I'm sorry it took me so long to update! My life's been absolutely insane lately, but I've finally been able to get back to my lovely robots and the lovely people who read about them. Thanks so much for the amazing story alerts and reviews. Y'all are great. Hope you like it!

SG-1 is not mine. Just in case the fact that it's not still running and Sam and Jack didn't have a whole mini-SG team of kidlets didn't clue you in.

Colonel O'Neill had been creeping slowly closer to the entity known as Samantha Carter. Neither of them had ever been the touchy-feely type. Well, except with Daniel, but he hardly counted; he somehow seemed to worm his way into everyone's heart until he became the little brother they never had. But Daniel was the exception and not the rule, so the first time Jack crept up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder, she jumped.

"Ow! Carter, what'd ya do that for?"

"Sorry, Sir. It was a reflex. Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he said, rubbing his chin in an offended manner. "I'll just stay away from your shoulders of pain and suffering from now on."

She blushed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's fine, Sam. Don't worry about it."

"You don't…have to stay away," she whispered.

"What's that?"

"Nothing," she said. "Just thinking out loud."

He put his chin back and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Get back to work, Carter."

Another year had passed, and finally she had finished creating four portable power sources. She was fairly sure that it would only have taken a quarter as long if Harlan would just have left her alone; by the end, the station was malfunctioning two or three times a day. She didn't blame him as much as she once had, though. Loneliness is a heck of a drug, and it can make people do strange things so as not to be alone. She figured he was afraid that they'd leave him there and never come back. Maybe he wasn't so wrong; she'd do it in an instant if she could. She thought she probably should have felt guilty about that. She didn't.

Sam's intuition hadn't abandoned her entirely, even though she was convinced she was soulless. She still knew things, and especially things about Jack. She could tell he was biding his time, waiting for the right moment to speak. She knew now for certain that he loved her, and, for the moment, that just made the woman without an identity feel guilty.

No one was quite sure when Daniel had started being allowed to schedule meetings, but they figured it was somewhere around the time Teal'c had agreed with him. Danny had decided they needed to be more connected, so now they met for an hour every night to talk. Harlan had attended for the first week, but he got bored fast, so it was just the four of them talking. Well, it was supposed to be all four of them talking, but mostly it was just Daniel rambling awkwardly on, and Jack good-naturedly mocking him, and Teal'c occasionally injecting monosyllabic comments. Sam never spoke, only leaned against Jack's shoulder and sat in the acceptance there. But that was all right. She liked it that way.

That evening, as they all sat on the steps in front of the Stargate, she spoke to them all for the first time in months.

"I've finished," she said.

"Really?" a wide-eyed Daniel said as he pushed up his glasses.

"It's not perfect—we only have 24 hours to a charge—but we can get out of here if only for a little while. We can get back to doing what we're supposed to do," she said.

"That's great!" Jack exclaimed, pulling her a bit closer and smiling proudly.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"That's, that's phenomenal! We can be SG-1 again! Well, maybe we'd have to call it SG-1.1, since we're not exactly the originals. Naah, SG-1 works. But maybe we could…" Daniel began to ramble, not realizing the effect his words had on his friends.

She and Jack reacted like they'd been burned. In an instant, Jack's arm was back at his side and she was sitting a good two feet away from him. Neither was sure who'd pulled away first, but both felt somehow rejected Daniel soon noticed that he'd said something wrong, but he didn't know how to fix it. The four of them sat in silence all night long.

It isn't fair! she thought. Just when I had a chance at happiness, we have to go back to being "Sir" and "Carter"! I was beginning to think…to hope…I might be able to give him a chance. But I can't deprive us of our chance to do what we're supposed to do. But now that we're going on missions as representatives of Earth and the Air Force, we have to go back to that stupid little dance around our feelings.

She found herself back at her workbench, back in the abandoned corner of the factory where she'd set up her little lab. She knew he'd find her there, and they needed to talk. Jack walked up slowly. She knew their bodies didn't age, but, as she looked at the stoop of his shoulders, she swore he looked ten years older.

He hugged her—for the last time, she thought—and whispered that everything would be all right, and asked her if she wanted some time alone.

"No thanks," she said. "I've had too much of that. It's time to be SG-1 again."

"That doesn't mean a thing," he said. "We're not SG-1. We're us."

"Jack." He smiled when she said his name. It made her feel even worse about what she had to say. "You've been spending this whole time telling me I'm still Samantha Carter. You can't pick and choose between identities. Either I am her, or I'm not. You can't have both."

"Yes, I can. You can. We can."

"No you can't. You did the same thing I did. If we're going to live their lives, we have to follow the rules. You know that just as well as I do, so don't deny it."

"So, this is your choice?" he asked.

"No, Jack." And another stab through the heart. "I never had a choice."

He started to walk away, but turned back. He took her chin in his hand and ran his thumb across her cheek. "You should know that I love you," he whispered.

"I know," she said with a watery smile. "But we're SG-1, and I'm not allowed to love you." His face fell as he walked away, and she watched her last chance at believing she was real walk out the door.