When she woke next, he was still with her, although now he was just seated on the edge of her bed, sipping a cup of hot coffee. He smiled when he saw her eyes open, and set his cup down before reaching over and touching her cheek – she still wasn't showing signs of a fever, which was the first indication of rejection of the Ancient's gene.

"How do you feel?"

She blinked sleepily, and his smile broadened. Obviously she wasn't one of those people who opened their eyes and were awake immediately.

"What?"

He asked you how you feel

"Oh... I'm..." She hesitated, taking stock in how she felt.

You're better, Talon prompted, amused and not bothering to hide it.

"I'm better..."

"Do you still feel sick?" Beckett asked. She didn't look quite so miserable, but since she'd just woken up, it wasn't saying much.

"A little. Not as bad, though."

"Think you could eat something?"

Ugh.

"No." She noticed that he'd made his coffee in her battery-powered coffee maker. "Is there more coffee? I'd have a cup if-"

"Sure."

He handed her his cup, and then stood up.

"You start on that one, I'll bring you your own."

Melony took a sip – she was never one to be shy about stealing someone else's coffee, after all – and was relieved to find that he drank his black. She hadn't seen sign of cream, but sugar was the worst thing that could happen to coffee as far as she was concerned, and that you wouldn't spot until you'd actually tasted it.

"I hope you don't mind that I made some," Carson asked as he poured her a cup.

"Not at all."

"Black?" He didn't see any cream or sugar – and hadn't seen any earlier, either.

"Yes."

He came back over to her bed, and traded cups with her and Melony took a long sip before setting it down on the stand by her bed, and lying back against her pillow.

"So, is it impertinent of me to ask about the progress your symbiote is making with the Ancient's gene?" Beckett asked.

"Not at all."

How's it going?

I shouldn't be too much longer. The sequencing isn't as difficult as it should be – he really did a good job with this thing – but then it'll take a bit for your body to become accustomed to the changes, so we're looking at another 24 hours, maybe a little less

"He says another 24 hours or so."

"Really? That's much faster than it was with McKay."

"Well, I do have certain advantages..." She said with a slight smile.

"True."

Beckett sat back down on the edge of her bed – there wasn't a chair to sit on, after all, but the bed was big enough that the position wasn't intimate – and took a sip of his coffee.

"How long have you had him?"

"Talon?"

"Aye."

"About three years. I got into a bit of trouble on a mission and ended up with some alien poisoned dart stuck in my arm."

"Poisoned?"

She nodded, and started telling him the story of how she and Talon met. She didn't really remember all of it, but she'd heard about the rush to get her back to the gate, and Talon himself had told her about the blending part, so she knew the whole story even though she'd been delirious during some of it.

It was harder than she'd expected, though. Talking about SG-2 meant talking about a group of people she'd loved – including Brad, who she'd loved more than life itself – and they were all dead, now. While she had no trouble getting through the part where they'd been stranded on the alien planet for a month, working their way back to the Stargate with wounded, she found herself unable to speak more than once when she started on the story of the trip back to the planet to find the pyramids that they'd discovered.

"It's okay, Melony," Beckett had said the first time she'd stopped speaking, trying to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. Obviously, it had been a terrible ordeal for her, and one she'd probably hoped to forget. "I didn't mean to bring up-"

She'd shaken her head, interrupting him, and had continued the story, her voice choked with loss and agony and her eyes filled with the hurt that had been lurking behind her expression since she'd first heard of the accident that had taken her beloved away. But she finished the first story, and had told him about the blending, and had even managed to smile slightly when telling Beckett about the hangover she'd shared with Talon the day after the going away party they'd thrown for her.

"So you didn't stay with the SGC, then?" he asked her. "You went to live with the Tok'ra?"

Mitchell shook her head.

"Not at all. We had other things to do, and we spent the next six months or so working on them, preparing technology and using the crystals we found in the pyramid to increase the power output in some of the device Talon had been working on with his last host..."

She went on to tell him the story of the defeat of the system lords, and although the way she told it seriously down-played just how dangerous it had been, Beckett had heard a little of that story, and knew that she'd almost been killed, and had done far more than she was letting on. It wasn't every day that a human took out an entire race of evil creatures, after all, and it was one of the rare stories when the truth was just as good as any fiction could be.

He listened intently, fairly certain that she was telling him a story she didn't tell all that often.

"And the Jaffa?" he asked, once she brought them up. "What did you do with them once you'd taken them away from their masters?"

"Put them under the command of my First Prime and allowed them the chance to live how they should be," she said, explaining what she'd done once the Goa'uld had been defeated.

"You're an amazing person," Beckett said, softly, once she'd finished her tale.

Melony flushed, and looked down at her now empty coffee cup.

"I just got lucky a few times."

"And this Major of yours?" Carson asked. "Why didn't he come with you when you came here?"

Immediately he wished he could take the question back. She grew still, and even though her head had been bowed over her coffee cup, he saw a tear fall and land on her hand.

"He was killed in an accident... a little while ago..."

"I'm so sorry." He reached his hand out and touched hers, and more tears followed the first.

"Me too..." she whispered, brokenly. "I didn't think anything could ever hurt this much..."

Taking a great risk – especially for him – Carson pulled her gently into his arms. His stupid questions were the reason she was remembering just how badly she hurt, and he was determined to do what he could to comfort her.

Melony almost pulled away – she wasn't going to go bawling all over him just because he'd asked a couple of innocent questions, after all – but the promise of comfort was more than she could resist at that moment, and she found her forehead resting against his chest as she started to silently sob, once more lost in the hurt of loss – a loss that she suddenly realized she wasn't going to be able to run away from, no matter how far she traveled.