He glanced sideways at the reassuringly solid presence beside him. The zat charged up. He grimaced a little – he understood the need for it, and if he was going to get shot with one of the things there was no one he'd rather be shot by than Teal'c, but it was an experience that he could really live without. And he hated the thought that at any second he might lose control and hurt an innocent person. Like, really hated the thought.
"Right," he muttered, turning his gaze back to Anise.
He hadn't been kidding when he'd said he'd done the drugged out, strapped to a chair thing. And yet, here he was, doing at least half of it again. He still wasn't exactly sure why.
Well, actually, yes, he was, if he was honest. But Jack O'Neill had found that lying to himself was a pleasant little habit that had got him through a lot, so it'd better get him through this, too.
Speaking of which, would that damn snake get on with it instead of leaving him hanging!? He wondered idly if she was racking up the tension to punish him for rejecting her, but dismissed it out of hand. He still had no idea why she'd done that, and frankly the idea of it still made him feel a little queasy. He wanted this over, he wanted Carter to be ok, and he wanted the snakes off his base, especially the woman messing about with … something … in front of him.
"If you are ready," Anise intoned in that oddly cool and collected voice that she had, like nothing could ever affect her. "We will begin."
Jack gave her a tight nod, and gave a small grimace again. May as well be now as anytime – the longer he left it, the worse Carter's chances were.
His attention suddenly went to the glass as Doc Fraiser banged on it. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be looking after Carter. Sam. Grabbing the microphone with as much haste as he'd ever seen her use, she said "Stop!" with as much command in her voice as the tiny unofficial general she was.
Jakc just stared at her in disbelief. Didn't she know this was Carter's best chance? What could have happened to her that would make Fraiser charge down to the observation room – and she looked completely out of breath by the rise and fall of her shoulders – and put a stop to this.
She didn't explain, just left to fetch his major, leaving everyone in the room to wonder at her actions, Jack most of all. Surely if there was something wrong with Carter – if her programming had kicked in, if she'd tried to hurt herself, the Doc would have said. And they definitely wouldn't be bringing her down here. But what else could it be? If she'd managed to do some harm, surely that was all the more reason to let him go through this, try to find out how to stop the programming once it had started.
He sat, staring straight ahead – not that he had much choice in the matter, no one had thought to remove his head restraint – listening to the footsteps approach. He looked at Carter as she wobbled up to the chair he was strapped up to. She'd really been hit hard by the drugs, and he wondered at the force of will that was keeping her upright.
"Carter?" he asked, with a quizzical rising of his eyebrows and the slight gesture of his hands giving away just how completely clueless he was as to her reasons. "What's up?" The casual tone completely belied the panic that he was feeling. What the hell was wrong with her?
She completely surprised him then. Turning to the rest of the room, she asked, "Could we have a moment alone, please?"
This was odd. He and Carter didn't have moments alone. Especially not in full view of military personnel. Moments alone with Carter had a tendency to lead his brain down paths that his brain should not being travelling.
He was so preoccupied with this, he almost missed everyone leaving, Teal'c's bow of assent barely catching his eye.
"Thanks," he heard her say. She was still slightly leaning on his chair, which was both disconcerting and nice at the same time.
So now they had an empty room.
"Carter, undo this," he said jerking his head up at the restraining band as much as he could. There was no way he was going to be strapped to the thing any longer than he had to. To save Carter's life he was willing to do it, but if she wanted a discussion about whatever then they were coming off, like right now.
She nodded in assent, and he felt her fingers push the band up and over his hair. Sighing, he turned to look at her as she leaned closer to him, both of her hands resting on his chair, and lowered her voice like she was going to impart some great secret.
"We're not za'tarcs."
We're not za'tarcs? He knew there'd been a mistake! There was no way that Carter was dumb enough to get them za'tarc'ed! Although, surely that was something that needed sharing with, well, all the people that had just been asked to leave the room. He glanced at the door in mild puzzlement, then back to the woman in front of him.
"How do you know?" he asked mildly, keeping his voice as low as hers. If she wanted to keep the discussion between the two of them, then there would be a good reason. Carter didn't do things without good reason. There was no doubt in his mind that she did know, though – she was Carter, if she'd discovered the meaning to life, the universe and everything he wouldn't be completely surprised – but he needed to hear her say that she was safe, that no harm was going to come to her.
"The machine thinks that we have false memories, but we don't. We were lying."
His eyes shot back to her from the spot on the wall they'd been focused on. "I wasn't lying," he objected. He hadn't been – he'd told that damn woman with her too small clothes nothing but the truth, and he resented any implication otherwise. Besides, how dumb would he have to be to lie on a lie detector test.
Well, one that you couldn't fool, anyway. He guessed Special Ops were good for some things.
"Okay. You left something out." A note of resignation had crept into her voice, as if she wasn't liking where this conversation was going. And she was regarding him intently, almost as if she was willing him to understand her line of reasoning. It wasn't working. He stared at her in complete confusion.
"No, I didn't," he said, objecting again. She knew he hadn't left anything out, so where was she going with this?
"Sir," she said, and paused for a second as if she was trying to figure out how to say what she was about to say. "When you wouldn't leave me…" And she paused again. But her tremendous brain power wasn't enough to communicate whatever the hell it was that she was trying to get through.
"Are you sure there wasn't something else that you're not admitting?"
He shook his head slightly in immediate denial, eyes narrowing before he turned his head away, refusing to meet her eyes. If there was a slight inkling of what she was talking about, it was quickly suppressed. Not that. Anything but that.
He met her eyes again. "What are you talkin' about?" he asked, his face still etched with confusion.
"Something neither one of us can admit," she said, not meeting his eyes, "Given our working relationship, our military ranks…" She turned her head to look him squarely in the eye at the last part.
"Oh!" he softly exclaimed, exaggerating the syllable. "Oh, that," he repeated, a lot softer.
'That' – that being the fact that he'd realised, as he'd stood in front of that forcefield with her the other side, that he couldn't live without her. 'That' being the moment, when he stared at her with more anguish than he thought he'd had in him, when he realised that he wasn't the only one who felt something. 'That' being the complete elation that he'd felt that she saw him in that way coupled incredibly intimately with the complete and utter despair that it may be their last moment. The moment when he'd stared at her, knowing that his soul was completely bared before her and not caring because he thought it was going to be their last moment, and because she was staring back with heartbreak in her eyes. He hadn't realised that he still had the strength to feel those feelings, any more. He thought that after Charlie everything he felt would just carry on being a pale, cheap imitation of what he'd had when he'd had his son.
Apparently not, because the ability to be ripped to shreds by what he was feeling seemed to be alive and kicking so completely that he was willing to die rather than risk losing the woman who stood, albeit still rather woozily, in front of him.
He flashed her an apologetic look before returning to his bout of wall contemplation. His feelings had gotten her into trouble, and there was no way that he could really make it better. It wasn't fair – she deserved better than to have her CO mess up her life with an impossible dream, even if she felt something for him in return.
"Sir," she continued. "We weren't telling the whole truth, and that's why the machine thinks the memories are false."
His jaw set for a second as he looked into the middle distance, then he turned back to her.
"Really?" he asked, almost hopefully, as if he was hoping for a get-out clause. He could see where this was headed, and he did not like it. It was hard enough looking Carter in the eye at the minute, and she already knew. That he was completely in love with her.
Crap. He'd been hoping that they could just sweep the entire thing under a rug, and forget about it. The last thing that Carter needed was him messing up her career by developing inappropriate feelings for her and there wasn't really any way that his feelings could get more inappropriate. But he'd hoped to pretend that they weren't there. He'd been good at pretending that his feelings weren't there. Not that they had been at first – which had made it worse. He knew that this was, or could have been, the real thing. It wasn't just a flash of lust intensified. When you were so infatuated with someone's smile that you'd go to any ridiculous lengths to see it, quite happy to throw yourself in front of her microscope to try and look goofy, then it probably wasn't just physical attraction.
She just looked at him. There really wasn't any way out of this apart from the one she was proposing, but he looked into her eyes anyway, hoping for a Carter brainwave. Right about now. How come she only had the brainwaves when the fate of the planet depended on it? If the fate of the human race depended on him not having to do this, then she'd think of something.
He gave her a nod of assent, completely unhappy with what was about to go down. The look in her eyes told him that not only was she feeling the same, but that she knew exactly what he was feeling, too. It was getting to be a habit. And in some ways he didn't mind – it was the rest of the damn base he had a problem with.
He watched her stand up. He was going to get her court-marshalled and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, though he vowed to protect her as much as was humanly possible.
She looked into the eyes of the observers.
"Retest him."