[Moments of Adoration]

Happy belated birthday, Cal! *big wet smooches* to Karen, Jara, and as always, to Michelle.

No. He'd done it because she had looked him in the eye, ignored his refusal, ignored everything she knew about him (but for one thing).

Please.

Sam understood something then, a sudden cascading pull of emptiness in the pit of her stomach, like free fall.

How he'd felt, with the Entity, firing that zat a second time. Making that decision.

It was different, but yet it wasn't.

"Sam?"

Janet. It made sense. She was sitting on the floor in Janet's office.

"How long have you been in here?" The doctor slid down next to Sam, a little awkward in her pumps and regulation skirt.

"Not long." Sam knew Janet wouldn't ask if she was okay. Janet knew better.

"You couldn't have known, Sam."

Janet knew too damn much.

Sam shifted, leaning her cheek against the side of the desk. "Do I really come across as that naive, Janet?"

"Of course not." But Sam knew it was an automatic response, an unconditional offer of comfort from a friend, because Janet was staring at her like she'd grown another head.

She pulled the sleeves of her shirt down over her knuckles, trying to ignore the sudden chill that prickled the hair on her arms and dimpled the skin. "So why does everyone think that I don't understand what the To'kra are like? Do they think I just forgot how Jolinar..."

She saw Janet's confusion washed away by sympathy and Sam stared down at her hands, not wanting to see any more.

"You couldn't have known." Janet repeated, reaching over and gripping Sam's wrists. Sam watched Janet's small sure fingers, compared them to her long, awkward ones, now bunched into tight fists. They'd both saved lives, saved the world.

But they couldn't fix this.

"No, not about..." The burns on his shirt... - Janet's voice, flat and clinical and over-controlled - they look like acid.  "... but the rest, I knew. I knew, Janet. I knew they'd use him. I knew that healing him was the least of their concerns."

"Sam..."

"But I thought... I thought having at least that much chance was worth the risk."

"And you don't think so now?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

But she did.

Janet let go, and for a moment, Sam felt disoriented. She wanted to snatch Janet's hands back, hold onto them for dear life, but instead she grabbed the edge of the desk and pulled herself to her feet.

"Go talk to him, Sam."

Sam reached down and helped Janet up. "I don't think this is a good time."

But she let Janet herd her out of the office and she sighed and rolled her eyes when Janet gave her a little shove toward the curtained off area across the room.

Sam stopped three feet short of his bed.

He was asleep.

Later, she told herself as she walked away. Later would be better, when everything wasn't quite so raw and she'd figured out how to neatly package all this into a little box at the back of her awareness.

"Carter."

Sam froze. After an almost-too-long hesitation, she executed a crisp about face and walked to his bed. "Sir." She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes, so she looked at his hands.

His knuckles were bruised. The only mark on him.

"What are you still doing here?"

"I... I just wanted to see if you needed anything else."

"I should be asking you that. You look like hell. When was the last time you slept?"

Honesty. It was the only thing she had left to give him. "I don't really know. A day, at least. Maybe two. Or three."

"Get some sleep, Carter." She finally forced herself to look at him just as he added, "You're no good to me like this."

Logically, intellectually, she knew what he meant. But it had stopped being about logic the minute he'd come through the Gate. It had stopped being about anything but what she'd done. Why she'd done it.

And that she was afraid she would do it again. Even now. Even knowing...

"Yes, sir."

She only stayed long enough to see his eyes close.

Wiping her paint-covered hands on her jeans, Sam deleted the most recent answering-machine message from Janet. It was the third one that day.

Back in the kitchen she spread one of the drop cloths over the counter, weighting it down with cans of green beans. She'd left the mountain four days before, driven straight to the hardware store and bought drop cloths and trays and rollers and four cans of paint: three cans of bright yellow and one that matched the antiqued brass fittings on her cabinets.

She'd started as soon as she unloaded the car. Threw the plastic cloths over everything, sanding until three in the morning and she could no longer lift her arms.

"You're... painting your kitchen." That was Jonas the next morning, calling, concerned when she hadn't shown up at the mountain - even though they had a week off. "Uh, why?"

"'Spaghetti Squash.' And it seemed like a good time," was the only thing she could think to reply.

Janet had called an hour after Jonas, and Sam told her the same thing, though with more detail about the paint.

She'd stopped answering the phone after that.

Picking up the roller, she started around the window over the kitchen sink. The paint smell was strong and she struggled to open the latch on the window with her free hand when she heard from behind her, "Carter."

The roller hit the plastic covered counter with a wet splat, freckling her face, the pale wood cabinets and the side of the refrigerator with sunny little splotches.

And there he was, standing by the island, wincing. "Shit. Sorry. You, uh, weren't answering the door."

"I was..."

"Busy, I noticed." He waved a hand at the yellow walls before shoving it back in his pocket. "Nice color. Very... colorful."

"I guess." Sam scrubbed at her cheek with the back of her hand. "What are you doing in my kitchen? Sir."

"I'm going to Minnesota."

"Through my kitchen?"

He snorted. "Fraiser wants me to check in every day. Make sure I haven't drowned myself or something."

And he tilted his head the way he did when he was joking, trying to make her laugh, but she remembered him coming down the ramp - his face and his eyes and the emptiness in them that had made her insides flip over and her hands shake. She didn't find it very damn funny.

"Carter?"

"What?" Sam blinked at his expectant gaze.

"So is eighteen hundred good?"

"For what?"

"For me to call."

"Call?"

"And check in." He spoke slowly, drawing the words out like he used to do when he thought Daniel was being particularly obtuse. "If it won't interfere with your home decorating plans."

Sam leaned back, grabbing the edge of the counter. He was watching her, and his face wasn't empty anymore. "Eighteen hundred. Sure."

"Good. I'll call you when I get there." He just stood there and she gripped the counter until her knuckles ached. She should say something, anything, but too many days of fear and failure and self-recrimination tied her tongue. So she picked up the roller and dipped it in the paint.

As she turned back to the half-finished wall, all she heard was a little sigh and a moment later the soft thunk of the front door.

The roller bounced off the counter this time.

Sam caught him halfway down the sidewalk. "Colonel!"

He stopped, hesitating before he turned back, and in that tiny moment her resolve failed her. "Yeah?"

"I... I hate yellow."

But then he smiled, and the world felt solid beneath her feet for the first time since he'd stumbled through the Gate.

"I know."