Secrets and Shadows: What You Don't Know
Part Five
Sunrise on Targonia was spectacular, to say the least.
Even Haley hauled herself out of bed to take the disc to the top of the complex and watch the sun rise over the waterfalls. Of course, it was only the third day of the mission; by the end of it, they might very well prefer to sleep in rather than see the sunrise.
Sam wasn't tired of it yet, although she was rather tired. The tiredness was her own fault for forgetting the time and staying up until past 'ninth chime' to study something. The woman who'd been working with her had been similarly engrossed in their work, and was horrified to discover it so late when Peta Meridian came looking for Sam.
As Sam yawned in the pre-dawn cold, Peta turned to the woman beside her. "Beth?"
"Yup?"
"If the Colonel's not in bed by the time we get into our room, we go out and find her."
"Roger that."
Sam caught Jennifer Haley's smirk, before the young woman cleared it from her face and put on a 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' expression. "Is this a conspiracy to look after me?" Sam demanded, rhetorically.
Her team-mates exchanged glances, and Sam suddenly realised that the question wasn't quite as rhetorical as she'd thought it might be. "Peta...?"
The Major rolled her eyes as the warning tone, but began an explanation. "See, it's this way, Sam. It's Saturday night, I've just finished the final notes on the remote dialling device, and I'm headed to my quarters. I'm in the elevator, on my way down to quarters, when the elevator stops at nineteen and General O'Neill gets on with a tray full of desserts."
"Uhuh."
"And I...uh...made a smart comment."
Smart comments were Peta's specialty. Sam wasn't surprised. "Uhuh."
"About him taking good care of you."
She knew the temperature of her voice dropped by about sixty degrees. "You did, did you?"
"Uh, and then he said that we'd better take care of you while you were here on Targonia, because if we didn't, then he and Teal'c would...uh...take care of us." There was a pause. "I think he was kidding. Mostly."
Sam remembered the dessert run. He'd stayed up with her, watching her as she packed and asking questions as he perched on a chair in her lab and when, past midnight, her stomach started rumbling for food, he'd gone to get 'some food' and returned with enough to feed him, her, Teal'c and Jonas, if Jonas had still been in the SGC.
She also remembered that evening for the intimacy of the way they related. Their conversation was mostly professional, as always, but after Friday... Sam fought a blush away in the cold Targonian pre-dawn. After Friday, there was an intimacy that they'd never had before. Although he didn't touch her, the way he looked at her had been personal enough for her to look up from what she was doing, meet his gaze, and blush like she was sixteen, instead of more than twice that age.
"It might be difficult for General O'Neill to realise that I am a grown woman and capable of looking after myself..." She began at her driest.
"Aw, Sam, he's just concerned about you," Peta said, lightly.
"With good reason," Beth added. "You're not exactly known for looking after yourself when you get into something."
"And you're five months pregnant."
"As if I didn't know that," Sam muttered. She kept herself from a further biting retort by turning to Haley, standing quiet and smiling to one side. "And do you have anything to add to this, Lieutenant?"
The young woman tried to stifle her smile. "No, ma'am." The demure reply was quite out of character for the usually feisty young woman. "But I agree with them."
"That I'm pregnant?" Sam inquired, dryly, resting one hand on her stomach.
"That you're well-known for getting so involved in something that you forget about your body's needs," Haley said, smiling. "And while the Targonians have set the remotes to monitor your condition, I can't see General O'Neill, Teal'c, or Dr. Jackson accepting any excuses we make about why you returned to Earth exhausted. Even if it was a world of technological discovery."
It was a conspiracy.
Sam shook her head and sat back on the seat that the four women had appropriated for the dawn. Directly across the ravine, the waterfall thundered its eternal song of churning power. Thousands of tonnes of water cascaded down the steep side of the cliff every minute, and when the wind was gusty, the spray could carry all the way across the gap.
From their vantage point at the top of the complex, the sun would rise over the waterfall at dawn, and the cascading drops would splinter the sunlight into a myriad shifting rainbows. The first morning, Beth had watched with her mouth wide open, and then pulled out her ubiquitous notepad and begun scribbling, all the while muttering things about refractive indexes and atmospheric conditions.
"Are we going to take Yukio up on her offer of breakfast this morning, Colonel?" Peta inquired, arching a brow at Sam. "Those ramen-noodle thingies look a lot better than beef stroganoff MRE. Smell better, too."
Sam grinned. They'd brought their own supplies; enough to comfortably last them the full ten Targonian 'days' of the diplomatic mission. However, after four meals of MREs, and when the natives were eating what looked and smelled like perfectly edible food, the soldiers had begun looking at the other foods available to them. "If you want to risk it, then you may."
"If we're going to be paranoid about it, it would probably be best if we didn't all switch to Targonian food at once," Lieutenant Haley suggested.
"Why, Haley! Are you offering to stick with the MREs while Beth and I try exotic new foods?"
The Lieutenant grinned. "I've never been a fan of Japanese food."
"They're not Japanese - they're Targonian."
"Several thousand years' difference," Haley shrugged, feigning nonchalance.
"Several thousand...?" Beth threw her hands up in mock-exasperation. "What do they teach Academy students these days?"
They were just getting into teasing the youngest member of the team, when one of their hosts approached them. "Colonel Carter?"
Sam looked up at the Yukio's smoothly expressionless face. "Yes?" Then she saw the men standing beyond her, and stood up. "Sir?"
"Carter." His expression was stiff, and she felt dread grow within her, spreading cold tendrils through her limbs, and winding close around her heart.
"What happened?" The question was slightly breathless, and he glanced around the place, looking for somewhere that he could talk to her with some measure of privacy.
She was barely aware of the other women moving away from the chair, giving them space for a while. Her whole being was focused on him and the reason for his presence here, the expression on his face that spoke of bad news. Oh, God. Had someone found out about Friday night?
He hesitated, as if unsure of how to break the news to her.
"Just say it, sir," she said, and steeled herself for the blow.
"Shanahan's dead." It hit her like a sledgehammer, shattering her composure in an instant.
"Dead?" Sam breathed. Her hand was at her waist in an instant, and she felt the baby shift a little at her distress. No. Not Pete. Not dead...
He eyed her, standing close in her personal space, as if telling her intimate news - or being prepared to catch her if she fainted. "Mugged," he said, and in his face was all the regret of the messenger bringing bad news. No, the news wasn't personally distressing to him, but he was aware it would hit her hard. "They think it happened Sunday night, found the body early Monday morning..." He grimaced and looked away and down. "From what they would tell us, it was...fast."
"From what...? When did you find out? How?"
"Monday morning," he said. "As for how... General Ettigan was going to lodge a complaint with the DPD about Shanahan hanging around the gates and making a nuisance of himself." His hands rested lightly on his P-90. "They called up and the Chief told them the news..." He paused. "I'm sorry, Carter."
Sam sat back down on the seat, staring blindly out across the ravine to the cold grey shadows of the cliffside.
Memories - good and bad - poured into her mind, fragments of what seemed like another life, another time.
The way he'd openly admired her, seen her as a woman and not just a soldier or colleague, the expression on his face after they'd made love - sweetly teasing, his belly-shaking laughter as she sat beside him and watched cop movies, the silly, 'romantic' things he'd done for her in the early days of their relationship, slow dancing until midnight...
Storming out on her that first morning after they'd made love, sulking when she didn't let him have his way, doubting her abilities as a soldier, refusing to see that she just wanted some distance from him, not that she didn't care about him...
Standing in her hallway with jealousy written plain across his face, wanting to know if the child she carried really was his...
No, she wasn't in love with Pete Shanahan anymore; but she had loved him, however briefly and inadequately.
Someone sat down beside her, not touching her, but mirroring her pose, perched on the seat, hands gripping the edge. She felt the heat of his body radiate out towards her, so warm and vital - unlike Pete, who lay cold and dead in a morgue back on Earth.
She blinked and felt the trickle of tears sliding down her cheeks. One hand reached up to brush them away, and the man sitting beside her neither moved to help her, nor offered her a kleenex. He just sat there and watched her until she was ready to meet his gaze. When she did, she saw guilt and an apology in his dark eyes, as well as concern for her.
"Do I..." Hesitation seized her, "Do I need to go back to Earth... Is there anything that...that has to be arranged...?"
He shook his head. "He has a sister who's the next of kin. She's doing the arrangements." He paused. "Unless you want to go back for the funeral. We can find out when it is..."
"I..." Sam paused, trying to find the words to describe everything she was feeling at that moment, a conglomeration of so many conflicting emotions that she couldn't identify any single one. "I'd rather..." she flushed, and wouldn't meet his gaze. "I'd rather stay here."
For a moment, she didn't want to look up and see what he thought of her decision. Then she forced her eyes to meet his, and saw understanding there. "If you want to stay, then stay. If you want to go back for the funeral, that's your decision."
She carefully smeared away the last chilly tear-trails from her cheeks. "I...I think I need to concentrate on this right now." Sam didn't add that the focus on her work would block out the more devastating of her emotions. She'd always used her work as a buffer between her and her feelings.
Just look at how she'd dealt with Jack O'Neill.
He nodded. "I'll let Hammond know," he told her.
Without a word, and very slowly, Sam leaned in towards him. She hadn't done this more than a handful of times in all the years they'd known each other. And there had never been witnesses. Maybe Teal'c. Once. But otherwise...
He moved his arm back, making room for her to lean into his side. And when she pressed against him, using the warmth and scent and presence of him as a repellant for her distress, his arm rested over her shoulders.
They'd sat like this that afternoon, after the second round of pleasure given and received. After sex, she'd wanted to be close to him, to preserve the intimacy that they'd finally accepted that day. So they'd sat on the couch, in physical contact with each other as they tried to work out where they were going from that moment onwards.
"I won't ever like him, Carter."
"I know, sir. I won't expect... You just need to get along."
"Enough to make things bearable on you?"
"Yes."
"I'll be civil," he'd said at last, "I can't speak for Daniel or Teal'c. Just as long..." The pause had been marked, and she'd looked up at him in time to see a wave of scarlet colour his cheeks, "I don't share well."
He wouldn't have to 'share' at all, now.
"Sir?"
"Carter?"
"Did you...?" As soon as even that much was out of her mouth, she regretted it. He couldn't hide the tensing of his body from her at this proximity.
Still, his words were controlled. "Is that what you think of me?"
"No," she murmured, honestly. "I shouldn't have..." She tried to sit up, but his arm didn't budge.
"No," he replied. She heard the intensity of his anger and regret. "You shouldn't have."
"I'm sorry."
She felt him shift towards her, kiss the top of her head, and stiffened. "They're discreet," he murmured into her scalp.
Sam nodded, and rested her hand near his knee for a moment. Contact and contact as the sky grew pink, and gold began to streak the clouds in the east.
The grey shadows turned dusky pink, and then yellow-gold, and the sun's rays crested the edge of the ravine and the lip of the waterfall opposite them, and the world burst into rainbows around them.
"Pretty," Jack murmured in characteristic understatement.
Sam smiled as the sun crept higher, and the twinkling light and colour danced around with effervescent vivacity. "Are you going to stay the whole day?"
"Four hours," he said. "All we were authorised to stay. We have permission to knock Daniel out and carry him back through the 'Gate if necessary."
She chuckled lightly at that. "I'm glad you got to see the sunrise."
"Even as the bringer of bad news?"
Her laughter stilled and faded. "Even so."
Pete was dead. Whatever his good or bad points, he was dead. Through no fault of hers or anyone she knew, he was dead. And life moved on.
Life. Her child. Pete's child. A small fragment of immortality in the child they'd made.
Mourn the dead, but don't let it interfere with life. The man who sat beside her was alive, and for that much she could be grateful.
The rainbows faded into bright sunlight that spilled over the gardens and trees of the walkway, like molten honey.
"Four hours?"
"Yeah," he said. "General's orders."
"You're a General."
She knew the answer before he even said it. "He outranks me."
Sam lifted her face to the sunlight and closed her eyes against it's brightness. "There'll be lots more sunrises," she murmured at last.
He didn't have to ask what she meant. He just brushed his lips across her head again. "Yes."
----
"General."
Jack looked up from his rental SUV, squinting against the cloudy brightness of the sky before he slipped his shades on. "Agent Barrett."
The NID agent's eyes gleamed slightly in acknowledgement of Jack's wariness. "I'm surprised to see you out of the mountain."
"I'm surprised to see you at all," Jack said. "Don't you guys have invisibility cloaks or something?" Maybourne in particular seemed to have this ability to appear and disappear out of thin air. And God knew Simmons had been an expert at turning up in the SGC - usually at the least-helpful moment.
But it was definitely a surprise to see Barrett in the Wal-Mart parking lot in broad daylight, dressed in civvies instead of a suit, and looking as ordinary as the next guy.
Barrett smiled in acknowledgement of Jack's parry. "Detective Shanahan's crusade against you and your team..."
"He's dead," Jack stated, baldly. He could find very little regret in the fact, but nobody expected him to be shedding tears about Carter's ex-boyfriend. "But you should know that." He watched the bland expression shift slightly. "And you do know that."
Inside the SUV, the groceries rustled in their plastic bags, and Jack spared a glance to make sure that nothing heavy was squashing the bread. "What brings you here, Barrett?"
"Just a friendly visit, General," Barrett said. "To let you know that the Denver Police Department is willing to drop any and all investigations into you, your team, Major Carter--"
"Colonel Carter," Jack corrected him.
"--Colonel Carter, or your workplace."
Jack frowned, "And whose soul did you blackmail to do that?"
Barrett's eyebrows rose, "What makes you think we had to blackmail anyone?"
"We?"
There was no answer to that one, just an infuriating smile. Behind the concealment of the SUV body, Jack's fingers flexed. There was probably a class at the NID academy called 'Pissing Off 101 - How To Really Infuriate Members Of The Armed Forces With Your Attitude.'
"You might like to know, though; Detective Shanahan's death is timely. He was making inquiries about the profile of your organisation."
"Not the first time."
"No. But this time he was looking into the Cheyenne facility as a body, not Carter as an individual."
It began as a tiny tendril of possibility, then exploded into a full blown blossom of understanding. "You had him...terminated," Jack said. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He'd never liked the guy, but he'd never have killed him. At least, he didn't think he would have.
"You jump to conclusions very easily, General," Barrett chided, mild as a lamb. "Detective Shanahan was also looking at having Sam declared unfit to keep a child."
Oh, it's 'Sam' is it, now? Jack's eyes narrowed. "Proof?"
"Proof is a relative thing, General." The agent shrugged, "And desperate times call for desperate measures."
A car roared by, some kid's souped-up motor drowning out all other sound for a few seconds. It gave Jack a few precious moments to think.
"You think Shanahan was that desperate?"
"I think that it's a good thing Colonel Carter is...out of town for a few days."
Which was no answer at all. Jack frowned and opened his mouth to demand why Barrett had turned up, but was forestalled as the Agent spoke again.
"Your relationship with Colonel Carter is unique." Pause. "In fact, her relationships with all the men of SG-1 are unique, if it comes to that." Pale eyes regarded Jack levelly. "Dr. Jackson is very protective of her." Jack frowned at that. What did Daniel have to do with any of this? But Barrett didn't seem inclined to elaborate. "I'll be keeping one eye on the Colonel in future. General health, possible dangers..."
Teal'c had intimated that Barrett had a thing for Carter. Jack had never seen it - before. With a faint pang, he wondered if this was going to be the rest of his life; wondering if every man who looked at Carter fell for her like a paratrooper without a parachute.
His knees twinged in memorial sympathy at the simile. Jack winced and decided to interrupt. "Agent Barrett, is your interest in Colonel Carter's well-being personal or professional?"
Barrett stopped, and smiled. "That depends."
"On what?"
"Is your interest in Colonel Carter's well-being personal or professional?"
Touché. Jack grimaced and didn't answer that question. It was obvious that Barrett already knew the answer.
"I'll be seeing you around, General," Barrett said, pulling out a set of car keys and unlocking the Lincoln in the next parking space. His gaze rested on Jack, calm and intent as he slid into the seat. "Take care of her."
The car was started and reversed out in a fluid movement.
And then the agent was gone.
Jack drove home slowly. There was no danger in leaving the mountain now that Shanahan was dead.
He was well aware that, as far as motive went, he was the prime suspect. And it made it all the more necessary that he and Carter were utterly circumspect in their behaviour towards each other - at least in the next couple of months.
Once she resigned from the Air Force...
More than the sex - powerful as it had been - Jack remembered the way she'd curled up against his side and rested her cheek on his shoulder as they talked about their future. Their future and her child's.
"Are you..." He felt her tense against him, her urge to push him away. "Are you going to continue seeing Melissa?"
The words were neutral, her feelings about the matter were not. "I'm a one-woman man, Carter," he told her, a little stiffly.
"Does this afternoon count, then?" The question wasn't arch or teasing, just a question, with a thready hint of fear in it.
In answer, he kissed her breathless. "It counts," he told her.
Jack drove home in the flat grey afternoon. By now, according to Targonian time, she would just be at the midday meal. Assuming she remembered to eat of course...
Two weeks.
And Barrett knew about him and Carter - as in really knew.
Jack wondered if this was getting out of hand. Daniel had confronted him on Sunday afternoon, after Hammond had gone. Privately, of course, but still. Teal'c had said nothing about the matter, but then Jack didn't figure Teal'c to be an idiot. And if Teal'c hadn't known before, he certainly knew after this morning on Targonia.
None of the women had seemed particularly surprised, but then, Peta Meridian was a know-it-all, Beth Reeve was a big gossip, and Jennifer Haley had a way of watching people that suggested she saw a lot more than she let on. But Daniel felt they were trustworthy, and Major Meridian had taken the time to reassure him on that point. "Our lips are sealed, sir," she said as they followed Daniel and Teal'c out of the 'disc' and across to the Stargate complex. When Jack gave her a hard look, she met it blandly.
So one more set of co-conspirators.
And Barrett.
He pondered Barrett's place in this whole situation all the way home. It wasn't until he'd unpacked the groceries that he realised that Barrett hadn't answered any of Jack's questions.
End of 'What You Don't Know'