Sam Carter was getting old.
Had it been so long ago that she'd pulled all-nighter after all-nighter, sitting through the toughest classes the Academy had to offer by day, doing all the extra-curriculars she could get her hands on, and fitting homework in at lunch, breaks, and... all the time she probably should have been sleeping? Pushing through fatigue had come as easily to her as breathing. Once.
And yet the equations that had been so clear yesterday were nothing more than red scribbles today, swimming around, taunting her. She held the dry-erase marker at her side, open and drying out, and she just couldn't bring herself to care. All she could see were the imagined shapes in the plastered ceiling above her bed – the elephant, the rocking chair, the woman with an umbrella who looked like something out of a Seurat painting. She'd spent enough time staring up the night before to memorize them all.
"Sam."
Thankfully, the fatigue had dulled her senses enough to keep her from jumping at the voice. Slowly, she clipped the cap on the marker and turned to face him. "Hello, Jonas," she said softly, trying to keep her face neutral in spite of the sudden anxious pounding of her heart. She was cornered, stuck alone with the very man she'd been trying to avoid, and it made her chest ache and her hair stand on end.
"Hi. I, um..." He lifted an arm out toward her, and in his hand was a single stem, a purple, multi-budded flower that she didn't recognize. She stared at it, but didn't move to take it – if he thought for a second that a plant was going to get her back into bed with him, he was delusional.
Then again, if she thought she could let him back into her life and not end up back in bed with him, so was she. Jonas Hanson always got what he wanted... especially from her. She swallowed hard.
"I'm not trying anything, Sam," he said, and while he stayed across the lab, he didn't drop the flower, either. "They told me this color is what you give someone when you want to apologize."
An apology? That was about a hundred and eighty degrees from what she'd expected, and the surprise almost made her forget her nerves completely. Setting the pen down, she took a few steps his direction – just far enough to take the flower. Oddly, it was silk.
"Well, I didn't figure you really wanted me walking around the base waving it around," he excused. "And a real one wouldn't have fared very well in my bag."
"No, I get it. Thank you." She smiled in spite of herself at the sweet gesture, realizing belatedly that it would only encourage him. Still, she couldn't quite manage to wipe the expression from her face.
"Uh, anyway," he said, clearing his throat, "I have a briefing to get to. And I know it's not what you deserve. But I just wanted you to have that, and to know... that I'm sorry."
He closed the distance toward her slowly, and though she knew she should back away, her feet were glued to the floor. How did he always manage to do that – become the gravitational center of everything? Tenderly, he took her free hand between his two larger ones, and she realized for the first time how much she'd missed that contact – being touched by him, held by him.
"I really am sorry, Sam," he said softly, intimately, his voice just barely registering above the pounding in her ears. "I'll see you around."
The complete lack of coordination traveled upward ridiculously quickly as he left, and she sagged against one of the banks of cabinets, eyes closed, the blossom still clutched in front of her as warmth surged through her chest. He was a player. She knew that. He would just suck her in all over again, walk all over her like the best of doormats, and leave her hurt. She knew that.
But her body and her brain couldn't seem to agree on... anything. Not where Jonas was concerned. Every bad memory lost out to five or six good ones – their first amazing night together, their search high and low for the perfect house to rent for the two of them... the night he'd led her to the beach for a late-night walk only to find "Will You Marry Me?" scrawled in the wet sand. The way he'd kissed her there, holding her warm and safe in his arms as they murmured contentedly about spending the rest of their lives together.
"Captain Carter?"
She snapped to, yanking away from the wall as her eyes flew open. "Doctor... um, Daniel," she greeted uncomfortably, head spinning from being yanked so abruptly from the memories.
"Secret admirer?"
"What?" Glancing down, she realized she still held the purple bloom in her hand. "Oh. Uh, no," she stuttered. Secret, no, anyway. Admirer? She didn't know how to answer that.
He blinked. "Ah. You okay? You seem a little..."
"I'm fine." Uncomfortably, she let the hand with the flower fall to her side and inched it behind her back, silently willing her visitor to forget about it. "Something going on?"
"No. I just thought I'd drop by."
She cocked her head at him suspiciously.
"It's just that you... I mean, we don't, ah, know each other all that well, but you've been kind of on edge. I think."
She didn't really want to have this discussion, but she couldn't bring herself to chase him away. He was so... open. He cared. It was kind of sweet. "No, you're right," she admitted. "I just... Ever had the past come back to bite you in the ass?"
"Uh... I'm an archaeologist. I, ah, live in the past," he said.
"Oh. Right."
"So, this particular past is a person?" He gestured toward the tiny bit of purple that still stuck out from behind her leg.
She nodded.
"That's the hardest kind of past," he mused. "There are always different ways to look at an event, different sides. But people... it's not just about interpretation. People change. Sometimes when they reappear, the past can... change with them."
Unbidden, her hand brought the flower back up, and she stared down at it for a moment. He was sorry.
And there was a lot to be sorry for.
And there were other memories. Like how she'd worked so hard to find a watch like his grandfather's only for him to point out all the differences instead of even saying thank you. How they'd chosen the house together, but she'd single-handedly moved in all of their things after his emergency beeper had gone off and he'd disappeared, only for him to rearrange all the furniture when he got home. Without even talking to her about it.
The way the fight she'd started by moving the couch back a few feet had turned into a screaming match that could have brought the roof down.
How it had only escalated from there.
And why, that last day, she'd pulled her engagement ring out of the plastic bag they'd given her and put it on the table instead of back on her finger.
"Daniel... Have you ever noticed that the people who claim that the loudest – that people can change – are the people who need change most?" She sighed. "And the ones who are the least likely to ever do it."