She Sleeps
She Sleeps
by Rowan Darkstar
Summary: Pete watches Sam sleep. And he has everything.almost everything.he ever wanted.
Category: Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, POV, Romance, Thoughts
Season: Season 8
Pairing: Jack/Sam, Sam/Pete
Rating: GEN
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 2004-09-05
Betas are golden: Fulinn, Teddy E, and AnnaK
Copyright (c) 2004
He likes to watch her sleep.
She likes to open the blinds of her bedroom window, just a bit, before dousing the light for the night. She wants the gentle rays of the sun to wake her on the rare mornings she gets to sleep beyond the sunrise. Sam Carter loves the sun.
When Pete wakes beside her, before her, he gets to see the thin rays of golden light on her freckled skin. He gets to see the highlights in her platinum hair.
He knows she used to wear her hair shorter. She would be beautiful with any style. But he likes it longer like this, thinks it suits who she is. Practical, but soft and sweet. Sam in a nutshell.
She's had a hard week. She's deeply tired. He doesn't know all that she's been through, only sees the toll it has taken on her. She may have been able to tell him the bare essentials of what she does every day, but he knows it is just a skeleton framework. She offers bits and fragments here and there, and he tries to build walls from the raw studs, but he knows he'll never see the finished product.
He knows that hurts her.
She started to cry one day, out of the blue, under a clear bright sky, eating lunch on the balcony of his apartment in Denver--because she would never be able to share her whole life with him. Even if she quit the Air Force tomorrow, everything that came before would still be hers to carry alone.
He hates her tears. He hasn't pushed so hard, since then.
Most days, he can't believe Samantha Carter has chosen to be with him. She is out of his league. All she has learned, all she has seen, all she understands. Her passion, her brilliance, that stunning beauty of which she seems so absurdly unaware. She is different from the women he has cared for in the past.
Pete loved his wife, in the best way he knew how at that time in his life. He wasn't the perfect husband. He loved her.
But Sam. Sam...being in a room with Sam shifts the elements of his universe in a way even *she* wouldn't be able to explain.
He felt it for the first time the night he took her to the old couple's anniversary party. Stupid idea, probably. Anyone else would have thought he was crazy. But walking into the hotel, making her close her eyes, and hearing her lively teasing--*'Can I open 'em now? Can I open 'em now?'*--a theoretical astrophysicist sounding like an eight year old girl, and he had fallen into boyish laughter and Sam Carter had melted his heart. The warmth radiating from her grin, the affection in the grasp of her hand, spread through his stomach like warm chocolate. He'd forgotten how it felt for the world to be so warm, so perfect, just as it stood. She gives that back to him.
He doesn't pretend to understand her. Sam will always be her own. Sometimes her sky-pale eyes are so far away, he doesn't dare venture toward such foreign horizons. Sometimes something hurts her for a shadow of a moment, and she twines her fingers through his, takes comfort in his presence. He lets that be enough. She told him once, in the life she has chosen, she either accepts her fate to be alone, or she finds someone generous enough to accept only the part of her she is able to give. She knows this is too much to ask of anyone. Such a gift must be given willingly and insistently.
He can do this. Only for Sam. Walking away when she needs him? He tried that once, to protect his own skin. The moment haunts him. And as deep as they are entwined now--it will never happen again.
There's a ring on her finger, catching the rays of the morning sun. There's a combat bracelet on her opposite wrist. There's a scar on her leg where the white of her thigh flashes out from beneath the covers. He understands one out of three.
And he knows his time is precious. This morning, she sleeps, contented and safe in his love, accepting of the wondrous gift she has given him, ready to build their life together. She does love him, he believes that, sees it in her eyes, feels it in her fingers on his forehead on tired, rainy nights. But it's not quite the same as the way he loves her.
He knows this.
Three days ago, she collapsed in his arms. His heart nearly stopped; so much for his academy training on calm in a crisis. One moment they were walking through the park across from her house, the next her knees let go and he was struggling to hold her weight. And he grabbed *her* cell phone and called General O'Neill because he knows enough to understand he can't take Samantha to a regular hospital.
Half an hour later and a ride in General O'Neill's truck with Sam half-conscious against his shoulder and Pete was inside the SGC again, helping O'Neill lower Sam onto a gurney. She was barely conscious by then. But everyone was telling him it was okay--something about an alien virus, something they had all picked up on their last mission, but they had thought she was immune. That same damned thing they had never explained to him that prevented her from being treated in anything but a top secret medical facility. Apparently she hadn't been immune; it had just taken her longer to show the symptoms.
They had a cure, they told him. Everyone else was okay. But he had never seen Sam so pale...
In the infirmary, the doctors were hooking her up to an IV and he was being urged out of the way at the foot of the bed. General O'Neill was still near her head and caught her outstretched hand as Pete moved forward to do the same. Sam half-opened her eyes and whispered, "Sir?" And Jack O'Neill had his face close near Sam's. "They gotcha. You're gonna be fine."
The pain creasing Sam's brow hit Pete like a punch to the gut, the single tear slipping from the corner of her eye. "It hurts," she whispered.
Pete pushed against the insistent hand of the airmen before him.
General O'Neill combed his hand through Sam's hair, smoothed his thumb across the lines on her brow. "I know. But the meds help right away. Trust me," he said gently. And Sam closed her eyes and nodded and a moment later she was asleep. The drugs had kicked in.
O'Neill touched Pete on the shoulder as he moved away, and told him Sam was going to be okay. He showed him down the hall to a room with coffee and candy machines and a place to sit and wait.
Pete took his girl home a few hours later. She slept it off like a 24 hour flu.
But he will never be the same.
Seeing her almost die--he knew he loved her, but he hadn't really known how much. How much... How shattered he would be if she were taken away.
But more than that. He saw the limit to his time with her.
She sleeps. And she thinks he is enough for her, she thinks they're going to be okay. Maybe for today, they are. And he knows he'll stay as long as there is the slimmest glimpse of maybe. He hates himself for this, but he can't do anything else when he sees her smile. But he has seen the limit; witnessed truths that should never have been classified, yet somehow were.
He gets almost everything he has ever wanted. He gets to warm her in the middle of the night and feel her arms tight around him. He gets to laugh at Cary Grant movies with her, he gets to shove her up against a wall and feel her bite his neck, he gets to drown in her half-closed eyes by firelight. He gets to wrestle with her for the remote control and end up laughing and kissing, he gets to hear her argue with her brother on the phone, and wish she could have a dog. He gets to see her cook ravioli and feel her tired weight against his shoulder at a midnight movie and feel her lips against his and her breasts against his chest and her fingers in the back pockets of his jeans and her tears against his neck in the middle of the night--
--but for as long as she stays, as long as she may say it's forever--
--he will never have--
He will never have...
He will never have.
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