This wasn’t what a mission should feel like.  On their worst days, Sam at the very least felt like she knew where she was going and why.  She didn’t feel that way this time.  The intel was sparse—they hadn’t been given coordinates, rather extrapolated them from what information they had already gathered from more trustworthy sources—the game plan was fairly slipshod and their operation was man-heavy.

            Special Operations Team One out of Peterson AFB did not operate this way.  Sam couldn’t dispute that she was pretty pissed at being forced to do so.  Lou, covering their west flank while Sam brought up their six, flashed her a quick smile in what could only be an attempt at comfort.  She returned it, shaking her head and furrowing her brow in incredulity at no specific thing. The whole damned situation was nuts, he had to know that as well as Sam.

            He tossed up his palms, one with gun in hand, conceding the same.  Sam realized that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the look of things.

Oh, this is not good.  Whenever more than one of their instincts started pinging at once, things were uncommonly dangerous.  They couldn’t afford ‘uncommonly.’

Suddenly, Sam felt more than heard a hush come over the already quiet band.  Past Siler’s shoulder, she spied two separate fists go up as their owners went down. She followed suit with an energetic lunge, snagging the bulk of Janet’s pack and dragging her to the dirt with her. Siler had beat them to their knees.  Lou was poised to her left with his gun braced on his bent knee and his eye to the scope.  There wasn’t the slightest glint from the reflective glass and, yet, she knew that the colonel was doing the same up ahead.

Desert camo would be a damned godsend right now.  They were walking ink blots out here.

She kept her ears open and her eyes on the colonel and major’s respective fists.  Without thinking, they were mimicking each others’ hand signals.  Evidently noticing the synchrony, she caught her CO risking a characteristically closed-mouth half-smile.  Can’t show teeth, might reflect light. Another aspect of the man that only made sense in situ.

He’d sighted possible hostiles north to northwest, numbering upwards of three.  Kawalsky echoed his observation, mutely adding his equal number from northeast.  Lou tapped his shoulder and held up four fingers for west.  Janet, who’d pivoted in Sam’s direction on the drop, peered over her shoulder and mouthed with devastating clarity, “Shit. Five,” on the south front.  Sam didn’t need to get Siler’s report to know they were screwed.

“Ditto here, sir.”

Now, it’s empirical.  We are royally fucked.  There were times that she seriously hated the numbers game. I am going to have someone’s ass for this.  She swore it then and there, and Sam could be damned strident about her oaths.  But her first and primary concern was not dying in the desert, where no one could hear her scream or curse every bastard with a star on their shoulders, her father and Uncle George excepted. Or not, because she doubted she’d even be here if not for their early influence.  No Father’s Day card for either of them next year. 

Probably.

She was a soft touch when it came to her father figures.  Still, they were getting such a talking-to about their lackluster peers.  She was actively telegraphing her part in the dialogue as the team fell into combat formation.

Their CO was back in action, faculties in check and crosshairs tight.  He would have been giving them the nonverbal equivalent of ‘Don’t fire until you can see the whites of their eyes’ if he thought such a sentiment was anything short of damned idiotic. His motto: ‘Shoot them over there, we don’t need ‘em over here!’ did perfect justice to the man himself.  He was practical, some would even say simple, but, either way, he wanted no more artifice than it took to get the job done.  And this was one job that needed to be done right. There would be no retreating; there was nowhere to retreat to.

“Anybody else think playing ‘possum might work?” he inquired sarcastically, in the process of pulling back toward their center.  “No? Just me, then. Damn.”

Janet hefted her gun up against her bracing shoulder.  “Should have worn the desert field dress,” she murmured, a bit too loudly and unhelpfully in the colonel’s opinion.  Sam winced preemptively on her behalf, though she agreed.

“Thank you for that positively insightful and useful comment, Captain Frasier.  The next time we need someone to state the obvious, I’ll make sure we leave an open spot on the floor for you.”  His glare would have likely been withering if he’d been able to aim it the right way.  As it was, Sam predicted that he had his hands and glare full with some very fast approaching potential—nay, probable—combatants.

“Sorry, sir,” Janet squeaked. Sam thought she remained a bit more fearful of the devil she knew than the likely ones she hadn’t met yet. 

The colonel’s annoyance came through in a wordless sigh, carrying a fine trace of guilt along for the ride.  “Of course you are.”

The opposing forces were definitely coming, but their approach seemed scattered as opposed to pinpointed.  That gave them a few extra minutes.  There would probably be no getting away, which didn’t mean they wouldn’t give a good old college try; however, there was time to prepare.

“Kawalsky, I want you covering Frasier and Siler.  If you get a chance to run, take it.  Cromwell’s people are gonna need tech and med assistance on their in and out.  Ferretti, I want you covering Carter and vice versa.  Carter, Doc, you both need to look a lot less feminine right now.”

“Sir?” their responses came simultaneously.

“I don’t think I need to explain what’s going to happen in there.  They give no quarter to men, what do you expect they’ll do with the two of you?”  The question was asked without malice and without expectation of a response since nothing really needed to be said.

Sam reached for Janet and started tucking the hints of her short bob under her cap.  That wouldn’t go far in offsetting the utterly feminine nature of her features, but it might make them hesitate.  Janet had gathered a bit of dust, dirt, and sand to smear across their war painted selves in the hopes of better hiding their smooth skin.  They had long since agreed that men seemed to have an unspoken understanding that women just had nicer skin, which was exactly what they didn’t want their prospective captors to notice.

 Sam’s own close-cropped hair worked in her favor this time, even if her overlarge blue eyes did not. Janet’s damned near Bambi-esque eyes weren’t much of an advantage either.  Their respective figures went without saying as difficult things to downplay, but for the moment they had tac vests and jackets to hide behind.  It was as good as it was going to get.

Someone’s ass!  And it better be delivered on a silver platter.  She’d be railing like that in her head for a while yet.

The colonel resorted to hand motions to pass their play.  Kawalsky set off with Siler and Janet, subtle at first, then faster in a direction 56 degrees off their chosen route.  There was going to be a firefight, no question.  They could doubtlessly take their detractors, but it wasn’t going to be a discreet win.  Winning meant storming the castle, losing meant being dragged to it.  I do not do strapped down and tortured well.  And, wow, she was never allowing that visual to enter her mind ever again.

As soon as Sam had managed to shake off the panic that came from imagining torture, the first shot from the other side clipped her vest, knocking her off her feet and to the much less serviceable on-her-ass position.  The colonel cursed and took out whoever got her from an impressive 250-plus-meter distance. Given the scowl on his face, she did not envy those on the other side of his bullets.  He’s a Master Instructor-level marksman. How did I forget that?

She glanced at the scattering of incoming bogeys from his vantage and figured they wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon either.  Nice.

After she climbed to her feet, Sam proceeded with some very quick takedowns on each of their flanks and a few on Charlie and company’s tail.  This has got to be the most bugfuck attack I’ve seen yet.  Their op hadn’t been all that well put together and they were still managing to trounce their takers, really trounce them.  Sam swallowed her chuckle at Janet taking out two in an eleven-second pause.  Siler patted her on the back, then popped another one at her four o’clock, leading Sam to wonder just how much training was required to be auxiliary personnel for Special Ops.  With the colonel in charge, I’m thinking a hell of a lot.  Lucky for them.

“Head in the game, Sam,” Lou hissed, rounding her to take up the hindmost position. “Head in the game!”

This thinking too much thing is getting to be a problem. Taking down five incredibly, improbably, well-aligned foot soldiers approaching at 120 meters, Sam decided that it bore further thinking about. Later, because she was a little busy right now.  She politely removed their gun-toting cohorts from the realm of this mortal coil and also put that in the pen of subjects she’d have philosophize about before she could go on with her life.  It was a big pen and she’d have a short life; there was a chance she’d get around to it before the end, but no promises.

Sam inhabited ground just due north of Truly Jaded and slightly southwest of Take Her Gun.  The neighborhood was far from hallowed ground but the neighbors were dependable.  They were either completely nuts or they had found some way to anchor themselves to what society—and the Air Force—considered good conduct and behavior.  She had anchored herself to the proverbial white picket fence. It was structurally sound for all its emotional undercurrents.

Yeah, Sam could do with a lot fewer of those.

Amid the firefight, Kawalsky and his two had actually managed to disappear.  The superior oncoming force had never come.  They’d gotten a Little League resistance at the World Series and they were left sitting on their asses in an Iraqi corpse garden.  This was way too easy, she thought, turning sharply from side to side to see what catch luck still had to offer.

There was nothing readily apparent.  Sure, they’d made a hell of a ruckus out here near the bad guys’ high security prison and, yet, no Second Coming.  Hell should have rained down on them and never stopped, but there wasn’t a grain of sand out place.

Sam tasted bile in her throat.  It also could have been the flavor of a fix; she’d always heard getting burned left a bad taste in your mouth.  Someone wanted them to go on, someone who knew that most of the team would object if they faced no resistance as opposed to weak resistance.  Whoever they were, she hated the hell out of them for being right.

She, the colonel, and Ferretti stayed bent in half to spy across any dips in the plain for places where the other side’s guys might be lying low.  It was certainly a plan.  Unbeknownst to the elder two, their most subordinate teammate was fighting hard against the urge to tell all and turn tail.  Bad juju, bad aura, bad whatever was all over this mission and she didn’t want it tainting the best things in her life: her job and her guys.  They didn’t need to be screwed because she didn’t have the good sense not to agree to a mission sight unseen.

And she was usually so logical.

The colonel signaled for them to proceed, though she noticed that he cut their speed by at least a third.  This looked twice as bad as it felt and they were about to have to pass their downed opposition on the way in.  It was the perfect opportunity for a surprise ambush.  So, naturally, there was no ambush.

They passed fourteen cooling forms to the north as they approached the prison’s perimeter. The colonel wasn’t even pretending this was going to go well anymore.  Retreat would definitely fail.  They were in No Man’s Land here and Charlie, Janet, and Siler had been the last lucky ones to escape.  Any attempt to radio either the secondary team or HQ would likely do more to expose their position than glean useful intel.  It was do or die here.  So, they did. As for whether they’d die, the jury was still out.

Rather than lead them through the front entrance and directly into the belly of the beast, the colonel guided them around the side of the solidly constructed citadel.  There was nary a guard in sight and that was far more alarming than any loaded weapon aimed at the center of her forehead.

They followed the path of the prison sewage trench, which was pretty nasty but also understandably deserted.  Her CO would rather suffer discomfort with the knowledge that it might save their lives than be slightly better off and get a knife between the shoulder blades.  I think his complex about knives is as big as mine.  She thought it was probably bigger, though, if it was the memories associated with his stay in Club Med that were guiding to him.

But, this time, he utilized Sam’s method of cut-class storage boxes and put those demons away.  Even if he’d worn his personal angels and devils on his shoulders for anyone to see and adopted them as pets, she and Lou still would have followed him to hell.  Been there, done that.  It was easy to follow him anywhere when they knew he’d never leave them.

They roved constantly without noting a sound, neither gust of wind nor human expletive corrupted the air, which was saying something.  The colonel tripped over something in their path and hissed; she’d heard the abrupt pop of his ankle as it twisted to one side and his staggering stealthily in pain.  The stars were offering less light now and they knew better to resort to their torches at this point. Sam’s next thought had her nearly staggering at her lateness and told her how clearly the lot of them had been off their game.  With a low, cricket-like whistle, she called their progress to a halt.  Lou and the colonel heeded her unquestioningly and mimicked her action in donning the night vision goggles Simmons had packed for them.  Ferretti shot her something akin to playful wink of thanks and her CO gave her shoulder a thump as he limped past her.

This mission had surpassed hinky back at Al Taqaddum. It was currently working toward suicidal.  I love my job, I love my friends. I love my country, I love my countrymen. Every one of those things was true and this still smacked of desperate futility. The fix was in, they had no friends here.   Luck and training would have to be their beacon from here on out.

It would also have to be the colonel’s crutch and nursemaid since there wasn’t exactly a first aid station nearby where he could rest his soon to be ballooning ankle.  She sent an empathetic wince in the direction of his last location prior to carefully continuing forward, feeling for his presence as she went.  The worn-in scent of Lou Ferretti, focused and winded, wafted past her. He was shifting the line-up.  Lou had just taken point, leaving the colonel the center position and Sam six. It’ll keep him being immediately apparent as the weak link, she hoped.

The noxious smell, which had let up for a short time during their prowl, started up anew as they approached a short rise of rickety stairs leading to a door on the prison’s rear wall. Except this smell was worse; this wasn’t solely a matter of human waste, this was human waste.  People locked in small rooms and left to languish until something ended their life or they wished something had.  She’d been to enough POW camps to recognize the smell, the reek of the dying left to mingle amid the sour of the living.  Pretty soon it all descended into a stomach-churning stench for the ages.  She took it as a warning: This could be you, don’t let this be you.  It was advice she would have happily taken had circumstances permitted.

Feeling a shudder of revulsion undulate up and down her spine with this latest ruined breath, Sam only carried on by sheer force of will.  She had her pride and her ego, but she didn’t want this to end the way someone else did.  They wanted Jack O’Neill to fail in the only battlefield where it was likely and that was where she’d brought him.

Despite not occupying the forward position, the colonel didn’t hesitate to stop them to the side of the door with a fist in the air.  The signals ran fast: Ferretti would throw open the door, Sam would throw a flashbang, and the colonel would cover the entrance after its detonation.  What of subtlety, she thought, but the art of war had been Alpha Team’s first fatality tonight.  Not a good night.

Their entrance went down without a hitch and without a stitch of resistance.  Continuing to sport their goggles, they descended into the heart of the building down a steep staircase.  Fluttering a shoulder against the nearest wall told her she was encountering a new door every few steps.  The Iraqis didn’t spare a square foot of storage space.  They’re also not too concerned about wasting money on plumbing. Nothing is exactly clean here. But, then, that was hardly the goal of a prison in the first place.

Their intel had placed their prisoners a third of the way down the main staircase, which wound throughout the building in a confusing labyrinth of ups, downs and horizontals to lead to the holes charitably called holding cells. Well, some were here and a few were elsewhere. For a quicker extraction, they’d probably have to split up.

Sam listened hard for any discernible enemy movement from the top or the bottom of the stairs.  The stun grenade fumes had already cleared, though her view of the site was still somewhat foggy through her goggles.  At roughly the indicated point, Sam clicked her tongue three times to catch the guys’ attention.  Ferretti copied and took up the position opposite her on the other side of the indicated door.  The colonel kept his gun up, easing in to check the door for booby traps; trip wires, detonators, and heat sensors.  If he was unfortunate enough to run across one, he wouldn’t stand a chance, but Sam and Lou might still have a shot at getting the hell out of dodge.

 Don’t find anything, don’t find anything, she chanted with chaotic frequency.  She didn’t think abandoning him here was something she could withstand on top of the year she’d had.  And telling Sara…Sam felt herself turn grey then green at the thought.  Sara had always been the stalwart at home; for this, she shouldn’t need to be.

When Colonel O’Neill turned his head left and right to make eye contact with them, as much as was possible through their goggles, Sam realized he must not have picked up on any detectable danger and hoped this was the luck she’d been praying for.  She moved in beside him and dropped down to pick the lock without needing to be given the order.  Thanks in large part to her big brother, Mark, she was damn good with a slim jim on the sly and under time constraints.  Oh, the trouble he’d pulled her into just to get back at their dad.

Now, I guess the joke’s on him. I turned out like Dad anyway. At home, she would have paused to think about all the implications of that as she had a few hundred times in the past. She wouldn’t do that here; she’d done enough thinking and not acting for a few old soldiers’ lifetimes in Baghdad.  Flight maneuvers have nothing on ground ops.  She would always love her wings but she’d never see dogfights the same way again.

The lock finally turned over with a sluggish, rusted click. Giving her team a thumbs-up, Sam dropped back to resume her former stance. The colonel nodded his thanks and crouched as low as an equally rusty knee and a twisted—and probably sprained—ankle would allow.  One more unspoken, “Eyes and ears front,” and he was shoving the heavy door inward and re-taking the lead, MP-5 poised and safety off. They glided in behind him, filling the exit and providing any backup he might potentially need.

He didn’t need backup, but he did need to get out of here and why was abundantly clear in seconds.

The prisoners—actually, the prisoner, because the other two bodies occupying the space had ceased to live none too long ago, hadn’t even moved when they came.  He had short-cropped hair and what must have been a baby face once upon a time.  It was as gaunt and lacking in naïveté as any ghoul in a Halloween horror.

            He’s one of ours, she knew and believed.  The muscle was all that remained just before starvation had begun to set in.  In his ripped, ruined fatigues, he was a body of shoulders and calves and callused, broken fingers.  He tapped them against his thigh in time to his off-key crooning of “Into the Wild Blue Yonder,” the official anthem of the USAF.  If the grinding bones hurt at all, he didn’t seem to care.

“Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At 'em boys, Give 'er the gun!”

The enthusiasm that made that song great was gone in this man, having been stolen by all he’d seen along with his voice.  Nearly hoarse or not, he kept on keeping on; freedom in reach or not, he continued to sing.  She didn’t think they were even real to him anymore, merely of figment of hope gone to pot.

“Airman,” she pitched low, but loud enough for the young man to hear, “we’re here to bring you home.”

Slowly, he rotated his head in her direction to look at her and her sudden gasp turned into a gag on the stagnant air.  He couldn’t see her, had no way of knowing who they were.  His eyes were a mess of scabbing abrasions, burns, and bruises.  He couldn’t see her and he’d learned not to care.  She hadn’t.

“We’re gonna get you out of here,” Ferretti told him, dropping into a crouch at his side. There wasn’t much any of them could do about his eyes without Janet, but they could take some basic steps to make him comfortable.  The soon to be-former prisoner flinched as soon as Lou’s hand came near holding the swath of water-soaked gauze.  Sam was moving to intervene when the colonel’s touch stopped her short.

            “We need to find the analyst.” He nodded at Ferretti’s running chatter as he made careful work of wounds that would probably never heal.  “I think he’s got ‘im. We need the last one.”

            She didn’t care for the idea of leaving Lou without support, but, given their uneven numbers, it was unavoidable.  She trusted Ferretti to hold the fort while they went after the lone civilian of the group.  In spite of his gamey lower limbs, the colonel remained a crack shot and that was what they’d need if escape became a numbers game.  She needed to see some good come out of this. Two dead on arrival was the worst this could be allowed to get.

            The colonel clicked his tongue twice and pointed between himself and Sam.  They got a thumbs-up and, “watch out,” from Lou, who returned to helping the wounded airmen take his first substantial drink of water in what might have been weeks.  Yeah, Sam was proud of the man she considered closer than a brother, would always be.

            Dropping into prowling stances, Sam and the colonel made their way back out into the stairwell.  It remained dark, though Sam knew that dawn was on the horizon in short order.  They needed to get in and out and back into the dessert before anyone else decided to pay them a visit.  This kind of eerily good fortunate was bound to end, and at the worst possible time.

            The made their way down to bottom of this flight to arrive at the door that was supposed to hold their last charge.  As last time, O’Neill checked for traps and Sam jimmied the lock.  They were in and out in two minutes with a bloodied, but outwardly cool security analyst settled protectively between them.

            Sam found that there was a lesson to be learned from this mission and it was one she hoped to take back to her trainees someday: Don’t ever assume that all traps are intended to kill.  Not instantly.

            Fifteen steps up, Sam found out how true that was. Several men, whom Sam could only conclude were the equivalent of prison wardens and their enforcers here, were standing there with their guns and grim amusement and waiting.  The security analyst’s sweating fingers found her wrist and squeezed—way harder than she would have given him credit for.  She knew it was panic and she sympathized, but did he have to choose her shooting hand?  Now, she couldn’t have lifted it to open fire even if she wanted to.

            Her CO was having a different sort of problem.  If Sam wasn’t out of her mind, she’d say he’d frozen.  His finger was poised in front of the trigger tight enough for a hiccup to be a mistake and he hadn’t taken a single shot.  Behind the goggles, she couldn’t see him blink, but she knew him well enough by now to know he was reliving his own worst nightmare in living color for the second time.  Nevertheless, trapped between nowhere to run and too many to run from, he still managed to do her proud.

            He stared at the men in khaki brown uniforms and fatigues balefully.  “I was wondering when you were going to get here.” She could almost see his eyebrows waggling, tauntingly. “Remember me?” he asked, with open arms.

            One man smiled and raised his gun.  Sam expected him to put an end to the colonel’s unrelenting commentary.  He put an end to the security analyst instead.  The generally composed, stoic man landed in a pile of bones, loose as a de-stringed marionette.  His back slapped wetly against the dirt steps, his exit wound a blooming rose of flesh and muscle in Sam’s mind.  Her nose wrinkled at the acrid smell of gunpowder in the closed space of the corridor instead of at the scent of scorched flesh.  She’d gotten used to the smells, but she found them unpleasant, to say the least.

            Her commander rolled his eyes in a play at exasperation. (She read the tautness in his shoulders; she knew better.)  “What’d you have to go and do that for?  We weren’t done with him yet.”

            “We were done with him,” the shooter replied, still smiling a deeply unsettling smile.  His English was more than passable despite the accent.  Sam was not reassured by their common tongue.  That might have been related to his shooting one of the people they’d come to rescue in the chest, but she’d need to test that theory in a controlled laboratory setting before saying for sure.  Thusly, she could only reiterate to herself, Best mission ever.

            This was going just as badly as she’d expected.  At least I get to be right.       Forget cold comfort, that was no comfort.  Sam had been captured while American and captured while female before. She wasn’t sure she could stand to live through that again, not with the same man watching and still-unsettled fears burbling.

            Sam wasn’t afraid of dying, but the idea of living, and living here, terrified her.

            And Jack O’Neill was living proof of the reason why.

~!~

            Sam was this close to humming the Academy fight song to put an end to all the silence. She traced her initials in the dirt on the floor instead, to keep from disturbing the colonel who already appeared to so uneasy.

            He’d frozen. There’d been so many and they’d been so woefully outgunned that surrender was all they could do if instant death wasn’t on the agenda.  She’d seen him fighting the urge to puke at the prospect, but holding back.  If he had been alone, she was positive he would have taken them on. If the entire team had been at his side, there’d have been no question.  But he’d had her for backup and a dead hostage at his feet and an abomination of memories on his back.  So, he’d buckled and, now, he couldn’t forgive himself.  She had doubts whether the Air Force would either.

            “‘I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.’” He spoke it in time to the recitation in her head.  He took the Code of Conduct to heart, as she did. If this was Paraguay, and he had it all to do again, he never would have let this happen.  When Jack O’Neill was tip-top, his detractors knew better than to stand in his way. They either knew or they learned. The man in this room was not that Jack O’Neill.

            This man had been dropped, broken, into a hell like this before and he’d never managed to leave. Not for his baby boy or his wife, not for his best friend or the former friend who was so sorry for his  part in it all that he’d begged forgiveness once, twice, and many times more.  Cromwell had never gotten that forgiveness because he’d never known the right Jack O’Neill to ask, if there could be a right one.

            Sam didn’t even know where she’d start, because someday she’d have to.  She supposed that forgiveness had to start within, but she certainly wasn’t there yet.  The sin wasn’t even finished yet. 

Forgiveness? She could have scoffed or thrown something if there was anything but a semi-empty shit bucket to throw. 

Forgiveness?  She shook her head.  Maybe she’d try again tomorrow.  If they saw tomorrow. Because it wasn’t certain, every moment mattered, even those when she was guilty and he was half-back in time. Every moment was a chance for redemption, not something every person got—or deserved.

            “Sir,” she addressed to the man who was standing, albeit barely, at the locked door in front of them.  He grunted in response. She went on anyway, just because.  “Sir, have you ever gotten an order you didn’t want to follow?  I mean, really didn’t want to follow?”

            He shifted to lean his shoulder against the door and gave her his eyes.  Even glazed, the implicit, Ya think, came right across in that look.  She ducked her head, knowing she was turning red and hating it.

            “I mean in addition to the stuff we normally do, sir.  Do you ever get, I don’t know, side orders from up top, orders you can’t tell anyone about?”  It was a question and, as far as Sam was concerned, they did not count as a confidentiality breech.  No details, no jail time, or so she hoped.  Assuming I live long enough to get back on American soil, Leavenworth will be a beach vacation compared to this.

            The colonel coughed and rubbed at his arms.  They both missed their jackets something awful at this point.  For a place so tightly enclosed, it got damned cold.  Sam wasn’t sure it wasn’t being done intentionally.  Another kind of torture, she added to the list of ways they’d already hurt them.  If the colonel wasn’t already otherwise occupied, they might have tried sharing body heat.  As it was, she questioned the wisdom of being that close, even if he’d let her.

            “Kind of goes with the job, Captain.” It was ‘Captain’ and not ‘Carter,’ because they’d effectively ceased to exist once they were caught behind enemy lines.  Name, rank, and serial number were all well and good until your country disavowed knowledge of your actions and allegiance.  Then, it was basically just rubbing salt in your own wound.

            “Yes, sir, but I was wondering if you’d ever had any especially bad missions like that.  How do you deal with it, sir, when the very people who could help are the ones you aren’t allowed to tell?”

            He dropped his eyes to the ground for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep.  She’d just about risen to catch him before he fell when he twisted himself to look at her and said, “You have to decide what you can live with.  Think it over long and hard before you act; then, you decide.  Think it over long and hard, because you can never take it back.”

            On that one, he was preaching to the choir.

            “That’s good advice, sir. I’ll take it under advisement.”

            At her reply, he smiled; a small, anemic thing on a mouth so known for mischief, but, for five seconds, it was the most beautiful sight in Baghdad. And she should know.

~!~

            She estimated they’d been there about five hours when she finally lost him.  Surprisingly, it was Sam’s attempts at comfort that sent him over.  She’d been singing—badly, she knew—the Air Force’s second, unofficial, anthem, “(U.S.) Air Force Blue.”  She liked the old school feel of the song. It reminded her of the trainees at her father’s old posts, the way they’d sing as they jogged in their ranks, 2-by-2.

“They took the blue from the skies and a pretty girl's eyes
and a touch of Old Glory's hue,
And gave it to the men who proudly wear the U.S. Air Force blue.

The U.S. Air Force Blue!”

            She still remembered those few dates she’d had with some of the younger enlisted men when she was in high school and how they would say, without fail, that that song made them think of her.  She used to tease them endlessly for the sentiment, but she’d been secretly pleased. Her father had said the same thing about her mother.  She couldn’t help but wonder if the colonel had ever said it to Sara.

            When she looked at him to ask, he was staring at her as though seeing her for the first time.  Though she’d never given it much thought, she realized now that the colonel’s attention could be damned unnerving.  Its constant presence, save for after Paraguay, had turned it into something she was merely accustomed to and bore no further consideration, so she didn’t consider it.  She did now.

            Unsure how to broach the subject, Sam decided to go about it another way.  “Do you know the Air Force songs, sir? My dad had me and my brother, Mark, singing them in diapers. By the time I made it to the Academy, I could sing both in three languages.  It was old hat to me.”

            He didn’t say word, didn’t stop leaning against the door, just leaned and looked.  He hardly blinked.

            “My dad tells me that he used to sing AFB to my mom, especially when she was carrying me.  Said he wanted a blue-eyed daughter just like her, so he could sing the song to her, too.”  Uncomfortable with his constant scrutiny, she looked down at her combat boots and began flicking clumps of dirt out of her laces.  “I think he’d still sing it to me if I let him.”  She wrapped her arms around her knees and risked a glance up him.  He wasn’t just looking at her; he’d begun to gaze through her as if she wasn’t there.

            She cleared her throat.  “Did you ever sing it to Sara, sir?”

            He blinked at the sound of his wife’s name and turned away. He braced himself against the door and ceased to acknowledge her.  Sam was completely confused and at a loss for how to respond.  Frowning and looking futilely for someone who would know, she rose to her feet. Keeping her hands spread out in front of her, she came closer.  She didn’t know everything there was to know about Jack O’Neill’s past, but she knew that it rivaled Jonas’ for trauma.  She wasn’t planning to make the mistakes she’d made with him.

            “Sir?”

            He had rested his head on his folded arms against the door.  She could see hear his agitated breath from her place behind him.  She didn’t let their respective positions make her complacent. He knew exactly where she in relation to the kind of damage she could do from this distance.  He may never have confessed an affinity for physics, but he was an acknowledged expert in how to use them to take people down, by hand or by bullet.

            But, he still wouldn’t look at her.

            “Sir, have I done something wrong?”

            He lowered his arms and shifted so that she only saw his back again, anything but face to face.  It was too reminiscent of the days immediately preceding their confrontation for her to be okay with.  She grabbed his shoulder to turn him back towards her.  I’m taking my life in my hands, but all right.  Contrary to the tension in his stance, he didn’t resist her urging.

            Once they were eye to eye, he couldn’t seem to stop looking at her.  He laid one of his hands on her shoulder and let the other one drift back into her hair.  They’d never had any aversion to physical contact, but it had never gone this far.

            She was realizing quickly that he wasn’t okay now, not at all. “Sir.” 

            “I missed you.”

            She tilted her head with a frown.  “I’m right here, sir.”

            “You weren’t here last time and I missed you, but you’re here now.”

            Sam blinked, only taking a small step back when what he was saying began to sink in.  The hint of contentment in his face almost made her wish her best friend really was here. “Sir…”

            “I know you’re not really here, but it’s still…nice to see you.”  His fingers went back to twining gently in her hair.  “Not so scary.”

            Knowing there was nowhere she could go, she decided to do all she could while she was with him.  “Then, I’m glad to be here. It’s always nice to see you, sir.”  She wanted to help, not feed into his delusion.  He didn’t deserve to wake up to that tomorrow.

            He released a familiar, tinny self-conscious laugh and let go of her hair.  “Thanks, Carter.”

            She couldn’t deny letting out a sigh of relief.  The Jack O’Neill she knew was still in there.  Probably reciting hockey scores until we get home.  They’d have to have a talk about his coping mechanisms someday. Pot. Kettle.  She told her inner voice to shut it.

            Feeling just a little bit reckless, she reached up and ruffled his unruly cowlicks.

He slapped at her hand, grouching, “Aw, maaaa.”

She grinned triumphantly, licking her thumb and rubbing one spot clean on his filthy face, knowing her own was no better.

He had a half a day of stubble and his eyes showed that he’d fallen farther than she ever could have imagined.  Not even when he couldn’t really look at her had he been this far gone.  He gifted her with a bleak smile and she returned it with one brighter.  She wanted to be the one thing that didn’t go wrong on this mission, the one thing he didn’t have to worry about despite the fact that she was the fox in his hen house and he was blissfully unaware.

            “It’s okay,” she said simply, lying for her next breath.  “Just rest.  I’ll have your back.”

            That he wanted to was easy to see.  He was wavering just so on his shaky legs, his weight shifted onto the one ankle of the two that was twisted instead of sprained.  If ironclad willpower manufactured a thread, it would have composed the fabric holding him together.  God knew it was all that was keeping her from falling apart.

            “You’ll have my back,” he asked, voice rough with early dehydration and a touch of forgotten insecurity.

            Her grin narrowed, face tightening in external response to her guilt.  She was refusing to think about it anymore, nothing to do or see here. “Always.”

            He stroked her face with grubby hands and she didn’t mind.  The act kept him on his feet, leaning or not, and that’s where she wanted him.  If he fell again now, he might never stand again.  Coming back here had been coming back to Hell, the last thing she thought he deserved.  To hell with the Brass, I can’t do this.

            “I knew you were the right one,” he said, echoing his week-old declaration that he’d known she was a perfect fit from the minute he opened her file.  She’d thought he was talking out of his ass at the time, filling the silence so that she couldn’t add more recriminations to the list he wouldn’t live down.  She should have taken heart in his sincerity; it was no less genuine in the cold that cradled them tonight.

            “Funny you should say that, sir. That’s how I felt the moment I met you.”

            His smile flagged and faded, his fingers slipped from her cheeks and down her shoulders to her arms.  She found his hands when he dropped his heavy head onto her shoulder.  “I’m tired, Sam.”

It was bad, but that was something she already knew.

“I know, Colonel…Jack,” she soothed.  “But I’ve got you covered.  You can sleep for awhile.”

“Can’t sleep,” he muttered, lips clumsy with exhaustion that probably branched years farther back than hers.  He turned his face into her neck and she felt him breathe her in.  He held on tighter and closer, and maybe a little more desperately, but she didn’t care.  This was what they did for each other, taking his burden was nothing new.

“Then, rest a little. You’ll feel better if you close your eyes.”

He muttered something like, “Yogi psychobabble mumbo-jumbo.”  She let him and rubbed his back in soothing circles until his harried breathing eased.  Definitely not asleep, though not at his most alert either.  It was better than the nothing he would have gotten otherwise.  It was good enough, like her.

The reprieve didn’t last long, maybe half an hour, and she’d kept standing even after her shoulder had grown stiff and her legs ached, because he needed her to keep him going. She’d forgiven him for many things; a couple of muscle aches were nothing.  She hoped to god it helped despite knowing better.

When she let go, she thought he might have been worse off than he had been—but she still let go. Never forget the training, never take it for granted.

He wandered away unsteadily; head down and thinking out loud.  He thought he’d never get out again, so he could hardly bear to try.  She could hardly bear not to, but she would never leave him here. She wasn’t Cromwell and the colonel meant too much to her—and to the team—for none of them to ever return for him, orders be damned.  Sometimes, the Rules of Engagement have to be subverted.  Reality, regulations, and the right thing seemed to live at loggerheads in her world.

The colonel slammed an agitated fist into the door. It didn’t give.

And his.

~!~

            Over the last year, Sam had vaguely wondered how much those enemies the colonel had referred to hated him.  She’d also wondered why. He seemed as good as good came in their line of work, straight-up to a fault, and someone anyone worth a damn could rely on.  Yet, people, apparently powerful people, hated him.  She just didn’t understand.

             Not having had that understanding when it counted, Sam figured she’d very much fallen prey to that influential enmity and brought the team with her.  He would have come even if he’d known, she tried to console herself, a gargantuan task while on the wrong side of the world, on the wrong side of the law, and trapped in a dusty cell with her CO as he slowly went out of his mind.

            He paced and paced, or staggered and staggered more accurately.  She got dizzy just watching, unable to listen for further sounds of their friends anywhere else in the complex.  She was unaccountably relieved not to hear screaming yet. She didn’t think she was quite up to that score; in her estimation, Colonel O’Neill certainly wasn’t.  That he hadn’t gone catatonic already, Sam took as a point for her in this insane game.  She’d kept him talking, his mouth moving, sometimes even in a language they spoke at home.

            Sam had taken French and Russian in school, which had come in handy on ops, but not nearly as often as the treasure troves of useable linguistic knowledge that were Kawalsky and her commanding officer. (Neither would actually admit to it if asked, but in pinch…)  Now, his entire arsenal of curses and insults, intermixed with the odd jot of philosophy, was on display, regardless of whether she knew the recipient or if he knew the date.  The idea that he didn’t made her sick to her stomach, it was so apparent.

He was lost, they were lost, and the hostages had been irretrievably lost.  She knew he’d never let this one go and she couldn’t say who she was to tell him he should.

And Lou. The thought caught in her mind and in her chest. She couldn’t think about him when she didn’t know, didn’t know and wasn’t sure and…She couldn’t think about him.

“It’ll be good to see Charlie again,” she said in the hopes of bringing him closer to present and putting some distance between herself and the potential losses the future might bring.

He shuffled to a halt, fingers dragging against the grimy wall after the momentum had left him.  “What?”

“Charlie, it’ll be good to see him.  He’s always so happy, he can make any nightmare seem worth it.”  She hugged her knees tighter to her chest as he turned to stare down at her.  In all his emotional commotion, she’d forgotten not to underestimate him in this state.  He still had a decade or more of training on her and maybe a hundred pounds, not taking into account pure might.  And motive, can’t forget about motive.

If there’d been anywhere to go, she would have backed up at the look in his eye: predatory and wary.  The look of someone who’d never met Sam and had no reason to trust her, and certainly not with the closely-guarded knowledge of his son.

“Oh, boy,” she whispered in an undertone and tried to ease back anyway.  The corner she encountered was not her friend.  Grimacing, she concluded that she had to think these situations through more carefully before acting.  Charlie is his Berserk Button. I knew that. What the hell is wrong with me?  The answer couldn’t be nearly as bad as what would be wrong with her when her gradually stalking colonel got through with her.

“Sir,” she appealed, “you know me. It’s me, Sam, y’know, Carter.”

He stood over her and she had never been more afraid in her life, a lofty statement given her life.  She wanted to get up, to try and face him one-on-one even if it meant dying on her feet rather than on her ass.  He couldn’t exactly deny her that, could he?

He bent over and, right when she expected his hands to snap her neck, he caught her arms and yanked her to her feet.  Oh, joy.

She hit the wall hard, back first, seconds later and he loomed closer once again.  The man he’d been after Paraguay she was wary of, but she’d never feared him, only the affect he had on her.  This man, with no loyalty to her or awareness of her, left her scared out of her wits.  And he’s the one I’m trying to protect.  If she’d ever felt this out of her depth, she didn’t remember it.

She had trained for this eventuality; she could take on a physically superior opponent and possibly win.  But if there was nowhere to run, there was no chance at any meaningful victory. It was delaying the inevitable.

            Wait a minute, she stopped short in sudden self-awareness.   I’ve done this. I’ve handled dirtbags three times the colonel’s size without warning. I can do this.  Her conscience was finally showing its true colors. On the other hand, that might have been her ego.

            “Sir?”  She smiled in apology for what she was about to do.

            He squinted down at her, his deadly hands poised for whatever, probably deadly, purpose near her neck. “Huh?”

            Not his finest moment, she lamented when she grabbed his shoulders and kneed him in the groin.  As he slipped, pained and confused, to the floor, her knee came up another time to meet his jaw with the mathematically precise—she’d calculated—amount of force necessary to knock him out cold.  She wouldn’t have caught him out at home or survived here had he meant it.  She had to conclude that some part of him still recognized her and that that had kept her alive. 

Jonas would be impressed, she decided though she didn’t think about that particular fling much nowadays.  She reflected on that blip in time while repositioning the colonel on the floor.  He hadn’t impacted his head on anything harder than her thigh.  His breathing was labored, likely more from anxiety than injury, but regular.  She went to pat his shoulder, then, reconsidered. He gave every indication of being at about only a third his usual lethality, which still surpassed the Average Joe by miles. Smiling fondly to herself, she mused, No need to tickle a sleeping dragon.

Were she grateful to Jonas for nothing else, she would be grateful for how he’d managed to help her save her relationship with Colonel O’Neill. He’d been good for her and taught her a handful of things about herself she’d needed to know.  Chief among them was the fact that her CO, however typically exceptional, didn’t get to punish her for things she hadn’t done wrong.  He didn’t get to use her as his psychological punching bag, not and keep her as a member of his team.  He had to pay for the things he couldn’t live with, not make her pay, regardless of whether he realized he was doing it.  Jonas had reminded her to stand up for herself when she’d forgotten how.

After all, were it not for the lessons he’d taught her, she never would have known when it was time to leave him, when it was time to come home.  Some students could be taught, but others simply had to learn for themselves.  The colonel had proved to be a good learner when Jonas had refused to try.  And yet, he’d managed to impart to her the best advice he never took:

“Know a good thing when you’ve got it and never let it get away.”

She brushed the backs of her fingers against the spiky hair on O’Neill’s unconscious head, exhaling, relieved, when he sighed but didn’t stir.  She knew what she had and she wasn’t giving it up for all the oak leaves the Brass had to offer.  Not even for the bars that hung in the balance.  She could do a lot worse than being stuck with Lou, Charlie, and the colonel for the rest of her career.

Far as Sam was concerned, this report was already written.