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P6J878.
It's a mundane mission, on a mundane planet, and a year ago -- a few months ago -- they would have baulked at the suggestion that they take it on. It's the kind of mission reserved for new recruits, or teams who've been off on extended leave and need to ease back into the swing of things. At best, it's a follow up mission; at worst, a waste of their time.
The fact that not one of them said a word speaks volumes.
She takes each sample carefully, scraping through the layers of soil inch by inch. When they find the river a few clicks away, she fills each vial to exactly four-fifths. Her handwriting on each label is meticulous.
It's repetitive work, and she takes her time. Over the years she's become inured to grabbing a handful of dirt and a boot-full of water on the run, an angry horde firing at her back. It feels alien to focus, to decide, to label.
Beside her, Daniel examines every stone, every pebble, every rock, with a similar degree of intensity. When she passes him her pen, he smiles at her, the expression sweet but tired. She knows he visits Sarah almost daily, and she can't remember the last time he laid claim to more than a few hours sleep.
"I think they missed this," he says, holding up a shard of stone. It's shaped like an arrowhead. "You know, before."
She nods, and gestures to her samples. "This too," she says.
They're both stretching -- this planet has been extensively scanned, mapped, investigated and sampled already -- but the illusion helps.
They turn back to their labels.
She's not self-centred enough to believe that the mission is all about her. Sure, some of it is -- the metaphorical ink on her medical clearance papers was hardly dry when the General handed them the mission file -- but that can't be the only reason. SG1 has always run the injuries gamut, and they've never been given a Planet for Dummies on their return to active duty before.
She watches Teal'c and the Colonel. They're on the far side of the clearing, pacing a slow perimeter along the edge of the forest. She can't tell if they're talking, but she thinks not. For not the first time, she thinks Teal'c's been more taciturn than usual lately.
She wishes she knew what he needs from them.
The Colonel wanders over just as she's considering packing up. "How's it going?"
"Good," says Daniel.
"Fine," she says.
The Colonel nods. "I've sent Teal'c back to the 'gate with a sitrep." He chucks a thumb over his shoulder. "We'll set up camp over there. You guys will be finished by morning, right?"
Technically, they were finished within five minutes of stepping onto the planet. "Sure," says Daniel.
"No problem," she says.
They encamp near the tree line. While she and Teal'c set up the tents, Daniel and the Colonel collect water and kindling. It feels good to do something constructive.
Dinner is MRE's, and she tries not to think about the meal Pete was planning to make tonight. He won't be happy that the mission was extended, but she doesn't care. Can't care. She needs constellations that aren't hers above her head.
The Colonel divvies up the watches after dinner and, one by one, the men leave her alone at the campfire.
She wishes they hadn't.
She packs away what's left of their dinner, stokes the fire, and looks for chore after chore to keep occupied. Anything to keep from sitting and thinking. She's tired of thinking -- it's all she did during medical leave.
Sometimes, though, there's only so many ways to stave. When there's nothing left to do, she paces the perimeter of their camp and recites the periodic table.
Alphabetically (Actinium, Aluminum, Americium), numerically (Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium) and by density (Osmium, Iridium, Platinum). She's careful to include naquadah.
Eventually, her watch beeps, and she wakes Daniel with a cup of coffee.
"Anything interesting going on?" He yawns, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
She shakes her head as she fumbles through her pack for her toiletries kit. "Not a thing."
He nods and yawns again as she walks away. "Don't go too far," he says and she gives him a little wave before breaching the tree line.
The woods are pitch dark, and decidedly gloomy, so she breaks hard right once inside and keeps parallel to the clearing. The torch on her P90 picks a steady path through the leaf litter. When she finally stops and looks back, their campfire is a distant glow.
There's a fallen tree nearby and once she's peed and brushed her teeth and changed the bandage on her leg, she sags against it, her elbows digging into bark and her face in her hands.
Life, she thinks, closing her eyes, used to be so much easier than this.
Which is a lie, she knows, because her life has never been (and never will) be easy... and she also knows that this is just a reaction to her father leaving and her feeling less than a hundred percent (god knows she's been injured enough over the years to know the post-wound-slump routine backwards).
She knows all this, really she does.
Maybe Pete was right. Maybe this mission is too soon.
Or not soon enough.
And maybe she should take her tired ass back to camp and get some sleep before she depresses herself even further.
When she turns around, however, he's standing there, his back against a tree and a P90 dangling deceptively from his right hand. Even though it's dark, a cap shades his eyes from her view. She doesn't mind. She knows he's not really looking at her anyway.
She waits for him to say something, anything. When he doesn't she walks towards him and does not stop until his hand raises to wrap around her nape and her face buries into the curve where his shoulder meets his neck, her fingers finding his hip.
He smells like sweat, and gun oil. She breathes shallowly, not wanting to drown.
Okay? he asks, but his mouth never moves and the word is felt, not heard, as his fingers move on the scruff of her neck. A tap for every dot, a stroke for every line.
She works her hand under his shirt, bridges hip to lower back, and taps out a reply. Okay.
Morse code. Her father taught her and Mark, years ago when they were little and so very eager for time with Dad --
You should be resting.
The last word seems to take forever, and she closes her eyes -- does not ask why they're conversing in morse because she knows why, has always known that for them, if nothing's said out loud, then nothing's said at all -- and taps out a response. I am.
It's been too long since she's attempted this with any kind of sentence structure and that bothers her. The last time had been with Pete at the movies a few weeks ago, when she'd tapped out bathroom on his arm before slipping from her seat. Now her fingers flex against an L1 and L2 meaninglessly and she forces herself to concentrate.
Oh, I could hide 'neath the wings, she practices, of the bluebird as she sings.
It takes an age to say and it's longer still before he replies. Okay.
Radio, she tries to explain, this morning.
In the car on the way to work, trying hard to concentrate on this easy-bake mission and not...
Pete hadn't understood her message at the movies either.
My dad, she starts, and stops.
His hand is silent on her neck; patient.
My dad, and again with the stopping. She takes a deep breath and then lets it out. Lets it all out. My dad has gone away and it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair. Her fingers falter and there is more but she knows she's incapable of further coherency.
So her fingers beat against his back without rhyme or reason, no longer paying attention as she instead remembers too much from not nearly long enough. All alone on the Prometheus and Pete getting hurt and running from the drone --
Morse code was never designed for this sort of conversation anyway.
The woods are too quiet and there's always the possibility (no matter how remote or far-fetched) that a drone is here, somehow, somewhere, lurking in the shadowy foliage. Her teeth bare against his neck at the thought.
You once thought of me, he says unexpectedly, as a white knight on his steed.
Her eyes open and she wonders if he can feel her eyelashes moving on his skin.
Practice, he says. Just sayin'.
She shudders but does not reply.
She wants her dad, and Pete, and ice-cream with Janet. Her leg aches and the remaining stitches itch; a headache blooms slowly but surely behind her right eye. She never gets to see Mark and her niece and nephew and not long ago she watched too many men and women die.
Lieutenant Glenn had been twenty-six and following orders: her temporising had cost him his life. Hudson and Raseuf and Gorman all fell under the drone's indiscriminate fire, and she'll probably never know whose weapon delivered the shot that killed Bek'ta in a burst cross-fire.
She remembers the hot lick of fire from the self-destruct and the resulting shockwave that sent them tumbling, like leaves lost in a storm. She remembers scrambling helplessly away from her father as he'd shouted, go! go! go! and fired useless blasts at the drone's back.
Then hiding in leaf litter, her blood sticky on her palms. Thirsty and scared and defenceless and tired and always running, running, running --
Her tears are hot on her cheeks and his carotid chants the letter 'e' over and over again against her eyebrow. Fingers flutter on her neck slowly, unintelligibly -- he could be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance for all she knows -- but the cadence is reassuring, soothing.
She breaks silently against his body, her right hand splayed on his back, fingers clenching wordlessly, and the left brushing his sidearm. His fingers slow gradually until all that's left is the beat of his pulse and the tears she has cried.
His neck is damp with them. She dries his skin with her lips and tongue.
His hand tightens on her neck, fingers digging further and further into her flesh until the pain is too much and she knows one more contraction will crush the vertebrae there.
So she stops. Rests her temple on his shoulder; her breathing heavy. Neither of them apologises. She understands.
She was hurting him too.
A noise.
Instantly she arcs to her right, collecting his sidearm as she moves (it's closer than her weapon). His P90 rises, their arms parallel as they sight for a target. Unspoken choreography.
Anything? she asks, her palm on his back still, his on her neck.
No.
A snake emerges from the undergrowth a few feet away, just to prove him wrong, and hisses petulantly.
They watch it slither away.
She curves back into his body as smoothly as she left, his P90-laden arm lowering again but not as far this time. If she were to shift a little, the weapon would brush against her thigh. She doesn't move.
She considers closing her eyes again.
We should probably --
Yeah. She swallows hard. Sir --
Don't.
They head back together quietly, carefully not talking (verbally or physically). Teal'c studiously doesn't watch them approach and she makes sure not to look at either of them as she slips into her tent.
In the morning they pack up camp and finish their surveys, Daniel dialling them home before lunch. As she waits for the wormhole to engage, she thinks about the quick weekend away Pete's proposing after the President's documentary but before month's end.
Maybe they'll go to San Diego and visit Mark. That'd be nice.
Daniel and Teal'c leave first and the Colonel stands at the event horizon, trailing his fingers through the faux-water. Absently, she wonders what the temperature is. Without looking at her he asks, "okay?"
She's not, of course. Her father is still gone and too much is still happening in too short a time. But for just a moment she closes her eyes and remembers last night, remembers his body against hers. Remembers the way he'd held her, comforted her, talked with her.
Understood her.
He's becoming a bad habit again. Physically, now, as well as emotionally. A worse habit, really, and she's fast coming to realise that she's let go of the wrong thing. That letting go of her restraint and the distance she's always maintained between herself and the rest of the world is not the same as giving up a certain Colonel.
She thinks she used to be much smarter than this.
"Carter?" he asks, when she's silent too long.
Opening her eyes, she nods and reshoulders her pack, liking the way the wormhole tinges his profile blue.
Liking it way too much.
"Okay," she lies, and follows him home.
The End
