Enjoy!

M.

Chapter 59

Saturday, August 11, 2012

After the call she got two days ago, she sat and finished explaining to Mark what had happened. Three hours later, Linda brought Parker back. The girl was properly introduced to her Uncle. They spent some hours there, then they parted. Linda's dislike for Sam had remained intact like before.

Parker was more surprised than she had more family beyond her mom than the fact that they were moving somewhere again. She questioned where. So, Sam explained to her that she had taken an offer she wasn't sure she should have.

Truth was, Sam only took it because it would take her to Colorado Springs. Despite all the years away, and all the things she now possessed, Sam was feeling lost. Now, as she parked in front of the house, they would make their home. She wondered if it was too much.

The house, his home, was devoid of anything that would remind her of the man who used to live here. It was filled to the brim with the first set of boxes of their stuff. She'd arranged the move with the company she'd used for leasing it before. She asked them to get in an interior designer and with a blank check, the house was now gloriously furnished. The boxes that remained were the belongings they had accumulated over the past year, and the designer didn't dare to go through.

Despite the look of awe on her daughter's face, Sam found it utterly depressing.

"P!" She called to the girl who was already taking some stuff labeled as hers to her room. After shaking herself, Sam checked the fridge. It was empty.

"Yes, mom?" Parker asked behind her.

"I need a few things to set up my office. You know how it goes. The other parts won't be here until Jordan…"

"Sends them. Yeah. Been there, done that… placed it on repeat every 365 days. 366 on leap years," Parker joked. Sam grinned at it, but it felt more like a bucket of ice water thrown at her than a joke.

"We don't have food either. So, what do you say, if we go find somewhere to have lunch? Then we can figure out what I need, and what you'll need to start with."

"Okay." Parker shrugged. "It's not like we have hundreds of boxes left to unpack." Parker grinned. Sam laughed at that.

"We're really bad at unpacking, aren't we?" She said. Parker nodded eagerly. "I guess it was always easier to find new stuff than to get out things that would remind us of the past," Sam said. Parker frowned in confusion. There was something odd in her mom's behavior lately, since their last name change.

Parker knew bits and scraps of what had gone on. Now that she was older, Sam had explained to her that the bad guys were people inside the government. She told her that now they were finally gone, and they could get back to their lives. Which, for Parker, meant actually getting to have a life of her own. She had always been someone else, never just Parker.

For some reason, her mom seemed worried about the getting back to this life of hers. But Parker knew better than to ask her about it.

"Mom," Parker started, as they sat inside a small bistro waiting for their lunch.

"Yes, P?"

"I know, you said you were going to be working outside the house this time around…" Sam frowned. "I was wondering… When will you start?"

"I'm going there tomorrow to find my office and fix some things," Sam explained. Not even sure of what she meant with 'some things'. It could mean anything from finding a desk and perusing files to catch up on the years she'd been missing. To maybe even bumping into some of her old friends and getting reacquainted with them. She gulped. The latter was a scary thought. "I won't be long, maybe two hours or so."

"What happens with me then?"

"I've asked Jordan to arrange someone who will take care of you while I'm gone. We'll figure it out, P," Sam smiled, reassuringly.

"Okay."

By the time they got back home and organized their last acquisitions. It was already time to make dinner. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Sam stalked towards the kitchen and started making dinner. She didn't like cooking, mostly because it didn't occupy her mind.

Whenever she was coding or taking care of P, helping her with her homework, managing their servers, or some other tasks that required her full attention, she was free of her issues. But cooking… Cooking allowed her to think about anything and everything.

Lately, it meant that she would topple the balance towards guilt no matter what. Guilt for taking the offer. Guilt for not telling Jack about Parker. Guilt for marrying Jack, and then leaving him, and now, for returning. Guilt for not contacting her friends, for letting them live a life without her. They didn't have a piece of paper that bonded them together. They didn't have any obligations to remember her. They had nothing more than the friendship they had shared for four short years.

"Paper or not neither does Jack." She mumbled. The truth was that Jack had nothing at all to bind him to her anymore. Well, now he actually had that piece of paper that was valid once again. The moment her death had been ruled as not existent.

She wondered if he knew she had been assigned there. If he would come to search for her before she found him. If things would be the same or exponentially different now. She turned off the eye and shook her head for the thousandth time that day.

P chatted away about all they saw earlier. How it had reminded her of several other places they'd lived before. Sam nodded absentmindedly to most of the comments. Feeling the now almost permanent knot of guilty in the pit of her stomach.

The things Parker spoke of as a perk were troubling for Sam. How the bistro they ate at reminded her of the coffee shop they visited when her name was Kim and Sam's was Delilah. The guilt of knowing that saying things like that would be part of how Parker related her memories of those times for the rest of her life was gigantic.

Of course, that always came up hand in hand with the fact that she had not only those, but she was so far, still fatherless. Sometimes Sam wondered if it was different for Parker growing without a parent since she never knew what it was like to have them both. Excruciatingly painful guilt was always the result of that train of thought.

Parker hadn't lost a parent, she hadn't met him because of the stupid shit she was involved in. Jack hadn't met her because she'd accepted this fate instead of continuing life as it was. It was her fault. She didn't care that the kidnapping she suffered before they offered the WITSEC solution was planned. She cared that she hadn't been able to avoid getting taken out of her house. If she could prevent being taken that day, maybe things would've been different.

"Mom? Is everything okay?" Sam blinked. She didn't know for sure how long she'd zoned out on Parker.

"Yeah, don't worry. I'm just tired," she smiled reassuringly.

For P, it didn't look reassuring at all. Chewing her lower lip, Parker hoped that this new place, this new job, this new life they were getting, would help her mom to feel more at ease with her own skin. However, it seemed that getting back to her own name was more worrying that all those years of running away.

"Why don't I help you with the dishes? You can start on your computer while I'm finishing it up," Parker offered. Sam smiled.

"What if I wash them and you dry them?"

"Deal!" Parker grinned. "Just let me change the radio to something more upbeat, mom!"

It was at that moment when Sam noticed there was a soft melody taking over the house. One sweet song she knew all too well. One that Jack and she'd danced to at their wedding. A tear fell before she could do anything to stop it, but she cleared it away as she stood up. Not wanting to worry Parker more than she already had.

They washed the dishes together, then Parker started settling in for the night. She called Sam to her room so they could read a chapter or two of the book Sam was currently reading to her. Sam made herself comfortable in Parker's new room. Remembering how it had looked back then when it was one of Jack's guests' rooms. One she'd shared with Janet several times after those rare team nights where the Doctor was free to join them. Where they'd all had a beer too many to drive home.

She started reading the book, caressing Parker's hair softly as she did. Once she heard the soft snores coming from the lithe figure of her daughter, Sam placed the book in its new place and stood up. She looked at Parker, so peacefully sleeping, and bit her lower lip. She wondered how long she had until Parker pushed her away. Until book reading wasn't a mother/daughter bonding time. How long before Parker realized she knew all this time who and where her father was, trumped all those years of worried, loving care she had given her?

As she turned the lights off and closed the door. She wondered if Parker would hate her for hiding her father from her, as much as she had hated her own father after her mother had passed away. She shuddered, praying it wouldn't get that bad. Hoping that whatever little she'd done right would be enough to make Parker understand that no matter how much Sam loved her and Jack, the safety of the two of them was far more important than her own broken heart.

She turned on the light in the office. Gasping for air when she noticed it didn't look at all like the office she'd sat in during her last day as Samantha Carter to record the first video for him. Feeling overwhelmed, she turned the lights off and rushed to her own room, his room.

The bed and the furniture were nothing like the dark masculine ones he'd had before. They had made it white, clear, and simple. Her heart was crushed when she saw it. She had loved the way his room looked. She had loved him in it. Shaking her head, she walked to the bathroom, undressing as she did.

It had changed, too. There had been some type of clog that resulted in requiring the whole remodeling of it. Now it was bigger, with a wide-open feel. There also had been a bath for two added to it. Sam gulped, she remembered his bathroom vividly. Along with the way, he'd caressed and touched her in there. If she didn't, there was plenty of footage for her to know exactly how it looked like before.

As she stood up under the water stream, she wondered, not for the first time, if living in his former home was a bad idea. It made every room bittersweet. So, she'd decided it was a good idea. That it was a fair punishment for her. It was fair to feel her heart breaking whenever she noticed the details her mind seemed to be popping out of nowhere, every time she walked around the house. Yet, no matter how often it happened, she knew it wasn't even close to the punishment she deserved.

She wasn't fast enough. It took her too damn long to get back here. She had changed too much. Everything had. It was only fair that everything was different and still somewhat the same. She couldn't just hop on a time machine and make all her pain disappear.

Sunday, August 12, 2012.

She hadn't managed to fall asleep, and it was obvious. The circles under her eyes were far darker today than they'd been the previous day. As she applied an obscene amount of makeup to cover them up. She wondered if she would ever manage to find and sleep pattern now that she was finally herself again. Now that there was a schedule to be fulfilled.

She knew that was hoping for too much. There was no fooling herself. Eleven years living on four hours of sleep couldn't be so easily erased.

Besides, she still had the companies that needed her leadership. Although Jordan was doing great with them, most of the time. He still needed her and wanted her to discuss movements and plans. There was no rule against her keeping her part of the companies. Having investigated the rules about it, to know for sure.

All the companies still would be able to work on the various USAF contracts they had won, as long as she wasn't directly involved with those projects. She could still develop anything not related to her new post or activities she would do inside the SGC. "Basically, you can have them. You can help organize them, and you can send workers to complete whatever you have to complete, but as SGC's CO you can't be the one doing the work." The former JAG from the JCS had told her.

Jordan had sighed deeply when she told him the news. Knowing him, Sam was sure he was worried about the many families they would have to lay off if they needed to break the companies up. "We do it together, or we take them all down." He had stated. When Sam offered to step down.

She shook herself out of her thoughts, once the bell rang. She walked to the door, and a young woman smiled at her. "Hi, I'm searching for Samantha Carter?"

"That'd be me."

"Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm the one you hired to take care of Parker." She smiled and Sam let her in. She looked exactly like the picture she'd found of her. Jessica's thoroughly done background check was clean. Sam had analyzed her for a while and hadn't found anything wrong with her.

"Parker!" She called. "This is Jessica, she'll be staying with you." Parker nodded. Sam looked at her daughter, fighting with the paranoia of leaving her with a perfect stranger. She asked her to walk with her to the entryway. "P, if anything happens, call me. I'll be here ASAP. And I mean anything P."

"Okay, mom. Have fun." Parker grinned.

Sam donned her now heavier dress blues jacket and Parker sighed.

It wasn't the first time she'd seen her mom transform right in front of her eyes. From her loving mother to this cold person. If she was honest, this woman looked nothing at all like the Samantha Carter from the picture she'd seen. That Samantha Carter had had a spark of something in her eyes. Whereas there was absolutely nothing left in her mom's eyes before she left the house.