Spoilers for "Singularity"
Sam decides to play nice, and actually let Jack lead, at least during their first dance as a married couple. He is, after all, a very good dancer, but there is something off about him tonight.
"Honey, are you ok?" she asks softly.
"Back hurts a little bit," he confesses, "I'll be fine."
"It was that dip," she says lightly, smacking his back, "You shouldn't have done that while pregnant."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Even in the early stages of pregnancy, it can make you more prone to injury, and you aren't really in the early stages of pregnancy anymore," Sam scolds.
"Well, I won't do it again," he whispers in her ear.
"Remember the way that we danced on our first date?" she asks.
He nods.
"You made me feel so safe," she says.
"Past tense?" Jack asks, pulling back from her warm embrace to look at her.
"I haven't felt safe since Ty was in that hospital bed," she confesses.
He runs a hand up and down her back, "Sammy, we're never going to let that happen again. You are safe."
And then, for the first time in a long time, she believes it. She leans her head against him, and lets go. He feels the moment that she relaxes in his arms, and grins. The music ends, but Sam doesn't notice. Jack pulls away, and Jacob takes his place.
"I'm happy for you," Jacob whispers to his daughter as soon as she is in his arms. "I still think that you and Jack should go somewhere on a honeymoon."
"We've been living together for a while, and we're pretty close to having two children. It's just not the right time."
"I feel like this is because of me, because of my cancer. Sammy, the last thing in the world I would want to do is rob you of even the littlest bit of happiness. I don't want to be the reason that you don't get this."
She smiles, "You're not."
He gives her his patented 'you've-got-to-be-kidding-me' look.
"You're not the whole reason, Dad. We're going to have another baby, and work is crazy right now. And Jack and I, we never do things in the right order. There is not some law that the honeymoon has to come right after the wedding."
"If it doesn't, they don't tend to call it a honeymoon," Jacob protests softly.
"We'll have our honeymoon sometime when we won't have a million other things on our mind," Sam says.
Jacob smiles at his daughter, "I'm so proud of you. Not just for the wedding, for everything that you've done, everything that you are."
Sam tears up, "Thank you, Daddy."
The Next Day
Sam glances at the clock the day after her wedding. It's eight o'clock. Ty never sleeps past six. So either her father woke up early to intercept the kid, or her son is sick. She gets up and wanders through the house, looking for her boys. They are nowhere to be found. She goes into the backyard, calling to them, but still nothing.
She runs back up into the bedroom that she shares with her husband frantic, "Jack, get up, and call… I don't know if we should call the SGC or the police!"
"What happened?" he asks sitting up frantic.
"Ty and Dad are missing!" she exclaims.
He laughs.
"It's not funny, Jack!" she says.
"C'mere honey," he says, holding out his hands to her. "They are fine, and I promise to never ever surprise you again. I promised you a long time ago that we would spend the whole day in bed. Life kind of got in the way. But if we aren't getting a honeymoon, I figured we could at least get a whole day alone in bed."
"They're fine?" she asks.
"They left for Daniel's apartment last night after we were in bed. They're going to come back tomorrow morning."
"Did you forget that you actually kept your promise to spend the whole day in bed with me?" she teases.
"Yes, but neither of us is sick this time," he says.
"Well, then it will be much more fun," she says.
"Yep," he says, kissing her.
Two Weeks Later
Sam looks at the little girl in front of her. Actually, this girl isn't so terribly little. She is probably around ten or eleven.
"It's okay. Don't worry, everything's going to be fine. Can you hear me? You're very brave," she tells the small girl. The girl looks at her, but still doesn't say anything. Sam knows that if her son were in this little girl's shoes, he would be terrified of the mask that she is wearing on her face to protect her from germs. That is probably it. Sam turns to Janet and asks if she can take her mask off.
"I think that'll be okay. Looks like we're dealing with a bacterial infection. Just don't get too close."
She pulls off her mask so the little girl can see her grin at her, "There, that's better, huh? You feel like telling me your name now?" The little girl stares at her, and then looks away. Sam speaks in her most encouraging voice, "That's okay. You remember my name? Samantha Carter. But you can call me Sam."
Cassie takes the tag that these people had given her dead friend, and snaps it on her hospital gown. Sam's heart aches at the pain in the little girls' eyes when the focus on her once again, "Oh, no. No, honey. You're not going to die. Why don't you just lay down and rest for a while, okay? Okay." Cassie lays back down, but refuses to let go of the tag.
-0-0-0-
Daniel wonders if she saw her parents die. When he was a kid, other people seemed to think that was the saddest part of what happened to his parents. He never did. The fact that he would never again bend over a translation with his mother, or brush off an artifact with his father, that was the saddest thing for him. He remembers how grief doesn't come all at once. It comes in little absences, little holes in your life that spans years after years.
Samantha bends down to look in Cassie's eye, "Hey, you okay? Don't be afraid, I'll be holding your hand the whole way, all right? I know it looks kind of scary, but it's really a lot of fun."
Sam stands up, and takes the girl's hand. Daniel holds the girl's other hand. He tries to remember if anyone ever held his hand after his parents died. He doesn't think so. At least until Sara and Sha're, and that was different. Sam counts down, and the three of them jump into the wormhole.
-0-0-0-
Sam hasn't left Cassie's room since she arrived on Earth five hours ago. Daniel volunteers to go get Sam when she has a phone call that she has to answer. When he walks in, Sam is sitting next to the bed where the small child is asleep. Sam is stroking the girl's hair. Daniel remembers that his mother used to do this before he died. He really wishes there had been someone like Sam there after they died.
Sam moves a little, and Cassie wakes up. "Hey. How you feeling?" Sam asks. When Cassie doesn't answer, she doesn't press it. Daniel remembers how much trouble he got into for being a quiet kid, and he wasn't even non-verbal like Cassie. "Listen, I have to go somewhere for a little while. But you're not going to be alone. Daniel's going to be here the whole time. Remember Daniel?"
Daniel smiles at the girl, who looks just a little bit panicked.
"You're very brave, remember. I'll be back before you know it," Sam says.
"Please don't go," the girl begs.
"You feel like telling me your name?" Sam asks.
"Cassandra," she says.
"Hi, Cassandra," Sam says.
"I hurt," Cassie says. Daniel's heart clenches. No, this isn't fair. This kid has already been through enough emotional pain for a life time. She should be excused from all the physical pain as trade.
"Where?" Sam asks. Cassie taps her chest.
-0-0-0-
Cassie looks up at Janet, and says, "Thank you." Janet's heart melts a little. Janet hasn't had a patient that was a child for a long time. And Janet had forgotten, in the years since her divorce, how desperately she had wanted children.
"You are welcome," she says, smiling at the kid. Cassie makes it halfway across the room before a look of pain comes across her face. She grabs her chest, and then falls backwards. Sam scoops her up.
"Get her on the table!" Janet commands. Janet rushes over to feel her pulse.
"Oh, my God. What is it? What's happening?" Sam asks frantically.
"She's got an irregular heartbeat. She's in arrest," Janet says, calling a code blue into the intercom.
"What? What do I do?" Sam asks frantically, as Janet starts CPR and other people rush in to help. Janet falls into the familiar medical terms as she works to save the little girl's life. Even when a nurse uses the paddles, Janet maintains a clinical detachment. But the relief that she feels when the girls' heart restarts is not just the relief of a doctor. She thinks the kid might again be out of the woods, when she makes a horrible realization.
"Wait. Wait… wait…. wait… wait. Oh, my God."
"What is it?" Sam asks.
"Get me a chest x-ray, stat," she says to those around her. Then she looks at Sam, "I don't know. Listen," she says, handing the stethoscope over to Carter. There is a strange mechanical whirling sound beneath the heartbeat. This is not a good sign.
-0-0-0-
Daniel is sitting on a chair in the hallway outside of Cassie's room when she hears the girl wake up with the word, "Mom?"
Sam's voice is soft. Motherly. "Hey. You okay?"
"I was dreaming about my mom," Cassie says. The words are like a punch in Daniel's guts. He had so many dreams about his parents when he was a kid. They were so happy in the dreams, so blissfully happy, and that only made it worse when you woke from the dreams to the cold hard real world.
"You miss your mom very much?" Sam asks.
"I'm tired," Cassie says.
"Well, you should get some rest. Don't worry, everything's going to be just fine. And when you get better, I promise you I am going to show you all kinds of really wonderful things about this planet," Sam soothes.
"Promise?" Cassie asks timidly.
"You bet," Sam says, a little while before she walks out of the room.
As soon as she enters the hallway, Daniel stands up and asks, "How is she?"
"She's fine. Sleeping." Sam says.
Daniel wants to provide this girl with comfort. He needs to, in some confusingly cosmic way, "Um. Um, if you want… I can sit with her tomorrow. For a few hours," he stammers.
"No, I'm okay," Sam says dismissively.
"Okay."
"I just… I want to do this," Sam says firmly.
So do I, Daniel says in his head. Out loud he says, "Okay. But I guess what I'm saying is that you don't have to do this alone."
"Thanks," Sam says, rubbing his arm before walking away.
-0-0-0-
Daniel walks into the room to see the small girl tossing in the bed. He stands next to Sam as she says, "How could they do this?" with more heart than he usually hears from his teammate.
"Well, to the Goa'uld, she's not as we see her. She's a tool. Her death is a very cheap way to get rid of us," Daniel says.
"I know I'm supposed to be detached," Sam cries.
He looks at her with surprise, "Who said that?"
"Sometimes I forget you're not military," Sam whispers with something that is almost a laugh.
Daniel wonders to himself if that was supposed to be an insult. A year ago, he never would have imagined that anyone would mistake him for a member of the military.
Has he really changed that much?
Two Days Later
Daniel still can't believe that Cassie almost blew up. They had taken this little girl, made her watch everyone she knew die, and then put a bomb inside of her heart.
He also can't imagine that this little girl is going to be ok. That she is playing at the park right now. He and Sam each have a hold of her arm, and they are swinging the girl between them. This is one of the things that he'd forgotten about before his parents died. How many other sweet little things did parents and children do with each other that he didn't remember?
Jack and his son appear from the other end of the park. "Cassie! Come play with our dog!" Ty shouts.
As soon as Cassie runs after the dog, Daniel turns to Sam, and says, "So, how sure were you, really?"
"I can't explain it, Daniel; I just knew," she says with a shrug of her shoulders.
Teal'c joins them from behind, and says, "Mother's instinct, perhaps."
Sam shakes her head ever so slightly, "Subtle, but no. Jack and I talked about it, to be sure. But with Ty, and the baby on the way, and Dad's cancer, it's just not the right time. Dr. Fraiser is going to take her until we can find qualified parents."
Daniel's heart jumps. Wait, Janet is taking the kid? Temporarily, he reminds himself. It's always temporary; he should have learned that from his own childhood. "By qualified, you mean ones with the right security clearance." He says glibly, hoping that it will cover his internal turmoil.
"I wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Fraiser wants to keep her for herself. As long as Cassandra's happy," Sam says.
If Janet kept her, then Janet would have a kid. It might not matter anymore that he couldn't give her one. And he would have the chance to be involved in making this kid's life stable and good. He thought, maybe, he could remember all the things that would make her more comfortable. All the things he spent lonely nights longing for when he was a child.
"She appears to be happy," Teal'c says.
"And I wasn't completely at ease until I learned the object was shrinking and being reabsorbed into her system," Sam says.
Cassie come running up, "Sam, your dog is awesome!"
Sam smiles, "Well, it's not exactly my dog."
Cassie gets a little pensive then, "When you find me a new home, will you come and visit me?"
Sam grins at her, "You betcha. All the time."
Daniel longs for Cassie to ask him that question. He was there for her too. Not like Sam was, but that was the kid's choice, not his. That girl needs so much. Daniel discovers with surprise that he too has needs, bubbling under his surface. He needs someone to need him.