Saturday, November 28, 2020
"I'm too old for this."
Sam couldn't help but laugh as Jack flopped face down onto the bed with a groan. "Tired?"
He rolled over as she walked into the bedroom with Aqua at her heels, as if the dog was monitoring Sam's movements. "Carter, the next time Cassie's kids ask for piggyback rides, smack me upside the head, will ya?"
She grinned as she stabilized herself against the dresser and slipped her shoes off. "Would it have done any good?"
He removed the heels of his palms from his eyes as he looked at her with utter consternation. "Good point."
She sank onto the bed beside him, gently resting the back of her head next to his as she caught his hand in hers. "You're good with them."
He squeezed her fingers as his eyes got a faraway look in them. "They remind me of Charlie. All of their questions. Their excitement."
She rolled over and kissed his shoulder as she snuggled closer to him. The dream world which had come with the virus niggling at the back of her mind. "Jack..."
He raised an eyebrow as he looked over at her. "Yeah?"
"I promised you an explanation. A reason why I've been so distant lately."
He grew more serious as he looked back at her. "I'm listening."
She rested her cheek on his shoulder, and his arm instinctively wrapped around her waist. "I had these dreams... They felt so real."
"Yeah, you said Fifth—your memories of Fifth anyway—had been messing with your head."
She nodded. "I can only guess that we had talked enough about Fifth and when I first suspected it couldn't be Pete. That's why my subconscious mind did what it did."
"What'd it do?"
She swallowed. "My first dream. Well, the first one I can remember, anyway, had me here after getting back from the Odyssey."
"Yeah?"
She nodded. "I was six months pregnant."
He didn't react, just listened.
"I was trying to figure out if I'd somehow gone back in time or if I was in an alternate reality. Not that any of that would still be me. I couldn't tell if this was the dream or if that was the dream. Then, you'd call, or I'd wake up. And I'd know this was real. That wasn't."
"Sam..."
She swallowed down the feeling that he would be disappointed in her. She'd always found a way to see between fantasy and reality, and this once, she'd ignored her instincts. Willingly given in to a dream over her reality. "I know it sounds strange that I should bring this up now, but you actually gave me a good reason to bring it up now. You see, in my dream, Charlie was alive."
His breath hitched.
"I spent years in that dream world, it felt like. I was at Cheyenne Mountain when Grace was born."
He raised an eyebrow. "Grace?"
Her cheeks colored. "Blame my time on the Prometheus. Ever since I met that hallucination and she told me that I knew who she was, I always thought that if I had a daughter, I'd name her Grace."
"That was my mother's name."
She blinked at him, wondering how her brain could possibly have known that. Had they talked about something once that she hadn't remembered? Had her subconscious mind taken note of it when she'd stolen a peak at his file in those early days? "It was?"
He nodded, apparently digesting her information. When he realized she'd stopped speaking, he motioned for her to keep talking. "What else happened?."
She bit the inside of her cheek. "There's not much to tell. Charlie was going to graduate from high school in my dream. Janet, Cassie, and my dad, they'd all come to celebrate with us."
"Janet? Your dad?"
She looked down. "I think my brain conjured my dad because he was the only person I could accept the truth from. He reminded me that you were still here. That you'd already suffered through so much loss. That if I wasn't careful, I'd be the next thing you were mourning."
Maybe it was her imagination, but Jack's hold on her tightened at that.
"When I realized there were too many holes in my story, too many questions I couldn't answer, I woke up."
"Questions?"
The pounding headache was back, and Sam pressed a hand to her forehead to try to hold it at bay. "What my job was, why I had memories of my dad dying, why Fifth was in the corner of my mind, why I had memories of losing a pregnancy I'd never lost in this world, why I had this feeling I'd been commanding a ship. There were dozens of reasons I should have seen that world for what it was."
"So, you tried to push me away because—"
"In that world, Fifth was posing as you the way he'd posed as Pete."
Jack's eyebrow twitched upward.
Before he could disrupt her train of thought, she pressed forward. "Since it wasn't really Fifth, you were a little more accurately portrayed than Fifth could have managed."
"So, that's why you tried to distance yourself from me?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Then, what?"
She tensed. "You have an uncanny ability to call people out when they're believing something that's not real. Even with Hathor, you were the one who was fighting her mind control the most."
Jack grimaced. "Good times."
A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. "My point is, Jack, that when it mattered most, I gave in."
His expression was difficult to read as he pondered her admission. "Carter, that dream would have been hard to walk away from. I'm not sure I would have."
Her head snapped up. "What?"
"Am I supposed to be angry that you love a kid you haven't met? Two?"
Tears moistened her eyes. "That's it?"
He sighed. "Sam, you were sick. By the time we found you, your fingernails were tinted blue. I don't know the science of how all that works, but I figure that you're bound to have a cloudy mind since you couldn't breathe. I just don't think that's the only reason you've been pulling away."
"What are you talking about?"
He sighed as he leaned his forehead against her temple. As if he wished he didn't have to explain. "Look, you're fiercely independent. It's one of the things I love about you."
She was guarded as she studied him. "But?"
"But when you started getting sick, we didn't talk about how to proceed. You locked the door."
"I tried to tell you that I needed to isolate."
He nodded. "Yeah. Once."
She pulled away from him, her head now pounding as she sat up again. "Jack, I can't take back the fact that I locked the bedroom door on you. Frankly, I'm not even sure I did anything wrong."
Jack sat up as well. "Sam, I love you more now than I ever did back when we were on SG-1."
"I know."
"I wasn't kidding when I said that I would have rather died myself than lose you to the Jaffa on the other side of the force shield."
Her throat felt swollen with unshed tears. "I know that, too."
"So, why the hell did you think I wouldn't want to take the chance now?"
She tugged her arm out of his grasp. Blinking away tears. "Do you really think it was easy? Knowing that we had six weeks together? Knowing that something I did on the ship or since I came home made me vulnerable? Jack, you act like I wouldn't feel the same way if you were the one who had gotten sick. Hell, I watched you take that chance over and over again when we were at the SGC together. Usually after I gave you some Hail Mary with million-to-one odds."
His brown eyes met hers with fierce resolve. "I trusted you."
"Still doesn't mean that I wouldn't have been responsible for your death." Tears colored her tone. "I couldn't do that here. Not now. Not like this."
There was a tightness in her stomach as she spoke, and only as the words fell from her lips did she realize just how long she'd carried that burden around with her.
"Carter, back at the SGC, I took the risks because I knew you had to be around to come up with another solution if this one failed."
Her eyes flashed. "You took the risk because you were always more comfortable being the hero than being left behind."
There was a long, heated moment between them. A moment where regret stole in and chided her for her harsh words.
Jack studied her, his jaw set and silent. She'd heard enough of his comebacks in the heat of the moment with Kinsey and the goa'uld that she was sure he could have responded with just the right jab to inflict the same kind of pain on her that she'd just volleyed at him. Still, he was silent.
Aqua sat in the space between them in front of the bed. Glanced from one to the other with concern in her gray eyes. Then, put her paw on Jack's knee.
Jack put a hand on Aqua's paw, acknowledging her request as he took a long, deep breath. "The problem isn't that I'm uncomfortable with being left behind, Colonel. The problem is that I'm getting far too accustomed to it."
Sam flinched as he stood and walked out the door. Aqua hesitated only a moment, looking between Sam and Jack, before she quickly caught up with the Air Force general.
That agony which had closed in on her just earlier this week came back in full force. Funny how she'd been so sure that her marriage was secure at the beginning of this pandemic. Now, she wasn't so sure...
It took her several minutes to gather up the energy to follow her husband down the stairs where she found Jack on the couch, sipping at a beer.
She swallowed as she sat beside him. Interlocked her fingers with his. Then kissed his shoulder and leaned her cheek against it. "I shouldn't have said that about getting left behind."
He didn't respond. Still, he didn't pull away, and for that, she was grateful.
She didn't quite know what to say. Hoped that maybe the longer she stayed here, the more willing he'd be to share with her what was going on in his brain.
She'd almost given up waiting for his reaction when he finally set the empty beer bottle on the coffee table. "Are you angry because you're not able to go back to the ship?"
Sam's heart froze. "What?"
He swallowed as he looked over at her. "Sam, I'm not saying that COVID hasn't taken a lot from you, but I can't help but wonder if the reason you don't talk about how much you miss commanding the ship, miss your experiments and the Air Force, is because you would rather be there than here with me."
She tried not to take offense, but from the way her eyes burned with stinging, unshed tears, it would take extraordinary determination. "How can you say that?"
Jack's jaw tensed again, like he was trying to avoid hurting her any more than he already had. "Sam, we've spent about six weeks together as a couple each year since we got together. I can't help but wonder if that's the only way we work. With you gone and me holding down the fort until you come back. Six weeks of living like newlyweds. Then, back to real life."
She hated to admit that he had a point, but he did. She looked down at their entwined fingers. "That would be ironic, wouldn't it? Can't live with you. Can't live without you."
"A cliché, to be sure."
Her voice was flat. "And you love those so much."
He had a crooked grin on his face as he splayed his hands out in front of him. "Yes, well—"
There was a long, tense moment as Jack stood and dropped the green Guinness bottle into the glass recycling container.
Sam wrapped her arms around herself as she watched him. "Jack?"
"Hm?"
She steepled her fingers, leaned her elbows on her thighs. "I know I've given you every reason to think I love the Air Force more than I love you, but it's not true. I just have to work through some things if this is how it's going to end."
His expression was hard to read as he looked back at her. "And you're that sure."
Her brow furrowed. "Sure about what?"
"That having COVID is going to be the end of your career?"
She tried to swallow down the feelings of loss that she'd tried to ignore. Come to think of it, that might have been another reason why there was a wall between them. Because she wasn't even admitting to herself how she felt about this. "I don't know what else I can do to return to my original state of fitness. Physically. Mentally." She grimaced before she added the last word that probably belonged with the other two. "Emotionally."
She could see the wheels turning in Jack's mind. "Maybe that's the problem."
"What are you talking about?"
He sat in one of the accent chairs across from the sofa. "Sam, there's no doubt in my mind that you can do anything you put your mind to. But maybe the problem here isn't what you can or can't do right now."
Her brow furrowed. "Okay..."
Maybe it was her brain fog kicking in after such a long, emotionally charged argument, but he wasn't making sense.
"You're so focused on getting back to the way you were. We've been treating this like a recovery. Maybe we need to think of it as something else."
She still couldn't grasp what else he was talking about. "Something else?"
He leaned back in his chair. "You used to like learning new things. Called it fun on more than a few occasions. I never understood it, but I always respected it."
She massaged her temples as a headache throbbed behind her eyes. "And you think I'm not finding this fun anymore?"
Jack leaned forward and caught her hands in his. "Let's go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning."
He tugged at her hands, but she didn't budge.
His brown eyes clouded with concern as he looked over at her. "Carter?"
She tried to muster the energy to walk up the stairs, tried to send away the dark clouds gathering around her as she squeezed her husband's hands. "It's going to sound silly given the fact that we were just arguing, but I wish that invitation were a little less innocent than it is, that's all."
There was a note of understanding on Jack's face when he crouched in front of her. "We could sleep in tomorrow."
She reached a hand out to caress his leathery cheek. "I love you, Jack. I'm sorry this transition back to Earth has been as hard as it has, but I honestly don't wish I was anywhere but here with you. It's the reason why I'm still here that I could do without. That's all."
He leaned in and kissed her, taking his time to really explore her mouth, and her whole body tingled with anticipation. She cupped the back of his head with her fingers, letting her thumb dust his cheek as silent tears dripped down her cheeks until she could taste them on her lips.
Jack finally broke contact with her lips, but he stayed close. "I'm not going anywhere, Sam. I know it sounds backward, but if I were looking for a way out, I wouldn't be asking the tough questions."
She wiped the bottom of her chin with the back of her hand, trying to catch the teardrops that were slowly dripping off. "I can't even stand myself right now, Jack. How can I expect you to?"
He planted a tender kiss on the apple of her cheek, as if he was damming up a stream or river. Then, moved to the other cheek and did the same.
She closed her eyes at his gentleness, the tears giving way to something bigger, better.
"I seem to recall pledging for better or worse, Sam. That didn't change just because you're on medical leave from the Air Force or because you had COVID. We just need to find a better way to be something other than long-lost lovers for six weeks every year."
Her lips lifted in a reluctant smile. "Long-lost lovers, huh?"
He nipped at her lips again. "Come to bed, Carter."
She melted into the kiss, not nearly as alarmed in this moment when her brain went on the fritz. "Yes, sir."
It must have been the way she sighed his name in ecstasy because he didn't raise an eyebrow or stiffen the way he normally did when the moniker slipped out. Instead, he just guided her arms around his neck, then effortlessly lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed.
