Fic: You just might find (SG-1), R
You just might find
Sam/Jack
R (barely)
SUMMARY: Sam and Jack, stranded. (How much do I want to summarize this: They lost everything . . . and found each other? LOTS.) ~7500 words.
Many thanks to stellar-dust and melannen for audiencing and encouragement.
You just might find
It plays out a million times that night in Jack's mind--the leap through the gate after the Goa'uld; the shot that finally kills it. The stray bullet that, one in a million, hits the Achilles heel of Ancient technology and shatters the DHD.
All of a sudden everything is very, very quiet. Jack lowers his P-90 in disbelief. Carter skids to a stop next to him, and he helplessly gestures in the direction of the shattered console, making fix it, fix it! motions. Jack himself goes over to make sure the snake is dead.
It's dead. Ew.
"Sir," Carter says, looking worried. "I don't know if I can fix it."
Which she always says, so he says his line: "Try;" and looks up at the sky. Teal'c and Daniel are up there, and self-destruct was Plan B. Jack really, really, hopes that everything goes according to Plan A.
Darkness falls quickly on this world, and with it comes a spring chill. He huddles with Carter next to a tiny fire, and neither of them have to voice the fact that only two people know the address of this planet, and Daniel and Teal'c hadn't been in the most inspiring of circumstances the last time Jack saw them.
Just as Jack's about to suggest that somebody get some sleep, Carter--a brilliant rosette in the sky explodes yellow-orange and leaves an afterimage burned into his retinas. A moment later, there's a sound like an X-302 flying through a china shop.
"Oh, my God," Carter says, and Jack can only blink and stare at the blue-violet behind his eyelids, because an explosion that big could only be a ship, and the only ship in orbit is--was the one Teal'c and Daniel were on.
"I--" she says, and starts to reach out a hand like she's going to clutch his sleeve before snatching her hand back and setting it deliberately on her own knee. She swallows. "I'll fix the DHD in the morning. We'll come back."
"Yeah," he agrees, but he can't make himself meet her eyes. "Maybe just a . . . drive pod or something."
**
On day two, Carter goes back to look at the DHD. Jack hangs around to keep her company until she gets a look on her face like she's going to murder him with a cracked control crystal. And hey, he can take a hint, and wanders off.
Jack checks out the area around the Stargate: things are just beginning to spring from the ground, and if they weren't kinda marooned he'd think it was a nice place. There's a double line of trees around a medium-sized stream; good fishing, he thinks. Hills rise sharply on the far side of the stream; Jack climbs to the top of the bluff to get a better look.
What he sees doesn't look promising. It's a dry, clear day and he can see pretty far, but nothing that looks like civilization, or even savagery. Just waving grasses. A forest off to the east. The Stargate, with the tiny figure of Carter fiddling with the DHD.
There's a sound behind him, suddenly, steps on the grass, and something bumps his ass. Jack whirls around, his P-90 up and pointed at . . . what appears to be a reindeer-thing, gray-brown and fuzzy, just about chest high with little stubby antlers.
"Oh," he says out loud, and lowers his rifle.
"Murr," the reindeer agrees, warily.
"Nice view," Jack tells it. The reindeer is probably a scout; Jack can just make out a clump of brown-gray moving over the fields below. That answers that, then. If there were people anywhere around here, the reindeer would probably be a little more wary of him. As it is, Dasher's pretty friendly, attempting to nibble on Jack's pocket. He swats at it.
"All right, all right, it's all yours," he says, and starts down the hill.
Carter's sitting back from the DHD when he gets there with a couple of too-small fish from the stream.
"Give me good news, Carter," he says.
She shakes her head. "The main control crystal is completely shattered, sir," she says, and takes a deep breath. "I can't see any way it'll ever work again."
He nods. "All right," he says, and leaves it at that, because if he blames Carter for not being able to get them out of this he'd have to blame himself for getting them into it. "Best-case scenario it'll be a few days until they can get the ship fixed and come back for us." He doesn't need to tell her what the worst-case scenario is.
She's thinking it, though; they both are. And just because Carter is the person he'd most like to be stuck on an alien planet with, that doesn't mean he's particularly excited to see it happen.
**
Carter comes up just as Jack's finishing putting together the lean-to.
"The pink flowers are a nice touch," she says.
He cocks his head. "I thought so," he says. The trees along the river are in bloom, dropping petals into the water, and hey, he figures flowers are always good for an apology.
Carter drops her armful of stuff just outside the shelter: cloth and chain mail and everything else she could salvage from the bodies of one dead Jaffa and one very dead Goa'uld. Some of it is burned; some is bloodied. Some of it is zats.
Jack picks one up. Seshat was holding out on them. Then again, why dirty your hands if you don't have to?
One zat, one staff weapon; four firearms which will very shortly be useless. No extra ammo. The clothes they're wearing; the puddle of sheer cloth that had been Seshat robe, the pile of Jaffa armor. Three knives and two humans and Jack stops, because there's a fine line between taking stock and despair.
He throws the zat back onto the pile. "We'll make it," he says.
That night, the temperatures drop again, and they spread out a bumpy pile of cloth underneath them and drape the linen robe over top. Jack reaches out an arm in the dark and hesitates, and Carter moves except he's moved too and somebody gets an elbow in the ribs and somebody else gets a faceful of terrible-smelling linen, and--"Wait, here, let me"--"Sir, let me just"--"Carter, stop. No, stop."
She stops.
"Thank you." Jack arranges them carefully in the pitch-black night: tucking in arms and legs and snugging her head up next to his neck. "Okay?" he says.
"Yeah," she says, and he feels it more than hears it, lips on his skin. God.
He buries his nose in her hair then, telling himself it's to conserve heat, and he draws the linen up as far as he can, and tries not to think about tomorrow.
**
On day ten Carter zats Prancer ("Naming them really isn't helping, sir,") and Jack squats down to help her dress it. Not that she needs much help; she's cutting open the reindeer with the same efficiency with which he's seen her rewire engines, and it strikes him that no one should look that beautiful covered in blood.
She catches him staring. "What?"
"Nothing," he says quickly. "You're just . . . suspiciously good at that. Didn't think your dad was the huntin', fishin' type."
"Not really, no," she says, reaching into the animal and yanking. "But anatomy's basically the same as engineering. Just--" and she swipes at her forehead with the back of one hand, leaving a smear of blood--"wetter."
They end up with enough meat to feed them for weeks, if they could manage to preserve it all. Strips of meat hang all around their site as they roast chunks of reindeer and gorge themselves on meat and the tender green shoots that failed to kill Jack when he tried them on day three.
"Not bad," Carter says, gnawing at her skewer. "It's like--remember that venison on M47-889? That feast with the six-foot-wide frying pan?"
And that kills his good mood; he can't let himself get to reminiscing about the good old days like they're over, like they're sure they're going to live out their natural lives on this planet. "You have blood in your hair," he says instead, shortly.
She frowns at that and puts a hand up to check. "I'm not surprised," she says. "I got blood everywhere else." But she's still patting her head and missing the spot, so he reaches over and directs her hand.
"There," he says softly, and realizes he's touching her, and they're sitting too close, and his internal Carter proximity alarm goes off and he pulls his hand back as calmly as he can.
She's cut her eyes away from his as well. "I should--" she says, "probably go for a bath," and winces. The stream is still ice-cold, snowmelt from the hills to the west, and neither of them are particularly excited about plunging into it, especially when the nights are still chilly.
"Save me some hot water," he says, and when she leaves, he groans very quietly and rubs the heel of one hand into his eyes. However much he misses his shower, a nice cold dip in the stream is probably a good idea before he snuggles up to Carter for the night.
**
So days twenty-eight through thirty-two go something like this:
Carter sits on the other side of the shelter, fiddling intently with a chunk of wood and a hot coal and the barrel of a disassembled P-90. Every so often there's a horrible squeaking sound as she scrapes charcoal from the wood.
The rain drums on the rawhide roof of the shelter, it sizzles in the fire, and it always--always--manages to drip on Jack no matter where he sits. He's sharpening a knife, or unraveling long lengths of thread from the linen robe so he can braid them into string strong enough for fishing, peering at the fibers in the low, flickering light.
Squeak.
Jack, very carefully, stills his hands and focuses on the line twined around his fingers. "If you don't stop that I will strangle you in your sleep."
"With what, your homemade fishing line?" Carter gouges the metal into the charcoal again, squeaking maliciously.
"Beats the hell out of whatever you're making."
"It's a bucket." It is definitely not a bucket. It's a chunk of crappy-ass wood with a gouge in it, but that doesn't even matter, because--
He stares at her in disbelief. "Because what we need around here is easily accessible water," he says, and gestures grandly around them, where rain is pouring off the roof of the shelter and dripping down the supports.
She raises her eyebrows. "We need a bucket," she says, and squeaks again.
"That's it," he snaps, and launches himself across the tiny shelter to grab her makeshift tool and fling the hot coal out of the gouge and back toward the fire. Carter's eyes narrow and she kneels up and bodychecks him out of the way, making a grab for his fishing line. Jack lands hard on his side but swipes a leg out to trip her up and she goes down but kicks him into the side of the shelter, which wiggles and dumps a load of rainwater onto his face. He makes a sound like "Eeeaaagh!" and grabs Carter off-balance and flips her over top of himself so she gets smacked in the side of the head with the rivulet.
She yelps and he grins and holds her there so she gives a heave and flips them over out of the water. They're probably squashing their store of dried meat, and he thinks that he's pretty sure he heard something crack--and suddenly he's aware that he's on top of her and still holding on kind of tightly. And she's looking up at him, a little flushed in the firelight, a smudge of soot along one temple, and he rolls off of her to sit up, one quick movement and he's on solid ground again.
"This fucking rain," he says to the roof, and he almost hears her sigh.
**
It's day forty-two--night forty-two, really, the forty-second time Jack lay himself down to sleep on this planet; forty-one times now he's woken up and thought, "Ah, fuck," and let go.
Six weeks establish a habit; he's done it himself and he's prodded others, six weeks of poking Daniel until he got his ass down to the gym all by himself. Six weeks is forty-two days and forty-one times he's woken up with Carter gathered to him, fit against his body like she belongs there.
It's already too late. He doesn't think he'll ever sleep well again without her, but one last-ditch effort at saving himself makes him say, too-casually, "Starting to warm up a little, don't you think?"
The planet is warming up. It wouldn't be any fun but he'd probably be able to sleep in these temperatures by himself (if, of course, it wasn't that his body would scream out for the loss of hers). He's not sure about Carter, though; she feels the cold more easily than he does and it's not summer yet.
She's kneeling by the fire now, banking it for the night, and the firelight fades to a faint glow. He can't see her face, and she's not moving. "Sir. Please don't make me ask," she says, clearly in the darkness, and--"No," he says. "Of course not."
Because there's cuddling with him and then there's having to ask to cuddle with him, and it may end up killing him but he can leave her her pride.
Besides, they'd have to make the shelter bigger if they wanted two beds.
So he lies back and stares up into the darkness while she does various rustling things a few feet off, and then she's settling into the crook of his arm like she's always been there, and always will be.
**
On day fifty-nine--a gray day, blustery and cool and dark--Carter says, "I still think we should do something."
Daniel and Teal'c died sixty days ago. Jack doesn't think about the fireball in the sky, the same way he doesn't think about the DHD he shot to shit or what Carter did with the bodies of Seshat and the Jaffa. He thinks about reindeer, and rabbits, and if there's likely to be a good source of carbs anywhere this early in the growing season, and he thinks about how to better waterproof their shelter, and he thinks about not thinking about Carter in his arms every night.
But--it's the second time she's mentioned it, and they need to mourn, he knows, and so he nods without looking at her. "What'd you have in mind?"
**
They hammer the two simple wooden markers into the ground a mile or so upstream, a calm grassy spot where miniature ducks paddle and reeds bow over the water. The names and dates are inscribed in charcoal with care, even though it'll wash off in the next heavy rain. Tonight, probably: Jack looks at the sky, dark as the clouds push in.
A oddly-pitched tone from Carter makes him look over sharply, and it takes him longer than it should to realize that she's singing; the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Jack recovers enough to come in on the glory glory hallelujahs. Teal'c once said he liked it, although Carter doesn't make it to let us die to make men free, her sweet alto falling silent after one verse.
Jack lets the wind whip around him in silence for a minute. In the end he says, "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me--" and his voice cracks. He can't go on, and they stand there in silence until the first raindrops hit them.
That night Carter lies in Jack's arms while the rain patters overhead and tells him stories, you never knew he was behind that time with the whipped cream, and he does the same, he was always so glad you were with us until his voice cracks and he has to hold on to her, tight, while she cries.
**
On day sixty-seven, Jack sees Carter sitting on the bluff with her head in her hands, which is probably not a great sign, so he meanders on up to see what's wrong.
Nothing's wrong, as he sees when he gets closer: what he didn't see from the ground is that she's got the scissors of her Swiss Army knife open and she's cutting her hair. By touch.
So he plops down next to her and looks out over the world, because he just walked up the damn hill and doesn't feel like making his way down again. She looks up but doesn't say anything, just goes back to doing what she was doing.
It's taking forever for her to do her whole head, a long time sitting in the spring-warm sun, and after a bit Jack takes a handful of flotsam out of his pocket and goes back to making crappy fishing flies out of linen threads and sharpened bits of Jaffa armor. It's slow going, he has to tie the fly to his pant leg to work on it, and--"Hey," he says, and she stops, both hands at the nape of her neck, her fingers threaded through her hair, looking at him questioningly.
He reaches out a hand and pinches a curl of hair from where it's fallen on her shoulder; nods at her and she goes back to what she was doing. Sometimes he worries that they will get rescued after all and he'll have a hell of a time figuring out how to communicate with anybody but her, he'll have forgotten all of the words he never speaks to her.
The golden hair gets worked into the fly; it's not the greatest-looking thing but it might serve to catch dinner one of these days. The reindeer are still hanging around and they're both pretty good at zatting birds and these hoppy little bunny things, but dammit, Jack just likes fishing.
She finishes with a last couple of snicks and he steals a glance to see her run her hands over her head to brush the last loose hairs away. It's good and short now, shorter probably than he's seen it before, but it still becomes her and she'll probably smear less rabbit blood on her face.
"You want a trim?" she says, and he looks up at her like it's the first time he's done it.
"Sure," he says. "It's getting in my eyes, I don't know how you stand it."
She moves around behind him. "Well, usually I have a drugstore nearby."
He sets down the fly as her fingers move at the nape of his neck, warm hands and the cool of the scissors moving steadily over his head.
Jack lets his eyes drift shut. They touch every day, he's used to touching her, warm solid pressure in the night, used to her body, but this feather-light drift of fingers is going to kill him, the soft scrape of fingernails on his scalp.
She shifts to reach one side, and he makes himself open his eyes, makes himself breathe regular and calm, and as long as he doesn't look at her, at her intent gaze, he'll be fine.
Time draws out like taffy, the only sounds the scissors and the vague nature sounds around them, the buzz of insects and the chirp of birds in their own personal Eden. Jack blinks once--it feels like once--and she's done, running her hands over his head to ruffle the stragglers free.
"Thanks," he manages to say, softly.
"Anytime," she says, but she--this was probably a bad idea, Jack thinks--she still has one hand at the back of his head, her fingers curling to toy at the back of his neck, and--yes, Jack thinks, a bad idea--he lets her draw him forward, and she kisses him.
It's--it's exquisite springtime, utterly this moment, and he almost lets himself drown in this one perfect kiss, because he knows as soon as it starts that it's the only one he can have.
They break apart and he's surprised to find his hand hard on her shoulder; he pulls it back and turns away from her--he can't look at her eyes now--and says, "We can't."
"Why not?" Her voice is shaking a little.
He touches her hand, picks it up. Moves it back to herself. "It was a bad idea when we stepped through that gate, and it's a bad idea now," he says, looking out over the river. Still not looking at her.
"Ja--" she starts, but he cuts her off.
"Carter," he says. "Please don't make me ask."
And because she'll never make him ask, she's silent, and gets up slowly, and leaves him on the bluff, alone in the suddenly vast world.
**
On day seventy-three, just as Jack's falling asleep, Carter says into the darkness, "I had a tubal ligation."
His mind goes Wait, huh? and then Holy shit and then Oh, God, she said that like it's going to be relevant, and he doesn't say anything but tightens his arm around her. She hasn't said or done anything out of the ordinary since that kiss on the bluff. He'd stupidly thought it was over.
"Back in the second year of the program," she says. "Right after we got SG-4 back, remember?"
He remembers. SG-4 had gone out on a milk run and had been taken prisoner, relocated to another planet. It'd been six months before they'd found them and brought them back.
"Janet drove me. Outpatient procedure on a long weekend and when I came back I told you it was a stomach flu."
Remembers that too. It was strange at the time--Carter was almost never sick, and she'd been out for a couple of days and holed up in her lab for a couple of days and then she'd been fine, bright-eyed and working hard like usual. And none of them had known.
"I realized it was too easy for something like that to happen. Something like this," she says, gesturing in the darkness at the shelter, the planet, the situation. "And hell, the Stargate program was my baby, important enough to give up anything for."
She's not saying So it's safe, Jack and she's not saying I can't give you children, and he can't say anything but, "I would have driven you."
He feels her shake her head. "I couldn't say anything. I was still so worried that I'd look weak to you."
"I never thought you were," he says, and holds her until she falls asleep.
**
On day eighty-five, they're gathering the watercress-stuff from the river's edge, which involves a lot of careful plucking to yield not a whole lot of the stuff, but they tried it once and now they both crave it. It's probably got some vitamin or other in it that they're lacking, so they stand in the cool water, pant legs rolled up, carefully gathering dark green leaves, swishing them through the water to clean them.
"We should follow the river for a while," Carter says. "See where it takes us."
They have, actually, a couple of weeks ago--a day out and a day back when the weather was nice. Nothing much was different downstream. "We did," Jack says. "We found a turtle, remember?"
"No," Carter says. "I mean look for someplace permanent."
Jack stands up straight. His back hurts like hell, and he knows exactly what she means. "We're not there yet," he says.
Carter straightens too. "Jack," she says, and her calling him Jack just never ends well. "They're not coming for us."
"We don't know that," he says, bending down again to grab a plant and toss it into the bucket. It takes him out of her gaze. "We're staying near the gate."
She makes an incredulous noise. "The ship blew up," she says.
He knows the ship blew up. They both saw it, streaming blinding light across the night sky; he sees it behind his eyes every night. But they've had miracles before. "It's still possible," he says, pulling up a plant.
"Why are you--" she starts, and he can't do this. He throws the plant down and with one splashing step, grabs her by the shoulders. He's struck with the urge to yell, and tamps it down, and then thinks, hell with it; there's nobody to hear him but Carter and she thinks he's nuts anyway.
"Because I can't," he roars into the sky, and then continues, more softly. "This is what I am. Stop kicking my legs out from under me."
There's still fury on her face, and for a second, she looks like she's considering doing just that, dumping him in the water and leaving his ass there, but then her eyes soften and she just brings her hands up to cover his, wet and clasping.
He drops his head and closes his eyes and pretends he wasn't just yelling at nothing in the middle of the day. She holds his hands for a moment and then lets go, and they finish picking their watercress without another word, the only sounds the trickle of the water and the birdsong around them.
**
Later, when they're nibbling blackened rabbit parts off of sticks, and chewing on watercress dipped out of Carter's bucket, Carter says, "You know, I always thought that I'd be willing to die if it meant taking one Goa'uld with me. That one less of them in the galaxy would be worth it."
He has a mouthful of rabbit, and so says nothing. At least, a full mouth is his excuse.
"And then I realized--we did. This is it. We killed Seshat, and we lost everything that made up our old lives, and here we are. We did it, and this is what we have."
He doesn't look up from pulling pieces of meat off his skewer. "So is it Paradise or Purgatory?" he says, licking his fingers.
"You tell me," she says, and raises an eyebrow.
"We're not there yet," he says, quietly.
She picks up a stalk of watercress, strips the leaves from it. "When will we be there?"
"Christmas," he says, and thankfully she leaves it at that.
**
On day ninety-three, Jack comes back from gathering cress and almost drops the bucket on his own foot.
Carter's gotten rid of the t-shirt she's worn for the past ninety-four days and improvised some sort of halter top from a strip of Seshat's linen robes, crossed over her breasts and tied in the back. Being Goa'uld-wear, the linen's not particularly opaque.
Jack adjusts his grip on the bucket. It's entirely possible that she's trying to kill him.
She looks him in the eye when he gets close, almost daring him to say something; a thousand phrases run through his head, but what comes out is: "You're gonna get one hell of a weird tan line from that."
Carter looks pointedly at him and steals some cress. "Likewise," she says. It's true--Jack's been going barechested for about a week now, as soon as he could, because wearing the same shirt every day got old pretty quickly. So he went from terrible farmer's tan from the t-shirt to an even more terrible farmer's tan that leaves half of him speckled dark and the other half dead-white. Carter, he can see even as he tries not to look, is creamy-pale where she isn't freckling attractively.
**
Day ninety-nine dawns warm and hazy-bright, so Jack peels himself from Carter ("Nnngh.") and goes straight for the stream to cool off. It's long past the time when they needed to cuddle for heat, but Jack can't quite bring himself to suggest that they sleep separated. And Carter's no help; she just slings an arm over him every night and falls asleep almost immediately while he's still deciding where to put his hands.
The stream is nicely cool, with smooth rocks on the bottom, and it's a vacation kind of a day, Jack decides. Perfect for lying in the hollow near the woods and fishing. Well. It's still technically fishing as long as he has a line in the water, regardless of his actual state of activity.
So he leaves Carter fiddling with pieces of the Jaffa armor--he's a little afraid that one day he'll come back and she'll have built a windmill, or an ice cream maker, or something--and he heads off with his line and pole.
He's not surprised to wake up in the late afternoon shade with a reindeer licking his neck. Either the reindeer aren't smart enough to understand that the zat shots come from the humans, or he and Carter have done a good enough job of hiding when they hunt. Either way. The reindeer are idiotically curious about the two of them, and also really love the salt on their skin.
Jack sits up and swats at the animal as it nuzzles at his ear.
"Muuuurrr," it says, sadly, and wanders off.
He lies there for a little while longer, stretched out on the sun-dappled grass, and listens to the mournful birdsong that echoes through the hollow, thinking about downstream, and Carter, and how they got here to this planet.
Jack detours by the Stargate on the way back, and spends a while looking at the area with a practiced eye, hearing Daniel say in his head Do you see that structure and the clearing? This gate's pretty heavily used. They hadn't made a detailed survey when they first came through chasing Seshat, and what with one thing and another Jack hasn't been back. Hasn't wanted to step past the grass growing up around white skeletons; hasn't wanted to see the signs that they're the only ones that have come through this gate in a long time.
The rubble crunches under his feet, and he turns and heads for home.
Later that night they shell nuts for dinner, stone hammers and anvils, tossing the shells into the fire where they pop and snap. It's a slow, drawn-out process for the caloric benefit, almost meditative: smash, pick out the nutmeat, eat, toss the shells, and Jack finds himself saying, "My marriage was tanking even before Charlie was born."
Carter doesn't say anything, but he hears her stop smashing her hammer down. Feels her eyes on him, even though he doesn't look up.
"We held it together for his sake. Gave us something else to focus on than how we couldn't give each other what we needed," he says. "Still wasn't enough." He throws another shell into the flames and smashes another nut, harder than is maybe necessary.
She's still not saying anything--treading delicately around the crazy man, not sure if he's done. He's not sure if he's done. He picks at the nut, sees it's rotten. Throws it whole into the fire.
"So, what, you think we should put together some supplies before we head downstream, or should we just start out?" He finally looks over at her; she's staring back, firelight flickering over her hair. "Merry Christmas, Carter," he says softly.
Jack doesn't celebrate Christmas anymore unless someone makes him, and his team's been making him since they found that out. Secret Santa and invites to dinner and one year Teal'c took him to Vespers. It'd been nice, but only academically; it's been a long time since he's woken up to find he's gotten exactly what he wanted.
So now he watches in an oddly detached way as Carter looks away from him for a moment and thinks to herself--she nods--and then, very deliberately, sets down her rocks and moves around the fire to sit down next to him, close.
He reaches up a hand to trace her cheek; she mirrors him, and without any conscious thought his mouth is on hers, and they stay sprawled in front of the fire, curled around each other, for a very long time.
**
On day one hundred and two Jack lies on the bluff in the midmorning sun, Carter moving slowly above him. They'd theoretically come up here to get a better view of the landscape (as if they didn't both have it memorized by now) before they set off southward.
But one thing led to another, and then that led to Carter's halter top mysteriously coming untied, and then--well. Here they are.
The sky is clear, the perfect deep blue of infinity, the same as her eyes, and Jack lets himself get lost in it, in the warmth, the birdsong, her skin.
And then--"Oh my God," Carter says, and Jack's brain skips like a record, because that's not the tone of voice she should be saying that in.
"Oh, God," Carter says, looking out over the plain. "Someone's coming."
**
They dress hurriedly and start on the path down from the bluff, and Jack wonders when the last time was he was this cranky. A hundred and two days here? And now a sign of humanity? He wishes they'd brought at least a zat with them so he could shoot whoever it is. Or--hell, he wishes he had a zat anyway; who knows who it could be.
And then Carter drops his hand and starts running, and God, the figure inspecting their shelter has a very familiar droopy hat; the other's stance as he turns to survey the landscape is--and Jack starts running too.
Carter's engulfed in Teal'c's arms by the time Jack gets there, and Jack grabs Daniel and holds on until he's convinced himself that he's really there.
"Jack," Daniel says, "Sam. Come here," and they switch off so Carter can cling to Daniel for a minute and Jack can have one of those bone-crushing hugs he only ever gets to trade with Teal'c.
"I am glad you are both well," Teal'c says, low because he's still only about four inches away from Jack's ear, and all Jack can say is, "Yeah. Yeah."
Eventually the hugs break down and Jack says, "Where the hell did you come from? We--your ship blew up."
"Ah," Daniel says. "Seshat had a ship--she must have had a plan to come to this world; it was waiting for us when we got here. We managed to take it out but a lot of our systems were crippled in the process--it took us over two months to even get back to Earth." He pauses, raises his eyebrows in the way that means he's already reached his conclusion but is surprised by it. "So. How are you two?"
"Great," Jack says. "You know. Fishing. Building huts." He gestures at the shelter. "Lunch?"
The SGC dials in when Teal'c and Daniel miss their check-in. It feels better than Jack would have thought to hear Hammond's voice, to give a dry report over the radio. It'll be a while for them to dig up the replacement crystal Carter needs to fix the DHD, but--"Luckily," Jack says, "I know where there's a decent campsite nearby."
When Jack comes back from taking down the traps he'd left at the edges of the wood, at the bend of the stream--cruel to leave them set when he won't be here to check them, and it's odd to think that he won't have to worry about where dinner's coming from--he sees his team, sprawled around the fire like it's one of their usual missions, comfortable and nibbling on things and bickering half-heartedly about whether you can call alien reindeer reindeer. Something inside Jack settles into place at the sight, and he goes and drops down next to them.
Teal'c reaches out to finger the delicate ties of the fish net. He doesn't say anything, but Jack answers him anyway. "We had some down time," he says.
"You really thought we weren't coming," Daniel says.
"We thought you were dead," Jack says. "We mourned you. Carter sang."
Carter looks guilty, but just for a second. "He recited poetry. Dickinson."
Daniel frowns. "I thought the only poem you knew was The Cremation of Sam McGee."
"Hey," Jack says, mock-wounded. "I know plenty of poetry. Kipling, even. You like Kipling?"
"Actually, no," Daniel starts to say, "the colonialistic themes are--" but Teal'c cuts him off smoothly. "Indeed I know not," Teal'c says. "I have never Kippled."
And Jack grins, and Carter tries not to laugh at Daniel's affronted expression, and the fire sends sparks high into the warm summer sky.
**
On day one hundred and three--which ends up being day one hundred and three and a half thanks to gate lag--Jack sits on a paper-covered table in the infirmary while Frasier draws more blood than he can imagine even the hungriest vampire would want. He says as much to her.
"Just making up for lost time, Colonel," she tells him with a smile, and pops yet another vial onto the line.
The infirmary is both completely unreal and exactly how he left it; he fingers the paper and the synthetic surface of the exam bed, glances over to see Carter blinking a little wide-eyed at the lights.
It's far from a clean bill of health, which is to be expected: they've both picked up some internal parasites and lost some weight that hadn't really been extraneous to begin with. Some vitamin and mineral deficiencies, some sunburn, nothing surprising, and they're packed off with some pills.
Jack will never be able to make himself take a shower that's more than three minutes long, but he gives it his best try anyway, taking advantage of hot water and real soap. He towels off, steps up to the mirror to shave, and stares at himself for a good long while.
This is the face that Carter's been looking at for three months: hair out of control, the lines on his face drawn a little deeper from the weight loss. Shaved-by-touch stubble that's rounded the corner of "scruff" and galloping toward "grizzled."
His eyes look haunted, and he closes them for a minute until he can see the sink, the razor in front of him, and not her face.
When he's back together--shaved, dressed in fresh clothes from his own locker, acquired a cup of coffee from a source which he shall not name--he heads for Hammond, and the debrief.
**
On day one hundred and ten, Jack, clean and shaven and full of actual breakfast food, pokes his head through the door of the lab where Carter's resuming light duty after her enforced week off. ("I don't need a vacation, sir. I just had a vacation.")
He hasn't seen her at all that week; he's talked to Daniel and Teal'c, gone to restaurants with them and eaten food that he didn't have to gather or kill himself, he's washed half the SGC's pharmacy down his throat, he's gone to the library with the intention of catching up on three months' worth of newspapers, and ended up just skimming today's headlines and the comics.
Hasn't argued with her over who has to skin the rabbits, hasn't touched her sun-warm skin, hasn't gone to sleep with his arms around her.
It's easier than he would have thought. Damn it. It shouldn't be; he should have tossed and turned all of that first night before giving up and watching late-night sports replays, but no, he went home, pulled out clean sheets from the closet, made the bed, went to sleep.
Slept for fourteen hours. Best sleep he's ever had, and Jack woke up to the sunshine filtering through his curtains like he'd never left.
He doesn't know if it's the same for her, if she went home and ordered a pizza, went to sleep between the simple feminine linens he imagines she has. (He's never seen her bed. Never will.)
Sometime during that week she got a haircut, he thinks. She looks good. Still.
"Hey," he says. "Got a minute?"
They go up to the smokers' patio, the trees and benches that huddle together on top of the mountain. It's almost deserted; the October chill doesn't encourage people to linger outside for very long. There's only one lonely airman there, his back to the wind, smoke curling away from him, and then he stubs out his cigarette and he's gone.
Jack perches on the back of a bench and wishes he had a cigarette. He could really use something to do with his hands without looking like he's actually fidgeting; he's gotten used to braiding fishing line, cracking nuts, making flies. Talking without looking at her eyes.
She makes it easy for him, though, sits next to him, close enough that they'll be able to keep their voices low, not close enough to touch. Not close enough to feel the heat from her body.
"You know what I'm gonna say," he says.
"Yeah," she says. "I--It won't be a problem."
It happens, they'd been told (they knew already). Marooned on an alien planet, emotional hardship, lots of Psych 101 terms to say it. It's no surprise, not grounds for discipline, Hammond won't break up the team, not unless Jack or Carter requests it, either formally or by continuing the relationship. Glad to have you back, take a week off, let us know.
Jack didn't even need to think about it. He doesn't think Carter did either--the program trumps everything, they both know it.
"Good," he says then. "Good," and he moves as though to get up, but a sound from her makes him stop.
"I'm not sorry, Colonel," she says suddenly, turning to him, looking him in the eye. "I've risked more on less, and if I had it to do over again I would. I made a decision based on the available information, and I stand by it."
It's the same tone of voice she uses when she's defending her actions in the field; it throws him for a moment, and by the time he realizes what she's saying she's turned away and started fiddling with a dead leaf that's blown onto her lap.
"I'm not sorry," she says again, twirling the leaf between her fingers.
He bumps her shoulder with his own. "You know you're the person I'd most want to be stuck on a desert island with," he says. "You skin a mean rabbit."
They're still not looking at each other, but he thinks he hears her smile.
"Well, sir," she says, "if you ever find yourself on a desert island, save me a seat."
"Yeah," he says. "Will do."
**
He wakes up the next day and walks into the Mountain whistling. He hunts down Daniel, who fills him in on the crisis du jour: the Nevven are balking at their agreement to let scientists from the SGC study the ancient ruins from which a mysterious power signature is emanating, possibly Goa'uld in origin and definitely of major interest. The ruins lie on both sides of the Nevven's border with the Gildea, who may or may not be coercing the Nevven into dropping the study. SG-1 is still grounded, but they had the initial contact with the Nevven and Gildea and can look forward to a stimulating day of strategy, briefing SG-7, and convincing Hammond that a plate of cheese Danish is vital to the continued recovery of half of SG-1 from their traumatic, cheese-Danish-less sojourn.
Jack gets a cup of coffee and takes it to the briefing room, Daniel finishing with " . . . trying to hide something, Jack, they might just be hesitant about letting us poke around their historical sites like the Earl of Elgin," just as they enter the room. One of these days Jack's going to figure out how he times it like that.
He nods to Carter and Teal'c, who are already sitting at the table discussing Goa'uld power sources, and takes a sip of his coffee. It tastes perfect: rich and bitter, and Jack leans back and smiles at his team, at the first day of the rest of his life.
Sam/Jack
R (barely)
SUMMARY: Sam and Jack, stranded. (How much do I want to summarize this: They lost everything . . . and found each other? LOTS.) ~7500 words.
Many thanks to stellar-dust and melannen for audiencing and encouragement.
You just might find
It plays out a million times that night in Jack's mind--the leap through the gate after the Goa'uld; the shot that finally kills it. The stray bullet that, one in a million, hits the Achilles heel of Ancient technology and shatters the DHD.
All of a sudden everything is very, very quiet. Jack lowers his P-90 in disbelief. Carter skids to a stop next to him, and he helplessly gestures in the direction of the shattered console, making fix it, fix it! motions. Jack himself goes over to make sure the snake is dead.
It's dead. Ew.
"Sir," Carter says, looking worried. "I don't know if I can fix it."
Which she always says, so he says his line: "Try;" and looks up at the sky. Teal'c and Daniel are up there, and self-destruct was Plan B. Jack really, really, hopes that everything goes according to Plan A.
Darkness falls quickly on this world, and with it comes a spring chill. He huddles with Carter next to a tiny fire, and neither of them have to voice the fact that only two people know the address of this planet, and Daniel and Teal'c hadn't been in the most inspiring of circumstances the last time Jack saw them.
Just as Jack's about to suggest that somebody get some sleep, Carter--a brilliant rosette in the sky explodes yellow-orange and leaves an afterimage burned into his retinas. A moment later, there's a sound like an X-302 flying through a china shop.
"Oh, my God," Carter says, and Jack can only blink and stare at the blue-violet behind his eyelids, because an explosion that big could only be a ship, and the only ship in orbit is--was the one Teal'c and Daniel were on.
"I--" she says, and starts to reach out a hand like she's going to clutch his sleeve before snatching her hand back and setting it deliberately on her own knee. She swallows. "I'll fix the DHD in the morning. We'll come back."
"Yeah," he agrees, but he can't make himself meet her eyes. "Maybe just a . . . drive pod or something."
**
On day two, Carter goes back to look at the DHD. Jack hangs around to keep her company until she gets a look on her face like she's going to murder him with a cracked control crystal. And hey, he can take a hint, and wanders off.
Jack checks out the area around the Stargate: things are just beginning to spring from the ground, and if they weren't kinda marooned he'd think it was a nice place. There's a double line of trees around a medium-sized stream; good fishing, he thinks. Hills rise sharply on the far side of the stream; Jack climbs to the top of the bluff to get a better look.
What he sees doesn't look promising. It's a dry, clear day and he can see pretty far, but nothing that looks like civilization, or even savagery. Just waving grasses. A forest off to the east. The Stargate, with the tiny figure of Carter fiddling with the DHD.
There's a sound behind him, suddenly, steps on the grass, and something bumps his ass. Jack whirls around, his P-90 up and pointed at . . . what appears to be a reindeer-thing, gray-brown and fuzzy, just about chest high with little stubby antlers.
"Oh," he says out loud, and lowers his rifle.
"Murr," the reindeer agrees, warily.
"Nice view," Jack tells it. The reindeer is probably a scout; Jack can just make out a clump of brown-gray moving over the fields below. That answers that, then. If there were people anywhere around here, the reindeer would probably be a little more wary of him. As it is, Dasher's pretty friendly, attempting to nibble on Jack's pocket. He swats at it.
"All right, all right, it's all yours," he says, and starts down the hill.
Carter's sitting back from the DHD when he gets there with a couple of too-small fish from the stream.
"Give me good news, Carter," he says.
She shakes her head. "The main control crystal is completely shattered, sir," she says, and takes a deep breath. "I can't see any way it'll ever work again."
He nods. "All right," he says, and leaves it at that, because if he blames Carter for not being able to get them out of this he'd have to blame himself for getting them into it. "Best-case scenario it'll be a few days until they can get the ship fixed and come back for us." He doesn't need to tell her what the worst-case scenario is.
She's thinking it, though; they both are. And just because Carter is the person he'd most like to be stuck on an alien planet with, that doesn't mean he's particularly excited to see it happen.
**
Carter comes up just as Jack's finishing putting together the lean-to.
"The pink flowers are a nice touch," she says.
He cocks his head. "I thought so," he says. The trees along the river are in bloom, dropping petals into the water, and hey, he figures flowers are always good for an apology.
Carter drops her armful of stuff just outside the shelter: cloth and chain mail and everything else she could salvage from the bodies of one dead Jaffa and one very dead Goa'uld. Some of it is burned; some is bloodied. Some of it is zats.
Jack picks one up. Seshat was holding out on them. Then again, why dirty your hands if you don't have to?
One zat, one staff weapon; four firearms which will very shortly be useless. No extra ammo. The clothes they're wearing; the puddle of sheer cloth that had been Seshat robe, the pile of Jaffa armor. Three knives and two humans and Jack stops, because there's a fine line between taking stock and despair.
He throws the zat back onto the pile. "We'll make it," he says.
That night, the temperatures drop again, and they spread out a bumpy pile of cloth underneath them and drape the linen robe over top. Jack reaches out an arm in the dark and hesitates, and Carter moves except he's moved too and somebody gets an elbow in the ribs and somebody else gets a faceful of terrible-smelling linen, and--"Wait, here, let me"--"Sir, let me just"--"Carter, stop. No, stop."
She stops.
"Thank you." Jack arranges them carefully in the pitch-black night: tucking in arms and legs and snugging her head up next to his neck. "Okay?" he says.
"Yeah," she says, and he feels it more than hears it, lips on his skin. God.
He buries his nose in her hair then, telling himself it's to conserve heat, and he draws the linen up as far as he can, and tries not to think about tomorrow.
**
On day ten Carter zats Prancer ("Naming them really isn't helping, sir,") and Jack squats down to help her dress it. Not that she needs much help; she's cutting open the reindeer with the same efficiency with which he's seen her rewire engines, and it strikes him that no one should look that beautiful covered in blood.
She catches him staring. "What?"
"Nothing," he says quickly. "You're just . . . suspiciously good at that. Didn't think your dad was the huntin', fishin' type."
"Not really, no," she says, reaching into the animal and yanking. "But anatomy's basically the same as engineering. Just--" and she swipes at her forehead with the back of one hand, leaving a smear of blood--"wetter."
They end up with enough meat to feed them for weeks, if they could manage to preserve it all. Strips of meat hang all around their site as they roast chunks of reindeer and gorge themselves on meat and the tender green shoots that failed to kill Jack when he tried them on day three.
"Not bad," Carter says, gnawing at her skewer. "It's like--remember that venison on M47-889? That feast with the six-foot-wide frying pan?"
And that kills his good mood; he can't let himself get to reminiscing about the good old days like they're over, like they're sure they're going to live out their natural lives on this planet. "You have blood in your hair," he says instead, shortly.
She frowns at that and puts a hand up to check. "I'm not surprised," she says. "I got blood everywhere else." But she's still patting her head and missing the spot, so he reaches over and directs her hand.
"There," he says softly, and realizes he's touching her, and they're sitting too close, and his internal Carter proximity alarm goes off and he pulls his hand back as calmly as he can.
She's cut her eyes away from his as well. "I should--" she says, "probably go for a bath," and winces. The stream is still ice-cold, snowmelt from the hills to the west, and neither of them are particularly excited about plunging into it, especially when the nights are still chilly.
"Save me some hot water," he says, and when she leaves, he groans very quietly and rubs the heel of one hand into his eyes. However much he misses his shower, a nice cold dip in the stream is probably a good idea before he snuggles up to Carter for the night.
**
So days twenty-eight through thirty-two go something like this:
Carter sits on the other side of the shelter, fiddling intently with a chunk of wood and a hot coal and the barrel of a disassembled P-90. Every so often there's a horrible squeaking sound as she scrapes charcoal from the wood.
The rain drums on the rawhide roof of the shelter, it sizzles in the fire, and it always--always--manages to drip on Jack no matter where he sits. He's sharpening a knife, or unraveling long lengths of thread from the linen robe so he can braid them into string strong enough for fishing, peering at the fibers in the low, flickering light.
Squeak.
Jack, very carefully, stills his hands and focuses on the line twined around his fingers. "If you don't stop that I will strangle you in your sleep."
"With what, your homemade fishing line?" Carter gouges the metal into the charcoal again, squeaking maliciously.
"Beats the hell out of whatever you're making."
"It's a bucket." It is definitely not a bucket. It's a chunk of crappy-ass wood with a gouge in it, but that doesn't even matter, because--
He stares at her in disbelief. "Because what we need around here is easily accessible water," he says, and gestures grandly around them, where rain is pouring off the roof of the shelter and dripping down the supports.
She raises her eyebrows. "We need a bucket," she says, and squeaks again.
"That's it," he snaps, and launches himself across the tiny shelter to grab her makeshift tool and fling the hot coal out of the gouge and back toward the fire. Carter's eyes narrow and she kneels up and bodychecks him out of the way, making a grab for his fishing line. Jack lands hard on his side but swipes a leg out to trip her up and she goes down but kicks him into the side of the shelter, which wiggles and dumps a load of rainwater onto his face. He makes a sound like "Eeeaaagh!" and grabs Carter off-balance and flips her over top of himself so she gets smacked in the side of the head with the rivulet.
She yelps and he grins and holds her there so she gives a heave and flips them over out of the water. They're probably squashing their store of dried meat, and he thinks that he's pretty sure he heard something crack--and suddenly he's aware that he's on top of her and still holding on kind of tightly. And she's looking up at him, a little flushed in the firelight, a smudge of soot along one temple, and he rolls off of her to sit up, one quick movement and he's on solid ground again.
"This fucking rain," he says to the roof, and he almost hears her sigh.
**
It's day forty-two--night forty-two, really, the forty-second time Jack lay himself down to sleep on this planet; forty-one times now he's woken up and thought, "Ah, fuck," and let go.
Six weeks establish a habit; he's done it himself and he's prodded others, six weeks of poking Daniel until he got his ass down to the gym all by himself. Six weeks is forty-two days and forty-one times he's woken up with Carter gathered to him, fit against his body like she belongs there.
It's already too late. He doesn't think he'll ever sleep well again without her, but one last-ditch effort at saving himself makes him say, too-casually, "Starting to warm up a little, don't you think?"
The planet is warming up. It wouldn't be any fun but he'd probably be able to sleep in these temperatures by himself (if, of course, it wasn't that his body would scream out for the loss of hers). He's not sure about Carter, though; she feels the cold more easily than he does and it's not summer yet.
She's kneeling by the fire now, banking it for the night, and the firelight fades to a faint glow. He can't see her face, and she's not moving. "Sir. Please don't make me ask," she says, clearly in the darkness, and--"No," he says. "Of course not."
Because there's cuddling with him and then there's having to ask to cuddle with him, and it may end up killing him but he can leave her her pride.
Besides, they'd have to make the shelter bigger if they wanted two beds.
So he lies back and stares up into the darkness while she does various rustling things a few feet off, and then she's settling into the crook of his arm like she's always been there, and always will be.
**
On day fifty-nine--a gray day, blustery and cool and dark--Carter says, "I still think we should do something."
Daniel and Teal'c died sixty days ago. Jack doesn't think about the fireball in the sky, the same way he doesn't think about the DHD he shot to shit or what Carter did with the bodies of Seshat and the Jaffa. He thinks about reindeer, and rabbits, and if there's likely to be a good source of carbs anywhere this early in the growing season, and he thinks about how to better waterproof their shelter, and he thinks about not thinking about Carter in his arms every night.
But--it's the second time she's mentioned it, and they need to mourn, he knows, and so he nods without looking at her. "What'd you have in mind?"
**
They hammer the two simple wooden markers into the ground a mile or so upstream, a calm grassy spot where miniature ducks paddle and reeds bow over the water. The names and dates are inscribed in charcoal with care, even though it'll wash off in the next heavy rain. Tonight, probably: Jack looks at the sky, dark as the clouds push in.
A oddly-pitched tone from Carter makes him look over sharply, and it takes him longer than it should to realize that she's singing; the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Jack recovers enough to come in on the glory glory hallelujahs. Teal'c once said he liked it, although Carter doesn't make it to let us die to make men free, her sweet alto falling silent after one verse.
Jack lets the wind whip around him in silence for a minute. In the end he says, "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me--" and his voice cracks. He can't go on, and they stand there in silence until the first raindrops hit them.
That night Carter lies in Jack's arms while the rain patters overhead and tells him stories, you never knew he was behind that time with the whipped cream, and he does the same, he was always so glad you were with us until his voice cracks and he has to hold on to her, tight, while she cries.
**
On day sixty-seven, Jack sees Carter sitting on the bluff with her head in her hands, which is probably not a great sign, so he meanders on up to see what's wrong.
Nothing's wrong, as he sees when he gets closer: what he didn't see from the ground is that she's got the scissors of her Swiss Army knife open and she's cutting her hair. By touch.
So he plops down next to her and looks out over the world, because he just walked up the damn hill and doesn't feel like making his way down again. She looks up but doesn't say anything, just goes back to doing what she was doing.
It's taking forever for her to do her whole head, a long time sitting in the spring-warm sun, and after a bit Jack takes a handful of flotsam out of his pocket and goes back to making crappy fishing flies out of linen threads and sharpened bits of Jaffa armor. It's slow going, he has to tie the fly to his pant leg to work on it, and--"Hey," he says, and she stops, both hands at the nape of her neck, her fingers threaded through her hair, looking at him questioningly.
He reaches out a hand and pinches a curl of hair from where it's fallen on her shoulder; nods at her and she goes back to what she was doing. Sometimes he worries that they will get rescued after all and he'll have a hell of a time figuring out how to communicate with anybody but her, he'll have forgotten all of the words he never speaks to her.
The golden hair gets worked into the fly; it's not the greatest-looking thing but it might serve to catch dinner one of these days. The reindeer are still hanging around and they're both pretty good at zatting birds and these hoppy little bunny things, but dammit, Jack just likes fishing.
She finishes with a last couple of snicks and he steals a glance to see her run her hands over her head to brush the last loose hairs away. It's good and short now, shorter probably than he's seen it before, but it still becomes her and she'll probably smear less rabbit blood on her face.
"You want a trim?" she says, and he looks up at her like it's the first time he's done it.
"Sure," he says. "It's getting in my eyes, I don't know how you stand it."
She moves around behind him. "Well, usually I have a drugstore nearby."
He sets down the fly as her fingers move at the nape of his neck, warm hands and the cool of the scissors moving steadily over his head.
Jack lets his eyes drift shut. They touch every day, he's used to touching her, warm solid pressure in the night, used to her body, but this feather-light drift of fingers is going to kill him, the soft scrape of fingernails on his scalp.
She shifts to reach one side, and he makes himself open his eyes, makes himself breathe regular and calm, and as long as he doesn't look at her, at her intent gaze, he'll be fine.
Time draws out like taffy, the only sounds the scissors and the vague nature sounds around them, the buzz of insects and the chirp of birds in their own personal Eden. Jack blinks once--it feels like once--and she's done, running her hands over his head to ruffle the stragglers free.
"Thanks," he manages to say, softly.
"Anytime," she says, but she--this was probably a bad idea, Jack thinks--she still has one hand at the back of his head, her fingers curling to toy at the back of his neck, and--yes, Jack thinks, a bad idea--he lets her draw him forward, and she kisses him.
It's--it's exquisite springtime, utterly this moment, and he almost lets himself drown in this one perfect kiss, because he knows as soon as it starts that it's the only one he can have.
They break apart and he's surprised to find his hand hard on her shoulder; he pulls it back and turns away from her--he can't look at her eyes now--and says, "We can't."
"Why not?" Her voice is shaking a little.
He touches her hand, picks it up. Moves it back to herself. "It was a bad idea when we stepped through that gate, and it's a bad idea now," he says, looking out over the river. Still not looking at her.
"Ja--" she starts, but he cuts her off.
"Carter," he says. "Please don't make me ask."
And because she'll never make him ask, she's silent, and gets up slowly, and leaves him on the bluff, alone in the suddenly vast world.
**
On day seventy-three, just as Jack's falling asleep, Carter says into the darkness, "I had a tubal ligation."
His mind goes Wait, huh? and then Holy shit and then Oh, God, she said that like it's going to be relevant, and he doesn't say anything but tightens his arm around her. She hasn't said or done anything out of the ordinary since that kiss on the bluff. He'd stupidly thought it was over.
"Back in the second year of the program," she says. "Right after we got SG-4 back, remember?"
He remembers. SG-4 had gone out on a milk run and had been taken prisoner, relocated to another planet. It'd been six months before they'd found them and brought them back.
"Janet drove me. Outpatient procedure on a long weekend and when I came back I told you it was a stomach flu."
Remembers that too. It was strange at the time--Carter was almost never sick, and she'd been out for a couple of days and holed up in her lab for a couple of days and then she'd been fine, bright-eyed and working hard like usual. And none of them had known.
"I realized it was too easy for something like that to happen. Something like this," she says, gesturing in the darkness at the shelter, the planet, the situation. "And hell, the Stargate program was my baby, important enough to give up anything for."
She's not saying So it's safe, Jack and she's not saying I can't give you children, and he can't say anything but, "I would have driven you."
He feels her shake her head. "I couldn't say anything. I was still so worried that I'd look weak to you."
"I never thought you were," he says, and holds her until she falls asleep.
**
On day eighty-five, they're gathering the watercress-stuff from the river's edge, which involves a lot of careful plucking to yield not a whole lot of the stuff, but they tried it once and now they both crave it. It's probably got some vitamin or other in it that they're lacking, so they stand in the cool water, pant legs rolled up, carefully gathering dark green leaves, swishing them through the water to clean them.
"We should follow the river for a while," Carter says. "See where it takes us."
They have, actually, a couple of weeks ago--a day out and a day back when the weather was nice. Nothing much was different downstream. "We did," Jack says. "We found a turtle, remember?"
"No," Carter says. "I mean look for someplace permanent."
Jack stands up straight. His back hurts like hell, and he knows exactly what she means. "We're not there yet," he says.
Carter straightens too. "Jack," she says, and her calling him Jack just never ends well. "They're not coming for us."
"We don't know that," he says, bending down again to grab a plant and toss it into the bucket. It takes him out of her gaze. "We're staying near the gate."
She makes an incredulous noise. "The ship blew up," she says.
He knows the ship blew up. They both saw it, streaming blinding light across the night sky; he sees it behind his eyes every night. But they've had miracles before. "It's still possible," he says, pulling up a plant.
"Why are you--" she starts, and he can't do this. He throws the plant down and with one splashing step, grabs her by the shoulders. He's struck with the urge to yell, and tamps it down, and then thinks, hell with it; there's nobody to hear him but Carter and she thinks he's nuts anyway.
"Because I can't," he roars into the sky, and then continues, more softly. "This is what I am. Stop kicking my legs out from under me."
There's still fury on her face, and for a second, she looks like she's considering doing just that, dumping him in the water and leaving his ass there, but then her eyes soften and she just brings her hands up to cover his, wet and clasping.
He drops his head and closes his eyes and pretends he wasn't just yelling at nothing in the middle of the day. She holds his hands for a moment and then lets go, and they finish picking their watercress without another word, the only sounds the trickle of the water and the birdsong around them.
**
Later, when they're nibbling blackened rabbit parts off of sticks, and chewing on watercress dipped out of Carter's bucket, Carter says, "You know, I always thought that I'd be willing to die if it meant taking one Goa'uld with me. That one less of them in the galaxy would be worth it."
He has a mouthful of rabbit, and so says nothing. At least, a full mouth is his excuse.
"And then I realized--we did. This is it. We killed Seshat, and we lost everything that made up our old lives, and here we are. We did it, and this is what we have."
He doesn't look up from pulling pieces of meat off his skewer. "So is it Paradise or Purgatory?" he says, licking his fingers.
"You tell me," she says, and raises an eyebrow.
"We're not there yet," he says, quietly.
She picks up a stalk of watercress, strips the leaves from it. "When will we be there?"
"Christmas," he says, and thankfully she leaves it at that.
**
On day ninety-three, Jack comes back from gathering cress and almost drops the bucket on his own foot.
Carter's gotten rid of the t-shirt she's worn for the past ninety-four days and improvised some sort of halter top from a strip of Seshat's linen robes, crossed over her breasts and tied in the back. Being Goa'uld-wear, the linen's not particularly opaque.
Jack adjusts his grip on the bucket. It's entirely possible that she's trying to kill him.
She looks him in the eye when he gets close, almost daring him to say something; a thousand phrases run through his head, but what comes out is: "You're gonna get one hell of a weird tan line from that."
Carter looks pointedly at him and steals some cress. "Likewise," she says. It's true--Jack's been going barechested for about a week now, as soon as he could, because wearing the same shirt every day got old pretty quickly. So he went from terrible farmer's tan from the t-shirt to an even more terrible farmer's tan that leaves half of him speckled dark and the other half dead-white. Carter, he can see even as he tries not to look, is creamy-pale where she isn't freckling attractively.
**
Day ninety-nine dawns warm and hazy-bright, so Jack peels himself from Carter ("Nnngh.") and goes straight for the stream to cool off. It's long past the time when they needed to cuddle for heat, but Jack can't quite bring himself to suggest that they sleep separated. And Carter's no help; she just slings an arm over him every night and falls asleep almost immediately while he's still deciding where to put his hands.
The stream is nicely cool, with smooth rocks on the bottom, and it's a vacation kind of a day, Jack decides. Perfect for lying in the hollow near the woods and fishing. Well. It's still technically fishing as long as he has a line in the water, regardless of his actual state of activity.
So he leaves Carter fiddling with pieces of the Jaffa armor--he's a little afraid that one day he'll come back and she'll have built a windmill, or an ice cream maker, or something--and he heads off with his line and pole.
He's not surprised to wake up in the late afternoon shade with a reindeer licking his neck. Either the reindeer aren't smart enough to understand that the zat shots come from the humans, or he and Carter have done a good enough job of hiding when they hunt. Either way. The reindeer are idiotically curious about the two of them, and also really love the salt on their skin.
Jack sits up and swats at the animal as it nuzzles at his ear.
"Muuuurrr," it says, sadly, and wanders off.
He lies there for a little while longer, stretched out on the sun-dappled grass, and listens to the mournful birdsong that echoes through the hollow, thinking about downstream, and Carter, and how they got here to this planet.
Jack detours by the Stargate on the way back, and spends a while looking at the area with a practiced eye, hearing Daniel say in his head Do you see that structure and the clearing? This gate's pretty heavily used. They hadn't made a detailed survey when they first came through chasing Seshat, and what with one thing and another Jack hasn't been back. Hasn't wanted to step past the grass growing up around white skeletons; hasn't wanted to see the signs that they're the only ones that have come through this gate in a long time.
The rubble crunches under his feet, and he turns and heads for home.
Later that night they shell nuts for dinner, stone hammers and anvils, tossing the shells into the fire where they pop and snap. It's a slow, drawn-out process for the caloric benefit, almost meditative: smash, pick out the nutmeat, eat, toss the shells, and Jack finds himself saying, "My marriage was tanking even before Charlie was born."
Carter doesn't say anything, but he hears her stop smashing her hammer down. Feels her eyes on him, even though he doesn't look up.
"We held it together for his sake. Gave us something else to focus on than how we couldn't give each other what we needed," he says. "Still wasn't enough." He throws another shell into the flames and smashes another nut, harder than is maybe necessary.
She's still not saying anything--treading delicately around the crazy man, not sure if he's done. He's not sure if he's done. He picks at the nut, sees it's rotten. Throws it whole into the fire.
"So, what, you think we should put together some supplies before we head downstream, or should we just start out?" He finally looks over at her; she's staring back, firelight flickering over her hair. "Merry Christmas, Carter," he says softly.
Jack doesn't celebrate Christmas anymore unless someone makes him, and his team's been making him since they found that out. Secret Santa and invites to dinner and one year Teal'c took him to Vespers. It'd been nice, but only academically; it's been a long time since he's woken up to find he's gotten exactly what he wanted.
So now he watches in an oddly detached way as Carter looks away from him for a moment and thinks to herself--she nods--and then, very deliberately, sets down her rocks and moves around the fire to sit down next to him, close.
He reaches up a hand to trace her cheek; she mirrors him, and without any conscious thought his mouth is on hers, and they stay sprawled in front of the fire, curled around each other, for a very long time.
**
On day one hundred and two Jack lies on the bluff in the midmorning sun, Carter moving slowly above him. They'd theoretically come up here to get a better view of the landscape (as if they didn't both have it memorized by now) before they set off southward.
But one thing led to another, and then that led to Carter's halter top mysteriously coming untied, and then--well. Here they are.
The sky is clear, the perfect deep blue of infinity, the same as her eyes, and Jack lets himself get lost in it, in the warmth, the birdsong, her skin.
And then--"Oh my God," Carter says, and Jack's brain skips like a record, because that's not the tone of voice she should be saying that in.
"Oh, God," Carter says, looking out over the plain. "Someone's coming."
**
They dress hurriedly and start on the path down from the bluff, and Jack wonders when the last time was he was this cranky. A hundred and two days here? And now a sign of humanity? He wishes they'd brought at least a zat with them so he could shoot whoever it is. Or--hell, he wishes he had a zat anyway; who knows who it could be.
And then Carter drops his hand and starts running, and God, the figure inspecting their shelter has a very familiar droopy hat; the other's stance as he turns to survey the landscape is--and Jack starts running too.
Carter's engulfed in Teal'c's arms by the time Jack gets there, and Jack grabs Daniel and holds on until he's convinced himself that he's really there.
"Jack," Daniel says, "Sam. Come here," and they switch off so Carter can cling to Daniel for a minute and Jack can have one of those bone-crushing hugs he only ever gets to trade with Teal'c.
"I am glad you are both well," Teal'c says, low because he's still only about four inches away from Jack's ear, and all Jack can say is, "Yeah. Yeah."
Eventually the hugs break down and Jack says, "Where the hell did you come from? We--your ship blew up."
"Ah," Daniel says. "Seshat had a ship--she must have had a plan to come to this world; it was waiting for us when we got here. We managed to take it out but a lot of our systems were crippled in the process--it took us over two months to even get back to Earth." He pauses, raises his eyebrows in the way that means he's already reached his conclusion but is surprised by it. "So. How are you two?"
"Great," Jack says. "You know. Fishing. Building huts." He gestures at the shelter. "Lunch?"
The SGC dials in when Teal'c and Daniel miss their check-in. It feels better than Jack would have thought to hear Hammond's voice, to give a dry report over the radio. It'll be a while for them to dig up the replacement crystal Carter needs to fix the DHD, but--"Luckily," Jack says, "I know where there's a decent campsite nearby."
When Jack comes back from taking down the traps he'd left at the edges of the wood, at the bend of the stream--cruel to leave them set when he won't be here to check them, and it's odd to think that he won't have to worry about where dinner's coming from--he sees his team, sprawled around the fire like it's one of their usual missions, comfortable and nibbling on things and bickering half-heartedly about whether you can call alien reindeer reindeer. Something inside Jack settles into place at the sight, and he goes and drops down next to them.
Teal'c reaches out to finger the delicate ties of the fish net. He doesn't say anything, but Jack answers him anyway. "We had some down time," he says.
"You really thought we weren't coming," Daniel says.
"We thought you were dead," Jack says. "We mourned you. Carter sang."
Carter looks guilty, but just for a second. "He recited poetry. Dickinson."
Daniel frowns. "I thought the only poem you knew was The Cremation of Sam McGee."
"Hey," Jack says, mock-wounded. "I know plenty of poetry. Kipling, even. You like Kipling?"
"Actually, no," Daniel starts to say, "the colonialistic themes are--" but Teal'c cuts him off smoothly. "Indeed I know not," Teal'c says. "I have never Kippled."
And Jack grins, and Carter tries not to laugh at Daniel's affronted expression, and the fire sends sparks high into the warm summer sky.
**
On day one hundred and three--which ends up being day one hundred and three and a half thanks to gate lag--Jack sits on a paper-covered table in the infirmary while Frasier draws more blood than he can imagine even the hungriest vampire would want. He says as much to her.
"Just making up for lost time, Colonel," she tells him with a smile, and pops yet another vial onto the line.
The infirmary is both completely unreal and exactly how he left it; he fingers the paper and the synthetic surface of the exam bed, glances over to see Carter blinking a little wide-eyed at the lights.
It's far from a clean bill of health, which is to be expected: they've both picked up some internal parasites and lost some weight that hadn't really been extraneous to begin with. Some vitamin and mineral deficiencies, some sunburn, nothing surprising, and they're packed off with some pills.
Jack will never be able to make himself take a shower that's more than three minutes long, but he gives it his best try anyway, taking advantage of hot water and real soap. He towels off, steps up to the mirror to shave, and stares at himself for a good long while.
This is the face that Carter's been looking at for three months: hair out of control, the lines on his face drawn a little deeper from the weight loss. Shaved-by-touch stubble that's rounded the corner of "scruff" and galloping toward "grizzled."
His eyes look haunted, and he closes them for a minute until he can see the sink, the razor in front of him, and not her face.
When he's back together--shaved, dressed in fresh clothes from his own locker, acquired a cup of coffee from a source which he shall not name--he heads for Hammond, and the debrief.
**
On day one hundred and ten, Jack, clean and shaven and full of actual breakfast food, pokes his head through the door of the lab where Carter's resuming light duty after her enforced week off. ("I don't need a vacation, sir. I just had a vacation.")
He hasn't seen her at all that week; he's talked to Daniel and Teal'c, gone to restaurants with them and eaten food that he didn't have to gather or kill himself, he's washed half the SGC's pharmacy down his throat, he's gone to the library with the intention of catching up on three months' worth of newspapers, and ended up just skimming today's headlines and the comics.
Hasn't argued with her over who has to skin the rabbits, hasn't touched her sun-warm skin, hasn't gone to sleep with his arms around her.
It's easier than he would have thought. Damn it. It shouldn't be; he should have tossed and turned all of that first night before giving up and watching late-night sports replays, but no, he went home, pulled out clean sheets from the closet, made the bed, went to sleep.
Slept for fourteen hours. Best sleep he's ever had, and Jack woke up to the sunshine filtering through his curtains like he'd never left.
He doesn't know if it's the same for her, if she went home and ordered a pizza, went to sleep between the simple feminine linens he imagines she has. (He's never seen her bed. Never will.)
Sometime during that week she got a haircut, he thinks. She looks good. Still.
"Hey," he says. "Got a minute?"
They go up to the smokers' patio, the trees and benches that huddle together on top of the mountain. It's almost deserted; the October chill doesn't encourage people to linger outside for very long. There's only one lonely airman there, his back to the wind, smoke curling away from him, and then he stubs out his cigarette and he's gone.
Jack perches on the back of a bench and wishes he had a cigarette. He could really use something to do with his hands without looking like he's actually fidgeting; he's gotten used to braiding fishing line, cracking nuts, making flies. Talking without looking at her eyes.
She makes it easy for him, though, sits next to him, close enough that they'll be able to keep their voices low, not close enough to touch. Not close enough to feel the heat from her body.
"You know what I'm gonna say," he says.
"Yeah," she says. "I--It won't be a problem."
It happens, they'd been told (they knew already). Marooned on an alien planet, emotional hardship, lots of Psych 101 terms to say it. It's no surprise, not grounds for discipline, Hammond won't break up the team, not unless Jack or Carter requests it, either formally or by continuing the relationship. Glad to have you back, take a week off, let us know.
Jack didn't even need to think about it. He doesn't think Carter did either--the program trumps everything, they both know it.
"Good," he says then. "Good," and he moves as though to get up, but a sound from her makes him stop.
"I'm not sorry, Colonel," she says suddenly, turning to him, looking him in the eye. "I've risked more on less, and if I had it to do over again I would. I made a decision based on the available information, and I stand by it."
It's the same tone of voice she uses when she's defending her actions in the field; it throws him for a moment, and by the time he realizes what she's saying she's turned away and started fiddling with a dead leaf that's blown onto her lap.
"I'm not sorry," she says again, twirling the leaf between her fingers.
He bumps her shoulder with his own. "You know you're the person I'd most want to be stuck on a desert island with," he says. "You skin a mean rabbit."
They're still not looking at each other, but he thinks he hears her smile.
"Well, sir," she says, "if you ever find yourself on a desert island, save me a seat."
"Yeah," he says. "Will do."
**
He wakes up the next day and walks into the Mountain whistling. He hunts down Daniel, who fills him in on the crisis du jour: the Nevven are balking at their agreement to let scientists from the SGC study the ancient ruins from which a mysterious power signature is emanating, possibly Goa'uld in origin and definitely of major interest. The ruins lie on both sides of the Nevven's border with the Gildea, who may or may not be coercing the Nevven into dropping the study. SG-1 is still grounded, but they had the initial contact with the Nevven and Gildea and can look forward to a stimulating day of strategy, briefing SG-7, and convincing Hammond that a plate of cheese Danish is vital to the continued recovery of half of SG-1 from their traumatic, cheese-Danish-less sojourn.
Jack gets a cup of coffee and takes it to the briefing room, Daniel finishing with " . . . trying to hide something, Jack, they might just be hesitant about letting us poke around their historical sites like the Earl of Elgin," just as they enter the room. One of these days Jack's going to figure out how he times it like that.
He nods to Carter and Teal'c, who are already sitting at the table discussing Goa'uld power sources, and takes a sip of his coffee. It tastes perfect: rich and bitter, and Jack leans back and smiles at his team, at the first day of the rest of his life.