Sticks and stones
Chapter 10:
Her first objective after getting into her house was to take a long hot bath. Daniel found the history channel and began commenting on the theories, even though he was alone in the room. By the time Jack and Teal'c showed up with pizza, salad in a bag, and a variety of sodas Daniel had fallen asleep on the sofa. Sam emerged from her bedroom with wet hair.
"Good evening, my lady. We come bearing delectable goodies." Jack did a mini-bow as he spoke.
"Is that pizza?"
"Indeed."
"I think I like mushrooms." Jack smiled at Sam while trying to grimace.
"I can't believe you want to ruin a perfectly good pizza with a fungus!"
"You do not have enough appreciation for vegetables, O'Neill." Teal'c looked at Sam and gave her a slight nod while one corner of his lips twitched. She was pretty sure that was his way of saying he was on her side.
"We were talking about a fungus, not vegetables. I appreciate vegetables just fine. At least I didn't say you were ruining perfectly good pizza by bringing salad." Sam began laughing at the two men and the ridiculous conversation. The sound of her laugh woke Daniel. Daniel awoke with such a start that he fell off the sofa. The site of Daniel sticking his head up above the edge of the sofa set Sam off again. All three men soon joined her mirth. The sound of her laugh lifted all of their spirits more then they had thought was possible.
After the pizza, a chick flick through which Neill complained constantly, and a shoot 'em up that caused Daniel to ask too many questions, the four friends found spaces to sleep. Sam took the bed in her room, Teal'c took the living room sofa, Daniel took the spare bed, and Neill blew up an air mattress he placed in the hall near the door to Sam's room. No one questioned his strange sleeping arrangement.
Sam and Teal'c spent every other day relaxing at her house, except for the morning trips to the base for Sam's therapy. After a month and a half, it was obvious Sam's therapy was paying off. Her speech had dramatically improved, she had everyone's name correct again, and she could use multi-syllabic words again. She was reading James Patterson novels, the short chapters resulted in a better feeling of accomplishment and the stories were interesting. She kept a small dictionary in her pocket, a gift from Daniel, that she would use to help her understand or say words she didn't recognize. Her right hand was much improved. The guys, and her physical therapist, noticed she didn't have any trouble with her hand when she was concentrating on her work, like retrofitting a naquada generator to attach to a MALP, instead of thinking about her hand.
Jack and Daniel used Sam's downtime time to prepare the next phase of 'plan memory retrieval'. When Sam returned to the base full-time she was much more relaxed. On her first day back full-time, Teal'c took her to a conference room in NORAD command. Neither Sam nor Teal'c had ever spent much time on the upper floors of the mountain so they both earned many stares from the passing airmen. When she entered the conference room, Jack and Daniel were waiting with three other men, all in uniform.
Sam felt Teal'c hang back to stay in the hall. The five men in the room all stood as she walked towards the table. They exchanged salutes as Jack walked over to stand beside her. Daniel was watching her closely.
"Morning, Sam."
"Daniel." Daniel held her hand for a moment, gave it a squeeze, and then slipped out the door behind her. He knew he didn't have a place in this meeting.
"Colonel Carter, I would like to introduce Colonel Marks, Colonel Bryans, and General Williams." Sam nodded as Jack moved his hand to indicate each man.
"It's nice to meet you." Sam smiled a polite tight smile.
"Actually, Sam, we've all known you for a long time." Colonel Marks shifted his eyes from his hands to the table as he spoke. "We flew together in the Gulf."
"That's why I asked them to come today. They know you were injured and lost your memory. They were nearby for another meeting so I asked to stop here to try and help you remember your time in the service before you joined this project." The look Jack gave her made it clear that these men were not cleared to know about 'this project', not that she remembered enough to tell them much.
Sam sat down beside Colonel Bryans. He smiled at her as she sat down. It was the smile of a good friend, not just a casual acquaintance.
"I wasn't even aware that I could fly." The men smiled at Sam's admission.
"I'd fly with you any day Sam. You are one of the best pilots with whom I ever had the pleasure of being stationed." Marks gave Sam a brilliant smile that made Jack angry.
"Your voice sounds so familiar." Sam closed her eyes. "You said you were bailing out. Your coordinates were...."
"Classified." General Williams interrupted. Sam's eyes snapped open. She nodded at her former commander as her memories began to solidify.
"It wasn't officially an official mission, was it, sir?"
"Not exactly." Sam returned her attention to Marks.
"I circled around you, following your chute."
"Yeah, even though I ordered you to retreat. You were under heavy fire but you wouldn't leave until you radioed my position. Your decision to disregard my orders probably saved my life. I was extracted two days later. Those two days were hell. I don't think I would have lasted much longer. If you hadn't radioed my position, God only knows how long it would have been until help arrived." Marks reached out and put his hand over hers. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jack react to Marks words and the site of them touching.
"You saved me Sam. I'll always owe you."
"To be honest Colonel until that point you had been having a hell of a time fitting in." Colonel Bryans dragged Sam's attention away from Marks and Jack. "After Marks was rescued we had a whole new level of respect for you."
"It was suddenly like having 20 big brothers." Sam smiled at the recollection.
"It was good to see. I had been worried about you since you were assigned to my command. Not only were you wasting those incredible brains of yours flying for me, but the guys had decided before you arrived that no woman was going to be one of them. I wasn't sure when you reported for duty that you would win them over but you did. It was even more impressive that you did it by being yourself." General Williams maintained eye contact with Sam as he spoke. His admiration and pride was obvious.
Jack sat back and tried to enjoy watching the pride with which these men spoke about Sam. He had read her pre-SGC record but it wasn't the same as being here as these men talked to her. He understood why her commanding officer had been worried about her ability to fit in with the flyboys. When he had met her eight years ago, she had seemed so young and naive and that was after serving with these men in the Gulf.
"General O'Neill?"
"Yes?"
"Any chance I could get a quick tour of your facilities? I rarely get to see an underground facility." Jack looked at General Williams for a moment before realizing that this was his attempt to give Sam a few minutes with her old teammates without a commanding officer hanging around.
"Of course." Jack locked eyes with Sam to get her permission to be left alone with these men. Jack was disappointed when she used her eyes to let him know she would be happy to have a few minuets alone with her old friends. Jack ushered the general out into the hall and closed the door. Her laugh floated out the door as he closed it behind him. Damn but that sound should be his!
Jack gave General Williams a quick tour of the upper levels of the mountain. Even Jack didn't know much about these levels and it was obvious. General Williams bumped into an old friend and decided he would meet Jack and the others back in the briefing room at 1400, after lunch with his friend. When Jack returned to the briefing room he found Sam bent over laughing hard. Both Bryans and Williams were laughing with her.
They all followed Jack to the NORAD commissary, which luckily had Jack's favorite Jell-o. Jack took the seat beside Sam. Colonel Marks sat across from Sam, beside Colonel Bryans.
"You introduced me to Jonas." Sam was looking at Bryans as if inspiration had just hit.
"I wouldn't exactly say I introduced you but it was my fault you met him." Jack saw Colonel Marks tighten his jaw and grip his fork a little too tightly. "I gave Jonas and his team a ride. I also picked up what was left of his team. Of course, there wasn't a scratch on Jonas."
"I don't understand. You don't sound like you approved." Sam's smile had faded. "I remember him as the kind of guy who would save me special desserts, hang around to watch me work, tell me stories about his adventures, and make big promises about home. What else was there?" Jack shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Sam described Jonas' attempts to get her attention. It sounded too familiar.
"He certainly did his fair share of courting. He followed you around like a puppy dog for a week after I brought his team back. I kept expecting to find him sitting in the infirmary with his men but instead he was following you. That should have been my first clue."
"Clue?" Sam's obvious confusion spurred Marks to join into the conversation.
"Yeah, a clue that he wasn't right. It's my fault you went out with him. At first, he annoyed you. Then I started teasing you. The other guys picked up on it and you began getting unmercifully taunted daily. You had finally become one of the guys and I ruined it for you. I guess you decided the best way to stop us cold was to have a real relationship with guy. It sure did shut us up. I've been kicking myself for years for being that stupid. I should have known better then to push you into a corner by teasing you."
"So what happened between us?" Sam's face showed her concern. Her memories were still full of the early romance. She couldn't fathom what happened to make all of the men at the table look so uncomfortable. Even Jack looked pained as he listened.
"I never saw it for myself," Bryans looked at Sam and back down at the table, "but some of the guys thought he was roughing you up."
"I saw it. At least I saw the bruises. It was late one evening and I needed to apologize to you for something stupid I had said at dinner. We all knew Jonas was getting shipped back to the states in a couple of days and we had started to breath easier in anticipation of your being free. I didn't knock loud enough on your door. When I came in you were looking in the mirror at some bruises on your arm. I was so furious I just stalked out. It took all my self-control to not beat the crap out of Jonas before he left. We all figured it was over once he left. You never told us anything else and we didn't mention him." Marks looked at his hands through the whole speech. Sam reached out and put her hands on top of his.
"I think I remember that night. We had been goofing around and I hit him on the chest when he said something a little insulting. I meant it playfully but he didn't see it that way. He grabbed me by the arm and told me that he was trained to kill and I had better not push him. I was shocked. I'm sure the look on my face told him how I felt because he quickly let go and tried to explain about how some of his missions affected him. I fell for it." Sam saw the look on Mark's face and her heart sank. "I was a big girl and I made my own choices. None of what happened was your fault."
"Thanks for trying amnesia girl but I know I drove you to him. If it hadn't been for me you never would have fallen for his routine." Marks looked up at Sam and gave her a small smile.
"Don't try and take all the blame. It wasn't just you. The whole team pushed her too far and she paid." Bryans shook his head and looked at Marks.
"Paid?" Marks and Bryans looked sheepish and hesitated, neither wanted to bring Sam the pain associate with the memories of Jonas.
"How about we take this back to the briefing room?" Jack wasn't comfortable thinking about the memories Sam was about to tackle and he didn't want to see her do it in public. Jack escorted all of them back. They each took a couple minutes to fill their coffee cup before sitting back down, in the same pattern as at lunch. Sam looked at Marks, using her eyes to ask him to continue.
"One of the guys saw the announcement in the paper and brought it to me. I couldn't believe in just four months you had agreed to marry the idiot. I called you and found out you had moved in with him. Several of us decided it was our duty to keep tabs on you, just to be sure you were doing alright. I think Henry, Captain Henry Longins back then, was the first one to find out you had been hospitalized. You had a couple broken ribs, a sprained wrist, and a concussion. Jonas was injured too so we knew you didn't sit back and take his crap. As far as I heard you never saw Jonas again. Rumor has it he went crazy and died during a mission a few years ago." Out of the corner of her eye, Sam saw Jack give a small shake of his head but she knew better then to ask at that moment.
Her first objective after getting into her house was to take a long hot bath. Daniel found the history channel and began commenting on the theories, even though he was alone in the room. By the time Jack and Teal'c showed up with pizza, salad in a bag, and a variety of sodas Daniel had fallen asleep on the sofa. Sam emerged from her bedroom with wet hair.
"Good evening, my lady. We come bearing delectable goodies." Jack did a mini-bow as he spoke.
"Is that pizza?"
"Indeed."
"I think I like mushrooms." Jack smiled at Sam while trying to grimace.
"I can't believe you want to ruin a perfectly good pizza with a fungus!"
"You do not have enough appreciation for vegetables, O'Neill." Teal'c looked at Sam and gave her a slight nod while one corner of his lips twitched. She was pretty sure that was his way of saying he was on her side.
"We were talking about a fungus, not vegetables. I appreciate vegetables just fine. At least I didn't say you were ruining perfectly good pizza by bringing salad." Sam began laughing at the two men and the ridiculous conversation. The sound of her laugh woke Daniel. Daniel awoke with such a start that he fell off the sofa. The site of Daniel sticking his head up above the edge of the sofa set Sam off again. All three men soon joined her mirth. The sound of her laugh lifted all of their spirits more then they had thought was possible.
After the pizza, a chick flick through which Neill complained constantly, and a shoot 'em up that caused Daniel to ask too many questions, the four friends found spaces to sleep. Sam took the bed in her room, Teal'c took the living room sofa, Daniel took the spare bed, and Neill blew up an air mattress he placed in the hall near the door to Sam's room. No one questioned his strange sleeping arrangement.
Sam and Teal'c spent every other day relaxing at her house, except for the morning trips to the base for Sam's therapy. After a month and a half, it was obvious Sam's therapy was paying off. Her speech had dramatically improved, she had everyone's name correct again, and she could use multi-syllabic words again. She was reading James Patterson novels, the short chapters resulted in a better feeling of accomplishment and the stories were interesting. She kept a small dictionary in her pocket, a gift from Daniel, that she would use to help her understand or say words she didn't recognize. Her right hand was much improved. The guys, and her physical therapist, noticed she didn't have any trouble with her hand when she was concentrating on her work, like retrofitting a naquada generator to attach to a MALP, instead of thinking about her hand.
Jack and Daniel used Sam's downtime time to prepare the next phase of 'plan memory retrieval'. When Sam returned to the base full-time she was much more relaxed. On her first day back full-time, Teal'c took her to a conference room in NORAD command. Neither Sam nor Teal'c had ever spent much time on the upper floors of the mountain so they both earned many stares from the passing airmen. When she entered the conference room, Jack and Daniel were waiting with three other men, all in uniform.
Sam felt Teal'c hang back to stay in the hall. The five men in the room all stood as she walked towards the table. They exchanged salutes as Jack walked over to stand beside her. Daniel was watching her closely.
"Morning, Sam."
"Daniel." Daniel held her hand for a moment, gave it a squeeze, and then slipped out the door behind her. He knew he didn't have a place in this meeting.
"Colonel Carter, I would like to introduce Colonel Marks, Colonel Bryans, and General Williams." Sam nodded as Jack moved his hand to indicate each man.
"It's nice to meet you." Sam smiled a polite tight smile.
"Actually, Sam, we've all known you for a long time." Colonel Marks shifted his eyes from his hands to the table as he spoke. "We flew together in the Gulf."
"That's why I asked them to come today. They know you were injured and lost your memory. They were nearby for another meeting so I asked to stop here to try and help you remember your time in the service before you joined this project." The look Jack gave her made it clear that these men were not cleared to know about 'this project', not that she remembered enough to tell them much.
Sam sat down beside Colonel Bryans. He smiled at her as she sat down. It was the smile of a good friend, not just a casual acquaintance.
"I wasn't even aware that I could fly." The men smiled at Sam's admission.
"I'd fly with you any day Sam. You are one of the best pilots with whom I ever had the pleasure of being stationed." Marks gave Sam a brilliant smile that made Jack angry.
"Your voice sounds so familiar." Sam closed her eyes. "You said you were bailing out. Your coordinates were...."
"Classified." General Williams interrupted. Sam's eyes snapped open. She nodded at her former commander as her memories began to solidify.
"It wasn't officially an official mission, was it, sir?"
"Not exactly." Sam returned her attention to Marks.
"I circled around you, following your chute."
"Yeah, even though I ordered you to retreat. You were under heavy fire but you wouldn't leave until you radioed my position. Your decision to disregard my orders probably saved my life. I was extracted two days later. Those two days were hell. I don't think I would have lasted much longer. If you hadn't radioed my position, God only knows how long it would have been until help arrived." Marks reached out and put his hand over hers. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jack react to Marks words and the site of them touching.
"You saved me Sam. I'll always owe you."
"To be honest Colonel until that point you had been having a hell of a time fitting in." Colonel Bryans dragged Sam's attention away from Marks and Jack. "After Marks was rescued we had a whole new level of respect for you."
"It was suddenly like having 20 big brothers." Sam smiled at the recollection.
"It was good to see. I had been worried about you since you were assigned to my command. Not only were you wasting those incredible brains of yours flying for me, but the guys had decided before you arrived that no woman was going to be one of them. I wasn't sure when you reported for duty that you would win them over but you did. It was even more impressive that you did it by being yourself." General Williams maintained eye contact with Sam as he spoke. His admiration and pride was obvious.
Jack sat back and tried to enjoy watching the pride with which these men spoke about Sam. He had read her pre-SGC record but it wasn't the same as being here as these men talked to her. He understood why her commanding officer had been worried about her ability to fit in with the flyboys. When he had met her eight years ago, she had seemed so young and naive and that was after serving with these men in the Gulf.
"General O'Neill?"
"Yes?"
"Any chance I could get a quick tour of your facilities? I rarely get to see an underground facility." Jack looked at General Williams for a moment before realizing that this was his attempt to give Sam a few minutes with her old teammates without a commanding officer hanging around.
"Of course." Jack locked eyes with Sam to get her permission to be left alone with these men. Jack was disappointed when she used her eyes to let him know she would be happy to have a few minuets alone with her old friends. Jack ushered the general out into the hall and closed the door. Her laugh floated out the door as he closed it behind him. Damn but that sound should be his!
Jack gave General Williams a quick tour of the upper levels of the mountain. Even Jack didn't know much about these levels and it was obvious. General Williams bumped into an old friend and decided he would meet Jack and the others back in the briefing room at 1400, after lunch with his friend. When Jack returned to the briefing room he found Sam bent over laughing hard. Both Bryans and Williams were laughing with her.
They all followed Jack to the NORAD commissary, which luckily had Jack's favorite Jell-o. Jack took the seat beside Sam. Colonel Marks sat across from Sam, beside Colonel Bryans.
"You introduced me to Jonas." Sam was looking at Bryans as if inspiration had just hit.
"I wouldn't exactly say I introduced you but it was my fault you met him." Jack saw Colonel Marks tighten his jaw and grip his fork a little too tightly. "I gave Jonas and his team a ride. I also picked up what was left of his team. Of course, there wasn't a scratch on Jonas."
"I don't understand. You don't sound like you approved." Sam's smile had faded. "I remember him as the kind of guy who would save me special desserts, hang around to watch me work, tell me stories about his adventures, and make big promises about home. What else was there?" Jack shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Sam described Jonas' attempts to get her attention. It sounded too familiar.
"He certainly did his fair share of courting. He followed you around like a puppy dog for a week after I brought his team back. I kept expecting to find him sitting in the infirmary with his men but instead he was following you. That should have been my first clue."
"Clue?" Sam's obvious confusion spurred Marks to join into the conversation.
"Yeah, a clue that he wasn't right. It's my fault you went out with him. At first, he annoyed you. Then I started teasing you. The other guys picked up on it and you began getting unmercifully taunted daily. You had finally become one of the guys and I ruined it for you. I guess you decided the best way to stop us cold was to have a real relationship with guy. It sure did shut us up. I've been kicking myself for years for being that stupid. I should have known better then to push you into a corner by teasing you."
"So what happened between us?" Sam's face showed her concern. Her memories were still full of the early romance. She couldn't fathom what happened to make all of the men at the table look so uncomfortable. Even Jack looked pained as he listened.
"I never saw it for myself," Bryans looked at Sam and back down at the table, "but some of the guys thought he was roughing you up."
"I saw it. At least I saw the bruises. It was late one evening and I needed to apologize to you for something stupid I had said at dinner. We all knew Jonas was getting shipped back to the states in a couple of days and we had started to breath easier in anticipation of your being free. I didn't knock loud enough on your door. When I came in you were looking in the mirror at some bruises on your arm. I was so furious I just stalked out. It took all my self-control to not beat the crap out of Jonas before he left. We all figured it was over once he left. You never told us anything else and we didn't mention him." Marks looked at his hands through the whole speech. Sam reached out and put her hands on top of his.
"I think I remember that night. We had been goofing around and I hit him on the chest when he said something a little insulting. I meant it playfully but he didn't see it that way. He grabbed me by the arm and told me that he was trained to kill and I had better not push him. I was shocked. I'm sure the look on my face told him how I felt because he quickly let go and tried to explain about how some of his missions affected him. I fell for it." Sam saw the look on Mark's face and her heart sank. "I was a big girl and I made my own choices. None of what happened was your fault."
"Thanks for trying amnesia girl but I know I drove you to him. If it hadn't been for me you never would have fallen for his routine." Marks looked up at Sam and gave her a small smile.
"Don't try and take all the blame. It wasn't just you. The whole team pushed her too far and she paid." Bryans shook his head and looked at Marks.
"Paid?" Marks and Bryans looked sheepish and hesitated, neither wanted to bring Sam the pain associate with the memories of Jonas.
"How about we take this back to the briefing room?" Jack wasn't comfortable thinking about the memories Sam was about to tackle and he didn't want to see her do it in public. Jack escorted all of them back. They each took a couple minutes to fill their coffee cup before sitting back down, in the same pattern as at lunch. Sam looked at Marks, using her eyes to ask him to continue.
"One of the guys saw the announcement in the paper and brought it to me. I couldn't believe in just four months you had agreed to marry the idiot. I called you and found out you had moved in with him. Several of us decided it was our duty to keep tabs on you, just to be sure you were doing alright. I think Henry, Captain Henry Longins back then, was the first one to find out you had been hospitalized. You had a couple broken ribs, a sprained wrist, and a concussion. Jonas was injured too so we knew you didn't sit back and take his crap. As far as I heard you never saw Jonas again. Rumor has it he went crazy and died during a mission a few years ago." Out of the corner of her eye, Sam saw Jack give a small shake of his head but she knew better then to ask at that moment.