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: WHISPERS IN RED
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://rowan_d.tripod.com
RATING: Teen
ARCHIVE: All archives fine as long as you let me know.
CATEGORIES: Angst, Sam/Jack UST
SPOILERS: Nothing worth mentioning from later seasons
SUMMARY: "Because sometimes this is all she has. The only excuse
she has to feel."

Thanks to my priceless betas: Teddy E and Tularia, and to AnnaK
for trying.:)


AUTHOR'S NOTES: Once upon a time, there was a challenge issued
involving PMS and blood on Jack. And then fic was written, and
it was funny. But then there were those who said, "But we were
hoping for a serious one", and those who replied, "Eeiiiwwww you
must be kidding!" And then one of those latter folk said,
"please explain it to me", and I tried to (being one of the
former folk:)), and in the process of explaining, I ended up
conceiving a fic. This fic is not an answer to the challenge as
it does not incorporate all the original required elements. But
it is a fic based on the idea of the challenge. And it's all
Jenn's fault.:)


WHISPERS IN RED
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2005



She's so tired.

She's had enough sleep. More than enough. Could hardly get
awake this morning, her skin puffed and tender beneath her eye as
she squinted in the fluorescent light of her quarters' bathroom.

She hates her quarters. So often she is only there when things
are bad. When the SGC is on lockdown or Cassie is in the
infirmary or Sam just lifted a weapon and shot someone she sort
of loved.

The walls of her quarters are painted with nightmares. And no
moonlight to wash them away.

Mid-afternoon already, and she's trudging along some empty and
hot planet, behind the Colonel, letting Daniel drift ahead,
knowing Teal'c is watching their six, that he will focus on their
would-be attackers, and not on her melancholy mood.

She doesn't want to talk. To anyone. She just wants the mission
to end. Wants to swaddle herself in the softness of home.

Sam can feel the tides washing through her. She knows she's
falling victim to hormones and cycles of the moon. But she
doesn't want to rationalize anything right now.

Because sometimes this is all she has. The only concrete remnant
of Samantha Carter. The only excuse she has to feel.

"Carter!" The Colonel calls out and she turns too fast and it
hurts, because her abdomen is tensed already and she didn't even
know.

"Sir?" Her voice is scratchy. She hopes he doesn't notice.

She steps up beside him.

"Shouldn't we have seen signs of that river by now?" he asks.

She checks the GPS. Brings up the data from the UAV. "Another
mile and a half and we should be within sight of it, sir."

He squints out at the alien horizon, pulls off his cap for a
moment, swipes a hand over his cropped hair, and replaces the
cap. The sweat beading on his tanned skin catches the light and
glares against her eyes.

"All right. We stop as soon as we near the river," he says,
simply.

She nods, "Yes, sir," but she feels like she's looking at all of
this from the outside. She can't quite keep her thoughts on the
subject at hand. Thinks of home again.

She stows the GPS and reaches for her canteen, takes a long
drink. The Colonel does the same, then stops to look at her for
a long moment.

"You all right?" he asks.

"Headache." Which, as she says it, she realizes is true.

"Did you take something?"

Right. Kill the pain. Numb the nerves. Heaven forbid she
should take time to feel. "I will," she placates.

And he nods.

They walk.

The terrain has grown rougher and the mile and a half that should
have taken no more than 15 minutes takes more like 30. But they
finally catch a glimpse of the river at the bottom of a ravine
far off to their left. They stop on a plateau overlooking the
ravine.

"Why is the water down there?" the Colonel asks.

He looks toward her, and Sam squints out at the landscape and
shrugs. "It's hard to distinguish ground levels from above, sir.
There's probably a way down through the trees.” She gestures
further on in the direction they have been traveling. She moves
to the edge of the plateau and gazes down at the wide river.
It's flowing rapidly back toward the way they have come, then
curves off beyond sight through the hills.

"Hmmm," the Colonel murmurs. "Maybe." She leaves him to
contemplate this alone.

The ground here is softer and easy to penetrate. Their main goal
on this planet is to study the flora and fauna and the
composition of the soil. She can grab samples here, then more
when they near the river.

Sam lets her pack fall to the ground, turns and stoops beside it.
She fishes out sample bags and tubes and is slipping a hand into
her first latex glove when Daniel cries out behind her.

Sam and the Colonel whirl in unison, just in time to see their
friend land sprawled on his face on the uneven ground, and Teal'c
missing the dive to catch him by no more than a foot. None of
this would be so bad (or even that extraordinary) if Daniel had
not already taken his gear pack off his back. As it is, the
heavy pack dangling from his hand swung out as he fell, the strap
slipping from his wrist, and the combination of wet ground and
momentum of the rounded pack sends the gear skidding across the
surface, down a slight wind-beaten slope, and off the plateau
toward the riverbed 50 feet below.

"Oh, Christ--!" the Colonel shouts, diving futilely toward the
pack, but he is a mile away, and the pack is long gone. Sam
leans to touch Daniel's shoulder as she passes, "You all right?",
and hurries to the plateau's edge. Half-watching over her
shoulder, she sees Teal'c lift Daniel to his feet in one swift
movement as Daniel feels for injuries to his glasses. Far below,
the gear pack spills over rocks, across grass, down a short
mudslide, and finally plonks into the river with a loud enough
splash the wind carries the sound to their ears.

The current is too fast. They will never see the pack again.

"Oh, that's just beautiful..." the Colonel quips dryly, and Sam
knows the heat's getting to him, because on a cooler planet he
would have made some cute joke, ribbed Daniel, and shrugged it
off.

"Is it gone?" Daniel asks from behind, concern and guilt thick in
his voice.

The Colonel nods. "Oh, yeah," he says over his shoulder. "It's
gone. Up the river without a paddle."

"Aw, Jesus..."

The Colonel grimaces, rubs his eyes, and turns back to Carter
with hands on his hips. "Okay, what did we lose?"

"Ummm..." She sorts through her mental files. It wasn't
Daniel's personal bag, thank God. He still has his notebooks,
his references. "A few med supplies," she says. "The flares.
Part of the flashlights. Some of the water purifiers. And...,"
she closes her eyes as realization dawns, "...and my sleeping
bag."

"Oh, God, guys, I'm sorry," Daniel says.

The Colonel takes in Carter's tally. Nods. Then shrugs.
"Well...we'll work somethin' out," he says, and this sounds a bit
more like the Colonel she knows.

She turns back to Daniel, who is alternately rubbing at his
glasses with his t-shirt tail and holding them up to the light.
"You all right?" she says kindly.

He shrugs it off. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just an idiot. I'm
sorry."

"It's okay. Come on, we've all hit the ground, and you know it.
You just had especially good aim when you did," she says,
summoning a kind smile she knows is needed. Daniel meets her
gaze for a moment, and the gratitude is clear.

"Yeah...," he says dryly.

The Colonel decides this is as good a place as any to set up camp
for the night. They're reasonably sheltered, but have a clear
view in case of approaching enemies. Not that they picked up any
life signs, but they've been fooled many times before.

Carter returns her attention to the samples.

For a while, the Colonel and Teal'c work on setting up camp.
Daniel has grown entranced with a nearby frond, and he is paging
through a botany book. Sam has almost bagged all that she needs
from here, when the Colonel's impatient hot-planet-demeanor
returns. "Carter, I thought you said the MREs were in the pack
Teal'c was carrying!"

"They are, sir," she says, not looking up from her sample bag.
She seals the top, pulls off her gloves.

"I'm not finding 'em," he retorts. And she really doesn't want
to deal with this, she really wants to continue with the quiet
and then maybe get something to eat so she won't feel so light-
headed, and once, just once could the team maybe keep their
act together without her, not look to her for every little need,
every technical detail, every... "Carter!"

"Sir, they were right on the top." She pushes to her feet, too
fast, and it's too bright, and there's a spear of pain behind her
eye, and she hasn't even turned before, "Whoa..."

"Sam!"

The bright whites out to black, and one second she's up and the
next she's not and she feels strong arms catching her weight and
easing her to the ground, and she thinks Daniel, but...

"Sam? Oh, God...what's going on..."

Yeah. Daniel. But wait...she's supposed to be awake, right?
Supposed to have her eyes open. The sun, low in the sky, stabs
like a blade as she lifts heavy lids.

"I'm all right....I'm all right..." She's slurring. Less than
convincing.

The Colonel is here now, stooped in front of her, so yeah, she
definitely lost a couple of seconds there.

She refuses to lose it completely. Sam pushes forward from
Daniel's chest as soon as she can force her eyes to stay at least
halfway open. She rests her forehead in the cradle of her own
hand, elbow propped on her one lifted knee. A breeze. .Oh, that
feels good...

Daniel still has a hand on her back, and she feels a wave of
guilt temporarily overshadow the pervasive embarrassment. She
knows moments like this really upset Daniel. And he's had a hard
enough day. She should have known better than to get herself
into this.

Suddenly, it's the Colonel's warm hand on the back of her neck,
and she realizes he may have asked a question and she didn't
respond.

"Carter? Talk to me. What's goin' on?"

"I'm all right, sir," she manages, and it’s a little clearer this
time. "Just...gimme a minute."

His hand stays on the back of her neck.

It hasn't hit her this hard in a long time. When she was 14, she
passed out in the middle of gym class. She had never been so
embarrassed in her life. Her mother had only been gone two
months. She'd had to call her father to pick her up from school.
She had never missed her mother so much. At the Academy she had
hit the ground in the middle of drill practice. She’d been
tempted never to leave her room again.

She had hoped she had left all of that behind with the advent of
her thirties.

Apparently not.

Her head is feeling a bit clearer. It really isn’t so bad this
time, just stood up too fast, and the heat and lack of food
haven’t helped. She cautiously opens her eyes and gazes at her
own hand resting on her ankle.

The Colonel’s hand is still firmly on the back of her neck, and
she really doesn’t want to move. She doesn’t follow that line of
thought.

She hears Daniel barely whisper, “Here,” and glances up to see a
canteen passing from Daniel’s hand to the Colonel’s.

"Try some water," the Colonel says gently, and without argument,
she takes hold of the canteen. Her grip is a little less than
steady, but she manages to keep hold of the casing and bring the
water to her lips. It tastes good and sweet and she realizes she
really is quite thirsty. Should have stayed more hydrated, too.
All in all, not her best thought-out day.

She feels heavy. Weighted down. But she really doesn’t want to
be here like this. She hates everyone staring at her, and
hovering, and embarrassment starts to win out over the need for
quiet. Her face feels hot, and she takes another sip of the
water before she hands it back to the Colonel. "Thank you," she
says softly, and he nods.

"You all right?" he asks, and she catches the heavier worry in
his eyes and feels bad for scaring him.

"I'm fine," she says. "It’s just the headache. And the heat..."

He narrows his golden-brown eyes and watches her an extra beat
before he nods and accepts her reply.

"All right," he says, finally. His hand leaves the back of her
neck to replace the lid on the canteen, and the cool air hits the
vacant warm patch of her skin. She shivers. "Well, you just
take it easy a while. We’ll finish setting up camp."

She nods. "Yes, sir."

His hand skims over her hair ever so lightly as he pushes to his
feet, and the unexpected intimacy brings tears to her eyes. She
really needs to be somewhere besides here.

Yet she doesn’t want to be anywhere away from her family.

*****

He watches her as surreptitiously as he can. He has no idea
what's wrong. He knows she's been a little 'off' all day. Maybe
it's just a touch of the flu or she's fighting a cold. But
Carter can be moody at times, and he has never been privy to the
deeper emotions she deals with in her private life. Her moods
rarely affect her work, so he has no grounds to push.

Her hands are still trembling as she bags her soil samples from
the ground beside the river, and at that point he has the right
to be the concerned C.O.. So he keeps watching.

He and Teal'c have gotten the tents erected and the MREs are
found (right where Carter said they would be, just jostled down
to the side a bit). Daniel has lit a fire. The heat of this
planet's day is too quickly shifting to the cool of evening, and
it's looking like the night might have quite a bite.

Carter eats about half her dinner and gives the rest to Teal'c.
But it's an MRE, so half is plenty to keep her going. And she's
drinking enough water.

She sits quietly by the fire after dinner, blanket pulled around
her shoulders, and listens as Daniel prattles on about recent
theories on human evolution. She's still a bit pale, but the
firelight warms the color in her skin, and even after all these
years, Jack can't help but admire her pure elegance. He has
always stolen these moments. Carter by firelight. One of the
small joys in his life that make things worth doing. Like beer
in omelets and lakes without fish and crosswords he can actually
complete.

It's still early when Carter yawns and says she thinks she'll
turn in for the night.

At which point they remember her sleeping bag is touring the
planet without them.

"Oh, God, please, Sam, take mine, I'm the one who threw yours in
the river," Daniel says, painfully earnest and ever the
gentleman.

Carter shakes her head. "No, Daniel, you can't--"

"We'll share mine," Jack says firmly, before he has the chance to
think.

Carter stops mid-step and stares over her shoulder. Daniel
freezes and squints in mildly alarmed confusion. Jack waves a
frantic hand between himself and Daniel. "Not us we, us," he
says, waving toward his 2IC. His eyes lock on Carter's, and
Daniel goes silent as he watches the exchange between his
friends.

Jack's mouth moves for a moment, before he manages to speak.
"Makes sense, right? I mean...we're sharing a tent....it's
really cold. You...Well, I mean it's not like we haven't done it
before!" Oh, why is he still talking...?

Daniel barely manages to stifle a smile and gazes down at the
fire to cover. Teal'c watches with a lifted eyebrow and an air
of silent Jaffa amusement.

Carter saves the moment with her infallible professionalism.
"Yeah. Yes, of course. That's fine, sir. Thank you."

He nods. "'Night, Carter."

"Goodnight, sir." Then she turns and ducks into the tent.

Daniel stares down Jack in her wake, firelight dancing on his
glasses.

"What?" Jack says, a little too harshly.

Daniel only smiles. "I didn't say a word."

Jack sinks into sullen silence. But in truth, he is grateful she
didn't suggest trading tents. He wants to make sure she sleeps
tonight. Wants to listen to her breathe.

He tells himself that's his job as her C.O.

*****

She wakes in the dark and the dream is all messed up with reality
and her defenses lie buried in slumber.

The burned smell of the campfire stings her nostrils and mixes
with the stench of Bynarr and the slick oil of his skin against
the flesh of her stomach and chest and she feels sick and there
are already tears in her eyes, blurring the surrounding night.

She feels warm breath on her neck and she starts to recoil, but
the pattern of breath is drawing her in, making her feel
something good, and she starts to realize it’s the Colonel
sleeping so close behind her. It takes a moment to remember why.

The dream is still so alive, she’s having trouble keeping a fast
hold on reality. She lifts a hand to her face, rubs at her eyes,
swipes her cheeks, massages her brow, but the tears won’t stop on
command. She tries to slow her breathing, to at least stay
quiet.

The pain rushes through her, she feels the ache in her stomach,
beneath her skin, down her thighs. The cool night air draws its
invisible tendrils across the exposed skin at her throat, and she
remembers the Colonel’s warm hand on the back of her neck. It’s
been...so long...

Jonas Hanson woke one night to find her crying beside him. She
hadn’t even been able to tell him what hurt. Just everything she
had closed off in her life sneaking up and grabbing her when she
couldn’t fight the demons away. He had been so gentle that
night. Cradling her close and stroking her hair, pressing warm
lips to her skin. She hadn’t wanted to be coddled, hadn’t wanted
to be treated like a child. But the comforts felt so very
good... And he never spoke of that night again. Didn’t ask her
to acknowledge anything or explain it in the morning. She stayed
with him much longer than she should have, based on memories of
that single night.

"Carter?"

She catches her breath, eyes wide. Her muscles quiver; refusing
to still.

"Carter?" softer this time. He knows she is awake. And his
voice makes her ache.

"Sir?" she manages, but talking makes it so much harder not to
cry.

"Hey..."

She squeezes her eyes tight in the dark. The pain...the
vulnerability...it doesn't feel good anymore. It isn't about
indulgence and feeling the moment and keeping hold of her
humanity. It just...hurts. Losing so many people she loves.
Never knowing when one of her family won’t make it back from a
mission. Watching Cassie grow up day after day and wishing
somewhere so deep inside she can barely hear the echo that this
little girl was hers. Wishing she had taken her home and never
let go. Seeing her own father look at her some days with
something like regret, because as close as they have become, he
still can’t quite manage to be by her side, be part of her
everyday life. Hearing the Colonel’s voice echo through her head
as he sits strapped to a piece of alien technology designed to
protect that instead is systematically shredding what little
defenses and denials she has set into place. Seeing the
bittersweet smile he gives her when no one is supposed to see.
Skin dark beneath alien sun, and eyes seeing a thousand might-
have-beens.

"What’s wrong?" the voice whispers.

She can’t think of a word to say. She keeps her face turned away
in the darkness, but she can’t stem the tears.

His fingers find their way into her hair.

He says, "Bad dream?"

And maybe that is all she needs to say. She nods beneath his
hand. "Yeah."

"I know all about those." And there is so little of his
defenses tainting his voice, it pulls her out of herself for a
moment. She thinks she has never heard him quite so raw, so
open.

"I'll bet you do," she says at last.

He remains silent.

But his fingers remain in her hair.

She doesn’t know whether she moves back, or he moves forward, but
in the end, she finds they are pressed much closer together in
the sleeping bag than they began.

She is so near to sleep when she thinks she feels the light touch
of lips on her forehead, she can’t place the sensation between
reality and dream, but she lets the phantom touch soothe her into
slumber.

*****

Jack O’Neill wakes to an orange-red dawn. An empty sleeping bag.
Carter has risen already. Her duffle bag is no longer in the
corner. She is probably dressed and packing up the camp.

He finds himself unwilling to rise. He closes his eyes again and
luxuriates in the distant sound of birdsong and the dim rush of
moving water beyond. And he can feel the warmth on his skin
where Carter lay. Carter was crying last night. Carter. The
scene replays in his mind with an air of the surreal his daylight
self can’t quite comprehend. But somehow he feels she is not the
only one who has been left naked.

Jack pushes back the flap of the sleeping bag, stretching his
legs and taking in the cool air as he feels the heat of the day
already taking hold. He pushes up onto his elbow, and his eyes
fall to his thigh. A smear of crimson colors the dark cloth.

He knows a blood stain better than he should, and for half a
second he’s alarmed. And then he’s not. Because things are
taking on form on the sleep-fogged carousel of his mind.

He finds himself sinking back onto the cushion of the sleeping
bag, not yet ready to face the world. Because he can feel her on
him, feel the warm weight of Carter’s body, the gentle curves and
the trembling muscles beneath her skin. He can feel her
femininity spilling across him, and the scent of her and all that
is alive and passionate and warm beneath her regimented exterior.

He finds himself breathless in the wake of her.

He lingers a good ten minutes longer. Until he hears Daniel
outside the flap of the tent, jabbering to Carter, followed by
Carter’s teasing reply. She is Major Carter again. Ready for
the day.

He lets his eyes fall to the stain once again. He can almost
feel her sleep-flushed skin beneath his lips. He reaches for his
duffle bag and shouts to Daniel to be ready in ten.

Time to go home.

*****

rowan_d1@yahoo.com