**"AFFINITY" SPOILERS!!**

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: She Sleeps
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
RATING: (PG)
ARCHIVE: SJD yes. All others fine, just let me know, please.
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Pete, Sam/Jack, Pete POV
SPOILERS: Spoilers through "Affinity"
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: Pete watches Sam sleep. And he has everything...almost
everything...he ever wanted.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Humour me. Let's pretend Ms. Tapping's combat
bracelet didn't fall apart over the hiatus, and Sam's still
wearing it in Season 8. Thank you.:)


Betas are golden: Fulinn, Teddy E, and AnnaK


SHE SLEEPS
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2004




He likes to watch her sleep.

She likes to open the blinds of her bedroom window, just a bit,
before dousing the light for the night. She wants the gentle
rays of the sun to wake her on the rare mornings she gets to
sleep beyond the sunrise. Sam Carter loves the sun.

When Pete wakes beside her, before her, he gets to see the thin
rays of golden light on her freckled skin. He gets to see the
highlights in her platinum hair.

He knows she used to wear her hair shorter. She would be
beautiful with any style. But he likes it longer like this,
thinks it suits who she is. Practical, but soft and sweet. Sam
in a nutshell.

She's had a hard week. She's deeply tired. He doesn't know all
that she's been through, only sees the toll it has taken on her.
She may have been able to tell him the bare essentials of what
she does every day, but he knows it is just a skeleton framework.
She offers bits and fragments here and there, and he tries to
build walls from the raw studs, but he knows he'll never see the
finished product.

He knows that hurts her.

She started to cry one day, out of the blue, under a clear bright
sky, eating lunch on the balcony of his apartment in Denver--
because she would never be able to share her whole life with him.
Even if she quit the Air Force tomorrow, everything that came
before would still be hers to carry alone.

He hates her tears. He hasn't pushed so hard, since then.

Most days, he can't believe Samantha Carter has chosen to be with
him. She is out of his league. All she has learned, all she has
seen, all she understands. Her passion, her brilliance, that
stunning beauty of which she seems so absurdly unaware. She is
different from the women he has cared for in the past.

Pete loved his wife, in the best way he knew how at that time in
his life. He wasn't the perfect husband. He loved her.

But Sam. Sam...being in a room with Sam shifts the elements of
his universe in a way even *she* wouldn't be able to explain.

He felt it for the first time the night he took her to the old
couple's anniversary party. Stupid idea, probably. Anyone else
would have thought he was crazy. But walking into the hotel,
making her close her eyes, and hearing her lively teasing--*'Can
I open 'em now? Can I open 'em now?'*--a theoretical
astrophysicist sounding like an eight year old girl, and he had
fallen into boyish laughter and Sam Carter had melted his heart.
The warmth radiating from her grin, the affection in the grasp of
her hand, spread through his stomach like warm chocolate. He'd
forgotten how it felt for the world to be so warm, so perfect,
just as it stood. She gives that back to him.

He doesn't pretend to understand her. Sam will always be her
own. Sometimes her sky-pale eyes are so far away, he doesn't
dare venture toward such foreign horizons. Sometimes something
hurts her for a shadow of a moment, and she twines her fingers
through his, takes comfort in his presence. He lets that be
enough. She told him once, in the life she has chosen, she
either accepts her fate to be alone, or she finds someone
generous enough to accept only the part of her she is able to
give. She knows this is too much to ask of anyone. Such a gift
must be given willingly and insistently.

He can do this. Only for Sam. Walking away when she needs him?
He tried that once, to protect his own skin. The moment haunts
him. And as deep as they are entwined now--it will never happen
again.

There's a ring on her finger, catching the rays of the morning
sun. There's a combat bracelet on her opposite wrist. There's a
scar on her leg where the white of her thigh flashes out from
beneath the covers. He understands one out of three.

And he knows his time is precious. This morning, she sleeps,
contented and safe in his love, accepting of the wondrous gift
she has given him, ready to build their life together. She does
love him, he believes that, sees it in her eyes, feels it in her
fingers on his forehead on tired, rainy nights. But it's not
quite the same as the way he loves her.

He knows this.

Three days ago, she collapsed in his arms. His heart nearly
stopped; so much for his academy training on calm in a crisis.
One moment they were walking through the park across from her
house, the next her knees let go and he was struggling to hold
her weight. And he grabbed *her* cell phone and called General
O'Neill because he knows enough to understand he can't take
Samantha to a regular hospital.

Half an hour later and a ride in General O'Neill's truck with Sam
half-conscious against his shoulder and Pete was inside the SGC
again, helping O'Neill lower Sam onto a gurney. She was barely
conscious by then. But everyone was telling him it was okay--
something about an alien virus, something they had all picked up
on their last mission, but they had thought she was immune. That
same damned thing they had never explained to him that prevented
her from being treated in anything but a top secret medical
facility. Apparently she hadn't been immune; it had just taken
her longer to show the symptoms.

They had a cure, they told him. Everyone else was okay. But he
had never seen Sam so pale...

In the infirmary, the doctors were hooking her up to an IV and he
was being urged out of the way at the foot of the bed. General
O'Neill was still near her head and caught her outstretched hand
as Pete moved forward to do the same. Sam half-opened her eyes
and whispered, "Sir?" And Jack O'Neill had his face close near
Sam's. "They gotcha. You're gonna be fine."

The pain creasing Sam's brow hit Pete like a punch to the gut,
the single tear slipping from the corner of her eye. "It hurts,"
she whispered.

Pete pushed against the insistent hand of the airmen before him.

General O'Neill combed his hand through Sam's hair, smoothed his
thumb across the lines on her brow. "I know. But the meds help
right away. Trust me," he said gently. And Sam closed her eyes
and nodded and a moment later she was asleep. The drugs had
kicked in.

O'Neill touched Pete on the shoulder as he moved away, and told
him Sam was going to be okay. He showed him down the hall to a
room with coffee and candy machines and a place to sit and wait.

Pete took his girl home a few hours later. She slept it off like
a 24 hour flu.

But he will never be the same.

Seeing her almost die--he knew he loved her, but he hadn't really
known how much. How much... How shattered he would be if she
were taken away.

But more than that. He saw the limit to his time with her.

She sleeps. And she thinks he is enough for her, she thinks
they're going to be okay. Maybe for today, they are. And he
knows he'll stay as long as there is the slimmest glimpse of
maybe. He hates himself for this, but he can't do anything else
when he sees her smile. But he has seen the limit; witnessed
truths that should never have been classified, yet somehow were.

He gets almost everything he has ever wanted. He gets to warm
her in the middle of the night and feel her arms tight around
him. He gets to laugh at Cary Grant movies with her, he gets to
shove her up against a wall and feel her bite his neck, he gets
to drown in her half-closed eyes by firelight. He gets to
wrestle with her for the remote control and end up laughing and
kissing, he gets to hear her argue with her brother on the phone,
and wish she could have a dog. He gets to see her cook ravioli
and feel her tired weight against his shoulder at a midnight
movie and feel her lips against his and her breasts against his
chest and her fingers in the back pockets of his jeans and her
tears against his neck in the middle of the night--

--but for as long as she stays, as long as she may say it's
forever--

--he will never have--

He will never have...

He will never have.

*****

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