Passing Storm

So, there were two of them now.

He didn't know whether to cheer or cry.

Of course, one of them was an intergalactic death machine determined to wipe out the human race and devour all resources at her disposal in order to replicate as many times as possible.

The other one was going to marry the shrub.

He was leaning towards the machine.

Carter had returned from the Alpha Site and given him a quick, pained, report, and then headed into her lab. He and Teal'c had tried to talk to her later, but she'd quickly shouldered all the blame she could and then returned to staring through her microscope.

He supposed that she was still in there, but he hesitated about going in. For one thing, he had a commissary budget to review, and for another thing, he was stalling.

See? He could be honest with himself.

That's why he still sat at his desk, going through dietary requirements and serving sizes apportioned out over 400 SGC staff for thirty days. All this multiplied and/or divided by shift changes and off world commissary ingredient lists for non-Earth personnel and indigenous species. He didn't have enough fingers. Those numbers were way over ten.

So he pulled up last month's expenditures and budget information on his desktop and checked it. That one had seemed to work all right—at least, no one had gone hungry that he knew of. Last month's and this month's numbers were roughly the same. Licking the pad of his thumb, he flipped to the last page of the budget and signed it.

Done. He looked around for something else to use as an excuse, but he'd done all his paperwork for the day. For the first time in his storied career as General, he was caught up.

Crap.

He looked at the clock on the wall. Four thirty. If he just held out for another half an hour, maybe she'd go home and then he'd be able to stall until tomorrow.

The truth was, he still didn't know what to say to her. She'd blamed herself, and he'd waved that off in public. But he kind of did blame her—she'd been the one all gung ho to cooperate with the mean, nasty, evil robot, after all. Like he'd said before, she was trusting—too much so at times. He could count off several times when her inherent belief in people had gone very, very wrong. Linnea came to mind, and Fifth, and the Tollans, and most of the Tok'ra. And she'd thought she could make a deal with that Bynarr dude on Sokar's planet, and that hadn't helped at all. Then she'd wanted to talk with that stupid computer virus, and it had taken her over.

And he'd had to Zat her—twice. He still couldn't shake that one.

He'd thought about this many times since she'd announced her engagement. How she trusted too much. Her choice in men was clouded by it—she saw men how they could be instead of how they were. Jonas Hansen had been her project, her man to save. Narim was her scientific superior, yet she could offer simplicity to his over technological life. Ironic. Martouf was in love with someone she'd never known, and she'd been drawn to him because of someone she'd never been. Orlin had given up eternal enlightenment to be with her. Now, there was an ego boost.

But in the end, each of them had disappointed her. Each of them had died, actually.

Jack wondered briefly, wryly, if Pete Shanahan knew that his days were numbered.

But that brought O'Neill to himself. She trusted him, too—entirely too much. She gave him attributes that he clearly didn't have—wanted him to be things that he wasn't. From the beginning, she'd been idealistic, and he'd blamed it on her youth and inexperience. He was still waiting for that bubble to burst.

And he'd trusted her, too. He gave her latitude in her work that sometimes backfired—but usually didn't. Who else did he know who could blow up a sun? And yet she still always burned the microwave popcorn. Go figure.

Jack leaned back in his chair, forgetting that it wasn't really his chair. General Hammond had ordered that one sent to his office in D.C. this morning at the same time he'd requisitioned Daniel and Walter to go with him to Atlantis. The chair he currently was leaning in was one pulled out of storage, and kind of smelled like something had died in it. And something poked out exactly where it hit his left shoulder blade. He grimaced, interlacing his fingers behind his head.

He'd trusted her to make the naquadah bomb when that freaking big ship had been terrafarming on—whatever planet that had been. And she'd come through for him. And she'd set his leg and kept him alive on Antarctica. And he'd relied on her to fly the cargo ship through the planet while riding on a giant meteor, and she'd made it not hit Paris.

But then, he'd also trusted her with a confession while he'd been strapped into a chair, but that hadn't worked out well at all.

So she was batting around .500.

But work-wise—when it mattered, she usually came through—this last minor detail giving immunity to a mechanical killing machine aside.

He looked up at the clock again. Four thirty eight. He wasn't sure he'd ever thought for that long in one stretch.

He sighed and rested his elbows on his desk. The SGC sat quietly around him. The 'Gate had been silent for several hours. No Walter buzzed around to make his life miserable. Daniel was up there on the Prometheus, too, presumably having a grand ol' time. Jack missed the space monkey. For all of their arguing, Daniel was still the closest thing Jack had to a best friend.

Doc Polly had said a few days ago that Jack needed to surround himself with people that would allow him to grow as a person.

That was kind of tough when you were The General. You were supposed to be the most grown person around.

Time to man up.

He stood abruptly, shoving back the chair with a movement of one leg. Rounding the desk, he walked through the door and down the hall, entering the elevator, where he was unusually alone. He pressed the buttons and then waited as the lift pulled him up to her floor.

He wondered briefly if he could get clearance to put music in the elevator system. He was the General, after all. He wanted to ascend and descend with The Eagles.

Her floor was as quiet as his. The scientists must have gone home early. O'Neill passed Felger's lab, and then paused. Her door cracked open, a light spilling out into the hallway.

He put a hand on the door. "Carter? You in here?"

He listened carefully, but there was no reply. He paused, thinking she may be in the mess or the john, but then he heard the scuff of a shoe on the cement floor, and a sniff.

He hoped to all the Gods in the Universe that she'd gotten a cold.

Experience told him they weren't listening.

Gently, he pushed the door open and entered, standing in the frame for a moment until he found her. She was sitting on the floor, feet planted solid flat on the floor in front of her, arms wrapped around her knees. When she looked up and saw him, she ducked her head. Sniff.

"So, I thought I told you that it wasn't your fault."

She sniffled again.

"Are you crying, Carter?" He went for humor. "There's no crying in intergalactic domination."

She raised a hand to swipe at her face. "Funny, sir."

Jack crossed the room, dodging all her various doohickeys. He wasn't allowed to touch. Ever. He knew that.

Even so, the shiny ones always beckoned.

But today Jack restrained himself, stopping in front of her. She'd settled herself between two of her winky blinky fixtures—he wasn't sure they actually did anything, but they looked really fun. And the space between them was pretty big, if she'd just—

"Shove over." He motioned with one hand. She scooched over a bit, opening up a space between her and the other machine. Turning, he bent and then sat next to her.

The room looked different this way. Like your mom's kitchen when you were three instead of thirty. And like if your mom had lots of really interesting widgets that could blow up a small planet.

She sat, silent, staring at her fingernails.

"So, pouting, are we?"

"No, sir."

"Now, now, Colonel, surely there's a reg somewhere about lying to your commanding officer."

"There is, sir, but I don't really care."

"So, we're pouting and wallowing."

She hesitated, then let out a sigh. "I know you're trying to make me feel better, sir, but I'm really not in the mood."

"So go home."

She shrugged.

"Don't want to go home either?"

"It's too quiet there."

"Doesn't Pete get home from work soon?"

She looked at him oddly. "Pete and I aren't living together."

That caught him off guard. "Oh. I just thought—you know that—"

"—That since we're engaged, we're going to shack up?"

"And now that Cassie's not there, he'd—"

"—That he'd be around all the time."

"You know, that gets really annoying at times."

"—Me finishing all your sentences?"

Jack raised an eyebrow in her general direction. She wiped at her eyes again with the back of her hand. "Sorry, sir."

"S'all right. You've had a day." He watched as she fumbled in her pockets, looking for something. O'Neill straightened his legs out for a minute and dug deep into a side pocket of his BDUs and came up with a few commissary paper napkins. Without preamble, he handed them to her.

He would have thought she'd be more delicate while blowing her nose. You learn something new every day.

"I miss her."

"I know." Jack nodded. "I think she misses you, too."

"Not enough to come home."

Another sniffle.

Jack observed her quietly out of the corner of his eye. He had his own issues with her lately, and truthfully, he would rather be anywhere else than here on the floor of her lab. He figured that Pete should be in charge of these moments when she needed support and comfort. But she just looked so dejected, and he knew that she was giving herself no quarter—she fully and completely blamed herself for what had happened. He also knew that Pete wasn't the type to just let her be upset. Pete would try to fix it. If Jack knew anything about the woman sitting next to him, it was that she preferred to fight her own battles, and figure out her own problems.

She just sometimes needed a shoulder or two along the way.

"Do you want her to?"

Sam looked at him, her watery eyes impossibly blue. "Yeah. She's all I have left of Janet."

O'Neill knew that it went deeper than that. Like himself, Carter found it difficult to have friendships outside the SGC. How could you, when you couldn't really say anything true? It was tough to have a real friend when you had to constantly lie to them.

And the General had been purposely ignoring the truth of things during his extended stay in Denial.

He shifted uncomfortably. He liked living in Denial—it suited him. They had good cake.

"I can talk to her."

"I'd rather it be her decision, sir."

"I honestly don't see it happening any time soon, Carter." He pulled his knees back up and rested his forearms on them, clasping his fingers together. "She was pretty adamant."

"Because of Pete."

"Yeah." His lips flattened into a thin line.

A tension descended between them. He knew that both of them were thinking about the engagement party and his own angry exit. He felt her go rigid beside him.

"Pete's not a bad guy. He just had a few too many drinks—we've talked about it."

"Pete needs to control himself." O'Neill turned to look at Carter. "I won't have him endangering this operation or my personnel because he's a pansy when it comes to beer."

"I know, sir. I'll take care of it."

Jack sighed and stretched his legs out again. His butt was falling asleep and it had started to do this strange little tingle. He shifted, but the tingling persisted.

"He's very sorry about what happened, you know. He said he thought you were trying to hit on me."

"So he's jealous now?"

"Unconsciously subordinate, I would say."

Jack harrumphed. "What does that mean?"

"Deep down, I think he feels inferior to you, sir."

"Why would he do that?"

"Well, sir, you're you. You've saved the world several times, and been places and done things that are indescribable. Pete knows a lot of it—not everything, but enough to know that he'll never quite measure up to that."

The only thing good about this conversation is that it had gotten her to stop crying. Jack felt confident that the sniffling would stop soon, too.

"You've done a lot too, you know. Doesn't he feel second rate to you, too?"

"He knows me better. He sees when I do bonehead things like leave the cap off the toothpaste."

"You know, they make caps that flip down nowadays."

Finally, a smile crept into her voice. "Yes, sir."

He watched some other winky blinky lights on the other side of the room for a while, waiting for Carter to let him know that she felt better and that he could go. There a few ways over the years that she'd done that. A nudge, a poke, a casual salute. That brilliant smile she gave when he got really lucky.

"Why do you put up with me, Sir?"

A statement like that wasn't one of those signs.

"You're a great officer—"

"No." She held up one hand. "No, I mean, why are you being so nice to me after all I've done to you?"

"What do you think that you've done to me?" He desperately longed for the drive back into Denial.

"I know that this whole Pete thing is awkward. I know that there are things that are left unfinished between you and me. But I also know that they will always be unfinished."

"Yes."

"I just needed to move on." She was nearly whispering now.

"I know."

"And then I kissed you."

"You did." Couldn't shake that one, either.

"And here you are, on my floor, helping me feel better about delivering the means to our defeat into the hands of our enemy."

O'Neill folded his arms across his abdomen. He'd been going over this in his mind for months—without really coming to any conclusions. Even Doc Polly had been unable to help him understand exactly why he didn't dismiss Carter outright.

He'd told himself earlier to man up. Honesty. Truth. In order to understand everything, he had to be able to answer that exact question. Why was he unable to let her go? Why was he so drawn to her—why did he need to be near her?

He'd felt the attraction to Carter from their first meeting. She'd walked into the briefing room on that first day, and he'd been able to admire her generally as a beautiful woman and specifically as a talented officer. After their first mission, he'd also been impressed by her strength and her gumption.

And slowly she'd burrowed her way under his skin, into his soul. She'd become so valuable and vital to him that he'd been scared as hell. O'Neill wasn't the kind of guy that needed other people. He was black ops—an assassin, a sniper, a guy who felt nothing about eliminating targets. The Air Force had found that out about him early on, and during all those years where most guys were learning how to tune up their Corvettes, Jack was learning the ins and outs of taking lives.

She understood that. And it didn't frighten her. But he'd wanted to show her that he was more than that particular ability.

Some time ago—more than two years after they had started going through the 'Gate—he'd been put on an assignment to scour out some NID operatives who had been stealing Asgard and Tollan technology. Maybourne had been in charge of them all. Jack had colluded with Hammond on a plan that would have him steal a device from the Tollan and then retire rather than face prison. All so that he could infiltrate the rogue units and stop the thieving.

And when she'd offered him her support during that operation with the Tollan and the NID, he'd said something unscripted—something he didn't expect to ever say and mean it.

"I haven't been acting like myself since I met you."

And even then, when he didn't need her as desperately as he did now, he knew the honesty in that statement.

"You make me want to be a better man, Carter. No matter who you're with, or what you've done, there's something in you that makes me want to be a better me. I'd never felt that before." Jack watched as her eyes filled up again. Sad? Happy? He couldn't tell. He only knew that he was blasting the bridge back into Denial apart.

He found that perfect blue gaze too much to bear and looked away, focusing instead on her left hand, which was wrapped around her knee. He could see her engagement ring glimmering on her finger.

"You have this ability to make guys want to be men. We want to live up to the expectations you place on us. I want to be the person that you believe me to be. And even though I know I will fail, I still want to try. And that's why I'm here, on your floor, trying to make you feel better. I like who I am when I'm with you."

"You don't fail, sir." After a long pause, she could finally speak. "You haven't ever failed."

"That's where you're wrong, Carter." Jack reached out at tapped the diamond in her ring. He wet his lips, standing up in a single, fluid motion. "No matter how hard I try, I'll never measure up to the ideal image of me that you have in your head."

"I don't know what to say to that, sir."

O'Neill shook his head and cracked an inward smile. "Say you'll be okay. Say you're going to dust yourself off and go back out there."

"I will, sir." She offered him that, at least.

"But you'll understand that I won't be coming to the wedding."

Carter nodded, biting her bottom lip. "I think I've known that for a while."

"Better?"

"Yes. Thanks."

"I'm going home." The General motioned blandly toward the door. "You going?"

"Later. I want to look at a few other things tonight first."

"Well, be safe."

Jack reached the door before turning and adding, "I'll talk to Cassie for you. See what we can do."

"Sir—"

He'd already turned back towards the hall, but he stopped again, his back still towards her. He heard her stand, heard her take a step.

"It works both ways, you know. Wanting to be more."

Jack stood perfectly still, unable to move.

"But sometimes that's still not enough, sir, is it?"

He nodded deliberately, acknowledging, before striding out of the lab and out into the hallway.

And he made it to his office and locked the door before he started to shake.