Paved Roads
Summary: Stranded for a while on a deserted planet, O'Neill and Carter have no choice but to look to each other while they wait for rescue.
Rating: T
Author's notes: A stranded fic – and an unoriginal idea as this may be – is something I've always wanted to write for a while, incorporating 'Chimera', an episode that I really hated. So this story is in a way, an attempt to rectify what happened. For bluemoonmaverick (and sorry if this is way long overdue), because she'll only give me what I want if I bribe her with stories. I've not forgotten 'In the thirteenth hour'; this is just a one-shot that needed to be written!
Thanks for reading.
It's a cliché that Jack hates.
He's stuck on a planet that's lush with vegetation (sans beaches and sand) with a beautiful woman whom he badly wants but can't get. To make him feel just a little worse, there isn't even an equivalent of a Goa'uld pleasure palace for him to engage in some debauchery while on a high.
In fact, he hasn't stopped cursing since that fateful day, three months ago, when the Stargate rocked merrily off its precarious perch on a cliff top and plunged a kilometre into the ocean, stranding him and his second IC on an uninhabited planet with miles of trees, steep overhangs and no beaches.
But in the last two-and-a-half months, he's also learned to interpret Carter's not-so-subtle looks of increasing annoyance. So his rants about the stupidity of those who planted the gate near the edge of the cliff now take place mostly in his head.
The Stargate is clearly irrecoverable, but it doesn't mean that they don't try anyway.
In the end, their failed attempts to even get past the shallow thermocline are laughable. It's obvious that the sea's way too deep and the heavy Naquadah in the gate guarantees that it has made its home at the very bottom by now.
But in particular, the idea that there could be aquatic creatures down in the deep that appreciate the taste of human flesh – something they only realised after their first dive – does wonders to their enthusiasm.
So they decide, rather sullenly, to wait. And hope for a rescue that will in all likelihood, take ages because their friendly neighbourhood Tok'ra wouldn't, well, be in the neighbourhood yet.
It began as a simple reconnaissance mission, a typical milk run on a tropical off-world site that had SG-1 stepping through the wormhole with a camaraderie that hasn't quite been fully there since Carter miraculously got her ass off the Prometheus.
But the simple things never stay simple. In fact, running into all kinds of trouble is pretty formulaic of SG-1's misadventures and Jack should have come to expect it the way he comes to expect the sheer number of trees on the many planets they visit.
Then the earthquake happened, a sudden rumble that brought them to their knees and loosened a sizable chunk of rock on which they'd unsuspectingly stood. A hurried sprint to the gate and a destabilising wormhole later, all he and Carter had been left with was an empty patch of air where rock and gate once stood.
Daniel and Teal'c – damn them – made it safely back home. As usual.
They'd been so near and yet so far. Jack didn't think that he'd ever forget Carter's horrified look, knowing it was most probably mirrored on his face.
So stuck on this godforsaken place with nothing but the packs on their back, they start off like they always do, working together like the well-oiled cogs of a machine that run in sync. In the first week, they settle in a spot somewhere between the ocean and the forest and find out just how far small talk and basic survival methods really get them in a planet that's all wilderness.
The grass is long; no footpath exists to make life easy for them. Soon enough, their heavy boots help wear the weeds down, flattening them into a semblance of a path that links the forest to the sea.
The second week begins with the same mask of determined nonchalance that they strive to wear around each other.
Faced with an interminable length of time together, Jack settles mostly into dumb-mode and tries not to think how things might play out by the time Daniel and Teal'c come for them. In any case, he's got his work cut out for him, doing whatever he can do to improve their stone-age living conditions. But there are days of overwhelming boredom that he tries to overcome by fishing in a lovely small creek a few clicks inland. It's a surprisingly productive activity, yielding on occasion, large snapper-like things that he grills for meals.
Carter's routine is simple. It's pretty much the same as his, except that she looks for fruits and wanders off at times to do whatever she wants to do and leaves him alone with his thoughts.
But the frustrating boredom hits her like it does a child who develops destructive tendencies when there's nothing to do. By the end of the week, she's broken part of her P-90's cartridge in her seventh attempt to take it apart, snapped his makeshift fishing rod twice and crushed part of their daily food supplies. The exasperation lends her usually smooth movements a rougher touch than usual and Jack's surprised to find that he's more secretly amused than annoyed to see his normally-collected major lose her cool. At least she tries to be well-mannered about it, apologising each time she breaks something.
But beneath it, there is a growing hint of resentment and anger – emotions that he knows all too well.
Jack just thinks he hides it better than she does, after having invested so much time in learning to put up walls between him and the rest of the world. But Carter's an open book of nuances that he takes his time to read and re-read, a forbidden, guilty pleasure made all that more sinful because she doesn't know what he's really doing.
At least he thinks she doesn't.
It isn't long before frayed nerves chip away the usual game of pretence and double-speak.
Jack's tweaking his makeshift fishing line and squinting into the gleaming sunlight reflecting off the rippling water when she comes over with a bundle of…things in her arms and plops herself next to him.
"Fishing again?"
He casts her a sideways glance and doesn't bother to answer her rhetorical question. From the corner of his eye, he sees her restless movements and looks at the berries that poke out from the leafy bundle she's holding.
It doesn't take long for her to speak again. "It wouldn't hurt, Sir, to see you a bit more worried about our circumstances."
The petulant undertone surprises him. Carter isn't one who's naturally insubordinate and Jack finds himself treading new ground with this rare side of her.
"I'm worried about not ever eating cake again, if that's what you're asking." His brows are raised, but a warning belies his casual statement.
But Sam doesn't get the hint, or doesn't want to. The bitterness seeps into her voice. "You like this, don't you? The wilderness, the outdoors. A caveman's existence."
Caveman?
"Carter." He snaps more sharply this time, more out of worry than anger at her suddenly mutinous behaviour. Tension in the air or not, he'd be damned before he allows Carter to mope for too long.
It seems to work. A look of surprise and belated realisation crosses her face. She opens her mouth like a fish out of water, then shuts it again, changing her mind about the insubordinate rejoinder she'd been planning to say.
Jack lets the fishing line go slack and turns to look at her. There's something bugging her. That much is obvious from the crease in her forehead and the lines around her eyes.
He already knows that Carter is built for a more complicated life among the stars and not for simple menial labour in the rural countryside. Thrust unceremoniously into the latter, she's only knows how to function like a square peg in a round hole.
Yet there's something more there. He has spent days mulling over it without really knowing what.
A full minute passes before O'Neill says anything and in the intervening seconds, Sam finds that she can't hold his hooded, unreadable gaze for long.
"We are going to get back. Maybe not immediately, but we will," he finally says with uncompromising firmness. If it is some reassurance she needs, he'll give it to her. Willingly.
"How do you know that? Unless there's something more here that I don't know about…look, Sir, I can't be here forever, not when…" She trails off, deliberately turning away from him.
It hits him then, that mostly likely, there's someone back home that she misses in particular. He takes a look at her troubled face and then looks away, not wanting to see the desperate longing on her face because she probably misses someone who's not him.
So Jack plays his last card. He refers to the strands of loyalty that tightly bind the team, because that is all that he can fall back on, all he can say to someone around whom he doesn't quite know how to behave anymore.
"If you don't trust what I say, then trust that Daniel and Teal'c won't leave us here."
Sam purses her lips in part-resignation, part-acquiescence, knowing that he's steering her into safe, reliable waters. "Yes, Sir."
It's a good way to deal with panic. But she feels something break inside her each time she looks to O'Neill for reassurance, hating that neediness that surfaces when she least expects it to. Yet he never fails her, time and again. Not that it makes her any less of a woman or a soldier who has been hankering after her CO after seven long years.
He cuts through her thoughts with a calm voice. "Carter, don't go bailing on me. Not now."
Finally, she gives him a watery smile. "I won't, Sir."
The seasons turn quickly on this planet; it's tropical for two weeks, then a shift in weather patterns in the third week causes an abrupt drop in temperatures.
For them, the third week begins with petty squabbling over the durability of their makeshift tent. It degenerates from there, their bickering taking on increasingly venomous edges as the invisible weight of what they aren't makes a sizable dent in their very professional relationship as CO and Second IC.
They realise this lesser-known fact a little too late, because suddenly, they're contending with a collapsed tent that's past its wind load limit, dying fires and food that simply…blows away.
Jack drops to his knees securing one side of the tent and she, the other. They punch bigger, deeper holes in the ground with the miniature toolkit they've got as the wind hurls sand and dirt into their faces.
He shouts his question after spitting out the sand that's gotten into his mouth. "Carter, when we planned this mission, did you have any idea that this damned planet's like that?"
She gives it back as loud as she can over the loud gusts of wind that's starting to make her fingers shake with cold. "The rotational axis was calculated at-"
Only Carter would be rattling off something incomprehensible in the middle of a windstorm.
"Ahh! C'mon!" He yells unceremoniously, finishes off his last knot and immediately shoves her into the tent, the sudden manoeuvre making her shut her mouth in surprise.
They fall clumsily onto the covered ground, breathless with their recent weather skirmish and their sudden proximity to each other. He's landed on top of her, his weight more comforting than crushing, his lips so close that it wouldn't take much to close the distance.
It's a breathtaking moment that stretches time into a frozen eternity where there's nothing more in the world than just the two of them, caught in each other. Helplessly, Sam winces at how it's all playing out, even if it's only in her mind.
He rolls off her in a heartbeat but not before she hears his breath hitch. She can't help the sigh of satisfaction when she hears it because it proves that she's not the only one affected by this.
Jack recovers quickly, the mask of mild nonchalance firmly in place by the time he sits a respectable distance from her. After all, it's easier to draw away, make a joke and pretend that things are fine, all around.
Distance has always empowered him. It's a large part of the construction that is Jack O'Neill the soldier; it's what allows him to tighten his finger on a trigger and then sleep soundly at night. But distance is also the only saving grace in his entire career that allows him to look at Carter just as a teammate rather than as a woman.
So he tries giving her an innocent look, only to grin when he really looks at her appearance.
Her blond hair is mussed beyond recognition and the sand that covers her face makes her look like a comic book character that got caught unsuspectingly in a fray. But all that dirt cannot conceal that Carter's still a woman whom he wants, a sentiment he was sure would mortify her to no end. So he carefully pushes these hindrances away and simply counters that rising desire with a play at normalcy.
"We'll need to make stronger re-bar stakes."
Sam opens her mouth with a frown, as though expecting him to say something else. But she's always taken her cue from him – a move that she's now starting to question – and there's no reason to upset the status quo now. Or is there?
But familiarity wins in the end. The reliant, dutiful Samantha Carter that O'Neill has known for seven years returns with a vengeance. She nods in resigned agreement, a solider who never fails to respond to his commands.
"I'll need to find something stronger than just branches."
"We'll do it together, Carter. It's not as though I'm incredibly busy tomorrow morning," he says, gratified to have coaxed a wry smile from her.
"Yes, Sir."
They stay silent for a while, listening to the howling of the wind and to the unsettling sound of the tent flapping slightly around them.
Finally, Sam hears his audible sigh above the wind. "They will come, Carter," he reassures her again, then purses his lips into a tight, thin line as though he's fighting an inner battle.
"Yes Sir."
They will come, Carter. Have some faith.
They're coming for us.
They'll be here any day now.
He's said these variations on a theme so many times over the course of the past few weeks so that it's nothing that she doesn't know. She trusts him, even though she knows his words are constructed out of blind faith. So her answer always falls within the strictures of military regulations.
There's clearly more he wants to say this time, but she doesn't ask. Because anything else that comes after that would involve addressing the mess that the proverbial elephant has made in that small, unforgotten room.
The silence is uncomfortable, but significant. He looks her over once, twice, with an unusual flash of intensity that's uncommon. Then he reluctantly breaks the growing tension. "You'll get to see the cop again."
His reply makes her freeze, then flush. The brief second when his eyes rake her down is horribly exposing, but it also makes a delectable tingle run through her spine – a shiver that has nothing to do with the weather.
Sam hadn't known that her CO had been privy to her personal life. He'd told her to get one, after all, then backtracked when she raised her brows at him and told him that work was fun. But to be reminded of her failure with something that had never really gotten up to speed by someone who wasn't supposed to know really felt like a slap to the face.
"It's nothing like that," she says defensively before she can help it.
Jack doesn't want to wade deeper into a pending conversation that he knows they'll both regret, so instead, he gives her a hard, warning look and repeats himself. "Look, we will get off this rock. Trust me on this."
Suddenly, Sam decides she's tired of this. Tired of the strain that they pretend is normal, tired of the constant denial that has been so much a part of her life that it has made her almost forget what it means to be emotionally honest.
"You told me to save my ass, you know."
"Huh?" The glint in her eye worries him but her non-sequitur makes him frown in confusion. Jack is less dense than he pretends to be, but even he knows that this is way out of his league.
"On the Prometheus," she clarifies and rubs a finger over the lightweight fabric of the tent, finding it suddenly fascinating.
He follows her story cautiously and tries to get up to speed. "When you got stuck in space and hallucinated."
She nods slowly. "I hallucinated the team. You were the last who came to talk to me. I asked you if you didn't feel anything for me. You never really answered my question, you know. So I thought it was time to let this go when I came to the conclusion that you were my safe bet."
Jack doesn't see that coming. Her confession blindsides him, not just because the little details aren't in the report but because she's finally working towards opening a door that she's shut all those years ago with a rusty key that he's not too sure works anymore.
Let this go? There was no this. Safe bet? The thought makes him want to laugh and punch something hard.
And what the hell could he say to that? That it had all been in her head and she'd taken for reality all that she'd hallucinated?
Trust Carter to over-think even her own hallucinations.
The real him didn't even stand a fighting chance, if she chose to go by the dream-O'Neill that her feverish mind had cooked up. Resisting the urge to shake her, he clenches his fists, looks down and says nothing.
She gives him a short bitter laugh. "It's something I've been thinking about again these days. When better, right? When there's nothing to stop my thoughts from running astray?"
Jack finally shifts his gaze upwards and gives her a sideways glance. "God, Carter," he groans and rubs a tired hand over his face. Words of denial and quips die in his throat before he can even give voice to them.
So they were indeed stumbling into this after all, the inevitability of this conversation suddenly making it easy to see that they didn't stand a fighting chance in keeping the status quo.
Sam continues softly, as though he hadn't said a word. "And when I woke up, I called you by your name."
Jack remembers the delighted shock that had rippled through him when she said his name, that day not too long ago in the infirmary. But then, under the glare of the white lights and the watchful eyes of the medical staff, he'd gathered himself together all too quickly, raised his eyebrows and looked too stupid to understand what she was implicitly asking when it really mattered the most.
"Carter," he repeats her name with a frown. But it's softer, gentler and more a plea than a command to stop.
Sam looks at him with a strange light in her eyes. "You said my name just like that you know. In that dream." She confidently calls it a dream now, because that's all it was – a funny hybrid of wishes and fantasies acted out in a moment of delirium.
Jack feels the urge to crack up, to break the moment by saying something stupid and waving it all away. But it's important to her and he just hopes he's man enough to follow through.
Carter's next sentence makes him regret it immediately.
"It wasn't too long after I went out with someone my brother set me up with. A cop, who, on the surface, seemed to understand the demands of my work. We had several casual dates. In the coffee-shop near my place. But one night, we went dancing and-" She trails off, lost in an internal debate that he wasn't privy to.
Jack doesn't understand why the floodgates have suddenly opened. Now he's fighting to tune her out, an impossibility considering she's just getting started. He doesn't want to hear any more of it, especially when she's probably only a few sentences away from revisiting an elevator incident that's to him, a very painful memory of how much he'd lost.
"Even then, I kept wondering just how much that stupid concussion had affected my ability to think properly. And about you being a safe bet…" she shakes her head in pained remembrance, "…did that also mean that I was making you my backup option, the one whom I've always taken for granted because you were always there for me? It certainly didn't sound very fair to you too if I tried to get a life apart from the SGC…and you."
"Carter, stop," he interrupts her sharply, forcing himself to look into her face. It is the hardest thing that he's doing; resisting her explanation so that she can go on with her life under the false pretext that he doesn't care. "You don't have to go on. It's none of my business whatever you do apart from…Quarks the cat."
Quarks is the only thing he latches onto because Carter's love of cats is the only familiar ground on which he can tread. He'd even get into a debate about cats and dogs if she wanted, but-
Carter blatantly ignores his wishes, knowing as much he did that they had gone way too far down this unexplored path for him to haul her up on insubordination charges.
"I invited him in and we…" she trails off, the embarrassment burning as strongly now as it did then, "I couldn't do it you know."
Jack clenches his fists around a stray twig until it snaps and fights the urge to bolt. He's entrapped by her confession yet terrified by its implications. But to say anything that's even slightly inappropriate now is going to break the fragile emotional web that she's suddenly spinning around the both of them. So he grits his teeth and prays that this god-awful moment passes as quickly as possible.
"Couldn't do anything beyond inviting him in and making out against a wall," Her hands come up to cover her eyes, then move downwards to cup her cheeks in a strangely vulnerable way.
It's her turn to sigh. The newness of the experience with Pete Shanahan had worn off quickly; in its wake had trailed uncertainty, confusion and an unshakable sense of melancholy that had unsurprisingly withstood a whole bottle of Merlot.
"He went home after that and I never heard from him again," she tells him frankly, then bites her lip in consternation. "And just like that, it was over. After a few weeks of casual coffee shop dating. But the next day, I felt happy. Happy that I hadn't changed the status-quo between us, insanely proud of myself for waiting for something else despite what I'd impulsively decided to do after the Prometheus incident."
"You hummed, Carter. You never did that before," Jack blurts out unwittingly, then fights to clap a hand over his mouth for the childish observation that had sunk his entire world that day.
"Yeah," she smiles at the look in his eyes, gratified to see the genuinely confused expression appear on his face. "I felt…freer that day. Happier. Because it hit me then that I was just settling. And that's not enough for me."
After the rush of relief passes, it's then that he knows that Carter had always been the braver one. As the unwittingly recipient of a front seat ticket to watch her fearlessly leap over a precipice onto solid ground, he's suddenly inspired enough to take a deep breath and follow her lead down.
"Sam," he stops her with the deliberate use of a name that he's not used in ages. Unwittingly, he finds himself grinning.
"Jack." She returns his grin with a tentative smile of her own, testing out his name with more confidence that she did on that infirmary bed, finally feeling the tension leave her shoulders.
"So."
"So."
So what did that mean for them?
As much as he'd like to take a step forward, he really doesn't know where to begin with Carter. Lame chat-up lines don't work because she's known him way too long for him to pull something so dumb that it insults her veritable intelligence. Even the traditional seduction method that begins with a candlelit meal is doomed to failure because neither of them can cook all that well. He'd burn the meat and she'd likely poison them both when she's cooking something else other than a soufflé. More importantly, she's a better shot with the P-90 and he would rather not spend days staring down the wrong side of her gun.
Which makes him glad that her gun cartridge is broken.
"I, uh, still don't know what to do, you know," he tells her, thinking that he owes her some honesty after all that she's confessed. Nevertheless, it's an admission that's costing him, so different from the playful deflection he usually adopts.
Sam chuckles, the sound of unburdened merriment making his own stomach tumble.
"I do actually," she shrugs and finally, finally moves closer until there's barely a gap between them. Suddenly, the contact is electrifying, even through the thick cotton of their BDUs. But more importantly, honesty comes easier after the cathartic moment because she's said all that she wanted to say. "Whatever happens, I'll always need you."
Jack feels lighter than he has in ages.
Somehow, it feels as though they've made inroads without meaning to, in the middle of a windstorm no less. They've had the fate of the world hanging on their shoulders for years now; the burden is familiar but the rising tide of emotions and feelings isn't. The isolation on this hunk of rock has merely put away their known universe of routine and duty, leaving only a man and a woman who simply need each other.
After that talk, Jack thoroughly sees to it that Carter learns to get a life on the planet in the next few months.
Without the trappings of her lab and all the alien technology around her, she's learned to relax after he forcibly makes her fish alone for hours on end as he forages for fruit and wildlife. Rescue is probably not too far off, but the thought of it no longer occupies their waking moments when they have much better…stuff to do.
Together.
It would have been more perfect if there had been beer and jello. But he's really not complaining. He'd take Carter anyway he can.
They fall into routine that consists of dreamy nights, lazy mornings and busy afternoons. Fishing takes priority in their lives, a hobby-turned-survival method that Carter has actually grown to like when she's not busy trying to become an amateur botanist.
Jack thinks, however, it's something he can live with. Fairly easily.
It's nearly dinnertime on a typical day when he realises that rescue seems to loom on the horizon. So he hollers for her, then gets up to look when she doesn't answer.
He finds her not too far away from the tent examining the properties of a yellow flower under the light of a fire and stops at the sight simply because it represents something more infinitely precious than the sight of Carter in BDUs and an SG-1 patch on her arm.
"Look, Carter." He takes her hand, leads her to their usual rock loveseat and nods towards the sky.
She curls herself into him and follows his line of sight, not realising that he's watching her closely.
Jack knows the exact moment she sees it; an open-mouthed smile of excited disbelief creases her tanned cheeks and lights her eyes.
"The moving speck in the sky. A ship breaking atmosphere."
"Tok'ra?" He makes a guess, squinting at the numerous stars that pepper the night sky.
"Too far to tell," she tells him. Just like that, Sam knows that this life is going to disappear into a report that will grow dusty with age. After all, it's just some time spent on a planet that's got nothing will be of no interest to the top brass but has everything to do with the significant changes between them. "Do you want to go back?"
He sighs. "I'd be lying if I say no. But-"
Sam agrees immediately. "I know."
Before the worry becomes a full-blown anxiety that she can't shake off, Jack bumps her slightly with his shoulder, a gesture of understated affection that makes the corners of her mouth turn up.
She follows his line of sight. "What are you looking at?"
"The ground," he tells her, smiling slightly at her confusion.
All she sees is grass and soil but it's a momentary distraction that keeps her thoughts from lingering on the rescue ship.
"Seems like such a pity to go back now that we've made these things," he clarifies. "After all those months of work."
"The trails?" She asks doubtfully.
"Yeah. Don't think so?" He gives her a piercing look, his dark eyes glittering with an emotion she can't quite identify. It's an openness that she seldom sees and for a moment, she finds herself lost.
More carefully this time, Sam looks at the twin trails that wind out from their permanent campsite. They branch out from the tent flap like a wide tributary of a river and then break out into smaller worn inroads of flattened grass and parched soil that lead away from the camp.
It hits her then, that he's not just talking about the dirt trails. In the months they've been here, they've worn down the grass into narrow dirt trails that lead them where they've needed to go.
He's referring to them, in that oblique way of his, and the significant inroads that they've paved in their relationship. Reverting to metaphors and double-meanings that had all but disappeared after that night they'd talked is perhaps, his way of backpedalling should she decide that their time together on this rock is not worth it.
He's always left it up to her, she gets it now. But she doesn't want to go back to any of those, not after they've been nothing but truthful to each other.
So Sam makes a decision that she hopes is worthy of the both of them.
"I don't want to go back," she tells him, then eyes him knowingly. "I don't think I can."
Instantly, Jack knows that she's also not referring to the Earth. The tension that he's been lugging around dissipates and the sheer relief that comes straight after makes him realise how afraid he'd been all this time that she would change her mind.
His second glance up in the sky fills him with less anxiety than the first, reassured by her response. It's only then that he thinks a rescue wouldn't be all that bad because there's still the very strong possibility of a table and a bed for two in his house.
With a cat. If she so desired. Even if it made him grumpy.
With that thought now firmly entrenched in his head, he grins and slings an arm around her as they both watch the gently descending ship.
"Carter, for once, I'm glad we're on the same page."
- Fin