Disclaimer: Not mine
A/N: No pairings, just a tag to "In the line of duty" (because it's such a cool ep and this hit me in between the eyes)
"Carter!" She doesn't look up from the computer screen. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you supposed to be enjoying some well-deserved downtime?"
"I am, sir." She shrugs. "I just wanted to be somewhere quiet for a while."
That's a lie, of course. She's not sitting at home because she found the silence there deafening. Her lab on the other hand is never wholly silent; she can hear her computers humming, footsteps echoing down the concrete corridors, the droning of the ventilation system.
Except that isn't the truth either. There's background noise at her house too: cars driving by, wind shushing through the trees, television and radio that will broadcast voices with the press of a button.
She's in her lab because, for the moment, that's the place where she feels safest. At home she's haunted by flashes from her dreams; it's easier to be prosaic on base.
"Carter!"
The tone of his voice breaks through her reverie and her head snaps up automatically. She expects him to look angry, but instead his brown eyes are warm with concern. For a moment she is ashamed.
"How are you sleeping?"
Oh. So they're having the Conversation now. She feels like she's been having it over and over again, ever since she hugged Cassie, and, well. She's tired of it, and why does no one want to talk about what she wants to talk about?
"Sir, permission to speak freely?"
She can see that he's cautious, but she thinks he's relieved too - probably because his second in command is no longer staring off into space. She's not going to be much good to him off world until she can pay attention for more than a few seconds.
"Sir, I've been reading people's reports on what happened since we returned from Nassya." She's proud that her voice doesn't falter, and swallows hard. "They killed him."
She can tell that he doesn't understand: he's frowning now, playing with a button on one of his cuffs. "Carter, we couldn't help it that Jolinar died; we thought you were going to die, for a while there."
She shakes her head. "They killed the Ashrak." He begins to look angry but she continues anyway, after a moment's pause. "What about the host?"
"Carter..." The word comes out somewhere between a reproof and a sigh.
She meets his gaze fiercely. "When I stood there in the gate room, you didn't kill me."
"You had a grenade."
"Before that."
He rakes a hand through his hair, and for a moment Sam feels ridiculous, like a small child complaining to a teacher. "Carter, Teal'c did the right thing. The Ashrak had a gun to Daniel's throat; it wasn't the time to negotiate."
She can't help protesting. "But the tranquiliser darts -"
"Didn't work on you." His voice is raised now. "Carter, that thing killed our men. It was a Goa'uld, it deserved to die."
A week ago she would have felt his outrage - the Ashrak had killed her fellow officers - but now... Nothing seems straightforward any more. If Jolinar had taken someone else's body instead of hers, maybe the Ashrak wouldn't have had to kill him. Maybe the airmen on base would have killed him instead.
She still feels as if her teammates have been playing favourites.
"Carter?" She can see that his worry runs deeper now, now that he has more than her pallor and her inability to concentrate as evidence that something is wrong. "Have you been having nightmares?"
She shakes her head, and the lie slips easily off her tongue. "No, sir."
For a moment he looks sad, and then he's her commanding officer again. "Go home, Carter, and get some rest."
And because he's her commanding officer, she agrees and switches her computers off.