Carter brushed a tendril of hair back from her face and chanced a glance at the man walking beside her. He caught her looking and gave her a small, nervous smile. She looked away uncertainly. When she'd buried the Circle, she'd buried with it the hope she'd ever be able to fill in the blanks of her life. Now the answers were assessable, and she was afraid to know them. She bit her lip and sought out O'Neill's lanky form behind her. He scowled back at her, and she knew he was no more eager to face the unknown than she was.
He'd refused to discuss it when they'd returned alone to their home the night before. "Don't go there, Carter," he snarled at her when she'd tried again over breakfast. And so she hadn't. But, now she turned away from his scowl and stepped closer to the man who claimed to be her father.
"Are you really my father?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, I am," he answered cautiously. It was the first time she'd approached him and he was frightened of moving too quickly.
"What about my mother?" she asked.
"I'm sorry, Sam," he answered, "she died a long time ago." When she didn't immediately answer, he added, "You are a lot like her...beautiful and smart."
She blushed at the compliment. Or maybe she was just flushed from the hot walk. "When's the baby due?" he asked.
"A while yet," she answered. "Do...did I leave other children behind?"
"No, no," he assured her. "This is your first."
"O'Neill?" she asked so quietly he'd never have heard her without Selmak's enhanced hearing.
"A long time ago he had a son...and a wife. The boy died, the woman didn't stay...he'd been alone for quite sometime."
"So," she said and paused before continuing so softly he had to strain even more to hear her, "we don't belong together, after all?"
"Well, you didn't. Not like that, but...you do now. It doesn't have to end, you know?"
"Really?" she asked, but he could tell she didn't believe him.
"Listen," he said earnestly, "you may not have been together but it wasn't because you both didn't want to be...it was the job. Being soldiers-officers together, it wasn't an option. But, I've known for a long time, if the circumstances were different, you would have been together. Well, now they are different. This doesn't have to end." She closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall from them, and he pulled her into a gentle embrace. For a second she resisted but then melted into his arms. "It will be all right, Baby," he assured her.
"We planning to make it to that Gate of yours today?" O'Neill said behind them. They took the hint and pulled apart to walk on. As they did so, she gave him a small smile that almost reached her eyes and a quiet 'thank you'.
She gazed at the swirling blue of the open circle as though mesmerized. "Are we sure we want to do this?" O'Neill asked at her side. "It doesn't look too safe."
Jackson threw off the pensive somberness he'd carried with him for the trip and grinned with forced excitement. "We're sure."
O'Neill tried to catch Carter's eye, but her gaze was locked on the Gate. He'd avoided talking to her about them-the them that they'd find on the other side of that thing. She'd tried more than once to get him to, but he'd avoided it as though his life depended on it. And he was afraid it did. The life he knew here with Carter. He hadn't been close enough to hear her discussion with Jacob Carter, but he'd watched her as they'd spoken. He'd seen the drop of her shoulders as though she'd suffered a great loss, and he was afraid he knew what that meant.
"Carter," he said low and urgently.
She tore her eyes from the Gate and turned to him. "Sir?"
"I...I..." he floundered painfully about, not even sure what it was he wanted to say. She dropped her eyes to his shoes. He'd rebuffed her too many times for her to take the chance she knew what he was trying to say. They were about to step into another world, another life, and she didn't want to leave this one with one of his angry, sarcastic statements echoing in her ears. She reached out her hand and took his. "Let's go, O'Neill," she said.
"Right," he agreed, and they walked through the Gate together.
The sights and people greeting them when they emerged on the other side were as unfamiliar to them as Kylanar had been when they'd first woken up without their memories. Their companions made introductions. General Hammond, Doctor Frasier, and several others. They nodded their heads in wary acknowledgement but without recognition. As soon as the introductions were over, they were led off to the infirmary.
O'Neill bristled at the medical staff hovering around them with strange instruments and unknown plans. Doctor Frasier calmly and firmly assured him the tests were necessary before they'd be allowed to travel onto the planet where hopefully their memories would be returned. With an aggrieved sigh, he allowed her and her staff to do their jobs. They passed the physicals with flying colors. Strong and healthy with no ill effects from their time offworld. Dr. Frasier beamed happily at them as she gave the good report.
"Fine then," O'Neill said, "let's get this over with."
"Actually, Jack," the general said, "we'd thought it best to wait until tomorrow. Give you time to rest up."
O'Neill scowled at the suggestion. The last thing he wanted to do was go through another night of anxious waiting. "I think we'd all like to just get it over with, if you don't mind," he said. The others nodded their assent.
The general did mind. His people weren't completely back but closer than they had been in far too long. He wanted to keep them safely within his view. Nevertheless, he reluctantly agreed, "Very well, then. SG-13 and Jacob will accompany you on through. I'll look forward to seeing you when you return."
JSJSJSJSJSJSJS
The memories and feelings rushing through his mind swept him along. Sarah and Charlie, lost almost as fast as they were found. He swallowed down a despairing cry in their wake. But they were only the beginning. Missions gone bad, fellow officers left dead on foreign soil, blood on his hands. A prison of war camp in Iraq where whatever shreds of humanity he'd managed to hold on to had been stripped away from him with his dignity and hope. Hitting the ground too hard and too fast and the sound of cracking bones. A pond as devoid of fish as much as his soul was devoid of innocence. The swirling blue of an event horizon. The frozen gut-wrenching trip through a StarGate. The open, curious face of Daniel Jackson. Teal'c's stony visage. Staring into the wrong end of a staff weapon knowing the game was up only to find it was just beginning.
And images of Carter: staring with wonder into the blue of the StarGate, laughing at his side as they walked on an alien world, biting her lip in frustration when she couldn't pull a solution out of thin air, pushing Cassy on the swings, eagerly tearing an alien doohickey apart, staring at him helplessly on the wrong side of a force field, and strapped to a chair unsuccessfully trying to evade questions that had to be answered.
"And what were you feeling at the time?" Anise asked.
"I was sad," she said with a shrug, "and angry."
"About?" the Tok'ra asked.
"That he was throwing his life away for me," she said with a strained voice, "That he would waste it like that."
"Did you tell him that?"
"No, of course not. There wasn't time...and it would have been too embarrassing for both of us."
He winced at her words. But then he'd always known, hadn't he, that his feelings for her were an unwelcome embarrassment.
"You didn't share his feelings then?" Anise probed. He knew the answer to that. No. She didn't share his feelings, and he'd never expected her to. He was old and hardened while she was still young and open to all the possibilities and wonders of the worlds they explored. Where he saw danger and subterfuge behind every new encounter, she saw excitement and discovery. There were too many times he'd issued orders that didn't set right with her ideals and hopes, too many times he had been forced to discount her and Daniel's opinions and desires trying to keep them safe, and far too many times he'd said the wrong thing at the wrong time or failed to say the right thing at the right time. She could no more love him than he could hate her.
"I've told you what I was feeling," Carter answered, sidestepping the question. He was grateful she'd spared him that at least. "You have what you need to know. I'm not a za'tarc." And when she'd made it plain she was only too happy to leave the whole mess behind them in that room, he'd been more than willing to agree. Leave it and forget it.
But, he hadn't. He'd swallowed down his feelings for her as best as he could before the incident, and he'd endeavored to do so even more in the time since. But he'd never let them go, and she knew it. He couldn't deny he would have wished a life with her if it had been within his power. If he hadn't felt as he did beforehand, if he hadn't desperately wanted the lies they fed them to be true...maybe they wouldn't have been taken in by their words, maybe they wouldn't have accepted the lie of their life together, and now she wouldn't be tied to him by all that had passed on Kylanar and by the child she carried.
But, he had, and they had, and there wasn't any going back from here. He'd give her what freedom he could, but he couldn't give her back the life she'd had before. It was far too late for that. SG-1, as they knew it, was history, they could never walk into a mission together again. Even without the baby too much had passed between them for that.
He drew in a long, wavering breath and opened his eyes. The alien hovering nearby nodded its head and moved out of his way so he could see Jacob anxiously watching another alien bent over Carter. The Tok'ra glanced up at him and then back to Carter. He couldn't read his expression. But he doubted the man or the symbiote were any happier with the situation than his daughter would be when she woke up. That would be soon, he thought. He could see the memories wash over her face. They came so fast that the good ones softening her face and making her lips turn up in a small smile blended into the bad ones that caused tears to run down her cheeks and small gasps and cries to work their way out of her mouth. Uncomfortable watching her innermost feelings, he looked around for Daniel.
He was on the other side of Carter. Already awake, he was sitting looking more than slightly dazed on the edge of his cot.
"Daniel?" he asked quietly.
Daniel glanced up and gave him a resigned nod and half a smile. "Jack," he answered.
"You ok?" Jack asked and then could have kicked himself. Of course, Daniel wasn't ok. His childhood memories were full of first the loss of his parents and then the rejection of his grandfather. And things had only gotten worse from there: his disgrace in his chosen field and the loss and then death of Sha're. And now Talyn and the kids.
Daniel read the apology in Jack's face before he had to say it. "I'm fine, Jack...I am," he said trying to assure his friend and himself both with his words. "She made the right choice, you know. She'd never have been happy here. Can you imagine her hemmed in under the mountain? Even if we'd gotten the clearance for her to leave the base, life on Earth would never have been what she wanted. She's better off on Kylanar."
"What about you?" Jack asked.
Daniel shrugged. "She was a nice girl, Jack, but..." he shrugged again, "well, we didn't have much in common. I'll miss her...I'll miss the kids, but I'll be ok. I am ok."
Jack nodded as though he wasn't quite convinced and Daniel continued, "Come on, Jack, the only real thing we had between us were her lies. Sam was right when she thought I shouldn't have gone back...I tried, but we never got past that and I doubt we ever would have. I never felt like her husband or those kids' father...you were a lot more a dad to Ylyn than I ever managed to be! If you're ok leaving him behind than you can be sure so am I."
Jack sighed, "I'd have brought him through in a heartbeat-already miss the little guy. But, I suppose you're right-he's better off back there." He sighed again and turned back to Carter just as she came awake with a cry. He thought it must have been like the one she'd given that had first woken him in their small room on Kylanar. Now, like then, she startled up from the bed. But this time her father was there to keep her from falling. He caught her up in a tight embrace.
"Dad," she said, her voice quivering.
"Sammie," he answered. He pushed loose hair from her face and kissed her bent head gently. "It's ok, honey. It's ok," he told her.
"Is it?" she asked into his shoulder.
"Yes," he assured her. "It's all behind you now...the good and the bad."
"And the colonel?" she asked so quietly no one else could hear. Her dad pulled away from her to see her face and smiled.
"He's right here. Waiting to make sure you're all right-just like always," he turned her to see Jack standing behind them looking as frightened and confused as she felt.
"Carter," he said, low and uncertain. Her dad nudged her toward him, and she came into his arms. He sighed deeply against her.
For a moment, she simply clung to him. "You all right, Sir?" she finally managed to work out.
"Just peachy," he answered. "You?"
She drew away from him and smiled. "I'm good," she said, "I'm good." Then she put her head back against his chest and let him encircle her in his arms as though she belonged there.
(Author's Note: Kelly2 felt a small epilogue was in order here and couldn't talk me into putting the effort into it...so she wrote her own which I offer here for those who want just a little bit more.)
Three-quarters of the facility was in the commissary-seems the kitchen had decided that the return of the remainder of SG-1 was a good excuse for a very large cake. Hammond smiled wryly-not that he'd authorized the party, but he was tired of waiting for the fax he was expecting and, besides, he wanted some cake. He pushed the chair back, sent one last stern glance at the fax machine, and headed for the butter cream frosting. As the elevator doors slid shut, the fax machine spewed its strident stream of static onto paper...
'Taking under advisement the extreme nature of the situation and the testimony of BG George Hammond, the United States Air Force Chief of Staff hereby authorizes a waiver of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for the individuals named below:
O'Neill, J.
Carter, S.
A copy of this notice shall be placed into the personnel files of the affected officers and the Office of the Chief of Staff shall be advised immediately should any situation arise which warrants re-examination of the command structure for the affected officers.'
The fax machine returned to silence. Its part in the saga completed.