Hello everybody,
first of all, thank you for the reviews to the first part of this little story! I really appreciate every single one of them.
And now to the obvious part: Here is a second part to the story around the Empty Room. I really didn't intend to write any more pieces, it was meant to be a one shot but it looks like the part of my brain that goes rough while writing, had other plans. So, this happened. We meet our favourit couple again, after saying their good byes on the dock. And as far as I know that rough part of my brain, there might be more. So, let's see, where this takes us.
But for now: I hope you enjoy this next round of angsty one on one time between the one General and one Colonel who keep popping up in my head. I'd love to read your reviews and like always: Charakters and backstory not mine, just borrowed them for some fun.
Sam takes another of the collapsed cardboard boxes from the stack next to her lab door and folds it into it's rectangular shape. It's the fifth and she had no idea, how much stuff has accumulated over the past nine years in this room. It seems like every cabinet holds another memory, another memento to a certain time or a special event. She never knew, she'd be the one who would hold onto little keepsakes like this, but she found pictures, framed and unframed, scribbled notes on post its, children's drawings from the kids of Orban and so much more. Much of it feels to Sam like it has been a lifetime ago and some feel like just a couple of days old. But all of them remind her how far she's come. It's a silent knock against the frame of her lab door that pulls her out of her thoughts and when she looks up, there he is. Balancing two plates with what looks like key lime pie in one hand while slowly letting the other sink back to his side. It is the first time since she left Minnesota, that she sees him again. They both retreated into their own spaces, a silent agreement to nurse their wounds apart from each other. It's been a week of carefully scheduling her days under the mountain around his habits to not run into him by mistake. But all it did was reminding her painfully clear, how well she knows him. How tuned into him, she is.
"Am I interrupting?" He asks, looking around her organized mess and Sam shakes her head once. "No, just packing." She shrugs, gesturing to the pile of boxes behind her lab table and frowns with another small shrug. He never asked, he always just came in and planted himself on the spare chair she made sure to always keep empty for him. Even if she was occupied with anything, she never made him leave. He sat down, started to play with the thin flashlight or the multi tool or one of her pens until she finished whatever she was doing. Him asking now is just another reminder, that things have changed. That things are about to change even more. He nods slightly, looking down on the pie and seemingly just now remembering, what he actually was about to say. "Pie?" He lifts the two plates a couple of inches but in his mind, his thoughts are racing.
First, he's glad, she didn't throw him out of her space immediately. Second, he is even more glad, there wasn't a 'Sir' falling off her lips, like so many times before. "Key lime?" She asks, already making space on her workbench and he nods, slowly stepping in and pushing the door closed behind him. He just feels too vulnerable to keep the door open for anybody to wander in on them today. Vulnerability isn't something, he usually would admit to feel. But today it's the closest to describing what he's actually feeling.
He's been off balance, ever since returning from Minnesota. He tried to stay at home for some time but in the end he decided for the solitude of his quarters on base instead of the solitude of his quiet home. Just for the feeling of a bit of normality and if he's honest with himself, just for the chance of him running into her. But the more time passed, the more he got the impression, she's actively avoiding that.
"Yep." There is a small smile tugging at the edge of her lips, when he sets down the plates and produces two forks from the breast pocket of his green BDU shirt. He'll probably never forget the glee in her eyes, when she found out for the first time, that the commissary offers key lime every so often. And then, there is this pang of melancholia again. Her smiling eyes on him, her wind chime laughter lighting up a room.
When her fingers brush against his, taking the fork from him, he lingers, taking in the softness of her elegant fingers against his and his stubborn brain makes him remember, what those elegant hands felt like on his chest, on his neck, in his hair and tracing his lips in a moment of pure awe. He doesn't know, if it's the same thoughts, running through her brilliant brain, but she ducks her face, taking down her eyes, letting her bangs shade her gaze and there it is again; the Sam, he didn't know until the week in the cabin. The private side of her, the insecure part of her, she usually hides behind the opaque shield the uniform and the regulations provide. It's bitter sweet, that she still steps around it for him. That she still opens up. That she's still the woman Samantha and not just the soldier Carter.
When she finally pulls back, his gaze falls to the stack of pictures right next to her hand. Team photos from off world that they couldn't bring home with them. They probably all have a stack of those somewhere hidden in a cabinet or a drawer somewhere on base. All the action and danger aside, they have had a lot of fun this past decade. Companionable evenings around campfires and long hikes through foreign woods, day-long journeys in spaceships and lavish parties on alien planets. Exploring and seeing things, nobody in their right mind would belief if told. They literally had the galaxy at the tips of their fingers. Thousands of worlds, wonders behind every corner of the way and memories that last for more than a lifetime just one step through an event horizon away.
"May I?" He asks, his hand hovering over the stack of pictures and Sam just nods, watching him picking up the stack and slowly flicking through the unsorted pictures until he reaches the one, she's been trying to hide from herself. It's one of the two of them, sitting next to each other; a snapshot, Daniel took out of a mood. Sitting way closer than it was needed in that instance, but they didn't care. Sam laughs about something probably Daniel said, one of her legs pulled up against her chest, her elbow resting on top of her knee and her eyes on Jack. Open, soft and oh so in love. If he didn't know better, he'd swear he's looking at a picture of a happy couple. If he didn't know better that just a couple of days later, they'd face immanent death with a blue shimmering energy field between them, pouring all the truth of their situation into a single gaze, into a single, desperate 'no'.
If he didn't know, that they put their jobs before anything else, their live on the backburner, their happiness not as important as their job and for the first time in a very long time, he wonders if that cost was too high. What has he been fighting for the past decade if not to come home to his happiness? And there has been more than one instance, when everything that kept him going was the certainty that he has just to live another day, to see those blue eyes again, to make her smile again.
They never even have been close to be the couple, he dreamed them to be. But they never not where that couple either. Not, when he was lost on Edora and despite trying to mute his sorrow in the arms of another woman, not when he came back after his rough undercover mission when she crumbled on his porch while trying to navigate the hurtful feeling of him dressing her down without leashing out, not when she was lost with the Prometheus when he threatened to be crushed under the weight of his own despair in fear of loosing her for good, not when he took that damned Tok'Ra symbiote to survive for her, not when he shot her to prevent the Entity to leave base, his worst nightmare becoming reality. And most certainly not, when they decided that whatever it was, is over on the dock of his pond in Minnesota a mere week ago. Since then, there is distance. Literally and figuratively. Distance that hurts in every fiber of his being.
"Are we okay?" His words are just above a whisper, probably a little more plea than question. He isn't good with words, he never was, he isn't the talkative kind and his love language is touch not words or acts of service or whatever else the shrink tried to call it at that one session he allowed himself to dwell on the one thing he never let that guy see before or after. But she is out of reach, the distance too vast, the space too thick to cross. Since last week on that dock, he feels like he's been set out in the cold. Darkness around him taking away the ability to navigate so he's just floating in that awkward state between the end of something and the start of something new. Usually it is not too hard for him to find that new start, to gain his footing again and to hit the ground running, not looking back. But this is different. This feels wrong. The floor is out of reach but so is the ceiling and everything in between is just chaos in the dark.
He never liked the ocean, not the vast distance, not the deep dips buried under thousands of feet of water. But right now, he feels like he's floating right in the middle. Not drowning, not being chased around by violent waves, but just floating. Going nowhere and everywhere at the same time. And then, there are her blue eyes, way too big in her pale face under her slightly too long bangs finally finding his again, tearing away her gaze from his thumb on the photo, covering the hand of her former self as if that's the only contact he can keep on her. "Are we?" She asks instead of answering him. Not because she wants to mess with him or because she expects anything of him but because he isn't floating alone. She's with him in exactly the same spot, in the darkness, not knowing where to go next. Abandoned by the only certainty that lead them the way through the mayhem, their life has been on so many occasions in the past decade. When they were okay, life was still going on. When they were okay, the world would be saved by the end of the day. When they were okay, nobody and nothing had a chance against the force of nature they could unleash. But are they okay?
"They were okay." He looks back down on the photo in his hand and sees her nod from the corner of her eye. "Yes, they were." She answers, voice thick with what he hopes are not tears. Her gaze moves to the closed door, back to the photo, up to his face, the tightly set muscle around his yaw, the tired lines around his eyes and the by now thoroughly grey hair. She watches his Adam's apple bop up and down, when he swallows against the tight feeling in his throat and he hears her taking in that deep breath, he was sure would come. Because he knows her, because he can read her in an instance.
"I don't know…" She answers his initial question silently, desperately, finally looking at him openly. Letting him see her own ocean, her own floating and falling through darkness. He doesn't know how, he doesn't know why but this can not be the end. This can not be it. This can not be the way things are going. Not because it is not fair, not because the world is still spinning tomorrow but because it is them. Because they are more important. Because for once, everything falls into place and for once he feels like he's not alone in this darkness. And for once, he feels like the distance isn't so vast if you just reach out.
Probably it's withdrawal what they are experiencing, probably it would be a lot more healthy if they just made the big cut, leaving behind the past and starting that new life that lies ahead, separate of each other. Separate of what they could have been. But there he is, weak and tired of fighting.
It's just two steps around her lab table and just another small one to be right in front of her. It's just a tiny movement of his hand against hers, brushing the back of his index finger against her knuckles, feeling her cool and smooth skin. It's just the slightest adjustment in her posture to angle herself closer to him and it's just the logical consequence of two people being so close to each other, to lift his arms and let her sink against him.
If asked later, they wouldn't be able to tell, who initiated an embrace that was needed so much. As much as touch is his love language, it is hers, too. It wasn't before; at least she always thought that, but with him it is. The small, seemingly coincidental touches, fingers brushing against each other when handing a file or a fork, a short pat on a shoulder as a silent 'well done' her ducking behind him when that one experiment exploded before their eyes in a lab deep in the mountain, a not so coincidental hand on the small of her back, when she was addressed as Mrs. O'Neill for the third time in two days and he couldn't help but go with the fantasy just once. All the small things they could do without being too obvious, without giving themselves away.
And when she allows herself to hide her face in that spot of his neck, when she feels his breath stirring the strands of her hair, when he feels her lips rested against his heated skin, they both find themselves thinking, that there might be a way, that they could be okay again. Not now, but sometime down the road, they probably will be and that floating in a calm, dark ocean isn't all so bad, if you're not alone in it.