Author's note: Once again, thanks so much to those who are reading and reviewing!
Sam followed Jack through the city, not really caring where they were headed, but trusting him to take her where she needed to go.
As he easily carved a path through the corridors, it hit her how much time he'd spent wandering these halls. His familiarity with the layout of Atlantis felt like a physical manifestation of the distance between them over the past couple of months and - more specifically - the past couple of weeks. Sam knew that it had been a tactical advantage earlier in the day, but a part of her wished he felt as lost walking around the city as she did now.
She'd been here before, but her trip had been brief and hadn't allowed for any exploring. The place still felt foreign to her. It wasn't to him.
It unsettled her, that they didn't have the same list of un-foreign off-world places anymore. She wondered if it bothered him that there were worlds she'd been to that he'd never seen.
At some point, Jack grabbed her hand and she let him, no longer caring if anyone saw them holding hands. What was the point of discretion, she wondered, when she could lose him so easily?
What did she care if a handful of co-workers in another galaxy saw her acting less than professional with a man she'd wasted far too many years acting completely professional with?
Sam could have lost Jack like she lost Daniel.
She didn't want to waste a single moment with him.
Jack led her through a set of doors. She felt a light breeze on her face and the warmth of the sun on her skin.
"Wait."
She tugged on Jack's hand and he turned around.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
Sam recognized the concern in his expression. She'd seen it on his face far too many times.
She didn't want to waste a moment.
"I just...I love you. You know that, right?"
The words weren't new between them, but she felt a desperate urge to make sure he understood how much he meant to her.
Sam couldn't read all of the emotions that moved across his face before he schooled his expression, but she thought she saw a hint of doubt. Was it possible that Jack still didn't believe the depth of her feelings for him?
He tugged on her hand to get her moving, but she stood still.
"'Course I know," he finally answered with a smirk, "McKay told me."
That sense of humor that she loved was also something he used as a defense mechanism.
"I'm trying to be serious."
Jack dropped her hand.
"I know and I love you too."
He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn't. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head towards the pier.
"Come on, we're not there yet."
"Jack, what's wrong?"
It felt like a silly question to be asking after everything they'd both been through. So many things had gone wrong recently, but the two of them had also been extremely lucky to emerge unscathed.
It just seemed like something was more fragile between them than it should be and she didn't know why.
She watched as he considered lying to her and then decided not to.
"Don't read anything into it. My brain's just been recently scrambled and I keep having these flashes."
"Flashes?"
One of Jack's hands moved from his pockets to scratch the back of his neck. He looked uncomfortable.
"Flashes from my chats with the Replicators earlier. I'm fine. It'll fade as the headache does."
Sam had insisted she was fine after she'd been tortured by Fifth too. It hadn't been until much later that she realized how much she let her experiences there affect her choices and personal life. She'd thrown herself back into a relationship with Pete that hadn't been working just to prove to herself that Fifth's impersonation of the man hadn't broken her.
"What do you see in the flashes?" she asked.
"I don't know, Sam," he sighed, "it's just flashes. You, me, a guest appearance by my least favorite System Lord. The overwhelming sense that I'm going to lose you one way or another."
He went to run a hand through his hair, but she grabbed it and used it to pull him one step closer to her.
"I'm not going anywhere, Jack. You're stuck with me."
Whatever had happened with the Replicators must've done a number on him. He was the one who'd almost died out here, not her.
She wanted to promise that he'd never lose her, but with her job that was a promise that she couldn't make. She wished she could.
Instead, she squeezed his hand and told him something that she hoped would cheer him up.
"On that last mission, I broke Ba'al's nose with a right hook. I was about half a second away from shooting him too."
He glanced over in surprise. Then his lips curved into a proud smile.
"Wish I could've seen that."
"I'll be sure to get Cam to film it next time."
Sam didn't doubt that if she ran into Ba'al again, she'd be more than happy to resort to violence.
He squeezed her hand back and it settled something in her.
"You do that," Jack replied. "And Sam, the flashes will fade."
She was pretty sure that when he said flashes, he really meant the unexpected sense of uncertainty that had been shaken loose by these recent emotional earthquakes.
"They always do," she agreed.
He nodded and his body relaxed. She didn't realize how tightly he'd been holding himself until that moment. It would probably take them both a while to come down from everything that had happened recently.
Jack gave her a soft smile.
"Let me show you my pier."
They walked, hand-in-hand, until they reached the edge where Atlantis met the water.
"It's beautiful out here."
Sam felt calmer just looking at the ocean and feeling the breeze. She understood why Jack decided to bring her out here when the thoughts of Daniel lost and alone threatened to pull her under back in the infirmary.
"Yes, it is." He gestured to a spot in front of them where the edge of the pier was smooth and slightly concave. "Pull up a chair."
They sat down on the edge of the pier, asses in the shallow dip of the metallic surface and feet hanging over the edge. Jack put his arm around Sam's shoulder, hugging her close.
"This is my favorite spot in the city. I spent a lot of time out here over the past couple weeks."
"Pretending to fish?" she asked.
"Wishing I was with you."
After all the years of hiding how they felt about each other, Sam was still caught off guard sometimes when he was blunt and honest like that.
"I spent a lot of time over the past couple weeks wishing I was with you too."
He tapped his fingers on the surface of the pier before setting his hand back on his thigh. He was stalling for time. It probably wasn't even on purpose, but Jack fidgeted sometimes when he wasn't exactly sure what to say.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when Daniel went missing. I should've been."
Sam wasn't expecting the conversation to turn back to that.
"He stuck his head in that damn repository, Jack! Even after knowing what you went through, he thought he'd be the exception. He's so arrogant sometimes."
It wasn't until that moment that Sam realized that as distraught as she was over losing Daniel, she was also pissed at the man for forcing her to mourn him again.
Daniel hadn't even waited to talk to her before putting his head in that machine. A part of her suspected - just like she had that second time Jack downloaded an Ancient repository into his brain, beating the archaeologist to the device by mere seconds - that Daniel's desire for knowledge surpassed his instincts for self-preservation.
Didn't Daniel understand that they needed him?
Jack's hand squeezed her shoulder, grounding her.
"We'll find him, Sam."
This was what she had needed all week - Jack O'Neill's confident voice telling her that it was going to be okay. She leaned her head against his shoulder.
"I know. I just wish..." Her voice trailed off.
"Yeah, me too."
After that, there wasn't much to say about Daniel - or maybe there was still too much to put into words - so they sat there in silence watching the waves crash against the pier.
In spite of that, sitting out here with Jack was helping her feel better. All of the pieces that had felt shattered by recent events were knitting back together.
There was no quick fix to what had happened with Daniel, and Sam was sure that she and Jack would have to deal with professional and emotional consequences from the events on Atlantis, but she felt confident in a way she hadn't before that they would get through this.
"Landry is going to be a pain to deal with," Jack admitted. "And he won't be the only one. You all ignored a lot of orders coming here. Some of them were even mine."
"Technically," Sam said, "Nobody gave me any orders in the first place. I was on leave. Can't exactly break the rules if no one tells you what they are."
He grinned at her before his smile faded.
"The rest of them don't have the same loophole."
"We've done the same thing hundreds of times," Sam said. "You would have done it for me if I was stuck out here."
"I know."
She knew it was times like these that he didn't like being the one in a position of authority. Jack O'Neill had always been more comfortable bending the rules than having to enforce them.
"They'll have locked out all of our IDCs and invalidated our personal authentication codes. The Daedalus will need to make contact with the SGC to get all of our codes reactivated. Or rather, yours. I'm probably going to have to go to the trouble of memorizing new ones after that mind probe."
Neither of them wanted to spend three weeks on the Daedalus to get home, so she hoped that Landry would let them return through the Stargate.
Jack played with the edge of his shirt.
"I'm really glad they didn't blow up the Midway Station like they were supposed to. Getting that budget approved was awful."
Sam could see the strain pull at Jack's face and she knew that he was thinking of meetings and budgets and inquiries and everything else he'd have to deal with when they got back to Earth. She wondered if it would spur another round of thoughts about retiring. He kept threatening to give it all up, but she thought it would be a while before he followed through.
He liked keeping busy, but she suspected that the main reason he kept his job was because he wanted to be in the position to help if she and the others they cared about were ever in trouble.
"You're not really going to fire them for coming to your rescue, are you?" she asked.
The crystal blue water spread out for miles in front of them, the reflection of the sun making the waves shine bright.
"Of course not," he replied. "If I was going to fire them, I'd have to fire you and we all know I'm never going to do that."
He grabbed his sunglasses with his left hand and put them on.
"For one thing, it would be a hell of a lot of paperwork, and then they'd just go and hire you back anyway since I don't have the authority to fire you. Also, I have no desire to sleep on the couch when we get back home."
"It was their idea to mount a rescue. They're the reason I'm here with you right now."
She didn't spell it out, but she was just so relieved that they'd gotten here in time and that the worst hadn't come to pass.
"Yeah, Carter, don't think I'm not a little annoyed you didn't plan out a rescue yourself."
There was no force behind the mock-aggrieved tone in his voice.
"I didn't even find out what had happened until they were already in the SGC causing trouble." She reached up to tangle her fingers with the hand resting by her shoulder. "No one told me, Jack. I only found out because I caught them taking the ARGs."
Sam squeezed his hand and tried not to let the "what if"s overwhelm her.
"Someone should have told me," she whispered, her gaze focused on the water in front of her.
Just thinking about what it would have been like if she'd been sitting at home unaware while he faced potential death in a different galaxy made her chest hurt.
He was supposed to be safe now. She shouldn't still have to worry that he might get himself killed out in the field.
Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked rapidly to prevent them from falling.
What if Jack had died and she'd been forced to hear about it through the SGC rumor mill?
"Yes, Sam. Someone should have told you."
Sam took a shaky breath, turned her head towards him, and half-attempted a smile to show that she was fine.
Jack pulled his arm off her shoulder and shifted to face her, grabbing her left hand with his right.
"In fact," he continued, "I was thinking there might be some legal way we could be placed at the top of each other's in case of emergency call lists."
"Yeah?"
He pushed the sunglasses on top of his head.
"You know, some paperwork, some vows, that type of thing."
His thumb ran over the ring finger on her left hand.
"Only if you want."
She wasn't surprised that his proposal took this understated format. Jack O'Neill didn't do big gestures in the same way other people did. He might suggest "some vows" as a way to move her up his emergency contact list, but he also asked her to marry him on another planet on a sunny morning, looking out over an alien ocean after saving the day yet again. It suited them.
"I like that plan," she replied.
"Yeah?" he asked, a grin spreading across his face.
She turned her hand over in his and interlaced their fingers together.
"Obviously. How am I supposed to keep saving your ass if there isn't a formal way for people to tattle to me when you've gotten yourself in trouble?"
Jack laughed.
"You can save my ass anytime, Carter."
Sam was so happy to see him smiling, that she leaned against him and pressed her lips to his.
Jack opened his mouth to hers and set a hand on her hip to steady her. Their kisses were less desperate than the ones they'd exchanged earlier, but they warmed Sam from the inside. She couldn't wait to get back to their bed in Colorado Springs and celebrate properly.
They kissed with a consuming, unhurried rhythm. Sam had the brief thought that the edge of the pier probably wasn't the safest place for these activities, but neither of them would get too carried away right now. His hand continued to rest on her hip, thumb moving in a soft caress.
Sam moved her hands up his arms, intending to slide one around his neck and thread the fingers of the other through his soft, short hair.
She felt a little guilty when the movement of her hands knocked his sunglasses and she heard them clank against the metallic surface of the pier and then splash in the water below.
"My favorite shades, Sam," he mumbled against her lips with half-hearted admonishment.
Her hands completed the movement they'd started before the whole sunglasses fiasco and wrapped around his neck.
"I'll make it up to you," she promised, before tugging him towards her for another kiss.
Sam let herself sink into the moment - in the touch and taste of the man she loved...the man she was going to marry.
This pier was officially her favorite place on Atlantis too.