(Since I forgot to post them with Under Siege: Part One)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: My genfic 'Hostage Situation' is a prequel to this story. It is not necessary to have read 'HS', however it will help with some minor references. In timeline, we went AU before the Season 8 episode 'New Order' and everything that has happened since then is not included in these pages.
Please note, this story contains very strong Sam/Jack UST; if that is not your cup of tea, then pleased don't read the story and then whinge about it containing S/J.
Secrets and Shadows: Under Siege
Part Two
In the early evening hours of the late summer's day, Sam knew what would be waiting on her doorstep when she arrived home.
She was right.
This time, they'd arrived in a box, black, with a clear plastic window. A dozen red roses.
Sam left them on the porch, along with the other floral offerings.
The flowers hadn't abated in a week. Nor had the cards or the phonecalls she no longer answered. The only grace she was given was the fact that Pete had been on duty roster up in Denver every day for the last eight days. She anticipated at least two more days of peace before he got a day off and came to plead his case in person instead of inundating her with gifts and impassioned speeches about how much he loved her and wanted to be with her and the child.
The message bank flashed at her; one message. She dumped her bag on the table and began to put the groceries away. She didn't play the message. No guesses who it was from or what it was about.
As she yanked her boots off and padded to the kitchen in smelly sock feet, Sam reflected on just how frightening it was to be the focus of such a campaign.
She yanked off the socks and tossed them at the boots, not caring when they bounced several feet short of her footwear. Three months ago, she'd have tucked the socks neatly into the boots. Now, she didn't have the energy to be bothered.
A tub of Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice-cream welcomed her home, its thick, textured flavour sliding smoothly across her tongue as she made her way over to the couch and flopped into its comfortable depths.
For the first time, Sam could see why being stalked was such a nightmare for film and movie stars. For the first time in years, Sam felt truly alone.
Her father was somewhere out in the stars. In six months, the SGC had heard nothing of the Tok'ra. They had vanished, presumably infiltrating noiselessly into the Goa'uld power structure.
Her brother was not exactly sympathetic. Although he hadn't said as much, he considered her pregnancy one of the best things that had ever happened to her, making her more 'appropriately feminine' in his eyes, and not another soldier like their father.
They were all the family she had, with the exception of the child who grew slowly and steadily, a deathknell to so many dreams and hopes she'd had.
She could almost hate it for that.
She dug up an extra big spoonful of ice-cream and sucked it off the stainless steel bowl, angrily. What kind of woman did it make her that she resented this child simply because it had interrupted her life? It wasn't as if the child had asked to be born.
It wasn't as though you asked to be pregnant, either, a little voice hissed at her.
There were too many things happening in her life, and she didn't know how to deal with any of it. She'd never been pregnant before and she hadn't spent that much time around pregnant women, so she didn't know what to expect, or who to go to. She was feeling flat and stale and exhausted - and it was only the fourth month.
Sam needed to talk to someone, but there was nobody to talk to, not even her former team.
The rich brown dessert blurred before her eyes and she blinked the blurrieness away.
On Monday, General Hammond had sent SG-1 out with a mission. The Colonel had been gently strong-armed into taking a substitute officer on the team, and had complied, although Daniel reported that it was with marked reluctance.
Sam had embarrassed herself by turning up to the briefing, not even thinking twice when the briefing notification appeared in her email's inbox. She only realised her mistake when she reached the briefing room and saw Captain Jarrod Peyton sitting with her team.
Even then, she might have stayed for the briefing at Daniel's insistance if the Colonel hadn't said, "I'm sure Carter has better things to do than this, Daniel."
Her face had flushed with anger and shame and a lot of other emotions she didn't want to identify at that moment as she muttered an apology and fled. She'd been terse with Daniel when he appeared half an hour later, all geared up and just awaiting his pack. "It's okay, Daniel," she insisted, as he tried to apologise for the Colonel's words. "He's right. I'm not a part of SG-1 anymore."
Sam reflected on that thought now, sitting in the comfort of her lounge room, neat and stylish, but unlived in and unloved.
She'd been a member of a team - and now she wasn't.
She'd been an officer of the Air Force - and soon, she wouldn't be.
She'd been in a relationship - and now she wasn't.
At least Pete was offering her the chance to be a part of that relationship again.
Something in her knew that it was wrong. Daniel was right: nothing would have changed between her and Pete but the fact that she was pregnant. And this time, he would have one more thing to hold against her, and she would have one less defence against him.
That didn't stop his offer from being any less attractive.
Sam Carter was tired of being strong. She was scared of being alone. And she hated that she felt that way. All her life, she'd tried to be stronger, bigger, better; not to let life - or any officer's prejudice - stand in her way because she was a woman. She'd tried so hard that when an officer came along who didn't actually care that she was a woman or that she could outthink him most of the time, she almost hadn't recognised the gift of his respect.
She hadn't wanted to recognise the gift of his affection.
Her breast ached a little, and she slipped her hand into her brassiere and massaged it, rubbing her palm lightly over the swollen nipple. The baby wasn't just changing her life, it was changing her body, too. She tried to deny it, to claim that the changes weren't all that many, but her mirror told her the unkind truth and her scales and wardrobe echoed the sentiment; she was putting on weight and her body shape was changing.
Sam felt like whining that it wasn't fair, except that she knew life wasn't fair.
Unbidden, she remembered the graceful slenderity of Melissa Sandringham; the clinging material of the dress that outlined a body firm of breast, trim of waist, and long of leg...
Don't go there, Sam.
She'd kept the thoughts back for more than a week, now, refusing to think of the Colonel and the woman at his door. But they kept seeping in, like water into a leaky boat. She couldn't ignore them, the fact that the Colonel had someone in his life. Someone else. Someone who wasn't pregnant with another man's child.
Someone who wasn't Sam.
She'd found someone else to fill the role of lover in her life. Why shouldn't the Colonel?
Because it hurts, she cried, staring at a picture of SG-1 that she had set on the wall. She focused on the tall, grey-haired man whose half-smile should have been cynical, but which Sam had always thought was just a little sexy. It hurts to think that he's seeing another woman. Not just sleeping with her because he needs the sex, but actually dating her, getting to know her, sharing his life with her.
She had a feeling that Melissa Sandringham would never cross the line between wanting to know what the Colonel did for a living, and trying to find out through deception and stealth.
No, life wasn't fair at all.
Strangely enough, what seemed to hurt most of all was the evidence that he didn't even consider her a member of his team anymore. That she'd been discarded from his concern without so much as a, 'So long and thanks for seven years.'
Sam stood and put the ice cream back in the fridge then collected the bags she'd left on the dining room table and headed down the hall. She didn't want to remember that right now. She didn't want to consider what she'd done, how much she'd lost with this pregnancy.
She didn't dare, because if she did then she might go mad.
The house echoed, empty of any life but herself. That would change. In six months her every waking moment would be focused on the child that grew in her body now. Her life would change, this house would change, everything would change.
And if she wanted to have a child at all in her life, there was no way she could stop this from happening.
In her bedroom, she stripped out of her fatigues and tossed them to the side, then upended the contents of the shopping bags on her bed. Clothing tumbled out. Maternity clothing. High-waisted, low-riding, sizes ten and twelve and fourteen... Sam had always been slim - not more than a four or a six, but that was changing.
She picked out some slacks, then slipped out of her bra and went to stand before her mirror and look at her body.
As she looked at herself, face-on, then sideways, she grimaced. When she first started growing as a teenager, she'd bemoaned the fact that she didn't have any breasts to speak of. Over the years, she hadn't exactly filled out, but padded bras had given her a slight boost in that department.
She didn't need the padded bras anymore.
Her breasts were fuller, heavier, and they ached almost constantly. That was normal - or so said all her pregnancy books. Sam would just have to get used to the changes. She cupped one, fingering the nipple, and winced at the slight soreness.
From side-on, the changes were more noticeable: the shape of her breasts, the slight swell of her stomach, curving out from what had once been a reed-thin body. Four months in and, from all accounts, the baby was perfectly healthy, no sign that either the gate travel or the naquadah in her blood was affecting its development at all.
As her hand rested over the slight curve of her belly, Sam felt torn by conflicting desires.
At one end, she hated this child and everything it represented. It was a stranger taking up residence in her own body; a possession more total and changing than Jolinar, and without reverse.
At the other, she felt intensely protective about it. This was going to be her child and nothing was going to get in her way or hurt it. Not even her own regrets.
Was it usual to feel as though there were two of her, pulling her in two very different directions? Sam didn't know and there were so few people she could ask.
Dr. Sefton had offered help last week.
Yes, but are you sure she meant it? It might have been pure politeness - or avid curiosity...
Sam knew she was being talked about on the base. It was certainly gossip-worthy news. A prominent member of the SGC accidentally becoming pregnant and having to give up her career? To say nothing of the question of who the father was.
Just because she didn't participate in the gossip didn't mean she didn't know what was being said about her. She chose not to listen because she'd always figured she couldn't do anything about it, and she supposed she was better off not knowing, more often than not.
Right now, she guessed that the betting was whether or not she'd take Pete back. The pregnancy was causing occasional migranes that reduced her to a frozen hunchback over her desk. General Hammond had caught her in the midst of one on Friday, coming to see her at her office. He'd sent her home, driven by an airman who helped her up to her door in spite of her protests that she was fine.
Four discarded bouquets sat on her porch then. The number had since doubled.
The next day, the news had been around that Pete was waging a war to get her back.
And Sam wasn't so sure he wasn't winning.
In the end, there was nobody else to turn to. Nobody else who wanted her. And it had been nice to be wanted, even if he didn't have the faintest idea about who she was, what she'd been, and what she could be. Pete thought her sexy and desirable, and it had been a long time since she'd felt that way to any man.
Sam stared at her body in the mirror, running her hands over the new contours, trying to see her figure through the eyes of a man. Sexy? In another few months she'd look like a beached whale as the baby took over her body. Stretch marks would develop across her stomach and breasts as the baby grew within her and her skin failed to expand with the change.
You were never all that much to begin with, she told herself, bitterly. Pretty eyes and blonde hair, and that was all that most guys ever saw. Not that her looks had ever been her means of advancement.
Not that any man would look at her pregnant body and care that she could develop a particle accelerator in less than three months. Not that any man would care that she developed a particle accelerator in less than three months so he shouldn't have to be in exile for over a year.
In the mirror, her eyes met those of her reflection nakedly, for once refusing to hide what she'd done or why she'd done it. The pleasant lies had served her well enough for over four years, before they crumbled under the weight of the truth.
She'd cared about a man she shouldn't have; given him her loyalty and affection, and if she hadn't buried it six feet beneath a stone that said 'Denial' on it, then she might have seen that there was no way this story would end well.
Especially not when the bastard writing the script didn't believe in happy endings. Fate was a bitch, and then you died.
Sam touched her breasts again, fingering them gently. For a moment, her hands rested on her body and she imagined the Colonel's hands on her, his mouth on hers, at her throat, on her nipple...
The fantasies had never been anything but brief yearnings, momentary lapses of the imagination in which she let her desire rule her, before the cold force of her usual control returned. Such imaginings might cause a brief aloofness from the Colonel when she saw him again, but she'd dismissed them as nothing more than the instinctive reaction of a woman to a desirable man.
It was tempting, now that her hopes in that direction were irrevocably gone, to let her mind continue with the fantasy, laying down on the bed and letting her mind and hands do for her what he had never asked permission to do. Part of her scoffed that it was the hormones from her pregnancy making her horny; but another part wasn't so sure. And the thought was so appealing...
The doorbell rang, startling her from the heat of her desires and imposing arctic reality on her mind.
It was probably just as well that she'd been interrupted.
She dressed, quickly and carelessly, as the doorbell rang again, insistent with the tenacity of a door-to-door salesman.
"Coming..." she muttered, grumpily as she reached the door and yanked it open.
Then she stared.
Pete glared at her from her doormat as he indicated the dead and dying flowers sitting on her porch. "Aren't my presents good enough for you, then?"
----
Jack nearly didn't drop in to Carter's on the way home.
Daniel put the bug in his ear the instant they were through the Stargate and on the Targonian planet, and there was no stopping him. Jack listened and mostly ignored it. Mostly.
What did Carter expect from him? Only what she'd ever expected from him: commanding officer and nothing more. Well, he wasn't her commanding officer anymore, he was just one more officer that outranked her on base. Without that connection, that left basically nothing.
'Nothing' hurt more than he'd expected.
And that was the problem.
He'd realised that the instant he first turned to Captain Peyton and barked out a command, tagging 'Major' on the end without thinking. Peyton had been as embarrassed as Carter when she walked into the briefing room and realised that she hadn't needed to come.
Jack's apology had been terse, and even Teal'c had commented on his temper for the remainder of the mission. Nor was his state of mind helped by the fact that they could have done with Carter's presence on the team.
Not to mention Jack missed her.
Definitely not to mention.
He'd silently admitted the lack as he changed into fatigues, preparing for the debriefing. He verbally admitted it as he told Hammond that if they'd gone a month ago, the Targonians would have been all over Carter. He admitted it as Daniel hauled back on Jack's shoulder after the debriefing and put Bug Number Two in Jack's ear.
Daniel told Jack that if he wanted to keep his head firmly up his ass, he was more than welcome to do so, but he should at least apologise to her for what he'd said when she turned up in the briefing.
The street was mostly empty; Carter lived in a part of town that seemed to be populated by retirees. Possibly where Jacob had originally intended to live out the remainder of his cancer-ridden days, before the Tok'ra gave him a new lease on life.
He parked his truck behind a station wagon, paying little attention to the neighbourhood. He'd come here to apologise for being a bastard, and he would. But nothing more. She didn't deserve anything more. Certainly not any explanation about Melissa. Jack's private life was none of her business, just as her private life was none of his. She'd made that clear enough over the years.
At the top of her porch steps, he paused, frowning a little at the bouquets that sat, wilting in the summer heat. The most lively-looking ones were roses, still sitting in their elegant box, unopened.
It seemed Shanahan had been bringing out the big guns.
Jack wondered how Carter was responding to the overtures. Not apparently very well, if the wilted state of the presents was any indicator.
So he knocked on the door, and stuck his hands in his pockets, waiting to be answered.
Just apologise and go. Don't stay to talk, don't stick around to watch her, don't think that this changes anything, because it doesn't. You're not friends and you never were. Nothing has changed.
That was the game plan.
He heard her footsteps, soft and barefoot, as she came to answer the door. "Yes?"
She looked flushed. Dishevelled. Harried. And yet, somehow, something in her appearance bypassed all his good intentions and went straight to a part of him that simply said, Nope, nothing has changed.
Life was so not fair.
"Sir."
He opened his mouth to say something, and stopped as a man appeared in the hallway behind her, and laid one possessively on her shoulder. "Colonel O'Neill."
At that moment, he only had eyes for Carter, for the way her gaze skittered away, ashamed.
Game over, Jack. You lose.
There would be time later to rage, to grieve, he told himself. Right now, he had to put a good face on, to gather his remaining fragments of dignity and make an escape. He wouldn't bleed here, not before her. She deserved that much; to never know how close her former commanding officer had come to making a complete idiot of himself on her front porch. He owed her that much dignity.
But it was hard to breathe at that moment.
Husband, wife, and baby made three. A perfect family. And the intruder standing on their doorstep, staring hungrily at the woman he couldn't have and never would.
No, life was not fair.
"Carter... I was just in the neighbourhood..."
He'd come to build up the bridge he'd ruined two days ago, even if he was determined not to cross it. He'd wondered if maybe she might need him in some small way. It wouldn't change the fact that she was carrying Shanahan's child, but it would at least give him something in her life - as a friend, nothing more.
Stupid.
It was with a sense of surprise he realised that, in spite of all the nice lies he'd fed himself about just coming here to apologise, he really had come with the intention of being friends again. Or as close to friends as they ever got.
It wouldn't change the fact that she was carrying Shanahan's child. It wouldn't change the fact that he was still angry that she was carrying Shanahan's child...
It wouldn't change the fact that he still cared.
But it would have been...nice.
'Would have been.' That was the trick.
"I see I'm interrupting," he said, scraping together every trick of control and composure he'd learned in nearly thirty years of serving in the Air Force. It nearly wasn't enough. "I'll go..."
His weight had transferred to one foot, preparing to turn on his heel and leave. Just walk away, Jack. You were never a player in this game anyway...
Then Carter changed the rules. "You're not interrupting," she said, swiftly. "Pete was just about to leave."
He'd dropped his gaze to her shoulder - the shoulder unoccupied by his hand. Her words brought his gaze back up to her face in surprise at the edge of desperation there. And hope - a tiny tendril - blossomed.
"Sam..." Shanahan sounded shocked, and there was anger and suspicion in his eyes as he glanced at Jack.
"We have nothing to say that we haven't already said," Carter stated, turning so she pulled her shoulder out from under his hand. "Nothing that you haven't already left on my answering machine."
Jack didn't look at the untouched flowers wilting on the porch. He didn't look at Shanahan, either. Instead, he watched Carter. Her expression appeared implacable at first glance, but years of reading her expressions showed tightness around her eyes, the mouth just a shade too thin for the determination she was projecting.
True to form, Shanahan wasn't one to take 'no' lightly. "I won't let you bring this child up without me, Sam. Every child deserves to know his father..."
"And mine will," Carter said, subdued but not submissive. "Just not in the way you want."
For a moment, Shanahan looked as though he might stay and argue it out. Then he glanced at Jack and his lip curled in anger as he turned back to Carter, "It's always about what you want, isn't it?"
Now she froze over, wintry reserve shutting her down until she was about as welcoming as the Antarctic wastes in the midday night. "We aren't having this discussion again, Pete," she said. "Please leave."
He argued the point of course, but Carter could be a cold-hearted bitch when she chose. Shanahan sulked his way down the path to the mailbox. Without a word, Jack moved past Carter, and into the house. The invitation was unspoken, but he was fairly certain he hadn't misread it.
He hadn't. Behind him, the front door closed, but it was a few more moments before she emerged from the hallway, her face schooled to neutrality. "He wasn't supposed to be off-duty for another two days," she said, and now Jack clearly heard the tiredness in her voice. "I thought I wouldn't have to..." Her voice drifted off, and she shook herself, like a woman waking from a dream. When she spoke again, her voice had the usual Carter-cool to it, as though Jack hadn't walked into the middle of a not-so-domestic argument between her and her former boyfriend. "How can I help you, sir?"
"I..." His fingers shuffled through the letters on her table, not seeing the addresses and business stamps at all, just looking for something to fiddle with. "I came... Daniel said I should..." Oh, hell... "I came to apologise for what I said in the briefing the other day."
"You were right," she said with the perfect correctness he'd come to hate over the years. It was Sam Carter saying what she thought should be said, not what she wanted to say. "I'm not a part of the team anymore, I had no right to be at the briefing..."
"Carter!" He barked, interrupting her. "Will you hear me out? No, you're not a part of SG-1," he said, "That doesn't mean..." He paused, and glanced down, "That doesn't mean you're not part of the team anymore."
"With all due respect, sir..."
"Screw respect," he told her, angry with himself and with her. "You're still part of the team. Even if we didn't still want you with us, you'd be part of the team," he muttered. "The number of times Captain Peyton got called 'Major' or 'Carter' or 'Sam' because Daniel or I reacted on automatic... I think the only one who got it correct every time was Teal'c, and even he kept glancing around to make sure you weren't going to pop up from behind some bush..."
Jack sneaked a look at her, and found her watching him apprehensively. Then, finally, "Thank you."
He relaxed a little. She'd accepted his apology, and he felt a damn sight better for it. Oh, she'd probably be angry for a while longer, and he'd feel guilty for having snapped at her - he should have known better considering her condition - but they were over that hurdle.
On the other hand, the other hurdles were considerably less easily navigated.
Like Shanahan.
"Have you been having much trouble with him?" He jerked his head at the door, indicating the vanished police detective.
She shrugged, "Nothing I can't handle," she told him, defiant. Sam Carter 101: Never Let Them Know You Can't Handle Anything - It's An Admission Of Weakness. "So," she said, moving into her kitchen, "How did the mission go?" Sam Carter 102: When Faced With An Admission Of Weakness, Change The Topic.
At least it was stable ground on which they could converse.
Jack gave in. "You'd have loved the Targonians," he told her.
"The Targonians?"
"Ancient Samurai culture," he said, leaning his arms on her counter as she began opening cupboards and the fridge. "Thanks," he said as she held up a bottle of root beer. "Daniel was all over them. Parallel development or something. But they had some very cool doodads."
"Doodads such as?"
"Oh, this thing that floated around in the air and could read your body temperature and health and stuff. They looked like those little floating sphere things in Star Wars." He waved a hand, knowing Carter would know exactly what he meant. She was Carter. "They just didn't shoot the tiny bolts of lightning. Might have been entertaining if it had."
Her smile was magic. Painful magic, but magic nevertheless. And she was listening to him as though he had something interesting to say. What man could resist that?
Not Jack O'Neill, that was for sure.
The kettle was filled with water and put on the stove to boil. "And I would have liked looking at these doodads?"
"They would have liked you looking at these doodads," he told her, seriously. "Daniel has a word for the kind of society the Targonians had, but it's segregated. Men and women work in different areas and they're rigid about that. But the men have this whole warrior and defence culture thing going - they were all over Teal'c. The women have this science and technology thing." He cocked a smile at her, "Daniel was pretty peeved." And so was I.
"He didn't get to play with the toys?" She dumped the teabag in her mug and got out a spoon with which to drink it.
"He didn't even get to see them. The women who showed us the technology were extremely polite but wouldn't let us take one of the things back. They showed us how to turn the little floating health thingies on, what the doodads could do, watched Daniel try to escape his with their hands over their mouths so we couldn't see them laughing, even if we could hear them quite clearly, and then they collected their goods and left."
"Daniel tried to escape?"
"It followed him to the restrooms."
Carter smiled. "Sounds...interesting." There was no mistaking the wistfulness in her voice, and Jack decided he could make a suggestion.
"Maybe you could go with the next team," he said, softly. "I mean...everything's okay, right? And the...the baby hasn't been injured by any of your previous trips through the Gate..."
She'd frozen at his suggestion that she go with the next team and now he didn't know if he'd crossed a line he shouldn't have. The kettle whistled, and she turned away to pour water into her mug. When she turned back, she had herself under control again, but Jack had seen the moment of hope that had flooded her expression.
Whatever she wanted for this kid, there was no doubt that Carter loved her work. It seemed a crime that she'd have to give it up, even to be a mother.
She wasn't saying anything, and he started to fill the silence. "Targonia is a pacified planet; the guys look intimidating, but they're like Teal'c - teddy-bears on the inside." Carter snorted her tea, and Jack smirked. "The women wouldn't let anything happen to you, anyway. Most of their technology is health and family-oriented. I think you'd like it."
"I think I would," she said lightly, putting down her mug. "Maybe later on, when...things are bit more settled."
Somehow, he didn't think she was talking about just the pregnancy.
He wanted to ask about Shanahan, about what she planned to do about her ex. He could see what the guy was trying to do; what Jack couldn't tell was how Carter was responding to it all. She seemed to have it all together, but that was just Carter. Everything was together and if it wasn't then something was badly wrong.
So Jack drank his root beer in silence, watching her. Nothing had changed between them; they were still in limbo.
And maybe he needed to change that; to give some form of explanation where he hadn't wanted to give one before.
"Carter... About Melissa..."
"You don't owe me an explanation, sir," she interrupted. Her gaze was firmly fixed on the mug in her hands, but when she raised them, her expression was as cold as the one with which she'd thrown out Shanahan. "You owe me nothing," she said.
It probably wasn't meant that way, but it bit a little too close to the bone for Jack's comfort. He was painfully reminded of her standing in his hallway, close to fainting, but insisting that she was fine and didn't need his help.
No, Carter didn't need him. He should have known better than to think she ever might.
He took another swig of his drink; so did she. They avoided each other's eyes. And they didn't say anything.
Jack had this sudden urge for something a bit stronger than root beer. And a desire to cause some serious injury. He should have known better than to come here, hoping that Carter might need him or his help. He should have known better than to suppose that anything he said or did mattered personally to her; after all, she'd moved on, right?
"So, I should mention the trip offworld to Hammond, then?" Back to the work topic. Work was safe.
"Please do," she said, and there was such formality in her voice that it only made Jack angrier.
It was an effort to resist the urge to bark at her, but he managed it, only saying, "Okay," as he stood up to leave. "I'll..." He paused. "I'll see you in at work tomorrow."
Of course, he probably wouldn't. He'd avoid her and she'd avoid him, and the only times they would exchange words would be when she came into the commissary looking for food and found him going through his paperwork. Oh, Daniel would try to do 'team' things, but she'd cry off, or Jack would avoid it, and nothing would ever be said or done between them.
Just as it had always been.
She let him out, past the wilting flowers, and Jack walked to his truck and didn't look back. As he slammed the door, he was surprised by how angry he was: at her and her damned independence, at himself and his own stupid, fragile hopes, at Daniel who seemed to know exactly how to get Jack into situations he didn't want to be in.
Fine. Jack was going to drag Daniel into a situation Daniel didn't want to be in. All was fair in war and drinking bars.
In his truck, he pulled out his cellphone and called Daniel.
The phone was answered almost immediately. "Did you see Sam?" That was it. No niceties or pleasantries, just straight to the point and damn the torpedos.
"It's lovely to talk to you, too, Daniel." Jack said. "How are you?"
"You saw me two hours ago and I was fine then. I'm guessing you didn't go and apologise to Sam."
"As a matter of fact, I did. Carter's fine. Everything's fine." Jack couldn't keep the bite out of his voice as he spoke. "Call Teal'c. I'll see you at Bombers."
"Jack?"
"Thirty minutes, Daniel, or I'm driving home no matter how much I've had to drink." Jack hung up and turned the cell off so Daniel couldn't call him back.
He'd never carry through on the threat of course, but as long as Daniel thought there was the possibility that he might...
Jack put the pickup into gear and drove out of Carter's neighbourhood like the Goa'uld was chasing his tail.
He so needed a stiff drink.
----