Filling the Spaces
Quantum Mirror
Hurt/Comfort
This chapter is set directly after the Season 3 episode "New Ground". This story would be a sequel of sorts to Chapter 4 (Friends with Benefits/Blind Date/Jealousy), and also references Chapter 2 (Blue Jello) of this series.
—-OOOOOOO—-
Finally.
She'd finally forced herself to turn it off.
Sam laid the controller in her lap, slumping forward and resting her face in her hands. The quantum mirror stood next to her, blessedly dark for the first time in what seemed like hours. The strange stone of the outer framework gleamed silver-gray in the light from the corridor. It was the only illumination in the room.
She wasn't supposed to be here. She should be at home—where she'd been ordered to go once Janet had released her from the infirmary. The Bedrosian weapons had only left blisters on her skin, treatable without the help of more than a little ointment and some time. Small favors, she guessed.
There was something to be said about being a lightweight, when all was said and done. Whatever made Sam take longer to recover from Zat blasts had also rendered her more susceptible to the electrocution-like effects of the weapons on P2X-416. Unconscious, she'd been left alone long before they'd given up on torturing Daniel and the Colonel. And while neither of them had been remanded to a gurney or isolation room by the formidable Doctor Fraiser, the time they'd spent being patched up had far exceeded hers.
Teal'c, of course, had fared the worst. He and Nyan were still in the medical unit. Janet had sent everyone else away, ordering the team to go home while she ministered to those who needed her the most. Sam had gotten as far as her locker before it had become apparent that driving wouldn't be a good idea. Especially since she'd brought the Indian that morning. With the tricky clutch and iffy brakes, it was a rough ride in the best of circumstances.
This evening? Well—mounting up would be the epitome of hubris. Sam Carter knew her limits, even when she didn't like them.
She'd probably end up sleeping in one of the on-base quarters reserved for officers. That way, she could check up on Teal'c. In the morning, she could get some hot breakfast, rather than slamming down an energy shake or handfuls of dry cereal straight out of the box as she stirred her coffee in her little kitchen.
Also, if she stayed on base, she would be here on time for the post-mission debrief, where they'd deconstruct the whole damned fiasco for the General. When that would be, Sam had no idea. Why this mission had hit her harder than other, similar, missions, she couldn't say, either. At least, not out loud.
Not with any kind of honesty.
With a harsh exhale, she looked at the device again. The controller lay heavily in her lap—warmer than she'd expected. Most alien technology had far more sophisticated internal systems than those of Earth origin. She'd encountered very few that had the overheating issues that she'd been fighting with her laptop or her PC at home. But the little hand-held dialing computer for the quantum mirror retained more heat than it seemed that it should. Probably something to do with the internal sequencers—wire relays rather than crystals. She'd check it out again later. Once she'd had a chance to sleep.
Once she'd had a moment to try to process—things.
Figured out what had gone so wrong.
But tonight? She was just too damned tired.
The floor had grown colder, somehow, even since she'd sat down. How that was even possible, she didn't know. Maybe it had more to do with her than with the physics of the situation. Perhaps she'd finally lost so much of her humanity that she'd grown completely cold. When had that happened? When she'd used the Goa'uld hand device to kill Seth? When she'd fought against the mind control potion in Netu?
When she'd nearly killed herself working to bring the Colonel home from Edora?
Or had it started over a year before? When she'd watched him kiss another Samantha Carter from within another reality and forced down the bile as she'd decided not to let it bother her.
That's why she was sitting here, wasn't it? Good lord, she was hopeless.
She let her head fall backwards, wincing slightly when it connected with the wall behind her. She didn't know why she hadn't found a chair. Hell—she didn't know why she'd come here in the first place. To this level. To this storage unit. To this darkened corner of the SGC where she had no business being.
Except that maybe she was hiding. Or looking for the privacy that she would have at home. Privacy that some people might call solitude. Others would call it 'loneliness'.
This is what her life had become.
"I thought this thing was supposed to be destroyed."
The voice came from her right where the door stood slightly ajar. She should have closed it. Enveloped herself completely in darkness.
She didn't answer him, clenching her jaw and angling her chin down towards her chest.
"Carter?"
He'd keep pushing. She knew him well enough to know that. "Yes, Sir?"
He took her answer as an invitation, edging the door open further with his foot and slipping carefully through. He found her immediately, even hidden as she was in the corner. Stopping near her feet, he poked at her heel with the toe of his boot.
"I brought you something."
What—a life? Purpose? Direction? But she swallowed the sarcasm and craned her neck upwards to meet his eye. "You didn't need to do that."
His shrug was both dismissive and flippant. "I figured you might be tired and hungry."
"Oh."
He bent towards her, extended the mug in his left hand. He held another in his right. Suspicious bulges in the pockets of his BDUs suggested that he might have absconded from the mess with more than just the coffee.
It was warm. So warm in her hands. Cupping her fingers around the cheap ceramic, she brought it to her face, inhaling the gentle heat wafting above the rim. Despite her sour mood, she raised her brows with a hinted smile. Not coffee after all. "Tea?"
"That green stuff you like." He pivoted, then lowered himself carefully to the concrete floor next to her. "Honey, and a little bit of skim milk."
She closed her eyes, dipping her head fully. If she'd expected anything—it hadn't been thoughtfulness. After all—she'd been the one to get off lightly. She should be the one showing the niceties. Damn.
He blew into his own mug, settling back against the wall. With a little grunt, he stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.
"Thank you, Sir."
"Don't mention it." Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a tidy bundle. He thrust it in her direction, waiting expectantly until she took it in her free hand. "Like I said. I figured you might be tired and hungry."
He'd figured her out a long time ago. Knew just what she wanted before she even knew she wanted anything. She couldn't drink coffee after around six in the evening and still expect to get to sleep later. He'd remembered that. And he knew that she only liked the mess hall's banana bran muffins when they were fresh out of the oven. The one he'd handed her was still hot, wrapped in a heavy paper napkin like a blanket.
"Sir—I—" But there was nothing more to say than another lame, "Thank you."
"Eat, Carter." He took a measured sip from his mug. "Fraiser wasn't too happy that you've lost more weight since the last time she checked on you."
Sam thought about that, frowning down into her cup. Taking a tentative taste, she couldn't help but close her eyes in satisfaction as the sweet herbal goodness started to warm through her system.
"So?"
"So, what?"
The Colonel raised his mug in the direction of the quantum mirror. "I thought that this thing was supposed to be destroyed."
Sam broke off a bit of her muffin. "It was."
"So why is it still like this?" He pulled one heel back towards his body, resting the arm holding his mug on his up-bent knee.
"Like what?"
"Intact." His face did that thing—his expression relaxing into a half-grin, a single dimple emerging as he teased her. "Whole. Still together. Notably complete. Integral. Plenary. Decidedly non-destroyed."
She couldn't help it. Turning her head away from him, she hid the smile that she couldn't quell. "We haven't been able to figure out how to accomplish that."
"Why not?"
She took her time chewing the bit of muffin, and then raised her cup for another sip of her tea. "Naquadah in the frame and in the projection surface itself. I'm a little concerned that using any kind of explosive, corrosive chemical, or combustible material will cause secondary—and far more hazardous effects."
"You're afraid it'll blow us all up."
"Pretty much." More tea made its way down her throat, followed by another, larger, bite of the muffin.
"Sledgehammer."
"Excuse me?" Sam angled the question at him.
He looked back at her, his dark eyes deeply shadowed. "Have you tried just whacking it with something?"
Despite herself, she smiled. "We have, actually."
"And?"
Sam gestured towards the mirror with the half-muffin still in her hand. "It's still non-destroyed."
O'Neill made an odd little face at that. "Well, then."
"Sergeant Siler and I were supposed to be working on it a few months ago. When you were—" She hadn't meant to bring it up, but somehow, it had just happened. She stopped speaking, taking another bite of the muffin, washing it down with a mouthful of tea.
"When I was on vacation?"
She used the napkin to sop up some tea on her lip. When she spoke, it was soft. "When you were on Edora."
For a long time, he didn't say anything, merely looking at her out of the corner of his eye as she finished off the last of the muffin.
He was right. She had been hungry. If he'd brought a few more of the muffins, she probably would have polished those off, too. Crumpling the napkin in her fist, she drank down the last of her tea, then set her mug on the floor next to her. The dull 'clunk' was the only sound in the room.
"I never thanked you properly for bringing me home, Carter." He fiddled with his coffee cup, tilting it to and fro, watching as the dark liquid sloshed around inside. "I owe you a debt that I can't possibly repay."
"Just doing my job, Sir."
But they both knew that wasn't true.
"And I owe you an apology."
Sam pressed her eyes closed, her hand tightening around the napkin. They'd already talked about this a few weeks before. On her back porch, cocooned together in the old quilt she'd pulled off her couch. Just a day or so before, she'd held it close and could still smell his cologne on it. "You've already apologized, Sir. You don't owe me anything."
She could feel his eyes on her, as he studied her. It was almost tangible—the touch of his gaze so close to being a physical sensation that she nearly pulled away.
Instinctive—her response was automatic. Because retreating from him had somehow become her first impulse, while at the same time she still yearned to fling herself towards him across the abyss. She didn't understand it herself, which added to the madness of it all.
Carter looked down at the empty mug on the floor next to her, chasing back the images that hovered just beyond her mind's eye. There had been an animal in a book her mother had read to Sam when she'd been a little girl. A llama with a head at the front and the back. She felt like that animal lately—forever in a cycle of reaching towards while simultaneously running away from what she wanted. Never knowing in which direction she really wanted to go.
"So?" He was doing that thing again—poking his finger into his cup in search of a nonexistent bit of schmutz. Shaking it off, O'Neill nudged at her with his elbow. "What are you doing in here? Alone in the dark with this remarkably non-destroyed piece of alien technology?"
"I don't know." A blatant lie.
Which he seemed to know already. "But you have the remote thingy."
Carter looked up at the ceiling, at the single ray of light that sent a bright shaft along the concrete surface. At the way the light reflected off the walls—like candlelight in a mirror. Enough light to be noticeable but too weak to be useful. A sad metaphor for something, surely. Hell. Maybe a sad metaphor for herself. "Have you ever questioned your life's choices?"
Narrowing his eyes, the Colonel passed his tongue along his bottom lip before inhaling sharply. He looked away as he answered. "I try not to."
She wanted to press him further, but she knew by the way he'd said it that any such attempt would be futile. Sighing, she opened her hand, pulling the compressed napkin free and worrying it back open. "The Bedrosians were so totally convinced that they were right. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary."
"They were big self-righteous dicks about it, too."
Breathing out something close to a laugh, Sam bent her head back to look at the slip of paper in her fingers. "They were."
"But you're not talking about religion, are you?"
Carter closed her hands into fists, then spread her fingers wide. She was still cold. The temporary effect of the tea was fading. An involuntary shiver startled its way down her body. "Not really."
"Cold?"
"A little."
He put his cup on the concrete floor and shucked out of his BDU over-shirt. Without a word, he draped it over her shoulders, then sat back and watched as she threaded her arms through the sleeves.
It was warm. And smelled like him, and the coffee. No cologne this time—just him. Sam resisted the urge to tuck her head towards her shoulder and breathe deeply even as she pulled the front plackets across each other and tucked them tightly around her body. Still, she sighed as the heat seeped into her.
"Better?"
"Yes." She took a little time to adjust the cuffs, so that her hands were partially covered by the heavy fabric. "Thank you."
For a long time, he just watched her, his dark eyes catching what little light was coming in through the door. His face was cast in a fascinating kind of shadowed relief, the hard planes of his cheek and the strong cut of his jaw becoming more pronounced.
Sharper. More striking.
"So, what's going on?" Quiet—so quiet. He reached over and tapped the mirror's controller with the side of a knuckle. "What's all this about?"
"May I speak freely?"
"Always."
Hesitating, Carter organized her thoughts as best she could. Amidst the exhaustion—mental and physical—her efforts would be subpar at best. But what the hell. "How does it get to that point where you have to believe in your own delusion? When you won't entertain any thought other than the ones that you've been laboring under for your entire life?"
"Cognitive dissonance?"
"Sort of." She shrugged. "I guess. But not really."
He waited for several moments before leaning towards her, tilting his head towards hers. His shoulder resting against hers. "Talk to me, Sam."
It was the gentleness that did it for her. That tone that he reserved for so few people—the one he usually saved for her. And he'd used her name—something he did so rarely. In moments when they needed such intimacy to tether them as humans—as something more than friends. As they did now, sitting here in the dark, as the heat from his body had started to seep into hers.
Melting a little, Carter twisted the napkin between her fingers. "I've been in here watching the mirror."
"Watching it?"
"I turned it on and dialed it to various realities."
"Carter, it's not a TV. You can't pull up HBO or the Discovery Channel." He was laughing at her. Well—not laughing really, but most certainly amused.
She leaned into his shoulder, giving him a nudge. "I was looking for me. Well, not me—but me."
"Samantha Carter from other realities."
"Yeah."
His brows rose high. "And did you find yourself?"
Oh, that dimple again. That crooked, smart-ass smile that never failed to make her feel things that she shouldn't. Looking away, Sam found the empty mug near her thigh again, running her finger along the smoothness of the ceramic handle. "I guess."
"And what did you find?"
"After we got back from P2X-416 and we all went to the infirmary, I was listening to Daniel and Nyan talking." Sam cast the Colonel a quick look. "They're similar people—both very focused on learning where the facts take them. Nyan was completely capable of seeing where the evidence was leading him and then accepting the truths behind that."
"While his leaders and those in charge of his country were not."
"Right." She started smoothing the napkin out on her thigh. "And as a result, that entire country is going to continue to believe things that aren't true, while never knowing what the truth really is. The consequences are enormous, including the continuance of a war that doesn't need to be fought."
His eyebrows drew low. "So, how does this involve you and this mirror?"
For just half a beat, she considered lying. Thought briefly about obfuscation. But he was still looking at her, with those deep, brown eyes warming through her. "Most of the other Sam Carters out there aren't part of the military."
His eyes never wavered, his expression inviting her to continue.
"I didn't keep count, but I probably found a hundred or so versions of myself through that mirror." She took some time to fold the napkin again, creasing the lines with the pads of her fingers, only to scrunch the whole damned thing back up in her fist. "Along with many, many versions of you."
Together. That was the word she'd omitted.
"I'm assuming that you mean—" He waved his hand between them, from himself to her and back again. Of course he'd pick up on that. His jaw worked as he considered what she hadn't said. What he hadn't iterated except for in gesture.
"Yeah." She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. "Very few of those Sam Carters were Air Force officers. Or Air Force at all."
He breathed out, a deliberate action. As much so as was the way he scuffed at the floor with the heel of his boot. His hand came to rest on the ground between them. "And the ones that were military?"
"Like this." Sam's shoulder rubbed against his when she shrugged. "Like us."
Not together. Two words omitted this time.
"Huh." His frown became more pronounced, reaching his chin, where a groove drew a tight line down towards his jaw. He made another scuff at the floor, lifting up his hand and putting it back down. "How could you tell? About the civilian yous?"
Outside, a pair of guards patrolled down the corridor, talking quietly between them. Sam recognized their voices, but couldn't immediately come up with names. She waited until their footsteps had faded before exhaling. Why she'd been holding her breath, she couldn't say.
"Carter?" He asked it again. Softer. "How could you tell?"
Sam combed her hair back behind her ear, pulling her legs back towards her body. Hugging her knees, she looked over at him. "Name tags. Badges. SGC—or similar—security placards. Wedding rings. BDU name patches on the military ones."
He seemed to accept that. He leaned forward, mirroring her pose, his eyes working through the darkness to see her better. "Doesn't necessarily mean—"
"In a few of the realities, there was more—vivid evidence."
O'Neill's eyebrows sailed upwards. "As in—"
"As in." Sam felt her cheeks go pink. Thank heaven for the shadows. She pressed her jaw against her wrist. "One of them must have had better knees than you do. A few of them worked out a lot more."
He sat up again, leaning back against the wall. With a little shake of his head, he squinted at her. "In front of the mirror?"
"We put it here. On a level nobody ever comes to, in a dark storage room that nobody ever enters. There aren't even any surveillance cameras in this unit." She looked from the mirror back to the corner where they both were seated. "Two guards just walked past us without ever knowing that we were here."
"And if we closed the door—" His voice trailed off. There was a hint of suggestion in his tone, and in the way he cocked his head to one side.
"Yeah." Carter's blush deepened. She could feel the heat creeping up her throat. "It's as viable a place as any on base if you were looking for some time away."
"Is that why you came here?"
"To do—" She choked on a hysterical little giggle. "That? No. Of course not."
He assessed her thoroughly, as if seeing her in a new light. Finally, he nodded. Once. "Just checking."
Anyway. Looking down at the toes of her boots, Carter bit back a smile. "I came here to be alone. To think."
"About your life and the choices you've made."
She shifted on the cold floor, turning until her knees were closer to his. Until she could look him in the eye. "Remember when we went to that planet with the symbiotic plants?"
He rifled through his memory, gazing off over her shoulder into the shadows until he found the right reference. "Yeah. The UAV went down on —445, right? Those weird little dudes who wore white paint and didn't talk much."
"I told you about my rhododendrons, and my succulents."
The corner of his mouth tilted upward. "And how you converse with them."
"I talk to them." Sam lowered her chin to her wrist, aiming her words at the floor. "It's not like they answer back."
He touched her knee with his index finger. "I was just kidding, Carter."
She couldn't quite keep the wounded tone out of her voice. "But it's just all about choices, isn't it? The ones you make. What you decide to do. The direction you take your life."
He sent a quick look towards the alien mirror. "Join the military or not. Follow pure science or use that incredible brain of yours for the protection of the planet."
"It's the ifs that get you, isn't it? If my mom hadn't died. If I hadn't been so determined to please my father. If I'd chosen straight science rather than applying to the Academy. If, if, if."
He'd always been quicker than he let on. He went straight to the point of the matter. "Then maybe you'd have something more to talk to at home than a ficus."
It was more blunt than she'd expected him to be, but the truth, nonetheless. "Yeah. That."
"So, you think that you've been fooling yourself all this time? That because a hundred other yous out of potentially billions of yous out there in the great beyond didn't make the same choices that you've made—" he paused, making sure she was following him. "You're thinking that the choices you've made haven't been correct."
"Kind of." She raked her hand through her hair again, tucking it back behind her ear. "There's a certain logic to it, isn't there?"
She was close to him—close enough that he could reach out and take her hand. And he did—his long fingers wrapping around her palm. His hand was warm against hers. Rough calluses and fine hairs on the backs of his knuckles and surprisingly smooth skin in between. Strong. Solid. Hands like the man they belonged to. Substantial.
"You're not fooling yourself. You aren't like the Bedrosians, Carter."
"Then why do I feel so—" But she couldn't complete the question. Sam really didn't even know how to put words to the muddle roiling around in her gut. "I just feel like I've been lying to myself. Like I've kept telling myself that I don't want more, expecting myself to believe it."
"Well, really, how can you not believe yourself?" He was teasing again, but more gently.
"A hundred mes, Colonel. Most of them—it seems—living very different lives than the one that I'm living." She turned her hand within his grasp, threading her fingers between his. They fit so perfectly. It felt so damned natural to sit this way. Thigh against thigh, hands joined, skin to skin. She could smell him—on the shirt she was wearing, the coffee on his breath, and whatever else he had in the pockets of his BDU trousers. Something citrusy. One of those tiny mandarins he liked, or the sweet orange pastries that Master Chief Laurents made just for him. "How can I not believe that they might have made the right choices? Ones that I should have made?"
"Because you're not them. You're you." So simple. He made it sound so damned simple. Somehow, he'd turned enough that he could look at her straight on. That he could reach out and cup her face in his other palm, his thumb making a wide arc across her cheek. "Nobody else is you. Not in this reality, and sure as hell not in any other."
Their eyes had long since adjusted to the shadows, and Sam could clearly see his expression—a little concern, a little bemusement, a lot of sincerity. His dark eyes seemed fathomless—deep—holding the secrets of the universe just beyond his irises. And the smile that played at the corners of his lips held something—something indefinable that Sam wasn't even sure she wanted to pin down.
A promise. Or a regret. Or both.
Sam couldn't hold his gaze. She allowed her eyes to drowse closed, pressing her cheek more firmly into his touch.
"I didn't want to go home to an empty house tonight." She turned her face until her lips whispered against his palm, her own hand rising to graze along his arm. Bare skin beneath the pushed-up hem of his sleeve. "I needed—something—tonight. Just some connection, I guess. Or reassurance that I haven't totally screwed my life up in some way."
His jaw worked again, clenching, releasing, and clenching again. If anything, his brown eyes grew more obscure. More profound. Finally, he pushed away, pivoting on his butt on the floor and tugging her along. "C'mere."
It was just another little shift and they were back against the wall. Only the Colonel had gathered her against him, his arm around her shoulders, her cheek tucked against his collarbone. His hand rested on her arm, making long, slow strokes up and down against the sleeve of the shirt he'd loaned her.
"You haven't screwed anything up." Words breathed more than spoken, warm against the crown of her head, with his heat surrounding her, and his smell so welcome in her nostrils.
He overwhelmed her senses so easily. Too easily. She should be more immune to this, shouldn't she? Shouldn't want this so much. But those hundred other Sam Carters hadn't been immune. They'd sought this out too, hadn't they? Not just a connection—but this connection. This connection with this man.
And maybe those other Sams—those wearing uniforms and dog tags and adhering to codes in their worlds—maybe they wanted this, too. Maybe they were living within the same odd half-life that she was. Maybe they were questioning the same things that she was.
For every 'if', there was a 'maybe', for each 'maybe' another 'if'. Perhaps it was the same in every universe. Perhaps those ifs and maybes were why universes diverged.
Only, now she was spiraling into the physics of it all. Asking those theoretical questions that would suck even more of her brainpower, and require more energy than she had at the moment to even attempt to order and resolve them. With an effort, she chased it all away. Concentrating on the here and now—this scant point within her own present reality—the reality that Teal'c had declared was the only one that mattered.
Turning her head, she leaned more heavily against O'Neill, his arm securing her more closely. She felt him move, and all of a sudden, another little packet appeared in front of her.
"Eat."
She took it the package, settling it on his thigh as she worked at reading the label. "What's this?"
"Sustenance." O'Neill's hand grew tighter on her arm. "Like I said. Ol' Doc Fraiser's on the warpath about you."
It was an energy bar. The kind that she liked—oatmeal, peanut butter, nuts, and just the right amount of sweetness. Breaking off a chunk, she slipped it between her lips, sucking a bit of chocolate off the pad of her thumb.
"And you're dehydrated." He'd produced a water bottle from somewhere, putting it in her lap as he scooched out, extended his legs and settled in. "So, drink."
She did. Obediently finishing off the energy bar and the bottle of water as he sat there with his arm around her shoulders and his fingers wandering aimlessly up and down her bicep. And when she'd deposited the rubbish in the empty ceramic cup that had held her tea, she nestled in against him again, content to simply be there for a moment, in the quiet, and the shadows. With his warmth infusing itself into her, and her brain finally—finally—growing calm.
Out in the hallway, the guards swept back through, still talking quietly between themselves. Something about football—or baseball?—team trades and salary caps and chances at the championship. Good-natured ribbing about home teams and win-loss ratios and how long it had been since the Cardinals had been in the playoffs.
Sam wasn't really listening—merely waiting until their bootfalls had faded down around the far end of the corridor again. When all lay quiet again, she looked back up at the Colonel.
"Sir?"
"Yeah, Carter?"
"Why did you come looking for me?"
"I knew you hadn't gone home." His fingers on his free hand absently thrummed against his thigh. "I figured you'd holed up somewhere for whatever reason. Probably licking your metaphorical wounds. I was worried."
"So, how did you know I was here?"
"Black ops training." Flippant. Light. He was teasing—again. "I asked myself where I'd go if I were a genius with huge blue eyes, an inability to obey orders, and a houseful of talkative plants."
His t-shirt was soft against her cheek as she tilted her face upwards to look at him. Despite the moment, her voice held a hint of laughter. "Right."
"Dunno." He exhaled quietly, his hand stilling on her arm. It took him longer than it should have to meet her gaze. "I just seem to have a weird sort of radar where you're concerned."
"Oh."
"I just kind of knew."
"For the record, I'm grateful, Sir." She laid her hand flat against his chest, smiling when she could feel the steady thrum of his heart under his shirt. "I don't know why, but this one really threw me."
"I got that." He dipped his chin until his cheek was resting on her crown. "When I saw your motorcycle still topside, I figured you'd gone to ground to think about things. To overthink about things."
"You were right."
"So, I came back in to find you." His free hand found hers where it lay splayed against his chest. It seemed perfectly natural for him to cover that hand with his own, completely enveloping it. "And here we are."
"So?" She watched as his thumb made lazy circles on the back of her hand. "Have I convinced you that I'm crazy yet?"
"Everyone has their moments, Carter."
"And what if this moment is the moment where I wonder if everything I've ever done has been a total lie? What if I doubt every single thing that's ever happened to me? What if I regret it all?" She breathed against him, pressing her cheek against the wide swath of his chest. "What if I've lost whatever it was that made me capable of doing this work? Of being who I am?"
"Well, that would suck." It took him a minute to continue. Maybe he was stalling for time, or trying to decipher her actual concern. But his arm only pulled her closer, his head lowering to rest against hers. And his voice—soft, but fervent—felt as well as heard—a deep rumble in his chest against her cheek. "But if that were the case, then I'd sit here with you and keep you company until you'd figured it out."
"You'd do that for me?"
"I'd do anything for you, Carter."
Somewhere far away, the elevator had started. Sam could hear the mechanical hum of the generators far below, the constant drone of AC units and air pumps. Footsteps—real or merely perceived—made their way through halls and across floors and up ramps. Voices traveled through vents and hallways, echoing off the concrete of the silo's construction.
And she was finally warm. And the vague panic that had seemed poised to overwhelm her had dissipated. The controller lay next to her mug on the floor, the mirror quiet, and cold across the room from where they sat. The tea, and the muffin, and the energy bar had pushed back some of the exhaustion and hunger. And her mind—and her heart—were finally beating normally again. Because of him? Maybe. Probably. Thankfully.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay."
Finally.
—-OOOOOOO—-
A/N: All of the stories for this challenge were supposed to be done by 2/11. I'm probably not going to get the last chapter finished by then—but I'm fervently hoping to have it done by Valentine's Day. (And maybe, a little later on, one more chapter that popped into my fron for the "Free Space".)
Cross your fingers and wish me luck!
Thank you all SO much for your support. The kudos, comments, reviews, favorites, replies to comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and hits have truly been a lovely blessing to me. I appreciate all of you!