Sam Carter stepped out of her office and into the hall. Her head was throbbing with a nuclear intensity.

//No sleep, need coffee, pleeeeeaaaase let someone have coffee...//

She walked down the hall searching various rooms for signs of occupancy, and therefore caffeine, at this hour anyway. None to be found, all the offices on this level were dead to the world. //And I will be too if I don't get some various caffeine substances into my system soon.//

Sam went up a level and began her search anew. Making lists of the upcoming day's events, and reasons why she couldn't go to sleep now, in her increasingly non-resistant to gravity brain.

//Meeting with SG-1 in two hours, going to see Cassie right after that, lunch with Daniel at noon, reports still need to be filed on that damn glitch in the last mission, damn almost forgot that one. Oil changed on car this afternoon notgonnamakeitdownthemountainifcardoesntwork.... Ugh, wake up Carter!//

A light at the end of a rather dark tunnel, could it be? It was! Someone awake, now if only she knew who it was. Sam stopped at the door and looked in, two people. She knew them, vaguely, one of them was new here the other had been around a bit less then a year.

//Names, I need names if I want to beg caffeine... Kitt... and... Atwater//. Brushing her uniform off a bit, as if to rid the I-haven't-slept-in-two-days wrinkles from it, she then knocked on the doorframe to get their attention. "Morning" She smiled as brightly as could be expected, which she was sure fell far from even looking like she half meant it.

"Enter at your own risk." Kitt answered, stretching and swiveling her seat to get a look at the newcomer. "Ah, Captain Carter, how wonderful to see you at this fine hour." She flipped her hand in the air as if about to do a graceful bow then swiveled back to face her computer screen. Atwater, the new girl, didn't say anything.

//Might as well cut to the chase.// "Caffeine search. Please tell me you have coffee and are willing to share with a lowly military officer." She smiled a little more genuinely, remembering a bit more about these two. Kitt was a civilian, Atwater a freshly reassigned lieutenant. She'd seen Atwater around the base at odd hours of the night, but never much past 0300. Kitt on the other hand, she was the one that had come about and hour away from breaking Daniel's no sleep record before being caught by one of Janet's cronies and knocked unconscious supposedly for her own good.

"Caffeine? Now what on earth is that?" Sam could actually hear the girl grinning.

"Coffee girl, I know you drink it." Sam smiled and pulled up a chair. Sitting was dangerous, but she was willing to bet her search was nearly at an end.

"It's a dirty lie! All right, it's true, but I never inhaled!!" Kitt jerked a thumb over her shoulder, "It's in the pot behind sleeping beauty there."

Sam now noticed that the new girl had simply passed out in her chair. She carefully reached around her, so as not to awaken the prisoner of the dreaded sleep monster, and grabbed a half full coffee pot and halfway clean looking mug. She downed the first glass in two gulps before carefully sipping the second innocently. "So," Kitt said when Sam had drank enough coffee to be at least half awake, "What are you doing up and without a good supply of coffee at this hour?"

"Organizing stuff for tomorrow mostly, but it gets increasingly harder to organize when you can no longer coherently form sentences."

"And where is the ever present zombie form of Daniel? He has a supply of coffee that the Guatemalans would be envious of." Kitt stretched again and turned to face Sam, a cup of what appeared to be slightly fermented extremely cold coffee in one hand.

"The big jerk actually opted for sleep tonight." Sam said with a grin and a sip.

"No! Damn, I knew I should have sold my stock in coffee beans yesterday!" Kitt took a sip of her so called coffee, scowled grimaced, and threw the cup onto the desk, opting for a warm can of cherry Pepsi instead. "I swear, this facility spends more on caffeine supplies each year then electric bills and medical equipment combined. You don't believe me? Look it up, swear its true."

Sam chuckled and slurped off the rest of the coffee. "I don't doubt it. Well, I'm afraid I have to thank you and run, still have a ton of paperwork due to be finished before 0600."

"Pity," Kitt grinned, "Atwater here is just no fun after about four a.m." She poked her friend and the officer just turned her head, mumbled a curse and snored once before dropping back off. Kitt grinned up at Sam. "Bah, back to the grind again. Never a moments peace and all that."

"Oh I don't know, this whole place can seem pretty peaceful at 0400, not much in the way of personnel, no real way to tell the time besides battery powered machines, just your thoughts and the drip, drip, drip of Mr. Coffee. The only thing you have to learn to put on hold is your brain... Sometimes it's just nice to forget." Sam stood and stretched.

"I suppose, my problem is I seemingly never run low on caffeine, always have the java, always have the soda. You see, it's awfully hard to forget when your mind is going a mile a minute. One of these nights I'll have to try it like you, no coffee, maybe then I could forget some of the stuff I've seen around here. Maybe then I could sleep." Kitt sighed and smiled, "No use though, I wouldn't make it 30 minutes without coffee."

It was a bit of a jolt to Sam's system as she left the room, she didn't know if it was the sudden alertness aid running rampant in her system, or what Kitt had just said about remembering the worst things late at night. Maybe it was a combination of the two. She decided to talk to Daniel about it. Maybe cutting down on the caffeine was a good idea for all concerned. They all had some pretty awful stuff stuck in their heads, stuff that it would be nice to forget with a good dose of sleep.

"Hey, Captain Carter!"

Sam turned around at the sound of her name. Kitt was leaning out the door of her office. Kitt tossed something at Sam, which she caught in midair.

"Don't take anything too much to heart, at least nothing I said. And if you already did, just remember, There's stuff you wouldn't trade for the world up there too." Kitt smiled and ducked back in her office. Sam could hear her talking to her friend, something about waking up and finding a cot before she was sorry.

Sam walked toward the elevators, still thinking. The door to one opened and she was face to face with Daniel.

"Going down?" He smiled blearily at her.

"Hm, oh, yeah" She got on the elevator with him and smiled.

"Hey, you know, I was thinking the other night, do you remember a couple months back when we were teaching Cassie and Teal'c about how to get a dog to heal and sit?" Daniel rubbed his eyes as he talked, he didn't even look one eighth awake yet.

"Yeah," Sam smiled, "Yeah I do, why do you ask?"

"Huh, oh, no reason, I was just thinking out loud really. But that was fun wasn't it." He smiled at her again and then yawned. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have any coffee would you?"

Sam almost said no, but then she looked down at her clenched fist, and the instant coffee packets she held that Kitt had thrown at her. "Yeah, yeah I do, but I only share the precious allotment on two conditions."

"Uh oh, now I'm scared." Daniel said with a smile.

"One, that you help me organize my mess of reports, and two, that we only discuss memories like Cassie's Dog, until the briefing."

"What, got a thing for dogs right now Sam?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah I do, and okay, agreed, paperwork from hell and happy memories in exchange for coffee, shouldn't be too difficult." He yawned, "Now let me have those coffee bags so I can start sucking the caffeine out of them right now!" He reached for them but Sam ducked away.

"Ew, and get Danny germs all over them, not on your life!!!" Sam reached a freehand out to push Daniel away as he reached for the coffee again.

They were both laughing and completely awake by the time the elevator stopped and the doors opened onto their level.

~FIN~