Title: A Time to Concede
Author: MissAnnThropic
Spoilers: Season 7
Summary: Samantha Carter's life being the last remaining member of SG-1.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Stargate but my rabid fan behavior. Alas.

You get to a point in life when certain small things take on such monumental meaning that it can really put a new spin on the perspective from which you view the so-called 'bigger picture'. For me, it's become this, a doughnut at 0500 with Jennifer before the work-day starts.

Jennifer Haley is sitting in my office across from me, a box of doughnuts open on my desk. It is habit for us each to eat only one, the rest we leave out in the commissary for the early-rising airmen struggling in from warm beds and comfortable homes to fight over. I doubt any of them realize where the lone box of doughnuts, always containing exactly ten, comes from, but then at their age and rank it's one of those questions never asked.

Jennifer picks at her plain glazed pastry, quiet. We do this, our conversations so often long pauses where we each think to ourselves. Sometimes her mind runs in circles mine doesn't, as mine can go places hers won't, and we've learned over the years it's a bad idea to try to force a meeting of the two, honey and vinegar. Sometimes we bicker about who's vinegar... years ago, with laughs, we both agreed it was Jennifer. Now, it's more likely to be me.

Jennifer has mellowed so much it's an incredible contrast to the rash, hot-tempered lieutenant she used to be. That was before age tamed her, and before the accident that got her an honorable dismissal from the military on medical grounds. She stayed on as a civilian scientist because a mind like Haley's you grab with both hands and refuse to let go. I know Jennifer misses the adventure of the military lifestyle, but she's adjusted well to being one of the lab geeks, and it suits her. She's a brilliant woman and only here, at the SGC, can her imagination know no boundaries.

Even though I feel for her losing her military career, right now I could not imagine her as one of my subordinates. I couldn't imagine going through the work day without this. Jennifer has become a true friend, a surprise despite our differences in age, but then, age never did factor much into my considerations when it came to people. Technically Jennifer's under my command, but not in an Air Force capacity and that makes it different. It makes it okay for me to call her 'Jennifer' and to spend free time with her. Not since Janet have I had another female I could talk 'girl talk' with the way I do with Jennifer Haley.

"You amaze me, Sam."

I blink up at Jennifer, startled from quiet thought and my own jelly-filled doughnut. Jennifer's matured into a beautiful woman; when she lost the chip off her shoulder she was a very witty, pleasant person underneath.

"How did I manage to do that?" I ask, enjoying the quiet of the early morning before the general chaos of the SGC breaks into our peace.

Jennifer gives a warm, sympathetic smile, and answers, "You've taken a lot in stride, suffered a lot without fumbling."

I like that about Jennifer maybe most of all. She has always maintained her brutal honesty, her vicious directness. To others it looks obstinate and arrogant, and I guess some of those vices may have carried over from Jennifer's youth, but mostly it's refreshing. I wonder if this is why General Hammond for so long put up with Colonel O'Neill's cynicism and flippancy.

I swallow. "I'll hit a point where it's too much to take, but I haven't gotten there yet."

Jennifer smiles at me again, "Then your threshold tolerance impresses me. I thought... a lot of people on base thought, after Daniel..."

I frown, eyes falling to the half-eaten doughnut on my table. The corners of my eye catch the light blue button shirt I'm wearing, the barest flickers of light reflecting off the silver star on each of my shoulders.

I look up at my friend, and she's ready to wait all day if she needs to. Patience is something she picked up later, but boy did she learn it in spades. Although I suspect it's selective, reserved for me and her fellow scientists... at least the ones she deems on par with her. It's a little self-inflated, but when you're as smart as Jennifer you can get away with an attitude. That she has the balls to storm and rant at men twice her size because they're too 'dumb' to grasp her theories I find kind of amusing. I guess I still have some issues from being the 'girl' in the boys' club all my military career and for that I can't help silently being Jennifer's cheer-leader. She has more spunk than even I did.

But now I'm avoiding the issue... Daniel.

"Daniel... he made his choice, and if I'd been in his place I might have done the same thing."

Jennifer shakes her head, "I can't imagine you ever giving up, Sam. No matter what, no matter how many treatments and trips to the hospital it took, I can't imagine you ever throwing in the towel."

I have to smile gently at that. Even if we're friends, I can't help but think Jennifer has a little hero-worship for me. Churned from the cauldron of earlier standoffish jealousy; she thinks more of me than I warrant. She gives me more credit than I deserve, and she doesn't even suspect she does.

"If you'd seen Daniel in the hospital, time after time, and what it did to him, you might not say that. He was tired, and he knew it was a losing battle. I admire him for doing what he did, considering the circumstances."

"You admire him up and running away? Heading off to Egypt with his tail between his legs?" Jennifer says with a frown.

God, was I ever like that? Had standing one's ground and fighting the good fight once been so inviolate to me? Damn, I'm starting to feel old.

"I admire him having the courage to realize he was running out of time and just saying 'to hell with it' and doing what he loved for what little time he had left."

"I... suppose. I didn't think of it that way."

Of course she didn't, but when she's older, she might think back on this very conversation and find herself on my side of the desk.

"I kept in touch with him at the dig via satellite phone and for the last few weeks he was happy. He was sick, but he was content. I only hope I go as gracefully."

Jennifer becomes distinctly uncomfortable, shifting and setting the remains of her doughnut on the edge of my desk.

"Is it scary?"

'Scary'? Now that's a word I haven't used in ages, nor heard. It seems you hit a certain point where 'scary' is not the word to use anymore. You can be concerned, worried, troubled, but scared drops from your vocabulary after a certain age... or maybe it's a certain rank.

"Is what scary?"

Jennifer goes for the jugular again, "Being the last member of SG-1 left."

I say evenly, without flinching, "SG-1 is perfectly healthy, currently on stand-down after completion of a successful mission."

Jennifer looks sharply at me, "That's not what I mean, Sam, and you know it. I mean YOUR SG-1, the original team. Does it scare you being the only one left?"

I want to find a way not to answer this, but Jennifer is tenacious if nothing else and she's not going to be distracted. Of course, I could outright refuse to answer, but I rarely do that with Jennifer. She's become a moral sounding board for me, the youth and idealism off of which I rebound my aged and high-ranking notions.

"It's not scary... it's lonely." I don't say anything, and Jennifer mercifully remains quiet. I don't know if she was expecting more than that, maybe a Teflon exterior of a stiff upper-lip position, but damnit, I do miss them. I miss Teal'c and Jack and now Daniel, and sometimes I'm angry that they left me to be the last.

"There was some talk through the ranks after news about Daniel came in that you might consider retirement."

I did, for a split second, then I realized being at home wouldn't change anything. I could either go to work and miss them or waste away at home all day and miss them, and at least here there are distractions and I have things to do. And commanding the SGC is the biggest distraction anyone could ever ask for.

"There's a few miles yet left in this old crow, Jennifer."

Jennifer laughs, "A few lights years I'd suspect, but then I know you better than the rest do."

Yes, you do, Jennifer. Now that Daniel, Teal'c, and Jack are gone you know me better than anyone.

"When the fight goes out of me I'll know it, and when that time comes I'll step down so someone else with a little more spirit can take up the gauntlet."

Jennifer smiles, "Sounds to me like we're going to have a four-star general ensconced in this command."

I laugh back. Four stars? Shit, I was shocked I made brigadier general. Sometimes I get dressed for work and look at my brass and think it's some joke being played on me. Not because I didn't work my ass off to get here, but because I can never forget someone else better qualified for leadership than me who never made it here, who never got to wear the stars while deserving them so much more than me.

Jennifer looks at the clock and stands, taking the box of uneaten doughnuts to shuttle them down to the commissary. "Aren't we supposed to be getting some new recruits in today?"

I nod, glancing at the stack of files on the corner of my desk of the new personnel being brought in. I remember when Jennifer Haley had been one of that group, a bright-eyed newbie ready for adventure. It gets a little harder each year, and each year the new arrivals seem a little younger.

"Yeah..."

Jennifer smiles at my wearied, tense voice. "I'll come by after work and we'll have a girls' night out, okay?"

I smile my gratitude at her. Sometimes I feel like the widowed old woman that Haley feels she has to keep company. Sometimes it does seem like she's looking out for me, and I've tried before to turn her down and insist she set up some kind of social circle, find herself a man, settle down, do all the things I neglected to do until it was too late. Jennifer just gave me a brusque rebuttal every time for my laments about her personal life. She's alone and doesn't seem to care. She's too much like me when I was her age, and when I try to imagine her future I can see her ending up in a place very much like mine now.

We're a rare breed, she and I, but it seems in every generation there are a few. Statistical outliers, that's us... there should be a club for people like Jennifer and me. It would be a sad state of affairs, and would probably end in us all bemoaning the simple things we denied ourselves.

Jennifer is gone, leaving me alone, and I turn to my paperwork, reposed and quiet.

I'm on my way to the surface to meet the new recruits. There are ten of them, fresh out of the Air Force Academy. I've read their qualifications, their academic marks, their achievements, and, as I do with every new group, I went through all this information without looking at the name or sex of the recruit. Maybe it's because I remember being a woman in the Air Force and what it was like having to fight harder than the guys for half the respect, but it's become an issue to me now that I'm in charge. I also remember the hell I went through being the daughter of Jacob Carter, the name 'Carter' alone putting me through so much shit I didn't deserve. I don't want to know what ethnicity, gender, or family someone is when I sign off to their transfer to the SGC. Merits and marks, that's all that matters, even though that fact had escaped me for so long when I was younger.

Topside, I walk the well-worn path to the visitors' reception area. When I open the door I have to blink at the mass of fatigue-wearing children within. Eventually they see me and jerk to attention, and within two seconds you could hear a pin drop.

I order them to take their seats and I start through my well-practiced speech about the SGC, the nature of the work, and the commitment expected of each officer and enlisted person who enters into service at the mountain. I see rows of eager, young faces and I'm bittersweet.

After taking a few questions I call for an officer to come and escort the group of new SGC personnel down to the base for the grand tour. With quiet shuffling the new arrivals stand and start toward the door to await their guide.

I'm gathering up the last of my presentation material, head down and thoughts a slow clogging in my head, when I hear a soft, low voice, "Hey, Carter."

My eyes jerk up at the horribly familiar timbre and tone and I find myself staring into the face of one of the new recruits. I see only a young, thin frame at first, the blue fatigues and the lieutenant's bar on each lapel, then it's just a face, like so many other childish visages I've seen come and go, and then it's brown eyes, brown hair, a mouth quirked upward in a tentative, careful smile that I would know anywhere.

And my heart stops and everything aches because I'm looking at Jack O'Neill.

I gape in silence a time, mouth moving in a vain effort to form words, and I have to look down at my notes. I sneak a surreptitious glance at my information sheet and run down the names of the recruits and I find him there, 'O'Neill, Jonathan,' and I'm broad-sided and flustered. Damnit, I could have seen this coming, I could have known, but my policy of equal opportunity blinded me and now here I am, dizzy and weak before a fresh lieutenant.

I look back at the young man before me and I measure the differences. Last time I saw him he was a young teenager, an irate clone of Colonel Jack O'Neill, and after he left the mountain and disappeared from all our lives I gave him no more thought.

I should have seen this coming, I should have been prepared to face Jack O'Neill again, this Jack O'Neill, because I never questioned that if my Jack could have done it all over again he would still have gone Air Force and that his ultimate goal would be to get back into the Stargate program. It's what the Jack I served under would have done; my mistake was in assuming, at some point, that these two men were different. This is, psychologically and emotionally, so much the same Jack O'Neill I knew.

This man is older than the acne-ridden clone I first met, grown now, and even though I had never known the original Jack O'Neill at this age he is still unmistakable.

"Jack," I finally manage to say, and calling him by first name feels so odd but he's not 'Colonel' and I don't think I could call anyone with Jack's face 'Lieutenant'.

Jack's careful smile becomes a little more genuine and he casts a short look at the retreating backs of his classmates. The officer at the door looks in at me, wondering if he needs to round up this errant young man that's cornered me, but I shake my head and we're left alone. Jack knows his way around the base; when a place is built into a mountain there's not a lot of room afterward for expansion and change over time. I dare say that the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is exactly as this Jack remembers it.

I look back at Jack and I want to cry. For the first time in years, for something so seemingly innocuous, I want to cry in the face of this impish ghost. He's become a handsome young man, and I know that he'll only get better because I've seen it.

"So... General Carter. Must get confusing when Dad's on base."

I crack a thin smile. He's right, it is. Dad, thanks to Selmac, is as healthy and vigorous as the day Selmac healed him, and when he comes to the SGC there are two General Carters running around. Damnit, did this Jack have to remember that, still be so embedded in the intimate details of my life and the life within the SGC?

"How have you been?" I ask lamely.

Jack stuffs his hands in his pockets, rolls up on the balls of his feet, and my fingers clutch tighter around the folders in my hand.

"Ahhh... well, I would say 'you know how it is' but no one else does know what it's like to live your life over again. It's..." he frowns and I can already see the beginning of the crease on his brow I knew so well in his predecessor, and he sighs, "I'm glad to be back."

I smile a little easier this time, because on basic principle I can understand the desire to be back at the SGC. "Well, you... you look good." I feel perverted saying that to him, looking as young as he does, but damnit he does look good. He looks alive.

Jack turns deep, familiar eyes to me and sincerity weighs down his words, "You too."

My heart does something strange then I'll never understand, maybe because it's hard to flip and crush at once.

He's standing before me, a strapping young specimen mimicking a seasoned soldier I knew very well what feels like so long ago, and I don't know what to do. I made my peace with losing him years ago and now he's standing in front of me, younger but still Jack O'Neill in so many ways. Jack O'Neill in enough ways.

"I should have known you'd work your way back into the Stargate program," I offer as conversation.

Jack rolls his eyes and god damnit, that fucking hurts.

"It was annoying as hell, you have any idea what going through the academy after all I already knew was like? I had to take test after stupid test just to get them to let me come home."

Home... the SGC.

"I read your file," and he looks at me and I stutter a moment under his gaze, "you weren't passed through because you were... are... I read every recruit's file and no one is here who didn't prove themselves academically." When Jack... before he died... I'd always known he was smarter than he let on, though I couldn't imagine why he'd play dumb.

Jack looks at me a moment and it becomes a teasing, playful expression so familiar, that I have not seen in so long, that I almost look away because I'm drowning in it all.

"Well, I didn't have you around to take care of all the hard science stuff for me so I had to buck up and do my own work. Although it helps when, owing to personal experience, you know more than most of the professors. Must be what it was like to be you in school."

I find myself chuckling, albeit a little nervously, and I realize he still has Jack O'Neill's sense of humor, and it still gets to me. Differences in experience weren't enough to change that, just as they had failed to change his subtle expressions, his voice, his face, his body.

And then I'm standing there thinking about Teal'c and Daniel and the colonel, and of all the other things I'll have to tell him that he's missed, catch him up on a lifetime, and my blood goes cold.

He seems to read my change in resolve, my shift in mood, and he's just as sensitive to it as the first Jack had been. That hasn't changed in this Jack, either.

"Well, I better go catch up with the others. Can I come by your office later?"

I blink once at him, resolute, and I only answer, "I have some things to take care of, I'll... I'll find you." For a fleeting second it's an effort for me not to add the word 'sir'.

He considers me a moment with eyes that are aged with experience and wisdom beyond his body, and then he gives me a nod and smile and heads out of the room with an easy stride that haunts me.

I stand in the empty reception room for what feels like hours, trying to gather my composure.

When at last I can breathe, when my hands stop shaking, I calmly pick up my papers and files and head toward the elevators, my office my destination.

I have a letter of resignation to type up and a military life to pack.

This command just became too much.

END