FalloutGate (Part1): Sanctuary

by devilishlysas

Sam/Jack end up stranded together on a world that has suffered a nuclear apocalypse, but that seems eerily similar to Earth (set S8 pre-Threads). A Sam/Jack ship story that happens to be set in the darker Fallout 4 Universe (if you don't know Fallout it won't impact your enjoyment at all, just be aware the setting is borrowed) Enjoy the ride! (Edit: X-over tag removed as more SG1)

8. Chapter 8

Author's note: Explicit warning tag. Various mature readers warnings see previous chapters. Descriptions of torture.

CHAPTER EIGHT: COMMONWEALTH

For the next few days he and Preston went out, day after day and tried to find something good. Something worth doing. Mostly it was just clearing out a pack of nasties, or keeping tabs and running errands for the local settlements. Until inevitably they ran into a Supermutant group. Because why not, he clearly needed the apocalyptic trifecta out on Minuteman patrol, robots, ghouls and mutants.

Jack ducked down behind a car and breathed in deeply through his mouth and not his nose. "That's a fucking troll." He told Preston with wide eyes.

"It's a Supermutant." Preston corrected plainly, not understanding the distinction, or his point. It was big, green, stinking and dumber than snot. That spelt troll in his book. Apparently, these bastards also ground your bones into dust too, so he was sticking with the damn analogy.

"Never mind." Jack muttered and bobbed his head up again, the damn things had taken over the parking lot and were taking pot shots at travellers, including the caravans that supplied Sanctuary, which meant that they really needed to go, but seeing them now, Jack was a bit concerned the combat rifle he'd bought with him wouldn't penetrate the thick hides.

"Ugly bastards aren't they?" he quipped, taking in one through his scope, right down to its hideously deformed face, bald head, and massively mutated body that made it look like a cross between the Incredible Hulk and a Wrestler.

"Strong too." Preston replied, looking down his own musket scope. "They'll tear your arms and legs off and use your torso as a pillow. Then they'll eat you."

"Thanks, great use of imagery there." Jack muttered. "What is it with everything out here wanting to eat me?" he griped, huffing. "So have they got any weaknesses?"

"Bullets, lots and lots of them." Preston replied, "Into the chest and the head. They regenerate so don't waste ammo on them if it ain't a kill shot."

"Good to know." Jack held a three count. "Let's go do this then."

All in all, it went pretty well, if a horrifying skirmish against a regenerating sadistic bunch of opponents with a rage problem that made Bruce Banner look calm, could be said to go well. It was his first proper battle since the disaster with the Ghouls. These things weren't rotting flesh sacks, but it was still a little too satisfying to see the dumb looks on their faces when he and Preston sniped them from afar. Right up until they almost got a missile up their asses.

"Forget to mention they liked the heavy weapons?" Jack hissed as a minigun exploded over head, peppering the metal wall they were cowered behind with an ungodly amount of noise. Jack popped the pin on the frag grenade and tossed it back over the wall in the direction of the sound. He scored a lucky hit to be honest, there was an oil barrel that went up like a damn rocket and took out most of the top half of the parking lot. He and Preston stared out from their covered position as the whole thing seemed to come down around the ears to the roars of the Supermutant's. The dust cleared and Preston followed him as he took out his shotgun and started coldly executing anything that was still breathing inside.

They stood in the wreckage surrounded by green skinned body parts and weapons, and yet somehow Jack was chalking that up as a good day… yeah, this place was getting to him he decided as he retrieved a rocket launcher from a corpse with something approaching glee.

It was a good story to embellish for the boys and girls back at camp. Particularly as they'd come bearing all sorts of new goodies. Sturgess in particular seemed to have a beef with Supermutants, much like Jun had with the Ghouls. Seems everyone had their own little private horror survival story out here. Preston's was a bunch of military-type Raiders that called themselves the Gunners who fancied themselves some sort of private army, with loose morals and worse ambitions. They swapped horror stories over the campfire that night, to Jack it seemed like he'd broken down a wall he hadn't been aware existed, but apparently them loosing that round with the Ghouls had made them more approachable, more real. They had failings too apparently, which made them worthy of shared losses and hurts. Jack felt for them, all of them, each story was harrowing and he knew he was only getting the clip notes. But in it all, he was clear that survival was the aim. If you survived, you did good.

"Sam, you must have an old war story you can share with us?" Sturgess asked, plonking himself down next to her and already Jack could see he wasn't about to let her wheedle out of this. In fact, there was a piqued interest from most of the group for their most reserved member.

"Yeah." Marcie drawled in her rasp. "What was it like on the Synth production line?" She snorted at her own joke and every eye turned to her but Sam's, promising to shut her up if she didn't shut up. Marcie had a bee in her bonnet about Sam since the start, despite their denials and the fact that she'd almost died god knows how many times fixing this damn place up, it never seemed enough to convince the woman. She was too hung up on the way Sam looked… and how good she was with tech. Ain't natural. Was what she'd mutter and shake her head whenever Sam came near. Jealousy more like it Jack thought. It was starting to make Jack twitch with the need to do something about it.

"Oh come on, everyone's thinking it. She's a god damn Synth how are you all okay with that?"

Sam's head shot up and she pinned Marcie with a dark look that promised she'd do something herself if she carried on.

Mama Murphy gave an exasperated sigh. "Now Marcie… you ain't ought to be looking a gift horse in the mouth. And she ain't no Synth." She rasped at the other woman who looked away hastily. Like most people, Ol' Mama freaked her the hell out.

"Sammy." Mama turned her almost milky eyes on her using a sing song nickname he hadn't heard from anyone in a long time. God maybe not since Urgo which was all kinds of disturbing.

"Why don't you tell Marcie dear, just why you hate machines that look like men?"

Sam opened her mouth to protest then shut it sharply and Jack winced. Ouch, nothing like having your deepest and darkest dragged out over a campfire.

"And why you hate the number Five." Sam's entire body shivered and she gave Mama Murphy a look that screamed murder.

"I'm not so sure that story is campfire material." Jack growled, coming to her aid. Mama shot a milky white eye on him.

"Then why do ya wanna hear it so bad?" Mama Murphy saw right through him and he winced. Ah. Right playing chicken with a psychic, bad idea.

Sam tossed a stick at the fire and made it flare up a moment startling everyone but Mama Murphy back onto her.

"Fine. I'm not a damn Synth." She snapped. "But I was kidnapped by one once." Sam started quietly. "His name was Fifth." She shuddered and he watched her lips press into a thin line, but her eyes, they were fixed hard on Marcie. If this woman wanted to know how much of a Synth Sam wasn't, it looked like she was about to get the motherload of emotional unspooling. Damn it.

"And Fifth hated me. I don't know how well he could feel human emotions, but he felt that one just fine. He hated me because I used him, like I use any machine, like a tool. Except I was cruel about it, he had what he thought were feelings towards me, I manipulated those feelings into getting him to help us destroy a group of Synth's like him." She expertly weaved the narrative of the replicators into the Synth's and Jack tried not to think about how easily it worked.

"They were terrorists. They would have hurt so many people… I gained his trust then I betrayed him and they all died. Or so I thought." She drifted off for a moment, kicking at the dirt with her toe and not looking at anyone as they sat in silence… waiting for the kicker.

"I gave the order Sam… that was on me." He cut in, because he couldn't not. All eyes swivelled to him. Sam didn't look at him though, her eyes back on the fire.

"And I followed that order, that was on me." She snapped back, clearly not wanting to be coddled or accept his own guilt on that.

"Besides it was me he'd trusted not you. It was me he hated. Not you." She replied flatly and Jack swallowed. Hate was a powerful emotion, he dreaded to think what Fifth's hate had done to her, he'd not been tortured by someone that hated him. He'd been fortunate he supposed in that respect, everyone who'd tortured him couldn't have given a shit about him, he'd practically been beneath their notice. He felt something cold as ice in his veins. He wasn't certain he wanted to hear this anymore. He after all was the one that had blocked the psyche team when they'd suggested a full evaluation on her, telling them she was 'fine' as was clear in her report… he was wondering if he'd made a monumental mistake. Yet another one concerning Sam, because of the simple fact that he'd not wanted to lose her from his frontline and he hadn't wanted to derail her career with a bad eval. She'd never get her own command if she was struggling with PTSD. Not that she'd shown any signs… until now.

"He kidnapped me and he kept me in a small room with no doors, no windows, no light, no escape." She continued sliding the small details into the expected narrative. "I didn't know how long I was there… it felt like months, but it turns out it was only days. But he had this tech." She simplified and touched her forehead.

"He put it to my forehead and he could reach into my mind." Jack kept his eyes fixed on her, admiring even in her clear distress her ability to adapt the story for their needs.

"He wanted me to suffer. To feel everything he'd felt, when he'd been trapped for years." Sam looked back up at Marcie and the woman flinched at the raw pain she saw there.

"He pushed nightmares into my mind, horrific images, things I'd never seen or experienced suddenly were mine. I could feel everything, every scenario from those stolen memories." She took an inhale, and he heard the shake and he wondered for a moment with growing dread where it was Fifth had gotten other people's memories, wondered right up until she looked at him. Looked at him like she knew the inside of an Iraqi prison cell. Like she knew where each of Ba'al's blades had landed. He looked away because he couldn't meet that stare as his hands shook and his chest pounded. His memories. His nightmares had been used to torment her. Suddenly his list of reasons to want that son-of-a-bitch Fifth alive so he could kill again grew exponentially. There was a lot of ugly in his psyche and each and everyone of those 'By the Numbers Human-form Replicators' had taken a stroll through his head. There were things he'd never wish on his worst enemy… never Sam, God not her.

"But he grew bored of that… that's when he started breaking my own memories." Sam continued sounding far away, lost in her own horror.

"He liked creating new ones. They were like waking dreams, he'd force me to kill everyone that meant something to me. Sometimes he'd corrupt old memories, like my mom's funeral, my God the things he made my father say to me." She blinked and swiped a tear…

"He liked to break my memory of you most Jack…" He looked up to find her staring at a point somewhere over his shoulder.

"I can't tell you how many times he had me kill you." Their eyes met and there was a shadow in her face now which he knew would haunt him and he considered telling her to stop, this was a private conversation if ever he'd felt one. He wondered what else the damn bastard had made her experience with his face…. Damn it! He'd not considered this form of torture, he'd just thought they could show you memories, not manipulate them. Suddenly his foolish attempt to protect her from the psych's was starting to look a lot more selfish, a lot more like he had let his personal feelings get in the way of what was right for her. She'd needed help and damn it, he'd denied her it. Hadn't even seen it. What the hell kind of CO was he, that he couldn't see one of his own, hell the woman he claimed to love, was suffering.

"I tried to convince him that being human if that's what he wanted, was about having forgiveness. Compassion." She almost spat the word. "The asshole told me he knew, but that he wasn't there yet." She let out a bark of a laugh, her fingers on the centre of her forehead again as she turned her gaze back on Marcie, the woman had the sense to shift uncomfortably and Jack glared at her coldly aware of Mama Murphy watching him with concern and he knew the old cow could hear his deep-dark quite clearly right now.

"I begged him to stop. I got down on my goddamn knees and I begged him." Her fingers were at her forehead again. "And he did… in a way. He stopped trying to break me, he decided I was ready then, that I was finally worthy of his love." She closed her eyes and looked like she was going to be sick. Jack felt the same. Fuck what had she been doing in the field… suddenly that whole incident with Repli-Carter was looking a lot more complicated than he'd believed and it hadn't exactly written up simply then.

"You see, turns out he hated me so much, because he thought he loved me. He wanted to keep me… now that I'd suffered for my betrayal, now that I understood his pain." Sarcasm dripped from her words.

"So he made me see a fantasy world, his attempt to play house with me, he gave me everything he thought I wanted. But it wasn't enough…" Sam looked at the faces around her, but not his and he had a horrified thought that the bastard had made her see him… what if her resistance to them had more to do with what Fifth had shown her, than just her inability to let go of hope and duty here?

"I wasn't convinced." Sam's eyes found Marcie's and her lips twisted into a sneer. "Because no matter what he liked to pretend, he wasn't human, and he couldn't understand a damn thing about my fantasies. About what I wanted. It was like he'd painted a technicolour version of 'this is not your life'." She stared flatly at the woman that had dragged this confession out of her and Marcie shrank back.

"Because they are not human. They don't feel like we do. And when they try… it makes them into monsters." She bit out, her words ringing across them all.

"How'd you get out?" Sturgess asked quietly, probably the only one that could have spoken right now, as he sat quietly unjudgementally next to her, his own unpleasant experiences with Synth's he'd shared early on, resonating.

Sam shook her head and sniffed. "I didn't." She replied. "He'd have kept me there, in misery forever, his. Like a bird in a cage." She tossed another stick onto the fire. "But Jack…and our team, they were creating merry hell amongst his little group. Turns out Jack had found this new weapon that could tear through them. Suddenly we were a threat. And keeping me was looking like a bad prospect." She snorted. "He made me believe for a moment, that he was letting me go, because he loved me. Because he knew I'd never love him back." She looked like she hated herself for that and it hurt Jack to see it, to see her self-loathing. But with hind-sight, he supposed she was right.

"He let you go because he'd got what he needed." Jack replied quietly filling in the pregnant gap and feeling like a schmuck. Her I'm fine's ringing in his ears. They were the same I'm fine's he'd used after Iraq, after Ba'al… the one he hadn't quite mustered after Charlie. The 'I'm fine' that you practiced in the mirror until you started to damn well believe it, even if you never met your own damn eyes.

"He took everything," she admitted stiffly, "he'd gotten in my mind and used it to make himself his perfect version of me. A synth version. A blow-up fucking doll he could abuse some more." Sam spat and stared at Marcie as Jack smashed his beer bottle in fury on the ground getting up and stalking away scrubbing his hands through his hair aggressively.

"Except that bitch wasn't me." Her voice carried, not sparing him the rest of the narrative even as he sorely wished he could clamp his hands over his ears. God he was jackass.

"She might have looked like me, had my memories. But she wasn't me." Sam rasped. "Because machines…Synth's aren't human. They can't feel, only copy what they see." He eyes drifted to Codsworth for a moment and Jack glanced back wondering if the robot was taking offence. He remained silent, and Jack recalled her little impassioned speech about AIs and robots… apparently Codsy she was fine with, because he wasn't pretending to be human.

"The only thing I'd ever really shown him was hate and pain. So his perfect me hated him almost as much as she hated the whole damn world." He listened from the edge of the camp, trying to get his breathing under control. He was going to kill Fifth, he was going to get back to their planet and fucking resurrect the little prick and take him apart block by fucking block. And to think, he'd stood there in front of him, all smug in his fucking grey shiny suit and ridiculous hair and made his threats… and he'd just let him walk back to where he'd trapped her inside that goddamn room suffering his mental torture. He'd left her behind. Even if it was for minutes… hours, he'd let that prick go slip back into her mind again.

He heard Sam stand, he turned watching her out of the corner of her eye as she stood to tower over Marcie, her blond hair glowing like a halo making her look like a damn avenging angel. Marcie at least looked faintly terrified, which made Jack feel a little better, the cow wouldn't be making anymore Synth's cracks again.

"You don't know me Marcie. But I'm not a fucking Synth." She spat and Marcie nodded, as Sam leant in close to the other woman. "So the next time you compare me to one of those soulless things because you don't like my face… I'm going to programme my sentry bot to dislike your damn face." She smiled thinly, her eyes dancing with unshed tears and a fair bit of promised malice.

"Have a good night." She muttered smiling thinly as she stalked off away from camp… and away from them all. Including him.

Preston ambled up to him, not saying anything, but still somehow saying a lot.

"She'll be fine." Jack told him, not sure now who he was wanting to convince, realising even as he said it, that was the damn word that had got them into this mess 'fine'. Preston nodded, looking like he wasn't so sure.

"Will you be…?" He questioned quietly, "I'm thinking you hadn't exactly been aware of some of what had gone down there?" He asked, as astute as ever. Jack shook his head.

"She'd said she was fine. I hadn't pressed… I should have pressed." He bit out in self-recrimination as he scuffed his boot in the floor. Jack watched as Marcie got off and slinked away, tears on her cheeks… so there was that at least. He supposed he should be grateful to the bitch for finally forcing Sam to talk about the whole fucking thing. For waking him up to it because he'd done a damn fine impression of an ostrich on that one.

"I'm not sure pressing her would have helped." Preston muttered, looking genuinely unsettled by what had been said, which Jack noted. Apparently fire fights were one thing but headfucks were just as unpleasant out here in the Wastes.

"From what I just heard, Synth tortured her for days… inside and out. Pressing her seems to me like it just makes that shell harder. Sam's like coal I reckon." Preston told him and Jack raised a querying eyebrow not getting the reference.

"Apply enough pressure, she'll harden straight into diamond. All shiny and perfect on the outside, but the inside, well that'll always be coal and coal's real easy to chip layers off." Preston stared at him and patted him on the arm consoling.

"Secrets have a way of coming out, specially out here. Old wounds play up. This was a wound Jack and it needed excising or it was just gonna rot inside her, and no one was getting through that shell, not until she was good and ready for it."

Jack gave him a stare. "Your doing that wise old preacher thing I've warned you about." He muttered, man loved to preach, Jack was starting to suspect he'd missed his calling.

"I just say it like I see it man." Preston patted him on the shoulder giving it a squeeze. "Wounds open, nasties out. Now it can heal. Seems simple enough to me."

Jack nodded. He supposed put like that, although he found mental trauma never did tend to fit into a nice neat box, there didn't tend to be a band aid big enough in his experience.

The night having ended on a sour note, he decided to go sit up on the roof and wallow a little in his hidey-lookout hole that he'd kept adding to. Now it had morphed into a shack on top of the main house with one wall, a barrier which made it semi-private and kept him protected from incoming fire. A half a tin roof, his mattress – the one he'd dragged all the way up from the damn vault on account of his back – and a reclining chair that didn't recline any more. But hell it beat sharing a floor with the grunts. He placed the little lamp down beside him and considered unearthing that pack of cigarettes again. His fingers twitching, they might be able to cure radiation damage, but cancer still seemed a bother and it wasn't a habit he especially wanted to get back into.

So he focused on the other hobby that had always occupied his mind, the night was clear and as he lay back he could stare up at the not so familiar night sky. The little glow of light put out by the oil lantern he'd bought up so he could see his own feet and didn't go tumbling off the edge, not disturbing the view at all. Every time he came up here noticed something different, or odd about it, aside from what was missing, there were also areas where he definitely saw more clusters of lights.

The sound of someone climbing the ladder alerted him and he waited, there were literally only two people that would come up here and he'd already finished his conversation with one of them. He avoided looking, knowing the sound of her footsteps as she approached.

"Hey." Sam announced herself quietly, a good habit given that out here most things that snuck up on him tended to get shot.

"Hey." He replied, staring up at the stars from his position until she appeared in his eyeline, she turned her head to glance up at what he was looking at.

"Mars is brighter." She commented after a few silent moments.

"Yep." He replied. "Big dippers all wrong too." He pointed out, what he was certain she'd already spotted.

"Can I join you?" She asked and he moved over slightly to give her room on the mattress beside him, by way of invitation.

They lay there for a little while, just looking up at the stars. Occasionally one of them would point out something that was different. The warmth of her body beside him started to become distracting and Jack sighed and reached down, sliding his hand along her arm until her found her hand and laced his fingers with hers. He wasn't entirely sure when it was he'd felt okay to do that, but it felt natural now, like her hand was an extension of his, except his he skin didn't buzz from the contact with his own hand…

"I've been meaning to talk to you about something I found out." She admitted quietly and he raised an eyebrow.

"Oh?" he pressed wondering what fresh hell this was going to be.

"I have a theory as to why the stars look like that." She admitted. He turned to stare at her, but she kept looking up and he stared at her profile, the soft planes of her jaw, the long lines of her nose.

"I was going with Apocalypse Universe." He muttered. "Given as so many stars have gone out."

Sam sighed. "Maybe." She paused, not entirely dismissing his theory which was disturbing on its own. "But I think, that it's because the Goa'uld don't exist, not as we know them in this Universe." She glanced at him for a moment letting that little bomb go off in his brain.

"Maybe they never existed, or they stayed in the Unas. We know they encountered some advanced alien civilisation maybe even a single alien that landed on their planet. Given how much else is different in this universe that one act would be relatively simple to have had change. The consequence though, is an entire Goa'uld civilisation gone and Earth and the human race was never enslaved."

Jack frowned, "Wouldn't that you know, add stars?" He questioned sure he was missing something.

Sam shook her head. "The Goa'uld have probably created more worlds and made them human compatible than they've destroyed. They are pretty much the reason that our Galaxy was seeded with human life." She explained.

"I thought the Ancients did that?" Jack queried now even more confused.

Sam shook her head. "We know they seeded Earth, maybe a handful of other advanced planets with the DNA. But that's it. The rest were populated by the slaves of the Goa'uld."

"You're getting all this from the fact that the stars look different?" He questioned not meaning to doubt her but that was a leap, even for her.

Sam shrugged. "That… and according to Codsworth and the databanks at the Atomics Galleria, the Ancient Egyptians never build the pyramids here. In fact, there are no documented pyramids on this world at any point in their history, not even the Myans." She told him with finality.

Jack blinked, something coming to him. "Pyramids as landing pads for alien spaceships!" He snapped his fingers pleased at the recall. Daniel's whole hypothesis and the reason he'd been declared a whack job by most of the scientific community. Sam looked at him pointedly, asking him to make the leap from that with her.

"Ah." He replied. "I get it. No pyramids, no landing pads… ergo, no aliens."

She shrugged. "It's a theory."

"Or… maybe they made square-holed ships…. Or circles!" He pointed out clutching at straws and not certain why he was so keen to hang onto the idea of the Goa'uld.

Sam nodded as if she'd considered that, which she probably had knowing her. "The Ancient Egyptians of this World didn't use hieroglyphs either. That language as far as I can see is gone, and we know at least that was from the Goa'uld."

"So… your telling me that these idiots blew themselves up, all by themselves, they never had to face what we did and they wasted it?" He barked, realising what it was that was bothering him about that notion after all.

"Yep. I know, it sucks." Sam muttered. "Maybe it was our very conflict with a race like the Goa'uld that prevented us from destroying ourselves, we had bigger problems." She countered and he frowned.

"I am not thanking those snakeheads… or giving them credit for that. I like my idea of Apocalypse Universe better." He groused. Crossing his arms over his chest and drawing her hand up to hold it there before he really realised what he was doing. Then he had no choice but to go with it.

"Okay." He considered after a moment. "So how'd the stargate get here?" He pointed out. "Unless I'm imagining the damn thing we stepped through?"

Sam smiled her lips curving as she looked over at him, clearly pleased he'd spotted what she'd considered the obvious question. "That's the thing that's been bugging me. Not the how, I mean it seems obvious that the gate we came through had to be a gate that the Ancient's left here." She added offhandedly and he nodded, 'oh'.

"What's bugging me is, how there could be a second gate? If the Goa'uld are gone, then they never put one here. Which would mean if there were two, both would have to have been put here by the Ancient's."

"I'm not seeing the issue?" Jack replied, playing with her hand, stroking his fingers along her almost absentmindedly until he caught her staring at it and he stilled the movement.

"It's not an issue, I just thought you should know that we've just gone from a chance in hell, to a snowballs chance in hell of finding a second gate in Antarctica." She replied coolly. "And if we did get off the planet, the chances of finding a world hospitable to human life is remote. We have no idea what the state of play is up there and we have no allies. And all that is assuming I could even find a supercomputer capable of calculating the interstellar drift to make the gate system work again."

"Oh." He replied, surprised that she was stilling holding onto hope of finding something, he'd thought she'd given up.

"Sam… remind me when you look all quiet and thoughtful that what's going on in your head is probably some next level stuff and I should just leave you to it." He sighed and she chuckled.

"I'm sorry." She replied. "Apparently I'm not so good at letting go of things." She replied quietly. "You should appreciate that though, it's why I never really gave up on the idea of us. Even half way down the isle with another man."

Jack stilled. Well that wasn't nothing. He turned to look at her and she turned her head to face him too.

"Jack can you understand, that I just need to keep tossing snowballs every now and then, to see if something sticks… or I'll go mad." She explained looking uneasy that it would be some sort of dealbreaker for him.

"Okay." He nodded. "Sure, if that's what you need." He wondered where that left them. He brushed his thumb over the back of her hand. "You okay?" he asked gently.

Sam blinked slowly and looked back up at the starry night sky. "About the world view or about what happened by the campfire?" Sam replied her tone a little clipped.

"Whichever." He replied lacing his fingers with hers again and lifting it to his lips and pressing a kiss there gently to the back of it. "You know I'm here to talk… if you want to. About… any of it." It pained him to offer that, the last thing he wanted to do was unearth more, but he wanted her to be okay, wanted them to be okay, so he'd take whatever awkward conversations that required.

"I shouldn't have exploded at Marcie like that. I apologised." She admitted. "Before I came up here."

"Bet that went down well." Jack muttered and Sam chuckled.

"Oh, she was quite gracious really. Told me to get out of her face." Sam added, "But she didn't whisper Synth bitch under her breath at me for once, which was a plus."

"Silver linings." Jack reasoned. Falling quiet again.

"Did you want to talk about it?" She offered and he winced.

"Yes… and no. And hell no." He added with feeling, there was a pregnant pause. "Which means I suppose we should." He admitted uneasily.

"Probably." Sam replied, then rolled onto her side, sliding her hand out of his and using it to prop herself under head as she stared at him and placed a tentative hand on his arm, gently stroking the revealed skin of his bicep.

"I wish you'd told me what he did to you." He started, because she'd already shared enough tonight, he figured it was his turn as he rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his arm mirroring her position.

Sam nodded. "Never seemed the right time. Then that Replicator version of me showed up and things got messy and, anything I said after that would feel… like I was making excuses."

"Excuses?" his eyes widened and he felt a distinct flash of annoyance at her. "Sam, that bastard raped you…" her eyes widened. "You don't think sticking his hands inside your head and futzing with your memories and your fantasies isn't rape? It's mind-rape!" He exclaimed, furious.

Sam looked down at his arm, her fingers stilling for a moment and he wondered if he'd been a bit too full on then, but he sensed the time for pussy footing around this damn issue had passed when she'd screamed it at an entire campsite of their live-in neighbours.

"Sometimes I used to worry that maybe, I hadn't gotten out, that I was still there. The way it happened, him just letting me go, you alive and well, with a fancy new anti-replicator gun kicking the crap out of him. I just… it stretched credulity. Then you got promoted… I just kept waiting for that moment when it would feel 'unreal' again." She admitted. "Then I worried that maybe he'd gotten better at it, maybe I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Maybe he figured that this new 'fantasy' of my life back as it was would be enough." She bit her lip.

"I'm screwed up you do realise that?" She shook her head. "When we got here, those thoughts came back a little. Maybe it was shock, or just how unreal this whole place felt, like our world but not…" She trailed off chewing on her lip. "I kept thinking that this was it, this was the moment that he'd reveal himself. But he didn't. And then after a little while, I realised that this place was so unendingly bleak that it could only be real. Fifth had the emotional control of a toddler, he might eventually have had the creativity for a place like this, but not the patience… or the finesse."

Jack shook his head absorbing that. She really had no business being in the field if she was having a disconnect from reality for fuck sake. Questioning if she'd even been rescued? "Carter…Sam," he realised his slip, but his head was back in 'you were her damn CO you should have noticed' mode. "You realise this type of thing really should have been in your report." He told her feeling dirty all over for suggesting it, but seriously… why was it she'd decided to break a habit of a lifetime and not record everything in minute detail in there?

"Because I was ashamed." She replied simply. "He broke me Jack at least in part." She added "I've never begged like that, not even Sokar." She admitted. "I just wanted him out of my head so badly." She rubbed her forehead with the hand he wasn't holding prisoner tracing his fingers along her knuckles as if to remind himself she was here. "After that his damn fantasy was almost… tame. I used to think he didn't realise, that if he'd just kept diving into my mind like that and terrorising me with nightmares, that I'd have done anything he wanted. That he'd been an idiot to try his fantasy tack, because that had been to easy to resist." She looked up at him and he felt his heart break at the pain he saw there, the knowledge that someone had pushed you to your limit.

"Then I saw what he'd done to her, the Replicator version of me. He tore her mind apart to get her to comply. He didn't misunderstand anything… he'd just known he'd break my fragile human mind if he kept at it and he couldn't copy a broken mind." He squeezed her hand.

"I'm sorry, I should have put it in the report, but the things he did, and said, they were so personal. I didn't want that laid bare. And I didn't want to be taken off active duty, I needed to work, to get over it." She confessed and what could he say, he wasn't the picture of sanity either, and he'd been guilty of playing a little fast and loose with the rules on reports too.

"Sam, you just got to trust me on this, because I have a little experience in this area of particular self-loathing." He swallowed and she looked up at him, her blue eyes shining in the lamplight with unshed tears.

"He only broke you if you didn't get back up after. Which you did, so damn well that no one noticed… which is shitty of us, but speaks kinda to your strength you realise."

"I appreciate that." She acknowledged, "But I don't know how fixed I am." She looked away again. "You know I still have the nightmares, and when things get hard I still question reality." Her fingers rose to her forehead and she caught the action, stopping it halfway and squeezing her hand into a fist to lay back under her chin.

"But I guess when everything out here is one long horror show that makes the things he put inside my head pretty much pale in comparison… seems kind of pointless to have PTSD about it." She sounded oddly okay with that, resigned and Jack had no idea how to respond, because that's how fucked up that statement was. So of course, he blundered on with what probably wasn't the most tactful question, but he needed to know and he needed to say it now before he lost his nerve.

"Was it me…?" She frowned at his question and he took a breath. "Was it me he made you see, in that fucked up little homemaker fantasy." He looked at her nervously. "Did he pretend to be me?" He asked the question that had been worrying him the most. Because he wasn't sure how the hell to get them through a mind-twist like that.

Sam's eyes shot to his realising his fears. "No! God no Jack… he, I told you, he gave me what he thought I wanted." She replied and it took him a moment to consider that before the lightbulb went off.

"Pete… he pretended to be Pete?" He asked in something like relief, which was a little inappropriate considering her crestfallen look. No wonder she'd been thinking the poor sucker the damn ring back. Especially if she kept worrying about reality slipping, Pete must have felt like all kinds of wrong to her.

Sam nodded and looked back down hastily, this time he could see the pinched expression as she struggled to push her emotions down about that. "Yeah, Pete…" She winced. "He also conjured a dog, a farm, horses, white picket fence, beautiful kitchen… hell I even had the long un-Airforce hair." She admitted quietly, her finger trailing the slightly longer shoulder length version now. "And I hated it the place. Every moment of it felt wrong, every detail off. He kissed me… and I felt nothing, worse I felt… repelled. It felt like the fantasy I had as a little girl, that didn't match who I was now, I mean, maybe it was who I thought I should be, I don't know." She trailed off looking faintly ill. "The whole time it was like I was asking myself what the hell was missing." She added.

"What do you think was missing?" He asked and she looked at him, scrutinising his face with a soft look on hers.

"You really need me to spell it out for you?" She smiled gently and pulled her hand from his to brush his cheek. His mouth opened and he made an 'O' of mild surprise. Right. He felt a smile flicker onto his lips despite the disturbing topic.

"If he'd have shown me a fantasy of you Jack, in your damn flannel shirt and scruffy beard, your cabin by the lake without any fish in it… maybe a little motorboat to complete the illusion, the smell of charred BBQ, I'd have believed." She smiled wistfully, "Damn it I'd still be there. With him. Because that's what I want!" She admitted and he felt his breath catch. He met her eyes and she leant in pressing her lips to his featherlight as if she didn't quite trust herself, with just enough pressure to let him know he wasn't imagining it before she pulled back.

It was the first time she'd kissed him. Not the other way around, every other kiss between them he had instigated he realised and he revelled in it for a moment, trying to bring his soaring blood pressure back under control, as his heart beat a little wilder. He had to be sure, after all of all the opportune moments since they got stuck here and he'd made his intentions clear. Her deciding now, at the tail end of this frankly disturbing conversation hadn't been how he thought they'd reach this point. And if he was honest there was still a lot of guilt laying heavy in his chest about his role in what happened to her.

"Sam… you've got to know how sorry I am. I've been a shitty CO to you, I should have insisted on a psyche eval, of getting you help to deal with that crap, you should have felt like you could come to me with it." He ran his hand across his brow in distraction, "Hell I should have been a better friend, I should have known you weren't fine. And… well I have no idea how to apologise for the shit I suspect he put in your head from my memory."

Sam shook her head. "It's in the past. I'll admit I was annoyed that no one seemed to notice, or seemingly care what happened at first. But I realised a lot of that was my fault, I didn't ask for help, I didn't tell the truth in my report. I just wanted it to go away so I did what I always do, I buried it in work and distraction." She huffed at herself a little.

"And it did do go away, until that bitch came through the gate looking like me and making a mockery of everything I went through with him. Because it was all for nothing because he got what he wanted. His perfect Carter. And it damn well killed him and I was actually a little happy about that, which sort of freaked me out for a while." She admitted and he thought that was a perfectly rational thing to feel. Hell, he'd have danced on Ba'al's corpse had the opportunity arisen.

"You should be mad at me. I gave the order to betray Fifth." He insisted not willing to absolve himself just yet.

"And I made you take Kanan." She countered. He inhaled sharply. Touché.

"Okay, so what we just call it even? You feel as guilty as I do that we both got each other horribly tortured. But we're alive, so c'est la vie?" He sighed, seriously what the hell was he doing contemplating a relationship with a woman when they had this level of shit between them.

"You realise you and I are kind of ridiculous right." He rolled his eyes at her as he slid his hand back to twin with hers, their fingers linking together.

"Insane." She countered with a smile.

"There's going to be no secrets you realise, no mystery." He added with huff of exasperation that he wasn't even convincing himself with, her kiss was setting something light and airy off in his chest. "All my deep-dark and nasty is literally in your head!" He added half-heartedly one last time, giving her one last chance to back out.

Sam squeezed his hand. "And you were with me or saving me from most of my deep-dark. I reckon we're good." Okay she had a point as always. Screw it, she was Carter, he didn't care he'd take a roll with this particular series of punches any day. Besides he figured they were as sure as they were ever going to get.

"So… I'm still your fantasy guy huh?" He teased lowering his voice a fraction and stroking a single finger down her arm and brushing her hair off her shoulder. Sam tracked his movement with her eyes as her lips curved into something wicked. Then her mouth was on his again, hard and fast this time, any tentativeness from her earlier kiss had vanished as she gripped his chin and held him there for a moment as she nipped his lip just hard enough to warn. Minx.

"Don't let it go to your head." She teased.

"Too late." He smirked and glanced down at his crotch to emphasise his point and she grinned back at him that big toothy one that lit up her eyes and Jack felt his heart soar. That was it, that was the look he needed to be sure. He captured her face in his hands and drew her in for a longer kiss this time, pressing his chest down into hers and trapping her beneath him as he revelled in the feeling of her smile as she kissed him back. They both became a little hesitant, exploring each other gently and she leant back.

"l won't change my mind." She promised working out even if he hadn't where the hesitancy was coming from.

"Good." He muttered and kissed her again, her lips parted and he groaned at the touch of her tongue to his as he let his weight sink over hers as he lost himself in the feel of her beneath him and the taste of her. His hands brushed through her hair that was getting longer now as he tucked it behind her ears, giving him a path down her neck and she pressed her lips to his cheek as he trailed kisses to her pulse point. He desperately wanted to believe her, but there was a flicker of doubt and maybe he was doubting his own sanity and reality. He didn't deserve Sam and it had taken the end of the World for him to finally stand a chance… what did that say?

Her hand rose to the back of his head and she drew him back up to look at her.

"We've wasted so much time Jack. I don't want to waste anymore. I just want you." She promised him drawing his mouth inches from hers until they almost brushed as she spoke. "I should have been braver with this, with us a long time ago." She confessed.

"Your plenty brave." He murmured against her lips, his eyes boring into hers, this moment fragile as he fought not to break it and push her away, but every instinct in him was demanding he end this ridiculous limbo they'd placed themselves in. "I'm the coward." He told her.

"You were being honourable." She replied her thumb brushing his lips as she looked up at him suddenly with something close to adoration and Jack's heart beat wildly. This was it. This was their moment. This was Sam. His Sam.

"I thought I'd lost my chance with you. And I got desperate." She admitted.

"Never." He shook his head, "Never." He swore and pressed a kiss to her throat, almost moaning at the intimacy of his lips there, touching them to her pulse and feeling it as fast as his own. He was trying to calm down, to calm himself and his reaction, to not make a mistake with her now, but then she tugged him more firmly over her until she was pressed chest to chest beneath him. Then it became difficult to do anything rational with the desire he could feel building between them. They'd made a hot mess of this whole damn thing for years. He had to get it right now but he could barely think with the feel of her against him. His dick hard and cutting off any rationale thought. Stop thinking. He willed himself.

"I could never love anyone like I love you." She told him quietly staring up at him her hand splayed over his chest another buried in his hair, her hips cradling him as she wrapped her legs around his waist. And there she went proving him right again, the braver of the two to finally speak those three little words that he needed to hear before he could confess to having felt them himself for what felt like an eternity. Oh he'd danced around it, told her a dozen different ways already, but he couldn't just say it like that, she needed to break the damn door down to that room they'd decided to shut it all in or he was always going to wonder if he'd forced her into this. A relationship of circumstance, nothing more…

The confession broke through any lingering doubts and fears he had, he was just a man after all and he had Samantha Carter wrapped around him, under a starry sky, confessing she loved him. He caught her face in his hands swooping down and kissing her again, properly this time kissing the woman he loved, not the woman he was concerned might be suffering from mental trauma, or who might decide he was the horrible mistake 8 years in the making. He hoped he'd actually be able to speak those words back to her.

Their tongues met again and he groaned, deep and long sending the sound reverberating through her and he didn't have to coax into any form of reciprocation she was right there with him. God he'd waited for this. Waited and hoped and given up a dozen times. But here it was, now, at the ass end of everything and it was his, if he just didn't screw it up.

He kissed her like he'd imagined he would every day for 8 years. Her mouth as perfect as he imagined the rest of her would be as she threated her fingers in his hair, holding him close; as they tried to put into one kiss, everything they'd not said in the years they'd longed too. She broke the kiss, because he sure as shit wasn't about to again. Pulling back softly, her forehead against his as he remembered how to breathe. Her thumb brushed up across his lips and she laughed gently a wonderful sound that only widened the smile he knew she was tracing on his lips. God only Samantha Carter could make him smile, genuinely giddy as a teenager perched on a shack roof to avoid all manner of nasty at the end of the world.

He kissed her to banish any thought of that bastard Fifth, pressing the reality of this and them, into her. Because there was no way she couldn't feel every second of the four years since they'd agreed to keep all of this locked up in that damn room. Tender turned into something more frantic as he pressed his hips into her watching as her breath hitched and her eyes darkened as she lifted her hips to meet him, chasing the sensations of each other with every contact.

"I don't think that's your side arm this time." Sam rasped up at him and he grinned enjoying the call back as he grinned rakishly back at her. God, if he could go back and tell his half dead frost bitten self that he'd get to do that for real one day…

She laughed gently at what he knew would be his dark look as he pressed his hardness a little more firmly into her as he tried not to shiver at the brush of her lips against his throat and the heat of her breath. He waited a beat before sliding his foot along her calf and curling his free hand around her waist pressing them closer, tension and almost anticipation seemed to pull taut between them. Her head raised and he watched as her breathing hitched, her gaze dropping to his lips for a moment as though she was having to remind herself that she could kiss him.

Staring into the face of this woman was becoming a habit. One he was more than happy to take up. His fingers trailed down from her face to her throat, and her shoulders, his thumbs brushing her skin as he could feel her pulse hammering beneath his touch. Her hands slid up to the back of his neck and stroking over his scalp as she gripped his longer than usual hair.

"Jack." She whispered against his hair and he raised his head, searing her with a look he hoped conveyed everything he was desperate to tell her, to show her. It was both a question and permission from her he realised with a jolt that he felt straight to his navel. Oh.

He captured her mouth moaned into her and feeling the sound travel down her throat as she tightened her grip on his hair. Slowly he kissed her, savouring the touch of her lips, the feel of her chest crushed against his and thanking her silently for every perfect inch of her he could feel. Perhaps there should have been a frenzy, he'd often thought if they were to ever give in to this attraction that it would be fireworks. And it was, but they had a long fuse apparently. Mostly what he felt was relief. His whole body sagged into her, her mouth his sanctuary as he felt her caressing him with the same kind of devotion and utter preoccupation. She wanted this. Wanted him.

His breathing was growing heavy, his entire body tingling, but his lips felt like they were burning wherever they touched her skin.

"God Carter." He hummed, pressing another tender kiss to the corner of her mouth and down again to her neck. "I could do that forever." He promised. "Eight years and I still never imagined it right." He sighed, curling his hands around her back he dropped one of his hands to her waist, keeping her close as he stroked his thumb across her jaw.

"I know." She sounded confident but her voice held the shake he wanted, telling him she was just as affected. She ran a fingernail down the back of his neck and he shuddered against her, just holding her there as she flexed the long gorgeous legs around his hips as her arms looped around him. She pressed a kiss to his throat and he tried not to groan deeply again, feeling the ripples of it straight down to his groin. God what she did to him…

He kissed her again until his tongue ached and his lips felt swollen. Kissed her until breath became a problem and his fingers began to round her ass, desperate almost now to pull her closer. She obliged, her grip on his shoulders tightened as he circled her ass cheeks and instinctively, they lifted her together until he was rocking directly against her centre. He considered that maybe on a roof top barely concealed from anyone that chose to look and certainly in earshot wasn't exactly his idea of privacy for this moment, but right now, he didn't much care. It was the safest they were going to get and he couldn't wait another minute feeling the heat of her pressed against his now raging hardness.

"Damn." He exclaimed, "God damn it Sam…." He hissed out and kissed her again. He didn't need to explain his exclamation to her, he felt the answering heat in her renewed kisses, like the spark had been lit as she cradled him against her warmth, her grip on his hair becoming tight as she pinned him to her, her hand snaking to his own ass and grasping a fistful that had him groaning deeply. This was heaven he realised. In this woman's arms. This was his reward for saving the damn planet… this was all he needed, this made it all worth it.

"Your perfect… you realise that?" He gasped, sucking on her bottom lip.

"Cute." She smirked, ducking her head and stroking his stubbled jaw.

"Yeah you're that too." He groaned, "So goddamn cute…" He squeezed her ass before realising he could do better and snuck his hands down the back of her pants until he was able to grasp the bare skin of her ass and take a firm globe in each, coming around to liking the lack of underwear out here. She bucked upwards in clear delight as her mouth parted and she sucked long and hard on his tongue, right then the friction of his own leather pants against him was almost too much. He would be damned if after all this god damn time wanting to be inside her, he was going to jizz in his pants when she was inches from him. Fortunately, she seemed to be feeling the same level of urgency as he was and her hands were working feverishly at his pants.

He caught her eye as she struggled with the damn things and he laughed lightly at the ridiculousness as she smirked back up at him.

"Shut up fly boy and help me get your pants off." She hissed, her hands slid into the front as she got them down around his hips and he forgot how to do much of anything other than try his darndest not to embarrass himself. Her long slightly rough engineer's fingers wrapped around him and he grunted, oh God that felt good and he closed his eyes for a moment at the sensation as her warm palm held him tightly, learning his shape and length. He braced himself with his hand on the mattress beside her head as she stroked him firmly and he squeezed the hand still cupping her ass in time with her movements.

"Jesus… 8 years… 8 long, hard years Sam." He hissed, stilling her movements and suppressing her chuckle at his fully intended pun with a swift kiss. "And this is going to be over in 8 seconds if you keep that up." He grabbed her wrist and pulled it off him with regret. She slid her hands back to the task of his pants and together they managed to get them far enough off that he could kick them away. He dropped his head to her stomach and pressed a kiss there. She gasped at the feel of his lips and he slid his hands along her hips and slowly started to unpeel her own pants them until she was lifting her hips and he was sliding them down her thighs with more care than either of them had shown his. His hands traced the path of revealed skin and his lips kissed just above the blonde thatch of hair suddenly in front of him.

"I promise you I will worship you." He muttered, pressing a kiss to it that had her making a strangled sound and bucking up, he pulled back smirking as he pressed kisses up her stomach and along her ribs before he whipped her top up over her head. He was foiled slightly by the expected sight of her glorious breasts, only to find the damn bandage was wrapped around them firmly. He made short work of it, getting it half undone before he gave up and dropped a kiss to the covered skin.

"And I will definitely worship these." He rasped brushing the still covered mounds with his thumbs. "But right now… I just…" He looked up at her almost apologetically slotting his hips over hers as he tried to slow down and utterly failed as his hands seemed to slide all over her skin barely knowing what he wanted to touch first, he just needed her… this, now.

"I know." She arched her hips up against him and let her legs wrap around his waist her eyes sparking with understanding and with the same longing, as the tension they'd built up for years grew heavy between them again. He could feel it tugging at his damn chest, making his skin alert with her closeness, her smell seeping into his skin as his eyes drank in the sight that was finally, wholly for him. His mouth went dry as he confirmed his suspicions, she was fucking perfect.

"We've waited long enough." She rasped dropping her hand back to his length. "I just need you." She admitted and gently guided him to her centre until he was just on the edge, the heat of her tormenting his sensitive head and making him twitch with imagined bliss. He didn't need further encouragement, as he let his arms take the weight and he leant forward, letting her guide him as he flexed his hips and slid into her, one glorious inch at a time.

"Jesus." He managed to get out, closing his eyes at the sheer ecstasy that was her clutching slick heat. "Sam… God Sam." He groaned and bent his head to catch her mouth, inhaling the gasping sound she made as he bottomed out in her. It shouldn't feel so God damn right inside someone else's body he mused.

They didn't speak after that, he wasn't sure if that was because they had no need, or because they were both struck dumb at the feel of each other. He reached up and cradled her face with one hand, letting his other slide down her side, tracing the curve of her body as he began to move inside her, one long hard thrust after another. Sam's lips parted and he pressed his own over them for a moment, swallowing the groan and the sounds she made as he moved inside her. He didn't want to miss a thing, not a single syllable of pleasure from her lips because of him. He let his hand brush through the coarse hair between them until he was cupping her. He wasn't going to last long, not with Sam… and his fingers well he knew enough women that had thought them magic.

"Do you need?" He asked, touching the sensitive little nub he could feel beneath his fingertips. Her nod was emphatic as she threw her head back and bit her lip. Which was forever going to remind him of this moment whenever he saw her make that familiar little gesture. With his touch he felt the change in her movements the hitch and the break in their rhythm as he circled her clit furiously. Her pelvis raised and he focused hard on not coming himself just yet, willing his body to let her reach her climax first as he slid almost out and back in again and again, angling himself towards her pelvis. But he was fighting a losing battle with his rhythm as her arms wound around his back, dropping her hands to his ass and guiding him, harder, deeper, so he went with hers.

"That's it." She panted and he nodded, burying his head in her neck and nipping the skin there. A shudder ran down her and he could feel the way her muscles were fluttering her hips faltering. She was close, he could read her body well enough it seemed.

He let his tongue flick out over her ear as he let his low rumble of a voice wash over her.

"I want you to come for me Samantha." She let out a gasp and the shudder happened again and he grinned against her skin, his breath coming out in sharp bursts with the effort as she pulled him in closer and he pistoned his hips that little bit harder.

"Come on baby." He rasped working his other hand under those damn bandages to finally curve around a breast they were so soft, he squeezed and brushed promising himself he was coming back to these. She arched up into his touch her mouth falling open and her breath seemed to falter as her eyes clenched shut. Her hands tightened and he brushed his thumb harshly over that little nub between her legs and wrapped his lips around a freed nipple that pearled under his attention as he sucked hard. She came around him suddenly and he barked out a sound of his own release as she clamped down hard and damn near milked him for all he was worth. Her legs trembled and she clung so hard to his ass he was going to have Sam's fingernail impressions left there. He spent himself inside her trembling body as he cradled her beneath him, trying not to crush her as he sank down in relief, his limbs shaking slightly from the exertion… and the release.

They lay there, entwined and panting, he hadn't quite found enough strength in his aching knees and trembling arms to roll off her yet. He could still feel his damn pants caught somewhere over his ankles and he glanced down in dismay and realised with his t-shirt still on he'd not even been properly naked. Hell, he still had his damn boots on.

Sam was smiling beneath him naked and glorious her clothes in a haphazard pile around them, including her boots she'd clearly kicked off he noted, impressed, as she pressed her hand over his chest whilst he considered shimmying himself back into his clothes, but decided the effort in that moment would be too great and dropped his head to her chest for a long moment, enjoying the soft length of her beneath him.

"So that happened!" She laughed gently, her eyes sparking and her face flushed in the meagre light provided by the oil lantern.

"Oh yeah." he managed feeling a little drunk with giddiness as he reached out and slid his hand to hold her hips gently. Her hands raked through his hair and she pulled his head up to press an open-mouthed kiss against his lips. The kiss broke naturally and he slipped from her, stroking her cheek and taking her chin in his thumb and forefinger so he could admire the way Sam looked like this, happy and spent beneath him.

Except her eyes were still dancing with desire and he realised she wasn't even remotely done with him. She was going to kill him… he was in his damn 50s, although it was a better way to go than pretty much any other option that had ever presented itself he reasoned. Her hand curled around his hair and she kissed him hard and fast. Her leg wrapped up around him, and he was clearly in a post sex fog, because he didn't immediately recognise the manoeuvre until she had flipped their positions and sat above him straddling his waist and looking smug.

She wasted no time and he lay there almost helpless as her hands went to his sides and she wrestled his shirt up and over his head. Then her hands were on him, on his skin and he felt his eyes shut for a moment just at the sheer wonder of it. Sam Carter was straddling his hips naked and touching his skin with rapt attention. He opened his eyes onto her watching the concentrated expression on her face as she traced her fingertips over his abdomen, enjoying the way his somewhat taut abdominals from all this hard-manual labour had given him as they twitched under her touch.

"You've no idea how long I've wanted to touch you like this." Sam murmured, her hand tracing his happy trail and he groaned reflexively as she followed the path to his hips for a moment. Then her fingers began an entirely new exploration, she found the bullet wounds on his body, the knife marks, the burns, every single blemish she was soothing her fingers over. Most of them he realised she knew… others, he watched her face as she attempted to work out what had caused it. His body was a patchwork of war and a life in service. There were wounds missing thanks to the damn sarcophagus and she found them with unerring accuracy a little frown crossing her face as she traced the burn that was but wasn't over his heart, reminding him that she'd seen what had been done to him with Ba'al thanks to Fifth.

"Your beautiful." She told him quietly, biting her lip as she touched his shoulder, there was no scar there but it seemed like she was intently looking for one. It took him a moment to realise why as it wasn't one of Ba'als. This was earlier… much earlier, back to a time when a futuristic time-capsule had skewered him and left him pinned, dangling from the wall as alien bacteria colonised his damn brain.

"No trauma remember. It healed me." He reminded, reaching up to touch her hand as she brushed his skin.

"This one was my fault." She admitted softly and he looked up surprised, he wasn't quite sure how she figured that. "I made you take it." She explained. "Then I caused it to activate. Then I made it damn near kill you with my damn plan to free you." She lowered her head and pressed a kiss to the unmarked skin just above his chest.

"I thought I'd killed you." She admitted barely above a whisper her eyes met his and he saw a deeper pain than he thought the event merited and he wondered at it.

"That was the first time I knew that I was in trouble with you, because all I could think was 'not you', 'anyone but you'." She confessed to his surprise, he hadn't known that, never would have guessed.

"I held off the solution until it was almost too late, because I wasn't sure if you'd survive it." She looked down at him then.

His fingers brushed up and touched the small scar on her abdomen she'd gotten from a cell mate when they'd regressed, after she'd all but thrown herself at him in the locker room.

"I punched out Daniel after this you know, when he was just that bit 'too' concerned." He admitted quietly, "Because primitive or not… I knew what I wanted, who I wanted." He offered, letting her know he'd been just as affected by her even back then.

Sam covered his hand with hers, then lifted it gently across her skin, asking him to explore her. He sat up, sliding her legs firmly around his waist and slotting her there like she belonged. They fit perfectly he realised quietly with a surge of desire that lit up deep in his belly and his dick flared to life again. He glanced down in mild surprise, that hadn't happened so quickly in a few years. Considering he'd been concerned he might embarrass himself in her hand a few minutes ago, he was especially pleased.

Her lips parted in what he thought was delighted surprise as she felt him between her thighs, which he was mildly affronted by. Her lips curved into a smile.

"Really…?" She asked a little 'too' coyly as she ran her hands along the hairs on the back of his neck, taking an ear lobe in her mouth and sucking it gently as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Advanced human remember… superior genetics." He grinned a little smugly and she responded by swotting his chest with an annoyed chuckle.

"Nothing to do with me then?" She pouted.

He sighed, trying to ignore the little party in his pants at the idea that maybe he wasn't too decrepit just yet, for his still thirty-something, hotter than hell partner.

"Oh trust me it's got everything to do with you Sam, and that kissable mouth," he pulled her chest against his, enjoying the soft warmth there as he kissed her, "wicked tongue," he nipped at it, "delicious breasts," he palmed them softly as he swept his hands over her body, "gorgeous hips," he gripped her there, tilting himself just so that she could feel what it was she did to him again "and these divine, long, long legs," he groaned as he swept a hand along the sheer toned length of them.

"No mention of my ass?" She teased, grabbing one of his hands and placing it there.

"Your ass is… unmentionable." He growled into her shoulder pressing a kiss there, squeezing a handful.

"God your corny." She smirked tugging his head up and pressing a kiss to his chin.

"Guilty as charged." He sighed, "But you know, don't go telling anyone, ruins my gruff General's mystique."

Her hand slipped between them and he inhaled sharply as she encircled him again.

"So, this is where all those advanced Ancient genes of yours went." She rasped against his lips wickedly and he bit down on his own lip for a moment as he opened his eyes onto hers with a flash, watching as she smirked with satisfaction at the reaction she was causing. All the while stroking him long and firm as he bucked slowly into her hand, coming back to life at her determined touch.

"This and your ass." She flirted and he took mild offence, he could still feel her grip on his ass from earlier and he knew had he a mirror he'd have seen little moon shaped crescents marking him.

"I thought you liked my pretty face too?" He groaned as she squeezed the head of his dick with just a little more pressure, learning what he liked quickly, with a few quick gestures and then a slow one now they weren't in the heat of the moment, until he was growing long and hard at her insistence, his balls ached slightly at the reminder he'd recently used them.

"I like all of you." She admitted softly, her expression unbelievably tender given as what she was doing and it left him with a light feeling in his chest. He'd not expected to have anyone look at him like that again.

He dropped his head to her neck and groaned into her skin at the smell and the sense of her there. This was heaven he decided once more. The Apocalypse beyond this little Sanctuary they'd developed could go fuck itself because he had everything he needed right here in his arms at last. He let his head duck lower until he could take one taut pink nipple in his mouth with a sigh as his other hand found the other one. His brain short circuited for a moment as he was finally able to appreciate the fact that his hands and mouth were on Sam's breasts. The breasts that had tormented and aroused him for years, breasts that felt gloriously soft and heavy. One pearling nipple resting on his tongue he focused on teasing it to tautness loving the way her breath hitched in response. She threw her head back exposing the long column of her throat and Jack focused on the sounds she was making, he wanted to hear them all again, find new ones he could have her make.

He dropped one hand to her thigh as she sat across his lap and lifted her leg up his hip a little opening her wider. He took his time tracing his fingers over the revealed flesh before an impatient huff from her drew his head up and he kept his eyes on her as he slid his fingers down, brushing her thighs and then her outer lips. Her mouth parted and her eyes held his, widening as she let out a sharp exhale as he stroked her, her fingers falling slack around his own stiffness with distraction. That was the look he wanted to remember, the look the first time he touched her like this properly, when he could take his time, learn exactly what she liked, where, how hard, his fingers itched to make it part of his muscle memory.

"Do you know how many times I thought about this when I was lying across from you in a tent." He murmured, stroking and rubbing her intently as she gasped at both the words and the touch.

"Probably about as often I as did." She groaned as he circled her clit. It was small and liked a bit of heavier attention he'd noted earlier, and he swiped his thumb back and forth over it now, drawing it out. Even here she was a tease he realised… but then he and his blue balls had known that for years about the good Doctor-Captain. God that first meeting still made his stomach clench with the flash of arousal. Maybe there wasn't love at first sight but there was definitely 'lust at first sight' and he'd imagined a thousand ways of putting his 'outside reproductive organ into her inside ones'.

"Did you ever touch yourself?" She gasped as he dipped one finger inside her for the first time, her eyes closed as she shuddered around him and he started playing with her breast with his free hand, tracing a path with his tongue around the other nipple.

"No… Colonel, I was on duty." He growled in indignation he had been her CO for crying out loud. He bit gently on the fleshy underside of the breast he'd been giving attention making her let out an almost squeak which he really enjoyed.

"But let's just say I may not have made it out of the base showers before having to… de-stress once or twice." He confessed.

She laughed lightly, her hand coming up to the back of his head and playing with the small hairs on the base of his skull again which he realised he really liked, but she sounded pleased rather than freaked out by his lecherous behaviour. Although he noticed she didn't make a similar confession, clearly she was better at impulse control of the two of them. He added a second finger and she let out a sound as close to a groan as he'd heard her make yet and he grinned around her nipple. He looked up to see the way her mouth parted as she arched her hips closer into him, seeking out more. She caught his mouth again and kissed him as he added a third.

"Oh god." She gasped and he pressed a kiss to her temple. "I used to imagine your hands… your fingers on me." She confessed panting around them now.

He nodded. "Really?" He focused on them now, pushing as far in as he could and cupping her as he did so, trying to angle it just right as he worked out just where it was that she needed him. She let out a soft cry as he got something right and clutched at her own hair, pulling it roughly as if she liked the tension and he filed that little fact away for later. He kept up the pressure of his thumb alternating between the sweeping caress and the heel of his hand as he increased the pace. Her rocking movements sending friction straight into his dick which was almost weeping now with the need to be exactly where his fingers were. He wanted her to come like this he realised. But she was fighting it.

"Please… Jack," her hand was reaching down for him and he knew what she wanted, but he wanted this more.

"It's okay," he soothed, "Just let me do this for you." He pressed his forehead against hers, he wanted to do this for him too, she might have imagined his hands on her, but he most definitely had. His fingers were slick when he picked up the pace, her eyes fluttering and her hips starting to buck against his hand. It didn't take long and he filed away that fact

about her too. Her eyes opened just as she came and he gripped onto her ass tightly with one hand as he pushed her through it as she gasped and threw her head back. God she was as perfect in that moment as he'd imagined as she shuddered over him, her legs trembling faintly around his hips, her mouth wide open and panting with only the barest groan to give her away, as a blush of red travelled down from her neck to her chest that he followed with rapt attention as she exposed the long column of her throat. Rocking on his lap, he took that as an invitation and he worried the skin on her throat with his teeth, not quite hard enough to mark but enough to make her clutch at his shoulders as she gasped and clenched around his fingers.

"Jack." She rasped and he smirked, he could stand to hear her say his name like that again and again. She leant back panting an eager smile on her lips that promised he wasn't nearly done as she reached for him again with renewed fervour, her hands loosely around his neck.

"One day we'll do this somewhere more private… you know with a door… walls." He promised as he trailed his hands up and down her bare back tracing the spine until he settled them over her hips as he rocked her gently against him.

She chuckled, looking amused. "Oh wow Jack… you really know how to spoil a girl."

"Oh yeah, five-star accommodation." He rasped, lifting her hips slightly and shifting her back enough that his near painfully hard dick could slide into her with ease as she rocked over him. Her hiss of pleasure as he bumped her pelvis and sensitive clit she let her head fall back and she stared up at the sky.

"It looks like a lot more than Five stars to me." She gasped and he let his head fall back too, to take in what she was seeing. And he smiled wildly because he was making love to Samantha Carter on a rooftop under a starry sky.

They took their time, in no rush as they clung to each other, hands exploring skin that had been forbidden for too damn long, tracing scars and smooth skin that wasn't always that way and scars that never were. His mouth covered hers and they learnt to breathe together. He came with a shudder her name spilling from his lips as they rocked and he gasped at the feel of her hands over his face swallowing the sound as she kept on kissing him like she was afraid it might be the last time she'd get the chance.

"Thank you." He murmured against her lips, then stroked her cheek, tilting her head to press a kiss to her temple; because honestly, he couldn't remember ever being more grateful than he was in that moment.

"I knew you'd be worth the wait." She replied, dropping her head onto his shoulder. "That we'd be worth the wait." He smiled and reached up and cradled her cheeks.

"Yeah?" He pressed a kiss to her nose.

"Yeah." She grinned, shifting so that he slipped out of her and she rocked back off his aching legs and he tried not to groan in relief. She laughed lightly, her eyes glinting at him and he could take comfort in the knowledge that she was happy, that he'd made her happy. She reached around him and grabbed the blanket he kept up here tucked under the shelter.

"Mind if I bunk with you?" She posed, like somehow Samantha Carter wanting to share a bed… possibly naked, wasn't totally a gift.

"I do mind actually, your frankly completely unappealing as a bed mate." He quipped and she swatted him, as she wrapped the blanket around her and dropped back onto the pallet with the big Vault mattress they'd just thoroughly christened. She smirked and lifted the blanket indicating he should get under with her.

"Is this you generously offering to share my bed with me." He growled crawling towards her and slipping under taking the opportunity to press her back into the mattress for a moment.

"Shut up and roll over fly boy, you have the best mattress, probably on the continent at this rate." She ordered and he complied because… yeah. He lay back, putting one hand behind his head as she snuggled up next to him, resting her head on his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her.

"This okay?" She asked gently, sounding slightly nervous now and he thought he understood, they were suddenly breaching an entirely new form of intimacy. No matter how many times they'd curled up together since being here, this time was different, sleeping together after sleeping together. Although he thought it was ironic that she was the one asking that. He grinned and pressed a kiss to the top of her blonde head, holding her closer and settling in.

"I dunno you going to steal the blanket…?" He teased, not sure why he was suddenly afraid of a tender moment, worried maybe that she'd think on it if they got too comfortable and decide this was all a terrible mistake.

Sam frowned and looked up at him. "What?"

"Nothin." He shrugged, her expression said she knew otherwise. "You strike me as a blanket hog." He deflected smirking down at her as she rolled her eyes at him, accepting his avoidance tactics that she knew only too well it seemed.

"Are you ever serious?" She huffed.

"Not if I can help it." He replied glibly as she wrapped her arm around him and slid her legs along his making him another kind of blanket entirely which he wasn't about to give up anytime soon.

"So, you're a snuggler huh?" He grinned down at her, "I can live with that." They lapsed into silence for a little while, neither of them seemed sure what to say now.

"Did this feel… real?" He asked gently when the question refused to stay down any longer despite his best efforts. She shifted against him and despite her closed lids he was certain she was still awake; he'd learnt the patterns of her breathing when asleep, sharing a tent in the silence off world somewhere. He didn't want to break the moment, but he needed to be sure where her head was at, after everything she'd unloaded tonight. Again, he was hit with a flicker of concern that he'd taken advantage of her fragile emotional state, but she was a grown woman, and he couldn't second guess her decisions not if they were truly going to be partners in this.

Her hand rubbed gently over his chest. "This is real." She confirmed softly and he nodded.

"And really intense." She admitted and his eyebrows had knit themselves into a frown that she lifted her finger to soothe. "In a good way Jack. Very good." She smiled and he felt relief flood him, making sure his former 2IC, who he'd just thoroughly obliterated the regs they used to live by, hadn't decided this was all a dream in the dark of the night, hadn't exactly been something he'd been handed a rule book for.

She leant in and kissed him softly letting him return it before she raised her hand to stroke the lips she'd just claimed. "You have my permission to be justifiably smug if you want." She replied, her thumb stroked his lips and he pressed a kiss to it.

"That's good." He cleared his throat, tamping down on the emotion he felt bubbling up out of his damn chest. "Wouldn't have wanted to disappoint a lady, not having made her wait 8 years to get her hands on all this." She giggled and he couldn't stop smiling as he guided her head back to rest on the pillow of his arm.

"Oy, we have a rule remember, no giggling." She sighed and lifted her hand to brush across his chest in an easy pattern, content he hoped to feel the closeness they'd been holding back from all these years.

It was almost perfect… except for you know… the end of the world outside this bubble.

"Go to sleep." She mumbled against him and he snorted, she always had gone out like a light and didn't appreciate someone getting between her and shut eye once she'd decided to go.

But sleep was evasive. If he was honest, this was not where he'd expected the day to take him as he'd looted a mutant troll-things corpse this morning. Hell, if Old Mama Murphy had told him he'd end the day with the taste of Sam on his lips, her confession of love ringing in his ears, her body wrapped around his… he'd have told her to go fuck herself. Because that was the culmination of his wants right there and he'd honestly started to doubt they'd ever get there. Especially not with what was apparently floating around her head. And yet, she was here, Sam in his bed, wrapped in his arms, wanting to be there. But he supposed one night didn't a relationship-make, and there was still the morning after. So he kept his own declarations close to his chest. He'd told her, just not in so many words, but if this thing between them petered out, then he needed to be able to cobble something of his shattered heart, and probably his soul back together.

His sleep situation wasn't helped any by the fact that the night air was sweltering, dead and oppressive without a breeze and he lay there naked beneath the blanket sweating and not inclined at all to move from the blonde heat source next to him. He recalled what Preston had told him about the last winter here in the Commonwealth, how they'd spent it shivering huddled together around fires at night to stay warm in drafty old buildings. They'd need to make things air tight by then if they were going to get by. But then, maybe they'd be in this Castle of Preston's. He'd been talking about it all the way home from the Supermutant camp. Apparently there was this old Castle out on the East coast, defensible position, good strong walls it used to be the Minutemen's HQ before something drove them out, it sounded good, so long as that something wasn't still there, and it hadn't all crumbled to ruin of course. But he was also keenly aware that a place like that was designed not to need central heating, trapping warmth in the stone. Preston had made no bones about the fact that he wanted him to lead the charge. Take back the Castle… take back the Commonwealth.

Jack sighed staring up at the stars here he was on an alternate future Earth, and apparently, he was still being pushed into being 'The Man'. He'd always led people, now apparently right when he was thinking about retiring, he might need to lead in the worst way. Through hope and by example in a broken world where everyone probably should have just rolled over and died. But they didn't, they soldiered on, he could respect that. Admire it even. Heck he admired the hell out of Preston. The man had no formal training, not really, just a lifetime of war, which was enough in Jack's book, although his morality was a little too black and white for Jack's taste, he figured if they spent enough time together the guy might go off him in a big way when he worked out that Jack wasn't the type of General or soldier that hadn't gotten his hands dirty.

Then there was Sam, he stroked his hand down her arm, admiring the freckles he hadn't let himself notice before. Taking Sam from these people would be a blow, but she'd done what was needed, she'd turned this place into a technological fortress as best she could, fresh water, strong defences. But as Marcie had proven… Sam didn't fit in here. She was too beautiful, too brilliant, too something else, especially for suburbia… and most especially for the damn Wastes. He sighed. Was it wrong that the idea of holing up in a castle with her didn't seem like the worst plan? Although he knew she'd murder him slowly if he suggested locking her in a tower… not that he thought she was some damsel, he just wanted her safe and out here that came with a hefty price tag. Sam was a gift to any settlement he reasoned, saving them one fixed piece of civilisation after another. He'd called her a light… his light. Maybe she was, but even he'd seen that light dim out here and he ran his hand over his mouth, feeling it dry. She'd left it up to him, he'd told her he wanted to make a go of the Minutemen and she'd essentially told him she'd follow that lead. Not because she had to anymore, but because she wanted to.

Lead. Why was everyone always looking to him for Leadership. He just… saw a problem and tried his darndest to fix it, that was his style of leadership. Problem was, when he looked around this world, all he saw were a whole bunch of things that needed fixing. Maybe that was it then, maybe it was time for a change, they'd done all they could here in Sanctuary, more than they'd promised at any rate. They'd made a community and a safe home for these people. And more and more people were coming every day to help them grow it, keep it.

If he was going to Lead the Minutemen, help these people have more than just 'tomorrow', then he couldn't hide away here. He needed to be out there, in the thick of it, building an army of Minutemen, a community that could actually look out for each other across the Wastes. Hope. Damn that was a hell of word to hang on his head, but that's what he was trying to fix now. These people were hopeless and that sat all kinds of wrong with him. He glanced down at the woman sleeping in his arms. He'd had his faith restored, his hope rewarded. He had to do right by her… as her CO, ex-CO, friend… lover, he had no idea what to call them, but it seemed deeper than some corny label. Of course she'd kick his ass out of the fine shape she seemed to like it in if she heard him talking about being 'responsible' for her, but he was. He always had been, sleeping with her just made him feel that more keenly.

So yeah… he slid his hand behind his head and stared up at the stars. Okay. He could do this. Bring hope to the hopeless… spread a little love. Probably have to shoot a butt load of people and nasties to achieve it, but nothing worth doing was ever easy. A grin split his features momentarily, when he considered… who didn't want their own Castle?