TITLE: They Do Not Make Them As They Once Did

RATING: PG-13

SEASON: Season 10

SPOILERS: Anything from season 1 to 10 is fair game

CATERGORY: Angst/ HC

PAIRING: Sam/Jack

SUMMARY: Had Sam become complacent over the last decade? An episode tag for season 10 episode 'Insiders' and how I have come to rationalize her behaviour as of late.

WARNINGS: One moderate swear word and a few mild ones

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. The whole 10 years of Stargate, including the intergalactic mess that is seasons 9 and 10, is entirely the responsibility of MGM, Sci Fi and the writers.

Sam stood in the now empty base gymnasium punching the stuffing out of a punch bag that had been suspended from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. After the Ba'al incident, the whole base had been unusually active as access codes and data encryptions had to be changed and entirely new procedures had needed to be put into place should any such event occur again.

Should any such event occur again, Sam half snorted half laughed at the voice in her head, you shouldn't have damn well allowed it to happen in the first place! It wasn't unusual for Sam to take such a blatant failure to heart or even to place most of the blame onto her own shoulders. After all, she had been the one who had given that snake-headed bastard access to the base's database and with it, all of the knowledge that they had as to the whereabouts of Merlin's weapon. Thanks to her inability to respond appropriately to a hostage negotiation scenario not only were they fighting against the Ori for the weapon but now they had to deal with Ba'al and his clones as well!

Sam punched the bag hard. She barely recognised herself any more. Life as a female Air Force Officer had never been easy. From day one she'd had to fight the prejudices and sexist remarks of her fellow Airmen about how she was "too pretty to be a soldier", "too geeky to be trusted in combat", how most of the people she had met had instantaneously underestimated her IQ because of her "blue eyes, blonde hair and bra size". In truth, Sam Carter could handle all of that in the best way she knew how. She worked her ass off at the Academy to graduate top of her class, never put a foot out of line and ignored the constant jibes and leers she'd had to endure on an almost daily basis. Every inch of the way up the chain of command, Sam had fought tooth and nail against the stereotype of a career military woman and she had mostly succeeded. She began to notice that, whilst the light teasing and subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) innuendo didn't disappear completely, slowly but surely the Airmen who worked with her began to do so with a little more respect and admiration in their eyes than when she had first joined the military. No doubt word had spread fast about the amazing Sam Carter, Theoretical Astrophysicist Einstein and Flygirl wonder. Nevertheless, Sam had never truly felt like 'one of the guys' until, at the age of 31, she was placed under the command of the then-Colonel Jack O'Neill and it was fair to say that her life began to change for the better.

After the initial rocky start of being dumped unceremoniously onto a Commanding Officer who obviously wished she was anywhere but on his team, she had, once again, worked her fingers to the bone to try to prove her worth as a more-than-competent soldier and a valuable member of his (somewhat unconventional) team. What surprised her more than anything was the way the Colonel and the rest of the SGC had integrated her fully into their command and unquestioningly giving her their full and undeniable trust, support and respect after such a short time at her new post. OK, so saving their bacon more times than she could count on her fingers and toes might have gone a long way towards building that trust and respect but Sam appreciated it all the same. Maybe during the last eight years she had become complacent about her current status within Stargate Command. She had rightfully earned the respect and admiration of her colleagues, Commanding Officer and the Base CO, General George Hammond and, despite making the occasional mistake, career-wise she had never felt more secure and sure of her place. But all of that was about to change.

Within a period of a few months she had lost and then subsequently recovered one of her team mates, lost her father and had to deal with a dramatic shift in command structure that involved a new Base Commander, a new (albeit temporary) posting to Area 51 only to return to find herself stripped of her command and demoted to co-command with an old friend from her Academy days. Officially her records would state that her team's new structure was down to her official status as Head of Research and Development at Groom Lake. Unofficially, however, it felt like a huge punch to the stomach to lose so much in such a short space of time. She'd lived the military lifestyle for long enough to realise that expecting her command to remain the same indefinitely was as unrealistic as Teal'c donning a pink tutu and traversing the corridors singing 'Row, Row, Row your boat'… OK, so the latter had happened but Sam could hardly see the former ever occurring in this reality, at least, but that didn't make the reality of her situation any easier to accept. In her own mind, Sam hadn't been the same since her return from Area 51. Her usually flawless work was getting a little sloppy, her daily routine had been getting her down and more often than not she found herself at the end of a failed mission apologizing for one of her mistakes yet again. When her father had been dying she had truthfully told him that she had loved her job; the truth of the matter was that two years later she was no longer so sure of that fact. Oh, it had its moments now and again but things were no longer the same.

PUNCH PUNCH The Goa'uld had made for interesting opponents. Yes, they were evil and many things had happened during the eight year war with them that Sam had wished to God had never happened but at least they had stood a chance of defeating them. The Ori, on the other hand, were vastly superior technologically and this time there were no willing allies that could help; the only race who had the power to stop the Ori had flat out refused, even when threatened with their own extinction. And I thought the Nox were infuriating! She thought as she threw several more hard punches into the bag. In the words of O'Neill: she'd done this! For the better part of the last decade she'd fought to overcome what had, at the time, been the biggest alien threat to Earth and they'd won. Now with one enemy gone, another had taken its place, this one more threatening than the previous one. Back then she'd been younger, greener, more wet behind the ears and she knew little of the harsh realities that came with fighting battles on such a vast and uncharted terrain as the galaxy. Now she was more than prepared for war but lately she'd found herself questioning what she was still fighting for. Ostensibly it was the planet, she knew, but on a personal level? She was beginning to question her place within the SGC. She knew that, as a soldier, there were younger, more enthusiastic people that could take her place; in combat no one was irreplaceable. As a scientist she knew that, while she was the foremost expert on the Stargate, there were many people who could do her job almost as well. Maybe not with her speed and finesse, she pondered, but then again given her recent efficiency she was even beginning to question her scientific ability. Under the command of General Hammond she had been lulled into a false sense of security and it had allowed her to entertain the notion that she was vastly superior to her peers, that she could not and would not be replaced. Her behaviour during her recent trip to Atlantis, however, had brought her back down to Earth with a thud as she winced at the clarity of the realisation that her ego had gotten so far out of check that it wasn't a stretch to say that she had become more conceited than Rodney McKay! And it begged one question: where the hell had the old Samantha Carter gone and was she ever coming back? To say that Sam was thoroughly disgusted with herself was the understatement of the millennium!

"When did I become such an ass?" she growled out loud to no one in particular as she continued to pound the hell out of the punch bag.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I must have stepped into another alternate reality. I'll come back later," came a very familiar voice from the door. Sam stopped lashing out and spun round to face the intruder.

"Daniel! When did you get back? I didn't hear you arrive." Sam exclaimed, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her glove.

"Oh, I, uh, hitched a ride with Colonel Emerson. He beamed me straight into the SGC." He replied as his brow furrowed. "I, ah, heard what happened while I was gone." He paused to try to gauge Sam's reaction which wasn't all that forthcoming. "Did, uh, did Ba'al really gain access to all of the 'Gate addresses?"

Sam resumed punching the bag.

"Yeah he did. I was the one who gave them to him." She said all-too-calmly, meaning she was mad as hell but didn't want to show it. Daniel was momentarily stunned.

"I, ah, what?" he stammered before getting over his initial surprise. "Sam, I'm sure whatever happened you had no choice-"

She spun around to face him, her face bursting with anger.

"But that's just it, Daniel! I DID have a choice! I could've refused. I DID refuse!"

Daniel was now extremely confused.

"Uh, well, how did he…?"

"He threatened to kill Agent Barrett." Sam replied, almost spitting the words and landing an extremely violent punch as she did so. Thankfully not on Daniel. "And I just caved in at the first sign of trouble" and I feel as if I should fall on my sword for it. She didn't need to finish that sentence, Daniel could hear it in the tone of her voice and it scared the hell out of him.

"Sam, tell me what happened. The whole thing, from the beginning."

So she did. After twenty minutes she came back to the beginning of their conversation and Daniel could feel his hackles rising.

"I screwed up, Daniel, and this time I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to fix me." She said, her eyes glistening with anger and self-loathing. "Maybe I should just cut my losses and-"

Daniel's anger flared up once more.

"Don't you even think it, Sam! Don't you even DARE!" he yelled, cursing under his breath. "How DARE that sonofabitch make you think that this whole mess is your fault?" he spat.

"Daniel…" she said in a warning tone but he chose to ignore it.

"No, Sam, I'm sorry but I'm not backing down this time! I know you're military and you can't say anything but I'm not and you know what? I've had my doubts about Landry since the day he stepped foot under this mountain and from what you've just told me, I've been right all along!"

"Daniel, it's not him that's making me feel like this, it's me! I'm not sure I even know who "me" is any more."

"You're wrong! That's the difference between men like General Hammond and Jack and Landry! They don't make the people under their command take the blame for their own mistakes! Let's say for a moment that there was no way that you could've stopped Ba'al from getting to that information. He and his clones should never have been allowed to escape in the first place! We ALL know how dangerous Ba'al can be, just look at what he did to Jack!" Daniel exclaimed as Sam visibly winced as though she'd been slapped. "And yet, for some reason, General Landry decided to place them under minimal guard in close proximity to each other with no back-up or contingency plan, all because the clones gave him their word that they weren't speaking to each other? To make matters worse he then delays giving the order to gas them for what reason exactly? Because he wasn't sure whether it would work? In the mean time, you were faced with the decision to let a colleague die or give Ba'al what he wanted. So you chose to save someone's life? Whether or not it was the right or wrong thing to do is immaterial, Sam! Those clones should've been hunted down from the moment they escaped and Landry should've expected that they had a way off the base, given the fact that you yourself told him that they all had locator beacons on them! For God's sake, Sam, this man made General? Simon Welle's three year old could've done a better job of commanding the base!" A though suddenly occurred to Daniel. "Did he even set the base auto-destruct?" Sam's face was all the answer he needed. "See? God, incompetent isn't even the word! Do you think that Hammond or Jack would have ever been that gullible? No, I don't think so either!" Daniel almost seemed to run out of steam at that point and visibly sagged as some of his anger dissipated.

Sam glanced around to check that nobody was listening but the room had remained empty.

"I'm not saying I disagree with at least some of what you're saying, Daniel, but the fact remains that neither General Hammond nor General O'Neill is in command of this facility any longer, and that's a fact we all have to face!" Sam said, deflated.

"I believe the saying amongst the Jaffa is "They do not make them as they once did", Colonel Carter!"

Both Daniel's and Sam's heads shot up at the sound of Teal'c's voice.

"Teal'c!" Sam exclaimed, more out of surprise than embarrassment at being caught disrespecting a superior officer. "How long have you been…?"

"Long enough to be able to assure you that the concerns you both share are also concerns of mine." He confirmed with a slight nod of his head. "However, I believe that Colonel Carter is correct, Daniel Jackson. There is little we can do to rectify the situation at this time."

"Yes, well it sucks!" Daniel groused and Sam snorted.

"I'm sorry, Daniel, it's just…"

"You have indeed been spending too much time around Jack O'Neill." Teal'c finished off that thought. Daniel shrugged.

"Maybe if we all had we wouldn't be in this mess, would we?" He observed dryly.

"Daniel, it's not his fault that we're in this situation. You know why he had to take General Hammond's job, if he hadn't then we probably wouldn't all be here talking about this now. It's hard for General O'Neill too, you know. You of all people should know how much he loves meetings and paperwork!" Sam said with a smile at the old joke.

Daniel's mouth turned up a little at the corners.

"Speaking of Jack, how's he doing in… Washington?" he finished with a smirk and a slightly raised eyebrow towards Sam.

"Daniel…" she warned, scowling at his implication. He simply grinned and waggled his eyebrows oh-so-innocently. Sam chuckled. "He's holding up OK, all things considered, although every time I get around to speaking with him we're usually interrupted by some 'goddamn Pentagon windbag' wanting to discuss napkin emblems!"

"Now who's starting to sound like Jack?" Daniel teased and Sam replied in a mock-indignant tone.

"Doctor Jackson, I resent the implication behind that statement!" she brought her voice down to a whisper, "and, for the record, we haven't really gotten that far yet."

Daniel's eyebrows nearly shot through the roof at that statement. Firstly because she had said "we" and not "I" and secondly because, well, he had to all intents and purposes been joking. Slightly.

"Really?" he asked incredulously, almost choking on his words. "I don't know, I guess I just never expected you to ever actually…" He paused. "You know what? I'm going to stop there before I get any further! Suffice it to say that you're the sister I never had and so without going into details, I'm just going to say that if you're happy, I'm happy, OK?" He frowned, recalling the earlier part of their conversation. "You are happy, aren't you?"

Sam smiled albeit weakly.

"With that particular part of my life? Yes. As for the rest? The jury's still out on that one." Nothing changed the fact that she was still feeling less-than-herself and she was still feeling incredibly guilty about her actions over the past few weeks despite Daniel's pep talk.

Daniel placed his hand gently onto her shoulder.

"Just remember, Sam, any time you need to talk, we're here for you, OK?" he said quietly, gesturing between himself and Teal'c.

"Indeed, Colonel Carter, I shall always be honoured to 'lend an ear' as the Tauri would say." He added with an almost imperceptible smile. Sam responded in kind.

"Likewise guys and thank you." She said sincerely before squaring her shoulders and snapping back into her military mode. "What do you say we go to the commissary for dinner?"

"I would find that most pleasing!" Teal'c enthused and was followed by an eager nod from Daniel.

"OK, well I'm just going to take a shower. I'll meet you down there in 15?"

Both Teal'c and Daniel consented and turned to leave the gym.

"Oh, Sam?"

"Yes, Daniel?"

"Lemon chicken again?"

Sam grimaced.

"Nah, I think I'll stick with the macaroni and cheese!" she replied with a sudden onset of guilt.

"Sure thing!" he said, heading out. Shaking her head she marched off in the direction of the showers. Sam just had to make one quick stop on her way to dinner to make a collect call to the Pegasus Galaxy. She had an apology to make.

…………………………………………………………….

Reviews, as always are much appreciated! I'm really worried that I didn't quite get Sam's voice right in this fic but I felt the issue needed to be addressed since Sam hasn't been acting like herself in the last few episodes.