It hadn't started here. These doubts. Really it had started about a month ago. He'd been concerned for her of course because he always was but… she had expected… more she supposed. Oh, she hadn't nearly died after all, but she'd thought after the way he'd been acting lately, that when she'd broken her arm she hadn't even gotten a hug. Usually she'd have at least gotten that from him, right in front of everyone too, not caring who saw but this time… well… he'd still been caring, tender, but he'd been preoccupied too. As though, in spite of offering to buy her lunch, comforting her had only been an afterthought.
Even her dad noticed Jack was more preoccupied with the implications of the Kull warriors than the fact that Sam had been injured. She wasn't able to pin down the problem so a couple weeks later, when she rejoined the Prometheus to help her limp home and all he'd said was good luck she had been casually distant. He'd looked at her oddly but shrugged.
Sam had headed for the engine room when they were attacked. She desperately tried to get another jump out of the cobbled Al'kesh drive that was designed for a ship a tenth of the size of the 303. Even if they could get a few light years away it might be enough….
Sam came to and looked around. She'd been thrown into the bulkhead when the ship was hit by enemy fire. A smiling little boy of about eight or so in a white baseball jersey and hat, stands, looking at her curiously. He has straight blond hair and hazel eyes very similar to Grace's. Sam blinks and the child is no longer there. She gets up and follows where the child disappeared to on unsteady legs.
There was no one on the ship. She was alone. Worse no one could answer her radio call either. She made a log entry with her heart racing. Everyone was gone. Suddenly Sam was very glad Jack, Daniel, and Teal'c were safely back on Earth. They would worry for her because that was who they were. She tried the sub-light engines and got an error command.
She goes exploring and discovers the escape pods gone. At least everyone got off safely. She hoped. They must have missed her in the evacuation. The hallucinations don't start until after she tries both the sub-light and hyperspace engines and fails.
Teal'c tells her she will die if she falls asleep. Sam goes back to the bridge and sends a distress call she knows deep down will not be heard. A child's voice singing can be heard but she shakes her head. There weren't any children on the ship.
She goes to the head to try to bandage the cut on her head as well as she can then walks to the mess hall to check on her food situation. She talks to herself as she goes to keep herself awake. It was a habit she'd gotten into when Grace had been little and asked her 'why' non-stop. When Sam has a dizzy spell, she sees the little boy again.
"Play with me." He tells her.
She puts her head down and shakes it. When she looks up again the child is gone.
Sam sits mulling over the problem in the bridge while she eats a power bar. It looked like the density of the nebula was contributing to her driver issues.
Daniel shows up to agree with her. Then he accuses her of ignoring the thing she came here to look at which was the nebula.
After her conversation with herself… as Daniel… Sam discovers she has a hull breach. She has slightly over eight hours to solve this problem or escape. She said "Oh my god." She thought 'well this just fucking figures'. Oddly, she thought it in Jack's voice.
Back on Earth, Daniel was asking Jack about Sam and seemed disconcerted by Jack's responses. Jack had a sick feeling in his stomach that Sam was gone. He had no idea he was simultaneously right and wrong about that.
The worst part was Jack knew there was unfinished business. He'd been so worried about how the Earth was going to defend itself against those super soldier things that he'd been negligent of Sam's feelings. He knew she'd had a really bad week on that planet with Anubis rearing his ugly snaky head, had been worried sick about her even while he was rescuing Daniel. And now she was missing again and all he wanted to do was take back those two weeks between saving Daniel and her leaving. He'd spent it pouring over her paperwork and hadn't had much to say to her personally the more the implications sunk in as to how dangerous these things were.
Sam sealed off the area of the ship with a hull breach but she knew if she didn't solve this problem the breach would spread. She would die.
The little boy appeared again, singing. "Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack." He smiles at her as he comes toward her.
"Who are you? What do you want?" Sam asked him, perturbed.
"Let's root, root, root for the home team. Come on, this way." The boy leads her down a hallway.
"Wait!" Sam calls and follows but the boy speeds up around a corner and she runs into Teal'c again.
Teal'c warns her that she might be on the alien ship being mind-probed and it might be best if she did nothing at all.
Sam argues that she's where she thinks she is and Teal'c disappears on her. Sam lies down for a few moments but gets back up, her head throbbing and makes her way back to the bridge. This is nuts, she thinks to herself.
Sam decides to try venting some atmosphere in the ship as propulsion but sees the little boy in one of the rooms being vented crying out for help. Even knowing it's her imagination Sam shuts down the venting and goes to find the boy.
Daniel shows up, tells her he hasn't seen the little boy and then decides to fill her in on this great theory that the nebula cloud is alive.
Her mental Daniel goes on to suggest the little boy might be a manifestation of the nebula. Sam decides mental Daniel is losing it. She feels like crap and slides to the floor while Daniel babbles on about talking to the cloud. Sam passes out again.
The little boy can be heard singing 'Take me out to the ball game' as he comes closer. When he reaches Sam he looks down. "My dad used to sing that to me." Sam mumbles.
"How obscure." He tells her. Sam looks at him oddly. It's a strange word for a child to use and there's something… familiar about him.
"I'm so tired." Sam tells the boy.
"You can't sleep. Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because we need to talk." He says with a shrug. He takes her back to the mess hall and makes her sit. He brings her a bowl of fruit while she sits, her head in one hand and in obvious pain. "Eat. You need to keep your strength up." He says smiling at her.
"Do you have a name?" Sam finally asks.
"I'm Charlie." He says with a little grin that reminds her somehow of Jack.
"Who are you?" He couldn't be Jack's Charlie. That was just insane.
"You know."
"No, I don't know." Sam insisted. Charlie is dead. Had been since before she met Jack.
"I'm your father." Jacob tells her. Charlie is gone and her dad is standing where the kid was a moment ago.
I am really losing it, Sam thinks. "Dad?"
Jacob sits down and tells her that she's not happy, she's just content with her situation. He adds that she's in control and that's a problem. That Sam's mom had rocked his world, gave him more to chase than just career, and if he met her tomorrow he'd fall in love with her all over again even knowing he'd lose her. Then he admonishes Sam that she's not chasing love because she's afraid she'll fail and she'll end up lonely.
Sam is in tears because her dad is right. She's been avoiding taking that final step because she's afraid to rock the boat.
Her dad takes her hands. "It's time to let go of the things that prevent you from finding happiness. You deserve to love someone, and be loved in return." He tells her. Sam though doesn't put it together, doesn't know what he really meant, and he disappears on her.
Back home, Jack talks to Hammond about what they had found out which is exactly nothing.
Shortly after Teal'c confronts him in the locker room. Jack is combative towards Teal'c's silent assessment of his mood and tells him Sam was just as worried when Jack was missing as he was now about her. He leaves out that Sam had sobbed in his lap inconsolably.
Teal'c doubted O'Neill would be doing the same but the man he felt was a brother to him was hurting just as much if his anxiety and anger were any indication.
Jack gave Teal'c a wan smile and thanked him. He was telling the truth. He appreciated the large man's comfort even if it was harder for men to express their anguish than it was women. Sam had worried she'd never see him again. He'd come home with a bit of help from her as per usual. So he'd find his Sam and bring her home or die trying.
Charlie was on the bridge with Sam blowing bubbles. His baseball was in his hat on the deck next to him. He'd already tried to get her to play ball.
Sam randomly started explaining surface tension to the boy who told her she was boring him. "Here, just try it." Charlie half orders her as he holds the wand up to Sam's face.
Sam shrugs and blows bubbles with Charlie for a while. What the hell difference did it make. She was going to die here anyway.
"Alright Carter, come on, on your feet, let's go." Jack drawls at her from the shadows.
"I was wondering when you were going to show up." She tells him. Everyone else had with the exception of family who weren't in the program or involved with it in some way.
"You just gonna sit there?" He asked her, waving at her prone position.
"Too tired sir." She admitted to him.
He walks over and sits across from her. "Samantha, I'm a figment of your imagination, you're gonna call me 'sir'?" He asks her a little incredulously.
"Old habits, sorry." She said, blushing a little. It was the location really.
He tries again. "So," he pauses, "You gonna save yourself, or what?" He asks frowning a little in concern before he gives her an encouraging half smile.
"I'm tired." She tells him again.
"So just giving up then?" He sounds surprised at her.
"I just don't know what to do right now." She admitted to her figmentary Jack.
"You'll think of something." He assures her.
"Came to give me a pep talk?" She asks him tiredly.
"It's what friends are for." He says with an amused smile. Teasing her as he often does.
"Friends." She says to him, her tone disappointed.
"Hey, this is you talking here. Might as well be honest." He says agreeably.
"What if I quit the air force? Would that change anything or is it just an excuse?" She demands of him.
"I would never ask you to give up your career." He tells her. He wouldn't. She knows that.
"Because you don't feel anything for me?" She taunts him.
"Carter?" He asks her, confused as to why she'd even think that.
"I'd let you go right now if I knew." She admonishes him. For all she knew they were only sleeping together because it was convenient.
"That easy?" He asks, not really believing her by his tone.
"I didn't say it would be easy." She admitted to him. It would be terrible actually.
"Then what's stopping you? If you really want to know." He said, because if she really wanted an answer, she had to know all she had to do was ask him how he feels about her.
"I'm trying." Sam said to him in frustration like they didn't have all this complicated stuff getting in the way of it.
"Maybe it's not me that's the problem here. Let's face it, I'm not that complex." He told her, which was true, but also not true.
"Me?" Sam asked him incredulous.
"Sam, I'm a safe bet." He reminded her. Because of their daughter he'd never leave and he didn't have any other prospects. It would be so easy to just solidify things simply because it was convenient for both of them.
"As long as I'm thinking about you, setting my sights on what I think is unattainable, there's no chance of being hurt by someone else." She mused sadly.
"Jacob was right. You deserve more. I will always be there for you, no matter what. Believe me."
And Sam misunderstands what he means by that entirely. Thinking he means he's letting her go, she chokes on a sob. "So what now?"
"Go save your ass." He tells her as though it's the most obvious answer.
"One last thing." She says and he draws her into a deep tender, familiar kiss. Jack waits for her to ask him how he feels but she tells him "Never mind."
The ship starts shaking and she leaves him in the shadows.
She returns to the bridge to find circuits overloading and sparking on the console. Charlie is absently throwing his ball up and catching it.
"What do you want?" She demands of the child.
"What do you mean?" He asks her.
"Whoever you are, I know why everyone else keeps showing up, why are you here? What do you want from me?" She demands of the child. Was he only here to remind Sam the only reason Jack was around was for his child?
"I don't want anything, but you do. …Root for the home team if they don't win it's a shame." He sings. He picks up the bubbles he'd been blowing earlier and blows a few more.
Sam suddenly realizes something and runs off.
Moments later Sam is back in the engine room. She's frantically typing code. "What you looking at?" Charlie asks her.
"It's complicated." Sam tells the boy.
"Try me." He says in an impossibly Jack O'Neill kind of way.
"I'm going to try and save myself with a bubble." She tells the kid, still frantically typing.
"How?" He asks in interest.
"The hyperdrive won't fully engage because of the cloud, but maybe it doesn't have to. If I can dial down the power flow from the hyperdrive emitter, theoretically I should be able to create a partial shift into hyperspace, essentially taking the ship out of the cloud's space-time. Hopefully just enough to eliminate its effects on the sub-light engines." Sam says.
"Neat." Charlie tells her and Sam knows it's not her imagination at this point, who the boy is.
"Yah." Sam agrees and goes back to the controls. When she looks up, Charlie is gone again.
It works. When she fires up the engines with a bubble around them the ship propels towards the alien vessel. Unsurprising everyone shows up again. Daniel to ask what she's doing, Teal'c to offer up an explanation and admonishment that she needed help to rescue the crew… and Jack… to offer her his unwavering faith.
She offers the other ship a deal. A way out if they send back her people. Crew members start beaming back to the ship, confused about what happened.
Sam quickly explains what she's done and both ships leave the cloud. The alien vessel leaves. Sam is taken to the infirmary after admitting she needs to relieve herself of duty.
Back home, Jack sits worriedly by Sam. She starts to come to and he smiles a little. "Hey."
"Jack?" Sam says to him, still disoriented.
"Excuse me?" He asks. They are at work after all.
"Sorry sir." She says chagrined.
"Yes, well, a massive concussion will tend to…disorient one." He muses, not genuinely annoyed about her verbal slip.
"How long was I out there?" She asks him finally.
"It's all relative Carter, that whole time-space continuum thing." He tries to dissemble but she sees through his tactic.
"Sir." She says tiredly.
"Four days." He admits to her.
"Could have sworn it was weeks." She admits.
Unable to say what he genuinely wants to; Jack goes another route. "Um, Teal'c and Daniel say hi, uh, they're planning a little bit of a shindig for when you're up and around. There's talk of cake." He smiles hopefully at her.
She smiles back. "A cake?"
"My idea." He admits with no small amount of pride. Hoping she'd get the sub context of cake in particular.
"Can't wait." She tells him.
"Need anything? Magazine, yo-yo?" My undying love? His eyes ask her.
She shakes her head, not noticing the love in his eyes. "I'm fine."
"Yes you are." He agrees. Finest woman he's ever known, frankly.
"Thank you, sir."
"For what?" He asks, confused.
"Nothing." She says slowly… changing her mind about what she wanted to say.
"Think nothing of it. I've got plenty of that." He teases her and they smile at each other. Each coming to separate realizations as Jack turns to leave before he says something stupid like if I retire will you marry me please.
Charlie can be heard singing again and Sam smiles as she drifts off, not realizing why he'd appeared to her but glad he had. She was home and safe thanks to him.