"I've never seen her like this."
Jacob Carter had learned by about hour twenty-one that his daughter's work put her in a reality all her own, that the only things that existed to her were the growing collection of dry-erase boards, several colors of markers (though mostly red), and her own two hands. He'd tried to talk to her a couple of times, but she mostly didn't even hear him – and when she did, all he seemed to get were absent, one-word answers. At the moment, she was ignoring him completely, though he didn't think it was a willful thing.
"Oh, she does this a lot."
The only man who seemed to be able to get through to her at all was the rather irreverent colonel who had stepped through the stargate with her. And while his overly-familiar way of talking to the general and his complete disrespect for the Air Force was more than obnoxious, Jacob couldn't deny that Colonel Jack O'Neill cared deeply about his daughter.
Maybe a little too deeply. And he wasn't sure what to think about that.
"Define 'a lot.'"
"Anytime she can't wrap her brain around something. She doesn't lose well."
The younger man watched Sam intently, and Jacob took the opportunity to observe him for awhile. He was... casual about it all, as though he had all the confidence in the world that she would drag them out of this – or any other – conundrum. Feeling the general's eyes on him, he gestured toward the boards and asked, "You understand any of this?"
"Hell, no, Colonel."
"Huh. Guess I'd always figured she got it from you."
No, Jacob had no idea where she'd gotten such a proclivity. To be honest, though every parent wanted to think the best of their children, he'd never understood how he could produce such a brilliantly talented child. A prodigy, they'd called her. "I've seen her practice the same ten measures for hours," he said softly. "The same keys, over and over – different fingerings, different methods – until it was beyond perfect."
He nodded. "Sounds like Carter."
"But she always knew when to stop." His gaze slid back to the beautiful girl that he couldn't quite recognize as his own. "This... single-mindedness, this self-destructive obsession – giving up food and sleep.... That isn't my daughter."
Colonel O'Neill took in a long, slow breath, and Jacob realized he was censoring himself. Perhaps his brashness wasn't a lack of filter, but the filter itself, he thought – the colonel's way of avoiding what he didn't want to say. "Well," he said finally, "I can tell you that her OCD has kept me alive this long, so I don't particularly mind it. Much."
"And?"
"And playing piano doesn't exactly carry the weight of the world."
"And?"
The brown eyes that met his own were sharp, reading him, silently asking if he really wanted the answer. "This has always been inside her, Jacob," he said simply.
"But?"
Though the woman across the room was completely embroiled in her task, paying not the least bit of attention to them, he lowered his voice. She wouldn't be able to hear him even if she strained for it. "But the woman you raised – you and your wife – always knew she was loved. That she was good enough to make her parents proud." He sighed. "And this woman.... She can never know. So she'll never stop trying."
Swallowing hard, Jacob looked across the room again, and the colonel was right. The way her forehead wrinkled unhappily, the way she scolded herself a little too hard just before she would erase something.... His chest ached a little for this version of his daughter who seemed all at once so very old and so very, very young.
It would mean breaking just about every rule in the book, but if he could help her....
"What if she could?"
