Trust
Chapter Six
Disclaimer: Not mine today, either.
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Sam didn't sleep much that night. After Cassie had gone off to bed she stayed in the living room, staring off into space and thinking over the things the girl had told her, the things that Pete had told her, and the things that Daniel and told her; all of the commentary she had been given in the last few days. It didn't do her much good, however, and in the early hours of the morning she found herself sleeping painfully on the sofa, her neck already starting to show signs of a crick.
She ignored it and got off of the couch, intent on getting ready for the day ahead of her. After starting a very strong batch of coffee she took a long, hot shower and changed into comfort clothes. Since her leg was starting to hurt once more she took the pain pills Brightman had prescribed along with her coffee, in hopes that it would sooth the throbbing of her head along with the stabbing feeling from her leg. With a sleepy glance at the clock in the kitchen she wasn't surprised to find that it wasn't even 0600 hours yet. Deciding to make use of her insomniac tendencies she slowly made her way to her study to look over her notes on the newest developments with the Naquadah generator.
It was nearly two hours and three cups of coffee later before Cassie made an appearance. Sam was almost surprised to see the girl awake at only 0753, but she was hardly surprised by much lately. She had heard the door to the guest room open and the shuffle of footsteps down the hall long before the girl had peeked into the study to find her.
"You're already up," she stated, more towards herself than to Sam. "Since when?"
"Five something," Sam mumbled, flipping the page of her notes.
"Have you eaten yet?" Cassie questioned, although she already had a good idea what the answer would be. The coffee pot in the kitchen had been almost emptied, and she knew when Sam drank that much coffee it was to substitute for any form of food.
"Not yet," she replied, her eyes still glued on the papers in front of her.
With a sigh Cassie entered the room further, shutting the door behind her and sitting down in the open chair by Sam. "Don't you think that you should?"
"...Probably..."
At least she admitted it. That was a start. "Well... would you like me to make something?"
Sam broke away from her papers for a brief moment, only to write something down on another stack of bland white sheets. "I don't care. There's probably nothing fresh in the fridge..."
That didn't surprise Cassie much, Sam had been 'out of town' for the last few days, then with the leg injury the last place she could go was the grocery store. "Fine, I'll go to Burger King or something. What do you want?"
"It doesn't matter," she said, looking at Cassie for the first time during the whole conversation. "Whatever you're getting."
"Sam you can't do this to yourself," Cassie said cryptically, taking the notes from her hands.
"Do what?" Sam asked, confusion dancing in her eyes.
"Throw yourself into your work in hopes that you can forget about what's going on in your life," the girl told her. "It won't work, trust me. I've already tried it."
Sam almost questioned her about why she would need to forget about her life before she realized that Cassie hadn't even taken a day off of school when her mother had died. The girl had done the same thing to ignore the fact that her mother was gone, except instead of throwing herself into a Naquadah generator she threw herself into her school work. "That's not what I'm doing Cassie," she said, trying to convince herself more than her friend. "I just... there's nothing else for me to do right now. I can't go anywhere because of my leg and I feel like I'm useless if I just lie around the house doing all of nothing."
Cassie could believe that, but she knew it wasn't Sam's sole purpose for ignoring everything but the paperwork in front of her. "Read a book or something, Sam... even a Science Journal would be better than slaving over a stack of files for hours at a time. I'm going to go get us something to eat, alright? When I come back, I don't want to find you in this office reading the same thing over and over again."
"I wasn't..." she began, before stopping mid-sentence and sighing. "Ok. I won't be in here when you get back. I promise."
Well, it was something, she guessed. "Alright. I'll be back in ten minutes."
On that note Cassie gave Sam's arm a gentle squeeze and left the room, moments later she heard the front door open and close and the sound of a car starting. With a sigh she fixed her papers and set them down on her desk, then left the office and headed for the kitchen, where she washed the dishes from the coffee and started on a whole new batch for when Cassie came back with breakfast. Taking the young woman's advice she then sat down in her over-sized chair with a journal and began to read, not really paying attention to what the writer was talking about.
Not long after that Cassie came through the front door holding a Burger King bag and smiling briefly when she saw Sam sitting in the living room. "I got bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits and cinnamon rolls."
Sam nodded and set the journal down, then followed Cassie into the kitchen where she sat down at the table and Sam went off to get them some coffee. When she returned she handed the girl a cup and sat down, picking up the biscuit and unwrapping it. "I don't know what I'm going to do about tonight," she confessed with a sigh. "I didn't really think it through last night."
Cassie smiled lightly, "You're going to talk to him and the two of you are going to finally figure things out. Lord knows all of us have been waiting forever for it to happen, and to tell the truth, we're getting kind of annoyed."
"And this 'we' you're talking about, it consists of whom?"
"Let's see, Daniel, Teal'c, Mom– when she was alive, Hammond, anybody you work with, really. Except the ones who have a crush on your or Jack, I guess..." she shrugged. "Sam, ever since I met you two, I knew. Well, ok, maybe not the exact moment I met you, because I was a bit traumatized then. But it didn't take long after things became normal for me to see it, everybody knows that you two have feelings for each other, and no one can understand why you've not done anything about it."
"We can't," she said in her defense. "There are regulations–"
"Haven't we already talked about this?" Cassie questioned. "Back doors, remember."
Sam sighed, "Yeah, back doors..."
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By the time Cassie left it was nearing 2000 hours, and Sam still hadn't heard from Jack. She was beginning to wonder if he was even planning on coming over as he said he would, or if he was just going to stand her up and avoid the conversation. When the girl called at 2040 she had made up her mind, no more waiting on him to come over. If he was going to try and brush her off he had another thing coming to him.
She took her motorcycle, deciding that it would get her there sooner, and sped off down the street towards his house. It took her seven minutes to get there, and as she pulled up into his driveway he stepped out onto his porch, a confused expression on his face.
"I was just about to come over..." he told her when she walked up the steps to her porch. Holding up his keys to prove he was telling the truth he smiled briefly. "Do you want to come inside, then?"
Feeling a bit embarrassed, she fought back the flush that was trying to break through her milky skin, "Yeah..."
He opened the door to the house for her and followed her inside, "You want something to drink? Beer, water, coke... beer?"
Sam smiled lightly, "How about we make it a water? I have to drive back home..."
"Alright, water it is." he motioned towards the couch. "Have a seat, I'll be right back."
Taking his advice she sat down and waited for him to come back into the living room. When he sat down next to her he handed her a bottle of water and twisted off the cap of his beer, "...So..."
"Jack," she started, earning a surprised look from him. Yeah, she could call him by his first name, this was an important discussion. "The other day, on P2Q-317, why did you make me leave?"
"You were hit," he stated simply. "There was no way you would make it out without somebody watching your six."
"Why couldn't you come with me?" she questioned. "We could have made it."
"No Sam," he told her, "there was no way. If I hadn't distracted them, neither one of us would have made it off that planet. You know that just as well as I do."
"Then it had nothing to do with..." this time she didn't even try to hide the flush in her cheeks, "I'm such an idiot."
Jack sighed and pushed her chin up so that she was looking him in the eye, "It had everything to do with my feelings for you, Sam. You are my second-in-command, more than that, you're my friend. If it had been Danny I would have done the same thing. It's my job, as your commanding officer and as your friend, to do any and everything in my power to keep you safe. And while it might have had something to do with my feelings for you, they weren't the only reason behind my decision. Ok?"
"Then what is the problem here?" she questioned.
"The problem is that when they made the rules they didn't expect anything remotely close to what we have to go through each day. They expected their soldiers to be able to stay detached from each other. Yeah, we're all brothers, but brother's in arms is as far as it goes... and it's only for a short time. It's different with us– at the SGC. We're forced to work together in such close groups and we go through these near-death experiences that makes war on earth seem like child's play, and the outcome is inevitable. Now, I'm not saying every SG group is going to fall in love with each other, because I in no way have romantic feelings for T or Danny boy, but they're like brothers to me. Not just brother's in arms or anything like that, they're my blood. I'd do anything for them, and I know that they would do anything for me. All of us are like that, SG-3, SG-12, every single one. What they don't know is that there's no room for romantics to impair our judgement, because we would already do anything for each other, you put people that close to each other, and you don't need to be in love to do whatever it takes to save their lives."
"There has to be some way..." she mused, frowning. "Some kind of... back door that we could use. A loop hole that we could take. They can't just tell us that we can't have feelings for somebody. You can't stop that kind of thing. I know I didn't plan on falling in–" she grew quiet and adverted her eyes. "There has to be some way."
"There aren't many options."
She looked up at him and a strange look passed through her eyes, "What is this between us? Truthfully..."
He licked his dry lips and sighed, "Sam– I would like nothing more than to be able to tell you... but I can't."
"You can't, or you won't? Stop hiding from me Jack. I know you better than to think you're afraid of breaking the rules."
"We get into this now, what happens if there isn't a back door? We're just going to hurt ourselves."
"Then we figure this out, right here, right now. We find the back door tonight."
Jack looked at her, defeated, "That easy?"
Sam shook her head, "When did I say that it would be easy? It's going to be one of the toughest things either one of us has ever done, because there's a good possibility that the back door only opens if one of us gives up our ranks."
"I won't ask you to give up your job, Sam. It means to much to you and you've got the possibility of going much farther than I do. I have an insubordinate streak, it's a wonder I've even gotten to Brigadier General."
She reached out and touched his arm, knowing that even that small amount of contact was dangerous, "Even if I made it all the way to General, I would still be alone. And that's not worth anything if I don't have somebody to share it with."
"There are so many better people out there that can make you happy, you don't need to waste your life on me."
"Newsflash, Jack, I've already tried the getting over you thing. It didn't work." She moved her hand from his arm and sighed, "I'm never going to find anybody better than you are. Nobody will ever compare to you, and I don't even know why I tried. I'm tired of pretending, Jack. It's not working anymore."
"I don't know what to do, Samantha."
Shivering at the sound of her full name coming from his mouth she shook her head, "We've got all night to figure it out."
"And what happens in the morning?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "But, we'll find out soon enough."
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Once again, she found herself curled up uncomfortably on a couch, early in the morning. Only this time, it wasn't her couch and she wasn't alone. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light coming through the living room window they darted from the ceiling to the man lying next to her, sleeping just as painfully as she had been. When had they fallen asleep? She could remember still being awake at 0300 hours, but after that she wasn't sure.
For the many hours of talking they hadn't gotten very far. The best they could figure was that the only other way, besides one of them giving up their job, was to go directly to the president. Neither one of them was very confident about having to do so, but it was the only way, and both knew it. They had decided that they would go together and see him, since he still had that invitation, and they had saved the world more times than either one of them could count. After all of that, wouldn't he be obligated to do them just that one, small favor? They deserved it, didn't they?
She slid off of the couch, ignoring the stab of pain she felt as her stitches were tugged at. The feeling reminded her that she was scheduled to be at the SGC later on that day to have them removed and she sighed, the last thing she wanted was to be in the infirmary, even if it was only for an hour or so.
After wondering briefly if she should wake him up she decided against it. It was still early, and even though he would need to wake up to go to work soon, he still had at least fifteen minutes. Instead, she ventured into the kitchen and searched for the coffee that Daniel had bought him. The man had absolutely no taste when it came to java and Daniel had finally gotten fed up of drinking bad coffee when he was over his place, so he had supplied his favorite brand. She put the pot on and left the kitchen, headed for the bathroom to wash her face and wake up a little bit.
When she emerged from the guest bath he was sitting up on the couch, looking around confused. "Morning," she greeted, "coffee's on."
"What time did we fall asleep?"
She shrugged and sat down on the couch, "Sometime after three, I guess."
"What time is it now?"
Glancing over at the clock on the wall she sighed, "0533."
"Coffee's on, you say?"
"Yeah," she smiled briefly. "So... we're really going to do this?"
"I can't think of any other way." he shrugged. "You sure I'm good enough for you? Because, I'm still not sure..."
She blushed slightly, "You're perfect for me, Jack. Nothing is ever going to change that."
"I haven't exactly been Mr. Perfect, you know?"
"Yeah, and I'm not little miss princess, either. I know that you've had to do some pretty horrible things, so have I. If that makes you a bad person, then I'm right there with you."
"If you're sure," he smiled lightly. "I'll see if I can set up an impromptu meeting today. He's a very busy man, though-- it might take awhile before we can see him."
"I can wait," she assured him. "Trust me."
He smiled and reached out to brush his fingers along her cheek, "Always."
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A/N: Sorry it's so cheesy! I couldn't think
of another way to end the chapter. Anyway, let me know what you think.
Hopefully the next one will be out sooner.
