Tag to Threads, major spoilers, and some serious sadness L.

Poor Sam, she needs a hug! Hopefully she will get one in the next chapter, eh?

She had thought she had been broken beyond repair the first time she had lost him. But no, somehow she had healed with his return. It had taken a long time, but the stitches on her very soul had finally been taken out and the scar was beginning to look like it belonged. And then this. There were no more tears to cry because they had all forced their way out of her clamed-shut eyelids and spilled all over everything she owned--it all reminded her of him. Despite having had many concussions in the past, the headache she bore was more than she could handle, and everything else hurt because of it.

There was no hope. He had to be out of luck by now, and she would never get him back. The General seemed so optimistic, but she knew he was just in denial. She would not get her hopes up just to spend the rest of her life falling apart.

She knew from experience that eventually it would stop hurting physically, and she would learn to hide the spikes of agony that pierced her heart every time she passed his office, or smelled coffee brewing, or even when she heard his assistants chatting about the last dig they had been on.

She couldn't go home and face the kitten he'd bought her a few months before after she had commented on the emptiness of her house since Schrodinger had found a home with the Tolan. She couldn't face the carpet he had helped her pick out, the fancy coffee maker he had come over to see when she had bought it online, or the piano he would play sometimes during team movie nights while they waited for Teal'c's world-famous Chicago style pizza to get out of the oven. She couldn't even face her phone-- they had often talked late into the night after one or the other had woken with the characteristic nightmares that the more warrior inclined members of the team denied.

Not that there was any part of her life he had not been a part of. Goodness, how was she supposed to live?

She sighed. Somehow, she had thought that this would get easier. But no, of course not. Of course not. Last time, she had thought she had hit the maximum point in her grief, but apparently it was possible to go further. Apparently, she could sink farther into this pain.

He wasn't coming back.

Tears appeared where she thought none could ever come again.

"Why do you keep leaving me?" she muttered angrily to an empty room. She sighed again and gave herself up to another sleepless night.