“Carter?” The colonel’s gravelly voice rose from somewhere inside his sleeping bag. “You were meant to wake me for my watch fifteen minutes ago.”
She glanced at her watch and realized he was right. “Sorry, sir, I lost track of time.”
“You lost track of time?” he said, sitting up and scratching his hand through his hair. “Sitting in the dark, freezing your ass off, you lost track of time?”
She smiled and hitched her sleeping bag up around her shoulders again. “I was thinking.”
“Oh, well, in that case…” he said and then shivered. “Damn, it’s cold.”
“Yes sir.”
It was too dark to see his face, but she heard him yawning, fidgeting and rustling around in his sleeping bag. “Sir,” she said, “I don’t want — That is, I don’t think I’ll get back to sleep again tonight, so if you want to grab some more shut-eye I’ll take your watch.”
He stopped moving. And the thing she’d learned early on about Colonel O’Neill was that when he went still you were in trouble; it meant he was paying too much attention.
“Bad dreams?” he said.
She sighed because there was no point in denying it. “A few, yes sir.”
There was more shuffling around and a moment later he came to sit next to her, his sleeping bag draped over his shoulders too, and close enough that she could see the hard lines and shadows of his face even beneath the bill of his cap. “You want to talk about it?”
“What’s to say? It tried to kill me, it failed.”
“And then you kicked its butt.”
She gave a faint smile. “That was just luck,” she said. “I think it’s because of Jolinar, sir. I think it might have to do with the naquadah in my blood.”
The colonel gave a soft laugh. “So you’re indigestible, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“And according to Crazy I’m a ‘lantern’,” he said with a sigh. “Carter, is it me or is this one of the freakier places we’ve ended up?”
“It certainly ranks in the top ten, sir.”
“Oh, at least.”
“Not as weird as PJ2-445, though,” she said. “Remember the singing plant people… ?”
“How could I forget? This is scarier, though.”
That went without saying and her gaze drifted back to the sickly light of the Amam ship.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Hmm?”
He nodded towards her and, looking down, she realized she held her hand to her chest, as if rubbing away a phantom sensation.
“Oh, no, not much.” She gave a rueful smile and tapped her head. “Up here, mostly, I think.”
“It’s been a tough few days.”
“A tough few months,” she snorted, and then winced because she hadn’t meant to sound so bitter. “Uh, I just meant —”
“I know what you meant,” he said, staring out into the darkness.
Not sure what to say next, Sam opted for saying nothing and the awkward silence between them grew deeper. High overhead she thought she heard a thin whine, but when she glanced up she saw nothing but night.
“Listen, Carter, I know I’ve been acting like an ass since I got back from Edora and I —”
“Sir, it’s fine,” she said, cutting him off. She really didn’t need to hear his reasons.
“No,” he said, “it’s not fine.”
“Sir, I understand why you had mixed feelings about coming home. It must have been a wrench.”
He shook his head. “That’s not it. Well, maybe. Maybe some of it, but —”
“Colonel, I —” From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw movement — a flicker in the darkness — and glanced over to her right. But there was nothing there, only shadows.
“Carter?”
“Sorry, sir,” she said. “I thought I saw something.”
He followed her line of sight. “Over there?”
“It’s nothing.”
“No,” he agreed after a moment. “No, I don’t see anything either.” His attention returned to her and he said, “Look, Carter, I just wanted to say thank you for getting me home. I know how hard you worked and I —” He trailed off. “I might not have appeared grateful, but I was. I am.”
“You weren’t,” she said, feeling a rise of anger and looking back out into the camp, trying to tamp it down. “I know you weren’t happy to leave.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh come on, sir, you’ve been —” She broke off, searching for some politick language. “You’ve obviously been out of sorts since you got back and, well, it’s pretty clear why.”