Disclaimer: I only own the DVDs. I do not own the characters. They are still the property of their usual owners (the lucky ducks).

AN: Jackson was just streaking through the house. Repeatedly. Annoyingly. Seeing as it is currently nearly three in the morning (AKA oh-dark-hundred), I've locked him in the bedroom so I can concentrate.

For those who are uninformed: Jackson is my cat, who insists on taking up residence on my desk while I write. And as I continue to swear, he was already named that when I got him. (Do you have any idea how weird it is to be yelling, "Jackson! Don't touch that!" "Jackson! Get away from there!" "Jackson! Don't eat that!" or [as he tries to eat string or plastic] "Jackson! Are you trying to kill yourself?" on a regular basis? I feel a certain kinship with O'Neill now, trying to keep this cat alive. My two-year-old gets into less trouble!)

This fic is tagged specifically for Company of Thieves & Line in the Sand. I make no promises about spoilers for other episodes. I don't have that kind of filter on the SG universe in my brain. Also, do run away now if you refuse to entertain the idea that Sam and Jack were together after the end of season eight.

All aboard … and on with the fic. Here ends one abominably long author's note.

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Of Thieves and Dreams

Jack came awake in the dark with a start. With the ease of long years of practice, he scanned the room to determine what threat had awakened him this time. All was at rest in his bedroom. Curtains drawn, door closed. A faint light showed beneath from the nightlight in the hall -- installed years ago when Jack became fed up with stubbing his toes in the dark.

Jack eased himself over onto his back and cautiously reached out into the darkness with his left hand, finding the warm form -- just as he expected. Samantha. He patted Sam's shoulder lovingly; her body tensed at his touch. As her slumbering self shifted to push his hands away, Jack realized what had brought him from sleep. A nightmare. Jack was rather used to nightmares disturbing his nocturnal rest. This time, however, it was Sam who was dreaming and terrified.

"Sam." He called out to her, his voice soft.

Jack wasn't entirely sure he wanted to wake Sam. He knew from experience it was often better if one didn't wake in the middle of a nightmare. Coming awake straight out of the startling scenario made the memory of the dream fresh, sharp, and abrasive. The vague memory of a nightmare long gone was infinitely easier to deal with in the morning. Sam's limbs began to move. Just a few twitches at first, but before long, Sam was thrashing about combatively, back and forth beneath the twisted sheets. Jack turned to face her, somberly studying the silhouette of his favorite human being. Her head tossed from side to side harshly in time with her limbs -- her lips were moving but released no sound.

Jack spoke again, with more power this time, but he tried to infuse his voice with warmth. "Sam." He reached out for a second time, gently caressing the skin of her upper arm with the back of his fingers.

Sam's body instantly came to a standstill. To Jack's relief, she had stirred at his light touch.

After just a few moments, however, the staccato rhythm of Sam's breathing told Jack she was still unaware and dreaming. And obviously still terrified. Jack closed his eyes for a moment, listening to her gasp in the dark.

Samantha had always been his rock in the field -- the one who kept a clear head above all else. The one who almost always followed orders, and always had a damn good reason when she defied them. Her strength and independence had carried them through to save the day on more than one occasion. To see her so scared, so immobilized by fear … it paralyzed Jack as well.

He felt conflicted. It had been drilled into Jack for decades that it was a dangerous affair to awaken fellow soldier in the throes of a nightmare; once battle hardened, one often came up swinging and kicking. But this was Sam, his Sam. Sam didn't get nightmares.

She cried out.

Throwing away caution, Jack hauled himself upright and onto his knees. He scooped up Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter in his arms, one arm behind her shoulders and the other behind her knees. Jack drew her close to his body and cradled his former team-mate on his lap.

"C'mere." He said it softly. "Sam, you're here. It's me. It's okay." As Sam became wakeful, Jack continued to murmur gentle words in her ear. He felt it the moment she came back to reality. Her body softened and conformed to his, and her palm reached out to settle over his heart, as if she could will her heartbeat to slow down and match his own. They sat together for a moment -- or an hour -- before Jack heard the faint sniffle and realized Sam was crying.

"Hey now." Jack kissed away a single salty tear. "I'm here. It's okay."

His words of reassurance had the opposite of their intended effect. Sam's sobs became more audible and she pressed herself to Jack's body, hiding her face in his neck while she wept. He felt lost and did the only thing he knew. He rocked as he stroked Sam's hair, shushing her quietly as one would a small child, as he had often done for Charlie in the middle of the night, a lifetime ago. "Shhh. I've gotcha," Jack murmured.

Jack's eyes were open, his pupils black pools in the inky darkness. He was grateful for the chance to be here for his Samantha when she needed someone most, thankful she hadn't come awake in the dark alone.

If he had only been there for her when it mattered. Sam'd had a hell of a few weeks. Jack regretted the fact that he had to let Sam go through that gate time and time again, doing his job from at a distance from Washington. Worrying about Sam and her team from afar and unable to do anything tangible to make their jobs more safe.

Sam slowly calmed, and took several deep shuddering breaths. Jack felt her damp eyelashes blink against his skin.

"You wanna talk about it?" The question from him was hesitant, but heartfelt.

Sam's only response was to shrug a shoulder.

Jack continued to hold her tight as a reassurance, though he wasn't sure if the effort was for Sam's well being or for his own. "Sometimes it's better if you get it out, you know," he decided to continue. His offer to be her sympathetic ear was a bit hypocritical, though he would only ever admit that to himself. Jack had never once taken anyone up on their offer to listen to his nightmares. A small part of him wondered if perhaps that was why they kept coming back.

He continued to gently question Samantha. "Have you been getting them often?" Jack felt Sam nod against his neck, her golden hair brushing against his cheek, so soft against his unshaven jaw. He shifted Sam's weight in his lap and rested his chin on the top of her head, gathering her tightly against him in his arms. "The same one?"

"Lately." Sam's voice was muffled against him.

Jack's hand carefully slipped beneath the edge of her pajama top, and his fingers found the fresh, slightly raised scar there at her waist. He lightly traced its borders. The touch in itself was a question, and Jack waited.

Sam drew a breath. "No. It's wasn't about that." She rested her head against his shoulder and looked up into Jack's face. "I can handle that."

Jack smothered a chuckle and smiled into the dark room. "You can handle almost dying?" Sam nodded earnestly, and Jack feigned gruffness. "Well I can't, okay?" He poked at her shoulder gently, playfully, to take the bite out of his words. "You dying, that is. I can't handle it. So knock it off. No more near death experiences."

Sam coming back critically wounded from the Ori attack had taken years from Jack's life, he was sure of it. He knew that kind of stress wasn't good for anyone, especially one aging Major General. Jack took a deep breath to compose his thoughts, filling his senses with the scent of Sam, wanting to reassure himself that she was here with him and was well -- was whole, was healed.

Sam rested there under Jack's chin for a few minutes, her body relaxed into his, and Jack began to wonder if she had drifted back to sleep.

Jack felt his own eyelids becoming heavy by the time Sam's guarded whisper came.

"Emerson."

Jack wasn't sure he'd heard her right, and stayed silent.

Sam wet her lips and swallowed, cleared her throat a little, then spoke again. "Colonel Emerson died because of me."

Jack took Sam's chin in his hand and raised her gaze to his, her bright blue eyes dim in the darkness. "You know that's not true." Jack spoke confidently, though he had only heard the barest of details from the official report. Sam's sojourn on the Odyssey was something of which she rarely spoke.

Sam shook her head and crooked the corner of her mouth cynically. "No, it's true. He was ordering me not to help repair the ship, so they shot him." Her eyes stared at a point beyond Jack and he knew she was replaying the gruesome scene in her head. "It was his final order. He was right there … and they shot him." She blinked a few times as if to clear the image. "I felt the gun go off, heard it go off, and still didn't realize what was happening until I felt his weight hit the deck through the soles of my feet." Sam paused, her body very still in Jack's arms. "It was unreal." Sam continued to speak, emptying her mental burden, describing the desperation she'd felt at trying to disable the distress beacon while still attempting to find a way for the crew to be rescued. For the first time, she also described the revulsion she had experienced from the rogue Anateo's very personal attention.

Jack's jaw was clenched, and he closed his eyes against Sam's description of the scenes. He could only imagine how helpless she'd felt, the ship's commanding officer murdered before her eyes, the welfare of a ship-full of crew in her hands -- and herself at the hands of the rogue member of the Lucien Alliance.

When Jack spoke, his voice was rough with emotion. "I'm sorry I wasn't there." His hand cupped the back of her head, and he rubbed his fingers through her hair sympathetically.

Jack felt Sam's gasp at his words rather than heard it. She turned her face to his, cupping his cheeks with her hands and meeting his eyes earnestly. "No, Jack. That's what bothers me the most. When I remember…" Sam closed her eyes and seemed to force the rest of the words from her mouth. "Mostly I feel thankful you weren't there. As ranking officer, you would have been killed, too." Sam's eyes opened, glistening with a few unshed tears, and Jack could feel the slight tremble in her fingers against his jaw. Her breathing was uneven. "I remember that grisly scene and the first feeling I register is relief … relief that you're safe on Earth." Sam let out an undignified snort and settled back into Jack's chest. "How messed up is that…" A self-depreciating oath was then murmured quietly under her breath. Jack hardly caught it.

He paused for a moment, not sure if he had the vocabulary to express what he felt, what he knew.

"Sam." Jack gestured with his free hand, keeping the other wrapped firmly around her shoulders. "I'm not so good at this part … the talking part. But I think you know I'd do anything to keep you safe, to bring you home safe, or to protect our planet. And I know you'd do the same for me. That's what we do." He paused again and pressed a small kiss to the crown of Sam's head, then smiled into her hair as he found just the right words. "But at the end of the day, you don't put Homer in charge of a train full of people because he has a weakness. You know the instant he sees that giant donut, he's going to say, 'To hell with these people whose lives are in my hands, there's my donut.' And there goes all those fine folks' free ride." He smiled once more into Sam's hair. "Sam. You're my donut. That's why I can't be there. Be glad I'm not there."

Sam's shoulders began to shake once more and for a split second, Jack thought he'd said the wrong thing again. He reevaluated that thought as soon as Sam's giggles became audible.

"Something you want to share with the class, Sam?" Jack felt slightly juvenile. Hell, he usually felt relatively juvenile, but Sam was laughing at him, giggling at him, and damn it, he'd thought he had found a good analogy.

She continued to laugh.

"Sam, I know I don't have a way with words, but you'd think I just asked you for an ID-ten-T form or some crap." Sam swallowed her laughter a little and looked up to meet Jack's eyes. Jack narrowed his gaze at her good-naturedly. "It wasn't that funny."

"Oh, Jack, it was. It's just -- well, you have the whole episode wrong." Sam was a little breathless from the laughter, and she brushed her hair back from her forehead, meeting Jack's eyes as intently as she ever did when discussing theoretical astrophysics. "Homer used the giant donut as an anchor for the runaway monorail. He saved the day. And Leonard Nemoy." She looked up with him, her expression every inch the cat who had caught the canary.

"Of all the--" Jack's mouth opened in an O of mock-horror, and he unceremoniously dumped Sam off of his lap and flat onto the bed, leaning his body over hers. "All this time, you pretend you don't watch the show, and here you have whole episodes memorized?" He went over her words once more and in exasperation added, "Including guest stars? Samantha Carter, I don't believe it!" He captured her body under his, and kissed both of her cheeks with glee. "You do watch The Simpsons!" He grinned at Sam, forehead to forehead with her, thrilled to have caught her at his own game.

Sam tried unsuccessfully to hold back her answering grin, and then defiantly kissed the tip of his nose. "I plead the fifth."

Jack propped himself up on his elbows above her and studied Sam's face, slightly serious once more. "Anchor, donut … whatever." His right hand gestured unseen beside her head. "I've had to accept why I can't be there. Can you see that you have every right to be glad I wasn't?" Jack willed her to understand, to let go of the guilt.

Sam just nodded and seemed content to let the subject drop. Jack studied Sam's eyes in the faint light, and was settled by the calm he saw in her gaze. He kissed her again, on the lips this time, and more thoroughly.

Sam pulled him in, deepening the kiss, and Jack reveled in it, suddenly glad he'd been awakened in the middle of the dark, dark night.

He had his donut.

She even tasted sweet.

.

.

END.

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AN: Reviews, as always, are very welcome. What did you think? How was the pacing? This went pretty long for such a 'short' scene, but it didn't feel slow to me. I don't know if that's because I read fast, or because I wrote it …or because I'm a wordy idiot? I dunno, but I'd love to know how you feel!

Oh, and sorry for more "AN" lengthiness, but before you ask: an ID-ten-T form? Spell it out: ID10T. Idiot. Military joke. I think Sam would have gotten what Jack meant by it right away. In military circles, the new guy is usually sent out on bogus errands that make him feel stupid while everyone laughs. The idiot form request is a pretty common one. (By the way, the idiot form is just one of many options. A friend of my husband's was once sent by his commanding officer to requisition eight feet of fallopian tube. Apparently no one let him in on the joke until well after his little errand had turned into a full-on quest. He still tells the humiliating story more than a decade later, LOL.)