Sam bit her lip as she nervously allowed her eyes to dart from the television screen to the telephone. If there was something wrong, she thought to herself. Someone would call. The odds that all three of them are hurt would be...

She didn't want to think about that.

"Would you relax?" Her husband asked, looking over at her. "You're all...jumpy."

She swallowed. "Right. Sorry. I just..."

"You're worried about the kids." He said in perfect understanding. "Still, may I remind you that two thirds of them are over the age of twenty-five?"

She managed a sheepish half-smile. "I know...stupid, right?"

He laughed softly as he kissed her cheek. "Sam, you're a mother. It's what you do." He rolled over to the nightstand and returned with the hotel pad of paper and a pen. "Okay, what are we going to do tomorrow?"

"What?"

"Face it, Sam, we've been kicked out of the house. Let's at least have a little bit of fun while we're here."

"We haven't been kicked out of the house," she laughed.

"Yes, we have." He insisted. "They did it nicely, but they still kicked us out."

"All right, all right," she laughed. "I'll play along."

"Come on," Jack said with a grin. "If you could do anything while we're here in Denver, what would it be?"

"Hm...well, we still need..."

"Ah, ah, ah!" He protested. "No needs. We can do that when we get back home."

"Jack..."

"Again, I ask, if you could do anything while we're here in Denver, what would it be?"

"Anything?" She asked, looking over at him in amusement.

"Anything you can do while following yours and my doctor's orders," he amended.

She chuckled softly. "I'd go to a museum."

"What kind of museum?"

"Doesn't matter. Art, science, children's..."

"We can do children's museums with Grace and the little guy when he gets here," Jack said, dismissing the idea. "But art and science...I think that's do-able."

"What about you?" She asked, looking over at her husband.

"Me?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes." She said with a small smile. "If I have to play, you do too."

He inhaled. "Well, there is something that we haven't done for a while...but I'm not exactly sure that your doctor would approve despite the fact that mine has already cleared me."

"Oh?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

He nodded as he turned his full attention to her. "I want to show you that you're the most beautiful woman in all of the worlds I've ever been to," he said, soberly.

She blushed as she shook her head. "Right now? I'm as big as a whale."

He shook his head in disagreement. "Nope. You're curvy because you're carrying our unborn child. There's nothing sexier than that."

Her blush turned to a deeper shade of crimson.

"Sam, these last few months have been pretty crazy," he said, gently touching the bare flesh of her arm with the tenderness of his most intimate caress. "And no matter how fast my world seems to be spinning out of control, you're there to anchor me. To keep me from falling. And tonight, I just want to look at you. All of you. No barriers, no masks. No Generals, no Mom, no Dad...nothing but you and me. I want to see you as you really are. And show you that no matter what happens, no matter what character traits - good, bad, or ugly - arise in the coming years, I will always love you with all of my heart."

She had tears slipping down her cheeks, and she quickly wiped at them with her shaking hands. "Damn hormones," she muttered under her breath.

He stopped her hands, and took over the task, gently wiping the tears from her eyes as he touched her face. "I love you, Samantha Carter, and it is an honor to call you my wife."

"I love you too," she whispered as he leaned in to kiss her.


"AH!"

The shrill shriek of the young female voice forced Charlie awake instantly. He blinked several times in an effort to become familiar with his surroundings again before he remembered that he was at his father's house on Earth. Feeling a weight on his shoulder, he turned to find Cassandra asleep with her cheek resting on his shoulder.

Had they fallen asleep during the show?

He looked over to find the television still on, but instead of the glittering costumes and energetic music of "Dancing with the Stars", he could see a woman holding a product called the "Bump It" as she tried to sell it to the general audience.

He reached over for the remote, almost sure that the scream had come from his dreams if Cassandra had managed to sleep through it. Managing to keep her still while he turned the television off, he leaned back to return to his own dreams.

Still, the silence of the house was not as it should have been, he mused as he stayed awake. There was someone...something making noise upstairs. Maybe Grace had had a nightmare.

Maybe he was crazy.

He gently helped Cassandra lay on the pillow to the other side of her so that he could leave. He felt an inner panic when she stirred.

"Sh," he murmured, gently placing a hand on her lips. "It's okay, you're safe. Go back to sleep."

She settled more deeply into the pillow as she returned to the depth of her dreams. He stood, and stretched before he crept up the stairs.

"No, Mommy, please...please don't go," a familiar voice whimpered.

"Grace," he whispered as he walked down the hallway to her bedroom.

"I'll be good, Mommy." She pleaded. "Just stay with me, please?"

He gently opened the door to find his younger sister thrashing about. "No, Mommy, please...Daddy, stay home, please...MOMMY!"

"Grace," he whispered as he gently touched her shoulder.

She gasped as she woke suddenly. "Charlie?"

"It's me," he assured. "Are you okay?"

She took a moment to recover before she looked at Charlie with a sad smile. "I'll be okay."

"Bad dream?"

She nodded.

"Have them often?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes."

"You want to tell me about it?" He asked, gently turning on the light that was on the nightstand beside her bed.

She looked somewhat hesitant, and he gave her a reassuring smile. "When I was little and I would have a nightmare, I would go into my parents' room, and they would ask me to tell them about the dream. I didn't want to talk about it, usually, but Dad told me once that it even helps him to talk about his bad dreams."

"He told me that too," Grace said, timidly.

Noticing the glimmer from her tears in the soft glow of lamplight, Charlie reached for a tissue, and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks before offering it to her so that she could blow her nose.

"Thank you," she whispered, looking down at her hands.

"You were calling to your parents. What happened?"

She bit her lip. "They died."

"They died?" Charlie asked, shocked.

"Not these parents...my first parents." She clarified.

"That's right," he said, shaking his head. "You're adopted."

She nodded. "My first parents died because they were fighting about me."

Charlie tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear before he smiled, gently. "It wasn't your fault, Grace."

"You don't even know what happened," she whispered, looking at him in confusion.

"Maybe not," he said, softly. "But I have a hard time believing that such an innocent and sweet little girl like you could do anything to hurt anybody. Not something like that."

"I get scared when Mom and Dad leave," she admitted. "It's like when my first parents died...all over again."

"Then let's get you unscared. Do you want me to read you a story?"

She shook her head. "Mom sings to me when I get scared."

"What does she sing?"

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star," she said with a small half-smile. "With all the verses."

"All the verses?" Charlie asked, surprised. "I don't think I know all the verses."

"I'll help," she said as the smile grew.

"Okay..."

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star," they sang together. "How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are..."

Grace continued. "When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shines upon, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.

"Then the traveller in the dark, Thanks you for your tiny spark, He could not see which way to go, If you did not twinkle so. Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are."

Charlie joined in on the repeating chorus, absolutely astonished by the simple beauty of the young girl's song.

"In the dark blue sky you keep, And often through my curtains peep, For you never shut your eye, Till the sun is in the sky, Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

"As your bright and tiny spark, Lights the traveler in the dark - Though I know not what you are, Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."

"Thanks for sharing the rest of the verses with me, Grace," he said with a small smile. "How do you feel now?"

"Better," she admitted. "But still a little scared."

"Well, go to sleep, okay? And in the morning, we'll make waffles."

She grinned. "With strawberries on top?"

"If we have any," he smiled.

She threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. "I love you, Charlie."

"I love you too, Grace," he whispered with a small, but somewhat sad, smile as he considered the baby girl he'd never be able to hold like this.


Charlie quietly closed the door, now certain that Grace had fallen back to sleep.

"She had the nightmare, didn't she?" Cassandra asked from where she stood in the kitchen.

"The one where her parents died?" He asked, quietly. "Yeah."

"Poor thing goes through that every time Sam and Jack are away."

"What exactly happened to her other parents?"

"She was four, and had a dream that they had died. Apparently, her mother hadn't wanted to leave her, but her father was starting to feel that Grace was coming between them in their relationship. They argued about Grace and her gift, made a rash decision to make a U-turn and return home, and were killed almost instantly."

"That's awful."

She nodded. "If there's one thing worse than losing your parents, it's watching them die...even if it is only in your dreams."

She turned away, but Charlie could see the empathy written on her face despite her attempts to hide it from him. "What about you? My dad explained that you'd been adopted by a friend of theirs...a doctor...but he didn't say much more than that."

"You and I are a lot alike," she said, thoughtfully. "You're not the only one who spent most of their life on a different planet than the one on which they were born."

He raised an eyebrow.

"The only difference for us is that I can't go back...there's no one to go home to."

She walked over to the cupboard and retrieved a glass as he processed her revelation. "So, you're..."

"An alien." She finished as she filled the glass with water. "And the sole survivor of the Hankan people."

"Wow."

"Jack, Sam, Daniel and Teal'c came and saved me just after the massive epidemic which slaughtered my people. They found me, and they brought me here." She swallowed without divulging her own part in their near-destruction. "The rest is history as they say."

"It must have been hard to keep that a secret," he said, knowingly.

"You learn to live with it," she said, brusquely. "I mean, I'm not the one who made them all so ill. I'm not the one who destroyed them."

"No, but you're the one left standing to tell the tale," he said, softly. "Sometimes, that's worse."

She paused before looking into her glass. "That's not fair."

"What?" He asked, confused.

"I hardly know you, and you can see through my facade."

"I'm sorry," he said, soberly.

"No, don't be." She said, shaking her head. "I just...I'll have to be careful around you. That's all."

"Yeah, well that goes both ways," he said good-naturedly.

"What do you mean?"

"Sam told me that you were the one who had felt that I wasn't telling everyone everything."

She blushed. "She told you that?"

"Uh huh."

"Sorry...I just..."

"You want to protect them." He said, understandingly. "It's okay. So did I."

"They're the closest thing to family I have left," she whispered, softly.

"Hey, are you okay?" He asked, noticing how close to tears she seemed.

"I'm...I'm fine," she tried to assure him.

"What is it?"

She blinked away tears. "I just...sometimes I miss my mom. I mean, Sam and Jack are awesome, and they've helped me out more than anyone else on the planet, but...my mom was just such...she was so good at making everything better. Even if she didn't have a solution, she could at least make you feel better...and she's the reason I want to be a doctor. I want to be like her, I want to keep things from happening like the plague that wiped out my entire planet...and I'm babbling..." She managed with a nervous smile as she tried to mask her pain.

"Come here," Charlie whispered as he wrapped his arms around her.

Despite her surprise, Cassandra returned the hug, grateful for the sudden warmth and comfort it provided.

"It's okay to miss your mom. It doesn't mean you love your birth parents or Sam and my dad any less," he murmured in her ear. "That's what my adoptive mother told me when I was about thirteen and wishing that I was here with my parents. I truly believe it."

"She was a smart woman," Cassandra whispered, unsure that she ever wanted to let go of him.

He pulled away with a cough. "Yeah. She was. There were a lot of great people on that planet. A lot of wonderful men and women who shaped the person that I am today."

"Charlie," Cassandra murmured as she watched him emotionally retreat from her.

"Look, it's late. I have a lot to do tomorrow. I should get to bed," he said, turning to go back to the basement.

Cassandra sighed as she watched him go. What she wouldn't give to have met him before he'd married or after more time had passed since his wife's death.

She finished the water in her glass. What she wouldn't give to know for sure that he wasn't just a rebound, she thought to herself wryly. Some attraction which was purely an opportunity to prove to herself that she could move past her last break-up.

"If only it weren't so hard," she groaned as she put the glass in the sink and headed to bed.