Author's Note: I'm behind on review replies but I wanted to thank the readers for your insightful thoughts about the story and what the characters are going through. This story is about Sam but it's also quite a bit about all of them. When bad things happen to our loved ones we're often touched in ways we could have never anticipated. Sometimes the things we say or do don't make much sense. But there's validity in emotion. There is truth in what we feel. I hope, in small part, to give voice to many of the angles of their situation.
"Is it possible to feel sympathy for yourself? Or, is it only pity?" Sam asks Natalie a few days later.
"Well, by its very definition sympathy is an emotion you feel for others."
"Because I think I feel sympathy."
"For yourself?"
"For her. The me I was on that planet."
"Okay."
"Is that possible?"
"I think anything's possible. Especially if you're disassociating yourself from the person to whom those things happened on the planet."
"The colonel said I am her. That for better or worse, that's part of my story now."
"Do you agree?"
"I don't know. I think it would be easier to put all of that in a box, you know?"
"You'll have to deal with it eventually."
"And before I can go back to work."
"Yes."
"Right."Sam fiddles with a string on the couch. "How can I be so mad at them and feel sorry for them too?"
"Do you think the sympathy you're feeling might actually be directed at your team?"
"In part, at least."
"Why?"
"They don't seem to be handling all this very well."
"They all have their own emotions surrounding your capture and captivity. It's only natural."
"Yeah."
"You don't believe that?"
Sam struggles to find an appropriate answer. She's sure they're feeling some emotions, she's just not sure it has anything to do with her. And then she feels bad because it's certainly not all about her. "It's not all about me, is it?"
"What they're feeling?"
Sam nods.
"No. I don't imagine it is."
"Aren't you seeing them too?"
"Yes."
"So don't you know whether or not it's all about me?"Natalie doesn't answer so Sam looks up at her. "Oh. Right. You can't tell me about their sessions."
"What's the difference between pity and sympathy," Sam asks after a few moments of contemplative silence.
"Sometimes, Sam, things just come down to connotation."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack very nearly turns and leaves when he encounters Sam in the gym. Her back is to him, though, so he takes a moment to look her over. She's still frighteningly thin. He can see her shoulder blades and the vertebrae between them. When she shakes her hands down by her hips he notices how delicate her wrists are – is momentarily taken aback by the marks she retains from her captivity ringed around them. She's walking at a pretty good clip on a treadmill. She hates treadmills almost as much as she hates walking, but the report sitting on his desk says she's only been cleared for swimming and walking. And the walking is new today. Apparently she's had enough of the pool.
She still hasn't noticed his presence and, as he advances on her, he notices her eyes are squeezed tightly shut and she's got tiny earphones stuck in her ears. He draws closer still and suddenly realizes he can hear the music. It's slow but it has a driving beat and he sees she's walking in time to the music.
She's nearly vibrating with the effort it's taking to keep from turning up the treadmill and breaking into a run. He'd recognize that tension anywhere considering he's humming with it himself. As a matter of fact he'd come to this very place this very evening to punish his knees in ways Janet would berate him for endlessly.
She's still focused inwardly and he struggles with his desperate desire to flee and avoid her. His other choice – the less attractive one in many ways and yet far more enticing in others – is to climb aboard a machine near her and revel in her nearness for at least a little while.
Though he was fairly certain he'd been clear when he told her the feelings he had weren't pity he's also fairly certain she's been avoiding him as she doesn't really believe him. He'd meant what he said when he told her she was strong. She was so strong when she was trapped on that planet. He knows because she was alive when he got to her.
Suddenly he can recognize the song playing. Huh. He'd have never really pegged her as a Pink Floyd fan. But, he supposes, Wish You Were Here is probably a fitting song for her at the moment. And then he starts to worry about her ears if he can clearly hear her music over both the treadmill and her footfalls.
So he joins her, unseen, and runs along as a remnant from his heydays sings about lost souls.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Teal'c does not spend a lot of time thinking about what Major Carter must have been subjected to as a prisoner of Votan and his Jaffa. He knows precisely what she was made to do. Knows intimately how she was treated. He knows the tools used to break her. He's used them himself.
He does not know why she seems comfortable in his presence. Knows not why she's startled away from him fewer times than she's sought him out.
He thanks whatever powers might be part of the Universe that she finds some small comfort in his presence, though. But it hurts the soft inner part of him when she sits quietly on a pillow on his floor in meditation with tears streaming down her face. He is unsure how to be helpful. Is afraid of touching her when her eyes are closed. Is afraid, if he's honest, of touching her when her eyes are open.
He thinks she looks beautiful, if broken, in the candlelight. He has never before truly appreciated the beauty in survival. But he wonders sometimes how much of Major Carter actually survived her time on that planet.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"I feel like a virgin."
Natalie is momentarily taken aback by Sam's blunt and incongruous statement.
"In what way?"
"I know how things are supposed to feel; I just don't know where all the parts go."
"Knowing how things are supposed to feel is at least half the battle, isn't it?"
Sam shrugs.
"Besides me, who are you talking to?"
"There's not anyone I'm not talking to."
"No, I mean about how you're feeling and what you went through."
"I can't talk about that with anyone."
"You talk about it with me."
"Not really."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She spends another evening half alone on the observation deck. The weather's turning cooler and she revels in the slight nip in the air as the sun sinks down past the horizon somewhere off her right shoulder. The trees in her immediate field of vision are an inky moss green superimposed over a grey blue dusky sky and she's suddenly struck by how much those colors look like she feels.
The bruises are mostly gone. It's been, after all, five weeks since her rescue and time and a half a dozen treatments with the healing device will do that. Her muscle tone is slowly returning. But her bones still ache. Her joints feel like they fit together strangely. Her skin still feels like something that's not quite her own.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"I don't know why I'm still coming here."
"Do you think you were unaffected by Major Carter's abduction?"
"Of course not."
"So you agree that there might be some fall out on your part."
Colonel O'Neill fidgets nervously in a chair.
"Okay, fine. Can you tell me about the events leading up to Major Carter's capture?" She watches as his eyes slam closed. "You don't have to relive it, Colonel. Just tell me what you're seeing."
His face contorts in pain. But he doesn't speak.
"Colonel? Open your eyes, please."
It takes many moments but he does.
"Can you tell me what you were seeing?"
"He pulled her out of my arms."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack hands Daniel a beer and then sinks wearily onto the couch next to him.
"It doesn't feel right without her here."
"It'll be a while before she's allowed off base, Daniel."
"Why? Physically she's capable of caring for herself."
"Yeah. Well, her head's still not straight."
Daniel makes a noncommittal noise and Jack echoes it.
"I'm not sure I'm ever going to forgive myself, Jack. How do you do it? How do you look at her and not feel like you have to spend the rest of forever apologizing?"
"Who says I don't?"
"She hates it when I apologize to her."
"Probably because you haven't had a single real conversation with her since she's been back."
"I feel guilty. I'm atoning."
"It's not about you. It's about her. And she doesn't need to be reminded what she went through every time she sees one of us."
"You think we have to talk to make her remember, Jack? I'm pretty sure our faces are enough."
Jack takes a long pull off his beer.
Daniel continues, "I know I'll never forget the look on her face when we left her."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"Your back looks good, Sam."
"Good."
"So do your wrists."
"Yeah."
"Your dad offered to come back if you're having any pain we haven't yet addressed."
"No."
"No pain, or no dad?"
"Both."
Janet pulls a stool up next to the bed Sam's sitting on. "I wish I knew what I could say to help."
"I wish I knew what to tell you to say."
"How's Doctor Jordan working out?"
"She's fine."
"No, really, Sam."
Sam hazards a smile. "Really, Jan. She's okay. I like her. She's better than Mackenzie."
"I'm not sure that's really saying much."
"She's helping."
"She can only help as much as you let her."
"What's that mean?"
"It means you get out of therapy exactly what you put into it. You want to get better, you have to level with her."
"Who says I'm not?"
Janet tries to think of an appropriate retort but settles for a no nonsense look that gets precisely the reaction she was looking for.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She submits to dinner with her team. She still doesn't like eating in front of other people. She's aware she's not eating enough to suit much of anybody. But if she doesn't spend at least a short amount of time with them every other day or so they each seek her out and force her into conversations she'd prefer not having. So, she consents to a meal and talk of things of little consequence.
It's not necessarily an easier thing to do, but it's proportionally easier than dealing with the conversations they'd rather be having. Besides, she's tired of telling Daniel not to apologize; tired of telling the colonel lies; tired of falling apart in front of Teal'c.
She doesn't want to chase them away. Not really. But she does want them to go away of their own volition. But they all look so sad all the time. And Daniel and the colonel look a little lost.
So, she submits to dinner with the team. It's not easy. But it's enough to get them through the next stretch and on to the next thing.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Natalie's notes are spread out across the coffee table as she makes notes into a handheld voice recorder. Erin is cooking something that smells like it might be a poor substitute for the dinner Natalie keeps missing.
"Major Carter continues to bury her true emotional reactions under case-typical reiterations of what she thinks she's supposed to be saying. We spend most of our sessions talking around problems. She doesn't trust me yet. But she doesn't trust anyone else either."
"You want my opinion?"
Natalie pushes the pause button on her recorder and looks up to see Erin leaning against the living room doorway. "Always."
"You should take a break. Eat something that doesn't come off a cafeteria tray or out of a vending machine."
Natalie sinks back into the couch with a smile. "That's good advice."
"I've got more." Erin's mouth turns up into a smirk and she advances to stand in front of Natalie.
"Shoot."
"If what you're doing isn't working, try something new."
"The vending machine food isn't that bad."
"Oh, it really is."