Author's Note: This is the second half of Seek and Find. I suggest reading that one first to realize how everyone got in their current situations. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 1

The house was dark. The shades had all been drawn to enhance the sulking going on inside the medium one-floored gray clapboard structure. The sky was dark with heavy clouds that held a mix of rain and snow. Winter was coming, most assuredly bringing bizarre cold temperatures and snow up to the eyeball level within a month's time. It was Colorado, and no one living there expected any less from October through the next spring.

Sam Carter sat nestled in her couch, watching a slow fire burn in the hearth. She sipped at her wine, feeling lonely for the first time since leaving Stargate Command. The time on her hands, though, was eating at her like an acid. She had never been this stagnate in all her career despite taking the teaching position at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. There had always been something to do in the SGC, to the point that she might not be home for weeks at a time. Now, she really was home for weeks at a time, and the monotony was being to get old very fast.

Jack O'Neill had called only once to check up on her, and even then, it seemed like a courtesy. She sensed he was somehow angry with her for leaving. Or, perhaps it was more a feeling of betrayal or abandonment. She had tried to explain to him that she needed to leave. She tried to tell him that her cup was running over with sadness and confusion associated with being inhabited by an alien, the duty to kill that alien's mate, and the general everyday blahs of death and destruction that went with the job of being a member of SG1. The missions had become nothing more than war operations. There was no time to explore, no time to find something enjoyable about seeing new planets and races. The team always seemed to end up running for the gate and for their very lives. They had taken one step forward and two steps back far too many times even, she suspected, for O'Neill's tastes.

Daniel, of course, was being Daniel – caring to a fault as best he could without offending O'Neill and providing updates of personnel in the base that didn't fall under the "classified" category. She had been stripped of her clearance the moment she walked out of Cheyenne, put on a "need to know" status. If Colonel Simmons and Senator Kinsey had their way, she would never even see the entrance to the mountain again in her lifetime. And perhaps that would be just as well. It was time to start putting some things behind her, even if her father was still with the Tok'ra. He would probably outlive her with the help of his symbiote anyway, and who would want to go through that?

Hammond had even called once to check up on her. His voice was as kind as ever, and that made the sting of leaving even worse. She respected the man, both as an officer and as a longtime friend of her father's. Sometimes, he had been her surrogate, getting tough when it was called for and being a shoulder to lean on when it counted. He was the glue that held the program together. His duty to that had been extended to Sam even after she had left.

Finally, there was Teal'c. She had expected him to remain impassive, accepting her decision to leave as one of evolution. That assumption was shattered when he showed up on her doorstep the week before, alone, to "observe any difficulties" she may have been having after leaving the SGC. The thought of it brought a small smile. The man had saved her life on the cliff, which was a huge thing. He also cared about the little things, though. O'Neill had done well in teaching Teal'c the finer points of the human culture, creating a well-versed alien in the art of emotional outreach. It was Teal'c's own sense of restraint that had perfected the skill.

There was no adequate way to assure her team that she was fine with her decision to leave the SGC. There was no adequate way because she had been having a hard time convincing herself she had made the right decision. Carter had anticipated she would miss the action of the program, but she never thought she would ache inside for the adrenaline rush.

Maybe she had left because she had locked herself inside the lab too much, like O'Neill had suggested before she left. Maybe it had just been a lack of sunlight, and perhaps she should have taken him up on his offer to go fishing. For all the good that would have done, that is. She still would have gone to P3X-324, and Wheeler still would have died with her command decision. Antalus would still have been beaten and killed, and all those who had died before him would still be dead. In truth, she felt as though she had not made an impact on the fates of those people. They were dead, and she had been a witness and perhaps even an instrument of their demise.

Janet Fraiser had actually tried to talk Sam out of leaving, which was surprising at the very least. There were times Carter could not fathom why Janet stayed with the program. There was something much deeper for her friend than just the practice of medicine. Janet had a goal, a purpose. She healed people in her work and fulfilled her duties without fail. All the government desired of Carter was that she figure out ways to kill people and blow things up faster and better than had ever been done previously with no particular regard for the long ended outcome. They didn't care about the explorer part of her, just the warrior part.

Carter stretched her neck against the back of the couch and snuggled down deeper into the quilt. The fire burned steadily, and she found herself lost in the flames again. She could barely stop the memories from flowing, one after another. Hers, Jolinar's – it all seemed to meld together in one long stream of consciousness that gave way to regrets and fear. As she had become accustomed to doing in the quiet moments, she pushed the thoughts and memories down, forcibly blocking them from coming to the surface. There was no way to undo the past, and her future held nothing in it that might repeat the perils she faced in the Stargate program. The worst danger that might befall her was a paper cut from grading tests.

She sipped at her wine again, reveling in the fact that she had caught up on grading papers for her theoretical astrophysics class at the Academy. There was time to relax that evening, and she intended to take every moment of it for herself. She would probably fall asleep on the couch again, having done so a few nights in the past week. She had forgotten how rigorous academics at Colorado Springs had been. She never knew it tasked instructors as much as it did students.

Her mind was drifting when the doorbell rang, snapping Carter back to reality with a jolt. She let go with a mild curse as her wine sloshed out of the stemmed glass and onto the quilt. The bell rang again, and she quickly got to her feet, setting the glass down and padding in bare feet down the hallway to the front door.

Turning on the porch light, she peered out the window to find a woman in a parka, shivering. There was something familiar about the face that was darkened by the shadows cast from the light. Sam opened the door, feeling she knew the person well. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, Carter, you can let me in. I'm freezing my ass off out here," the woman groused, standing next to a large suitcase. A taxicab was pulling away slowly in the drifting snow.

Recognition caught up with Sam, and she realized just who was standing at the door. "Rachel?" she asked with growing delight.

Rachel Dekker. It was a face and name Carter had not thought of in years since leaving the Pentagon's research facility. Rachel had been among the top minds in nanite technology, leading the charge to develop smarter machines to bring about the future years before anyone thought possible. Sam and she had met when Carter was doing a brief stint at the facility as part of another ongoing project for the Air Force.

"Hey, Sam," Rachel said, revealing her face from the hood of the parka. Her smile was fond as the two embraced after not seeing one another in over seven years.

Sam stepped back to allow Rachel into the doorway, offering to take her coat. "My God, it's been so long."

Rachel dragged in the suitcase and closed the door behind her. "It would have been longer if I hadn't managed to escape DIA. Does anything arrive on time there?"

Carter smiled, knowing the frustrations of flying in and out of Denver International Airport. "Occasionally," she said, leading the way into the living room with Rachel in tow. "What brings you out here? I thought you were still in DC?"

"It's a long story. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you about it."

"Wine okay?" Sam asked, showing Rachel to the couch.

"At this point, cough syrup is a step up from airline swill."

The wine was retrieved from the refrigerator and brought out in an ice bucket. Sam set it upon the coffee table and poured a new glass for Rachel, topping off her own.

Rachel accepted the goblet offered her. Sam looked at her friend, not seeing any real difference since the last time they had worked together. The dark hair was a little longer, accentuating a face that had high cheekbones and a rather tall and superb build that had a tendency to stop men cold in their tracks. There was something underneath, though, that seemed darker, almost sadder. Rachel's eyes seemed older and tired. It was uncanny that the woman looked how Sam felt.

"Okay," Sam said, sitting down and leaning into the corner of the couch, "so why the trip out here?"

"What – I can't fly out to see an old friend once in a while?" Rachel answered slyly.

If there was one thing Dekker was, it was deliberate. She was the least spontaneous person Carter had ever known. "Unless your habits have changed, you never do anything on a lark without a purpose."

"True," she answered, taking a healthy taste of wine. She rested the glass on the arm of the couch. "Heard you're out of the SGC."

Carter was caught completely off guard. A nervous chuckle came forth, and she scrambled to effectively deny knowledge of the program. "Where?"

Rachel got a bored look on her face at the prospect of the cloak and dagger game beginning to blossom. "Relax, Carter. I'm still have clearance and I'm in the know, just like I know you're a physics nerd at the Academy now."

"I'm an instructor, and it's theoretical astrophysics," she countered.

"So, like I was saying, you're a nerd. I'm sitting in a meeting the other day thinking about how the change of pace must be killing you and how those kids must be getting on your nerves. Then it came to me. I thought, 'She could work here, make good money, still be a part of the program, and get a little sun in the process.'"

Sam was trying to absorb all that Rachel was saying but found herself utterly lost back at the "nerd" comment. "Rachel, can we back up a bit or at least slow down? You're confusing the hell out of me. Where is 'here'?"

"California."

"You were transferred?"

"No, I'm a civilian contractor now."

Another unexpected turn in the story appeared. "You're not military anymore?"

"No. My father's corporation needed a head for its military research unit, and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

Sam looked down at Rachel's hand to see if there was still a wedding band on it. It was there, along with the rock of an engagement ring. "I thought you and Ronin would have been at the Pentagon until you retired. You two worked so hard to get that program on its feet."

Rachel's face dropped slightly. She took another sizeable sip of wine, pausing a moment afterward. "Ronin died three years ago."

Sam reeled at the shock of the revelation. Rachel and Ronin McConnell had been a heavy item for a long while until Ronin had finally gotten his ideal mate to marry him. For all intents and purposes, they spent so much time together in the lab beforehand that they might as well have made the coupling official. Sam easily brought Ronin's face to mind. He was rugged and tall, dark, from an Army family. Intelligent and quick with a razor sharp wit that sometimes made it hard to concentrate on the project at hand. There were certainly no dull moments when he was around.

"I'm sorry, Rachel," Sam said, "I didn't know. I saw the ring and just assumed . . . "

"Don't be," Rachel answered. "You couldn't have known." She looked down at the rings, spreading her fingers apart, then rolling them into a fist. "I haven't gotten around to being able to take the rings off. I guess I should do that one of these days."

"What happened?" Sam asked softly.

"A late night at work. The two of us were driving back to Alexandria. A drunk went left of center. Ronin's side of the car took most of the impact. He was killed instantly."

"What about you?"

Rachel smiled wryly. "Broken bones and cuts. If my leg hadn't been broken, I probably could have walked away." She grabbed the bottle off the table and refilled her glass. "That's when my father offered me the division job in California. Once I got out of the hospital, I knew I couldn't stay where Ronin and I had lived. The Air Force was itching to slash the payroll, anyway, and the accident was a forced discharge waiting to happen."

Sam was still in shock over the news of Ronin's death. "I'm sorry," she said again, at a loss for anything else to say.

Rachel's chin quivered slightly until she brought it under control. "Yeah, me too," she said quietly. Then she looked away. It had always been important to Rachel to have total control over her emotions. For the most part, she did, unless Ronin had something to do with it. The man had melted her heart, and that had not appeared to change, even in death.

Once she seemed to regain her composure, she sat back in the couch, casually laying her arm across the back. "So, enough of that. You want a job?"

Sam was uncomfortable with the sudden shift in topic, but Rachel was quick and to the point. "What kind of job?"

"The kind that gets you back in the SGC without the emotional baggage of an off-world team. Strictly R and D."

Research and development had been one of Carter's career aims early on, but she had not jumped into it with both feet since leaving the Pentagon. She had gone directly into the SGC, leaving behind any aspirations of creating and guiding new technologies. Her job in the Stargate program had been one that was concentrated more on backward engineering than theoretical creation.

"Doing what?"

A sly grin crept across Rachel's face. "Equipment engineering. Faster, stronger, better performance."

"What kind of equipment?"

"The exploratory mission prep kind."

It dawned suddenly on Sam what that meant. "M.A.L.P.'s?" she asked with surprise.

The Mobile Analytic Laboratory Probe was crucial to the success of SGC mission. It acted as the eyes and ears, and even the nose, of the teams before stepping onto unknown planets. Clad with the latest in exploratory technology, the MALP could decipher atmospheric contents, temperatures, seismic activity, and could relay video images back to the control room of the SGC. The remotely operated vehicle was the mainstay of the scouting program for the Stargate crews.

"Yeah," Dekker answered. "Who the hell do you think manufactures the damned things?"

"But I never saw your name associated with them," Sam said, shaking her head.

Rachel shrugged. "Not surprising. I administrate the people who work on them. We do the servicing when they're put through the wringer, then we ship them back to Cheyenne. Standard stuff. Only now, the Air Force wants a new toy. They want something that will blow the current model out of the water, and cost is not an issue. I figured there was no one better qualified to determine what faster, stronger and better meant than you."

"You're talking bottom-floor engineering?"

"A new model with your fingerprint on the design, yes," Rachel answered with a nod and looking very pleased that she seemed to have found the right tactic to take with Carter. "Might even require a trip or two to the SGC for test runs through the gate."

Sam's head was reeling with the possibilities. This is what she had wanted for a long time, and it would let her into the program again without putting her back in the circumstances that had caused her retirement in the first place. There was no denying that she missed seeing the people who worked at Cheyenne. Perhaps it might even ease the growing tension between Carter and O'Neill if she were involved once more.

"So? What do you think?" Rachel asked, breaking Sam's contemplation.

Sam scratched at her forehead absently. "I think this is all pretty sudden."

And it was. Sam was trying to replay the entire conversation since Rachel had walked through the door, attempting to pinpoint the exact moment where things had gotten weird.

"So was your exit from the SGC, but you did that anyway," Rachel countered. "C'mon, it'll be fun. You'll get a nice office with a view – not that views seem important to you after working in the world's deepest basement. You'll have access to the latest sim software - which we manufacture, by the way. And you'll be working with the best minds out there to make this new model. My company beats anything the government has going." A proud yet devious smile grew on Rachel's face, as though she clearly had a hand up on the military when it came to resources to build the future.

"I don't know, Rachel," Sam said, getting to her feet. She walked over to the fire and stared down into it. "There's a reason I left the SGC. I'm not sure I'm ready to go walking back in there and be so close to it."

"What does your father think of your leaving?"

The question caught Sam completely off guard. She turned to face Rachel, who had now sunk back into the corner of the couch. "My father?"

Rachel's eyes looked a bit surprised. "You haven't told him you left?" The tone was accusatory.

Again, the cloak and dagger game crept up into the conversation. Sam was having a hard time putting a finger on just how much Rachel knew. "No, I haven't had the chance."

"I understand he's off world, but you'd think they would have let him know at least."

"Rachel," Carter asked, "just how much do you know about the program?"

Dekker smiled again, only the deviousness was there without restraint. "Without actually being there, a lot more than you think. I make it my business to know. Otherwise, I couldn't outsmart the competition for the technology contracts."

"You have a spy inside the SGC?"

"Not at all, but I do make it a point to make sure I am in the reporting loop when it comes to events."

"Do I even want to know how you got into that loop?"

Rachel laughed quietly. "No, not really."

"And, it's probably better that I don't know, right?" Sam smiled, the irony of the situation becoming a bad joke.

"Right. So, what do you think?"

Sam sighed. "I think I need another drink."