Part Two

Then tension had broken, but starting this conversation was still no easy task, and again Sam found herself struggling for words. She glanced over to Jack with a slightly helpless expression. Jack mercifully came to her rescue once more.

"Tell ya what, Sam," He put a deliberate emphasis on her name, a clear and unmistakable sign that the Air Force, their duty, ranks, and regulations had been tossed out the proverbial window. One part of Sam was put very much at ease by that, but another more dangerous part of her psyche leapt into full alert, on edge, and ready to pounce.

Jack continued, seeming oblivious to her internal struggle. "Why don't you take off your jacket, kick up your feet, and relax a bit… I'll go make us some coffee."

He rose and made to leave the room, but Sam caught his hand as he passed her. "Expecting a long night, sir?" She saw Jack cringe the moment the "sir" escaped her mouth, and she winced herself. "Sorry… habit." She dropped his hand, almost like it was on fire.

Jack let a slight smile form on his face once again. "Bad habit."

Sam nodded. She wanted to say more, to address him "properly", but she just didn't want it to sound, or feel, forced. When it came, it should be natural, she thought. Jack seemed to accept that, for now, and turned back to go get their refreshments. Sam sighed, shrugged out of her jacket and laid it across the arm of the couch.

As she sat back, she tried to relax. She could hear sounds of coffee making in the kitchen and was tempted to go see if he needed help when she heard a distinctive crash and enough cursing to make a sailor blush. The cursing stopped her, though. It had been enough to set her on edge once more, and she fought back the bubble of panic welling in her chest.

Sam leaned back into the plush cushions and focused on her breathing. Several long, slow breaths later, she recognized the pungent aroma of coffee seeping in from the kitchen. It was a comforting scent, and she inhaled deeply just for the sheer pleasure of it.

She opened her eyes again when she heard Jack approaching. He passed a steamy mug to her before sitting beside her once more. She pulled the cup to her lips and took a small sip, savoring the warmth in her mouth for a moment before swallowing it down.

"Well…" she began, but hesitated, again uncertain as to just how to start.

"Deep subject," Jack retorted with a smirk.

Sam bit back a snort, choosing instead to enjoy another sip of her coffee before attempting again. She set her cup down on the coffee table as she swallowed both the coffee and one last little bubble of fear. She shifted her position on the couch so that she could face Jack more directly.

"After Jolinar died, you were the only person who could break through to me."

"Seems to me, all I did was piss you off," Jack replied with a bit of a frown.

Memories suddenly flashed through Sam's head, much like on Hathor's ship, but this time induced only by Jack's words.

Jack's voice, dripping with frustration. "Damn it, Carter, its time to snap out of it. You can't wallow in this forever. You've got work to do, people counting on you. Let it go, already, for cryin' out loud!"

Her own voice, filled with as much fear as anger. "Damn it, Sir, don't you think I've tried? That I'm trying right now? I hate this! I hate every second of it. It's not ME! And you have absolutely NO FUCKING CLUE what its like, what I'm going through! NO ONE DOES! Because no one has EVER survived ANYTHING like this. I am completely on my own to cope with the single worst experience of my entire life!"

Sam shook her head to clear the moment that still haunted her to this day. Never before, or since, had she spoken to a superior officer with such aggressive and flagrant disrespect. To say it bothered her deeply would be a gross understatement.

She lifted her eyes back to Jack's, more than a hint of embarrassed apology silently passing from her to him. "It was the first feeling I knew was mine. All mine."

Jack nodded his understanding; the full comprehension and acceptance reflecting in his eyes filled her with a small sense of relief.

"I've been a prisoner of war." Jack spoke slowly, his words carefully chosen, his tone steady and even. "I've been through some pretty impressive torture sessions." Jack paused, gave a harsh snort before continuing. "I even had the distinction of being singled out for interrogation by the particularly sadistic Uday Hussein."

Sam winced, and for a moment she couldn't bring herself to look at Jack. The whole world knew the reputation of evil that individual, and the thought of Jack at his hands was almost too much for her to bear without weeping.

Jack continued, though, almost robotic in his delivery now. "But nothing that monster did could compare with having one of those snakes in your head. I was a prisoner in my own body. In my own mind. The only ammunition I had to fight back., to defend myself with, was sheer strength of will."

Sam didn't dare speak, didn't dare interrupt now that he'd finally begun to open up. She nodded, silently encouraging him to continue.

"I had no control. No control of my body… or my mind. It picked my brain, dug out the most horrible memories it could find, and used them in an endless barrage of assault against my own sense of self-worth. And I've done some pretty horrific things in my time. Gave it loads of ammunition."

Jack let out a ragged, defeated sigh. "But that's not the worst." He glanced at Sam, then quickly averted his eyes. He stared down into his forgotten coffee mug as though it held the answers to the universe inside its dark liquid contents. "I gave up," he admitted quietly. "I don't know how long it was… before the Tok'ra stuck me in the deep freeze… could have been hours… days… But somewhere in the midst of it, before the cold blackness of unconsciousness took over… I gave up. It won. And I think… I lost my soul to the devil in the process."

Sam's mouth fell open, a slight gasp the only sound in the room. Her eyes were wide with fear, with disbelief. He couldn't have done that, she told herself. And yet the evidence was right before her very eyes; proof undeniable was sitting in the defeated frame of Jack O'Neill. The man who had survived capture, imprisonment, and torture at the hands of the sadistic Iraqi dictators, who had somehow survived his own guilt over the death of his son by his own weapon, who had faced down Ra and Apophis and countless other goa'ulds without batting an eye…. That man now sat before her utterly crushed under the weight of his own transgressions.

Sam searched her mind, desperate for the right words to pull him out of this dark place he'd drifted into… knowing she was likely the only one who stood any chance of success. Placating sympathy wouldn't cut it, of that she was certain. Perhaps the only way to reach him now laid in her personal knowledge of symbiote-possession.

"I gave up, too." Her quiet admission was just enough to draw his attention. "It was right after Jolinar gave me my one and only chance to speak out independently… You didn't believe it was really me. You walked away and left me there, alone. I was so terrified… I broke. I gave up. Retreated to a tiny corner in my mind, resigned to my fate. That truly was the worst part of the whole experience."

Jack had been staring at her through her brief monologue, his eyes dark, intense, and more than a little haunted. When she ran out of words, she stopped to look at him, really look at him, her eyes pleading for something, some reassurance, perhaps, or at least understanding.

Jack reached out with one hand to clasp her neck in a warm and tender gesture. His long fingers strayed up to her hair, grazing her scalp with just the right pressure to send warm, tingling sensations flowing through her body. She shivered beneath his touch, and he responded by pulling her in closer, his arms wrapping around her in a tight embrace.

For a long time, they simply held one another, the sudden desperate need for human contact overwhelming and irrefutable. There were no murmured words of comfort, no life-altering declarations, just the soft sound of two people breathing in shared pain, and eventually, release.

Still tightly wrapped around her, Jack shifted his head until his lips found her ear. She shivered as his warm breath tickled sensitive nerves. "I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered. "I wanted to believe you… God knows I tried… but I couldn't… I'm so sorry."

"I know," she replied as softly. "Maybe if I called you 'Jack' every once in a while, it might have been easier," she tried to keep the comment light, even managed a soft, slight chuckle. But the underlying pain was too poignant to be missed.

"No. It only would have made it harder to walk away. Damn near killed me as it was." Jack pulled away just enough to rest his forehead against hers. "I think that's when I started to realize…" he paused and swallowed hard before continuing. "…just how dangerous this is." He emphasized his statement by squeezing her in impossibly closer to him. His eyes were more alive than she had seen all night, since their return from Hathor, in fact.

"How do you do it?" he asked her, his voice dark and hoarse. His hands crept back up to her neck, his fingers wrapping around behind and pressing into her vertebrae. "How do you live with that thing inside you? How can you possibly not lose your mind?" With every question, he applied a little more pressure. He was nearly strangling her now. "How do you know you're you?"

Her eyes started widening in fear. She never would have believed him capable of hurting her, of all people, and yet here he was nearly choking the life out of her. She couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, couldn't find the strength to try to shake him off. She brought her hands up to his, wedged her fingers between his and physically urged him to loosen up. The pressure started to ease; her lips formed his name, and it seemed to finally grab his attention. He released her neck completely, but she refused to allow him to withdraw his hands from hers.

She slowly sucked air back into her starving lungs as their entwined hands dropped to rest across their legs. "It hasn't been easy," she began when she could find her voice again. "Those first few days after… after she died… I almost did lose my mind."

"I know there are some fundamental differences between what you experienced… with the Goa'uld symbiote and what I went through with the Tok'ra… but there are also definite similarities, too. Like the loss of control… And losing your sense of self, and yes, even self-worth." Sam paused to look at Jack, catching the surprise in his eyes when he glanced back at her on those last words.

"When Jolinar entered my body, she immediately seized physical control…She took complete domination over my actions, even the words coming out of my mouth. And yet… She stayed out of my head, for the most part. I immediately made it clear and obvious to her that I would never submit to becoming a permanent host by my own choosing, so she… well, she basically told me to sit down, shut up, and wait, while she worked on getting herself back through the Stargate, back to the Tok'ra, whom she swore would remove her as soon as they could secure a willing host.

"She didn't go picking my brain, digging through my memories, or anything like that… except to get the most basic information she needed to carry off the deception that she was 'me' until she could escape. After you captured…us… I pleaded and begged her to let me talk to you, to try to convince you… We already know how that went over… After that, she just wouldn't listen to me at all.

"Then the bounty hunter attacked… And Jolinar knew she wasn't going to make it… She knew the only hope for certain knowledge she carried to reach her Tok'ra colleagues… lie in me… And only then did she completely blend with me. In those last few minutes of her life, not only did she save my life, but she also shared with me all the cumulative experiences of her extensive lifetime… Hundreds of years worth of memories."

Sam closed her eyes tight, blocking out the flood of those memories before they deluged her again. She drew in a shaky breath and slowly opened her eyes, slowly focusing on Jack's face, inches from her own. "Just when I was sure I would be drowning forever in Jolinar's memories, you found me… you anchored me back down in reality… and you gave me the first sense of self-control I'd had since she took over. I was angry, furious… I wanted to lash out so badly… I don't think you ever knew how close I was to physically attacking you that night… but somehow, I found the restraint… and I knew it was me. I knew the anger was mine alone. I grabbed that knowledge and held on for dear life… and I gradually found myself again in the hours that followed."

She paused again, this time cupping Jack's face in her hands. "I never could have done so without you. You stayed, even when I pushed you away, shut you out… You refused to leave my side. Every time I started to slip back, you pulled me out of it. I can't ever thank you enough for what you did that night… But I am here for you now. I'm not leaving you to deal with this alone. You need me, Jack."

She saw the denial form in his eyes, but he couldn't, wouldn't give it voice. His hands, now clasping her shoulders, tightened their grip. "I need to feel… something… anything… and know its me, its mine…" His voice kept faltering, and every time it cracked, so did a part of Sam's heart. "I need you like I've never needed anyone… Please, Sam…"

Sam answered his wrenching plea the only way she could think to. She closed the final distance between them and pressed her lips into his. He jerked her into him, her chest pressed flat against him. She could feel his heart pounding through his ribcage, hard and heavy against her breasts as her own heart pounded back in echo of his increasing tempo. The kiss was instantly out of control, lips and teeth clashing together fiercely, even painfully.

He thrust his tongue deep into her mouth, and she dueled back with every bit as much strength as he. As his arms wrapped around her, he squeezed even hard, forcing the breath from her lungs. Still Jack refused to release her. She fought wave after wave of dizziness as she struggled to pull in air against Jack's mouth. Just as she was sure she was going to pass out, Jack broke away.

"I need you, Sam," he told her in a ragged voice. "Stay with me… Help me feel alive again."

Sam hesitated only long enough to regain a steady breath. As she looked into his eyes, she knew she would refuse him nothing this night. She offered him a gentle smile and nodded her head. "I'm here for you as long as you need, Jack." She sealed her vow to him with a gentle kiss.

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