I'm sorry," she said. Her voice so low he almost didn't hear her over the fading shouts of the battle moving off into the distance.
"You're always sorry, Carter," he snarled through clenched teeth and watched her blanch against his attack. The wound through her shoulder had finally stopped bleeding, but he doubted it would stay that way if they tried to make their way back to the Gate. They'd have to sit here among the dead and wounded and wait for the mop-up crews to come for them. The moans and cries coming from the still-living echoed painfully in his ears. He was afraid it was only a matter of time before her voice joined them. He eased her down into what he hoped was a more comfortable position and was relieved to see no fresh bleeding from the movement. He worked off his flack jacket and placed it over her. The afternoon sun was slowly sinking, and the temperature had started to fall.
"Thank you," she mouthed, but her voice had faded beyond his hearing. He nodded an acknowledgement and avoided looking into her eyes for fear she'd read the truth in his. The blast had hit too close, the time it had taken him to reach her had been too long, and the amount of blood had been too much for him to trust he'd managed to hide his feelings safely away. He loved her. Not a comfortable admission for him to make in any circumstance, and certainly not in a field of blood thousands of light-years from home. And certainly not to her, his fellow officer and his subordinate. The woman he walked into battle beside, the woman he depended on to be clear-thinking and level-headed. He couldn't cloud her judgment, or his own, with emotions and attachments which he had no right to feel and no way to express. So he didn't look into her eyes. Instead, he hunched beside her and waited for help to arrive, please God, soon and in time.
Her eyes gradually closed as the morphine he'd thrust into her thigh took effect, leaving him free to look at her all he wanted. She was, he thought, extraordinarily beautiful...even here with mud, blood, and gunpowder residue liberally applied to her pale features and with a darkening bruise spreading across her left cheek causing her eye to swell. She was normally so animated, so alive, that seeing her asleep or passed out was always disconcerting. Like stumbling upon Sleeping Beauty waiting to be awakened by a kiss.
But he wasn't the prince and never could be though he'd thought of kissing her. Not here among the dying. Somewhere else in a fantasy life he tried to keep firmly locked away from the real world. He'd kissed the alternate Carter, and certainly woke up from enough dreams with the taste of her on his lips, but he'd never kissed her. And he wouldn't be kissing her anytime soon...whether help came in time or not. It wasn't his place, wasn't his right.
There was a rasping, irregular gurgling nearby. Somebody dying. No one, he thought, even though possibly dozens were doing it that very moment all around him, should have to die alone. Her eyes had closed, but her chest moved in regular, if abbreviated, breaths. To his laymen's eye she didn't look like she was on death's door quite yet, but she hardly looked like she'd miss him for the little bit of time this would likely take.
As quietly as possible, he straightened painfully from his place by her side and made his way to the wounded man. He squatted next to the soldier, whom thankfully he didn't know even by name, and held his hand as the man gasped his last breaths and gave up his fight. Grimly he pulled the dogtags from the body and stuffed them into his pocket without reading the name. Then there was nothing to do but straighten the broken limbs and make his way back to the side of his wounded major.
She stirred when he settled next to her again, and a soft moan made its way past her lips. He wished for more morphine, but he'd used the last of it on a fallen soldier he'd passed on the way back. Half the man's face had been destroyed in a blast, and it was more than he could stand to walk by without doing what he could to alleviate the man's sufferings. He hoped the airman slipped away in the morphine-induced haze though he'd patted his shoulder and given him a half-hearted, 'hang in there, soldier' as the medication had taken effect.
He found himself giving her thigh a similar pat and murmuring the same sentiments, but this time they were fervently said and meant. Hang in there, Carter, hang in there. He wet his finger in the mouth of his canteen and gently wet her lips with it. She opened her eyes for a brief second, and he flashed a meant-to-be upbeat and positive smile at her. Her lips twitched in response, and she painfully raised a hand to his arm. He patted it with his other hand and was startled to find it ice-cold. "You're doing fine, Carter," he assured her. "Won't be long now. Just hold on."
With an effort, she swallowed and nodded her head. He stripped his t-shirt off and placed it over the top of the flack jacket and caught her hand back up in his to try to warm it. She didn't pull it away. Though her eyes had shut again, the stiffness of her body told him the morphine's effects were about gone, and she was awake and hurting. When he shifted to find a less torturous position for his aching knees, her hand tightened its hold on his. "It's all right, Carter," he told her, "I'm not going anywhere." And he wasn't. Every peek he'd taken at her shoulder had assured him the bleeding had stopped. But it hadn't. A dark puddle of red had grown beneath her on the hard packed clay of the battlefield. He had nothing else to offer but his presence. He wouldn't be leaving again until help came or...no one should die alone and most definitely not her.
From somewhere, she found enough air and strength to say a weak, "Thank you, Sir."
He nodded his head, "Think nothing of it."
"Sir..." she started weakly but didn't finish. As the silence stretched out, he feared the worst. Dropping his hand to her good shoulder, he gave it a small, desperate squeeze. He gasped a ragged breath of relief when she moaned and opened her eyes in response.
Understanding flitted across her face. "Still here, Sir," she breathed out.
"You're right you are and you're staying right here, Major! Is that understood?" he barked at her in reply because otherwise his voice would have broken.
She struggled to swallow, and a small trickle of blood made its way out of the corner of her mouth. He gently wiped it away with a bit of his flack jacket. "Sorry, Sir," she said again.
The anger, which had upheld him earlier, was gone. So was any protective, angry retort with which he might have answered her. He was left with only the truth. "You have nothing to apologize for, Major," he told her. "It has been an honor serving with you...you're a fine officer, Carter." To his horror, he found he was crying. He swiped his forearm across his face and glanced shamefacedly at her. Her eyes had closed again, and he could hope she hadn't noticed. Her breathing was no longer regular and had become more labored, her skin had taken on a grayish cast beneath the grime and bruising, and the puddle under her shoulder had grown enough to form a small rivulet running away from her body towards his left boot. It wouldn't be long now, and then it wouldn't matter how long it took for the reinforcements to arrive. Maybe to those whose cries he could still hear all around them, but not to her. Not to him.
Somewhere along the way, the light of the day began to slip away, and her breathing seemed to fade with it becoming shallow and even more irregular. He sat quietly beside her, swallowing down tears and emotions but unable to swallow down the words that went with them. "I love you, Carter," he whispered.
She blinked her eyes up at him in response, and he realized she was still there enough to hear his words. Yet, he found he didn't regret them. Later maybe. If she lived. But not here, not now. She opened her mouth but never said whatever it was she'd meant to.
Or if she did, he couldn't hear it over the sudden cackle of his radio and Daniel's frantic, "Jack? Sam? Are you guys there? Jack! Sam!"
He should have known. "For crying out loud," he burst out in relief, "if I'd thought spilling my guts was all it would have taken--I'd done it hours ago!" Then he gave her an embarrassed grin and an apologetic shrug and dropped her hand to answer Daniel. They were on their way home.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Part Two ~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"We're minutes away, Jack, just hold on," a breathless Daniel said over the radio.
"Sure, Daniel. We'll be here," he assured him and felt relatively sure they would be. She'd rallied a little knowing help was on the way. He thought she'd manage to hold on until it arrived. He was busy avoiding looking at her eyes again and wondering how he was going to deal with the ramifications of his words. Good chance he wouldn't need to, of course. She was in a bad way and by the time the docs had fixed her up, she quite possibly wouldn't remember much of what had went on out here. He'd once lost an entire day after surgery. He could hope for the best.
But, if she did remember? The general disclaimers he could think up were hardly convincing. "Whoa, Carter. I'm sure you must have misunderstood what I said. I'm not sure what I did say, but that would have been the farthest thing from my mind." Or "You must have been delirious, I do love you...like a brother, like Teal'c and Daniel, but not...you know." Oh yeah, she'd buy that. If she had the IQ of a watermelon; which she did...plus a few hundred points. Him and his big mouth.
"Sir..." she managed to gasp out, and he leaned over her to hear what she had to say. "Wash your face." Her words came at him from left field and took a while to set in. When they did, he splashed canteen water over his grime and tear-streaked face and violently rubbed at it until she gave a small nod of satisfaction. It would have to do...night would be on them before the mop-up team had time to really take a look at him anyway. He dried his face the best he could and rubbed his hands through the dirt at his feet and over his face...a clean face out here would be just as obvious as a tear-streaked one. When he was finished, she gave him another small nod of satisfaction, and he knew then it was going to be all right. Regardless of what she did or didn't remember, his words stayed here on the battlefield.
The activity seemed to be a bit much for her, and she closed her eyes and drifted somewhere between sleep and wakefulness while they waited. He alternated between squatting beside her and impatiently standing and staring off in the direction help should be appearing any moment now or far too late.
They arrived on time with blessed, lifesaving plasma and IV fluids, pain meds and antibiotics, and a bustling, hopeful competence. He stepped away from her side and let them do their work. He'd thought she was beyond noticing at that point, but as he did so her eyes flew open and she stirred and fought weakly against the healing hands of the doc and medics.
"Easy, Sam" Frasier said quietly to her, "we're going to get you taken care of." But it was only when her searching eyes found him, in the shadows outside the circle of emergency lighting surrounding her, that she settled down again. He knew then what he hadn't wanted to know before. He knew what she would have said if the radio hadn't burst to life.
Daniel and Teal'c reached him with bear hugs and worried faces, and he accepted their love like he couldn't hers and hugged them back with what he knew was a silly grin on his face.
"That's it," he said with feeling. "That's the last time any of us go through that Gate without the rest of us for back up." They agreed wholeheartedly. The wait back at the SGC had not been any easier for them.
~*~*~*~*~*
When she came out of the anesthetics enough to actually know she was alive and going to stay that way even though her shoulder insisted she'd be better off giving up the ghost, he wasn't there. Daniel was and Teal'c, but not him. She blinked back hot tears of pain and something else and cursed the words he'd whispered to her out on the field. She'd known, had known for a long time, and knowing had been enough. He hadn't had to say them--not for her anyway. But, he had. And she'd been so surprised, and yes, so frightened of dying, she'd acknowledged them instead of letting them fade away as though he'd never said them at all. Like an impenetrable barrier, they'd stand between them now. Keeping him from being there when she woke like he would have been for anyone else under his command. Making their every exchange painfully awkward and uneasy. Requiring them to examine every word, look, and order for something that shouldn't be there.
She'd been sure, he'd understood she would never bring his words up, never hold him to them. That she would let them die away as though they'd never existed. But, she'd been wrong and it would be days before he quit hiding from what he'd said and screw up enough courage to face her. Or maybe...maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe it was duty that kept him away.
In which case, they'd be ok. Eventually. She didn't feel ok now though. He wasn't there. And that was really the reason she'd been willing to let his words die. All those times he wasn't there, couldn't be there, regardless of how badly she needed him or how badly he might wish to be with her. Their lives would always be full of times he couldn't be there...or she couldn't. It was the nature of their work, the nature of the war they were in. And, it wouldn't be changing anytime soon. She wanted what his words promised, but he couldn't keep those promises no matter how much he meant them. Better to never make them at all then break them.
Daniel and Teal'c realized she was awake and bent eagerly over her, freely offering her the love and friendship he couldn't. She accepted it gratefully. He'd cried at her side and said words she'd never thought he'd ever say, so she knew it had been close. Too close: she'd almost died out there, and, even after all these times, it had shaken her.
Janet arrived with needles, a thermometer, and a top-off for her IV and chased the guys away. She closed the curtain behind them with a commanding snap. Sam sighed, but, really, she was ready to fade away again.
When she woke up the second time, he was there snoring softly in the chair by her bed. Afraid to wake him, she stifled the moan trying to escape from her own mouth. The pain wasn't too bad yet. It was much easier to endure than the awkwardness soon to be coming when he woke up.
She took the time to examine him. He wasn't looking his best. Awake he was rarely still except out on the field where stillness could mean the difference between life and death. Even now, there was a tenseness in his body beyond the relaxation sleep brought to him. It came, she guessed, from black ops training and a time he'd like to forget in a POW camp. It made an odd contrast to the way sleep usually washed the years from his face and gave it an innocence he himself wouldn't have recognized. Today though, the lines of worry and exhaustion were etched too deeply for even the slackness of sleep to erase. Lines she'd put there almost dying, and lines he'd put there worrying over things said that should have been left unsaid.
Ever a soldier, he awoke, alert and watchful, sensing her eyes upon him. A quick survey of her lying there assured him she was hurting but ok. He smiled at her and she gave him a weak smile back in return. After what she'd been through, he decided it was enough. He nodded his satisfaction, pressed her call bell to bring in the pain meds, recrossed his long legs under her bed and his arms over his chest, and went back to sleep.
With relief, she realized the danger had been averted. They were going to be ok after all.
"I have to say you look happier than most people a day post-op," Janet said, coming in with a shot of the good stuff and not the least bit concerned about waking sleeping colonels who didn't keep their big feet out of her way.
"Just glad to be alive," Sam told her and bit her lip against whatever else might slip out as the wave of pain meds washed over her. They'd only just survived his words. She wouldn't add hers though she'd come within an indrawn breath of speaking them before Daniel's frantic call had come through. And he complains I talked too much, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep, a relieved smile still playing on her lips.
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Dying Words
by OffworlderStory Bemerkung:
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