Mysterious Distance

Part 9

Sam dug through the drawers in her lab for a second time. But there was no chocolate to be found. Not even to a Silvertip. She had already been through Daniel's lab. She knew he had a stash of 5th Avenues somewhere but she couldn't find them for the life of her. It wasn't fair. The bastard had knocked her up and then hid his candy from her. She ought to smother him as he slept. She slammed the final drawer shut and sat down heavily. It was hell being six month pregnant, especially when there was a sudden severe shortage of chocolate on base.

She sat contemplating for a while. She could send some hapless airman out for something to fulfill her cravings. No, the General would find out and probably bitch about it causing him extra paperwork. Ah ha. The General and his little known obsession with Reece's Pieces. Not quite what she was looking for, but it would do in a pinch.

She made her way up to the control room and nodded a greeting to the tech on duty and Colonel Reynolds, the duty officer for the night. Then she went into the General's office. She flicked on his desk lamp and sat down in his chair. She took a few minutes to revel in the supple leather and body conforming comfort of his chair. After sitting for hours on end for nearly nine years in her lab on some of the most uncomfortable stools in the universe, she was really quite envious. She supposed being 'the Man' definitely had some perks.

She looked at the items displayed on his desk. There was a folding picture frame near one corner. One side held a picture of his son Charlie, the other Cassie's graduation picture. Another frame sat nearby containing a picture she didn't even know existed. It was taken at O'Malley's during Daniel's welcome home party/Jonas's goodbye party. Apparently it was close to the end of the night they all looked a little too 'relaxed'. Jonas was grinning manically as usual. Teal'c was beside him smiling what passed for a grin for him. Next was Janet holding a half drunk Margarita and laughing at a thoroughly trashed Daniel who was leaning half against her and half against the pool table behind him and looking a little too amused at his drunkenness. Beside him Sam sat on the edge of the pool table leaning on her cue. She had a huge smile on her face and was half turned to the General, or rather the Colonel as he was at the time, beside her. He had a smart ass smirk on his face and pointing the beer bottle in his hand at Daniel. As Sam looked closely at the picture she was astounded to see he had his other arm snaked around her waist. She didn't remember that. She had also ended up very drunk that night so that's not a big surprise. The next morning, she and Janet had to practically fight over space on the bathroom floor until Cassie pointed out that they did in fact have two in the house. She felt herself tearing up at the picture. Those had been happy times. She closed her eyes trying to hold back the tears. Damn these hormones.

She stared down at the calendar blotter and laughed. It was almost completely obscured with doodles. Nearly the entire left side was taken up by massive dogfight between X-302s and…X-wings? Yes. Those were X-wings. 302s and X-wings doing battle against Death Gliders and TIE fighters. Busted! she thought gleefully. How could the man draw such accurate Rebel and Imperial fighters with out being a Star Wars fan. Wait until I tell Teal'c. On the other side of the paper were various drawings of what looked to be pots and vases. She decided Daniel must have been prattling on about some 'artifacts' when the General had doodled these. There were also a couple of abstract designs, a Homer head, and Earth point of origin symbols scattered all over. It odd to admit but he seemed to be a fairly decent artist.

Her stomach rumbled and she remembered why she was in the General's office in the first place. She opened the middle drawer to find nothing more than pens, pencils, post-it notes, and a yoyo. She quickly went through the other drawers finding nothing more than office supplies, file folders, and a couple more yoyos. In the final drawer she hit the jackpot. Along with a bottle of whiskey was a huge bag of Reece's Pieces and… a small pile of Godiva candy bars? General O'Neill was the Godiva Man?

The first time the Godiva Man had left her a chocolate and toffee bar in her lab had been after the mission where she had been through hell with the Shavidai, forced to wear a hideous outfit complete with veil, kidnapped, beaten, and finally kicking a Mongol's ass. At the time she never suspected O'Neill. She thought it might have been Daniel apologizing for getting her to play anthropologist. The bars and sometimes a few truffles had continued to mysteriously show up whenever she was stressed with one of her projects or after a particularly rough mission. When Daniel 'died' for the first time they still continued to show up, so she had to discount him. She later considered the possibility that it might have been Colonel O'Neill, but then the treats showed up daily while he was trapped on Edora and shortly after when he went undercover. In fact, when he reluctantly returned from Edora she had received a pound of truffles. It seemed that the mysterious Godiva Man knew how much she was hurt by O'Neill's lack of gratitude. She began to suspect Daniel again, but then he 'died' a couple more times and she was still receiving them.

In addition to her pick-me-ups, for every Valentine's she received an elaborately wrapped pound of the most expensive truffles. This also led her to suspect that it wasn't a member of SG-1 because on every Valentine's Day she received a bouquet of yellow roses (her favorite roses) and a small inexpensive piece of jewelry from 'the boys of SG-1'. Janet had also received the same treatment from the grateful injury prone men of SG-1.

The identity of the Godiva Man had been a mystery to her for nearly 9 years. She'd tried everything to find out who he was. She had even been through hours of security camera footage but she could never discover who was responsible. Now it seemed it was in fact General O'Neill, which made sense. He was former Black Ops and probably knew the base better than anyone.

The treats had stopped appearing when she married Daniel. She missed them. She had come to look forward to them brighten her day. That was probably why she was craving chocolate now. She had been conditioned to expect chocolate when she was having a bad day and today had been a bad day. She ignored the Reece's Pieces and pulled out the chocolate bars. She leaned back in the chair and savored the fine chocolate.

"Should I be watching my back?"

She looked up to see Brigadier General Jack O'Neill standing in the doorway of his office looking down at her sitting in his chair behind his desk. "Sir?" she asked in surprise.

"I don't know, Carter. Has some sort of coup occurred on my day off? Correct me if I'm wrong but the door still says 'J. O'Neill' not 'S. Carter-Jackson'. "

"I'm sorry, sir. I was looking for chocolate," she blushed deeply and moved to stand but he waved her back down and he sat down in a chair on the other side of the desk.

"I see you found some."

"I didn't mean to plunder, sir. But you've got me conditioned."

"Me?" he looked surprised.

"You were the one leaving Godiva chocolate in my lab all these years, weren't you?"

He smiled mysteriously, "Yep."

"Why did you stop?"

The smile left his face, "It didn't seem appropriate anymore."

"Why?"

"You're married."

"So. You think Daniel would care if you gave me chocolate?"

"No, but things have changed, Carter. You're happily married and I can't keep hoping anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?" he asked seriously. "Aren't you happy with Daniel?"

"I'm happier than I have been in a long time. It's nice to have someone to come home to who you can actually discuss your day with. Someone who knows what hell I've been through here. He's pretty easy to live with. I don't feel like I'm constantly on the verge of an emotional breakdown anymore and I'm having a child with someone I respect and care about. I didn't think I could have children after Jolinar. So, yeah, I'm guess I pretty happy."

"Then you don't need to be sorry," he smiled more than a little sadly. "I only ever wanted you to be happy. I'm just sorry I couldn't be the man to make you happy."

"Me too," she whispered and then they sat in uncomfortable silence for a couple of minutes.

He cleared his throat. "Hand me those Reece's Pieces."

She tossed the bag over to him and decided to satisfy her curiosity "So when you weren't here for whatever reason how did I still get these?"

"Siler," he said looking a little smug at his own ingenuity. "I had a deal with him to keep you supplied when it looked like you needed a lift." She started crying. "Oh, geez, Carter. Don't cry."

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't help it. It's just these stupid hormones," she said wiping her eyes.

"So where is ol' Danny boy, anyway?"

"Asleep. I couldn't sleep and I was craving chocolate." She eyed him suspiciously. He was dressed in a light blue camp shirt and khaki cargos. "What are you doing here, sir?"

"Oh, I couldn't sleep either, so I thought I might as well work on some stuff."

"Wow. You're starting to sound like me, sir. Is paperwork really that fascinating?" she teased.

"No! The exact opposite. I was hoping it would put me to sleep." He sighed deeply. "My house is just so lonely with Cassie gone this summer. I've really got used to having her around. I miss her."

"Well, if you didn't spoil her so, sir, she would still be here."

"And moping because she couldn't spend the summer in Europe with Georgie."

"Frankie," she corrected.

"Well, some girl with a guys name."

"She's been having a great time, sir."

"I know and very dutiful with the postcards, too. I just miss her."

"We all do. Whoa," Sam grunted and then placed a hand over where her daughter had begun kicking. "Somebody woke up."

"Must be all the sugar." He said popping a few more candies in his mouth.

"Yeah, that may not have been such a good idea this late at night." She leaned back and tried to will her daughter to relax but it didn't really work. "We finally decided on a name."

"Oh, yeah. What's it gonna be? No some wacky mythological name, I hope. Or some scientist."

"We're going to name her after Janet-"

"No!" he interrupted. "You can't name your kid 'Janet Jackson'."

Sam laughed, "No, sir. We thought of that. We're going to call her 'Grace'. That was Janet's middle name and 'Catherine' after Catherine Langford. So, it's Grace Catherine Carter-Jackson."

"Gracie. I like it." The General grinned manically. "You do know that Uncle Teal'c and Uncle Jack are going to spoil her insanely, don't you? If you think I'm bad with Cassie, you just wait."

"Oh, God. I'm already terrified." She laughed and then turned serious. "Can I ask you a personal question, sir?"

"Oh, for cryin' out loud, Carter. We've known each other for nearly a decade and you're married to my closest friend and carrying his child. I think it's okay for you to call me 'Jack' when we're off duty."

"Okay, Jack," she conceded. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Shoot."

"Why didn't you and Sara have anymore children beside Charlie?"

He sat silently for such a long time she didn't think he would answer. Finally he did in a voice devoid of emotion, "She didn't want to have anymore kids with me."

"Why?"

"I was never there. As much as I loved him I really wasn't much of a father to Charlie. Carter, you're an Air Force brat. You know what it was like for your mother when your father was gone. Can you imagine how much worse that would have been if he was special forces or black ops? I wasn't even there when Charlie was born. I can't even tell you how many times I'd been declared dead when we were married. It was hell on Sara. She falsely assumed after Charlie was born I would give that stuff up, but I couldn't. I was needed and the duty to my country meant more to me than the duty to my family. Sara didn't really understand that I was doing so that they would always be safe too. She always said it was like being married to Batman. Her husband always out defending the innocent and never knowing in what condition I would come back to her. If I would at all."

"Batman doesn't have a wife."

"There's a good reason for that, I guess. I loved her. She was my little slice of normal. I guess I used her, but I couldn't hang up my 'cape' for anyone, not Sara, not Charlie, not you." He met her eyes and she felt like crying again but she was able to hold it in.

"I would never ask you to," she told him honestly. "You were…you are needed. I've always understood that. I could never do the same for you either."

"So here we are," he said ruefully.

"Here we are."

"Unscheduled off world activation!"

Sam and Jack both automatically got to their feet and walked to the control room. Colonel Reynolds looked at the General as he walked in, "It's the old Tok'ra IDC, sir."

"We're getting an audio transmission, sir."

"Put it on speaker," Reynolds ordered.

"This is Jacob Carter and Selmak of the Tok'ra requesting permission-"

"Jake!" Jack cut him off. "You never write, you never call, we were beginning to think you didn't love us anymore."

"Good to here you, Jack. So can I come through?"

"Sure. Carter's got a big surprise for you."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah." Jack turned to the tech. "Open the iris." Then he bounded down the stairs only to realize Sam wasn't behind him. "Carter, don't you want to see Dad?"

"Uh uh," she shook her head and put her hands protectively over her belly. This was going to shock the hell out of her father.

Jack laughed and Reynolds snickered behind her back. "Well, Reynolds you'd better send someone to wake Daniel up. He's gonna to have some 'spailin' to do."

"Yes, sir."

"C'mon. Carter, don't be a chicken. He won't kill you. Spacemonkey just might not be able to have any more kids." He turned and continued down the steps and Sam followed slowly after him.

When Sam made it to the gate room, her dad and Jack we engaged in a very manly back thumping hug. They parted and Jacob smiled as his daughter. Then his eyes tracked down to her enlarged belly. He turned to Jack with a murderous gleam in his eye. Jack held a his hands in defense. "Whoa there, turbo. You got the wrong guy."

"Dad, quit threatening the General. It's not his-"

"General?" Jacob gasped in disbelief. "What the hell is going on here? Am I in one those alternate realities that I keep hearing about?"

"Hi, Jacob," Daniel said as walked sleepily into the Gate Room.

"Daniel, what's going on here?" Jacob pleaded.

"Well, that's simple," Daniel said with a yawn and placed a comforting hand on Sam's shoulder. "Sam and I got married about six months ago and you've got another grandchild on the way."

"WHAT?" Jacob turned to Jack. "He's kidding right? This is all some elaborate joke to get back at me for being away for so long, right?"

Jack shook his head.

"Dad, I know this is a shock…"

"Shock? Like a zat blast. What happened to cop guy?"

"We broke up. I thought you didn't like him."

"I hated him, but what about…" Jacob turned confusedly to look at Jack.

"C'mon, Jake," Jack said leading him out the room. "How about some good old fashioned Tauri coffee? And cake. Wouldn't cake be nice?"

"Sure," he said dumbly.

"Daniel and Carter will explain the whole thing. Just think you're gonna be a grandpa again."

Daniel pulled Sam closer to him as they followed, "You remember when we found out about Grace and I said I was scared?"

"Yeah?"

"You're father is what I was afraid of."

-

TBc