The looks are what I hate the most.

We’ve only been back from P4Z-982 for 5½ hours, and already I’ve gotten enough of them to make me want to scream. They look at me with pity, as if I’ve suddenly been transformed from an intelligent scientist to some sort of pathetic creature.

Oh, it’s not as if what happened has been broadcasted all over the SGC - Janet would never allow that - but the medical personnel found out, and pretty much everyone who met us in the gate room could put two and two together. Factor in the SGC grapevine, and less than six hours later, everyone knows.

We were knocked unconscious almost the instant we stepped through the Stargate on P4Z-982. Evidently the natives had their ’gate surrounded by some sort of energy field that had roughly the same effect as a zat blast on anyone who stepped through.

By the time the four of us awakened, we were prisoners. The Colonel and I were in a cell together, with Daniel and Teal’c caged up in the neighboring cell. Our captors must have been monitoring us, because we couldn’t have been awake for more than two minutes before the door to my cell swung open, and three men entered.

They were every bit as human as me, but from the moment I saw the looks they were directing at me, I knew I was in trouble. The Colonel must have known it too, because he stepped in front of me until two of our captors, both of them at least five inches taller than Colonel O’Neill, slammed his head into the bars. He sank to the cold stone floor, unconscious, and when I made a move to go to him, the same two men grabbed my arms and dragged me away.

I left with the sound of Daniel’s desperate shouts and Teal’c’s infuriated roars ringing in my ears, and when I was brought back a half hour later, barely able to walk because of the pain, the silence was almost suffocating.

Teal’c looked livid, angry enough to rip the bars apart with his bare hands.

Daniel tried to hide it, but I think he was crying.

The Colonel was still unconscious.

I felt ... nothing. Empty. A shell.

None of us made a sound.

After Colonel O’Neill awakened, he didn’t say much. I could tell his head hurt, although he wouldn’t admit it, and I think he felt guilty. I don’t know what he thought he could have done to protect me from three men, all much bigger than him.

Escape came much more easily than we would have expected; I got the impression that our captors had gotten what they wanted and weren’t trying too hard to keep us around. They’d taken our weapons but not our GDO, and the force field evidently only worked on incoming travelers, not departing ones.

I only remember flashes of the escape, and really nothing about how Teal’c and Daniel orchestrated it. I remember running, gritting my teeth against the pain, and the sudden sharp coldness of the wormhole, and the startled eyes of the people waiting on the other side.

Now, after an endless cycle of tests and treatments and pitying looks, after several promises to attend counseling, I’ve finally been allowed to go home. I’m sitting on the couch in my living room, having just completed my third shower in the last hour. I have only a single lamp turned on; the semidarkness makes the reflection of my battered face in the window faint and indistinct, makes it easier not to face what has happened to me, what I’ve become.

An object of pity.

Someone knocks on the door, and I jump, my heart rate rising dramatically. Trying to calm my rapid breathing, I remind myself that I’m at home, that I’m safe, that there’s no reason to be scared.

“Who is it?” I call, curling my knees protectively toward my chest, trying to sound calmer than I feel.

“Carter,” a voice calls quietly from outside. It’s Colonel O’Neill. I’m surprised Janet let him out of the infirmary already. I really don’t want company, but I force myself to get up off the couch, walk painfully to the door, and unlock it.

When the Colonel enters, I see a brief flicker of sadness in his eyes before he puts on his carefully neutral mask. I don’t even want to think about what I look like - hair uncombed and still wet, face bruised and swollen, three stitches in my bottom lip. I’m wearing only a towel, which is not as bad as it sounds, because it’s a huge beach towel that engulfs my body from collarbone to knees.

After an awkward silence, Colonel O’Neill clears his throat. His face is still pale, and there’s a bandage on his forehead; Janet said he had a minor concussion. I wonder how much whining he had to do to get her to release him.

“Carter,” he says again, as if simply saying my name enough times will erase what has happened, will make things the way they were. I’m looking down at the floor, away from his eyes, when he asks softly, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say lightly, and we both know I’m lying.

“Carter.” Something changes in his voice, something that almost makes me raise my eyes to his face, but I don’t. I don’t want to see The Look again. I don’t think I could handle it right now.

“Carter, I know what it’s like.”

He gives me a moment to absorb his words. I freeze, my eyes fixed on a small white stain on the carpet.

“I know.”

This time the inflection is perfectly clear. He doesn’t mean he can imagine the pain that I’m in.

He means that he knows.

Oh, God, I knew he was in Black Ops, knew he must have been through things I couldn’t even imagine, but it never once occurred to me that he might have been captured and ... and ...

I raise my eyes to his and see ... no pity.

Compassion. Understanding.

But not pity.

It’s the compassion in those eyes that does it, and suddenly I’m sobbing and my CO gently wraps his arms around me, soothing me as a father would soothe a terrified child, as he must have calmed his own son years ago.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he whispers against my hair. “It’s all right.”

Sam.

He rarely calls me that, but tonight I don’t want to be Carter, the tough, strictly military Major who always keeps a lid on her emotions. Tonight I want - no, I need - to be Sam, who can stand in a dimly lit living room wrapped in a towel and cry on her CO’s shoulder without being ashamed.

When the tears have finally stopped I whisper, “Will I ever be able to forget?”

“No.” His tone is soft. “But you’ll live anyway, and if you’re lucky, eventually you might be able to go a whole day without thinking about it.”

He lets me go and I step back and look up into his face. He doesn’t look like a victim. He looks like the same confident Jack O’Neill I’ve always known. A man who has been bent but not broken.

In the window I catch my reflection and see ... myself. Not some wretched creature to be pitied. I see me, Samantha Carter, and I finally realize what Colonel O’Neill has been trying to tell me all along. They hurt me, but they could not destroy who I am.

And for the first time since I was dragged from my cell back on P4Z-982 I know for sure that, while the future will not be easy for me, I will survive.

I am Major Samantha Carter of SG-1, and I will not be pitied.