DISCLAIMER: Yeah, the SG-1 guys are all property of MGM, World
Gekko Corp, and Double Secret productions. This is all in fun, no
infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. All other
characters, ideas, etc., herein are copyrighted to the author.
TITLE: Fractures
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
RATING: Older Kids
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Jack UST
**Hugs** to TeddyE for the SpeedBeta
Written for the Icon Fic Meme on LiveJournal. Annerb asked for
my Sam/Jack angst icon "Certain You Will Break Me".
FRACTURES
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2006
In time her skin wears thin. Touches that once brought comfort
begin to burn.
He gazes at her with tired eyes and for all he's seen and felt he
doesn't understand. He looks and sees someone she has willed him
to believe.
She wants in her deepest guts to be the silent pillar Jacob
needed his daughter to be.
She taught the Colonel to expect the same.
Her work is meticulous, as it is in all things. Twenty years
and she has nearly convinced herself of the illusion.
She's standing in the middle of the briefing room when it falls
away. She is stripped and armorless as the others trail out of
the meeting. He is two feet behind and she hears him breathing
and imagines the ruffle of hair on the back of her neck.
She's thirty-something years old, and she hasn't slept without a
nightmare in days. She's tired and walking through the motions
with nothing but a dull headache as she lives the life she always
wanted. She has tried to love three men in the past four years
and each has left her with dreams of strong arms that hover a
step behind and a million miles from reach.
She used to treasure every touch, every brush and wave of heat
and kindness and the memory of a boiler room with a shoulder
beneath her cheek.
Contact has started to ache.
Her stomach is hollow and her fingers are cold as she holds onto
the back of her chair and hopes he will walk away.
She startles when a heavy hand clamps onto her shoulder.
"Carter? You all right?"
The Colonel was broken when they met, working to glue the pieces
together and find a way to live. She's never lost her need to
take injured creatures and nurse them to health. She flashes on
Schrodinger curled by the side of the road and bleeding when she
found him and bundled him in her jacket and into her car and her
heart.
She thinks caring for someone more lost than she makes her own
foundations feel sturdier by comparison. She doesn't want to
need someone to wrap her up and take her home. She hasn't been
allowed to need that since her mother vanished into the ether.
Sam Carter is a pillar of strength. She's okay with leaving it
all in the room. There's no time for more.
"Carter?" His voice softens with concern at her nonresponse.
She pushes herself to speak, her presence somewhere outside her
own words. This is her battle reflex and she wonders when her
days on world became a war zone. "Yeah, I'm fine, sir. I'll be
right there." She almost believes her lie. She has practised
her skills.
"Yeah?"
She offers a glance and a nod. "Yes, sir."
They all but lost him last mission and she doesn't know what to
do with the fear. She's spent a lifetime training and accepting
the military mentality. Any of them could fall at any moment.
She remembers a thousand battles through Jolinar's eyes and the
fall of all she loved. She remembers crying in Martouf's lap as
he stroked her back and told her it was okay to feel. *Strength
is in moving forward through the pain,* he said, *not in being as
cold as the Goa'uld.*
The Colonel remains a moment too long. She knows he is searching
for words he doesn't know how to say. She is terrified he'll
speak and desperate for a single word.
She's the one who silenced the flow, and she's starting to regret
this path on levels she doesn't believe.
He nods. "See you at the Gate in fifteen."
"Yes, sir."
His footsteps drag as he moves away. She hears his boots touch
the tile at the foot of the stairs.
She draws a deep breath. Her armor is rising, she'll reach the
Gate intact. But the chain mail is wearing and pulling at the
seams. The ache is eating at the fundamental elements of the
alloy. Light burns at the cracks.
She tells herself she's tired and snags an extra coffee for the
walk to the locker room.
She knows a stop-gap measure when she sees one. She's patched
together too many DHDs on bubblegum and incompatible technology.
One day they will spark. One day they will give out and overload
and burn.
One day they will break.
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