Road to Nowhere

Part 17

Jack leaned his head back against the couch trying to force back the images and sensations beginning to assault his senses.

"Are you okay, Jack?" Sam asked resting a comforting hand on his knee.

"Not really."

"It's started?"

"Yeah. You remember the Blood of Sokar?"

"How could I forget?"

"Well, I'm starting to think that was a walk in the park."

Higgins and Magnum came into the living room followed by who Sam assumed was the doctor. "This is Doctor Cornwell, Mr. Master's personal physician in Honolulu," Higgins introduced the man beside him.

Jack opened his eyes to look at the pudgy man. "Well, Doc, we might as well start this walk down memory lane."

"I've spoken with Mr. Magnum, Mrs. Yashida and Miss Nanahara about what symptom's Mr. Yashida displayed. I believe I have a sedative that will reduce-"

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever," Jack waved his explanation away. "Just do what you gotta do. I don't need to know the details."

"Mr. Higgins has prepared a room, if you're ready?"

Jack stood and Sam moved to follow him. He stopped and turned back to her. "No."

"I'm not leaving you."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

Jack glared down at her giving her the look that made many an airman tremble in their boots. "I'm not going to argue with you, Major."

She glared back at him defiantly. "I'm not letting you go through this alone, Colonel."

Anger blazing in his eyes, he turned away from her, "Thomas, you keep her out of that room. I don't care what you've got to do."

Magnum nodded his agreement. "Whatever you want, Jack."

Without a glance back, Jack followed Dr. Cornwell down the hall. Sam started after him, but she was held back by Magnum's restraining hand on her arm. She gave him a look that would have made system lords cringe.

"Perhaps I can interest you in some dinner, Major?" Higgins asked politely.

In the end, they wouldn't even let her in the main house. She was relegated to the guest house where Magnum lived. She lay in his bed unable to sleep while he slept on the couch in the living room, holding her prisoner. Somehow she managed to fall into a fitful sleep plagued by nightmares of Jack dying horribly and alone and no matter what she tried she can't reach him.

"JACK!"

Sam awoke with a start and lay there for a while forcing herself the breathe evenly and deeply. She threw the covers back and pulled her lavender silk robe over her matching pajamas. She made her way through the dark living room not even caring that she noisily bumped into several pieces of furniture.

"Sam?" a groggy voice from the couch asked. "You okay?"

"Peachy." Sam jerked open the refrigerator door and pulled a beer out. She popped the top and took a long pull. An arm snaked around her and snagged beer.

"He'll be okay, you know."

She closed her eyes and leaned on the refrigerator door. "No, I don't know that. That's the problem."

Thomas reached around her again and grabbed two more beers, "C'mon, let's take a walk."

"What, I'm being let out of my jail?"

He didn't respond so she trudged after him up the stairs and out across the lawn to the beach. Thomas plopped down on the ground and set down the two extra beers. Sam stood staring out over the ocean. It was a clear night with a very nearly full moon. The stars twinkling made her think of Jack. He loved the stars. He tried not to show it, just like everything else he felt strongly about. It was almost like he was afraid someone would take it away if they knew how much he cared about it; as if they would pull the stars from the sky just to spite him. She sighed heavily and sat down next to Magnum. He silently held out a fresh beer to her.

"Thanks."

"Don't worry, Sam. He'll pull through and in the mean time we'll do whatever we can to protect you.

"Why would you do that? You don't even know me."

"You're Jack's girl. We promised him we'd look after you."

"'Jack's girl,'" she repeated bitterly. "I've spent most of my life proving I'm not just 'General Carter's little girl' only to become 'Jack's girl'."

"I didn't mean it like that," he protested. "I only-"

"I know, Thomas. But it's true. It's not the first time someone has said something like that. I've been Jack's 2IC for five years. Even in the beginning when he didn't like me very much there were a lot of people that just assumed that I was screwing him to get ahead. I think even my own father thought we were having an affair the first time he met Jack. I guess none of them knew us very well. Jack's too honorable to do anything the endanger my career and I… I was too scared to do anything to endanger my career. Now it doesn't matter. Our careers are over and I guess if I end up just 'Jack's girl' it's not so bad."

"Is that why you're here?" Thomas asked quietly.

"No, nothing so scandalous," Sam said laughing slightly. "I was involved in something a couple years ago. I shouldn't have survived it, but I did and it changed me. A couple of month ago I was kidnapped by a man who thought that the changes my body had undergone could be the key to curing his illness. His doctors were just about to kill me and dissect me when Jack found me. Last week- God, only last week. I seems so much longer. Anyway, Jack received information that the NID thought I was more valuable for study than as an Air Force officer. Jack saved me again."

"Sounds like the NID. I hate those guys," he said in disgust. "When I was in Navy Intelligence, I had a run in with one Air Force Colonel- What was his name? Mayberry?"

"Maybourne?"

"Yeah, shifty little bastard."

Sam laughed at that. She wasn't surprised Maybourne had a reputation far and wide. "Yes, he is. And as much as I hate to admit it, he helped Jack save me twice."

"Well, I guess he was good for something."

"So you were in Navy Intelligence?"

"For a few years. I was a SEAL before that."

"Is that how you met Jack?"

"Yeah, we were on a couple of joint ops together. And then in Iraq, we were both POWs."

"You were there with him?" she asked, not really sure if she wanted to hear about it. She knew he had been left for dead and imprisoned for four months. It was one of the things you avoided talking about at all costs with Jack but she couldn't help her morbid curiosity.

"Only at the very end. I don't know how he survived it for four months. I don't think I could have. He had been the only American prisoner there. Jack hadn't give them any information, but they didn't kill him. They just toyed with him, tried to break him. They enjoyed hurting him. I don't know how a human being can treat another like they did him. They would have done the same to me I guess, but Jack… Y'know, he didn't even recognize me, but he saved me from the worst of it. He had been through hell for four months but he still tried to defend me from them. And they just hurt him more for his efforts."

"How did you get out?"

"TC and Rick forged orders, stole a helicopter, and put together a group that infiltrated the compound an got us out."

"They weren't court marshaled?"

"No, actually it seems like Jack had a couple of friends in high places. When they found out he was alive and how Rick and TC had saved him, everything was kinda pushed under the rug."

"So you haven't seen Jack since then?"

"No, we ran into him when he came to Hawaii after he got divorced. We had just resigned from the Navy. It was right before I started to work for Robin."

They sat in silence for a while. Sam stared up at the stars and couldn't stop herself from asking, "Did you hallucinate about your time in Iraq?"

Thomas took a sip of his beer and thought for a long moment before answering, "Yeah."

The breeze suddenly seemed a little cooler and Sam pulled her robe tighter around her.

"So were you a Combat Controller?" he asked trying to steer her thoughts away from Jack's nightmares.

"No, I'm an astrophysicist."

"But you said you were Jack's second?" he questioned in confusion.

"Trust me. It makes sense if you knew. It's just classified."

"Well, I understand that."

They fell into silence once again. She decided she liked Thomas Magnum and she couldn't hold Jack's stubbornness against Thomas and his friends.

TBC