Author's Notes: I'm woefully behind on review replies – I'll get there, I promise. But many thanks to everyone who has dropped me a line.
I'm glad to hear that the pacing isn't too troubling for most of you. This story is meticulously planned out so it's unlikely the pacing will change. That said, though, it may feel like it's moving quicker in later chapters as the subject matter becomes less fraught with tension. So, for those that feel like they're still stuck in the mire, please bear with me a little long. I think I can confidently say it'll be worth it.
"Colonel O'Neill says it's time for me to start taking therapy more seriously."
"What do you think?"
"I think I'm tired of waking up screaming."
"It's been…a while now. Not everyone decides right away that they want to get better. Not everyone even sees the problem. And for some people the real struggles take a while to manifest. Your body was putting a lot of effort into physical healing for a long time." Natalie shrugs. "Now it's your brain's turn."
"I pulled a gun on Colonel O'Neill last night."
Natalie's eyebrows climb up her forehead and Sam thinks she might have found that comical if the subject matter were a little less dire. "And that's what prompted him to suggest you take your therapy more seriously?"
"Well, no," Sam decides. "I think he was more worried about me and the nightmares. But we both agree I am capable of hurting him if I continue on like this."
"Just him?"
"He spends more time with me than anyone else does. Statistically speaking he's more likely to the target of my bad moment."
"Yes, let's talk about that. Scuttlebutt has it that Colonel O'Neill's moved in with you."
"What?!" And Sam's completely sure she doesn't like that defensive shriek in her voice. "No. No. Absolutely not."
"Wow. That was a pretty strong reaction."
"Was it?"
"Sam."
Sam fiddles with her wristwatch for a moment. "Okay, yeah, it was a strong reaction."
"Yes," Natalie nods exaggeratedly, "it was."
"He hasn't…moved in, exactly."
"Then what has he done? You know…exactly."
"He stays over. Most nights."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"How does that make you feel?"
Sam considers all the possible answers quite carefully. Safe? Comfortable? Happy? Maybe not any of those things. But maybe all of them. At least, in small measures. And only when he's around. When he's not there she vacillates between freaking out and counting moments until he returns.
"I'm not sure, precisely. But it's not bad."
"So…it's good?"
"It's…" and Sam finds she doesn't have a clear-cut answer. Finally she settles on, "It's okay."
"When was the last time you lived with someone?"
Sam can't help the shudder that precedes her one word answer. "Jonas."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack watches her warily out of the corner of his eye as he peels potatoes. She's been jumpy ever since she got home. He knows she saw Doctor Jordan but he's not sure how to bring it up. So, instead, he peels potatoes and watches her out of the corner of his eye like a coward she doesn't need.
She pretends to work her way through the mail but he's watched her take the same letter out of the same envelope three times. Watched her refold it and stuff it back into the envelope. And then watched her pull it back out. But he wants her to start the conversation.
Then, as if he's willed it, she begins. "We talked about Jonas today."
He's no psychologist but he thinks that perhaps that topic of conversation was not the most helpful one they could have broached. Instead of pointing that out he settles for, "Oh yeah?"
Sam nods and puts the letter back in the envelope. "I don't know why. Natalie asked me when I last lived with someone and it was Jonas. And then we were talking about him."
"Okay." Jack knows he sounds like a half idiot the way he draws out the simple word. He's not sure what they're really talking about.
"Did you know people think you live here now?"
And there it is. He could lie to her and tell her nobody's mentioned it to him. But what would that yield him? "It might have come up once or twice."
"And that doesn't bother you?"
"No," he answers honestly. "Does it bother you?"
She pulls the letter back out of the envelope and pretends to study it but he knows she's likely got it memorized by now. "I don't know."
"Because I'm not leaving."
She chuckles and it makes him smile. "No, sir, I didn't think you were."
"Well, just so we're clear."
"We're clear."
"How does it make you feel? Really, Sam, I want to know." He turns so the countertop cuts into his lower back and wipes his starchy hands on a dishtowel.
She puts the letter back in the envelope. "A little sad, I think."
He resists the urge to step toward her. "Sad? Why?"
"All the things I've done in my life…everything I thought I had to offer…all the things I thought I wanted…then all the things I knew I didn't…and this is what it takes to find someone who won't walk away? Now? When I'm," her hands flutter as she messily indicates her person, "whatever this is? This is what I have to be to keep a person around? I guess there's really something to the whole damsel in distress thing."
He cocks his head to the side in the way that usually makes her smile but she disappoints him by not even looking at him. "Is that why you think I'm here? Some sort of damsel in distress thing?"
"Well, why are you here?"
He shrugs. "I go where I'm needed."
"And you've decided you're needed now?"
"If not now, when?"
"Oh, God, sir. I don't know. Any other time over the last few years? Any other time when I wasn't this?"
"What makes you think there's something so wrong with this?"
"Because things that are right don't feel like this."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She loves that she's able to run again. She sets off in the early mornings nearly every day. On this day, though, there's a low, rough fog and a bit of a mist that keeps the clouds hanging low around the ground. She likes running through the fog and feeling the pull in her lungs. She likes the heavy feeling of her running clothes as they become more saturated with water. The longer she runs the more the mist turns into a light sprinkling of drops that at a mile and a half into her run turns into a drizzle that another half mile in turns into a driving rain that makes her feel really alive for the first time in a long time.
The rain, though it makes her feel alive, doesn't do anything about the sadness that has settled deep in her chest over the past couple of weeks. She's been in a holding pattern. She's not challenging anything around her. She's mostly just going through the motions. The colonel cooks breakfast; she eats it. Someone brings a device to her lab; she examines it. SG-1 goes off world; she doesn't. The doctors prescribe more medicine; she takes it. It's time to run; she runs.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She wonders if she'll ever really feel like a woman again. Since she's been home she's been careful to not think of herself in terms of being female – at least not since the soft, female parts of her healed on their own. She absolutely would not, could not, talk about that with anyone – her father – holding a Tok'ra healing device. But, inexplicably since her body fat is still so low, her period started again. After that she can't help but study herself in the mirror.
She lost a lot of weight while she'd been a captive of Votan's Jaffa. She'd been a very respectable 134 pounds when she'd been taken. And a paltry, scrawny 104 when she'd been returned. Basically, Janet had told her, precisely what a human skeleton with essential muscle mass and internal organs would weigh at her height. She hadn't even known it was possible to lose 30 pounds in six months when you were already at a healthy weight. But apparently it was very possible. In the four and a half months since she's been back – longer than she was gone, she realizes with a start – she's only gained ten of those pounds back.
And looking in the mirror she can see it. Her breasts – once a feature she had a fair amount of feminine pride about – are flat and sagging like she is older than she really is. Her hipbones are prominent. Her arms as well – the collarbones and shoulder blades protruded in a way that seemed almost grotesque to her. Her thighs, once shapely and well toned, seem like the thin strips of muscle in crab legs to her now.
And yet, yet…she has her period. She wonders at that a little. Thinks it might have been something she'd have been irritated about once. But, instead, it makes her feel like her power – whatever it is deep inside her that allows her to fight – might be accessible again one day.
It takes her a moment to get over her embarrassment, but the colonel's at the grocery story and there's not a single feminine product in her house. She picks up the phone and calls his cell. She almost thinks she hears a smile in his voice when he agrees to pick up the necessary items.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
He watches as she pushes pasta around her plate. Normally he'd be pushing her to eat. But not tonight. Tonight he's just happy she's gotten back a part of herself. A part of herself he's surprised by considering her recent medical evaluations. But what the hell does he really know? Marriage and age don't really give a man all that much insight into the mysterious inner workings of a woman's body. But he figures he's only been this pleased about a woman getting her period just one other time in his life and that was an entirely different situation almost thirty years in his past. And he can honestly say he's never so gleefully and without coercion purchased tampons in his life. The bag of individually wrapped Dove chocolates he'd casually tossed onto the kitchen counter had also particularly pleased her. He's hoping the way she plowed through half the bag is the reason she's not all too keen on dinner.
Hell, he's more likely to throw a party in honor of the calories she'd consumed so easily. He can't remember the last time he'd watched glee flit across her face. But that's what the chocolate had lit in her eyes. And if that's what it takes he'll bring home bags of the stuff. Then again, he supposes she should probably be putting all that lost weight back on in a healthier manner. But beggars weren't to be choosers and he's been doing his fair share of begging ever since she'd been taken.
Later that evening they wash dishes side by side since she objects to using the dishwasher when there are only two people's worth of dishes to do. As happy as he is, though, that there's been some forward progress, he's concerned by how quiet she's been tonight. So, when the dishes are done he pours her a half glass of wine and sits with her on the couch.
"So…it's been a good day," he starts.
"Yes, sir," she manages a grin and snags the bag of chocolates off the coffee table where he'd thrown them in an attempt to shift her focus towards dinner a couple hours before.
"You had therapy today?"
She nods. "I did."
"Want to talk about it?"
She sighs, eats a chocolate, takes a sip of wine and repeats. "I don't think we made much progress."
"No?"
"We talked about…well, dad, really. And Mark a little bit."
"Uh…okay." He not sure why the doc is wasting time on Sam's ancient history when there seem to be more pressing matters to discuss, but he's not the one who got his Ph.D. in psychology.
"Yeah, that was my reaction, too."
"Give her the benefit of the doubt, Carter. She probably knows what she's doing."
"Well, we sort of got to them in a round about way."
"In what way?"
"We were talking about the nightmares."
"I thought you dreamed about the…"
"Yeah. Me too."
"But…no?"
"Apparently not all the time."
"Sometimes you dream about your family?"
"Sometimes, sir, I dream about lots of other things."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"What does it feel like to be happy?"
"Haven't we done this part already?"
Natalie rolls her eyes. "A really, really long time ago. And, if you'll recall, you didn't answer the question then."
"I still don't know the answer."
"Try."
"Natalie—"
"Humor me, Sam."
"I know what happy isn't. Can't that be enough?"
"Maybe for people who aren't actively trying to be happy."
"I'm not actively trying to be happy."
"So what are you trying to be?"
"I don't know. Functional?"
"You're plenty functional, Sam. You never went through dysfunctional. Skipped right over that part. That's okay, you didn't miss anything crucial," Natalie hurries to point out when Sam eyes go a little stricken.
"I don't feel like I have it all together yet."
"Because you don't. But there's a difference between dysfunction and just not having solved all your issues."
"Okay."
"So. What does happiness feel like?"
"I don't know, Natalie," Sam says with exasperation. "The complete opposite of what I'm feeling right now."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"So you don't think you've been happy at all since you came home?" Jack can't help but ask after another one of what Sam described as an unproductive session.
"No. Yes. I don't know. I guess not."
"Think hard. Things haven't been all bad."
"No, I don't suppose they have."
"So just one, tiny – fleeting, even – moment of happiness."
"I don't know, sir. Those chocolates were pretty good."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"Come have coffee with me." Sam looks up from the paperwork she's been hunched over for several hours.
"I don't have time, Daniel."
"Aw, c'mon, Sam. Real coffee. Starbucks," he cajoles.
She has to admit some non-base coffee does sound insanely good. "One cup," she offers but she's already closed the file in front of her and has her jacket half on.
"All right!" he pumps a fist into the air with far too much enthusiasm.
"It's just a cup of coffee, Daniel."
"Hey, you take your victories, I'll take mine."
They're barely three sips into their outrageously expensive coffees when he starts in. "How are you really?"
She sighs. She doesn't want to have this conversation every time she talks to someone but it seems inevitable these days. "What if I just told you we're on it?"
"We?"
"Me and Natalie."
"And Jack?"
"Daniel…" Damn she doesn't want to go ten rounds of 'has Colonel O'Neill moved in with you?' today. Not for a second time, anyway.
"Sam, I just want to make sure you're getting the help you need. Because, you know, I'm here if you need me. Teal'c, too."
"I've got help, Daniel. I just need a little normalcy."
"So less talk about how you're feeling all the time."
"That would be truly excellent."
He shifts back in his seat and takes care to look less vigilant; she'll give him that. "So, this is really good coffee, right?"
And when she dissolves into giggles she sees the worry lines that have been etched around his eyes for weeks start to smooth out. This, she thinks, is a moment of happiness.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Natalie looks up with a start when Sam stalks into her office twenty weeks to the day after her return to Earth.
"I'm ready to talk about it now."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"So, where do we start?"
"I don't know, doc, you tell me."
Natalie grabs her legal pad and a pen, pours herself a cup of coffee and settles in across from Sam.
We've hit a milestone, folks. This chapter is the last of the more passive, ephemeral emotions for Sam. We're going to work our way through the more tangible parts of Anger next as we simultaneously delve into the details of what, exactly, happened to Sam on Votan. Expect that those will be an uncomfortable handful of chapters. But after that we'll get into the meat and potatoes of the rebirth associated with true healing and, for those that are really only here for the ship, some romance.