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.

#####

rowan_d1@yahoo.com