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I'm sorry," she said. Her voice so low he almost didn't hear her over the fading shouts of the battle moving off into the distance.
"You're always sorry, Carter," he snarled through clenched teeth and watched her blanch against his attack. The wound through her shoulder had finally stopped bleeding, but he doubted it would stay that way if they tried to make their way back to the Gate. They'd have to sit here among the dead and wounded and wait for the mop-up crews to come for them. The moans and cries coming from the still-living echoed painfully in his ears. He was afraid it was only a matter of time before her voice joined them. He eased her down into what he hoped was a more comfortable position and was relieved to see no fresh bleeding from the movement. He worked off his flack jacket and placed it over her. The afternoon sun was slowly sinking, and the temperature had started to fall.
"Thank you," she mouthed, but her voice had faded beyond his hearing. He nodded an acknowledgement and avoided looking into her eyes for fear she'd read the truth in his. The blast had hit too close, the time it had taken him to reach her had been too long, and the amount of blood had been too much for him to trust he'd managed to hide his feelings safely away. He loved her. Not a comfortable admission for him to make in any circumstance, and certainly not in a field of blood thousands of light-years from home. And certainly not to her, his fellow officer and his subordinate. The woman he walked into battle beside, the woman he depended on to be clear-thinking and level-headed. He couldn't cloud her judgment, or his own, with emotions and attachments which he had no right to feel and no way to express. So he didn't look into her eyes. Instead, he hunched beside her and waited for help to arrive, please God, soon and in time.
Her eyes gradually closed as the morphine he'd thrust into her thigh took effect, leaving him free to look at her all he wanted. She was, he thought, extraordinarily beautiful...even here with mud, blood, and gunpowder residue liberally applied to her pale features and with a darkening bruise spreading across her left cheek causing her eye to swell. She was normally so animated, so alive, that seeing her asleep or passed out was always disconcerting. Like stumbling upon Sleeping Beauty waiting to be awakened by a kiss.
But he wasn't the prince and never could be though he'd thought of kissing her. Not here among the dying. Somewhere else in a fantasy life he tried to keep firmly locked away from the real world. He'd kissed the alternate Carter, and certainly woke up from enough dreams with the taste of her on his lips, but he'd never kissed her. And he wouldn't be kissing her anytime soon...whether help came in time or not. It wasn't his place, wasn't his right.
There was a rasping, irregular gurgling nearby. Somebody dying. No one, he thought, even though possibly dozens were doing it that very moment all around him, should have to die alone. Her eyes had closed, but her chest moved in regular, if abbreviated, breaths. To his laymen's eye she didn't look like she was on death's door quite yet, but she hardly looked like she'd miss him for the little bit of time this would likely take.
As quietly as possible, he straightened painfully from his place by her side and made his way to the wounded man. He squatted next to the soldier, whom thankfully he didn't know even by name, and held his hand as the man gasped his last breaths and gave up his fight. Grimly he pulled the dogtags from the body and stuffed them into his pocket without reading the name. Then there was nothing to do but straighten the broken limbs and make his way back to the side of his wounded major.
She stirred when he settled next to her again, and a soft moan made its way past her lips. He wished for more morphine, but he'd used the last of it on a fallen soldier he'd passed on the way back. Half the man's face had been destroyed in a blast, and it was more than he could stand to walk by without doing what he could to alleviate the man's sufferings. He hoped the airman slipped away in the morphine-induced haze though he'd patted his shoulder and given him a half-hearted, 'hang in there, soldier' as the medication had taken effect.
He found himself giving her thigh a similar pat and murmuring the same sentiments, but this time they were fervently said and meant. Hang in there, Carter, hang in there. He wet his finger in the mouth of his canteen and gently wet her lips with it. She opened her eyes for a brief second, and he flashed a meant-to-be upbeat and positive smile at her. Her lips twitched in response, and she painfully raised a hand to his arm. He patted it with his other hand and was startled to find it ice-cold. "You're doing fine, Carter," he assured her. "Won't be long now. Just hold on."
With an effort, she swallowed and nodded her head. He stripped his t-shirt off and placed it over the top of the flack jacket and caught her hand back up in his to try to warm it. She didn't pull it away. Though her eyes had shut again, the stiffness of her body told him the morphine's effects were about gone, and she was awake and hurting. When he shifted to find a less torturous position for his aching knees, her hand tightened its hold on his. "It's all right, Carter," he told her, "I'm not going anywhere." And he wasn't. Every peek he'd taken at her shoulder had assured him the bleeding had stopped. But it hadn't. A dark puddle of red had grown beneath her on the hard packed clay of the battlefield. He had nothing else to offer but his presence. He wouldn't be leaving again until help came or...no one should die alone and most definitely not her.
From somewhere, she found enough air and strength to say a weak, "Thank you, Sir."
He nodded his head, "Think nothing of it."
"Sir..." she started weakly but didn't finish. As the silence stretched out, he feared the worst. Dropping his hand to her good shoulder, he gave it a small, desperate squeeze. He gasped a ragged breath of relief when she moaned and opened her eyes in response.
Understanding flitted across her face. "Still here, Sir," she breathed out.
"You're right you are and you're staying right here, Major! Is that understood?" he barked at her in reply because otherwise his voice would have broken.
She struggled to swallow, and a small trickle of blood made its way out of the corner of her mouth. He gently wiped it away with a bit of his flack jacket. "Sorry, Sir," she said again.
The anger, which had upheld him earlier, was gone. So was any protective, angry retort with which he might have answered her. He was left with only the truth. "You have nothing to apologize for, Major," he told her. "It has been an honor serving with you...you're a fine officer, Carter." To his horror, he found he was crying. He swiped his forearm across his face and glanced shamefacedly at her. Her eyes had closed again, and he could hope she hadn't noticed. Her breathing was no longer regular and had become more labored, her skin had taken on a grayish cast beneath the grime and bruising, and the puddle under her shoulder had grown enough to form a small rivulet running away from her body towards his left boot. It wouldn't be long now, and then it wouldn't matter how long it took for the reinforcements to arrive. Maybe to those whose cries he could still hear all around them, but not to her. Not to him.
Somewhere along the way, the light of the day began to slip away, and her breathing seemed to fade with it becoming shallow and even more irregular. He sat quietly beside her, swallowing down tears and emotions but unable to swallow down the words that went with them. "I love you, Carter," he whispered.
She blinked her eyes up at him in response, and he realized she was still there enough to hear his words. Yet, he found he didn't regret them. Later maybe. If she lived. But not here, not now. She opened her mouth but never said whatever it was she'd meant to.
Or if she did, he couldn't hear it over the sudden cackle of his radio and Daniel's frantic, "Jack? Sam? Are you guys there? Jack! Sam!"
He should have known. "For crying out loud," he burst out in relief, "if I'd thought spilling my guts was all it would have taken-I'd done it hours ago!" Then he gave her an embarrassed grin and an apologetic shrug and dropped her hand to answer Daniel. They were on their way home.