Planetary Shifts 1: Watching
Planetary Shifts 1: Watching
by Rowan Darkstar
Summary: Jack is watching. There's nothing he can do.
Category: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Series, 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: 2004-11-28
Betas rock: Foxcat, Teddy E, and annaK
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com) Copyright (c) 2004
The bar and grille is dark and cool. Red and blue glass lights hide people's real lives.
He has been in this booth too long. He has finished his food, he has nursed too many beers. He's sitting here on the pretense of letting the beer clear his system before he makes the drive home.
He's in a far corner, sheltered by shadows.
She's sitting with Pete in a booth along the main wall. She might see him if she really looked. But she's not looking tonight. The lights from the stained glass chandelier play across her pale skin like firelight. He knows. He's sat around a thousand fires with her.
He's watching. He can't take his eyes off of her. He should leave. She's in a public place, but he's invading her privacy, he knows this. Her privacy is one thing he has always respected to a fault. He has always respected her right to be someone he does not know.
Some days he's not certain this was the right way to live. Others he knows it is all he ever had.
Carter's hair is a little longer this year. *Or maybe it's Samantha's hair.* He likes it longer. Not because it makes her any more beautiful; she is forever beautiful. But because she seems to enjoy it, and because her blond locks catch the light and tickle the soft skin at her temples. He knows the skin at her temples is soft, because she cried when Janet died, and somewhere in those blurry first days, he brushed his lips against her temple.
Soft.
He can't take his eyes off of her.
Carter's hurting tonight. Something on the job hurt her. And he can't stand this. He never could. Every little scar takes a little bit of her away she will never get back, he will never get back. He has hated this since their first mission to P3X-593, when that bastard Turghan held her with rough hands. She came back to the team with nothing more than a few welts on her back. But her eyes have never been the same. She came back a little worse for the wear. She came back with something missing, and something in its place he knows too intimately. He almost wished she had killed the scum, knifed him to death on the spot. He thanks some kind of god each day that she walked away. She would have lost so much more. As would he.
Jack wishes he had killed Turghan himself. He had nothing left to lose but anger.
He has watched everything ravage her. Jolinar to Nirrti to Anubis to Fifth. And he has done all he can.
Like hell he has.
Something on the job hurt her today.
The hell of it is, he doesn't know what it was. He missed it completely. He has gone over the mission reports, sifted through hour by hour of what he knows they went through--a hundred times. He can't find it. He doesn't know why her "Goodnight, sir" was washed in grey. Doesn't know why the skin around her baby blues was a breath too tight.
At the start of the mission she was the brightest light in the SGC.
She has picked at her dinner while Pete downed a burger.
Pete is watching her, too. Jack sees it. And that is some kind of comfort. And some kind of pain.
Pete reaches a hand across to caress Carter's long fingers. He's working on her, urging her to talk. And Jack thinks she's starting to. He can't hear a word. Can't even catch the sound of her voice. But he can see her eyes. And he knows when she starts opening up. Knows when she starts letting Pete glimpse her pain. She's a little angry, a little hard. But that's Carter when she's hurt.
By the time their waitress asks about dessert and they shake their heads, Carter is speaking earnestly, pleading for some kind of justification from someone who can't know the whole story. From someone who can't understand what all of this means to her. Who hasn't held her while her DNA dissolved or touched her face while her symbiote gave its life to restore her breath.
It's not long before Pete is standing beside her and holding out his hand. Jack thinks, for a moment, they have decided to leave. Then he realizes Pete has asked her to dance. O'Neill thinks this is crazy. She doesn't need to dance. She needs to talk.
But Sam almost smiles, for the first time all night. And she takes his hand, and lets him lead her to the makeshift dance floor, really just a gathering of bodies in the vicinity of the jukebox.
Something soft is playing. Something Jack doesn't even know if Carter would like. There's a lot he doesn't know.
For a while they are talking more than dancing. Carter's still looking at Pete with those pleading eyes of hers that Jack has never been able to deny. She's wearing a soft, flowing skirt, and a sweater that drapes over everything just the way it should. But those eyes--those eyes convinced him to take on a fucking symbiote to save his own fucked up life. And smiled at him when he woke up home again.
His stomach burns when he realizes she has started to cry.
He should have left the last beer. He should have left the girl long ago.
She looks self-conscious, but not about Pete. About the time and place.
Pete has gotten through. His hand is on her hip. His other hand is on her face, in her hair. He is stroking her, soothing her, keeping her talking. He kisses her eyebrow, caresses her cheek, nods his head. Carter is looking at him, pleading, like nothing has been accomplished, nothing has been solved, and this doesn't surprise Jack, because anything that hurts Carter enough to make her cry in the middle of a restaurant is something too big for the world to solve.
But as he watches them move, fall into a real dance step; as he watches her words fade out and her eyes close as she listens to the music and the beat of her heart, or his heart, or both--he thinks tonight she didn't need the problem solved.
Pete's arms slide around her, and she moves in closer, willing and pliant beneath his hands. *Carter always let him touch her. Why didn't he do it more?* And then she is resting her head on Pete's shoulder, eyes closed. She is nestling into his warmth, and she seems unaware or uncaring of where she is, only of whom she is with.
It is time for him to go.
Carter brushes at her nose with the back of her hand, catches a tear at the corner of her eye, then settles back on Pete's shoulder. Pete cups a hand to the back of her head and Jack looks away.
He doesn't wait for the server. He makes a few quick calculations in his head that Carter would have made for him on another night, and he tosses a wad of bills onto the table.
He has to walk near the dance floor to get out the door.
He looks straight ahead. He doubts Carter opens her eyes. He doubts Pete looks up at all. But Jack has moved just close enough to hear her wet sniff, to hear her clear her throat. He would recognize her in the dark.
The night is wide open and cool. This place is just outside town, not too many lights blocking out the ceiling of stars. He sits on the hood of his truck, looking up. *'Hey, Carter? Which planet do you think that is?' 'That's not a planet, sir, that's a star.' 'Hey, Carter? Which planet do you think that is?' She smiles for a moment. Gets it. Lowers her gaze. 'How about ALF's, sir?' 'Naannh. ALF's is further away.' 'So, what is it, sir?' 'Somewhere with more sun than this place. All year. And big green oceans.' 'And lots of beer and girls in bikinis?.' 'No. Just us.' 'Hey, guys, Teal'c's got the tent set up on the far side of the hill, so....' She heard it.* Or he always thought she heard, and thought she heard all the rest, on all the hundreds of other days. Maybe she never did. Maybe she never wanted to. Maybe. Maybe there is a reason they are here tonight.
*Sam's head on his shoulder. Thera's head on his shoulder. Sam's hand over his and a quiet sigh and wind-tossed hair that smelled like fresh rain. And a moment when he was just Charlie's Dad again.*
Time for him to go.
***** rowan_d1@yahoo.com http://rowan_d.tripod.com/
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Rowan Darkstar
Heliopolis Main Archive
A Stargate: SG-1 Fanfiction Site
Planetary Shifts 1: Watching
by Rowan DarkstarSite Navigation
Support Heliopolis