Stargate SG-1and SGA and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime / Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money changed hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author.
This is the middle story of a trilogy: This is What's Keeping the Stars Apart, Space, and Equations for Falling Bodies.
"Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being"
Carl Gustav Jung
"General O'Neill will see you now, Colonel Carter."
Beautiful and confident as ever, Colonel Samantha Carter rose and followed the executive assistant into the General's office. Within the expansive office was a cherry wood desk and behind the desk sat Major General Jack O'Neill. He stood up as the assistant excused himself. "Carter, it's good to see you."
"You too, sir." Sam suddenly felt a little less confident, standing there in the center of the office. She always tried to avoid seeing Jack here. He was as handsome as always, and that little smile made it hard for her to keep things on a professional level.
Jack walked around the corner of the desk and stood in front of her for one tense moment; then all the military decorum dissolved when she smiled and he wrapped his arms around her, her head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes, his cheek on her hair. "It's been too long, Sam."
"I know." She tipped her head up to look at him, and her eyes drew him in like a pair of perfectly matched whirlpools. Jack kissed her ravenously, completely forgetting where he was.
"Jack." Sam pulled back, slightly embarrassed.
"You shouldn't come here first when I haven't seen you in a while, Sam." Jack rubbed his face and lips on her neck, savoring the taste and scent he longed for on the nights they were apart. Too many nights. Jack pulled back to look at her, smiling.
"Don't blame me for your bad behavior." Sam said.
"You like it." He let go of her, still smiling. "Have a seat, Sam." He motioned toward a comfortable leather chair in front of the desk. Sam walked over and sat down on the edge of the chair. O'Neill appreciated the skirt. Actually, he appreciated the legs beneath the skirt. Get a grip, O'Neill. Only a couple of hours to go. "How are things with SG-1?"
"Great. It's pretty quiet now, since most of the bad guys are gone."
"Yeah, you guys have kicked a lot of interstellar butts. But Carter, that "little trip" to Pegasus you told me about? I got the report yesterday."
"Not a little trip?" Sam asked.
"No."
"Sorry, Jack." Sam shrugged sheepishly.
He smiled at her and shook his head. She looked nervously down at her briefcase.
"Is everything all right, Sam?" By now she'd usually be going on about her latest, greatest technological doohickey. He was happy not to have to pretend to be interested in it, but her subdued behavior concerned him.
"It's fine."
"Just 'fine'? You never show up here without a reason."
Sam glanced at him, unable to hide her unease behind those pool-blue eyes.
O'Neill sat forward, put his hands on the desktop, and looked at her with concern. Something was definitely going on. "What do you need, Sam?"
"I'd like to be reassigned." She felt a lump rise in her throat.
"Back to area 51?" Jack had always felt badly about having returned her to the SGC, but it was necessary given her experience and the threat that they faced at the time. She was right, however, that the risk to earth was now markedly diminished. There really was no reason for her to stay- and Area 51 was a hell of a lot safer. Not that she cared about that.
"I'd like to command Atlantis."
O'Neill looked at her in surprise. "You would?" His heart sank like a stone.
She nodded. "Jack, I've been there twice now, once under some fairly stressful conditions. I know what I'd be getting into."
"Yeah it's only thanks to you that Atlantis is still there. If you hadn't figured out where they were, and then gone out to save Sheppard's sorry ass, they'd all be dead by now." Jack tried to appear nonchalant, but his heart was pounding.
"Atlantis is new and different. I'd like a challenge, Jack."
O'Neill didn't answer. Then, after a moment, he said, "You know you're next in line to head the SGC. Landry won't be there forever. In a few years, you'll be the youngest General we've ever had, and the CO of our most important facility."
"I'm tired of waiting." Their eyes met. Sam finally said, "When Landry retires, I can always come back."
Jack got up and went to the window, looking at the beautiful view but not seeing it, his hands behind his back. "So, what you really want is just to get out of here, and Atlantis is a nice way to do it."
"No, Jack."
"No, Sam."
"What?" Sam remained in her chair. Her cheeks were burning.
"I don't want you out there." He didn't turn around.
Sam took a few moments to calm herself, then rose and put her hand on his arm. "Is that the General or Jack talking? I've got a speech ready for both of you."
"Ah, God, it doesn't matter." Jack rubbed his temples with his hand. "You were on the short list from the start. Woolsey and I agreed we wouldn't order someone to go halfway across the universe. I thought you might decline." Jack turned to look at her. "You're exactly what the IOA wants." He studied her face- a face he'd watched under every conceivable circumstance- and a few that were simply inconceivable. He was glad he didn't really know how far 3 million light-years was. "It's easy to come home. You can use your eponymous bridge."
Sam smiled. "Crossword puzzle answer?"
"Everybody in this town wants to be an eponym."
"Don't be too modest, Jack, you've got your own class of ships."
Jack smiled and nodded. "Now if we just knew how to fly 'em."
Neither of them spoke for a moment, then Jack said, "I'll think about it, Sam. I can't show any favoritism."
Sam shut her eyes for a moment. She must have felt this feeling a hundred times, maybe a thousand. "You never have, Jack."
Jack's eyes narrowed at her tone. Something was going on, and he didn't have a clue. "Anything else, Sam?"
"No." Sam stood, kissed him on the cheek and started toward the door.
"Then I'll see you at home."
Sam turned around. "Jack, I'm staying at the Willard."
"Why?" Jack was stunned. In over two years they had never slept apart whenever she was in Washington.
"If I'm going to Atlantis," Sam looked at him. "I think- I think that it might be easier this way."
"I don't." Jack barely controlled the urge to grab her by her shoulders and give her a good shake. What the hell was wrong with her?
"Is there anything else, sir?" She retreated back behind the military façade.
"When are you leaving Washington?"
"Tomorrow."
Jack nodded, and Sam left, closing the door quietly behind her.
O'Neill turned to the window again. He knew this day would come, he knew it as well as he knew his own name. Carter always wanted to try the next new thing, to discover the unknown, to take chances. Behind that beautiful and proper demeanor was a thrill-seeker. To command Atlantis was the next logical step for her.
But there was more than that. Jack closed his eyes against the sick feeling tightening up inside of him, and remembered the last time he'd felt it. When he'd flipped open the little black box Sam had given him that night in her lab and the only good and decent thing in his life fell through his hands. Jack put his head against the cool window and waited for it to pass.
After the car dropped Jack off at his home he changed and called for a cab. The traffic this time of the day could make what should be a fifteen-minute ride into an hour-long ordeal, and he wanted to track Sam down early. The cab pulled up to the hotel in deepening twilight, but as Jack paid the driver he clearly saw Sam leaving the building, with Malcolm Barrett holding the door for her. He sat back in the cab seat, stunned. Watching them, it suddenly struck him how much younger she was- they were- than he.
"Sir, you are getting out?" The cabbie inquired.
Jack thought for a moment. "No. Take me back to where you found me."
Jack called Andrews, and identified himself. "Cancel the seat for Colonel Samantha Carter. Yeah. I'll be there to get her." He shut the phone and stared out at the luminous city. God, how stupid could one man be? He'd just thought that things could keep going as they had been, and everything would be all right. What an idiot.
Take a deep breath, Jack. Most likely Barrett and she had work to discuss- after all Sam was only here for a day. He knew they'd worked with each other several times in the past year. But he didn't understand where Atlantis fit into all of this, or if it did at all.
When Jack got home, he opened two bottles of beer and brought them both over to his easy chair, setting them on the end table. He sat down and put up the footrest, then turned the picture of Sam until he could easily see her face.
The next morning, Jack drove out to Andrews AFB. He got to the terminal just as the airman was explaining the situation to Sam. "For what reason?" she demanded. The anxious airman shook his head, then noticed Jack standing a few feet away. Sam followed the airman's glance and locked eyes with O'Neill. "Carter." Jack said evenly.
Sam stared at him with icy blue eyes.
"Carter, let's go." he nodded toward the door. Sam had no choice but to leave the waiting area with him. While a fight between a general and a colonel was always good fun for the other officers and airmen, it wouldn't reflect well on the records of those involved.
They walked out to his car and left the base. They drove in silence for some time, but as they pulled off the Beltway and headed north, Sam finally gained enough composure to speak. "Why did you cancel my seat?"
Jack had his sunglasses on, his face inscrutable. "I decided there wasn't enough information in your file, Colonel. Motivation isn't something I can just read up on."
Sam remembered when Jack first became a general. Daniel had said, "You'll be in charge. You can do whatever you want."This would be one of those times, Daniel.
"Where are we going?" Sam watched the Pentagon turnoff slide by.
"Home."
"I don't think that's a good idea." Sam wearily laid her head back on the headrest.
"I'm not dressed to be strolling into my office on a weekday." Jack looked in the side mirror and started to change lanes.
"I never thought I'd see the day you'd care about that, General."
"Drop the General." Jack looked at her.
At that moment, Sam understood the problem was not her qualifications. She closed her eyes and sighed.
They drove up to their townhouse in Arlington. They went up the steps and he unlocked the door, a habit he'd finally picked up here in D.C. when he realized it wasn't quite the same environment as Colorado Springs.
"Do you want a drink? We've got beer or- beer." Jack peered in the refrigerator. "And water."
Sam took her suit jacket off and laid it over the back of a chair in the kitchen. "Beer is fine." She sat down and unbuttoned her tie and top button of her shirt. Jack watched her as he opened the bottles, then brought them over to the coffee table in the living room.
"I remember when you didn't have a clean glass in your house." Sam smiled, pouring her Guinness straight down into the glass.
Jack remembered how he'd taught her to pour Guinness that way. He raised his glass as if for a toast, and they clinked their glasses, though Sam had no idea why.
"Jack, about my motivation."
"No small talk today, huh, Sam?" Jack sat back on the couch.
"What do you want to talk about?"
"How about Malcolm Barrett?" Jack took a drink and watched her reaction.
"Jack." Sam said, exasperated. "He's one of the few people I know here. A friend and colleague- who had a very rough time recently as you well know. But I don't think this qualifies as small talk."
He looked at her. "No, it doesn't." Jack let out a deep sigh. "I'm sorry, Sam." He put his arm around her and pulled her to him.
"For what?" She put her head down on his shoulder.
"For whatever it is that made you stay at the Willard."
"I told you. Atlantis is a long way, Jack. I can't do this anymore." Sam looked up at him, her eyes glistening. She'd tried so hard. She lived for those days they could spend together,finally together. They were just so few and far between now, and even then, there was something in Jack she couldn't get past.
"You built the damn bridge. Use it." Jack looked in her eyes, the frustration beginning to build again.
"I would if I thought you'd be there on the other end."
"This job, Sam, you know I can't….
Sam cut him off. "Even when you're with me, you're not."
"What the hell does that mean?" He didn't understand how he could love her so much and yet she didn't know. He knew he was no poet, no romantic, but how could she not know that she was the only reason he kept going, through the meetings, discussions, travel, negotiations and endless minutiae that kept the world safe? He only did it because Samantha Carter was in it.
"Jack, you've always done what you thought needed to be done. You don't even want to be in charge of Home World Security, but you are."
Jack nodded.
"How is it different for me?"
Because I want you to stop running all over the damn galaxy and stay here with me.
He looked at her and shook his head.
She finished her beer and got up, then pulled out her phone to dial a cab. Jack gently closed his hand around hers and turned it off. "I'll take you back." Then he slid his hand down her arm and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her toward him.
He looked into her with his piercing brown eyes. "Don't do this, Sam. I know you have to go to Atlantis. You do. The fate of the galaxy and all that crap- it's true. You're our best choice for that command." Jack found her other wrist and pulled her in closer. "But not us."
"You've been giving me orders since the day we met."
"I know I can't make you." Jack said, suddenly understanding that she'd been at the mercy of his thoughts and actions for over a decade. No wonder she wanted to escape. "But, maybe I can make you want to." He put his other arm around her waist and pulled her to him. He closed his eyes and put his cheek against her soft hair, his heart beginning to pound. Sam didn't even try to resist, and she was angry because he knew she wouldn't. She never could.
He kissed her, holding her close, stroking her hair gently. "I miss you, Sam." Jack kissed the side of her neck. He could feel her pulse under his lips, feel it begin to quicken as he tightened his arms around her, pressing her to him.
"You do, Jack." It was meant to be a question but came out as a statement. His voice was a smooth narcotic, erasing any trace of rational thought from her mind. All she could think of was the heat from his mouth, and his hands.
"Sam, you don't understand. You never have." He kissed her again, harder this time, as if trying to get through to her somehow. Sam remembered back to the time when she'd thought he wasn't that complex. She'd been wrong.
Jack ran a hand down her back and over her curves, lifting her skirt to caress her thigh, all the while kissing her with a hunger that surprised him every time they were together. Sam kicked off her shoes, giving in to the inevitable. "Sam," he whispered, "it'll never be over."
She breathed in sharply. "It's not enough, Jack," she said even as she unbuttoned his shirt and took it off of him, running her hands over his broad back and shoulders and kissing his neck. Jack unfastened her skirt and it fell to the floor. Within a few minutes, they were in bed, the sunshine streaming through the window, hot on their bodies. He put his lips up to her ear, his body slowly rocking hers. "Won't you miss feeling like this?"
Sam turned her head away from him. "Jack."
He wanted to make her remember him, to remember this moment. "Won't you?"
Sam knew there was no right answer. She suffered his sweet torment until they both came apart under the pressure of their anger and desire.
To be continued...
