4.
Sam was not resting as well as she had been, she had started tossing about the bed emitting a low moan, which gradually got louder and clearer "no…no…Jack you can't, I won't let you…No… NO!…JACK!" he rushed into the bedroom and virtually threw himself on the bed, his arms going around her as she started up from the nightmare.
"Shhh, it's ok love, I'm here" he carried murmuring reassuring nonsense to her until her heart rate slowed to normal. "Want to tell me about it?" It wasn't as if it was the first time one of them had had a nightmare, though somehow he managed never to have one offworld, or at least he never woke up screaming and sweating from one offworld, which both Daniel and Sam had done. Knowing what they had all been through these last 9 or 10 years, it was a wonder than anyone actually slept through a full night! His nightmares tended to go back further even than that, he still relived his time in Iraq, Charlies death and several of the things he had had to do for his government back in the 80's and 90's. His training in sleeping quietly went back even further than that, and he never relaxed offworld enough. So it was a huge shock for Sam when they started sleeping together and he let down his guard and relaxed in sleep, a couple of times she had tried to shake him awake, only to find herself pinned down in a choke hold before he realised who she was. She tried shouting at him after that, which never worked as he was screaming so hard he couldn't hear her, or was so wrapped up in trying to be silent that she couldn't get through. Eventually she worked it out, she had to either leave him alone until he woke himself up, or go to the door of the bedroom, open it and shut it again. Somehow the environmental noise always got through to him, and woke him straight up, she thought it was a defence mechanism from hospital, he was trying to not allow the staff to see how bad he really was, which would lead to psyc evals, and everyone knew how he loved to bark like a chicken and cluck like a dog!
This time her nightmare was of watching everyone she loved die of the plague, while she alone seemed immune to it, both her parents, Janet, Daniel, Teal'c and even General Hammond, but worst of all, Jack! He took longer to die than anyone, suffering more each day, until he eventually gave up! She knew she held the key, but had to watch them all die in great pain without once being able to do anything for them. She shook as she recounted it to him, the latest in a long line of things to haunt her, and the reason why she was so tired. The only full nights sleep she had had since it all started was the night before, where she was cuddled up to her husband from falling asleep to waking up. He still may not know how come he deserved her, but he was everything to her, including a magic charm to keep away the bogey man. She held onto him tightly, and he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her neck, all the time telling her she was safe and loved. He was perfect!
Eventually she pulled herself together and noticed the smell of fresh brewing coffee in the air.
"Hmm that smells good; I'll just nip into the shower and be there for breakfast in 10 mins"
She got up and headed to the bathroom, while he straightened the bed up, he waited until she was in the shower and went in and collected the laundry from the hamper, and put it into a bag by the door, he would have to call the service to get them to collect it, he didn't know how much longer they would be there, and he had only brought 3 changes of clothes, thinking about it though, he could get Daniel to pack them a small case each and send it via the transporter. GOD! He had to stop thinking like this, it was getting too easy, they weren't there just so he could get fresh laundry! It was still tempting though, he grinned.
"What're you smiling about?" Sams voice came from the doorway. "that grin is the one you usually save for when you are thinking of things to annoy Daniel" she beamed at him, totally recovered from the bad dreams.
"Was just thinking, either I have to phone the laundry service, or use the multibillion dollar spaceship to beam us some more changes of clothes" He watched her think it over, a sly grin on her own face showing just how tempting it was.
"I think we should use the service, after all we wouldn't want them to go out of business just because we got lazy, would we?" she slipped behind him and headed for the coffee machine, pouring herself a mug full. She opened the box of Bagels to find only a couple left. "You had yours?" she asked
"Yeah, decided to get some fishing in early on" he saw her puzzled look and then she glanced at her watch. She looked at him and then back down again as if she didn't believe it "0936?"
"I thought you could do with a bit extra sleep" he remembered she had had a nightmare, and wondered if he had been right leaving her in bed when he got up, but she looked so much better than she had yesterday, not that he thought she ever looked bad! Even exhausted and covered in muck and injuries after that super soldier thing at the Alpha site, she was beautiful, but today she seemed to glow with health.
"I can't remember the last time I slept that long without it being in the infirmary, though I do feel wide awake now!" she remembered yesterday "Oh, what's happening with everything back home?"
Jack told her everything he knew, which wasn't much more than yesterday, it was a waiting game now.
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He didn't want to go into town again, so he rang the laundry service for a collection, put the bag by the front door and they set off on a slow walk to the top of the hill overlooking the cabin, and walked the long way around the lake on the way back. They had just come in sight of the cabin when Jacks phone rang. He stopped dead to answer it.
"O'Neill, yeah, crap! Yeah sorry, my fault, yeah let her in, O'Neill out" he closed up the phone and groaned "we should have beamed it in! That was the special forces lads, they just jumped Edna!"
Sam looked at him, he could see her lips twitching, she was dying to laugh. "Sam! It isn't… Ok so actually it is a bit funny, but poor old Edna could have died from the shock" Edna, another old friend of the O'Neills, ran the laundry service in town, he would be hearing from her daughter, Rachael, next time he saw her, that was if she didn't storm up to the cabin as soon as she heard. Another thing he could do without, a pissed off Rachael!
They hurried back to the cabin, and managed to get to the front porch just in time to catch Edna as she was picking up the bag.
"Edna!" Jack shouted, she spun around startled for the second time this morning "I am SO SORRY Edna" he grabbed her and pulled her into a hug, she was a frail looking woman, not much over five feet tall and couldn't have weighed more than 7 stones, she seemed to be totally engulfed by the tall lanky general.
"Jonathan! Put me down you great ape!" Jack let her down and stepped back a bit, feeling like he was 12 again and had been caught stealing apples from the tree in her back yard.
"So sorry Edna, I forgot that they were there, I hope you are OK," he gave her the puppy dog expression that usually charmed any female (and some males) in seconds "Forgive me?"
"Young man, do you know there are men running about your land with GUNS? They held me up, like I was a stage coach in the old west!"
"Yes ma'am, I know they are there, you shouldn't have been stopped, it is totally my fault"
"How long will they be around?"
"They should be gone by tomorrow, maybe the day after"
"Then you have 48 hours running time before I tell our Rachael about it, last thing that girl needs is to know there are men in uniform about, especially young men in uniform, you know how she is!"
Oh yes, Jack did know how Rachael was when she saw a uniform, it was like releasing a moggie into a catnip factory, he had spent many a weekend while trying to 'get away from it all' trying to get away from Rachael, from the moment he sent his gran the first picture of him in uniform, back when he was just 17, Rachael had been trying to get him out of it and into her bed. She was not even put off when he married Sarah, always telling him that she wasn't right for him, that she (Rachael) could be better. She actually sent him a congratulations card when she heard about the divorce, he came within inches of hitting a woman at that time. However, she only sneered at Sam the once, and after trying to feel him up right in front of her, she suddenly found herself pinned to the wall of the shop in town they were stood outside, Sam told her, in no uncertain terms, just how unwelcome her advances were, and how they would not be tolerated again. It was the first time that Sam had ever shown jealousy where it came to Jack, and he was 'chuffed to bits' as his gran would have said, that she lost control like that, in public, and over HIM!
"You need to phone me when you are on your way back with the laundry Edna, so I can warn the boys that you are coming, and they don't waylay you again."
"I was going to send our Rachael with 'em Jonathan, but I daren't now"
"Don't worry Edna, if I tell the lads you are coming through, she won't even see them" Basically because they would still be in orbit, but all Edna needed to know was Rachael wouldn't be eloping if she sent her to Jacks to deliver the clothes.
"Ok Jonathan, I'll send her around first thing in the morning, any dress shirts to starch?"
"Naww, just the usual Cabin stuff, shorts, shirts, smalls"
"Ok, Ill be getting off then, look after yourselves you two, nice seeing you again Samantha"
And she climbed into her van, did an about face with it and trundled off back down the track towards town.
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They went into the cabin, and just as Jack was about to get the communicator, a beam of light dropped some sandwiches, a couple of bowls of ice cream and fruit, and some fresh orange juice onto the table.
"Now that is what I call service" said Jack, and they tucked in!
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It was getting on for late afternoon, and the longer they were without news, the more fidgety Jack was getting. Usually at the cabin, when they were together, they spent their time making love, or on the dock fishing, but that bit about high powered rifles made him reluctant to sit in the wide open for any length of time. Sam was still tired, though better than she had been, and no matter how much he wanted to, at his age there were limits to how many times a day he could manage 'it'!
He looked over at her, she was laid on the sofa, having started a journal on astrophysics, she had fallen asleep in the middle of reading a boring (and very wrong!) paper published by someone she disliked, her mouth was slightly open and her breathing was a soft sigh that he could just hear over the top of the music, playing at minimal volume. The piece ended and he slipped another disk in the machine, Bach, soothing at any volume, at a low setting it tempted him to join her in slumber.
He decided that it may be time to catch up on some things he had to do, so he went into the bedroom and from the safe under the floor he got out his laptop. He set himself up on the table, where he could see Sam, and hear the music, as well as being able to see anyone heading for the door. He slipped a disk into the machine that he had brought with him in his luggage and sat down to read through some reports from the committee and look over the specs of the newest aircraft made from hybrid technology.
He was concentrating that hard he never noticed Sam get up and sneak behind him to wrap her arms around him and look over his shoulder, she was surprised to see him looking over the engine specs of a new version of a glider, and making notes at the side in Goa'uld.
"Whatcha doin'?" she asked in imitation of all the times he had done the same thing to her.
"Just catching up on some paperwork. The diplomats are still pushing for some first hand knowledge of how things work, I'm thinking of allowing them on a trip, been writing an email to the Chinese to see when the best time is, I know that the president will want Woolsey, that just leaves the French and the Brits, the Russians are quite happy as they have their own team, I'll transmit it when I get back to the desk, you will probably hear the screams of whoever they get to babysit them when it's all arranged, thinking of recommending SG-3 for the job" He grinned wickedly, he knew just what the Marines would say to a babysitting job like this.
She pointed to the screen and the schematics displayed… "The exhaust from the coolant system is headed right past…"
"Spotted it," he pointed to the note in the margin.
"Damn all these years you were acting dumb, I could have had loads of time off!" she punched him lightly in the arm, "and when did you start writing notes in Goa'uld?"
"It makes sure that if the disks or computer go missing that people just can't use what they find"
"Why not use Ancient? We know there are still Goa'uld around, Ba'al for instance" she winced, she hated to even mention him to her husband, knowing his usual reaction to just the thought of the sadist.
"I can't get the damn machine to accept the characters for ancient, and anyway the techs that are reverse engineering can read this, I would have to translate again if I wrote in Ancient" She kissed him on the cheek lightly and went into the kitchen to put on a fresh pot of coffee, as she came back in she turned up the music a bit, and sat back down with her magazine.
"I wish I could write a rebuff to this pompous asshole" She complained, waving the offending article about "more than half of what he says is rubbish, the rest is just bad science" he just looked at her and shrugged, "You know he had the cheek to question one of my papers? Then he goes and writes this pile of garbage!"
"One day love, you know that…"
She sighed, yeah she knew, but it really could be very annoying, especially as the mistakes he was making she could have corrected him on over 11 years ago, as soon as the 'first' wormhole to Abydos had opened, of course she wasn't actually there to SEE the results of the theories and hard work, she had been in hospital recovering from the beating Jonas had given her when she sent back the ring to him. Of all the advances that had happened around the world as a result of the technology they had brought back, the one piece of tech they could not use anything of, was the Stargate itself! It would be a total and worldwide revolution of her particular field when it went public, and she wouldn't just be the person who understood it best in the limited number with clearance, she would be the leader of the entire branch of science. While quite modest usually, when it came to her science, she did want the academic worlds respect, rather than allowing this so-called-leader-in-his-field to dictate what could be published, when he was full of bull!
She was daydreaming of the look on his face when he found out about the gate when her cell phone rang.
"Carter" she said, not even checking who it was on the caller ID.
"Sam," her brothers voice came down the line "I just had a call from Pete, he wanted to know where you were again"
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him you were away with your husband until tomorrow, and tried to get him to tell me where he was, but he didn't want to tell me, sorry"
"I thought I asked you to phone Daniel if he got in touch"
"Yeah, sorry about this, I wrote the number down but the kids pinched the pad with it on and I can't find it"
"When did he call you?"
"About 5 minutes ago, I rang you straight away"
"And he didn't call you yesterday, or you call him?"
"No, if I had been in touch I would have let you know, I said I would"
That was one weight of her mind, Mark wasn't deliberately passing information, however it meant that there was a tap on his phone, and even this call would be recorded and available to him. "Mark, you will be getting a visit from someone soon, not sure if it will be FBI or someone from the forces, but I think there's a tap on your phone, Pete could be listening in right now, he knew we had been talking yesterday within minutes of us doing it. I'll have someone come around and remove it, they may not even have to come in the house"
"Sam! For Gods sake, what is all this James Bond stuff! You are just a Colonel that works on radar in a mountain! Why the hell would he bug my phone to find you, and how can YOU get someone around to check on my phone line?" She closed her eyes and sighed, Mark wasn't really that naive, he had to know that 'Deep Space Radar Telemetry' was a cover, for Gods sake, her dad had been cured of a cancer that was so serious the hospital had phoned him to come to his death bed. But then General Carter had never worked covert, and he had been just another cog in the military wheel, a larger cog than most, but nowhere near the influence that Jack was at now. Thinking of him, she looked over to find him on the phone himself, he held up his fingers and pointed, as usual she knew exactly what his signalling meant.
"Someone will be there in less than 30 minutes Mark," she looked at him again and he mouthed SF and pointed straight up. He put four fingers against the back of his wrist. "A Colonel with the right equipment and expertise is on his way Mark, just let him do his job, please!"
"Ok Sam, you are the one who is wasting the Airforces time and resources with this, I really think you need more than a couple of days rest though. I'll call you later, let you know when they don't find anything."
"Fine Mark. Just let them look, humour me. I'll talk to you later" She put the phone down.
"I don't suppose I can blame him, things like this just don't happen to normal people, and he doesn't know how far from 'normal' our lives are."
Jack finished up his conversation with whoever it was and went and sat next to Sam on the sofa, he threw his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him "With a bit of luck Pete will think you are gong home tomorrow and will break in tonight to lay in wait, T will get him, and all this will be over, we can get back to as 'normal' as we ever get" he kissed her forehead and then rose to get them both some coffee. "I think I'll go chop some wood, work off all this good eating we have been doing"
Sam shivered at the thought, Jack usually chopped wood topless and just the thought of watching his muscles rippling and sweat running down his chest were enough to make her want to jump him there and then, but even better if she waited, she could actually SEE what she was busy imagining, and THEN jump him!
He knew what she was thinking, her breath was getting heavier, and her chest moving out further, her nipples giving it away if nothing else was. He grinned to himself as he closed the top on the computer and went out through the door. He made sure he was facing away from the cabin while chopping the wood, so he could watch the forest in front of him, knowing that no-one could see him from the road approach as the building was in the way. He worked up quite a decent pile of split logs in 20 minutes and was just stacking it against the back wall, under the extension of the eves that kept it dry, when he heard Sams phone go off, it was a bit quick for Mark gloating, so he picked an armful of wood up and went back inside.
Sam was sat on the sofa still, but she was bolt upright and stiff, her face looked shocked, and her eyes darted straight to his as he came in. "What's wrong Sam?"
"That was PETE!"
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