Chapter Eleven - John Neill

Twenty-five years. John cursed himself. It had been twenty-five years since his life had diverged from the original Jack O'Neill, and he still couldn't say no to her.

Now, to be standing in their house. In their son's bedroom. With all the reminders of what their life had turned out to be.

It was a special kind of torture.

From the family photos to the knickknacks John remembered from Jack's life, even a couple things like the bowl of yarn and knitting needles he'd gotten Sam as a gag gift almost thirty years ago. They say in plain view. Reminders of the life he'd gotten to live with her.

It was the reason John hardly ever came to these things anymore. The reason he'd looked for an escape. An escape that had brought him here, of all places.

He set the wedding photos back down on the mantle. Let his gaze dust the picture of Charlie as a kid, in his baseball uniform. That was one thing he wished he would have asked for. Some copies of the pictures. Of his family in the Minnesota cabin. Of Charlie as a baby.

He shook the nostalgia from his mind. So much for starting over. Getting a fresh start. Well, except for the fact that he'd made friends with a couple of the nerds his second time through high school. That, apparently, hadn't gone away in his reboot.

The front door burst open, and John whipped around to face a fierce woman with a baseball bat clutched in both hands. "Who are you, and what the hell are you doing here?"

John just quirked an eyebrow. "I'm John Neill. Jack and Sam asked me to pick something up... And you are?"

She studied him, a tiny spark of recognition playing in her eyes. "John Neill. They've never mentioned you."

John tried not to roll his eyes. Of course they hadn't. "Yeah, well, I've heard nothing about you either."

She raised a keychain that John recognized from an earlier time when he and Jack O'Neill had been the same person. "I'm their neighbor. I watch out for their place when they're gone. Since I saw them on the news at the White House just a few minutes ago, when I saw the bright light, I figured I'd check on the house."

The thirty-something-year-old woman pointed the baseball bat at him, her tightly curled brown hair tucked into a short ponytail. "So, imagine what I'm thinking when I find you here. A guy who claims they asked him to grab something for them. When they're fifteen hundred miles away."

John rolled his eyes. "Put the bat down. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it awhile ago."

The bat went down a fraction of an inch, and John put his hand in his pocket.

The bat came back up as the woman's hazel eyes flashed in suspicion. "Hands where I can see them."

John groaned as he raised his hands back up in surrender. "Oh, for the love—would you get them on the phone? I can prove I know them. Intimately."

One of her eyebrows jumped up at the last word.

He threw her a look of utter exasperation at her expression. "Get your mind out of the gutter and get them on the phone."

He could sense that the wheels in her mind were still turning. "Why should I?"

He splayed his hands the way he always had any time he was about to tell someone something painfully obvious. "What could I possibly have to gain by asking you to call the people you claim I'm trying to rob?"

She scrutinized him. "You're trying to earn my trust. Trying to buy time until you can disarm me. You just said you were going to attack me."

John gave her an entirely unamused look, one that he'd stolen from Jacob Carter years ago. "Actually, I said if I were going to hurt you, you wouldn't be holding that bat. So, can we fast forward to the part where you call Carter?"

Her eyebrows knit together. "Carter? That's what Jack calls his wife."

John managed a placid expression. "I told you I know them—"

"Intimately. I remember." The woman reached into her pocket for her cell phone. "You realize I probably won't be able to reach them. I mean, they are at the White House, after all. It's probably not the kind of affair where you bring your cell phone."

He gave her a droll smile. "Just give it a shot."

She pressed a handful of buttons on her phone and tucked it against her ear. "Who are you, anyway?"

He scratched at his forehead, loathe to resurrect this particular cover story. "Jack's my uncle."

She held the bat with only one hand as she waited for someone to pick up the phone. "You look very much like him. Have his mannerisms, too. Although the uniform's a bit overkill."

A tiny smile played at his lips at the ironic statement he was about to say. "I spent a lot of time with him when I was growing up. Kind of rubbed off on me, you might say."

She pressed the end button on the call, having apparently been correct in whether or not Sam or Jack would answer the call. "Let's say for the sake of argument that I believe you."

He raised an interested eyebrow as he let his arms slowly drift back to his sides. "You do?"

She frowned at him. "I said, for the sake of argument."

John snickered. "Okay. Fair enough."

She leaned on the bat. "What are you doing here?"

"Their son, Jake, tinkered with Grace's car. They were hoping to find whatever plans he might have put in his room so they can fix it."

The woman broke into a musical laugh. "Sounds like Jacob."

John eyed her, unsure of what to expect next.

She leaned the bat against the kitchen island. "I'm Rebecca Norton. Let's see if we can find Jake's got locked in his room, huh?"

For the first time since Captain Samantha Carter walked into the briefing room, John Neill found himself perplexed by a woman. He just waved her ahead. "After you."

She looked around the room, apparently puzzled by something.

A tiny half-smile played on John's lips. "Something wrong?"

She waved at the ceiling. "How'd you do that light thing? It was like someone had put a searchlight inside."

John leaned in close to her, a faint waft of honeysuckle coming off her skin. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

There was a sparkle in her eye as she looked back at him. "Lay off the 007 act, buddy. It's not nearly as sexy as you think."

There was something in her voice, dark and sensual, that made him think she might not have been telling him the whole truth.

There was something about the chaos in Jacob's bedroom that made John smile. The last word he would ever have used to describe Samantha Carter was chaotic. Her lab had always been in pristine condition, unless she was in the middle of an experiment, and the few times John—er, Jack—had been to her home before being cloned, it had been impeccable.

Down to organized bookshelves that had made him smile with affection for the orderly military scientist. He bit back a smile as he remembered the way Sam had almost twitched with all the intelligence personnel combing through her well-ordered life. She hadn't said it, and he'd almost chalked it up to how on edge she was with the whole ordeal, but he suspected one reason she'd been so ill-at-ease had been because of all the ways her organizational system might accidentally be altered by so many hands and eyes moving and replacing her things.

This kid might have inherited Carter's mechanical intelligence, but he hadn't quite grasped her orderliness.

Something about that amused John to no end.

"There a reason you're smiling like that?"

John just lifted a book from under the kid's mattress. "I just think it's hilarious that Jack O'Neill's kid has a A Brief History of Time stuffed between his mattresses. When I was a kid, I had—uh, other things hidden."

"Other things, huh?"

He shrugged. "My dad wasn't a big fan of my classic car obsession."

Rebecca gave him a look like she didn't buy his story. "Classic cars... Right..."

John grinned, impishly. "What did I say about your mind and the gutter?"

Rebecca bit back an amused smile as she sifted through a pile of papers stacked on Jacob's desk. "So, we're looking for mechanical blueprints, right?"

John grimaced as he discovered an old pizza box with stale crusts inside. "Maybe. Even Sam and Jack weren't sure what they'd find in here. Now, I understand why."

Rebecca snickered. "I have to admit the kid's a genius, but I'll be honest, his housekeeping skills leave a little to be desired."

John cracked an eyebrow. "Only a little?"

She released a full-blown smile, and John was almost blown away by how the single feature seemed to light up her entire face. "Okay, a lot."

They fell back into silence as they searched, but it wasn't uncomfortable. More companionable. Still, after almost a minute, John decided to ask some of the questions that had been burning in his mind since she'd come bursting in the door with her baseball bat. "So, how'd you and the O'Neills get so close?"

"You mean, other than the fact that we're neighbors?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm not best buddies with all of my neighbors."

"Fair enough." Rebecca lifted a scrap of paper and waved it toward John. "What about this?"

John climbed over a mountain of laundry, though he couldn't tell if it was clean or dirty. Then, he reached out for the piece of paper, no bigger than a deck of cards. "Could be."

The design sort of looked like a car engine from what John had studied in engineering classes his second time around in college. Given what Carter thought it could do, he wasn't surprised it wasn't recognizable in any other way.

"What'd you say you do again?"

He didn't realize how close he'd gotten to her until he turned to find she was mere inches away from his face. "I'm a civil engineer."

"Military?"

She hesitated. "Military adjacent, really. Civilian contractor at Cheyenne Mountain."

Suddenly, it made perfect sense why she was friends with Sam. Probably even explained why John was intrigued by her.

John eyed the paper in his hand. "I should probably get this back to them, but next time I'm in town—"

The golden flecks in her eye sparkled like she could read his mind. "Yes?"

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his dress uniform. "I was thinking maybe we could go for coffee?"

She tapped her chin as she considered the possibility. "That's a definite possibility. You have a phone?"

He raised it to show her.

She took it from his fingers and tapped a few strokes on the screen. "There. You have my number. Call me."

He grinned. "Oh, trust me, I will."