Chapter 22 – A Life of Luxury

Andan leeches were very like their Earth counterparts some twenty-four thousand light years distant, thought Sam. 'Mustn't pull them off, the effect's the same.' she mused. Looking over her shoulder as she laid naked, face-down on the floor of their tent-hut, she smiled at Jack as he applied more of the ointment that the guerrillas' doctor had given them all. He had a faraway look on his face, only relieved from time to time when another of the small black creatures detached itself from her back under the torment of the lotion, to be picked up and thrown outside as far as he could send them. Had he looked out, he would have seen that most of the camouflaged shelters, just like theirs, were marked by the occupants' clothes turned inside-out, hanging on the trees nearby so that any more of the creatures would drop off by themselves. It was the normal hazard whenever they walked along river beds through the jungle – sometimes the only way through dense foliage and certainly was the best means of eliminating scent trails that dogs might pick up. The ritual of cleansing each other of the parasites had become routine and somewhat unremarkable after the first few times.

"Penny for 'em." she said, her eyebrow raised in the way that Teal'c had taught them.

He smiled back in response. She thought that he wasn't going to say anything for a while, but he replied. "Nothing and everything." Seeing that she wasn't going to let him get away with that, he continued, "I was thinking...... Well, you're amazing, Sam. We're in the fifth month of our tropical honeymoon here in *Costa del Mud*, and you haven't once said anything about what you're missing back home. Or complained about me – 'cept that time when you thought I was letting Jen walk over me – or done anything that I could grouse about."

"Yup! Perfect little wife, that's me." she laughed.

"Apart from the snoring." he added wryly.

"I do not snore!" she replied vehemently.

"And the farting." he said, face deadpan.

"That's rich, coming from you!" was her riposte.

"It's the Andan diet, of course." he continued. "We'd never behave like that back at home. Unless, of course, the local superstore is doing special offers on lizard and jungle fruit stew. And then again, it's a well-known fact that women never fart before they're married." He fell silent again, but continued to treat her remaining 'invaders' with the ointment. After a few minutes, he delivered a playful, resounding slap across her rump, the usual sign that it was time to change places and disinfect him. He couldn't resist it, but the return blow she would land on him always left him wondering *why* he couldn't have resisted doing it. But he knew the answer to that, of course he did.

"Jack, talk to me." said Sam as she set about his back. "Something's brewing, and you promised to be honest with me."

Jack took a deep breath and started what he knew was going to be a difficult conversation. "Look, Sam, I know you're going to take this the wrong way, but I'd consider it a favour if you and Jen didn't participate in the first wave of tomorrow night's attack."

She stiffened and her hands stopped moving, just as he'd known they would. "Why?" The hurt tone of her voice was unmistakeable.

"Have you noticed how 'our' Andans only seem to be confident about going in against the enemy when we open up an attack using the guns we brought from Earth?" he asked. "It's been a problem from the start, and now it's worse. It won't change unless they start believing in their own abilities. Sure, we've still got enough ammunition left for the nine mils and the M-82 to make a few more strikes, but that's not the way any more."

"So you're planning to go in tomorrow using only the Andans' own weapons, then?" she deduced. "Right?" She saw him nod. "Makes sense. But why not have us along? We've been there on every assault so far. Please don't start any 'weak little women' stuff with me, Jack. It won't wash. Jen and I are good enough at hand-to-hand."

"It's not that, and you know it." he said firmly. "But I do know for a fact that you've never had to creep up on a guy on guard duty and knife him to death in a way that he won't struggle or cry out. These electric stun guns are too noisy and the flashes can be seen far enough away to put us at a real disadvantage. With all my heart, Sam, it's something I don't want you or Jen to have to do. I won't make it an order, but I'll tell you right now, the thought of it's tearing me apart."

She paused in mid leech-pull, and the undercurrent of resentment at his words disappeared instantly. Not that she was going to change her mind, though. She had suddenly realised that his motives were genuine Jack O'Neill, and what was on display was his almost limitless caring for the ones close to him, not some gender-related viewpoint. She decided to change tack to get him to understand her point of view.

"Why not exclude Jeff as well?" she asked, smearing more of the lotion over a group of black forms clustered between his shoulder blades.

"I tried." was his blunt reply. "But he threatened me with..... well, I won't say what. But he insisted that he was going to lead his section tomorrow. He's not the most skilled fighter I've seen, but what he lacks in finesse he more than makes up for in sheer guts and determination. You've noticed the changes in him these last few months? His group will follow him anywhere now."

"Meaning they won't follow Jen or me?" she retorted.

He sighed, wondering how to state what he could see with his own eyes, but not wanting to alienate her. "Sam, their society is different from ours back in the USA. They just don't see women in these roles yet."

"All the more reason for us to do it, then." she replied. "Jack, I know too why we have the frat regs back home – I'm just as worried about what might happen to you in these raids now as you are about me. It's worse than before, now that we're married, isn't it? We were both hiding behind the regs with regard to how we felt about each other these last years, but when we were fighting alongside each other in SG-1, those same rules did keep us more focused on the objectives and less on the personal danger."

"I suppose." he admitted with a grunt.

"Well," she continued, pausing before delivering the point that she knew *he* wouldn't accept, "I've got to the point where I can't bear to think of what might happen to us if you go down in one these encounters, Jack. Not just me personally, but all of us. You've got to face up to the fact that you're much too valuable as a leader to be put at risk every time." She felt his muscles stiffen up under her hands as she said it, but she was determined to get through this.

"Klint and T'Nevaraka often stay out of the front line, don't they?" she added. "Their men don't think any the less of them. You've got to start doing the same thing from time to time. Show them that you're their equal."

The silence and stillness of the next few minutes interrupted only by Sam detaching more leeches and throwing them out, was almost deafening. She was quietly celebrating the fact that at least she'd got him to think – or brood, it didn't matter – about the changes in his lifestyle that he really did need to consider. She knew better than to nag him about resting his slowly worsening leg injury.

"I'm not going to talk you out of this, am I?" he asked at length, gazing out of the doorway.

"Nope." she came back. "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia, to quote one of your favourites. But I'll not shy away from doing what we have to. I'll probably need all your support to pick me up again afterwards, but I won't be carried by the others. I've talked it through with Jen, and she feels the same way."

He remained silent as her hands continued to work their magic, and eventually he felt the sharp sting of her retaliatory slap across his buttocks. Thinking that it was time to get up again, he started to move, only to find that she was pushing him down by sitting on his back. She reached forward over him to pull the canvas across the open doorway, and he suddenly realised that the agenda had changed drastically.

"Sam?" he asked tentatively, trying to look round.

"Stay still a moment, while I tell you something, Jack." she said quietly. "And don't interrupt."

"What's up?" He sounded concerned.

"You asked me the other night if I had any regrets about us ending up here."

"And you said no. Changed your mind?"

"No, quite the other way. Of course, nobody in their right mind would want to fight a guerrilla war in the jungle, as well as being outcasts from our own world." she stated. "But we're here because we're here, as the song goes. That aside, I've been giving a lot of thought about what we do next if we make it out of this in one piece."

"And?"

"Well, as you said, one of three things is likely. Dad will come back for us and deposit us anywhere we want to go, within reason. Or, the Prometheus will come to take us back to Earth, either to resume our careers or to jail, depending on who's in charge. Finally, no-one will come and we'll become natives."

She paused, feeling the heat of the Andan summer penetrating through the thin walls of their shelter. A sheen of sweat covered them both, but they had grown used to that over the weeks that they had lived in this fetid environment. She moved off him and laid by his side, and he turned to face her. She reached for both of his hands with hers and held them to his chest, staring into his eyes. He waited, knowing that whatever was on her mind, it wouldn't be any easier for her if he said or did something inappropriate now.

"I used to think that everything in my life could be carried out in sequence." she said softly. "Get qualifications, experience, promotions, and so on. Then I met you." She was quiet again, and he could almost see her recollections of the past few years rolling through her mind. She only resumed when he raised his eyebrow slightly.

"You were mixing up everything in my mind, but you respected my wishes to 'keep it in the room'. Jack, I should never have asked you to do that, and you shouldn't have let me. I even thought I could box up a private life and not let it interfere with the career master plan. That's when I hurt you by going with Pete. I still thought I could get where I'd planned to be all along. Everything more or less still in place. Well, that all fell apart the minute you got involved with our mission here. Do you know, one of the Andan negotiators asked me if I had someone back at home, and I said straight away that he was in our military, and it wasn't for a moment or two that I realised I didn't have you any more. That's when I knew for certain that I'd taken the wrong path somewhere back down the line."

"Sam, there's no need to explain anything." he said, letting go of her hand and reaching up to push back the stray hair that was plastered to her forehead. "I wake up at nights and see you there, and I just can't believe my good fortune. It's enough that you're still here with me."

She had come to the essence of what she wanted to tell him. "I want more, Jack. But only if you do too."

"Now what do you mean by that?"

Another hesitation, and a deep breath. "I want to stop taking birth control measures, Jack. I've no idea if it'll work, and if nothing happens for a while, I want for us to see if we can qualify for adoption. Assuming that we're in one piece and not in jail, of course."

"Of course." was all he could think of in reply.

"Jack? Please tell me right now if that's not what you want. I can live with that, too. More than anything, I don't want to lose you again."

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, and then drew back. Her heart rate had increased palpably in expectation of a reply that she mightn't like.

"On one condition." he said at last, and she raised her eyebrows. "That you give up all combat the instant you become aware that you're pregnant." She exhaled and grabbed him in a hug, and he responded likewise, but pushed her away slightly before he continued. "And you don't go in to take out the sentries tomorrow. No mother of my kids is going to make the step from combat-hardened veteran to cold-blooded assassin. One of us in the family is bad enough."

"But....." she protested.

"Sam." he cut her off. "I know what I'm talking about here. I've given all the reasons before, so I won't repeat. It takes a special kind of person to be an assassin and live with the consequences. I've had to judge people for their suitability for that role over the years, and you wouldn't pass the test. You're brave, and brilliant, and competent at almost everything you turn your hand to. But there's an inner *you* that I recognise that would never be able to handle the consequences, to be able to cover up the blackness of cold-blooded killing that can descend at any time, from months to years later. There's things in the past that I will never tell anyone about, not even you. Not because they're classified missions, but they're part of the personal hell I told you and Jen about before."

He placed his hand gently on her cheek, staring back at her look of shock and disappointment. "Please don't do it, Sam. By all means, do what you're good at as part of the main force, but don't cross that fine line."

She clung to him as though his life had never been so precious to her before. 'God, that's true!' she thought to herself as she kissed him passionately. Her feelings were a mixture of resentment at his insistence and despite her earlier determination, relief as well. She knew that Jen – who would steamroller Jeff into getting her own way – would be disappointed in her, and would see it as weakness. But at the deepest level, she trusted Jack's judgment implicitly and did not wholly disagree with his reasoning. And significantly, she could now see the way to lay the foundations of future deeper mutual trust and respect between them.

"That means you stay behind with Klint and T'Nevaraka in the command post, right?" she asked. When no immediate answer came, she made to get up and walk out. However, he pulled her back to him before she had moved too far.

"OK."

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