2
To say she was surprised would be an understatement, to say she was pleased would be an outright lie.
Within 20 minutes he had started an argument. First he was trying to get how she had been awarded the Air Medal when working underground, after all the very definition of the medal meant you only got it if you did something in the air! Then he had told her he had 'had words' and she could be reassed to NASA, all she had to do was re-apply.
She had not wanted to go to NASA for the last 5 years! Ever since Catherine had told her that the project she had been working on for the last several years was actually the Stargate, though it was not called that then.
Later he told her he was dying, trying emotional blackmail to get her to do what he wanted, and when she refused he had shut down. She stumbled back to her hotel afterwards and had cried… a lot. How did he still do this to her? She hated the fact he could make her cry like that.
She had heard a knock on her door, she ignored it, her cell rang, she ignored that too. Then she heard her CO shouting through the door.
"Carter! I know you are in there, I heard your cell!"
"What do you need sir?" she answered
"Open the door Carter!" he shouted, she could imagine the other guests looking out to see what was happening. She was off duty though, she did not want him to know she had been crying. She got close to the door and asked again
"What do you need sir?"
"Hammond sent me" he replied in a more normal tone of voice "You going to open this door or am I going to have to get the manager to let me in?"
He would too. She opened the door, turning away from it as soon as the latch disengaged. She tried to stuff 'Dad' back into the box in her mind, but the lid wouldn't close and she felt herself fill with tears again. As the Colonel walked through the door she rushed to the bedroom and closed herself in.
"Carter?" he said, she ignored him. And threw herself on the bed, muffling her sobs in the pillow. She knew he would not try to enter the room, he was too much an AF officer to try it. Though she wished, back in the part of her mind full of boxes, that he was not quite so much the gentleman sometimes. She could do with the physical comfort of strong arms… she did not mean anything improper, and she hated herself while admitting to it, but she could REALLY use a hug!
She came out of the bedroom an hour later, she had managed to close the box at last, having cried herself out. She just felt sad now. She wondered how long he had stayed, how long before he had given up and left. She had taken off her dress blues and had thrown on her satin dressing gown with only her underwear underneath it, when she headed for the minibar in the room. She got a bottle of water, which she opened and took a drink out of, and then she got a miniature whisky, a couple of miniatures of vodka and a brandy, She looked at the rum and at several other bottles, and decided on some orange juice, she put them on top of the small fridge, and got a single glass. She opened the spirits and poured them into the glass, added a small amount of orange and then noticed she had no ice.
"Ice" she said, turning around. She jumped when she noticed her CO, sat watching her.
"You going to drink that or clean an engine with it?" he asked her, she looked at the concoction in her hands, she sighed. If he hadn't been there she would have drunk it, probably in one shot if the truth be known, but she couldn't now. She placed the glass back on the counter and asked
"What are you still doing here sir?" He raised an eyebrow at her.
"I told you, Hammond sent me" She had forgotten, oh god all she needed was dereliction of duty on her sheet!
"Sorry, yes you did say" she apologised "What does the General want?" she asked
"He was under the impression that something happened at the medal ceremony, something that upset you, especially as you left before the end."
"So did you" she pointed out.
"Yes, but I am me" he said, as if that explained everything, which strangely enough, it did!
"So are you here in an official capacity?" she asked
He looked her up and down and she suddenly realised she was only partly dressed and she pulled the dressing gown closed and tied the belt. She blushed furiously and couldn't look at him… as if things weren't bad enough! He got to his feet and strode over to her, he stood looking down at her, his eyes dilated and his breathing heavy and loud in the room, he brought a hand to her face and stroked her cheek, she leaned into the caress.
"You OK?" he asked softly to her, she nodded, the only thing he could do that would be better than what he was doing would be if he put his arms around her. "You sure?" she gulped back tears that threatened once more to spill from her eyes, as if reading her mind he put his arms around her and held her close, she sobbed and clung to his jacket.
He managed to move them both back to the sofa and he pulled her down so she was sat on his thighs, he stroked her hair with one hand, holding her tightly with the other.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew it was morning, she was in bed, in her underwear but not the gown and he was nowhere in the room. What the hell must he think of her! She had worked hard to get him to view her as a solider first and then she went and did something so totally stupid as cry herself to sleep in his arms!
She rose and took off the underwear she had been wearing for almost a full 24 hours, she showered and applied her usual makeup, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a top. She was just heading to the door to go to the dining room for breakfast when her phone rang.
She picked it up as she went through the door into the hallway, "Carter, we have a flight back to base at 11:30" her CO said, "have you had breakfast yet?" she told him she hadn't and saw his room door open down the hall. The phone went dead and he walked up to her.
"Mind if I join you?" he asked she blushed as she remembered he must have put her to bed last night. "don't worry about it" he said, reading her mind, and called the elevator, he put a hand to the small of her back and pushed her into the car when it turned up, oh god this was embarrassing.
"You ok this morning?" he asked she nodded her head, he changed the subject "What are you planning to do before the flight?"
"I was going to look up a friend who is still posted here" she told him, she wanted to see someone who may have some details on her fathers illness, an old friend of hers from the academy worked at the local base as CMO and would have access to her fathers medical files.
Her boss, however, had a different idea, and she didn't want to share the state of her fathers illness so she allowed him to persuade her to go walking around, showing him her favourite park and sandwich bar. They checked out of the hotel at 10:00 and caught the flight back to Colorado Springs at 11:30, she only found out as she disembarked that her father was on the flight as well, up in first class with General Hammond, he walked away without even acknowledging her, Jack placed his hand on her back to help ground her and she accepted his silent support.
They made it back to the mountain and early that evening the General awarded them their medals. Everyone smiled when Jack told them he would rather have it this way than the pomp and ceremony they were supposed to have gone through. She agreed, she wished with all her heart that they had never gone to DC, not that that would have stopped her father being ill, but she could have coped better if it had happened at home.
The General called her into his office afterwards and told her that her father had come to the Springs so he could be close to her, she did not know what to say, after he cut her dead as they got off the plane she could not see her father doing anything of the kind. George Hammond placed a hand on her shoulder and told her that her father really did care and wanted to be close, no matter how it looked, she nodded but couldn't trust herself to actually say anything about it.
She escaped to her lab as soon as she could. She tried to stop herself crying again, she had cried more in the last 36 hours than she had in the 10 years previous.