Author: Regency

Title: Doctors, Fake and Otherwise

Crossover: House, M.D. & Stargate SG-1

Rating: PG for non-graphic violence

Spoilers: AU from the end of season seven of SG-1 and the beginning of season six for House, M.D.

Warnings/Categories: AU, implied character death, angst, friendship, UST, drama, non-graphic violence, mentions of suicidal ideations, deals vaguely with mental disorders

Pairings: implied Sam/Jack UST, Sam/House UST, implied House/Cuddy UST

Word count:

Summary: It's been three years since the disastrous mission that killed the rest of SG-1 and Sam isn't coping well. PTSD has landed her in Mayfield, where she hopes she can get the help she needs and be close to Cassie while she attends med school. She isn't looking to make allies, but that's exactly what she finds in the genius misanthrope also known as Gregory House. What he sees in her, she'll never know, because he'll never tell her. What she sees in him is maybe a second chance.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1 & House, M.D. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

~!~

"Your file says you're a doctor."

Sam looked up from the Science Journal on her lap to the shadowy figure lurking overhead.

"Does it?" She'd have been more surprised about him knowing that if she hadn't had the pleasure of watching him run roughshod over the staff around here for the last three weeks.

"What's your specialty," he continued without preamble. Sam shrugged and went back to reading in what little light managed to spill around him.

"I'm probably not the kind of doctor you're thinking of." She noticed the way he swayed from his silhouette. Favors the right leg. Wonder what the story is there. She turned the page.

"So, you're a fake doctor, then. Brilliant," he quipped with more than a hint of venom. "Just when I thought there was at least one non-idiot around here to save me from the monotony."

"Read a book," she advised and turned the page again. She'd already read this issue twice and gone over it with her nice red pen—she wasn't allowed sharpies, damn it—but it was the only one she had, so once more with contrivance went she.

"All the books here suck. I've already finished the ones I brought with me." Sam raised an eyebrow and resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. For a second there, just for a second, he reminded her so much of Colonel O'Neill that she had to resist to urge to reach for her emergency yoyo. If there was one thing she'd learned in ten years under the colonel's command, it was that he couldn't be trusted to stay out of trouble if he was bored. He needed entertainment and he needed it ASAP.

"You could try asking some of the other patients if they have some books you could borrow." There was a moment of silence so acute that, were it not for the shade he still cast over her, she might have thought he'd wandered away.

"How about you? What kind of books you got?" Sam finally shut the journal and sat back to look at the man so boldly intruding upon her silence.

"None you'd be interested in." Still wavering just so on his feet, he rolled a pair of clear blue eyes towards the heavens.

"Why, thank you, Dr. Feelgood."

Sam loosed an amused smirk. "I told you, I'm not that kind of doctor." Her guest shrugged, eyes flickering toward the floor and taking on an air of uncertainty.

"You read science journals—or a science journal, to be more precise. You've gotta be doing something interesting when you're not playing psych patient."

Sam crossed her arms. She knew it sent all the wrong messages, but she couldn't force herself to care. This wasn't about impressing him, it was about holding herself in tight to keep from bursting apart at the seams. She'd been waiting for the feeling to return for hours, but it'd been gone for days.

"Classified," she grunted through clenched teeth. She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about it.

She could not smell ozone in the air.

She could not smell ozone in the air.

She couldn't feel superheated steel against her skin.

That was not the impression of Daniel's sidearm burning into her side for all time.

Teal'c was not trying to carry what remained of the colonel toward the gate.

There was no gate.

There was no planet.

That was then, before.

This is now.

They're dead.

I'm alive.

…even if she didn't feel alive.

Sam merely pulled her arms around herself tighter and tighter until the only thing she could feel was her fists against her ribs. They feel sort of like Daniel's. She held onto that sense memory as tight as she could. Three years later, she was still expecting him to walk back through the door. Daniel never dies; he doesn't know how.

He was impervious. They all were—until they weren't.

Now, Sam was all that remained of the once great SG-1. There wasn't a day that went by when she didn't wish she wasn't. That way she wouldn't have to wonder why.

"Hey," said her hovering visitor with a lithe-fingered hand dangling in the air above her shoulder. "You all right? Don't think you can go nuts just because you're in a nuthouse. I need company and you're it, so, snap out of it."

Any other time and place, Sam would have seriously considered decking this guy, but she was grateful enough for his pulling her out of her flashback that she was going to let the opportunity pass her by, just this once. If he touched her any time soon, though, all bets were off.

"What exactly would it take to entertain you," she asked first. "Who are you, anyway? You've seen my file, but I haven't seen yours. That doesn't exactly seem fair." He smirked at her. She considered smacking him in the face. The last few years have done a number on my social skills.

"Life isn't fair."

Sam rolled her own clear blue eyes this time.

"And you're a pain in the ass. Thank you, Captain Obvious."

He smirked a little and looked highly amused.

"Nice attitude."

Sam raised an eyebrow, Teal'c-style. "Likewise. Think it's contagious."

"Sorry, have to say mine's nurture, not nature. I'd say hereditary, because my dad had it, but since he wasn't really my dad, he was just an asshole. Therefore, I think it's safe to say I got it from the mailman." Sam blinked and leaned back just slightly. This is a job for MacKenzie if I ever saw one. Okay, maybe not. I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to him.

"You may be the craziest lucid person in the room." At that, the man seemed to preen. Well, as much as a man who could probably give a damn what others think can preen.

"What can I say? I've been an overachiever all my life." The line between genius and insanity has been breached. Welcome to Crazytown.

"That's something I know a little about."

"Do tell," he prompted with a curious gleam in his eyes. She shifted uncomfortably in her highly uncomfortable chair.

"Not really in the mood. Besides, I doubt it would interest you."

"And, somehow, I doubt that." He moved his hands as though he was looking for something to lean on, but it wasn't there. He finally settled for his pockets instead. If he was the colonel, he'd be bouncing on the balls of his feet right about now. But she didn't want to think about the colonel, he was a trigger, too. Maybe worse than all the rest.

"Then, I admit it'll bore me, then."

"You're the entertainment, you don't get a vote." She thought he looked far too pleased with himself at that. She uncrossed her arms and let them sit on the armrests on either side of her. She wasn't defensive and defending; she was simply watching. She'd learned a thing or two about being the subject of observation over the years.

"Nice to know how you really feel about me."

"Meet me in the janitor's closet after lights out and I'll really show you," he zinged with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. If Sam thought he was actually serious, she might have been worried. Instead, she chose to be highly amused, as though he was Daniel, wasted, and making an idiot of himself.

"Thanks for the offer, but I have a dinner date with my 9mm around the same time. Maybe next lifetime?" After Daniel had told her about the state the colonel had been in when they met, it was years before Sam felt comfortable joking about suicide. Now that they were both gone, she'd lost any motivation to be tactful. Guess that's contagious, too.

"A woman with a gun? Getting hotter all the time." Sam had officially run out of facial expressions to answer his inanity. The colonel would definitely be impressed.

"A woman with a gun, a hunting knife, and level four hand-to-hand combat training? Yeah, I can see how that might get you all fired up." Tall, scruffy, and lame gave her an almost painfully thorough onceover. Every person she'd known who could look through her and at her that way had died years ago. She hadn't expected to ever feel that again—just like she hadn't expected how much she'd miss it.

"Am I imagining you, because it's like you stepped right out my fantasies fully-formed." Sam stifled both of her kneejerk reactions. One was to cry, the other was to smack him in his obviously ailing leg. She settled for allowing their banter to remain a battle of wit and not of brawn. Teal'c would say that it is dishonorable to strike a physically disabled opponent, and she'd always trusted his judgment on those sorts of things.

"Your fantasy world is a scary place."

"Apparently Intake agrees, because they sent me straight up this creek without either paddle or cane to guide me." Sam settled in, because she was actually starting to enjoy him.

"Did they take your meds, too, because that seems like it might have been a premature decision."

He paused, stared balefully at her, and loosed a startling bark of laughter. "Oh, this is the part where I'm supposed to laugh. Sorry, not used to such sophisticated humor."

"I buy that."

"Touché."

"Indeed," she parroted the late and lamented, Teal'c.

"And you say I'm weird," he muttered before turning around and lurching away.

Sam stared after him for a long, confused minute before shaking her head and turning her attention back to her journal. Well, she would have turned her attention back to it, if she could have found it. Apparently, it had walked away during her little tête-à-tête with the limping interloper. She had a feeling she knew where it had gotten to and that she'd be seeing it—and him—again eventually.

For want of anything else to do, Sam stood up and went in search of a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. She hadn't designed anything new in months; now, there were figures and shapes whirling in back of her mind. Maybe it was sudden inspiration, or maybe it was just about time.