Consequences
Part Three
The Edoran was clearly uncomfortable at her presence, and distressed by the scene that had taken place before the Stargate. Sam couldn't blame her, although she kept the concern she felt inside her. Daniel and the Colonel would argue, they would yell at each other and accuse each other of every sin under the sun and then they would go off to sulk for a few hours before grudgingly making up again.
Sam made small talk to ease the Edoran's tension.
"You had...have a son, don't you?"
"Yes. Garan. He no longer lives under my roof. He has taken himself a wife."
"Naytha?"
The Edoran woman looked surprised, "Yes. How did you know?"
"When I was developing the technology to get through to your Stargate, I met her parents."
She'd been working on the particle accelerator, night and day, wearing herself down to the bone. Daniel hijacked her, first forcing her to get some sleep, and then insisting she take a day off. Arguing had availed her nothing – he'd forcibly dragged her through the Stargate to the world where the refugee Edorans were staying, announced her name, and told the people that she was the one who would be getting them home. She'd promptly been swamped by Edorans. Adults and children, thanking her, cursing her, asking her when they could return home...
It had given her a new perspective on the work she'd been doing. More than just the Colonel's return hinged on the particle accelerator succeeding.
A shy couple had approached her later on in the day and asked about their daughter. "She went with Garan – Laira's son – when the Fire Rain began falling. Colonel O'Neill went after them." More than anything else, what they'd wanted was reassurance that their daughter was alive. Reassurance that the Colonel was the kind of man who would not give up looking for two foolish children, and who possessed the resources to survive the fall of the Fire Rain.
She had been able to give them that much comfort.
And, in the end, she had managed to return them to their daughter.
Thinking of them, she reminded herself to find them among the villagers and say hello. To find the other people she had met that day and feel again the satisfaction of what she had done – not just for the Colonel, who had forgotten his team, but also for the people who had not forgotten their home.
Hopefully, they had not forgotten her, either.
They came to the end of the path from the Stargate, pausing on the main causeway along, which the houses stood. Then Laira directed Sam towards one end of the causeway, and she followed.
"How long have Garan and Naytha been married?" Mentally, Sam grimaced at the inanity of her conversation, but the words filled the silence between them. They were two women with nothing in common but the Colonel.
"Nearly a full turn of the seasons." Laira did not seem inclined to be talkative – at least with Sam. She eyed Mia, "If my daughter is too heavy..." Was there a possessive lilt on the pronoun? Perhaps. Or perhaps Sam was being paranoid.
"Oh, no, she's fine." Sam didn't know why she was so reluctant to let go of the toddler, only that it was a good feeling to have the baby in her arms, trusting and adorable. She'd missed out on the 'toddler' stage of her niece and nephew – that stage of their development had been during the period when Mark wasn't talking to her. And Mia seemed happy enough there as she fiddled with the flaps on Sam's vest, looking up at Sam from time to time as if to check she was allowed to play with the bits and pieces of material..
They stopped outside a house, presumably Laira's. Wooden, like all the structures, rough-hewn yet solid. Sam had a moment of heart-stopping panic: what if the Edoran woman asked her inside? She didn't really want to see where the Colonel had lived those three months; where he had loved this woman and given her this child.
Her fears were unfounded; the Edoran had no intent of inviting her in, any more than Sam had the desire to enter. "I should put her down inside the house." Laira reached for her daughter.
Mia didn't want to leave Sam. She wailed, her hands gripping firmly to the straps of Sam's pack, and Sam was forced to reclaim her as the toddler broke into crocodile tears. "It's okay, Laira," she said gently. "I can hold onto her for the time being."
"You are sure?"
"Yeah, it's no problem. I'll just be out here if you're worried."
"Very well." Laira seemed a little huffy, and Sam winced as the other woman went inside the house. It wouldn't be easy for Laira to accept that this time the Colonel didn't come as a stand-alone. He would come with three friends who weren't about to let him go gently.
She sighed, thinking of Daniel, spoiling for an argument with the Colonel. It wasn't going to be an easy time for any of them. And this return to Edora raised other unpleasant memories closely associated with Edora – such as the Stargate smuggling ring and the tense days thereafter. Well, they'd coped then, and they would cope now.
They had to. They were SG-1.
Glancing around for somewhere to sit, she seated herself down on a patch of grass and rested the baby on her knee. Small hands yanked at a waving strand of grass, uprooting it, and the toddler brandished the prize at her keeper with an entirely delightful grin.
"You're a real charmer," Sam murmured, hopelessly enchanted by this bundle of life and energy. "You know that? Just like your Daddy."
A weight pressed against her heart as she looked at Mia. One blink blurred her sight, but with a surreptitious glance around she brushed the blurriness from her eyes. It wasn't her right to feel this way, she told herself repeatedly as the toddler gurgled and poked the grass frond at her. The Colonel had made no promises either then or now, was in no way obligated to her beyond his command and whatever else he felt was due her as a friend.
It still hurt.
Mia tilted her head, and patted Sam's cheek with a declaration of: "Baa-aaa!"
Sam laughed in spite of herself. She rubbed one thumb over the girl's cheek and leaned forward to kiss the soft, smooth forehead. I wish you'd been mine, she told the toddler silently. Regret ached in her briefly until she banished it. She was the Colonel's friend and would stay that way; his friendship was just as valuable as anything else he had to offer. Wasn't five years proof of that?
But, oh, it would be difficult.
Along the causeway, a crowd of small, determined figures were kicking up a small storm of dust, making their way towards her.
"Major Sam!" On the day Daniel had dragged her out to the refugee Edorans, she had met and made friends with several of the children. They were fascinated by the paleness of her colouring against their sun-tanned skin, and the news that she would be getting them home to Edora. "Fair day, Major Sam! You never came to visit!" The speaker was a sturdy boy of ten who scuffed at the ground near her. "Hey, you have Mia! Fair day, Mia!"
"I'm sorry I never visited, Tam," she said, smiling up at him, but feeling a little guilty. "It's been a busy time." And she'd had little desire to come back to Edora. Selfishly as it turned out. In the pain of those days after the Colonel's return, she'd almost forgotten the Edoran friends she'd made. "I'm here now, aren't I?"
"How long will you be staying?" One of the other children demanded. "Will you come see our caves like Doctor Daniel?"
"Will you come swimming in the river?"
"You have to tell us everything that's happened since we saw you!" Tam told her. "Doctor Daniel told us a little bit, but you have to tell us everything!"
Sam couldn't help a smile, thinking of everything that had taken place in the last two years. Tam would be an old man before she got through telling him. Well, she didn't have anything else much to do except baby-sit Mia, so she might as well reacquaint herself with the children she'd met two years ago.
"Well," she said, "Where to begin..."
----
She was sitting amidst a crowd of children, with Mia tugging at her fatigues jacket and playing with the buttons. The Air Force Major was nowhere to be seen, just a woman in fatigues telling a story to spellbound children who leaned on her knees or squeezed in beside her in the grass, their huge eyes watching her face as she finished telling them about the replicators.
"Ooh!" One of the girls declared. "I hope they never come to Edora."
"Oh, I don't think they will," Jack drawled, lightly, aware of a slight squeezing in his chest as he came to stand on the edge of the 'storytelling session'. Then she looked up at him and the squeeze became a full-fledged iron grip. "We took care of them, didn't we, Carter?"
"Several times, sir."
The children began to get up, suddenly in the presence of an adult they didn't know. The shyer ones clustered behind Carter, while one of the bolder ones planted his feet and eyed Jack up and down. "You're Laira's man, aren't you?"
Carter looked down at Mia burbling happily away, and Jack cursed himself for the idiot he'd been. The consequence of forgetting that this team would never leave him behind was their situation now. A daughter for whom he was responsible, Daniel furious, Carter distant, and Teal'c...well, Jack didn't know how he was gonna face Teal'c in the end. How could he tell the Jaffa that it was okay to leave his son behind to fight the Goa'uld, when Jack was willing to give up the fight to bring up his daughter?
"I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill," he told the boy, neither confirming nor denying the child's statement.
The boy looked him up and down, about ten years of age, young, bold and brash. "You're the one Major Sam built the artickle sellaytor for."
"She built it to get you home, too, you know."
One shod foot scuffed at the grass, "Yeah." Then the boy looked up, ingenuously, "Do you have any stories?"
"Tam," Carter said a warning clear in her voice. The boy looked anxiously at her, and she shook her head at him, smiling. He grinned back shyly. Jack almost laughed. The boy had all the textbook signs of infatuation with Carter.
"Guess we should go back to the field," Tam murmured and nudged one of the other boys, "Bet I can beat you there!" He started off in a sprint that drew most of the other children away as Carter stood up, still balancing Mia in her arms.
"Major Sam," a soft voice said as a small hand tugged at Carter's sleeve. "Thank-you for telling us about the reppy-gators. Fair Day." And the girl followed her companions into the cloud of dust down the causeway.
"Maybe the Edorans should hire you as their babysitter," he told her, smiling slightly. "I see you made a few friends."
"Renewed a few old acquaintances," she corrected him, glancing up from Mia.
"And Mia's decided she likes you."
"Laira was going to put her down inside, but she didn't want to let go." The toddler looked up at Carter and smiled brilliantly, and Carter's lips curved in tender return.
Regret stabbed deeply. The picture of the two of them wouldn't have been all that far off from a traditional 'Madonna and child' portrayal, if you ignored the fact that the 'Madonna' was dressed in military fatigues and had a P-90 slung over her shoulder.
"You've got your Daddy's eyes, miss," Carter told Mia, then glanced over at him and blushed a little. "She's beautiful, sir."
"Yes." She was beautiful, too. Beautiful in the heart and mind as much as in the body. This is Major Samantha Carter... If you've got any sense, you'll grow up as smart and beautiful as she is. His courage had failed him in the end, and he'd substituted 'intelligent' for 'beautiful', but the sentiment had been there.
Carter held his gaze, "Sir? Did you and Daniel..."
Breath gusted out of him. "We sorted things out. Kinda." He thought of Daniel's weary replies to his angry demands – as if the energy that fuelled the initial fury had drained from the younger man, leaving him a hollow shell.
"'Kind of', sir?"
"We're...not really talking right now." Not after Daniel walked away and Jack stormed off down the path to the village.
Her disappointment was clear in her face. "Sir..."
"It'll sort itself out, Carter."
"Not if you're not talking to each other."
He gave her a very direct look, exasperated with her persistence, "Are you sure your first name isn't Jimmy?"
The flash of amusement on her face was dazzling and coveted. "Do I look like a Jimmy, sir?"
"No," he said quietly, "You're definitely not a Jimmy."
Silence stretched between them, much as it had on Apophis' ship with the field separating them and a wealth of reasons for him to go – and only one to stay. Then, a movement at the periphery of their vision caused them both to turn and behold Laira watching them, guardedly.
"Sir?" Sam gently extricated Mia from her arms and her pack straps, and offered his daughter to him.
His daughter.
He took Mia into his arms. "Carter?"
"I'll go looking for Daniel and Teal'c, sir. They're probably at the research station. Fair day, Laira."
She walked away, her hands coming up to steady her weapon at her chest, resting her arms on the weapon in a gesture that was as familiar to him as any of his own. Jack watched her leave. One finger was absently being pre-empted as a pacifier by the baby, while her father – her father! – took a deep breath and turned to Laira, finding her eyes upon him.
"What is it?"
----
The breeze whispered around them, warm with mixed scents of a farming life – fresh wheat, new-cut hay, ripe fruit from the orchards...
The scents were unfamiliar to Daniel. He knew the pungent aroma of bovine herds, musty rooms of books and papers, stale air in museum storage rooms or professorial offices, and the dusty scent of endless sand...but not this kind of agrarian life.
He sighed. This was Jack's future. He couldn't see Laira coming to Earth – the Edoran woman would be lost in the cement jungles of their planet. And Jack would never let his daughter grow up without him.
Shit happens, he thought dully, and this is the result.
"Major Carter," Teal'c asked quietly, "What will happen to SG-1 with O'Neill gone?"
Sam looked up from the notes she was scribbling on the test results the scientists had given her to look over. "I don't know, Teal'c. It will depend on a number of things." She dropped her pen to the ground and rested her chin in her hand and her elbow on her bent knee. "I don't think they're likely to split us up. We're a unique team as it is." There wasn't any pride in her statement, just simple acceptance. "The last time circumstances required the Colonel to leave SG-1, I'd only just received my promotion to major. It wasn't suitable for a newly promoted Major to take control of the flagship team for the SGC. Now..." she looked thoughtful. "It would depend on whether General Hammond would give me command of SG-1 or assign someone new to command." She winced, "Hopefully, this time, it'll be someone who can deal with us on a level similar to the Colonel."
Daniel didn't hide his grimace. Makepeace had been an exceptional soldier, or so he had been told by various stunned personnel after the 'Black-Market' Stargate scandal, but the man had not possessed the people skills to deal with the three 'non-standard' members of SG-1. "Would you like to take command of SG-1?"
She thought about that for a few seconds, "I'd prefer not to," she said at last, surprising both Daniel and Teal'c with her answer. Seeing their expressions, she hastened to explain. "It's not that I don't want my own command, guys. A year ago, shortly after the incident with...with the memory stamps on P3R-118, General Hammond offered me the command of SG-14. Captain Denison was transferring out and the General asked if I would take the command."
This was news to Daniel, and, looking at Teal'c, he gathered it was news to the Jaffa as well. Neither Jack, nor Sam had said anything regarding the offer to either of them. "Why didn't you take it?"
Sam hesitated, "I had...issues I needed to get out of the way," she said at last. She didn't elaborate on what the issues were, although they could guess the nature of them. "Leaving the team at that time would have been...escapism. I wouldn't have been dealing with the problem, just running away from it." And to Sam Carter, that would have been unacceptable.
"But I assume you've dealt with it since then, right?" Daniel offered, careful to remain non-specific about the 'problem'. "So why wouldn't you take the command of SG-1, now?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't, Daniel, just that I'd prefer not to." Seeing the arch of Teal'c's eyebrow, she hastened to clarify: "I'm not just a Major in the Air Force, I'm also an astrophysicist. Presently, in SG-1, I get to balance those two sides of me. If I was commanding the team, I wouldn't be allowed that kind of freedom to indulge my interest in science and technology off-world. But if it came down to me or someone unsuited to commanding us as a team, I'd do it."
"You assume that O'Neill would give up command of SG-1," Teal'c pointed out.
"I don't see how he'd do anything else, Teal'c. The kind of danger SG-1 goes into..."
"...and gets out of..." Daniel interposed, earning him a wry smile from Sam.
"...isn't something that he'd want to risk knowing Mia is here on Edora."
The omission of the Edoran woman brought up another question that had been bothering Daniel. "Why didn't Laira come forward before now? It's been two years since Jack was last on Edora – we've had the research station up during most of that time. Mining teams have been sent through to collect naquadah. It would have been so easy for her to get a message through to Earth with the reports or with personnel. Let Jack know he had a kid before he gets himself killed by the Goa'uld."
"She may have wished to keep the child for herself, Daniel Jackson."
"I don't think so." Daniel thought of the hungry look in the Edoran woman's eyes that morning. Laira of Edora had not forgotten the man who briefly shared her house and her bed, even if he had not remembered her so thoroughly or fondly. "She still loves him. At least, she loves who she thinks he is." He grimaced. There was a lot more to Jack O'Neill than Laira would have seen, even during his three months of exile. "If Mia really was Jack's daughter, Laira would have let him know long before this."
Sam frowned, "Daniel, she simply might have been afraid to burden the Colonel with the knowledge he left her pregnant." There was the slightest of catches in her voice, but nobody but a very close friend or watchful observer would have heard it. "Why she left it for two years doesn't matter. Only that the Colonel found out about Mia in the end."
"I just think it's a little bit suspicious..."
"Daniel, please." With her eyes covered by the sunglasses, it was hard to see her expression, but her lips pressed tightly together. He bit his lip and didn't say anything more on the topic.
They talked of other matters: SGC gossip, the naquadah experiments going on at the research station. Daniel mimicked Dr. Vernon's accent and Sam swatted at him, laughing, while Teal'c's mouth curved and his eyebrows rose.
"We should return to the Stargate," Teal'c reminded them as the afternoon wore on.
Daniel stood up and brushed himself off, then helped Sam pick up her papers. Looking at her face as he offered them back, he saw the struggle of the last day and cursed himself for being an unfeeling idiot twice in a day. "Sam..."
"Teal'c's right, Daniel," she said, taking the papers from him and turning away to follow Teal'c down the path to the research station in the valley below. "We're due at the Stargate in half an hour."
Talk about bottling things up! He followed her down to the research station without a word, while his mind tried to find something to say that would help.
Just short of the cleared ground around the building, he touched her arm. "Sam."
She turned, took her sunglasses off, and sighed. "Daniel, don't..."
"You don't have to face this alone, Sam." The first time Jack had returned from Edora, they'd taken comfort in the company of each other, both feeling the betrayal of their friend and team-mate stronger than they could bear alone. Now, more than ever, they'd need to rely on the ties that would be left to them once Jack was gone.
A sigh issued from her, very soft. "I know." She looked up at him, lifting her gaze from his collarbone to his face. A smile touched her face. "You don't have to face this alone, either, Daniel."
"I won't." He reached out one hand, and took hers, squeezing it. "Come over for dinner, tonight?" With other women, Daniel would have worried that it might be taken the wrong way. With Sam, he knew she understood that it was her presence he wanted, not her body.
"As long as it's not pizza."
"Will TV-dinner lasagne do instead? Teal'c seems to like them."
"Sounds good." They smiled at each other, friends in harmony.
"I hate to break up a tender moment," drawled Jack at his most charmingly sarcastic, "But you guys have a wormhole to catch."
They looked over at their CO, leaning against the building like he had all the time in the world. He looked back at them, eyebrows arched.
"'You guys'?" Daniel questioned.
A stillness settled on Jack's face. "I won't be coming back with you tonight. I'll be staying with my... with Mia and Laira."
So he couldn't call them his family. At least, not yet.
"General Hammond cleared this, sir?"
"Yes." He gave them a wry smile. "I'll still walk you to the Stargate, though."
Sam nodded, almost pausing by Jack, before she kept walking until she was out of sight around the corner of the station building.
They faced each other, reading the regrets in the other's face. At last, Daniel walked forward, his hand grasping the older man's shoulder at the same time as Jack gripped Daniel's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Jack." Sorry for arguing with you. Sorry for taking my inadequacies out on you. Sorry for not dealing with this sooner rather than later.
"Me too, Daniel." And there was as much subtext in Jack's apology as there had been in his own.
Daniel tried to lighten the mood. "Guess I'll be 'Unca Danny', then?"
"I'll teach her to call you 'Unca Spacemonkey'," Jack replied, one corner of his mouth quirking.
"You do and I'll teach her how to insult you in a dozen different languages!"
"You wouldn't!"
Daniel grinned, "Try me."
Their banter carried them inside the station where Sam and Teal'c were putting on their packs and collecting their weapons.
The trudge back along the path to the Stargate was made in a considerably easier silence than their return the previous day.
Just before they reached the glade, Jack turned. "You guys are coming back tomorrow?" He asked, soft enough not to be heard by the people gathered at the Stargate, loud enough for them to hear.
Daniel answered for the three of them. "Guess so."
"We're gonna need to talk about this." And with a gesture of the hand, he indicated the whole Edora situation.
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
In the glade, Daniel noted there were a few more people than were supposed to be going back through to Earth. Several of them were Edorans. A small figure launched himself at Sam and blurted: "Mama wants you to stay with us for dinner, Major Sam!"
An Edoran woman approached Sam, her dark hair plaited in long braids. "We understand that you have many duties, Sam, but we would love to have your presence with us this evening. You could stay with us over the night if that is not a problem with your General."
"I have no problem with that, Piera." Sam glanced over at the assembled SG-12, already dialling up the wormhole, and her team mates. "But I'd have to request permission from the General first. If they're expecting me back..."
"You could send a message through the open wormhole after the others have gone through," Jack offered. "Don't see why Hammond would have a problem with it."
SG-12 went through the now-opened wormhole, and shortly after, Sam had her permission to remain for the night. She turned to Daniel, apologetic: "I'll have to renege on the dinner, Daniel."
Daniel grinned at her to show his feelings weren't hurt. "You've broken my heart, Sam. You owe me one."
"See ya tomorrow, guys. Hey, Teal'c!" Jack called to the Jaffa standing by the Stargate's rippling blue surface, "Make sure he doesn't stay up all night looking at those rocks SG-4 brought back, hey?"
"I will endeavour to ensure Daniel Jackson gets some sleep tonight, O'Neill." Teal'c inclined his head, and stepped through the event horizon.
Daniel rolled his eyes, then stepped through the wormhole back to Earth.
End of Part Three