Sam and Jennifer got to work as Rodney did...whatever it is Rodney does when everyone else is working.
"Only a few hundred knots...no big deal," Sam said, falsely cheerful.
"It'll give us a chance to talk."
Sam smiled a little uncomfortably. 'Girl talk' had never really been her thing and her personal life was not something she enjoyed sharing.
Jennifer looked at her expectantly between occasional glances at her string of knots.
Sam cleared her throat. "Uh, well, the employee evaluations are coming up. How are you finding your new team?"
Jennifer blinked. "Uh, they're great. Everyone's super smart, and we all get along pretty wonderfully, actually."
"Good, good," Sam replied.
"How am I doing?" Jennifer inquired. "I mean, are you happy with-"
"Yeah, yeah. You're gonna get a great evaluation."
"Oh, good," Jennifer smiled in relief. "That's good to hear."
Sam looked over at Jennifer and smiled wryly at herself. "I'm sorry. My default is always work."
"No, that's ok," Jennifer said with a dismissive wave.
"Are you seeing anyone?" Sam said, shifting the conversation abruptly. Apparently, she was thinking about Jack in this perilous siluation.
"What?"
Sam glanced over to Rodney, comfortably seated and flipping through papers some distance away. "On the base. You seeing anyone?"
Jennifer smiled slightly. "Well, I kinda had a moment with this guy, but he's kinda hard to read. So I guess the short answer is no." She frowned. "You?"
Sam just grinned and shrugged noncommittally.
"Come on, spill," Jennifer urged.
"Well, we're not seeing each other." Jennifer looked apologetic and Sam hurried to explain. "No, no, I don't mean we broke up or anything. We haven't seen each other since I left Earth and I don't know when we will again. Our jobs are both pretty demanding and there's always a good chance one of us will need to save the world anytime we make plans."
Jennifer nodded. "Complicated, huh?"
Sam sighed. "You could say that again."
After a slightly awkward pause and with a definite desire to change to subject so she wouldn't give Jennifer any accidental hints about just who she was in a relationship with, Sam said, "You know, being a doctor in the Stargate program is pretty rough." She fell silent as her thoughts again drifted to Janet, and the doctor Atlantis had lost before she arrived, Carson Beckett.
Jennifer sighed, too. "Yeah. It's kind of a dangerous job everywhere." She paused for a few moments. "I didn't always want to be a doctor. When I was younger, I was a whiz with machinery. Then I met this doctor, Simon. He was cute. Totally clueless when it came to women-he was always saying the most insulting things because he was nervous. Every time we had a fight, his sister would find him and call him a boob." Jennifer smiled slightly. "She was something. One minute spouting harmless nonsense, the next turning into something truly terrifying." Jennifer fell silent, fighting the desire to cry. "We were a group of misfits, I guess, but we were like a family. We all had dangerous jobs. Eventually, it caught up with Shepherd and Wash. Inara and Zoe left. There was just Cap, Jayne, Simon, River and me. We had some trouble and Cap was killed. I don't remember anything about it. I was unconscious. When I came to, it was only Jayne and me left. Figures. He always did have a knack for coming out alive." Jennifer hummed a few notes and rolled her eyes. "The hero of Canton indeed."
"I've never heard that song before," Sam remarked.
Jennifer shook her head. "Not many people have. It's...regional. And completely untrue, by the way."
Sam got the feeling there was a lot Jennifer wasn't telling her, but she didn't push. Everyone was entitled to their privacy and Jennifer Kaylee Keller was no exception.
A/N: Is this serious? Not really. Possible? Theoretically. Does it tickle my fangirl fancy? Yes. Channeling my inner evil Joss, I killed off Mal, Simon, and River; had Inara and Zoe bail on the crew; and let Jayne live. Kaylee lives, too, and through some kind of inexplicable complicated timey wimey stuff, she winds up in the Stargate universe and changes her name to Jennifer Keller, unable to tell anyone about her real past beyond what she tells Sam here.
If anyone is interested, I have a throwaway line I would love to see used somewhere where Jewel Staite and Mark Sheppard characters cross paths. Her character passes by his character and someone with her says, "That guy reminds me of a badger."