Author's Note: There seems to be some concern about the speed at which Sam is recovering. In fact, the speed at which she isn't recovering. This is a process, guys. And it'll get a little worse before it gets better. Keep in mind, near the end of the last chapter it had only been 13 weeks since she'd been rescued. That's about three months.
We've got eight more chapters of dealing with mostly negative emotions and what happened to her before we can start dealing with the positive emotions will take up the remaining chapters through the thirtieth – and final – chapter. Hang with me, please. There's a method to the madness and Sam has to break through these lows in order to fully appreciate and heal through the highs. Besides, what sort of payoff is success without a little struggle? And who is to say what success really is?
Many thanks to those who have engaged me in conversation about this story. Also, many thanks to those who are taking the time to read and/or review – your time is precious and I appreciate every moment you share with me.
"Sometimes I still hurt but I'm all healed up."
"Yeah," Jack nods. "Sometimes that happens."
Sam leans back and takes a sip of her hot tea then turns the mug in her hands to warm her fingers. "Between the time and the healing device, I just didn't think I'd still feel this way."
"Well, that and the meds. Right?"
"Which ones?"
"Pain pills. Head fixers. You choose."
"Yes. The anti-depressants. I'd thought the pain was psychosomatic at this point."
"And now you think it's not?"
"They're not helping."
"Yeah, Sam. They're helping."
"Not with the pain, they're not," she says with so much anger it surprises him. "I'm so damn tired of hurting."
"There's more than one kind of pain."
"What? You think I don't know that?"
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack wanders around his darkened living room, a pen in one hand and a glass of neat whiskey in the other. Now that Teal'c's back he's taking a night with Carter and Jack finds he doesn't quite know what to do with himself when he's not walking on egg shells around her.
He realizes all the things he'd like to have his hands in right now have migrated to her house over the course of the last few weeks. The paperwork he doesn't want to do but that Hammond's been griping about – the paperwork he'd retrieved the pen for – is sitting on her dining room table next to her stack of resumes for candidates for open positions in the science department. The shirt with the Guinness stain he'd been trying to get out is soaking in her laundry sink with a sweater she dropped cocktail sauce on. The DVD he'd rented so he could watch shit blow up is sitting on top of her DVD player next to some girly new-age music CD she'd taken to blaring in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep – mostly that, she'd said, because nothing about it sounded at all like the clanking of Jaffa armor in a stone hallway.
Jack detours to the kitchen and dumps his barely-touched glass of whiskey down the sink drain, snags his jacket off the back of a dining room chair and his keys off the table. Who the hell was he trying to kid? He didn't need – or want – a break.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
They're standing shoulder to shoulder in the laundry room trying to scrub stains out of tops. She makes a disgusted sound low in her throat and thrusts her soft pink sweater into his hands and snatches the worn flannel out of his.
"I'm not making any progress with that. Trade me."
He chuckles. "Looks like I already have."
"You didn't have to tell Teal'c to go, you know."
"What? You want me to call him back?"
Sam shrugs but he catches a half smile out of the corner of his eye. He feels the callouses on his trigger finger catch against the fibers of her sweater and turns his fingers a little so it won't happen again.
"I'm just picturing him pointing a staff weapon at your stereo speakers about the time one of those whale calls comes blaring out of it."
This time Sam smiles outright but ducks her head so he only sees a flash of her pearly white teeth. "I don't think they allow him to take his staff weapon off base, sir."
"I think he'd find a way."
He massages a little more stain remover into her sweater and watches as the reddish orange blotch begins to fade away. He grunts affirmatively and shows it to her. She, in turn, shows him the stain on his shirt is gone as well. "Looks like we did it."
"It feels good to watch stains just disappear, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," he says but can't help the catch in his throat. "It does."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Several days later he wakes her up from yet another nightmare. She feels like she hasn't slept more than a couple hours at a stretch since this new round began. Those first nights he was reluctant to even venture into her room. Tonight, she notices, he sits on the edge of her bed.
"You back with me?"
She nods, and then swallows the thick saliva of fear that has collected on the back of her tongue. "Yeah."
"Coffee, tea or hot chocolate?"
She flicks the sweat-dampened covers off her legs and revels in the rush of cool air across her overheated skin. She watches goose pimples raise up across her shins and contemplates her choices. "Coffee."
He sighs. "So we're up for the day."
"Yep," she says definitively.
He glances at the clock. "Well, at least we made until three thirty this time." And he trails her out of the bedroom.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The next night Jack finds himself sitting off world, soaking up the warmth of a campfire, and nursing a bruised shoulder.
"I can't believe you were taken down by a sling shot," Daniel chuckles as he hands over a cup of coffee.
"I was taken down by a rock. That was propelled by a sling shot."
"I believe the young warrior was prepubescent," Teal'c volunteers with a Jaffa-esque smirk.
"All right, all right," Jack grouses.
The three men sit quietly for a few minutes and poke at the damp dirt with sticks. Daniel belches delicately and Teal'c follows up with a sound that rattles the branches above them. Jack chuckles.
"Sam really did temper our baser nature, didn't she?" Daniel observes.
"Some things are not meant for mixed company, Daniel Jackson."
"Some times it's nice to just be guys."
"I miss her."
"We all miss her, Daniel."
"How is Major Carter's recovery progressing?"
"She's…" Jack's not sure how to answer. He tosses a small rock into the fire and watches embers rise up in its wake. "She's suffering."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The next evening they're huddled up in a cave and Jack's madder than a hornet. "She'll be fine," Daniel tries to soothe.
"We were supposed to be back six hours ago."
"I'm sure she's on base. Or with Janet."
"I'm sure she's home, trying to tough it out and climbing the walls."
"What? Why?"
"She's not sleeping, Daniel! What do you think that does to a person's state of mind?"
"So what's different about tonight?"
"I believe it is that O'Neill is not there with her."
"Do you stay there every night?" He's curious. He knew that for a while she needed someone with her, but he was sure that by now she'd be able to stay on her own.
"Not every night," Jack says slowly.
Daniel can tell he's hedging. "Jack…"
"What?" the older man asks caustically. "What could you possibly have to say about this situation, Daniel? You have some kind of ancient insight into how to help your friend when she's going off the rails? You know some way to help that doesn't include the instruction to 'be there'?"
Daniel raises his hands in supplication. "I was just asking."
"You don't just ask."
"This time I was." On Jack's withering glare he says, "Really."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She's sitting on her couch with her face buried in her hands. She's rocking back and forth. And even in her newly fragile state of mind she knows this isn't okay. At first she'd been irritated to learn someone had to be with her all the time. And then she adjusted to having one of the guys around simply because the company was nice. Slowly it transitioned and only the colonel stayed with her. And a little while later she realized he was with her every night. Well, every evening and weekends, too, if she were honest. And she's gotten used to never really being alone with her demons.
The first few times he'd had missions she'd been distracted with nights on base or dinner with Janet and Cassandra. But she really thought she was ready to stay by herself.
She was wrong.
She wanders aimlessly around her house for a while until she realizes she's cataloguing his existence in her house. His paperwork on the dining room table, his reading glasses on the coffee table, his coffee cup in the dish drainer, his jeans folded on top of the dryer, and his duffel bag on the floor next to the couch.
She flings open the door to the room she tries to call a home office slash guest room but that has become, more than anything else, a storage unit where boxes go to die. The red numbers on the digital clock next to the small bed are barely visible through a layer of dust and read 2:37 am. She picks up the box nearest the door and starts hauling things out to the garage.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"Damn it, sir," Jack spouts as soon as he steps through the gate. "I want to know exactly which pipsqueak scientist sent us in the wrong fucking direction."
"Colonel O'Neill," Hammond's voice comes resignedly over the loudspeaker, "med evals and then debrief."
"Just tell me you know who it was, General."
And as pissed as he is, he finds himself answering the slight grin on the General's face. "The situation has been handled. Major Carter briefed the technician on proper use of compasses on planets with varying geomagnetic fields."
That means she's on base. She's on base and she's pissed because someone kept him from getting home to her on time. Well, you know, maybe that's why she's pissed. A grin spreads fully across his face.
"Infirmary first, Colonel," the General reminds him, but even Jack can hear the smile in the man's voice.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The fact that he was able to lean against the door to her lab for so long without being noticed was very telling. Her eyes were dark and sunken. She held her mouth tightly and her shoulders were up around her ears. "I heard you about took a lieutenant's head off today."
She jumps more than six inches into the air at the sounds of his voice.
"Just me," he soothes. "Did you sleep at all?"
She sinks down onto the stool by her worktable and shakes her head with a sigh. "I don't think so. Not really. And I only took his head off because I'm not allowed to demote people."
"What say we go home? I could use a hot shower and some hot chow. You look like you might need at least one of those yourself."
"There's nothing to eat at home."
He shrugs. "I'll pick up Chinese on the way. C'mon." He holds a hand out to her and wonders if she'll take it. She doesn't, but she does take it as an invitation and precedes him out the door. So they can go home. Together.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
He wakes to the sound of a blood-curdling scream. He sits up, disoriented in the bed she prepared for him after weeks of sleeping on her couch. The upshot is that he's only a short sprint to her bedroom now. When he flings open the door, he's confronted by the business end of her service pistol and a wild look in her eyes.
"Sam, put down the gun."
"No, sir," she says with a calm that freezes his veins.
"There's nobody here but you and me." He chances a few steps into the room and notices that her gun stays trained on the door and he's got to admit he feels a damn sight better knowing it wasn't him she was aiming for.
The bushes rustle outside her bedroom window and she swings the gun in that direction. "He's here. I can feel him. Hear him. Can't you smell him?"
"Sam," he takes another cautious step towards the bed and curses the four feet of space and half a bed between him and disarming her, "listen to me." He shivers in the cool air of the room. "Look at me."
She does after a moment but her gun remains pointed at the window.
He indicates his sleepwear. "Do I look dressed for a showdown? It's you and me and a hell of a breeze out there." He gestures towards the window and her eyes flicker back in that direction before taking in his flannel pajama pants.
The moonlight glints off her dog tags in uneven measures as her chest heaves and he's momentarily frozen by the site of a warrior swathed in a down comforter. Her arm relaxes and a moment later the gun is on her bedside table and the safety snicks on. He exhales a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"Is that loaded, Sam?"
"What do you think?"
He sighs. "So, coffee?"
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
They stand facing one another in her living room. "I didn't mean to hold a gun on you, sir."
"I know. But you did."
She nods. "I did."
"You know anybody's going to have to go through me to get to you, right?"
She wants to believe that but declines to answer. Instead, "What was it like for you?"
He takes the change of subject in stride. "Those were different days, Carter. I slept with a knife under my pillow, a gun in my bedside table and a terrified woman by my side."
"Did you ever hurt her?"
"No. But I was lucky. I know guys who did hurt their wives."
"Do you think I'll hurt you?"
"Not on purpose."
"But…you think I could?"
"Yeah, Carter, I think you could."
She walks back to her bedroom and retrieves her gun. When she gets back he's standing right where she left him. She hands him the gun. "I'm not getting any better."
"Maybe it's time you started taking getting help a little more seriously."
"I cancelled my last three scheduled sessions."
"I know."
"You do?" She's surprised. "Why didn't you make me go?"
"What would you have done if I did?"
"I'd have been pretty pissed."
"Yeah."
"I wouldn't have talked to her."
"You haven't been talking to her."
"I guess not."
"Sam, I'm with you all the way. However long this takes. You're not going to get better until you're ready to get better. But she can help."
"If I'll let her."
"You've got to let her do her job."
And she knows he's right. Because she can't do this anymore. Not like this.