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: PLANETARY SHIFTS 1: WATCHING
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://rowan_d.tripod.com
RATING: (PG)
ARCHIVE: All archives fine as long as you let me know.
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Pete, Sam/Jack
STATUS: Complete
SPOILERS: Through early Season 8
SUMMARY: Jack is watching. There's nothing he can do.



Betas rock: Foxcat, Teddy E, and annaK



PLANETARY SHIFTS 1: WATCHING
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2004



The bar and grille is dark and cool. Red and blue glass lights
hide people's real lives.

He has been in this booth too long. He has finished his food, he
has nursed too many beers. He's sitting here on the pretense of
letting the beer clear his system before he makes the drive home.

He's in a far corner, sheltered by shadows.

She's sitting with Pete in a booth along the main wall. She
might see him if she really looked. But she's not looking
tonight. The lights from the stained glass chandelier play
across her pale skin like firelight. He knows. He's sat around
a thousand fires with her.

He's watching. He can't take his eyes off of her. He should
leave. She's in a public place, but he's invading her privacy,
he knows this. Her privacy is one thing he has always respected
to a fault. He has always respected her right to be someone he
does not know.

Some days he's not certain this was the right way to live.
Others he knows it is all he ever had.

Carter's hair is a little longer this year. Or maybe it's
Samantha's hair. He likes it longer. Not because it makes her
any more beautiful; she is forever beautiful. But because she
seems to enjoy it, and because her blond locks catch the light
and tickle the soft skin at her temples. He knows the skin at
her temples is soft, because she cried when Janet died, and
somewhere in those blurry first days, he brushed his lips against
her temple.

Soft.

He can't take his eyes off of her.

Carter's hurting tonight. Something on the job hurt her. And he
can't stand this. He never could. Every little scar takes a
little bit of her away she will never get back, he will never get
back. He has hated this since their first mission to P3X-593,
when that bastard Turghan held her with rough hands. She came
back to the team with nothing more than a few welts on her back.
But her eyes have never been the same. She came back a little
worse for the wear. She came back with something missing, and
something in its place he knows too intimately. He almost wished
she had killed the scum, knifed him to death on the spot. He
thanks some kind of god each day that she walked away. She would
have lost so much more. As would he.

Jack wishes he had killed Turghan himself. He had nothing left
to lose but anger.

He has watched everything ravage her. Jolinar to Nirrti to
Anubis to Fifth. And he has done all he can.

Like hell he has.

Something on the job hurt her today.

The hell of it is, he doesn't know what it was. He missed it
completely. He has gone over the mission reports, sifted through
hour by hour of what he knows they went through--a hundred times.
He can't find it. He doesn't know why her "Goodnight, sir" was
washed in grey. Doesn't know why the skin around her baby blues
was a breath too tight.

At the start of the mission she was the brightest light in the
SGC.

She has picked at her dinner while Pete downed a burger.

Pete is watching her, too. Jack sees it. And that is some kind
of comfort. And some kind of pain.

Pete reaches a hand across to caress Carter's long fingers. He's
working on her, urging her to talk. And Jack thinks she's
starting to. He can't hear a word. Can't even catch the sound
of her voice. But he can see her eyes. And he knows when she
starts opening up. Knows when she starts letting Pete glimpse
her pain. She's a little angry, a little hard. But that's
Carter when she's hurt.

By the time their waitress asks about dessert and they shake
their heads, Carter is speaking earnestly, pleading for some kind
of justification from someone who can't know the whole story.
From someone who can't understand what all of this means to her.
Who hasn't held her while her DNA dissolved or touched her face
while her symbiote gave its life to restore her breath.

It's not long before Pete is standing beside her and holding out
his hand. Jack thinks, for a moment, they have decided to leave.
Then he realizes Pete has asked her to dance. O'Neill thinks
this is crazy. She doesn't need to dance. She needs to talk.

But Sam almost smiles, for the first time all night. And she
takes his hand, and lets him lead her to the makeshift dance
floor, really just a gathering of bodies in the vicinity of the
jukebox.

Something soft is playing. Something Jack doesn't even know if
Carter would like. There's a lot he doesn't know.

For a while they are talking more than dancing. Carter's still
looking at Pete with those pleading eyes of hers that Jack has
never been able to deny. She's wearing a soft, flowing skirt,
and a sweater that drapes over everything just the way it should.
But those eyes--those eyes convinced him to take on a fucking
symbiote to save his own fucked up life. And smiled at him when
he woke up home again.

His stomach burns when he realizes she has started to cry.

He should have left the last beer. He should have left the girl
long ago.

She looks self-conscious, but not about Pete. About the time and
place.

Pete has gotten through. His hand is on her hip. His other hand
is on her face, in her hair. He is stroking her, soothing her,
keeping her talking. He kisses her eyebrow, caresses her cheek,
nods his head. Carter is looking at him, pleading, like nothing
has been accomplished, nothing has been solved, and this doesn't
surprise Jack, because anything that hurts Carter enough to make
her cry in the middle of a restaurant is something too big for
the world to solve.

But as he watches them move, fall into a real dance step; as he
watches her words fade out and her eyes close as she listens to
the music and the beat of her heart, or his heart, or both--he
thinks tonight she didn't need the problem solved.

Pete's arms slide around her, and she moves in closer, willing
and pliant beneath his hands. Carter always let him touch her.
Why didn't he do it more? And then she is resting her head on
Pete's shoulder, eyes closed. She is nestling into his warmth,
and she seems unaware or uncaring of where she is, only of whom
she is with.

It is time for him to go.

Carter brushes at her nose with the back of her hand, catches a
tear at the corner of her eye, then settles back on Pete's
shoulder. Pete cups a hand to the back of her head and Jack
looks away.

He doesn't wait for the server. He makes a few quick
calculations in his head that Carter would have made for him on
another night, and he tosses a wad of bills onto the table.

He has to walk near the dance floor to get out the door.

He looks straight ahead. He doubts Carter opens her eyes. He
doubts Pete looks up at all. But Jack has moved just close
enough to hear her wet sniff, to hear her clear her throat. He
would recognize her in the dark.

The night is wide open and cool. This place is just outside
town, not too many lights blocking out the ceiling of stars. He
sits on the hood of his truck, looking up. 'Hey, Carter? Which
planet do you think that is?' 'That's not a planet, sir, that's
a star.' 'Hey, Carter? Which planet do you think that is?' She
smiles for a moment. Gets it. Lowers her gaze. 'How about
ALF's, sir?' 'Naannh. ALF's is further away.' 'So, what is it,
sir?' 'Somewhere with more sun than this place. All year. And
big green oceans.' 'And lots of beer and girls in bikinis?.'
'No. Just us.' 'Hey, guys, Teal'c's got the tent set up on the
far side of the hill, so....' She heard it. Or he always
thought she heard, and thought she heard all the rest, on all the
hundreds of other days. Maybe she never did. Maybe she never
wanted to. Maybe. Maybe there is a reason they are here
tonight.

Sam's head on his shoulder. Thera's head on his shoulder.
Sam's hand over his and a quiet sigh and wind-tossed hair that
smelled like fresh rain. And a moment when he was just Charlie's
Dad again.

Time for him to go.


*****
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