"Sir," Carter said, "I think you should know that General Hammond authorized me to take command of the team if I determined that you ..."
"Do it now," Jack said. He could feel his mind slipping away from him - the last thing he needed was someone expecting command decisions.
"Sir, I don't think that's necessary ...," Carter objected.
"I trust you," Jack said. More than anyone he'd ever known. "I'll make it easy for you. I resign. You're in charge."
"Okay." Carter paused. "Sir; at your house before Daniel and Teal'c showed up, what I was gonna say was ..."
"I know." Jack slammed the rack of crystals back into place, his fron now screaming from all the information flooding into it. He couldn't deal with Carter - with Sam - now.
And he did know. He wasn't stupid. He knew.
Several months later:
"O'Neill, the weapon worked," Thor reported from his ship. "Reports from the colony say all the remaining Replicators have been neutralized. While the ship did escape, at least we have an effective means of fighting them now."
Great. Freakin' great. In the meantime, Sam's missing - trapped somewhere with that SOB Fifth. "Yeah, well, at least there's that."
"O'Neill - I am detecting a fourth life sign in your immediate vicinity."
Sam?
Jack, Teal'c (with hair!) and Daniel spread out, looking for a certain blonde Major.
"Sam!" Daniel shouted. "Sam!"
"Carter!" Jack hollered. So help me, Sam; you'd better not be dead. Jack had had a lot of time to think after he'd let that sucker suck his brain, and it was time to make some changes.
"Over here!" Teal'c shouted.
Jack and Daniel ran over and saw Teal'c helping Carter sit up. Blonde hair disheveled, wearing a black tank and BDUs, she'd never looked so great to one bird Colonel as she did right now.
"You okay?" Jack asked, putting a gentle hand to her thigh. She was real! She was alive!
Carter nodded her head with a small smile, her large eyes flickering over his face. "Glad to see you, sir," she said.
"Likewise," Jack replied. Really glad to see you, Sam. God, those eyes! Just before he'd taken the big snooze, he'd stared into those baby blues, imprinting them onto his rapidly unspooling mind. He took her hand and drew her gently to her feet. "Time to go home, huh, Carter?"
She smiled again. "Yes, sir," she replied.
Sam Carter curled up on the weird shelf-thing the Asgard used as beds and shivered. She didn't think she was ever going to feel warm again. In fact ... the only bit of her that wasn't frozen was her thigh, where the Colonel had touched her gently.
"Hey, Carter; ya decent?" the man himself called from outside her quarters.
She sat up and swung her legs onto the floor. "Yes, sir," she replied.
The door opened and one Jack O'Neill - hale, hearty and handsome (Shut up, Sam!) - strolled in, arms full of blankets. "Figured you'd be cold, Carter," he said, dropping them on the bed.
"Thank you, sir," she replied, grabbing one of the blankets and dragging it around her shoulders. She looked at him as he sat down beside her. "Couldn't sleep, sir?"
He grimaced. "I think after doing the Rip Van Winkle thing for three months, I'm not gonna need to sleep for weeks." Then his features sagged, making him suddenly look his age. "And I just remembered about ... the Doc."
Oh, God, Janet. From the Colonel's perspective, Janet's death had only occurred less than a month go. "Sir ...," Sam said tentatively, putting her hand on his hard forearm and squeezing it gently. "I miss her too," she said.
"Yeah." The Colonel shifted on the bed. "I always gave her such a bad time in the Infirmary - gave as good as she got."
Sam chuckled. Janet Fraiser had probably been the shortest member of the SGC, but she'd also been one of the few people Colonel Jack O'Neill had actually feared. "She knew, sir," she said. "Under all the grouching, she knew you did actually like her."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, she kept us all relatively sane for seven years - pulled our asses out of the fire more than once. What's not to like?"
Nice to know some things hadn't changed. The Colonel was just as bad at discussing emotions as ever. Sam shivered again and pulled the blanket around her even more tightly. "Sir ... how did you know I'd be feeling cold?"
Again with the shrug. "Carter; I've been tortured a few times before," he said. "First time it happened, I spent a fortune on heating bills."
The first time? Sam had been thinking of his time with Ba'al or on Netu. He'd been tortured before that? "Was it a long time ago?" she asked then could have shot herself if there'd been a zat handy. Like he's going to want to talk about it!, she scolded herself.
He wriggled slightly. "Yeah. POW. Iraq," he grumbled. "So ... yeah ... I know how you're feeling right now."
"Thank you, sir," she said, sliding another blanket around her shoulders and trying to suppress the shivers. The cold seemed to have gone bone-deep.
"Oh, crap; c'mere, Carter," the Colonel said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her into the warmth of his own body.
God, she hated this. Not the Colonel's strong arms around her, but the fact that she felt so weak. She was a Major in the Air Force, for God's sake! She'd seen things most people couldn’t even imagine and had gone through torture more than once.
She slid her arms around his waist, noting that it had gotten a little softer during his time in stasis - three months of inactivity would do that - and rested her head on his chest. "Thanks, sir," she mumbled, closing her eyes.
He breathed in deeply and she felt him a drop a gentle kiss to the top of her head. "You're welcome, Carter," he replied simply.
She shivered again - for an entirely different reason. The man's arms felt wonderful around her, the simple gesture so touching, so ... Jack. She'd been such an idiot to think she'd gotten over him. She'd tried - most recently with Pete, but she'd dropped him when she'd found out he'd done a background check on her. Stupid son of a bitch - had he thought she'd never find out?
Jack woke up to find a disheveled blonde head on his chest and a slim hand somehow inside his tee shirt. Nice, but ... wrong. That slim hand rested on his abdomen, which wasn't as flat as he remembered - he'd never been able to harness the six pack, but he knew he was going to spend some serious time in the gym when they got back to the SGC.
She shifted and her hand moved lower. He grasped the wandering hand quickly before it came into contact with his morning ... uh, issue ... and withdrew it from his shirt, placing it on his now covered abdomen. He looked at her lovely face and saw for the first time the deep shadows under her eyes, the sure signs of strain making her features tense, even in sleep. What the hell had that bastard put her through?
He sighed gently. He didn't have the heart to wake her from what looked like a desperately needed sleep, so he kissed her hair once more and closed his own eyes.
Oh yeah, he mused as he drifted back to sleep, definitely gonna make some changes.