AN: This is just a short little something I whipped up when mystified by that blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment. It happens so fast but it's such an un-Sam like reaction that I had to make up a headcanon for it.
Bon apetit!
She loathed it immediately.
Her brows drew low over masked disgust. A man at the table caught sight of her in the hall.
"Oh hey! Didn't see you there. Pretty cool, huh?" Jonas bobbed his head, eyes already back on a set of equations. "They've given me my own study space. Soon I'll have it all set up. It's so gloomy in here! And the dust…"
For a moment she balked at the door. Her wide eyes and heaving breaths took in this new scent layered over one so constantly familiar she only just registered it for the first time.
The tang filled her dizzy brain. Same papers. Same book shelves. Wrong…everything. It was the static hollow of a strong radio signal.
Only no one spoke from the other end.
She expected more tears, longed for them, even. Anything to replace the static void in her chest. Yawning, drunk on the sheer nothingness.
Finally she nodded, once, and walked away.
A week came and went. The façade got easier. She wrote reports, taking pride in their clinical precision.
Janet explained—"Take it one day, one breath, at a time."
Only…even breathing didn't feel real. She felt her chest had stopped moving too. The nothing, that sticky grey curtain, claimed her lungs. Then her voice.
She stopped contributing to debriefings, didn't join in small talk the few times she didn't eat lunch alone. The nothing seeped to her bones. She found herself hating the sight of Jonas bent over a science journal.
So she avoided that corridor altogether. Nothing was simpler.
She ate, slept, worked, and rose each morning to repeat. No voice spoke into the static.
Co-workers bought it, spoke to her with amiable respect for the good major that she was.
But the airwaves were silent. The only sensation she clung to was a wiry shape in her shirt pocket. At night, she'd take it out and set it on the nightstand, where its twin irises flashed moonlight in the dark.
And then one day a sign blocked her usual routine. She scowled at it—Hall closed for reconstruction—and rushed down a different wing. Muttering under her breath, she'd almost turned the corner before she suddenly jerked to a shocked halt. She backpedaled and stared.
The door was closed.
Closed.
Sealed.
With shaking fingers, she swiped her key card. The door slid open. She gaped. Archeology texts, books, and artefacts were gone or shoved into boxes behind the shelves.
Replaced by a TV. Beside gurgling fish tanks and a colony of fleshy green plants. It smelled of oxygen and life and Jonas and salt water and—
Sam didn't realize she'd thrown the nearest plant until a shatter met her ears.
Ceramic and dark soil littered the floor. Her nostrils flared. Face bunched, she hurled another pot at the wall. And another. Over and over until her arm trembled. They taunted her. That they should be alive while he—
"Carter!"
She turned. Jack was red faced where he stood at the door, faintly panting like he'd run all the way here.
"Sam?" quavered Jonas. His eyes held deep sorrow, pooling over.
Not for the plants, she realized.
The nothing throbbed. Her eyes darted to the mess. Then to the two men in the doorway. Her shoulders squared. It felt robotic, no shame and no pleasure in any of it.
"I'm sorry for my outburst," she said, in a tone so flat she wouldn't have recognized her own voice if her tongue hadn't curled around the syllables.
The men stood speechless. She brushed past them, out into the hall, out of the mountain and, without another word, to her house.
She didn't go back.
It took three days for the remaining members of the team to shuffle up to her doorbell and ring it. When they got no response, they ducked into the garage. Her legs poked out from underneath the motorcycle.
"Sam?" called Jonas.
She closed her eyes and rolled the creeper out to see their subdued, baleful faces. "What?"
"Come back to work, Carter," said Jack.
She rolled out of sight.
"Wait, wait!" Jack swore. "We should've explained the move first."
She frowned. Static crackled in her temples. The wrench felt warm in her palm. She set it down and rolled the creeper to sit up. Standing, she folded her arms.
Jonas held up both hands. "This whole thing was stupid. I don't know why I expected everything to just smooth over, start over…I was stupid. Please, let us show you."
She searched their faces, not sure what to make of their new hint of insecurity. Of Jack's grief so poorly hidden. He caught her eye and pursed his lips in a mute missive.
For him.
Sam nodded.
They drove to the mountain in silence. She spent most of it gazing out the window at blurry shapes and dying leaves. Though cold to her very marrow, she didn't shiver. No one gave her a second look in their trek down the halls, but a hushed spell followed them to his closed door.
Her throat ached. She swallowed. "Why is it closed? It's never closed, not in five years."
Jonas held up a finger and swiped his card with the other hand. All four held their breath. Dark shrouded the office space.
"What is this?" she demanded.
"See for yourself," said Jack.
Hesitant, she stepped inside. Her hand automatically found the desk lamp and twisted the switch.
Sam's breath caught. Messy piles of languages she couldn't read surrounded her, artifacts littered on every sand-smelling shelf. A cold cup of coffee next to the lamp…
"You put everything back," she whispered. "Exactly the way it was."
Jonas beamed. Jack swiped at his eyes with a, "Daniel's dang tomes."
Teal'c bowed. "Jonas' eidetic memory assisted him in relocating to another office location and restoring this hallowed space."
"It's not mine," said Jonas. "Never was and never will be."
For a long minute, Sam didn't move. Her world fell silent. And then something shifted. The void didn't close. No tears came.
Instead, her hands smoothing over everything, voices echoed off the walls of her heart, laughing and arguing and singing and crying in one glorious mess. The grey curtain swept back. Her cheeks lifted in a smile, the first real one in three months.
And she felt it. Every atom of her being vibrated. Her chest moved again.
"It's perfect," she murmured. "Thank you."
"You guys can come here anytime you like," said Jonas. He raised an expectant brow. "If my memory serves me, this room is missing just one thing."
No one moved. All eyes shifted to Sam. She swallowed again and it tasted bitter, like grief and mutiny, but peace joined it. Feeling again, the good and the bad.
She reached into her uniform pocket. Her vice grip on the object left painful marks in her skin.
"There," said Jonas. "Now it's perfect."
The three left her alone and in the quiet, the privacy of Daniel's beloved dim lighting, Sam breathed in the familiar scent, strong once more in the presence of his antiquities.
At last, she opened her hand. And though her fingers ached too, she relaxed. The edge of her lips flipped up to meet fresh spots of colour in her cheeks.
Sam let go of the round glasses. Set them on a worn, well-loved notebook.
"Perfect."
Written in 2016.