Reflections
Chapter Nine
After two days out of the SGC, Sam was feeling decidedly more at peace with herself, the SGC, and Samuel Carter.
It helped that the expedition was a success and more. Not one of the twelve personnel under her command had been injured, they hadn't had to come back early because something chased them off the planet, and neither had they been delayed in returning by something untoward.
Sam had even been the one to discover the mechanism hiding a secret chamber in the ruins they'd been sent to explore. It appeared to have once been a library, before the ruins - a mediaeval castle-like structure - had been abandoned.
So, all in all, a successful mission with a probable follow-up at some point in the future.
It also helped that General Hamond had sent her out with her team. Her team, her command, and her people. It was an affirmation she'd needed after the last couple of weeks of whispers and rumours, the the iris program and the control room connection fiascoes, to say nothing of the mislaid technology and being ordered to hand over her research and development project to Samuel.
She was still Colonel Sam Carter, trusted member of the SGC. And although there was now someone else on the base with her knowledge, she was still more than capable of commanding her own team. They wouldn't be taking that from her any time soon.
It was a relief to have that reassurance.
"It all went well, Colonel?" General Hammond asked her as the last of the FREDs trundled down the ramp from the Stargate and the expedition members began leaving the gateroom.
"It did, sir. Very well." Sam felt she could say that without reservation and not a little satisfaction.
"Good." The general didn't question her opinion, but fell into step beside her. "Take yourself and your people through post-gate, and I'll see you at the debriefing in ninety minutes. I don't feel it's necessary to have any more than the command personnel at this debriefing, unless you disagree?" He regarded her quizzically.
Sam shook her head. "There's no reason to include them, sir. The leaders have the broad overview."
"Which is all I want at this stage," Hammond agreed. "Very well. I'll see you in the debriefing, Colonel."
The post-gate procedures were standard by now. It was a basic round of medical check-ups, blood tests, and an MRI. The MRI took the longest, but it had been considered necessary since the second year of the Stargate's operation and Sam's possession by Jolinar.
Sam's post-gate check-up usually took a little longer than the rest because of Jolinar. She also had to be handled by the medical officer on duty who'd been stationed there the longest because of the complications that could - and had - arisen during the tests. It hadn't been such a problem when the SGC was smaller in size during their early years, but more recently, and specifically after Janet's death, there'd been some difficulty with personnel not realising that Sam needed a different set of tests.
As a result, although she was one of the first into the infirmary, she was one of the last out of it.
One of the definite advantages to being a woman at the SGC was that the women's showers, unlike the men's, were rarely full. Today was no different.
She stripped down and kicked her clothing into the cleaning hamper to the sound of the chatter of the other women of the expedition.
"You know," one woman was saying from the cubicle beside Sam's, "how women used to survive without hot showers, I really can't imagine."
"Don't much care to, either," said another woman on the other side of Sam. "This is heaven."
"Oh no," another woman laughed, her voice echoing back to them from even further along the line of shower stalls. "Heaven will be when I get home and get at my partner. This is just a nice hot shower!"
"Unfortunately, we don't all have nice warm men to go home to at the end of the day."
"Yeah," someone else commented dryly, "Some of us have partners who are incapable of fending for themselves. Burger King doesn't count."
"You should make him eat his own cooking, Kat!"
"I should," Kat agreed. "The only thing is that I'd have to eat it, too!"
There were snorts and chuckles along the other women, and in her own cubicle, Sam scrubbed herself down with shower gel, and smiled.
"So, Sam," someone said along the cubicles, "how's O'Neill's cooking?"
In the privacy of her cubicle, Sam grimaced. She was careful to make her answer light when she answered, though. "Beery," she said.
There were various chuckles around her.
"You know, at least he understands when you come home exhausted. I mean, he's been there before, right?"
Sam felt obliged to say, "Well, we're not exactly living together."
"Yeah, but it works with seeing each other as well. I mean, when I have to tell my boyfriend that I'm too tired to see him, I can't tell him that it's because I've spent the last four days trekking halfway across a moon with aliens hot on my tail."
The conversation devolved into a discussion of exactly what they told their partners and families about what they did in the mountain, and Sam listened with half an ear and wished that nobody had brought up Jack.
She still had to work things out with him.
Especially after Saturday morning.
One of the chiefest problems in her relationship with Pete was that she hadn't loved him and she had expected too much of the relationship at the start, only to find that he expected too much of the relationship in the end.
Sam knew she loved Jack. But she wondered if she hadn't taken her expectations with her, extra baggage in her relationship with him. Well, she knew they both had baggage, but she had thought she'd left her unrealistic expectations of a relationship behind.
Not that anything in her relationship with Jack was perfect. Not by a long shot.
But she wanted to work things out with him. As in, he was important enough to her that she was willing to work on the more difficult parts of their interactions.
And Saturday morning had been difficult.
She hadn't been expecting his visit. If she had... Well, if she had, then she didn't know what she'd have done with Samuel. But it was fairly obvious that Jack hadn't been expecting to find Samuel eating breakfast in her kitchen.
Not that she'd been all that sanguine upon rolling over in her bed and discovering that there was a half-naked man where no half-naked man should be.
At that point in time, midmorning or so, Samuel had been a cross between apologetic and amused - at least, he was once he remembered enough of the previous night to assure her that he'd only put her to bed. The main problem was that by the time Jack turned up at the house, Samuel was just stubborn enough to see nothing wrong with waking up in Sam's bed. According to his argument, it was his bed, too, and it wasn't as though anything had happened between them.
So Samuel, damn him, hadn't been a bit of help in explaining what actually happened. And Sam had not been prepared to explain to Jack that she'd slept in the same bed as Samuel after a night out on the drinks.
He'd backed out fairly fast. Politely, of course, but in more than merely physical retreat. She'd started to follow Jack out of the house, planning to explain everything to him. Samuel had stopped her from embarrassing herself even further. "For crying out loud, Sam, you're wearing a towel! Explain it to him later, get dressed now."
She'd gotten dressed. She'd called his cellphone and listened to it ring out. She'd gone house-hunting with Samuel while her mind was trying to work out how she was going to explain this to Jack when he finally did talk to her. She'd wavered between determination that she was going to explain herself and the irrational fear that he didn't really want to listen to her side of the story anyway. And then she'd taken the call about the rescheduled mission, and the rest of the weekend was spent getting her residual paperwork sorted out, along with the supplies that they were taking off-world.
So, all in all, the last time she'd heard from Jack had been Saturday morning, and that had been about as comfortable as being brain fried with a ribbon-device.
Sam really needed to see him.
She just hoped he wanted to see her.
The debriefing was simple enough, they'd run into no complications, there'd been no sign of either local or extraterrestrial activity, and Sam recommended that a short-term follow-up be sent to more thoroughly investigate the castle ruins. The personnel at the debriefing - both the military and the scientific - were in concordance with her, and the meeting was over fairly swiftly.
"So," Daniel said, all innocence as they walked down towards their labs. "Are you going to call Jack?"
She arched a brow at him. "Why should I?"
"Because you've been away half the week," Daniel said. "I thought it was the kind of thing you do after being away a few days." He held up his hands in defence. "It was just a thought."
Sam rolled her eyes and didn't bother answering, leaving him at the entrance to his office and heading on towards her lab.
It was a bit of a surprise to walk into her lab and find Samuel studying a piece of tech that was sitting in the middle of her desk. Sam felt a momentary stab of jealousy, then squelched it firmly. General Hammond would have said if he'd allowed Samuel to take over her lab.
He looked up in surprise. "Hey, Sam. Didn't know you guys were back yet."
"Three hours ago," she returned, coming to stand beside him. "What's this?" It was made of some kind of metal alloy, small enough to be gripped in the hand, and roughly ovoid with one elongated, tapering end to it, and another end that looked as though it had been made to be held in a hand.
"Something SG-4 picked up on their last mission," he said. "The natives had them."
"Natives?"
"Yeah. Natives. They had loincloths and spears," Samuel said. "Carey said it was like the founding fathers facing Indians with ray guns."
Sam ignored the familiar reference to the CO of SG-4. "Disproportionate technology," she murmured, leaning her elbows down on the desk.
He regarded her, amused. "Ya think?"
"I do," she replied. "So no idea where it came from if not from them?"
"Not a clue," Samuel said. "Apparently the natives were extremely hostile towards them. Ran at them several times with these things pointed at them."
"And?"
"And?"
"What does it do?"
"Nothing. They just pointed them at SG-4 and yelled stuff to try to make them go away." Samuel shrugged as he sat back. "I've been staring at it for most of the day. Haven't discovered a thing." He sighed. "Sorry about hijacking your lab, but I went into mine this morning and found Dr. Lee had hijacked it for the latest tests on the zat blast dissipators. Since I didn't feel like getting an electrical shock every time I touched the thingummy, I moved here."
Sam half-smiled. "It's okay," she said. "I just came to check if anything important had turned up in the in-tray before I went home."
"There isn't much," he said, indicating the tray that stood on one of the side benches with her paperwork and notes in it. "Although I think there's a personal letter there for you."
A personal letter? Sam went and retrieved her mail. She had an assortment of professional journals delivered to the SGC, and they were usually to be found in her in-tray. But on top of the latest set was a sheet of paper, folded and sticky-taped together.
She retrieved the letter and a pair of scissors with which to cut the tape, and met Samuel's slightly amused gaze as she opened it, feeling oddly secretive about the letter.
It was short and to the point. Definitely not a man of many words when it came to writing letters.
Sam,
Call me when you get back.
Jack.
Her mouth curved in a smile as she re-read the short lines. A moment later, she remembered she wasn't alone as Samuel shifted on his chair. Sam folded up the letter briskly.
"O'Neill?" He had the start of a smirk on his face, and she flushed pink, heat roaring into her cheeks.
"Who else would it be?"
Samuel moved about in his chair again, and Sam looked up and caught his slightly abashed gaze. "I explained Friday night to him."
That alarmed her. "What did you say?"
"I told him that we went out but nothing happened."
Somehow, that wasn't any comfort. "Did you tell him...?"
He lowered his voice. "About sharing the bed? Yes," he said levelly. "Look, I'm sorry about that, but it was my bed, too. And I can promise you it won't happen again."
"It won't," she said, picking out the rest of her mail. In the back of her mind, a question bubbled up, demanding to be asked. "How...?"
"...did he take it?" Samuel asked. "We talked. Only short, but I think he's sort of okay. He seemed okay about what happened - or, rather, didn't happen - on Friday night."
Well, that sounded a bit better. And the letter seemed to indicate that he was willing to talk.
It was more than she'd expected, even an hour ago.
"So, you going to call him?"
Sam glared at him. "Did you read the letter?" It was more than possible. Jack hadn't exactly sealed it up.
"Oh, please," he said, and she was instantly sorry she'd suggested it. "What else was it going to say? 'Dear Sam, I'm yours forever to do with as you want, love and kisses, Jack O'Neill'? The man is a long way from emotional Central Station. As in, way out in the boonies. The most it would say is 'call me' - if that."
She couldn't deny that. Especially since it was entirely true. And she wasn't going to continue this conversation. Not with him. Not now. Probably not ever.
So Sam collected up her mail and ignored the growing air of amusement in the lab. "I'm going."
There was the smirk again. "Have fun."
As she walked away from her lab towards the elevators and the outside world, Sam found it relieving to realise just how far she'd come in two days. Although she'd had a momentary pang seeing him in her lab, it wasn't the full-blown panic she'd felt clutch at her two weeks ago.
She was who she was and she couldn't change that.
She'd done what she'd done - and not even Samuel Carter would be able to take that away from her. Whatever he'd done was hearsay to everyone - the only proof they would ever have of his actions would be that Sam had done the same thing here.
They'd have to get used to each other.
It had taken three weeks, but Sam was ready to start.
And, while she was at it, she was ready to start on a few other things, too.
- TBC -