The first strains of light were barely filtering into the room when Jack opened his eyes. His mouth felt like it was filled with cotton and his head was pounding. It had been a good long while since he'd had so much to drink. He stretched in his bed and contemplated getting up. After a few minutes of reveling in the softness of his bedding his decision was made by his bladder and he groaned as he shifted into an upright position and his head protested the movement.

As he moved through his ablutions in the bathroom, the night before came filtering in little by little. He rolled his eyes as he remembered telling Carter what had happened to him. Had he really been so drunk that he'd have allowed himself to blunder through those walls? He could feel the usual anger and recrimination begin to build within himself. Then, as he washed his hands he recalled how the night ended. She was asleep on his couch. And suddenly, all the darkness in him receded.

He quietly made his way down the hall and into the living room. Carter was stretched out on his couch, his grandmother's afghan spread over her, the throw pillow clutched to her chest. Carter was a cuddler. Huh. He sat down on the coffee table so that when she opened her eyes he'd be the first thing she saw.

He remembered being angry the night before, but the emotion had dissipated into something more nebulous. And seeing her asleep in his space was doing funny things to his insides. Things that felt an awful lot like that kiss they'd shared in his kitchen. Startled, he realized he liked seeing her there, on his couch, asleep. He filed that information away for later.

"Carter," he said, his quiet voice sounding loud in the room. She didn't stir. "Carter," he tried again, a little louder and using the backs of his fingers to trail across her exposed cheekbone.

Her eyelids fluttered open. She came awake slowly, her eyes filling with trepidation as she became more and more aware. He realized he put that look in her eye with what he'd told her the night before. Possibly with the way he'd told her. Still, the first words out of her mouth were, "Are you okay?"

He tried to smile, ended up nodding. "Yeah. I'm fine. Headache," he said with a shrug and she nodded with a sympathetic look on her face. "It's morning."

Her eyes meandered over his shoulder to the windows. "It's early," she observed.

"Yeah."

She looked at him with unsure eyes like she wasn't certain what was supposed to happen next. He realized then that he had no idea why he woke her up other than that he simply wanted her with him. It socked him in the gut. None of this felt like all the anger that had built up inside him since he'd been home. Maybe spilling his guts to her the night before had been helpful after all.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said.

She sat up. "I'm not," she said, causing his eyes to snap to hers. "Jack..." she said his name slowly, softly, as if taking it out for a test drive, "nothing you told me last night changes anything."

He took a moment first to let his body adjust to the sound of his name on her lips and then to assimilate what she'd said. But it didn't matter, he still felt wholly unworthy of her feelings. "Carter, I don't-"

"No. It doesn't change how I feel about you," she blushed as she said it.

It made him want to touch her heated skin. It also made him want to know exactly how she felt. He'd gotten bits and pieces from Daniel and from their exchange in his kitchen, but he'd been too angry that day to really hear her. After their breakfast the day before he thought maybe he was ready to really listen on the subject. "And how is that?" he asked her quietly.

Instead of answering his question she raised an eyebrow at him."You were so angry last night. What's changed?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I woke up this morning and you were here."

She took a deep breath and searched his eyes. "And that's a good thing?"

"Apparently. Don't change the subject. Tell me how you feel."

She sighed and looked at him with big, blue eyes, dark in the low morning light. She looked like she was trying to figure out not only how but why she should chance opening up to him. He hadn't exactly made it attractive so far, he knew.

"Just trust me a little, Sam."

She bit her lip then nodded minutely. She appeared to steel herself. It physically pained him to see her bulk herself up against him, but he knew he deserved it. She shifted until her knees were between his but still she sat there quietly.

"Trust me," he begged her, suddenly desperate to know exactly what she was keeping from him that was so big that she was reticent to even say it.

"I think..." She audibly swallowed, met his eye then her look skittered away. He reached out and tapped her knee until she looked him in the eye again.

"You think?"

She exhaled. "I think I love you."

"Think?" Isn't that the sort of thing you knew?

"Well, the last time I was in love was Jonas and we both know how that turned out."

He huffed out a laugh. Love? That was serious. That was no crush, no bout of hero worship, no little dalliance to just sweep aside. But... she couldn't love him. She didn't know him. Oh, sure, she knew some things about him, she even knew a great deal about the man he let her know. But there were things about himself he didn't let her – or anyone – see. And then, top it off with the new shop of horrors he'd opened in his head after his stint with Astarte and there was just no way she could love him. "You have no idea what loving me means," he said, no edge to his voice, and watched her face crumple. He'd asked her to trust him and she had. And he'd thrown what she said back in her face. Accused her yet again of not knowing herself.

"I should go," she said quietly, her voice shaking and he knew she was near tears, he could see her blue eyes swimming.

"Sam-"

"Don't," she said harshly. "Just... don't... say... whatever it is you were going to say. Just... let me leave." She stood up and found herself trapped between his legs. He slid back on the coffee table, releasing her from the prison of his thighs. She swiped her keys up off the side table and then made for the front door.

He wanted to say something, anything, to take the sting out of his words, but he didn't know what to say that wouldn't make it worse. So, he just watched her go, listened to the sound of her car starting up outside and tried not to think of what her face would look like, tearstained on the drive home.

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

She felt agitated for hours as she cleaned her house to dissipate the energy bubbling inside her. Finally, though, she climbed into the shower. It was an eerie sort of calm that settled over her once she showered the smell of him out of her hair. To admit to him that she felt love for him had been a big step – one she hadn't even been ready for, but he'd asked her to trust him and dammit, she did. More than anyone else on the planet, she trusted Jack O'Neill; even after everything, even after the way he'd treated her during the undercover mission, damn it all. She should have known better, she figured. He was damaged from what he'd been through, there was no way he could keep from lashing out. But he'd seemed so calm, so different than the angry, reticent man he'd been since his return. He'd seemed almost like his old self.

So it had been relatively easy to sit there and tell him she loved him. Or, at least that she thought she did. Because, really, with her track record, could she even truly say? She worried that she didn't really know what love felt like, that she just ran on a mix of lust and excitement and called it love. But she would say that what she felt for him was different than what she'd felt for any other man, ever. So if she was going to cop to love this might actually be the time to do it.

Of course, he hadn't said boo about it. Aside from yet another crack about her not knowing how she felt, that is, though it was more a testament to how he viewed himself than how he viewed her now that she thought about it. It made whatever anger was left inside her smooth out into something more like disappointment. She had no clue how he actually felt about her. In all the talking they'd done on the subject, he'd never expressly said he wasn't interested in her in the same way she was interested in him, and that gave her a little hope that perhaps there was some potential for something more with him. Especially now that it wasn't a crime to want something more with him. Or, well, very nearly wasn't a crime.

That wasn't to say she was looking forward to his retirement. As much as she liked the idea of being able to relate to the colonel as a man rather than as her commanding officer, he had been a stellar CO and she would miss serving under him. SG-1 had been a singular experience and it would never be replicated no matter who General Hammond brought on board to lead the team. Oh, sure, part of the way SG-1 had felt had to do with the way she'd come to feel for the colonel, but a great deal of it was in the way they all related to one another. And, just as much as she'd miss the colonel, she'd miss the way he and Daniel played off one another, and the way he and Teal'c would say so much without saying anything at all. They were, for lack of a better analogy, her family. And it felt very much like she was losing a family member in the loss of the colonel.

But, there was the potential to gain, as well. Or, at least, after the kiss they'd shared and the heat it had contained, she'd hoped there was. Now, she wasn't so sure. Perhaps too much had happened to him in his life both before and after Astarte to make him accessible to her. It already sounded as if he didn't believe she could possibly feel the way she knew she felt and she didn't know how to convince him of her feelings when he wouldn't allow her to show him or tell him. And how was she supposed to convince him, anyway when he wouldn't even really talk to her about what had happened to him? Oh, sure he'd given her something, but it wasn't a conversation and it certainly wasn't going to help him solve anything.

She thought about the way he'd talked at her the night before and how he'd flung her actions in her face like she'd done something to be ashamed of. She knew he'd killed before, just as she had, though she'd never done so quite as deliberately as she had Astarte. If putting it out of her mind was healthy, then she was doing great, but she suspected she was going to have to actually deal with what she'd done sooner or later. She was going to have to admit that she'd killed the woman because of what she'd been doing to the colonel at the moment Sam had found her. Had she not been in the process of raping him, perhaps Sam would have let her live, perhaps Sam would have let the colonel do the killing, perhaps any number of things would have happened.

She cursed the zats that made it so easy. One shot stun, second shot kill, no muss, no fuss, no bad dreams keeping you up at night because you killed the woman that tortured the man you love until he turned into a shell of his former self. She shook herself. So maybe she hadn't put it out of her mind completely. But she'd done a hell of a job jamming it down into the back of her mind until she didn't have to focus on it. She had other things going on. Bigger fish to fry. And anyway, so far nobody had gone barking up that tree and she suspected that they wouldn't. Astarte's death was considered collateral damage of the rescue mission. It didn't seem to matter that it wasn't strictly necessary. Perhaps even the General was willing to turn a blind eye over the fact that his second in command had been tortured for a month by the woman. That sort of thing went a long way when making decisions.

Thinking about Astarte that way made her think about what the colonel had said about the drugs he'd been given. The words were imprinted on her brain. The drugs made me hard but without feeling, so she could use me for as long as she wanted. How must that have been? To be nothing more than a tool for her use in such a base and personal way? To have been aware of what was happening but to not feel the sensations of pleasure your brain and body were expecting? Was it help or hindrance considering the nature of their involvement? She wanted to talk to him about it, but she was afraid he'd given all he was going to on the sexual portions of his torture.

She was very afraid that one of the reasons he was so adamantly against her having feelings for him was because he was afraid of what it meant if they were together. She was afraid that there were now physical barriers he'd have to push through in order to have a sexual relationship again. She wondered if that was what, or at least if it was one of the things, holding him back. He'd been so angry after their kiss and he'd clearly been aroused, she'd felt him, hard against her. So fast it had happened it had made her head spin.

She closed her eyes and rolled her head on her shoulders. She felt so tense after all the thoughts about him. She shrugged out of her robe and pulled on a soft pair of lounge pants, a long sleeve t-shirt, and fluffy socks, prepared to spend the rest of the day curled up doing nothing but watching mindless television and hopefully keeping her thoughts off of Jack O'Neill. Which was, of course, when her doorbell rang.

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

Jack stood nervously on her front stoop waiting for her to open the door. He'd given her hours to cool off, sure she'd been more than a little angry with him for the way he'd betrayed her trust that morning. And she deserved to be angry. He felt more than a little contrite, and to be fair, contrite was a welcome change from the anger he'd been feeling for so long. But it still didn't taste right in his mouth. So he decided that it was probably best to deal with this thing right off rather than do as they usually did and let it sit and fester.

When the door did open, he was greeted by the sight of Samantha Carter looking smaller than he'd likely ever seen her, swathed in big, comfortable looking clothes, with wet hair. Like most things did these days, it made him want to touch her. It occurred to him then that they were just standing there, looking at one another. "I think I might owe you an apology."

She took a step back. "Come in, then."

He followed her inside and into the living room. They stood there, awkwardly, while she waited for him to speak. "This morning, knowing you were there, if made a difference. To how I felt."

"Why?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. He rushed forward before he lost his nerve and didn't get his full apology out. "And I asked you to trust me and tell me how you felt and then I discounted your feelings."

"Again."

"Yeah," he said. He ducked his head and grasped the back of his neck. She wasn't making this easy on him, that was for sure. "I'm... I'm... I'm an emotional mess on a good day, Carter, and that was before this happened."

"I don't think that's true."

He reached out and snagged her hand, looked her in the eye. "You don't know me, Sam. You know Colonel O'Neill. I've got an ex-wife and a dead kid and baggage from Iraq and-"

"I know those things."

"Peripherally. You know of those things."

She pulled her hand, trying to extricate it from his, but he wouldn't let her. "Don't be upset, please."

"What do you want me to say? You're telling me, again, that I don't know how I feel."

"I'm not! I'm just telling you that there's more to me than the guy you know."

"But the guy I know is a big part of you. And I know enough about him to know how I feel about him," she said softly, her eyes downcast.

With his free hand he lifted her chin until their eyes met. "But if all of that wasn't enough, I've got this fresh hell to navigate. And Carter... Sam... even I don't want to deal with that."

"You shouldn't have to do it alone."

"I'm not sure I'm going to do it at all."

"You have to," she objected. "Or the anger you've been feeling... that's as good as it gets."

"Unless you're planning to spend the night every night," he said teasingly. When he saw the sad look flit across her face he realized that perhaps it wasn't the best thing to be teasing her about. Even if she did make him feel a damn sight better just by being around. "Bad joke."

She shrugged one shoulder as if he hadn't just carelessly hurt her. Again. "You have to know, I'd do whatever you needed to help you."

He did know that. It was Carter, for crying out loud. She went above and beyond the call of duty every single time. He sighed, looked down at their joined hands, and then tugged her to him and into his embrace. She was stiff against him for a long moment until he smoothed his hands across her back and she sort of melted into him. Her wet hair was cold against his cheek but her body felt so good against his that he didn't really notice. "I know," he said lowly.

"I never meant to make this harder on you," she said against his chest. "You need to be worrying about feeling better not... me."

"I'll admit, at first I was pretty upset that this had come up. The timing sucks more than a little."

"The timing was always going to suck. It's why I was never going to say anything."

He pulled back and looked her in the eye. "You'd have gone on, feeling like you did, and never saying anything? Why?"

"Because it was better to be a part of the team than to not be anything at all. And I love everything about SG-1." She cracked a smile. "Not just you."

He sifted his fingers into her hair at the nape of her neck. "Are you really sure?"

"About how I feel?"

"Yeah."

"Yes," she said simply, surely.

He closed his eyes for two heartbeats. How could she be so sure about him when he was so patently unsure about himself these days? He could barely stretch good hours together let alone good days. What on Earth did he have to offer her? But she didn't seem to care. And she was offering him a port in the storm, she was offering him help.

"I'm not... I'm not where you are. But, I'll admit that my feelings for you aren't just professional."

"Well, it's a start," she said softly.

"Yeah, I guess it is." He tightened his fingers in her hair and watched as her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted making her look so utterly kissable that he couldn't help but lean down and capture her lips with his own. She made a surprised sound in the back of her throat and one of her hands flew to his chest to curl into his shirt. He kissed her long before he opened his mouth to her and let her curl their tongues together, but when she did he felt it all the way to his toes. And, more to the point, everywhere in between. It pulled him up short. He pulled back from her abruptly, his breath coming in short pants just as hers was.

"What's the matter?" She asked, breathily.

He rested his forehead against hers. He didn't want to do it, but if he was going to try something with her and he was beginning to be willing to admit to himself that he was, then perhaps he needed to talk to her about the sex stuff. Because he couldn't even kiss her without it becoming an issue. "Maybe we need to talk about what happened after the Blood of Sokar."

She looked at him with big eyes and nodded, led him to the couch and sat him down. She curled up on the cushion next to him and waited for him to speak.