Less Than

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: Less Than
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://www.beautyinshadows.net
RATING: Teen
ARCHIVE: All archives fine as long as you let me know.
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Pete, Sam/Jack implied, hurt/comfort, team
SPOILERS: Through "Death Knell"
SUMMARY: "Too quiet and the shadows were all wrong and the night
seemed endless and infinite...and she was just...so...tired."

Written for the GateShip Wednesday Shorts "Death Knell" challenge.

Much beta thanks to Teddy E.

LESS THAN
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2005

"Something happened, that I never understood
You can't leave
Every second, dripping off my fingertips
Wage your war
Another soldier, says he's not afraid to die
Well I am scared
In slow motion, the blast is beautiful
Doors slam shut
A clock is ticking, but it's hidden far away"

--"Somewhere a Clock is Ticking" - Snow Patrol

Stranded, alone, aching. The second time in weeks. She had come
through the first crisis with her strength and pride intact; she
had tackled the second with the same determined fervor. And she
had made it home again. "Hey, hey, I saved the world today..."

Snatches in her head from a song on the radio. She was having a
bit more trouble bouncing back this time. She was having trouble
hearing "I should go, I'll let you rest" without shouting "No,
please, stay. I don't want to be alone again."

She was starting to wonder if the universe was trying to tell her
something.

She smiled a tired smile and the shouts remained in her chest.

Daniel was the one who caught the flinch when he stood to go. He
paused by her bedside and tucked his brow in that beautiful way
he had. He touched her forearm with an index finger. "Sam, you
all right?"

She smiled and nodded. "I'm fine. Just tired."

He hovered a moment, then begrudgingly accepted the lie. He
squeezed her hand, told her to get some rest, and left for the
night.

Her father was light years away.

Her throat felt tight, but crying would only make her head pound.
She told herself she really was just tired if things were
bothering her this much. Exhausted, probably. She closed her
eyes and hoped to sleep.

She did have a concussion. She hadn't even realized, thinking
only about her leg. But her food wasn't staying down well, and
with her that was pretty much a lock. She knew; she'd had three
concussions in as many months. The bed moved a bit underneath
her when she closed her eyes.

So long alone on the Alpha site. No luxury of feeling the pain.
There had been no shifts, no changing of the guard. One moment
of let down, and she would have died. The SGC would have lost
their prototype. Defeat had not been an option.

She had concentrated on nothing but the end goal. And she had
almost made it on her own.

She had almost lost her strength.

At the end of her tether when the Colonel had appeared. And
Teal'c. The Colonel's gun and her prototype and the Super
Soldier hadn't stood a chance.

All she had focused on was resting for a moment. Conserving.
Holding her equilibrium to weather the next stage.

Until he had said..."C'mere." And she had looked at him through
the haze, as though finally registering his presence. Her team.
Her team had arrived. Not on duty alone, anymore. The others
would keep watch, give her a moment to acknowledge she was
injured. She could actually...let go.

Everything had been okay. SG-1 around her, watching one
another's backs. They had taken her home. She had walked for a
while. Then Teal'c had carried her when her leg gave out. She
had awakened in the infirmary, and the Colonel had been sitting
at her bedside. Like always. He had joked and smiled. Like
always.

He had left.

Like always.

Her father had come to tell her he was leaving as well.

She was home.

And she was still alone.

Janet moved Sam to a private room the second night. Everything
was too damn quiet by midnight.

Sam kept the dim bedside lamp lit. Janet stored the little camp
light in her office supply closet, just for Sam's use. Sam hated
the fluorescents in the late night hours, and Janet knew. Sam
should probably have hated that she had been here enough times to
have a system, but in truth the routine was comforting.

A stack of magazines and physics books waited on the beside
table. Courtesy of Daniel and Teal'c. Beside them, a yo-yo that
almost made her smile, and almost made her cry.

She was too tired to read, and too tired to let herself think.
She slipped in and out of consciousness with the light still
burning.

She woke shaking and gasping for breath with the feel of the
supersoldier's weight on her stomach and hot sun on her skin and
dirt and grime in her hair. She was too far asleep to summon her
defenses, and she curled on her side beneath the covers and
buried her face in her pillow and gripped her hair as she shook.
Her leg ached like hell but she didn't want to call in the nurse
for more meds. She didn't want to talk to anyone.

Or maybe just...not anyone.

Her skin was aching for touch. The hospital issue blanket wasn't
passing for warm arms like her down comforter almost could at
home.

Too quiet and the shadows were all wrong and the night seemed
endless and infinite...and she was just...so...tired.

Too tired to deny her guts. She wanted the warm arms that had
held Thera, the shoulder beneath her ear as her DNA melted, and
the last bit of warmth at the icy end of the Earth. But it was
all fucked up. And maybe it was her fault, maybe...

She wasn't the one who had smiled, tossed a yo-yo on the
nightstand, and walked away, but she might have been the one
who--in the last few months or in the past--or she might have
done things to... She closed her eyes and tried to slow her
breath along with her thoughts. Hot sun and every rustle of leaf
a beacon of death. Blurred vision and a glare so strong the
landscape flashed before her like strobe lights.

She opened her eyes again, and she was staring at the dimly lit
nightstand.

The private rooms had phones.

Sam held the handset beside her, thumb pressing the line closed;
a good five minutes passed before she moved her fingers over the
increasingly familiar sequence. The trick was to keep herself
from thinking, concentrate on the movement

It was the idea that she was supposed to call, that she
should call, that wasn't familiar at all.

The phone rang three times before a sleep-thick voice mumbled,
"Hello?"

Sam's face flushed hot the moment the sound touched her ear.
Reality was bleeding into her nightmare and she found it hard to
focus and hard to speak. "Pete? It's me."

"Sam?" She heard him clear his throat, a shifting of covers.

"Yeah."

"Hey, what's goin' on?" Concern. And tenderness. And God, she
needed both so badly and didn't want to accept either.

She swallowed and her neck ached. "I'm sorry to wake you. I
know it's really late, and I shouldn't have--"

"Hey, no, no. Sam, it's okay. Are you okay? What goin' on?"

"I'm fine," she said, and even she could hear the absurdity of
the tone against the words. She tried again. "I'm fine, I
just..."

"Where are you, Sam, are you at home?" The cool cop. Assessing
the facts in a crisis. Get the address before the panicked
caller hangs up.

"Yeah--well, no. I mean...I'm back from the mission. I
was...delayed. But we're home, and I'm on base, I'm in the
infirmary."

"In the infirmary?" He sounded fully awake now, and she heard
movement again, sitting up, maybe. "My God, Sam, what happened?
Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Really. I just...I hurt my leg. And...a mild
concussion, but I'll be fine."

"Oh, God, Sam. What happened? When did you get back?"

"Really late last night. Closer to this morning, I think, I
don't...I was asleep a long time...."

"Is that why you're awake now?"

She couldn't speak for a moment.

"Sam? Honey?"

"I was kind of...trapped. Alone. For a while. There was an
explosion. And I was injured, and there was...there was someone
trying to kill me."

"Oh, Christ..."

"It's okay. Pete, really. It's...I've been through lots worse,
I just..." And then all the strength she had mustered fell away
and she lost the Major somewhere in the darkness. Like water
sinking through pebbles. The light was dim and amber-tinted like
a childhood nightlight and her leg hurt and her head pulsed and
Pete's voice was throaty and gentle in her ear, and before she
could bite her tongue, she breathed, "I had a bad dream." The
moment she spoke, she was shaking again and her throat was tight.

"Well, how could you not? Sam, I'm so sorry you had to go
through this. But it's okay. You're okay now."

"I'm sorry. It's the middle of the night, I shouldn't have--"

"No. Sam, don't ever apologize. You can always call me, okay?
Always. Don't ever doubt that. Okay?"

His voice was so sincere. So utterly open. She found she wanted
to trust him in a way that hurt her chest.

She breathed for a moment, then whispered, "Okay." But she
wasn't sure she was ready to give herself that. Not yet.

"God, Sam, I can't even imagine...you must have been so scared."

"It wasn--" She wanted so much to brush this off the way she
always did, to resurrect her quiet dignity. To nod and say she
was fine and she would get some rest and let the warm brown eyes
walk away and forget it all in the morning, but it was dark and
cold and this real and tangible, loving voice was soft in her ear
and the blanket was so much less than strong arms, and...and...

"Sam? Honey, are you crying? Heeyy...ssssshhhhh... It's okay.
It's okay. Oh, baby, I wish I was there."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Ssssshhh...stop. It's me. Okay? It's okay."

She couldn't speak.

She stayed on the phone another fifteen minutes. Pete said he
could take off from work early the next day, drive down by
dinnertime. She told him he didn't have to. He said he would
meet her at the base, drive her home when she was released
tomorrow. She was scared to say 'yes', too fragile to say 'no'.
She didn't want to hate him because she hated herself.

She said goodnight. He said he loved her, and that made her cry,
but she didn't let on. She slept the few hours before dawn.

*****

Daniel Jackson woke to the feel of dampness on his chin and the
smell of Jaffa skin oil. A nudge to his hip jolted him into full
consciousness.

Jack towered above him, silhouetted a little alarmingly against
the harsh ceiling lights. Jack was kicking Daniel's hip with his
boot. "Hey," Jack said, by way of greeting.

Daniel pulled his stiff body to a sitting position, subtlely
wiping the drool from his chin, then turning and apologetically
wiping the rest from Teal'c's sleeve. He'd fallen asleep on the
Jaffa's shoulder, both of them on the floor of an SGC hallway,
backs to the wall.

"Sorry," Daniel mumbled again, dabbing inefficiently with the
cuff of own BDU sleeve.

Teal'c raised an eyebrow.

Empty Styrofoam cups slipped to the floor as Daniel straightened
his posture.

"My turn," Jack said simply.

Daniel nodded as he gathered up the old coffee cups.

His muscles protested heartily as he rose to his feet. He really
was getting too old for nights on tile floors or tel'tac cargo
bays. He didn't know how Jack did it without the Advil.

His mouth felt like straw and the gallon of coffee sat acidic in
his stomach. For all the good it had done in keeping him awake.

"She sleep through the night?" Jack asked, tone flat and
professional, hands on his hips. And for a moment Daniel forgot
about his own beaten up body and took in the scope of the man
before him. Jack hadn't gone home, merely crashed in his
quarters for a few hours, but he smelled of soap and his BDUs
were fresh and crisp. The darkness in his eyes was far too
familiar to Daniel after so many years.

Daniel drew a slow breath. "Nurse was in a few hours ago to give
her some pain meds, but everything seemed all right. Before
that, I think she was on the phone with someone, but, of course,
we couldn't hear..." He faded out, and Jack's eyes narrowed with
only the slightest flicker of buried emotion. "But after the
nurse's last visit all's been quiet, so I think she's been
sleeping."

Jack nodded. "Good."

Daniel stood a moment, holding eye contact with this man who had
once disgusted him, later frightened him, and ultimately left him
with the deepest respect. But he would never fully understand.
"She's okay, Jack. She's healing."

The nod was terse and might have seemed cold to another man's
eyes. "Yeah," Jack said softly. "Go get some sleep, Daniel, you
look like hell."

"Thanks, Jack."

Daniel moved away, but let his feet drag on the brown-grey tile,
listening to the men behind him, unwilling to break the ties.

Jack had slipped to the floor in Daniel's place.

"You can take off, too, T, I got it," he heard Jack say softly.

There was quiet for a moment, and Daniel was afraid his steps
would carry him out of earshot. But before he was forced to turn
the corner toward the elevators, he heard the deep Jaffa voice
resonate a reply. "I will remain, O'Neill."

Daniel could feel the silent acceptance from Jack, though he
never looked back.

Visiting hours would begin in an hour. Janet would bring the men
on the floor a healthy breakfast, as she always did on these
nights, with a disapproving glare to answer their words of
thanks.

Daniel would be back by mid-morning with checkers and the money
he still owed Sam for that last box of donuts she'd bought him at
the local coffee house...

*****

rowan_d1@yahoo.com