Day fifty was a landmark for them. Fifty days on this planet, alone except for each other. Fifty days without contact from Earth, from the Tok'ra, even the Go'auld. They had seen no forms of intelligent life in either the ocean or the sky, in the meadows or the trees. They had spent fifty days here trying to maintain the semblance of ordinary life and their normal order.
Slowly, though, they were failing at their pretence.
It started with the first day that she, while they sat outside for the first time since the rain stopped, leaned against his shoulder and stayed there for several moments. Time seemed to stop, as they both sought solace in the slight touching of their bodies, the feel of another person pressed against them. He could of stayed like that forever if she hadn't pulled away to point out a rainbow forming in the distance, illuminated by the rays of the sun and suspended over the waves on the sea.
They were both trying so hard to keep things the way they had been, the way it was supposed to be – on Earth, they were bound by regulations and by respect and by honour. But out here, beyond the gaze of any prying eyes or any military court, it was becoming harder and harder to remember why they were supposed to be apart. The more time they spent out here, the less they were able to go on pretending that all they were was a commanding officer and his second-in-command.
With the rain having abated, they filled their day with other tasks. She had gone to the gate and made a simple cairn with some of the rocks they had collected from the rocky shoreline of the salt-water sea. She'd pinned one of the SGC patches from Mortensen's uniform to the small structure with another stone; hopefully if any rescue came during the night or during a storm they would still be able to confirm the presence of herself and O'Neill. Otherwise she spent time drying more fruit and meat; they'd decided to use their guns once a week to catch one of the local mammal-like creatures, a house-cat sized creature that looked halfway between a rabbit and a beaver. O'Neill had decided to brand it a Beabbit, and the name had stuck ever since.
For his part, her CO had occupied himself the creation of a shower-like device for their use. Since the end of the two weeks of rain, the sun had emerged even brighter than before, raising temperatures to nearly 30 degrees Celsius. The colonel had managed to find a roughly-bowl shaped chunk of wood in the forest behind their camp, and he'd spent the better part of three days carving three small holes in the bottom of the bowl as well as rigging a system to raise and suspend it from a nearby tree. Every morning he'd fill it with water and let the sun's rays heat it to a surprisingly warm level. Once one of them decided to take a shower, they'd simply stand underneath, reach up and remove the flat stone placed over the holes, and enjoy the closest thing they could to a shower.
She had noticed, though, that they both had the unusual habit of wandering far away into the woods or over to the cliffs whenever either of them decided to partake in their primitive cleaning ritual. The two of them, it seemed, were both so worried about keeping up their pretences that they wouldn't even be in the vicinity of their unclothed teammate.
Today though, on such an auspicious occasion such as this, she decided to hell with their routine.
"I'm going for a swim," she abruptly announced, while they were both working on their own projects, basking in the light of the midday sun.
"Now?" the colonel asked, still looking down at the makeshift arrow he was hell-bent on carving.
"Yeah," she answered, rising to her feet and putting down the fishing rod she'd been working on.
She started walking towards the gully that would lead her down to the beach along the sea, pausing only to look back and smile at him. "Coming, sir?"
He looked up at her strangely, as if trying to get a sense on what exactly she was trying to accomplish. "Sure...?" he answered, putting down the half-formed arrow and replacing the knife in its case along his belt.
They walked down towards the water, taking their time along the sometimes-rocky path. Since the beach was effectively walled up by the cliffs and since it had rained for so long, they'd only been down to the level of the beach a few times, usually to gather rocks or look for any sort of useful material the tide might have brought in.
With the increasingly nice weather, and her feeling of idleness only intensifying with time, Sam finally couldn't resist the tug of the water. With the sun on their backs and nothing but time on their hands, she wanted only to jump into the sea and feel the tide pull at her, feel the waves glide over her skin.
As they reached the bottom of the path they'd established, the colonel turned to her. "Alright, until we get a handle on tidal conditions here, I think we should stick close to shore for a bit. Maybe wading for a bit or –"
He didn't get to finish his sentence before Carter yanked off her uniform pants and jacket, discarding her clothing items on the shoes she'd already removed. Down to just a regulation shirt and underwear, she grinned at him in a strange way, and headed full tilt for the water.
He stared after her, utterly confused. "Carter! What's gotten into you? Be careful of the- oh, for cryin' out loud..."
As he pulled off his shoes, then pants, then jacket and shirt, he couldn't help but wonder if she'd finally lost it. Fifty days lost on a planet, away from everything they'd ever known, and without any recourse or option for contacting those they'd left behind. He'd seen it before.
He walked towards the water, deciding to take it a bit more cautiously. Putting a toe in gingerly, he flinched as he adjusted to the difference in temperature, and then smiled as he realized that the water, in fact, was quite warm. "It's not Aruba, but I'll take it."
He can see Carter about ten feet in front of him, looking like a blonde-haired dolphin. The smile on her face only served to make him grin even more, as he continued to watch her as he walked further into the waves. The way she moved without abandon, as if the past days and weeks of adhering to protocol in the face of an uncertain fate had finally gotten to her, driving her to shuck off responsibility and duty just for this moment now, to feel liberated and carefree once more.
"C'mon, sir, the water's fine!" she called out to him as she surfaced, water streaming down her face.
"I'm not as fast as I used to be, Carter," he replied, but he was grinning as he waded in.
"You're not that old, sir," she rebutted, moving forward to splash him. She was like a different person out here...
"Hey!" he called out as the water hit him, and he leapt forward, throwing himself into the oncoming wave, reaching out to grab Carter's wrist as she made to splash him again.
She yelped in surprise and pulled back, narrowly evading capture. He fell straight into the water, submerging himself completely, and it felt so good, so free. Surfacing, he turned and positioned himself on his back, staring up at the sun.
"Fantastic idea, Carter," he said, as he looked over at her
"Thanks, sir," she replied, her smile even brighter than before.
They stayed like that for hours, floating and swimming and splashing each other, enjoying the heat of the day and refreshing power of the water.
Day seventy-one was, like most others, a quiet one.
They had taken to going on a run together in the mornings, doing repetitions of an (est.) one kilometre route. They were still loath to go too far from the gate; should they get into trouble, or get injured, or fall prey to some greater threat deeper in the forest, they would be too far from the source of their potential rescue. After their run, they'd take turns showering, get some tea and breakfast ready, and then go about their daily routines.
Sometimes they'd go fishing, other times they'd wander over to the meadow they'd found when they first arrived, gathering up fruit and a couple of plants they'd generously classified as "vegetables". They'd do their inventory, perform some basic maintenance on the tents and the equipment, clean their weapons, wash their clothes, etc. With the persistence of the nice weather conditions, they'd decided to put away their jackets and socks/shoes for the eventual possibility of colder times. Ten weeks into their sojourn on this planet, they were beginning to see the end to adapt their plans, to prepare for the long haul.
Day seventy-one, though, was also the first occasion of their attempt at hair cutting. For the most part, they'd decided (or time had decided for them, more like) to let their hair grow long. The colonel still had two razors in his pack, and he used them occasionally when he'd decided that his old man of the woods beard had overstayed its welcome. However, he found the longer his hair got, the more annoyed he became, so he'd finally broken down and asked Carter to cut his hair for him.
"I'm really not great at this, sir," she told him, even as she made him sit on a relatively flat rock out near the cliffs.
"Well, Carter, as long as you don't ridicule me too much in front of the other kids, I think we'll be okay."
She grinned, though with his back to her, he couldn't see it. "Yes,sir."
As she started her work, her smile faded, and she cleared her throat somewhat anxiously.
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Carter?"
She took a deep breath. "Was it like this the last time, sir? When you were stuck on Edora?"
He was silent for a long moment, the snapping of the scissors the only sound in the quiet morning air. "A little bit," he answered, after a long pause.
"How so?" she prompted, after it became evident he wasn't going to elaborate.
He sighed. "Well, I mean, I wasn't as alone as we are out here. There were some of the villagers, and we had solid roofs over our heads, fields to plough, work to do. And every day I went out to the gate to dig or stare or just be near it, knowing that you were working on getting me home."
She continued to cut at his locks as she nodded her understanding. "So it's harder this time, then? Because it's just us?"
He thought about it for a long moment, and then he made to turn to her. She stopped cutting, pulling the scissors back and looking down at him.
When he looked back up at her, she could see the pain in his eyes, the emotion bubbling under the surface. "It's not harder, Carter," he said, nearly whispering. "Last time was way harder. Because I wasn't with you."
She stared down at him then, as a part of her leaped to hear those words aloud, vindicated in their aural presence. But another part of her, so rigid and so regimented after years of practice, recoiled at the sentiment, rejecting it. They were colleagues. Teammates. Team leader and second-in-command.
"Sir...?" she said uneasily.
He looked away then, and turned back around. "Yeah, Carter. I know."
She continued to cut his hair in silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts, alone at the edge of the world.