Part 3: Janet

Janet kept looking over at Daniel all the way home. She felt like any minute he wouldn't be there in the seat next to her. Over the weeks since they had found him, returned from his ascended state and restored to life but unable to remember who he was, and brought him back through the stargate, she could only really believe that he was actually alive when she was looking at him.

She pulled to a stop in the driveway but neither of them got out of the car. Janet turned toward him to find him looking gently at her. "Jan, I remember everything now. That's why we decided it was time for me to come home. For the kids to know I was alive." He took her hands. "And one of the things I remember the most is what I had with you. It's strong and good Jan. We can get through this if we help each other."

She realized tears were slipping down her cheeks. So many tears in the last year.

"Please, darling, don't cry. Not any more," he asked softly, his voice almost breaking.

He pulled her toward him and held her awkwardly across the gear shift. Then he found the chain around her neck and pulled it out of her shirt. "Take the ring off the chain, Jan. Put it on your finger where it belongs and let's face this together."

Janet stared at him. She wanted to do what he requested. Before he remembered his life or her, she had wanted to tell him about how it had been between them but Sam was there, watching him with yearning in her eyes, waiting for him to remember her too. Janet became sure that Sam really loved Daniel, not Jack. Losing him and then getting him back might be enough of a push for her to finally do something. Every day she had waited for it to happen. Because she did love Daniel, she stood aside and gave it a chance. Surely he would be happier with Sam if Sam loved him back than he could ever be with her.

One night, as she was leaning over the dinner table, putting their plates down, the chain slipped out of her blouse and hung down, the diamond sparkling in the light. Cassie asked, "Isn't that Daniel's ring?"

"Yes." She sat down and looked at the two kids. "It's crazy but I feel like as long as I wear it, I haven't lost him altogether."

Cassie said quietly, "We were really good together the four of us, weren't we? I think it made him very happy."

That was when she decided to fight for him. She went to see a psychologist who specialized in helping women who had been raped. She could tell the psychologist was amazed that she had never sought help in the close to 20 years since it had happened. The woman was extremely pleased that she and Daniel had progressed so far with non-sexual physical contact. She was very optimistic and she managed to infect Janet with her optimism.

Sam had never made a declaration and Daniel was here with her now. "Okay," she said at last. Then she kissed him full on the mouth.

On their wedding night she told him about the psychologist. Daniel heard her out, smiling more and more broadly.

"I can't imagine a better wedding present. Even if it doesn't work, the fact that you loved me enough to try is stupendous. It takes my breath away."

Janet and Daniel began to be counseled as a couple. Daniel with his gentleness and sensitivity was the perfect partner for a woman dealing with rape trauma. He had no problem with always asking before he touched her sexually or stopping immediately if she displayed any skittishness. The therapist said it required "an infinitely patient partner" and Janet thought Daniel was close.

The night they consummated their marriage at last didn't seem likely to end in such a high point. Janet had a cold with the attendant red nose. It was frankly a bad hair day. She had seriously considered not going to work but went anyway, only to regret it.

Daniel had been very preoccupied with a problem he had been trying to work out for days related to some recently recovered Ancient artifacts. Janet was frankly sick of hearing about it every night and tired of talking to someone who was in such a haze that he either didn't hear her or didn't remember what she said to him 1 hour later. Now she went to his office a little before their normal departure time, unable to stand being there one minute more, and there was Sam leaning over him, unnecessarily close it seemed to Janet, as they looked at something on the computer screen.

A jealousy inspired scene wouldn't have done any of them any good. Janet and Sam had tried to preserve their friendship. Daniel was an unspoken barrier to closeness but they never acknowledged that to each other. Fortunately for the relationship Janet and Sam still had left, Daniel connected with the expression on his wife's face and reacted appropriately. He immediately closed the program up, turned off the computer, and walked his wife to the elevator and out to their car.

In the car, they got into something less than a argument but definitely not a friendly discussion about whether to put this month's discretionary income toward finally reupholstering the family room couch or replacing the water heater. Dinner was dominated by a monologue by Cassie about what was wrong with her car and how she thought they ought to buy her a brand new one. Alejandro kept his own council. Janet had noticed that he would never oppose Cassie if it didn't directly affect his own self-interest. She was his best ally and he knew it.

United by a common irritation at Cassie's unreasonable demands, especially as neither of them had had a car of their own of any kind when they were teens, much less a brand new one, they were more in charity with each other by the time they went upstairs to bed. Janet shattered that quickly enough. "What's it with Sam?"

"What do you mean by that?" her husband asked, tying the drawstring on the sweatpants he slept in.

"A couple of days ago she was practicing hand to hand with you in the gym. Today she's snuggling up to you at the monitor."

"She was hardly snuggling up. Jan, she has never been interested in me."

"Like anyone believes that. The two of you go off world for extended periods together. You would have all the opportunities you could possibly want to do anything you wanted and who would ever know? Teal'c and Jack would be the only possible witnesses and they wouldn't tell." She was shouting now. She knew she was being ridiculous but she was feeling so miserable physically and mentally that she had disengaged her brain and was letting her mouth run on by itself.

For a moment Daniel looked like he was going to answer her, angry word for angry word, but in the end, he just shook his head sadly, went back into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Janet stood there appalled, unable to believe that she had hurled such terrible accusations at him, accusations she didn't even believe. Even worse, at the volume she had been using, Cassie and Alejandro probably heard them too.

She slumped on the bed and cried. When she was cried out, the shower was still running. He's going to turn into one of the prune people. She went into the bathroom to apologize and saw him through the glass door, his muscular, toned body well visible. Suddenly she felt like she had to be able to see him, look into his eyes when she apologized. She opened the shower door and stepped in, pajamas and all.

"I'm sorry. She's a complete woman and I feel like I'm still not there. She has so much more of your time and your life than I do. Jealousy isn't very pretty." She ran out of steam and took in the way he was looking at her.

He cupped her jaw with one hand and put the other hand on the small of her back. "May I?" he asked. When she nodded, he pulled her into a kiss and moved the hand on her back further down to pull her against him. Before he went any further, he started to ask permission as the psychologist had taught him. Janet said, "If I tell you stop I know you will, but you don't have to ask me any more. I never wanted anything more in my life."

The last two months of Janet Fraiser's life were the best two months of her life.