Bec-I love your reviews to my stories. Thanks. Another Daniel and Sha're story? Not quite, but a Daniel Vala one should be next up. Tried to write it before this one demanded I give it existence. First chapter is written.

Jack

The really nice thing about mission schedules is that you get random days off. It's six days after Thanksgiving and I put the day to good use. I went and got a huge Christmas tree. I bought new lights, and strung them all over the house. I went into Hallmark (something a man should never have to do) and bought a "babies first Christmas" ornamented. I laid out the boxes of my Christmas stuff, and failed in my search for Sam's Christmas stuff. I didn't decorate the tree though, that felt like something we should do together.

It's not like we're really a family yet, but we're getting there.

Sam comes home, and her face is light up. "Jack," she says.

"Well, I figured it was our first Christmas…" Suddenly her face falls.

"I should have talked about this before…" she stammers.

"You have plans for Christmas. It's ok," I start.

"No…Jack, I mean it wouldn't just be us for Christmas. I always go to Mark's. I called him the other day to make sure it was ok for me to bring you…but I told them I hadn't asked you yet."

"You sure you want me to come?"

She smiles,"Yes Jack."

"And how much does Mark know?" I ask cautiously.

"I told him a lot about you. I didn't tell them about the baby yet," she says sitting down. "I didn't know whether that would be better in person, or if I'm going to ruin Christmas."

I sit down next to her, pulling her against me. "We could let Brocca tell him next Christmas."

"No way is this kid going to be talking next Christmas," I say. She's finally given up trying to cure me of calling the baby 'Brocca'.

"I don't know Carter, it is yours."

"Careful, or you'll be reading child development books instead of watching decade old hockey."

"I thought tonight, we could decorate the tree, drink some coca…"

"And watch really cheesy romantic Christmas shows?"

I raise an eyebrow. "Ok."

"And I'm going to tell Mark tomorrow."

"I made super," I offer.

"I hope you mean you ordered super," she says cautiously.

"Relax, I used my mom's recipe."

"Thank you for trying," she says leaning forward to give me a kiss.

"What do you mean trying. I succeeded," I ask.

Mark

"Hey, Mark," Sam says on the phone. My little sister, I love her with all of my heart. She's amazing at almost everything. But her choice in men…awful. And she has another one. After Jonas she said she was going to stay away from guys for awhile, focus on work. Yet, she's never missed a Christmas brining some loser home.

"Hey Sam, so what'd he say about Christmas?"

"He'd love to come."

"Good, we'll be excited to see the two of you."

"Well, there are sort of three of us."

"What?"

"I'm three months pregnant," she says. I don't know what to say. She's three months pregnant. She was engaged less than a year ago!

"Are you…happy?" I ask, I can't tell from her voice how she actually feels about it.

"I'm happy…terrified, but happy."

"And this guy?"

"Jack, yeah, he's happy too. A little conflicted…he lost his son a year and a half ago in an accident."

"That's awful," I say, "You and Jack…how serious were you before surprise baby?"

She takes a really deep breath, "We weren't very serious. But we are now. We're…trying to make this relationship work. We're actually living together. But…either way we'll be there for the kid."

"It sounds like you're doing alright. What about work?"

"I'm doing more science stuff for awhile."

"Do you hate it? Or…I mean you like both parts of your job right?"

"I do…I miss the mission part of my job. So much. But I'm not even sure…if I'm going to be going back."

"Why wouldn't you be going back?" I say. What is she giving up for this guy?

"I just…Mark when we lost Mom…"

He cuts me off, "What could possibly be that dangerous? We're not at war."

"We haven't technically been at war since the second world war, Mark. You don't need war to have a battle."

"How dangerous is your job, Sam?" I ask. I guess I know that her job is dangerous. I just didn't think it was that dangerous.

She takes a deep breath, "This sounds like it's heading toward a fight, and I really don't want to fight. I…I can't fight right now Mark. All my energy is going toward being ready for this kid in six months."

"Sorry," he says quietly, "So tell me more about this guy."

Sam

I'm trying to think of what I can say about Jack. Something I can say that isn't going to make Mark hate him. I can't talk about Jack's job…even though that is a really big part of who Jack is, because Mark hates the Air Force. I can't talk about Jack's son, or his ex-wife, because it would feel like breaking confidence. Besides, I don't actually know that much about either of them. And you take all that out of Jack, and you're really only left with the Simpson's, hockey, Mary Steemburgen, and the color perigo. And none of those things are Jack. They are just the person Jack has created so no one looks to close and actually sees him.

"He's complicated. He pretends to be stupid, but he's not. He strong, one of the few guys who can actually beat me at arm wrestling. It's only, because he knows the physics behind it though. That's how I win against guys with more upper body strength, it's the physics. But he knows the physics, because he's smarter than he appears. Also beat me in a drinking contest, which is rare. That was obviously pre baby," I say with a chuckle.

Mark doesn't appear to think it's funny. "Anyway," I stumble on, "He's practically psychic. I mean he predicts and fills me needs so well. Probably since he had a pregnant wife before. I don't know. I'm clueless about the whole thing. But he is ready for every problem. I mean whether it's ice cream, or broccoli, or hugs, or reassurance that the baby is going to be fine. No matter what I need it's like he's handing it to me before I ask."

And I start pacing, because Mark still isn't responding to anything I say. And as I start pacing, I see Jack standing at the door. He gives me a weak smile.

"Jack," I say. I'm not sure if I hate the idea he overheard me, or if I'm glad, because I'm not the kind of person that says those things to the person that needs to hear them. And he isn't the kind of person that listens.

"He's there?" Mark asks.

"Yeah, he sort of forgot to announce his presence," I tease.

"Sorry, I'll get out of your way, Carter," he says softly.

"No, Jack, come say hi to my brother," I say holding out the phone. It occurs to me that might be bad plan. Neither of them are particularly chatty, and a silent phone conversation might not be the best way to start a relationship.

Jack raises his eyebrows. I hold the phone back to my ear and say to Mark, "You want to say hi, to my…" ok, so we've never really defined our relationship, bad time to discover it "Jack."

"I'm a belonging, and I?" Jack asks playfully.

"Yep, I own you," I say to him. Then I say to Mark, "So here's Jack."

Jack takes the phone, and pauses a second, before he puts it to his ear. "How is it going?"

He pauses.

"Yeah, Air Force. You?"

More pause.

"Yeah…were Sam used to work anyway. Yeah. Deep space radar telemetry."

He flinches, "You pick up on stuff just like your dad."

I feel my eyes go wide in horror. He looks at me and realizes he's messed up. He wasn't supposed to talk to Dad about Mark, and he wasn't supposed to talk to Mark about Dad.

"Sorry," he mutters, and I'm not sure if he's talking to me or Mark.

"Yeah," he says with a smile which lets me know that they switched subjects, "yeah, I can't wait to meet me kid."

I put my arm around his shoulder. He reaches a hand around my waist. "Yeah, your sister is pretty amazing," he says. Wow, there making nice? I mean obviously for me, but this is going well.

Jack's face falls, and he lets go of me. "I wouldn't…use that word."

"What's wrong?" I ask.

He takes a step away from me, and I nod my head. I walk into the kitchen, and start making myself some herbal tea. I gave up on the decaf coffee. It just made me really, really, want real coffee. Not that I actually like herbal tea. I sort of hate it. But it's better than pretend coffee.

"Hey," Jack says a few minutes later. He hands me my phone. "You ok?"

"Yeah, you?"he says looking guilty.

"You don't have to tell me what happened in that phone conversation, Jack, calm down."

"Sam…he asked me if I was in love with you. I can't say that…yet," he says.

I laugh in relief, "Don't sweat that Jack. I'm not ready to say that either. Don't let Mark bully you. We've just come out of relationships. We'll worry about it later."

He reaches out and puts a hand on my still flat belly, "I love this one."

I put my hand over his, "me too. And that's a start right?"

Jack

There is a boy out in the front yard of Sam's brother's place. I didn't think it would bother me, but it's eating me up inside. He reminds me of Charlie for no other reason than that he's a little boy.

"You ok?" Sam asks.

I nod.

"He's way less scary than my father, more polite too."

I give her a nod, and the part of a smile I can manage.

"Hey, it's going to be fine."

"I know," I whisper.

Then she notices where my eyes are. "Charlie?" she asks concerned.

"I'm going to be ok," I assure her. But I can practically see into her brain, and the wheels are spinning. She's worried I'm never going to be able to look at a baby without thinking about Charlie.

And frankly, so am I.

What would that mean for our kid?

The taxi stops, and we get out. "Aunnie Sammie!" the kid exclaims throwing his hands up. She catches the kid mid run, and spins him around. "Hey, there Paul how you doing?"

"'dis your new Jonas?" the kid asks giving me a suspicious look.

"I'm Jack," I say, because I don't want Sam to have to try to answer to that question. "Do you like Air Plane rides?"

"You'll take me in a plane?" he asks. Right, still well within the literal stage.

"Maybe someday. Today I was just thinking about turning you into a plane," I say holding out my arms. He climbs from Sam's arms to my arms. I hoist him up with one of my arms under his belly, and the other under his legs. "Put out your arms," I instruct like that's actually essential to the experience instead of pure aesthetics. Then I throw in the plane sounds and we take off. He immediately bursts into giggles. After a few seconds my arms are already aching. I realize I've aged a lot in the few years since Charlie was this little. I hope I'll still be fit when my kid gets this big. I'm getting old.

"And how is little Lizzie?" I hear Sam asking. Right the baby. I look over at her on the forward spin. The kid is almost old enough that you can't call her a baby.

Sam picks her up, "hey there big girl. It's your Auntie Sam."

The kid buries her head in Sam's shoulder. Or whipped her bugers on Sam, it's hard to tell sometimes with the little kids.

"Hey sweetie," I say giving the little girl a pat on the head.

"More a'pane Uncle Jack," Paul protests.

"Ok, little man, ok."

Mark

I watch Sam and her new guy play with the kids for awhile before I go over and introduce myself.

"Mark," I say with the head nod.

He uses my son's head to shake my hand which make Paul giggle.

"You're good with kids," I tell him.

"I'd better be," he says, and the guy looks worried. I may not be a big fan of the guy who knocked up my little sister, but a lot of guys wouldn't still be around. And it really looks like he would be a good father.

"Where is Rachel?" Sam asks.

"She's working late today," he says, "she'll be home in an hour or two.

"When did she go back to work?" Sam asks.

"When baby girl turned one," I say smiling at my daughter who pulls her head back and looks at me when she hears the words 'baby girl' which I'm pretty sure is she's mistaken from her name. "You staying home with yours?" I hope I'm not opening a can of worms. Gender issues have always been a little touchy with my little sister, and much more so since she had that nightmare of an engagement with Jonas.

"For a month or so," she says.

This guy raises a brow at her and says, "Really? And then you're going back to SG-1?"

"Jack," she says shaking her head.

"Sam, you deserve to be on the front line team," he insists. She hands my daughter back to me. He takes the cue, and sets my son down. Paul runs off to play.

"I'm going to deal with enough rumors about sleeping my way to the top. I don't need them to actually be true," she hisses.

He laughs. Oh, he is so going to die, "That's what you're worried about? Because the exact opposite is true. Sam where would you be if we'd never slept together?"

She smiles, "SG-1."

"Right, so I'd just be restoring you to your rightful place."

"But you can't do that, you shouldn't be punished for this."

"Getting to be with you, and getting to have a little one are not punishment, Sam," he says.

"But your job..."

"It's less important to me than it is to you," he says swiping some hair out of her face, "sorry for having that conversation in front of you, Mark," he says to me, "We're right on the edge of classified here."

"It's alright," I say. I'm trying to figure out if they broke any rules with their relationship, but I can't quite get that from the context.

Sam

Rachel and I always go shopping when I come to visit. It's not that San Diego has a particularly wonderful shopping scene, but I never get to do girly stuff. And neither does Rachel, at least not without octopus hands reaching out of the cart.

And then Jack decides to come along. He didn't quite get the concept of "girl's night" and I couldn't really tell him not to come, because I've been trying to get him to take me out more. And this is out of the house. So I'll pretend to be happy, and hope I actually will be.

Half an hour later, I take a quick detour by electronics before meeting Rachel by shoes. What I didn't know is that between electronics and shoes is the baby department. I suddenly find myself mesmerized by the most adorable new-born dress. I hear footsteps stop behind me, and figure it's Rachel come to retrieve me.

"I know it's way too early to start buying baby clothes, but I'm not sure I can resist."

"Why would you?" Jack's voice says, and I turn with a start. I try to hide the dress behind me, and that causes him to laugh. "It's cute."

"There is only a fifty percent chance our baby will get to wear it," I defend. And that's not even factoring in the odds that I will lose the baby.

He shrugs, "Hey, if it's a boy we can tell him he wore it when he was little. That'd be fun."

"Even better we could put it on him, and take a picture or two," I say.

"That's going a little far," he says frowning.

"You're not comfortable with your son wearing a dress?" I ask.

"No, maybe if it's a boy we'll have to save that for the next one," he says playfully. My face must have fallen, because he quickly says, "what's wrong?"

"I just…Jack, I don't know if there is going to be a next one…" I stammer. This isn't fair to him. He probably wanted a big family, "Almost a year away from the Stargate, per kid…"

He looks into the distance for a second, and then back at me, "Sam, there is a lot of time between now and eternity, and there is more than one way to have a kid. Now we're buying that frilly little dress even if we're never going to have a chance to use it. If nothing else you can hang it on the wall."

"Because that's not weird," I say.

"We're getting it Carter, no more arguments," he says snapping the dress out of my hands.

Jack

I debated getting Carter a ring for Christmas. I feel like I should offer. But if I offered I know I'd be hoping she'd turn me down, and that's no way to start a marriage. I know an engagement would make her brother's Christmas. Mark has been pushy, and nosey. I like Rachel though.

But I didn't get her a ring for Christmas. But I wanted to get her something to show her that I'm serious about this whole thing. So I did get her jewelry. Actually jewelry that came in a ring shaped box. But I took it out, and put it in another one. We really don't need any misunderstandings with this one.

I put it in a toaster box. Just because I happened to have a toaster box. That by the way, is Sam's fault. She thought she could take pieces from my toaster and her toaster and put them together to make a super Frankenstein toaster which would end world hunger or cook her toast in half the time or something. I guess the cooking toast in half the time is sort of a big deal since she's still got horrible morning sickness and toast makes up a large portion of her diet.

Anyway, Sam isn't as good at engineering as she thinks she is. Even though she is pretty darn good. So we ended up with two broken toasters, and me making a 5:45 am run for a toaster before I left on a mission.

Stupid pregnancy nausea.

Anyway, back to the current contents of the toaster box which are not an expensive quick cooking toaster, but in fact a necklace. It's silver, because the rare times when Sam wears jewelry it's always silver. The chain is thin, but strong, just like Sam. The pendent has a mom's arms wrapped around a tiny baby all swaddled up, with a row of little diamonds on the inside. The arms form a heart.

When Sam opens it up she's almost crying as she looks at it. I'm hoping this is just the pregnancy hormones, otherwise I'm going to avoid giving her jewelry in the future, jesh.

"Jack, you didn't have to…" she says.

"I know Sam, just like we didn't have to buy the baby clothes yesterday. But we did it for the same reason," I tell her and her eyes go huge with surprise. Yeah, I hope that works, because that's as close as she's going to get to a declaration of love for awhile. I help her put it on, and her hand reaches to grab mine when I'm done. Our hands hover there for awhile by her shoulder.

"Aunie Sam, you're so spark'ly," Paul says crawling onto her lab, and turning his chubby hand on her necklace.

"And you're so fuzzy," she says rubbing the boy's footy pajamas. God, I love snuggling a kid in footy pajamas. That should be our next purchase for this kid. That one would at least be gender non-specific.

I'm pretty sure Sam wants a girl. And it's not just because of the tiny girly dress either. When we're not calling our kid "baby" or "Broca" she's calling it "her" and "she". Plus she's finished all the pregnancy books (I swear it's been one a night) and started on a naming book. I glanced at it the other day, and noticed all the highlighted ones were girl names.

Not going to lie, I'd rather have a daughter too. Not that I wouldn't love a son, but a boy is going to remind me more of Charlie. Of course, if I have a girl I'm still going to play catch with her, and build model airplanes. But she'll be wearing one of those fluffy dresses as she does it, so it will be different.

Sam smiles and hands me my present. I open it up. Ok, maybe I was wrong about Sam wanting a girl.

"So that dress wasn't the first baby outfit you bought?" I tease holding up a tiny Colorado Avalanche jersey.

"Well, we wouldn't want the baby to stick out," she says pointing to the box. Another one? I pick it up. It's exactly like the baby's except Jack size, and one Sam size too. And under those there I see an envelope. I pick it up and look inside.

"Season tickets?" I ask.

"So you don't have to tape the hockey games," she smiles at me.

"I didn't have to tape them," I say.

"I know, you wanted too. But I thought if you took your reason for taping them with you…" she says holding up the baby sized jersey.

"My reasons," I say giving her a kiss.

She pulls away from the kiss to say, "well…I was hoping you'd choose me as your date," before returning that kiss. She has this way of smiling into a kiss so your lips barely make contact, but you feel more connected. I like it.

"What game?" Paul asks pulling on the jersey.

"Hockey," little man.

I notice Mark shaking his head.

"Let's play with some of your new toys," I say catching on.

"Thanks," Mark tells me when he follows me out the kitchen on an early morning cookie run. "I don't like Paul playing or watching violent games."

I shouldn't say anything. I always hated unsolicited parenting advice. But I have to. "The whole forbidding violence doesn't keep them from violence." It might have resulted in my son death.

He looks at me.

"Sam told you about…my son right?" I ask looking away. But even though my eyes are on the wall I know that he nodded, "We didn't let Charlie have toy guns. He accidently shot himself."

There is an awkward silence for a while.

"I'm not telling you what to do Mark. If I knew what I was doing my son would still be alive," I head back into the living room.

What kind of a dad will I be this time? Is our kid getting toy guns? Will Broca be playing hockey? What if Broca wants to box? Or do karate? Or join the military? Am I going to be ok with any of that?

I sit down next to Sam. She is holding the baby sized jersey.

We'll figure it out. The important thing is Broca exists.