She'd read once somewhere that thought the body grew at a more or less defined rate, the soul grew in leaps and bounds as it overcame tragedies.

She figured that her soul had done a lot of growing in the past few months.

It was odd, in a way. She'd sat herself down one afternoon in Nevada and told herself that that was it. No more needing men. No more needing someone else to make yourself complete, no more pining after the man she couldn't have and no more settling for a less than perfect man that she could have.

Because if there was one thing that scared her, it was the thought of becoming "Jack's girl". There was no way that was going to happen. She'd spent too long, given up too much and lost too many things that had seemed irrelevant at the time, but in retrospect should have been given more importance. The last time she'd checked her dog tags, they'd said "Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter", not "the woman pining after her CO", or even "the woman going for the most screwed up engagements in history."

Don't be silly, Sam. Twice, that was it. And with good reason both times. Forget the whispers of a black widow curse as well – even if they were jokingly met, they still stung, a little. The list of names rolled in her mind over and over until she forced them to stop, even if the only way she could get them to stop was to recite the periodic table with new additions.

Maybe they could rename one Carterium? She laughed at her moment of egocentricity. Truthfully, if she could rename one thing it would have been that planet with the beaches that went on forever. O'Neill. Purely because she had a feeling it would royally piss him off to be given that much recognition.

Now what had she promised herself? No more thinking about him, even in friendly terms, unless Daniel and Teal'c got equal measure. Because thinking about him pissed off led to her thinking of the face he'd make when he was pissed off with someone else, and that led her mind down alleys she wasn't prepared to think about.

Because she'd messed up there. Completely screwed with three lives and it led inevitably to disaster. Pete hadn't deserved it – in some ways she thought that she'd hurt him worst. It wasn't his fault that he just wasn't the right man for her, and he was a lovely guy. Very sweet. She pulled a face at the adjectives that her mind had conjured. She should have listened to it sooner. 'Sweet' and 'nice' were not the words that you used to describe the man that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. But at least she'd done the right thing in the end; and since she'd come to the decision a couple of months ago that it was pointless trying to revolve her life around who she wanted to be with she'd never doubted it.

The last time she'd checked she'd be perfectly happy ambling into old age on her own – happier than with the wrong man, anyway. She had her friends, and her work, and she wasn't unhappy, not in the way that she felt the urge to go and actively seek out a replacement for the one she didn't want and the one she couldn't have.

The doorbell rang, interrupting her thoughts. Putting down the copy of Scientifica America that she'd been staring at for the past half hour, she opened her door to a surprise.

"I brought cake," he said hopefully. "And jello. Blue!"

She grinned. Maybe she would have been happy and satisfied on her own, but it didn't mean that she'd have everything that she wanted, the everything standing on her door with a hopeful, albeit slightly worried expression. She got the distinct feeling that the worried bit she wasn't supposed to see, so she ignored it but stored it away for later.

"Like I give a damn about the cake," she answered warmly, letting him in.

"How 'bout the jello?"

AN: random question – what you (US) call jello, we (UK) call jelly, right?