Daniel accepted the bag of cookies dubiously from Sam's hands and set them down, never taking his eyes off her. He watched warily as she paced around the room, finally stopping at the chair vacated by Jack an hour earlier. Daniel hoped he would return soon. A Sam that continuously flirted with Jack and vied for his attention was preferable to a Sam who wanted to talk.
Daniel wasn't sure what he had done, but ever since he had awoken, Sam had seemed annoyed with him. She visited him often, especially if Jack was there, which was most of the time, but in that case she always seemed more interested in visiting Jack than Daniel. That wasn't all that different from her most recent behavior before the accident, though, and it was those rare times she came when Jack wasn't there that really bothered him. The first time it had happened, she had bounced cheerfully into the room, noticed she was alone with Daniel, and faltered. She hadn't stayed longer than five minutes, and most of that time was centered around asking where Jack had gone. In the end, she suddenly became happy again and skipped out.
The next few visits were less cheerful. Far from missing Jack's presence in the room, she now seemed to be flaunting the fact that he wasn't there. She would say things that Daniel would never have thought it in her to say, one time demanding how much of a klutz you would have to be to almost kill yourself by falling off a bookshelf ladder. She questioned his worth on SG1. It wasn't that she acted deliberately nasty, either, trying to pass her comments off as teasing, but Daniel could see a hard glint in her eyes that spoke of sincerity. Each time, she would leave Daniel feeling confused, upset, and vaguely guilty that he must have done something to her to get this treatment. He had thought they were friends, a team, but she was beginning to give the impression she wanted him gone.
He had thought about bringing it up with Jack, but looking back it was hard to come up with something concrete to explain his feeling. All he knew was that Sam seemed different. Besides, he didn't want to worry Jack about it, he hoped he could solve the problem himself. This time, he decided he would do as Hammond suggested, and confront her. If he had done something to upset her, he wanted to know, and if it really was just that she was feeling upset by his accident, he wanted to know that too. He didn't want things to continue as they were. So when Sam launched into a story about her cookies, apparently not having realized that Daniel hated peanut butter raison, just asked her straight out.
"Sam. What have I done?" She paused mid-speech, staring at him. "I mean," Daniel continued, "You seem angry with me. What did I do to upset you?"
"You haven't done anything, Daniel," she answered with that false cheerfulness that was really starting to get on his nerves, "How could you? All you've done for the past month or so is sleep."
"Then answer me this," Daniel said, "Why have you been so clingy to Jack lately?"
"Clingy?" she demanded, narrowing her eyes, "You call me clingy? You've been lying around demanding everyone's attention, and you think I'm being clingy?"
"See!" Daniel cried, "You are angry about something!"
"Of course I'm angry! You're calling me clingy! And I wouldn't call spending time with Jack 'clingy'. He likes spending time with me."
"He thinks you're displacing," Daniel answered, "He thinks you were upset when I was hurt and you couldn't do anything for me so you started taking care of him." He didn't add that Jack was beginning to find her very annoying.
"Oh?" Sam demanded, "You and Jack talk about me a lot when I'm gone? And what is Dr. Jackson's great theory on my behavior? That I'm clingy?" Daniel sighed.
"We talk about all of our friends," he answered, "And to be honest, I don't agree with Jack. I think you're jealous." Sam opened her mouth and closed it, for once at a complete loss of words. Daniel lay back in his bed, his arms moving protectively around his waist. This had been why he hadn't brought it up before. He didn't know what Sam knew about him and Jack, or what she thought she knew, but it was obvious Sam had a thing for Jack and a problem with Daniel. It wasn't hard for him to reach a conclusion, no matter how much he wanted to believe Sam was above that kind of thing.
"Jealous?" she finally spit out, getting control of herself once more, "Of what? You? A pathetic geek who can't climb a ladder without falling? An archeologist so renowned he clears a room with his theories, so boring no one can stay away during his lectures and so clueless he lets his own wife get snaked? Everyone around you gets hurt; your parents get crushed, Abydos gets attacked and your old girlfriend is snaked. You're a curse. Why should I be jealous?"
Daniel turned his head away, trying not to take her words to heart. What had happened to Sam, his once best friend, the person he used to bounce ideas off of and conspire with as a fellow scientist to get more time on a planet? Had this always been there? Trying not to show that he was hurt, he decided to continue on talking like an adult, to get to the root of the problem. Surely it wasn't too late to fix this?
"I am also Jack's friend," he pointed out, turning his head again to once more look her in the eye, "He cares about me. Maybe you resent that."
"He's a guy," she hissed at him, "There shouldn't be competition. You turned him gay, you sick homo pervert." Daniel reeled back from the words, cut by the venom behind them.
"S…sam," he stuttered, uncertain what to say next, startled from the direction this was going. This seemed to go way beyond some petty jealousy. Was Sam homophobic, he wondered, was that what this was all about? She had found out about him and Jack and, unable to mold this new image with her dreams of Jack, she lashed out at Daniel?
"I saw you," she continued, venom dripping from her voice, "You dirtied him. I saw you in that restaurant, flirting, flashing those blue eyes. I saw you kissing." She had stood up by then, towering over him and he cringed away from the hatred she projected. For the first time ever, he found himself afraid to be in her presence.
"You were at his house, after that dinner, and I saw you with him. You seduced him!"
"I didn't…Sam, please," Daniel said, hugging himself tightly. He was beginning to feel drained fending off her verbal attack, sitting up in the bed. He wanted Jack and at the same time he was afraid to let anyone come in and see Sam acting like this.
"You're a slut," Sam continued, warming up to the topic, finally letting loose with all the words she had wanted to say for ages, "I've seen you, everywhere we go, all the girls and the guys too falling over you. Your wife was even alive and you already started drooling over the first girl you see. I know you did Hathor. Was she good? Do you enjoy playing with people, even when your wife was out there?"
Daniel turned pale at her words, no longer able to hold them separate from himself, to convince himself she didn't really mean any of it, that it wasn't true. Sam put her hand on his shoulders and he cringed away from the touch but her grip was too tight.
"And what about Shyla?" Sam continued, "We were all stuck sweating in the mines and you were getting laid? Was she worth it? How many women have you done it with while your wife was suffering? How many men have you seduced? Did you enjoy it?" Leaning over him, she moved one hand down and grabbed at his crotch through the sheets.
"This what you like?" she asked, grinning with a strange, feral glint to her eyes, "I've seen you in the showers. You're pathetic."
"Sam," he gasped, half sobbing, half pleading, struggling to get away from her. The hand still latched to his shoulder was pulling on his wound, and her touch and words brought back his memories of Hathor and Shyla in living color, sending him into shudders of revulsion.
"He deserves better than you," Sam continued, not removing her hand, squeezing harder. Daniel's breathing became labored as he fought off a panic attack, tears streaming down his face. Abruptly she pulled away, leaving him gasping weakly, falling back onto his bed.
"I'm not jealous of a nobody, Daniel," Sam finished as she walked towards the door, "Especially concerning the Colonel. He'll choose me in the end; no one could choose a pathetic slut like you over me. Jack's love is mine." With that said, she left.