AN: I fell over laughing while I was writing this, so word to the wise: don't snarfle your soda while reading! Hope you like it!

Chapter Fourteen

Not having slept much in the previous two days, I went to bed soon after Carter. I left my bedroom door standing open so I could hear her if she called. I fully expected to be awoken during the night by a not so stealthy three-year-old climbing on me. I'd been through it with Charlie and as far as I could remember, he'd been six before he'd spent an entire night in his own bed.

As it turned out, it wasn't Carter that woke me - it was lightening. Now I make no claim of being a heavy sleeper, but it takes some serious lightening to wake me. The flashes were so bright I couldn't sleep through them; it was light there was a strobe light in my room. I carefully crept into the doorway of the spare room to check on Carter. I figured if the lightening had me up, she was probably pinned to the sheets in fear. But when I looked, she was curled up, sucking her thumb and sleeping peacefully. I smiled at the precious picture she presented and returned to my room.

I jumped when another flash of lightening lit up the room. I chided myself, remembering that I was perfectly safe. Just to be sure, I got back in bed, turned away from the windows, and pulled the pillow over my face. I kept up my mantra that I was not afraid of thunderstorms, but I knew, deep down, that there was one childhood fear that relentlessly stalked me. Yes, Colonel Jack O'Neill is afraid of thunderstorms. I thought of brave little Carter sleeping peacefully and forced myself to relax until a huge clap of thunder sounded. It was so loud I started to wonder if the house was going to fall down.

Of course, that was followed by an unbelievably terrified scream.

I probably scared the crap out of Carter. She was wide awake when I scrambled into her room and curled up next to her. She smiled at me, not at all concerned at my reaction.

"Are you scared, Jack?"

"No." My indignant tone probably would have clued in an adult, but I hoped Carter wouldn't know.

She snuggled up to me and rested her head on my shoulder. "It's ok if you are. I used to be scared until my daddy told me what was going on up there."

Just having her in my arms again calmed me down. "So what did your daddy tell you?"

"The angels are bowling and they're having so much fun they're taking lots of pictures."

I smiled at her. "I wish they could bowl quieter."

"Me too." Carter stuck her thumb back in her mouth and promptly fell back to sleep.

I laid there awake for a long time, wondering why my one night to sleep in the same bed as Carter had to be like that. Disgruntled and still a little anxious from the slowly retreating storm, I finally drifted to sleep.

Something woke me, but I couldn't tell what it was. I stared at the ceiling and tried to figure out what I'd heard. It was still dark. Carter was no longer beside me and I knew that probably had something to do with it. Just as I sat up to look for her, I heard a startled squeak.

Then a minute later, a plaintive cry. "Jack!"

I sleepily followed the noise to the half closed bathroom door. "Sam? Are you ok?"

"No."

"Can I come in?" I really didn't want to, but I knew I was going to have to.

"Yes."

I pushed the door open the rest of the way, nearly falling over when I saw her. You have to remember, I'm a single man who had lived alone for ten years. I leave the toilet seat up; there are rarely any women around to complain about it.

"I'm stuck."

There was Carter, wedged into the toilet. Her arms were held straight out; her knees were hooked over the rim. She was terrified. I couldn't stop laughing.

"I don't want to drown!" She was growing more hysterical by the second.

So was I, but in an entirely different way. "Sam, you're not going to drown, I promise." I could barely draw breath in my fit of laughter. I was impressed that I managed a whole sentence. "But you're going to have to hang on until I find a camera." Cause really, Samantha Carter was stuck in my toilet and, as she'd pointed out on more than one occasion, my mental age had been stunted around thirteen.

"Jack! I'm going to drown!"

I couldn't leave her there terrified, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity either. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I needed a picture, so I developed some of Carter's inventiveness. I pulled the loose end of the toilet paper over to Carter and placed it in her outstretched hand. "Hold on to that and you won't drown. I'll be right back."

I returned after only a moment, surprisingly finding the camera in the first place I looked. Carter was still gripping the toilet paper for dear life. But I couldn't take a picture with her crying. I looked through the camera. "Hey, Sam, how about pancakes for breakfast?"

Carter's face lit up and I snapped the picture. "With syrup?"

"Is there any other way?" I set the camera down and offered her assistance in climbing out of the toilet. Carter tugged on my hand as we were heading back to the bedroom. Her arms stretched out to me as soon as I looked back. I lifted her up, sopping wet shirt and all, and carried her back to the spare bedroom. "Why don't you like to walk anywhere?"

She just shrugged at me, having become oddly silent. I retrieved a dry shirt for her and helped her change. She didn't say anything when I tucked her into bed.

"Sam, what's wrong?"

"Are you mad at me?"

Ok, so the girl didn't think I would be mad over trying to break the iris or crashing an Asgard ship or making me look like an idiot in front of her father or running away and playing hide and seek, but she thought I was mad that she fell in the toilet. I immediately came to grips with a very clear fact that had been eluding me for years: Carter was very, very odd. Most of the time, it worked out well for everyone. But sometimes, like right then, it was just, well, strange.

I shook my head. "No, I'm not mad. Why would you think that?"

"I got a boo-boo." She lifted her arm and showed me a large purple bruise that had formed from her run in with the plumbing. "Mommy gets mad when I get a boo-boo cause she thinks someone will call the police."

"Why would they call the police? Kids get boo-boos. It happens."

Carter winced. "Daddy says I get a lot of boo-boos when I'm playing and he can't 'splain them cause I'm weird."

Judging from the bizarre things she'd done while in my care, I could only imagine how out of hand she could get when her mother was busy with another small child. "Like what?"

She pointed to the fine scar that ran into her hairline. I'd seen it before, when it wasn't covered by her constantly adorably rumpled hair, but I'd never thought to ask. I hadn't realized she'd already had it at age three. "I fell off the fridge."

I shook my head. "You what?"

"I thought I could get to the roof to see outer space. I couldn't get any higher and I couldn't get down, but I didn't want mommy to find out so I jumped."

Ok, yeah, a three-year-old cracking her head open by jumping off a refrigerator was not something I could explain to the authorities either. "I don't think I want to hear anymore." I saw the guilty look on her face and realized she'd probably done worse. "Have you hurt yourself since you met me?"

Carter nodded slowly. She showed me the back of her other arm which sported a matching bruise. She glanced at me and then reluctantly opened her hand to reveal a nasty cut, probably from the Asgard crystal - with any luck, we'd have matching scars since I'd never gotten mine cleaned up either. I was amazed that she hadn't been whining and crying over her injuries, but Carter had never been one for complaining. "Are you mad now?"

"Of course not. But can you please not hurt yourself anymore?"

Carter nodded happily, pleased that I wasn't going to get mad. "Are you coming to bed, Jack?"

I chuckled and silently scratched off one more phrase that I'd always been so desperate to hear from Carter that had come about in such a horribly wrong fashion. "The storm's over, so I'm going to my room."

"Good night, Jack."

"Sleep tight, don't let the-" I noticed her rapt attention and thought better of suggesting that there might be bugs in her bed. "Night."

The next time I woke up, the sun was shining brightly through the curtains. My first instinct was to roll over and go back to sleep. But then I remembered that Carter's first instinct was to cause bodily injury to herself. I found her in the kitchen, swimming in my t-shirt. She'd climbed up onto the table and was playing some sort of extremely involved game that involved talking to her Play-Doh blobs that were atop her cars. As soon as she saw me, she jumped up and held out her arms.

"Jack!"

I let her give me one of her trademark oxygen-depriving neck hugs. Then I set her on the floor, where she'd be less likely to fall, and carefully moved her elaborate set up with her. "I'm going to take a shower. Then it's time for pancakes."

"I already made pancakes."

My eyes immediately darted to the stove, fearing there was going to be firemen and a burn center in my future.

"No, silly, play pancakes!" She giggled at me and showed me the blue and yellow "pancakes" she'd prepared.

Knowing my job, I squatted down, picked up a blue one and took a pretend bite. Then I picked up the yellow one and took another pretend bite. Carter smiled at me gleefully. It was so easy to please a three-year-old. But something told me her cooking skills had only gone downhill from there. "Those were delicious, but I'm going to save room for not-play pancakes, ok?" She nodded. "Behave and don't hurt yourself." She nodded again and I ran to the bathroom for history's quickest shower.

It seemed safe enough when I returned. Carter was still on the floor, driving her cars around. I couldn't locate her homemade pancakes, but I was fairly certain they'd pop up somewhere inappropriate, like the VCR. I set about making a huge stack of pancakes. I got out two plates and forks and syrup and butter.

"Ok, Sam, let's eat."

Carter quietly joined me, sitting down in the chair next to me. "Two, please."

I doled out the breakfast, slathering hers with half a jar of syrup. I was halfway through my stack when I noticed she hadn't eaten a bite. "What's the matter?"

"You shouldn't talk with your mouth full, Jack." Even at three, Carter still had an easy time making me feel like a Neanderthal.

I swallowed my food. "Why aren't you eating? I thought you wanted pancakes."

She looked at the plate in front of her. "I'm not hungry."

I shrugged at her and pulled her plate over to mine. "More for me!"

While I was finishing off her breakfast, Carter had a brilliant idea. "Let's play cops and robbers! I'll be the cops!"

I grinned and put my fork down, using my thumb and first finger as a gun. "Stick 'em up!"

She giggled and pulled out her sheriff set. "I'm the sheriff and you're rested!" She held up her badge proudly and they clamped her handcuffs around my wrists.

The cuffs were made for kids and a second into the game, they really started to hurt. "Hey, copper, do I get time off for early behavior?"

She shook her head and looked sternly at me. "You're going to jail, robber!"

"Sam, these really hurt. Take them off."

She shook her head again. "No way!"

"Sam, I'm not playing anymore. Where are the keys?"

Frowning, she retreated to her collection of toys amassed on my kitchen floor. She lifted the package from the set up and shook it. Nothing came out. She looked at me with wide eyes and then her chin started to tremble.

"Hey, it's ok. I'll just have to break them." Fearing that would upset her more, I quickly changed my plan. "We'll buy you a new set later, ok?"

It took a half hour for me to saw through the plastic rings connecting my wrists to each other with a steak knife, but I didn't dare use a bigger knife - too much chance I'd kill myself accidentally. It did nothing to alleviate the fact that the circulation was being cut off to my hands, but I did have a greater range of motion. I knew it would take forever to get through the cuffs by myself. I took a deep breath and resigned myself to calling Daniel for a rescue. Carter was just too dangerous to trust with a knife and Teal'c would probably just hang up on me.

But as I reached for the phone, I noticed Carter looking at me funny. "Sam, what?" I was in serious pain at that point and I didn't think I had the energy for another crisis.

"I don't feel so good." Once she mentioned it, I noticed her slightly green pallor.

"Sam, did you have something to eat while I was sleeping?"

"I had some pancakes."

"You mean the make-believe kind?"

Carter nodded her head slowly and tells welled up in her eyes. "My belly hurts."

"Oh, God." I grabbed her and ran for the truck, hoping Janet knew what to do for Play-Doh poisoning.