One More Try by Betty Bokor
Sam/Daniel. Daniel has a heartbreaking secret and needs to share it with Sam.
Spoilers: All seasons, including 9 and 10.
Disclaimer: The Stargate original characters belong to MGM/Showtime, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Film Corp. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.

One More Try

Chapter 1

The last few days had been trying for Sam. The pain of losing Orlin, once again, had reawakened the ache for everyone she had lost in the previous nine years. Losing Orlin had been different this time. All the feelings that Orlin had provoked in her the first time around had rapidly transformed into some kind of maternal instinct when faced with his new embodiment. If any good had come from the events of the last two weeks, the best part had been finishing the weapon that could help them battle the Ori. Actually, almost the best. When she thought about it, it was what Daniel had done that had given her the comfort she so desperately needed in her heart.

She stopped working for a few minutes to meditate on it. After days of concentrating on the weapon and the renewed presence of Orlin in her life, she had paid attention to Daniel for the first time in a long while that day when Dr. Lam had explained that the young boy probably would not survive the night. Sam had been devastated and unable to come up with anything that could help him. That was when Daniel had requested that Dr. Lam give Orlin some medication that would enable him to talk with them. The physician had objected, but Daniel had remained adamant and she had finally agreed. After the patient had awakened, Daniel had sat in front of him and quietly talked in the Ancient language for a long while. Suddenly, the room had filled with light and both figures, Daniel and Orlin, had momentarily disappeared from the view of all of the spectators in the observation room. Seconds later, the light had divided in two, part of it going upward and part of it remaining in the middle of the room. In a moment, Daniel had been visible again, all light gone, and had collapsed unconscious on the floor.

Sam's heart hurt remembering that second when she had thought that Daniel was gone. However, she tried not to dwell on those feelings and rejoiced that, after the ordeal, he had been all right. He had explained that he had merely helped Orlin remember how to ascend because he was sure the Others were not going to help him. Sam believed that there was more to it, especially since Daniel had been able to guide her in finishing the weapon against the Ori, something she had not really revealed to anyone.

She decided it was time to leave the Mountain and go home to get ready. After all, Daniel had asked her to have dinner with him at his house that night because he had something "very serious" to talk about. She wondered what it could be, but decided it would be better to wait and see.

A few minutes after 8:00, she knocked at his door. He had cooked a delicious dinner and bought some wonderful strawberries covered with chocolate for dessert. The conversation had been light all night, light in their terms anyway, because probably the rest of the mere mortals of this planet (and many others) could not have understood many of the topics they discussed together. When dinner was finished and they had put away the dishes, Daniel served some hot coffee and they sat on the sofa to talk again. This time Daniel's face was very serious and Sam felt apprehension beginning to grab her heart.

"I wanted to see you tonight, Sam, because there's something very important that I need you to know. I already talked about it with Jack, last Saturday, when he came for that ceremony at the Base, and I also told Teal'c, and Cameron… and General Landry… Wow, it gets harder by the minute…"

"Come on, Daniel. What is it? Why can't you tell me? It looks like you have already told everybody else," Sam said, with a little bit of disappointment in her voice.

"I don't know why it's harder to tell you. You're as much a part of my family as Jack and Teal'c. It's just…"

"Thank you", interrupted Sam. "I also feel that you're my family, Daniel."

"All right then… Sam… I'm… I'm dying… I…"

"What! What did you say?" yelled Sam.

"Sam, listen to me, please." He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears and knew immediately why it was so difficult to tell her this. "I have a tumor, in my brain. They cannot remove it surgically and it keeps growing, so…"

"That's not possible," said Sam, more to try and convince herself than because she actually believed it. "There must be something that can be done."

"Sam, before burdening all of you with this, I explored all the possibilities. You know me, Sam. I wouldn't be here telling you this if there were any chance of fixing it. Dr. Lam believes it's a consequence of what I did for Orlin, and she's probably right, but…"

Sam could not control herself any longer and started sobbing quietly. Daniel moved near her and embraced her softly. She put her head on his shoulder and kept crying.

"I'm so sorry, Sam, that I'm the cause of your pain. I wish there was something I could do or say to help you."

Sam straightened suddenly and looked at him surprised. "You want to help me, Daniel? For goodness sake! I should be trying to help you! It's not your fault that you're sick! It's not your fault that I'm crying! It's just that… I just can't bear the idea of losing you again." Her eyes filled with tears one more time and Daniel hugged her again. They remained that way for a while, Sam crying softly on his shoulder and Daniel quietly stroking her short hair.

Then, as if lightening had struck her, Sam sat up straight, looked at Daniel in the eyes and asked, "You're going to ascend, right, and then come back to us?"

Daniel lowered his eyes and said softly, "No, Sam, not this time."

"Why? Why not? Don't tell me it's because Oma is busy with Anubis. I know you can do it without help. The last time you descended on your own; I'm sure the Others did not pay any attention to you, if they are as you told me. And you didn't lose your memory this time. So, that means that you could ascend and if you don't, it's just because you don't want to!" Sam finished almost shouting.

"It's true, Sam," he said sadly. "Everything you said is true. I just couldn't let anyone else know. They would have taken me who knows where."

"But why don't you want to come back to us?"

"It's not that I don't want to come back, I just… I don't really want to die; I simply want to let go. I am so tired, Sam…" Her eyes kept staring at him without comprehending, so he went on. "Not physically; it's different. I can feel I'm dying… I have died so many times before… and I don't want to fight it anymore. I know that I didn't find happiness when I was ascended, and I can't keep playing this game of coming back to my new old body every time things go wrong. I want to just let go, cross the bridge, follow the light and be done with it."

She could not stop looking at him. She could not believe- no, she could not understand what he was saying. That was so selfish; he was not thinking of all the others that would have to stay and mourn his absence. He was not thinking of all the pain he was going to cause them, that he was going to cause her. She had to make him understand.

"Listen to me, Daniel. You can't do this. You have to fight this. Ascend, descend, whatever it takes."

"Sam…"

"No, no, listen to me. You can't leave us again, you can't die, you can't leave me…" Her sobs interrupted her and seconds later she was once more in Daniel's arms. She clung tightly to him, as if he were going to die right then. "The first time I thought you were dead, when Nem took you, I felt so much pain… and I had only known you for such a short time… But you had already become part of my family; you were my friend, my brother. When you ascended after Kelowna, I couldn't get over it. No matter what everybody said, I kept going back to that moment, trying to think what could have been done to prevent you from getting hurt. I understood why you chose to ascend. It was that or dying, because there was no way that you'd accept coming back to a mangled body, which is the only thing that my father could have given you if he had kept using the healing device. I understood, but I couldn't get over it. This last time, the only thing that kept me going was the uncertainty. As long as I didn't know for sure, you could be alive, somewhere safe, far from the malignant creature that I allowed to escape."

"Sam, that wasn't your fault."

"She wouldn't have killed you if I had stopped her in the first place."

"Sam, let's not talk about that. She's gone. I don't want you to suffer because of me. I think that our biggest problem is that all these years we've been saving the world over and over again and we have completely forgotten about ourselves. We don't have a life outside the SGC. We don't have our own families." He softly put his hands on her shoulders and moved her slightly away from him before adding, "I think you have to forget about me and concentrate on Jack. He's not exactly in the same chain of command as you anymore. Why don't you two stop playing games and face what you feel and make a life for yourselves?"

Sam looked at him, surprised.

"Come on, Sam. Everybody knows. That's why you broke up with Pete. If you want to know the truth, I was happy when you found Pete; I thought you were going to have some semblance of a normal life with him. Now you can do it with Jack. You have already proven that you would be willing to leave the SGC when you did it for Cassie. You probably wouldn't have seen me for a very long time if I had gone to Atlantis, and that didn't hurt you. You had other, more important things on your mind. Think of that."

Sam was trying to process all that Daniel had been saying so fast. Jack? What did he mean, 'everybody knew?'

"Sam, you're braver that Jack about this sort of things. You almost told him the day your father got sick. If Agent Johnson hadn't been there…"

"Daniel, stop. Jack told you that about the barbecue day? That was what he thought?" Daniel nodded. "Well, that's not exactly what I was going to tell him. Oh, goodness… I haven't confided much in you lately, have I? What a best friend I've been! Preoccupied solely with myself and my little pathetic life. I didn't talk to you much about Pete, did I? It sort of made me feel uncomfortable to discuss that with you; I don't know why, but I told Jack… Do you think I was trying to make him react, say something, show jealousy? Anyway, it's time to make up for my lack of trust."

Daniel tried to protest, but Sam made a gesture and continued. "That day I wanted to talk with him about Pete, about why I had felt that it was wrong to go ahead with the marriage. I've felt this strange attraction to Jack for the longest time. We've been playing a game. He flirts, I react. He flirts again, I keep it going…eHe That day, after I left Pete, and I really acted like a spoiled brat, complaining about him not been as devastated as I thought he ought to be, I sat down and, for the first time, I thought seriously about Jack. I tried to imagine us together. I even thought of how he'd make me feel in bed, but I always ended up imagining how he would summarily dismiss any half-intelligent comment I tried to make about what happened during the day or at work. I'm not saying that he's not intelligent, because we both know his dumbness is a charade. I simply envisioned countless weekends eating pizza on the sofa, drinking beer, and watching hockey, or worse, fishing in an empty pond in Minnesota. I couldn't imagine us doing any of those things you and I do together, you know, like when we go to a concert or we spend an afternoon discussing the movie we just watched." She was not looking at him anymore; it looked like she was putting her thoughts in order as she talked. "I think he still loves Sara; and I also think that we could never have a stable, lasting relationship." She looked straight into his eyes then. "That's all I wanted to tell him. I wanted to stop the game. Now, he's in Washington and I don't have to worry about it anymore." Sam finished.

Daniel was surprised, but he understood completely what she was saying. He had been ready to support her relationship with Jack if it made her happy, even though it kind of bothered him at some level he could not really understand, but now that problem had been solved. He was still thinking about how he was going to help her be happy when Sam started crying one more time.

"Oh, I did it again. I got so self-involved in my own drama that I forgot why we're here tonight."

"We'll think of something, Sam. You need to stop crying and think of all the things you have going for yourself. Think about Cassie, of how she needs you now more than ever. Believe that you'll find someone special and maybe even have a child." He lifted her chin to make her look at him. "Wouldn't you like that? To have a baby and prove that even after all we've seen, we have hope enough in this world to bring another life to it? All these years I've been thinking that it was better that Sha're and I didn't have children –can you imagine how much they could have suffered?– but it's the biggest regret I have about my life… That I never knew the joy of having a child. There mustn't be anything else like that, don't you think?"

Sam was dizzy from the way Daniel's brain was jumping from one thing to another and, at the same time, her own was spawning ideas that she had never contemplated before. Daniel was talking again.

"I don't want you to go home alone and keep crying, so I'm going to prepare my bedroom for you and I'm going to sleep here on the sofa." He stood up and started leading her to the master bedroom. "My guest room is a mess, full of books and papers everywhere; you know I never have any guests. You'll be fine here. Use the restroom if you need. You can wear one of my pajamas to sleep in, just a little big…" He added while he took the clothes out of a drawer.

Sam stopped on her way to the bathroom and said, "Would you stay with me, you know, just by my side, like if we were on a mission. I want to be near you tonight."

Daniel looked at her and could not resist when he saw the sadness in her eyes. "All right. I'll use the other bathroom to get ready and I'll come back. Okay?"

She nodded and he left. A few minutes later, he came back and got in bed by her side. He stretched his arm out and she put her head on his chest. Quietly they both started to drift into a light sleep. Daniel kept his arm around Sam and was about to lose his battle with unconsciousness, when Sam slightly lifted her head and tried to look at him in the dark. Then she dropped a naquadah bomb in Daniel's lap.

"Daniel, would you let me have a baby with you?"

"Wh-what?" He said while turning on the bedside lamp to be able to look at her. "What did you say?"

"I said that I'd love to have your baby."

"But, Sam, you know I won't be around for too much longer. Dr. Lam doesn't know how long; the tumor is unpredictable, nothing she's seen before, but all the doctors agreed it wouldn't be too long… Maybe some months… or just weeks…"

"Oh, Daniel, I understand, but that's why we have to do it. You're right; I want to have a baby. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. What do they say about the ticking clock? I do. I do want it, and you're the only person in the world I can even imagine to be the father. I thought that if I got together with Jack I wouldn't have any chance. I don't think he wants another child; he's been through that. But you, you'd be perfect, for as long as you have, and then I'd take care of him. I'd leave SG-1 and request a desk job. Hey, even resign my commission if necessary."

She was talking fast and sounded so excited that he was amazed. He could not think of what to say. It was an honor that she wanted him for the father. He knew she would be a great mother; he even thought that she was better to Cassie than Janet had been. No, he could not deny her that if that was what she wanted. Actually, he did not think he could deny her anything.

"Daniel? Are you listening to me? Have I offended you? I'm sorry."

"No, Sam," he interrupted her. "You haven't offended me. On the contrary, I'm honored. If that's what you really want, I'll do it. However, although I know we don't have much time left, I don't want to rush things. Why don't you think about it a little bit more and then you tell me what you have decided? Either way, I will accept it, and then, if we have to, we can talk about the logistics of the matter. All right?"

Sam smiled and nodded. He turned off the light, kissed her forehead and said his goodnight. She laid her head on his chest again and went to sleep thinking that she had found a way to keep Daniel with her forever.

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