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For the first time in her life, Major Samantha Carter had intentionally disobeyed postmission protocol.

Standing in her field fatigues in the middle of her quiet lab, Sam tried to remember if she had forgotten anything. After stopping off at the locker room only long enough to discard her gear and get her keys, she'd come to the lab to make sure all her equipment was deactivated. And then she was going to go home. No physical, and more importantly, no Janet asking pointed questions that she knew she couldn't handle right now. Running a hand through her cropped hair, she felt the desperation clawing at her throat and turned to leave when the light from her computer caught her eye. Sighing anxiously, she moved over to her desk to turn it off, wiggling her toes in irritation at the grainy Abydonian sand still in her boots. The glassy surface of a framed photograph caught her eye, and her hand hovered over the mouse for a few moments before instead reaching for the picture. Despite her best efforts, she found herself mesmerized by the image. It had been taken before Daniel had died (ascended, she reminded herself wearily), when SG-1 had still been family. Tracing Daniel's smile sadly with her fingertip, she felt herself tense as she remembered exactly why she was fleeing the base, what had been broken and lost between the four people in the photo. She felt her face flush at the sticky anger that bubbled in her chest. Without thinking, she drew her arm back and flung the frame as hard as she could at the opposite wall, instinctively throwing her arms up to protect her face as the glass exploded.

Filled with sudden remorse, she ran over to crouch down beside the broken frame, frantically sweeping away glass shards with her fingers to get at the undamaged photograph beneath. A fractured edged sliced through her thumb, and she drew back in pain, watching a few drops of blood splatter on the smiling faces of her team. Her former team, she reminded herself with a renewed vehemence, slamming her palm down to cover the picture, wincing with pleasure as the glass opened a new gash.

She had been cut out of that team, Sam thought bitterly, a team that was now broken. Trust had been shattered into sharp, biting edges just like the ones digging into her palm. Except forgotten loyalty hurt a lot more than mere glass.

At first, she hadn't believed them. Sam just couldn't accept what the colonel and Teal'c had said, that Daniel was alive and well and that they had conveniently forgotten to tell her, forgotten she cared. But denial lasted only so long before it gave way to hurt and anger. She was mad at Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c for keeping Daniel's existence to themselves. Of the three remaining members of the team, Sam had taken Daniel's death the hardest, and it would have meant the world to her to know that her pseudo-sibling was okay. In the colonel's case, he'd known for months. Her mind reeled as she remembered with renewed clarity every opportunity he had had to tell her, every chance he had let slip by.

Although Sam was angry with the two surviving members of SG-1, the betrayal that stung the most was Daniel's. Daniel had visited both Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c as they lay dying and in agony, but when Sam's cells had nearly imploded at the hands of Nurrti, he did not come. Grinding her palm deeper into the glass, Sam angrily wondered why her life was worth so much less than her teammates', her pain less significant than theirs.

As she remembered again how long it had been, her stomach seemed to hollow out to make room for the abandonment curling up inside her. She drew back her hand and gazed at the mangled picture, slightly blurred by tears. A single drop splashed down her cheek to mingle with the spilled blood, and Sam tilted her head back and squeezed her eyes tightly shut to prevent more from falling. Fighting back the rising lump in her throat, she willed herself not to cry over losing something that had never been there in the first place. Sam had never felt more alone.

She didn't notice as her CO walked into her lab until he spoke from the doorway, eyes downcast and hands in his pockets. "You skipped out on your post-mission," he chided. "Frasier wants to see you."

Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice, and she blinked at him a few times, making no move to stand from her crouched position on the floor. Prompted by an intense feeling of apathy, she muttered, "Go away," staring hard at the picture frame.

"What?" he asked, taking a step into the room.

Turning her head to look up at him, she repeated herself, adding an acerbic 'sir' almost as an afterthought.

Anger flitted briefly across his face as his eyes took in the broken glass and her bloodied hand. "Carter, did you just tell me to go away?" he asked, sounding both amused and worried.

Lashing out at the concern in his voice, she got to her feet, yelling as she stood. "Leave me alone, Colonel!"

The colonel took a few more steps towards her, and she began backing away from him. "Carter," he said warningly.

"No!" she shouted. "I'm sick of this! If you think things will just go back to the way they were before, you're wrong!"

"Before what?" he asked hesitantly, faking confusion.

She gave a short laugh that contained no humor. "Before I found out that the people I used to trust implicitly have been lying to me for months on end."

"We never lied to you," the colonel said defensively.

"Well, you certainly omitted a few important details, don't you think?" she retorted harshly. Colonel O'Neill stayed silent, seemingly at a loss for words, and Sam was vindictively pleased to see a shadow of guilt cross his face.

"You're right, we were...careless," he said finally. "But we do care about you. Daniel cares about you," he told her sincerely.

"I was dying. Why wasn't he there?" she countered, finding that she hoped he could produce a reasonable answer.

"Maybe he was...busy." It sounded lame even to Colonel O'Neill, who winced apologetically. Sam's heart sank.

"He didn't care and he still doesn't!" she screamed, backing away from him until she hit the wall. "Nothing, NOTHING should be more important than..." Her voice trailed off, and she found it difficult to speak through the tightness of her throat. "...than the death of a...of a friend," she choked out miserably, brushing angrily at the tears splashing down her cheeks.

The colonel looked tempted to step forward and take her in his arms, and although part of her desperately wanted him to, she didn't trust him enough anymore to let him get that close.

"You should have told me," she said despondently, and because it was the truth and she could think of nothing else to say, she repeated, "You should have told me."

"I didn't even know if it was real," he protested, tearing his eyes away from her face to stare at the floor. Sam smiled sadly.

"But it was real? It was Daniel?" she asked him, watching him nod. "Then you knew. And you should have told me."

Pushing herself off the wall, she walked towards him, looking stronger than she felt. Inside she was ready to crumble from the disloyalty and the dull ache settling in her heart. "I used to trust you," she told him, "with a lot more than my life." Walking past him, she reached briefly over her desk to shut down her computer. She stared hard at him, eyes bright with unshed tears, and whispered, "We were a team." With a final glance, she flicked off the lights and left him standing in the gentle darkness of her lab.

*fin*