Secrets and Shadows: The Thin Blue Line
Part Five
"All I'm saying is that it might have been nice to give her a little advance warning," Daniel said into the phone as he stared out his kitchen window.
"Warning about what?" Jack was in a bad mood and no doubt about it. Lucky for him, Daniel was also in a bad mood and ready to do battle. He'd spent most of yesterday around at Sam's place, 'keeping an eye on her' as she snapped more than once. And he couldn't deny the truth of that. He was keeping an eye on her.
Someone had to.
"About Melissa."
"It's not her business."
Daniel resisted the urge to grind his teeth. Instead he ripped back the plastic cover of the frozen meal with a viciousness that might had surprised a number of his colleagues. So Jack was going to play the old, 'There's nothing between me and Carter' card again?
"Maybe, maybe not. But did you even tell her you were expecting a guest when she arrived? Or was it just, 'Oh, hey, Carter, nice to see you here, sit down and have a cup of coffee while we wait for my call girl to show up?'"
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. Daniel used the silence to shove the frozen meal into the microwave and start it cooking.
"That was unnecessary, Daniel." Jack's voice was frigid steel.
Maybe it was. But Daniel would never admit that. "Did you know she was considering going back to Shanahan?"
More silence. Then, "No."
"She's lonely, Jack, and it's harder on her than it is on us. For some people, bad company is preferable to loneliness."
"She's Carter."
As if that changed anything! "She's a woman, Jack. She's lonely. And all she can see is the long, empty years ahead of her, bringing up a child without someone there beside her."
"And what am I supposed to do about that?" Jack rapped out, angrily.
"A little compassion probably wouldn't go astray," Daniel retorted. "An understanding of where she's coming from, possibly how hard it was to have the realisation of Melissa thrown at her."
"I understand exactly where she's coming from!" The words were spat out like bullets, old bitterness emerging from beneath the gruff exterior. "And there is nothing I can do, Daniel! Life isn't fair and we live with it. We deal with it." The way Jack had lived and dealt with Sam's relationship with Shanahan. "How easy do you think it is..."
As abruptly as it had started, Jack's rant stopped. He bit off his words and went silent. But Daniel heard what his friend didn't say. How easy do you think it is knowing she's pregnant to another man, to watch her grow with his child and know that if she was beyond reach before, she's now out among the stars?
Daniel felt like a heel. But that didn't stop him from saying, "She needs you, now, Jack. She needs all of us."
Jack muttered something that sounded like, "Yeah, like a hole in the head."
Daniel counted to ten. He counted down from ten. He did it again in Abydonian, Russian, French, and Swahili.
"Daniel?"
"I'm counting, Jack."
Jack knew what that phrase meant. He'd heard it often enough. The noise at the other end of the line was almost definitely a huffed sigh, but when the older man spoke again, it was with a little more leniency. "Look, when you and Carter are done, come around for dinner. I'll invite Teal'c, we'll make a barbecue of it."
Okay, so there was hope. Not a lot, but some.
Daniel hung up the phone after assuring Jack that both he and Sam would be there for dinner. It would provide an opportunity for Sam to pick up her car from Jack's place, and would also give her a chance to get over the initial awkwardness between her and Jack that was most likely after the unexpected meeting with Melissa.
The microwave dinged, producing his macaroni cheese lunch, and he went over to his open books and sat down to enjoy a couple of hours of relaxing translations.
Sam was a bundle of nerves when he picked her up, although she was hiding it pretty well. He forebore to comment on her nervousness, and they sat in silence all the way to the park.
It had been a warm summer, and even this late in the season, the temperature was a pleasant eighty degrees. As they drove down to the nearby park, Daniel saw that many families had taken advantage of the warm weather to go outside, and there were parents and children all over the place.
Daniel spotted Shanahan without too much trouble. A lone man, pacing in an empty section of the park, his eyes shaded as he glanced towards the parking lot. Presumably, he was looking for Sam's car. Daniel was suddenly quite glad he'd come along to provide moral support.
As he parked the car, he touched Sam on the arm. "You're sure about this?"
He honestly didn't know what she'd decided over the last day. For all he knew, she might have decided to take Shanahan back. And it wasn't his place to tell her right or wrong, yea or nay, although he wouldn't hesitate to give her a piece of his mind where necessary. All Daniel could do was hope that she was strong enough not to settle for a relationship where she had to hide who she was in order to be accepted.
Sam looked back at him, pale but holding onto her composure. "Yeah," she said, quietly. "Showtime."
Shanahan's surprise at seeing Daniel accompanying Sam only lasted a moment. "Sam, what's this about? Why are we meeting here?"
"Because I'm pregnant." It was a bald statement, plain and unvarnished, and Shanahan gaped at her.
"You're... But you said you were protected... Those injections..."
Daniel kept a few yards away, close enough so he was still in Sam's presence, far enough away that he wasn't a part of the conversation. Not overtly.
"I was. But sometimes...sometimes the injections take a day or two to kick in." Her explanation was stilted and slightly formal.
"And now you're pregnant..." Shanahan was stunned. "You're sure?"
Sam detailed the tests Dr. Brightman had run on her in the SGC. Bloodwork, hormone tests, even a preliminary ultrasound. She left other details of her discussions with the SGC doctor out. He didn't need to know everything.
"My child. God, my child... Sam, I know we had our troubles, but this is...this is wonderful!" He moved to embrace her, spreading his arms wide.
"Pete." Sam put her hands up against his chest, and stopped his rambling with her action. "I... This doesn't change any of the problems we had."
Now Shanahan stepped back, a frown wrinkling his brow as he tried to make sense of what she was saying. "What do you mean? This changes everything! It's our child, Sam..."
"We're not seeing each other anymore," Sam began.
"We could," he said, his voice softening. "I've missed you, you know..."
Sam made a sound like a sigh. "Pete, things are different now."
Shanahan eyed her sharply, "Are you seeing someone else?" Daniel saw the pale eyes flicker over Sam's shoulder to where he stood. Sam followed his gaze and shook her head.
"No," she said quietly, "I'm not seeing anyone else."
"Then why can't we get together? Why can't I bring up my own child?"
"You can have access to him or her..."
"Access? I don't want 'access', Sam," Shanahan's voice rose, incredulous. "I want to be its father. Properly its father..." He took her hands in his own, "I'll marry you if you want, but you have to let me bring up my own kid!"
Sam didn't say anything, and for a moment, Daniel wondered if she was going to give in to her ex-boyfriend's wishes.
Then Sam spoke. "I want to keep this child, Pete." She spoke very quietly - so quietly, Daniel could barely hear her. "But we're not seeing each other and we're not going to start seeing each other again."
"Sam..."
Daniel tucked his hands in his pockets and turned towards the main park area, where children romped around the swingset and the jungle gym. Men and women stood around, some talking to each other while keeping a watchful eye on the children, others were led by their offspring into the midst of the playground area, or were remonstrating with the children's behaviour.
"Daniel!" The call was unexpected, and for a moment, he wasn't sure that the woman was addressing him.
Then he saw her, coming towards him, her youngest child in her arms. "Linda!"
"Not a place I would have expected to see you," she said, smiling. "Unless you've been holding out on me."
He shook his head with a smile of his own. "No, no holding out." He indicated Sam who'd turned from the conversation with Shanahan at Linda's call. "I'm here with a friend." It felt a little odd lowering his voice, as though he had something to hide. "She needed to see her ex- about a personal matter and asked me to come along as moral support."
Linda arched a brow at him, "One of your friends from work?"
"Yes," he said. There was no point in equivocating around the matter. "Sam."
"Ah," Linda didn't turn immediately to look; she had more finesse than that. "Well, dare I hope your presence here means I can expect to see you at my office come Thursday? Or will you be out and about again?"
Daniel mentally ran through SG-1's schedule in his head before he realised that it didn't make any difference. Sam's announcement of her pregnancy and her forthcoming resignation from the Air Force had set the schedule on its head since they'd need a fourth member to go out with them. Assuming, of course, that Jack's knees weren't acting up again. They'd been notoriously unstable of late. "No, I think... I should be able to make Thursday."
"Good." Then she frowned and glanced around at the raised voices behind them.
"...don't make this about revenge on me just because I didn't meet your standards, Sam..."
"It's not about revenge, Pete," Sam said. From the sound of it, she was trying to be understanding; there was a note of pleading in her voice. "It's about what's best for us..."
"And what about what's best for our child? Have you considered that?" Shanahan's voice turned bitter, "Or is it all about your job and your work again? Sam, you can't bring up a child doing what you're doing..."
"I know. I've resigned my commission, effective from the baby's date of birth..."
"You've left the Air Force?" There was no mistaking the surprise. Whatever Shanahan had expected, this wasn't it. "I thought..."
"This is my child, Pete," Sam said, quietly. "I want the best for him too."
Shanahan looked hurt. "You just don't think that I'm the best father for him, do you?"
"I think that our relationship wouldn't be helpful..."
"Jesus, Sam, we got along fine most of the time! It was just that you were so focused on your job all the time! And now that you won't be working for the Air Force and we have the baby..." Shanahan took her shoulders in his hands, "We could make it work, you know..."
Daniel grimaced, completely forgetting Linda's presence, or that he wasn't supposed to be watching them.
"Trouble in paradise, I see," Linda said, her voice light with irony. "That would be Detective Shanahan, yes? The one who interrupted one of your....projects?"
Beyond her, Shanahan's voice had risen noticeably, "...was always about you all the time. You and your work. You and your team-mates. How was I supposed to compete with that, Sam? You had them all up on a damn pedestal, and I was just the poor schmuck you dated whenever you weren't off saving the world..."
"Pete!" Sam hissed, warningly. Her interruption of his tirade wasn't quite timely enough to stop him from the 'saving the world' jibe, but it stopped him from revealing any more secrets that they didn't want divulged to the general public.
"Sorry," he muttered. "But it's true. You were so busy with your job - with them - you had no time for me."
"Your job is hardly nine-to-five either," Sam said, and her voice was pitched so low, Daniel had to strain to hear it. "Pete, this isn't the time to go through why we broke up..."
"Dinner, then," he said, promptly.
"Uhh..." Daniel suddenly realised he had to intervene since she didn't know about the dinner. "Sam, I didn't tell you this before - completely slipped my mind. We're having dinner at Jack's. You, me, Murray..." A team night. He didn't say as much, but Sam would get it.
The question was whether dinner at Jack's would be considered worse than arguing all night with Shanahan.
Right now, Daniel figured it was a toss up - with the coin weighted against them. Sam had been close-lipped and unwilling to discuss anything about Jack since Friday evening; she wouldn't want to spend the evening in his presence, only two nights later.
The balance wavered, and Daniel saw it tipping inexorably away from SG-1...
Then Shanahan upset the scales.
"You can do without Sam for tonight," he said, forthrightly. "We have things to discuss about this child, right, Sam?"
Daniel later reflected that if Shanahan hadn't pre-empted her decision, she probably would have chosen to avoid Jack entirely. Instead, she looked at him coolly, "We have things to discuss about it, Pete, but not tonight."
"Then when?"
As she struggled to find an answer that he would accept, Daniel turned back to Linda, somewhat relieved that the immediate danger had been averted. Linda was watching Sam and Shanahan, although she turned back to him once she saw his eyes upon her. "The milk and meat of my career," was all she said. "So, I'll be seeing you on Thursday, then?"
Daniel just nodded. "If something comes up, I'll let your offices know."
Linda smiled. "It would be better to see you, Daniel."
"I'm not always in control of that."
"I know. But it would be a pleasant surprise to have you turn up for one of your appointments."
"I'll do my best," he promised with a half-laugh and watched her walk towards the child that was watching, wide-eyed, his hand stuck in his mouth. Daniel observed her pick up the toddler and carry him back to the playground.
It had been at least a month since he'd last sat down with Linda. Their meetings were supposed to happen every fortnight, but what with one thing and another...
"Look, Sam, you'd better get used to the idea of me being in your life, because you're not going to have my child without me!"
Daniel didn't turn around at the angry words. He didn't need to add to Sam's embarrassment at this moment. Shanahan had unwisely spoken loud enough for quite a number of adults in the park to hear his words and Daniel could see them staring.
"If I intended to keep you out of my child's life, Pete, I wouldn't have told you at all!"
"So I should be grateful, then?"
Sam looked away, and her gaze clashed with Daniel's before she turned back to her ex-boyfriend. "This is why we shouldn't talk about this now," she said tightly. "You need to work out what you want for this child, and I need to work out what I want for this child, and we'll have to come to an agreement..."
"An agreement? This isn't a negotiation, Sam!"
"And what do you expect me to do? We split because things weren't working out..."
"Things were working fine until everything became about that job of yours..." Shanahan's eyes sullenly met Daniel's. "Have you ever heard of separation anxiety? You even brought one of them along with you to tell me you're pregnant? Doesn't that seem strange to you?"
Daniel wondered how strange Shanahan would have found it if he'd been told that Daniel was here for moral support in the face of a difficult situation.
"We're not going to discuss this now," she said, angrily. "I'll call you on Tuesday and we'll talk this over then."
Shanahan didn't look happy, but Sam was set.
And Daniel didn't say a thing as they walked away from the park, the screeches and bellows of the children echoing behind them. He didn't have to say anything.
"Why didn't you tell me about dinner before?"
"I forgot." It was true enough.
A quick peek at her face showed her looking troubled. She caught his glance, but didn't say anything or try to explain. With Sam, her emotional troubles were usually private, except where her team-mates delved into her life.
"You have to pick up your car anyway," he pointed out.
"And whose fault is it that my car was left there?" Sam inquired, acidly.
"Not mine." Daniel reminded her.
They wandered across the grass, twigs and leaves snapping lightly under their shoes, barely audible with the background of the children screaming and laughing behind them.
"Look," he said in an effort to lift her spirits a little. "You've done what you said you would; you've told Shanahan. That's the worst of it, isn't it?"
The irony of his blithe statement would only come back to haunt him later.
Afterwards.
-- End of Part One --
NOTES: Part Two is called 'Under Siege' and will be posted shortly.
CHARACTER NOTES: For the character of Pete Shanahan, I extrapolated on the base of what the writers of the show gave us in the episode 'Chimera' (obsessive, paranoid, manipulative, and inept) and simply didn't smooth everything over with a 'no harm, no foul' at the end.