Secrets and Shadows: Taking Sides
Part Two
Daniel was tired of two things.
He was tired of being drugged out of his mind. He'd been on pain meds for the better part of a week, and it was a pain in the mikta not to be able to think straight. It meant he spent most of his time mentally translating the daytime talk shows into other languages, and trying to find equivalent phrases for such sentiments as 'Chew dirt, bitch!'
The second thing was that he was tired of being stuck in the infirmary all the time.
Yes, he had been shot during a retreat from P7T-995, but he was alive, wasn't he? And he was healing much faster thanks to Sam's efforts with the Goa'uld healing device.
Of course, from here on in, it was going to be his own body's abilities that got him better. Jack had laid down the law regarding Sam's use of the healing device yesterday afternoon. Daniel had wondered about that while Sam was healing him, but he'd still been under enough painkillers not to question it until later.
"Go talk to Brightman, Jack," Daniel said at last. "She's the one who allowed Sam in with the healing device. I was mostly on Jupiter."
Jack raised an eyebrow, "Why Jupiter? It's cold out there."
Daniel shrugged, "Random planet," he told Jack, yawning. Jack had left shortly thereafter, presumably to chew Brightman out for not taking a stand against Sam.
Not that anyone could really take a stand against Sam when she had her mind made up.
Daniel frowned, and gently reached down to scratch his hip where it itched. Come to think of it, that could be said about any member of SG-1.
One more day and you're allowed out of bed. You can walk through the halls of the SGC and go back to your lab, and maybe even get driven home to sleep in your own bed...
There probably wasn't much chance of him getting to sleep in his own bed. But even the ability to go up to his lab and do something would be valued right now.
Daniel Jackson was antsy as all hell.
Meanwhile, everything was calm around him. No emergencies, no dramas, not even a peep from Shanahan - at least, none that Daniel had heard of.
And that was worrying Daniel.
Pete was playing nice guy, running errands and taking Sam out to dinner. Sam, for the most part, seemed to be lapping it up. Daniel didn't get it. Just because the guy was playing nice now didn't make him a nice guy. It just meant he had brains enough to know that pissing off the three men closest to Sam wasn't a good idea - especially if he had any aspersions to getting her back.
Linda's ex-husband could play nice, too, when he chose. Daniel had even witnessed Kieran's 'nicer side' - and then gotten a close-up of the nasty when Kieran got the idea that Daniel was 'the other man' in his ex-wife's life. Luckily for Daniel, seven years working in the midst of macho military men had taught him a few things about how to head off confrontations without losing his cool.
But it made him wary of the kind of guy who would think nothing of calling his ex-wife names in front of the kids, but cuddle his children as he told them how much he loved their mom. And yeah, it was personal to Daniel, but that didn't mean he wasn't correct in his judgement call.
According to what Sam would tell him, things were good right now.
Daniel wasn't worried about when things were good. He was worried about when they went bad - and they would. As Linda had said during the 'interview' with Jack, it was the 'little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead' syndrome. When things were good, they were very, very good; and when they were bad, they were horrid.
Daniel was waiting for the 'horrid' to show up in Shanahan. And he was tired of waiting.
Okay, so maybe he was tired of three things, then.
----
Daniel was snoring on the couch when Sam finally got up from her nap.
She'd intended to lie down for a brief snooze and surprised herself when she woke up nearly three hours after she stretched out on her bed.
It didn't surprise her much that Daniel was sleeping. His body was still healing and although he'd been considered healthy enough to be discharged from the infirmary for twenty-four hours, Dr. Brightman wasn't so sure of his recovery that she felt he could go home unsupervised quite yet.
Sam hadn't asked how the Colonel had managed to 'spring' Daniel from the infirmary for the best part of the weekend, but Daniel was certainly happy enough to be out of the mountain, even if he didn't get to sleep in his own bed. Sam couldn't blame him, in spite of the healing she'd done on him, Daniel had been immured in the infirmary for over a week.
From inside the house, the late afternoon sun in her backyard looked inviting enough for her to put off the preparations she'd been going to make for dinner tonight. Not that she was cooking. The Colonel had made sure of that before he accepted the invitation.
Quietly, she tiptoed her way across the room to the back door as Daniel slumbered on, oblivious. He turned over as it creaked, but resettled himself. The snores resumed a moment later.
Golden sun dripped over her like warm honey. Sam shut her eyes as she paused out on the sundeck and let the subtle stresses of the week melt away, just for a little while. They'd be back all too soon, but in the meantime...
In the meantime, she could relax.
She settled herself into a lounge chair and leaned back, listening to the distant shouts and splashes of children playing in a pool. Several houses over, the buzz of gardening machinery indicated that someone was trying to wrestle their yard into cropped submission - and probably failing. If she concentrated, she could hear the cars driving by the street out the front. And somewhere out in suburbia, the ice-cream van was making its way through town. It's tinny music echoed across the rooftops, giving ample warning to the children so they could pester their parents for money.
It was an ordinary Saturday afternoon.
She'd probably need to relax now. Chances were, she wasn't going to have any other time to do so.
In a little while the Colonel and Teal'c would return from their mystery mission across town. There had been no explanations when they dropped Daniel off just before lunchtime, no hints or tips, just a short, "We're off to see the wizard, Carter. We'll be back in a couple of hours."
In a little while, Pete would be arriving for dinner, having finished his shift for the day.
In a little while, Sam would have to try to meld the two sections of her life into a whole, or learn to live with the separation. As a result, she was just a little apprehensive.
Shutting her eyes against the sun, Sam tried to make her body relax. Her shoulders were stiff, and she was getting twinges in her back as her body adjusted to carrying the weight of the baby.
So many changes in such a short time. So many things to level off in her mind. So many decisions to make.
And at some point, she would have to reconcile the guys of SG-1 to Pete - as well as reconciling Pete to the guys of SG-1. They'd have to live with each other, because this wasn't a contest with Sam as the prize. This was her life and her child, and she wasn't going to be made to choose between the men who'd been her team-mates as well as her friends and the man who'd fathered her child.
She'd decided that much.
She'd also pretty much decided that she wasn't going to take Pete back.
Oh, he'd been much nicer since she'd called him about the ultrasound. No temper tantrums, no accusations, very solicitous and considerate and kind. A lot like the man she'd first fallen in love with.
He'd been reasonable. A call every couple of days, the invitation every couple of days to do dinner or talk about the baby's future. Small things that she appreciated - the kind of attention he'd lavished on her in the first months of their relationship.
This time, though, Sam didn't have the blinders on. She wasn't madly plunging towards relational happiness at the cost of everything else - her individuality, her independence, her sense of self. The issues between them, while fixable, were made all the more difficult in the fact that their circumstances meant there would be no compromise.
As always, Sam would be the one making all the concessions and Pete would be the one gaining all the benefits.
Not quite a relationship of equals for which she'd hoped.
And then there was the memory of Jonas Hanson, to whom she'd engaged herself nearly ten years before. The parallels were inescapable. It terrified her that although her circumstances had changed, her underlying co-dependencies in such relationships had not.
It had disturbed her to the point where she'd found herself looking for such co-dependencies in her relationships with the guys of SG-1. After all, she'd initially reasoned, if she'd done it twice, was there the possibility that the patterns that defined her romantic relationships were so deeply ingrained that they also defined her friendships?
Illumination had been provided by the Colonel and Daniel, in the middle of one of their petty arguments; the ones where one would say 'blue' and the other would say 'orange' just for the sake of having something to disagree about.
"You do this just to annoy me, don't you, Daniel?" Colonel O'Neill's exasperation was tart as lemon peel.
"Yes, Jack," Daniel said, sarcasm dripping from his tone of voice as he pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I hold a differing opinion purely for the purposes of pissing you off."
"And you do it so well," the Colonel said, his tone equally acerbic.
"It's an art form."
Watching them from the next bed over, Sam had entertained the thought that if it wasn't for the existance of SG-1, then the two men would likely never have been anything more than distant acquaintances. Respected, yes; but certainly not friends.
And that provided the answer to her question.
The psychological co-dependency of her relationships, first to Jonas Hanson, then to Pete Shanahan, had been defined by her own subconscious, falling into patterns so old she hardly even realised they were there until they came back and bit her hard.
Her relationships to the Colonel, Daniel, and Teal'c had been required by the United States Air Force working under the auspices of the SGC. Her own relational patterns had not played a part in their initial definition, and the difference there had given her enough freedom to develop friendships that were more evenly set out in relational nature, even if they were rigidly structured in organisational terms.
That had been a profound relief.
Sam slipped her hands under the edges of her shirt and rested them on her stomach. There was something fascinating about the idea that there was a tiny human growing within her. It seemed at once both grossly horrible and innately sensuous, a mingling of the terrible and the awesome in a single state.
The door behind her opened and shut, and Daniel came to stand beside her. "Hey."
She glanced up at him, squinting into the sun. "Hey. Did I wake you up?"
"Not as far as I know." He sat down on the next deck chair and indicated her hands, squinting through his glasses in the bright sun. "How's junior doing?"
"Fine as far as I know. The tests from the other day didn't show up anything abnormal in its genetic development."
"And he's forming up okay?" He'd begun adjusting the angle of the back of the chair, but kept glancing at her as he settled it to his satisfaction and lay down on it.
"Yes." Sam hesitated before blurting out the next piece of information. "The amniotic sac contains trace amounts of naquadah."
"But it's not harmful?"
Sam shrugged, helplessly. "This isn't something we've ever seen before."
"It may never have happened before," Daniel said. "Ex-hosts are rare enough. One who would live long enough to have a child..."
"We don't yet know if the child will carry the protein marker or not."
"But it's likely."
"Yes." Sam's eyes flickered out to the neighbour's yard where the elderly couple had just come out for their afternoon walk. "The foetus is Rh-compatible so I don't need to have injections, but there's no way of telling just how this is going to affect it."
He eyed her. "So what are you going to do about it?"
She'd already considered that question. "Learn everything I can about what I have in me," she said, staring down at her hands. Long fingers, oval nails, and beneath the skin, in the veins, a gift - or curse - from a creature who had possessed her for a few days almost seven years ago.
What she had in her was both a blessing and a curse. She'd ignored it for too long, touching the edges of the abilities it granted, but afraid of what it might bring her to become.
Her child wouldn't have the leisure of ignoring it. Boy or girl, it would carry some hint of what Jolinar had made Sam. The legacy of Jolinar was now Sam's legacy, and would be passed on to this child. For the sake of her child, Sam would have to face what Jolinar had given to her and taken away from her as she never had before.
When she looked up, Daniel was watching her through narrowed eyes. "Is this to do with your healing me last week?"
"Sort of," she said, lightly. More than anything else, it had been Pete's reaction to her work with the healing device - and by extension, with the ribbon device - that had convinced her she needed to deal with this. He hadn't said it, but she'd seen it when she came out of the operating room: revulsion and fear. Bitterly, she supposed that even if they hadn't broken up after her use of the ribbon device on him, Jolinar's possession of her would have been one more point of contention between them.
"Have you told Shanahan?"
Sam frowned a little. "He has a first name, you know."
"He does?" Daniel snarked. "I guess that means you haven't told him."
And Sam was forced to concede she hadn't.
Pete's first experience of the ribbon device had been the capture of Osiris; the stakeout into which he had blundered. The Goa'uld had thrown him across the road like so much flotsam. His second experience had been no better. Once again, he had blundered into a situation which was out of his field, and again, a woman had flung him away from her with no more consideration than was given to trash.
That the woman in question was his girlfriend at the time, only added insult to injury.
"He's going to have to deal with it sooner or later," Daniel said. "What with him being the father of your child and all."
"Don't push it, Daniel." Her voice was sharp. Sam was tired of Daniel's not-so-subtle prods about her decision to tell Pete about the child. Daniel could be a nightmare when she made a decision he didn't like. There was no rest, no peace, no leaving alone; it was nag, nag, nag. Thank God, she'd never been attracted to Daniel. He was a great friend, and nobody could ask for more loyalty, but in a close-quarters personal relationship, day in and day out, she'd have murdered him a long time ago.
Daniel didn't push it. He'd learned to back off when she was in a shitty mood.
And maybe Pete had, too.
Well, she could hope. It would make things easier on her and on the child. Anything that made her life easier was good right now.
"Did you hear back from the Targonians?" Daniel asked, changing the topic entirely. "I never did hear back about that..."
"General Hammond sent through SG-13, led by Major Meridian," Sam told him. "The Targonians agreed to send a delegation through the gate in about a week. We'll leave one of our people there in exchange."
She was looking forward to the visit. The reports from both missions had been intriguing and the Targonians were a very distinct contradiction: the fiercely patriarchal Samurai side of their society against the highly feminine-oriented technological side.
Daniel nodded. "Any chance I could get some time in to ask her about their culture and how it works in practise? I didn't get all that good a discussion in with the people we met when we were on the planet..."
"She'll be here for several days, Daniel." Sam grinned as his eyes lit up. Daniel was highly entertaining when he was enthused about something - just as long as he didn't drag her into it and wasn't getting her or their team into trouble in the process. "You'll have more than enough time to grill her about her culture."
"I don't 'grill' people," he protested, taking mock-offense at her words.
Her reply was halted by the sound of the doorbell, and Sam climbed to her feet to get it. Daniel trailed her inside, waiting at the living room entrance as she answered it.
The Colonel and Teal'c stood on the front porch, holding bags of groceries for tonight's dinner. "May we come in?"
"There's enough here to feed an army," Daniel observed as the bags were dumped on the table. "Are you sure you didn't invite half the SGC for dinner, Jack?"
As Sam began to stow the groceries, she heard the rustle of a paper bag behind her. A moment later, the Colonel said, "I figured she could have a glass or two and it would be okay..."
When she turned around, Daniel was holding a bottle of red wine, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead, as the Colonel stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and shrugged.
"A single glass should not harm Samantha Carter or her child, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said from where he was unpacking what appeared to be half a greengrocer's worth of fruit and vegetables. "You have no cause to worry."
"Sara had wine every now and then while she was pregnant with Charlie," the Colonel offered.
Sam took the wine from Daniel's hand, hoping the pangs she felt at the mention of the Colonel's ex-wife and son weren't showing on her face as she examined the bottle. "You don't have to police me, you know, Daniel."
Daniel held up his hands, "Excuse me for being cautious!" He continued to sort through the bags, pulling out their contents until, "Ooh, blackberries!"
Sam had been tucking the wine away by the refrigerator. Daniel's exclamation turned her around and she held out her hand for the carton.
"Daniel..." The Colonel warned as Daniel pouted and held the container back from Sam. She advanced on him, and he began backing away, carefully keeping the table between them.
"We can share," he began. "Hey!"
Teal'c had plucked the container from his hand. "Those are for Samantha."
"Spoilsport," Daniel grumbled as she took the blackberries, grinning at her team-mate's annoyance.
Within a few seconds, her fingertips were stained purple with the juice from the somewhat squashed fruit. Sam didn't much care. The berries were exactly what she'd been craving all day - something tart and sweet in her mouth. She smacked at Daniel's hand as he tried to sneak in and nab himself a berry. "Ow!"
"Daniel, stop stealing Carter's food." The Colonel's voice had a note of long-suffering in it. He sounded like nothing so much as an adult reprimanding a kid, and Sam grinned around another berry.
"Colonel's pet," Daniel pouted at Sam. The twinkle in his eye belied his words, and, feeling decidedly childish, Sam stuck her tongue out at him, then offered him the container. "Thanks." He only took a couple before pushing the container back at her.
As the Colonel began to put things away, opening and shutting cupboards to find out where everything was, he asked, "So what have you two been doing all afternoon?"
"Sleeping mostly," Daniel said, in between berries. "I did a bit of translation on those scrolls from Zabulan. The language seems to be a hybrid of older Hebrew and ancient Assyrian, but the actual text seems to be from the Torah. I'll probably have to reference it with a couple of biblical scholars, but we might have found the planet where at least one of the lost tribes of Israel ended up...."
"Fascinating," the Colonel said, without one shred of sincerity. "Carter?"
"Sleeping and reading, mostly," Sam admitted. "Not much." She eyed the Colonel, "What about you?"
The Colonel and Teal'c and Daniel exchanged a look. Something was going on.
It was the Colonel who finally answered. "Well," he began, "As you've probably worked out in the last couple of weeks, Carter, children are expensive. And we weren't sure if you were going to buy everything brand new, but...we kind of figured that we should ask around and see who has what - just in case you wanted it." From his shirt pocket, he pulled some folded sheets of paper and unfolded them, laying them down on the table before her.
Sam began looking down the list, then looked up at him in astonishment. There were two columns: names and item. The items were baby equipment; everything from cribs to changing tables, from carriers to car seats. The names... The names were SGC personnel.
He nodded at the paper, as if to say, 'Keep going.' She read on. And as the list went on, she realised that it wasn't just items, but also advice, suggestions, offers of help and assistance. Some were just a name and a scribbled line, 'help offered.' Others were more specific, 'a home-cooked dinner sometime in the first month when everything is going to hell in a handbasket and she wonders if she'll ever get a decent night's sleep again.'
"Belinda Dixon?" Sam asked, pointing to the name written beside the home-cooked dinner. "As in...?"
"Colonel Dixon's wife," the Colonel replied, smiling.
"Sir, I don't even know this woman..."
"Well, either Dixon's been gossiping, or she really sympathises. Mind you, they had an attic full of stuff. Teal'c?"
From within his coat pocket, Teal'c produced a small digital camera. "The quality of the photography is not excellent, Samantha, but the images will give you an idea of the appearance of each item. You may choose those which suit your needs and the needs of your child."
In growing disbelief, Sam pushed the berries away and took up the camera. A few seconds of experimentation helped her work out how to shift through the contents of the memory card. A couple of glances cross-referenced the list with the photos, and she looked back up at the Colonel and beyond him to Teal'c, shocked at the amount of organisation and thought this displayed. "And you were doing this all day?"
"Yeah." The Colonel seemed a little embarrassed by her shock, he was staring at the photos. As she looked at him, he lifted his eyes to meet hers for a brief moment before his gaze slid away. Beyond him, Teal'c was listening to Daniel who was talking too softly for her to hear.
It seemed unbelievable - a lot of time and effort had gone into it. And for what?
Maybe the question should be 'for whom?'
Sam looked back at the images the camera was showing, blinking rapidly to try to diffuse the tears that had stung her eyes. It was stupid that she was getting emotional over this, but they'd put in so much effort into co-ordinating it. From getting the word out, to taking the time to drive all over the Springs and find out what people had and take photos of each item, so she could choose if she wanted any of it...
Her eyes stung, and the images on the camera blurred a little, then a lot.
Sam was crying.
She was crying and looking like an idiot - yet again.
And, yes, it was the hormones and the stress, but it was also just the fact the they'd decided to show that they cared - about something so small and crazy and...and...
"Carter?" His query undid her.
Accustomed to being strong before these guys, Sam couldn't allow herself to break down before them. Somehow, crying in front of them seemed less acceptable than breaking down before Agent Barrett, and she didn't want to deal with them and their concern right now.
She stood, letting the camera sit on the table, and choked out something about needing some time alone. She walked past them, fighting the urge to run from their startled and worried gazes.
Safely in her bedroom with the door shut, Sam climbed on the quilt and let herself burst into tears.
In truth, she'd expected to be left by the wayside when she discovered she was pregnant. A tiny voice in her had hoped that her friends would rally around her, but an overwhelming cynicism and pure practicality had told her that the chances of that were very slim.
And yet they were here, in support of her; including her in their lives, making space for her and the child she carried. Not one of them had a stake in her child, but they intended to be there for her as much as possible.
Did they have any idea how much that meant?
She hadn't expected anything from them at all; especially from the Colonel.
Of all her team-mates, she'd thought that Colonel O'Neill would have the least reason to want anything to do with her now that she was pregnant with her ex-boyfriend's child. Yet, he had spent his Saturday afternoon driving around town instead of parked in front of the television, watching the hockey pre-season as he usually did at this time of year.
That was more valuable to her than he knew.
She stared down at her stomach, at the slight thickening of her waist. Sam couldn't imagine a guy wanting her when she was carrying another man's child. He'd probably given up months ago - back when she first started dating Pete. And he had Melissa now.
So maybe his lack of response to her pregnancy was to be expected, in the end.
And 'just friends' wasn't so bad. She'd had seven years of being 'just friends' and they'd been good years.
It was just...
She'd thought she could have her cake and eat it too.
Oh, she'd been happy with Pete in some ways. The sex was good, and it was such a nice change to be adored and petted; but in the end, she'd always measured herself up to the Colonel's expectations.
It was quite ironically funny. Independent woman and successful soldier, but all her achievement was marked by the ruler of two men. Her father, and Jack O'Neill.
Which made her situation even more pitiable now.
Restless fingers picked at the quilt cover, a log cabin block quilt that Mark's wife had made her two Christmases ago. You'll just have to live with it, she thought, as she smeared her tears thinly over her cheeks and grabbed at the bedside Kleenex box to dab her face dry. And as long as they're around, things aren't too bad...
And if, one day, they weren't... Well, she'd deal with that then. She'd have to.
There was a knock at the closed door, then a pause. Then, "Carter?"
Sam gave her face a quick swipe and went to answer the door.
The Colonel eyed her from the hallway outside. He was holding a steaming mug in one hand and looked a little apprehensive. "You okay?"
"Yes," she said, still operating on automatic. Her fingers swiped briefly over her face, checking that she hadn't missed any stray tears. Not that it would make much difference. She probably looked ugly, all blotchy skin and red eyes, but there wasn't much to be done about that, and it was doubtful that the Colonel would mind anyway. He'd seen her under all kinds of conditions, this was hardly the worst.
His eyes studied her for a minute before he nodded and looked away. "Daniel said I should bring you some decaffeinated tea," he said, offering the mug. "He makes a pretty good mom for a guy who spends most of his time lost in translations."
Sam couldn't help her smile as she accepted the mug. "Thank you, sir."
He nodded briefly. "You ready to come back out, or did you want a bit more time to yourself?"
"I'm fine." The response slipped through her lips before she could censor it. At one level, she was fine, yes; at another, she wasn't. But that wasn't what he was asking, in the end.
And what she wanted to know was something he'd never tell her - not if she didn't ask.
"Sir..."
He'd been turning away, about to head back to the living room. Her address stopped him. "Carter?"
She indicated the living room, meaning the list that he and Daniel and Teal'c had compiled. "Why'd you do it, sir?"
He didn't pretend not to know what she was talking about, but he didn't seem to know the answer either. "Help you out. Give you something to start with." His eyes were downcast; he wasn't meeting her gaze. Sam had the urge to step up to him, nose to mouth, and tip his chin up.
Of course, she didn't. She never did.
What she did instead was retreat into the room and sit down on the bed, as if waiting for him to answer her further. Her hands closed tightly around the hot sides of the mug and she gripped it, ignoring the way the skin of her palms protested at the heat. "Thank you," she said. "I... You didn't have to."
"No," he agreed. "We didn't." The wide mouth twisted a little. "Carter... I should probably let Daniel say this since he's better at this than me, but...you won't be doing this whole parenting entirely alone. With...with or without Shanahan, we're not going to let you do this by yourself." His eyes met hers for a moment, dark humour lurking in their depths. "Between the three of us, we might have, oh, one parent's worth of parenting. Maybe. On a good day."
Sam couldn't help the smile that tipped up the corners of her mouth. "You're not that bad, sir."
"I dunno," he said, not without a little bleakness. "Teal'c's the only one with a live son out of the three of us. If you count Shifu as Daniel's. And the whole ascended-y thing..." He trailed off. "Yeah. So, one live son."
"That's not an indication of parenting ability," Sam said, gently. Even after all these years, he still blamed himself for Charlie's death. Oh, it wasn't the all-consuming self-hatred Daniel had described from the very first trip through to Abydos, time and life had worn it down to a nub; but the nub still burned in his soul and always would.
"Maybe," he hedged, unwilling to give up his guilt. "The point is that we're in it as much as you are."
"All for one and one for all?" Sam smiled as he made a face.
"Daniel said that the other day."
The other day? "He did?"
"When we called you from Luigi's."
"Oh." She remembered then. But that had been a couple of weeks ago, now. After the Colonel left, she'd fretted and wondered what he'd meant by coming over to apologise. He didn't owe her an apology - not for his bluntness in the briefing room, not for his decision to start going out with someone. She'd said he owed her nothing, and it was true. And she'd over-reacted to his queries about Pete's behaviour and the mention of Melissa.
She'd regretted sending him away like that afterwards. If he'd wanted to talk about Melissa, she should have let him, but there'd been nothing to do; she wasn't going to call him back and beg for forgiveness - that wasn't her.
So the call, later on in the evening from Teal'c, had been unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome.
The guys had come around, bringing her dinner and sitting on her couch. The Colonel and Daniel argued over what to watch until Teal'c confiscated the remote control and asked Sam what she wanted to watch. Before the guys arrived, Sam had intended to watch reruns of a sci-fi series she'd enjoyed but which had been cancelled after an extremely short season; but by the time Teal'c asked, she hadn't much cared. Instead, she'd been surreptitiously watching Colonel O'Neill and wondering about his relationship with Melissa Sandringham.
He didn't owe her anything, no. But that didn't mean she wasn't curious.
"May I?" He indicated the edge of the bed beside her, expression cautious.
Sam nodded, surprised that he was willing to venture this far into her 'personal space'. Then again, she supposed, she was 'safe' now. And who was there to know or care? Daniel? Teal'c?
The edge of the bed depressed under his weight, and he bounced lightly on its edge, then ducked his head when she arched a brow at him in amused query. "Bouncy."
"It's new." She'd sold her old bed and bought the new one after she broke up with Pete. Some things she didn't need reminding of. Sam didn't explain the why of it; that was something he definitely wouldn't need or want to know.
"That would explain it," he said, solemnly, settling down with his elbows on his knees, hands lightly clasped between his legs. "Are you looking forward to the Targonian delegation's arrival? What is it? A week?"
"A little over a week. I've already set the research department to determining which technologies the Targonians might be interested in looking at while they're here..." Aware that he didn't always enjoy listening to her talk about her technological interests, she glanced at him, trying to determine his attention.
The Colonel caught her glance and shot her a brief half-smile. "I'm listening," he assured her, warmth in his expression.
Sam crooked a smile, "But are you paying attention?"
"Is there a quiz at the end of it?"
"Maybe."
He snorted, smiling. "What do I get if I pass?"
She leaned towards him, conspiratorially, and lowered her voice. "I hadn't actually thought about it."
"Your firstborn child?"
"Should I call you Rumplestiltskin?"
Colonel O'Neill tilted his head at her. "That's Colonel Rumplestiltskin to you, Carter!"
Sam laughed.
It felt so nice to sit here and just talk with him, lightly teasing, as though they were ordinary people and not in a command structure that forbade them to do anything more than care. But even as her laughter fell silent and she felt his eyes upon her as her own dropped to her mug, she knew she couldn't let it last.
There were things between them that wouldn't go away; like Pete's child and the other woman in his life, and they could be friends but no more. She had to acknowledge that.
So she did.
"So," Sam said lightly, looking up from the dark swirl of her tea. "How's Melissa?"
He seemed surprised at the question, and Sam wondered if he'd resigned himself to never being able to mention the woman he was dating in front of Sam. Her self-control had never been better, though. No waver marred her voice, although she felt as though she was dying inside, something crumpling up, fragile as a flower and just as easily crushed - especially at his answer.
"Mel's fine."
Mel. The nickname clenched around her heart, compressing her chest so she couldn't breathe. Suddenly, Sam had grown gills, and the air in her lungs burned like lava down her trachea.
She shouldn't take it further. Sam knew that. And yet...something in her wanted to know. Something in her needed to know.
"Daniel said you'd been seeing her for a while," she said, and watched his gaze slide down to his hands. Ashamed of this woman? No. But he didn't want to talk to her about it, and Sam wondered why.
Sam wondered what he'd do if she leaned over and brushed her mouth over the tan flesh of his collarbone. If she slipped the buttons out of his shirt and let her lips trail down over his chest, would he let her?
No. No. She was hormonal. That was all. She was just hormonal.
"About...four months," the Colonel was saying, and Sam dragged her attention back to him.
A couple of months after she'd started seeing Pete, then. That eased the pain in her chest, just a little. But the next question - the question to which she really wanted to know the answer - tightened her throat enough that she had to swallow hard before asking, "Is it serious?"
He glanced at her, the profile turning towards her, catching her unawares. "It's not humworthy, yet," he said lightly.
She winced. She couldn't help it.
"Carter? You okay?"
"Fine." Her response was sharper than she intended, and she cursed herself for overreacting. He hadn't meant it personally, it was just...
It's not humworthy, yet.
That was something, at least. Sam wouldn't be dancing at his wedding anytime soon. Of course, Sam wouldn't be dancing anytime soon, period.
Unaware that he was still watching her, his next question took her by surprise. "Why'd you ask about Mel?"
Sam looked up at him, meeting the searching gaze, then looked back down at her mug. Dissembling was a possibility; the option of telling him that she'd been polite and making small talk. But the Colonel was watching her like a hawk, and she owed him something. God knew, she'd taken enough comfort and solace from him and never given him anything back.
Let him know the reason why. He deserved to know that much.
"Because she's important to you." The answer was surpringly simple, getting the words out wasn't.
He looked piercingly at her for a long time, and she willed the blood not to rise to her cheeks. She couldn't stop caring about him, it wasn't something she could just turn off. And her relationship with Pete hadn't changed anything in that way, either.
It didn't matter anymore, anyway.
He was still with Melissa, and she was still carrying Pete's child. Pete might not be her lover anymore, but he was still a major player in her life. And the rules and regulations of the United States Air Force still prohibited emotional attachments between officers in the chain of command.
No, nothing had changed.
If the Colonel found what he'd been looking for, he'd either found it, or given up, because he looked back down at his hands, the fingers of which were fiddling lightly against each other.
"She's an escort." The words were so low, she almost missed them. Sam stared at him, unsure if she was hearing what she thought she was hearing, and he looked up and turned towards her, sparing neither her, nor himself. "I met Melissa through an escort agency."
Beneath his tan, a dark flush rose, and Sam's own cheeks matched it, blood for blood.
The woman she'd met in his house, elegantly dressed, intelligent, articulate... She was a prostitute?
"Why?" The question escaped her before she could bring it back and she looked away. "I'm sorry, sir... I..." It wasn't her right to know. She didn't deserve that.
A touch on her wrist stopped her words, and she looked from the hand resting hot and warm on her arm to the face of the man sitting beside her. "You know how lonely it gets, Carter. Sometimes you want...someone just to be there. To pretend that everything's normal; to 'play house' so to speak." He didn't take his gaze from her face, although she watched them flicker from eye to eye, down to her mouth, back up to her eyes. "Mel is my version of 'normal.'" Just as Shanahan was yours.
Sam looked away. A part of her wanted to scream and rage and push him away, to tell him that what had been between them was more than an itch to be scratched or a 'version of normal' to be enjoyed... A part of her stood back and looked at it all, coldly and with about as much emotion as the military wanted its people to behave.
The Colonel's relationship with Melissa wasn't just about sex. That was blindingly obvious. It was a much broader need that the Colonel had - a need that Melissa could meet and Sam couldn't; companionship, desire, affection, normality.
Hadn't she done the same thing with Pete?
Slowly, she forced herself to turn to meet his gaze. "I understand," she said, very quietly. It was all she had to offer him, really; neither acceptance, nor liking, and certainly not the affection that ran between them, close as a whisper, binding as a vow.
"I wish you didn't have to," he said, and his voice was just as low.
Sam still wanted to be sick. But she did understand and, like the accusations of an extramarital affair cast upon him during the situation up in Denver, it didn't change anything at all.
Fish gotta swim...
The doorbell rang, and her head turned away from him, towards the door.
"I've got it!" Daniel was heard to yell, and Sam grimaced.
Behind her, the Colonel huffed in soft exasperation. "Remind me how old he is again?"
"Thirty-nine."
"Uh-uh." She glanced back at him. She caught the vestiges of some lingering apprehension in his expression before his mouth quirked, "We should find him a wife."
Sam laughed and stood to leave.
A touch on her arm turned her back to the Colonel. "Carter..." He clearly want to say something, and yet seemed lost for words.
When he didn't respond, she gave him a brief half-smile. "It's okay, sir." It wasn't perfect, but it was okay. She'd made her bed, and she would lie on it.
There were voices coming along the hallway, growing closer in argument. Daniel and Pete, not clearly audible, but noisy enough. Sam grimaced at the Colonel and pulled the door open.
"You can't..."
She emerged from her bedroom into the hallway and stopped dead. At her back, the Colonel radiated warmth, like a hot stone, constrasting with her body which felt like cold lead at the expression on Pete's face.
Pete's eyes flickered from her to Colonel O'Neill, and there was no mistaking his anger as he looked over them.
Sam remembered that anger from the first morning after they'd slept together. The thwarted intent, made childishly ugly on the otherwise handsome features. Nausea threatened even before he opened his mouth, addressing her conversationally. "So how long were you fucking him?"
Something in her recognised that he was angry and his anger was ruling his speech. He wasn't thinking about what he was saying, he was just casting words out without regard for who he hurt. And perhaps he didn't mean what he was saying, but that didn't stop her from hearing it and processing it as if he did.
"Shanahan..." The Colonel growled, his voice a warning.
"You can quit with the threats, O'Neill," Pete snapped, his gaze transferring to the man standing behind Sam. The man whose hand was at her elbow, supporting her as she groped for the wall, her stomach churning at the baldness of his words. "I won't be intimidated..."
"Who's talking intimidation?" The Colonel demanded, frowning.
Pete's face creased with irritation. "Your guy, the one who told me that I should be more careful of who I spoke to! You can't control my life the way you can control Sam's. I'm not part of your precious Air Force!"
"What the hell are you talking about...?"
Pete's mouth curled in a sneer, "Oh, don't give me that shit, Colonel. It's fairly obvious what's been going on around here; the whole brush-off Sam gave me, the way you always seem to be over here when I come around, the way you sent someone to threaten me..."
"Pete." Sam was trembling, partly in revulsion at his words, partly in shock at his vitriol. She'd known he was bitter about the SGC and her job; she'd never realised just how far it went. "That's not the way we work."
"We?" He demanded, eyes narrowing. "The SGC? Or you and him?"
Her stomach roiled, and one hand went to her waist, pressing it in an attempt to keep her lunch down. She'd been working with the Colonel for seven years, and there had to be some irony in the fact that the only man with whom she'd had a consummated romantic relationship in that time was one of the very few who'd ever outright accused her of sleeping with Colonel O'Neill.
His eyes followed the movement of her hand to her stomach, and, misinterpreting her movement, he lashed out. "Is it even mine? Is that why you don't want me to have anything to do with the kid?"
If he had other accusations, they went unsaid. Teal'c sprang like a cat, unfurling limbs and muscles with the killing grace of a predator who knew his strength and skill.
"Teal'c, no!" Her cry was futile, she knew. Above all other things, Teal'c prized honour and the honour of the warriors he fought alongside. That he had remained so still for so long was a wonder in and of itself.
Pete had a hand at his throat and a wall at his back before he could do more than squeak. Even as his gun emerged from its holster, Teal'c smashed it from his hand, sending it clattering down the wooden-floored hallway to rest at Daniel's feet.
The force of Teal'c's wrath resonated through the hall as he held the smaller man against the wall. And Pete might be a trained police officer, but he wasn't prepared for the rage of a two hundred fifty pound Jaffa.
"Teal'c..." Sam's voice rose in unison with the Colonel's.
Their appeal was unnecessary, and they knew it. Even in the throes of fury, Teal'c possessed exquisite self-control.
"Samantha Carter does not wish you dead," Teal'c stated coldly, looking at Pete with the merciless, unforgiving stare that meant he was in a deadly rage and holding onto it with a trinium will. "However, I do." There was an icy passion to his words, scalding in tone, deadly in intent. "This time I will submit to her decision. Next time, I may not be so lenient." He let go of Pete's throat, and stepped back. "Take your false accusations from this house, and do not come back."
Pete's hand had automatically flown to his neck, rubbing where Teal'c had gripped him. He glared at Teal'c, humiliated by the Jaffa's actions; before turning his resentful gaze to Sam.
At this moment, Sam had nothing for him. His hateful accusations hung in the air between them, clouding everything that had gone before and shadowing everything that would come. If she was to deal with him at all, it would have to be later, when her emotions had settled down and her mind was clear.
"I know my rights, Sam," he said at last, and although his voice was softer than before, it still carried an angry edge. "You can't keep my child from me. And what kind of life are you going to give it, anyway? What kind of heritage will our child have with that alien thing you've got in you? How do you know it won't be a freak?"
He'd always objected to her secrets, from that very first morning. She'd never thought it would come to this; that the shadow of what had been done to her by Jolinar would cloud their relationship so badly.
She'd been an idiot.
"You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about," the Colonel said, his voice lethally soft as he cut into the silence.
"And don't think you can come between me and Sam," Pete sneered. "You had your chance, O'Neill, and your son is dead, you can't have mine, too!"
"That's enough!" The burning cold of his voice stabbed through the accusations, "If you have any sense at all, you'll turn around and walk out of here before you say anything more. And tomorrow, you'll call Carter and apologise for what you've said tonight."
Sam couldn't see the Colonel's face behind her, but she could see Pete's and the way he struggled with his temper - so quick to flare, burning in anger, cutting deeply.
There was a moment where it looked like he'd set his jaw and demand to stay. Then, behind him, Daniel took one step to the side, clearing a way for Pete to leave.
Pete glanced back at Sam once, then set his jaw and strode away. The door slammed shut behind him.
Silence.