Title: War of Nerves 2/2
Author: Athena
Email: atheniandream@aol.com
Content Warnings: Angst, drama, light-very-light humour
Pairings: SJ
Spoilers. Gen. Info on Other guys and Avenger 2.0
and a certain line in divide and conquer...
Season: Seven
Rating: PG-13 Maybe more.
Summary: The Floodgates are opening again...
Author's notes: I think it's a little rushed, but I didn't want to
bore you with the little details too much,
Archive: Anywhere. I'm my own publicist.
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. I know this.
-------------------------------------------
WAR OF NERVES 2/2
-----------------------------
This is for my Gramps...who is always with me...
Also for Faith, Pep, Starprops, Lesley as well as a bunch o' people that kindly offered to beta...thanks ya'll
And especially to Ayesha, who bust her ass coz I asked her to...you star... ;)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
His eyes steadied on her face, but he didn't speak a word. As he listened Daniel felt he were suffocating, but without the struggle. His pearly blue eyes blinked furiously to keep up with the light wind around them both.
"So, anything else happen?"
"Oh, it didn't stop there..." Carter explained and continued her story.
{"Look, I think you should go." She couldn't face him, she daren't. Afraid that if she looked at Jack again, studied the emotions on his face she would weaken. She feared that the urge to kiss him would grow even stronger, uncontrollable.
"What? No I'm not going, Carter."
"Please," she pleaded with him.
"Don't you think we should-"
"*Please*." Her hand glided steadily around his, catching his knuckles under hers as she pleaded just silently enough with him, to leave her...}
Her coat crumpled around her fingers as she clenched it tighter around her body. The cold was getting to her, lacing her lips as she laughed quietly to herself.
"I guess having Cassie 'catch' us, kind of freaked me a little. It made me see how wrong it was."
"Sam it's not wrong," Daniel contradicted. "Just because the Air force say it's against the rules doesn't make it wrong. It's how we're supposed to be. You were just reacting to how you felt."
He had a point, she thought. However, not everything is that easy, not even by Daniel's standards. Even if he did have a knack of trying to simplify anything that came up as a challenge...
"I don't know how I feel Daniel..."
"Well, maybe, you should find out?" Daniel pressed the idea on to her, quietly and calmly not wanting to alert her stubbornness, but to introduce a solution into her jumbled bag of problems.
The that last sentence resonated in her head...
'Well, maybe you should find out?
.........maybe you should find out....
......you.........you should find out....
Well.............find out.
Maybe.'
"Look, we have a mission in three hours Sam" Daniel intruded. "Talk to him then."
Looking to talk about the problem and having to talk about it were two different things. Carter grimaced as she realised she wanted to execute neither action the way she was feeling. The good thing about their next mission was that it was essentially science based. With the other scientists she could lose herself analysing P4C-7DW. It had an apparently rapid daily climate change, which contradicted its constant 'Switzerland' looking locations. So, as 'an egghead' she could float off with the other eggheads and be completely at peace with herself. 'Hopefully.'
She didn't come cross O'Neill in the halls of SGC and kept herself hidden in the lab, hoping to god he didn't come looking for her in the run up to the mission.
-------------------------------------------------
"Felger! Just get through the damn gate!"
The first words she heard as she entered the Gate Room were the Colonel's. He was looking worse for wear and clearly not reaping enjoyment from yet another babysitting mission. Most of it would entail watching everyone else work while he polished his gun, and that never sat well with him.
Sam walked past him calmly and set the rest of her equipment on F.R.E.D. She busied herself checking the equipment and ignoring the rest of the room.
"Major Carter!"
She didn't even have to turn her head to know that Jay Felger was sidling up to her side. He was carrying his briefcase, which he dropped onto F.R.E.D. The same floppy dark brown hair framed his face and the gimpish smile was in evidence. She knew from past experience that he had a thing for her and that the Colonel was well aware of it. An inclination to look at the Colonel surfaced, but she resisted. 'Felger's a nice guy,' she thought, 'just a little too expressive.'
"It's great to be working together again. Soldiers side by side, protecting earth in it's glorified splendour, don't cha think?"
"Ah. Doctor, it's just off-world research." She tried to smile naturally at the over-exuberant man edging a little to close for her liking.
"FELGER!" The Colonel's hollered at them. "Get over here. And leave Carter alone."
Carter could not refrain from smiling at the constipated, loyal-dog expression on Felger's face. He smiled back at her, before moving reluctantly back to where the Colonel and Teal'c were loading up the rest of the truck.
Daniel appeared and loaded his equipment along with the other scientific odd and ends, nodding towards the Colonel as he addressed Carter.
"God, Jack's going to have a field day, with this lot." he said, eyeing the 15 other scientists and theorists that they were trying to get thought the gate.
"Yea." Sam smiled genuinely at him, before glancing to where the Colonel was once again reprimanding Felger.
"You okay?" Daniel asked.
"Yea. I'm fine."
The truth was that time would tell if she really was. Still, she had that little talk to have with Jack to keep her really amused. 'What fun,' Sam thought as the ordeal that was likely to be echoed through her mind.
"Right. Everyone, let's move out!" the Colonel Bellowed as he shoved Felger up the ramp.
Yep, definitely 'fun'.
----------------------------------------------------------
The evening had her figuratively screaming for her bed back home. She was worrying about Cassie again, which wasn't helping. In the end she was mentally slapping herself every time she wondered what a seventeen-year-old girl with a boyfriend might be doing. The good thing was that the General, who was already firm friends with Cassie, had promised Sam he would watch out for her. This included visits whenever Sam was off world, which soothed the anxious thoughts that rose occasionally.
Rising from her sleeping bag, she quietly walked out of the 'Sg-1' tent where Daniel snored incessantly. A nod at Teal'c on watch was sufficient and she found a quiet patch of open space not far from the camp and digs sites. The Air was cool but not uncomfortable as it rose and fell with the wind that caught in her hair. She settled crossed legged on the ground and stared up at the blackness of the sky.
She'd completely forgotten to talk to the Colonel during the day. Hadn't found time between keeping Felger at bay and helping to uncover the massive amount of rubble that covered what looked suspiciously like a mass burial ground. It was littered with various differing skeletons. However, now wasn't the time to think of the day's events. Now she had found time to take a solitary breather and be at one with herself-
"Carter."
Well, maybe not so solitary.
"Sir!" She almost screamed, before realising that it wasn't Felger. She rose and took a small step back from him.
"What are you doing up?" O'Neill asked.
"I don't know. What are you doing up?" she responded warily.
"I couldn't sleep."
Through the sparking light of the campfire behind them, she spied the cut he'd gotten above his eyebrow while digging earlier. It had begun weeping again. Ignoring his words, she immediately did what she always did with her boys.
"Colonel, you're..." She reached for a tissue in her pocket and it collided with his face as he frowned at her, trying to step back.
"Carter, give it a rest will ya?"
She grabbed hold of his arm, and tried to stem the trickle of blood running down his forehead.
{At the time, she'd insisted that he go back to base and have his head checked.
His response, "Oh, so they can commit me?" a normal sarcastic come back for him was softened by the addition of, "I'll be fine."
So she'd bargained with him. "If it stops bleeding, and you tell me the minute you feel ill, then you can stay." Concern making her disregard his status as her superior.}
"Carter, I'm fine." He gently attempted to bat her hand away. She stood looking up at him holding the tissue there for a moment longer. Her hand still rested on his arm with the palm curving round his elbow and thumb pressing the inside. For a split second his head lightened, and he rocked back on his feet. Worried that he would collapse, she wrapped her other arm around his back, drawing closer to him. The thought that if he fell she would not be able to hold him up sent her eyes back toward the camp looking for help.
"I'm okay." He whispered, sucking all available air and finding his balance, his eyes squinted at her, trying to read the lines on her face...
"We need to talk, Jack." She whispered, not quite looking at his face but urging him to speak to her.
But he couldn't. His body felt frozen in place. He tried, but his entire body came to a complete stop. Fingers, toes, arms, legs all motionless, all he could do was breath. 'Jesus Jack, pull it together....'
Pressing towards him, Sam felt her body convulse. The heat emanating from him chilled her blood, which seemed impossible. The heat creeping in the shadows of her skin a contradiction but no accident. It shone like a beacon for him to see. Burying her head into his collarbone, her eyelashes fluttering along his neck, they stood frozen.
He could feel the rising heat pounding with the rhythm of his breathing, but he couldn't risk raising his arms, touching her, but her wanted to so badly. He wanted to grab at the curve between her hips and chest and pull her under him, and silence her like he'd never been able to. But like a shy child he stood motionless against her, gently rocking against gravity and mentally steadying himself.
"Why is this so hard?" She asked, the sound vibrating on his throat.
"I don't know. But it is." The muffled sound of his voice came from under his hand.
"Don't Stop."
But he had to....
They had to....
"One day Jack, I will die." She assured him. "And I would have spent my life avoiding everything. Bullets, knives, death...and you." She didn't have to tell him that she was right. He'd known that from the beginning, and would have been stupid not to remember it again. "It's my life, Colonel. I'll ruin it how I want to."
Lowering his chin to rest on the top of her head, he couldn't help but feel old. This whole emotional disaster was aging him rapidly from the inside out. He felt that he'd been fighting, not just the Goa'uld, but Carter too. He didn't have the faintest idea why he got annoyed when she wasn't around, or why he snapped at everyone when she got injured. He was not even certain why he instinctively crept into her lab everyday to annoy her. No, that wasn't true. He did it just so she'd pry herself away from her work to take a second's interest in him. Beneath it all he did know this.
He loved her.
Not her smile.
Not her 'Carter' driven awkwardness that he knew she'd inherited from Dad.
Nor did he love her intellect and the way that she knew everything, and pouted when the comment wasn't one hundred percent true.
He loved her.
And because he loved her, he did the right thing.
"I don't think that we can work together anymore."
"I'm not leaving SG-1."
"Maybe not."
"And you're not leaving either." He felt her hug him tighter.
"No, Carter..."
She pulled away, not quite believing where his words were headed.
"There has to be a way.... God, you know... I want to be happy, maybe just once. Don't I even get that?"
And he couldn't help but laugh at her and the way she was yelling with her fists thrown towards the sky. She was a real nutcase when it came to it.
"Carter." He warned her again, his eyes scouring the area hoping to see someone approaching, someone nearby, just so he didn't have to do this. He wasn't good at this.
"I am fed up of doing what's right, damn it!"
"That's what we do. We don't get happy endings, we save the day, we never get rewards and we die doing the one thing that we were meant to do. Protect."
"Always a soldier..." She smiled bitterly even though he couldn't see it. "Can't we just take a chance."
"Maybe." O'Neill frowned, could they take a chance?
What did they have to lose in the grand scheme of things? Everything they'd made for themselves, their homes, their jobs, and their security. Then again, what they would gain was so much more appealing, more tangible, and in the long run, far more important. There would be someone there when they went home for once, someone to relate to and see the world the way they saw it. Maybe, just maybe, that was the right thing to do for once.
"Let's see. And maybe we won't lose our heads."
------------------------------------
Several days later
-------------------------------------
He knew she was looking at him. And even though he was also looking at her, it felt like an intrusion into his privacy. That was, apart from the fact that he, Carter, Daniel and Teal'c were all sat on another boring world, in the middle of some damn field, enclosed by a fencing of trees that appeared to be closing in on him. As he sat there the thought ran through his mind, 'God, how many more boring, interesting, tedious planets are there out there. I'm not the only one NOT do anything much. Teal'c is watching Daniel, who is watch the most boring, lumpy, grey rock I've ever seen. And Carter is... well... watching me... and working. She's always working...'
Still, in the glinting slit of the light shining through his sunglasses, he could tell. He had developed a knack for these things. Shrugging he let out a breath, pursing his lips until they opened to a yawn he could not avoid and he covered his mouth briefly with the back of his hand.
"Sir?"
He looked back to see Carter once again had her eyes fixed and concentrated on him.
"Yes Carter?"
"Nothing."
He heard her mumble something incoherent as her eyes quickly flickered back to the sky. Her fingers continued to pick at the metalwork in her hands
"Carter," He pressed. "Care to divulge whatever's going on in there?"
She frowned, tipping her head to one side as she squinted again.
'What WAS she looking at?' It was starting to annoy him. Either that or make him really, really nervous. Had he shaved this morning? Surely, he remembered to put on his shaving cream?
"It's just...your hair?" She finally burst out, her hand flying out to gesture at his hair.
'What the Hell? Now what?' "What?" he snapped at her.
Scuffling from her place, she crawled over to where he was sat.
"Well, I remember the first day I met you."
"How could I forget?"
He remembered. He remembered just as vividly as the last week of events that had passed by. Cause and effect, leading or proceeding to another cause, he'd remembered her say once... Then, she just grabbed a piece of his hair, and for a moment he'd actually forgotten where he was, feeling her fingers brush against his scalp.
"Your hair, it was brown wasn't it?"
"Uh. Yes Carter, I've not always been old," O'Neill muttered. She completely missed his comment, which served to interest him further.
"Well..." She took hold of another strand.
'God please let her do that again...'
"It's Grey."
"Thanks for noticing. And?"
"Well," She drew closer to him, almost whispering. "Did you used to dye your hair?"
He almost hit her at the comment. "No! You did this to my hair."
"What?"
"You, and your little world. It does this to me."
"Jack that's not funny." Her tone warned as her brow wrinkled into a frown.
He knew better than to press his luck, this not being their first verbal encounter. Suddenly and forcibly he was aware that by some strange fluke of nature and magnetic attraction they'd ended up close, to close. They sat diagonally and he felt her deep sigh lay across his face and glanced quickly behind him for signs of Daniel and Teal'c. Thank God, they were looking in another direction, so he continued.
"I'm sorry. For everything, you know?"
"I know. And it wasn't all you...it takes two people."
He couldn't deny that. It was the two of them. Everything had been. The fights, the jibes, they were all thrown and reciprocated, as were the touches, the kisses and the shouting.
And again he repeated that sentence, it seemed he'd said it so long ago.
"We're okay with this?" This time though he looked as though the words were just regulation, a way out, but not from the heart. But then, in a clear state of definition, how could they be? They both knew what they wanted.
"Yes Sir." She replied as she touched his hair once more, just to seal their agreement.
"Sir?"
"Yes Major?"
"I love what I've done with it. The hair I mean."
"Good, I like it too."
---------------------------------------------
Darkness hid the moonlight, emptying the shadows from her bedroom and comforting her. Soothing her as evening moved on and helping her to sleep. It banished her demons from the sleep she was trying to fall into. Rarely had she been able to sleep in a comfortable bed over the last week. When she had, it was not without worry about work or deadlines or him. She dread contemplating what he was thinking right now. Carter knew all to well not to dive into his mind uninvited.
Daniel had stopped asking questions. She supposed he believed that they had refused to sort out their matters for his and Teal'c sake. The truth was that he had no idea, but at least he left her and them alone. Maybe she was growing up, maybe not. Just because she was an adult, it didn't mean she was getting through the world knowing everything and analysing nothing. She didn't want to think about it. Not right now, anyway...
"You're cold."
The muffled sleep drenched sound came from behind her shoulder. It came accompanied by a head and soon rumbled closer to her earlobe taking quiet refuge there.
"Sorry. Warm me up?"
"Sure."
Closing her eyes and feeling her skin burn white with his warm touch, she hoped,
That it was worth it, trading into a war of nerves...
----------------------------------------
'Battle through this wall of nerves
When your life, it takes a turn
What I have is what I feel
While in my mind you're lying here
Fear that unholy dread
There's a piece of me in all he says
All kinds of weird stuff inside my head
The stage freight in my own bed' ~~ 'War of Nerves' By All Saints.
--------------------------------------
I think it's a little rushed, but I didn't want to bore you with the little details too much,
Athena
Author: Athena
Email: atheniandream@aol.com
Content Warnings: Angst, drama, light-very-light humour
Pairings: SJ
Spoilers. Gen. Info on Other guys and Avenger 2.0
and a certain line in divide and conquer...
Season: Seven
Rating: PG-13 Maybe more.
Summary: The Floodgates are opening again...
Author's notes: I think it's a little rushed, but I didn't want to
bore you with the little details too much,
Archive: Anywhere. I'm my own publicist.
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. I know this.
-------------------------------------------
WAR OF NERVES 2/2
-----------------------------
This is for my Gramps...who is always with me...
Also for Faith, Pep, Starprops, Lesley as well as a bunch o' people that kindly offered to beta...thanks ya'll
And especially to Ayesha, who bust her ass coz I asked her to...you star... ;)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
His eyes steadied on her face, but he didn't speak a word. As he listened Daniel felt he were suffocating, but without the struggle. His pearly blue eyes blinked furiously to keep up with the light wind around them both.
"So, anything else happen?"
"Oh, it didn't stop there..." Carter explained and continued her story.
{"Look, I think you should go." She couldn't face him, she daren't. Afraid that if she looked at Jack again, studied the emotions on his face she would weaken. She feared that the urge to kiss him would grow even stronger, uncontrollable.
"What? No I'm not going, Carter."
"Please," she pleaded with him.
"Don't you think we should-"
"*Please*." Her hand glided steadily around his, catching his knuckles under hers as she pleaded just silently enough with him, to leave her...}
Her coat crumpled around her fingers as she clenched it tighter around her body. The cold was getting to her, lacing her lips as she laughed quietly to herself.
"I guess having Cassie 'catch' us, kind of freaked me a little. It made me see how wrong it was."
"Sam it's not wrong," Daniel contradicted. "Just because the Air force say it's against the rules doesn't make it wrong. It's how we're supposed to be. You were just reacting to how you felt."
He had a point, she thought. However, not everything is that easy, not even by Daniel's standards. Even if he did have a knack of trying to simplify anything that came up as a challenge...
"I don't know how I feel Daniel..."
"Well, maybe, you should find out?" Daniel pressed the idea on to her, quietly and calmly not wanting to alert her stubbornness, but to introduce a solution into her jumbled bag of problems.
The that last sentence resonated in her head...
'Well, maybe you should find out?
.........maybe you should find out....
......you.........you should find out....
Well.............find out.
Maybe.'
"Look, we have a mission in three hours Sam" Daniel intruded. "Talk to him then."
Looking to talk about the problem and having to talk about it were two different things. Carter grimaced as she realised she wanted to execute neither action the way she was feeling. The good thing about their next mission was that it was essentially science based. With the other scientists she could lose herself analysing P4C-7DW. It had an apparently rapid daily climate change, which contradicted its constant 'Switzerland' looking locations. So, as 'an egghead' she could float off with the other eggheads and be completely at peace with herself. 'Hopefully.'
She didn't come cross O'Neill in the halls of SGC and kept herself hidden in the lab, hoping to god he didn't come looking for her in the run up to the mission.
-------------------------------------------------
"Felger! Just get through the damn gate!"
The first words she heard as she entered the Gate Room were the Colonel's. He was looking worse for wear and clearly not reaping enjoyment from yet another babysitting mission. Most of it would entail watching everyone else work while he polished his gun, and that never sat well with him.
Sam walked past him calmly and set the rest of her equipment on F.R.E.D. She busied herself checking the equipment and ignoring the rest of the room.
"Major Carter!"
She didn't even have to turn her head to know that Jay Felger was sidling up to her side. He was carrying his briefcase, which he dropped onto F.R.E.D. The same floppy dark brown hair framed his face and the gimpish smile was in evidence. She knew from past experience that he had a thing for her and that the Colonel was well aware of it. An inclination to look at the Colonel surfaced, but she resisted. 'Felger's a nice guy,' she thought, 'just a little too expressive.'
"It's great to be working together again. Soldiers side by side, protecting earth in it's glorified splendour, don't cha think?"
"Ah. Doctor, it's just off-world research." She tried to smile naturally at the over-exuberant man edging a little to close for her liking.
"FELGER!" The Colonel's hollered at them. "Get over here. And leave Carter alone."
Carter could not refrain from smiling at the constipated, loyal-dog expression on Felger's face. He smiled back at her, before moving reluctantly back to where the Colonel and Teal'c were loading up the rest of the truck.
Daniel appeared and loaded his equipment along with the other scientific odd and ends, nodding towards the Colonel as he addressed Carter.
"God, Jack's going to have a field day, with this lot." he said, eyeing the 15 other scientists and theorists that they were trying to get thought the gate.
"Yea." Sam smiled genuinely at him, before glancing to where the Colonel was once again reprimanding Felger.
"You okay?" Daniel asked.
"Yea. I'm fine."
The truth was that time would tell if she really was. Still, she had that little talk to have with Jack to keep her really amused. 'What fun,' Sam thought as the ordeal that was likely to be echoed through her mind.
"Right. Everyone, let's move out!" the Colonel Bellowed as he shoved Felger up the ramp.
Yep, definitely 'fun'.
----------------------------------------------------------
The evening had her figuratively screaming for her bed back home. She was worrying about Cassie again, which wasn't helping. In the end she was mentally slapping herself every time she wondered what a seventeen-year-old girl with a boyfriend might be doing. The good thing was that the General, who was already firm friends with Cassie, had promised Sam he would watch out for her. This included visits whenever Sam was off world, which soothed the anxious thoughts that rose occasionally.
Rising from her sleeping bag, she quietly walked out of the 'Sg-1' tent where Daniel snored incessantly. A nod at Teal'c on watch was sufficient and she found a quiet patch of open space not far from the camp and digs sites. The Air was cool but not uncomfortable as it rose and fell with the wind that caught in her hair. She settled crossed legged on the ground and stared up at the blackness of the sky.
She'd completely forgotten to talk to the Colonel during the day. Hadn't found time between keeping Felger at bay and helping to uncover the massive amount of rubble that covered what looked suspiciously like a mass burial ground. It was littered with various differing skeletons. However, now wasn't the time to think of the day's events. Now she had found time to take a solitary breather and be at one with herself-
"Carter."
Well, maybe not so solitary.
"Sir!" She almost screamed, before realising that it wasn't Felger. She rose and took a small step back from him.
"What are you doing up?" O'Neill asked.
"I don't know. What are you doing up?" she responded warily.
"I couldn't sleep."
Through the sparking light of the campfire behind them, she spied the cut he'd gotten above his eyebrow while digging earlier. It had begun weeping again. Ignoring his words, she immediately did what she always did with her boys.
"Colonel, you're..." She reached for a tissue in her pocket and it collided with his face as he frowned at her, trying to step back.
"Carter, give it a rest will ya?"
She grabbed hold of his arm, and tried to stem the trickle of blood running down his forehead.
{At the time, she'd insisted that he go back to base and have his head checked.
His response, "Oh, so they can commit me?" a normal sarcastic come back for him was softened by the addition of, "I'll be fine."
So she'd bargained with him. "If it stops bleeding, and you tell me the minute you feel ill, then you can stay." Concern making her disregard his status as her superior.}
"Carter, I'm fine." He gently attempted to bat her hand away. She stood looking up at him holding the tissue there for a moment longer. Her hand still rested on his arm with the palm curving round his elbow and thumb pressing the inside. For a split second his head lightened, and he rocked back on his feet. Worried that he would collapse, she wrapped her other arm around his back, drawing closer to him. The thought that if he fell she would not be able to hold him up sent her eyes back toward the camp looking for help.
"I'm okay." He whispered, sucking all available air and finding his balance, his eyes squinted at her, trying to read the lines on her face...
"We need to talk, Jack." She whispered, not quite looking at his face but urging him to speak to her.
But he couldn't. His body felt frozen in place. He tried, but his entire body came to a complete stop. Fingers, toes, arms, legs all motionless, all he could do was breath. 'Jesus Jack, pull it together....'
Pressing towards him, Sam felt her body convulse. The heat emanating from him chilled her blood, which seemed impossible. The heat creeping in the shadows of her skin a contradiction but no accident. It shone like a beacon for him to see. Burying her head into his collarbone, her eyelashes fluttering along his neck, they stood frozen.
He could feel the rising heat pounding with the rhythm of his breathing, but he couldn't risk raising his arms, touching her, but her wanted to so badly. He wanted to grab at the curve between her hips and chest and pull her under him, and silence her like he'd never been able to. But like a shy child he stood motionless against her, gently rocking against gravity and mentally steadying himself.
"Why is this so hard?" She asked, the sound vibrating on his throat.
"I don't know. But it is." The muffled sound of his voice came from under his hand.
"Don't Stop."
But he had to....
They had to....
"One day Jack, I will die." She assured him. "And I would have spent my life avoiding everything. Bullets, knives, death...and you." She didn't have to tell him that she was right. He'd known that from the beginning, and would have been stupid not to remember it again. "It's my life, Colonel. I'll ruin it how I want to."
Lowering his chin to rest on the top of her head, he couldn't help but feel old. This whole emotional disaster was aging him rapidly from the inside out. He felt that he'd been fighting, not just the Goa'uld, but Carter too. He didn't have the faintest idea why he got annoyed when she wasn't around, or why he snapped at everyone when she got injured. He was not even certain why he instinctively crept into her lab everyday to annoy her. No, that wasn't true. He did it just so she'd pry herself away from her work to take a second's interest in him. Beneath it all he did know this.
He loved her.
Not her smile.
Not her 'Carter' driven awkwardness that he knew she'd inherited from Dad.
Nor did he love her intellect and the way that she knew everything, and pouted when the comment wasn't one hundred percent true.
He loved her.
And because he loved her, he did the right thing.
"I don't think that we can work together anymore."
"I'm not leaving SG-1."
"Maybe not."
"And you're not leaving either." He felt her hug him tighter.
"No, Carter..."
She pulled away, not quite believing where his words were headed.
"There has to be a way.... God, you know... I want to be happy, maybe just once. Don't I even get that?"
And he couldn't help but laugh at her and the way she was yelling with her fists thrown towards the sky. She was a real nutcase when it came to it.
"Carter." He warned her again, his eyes scouring the area hoping to see someone approaching, someone nearby, just so he didn't have to do this. He wasn't good at this.
"I am fed up of doing what's right, damn it!"
"That's what we do. We don't get happy endings, we save the day, we never get rewards and we die doing the one thing that we were meant to do. Protect."
"Always a soldier..." She smiled bitterly even though he couldn't see it. "Can't we just take a chance."
"Maybe." O'Neill frowned, could they take a chance?
What did they have to lose in the grand scheme of things? Everything they'd made for themselves, their homes, their jobs, and their security. Then again, what they would gain was so much more appealing, more tangible, and in the long run, far more important. There would be someone there when they went home for once, someone to relate to and see the world the way they saw it. Maybe, just maybe, that was the right thing to do for once.
"Let's see. And maybe we won't lose our heads."
------------------------------------
Several days later
-------------------------------------
He knew she was looking at him. And even though he was also looking at her, it felt like an intrusion into his privacy. That was, apart from the fact that he, Carter, Daniel and Teal'c were all sat on another boring world, in the middle of some damn field, enclosed by a fencing of trees that appeared to be closing in on him. As he sat there the thought ran through his mind, 'God, how many more boring, interesting, tedious planets are there out there. I'm not the only one NOT do anything much. Teal'c is watching Daniel, who is watch the most boring, lumpy, grey rock I've ever seen. And Carter is... well... watching me... and working. She's always working...'
Still, in the glinting slit of the light shining through his sunglasses, he could tell. He had developed a knack for these things. Shrugging he let out a breath, pursing his lips until they opened to a yawn he could not avoid and he covered his mouth briefly with the back of his hand.
"Sir?"
He looked back to see Carter once again had her eyes fixed and concentrated on him.
"Yes Carter?"
"Nothing."
He heard her mumble something incoherent as her eyes quickly flickered back to the sky. Her fingers continued to pick at the metalwork in her hands
"Carter," He pressed. "Care to divulge whatever's going on in there?"
She frowned, tipping her head to one side as she squinted again.
'What WAS she looking at?' It was starting to annoy him. Either that or make him really, really nervous. Had he shaved this morning? Surely, he remembered to put on his shaving cream?
"It's just...your hair?" She finally burst out, her hand flying out to gesture at his hair.
'What the Hell? Now what?' "What?" he snapped at her.
Scuffling from her place, she crawled over to where he was sat.
"Well, I remember the first day I met you."
"How could I forget?"
He remembered. He remembered just as vividly as the last week of events that had passed by. Cause and effect, leading or proceeding to another cause, he'd remembered her say once... Then, she just grabbed a piece of his hair, and for a moment he'd actually forgotten where he was, feeling her fingers brush against his scalp.
"Your hair, it was brown wasn't it?"
"Uh. Yes Carter, I've not always been old," O'Neill muttered. She completely missed his comment, which served to interest him further.
"Well..." She took hold of another strand.
'God please let her do that again...'
"It's Grey."
"Thanks for noticing. And?"
"Well," She drew closer to him, almost whispering. "Did you used to dye your hair?"
He almost hit her at the comment. "No! You did this to my hair."
"What?"
"You, and your little world. It does this to me."
"Jack that's not funny." Her tone warned as her brow wrinkled into a frown.
He knew better than to press his luck, this not being their first verbal encounter. Suddenly and forcibly he was aware that by some strange fluke of nature and magnetic attraction they'd ended up close, to close. They sat diagonally and he felt her deep sigh lay across his face and glanced quickly behind him for signs of Daniel and Teal'c. Thank God, they were looking in another direction, so he continued.
"I'm sorry. For everything, you know?"
"I know. And it wasn't all you...it takes two people."
He couldn't deny that. It was the two of them. Everything had been. The fights, the jibes, they were all thrown and reciprocated, as were the touches, the kisses and the shouting.
And again he repeated that sentence, it seemed he'd said it so long ago.
"We're okay with this?" This time though he looked as though the words were just regulation, a way out, but not from the heart. But then, in a clear state of definition, how could they be? They both knew what they wanted.
"Yes Sir." She replied as she touched his hair once more, just to seal their agreement.
"Sir?"
"Yes Major?"
"I love what I've done with it. The hair I mean."
"Good, I like it too."
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Darkness hid the moonlight, emptying the shadows from her bedroom and comforting her. Soothing her as evening moved on and helping her to sleep. It banished her demons from the sleep she was trying to fall into. Rarely had she been able to sleep in a comfortable bed over the last week. When she had, it was not without worry about work or deadlines or him. She dread contemplating what he was thinking right now. Carter knew all to well not to dive into his mind uninvited.
Daniel had stopped asking questions. She supposed he believed that they had refused to sort out their matters for his and Teal'c sake. The truth was that he had no idea, but at least he left her and them alone. Maybe she was growing up, maybe not. Just because she was an adult, it didn't mean she was getting through the world knowing everything and analysing nothing. She didn't want to think about it. Not right now, anyway...
"You're cold."
The muffled sleep drenched sound came from behind her shoulder. It came accompanied by a head and soon rumbled closer to her earlobe taking quiet refuge there.
"Sorry. Warm me up?"
"Sure."
Closing her eyes and feeling her skin burn white with his warm touch, she hoped,
That it was worth it, trading into a war of nerves...
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'Battle through this wall of nerves
When your life, it takes a turn
What I have is what I feel
While in my mind you're lying here
Fear that unholy dread
There's a piece of me in all he says
All kinds of weird stuff inside my head
The stage freight in my own bed' ~~ 'War of Nerves' By All Saints.
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I think it's a little rushed, but I didn't want to bore you with the little details too much,
Athena