Difficult Decisions
Sep. 23rd, 2022 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stringertheoryTitle: Difficult Decisions
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Jack O’Neill, Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson
Word Count: 5660
Categories: gen, UST, friendship, angst
Spoilers: Episode tag for “Entity” (4.20). Spoilers for the same.
Warnings: None
Summary: It seemed like with Carter, there were only ever difficult decisions, and Jack was always in the middle of making them.
It was on him, in the end.
He should’ve listened to his gut, should’ve never let Carter get anywhere near the thing’s nest. But Daniel insisted on being Daniel, able to sympathize with anyone and anything, and he saw intelligent life in the form of a machine. And Carter backed him up, comparing the entity’s struggles to all the times they themselves had been trapped off-world, taking whatever desperate measures they could to survive. It was a comparison that cut a bit too close to home, and Jack felt himself give a little, just enough to not take the thing out on principle.
Carter wanted to try communicating with it, to see what it wanted. She was convinced the threat was neutralized and the base safe. It was. She wasn’t.
The fact that the thing seemed to want to talk to Carter, specifically—displaying her personnel file on its screen like a calling card—should have been all the evidence they needed to pull the plug. But Jack ignored his gut and instead of “accidentally” cutting the wires before anything could happen, he let Carter take the lead, trusting her over his instincts.
He’d been right there. That was the thing killing him: he’d watched it happen and he hadn’t acted until it was too late. He’d been mere feet away from her with his finger on the proverbial trigger and Carter had still been taken. Somehow no one had noticed until it was already done and Carter was lost in herself. Again.
Fraiser didn’t know what to do, didn’t think there was anything she could do. If Carter was still in there, it was only barely, and the entity was rapidly pushing her out; for all they knew, too much of her might already be gone. Jack sat stock still in his chair in the briefing room, hands clasped together in a white-knuckle grip as rage and guilt roared through him. So often they knew what the problem was but couldn’t fix it, and it was infuriating.
The feelings triggered a memory, and suddenly Jack was back at that same conference table, somehow looking down at the exact same scratch on its surface, wondering how in the hell they could see a Goa’uld inside Carter and yet not be able to get it out. The moment rattled around inside his head in a weird kind of déjà vu, like hearing a song he knew played on different instruments.
Maybe they had realized Carter wasn’t Carter sooner this time, but another thing had still taken control of her mind and her body and Jack couldn’t do a damn thing about it. First there had been Jolinar, now this thing. He wondered how many times you could have your brain hijacked before you wouldn’t be able to make it out the other side. It was starting to look like two.
When Hammond kept him behind and regretfully mentioned having to make difficult decisions, Jack had to resist the urge to break things. It seemed like with Carter, there were only ever difficult decisions, and he was always in the middle of making them. He was her CO, everything was always life and death with them, it was to be expected.
But then Hammond haltingly added in a kind voice that he knew how much Carter meant to Jack, and Jack froze for a heartbeat. He knew that Hammond knew—knew enough to suspect enough, anyway—but it was practically an unwritten rule that anybody who knew about it didn’t talk about it. Plausible deniability, a secret soft spot, an aversion to the paperwork it would have required—he didn’t care what the reason was so long as neither he nor Carter got in trouble (well, more that Carter didn’t), and neither he nor Carter got moved off of SG-1. They hadn’t done anything wrong, and wouldn’t, but they weren’t supposed to care so damn much and people definitely weren’t supposed to know that they cared so much.
Jack understood what Hammond was trying to do, though. His words were a gesture, a way for him to acknowledge the difficulty of the situation without directly addressing why it was so difficult. And if there hadn’t been an SF standing not ten feet away, watching them more closely than Jack thought was entirely necessary, he might have responded differently. But he knew Hammond understood when he said what he could and not what he wanted to.
It would never get easier, staring into the face of someone you cared about and not seeing them. Jack couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that the entity wasn’t able to use Carter’s voice.
Daniel talked to it—the way he could, the way he always had to—trying to forge a connection and find a way out that didn’t include death and destruction. Jack was only a little surprised to hear that the entity hadn’t come after them as a first strike, but in retaliation. Who would have guessed that one little MALP could devastate a world, or that radio waves could be contagious? Carter, maybe. If she were there, she would probably have already figured out exactly what their probe had done and how, and then rigged a way to keep it from doing it again.
But she wasn’t there.
This wasn’t the first time they’d inadvertently hurt others just by going through the Gate, and Jack doubted it would be the last. But they could also do it on purpose, and he wasn’t above it.
Maybe they’d accidentally hurt lots of the entities; maybe they’d killed thousands of them. On another day Jack might have felt the guilt of it and been able to care about the entity’s plight. But right now, on this day, he was looking into Carter’s face and seeing nothing behind her eyes and he didn’t care, he didn’t care. That thing hadn’t just hurt Carter, it had targeted her. Out of all of them, it had run its little threat assessments and it had taken her. So he didn’t care. He’d burn its entire world to the ground. He’d blast its planet out of the sky. He’d send every MALP they had through the Gate, each of them covered in as many radios as he could find, all blasting “Ride of the Valkyries” at top volume. He didn’t care.
In retrospect, he probably should have planned out his next move. Daniel could have issued a more diplomatic version of the ultimatum, and they could have prepped the base for the fallout, made sure the entity only had one place to go. But in the moment his logic had only been fueled by anger and guilt and fear, and he’d lashed out, threatening the entity until it had no choice. He’d thought it was the only way to get Carter back. Now he was staring down life support, unable to look at the empty shell that had once been his second in command.
Carter was dead, and he’d killed her.
That was the only thought running through his head: Carter was dead and he was the reason. His memories were just a loop now, of the entity staring him down, electricity sparking from Carter’s fingertips, the heaviness of the zat in his hand, Carter hitting the floor. Over and over again, a lowlight reel of a regret he might never recover from.
It didn’t seem right that, after everything they’d been through, this was was how Carter went out. She hadn’t even been able to fight back, to do anything to help them help her, and somehow that thought hurt Jack more than anything else. If he could stand to look at the situation head on, he might have found it kind of darkly fitting that the thing that finally got Carter was a vengeful computer virus. But he was too busy hating himself.
The thing he hated most was that he wasn’t falling apart.
Over the years, he’d seen and done despicable things in the name of duty. He’d gotten good at not letting things get to him, at shoving things aside and pretending they weren’t there and carrying on. Easily half his life was kept in a box he wouldn’t open.
But he’d driven an enemy to desperation and then stood in a hallway full of silent witnesses and killed Samantha Carter. And he was still upright, still functioning, still taking orders and acting okay and he hated himself for it. Because despite the fact that he felt hollowed out, he knew he’d survive. And maybe this time he shouldn’t.
It was on him.
He’d known it had to be done, that they couldn’t let the entity get loose in the base again, especially not after it had been told in no uncertain terms that it had to either sacrifice itself or its world. He couldn’t imagine what he’d be feeling now if it had been somebody else who’d pulled the trigger. It could have been; he’d been the only one with a zat, but there’d been more than enough security personnel present to take Carter out even if he hadn’t done anything. He’d called them off and they’d listened, following his order even after the entity had started zapping itself into the wires. But if he hadn’t stopped it with a zat blast, somebody else would have done it with bullets and he could not let that happen.
Nobody blamed him, and somehow that made it worse. Not even Daniel, who on any given day could come up with five separate arguments for ways Jack could have done something differently. They all understood that he’d had to do it and they weren’t angry about it. If anything, they were sympathetic and it made him want to throw things, made him want to rage and bellow and beat the walls. But he didn’t. Because it was on him.
He was still trying to find a way to live in the new, Carter-less world he’d created when they got her back.
Though he’d grown accustomed to believing in the impossible somewhere around the second time a fatally injured Daniel had turned back up, right as rain, Jack couldn’t fully trust Carter’s recovery. He didn’t think he was the type, but he almost wondered if he’d finally cracked, and everything after Carter had hit the hallway floor had just been a delusion. How many times could you lose people before you lost yourself? It was going to be more than whatever number he was currently on, because Carter really was alive and currently resting in the infirmary under the affectionate and steely gaze of Dr. Fraiser.
Jack had left the infirmary when he was expected to. He’d visited with Daniel and Teal’c and they had all stayed until the general came by, then left as soon as Fraiser started shooing them all out. Alone for the first time in hours, he had gone through all the motions of going home: showering, changing into his civvies, grabbing his keys and wallet from his locker. But he didn’t leave. He couldn’t.
It was late, well after visiting hours and maybe late enough that Fraiser had turned the infirmary over to the overnight staff. Given Carter’s presence and what had landed her there, though, there was every possibility that the doc was still around, but Jack was willing to risk it. At this time of night, there would be few people left on base to spot him stalking back to the infirmary, and even fewer to catch him inside it. Because he wasn’t supposed to care so damn much. But he did.
He didn’t sneak, because that would look even worse, but he did tread as quietly as he could back to Carter’s bedside. She appeared to be sleeping, and Jack studied her face as he lowered himself into the empty chair beside her. Even asleep, eyes closed, he could tell that it was her in there, and something that had been squeezed tight inside him finally released. He’d seen her and talked to her already, but it was almost as if his mind needed a second look before it would believe that reality had turned out the way it did. Letting out a sigh, he propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and dropped his head into his hands.
“Hi, sir.”
His head snapped up at the sound of Carter’s voice. It was quiet, though whether that was a sign of how she felt or just a concession for where they were, he wasn’t sure. She looked tired, but the smile she gave him was serene.
“Hey, Carter. I was just checking in on you before I headed home.”
She nodded slightly, still smiling. “Of course you were, sir.”
He cleared his throat and looked away. “How are you feeling?”
“Really, sir?” she asked, tone incredulous.
Glancing back at her, he could see she had one eyebrow raised at him.
“Dumb question?”
“No, sir. But you already asked that just a few hours ago.”
And it was an entirely safe topic, one that practically came with its own script, so he tended to fall back on it. He hesitated, eyes roaming around the infirmary. His gaze landed on a computer across the room, and he turned back to Carter.
“You’re sure we got all of you back in there, right?” He waved a hand vaguely in her direction before pointing to the computer. “We only hooked you up to that thing’s homemade hardware, but you were yelling across every screen on base.”
She blinked at him, smile fading. “Was I?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, feeling more comfortable with the new subject to focus on. “I know Fraiser said your scans matched and all, but I just want to make sure we aren’t going to find a little Carter virus out there zipping through the base servers, rewriting programs or creating new algorithms or whatever other mischief a code version of you might get up to.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m all back, sir,” Carter told him, one corner of her mouth curling up in a half-smile. “Unlike the entity, the human brain can’t be rewritten from a snippet. I’d either be completely returned to my body, or I wouldn’t be functional.”
And you weren’t, he almost said, but he swallowed the words. “So no Carter 2.0 working to fix our computer problems while the real Carter sleeps?”
“No, sir.”
“Too bad. Could’ve freed up some time for you.” He was being too flippant, trying too hard, but he’d killed her less than ten hours before and this was the best he could manage. “Did you—”
He cut himself off, not even sure why he’d started to ask the question, but Carter of course didn’t let it slide.
“Did I what, sir?” She said it softly, like she knew what he wanted to ask and was easing him into it.
“Did you know what was happening? While it was in you?”
He almost didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to imagine her stuck inside her mind without any connection to the world outside, without any idea of what was going on or any way to reach out to anyone. But a part of him hoped that had been the case. That part of him didn’t want to know that she had been staring through her own eyes at him while he shot her, didn’t want her to have lived through her own death.
She was studying him with an unreadable expression when she answered.
“No, I—” She slowly shook her head. “It wasn’t like with Jolinar. She and I shared our minds, but not our actual brains. I was fully aware of what was happening, then, still completely in my body like always; I just wasn’t in control. This time, it was like being trapped in a pitch black room. From the time I touched the keyboard until the time I came to on the gurney, I didn’t have any idea where I was or what was happening. I just knew I had to get out.”
I was shouting for you to hear.
It was a horrifying scenario to contemplate, and Jack hated the relief he felt knowing what she hadn’t experienced, given how she had avoided experiencing it. The image of Carter trapped in a small, dark room—even just in her own mind—was repulsive, and he felt the fury that had driven his actions in the isolation room rising up in him again. It had nowhere to go, but he did. He took a deep breath, readying himself to say his goodbyes and head home. He needed to get out, needed to be alone for a while. But Carter’s quiet voice stopped him.
“Are we going to talk about it, sir?”
He looked over at her, still watching him with that same unreadable expression on her face, and felt himself tense. “About what?” he warily asked.
“About the fact that you killed me?”
Jack flinched, hands twitching where they lay on the arms of the chair. If she had reached over and slapped him, he would have been less shocked. Would have actually known how to react, too. Instead he just sat there, unable to look at her, at a loss for the right witty response that would get them over this bump in the road without ripping the undercarriage to shreds.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
The unexpected question asked in an unexpectedly tender tone was enough to drag Jack’s gaze back to Carter’s face. Her eyes were kind and sad as they searched his, and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to tell her the truth. He wasn’t even sure what the truth was. Was he okay? He’d been so many variations of not okay over the past twenty-four hours that he was still trying to relocate where okay was. And he hadn’t died.
“Are you?” he deflected, studying her in return.
“I didn’t have to kill you today,” she simply replied.
Jack’s heart stuttered. They were getting perilously close to a line here, tiptoeing around things they didn’t—shouldn’t, couldn’t—talk about.
He contemplated what it would be like if the situation was reversed, if Carter’d had to kill him. He felt sick at the thought, not for himself but for her. If she’d had to kill him, he wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have blamed her. But Carter? The guilt would have eaten her alive. He knew her, knew what it would do to her, and he could barely stand to think about it.
So though he wanted to lie—even had an easy line ready on the tip of his tongue that would answer the question without really answering it—he didn’t. He made himself meet and hold her gaze again, and he told the truth.
“You’re alive, so I will be.”
Her eyes were knowing, the sorrow in them sharp enough that he wanted to look away. But he owed her this moment of transparency, and he let her be the one to end it. After a beat, she looked away with a half nod and a small frown. A moment later, though, she turned back to him, the movement drawing his gaze. She stared at him for a second, before turning her hand, which was lying on top of her blankets, palm up on the bed.
He’d almost—almost—touched her in the MALP room after they’d gotten her back. Despite the fact that they were on full display in front of a number of witnesses, his hand had risen of its own accord, angling for her blanket-covered shin. He’d just needed the physical reassurance that she was really, actually there. And, honestly, she might have needed it, too, coming out of a computer and back into flesh and blood. He’d stopped himself before he made contact, though, sure no one would think much of the aborted gesture. There would have been nothing wrong with him touching her in that situation, but the two of them were always cautious about physical contact even beyond what protocol dictated.
But here, in a dim corner of the otherwise empty infirmary, he slipped his hand into hers. He was her CO and he’d had to kill her and somehow they’d saved her by pulling her out of an alien-constructed computer and if they needed to hold hands for a minute, dammit, they were going to. Hell, if he thought he could get away with it, he’d forget about her hand and pull her into an embrace instead, take a minute or two to just hold her and soak in the fact that she really was alive and that she wasn’t going to be another thing he had to lock away in his box.
It was the first time he’d touched her since they got her back, and he hadn’t realized until the moment their hands met that some part of him hadn’t fully accepted the reality that she had somehow survived the unsurvivable again. But with her palm warm under his, he finally felt like he had come out the other side.
“Did you really threaten to destroy a world for me, sir?”
And here they were, over their heads in dangerous waters. Jack was grateful for his own self-restraint, because if he’d given in and hugged Carter instead of just taking her hand, he didn’t think he would have survived that question. As it was, he casually sat back in his chair, letting his hand slide out of hers. A brief glance Carter’s way showed that she’d been half-teasing, half-serious with the inquiry, the crooked smile on her face belied by the intensity in her eyes. He lifted one shoulder in as nonchalant a shrug as he could manage.
“It was just a bluff, Carter.”
“Of course it was, sir.”
He was saying what he could instead of what he wanted to again, and he knew Carter knew it. They always had to talk around things. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, not yet trusting himself to face her head on, and saw that she was watching him with a mixture of fondness and regret.
He didn’t jump at the quiet sound of a throat being cleared behind him, but Carter did, just a little.
“I thought I already kicked you out once tonight, sir,” Fraiser said, walking around the foot of Carter’s bed to stand on the opposite side of it from him. She fiddled with the monitors there for a second, before giving Jack an arched look.
Jack knew that she knew—she always knew—and he tried not to shift under her gaze. Carter being in the infirmary at all was a perfectly valid reason for him, as her CO, to pop in, even if the fact that she had been dead by his hand not much earlier was disregarded. And even it if was after visiting hours.
“The colonel was just checking in on me before he headed home,” Carter quickly explained in an attempt to cover for him. For both of them, really. “And I asked him some questions about what happened.”
Fraiser gave them both a look that said she knew better, but would allow them their charade. “Mmhmm.”
Carter, as with most things involving their diminutive doctor, visibly decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned to Jack with a slightly apologetic smile.
“Thank you for stopping by, sir,” she said, her tone hinting at what she wasn’t saying. They were talking around things, after all.
“No problem, Carter,” he replied, his tone doing the same. He rose from his chair, stretching through the stiffness in his joints. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“G’night, Doc,” he called over his shoulder as he headed toward the infirmary door.
“Goodnight, Colonel.”
There was amusement in Fraiser’s voice, but also something else Jack couldn’t quite identify. He didn’t turn around to see if he could read it on her face, though. He needed a beer or two, and he was anticipating a sleepless night spent on his roof with his telescope. It’d make the next day rough, but exhaustion tomorrow would be worth avoiding sleep tonight.
If he’d wanted sleep, it would’ve had to wait anyway. When he came around the last curve on his street and saw Daniel’s car sitting in his driveway, he cursed under his breath. The car was empty and he parked beside it, dropping his head onto his steering wheel for a moment and trying to brace himself for whatever Daniel was planning to throw at him. Even though Daniel had been understanding in the moment, now that he’d had time to think about things he was sure to have all sorts of arguments he wanted to hash out. Jack didn’t think he had it in him right now to absorb any “I told you so”s or “We could have handled that differently”s.
Figuring he would probably be able to just physically evict Daniel from the premises should it come to that, he went inside. The kitchen and living room lights were on, but Jack could tell from a reflection in the living room windows that Daniel was in there, sitting on the sofa. He either hadn’t heard Jack’s arrival, or was pretending not to, and he didn’t react until Jack stepped into the room and spoke.
“You know I could shoot you for trespassing, right?” He ended the sentence in a grimace, the words having shot out of him before he could think better of saying them.
Daniel turned to him with a neutral expression, unperturbed. “You know you should lock your door, right?” he returned in a mild tone.
“I thought I had,” Jack grumbled, throwing his keys in the general direction of the dining room table. He heard the metallic thunk of them hitting it and the jangle of them falling to the floor as he walked over to stand in front of Daniel. If they were going to have this fight, he wanted to do it head on, get it over with so he could drink and try not to remember. “What do you want, Daniel?”
Daniel raised his eyebrows at Jack’s brusque tone. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
Jack, geared up for an argument, froze and blinked at him, taken aback. “What?”
Daniel stood, putting him and Jack eye to eye, and tucked his hands in his pockets. His eyes searched Jack’s, and instead of the censure or condescension Jack had anticipated, all he saw was compassion.
“You killed Sam today, Jack,” Daniel said, in the blunt yet kind way only he could manage. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
And there was the difference between Carter and Daniel. With Carter, she and Jack had to talk around things. They could never come out and say what they meant, not directly. They had to dance around it. But there were no such cautions with Daniel; he could say exactly what he meant, even if Jack didn’t always understand what that was. But when Daniel chose to cut to the heart of the matter, he did it with a scalpel.
You killed Sam today, Jack.
Despite the fact that he’d been telling himself the same thing for hours, hearing the words come out of someone else’s mouth—so simple and so direct—hit Jack like a fist in the stomach. The fire he’d banked inside him to deal with whatever debate Daniel had come by to have went cold in that split second. He was left feeling drained and empty, and he studied Daniel’s face with a blank expression.
“So you aren’t here to tell me that if I’d just listened to you, none of this would have happened?”
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he answered the question. “You did listen to me; it didn’t change anything.”
“And you aren’t going to tell me all the ways we could’ve done things differently that would’ve prevented anything bad from happening?”
“No,” Daniel replied, frowning disapprovingly. “I’m not.”
“Oh.”
For a minute or two, they stood there with the coffee table between them, Jack suddenly tired, Daniel uncharacteristically silent.
“Jack—”
“You want a beer?” Jack asked, cutting Daniel off from wherever he was headed. He started toward the kitchen, leaving a still-frowning Daniel behind him.
“Uh, sure.”
When Jack returned, he handed Daniel a bottle, then jerked his head toward the back door. “C’mon.”
Daniel had joined him on the rooftop enough times to recognize the gesture for what it was, and he nodded, following Jack out into the backyard and then up the ladder to the roof. They settled into the chairs there and sipped their beers in a companionable silence, Jack relieved from thinking or talking or feeling for a few blessed minutes. Silence never lasted long with Daniel around, though.
“Jack—”
“Daniel.”
“Are you okay?”
Jack wanted to brush off the inquiry—the second one he’d gotten that night—but just like with Carter’s, he couldn’t. Daniel had come to his house to check on him, had waited there for however long until Jack got home, because he cared and was worried. He deserved as much of the truth as Jack could give him.
He sighed and stared up at the sky. “I killed Carter, Daniel,” he bitterly replied. “What do you think?”
“I think you went through one of the worst things you could imagine, and you’re hating yourself for what you did even though it had to be done, and despite the fact that it all turned out okay in the end.”
Jack froze, beer halfway to his mouth, and turned to look at Daniel, who just stared calmly back at him. Jack’s response had been rhetorical, and sarcastically delivered at that, but Daniel had never met a rhetorical question he wouldn’t answer. Especially not one regarding feelings. Because Daniel had a scalpel and Daniel had ultrasound.
Jack let out a huff. “You know, it’s really annoying when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Know me as well as I know me.”
“Sorry.”
There was clear amusement in the apology, and Jack shook his head. Rolling up the piece of label he’d peeled off his bottle, he flicked it over the side of the roof.
“You do know that you had to do it, right?” Daniel asked, a bit more gently. “You didn’t have any other choice.”
“I know.” Oh, how he knew.
“You would’ve done the same if it had been me or Teal’c.”
“I know.”
“And Sam’s going to be fine.”
“I know that, too.”
“And—”
“Daniel, you don’t have to justify my actions back to me; I know.”
“But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No,” Jack sighed. “No, it doesn’t.”
It didn’t make it any easier and it didn’t make it right. And the fact that Carter had survived didn’t change the fact that they’d all probably find themselves in another life or death situation within a week. And Jack would have to face more difficult decisions. It seemed to be their standard operating procedure.
He waited for Daniel to continue on, to maybe get overly philosophical like he tended to do in the darkest hours of the night. But he seemed to have said his fill, at least for the time being, because Jack was able to get through the rest of his beer without any further interrogation. Draining the last swallow, he stood and gestured to Daniel with the empty bottle.
“I’m going to get another. You leaving?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, I’ll stay.” He paused and looked up at Jack, expression questioning. “Unless you want me to go?”
There was something in Daniel’s tone that gave Jack pause, that kept him from just tossing out a typically sarcastic response. If he didn’t know any better—and he wasn’t sure he did—he would say that Daniel was hesitant to leave him alone. Which was just this side of ridiculous, not to mention the opposite of what Jack had wanted, but it was a nice sentiment all the same.
Still, Jack was determined to get at least part of the peaceful night he’d wanted, and he studied Daniel through narrowed eyes. “That depends; how long can you go without talking?”
“I mean, I’ll probably fall asleep soon,” Daniel replied with a shrug, a confession he backed up with a timely yawn.
“Good enough.” Jack started toward the ladder. “You want another?”
“No, I’m good.”
By the time Jack returned, Daniel was looking decidedly drowsy. Jack tossed him the blanket he’d brought up, and Daniel snuggled down under it while Jack settled back down in his chair with the two beers he’d retrieved. Ten quiet minutes later, Daniel started lightly snoring. He had the ability to sleep pretty much anywhere, much like a soldier, and that apparently included awkwardly sprawled out in a lawn chair on a rooftop under the Colorado stars.
Jack half-heartedly studied those same stars while he went through his beers, trying not to think and failing miserably at it. But his thoughts weren’t as dark as they could have been, nor as lonely, and he found that he was in a pretty good place by the time the sun started to rise. Not exactly well-rested, but better off than he might otherwise have been. And he’d even come out of the night with beers leftover. All things considered, it was a better start to the day than yesterday what had seen.
He hauled himself to his feet and gingerly stretched, twisting out the kinks in his back and ignoring the complaints of his knees. Without waking Daniel, he made his way back down the ladder and headed inside to put on a pot of coffee.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Jack O’Neill, Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson
Word Count: 5660
Categories: gen, UST, friendship, angst
Spoilers: Episode tag for “Entity” (4.20). Spoilers for the same.
Warnings: None
Summary: It seemed like with Carter, there were only ever difficult decisions, and Jack was always in the middle of making them.
It was on him, in the end.
He should’ve listened to his gut, should’ve never let Carter get anywhere near the thing’s nest. But Daniel insisted on being Daniel, able to sympathize with anyone and anything, and he saw intelligent life in the form of a machine. And Carter backed him up, comparing the entity’s struggles to all the times they themselves had been trapped off-world, taking whatever desperate measures they could to survive. It was a comparison that cut a bit too close to home, and Jack felt himself give a little, just enough to not take the thing out on principle.
Carter wanted to try communicating with it, to see what it wanted. She was convinced the threat was neutralized and the base safe. It was. She wasn’t.
The fact that the thing seemed to want to talk to Carter, specifically—displaying her personnel file on its screen like a calling card—should have been all the evidence they needed to pull the plug. But Jack ignored his gut and instead of “accidentally” cutting the wires before anything could happen, he let Carter take the lead, trusting her over his instincts.
He’d been right there. That was the thing killing him: he’d watched it happen and he hadn’t acted until it was too late. He’d been mere feet away from her with his finger on the proverbial trigger and Carter had still been taken. Somehow no one had noticed until it was already done and Carter was lost in herself. Again.
Fraiser didn’t know what to do, didn’t think there was anything she could do. If Carter was still in there, it was only barely, and the entity was rapidly pushing her out; for all they knew, too much of her might already be gone. Jack sat stock still in his chair in the briefing room, hands clasped together in a white-knuckle grip as rage and guilt roared through him. So often they knew what the problem was but couldn’t fix it, and it was infuriating.
The feelings triggered a memory, and suddenly Jack was back at that same conference table, somehow looking down at the exact same scratch on its surface, wondering how in the hell they could see a Goa’uld inside Carter and yet not be able to get it out. The moment rattled around inside his head in a weird kind of déjà vu, like hearing a song he knew played on different instruments.
Maybe they had realized Carter wasn’t Carter sooner this time, but another thing had still taken control of her mind and her body and Jack couldn’t do a damn thing about it. First there had been Jolinar, now this thing. He wondered how many times you could have your brain hijacked before you wouldn’t be able to make it out the other side. It was starting to look like two.
When Hammond kept him behind and regretfully mentioned having to make difficult decisions, Jack had to resist the urge to break things. It seemed like with Carter, there were only ever difficult decisions, and he was always in the middle of making them. He was her CO, everything was always life and death with them, it was to be expected.
But then Hammond haltingly added in a kind voice that he knew how much Carter meant to Jack, and Jack froze for a heartbeat. He knew that Hammond knew—knew enough to suspect enough, anyway—but it was practically an unwritten rule that anybody who knew about it didn’t talk about it. Plausible deniability, a secret soft spot, an aversion to the paperwork it would have required—he didn’t care what the reason was so long as neither he nor Carter got in trouble (well, more that Carter didn’t), and neither he nor Carter got moved off of SG-1. They hadn’t done anything wrong, and wouldn’t, but they weren’t supposed to care so damn much and people definitely weren’t supposed to know that they cared so much.
Jack understood what Hammond was trying to do, though. His words were a gesture, a way for him to acknowledge the difficulty of the situation without directly addressing why it was so difficult. And if there hadn’t been an SF standing not ten feet away, watching them more closely than Jack thought was entirely necessary, he might have responded differently. But he knew Hammond understood when he said what he could and not what he wanted to.
It would never get easier, staring into the face of someone you cared about and not seeing them. Jack couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that the entity wasn’t able to use Carter’s voice.
Daniel talked to it—the way he could, the way he always had to—trying to forge a connection and find a way out that didn’t include death and destruction. Jack was only a little surprised to hear that the entity hadn’t come after them as a first strike, but in retaliation. Who would have guessed that one little MALP could devastate a world, or that radio waves could be contagious? Carter, maybe. If she were there, she would probably have already figured out exactly what their probe had done and how, and then rigged a way to keep it from doing it again.
But she wasn’t there.
This wasn’t the first time they’d inadvertently hurt others just by going through the Gate, and Jack doubted it would be the last. But they could also do it on purpose, and he wasn’t above it.
Maybe they’d accidentally hurt lots of the entities; maybe they’d killed thousands of them. On another day Jack might have felt the guilt of it and been able to care about the entity’s plight. But right now, on this day, he was looking into Carter’s face and seeing nothing behind her eyes and he didn’t care, he didn’t care. That thing hadn’t just hurt Carter, it had targeted her. Out of all of them, it had run its little threat assessments and it had taken her. So he didn’t care. He’d burn its entire world to the ground. He’d blast its planet out of the sky. He’d send every MALP they had through the Gate, each of them covered in as many radios as he could find, all blasting “Ride of the Valkyries” at top volume. He didn’t care.
In retrospect, he probably should have planned out his next move. Daniel could have issued a more diplomatic version of the ultimatum, and they could have prepped the base for the fallout, made sure the entity only had one place to go. But in the moment his logic had only been fueled by anger and guilt and fear, and he’d lashed out, threatening the entity until it had no choice. He’d thought it was the only way to get Carter back. Now he was staring down life support, unable to look at the empty shell that had once been his second in command.
Carter was dead, and he’d killed her.
That was the only thought running through his head: Carter was dead and he was the reason. His memories were just a loop now, of the entity staring him down, electricity sparking from Carter’s fingertips, the heaviness of the zat in his hand, Carter hitting the floor. Over and over again, a lowlight reel of a regret he might never recover from.
It didn’t seem right that, after everything they’d been through, this was was how Carter went out. She hadn’t even been able to fight back, to do anything to help them help her, and somehow that thought hurt Jack more than anything else. If he could stand to look at the situation head on, he might have found it kind of darkly fitting that the thing that finally got Carter was a vengeful computer virus. But he was too busy hating himself.
The thing he hated most was that he wasn’t falling apart.
Over the years, he’d seen and done despicable things in the name of duty. He’d gotten good at not letting things get to him, at shoving things aside and pretending they weren’t there and carrying on. Easily half his life was kept in a box he wouldn’t open.
But he’d driven an enemy to desperation and then stood in a hallway full of silent witnesses and killed Samantha Carter. And he was still upright, still functioning, still taking orders and acting okay and he hated himself for it. Because despite the fact that he felt hollowed out, he knew he’d survive. And maybe this time he shouldn’t.
It was on him.
He’d known it had to be done, that they couldn’t let the entity get loose in the base again, especially not after it had been told in no uncertain terms that it had to either sacrifice itself or its world. He couldn’t imagine what he’d be feeling now if it had been somebody else who’d pulled the trigger. It could have been; he’d been the only one with a zat, but there’d been more than enough security personnel present to take Carter out even if he hadn’t done anything. He’d called them off and they’d listened, following his order even after the entity had started zapping itself into the wires. But if he hadn’t stopped it with a zat blast, somebody else would have done it with bullets and he could not let that happen.
Nobody blamed him, and somehow that made it worse. Not even Daniel, who on any given day could come up with five separate arguments for ways Jack could have done something differently. They all understood that he’d had to do it and they weren’t angry about it. If anything, they were sympathetic and it made him want to throw things, made him want to rage and bellow and beat the walls. But he didn’t. Because it was on him.
He was still trying to find a way to live in the new, Carter-less world he’d created when they got her back.
Though he’d grown accustomed to believing in the impossible somewhere around the second time a fatally injured Daniel had turned back up, right as rain, Jack couldn’t fully trust Carter’s recovery. He didn’t think he was the type, but he almost wondered if he’d finally cracked, and everything after Carter had hit the hallway floor had just been a delusion. How many times could you lose people before you lost yourself? It was going to be more than whatever number he was currently on, because Carter really was alive and currently resting in the infirmary under the affectionate and steely gaze of Dr. Fraiser.
Jack had left the infirmary when he was expected to. He’d visited with Daniel and Teal’c and they had all stayed until the general came by, then left as soon as Fraiser started shooing them all out. Alone for the first time in hours, he had gone through all the motions of going home: showering, changing into his civvies, grabbing his keys and wallet from his locker. But he didn’t leave. He couldn’t.
It was late, well after visiting hours and maybe late enough that Fraiser had turned the infirmary over to the overnight staff. Given Carter’s presence and what had landed her there, though, there was every possibility that the doc was still around, but Jack was willing to risk it. At this time of night, there would be few people left on base to spot him stalking back to the infirmary, and even fewer to catch him inside it. Because he wasn’t supposed to care so damn much. But he did.
He didn’t sneak, because that would look even worse, but he did tread as quietly as he could back to Carter’s bedside. She appeared to be sleeping, and Jack studied her face as he lowered himself into the empty chair beside her. Even asleep, eyes closed, he could tell that it was her in there, and something that had been squeezed tight inside him finally released. He’d seen her and talked to her already, but it was almost as if his mind needed a second look before it would believe that reality had turned out the way it did. Letting out a sigh, he propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and dropped his head into his hands.
“Hi, sir.”
His head snapped up at the sound of Carter’s voice. It was quiet, though whether that was a sign of how she felt or just a concession for where they were, he wasn’t sure. She looked tired, but the smile she gave him was serene.
“Hey, Carter. I was just checking in on you before I headed home.”
She nodded slightly, still smiling. “Of course you were, sir.”
He cleared his throat and looked away. “How are you feeling?”
“Really, sir?” she asked, tone incredulous.
Glancing back at her, he could see she had one eyebrow raised at him.
“Dumb question?”
“No, sir. But you already asked that just a few hours ago.”
And it was an entirely safe topic, one that practically came with its own script, so he tended to fall back on it. He hesitated, eyes roaming around the infirmary. His gaze landed on a computer across the room, and he turned back to Carter.
“You’re sure we got all of you back in there, right?” He waved a hand vaguely in her direction before pointing to the computer. “We only hooked you up to that thing’s homemade hardware, but you were yelling across every screen on base.”
She blinked at him, smile fading. “Was I?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, feeling more comfortable with the new subject to focus on. “I know Fraiser said your scans matched and all, but I just want to make sure we aren’t going to find a little Carter virus out there zipping through the base servers, rewriting programs or creating new algorithms or whatever other mischief a code version of you might get up to.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m all back, sir,” Carter told him, one corner of her mouth curling up in a half-smile. “Unlike the entity, the human brain can’t be rewritten from a snippet. I’d either be completely returned to my body, or I wouldn’t be functional.”
And you weren’t, he almost said, but he swallowed the words. “So no Carter 2.0 working to fix our computer problems while the real Carter sleeps?”
“No, sir.”
“Too bad. Could’ve freed up some time for you.” He was being too flippant, trying too hard, but he’d killed her less than ten hours before and this was the best he could manage. “Did you—”
He cut himself off, not even sure why he’d started to ask the question, but Carter of course didn’t let it slide.
“Did I what, sir?” She said it softly, like she knew what he wanted to ask and was easing him into it.
“Did you know what was happening? While it was in you?”
He almost didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to imagine her stuck inside her mind without any connection to the world outside, without any idea of what was going on or any way to reach out to anyone. But a part of him hoped that had been the case. That part of him didn’t want to know that she had been staring through her own eyes at him while he shot her, didn’t want her to have lived through her own death.
She was studying him with an unreadable expression when she answered.
“No, I—” She slowly shook her head. “It wasn’t like with Jolinar. She and I shared our minds, but not our actual brains. I was fully aware of what was happening, then, still completely in my body like always; I just wasn’t in control. This time, it was like being trapped in a pitch black room. From the time I touched the keyboard until the time I came to on the gurney, I didn’t have any idea where I was or what was happening. I just knew I had to get out.”
I was shouting for you to hear.
It was a horrifying scenario to contemplate, and Jack hated the relief he felt knowing what she hadn’t experienced, given how she had avoided experiencing it. The image of Carter trapped in a small, dark room—even just in her own mind—was repulsive, and he felt the fury that had driven his actions in the isolation room rising up in him again. It had nowhere to go, but he did. He took a deep breath, readying himself to say his goodbyes and head home. He needed to get out, needed to be alone for a while. But Carter’s quiet voice stopped him.
“Are we going to talk about it, sir?”
He looked over at her, still watching him with that same unreadable expression on her face, and felt himself tense. “About what?” he warily asked.
“About the fact that you killed me?”
Jack flinched, hands twitching where they lay on the arms of the chair. If she had reached over and slapped him, he would have been less shocked. Would have actually known how to react, too. Instead he just sat there, unable to look at her, at a loss for the right witty response that would get them over this bump in the road without ripping the undercarriage to shreds.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
The unexpected question asked in an unexpectedly tender tone was enough to drag Jack’s gaze back to Carter’s face. Her eyes were kind and sad as they searched his, and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to tell her the truth. He wasn’t even sure what the truth was. Was he okay? He’d been so many variations of not okay over the past twenty-four hours that he was still trying to relocate where okay was. And he hadn’t died.
“Are you?” he deflected, studying her in return.
“I didn’t have to kill you today,” she simply replied.
Jack’s heart stuttered. They were getting perilously close to a line here, tiptoeing around things they didn’t—shouldn’t, couldn’t—talk about.
He contemplated what it would be like if the situation was reversed, if Carter’d had to kill him. He felt sick at the thought, not for himself but for her. If she’d had to kill him, he wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have blamed her. But Carter? The guilt would have eaten her alive. He knew her, knew what it would do to her, and he could barely stand to think about it.
So though he wanted to lie—even had an easy line ready on the tip of his tongue that would answer the question without really answering it—he didn’t. He made himself meet and hold her gaze again, and he told the truth.
“You’re alive, so I will be.”
Her eyes were knowing, the sorrow in them sharp enough that he wanted to look away. But he owed her this moment of transparency, and he let her be the one to end it. After a beat, she looked away with a half nod and a small frown. A moment later, though, she turned back to him, the movement drawing his gaze. She stared at him for a second, before turning her hand, which was lying on top of her blankets, palm up on the bed.
He’d almost—almost—touched her in the MALP room after they’d gotten her back. Despite the fact that they were on full display in front of a number of witnesses, his hand had risen of its own accord, angling for her blanket-covered shin. He’d just needed the physical reassurance that she was really, actually there. And, honestly, she might have needed it, too, coming out of a computer and back into flesh and blood. He’d stopped himself before he made contact, though, sure no one would think much of the aborted gesture. There would have been nothing wrong with him touching her in that situation, but the two of them were always cautious about physical contact even beyond what protocol dictated.
But here, in a dim corner of the otherwise empty infirmary, he slipped his hand into hers. He was her CO and he’d had to kill her and somehow they’d saved her by pulling her out of an alien-constructed computer and if they needed to hold hands for a minute, dammit, they were going to. Hell, if he thought he could get away with it, he’d forget about her hand and pull her into an embrace instead, take a minute or two to just hold her and soak in the fact that she really was alive and that she wasn’t going to be another thing he had to lock away in his box.
It was the first time he’d touched her since they got her back, and he hadn’t realized until the moment their hands met that some part of him hadn’t fully accepted the reality that she had somehow survived the unsurvivable again. But with her palm warm under his, he finally felt like he had come out the other side.
“Did you really threaten to destroy a world for me, sir?”
And here they were, over their heads in dangerous waters. Jack was grateful for his own self-restraint, because if he’d given in and hugged Carter instead of just taking her hand, he didn’t think he would have survived that question. As it was, he casually sat back in his chair, letting his hand slide out of hers. A brief glance Carter’s way showed that she’d been half-teasing, half-serious with the inquiry, the crooked smile on her face belied by the intensity in her eyes. He lifted one shoulder in as nonchalant a shrug as he could manage.
“It was just a bluff, Carter.”
“Of course it was, sir.”
He was saying what he could instead of what he wanted to again, and he knew Carter knew it. They always had to talk around things. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, not yet trusting himself to face her head on, and saw that she was watching him with a mixture of fondness and regret.
He didn’t jump at the quiet sound of a throat being cleared behind him, but Carter did, just a little.
“I thought I already kicked you out once tonight, sir,” Fraiser said, walking around the foot of Carter’s bed to stand on the opposite side of it from him. She fiddled with the monitors there for a second, before giving Jack an arched look.
Jack knew that she knew—she always knew—and he tried not to shift under her gaze. Carter being in the infirmary at all was a perfectly valid reason for him, as her CO, to pop in, even if the fact that she had been dead by his hand not much earlier was disregarded. And even it if was after visiting hours.
“The colonel was just checking in on me before he headed home,” Carter quickly explained in an attempt to cover for him. For both of them, really. “And I asked him some questions about what happened.”
Fraiser gave them both a look that said she knew better, but would allow them their charade. “Mmhmm.”
Carter, as with most things involving their diminutive doctor, visibly decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned to Jack with a slightly apologetic smile.
“Thank you for stopping by, sir,” she said, her tone hinting at what she wasn’t saying. They were talking around things, after all.
“No problem, Carter,” he replied, his tone doing the same. He rose from his chair, stretching through the stiffness in his joints. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“G’night, Doc,” he called over his shoulder as he headed toward the infirmary door.
“Goodnight, Colonel.”
There was amusement in Fraiser’s voice, but also something else Jack couldn’t quite identify. He didn’t turn around to see if he could read it on her face, though. He needed a beer or two, and he was anticipating a sleepless night spent on his roof with his telescope. It’d make the next day rough, but exhaustion tomorrow would be worth avoiding sleep tonight.
If he’d wanted sleep, it would’ve had to wait anyway. When he came around the last curve on his street and saw Daniel’s car sitting in his driveway, he cursed under his breath. The car was empty and he parked beside it, dropping his head onto his steering wheel for a moment and trying to brace himself for whatever Daniel was planning to throw at him. Even though Daniel had been understanding in the moment, now that he’d had time to think about things he was sure to have all sorts of arguments he wanted to hash out. Jack didn’t think he had it in him right now to absorb any “I told you so”s or “We could have handled that differently”s.
Figuring he would probably be able to just physically evict Daniel from the premises should it come to that, he went inside. The kitchen and living room lights were on, but Jack could tell from a reflection in the living room windows that Daniel was in there, sitting on the sofa. He either hadn’t heard Jack’s arrival, or was pretending not to, and he didn’t react until Jack stepped into the room and spoke.
“You know I could shoot you for trespassing, right?” He ended the sentence in a grimace, the words having shot out of him before he could think better of saying them.
Daniel turned to him with a neutral expression, unperturbed. “You know you should lock your door, right?” he returned in a mild tone.
“I thought I had,” Jack grumbled, throwing his keys in the general direction of the dining room table. He heard the metallic thunk of them hitting it and the jangle of them falling to the floor as he walked over to stand in front of Daniel. If they were going to have this fight, he wanted to do it head on, get it over with so he could drink and try not to remember. “What do you want, Daniel?”
Daniel raised his eyebrows at Jack’s brusque tone. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
Jack, geared up for an argument, froze and blinked at him, taken aback. “What?”
Daniel stood, putting him and Jack eye to eye, and tucked his hands in his pockets. His eyes searched Jack’s, and instead of the censure or condescension Jack had anticipated, all he saw was compassion.
“You killed Sam today, Jack,” Daniel said, in the blunt yet kind way only he could manage. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
And there was the difference between Carter and Daniel. With Carter, she and Jack had to talk around things. They could never come out and say what they meant, not directly. They had to dance around it. But there were no such cautions with Daniel; he could say exactly what he meant, even if Jack didn’t always understand what that was. But when Daniel chose to cut to the heart of the matter, he did it with a scalpel.
You killed Sam today, Jack.
Despite the fact that he’d been telling himself the same thing for hours, hearing the words come out of someone else’s mouth—so simple and so direct—hit Jack like a fist in the stomach. The fire he’d banked inside him to deal with whatever debate Daniel had come by to have went cold in that split second. He was left feeling drained and empty, and he studied Daniel’s face with a blank expression.
“So you aren’t here to tell me that if I’d just listened to you, none of this would have happened?”
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he answered the question. “You did listen to me; it didn’t change anything.”
“And you aren’t going to tell me all the ways we could’ve done things differently that would’ve prevented anything bad from happening?”
“No,” Daniel replied, frowning disapprovingly. “I’m not.”
“Oh.”
For a minute or two, they stood there with the coffee table between them, Jack suddenly tired, Daniel uncharacteristically silent.
“Jack—”
“You want a beer?” Jack asked, cutting Daniel off from wherever he was headed. He started toward the kitchen, leaving a still-frowning Daniel behind him.
“Uh, sure.”
When Jack returned, he handed Daniel a bottle, then jerked his head toward the back door. “C’mon.”
Daniel had joined him on the rooftop enough times to recognize the gesture for what it was, and he nodded, following Jack out into the backyard and then up the ladder to the roof. They settled into the chairs there and sipped their beers in a companionable silence, Jack relieved from thinking or talking or feeling for a few blessed minutes. Silence never lasted long with Daniel around, though.
“Jack—”
“Daniel.”
“Are you okay?”
Jack wanted to brush off the inquiry—the second one he’d gotten that night—but just like with Carter’s, he couldn’t. Daniel had come to his house to check on him, had waited there for however long until Jack got home, because he cared and was worried. He deserved as much of the truth as Jack could give him.
He sighed and stared up at the sky. “I killed Carter, Daniel,” he bitterly replied. “What do you think?”
“I think you went through one of the worst things you could imagine, and you’re hating yourself for what you did even though it had to be done, and despite the fact that it all turned out okay in the end.”
Jack froze, beer halfway to his mouth, and turned to look at Daniel, who just stared calmly back at him. Jack’s response had been rhetorical, and sarcastically delivered at that, but Daniel had never met a rhetorical question he wouldn’t answer. Especially not one regarding feelings. Because Daniel had a scalpel and Daniel had ultrasound.
Jack let out a huff. “You know, it’s really annoying when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Know me as well as I know me.”
“Sorry.”
There was clear amusement in the apology, and Jack shook his head. Rolling up the piece of label he’d peeled off his bottle, he flicked it over the side of the roof.
“You do know that you had to do it, right?” Daniel asked, a bit more gently. “You didn’t have any other choice.”
“I know.” Oh, how he knew.
“You would’ve done the same if it had been me or Teal’c.”
“I know.”
“And Sam’s going to be fine.”
“I know that, too.”
“And—”
“Daniel, you don’t have to justify my actions back to me; I know.”
“But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No,” Jack sighed. “No, it doesn’t.”
It didn’t make it any easier and it didn’t make it right. And the fact that Carter had survived didn’t change the fact that they’d all probably find themselves in another life or death situation within a week. And Jack would have to face more difficult decisions. It seemed to be their standard operating procedure.
He waited for Daniel to continue on, to maybe get overly philosophical like he tended to do in the darkest hours of the night. But he seemed to have said his fill, at least for the time being, because Jack was able to get through the rest of his beer without any further interrogation. Draining the last swallow, he stood and gestured to Daniel with the empty bottle.
“I’m going to get another. You leaving?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, I’ll stay.” He paused and looked up at Jack, expression questioning. “Unless you want me to go?”
There was something in Daniel’s tone that gave Jack pause, that kept him from just tossing out a typically sarcastic response. If he didn’t know any better—and he wasn’t sure he did—he would say that Daniel was hesitant to leave him alone. Which was just this side of ridiculous, not to mention the opposite of what Jack had wanted, but it was a nice sentiment all the same.
Still, Jack was determined to get at least part of the peaceful night he’d wanted, and he studied Daniel through narrowed eyes. “That depends; how long can you go without talking?”
“I mean, I’ll probably fall asleep soon,” Daniel replied with a shrug, a confession he backed up with a timely yawn.
“Good enough.” Jack started toward the ladder. “You want another?”
“No, I’m good.”
By the time Jack returned, Daniel was looking decidedly drowsy. Jack tossed him the blanket he’d brought up, and Daniel snuggled down under it while Jack settled back down in his chair with the two beers he’d retrieved. Ten quiet minutes later, Daniel started lightly snoring. He had the ability to sleep pretty much anywhere, much like a soldier, and that apparently included awkwardly sprawled out in a lawn chair on a rooftop under the Colorado stars.
Jack half-heartedly studied those same stars while he went through his beers, trying not to think and failing miserably at it. But his thoughts weren’t as dark as they could have been, nor as lonely, and he found that he was in a pretty good place by the time the sun started to rise. Not exactly well-rested, but better off than he might otherwise have been. And he’d even come out of the night with beers leftover. All things considered, it was a better start to the day than yesterday what had seen.
He hauled himself to his feet and gingerly stretched, twisting out the kinks in his back and ignoring the complaints of his knees. Without waking Daniel, he made his way back down the ladder and headed inside to put on a pot of coffee.