Author's Note: I took a vacation and then I took a week off. I have to admit it felt really good to focus on life and school for a while. But I just couldn't stay away. This chapter has been coming out a scene at a time for a while – quick bursts of energy that stop me from doing other things. While that was fun, I'm glad it's done and I get to share it with you.

Also, we're halfway home now! Isn't that neat?

~A.

"Just stop it, okay?"

Jack realizes that while she phrases it like a question there no real room for argument. That doesn't mean he doesn't try. "I can't just stop looking at you completely."

"You can. You will. Or you'll leave."

"Carter, you're being unreasonable."

"Well, if anybody's going to be unreasonable, I think I've earned the right, don't you?" she asks waspishly.

"I think you've got the right to feel whatever you're feeling. But every now and again I'm going to look at you. If only so I don't run into you in the hallway."

"Don't be glib with me Jack O'Neill. You're not nearly as cute as you seem to think you are. You know what I meant."

"You mean you don't want me to see you when I look at you."

"I don't even want to have to see me right now."

"There's something I want you to understand." When she turns away from him and busies herself with straightening the folds in a used dishtowel he places a hand on her shoulder. "Sam. Look at me." She sighs deeply and turns to face him. "Yes, you look different. Considering what you've been through it would be shocking if you didn't. But everyday – even on the days you don't change out of your sweats or comb your hair – the sight of you is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Because you're here and you're alive and I wasn't sure both those things would ever be true again. So believe what you like, but I'm not thinking what you think I'm thinking when I look at you. Okay?"

"Okay," she finally says after much consideration.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"I've got a lot of weight left to gain back."

"Yes, you do."

"I want to gain it back healthily."

"I want that, too."

"No, Janet, really. I can't look like this anymore. I need to look like me again."

"Is this about health or vanity?"

"Is there something wrong with me if it's about both?"

"No."

"So, you'll help me?"

"There are some protein powders and special dietary shakes I can give you. But it's mostly about healthy exercise and putting the right number of calories into your body. It's going to take a while, Sam."

"How long?"

Janet's heart breaks a little as she watches insecurity flash across her friend's face. "How long until what?"

"How long until I'm pretty again?"

"Oh, Sam—"

"He said I'm beautiful because I'm alive. And I don't want that to be the reason."

"That's a good reason, Sam," and she doesn't even have to ask which he Sam might have been referring to. Her live-in ex-CO, perhaps?

"Not a good enough reason, it isn't. I want him to look at me the way he used to. I want him to look at me the way he wasn't supposed to."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She's taken to wearing some of his large sweatshirts that have migrated over to her house. They are too large by half and have unattractive holes and fraying. She seems to seek them out. She seems to hide in them. He contemplates buying her some more attractive outerwear but thinks the old sweatshirts aren't just about warmth and the ability to hide in extra yardage but also, maybe, something about him. Which feels kind of nice, all things considered. All things being the tendency he has to come down on the bad side of her lately. Not that ferreting out a good side has been altogether easy in recent days. It seems like everybody and everything rubs her the wrong way.

He cooks dinner every night he's on world and for the past few days she's stood in the kitchen with him and used the blender to whip up one of the fancy weight-gaining shakes Janet gave her. He's not sure he likes how little food she eats once she sucks one down, but at least he knows she's getting the necessary nutrients and anything she eats on top of the shakes is added calories – so he tries to cook healthily, despite his own habits and desires. Sometimes, when he encounters her in the hallway in the middle of the night he's momentarily taken aback by how frail she is. And then he's instantly reminded how far she's come since her rescue. He feels bad for a moment for thinking she looks bad now, but he realizes that while progress is important it's still good to keep your eye on the prize, so to speak. And he's looking forward to the prize that is the return of her former figure.

Not that he'd even think of mentioning that to her. He hadn't lied when he told her she was beautiful just for being alive. Hell, he thinks she's beautiful all the time. Always has. But he can feel their relationship shifting – even if he created that shift artificially by simply moving in. And he can't help but hope that the shift will still be in play when she does have her figure back. Because, after all, he's just a man; and sometimes it's fun to revel in those kinds of thoughts. Especially when you've spent so long just being thankful that someone's alive.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She doesn't mention the shards of glass in her bedroom trashcan that used to be the face of the pretty gilt mirror she'd picked up at an antique shop in Alexandria back during her tenure at the Pentagon. Nor does she mention the little crystal crumbles that were once her parent's wedding toast glasses. She knows he saw the begonias he'd planted that she'd ripped up and threw into the trashcan in the garage but he didn't mention it and neither did she.

He doesn't say anything when she walks into the kitchen one night and her hair is well past regulation-short. He cracks a grin when he sees she's ripped the sleeves off one of his old sweatshirts in deference to the milder spring days. But they don't talk about the little fractures that have become part and parcel of her life. Things she's made – or he's made – part of his life as well. He didn't really sign on for all manner of hell, she supposes, but then again she's practically riding along with the four horsemen these days so what, precisely, does he expect?

He overlooks beer bottles in the back yard, wet towels on the bathroom floor and the fact that he's the only one who bothers to do laundry anymore – or dishes for that matter, and, more's the pity, seems to overlook how desperately she's crying out for contact. She's doing everything she can to push him; she's doing everything she can to pull him to her. He's oblivious.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"I don't even know what I'm doing anymore."

"How's that, Colonel O'Neill?"

Natalie studies him as he seems to collect his thoughts. Things have been progressing with Sam about the way she expected: slowly, painfully and with at least as many steps back as steps forward. It's been three weeks since Sam walked in and declared herself ready for treatment and Natalie can't say it hasn't at least been interesting. But while she's experienced enough things in her career to predict how her patients may react she finds herself consistently flummoxed by their loved ones – perhaps because relationships are so complicated. None of them are more so than whatever it is that the colonel and Sam are trying to juggle.

"I'm not sure exactly how much you know about what's been going on and the truth is, Doc, I haven't exactly been leveling with you."

"About what, exactly? That you're living with Sam? Or that you're in love with her? Or that she probably loves you, too – or at least she did before she was taken? Or maybe that you're letting her get away with working more hours than she's cleared to? Or maybe that she's having caffeine and alcohol on top of her meds?"

"Wow, those are an awful lot of blind shots in the dark."

"Even money says I'm right, though."

"So I guess Carter's really been talking to you."

"She has. You want to address any of those things?"

"She's destroying things that really matter to her."

"Like what?"

"She broke her parent's wedding crystal. Those two glasses have sat under the light in her china cabinet the whole time I've known her. Then one day they weren't there. I found pieces of them in the trashcan. Before that was the antique mirror that I thought was an accident. I planted some flowers at the front of the house and she pulled them up. Just days before she had sat out there and watered them and weeded and said how much she loved them…"

"Anything else?"

"I don't know. She's not acting like herself."

"You mean she's not acting like she acted before she was held captive on Votan?"

"Well, of course she's not."

"And yet you find her behavior surprising?"

"Yes!"

"Why did the flowers upset you so much?"

"They didn't. Not really. They were just flowers."

"You sounded pretty upset."

"They were just posies, Doc. Don't read too much into it."

"I think they were more than that. I think they were symbolic. Colonel, you planted flowers for her. You planted something in her garden that was going to grow into something beautiful. She loved them. She tended to them. Then, in a fit of pique you didn't see coming, she ruthlessly ripped up that beauty that you planted in her garden that was going to grow and threw it away. She threw it away, Colonel."

"They were just flowers, Doctor Jordan," he says quietly.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They fight sometimes and she tells him to go. Screams it at him, really. He thinks she's equal parts pissed and grateful when he simply closes himself inside the guestroom or disappears out to the garage. He knows she's trying to run him off to prove something to herself. But he's got something much more important to prove to her – even if she's hell-bent on hurting him while he shows her. In the mean time she's taking the anger out on her house. She's slammed just about every door she owns. He fixed the first two hinges and the first cracked jam. After that he brought her the toolbox and set it down at her feet.

She fixed the door and came to him later with a cold beer and an apology. Somewhere along the way he held her and she sobbed against his shoulder in a way she hadn't in weeks.

After the door slamming finally settles down – but only because she'd flat out broken her bedroom door and the whole thing needed to be replaced – is when it happens. He just happens to pass by her bedroom while she stands in front of a full-length mirror dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans. In a former life he probably would have been caught up by the reflection of her breasts but in the here and now he can't take his eyes off the scars that crisscross her back.

He must say something or maybe he gasps because she looks up sharply and their eyes meet in the reflective glass. He steps into the room and she doesn't avert her gaze so neither does he. Not until he's within reaching distance, anyway. But he keeps his arms resolutely by his sides. He clenches his fists. "I thought you had your dad heal you."

"Those are from before."

"Before the capture or before your rescue?"

"Votan's Jaffa gave them to me," she confirms.

When he reaches out to touch is when she realizes she's naked. She covers her breasts with her arms and drops her eyes but she doesn't turn away from the fingers that he glides over the silvery scars.

"I thought I asked you not to look at me."

"And I told you you're beautiful and now I'm telling you I'll look at you if I damn well want to. I know all this is hard for you, Sam, and I really want to do whatever it takes to help you get better; but you seem to forget how hard this has been on the rest of us. How hard this has been on me. This happened to me too, Sam."

She opens her mouth to speak but he cuts her off. "I don't mean back then, Sam. Yeah, bad shit happened to me back then but I've moved passed that. I mean, what happened to you, the fact that you were missing and that I had something to do with that, that happened to me. And I need a little help dealing with it, too. You know I don't do too well with all that touchy-feely psycho crap." He waits for the corner of her mouth to tip up and he's not disappointed. "So I kind of think I'm going to need you. And maybe you could need me too, a little."

She's quiet for a long time but finally she meet his eyes in the mirror again. "Okay."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He'd thought they were making progress. And then, just a week later he comes home one night and the mirror in the entrance-way is broken. At first he thinks it's an accident but then he sees the little one in the hallway between two old Carter family photographs. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach. Sure enough the huge mirror in the spare bathroom is a spider web of cracks. In her bedroom the mirror on her dresser is broken in two by a large, diagonal crack. The full-length mirror they'd stood in front of and shared something profound is overturned and cracked.

Cautiously he looks into her bathroom. He finds more broken mirror along with broken woman. She sits despondently on the floor. She doesn't cry. She's holding one palm-sized piece of mirror out in front of her and staring through her reflection.

He pulls her up by her elbow. "C'mon."

"I don't want to go anywhere, Jack."

He pauses over his first name. The first time in a long time he can recollect hearing her use it to address him and he can't even enjoy it. "Too bad."

"I'm sorry about the mirrors."

"They're your mirrors, Carter." He pulls her into the bedroom and sits her down on the edge of her bed. He's taking her to the base but he'll be damned if he's taking her dressed in nothing but a button down shirt that looks like it was his before she'd streaked it with the blood that was the byproduct of her apparent outburst.

She sits there and waits for him to turn a circle in her bedroom before deciding on a course of action. He snatches jeans from her dresser and one of his sweatshirts from the laundry basket on top of her chest of drawers. She lets him thread her legs into her jeans and allows him to coax her to stand. She doesn't flinch when his hands brush against her belly to button her pants and she doesn't blink when he unbuttons the shirt and pushes it off her arms. He puts the sweatshirt on her in a way that makes him think of dressing Charlie and tears gather thickly at the back of his throat. "You've got to see the docs. Tonight, Carter. We're done with this, okay?"

"I really hate it here."

"Earth?" His blood runs cold while he waits for the answer. He's not sure what he'll do if she answers in the affirmative.

"This house." He releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"That's okay. We've got another one we can go to."

"You don't mind?"

"No."

"I've been breaking things."

"Yeah, you've got to stop that."

"I know."

"Doctors. Then home."

"If I have to."

"Tonight, you have to."

"Doctors, then home," she repeats. She says it like a mantra as they move through the house collecting what they'll need. And then, it's like a weight is lifted as soon as she's buckled safely into the truck. Halfway to the mountain she's asleep and he turns up the Puccini flowing out of his speakers. It's beautiful and slightly haunting. He embraces the familiar emotions and drives on.