Daniel quickly paid the check and made his way to find Sam. He'd meant what he'd said to her about Jack, but he'd had no place saying it the way he had. He was upset, and he had just blurted it out.
He was glad Sam had interrupted him. He'd been on the verge of telling her he would give her the love she sought, but now he realized how corny that would have sounded and how disastrously it could have turned out. That certainly wasn't the way he'd wanted to tell Sam about his feelings. And now, he really didn't want to at all, as he was nearly certain she did not reciprocate them.
As he came outside, he looked around, but saw no sign of Sam. He noticed a small path leading around the building and decided that she must have gone in that direction. A short distance down the path, he saw her sitting on a bench. Her back was to him, and she was staring at the mountains in the distance. His footsteps sounded against the rocks, and as he got closer, he saw her bring her hand to her face as though she were wiping her eyes. He stopped a few feet behind her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
She continued looking toward the mountains as she answered, "No, don't be. I shouldn't have yelled at you." She sighed heavily. "Hell, you're probably right anyway. I only got so upset because I know it's true. Do you know how many times I've tried to talk to him about my feelings just to have him shut me down?" She shook her head slowly. "I don't know why I keep going back. What makes me think things are ever going to change? I must be a glutton for punishment."
Daniel walked around the bench and took a seat next to her. "I know Jack cares about you, Sam. He probably even loves you. He would be a fool not to." He draped his arm across the bench behind her, offering support but careful not to push past her boundaries. "But, Sam, are you really in love with him?"
Sam didn't hesitate with her answer. "Of course, I love him."
"No, that wasn't what I asked. I love Jack. Teal'c loves Jack. Of course you love him, too. But are you in love with him? Do you love him so much that you're willing to leave Pete and give up your career to be with him?"
"Yes," she whispered. "If I thought he wanted to be with me, I would."
"Oh." That wasn't the answer he was expecting. He never thought Sam would be willing to give up her career for any man. In fact, when he considered the possibility of becoming involved with her, he always assumed that he would be the one who would transfer to another SG team to make it work. "Are you sure?" he asked. After the words came out, he realized how ridiculous they sounded.
Sam simply answered him as though she had been expecting the question. "I've thought about it so many times. At first the answer was no, but it grew to be yes."
Daniel knew that he would stop at nothing to be with a woman he loved if she loved him back. For him, even the fight against the Goa'uld came a near second to the chance to have closeness and a bond like he'd had with his late wife. If he had to choose between fighting for the galaxy and spending the rest of his life bringing joy to the woman he loved, he had to admit he might choose the latter. For Sam and Jack, though, the two were not mutually exclusive. There was more than one way to fight the evils of the galaxy. Why hadn't Sam simply chosen one of those options so that she would be free to be with Jack?
He leaned toward her and asked, "So why haven't you transferred or resigned?"
Sam stared at the ground. "He won't let me. Every time I go to him to confess how I feel, I know it could be the end of my career. I just don't care, but he never lets me say it."
Daniel would never expect Sam to let a man control her future that way. "Why do you let him do that? It's your career and your choice."
"He's just protecting me," she explained.
Sam didn't strike Daniel as a woman who needed protecting. Well, she hadn't until she'd revealed this mess with Jack. Now, he felt like he should be protecting Sam from what his friend was doing to her emotionally. If Jack knew about Sam's feelings, Daniel felt he owed it to her to either confirm his own or let her down gently. Leaving Sam figuratively flapping in the wind did not sit well with Daniel. It struck him as more of Jack's avoidance, which had once hurt him a great deal. If he could save Sam from that same kind of pain, he would. He determined to confront Jack about it later.
Sam sighed and a bitter smile worked its way across her lips. "That's how I know he loves me. . . because he protects me from myself." She sounded as though she were reciting a line that had once been carefully prepared and full of passion, but it was now growing old and tiresome, and the delivery lacked believability.
"So why don't you just put in your transfer, then talk to him? If that's why he's doing it, he won't have any reason to avoid the issue anymore."
She shook her head. "I can't. I've actually written one up and torn it to pieces. I got scared that maybe the reason he doesn't let me talk is because he knows what I'm going to say, but he doesn't feel the same, and he doesn't want to have to let me down."
Daniel nodded, fully understanding her fears, and wishing more than ever that Jack wasn't so closed off. Of course, Jack had always been more closed off to Sam than to him. As far as Daniel knew, they never talked about his ex-wife, his son, or anything else the way Jack used to with Daniel. So what had interested Sam in the first place?
"Why him?" Daniel asked.
Sam lifted her head in his direction without really looking at him. "What?"
"Why are you in love with Jack?" What he really wanted to ask was 'What does he have that I don't?'
Her chin dropped as she answered, "He's everything I can never be."
"Oh." Daniel nodded in understanding. She'd more than answered his unasked question. Minus the attitude, Jack was a poster child for the military, always thinking about the strategic advantages before the ethical dilemmas. He was the action hero of the group, the decision maker, the alpha male. In a military family, Sam had grown up seeing those qualities as the ideal. Where Jack was a 'kick ass and ask questions later' man, Daniel was a 'get all sides of the story before coming to an informed decision' guy. Of course she would want a man like Jack; Daniel had been a fool to think otherwise.
Even though it often irritated the hell out of him, Daniel respected Jack for his decisiveness and his ability to tactically evaluate a situation. Because of his job, Daniel knew Jack had to be that way, but Daniel had never wanted to be like that. He could possibly take on those qualities if he put his mind to it, if he blocked out his feelings and his heart the way Jack did. Yet he wouldn't ever try to change in that way, not even to be with Sam. In his core, he would always choose to keep the mentality he held dear no matter how many times he went into battle or how skilled he became with a sidearm.
As Daniel came out of his thoughts, he realized neither of them had spoken for several minutes. He broke the silence by asking, "So what are you going to do?"
Sam looked at him for the first time since he'd joined her outside. "I still don't know."
"Sam, I don't mean to be blunt, but why not? I've never known you to be an indecisive person."
She sighed. "This is a lot harder than running an analysis or computer simulation then coming up with a decision based on the data, Daniel. The truth is I've been indecisive and have avoided all real relationships for years, practically as far back as I can remember. I even did it when I broke off my engagement to Jonas. I know that was the right thing to do, but I don't think I did it for the right reason. I wasn't really running from the type of guy he was as much as the commitment itself. Then there was Narim, Martouf, Orlin. . . I cared about all of them, but I never did anything about it. It was obvious how much they loved me, and I was close to them all. Hell, I kissed Narim, but I just pushed that aside like it'd never happened. We were never anything more than friends." Sam absent-mindedly kicked a pebble near her foot. "I held every man I cared about at a distance. I wouldn't let them be anything more than a friend."
Daniel wondered briefly whether she might be including him in that group, then he put the thought out of his mind. He had to forget about his selfish desire to be with her and focus on supporting her and being there for her.
He took the thoughts she'd expressed to the next logical place. "Except Jack. You knew he cared about you, but he never came on too strong like they did. And he was always out of reach. There was no real chance of a serious relationship."
"Pretty much. I realized that in a vision I had when I was stuck on the Prometheus." Daniel looked at her quizzically, and she elaborated. "I didn't exactly include everything that happened in my report. I did say I was seeing things. . ." Sam didn't finish her sentence.
After a few seconds, Daniel finished for her. "And Janet said it was probably because of your concussion."
Sam nodded. "I only told everyone about the little girl."
Daniel didn't understand how this related to Jack, but he knew she'd expressed concern about the hallucinations after she'd returned from the trip. She'd told him and Teal'c she had been worried she might've been cracking up. She also seemed worried that other people might think so as well. He assured her once again, "Sam, we still don't know if that girl was a hallucination or a manifestation of the cloud or even a representative of the aliens who were trapped there with--"
"Yes, but I didn't tell you everything. She wasn't the only person I saw, and I know for sure the rest were hallucinations." She looked at the ground and bit her lip. "I saw you, Jack, Teal'c, and my dad too." Sam met his eyes as she finished, "I had conversations with all of you."
"Why didn't you say anything before?" he asked.
"It wasn't important to the mission report. I reported the one hallucination, and that seemed good enough. I didn't really want to have to tell anyone what I talked about with the others. It was mostly personal stuff."
"Oh. So the visions helped you sort out your feelings for Jack?"
"Yeah." She sighed. "The Jack my mind created flat out told me that I was just using him as a safe bet. And my dad told me I should let him go. Or more specifically, let go of what was making me unhappy." She kicked another pebble. "That's why I started dating Pete."
Daniel wrinkled his brow. "So if you've done everything the visions told you to, why are you--"
Sam cut him off. "Because I realized that I was wrong. I did everything I thought I should, but I'm no happier than I was before. I misunderstood what they were saying to me on the Prometheus. My father wasn't telling me to let go of Jack. He was telling me to let go of the military and SG-1, because they were keeping me from him, from being happy. And the most important thing that Jack told me was that he'd always be there for me no matter what. And it's true. He will. That's what would make me happy. It has to be."
The desperation in her last words was almost painful to hear. "Sam. . ." He didn't exactly know how to put this. Everything he knew about Sam told him that that statement was wrong. What she'd said about Jack being her security blanket made complete sense to him. He couldn't fathom the concept of Sam giving up her career, her life, for any man. And while he was certain that Jack would always be there for her, he knew it wouldn't be in the way she needed, that anyone needed from a lover. Jack had long ago closed himself off to that kind of intimacy. "Did you hear what you just said?"
She looked at him with confusion written across her features. "What do you mean?"
Daniel sighed. "Never mind." If she didn't realize it on her own, there was no way he was going to convince her to see it. Trying to do so would only end in an argument and hurt feelings.
"No, tell me," she prodded.
"Really, it's nothing. Forget it."
They sat in silence until Sam finally spoke, "I'm going to break it off with Pete."
Daniel nodded, thinking she'd probably made the right decision. "So do you plan to tell Jack how you feel?"
"I don't know yet. If I do, I'll have to transfer or resign and work at the SGC as a civilian. There's no way I could stay working there with my feelings for the General out in the open. It'd put both of us at risk for a court martial."
"And you're prepared to do that? To give up command of SG-1?"
Sam shrugged. "That's the part I'm not sure about. There are times when I'd gladly give it up, but then there are times when I think about how much I could lose. Not just my rank, but the opportunity to go through the Stargate, fight the Goa'uld, discover technology, and learn things I could only dream about without the 'gate." Her enthusiasm and passion were so obvious in her eyes that Daniel couldn't believe Sam would ever consider the possibility that the Stargate and the SGC were getting in the way of her happiness. A frown came over Sam's lips as she continued, "Plus, I'd have to give up our team. If we weren't all on SG-1, who knows how often I'd see you and Teal'c. I just don't want to give that up, but. . ."
Up until the 'but', she had sounded like the Sam he'd grown to know and love. He wasn't sure how much more he could handle hearing Sam talk about how much she loved Jack, even at the expense of her own passions. He removed his arm from behind her shoulders and asked, "You want to go for a walk?"
She looked at him for a long moment, as though trying to find an answer to an unknown question in his face. Finally, she responded, "Sure."