Non! Là sera notre vie!
Si tu le veux, ô Manon

- Manon

Libretto: Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille
Music: Jules Massenet

Sam comes to with a gasp, her heart pounding, her whole body tense.

Oh, what the hell?

She's on another planet - of course - and the last thing she remembers is walking towards a lofty stone temple. At the moment, it seems like she's inside it; there's sunlight streaming in through the open columns, and a look around reveals she's currently lying on this world's equivalent of a cushioned pew.

"Major Carter." Teal'C gives her a hand to pull herself up to sitting, then hands her a canteen. "I am glad to see you awake."

"What happened?"

"Daniel Jackson is attempting to ascertain that. Both you and Colonel O'Neill were unconscious for several minutes."

She looks over her shoulder to find Jack - Colonel O'Neill - sitting on a bench nearby, staring at her. He looks as dazed as she feels, and despite her confusion, she can't help the blush that warms her cheeks.

"Carter?" His voice is rough.

She swallows. "Sir." It's disorienting, seeing him right here, when just a moment ago, she was dreaming about -

"You all right?"

"I'm not sure, sir." She puts her head in her hands, willing her mind to clear up, willing the lingering images from that dream to dissolve.

Daniel's nearby, listening to one of the town's healers; the man's speaking rapidly, hands up like he's apologizing. This is a bad sign.

"Daniel?" the colonel prompts.

"Uh -" Daniel blinks, takes his glasses off, rubs his eyes, and Sam's bad feeling gets worse. That's non-verbal Daniel for I'm stalling, because I don't want to talk about it. "Well. I'm - not entirely sure."

The colonel stares at him. "You're not entirely sure?"

"Their dialect is kind of hard to figure out. But I think he's saying there's something strange about the place we're in. It - triggers something? - like dreams? I think. Like I said, I'm only understanding about half of everything he says."

"Okay." Colonel O'Neill seems resigned; he knows there's only so much he's going to get. "Bottom line. What knocked us out?"

Daniel conferred briefly with the healer again, nodding slowly. "Right. Okay. I think you and Sam walked in too fast. There's something about the air, or the light, something in this hall that knocks you out if you go into it too quickly."

"You sure?"

"He said it happens to everyone who walks in too fast. Even him." Daniel winces. "If I had a little more time, and some grammar books, I could be more precise here. But he doesn't seem worried, so I don't think it's too serious."

Sam lets out a breath. Well. That's one less thing to worry about. Janet will still have a field day, though.

The healer touches Daniel's sleeve, gesturing to her and the colonel, murmuring something to Daniel. Sam sighs. It's embarrassing enough to faint dead away in the middle of a temple. She certainly doesn't want to keep dwelling on -

- on a dream she's not going to think about. Ever again.

"The dreams - hang on. I'm not - I think he's saying something about your dreams?" Daniel frowns. "I'm not sure. What did you see? Anything weird?"

She blushes involuntarily, mentally searching through her own dream, wondering if there's anything she can tell him that won't be too damning.

There's a moment before the colonel answers. It's not much, just long enough to give Sam the distinct impression that he's trying not to answer, either, but he's resigned himself to the necessity.

"I was...up at my cabin."

Her heart stops in her chest.

She finally finds her voice. "And it was cold?"

The colonel freezes, looking back at her, and she sees the realization mirrored in his face.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, no.

From what Daniel can ascertain, between what he understands from Healer Dravek and whatever has Sam and Jack trying not to stare at each other, it's not overly serious. Whatever field is cast within this hall, in addition to knocking them both unconscious, connected their minds on a superficial level.

A battery of brain scans will be waiting for them back at the SGC. Both Sam and Jack seem to be shaken from the experience, but physically fine.

That's not right, though.

Daniel knows Sam and Jack pretty well. And he can't help but notice that neither of them will offer any extra details about whatever dream they'd been sharing. It was Jack's cabin, and it was cold. That's all either one has volunteered.

And Sam can't stop blushing.

The trek back to the Gate is quiet, giving Daniel far more time than he wants to think about just what the two of them might have been doing to each other in their dreams to elicit that kind of silence.

I don't want to know.

When Janet makes an offhand comment about daydreaming at work while she takes Sam's vitals, she can't help but notice the sudden jump in her friend's pulse rate, though her pink cheeks more than draw attention to it.

Well then.

Janet's fairly sure she can guess where this level of mortification might be coming from. It's awkward to have a sex dream about your boss. At work. And then to find out he was having it, too.

Janet has no real reason to keep them - all the scans come back clean, so as far as the USAF can tell, they're both fine - so she releases them, though as Sam's climbing off the exam bed, Janet takes a moment to ask her quietly, "Is there - anything we need to talk about? Privately?"

Sam meets her eyes squarely. "I'm fine."

But Janet doesn't miss the way Sam and Jack leave the infirmary: silently. Avoiding each other's eyes.

On the one hand, there's nothing concrete. No evidence that there's a problem.

On the other hand, though, how long before "deniability" is no longer "plausible?"

After a fairly short briefing, General Hammond dismisses SG-1 for the day. Jack follows the general to his office to finish up the official report, leaving the other three to gather up their papers.

Daniel has seen Sam biting back details since she and Jack woke up from whatever dream they were both having, and he's still trying to figure out how to ask. Or 'if,' honestly.

But before he can come up with anything, Teal'C, who had yet to comment on the entire situation, finally takes the opportunity. "You and Colonel O'Neill both seem to have been affected by this incident. It appears you shared a vision of a...private nature."

How subtle.

She flushes at the insinuation. "It's not like that."

With SG-1 on break for the day, Daniel should go home. And...he will. Eventually.

But something's been bothering him.

In the quiet of his office, Daniel pores over his notes on Akkadian dialects. Dravek used a word Daniel hadn't heard before, and despite the grammatical structure that had him struggling to parse every sentence, there was a specific noun Dravek kept using that stuck with him. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. The language was definitely within the Eastern Semitic family; he knew he had a notebook around here somewhere that could help.

After pages and pages of notes, he finally sees it. There. That's what Dravek was saying.

In his own handwriting beside it, Daniel sees the rough translation: "heart's deepest desire."

He sits back in his chair, blinking. Wow.

So that's why Sam and Jack can't look at each other.

(You see, Daniel-sir, if they share a dream, it showed them one thing: their heart's deepest desire. Because that is what they truly share. A dream only shows what is already true.)

He could add an addendum to his official report, but what would it accomplish?

Because the way Sam and Jack looked at each other - whatever it was they'd both seen, it was something they were desperate not to admit.

Maybe even to themselves.

She stepped out the back door to find Jack on the porch step, looking out over the lake, where the sun was just starting to appear. Mist hovered over the water, and the air was thin and clear.

"Morning," he said without looking up. "You sleep okay?"

"It's cold."

"It's Minnesota," he grinned. "Up here, this is tropical."

"Ridiculous," she huffed, settling on the porch step beside him. He wrapped an arm around her as she burrowed into his side. "Why does anyone live here?"

"The company?"

"That can't be it."

He laughed at that, squeezing her closer, stealing a quick, sloppy, lazy kiss. "Ouch."

"Did I hurt your feelings?" She couldn't stop smiling. She felt like she would never stop smiling.

"If I said yes, would you kiss it better?"

"Of course." She kissed him gently, just a brief, delicate press of lips. "Even if you said no."

He ran his hand through her hair, idly massaging the back of her neck.

"Love you."

She hummed into his skin. "Love you, too."

The sun was creeping over the horizon, casting long rays of pale gold across the water. It was a morning out of time, like everything beyond the horizon was gone, and all that was left was the two of them, together, where no one could ever pull them apart.

A shiver ran through her for a moment, and it wasn't the air. She ran her fingers over his arm, relishing the warmth.

"Can we stay for a while?" she asked.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, pulling her closer into his side.

"We can stay forever."