Title: All She Can Do
Author: MissAnnThropic
E-Mail: miss_annthropic@yahoo.com
Summary: Samantha Carter coping the only way she knows how.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Stargate but my rabid fan behavior. Alas.

***

Her hands are strong, solid and sure. Her mind is sharp, quick and precise. Life is before her to be grasped, to be wrung and spent, a play-thing at her mercy. She's young, she's bright, she's envied and loved, even more than she knows.

And it's all she can do to smile.

***

"I don't know what to do, Janet."

"Give her time, Daniel. She's lost someone close..." the doctor trailed, looked up at Daniel's soulful blue eyes, awash with pain, and amended, "well, you all have."

"It's been four months, and I know these things don't just go away, but... shouldn't she be better than this?"

Janet wanted to lie, wanted to reassure him, but Daniel had a way of drawing the truth from people, coaxing it with an emotional innocence and honesty so few people possessed the way Daniel Jackson did. "Yes, she should be."

***

Sam rides. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't even matter why. She doesn't know what to do when motion stops, when she's still and has to find something to do with her hands. Once they had been immersed in science, the intricacies of the universe distilled down to atoms and protons. The understanding is still there, the brilliance, the power to create so much from so little. The body and mind are able but the heart is unwilling.

Instead she rides. Her motorcycle is a machine made for one, a means of escape to places never enough to let her forget. She rides into the night, down highways and streets she doesn't know. She can only hope to become lost beyond finding her way back but the streets fold and bend, always bringing her back to a place she knows, a treacherous path from which she knows the way home.

She's a beautiful woman with the wind in her hair. Youth still lays claim to her face and body. She turns heads of men half her age, trips impure thoughts of men thrice her years.

And it's all she can do to get out of bed in the morning.

***

"We're concerned you are not using Major Carter to the best of the Air Force's capabilities."

General Hammond looked at the man across the desk from him, pinning the Pentagon underling with a steely glare. If there was any justice in the universe this man would disintegrate into a pile of ash and leave Carter the hell alone.

Strike that, if there was any justice in the universe Jack would still be alive.

Because the unjust reigned Hammond took a slow, steadying breath. "I understand the Pentagon's concerns¬–"

"I'm not entirely certain you do. Major Carter is a valuable resource, a talent pool we dare not let go to waste in an under-stimulating environment. Now, General, by your own admission there have been no discoveries, theories, or propositions to speak of from Major Carter in over a year."

"Major Carter has been grieving."

"For her former commanding officer, yes, I know, but it's been a year, General. A year with nothing to show for her work at the SGC. While Major Carter has shown exemplary performance and production here in the past, perhaps the situation has progressed to a stage where her talents would be best exploited elsewhere."

Hammond wanted to throw the man through the cement wall. "Nowhere you send her will make a difference."

"Well, maybe the Pentagon will think differently. Major Carter is an asset not to be untapped, General, surely you can appreciate that."

"It won't change anything, son... nothing the Pentagon can do will help her."

***

Her friends are of the kind for which one would die, and did. Daniel is like a brother to her, and she loves him. Janet knows her, heart, mind, and body, and Sam loves her, too. Teal'c, General Hammond, her father... she is surrounded by people she loves, people who love her.

She's never want for a place to turn, even in the middle of the night. They're there to take her in, tuck her close, shelter her from the wind and rain. She never goes to them, never runs to them, but they're there if she did one day.

She never will. She'll know that she could and it will be enough, all that she can take. She'll move among them and see the concern on their faces, the sadness in their smiles, and though she never opens up to them she'll love their compassion all the same.

They're more than she deserves, vestiges of a lifetime past when she smiled and laughed, when the number of friends in her life had been one more.

She's loved and adored, protected and guarded, a woman with all the family, biological and adopted, for which she could ever ask.

And it's all she can do to eat and sleep.

***

"Major Carter..." General Hammond looked at her standing in the embarkation room in her dress blues. The party clustered in all corners of the room were in her honor. Had it been it otherwise, she would not be present at this send-off.

"General."

"I just want you to know I fought this with all the resources at my disposal."

"I understand, sir."

Hammond sighed. "It's going to be a shame to lose you, Sam. Your place is here at the SGC."

Sam only blinked, stared like the half-dead at him, then returned without passion, "Well, sir, that's the military for you. I go where I'm told."

Hammond frowned nonetheless. "I'll keep petitioning to have you reassigned back to the SGC. In the meantime, best of luck at your new position with the Pentagon."

Sam looked away, only a fraction, but enough to catch sight of Daniel near the far wall. He was watching her intently, sadly, dressed to the nines in a dark suit and tie.

Hammond offered more softly, "And Major... I'm sorry, about Colonel O'Neill."

Sam didn't flinch, didn't move, only nodded. "These things happen in the service, sir, he knew that as well as I do. It could have just as easily been me."

"I don't think Jack could have lived with himself if it had been."

Sam smiled then, the first time in a year, but it was humorless and thin. Without bidding General Hammond goodbye she turned and moved with strong and measured steps out of the embarkation room, drink still in hand as though only stepping out for a few seconds, even though everyone who saw her leave knew she wasn't coming back.

***

The harsh lights of Washington, D.C. thrust themselves through the open blinds of the apartment bedroom window as the two bodies on the bed move together. Hands grasp at bare, slick flesh, limbs tangle in awkward locks.

Sam doesn't remember who is beneath her, but doesn't care. She forgets where they met, if they enjoy each other's company... she can't even remember what his face looks like in the light.

"Love you... Sam..." he gasps, and she thinks he means it. Another to add to the list of people that would sacrifice themselves for her, and she is beyond caring.

Her partner comes inside her, slipping into ecstasy and holding her, loving her, and Sam is anywhere but her bed, mind trapped on a hundred planets she'll never see again.

The man under her rolls and cradles her, nuzzles her, and Sam is a fraction of an inch from slipping into blackness, giving into apathy so completely not even she could find herself again. She's half disappointed when she comes up just shy.

Sam is a successful career military woman, an example to intelligent young men and women who want to live their dreams that they can. She's a woman who's seen the galaxy, felt the heat of a hundred stars.

And it's all she can do to breathe.

END