Sam really thought that things might feel halfway normal once things were back to, well, normal, but they didn't. She felt like she was walking around in a bubble that was about to burst. She threw herself into her work in hopes that would help, but even her experiments were hardly enough to hold her attention when all she could seem to think about was him. She knew he was off limits, but that didn't seem to make any difference at all to her brain. To say she was worried about him would be an understatement. Did he sleep the night before? Did he drink?
"Hey," came the quiet entreaty that startled her out of her reverie.
She looked up sharply to find Daniel standing in the doorway to her lab. "Hi," she said cautiously. They hadn't really spoken much since she'd left him sitting in that coffee shop.
"I thought it might be nice if we all had lunch together, you know SG-1, all back together now..."
Sam blew air out through pursed lips. She didn't want to sit across the table from Jack just yet. Didn't think she could, not knowing what his body felt like, warm in bed. She needed more time to compartmentalize. "Not today," she said. "I've got too much going on."
Daniel looked around. "Too much to eat lunch?"
"Yes," she said simply, in hopes that the less she said the less he'd have to trip her up with if he chose to argue.
"Is this because you're still mad at me for telling Jack? Because I don't think he's upset anymore."
"I'm not mad at you, Daniel. I feel like you betrayed a confidence. I know that you went behind my back and did something I expressly asked you not to do. I'm hurt. And," she was ramping up now that she had a captive audience, "okay, so maybe it is anger. But you did irrevocably change things between me and the Colonel."
"But isn't that good?"
"Two things for you to think about... what made you think he'd even be open to entertaining feelings from somebody after what he'd been through?"
"I... I just thought he could use somebody..."
"And what made you think he'd be interested in me?"
"Well... you're... you..."
She huffed out a humorless laugh. "Well, as it turns out the joke's on me, because you were right."
"I was? Wait... do you mean you and Jack are...?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "Not anymore. I don't know what you expected to happen, Daniel, but the General has ordered the colonel and me not to be personally involved. This is what happens if you want SG-1 to be together. It's either this or that, but it's not both. And we don't even get the option. It's SG-1."
"So, you two talked and decided you felt the same way and now..."
"Now it's over." She was mortified to feel her eyes fill with tears. Again.
"Sam, I'm sorry." It was the first time he'd apologized over the whole mess and it hit her square in the solar plexus. He crossed the room to her and gathered her in his arms. "This isn't what I meant to happen. I just wanted you to be happy."
"There was no way this was going to end well. I knew that."
"But when it looked like he was retiring..."
"We thought, maybe."
"Would you have ever said anything to him? Once he was retired, maybe?" He pulled back from her so he could look her in the eye but kept his arms looped loosely around her.
"I don't know. Probably not."
"I've known Jack a long time, Sam. He's worth the risk."
"I've already taken the risk, Daniel." She refused to say that it was over again. That part hurt too much.
"Maybe one day things will be different," Daniel offered.
She huffed. "Sure. One day. I'll just put my life on hold then, waiting for one day."
"Move on, then, if you think you can. But I don't think it's going to be that easy."
"Are you trying to doom me to something, here?"
"No. I'm just saying, feelings like this don't come around often. And maybe you should be looking for a way to make it work instead of living in defeat."
"I can't live in hope for something that can't happen. It would hurt too much. The whole thing hurts too much."
"I feel like this is all my fault."
She laughed soggily and pulled out of the circle of his arms, batted his chest. "It is. You need to learn to keep your mouth shut. And just... keep your nose out of it from here on out, huh? Things might be tense between me and the colonel for a while, we don't need you trying to fix it, okay?"
He nodded. "Okay. I'll try. It's just hard to see people you love hurting."
"I know. Now, go to lunch. Tell the guys I'm busy, don't tell them anything else."
He grinned. "Yes, ma'am."
He left her lab then and she was left feeling like she'd been run over by a tractor trailer. She was starting to think that Daniel might be beginning to understand exactly what he'd gotten himself in the middle of. And he did seem genuinely apologetic about the pain he'd caused. He was, she knew, her friend, and he'd never purposely hurt her. But he'd done exactly as she'd asked him not to because he thought he knew better. And, it had actually gone okay, at first. So maybe he'd been right after all. It wasn't really his fault that the whole thing had gone to hell.
But, it was hard not to blame him. If it weren't for him and his meddling ways none of this would have happened. She'd have gotten SG-1 back and been blissfully unaware of what it meant to be with Jack O'Neill. She'd seen a side of him she hadn't known he had. It was true what he'd said – she didn't know all of him. And she'd been enjoying learning about him. For the short time she'd had with him, despite the challenges they'd faced, she was happy. Really and truly happy. She owed that to Daniel opening his big mouth. So, maybe if he were to blame, he was also, a little bit, to be thanked for what he'd done.
Maybe, she thought, she owed him a bit of an apology.
Then, she thought of what he put her through.
No. They were even.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack sat behind his desk sorting through a mountain of paperwork. Apparently no one had gotten the memo that he'd been on leave and he had, well, memos out the wazoo. It took him several hours just to get up to speed on what was going on under the mountain. Of course, it probably took that long because he couldn't go more than fifteen minutes without his mind drifting to Sam.
He wondered how she'd been the night before. Had she slept and better than he had? His dreams had come wicked and wild, a mix of remembrances of his hallucinations and new, fresh hells his brain had cooked up for him. When he'd awoken, violently, at one point, he'd reached for her, forgetting that she wasn't with him, his hand encountering nothing but the cool sheets of the empty side of his bed.
He found himself yawning his way through his morning, and when Daniel came to get him for lunch, he went with a sort of restrained hope that he'd see her there. Then Daniel had dropped the bomb that she was working through lunch and he'd felt his spirits falls. He hadn't realized how much he'd been looking forward to seeing her.
He wondered if maybe he wouldn't be better off avoiding her, though. She was like a drug to him. Better to detox completely. He scoffed at himself because wasn't he the one who was huffing her shirt the night before? He'd gotten attached to both her and the idea of her very quickly. Once he'd submitted to concept of her and her feelings, it hadn't taken long for him to see how they fit together. He'd told her he wasn't where she was yet, that he wasn't in love with her, but he could see how it could very easily happen.
After lunch he sifted through mission files for a while, reacquainting himself with what the teams had been up to in his absence. He was about ready to bang his head on the desk, though, when Teal'c showed up – perfect timing as usual.
"O'Neill."
"Teal'c! Buddy! What's happening?"
"I believe it would be beneficial for you to train with me this afternoon."
Jack raised an eyebrow at him. "You looking for a reason to beat me up? What did I do? Does this have something to do with Sa—Carter?"
"For what reason would I need to damage you on behalf of Major Carter?" Teal'c asked with one impeccably raised eyebrow.
"On behalf of her? No reason. Because she's upset and it's got something to do with me? Maybe you've got a reason." Jack got up from his desk and threaded his arms into his BDU jacket as he followed Teal'c out of his office.
"You changed the nature of your relationship with Major Carter," Teal'c surmised.
"Yeah."
"But now you have returned to SG-1."
"Yep."
"And that means you may no longer engage in an intimate relationship."
"Let's call it a personal relationship, okay?" Jack said, feeling himself blush.
"And for this reason, Major Carter finds herself unhappy. And what of you?"
"Me? Yeah, I'm unhappy, too. I'm unhappy about the whole damn thing. I'm supposed to be retired. But here I am."
"For what reason do you desire retirement over service?"
"Because I'm a liability, Teal'c. I'm not the same guy that led our previous missions."
Teal'c frowned. "Do you not believe that with time you could become the same man again?"
"I don't know. I just know I'm tired of trying. It's time, Teal'c. No one is meant to do this forever. I've earned my retirement. I've had a helluva career. I've seen things no one should have to see," he said as they reached the locker rooms. Jack pushed his way inside and went to his locker. He opened it up and grabbed gym clothes from the shelf at the top. "I had made plans. I was on my way out."
"And those plans included Major Carter?"
"Yeah, they did."
Teal'c nodded bent down to untie his boots but the censure in his voice carried. "Your military regulations confuse me."
"Why's that?"
"You and Major Carter share a bond that is not duplicated easily. It does not make sense to keep you apart to make the team safer."
"It's so that I keep the team as a whole in mind instead of my girlfriend. They don't want me saving her when it makes sense to save someone else, or the rest of you. They don't want me making a stupid decision because I'm more concerned about her than I am about myself or about the mission. There are good reasons for the regulations."
"They seem unnecessarily restrictive."
"I'm surprised you don't see the merit of them."
"Do your feelings for Major Carter change simply because you are not allowed to engage in a... personal... relationship?"
Jack hesitated, he was only just coming to grips with what his feelings for her were. "No."
"So I do not see how it makes a difference."
"We're not supposed to have the feelings at all," Jack said with exasperation.
"And yet the fact remains that you do."
"I don't know what you want me to say, Teal'c."
"I do not wish for you to say anything in particular, O'Neill. We are merely having a conversation."
"Right," Jack said, though he was pretty sure Teal'c was telling him to screw the regs. Or something. It felt like Teal'c was coming down on the side of the relationship with Sam. Which was, Jack had to admit, attractive. But he couldn't ask her to do that. She was an honorable officer. It was enough of a run around for her when they were marking time while he was waiting to retire. She'd never go for a clandestine relationship while they served on the same team.
Would she?
He wouldn't put her in that position. Never would. He wasn't sure he had it in him, either. He respected the General too much to go out of his way to defy orders so spectacularly. Never mind the times he'd done so before – but those were different, he justified.
Changed and ready for the gym, the two men made their way there and to the mats. The gym was nearly empty save for a few people on treadmills and weight machines. They began to spar, but he was in his head more than he was on the mat – to a fault, it turned out, because he spent more time on his back than he did on his feet.
"You seem distracted, O'Neill. You should focus."
"Yeah," Jack said, wiping the sweat off his brow.
Which was, of course, the moment, Sam walked into the gym.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Sam needed some time in the gym to clear her head. Preferably some time on the treadmill to run until she'd left her problems behind her somewhere. But as soon as she walked into the gym, she spotted him. Spotted his back, really, his silver hair, shoulders, narrow hips, legs – she knew his body well, could pick him out of a crowd at a hundred yards.
Teal'c was with him. They were sparring. She knew the moment Jack spotted her because he was flattened by Teal'c who grimaced at him before helping him up off the mat. The big man said something to him that she couldn't overhear that made Jack scowl before he darted another look in her direction. She was glued to the floor where she stood as she looked at him. She hadn't been expecting to see him so she was unprepared.
She'd resolved to avoid him. It was the easier way to deal with her feelings, sure, to simply pretend like she didn't have them. Not so easy when she kept pouring her heart out to whoever would listen. But true that she didn't want to have to face him when she knew how difficult it would be to see him and not want to feel him, not want to know how he was doing. She didn't want to have to ask about his recovery – she wanted to be a part of it. She didn't want to be his teammate, she wanted to be his partner.
She realized, then, that she was staring at him. But he was staring right back at her and Teal'c was looking between the two of them as if trying to figure out what, exactly, their problem was. She wished she could tell him. Realized that Jack may have already done so. The fact that they'd spent a short time together might not be a secret any longer. Goodness knew she'd told her fair share of people. She wouldn't begrudge him talking about it if he needed to.
And it did her heart good to think he might have needed to talk about it, too. That maybe it hurt him the way it hurt her to be told that they couldn't be together. Maybe she meant something to him even if he never had gotten a chance to tell her so. Which broke her heart a little because she thought maybe this whole thing would be easier if only she knew how he felt. Once Janet had put the thought in her head that his feelings could have changed, she'd been fixated on that as if she now had no idea what was going on in his head.
After long moments she saw him open his mouth as if to speak to her and she, out of self preservation, minutely shook her head. Whatever it was he had to say, she didn't think she could bear to hear it, even if was just an inanity of command. That might even be worse.
She turned her back on him and crossed the room to the treadmills. It was better if she just pretended he wasn't there. She tried. Oh, how she tried. But she was hyperaware of his presence. It was like she could feel him in the room, his heartbeat, his respiration. She ran until she he left the gym. She ran until she couldn't still feel him. She ran until the only thing she was aware of was the feeling of her feet hitting the surface of the treadmill beneath them.