"Sam? ..." Jack slowly opened his eyes to the tune of bleeping monitors around him. Every sinew of his body screamed in pain as he tried to shift to a more comfortable position of the bed. He was only painfully aware that he had managed to land himself back at the infirmary again, a place he frequented nearly as much as the mess hall itself. But this time ... his entire team was there with him.

"Sam?" He said more lucidly, panic rising with every second as the last moments of the mission came flooding back to him. Grass ... mud ... trees ... *blood* ... lungs screaming for air but never getting enough ... carrying ... dragging ... *Sam*.

The Colonel sat bolt upright, ignoring the myriad of equipment hooked to him and the insane sensation of pain coursing up and down his body. The effort made him breathless; he gasped for air against his will yet did not care. He had to find out whether ...

"Please Colonel, you've got to keep still." A young medical technician placed a firm hand on him, restraining him from yanking out the assortment of tubes attached to his body. The Colonel made the worst kind of patient - someone who was used to being in charge did not take well to following orders, especially from a younger man.

"I want to know what happened to my team." Jack insisted roughly, grasping the arm of the technician as strongly as he could. "Please."

The young man nodded in acquiescence. "I'll call Dr. Fraiser, let her know you've come to."

Jack leaned back onto his bed, the dull thudding of his head increasing as he sagged onto the pillows. Sam. Please god, please let her be okay.

***

"Colonel O'Neill." The matter-of-fact Dr. Fraiser breezed into the infirmary at her usual break neck pace, grabbing the chart off the end of the bed and glancing at it in one swift motion before the battle-hardened soldier could even lift his head off the pillow. During the short interval that Jack had spent waiting for news of Sam, he had unfortunately dozed off. Now he struggled to clear the last vestiges of sleep in order to find out what happened to his team - and Sam.

"Glad you see you're feeling better. Alan told me you were quite insistent." The doctor gave the Colonel a hint of a smile before sending the aforementioned young technician away. She could sense that the Colonel was impatient to ask her about the welfare of his team.

"Doc ... Where's Sam? ... Daniel and Teal'c?" If the experienced doctor noticed his tell-tale slip of using Sam's first name she didn't let on. Instead, she stepped closer to the bed, her intelligent brown eyes fixed intently on his hazel ones.

"Well, I can tell you Teal'c's fine. He was in shock, but I gave him a sedative for it and he's okay. As for Daniel ... well, you know our boy. Easy to hurt but damn hard to kill." She smiled wryly at Jack in a vain attempt to alleviate his transparent concern. "He's okay - just a blow to the head and minor concussion. Should be out in a day or two."

"And Sam?" Jack asked with a sense of dread. His time spent in covert ops had honed his instincts to near perfection - he used his instincts as other people used their minds. "What is it?"

Dr. Fraiser took an involuntary breath before breaking the news to him. "She's still unconscious. She ... slipped into a coma about 18 hours ago."

Jack felt his heart swirl then sink into a dark pool of despair. It was all he could do to squeeze out, "How bad is it?"

The concerned doctor weighed her words carefully, unwilling to give the Colonel any false hope for Sam's recovery yet unwilling to strip him of any such hope. She had a faint sense of the bond between the Colonel and his second in command - that they were friends and comrades in arms was certain, but ... there was something else. Always present in their exchanges ... a look here, a word there. Just something ... else, more than the bonds forged out of battle. Deeper emotions. A connection.

And she did not want to be the one to break it.

"Colonel, I'm not going to lie to you. It's ... not good. By Teal'c's account, she's already lost a lot of blood from her initial injuries. There were internal injuries which we did our best to repair. Her broke bone's been set ... There's nothing more we can do but wait."

Jack unsuccessfully choked back his over-filling emotion as he whispered, "What're her chances Doc?"

The petite doctor gave it to him, point blank. "The longer she stays in the coma, the less likely it is that she'll wake up. I'm sorry Colonel."

Jack tried to digest the information as the compassionate doctor looked on. Being in her profession had hardened her fa�ade of detachment from the plight of the injured and their families. But it was especially difficult now, seeing the usually hard, fearless mask of the Colonel slowly crumble before her eyes, revealing a desperation she was unfortunately familiar with. Desperation to believe that a loved one will recover, despite the odds presented by cool-faced doctors and their clipboards.

Dr. Fraiser shifted from her standing position beside the bed and replaced his chart. "I'll have a wheelchair brought in so you can visit her. Teal'c's with her now." She gave him a soft, empathetic smile as she left to check on her other patients, leaving Jack to stare uncomprehendingly at empty space in front of him.

A world without Sam?

Never.

***

"Colonel O'Neill. It is good to see you awake." Teal'c's barotone greeted his entrance into the makeshift ICU, privacy provided with a generous hanging of plastic curtains. Besides a scratch or two on his limbs and a tired expression on his features, Teal'c looked as fit as a fiddle.

Well, he looked fit compared to Sam, who lay pale-faced on the bed in front of him. Jack could not help but notice the changes in her. He realised with horror that her skin seemed paler than the white starched sheets she lay on, and that her vibrant, intelligent blue eyes did not, for once, greet him with a twinkle and a smile. She looked lifeless, devoid of the spirit and the character that normally infused her perfect body.

Jack wept inwardly at the sight of her.

"Yeah, you too." He whispered abstractly, his entire attention focused on the pale comatose form in front of him. The gentle Jaffa understood and stood up, offering the chair that he had been sitting on to the Colonel. Jack silently thanked him as he looked up into the dark, compassionate eyes of his team mate, still unable to tear his eyes away from Sam.

His Sam. Lying so limp and lifeless in a cold underground room, surrounded by four concrete walls, as grey as they were bleak. This was so wrong - Sam, who was so full of life, her enthusiasm for it spilling out into everything she did, from her dedication to scientific mumbo-jumbo to simply being there for her friends when they had needed her ... when *he* had needed her ...

He suddenly realised that he had always thought she was at her most beautiful surrounded by the wild beauty which her presence inspired. Not couped up in some dark underground facility or dank prison like a caged bird; Sam's strength and spirit pervaded from her like warmth from a sun's rays. She belonged outdoors, amongst lush forests, fields with flowers that ran wild in summer, a gurgling brook and a sky of iridescent blue. And damn it, he *wanted* to be there with her ...

Hearing her laugh ... Seeing her smile ... fancying that she had a special smile, reserved just for him. Whenever he cracked one of his lame jokes on missions. Whenever he sang horrendously out of tune. Whenever he lost to her in their regular poker games.

Jack realised with twisted self-loathing that he'd been a fool. A fool to have been blinded by a haze of his own construction, too occupied with pushing away the world for fear of rejection, fear of loss ... fear of getting hurt, when she had been there all along, being the best friend and second in command a guy could ever have. God, he hadn't even realised how much he was in love with her when Jolinar had taken over her body ... and for that split second when Dr. Fraiser had pronounced her dead ... He had wanted to cry then, and he hadn't even known why. Just felt numb with sorrow, a suspension of belief to even contemplate that Samantha Carter could die, and no longer be part of his life. And of course he had been able to reason with himself afterwards that it was natural for him to develop close bonds with her, seeing as they'd faced death together so many times before.

It had taken an alternate reality version of Sam to make him realise he loved her, and had loved her for a long time. For crying out loud ... the moment he kissed her, he knew she wasn't the one. He had wanted to find out what it was like to kiss his blonde Major for a while; and kissing her alternate was the closest thing that he was ever going to get. But ... as soon as their lips met, he *knew*. He knew that it wasn't that Carter he had to kiss, but *his* Carter ... the Sam that he had shared so much with. Dying in some god forsaken ice crevasse, he had called out for Sara, but instead received something much more pleasant and infinitely more comforting - Sam, whispering with emotion 'I'm here Jack.' ... Sam, dying on the bed, Jolinar already dead inside her ... Him pinned to the wall of the gate room by an alien crystal, Sam choking back tears as she told him that she was going to kill him to get him out of it ... hang on Colonel ... Him, trapped on Hathor's base, a gao'ould inside him, and she had come back for him ...

A dozen things, a dozen signs, and he had never figured it out.

Yeah, he thought bitterly to himself. You're one hell of a smart guy, Jack.

And so he sat, oblivious to everything and everyone around him, while his mind whirled and churned with desperate thoughts, staring at the single most important thing in this life. And for the first time in a long time, he wanted to pray - whether to god or not he couldn't tell.

He just needed to believe that she would get better.

***

"Jack." An insistent yet gentle voice interrupted his waking slumber as he rubbed his bleary eyes.

"You're up." He said to Daniel, who still tottered somewhat despite the rest he had gotten. It had been 20 hours since Jack had been wheeled into Sam's makeshift ICU, and almost 18 hours had lapsed since he'd threatened physical violence to anyone who attempted to drag him away from her. Daniel and Teal'c had passed through unmercilessly, at first to be with Sam, and then more and more to persuade the obstinate Colonel to get some rest. But Jack wouldn't listen ... he didn't care to listen. He had been less than civil to even General Hammond, who came by every couple of hours or so to check on the Major. The combination of prolonged stress and lack of sleep had made him revert to an almost customary defensive hostility, aggressiveness radiating from him like a caged bear.

"Yeah, ah ... Jack ..." Daniel hesitated, his eyebrows furrowing in consternation. "Ah ... General Hammond wants us to debrief in half an hour ... He ordered you to be present, since, well ..."

"Yeah ... " Jack whispered reluctantly, rationality colouring his words for the first time that day. "I'll be there."

Daniel stood behind him, unsure of what to do next. Jack had gone back to his languorous state, almost mirroring the comatose state of Sam lying in front of them. He felt helpless ... powerless to do anything, yet ...

Better than anyone else around him, Daniel knew the torment of losing a loved one. Oscillating like a crazed pendulum, swinging alternately between the highest of hopes and the depths of despair. Replaying memories, lost chances ... regretting words that had been said in anger, times when you'd hurt them unknowingly ...

Daniel was also worried about Jack from another perspective. He'd seen what the Colonel was like after his son had died and they had gone on the first mission to Abydos together. Crazed and suicidal would have been an apt description for a man who was willing to go on a Kamikaze mission through an unknown piece of technology to an unchartered section of space. He still bore the scars from that loss, and if he were to lose Sam now ...

The young anthropologist's gaze shifted to the golden-haired form in front of him. Except for the bleeping of the monitors beside the bed and the obvious lack of warmth in her complexion, Sam looked for all the world as peaceful as she had ever looked. On missions her face was always tense, even when sleeping - Daniel had always surmised that it was because she was such a good soldier, always in readiness to defend if attacked. Admirable since Daniel was usually a person who was dead to the world as soon as he hit the pillow ... or log ... or whatever happened to be available at the time. She was always side by side with the Colonel; they were always around each other, like they were marching to the same tune, same beat to some inner drummer ...

Daniel realised that life would never be the same if Sam ... He had already lost Sha're three years ago ... Sam was his best friend, his confidante ... all the family he had in the world ... actually, in all the worlds in the galaxy... He would be lost without her.

He sighed and turned to retreat noiselessly out of the room with a heavy heart born from the realisation that Jack was already lost without her.