A/N: This story takes place immediately after the Season 10 episode Line in the Sand.

My medical knowledge is limited and I relied on Google to verify it. There was a question as to whether Sam could remain in the Air Force with the injuries I've described and as best as I could research, her injuries would not disqualify her from service.

His office phone had been ringing non-stop all morning. Mainly because he'd turned off his cell knowing that the kind of schedule he was facing today was killer and he wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. To her credit, his assistant had taken everything in stride, trying to calm the increasingly frantic voices that had been trying to get through to the General over the last hour or so. She'd been under orders not to let any calls through, but when the director of the SGC ordered her to do so, she interrupted the General's current call with great urgency. Jack O'Neill apologized to the voice on the other end of his phone and ended the conversation by telling them he had an emergency to tend to. He paused before he picked up the phone again because he knew that Hank Landry would not have had him interrupted without a damn good reason.

"Jack."

"Hank. My assistant knew not to bother me today so I'm guessing this isn't a social call."

He heard the heavy sigh of the man on the other end of the line. "Jack, there was an incident on P9C-882."

He felt his heart stop. "Carter?"

"She's alive."

She's alive. He clutched the phone tight in his hand and repeated it to himself again. She's alive.

He exhaled a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding and cleared his throat. His voice still rough as he asked, "What happened?"

"Apparently the connection between the generators and Merlin's device failed. Some kind of failsafe was triggered that shut down the transfer field. The Ori showed up in the meantime and while trying to fix the problem, Colonel Carter took a staff blast to the abdomen." He heard Jack's intake of breath and quickly continued. "Thankfully Mitchell's had training as a field medic. I won't lie to you, Jack. It was touch and go when they got her back here, but she's out of surgery and Carolyn thinks she's out of the woods."

"Okay."

Hank heard the disbelief in his old friend's voice and knew that Jack wouldn't believe what he said until he'd had a chance to see Sam first hand. He tried to reassure him anyway. "Jack, she's going to be fine, really."

"Yeah. Thanks, Hank. I...I, uh, appreciate the call."

He put the phone back in its cradle and let his head drop into his hands. He hated that he hadn't been there for her. He'd spent half of the time he'd been in Washington beating himself up over leaving his team behind and he despised himself over the fact that instead of being there to watch their backs, he was an Earthbound bureaucrat, watching the bottom line instead.

Why did I ever let George talk me into this? He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He'd almost lost her, again. "Dammit, Carter." He picked the phone back up and buzzed his assistant. "Lieutenant, I need you to clear my schedule for the next couple of days and I need a flight to Peterson. I'll be at Andrews in an hour."

His assistant was very good. His car had been waiting outside when he emerged from the building half an hour later having wrapped up all loose ends and his plane was ready for take off when his car pulled onto the tarmac at Andrews another 30 minutes later. The pilot was even better, somehow cutting their time in the air so that by the time they landed in the Springs, just over five hours had passed since he'd received Hank's phone call.

His entire flight and the ride to Cheyenne Mountain were spent with thoughts ping-ponging between his anger at the IOA for forcing Sam to do something she knew she wasn't ready to do and praying to a God he wasn't sure he still believed in that like Hank said, she was going to be okay.

As the car parked and he headed to the first checkpoint, he began wishing that he had changed out of his uniform before leaving D.C. His own comfort had not been at the forefront of his mind, and although he was accustomed to more formal dress while travelling, as he descended into the mountain amongst the salutes and "Sirs," his desire to see Sam began overriding his ability to maintain decorum. He wished for the anonymity of a pair of BDUs despite the fact that the whole base probably knew by now why he was here. Anyone who knew Carter knew that Jack would be coming to her side. Over the years, many had speculated about the depths of his feelings for his second in command. But no one had dared broach the subject directly, not even Daniel and Teal'c who had been through their struggle alongside them, always hoping as they hurdled obstacle after obstacle, that Sam and Jack would find the happiness they both deserved despite the constraints put on them by the military.

Years ago, he and Sam had been forced to confess their true feelings only to bury them deep and in the best interest of all involved, lock the door to a room he thought would never again see the light of day. Oh, there were times when the door cracked open and their true feelings burst to the surface … when Sam was overtaken by an energy-based entity and he had to kill her to stop it from taking over the base; when he was stranded with Maybourne on a forgotten moon and she couldn't figure out how to get him home; when Sam had been hunted by a supersoldier hell bent on killing her for the technology she'd created to destroy it; when Jack's consciousness was overwritten by Ancient knowledge, again, and he'd had to be frozen in suspended animation … through all of these things, they'd both tried to ignore what was happening inside their hearts so that they could continue saving the world. Their promotions and his command of the SGC had only made things more complicated in the end, but with Jacob's death and ending her engagement, Sam made a move that changed everything for them. She accepted the position as the Head of the Stargate Research and Development Program at Area 51. And when the transfer was finalized, General Hammond made sure that they were free of the burden of the chain of command once and for all by making it so that she no longer reported directly to Jack.

When they had both had several weeks between the end of their responsibilities at the SGC and the start of their new jobs, they'd made the most of it. They'd visited D.C. and she helped Jack move into his brownstone, they'd checked out housing in Nevada for Sam, and during a trip to California to visit Mark Carter and his family, Jack pulled him aside one night after dinner to ask him for permission to propose to his sister.

They thought that the universe was finally on their side … that they were finally free.

Dr. Carolyn Lam met him as he entered the infirmary. "General O'Neill."

"Doctor Lam." He scanned the empty beds around him. "Where is she?"

"Come with me. I've got her in an isolation room. She's doing much better than when she came in, General. She's breathing on her own, her pressure's normal, and the damage from the staff weapon wasn't as extensive as it could have been. I was able to repair most of the damage."

"Most of the damage?"

She waited until they were outside of Sam's room to answer his questions and her voice softened as she spoke. "She was shot in the left side just above her hip. There was internal bleeding and I had to remove her spleen, part of her kidney, and also repair damage to her small and large intestines. Once she is fully healed, there shouldn't be any lasting effects but her recovery will be slow and she'll be extremely sore and very uncomfortable for a few weeks. Unfortunately, there was just no other option under the circumstances."

He nodded in acknowledgement and Carolyn continued.

"As you know, the heat from energy weapons tends to cauterize wounds, so our biggest concern right now is a secondary infection. Currently there is no sign of any such infection, but we have her on a strong broad-spectrum antibiotic along with the pain meds."

He nodded again and then steeled himself for what he might see as Carolyn opened the door. Despite all that she had just told him and despite the images his imagination had tortured him with since he left D.C., he wasn't prepared to see her looking so pale and lifeless.

"Has she been conscious yet?"

"No. I've had to keep her pretty heavily sedated because of the severity of her burns but she should be coming around in the next 12-16 hours." She placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'll leave you alone for awhile."

"Carolyn?"

"Yes, General?"

"Thank you."

She smiled giving him a slight nod before she turned and closed the door.

At first he just stood there, staring at her, watching as she took each breath, slowly trying to convince himself that this was good. She was alive, she was breathing, she'd wake up and everything would be okay. He walked around the bed and sat down in the chair next to her. It hadn't been an easy road for the two of them, but he thought that they had finally gotten things figured out. He had wanted to hit something, and probably did, when he'd learned that she was being transferred back to the SGC last year. They'd lied to themselves, desperately wanting to believe that she really was only TDY, but they knew that as long as this new threat was out there, with all of her skills and know-how, Sam would be right there with SG-1 in the thick of things.

Grabbing her hand in both of his own, he gently lay his forehead against them. "Dammit Sam." It was all he managed to say for the next few hours as he sat by her side, images of their time together slowly replaying in his mind.