A/N: This one took a while because I wanted to cushion the sad bits and added a long, lighter bit at the end- I know it gets kind of intense, but since we're approaching the end of this whole long series where Jack and Sam haven't talked very much... well, there's a lot to say. Just a couple of quick notes about the last chapter... I was shocked at how many people are familiar with 'Apples to Apples,' which is a great game. Gateseeker2: Thank you for asking, the symbiotes are doing just fine, although they're doing a good job at reducing me to an inanimate object! Janissima - you hit the nail on the head, Jack's gifts (except for the hat of course) were intentionally impersonal. I wanted to pick things he could have ordered over the internet while he was at work. Lastly... man, I never would have thought finally writing Pete in a fic would actually make me feel more sorry for the guy - a lot of you guys are drinking some serious Haterade!

Ch 5: Splintering

The party had hit a comfortable lull. Sam and Daniel were still ensconced in their chair, now taking their time and looking through the photo albums at a slug's pace. Aileen, Pete, and Teal'c were talking over by the food, Teal'c snacking. Jack was considering getting himself another beer when Cassie appeared beside him with a fresh one. "Thanks," Jack said as he took it.

Cassie nodded, apparently noticed what Jack was looking at, and asked, "What are you thinking about?"

"I was just thinking how many pictures are in that book on their laps of the two of them sitting right in that same chair," Jack said.

"Yeah. Well... it's a good chair."

"Yeah, and whenever they're here I never get to sit in it!" he complained half-heartedly. Cassie shook her head and sighed. Sam and Daniel finished with the album and said something quietly to each other, then both of them nodded and Daniel got up and grabbed his new scrapbook.

He scouted the room for Cassie and called, "Come over here while I take a look at what you did."

Cassie sat down with him on the couch, and Pete and Aileen scooted over to look at the book as well. Teal'c came over to Jack and said, "You have done an excellent job tonight, O'Neill. You are to be commended."

"Cassie and Aileen deserve most of the credit," Jack said with a shrug. He groaned as Sam, who apparently wanted to look at her own scrapbook alone, let Maggie (who had been Sam's shadow all evening) get up in the chair with her. "Carter!" he called. Sam knew he didn't like Maggie getting on the furniture... the dog's toenails were lethal on leather. She also knew she could pretty much get away with anything on her birthday.

"Sir?" she called back, not looking up from the scrapbook, in an annoyingly respectful/innocent voice. He grumbled to himself.

Jack glared half-heartedly at the two of them, ignoring him, all cuddly in that chair, Maggie with her front legs and head draped over Sam, the halo and wings still on, looking for all the world as though she were studying the scrapbook too... Teal'c took a picture of them, which reminded Jack that he and Teal'c had been in the middle of a conversation.

"As I was saying, O'Neill," Teal'c said calmly. "You are to be commended."

"And as I was saying, I didn't have to do most of the work for this," Jack replied.

Teal'c stared at him, hard, for several moments, and finally said, "I was not only referring to the party, O'Neill." Before Jack could fully assess the possible implications of that, Teal'c had gone back to refill his plate.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Sam glanced up from the scrapbook, which had clearly taken Cassie a lot of time to put together, help from Aileen notwithstanding. She looked over at the couch, where everyone else was crowded, either sitting on it or leaning on the back, looking at their regular photo albums, while Cassie and Daniel took turns explaining the context of some of the pictures.

She looked back down at the open scrapbook in her lap, absently petting Maggie with her free hand. The picture on this page was from the Princess breakfast that the Colonel... no, now the General, had pulled several strings to get them last minute reservations for, on their last morning at Disney World last year. He had done this because Teal'c was distraught about being unable to find Belle, but insisted it was for Cassie.

The corners of her mouth turned up in a small smile as she studied the big group picture. Everyone was squashed together so they'd all fit, and they all looked so happy. Although none of them were related to each other by blood, and two of them were actually from other planets, the first thing that came into her mind when she looked at the picture in her lap was 'the perfect family.'

Glancing over at the people on the couch, she realized Pete was looking at her already. She returned his smile a bit unsteadily, but he didn't notice the hesitation. He turned his attention back to whatever Daniel was saying, but Sam kept looking at them.

The couch was crowded. Everyone, even Cassie and Daniel, was now being super-polite to Pete, much more so than they ever had before and more than Sam had expected of either of them. She knew that was probably Jack's influence, but it was still progress. Despite all of this, she still didn't feel as right when she looked at the people on the couch as when she looked at the picture in her lap.

She realized most people's personal and professional lives were completely separate spheres, but hers had always been inextricably linked, ever since she was transferred to the SGC. Now, she realized sadly as she looked back down at the picture in her lap, they were going to have to separate. Pete just didn't fit here, with this part of her life. It would be unfair to expect him to, wouldn't it? Sure he knew the basics of what went on at the SGC, but it was nothing like what any of the rest of them shared – years and years of facing situations that nobody could ever dream of facing. Facing them together... surviving them together... and sometimes not.

Her eyes teared up again as she found Janet in the picture, standing directly in front of Teal'c and not blocking him from the camera at all because he was just that much taller than her... she sighed heavily. Maggie licked her arm.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Jack had been keeping an eye on Sam discreetly as she made her way through her scrapbook by herself, respecting the fact that she wanted to look at it alone but still concerned that some of the pictures of Janet would understandably upset her. When he saw her eyes fill up with tears again and saw his dog look up at her with her ears back, wag her tail slowly, and lick her on the arm, he said quietly, "Daniel." It wouldn't really be right to go over there himself, with Pete right there and all, but Daniel could do it.

Daniel looked over at him, followed his eye line, and nodded, passing off the book in his lap to Cassie and going back over to Sam. He sat down on the arm of the chair and wrapped his arm around her. Sam looked up at him with a grateful smile and squeezed his hand. They started looking at the book again, together.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Sam felt the loose grip Daniel had on her shoulder tighten as she turned the page of the scrapbook. She froze, unsure if she should turn the page quickly or give Daniel some time to look at the picture she knew had been the one to instantly grab his attention. She hesitantly moved her hand back to the corner of the page. "Don't," Daniel croaked. She sat still, wanting to look up at him but wanting to respect his privacy even more. They were looking at a picture of Daniel and Janet on some sort of boat ride. Sam remembered Janet telling her that it had been her favorite thing at Disney World, but the usually chatty doctor hadn't said anything more about it.

Judging from the pictures, Sam could see why. The top one was a nicely composed tourist shot, with a beautiful, scenic river background, Janet and Daniel standing near the rail of the boat. Obviously to reduce the glare, Daniel had taken off his glasses, and the hats they had worn all weekend were gone as well. They each had one arm around each other in a friendly, casual way, and smiled into the camera. It was a perfectly lovely, but rather ordinary shot.

It was the one underneath it that caught Sam's attention, and she knew it was the one Daniel was looking at too. It had to be taken either just before or just after the one above it, probably before, because Janet and Daniel obviously didn't know it was being taken. Daniel had his glasses and Mouseketeer ears on, Janet had her Minnie Mouse ear headband, and they were facing each other, about a foot and a half of space between them, both leaning casually on the rail of the boat. Janet held a partially eaten cotton candy, and was holding a little bit of it out between her fingers, offering it to Daniel, who was reaching out to take it. They were both smiling, like one of them had just told a good joke.

"My tongue was blue," Daniel said quietly.

"The cotton candy is pink," Sam said, confused.

"Janet's was pink. I'd already finished mine - blue - by the time we got on the boat. I remember, she had joked that I looked like you, and I told her she was taking this 'Sam and Daniel are twins' thing a little too far. When I ate some of hers it just made my mouth turn purple."

"That was her favorite thing we did at Disney World."

Daniel sighed heavily. Sam leaned up to hug him as best she could at the somewhat awkward angle, ending up with him pulling her up into him with both arms, her nose pressed right into his armpit. Luckily, he was only dressed as Indiana Jones, and hadn't been out fighting Nazis or anything, so it wasn't too bad.

"I keep thinking I wasted a lot of time. I was only just getting to know her. Even then, I wasn't sure if we were just supposed to be really good friends or maybe if there was something else, just starting, you know? And then we didn't get a chance to find out. That's the worst part of it."

Sam knew nobody else in the room could hear what he was saying, he was speaking so quietly and directly into her ear. "I'm so, so sorry, Daniel," Sam finally said. It seemed like a stupid thing to say, but she couldn't think of anything else.

He pulled away from her and wiped his eyes quickly. "I'm going to go upstairs... I just want to be alone for a little while."

"Okay." Sam nodded sadly and watched him go, then caught Jack's eye. He tilted his head slightly in the direction Daniel had gone, asking if he should go after him. Sam shook her head minutely and looked at Teal'c, who had seen everything as well. He nodded his head at her in that respectful-of-your-wishes way of his and went back to whatever he was talking about with Cassie. Sam looked back down at the picture of Janet and Daniel, shook her head sadly, and turned the page.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Jack grimaced as he watched Sam return her attention to the scrapbook after watching Daniel leave the room. "God, this party sucks," he mumbled under his breath.

Ten minutes later, Sam got up quickly, placing the scrapbook down on the coffee table in front of her, open. Maggie started to get up out of the chair too, but Sam said, "Stay here Mags," and hurried out of the room even faster than Daniel had, her head ducked down.

Jack went over to the chair she had vacated and petted Maggie absently as he sat down on the edge of it and angled the scrapbook to himself. He sighed as he looked at the pictures. Most of the scrapbook pages contained multiple pictures, sometimes cut out and arranged in a bit of a collage, and most of the pages had decoration around them, and captions. Stamps, stickers, that kind of thing. These two pages were completely blank apart from the picture centered on each.

They were pictures from the night Jack, Cassie, Janet, and Teal'c had met up with Sam and Daniel. Jack had no idea these pictures were even taken. After the official birthday dinner, they had found a grassy hill to watch the Epcot fireworks display. In both pictures, Jack was closest to the camera, Sam sitting beside him further away from whomever had taken the picture. It had to be Janet or Teal'c, because Jack remembered that Daniel had gone to fetch drinks for everyone, and Cassie had been mad at Sam that night.

In the photo on the left, Sam was hugging her knees, her chin resting on top of them. Her face was turned up towards the sky, and even in profile it was obvious how enchanted she was with the light show going on above them. She looked like a little kid. The tiara on her head certainly added to the simple look of wonderment on her face. Jack, in the photo, was looking at her rather than up at the sky, the photo proving to the Jack on the chair that yes, he did indeed stare quite inappropriately at his 2IC.

Hammond probably wouldn't be too happy with that picture, but it didn't strike Jack as all that surprising or unusual. The picture on the right, however, was another story. It was, essentially, the reverse of the one on the left. Jack was leaned back on his hands, legs out straight in front of him, looking up at the fireworks with his 'Niiice' expression. The surprising part was that Sam was looking at him.

While her expression lacked the more-than-slightly hungry look on his face in the previous photo, she was still looking at him with an overall soft and fond look on her face and in her eyes, her mouth curled up in a very small smile that she would have been able to hide quickly if anybody had looked at her suddenly.

Jack idly wondered how it was possible she hadn't noticed a camera pointed at them from that angle as he muttered, "Crap" under his breath, closed the book, and sat back in the chair, leaning back over his dog, who had made herself comfortable now in the whole chair. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Leave her alone or go see if she was okay? Like he'd know what to say anyway... God, this party sucked.

Daniel came back into the living room looking back in control of himself, without his jacket on. He came over to Jack and said quietly, "She went up on the roof and told me to leave her alone. I made her take my jacket, well, your jacket actually, but even with that, she's going to freeze in that costume."

"Okay," Jack said, suddenly strangely calm again. "Thanks, Danny."

"You aren't going to go get her?" Daniel asked, surprised.

"It's Carter, Daniel," Jack explained patiently. "We've got to give her a chance to freeze her ass off a little bit first."

Daniel looked at him intensely for a few minutes and said, "You know if you'd say anything about it you could fix this, Jack."

Jack knew exactly what he was talking about and said simply, "I'm sorry Daniel. I can't do that."

"You might not have forever, you know," Daniel said seriously, obviously speaking from experience. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I'm not doing anything," Jack said firmly.

"That's my point."

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

In the ten minutes that Jack made himself wait, Aileen and Cassie got everyone started on some game Jack wasn't paying attention to but that thankfully took everyone else's attention away from the fact that Sam was AWOL. When the ten minutes were up, Jack went into the kitchen and poured half the coffee into his giant travel mug thing, stopped in his bedroom to grab a blanket, and headed up to the roof.

Sam was looking through his telescope, her back to him, but she stood up straight as soon as she heard him shut the door. He smiled at the way she looked from behind - with the big leather coat on over her costume, only a few points of the gauzy skirt fabric poked out from the bottom, so it almost looked like she was just wearing a coat, her birthday tiara, and nothing else. "Find anything interesting?" Jack asked.

"Not really," she said, turning to face him. She had the coat zipped up and hugged her arms tightly for warmth.

"If you're planning on making yourself sick so you don't have to go to work tomorrow, you shouldn't do it at your boss's house," Jack commented, handing her the coffee.

She took it with one slightly shaky hand and took a small sip. "Thanks." He nodded and folded the blanket in half, put it on the ground, and sat down.

"Not going anywhere?" Sam guessed. He shook his head. "Subtle," she muttered, sitting down next to him.

He waited for several minutes while she alternated between looking up at the stars and drinking the coffee. Finally, he couldn't sit there without saying anything any more. "You think too much."

"Maybe," she agreed, surprising him not only with the response but with how tired she sounded as she said it.

"So... what were you thinking about before I interrupted you?"

"Entropic cascade failure, actually."

He chuckled. "Figures. That's the thing that happened to the other you when she came here, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why were you thinking about that?"

She shrugged and looked down at the coffee mug in her hands. "That's just kind of what this feels like," she finally admitted.

"What what feels like? Tonight? This party?" He tried to prompt her into talking more. Sam Carter always did some of her best thinking out loud, using one of them as a sounding board for something complex that made sense in her head but hadn't been narrowed down to its simplest terms yet.

"Yes." She shook her head and changed her mind. "No. I don't know! Sort of. It just seems like everything's falling apart sometimes. Not even falling apart, just... spreading apart... entropy..."

"Everything tends towards chaos," Jack supplied. She looked over at him quickly. "Sometimes I do listen to the prattling," he said with a shrug.

She laughed a little bit and handed him the coffee.

"Thanks." He drank some of it and set it back down between them. "I should have told Cassie no when she asked me about the party. I knew it was a bad idea, but I thought..."

"The party was wonderful," Sam told him. "Really. It was... necessary, in a way. I don't know. And just the fact that you did it, even though you're so busy, and I know you probably didn't even want to... it's just... I don't know. What you were saying before, in your toast. Maybe it's not possible anymore. Maybe things are already too messed up to ever fix."

"I don't believe that."

"Nothing even seems to bother you anymore, sir," she said, her tone slightly accusatory. Then she got introspective again and asked, "How come you never feel like this?"

"Like things are too messed up to fix?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"That's easy. When that happens I go, 'CARTER!' and you come up with some wacky plan and fix whatever needs fixing."

She shook her head sadly. "Not this time, I don't think. What you said at dinner... I mean, it's not just Janet that's missing from tonight."

"I know," Jack said quietly. "I tried to track Dad down, Carter, but you know those Tok'ra... they've perfected the art of Hide and Seek."

"He told me last year it would be a long time before I'd see him again."

"And that was almost a year ago. That's more than long enough. I'm sure if something bad had happened we would have heard about it, but I wanted to try to get him here... I'm sorry that I couldn't."

"Thank you, sir. I just... miss him. And General Hammond, and Cassie being here all the time, and Janet, of course, but it's even more than that... I don't know how to explain it."

"You miss the way everything used to be?" he guessed carefully.

She looked at him earnestly. "Yes, that's it exactly! I'm not a child... I know things change, that they have to. Especially doing what we do. We're lucky we haven't had to go through more losses than we already have. And the changes aren't all bad, they're just... I don't know."

"Yeah you do."

"Are you happy?" Sam asked him suddenly, catching him off-guard.

Jack shrugged, unable to lie to her. He wasn't unhappy. "I'm... tired," he finally said.

"I know," Sam said quietly. "This past year... sir, don't get me wrong. You are great at your job, whether you think you are or not. But despite being so good at it, it seems like it's... I don't know... like it's taking something away from you. I know we're all doing the jobs we need to be doing right now, and I love my job. But you loved my job too, when it was yours, and... I'm so... touched that you gave me your hat tonight, but I'd happily give it back to you in a second if I could."

"I know you would, Carter."

They sat in silence for several long minutes. Finally Jack let out a frustrated sigh and said, "This is the worst party ever."

"No it's not," Sam said immediately. "My ninth birthday was much worse."

"Really?" His tone begged her to tell him about it; they really needed something to lighten the mood.

"Yes, sir. It was a swim party, at an indoor pool obviously, for the weather. The novelty of swimming while it was still cold outside had everyone a little overexcited, I suppose, and about thirty minutes into the party I tried a backflip off the diving board on a dare, hit my forehead on the edge of the board on my way down, and had to be rushed to the emergency room. Dad likes to joke that I had asked for 'My Little Pony' and got 'My first stitches' instead."

Jack laughed. He could picture Jacob saying that. "Well, I stand corrected," he finally said.

After a brief quiet period, Sam said, "This party is a goodbye, isn't it, sir," not quite making it a question.

"No," he said quickly. "It's not a goodbye. But... I think it might be an end. Or maybe last year should have been the real end, and maybe you're right, and this year we were all trying to hold onto something that can't really be recovered. But that's... that's okay, if that's what it is. It's just another change. We all got used to the changes at the SGC. We can get used to this too."

"Do you want to?" she asked quietly.

Jack thought about what Daniel had said, and he knew he was right. He'd known it before Daniel had said it, too. He'd sort of known it at the back of his mind for a long time. She wanted him to ask her not to marry Pete.

But he knew a couple of other important things too. "That's irrelevant, Carter." She wanted to press him further on the issue, he could tell. But she was frustrated with his dismissal of the question and the deliberately obtuse look he now put on his face.

"Dammit, sir," she said as she exhaled sharply, looking away. She got to her feet and walked back over to the edge, looking up at the stars and mumbling, "Damn entropy."

Jack left her alone for a few seconds, sighing. He still wasn't going to touch the Pete situation, not even now, but he wasn't going to intentionally upset her either. He got to his feet, his knee popping loudly. He winced as he stepped up next to her.

"Carter... I think you took my toast earlier a little too seriously," he said quietly. "Or you're thinking too much about the wrong parts of it. So, I'm gonna do your job for a minute here, and simplify things for you." She turned sideways to face him again, looking surprised and curious as to what he was about to say.

He took a deep breath. "I wasn't lying about the toast being one I'd heard in my family, but it wasn't the one I usually heard. But I didn't want Aileen and Pete to feel left out, so I picked that one because it was something I could honestly say to them too. If it had been just you, Daniel, and Teal'c, I would have said the other one."

"What's the other one?" she asked, almost whispering.

Jack bent down to pick up the almost-empty coffee mug and held it up briefly like a toast before handing it to her. "Here's to you, who halves my sorrows and doubles my joys."

Her eyes filled up with tears again and Jack internally repeated his phrase of the night to himself: this party sucks. How many times had he made the birthday girl cry tonight? Way too many, that was for sure.

She blinked the tears away before they could fall, which made him feel a little better. Then he almost felt like crying himself, because she stepped a little bit closer to him, just barely brushing up against him but close enough that he could feel how cold she was, and locked eyes with him and he knew exactly what she was going to ask him to do before she said anything.

And it was going to kill him to do it, but he was going to do it anyway, because he could hardly tell her no any day of the year but on her birthday it was damn near impossible. He must have had a slightly scared or tortured look on his face, because she obviously knew he knew, so she skipped saying it out loud, instead saying, "Please."

"Sam."

"This is where everything began, after all. You packed that silly backpack with cake and champagne and almost wouldn't let me climb the ladder because you thought I was too drunk..."

"That wasn't where it began," he said without thinking. Dumbass, he internally scolded. Now she was waiting for the explanation to that. "For me at least," he clarified, unwilling to voice any further explanation as to where, exactly the 'beginning' of thething between them really was.

She got it though, she always did. "Me neither," she admitted, so quietly he almost missed it. "But if this party is really the end, please."

She was looking at him so openly – it was probably her rarest expression. Completely unguarded. The last time he remembered seeing it had been in his quarters on base after Janet died. She'd given him a simple, "I'm really, really glad you're okay," plus that look, and he'd simultaneously wanted to hug her as tightly as humanly possible and put his fist through the wall for being alive, standing there looking at her while her best friend was lying dead in the morgue three floors up.

Luckily, he'd chosen the first action. The walls were made out of concrete, after all.

"God, don't look at me like that," he grumbled, at the same time pulling her into another hug like he had done that day in his room – hey, this time his ribs weren't cracked. She hugged him back, sliding her arms around him underneath the stupid cape he was still wearing, her face going into his shoulder, but it wasn't enough. They both knew it.

After a long time, he stood up straight, leaning slightly away from her face, and pressed the palm of his right hand to her cheek, their eyes still locked on each other, her eyes still a little wet. She knew how much she was asking from him, he could tell. She knew he'd give it to her too – taking a snake in the head because someone says, 'Sir, please,' kind of made everything else, even this, seem a little trivial, at least in Jack's strange world.

The trapdoor was thrown open, banging back against the roof loudly, and they both jumped and looked around in confusion, as though they had temporarily forgotten there were other people in the world at all, let alone in the house.

"Jack!" Daniel called, a few seconds before he scrambled up onto the roof with them.

"Daniel, your timing is worse than a two year-old that just figured out how to climb out of the crib," Jack informed him.

"Thanks," Daniel said without missing a beat. "I'm sorry, but Colonel Reynolds just called – Bray'tac just showed up at the SGC. Something's going on, guys, something big."

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Cassie, who was used to those who worked at the SGC being called in at random hours, tried to keep Pete and Aileen out of the way amidst the sudden chaos of SG1 gathering ID badges, cell phones, and in Daniel's case, the shoes he had taken off. They ran around, grabbing whatever they saw no matter who it belonged to, slamming drawers in the kitchen and doors upstairs.

"Does someone have my badge?" Daniel called, rummaging around for it in the kitchen.

"Got it, Danny!" Jack called. He turned to Cassie as they all crowded at the front door. "You'll..."

"Take care of everything," Cassie finished, nodding.

"I'll call you when I can," he said, pushing everyone out the door.

The three people remaining looked at each other for a few seconds, not quite knowing what to say. Pete was watching the mayhem in a kind of stupor: he wasn't unused to Sam having to cancel plans, sometimes at the last minute, for 'Base Emergencies,' but it was always on the phone – this was the first time he had ever watched her get a call and just take off. He knew it was her job, of course, but he hadn't quite expected her to be so happy and excited about it. She clearly wasn't exaggerating when she said she loved her job. And he now realized it was definitely always going to be that way.

"That happens a lot," Cassie finally offered. Everyone jumped as the front door opened again quickly and Sam hurried past them into the living room. Outside, Jack was honking the horn of his truck loudly.

"I'm coming!" Sam yelled back, rummaging around a bunch of tissue paper for something. Finding what she was looking for, the baseball cap Jack had given her, she rushed past everyone again, calling over her shoulder, "Bye guys, thanks for the great party!"

Cassie watched them all pile into Jack's truck quickly, Teal'c practically throwing Daniel and Sam into the backseat. Jack started pulling out of the driveway before Teal'c had even completely closed his door.

As they disappeared around the corner, Cassie turned to Aileen and Pete with a grin and asked, "So... how long do you think it'll take them to remember that they're all wearing their costumes?"

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

SG1 (which still included Jack, in all of their minds) tore through each security checkpoint quickly and rushed into the Gate room, where Bray'tac was waiting with Walter, Siler, and the usual technicians and security team that were always skulking abound the Gate room.

Bray'tac and Walter were both giving them all such stunned, surprised looks that the men of SG1 turned to each other, confused, trying to see if any of the rest of them knew why they were being looked at so strangely. While they were doing this, Carter was in full-on emergency mode. When she quickly unzipped the huge jacket she was still wearing and tossed it absently over Daniel's shoulder before going over to Walter, Jack quickly realized why they were all being looked at like they were completely mad - they were all still in their costumes.

He fiddled with the strings of his cape and cleared his throat self-consciously while Daniel tried, "Wh... we were just..."

Only Teal'c looked unperturbed.

Carter still hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, and was clearly trying to figure out what the big emergency was. She was already hovering over Walter, at his usual console, pulling up Gate Diagnostic screens and demanding, "What's the problem, Sergeant?"

Walter, who had about a thousand funny responses running through his head, couldn't help himself. "Well, ma'am, at the moment, your wing is hitting me in the back of the head."

Sam looked at him blankly for a moment and then realized she was still wearing her costume. "Er... right. Sorry about that Sergeant," she said, quickly moving back to the rest of SG1, stepping behind Teal'c to sort of cover herself up. It would have worked, had Teal'c not chosen that moment to go over to Bray'tac and give him a Jaffa greeting and handshake.

Sam sidled over to Daniel, but he had already put the jacket back on and was standing with his arms crossed, as though daring anyone to mock his costume or point out the redundancy of an archaeologist dressed as an archaeologist.

"So, Bray'tac... as you can see, we ah... came as soon as we heard you were here... and I'm guessing you didn't just drop by to crash Carter and Daniel's birthday party..."

"How can one crash a birthday party, Teal'c?" Bray'tac asked quietly. "Are Tau'ri parties held on some sort of flying vessel?"

"It is an expression, Master Bray'tac," Teal'c explained. "O'Neill, perhaps we should go to the conference room?" he suggested firmly, already steering Bray'tac towards the steps.

Jack shrugged and started to follow them.

"Um, sir," Carter stopped him, shifting uncomfortably on her feet and tugging at the hem of her skirt, trying to pull it lower.

He gave a huge 'my hands are tied' shrug and said, "Come on, Carter, we can't keep the Jaffa waiting." With that, he whirled around with an exaggerated flourish of his cape and sauntered over to the stairs.

Daniel and Sam looked at each other and sighed, then followed. Once they were gone, the entire Gate room started laughing and talking loudly about the crazy people in charge of their base. "Did you get that on the security camera, Siler?" Walter asked.

"Of course," Siler said. "Give me a couple of hours and I can probably put together a reel that tracks them from the time they got on the base to now."

"Be sure you send a copy to General Hammond," Walter reminded him.