I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Pablo Neruda

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In the small hours of the morning, the darkness of the SGC seeped through corridors; spreading from room to room until reaching the office of the base commander. The time thus far going unnoticed by the man engrossed in mountain of paperwork. Jack O'Neill was a man with a reputation, one that he had to up hold so while the SGC bustled with the scientists, linguists and military personnel he dogged everything that ever used to resemble a tree. This arrangement however left very little time for the man to complete his duties as the commander of the world's biggest secret, in fact the only time it left was late at night when mostly everyone had gone home. Very few people knew how quickly Jack could get through a stack of paperwork, but his reputation remained thanks to sleepless nights and the people he would call close friends even family upholding his secret.

With a sigh he signed the last dotted line on a request for better quality toilet paper completing a forests worth of forms and requests that now filled his out tray. Switching off his desk lamp the small room was plunged into a ghostly luminescence that came from the sparse lighting in the halls, a futile attempt to save on the SGC's large electricity bill.

Maybe I could have a hydro electrics station built or have Carter come up with a Naquadah power station. He thought closing the door to his office.

Yawning he crossed the briefing room heading for the stairwell; Sergeant Harriman was on the graveyard shift, and as Jack's temporary assistant (even though Jack could never think of anyone better to do the job) he took it upon himself to make the guy's work a little easier to make up for the undoubted future snappiness which he would one day be subjected to from his tired, stressed, old and cranky boss.

He nodded to the man before heading for the coffee pot at the back of the room, filling a cup for himself and the sergeant. It had become somewhat of a tradition, the sergeant would be waiting by the elevator with his coffee in the morning but at night it was Jack's job to get the coffee for his assistant. There was no doubt Jack was the man, but the simple act of returning a good gesture made him feel … well grounded. Handing the man his coffee, the very substance that would be needed for him to stay awake until his shift was finished a whole eight hours away.

'Anything happening?' he asked the man in front of him who was far to awake for 1.30 in the morning.

'No, Sir nothing to report.' He replied curtly, looking his superior in the eye before turning back to his ever-changing display on screen.

'Right, I see you later then.'

'Good night, Sir.'

'Good morning sergeant.'

And with that he left him to do what ever he did to keep the stargate going smoothly.

With his coffee in hand his feet slipped into autopilot guiding him with ease through the vast maze of corridors that made the SGC. Finishing the coffee that would keep him alive just long enough to drive home and collapse into bed, he found himself heading down the corridor with led to one Lt. Colonel Carter's lab.

It wasn't so strange that his feet had led him there.

Whenever he was tired and he wasn't careful his subconscious took over it would always bring him to her.

It was his subconscious that he usually managed to curb, the part of him that noticed the way she did her calculations going down the page like some newspaper column, a confusing array of symbols and numbers of which only she could make sense. The part that liked the way she bit her lip when she was nervous, the part that loved the way she smiled, and the feeling when he was the one to put it there.

Figuring since he was already there he tapped lightly on the door before walking in.

The room was in darkness, the small arc of light from the open door illuminating instruments left abandoned on the large table.

The absence of her presence did not go unnoticed by his subconscious, and neither by his conscious.

His eyebrows fell into a frown, chest deflating, as his insides suddenly felt empty.

She wasn't there.

Things had changed.

For the first time it truly hit him, his Sam would no longer be there when ever he needed her, whenever his subconscious demanded attention, whenever he needed saving. She had a life now, one that she went home to, and one that she left her work abandoned on the table for.

Jack moved further into the room taking his seat trying to fill some emptiness with remnants of her left be hind by her work, but it wasn't good enough. Everything was alien to him, the doohickeys and the lack of her presence.

Something was crushed inside him.

But she didn't know.

She would never know.

Because she had a life.

Because she had Pete.

It had been her decision to leave it in the room and true to her word that is where she left it, but Jack just couldn't. Those feelings already embedded deep in a place that he had once forgotten, in place that could not be kept within walls of concrete for it was in his very soul and went everywhere with him since that day and even before.

But despite the empty cavity that was now in his chest, despite the pain and hurt those feelings had brought him over the years, they would not just wait in a room, a single burning fire in his heart that would never go out.

So in the shadows of the room he sat and let his subconscious do in the confines of darkness what it wanted to do on top of the mountain and scream from the rooftops.

The secret of his heart.