A/N – Officially this is a sequel to my story "Now is the Winter", but I think this one can be read on it's own (I'm doing my best to provide sufficient background). This is a different genre than "Now is the Winter", this one being more of a romance with a few dashes of angst on the side.
Chapter 1: Terra Nova
Jack looked at his watch and realized with some shock that two hours had passed already. Two hours since…since the Earth was destroyed.
No, not destroyed, just made uninhabitable by the nuclear bombs thrown back and forth between the U.S and Russia. The whole thing had been an unavoidable disaster. Or at least that's what the remaining leaders had decided in the past couple hours.
Jack groaned, putting his hands over his face and listening to the former prime minister of England yell at the former president of the United States.
This was all the U.S.'s fault. This could have been avoided. Russia could have been appeased.
But they'd tried everything, the president pointed out. They talked to Koranov, the former leader of the now non-existent Russia. They'd had endless conferences with him. He'd wanted blood. He'd wanted the Stargate program shut down. The Stargate program going public had only done to slow Koranov down, but after that he hadn't hesitated to send his bombs.
So lucky they had an evacuation plan and that the Asgard had been there to help.
"Jack," Hammond put one hand on Jack's shoulder. "Are you alright?"
What a stupid question. Our planet's just been destroyed, sir, of course I'm not alright! But he didn't say that out loud, he just shook his head. "May I be excused, sir? I don't think I'm needed here."
Hammond nodded. "Go ahead. I think Doctors Jackson and Fraiser are helping the civilians get organized outside, maybe you could go give them a hand."
Jack stood up, excused himself, and left the complex that housed the beta site's stargate. Once outside he didn't meet the sheer pandemonium that had been in the SGC while everyone was being evacuated. Families were huddling together, and most people seemed to be in shock and clinging to anything that resembled an authority figure.
That authority figure happened to be Janet, who was giving out instructions for what people should do.
Pick up a standard supply package, one per person. This included food and blankets. Then pick up a group supply package, one per family unit. This included tools, tents, sleeping bags, batteries, medicine and a small long range radio. Then go and find a place to live. People collected their supplies and moved off, some taking the ATVs that were parked alongside the compound, others walking off aimlessly into the woods.
Luckily the planet had already been screened and it was home to no dangerous animals or natives.
"Hey, Danny-boy." Jack walked over to Daniel who was helping a couple of SF's hand out supply packages.
"Jack." Daniel didn't look up. He had his jaw set in a determined manner. "Have they decided anything?"
"Not really." Jack stuck his hands in his pockets. "We got word from the other evac sites and things seem to be going well there."
"How many people?"
"In total?"
"Yeah."
Jack shrugged. "They think several hundred thousand. Maybe a million. Each of the evac sites has the population of a small city."
"That's good."
"You seen Carter?"
"I saw Sam." Janet came over. She was carrying a small, coughing infant in her arms and the baby's worried parents trailed behind. Janet pulled some medicine out of a black box.
"Where'd she go?" Jack asked after Janet was finished.
The small doctor pointed off to the east and the direction of a small mountain range. A forest grew at the base of the mountains and Jack could see that something had entered the forest recently.
"She took one of the ATV's and a couple of supply packages off in that direction a little while ago," Janet said.
"Thanks." Jack grabbed the keys to an ATV, his small bag of personal belongings and one of the standard supply packages. "I'll go after her."
He followed the tracks of Sam's ATV through the forest, then through a narrow pass in the rocky mountains. It was a fifteen minute ride from the compound before he finally came out of the woods and felt his breath catch in his throat a the sight before him.
In front of him was a field of waving grasses that sloped gently down to the shore of a glimmering lake ahead and to the left. The west end of the lake, nearest to Jack, was a bluff of maybe twenty or thirty feet. The north side was the sheer cliff face of the mountain range, but the east and south banks transitioned smoothly to the grassy field, with a few large rocks scattered about.
It was on one of these rocks that Jack spotted Sam, sitting and staring down at the water. She looked up as he drove over and parked his ATV next to hers.
"Who sent you?" She mumbled as Jack climbed up next to her. The rock was huge and perfectly flat on top.
"No one. I wanted to find you."
"Oh." Sam picked up a fistful of gravel and threw it down at the water.
"Nice spot you found here." Jack commented, squinting up at the tall peaks of the mountains to the north, set against the pale sapphire sky.
"Mhmm."
"People seem to be settling in ok," Jack said, picking up a loose stone and thumbing it around. "I think everyone's just so much in shock to panic…they're all looking for their own little part of this world."
"Well they can't have this one." Sam said, gesturing around at the clearing. "This is my part."
"I don't think anyone'll bother you. They all headed in the opposite direction, away from the mountains."
"I'm sheltered here. Mountains on all sides."
"True that."
They fell into companionable silence. Jack closed his eyes and was just considering laying down when Sam spoke again.
"I'm never going to eat a hamburger from Wendy's ever again."
Jack opened his eyes. "No more Chinese take out."
"No more watching Simpsons on TV."
"Oh…my fragile heart…" Jack put a hand to his chest, then grinned. "Luckily I brought the whole series on DVD."
"You would count that as a treasured possession," Sam said, wrinkling her nose.
"Well what'd you bring?"
"Photo albums, notebooks…all my computer backups…books…home movies…"
"Keep an eye on the books, Danny might steal them." They both chuckled at this.
Sam lay back, folding her arms behind her head. Jack lay on his stomach.
"So…" Sam said. "You got sucked into the meeting."
"Yeah. I left when they started pointing fingers at each other and yelling."
"Did they get anything done?"
"Yeah, actually. They talked a lot about the basic needs people are going to have and how we're going to meet them." Jack sighed heavily. "We're going to set up a 'capital city' around the base – now the new SGC and there we'll have a doctor's office, food distributors, police station and military base. People will be pretty much allowed to go lay claim to whatever land they get to first. It'll be like the wild west."
Sam bit her lip. "Things are going to be so different."
"You can say that again. The top dogs are re-writing pretty much all the rules. No restrictions about underage sex….no frat regs. They're pushing the 'settle down and start repopulating' thing."
"No frat regs…" Sam murmured.
Jack opened one eye, regarding her thoughtfully. "Nope."
Sam pushed herself into a sitting position. "It's so hard to think about normal things like having babies at a time like this."
"So don't think about the babies. We should get the food situation settled first. House situation before that." Jack sat up and pointed towards the bluff on the western edge of the lake. "Couldn't you picture your dream house right there? With a big picture window overlooking the lake where you could watch the sunset…We could build the basics now and just keep adding on each year…"
"We?" Sam said quietly, raising her eyebrows.
Jack turned, smiling faintly at her. "Sam Carter," he said in an imitation cowboy accent. "Will you marry me and be the mother of my children?"
Sam stared at him, wondering weather to say yes or just push him into the lake.
"Ok, well…marriage doesn't quite exist anymore, exactly, but you get the point." He grinned sheepishly as Sam rolled his eyes. "Come on, baby, you know how I feel about you!" he scooted closer, earning an odd look from Sam.
"Did you just call me 'baby'?"
"Pleeeeesssssseeeeee!"
"Sir."
"Carter."
They stared at each other. Sam's mind was spinning as she realized just how strange her current situation was. In the past six hours she'd been forced from her home planet, was preparing to start a new life, and was now sitting on a large rock listening to her commanding officer begging her to be the mother of his children, or whatever crap he'd been spewing.
"You do know how I feel about you, right?" Jack's eyes were wide. "I mean I did try to tell you that one night at the cabin but you didn't let me finish…"
To his surprise Sam leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder. "Tell me. I want to hear it."
"I love you." Jack said, bringing his arms up around her in a tight hug. "I love you more than anything in the universe. Literally everything about my life has changed in the past few hours but the one thing that I appreciate is that it's brought you into my arms."
"That was sweet." Sam smiled as she sat up and looked at him. "Really it was…" She put a hand against his cheek, which was slightly rough with stubble. "There isn't another person I'd rather start a new life off with than you. You know that, don't you, Jack? I love you too."
Jack smiled, and then under the bright sun, in their own little section of paradise amongst the fear, he leaned in and kissed her, for the first time able to fully appreciate the soft feeling of her lips against his, the feeling of her fingers curling in his hair, her tongue sliding against his, the way her body felt in his arms.
"This planet is going to become one of two things," Jack observed as they set up camp near the rocky base of the mountains to the north, well within their shelter. "It'll either become our paradise, or we'll screw up and it'll become our hell."
"I think you and I should be hermits," Sam said.
"Not a big change for you."
An MRE came flying his way and Jack only just caught it before it hit him in the head.
"Hey watch it!" Jack shouted. "These things are lethal."
"Exactly my point." Sam bent down, making a ring out of some stones and piling firewood in it. The sky to the east was an explosion of colors, far more spectacular than anything Jack had ever seen on Earth. For a few minutes he just stood there staring at it.
"Wow…"
Sam looked up. "There's different types of foreign particles in the air. They refract light differently than those on Earth."
"Well that took all the fun out of it." Jack grumbled, turning to set up his tent.
With night came strange sounds of insects and nocturnal animals. It wasn't any stranger than the other nights spent off world, and something comforted Jack knowing that in a few weeks he'd be used to this.
Sam set her tin plate aside with a light clank, then stretched and yawned. "You only set up one tent," she observed sleepily.
"Yeah…" Jack was clearing up the dishes and putting them in one of the locking cases on the back of the ATV. "Do you mind? I could set up the other one…"
"Nyah," Sam shook her head, yawning again. "I just hope you're not expecting anything."
"What?" Jack's eyes went wide. "No…no! I didn't mean that…"
Sam laughed, shaking her head as she crawled into the tent.
Sometime in the middle of the night Sam awoke suddenly. She didn't remember what she'd been dreaming about but it had left her in a cold sweat as she sat bolt upright, her fingers clutching the edge of the sleeping bag.
Jack's steady snoring came to a sudden stop and he propped himself up on one elbow. "Sam?"
"I'm ok, I just…" she realized she was shaking.
"Bad dream?" Jack lay back down, holding one arm out to her.
Sam looked at him for a second, confused, before she remembered that they weren't just off world on another mission. It all came flooding back to her and to her dismay tears began welling in her eyes.
"Hey…hey…" Jack said as she dropped down beside him, burrowing her face against his chest. "Hey it's ok. It's ok I'm here." As he hugged her close his half asleep mind was trying desperately to piece together the strong, brave Samantha Carter with the woman he now held crying in his arms.
After what felt like an eternity her breathing changed from choking sobs to normal, to the slow rhythm of sleep. Somewhere an insect chirped. Jack pulled Sam a little closer and lightly kissed the top of her head before closing his eyes and allowing himself to drift back off to sleep.