"There is no place like home."

-Wizard of Oz

Jack starts the fake cheer right after dinner. Either the head trauma made him a much better actor, or his team was pretty tired out from keeping him company 24 hours a day for days on end. Either way, they leave him alone for the first night.

Every time a nurse came to check on him throughout the night, he seems to lose a wire or a monitor. By morning, he was free of any attachments to the wall.

Even his most embarrassing connection, the one that Janet was 'almost certain' was temporary came out, much to his relief. This resulted in him going to the bathroom every half-hour, and he wasn't quite ready to dispense with the adult diapers, but it did show promise for the future.

Without Jacob's help it, might have taken several more weeks before he reached this level of independence.

Janet's shift started at eight in the morning. She comes in to his room first thing. "Well, let's get you up and off to rehab."

"By rehab, do you mean fishing?" Jack asks.

She smiles, "Come on, it's not so bad. You're going to get to see the sun."

"Oh, sun," he mocks.

"Now, let's get you in a chair," she says as a nurse rolls one into the room.

All the levity evaporates from the room in a second. He glares at it.

"Hopefully it's just temporary," Janet says softly.

"Right," he says, knowing that there is nothing poor Janet can do about it.

It took two nurses to lower him into the chair. One of them did it with her hand on his butt. Apparently she figured that when you're crippled, you have no personal boundary issues anymore.

Sam arrives just then, and takes the handles of his wheelchair. "I've got it," he says, putting his hands on the large wheels of the manual wheelchair.

"Actually, sir, you're going to be pretty tired if you push yourself, even with all your upper body strength. You're going to need to save that energy for the physical therapy when you get to rehab," Janet says.

"Great," he says, folding his hands on his lap.

Sam is worried about the lack of sarcasm coming from him right now. She gives his shoulder a squeeze.

At the surface, he gets into a handicap-accessible van. "I suppose I'll have to get one of these. I loved my truck."

"This is rented for a month. We'll see where we are after that," Sam says.

"Right," Jack says, feeling like he's going to be in the exact same place. Literally the same place, this exact chair. Well, probably a different one, since this had 'Property of the United States Air Force' stamped on the back.

Maybe he'd even have to go wheelchair shopping. That sounded fun.

Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c try to talk to him the whole van ride. Well, not Teal'c, but still. About half way there, Sam says "Stop," in such an authoritative voice the poor Airman can't help but obey.

Here it is. Apparently it only took one surly van ride to break her. That's a whole lot less than he thought it would take.

They're not just pulling over, though, they are turning. Sam opens the door, and waits for the little automated ramp to come down. Daniel rolls him, out apparently having guessed whatever Sam is planning, even though Jack has absolutely no idea.

They're at a park. There is a bridge. He's rolled onto it. It's a little scary, the uneven ground.

"Look, I don't have a fishing rod, but you're going to pretend," she says.

He glares at her.

She mimes casting, and reeling up to cast again.

"Your form's off," he says lazily.

"Ok, show me," she says, handing over the imaginary rod.

"Sam," he says warningly.

"Your life is not over, Jack. You've still got your friends, and your fishing, and your telescope, although we're probably going to have to move it off the roof, and you've got me. And if that's not enough for you, well, then, I'm sorry!" she yells the last words with no small amount of panic.

She's been having a day, but it has nothing to do with his disability. It has to do with him being an ass. He can't make the accident go away, but he can treat her better.

"C'mere," he says, pulling her onto his lap. The bridge has an incline to it, and Sam hadn't set the break when she'd stopped Jack on it. So with the added weight, the chair starts to slide backward down the bridge, causing both of them to scream in a very unsoldierly way.

Teal'c steps forward to catch them without comment.

"I think I have an imaginary fishing pull up my butt," Sam whispers to Jack.

"At least it's not an imaginary sidearm," he whispers back, having remembered Antarctica sometime during the night.

She giggles "Am I hurting you?" she asks with concern.

He shakes his head. Teal'c starts to push them over the bridge. Jack kisses her. He'll never be able to dip kiss her again, like the first one, but this is nice. Really nice.

He thought that when he kissed her, the memory of a lot of other kisses would come back, but he still only has that one. He wants to ask her how long they've been together, but he decides to wait for some time when Daniel and Teal'c aren't within earshot.

-0-

She'd wanted to stay. But he didn't want that added complication. He'd either be trying to impress her (because goodness knows there is nothing more impressive than being able to lift yourself from a wheelchair to a bed) or he'd be trying to hide the pain (because, oddly, the only thing his legs could feel, it seemed, was pain). So he talked her into leaving with Daniel and Teal'c.

He just didn't realize that he had to talk her out of coming back as well. He's pretty sure that visiting hours are over, at least if this place has anything remotely like visiting hours. She slips into a chair in the corner of the room, and obviously thinks that he's asleep.

"Don't you have a bed, Carter?" he asks.

"Why? Are you inviting me into yours?"

He laughs, "I've got a perfectly good one at my house if you need it. I'm pretty sure it would be better than what you've got there."

She smiles, "I've got a bed at my place and one at the base. They're just all missing one cranky Colonel."

"Dad leave?" he asks.

She nods.

"He's been gone a lot lately, hasn't he?" Jack asks.

Sam shifts in a way that lets Jack know that he's hit, quite by accident, onto something a lot larger than geography. "You know… the alliance…it's important," she defends.

He wonders how many other things Sam thought were more important than her. He wants to gather her up in his arms, and make everything ok. The only problem with that plan is his arms are currently so sore that he's not sure he'd be able to manage it. Oh, that's not the only problem with it, the nurses would probably get pretty angry about that as well.

So he'll just have to use his words, instead. "He loves you."

Tears well up in Sam's eyes, "You say that like it means something."

"It's the only thing that means something."

"No, because people can love you, and you're still all alone. I'm sick of just being loved! I want someone to actually be there for me!" Sam says, with the volume of a whisper and the fury of a shout.

"I'm here," he says giving her a faint smile.

"Only because you can't run away."

"No, Sammy. I am here, always," and he holds out his hand.

She crosses the room, and gives him a hug much longer than you'd expect with the side of the hospital bed poking into her side. He was going to try to make her leave. But he isn't going to do that anymore. He's figured out that she needs to be here as much as he needs her to be.

She pulls the chair over to his bed.

"Tell me something, tell me something good," he whispers.

"Once we went on to a…place," she says looking around in a way that clues him in she really means planet, "That had these lovely golden flowers, as far as the eye can see. They just went on forever."

He smiles, and closes his eyes.

"And the view from your deck? You remember it? It's right in town, but you've got some many trees you'd never know it…"

"Except when you hear the traffic at 5 when everyone's coming home from work," he says, remembering.

And she gives him the good memories, one by one, until they both fall asleep.

-0-

It's amazing, the amount of things you take for granted until you can't do them anymore. The first time he managed to actually have a bowel movement in the bathroom instead of a diaper was more amazing than he ever imagined possible. The first time that he lifted himself from his wheelchair to the bed gave him a sense of accomplishment he never thought he'd feel. The emotions that went through him when he put on his pants by himself for the first time were not something he was likely to forget. Neither were the emotions that came a few second later when he glanced over at the clock and realized that the task had taken him a better part of the hour.

People kept telling him that he was making progress. He knew that he hadn't even mastered what the average preschooler had, so he didn't consider that much progress. He'd only been at rehab for a week when they started planning for his "outpatient" services.

"Wait a second. I can't leave. I've only met half of my therapy goals, and most of those still take a ridiculous amount of time. I am not ready to throw in the towel and say that this is as good as it's going to get!" he protests.

"That's not at all what we're saying. You'll still continue to work with us three days a week for four hours," the therapist says calmly.

"How am I supposed to get here? We haven't even begun to talk about driving! How am I supposed to get ready for therapy? It would take me a whole day just to get dressed!" he rants.

"Sam is taking you home. We'll be talking to her about the things she should and should not help you with. There are a lot of things that we do want you to do by yourself. Even if it takes a lot more time. That will be part of you therapy homework. She can help you with the rest of it. She can certainly help you with the driving for now. Later, when you've got the rest of your daily living tasks figured out we can start working on that one. By then we'll know what kind of a vehicle you're going to require. There are a lot of different models we can get based on how far your therapy has advanced by then.

Jack takes a deep breath, and nods his head. He knows that the rest of his objections to being sent home so soon are things that he can better address when Sam comes for her evening visit. He has managed to talk her into sleeping at home most nights since he came to rehab. Nothing he could stay could stop her from spending most or all of the hours between work and sleep by his side however.

-0-

"Sam, they're talking about sending me home," Jack says as soon as she comes in for the day.

"I know, that's great news!" she exclaims.

"I am so not ready. If they let me stay longer I can get better. I promise. If I go home right now, I am going to be a huge burden to you. I can't do anything myself!"

"Jack," she scolds, "You are NEVER a burden. I want to do these things for you."

"Sam, even if that were true, and honestly, it would be pretty weird if it was true, you don't have the time to do all of this. What is your plan? You're going to get me all dressed, and cart me around to therapists, and then go off to work?"

"Jack, Hammond understands our circumstances. He's allowed my work schedule to be flexible right now."

"I know that, and maybe we've reached the point where that has to stop. I feel like we're just on hold. Like I am keeping you from something big."

She grabs his hand, and smiles. She wonders how much of that "big" thing he remembers. If he remembers that they used to save the world together. If he knows that she'll probably have to save the world again. If he understands that soon, she will have to go back to full time missions, and leave him alone for days at a time. She wonders if that fear of abandonment isn't what is really at work here.

"Jack, I don't have to take care of you. We could hire a full-time nurse if we wanted to. We might have to do something part time as it is, although Janet has volunteered to help out whenever my mission schedule won't allow me. I want to do this."

"You want to change an old man's diaper and lift him into bed?" Jack asks.

"I don't see an old man anywhere," she says, leaning in enough that he could kiss her if he wanted.

He doesn't want, at least not yet. "That doesn't change the facts, Sam."

"Jack, you hardly need a diaper anymore, and I'm supposed to make you lift yourself into the bed. I do actually talk to your therapist, you know."

"You're supposed to do that usually, yes, but what about when I can't, Sam? I don't want you to go into this thinking that I am a lot better off than I am. I'm in rough shape. If you actually choose to do this yourself you are going to end up changing a lot of diapers, and doing a lot of lifting, and pulling my damned pants up. Not to mention the fact that you're going to have to do all the cooking and cleaning for a while. We haven't even started working on those things yet."

She laughs.

"What is so funny about that?"

"Jack, if you were perfectly healthy, I would still have to do all of the cooking and cleaning."

He laughs too, "That's true."

"I want this. I want you," she says.

He sighs, and nods his head. She leans forward and kisses him on the cheek, since he wouldn't take the bait and give her the kiss that she really wanted.

He still felt guilty. An old man robbing a young women of her freedom. Tying her down to a person who couldn't do everything anymore. But he's not tying her down. She's choosing this. If it becomes too much, they can always back up a step, and choose something else.

-0-

They all come to take him home. This isn't even a little surprising, because most days he has a visit or phone call from some or most of them. It's just funny, because they don't all fit in the van. The General, Janet, and Cassie have to ride separately.

They all still come back to the house. The sight of it brings back wave after wave of memory. They aren't particularly earth shattering or even that interesting. They do, however, fill in huge swathes of his life that up until now had been out of reach. It's like the background, blue sky, and green grass, had been added on to his jigsaw puzzle. It has a frame now, and the only thing he can't make out is the picture in the center. The most important part.

There were three steps going up to his house. Such a small number that most people wouldn't even think about or remember they existed. Sam and her father had built a large and stable ramp over them. He'd been operating the arms of his wheelchair by himself. Not only did that make his arms stronger so he could do nifty things like get from his chair to the toilet by himself, but it also allowed him to feel more independent. Like he was in charge of his own life.

He tries to get up the ramp by himself, but he doesn't have enough inertia. He starts to slide down almost immediately. Teal'c catches him, and starts to push him up. Everything in Jack wants to object. He wants to tell the big man that he is perfectly capable of doing this himself.

Only, he knows that he is probably not. He doesn't want to accept help, but also really doesn't want to struggle and fail in front of his friends.

The furniture has been re-arranged. No-one mentions it, and that annoys Jack. For all they know he doesn't even remember that the furniture used to be different. They could be trying to deceive him, and convince him that this is the way that the furniture always was. He knows why they did it, though. He never would have been able to navigate the house with the furniture the way it was before.

His friends stay for hours; it's a Saturday morning. Sam orders pizza for lunch. They all go out, and sit on the porch, and Jack is struck by the sudden feeling that something is missing. That there is something he should be doing. He looks at Cassie. "Chess," he says.

She grins, "Every Saturday when you are on Earth."

He's not sure why they didn't bring this up before. Perhaps they think that his mind is just as broken as his body. They are wrong, though. They'd given him cognitive assessments at rehab, and he knows that his problem-solving, working memory, and processing speed were all above-average. It's just the long-term memories that are a little hard for him to reach.

They lay out the chess boards, and they play a good game. Cassie has good strategy for her age, although she is no match for his military skills.

He calls all the pieces by their correct names, and this makes everyone a little bit sad. Then he remembers to call the knights 'horses' and everyone perks up.

By the time everyone leaves, it's six at night. This is, of course, not a time he would ever consider going to bed before, but it's not before anymore. He has therapy tomorrow morning, which means he's going to have to be up at three in the morning to get dressed in time. Yep, he's going to get dressed in order to prepare to go somewhere to practice getting dressed; well, that and a lot of other things.

He still hopes that he will learn to walk, even though he can tell that Sam has begun to lose hope. Or, at least, to plan for the fact that he might never walk again.

"Sam, I think I'm going to go to bed," Jack says as he rolls into the house.

"Ok," she says, following him in case he needs any help or falls down.

He starts with brushing his teeth. He opens the drawer with the toothpaste. It is right where he expected it to be. He opens all the other draws, and finds in them exactly what he expected to find I them.

"What are you looking for?" Sam asks.

He gets the strange feeling that she wouldn't be able to help him find it.

"Where is all of your stuff?" he asks. Thinking back, he couldn't see a single thing in the whole house that looked feminine. Well, that didn't exactly present the strongest case, since Sam wasn't the most feminine person he'd ever met. But he hadn't seen a single thing in the whole house that looked like Sam.

"I couldn't keep much stuff here before; we were a secret," she says without so much as a guilty pause.

Right, the stupid frat rules. "We're not a secret anymore."

"I know. I've got a bag of things in the guest room. Before you know it, I'll have piles of physics magazines in your way all the time."

They both know that's a lie. First of all, Sam is a very neat person, unlike him. Second of all, if there were really magazines lying around, it would be a health hazard to him.

"Why the guest room?" he asks.

"I didn't know… I mean, you're recovering, and you don't remember me. I didn't know if you wanted to share a bed," she says, with awkward self-consciousness.

"I'm not ready to share… more than a bed, but if you want to, I promise to keep to my own side," he says, letting a little vulnerable sadness into his eyes.

When they actually go to bed, they don't keep strictly to their own sides. It starts with his hand being extended to her, and her taking it. It ends with them laying on their backs, side by side, shoulders and knees and hips all touching, and their hands clasped together tightly between them.

Note: I use words like "crippled" in this because that's what how I believe Jack would see it. I cringe every time I use them. I tried taking them out, but it didn't read like Jack anymore.