AU: When an exploration mission goes way off the left field, Jack and Sam are left to patch up their lives. Will that door stay open?
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are the property of MGM/Amazon. No copyright infringement intended. I am once again taking my favourite two Gaters for a walk in an Alternate Universe. Takes place after 5.05 Red Sky with some canon episodes skipped (overlooked) and others referenced.
Rating: Gonna start this one as M from the get-go.
Chapter 14: Learning Curve
Walking into the infirmary this morning, I found Jack and Teal'c already here visiting Sam. Teal'c was leaning his elbows on the bed speaking in low soothing tones to Sam. Jack was leaning over a desk of paperwork occasionally looking up to watch as Sam slowly traced Teal'c's tattoo with her finger, a look of pure fascination gracing her features. She still hadn't tired of it, and I wondered if Sam had always wanted to do that but was too professional before this happened. It was surreal watching her act so carefree and unguarded. Teal'c seemed to be enjoying her childlike attentions with the learned patience of a father doting on his daughter. Jack. however, held a pained look in his eyes, though anyone who didn't know him wouldn't see that pain. He blamed himself for her injury, even though there was nothing he could have done, no way he could have anticipated the Jaffa party coming through the Gate.
"Hey."
"Hey Space Monkey."
"How is she?"
Jack just shrugged as he ran his hand through his hair. "Better. I think. She's awake more. I guess that something." He said with a heavy sigh and a look of regret.
"Has she said your name yet?" I asked, since I knew that so far all she had called him was Sir. In the true scope of things, Sir was his name where Sam was concerned, but I knew he really wanted to hear her acknowledge him as more than Sir, more than her commanding officer.
"Kinda." He replied with pause. I could see there was something more he wanted to say, but in standard O'Neill practice, I knew he would remain silent. Nevertheless, I gave him the time to consider if he would speak up and summarily saw him dismiss the idea in favour of resigned acceptance and return to his paperwork. So, I decided to do what I always did. Hit it head on like a Mack Truck and hope I survived, because there was only so much a man could take before he cracked. I had seen Jack O'Neill crack under emotional pressure before. It was not a pretty sight.
"Kinda how?" I asked. He gave me the look. The O'Neill 'drop it Space Monkey' look, not the 'if you don't shut up, I'll deck you' look. We weren't there just yet. I hadn't seen that one since that awful mission with Alar and his merry band of fascists. "Kinda yes, kinda no, kinda maybe?" I prompted. His lip curled and he went back to signing off on requisitions for toilet paper, Stargate polish or whatever else a top secret military base needed to operate. Taking a deep breath, I pulled a chair over to face him hoping it would prompt him to say something. Optimistic I know, but that was part of my job description. The part that kept me digging for artefacts long after everyone else had started packing up to go home. "Jack?"
"Daniel." He replied with the 'drop it' tone of voice. Good, that was progression and proof that something had happened yesterday.
"Jack. Kinda what?"
"For crying out loud!" He mumbled angrily, "Kinda… kinda, that is all!"
"Tilk!" Sam said, enthusiasm in her voice.
"Yes, Samantha Carter."
"Sssssaaammm." She said slowly, "Sam. Sam." She said, over and over, her elocution improving even as we sat here.
"Yes, you are Samantha Carter." Teal'c replied.
"Sam Ohnneeell." She repeated. And there it was. The 'kinda kinda' Jack was talking about. He swallowed audibly and closed his eyes as he squeezed the bridge of his nose. I could feel Teal'c's gaze burning through my back, noting that he did not correct her. Neither did Jack for that matter.
"Dam!" Sam cried out. I turned around to see what was wrong only to find her pointing at me. "Dam." She repeated which made Jack laugh. The first one I had heard since the day we arrived at 755.
"Daniel." I repeated, looking at her. Over pronouncing the N sound.
"Nope, your name is now Dam." Jack added. Spinning back around in my chair, I noted the sarcastic smirk on his face. Bastard. Standing, I picked up my chair and dragged it over to sit by Sam.
"Danneeel" She repeated, making that last part sound an awful lot like O'Neill. Now that was interesting. Jeez, wouldn't I have loved being a fly on the wall yesterday.
"It's OK, Sam. You'll get there. Who is this again?" Daniel asked her, pointing at Jack. She looked over at him, bit her lip and drew out the name tag she stole from him yesterday. Tracing the letters with her finger, she looked straight at Jack.
"Ohnnneell. Sir." She said and looked away shyly, before refocusing on Teal'c's tattoo. She had the same look Sha're had given me when her father first introduced us. I looked over at Jack to find him with his walls briefly down, his emotions on full display. It did not last. Once he saw me looking at him, they all came but up again hiding whatever he was feeling.
"What about his first name? I am Daniel, you are Sam, he is Teal'c." I said, pointing to each of us in turn. "Who is he?" I asked again, pointing at Jack. She stayed silent, instead choosing to run her finger over Teal'c's tattoo again before biting her lip and digging her fingernails in to try and take it off. Jack cast his eyes from Sam to me then back to his paperwork. Completely and utterly unreadable. There was nothing I could say that would make any of this any better.
"No, Samantha Carter." Teal'c said, sitting back away from her. "It does not come off." She pouted and turned towards me, reaching for my glasses.
"You want these?" I asked, taking them off and handing them to her. Taking them from me, she folded and unfolded the arms, held them up to her face the wrong way, then turned them upside down to look through them again, trying to sit the wrong side of the arms on her ears. Blinking rapidly and screwing up her face, she quickly took them off and flung them back at me.
"No. Bad." She said, which made us all laugh, even Jack, though he didn't look up. Once her eyes had readjusted, she noticed my name tag. Scooting forward on her bed, she reached out to trace the letters. Her mouth moving as if she were reading the word. "J-A-K. Jak. Jack. Sssa-sssam. Jacksam." She said over and over, looking at me. Flicking my eyes to Jack, I noted the pain he fought to hide. He swallowed and wiped his eye while trying to focus on signing his name. Placing her palm on my chest, she repeated his name followed by hers over and over until the man in question abruptly stood and walked out of the room, taking his stack of paperwork with him.
Frowning, I took her hand in mine. "No, Sam. I am Daniel Jackson." Clearly enunciating the last part of my name. Then pointed in the direction of the closing door. "He is Jack. Jack O'Neill. You know Jack. He's your friend." She looked to the now closed door.
"Ohnneeell. Frrr-end." She repeated with a shy smile while touching her fingertips to her lips. I smiled and nodded feeling perplexed as to how she lost her memory of us, despite us being together for so long. Pointing at herself, she repeated her name again. The sound of the door opening, and the click of heels announced Janet's arrival for Sam's afternoon observations. Jack following at a discreet distance behind her.
"Doctor Jackson." Janet said. "How are you, Sam?"
"Sam." She repeated pointing to herself just as the door opened again. "Danneell Jackss." she faltered pointing at me which caused me to laugh, much to Janet's disapproval. "Doc." She said pointing to Janet. I smiled at her calling Janet the same name as Jack did. Well, to her face anyway, but Napoleon Power Monger was far too many words for Sam at the moment.
"Sorry. Sam, I am Daniel Jackson." I repeated to her, making sure to sound out each syllable for her. It didn't seem like a hard name but when you were monosyllabic, I guess getting four syllables out was harder than normal. Saying my name again for her and thinking about how she could recognise words, I had a thought.
"Who is that, Sam?" Janet asked pointing to Teal'c.
"Tilk." She replied as I jumped up from my chair, I ripped my name tag off and walked over to Jack to grab the one on his shirt. He immediately batted my hands away, until I attached the 'son' part of my name tag on his velcro strip, then put his beside it while giving him my 'just trust me' stare.
"Good. How about him?" She asked pointing at Jack. I moved out of the way and shoved Jack forwards until he was beside her bed.
"Oh Neeell." She pronounced, with much better control over the syllables, but the change in name tag had her scooting closer. Reaching her finger out while her other hand rested on his chest, she traced the letters and then looked straight at him. "Oh Neeell... Jack. Jack Oh Neeell." She said clearly for everyone to hear, without so much as a stutter, though her words were still long sounding. Her mouth twitched, "Jack." She repeated, and then promptly stole his second name tag, raising it to her nose. With a very un-Sam like little smile at Jack, she seemed to breath in deep before settling back onto the bed.
With everyone looking at him, he cleared his throat, "Good job Carter." Jack replied before taking his seat again, seemingly not bothered that he had now lost two name tags to his 2IC.
"Do you know what happened Sam?" Janet asked as she checked blood pressure, temperature, eyes, and her bandages. Sam touched her head and her arm but shook her head in the universal gesture of 'no'.
"You were shot Sam." I said to her. It was easier than explaining ricochet. Taking a deep breath and sigh, I looked at her. "I just wish we knew what you know, Sam. We know you can play strategy games." I mused as Janet checked her lungs.
"That's it." Jack said, coming to his feet. "Visuals. We need visuals."
"What?"
"She picked up chess and beat me by castling after one game."
"Jack, Sam has been beating you at chess for years." I replied. That was nothing new. Jack could beat everyone else on base, except Sam.
"OK, bad example. What does Carter do when I don't understand something?" Jack asked. I stared back at him thinking things along the lines of rolling her eyes, sighing, breathing deep before explaining with smaller words… then it hit me.
"She uses fruit. Apples, oranges."
"Yes, she did that whole wormhole through the universe explanation with an apple, and the thing with the red sun and the unstable... space dust hitchhiking on the wormhole going through it." He said quickly, gesturing with his hands something travelling through something else.
"Introduction of a stable super heavy element with an atomic weight of above 200." I added in for him, smirking because even after a few weeks, I could still remember her explanation.
"Yeah, whatever. My point is, we need fruit." He added.
"There is an apple on my desk, Colonel." Janet added while she jotted notes.
"Left there by an admirer, Doc?"
"Not a teacher, Colonel." She replied with a side smile, the one I loved. "I don't dabble with students, only grown men." She added, and there it was, the blush I couldn't stop. Jack looked at me and raised his eyebrows until I mouthed 'what?', then he smiled broadly before he shook his head and left the room. Shit. So much making sure no one found out. He would never let me live this down. Especially after I had given him so much hell over being head over heels in love with Sam for years.
Looking around, I spied Jack's deck of cards. Grabbing out four cards, I laid them in front of her on the table she used for her lunch. "Sam, can you put these numbers in order for me?" I asked. There was a seven, six, nine and a three. She looked at them for less than a few seconds before rearranging them in the correct order. I smiled at her before laying out an eight.
"Where does this one go?" I asked, handing her an eight. She quickly made a space between the seven and the nine before slotting the card in. Janet then grabbed them all back up. Going through the deck, I found four picture cards and laid them in front of her, handing the rest of the deck off to Janet.
"What one is the Jack of Diamonds?" I asked. Her choices were the Queen of Hearts, King of Spades, Jack of Diamonds, and the Joker. She picked up the correct card and handed it to me. "This is great. Janet, pass me the other Jack's and a Queen."
"What are you doing now?" Janet asked as she handed off the cards.
"You'll see." I said as I laid down the King, two Queen's, and Joker plus three Jack's, purposely leaving the Spades Jack hidden in my hand. "Sam, which one is the Jack of Spades?" I asked. She looked at the cards, then at me before reaching for my hand and prying the fingers open to reveal the hidden card. I smiled broadly. "No fooling you, hey."
"No." She replied.
"It's clear she is suffering from a form of post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. Things that she learned decades ago are still there. I don't understand why she doesn't know us; we have known her for five years. Her memory of us should not be affected." Janet reminded me.
"Brains are complex, you said it yourself. She has shown recognition of all of us, particularly Jack" I explained, being sure to leave out the whole 'Sam O'Neill' thing. "I wonder if she remembers Gate addresses?" I mused, then added, "I need my Abydos journal. I'll be right back." I said, then turned to leave.
"Daneel!" Sam called out, her attempt much closer to my actual name.
"It's OK, Sam. I will be right back. I promise." I said to her with a bounce in my backwards steps. My Abydos journal had the original sketch I made of the DHD. I had sketched it since, but that one remained the best version to date, probably because I had had a year to study it and days to sketch it properly. It didn't take long to get to my lab, grab it and get back in the elevator.
As I exited on level 21, I saw Jack carrying Janet's apple, another apple, an orange, and a plum. Obviously, he had raided those from somewhere else. We entered Sam's room together. Sam looked up immediately and smiled. Smiled. She smiled. Full and bright, all teeth and dimples, the way she used to before all this happened.
"Jack, did you see that?"
"Yeah, Danny. I did." His voice held a tone of happiness. She had had so few facial reactions in the past 48 hours that seeing that smile was just amazing. Shaking myself out of the daze she put me in, I motioned for Jack to go first. He put each of the pieces of fruit down on her table.
"Hey, Carter. I don't suppose you can explain how a wormhole works for me."
Looking at each piece of fruit and back to Jack, she picked up the green apple and bit her lip. She spied a pen in Janet's top pocket and grabbed it. Drawing a cross on one side, then a cross on the other side.
"Yeah, I want to go from here to here without going around." Jack said, moving his finger from one cross to the other around the outside of the apple.
She smiled, then stabbed the pen into the cross, twisted, and pushed it through the apple and out the other side, pulling it free. When she was done, she held the apple up and looked through the hole at her CO, "Hi Jack." She said with another smile, one that I would describe as being just for him. I pretended not to notice that he was sporting a massive smile in return.
"That's my girl." He replied, not even remotely concerned that the words he said would have been considered inappropriate. "Your turn Space Monkey."
I nodded to Jack and laid my journal open on a double page sketch of the DHD. "Sam, can you point to the symbols that dial Abydos?" I asked, holding the book down so she could see. Waiting silently, I saw her finger move over the symbols before stopping on Taurus, then Serpens Caput. She continued to point to each symbol in the correct order before finally landing on the symbol for Earth. "Yes, Sam… yes." I confirmed for her. She looked at me and started pointing out more symbols. Grabbing my own pen, I quickly wrote them down as she pointed to them.
"What is it?" Jack asked, coming back over to the table.
"K'Tau." I replied, then looked at Sam. "You remember K'Tau?" I asked Sam. She nodded slowly. "Do you remember what happened there?" Holding her hand up, she brought her fingers together into a point, steadied her elbow on the table, then made an explosion sign with both hands, complete with sound effects. Jack raised his eyebrows and looked at me as I bit back a laugh. God, these two were so much like each other it wasn't funny.
"She remembers the rocket exploding, O'Neill."
"Yeah."
"Sam, do you remember P6X-755?" I asked. She showed no recognition, so I pointed out the symbols on my DHD sketch. She shook her head.
"Sam, honey. How about Cassie? Cassandra." Janet asked. Sam nodded quickly, then reached for Jack's chess board. Opening it, she closed her hand around one of the Knights and held it up, then turned it around and around and around in her fingers. "How about Nirrti being on base?" Janet expanded, only to have Sam furrow her eyebrows and shake her head. So, she remembered bits of that, but not all of it. Her memory was not absolute, but she still recognised enough, in fact she hadn't even faltered once at the mention of Cassie or Nirrti. We could work with this. Perhaps her injury did not affect her memory so much as it affected her ability to communicate with us. Of course, there was also the emotional dysregulation we had seen already a couple of times, but hopefully that would disappear as she healed and could do things for herself.
"I think its time to get the mission reports, Daniel." Jack said, "Maybe going through those will help her remember what happened."
"Good idea, Jack." I responded just as Sam let out a massive yawn.
"Later. Right now, she needs rest." Janet ordered and ushered both Jack and me out of her room leaving Teal'c to watch over her slumber. She had made fantastic progress in the last two days. If she continued like this, hopefully we would not have to get MacKenzie involved for anything other than her psych evaluation to return to active duty, not that that would be happening anytime soon. Still things were looking up.
A/N: Is it 'discreet' or 'discrete'? My spellchecker cannot seem to make its mind up and both versions appear in the English dictionary with the same meaning. I feel like locking my spellchecker in a room with both versions of the word for them to duke it out. In the meantime, you may see both versions of the word throughout because I have given up arguing with my computer who has been as indecisive as a dog with too many bums to sniff.
A/N: Australian English, US English, English English! Gah! Dictionaries of the world, why can't we just have one type of English! OK, now I am done. 😝