TITLE: The Dessert Tradition
AUTHOR: Sadie
CATEGORY: Vignette, epilogue for Metamorphous
RATING: PG (just in case… probably closer to a G)
SEASON: 6 (boy, I wish it was showing in Canada already), spoilers up to Metamorphous
SUMMARY: Jack is eating carrot cake at 1:30 in the morning…
PAIRING: Sam/Jack
ARCHIVE: so far, just Fanfiction.Net (if you want it, plez feel free to ask).
STATUS: Complete.
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 is not owned by me. Nobody's paying me for writing this. I'm just having some fun with someone else's characters. I promise I'll return them in good condition.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: It was when I was trying not to write a short story for Writer's Craft that this came stumbling out. It's short and sweet.
(BTW: if anyone is still wondering about "I was Reminded", another SG-1 fanfic I've been writing that has been on hiatus for the last… I don't know, months now. I'm really really sorry. I won't list excuses. There are 2 more chapters. I'm working on them. Really.)
-S
***
I almost lost her again.
Jack ignored the unbidden thought. She almost spontaneously combusted into a waterway…
Okay, that sounded a bit more humorous, but it followed the same general train of thought. Sam Carter had almost died. And although it seemed to happen too often, Jack refused to get used to the idea.
He took another bite of his carrot cake. The commissary didn't normally serve food at 1:30 in the morning, but being the 2IC of the base came with certain responsibilities (ha!) and privileges. Eating desserts at all hours of the night was his right. Okay… maybe not so much. Brooding over "almosts" and those wonderful "what ifs"? Well, that was a privilege.
The memories were too fresh: the sound of anguish in her voice, the certain knowledge of her, and in time, all of her deaths, the feeling of her head on his shoulder… He forced himself to eat some more of the cake. It was good cake. He should be enjoying it, but for some reason, it seemed to have lost its taste.
What if one of these days they didn't escape? What if he made a wrong decision and everyone lost their lives? What if –
Stop it! He thought angrily, you didn't make Colonel thinking that way.
He knew the risks, she knew the risks –hey, where did the rest of his cake go?
"Sir?"
Jack quickly forgot about the missing dessert. He'd known that she'd come eventually. She had a bowl of Jello in her hands. Carter also had a spare key to the commissary, just in case he lost his.
He nodded a greeting and Sam stole the seat in front of him.
"You finished already?" she joked in regards to the empty plate with the forgotten fork in front of him.
"Hey, it was carrot cake!" he protested, a smile on his face. She always seemed to have that sort of effect on her.
"The last piece, one that I specifically shot-gunned," she grumbled.
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
Sam was soon reduced to giggles. Although if confronted, Sam would never admit to giggling. "I don't giggle," Sam claimed, "I laugh full heartedly." Her friends humoured her.
After their laughter subsided, a sober silence reigned over them. Sam took her first bite of her blue Jello. It was their tradition. Any time one of them had a close brush with death; any time a mission went horribly, extremely wrong (beyond the norm); every time they got damn lucky; they met up in the commissary (neutral ground) and ate dessert. Sam didn't know when it had reached tradition status, but she relished the stolen moments, but perhaps not the calories.
They chatted about the mundane: like how ugly Teal'c's new squirrel-fur hat was (and how neither of them would dare say anything to him); how Jonas kept flirting with the nurses and was going to be stabbed by Janet's needles soon if he wasn't careful; and how all the fish seemed to have migrated away from the Colonel's cabin. They never talked about the mission. They never mentioned how close they came to dying.
That's just the way it was. The way it always been. And for now, it was enough.
End