by ALC Punk!
Siberia is colder than she was expecting, the chill bites deep into her bones. She wonders if she'll ever sleep at night anymore.
Dr. Svetlana Markhov meets her at the door (so to speak). They spend hours chatting like old friends, and the facade never slips. Sam spends the night curled around her pillow wondering why the shadows get darker with the cold.
It takes time, but she begins to almost breathe again, here. The men and women listen, the jokes they exchange with each other and her never pass the boundaries they shouldn't. No one asks why she was sentenced there (no one cares, maybe). Some of them look at her with speculation, but it's less about her past and more about what they think her future can be. The men are easier to let down than the women. And only late at night, when she craves him, does it all fall to pieces.
Three weeks in, and she watches the blood in her shower. There is nothing frantic about watching herself bleed and she thinks there should be. Janet said this wouldn't happen again.
She spends an extra hour in bed the next morning, wrapped around her cramps.
Life goes on, is a morbid saying, but she thinks it anyway. Days begin to blur into one another. Nights are the same. Just more time spent curled and shaking.
She doesn't believe in redemption.
The mask slips once, Svetlana is talking about her sister's children, and the others are relating stories of laughter.
One of the younger women glances at her, and then reaches out a hand. "Captain?"
"It's nothing." A lie.
Concern in the young woman's gaze makes her feel stupid, but she ignores it. "If you're sure?"
"Yes." Stand, smile, "I think I'll go take a cat-nap."
General laughter sends her off down the corridor and she makes it to her quarters before the pain rips her to shreds and she finally begins to cry.
It's an international group, stationed here. They are learning about each other and the universe, and theories. So many theories. Some of them don't even believe her, despite the overwhelming evidence. "The laws of physics state clearly that -"
"Listen." Sam has to restrain herself from screaming. "Dr. Scully, I don't care what you think is real. I've been out there. The laws of physics as we know them can't account for everything I've seen and experienced."
Others chime in, Svetlana shouts them all down in the end, and Sam goes back to her quarters seething with frustration. Everything she's worked for, laughed at and disbelieved. She wonders what half of them would do when faced with the gravity waves from a black hole only seen because the stargate linked the two places. Or if any of them would have the sheer gall to blow up a sun.
Probably not.
With grim determination, she pushes onwards. Talking, involving herself (but never admitting that there's no connection) until she feels like they think she's part of the community.
She's fine until the next time she bleeds. This time, the cramps are far worse than anything she's faced (although the ash'rak comes close). Doubled over in the shower is about all she can manage, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. It takes time to get the strength to crawl out, time to find the tampons she'd brought out of habit.
By then, Svetlana is at her door, asking questions.
Everyone asks too many questions, she sometimes thinks. She tells her she's got a 24-hour bug and leaves it at that.
The next day she's riding high on the painkillers they'd given her for her injuries (she never took them, she hated getting fuzzy-headed). It's an inopportune time to not be all there, she realizes only later.
One of the girls starts talking about her boyfriend, another chimes in with hers, and Sam suddenly can't help herself. "Love is worthless."
Too late, she catches herself remembering, the cold, the heat, the way he felt when they were both so dirty she couldn't taste anything but the grit between her teeth. The memory leaves her pale and shaking.
Svetlana prudently doesn't touch her. "Sam?"
"I'm fine."
"Dear, you look awful. Go back to bed."
Bed. Without him. Without anything but the cold. A shiver runs up her spine. "No, no I think I need to stay out here."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Ten days pass, and Sam is fine. Fine, she reassures everyone she sees. Fine, say her fake smiles, and over-glazed eyes.
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
Svetlana finally calls her on it. "What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing, Sam. Tell me why you were demoted."
"Didn't the grapevine spread it fast enough?" Sam knows her voice is taunting, but doesn't back down. "Fraternizing with my commanding officer, conduct unbecoming... I'm sure the list goes on and on. I stopped counting when they told me I was guilty for trying to stay alive." Too much information.
"Staying alive?" The door closes as Svetlana steps further into the room. "Sam, please. Explain."
"What, they didn't tell you? Oh, wait," cruelty fills her, "you're not in the know. It being classified and all."
Svetlana shakes her head. "You're not deflecting me, Samantha Carter." There is nothing motherly in her tone, her arms cross over her chest. "Explain, now."
"Or what? You'll have me tossed out on my ear? You'd be doing me a service."
"Just tell me."
"Fine. You want to know? I'll tell you." Sudden anger lashes out, and her words are clipped and hard, "We were held in a work-camp that makes the Nazis look like puppies. Every night we had to fuck each other or risk rape - or worse. I got pregnant." The pain hits her then, and she stares at Svetlana, "Do you know how hard it is to raise a child in that kind of environment? It was so easy to injure myself, to pretend to collapse and have them take me to their surgery - more children mean more workforce, after all. So easy to wait until they'd left me alone and use what was their equivalent of a rusty wire coat-hangar to rupture the membranes. There was so much blood..."
Svetlana is staring at her, horror in her gaze. "My God..."
"That wasn't the end of it. They beat me for six hours straight, breaking bones, leaving marks that wouldn't have faded as blood loss slowly killed me. And then they threw me in a box, and returned me to work, whole. Except I wasn't whole, was I."
"Sam..."
"You can't say anything," the pain is ragged, "No one can."
"You don't have to continue."
"Oh, but I need to, Svetlana, Dr. Markhov. Isn't that what you said?" The viciousness in her tone might once have disturbed her. Now it just makes her angrier. "We continued to fuck - it wasn't sex. It wasn't 'making love'. The poets are wrong, you know. Love just kills you. I got pregnant again. Only, this time, I had to change how it ended. I picked a fight, and won. But not before she marked me. Destroyed me."
Silence falls. She's finished, now.
"In view..." Svetlana swallows, her eyes still wide with shock and pain. "In light of this information... I need..."
"Cat got your tongue?"
"No." Firming her stance, Svetlana shakes her head. "I need to speak with my superiors."
"You do that." Sam drops wearily to her bunk, curling up against the shakes that will come. "I'll be right here."
It takes a few days for them to come to a decision, and when they do, it's not what she expected.
"Washing out, are we?" His voice is as harsh, as taunting, as hers was to Svetlana.
It has her on her feet, facing him, shaking with something she refuses to believe in. "Well, after your sterling example, I figured it was just a matter of time."
"Stop it, Carter." The anger leaves him, suddenly.
She wants him angry with her. "Stop what?"
"This. Whatever it is. Repression, depression, just snap out of it."
"Oh, and it's so EASY, is it?" She doesn't remember hitting him, but her hand is stinging, her palm aching from where it connected with his face.
He rubs his jaw, "Maybe I deserved that."
Something breaks, something that was already broken and walled over, pulls open, and she staggers at the pain ripping through her. "I killed our children, Jack."
"I know." Raw pain in his voice, but he meets her eyes steadily, and there's no recrimination. "You did what you had to do."
"You don't understand. I planned their deaths, I executed them as surely as the jaffa put Daniel and Teal'c on a stake." No tears, because she isn't allowed tears. Not for the murderess of two innocents and two men who should have lived forever.
"No." His hands catch her shoulders, and he shakes her. "Carter, you had no choice. There was no hope of escaping that place. No way to get out. No way to raise children in that kind of environment."
"Why can't you hate me?"
"I did."
The words shatter the pain into splinters under her skin, and she gasps out, the sob ripping her apart. Hands drag her close, lips bury themselves in her hair as she cries for the children she can't ever have. The life she no longer leads. Everything and nothing, but most of all, her innocence.
He holds her for a long time, hands gently rubbing her back, lips moving, vague sounds murmured into her hair. He isn't telling her it will be all right.
Neither of them is allowed this luxury.
"When did you stop?" A hiccup makes her sneeze. She wipes her nose on her own sleeve, but doesn't let him go.
"Dr. Markhov made them find me."
It doesn't answer her question. "When, Jack?"
"You were killing yourself, too." His voice is a whisper.
"What?" Sam looks up at him, meets fathomless brown eyes. "I don't think I can do this."
"Do what?"
"This."
"Carter," This is a tone she recognizes, and she wants to laugh hysterically. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't marry me, Jack."
He coughed, "I was unaware -"
"Don't lie to me, either. I won't do you any good." She can't meet his eyes anymore.
"You're a difficult woman, Carter."
"Thank you." She has to let go now. Let go, or it will be the end of her, she thinks. But she thinks it will be the end of her no matter what, so she holds on.
"C'mon, you need some sleep."
"I've slept."
"Uh-huh." She doesn't object as he pushes her down and climbs in after her, doesn't say no when he pulls her against him and lays her head on his shoulder. "Go to sleep, Carter."
"Autocratic bastard."
"Yup."
But she doesn't leave the bed.
And it's the first night she sleeps through without shivering.
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