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Child of the Ancients

As soon as Teal'c and Vala were through the Stargate, Daniel had turned to look at where Sergeant Harriman sat in the control room, looking anxiously at SG-1.

"Close the iris!" he yelled at the man sitting there, indicating the Stargate behind him; he had no sure way of knowing exactly what Daanar and his fellows were planning to do to escape the attacking Ori battlecruiser, but he was pretty sure that it would be wisest to prevent any after-effects from reaching them until the wormhole had shut down.

As soon as the metal shield had closed on the wormhole, a voice sounded from the control room that Daniel had, on some level, been expecting to be there.

"So," General Landry said, looking at his flagship team with a look that somehow combined fondness with exasperation, "judging by the rather rushed way you came back through the 'gate, shall I take it things didn't go smoothly?"

"You could say that, General Landry," Liam said, looking brightly up at the window that separated the Gateroom from the control room. "Don't worry, though; Daanar and the others dealt have with it, and they're safe now."

"Ah," Landry said, nodding in a slightly bemused manner at Liam's words before turning his attention to the others. "Colonel Mitchell, would you care to elaborate on what Liam Jackson means by that?"

Mitchell shrugged in an apologetic manner as he looked up at his commanding officer.

"Sorry, sir; you know as much as I do," he said apologetically, as he looked back at the general. "We'll tell you what we can in the briefing, OK?"

After a moment's pause for contemplation, Landry nodded in acceptance.

"Very well; briefing will take place in an hour's time," he said, before looking inquiringly at Sam and Daniel. "I assume you two will be wanting to have some time alone first?"

Despite the seriousness of what they'd only just managed to escape, Sam and Daniel felt more relieved when Landry told them that they'd have some time to talk than they'd felt when they'd found themselves back on Earth.

The problem of the Ori may still be existent- and the question of what Daanar and the others had actually done to escape that planet remained an issue- but, right now, Sam and Daniel knew only one thing for sure.

They needed to talk about what they'd just discovered- or rather, remembered- about their feelings for each other.

As Landry turned around and walked out of the control room, Daniel turned to look at Liam.

"Uh, Liam, could you just… stay with Cam and the others for a bit?" he asked, trying not to feel quite so out of his depth as he looked at the son he'd never thought he'd have. "Your mother and I… uh…."

Even as he tried to come up with a way of saying what he wanted to say without having to deal with his son's teasing, Daniel couldn't help but reflect to himself that, if he hadn't felt so awkward about Liam's presence, he might have found the current somewhat amusing. He'd spent so much time wondering what he'd be like as a father, trying to make sure that he wouldn't make the mistakes some of his foster parents had done, and now that he was actually in that position, he wasn't entirely sure how to behave.

Of course, he wasn't exactly in the usual position of a first-time father- if nothing else, his child was physically ten and chronologically four without Daniel having had the chance to be involved in any of the intervening stages of his son's development, and he hadn't even remembered the conception until barely even an hour ago- but he still felt like he should have been a bit better at this kind of thing…

Thankfully, Liam seemed to understand why his father was asking him.

"Sure thing, Dad," he said, giving Daniel a brief thumbs-up as he grinned at him and Sam. "After all, you two probably have a bit of catching-up to do… in every sense of the word…"

"Liam…" Sam said, glaring mockingly at her son even as she smiled slightly; in some ways, his behaviour reminded her of the times she'd teased her brother Mark about having a girlfriend over when she was younger.

"Just joking, Mom; I know you're not going to do anything too inappropriate," Liam added, grinning over at his mother before looking back at Mitchell. "C'mon, Uncle Cam; can we just get out of here already? There's got to be something interesting to play on the computers in this place, right?"

"Uh… sure thing, Liam," Mitchell said, looking bemusedly over at Teal'c and Vala as Liam grabbed his hand and began to practically drag him out of the gateroom. The other two exchanged glances, smiled slightly, and then followed Mitchell and Liam out of the gateroom. As the doors closed behind their teammates, Sam and Daniel were left standing in the gateroom, staring uncertainly at each other.

"Uh… your office or mine?" Daniel asked after a moment's pause, looking at Sam with an awkward expression on his face.

Of course, Sam couldn't exactly blame him for feeling awkward about how to deal with this drastic change in their relationships; she wasn't exactly sure how to handle this kind of situation herself. After all the times she'd entertained thoughts about asking Daniel out, suddenly they both had a ten-year-old son with access to most of the knowledge and powers of the Ancients themselves… and they'd not only totally missed out on the early parts of his life, they now (apparently) had to depend on him to fight the current war against the Ori.

There wasn't even an 'instruction manual' for normal parents; this was definitely going to be far harder to deal with.

"Yours, I think," she said after a few moments in silent thought. "If Liam wants to play a few games, I don't think he'd drag Cam and the others off to the room full of ancient artefacts- no offence meant, of course."

"None taken," Daniel replied, a brief smile flickering across his lips before he indicated the door. "Come on; let's go."

A few minutes later, the two of them stood in Daniel's office, amid a mass of artefacts and language books, staring awkwardly at each other as they tried to come up with something to say.

Nothing was occurring to them so far.

In all fairness, though, what was there for them to say in a position like this?

Finally, in the end, Sam broke the silence that had settled over the room as she looked at the man she had come to love, voicing the one topic she could think of that wouldn't be likely to make either of them yell at the other.

"So… Oma named our son Liam?" she said, looking awkwardly at Daniel; it probably wasn't the best way to begin the conversation, but it was all Sam could think of right now. "Nice name, isn't it?"

"Uh… it kind of fits, really," Daniel said, looking back at her with an equally awkward expression on his face. "'Liam' does mean 'determined guardian'; given how Oma appears to have kept him secret to help us against the Ori… well, it fits."

"Yeah…" Sam said, nodding slightly in agreement, a small smile on her face before it faded as she looked at Daniel once again. "Did… did you mean what you 'showed' me?"

Daniel swallowed.

Even after all they'd gone through since joining the Stargate program, Daniel didn't think he'd ever been more afraid of the consequences of his actions than he was at this moment.

"Yeah… I meant it," he said, looking at her anxiously, hoping that she'd allow him to say everything he needed to say about the matter in question before speaking herself; if he had to stop, he wasn't sure he'd manage to summon the nerve to start again. "I… well, actually, I'd had… feelings… for you… for a while before I Ascended."

Sam blinked in surprise.

"What?" she said, looking at Daniel with a stunned expression. "You've had… feelings… for me for that long and never mentioned them?"

"Well, I wasn't actually consciously aware of them for a while before that," Daniel explained, looking awkwardly at Sam as he spoke, clearly wishing that he didn't have to be in this position. "It was… well, just little things here and there that made me realise I didn't just think of you as a friend at first. My thoughts when I saw you in that dress on Simarka, how I felt when Jolinar got into you, that time you were taken over by that entity and sent into the computer…"

He sighed briefly as he took off his glasses and pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, taking a couple of deep breaths as though he was trying to steady himself before he looked back up at Sam. "I can't pinpoint specifically when I started to feel something for you; all I know for sure is that, when I first saw you back on Vis Uban, when I'd lost all my memories… I felt something for you that I've never been able to really forget."

"Oh," Sam said, after a moment's pause.

What else was there to say when you learned that a man you'd thought only saw you as a friend had been hiding feelings for you for the last few years?

"Well…" she said, sighing once again as she looked at him. "I suppose I should admit that… well, I'd been thinking about asking you out before you Ascended."

Daniel's head shot up sharply at that.

"What?" he asked, staring incredulously at his friend. "But… but Jack…"

"Yeah, I know I had a crush on him at that point, but I was getting tired of having feelings for him and not actually being able to do something about them," Sam explained. "I had pretty much given up on a relationship with him at that point, and… well… God," she said, chuckling slightly as she looked up at the ceiling, "this is kind of embarrassing…"

"What is?"

The lieutenant colonel sighed as she looked at him. "Well, during the first months we were a team, I actually had feelings for you."

Daniel's eyes widened.

"E-excuse me?" he asked, staring incredulously at her. "You had a crush… on me?"

"Well, why wouldn't I?" Sam asked, smiling slightly at him. "I mean, you were this brilliant, gorgeous guy who actually understood my work and who I genuinely enjoyed spending time with. The only reason I never did anything about it was… well…"

Sam trailed off slightly at that, but she didn't need to finish; Daniel knew what she would have said.

Even if she'd actually asked him out back when she'd first had feelings for him, he probably would have turned her down out of loyalty to Sha're, so she hadn't done anything about it. Even after Sha're's death, Sam couldn't have been sure when would be the 'appropriate' time to ask him on a date, and anyway, by that point, there was the detail of her 'feelings' for Jack (Not that Daniel would ever have mentioned them to her face, of course; the situation was awkward enough without bringing whatever 'relationship' Sam may or may not have had with their old friend and commanding officer into the equation).

"And then, when I came back from Ascension, there was never a convenient time, was there?" Daniel continued after a moment's pause, looking inquiringly back at Sam as he spoke in an attempt to gauge her reaction. "I mean, what with the search for the Lost City, your brother setting you up with Pete, the war with the Replicators, and the current situation with the Ori…"

Sam nodded. "Tell me about it; there was just never a good time to have a discussion like that, was there?" she said, shaking her head as she smiled slightly, before the smile faded as reality set in. "And now… well, here we are."

"Yeah…" Daniel said, his own grin trailing off as he acknowledged Sam's point.

'Here they were' was indeed all that could be said about their current situation.

Two friends and teammates on a military team created to travel to other worlds, facing life-or-death situations every day of the week, who'd just discovered that they'd had a child for the last four years that neither of them knew about… and neither had any real idea where they could go from this point.

Finally, after a brief silence, Sam finally decided to speak.

"Well," she said, smiling slightly at Daniel as she inwardly prepared herself for what she was about to do, "it seems like we have two choices right now. Either we can do the 'sensible' thing, and leave things as they are for the sake of the team…"

"Or," Daniel continued, slowly walking over to Sam, a slightly apprehensive look on his face as he reached out with one hand to gently touch her cheek, "we could not do the 'sensible' thing, and take a chance on something that I, for one, have wanted for the last few years?"

Sam didn't answer- at least, not with words. Instead she leaned in, a soft smile on her face, and kissed Daniel. It wasn't an overly passionate kiss- just a soft, gentle meeting of lips- but the warm feeling that spread through the two of them as their lips finally met was, as far as they were both concerned, the most incredible feeling either had experienced, second only to Liam's actual conception.

After a few moments, the two parted once more, prompting a small smile from Daniel as he looked at Sam.

"So, Colonel-Doctor Carter," he said, in a casual manner that did little to conceal the gleam of joy in his eyes, "shall I take this as meaning that you're interested in giving a long-term relationship a shot?"

Sam smiled back at him trying to conceal her instinctive pleasure at hearing his updated version of his old nickname for her; it had been a long time since he'd first called her 'Captain-Doctor' back in the early days of the SGC, but she'd always remembered it with great affection. It was the closest thing she'd ever had to a 'pet name' in her life- her father and brother occasionally calling her 'Sammy' didn't really count, and her boyfriends had mostly just called her 'Sam' or 'Samantha'- and, on some level, she'd always loved the fact that Daniel was the only person who called her that.

It may have been a somewhat antiquated attitude- and she'd have beaten up anybody else who suggested it- but, in some way, it made her feel like she'd… belonged to him, almost.

"You may indeed, Doctor Jackson," she said, a broad grin on her face as she looked back at him.

"Perfect," Daniel said, grinning back at her with an equally broad smile as he pulled something out of his pocket- Sam vaguely recognised it as the tablet Daanar had given Daniel just before they left the planet- and placed it on his desk.

Noting Sam's slightly surprised expression- she'd never seen him reject the chance to look at a tablet that could contain useful information at the earlier opportunity- Daniel smiled softly at her.

"Hey, I've got an entire department of people to study that if it's needed; I can look over that the next time we're in here if I want to," he said casually. "Right now… well, I'd like to spend some time with my son, my friends, and the woman I love."

Once again, Sam couldn't come up with the words for a proper response to that; instead she just leaned over to kiss Daniel once more, another smile spreading across her face as she stepped back.

"Come on," she said, indicating the door of his office. "Let's check with General Landry if we can have some time off, and then we'll see if we can find our son."

Clasping hands, the two of them headed out of their office and into the corridors of the base, broad grins on their faces as they reflected on what had just taken place.

The Ori may still be a threat, that tablet may still need to be translated, and the exact part that Liam was meant to play in the continuing Ori war may still remain a problem…

But, for the moment, as far as Sam and Daniel were concerned, all they wanted to do was spend some time away from work with their son and friends.

After all the time they'd been forced to put their own desires for families above the needs of the majority, they were going to take the day off before starting to worry about the universe once again.