She didn’t feel quite like herself anymore.
Like she had gone through a life changing experience, but then she had in way, loosing her father, it was obviously going to have an effect but this felt different. Different to how she felt when her mother died.
Back then she had been weak, just a child lost and grieving and she had overcompensated in every aspect of her life. School, boys, her family. Within a year she had been skipped ahead two grades, lost her virginity and exhausted herself trying to hold the rest of her family together.
But that was then and now she didn’t feel like she had to do anything to cope because she was coping. She didn’t have to do anything at all, she could just be.
She hadn’t felt like that in a very long time and it was liberating to say the least.
She always had to be working towards something, for someone. Working harder than anyone else, she didn’t feel like she’d had a decent rest in year but now, even with a new General to impress and the Ori to suppress she didn’t feel the same pressure she did before her stint at Area 52.
Even though Cameron was always pumping her for information, Landry was expecting her to pull miracles out of her ass and Cassie depending on her she really didn’t feel the need to push herself anymore.
She could sleep at night.
Not that she had been suffering from insomnia before but now she realised she hadn’t been sleeping properly. She was asleep but her mind had been active the entire time, on the go all night and she hadn’t even noticed. Now she was finally resting.
It was wonderful.
She didn’t miss the old Sam. The old Sam was always searching for something to make her life complete. The secrets of the universe, the right relationship, a family, anything to make her feel complete.
Even though most of the time she hadn’t even realised she was missing anything.
She felt like she could walk across different planets with Cam in charge and Teal’c taking point without thinking about it too much. Without worrying about all the projects she had set up in her lab, without worrying about her physical, her appraisals, her mission reports, debriefings, weigh-ins, anything. She knew those things would come and go and she would come out the other side regardless.
Her father had been proud of her, the General trusted her, her team accepted her and Jack, well Jack loved her.
They were doing something, being together and she was enjoying it because she hadn’t gone looking for him, hadn’t gone after him and he hadn’t expected anything from her either.
It was just there and they were just together.
She felt different around him too and maybe that was it, or at least a part of it. She was calmer than ever around him, she smiled and he responded and it wasn’t entirely different to before but she wasn’t holding back, holding off.
Now there was more.
More of him, the flirting, the smiles, the looks. Now there was touching and kissing and sex. Movies and dinner and sleeping in.
She can’t remember the last time she had slept in on a Sunday but she could remember studying for the state math quiz at 15 on a Sunday and fixing the bugs in her dialling sequence and sifting through theories on particle acceleration but not lying in his/her/their bed on a Sunday, on any day, his arm draped over her body and her feet wrestling with his.
She didn’t want to think that one man could change her life. That her father dying or Jack in her life could change her so fundamentally but it had and maybe it didn’t matter.
Not when he was so warm next to her and Cassie was too busy to need her and there was always hope the bad guys would take an entire day off.
She was different. She felt different and her life was different but that was okay.
She was okay.
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