A/N: I finished fiddling with this chapter ahead of schedule (yay insomnia!) but it's now 1:30am, so I make no promises about the quality of my editing. : ) I'm hoping to get the next chapter up by tomorrow night and another one up on Sunday, so keep an eye out for at least two more updates this weekend. And now on with the show… Enjoy!
Grabbing a handful of empty beer bottles, Daniel trailed Jack into the kitchen and deposited the bottles on the counter. Fixing the older man with a pointed look, Daniel crossed his arms over his chest expectantly and waited.
"What?" Jack asked testily while rummaging in the fridge to retrieve another round of beers.
"We need to talk to her, Jack," Daniel murmured, keeping his voice low so that he couldn't be heard from the living room where the rest of the team waited.
"She's fine, Daniel," Jack retorted in exasperation.
"She is not 'fine', you said so yourself when Teal'c and I first got here," Daniel argued. "We screwed up, Jack. Big time. We screwed up and Sam paid for it and now we need to talk to her and try to fix this mess."
"She doesn't want to talk about it," Jack hissed, turning on his heel and marching back into the living room, effectively ending the conversation.
Rejoining the others, Daniel settled himself on the couch beside Teal'c and accepted the beer bottle Jack waved at him. Fiddling with the damp label, Daniel studied the woman sitting across the room from him. When they'd first arrived, Sam had been her usual good-natured self. But as the night wore on, she'd gradually withdrawn from them, obviously lost in her own thoughts. All things considered, Daniel was surprised that Sam had even bothered staying downstairs with them. If their positions had been reversed, Daniel didn't think he'd have been too fond of spending the night with his teammates.
Setting the bottle on the wooden coaster in front of him, Daniel watched sweat trace its way lazily down the smooth glass and mulled over the events of the last few weeks. He, Jack and Teal'c had certainly screwed up; there was no denying it. Even after everything they'd seen and done since stepping through the stargate for the first time, when push came to shove they'd found it easier to believe that Sam was losing her mind than to accept the possibility that an invisible alien had followed her home. Heaving a sigh, Daniel looked up and opened his mouth to speak. He snapped it shut again when he noticed the death glare Jack was aiming at him.
"I wish to offer you my apologies, Major Carter," Teal'c spoke up a heartbeat later, earning him his very own death glare. "And I ask your forgiveness."
Sam's eyes landed on Teal'c and she offered him a tentative smile before quietly protesting, "You have nothing to apologize for."
"Yes he does," Daniel contradicted, shooting Jack a pointed look. "We all do."
"Look," Sam began, taking a deep breath. "I'm not thrilled about what happened, but I understand why it happened."
"Well I don't," Daniel shot back. "You're supposed to be able to trust us to have your back and when it really counted, we wrote off your claims as 'crazy talk', abandoned you to the alien that moved into your house without your permission and let the NID establish round-the-clock surveillance on you."
"Daniel!" Jack barked warningly, his eyes narrowed.
"You had no reason to believe me," Sam murmured, her gaze locked on the half empty pizza boxes sitting open on the coffee table so that she wouldn't have to look any of them in the eye.
"We had your word, Major Carter," Teal'c said gently, sitting up straighter. "We should have needed no other reason to place our faith in you."
The gentle tone of his voice finally drew her attention up from the pizza boxes and locked her eyes onto Teal'c's face. Daniel almost wished it hadn't; the raw hurt etched into her features made his chest ache.
"I'm not crazy," she whispered, the words spoken so softly that Daniel barely heard them.
"No," Jack breathed quietly but firmly. "You're not."
Sam shifted her attention to him, studying his face for any trace of doubt that may have lingered there. Daniel took a few seconds to study Jack himself and failed to find anything. Refocusing his attention on Sam, he noticed that she still didn't look very reassured.
"But it was easier to think that I was than it was to trust me," she stated matter of factly long moments later. "And… And I think I'm having a hard time accepting that," she confessed.
"We all are," Jack assured, idly rolling his beer bottle between his hands.
The foursome lapsed into silence and each devoted their full attention to studying the various objects in the room, anything to avoid looking at one another. Tension weaved its way through the quiet that settled over them, a rare awkward silence that left them all feeling off-balance. They were used to the sorts of silences that could stretch on forever without feeling strained, the kind where they could enjoy one another's company without uttering a single word. At the moment, the group gathered in Jack's living room was a long way from being those other people.
Finally, Sam could stand the silence no longer. "I already forgive you all, as hard as that is to believe. I just can't forget, not yet," she added, quietly.
"We betrayed your trust, Carter," Jack admonished, trying to chase away the illogical guilt that shone from her eyes. "You won't forget that, but that's on us, not you. Stop beating yourself up."
"But…"
"Sam," Daniel interrupted gently, "You didn't do anything wrong."
Shaking her head, Sam started again. "When I went in after Orlin tonight…"
"You didn't do anything wrong," Jack echoed Daniel's words, fixing her with a pointed look. His brown eyes held her blue ones for a few moments. When he was sure she'd understood, he nodded slightly and glanced at his other two teammates.
"So, what now?" Daniel asked, glancing between the other three. Forgiveness was all fine and good, but the trust they'd established between them over the years had taken quite a beating in the last few weeks. It would take more than a round of apologies to build it up again.
"Now we hang out and watch Star Wars," Jack replied with a shrug, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. To him, it was. His team had built the trust between them by practically living in one another's back pockets for weeks at a time. The fastest way to repair those bonds, in Jack's opinion, would be to spend as much time together as possible in the next little while, giving them all a chance to fall back into their familiar rhythm.
"Just like that?"
"Indeed," Teal'c bowed his head, a ghost of a smile on his face. He had no doubt that their relationships would recover; it would just take a little bit of time and patience. As far as he was concerned, there were worse ways to nurture those relationships than watching his favourite movies with his closest friends.
"And we're all okay with this plan?" he checked, pinning Sam with an inquiring gaze.
After a moment's hesitation, she graced him with a shy smile and agreed, "Provided I don't have to watch the movie in this big chair all alone, yeah, we're all okay with this plan."
Offering her a smile of his own, Daniel recognized the opportunity she was offering to start mending their friendship. Standing and stretching, he plucked his beer off the table and moved it over to the table beside Sam's chair before making his way over to the DVD player.
"Major Carter," Teal'c piped up as Daniel slipped the disc into the machine, "I hope you will allow me to offer my assistance in rectifying the damage that your home has sustained at the hands of the NID."
"Uh, what he said. I think," Jack chimed in, his tired brain sluggishly processing what Teal'c had actually just said.
"Me too. Three. Whatever," Daniel added, grabbing the remote off the top of the entertainment centre.
"Gladly," Sam replied and even with his back to her, he could tell she was wearing a warm smile just from the tone of her voice.
As the familiar theme music began, Daniel playfully shoved Sam to one side of the chair and sat himself down on the other. As he'd expected, she slid back over into his half as soon as he was settled and dropped her head to his shoulder. Glancing around at his teammates, he felt a wave of relief wash over him. He knew they were still a long way from being okay, but they had cleared the air and they all felt better for it. They had made progress tonight and he was grateful for it.