DISCLAIMER: I only borrowed them for a while. MGM and whoever can
have them back whenever they want.
SERIES: The fourteenth in a series of vignettes from those close to Sam/Janet.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author
Outside Looking In:
Ambassador Joe Faxon
By Celievamp
I felt like James Bond. Major Sam Carter looked at me, asked me to trust her and I had no doubts. Those beautiful blue eyes bored into mine and I would have done anything for her, followed her to the ends of the earth, or through a wormhole to another planet far far away. I had been trying to get her to smile at me, to talk to me since I accepted the assignment to handle the negotiations with the Aaschen. I had even invited her to dinner.
I thought at first that this beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent woman was just shy, but as I watched her more closely (no great problem, believe me) I realised that it was just that she wasn't interested in me in the slightest, but was too polite to tell me.
And then I saw her with the doctor, Janet Fraiser, and I knew. Okay. So I'm a non-starter. But I can at least admire from afar.
They were standing in the corner of the briefing room, a snatched moment in the chaos. I looked up at the right moment to see the most incredible look of tenderness on the face of the Doctor as she reached out to touch lay a hand on Major Carter's shoulder for just a moment. And the expression in Major Carter's eyes. If I tried to describe that look in words, well, it would be quite a read, I can tell you.
Watching her was easy, easier than tuning out Senator Kinsey who spent our entire visit at the SGC badmouthing Major Carter and her CO, Colonel O'Neill. At first glance, O'Neill seemed exactly what Kinsey painted him to be, a sarcastic, slightly boorish maverick but as the negotiations with the Aaschen progressed a little too swiftly even for my piece of mind I realised that this was a façade for a deeply perceptive and intuitive individual. He trusted his team implicitly. If they said it was so then it was so.
And they said the Aaschen were hiding something. That in their way they were worse than the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld saw something they wanted and they reached out and they took it by main force. The Aaschen were patient. They thought in timescales of centuries. But they were just as avaricious, just as implacable.
Sterility. That's what they had planned for us. Take over by attrition. Wait out our puny hundred year lifespans and take what was left.
She volunteered for this, knowing that if the Aaschen found out that we were on to them our lifespan might be a hell of a lot less than 100 years. She promised to do her best to get me home again. But we both knew that might be impossible.
I felt like James Bond. Okay, so I didn't get the girl. But before the Aaschen grabbed me, I made sure that Sam Carter got away. She had someone to go back to, the little brown eyed doctor. And as I watched her cut through the rope that held her and drop through the Gate event horizon to safety, I got my smile. One meant just for me. In her eyes was a look of respect, sorrow and pride. She would not forget.
I did a good thing today. How many times could James Bond say that?
The End