A/N: This idea popped into my head yesterday morning when my alarm went off to Ryan Adams' "When The Stars Go Blue". I ended up scrapping what I'd already written and starting this part from scratch. I am absolutely in love with this version of the chapter, and now that I've written it, I have a few other ideas for chapters I'd like to write. They don't change the end of the story, they just add more meat to it… Which means that the next few updates might take a while. Oops. Still, I will try to update every two or three days, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long to find out what happens next! And now on with the next chapter. Enjoy!

Descension Back To Normalcy

Jack lay in bed staring at the ceiling and listening to the muffled sobs from the other side of the wall for the second night in a row. He'd allowed Sam to have last night to herself. At that point, he'd been reluctant to disturb her, confident that he'd caused at least a few of the tears he'd laid in bed listening to. On top of that, there had still been too much he didn't know about what had happened between her and Orlin to feel comfortable talking to her about it. A few subtle phone calls to General Hammond throughout the day combined with the talk SG-1 had had last night left him with a better understanding of the situation and feeling ready to deal with her tears tonight.

Checking his watch again, he saw that only fifteen minutes had passed and heaved a heavy sigh. He'd promised himself that he'd give Sam twenty minutes to herself before checking on her. At the time, it had seemed reasonable but as the minutes had ticked slowly by, he was sorely tempted to forget his self-imposed time limit and go to her right away.

As he watched the sixteenth minute of his wait crawl into existence, the sobs faded away. In their place came the faint creaking of the floorboards, signalling that Sam was up and moving about. Moments later he heard the door to "her" room open and soft footfalls heading down the stairs and towards the living room. Lying still and straining his ears, he could just make out the soft click of a door unlocking in the distance and, a few seconds later, the muffled thud of a door being eased shut. With a soft smile, Jack sat up and moved to his closet, rifling about for the thickest sweatshirt he could find.

Pulling the well-worn grey material over his head, he meandered out to the front hall and slipped a pair of beat up running shoes on his feet. Stalling for time in order to allow Sam a few more moments alone, he took the time to tie the laces before heading to the back door, pausing only to grab two thick fleece blankets. Like the woman he was shadowing, he eased the door shut as quietly as possible and crossed the wooden deck almost on tiptoe, keeping his steps as silent as he could. When he reached the base of the ladder leaning against the side of the house, he draped the blankets over his arm and forced his protesting knees to make the short climb.

Reaching the top, he found Sam leaning against the wooden railing a few feet from his telescope, her eyes raking over the blanket of stars overhead. When she failed to react to his sudden appearance, he knew she was lost in her thoughts again. He took advantage of the opportunity to really study Sam without Major Carter getting in the way and wasn't surprised to find the odd tear still rolling down her cheek every now and again.

Quietly approaching, he draped a blanket around her shoulders and informed her, "The blankets are piled by the door, for future reference."

She jumped in surprise and blinked rapidly, trying to clear the remaining tears from her eyes. Considering he could still make out the streaks they left behind on her face, it was a wasted effort, but he had to give her credit for trying.

"Sorry, sir," Sam apologized, swallowing convulsively to try and clear her throat. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't," he assured, wrapping the second blanket around himself. "How are you doing? And don't try to tell me you're fine," he added, knowing that the lie was on the tip of her tongue.

"It's hard," she confessed, returning her attention back to the sky. "I'm trying to cope with everything, but it's all a little overwhelming."

"Do you want to talk about it?" he offered, watching to see if her body language matched her answer.

"Do you?" she fired back, her voice laced with doubt.

"Carter, I'll do whatever I need to in order to help you get through this. Just say the word."

Jack saw resignation flash across her features, though he wasn't sure what it meant. She had either resigned herself to opening up to him or to having to kick her commanding officer off his own roof. Jack preferred the first option but he was more or less okay with the second, just so long as "kicking him off the roof" was a figure of speech.

"I know it's just stuff," Sam sighed, her fingers tracing idle patterns on the wooden railing in front of her. "But some of it… I don't know, some of it's not just stuff, not to me. It's my past and memories and family heirlooms. It's bad enough that the NID picked through all of it for the sole purpose of destroying it, but then to have a group from the SGC rifle through it afterwards and sort it into piles of 'garbage' and 'probably garbage'… I know they were trying to help, but it still feels like an invasion of privacy."

"You're a private person, Carter. Of course it felt like an invasion of privacy, regardless of the intention behind it," Jack noted understandingly, stepping back from the railing and settling himself in his private observatory's lone chair.

"Still, they were all there trying to help and the whole time I was in the backyard, I just kept wishing that they would go away," she confessed, guilt evident in her voice.

"I think any one of us would have felt the same way," Jack reasoned. "You have nothing to feel bad about."

"Maybe," she said, her tone non-committal.

Jack knew that she had more to say and waited patiently, giving her the time and the quiet she needed to sort out her thoughts. Even without being able to see her face, he could tell when she'd decided on her next words, the subtle change in her posture warning him that she was uncomfortable with what she was about to say.

"I'm still struggling with the fact that you guys didn't believe me," Sam murmured. "I mean, you and Daniel and Teal'c are my best friends, and I can't imagine trying to cope with everything that's happened without you, but at the same time, I can't forget your roles in this whole mess. I don't blame you," she added hurriedly, finally turning to meet his eyes. "But I can't stop running through things in my head and wondering how everything would have turned out if the SGC had believed me and kept the NID out of it."

"I've been doing the same thing," Jack confessed. "And so have Daniel and Teal'c and General Hammond probably has been too. We messed up and even if you don't blame us, we blame ourselves."

"I wish I could stop thinking about it," she said quietly. "I just want to be able to trust you all without reservations again, like I did before."

"You still trust us more than you think you do," he pointed out. At her questioning look, he explained, "When you got back from Velona, you let Teal'c handcuff you and cart you off to a holding cell to appease Simmons while he was on the phone with the President. You spent a good chunk of last night curled up around Daniel and then went out and spent the whole afternoon alone with him. Tonight you're supposed to be sleeping down the hall from me, just the two of us in the house."

"So?"

"Would you really have done that – any of that – if you didn't trust us?"

She hesitated for a few moments to think this over before breathing a quiet "no."

"We'll be okay," Jack assured. "We got through my undercover stint with the rogue NID team two years ago and we're going to get through this too. All of us."

"How can you be so sure?" she asked, wishing she could share his confidence.

"Because we're family," he stated quietly, reaching out and snagging her sleeve. He pulled her towards him and gave her arm a gentle downward tug, urging her to sit on the edge of his chair. "Families stick together, even when it isn't easy."

Following his unspoken command, Sam lowered herself onto the chair and leaned back, resting her back against his chest. She felt him shift behind her and smiled when his arms and the soft fleece wrapped lightly around her waist, the combined warmth of his body and the second blanket chasing away the slight chill in the night air.

"Back in General Hammond's office, I lied," Sam whispered, closing her eyes.

"If you tell me what you lied about, am I going to be obligated to report you?" Jack teased lightly, knowing that nothing she had to say could be that bad. Even under the worst circumstances imaginable, he knew she wouldn't have looked the General in the eye and outright lied to him.

"You heard Simmons ranting about my 'intimate' relationship with Orlin?"

"Hard not to," Jack replied with a grimace. He wasn't sure he was comfortable with where this conversation was heading, but he was still willing to listen for her sake.

"Well, it was an intimate relationship, I suppose, but not the way Simmons meant," she explained, tucking her head under his chin. "Orlin's people have the ability to establish… a connection with one another. It's not psychic; they can literally share their souls with one another."

"And he did that with you," Jack guessed, filling in the blanks.

"He tried doing it back on Velona but I wasn't open to it; that's why I passed out."

"Were you okay the second time he tried?"

"Once he warned me what he was going to do and I had the chance to prepare myself for it," Sam assured.

"It's no wonder he fell in love with you," Jack murmured, glad that the alien mind-soul-whatever meld hadn't harmed her.

"Sir…" she started, sounding disappointed that he wasn't going to be serious about this conversation any longer.

"No, I mean it," he interrupted. "Infatuation is nothing new; men are forever taking one look at you and then spending the rest of our missions mooning over you. But Orlin wasn't infatuated, he was in love and I don't blame him. He realized you're as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside. Unlike some of us, he got to cheat and fast-track his way to that realization," he added lightly, trying to bring levity to the moment. Neither one of them did well when it came to talking about feelings and he was afraid he might be making her uncomfortable.

"It was incredible, knowing someone so well even though I'd only known them for a short time," she sighed, fisting the blanket between her cool fingers.

"He's not the only one who knows you inside out and backwards, you know," Jack pointed out, tilting his head so his cheek was pressed into her hair.

"And here I was thinking it was all your black ops training that led you out here after me," Sam teased, shifting slightly so she could look at the night sky.

"We are going to be okay, Carter," he promised, settling back and pulling her tighter against him.

"That gets a little easier to believe every time you say it," she smiled. Jack was right: trusting her teammates was as natural to her as breathing and she often did it without realizing it. The more she thought about the last two days, the more she could pick out little moments that she'd thought nothing of at the time but, upon closer examination, demonstrated that even now she trusted them to no end.

"We should get to bed soon, it's going to be another long day tomorrow," Jack observed, even as he relaxed further back into the chair.

"Not yet," she sighed, enjoying the opportunity to simply sit and study the familiar star patterns of Earth. "It's a beautiful night."

"That it is," he agreed, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth upwards.

"Tell me about them," she requested.

"You already know this stuff," he argued. Sure, astronomy was his hobby, but she'd made the stars her whole life.

"I know the science," she rebutted. "You know the stories behind them."

"Okay," he acquiesced, searching the sky for a good place to begin. Finally making his mind up, he raised a finger and directed her attention to the first constellation. "See that one? That's Cassiopeia, 'Cass' for short. It's named, not for our dear adopted niece Cassandra Frasier, but, of course, for… Cassius Clay, the great boxer."

She giggled at that, the soft sounds bringing a full smile to his face. With that informative introduction, Jack proceeded to "educate" Sam about the various constellations visible from Earth. As she snuggled into his warmth and slowly relaxed, Sam finally allowed herself to believe that maybe SG-1 would be all right after all.

A/N: And this is what happens when you wake up to Ryan Adams: )