Title: Waking Dreams
Author: annaK
Rating: Kid Safe
Classification: S/J, Angst
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine.
Spoilers: A Hundred Days, Shades of Grey
Summary: "...something the little girl inside calls a broken heart."

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Waking Dreams by annaK

**

It's blinking. She's not sure if it should be. Been staring at it for hours
but she's no closer to understanding. Tired eyes scan the lab results, but
they don't tell her anything she doesn't already know. She's read them a
hundred times.

Closing the laptop she gives up the battle, head coming to rest on her hand
as she leans her elbow on the bench and closes her eyes.

She does this a lot, lately. Too tired to sleep, to wired to stop. And she
doesn't even have an excuse. It was different before, working herself into
the ground when Daniel and Teal'c were by her side, concerned but
supportive, as eager as her to bring him home. But this time Daniel's given
up. Wouldn't answer her when she asked how the visit went. And since the
'gate shut down on Edora for the final time, his glasses have taken on the
role of shield. Even from her.

It's ironic that today feels so much like a month ago. In many ways, it is
the same. The Colonel on another planet, her in her lab with scratchy eyes.
But this time she can't bring him home. And it seems she's the only one who
wants to.

Teal'c has withdrawn to his quarters whenever off duty, unable to find the
respect for Makepeace that came so easily for O'Neill. She thinks he'll
probably leave.

She finds herself wishing she could go with him.

Here there's the 'gate and her team and a job that she loves, but there's an
ache that doesn't belong, an ache that tells her she let herself care. And
she shouldn't have.

So many things she shouldn't have done. She smiled at his jokes, let his
hand rest against her a moment too long. She let icy fingers cling to her,
and, most damning, she clung back. And she watched herself kiss him and let
herself... wonder.

Janet was right.

She scrubs a hand across her face, brushes her hair behind her ear and
pushes herself to her feet. The blinky thing (what he would have called it
and she hates that he's left a piece of himself in her mind) will still be
there in the morning.

Grey walls of the corridor and the hollow echo of her footsteps. No Daniel
by her side. She knows he's trying to hold on, trying to just be her Daniel,
but deep down he's still the little boy who loses everyone he loves, and she
knows the distant eyes are his way of protecting himself from losing anyone
else.

The team was never designed to survive without its heart. They are each the
life force of the others, and while the Colonel is still out there, a
distant light from a distant planet is not strong enough a force to maintain
SG-1. They burn too brightly.

Her quarters ahead and she stops outside the door, takes a moment to
breathe. Can't take the feelings into her personal space. It makes it too
intimate, too real. Like he means something in the softness of slumber, and
that she can not allow. Because, in the darkness of her lab, he is a
presence that can not be ignored, a part of her as unquestionable as the
blue of her eyes. But when she's warm and vulnerable and her head's on the
pillow and the shadows turn within, he is the man in Laira's arms, the man
who left her in a grey corridor with something the little girl inside calls
a broken heart.

He has no place in her dreams.

**

End


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