He should have known they were in trouble the minute she shut down Kawalsky and Ferretti. The minute she levelled her eyes at him and offered to arm wrestle him. But he hadn't worried. They were only going to retrieve Daniel after all and he wasn't planning on sticking around after that.
Besides, he likes her cockiness, likes the soldier despite the scientist. Later, when he finds - much like with Daniel - he likes the scientist too, he doesn't have the time to dwell on it.
He never works out when it became so important to make her laugh but he does stop himself calling her by her first name and knows why she'll never use his because he can see the potential there even when he thinks they have a handle on it.
/\/
He can barely focus long enough to keep himself awake but he knows he has to stop her working. He's seen this in both her and Daniel, the drive to work at a problem until the solution presents itself out of sheer desperation. He recognises that driving force as something all of SG1 share and part of him wonders how that's going to play out the longer they're a team. Teams need balance and if they're all going to be this stubborn he's not sure it can work.
But right now he needs to focus on her. He can feel a swell and a heat in his chest that can't be good and he worries that if he can't get her to stop before he passes out she'll keep working. She doesn't like that he kept the broken ribs from her, he can tell, but there's some self-recrimination there too. She seems to think she should have known.
If she can't fix the DHD he's going to have to order her to leave him behind and he can already tell it's going to be a fight, but he can't let her die here too.
/\/
She forgives him easily and he's not sure he likes how that makes him feel. Daniel will give him a hard time and Teal'c won't pull any punches - figuratively or literally - but he hadn't realised she'd forgive him before they even leave the gate room. After all, she doesn't know that he argued with the Asgard about the necessity of lying to the rest of SG1, doesn't know he only did it because he had to. But she forgives him anyway.
He wishes she hadn't. Wishes she'd given him the cold shoulder - inasmuch as she'd ever be capable of doing so with a superior officer - but she hasn't. She's gone from incomprehension at his actions to understanding to smiling that smile at him before he's even completely off the ramp and he knows he doesn't deserve it to be that easy.
He thinks - hopes - it's because of the three of them, she's uniquely placed to understand him. To understand his job. He knows Daniel, for all that he's made his peace with it, still regards the military in general and his career history in particular with what he tends to think of as privileged distaste. Daniel has the luxury of the high moral ground and although it irks him, he knows he doesn't want that to change.
Teal'c doesn't have an underhand bone in his body. The Jaffa is the embodiment of the honourable warrior, something he knows he's not.
She's honourable too, but she gets it. Gets him. He hopes that's what's behind her quick forgiveness, but he's not able to stop himself seeing the relief in her eyes when she smiles and it makes him wonder.
/\/
He's able to keep himself under control long enough to realise beating the hell out of the panel won't drop the shield. He wonders if he would have maintained that semblance of control if she hadn't ordered him - begged him - to leave. Her order is just as desperate as his refusal in its own way and when he meets her eyes he sees his own realisation reflected there and wonders what'll happen now they're each aware of the other.
It means they can't deny it anymore, he can't deny it. The lie hed constructed in the privacy of his own head is shattered. He can't invite her to the cabin, telling himself it would be the same as with Daniel or Teal'c. Because now they both know just how far they've let this go. He wonders if that's why she refused, because she'd known it wouldn't be safe. He wouldn't be surprised; she's the smart one after all.
Because he's not the smart one he'll stay here until the Jaffa find them and they both know it. He'll force himself to watch her die - will die himself - because he can't leave knowing it'll be without her.
They say nothing while the Jaffa approach, but he can feel her eyes on his face like a physical touch and his fingers flex, wanting to reach for her. The pattern here is not lost on him. But for once they're both just looking at the other and he hates himself a little that seeing what he's feeling mirrored in her actually feels good.
He's often thought they'd end up like this, he was just certain it'd be him getting left behind because he's still pretty sure, even now, that he could make her leave.
When the shield drops he knows getting away from here needs him to work, to give orders and not think about how else this might have gone down so he doesn't grab her hand as they run, doesn't look back to make sure she's there during the run for the gate. He buries it all away, the look on her face and the sandbag to the chest feeling of their shared understanding.
/\/
He's not stupid, despite his efforts to appear so. He knows that there's a job to do, knows better than anyone that to do it they need to reestablish the status quo, the chain of command.
But his rank has never felt so heavy a burden to carry until now. It's not better, knowing it's both of them, knowing that's what survives of them, and he'd never expected it to be. He wonders if she had.
He's always known that the minute they both know it'll make this that much harder. It's one thing to have to watch yourself, another to have to watch someone else too.
So he tilts his head to the side, echoing the word to help her rebuild their careful distance but he lets something of how he's feeling bleed into it too, because when they're still here, still dressed as who they were when they thought they could be together he can't just let it go.
She told him once that if the moon was moved just a bit closer or a bit further away in orbit life on Earth would be destroyed, so it's best it stays where it is, just close enough.
He wonders which of them is the moon in this scenario.
/\/
She yells at him and he grabs her without thinking, hauling her around to face him and yelling back. He needs to keep the chain of command in place because without it they're lost, but after they're done yelling he doesn't let her go.
Instead, he watches as her gaze flits between his eyes and his mouth, knowing he's doing the same. And this is so much worse than it would have been before 118. Before the memory stamp left them each with the taste of the other, the memory of his hands in her hair and hers under his shirt.
When Teal'c calls to them he tells himself he's relieved. If the Jaffa's voice had come a moment later he's sure they would have given in to the pull and he knows that would have made it that much harder to go back to how things are, how they need to be.
/\/
He can tell himself its not her anymore, but he still feels the tug that pulls them together. He can tell himself she's gone and something has taken her place but he knows he'll see her fall every time he closes his eyes.
He's killed her and knowing he had to do it makes it no easier. Knowing he wouldn't have let anyone else do it makes him wonder who he is.
He sits by her bed in the observation room and watches the forced rise and fall of her chest, knowing that eventually, he'll have to give in to Fraiser, to her. He's being watched, he knows, but he can't bring himself to stop, can't leave her side because when he does he's sure he'll spiral off, lost in space without her to hold him where he's supposed to be.
When they figure it out and she looks up at him he hates how quickly he compartmentalises. He shuts everything he's been feeling away, pulling himself back from her so they can maintain their distance.
/\/
Most of the time he finds it doesn't matter much and he wonders if that's how he let it go so far. SG1 are a law unto themselves, epitomising the SGC's general approach to the galaxy and taking it to the extreme.
And they're good - so damn good - at not thinking about it. Not reacting to the inexorable pull of the other that they can forget it exists for huge stretches.
But there are those moments when he knows they're kidding themselves.
Hammond tells him she refused to give up her weapon and the first feeling he has is pride. He taught her that. The second is concern. Teal'c refused too, but it's in the Jaffa's character as much as in his own to question orders like that when he feels they jar with his sense of what's right. It's not in hers.
/\/
He doesn't like who he is when she's not safe. The man he becomes is too much the part of himself he tries to keep in check, holding back the darkness until he needs it. These past five years have given him the space to temper that man with something lighter. Always on the edge of insubordination, it's now irreverent rather than rude. Daniel saved him, and then Teal'c and Hammond and Carter saved him too and now he can't not be this.
But when she's not safe it feels like the man he's become was a mask he's been wearing all this time. Heavy and faintly ridiculous.
The officer in him knows they've already shot the regs to hell in moments like these.
When he finds her and sees just how late he nearly was he has to let his training take over just to stop himself killing the men he finds with her.
Instead, he sends them to the other side of the room, putting them out of his reach even as he brings her into it, his hand falling to her leg and tightening on the fabric until he can feel her beneath it.
She looks afraid and surprised to see him and he hates that. She should have known he would find her but he knows he can't say that, can't say anything he's thinking without risking getting too close, so he retreats, arming her arms her and filling her in on what's next.
/\/
She's barely left his side since they left Antarctica and some distant part of him isn't happy about that. They want him to take in a Tok'ra symbiote and the way she asks shows she knows just how he feels about that.
But now she's found a way to save him and he finds he can't blame her for using it, not when she seems to have made a career out of doing just that.
Maybe not a career… more like a side hustle, because her main job is still saving the world - the universe - and saving him is just a byproduct of that. He's pretty sure.
And it's not like this is the riskiest way she's found to save him, it's by far the easiest. She just has to ask him to have himself. Her Sir, please has barely died away and he's already nodding, as powerless to deny her as she must have known he'd be.
/\/
The realisation of what triggered the Tok'ra's suicidal assault on Baal's fortress doesn't surprise him as much as it should. That his team also worked it out - that its how they found him - worries him until he realises they're thinking generally, not specifically.
Because in truth it isn't what they think. He's not what they think. He doesn't want to leave people behind, true. But he's served a long time and he knows not everyone makes it home.
But Kanan looked into his head and saw her. Saw every time he risked his stupid ass to save her, despite the odds and the warning bells in his head. Saw why. Blended with that, Kanan was unable to do anything but go back.
He understands the symbiote even as he condemns him, because if he can compartmentalise that part of himself why can't the snake?
/\/
He watches as she shares a kook with Teal'c before the Jaffa turns away from them and she rests her head on his shoulder. He can feel his own fear coiling in his gut so he concentrates on keeping his breathing steady, trying to jostle her as little as possible.
She can't be comfortable, but he knows this is nothing to do with physical comfort. She's leaning against him and he's pushing back against her because they can't help it and this is less than he wants but more than he can have so he'll take it.
When Evanov dies he watches the horror on her face and tries to push down the panic he can feel fluttering under his ribs. He orders her to rest again, helping her lie back on the bench and resting his fingers on her arm.
By the time they come for him she's unconscious and he finds he can't look at her, instead keeping his eyes on Eggar and Wodan. He knows Nirrti won't bargain with him but tries anyway, terrified the sadistic Goa'uld is his last chance to save her.
When Nirrti is - finally, permanently - dead he's offered another chance and he barely thinks, speeding back to the cell to slide his arms under her and carrying her back to the machine. They heal her and he feels his panic recede like the tide, starts to push everything back to where it needs to be, but not before he reaches for her. He tells himself he's just helping her away from the machine, but his fingers linger slightly too long and he doesn't miss her outstretched hand either.
/\/
He seeks her out just before he has to leave to find Daniel, making sure he tells Teal'c beforehand. He knows what's behind the need to see her separately but can't acknowledge it. Part of him is - continually - disgusted at his own cowardice.
But he knows he has to see her, and knows this is the best way; when there isn't enough time for more than goodbye and good luck, because he's pretty sure she's as uneasy about his mission as he is about hers and for the first time in a long time he's afraid of what they'll say given more time.
/\/
He snaps at Daniel and knows he shouldn't. Daniel looks hurt and he's almost sorry but he can't take it back so he doesn't. He sees that while the younger man looks slightly hurt, he's not surprised, and he knows he should care more about that.
It's not a problem that he's anxious to find her. He'd do the same for anyone under his command - has done, more times than he cares to count - and he's convinced it means he'll never make general. One person can't matter so much.
The problem is what he worries will happen after he fails to find her. What it'll do to him when she doesn't come home. Because he's fairly certain he won't survive it. The taste of losing her is in the back of his throat like bile and he feels like a compass needle spinning loose, seeking north but finding nothing but a void.
When Teal'c follows him into the locker room and employs better tactics than Daniel he falls for it, snapping and spinning and joking to distance himself from what the Jaffa has to say.
He knows he's fooling no one but he's finding himself on the edge of not caring more and more these days, so when she calls him by his name it startles him and he calls her on it. When she takes it back he not sure if he's more disappointed with himself or her but bites back that feeling.
This is better. Safer.
And now she's back he can relax, bury the fear and the need that push him to find her, to bring her home no matter what.
/\/
He lends his weight to her request that the cop be told about the program, trying to ignore the expression in his CO's eyes as he does it.
It makes sense, he knows. Better this than what they've been doing the last few years. Hammond looks as though he wants to ask something but knows he'll either be lied to or hear something he can't afford to hear if he does so he tightens his jaw on the question.
He sends the older man a look - a grateful upturn at the corners of his mouth and leaves without waiting for formal dismissal.
She told him once that black holes consume themselves when everything else is gone - theoretically - and he wonders if that's what'll happen to him when she's finally gone. If he'll turn inwards, destroying himself.
/\/
When he does finally find her he's worried he hasn't. She can barely look at him and he really needs her to, to thank him like he had a choice in this - like every part of him hadn't been vibrating with the pull of her stuck in this place until Hammond signed off on the S&R - and tell him she's fine like the good soldier she is. But she doesn't.
She calls him sir - because at this point he's pretty sure it's the closest thing she has to a name for him - but she doesn't tell him she's ok. She doesn't bother to lie and if she's not going to he'll be damned if he is, so he sinks down to the ground beside her.
He drops an arm around her shoulders, ignoring the internal reminder about the cop, and pulls her in to rest against his side, only half surprised when she comes willingly, without compunction, her head resting on his shoulder.
/\/
He hears her. He feels scattered, his brain fizzing with the knowledge it can't contain, can barely translate, but through that, he hears her.
She wants something from him and he can't understand her words anymore so he settles on the sound of her voice as he drifts away. She's not happy about that, he can hear it in her tone and he's wishing there was enough of him left to help her when she asks again.
Please. Jack.
/\/
When she hands him the box he feels like he's been ambushed. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, he reflects, but he never thought he'd be under attack from her.
He knows he should have seen this coming. The cop doesn't appear to be too much of an idiot so of course he wants to marry her.
Still, he can't help but wish he'd left well enough alone. That he'd sent Daniel to check on her. That he didn't have to be the one to give her the final push away. Because he can't give her anything. He can't tell her not to do it - even though a part of him suspects that's what she wants.
Instead, he tells her half of the truth. Giving her words that could - and do - mean several things. If his family had remained intact he wouldn't be here. None of them would be. If they'd chosen each other instead of the job he's fairly certain he'd be dead. If by some miracle he'd survived he'd be out of the program, they could be together but separate and he's not sure if that's better or worse.
When he leaves her he feels the distance he's covering - fairly quickly - is much more than it should be, as though the space between her lab and his office is distorted somehow.
/\/
They relax, it's safe now. She calls him when he's off-base and they don't speak much about work. He can always hear the smile in her voice, knows she can hear his too.
A year ago this would have made him uneasy, would have had him using her rank instead of her name in order to preserve the distance they'd fought to maintain.
But now it's safe.
/\/
She's managed to surprise him, turning up here unannounced and he can feel himself spinning uneasily off his axis. He watches her eyes fall closed as Kerry exits the house and pushes against the feeling that he should comfort her, should move to stand in front of her the way he had after Janet died, proving that despite everything he's still there.
But he can't be there, so he maintains his distance, watching her try to process what's happening and feeling immeasurably grateful when her cell phone rings. The guilt he'll feel for that relief almost floors him.
He finds her in the isolation room hours after they've taken Jacob to the morgue. She's sitting on the high bed in the dark, looking smaller than he's ever seen her.
He thinks about leaving her alone, considers ordering her off the base but knows he won't. His feet have already taken him into the room before he's fully decided and he takes her hand, tugging her down until her boots hit the floor and he's holding her, tucking her head into this shoulder, because this is ok. The distance is maintained - she's still engaged - but he wasn't lying. He will always be there when she needs him, in case she needs him and he doesn't know how to see her like this and not pull her closer. Because
/\/
He watches her leave the cabin while he's fielding questions from Daniel and Teal'c. When he thinks he's answered enough he stands, ignoring the hand Teal'c drops on Daniel's shoulder when the archaeologist starts to rise too.
She's leaning on the fence around the decking, watching the water. She seems deep in thought so he watches her a moment. She's breathing deeply, her breath coming quickly as she clasps her hands in front of herself. He knows, somehow, that for once she's not trying to work anything out. If anything, she looks defeated, finally. In a way she hadn't until five minutes ago.
She sighs, compelling him to move. When he leans down next to her he takes her hand and he's not surprised when she threads their fingers together, tightening hers on his in a way he's certain she's never dared before.
Finally, he straightens, turning her so she's looking up at him. He feels his amusement at her bewilderment chased away by concern that she's taking this so badly before he sees in her eyes that she thinks she's losing him.
He tells her that's not so, that it's not possible and that what he's doing is giving them a chance, if she wants one. He tells her about the stop-loss and why it hadn't been necessary, once he made himself clear to the President and General Hammond. He tells her he's not going to try to keep them apart anymore but he senses she's not listening.
Her gaze is turned inwards, as though something he's said has started her thinking, so he stops talking and waits for her.
She blinks up at him and he can feel the weight of whatever she's been thinking even if he doesn't know the substance. Then she's in his arms and he realises he didn't even have to offer this time. She still looks uncertain so he ducks his head and kisses her, feeling the second she adjusts her orbit and falls against him.