Grace
by Aria
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Rating: Same as the show.
Disclaimer: I don't own them; if I did then I would be a hell of a lot richer. No one's paying me to write this, so I'm not making any profit from writing it. I'm just killing time.
Spoilers: In the line of duty, Divide and Conquer, Beneath the Surface, Point of No Return, Tangent, Serpent's Venom, Grace, The Other Guys, Heroes.
Synopsis: Grace arrives through the Stargate, and it's not just Sam that can see her. Set a couple of months after Heroes, and Lost City.
Hello guys, I'm back! I moved and we didn't have the internet for the last two months, unfortunately, there are no internet cafes in town either! Madness.
For the last chapter (36, in the alternate reality to this one) I couldn't face writing pages of action scenes and tension and so on, I hope most readers got the jist, it might become clearer if you didn't. This story isn't going to be much longer now.
Oh, and just in case you still haven't noticed - even chapters tell one reality, odds another.
-*-*-
Jack O'Neill uncorked the rich red wine and poured what was left of the bottle into their wine glasses. Through the archway and down the small corridor he could hear Sam's soft singing voice, a lullaby attempting to send Grace to sleep.
Samantha hadn't been herself since she'd arrived back from Colorado. She'd seemed nervous and quiet, but Jack O'Neill hadn't been able to put his finger on any one thing in particular so far. Nothing he did seemed to put her at ease and as was their custom, he hadn't continued to ask.
The last two nights she'd gone to bed shortly after Grace, feigning exhaustion, even though Jack was sure that a few hours of swimming weren't enough to put his hardy 2IC through her paces.
Swimming.
The sight of Samantha Carter in a swimsuit wasn't one he was liable to quickly forget.
They'd packed family fun into Grace's few days at the cabin. Yesterday he'd woken early to fish and Samantha long before him to run, and then when Grace bounded out of bed and hit him on the deck at a running pace he'd made his special omelette for them. Grace had spent the morning colouring and collecting snails in the shade at the edge of the wood whilst he continued to cast his hook.
Samantha must've run twenty miles because she made it back to the cabin around lunch time, soaked in sweat and starving.
Jack had flipped a few pork steaks and they'd been to town for icecream afterwards, eventually spotting a funfair on the way home.
Grace had only been sent to sleep yesterday with the promise of heading to the funfair after nap time today, and so her drawings this morning had been of bright lights and ferris wheels whilst Sam had insisted on doing their laundry and other various bits of housework in the morning.
After nap time, which Jack was very sure was not spent napping, he'd released the snails back into the wood and they'd headed to the funfair, but had returned shortly after it turned to dusk.
Sam hadn't wanted to stay in the funfair in the dark, "apparently they're a haven for paedophiles." She'd whispered to him.
Things had changed since he'd been raising Charlie, in the late eighties, early nineties. Charlie would be in his midtwenties now, he thought with a sigh. He didn't let himself work out his son's exact age or dwell too long on the facial features he would have inherited.
Jack pulled a plastic bag out from under the sink and pushed ten or so collected pairs of dirty boxers into the washing machine. Samantha appeared behind him. "Woah, she's one overstimulated child this evening." She muttered, standing by his side and collecting a glass of wine.
It didn't matter whose was whose anymore. They'd swapped a shared canteens on missions for nearly a decade.
Jack dropped some dusty detergent tablets on top of the pile and closed the washing machine door. As he rose to his feet, with a groan from his knees, he caught Sam's eye.
"Something I missed out?" She asked
Jack shook his head, "Not sure if I'm ready for you to wash my tidy whities yet, Carter." They were all black, but he wasn't sure if he was ready for her to know that either.
She was blushing.
Jack reached around Sam and picked up his, by default, glass of wine and sipped. "She'll be comatose as soon as there's no one to talk to." He informed her, "what about you?"
Calling her on her recent behaviour. Sam looked caught off guard.
"You've been tired lately, hitting the hay with Grace. Going to stay up with me tonight?"
Sam took a swig of her drink whilst he spoke, gently swilling the drink in her mouth for a moment to give herself time to think.
Jack pretended not to notice, and leant casually back against the counter. Eventually she nodded.
"Great!" Jack headed into the lounge and waited by one of the chairs for her to follow, pass him, and take up a spot on the couch. "We've got a few movies, classics, that we could watch - or there's Scrabble." She'd sat down by now, so he waggled his eyebrows at her. She took a little laugh.
Hitting a high note in their currently awkward relationship Jack sensed a winner and prodded further, "I happen to be somewhat of an expert at Scrabble."
"Really?" a smirk.
Jack's chest welled with success. "Indeed, I doubt you'll be able to come close to my score, Sam, you might as well give up now."
She chuckled and raised her glass slightly to him, "I accept your challenge sir, Scrabble it is."
Jack reached around the dusty VHS player for the even dustier game box.
-*-*-
"Right, that's it, Carter! You're so making that one up."
"Quarks?" She paused, her hand in the tile bag already.
"Yes, quarks."
Her eyes narrowed, accusingly. "I know you know what quarks are."
"Yes!" He exclaimed excitedly tapping the tiles, "Quarks - q *u* a r k s."
"It doesn't have a 'u' Jack, in physics."
"I challenge you."
Samantha snorted, rearranging her new tiles.
Jack rose to his feet.
"What are you doing?" She asked, looking up at him.
"I challenge you, Samantha Carter!" He waggled a finger at her now, and scanned his ceiling to floor shelving. "I know I've got a dictionary around here somewhere."
Samantha laughed, taking a swig of her half drunk beer. "You know because you've challenged me you lose the points for that word. The 'Q' is on a triple letter."
"Oh, no, not if I'm right Samantha, not if I'm right." Jack moved to one shelf, then the other, and eventually selected a book. "I challenge you." He announced, demonstrating the presence of a dictionary to her.
He moved back onto the floor.
"Q, q, q." He muttered to himself, flipping through the pages.
Sam came round to his side of the table and pushed the dictionary closed. She tried to take it from him.
"Oh, hello? What's going on here then?" Jack teased, pulling the book this way and that, keeping it steadily from her reach.
Samantha gradually turned a deeper and deeper red, and eventually managed to drop herself down onto Jack's lap, reaching a little too far from her grasp for the book.
Jack rested his elbows on her side, pinning her in position. She giggled - the first genuine one in a while and tried to stop herself looking like a beached whale, eventually getting enough give to turn herself onto her back.
"We have to complete the challenge, we have to read the dictionary entry."
Samantha arched her back a little, revelling in the awkward stretch that Jack's knees below gave her, before she realised, thanks to an errant glance from Jack that she was also arching her breasts in this move. Her heart flopped a little at his admiration of her body and then she became increasingly uncomfortable. "But I've admitted it."
Jack peered over at her. "Admitted what?"
Sam attempted to use her core muscles to rise to seating again and Jack restricted her. "Cheating." She muttered.
He smirked at her but found that once again he was met with a cool, deer in the headlights look. Eventually he slid gently backwards and took one of Sam's hands to assist her rise to seating. She quickly made her way back to her side of the sofa, her bright smile now replaced by a look of consideration.
Sam dropped a 'u' from her tile rack onto the triple word spot and collected another from the bag. "Your turn."
Jack was watching her, taking a slow drink from his Guiness bottle.
"Jack?" She needed distance at this moment, and every fibre of her training told her to call him 'sir'.
"The guys arrive tomorrow."
Samantha nodded slowly. Two weeks had passed quickly, the majority of it, very much fun. She'd enjoyed her daughter's company immensely. Her commanding officer's as well.
"I know." She acquiesced.
"Do you know what you want to do?" He asked her.
For a moment Jack wondered if he could see something flash from beneath her eyes, a strong emotion, and then she blinked and it was gone.
"What I want to do?" She spat out the 'I' like he was rejecting something about her in his question.
Jack frowned momentarily, confused but did his best to explain. "Yeah, I mean, I'm on Earth 99% of the time nowadays, so I can be flexible. I can have Grace all the time if you want, or..." He paused for a moment, unhappy with the option he was about to voice, "...just when you're Offworld."
Sam's manner changed entirely as he spoke. She looked away as he finished his offer and held her beer bottle in both hands, between them.
Jack cleared his throat. "I don't know how I feel about having Grace be with you all the time - I know you've got Pete, and so you could offer her a two parent household but..."
Sam cut him off, "Can we not talk about this now?"
She rose to stand.
Jack looked up at her. "We don't have many other times to discuss it. The guys will be here tomorrow afternoon." Jack had had a last minute discussion with Daniel before he'd left, wondering if he needed anything bringing, how it was all going with Sam and Grace. Unsure of what to answer, Jack had wished them a safe journey and declined offers of tapes of hockey from last week or the new Simpsons. T was going to do most of the overnight driving, but they'd be taking turns, Cassie included, now she was old enough.
"Tomorrow, in the morning."
Jack stood up. This was important, this was their daughter's future. "I think we need to ask Grace what she wants, but this is a discussion best left for the two of us in private - Sam; she thinks we're married, that this is a happy home."
Sam closed her eyes and Jack wondered why. She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment and then moved into the kitchen. It took Jack a minute to realise he'd started to raise his voice. He followed her into the kitchen. Slightly further away from their sleeping child.
Sam placed her beer bottle on the counter top, next to the five empties and the bottle of wine they'd finished earlier in the evening.
Jack scratched his head and looked at the empties. They'd had quite a few to drink. He didn't want Grace coming home from school to Sam's boyfriend. He didn't care if they'd known each other carnally for a year now, it wouldn't change the six or seven he'd spent at her side. He couldn't bear the thought of being a 'weekend' dad. Suddenly one of his statements clicked in his head and he felt rude and apologetic. Sam tried to move past him again, he grabbed her arm.
"It's not about your abilities to parent." He spoke quietly into her side. Samantha refused to turn to look at him, but released the tension in her restrained arm. "I just don't know how I feel about her calling him 'dad'."
She looked him directly in the eye and his breath caught. "She'll never call him 'dad'." She looked away again, and he dropped his grip on her arm. They didn't move apart. "I know this is big, for her, for all of us...and I know, that to some extent we've been...playing house...these past few weeks."
Samantha shook her head. At this proximity soft blonde strands pressed against Jack's nose. She stepped away, into the archway and turned back to him. "I'm not ready for it to end tonight, Jack." She said to him.
They looked at each other, her honesty and openness startled him, and he wished he could demonstrate something other than confusion. It was only a brief moment before she headed for her bedroom, her even slow pace nothing short of a run in either of their minds.