Broken
Broken
by havocthecat
Summary: Sam and Janet's tensions erupt. Daniel refuses to get stuck in the middle.
Category: Alternate Universe
Season: any Season
Pairing: Daniel/Janet
Rating: FAM
Warnings: none
Author's Notes: This is an AU that diverges after "Fragile Balance" and resolves one of the events of the Heroes two-parter.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story was created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 09/05/06
***
Daniel sighed. It was great having Janet around. It really was. But sometimes, when she and Sam got really loud, he missed his eardrums. They'd been shattered at the first round of high-pitched squealing and life had never been the same. "So glad to see you're getting in the spirit of teenagerhood," he muttered very, very quietly. Daniel wasn't stupid, after all.
Sam's phone rang, and she answered with a quick hello. It had taken her a couple of months to get out of the habit of answering as Major Carter. Looked like one of her cheerleader buddies had called to invite her to a sleepover. "No, I can't go, Renee, I'm busy. Yes, I already made plans. Yes, with Janet."
Daniel was pretty sure that neither Sam nor Renee realized how loud the volume settings on Sam's cell phone were. He could hear Renee, and he was halfway across the room, so he winced preemptively when he heard Renee say, "Why would you want to hang out with her, Sam? She's a freak!"
Janet, who was right next to Sam, didn't just roll her eyes and walk away like she usually did. She grabbed Sam's phone and batted Sam's hand away when she tried to grab it back. "I'm sorry, Sam can't come to your little slumber party." Janet smiled, and Daniel winced again. He knew that smile. Even Teal'c had been known to take a step back and get out of the way for that smile. "We're going out to get matching tongue piercings and then we're going to try them out on the entire hockey team at the orgy tonight. Didn't Sam tell you?"
Sam, who had been getting progressively more upset looking with every word Janet spoke, took her phone back. "Look, Renee," she said. Daniel could hear Renee sputtering and trying to form words. "I'll call you back later." She glared at Janet as she hung the phone up and slid it back into the pocket of her jeans. "What did you do that for?" asked Sam.
"I think you know why," said Janet.
Daniel looked around for the exits. Damn. He'd gotten out of the habit of keeping sight of all the exits and planning a line of escape. Jack was going to give him hell for that, especially since Janet and Sam were blocking the one door out of the place, and it wasn't going to be easy to sneak out the window unnoticed. Daniel backed up slowly.
"Janet, you didn't have to be such a bitch," said Sam. She sighed. "You could just put forth a little effort."
Uh-oh. This was going to be really, really bad. Not that it hadn't been coming for a while. But it was going to be bad anyway.
"Gosh, I'm sorry, Sam," said Janet, who was obviously not sorry. "Did I not want to match all your little cheerleader friends shallow for shallow?"
Sam was pulling out the look to the side, sigh, and look back at the person she was talking to gesture. Daniel wondered if he changed strategies and stayed very, very still maybe they wouldn't notice him. "Shallow? God, Janet, no wonder they don't like you! You say things like that, and you do things like lock us in the locker room, and you wonder why you can't seem to get any friends?"
And thermonuclear meltdown has just been reached. Janet's hands clenched into fists, she looked Sam up and down, and she stalked away without saying anything. Daniel stared. The only sound he heard was Janet's door slamming upstairs.
"Daniel!" Damn, he'd been spotted. He was really going to have to get a TV for his bedroom instead of relying upon the main TV when he wanted to critique the History Channel programs for accuracy. "Can you talk to her? Can you do something? You're the only one that can reach Janet when she gets in a mood like this!"
Daniel took a deep breath. "Hi, Sam. Nice to see you too."
"Oh, come on, Daniel. Like she was remotely justified?" Sam and Janet on a tear. And Sam wanted him to get involved?
"I think you need to talk to her," said Daniel slowly. "Yes, I can get through to Janet, but that's partly because I understand what it's like to have died and then come back to a world where everyone's moved on--and even then, my experience isn't the same." He shook his head. "But I don't think I should get involved in a fight between the two of you. She's not being unreasonable Sam--" He put up a hand to forestall her protest. "And neither are you. Talk to her, okay?"
Sam nodded and sighed, her shoulders drooping. "Yeah," she said. "You're probably right."
***
"Janet?" Sam didn't hear a response from inside Janet's room. "Janet, let me in." Nothing. She tried the doorknob; it was locked. "Come on, Janet," she said, pounding on the door. "Let me in. We need to talk!"
Fine. Janet didn't want to talk? Sam knew just what to do.
***
Janet held her breath, hoping Sam would go away. When she didn't hear anything for a couple of minutes, she relaxed.
Ten minutes after that, the door opened. Sam shoved her lockpicks into her pocket as she walked in. "Hi," she said awkwardly.
"You know, I locked the door for a reason," said Janet dryly. Mostly so that no one would see her crying.
"I know," said Sam. They stared at each other silently for a minute. "This is awkward."
"Daniel wouldn't come up and make me listen to reason, would he?" asked Janet.
Sam nodded. "You got it."
"Sure," said Janet. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and rested her chin on her knees. She really didn't want to do this. "What do you want, Sam?"
"I don't know," she said. She was still standing in the doorway.
"You may as well come in," said Janet. "And shut the door. Let's not have any of the guys interrupting."
After she'd come in and closed the door behind her, Sam walked toward Janet. "What's going on?" she asked. "I know you've had a hard time adjusting here, but we all have. So why are you being such a bitch about it?"
Janet looked down at her knees. "It hurt," she said quietly.
"Janet?"
Janet looked up. "Sam, this isn't going to be easy, so let me get through it, okay?"
Sam nodded quietly and sat down on the bed. Janet looked back at her knees, gathered her courage, and looked back up at Sam. "It hurt. A lot. And it was so sudden. One minute I'm Dr. Janet Fraiser, trying to treat a wound, the next minute I'm dying, and then an instant later I'm waking up in an Asgard ship and I'm a teenager."
"I thought you came to terms with all of it," said Sam.
Janet snorted. "Sam, honey, I came back from the dead to find that a year had passed. Not only had everyone moved on, but when we got back to Earth, I was shunted off to the side so that the whole base could welcome the adult me that Loki had cloned. Would you come to terms with that easily?"
"It's hard to come to terms with a lot of the things we've encountered," said Sam. "A lot of the things that we've done, or that have been done to us are so out of the realm of normal human experience--"
"Us?" Janet raised an eyebrow. "You're SG-1, Sam. You're the one that's supposed to have all the out of this world experiences. I'm supposed to patch you up after you have them!"
"Come on, Janet, now you know that's not true." Sam leaned back against the headboard and rested the back of her head against it. She turned her neck to look at Janet sitting next to her. "You knew the risks. You were CMO, you saw the problems every day. You solved your fair share of problems caused by everything that we had to deal with."
"And you guys were always the ones possessed by aliens, or dying and coming back," said Janet. "I was used to being in the background while all of that was going on." She laughed, a little bitterly. "I guess we're all in the background now."
"We are. But we have each other." Sam paused. They're not all bad, you know," she said, glancing at Janet almost hesitantly. "The cheerleaders. Renee's one of the worst, though."
"I know." Janet's frown twisted into a grimace. "Renee and I, ah, had words the other day. In the library."
Sam's eyes widened. "Please tell me you don't have some sort of horrible revenge planned for the entire cheerleading squad just because Renee's a bitch," she said.
Janet shook her head, not quite meeting Sam's eyes. "Not the entire cheerleading squad."
"Janet--" Sam's voice took on a warning tone.
"Sam!" Janet sat up and turned to face her. "I get bored during chem labs. You wouldn't deny your best friend the chance to practice advanced concepts when everyone else is busy making pretty lame rock candy, would you?"
"Hey!" exclaimed Sam. "My rock candy tasted pretty good, thank you!"
Janet rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't know. Jack and Jonas ate all of it before I could try any." She grinned at Sam. "Just don't go to that slumber party tonight. Invite the nicer cheerleaders out to the movies or something. This time I'll only get the ones that deserve it."
"I'm still never going to hear the end of this," muttered Sam.
"It'll still be funny," said Janet. She studied Sam. "How come you're so accepting of this? You're captain of the cheerleading squad. You blow everyone else out of the water in Shop class, and you have friends outside of our little group." Janet's mouth twisted and she nearly spat out the word 'little.'
"You could have other friends too," said Sam. "You just have to be a little nicer."
"I don't want to be nice," said Janet, frowning at her knees. "God, Sam, this whole situation sucks."
"Do you think any of us wanted to be here?" asked Sam. "I mean, at least you're not dead!"
"You did want to be here, remember?" asked Janet. "And of course I don't want to be dead. But I want to be not dead and have my life back."
"Deal with it." Sam let her head fall back against the wall, possibly a little harder than was good for her. She winced. "You can't have it back. Can we just make the best of what we've got here? Please?"
Janet rolled her eyes. "What am I supposed to do, try out for the school play?"
"It would be a start!" exclaimed Sam. "Come on, Janet, you have to do something other than gripe at everything."
"I will if you will," blurted Janet, just to see Sam's reaction. Sam had to have gone for cheerleading to remain flexible. It couldn't possibly be because she actually wanted to make a spectacle of herself in front of everyone.
"All right," said Sam.
"Damn." Janet glared at her. It lacked the force of previous glares from this afternoon. "What's the next production."
"Into the--" Sam paused, a look of horror slowly spreading across her features. "--Woods," she finished. "I'm not holding you to that. There's singing involved."
And one thing Sam Carter never, ever did was sing in public. Not even drunken karaoke, and Janet had tried. Unfortunately, Sam could drink her under the table, especially now. Janet smirked. "But I'm holding you to it," she said. "Into the Woods auditions. You're going to sing in public." And Janet was going to tell the guys about it, but Sam didn't need to know that.
"Bitch," said Sam, sticking her tongue out at Janet.
"Especially lately," said Janet dryly. She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and let it out slowly. "Are we okay now? You and me?"
"I really wish you'd get rid of some of this anger you've been reining in," said Sam, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them. "I don't like seeing you so upset."
"I know. I'm sorry I blew up at you." Janet sighed. "It's going to take time. A lot more than either of us would like."
"You might want to talk to someone," offered Sam. "And I probably shouldn't have pushed."
Red hair flew as Janet shook her head. "I've had enough of talking about it to last this entire lifetime."
A tentative knock sounded at the door.
"What?" Janet and Sam bit the question out simultaneously.
"Uh, we don't have to hide the explosives, do we?" asked Daniel tentatively through the door.
"We already hide them, Daniel," said Sam, sharing an exasperated glance with Janet.
"We don't have to hide them from you, do we, Carter?" asked Jack, who apparently had gotten home and been filled in by Daniel. "We already got the needles buried away from Janet."
"I'm going to kill that man," murmured Janet, shaking her head.
"Which one?" asked Sam, frowning in confusion.
"Both of them!" exclaimed Janet. "Again!"
Sam burst into laughter. Janet stuck her tongue out at Sam and started chuckling along with her.
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