A/N: No warnings for this one...

20.

Scar Tissue

"Scars show us where we have been, they do not dictate where we are going." - David Rossi

When the alarm went off, Jack freed a hand from the covers and groped blindly across the side-table before slapping the clock back into silence. He blinked against the unwelcome brightness of the room and then squeezed his eyes shut again, but it was no use. The light filtered through his eyelids: red and orange and the frayed edges of a forgotten dream.

Red and orange...

He had to stop forgetting to draw the curtains.

Groaning, he rolled away from the window and onto his back, throwing a forearm across his eyes and stretching his legs out until he heard his knee give a satisfying pop.

He blew out a long breath as he waited for his thoughts to solidify into something approaching comprehensible. There was something he wasn't remembering and it was about the only thing he was sure of as he let the weight of his arm press against his still-closed eyes, forcing out the remnants of red and orange and edges, and replacing it with cool shadow. A beat and another deep breath later he was ready to lower it, and he let his hand drift absently to scratch first at his neck, and then down to the uneven patch of skin which stretched across his stomach.

The skin under his fingertips felt tacky and slightly coarse; salt dried onto him like he'd just spent a day at the beach. Not dreams then, he thought, a grimace pulling at his mouth. It had been a while since he'd had one of his nightmares; things had been... better. Not great. Not even really good. Just better.

A name surfaced then, and the events of the previous day suddenly coalesced and sharpened to painful clarity.

Carter.

He sighed deeply and pressed his thumb and forefinger into the sockets of his eyes, rubbing slowly. She was here. Right across the hall. The alarm had been set because he had to take her back to her car, and then he was taking a team through the Stargate because someone or something had activated it, people had died, and it was entirely possible that it was all his fault.

For a moment he wondered if he wasn't still in the nightmare, and that particular idea had him coming back to the fact that Carter was just across the hall and he'd had one of his nightmares during the night.

Crap. He hoped she was a heavy sleeper.

He was preparing himself to finally get up and wake her when a warm breath ghosted across his cheek. All concept of movement fled as his muscles stiffened and his heart leapt into his throat. Resisting the impulse to fling himself out of the bed, he slowly pulled his fingers away from his eyes, blinked, and turned his head, another exhaled breath hitting him as he did so.

He blinked again.

Her face was close to his, half pressed into the pillow; her blond hair a messy halo. Well, he thought, his brows pulling together in confusion, this was... unexpected. Her eyelashes fluttered and he froze again, but the gentle rhythm of her breathing suggested that she was still very much asleep.

He gathered himself, and steadily eased onto his side, stilling at each soft creak and whisper of fabric and mattress. There was a sinking feeling settling in his gut not unlike the hollowness he'd felt the night before and he couldn't bring himself to name it even though he was finally sure now of what it was. And he needed to do something about it; needed to shake himself free of it, to push it from his mind. He needed physical action to override thought. He should get up. He should wake her. He should not be lying on his side studying her while she slept as he was now. If there was one thing he was good at, it was action, but right in this moment he was failing miserably. He was rationalising: she was, after all, in his bed, uninvited, and that was equally inappropriate.

Two wrongs didn't make a right, though, and still he couldn't make himself move.

He thought about her standing in the locker room the previous day; that first flash of recognition and how, besides being a little older, she had seemed exactly the same to him. He'd looked at her without really seeing her then, because honestly he hadn't been able to see past his own pain. And he was wrong - this woman beside him was not the same; was different in more ways than just a few extra lines added from the passing of time. She had exuded confidence with none of the uncertainty that her younger self had; possessed a stubbornness and irreverence that she'd completely lacked as a lieutenant. He remembered that night at the hangar, remembered the firm set of her jaw and the fire in her eyes - the potential must always have been there.

Not for the first time, he wondered if it had anything to do with the crash. Something had caused her to leave the military, and he could see how not being held under thumb by rank and authority might make all the difference.

No longer military.

Trying not to linger on that thought he let his study expand from the portion of her face not obscured by pillow and realised that it wasn't his quilt she had pulled around her, but the one from the guest room. She was sleeping on top of his, and he couldn't help the small smile curving his lips at the innocence of it. She was curled in towards him, one arm exposed over the top of the covers, and as his gaze drifted over her his smile faded at the sight of an ugly ring of purple marring the pale skin of her forearm. Before he could stop himself, he reached out, fingertips gently brushing the bruise, and she flinched.

He pulled back his hand immediately, his eyes flicking back up to her face only to find her watching him, eyelids still heavy with sleep.

"Sorry," he cringed, voice barely a whisper. She shook her head minutely and blinked, regarding him sleepily.

"Did I do that?" he asked. She hesitated for only a second before nodding, and he could see the haziness of sleep fading from her features as her gaze sharpened, eyes locking onto his. He looked away guiltily, recalling how he'd manhandled her into the truck.

Gritting his teeth he groaned inwardly when he remembered that he'd pinned her at one point too. Without thinking he lifted the sleeve of her t-shirt - his t-shirt, he reminded himself - only to find more bruising, though not quite as bad. He dropped the fabric abruptly when she cleared her throat.

"I'm so sorry," he said, raising his eyes to meet hers. He didn't know what else to say.

The corner of her mouth twitched and her hand moved suddenly, her fingers pressing lightly against his chin. He winced, jerking his head away from the contact - he'd forgotten about that hit she'd gotten in in the parking lot.

She chuckled darkly then, drawing her hand away. "It was my fault," she said finally, her voice husky in a way that made him swallow reflexively.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I jumped in front of your truck."

He considered this. "You were pretty crazed."

"I tried to knock your block off," she drawled, and he grinned at that momentarily before his mouth twisted back into a frown.

"You thought I was going to attack you," he said, fixing her with a serious look.

She shook her head again, the beginnings of a smirk pulling at her lips. "I told you that you'd have to move me."

He sighed and ran hand through his hair. "Well," he said, quirking an eyebrow at her, "since you're in my bed this morning, I guess you were pretty moved."

Her eyes widened for just an instant, and then she turned her face into her pillow, smothering the start of a giggle. Jack found himself watching the early morning light play off the golden strands of her hair, the desire to touch them more than a little unsettling.

When she came back up for air, her expression was grim.

"You were having a nightmare," she said, and his face fell.

"Ah." He rolled onto his back and rubbed his hands over his face . This was exactly what he'd been afraid of.

"How often does that happen?" He felt the bed move as she inched nearer to him, but he didn't answer, instead letting his jaw work slowly in the growing silence.

"Jack?"

"You sound just like Daniel when you say that," he said flatly.

"Dr. Jackson?"

"The very same."

She huffed, and even though he couldn't see her, he knew she was probably scowling. "Don't change the subject," she said, propping herself up on her elbow and leaning over him.

Yep. Scowling.

She was so close he could feel the heat from her body.

"Once a week, once a month, once in a while?"

He turned away from her scrutiny. "We should really get moving."

"You thought I was Sara," she said.

"What?!" He sat bolt upright, lips parting in shock as he stared at her, and she pulled herself up into a sitting position, her eyes never leaving his. The determined set of her mouth was demanding and he couldn't stop the flare of anger he felt in response - none of this was any of her business.

"You asked me to stay, so I stayed."

He blinked, the heat of his rage quickly ebbing at the tenderness in her tone.

"Well, shit," he said with no real force, letting his gaze wander over to the window. He didn't really want to look at her just then, the intensity in those blue eyes making him feel exposed.

This was getting far too familiar for his liking. He rubbed at the back of his neck distractedly while she remained silent and waiting beside him. He couldn't quite fathom how this had happened; the strange intimacy of it. There was no denying that there was something between them - the guilt at his avoidance of her questions was evidence enough for him. Logically, he wondered if it was the kind of thing that developed between victims and their rescuers.

"We should really get moving," he repeated, still looking out the window.

"Oh for crying out loud," she muttered, but he felt the bed shift and creak, and when he looked back, she was walking from the room. She didn't look back at him as she disappeared into the hall and he heard the bathroom door close.

Oh for crying out loud?

He snorted, a brief smile flitting across his lips before the corners drew down into a grimace.

He couldn't work out which of them was the victim, and which the rescuer.

Ten minutes later she was stepping back out into the hall, her gaze automatically finding his door, now closed. She wasn't surprised. Her feet fell still as her eyes lingered, listening for signs of movement like she'd done in the early hours of that morning. What had she been thinking? Going into his room like that; invading his privacy; questioning him; expecting him to just spill it all to her like she had a right to know. Just like she'd done last night. And for all she knew it was her prying that had pulled the nightmares to the surface in the first place.

He was not something she could apply the scientific method to, and she realised that she had problems knowing when to draw that line at times.

She exhaled a long breath and shook herself lightly, then headed back to the guest room in search of her own clothes.

The sound of a percolator greeted her as she stepped into the kitchen a short while later, but the room was empty. She left the kitchen and wandered back out into the dining area, crossing over to the pass-through that looked down into a den. A quick scan told her she was alone; he must have come down just to put on the coffee.

Last night, she'd thought it was the weariness of the day and the cast of the incandescent lights that had given the place the feel it had, but even in the warm hue of early morning there was something... desolate about the house. She felt a weight settle in her chest as she made her way down into the den. Her finger traced the frames of a few pictures and various certificates as she roamed the space. There were a few framed medals and a lone, dusky coloured couch. She tried to picture the man who'd lectured her about fun and living inhabiting this relatively pristine room; a snapshot of a life that had simply stopped.

She found herself in front of the fireplace, her eyes skimming the photos arranged there. A smudge of bright red caught her attention and she gingerly lifted the frame from its place, partially hidden behind a few other photos.

It was a family photo: a smiling woman with her arms wrapped around the waist of a grinning Jack O'Neill who looked more like the Colonel she remembered from Hurlburt Field as he rested a cheek against the crown of her head. Standing just in front of them, a small baseball bat gripped tightly in his tiny fingers, was a little boy wearing a peak cap in a shade of fire-engine red. Sam guessed he was around five or six.

She stared at the picture - taking in every detail. Her focus moved from mother to son and back again and the weight in her chest expanded as realisation dawned, her pulse increasing rapidly; the sound rushing in her ears until it was all she could hear. Numbness prickled her extremities, and she tightened her grip on the frame reflexively, not wanting to drop it. Her eyes grew wider and she blinked, drawing in a sharp breath.

The fall of a shadow across the photo made her jump and she spun towards the sudden presence at her shoulder, just managing to keep her grip on the frame before his deft fingers grasped one silvered edge. She lifted her head to his face but he was studying the picture, his profile thoughtful as he pursed his lips into a thin line, and she became acutely aware of his proximity and the way they held the photo between them.

For a long moment they stood in silence. She knew she should let go, but she couldn't; she shared at least a small fraction of this history with him and she wanted him to know.

"That's my son, Charlie," he said quietly.

"I know," she breathed, raising her eyes to his; they bored into her, confusion and grief colouring his expression. "I met him once, sort of."

"Why didn't you mention this before?"

"I didn't know," she looked back down at the picture. "Not until I saw this."

He sighed next to her and she finally released the frame. He positioned it back on the mantle-piece and rubbed his hand through his hair; she'd seen that gesture enough times now to realise it was something he did when he was thinking.

"When?" he asked, his back still to her.

She cringed, not sure whether he was going to like hearing this part.

"At Arlington, some months after the crash," she paused, carefully avoiding his gaze as he turned back towards her, "I'd just started my separation from the military and I went to say goodbye to my crew..."

His hands fell across the tops of her shoulders, drawing her eyes back to his, and she stuttered momentarily at the sudden contact but nothing in the world was going to stop her from telling him this - with everything that had happened she'd never gotten her chance to say what she'd wanted to say.

"... and you."

"Sam..."

Her vision was suddenly hazy and her eyes dropped to the floor. "Well, it was more a thank you than a goodbye..."

She felt his fingers tighten imperceptibly.

"C'mere."

And then his foot was sliding towards her and she found herself being pulled into him, looking up just in time to avoid having her nose pressed into his collarbone. She let out a choked laugh and her hands hovered uncertainly for a moment before she relaxed and folded them across his back.

She tilted her head up slightly, blinking back the tears that threatened to spill. This... this, she realised, is what she had really wanted all along, and it had been such a long time since she'd felt this happy because he was alive, he was alive, he was alive...

She took in a shaky breath to steady herself.

"I can't tell you how glad I am that you're OK," she said.

For just a second he squeezed a little harder before loosening his grip, and the space between them widened again as he moved back, his arms falling back to his sides. She felt the loss keenly and there was an awkward moment where he wouldn't quite meet her eye.

He stepped past her and cleared his throat. "We're going to get our asses handed to us if we don't get going."

He looked back at her then and she finally caught his eye, offering him a small smile.

"You, maybe," the smile widening into a grin, "I'm a civvy, remember?"

"Yeah, I'm kinda getting that." He grinned back and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Is there time for coffee at least?"

He freed a hand from his pocket and glanced at his watch, one eyebrow raised in question. "Just about," he said. "If you don't mind it scalding hot, that is."

He didn't wait for her to answer as he headed for the kitchen. Maybe it was just the inviting aroma of freshly brewed coffee that now filled the house, or the subtle change in light as the sun gathered a little more strength, but as she glanced around the room once more before moving to follow him, she thought the space wasn't so desolate after all.

A/N: I'm so sorry for the delay on this. Unfortunately, a lot of excess hours at work drained both my energy and creativity and I found myself only able to do little bits here and there (until today that is). Thank you all for your patience though. I hope you enjoy! Thank you so much followers/readers/reviewers!

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of the Stargate franchise. All other characters mentioned in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.