Sam shifted her basket from one hand to the other and reached up high for the brass fitting that was just the right size. She dropped the item into her basket on top of several other things she'd been needing to pick up from the big box hardware store she generally bypassed for the smaller, more mom-and-pop place that was closer to her home.

She made her way to the cross aisle and down towards aisle twelve. As she made her way down to the plumbing supplies, a familiar riot of silver hair pulled her up short. The colonel. Standing there in the middle of her Home Depot. She hadn't seen him since that last moment in his living room when he'd reached out and touched her, taken her hands in his and held on to her. They'd parted strangely, barely murmuring goodbye and not meeting each other's eyes. She'd been shaken by the feeling of his hands on her, she couldn't deny it.

It had taken some of the wind out of her sails and she didn't feel so sure of herself anymore. She'd been the one, up to that point, to be sure of the two of them. She knew how she felt, and after that kiss she thought they really had enough chemistry to make a go of it. But she really, really wasn't going to make a move on him. The move had to be his. Especially considering what had happened to him. Things had to move at his pace and not one step further than he was willing to move at any given point.

So to see him standing in front of her where and when she least expected to see him was a jolt to her senses. He looked up then, at the exact right moment, and directly into her eyes. They were both frozen for a long moment before she gave him a half smile that he, very conspicuously, didn't return. If anything, he frowned, the lines on his face deepening. She felt the smile slide off her face. She greeted him anyway. "Hello, sir."

"Carter," he said gruffly.

She wasn't expecting the tone, not after the soft way he'd looked at her while he'd held on to her. She knew that he was probably having good days and bad days and, apparently, today was a bad day. She could either leave him be, not poke the bear as the case may be. Or, she could show him how she felt about him by being the one to step in close, even when things were prickly.

"I wasn't expecting to run into you here," she said, hoping to open a conversation.

He just grunted. Great.

"Got a plumbing problem?"

He looked down at the sink plunger in his hands and then looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

She chuckled ruefully. "Okay, I guess that's a yes." She fingered the cardboard packaging on one of the items in her basket for something to do with her hands while she tossed around a reckless idea. It was early yet, the morning only half gone, she had time to throw a little caution to the wind. Maybe he did, too. "Do you... maybe... want to go grab a little breakfast? If you're done here?"

His eyes burned into her. Yes, she'd just asked him out. But it's nothing they hadn't done before – shared a meal together. Maybe this was a little different. There wasn't as much standing between them with his retirement papers filed and her feelings out in the open. She thought, for a moment, he was going to say yes, but she saw the moment his eyes shuttered over and she knew before he said it that he was going to say, "I'd better get back. Clogged sink, you know."

She nodded slowly. "Sure."

"Maybe next time," he said, taking the sting out of his rejection, just a little.

"Yeah, okay. See you, sir." She turned on her heels and fled, completely forgetting what she'd needed on that aisle.

She finished her shopping only to run into him again at the self-checkouts. They stood side-by-side each running their purchases across the scanner and studiously ignoring one another until, finally, he turned to her. "Hey Carter, how about that breakfast?"

"Sir?" she asked, surprised.

"How about we get that breakfast, after all?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he said with a half shrug. "I know a little diner we could try. It's usually empty this time of day."

"Okay," she said hesitantly, feeling like he was going to yank the rug out from under her at any minute.

She followed him to the diner, her little car behind his big truck sitting at traffic lights in the busy Saturday morning Colorado Springs traffic. But, as he predicted, the diner had mostly cleared out by the time they arrived. Only two tables were occupied and they chose a booth in the back corner far from those tables where the waitress had to wind her way through the maze of chairs to get to them. She arrived with a pot of coffee, two cups and two double-sided laminated menus.

"Welcome to Joe's," she said as if she'd already been on her feet for half a day. "Cream and sugar are at the end of the table there. Take a look at the menus and I'll be back to take your order."

She was gone before Sam or the colonel could say a word. Sam was taken aback by her abrupt nature but a glance at the colonel showed him already perusing the menu looking no worse for the wear of her attitude.

"Do you come here often?" Sam asked him.

"No," he said, but didn't offer more.

Sam turned her attention to the menu. It was standard diner fare, the same thing on every menu in every diner in the country. She settled on whole wheat toast and scrambled eggs, not feeling especially hungry despite being the one with the brilliant idea for breakfast with him.

They said nothing until the waitress returned to take their order. Sam ordered her toast and eggs, the colonel ordered the special – she had no idea what that was and she suspected he didn't really either though at these places it was always just about the same thing – and they both handed their menus back over to the waitress whose name tag, Sam was amused to find, read Alice.

Just when Sam thought it was going to be an incredibly quiet meal, the colonel cleared his throat. "In the briefing, when I got back, I never got to hear about what it was like when I was... away."

Sam's eyes widened. Did he really want to talk about this? She lifted her too-hot coffee to her lips and took an ill-advised sip.

"What did I miss?"

Oh, how to answer that question? "A lot of us trying to figure out how to dial a planet we couldn't get a lock on."

"What else?"

"The Tok'ra, telling us that maybe it wasn't such a friendly planet."

"So you knew."

"We suspected."

He leaned back in his seat, his body making an inelegant curve against the back of the booth. "What was it like for you?"

She could have played dumb and asked what he meant, but it wouldn't do either one of them any favors. Instead she decided to be honest with him. "I'd rather not talk about it."

"I'd rather not talk about any of it either, but one of us has to start, right?"

Did that mean... did that mean he was willing to talk to her about what had happened to him? Was this a tit for tat thing? If she opened up to him, he'd open up to her? Because if that was the case, she could endure any amount of humiliation if it meant he'd be given the opportunity to process what happened to him and heal. "Does that mean you'll tell me what happened to you?"

"Let's just start with you."

She didn't like the way that sounded. It sounded very one-sided. It sounded like she'd be baring her soul to him and he'd be offering her nothing in return. That was scary. It left her feeling very vulnerable and she hadn't even done it yet. But, it was time to take a risk and, he was a man worth taking a risk for.

So she told him about how it felt when she knew she couldn't get to him. She told him about the anger and the hurt she'd felt at the time when she thought about Edora, Laira, and the undercover mission. She stopped talking when their food arrived and waited impatiently as their coffees were refilled. Then she went on to tell him how scared she was when she found out that he was likely being tortured on that planet and how much of a failure she felt like because she couldn't devise a way to get to him, that she had to wait for the Tok'ra of all people to come to his rescue.

Through it all, as she laid herself bare to him, he was silent with an unreadable look upon his face. He'd encourage her to continue with his eyes when she'd falter or stop, but aside from that he didn't engage and he certainly didn't respond. But, when the check came he snatched it off the end of the table, paid it at the register despite her protestations, and he walked her to her car.

She was feeling decidedly off-kilter for his silence. But at her car she stopped and turned to face him, any words she might have had, though, died in her throat at the intense look in his eyes. He reached for her face, his fingers glided along her cheekbone and threaded into her hair. She couldn't help but tip her head into the cup of his hand. He held her, his thumb caressing the soft skin of her temple. His lips were soft and parted, it was as if he were kissing her right there in the parking lot of that diner but he was still standing an arm length's away. It was a singular experience in her life to be touched so profoundly and yet so innocently at the same time.

Slowly, he withdrew his hand. His eyes, they cleared, the brown lightened looking much less intense. He gave her a crooked half smile then turned and walked to his truck. She wasn't sure exactly what she'd said that had gotten that soft reaction out of him, but she was glad she'd said it. As embarrassing as the whole conversation might have been, as it turned out, it was worth it.

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

Jack watched as Sam pulled out of the diner parking lot and turned towards her home. His mind had been reeling since she'd started talking and it hadn't yet slowed down enough for him to truly catch up. He was aware she'd left, he was even aware of the moment they'd shared before she'd climbed into her little car, but what had truly been said? He wasn't sure.

He did think it was highly possible that he'd heavily discounted the feelings she said she had for him, though. He'd been convinced that it was a crush, likely born of hero worship and, despite the fact that she'd denied that from the beginning, he'd been unwilling to see beyond that particular incarnation of things. But after hearing the way she'd spoken that morning he thought, maybe, what she was feeling was a damn sight more serious than he'd previously given her credit for.

Anyone who hurt the way she hurt while he'd been trapped on Edora and felt the way she'd felt when he'd walked away from her and turned towards Laira had to be feeling more than just the tendrils of a crush. She'd told him about the way he'd crushed her when he'd made his backhanded comment to her when he'd been undercover – he'd heard the hurt in her voice even now. Despite what had transpired between them since then she still believed, at least a part of her did, what he'd said to her that day might be true. He hadn't disabused her of that notion with their conversation in his living room, either.

He turned and climbed into his truck, unwilling to stand in the parking lot alone with his thoughts any longer. If he was going to be made to think, no, he was going to do it in his home, isolated from the world where there was access to alcohol.

The drive home was short enough and busy enough that he managed to put her and her words out of his mind for the duration of the trip but upon crossing his threshold he found himself once again plagued by the heavy thoughts of what if it was more than just a passing fancy? What if what she felt for him was something real and deep?

Did she know him well enough? There were so many things he'd never shared with her – things that were so much a part of who he was that they were a living breathing part of every decision he made. So, even if she didn't know those things specifically, did she know him and his reaction well enough to say she had true feelings for him?

He poured himself a drink despite the early hour. The truth was that the thought that Carter might actually be dealing in serious feelings had shaken him up quite a bit. When it was just a crush it seemed simple. Even if that kiss had been anything but simple once he'd experienced it.

Before Astarte, if he'd been confronted with her feelings he'd have felt... unworthy... of such attention from a woman like her. He wasn't stupid, he knew Carter was a catch. She was beautiful and brilliant. What the hell she thought she wanted with him he truly wasn't certain. If he were younger, maybe, smarter.

But since Astarte things were different still. Now he had his fancy new sexual hangups. It was an odd thing to intellectually know something to be categorically untrue and yet still emotionally believe it with every fiber of your being. Such was the lesson he'd been so unilaterally taught about pleasure: it was no longer his to seek. It was tough to believe that pleasure was something you deserved when hell flashed through your mind for weeks on end and then your body was used against your will.

He shuddered as he remembered those sexual encounters with Astarte. Pleasant they were not, but unpleasant would be the wrong word, too. He was aware of arousal, but the fact that climax never came wasn't a hardship, it simply... was.

He knocked back what was left in his glass and got a refill.

So now what did he have to offer a woman like Carter? He was older, dumber and had issues with sex – the one area where before he might have professed to have been able to hold his own if he had to match up with her. And she wasn't just looking for a tumble, anyway.

He was just heading down that train of thought when his doorbell rang. He looked forlornly at his tumbler of whiskey and then at the door wondering who, exactly, would be encroaching on his alone time and whether or not he could get away with continuing to get drunk while that person was present or not. He set his glass down on the coffee table and went to answer the door. He was surprised to find Teal'c on the other side, a taxi cab pulling out of his driveway behind the big man. Clearly he was planning on staying a while.

"O'Neill," Teal'c greeted him when he didn't say anything.

"Uh, hey."

The two men stood, impassively, staring at one another until Jack took a step back and tacitly invited Teal'c inside. Teal'c preceded Jack into the living room and Jack felt judged as he watched the other man's eyes light upon the glass of whiskey, even if he didn't say anything about it.

"What are you doing here?" Jack asked, picking his glass up off the table almost defiantly and taking a long draw.

"I have come to see of your wellbeing." Teal'c settled his bulk down onto the edge of an easy chair.

"I'm fine," Jack offered.

"Daniel Jackson does not believe this to be true."

"Daniel's long on gossip and short on truth right now."

"Is it your intention to leave Stargate Command?" Teal'c asked him outright.

Jack thought about beating around the bush but found that he couldn't play games with Teal'c. "I've already turned in my retirement papers," he confirmed.

"I see."

"It's time for me to go."

"Would it have been time for you to go had you not been taken captive by Astarte?"

Jack grimaced. "Doesn't matter. What happened, happened."

"When I was detained off world with Major Carter, I observed that perhaps you would speak to her about what troubles you."

"Why on Earth would I want to talk to Carter?"

Teal'c frowned at him. It made him wonder if Carter's feelings were a poorly kept secret on the team that Jack, himself, had been too blind or too conveniently blind to see. "You have always shared a connection with Major Carter that is unlike the bond you have with Daniel Jackson or myself."

This time, Jack frowed. Was that true? Could that be why he'd had the urge to get himself home to Carter? Some sort of connection he'd been blissfully unaware of? "Look, Teal'c, Carter's a good officer, and a great second in command. She's smart as hell and hell on wheels. I respect her. I like her. But that's as far as it goes."

"Is it?"

Jack flashed back to getting tortured. Get through it, get home, make Carter's eyes smile. Get through it, get home, make Carter's eyes smile. Get through it, get home, make Carter's eyes smile. Did that really sound like a man who wasn't at least a little invested in someone? Had he been fooling himself all along that any interest he had in her was purely physical? Because she was something else to look at, he'd be the first to admit. But maybe there was something more to it.

But dammit, there couldn't be! Not anymore. "Teal'c, it's not that simple," Jack floundered for any reason that wasn't a truth he didn't want to admit to. "She's my subordinate officer."

"Did you not just say you have retired, O'Neill?"

Well, shit. Yes, yes he had. He grasped at straws. "The paperwork hasn't been completed yet. I'm still her superior officer."

"Is that your only objection?"

"What? NO!"

"It is clear to me that Major Carter has powerful feelings for you. And I believe you to have feelings for her that are not merely those a superior officer harbors for a subordinate officer. But perhaps," he said, settling back into his seat, "I am wrong."

Jack drained his glass and frowned at the bottom of it. "I'm going to get a refill. You want anything?"

"I do not."

Jack got up and ambled to the kitchen, using the time to collect his thoughts. Was Teal'c right? Could Jack really have feelings for Carter? It had been so long since he'd allowed himself to really feel for a woman. Since things had gone wrong with Sara, really. Things with Laira were different. He'd felt things, sure, but they were born out of a feeling of despair and loneliness. He'd made his choice when he'd had a choice of one.

He poured himself a new glass and realized it was number three. He was already well on his way to drinking his troubles away but a long way off from being drunk. And he really felt the urge to be drunk. But he wasn't going to do that with Teal'c in the house.

He needn't have worried, though. Teal'c was on the phone with the cab company when he returned to the living room. Apparently, he'd said what he'd come to say. "Don't leave on my account," Jack offered, after Teal'c had hung up, though.

"I must return to Stargate Command," he said, and offered no other explanation.

Jack didn't argue. The two men sat quietly until the cab arrived and then said short but not unfriendly goodbyes. Jack checked the clock. It was barely past noon. It didn't matter, though. He settled in to get good and drunk.

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

It had gotten late and Sam was channel surfing when the phone rang. Out of habit, she checked the caller ID and was surprised to see the colonel's home number on the display. "Hello?" She answered, warily, for she wasn't sure what he'd say after he'd been so quiet at breakfast.

He drawled her name out long and low. "Carter." It did funny things to the pit of her stomach.

"Yes, sir?"

"You should know that Teal'c and Daniel are both on your side," he slurred a little as he spoke and she deduced he was a little drunker than he should be. Because when the colonel was slurring his words, he was really, really drunk.

"On my side?"

"About... you know."

She raised an eyebrow to the empty room. Was he talking about... was this about... oh, god were they talking about her feelings? "Uh... sir?"

"You weren't very discreet," he accused.

"They're my teammates and my best friends," she countered. "If anyone was going to notice, it would have been them. I don't think it's common knowledge."

"Ha!" And she could practically picture him pointing. "So you do know what I'm talking about."

Busted. Well. "Besides, I'm not sure we're on opposite sides of anything, sir. I'm not going to war with you over this. I never intended to tell you, even."

"Not the point, Carter."

She heaved a long suffering sigh. "Then what is the point, sir."

"That you... that this is potentially... Carter, we've got problems."

"Maybe we should talk..."

"Again?"

"I meant maybe we should talk about how you feel about... how I feel."

She could practically hear him frowning.

"Because short of you being kind of pissed at me about it, I have no idea what's going on inside your head." When he didn't speak she blundered on. "I'll come over."

"No!" He said harshly.

"Sir-"

"I'm not in the mood for this, Carter."

"You don't sound very good, sir, maybe you shouldn't be alone anyway. And besides, you called me. Why?"

He couldn't seem to come up with an answer so he hemmed and hawed for long moments until he finally said, "It was a bad idea, one of many. Talk to you later, Carter." And he disconnected the call before she could say anything else.

It took her all of two minutes to decide to go over there. He was drunk, he clearly had things on his mind, she was a little worried about where his mind was going to take him and whether or not he was going to drink more. She'd heard stories about his time after Charlie and Sara and she knew he had the proclivity to really drown his emotions and she wondered how much of this had to do with her and how much was a result of his time in captivity. And if he was unspooling over his time with Astarte, he really shouldn't be doing that alone, no matter what he believed. So she climbed into her car and made the relatively short drive to his house.

When she arrived the house was dark. She climbed out of her car, suddenly wary of knocking on his door. He'd know it was her. He could just as likely ignore her, not let her in. Or answer the door and still not let her in. He wasn't obligated to see her, just because she showed up. But she hoped he'd allow her to be present for whatever was going on with him. She genuinely wanted to help him. This wasn't about her feelings for him, this was about him and whether or not he was going to be okay. This was about how he moved forward.

At his door she took a deep breath before she knocked twice, hard enough to bruise her knuckles, then she waited, butterflies in her stomach. She heard him approach the door before he pulled it open and then they were standing there looking at each other. He had steel in his eyes and a tumbler of whiskey in his hand.

"I told you I wasn't in the mood."

"We don't have to talk."

He raked his gaze over her from head to toe and it made her shiver under his scrutiny. "Then what did you have in mind?"

Her brain instantly flew to sex with the way he'd looked at her, how could it not have? But she couldn't imagine how that was at all what he meant. "You're drunk," she said needlessly.

"So?"

"You shouldn't be alone."

"Not my first drunk, Carter."

"Can I come in?"

Incongruous to his unwelcoming look and stance he took a step back and waved her inside. She was surprised, really, that he let her in. In the living room she turned on two lamps and sat down in the easy chair, leaving the couch for the colonel as he seemed to prefer it. He blinked rapidly in the light and sipped on his drink as he sank into the corner of the couch.

"Why are you drinking?"

"Why not?"

"You must have been drinking all day," she observed. "Does this have anything to do with breakfast this morning?" When she'd left him at the diner she'd been concerned, he'd been so quiet, but then he'd touched her and she thought maybe, just maybe, he'd been okay.

"Not everything is about you," he said churlishly.

"I didn't say it was," she said, refusing to rise to the bait. "You clearly had some things on your mind this morning, too."

He shrugged, childishly.

"Do you want to talk about what happened to you?" she asked him carefully.

"Do you want to talk about what you did?" he threw back at her.

She stiffened. "What I did?"

"Well, sure, Carter. I'm not the only one carrying around baggage from this thing. You killed a woman. You wanna talk about that?"

"No," she said quietly. She didn't. Not now, anyway. She'd done a spectacular job of putting the whole thing out of her mind, actually, shoved it aside for dealing with the more immediate needs of the colonel. "I talked this morning," she pointed out. "It's your turn."

"My turn? My turn?" He laugh derisively. "Fine. You wanna hear about it, Carter? Then fucking fine. Sit right there and listen." His eyes turned steely, his face went hard and she was suddenly afraid to hear the things he might have to tell her. She thought it was going to be an emotional opening up, but it was becoming clear that it was going to be something else entirely.

"You probably noticed that Astarte was interested in more than my diplomatic skills while we were on her planet. It took me a while to clue in, but I finally did – right about the time she asked me to be her consort. She had thirteen of 'em," he said and took a swig from his glass then grimaced. "Anyway, after dinner one night she asked me to her private home for a drink. I should have known something was up. She was pissed when I turned her down for the consort thing. So, she drugged me."

Sam was uncomfortable as he spoke, his tone cold, his eyes shifting from one point to another as he recalled detail after detail that he assimilated and then discarded shared or not.

"When I was eight years old I watched my best friend get hit by a car. I ever tell you that story? I got to relive that as if I was there all over again. Like I was that kid but also like I was an adult both at the same time, knowing it was going to happen and experiencing it for the first time. I held him in my arms, had his blood on me. Because sometimes the things that shit shows you isn't real."

He got up and walked to one of the big windows and stood there looking out, his back to her, but he kept talking. "And when I was a teenager, my dad shot himself in the upstairs bathroom of our house. When it really happened, my mom found him. But there? On Astarte's planet? It was me."

Sam's eyes filled with tears. She hadn't even known his father was dead let alone that he'd committed suicide when the colonel had been just a boy. She swiped at her eyes, not wanting him to see the tears if he turned around. He didn't need her sorrow, he needed her strength, and that was what she'd give him, if ever he turned back to her.

"I was tortured in Iraq. Again. And again. And again. And again. I lost count of the times. But it was still better than having to watch my son die over and over again. I shot him," he said quietly, so quietly she had to strain to hear. "The last times, it was me, I shot him." The colonel's voice broke and then turned hard once again. "But the worst of it? The worst of it besides that? The hallucinations. The things my brain came up with that had no basis in reality. The things that were just a part of the sickness that is inside me."

"You're not sick," she tried to counter.

"You don't know what I saw."

"So tell me."

"I killed you. You and Danny and Teal'c."

"Why?"

"Because you were there, in front of me, and I had a gun in my hand."

"It was a hallucination," she said softly, fighting the urge to cross the room, to stand next to him, to put her hands on him.

"It was in my head, Carter. It was in there, just waiting to get to out."

"That's not true. It was the drug. I don't believe for a moment you've been harboring some secret desire to kill us."

"Not a secret desire," he said with a shake of his head, "an inevitability. I can't keep you safe. I can't keep you alive."

"Is that why you're retiring? Because you think your hallucination was your brain's way of telling you that you were going to fail us somehow?"

He didn't answer he just stared resolutely out the window into the dark night.

"Colonel," she said, finally standing and crossing the room to stand behind him, even if she was two feet away from him when she stopped advancing, "you never failed us before, and you wouldn't fail us now."

"You can't possibly know that."

"I trust you."

"You shouldn't."

"What happened after the Blood of Sokar?" she asked quietly, still standing closer to him.

"There were other drugs. She made me drink things that made me..." He started breathing heavily through his nose and she caught his eye in his reflection in the window. His voice went steely again. "The drugs made me hard but without feeling, so she could use me for as long as she wanted. The others were willing so they got to..."

She followed, she didn't need him to say it so she let him off the hook. "Yeah. How long?"

"By the time you showed up? It had been days."

She closed her eyes. For days he'd been left in a pleasureless state of arousal so he could service Astarte whenever she chose. "Was it painful?"

"I'm not taking questions," he said snidely, which she took as a yes. "So, now you know."

"I know a little, yes."

"You want more?" he asked incredulously, turning towards her.

"I'd like you to tell me more about your hallucinations. About what you did to Daniel, and Teal'c, and me. I think it would help you to talk about it. But we don't have to do it right now. It might actually be better when you're not drunk," she said frowning.

"The only reason I'm talking is because I'm drunk. And I think I'm done now."

"Drinking or talking?"

"Both. I'm going to bed."

"I'm sleeping on your couch."

"Carter-"

"Sir, it's late and it's been a rough day."

"Fine, suit yourself."

He left her without another word. She sighed turned off the lamp farthest from the couch and then sat down and toed off her shoes. She lay down and pulled the afghan off the back of the couch and spread it over her body before reaching up and clicking off the lamp on the table by the couch.

It felt very strange to be going to sleep on her CO's couch, but, she reminded herself, he wasn't really her CO for much longer. Really, he was just a guy. A guy she had a very complicated relationship with. A very complicated guy she had a very complicated relationship with. She groaned and buried her face in the throw pillow. It smelled like him. It was going to be a long night.