Author's Note: I've had an overwhelming number of requests for Sam's Point of View, so I just wanted to let you know that I'm working on it. And thank you so much for the many wonderful reviews. I've enjoyed reading them, makes me all warm inside.

-Bixata

Chapter 11

Folks in Washington never bother me again. Daniel doesn't let them once Carter informs him of our…discomfort. Requests are denied, awards misplaced, ceremonies cancelled. Thankfully I'm brought back to life, repatriated, retired, awarded my well-earned pension and veteran's and disabilities benefits. I've got good credit and insurance, fantastic free health care, and, most importantly, the legalized adoption of my two children. Boy O'Neill and Girl O'Neill until further notice. I find this quite humorous. We'll be laughing about it for years.

I have no house, no car, two adolescent children with generic appellations, and no life savings to fall back on.

There really isn't anything for me to worry about financially. I'm too high profile to slip through the cracks of government paperwork. But with two kids dependent on me, who I plan to thoroughly spoil for years to come, on my own in my condition it won't be enough.

The ironic part is that after ten years as a bachelor with no life outside of work I'd saved up quite a tidy sum of money, all of which had been usurped by the SGC to be used for refugees and families in need once I was declared killed in action. Families like the Twins and me. I'm a big fan of irony. Some of the money I've been receiving was probably my own at one time (though by now my measly account would have been used up, but I was going for symbolism here).

I have enough money to get by in the long run if I don't have such pressing needs as putting a down payment on a house. Like I said before, a box would be great but my kids deserve the best. And I'm really not all that eager to ditch Carter's.

So we stay at Carter's and it isn't long before she becomes Mother. She's so excited and proud, I don't have the heart to tell her that I became Father the day their parents died. It's the sentiment that matters, and it is comforting to know that the Twins have accepted this new life we're making for ourselves. And if Carter is happy being a part of the family then I'm not ashamed to admit that I couldn't be happier. I feel no guilt or shame for invading her home and taking over her life. I like to think we make her life better. Outside of work she doesn't seem to have one.

With Washington out of the picture and things finally settling down it's time to get busy living and not just surviving. The kids grow stronger by the day and it won't be long before they can keep up with other kids their age. They are undersize due to their malnutrition but surprisingly they are in good health otherwise, for which I have been eternally grateful.

My own recovery seems to be stinted by my pig-headed stubbornness. Age and years of physical trauma haven't been much help either. My shoulder has more or less healed from the bullet wound but the strength in that arm is severely limited. The leg is a lost cause, and the scars all over my chest, back, and arms are stretched uncomfortably tight as I gain the bulk I so sorely need.

It isn't so much painful as it uncomfortable, such that I find it difficult to fall asleep at night, even with the comfort of the kids at my side. They have refused a bed of their own, and honestly I don't think I'd sleep much without them. My very own security blanket, with four arms, four legs, and two lovely little heads.

Boy and Girl, my lovely children. I'm still laughing at that. It isn't that they lack identity or individuality or character. It takes great character to call yourself Girl O'Neill.

We're at the hospital for our weekly check-up when one of the cheerful, overly friendly volunteers comes by with stuffed teddy bears. The Twins are sitting together on the bed while I sit in a chair by the window, trying to avoid everyone. The doctors seem dismayed and stumped by my inability to speak. They make it seem more and more like a psychological problem, a thought which had occurred to me but like any good, emotionally traumatized, socially inept, stubborn, pig-headed man, I quickly dismissed it. Maybe I just don't have anything to say.

Anyway, the lovely woman comes in with her teddy bears and smiles sweetly at the Twins. They immediately hug each other, curling up on the bed and making themselves small. They're smart kids but honestly they could use some social skills. To them, a smile could mean 'I'd love to thrash you now, and I get off on it' as much as it could mean 'aren't you the sweetest thing'. Sick, I know, but the guards did smile a lot at our misery. So any new people that I haven't confirmed to be friendly are instantly bad. As an overprotective father I approve of this instinct. However, when they freak out from a cheery, elderly woman with stuffed teddy bears in her arms even I have to roll my eyes. Which I do.

The woman is quite disturbed by the cringing children but she knows better than to try to comfort them. I wave at her to stay, and move over to the bed, placing my hands on their shoulders. I reassure them with a look I have mastered for that purpose, and help them to sit up, facing the woman. They watch her warily but seem fascinated by the small figures in her arms.

"Hello." She greets them cheerfully, seeming to build her own confidence. "The doctors told me there were two wonderful children in her and I had to see for myself. Looks like they were right. I brought a gift for each of you for being so well-behaved. Your father must be very proud of you."

The Twins look over at me confused as the woman hands over the teddy bears. I nod my head toward the woman so they turn their attention back to her, accepting the stuffed animals curiously. Their confusion as to the purpose of the gift startles the woman.

"They're teddy bears," she explains. "You can play with them."

The Twins share a look that says they haven't got a clue what to do, and look to me for guidance. I honestly don't know what to do. I don't play with teddy bears. So I fake it, moving the girl's arms so that she hugs the surprisingly soft bear. The boy follows suit.

They giggle. They can be so cute it breaks your heart. Hugging their new teddy bears they are the definition of adorable.

I want a teddy bear.

The woman smiles down at my lovely children, pleased to have brought them happiness. She could have given them a stapler and evoked the same reaction, but I suppose were they clutching staplers to their chests I would have to redefine the word 'adorable'.

Because the Twins are so well-behaved most people assume they are also well-mannered. You don't learn manners in Hell, I'm sorry to say. And since I can't speak they don't know that they should thank the teddy bear lady. She obviously thinks that she deserves a thank-you. She decides to stick around, pulling a chair up alongside their bed.

"Do you like your teddy bears?"

They nod emphatically, afraid she might take them away if they don't admit it.

She smiles gently at them. "Then I think I found a good home for them. You'll take good care of them?"

I really wish she hadn't said that. The Twins can be so literal. I imagine the next fifteen years with them towing their teddy bears around, giving them baths, tucking them in at night, defending them from nightmare villains, friends laughing at their devotion to the stuffed bears.

Their emphatic nods terrorize me.

"What's your name, sweetie?" The woman asks my daughter.

Girl smiles proudly and states "O'Neill."

The woman smiles amusedly at that. "What a lovely name. And how about you, young man?"

He smiles just as proudly. "O'Neill. She's my sister."

"Oh. O'Neill is your last name." She glances over at me quickly, unable to hide her amusement that they would refer to themselves by their last name. "I'll bet your father is an O'Neill, too."

They nod, flashing their teeth in broad grins.

"What are your first names, then?"

When they excitedly reply, "Girl" and "Boy," the first time in their lives when they could introduce themselves by name, the woman's jaw drops to the floor. I raise my eyebrows at her, clearly defending their names and asking her to make something of it.

"Oh, really, well, that's…uh…nice."

She wants me to explain why I would doom my children with these names but I think it's just so darn funny that I almost don't want their names to ever change. Almost. I'm not that sadistic.

"Father thinks we should get to choose our own names." Girl explains happily, clutching her bear.

This seems to appease the woman a little. "So he calls you Boy and Girl?"

"Father doesn't speak but the dressed people needed our names so we could stay with Father."

This even confuses me, and I already know why they were given these names. I can't imagine what the woman is thinking.

"Your father doesn't speak?" She asks, looking at me. I guess that would be important to clarify before asking me to explain.

"Not since before we were born."

"So who are the dressed people?" Ooh, she's intrigued.

"We flew in the air and traveled really far. The people wore lots of clothes and had pretty colors right here." Boy places his hand over his left chest. "They asked Father lots of questions about where he had been. Daniel says they let Father keep us, but we had to have names to make it real."

"Oh, you were adopted?" They don't recognize the term. "Is he your real father?"

"He's our real father now." Girl states confidently. Did I mention I love my kids? "Mother and Father were killed in the mines, and Guardian became Father."

The Twins tell this story a lot. It seems to make them feel better, I'm not sure why. Maybe they're proud that I love them enough to take care of them. I love them way more than that, but they'll never know the extent of it until they become parents themselves.

The Twins patiently explain their current situation to the woman and it inevitably goes back to their previous life and how happy they are now with me. The woman goes through the whole range of emotions. I've seen it all before, on nearly everyone who learns of our ordeal. Sometimes I wish the Twins would stop talking about it and just move on and forget their past, but that past has made them strong, made them who they are and I wouldn't change one thing about them.

So I let them talk. It's probably a good thing that they can look back on it without fear and hatred, without the nightmares and the pain. But sometimes seeing the sympathy and uncomfortable guilt in others as the kids innocently talk about the past is annoying.

I quit paying attention to the woman a few minutes into the kid's story, turning instead to the window, looking down on the world. I don't know why this moment has stayed with me. There is nothing extraordinary or special about it. It's probably just the teddy bears. Once the woman leaves I glance at the Twins and they are excitedly exploring their new treasures, behaving as any child their age would, making them walk and 'talk' to each other. It's good to see them so well-adjusted.

Carter takes us home after our check-up, which she always does. She spends all her free time with us, in fact, she never seems to be at work. I'm beginning to wonder if she's even still involved at the SGC. I'd have expected her to be a General by now, Lord knows she's earned it. I wonder if something happened. And then I dismiss it entirely from my mind because I like having her around all the time. She's great with the kids and they love her.

Things between us seem to be at a standstill, reminding me of the months just before I was taken prisoner. There have been no repeats of that night she stayed with me and the Twins. I'm not sure who is keeping the distance. She doesn't want to push me and I don't want to hurt her, so nothing changes.

My recovery is pretty much at a standstill as well. I quit trying to talk so my communication skills are lacking and the doctors aren't much help. They finally send me to a shrink, who chats away about feelings and inadequacy and love and hate.

I promptly ignore him. I may be a head case and perhaps I'm not the best judge of my personal state of being but if there's one thing I know, it's that I'm not inadequate. I know I'm not perfect and I don't try to be. That's why I have Carter and Daniel and Teal'c, wherever I'm lacking they make up for it, brains, heart and brawn, all three of them. But even by myself I can hold my own.

So when that guy starts crying about feeling inadequate and how it's a normal human feeling when you are unable to help the situation I decide he doesn't have a clue what is wrong with me but has to justify his paycheck with a little effort.

Frankly, I think he's talking about himself.

I did help the situation, I did everything I could to help those people with what I had. I saved them from that life, I saved my children, I saved myself. I think I did a more than adequate job, given the circumstances.

I leave twenty minutes into the session. I've had bigger breakthroughs watching The Simpsons. But now I'm a troubled patient who's too headstrong and stubborn to admit I've got a problem.

I know I've got a problem. I can't speak. And I've got to listen to idiots discuss their own problems to me like I'm the Dalai Lama or something. I'm a 65 year-old mute retired General with two adopted children living in the house of my former 2IC. I'm not Socrates or Robert E. Lee or… Superman. I'm more of a Homer Simpson kind of guy. Give me beer and donuts and I'll save the world. Give me a shrink and I'll smash a chair over his head.

Not that I did. I'm just saying.

So, I'm a head case. And yet, they're letting me keep the kids. Perhaps they've realized that if they took my children away I'd go over the deep end, the world would lose all meaning and my happy meal would lack not only the fries but the coke as well. And the bun. All I'd have would be a slab of charred meat.

I'm the world's greatest Dad. I have the coffee mug to prove it. And the shirt. Somehow, I feel that if I'm not a father then I'm nobody. This may have started with Charlie. After Charlie died, I was lost, I had no purpose, no reason to be doing the things I do. I was a soldier, I fought for my country to keep my family safe. My family fell to pieces and like any coward I turned to suicide. Without a purpose, what's the point in living? I found my purpose again through a sneezy, bumbling geek, who showed me life is entirely about living. It isn't something you just give up. If life gets tough you get tough back, you start over somewhere else, and all the other old clichés. The Stargate gave me a new life, but it was the people around me who helped me to live it.

The kids are my family now, Carter, Daniel, and Teal'c my closest friends. They can get me through anything. Maybe I'll learn to speak again, maybe I won't, but it doesn't really matter to them. They get by with my sparse hand signals, the short typed messages, the stiff and clumsy sign language. They can read the expressions on my face as clearly as though I had said it aloud and written it out for them.

The Twins have never been bothered by my muteness. I think they'd be more uncomfortable if I had begun to speak right away. They have been thrust into this new world where everything is different, better. They are well-fed, pampered like royalty, loved and adored by all, warm and comforted, and free. I think the thing that keeps them grounded, that unites them between their two lives, is me. My silent presence is a constant for them, and I will always be there. That is my purpose now.

I remember a man, years after my return, ask me about the kids. We were at their soccer game, and we were winning, of course. He asked me which of the players was my grandchild. Naturally, I promptly glared at him and walked away and made a splendid show of hugging and kissing my wife until we got distracted by the game again. Where was I going with this?

Most folks in the area know who I am and the story about my kids, so by the next game the man was fully informed and apologized profusely to me. I know he wasn't trying to be insensitive or rude or something much worse, but he said something that really stuck in my mind, essentially asking me if I was really able to love my adopted children as much as I had loved my biological son.

I wanted very much to deck him in the mouth. I refrained because I have frail bones and it would have hurt me much worse than him. And Sam would have given me a good dressing down, and not in the good way.

There are no rules to love. Carter and I will testify to that. Rules and regulations can control your actions but not your heart. I loved Carter despite the regulations that said we couldn't be together, because love has no restrictions.

Nor is it a competition. I still love my ex-wife, and I always will. There's no doubt in my mind that if things had been different we could have lived our whole lives together, and had no regrets. But fate screwed with that and she's no longer an active part of my life. I don't love Sam any less because she came second. She's in my life now and that's what matters, that right now, for the rest of my life, I'll be in love with Samantha Carter-O'Neill, to the grave and beyond, always. That doesn't mean I don't love my ex-wife as well.

It's the same with the kids, however, even after over twenty years I still find it hard to talk about Charlie. So apply the same analogy to the kids yourself, and consider that I brought the Twins into this world, and raised them and cared for them as my own. As such, they were always my children, as real to me as flesh and blood. How could I love them any less?

I have included this explanation at this point in the story to convey to you all the depth of my feelings for my family, and how just their presence could save me from myself. The people responsible for my well-being were wise enough to recognize my need for emotional attachment. I've done nothing that would jeopardize the children and their upbringing. They're incredible, the way they've adjusted to this great new life.

Sometimes I'm afraid they'll realize that I'm holding them back, that they're better off without me, but they never do. They love me, not because I kept them safe in a world that hated them, but because I'm still there for them, still taking care of them, and I need them as much as they need me. More than they need me. There are probably thousands of loving, caring couples that could have taken them in and given them the life they deserved, but they chose me.

And I've never felt more honored.

TBC