Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are property of their lawful owners. This story is written for entertainment purposes only and no profit is made. No copyright infringement intended.

A/N: Thank you so much for your kind words. I don't know why I'm always so scared of sharing my stories. You guys are always so nice and supporting.

CHAPTER 7

"I kinda wondered where she went," Jack said, trying to hide how panicked he had been to wake up and find Emily gone.

"I'm sorry, sir," Sam said and smiled, adjusting the bottle a little. "I went to the bathroom and heard her whimpering. I thought I'd let you sleep." She was standing by the kitchen window, watching out to the lake, feeding Emily like it was the most natural thing to do. Jack's original plan had been that he sleeps on the couch and Carter gets the master bedroom while Daniel and Teal'c share the guest room, but Sam had insisted that it was easier if Jack and Emily slept in the big bedroom and she took the couch instead.

"Nah, it's OK." He tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. "My kid."

"I'm sorry," she said again. "For some reason I'm just... drawn to her."

Sam flashed a little smile and Jack swallowed the lump in his throat. He was planning to tell her the truth some time during the long weekend at the cabin but he wasn't mentally prepared for the option that the conversation would take place on the first night after their arrival.

"I think it's just... everything that's happened," Sam said and turned to look at Emily. "I always thought my Dad would walk me down the aisle but now he's gone and I'm starting to think all my engagements will just fall apart in the end. And I always imagined how..." Sam stopped to swallow, fighting back tears. "I always imagined he'd be a proud grandpa if I ever had children. But the clock is kinda ticking past that window in my life."

She shrugged, suddenly looking very embarrassed that she was blurting out things like that to her commanding officer in the middle of the night.

"Look..." Jack sighed and put his hand on Sam's elbow, gently steering her towards the couch. "I'm going to tell you something now, then we'll put Emily to bed and then you have my permission to break my nose, all right? Do you agree to this order of events?"

Sam frowned, obviously trying to figure out what he was hiding. "Yes, sir," she finally agreed.

"All right..."

They sat down on the couch and Jack left a little distance between them.

"She's yours," Jack jumped straight to the punchline and Sam's eyes widened. "Asgard interference. Loki was desperate to get his hands on my genes so he had a back-up plan in case the cloning didn't work. He stole my sperm and your eggs."

"But... How... Loki was a long time ago. She's, what? A month?"

"Six weeks."

"Exactly. And who gave birth to her?"

"I did." Jack had to reconsider his thought about what was the punchline of this story. "Well, Asgard style caesarian, in case you're interested. None of the pushing thing."

"Jack," Sam sighed and closed her eyes for a couple of seconds. "Please, start from the beginning."

"All right, sorry. When Loki beamed me up to his ship, he stole some eggs from you and sperm from me and put those together. I don't know if it happened before or after the cloning failed but some time during that whole incident. He was in a hurry and managed to skip about ninety percent of the biology book. He created an artificial uterus and placed that and the embryo in my stomach cavity."

"But she was only born six weeks ago."

"Ah, Thor explained that the cells were in dormant state. The whole... healing pod thing he had to do after Antarctica started the development."

"Antarctica was nine months ago. Was she born early?"

"A little bit but not that much. I was starting to show so Thor came up with a way to hide the last few months of my pregnancy. He put a time dilation field around this place and I spent the last couple of months here. Only a weekend went by for the rest of you."

"That long weekend you took of because of family emergency," Sam mumbled, putting the pieces together in her head.

"Yeah."

It was probably a sign that they had been working in the Stargate program for too long that she didn't think he was joking, even for a second.

"And you're sure she's mine?"

"I think this is the part where I swear I haven't slept with other women, right?"

Sam glared at him, not appreciating his humor.

"Sorry... Loki's notes and the Asgard scanners say Em got half her genes from you. I don't see any reason why Thor would lie about it. He's still in orbit if you want to know more about the technical details. Or he can beam us to infirmary if you need a DNA test to believe it."

Emily just drew the last drops of milk from the bottle and Sam placed it on the coffee table. She simply stared at the baby for a moment before she lifted her up against her shoulder to burp her.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Jack said softly.

"Why?"

"Pete," he answered. "You had your life all figured out. I didn't want to ruin your plans."

"You didn't think this was important enough to change those plans? To adjust them at the very least?"

Sam lowered Emily on her lap again. She didn't sound angry. Actually, her voice was unusually flat, void of any emotions whatsoever. Jack didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She kept her eyes firmly at Emily, the look on her face switching between disbelief and a gentle smile.

"You didn't seem too excited about kids when you showed me Pete's ring."

"I wasn't," Sam whispered. "Not about Pete's kids."

"But mine are a different thing?"

"Apparently, yes."

She seemed genuinely surprised about that realization and Jack's heart jumped to this throat. He hadn't really dared to hope for anything more than a shared custody but those two words lit a spark of hope inside him that perhaps they could actually be a family one day.

"I was also worried about, you know, custody. I didn't want to become a weekend Dad." He was fishing and he knew that, but he had to know something about what was going on inside her hear.

"I'd never try to take your kid from you, Jack. Not after everything I know about you."

She sounded honestly hurt that he thought something like that about her.

"Not even when I kept her from you?"

"Never," she repeated.

"You're a better person than I ever will be, Sam. For what it's worth, I never planned to keep her from you completely. I just thought you'd rather be the doting aunt without the responsibility. You still have that option. She's not your responsibility, you had nothing to do with bringing her to this world."

"And you did?"

"I made the decision not to abort the pregnancy," he said and saw how Sam swallowed a couple of times when she realized she never would have known if he chose that road.

"I wouldn't have made that decision without you, Sam. But to be honest, the idea of having that conversation with you was scarier than the idea of carrying her to term." It was probably the first time he admitted being afraid of something.

"Are you scared now?" she whispered and turned to look at him briefly.

"Terrified," he admitted after a brief hesitation.

"Well, that makes two of us."

"So..."

"So?"

"Any thoughts? Suggestions? Urges to cause physical harm?"

"My mother died when I was young," Sam said and Jack realized he had completely forgotten that part of her personal history. "I don't want her to grow up without one. But it's gonna take a while before I can actually process this enough to even ask the right questions let alone make suggestions."

"Of course," Jack agreed.

Sam held Emily at arm's length and smiled at the girl, before she gave her to Jack.

"I'm gonna go for a walk," she announced and got up. She walked to the door and picked her jacket that was hanging on the wall near it.

"I know you're angry, Sam," Jack said softly, worried about her calm demeanor.

"You know what's the weirdest part is?" she asked and pulled the door open, then turned to look at Jack. "I'm really not." She stepped outside and closed the door. Jack stared at the door for a moment before he took the empty bottle to the kitchen and then made his way to the master bedroom.

"I think that went pretty well," Jack mumbed to the girl. "Though she might get angry once it really sinks in. But anyway, you've got two parents now. How does it feel?"

Emily simply yawned and swung her fists in front of her a couple of times.

"Yeah, I kinda have to agree about that one," Jack mumbled and lowered the girl into her crib. He took the communication stone and told Thor to keep an eye on Carter and make sure she didn't get lost or wander too far.

Jack woke up when the mattress dipped next to him. He pried one eye open and saw skin, lots of skin. Smooth skin, so he figured it was Sam, unless Daniel had started shaving his legs. Opening the other eye confirmed the suspicion. She was wearing blue silk boxers and a black tank top, and she had closed the door which probably meant he was in trouble.

"What's wrong, Carter?"

"I'm lactating."

"What?"

"Producing breast milk, sir."

"Please, drop the sir, Carter. And I know what lactating means. Just... When? How? Hell, I don't even know which question I should ask."

"Last night. After you told me and I went for a walk."

"So, uh... You wanna break my nose now?"

Sam heaved a sigh and covered her face with her hands.

"It's a mess," she mumbled and pulled her hands away.

"Yeah, it is," Jack admitted and sat up. He patted the mattress next to him, silently encouraging Sam to sit more comfortably. To his surprise she got up instead and went to pick up Emily before she sat down on the bed next to Jack.

"What do you want to do?" Jack asked when Sam just sat there, smiling at the sleeping girl, gently stroking her head.

"I promised I wouldn't try to take her from you," she whispered. "And if I start breastfeeding, she needs to stay close to me."

"Or you need to stay close to us," Jack said.

"Sir?"

"I have a guest room," he suggested, not really sure if it was a good idea or not. But he didn't want them to become like divorced parents, tossing the kid from one home to another once a week. "I don't know what you want, Sam," he said softly. "But I think you should have as big a part in her life as you want. We can figure out the rest as we go."

"Is Thor still in orbit?"

"Yeah."

"Can you contact him? I'd like a ride to the infirmary."

"Why?"

"To figure out if the milk is even safe for Emily."

"Right, of course."

"Can you cover for me? I don't want to tell Daniel and Teal'c just yet, I want to wrap my own head around it first."

"Yeah."

"Is Sam still sleeping?" Daniel asked when Jack made his way to the dock with the fishing equipment and a baby monitor.

Jack had explained that he woke up early and Sam had slept poorly on the couch so he offered her his bed so she could catch a few hours of sleep.

"She's taking a long bath." It was almost eleven already, there was no way Sam would have slept that long.

"So she gets to stay inside while we're out here, being eaten alive?" Daniel slapped his neck though Jack was pretty sure there wasn't a mosquito there, especially because Teal'c had practically bathed in the bug repellant and was standing right next to Daniel.

For a brief moment Jack was tempted to say something about how he'd get to do whatever he wants the next time he calls off his engagement and loses his dad within two days but that would have been cruel.

"You're free to go inside, Daniel," he said instead. "I brought you here to relax, not to torture you. I like fishing. If you don't... go do something that makes you happy." He gestured towards the cabin and set out his chair on the dock. "You too, Teal'c." He nodded but didn't move.

"Really?" the archaeologist asked.

"Yeah, sure. Just... no working."

"Working makes me happy, Jack."

"Well I'm sorry but no working allowed at the cabin, Daniel. That's been the rule for the last sixty years, before I was born, and I'm not going to let you break that. You're allowed to do anything else, just no working."

"Do astrophysics books count as working?" Sam asked as she made her way out of the cabin, carrying Emily and a book that seemed to weigh more than the girl.

"Only if you take notes."

"Good. She seemed hungry so I fed her," Sam said as she gave Em to Jack. The happy glow on her face made Jack think it hadn't been formula this time.

"Did she eat all right?" he asked, trying to act nonchalant.

"Yeah, just fine." Sam smiled and spread a blanket on the ground in the shadow of the tree, then got settled on her side and opened the book like it was a light novel she couldn't wait to finish.

"Would you like some slobbery palm prints on your book?" Jack asked. "I don't want to take her on the dock."

"Sure."

Her smile was a lot closer to her usual grins, much to Jack's relief.

Daniel disappeared inside but soon came back with an equally large book about some dead language or another and got settled on the blanket next to Sam and Emily. Teal'c moved his chair so that he was keeping watch near the three and Jack got settled on the doc with his fishing gear. It was going to be a great day.

A/N: Thank you for reading. There should be one chapter after this one and then an epilogue.