AN: Morning campers! One of my fave workers is leaving me as of last night. Kind of sucks but she will probably be back. She already misses us and admits it. Found out my night manager thinks all I do with my time is handle the damage shelf. I guess coaching the team and all the paperwork I do and you know, solving problems is just my imagination. lol. That does explain her attitude. Ironically our boss accidently admitted in passing to me the other day that the staff does not do anything the night manager asks of them. Arguably my I am the boss thing backfired last night when a staff member talked to her mom right before I did her review so when I asked about her numbers she all but burst into tears so when I tried to reassure her that sales is harder for some people than others and she just needs to work at it a little bit she took it as I think she's bad at her job and called our boss upset that I said that. Then our boss called ME because I'd hurt her feelings. Yeash... I really wish parents of teenagers would NOT call their kids to critique their life choices WHILE they are at work.

Chapter 3

Around noon the next day, people just started showing up at the house. At first, Sam thought they had heard from Walter that she was home and were just dropping by… except they didn't leave. Gracie was having a great time greeting everyone like she was the star of the party. An hour into the ballooning assortment of happy guests, Lynn appeared with her overnight bag in hand, having stayed at a friend's and sheepishly smiled at Sam before dropping her bag in the guest room.

When Jack put Virginia in the bedroom, Sam knew for sure everyone stopping by wasn't an accident.

"Jack…" Sam said to him pointedly as she grabbed his sleeve by the elbow as he passed her in the living room to grab a chair out of the garage. "Something you need to tell me?" she asked archly.

Jack gave her one of his more innocent looks. "Everyone missed you."

"Of course." She said with a shake of her head and let him go.

The party was in full swing when Bub showed up, Sean in tow, and greeted Jack with a thump on his back and a heartfelt hug for Sam. "I've missed you." He said enthusiastically. Bub was one of the few non-SGC members cleared to know where Sam had really been. Of course, his knowledge came after he talked to, in reality, yelled at Jack about why Sean hadn't been able to find Sam in the first place after the kidnapping. Jack's only response was "I know" when he realized how upset and terrified he was at the thought of losing his cousin.

"I've missed you too, Mac." Sam said, hugging him back with a happy smile. She genuinely liked Jack's distant cousin.

"Where's my favorite niece?" Mac said looking for Gracie who flew into his arms.

"Unka Bub!" She said with a happy squeal.

Sam averted her eyes. Gracie had hugged her happily but she showed no real interest in talking to or spending time with her mom. She was having no such problem with Mac and was telling him some lengthy story about her last visit with Sammy and Jon.

Jon came in a bit later with Sammy and hugged Sam. "Missed you." He said simply to her and hugged her again.

Sam wondered what that was about. What had gone on while she was gone for him to hug her that tightly? It couldn't have just been Jack's kidnapping. She'd have to talk to him about it privately and now wasn't the time.

With a ginger ale in her hand, Lynn walked up to Sam as she returned to her party with a fresh drink herself. "Hey boss." She said almost softly. They hadn't talked yet and this was their first real opportunity since the information slipped out.

Sam smiled at her, guessing the reason behind the other woman's hesitant greeting. "Lynn, I was annoyed that I was losing a valuable team member not that you got pregnant." She said to her normally assertive field expert who was being so careful around her.

"You're sure?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "I'm not supposed to tell you but Jack got Hayes to approve Frank's reassignment back to the SGC." She figured ruining the surprise was worth the smile on Lynn's face. Sam couldn't imagine how worried she'd have been without Jack by her side through her pregnancy with Gracie.

"Thank you, ma'am." Lynn said, still grinning.

"Quit calling me ma'am in my house, Lynn." Sam admonished her.

"Sorry, ma'am." Lynn said but there was laughter in her eyes.

"This kind of thing is why Jack's hair went grey early."

"I'm pretty sure Daniel did that." Lynn said deadpan. She liked Daniel but, well… he was Daniel.

Sam giggled. "You might be on to something there." She said of her best guy friend who was currently explaining something at length to Mac's son whose eyes were starting to glaze over.

"Should we rescue him?"

"Nah. He's gotta learn sometime." Sam said with a chuckle.

Lynn snorted in amusement.

"How are you feeling?"

Lynn shrugged. "Really good. No morning sickness, no crying jags." She lied about the second part, but it had been Jack. If she couldn't cry on Jack who could she cry on after all?

"So nothing at all like I went through. Great." Sam said, with false exasperation then laughed.

"Sorry, ma'am." Lynn said with laughter in her eyes.

"Oh, for crying out loud…" Sam grumbled which made Lynn laugh outright.

Jack was still moving a bit slowly and Sam noted with amusement that Daniel and Mac took over taking the food out to the grill and let Jack coordinate pre-dinner snack placement. She hadn't looked in the fridge when they got home yesterday. They had ordered pizza for dinner but it had sat relatively untouched on the kitchen counter until Jon and Sammy showed up. Jon had devoured the remaining pieces like he hadn't eaten all week and tossed the box in the trash in the garage. On his way back, he scooped up Gracie and flung her around until she squealed with laughter.

Sam smiled softly at the boy. She noticed that he and Sammy seemed tentative around each other like they had a misunderstanding of some kind. Sam knew the signs as she and Jack behaved the same way, but Sam was too busy greeting other guests to talk to either of them about it at the moment. She might tag Vala about it. She seemed to be able to cut through Jon's defenses more quickly than she or Jack could. Probably because he didn't feel like Vala could read his mind like she and Jack pretty much could.

Lynn had wandered off to talk to Frank's buddies and Sam found herself standing alone until a pair of familiar arms wrapped around her middle and a pair of warm lips descended on her neck. "Penny for your thoughts?" He muttered and squeezed her slightly when she melted against him.

Sam shrugged. "The kids seem okay to you?"

Jack glanced at the minis. "They had a bit of a tiff during that little rescue mission thing." He explained.

"Oh?"

"Hmmm…. Mostly mini me making the worst case scenario conclusions."

"What about?"

Jack sighed. "He got it in his head the only reason we made Sammy was an insurance policy, just in case something happened to you."

Sam frowned. "I would never have agreed to that reason."

"No, but I sold the Pentagon and our little grey friends on the idea. Only Thor knew why we made her the age we did. All of the rest of them were told that you should be considerably younger then you personally age but not so young that her adult thoughts would concern anyone."

Same smiled in amusement. "I'm impressed that they bought that." She said of his idea. She'd told him the same thing when he'd done it too.

"Well, sometimes dumb ideas outsmart smart ideas." He said with a wry grin.

Sam chuckled. "So I take it she's still a little mad at him about that?"

"Probably. He's being moody and defensive too which never helps things."

"Which is probably annoying her after a decade of that nonsense." Sam said with a chuckle.

"Sounds like us." He agreed softly but there was amusement in his voice. "Might have been nice if they had made them both a bit emotionally smarter than we are."

Sam chuckled softy. "Why, Jack, are you admitting you overthink things too?"

"Don't you dare tell Daniel." He admonished her. "Besides, it's only ever been about you anyway."

Sam grinned "True." She said turning in his arms and giving him a light kiss. "Thank you."

Jack grinned. "I'm glad I didn't plan this for yesterday." Yesterday Sam had been as angsty as one of those afternoon specials ABC used to run for kids every week.

Sam shook her head and chuckled. "Thank you for giving me time to decompress." Yes, the party was definitely a distraction from the past few days. But she had a couple of more days before she still had to go to DC and explain herself to Congress but otherwise she was happy to be home.

Meanwhile, in another room Daniel noticed the minis' behavior too… and while he wasn't specifically comfortable around Jon, he didn't want the kid to screw up for as long as Jack had either. He did his version of a casual stroll over to Jon while Sammy was off talking to Walter and his wife.

"How's it going?" He asked Jon casually.

Jon shrugged. "Did you need something, Danny?" His tone was mild but a little bored, and highly reminiscent of his older self.

Daniel shrugged. "What did you do to annoy her this time?"

"Don't know what you mean." Jon said, feigning ignorance and tried to snag a beer that Daniel promptly took from him.

"You aren't twenty-one yet." Daniel gave him a pointed look. Not everyone here was cleared to know exactly who he was. As far as some of the guests were concerned, Sammy and Jon were just Jack and Sam's niece and nephew.

Jon sighed in exasperation. "We'll handle it, Danny." Jon finally grumbled as he scored one of Schultzie's ginger ales.

"Because how you handle things with her has always worked so well in the past." Daniel said pointedly.

"Look, I know I'm not the best at this, all right?" Jon snarled and drank some of the ginger ale.

Daniel nodded in agreement. "This should be redundant but you weren't there for that one. Just tell her how you really feel."

"About what?" Jon grumped.

"About her. There's nothing standing in the way for you two now. Don't invent obstacles just because you're scared of how you feel. She already knows who you are and loves you anyway. Trust her. Trust yourself." Daniel said with a philosophical shrug. It was advice he'd tried to give Jack years ago but the original version had cut him off before finishing with 'unfortunately the valid point was that the only way they could openly be together was for one of them to leave the team'. And even if Sam had moved to an R&D position only, Jack still oversaw all the SGC teams after Samuels was moved up and out to DC.

Jon seemed to mull that over for a while. Daniel watched the play of emotions on the younger man's face. Frustration. Regret. Anger. And finally, acceptance. "You're probably right."

"I was last time too."

"Don't push it, Danny." Jon grumbled.

"Good talk, Jon." Daniel said with an ironic smile.

"Smart ass." Was all Jon said as he walked away to go find his own Carter. But before leaving Daniel, Jon turned and said calmly, "Maybe you should take your own advice, Danny". As he turned away, Jon knew that his comment went completely over Daniel's head and he only heard what he wanted to hear.

Feeling proud of himself, Daniel grinned and wandered over to Sam. "Crisis averted."

"Which one?" Sam asked him in curiosity, while watching Jack burning meat on the grill outside.

"Mini existential one."

Sam chuckled. "At least he's consistent. What did you say to him?"

"That you already know how annoying he is and love him anyway so stop making things harder by adding problems that don't exist." Daniel said smugly.

"Oh Daniel." Sam said laughing in exasperation. "I can't believe that worked on him."

"Worked on Jack. Eventually." Daniel said with a grin and wandered off to find Cameron.

Sam's eyes casually looked over the crowd and saw Jon and Sammy in a corner. She noticed that they must have talked a bit because Jon seemed more relaxed but Sam saw that her younger self was still holding back on something.

Several hours later, the party was long over. Daniel, Vala, and the minis had stayed behind to help clean up but they were gone too now. The minis were the last to leave Jack flicked his eyes to Sam then to Sammy, pointing out to his wife that the girl was nervously biting her lip. Sam nodded. She'd talk to her about whatever it was bothering her. It couldn't be Jon's behavior. She was used to him being kind of an idiot about how he feels about her by now. The trash was all thrown away and Jon had piled as many leftovers into his car as he could manage without looking like he was homeless.

Sam had laughed. Sammy rolled her eyes as Jack had just added a box of pantry items he and Sam weren't going to get to by the time they had to be thrown out. The Air Force was paying him a decent stipend but Jon had admitted to Jack that he was spending quite a bit of it on art supplies right now. There was a student gallery coming up and Lynn's mom had been stingy with needed supplies so Jon had given her quite a few of his own then had to go buy new.

Jack had nodded and made a mental note to get the kid another gift card or talk to Sam about a loadable credit card he could use to buy stuff since he knew that art supplies hadn't gone down in price at all. Jon just had only enough disposable income that he could only replace as things were used up not invest in new.

When Jon made a comment about affording things when he went to the Academy, Sam saw Sammy's subtle reaction and that's when she knew what was upsetting her younger self. She was scared of being left behind because Jon, who was her anchor and had been for the past three years, was moving on and she was staying here.

Jon and Jack left the house together, discussing the possibility of increasing Jon's allowance. Sam reached out to grab Sammy's hand and squeezed it. "Sammy, I don't have a lot of free time before I have to report to Washington on Monday. But when I get back, let's have one of our check-ins, hmm?"

Sammy looked up at her, startled. Blue eyes met blue eyes and nodded. She let out her breath and blinked several times to keep the tears at bay. "I'd like that." And with that, Sammy left the house. Sam noted her younger self seemed to be fleeing from her emotions which… Well, Sam was honest with herself these days. Was a very bad habit she'd had worked hard to overcome in the last few years.

From the doorway, she watched the minis for a few minutes as they said their goodbyes to Jack and finally let out a sigh. She went back into the house, glancing quickly at the time. While today had been fun and kept her mind off her recall, she was exhausted. And now it was past Gracie's bedtime. Sam found Gracie passed out under the coffee table and was soon gently tucking her daughter into bed. She supposed they would have to let go of the convertible crib soon and get her a toddler bed.

Gracie woke up while Sam was tucking her in. "Where's daddy?"

"Saying goodbye to Jon and Sammy. Would you like to go shopping for a big girl bed with me?" Sam asked her, pulling the blankets around her daughter's slender frame.

Gracie shrugged sleepily and yawned. "Daddy will do it soon." She said and closed her eyes and rolled over.

Sam sighed. "Good night, baby. I love you."

"Love you too." Gracie then mumbled. "Not a baby." But was out again afterward.

Sam stood from her crouched position and looked sadly at her daughter who quickly fell asleep. What had happened since Christmas? Gracie had been so happy to see her. Now she was acting like she couldn't care less that she was now home.

Sam silently left her daughter's room, hiding her hurt. She didn't want Jack to see her like this and was in bed when he joined her in their bedroom. When Jack finally joined her in the bed, she turned over and went willingly into his arms.