SUMMARY: Of course they would have done it. They would follow him to hell, back and beyond. After all, they had done it before.

DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions.

I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).

He should have seen the signs. He didn't. The briefing had been filled with an angry tension but that was to be expected. Their faces had been set in stone but their eyes had flashed with the fire of retribution. When he had dismissed the team, Colonel Carter had saluted him smartly, her body ramrod straight, the perfect picture of an Air Force officer, and promptly excused herself, her two teammates Teal'c and Dr. Jackson following swiftly.

It wasn't a pleasant situation, not by a long way. The whole base knew about it and was careful to not provoke the caged tigers that SG-1 had become. Now, in the wake of their actions, he believed that many of his subordinates had at least suspected what it would come down to. The team was known to be deeply loyal to each other, more so than any other he had under his command. Even after leaving the team to pursue the position of Head of Homeworld Security, Jack O'Neill had always remained the leader of SG-1, a part of their exclusive little family. He had read the mission reports and those of the base psychiatrist, so he was not blind to the bonds that governed them.

The social dynamics between the members of SG-1 have more in common with those of wolf packs.

The members are extremely loyal to each other to the point of only trusting the team. Outsiders or those who threaten the team are considered a risk and not to be trusted. Aggressive defensive actions are to be expected.

The bonds of SG-1 make them nearly completely dependent on each other.

Hank Landry had seen his fair share of special ops teams in his long career in the Air Force and even he had acknowledged that the ties between SG-1 were some of the strongest he had ever encountered. The psychiatric reports had not concerned him initially. What team of people who went to other planets and fought aliens wouldn't be close? It was expected that they would form strong attachments to each other. Normal, even.

So why had he been surprised when they had run through the gate to rescue General Jack O'Neill? Had he thought that they wouldn't do it, would not try to find a way off-world? Even after several months in his position, it seemed that he still didn't know everything about his teams. He wondered if they would come back alive.

It had started as a really good day. There had been no huge crises in the galaxy. The Tok'ra reported no suspicious activities from the System Lords. The Jaffa were well on their way to being a democracy and helping the Tau'ri with the acquisition of ships for their fleet. And the Asgard had just delivered the promised new weapons systems for the Andromeda and Cassiopeia. The Head of Homeworld Security had been invited to a nice political gathering of one of their long standing allies and the party was well on its way to being entertaining, when the Jaffa of this new Goa'uld showed up, capturing almost everyone and taking them away. It was pure luck that one of their men had been able to escape, reporting the address he had seen their people taken to. An address that was not unfamiliar to the Tau'ri but known as a heavily fortified Goa'uld base that had once belonged to Anubis. His refusal to send Colonel Carter, Dr. Jackson and Teal'c on a rescue mission that spelled certain death to all involved had not been taken well.

"Yes, sir!" Carter snapped a smart salute and turned, walking briskly out of the room, anger and disappointment radiating from her. Her two fellow teammates followed her, their expressions frustrated and mad.

Hank looked down at Mitchell, the only one who had not raced from the room. He looked concerned, true, but not nearly as much as the rest of SG-1. It was understandable, of course. He had not been part of the team for eight years and did not hold a true attachment to one General Jack O'Neill.

Hank sighed bitterly. It was going to be a long day. Hopefully it would get better.

But it had not gotten better. Nobody had seen the three members of SG-1 the rest of the day. There were rumors, of course, that they had barricaded themselves in Colonel Carter's lab, not allowing anyone entrance. He had let them, hoping that after blowing off steam they would return to normal. Hank didn't like leaving General O'Neill, who was an old friend, behind but he simply couldn't risk his people for the off-chance of rescuing him, even knowing that almost every person in the SGC would volunteer for the mission.

After hours of calm and quiet and no solution that could help them rescue Jack, he had thought SG-1 to be less angry. He hadn't counted on the crazy determination that had always been part of that team.

At precisely 0300 hours, when the base was as deserted as it could get, an alarm sounded through the SGC. He had still been on base, allowing himself the luxury of some pie and coffee in the mess hall, when all hell broke loose.

Level twenty-eight had been in complete lockdown. When Siler and his technicians had finally managed to break through to the control room, the sight before them was of unconscious gate technicians and guards and the three original members of SG-1 in front of the active stargate, fully decked out in black clothing and armed to the teeth.

It was clear what they wanted to do.

"Shut the gate down!" He had yelled but nothing could have been done. It figured that the one person who had developed almost all of the security for the gate was also the one person who had managed to shut everything down, thus not letting him control anything.

Helplessly he had met the icy blue eyes of Colonel Samantha Carter and now he recognized the glint in them from before. The only difference was that he now knew what it meant. She was determined to rescue him, come hell or high water and she was obviously well aware that it could mean her death. Determination and the will to succeed stared out at him and in this moment he was certain that if Jack O'Neill didn't come back, she wouldn't come back too.

Her emotions were mirrored in the faces of her two teammates and it was with resignation and a feeling of helplessness that he looked on as the remaining members of the original SG-1 followed their leader into hell. Again.

It had been two weeks now since the three had disappeared through the gate. Ten minutes after their departure the gate systems were back to normal and SG-3 were sent after them. It was not long until they reported back, saying that SG-1 had apparently started gate-hopping to wherever they thought they needed to go before attempting a rescue. The only thing that remained was waiting for them to turn up again.

And that was what Hank did. He waited and observed and wondered. It was strange that the atmosphere on base was not only fear or concern for their missing people, but a peculiar kind of hope and euphoria. Hank didn't quite know what to make of it. It was as if they didn't believe that SG-1 could fail. During the first week of waiting many stories of the original SG-1's escapades started circulating. Though he had read the reports, he knew military people well enough that it was evident that not everything would be mentioned in those. So it was with a kind of guilty pleasure that he overheard some of these stories.

"You really think that they will rescue the General?" The disbelieving quality of the voice garnered a firm response.

"Of course!" The other voice replied with certainty. "They're SG-1! And I don't mean the watered down version with Mitchell at the helm!" The voice snorted. "You weren't here during the first years, when we still had General Hammond or O'Neill here. It was different, I tell you. There were rescues and solutions that SG-1 pulled out of their asses that saved everyone and in the end they never lost a member!"

"But it's suicide to go to that planet! I heard that it was one of Anubis' strongholds. It's impossible to penetrate or to get someone out of there!" The other argued back.

"You don't understand, man!" Exasperation and annoyance sounded clear in the first voice. "We don't leave people behind! That's the creed of the SGC! You newbies don't understand what it's like. Now that most of the System Lords aren't a problem anymore, the galaxy's a lot safer than it has been in millennia! You don't face the kind of dangers we did. We go after our people and bring them back, dead, alive or ascended! And SG-1 is another story entirely!"

"Come on! What's so special about them?"

"Other than them saving the world a few times? Dr. Jackson was the one who opened the gate! Teal'c is like one of the greatest warriors there is! He freed his whole people from enslavement. And Colonel Carter is the successor of O'Neill and all-round genius!"

"What about Mitchell?"

"The hotshot pilot guy? What about him? Sure, they say he has official command but come on! Everyone knows that Jackson and Teal'c wouldn't follow him, if Carter didn't enforce his decisions! They wouldn't trust a newbie as lead, especially with Carter on the team! And you can bet that they're going to get O'Neill back. He's like a brother to Jackson and Teal'c, and Carter, well,…"

"Well what?"

"You mean you don't know about the betting pools? Buddy, you don't know anything! It's like the oldest and largest betting pool on base! There are rumors, of course, that Carter and O'Neill finally got together after she got out of his chain of command and into Area 51 but nothing certain. I bet only Teal'c and Jackson know. But you can bet your ass that there's something between them."

"What do you mean?"

"It's the stuff of legends, my friend! Like, there's rumors that four years ago during the signing of the first Tok'ra-Tau'ri treaty, there was an assassin on base and the Tok'ra tested everyone with one of their alien gadgets and it told them that O'Neill and Carter were programmed by the Goa'uld to assassinate someone."

"No way!"

"Yeah. There was only the chance of being put in a coma for an undetermined amount of time until they knew how to get the programming out or trying this really dangerous procedure that could result in irreparable brain damage."

"So what happened?"

"O'Neill decided to do the procedure. A friend of mine, Steve, said that he told Doc Fraiser that if he died the autopsy would perhaps help Carter. Of course, when she heard about it she almost didn't let him go. There was real anguish on her face, I tell you. That's not something you can fake so easily."

"So, did he go through with it?"

"No. Carter prevented him from doing it. Apparently, drugged out of her mind she realized that they had somehow lied."

"Lied?"

"Yeah. Nancy, one of the nurses, who helped Doc Fraiser with the sedation, told me. They didn't even know they lied. In the end they were retested and although nobody but Doc Fraiser and SG-1 were present for it, there were still the video tapes and I got contacts. Oh, it was really bittersweet. A few weeks before the treaty, they did a shared experiment with some alien armbands the Tok'ra brought with them. I remember it very well. These armbands gave them immense powers. They were faster and stronger. Imagine Superman."

"Wow."

"Yeah, wow. Then there was information about some new ship of Apophis that would almost certainly be a real danger to Earth. They wanted to go and destroy it but Hammond wouldn't let them. The planet the ship was on was heavily fortified, a little bit like the place O'Neill is now in, but they still went. The problem was that somehow the armbands suddenly ceased to function in the middle of the mission. They both were unconscious for some time and that's why the Tok'ra thought that they could have been manipulated during that period, so they asked about the mission. Carter was stuck behind a force field and O'Neill was on the other side. O'Neill could have escaped but Carter couldn't. The Tok'ra alien gadget thought they lied because they left something out."

"What was it?" The voice asked, awed and excited. It was a dramatic story, full of danger and sacrifice. Even Hank, who had still not been discovered by these two, listened with interest.

"So they are stuck behind the force field and Anise – that is the Tok'ra chick – asks O'Neill how he felt and he first answers with some bullshit about someone who was about to die." The voice snorted. "But then…he said something that made it apparent to every last person on base that they had something. He said: "I didn't leave 'cause I'd rather die myself, than lose Carter… Because I care about her, a lot more then I'm supposed to.""

"That's heavy. Wow, just wow! And they did nothing about this?"

"Yeah, apparently not. And you know what Carter said, when they retested her? She said that she knew and understood why he wouldn't leave and that had their situations been reversed, she wouldn't have left as well. Because she cared about him too."

The heavy silence that followed was finally broken when the second voice stated with awe.

"That's really something. So for the next few years they didn't do anything about it? I mean, that's as close as you can get to a declaration of love without saying it!"

"As far as the base can tell, no. She even had a fiancé for quite some time before she dumped him, if I heard correctly. But my point is that if someone can get O'Neill back, then it's Carter and the other two. She won't leave him behind, because she'd rather die herself and I can promise you that she would, too. You haven't been here long enough to see what crazy things Carter can do, if there's no other way. She's a genius but a crazy and in love genius, not to mention O'Neill's protégé. I heard that he's taught her all of his special ops skills from some marines in SG-7, who once saw them. You should have seen her with the clone situation two years ago, as well, and what crazy stunt she pulled to not leave the clone of O'Neill behind. What I mean is: They won't leave him behind and it was clear from the get go that they would go after him, with or without Landry's blessing. General Hammond would have probably seen it in their eyes but Landry's not been here long enough to do so. Not that it would have made any difference. Hammond was intelligent enough to know, when he was fighting a losing battle."

The story made a large impact on his perspective on things SG-1. For the first few weeks, he had been concerned with the team dynamics of his premier team. Somehow it had seemed that although Mitchell was the official commander, the other two clearly deferred to Carter. He had often contemplated if he had made the right choice and this little story only strengthened his doubts. Of course, he also hadn't known about the possible relationship of Carter and O'Neill. This changed the situation almost completely.

He really could only hope that they would make it back. In the meantime, he had his hands full with a sulking Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell. The man had not known about the plans of his three team members and was obviously insulted that they had not wanted him along. Sometimes, Hank mused, I really wonder if I made a mistake. Mitchell was a good soldier and a good man. For a flyboy he was even decent on the ground. Still, perhaps it had been a mistake to allow him onto SG-1. While Mitchell would have definitely made a good addition to any SG unit, his position on SG-1 had only given him a dangerous overconfidence. The problem, Hank thought, was that Mitchell hero-worshipped SG-1 and had now elevated himself to their position, thinking that he was invulnerable. And while the original SG-1 were truly heroes, it was clear that they knew the risks and thought of themselves as humans, as such knowing where their faults lay. Mitchell, sadly, didn't have that and Hank feared – and this fear was ever growing, especially in the last few weeks – that the young man would get himself killed or, worse, get one of his teammates killed. Perhaps it was really time to consider alternatives.

Suddenly, his thoughts were disrupted, when the alarms began blaring.

"Unscheduled off-world activation! Unscheduled off-world activation!"

He quickly made his way into the control room.

"It's SG-1's code, General! And they're coming in hot!"

"Open the iris! Defense teams to the gate room!"

"Yes sir!"

The iris opened and the shimmering blue event horizon of the stargate was revealed. Only seconds afterwards four figures stumbled through, falling onto the metal ramp, two to the sides and one on top of the other.

"Close the iris!" The voice of Colonel Carter yelled and the technicians obeyed even before Hank could say anything.

His feet led him to the gate room below, the defense teams having stood down and watching the four people. All of them were dirty and bloody. Teal'c and Dr. Jackson were sitting up, exhaustion and relief on their faces as they looked at the pair in the middle. The heavy body of General Jack O'Neill had landed painfully on top of Colonel Sam Carter. Blood seeped from a gash on his forehead and Hank could clearly see the ripped clothing. Whatever they had been through, it had been an ordeal.

"That was good timing!" The wry voice of O'Neill exclaimed.

"Option four, sir!" She grinned back and all of SG-1 grinned with her at the inside joke.

"I knew you would get me out." The statement was delivered in a calm, confident voice and Hank was for a moment ashamed that he had doubted them.

"We leave nobody behind." Dr. Jackson stated.

"Indeed." Teal'c agreed.

"And we couldn't let you have all the fun taunting the snake-head." She giggled slightly.

"What did I say about giggling, Carter?" Even though it was a reprimand, his voice was light and his smile was big. Without warning he leaned forward and captured her lips in a passionate kiss. A soft moan escaped her and both of them were gone for good, not hearing or perhaps not acknowledging the sudden cheering of the people in the gate and control rooms. Hank had no doubt that this confirmation of the rumors about O'Neill and Carter would make it around the base like fire. Still, after a few minutes waiting, they still didn't seem to want to end their passionate embrace.

"Guys!" Dr. Jackson coughed.

"O'Neill, Colonel Carter! Daniel Jackson and I believe that it would be prudent to postpone the expression of your affections for another time."

Sheepishly, they separated and their two team members helped them to their feet. SG-1 stood in front of him, calm, confident and grinning. It was the first time he had seen them like that and he suddenly realized that nobody could ever take the place of Jack O'Neill on SG-1. They could try but it wouldn't be the same.

"Well," he coughed, "it seems like you're back. The debriefing can wait until after the medical check-up and the showers." With that he turned around. It would do no good having the argument in the gate room. There would be some consequences for disobeying him but they wouldn't be severe. SG-1 was far too popular for that.

As he began walking away, he heard the questioning voice of Cameron Mitchell, who had arrived sometimes after him.

"Why didn't you take me with you?"

The somewhat amused and indulging voice of Colonel Carter answered him.

"Don't take it personally, Cam, but this was family business."

And that's what SG-1 was, when it came down to it: a family.

Author's Note: So, how did you like it? I just kind of got the idea and it's a welcome little distraction from my other story, the New Lantean Chronicles. I hope I showed some interesting introspectives. The bit about Upgrades and Broca Divide just slipped in and I finally had some S/J in it. I think they would have liked coming out like that, in the middle of the gate room after escaping certain death.