When they were seated, Sam and Sara on one side, Daniel opposite, and had ordered their lunches, a slightly awkward silence fell over them. Sam, feeling like a bit of a third wheel for some reason, decided to break the ice.
"Sara, if you don't mind my asking, what's a nice girl like you doing working for MI6 anyway? You don't seem like a typical spy…" She lowered her voice as she said this, not wanting to attract any more attention than they already were.
"I was recruited straight out of uni, actually," Sara began. "I'd done my undergrad at SOAS in London, and I was planning to go straight into a Masters' programme, so I wasn't even doing the milkrounds," she noticed Sam's confused expression and explained, "That's what we call the recruitment sessions companies hold at universities for final year students. So, yeah, they came to me, it would seem. I guess really they wanted me for my Arabic, but the Japanese came in handy as well. It's actually a lot of fun, even though ninety percent of the time I'm just in the office translating documents. They even paid for me to do my MA and PhD part time while I was working for them."
"Yeah, the Air Force did the same for me. Pretty good deal, really," Sam agreed.
"But how does Japan fit into all of this? I mean, I'm only a year or two older than you, right?" Sara nodded in reply to Daniel's question. "You say you've worked at MI6 since leaving university, so when did you learn Japanese?"
Sara gave a small, rueful smile, as though remembering something she wasn't sure she wanted to.
"I did my BA in Japanese Linguistics. I actually went and lived in Japan for about three years before I started uni. I was just a kid, really, but I was going through a horribly rebellious streak, and I was desperate to get out of Wales. Egypt was out of the question. I wanted to go wild and not have anyone tell me what was right or wrong."
Daniel was stunned. Go wild? Since meeting her again just a few days ago, Daniel had assumed that Sara had led a conservative, religious life. He remembered Uncle Haroun, and how he and Daniel's father had often held long debates on the subject of religion. Haroun and his wife were simple, devout, peaceful people. Daniel wondered what had made Sara want to rebel against that.
As if reading his mind, Sara explained. "It started when I was about 15, I guess. I suddenly woke up one day and decided this life wasn't for me anymore. I had lost my mum, before that we'd lost you and your parents, and my brothers were both much older than me and couldn't relate. It was just me and dad and the housekeeper in this little town in west Wales. I was such an outsider, and so I decided to pack myself up and get out of there. I applied to study abroad, I didn't care where, and they placed me at a high school in northern Japan. The lifestyle there was completely mad, hedonistic really. Of course, I took off my scarf and wore whatever was in fashion just to fit in. Parties, karaoke, you name it, I was there!
"But then, after a while, I realized that no matter what I did, I still didn't fit in, and that I likely never would. In Egypt I was 'English,' in Wales I was 'Arab,' and in Japan I was just 'foreign.' It was around this time I met a student from Tunisia – even in Japan, she kept her scarf on and never missed her prayers, and yet she seemed to have far more peace in her life than I did. I finally got up the nerve to ask her for advice, and she told me a saying. 'Islam started as something strange, and it will return to being something strange. So blessed be the strangers.' I didn't get it at first, but then I realized that she was trying to tell me that there is sometimes a great deal of good in being different."
Sam listened with growing compassion. She, too, had lost her mother, and had rebelled. She, too, struggled to fit into the male-dominated world she lived in. And with her dad with the Tok'ra and her brother so far away, Sam, too, knew what it was to be a stranger. If it weren't for her teammates, she would be completely alone.
Daniel also felt that he knew where Sara was coming from, which didn't surprise him. He'd grown up a stranger. He and Sam glanced at each other and smiled, realizing they were both thinking how lucky they were to have SG-1, a team made up of "strangers."
Again, it fell to Sam to break the silence. "So how old were you when you left Egypt? You were born there, right?"
"Yeah, we left not long after my mum died. She had ovarian cancer and it killed her really quickly. I guess I was about ten. It was about four years after Daniel's parents' accident. My brothers were both away in the UK for university, and my dad couldn't handle being in Cairo without mum. She was his only reason for staying there. So he sold our flat and we went back to the old family house in Wales."
Daniel still remembered Sara's mum vividly. She was older than his mum by several years, so everyone called her Auntie. He remembered his mother saying how she'd had her two sons right after getting married, but then suffered a series of miscarriages and stillbirths before having Sara nearly a decade later. It was the last stillbirth that had led to the deep bond between the two families, and Daniel wondered if Sara knew the story.
"You know, your mother was like a mother to me."
Sara smiled at Daniel's words; she knew her mum had loved Daniel like her own son.
But she was completely taken aback by what came next.
"Before she had you, when I was just a baby, my mother wanted to get back to work. But, what with it being Egypt, there wasn't a lot of baby formula about. The custom there was to find a wet-nurse," he explained for Sam's benefit. "But there was no one I would go to. Then your mother, well, she suffered another stillbirth. I think it must have been really late in the pregnancy, because afterwards her milk came in. She offered to try to feed me – I think it was probably just to relieve her own pain – but I took to her straight away. My mother was amazed, and…" Daniel trailed off as he saw the colour drain from Sara's face, her hands starting to shake as she put down her cup.
"Danny," she nearly whispered, fighting hard to hold back tears, "are you absolutely certain of what you are saying?"
Daniel was positive. He'd heard his mum and dad talk about it several times, how he'd refused all the regular wet-nurses in the neighbourhood and been branded 'that picky American baby.' Yet he'd gone to Sara's mum time and again, right up until Sara was born and she took over.
"Danny, you realize what this means, don't you?" Sara was looking at him with an indescribable expression, full of emotion.
He just shook his head, no. What could it mean?
Very deliberately, Sara removed her hand from her cup (which she had clung to in an effort to stop their shaking), reached across the table, and took Daniel's hand in her own. Daniel just looked down, not understanding why she had suddenly 'broken the rules' to make such contact, then, as realization dawned on him, he looked back to her for confirmation.
"We're…" He almost couldn't speak.
Sara nodded, seeing that he understood but couldn't give voice to the words. A single tear slipped down her cheek.
Sam, off to the side, was too confused to feel left out. "Um, guys? Sorry, I think I'm missing something here…"
Sara laughed, turned to the perplexed major and confused her even more by giving her a quick hug, and then stated simply, "Dr. Jackson here just found his long-lost sister."
