Sam swears in this one, and it's not "Holy Hannah", but I think, all things considered, it's justified.
1996
Sam and Jon had spent the last year working toward the goal of getting her this job. A job that in the other timeline she hadn't held for another two years. One of which she apparently spent researching an advanced piece of technology that was located on the other side of the country, and the other of which she'd spent researching robots.
Jon's told her what she's going to be getting involved in. But the fact is that she honestly has no idea what this job really involves. It's all classified.
She's more nervous than she thought it was possible for a human to be.
What if this is all wrong? What if this has nothing to do with the Stargate? What if she's just got herself into some other classified thing?
What if deciding to raise her daughter, to bring her son into this world, what if those decisions caused something horrible to happen to the whole world?
What if that was the same, but she wasn't? What if she was somehow softer, somehow less smart? What if she couldn't build the dialing computer that would open up Earth to the whole universe? What if she spent the hours that she should have been learning to do that changing diapers or on a date night with her husband?
Her husband had told her stories about what she was like when Jack had first met her. About how she'd threatened to arm wrestle him. She couldn't imagine herself saying anything like that to Jack now, and it wasn't just because the man was sort of her father-in-law. The truth was that she couldn't imagine saying anything like that to a commanding officer.
Perhaps she was no longer the kind of person who would fight a Tok'ra in her mind or shoot a Goa'uld with an alien device as he stood feet away from her.
She really worries that she doesn't have the strength inside of her to fight the enemy they are about to open the 'Gate to. She can't imagine fighting them for more than ten years. She worries even more that she might not want to.
She never would have dreamed of taking the job if her children weren't both in school, and her husband didn't have a safe job. Still, she would hate to leave them motherless in the same way that her mother's death had left her motherless.
She worries that being a mother is going to mean that she won't be good enough at her job.
She also worries that doing her job is going to mean that she isn't going to be as good a mother.
"Ma'am, here is the artifact that you were brought here to study," the Airman says, opening the door. Sam walks through the door and into the huge concrete 'Gate room. Jon had described the room, and the Stargate, many times to her, but no description even began to match up.
She has the childish urge to touch it.
"Pretty impressive," her guide says with a wide grin.
"That it is," she replies, knowing that now she is going to have to ask a question that she already knows the answer to, "What is it?"
"We don't know that, a team just started working on the translation. They think it is something called a doorway to heaven. You know, 'cause you use it and it sends people to heaven."
"So they think it's a weapon?" she asks. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. When was Jack's friend Daniel going to be involved in the program? It needed him.
She was going to have to do a little bit of playing dumb. She would have to pretend not to know things that she couldn't know without her knowledge of the future. Of course, she could use her knowledge of the future to "guide" them in the right way to do things.
"Well, ma'am, we'll finish up the tour by showing you the way to your lab," the man says with a bright smile.
Sam smiles back. She'll go hang up a couple of pictures of her kids, and then she was going to be back with a whole bunch of technology to start her tests on the gate.
After all, she had a dialing computer to build, and a world to save - multiple times, actually. The Jaffa who would become one of her best friends was the only one who ever really kept count.
A few months later
Charlie turns to his father and his big brother Jon in annoyance. "Seriously, do you guys think you could stop following me anytime soon? You haven't left my side all day!"
"I'm sorry," Jon says, hanging his head, and starting to walk away.
"I'm not. We're just trying to keep you safe, buddy," his father says.
"Ok, well knock it off. I'm just at school, ok? And having you two watch me is really creeping me out. Not to mention my friends," Charlie says.
"It's just a weird day, buddy," his father pleads. "We're going to be weird for a couple of days, and then we'll be back to normal."
"Just…Bud, you know never to touch a gun, right?" Jon asks.
"Of course," Charlie says, "What is this about?"
His father glances at his brother for a long second, and they seem to come to some kind of consensus, "One of the guys I work with in security. His son, who's about your age, just took his work gun, and shot himself. I'm pretty shaken up by it," Jon says.
"So why aren't you stalking your own son?" Charlie asks his brother.
"I told you, this guy's son is your age."
"Nate is only a year younger than me. So how come you aren't stalking him?" Charlie asks again.
"Charlie, I can't really explain this to you, but I will tell you that I want you to be super-careful today. I don't want you to jump off anything, or go in a street without an adult, and I definitely don't want you to go near a gun. And I'm going to watch you the whole day. I'm sorry, but that's what's happening," Jack tells him.
"Dad. you are so weird," his son tells him.
The next day
"Jon, you've been super jumpy lately," his wife tells him, touching his arm gently, "What's going on?"
"It's just... the anniversary of Charlie's death," Jon says. Then he pauses, "Well, not the anniversary, exactly. I suppose you'd have to say it's the day he died, because the year is the same."
"Charlie died?" she asks. staring at him in horror and feeling as if she is about to faint.
"No, not in his reality. Only in the reality that I came from."
"You scared the living daylights out of me, man!" she exclaims. Then his words really permeate her brain, and she says, "Wait a second, you're telling me that you did something that resulted in Charlie living?"
Jon nods.
Sam grins, "Honey, you should have thought of this forever ago! Why didn't I think of it? I suppose I still have some of her hang ups about not changing the space time continuum or whatever. You said that was super important to her, so I guess there is a part of me that that is super important for as well. But of course we're going to do it."
"Do what?" he asks.
She laughs apparently thinking that he is joking. Then she looks at his face, and realizes that he really has no idea what she is talking about. "Save my mom. You have to save my mom."
"Sam, I don't have the time machine here. It would have been such a security breach. I mean, it's invisible, but it's not really the sort of thing that you just leave laying around. Imagine what could happen if the wrong people got a hold of it. He took it back to the SGC in the future."
"So you don't have a time machine now, but you used to have one?"
He nods.
"So why didn't you save her then? Why is your son more important than my mom? You selfish bastard!" she says as she runs out of the room.
"Sam!" he says, running after her.
She turns to him, "Did you even think? Didn't you understand that her death hurt me just as much as his death hurt you?"
"You didn't cause her death," he says quietly.
"You didn't cause Charlie's death either," she says softly, touching his arm.
"That's crap, Carter."
"Well, my Dad blamed himself for my mom's death for a long time. You saw what it did to my family! Mark never would have drunk if it weren't for mom dying. And it nearly destroyed me and Dad."
"You don't see it, Carter, but it didn't almost destroy you. It made you stronger. It made you who you are. It made you and Jacob have this crazy screwed-up relationship which pushed you to be the superhero that you are. It made you military. It made him feel responsible for every part of your life for years longer than he should have. I changed that by coming, I know. But not all of it. If it wasn't for her death, I'm not sure you ever could have become the person who would save the world again and again. I was taking a risk in messing with the timeline, and I didn't want to take any more of a risk than I absolutely had to."
"The same thing can be said about Jack and the way that he changes because Charlie never died. You told me yourself that the only reason that he went through the gate the first time was because he wanted to die, because Charlie died."
"I know, but I felt like I could fill in for him if I had to. Or I could tell him what to do."
"You could have done the same with me."
"You're right, Carter. I shouldn't have saved Charlie. I very well have could have traded the life of one little boy for billions. But I couldn't have made another choice. I love him in the same way that I love our own kids, with my whole heart, and I wouldn't trade him for the whole world."
"That's illogical, because if the whole world dies, he does too."
"I know, but logic and love have little in common."
"I feel the same way about my mom. You could have saved her, and I'm not sure I am going to be able to forgive you for not saving her."
"That's a slippery slope, Sam. I'd end up changing every bad thing that had ever happened."
"I'm not asking you to do that! I'm asking you to save one person, at one particular time in history!"
"Right, but if I save your mom there is no way I could justify not saving Daniel's parents. Granted, he's not my wife. But he is my best friend. And the death of both of his parents when he was eight was a lot harder for him to deal with than your mom dying when you were fourteen. And then if I save the parents of the members of half my team, I'd have to save Teal'c's parents. I could probably get away with his mom. I mean, I would be taking out a General in an alien army, so I don't know how that would go. But I'm pretty sure the only way I could save his father was if I killed a system lord. And I know that would have changed history."
"But you could have done what you could have within reason."
"Within reason? Teal'c is like a brother to me. I want to save his parents just as much as I wanted to save your mom. And then there are people I served with. I've watched a lot of good people die. Some of them would be really easy to save. And my dad? Do you think I wouldn't want to go back in time and have a conversation with the man before he had his stroke? You have to understand that if I started down that path, I would never stop."
"So why are your children so special? Why does Jane get a dad? Why does Charlie get to live?" she pleads.
"Because I'm selfish. I refuse to live in a world in which my children don't exist. But let me ask you this, do you really want me to undo it Sam? Really?"
She shakes her head.
"That's what I thought."
"I'm sorry, Jon."
"I'm sorry that I didn't save your mother."
"How opposed are you to using your knowledge to help a few people out at the SGC?" she asks. He's told her some things of what they are going to face over the next couple of years, but here is still a lot she doesn't know.
"I'll tell you some things that are going to keep people out of heartache. We apparently did some time-travel to prevent that sort of thing ourselves. However, I'm not going to tell you everything."
"I wouldn't want you to," she says, giving him a kiss.
"I'm sorry, I'm selfish. If you want, when the SGC finds a time machine, I can steal it, go back in time, and save her."
"No, because the daughter my mom would raise wouldn't really be me, and I like me."
"I'm still sorry, Sam," he says sincerely.
"I need to be gentler on you. The ability to fly that time machine gives you more power than a human is supposed to have. I have to be understanding when you make decisions about it. I may not like all of your decisions, but I know that I would not like to be the one that had to make the decisions."
6 months later
Sam presses the button on the keyboard deliberately, and then looks through the huge window as the gate whirls around the proper coordinates. A grin covers her face as she types in the next key and gate responds again.
She worried that she as a mother wasn't going to be as good as the other Samantha was, but it turns out she figured out how to make the gate work a whole lot faster. Of course, she'd had the benefit of actually having a physical gate to work with. Still, her being a mother hadn't hurt her ability to do this part of her job in the least.
Seven months later
It was official. She was no soldier. She wonders what exactly Jon changed in her to make her so bad at physical fighting. She bets the Samantha that Jack knew would have never allowed herself to be overpowered by Kowalsky, Goa'uld or no Goa'uld.
Sam opens the door to their house, and is faced with her worried husband. "Are you ok? They told me that you were hurt, but they wouldn't give me any more details than that."
"I'm fine. It was my own darn fault," she says, wishing he wasn't here to witness her humiliation.
"I doubt that," he says.
"Really? I let Kowalsky get the drop on me."
"But he had the superpower of a Goa'uld, right?" Jon asks.
She nods.
"Well, then you couldn't help it."
"I'm sure she could have," Sam says bitterly.
"Oh, no the same thing happened to her," he tells her.
"Really?" she asks skeptically.
"Really," he says. "You are better than her in every way."
"You're biased," she says, grinning despite herself.
"That's true, but that doesn't change the fact that you are. You are two levels in hand-to-hand higher than she is. The two of you got about the same score on the marksmanship test. Your record in the Gulf is better than hers, and you certainly solve technology problems at work faster than she did."
"Most of that is because of information that you gave me."
"No, most of it is just you."
"You said our scores on the marksmanship test were similar."
He nods, hoping that she didn't pick up on what he is pretty sure that she picked up on.
"So they're not the same?"
He shakes his head.
"How much better did she do than me?"
"I'm not going to tell you that."
"If you don't tell me, I'm just going to have to become perfect."
"All right!" he says, throwing up his hands in surrender as he tells her.