Here's the beginning of the next Christmas! I can't do the third Christmas until after the Atlantis finale though, cause we don't know what position Sam in occupying on Earth, exactly. *sigh* That, and we'll be somewhere without easy internet access, with family and such. So I might not get anything else uploaded till just after New Years. That's why I made sure to get this up today, so enjoy! Merry Chrismas!

2nd Christmas: Christmas Without Carter

Last Christmas

I gave you my heart

And the very next day

You gave it aw—

Vala snorted in annoyance and shut off the radio before it could finish the chorus that she'd heard too many times in the past two weeks—and Thanksgiving had only been yesterday. How annoyingly appropriate though, she huffed silently.

Sure, maybe things were a little better now. Daniel seemed less annoyed by her presence, smiled at her more…but then again they all had reason to smile. Neither the Ori nor their followers were any longer a threat. Vala was glad for that, but still, after everything she'd been through last December, she would think maybe he would be even a little more receptive than he was.

It didn't help her mood that SG-1 hadn't been together for Thanksgiving this year, either. Well, technically, they had been, but that only made it hurt more when she remembered that even though it didn't feel that way, Sam was no longer a member of the team. She was now the leader of the Atlantis expedition.

Vala sighed and rolled off of the bed to her feet. It was no use moping around. It wouldn't change anything.

She found Daniel in his office, mussing over a translation he was deep enough into that he didn't notice she was there until her hand on his arm made him look up.

"Hmm? Oh…hey." Not entirely dismissive, none of the old annoyance, but there was a hint of something different—something that told her he wished she hadn't come in just now.

Vala wondered if she'd done something wrong—unfortunately still her first assumption when Daniel was angry or upset—but she realized that it must be something new when she went around the table and sat across from him. She noticed immediately that he was trying to duck his head far enough to keep her from seeing, but she caught his pink cheeks and red-rimmed eyes quickly, even behind the glasses.

"Daniel?"

"What?" he asked grudgingly.

"Is something wrong?"

"No," he answered, too quickly, still not looking at her. But both of them knew that she wasn't buying it.

Tentatively Vala reached across the table and touched his arm, but he pulled it away and stood as if to put the translation away. "I'm fine."

She pushed out from the table and went back around it to him. "Don't give me that. Really, Daniel, I'm not that dense."

"I'm fine," he muttered, shoving things back onto shelves as he circled the office, avoiding her.

But there was only one thing that could really be bothering him at the moment. "It's about Sam, isn't it?"

Daniel froze, only for a second, but it was enough to tell her she was right. "We all miss her, you know."

He knew he was had, and he stopped pacing and sighed, but his back was still turned as he fiddled with a stack of papers on his desk. "It's not just that. I know that. We know where she is, we get messages, talk to her on the video feed. It's not that. That's not the issue. I can deal with that; it's just like Jack, another long distance friendship. Everyone has them. That's not the problem."

"Then what is the problem?" she asked slowly.

She saw him tense, saw his hands abandon the papers and grip the edges of the desk. It only took her a moment to realize what he meant before he said it—because she already knew.

"Where you there last week? When Sheppard came on instead of Sam? When he told us she was laid out in the infirmary? Unconscious because she'd broken her leg falling into some kind of abandoned mine?"

Yes, she'd been there. She remembered the sudden fear, that remained even after Sheppard had assured that Sam was going to be fine. She remembered realizing that even with the replicators finally gone, the Pegasus galaxy was still much more dangerous than their own now—and the circumstances around her getting hurt didn't even have anything to do with those factors.

Daniel finally turned around then, facing her but still not looking directly at her. The pain she saw in his eyes anyway told her that he didn't want to be spilling his heart like this, but something was making him do it anyway. Maybe he just needed to get it out.

That was all right. She didn't mind being here.

"It's bad enough on this job…knowing something could happen to someone you care about right here, but it's worse having her out there like that…Something could happen to her and we might not even know immediately. Anything could happen, and we wouldn't be able to get to her in time, if she had any time…" His voice ground to a halt there and he turned away again.

Vala swallowed hard, because though she couldn't know exactly how he felt—didn't have the deeper connection of many more years of friendship with Sam—she still understood his fears.

"It doesn't help, with the holidays this time of year, and not having her here now," she offered quietly.

"No," he agreed, barely audible.

"I know."

He looked at her then, thankfully, and Vala reached for his hand and squeezed it. "She'll be fine."

"Yeah…" He sighed, and to her surprise he squeezed back before he let go.

She watched him go back to the table and pull out something else to work on, and something twisted in her chest.

That was all she could do, all she say, really. There was nothing else she could do keep him from hurting, even though it pained her just as much to see him suffering as it did knowing that Sam wouldn't be home for Christmas, either. Annoyingly enough, sometime in February Teal'c would be going to Pegasus via the new 'gate bridge because of some impending IOA review of the personnel over there. Apparently Sam thought Atlantis's own big intimidating alien could use some help preparing.

But the rest of them didn't know when they would see her in person again.

Vala sighed heavily and wandered out of Daniel's office, thinking hard all of a sudden. What if she could do something?

Halfway back to her room she spun and broke into a run back toward Landry's office.

"Vala, there's nothing I can do about that. I have no jurisdiction."

"No, but you would know who to talk to—what to say to them."

Landry sighed. "I hardly think the IOA or anyone in Washington would be obliged to pay much attention over something so trivial."

"Trivial?" Vala fumed, pacing in front of the general's desk. "We're all going crazy here! Attempting to do something about that could hardly be called trivial."

"Not to you, and not even to me, but to the IOA, it is, and that's what counts. Maybe if you'd had an earlier start, but with only a couple of week or so I don't think you'll make much progress."

She stopped and let down hands drop onto the edge of the desk. "All I want to do is get Sam home for Christmas!"

Landry's tone softened. "And in any other situation, any other job, any other place, that really wouldn't be much to ask—I understand that. But she's in the Pegasus galaxy, Vala. She's the leader of an expedition that needs her. It's a lot different than my job, having to keep those people alive out there."

"But we have the 'gate bridge now. She would only be gone for three or four days, even with the overnight quarantine in-between…"

"I know that, and you know that, but vacation times have already been firmly set, and it wouldn't be right to make that kind of exception."

Vala dropped into one of the chairs there and pouted. "But she just broke her leg; doesn't that count for something?"

Landry thought for a moment. "I suppose it might…" He sighed. "Look, I'll make a few calls, but that's all I can promise."

That was enough to have her out of her chair again; she popped up and grinned. "Thanks!" Then she was out the door and bounding away, leaving Landry to shake his head in her wake.

Daniel hadn't seen much of Vala all week, and there were rumors that she'd been in and out of Landry's office for days. He wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but he supposed he would know already if it were anything to worry about. As it was, he knew better than to interfere when Vala was in one of her intense focus moods. When she wanted something, or was trying to get something done, she was single-minded until whatever was accomplished.

That was why he didn't bother her that morning when she blew into the commissary, snatched up enough packaged foods for a decent breakfast, and started to hurry out again. T was until she caught sight of him that she slowed down and changed course.

"Hey. How are you?" she asked brightly.

"Uhm…fine…" It wasn't entirely untrue. They'd just talked to Sam yesterday, so it had improved his attitude—besides the fact that he knew it wouldn't do any good moping. They'd all had to get over this when Jack went to Washington, after all, except for the fact that D.C. wasn't nearly as dangerous.

"Good." Vala smiled warmly, then leaned over to swiftly peck him on the cheek before hurrying away. He didn't even have time to sputter at her.

It took a moment to realize, almost painfully, that he didn't want to.

"Thank you, general!"

Vala grinned and snapped her phone shut. Several days of endless phone calls to Washington—which was still much less time than she'd imagined they would need—had finally paid off. Glad that she could drive now, she turned on her heel on the sidewalk and headed back for her car, juggling a few shopping bags.

She had to admit that, even without Sam, she was already enjoying the holiday season more this year. It was easier to be in a reasonably good mood when she wasn't wondering if one of her best friends was alive or not. The bright decorations in town helped, too, the music, the atmosphere…

She hadn't had time last year to really notice how strangely comforting it all was, despite the noise and rush. Most people seemed happy, and everyone had somewhere to go, and something to do—a purpose. There was a point to all this. Vala wasn't sure she had decided for herself what she thought of it all, but she enjoyed being here. She'd parked her car at a department store and walked the streets downtown as she shopped; though it was getting dark. She'd been in no hurry; she'd gone to the mall before Thanksgiving. There wasn't much else she needed.

Now she had reason to hurry. She had a call to Atlantis to make.

The clunky brace that encased the lower half of her leg kept her from moving very fast, but at least it wasn't a cast. Sam was glad to be walking already at all. Just a few days ago she'd been forced to allow John to push her to the mess hall in a wheelchair for Thanksgiving dinner.

That was where she was headed now, intrigued by information that Christmas decorations were being put up there today. The base was too big and its personnel too diverse to make it worth really doing anything like that, but apparently the mess hall was the on exception.

Sam expected to see few garlands, ribbons, maybe a wreath, but she certainly didn't expect to see the Christmas tree that reach nearly to the high vaulted ceiling.

"Holy Hannah," she murmured, shuffling into the room. Her ponytail brushed her shoulder blades as she craned her neck to look up at the thing. It was nicely decorated—the garlands she'd expected, and several oversized ornaments along with the smaller ones—though everything was widely space, understandable considering the sheer size.

McKay was the first to notice she had arrived, and he quickly bounded over from the foot of the tree. "Hey, Sam. It's uhm, it's good to see you on your feet."

"Thanks—just please tell me that thing is fake. If it's not, I don't even want to know how you got it in here."

"Oh, it's fake all right; had it shipped from Earth a couple years back, you know once we could and all."

"Right."

There were a few other decorations strung on the walls and set on the ledges around the rooms, but the few boxes it all had been in were already being closed and carried away. John Sheppard handed off a small crate to a younger airman and came over to them, a plastic snowman figurine forgotten in his hand.

"Good morning, colonel."

"Colonel," Sam smirked. "And why didn't I know about any of this before?" she asked, nodding around at the decked-out space.

"Ah…it's not official and all. We all had to chip in and pay for it ourselves to get it here in the first place," he shrugged. "You know, it was the first year when we really had contact with Earth, and we though the place could a little touch of home. Christmas seemed to be the only holiday most everyone could agree on in some form or another, so…" Sheppard looked around uncertainly.

"Maybe we went a little overboard," McKay said.

"Yes, well, I don't think anyone minds," John clarified.

Sam smiled. "No, I wouldn't think so. It's homey. Too bad I didn't get here in time to help."

John and Rodney exchanged a look, and Sheppard held out the snowman. "Here, put this somewhere."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"The job isn't done until every piece is in place," he said gravely.

Sam took the snowman and shuffled out into the mess hall, which was now nearly devoid of people at the off hour. She stopped at the base of the tree and looked up again. "So no sentient beings were harmed in the making of this, huh?"

John smirked as he and McKay followed her. "No one's ever fallen off a ladder getting it decorated, if that's what you mean—yet."

"Uh huh. Just make sure to keep it that way." She shook her head and moved toward the tables. She found the one that didn't yet have a centerpiece, and reverently set the snowman down in the middle of it.

"Happy now?" Sheppard asked.

"Immensely," Sam smirked. That was when Chuck rushed in, calling for Colonel Sheppard. John met him halfway across the room, and the two spoke briefly. After a moment John looked up and called back to Sam and Rodney.

"Midway station just dialed in, that's all."

Sam took a step toward him. "Is something wrong?"

"Nah, it's nothing—just a message for me. Don't worry about it. I'll catch you later." With that the colonel followed the technician away.

"Huh…"

McKay blinked a few times. "I'm sure it is nothing, if he says so. You'd definitely know if there was anything to get worked up about."

"Believe me, I know." Sam sighed. Back to work, then. She missed the good old days already. Not that she didn't love the new job…and the people here…

But it was hard to forget how much she missed her friends.