Why?
Jack stepped through the Stargate last, Daniel meeting them at the bottom of the steps. A blur flew past Teal'c and Sam and latched itself onto Jack's legs.
He smiled and looked down. "Hey cutie," he said to Tay, picking her up.
"Daddy has something he says he really needs to show Dr. Carter," she rambled.
Jack looked up at Teal'c, then back over at Daniel, who looked almost nervous.
"Teal'c, would you mind escorting Ka'suf and Tay back to the village?" Jack asked in his I'm-the-boss-so-do-it tone.
Teal'c nodded as Jack set Tay down. Ka'suf had been standing back, watching, knowing he'd be asked to take his granddaughter back with him.
"You're not from their home are you?" Tay asked Teal'c, somewhat hiding behind Ka'suf.
"I am not," Teal'c answered, nodding his head.
"How do you know Daddy an' Unka Jack?"
"I watched them defeat Ra and followed O'Neill through the Chappa'ai. I have joined in their fight to one day rid the Universe of the Goa'uld."
Tay's eyes grew wide, and Ka'suf could tell she hadn't understood a word of it. He laughed and let them through the village gates.
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"I didn't want to show you this until I had it completely translated." Daniel led them into the caves where they had found the cartouche. "I was exploring one day and came across this."
The room was huge. The ceiling looked to be about 15 feet high, but the room itself was at least 50 feet square. Goa'uld symbols and ancient Egyptian writing covered the walls.
Sam and Daniel immediately broke into a fit of banter. Something about planetary shift and mathematics, Jack wasn't really paying attention, he didn't want to give up his ignorant image. He just stood in the middle of the room, staring at the 'glyphs. Suddenly, his joys and problems seemed exponentially small.
"I have returned, O'Neill," he suddenly heard behind him. It startled him, even though he knew he should have been on alert.
"Jeez, Teal'c!" Jack almost shouted.
"I am sorry, I seem to have startled you."
"Aw, gee, ya think?" Jack snapped back. He flinched as soon as he said it. He normally wasn't so calloused towards Teal'c.
"Is something wrong, O'Neill?"
"Just itching to get home," Jack answered vaguely.
"Is your wife progressing favorably?"
Jack's head snapped up, his eyes wide. "How'd you know? You know what, I don't even want to know." He shook his head and looked back up at the Jaffa. "Yeah, she's just a little hungrier than last time, but she seemed fine this morning." Jack leaned his arm on the P-90 hanging from his shoulder and watched Sam and Daniel adamantly discussing wormhole physics and history, two subjects jack never thought could fit together.
There was a clicking and suddenly, Hammond's voice came shooting out of his shoulder.
"SG-1, this is General Hammond. Do you copy?"
"SGC, this is Colonel O'Neill, go ahead."
"Colonel, you need to return to base immediately."
"Something wrong, General?"
"Teal'c and Dr. Carter can finish up there. Send Captain Jackson through with them."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow to Jack curious as to what was going on. Jack figured it better not to question Jack.
"Copy, Sir, I'm on my way back now." Jack shrugged at Teal'c and headed towards Daniel and Sam. "Hammond wants me back at the base. You guys can finish up here."
"Everything okay, Jack?" Sam asked. She looked up from Daniel's translations for a brief moment.
"I'm not sure yet." Jack was turning to leave when his radio crackled to life again.
"Colonel, the Academy hospital just called back, it was a false alarm. Continue your mission and check in as scheduled," Hammond's voice echoed in the cavernous room.
Jack threw up his arms in frustration and clicked his radio. "Copy that, O'Neill out." Then, as if a brick had just hit him in the back, Jack stiffened. Sara! Suddenly, he was back at the hospital, holding her, standing over Charlie's limp, cold body.
"Sir? Is… is Sara okay?" he quietly asked.
"I'm not sure, son. We haven't been filled in."
"Thank you, O'Neill out." Jack returned to where Sam and Daniel were talking, Teal'c had joined them.
"Colonel, what's wrong?" Daniel asked, noticing Jack's face had gone deathly white.
"I don't know, I think it's Sara." Jack flopped onto the dusty dirt floor, a cloud rising up around him.
"Jack," Daniel said, becoming personal. "It is Sara, isn't it?"
"I think so. The hospital called the base. Hammond said it was just a false alarm." Jack dropped his head in his hands. Sam could see a single tear hit the dirt.
"She's not due yet is she?" Daniel asked matter-of-factly.
Jack's head shot straight up, his eyes boring holes into Daniel's head. The shock on his face told Daniel Jack didn't know Hammond had told him.
"How does everybody know?" Jack jumped up. He put on his military bravado, pretending he wasn't hurting, like they had violated protocol. He quickly relaxed again, realizing who he was with.
"No, she's not," he answered quietly. The fear he now gave up trying to hide, shone through, overpowering any strength he'd been trying to portray.
"How much longer?" Sam asked. She put her hand on his shoulder, knowing he needed a nonmilitary friend by his side.
"Ten weeks." Jack's face contorted into one of hurt, fear, and concern.
"Colonel O'Neill, you're needed back home," the radio suddenly crackled to life. It wasn't Hammond's voice.
"Dammit!" Jack shouted. He turned and ran out of the cave, adrenaline pushing him harder than he could ever remember. No! Nonononono! He wasn't ready for this, Sara wasn't ready for this. They couldn't lose another child. Sara couldn't handle that.
He had to smile ironically at how much he had changed. His main concern was Sara and the child instead of himself.
He stumbled in the sand, hitting his knees. He struggled to get up, using his gun as a crutch to stand up on. He continued running, ignoring the pain in his knee. He had aggravated an old hockey injury, but he didn't care. He had to get to Sara to be by her side.
The dialing process seemed to take longer than usual. He drummed a cadence on the butt of his P-90 with is fingers as he stood off to the side so he wouldn't' be disintegrated by the vortex. When the Kawoosh had settled, he ran through the event horizon.
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Jack sat in the hard plastic chair next to Sara's bed. She was sleeping at the moment, exhausted from the day's work. He held her hand, stroking her fingers, so upset he hadn't made it there sooner.
Dr. Fraiser had ridden with him from the SGC, assuring him that nothing would happen. With all their medical advances, she had told him, it would be almost impossible for anything to happen to Sara or the child. Jack desperately wanted to believe her, but the gut wrenching lurches his stomach was giving him said otherwise.
Now he was sitting next to his overly pale wife, in the hospital, over two months early and with absolutely no understanding as to why any of this was happening. He ran his hands through her dark brown hair, silent tears running down his face.
"Colonel," he heard behind him. It sounded so far away, distant. This was not happening to them!
"Jack." He heard this one a little softer, closer. He couldn't bring himself to look at the speaker, so he kept his eyes fixed forward.
A gentle hand rested on his shoulder, but he couldn't acknowledge it. He remembered those hands all to well. It had never been anybody in particular, just everybody, anybody who'd ever tried to comfort him. He had felt those hands to much in the past, when his father died, when Charlie died… He knew what they meant.
"Please, don't," he whispered softly. He closed his eyes tightly, not wanting to see who it was. He knew, but didn't want to face her.
"Colonel O'Neill," Janet said softly. "We need to take some blood, from you. We found some abnormalities in Sara's."
"What type of abnormalities?" Jack asked. He refused to look up at Janet, to see in her eyes everything he feared.
"She's having an adverse reaction to some sort of bacteria. It looks like it's been lying dormant in her system for months." Janet looked away from him, purposely trying not to look at his face. She knew what he was thinking, and she was afraid he might be right.
I killed my wife and child! He tried to swipe away that first thought but it just stuck like rotten peanut butter. He knew what "for months" meant. He could feel her turn away from him.
"Dammit!" he shouted, pounding his fist into the arm of the chair. The weak plastic shattered under the force, some of the splinters shooting into his hand.
Janet winced. "Colonel, this is not your fault!" She grabbed his hand and started looking it over. He struggled to pull it away, but it just mad her grip on his wrist stronger.
"I brought it back with me! Of course it's my fault!" Jack's voice elevated with every word.
"This… thing, could have been brought back by any of the SG teams and transmitted to you." She stood, picking the plastic shards out of Jack's hand. "We're transferring her to the SGC," she added calmly.
"Probably the best." His voice sounded flat, deflated this time. He was trying to separate himself from the situation, she could tell, the worst thing he could do right now.
"She needs you, Jack. Don't hole up on her now."
Jack didn't look at her. He didn't need to, his body language told her everything she needed to know.
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Now, two hours later, Sara was secured in the infirmary, Jack's throbbing, bandaged hand was the least of his worries. The bacteria, they now knew, had been brought back by Jack. He wondered if this was what Thor had meant by stopping their "ritual of procreation."
As the thought finished running through his head, Thor showed up next to him in holographic form.
"We are sorry, O'Neill. We were called by your Dr. Carter. We did not realize the bacteria would be harmful."
Jack stared in disbelief. They had known about this when he returned!
"What!" Jack screamed.
"When we first detected the organism, it was improving your immune system. It seems to be trying to do the same here. The child is being treated as a foreign entity."
"There's nothing you can do, right? No technological interference, huh?" Jack said bitterly.
"Most of the System Lords have been eradicated. That treaty no longer exists."
"But…" Jack led on. He knew there was something Thor wasn't telling him.
"We do not know how we can help without causing the death of one or the other. We do not know what we can do to help."
Jack started fuming, his face turning bright red. They sent him home knowing there was a foreign organism in his body and now his family was paying for it. He could possibly lose one or both of them. His hand started throbbing again with his raised blood pressure.
"J… Jack?"
He quickly turned from Thor.
"Sara, honey," Jack said leaning closer to her. "How do you feel?" He held her hand, trying to avoid pulling the IV.
"It hurts," she cried softly. She gripped his hand tighter, causing him to turn away and wince. "I caught that," she tried to smile. "What happened?"
"Temper," Jack ashamedly answered. As much as he didn't want to, he forced himself to look into her eyes.
"Sara," he said quietly. "This, what's happening to you, it's my fault."
"No, Jack…" She winced again as the pain racked through her body. "It's not."
"You don't understand." This was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. "What's happening… it's a bacteria I brought back with me."
"Jack, that's not your fault." Her voice tried to stay calm as her face showed her pain. "Jack, it hurts. Something's wrong." Tears streamed down her face like waterfalls.
"I know. This bacteria, it's supposed to boost the immune system, but while it's doing that it's trying to flush out anything it thinks doesn't belong. That's what it's doing to the baby. At least that's how Thor explained it. Dr. Fraiser should be coming up soon." Jack ran his fingers up and down her arm in comfort. He slowly brushed her hair out of her eyes.
"What's going to happen to us? Our baby?" Sara cried.
"I don't know, honey," he replied. He couldn't hide his fear, not from her. He wasn't going to lie to her anymore, especially now.
As he held her as close to in his arms as he could he felt her shudder and tense, the pain racing through her body evident to him.
At that moment Janet ran through the doors to the infirmary. "Colonel," she stated, all business. She studied the monitors for what seemed like an eternity. "Jack, she's going into labor."
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Sam, Daniel and Teal'c sat outside the infirmary, quietly, each one showing their worry in their own way. Sam's eyes were bloodshot from too much work and too little sleep. The chairs around her were littered with reports she was studying, her laptop balanced on her lap. Daniel paced the room, then would stop and sit for maybe five minutes before he got up and paced some more. Teal'c had put himself into a deep state of Kel-no-reem, recently once he realized his symbiote was struggling.
It had been 36 hours since they had returned from Abydos. None of them had been anywhere else on base since. They couldn't leave their CO, their family. Sam had even had a passing Airman bring her the work she had in front of her now, not wanting to leave in case they heard some news.
Teal'c slowly came out of his meditation, disturbed by Daniel's constant pacing.
"CaptainJackson, would it not be beneficial to give your body some rest?" he more like stated. His eyebrow raised, waiting for Daniel's reply.
"That annoying, huh?" Daniel gave a half-hearted grin.
"Indeed."
In the silence that followed, none of them quite knowing what to say, they could hear the familiar footfalls of General Hammond. Judging by the increasing volume, he was heading their way.
"As you were people," he said without giving them a chance to stand. "I've ordered all intercoms to the infirmary shut down for the time being. Your pagers must remain on at all times. We have civilians on base. The infirmary is the only place they're cleared."
Hammond nodded towards the team and walked on into the infirmary. He knew better than to order his flagship team home. They wouldn't leave, they would never leave, not while one of their own was in trouble.
Jack's team was just settling down again when they realized it was no longer the General's footsteps they heard. This second set, familiar only to Daniel, was getting eerily close.
"Throw this on," he said, chucking a Boonie hat to Teal'c, who responded with the usual eyebrow raise.
"Trust me," Daniel replied. "It's Mike."
"Who?" Sam asked, looking up from her reports.
"Sara's father." Daniel dropped his voice as the footsteps entered the room.
"Daniel," Mike said, nodding in his direction. The older man sat, reluctantly, in one of the empty chairs surrounding them. He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, worry racking his body.
"What can you tell me?" The tension ran thick through the air.
"Unfortunately, not much, Sir. We know hardly anything at all. Janet, er, Dr. Fraiser was still speculating on the possibilities last we were to-"
Before Daniel could finish, Janet walked through the doors, her scrubs still hanging on her body. The sight horrified anyone unfortunate enough to be in the room. Blood covered her frond and dripped off the ends of the shirt and down the pants. She slowly, purposefully, approached Mike, knowing who he was on instinct.
"Sir, you should go in and talk to Jack," she said without much of an explanation. She slowly shook her head, knowing what he was going to ask next.
Mike numbly nodded and stood. He couldn't hear Daniel and Sam pumping the doctor for information, or even the sound of his own shoes on the cement floor, just the short uneven breaths coming from one, usually stone faced, Colonel O'Neill.
Jack sat next to the still form of his wife, staring at her, willing her to wake back up. He stroked her arm and hands gently, mostly to hide the rage he felt ensuing from the depths of his very being.
"Jack."
"It's a little boy," he said, trying to avoid the topic he knew was coming. He could feel his eyes burning, wanting to let the tears flow, pushing them back all the same.
"The second she saw him, I thought she would be okay. Her eyes brightened, she smiled." He couldn't help it now, the tears were pushing too hard.
Mike stared down at his baby girl, grief surging through his body. He wanted to blame Jack, almost.
"She gave me a second chance at being a husband, a father and at life. Now I'm no longer a husband, our son is so small he's in danger, too, and life is just laughing at me!" He flopped back in his chair, the rage slowly receding but replaced by nothingness. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel, just that he didn't.
Mike could see in the younger man's eyes he was drawing back from reality, much like he had after Charlie's death.
"Jack, what about the rest of your family?" he asked, trying to bring him back.
"You know as well as I do I have none," Jack replied, a coldness to his voice and eyes.
"Then you're more of a fool than I thought you were," Mike confronted him. The words had come out harsher than he'd intended, but that didn't matter now. "There are three very dedicated team members of yours waiting outside this room, judging by the looks of them, they've been here just as long as you have."
"God, all the battles I've been through, the scraps I've gotten into, I've never seen so much blood." Jack lowered his eyes. He still felt sick to his stomach.
"What happened, Jack?" Mike asked, anxious to know how his daughter died.
"This bacteria thing, 'immune boosting' made her body react to the baby like a disease. It thinned her blood as well. She couldn't clot and when she hemorrhaged, she just… bled to death. The more blood we put in her, the more she bled. She finally told me to stop and let her go. She said it hurt to much. Then she told me she loved me and… and Jonathan."
"Jonathan?"
"When he was placed in her arms, she looked at me and said, 'He's a junior, Jack.' I can't deny her that."
"No, I don't suppose you can," Mike replied with a small grin.
"Sir, I feel I should tell you that…" He paused, suddenly unsure of whether he really wanted to say what he was thinking.
"Yes, son?"
"The bacteria, I brought it back with me, from a mission I was on. We didn't know it. The, um… people I was with recorded it as a beneficial bacteria and let me go home."
"That doesn't make it your fault, Jack. This is about as much your fault as Charlie's death was." Mike rested his hand on Jack's shoulder.
"That's comforting," he replied sarcastically.
"Jack, you didn't pull that trigger on your son and you didn't inject that bacteria into my daughter."
"Um… well, in a way… I… did." Jack gave his half-squint/grimace and looked away.
"What? Oh… Ooooh." Mike suddenly realized what Jack meant by that and was a little more than taken aback.
"I didn't know she was… expecting She didn't tell me."
"I see."
"What am I supposed to do now?" The question was obviously vague, but Mike could tell what he was thinking.
"You'll figure something out, you always do."
Jack stood, leaned forward and kissed Sara's head. "Goodbye, my love," he cried to her. His tears splashed across her lifeless face. He stood back up, reluctantly released her hand, and placed his hand on Mike's shoulder. "I'll leave you alone with her."
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Jack rolled over to face the cold, empty half of his king sized bed, a surge of grief washing over him. His bed had never seemed quite so large until now. He fought back the urge to throw anything he could reach and grabbed Sara's pillow, hugging it to his chest.
Have to get up, got a debriefing. Jack numbly slid out from under the covers and plodded his way over to the bathroom.
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"I'm putting SG-1 on two months downtime. Captain Jackson, Teal'c, you're free to return to your homes. Dr. Carter, if you would like, you are cleared to join any other SG teams until then." General Hammond stood and closed his leather folder. "Dismissed."
The team stood, Daniel facing Jack.
"Two months?"
"Dr. Fraiser projects that's when J.J. can be released," Jack responded solemnly.
A/N: Okay i hope you like it, next chapter is Lonely, so i hope i can get it out fast enough. Please r and r.!