Title: Safe Bet
Chapter: Lies Kept
Summary: "Yeah, but what good is easy, if it's just going to cost your soul?"
Disclaimer: Nah, not my show and not my characters. Aside from that, I don't make any money off of my fiction. I'm just borrowing them for a bit.
Authors Note: Well, I'm gonna try and clear up a few things. There are two options you can choose for why Pete called O'Neill, one; he was just being nice or, two; he was doing it to get back at Sam, in a way. Pete's a cop, he's smart, he knows how much Carter is going to stress over the fact that he let her secret slip, and he also knows that with the regulations that stand, there can be nothing between the two. You can pick either one. I'm choosing because he was being a nice guy, stepping aside, and because he loves Sam, trying to make her happy. With Jack going to her house, that's simply because he was confused. After all this time when Sam has been pretending to be happy with Pete she left him, and moreover, she didn't tell him about it. They're close friends, so he doesn't really understand why she wouldn't let him know. He just wanted some answers, and he was tired of being left out in the dark. As for Sam being rude, I explained that in the chapter. She was backed into a corner, and the last thing she wanted was to confirm whatever Pete might have said, so she had to get away from him so she wouldn't slip and say something that she shouldn't. I know that was extremely long, but I hope it cleared some things up.
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Samantha Carter had lost her cool. For years she had been calm and collected, it was a requirement of her job to remain level-headed and rational. With, quite frankly, the most important, and relatively, most dangerous job on the planet, she couldn't run around screaming every time there were complications, in the forms of bombs and alien invasions. But, she was not at work, and this had nothing to do with explosives or demonic snakes from outerspace. This was her life, her personal life, and it was falling to pieces. "Pete called him, Cassie," she explained frantically, her glass of wine nearly empty. "He called him and he told him that I broke up with him. God knows what else he might have said, but unfortunately, I have no clue!"
"Calm down, Sam," the college student ordered. "I can be at your place in ten minutes. Is that okay with you? Are you alright by yourself until then?"
The woman snorted, "I'm not actually in danger, Cass, at least not physically. My entire life is going to end up a bit screwed after this, but at least I have my health..."
"Well," the girl replied, "hold on to that thought and I'll be right over." She hung up without even saying goodbye and Sam sighed, letting the phone drop to the couch and retreating back into the kitchen, where her bottle of wine was open on the counter. She was going to have to get so drunk in order to force herself to work in the morning, and at the moment, she had no problem doing so.
When Cassie arrived, she didn't even bother knocking on the door. Had it been locked she would have used her spare key, but it wasn't, so she just walked right on inside. Sam wasn't in the living room, but she really hadn't expected her to be. Her next place to look was the kitchen, although she wasn't there either, however, it was apparent she had been. There was a half empty glass of wine on the counter, next to a clearly used glass. Cassie laid down her purse and keys next to the alcohol and began her tour of the rest of the house. "Sam?" she called out, as she left the kitchen.
As she walked down the hallway, she noticed the light to Sam's bedroom was on, while all the others were dark. She passed up every room, until she got to the head of the hallway, where she rapped lightly on the door, "Sam?" she questioned. "You in there?"
"Yeah," the older woman's voice called from the other side. "Come on in."
And so Cassie did. Sam was standing in the middle of the room, staring at her bed, which held a whole lot of men's clothes, along with a few books and other items. "What's going on?" she asked, looking up at Sam with confusion. "What's all of this?"
"Pete's things," she said quietly. "He's gonna want them back, right?" Looking up at Cassie, she got an idea, "You can call him... tell him to drop by while you're on vacation and pick them up. When I'm at work. And while you're on the phone with him, you can casually mention a conversation you and general O'Neill might or might not have had..." her look was hopeful and Cassie was floored by how unwrapped she had become. "Please Cassie, I have to know."
"Sam," she replied, sitting down on the bed, "what is wrong with you? I don't think I've ever seen you even remotely like this before. It's like you're falling apart."
Sam sighed and sat down on the bed next to her, "You didn't see his face," she finally said. "The look in his eyes. He knew. Pete had to have told him, because he was just waiting for me to confirm what he had already been told. And then," she looked down at her hands, "I panicked." Laughing bitterly she continued, "I didn't know what to do, so I kicked him out. I was mean and hateful and I said everything I could to get him to leave. It hurt him, but I can deal with that latter. What I can't deal with is him trying to get the truth out of me, because the truth isn't allowed, and the lie is just so much easier."
"Yeah, but what good is easy, if it's just going to cost your soul?"
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Jack scowled, as Daniel's voice mail picked up once again. He had called Davis' twice, and Daniel's cell three times, and each and every time, he either got a clueless girlfriend or Daniel instructing him to leave a message in German or Russian or some other language. Probably a combination of a few, knowing the archeologist. Teal'c was off-world, and he didn't have any other friends he could talk to about what was bothering him. They wouldn't be able to understand, with all of the downplaying he would be required to do.
He drove home in silence, ignoring the radio and speeding in order to get there quicker. When he arrived, he pulled a beer from his fridge and fell onto his sofa. Life, at that moment, pretty much sucked.
Maybe Pete had been lying to him. The two certainly weren't friends, and he had gotten the impression a few times that the cop couldn't have cared less for him, so why all of a sudden would he be so generous. But, the lie would make no sense, unless he wanted to make him feel like an idiot, and how would that effect Carter?
So, for then, he was left believing that what the cop from Denver had told him was the truth. Maybe he had been too hasty, rushing over to her house like that. Well, down right stupid was more like it. What had he hoped to find out? That it was, indeed, the truth? Where did that leave him? Nowhere. It wasn't like he could do anything about it, anyway. And the knowledge would just make working together all the more harder.
Was that why she had kicked him out like that? Why she had kept the secret from him? Why she had been so hurtful?
Cursing himself for acting before thinking, he took another drink from his beer. How on earth, or any other planet, was he going to face her in the morning?
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Although Cassie really didn't want to talk to the man, whom she had never really liked in the first place, she knew that Sam was depending on her to do so. And as much as she disliked Pete, she hated seeing Sam so bent out of shape, and was willing to do anything to get her insanely calm friend back. Somehow, though, she didn't think this phone call was going to solve that problem.
He answered on the third ring. "Hello? Peter Shanahan?... This is Cassie Fraiser."
"Sam's friend?" he asked, a bit surprised to hear from her.
"Yeah... I was just calling to let you know that I'm going to be at her place for all of next week, so if you want to come by and pick up your things one day, I'll be here..."
"Oh," he replied, "okay." There was a pause, "How is she doing?"
Looking behind her, she winced, Sam was watching her and there was no way she was going to answer that question while in the same room with the woman. Walking out of the bedroom, she made her way down the hall and slid out the back door, "Truthfully? Worse than I have ever seen her, at the moment." Before he had a chance to reply, she explained. "You said something, to Jack. She knows that you said something, but she doesn't know what it is, and at the moment, she's freaking out." Cassie paused, then breathed deeply, "Please... what did you tell him?"
"I just let him know that she broke up with me," he replied, "and that it was because of him..."
"You did what!" she practically yelled. Calming herself down, she said in a patio chair and sighed, "That was not a very good thing to do, Pete. You do know that Sam's not even allowed to have romantic feelings for him, don't you?"
"Well... yeah, but I mean come on, they've both saved the world, I saw them do it myself," he paused, "that has to count for something, right?"
"They don't get any special privileges for what they do, although if you asked me, that wouldn't be such a bad idea," the girl leaned back in her chair and sighed once more. "That's all that you said?"
"Yes, that's it. I didn't mean to stress her out," Cassie couldn't tell if he was telling the truth or pulling her leg. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah, well... if you'll excuse me, I have to go do some damage control."
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Sam was sitting on her couch when Cassie came back in from outside. She nearly jumped out of her seat, and stood in the living room, waiting for the girl. "So?" she asked nervously, "what did he say?"
The girl seemed to school her expression, as she walked further into the room. "He told me that all he said to Jack was that you broke up with him, and had done so because of Jack." A wince passed across her face as she stood before her in the middle of the living room, "I am so sorry, Sam, I don't know what to say."
"He knows," she whispered, her eyes closing in defeat. "After all these years of having to keep it a secret, and now it's out there in the open..." she sank back into the couch, leaning her head against the back. "What am I going to do?"
"You are going to go to bed and sleep off all of the alcohol you drank," Cassie informed her. "I am going to drive over to Jack's house and straighten some things out."
"Cassie," she protested, "no–"
"Don't worry about it, Sam," Cassie promised, "everything is going to be fine. Just, trust me, okay?"
The woman nodded, "Alright. I trust you. If I'm asleep when you get home, will you wake me up?"
Nodding, Cassie kissed her on the cheek, "I will. Now, go lay down, you're going to have a hangover in the morning, and you'll need all of the sleep that you can get."
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Jack was still laying on his sofa, the same bottle of beer resting idly in his hand, when there was a knock at the door. As quickly as the sound entered his house, the door was being opened, and a dark haired college student was stepping inside without permission to do so. "Cassie?" he questioned, sitting up on his couch. "What are you–"
She sighed and walked into the living room, her eyes falling on the beer. "You two are so damn alike it's sickening."
"What ar–"
"We need to talk about a few things, Jack..." she informed him. "No, I need to tell you a few things, and you need to listen to me without trying to interrupt. Okay?"
"Yeah, sure..."
"Pete called you today, right? Told you that Sam had broken up with him. He also let it slip that she did so because of you." Jack was a bit surprised that she knew all of the details, but he had learned never to put anything past the daughter of a woman who had known everything there was to know, especially if it was gossip. "You then went to confront Sam about it. I gotta tell you Jack, that was probably the dumbest thing you've ever done."
He winced, "I know–"
"You're not interrupting, remember?" she asked. "What did you think was going to happen, Jack? She would admit it, and you two would live happily ever after?" Without waiting for a reply, she folded her arms across her chest, "Newsflash, you're her commanding officer and you two aren't allowed to have a storybook ending. And this is Sam we're talking about, she's better at keeping secrets than Victoria." Catching his confused look she sighed, "The store? Victoria's Secret?" A look of realization washed over his face and that was enough for her. "She's in a bad way at the moment, Jack, freaking out about what you know and how you're going to react. I think she's afraid she's going to lose her job."
"That's ridcu–"
"You need to let this drop," the girl informed him. "For a little while, at least. Act like it never happened, go on like things are completely normal, and keep pretending that the two of you aren't in love with each other." Sighing, the girl laid her hand on his arm, "Also, I think it'd be the best for both of you, if you tried to stay out of her way at work tomorrow, and maybe the next day. Just, give her some time to recollect and return to her normal, way too serious, self." She took a deep breath, and looked at him pointedly, "Okay?"
Jack nodded, "Yeah, alright. I can do that."
"I'm really sorry you've got to go through all of this Jack, I can't even imagine how bad it sucks for you two," she leaned back, resting her head against the couch. "Maybe one day all of this will go away and you two can finally be happy, but until then, the last thing she needs is to be worried about what you know and what you're oblivious to."
"I never meant to hurt her." he promised. "I don't even know if I was thinking when I went over there. I guess I was just tired of all the sneaking around, all the lies."
Smiling sadly, the girl nodded, and stood up. "Just to let you know, whatever she told you today, she didn't mean it. She was taken by surprise and was just trying to get you to leave before you found anything out."
He sighed, "That's good to know."
She nodded, "Goodnight, Jack."
"Yeah, night..."
Turning, she walked out of the house, closing the door behind her. Jack laid back down on his sofa, staring at the blank TV screen, wondering how on earth he had managed to screw things up so badly.
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A/N: I hope this chapter doesn't come off as a leap or anything, but I think that, were Janet alive, she would have probably done something like that, so the next best thing is Cassie... Just a thought. And, I know, there was no Daniel and the president in this! AH! The next chapter will probably be based solely on that part of the story, if not that mostly. Anyway, please review!
