His instincts told him that he'd do much better with Sam if he talked to her before he said anything to Danny. She'd want to be part of figuring out what he got told and how much, the timing of it. That was why he was hoping that Danny wasn't around. He hadn't seen Jack's car when he drove up so unless Jack had relented and bought Danny his own car in the last three days, maybe he was going to have at least that much go his way. It was a cruel disappointment when the clatter of feet on the stairs was too heavy for either Sam or Carmen. It was the heavy tromp, tromp of his son in a major hurry.
"Dad," Danny greeted him enthusiastically, bursting into the foyer. He was surprised to immediately get a major hug. Danny acknowledging him as his father and being anything but studiously sullen around him was so new that he was still adjusting. "You're back really fast."
"I was surprised myself. I really thought it would take longer," Daniel said neutrally. He had to derail Danny somehow or the ETA for him on the couch might be even sooner than initially anticipated.
"Dr. Jackson?" Carmen said, entering the foyer. It was her first pregnancy and at 4 months she looked more chubby than pregnant but still so lovely. Daniel had no trouble understanding how his son had fallen for this sweet girl with her Madonna-like face – a historical image of a Madonna, not the opportunistic singer. "It's so good to see you. Dr. Carter and Danny have been so worried. I guess it's a dangerous area around where you were looking for his mother. Guatemala does have its share of troubles."
"Carmen, we've told you to call us Daniel and Sam," he said automatically while thinking, "why did we have to pick Guatemala of all places as the bogus location for my disappearance and Danny's mother? Especially since he went ahead and picked a Latina for the love of his life."
"I know," she said regretfully, "but it makes me uncomfortable. My parents always stressed the need to show respect for adults. You're sure you wouldn't like Donna Sam and Don Daniel?"
That compromise just made him feel like he was in a Zorro movie that had been miscast with Anglos in the lead roles but it was really more important how she felt. She was the outsider here trying to fit into the family. "You call me whatever you like, Carmen," he responded and hugged her.
Danny couldn't stand it any more. "She's okay, right? My mother? I mean you're not back so fast because she's dead?"
Daniel was a little stunned by that question. It hadn't occurred to him that Danny's mind would work quite like that. He hated this. He couldn't even answer that question in front of Carmen or it would prejudice the only scenario he had been able to work out to bring Danny's mother to him. "Danny, we'll talk in a minute. I need you to help me get something out of the car, right now."
"YOU WHAT? I'm asking you if my mother is dead." Danny was amazed by his father's lack of sensitivity. This was the guy who was supposed to be the poster child for sensitivity if you listened to his mother talk.
Carmen bit her lip and put a gentling hand on Danny's arm. "I'm afraid I need to use the bathroom. Excuse me." Daniel watched her go, appreciating her sensitivity, while Danny continued to scowl, cluelessly, at him as they both listened to her walk slowly up stairs.
Daniel looked back at his outraged son and said, "Danny, Carmen can't know anything but the official story. You know far more than you're supposed to but it has to stop there."
Danny looked a bit mollified. "Okay, she's gone. Answer my question," he demanded and then belatedly tacked on, "please," reflecting that Carmen was civilizing him rapidly.
Daniel said, "No, she's not dead. She's absolutely fine."
"Wow. You found her, just like that, and she's fine. I'll have to let Carmen and Mom drag me to Mass more often. I was praying my head off, Dad. Wow. So, where is she? When can I see her?"
"She's not here. I mean, she didn't have a passport or anything. I couldn't just bring her into the country."
"Then we can go there, to Guatemala, right? I know it's not cheap but Dad surely we can afford to go and see her?"
"I'm a little puzzled, Danny. I showed up and you didn't want any part of me. You said you already had a dad. You've got a mother and you guys are tight. Why are you so hot to see your biological mother?"
Danny was a little taken aback. He hadn't thought about why he felt the way he did. "Maybe coming to terms with you and finding out that I didn't have to trade one father for another, that having two dads could actually be cool in some ways." He got impatient then. "Come on, Dad, answer the question."
"Danny, I'll be honest with you. I really don't want to go into it with you before I talk to your mother. I don't think she'd appreciate not being part of this from the beginning," Daniel said, deciding the only way to be fair to Danny without telling him everything was to just lay his cards on the table.
"You're afraid of Mom," Danny said incredulously. "I can't believe it. Dad sure as hell isn't but you're afraid of her." Danny lost some of his respect for Daniel. "She's out running. I'm not leaving until after she gets back AND you talk to her." He turned and walked out of the foyer and rapidly went upstairs.
Daniel slumped into an armchair and considered the situation. He was still really in the mood to jump Sam's bones. Maybe, somewhere in his subconscious, he felt like he had to in order to prove he was still the man and not, as his son thought, afraid of his wife. Okay, so he was hot. Sam would be hot too but the all sweaty from running 5 miles way. In his experience, this never left her anywhere close to being in the mood. "Just give it up, Daniel," he told himself. "It ain't happening for you tonight."
Sam went straight to shower after greeting him. "I'm sure we have a lot to talk about," she explained, "and I don't want to do it mired in my own sweat." Daniel also thought she was pulling a delaying tactic and he was right. They had talked long enough for her to know that he had found Danny's mother. Sam was a brilliant woman and had immediately discerned the can of worms that had been opened.
He sat on the bed, watching her dress. Finally he decided that he wasn't waiting on her timetable any more. He had done a complete about face and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible. "Her name's Debri," he said, "and she was really in a bad situation. The culture has some serious superstitions about people in her circumstances, people the slavers had in suspended animation, and she was being treated more or less like a leper. At the point I got her out of there, I think they were about to execute her as some sort of propitiation to the gods." Sam was standing stock still, one shoe on and the other in her hand, just staring at him. She was surprised at the situation but even more surprised that she had been in such a complete state of denial that she hadn't seen this coming. Daniel continued, "Surely you can see that, Sam. We couldn't leave her there."
"You brought her back here. She's at Cheyenne Mountain," Sam stated with a false calm that papered over some very strong emotions.
"Yeah."
"And she was in suspended animation. So she's what, only chronologically in her thirties?"
"Actually," he said, dreading the reaction he expected would be forthcoming, "she's a couple years older than Danny."
"You had sex with an underage girl?" Sam exploded.
"She wasn't underaged Sam. I think she was 19 which would make her 20 now. But their years and ours… I never tried to do the exact math."
"Does Danny know his mother is the same age he is?" Sam demanded with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"A bit older. No, Sam, I made a point of not telling him anything other than that I found her, she was okay, and I did mislead him a bit by implying she wasn't in the country. I hated lying to him but I could hardly tell him she was a few miles away but in quarantine because she's an alien." Daniel drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out again. "I knew you'd be upset if we didn't work out how to handle this together first."
"How DO you suggest we handle this?" Sam asked, still sounding upset with him, as she plopped down on the other end of the bed.
"We can't keep him from her forever," Daniel said reasonably. "I don't think we have the right to in any case."
"So what, we trot him into Cheyenne Mountain somehow bypassing all the clearances required?"
"They're not going to keep her there like some sort of prisoner, Sam. They'll either find a home for her on another world or they'll let her live here on earth. It'll be the former unless we intervene and Danny never will get to know her," Daniel ground to a halt with the alternatives thrown down between them.
Sam struggled to calm down. She knew she was being unfair. Her brain and her emotions were at war. She dipped her head for a moment and when she looked up at him, Daniel was pleased to see that her innate fairness and generosity of spirit had won out. "It would be us intervening because she'd have to be watched for awhile, helped. Who else would be willing to take on that responsibility," she said, summing up the obvious. "They were pretty uncooperative about Teal'c moving about freely outside the Mountain and they gave Jonas a hard time. Are you sure they'd be willing to go for it even if we raised our hands?"
"I had some preliminary conversations about the possibilities," he said holding up his hand to forestall her, "I said preliminary. I didn't commit us to anything."
"But it puts me in the same position I'm in with respect to Danny's baby, don't you see?" she said anguished. "You're all ready to raise his kid for him, take on his mother. If it doesn't happen, it's because I didn't want to. I've got good reasons for feeling the way I do. I do," she finished, almost wailing.
Daniel moved quickly to her side and wrapped his arms around her. "Oh honey," he whispered against her hair. "Life hasn't been too fair to you but in the end, it's about making the right choices with what we are given. I love you and I'll love you no matter what you want with respect to either of those decisions but then we'll have to live with the consequences including how we feel inside about the decisions we made."
She was crying now, the tears slipping silently down her cheeks and splashing on his hands. "Oh Daniel, just hold me." They sat quietly for a long time and then she stirred and wiped at her dried tears. "So, let's talk logistics. How do we explain the reality of this woman to Danny and Carmen and everyone else?"
"Her youthfulness makes it impossible for her to be his mother and the slight but apparent difference in their ages rules her out as a long lost twin sister but there has to be some strong connection for us to be taking her in, right?" Daniel said. He'd already thought about this for hours and thought he might have the answer. "So I'm thinking, she's his half sister. That'll work, right?" Sam nodded. "Next problem is this whole damn Guatemala thing. Irritates the hell out of me that we came up with that lame story in the first place. So I'm thinking, she's from some small Indian tribe, up in the mountains somewhere, that didn't speak Spanish. That would also explain her complete unfamiliarity with modern conveniences." Sam nodded again. "I'll work with her, teach her some rudimentary English, basic modern living, before she comes here so she'll fit in better and won't go into complete culture shock."
Sam didn't nod this time. Surely Daniel could see the pitfalls in the scenario he was setting up. "Does it have to be you?" she asked. "I still have clearances for the consulting work I do. Let me work with her."
"You don't trust me?" he asked.
"I trust you. I do. But she's coming in as a part of the family, which includes me, not as your second wife. Do they have polygamy on that planet, by the way?"
"I don't know," Daniel said but his innate honesty caused him to immediately amend the statement, "well, maybe they do, but I think it's only the headmen who get to have multiple wives."
"She probably thinks you're big deal. Are you sure she realizes that this is not what's happening?" Sam didn't wait for an answer, "I think my working with her instead would get some other relationships going."
"And depress any pretensions she might have?" Daniel asked, a trifle sharply.
"Let me ask you a question," Sam countered. "Just what was the nature of the relationship whereby she got pregnant by you?"
Daniel flushed. "We were captured together and imprisoned together. We turned to each other for comfort. She had some young man she was pining for. We never thought we were in love."
"I'm sure you didn't. I'll to be convinced that she didn't." Sam stood up. "So we go talk to Danny now?"
Later Daniel lay in the dark, silent bedroom next to the warm body of his wife staring up at the ceiling and thoroughly ashamed of himself. Why had he sold Sam so short? She had risen to the occasion beautifully. He certainly wasn't on the couch. Should he go for broke? He rolled on his side and ran a hand down her back to her buttocks and gently kneaded them. She didn't move away. Encouraged, he snuggled closer and kissed her neck. Still no rejection and he was sure from her breathing that she wasn't asleep. He slid his hand around and cupped her breast. She said, smiling to herself and glad that he had made an overture, quietly, "Is there perhaps something on your mind, Dr. Jackson?"
"I would really like to make passionate love to my beautiful wife," he said moving in a way that anticipated a positive response. He wasn't disappointed.
Sam and Daniel drove Debri home from Cheyenne Mountain together almost three months later. She sat in the backseat alone next to her carry-on style bag that held a week's supply of changes of clothing and toiletries. There was a shopping expedition planned for the next day. When they had mentioned it to her, she was confused. She already had more outfits than any but the wealthiest woman on her home world.
When they pulled into the garage, Daniel hopped out of the car very quickly and got the door open and her carry-on out before Sam could even get out of the car. He was willing to bet Sam was feeling like they were the chauffeurs sitting up front and Debri was a visiting princess although she had grabbed the shotgun seat like a high schooler to make sure that Daniel and Debri were not together alone in the front. Debri emerged slowly, and stood uncertainly of where she was supposed to go.
Daniel put an arm lightly around her back to reassure her and draw her into the house leaving Sam to tag along behind. he was surprised that Danny hadn't appeared in the garage, unable to wait any longer. He expected him in the kitchen but he wasn't there either. In fact, the house seemed awfully quiet. The explanation appeared in the form of a block lettered note on a legal pad propped up on the table in the breakfast nook. "I cut myself. Carmen drove me to Emergency Room. Danny"
Daniel and Sam exchanged a stricken look. Debri immediately pleaded, "Please tell me what it is?"
Before answering her, Daniel said to Sam, "We don't know which emergency room, do we?" The house was almost equidistant between two hospitals.
"I'll call," she said immediately and stepped to the phone.
Daniel drew Debri away from the phone a bit further and said quietly, "Danny cut himself somehow and Carmen took him to get it taken care of."
Debri gasped and put her hand over her mouth. She looked at Daniel with tragic eyes. Daniel and Sam had both noted that Debri believed she was under some sort of curse and she expected bad things to happen to her. Sam had gotten an answer from the first hospital she called and they were about to go out the door when Daniel's cell phone sounded. He snatched it up and opened it to hear Danny's voice. "Dad, I tried to call you before but your cell wasn't answering. I guess you were in the mountain. Everything is okay. I was hacking at a frozen candy bar. I just needed a couple of stitches. We're on our way home."
"That's good news, Danny. Sam and I and Debri are here waiting for you." He closed the phone and shared the outcome with Debri and Sam. They took Debri's things upstairs and returned to wait for Danny and Carmen, sitting around the breakfast table with soft drinks.
Daniel leaned back and said to Sam, "The two of them rushing off to the hospital made me flash on when she goes into labor. It's not really that far away and there has still been no decision about what happens with the baby. I think they both believe that you and I are taking it just because you've never said anything since it came up and they really want that to be how it works out. If you aren't going to go for that, they need to know immediately. If you are, we have a lot to do to get a nursery set up"
Sam looked upset and said, "I know. You think I don't know."
On the heels of her statement, Debri broke in, "What is meaning what is happening with the baby, with my grandchild?"
Daniel looked at Sam with something just under the surface of his gaze. He was not pleased at all with her unwillingness to get on board the idea that they would raise the child. He decided to let her explain it. Sam groped for words, "Carmen and Danny are too young to be parents. They both need more education to have the kind of future they deserve. We need to decide if we are going to raise the child or they give it up for adoption." Daniel's body language was shouting quite audibly that she was the one who had to make this decision. He already had.
Debri backed up a step and looked at her as if she was a monster. "You know Daniel, one reason my people hate me is because my child is not with me. It was no my fault but it is a very bad thing. You child is your child. I am very sad my son does not know this. Why did you not teach him?"
Sam was instantly irritated. Debri seemed to have that effect on her. Daniel tried to explain, "It is different with us. There are many people who cannot have their own babies. They will give a very good home to a baby and make it theirs."
"No, no," she said forcefully and shook her head. "No. This is my grandchild. It can no go to strangers. I never have my Danny when he was baby. His baby time was taken from me. I will be mother to this baby. YOU," she fixed Sam with a glare, "do not need to worry."
Sam was about to boil over and Daniel tried to avert the explosion. "Debri, that is very fine of you but you would have a hard time raising a child alone. You will need to get skills and get a job."
"I am not alone unless you would put mother of your child on street?" Debri asked amazed and sounding bitterly disillusioned in Daniel. "I bear you child and you would put me out to make my way alone? She never bear child and you take care of her."
Sam was over it. "We need to understand some things now, Debri. I told you these things many times already. The ways of the people here are different. Women are not cared for by their parents until they marry someone who cares for them. We all take care of ourselves. Daniel and I want to help you but when you know enough, you will need to help yourself."
Debri looked at Daniel, "This woman she talks for you? Does she make your decisions? You were a man when I knew you. Has she taken that from you. Perhaps because she is old, she is afraid."
Daniel said slowly, enunciating each word carefully, "Sam is my wife. Marriage is a partnership between two equals. She does not make my decisions but I do not make hers either. You will show respect to Sam or you cannot stay here."
Suddenly Debri stopped listening to him and a huge smile broke over her face. She got up from the table so hastily that her chair crashed to the floor. Daniel turned around to see Danny in the doorway with Carmen right behind him. He was looking at Debri with an expression of wonder. Her lustrous waist length hair swung out behind her as she ran to him. They hugged each other fiercely and then she pulled back to look in his eyes. "Ah, my Danny," she finally said at last and hugged him again.
Carmen said something inaudible behind him and Danny released Debri and turned to put an arm around Carmen and pull her forward. "Carmen, this is my m…my half-sister Debri. Debri, this is my wife, Carmen."
Debri's smile did not reach her eyes and her greeting was cool. Daniel groaned inwardly. Carmen's willingness to give up her child had placed in a very unfavorable light with Debri. She linked arms with Danny and drew him into the living room, saying, "Tell me all about yourself."
Carmen stood staring, unbelieving after the two of them. Sam went to her side and Carmen said softly, sounding hurt, "I just took him to the hospital, I'm having his child, and he ignores me for a half-sister he has never seen before."
"I'm sorry Carmen," Sam apologized. "Debri is a little hard to take. Hopefully she'll change when she gets used to things. Would you like me to help you upstairs?" Carmen nodded gratefully.
Daniel sat with his head in his hands, thinking wistfully of how much simpler things had been before Carmen and then Debri came to live with Sam and him. It felt a little like being a guard in a harem although, thank heavens, he hadn't been castrated yet. A few minutes later, Sam returned and plopped down across from him. "How could you ever have any kind of a relationship with that little ingrate?" she hissed at him.
He closed his eyes and sighed.