Title: No Need
Author: MissAnnThropic
Spoilers: Threads
Summary: Sam grieving the night after Jacob's death.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Stargate but my rabid fan behavior. Alas.
A/N: Definitely another fic straight from the CFF file, aka the 'Crap Fanfic File'.

"Carter?"

Sam would have startled if it had been anyone else's voice. If it had been any other person's soft, cautious footfalls drawing near where she sat on the surface of Cheyenne Mountain she would have flinched at the intrusion. But it wasn't and they weren't, so she didn't. Instead Sam cant her head to one side to bring his figure into her peripheral vision. The night would hide most of the tears still drying on her cheeks, and even if it didn't she wouldn't have cared. Not around him. She'd been through to much with the man to be afraid of showing a little weakness; he knew both extremes of her. He'd seen her rocking on a gurney, huddled in an infirmary blanket like a lost kitten and he'd seen her emptying her clip into gods. He wouldn't condemn her tears, not for the man she'd lost.

"Hi, sir," she barely whispered. She knew her voice sounded anguished, but in defiance to her squeak she really felt kind of okay. It was almost funny how not devastated she was, not as much as she'd thought she'd been at her father's death. Not like she'd been after her mother died.

Jack moved closer and stopped two steps shy of her position. She was perched on a boulder ('gotta love the mountain terrain, always a place to hop a squat' Sam thought dourly), her legs drawn toward her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins. She could feel her commanding officer's presence, like a warm stone in winter's dusk still holding the sun's rays. She inhaled and exhaled deeply.

"How you doing?" he asked softly, and Sam allowed a gentle smile. Jack had a voice, one she suspected next to no one outside of her got to hear. It was a tender, gentle, careful, low-pitched, soft-spoken voice. It was an auditory hug, and Sam had taken his hugs of air when hugs with arms weren't appropriate.

"I'm doing okay."

Jack nodded silently and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He'd stand there and let her think, because he knew that's what she did. Sam appreciated his respect for her processes, her patterns. So few people in her life had understood her natural rhythms so perfectly. Her father had 'gotten' her in that way, too. Even when she and her father had not been close he'd understood that aspect of her. At the time, Sam had to accept understanding in place of emotional closeness.

Sam tipped her head back and looked at the stars. They were pinpricks of brilliant white light. Their distance did not diminish their brilliance, because Sam knew they were each burning, lustrous wonders of the galaxy, the explosive offspring of a violent birth that gave life to everything.

"Whatcha doing?"

Sam smirked at Jack's voice. The words flippant but the tone in his gentle-voice. Double-talk without the added words. "Thinking."

"Don't you do enough of that?" Jack teased.

Sam chuckled. "I was just thinking... being out there and seeing what's out there doesn't make this any less beautiful."

Jack was quiet a moment then Sam sensed him move. Without a word he took the last two steps and climbed on to the rock with her. Their shoulders were brushing, familiar and home in so many ways, and Jack looked upward with her. "You're right," he said after a time, and Sam didn't think he was giving her lip service. Jack wouldn't do that to her, give empty platitudes because she'd lost someone. Jack O'Neill played a lot of games, but not those kind. Sam also knew him enough to know that he was constantly star-struck, not by celebrities but by the real things, stars millions of miles away casting their tenacious light. And he wasn't an astrophysicist... he could look with the eyes of the child at the night sky. Sam treasured that preserved innocence in him more than she'd ever tell him.

"So..." he began then trailed.

Sam smirked again. "So, here to give me a pep talk?"

"No, just... here if you want to talk."

Sam finally glanced over at him and his face was almost safe in the darkness. She could let herself not see the fabric stars sewn to his collar or the stark clarity of his features or the intensity of his eyes. He could be a ghost of Jack, there just enough but not too much.

Sam sighed. "I don't know how I'm going to tell Mark. He can never know exactly how Dad died."

Jack nodded solemnly and Sam didn't have to ask, nor did he volunteer. They both knew that Jack knew what it was like. There was no need to voice it. Jack had lost his fair share of comrades in Special Ops, returned home only to give vague, unsatisfying accounts to grieving loved ones who wanted only what Jack couldn't give, answers and closure... understanding.

Sam looked skyward again and let the starlight attend her, thousands of years old by the time she saw it. Old wisdom in a faint sparkle of light.

"Need anything?" Jack asked.

Sam looked again at him and their eyes locked. The moment he'd joined her she had everything she needed. And he knew it. It was their unspoken knowledge, their secret, shared truth. Through everything tangible and physical they lived as Lieutenant Colonel and General, beneath their lives was the certainty that they had each other. Maybe not in the way it should have been, or the way it had been in other realities, but in the way that saved them. There was no need to say it.

Sam smiled at him and merely shook her head.

Jack smiled back fleetingly, their stolen second, then his expression was carefully schooled again and he said, "Jacob was a good man."

Sam felt sadness again, even though she was all right. It seemed inevitable she'd cry for her father, and he deserved her tears. Jack was right, Jacob Carter had been a good man... a great man.

Jack's words had been simple but loaded. Jack did not give his loyalty blithely or indiscriminately. He'd trusted Jacob. He'd been genuinely fond of Jacob.

He liked Jacob more than Jack truly let on. The teasing way he'd called the man 'Dad' was a big deal from Jack. It was a private language and Sam knew its meaning. It was the glancing blow of what may have been, a nod to the attachment he had to Sam, and Jack's subtle way of letting Jacob know.

Jacob had known. Jacob played along and played back and Sam took it as the veiled approval it was. If it could have ever been approval for anything. As it was, it was all parties saying 'had things been different...', and everyone approving the may have beens with no need to say them out loud.

Sam lingered on the memory of the way her dad's eyes would glitter and laugh at Jack's antics and salutations, the way they'd cut to her knowingly and fatherly, and it hurt to know she'd never see it again.

"I'm going to miss him," Sam said softly, if only to herself and the starlight.

Jack was still a moment, she knew he was running through options, then his sacred word. "C'mere."

Sam didn't have to look up to know his arm was at the same moment rising to enclose her shoulders. She didn't fight him; she never did. She'd never shied or pulled away from a Jack O'Neill hug and she couldn't imagine ever doing so. There was too much safety and comfort in his arms. He could hold the universe at bay with one arm, and sometimes Sam would let him.

Sam leaned into his side and dropped her head on to his shoulder. It was her place. On rare occasions such as these his shoulder belonged to her when it seemed she had nothing left to call her own, even her strength and pride.

Jack held her like he always did, firmly but not desperately, respectfully but not distantly. He held her like Jack treated her in life, approaching an equal, waiting to take his cue from her to decide if he should be the stronger or the weaker. Always the stronger, but if she needed to be the strength he'd back off and let her. She knew it without need to ask.

Sam closed her eyes and lingered in his touch. She breathed in deeply and his scent effused her. Home base, port in the storm. Stripped of silver leaves or shoulder-perched stars, there was only a war-torn man giving everything he knew to give to a woman so many ways his superior, so many ways his inferior.

With them, so much was unspoken. He'd always be there for her, no matter what. Even if she'd married Pete she could run to Jack and he'd give her shelter. He'd always care, probably more than he was supposed to, just like she would. He'd always know when to back away without pulling away, by now almost an art. He'd always find a smile just for her. He'd know when to use that voice with her. He'd know when to say something and when to keep his mouth shut. Sam knew Jack would always be just what she needed him to be... himself, uncompromising and unflinching.

And she'd be Sam for him. There'd be the masquerade of the day when they were Lieutenant Colonel and General and commanding officer and second in command and comrades and teammates and friends, but always, beneath it all, she'd be Sam for him.

And he knew it, as certainly as she knew she could count on Jack.

A wealth of truths between them and no need to speak them.

END