Episode Tag: The Brocha Divide

A/N: This show! This show. I love this show. It's all been put on Netflix recently, so I'm engaging in the mother of all re-watches. I can't really remember much from my first time watching it, so I'm writing in what will hopefully remain a spoiler-free zone. I'd love if you guys could help me keep it that way. I know the show is over - but as you can see from my other fics - I'm a sucker for classic TV. Anyway. Enjoy!


The marks heal.

They don't leave scars, or anything. Sam's nails aren't that long. Not that long – she would have said – and certainly not that vicious. But wow. She had really gone to town on him. Red lined semicircles that reached halfway up his neck, arching to a sweep that curved right underneath his collar.

It looked like it hurt.

He couldn't have forgotten that. Not really. She'd clawed his skin open, ambushed him the locker room and all he'd remembered was something about a tank top? No. She wasn't buying it. Healing or no, every so often she does spot a wince. A flicker of something as he stoops to lay firewood, or settles himself in for first watch. The hand goes to his neck, and he stops. Pain, she thinks. Or something like it.

Guilt re-surfaces. She does her best to banish it. Almost everyone on the base that day behaved like an idiot. It got so bad that on-site protocol was never to talk about it. Things happened. Now they didn't. But…but Sam remembered other things. His hands on her waist. Bare seconds of feedback – of a two-way kiss – before his higher brain lit up and common sense kicked in.

'Not like this.'

Gut instinct. Sam didn't trust it. Didn't trust what she remembered or how it made her feel. She was sorry, sorrier than he knew – but one look at O'Neill would tell you he's fine. Ask him, and he'd confirm it. 'More than fine, Captain,' he'd say, gaze light on the horizon. 'Peachy. I'm pretty gosh darn peachy.'

But, sometimes – odd times, rare times – he'd look for her, and his hand would stray to his neck.

She wondered what it means.

He's healing, so she doesn't ask.


A/N: Reviews, likes, comments...you know they make my day. Thanks for reading.