(Summary: ummm...he's waiting. For her to wake up. This has probably been done so many times it's not even funny, but I'm doing it anyway. Rating: PGish? Nuthin bad, I swear. Disclaimer: If I owned Stargate then Pete...no nevermind, I'll put that in a fic. I own nothing, not the show, not the stargate DVDs I'm borrowing from Aiy, not even cable service, pity me....)
Vigil
It was times like these that O'Neill questioned the wisdom of his chosen career. Yes, he loved his job, but what had he had to sacrifice over the years? His wife, his son.
And now her. It was too much.
He wondered if he could treat her the same as before. This had changed everything, their relationship, their priorities, their entire lives. She would be a different person when she woke up.
If she woke up. He banished the thought.
He'd thought it had been bad before, when she'd been conscious and in so much pain. Gasping and crying from the knuckle-whitening, back-arching torture of it. It was so bad she'd fainted momentarily, a result the doctors said, of stress and fatigue. She'd woken afterward in a panic, and once they'd calmed her down, assured her that everything was all right, they'd given her a sedative. Now he sat silently by her side, waiting for it to wear off, for her to wake up, for everything to be okay again.
As she lay quiet and unmoving, he'd decided he could stand it better when she was awake. When she was conscious and fighting. Knocked out, it seemed too much like she'd given up. Her skin was too pale, and her hair was too bright against it, as if it could set fire to the sterile, white, hospital sheets. Blue shadows dusted the skin under her eyes, as if her tears had washed the color from her eyes, and left it with a coating of tear salt, on her cheeks.
How many times had they done this, he wondered? One of them sitting patiently by the bedside of the other. He was sure she had spent time sitting next to him after he'd downloaded the knowledge of the Ancients into his brain. But when he'd finally awoken, she was gone, captured while he slumbered. The first time he'd laid eyes on her after being revived by the Asgard was when she'd been opening her own, lying curled among the leaves of an alien forest, giving him that smile that said she was glad he was awake.
She'd given him the same smile when he'd found her in a semi-drugged state of consciousness in her cryogenic pod. Only that time she was glad he was alive, and she was drugged enough not to stop herself from gripping his arm tightly. He remembered bursting into her cell, after Jolinar had taken her as a host, to find her lying on the floor. He'd called her Sam then, the name torn from his mouth at the shock of her mortality. He remembered waiting in the infirmary, after she had been rescued from the Prometheus, how she'd woken with his name on her lips, "Jack" and how his heart had sped up, as he heard himself answer coolly "Excuse me?" She'd retreated, apologized, and he'd written it off as a side effect of her injury. This time there was no pretense of concern for his 2IC, for his teammate, for his friend even, just Jack's concern for Sam.
The rest of SG-1, her unofficial family, sat outside in the waiting room. Cassie had fallen asleep, her head drooping onto Daniel's shoulder. Jack couldn't believe she was sixteen already. If there was a bright side to this whole mess, it was that it was happening now, while Cassie was still living at home. A few more years and Cassie would be off at college, and he knew she would have flown back immediately, once she heard the news. Daniel was close to unconsciousness himself, his eyes barely open. Only the long years of staying awake so as to concentrate on some new ancient artifact kept him up. That and the coffee he held onto like a life preserver. They all wanted to be awake, in case something changed. Teal'c was the only one truly alert, though. He was reading the girl magazine that had slipped from Cassie's hands as she dozed off. Teal'c's queries about humans and their peculiarities were few and far between these days, but Jack knew that "Seventeen" was sure to spark some more. The only person missing from the group of loved ones was Jacob. A message had been sent to the Tok'ra and when it reached Jacob, Jack knew he would do everything in his power to get here. He prayed it would be soon.
Only Jack waited by he side. The others left him in peace, not wanting to intrude. They shared his vigil, but they couldn't share his anguish. Yes, they all loved her, but he was in love with her. He could almost laugh. How much time and energy had he wasted denying it, only to wind up here, gripping her hand, willing her to wake up soon, so he could tell her how much he loved her? Tell her that he wouldn't have made it if it weren't for her. Not counting the countless times she'd saved his life, but all the other times, when the only reason he got up in the morning as so he could see her face and try and make her smile.
Everyone knew it, too. All the years of pretending and lying to themselves, and to the military, and to the world, wasted now, as base personnel trickled in and out, inquiring as to her status and griping his shoulder, clapping him on the back, their unspoken sympathy almost unbearable. Already Hammond had been and gone, offering his few kind words, and a sympathetic glance. Janet periodically poked her head in the door, during the few minutes she was able to slip away from her rounds. But the last real visitor had been hours ago. Now only he was left.
He studied her silent face, her emotionless features, and the line between her eyes not yet fully erased. It didn't matter; there was a matching crease along his forehead, too. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there. He had lost all feeling in his limbs, long ago, concentrating only on her hand in his, making sure it was still warm, making sure her pulse still slogged methodically in her wrist. He gripped her hand tightly, marveled at its delicateness. A few bright pecks of nail polish, her one "surrender to femininity" clung to the ragged nails on her right hand. This was the hand she'd been willing to arm wrestle him with, the first time she glared at him from across the briefing table. She'd been too smart, too beautiful, and too cocky for her own good then. He didn't know when she'd switched from being the Girl-Scientist to being Just Plain Carter. It was doubtful she'd grown less cocky, not with him as her CO. She certainly hadn't become less head turning or brilliant. Maybe what he'd said was true, back on that first mission to Abydos. "I adore you already."
Maybe not then, but now, certainly. Now he found himself breathing in rhythm with her, each exhaled breath marking another spike on one of the many blinking machines that surrounded her. And, then, finally her eyes flickered open, as blue and heartbreakingly beautiful as ever.
"Hi," he whispered, squeezing her hand.
'Hey," she croaked back, her eyes still ghosted with pain. They stared at each other for a small eternity.
"I'm sorry," he said, offering up his few pitiful words. They were worthless, they couldn't take away her pain, couldn't unmake what had already happened.
"S'not your fault," she managed through dry lips. He wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid of crushing her, she looked so fragile. He remembered why he had been so anxious for her to wake up.
"I love you," he told her.
"I know," she said, smiling weakly, wincing as her lip cracked and a bead of blood oozed forth. He took a tissue and blotted it away. "Is he all right?"
He patted her hand comfortingly. "He's just fine."
"They've put him on oxygen?"
"Just as a precaution," he hurried reassure her. "They say he'll be fine in a day of two."
"I know," she sighed, "I heard them say it, right before I passed out. "She glanced at him ruefully. "Look at me, a former military officer, fainting."
"No one can fault you for it," he told, "There's not a man in the military who could have done t better."
"No," she agreed, breaking into a real smile, as her voice broke as well, "Definitely not."
He handed her a glass of water, then picked up her other hand so he could toy with her ring. "I still feel guilty," he admitted.
She rolled her eyes in perfect imitation of him. "Fine," she said exasperatedly, "Next time you can have the baby." She was rewarded with a look of horror.
Janet wandered into the waiting room, pausing to drop a kiss on her daughter's head and another one on her husband. They both smiled sleepily up at her.
"I think Sam's awake," Daniel told her, yawning widely.
Janet fussed over Sam in the wheelchair, making sure she was secure before allowing Teal'c to wheel her to the viewing room. Hammond and Jacob were already plastered against the window. Jacob reached down to her hug his daughter.
"Congratulations sweetie, he's beautiful," he told her, "Feeling better?"
"Thanks Dad," she said, "And I'm fine now."
"Good," her father said, turning to stare in the window of the nursery again. "I can't tell you how excited Selmak is to finally see one of her grandchildren."
"Yeah, well we were going to name him after her, but we thought Jake would be less likely to get him beat up on the playground," O'Neill said. How, he wondered, we're they going to explain that there were two grandparents in one body? He eyed Teal'c. Or for that matter, the big gold mark on Uncle Teal'cy's head. Janet and Daniel stood on either side of their adopted daughter. What about the fact that Cousin Cassie wasn't exactly adopted from Toronto and that Uncle Danny used to be an all-powerful being?
He shrugged, and looked over Sam's shoulder at their new baby. For once he was able to forgive himself for what had happened the last time he was in love, the last time he had a kid. For once he was truly happy. He had his wife, and his son, and a family that wouldn't have existed if not for the stargate. He had a chance to start over
He loved his job.
(I really agonized over the ending. Stoopid ending. So Aiy wrote it. I lung you Aiy! And I kinda stuck in the bit about Janet and Daniel being married. I thought it fit. Tell me if it doesn't. Here's the important bit. I need reviews. I live off them. Every day on the bus I drive my friends mad with the possibility that there might, just might be reviews for the two Atlantis fics we've written together. Read. Review. Make me happy. Pretty Please?-Q)