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: Snapshots: Continuity In Loss
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://www.beautyinshadows.net
RATING: Series is rated NC-17
ARCHIVE: Only on author's website
SPOILERS: Through "Ripple Effect"
CATEGORIES: Sam/Martouf, Sam/Teal'c friendship, hurt/comfort
SUMMARY: "Teal'c heard the 'alone' at the end of her sentence; she had no doubt. He acknowledged the statement with a simple nod." The continued story of the AR Sam and Martouf introduced in "Ripple Effect".

Huge hugs to my Snapshots Beta Squad: Jenn, Pax, Jill, Teddy E, and Kudra

This is the fifth installment in a series of vignettes collectively titled "Snapshots: Some Kind of Love Story". The stories do not always fall in chronological order, but in an artistic one. Each of the vignettes can likely be read alone (to varying degrees), though taken as a whole they're meant to paint a larger picture -- of some kind of love story.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Remember these vignettes do NOT tell the story in chronological order, so despite the subject matter here, there are still many stories to come.:)


CONTINUITY IN LOSS
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2006


"Somehow everything I own
Smells of you
And for the tiniest moment
It's all not true"
--Snow Patrol "You Could Be Happy"


When she stood in General Hammond's office, reciting her report on the mining potential of P4X-982, her ears hummed with the electromagnetic buzz of the mountain, and the roar seemed to drown out her voice. She lifted her gaze repeatedly to the General's patient countenance. She wanted to stare at the papers on his desk, but she couldn't do that, because she recognized the flamboyant blue scrawl of the signature on the top of the pile.

Martouf was requesting a team transfer from SG-1.

The General would honor the request. Unless she asked him not to.

She finished her report, and the General nodded her dismissal. She had no idea if she had said anything relevant to the work

*****

The women's locker room was deserted and quiet. Sam closed her eyes and let the shower water wash over things both tangible and ethereal. The rush of sound slowed her thought process. Today's mission had been simple enough. More about soil samples and meet-and-greet than saving the world. But her stomach had hurt so badly through it all she hadn't been able to touch a bit of her lunch MRE. She'd hardly made eye contact with any member of the team since her arrival on base at 0500 this morning. A weapon in her hand and a fresh landscape had been a welcome distraction. Not for long enough.

One boot in front of the other; that she knew how to do. Letting go of people she loved...

That was a little harder.

Sam pulled on her civilian clothes, jeans and a tight tank top, boots and a leather jacket. She slung her bag over her shoulder and kept her gaze on the splashpaint pathways on the concrete floor, focusing on the gentle tickle of her earring on the soft skin behind her jaw. She had to pass the team quarters to reach the elevator to the surface.

There were back routes. She could have ducked through the chem labs and ridden up by the service elevator. But she wouldn't do that. Her footsteps carried her insistently to the slightly dimmed hall outside her own quarters, and Teal'c's, and the Colonel's....and her ex-lover's. The Colonel had already taken off for the night. For the weekend, in fact, up to Minnesota. He had asked her to come along, as always, expecting her usual snarky or teasing declination. Instead she'd swallowed hard and bitten the inside of her lip so fiercely it bled. She prayed he hadn't seen the sheen of tears come with her quiet, "No thank you, sir." The flash of amber darkness in his eyes could have been a trick of the overhead light.

The team knew Martouf had moved his things back to the base. She knew they suspected Martouf would be leaving the team. No one said anything aloud. But she felt the added protectiveness in the Colonel's stance, saw the quiet support in Teal'c's dark eyes, felt his presence solidly behind her on the rocky hillsides.

They knew she had walked away.

She stood in the quiet hallway, shoulder sinking against the cold of the wall, leather boot hooked round and nagging at the back of her opposite ankle as a few straggling airmen wandered past.

He was inside. 30 feet away. The man she'd slept beside most nights for nearly a year. Probably holding a book in his lap and sitting up too straight, or writing at his desk with the careful attention and patience he gave his daily journal, or studying the remote like a foreign explosive device and wondering how its uses could stump him when he mastered gate technology with little effort. She wanted to watch his face as he recorded the day's impressions in the leather bound volume she had given him this Christmas. She wanted to make sure he found the Discovery Channel before tonight's special on Celtic folklore.

Somewhere in her head a creature named Jolinar curled in a corner crying her eyes out into a crimson blanket, and a soothing voice woven on the winds of her life for months or decades whispered tenderly, "Jol...don't do this. You don't have to do this. I love you. I'll always love you."

Sam pushed off the wall and walked away as fast as her legs would move. Too fast to start crying in the fucking SGC hallway.

*****

"Teal'c?

The massive Jaffa turned from his seat at the computer terminal in the research library. He and Sam were the only two people in the room. "Major Carter. I thought you had gone."

Sam cleared her throat, took a step closer. "Yeah, I was, uhm....on my way to." She felt strange in street clothes in this room. She was two different people in these two different skins. Lots of people in her head these days. She rubbed her palm along her thigh.

Teal'c lifted a silent eyebrow and waited for her to elaborate.

"I just, uhm..." she searched for an excuse, but she was suddenly tired and everything was fuzzy and she felt a little lost and naked and Teal'c was sturdy and strong and she knew with every fiber of her being he would never hurt her. "I didn't want to go home," she finished.

Teal'c heard the 'alone' at the end of her sentence; she had no doubt. He acknowledged the statement with a simple nod.

They lingered in comfortable silence for near a minute. "Have you eaten your evening meal, Major Carter?" he asked.

Sam shook her head. "No. I didn't eat lunch, actually." She hadn't meant to reveal that.

"It is a lovely night on this planet, I am told. I was considering retrieving my sustenance and taking it above to consume in the fresh air. Would you care to join me?"

"Umm...yeah. Yeah, I'd like that, Teal'c."

They walked the path to the mess in companionable quiet. Teal'c picked out massive amounts of food. Sam placed a few token items on her tray. Teal'c placed a few things on his tray she knew were more to her taste than his. They lined up at the checkout and she insisted he let her pay. In the hallways again, she let him lead the way up to the surface and out into the cool evening air. Beyond the security doors, the wind and rustle of leaves prickled her skin and she realized with a sensory rush how numb she'd been for how many hours. Awakening her senses was a little unnerving.

"Where would you like to sit?" Teal'c asked.

"Uhmmm...over there's good."

They'd been eating for a good 15 minutes before she couldn't fake interest any longer and moved her tray from her rock chair to the grass at her feet. She kept hold of her iced tea, sipping it tentatively.

Teal'c broke the silence. "You and Martouf are no longer...a couple?" he said, watching his own fork as he gathered a bite of something like lasagna. Sam almost smiled hearing her friend search through Earth euphemisms, seeking a delicate term for lovers. She couldn't think of anyone else in her life who even would have asked this question tonight. She didn't know how to feel about that.

Sam pulled her knee up tight to her chest, hugging her leg. "No," she said simply. "We're not."

Teal'c chewed his bite of food, and Sam rested her chin on her knee, staring out over the landscape beyond the mountain. Her stomach hurt again.

"Are you all right, Major Carter?"

The softness in his voice burned her skin. There was so much more to Teal'c than most of the world saw each day. Even SG-1 could forget sometimes; out of sight out of mind. Father. Lover. Friend. Massive power, both of physique and will; such capacity for tenderness and feeling beneath the iron flesh.

Sam didn't move her eyes from the horizon. "Yeah, I'm okay, Teal'c."

Teal'c's voice carried on the wind, a steady beat. "I believe Martouf would still go home with you...if you asked."

Sam dropped her gaze to the grass and her voice sank to shadows in its wake, "Yeah. I believe so, too."

Silence.

"You love him," Teal'c stated.

Her throat ached, and her eyes washed hot with tears in the declining light. "Very...very much," she whispered. "But sometimes...that just isn't enough to make things right, you know?"

Teal'c set down his fork and pushed his tray aside. He reached out a hand and rested its weight on her shoulder. She felt the warmth through the leather of her jacket. "Indeed, it is not," he said. "However...I do believe such feelings make the acceptance of this knowledge, far more difficult."

Her throat clogged and the grass swam and blurred beneath her feet; no amount of past conditioning could maintain her walls right now. One year or one hundred, she had learned to feel him in her air space and she wouldn't be waking in Martouf's arms tomorrow or any morning after. Her sheets would smell of him for days, and then his scent would fade and nothing would be left but more and endless memories, smiles and touches and devotion and tears. She had let someone rip down her defenses for the first time in a decade, and she was tearing off the bandages to leave the open wounds. "Yes," she answered on a wet breath. "Yes, it does."

Teal'c sat beside her, immobile like the trees bordering the clearing, wide hand pressed to the center of her back, until the sun had disappeared behind the mountain and the birds silenced their evening song.

She drew a slow breath. "It's like...because Jolinar's dead...I'm not really one of them, anymore. But at the same time...I'm not really one of us, either. Not just Tau'ri. And I never really will be again. I can't be Tok'ra. I don't want to. But I don't quite belong at home, anymore."

Sam turned to him, catching the first glimmer of moonlight in Teal'c's hooded gaze, and her voice found a solemnity and strength she had lost moments ago. "And I'm thinking...that's how you've felt for a long time, now."

Teal'c did not speak, but his neck muscles worked as he swallowed, and she was hit with the depth of his response. She had learned to read the subtleties of Teal'c body language years ago.

He gave her a single deep nod, and she turned back to the tree line.

When Sam had ceased to swipe at her nose and cheeks, Teal'c held out a plastic cup of red grapes, and she took one. The sweetness was surprisingly comforting on her tongue. Reminiscent of the Tok'ra baa'le'tai fruit. And somehow that was okay for a moment. There was a thread of unity. Something to ground her in Samantha, the universal invariant in the equation of her life.

She took a second grape. Then she took the bowl.

The wind whistled through the Earth trees.


*****