Unbeta'd. All mistakes my own. Tell me what you think. Feedback = more chapters.

Chapter 1

Jack looked down at the woman who shared his bed. She'd changed in the last two years. It was strange to think it had been that long. It wasn't surprising that she'd changed though, what she'd been through. Her whole life had changed. She'd let her hair grow long and it was caught in a tight plait to keep it tidy during the night. No beating that military upbringing. Small wisps had escaped through the night and curled around her forehead, begging for escape for their restraint. Hey eyes were still red and swollen from crying the night before, but now she lay peacefully at rest.

Her body had changed over the last few years, adapting to the new limitations put on it. Her shoulders and arms had strengthened, becoming thick with muscle. More than capable than winning that arm wresting match she'd one challenged him to. But beneath the sheets, her legs were becoming pitifully thin. It was a matter of constant disgust to her, and something he often used to tease her with.

Her eyes flickered open as she rolled towards him. A night of rest had not dulled the turmoil in her eyes and tears brimmed as she studied his face.

"I I have work today, Jack." She whispered, her voice breaking painfully.

"Not yet." He gestured to the watch he was wearing. It proclaimed the time as 3:00am. She gave him a weak smile.

"Maybe not quite yet." She closed her eyes again as if sleeping. When she opened them again her emotions were gathered and closed away. Hidden from view. She hadn't had to hide her feelings from him for a long time, but he understood now. These feelings were too much for her. She wasn't used to such emotion. She would deal with it slowly. In her own time. "Let's go out." She announced suddenly.

"What, now?"

"Well, maybe after we get dressed." The smile was real this time, almost reaching her eyes. Closer to the earth-shattering grin he was used to.

"Sure."

It struck him as funny, as he stood in her hall, how much he'd settled down here, in her house. It was always his plan that, when they finally got together - which they always knew they would - they would move into his house. It seemed the sensible thing to do. His house was bigger, and all of his stuff was there. And there was no doubt that he had more stuff than Sam, she had good as lived on the base, only coming home occasionally for a clean set of clothes. But once she'd been allowed out of the hospital it seemed obvious that the place she'd go was home. It was a bungalow, so all on one floor and the rooms in the basement were mostly unused anyway. It was her home. When they'd started living together he had wanted her to move in with him, but she'd been quick to point out that, although the steps between the rooms made his house stylishly modern, it made accessibility a nightmare. He'd promised to get ramps installed at some point so they could move into the bigger house, but it had never happened. Jack's things had migrated from one house to the other and now there were signs of his inhabitancy on every surface. And in the end it looked like the spare room would not be necessary, much to Sam's grief.

His eye was caught by a multicoloured message on the note pad in Sam's hand. 'February 15th 2005, 2:30 - gynecologist' The multicoloured writing was a clear sign of how nervous she had been about the appointment. Things often became multicoloured when she was nervous - it was a habit that made him smile. He knew her so well. He pulled the page from the pad and stared at it for a moment, thinking of its significance, of its impact on their future. Of what he would miss. He smiled at the thought of Sam pregnant. If she had ever been as temperamental as Sara had been while she was carrying Charlie, no one would have survived.

"Penny for your thoughts?" He jumped as he realised Sam was sat in front of him ready to go.

"They're not worth that much." He offered the usual response, knowing that Sam would not need to know that he was mooning over the thought of the child they would never have together. "So, where are we going exactly?" He said, throwing away the small slip of paper.

"I don't know. Around the block would do. I just need to get out of the house." Jack nodded amiably and stepped out of the door so that Sam could have room to manoeuvre the bulky wheelchair over the ramp on the front door step. The morning was foggy and the white mist clung to the sides of the houses as they moved through the small community that Sam lived in. A lonely man walking his dog greeted them as he passed, commenting on the fog and the next day's weather. They ended up sitting in the local play-park, surrounded by memories of youth and childhood. They both sat silently for a while, totally immersed in their own thoughts.

"I'm so sorry Jack... I... This isn't the way things are supposed to happen. This isn't..." The tears returned to his eyes as she struggled to find the words.

"God, I'm sorry Sam. We shouldn't have come here." He reached a hand around her back, pulling her forward as he comforted her. "I want you to understand, Sam. It doesn't matter to me. I've had my chance with Charlie. It's just... This shouldn't have happened to you. You've given up so much for the program, you should have had to give up this too. It's wrong. And I'm sorry, but you can't think that this will change us. I love you Sam. You know that, right?"

"Thank you."

"Anytime. Now lets go home before we freeze to death."

"I think Jack's more upset about it than he's letting on. But we're OK. And life goes on, y'know." Janet pulled her friend into a hug.

"You'll get over this. Jack will always be there for you and so will we. Everyone misses you downstairs. It looks like the new security system is getting good use. It's already saved some lives. I think there's a few people that want to thank you for it." Janet's expression changed, becoming slightly devilish. "On the other hand there are those who have lost money from betting on how smart your kid was going to be and how quickly it would save the world." They both laughed, enjoying the chance to get rid of some of the tension. "We love you Sam, you have to know that. And no matter what the big people on the red telephone say, you are still a part of this family."

The 'people on the red telephone' had had a lot to say about Sam's request to re-join the SGC after her illness. The first had been 'hahaha'. Which was followed by 'no way, no how'. They were worried about safety issues they said, she was easy to over-power if someone wanted to get their hands on information and difficult to evacuate in an emergency. When she had pointed out that she already had enough information to bring the SGC down if anyone was bothered enough to try it the 'big people' had started panicking, realising that that was true for many other people. Eventually that had met a compromise. Sam had been allowed to work on the project, but not in the complex. She was sent projects and worked on them in the confines of a make-shift lab at 'an undisclosed location' that only she and a few choice people in the SGC knew about. They had wanted to ship her out to Area 51 where she could work in a better lab, but it was pointed out that whenever she went anywhere near the place, the scientists there started making subconscious grabbing motions towards 'the ex-goa'uld host'.

All of her friends had fought against not having her on the base. They knew that it was unlikely that she would be close enough to evacuate to the Beta site in the case of an evacuation of earth, but Sam had been happy just knowing that she was once again working to help and protect her friends at the SGC.

She and Janet had met up as often as possible since she had left her position in SG1 to keep her informed about the goings on in the mountain. That way she could request time with any of the things that were brought through before they could be shipped off to Area 51. This meant that her discoveries could be put to use ASAP in the base and saved time for the General - of which he was very grateful.

During the last two years that she'd been working for the base in this way she had got the gate dialling as fast as it would if they had a DHD and running at twice the efficiency it had previously. The made the politicians and the General very happy.

Finding out that she couldn't have children was a blow to Sam and it was very unfair. Janet only hoped that Jack could keep her together. She'd come so close to falling apart completely before. They might not be so lucky a second time.

Waving to the airman who had dropped her off, Sam made her way into the house. A small note was propped up on the table, stating simply, in Jack's untidy scrawl, 'Meet me at the park'. Her curiosity piqued, Sam made her way down to the park where they'd spent the morning. Jack was sat on the swing, his back to her. He was waving his hand as though acting, and was talking to himself. He looked for all the world like a little kid, practicing the lines for some upcoming play.

Closing the gate more loudly than it needed, Sam alerted him to her presence. His eyes were bright as he turned to face her, his cheeks red. He relinquished his seat to a young girl and walked over to her, meeting her on the edge of the park.

When they reached each other, he stopped Sam with a wave of his hand and knelt before her, taking out a tiny blue velvet box from his coat pocket. He looked up into her steely blue eyes with his chocolate brown ones and smiled.

'I've been practicing this for the last two hours and I still don't know what to say.' Brown eyes whispered.

'You can do it.' Blue ones smiled.

"Sam, will you marry me?"

"Yes, Jack. I'd love to marry you." A gold band slipped onto a delicate finger. "Thank you." She whispered into his ear as they held each other.

"I love you Sam." He responded. And with those simple words...

The world went black, pain flared, their bodies were engulfed in flames and ice, needles pressing in flesh, they were squeezed until they cried out and finally the nothingness of a vacuum. They passed out clinging tightly to each other, as though their lives depended on it.

When they awoke they were on the floor in a dark room, still clinging together tightly.

"Where the hell are we? And what the hell just happened?" Jack was the first to speak.

"Whatever that was it hurt. My head feels like it's going to explode."

"Think we were attacked? Kidnapped or something?"

"It makes sense. They could have had better timing though. I mean, I just got engaged..." Jack shifted so that he was upright.

"Yeah." Even without being able to see his face she knew he was grinning widely. "I'm going to try and find a wall. See if there's a door here somewhere. You'll be OK here until I get back?"

"I'll be fine."

"I'll be back before you know it." He promised, standing and stepping away from the woman on the floor. After two steps there was a 'whomph' and a curse.

"Take it you've found the wall."

"Yeah." Jack traced the sides of the wall round; cautious of things on the floor that might trip him. "I think I've found a door." He muttered, waving has hand around in the space where the wall had disappeared from his touch. He circled the whole room, then again before returning to the center to Sam. "The walls are solid and feel like concrete or something similar. There's only one entrance and exit and the room is square. There doesn't seem to be anything on the floor or anywhere else in the room for that matter." He informed her. "What do you think?"

"If we've been kidnapped why is the door open? And why are we together and where is our captor?" She paused to think for a second. "If you can get out of the room, go. Find out where we are."

"I can't leave you here on your own."

"You can and you will. If there are guards you don't need me in your way and you were complaining about your knees the other day, you can't carry me. You know I'm right so go, before I change my mind." Jack hovered for a moment, not quite sure what to do. "Shoo." She told him with a grin.

"I'll be back soon," he promised and with that he dived out of the door, knowing that if he stayed a moment longer he'd change his mind. Sam listened to him walk hesitantly down the dark corridor outside the room and then pulled herself into a corner, feeling the emptiness of the room closing in on her. Sam smiled at herself. She was already regretting her decision and he wasn't out of earshot yet.

The hallways weren't as dark as the room they had awoken in. There seemed to be some sort of ambient light, not as much as he would have liked, but enough to see his way around with. Their room was at one end of a long corridor of rooms, all seemingly numbered or titled, although in a text Jack couldn't read. It wasn't until a few doors later that it occurred to him that the different language suggested that they might not be on earth. He grinned to himself, wondering when an alien language had become an everyday thing for him. But then other thoughts reached him. Who would have kidnapped them and taken them off-world? Who had the ability to do that? There was something to the equation he was missing.

He sped up as he walked to the other end of the corridor, beginning with the doors furthest from theirs, and then started investigating the other rooms. The furthest room had a door very similar to theirs and it slid silently open as theirs had. He stepped into the room, wondering if any other people were in these. The room seemed empty. In fact the first four rooms he checked were empty. Then he came across a room with one occupant. This occupant was dead, it was quickly obvious from the smell, but what disturbed him the most was that he recognised the species. It was a man from the Terrenell of PX2-155. A group of people who had been quite accepting of a trade agreement and were currently acting as their prime trade-post for trinium. He remembered seeing a woman with two children crying quietly one day when they had visited and, on inquiring as to the problem he had found that the woman had recently lost her husband to an illness which had only affected a few in the population. Her grief had stayed with him for a long time after the mission.

Quenching thoughts of running back to his fiancé to check that she was still OK, he moved on to the next room.

In each of the rooms from there on, except one or two, there was one occupant, and in most cases the occupant was dead or dying. None seemed alive enough to register his presence. Almost all of the species had been encountered by SG1 at one point during the last two years, which Jack found strange. Most were not human, some were not humanoid but it was obvious most of them had been there a long time. Halfway back to the room he had awoken in, he encountered a room with no occupants. Instead of people inside there were rows and rows of shelves, each one labeled with what seemed to be the title of a room and a second line of script. He quickly found the shelves for their room. When he looked he was surprised to find several sets of gear. He rest of the team had not been in the room with them, nor had anyone else from earth, but it made sense that if this had been a mission, the rest of SG1 would come too. The only thing was that Sam had not been part of that team for over two years now. Who did the other packs belong to? The situation didn't make sense.

What was Sam doing on a mission to a hostile planet? What was Sam doing on a mission at all? She wasn't allowed on the base, let alone off-world. But something had happened, because here they were, off-world with full packs - he checked in one of the packs - with enough supplies to last them for a week. Everything was present for a normal SG1 mission. Using a flashlight he checked for the small palm-top Sam used to carry on missions with her when she was with SG1. It was there in the smallest pack, still active. There were even soil sample containers in the packs. Her chair wasn't anywhere to be seen, though. Something was very wrong here.

He stepped out of the room feeling slightly more relaxed wearing a flak jacket over the thin t-shirt he had woken in, a MP5, a zat and an off-world pack and carrying enough weaponry for Sam too. He headed back to the original room to give Sam the gun, knowing she would feel the security of the weapons as he did.

Before he entered the room he spotted one more door which was more interesting than the others. It was huge, towering way over his head and reminded him of the door to the 'gate room at the SGC. He had noticed that the closer he got to their end of the corridor, the more alive the people in the rooms tended to be. The thing that needed a door that big might cause a few problems if it was a conscious as they were. He leaned against the back of the door and slipped his hand across the door in the gesture he had used to open all of the other doors. The door slipped up a few inches and stopped. He grabbed a torch from his pack and laid down on the floor, shining it underneath the door. Looking through the glare of the bright light he searched the room for the two inhabitants. Seeing nothing moving he studied the room. There was no scene in this room, no unusual surroundings or other worlds, only a familiar shape in the middle of the room and against the back wall an even more familiar presence. A DHD, and a stargate. It was a 'gate room.