6After Affinity:
C1 'The Stargate Turns'
A/N: This is the story of what I seen regarding the SGC in a dimensional portal I have in my living room. This story picks up after the show Affinity from season 8 and before Covenant, which is also season 8. Affinity left off with Teal'c moving back on base after a run in with the Trust and a tryst with a hottie named Krista. I had to add in brief Sex in the City (HBO show) and a lot of Halo 2 (X-Box game). Enjoy.
Jack's House (early morning)
There were several knocks at the door, and Jack was trying to ignore it. He woke to know that he had a slight hangover and the knocking sound was getting louder. He had stayed up late with some old friends who worked at a base near Colorado.
He thought to himself as he became more awake, What is that? Just shoot the Goa'uld and be done with it!
The knocking sound stopped. He started to drift back into sleep into a dream where a Goa'uld had been shot with a handgun and there was silence. Just as he jumped in a run, into a Stargate, something shattered the dream and his mind reeled at what it was hearing now. In his dream, he started falling into a darkness that had no defined shape. Jack seen flashed of images of Sam getting married to Pete and his anger stirred him closer to consciousness along with a new sound.
What the Hel? Jack leaned over and started pushing all the buttons on his alarm clock, but it would not shut off. That was when he knew it was his phone and not the clock making the ominous noise.
Jack fumbled with the receiver of the phone before he got it to his mouth, "Yea?"
"Hi, sir. I'm at your front door." The female voice paused, "Could ya let me in?"
"What time is it?" Jack coughed out.
"It's around seven in the morning. Are you still asleep? I thought you normally get up around six-thirty." The voice questioned.
"Yeaaa, I'm up now. If I was still asleep, I would have been on the other side of the Stargate by now sipping a drink by the river." Jack sputtered out as he sat up on the side of his bed still groggy.
"What? Ahh, I can come back later. I didn't mean to wake you up."
"No, don't be silly. Just hold on a minute." Jack hung up the phone and disappeared in the bathroom for a few minutes.
Jack opened his front door with his hair sticking out in several directions as he stared blankly at the woman on his doorstep. "Well, come on in. What's up?" Baby pop? A little 'Sex in the City' flashback, good thing I didn't say that out loud, Jack thought. He had been conned into watching two half hour episodes of the show by Anise who seamed to find the show amusing. She had told him that the show gave her better incite into human sexuality. Jack found it humorous that Teal'c had been recording the show for her when he was in his apartment. Now, he was the one recording it for her to watch when she came in some weekends.
Sam smiled as she followed him into the kitchen, "You got something yesterday."
"Yea, I know. My new flat top stove was delivered and installed, look."
He turned one of the burners on and she seen the smooth black surface start to glow red just under the surface. "Sorry." Jack turned it back off.
"No, that was not what I meant." Sam watched as Jack started making coffee. "Can I get a cup too?"
"Yea, just takes a minute. What did you mean then by I got something then if it was not the stove? Did I win a door prize from a Tok'ra Stargate?" He turned his back, pored in the water, and turned the coffee pot on.
Sam set a plastic bag down on the stove just as Jack turned back around. "A little gift you have been waiting for."
Jack noticed she put a bag on the stove. He thought that it was partially on the burner he had just turned on. "Aaaaaahhh" He grabbed the bag and slid it to the side, which caused it to go over the burner that had been on and it singed the plastic to the surface of the new stove.
"Sir, are you ok? I didn't put it on the part that was still hot, but you moved it and now it is." Sam started trying to scrape off the plastic with a wooden cooking spoon that was melted on the surface.
"Oh, just leave it. I'm the one that did it. I'll fix it later after I have a cup of coffee." He held the melted bag and reached in to see what she brought as they walked back to the living room.
"It's something I had a friend of mine send over. It's not even in the stores yet." Sam smiled as she opened another bag and handed him a bacon egg biscuit. "Oh, I also got ya a biscuit, so you don't have to eat Fruit Loops. I know how much you hate them.
"NO!" He set the biscuit aside, ripped the paper off of a little flat box, and reached inside. "It is. You got Halo 2 for me? Cool!"
Jack changed his direction to the den where his X-Box was at and popped it in. "I can't believe you got this. They kept delaying it coming out."
Both of them sat down on a couch as the military game began. An hour later, they had blasted their way through a couple of levels. They both commented on how the graphics were better and things they had wanted to do on the first one were now in the second one.
Sam paused as it loaded the next chapter with more detailed story lines. "Hey, want to go online and play the game once it comes out in the stores?"
"We could get people from the SGC to go online too and we could all play Halo 2 together. This is sooooooo coooooool!"
After another hour, they stopped to take a break as Sam pointed out her hands were feeling numb from gripping the control to hard.
Sam got another cup of coffee and joined Jack on his deck. "Sir, have you ever noticed that Halo 2 kind of makes you think of our work at the SGC. It uses teleporters, the humans are in the military and run around with weapons like ours, and the fighting is at Earth, other alien crafts, and worlds. On the game, the humans are fighting to stop the aliens from taking over our planet and from activating the Halo ring that could end all life, as we know it. It makes you think."
"Good point Carter, but you forgot the most important one." Jack raised his eyebrows and smirked.
"Yea, what's that? Is it that in the end all beings will fight to protect the things and people they have come to love from those who would destroy it?" Sam sat down in a chair and propped her feet up looking out into the trees.
Jack sipped his coffee, "Nope, the aliens we fight in real life and the aliens on the game have those cool zapping guns that we don't."
Sam giggled knowing he liked to keep things light when all possible, but she needed to change that. What she truly needed to do was talk out in the open to him about how she felt about everything that was happening in their lives. She had been face to face with the fact that life was short and at any moment, it could be taken away by an evil enemy or an act of nature. What she needed was to talk to Jack about her feelings for him once and for all.
Sam shifted in her seat and peered into Jack's stormy eyes, "I think there is something we need to talk about."
"The way the new controls on the game kind of make your aim shake when you pick up two M7 Caseless SMGs and fire. All the bullets out there flying in the air, works great. One thing is that the Lego guys are still hard as Hel to kill."
Sam picked up the book that came inside the metal Halo 2 Limited Collector's Edition case. She flipped to page four. "You mean the large Lekgolo. They have the spikes and shoot the green fuel rod guns. I think they also call them hunters."
"Yea, them and the jiggy guys with the shields."
"You mean the Kig-yar?" Sam smiled and turned the page.
"Yea, yea, you know which ones I'm talking about. Hey, lets go see if we can change the color of our uniforms on the game. I'm kind of an orange color, and I don't like that."
Sam read the 33-page booklet and glanced at the four games highlighted in the back. "Sir, if you go back to the screen just before that…"
"Come on Carter, you like to read and learn it that way. I like to use something and learn it that way. Let me do my thing. Here we go. I think I like the Sage color for my body armor and red for the guns. Now for the symbol on my shoulder." He reviewed all of them and came back to one called vortex. "I think I like this symbol since they don't have a Stargate on here to wear as my patch."
"Yea, that would be great if they had the symbol for Earth or one that looked close to it. Ok, my turn to change my colors and settings." Sam took a controller and flipped over to pick out a color.
"I have an idea," Jack pointed at the screen. "You could be pink with purple weapons and use the kiss symbol for the shoulder." He started laughing till she picked blue for her color and a sword with wings for her emblem. "Hey, that looks good! I like where the color changes a little from the top to the bottom on the patch."
A few hours later, they were so wrapped up in the game that they did not hear the knocks at the door. The person finally left.
Jack yelled at the screen. "He killed me! I sliced him with a sword, and he killed me."
"Hold on sir, I'll run back in the other direction and bring you back." Sam started leaning in the direction she was making her figure on the screen go. Jack watched her clench her teeth to evade an enemy and the Flood who was hot on her tail.
He remembered his dream that morning as she knocked on his door. An image of her getting married to Pete flashed in his mind. Does Pete truly understand how wonderfully precious and strong she is? Jack contemplated while still staring at her if she would still hang out with him once she got married. He then remembered her saying they should play the game online once it comes out in the stores and accepted that their camaraderie might keep them together at least in some ways.
"Sir, your back."
"What?"
"I got away from the fight, and it let you come back. You take the Scorpion MBT, and I'll take the Ghost with the cannons. First, I'll have to kick the guy out of the Ghost. It looks like out guys have a Warthog LAAV with the Gauss Cannon." Once again, Sam got the feeling that something was not right, as the General appeared distracted. She paused the game.
"Sir, there is another reason why I came over here." Sam had a grim expression on her face. At that moment, her cell phone rang. "Hello? Hi, Pete."
Jack still held his controller and watched her sporadically on the cell phone.
Sam shook her head. "Yea, I'm at Jack's. You were here? Well, I guess we had the volume up cause we are playing on the X-Box. No, that's ok, no, hu? Yes, no…no, ok. I'll see ya later today. Bye."
Jack listened to her use his first name as she answered little questions that Pete was asking her as he noticed she was touching the place on her arm where a fence had cut her some time ago. He started remembering when he seen that truck almost run her over and the rage that filled him at the thought of a drunk killing her with his truck. Thankfully, Anise was there with her Tok'ra medical device to stop the bleeding on her arm and fix the scar later that formed. The guy and his friend had called her stupid after he had almost killed her and her friend who looked similar to the way Janet had. He tightened the grip on his controller as he remembered Teal'c, Daniel, Pete, and Bubo helping him beat the two idiots and their friends into the ground.
Jack took a deep breath as he seen her hang up her cell and stare off into another room. He followed her gaze and remembered the time when a device had caused time to replay every ten hours. With a hint from Daniel, he and Teal'c had taken a week to do whatever they wanted before solving the problem once and for all. Only Teal's and Jack had memories of the repeated days and used it for their advantage in helping Daniel translate the text. Jack smirked as he remembered turning in his resignation papers then kissing Sam in front of everyone. It was probably wrong, but it was not the first time they had kissed and at the time, he hoped it would not be the last.
A/N: Well, Lets see what happens shall we.
What ya think so far?
Smile at the Stargate,
Leia