Twenty-Eight Days
Part Two
They stayed on the base overnight at the General's order. And although they started in different rooms, when Sam woke up the next morning, it was to Daniel snoring on the other side of the bed, the Colonel out like a light in the chair, and Teal'c meditating at the foot of the bed.
She wondered what the airmen posted outside the door thought of that.
She didn't ask.
Their bloodwork came back clear. No STDs, no diseases, nothing that shouldn't be there.
Even her bloodwork came back fine. No change, no difference.
But everything felt wrong.
It felt more wrong when they were scheduled for psych evaluations and two counselling sessions each: one individual, one group. Sam looked at the schedule and dreaded the group counselling.
Bad enough to have to look them in the eye and face what they did for her; worse to have to listen to them explain it to someone else.
"Do we have to?" The question was Daniel's, thin with the strain of holding back his revulsion.
Janet regarded them all. "You won't be allowed back on active Stargating duty without the psychological evaulation, Daniel."
The appointments were made and set and they were given permission to leave the base.
SG-1 rode the elevator without a word, the noise of the machinery filling their ears. Sam felt the words unsaid, both in the elevator and as they signed out of the mountain. There was a moment of stilted silence as the four of them paused in the parking lot before she took the initiative, said goodbye and made for her car.
She drove away from the mountain - away from the three men still standing out in the midday sun.
But once she was home, had cleared out her messages, gone through her mail, cleaned out her fridge, and put on a load of washing, the silence gnawed at her.
Sam resisted the urge to call up the Colonel or Daniel and find out what they were doing. They'd seen too much of each other in the last ten days, and they needed some time out.
Even if the house felt empty around her.
She sat down to watch a fluffy, romantic comedy, but couldn't watch for more than a few seconds before her own memories intruded.
---
The man who slept in the cell beside hers was both the same and different from the man who'd made the bargain with the female leader, Akaitah: his freedom in exchange for Sam's.
Sam didn't know how to quantify it, only that something in him burned, as though the unnecessary excess had been stripped away. Something shuddered within her at the thought of what he - and Daniel and Teal'c - had been through in the last week, but she kept the revulsion from her face. She owed him that much.
The guards had come and taken away the other two a while back, much to their dismay and the Colonel's anger. Whatever he had bargained in exchange for this visit was not enough to 'pay' for Daniel and Teal'c's absence from service this evening - only his own.
She wasn't tired; here in the cells, she did nothing but sleep and fret and worry over the guys. There was nothing else to do.
Somewhere else in the maze of cells that formed this prison, a woman screamed once, then fell quiet, merely sobbing as the guards brutalised her. Sam's fists clenched in rage and frustration.
Bought and paid for, by the flesh and blood of her team-mates; sacrosanct only by their sacrifice; and both grateful for and guilty for what was being done to them in exchange for her sanity. She owed them a debt beyond anything she could repay.
So Sam lay still when she wanted to be up and about, pacing. She watched the man whose tension radiated from him, a heat that was as sexual and emotional as it was physical. She accepted what he and Teal'c and Daniel had given her, and swore that she'd make it up to them somehow.
Somehow.
Even as she watched, the Colonel rolled over onto his stomach, turned his head towards her and opened his eyes, the lids lifting slowly to meet her gaze with slumbrous intensity. One hand snaked through the bars and closed around her upper arm in a grip that was as unyielding as steel and as gentle as a lover's caress. Hot fingers seared her skin like a brand, and his eyes fixed upon her, no less intense for the sleep that still clung to them.
Her flesh tingled at his touch, and she tensed, but didn't move away. "I'm here," she said - the only reassurance she could give.
The only reassurance he wanted.
He said nothing as they continued to lie in stillness, but as his breath evened out to sleep and the fingers enclosing her upper arm relaxed, Sam couldn't shake the feeling that the touch was indicative that she'd been bought in a coin she couldn't repay.
And that, more than anything else, terrified her.
--
"Carter."
She started awake with the hand on her shoulder, and looked up into the concerned face of Colonel O'Neill.
Sam sat up and scraped a hand through her hair as she sat up. Across the table, Teal'c was just seating himself and beyond him, Daniel was bringing over a tray of desserts. Around them, the commissary hummed with the activity of a lunch break.
"You were in deep," the Colonel observed as he dragged out his chair and regarded her. "Not getting enough Zs?"
She shook her head. "Not really." In fact, she hadn't had a really good night's sleep since...the first night they'd been back. That had been over two weeks ago.
Two weeks of ups and downs, restless nights, and tense days. And headshrinking by Mackenzie.
"Hey, Sam," Daniel said, laying down a glass of her favourite jello in front of her. "Dessert?"
She accepted it with something like gratefulness. "How'd the session with Mackenzie go?"
The grimaces told her everything she needed or wanted to know.
"It was not helpful," Teal'c stated with the hint of a curl to his lip.
Daniel huffed and examined his apple pie. "Can you say 'understatement'?"
"I've had failed missions that went better," said the Colonel.
Sam kept silent as the guys expressed their disdain for Mackenzie over the food. Today's session had been just the three of them, without her. So they could speak freely about their 'experience' without feel hampered by Sam's presence.
"I feel that your presence might be inhibiting their freedom of expression, Major," Mackenzie had said. "They may feel that what they went through is too personal to voice in front of you."
Sam didn't tell him that if the guys felt that what had happened was too personal to voice in front of her, then being closeted with the base psychologist wasn't going to make them any more loose-tongued.
She didn't know why Janet hadn't been able to find another psychologist to see them. There were at least two others who worked on the base and either would have been preferable to Mackenzie: although the man was competent, his personality simply rubbed SG-1 up the wrong way.
Judging by their discussion, today's session hadn't gone quite as Mackenzie hoped.
"It's not that I don't appreciate their consideration for our state of mind," Daniel said as he harried bits of apple pie across his plate. "But how helpful is it to push for every little detail?" He pointed his fork at the Colonel. "And don't tell me it's so they know what might cause us to go off under pressure."
"I was going to say that it's because they don't want to find us reacting adversely in dire circumstances," the Colonel said without missing a beat. He dodged the piece of piecrust that would have hit him on the head and smirked at his team.
Sam bit back a grin and saw the corner of Teal'c's mouth lift.
Some things, at least, hadn't changed.
--
The things that had changed were harder to pinpoint, more subtle disturbances in the ebb and flow of their daily life.
She noticed that the guys dropped by her office a lot, but that wasn't unusual. She noticed that they got a lot of attention from the women of the base, but that wasn't unusual either. She noticed that they spent a lot of time around her - even outside the base, and that definitely was unusual.
She noticed that she was almost never free from their presence, in the mountain or out of it.
And others noticed it, too.
"The guys seem to have been at your place a lot lately," Janet observed during dinner one night. They were out at a restaurant, neither woman much wishing to do any cooking or cleaning around the house, and Valentino's was always good.
Sam glanced up at her friend from the lasagne she was pushing around her plate. "We just hang out."
"But quite often."
She eyed the diminutive brunette, not meaning to be wary, but unable to help it. Where was this interrogation going? "Janet?"
"More than you used to."
There was a good reason for that. "It's...difficult for them. After Pindalyn."
Brown eyes that were usually soft looked at her with a very piercing expression. "You can ask them to leave, you know."
Sam didn't ask how Janet knew that her team-mates' constant presences were grating on her nerves; Janet saw more than she let on. Mostly, she was relieved that Janet wasn't talking about more dangerous topics than her team spending time together.
"Sam?" Janet was watching her. "You can ask them to leave."
Her hesitation was a moment too long and her friend knew her far too well to keep up the pretense.
"What happened to them in Pindalyn happened because of me." It might have been their choice, but it was only because they had to protect her that they'd chosen to go into that slavery.
What Akaitah had done to them could never be undone.
What they had given in return for Sam's security could never be repaid.
"That doesn't mean you're responsible for them, Sam."
Except that she was. Being who she was, being as she was, she was responsible for it. She felt it with every fibre of her being - in her core, like solid steel.
"Could you have done anything to stop what happened to them?"
"No." That answer was immediate. What little rebellion she'd attempted had been crushed: she had no strength, no power on that planet. What assistance and power she'd used to fight back had been through others - others who had their own demands and requirements.
But those requirements had cost nothing compared to what the guys had paid.
"You went and found help."
"Yes." But not soon enough.
One small, warm hand covered her larger, cold one as Janet regarded her with brisk compassion. "Sam, I know Mackenzie's been telling you that it wasn't your fault. And I don't know if there's anything I can do or say to change your mind on that point."
But?
"But I know that neither General Hammond, nor myself, nor anyone on the base thinks you did one bit less than what you could to rectify the situation. You came up against an enemy you had no reason to expect, and you encountered a situation for which you had no training. For what happened, you did well."
Sam wasn't convinced - couldn't be convinced. How could a whole base of military personnel - known to be the most inventive and innovative of solution-finders in desperate situations - think that she'd done well? She'd not only let them go as slaves to this woman, she'd run away, vanished from her 'confinement' and left them in Akaitah's hands.
Ten days during which they'd been treated worse than dirt because she'd defaulted on them.
The bitterness hadn't yet shown. Not yet. But it was there. Sam knew it had to be there - because three men with spines and tempers did not suddenly become doormats just because they were abused.
"Sam?" Dark eyes regarded her anxiously. "Have you heard a word I've said?"
Sam grimaced. "I'm... Janet, this isn't the time. Not right now."
"Maybe it's not," Janet admitted. "But you'll need to hear it sometime. And," she added, "if I can sandwich it inbetween the layers of your lasagne over dinner, all the better!"
Now there was a slight twinkle on the oval face, and Sam automatically smiled in return.
"You're all alive and, with time and counselling, they'll learn to deal with what happened - and so will you."
With time and counselling...
Sam asked the question none of her team had yet dared to ask. "How long will we be out of action?"
Janet shrugged. "As long as you need to be to deal with this."
Which might mean a week, or might mean a year.
Sam didn't ask any more questions and was very relieved when Janet dropped the topic.
But Sam felt the other woman's eyes on her when she took the Colonel's call in the middle of dessert.
--
"Carter?"
She turned from the edge of the porch, not sure whether to be pleased or annoyed that he'd interrupted her solitude. Inside the house, she could hear Daniel and Teal'c 'discussing' the movie they were going to watch.
Sam would have been just as happy if they would watch no movie and left her alone.
Things were getting worse.
She'd always known that the guys were popular among the women on the base. But lately the popularity had turned into a more active interest on the part of several women.
Perhaps it was the gossip going through the base about what had been done to them, slowly seeping through the personnel working beneath the mountain; perhaps it was simply the way they'd changed.
The other women of the base saw the way the guys hovered around her, the way they spoke to her, the way they touched her. They saw the results of what had happened to the guys on Pindalyn, saw how they treated Sam, and they assumed that because the men of SG-1 were comfortable with Sam - and, to a lesser extent, with Janet - they would be comfortable with the interest of other women.
And there were some women on the base - only a few, but enough - who didn't hesitate to make their interest known. Or to make their displeasure known to Sam when the guys knocked back their interest.
It wasn't as though Sam was forbidding the guys to hang around with anyone else.
She almost thought she'd have welcomed the break.
You can ask them to leave, you know.
Almost.
Guilt kept her from objecting when the guys turned up outside her house. Again. By now it was an automatic reaction - at least by the Colonel and Daniel. Teal'c sometimes came and sometimes stayed in the mountain. Sam wasn't sure if it was his innate consideration for her state of mind that kept him away, or if he occasionally felt the need for the solitude she craved.
"You've been pretty quiet all night," the Colonel observed, resting his hip against the brick wall of the porch. "Everything okay?"
There was one simple answer to that.
She summoned up a smile from somewhere. "Fine."
He eyed her, and she guessed that he knew something wasn't 'fine', but the habit of taking her at her word was too ingrained for him to stop. Possibly.
Sam could hope.
Something warm touched her nape. She flinched, then glanced guiltily at him as he withdrew his hand, unhurried, but with a tension about him that spoke of what he was holding in. And the spot where he'd touched her was icy cold after the warmth of his hand.
She met his gaze, blue to dark, and she felt the temptation to take his hands and lay them on her skin, to let the heat of his touch sear her from the outside in - a fitting fire. For a moment, she could feel his mouth on hers, his body pushing her back against the wall, his hands at her waist, at her nape, on her breasts...
There was a rattle from the house, and a moment later, Daniel hauled open the door. Light spilled out across the porch, making her blink. "Sam? We can't get your remote control working."
Icy water on the heat of her thoughts. It was better this way.
She didn't look at him as she went inside, or as she fixed the remote control. But he followed her to the kitchen when she went to put together some snacks, and Teal'c inconsiderately went to inform Daniel that the movie would start when they were all there.
He stepped up to the bench beside her, an inferno of heat that she couldn't touch, couldn't abate. The fire that burned in him was not for her to douse. Sam glanced up as she opened a bag of crisps to find him watching her with the steady, measuring gaze of a man who knew her all too well.
"If you want us to leave, you just have to say," he said softly, as the previews sounded loud in the living room.
She shook her head, an insitant negation. "You don't have to, sir."
"But you don't want us here."
"I..." The lie stuck in her throat and he saw it.
"Why don't you say something?" The words were harsh, as though she'd been the one to give him over to the abuse he'd endured for over three weeks.
In a way, she had.
"You were in there because of me." Her words were low, but he caught the meaning of them immediately. Nobody had ever accused him of being stupid.
"We were in there because we chose to be."
"You could have let--"
"No."
"You could--"
"No." He took a step towards her, his hands fisting by his sides. "I was not going to let that happen to you, Carter."
"But you made that decision," she said, trying to make him see, trying to make him understand.
She failed.
"And I would have made the same decision if it had been Daniel or Teal'c threatened."
"That's not the point."
"Then what is the point?"
Sam took a deep breath. "The point is that whether or not you made the decision, you would never have been faced with the choice if it wasn't for me."
"Carter, you have no idea of how wrong you are," he began. "Achy-tart would have used something else to get us into her bed."
"You were in there because of me," she repeated.
"And because of that, you can't tell us to get lost?" He saw her eyes and his face darkened. A moment later, he was walking out of the kitchen and through to the living room. Sam heard him telling Daniel to turn it off - they were leaving her alone.
"Sam?" Daniel stared at her, scraped a hand through his hair, and took a deep breath. "Okay. Well. Um. We'll see you tomorrow, then."
Teal'c went more serenely, but she knew that he had taken her measure. There was little that he didn't see - for all that he kept close-lipped about it. "Samantha Carter."
The Colonel was the last to leave. He gave her one long, bitter, angry look from eyes that were as black as obsidian and just as hard, and spoke her name. Two syllables, no gentleness. "Carter."
And she let them out, then leaned her head against the glass panes of her front door and wasn't sure if she should sigh or cry.
--
She was so preoccupied with her thoughts, she didn't notice she had company until her locker door closed with a sharp snap.
"Going somewhere, Carter?"
Sam glanced up, startled by their presence and the bitter venom in his voice.
A quick glance around, showed Daniel standing to the side and Teal'c at the door. The Colonel's dark eyes burned her to the bone. There would be no running now.
Not that she'd ever entertained the thought with any seriousness.
"No, sir."
"Sure about that?" The question was loaded. She could feel the cold gunmetal of it as his voice rang through the otherwise empty locker room. "Dr. Lee said you'd been asking about Area 51," he said. "But you never mentioned it to us."
She kept her expression calm as she packed her clothing into her duffle. "Just making some enquiries."
His face convulsed with something like rage - or despair. "Bullshit, Carter," he said, tightly controlled for all that his emotions held him fast. "Sergeant Madison mentioned you'd taken out an application for transfer."
"As I said, Colonel," she said, "I was just making inquiries."
"But you didn't discuss them with us," said Daniel flatly. "We're a team."
We were a team.
Four weeks after they'd returned from Pindalyn and they were still undergoing counselling, therapy, and weren't allowed back on the duty roster. The guys weren't dealing well with what had happened to them.
Hell, Sam wasn't dealing well with what happened to them.
And she wasn't dealing well with their need to be around her all the time.
"I'd go for a couple of projects," she said. "Short term transfer."
"But you still didn't discuss it with us," the Colonel said. "Why not?"
Because I need time out. I need time out and you guys aren't capable of giving that to me. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but guilt constrained them from being spoken. She hadn't been able to confront them about it - at least, not any more directly than not saying anything when the Colonel confronted her in the kitchen, but she'd been able to act quietly and hope they didn't notice.
She should have known it was a vain hope.
In spite of that confrontation between her and Colonel O'Neill, the guys still couldn't leave her alone. She was the north pole to their lodestones and nothing could stop them turning towards her.
"Carter," his voice was implacable. "Talk to us."
The sound of the zipper being yanked shut ripped through the silent air. "What do you want me to say, sir? That you're crowding me? That I don't have any space to myself? That I can't tell you - any of you - to go away and leave me alone even for a few days?" Her voice rose. Once the words were said, they couldn't be unsaid, and she saw Daniel flinch and didn't care.
"We want you to tell us when we're overstepping our bounds!"
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Guilt choked her again, but this time it was joined by a slow outpouring of anger, flooding her senses.
She let it rise. The only way she was going to get through this was in anger. God knew nothing else had worked.
"Just say it!"
"Colonel, in case you haven't noticed, we're not in the habit of just saying anything."
The snap was brutal and he felt it, a personal slap between them. But he only winced once. "Then learn! Dammit, Carter, learn to set us boundaries."
"I shouldn't have to!"
"Well, you do!" He rapped out. "Because you have no idea how difficult it is..." Something in his throat worked and he broke off.
It was Daniel who picked up the thread. "You have to set boundaries for us," he said, no less angry for all that he was less intense about it than the Colonel had been. "Sam, we need those lines drawn."
"You didn't before."
She knew the difference the moment the words were out of her mouth, before the Colonel even answered. "That was before."
Before they'd given up more than they should have just to keep her inviolate.
Before they'd paid for her sanctity with their bodies and souls.
Before they'd started extracting the price from her, taking her freedom, her sense of self, her personal space in exchange.
Daniel was angry, his eyes afire. Colonel O'Neill was watchful, like a hawk viewing its prey. And Teal'c observed silently from the door; if he had an opinion, he didn't give it now.
She kept her eyes on the Colonel's face. Daniel had the force of emotion, but the Colonel had the authority. If he called them back, they'd come. If.
"I never asked for you to--"
"No. But we did."
"You shouldn't have."
"Why not?"
Anger washed through her, no longer a slow seeping but a forceful gush. It fired her nerves along every limb, prickled across her nape, spine and shoulders like the soft crackle of low voltage humming through her flesh.
"Because I'm not worth that!" she said, her hand clenching around the duffle strap. "Because you shouldn't have had to do that!"
"What was I supposed to do then?" Dark eyes pinned her, remorseless. "Tell me what my options were!"
"To let--" It was a pointless argument. Sam knew that.
"When hell freezes over and Sokar takes my ass!"
"Then why can't you leave me alone?" The words slipped out before she could censor them.
Daniel flinched.
The Colonel never moved. But the expression on his face was like a death.
And Teal'c's eyes slowly slid closed.
"I..." I'm sorry. "I had to say that," she told them. "I have no space - you leave me no space."
"All you have to do--"
"Is tell you to go? Set boundaries?" She couldn't help the laugh that rose up in her, bitter, like regret. "Would you even observe them?"
"You know I would." He hardly seemed aware that he'd made it personal - and fear arrowed through her, cold and piercing. He'd always observed the limits between them; she'd always trusted that before.
Things were different now.
"And running away would change anything?" Daniel demanded.
She dragged her eyes from the Colonel's. "It was going to be temporary."
"So you say."
"Daniel--"
"We're not ready to let you go, Sam."
"Daniel."
He spared the Colonel a glance that was almost contemptuous in its brevity. "You might be willing to let her run away, Jack. I'm not."
And in the end, the Colonel wouldn't let her go, either. Oh, maybe she'd get a little way away, but the chain of responsibility - forged with links of guilt - would inevitably drag her back.
As swiftly as it had come, the anger drained from her. She felt flat and tired. Cornered. And she just wanted to go home. Or somewhere where she could hide for a while.
It would be better for them, too. Without the reminder of her, of what her presence meant, maybe they wouldn't have to remember what had been done to them. They could get on with their lives, deal with the memories of rape and abuse, and move on.
But it wasn't going to happen. As both the Colonel and Daniel lifted their voices in ferocious argument, she began to swing her duffle to her shoulder and paused.
Teal'c, so far silent, had moved away from the door. His grace was achingly innate, and utterly terrible. He could move like a serpent striking, swift and deadly; or like a dancer, smooth and lithe. Of them all, he was the only one to level no accusations, to make no claims, to say nothing, but simply watch without a word.
It was without words that he stopped before her, took her hand and laid it over his heart.
Her fingers rested on the cloth of his t-shirt, warm like the body that ran beneath it; and she could feel the muscles of his chest move faintly with the pulse of blood running through the heart beneath.
Afraid, she looked up, a part of her not wanting to see what his expression might be, a part of her knowing that she needed to see - that she needed to know.
Deep trust and equally deep hurt. Absolute faith and absolute concern. Loyalty and acceptance.
He knew what he was doing. He knew it perfectly well.
And so did Sam.
She could run, but there was nowhere to hide from this. From them. All of them.
She was trapped.
--