These Thoughts

*

There were these thoughts that bumped around in her head (We’re going to die here) as Anise’s armband was busy failing and falling off (I am going to have one hellish hangover tomorrow). And there were these thoughts that bumped around in her head (We didn’t die) when they returned to the SCG, grateful to Teal’c for saving their lives, and to Hammond for ordering him to do it (I was fast. I was fast, and I was strong, and I will never get that back), caught somewhere between ornery and embarrassed.

The other thought, the one that won’t get the hell out of her head now, didn’t arrive until they reached the infirmary. Janet was there, inspecting them with the intensity of a mother bear and jabbing needles into their arms with more verve than strictly required. And Sam thought, I’ll have to apologize to Janet.

Janet didn’t say “I told you so.” Didn’t say, “I didn’t trust that bitch for a minute.” Didn’t ask what the hell they were thinking, defying direct orders to run off on a suicide mission. Sam wishes she had. It would make this easier. If Janet had been intractable, snide, wounded, Sam could hate her. Instead she’s stuck with this gritty resentment somewhat akin to sand in her bikini top.

And she can’t sleep, though her head feels like it’s made of twenty tons of cornmeal mush.

A wonderful thing, science.

*

Sam, Daniel, and O’Neill keep to themselves in the morning. The after-effect of the armband isn’t so much hangover as severe withdrawal, and they cling jealously to each other because only they understand the imperative drive not to speak. All three wearing sunglasses, they huddle at a table in the cafeteria, heads low over uncut cups of the strongest coffee they could muster, sympathizing completely in those moments when hands shake too badly to hold handles.

Janet comes into the room and stares at them. It hurts. They can feel her eyes boring into them, and it hurts like hell. But once she has her breakfast and her coffee, she merely nods at them and settles on the other side of the room. Sam sighs in relief and regrets it instantly. Sighing hurts, too.

God. Is she ever going to stop aching?

Sam goes back to her office and turns on her computer. The book is there. A thousand pages on wormhole physics. She wrote it in two hours – and she understood it all. That’s the thing. She understood. Now she gets a stabbing pain behind her eyes just from looking at it, from the thought of typing that fast – thinking that fast. The worst part is that, looking at it now, she’s not sure she understands everything she wrote. The armband wasn’t just speed and strength. She feels like she’s stuck in a bad cable remake of Flowers for Algernon.

She wants to scream, to throw things, but she still hurts too much. She supposes she’s lucky – they’re all lucky – the race that wore the armbands originally is dead now. SG-1 is not dead, and she supposes she should feel grateful for that, but she feels so awful that she might as well be dead, and it’s hard to be grateful for the fact that she was strong and fast and brilliant and now it’s gone.

Eventually, she will have to apologize to Janet. Because, as usual, Janet was right, and they didn’t listen. Who would turn down an opportunity to become this amazing thing? Especially when Anise’s arguments were so strong, and the Tok’ra Alliance so fragile, and Freya so blond and waif-like, with big doe eyes and a cute apologetic twitch every time she had to speak for Anise. Sure, baby; strap that thing on me and I’ll show you what a human can do with your toy. That’s one more thing she has to apologize for.

“Major Carter.”

Sam looks up, slowly, because her head doesn’t want to move any faster. Janet stands in the doorway, silhouetted from the back by the ugly fluorescent lights in the corridor. The lights in Sam’s office are off; her eyes aren’t ready to accept that much illumination yet. “Dr Fraiser.”

By rights, Janet should look frowsy in her uniform. The shirt isn’t cut with breasts in mind. She should look dumpy and uncomfortable. What she looks is powerful and in charge, like she’s not going to be bothered by anything as inconsequential as breasts and how they do or don’t look in her uniform shirt.

“I suppose you’re mad at me.”

Janet shrugs and comes into the office. She stops a good ten feet from the desk, and Sam thanks her silently. Confrontations like this are best with a wide swath of floor between combatants. “I was worried about you.”

Sam snorts weakly. It’s all the ire she can manage. “You were pissed off.”

“That, too.”

The fact that Janet doesn’t deny it alarms Sam. She thinks it must mean that Janet considers her anger fully justified, which means she won’t back down even a little.

“It wasn’t us out there.”

“I am perfectly aware of that.”

“The armbands were—“

“The armbands contained a narcotic-like substance that began working on your systems the instant they were secured. It’s amazing, really, that any of you survived.”

“Then why are you—“

“Because it was you when you put them on in the first place. Against my protests; against my research; against everything, Sam, you put on the armbands and went along your merry way. And now, when it turns out I was right the entire time, now you try to hide behind the soporific effect of the armband and claim you weren’t responsible for your actions.” She pauses for breath, and when she speaks again she’s the calm, rational Janet that Sam’s used to, but the damage is done. “I warned you all, but you wouldn’t listen to me. Anise, though – every time Anise opened her mouth it was like the gods themselves had spoken.”

“Jealousy, then.” Sam glares at her. “That’s what this is about. You were jealous of Anise.”

“Jealous?” Janet snorts and looks at Sam with narrowed eyes. “Yes. Okay? Yes, I was jealous of Anise. There.” She waves her hand vaguely at Sam, and Sam sees that she’s about to be ridiculed. “If that makes you feel better about this situation, I will say it. If it makes you feel justified in dismissing my concerns again, I will say that I was motivated by jealousy of a wide-eyed blond Tok’ra scientist. If that helps you.”

“No, it doesn’t help me, Janet!” Sam turns her computer so the screen faces the doctor. “Do you see this? It’s the book I wrote while I had the armband. One thousand pages on wormhole physics. I wrote it in two hours. And now there are parts of it I don’t understand. That’s what the armband did for me.”

“And what good did it do you? What good did it do any of you that you could do these things, if the entire time the virus was slowly killing you?”

“Because we could.” Sam turns the computer back. “For however long we had, we were unstoppable. Better to burn twice as brightly for half as long, or however the hell that goes.”

Janet’s face closes up. Sam can’t read a thing in it. “I see. I think I understand, now.” Janet straightens her shoulders and nods once. “I should go.” Spinning on the balls of her feet, she crosses the office and opens the door. Then she pauses, but she does not turn back to Sam, addressing her words to the wall instead. “Ask yourself, though: who were you writing that book for? In the entire world, there are maybe five people smart enough to understand it, and they wouldn’t need to read a thousand pages about it.”

Then she’s gone, and Sam stares at her computer screen, the words barely registering – the fact that there are words barely registering – and wondering if Janet’s right.

What a ridiculous question. Of course Janet’s right. Janet’s always right. After all, isn’t that what got them in this mess in the first place?

*

But it turns out that Janet has more to say. So much more, in fact, that she appears on Sam’s doorstep at eleven o’clock that night.

“I was jealous,” is the first thing Janet says after she gets over apologizing for coming by so late and Sam gets over squinting and scowling and wondering what the hell Janet is doing here. “You were right about that, at least. But it wasn’t Anise I was jealous of.”

Sam doesn’t understand what this is about; doesn’t pretend to see where Janet is leading, so she doesn’t try. She leans against the wall and lets Janet talk it out – suspecting she’s just working it all out herself. “It was the three of you.”

Sam’s frown deepens. “If you’d wanted to be part of the experiment, I’m sure General Hammond could’ve made arrangements—“

Janet scoffs and sinks into the armchair at the end of the room. “I didn’t want in on the experiment. The armbands were a terrible idea from the moment they were proposed. I wanted the SGC to have nothing to do with them, but once I realized that wasn’t going to happen, my only duty was to see you safely through the experiment.” She smoothes her hair with her hand, and everything falls miraculously back into place. “SG-1 is already so close...so much closer than the other teams, and while you had the armbands—“ She shakes her head and tries to corral her thoughts. “Everyone who didn’t have the armband was outside of you. Even the general – even Teal’c. And I suppose, by now, I should be used to being on the outside, but it seemed worse somehow, this time.”

Sam leans against the back of the couch and tries to figure out what to say. She has nothing to say. Of all the things she’s thought Janet’s objections were about, of all the things she’s thought Janet’s ire was about, this is not on the list. It’s true, though; she and Daniel and the Colonel had a connection through those armbands. That’s what made them go on a steak run and get into a bar brawl, and what made them try to blow up Apophis’s ship. The drug made them believe that they were better than they used to be, but the fact that they were going to be doing these things together made them believe that they were invincible.

Janet stands before Sam has time to respond. “I’m going home now. You need to sleep; I need to...I need not to be charging around in the middle of the night.”

“Give Cassie a kiss for me.”

Janet nods, and then she leaves. Sam wanders around the room for a while, not thinking about much of anything. Right before she falls asleep, she realizes that she still hasn’t apologized.

*

They spend two days acting like the last two didn’t happen. Then Janet starts glaring at her whenever she’s walking with Colonel O’Neill or eating lunch with Daniel. And Janet is being absolutely irrational and immature, but Sam understands completely.

Overtures will have to be made.

“Come over for dinner tonight.”

For a minute, Sam feels like Janet doesn’t recognize her. Then Janet blinks twice, slowly, and puts down her book. “To your place?”

“Yeah. I’ll cook.”

“Cassie’s staying at a friend’s house, if you were thinking—“

Sam shakes her head. “No. I always like seeing Cassie, but tonight I just want you.” That’s awfully open for misinterpretation, but she leaves it. “Seven o’clock?” Janet’s still frowning, so Sam tries a smile. “That’s nineteen hundred, in case your brain doesn’t work in non-military time anymore.”

“Thank you, Sam, but I know what time—“ Janet cuts off and smiles tentatively at her. “Yes, thank you. I would love to come over for dinner.”

“Great. I’ll see you then.” Wisely, Sam refrains from mentioning that she’s doing this so Janet will stop feeling left out and will therefore quit glaring at her.

Overtures have been made, if apologies have not.

*

As it turns out, that statement wasn’t as open to misinterpretation as Sam thought.

Conversation during dinner is awkward and uncomfortable in ways that it never has been before. Part of this, Sam knows, is because she has yet to tell Janet she’s sorry – because she isn’t sure she is sorry. Every time she starts to say it, she thinks of a thousand pages on her computer and half a dozen assholes in a bar who learned the hard way why you don’t insult a member of SG-1. The other part is something she senses Janet is keeping from her, something that makes Janet steal glances at her when she thinks Sam’s otherwise occupied and look away every time Sam tries to make eye contact.

After dinner and dishes and a bit more wine, it seems easier to take Janet to bed than to sit on opposite ends of the living room couch and try to make small talk while these things sit like two enormous pink elephants between them.

Janet’s gray sweater is soft and clingy, and her black slacks hang quite nicely off her hips, but Sam takes them off as soon as she can justify it, because Janet in civilian clothes looks wrong to her. Janet should be in uniform, or naked, and nothing in between seems to work. Janet makes the most adorable mewling gasps when Sam takes a nipple into her mouth, and her growl when Sam slips two fingers inside of her is one of the most erotic things Sam’s ever heard. Sam holds tight to Janet’s shoulders as Janet kisses her way down Sam’s body, and the way she gasps Janet’s name when she comes is the closest to an apology she’s ever going to get.

Still, there’s this thought that comes to Sam with absolute clarity in the sated, sex-drenched moments before lethargy drags her into sleep with Janet’s head pillowed on her stomach, Janet’s arms wrapped possessively, protectively, around her waist, and her own hands in Janet’s hair: This hasn’t changed a thing.

*

“The thing is, Sam,” Janet says in the morning, sitting at the edge of Sam’s bed in her clingy, wrong, gray sweater, already removed and unreachable, “I’m thinking of requesting a transfer out of the SCG.”

“What?” Sam sits up slowly, pressing the sheet to her chest just below her throat. She shouldn’t be shy, not now, not after last night, but Janet’s fully dressed and she’s dropped a not inconsiderable piece of information on Sam, and she’s feeling adrift. “Why?”

“I worry, Sam. About you. About SG-1. I worry all the time, and it’s wearing me down.”

“But—“

“And this,” Janet waves a hand between them, encompassing the bed, the sex, the awkward almost-conversations of the night before, “this only makes it worse. You going on dangerous missions made me sick when we were just friends; after this...” She shakes her head. “Better this way, I think. Better for us all.”

Sam can shake her head, too. See, Janet, it’s not that hard. “You can’t just leave. You’re part of SG-1.”

Janet looks over her shoulder and gives Sam a crooked smile before standing. “No, Sam. I’m not.”

*

She looked like a perfectly normal, if overly enthusiastic, denizen of P8X379, but it turns out she was really an ornery Goa’uld bitch, and Sam is racing through the ‘gate towards the infirmary, screaming for Janet, Daniel a dead weight in her arms.

There are these thoughts she’s having now (How the hell did I end up carrying Daniel?), as Janet rushes towards her (If he dies, the entire fucking planet is going down), and she begs Janet, pleads with her: save him, help him, do something. All color has bled from Hammond’s face; there isn’t a single part of Jack that’s stayed still since Daniel was hit; and even Teal’c looks as though DanielJackson’s death might not roll off his broad Jaffa shoulders the way everything else seems to.

They’re all looking to Janet. They’re begging her to help him as only she can, and as Sam lowers Daniel onto a bed, her eyes meet Janet’s over the eerily still form. She mouths, “Thank you” and hopes Janet realizes that whether or not she’s as tightly knit into SG-1 as the others are, she can’t possibly leave. They need her too much. Sam needs her too much.

Janet saves Daniel, and no one thought for an instant that she couldn’t, though Sam may be the only one who realizes how much was riding on it – besides Daniel’s life, which was more than enough. Jack sits by Daniel’s bed for the fourth straight hour, refusing to budge under any circumstances, and Janet returns to Sam’s office.

“Major Carter.”

Sam looks up and risks a smile. “Dr Fraiser.”

Janet gives a small, wry smile in return and presses her fingers flat against the front of her skirt. Sam thinks about the skin beneath that skirt, about her own head being there, and she thinks idly that she might like to be there again someday, but these thoughts are inappropriate for the SGC, so she looks back at Janet and waits.

“After careful consideration, I have decided not to request a transfer.”

Sam nods carefully. “I’m glad to hear that.” But she feels herself slipping back into that place where she takes Janet for granted on an hourly basis.

“I am needed here.”

Sam nods again, more earnestly. “You are.”

Something’s wrong, though. Janet’s not smiling. She doesn’t look happy to be staying; she doesn’t look pleased that Sam’s admitting she’s needed. She looks like she’s been duped. “That’s all I wanted to tell you.” She turns and starts to leave, then stops. “I don’t appreciate emotional blackmail.”

Sam’s eyes widen, and something inside uncoils. “I didn’t ask for Daniel to get shot!”

Janet sighs. “No, of course you didn’t. You certainly milked it for all it was worth, though.”

“That’s such a crock of shit.”

“Is it? ‘Save him, Janet. Please, Janet. You’re the only one who can help him.’”

Sam blinks; she hadn’t thought she’d intended the words that way when she said them, but thrown back in her face this way they sound incriminating – and really whiny. “I suppose I shouldn’t invite you over for dinner again tonight.”

Janet chuckles quietly. “No. I don’t suppose you should.” She looks over her shoulder. “Go home, Sam. Get some sleep. It’s been a really shitty day.”