A/N: Once again I find myself distracted by Stargate due to my impending exams.
Set throughout season 4, it occurred to me that there is a definite shift in the S/J relationship, and this is my take on why that is. This has also not been Beta'd.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
He had always known it would come out at some stage. Somewhere along the timeline in any reality, eventually they would have to admit it. He had always imagined it in a life or death situation, where one of them was about to die and suddenly the other one would admit their love right as the lights went out. Oh, the cliché of it all.
Somehow, he never imagines admitting it in front of a room full of people, and half of them aliens. What the hell, he tells himself. Better than dying. Ironically this time it saves their lives instead of ending them. Somehow that makes it alright.
But it's not alright.
He shouldn't have to admit his feelings for a certain blonde individual under his command. He shouldn't have to face it just yet.
He's saved when she offers to keep it in the room. Deep down he knows it's more for herself than him, and she doesn't want to face it anymore than he does. Bitterly he admits that it's because she doesn't want to ruin her projected straight-to-the-top career path for a fling with a wrong-side-of-forty Colonel.
But he can't help but wonder what it would be like to be with her. Full-on no doubt, and never ending. Caught up in her youth and passion for all things that make the world move. A whirlwind that he isn't entirely sure he wants to be swept away with.
It's after too many close calls and too many unsaid goodbyes that he indulges himself sometimes. Alone, late at night somewhere on some planet in some area of the galaxy when he has nothing to do but think of her.
In the weeks that follow, nothing really changes. But he feels like he is drowning. It hovers over them, influencing everything they do but he knows it would be oh so wrong. It's too easy for them to hurt each other. It's too easy for them to die.
And it shouldn't be that way.
It takes a row boat on an alien lake somewhere far from home on a terraformed planet to realise that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But her heart is closed. Forever the soldier and duty comes first.
He knows why she is scared, a deep-seeded fear that she knows once they start they just won't stop. He can't reassure her; he knows it's true. A few weeks in an underground mine proves just how fast their relationship would progress. And all it takes is an hour of memories returning and the word "sir" to set him straight.
He sees it immediately in her eyes the moment they get home from his one-way trip in the death glider. That moment of clarity where she realises this isn't something she can forget. And all too soon it's gone, hidden away beneath those blues. Locked away in a box that contains Sam and not Major Carter.
They never speak of the moment he nearly suffocates in space. He knows she blames herself, and he can't imagine how she felt stuck back on Earth knowing he was moving away from her at a rate faster than she can catch him. And there was nothing she could do.
It's the gut wrenching ache he tries to ignore whenever he sees her. It follows them though, and he feels like it echoes everything they do. He doesn't call her 'Sam' anymore, and somehow he can't even bring himself to be near her alone.
A few weeks later and it's all happening too soon, that moment they both dread when one has to make the life ending choice for the other. It's been one hell of a year for them both and somehow he wonders if this is the universe kicking his arse. Too many moments spent near death and if anything it just proves to them both they cannot be together.
Ironically, it's him that pulls the trigger to end her life. He tells himself she was long gone before that moment. But it was still Sam. And he watches numbly as once again they load her limp body onto a trolley to wheel her back to the infirmary.
This time it was him that ended her life. And it was worse than watching her die on some alien planet in the cold.
He can't even think about it, he can't feel.
Or is it that he doesn't want to?
But just like that, she is back to him again. She doesn't say it, but he hears it anyway. The gratitude that he was able to do what they both fear. He can still separate the soldier from the man. And somehow he knows now that he can make that decision if he has to.
And she knows it would kill him too.
But they never say it. They can't.
The year moves on and they avoid the infirmary for the most part. They avoid a lot of other things too.
Fate is anything if not cruel. And it's cruel they have to live side-by-side facing situations that cause them pain. They need each other to survive, to protect each other and to do their job.
Sometimes he thinks it would be a whole lot easier if she was attracted to Daniel. But she isn't.
His sheer panic each time they step through the gate is always going to be there, and he makes a choice to do everything he can to make damn sure they both return through the gate.
Because they both know they'd never survive without the other.
Thanks for the read!