Title: Down Came the Rain
Author: cgb (luberluber@yahoo.com.au)
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Pairing: Sam/ Janet
Rating: NC-17-ish
Spoilers: "Grace," and "Heroes" mostly.
Summary: "She's still scared, still thinking about Apophis and the Goa'uld that laid waste to Cassie's planet. Janet is the brave one."
*
"It flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with a waistcoat-pocket, or watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice"
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.
*
She's running. In her dreams she's always running. She's running from Jaffa, running from weapons fire, running to the gate, running for shelter. She doesn't know why she's running this time but she sees the gate before her, sun shining off the alloy, breaking through the foliage. She calls out and Teal'c answers behind her. Daniel is in front, running for the DHD. Low hanging branches fly in her face and scratch her cheeks. She keeps running.
She stops. Holds up her hand.
Somewhere she can hear a child singing. A nursery rhyme: "...itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout..." Sam knows the song. She knows the hand motions: thumb to finger, finger to thumb, thumb to finger again.
There's a flash of light and she opens her eyes, sees the ceiling. Her ceiling. The child's voice keeps on singing: "...down came the rain..."
Grace.
Grace is back.
She sits up in bed. Standing in the doorway of her bedroom is Grace - same curls, same white dress, same mischievous smile on her face, hiding secrets. She is performing the rhyme's hand movements as she sings - thumb to finger, finger to thumb, thumb to finger again.
Sam finds her voice. "What are you doing here?"
"How rude!" Grace looks insulted. "It's polite to say 'hello' when you have company."
"You're not company," Sam says. "You're a figment of my imagination."
Grace laughs and skips away, her voice echoing down the hall.
Sam closes her eyes, gives her body a shake. She opens her eyes to find the room as it was. No Grace. No singing, no laughter. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands up. Her stomach lurches and her head swims. She falls to her knees beside the bed.
She tries standing again, letting her head adjust to the shift in her centre of gravity. She performs a quick inventory in her head. She is wearing pyjamas and she is home. All else is a mystery.
She takes a few steps in the direction of the door. When she feels steadier on her feet she increases her pace, creates a momentum that propels her into the hallway.
She can hear humming. Not Grace this time. Someone older. She enters the kitchen and finds Janet, fully dressed in uniform with white lab coat over the top. She's making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Sam's mouth goes dry, she swallows air, grabs the door frame to steady herself.
"Janet?" Her voice cracks when she speaks.
"Hey Sam." Janet turns around. Takes a bite out of the sandwich.
"You're not here," Sam says. "This isn't you."
Janet shrugs. "Whatever you say."
"You're dead."
"Death isn't what it used to be," Janet says. "I mean, take Daniel for instance."
"You were shot by a staff weapon. They shot a hole through your heart."
Janet puts the peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a plate. Sam can hear Grace singing again. The room seems darker. Her breath feels shallow and her head won't stop spinning. She leans against the wall and finds herself sliding down, down until she reaches the floor.
Janet is there, seated on the floor beside her. She's wearing civilian clothes now - jeans and sneakers and a blue sweater.
"What's going on, Sam?" she says.
"I don't feel so good."
"You don't look so good. When was the last time you took a vacation?"
Sam doesn't take vacations. She's never sick, never tardy. She gets bed rest only when she's shot, taken over by an alien entities or suffering from concussion and hallucinating small children.
She remembers she's getting married which means there ought to be a honeymoon in her near future. The thought makes her stomach turn. Again.
"I'm getting married," Sam says.
"I know," Janet says.
Sam closes her eyes and rubs the heels of her hands against her forehead. There's a dull ache behind her eyes. She considers lying on the floor, waking up when the dream is gone.
"Wake up, sleepy-head." Sam opens her eyes and it's Grace standing there.
"What do you want?" Sam's voice echoes off the hard surfaces of her empty kitchen.
"I want grandchildren." Sam turns and finds Janet still sitting beside her, elbows on her raised knees. "I guess that's not going to happen now."
Sam turns back and Grace is gone. "Did you see her?" she asks Janet.
"See who?"
"Grace. She was right in front of me..."
Janet puts a hand to Sam's forehead. Sam jumps at the touch. Janet feels real - warm and pulsing with life. "You have a fever," Janet says. "You could be delusional."
"It's happened before," Sam says. "It was just after..." She meets Janet's eyes. Janet stares back, unblinking. "It was just after you died."
"Sam." Janet takes Sam's hand, holds it between both of hers. "You know what this is about."
There's a flash of memory and Sam sees the two of them, naked under the soft light filtering through partially open curtains. They don't know each other very well. Janet is new to the SGC, still finding her way around event horizons and alien life forms. It's not familiar to Sam either. She's still scared, still thinking about Apophis and the Goa'uld that laid waste to Cassie's planet. Janet is the brave one: first woman on Earth to adopt an alien. Janet laughs and says, "I always knew my child would be special."
They meet after dark. Sam's place. Cassie gets to be a regular Earth child with a sitter, pizza and a stack of DVDs. Sam always imagined she'd be swept away by the dashingly rugged Colonel and maybe that's a feeling she's not given up but it was the Janet who held her when Daniel "died" (the first time). It was Janet who was there after they'd saved the world. Janet who said, "I'll always be here."
They are lovers after the third night. They drink red wine and Sam says, "I want to close my eyes and not see stars exploding."
Janet says, "I want to not see them bleeding over my hands. I want to be able to tell their family how they died."
Sam says, "Will you stay?" and Janet is at her side, taking her head in her hands, kissing her eyes, her neck, her lips.
"Did you tell him about us?"
The memory disappears. Fades into her kitchen, Janet is still there beside her.
"I didn't tell anyone," Sam says. "Don't ask don't tell. Remember?"
"He's not Air Force."
"It's..." There are too many things she doesn't tell Pete. She's become an expert at keeping secrets. "It's complicated."
"That's what you always say," Grace says. She spins and skips outside.
Sam blinks at Grace's sudden reappearance and exit. She gets to her feet, follows Grace out into the garden.
The sun is warm and blinding. Almost in the middle of the sky. Grace skips around a flower bed, a white blur against a backdrop of colour. She sings, "Itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout..."
The dream returns: they are hiding behind a fallen log - she and Daniel. Teal'c is scouting ahead. He returns quickly, says, "It's clear," and they run. The gate is across the clearing. Daniel reaches the DHD first and dials. She sees the splash of light as the event horizon forms. She scratches her hand on a protruding branch, holds it up for inspection.
"It was just a scratch," Sam says.
"It's never just a scratch." Janet is beside her, wearing her uniform again. "Let me see."
Sam holds up her hand. There's nothing there. "Doctor Carmichael said it was nothing," Sam says.
Janet shrugs. "He's right. It's probably nothing."
Sam looks at her hand again. There's a large red welt running from her index finger to her wrist.
Her breath is caught in her throat. "What happened?" She says to Janet. Janet's face is blank. Sam looks up, and sees Grace, watching them. "What's going on?" she asks her.
Janet takes Sam's hand, runs a swab carefully across the wound. "Looks like an infection," she says. She consults Sam's chart.
Eventually, Janet says, "Get dressed. I'm taking you home."
They undress and get into bed together. Sam turns on her side, switches the light off. Janet runs a hand from Sam's thigh to her rib cage, a surgeon appraising her work. She traces the curve of Sam's breast, her fingers trail down, lightly dancing over Sam's stomach, circling her abdomen. Janet slides her hand lower until she comes to rest between Sam's leg, slides her fingers inside Sam, moves them slowly in and out. Sam feels Janet's breath hot against her neck, tilts her head back so it's against Janet's shoulder. Janet strokes her, builds her to climax. Sam closes her eye and sees stars.
It only takes two times to be habit forming but it never gets to be a habit. There isn't a third time.
"What happened?" Sam says, again.
"You know what happened," Janet says.
"I was scared."
"Don't ask, don't tell," Janet says. "I took it to the grave."
"That's not what I wanted."
"Then tell them."
Grace is staring at the sky. "It's going to rain," she says.
It does. Sam runs for cover, stumbles through the door and falls to her knees on the floor of her hallway. Her hair is damp and her face feels like it's burning. She rests her hands against her knees, catches her breath. Grace stands watching her, like she's been there all the time.
"Tell me," Sam says. "Tell me what's going on."
"You'll figure it out," Grace says. "You always do."
Janet appears before her, lab coat and uniform again. "Sam?" she says.
"You're not here." Sam wants to cry. She blinks at hot tears stinging her eyes. "You're not Janet."
"Look at your hand."
Sam holds up her hand. It's red and round like it's full of air.
"You should call them," Janet says.
*
She's running through a forrest, brandishing her P-90 in front of her, flinging branches and vines to the side. Teal'c tells her he's right behind and Daniel is ahead, the first to break through to the clearing and the first to reach the DHD. He yells, "dialling!" and weapons fire answers. They all duck.
She holds up her hand.
She wakes up in the infirmary. A nurse is quickly at her side, smiling and saying, "Welcome back." He tells her he's going to fetch Dr Carmichael.
Dr Carmichael tells her she's been stung. "An insect probably," he says. "The sting was embedded and the poison released slowly - which is why we missed it on your post-mission screening. You probably didn't even notice at the time."
She holds up her hand as she did in the dream. A bandage covers an IV bung delivering what is no doubt antibiotics. The last thing she remembers is kneeling on the floor of her hallway.
"How did I get here?"
"You don't remember? You called the General. Apparently, you said something about someone called Grace?"
Sam shrugs, feigns ignorance. "Doesn't ring a bell."
"Well," Dr Carmichael says. "The General was concerned enough to send Dr Jackson to check on you. Dr Jackson said you were unconscious when he found you."
The memory returns. She was running through the forest, running from Ba'al's Jaffa. She was almost at the gate when she felt the scratch. She held her hand up to the light of the gate and saw nothing there. With no time for further investigation, she ran for the gate.
She hears Grace singing, telling a story with her hands, thumb to finger, finger to thumb. She remembers Janet.
"Is Dr Jackson still here?" Sam asks.
Dr Carmichael nods. "I'll send him in."
Daniel appears moments later, hands in pockets, trying to smile reassuringly. He says, "Hey Sam," and sits on the end of the bed. "Feeling better?"
"Much better," she says. "Thank you."
"Jack's looking into improving the screening process on returning teams," Daniel says. "He's not happy that you got past us."
"I'll bet." Sam looks sheepish. "It's not Dr Carmichael's fault. I should have insisted he run a second screening."
"We caught it in time," Daniel says. "That's what counts."
Sam shakes her head. "Janet would have..." She catches Daniels eye. "She always insisted on double checking."
"Yeah," Daniel laughs, wryly. "I never thought I'd miss that."
"Me too," Sam says. In her head you can hear Grace singing, down came the rain and washed the spider out... "Daniel?"
"Yeah?"
"I want to tell you something - about Janet."
He leans closer. "I'm listening."
Fini