A/N - spoilers for Unending, and extra special thanks to Caladria for her knowledge of music

-o-o-o-

For her second anniversary, Sam got a cello.

Well, to be correct, she got herself a cello. She hadn't planned on even marking the occasion initially, but as the days SG-1 and General Landry were stuck on the Odyssey turned into weeks which became months, she changed her mind. She had to find something to distract herself from the theories and equations and crystals and power outputs and all the other crucial yet tedious problems of her work with the Asgard technology.

And she had to find a way to stay close to Jack. Because when she tried to take a break from the work, the quiet of the empty lab room pressed in around her and she could feel his absence so acutely it nearly crushed her. It was only a few weeks before the songs on the MP3 player stopped working - when the despair of not knowing when she'd see him again, smell him again, feel him again threatened to consume her.

But as much as she missed him personally, the effect his absence was having on her work was astonishing. She'd been separated from him before, but never this long or this completely. Now, she was beginning to realize how much she'd come to rely on him professionally. A hundred times a day as she worked, she'd get stumped or confused and find herself making a mental note to mention the problem to Jack before she'd remember that she couldn't.

The hologram of Thor did not help. She didn't need another scientist. She needed Jack, with his quick wit and often uncanny ability to free her from the scientific complexities she'd get herself tangled in to let her see the simple answer at the heart of it all. Which meant this whole damn process was taking impossibly longer than it should. And the longer it took, the more frustrated she got – in every way – and the harder everything got and the longer everything took…

She needed to figure out a way to break the cycle – to refocus her mind and body – or she'd quickly become worthless to herself, not to mention the rest of the known universe.

The solution came to her one night as she lay alone in her bunk. The rest of the team had quickly requested regular beds, which she had made for them. But she had been unwilling to move to a larger bed. The empty space next to her had been manageable when the sound of his voice was just a phone call away. She couldn't face it now.

She'd connected her MP3 player to the speaker system in her quarters, and the sound of 'their song' filled the room as she'd drifted half asleep. But instead of bringing him closer, it seemed to expand the emptiness inside her. She lay, listening to the music, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep was impossible. Yet she couldn't bear the thought of losing the music or the connection to him. Simply listening to the music was no longer enough.. And then she knew.

Sam got up, went to her lab, and began to search the ship's files. It took her several days to find the information she needed, and several more to set the parameters in the matter replicator. But, the day before her second anniversary, she had it. And sometime during the process, what had started out as a simple means of distraction had somehow become something more. The more she'd thought about sitting down with the cello instead of her laptop, the more she'd realized how much she wanted to learn to play. How the idea that maybe someday she'd find the time had drifted in the back of her mind for years – maybe since she'd been a child listening with her mother. At least she could do something productive during her breaks. Wouldn't Jack be surprised!

But, despite her excitement, she forced herself to wait until the next afternoon, when she had grown accustomed to taking a short break before meeting the rest of the team for dinner. Then, instead of reading an e-book or going for a quick run through the empty ship, she punched the necessary commands into her laptop.

The air shimmered behind her, and turning to look over her shoulder, there it was. A perfect cello. She'd done it.

And it worked. The cello proved the perfect distraction from the rigors of studying and adapting the Asgard technology. At first, of course, she was so bad it took all her concentration just to play any notes without the cello screeching like a tortured animal. Fingers had to be placed on precisely the right spots, with just enough pressure and no more. The bow had to be held at just the right angle, too, each stroke smooth and sure and accurate. But nearly anything can be accomplished with time and trial and patience. Before more than a few weeks had passed, she could manage the easy scales.

It took longer to turn those scales into music. She was in no hurry, and experimented with the notes until she could play simple music like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Then she moved onto more complex music, listening to the songs on her MP3 player and trying to match their notes and rhythm. As she grew ever more proficient, and was able to play the songs without concentrating on technique alone, she found the simple math of the music to be the perfect counterpoint to the more complex equations of her work – the music refocusing her as she'd hoped it would.

The very last song she learned to play was 'their song.' The song that had first been her mother's. And while she never stopped missing Jack, playing kept her longing manageable. Her lab no longer smelled empty and sterile, the mingled scent of varnished wood and warmed resin having replaced those of metal and plastic. The strings pressed beneath her fingers, the bow humming in her hand, the cello positioned perfectly in her arms and between her legs kept the emptiness at bay. At least while their music filled the air. It wasn't enough, but it kept her going. And as the months rolled into years which became decades, she stopped thinking about technique entirely, and like math itself, playing became simply another part of who she was.