AU: Jack's request for Sam to stay with him is not received well by everyone. Samantha makes a realisation that she wants to keep under wraps.
Chapter 17: Indeo Sam!
Monday, 15th March 2004 – 0300 hours – O'Neill Household – Samantha O'Neill
A sudden elbow to my ribs pulled me out of a restful sleep. Sitting up, I found him gripping his head with clawlike fingers while gritting his teeth.
"Jack!" I reached for him only to be brushed away.
"Incursus… incursus… adventus." He said in words I did not understand. "Indeo Sam… Indeo… Carter, comdo." The only thing I understood was Sam and Carter, so I put my hand on his cheek.
"I'm here. I think."
"No…" He barked, then climbed out of our bed only to fall in a heap when the sheets wrapped around his feet. "Fuck!" He yelled. Now that I understood. Getting up, I ran to the other side where he had fallen. "Anubis adventus…" He said and reached out to touch my face. "Get… C-Carter." He struggled to say then screamed and gripped his head again.
Jumping up, I ran to Dad's room and flung the door open, "Sam! Sam!" I cried out, seeing the two sleeping figures sit bolt upright. As expected, John slept closest to the door. "It's Jack… somethings wrong. He's talking that crazy language again and gripping his head. I don't know what to do." I cried, the unexpected bout of tears accompanying the honking sob as I held my hand over my mouth, petrified that I would wake Grace. I knew that Jack didn't want her to see him struggle through this.
"It's OK. C'mon." Sam said as she gingerly stood up wearing one of Jack's Air Force shirts. It hadn't occurred to me that neither of them had any sleeping clothes and that Jack had given them his spare set to sleep in. John had taken the pants while Sam used his shirt. "What is he saying?" She asked as we walked up the hallway to our bedroom.
"I dunno… incursus adventus or something."
"The invasion is coming." John supplied then shrugged with a smile when we both looked at him funny. "I may have learned a bit of the language." He replied returning a cheeky smile that lit up his face just like my husbands.
"Since when, and how?" Sam asked so incredulously that I pictured her standing with her hands on her hips and tapping her foot. John just gave her a long-suffering look and pretended to play golf. "Oh right, I remember now." She said with a blush. Rather than provide any background on that memory, she marched through the door and straight over to Jack who was still on the ground in an upright foetal position rocking himself and muttering while pulling his hair. "Jack. Jack." She tried, but he didn't stop. "Sir! It's Carter." When she said that, he snapped his head up.
"Carter… asordo comdo… com-do." He said then closed his eyes and jammed his fists into his head. Watching him in so much pain was hard because I had no idea what to do. "Putago… indeo… you.' He ground out in two languages, one I understood and the other I had no idea about. "Ahh…" He cried out again trying to bury his hands into his skull.
"He needs help. Puta… umm…" John muttered and closed his eyes. I could see his lips moving. "I think I need you to help. Or something like that." John eventually said.
"John, get my Restavit." She ordered, asking for a relatively common sleeping aid.
"You know that won't work for long, Sam." He said while crossing his arms which made me remember that he probably recalled the first time that this had happened to Jack.
"I know. But it might be enough to get him to calm down. It's either that, or we take him to the base and get Janet to shoot him up with Valium." She stated clearly while trying to soothe Jack. The wince on John's face was enough to confirm that he hated needles and hospitals as much as Jack did.
"Right. Restavit it is." He agreed, then darted off back to Dad's room.
"Na-Naqua…" He tried to say in English but couldn't get the word out.
"Naquadah? You need Naquadah or you need my Naquadah?" Sam sought to clarify. Jack merely nodded and gritted his teeth while pushing out a harsh breath laced with pain.
"OK. I think." She replied and wrapped her arm around him to get closer. I didn't know much about Naquadah in a person's blood because I hadn't interacted with the Tok'ra.
He was still on the floor, and I dreaded to think how his knees would hold up being scrunched up like that, but since Sam was on the ground beside him, I figured she would have as hard a time getting up, if not more so than him. He was gripping Sam's hand so tight that I feared he would crush it, but at least he had stopped screaming. She had tipped his head to rest against her collarbone while she murmured that he was OK, that he would get through this and to stay strong. For her, for me and for Grace. I felt so helpless and for the first time in years, I envied her for the connection she had with my husband borne from their shared history and the bond they had forged under fire.
"Here." John said as he shook the small blue packet at Sam. "Give him half first, like we do with you. The last thing we need is for him to be knocked out for 12 hours." Sam nodded as John passed her half a tablet and coaxed Jack to take it with a little water from a bottle John handed her.
"Why?" I asked because surely having him get some sleep was better than having him lucid and in pain.
"We kinda need him to find what he needs and get through the Gate. We have no idea how long we have until Kinsey manages to pull the proverbial plug." Sam informed us with a strained look on her face. "We're on a tight schedule."
"Fucking Kinsey, should've killed that b… bastard." Jack ground out in full English while squeezing his eyes closed and pressing his temple into Sam.
"Amen to that." John muttered. "I wouldn't have missed."
"W-wouldn't have sh-shot him…" Jack added with a heavy breath, "Not worth a bullet."
"True. Strangulation is much better, hey old man." John agreed as he patted his shoulder. Jack barked out a pain filled laugh.
"Nah, I'd zat him once, let him recover, then do it again just to watch him dance the funky chicken." Sam provided her two cents worth regarding how they were going to kill a sitting US Senator whom I had only heard of before in my reality, but never met.
Jack laughed again. "R'mind me ta n'ver piss you off Carter." He muttered with a much more subdued tone of voice. He had even relaxed a little and was back to speaking in full English. Sam giggled and lifted his head to check out his eyes. Whatever she saw made her smile and she stroked his sweat matted hair back from his face, a sigh of relief coming from her mouth.
"C'mon, let's get you up and into bed." She coaxed him, pulling another laugh from my husband.
"That an invitation, Colonel?" Jack muttered to which she merely raised an eyebrow in John's direction who braced himself and pulled Jack to his feet. Sure enough the audible sound of his knees – particularly the left one – cracking filled the otherwise quiet room. As soon as he was on his feet, I took his weight from John and guided him over to our bed, sitting him on the edge. Meanwhile, John was helping a very unsteady Sam get to her feet.
"You should've let me sit down Sam. You know your joints are going to scream at you tomorrow." John berated his charge. She chuckled.
"What do you mean tomorrow? They already are screaming at me." She retorted with a stretch of her back and neck filling the room with another chorus of cracking. Yuk! I hated that sound above anything else.
"Oh, for crying out loud! Do you guys have to do that?" I complained at both my husband and Sam.
"Hey, when you are as old as me with as many cranky bones and joints as me then you can complain." Sam bit off a little more harshly than I was expecting.
"Carter. Did you just tell yourself off?" Jack asked with a wry smile, his hand reached out to take hers almost as if he needed to maintain contact with her.
"Oh, please. As if you haven't done the same thing to John." She replied allowing him to hold her hand. It didn't escape my notice that he was running his thumb along her palm, and I wasn't sure I was happy about that.
"Hey, don't bring me into your little lovers tiff." John flung back holding his hands up, only to receive a backhanded cuff across his shoulder from Sam's free hand for his efforts. "Ow. Hey! Child abuse." He mocked by holding his arm as if it were broken.
"Pfft! Please, after what I've done with you, that barely registers." Sam replied as she accepted his help to walk back to their room. I could not believe I was hearing this. I still hadn't reconciled that my older – much older – extratemporal self was sleeping with a 16-year-old version of my husband. Though Jack didn't seem to have an issue with it one iota. Though, since he was Jack… that meant he could… oh! I had to swallow and look away from him because my mind was filling my head with images of all the things that Jack could do and had done to me. Suddenly I was him doing all the same things to her, then me, then both of us. Holy Hannah, suddenly there were four of us in my brain and I had to shut those thought down lest I give away my inner turmoil. They were still holding hands; he was still caressing her palm. As she pulled her hand away, Jack looked up at me with desperation in his eyes.
"Stay. Please, Sam." He asked, though he was looking at me with an apology dancing in his eyes. I knew he loved me, but he needed something right now that I couldn't give him. Both John and Sam looked at me, whether it was saying sorry or seeking permission for her to sleep with my husband, I wasn't certain. Suddenly those rampart thoughts returned, so I shut them down afraid I'd be found out.
"I'll stay with Grace." I announced as morosely as I could.
"No. It's a king bed, angel. I just… I need… I'm sorry." Jack apologised with a look of pure anguish on his face. Rarely did he show so much emotion, so whatever this download was doing to him meant he lacked the ability to keep things hidden.
"Samantha?" Sam asked multiple questions with just my name, though the main one was whether this was OK with me. It wasn't, but I knew he needed her, and I had never been able to deny him anything. Nodding my assent slowly made her smile. "OK, I'll get my pillow."
"Our pillows." John added, then pointed to himself, "Little spoon." Then he pointed to Sam, "Big, bigger and biggest." He finished by pointing at Jack and finally me.
"Should we put him in the middle? More Naquadah." Sam asked with a wry smile as she made her move towards the door causing John to pull a yuk face. I could not help but giggle just imagining Jack hugging himself.
"Carter. I am only going to say this once. Hell no. I am not hugging, nor being hugged by another man… even if he is me." John replied as he closed our door. Looking at my husband who appeared better now that he was calm, though I could sense that he was struggling to not curl up again. I guess seeing him visibly start getting worse the minute she was out of the room was enough to help me understand that he really needed that contact. I had no idea how he was going to get through the voyage without her being there, but I guess by then, the download would have taken over a lot more of him, so maybe he wouldn't feel it.
"What's wrong?" He asked me, patting the edge of the bed.
"Don't you think that's innately wrong?" I asked thumbing over my shoulder in the direction of our other selves.
"Sure, if they were normal people." He said with a shrug of his shoulders. "You forget that kid has the mind of a 52-year-old man. With the exception of the last eight months, he is me. He has all my memories. He feels the same pain from the loss of Charlie, and he fiercely loves his Samantha Carter, who is – incidentally – also my Samantha Carter." He reminded me, reaching out to take my hand in his. He was shaking but he wasn't cold. If anything he was running a temperature. "Unlike you and her, him and me, we lived exactly same life right up until Loki decided to play God. I knew before I contacted him that he'd fall head over heels in love with her and that age would not matter." He explained, his fingers curling around mine.
"But Jack, she's got what, maybe five years left in her life. How could you do that to him?" I asked, willing him to see that he had set his clone up for heartbreak from the start. He looked at me, the truth of things reflecting in his eyes. I gasped. "Less?" He gripped my hand and raised my knuckles to his lips.
"A few months, if she's lucky, but if I've learned anything from taking that leap after seven years of holding the line, it's that a life without love is no life at all. I had the best three weeks of my life when I finally let myself love her the way she deserved." He confessed. "The Sam in that other room never got her Jack and I saw firsthand the devastation that caused her. There was no way I was ever going to let another Carter go through that. I love you Samantha, but you have to understand that I also love her." He finished with a sad smile and a heavy breath. There was sweat beading across his forehead again. When the door opened, I was relieved that they had come back.
Squeezing Jack's hand, I climbed onto the bed and turned on my side. Jack snuggled up with his back to mine, then Sam climbed in followed by John. It kind of reminded me of that story about X number of people in the bed rolling over until they all fell out. My husband sighed as he wrapped his arms around Sam the way he would normally do with me. Yet I found I could not be jealous, because in the end he would come back to me. Sure, for four months, he would have no idea who I was, until Thor helped. When her time was up, John would lose her and that was the most heartbreaking thing of all.
"Hands, Jack. Hands." Sam muttered earning a 'sorry Carter, habit' from Jack. I heard him breath in deep and noticed that his shaking had stopped, and temperature seemed to have normalised a little. Although I was not used to being the hugger, normally having Jack wrapped around me, I found that finding slumber again now that Jack was in a better place came easier than I was expecting.