When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be
He watched her go. There was no way to stop her, really. For all of his quips and jokes about having an intergalactic heroine for a girlfriend, there are some days when he wished that she wasn't. Those are the days when she doesn't call when he expects her to, when he lies awake wondering (and he'll leave it at wondering, not worrying) if she's okay, if he'll ever see her again.
Because he's seen what's out there, a little. He knows what she faces, at least he knows enough to have a vague idea. And the vague idea scares him enough to know that he'd do anything to stop her doing it again and again.
Those are the nights he hates. Those, and the nights when he lies awake and tries to hold her through her nightmares, to ground her. He never really knows whether to be hurt that his is never a name that he hears from her sleeping lips, or perversely relieved that she'll only call him "Sir", even in the privacy of her own mind.
He'd prefer it if she didn't call for him at all, of course. Because she'll call to him like he was the one who could solve the problems of the world.
And she'd never tell him anything of it. He suspects that she wouldn't tell him even if she could. She thinks him too inexperienced, too untutored in the horrors of what she sees and takes for granted. He disagrees. He can handle truth and lies and deception, but he can't handle it when she thinks its for his own protection.
Oh, he's fairly sure that she doesn't want to lie to him, to not trust him. But she can't help it. There's something about them, the fabled SG-1. The ones they hold dearest to their hearts are each other, despite who else comes into their lives.
She didn't mean to be unfair with it – he knew that. She was simply doing the best she could in a bad situation. And he thought he had her heart, in some measure. But she had his with a wholeheartedness that scared him. And someone else had hers.
She didn't even really know herself. He had a feeling that he saw the whole sorry mess with more clarity than she ever could.
But he would lie to her, and pretend that he didn't know that, and she would lie to him and herself, convincing herself that it was the man she lay next to that she wanted, and not he who she couldn't have.
Because he had secrets of his own – ones that would probably horrify her and make her think twice. And he has a horrible feeling that if she thinks twice then she might realise what she's hiding from herself.
Because in the end, he loved her. And if he had to settle for being second best, then he'll be trying to make up the gap to first for the rest of his life.