Disclaimer - MGM/Gekko/Double Secret own them.
Next in the 'Remedied' series, following shortly after Not Sam. Rated PG-13 for one use of a certain swear word beginning with 'F'. Feedback would be appreciated.
Those of you who've been enjoying how fluffy bunny this has been lately might not wanna read this part...
*
Something had woken him up.
He'd been working in the back yard - something he really didn't do as often as he should. He'd been digging, pulling, kneeling (simultaneously cursing his knees), and then he'd sat down on the porch to rest just for a few minutes.
Just for a few minutes. Blinking against the sunlight, he lifted his wrist. 'Just for a few minutes' had turned into well over three hours. Proof that he was *definitely* getting old: napping in the middle of the day.
Ah well, he thought with a grin. Might as well stock up on the sleep while he could. God knew when the baby came what little sleep he managed to get would be frequently interrupted.
Man, he was almost looking forward to that.
She was barely eighteen weeks along which meant she was barely showing (except when she was naked - something he liked very, very much). Still, that didn't seem to stop Jonas referring to the 'bump' whenever he saw her - it was one of the many things that'd been bugging her lately that he was trying (and usually failing) not to find amusing.
The thought struck him again: something had woken him up. Rubbing his eyes he sat up from where he was slouched in the chair, glancing back towards the house. Jack couldn't hear the phone or the doorbell, but that didn't mean someone hadn't been using either of them to-
Footsteps, on gravel. Side of the house.
Years of instinct meant he was out of the chair and pressing up against the front of the porch before his visitor even appeared.
Naturally, he was just a little embarrassed when he almost whacked Siler on the nose. Stepping back as he stumbled away, Jack overcompensated with anger. "*Siler*? What the hell are you doing here?!"
The sergeant quickly regained his composure. "Sorry to surprise you, Colonel,"
"Not anymore," He pointed out, still wondering what the heck Siler was doing in his back yard.
He ignored the comment. "General Hammond's been trying to contact you sir. He's tried both your home and your cell phone, with no luck."
Oops. "Uh yeah, I was kinda..." He gestured towards the porch, then realised he didn't much want to tell anyone about snoozing in the middle of the day. He quickly lowered his hand. "Sorry. Guess I didn't hear it. What does he want? Must be pretty important to warrant sending someone...out..."
Hammond.
SGC.
Sam worked at the SGC.
Yet although he was frowning, Siler didn't look like someone who'd recently seen her die...
His brain finally made the connection.
Fuck.
Somehow, some way, he managed to resist the impulse to tear the porch into splinters with his bare hands. It wasn't fair. It wasn't. Fair.
Breathe. Breathe. "Is she okay?" It was getting considerably harder to swallow.
Siler's voice, when it came, seemed to be from some place very far away. "Major Carter's going to be fine, sir."
Breathe. Breathe. *She* was okay, at least. "Take me to her."
He wasn't getting behind the wheel of a car right now.
He wasn't able.
*
He didn't remember arriving at the base, or signing in as a visitor. He didn't remember the two elevator rides that must have happened, or walking through most of level twenty-one. For all he knew, none of that happened at all until some twenty feet from the infirmary, Jack's brain finally reconnected with his body.
Teal'c and Jonas were there, as he turned the corner and saw the entrance. They stood, from those stupid little plastic chairs they always made you wait in outside the infirmary.
They were a real killer on the butt.
"O'Neill,"
"Colonel..."
Jonas looked like he might have been crying, or seriously trying not to.
Jack didn't pause, didn't talk to them; didn't do anything other than walk right past and straight into the infirmary.
He was vaguely aware, as he strode towards the only bed with the curtain pulled around, that Hammond and Fraiser were standing just outside it. That Hammond said his name. That Fraiser - ever the erstwhile Doc - rubbed inconspicuously at her eyes.
He said nothing to them, either, finding the edge of the curtain and stepping behind it.
She was lying on her left side with her back towards him, her right hand grasping forcefully onto the edge of the pillow.
Knowing nothing else to do, knowing anything he said would be absolutely *useless*, he reached out and touched her shoulder.
She moved, rolling onto her back, her face pale, tear-stained, and anguished.
He said something anyway: all he could manage. "I am *so*..." The rest of the sentence choked in his throat as he lowered his weight against the bed, enveloping her in his arms.
Her hands clutched at him, pulling closer as she sobbed silently against him.
*
No baby. No kid. No blonde five year-old showing him how to set the timer on the VCR.
"I was in the lab,"
They'd moved, eventually. Careful not to detach any of the wires going into her skin, he'd climbed slowly onto the bed next to her, and now they were spooned together.
"The guys had come to see me, to tell me about their latest mission. They like doing that, you know? Like keeping me informed so it doesn't seem like I'm missing anything, even if I do read all the mission reports."
He kissed her shoulder, his arms around her body, careful not to touch any place that might be tender. He really wasn't sure what any of the...after effects might be.
"Jonas was in the middle of telling me about this ritual involving dancing or something when there was this...warmth. On my legs. And the pain." The words stopped, her voice catching again.
Closing his eyes and contracting his throat painfully, Jack pressed his face against her neck.
Stubborn as ever, she forced herself to continue. "Teal'c carried me all the way here. Janet said I was fortunate that...that it hadn't happened later. I honestly don't know if she meant more complications, or being more atta...ched..." Her shoulders shook, briefly.
Jack didn't know what the hell to do, frustrated by his helplessness. "How you doing physically?"
She sniffed, loudly. "Tired. I'm still...bleeding. Apparently that could last awhile. And the rest of me is kind of...numb. Though that could be the drugs." She was trying to be normal. Trying to be the Good Little Major.
His right hand rubbed slowly across her body, underneath her breasts. "You should sleep."
It was as if she didn't hear him. "It's not that uncommon, you know, and it' s usually not environmental factors - which means that I shouldn't blame myself. It happens all the time - some women never even know they've been pregnant at all. It's a little strange that it's this late, but it's not like I'm the first person this has happened to."
She sounded like some medical textbook. "No, but it is the first time it's happened to *you*." And by default, to him. God knew even despite that little nap earlier, he was exhausted already. She must have been on the point of passing out.
"Jack?" She sounded terrified. She never sounded terrified.
"Yeah?"
"It's gone. Our baby's *gone*."
He pulled her closer, surprised to discover tears on her neck that could only have come from him. "I know," Jack tried to clear his throat, tried to be *Jack*, but failed. "I know."
This time, when she cried, it wasn't silently.
~FINIS