Cassie finally returned to Chez Carter at eleven o'clock the next morning. "Morning!" she called cheerfully, giving her guardian plenty of time to hide any strangers who might possibly have slept the night...
To Cassie's mild disappointment Carter was in the kitchen, apparently alone.
"No Pete?" she asked, just to make sure.
Carter shook her head. On closer inspection Cassie noticed dark circles around suspiciously red and puffy eyes, unusually clouded.
Cassie's bag hit the floor. "You haven't split up have you?"
"No!" Carter replied, a little too sharply, "No."
"Sam, what's the matter?" Cassie asked, motioning for the older woman to sit down on the sofa in the adjoining room.
Sighing, Carter complied with her order, plonking herself down on the chair. Cassie noted an empty cup of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (Chocolate Cookie flavour) and a Hershey wrapper on the coffee table. If Carter was seeking comfort in food things must be bad.
"Nothing's the matter," Carter lied, badly, "How was your night?"
"I stayed up too late watching old films and getting high on sugar," Cassie answered honestly, "At two o'clock in the morning I became convinced, along with Sofia, that the Yakult Bacteria Man was the most attractive man in the world. So a pretty normal night in really."
"Good," said Carter, obviously not listening.
"What happened?" Cassie asked, sounding heart-wrenchingly like her mother used to, not so long ago, when having conversations of a similar nature with Carter.
"Nothing," she repeated, with a weak watery smile. "What do you fancy for dinner?"
"Did you bump into Jack and Julia?" Cassie said casually, looking at her nails in a disinterested kind of way.
Carter froze, immediately giving herself away. How could she know?
"Yeah," she admitted, "Julia looks ...nice."
"You're still in love with Jack, aren't you?"
Carter frowned, a note of warning in her voice. "Cassie..."
"I know you have feelings for each other," Cassie said as if in explanation. "It's obvious, however professional you try to be."
Carter closed her eyes, fighting back the tears that had never really gone away since last night. This was perhaps the most humiliating moment of her life. A seventeen year old girl declared the feelings she worked so damn hard to hide from everyone, not least herself, were obvious.
"And you have feelings for Pete," Cassie continued. "And it's cool at work, 'cos you don't have to think about Pete because he isn't there, and it's cool when you're with Pete 'cos Jack isn't there and when you're with them on their own, all you can think of is that one man. And then suddenly you're confronted with them both in the same scenario and you don't know what to feel, except that you want to run away and hide and maybe become a nun."
"Become a nun?" Carter laughed, tears now trickling down her cheeks.
"Sam, do you think you're the first woman in the world who's found herself in love with two men?"
"I'm not-" Carter met Cassie's gaze and realisation dawned. "When?" she asked hoarsely.
Cassie shrugged her shoulders again. "For the last three years. He's just, y'know, a guy in my English class. He's dating someone else and he doesn't even know I exist. So I know we can't be together, and so I date other guys and live my life and generally feel really great... until English."
Carter enveloped Cassie in an unselfconscious hug. "I feel so stupid!"
"It is stupid. But we're only human."
O'Neill woke up and rolled over, at once enjoying and lamenting the emptiness of his bedroom. Stretching out under the covers he waited for the events of the previous twelve hours to suffuse back into his consciousness.
He'd driven Julia home, seen her to the door and politely refused the offer of coffee. He should probably call her, try to reassure her he hadn't given her the brush off. He couldn't help it. He hadn't expected Carter to be in the bar, confusing things.
He liked Julia. She was exactly the right mix of toughness and glamour; not one of those girls he suspected Carter had been, who played baseball with the guys and damn well beat them, who'd never owned a Barbie but had stolen all of her brother's Action Men and who could fire P-90 to hit a target with deadly accuracy in the dark. Julia hadn't played baseball, but she'd never been a cheerleader either. She couldn't shoot a P-90 but she could handle herself in a situation. She walked the middle line, never compromising on hardiness and never compromising on femininity. She reminded O'Neill of his wife.
So why had the sight of Carter and her boyfriend in the bar sent him reeling?
Growling in frustration, he rolled out of bed and hit the shower, his universal cure for almost all ills, followed by beer.
Carter tapped her ID card thoughtfully against her thumb as the elevator began its descent towards the heart of Cheyenne Mountain. Monday mornings in any other job were the cause of mild depression, song writing, or throwing a sickie.
Monday mornings at the SGC meant briefings for the first mission of the week; always an exciting prospect.
The place seemed crawling with activity this particular Monday, like an anthill stirred with a stick. She walked to her lab, in the mind to finish one or two experiments abandoned on Friday before their briefing at ten o'clock.
She look up to see a man, hands in pockets, framed in the doorway. For a moment her heart leapt, and then she looked properly and saw it was Daniel.
"You ready for the briefing with our wonderful leader?"
She nodded. "Is it time already?" She always lost track of the hour when she was working in the lab. They set off to pick up Teal'c.
O'Neill was waiting for them. Briefings with him were, it had to be said, a little different to how they had been with Hammond. Perhaps it was because SG-1 was O'Neill's favourite team; the one he knew so well.
"Morning campers," he said, smiling at them all in turn. His gaze rested for a brief second too long on Colonel Carter. "Nice and easy one for you today. MALP shows P3X-907 has ruins which you should enjoy poking around, Danny, and there's some unusual energy readings for the Colonel to check out. Keep 'em out of trouble T," he said, with a grin in Carter's direction as she bristled at the insinuation she couldn't look after what was now her team. "SG-1, you have a go."
He paused for a moment.
"That still sounds weird," he confessed.
Laughing, they set off for the locker room.
A prickle of unease settled at the base of Carter's spine as soon as SG-1 stepped through the 'gate on P3X-907. The planet was quiet. Too quiet. Carter immediately slipped the safety off her weapon with a practised thumb and scanned the treeline, noting Teal'c was doing the same. Even Daniel was looking around himself, barrel of his gun raised, face grim.
"It's too quiet," he said.
Carter nodded. "No birds."
"No anything."
"The silence is indeed disturbing."
Carter sighed. She could imagine the look on O'Neill's face if they 'gated straight home, and when asked why, said it was 'too quiet.'
"Come on," she said, motioning with her gun towards the ruins, "Let's get this over and done with and head home."
The ruins were hauntingly familiar; certainly not Ancient or Go'auld in design. There was a depressing humanity to them, the remnants of what on closer inspection appeared to be steel girders, brickwork and broken spars. There were no writings for Daniel to investigate as they moved through them.
"This was a town," Daniel observed, and she nodded. A town now reclaimed by the countryside that apparently surrounded it; buildings now moss and grass covered rubble, everything covered in a fine layer of earth or rust.
"You know what this looks like?" Carter said suddenly, realising what had been niggling at her mind.
"What?"
"It looks like something of enormous explosive power was detonated here. The buildings were razed to the ground and then covered with earth. Now things have grown on that earth."
"Several years worth of growth," Daniel noted, pointing out a tree which, whilst not being a tall and weather oak, was certainly no longer a sapling.
"An aerial bombardment?" Teal'c suggested.
Carter shook her head. "I don't think so. Look at the way the buildings have collapsed inwards. To me that suggests the explosion ripped through them at ground level. Maybe it was even planted inside."
Daniel shrugged. "You can make anything out of this mess."
"There are no bodies," Teal'c remarked, "No skeletons."
"Depends on the power of the device used. They could have been vaporised," Carter replied and he nodded in accordance.
"Have you identified where that energy signal is being emitted from?" Daniel asked.
Carter pulled out her monitor. "There," she said, pointing to a large mound of loosely covered rubble.
The movement was so swift they had no time to react to it before it was still once more. Carter's head snapped round. "Did you feel that?" she whispered.
Daniel, the whites of his eyes showing, nodded.
"We should leave," Teal'c said.
"With you on that one," Carter said fervently. "Move out."
They hurried back to the 'gate, not daring to break into a run but jogging seeming far to slow. The silence that had been unsettling was now downright menacing.
"Dial us up," she instructed to Daniel, fear making the words clipped.
Daniel dialled at maximum speed, as if they were under fire rather than standing in a rather pleasant meadow on an apparently deserted planet.
Carter had just enough time to yell as the lightening fast burst of silvery movement shot out from the tree line. There was no shape to it as it rushed past them at unfathomable speed.
Carter dropped to her knees, hearing Daniel shout as the 'gate initiated. The images were flashing before her eyes.
Cassie-
- Pete-
-the bar-
- her lab -
- the id card tapping against her thumb-
-a cup of blue jello and a spoon-
A brightly painted nail.
The general, his eyes filled with worry.
A kiss.
She opened her eyes to find herself lying on the ramp, apparently having been carried through the 'gate by Teal'c.
"Close the iris!" she yelled at exactly the same moment as Daniel, their voices filled with icy fear.
O'Neill's face was grave. "What happened?" he snapped into the control room microphone.
"I don't know sir," Carter said, regaining her feet and trying to shake off sudden dizziness. "I think we were attacked by something but... I don't know what." She felt weak, like she was suffering from a bad bout of flu and was still fighting the fever. She was sweating, she realised, her fringe soaked with perspiration and her limbs were shaking. "I think I should go the infirmary," she said.
No one noticed the knuckles of O'Neill hand, clutching the microphone stalk, go white. He nodded. "Go. All of you," he said, his voice now tempered with well controlled-worry. She nodded, grateful, and let Daniel take her arm and help her to the ministrations of Doctor Smith.
Carter had never found the infirmary beds particularly conductive to sleep. They were too soft; she spent too much time sleeping on the ground to be comfortable in them. The sheets smelt to unfamiliar and she was fretting.
Doctor Smith, a good foot taller than her predecessor and five or six years younger; a woman who would have been beautiful if it weren't for her icy bedside manner, had crisply informed the Colonel that she was confined to her bed. Her feverish symptoms had evaporated hours ago and her blood samples were clean, but Doctor Smith had still forbidden her to leave the infirmary. Bored senseless, Carter was beginning to wonder if the Doctor didn't find a cause would she ever be let out?
"Knock knock," said someone behind the curtains drawn around her bed.
She smiled in spite of herself. "You can come in sir."
General O'Neill sidled in, his fingers to his lips in a theatrical gesture of quiet. "Daniel's distracting the Ice Queen. I bought you a present."
She was expecting a cup of jello, but it was in fact a book.
"Where'd you get this from?" she asked, "And that's not a very nice way to refer to Doctor Smith."
"Daniel coined the name," he said, shrugging unashamed. "The book was from your lab. It was hidden under some files so I guessed it was your current reading material."
"You guessed right," she said, feeling pleased.
"Oh, I've 'phoned Cassie and she's coming back to my place. I'll make sure she gets fed. Just on my way home now," he explained.
"Thanks," she said, feeling the knots of tension in her shoulders loosen as her mind was set at ease.
"Anytime," he said, looking away as was his custom when embarrassed by the gratitude he neither expected nor sought. Approaching footsteps heralded the return of Doctor Smith. He looked guilty. "I'd better go. See you in the morning. Sleep well Carter."
"You too sir."
He mouthed 'bye' and disappeared through the curtains. She lay back on her pillows, opening the book.
With any luck Doctor Smith would finally give up looking for a cause of her feverish outburst and clear her for duty tomorrow and she could get on with work.
With any luck.