body.
“No,” he denies just a moment too late. The damage is already done, his thoughts betraying him. She can see her own face leaning down over him. Sir, please.
She swallows hard against the tightness in her throat. “It’s okay to blame me,” she says, willing herself numb. Untouchable. “I understood why you wanted nothing to do with me when you came back.”
Something shifts, something she can’t quite put her finger on. She hears him take a step back as if considering leaving, but distance isn’t a choice they have anymore.
He’s struggling, only it’s not the dreams he’s trying to hide. There’s no point. He’s desperately trying to hold on to his anger, and it’s only now as it begins to crack that she finally understands. The anger is real, but she sees now the way he’s been consciously feeding it, keeping it bright and harsh and dangerous and never far from the surface. It’s a front, a buffer, an impenetrable façade meant to keep her from seeing anything else, a performance he’s been holding this whole time just for her benefit. He’s been trying to protect her just as much as she has him.
But the anger just isn’t enough to hide it anymore.
“You only do this for her,” Kanan observes, digging ruthlessly into Jack’s subconscious, spreading in and taking over every tiny corner, no matter how heavily guarded. “Even though you abhor our blending and would rather die…you do this for her.”
Jack struggles, fighting the intrusion but he’s far too weak to hold Kanan off. Goddamn snake.
“You must care for her a great deal.”
And he can’t hide it, not from either of them.
The memory catches Sam off guard, soft and confessional in a sea of bad experiences. She puts out a hand to the building to steady herself.
Turning, she looks up into Jack’s gaze where he stands frozen in the doorway as if caught out mid-retreat. He doesn’t flinch though, doesn’t turn away, even though he has to know she’s heard it. Felt it.
Not breaking eye contact, she steps towards him until she’s standing in front of him. Way too close, but she can’t bring herself to care. Her fingers unerringly lift to the spot just to the right of his heart, the location of the first knife. The first of many. She presses her palm down on the spot, feeling the warmth of his skin through the worn shirt. She sways slightly, her forehead brushing his chin.
Jack reaches for her arm, holding her steady. “Carter,” he says, barely a breath, a warning, a plea.
She closes her eyes, feels the warmth of his thoughts flutter across her skin, affection and familiarity and yearning all closely tangled together. It’s such an abrupt shift from the dark, haunted thoughts that she feels a bit light-headed.
“You know why I asked you to do it,” she says. “You have to know that I--.”
His hand clenches on her arm. “Don’t,” he says, voice hoarse.
It’s too loud now though, far too real, and she can’t ignore it any more than she can ignore the feel of him under her fingers. Doesn’t want to ignore it. She slides her hand up to his neck, skimming her thumb along his jaw and she can feel every nuance of sensation from both sides, knows exactly how she’s affecting him. It’s heady.
He needs this contact just as much as she does-the dreams, this captivity, all of it has left him shaken, teetering. She thinks that’s what gives her the nerve to do it, this certainty that erases every doubt that has ever held her back, every feeble excuse she’s erected between them. She lifts her chin that last fraction of an inch and her lips have finally found his.
There’s a beat of hesitation on his part, but she can feel what’s underneath and it’s enough. She shifts closer, pressing her advantage and then he’s kissing her back, his hands on her arms pulling her closer. She stumbles, her senses seared by the overflow of information.
He backs her against the wall, his hand carefully cradling the back of her head and she’s surrounded by him, the heat of his body, the thrum of his thoughts, the swell of desire-all of it threatening to suck her down, drown her. She welcomes it, this chance to stop fighting and struggling and pretending and just let it all go for once. Finally.
Her hands find his hips, pulling him tight against her, the kiss deepening, sparked by desperation and driven by need. It’s a blur of sensation and contact.
Jack’s mouth is warm as he works his way down her neck and she lets out a shuddering breath of appreciation. Her fingers find the hem of his shirt, tugging it free. She’s finally splayed her hands across his stomach when Jack’s fingers tighten to the point of pain on her shoulders. It takes her a moment to register his taut stillness, the fact that he’s stopped completely. His breath is heavy near her neck.
“Jack,” she says, her hands sliding up the back of his shirt, drawing him closer. Encouraging.
Don’t stop.
His hands find her arms, firmly pulling her hands free from his shirt as he steps away from her.
“What is it?” she asks, flinching against the intrusion of cool night air between them.
He’s staring at her neck.
She takes a step towards him. “You want this,” she says, not understanding this abrupt switch. She can feel the desire still there, tangled with her own. She knows he wants this.
His laugh is slightly ragged, and there’s the anger again, grating like sandpaper against her sensitized skin. “It’s not like I can deny it, can I?” he says, one finger sliding along the edge of her collar.
She sucks in an unsteady breath at the touch, her mind still swamped with lingering echoes of him, battling with this new sharp edge. “I don’t…” She swallows, trying to fight the dizziness. “I don’t understand.”
“The collar,” he says, and she doesn’t get this regret he’s emanating. The look he gives her is tempered with affection, but doesn’t mask his utter certainty. “This isn’t you.”
She feels a chill rise across her skin, those words effectively clearing the haze from her mind. “What?”
“This isn’t you,” he repeats, letting go of her.
She moves back a step, leaning against the rough wood of the building, welcoming the press of hard angles into her flesh. Solid, concrete. She shakes her head. “That’s not true.”
“You would never…,” he trails off, awkward, but earnest. “We both know that, Carter.”
It isn’t the nagging possibility that the collar could be influencing her that she finds so horrifying in this moment, but rather the complete certainty she finds when she lets herself examine his thoughts. She can see it perfectly, the vision he has of her, the fact that he’s never really let himself believe that she feels the same for him, as much.
Cold and distant. Isn’t that how it’s been between them for months now?
The collar is the only explanation he can fathom. He thinks she’s unduly influenced by his thoughts. That he somehow pushed her to this. Made her do it. He honestly doesn’t think this is her, that she would ever do something like this. Doesn’t know that she was weak enough to imagine a moment like this long before someone slapped a collar on her neck.
This isn’t you.
God.
She lifts a hand to her mouth, lips still warm with the taste of him.
“Carter,” Jack says-cautious, worried, like he doesn’t know what to expect from her anymore. Like she’s a stranger.
This isn’t you.
She closes her eyes. This would all be so much easier to handle without his thoughts bleeding into her mind, his concern and doubts twining so intimately with her certainty, undercutting any argument she could ever make for why he’s wrong.
Is he?
Shaking her head, she pushes off the wall, moving back towards the door to the dormitory.
“Hey,” he says, reaching out to stop her.
“I’m fine,” she insists, her voice thin as she pulls against his grip on her arm. This isn’t a fit of pique; it’s surrender. Can’t he see that?
His hand doesn’t leave her arm though. She stares at it there, still fighting the lingering urge to turn back into his touch. She just can’t think straight with him so close, not right now. She shakes her head, horrified to feel the press of tears. “I’m just…”
“What?” he asks, his voice soft with earnestness. Carter, talk to me.
She tries to smile, to brazen through this, but all the empty gesture does is squeeze out a tear from the corner of her eye. She turns her face away from him, batting at the mortifying drop of water.
“I’m just really tired,” she manages to say.
At best, it’s a half-truth.
Jack isn’t fooled. “Sam,” he says, and God does it hurt, this cautious, painful opening he’s offering her despite his vision of her actions, despite the fact that he’s already had more than enough secrets stolen from him tonight.
It’s all jumbling and growing in her mind, the torture, the helplessness, the need, all of it hers and his and everything in between. She presses a hand to her forehead. “Do you think we could just...not do this right now?”
His hand drops from her arm, but doesn’t erase the worry he’s emanating. “Sure. Of course.” He’s scared that if he pushes, she’s going to break.
She not sure he’s wrong.
“I’m going back inside now,” she says, carefully not looking at him, concentrating on getting one foot in front of the other.
He doesn’t follow.
* * *
Jack gives her a few solid hours of space, and by the time he finally follows her inside she’s still sleepless, sitting against the back wall, staring unseeing into the darkness.
“It hasn’t gone away, has it?” he says.
She feels her heart stutter, too jarred by the statement to remember to play possum. “What?”
“The headache,” he clarifies, the weight of his stare boring into her.
She breathes out, feeling her heart rate settle. “No, it hasn’t,” she admits.
There’s a soft shuffle of sound from the other side of the cell. She imagines he’s picked something up, is toying with it in his fingers. “It must get…noisy.”
She knows she should make some crack about his brain not being that complex, but it’s beyond her at the moment. She’s still got Baal’s voice circling in her mind. It will be far worse next time. Her fingers dig into her shins.
“It’s not that bad,” she lies, desperate for him to believe it.
After a moment she feels his eyes leave her. She lets out breath.
She feels the air shift, can feel the change in pressure as he sits down next to her. Near, but not touching. Just like always. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
They fall into silence. She doesn’t know how long they’re sitting there before she finally notices the image hovering quietly at the back of her mind. She feels tension draining out of her shoulders, a dense quiet filling the room. The soothing sound of water lapping against a wood dock is quietly blotting out everything else.
A surprised huff escapes Sam’s throat when she finally realizes exactly what that image is, where it’s coming from. “Is that supposed to be soothing?” she asks.
There’s a scruff of sound, his foot against the worn floorboards. “It’s the most zen thing I know,” he admits, something warm and wry and seductively comfortable lacing his tone. She gladly lets herself get lured in by it.
“Don’t you mean boring?” she shoots back because this, of all things, is at least familiar. Easy.
He’s scowling now, having his precious fishing so disparaged. “I never wanted to say anything, but Teal’c is a giant fibber. It’s a really unattractive quality in a Jaffa.”
Sam laughs, feeling the way it settles everything, makes breathing just a little bit easier. “When we get out of here, I’m telling him you said that.”
“Tattle tale,” Jack accuses, bumping her arm with his elbow.
It’s the easiest conversation they’ve had in months, if not longer, and that’s just as counter-intuitive and surprising as everything else between them.
She shifts, her hand sneaking into the crook of his arm, her fingers latching on to this lifeline he’s offering. “Thank you,” she says.
“For what?” he asks in his best clueless tone, but his fingers brush hers in quiet acknowledgment. Anything.
She knows this is the entire purpose of his act-proof that despite everything that happens between them or doesn’t, this still works. They haven’t broken anything.
“Think you can sleep?” he asks. It should be enough, the quiet, simple memory and this ease back in place between them.
She lowers her head to his shoulder, focusing in on the image in his mind. It’s beautiful, calm and worn soft with the weight of memory, but also something else right underneath. Something like…possibility.
Nothing with Jack is ever unintentional.
You must care about her a great deal.
“Jack?” she asks. She doesn’t know when he became Jack exactly, just knows that being inside his head renders it impossible to think of him as ‘the Colonel’, no matter how much safer it might be.
“Yeah?” he asks, his body stiffening slightly.
She doesn’t want to ruin this ease they’ve recovered, knows dragging this back up is probably a bad idea. Still, she can’t stand to leave it unspoken. She lets out a long breath. “You should know…you’re wrong.”
“About?”
She looks up at him. “Me.”
Maybe he can’t discount the collar’s influence, maybe she can’t either, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s been teetering towards this for a long time.
He’s staring back at her with something like fear, and she reaches out without thinking, her fingers brushing along his jaw.
She feels it, the painful echo of hope and stubborn refusal rising simultaneously in his chest in the face of her touch, but it’s quickly subsumed by that much more benign sun-sparkled water and the soft hum of an old childhood ditty.
She doesn’t press, pulling her hand back, lowering her cheek down to his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she allows the soothing cadence of his thoughts to lull her towards slumber. She feels it though, the moment before she drops off, the soft press of his face against the top of her head, the gentle thought behind it.
I wish I could believe that.
Chapter Five
Day Eleven
Like most bullies, Tess doesn’t do her own dirty work. There are women of much more uneven tempers and greater physical skill who will get there much faster on their own with just the right encouragement. Sam knows to watch her back from the moment she hands over the shards of glass carefully wrapped up in a piece of cloth.
“Clumsy, are you?” Tess says, something like pity in her eye. “The owner won’t be happy.”
“Seven years bad luck,” Sam says with a careless shrug. There’s nothing she can do to fix it now.
Tess smiles. “Oh, you have no idea.”
It’s the one loophole in this entire system. The men can’t fight, and it’s assumed the women won’t. That it isn’t inherently part of their nature. Just like the women won’t run.
But even the women can be pushed too far.
Sam doesn’t even realize how much she is spoiling for a fight until they come for her. There are three of them, so they get a few good shots in on her here and there, but Sam is more than a match for them. She has the benefit of two important things on her side-an even temper and the best hand to hand training the Air Force has to offer.
She has two of them on the ground and the third well on their way when Tess finally steps in to stop it.
“That’s enough,” she says, looking at Sam with something close to admiration. “I think she got the message.”
For the first time in days, Sam smiles, really smiles, feeling the pull on her bruised face. Someone certainly got a message, but Sam doesn’t think that’s her. She lets go of the third woman and she scurries back into the crowd.
By the doorway, two guards are grumbling at the end of the fight, money exchanging hands over the outcome.
“Show’s over!” Hattie shouts. “Get back to work!”
Sam ignores Hattie. She decides she’s earned a bit of a break. And even if she hasn’t, who’s going to stop her?
Young Beth darts forward, her eyes wide. She surprises Sam by holding out a cold cloth. “For your face,” she says, and Sam can see it, the awe and gratitude in her young face. Sam wonders if she’s the first person to keep her word, to stick up for Beth in her short, rough life.
“Thank you,” Sam says, taking the cloth and pressing it to her cheek.
As she walks out the laundry, the women silently step aside to let her pass. For the first time since setting foot here, she doesn’t feel the need to watch her back as she goes.
She’d almost forgotten what it feels like not to be a victim.
She doesn’t plan on forgetting again.
* * *
Sam has the beginnings of a black eye when the wagons pull in that evening. If it had been anyone else, someone a little less able to protect themselves, she thinks it could have been much worse.
All she knows is that Beth would have paid a hell of a lot more in her place.
Jack steps up next to her, his eyes on her bruised face. “Carter, what happened?”
“You should see the other girls,” she quips.
“Carter,” he says, touching her arm, but somewhere raised voices break out, easily filtering through the cloth walls. He sighs. “Let’s get out of here.”
She follows him outside, walking away from the bunkhouse until the sounds fade to gentle background noise. At the edge of the stream he stops, turning to look at her.
“Your back,” he says. “That’s why they’ve all been staring at me like I’m a monster. Why the men won’t meet my eye.”
“Yes,” she says.
They’re pariahs, both of them. The men here, for all their backwards thinking, are still innately programmed with a sense of chivalry, as some might call it, an instinct to protect their own. This whole skewed system wouldn’t work otherwise.
“And this?” he says, his fingers stopping just short of touching her cheek.
“For the broken mirror,” she admits.
He swears under his breath, turning back to look at the stream. “I’m sorry, Carter. I’m not dealing with this particularly well am I?”
“It’s okay, sir. I understand.” Neither of them have been dealing with this very well.
He’s trapped here in more ways than one, and right on the tail of an unwelcome blending with a Tok’ra? She gets it. He shouldn’t even be here. They all fooled themselves that Jack O’Neill can handle anything, even weeks of torture and painful withdrawal. Each of them had been too willing to accept his front.
But out here? Having to deal with this impossible situation? Someone, no matter how unwilling, digging into his mind, stealing his thoughts? He’s falling apart, no matter how much he’s trying to hide it, even from himself.
“God,” Jack says, looking over at her. “You probably actually do understand.”
It’s not a relief for him though. It scares him. She tries not to think too hard about why.
* * *
“Because I will find the answers. Even if I have to *dig* them out.”
Sam slaps her hands over her ears as the sinister, symphonic voice fills her mind. It doesn’t help though, because it’s coming from the inside, echoing outwards.
The connection is getting louder. She doesn’t know if that is Jack making it worse by trying so hard to hide things from her, or if it’s her, if she’s just getting more receptive. Weaker.
The long, quiet night hours of watch are no longer the safe haven they had once been because she sees it all now. Feels it all. The nightmares that chase him every night without fail. It’s too much. She can’t just sit and watch, wait to see if he might actually accept her meager attempt at comfort just this once.
In his sleep, he twitches against the remembered horror and Sam gets to her feet, shoving through the canvas door cover, stumbling out into the cool night air. The temperature plummets dangerously here at night, but not even the bitter bite against her cheeks is enough to shake the memories that chase her.
He lied. Lied to all of them.
Everyone at the SGC knew that what happened to Jack in Baal’s fortress must have been bad, but even in her darkest imaginings Sam couldn’t have come up with something as twisted as the truth, a truth Jack so carefully hid from all of them. The horror of physical pain that is easily outstripped by the psychological game Baal played on him-the careful, seductive pull of the sarcophagus, the incessant splintering of everything Jack could lay claim to in himself as good, as human.
All for answers Jack didn’t have, and one tender secret that never should have been his to keep.
She understands so much better now the flicker of distaste in Yu’s flat eyes at the mere mention of Baal’s name, an evil even something as twisted as Yu couldn’t stomach. She understands the edge of fear in the Tok’ra’s gestures when they said rescuing Jack from Baal would be impossible.
He is far beyond our reach.
They knew. They all knew what Baal was capable of, what Jack would have to endure.
Sam slides down the rough wall of the building, sits there and listens to the ache of Jack’s troubled sleep, acid and knives and bright white light. She draws her knees tight up into her chest, hands pressed over her lips, trying not to make the slightest sound when all she wants to do is scream, “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
But the images don’t end, just morph into new horrors, longer days dragging on, the penetrating certainty that no one is coming, that this will never end. She’s gently rocking now, back and forth, back and forth, refusing to acknowledge the bile burning the back of her throat.
“Carter.”
She starts violently at Jack’s voice, no longer in her mind, but ringing in her ears. She doesn’t know how he’s managed to sneak up on her. She must have missed the dream ending, his shift towards consciousness, too lost in what she’s seen to notice.
He steps out of the darkness of the doorway, into the meager light of the moons.
Hastily pushing back up to her feet, Sam swipes at the moisture on her cheeks, trying to slow her breathing, anything to hide the fact that she knows now. Knows his secrets. Not just supposition and echoing hints anymore, but tangible truths in the harsh Technicolor of memory burned forever into his mind. And hers.
She can feel the knife now, just like he can. Over and over and over again.
She wants to rub at her chest, dig out the aching spots where the scars should be, scars he doesn’t have. Nothing but phantoms.
“You know,” he says, his voice hollow. It isn’t really a question.
She doesn’t want to. God, she doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, trying to bite back her horror, not wanting to add the weight of hers to his already unbearable load.
She feels his reaction, the tightening of his gut at being caught out with these particular memories, the resigned understanding that he can’t keep anything from her, the impotent anger that his privacy is being so relentlessly violated, and by her of all people. ‘Fuck,’ she hears ring clearly in her mind.
She turns away from him, her nails digging painfully into her palms.
“It’s my fault,” she says, her ever-present companion guilt rising unexpectedly, far too quickly for her to remember the lies she’s supposed to cling to, the things she should never admit, no matter what. “Everything he did to you is my fault.”
Everything hiccups for a second, a wave of disorientation through her brain like a clumsy shifting of gears and she knows that despite everything, Jack hadn’t expected her to be that blunt, to remind them both of how the whole mess started in the first place.
Over my dead body.
“No,” he denies just a moment too late. The damage is already done, his thoughts betraying him. She can see her own face leaning down over him. Sir, please.
She swallows hard against the tightness in her throat. “It’s okay to blame me,” she says, willing herself numb. Untouchable. “I understood why you wanted nothing to do with me when you came back.”
Something shifts, something she can’t quite put her finger on. She hears him take a step back as if considering leaving, but distance isn’t a choice they have anymore.
He’s struggling, only it’s not the dreams he’s trying to hide. There’s no point. He’s desperately trying to hold on to his anger, and it’s only now as it begins to crack that she finally understands. The anger is real, but she sees now the way he’s been consciously feeding it, keeping it bright and harsh and dangerous and never far from the surface. It’s a front, a buffer, an impenetrable façade meant to keep her from seeing anything else, a performance he’s been holding this whole time just for her benefit. He’s been trying to protect her just as much as she has him.
But the anger just isn’t enough to hide it anymore.
“You only do this for her,” Kanan observes, digging ruthlessly into Jack’s subconscious, spreading in and taking over every tiny corner, no matter how heavily guarded. “Even though you abhor our blending and would rather die…you do this for her.”
Jack struggles, fighting the intrusion but he’s far too weak to hold Kanan off. Goddamn snake.
“You must care for her a great deal.”
And he can’t hide it, not from either of them.
The memory catches Sam off guard, soft and confessional in a sea of bad experiences. She puts out a hand to the building to steady herself.
Turning, she looks up into Jack’s gaze where he stands frozen in the doorway as if caught out mid-retreat. He doesn’t flinch though, doesn’t turn away, even though he has to know she’s heard it. Felt it.
Not breaking eye contact, she steps towards him until she’s standing in front of him. Way too close, but she can’t bring herself to care. Her fingers unerringly lift to the spot just to the right of his heart, the location of the first knife. The first of many. She presses her palm down on the spot, feeling the warmth of his skin through the worn shirt. She sways slightly, her forehead brushing his chin.
Jack reaches for her arm, holding her steady. “Carter,” he says, barely a breath, a warning, a plea.
She closes her eyes, feels the warmth of his thoughts flutter across her skin, affection and familiarity and yearning all closely tangled together. It’s such an abrupt shift from the dark, haunted thoughts that she feels a bit light-headed.
“You know why I asked you to do it,” she says. “You have to know that I--.”
His hand clenches on her arm. “Don’t,” he says, voice hoarse.
It’s too loud now though, far too real, and she can’t ignore it any more than she can ignore the feel of him under her fingers. Doesn’t want to ignore it. She slides her hand up to his neck, skimming her thumb along his jaw and she can feel every nuance of sensation from both sides, knows exactly how she’s affecting him. It’s heady.
He needs this contact just as much as she does-the dreams, this captivity, all of it has left him shaken, teetering. She thinks that’s what gives her the nerve to do it, this certainty that erases every doubt that has ever held her back, every feeble excuse she’s erected between them. She lifts her chin that last fraction of an inch and her lips have finally found his.
There’s a beat of hesitation on his part, but she can feel what’s underneath and it’s enough. She shifts closer, pressing her advantage and then he’s kissing her back, his hands on her arms pulling her closer. She stumbles, her senses seared by the overflow of information.
He backs her against the wall, his hand carefully cradling the back of her head and she’s surrounded by him, the heat of his body, the thrum of his thoughts, the swell of desire-all of it threatening to suck her down, drown her. She welcomes it, this chance to stop fighting and struggling and pretending and just let it all go for once. Finally.
Her hands find his hips, pulling him tight against her, the kiss deepening, sparked by desperation and driven by need. It’s a blur of sensation and contact.
Jack’s mouth is warm as he works his way down her neck and she lets out a shuddering breath of appreciation. Her fingers find the hem of his shirt, tugging it free. She’s finally splayed her hands across his stomach when Jack’s fingers tighten to the point of pain on her shoulders. It takes her a moment to register his taut stillness, the fact that he’s stopped completely. His breath is heavy near her neck.
“Jack,” she says, her hands sliding up the back of his shirt, drawing him closer. Encouraging.
Don’t stop.
His hands find her arms, firmly pulling her hands free from his shirt as he steps away from her.
“What is it?” she asks, flinching against the intrusion of cool night air between them.
He’s staring at her neck.
She takes a step towards him. “You want this,” she says, not understanding this abrupt switch. She can feel the desire still there, tangled with her own. She knows he wants this.
His laugh is slightly ragged, and there’s the anger again, grating like sandpaper against her sensitized skin. “It’s not like I can deny it, can I?” he says, one finger sliding along the edge of her collar.
She sucks in an unsteady breath at the touch, her mind still swamped with lingering echoes of him, battling with this new sharp edge. “I don’t…” She swallows, trying to fight the dizziness. “I don’t understand.”
“The collar,” he says, and she doesn’t get this regret he’s emanating. The look he gives her is tempered with affection, but doesn’t mask his utter certainty. “This isn’t you.”
She feels a chill rise across her skin, those words effectively clearing the haze from her mind. “What?”
“This isn’t you,” he repeats, letting go of her.
She moves back a step, leaning against the rough wood of the building, welcoming the press of hard angles into her flesh. Solid, concrete. She shakes her head. “That’s not true.”
“You would never…,” he trails off, awkward, but earnest. “We both know that, Carter.”
It isn’t the nagging possibility that the collar could be influencing her that she finds so horrifying in this moment, but rather the complete certainty she finds when she lets herself examine his thoughts. She can see it perfectly, the vision he has of her, the fact that he’s never really let himself believe that she feels the same for him, as much.
Cold and distant. Isn’t that how it’s been between them for months now?
The collar is the only explanation he can fathom. He thinks she’s unduly influenced by his thoughts. That he somehow pushed her to this. Made her do it. He honestly doesn’t think this is her, that she would ever do something like this. Doesn’t know that she was weak enough to imagine a moment like this long before someone slapped a collar on her neck.
This isn’t you.
God.
She lifts a hand to her mouth, lips still warm with the taste of him.
“Carter,” Jack says-cautious, worried, like he doesn’t know what to expect from her anymore. Like she’s a stranger.
This isn’t you.
She closes her eyes. This would all be so much easier to handle without his thoughts bleeding into her mind, his concern and doubts twining so intimately with her certainty, undercutting any argument she could ever make for why he’s wrong.
Is he?
Shaking her head, she pushes off the wall, moving back towards the door to the dormitory.
“Hey,” he says, reaching out to stop her.
“I’m fine,” she insists, her voice thin as she pulls against his grip on her arm. This isn’t a fit of pique; it’s surrender. Can’t he see that?
His hand doesn’t leave her arm though. She stares at it there, still fighting the lingering urge to turn back into his touch. She just can’t think straight with him so close, not right now. She shakes her head, horrified to feel the press of tears. “I’m just…”
“What?” he asks, his voice soft with earnestness. Carter, talk to me.
She tries to smile, to brazen through this, but all the empty gesture does is squeeze out a tear from the corner of her eye. She turns her face away from him, batting at the mortifying drop of water.
“I’m just really tired,” she manages to say.
At best, it’s a half-truth.
Jack isn’t fooled. “Sam,” he says, and God does it hurt, this cautious, painful opening he’s offering her despite his vision of her actions, despite the fact that he’s already had more than enough secrets stolen from him tonight.
It’s all jumbling and growing in her mind, the torture, the helplessness, the need, all of it hers and his and everything in between. She presses a hand to her forehead. “Do you think we could just...not do this right now?”
His hand drops from her arm, but doesn’t erase the worry he’s emanating. “Sure. Of course.” He’s scared that if he pushes, she’s going to break.
She not sure he’s wrong.
“I’m going back inside now,” she says, carefully not looking at him, concentrating on getting one foot in front of the other.
He doesn’t follow.
* * *
Jack gives her a few solid hours of space, and by the time he finally follows her inside she’s still sleepless, sitting against the back wall, staring unseeing into the darkness.
“It hasn’t gone away, has it?” he says.
She feels her heart stutter, too jarred by the statement to remember to play possum. “What?”
“The headache,” he clarifies, the weight of his stare boring into her.
She breathes out, feeling her heart rate settle. “No, it hasn’t,” she admits.
There’s a soft shuffle of sound from the other side of the cell. She imagines he’s picked something up, is toying with it in his fingers. “It must get…noisy.”
She knows she should make some crack about his brain not being that complex, but it’s beyond her at the moment. She’s still got Baal’s voice circling in her mind. It will be far worse next time. Her fingers dig into her shins.
“It’s not that bad,” she lies, desperate for him to believe it.
After a moment she feels his eyes leave her. She lets out breath.
She feels the air shift, can feel the change in pressure as he sits down next to her. Near, but not touching. Just like always. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
They fall into silence. She doesn’t know how long they’re sitting there before she finally notices the image hovering quietly at the back of her mind. She feels tension draining out of her shoulders, a dense quiet filling the room. The soothing sound of water lapping against a wood dock is quietly blotting out everything else.
A surprised huff escapes Sam’s throat when she finally realizes exactly what that image is, where it’s coming from. “Is that supposed to be soothing?” she asks.
There’s a scruff of sound, his foot against the worn floorboards. “It’s the most zen thing I know,” he admits, something warm and wry and seductively comfortable lacing his tone. She gladly lets herself get lured in by it.
“Don’t you mean boring?” she shoots back because this, of all things, is at least familiar. Easy.
He’s scowling now, having his precious fishing so disparaged. “I never wanted to say anything, but Teal’c is a giant fibber. It’s a really unattractive quality in a Jaffa.”
Sam laughs, feeling the way it settles everything, makes breathing just a little bit easier. “When we get out of here, I’m telling him you said that.”
“Tattle tale,” Jack accuses, bumping her arm with his elbow.
It’s the easiest conversation they’ve had in months, if not longer, and that’s just as counter-intuitive and surprising as everything else between them.
She shifts, her hand sneaking into the crook of his arm, her fingers latching on to this lifeline he’s offering. “Thank you,” she says.
“For what?” he asks in his best clueless tone, but his fingers brush hers in quiet acknowledgment. Anything.
She knows this is the entire purpose of his act-proof that despite everything that happens between them or doesn’t, this still works. They haven’t broken anything.
“Think you can sleep?” he asks. It should be enough, the quiet, simple memory and this ease back in place between them.
She lowers her head to his shoulder, focusing in on the image in his mind. It’s beautiful, calm and worn soft with the weight of memory, but also something else right underneath. Something like…possibility.
Nothing with Jack is ever unintentional.
You must care about her a great deal.
“Jack?” she asks. She doesn’t know when he became Jack exactly, just knows that being inside his head renders it impossible to think of him as ‘the Colonel’, no matter how much safer it might be.
“Yeah?” he asks, his body stiffening slightly.
She doesn’t want to ruin this ease they’ve recovered, knows dragging this back up is probably a bad idea. Still, she can’t stand to leave it unspoken. She lets out a long breath. “You should know…you’re wrong.”
“About?”
She looks up at him. “Me.”
Maybe he can’t discount the collar’s influence, maybe she can’t either, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s been teetering towards this for a long time.
He’s staring back at her with something like fear, and she reaches out without thinking, her fingers brushing along his jaw.
She feels it, the painful echo of hope and stubborn refusal rising simultaneously in his chest in the face of her touch, but it’s quickly subsumed by that much more benign sun-sparkled water and the soft hum of an old childhood ditty.
She doesn’t press, pulling her hand back, lowering her cheek down to his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she allows the soothing cadence of his thoughts to lull her towards slumber. She feels it though, the moment before she drops off, the soft press of his face against the top of her head, the gentle thought behind it.
I wish I could believe that.
Chapter Five