You Knew
After leaving O'Neill's house and checking on her father at the SGC, Sam found herself caught in a whirlpool of emotions, her father lay dying and her friends, that she has become most reliant upon, were not there. Janet had died, Teal'c was off in Jaffa land, Daniel, if he existed at all, was somewhere in the ether and Jack had a woman in his life and it wasn't her.
Jacob fell into a deep sleep after talking with Sam. Following his wishes she went to see about notifying the Tok'ra of his condition. On her way back from the control room in the hallway she ran into Gen. O'Neill, just a few short hours since attempting to talk to him on his deck.
Her usual tight control was slipping as all of the tensions of the day turn to anger and came spewing out at him for his abandonment of her in her time of need. In her mind she had already cast Pete aside. That ham-fisted way he tried to bind her to him with the house was the last straw. And her father's words allowing her to pursue a life with O'Neill had finally freed her. But that woman at O'Neill's house was the ultimate betrayal; the proof that he would not be faithful, would not sacrifice all for her, that he did not truly love her.
"How's your dad doing?" The question was a sincere voicing of concern for both Sam and her dad but it was the wrong thing to say. In fact, nothing Jack could have said was the right thing; she was livid.
"How could you?" Her eyes were ablaze with anger. She had initially been embarrassed and hurt at his house facing Kerry Johnson. But her pain morphed into feelings of total abandonment and finally into anger and it was impossible to contain.
"What?"
"That woman" her voice was sharp and raised.
"Not in the hall way; come into my office, NOW."
He closed the office door behind them and stood behind his desk.
Sam found it difficult to even look at him. Her face usually beautiful to him was a mask of intense hatred. He felt himself becoming defensive.
"Look, I know you're upset but this is not the time or place to discuss my private life." Unfortunately her raging anger seeped into him and intensified as he spoke. The turmoil of the day had affected him as well. "And who the hell do you think you are, Colonel, dictating to me whom I may or may not see. You are the one engaged to be married; you are the one who turned you're back; you are the one who needed more. I should become a monk while you sleep around with that…that looser. You're the one who wanted to lock everything away, to ignore our feelings, so you got what you wanted and now you're not satisfied. Well tough."
"You son of a bitch, you knew how I felt."
Waiting outside the general's office with the response from the Tok'ra, Sgt. Walter Harriman was hoping for an invasion by aliens just to stop the extremely loud arguing that could be heard clearly in the hallway and the briefing room. He didn't have the nerve to knock on the door.
"Coulda fooled me – oh yeah, you did."
"Well I'm glad I know now how you really are. No point wasting one more minute of my life waiting for you."
"Oh sweet, that's how you wait, good to know you have a hobby to keep you busy."
She wanted to slap him. "I wanted someone in my life and you backed away like a scared rabbit. Sure flirting on base was safe for you but giving of yourself... no, too much effort. I needed to know; I needed to be sure."
"You
knew. How can you say you didn't know?"
He
was just about shouting now.
"When
they did the Za'tarc testing it was you, not me, that knew what was
wrong. It was you that told me to tell them how I felt. It was you
that…"
"I didn't know what you'd say. I only knew that you were hiding your feelings." Her voice took a oh so reasonable tone, her chin up but slight quiver of anger around her tightly pursed lips.
"Bullshit. You knew and you told me, no, you made me tell them everything." His voice was lower now but just as angry.
"You'd rather they destroy your brain trying to cure you of something you didn't have?
"Sometimes I think I would have rather."
"And for Christ's sake that was four years ago."
"What about the ice planet?"
"What about it?"
"Don't you remember."
She had no reply just an icy glare.
"That's the problem I do remember. I remember everything about it. They stripped us of everything, our uniforms, our memories, our lives, but I remembered one thing. One thing, one damned thing, I remembered that I loved you. You knew that. You knew that was the one constant in our lives and you threw it away. And you still can't tell me why you could do that without say one word to me."
"I told you I was going out with him."
"Oh yeah, I remember… in the elevator and I asked you and you said it was 'nothing serious'."
"You said you were happy for me."
"What was I suppose to do – press the stop button and fuck you in the elevator?"
Her
cheeks flamed at his vulgarity.
"You
could have said something."
"We were on base, in uniform, as a superior officer it would have been sexual harassment… unwarranted advances."
"I told you he asked me to marry him."
"Yeah, I remember that to, the day you shoved the ring in my face what was I suppose to do then."
"I don't know. It's not all my fault."
"So you agree to marry him, HIM and you're angry at me for going out."
"You said you'd always be there for me."
"I'm not a god damned door mat. Believe it or not I actually have feeling too. And when the hell did I ever say that." He was shouting again and immediately regretted it. He sat down and with his elbows on his desk put his head in his hands.
She took a deep breath and tried to remember. They so rarely had personal conversations that it was hard to put her finger when this could have possibly come up. Then she colored remembering.
"On the Prometheus." She spoke softly.
"What? Two years ago with Conrad and Simmons?"
"No, it was when it was lost"
"I was there?"
"I saw you."
"You were hallucinating, Carter, I wasn't there."
"It was you; you came to help me. It seemed so real."
"Okay, so I saved you from being lost forever in space and in return you throw away seven years."
"Seven years of what?"
He just stared at her, his lips compressed in a tight white line. "I thought you knew."
Tear
welled in her eyes. "I wanted so badly to have a normal life"
her voice shaking with emotion "I wanted some one to come home to,
some one to care." But the anger just as quickly as it sprung up
turned again to pain. Sam tightened the reins around her feelings as
she had for years.
"I'm
sorry. It is all a horrible mistake. It snowballed out of control,
just like I was afraid my feeling for you would have. If I was only
sure of you, if the damned war was over, if we were free from
restrictions, people prying into our private lives, if only I could
have been sure."
"That's a lot of 'ifs'."
A
tear or two broke free and ran down her face. It hurt him.
(He
wanted to enfold her in his arms. Yearned to put his cheek against
the top of her head; play with the hair behind her ear; caress her
cheek.)
"I'm
not seeing her any more. She told me there was someone else."
"She left you for someone else?" It was incredulous to Sam.
"No. She said that I was in love with someone else."
"Are you?"
(If
she were in his arms he would tip up her face to him and kiss away
the unshed tears sparkling in her eyes.)
And
speaking so softly she barely heard him, he said "I thought you
knew."
