"Sir, would you hand me that vase? I've got a good spot for it."
Jack O'Neill obligingly handed his former second a red vase off the coffee table. "Carter, you know you don't have to do this."
"I know, sir." He watched her closely as she moved around her father's barely-used apartment, putting his things carefully into boxes. "But I'd have to sort through it all at some point, even if I let the military movers take care of it. Might as well do it now."
"Sure." He'd never understood why Jacob kept his own place in Colorado Springs, as little as he was home, but he supposed it had at least given the man a place to put his stuff. What little stuff he'd had. It didn't look like Jacob was a trinket kind of man.
"Sam, I think you're gonna want to see this!" Daniel emerged from the guest bedroom with a small box – one he'd found, not one he'd packed. "Looks like a box of stuff you gave him."
He set the box on the now-empty coffee table and stepped back to let Sam rifle through it. "I… never gave him this," she said softly.
"It's all about you," Daniel replied.
She held up a binder. "A copy of my doctoral thesis? He wouldn't even know what to do with that. How did he get this stuff?"
"He must have been tracking you, Carter," Jack put in. "Jacob had a lot of friends in high places. It wouldn't have been hard."
A wide smile crossed her face as she pulled out a photograph. "Wow." She studied it for a minute, then passed it to Daniel.
A very young Sam Carter stood in a flight suit in front of a jet, surrounded by several other airmen. "Is this your plane?" Daniel asked. She rarely spoke of her time in the Gulf.
"Yeah. And my ground crew. Good guys."
"So, did you have a call sign, Sam?"
The smile grew. "Sure. Check out the nose art on the plane." Daniel looked at the front tip of the plane, but he didn't see anything. "No, Daniel, there."
The archaeologist squinted at the cartoon just ahead of the fuselage. "Is that… Inspector Gadget?"
Teal'c took the photo and studied it before handing it off to General O'Neill. "It is indeed."
Sam raised an eyebrow at the alien's TV habits, but moved on. "They named the plane 'Gadget' because not many were equipped with the infrared LANTIRN pods like mine. Without it, the F-16s could only fly day runs."
"And you were…"
"Do you remember Gadget's dog? The one who always got him out of trouble?"
"I believe the canine was named Brain," Teal'c put in.
Sam nodded. "That was me. Sucked for my wingman in training, though. Since I was Brain, he got stuck with Penny."
Daniel chuckled.
"O'Neill, you appear troubled."
Sam and Daniel glanced up to their former team leader and realized the Jaffa was right – the general was staring down at the photograph, a deep frown on his face.
"Sir?"
"It's not possible," he murmured.
"I don't follow, sir."
"I know this plane." He looked up, his gaze intense as it reached her face.
She gave him a small, uncomfortable smile. "It was fairly standard issue."
"No," he corrected her. "I know this plane."
Her mouth went slack, and the two stared at each other for a long moment.
"Sam?" Daniel finally asked. "I thought you two had never met."
"I… thought that, too. Sir, the odds…"
He nodded, still holding her gaze. "Yeah. Because the woman I pulled out of that plane never, ever should've lived."
The colonel couldn't suppress a shudder.
"Okay," Daniel said finally, "one of you is gonna have to spill it."
Sam finally wrenched her eyes away. "The F-16s were raiding almost daily near the end, taking out ground artillery and Iraqi strongholds. We had already lost a couple of pilots to surface-to-air missiles, and we knew the artillery posts would be rough."
Something occurred to her, and she abruptly raised her head. "This is all in my file, sir."
"You think he actually read it, Sam?" Daniel put in.
Jack hushed him with a hand. "Go on."
"On, um, February 23rd, they deployed sixteen pilots to a stronghold on the border. It was night, and we were flying low, and I got clipped. It sent me into a spin, and by the time I righted it, it was way too low to punch out. Last thing I remember, I was four miles over the Iraqi border, and the sand dunes were getting way too close. I was sure it was all over."
It was clearly a rough memory, and she retreated to the fridge, glancing inside. Obviously not finding what she wanted, she opened the cabinet above it and pulled out a bottle of Crown Royal.
"The last two F-16 pilots who had gone down were captured, and we knew they were being tortured," Jack spoke up.
Sam poured herself a shot and downed it.
"We scrambled quick – we only had four hours of darkness left after the call came in, and we dropped to the last given coordinates. The plane was two miles further into Iraq in pieces. Wings ripped off, nose in the cockpit. The thing had rolled multiple times." He glanced to where Carter stood, leaning hard against the kitchen counter. "The pilot didn't even look human."
The colonel cleared her throat. "The F-16's seat back was set at thirty degrees rather than thirteen, like most other fighters. It allowed for greater g-forces… and meant I broke just about every bone in my face as I rolled."
"Ouch," Daniel put in.
"They told me my rescue team came under heavy fire," Sam said softly.
Jack snorted. "You could say that. Kowalsky took a good hit to the shoulder, and the helo barely made it out of there, even under escort."
She shook her head. "I knew I should have been nicer to that man." Finally, she turned back around and looked up at her CO. "I never knew, sir."
"I didn't, either." A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Y'know, we wouldn't have given you so much crap if we'd known."
"Actually, I think you might have given her more," Daniel mumbled. "Women drivers and all that."
Sam pointedly ignored him.
"Is that when you began your work on the Stargate program, Colonel Carter?"
"Not right away, Teal'c. I wasn't cleared for field work for a long time, and they stuck me at the Pentagon. It was a year and a half later when I got transferred to the program."
Daniel raised an eyebrow. "So, in a way, if it hadn't happened, you might not be here."
"Maybe. Sir?"
"Yeah, Carter?"
She poured two shots this time and held one out to him. He took it and clinked his glass to hers before downing it.
"Thank you, sir."
"Any time, Carter. Any time."