Chapter Eight

They were absolutely stuffed when they got back in the car. Jack was quite happy, having finished off most of a large pizza and half a pitcher of beer. The beer had been a mistake, as he'd forgotten until the waitress returned with only one mug that Sam wasn't old enough to help him out. He was content, so content for the time being that he didn't even mind having to buy clothes. He was fairly certain that getting back home was going to involve the long drive from Colorado to that D.C. address in Sam's note and he wasn't about to spend all that time in his rather disgusting uniform. The shopping trip was kept short. In fact, he left Sam in the car, illegally parked in the fire lane with the engine running while he grabbed the first decent things he found.

The next stop was a dinky little motel on the edge of town. He couldn't get quarters on the base without revealing his 'I'm from the future' gig. Jack was planning to take Sam back to her dorm after he registered, but she begged him to let her stay. Somewhere in the middle of her vivid description of her Bon Jovi loving roommate who played 'Slippery When Wet' over and over again, Jack felt compelled to take pity on her. It could have been the fact that he hated Bon Jovi, but he knew it was much more likely that it had something to do with the pathetic, pleading look in her eyes. It was hard enough to tell Colonel Carter no; it was impossible to say it to a teenage Sam.

He checked the area in a rather paranoid fashion before he walked up to the door. He had no desire to explain why he was checking into a motel with a young coed. He made one request as he closed the door behind her. "Your father never, ever finds out about this." Naïve as she was, she simply nodded, not even realizing why he was so adamant.

He ducked into the bathroom to shower and change while Sam settled onto one of the beds to work. She wanted to start working right away; Jack had no objection since it would speed up his trip home. In only a few minutes, he returned to the small room. He felt tremendously better in jeans and a t-shirt, not to mention the simple comfort of being showered and shaved and stretched out on an actual bed. It felt like a piece of heaven. Glancing at Sam, who was spread completely across the adjacent bed with textbooks and a calculator and a notebook and the note from herself and an assortment of pens and pencils, it appeared that she was in heaven as well, as evidenced by the smug grin that was firmly entrenched on her face.

He turned on the TV and forced his eyes onto the images on the screen rather than Sam. He loved to watch her work, especially when she was all wrapped up in solving something, but under the circumstances, he thought it might just creep her out. And he realized he could still see her out of the corner of his eye.

He'd seen her hair long before - when the alternate Carter had crashed the SGC with her tale of having lost her husband - but somehow this was completely different. Because it was his Carter. Not one from a different set of circumstances. Not one that might have been. But the very same one. He closed his eyes, suddenly desperate to get home to her.

"Uh, sir?"

Jack's eyes snapped open. "Yeah?"

She pointed at the TV. "Are you watching that? Cause it's really distracting."

"Sorry." He turned it off and tried to come up with some way to fill the time until he could see her - the grown up her - again. Sam worked quietly for several minutes, not making any sound. He was actually surprised at just how stealthy she could be. But sure enough, just when he'd convinced himself that he was all alone, he heard her voice again.

"Uh, sir?" Her voice was uncharacteristically shy and Jack found it as endearing as everything else about little Sam.

"Yes, Carter?" His own voice came out completely flat and he listened to the silence as she tried to read him.

"Can I ask you something kind of personal?"

Jack's eyes, which had settled closed again, popped open. He wasn't sure if he was ready for that conversation with his Carter; he certainly wasn't prepared to discuss it with junior. But he didn't want to hurt her feelings, not with the enthralled look on her face every time he smiled at her. "As long as I reserve the right to not answer."

She nodded and turned around to face him without disturbing her carefully arranged notes. "How do we know each other? In the future, I mean?"

His face betrayed nothing as he flinched inwardly. "We work together."

"Where?"

He smiled. "Can't tell you that." He couldn't resist winking at her. "You don't have clearance yet."

"Obviously it has something to do with wormholes." She tried to play down the blush on her face, but her pale skin did nothing to conceal it. "But don't worry, I won't tell."

"If I worked with wormholes, wouldn't I be able to help myself?" One would think, at least, but then one would be grossly overestimating how much about the Stargate Jack actually understood.

Sam looked perplexed. "But I'm still in the military?"

Jack nodded, unable to explain the pride he felt in telling her. "You're a Lieutenant Colonel."

She blushed again, but didn't look away. "That's hard to imagine."

Remembering that he had a mission there besides getting home, he met her eyes. "I told you I could help you. Don't worry; we'll work on that before I leave."

"You seem to know me pretty well considering we only work together."

Jack shrugged and tried to hide his dismay at how quickly she turned the topic to something less uncomfortable for her. In only a short time, she was secure enough in their dynamic to bring up their relationship. He cleared his throat and tried to act nonchalant. "We've worked together for a long time."

She nodded once and looked down, fooling Jack into thinking she had accepted his answer. His eyes drifted closed; he was tired from not having slept well the night before in the car. Sam didn't make a sound, but he assumed she'd gone back to her happy math place.

"So you tell all the women under your command that they're beautiful?" Her voice was so close that Jack nearly jumped off the bed. She'd moved to sit on the edge of her bed, leaning over until she was only a foot away.

He sat up and forced himself into general mode as best he could while she had him absolutely frazzled. He reasoned that just because she was getting to him didn't mean that she knew she was getting to him. His Carter never seemed to be aware of it when she was driving him crazy and he knew her well enough to know she wasn't faking it. He offered her a cocky grin, one he'd never seen her successfully resist. "Only the beautiful ones."

She held his eyes and smirked and he realized she was well aware of how she was getting to him. "And how many would that be?"

He swallowed the lump in his throat and managed to croak an answer past the frog that had lodged itself there. "Oh, just the one." He crossed his arms over his chest. "And who said you were in my command?"

She sat back, satisfied. "There's no mathematical way for me to make general in eighteen years, since I'm only a cadet now, so I figured if we work together, you had to be my CO."

He hated it when she had a perfectly legitimate answer to the questions he meant to throw her with and she always have a perfectly legitimate answer. He needed to stop trying. "Ok, fine, so?" He wasn't sure if it was worth it at that point to save face, but he was going to stick with it.

"So you know me awfully well for my CO."

Obviously, they didn't teach cadets not to question generals until their second semester. Jack made a mental note to talk to someone about that. "We're friends. I told you, we've worked together for a long time."

She grinned. "So now we're friends?" Her eyes sparkled with delight.

He was normally very defensive about his relationship with Carter. He usually felt so guilty for having such inappropriate feelings for her. But he couldn't resist her smile and she knew it. Answering the one question she wasn't asking was the only way to get the upper hand. "We're not sleeping together, if that's what you're getting at."

He'd been sure initially that was her real question, but she didn't seem discouraged at all. "Of course not. If you're my CO, that would be in gross violation of the regs, sir."

"Ah, yes, the infamous regs. And here I was starting to wonder if you'd been introduced to them." His eyes fell to the floor, unable to face her curiosity anymore and knowing his sarcasm would do nothing to dissuade her.

"Is that the only reason?" She was so quiet and serious that she sounded exactly like the Carter he knew.

His eyes climbed back to hers. He wouldn't lie; he couldn't answer. Eventually she turned away. Apparently, she'd been expecting him to deny it. Sam went back to her notes. Jack tried to go back to sleep. He couldn't, naturally, but he pretended. He thought it might be better if she didn't ask any more questions about them and the only way to stop her was to pretend he was asleep.

One thing became clear to him as he lay there, silently musing on everything he knew about Carter. It was the one thing he'd always wondered about her because he hadn't seen it coming. During that whole fiasco with Anise and the zay'tarc detector, Carter had been so sure of his feelings for her. Five years later, he continued to wonder, at times, if she ever felt anything besides friendship for him, yet she showed no fear or uncertainty when she approached her CO about his feelings for her. She'd had a confidence when she approached him, a confidence that he have had, a confidence that allowed her to broach that subject first. He finally knew how she'd been so sure. He'd told her.