Far Away

Summary: Sam's been missing for four months. Jack blames himself and after countless unsuccessful leads, he is beginning to loose all hope of ever finding her.

Chapter 1: Four Months

There is NO Pete in this story. Pretend he doesn't exist.

Set in Season 7. (This story may not make sense at first, but believe me, it will soon. I promise!)

This time, This place, Misused,
Mistakes, Too long,
Too late, Who was I to make you wait

The sunlight streamed in through the thin curtains covering the windows, casting a warm glow over her soft features. She lay on the bed sleeping peacefully, her face bathed in the warmth the sunlight brought with it.

She stirred softly and opened her eyes slowly, closing them again against the light that her eyes had been deprived of while she slept. She brought her hand up to her face, running it through her short blonde hair, ruffling it more so than it already was and turned her head to look at the clock on the table next to her bed.

06:17 the green luminescent digits read against the black background. She never really slept late in the mornings these days and so sat up pushing the bed covers off of her slender body and walking to her adjoining bathroom.

She reached into the shower and turned on the faucets, setting it to the right temperature. As she walked past the mirror above the sink she stopped… she looked at her reflection in the mirror and took in her appearance.

Her blonde hair was messy from sleep, yet being short, it didn't look too bad. Her blue eyes and soft pink lips were contrasted against her slightly tanned skin. She couldn't really complain about her body, covered by a black tank top and shorts, she had a slender, toned body, yet there were scars, some barely noticeable but others that were defiantly apparent. Scars that had been sustained when…

"Honey there's coffee downstairs when you're up" she heard called from the other side of the door.

"Thanks" she replied. "Um, I'll be down soon, thanks Dad"

She pulled herself out of her musings and stripped herself of her clothes before entering the shower. She placed her face directly under the stream of water, letting the heat wash away the memories that were swimming inside her mind. 'She shouldn't wish her memories away' she thought to herself, 'memories are precious…. aren't they?' But these memories, these memories plagued her, made her feel hollow inside, and made her have flashbacks to when…

She looked up with a start as if someone had drenched her with cold water, yet the water that poured over her body was still hot. Trying to shake the thoughts from her mind she set about washing her hair.

She had a lot to be thankful for… she was still alive. 'But what was worse… being dead or going through what she was going through now?' This was a question she had asked herself repeatedly over the last four months.

She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel, trying not to think about the accident, the accident that had caused her so much grief and pain… not just physically but emotionally. She sat down on the chair in front of her dresser, staring at her reflection in the mirror once again.

This had become a common occurrence since the accident. She would sit for hours in front of a mirror, just staring at her reflection asking herself the same question over and over again, 'why am I here'.

A quiet knock on the door broke her out of her reverie.

"Honey, work called. They wanted to know if you could come in today? I told them you'd call them back."

"Okay, thanks, I'll call them back in a bit" she called to the closed door.

Her father's voice called out to her once more.

"Are you okay Kate?"

"Yeah dad! I'm fine" she called out to him.

'One hundred and twenty six days…' he thought to himself, as he threw his cell phone against the wall, shattering it into tiny pieces, yet the word that came out of his mouth was both offensive and blasphemous. Over four months and still… nothing!

He sunk to the couch behind him, placing his head in his hands running his hands through his silvery grey hair. She'd been missing for over four months… she could be anywhere. No-one had heard or seen anything relating to her whereabouts. Had no clue as to how she had simply disappeared.

She'd been missing before, but never this long, and the longer she was gone, the more he thought about the things he hadn't said, things he hadn't done. Over the past seven years on so many occasions they had both been so close to death… hell he HAD died, over and over.

Each time he had seen her again after fearing the worst, the promise he had made to himself, not to let rules stand in the way anymore, the promise he had made while either of them were either missing or on the verge of dying, went catapulting out of the window through fear that she didn't feel the same way about him.

But this was the longest she had been missing, and it scared him to the core. Wondering whether she was dead, or captive. Whether she was being tortured by a system lord or whether she was on a planet somewhere with no possible way of getting home. All he wanted to do was hold her in his arms, feel her body, taste her lips.

For over four months Jack O'Neill had woken up fearing that all of this was a terrible nightmare. That she wasn't really gone, but was safe at home, or on the base, working on some doo-hickey in her lab.

Sam Carter had been missing for over four months and every time he heard a knock at his door he had raced to it at the speed of light opening it, praying to whoever was listening that she would be there… but she never was. Every time the phone rang, he had hoped against hope she would be on the other end of the line. What he wouldn't give to hear her voice, to hear her laugh. Every time he walked into a room and saw her he felt… there were really no words for it. Whenever their eyes would meet it was the highlight of his day, just seeing those cerulean blue eyes that changed with her moods.

He'd tasted her lips on more than one occasion and he pressed his fingers to his lips as he remembered one particular time when he'd not only kissed her but held her in his arms, her arm around his neck, his tongue caressing hers softly, slightly desperately before the time loop started again. That was when he realised she had feelings for him. She could have just pushed him away but she didn't. She returned the kiss with equal vigour.

Okay so that wasn't true. The first time he realised his feelings for her were reciprocated was when those damned arm bands the Tok'ra had given them failed, and they were trapped either side of the force shield. He remembered trying to beat the force shield down and ignoring her pleas for him to leave her. When she had yelled at him, "sir just go!" he had screamed back "NO!" and in that instance he knew what he had been feeling ever since he had met her… it was love. As he had stared into her eyes he knew he'd rather die than lose her.

But now, she was lost, and he had tried in vain to find her. Dr Frasier had told him he needed to sleep but how could he when his dreams and nightmares were plagued by images of her. Images that gave him the false hope that caused him to awaken believing it all to be a lie.

Daniel and Teal'c had come to see him countless times over the past four months, in amongst their own efforts to find Sam. Teal'c had been using his allies and contacts off world to find out of any news of Sam's location, and Daniel had been using his contacts on Earth. Jack was more of a 'do now, think later man'.

So he'd been the one out visiting every possible lead they got. Daniel and Teal'c had accompanied them on several of the visits, but a lot of the time they remained either off world in Teal'c's case or at the base, continuing to research leads encase this one was a bust like so many of them had been.

After four months of erroneous leads, Jack couldn't bear to hear one more "Jack I think we may have found something", getting his hopes up only to have them shattered into a thousand pieces.

The one thought that had plagued Jack nearly every minute of every day for the last one hundred and twenty six of them was of the last time he had seen her.

Walking into her lab he saw her bent over a microscope and his breath caught, as it did almost every time he saw her. She looked up as she hear him enter giving him a sweet smile before speaking,

"hi sir, I thought you were off to your Cabin?"

"I am Carter, just leaving…last chance, land of sky blue waters, yada yada, you know the drill." He spoke with a sly grin.

"I'd love to sir, but I've got to finish this analysis of the naquadria samples found on P7X-489, sorry."

He gave a small laugh and hung his head, then looked up at her with a smile.

"Okay, okay, but I'm gonna get you up there one of these times Carter."

She smiled at him and then spoke softly. "Next time sir."

"Is that a promise Carter?"

"Yes sir, next time I'll come with you". She took his hand in hers as if the physical contact were a sealing the promise.

He looked up from their joined hands at Sam and gave her a smile which she returned. It was a look they shared. One that only they knew what it meant… an 'I want you so badly but I know we can't' kind of look.

Knowing he had to get out of there, fast, he let out the breath he didn't realise he had been holding and spoke,

"Okay",

and as he turned to leave she caught his hand in hers and pulled him back to her.

"I promise" she said tenderly.

He shouldn't let this physical contact go on much longer between them, but the feel of her hand in his made him want to grab her, pull her into his arms and shower her skin with passionate caresses of his lips. But he restrained himself.

Restraint had been something he had become damn good at over the past seven years. If they did a degree in it, 'mastering the art of resistance' he'd have a god damn PhD in it. When it came to Sam Carter, his restraint was pushed to the limit.

He turned to leave caressing her hand as he pulled away.

He had been beating himself up over that ever since he had found out she was missing. If only he had tried harder to make her come to the cabin with him, he could have protected her. Not that she really needed protecting. She could handle her own, something he had seen first hand, which lead him to wonder who could have so easily overpowered her that she was still missing. Her physical strength and ability to defend herself was something that would make most people gaze in awe… and yet, her intellectual strength was so far beyond that. She could fix almost anything, had used her intelligence to escape from so many captivity situations.

These qualities in her made Jack fear that something had happened to her which meant that her physical and mental strength was not enough to help her escape. Which lead him to fear to worst. Not that she was missing… but that she was dead.

"No!" Jack spoke suddenly to the empty room. He couldn't think like that, the thought that she was alive and would come back soon was the only thing that was keeping him going. But the thoughts of never seeing Sam again, possibly finding out she had died seeped into his consciousness and before long he had headed to the drinks cabinet and grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels despite it being only mid afternoon.

He poured a substantial amount, into the bottom of a glass tumbler and downed the fiery liquid. It burned his throat as it went down and the slight pain it brought with it made him ponder the thought of drinking more, to cause pain and also to make him try and forget what he had failed to do… how he had failed to protect her.

As he poured himself another shot the shrill sound of his house phone made him jump. He looked at the phone. 'Dare I answer it?' he thought to himself. He didn't know how much more he could take.

Although his heart ached, his hand reached out of its own accord and he picked up the phone.

"What?" his weariness was evident simply through his voice.

"Jack?" Daniel's voice came over the phone.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I think I may have found something…"

"Daniel…"

"No, seriously Jack, this time I really think I may know where she is."

"Daniel you've said…"

"Jack… please…. Just come down to the base."

"I swear to god Daniel if this is another dead end…" Jack left the sentence hanging.

Daniel was silent, knowing Jack wasn't finished.

Jack took a deep breath. "I just… I just don't know how much more of this I can take." He admitted.

Daniel knew of Jack's feelings for Sam, and of her feelings for him. It pained him greatly to see his friend like this. When they had heard of Sam's disappearance, Daniel had seen the change in his friend, the growing weariness, the look of despair in his eyes when the leads they had followed had been a bust.

She'd been missing for four months and the last time Daniel had seen Jack he looked so different to the witty, sarcastic leader of SG-1 that he was so used to seeing. He was thinner and it seemed as though he had more lines on his face. The most evident feature of his despair was his voice. Whenever Daniel spoke to Jack it scared him, hearing the hopelessness in his voice. The hopelessness had really only developed over the last month. The determination that had been apparent at first ebbed away and now, that she had been gone for so long… Jack seemed to be loosing hope.

Daniel knew of Jack's invitation to Sam to come fishing with him, and realised that Jack blamed himself for Sam's disappearance. He blamed himself for not trying harder, not being there until it was too late.

"Jack, please… just come to the base. I really think this maybe it." He told Jack.

"Where is she…"

"You may not believe this… but she may be in England."

"England?!"

"Jack, come to the base and I'll explain more."

"Okay…I'm on my way." Jack hung up the phone and walked to the front door, grabbing his keys.

As he reached for the door handle he stopped. 'What if this really is another dead end?' he thought to himself. He mentally slapped himself. 'This was Sam… how could he not risk it?' He opened the door and jumped into his truck and sped out of his driveway to the mountain.

Just one chance, Just one breath,
Just in case there's just one left
'Cause you know, you know, you know…

So... what do you think. It'll start to make sense in the next chapter (or possibly the third). Some of you may have already guessed what's happened. If you have, let me know! lol.