triumvirate - chapter nine - powerlines
“It’s not our fault,” Daniel says, tracing Sam’s knee with his finger. “The war,” he clarifies, when the others look at him confused. General Hammond sent them home for the night; after their last encounter with alien technology, he wants Janet to look over the Venkati equipment and make sure it wouldn’t harm them even more.
Sam shifts on the couch, stretching her legs further across Daniel’s lap as she settles into Jack’s chest. He slides his arms around her waist and rests his chin on her head. There’s a discussion to be had about what the three of them will do once their link is gone and SG-1 returns to full duty, but an unspoken - and unthought - agreement has pushed that off until later. The remnants of dinner cleaned up and leftovers boxed away, and most of the lights in Sam’s house have been turned off, a few candles lighting the living room.
“How do you figure?” Jack asks, eyebrow raised. Sam giggles at the feeling of his chin moving on her head and he squeezes her just a little tighter to shush her.
Daniel shrugs and trails his hands down to Sam’s socked feet, gently pushing his thumbs into her arches. “The Venkati planned it. Even if we hadn’t had to blow up the building -”
“Which was not my fault,” Sam clarifies; they’d learned later that the Venkati ships firing on it were the reason the prison collapsed completely. They hadn’t liked that news much, since they could easily have been buried alive by the rubble, but Sam was pleased she’d planted the explosives properly.
Daniel smiles at her and finishes his thought. “They would have used our rescue to start something. Or they would’ve found some other situation to do the exact same thing. Their own government wasn’t letting them leave the Collective and the Hokari weren’t exactly being fair about their price.”
Jack sighs. He doesn’t like the Hokari, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy that all of the guards were gunned down. At least the Hokari are unaware of their involvement in the incident - or don’t care - and Earth will be left out of it.
Sam covers Jack’s hands with hers and closes her eyes. “That doesn’t make it okay,” she says, voicing all of their thoughts on the subject. Daniel and Jack had each given the Venkati a piece of their mind on the flight home, and then Jack had been unable to stop himself once they arrived in the briefing room. She had stayed silent, playing solitaire or reading one of the history books Daniel brought along, only because she wasn’t certain she could keep her rant on topic.
They sit in silence as the small tealights burn down, gradually leaving them in darkness. Sam untangles herself from the two men and stands, offering them her hands.
It’s quiet as they make their way to her bedroom, extinguishing candles and remaining lights on their way, none of them willing to let go of each other until they have to.
“I’ll leave,” Jack says after, Sam curled against his chest. He runs his fingers across Daniel’s shoulders and through his hair, the other man’s head resting on Sam’s stomach. The decision has been in the back of his mind for weeks, carefully kept from the other two. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He doesn’t like it, but knows that if he doesn’t distance himself from them, he’s bound to fall deeper and someone will get hurt offworld.
Sam lifts her head, brows furrowed. “Jack…” she starts before realizing she doesn’t have a legitimate argument against it. She wants to argue, tell him that it’s not fair that he should have to leave - that any of them should have to leave - but knows that it’s no use. It isn’t fair, but he is right. If they want to stay a team offworld, things have to go back to how they were before.
Daniel languidly slides up to look Jack in the eye. He nods, resigned to same logic as Sam; they’re SG-1 first, the three of them second. “Tomorrow,” he whispers, lowering his lips to Jack’s as Sam’s hands roam across their bodies.
The sun is just beginning to press against the horizon when they finally drift off, three sets of limbs tangled around each other.
By virtue of being the only one who has half a chance of understanding what’s about to happen to them, Sam goes first.
She takes a deep breath and follows Jai to the bed at the edge of the infirmary where all of her equipment is set up. She reminds herself that they’re on base and that Janet is right next to her and that there is no chance of this backfiring the way it did the last time a young alien woman attached electrodes to her head.
For a brief moment, she wants to tell Jai to stop, to sit up and rip all of the cords away and storm up to General Hammond’s office and tell him that she is in no way going through with this. She knows that he’d order her back down to the infirmary and there’d be nothing she could do, but at least her protest would be on record.
Bye, Sam thinks after everything’s situated.
Bye, Sam.
Bye, Carter.
“Are you ready?”
Sam nods, though she wants desperately to shake her head. As much as she wants to be left alone inside her head and even though they physically aren’t going anywhere, she knows she’s going to miss the sound of Jack and Daniel in her mind.
Jai presses a button. The machine beeps and the device on Sam’s head lights up, blinking blue before it turns off again.
“That’s it?”
Jai nods.
Sam grips the edge of the bed, suddenly realizing how echoingly quiet it is. She wonders if they can still hear her or if she’s been taken out of the equation entirely. Janet rushes her off for a scan and to take readings to make sure she really is back to normal.
Determining that it did work, Janet gives Sam a clean bill of health and tells her to send in someone else.
“What’s it feel like?” Jack asks since he’s up next, having lost the Rock, Paper, Scissors match. It’s unsettling to no longer feel Sam inside of his head; one moment he knew she was close to telling Jai to stop, and the next she was just gone.
Sam looks first at him, and then Daniel. She can’t hear what either of them is thinking anymore, but she knows. “Silent.”
Silent doesn’t begin to cover it.
Sam thinks she now understands Mika’s terror when she suggested the concept of telepathic separation. She thought she would remember what it was like to be alone, to not feel Daniel or Jack even when they were too far away to hear. The silence is unnerving.
It helps to be with Daniel. Though they’re no longer connected, his presence settles her, makes her feel less alone. He sits closer to her in the briefing room than he used to; she knows he feels the same.
More than once she’s caught Jack looking at one or both of them, so close to asking a question he can’t ask. It takes two weeks to stop trying to reach out and touch him with her mind.
They’re good off world, appearing back to normal to anyone but the four of them. Their first mission back was another babysitting one, but a glowing review from the archaeological team quickly put them back on the front lines.
She knows Teal’c notices. They’re all in sync with him, but half a frame away from each other.
“You know, don’t you?” She asks one night offworld. Daniel’s out for the count with painkillers from a twisted ankle and Jack’s soundly asleep a tent over, exhausted from carrying half of Daniel’s weight all afternoon.
He lifts an eyebrow.
“About us.” Sam gestures to herself and the two tents. They never agreed not to tell anyone, but the implication was there. She wouldn’t even bring this up to Teal’c, but she needs the opinion of someone she hasn’t slept with recently.
He nods once. “Indeed.”
Sam doesn’t ask him how he knew. Teal’c’s always known them better than they know themselves. Part of her is certain it was Teal’c who gave the report to General Hammond after the mining mission; she still thinks the mine staff is too focused on rocks to pick up on anything being wrong between the three of them. If it was, she doesn’t blame him. It’s a miracle they got out of the prison without being fatally distracted by each other. They were stupid to think they could make it work.
She wonders if they would’ve been allowed to keep it and stay together as a team if the telepathy had affected Teal’c, too. She doubts it, but it’s an interesting thought that’s kept her mind occupied on long hikes across boring planets. Heat rises in her cheeks each time she considers how it would have worked on Earth, if it had remained just her and Daniel, or if it had been the three of them, or if she would’ve upgraded her bed to a king. It’s a moot point and she starts to push it out of her mind before remembering that the other two can’t hear her anymore. It took so long to learn how not to think about things, she wonders when it’ll no longer be automatic to think about physics when an inappropriate thought crosses her mind.
Teal’c is still looking at her, puzzled. “Is everything alright, Major Carter?”
She frowns and stares into the campfire. She really ought to go to sleep and get some rest before it’s her watch. “We’re not quite right, are we?”
“The three of you do appear different,” Teal’c acknowledges.
Sam knows he’d never say that they’re not working quite as well as they used to, at least not to her. They can make do with what they have now; they’re not so far out of sync that it’ll become dangerous, but it’s the little things that are off: bumping into each other, two pairs of hands trying to make coffee, a few words overlapped, unsure that the other person has stopped speaking.
“Would you mind?” she asks quietly. It had happened accidentally before, a result of alien technology and not knowing how to block out emotions. She feels like she ought to ask him first this time, since they’ll be leaving him out but still working as a team. Sam doesn’t even know if what she’s thinking would solve the problem, but it’s the only option to try.
“Would it not be against regulations?”
Sam sighs and leans back, staring up at the stars. Her breath mingles with the smoke from their campfire, disappearing into the crisp night. “It would,” she concedes.
“And would I not be obligated to tell General Hammond if I were made aware of any such relationship?”
Sam shifts her gaze to her left, settling on Teal’c. “You would,” she says reluctantly.
He offers her a small smile before returning his gaze to the fire. “Then it would be best if I were not made aware.”
She knows that’s the closest to a blessing she’ll get from Teal’c for this. She wants to hug him.
“How’s your ankle?” Sam asks, bringing a glass of water over to Daniel. She sits next to him on the couch, swirling her second glass of wine before taking a sip.
Daniel flexes his ankle underneath the ice pack. “I’ll live.” It’s not as bad as it looks and they’ll be back in the field in a week. He slides his arm around Sam’s shoulders. “What’s up with you?” He may not be able to read her mind anymore, but he knows that she’s been thinking intently about something ever since they got back from their latest mission. And the look on her face isn’t the one she gets when she’s puzzled by science.
Sam sighs and shifts away from Daniel so she can turn and look at him. She hasn’t said anything about her conversation with Teal’c or what she’s thinking, and isn’t sure she should. As good as they all are at not talking about what happened, she knows that if they were given the opportunity, they’d spend hours talking themselves out of it. Being talked out of it is not what she wants, nor does she think it’s what they want.
Daniel nudges her knee, wondering if she heard him.
She inhales quickly, her decision made. “We should call Jack,” she says. They’ll talk or not talk, but the three of them need to do this together.
Daniel swallows and studies her face. After a moment, he nods, understanding exactly what she’s thinking.
Jack pulls up behind Daniel’s car and takes the key out of the ignition. He sits in his truck for a moment, thinking. Finally, a twitch of the curtains from the living room and a silhouette - very clearly Sam’s - against the window encourages him to get out.
The door opens in front of him with his hand halfway to the doorbell. He smiles at Sam, and Daniel behind her.
This feels right, they think, as the door closes behind him.
- end -
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