[Moments of Adoration]

Title paraphrased from Dar William's "It's a War in There." Many thanks to nanda for the beta.

When the crowd eventually thinned, Sam approached Casselberry's wife.

"Ms. Schrift?" Sam always did her research; Casselberry's wife was a lawyer who had kept her name after her marriage. She was also enormously pregnant with their first child. Sam forced her eyes away from the woman's distended belly after a glance. "I'm Captain Samantha Carter. I..." And her mind went blank. Why was she here? What was she thinking? What good would this do for anyone?

"Yes, Captain?" Ms. Schrift settled back into the chair someone had provided for her. Fatigue owned every movement.

Sam said, "I worked with your husband. He was a good man, a good soldier. He was-" She made herself stop the words before they ran away from her. "And I'm sorry. I just wanted you to know I'm so sorry."

Ms. Schrift nodded an acceptance of her words, but Sam knew well enough that while what she said had registered, the woman wasn't concerned with Sam's apologies. But she murmured "Thank you, Captain," and Sam watched her rest both hands across her stomach, clenching her fingers into the fabric of her dark green dress. The color was familiar, too familiar; Sam blinked away the image of Ms. Schrift's pale fingers wrapped in gold.

Suddenly feeling sick, Sam left Ms. Schrift to her grief and retreated to her car.

****

"Carter. Hey, wakey, wakey, Captain." Sam inhaled: clean, antiseptic. No charred flesh, no power residue. No blood. Her eyes were crusted, and she blinked a few time before the Colonel's face came clearly into view. He smiled, relief tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Hey there."

Her "What happened?" came out as a croak, and on cue the colonel held a glass and straw to her lips, lifting her head so she was able to sip enough water to clear the worst of the sedative taste from her mouth. It hurt to breathe in more than shallow pants, and her throat ached like it had the one time she'd been intubated.

The colonel knew the routine well enough by now; they all asked the same questions, every time. "You've some broken ribs-"

"And you need to rest." Janet appeared and nudged the colonel out of her way, her stern tone reinforced by the firm hand she laid on Sam's arm. "You can get the report later."

Shaking her head, and regretting it immediately, Sam said, "I want to know what happened."

There was something in the glance Janet exchanged with the colonel that Sam was too fuzzy to interpret. "What happened?" she said again, louder, even though it hurt her throat.

The penlight came out, and Janet flashed it into Sam's eyes. Sam blinked into the bright light. Like the flash of the Goa'uld shock grenade on the planet they were surveying with SG-8.

"How much do you remember, Sam?" Waking up on the mothership that had appeared in orbit and sent them all running for the gate. Daniel, Casselberry and Freemont following her through corridors. A Goa'uld. An explosion. Jaffa. Too many Jaffa. Gold. Something gold.

Hand device.

Dragging herself to the Goa'uld's body and ripping the hand device from him. A terrible pressure building in her head, pushing her, burning along her skin until she had to let it go, let it out before it ate her away to nothing.

"Oh my God, what did I do?"

"You took out a bunch of the Jaffa," Jack said. "And and there were some other injuries."

Daniel. She remembered Daniel yelling. "How bad, how bad did I... Daniel, I heard Daniel..."

She didn't realize she was struggling to sit up until Janet was pressing her back down onto the bed and the colonel hurried his explanation. "Hey, whoa, easy Carter. It's okay, Daniel's okay. Dislocated shoulder and what will be some spectacular bruising. But he'll live."

And there was that look again, Janet's mouth thinning to a tight line, and she said, "That's enough for now, Colonel," as she inserted a syringe into Sam's IV line, and Sam's world faded away.

*****

Sam woke into the muted nighttime of the infirmary, heart pounding, mouth dry, and rubbing the palm of her right hand against the sheets so hard it was scraped raw. Her monitor was beeping frantically as her heart rate climbed, and it wasn't long before the night nurse appeared.

She played along with the nurse's prodding, and when she retreated to her station, Sam turned off her monitor and slipped out of bed, IV stand in tow.

Daniel lay only a few beds over. The colonel hadn't been kidding about the bruises - black and blue mottled what she could see of his chest and one side of his face. He shifted when she brushed his hair from his face, and his eyes blinked open, slow and heavy.

"Sam." His hand found her wrist, fingers wrapping loosely around it. His mouth worked like a fish, and as the colonel had done for her, she helped Daniel take a sip of water. When he spoke his words were slurred, and Sam had to ask him to repeat them.

"You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

"What's not my fault?"

"Casselberry."

The colonel had said there were two injuries from SG-8. But when Sam looked around, she realized only one other bed in the infirmary was occupied.

"Daniel..." But he had slipped into sleep again, his fingers falling away from her wrist.

*****

"Is that from Seth?"

The colonel was standing in the door of the hazard storage room, pointing at the box in her hand. He didn't say anything about her infirmary garb or the smear of dried blood on the inside of her elbow, where she'd pulled out her IV.

"Yeah. I talked Dad into leaving it with us for study." She'd spent hours staring at it in the days after that mission, taking it to her lab and later returning it to storage untouched.

"You, uh, want us to call him?"

"No." She bristled at the implication she needed her father to come running and kiss her scraped knee. Especially when she knew he would only give her that look of disappointment, the one that made her stomach knot and her hands go cold. Because she'd - "Tell me the details. All I have are bits and pieces. After we split up, Daniel, Casselberry, Freemont and I got pinned between the Jaffa and the Goa'uld." She picked up the hand device, examining the crystal. It was different than other Goa'uld crystal technology. They must have cannibalized it from a different source. "It gets a little messy after that."

The colonel scuffed his boot against the floor. "Near as we can guess one of the Jaffa got a little over-eager and hit something vital with a staff blast. You and the snake took the brunt of the explosion. Daniel, Casselberry and Freemont were okay, but there were too many Jaffa for them to hold off. You..."

Smoke. She remembered the acrid smoke from the explosion. It burned her nose and eyes. She remembered Freemont yelling for covering fire, weapons chattering. Her weapon was jammed, and how to fix it eluded her, process and procedure scattered fragments in her throbbing head.

She remembered seeing the glint of the hand device against the Goa'uld's green silk robes. Weapon, she'd needed a weapon to help them. She had to help them...

"It looks like you lost control of it," the colonel was saying. "The damage in the corridor was pretty extensive, and you weren't breathing when we found you. Doc says it did a number on your system."

"Lucky me." It slipped out, her voice thick with scorn.

"Carter, you know how this works. You made the call you had to make-"

"Don't give me the good soldier crap, sir. This," Sam threw the device down onto the table, "this wasn't ever in the cards. NASA, going into space, finding ways to make a difference in the world with science, that's who I am... not this, not some freak with the power of a bunch of megalomaniacal aliens." She was too sick with what she'd done to quell what that tumbled free. "She felt it too, even though she was supposed to be one of the good guys, she had that power, liked using it..."

Sam gestured helplessly at the hand device. "It made her feel like I do when I fly. And that's part of me now, it's in me and it's never going to go away." Surprised by the shock creasing the colonel's forehead, she fell silent.

"I thought," he finally said, "you were okay with the Jolinar thing."

"I'll never be okay with Jolinar."

"It's just... I mean, you pushed about remembering the dreams, about contacting the Tok'ra..." He trailed off. "I had no idea."

"Well, that was the idea. Buck up, push on, do your duty..." Sam cringed at the bitter edge to her words, but she saw sympathy flash across his face just ahead of a sardonic smile.

"I thought you didn't want the good soldier crap, Carter."

She didn't tell him to shut up, tempting as it was. As she gathered up the hand device and placed it back in its storage box, he said, "There's going to be an inquiry."

"I know." Sam took a deep breath. "I killed one of our own people." The admission filled the room, crowding out any further discussion, and as she closed the box, the colonel turned to go.

"Carter," he paused at the door. "It may not be the last time that happens."

The storage box was heavy, and her hands shook as she put it away.

****

Teal'c stood sentinel at the secondary security checkpoint when she returned from the funeral. "Captain Carter."

"Is something wrong?"

"No." He fell into step beside her as she flashed her ID at the guard and cleared through the checkpoint. As they waited for the elevator, he said, "O'Neill has told me that you must face an inquiry into the events on the mothership."

"Yes, this afternoon, actually." She planned to go find some paperwork to do in her lab so she wouldn't have to change out of her dress blues. Or think of anything other than equations and requisitions.

"Do you think you will be penalized for your actions?"

"If the committee finds that my actions were negligent, then yes, I will." A judgment of manslaughter. Dishonorable discharge. Potentially jail time. Worst case scenarios, she knew, but...

"That would be unfortunate." The elevator opened and Teal'c bowed her in. She pressed the button for her lab level, as the elevator lurched into motion, Teal'c said, "You have not yet decided what your fate should be."

Her eyes snapped up to meet his at the statement. She hoped the thoughts chasing each other around in her head were not so nakedly written on her face. "One minute yes, one minute no. I'm not sure I'll ever know if I did the right thing."

Teal'c tilted his head, regarding her for a long moment. "Not now. But perspective will come with time. And until then, you have our support, Captain Carter."

Sam patted his arm, forcing a smile. "Thank you, Teal'c."

Maybe someday that would be enough.