Ficamnesty: 'The Raggedy Edge' Prequel Snippets
When I started writing ' The Raggedy Edge', I knew that as a crossover, the story had to start with Sam and Jack meeting the Serenity crew, but I also knew I had to have at least an idea how Sam and Jack got to that point, where they were in terms of the rescue, their relationship, and their mindset. So I spent some time plotting out the time between when they made the decision to go after Daniel and when they board Serenity. One of those scenes made its way to the page as a flashback towards the end of the fic, but the others just languished in my brain until I sent 'The Raggedy Edge' off for beta and I needed something to distract me from obsessive editing and nerves. So I wrote some of them down and included them as 'Bonus Materials' for holdouttrout . With her permission, I'm sharing them here too. Ficamnesty because they are rough little snippets, and because of the discussion of certain plot threads that didn't pan out in the final draft of 'The Raggedy Edge.'
So here they are, the heavily Sam/Jack (with bonus appearance by Thor) prequel snippets that I will rate Adult just to be safe.
1. Decisions
They were sitting in her car, the rain plunking hollowly on the roof. In her lap was the plan, the way to save Daniel, the physical evidence of the unspoken agreement they’d made across the briefing room table as the IOA shattered the last of their hopes of avoiding this drastic step.
They were officially out of choices.
She passed the folder to him, resting it on his knee, but when he reached to take it, she put her hand on his, keeping the folder closed over the damning evidence-the words that made them thieves and traitors. He stilled under the touch, waiting for her to speak.
She licked her lips, fighting the dryness of her mouth. “We do this as equals,” she said, her voice quiet in the car, barely louder than the rain.
Equals.
This was her one condition. She could give everything else up. Her job, her career, her life, but she absolutely refused to let this be just another excuse between them. She refused to forget the small handful of clumsy not-quite-dates since he was promoted, the awkward phone conversations laced with promise. It would be too easy to go back to the way things had always been before in the face of this impossible mission.
He was staring at her now; she could feel it against her skin like a physical sensation. She allowed herself one calm breath and then forced herself to look away from the steering wheel, to look up and over at him, to meet his gaze.
His hand twisted under hers, pressing upward so his palm was flush against hers and it should be ridiculous that so far this was the most intimate they’d ever been, if not for the hum of electricity that traveled over her skin at the mere touch-the promise of so much more.
“Okay,” he agreed.
It wouldn’t be easy for either of them. His instinct would always be to lead, hers to toe the line, but the journey they were embarking on was untested, unmapped in every way, not just in this one way. They might have to make it all up as they go along.
She leaned across the center console and kissed him.
2. First Time
Stealing the puddle jumper had been embarrassingly easy and Jack was belatedly beginning to realize just how easily they’d gotten off with the evil Carter Replicator. It really could have been much, much worse.
Finding Thor remained the most difficult part of the entire plan, not to mention the fun of explaining to their little alien friend why they were now fugitives from their own planet. Luckily Thor’s loyalty had always been more attached to Jack and SG-1 than Earth, because in order to follow Daniel, they were going to need every bit of help Thor could provide.
Primarily in that they were in need of a hyperdrive. Thor provided them with the materials, but it was mostly falling to Sam to integrate it into the jumper’s systems. It was taking a lot longer than either of them would have thought.
Poking his head in the jumper, Jack saw Sam hard at work as usual. She was grappling with the controls as he came in. It was possible Jack stood there a while watching her. Of course he assumed she hadn’t noticed him, seeing as how she had her head practically stuck into the open panel in the ceiling.
“Hey, come over here and hold this for me,” she said, sounding just amused enough to tell him he was totally busted.
“Uh, sure,” Jack said taking another moment to look at the way she was precariously perched on an upside down milk-crate looking thing. The whatever she wanted him to hold in place was even further above her head.
Well, there seemed nothing for it, he thought, stepping up on the crate behind her and reaching for the whatsis.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice crisp and business like, but he didn’t miss the way she drew her lower lip through her teeth. Maybe the fact that he was nearly pressed up against her back wasn’t leaving her as unaffected as she was pretending.
Since that steamy day in her car, there hadn’t really been any time for anything more…extracurricular, but it seemed to be growing larger and larger between them, a giant Unas in the corner of the room they were both trying to pretend they were oblivious of.
Sam reached back up to continue doing whatever it was she doing and Jack tried to rein in his unruly thoughts. They were currently wanted criminals on their home planet, not to mention a month into a reckless rescue plan that was materializing much slower than he would have thought. In light of that, Jack really shouldn’t be getting hung up on things like what Carter’s skin might taste like.
Whoops. At that errant thought, his unruly thoughts gave a little cheer and started running wild again. And now he was thinking of that rainy afternoon sitting in her car again, and the way her lips had felt against his-promises and secret pacts begun with that simple act.
Carter made a little sound, snapping Jack’s mind back to the present. She might have stumbled, but Jack couldn’t quite be sure, just knew that his arm wrapped around her almost on instinct, pulling her back against his chest to stabilize her. Keeping her from falling could explain the hand he had flat against her stomach, the way his thumb pressed up into the valley between her breasts, but not why he lowered his face to her head, where he might or might not have smelled her hair. Possibly.
He felt her sway again, though this time he wasn’t so sure it had anything to do with her balance. Her fingers slipped and something fell free, the unit dying with a soft fizz.
Whoops.
“Sorry, Carter,” he said, not sure if he meant his hand or his face or just the fact that he managed to make her break something.
“Sam,” she corrected, her voice soft and slightly hoarse and full of something he’d never heard from her before, something that made his hand press even firmer against her body.
When he didn’t say anything she carefully turned, his hand sliding around to her waist to press against her back while his other lifted to brace against the inward curve of the ship. It would be a shame for them to fall and break their necks just as everything was starting to get interesting.
“My name is Sam,” she repeated, her hand lifting to rest on his arm like it belonged there.
He nodded, knowing he should acknowledge that. “Sam,” he repeated. She smiled then, something intimate and affectionate that made his stomach feel like he’d just taken a step off a particularly high cliff.
He leaned into her until his lips were hovering just above the exact patch of skin on her neck that’d been so fascinating him earlier. Her hand tightened on his arm and he stopped just short of making contact. “Should you probably, you know, fix that?” he said, unable to resist teasing her.
She licked her lips. “I can do that later.”
“You sure?” he asked, amused to hear her make a soft sound of impatience.
“Jack.”
He pulled back to smile at her, but she took advantage of the moment, pressing her lips against his and there was nothing of caution or hesitance this time, just a month of pent up frustrations and curiosity.
They managed to get off the ledge and back on solid ground without breaking any bones or letting go of each other, which he though was pretty impressive. Then Sam lifted one of her arms and blindly reached for a control, the back ramp lifting and sealing.
He lifted an eyebrow at her in question and she just smiled. “I don’t particularly need an audience for this.”
Her fingers started making quick work of the buttons on his shirt and he put his hands over hers. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Instead of answering she leaned down, her mouth connecting with the base of his neck, warm and liquid and now Jack was beginning to worry about his own balance.
“Do we need…” he asked, really beginning to hate his stupid mind and its need to ask all these practical questions when the rest of him just wanted to run around in excited circles.
“No,” Sam said, her mouth moving on to the hollow of his collarbone. “I took care of it.”
He hesitated, something of the oddness of that phrase penetrating the haze. “What do you mean?”
With a sigh, Sam pulled back. She gave him a look that he knew meant she was trying to decide if she could just distract him rather than answering. That only made him more insistent.
“Tubal ligation,” she said and it took Jack a moment to place the term, something heavy lodging in his stomach when he does.
“Isn’t that rather…permanent?”
She nodded.
Her general nonchalance was throwing him for a loop and he felt like he was having a hard time getting his thoughts together. “When did you…”
“Right before we left.”
He frowned at her and he wasn’t sure what it was that made him so uneasy about this entire conversation.
Sam seemed to have an idea though, because she peered up at him and said, “Did you really want more kids? Do you honestly see that in your future?”
“No,” he had to admit.
“Okay then,” she said as if that concluded the discussion.
“But this isn’t about what I want,” he said. “It’s about…”
She stared back at him, something fierce and hard in her expression, almost as if he was missing something incredibly obvious. “I have what I want,” she said.
Oh God, he thought, some part of him beginning to panic because there was no way he was worth the trade she was making. “It’s not enough.”
He really expected her to look angry, to throw her hands up in impatience, but instead she just touched his face. “That’s not really your call to make.”
She stepped away from him then, and Jack felt a beat of panic, wondering if he’d managed to screw this up, but she only pulled open a box to grab a sleeping bag, spreading it on the floor.
“I get to decide what’s good enough for me,” she reminded him, looking up at him with such trust and affection and need that he almost believed this could be enough for her.
She pulled off her shirt.
“You are so damn beautiful,” he breathed, staring at her in the dim light.
She smiled, stepping up against him and there just wasn’t any space left between them anymore.
3. The Way Things Change
If you had asked him before, Jack would have said sex wouldn’t change things between them, not really. Not the giant significant things.
He would have been wrong.
It wasn’t until the hours spent lying with her in their little cocoon of sleeping bags in the back of the jumper that he began to think how fragile she was. Well, maybe not so much her, because even naked and lying with her legs tangled with his, even then he still saw Carter, the competence and strength. He just couldn’t stop thinking about how tenuous it all was, this thing between them, and maybe it was only when he had it that he began to worry about losing it.
Nothing had changed. Not the variables, the danger, the mission, not even their resolve to find Daniel, damn the costs. But the decisions were harder now, the possibilities a hell of a lot more frightening, because having her this way made him scared to death of losing her.
He felt her breath against his neck, the damp sheen of her skin under his palm, the soft curve of her body against his, and wanted to lock them both up in this tiny little world they’d created and never, ever leave.
His arms clenched around her, as if hoping it was physically possible to bring her even closer.
“I want Thor to see if he can give you the Ancient gene,” he blurted, the sentence coming out way more of an order than he intended.
It wasn’t exactly pillow talk and Sam lifted her head. “What?” she asked, blinking up at him as if she was having a hard time getting her brain to follow the abrupt switch from mindless afterglow to mission parameters.
“If something happens to me--.”
She cut across him, all soft sleepiness gone in an instant. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“Carter-,” he started to argue, coming to a stop when she glared at him. “Sam,” he amended.
She shook her head, stubbornness etched into every plane of her expression. “I don’t see why that’s necessary.”
He touched her cheek. “I need to know that you’ll be okay. Not matter what.”
“And we will be,” she said, sitting up abruptly and groping for her clothes.
It just wasn’t like her to ignore what was clearly a rational conclusion, a precaution that needed to be taken. “I don’t understand why you’re fighting me on this,” he said, watching her in confusion.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, her back still to him as she searched for her shirt in jerky motions. “Maybe because this all hinges on the possibility of you dying.”
Jack sat up behind her, reaching for her arms and resting his chin on her shoulder. Her hair was getting long, curling down around her ears now. “Or maybe I just get injured or we get separated. Hell, you might need to swoop in and rescue me. Who knows.” He turned his face into her neck, his arms wrapping around her. “I’m not doing this if we don’t at least take whatever precautions we can.” He hoped she could read his tone well enough to know that this was one thing he refused to bend on.
“And I thought General O’Neill was overbearing,” she blustered, still stiff in his embrace.
Jack shook his head. “He’s a teddy bear. I’ll think you’ll find I’m much worse.”
She let out a shaky breath, not quite a laugh.
“Sam, please,” he said.
He could feel the tension leave her body then and knew she wouldn’t fight him on this anymore. She twisted around, her hands lifting to his face. In the moment before she leaned into kiss him, he saw it, the way she looked at him.
He wondered if he looked fragile to her too.
4. Thor’s Sex-Ed Lesson
Thor had agreed to try to create a gene therapy for Carter, which meant she got to spend a few days in the medical pod, much to her annoyance. Luckily Thor had agreed to give her something to put her into a light slumber during the long process.
Jack stood watching on, feeling a little useless, all things told.
Thor looked up from his console, looking alarmed. Well, as alarmed as an Asgard could manage to look. “Colonel Carter appears to have suffered damage to her reproductive systems.”
Jack managed to choke on absolutely nothing. It was like some bad sitcom. “Uh, it’s not damage, really,” he said, wondering how this had become his life, explaining the birds and bees to an alien. “It’s, uh, a type of birth control.”
Thor’s head tilted to the side. “To prevent conception?”
“Yes,” Jack said, glad he was catching on so quickly.
“Why would she wish to prevent conception?”
Or not.
“Look, Thor, buddy. In our culture woman have the right to choose whether or not they want to have a kid, or when, with whom, all of that.”
“And Colonel Carter does not wish to procreate with you, despite your recent activities,” Thor surmised. “That is most unfortunate for your species.”
Jack closed his eyes. This was not a conversation he ever thought he would have to have. Was Thor spying on them for God’s sake? Crazy, curious little voyeuristic alien. “I don’t think she has anything against me in particular, Thor. It’s just that in a dangerous situation like we might face during this rescue, pregnancy would…complicate things.”
“I believe I understand,” Thor said, though Jack still thought he heard a trace of disapproval in his tone. He imagined it must be frustrating to see a species perfectly capable of reproduction choosing not to do it, when his own species was so desperate for it.
Jack stared down at Carter in the glass tube as Thor fiddled with his dials.
“Can you…repair it?” he asked, before he was even aware of the thought.
“Do you wish me to?” Thor asked, his hand moving to a new stone on the console.
“No! No, that’s not what I meant.” Carter would no doubt purposely damage his own reproductive organs beyond repair if he were stupid enough to mess with her birth control. “I just wondered…if she changed her mind someday, could you fix it for her?”
Thor gave him a piercing look that was a little too knowing for Jack’s taste before the alien nodded. “I believe I could.”
“Okay,” Jack said, turning back to stare down at Carter. “You could just maybe mention that to her when she wakes up. Just so she knows she has the option.”
5. Separated
They’d been on Higgin’s Moon three days when Jack got picked up by a press gang.
All Sam knew was that he didn’t show up at the appointed meeting time. She’d lingered in the cantina for almost four hours, only leaving when the patron actually threw her out.
They’d talked about this possibility (about all possible situations in fact, as there wasn’t much else to do stuck on a jumper for five weeks straight), but none of the plans or backups or reasonable responses rose to mind as she stood in the dark street.
There was always the very real possibility that there would be a situation in which they weren’t able to find each other again, she reminded herself.
She wasn’t prepared for the panic she felt.
She wasn’t supposed to feel this adrift.
When he walked into town five days later, looking a little worse for wear and tired as hell but in one piece, Sam felt like she was breathing for the first time in days.
She didn’t let him out of her sight for even a moment for the next two weeks.
6. The Day Things Went Bad
She was late.
They’d been separated earlier, caught on two sides of the bar by a mean-looking band of bounty hunters. He’d stared across the room at Sam, and even though he knew the logical course to take, he still took a step towards her.
The look she’d thrown him-half-terrified, half-pissed-didn’t help, but then she was shaking her head, falling back to the rear exit behind her and Jack had no choice but to slip out the front door. He stuck to shadows as he moved as swiftly down the street as he could without raising suspicion.
He didn’t look back to see if the bounty hunters had followed, just repeated the failsafe plan in his head. Evade. Keep moving. At midnight, meet at the depot.
Only midnight came and went and the plan began to feel naïve and overly confident because the only thing Jack knew for a fact was that the bounty hunters hadn’t followed after him.
And she was late.
It was almost two when she slammed into him as she careened around the last corner, striking out at him as if on instinct. She was vulnerable in her panic and Jack subdued her easily, pushing her back against the wall.
“Sam,” he repeated over and over again until she finally calmed, snapped to in a moment.
“We have to go,” she said, her eyes focusing in on him.
There was blood on her fingers as she shoved money into his hands without another word and let him lead her to the small rusty bucket of a ship where they didn’t ask names and were happy to take them anywhere but here for a tall enough stack.
Their lodgings on board were more an alcove than a room, just a narrow space with blankets that could probably walk off on their own from the smell of them, a ration bar, and a small tin of water.
Jack used the precious water and the cleanest corner of his shirt to clean the bruises on Sam’s face, wiping away the blood on her hands and she let him, sitting there like a child. His reached for her shirt buttons, pausing for a moment to see if she was okay with it. She didn’t move.
Pulling her shirt open, he revealed a deep bruise already rising across her ribs and the perfect impression of a hand on her upper arm.
“Jesus,” Jack swore.
“I killed one of them,” she said, her voice thin.
Jack wanted to say ‘good job,’ but something in her voice made him hold his tongue.
“And maybe a second,” she continued, her head tilting to one side as if she wasn’t sure.
It was far from the first time she’d been forced to kill someone, so he knew there had to be more to it than that.
“I can’t remember if it was one or two. Or more.”
“Sam,” he said.
She shook her head. “I panicked. I was scared and I let myself panic. And now I can’t even be sure how many I--.” She looked down at her hands, clean now, but she stared at them as if they were still covered in blood. “I thought…what if I couldn’t find you again?”
“Sam,” he said again, his hand lifting to her cheek. “Look at me.”
She met his gaze and he could still see it there, the edge of her terror.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” he said.
She put a hand flat against his chest, pushing him so he was sitting against the wall as far back into their little alcove as he could go. Gathering up the hem of her skirt she settled herself on his lap, his hands almost automatically lifting to her hips.
“Sam,” he said. He’d meant to express his uncertainty, but even he could hear the need in his voice, see the way it was echoed in her expression, in the shaky edge of panic she was still riding. She leaned in to kiss him and his hands were almost as unsteady as hers.
He’d almost lost her today.
He was fairly certain this wasn’t the best way to deal with this, but it was all they had and he couldn’t take that away from her. Take that away from either of them. So he pulled her closer, their hands fumbling through the layers of clothing that offered the only thin veneer of privacy they had, remaining adrenaline and fear rushing them ahead. When she lowered herself down onto him, he managed for a brief moment to forget the nearby sounds of the other passengers sleeping, the blood on her hands, and that look she’d sent him across the crowded bar before disappearing from his sight. His fingers dug into her thighs.
In the dim light of the crowded transport, he buried himself deep inside her as she breathed against his lips. He swallowed her words and sounds and tears until he could taste nothing but salt and blood and she tightened around him, saying his name something like a prayer, a question he didn’t have an answer for.
The next morning, it was if the evening had never happened. They walked out into the sun of yet another foreign world full of strangers and betrayal just waiting to happen. Sam was lucid and controlled and looked at every option with calculated coldness that made some part of Jack burn with inexplicable loss.
She never slipped again.
So here they are, the heavily Sam/Jack (with bonus appearance by Thor) prequel snippets that I will rate Adult just to be safe.
1. Decisions
They were sitting in her car, the rain plunking hollowly on the roof. In her lap was the plan, the way to save Daniel, the physical evidence of the unspoken agreement they’d made across the briefing room table as the IOA shattered the last of their hopes of avoiding this drastic step.
They were officially out of choices.
She passed the folder to him, resting it on his knee, but when he reached to take it, she put her hand on his, keeping the folder closed over the damning evidence-the words that made them thieves and traitors. He stilled under the touch, waiting for her to speak.
She licked her lips, fighting the dryness of her mouth. “We do this as equals,” she said, her voice quiet in the car, barely louder than the rain.
Equals.
This was her one condition. She could give everything else up. Her job, her career, her life, but she absolutely refused to let this be just another excuse between them. She refused to forget the small handful of clumsy not-quite-dates since he was promoted, the awkward phone conversations laced with promise. It would be too easy to go back to the way things had always been before in the face of this impossible mission.
He was staring at her now; she could feel it against her skin like a physical sensation. She allowed herself one calm breath and then forced herself to look away from the steering wheel, to look up and over at him, to meet his gaze.
His hand twisted under hers, pressing upward so his palm was flush against hers and it should be ridiculous that so far this was the most intimate they’d ever been, if not for the hum of electricity that traveled over her skin at the mere touch-the promise of so much more.
“Okay,” he agreed.
It wouldn’t be easy for either of them. His instinct would always be to lead, hers to toe the line, but the journey they were embarking on was untested, unmapped in every way, not just in this one way. They might have to make it all up as they go along.
She leaned across the center console and kissed him.
2. First Time
Stealing the puddle jumper had been embarrassingly easy and Jack was belatedly beginning to realize just how easily they’d gotten off with the evil Carter Replicator. It really could have been much, much worse.
Finding Thor remained the most difficult part of the entire plan, not to mention the fun of explaining to their little alien friend why they were now fugitives from their own planet. Luckily Thor’s loyalty had always been more attached to Jack and SG-1 than Earth, because in order to follow Daniel, they were going to need every bit of help Thor could provide.
Primarily in that they were in need of a hyperdrive. Thor provided them with the materials, but it was mostly falling to Sam to integrate it into the jumper’s systems. It was taking a lot longer than either of them would have thought.
Poking his head in the jumper, Jack saw Sam hard at work as usual. She was grappling with the controls as he came in. It was possible Jack stood there a while watching her. Of course he assumed she hadn’t noticed him, seeing as how she had her head practically stuck into the open panel in the ceiling.
“Hey, come over here and hold this for me,” she said, sounding just amused enough to tell him he was totally busted.
“Uh, sure,” Jack said taking another moment to look at the way she was precariously perched on an upside down milk-crate looking thing. The whatever she wanted him to hold in place was even further above her head.
Well, there seemed nothing for it, he thought, stepping up on the crate behind her and reaching for the whatsis.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice crisp and business like, but he didn’t miss the way she drew her lower lip through her teeth. Maybe the fact that he was nearly pressed up against her back wasn’t leaving her as unaffected as she was pretending.
Since that steamy day in her car, there hadn’t really been any time for anything more…extracurricular, but it seemed to be growing larger and larger between them, a giant Unas in the corner of the room they were both trying to pretend they were oblivious of.
Sam reached back up to continue doing whatever it was she doing and Jack tried to rein in his unruly thoughts. They were currently wanted criminals on their home planet, not to mention a month into a reckless rescue plan that was materializing much slower than he would have thought. In light of that, Jack really shouldn’t be getting hung up on things like what Carter’s skin might taste like.
Whoops. At that errant thought, his unruly thoughts gave a little cheer and started running wild again. And now he was thinking of that rainy afternoon sitting in her car again, and the way her lips had felt against his-promises and secret pacts begun with that simple act.
Carter made a little sound, snapping Jack’s mind back to the present. She might have stumbled, but Jack couldn’t quite be sure, just knew that his arm wrapped around her almost on instinct, pulling her back against his chest to stabilize her. Keeping her from falling could explain the hand he had flat against her stomach, the way his thumb pressed up into the valley between her breasts, but not why he lowered his face to her head, where he might or might not have smelled her hair. Possibly.
He felt her sway again, though this time he wasn’t so sure it had anything to do with her balance. Her fingers slipped and something fell free, the unit dying with a soft fizz.
Whoops.
“Sorry, Carter,” he said, not sure if he meant his hand or his face or just the fact that he managed to make her break something.
“Sam,” she corrected, her voice soft and slightly hoarse and full of something he’d never heard from her before, something that made his hand press even firmer against her body.
When he didn’t say anything she carefully turned, his hand sliding around to her waist to press against her back while his other lifted to brace against the inward curve of the ship. It would be a shame for them to fall and break their necks just as everything was starting to get interesting.
“My name is Sam,” she repeated, her hand lifting to rest on his arm like it belonged there.
He nodded, knowing he should acknowledge that. “Sam,” he repeated. She smiled then, something intimate and affectionate that made his stomach feel like he’d just taken a step off a particularly high cliff.
He leaned into her until his lips were hovering just above the exact patch of skin on her neck that’d been so fascinating him earlier. Her hand tightened on his arm and he stopped just short of making contact. “Should you probably, you know, fix that?” he said, unable to resist teasing her.
She licked her lips. “I can do that later.”
“You sure?” he asked, amused to hear her make a soft sound of impatience.
“Jack.”
He pulled back to smile at her, but she took advantage of the moment, pressing her lips against his and there was nothing of caution or hesitance this time, just a month of pent up frustrations and curiosity.
They managed to get off the ledge and back on solid ground without breaking any bones or letting go of each other, which he though was pretty impressive. Then Sam lifted one of her arms and blindly reached for a control, the back ramp lifting and sealing.
He lifted an eyebrow at her in question and she just smiled. “I don’t particularly need an audience for this.”
Her fingers started making quick work of the buttons on his shirt and he put his hands over hers. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Instead of answering she leaned down, her mouth connecting with the base of his neck, warm and liquid and now Jack was beginning to worry about his own balance.
“Do we need…” he asked, really beginning to hate his stupid mind and its need to ask all these practical questions when the rest of him just wanted to run around in excited circles.
“No,” Sam said, her mouth moving on to the hollow of his collarbone. “I took care of it.”
He hesitated, something of the oddness of that phrase penetrating the haze. “What do you mean?”
With a sigh, Sam pulled back. She gave him a look that he knew meant she was trying to decide if she could just distract him rather than answering. That only made him more insistent.
“Tubal ligation,” she said and it took Jack a moment to place the term, something heavy lodging in his stomach when he does.
“Isn’t that rather…permanent?”
She nodded.
Her general nonchalance was throwing him for a loop and he felt like he was having a hard time getting his thoughts together. “When did you…”
“Right before we left.”
He frowned at her and he wasn’t sure what it was that made him so uneasy about this entire conversation.
Sam seemed to have an idea though, because she peered up at him and said, “Did you really want more kids? Do you honestly see that in your future?”
“No,” he had to admit.
“Okay then,” she said as if that concluded the discussion.
“But this isn’t about what I want,” he said. “It’s about…”
She stared back at him, something fierce and hard in her expression, almost as if he was missing something incredibly obvious. “I have what I want,” she said.
Oh God, he thought, some part of him beginning to panic because there was no way he was worth the trade she was making. “It’s not enough.”
He really expected her to look angry, to throw her hands up in impatience, but instead she just touched his face. “That’s not really your call to make.”
She stepped away from him then, and Jack felt a beat of panic, wondering if he’d managed to screw this up, but she only pulled open a box to grab a sleeping bag, spreading it on the floor.
“I get to decide what’s good enough for me,” she reminded him, looking up at him with such trust and affection and need that he almost believed this could be enough for her.
She pulled off her shirt.
“You are so damn beautiful,” he breathed, staring at her in the dim light.
She smiled, stepping up against him and there just wasn’t any space left between them anymore.
3. The Way Things Change
If you had asked him before, Jack would have said sex wouldn’t change things between them, not really. Not the giant significant things.
He would have been wrong.
It wasn’t until the hours spent lying with her in their little cocoon of sleeping bags in the back of the jumper that he began to think how fragile she was. Well, maybe not so much her, because even naked and lying with her legs tangled with his, even then he still saw Carter, the competence and strength. He just couldn’t stop thinking about how tenuous it all was, this thing between them, and maybe it was only when he had it that he began to worry about losing it.
Nothing had changed. Not the variables, the danger, the mission, not even their resolve to find Daniel, damn the costs. But the decisions were harder now, the possibilities a hell of a lot more frightening, because having her this way made him scared to death of losing her.
He felt her breath against his neck, the damp sheen of her skin under his palm, the soft curve of her body against his, and wanted to lock them both up in this tiny little world they’d created and never, ever leave.
His arms clenched around her, as if hoping it was physically possible to bring her even closer.
“I want Thor to see if he can give you the Ancient gene,” he blurted, the sentence coming out way more of an order than he intended.
It wasn’t exactly pillow talk and Sam lifted her head. “What?” she asked, blinking up at him as if she was having a hard time getting her brain to follow the abrupt switch from mindless afterglow to mission parameters.
“If something happens to me--.”
She cut across him, all soft sleepiness gone in an instant. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“Carter-,” he started to argue, coming to a stop when she glared at him. “Sam,” he amended.
She shook her head, stubbornness etched into every plane of her expression. “I don’t see why that’s necessary.”
He touched her cheek. “I need to know that you’ll be okay. Not matter what.”
“And we will be,” she said, sitting up abruptly and groping for her clothes.
It just wasn’t like her to ignore what was clearly a rational conclusion, a precaution that needed to be taken. “I don’t understand why you’re fighting me on this,” he said, watching her in confusion.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, her back still to him as she searched for her shirt in jerky motions. “Maybe because this all hinges on the possibility of you dying.”
Jack sat up behind her, reaching for her arms and resting his chin on her shoulder. Her hair was getting long, curling down around her ears now. “Or maybe I just get injured or we get separated. Hell, you might need to swoop in and rescue me. Who knows.” He turned his face into her neck, his arms wrapping around her. “I’m not doing this if we don’t at least take whatever precautions we can.” He hoped she could read his tone well enough to know that this was one thing he refused to bend on.
“And I thought General O’Neill was overbearing,” she blustered, still stiff in his embrace.
Jack shook his head. “He’s a teddy bear. I’ll think you’ll find I’m much worse.”
She let out a shaky breath, not quite a laugh.
“Sam, please,” he said.
He could feel the tension leave her body then and knew she wouldn’t fight him on this anymore. She twisted around, her hands lifting to his face. In the moment before she leaned into kiss him, he saw it, the way she looked at him.
He wondered if he looked fragile to her too.
4. Thor’s Sex-Ed Lesson
Thor had agreed to try to create a gene therapy for Carter, which meant she got to spend a few days in the medical pod, much to her annoyance. Luckily Thor had agreed to give her something to put her into a light slumber during the long process.
Jack stood watching on, feeling a little useless, all things told.
Thor looked up from his console, looking alarmed. Well, as alarmed as an Asgard could manage to look. “Colonel Carter appears to have suffered damage to her reproductive systems.”
Jack managed to choke on absolutely nothing. It was like some bad sitcom. “Uh, it’s not damage, really,” he said, wondering how this had become his life, explaining the birds and bees to an alien. “It’s, uh, a type of birth control.”
Thor’s head tilted to the side. “To prevent conception?”
“Yes,” Jack said, glad he was catching on so quickly.
“Why would she wish to prevent conception?”
Or not.
“Look, Thor, buddy. In our culture woman have the right to choose whether or not they want to have a kid, or when, with whom, all of that.”
“And Colonel Carter does not wish to procreate with you, despite your recent activities,” Thor surmised. “That is most unfortunate for your species.”
Jack closed his eyes. This was not a conversation he ever thought he would have to have. Was Thor spying on them for God’s sake? Crazy, curious little voyeuristic alien. “I don’t think she has anything against me in particular, Thor. It’s just that in a dangerous situation like we might face during this rescue, pregnancy would…complicate things.”
“I believe I understand,” Thor said, though Jack still thought he heard a trace of disapproval in his tone. He imagined it must be frustrating to see a species perfectly capable of reproduction choosing not to do it, when his own species was so desperate for it.
Jack stared down at Carter in the glass tube as Thor fiddled with his dials.
“Can you…repair it?” he asked, before he was even aware of the thought.
“Do you wish me to?” Thor asked, his hand moving to a new stone on the console.
“No! No, that’s not what I meant.” Carter would no doubt purposely damage his own reproductive organs beyond repair if he were stupid enough to mess with her birth control. “I just wondered…if she changed her mind someday, could you fix it for her?”
Thor gave him a piercing look that was a little too knowing for Jack’s taste before the alien nodded. “I believe I could.”
“Okay,” Jack said, turning back to stare down at Carter. “You could just maybe mention that to her when she wakes up. Just so she knows she has the option.”
5. Separated
They’d been on Higgin’s Moon three days when Jack got picked up by a press gang.
All Sam knew was that he didn’t show up at the appointed meeting time. She’d lingered in the cantina for almost four hours, only leaving when the patron actually threw her out.
They’d talked about this possibility (about all possible situations in fact, as there wasn’t much else to do stuck on a jumper for five weeks straight), but none of the plans or backups or reasonable responses rose to mind as she stood in the dark street.
There was always the very real possibility that there would be a situation in which they weren’t able to find each other again, she reminded herself.
She wasn’t prepared for the panic she felt.
She wasn’t supposed to feel this adrift.
When he walked into town five days later, looking a little worse for wear and tired as hell but in one piece, Sam felt like she was breathing for the first time in days.
She didn’t let him out of her sight for even a moment for the next two weeks.
6. The Day Things Went Bad
She was late.
They’d been separated earlier, caught on two sides of the bar by a mean-looking band of bounty hunters. He’d stared across the room at Sam, and even though he knew the logical course to take, he still took a step towards her.
The look she’d thrown him-half-terrified, half-pissed-didn’t help, but then she was shaking her head, falling back to the rear exit behind her and Jack had no choice but to slip out the front door. He stuck to shadows as he moved as swiftly down the street as he could without raising suspicion.
He didn’t look back to see if the bounty hunters had followed, just repeated the failsafe plan in his head. Evade. Keep moving. At midnight, meet at the depot.
Only midnight came and went and the plan began to feel naïve and overly confident because the only thing Jack knew for a fact was that the bounty hunters hadn’t followed after him.
And she was late.
It was almost two when she slammed into him as she careened around the last corner, striking out at him as if on instinct. She was vulnerable in her panic and Jack subdued her easily, pushing her back against the wall.
“Sam,” he repeated over and over again until she finally calmed, snapped to in a moment.
“We have to go,” she said, her eyes focusing in on him.
There was blood on her fingers as she shoved money into his hands without another word and let him lead her to the small rusty bucket of a ship where they didn’t ask names and were happy to take them anywhere but here for a tall enough stack.
Their lodgings on board were more an alcove than a room, just a narrow space with blankets that could probably walk off on their own from the smell of them, a ration bar, and a small tin of water.
Jack used the precious water and the cleanest corner of his shirt to clean the bruises on Sam’s face, wiping away the blood on her hands and she let him, sitting there like a child. His reached for her shirt buttons, pausing for a moment to see if she was okay with it. She didn’t move.
Pulling her shirt open, he revealed a deep bruise already rising across her ribs and the perfect impression of a hand on her upper arm.
“Jesus,” Jack swore.
“I killed one of them,” she said, her voice thin.
Jack wanted to say ‘good job,’ but something in her voice made him hold his tongue.
“And maybe a second,” she continued, her head tilting to one side as if she wasn’t sure.
It was far from the first time she’d been forced to kill someone, so he knew there had to be more to it than that.
“I can’t remember if it was one or two. Or more.”
“Sam,” he said.
She shook her head. “I panicked. I was scared and I let myself panic. And now I can’t even be sure how many I--.” She looked down at her hands, clean now, but she stared at them as if they were still covered in blood. “I thought…what if I couldn’t find you again?”
“Sam,” he said again, his hand lifting to her cheek. “Look at me.”
She met his gaze and he could still see it there, the edge of her terror.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” he said.
She put a hand flat against his chest, pushing him so he was sitting against the wall as far back into their little alcove as he could go. Gathering up the hem of her skirt she settled herself on his lap, his hands almost automatically lifting to her hips.
“Sam,” he said. He’d meant to express his uncertainty, but even he could hear the need in his voice, see the way it was echoed in her expression, in the shaky edge of panic she was still riding. She leaned in to kiss him and his hands were almost as unsteady as hers.
He’d almost lost her today.
He was fairly certain this wasn’t the best way to deal with this, but it was all they had and he couldn’t take that away from her. Take that away from either of them. So he pulled her closer, their hands fumbling through the layers of clothing that offered the only thin veneer of privacy they had, remaining adrenaline and fear rushing them ahead. When she lowered herself down onto him, he managed for a brief moment to forget the nearby sounds of the other passengers sleeping, the blood on her hands, and that look she’d sent him across the crowded bar before disappearing from his sight. His fingers dug into her thighs.
In the dim light of the crowded transport, he buried himself deep inside her as she breathed against his lips. He swallowed her words and sounds and tears until he could taste nothing but salt and blood and she tightened around him, saying his name something like a prayer, a question he didn’t have an answer for.
The next morning, it was if the evening had never happened. They walked out into the sun of yet another foreign world full of strangers and betrayal just waiting to happen. Sam was lucid and controlled and looked at every option with calculated coldness that made some part of Jack burn with inexplicable loss.
She never slipped again.