Chapter 10: A Dozen Roses

Sam was lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing that if she wasn't allowed to work that she could just fall asleep, because having absolutely no distraction from her thoughts was agony.

When she finally drifted off into a restless sleep, she dreamed that SG-1 had been captured off world and Jack was being tortured while she was forced to watch, unable to help.

She woke in the early hours of the morning in a cold sweat, and, unable to shake the memories or the adrenaline, she decided to go for a long run.

Sam managed to loose track of time spectacularly while jogging, and by the time she got back she only had a few minutes before she had to leave in order to arrive at the base on time. She decided to forgo her usual meager breakfast in favor of a shower. Ten minutes later she was locking her front door and heading to her car.

She was about to pull into the street when something abnormal caught her eye: pinned elegantly under her windshield wiper was a red rose with a piece of paper tied to its long stem.

Sam got out and grabbed the rose, eyeing the note. On it was written the letter M. She wasn't sure what she'd expected it to say, but that wasn't it.

It did answer a few questions, however, and she had to give Jack some major points for coming up with this. Based on the brevity of the message, this obviously wasn't the last rose she'd find today. Therein lied its brilliance. She'd spend the entire day finding roses round the base with random letters attached to them, all the while leading the gossipers to believe that Jack was asking her to prom or something, and then when it was all said and done she and Jack didn't actually have to do anything, and it was almost certain that they wouldn't after the thrashing they'd received yesterday.

She'd really have to thank him for this later.

Smiling slightly, Sam placed the rose on the passenger seat and began the drive to the base, now several minutes late, but not really caring.

When she arrived at the security check and placed her hand under the palm scanner, the airman manning the desk handed her another rose, explaining hastily that he'd been ordered to give it to her by someone else, although he wouldn't say who, not that Sam really needed to ask. As she stepped into the elevator she read the note attached to the flower, O. So far she had an M and an O, maybe Jack was trying to spell out the names of the Three Stooges.

Sam was downright excited to reach her office that morning, since it was the most obvious place for another rose to be hidden, however, when she stepped inside she saw no immediate evidence of an intruder, or a rose. Undeterred, she opened a few cabinets and briefly looked through her bookcase in search of the elusive piece of flora. Still nothing, which struck her as odd, Colonel O'Neill was rarely that sneaky, or subtle. She wanted to keep searching a few more minutes, but the pile of unfinished work was beckoning to her a lot louder than the missing rose.

With a sigh, she turned on her computer and sat down, then smiled. Wedged between the keyboard and the monitor was another rose with the letter T attached to it. She pulled it out and placed it with the other roses. Apparently the three stooges idea was out, but it could be shuffled around to spell Tom.

A couple hours later she had finished several reports and an experiment and was beginning to feel the effects of skipping breakfast, so she left for the commissary. She reached toward the elevator panel to select the appropriate floor then stopped, amazed. Caught in the emergency phone was a fourth rose, a piece of paper with a letter L written on it tied to its stem. Sam grinned; the man was really going all out with this.

When she entered the commissary a few minutes later the entire room became hushed, but only for a moment. Then the silence was replaced with the low hiss of quiet conversations, and a few people cast knowing smiles at her. Sam chose to ignore this and got herself a cup of coffee and a bowl of Jell-O. As she went to sit down at her usual table she discovered what everyone was so giddy about, placed between the salt and the pepper was another rose, this time with the letter N on it. This brought the total number of flowers up to five, how long was this going to go on?

She ate her Jell-O slowly, pondering what Jack might be trying to spell; she was running out of words that used all the letters. Sam happened to glance at a clock and was alarmed to discover just how much time had gone by. She hadn't realized she was that lost in thought. SG-1 had a briefing in five minutes, and after Daniel had lost track of time and nearly missed the last one, she' promised to stop by his office and make sure it didn't happen again. This was going to be tight. Deciding this, she threw away the remainder of her snack and took of in the direction of Daniel's office.

As she'd suspected, Daniel was still there, pouring over an artifact and blissfully unaware of the time. He seemed confused to see her there at first and more curious about why she was holding two roses than why she was trying to get him out of his office, but she managed to get the message across eventually. Just as they were leaving Sam spotted another rose on a shelf near the door and grabbed it up. It had the letter A tied to it.

They were a few minutes late to the briefing, but it didn't matter because General Hammond was still in his office on the phone when they arrived.

Jack, the object of her agony, was just sitting there, looking slightly smug. He nodded to acknowledge their presence then went back to whatever he was doing, apparently a one sided game of tic tac toe which he nevertheless seemed to be loosing.

He was still watching Sam out of the corner of his eye, something that did not go unnoticed by her. She decided to pay extra attention as she went to sit next to her commanding officer, and her care was not uncalled for; sitting on her usual chair was another rose, this time carrying the letter S, and, as she discovered when she picked it up, it was the only one she had found thus far which hadn't been dethorned properly.

At least she knew why the Colonel was acting so smug, but at least he hadn't looked disappointed when she didn't sit on the flower. Jack was still watching her, so she nodded her thanks to him, along with one of her best smiles.

Sam had a great deal of trouble staying focused on the briefing, her thoughts kept drifting back to the roses and hypothesizing on what the Colonel might be trying to spell. When the briefing adjourned half and hour later Sam wasn't any more knowledgeable about their next destination than she'd been when she walked in.

General Hammond asked Jack and Sam to remain a moment after Daniel and Teal'c left.

"Brilliant idea, with the roses," he gushed. "Absolutely top-notch. Keep going like this and I imagine this will all be over in a few days."

"Thank you, sir," Jack said, not allowing his reply to betray his inner desire for the rumors to continue.

"Keep up the good work," the General added. "Dismissed."

Sam had gathered up her papers and was heading for the door near the General's office when she heard a meek, "Major Carter?" from behind her.

Sam spun around to face the person and found a nervous looking gate technician standing a few steps down the staircase leading to the control room. Sam recognized her but didn't know her name, a fact she regretted, because not only did she work with the technicians whenever there was a problem with the gate system, which was often, but they were also responsible for ensuring that no one ended up crushed against the back of the iris, thus making it an intelligent idea to stay on their good side.

"What can I do for you?" Sam asked, crossing the room to where the technician was standing.

"Our orders were pretty explicit, we're supposed to let you find it on your own, but we can't take it anymore..." she trailed off, noting Sam's confused look at her generalizations. "Could you just come down here a minute?"

Sam nodded and followed the technician down the stairs. They were greeted with a loud sneeze upon entering the control room and Sergeant Harriman gasped congestedly and blew his nose into a large handkerchief. The source of his misery, another rose, had been placed at the far end of the room, but its distance didn't seem to help either the Sergeant or his allergies.

"Doctor Fraiser could give you and antihistamine," Sam suggested to the ailing Sergeant as the moved to retrieve the flower.

"I'm needed here," he replied thickly.

"You're no good to anyone if you can't think straight," Sam informed him, while she glanced at the letter I attached to the rose. "The other technicians can handle it for awhile."

As she turned to leave something in the gate room happened to catch her eye, something red, but when she actually stopped to search for it, she couldn't find the thing. Nevertheless, red wasn't a common color in the gate room and it did happen to be the color of the roses, so she decided a closer look was in order.

When she entered the gateroom, the small piece of red wasn't any more obvious that it had been when she was looking for it from the control room, so she was forced to inspect all the corners and crevices that filled the gateroom while a group of curious airmen looked on.

She was becoming more and more embarrassed and flustered with her futile search by the moment, so she decided to get back to work and perform a more thorough search when there were fewer people around. However, that proved unnecessary, because, as she was crossing the gate room back to the door, she found the rose hidden in plain sight on the inside of the banister of the ramp, right where she couldn't have seen it when she walked in. It had the letter F attached to it.

While Sam was walking back to her lab, Doctor Fraiser fell into step beside her.

She eyed the roses suspiciously, then asked, "Where'd you get those?"

"Colonel O'Neill's been hiding them all over the base for me, "Sam explained. "I think he's trying to spell something."

"Any idea what?" Janet implored.

"Not a clue," Sam replied. "What's up with you?"

"Actually, I'm here to ask for a favor," Janet said.

"Oh, yeah? Name it," Sam told her.

"My MRI machine's been acting up," Fraiser explained. "I asked Siler to come and fix it hours ago, but he hasn't shown up. I think he might be afraid of me."

"I'm not surprised," Sam replied. "I heard about that lecture you gave him."

"It was his own fault," Janet shrugged. "What did he expect me to do, just sit back and tell him everything I know about you and Colonel O'Neill?"

"Thanks for that, by the way," Sam interjected.

"Not a problem," Janet replied. "Anyway, he hasn't come in with any medical complaints either, so if I managed to scare him into not hurting himself anymore I'd say it's a job well done."

They had arrived at the room where the MRI machine was held by now and Sam was checking the device over. "Any idea what the problem is?"

"Not really," Janet shrugged. "I first noticed this morning when I was trying to scan a patient, it didn't seem to respond to my commands and kept coming up with gibberish. We had to pull the plug to make sure it didn't turn on again."

"I'll check the interface," Sam said, moving to the appropriate area. She pulled out her swiss army knife to open a panel but discovered that the screws were already mostly loosened. She pulled off the cover and was astonished with what she found.

"Janet," she called. "Are you sure you aren't in on this rose thing?"

"'Course," Fraiser replied. "Why?"

"Because a rose is what's causing your problems." Sam lifted the flower out and placed it with the others. "It must have bridged a few of the wires."

"A flower can do that?" Janet asked.

"Sure," Sam shrugged, "anything that can conduct electricity. Flowers are mostly water."

"Weird, so what's it say?" Janet asked, glancing at the note attached to the stem.

Sam picked it up and said, "This random malfunction has been brought to you by the letter I."

"Sometimes I don't understand Colonel O'Neill," Fraiser sighed.

"Yeah, me neither," Sam replied. "But life would be a lot less interesting if her weren't around."

"I saw that."

"Saw what?"

"That."

"What was there to see?"

"You told me all about what happened yesterday, don't think I can't see right through you."

"We already got yelled at about that once."

"I told Siler nothing was going on between you two, don't keep making a liar out of me."

"Nothing is going on."

"Then what about yesterday?"

"A lapse in judgement and surge in hormones."

"Don't think I don't know what interesting means."

"Your MRI machine should work just fine now, I'll see you later."

"Say hi to Colonel O'Neill for me," Janet called after her, then she had to grab the nearest bed for support because she was laughing so hard. Sam was the only person she knew who could stand up to a beating like that and not take it personally.

Sam smirked at her friend's antics as she made her way back to her lab. She'd known most of the conversation was a joke from the very beginning, but had still had to fight tooth and nail to keep up with the Doctor, only to loose in the end anyway.

When she got to her office, Sam shut the door and hid the roses in a cabinet; nothing was going to distract her from her work this time.

A few hours later the monster had been slain and all her reports were residing in her out box. Her fingers were stiff and achy from pounding at the unforgiving keyboard and her eyes felt dry from staring at the screen for so long, but she didn't pay either ailment any real heed. Instead, she shut down her equipment, picked up her stack of reports and headed in the direction of General Hammond's office.

Poor man, he wasn't there when she arrived, so she placed her reports in his in box, which put hers to shame, even when she was having a busy day. She then made for the locker room, intending to change into her street cloths and then head home for the night.

She entered the locker room and flipped on the lights, then crinkled her nose in confusion. Another rose was sitting on a bench near her locker.

But this was the women's locker room.

Not that it was entirely inconceivable for Jack to wait until the room was empty then sneak in and place it there or else recruit someone to do it for him, but it did seem like a pretty great length to go to. Then again, this didn't even shine a candle on the effort required to stuff a rose into the inner workings of an MRI machine. How had he known she would find it in there anyway?

She picked up the flower, taking in its sweet perfume as she pulled the note around to read...G...great. In her excitement at finally finishing all her reports, Sam had almost completely forgotten about the roses. The rest were still in a cabinet in her lab.

As she changed, Sam contemplated the roses and the letters that came with them. Thus far she'd received eleven roses and the letters M, O, T, L, N, A, S, I, F, I, and G. She was inclined to guess that she had almost all of them, mostly because it was the end of the day and one more rose would make a round dozen. The significance of the number was not lost on her, but she chose to ignore it anyway.

She shuffled the letters around in her head, comparing them to country names, System Lords, and all the Simpsons characters she knew of but came up empty. There were simply too many letters to unscramble without looking at them, and based on the number of possible permutations, physically moving them around wouldn't be practical either. Thus, she refocused her attention on a computer program she could write to do the dirty work for her, causing the time it took her to tie her shoes to double.

The program didn't take long to write and test so before long she was watching as the computer scrolled through the different permutations and compared them to an online dictionary. When it didn't come up with any matches, or at least none that made any sense, she began to rethink her hypothesis that the Colonel was trying to spell something, but the duplicate I's almost nulled the possibility that the letters were random. Thus, she modified the program to arrange the letters into two words. However, she didn't have any luck until she changed it to three.

Finally the computer spit out the words: GOLF SAT MINI

Minigolf Sat

Miniature Golf Saturday

Huh?

All this time she'd thought the letters would amount to some random word and that she was trying to unscramble them for pure sport, but that message almost sounded like a proposition for a date. Then again, he could have just written that in case someone got really curious and decided to find all the roses and unscramble the letters themselves. She wouldn't know until she spoke to him.

That decided, Sam gathered up her roses and keys and headed for the surface.

When she reached her car Sam heard a familiar voice from behind her.

"Sam!"

"Hi, Jack," she forced out his first name.

"I was beginning to wonder if I needed to get someone to drag you out here," Jack said. "You do realize it's cold, right?"

"Sorry," Sam shrugged. He was right, as soon as she determined that he was going for a dozen roses, she should have figured that he would want to give her the last one in person.

"Anyway, I'm assuming you found all eleven?" Jack asked. When she nodded he continued. "And you figured out what it says?" Another nod. "Right, well, I suppose you'll be wanting the last one."

He pulled the final rose out from behind his back and handed it to her. She took it and looked at the note. It had a question mark. So it was definitely a proposition, but weren't they supposed to be in trouble for doing stuff like this?

"Don't you ever work, sir?" she asked, thinking of the time it must have taken him to get all these flowers and arrange them in places where he knew she would find them.

"Don't you ever stop working, Carter?" he replied. "What's so wrong with not saving the world every once in a while, it'll still be here when you get back. Why not just take some time off now and then, live a little, spend some time with your friends."

"I don't have all that much to do," Sam said plainly.

"Nothing wrong with a little companionship among friends, is there? I hear minigolf's fun..." Jack trailed off expectantly.

"I haven't played in years," Sam said, grasping for an excuse. "I'd probably be terrible."

"Good, me neither," Jack replied, rubbing his hands together. "Then maybe you won't beat me flat out like you do at pool. We could make a competition out of it."

"It does sound kind of fun," Sam shrugged.

"Great, I already booked a tee time," Jack said excitedly. Of course he hadn't, the game was miniature golf, after all, but the irony earned him a winning smile from Sam. "I'll pick you up around three?"

"Sounds good, sir," Sam replied.

"All right, well, enjoy your roses," Jack said as he opened her car door for her, "and quit calling me 'sir' all the time."

She waved and drove away, and it took every ounce of reserve in Jack's body to hold off on the victory dance until she was out of sight. His plan had worked like a charm.

When the thing started he'd been perfectly prepared for it to go either way, for them to shrug it off as another way to send the base personnel through a loop, or to end up going on a date, and he suspected that Sam had felt the same way. However, through a lucky bought of mutual misunderstanding, he was going to get to spend all of Saturday afternoon with her, as friends, granted, but there was plenty of time to change that.

He couldn't help but be excited that even though she was married to her job, best friends with a computer, and having an affair with a naquadah reactor, she still had time for him.

A/N: Hey guys, I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations. I know it didn't seem to jive very well at the beginning, there are only so many ways to say, "She found a rose and read the note." I hope you'll forgive me for that. By the way, major points to anyone who figured out what Jack was spelling before Sam did. Finally, this is getting down to the last few chapters and I want to make sure I wrap it up right, so I'll probably finish writing it before I post anything else. I've got a pretty good idea of where I'm going so it shouldn't take too long. Just bear with me for a little while, and then the last few chapters will be updated really quickly. Thanks for the reviews.