A big thanks for my reviewers! I restored a few lines in the first chapter that clarify what they were doing before they got lost. I will continue to post a new chapter every Friday until it's done.

In this chapter, things get moving back on earth, feelings start to resurface, and Jack's thinks they're on one long, fun camping trip until he reminds himself that they're really not.

Thank you very much for reading, and please leave a review if you can- this is my first foray into h/c writing.

Twilight

"A neutron star pair?" McKay looks up at the video link and repeats Dr. Lee's own words back to him."That could do it!" Lee, the chief scientist at the prospective mine site, finishes giving McKay the data he'd collected on the star and then signs off. Turning to the anxiously eavesdropping group behind him, McKay asserts, "It's a gravitational wave coming off a spinning pair of stars- that's why it fluctuates. It distorts space and moves the event horizon for a fraction of a second at a time."

"Explain." Teal'c requests- or rather demands- of the easily excitable scientist who is his polar opposite in personality, a fact that is starting to perturb even him.

"Well, if you took, say, a sheet or …the back of Dr. Jackson jacket," Rodney turns the slightly surprised archeologist around and lifts the hem of his coat until it's parallel with the floor, "a wormhole dents space-time." He sticks his finger right in the middle of the jacket. "And a gravity wave will distort space-time as well, pulling it toward the source as the waves passes through." He slides his fingertip back and forth across the cloth while Daniel tries to see, which causes several ripples in space.

"I thought it was like a wormhole through an apple." Daniel shrugs the fabric of the cosmos onto his back where it belongs.

"I hate that model! It's terrible. No wonder you thought the wormhole went through things."

"She was trying to keep it simple for us." Hammond says, cocking his head slightly.

"Oh-, yes." McKay backtracks awkwardly, "It is the classic description. But that stargate is completely unsafe, General. The event horizon can move."

Hammond looks grim. "Why didn't we notice it?"

McKay shakes his head. "You'd need a LIGO, and they're a half-mile long."

"That's one hell of a toy," the general muses.

"Not LEGO, LIGO- Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory."

"Like I said, one hell of a toy." Hammond turns to Walter, who's busy shutting down the comm. line to the planet. "Order the Prometheus to evacuate P3X-812, and lock that gate out of the dialing program. Until we get more ships, there's not going to be a mine there." He leads the small group up the stairs. "Tell me, McKay, are we any closer to finding Carter and O'Neill?"

"No. But at least we know where to focus our efforts, General." They enter the briefing room and McKay proceeds directly to the star chart. "They're likely at some planet between P3X-812 and the neutron star." He traces a path with his hand.

"That's still a dozen gates, some of which we've never explored." Daniel estimates.

"General Hammond will adjust the mission list," Teal'c states firmly, and turns to the general, adding, "will you not?"

"I will, Teal'c. But there won't be any missions unless I know those gates are safe."

Teal'c stares impassively at General Hammond, but the atmosphere in the room is suddenly tense and brittle.

Daniel inches up, placing his hand on the alien's muscled shoulder. "He's right, Teal'c. We don't know why they didn't just turn around and dial home. But we can send probes through to find out, right, General Hammond?"

"Absolutely. We'll start with MALPs and UAVs and go from there. Dr. McKay, you're good with machines. I'm putting you in charge of the search and rescue."

"This is just the kind of mission I like, General." Rodney smiles confidently, "Conducted from behind a base computer."

--

The world comes alive when twilight falls, as if the animals only exist in the shadows that follow just behind the sun. The cooler temperatures and softer light diminish the sense of danger and frustration as well, and in those first moments after sunset the last two people on the planet call a truce without speaking a word.

Jack tries his luck at hunting and on the first day brings back a small deer-like creature, hefting it onto the stout wooden kitchen table. "Let me know when supper's ready," he tosses back at her with a smirk as he turns to wash his sticky hands. Sam gives him an indignant look and before she can protest his chauvinistic assumptions he cuts her off. "Uh uh," he raises a finger in warning, "I killed it, you cook it. If you don't want to pull mess duty, you'd better get over your aversion to shooting Bambi." Then he steps out the back door and sits down to clean the weapon, leaving her standing in the kitchen with an expression of slightly annoyed amusement.

As it grows darker she often watches him build up the woodpile while she edits her notes in the waning light, having been forced to give up the computer due to a lack of power. "You like this whole living-off-the-land thing, don't you?"

He looks at her with a genuine grin. "Yeah, I do. Don't be surprised if those notes are accidentally trashed by a flying chunk of wood the next time you go inside."

He's not sure if he's just teasing her.

A few days later Sam is lying out on the back porch with the rudimentary star chart in front of her, taking advantage of the steady glow on the horizon. She sighs in frustration, and then drops the stubby pencil carefully on the map before rolling flat on her back to stare at the pink sky, scanning it for the first hint of starlight.

"Shouldn't you be working?" Jack teases her gently, knowing full well she does it endlessly, having slipped the chart out from under her head more than once before covering her up with a jacket and falling asleep beside her. They've forgotten about taking shifts and standing watch.

Sam smiles and keeps scanning the sky. "I am."

"Oh, I forgot. Physicists don't daydream. They think." Something lands with a thud not too far from her head, causing her to roll over for a better look. Jack has definitely found something of interest- a small metal drum.

"Is that your still?"

He shakes his head and sits down beside her. "I'm not making the hard stuff, but even if I was, I wouldn't use this." He removes a wooden plug from the cask and she sits up, the unmistakable smell of fossil fuel wafting up as she tips the drum to peer in.

"Carter," he says wistfully, "whenever I smell petroleum products, I'm reminded of you."

She shoves him playfully, which surprises but doesn't bother him in the least, and then she takes the plug out of his hand and taps it back onto the canister. "Where there's oil, there's an engine."

"I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it's for the lamps. But that's still good, don't ya think?"

She searches his earnest expression thoughtfully. "It's great, sir. I can work on these problems all winter long now."

Jack suddenly realizes that her gratitude isn't just for the promise of better lighting, and for once he has absolutely no guilt over how damned good that makes him feel. "Hmm," he says, in mock seriousness, "It sounded like a good idea at the time."

"I'll pace myself. I promise."

"You're completely incapable of pacing yourself."

"All right then. You help me." She tosses the calculator in his lap.

He stops smiling and stares at her. "Me? I agreed to help with the looking part, but I'm not doing the figuring-out part."

"Ah- you said you're 'not'- you didn't say you 'couldn't'. All I'm doing is simple triangulations between stars."

"I forgot my trig.," he offers lamely.

"That," she points at the calculator, "will do it for you. You just have to remember what corner you're in."

"The one you backed me into," he grumbles. But he resigns himself to her tutoring and they lie on their elbows for the next hour, plotting distances and angles hoping that once the stars come out, they'll be able to figure out their place in the universe. In spite of himself, Jack is starting to feel as if he already has.

After a few sessions, Sam sits looking over his work while he plays with the calculator. "These are good, sir." She glances over at him and notices he's spelled "ShELL OIL" upside down and backwards.

He sees her interest and quickly erases it. "It's not a labor of love, I can tell you that."

"Okay then, don't help me anymore." She folds up the charts and graphs along well-worn lines.

"Really?" He tries too late to hide his excitement and then finds he doesn't need to when he sees the entertained expression on her face. It's all a little too suspicious. "You could have done five times the work I did with the effort you wasted on me."

"Maybe." She moves her head just enough so that can't see her face very well in the low light. Jack sits up as she puts away the last of her things.

"You didn't need the help, did you?"

She doesn't look up, but her happy demeanor fades. "No, sir. But you needed to learn."

"Carter…" he touches her chin, turning her face toward the last rays of the sun, but before he can see what's going on behind those baby blues she abruptly picks up his homework and gets to her feet.

"You taught me a lot, sir. Now I'm teaching you. Just in case." Then she turns and disappears into the shadows of the house.

Jack sighs, filled with guilt over his relative lack of worry about getting back. He doesn't dwell on things he can't affect; and at times he feels like he's at his cabin only without the fate of the world to worry about. He lies back down on the porch and for a change tries appreciating the sky for its awesome beauty instead of just scanning it for the points of a scalene triangle.

Like that little bright point just over the roof of the house next door.

He finds that she's already asleep, the glow from the horizon seeping in through the open window, washing over her in tints of pink and gold. Well, he thinks, the star will still be there when she wakes up and by itself it's useless- so he just watches her from the doorway to her room and imagines what it would be like to be in her bed, his fingers tangled in that yellow hair, those long limbs wrapped around him.

--

"Jack, come here! You've got to see this!" her excited voice comes to him as he puts away the last of the few rough utensils they had used for breakfast. His astonishment at her use of his given name helps him to keep a straight face as he walks through the kitchen and onto the porch.

"Carter, that's still 'sir' to you."

"Okay," she says distractedly, staring up at the lavender sky. "There they are!" Three stars are visible now.

"Well, it's about damn time," he grins. He decides it was definitely worth it to keep his mouth shut. "Now what?"

"Well, I can't run a doppler or check light echoes on them and find out far away they are, so all we can do is take measurements and hope some day we recognize a star, or pattern- or something that fits the calculations I made from Starry Night." Her enthusiasm at what she can do with a few stars and a calculator causes his small grin to widen into a full-fledged smile. Her eyes spark back at him and for a second she almost flings her arms around him in a paroxysm of unrestrained scientific joy, but then she just hugs her own arms self-consciously.

He's used to 'almosts' with Carter- she almost died, they almost kissed, she almost told him how she felt. This time, though, there's no sadness in her eyes, no remorse. There's just the awkwardness of being caught with her guard down and her feelings showing and she's a little embarrassed just like she used to be before they realized that it was, quite literally, a crime to feel that way.

It's the best 'almost' hug he's ever had. And he's so happy about it that he actually asks Carter a scientific question. "So you're going to measure these with… what?"

"I can make a protractor." She's still smiling and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, it's not just about the stars.

"Of course you can."

"You of all people ought to be glad I'm such a geek. Sir."

"Oh, I am. Ever since the day you made the earth move for me." She looks a little surprised and Jack wonders again why there is no airlock between his brain and his mouth. He quickly explains, "In Antarctica. That thing you did with the DHD." But her smile hasn't faded and now it's his turn to be embarrassed. "Um, Carter," he says, motioning vaguely toward the forest, "I think I'm going to go kill something."

--

With a rare few minutes of time on his hands, General Hammond sequesters himself in O'Neill's office in order to sift through the debris pile on the desk. He hears a light tap on the doorjamb and looks up to find a petite, redheaded woman whom he's never met standing in the doorway. "Yes?"

"General Hammond. I'm Kerry Johnson, the new CIA analyst."

George smiles. "Of course. I'm sorry we haven't met yet. I've been as slow as molasses in January as far as meeting the new folks. Please come in."

"Oh, it's fine sir. I know you're- busy." Kerry walks hesitantly into the room.

"Yes." George nods grimly. "What can I do for you, Ms. Johnson?"

"Do you have news on General O'Neill and Lt. Colonel Carter?"

"No, ma'am. I'm afraid I don't. Is it something I can help you with?"

Kerry shakes her head "No, sir. I just wanted to know. It's… personal."

General Hammond sets his papers down and looks kindly at the nervous young woman. "I didn't know, Ms. Johnson. I'm sorry."

"No one knows." Kerry sighs.

"I'm sure he'll be back." They both know that is nothing but a polite reassurance.

"How long since they've been missing, General?"

"Four weeks."

"And they're together?"

"We have no reason to think otherwise. And that's a good thing. "

"Right." she nods in agreement. "It certainly is." After a brief pause, she straightens her shoulders and lifts her eyes, "Thanks for your time, General." He watches her go, and knows that they're both concerned about the same thing. And oddly enough, he's okay with it, because it means his officers are more likely to live if they're doing it for each other.

--

The creature slams into O'Neill's shoulder like the end of a staff weapon shoved by a big Jaffa, knocking Jack face-first into the underbrush, his hands curling around his automatic instead of protecting his head. It's heavy and he finds he needs every inch between his body and the ground to maneuver around and get the barrel up against its heaving, growling body armed with teeth and claws that have his right side in a crushing grip. Hoping he isn't about to shoot any part of himself, he pulls hard on the trigger and blasts the animal back with a half-dozen rounds.

The shots ring like an alarm through the silent forest, and Sam drops the papers from her hand at the sound. There are too many shots, too fast. Stumbling on her way back into the dark house, she grabs her radio off the table. "General? I heard shots." She takes her thumb off the button and waits.

He's still on his back when her call comes, his hand trying to stem the bleeding from his shoulder wound, not sure if the thing is coming back. He hopes the radio doesn't draw its attention back to him, but he hears nothing except the rasping of his own breath. Finding that his right arm isn't working so well, Jack moves his left hand to work the radio, his bloody fingers slipping off the controls. Her voice comes again, clear but a little too controlled. "Hold on," he mutters, wiping his hand on his shirt, his eyes finding the enormous cat-like predator lying a few yards away, still breathing, its orange eyes open but vacant. He manages to operate the radio. "Carter."

"Are you all right?"

"Not really."

"Dammit!" Sam blurts, and then realizing her thumb is still pressing the transmission button, adds, "Sir."

Jack grins, more of a grimace than a smile as the pain sweeps the amusement off of his face. "Due east, Colonel. There're a couple of rocks about the size of- an ambulance."

Taking the hint, she reaches up and grimly pulls the first aid kit off of the shelf over the counter. "What is it?"

"Dead." He shuts his eyes and lies back. "But don't forget your P-90."

She finds him a few minutes later, the carcass of the dead animal flagging his location. His eyes are still closed and he's not moving, curled up in the deep gloom of the forest floor. She drops to her knees beside him, touching his face, because it's all she can see that's not covered in blood. "Sir?"

"Ah, Sam," he whispers.

Her eyes close briefly at the sound of his voice, and then she gets to work, first rolling up her jacket to place under his head.

"The goa'uld never allow competition," he grunts through gritted teeth, the flexing of his neck muscles almost too much to bear. "What the fuck is this thing doing here?"

"I don't know, sir," Sam's breath catches as she moves his hand aside. The wound is long, ragged and deep, and by the looks of his shirt, he's already lost a lot of blood. Moving quickly, she sprinkles the gash with quikclot and then packs it with gauze. She tears the sleeve of his shirt the rest of the way off, using it to tie the dressing tight, wincing when he winces.

He's pale and his breathing is shallower as she turns her attention to the wrist distal to the jagged wound. There's a pulse there but it's so fast she doesn't even bother to count it with her watch. He needs fluids right now, but there's no medevac team coming, no surgeon to patch him up, not even an IV of normal saline. She makes him drink two full canteens and then manages to half-carry, half-drag him back to the village despite his twisted ankle. Sam pushes his sleeping platform in front of the fire and hauls him onto it, and then stitches the wounds as best she can, finishing by handing him a cup of water and two of their precious few antibiotic tablets.

"I don't need those." He's chilled to the bone despite the blankets and roaring fire, and all he wants to do now is sleep. At least it doesn't hurt anymore and he should be glad about that except that he's felt this way before. And this time there's no sarcophagus.

"No," she says firmly, the tightness of her jaw and her tone making it clear she's not just referring to the pills. Sam presses them into his palm, and he can feel her hands trembling. "I'll dissolve it in your water if I have to."

He closes her fingers over the drugs. "Sam. It's not gonna make any difference. Save 'em." The room starts to fade out and he closes his eyes, but mostly he does it because he doesn't want to see her face.

She bends down and whispers into his ear, "I'll throw them in the fire, then. So cut your losses, General." She rests her cheek on his and waits, their hands intertwined, while he decides what he wants to do. "Please, Jack."

It works every time. He almost resents how she always manages to make him want to live.

She supports Jack as he struggles to lift his head, and he chokes down the capsules with water from a cup she holds for him. He's never felt this weak- so completely and utterly drained. But he forces his eyes open one last time to find her watching him intently with a look of worry so deep that he finally understands he needs to get his shit together and pull through because he can't bear the thought of leaving her alone on this planet. He wishes there were more blood getting to his brain, because the only thing he can think of to tell her is, "Thanks."

Sam turns her face away as she straightens the blankets around his injured foot, as if there are points for neatness. "Don't thank me yet, sir." She slips down to rest wearily on the floor and crosses her arms on the bed, resting her head on them as she watches the fire and the rise and fall of his chest until he's asleep. Then she carefully stands and picks up the pieces of his mangled shirt, shaking her head with a pained expression as she turns it over in her hands.

The shirt is in obvious need of a good washing before she makes any attempt at repairing it, so she moves quietly into the kitchen and tosses in the sink. Swirling the garment through the water, she watches with horror as the basin fills with blood, black in the dim light. Any experienced combatant knows very well what a little blood can do to a lot of water, but that doesn't stop her from taking a step back, gazing wide-eyed from the dark pool to where Jack is lying.

He moves one leg a little and her shoulders relax as her breathing calms down. She watches him a moment longer, and then her actions become more deliberate and sure as she steps up to the basin and washes the shirt again, going outside to hang it up to dry. But snowflakes swirl in through the open door and she chooses instead to shut and latch the door against the darkness.