A MATTER OF POWER – I. The Power of Politics by Betty Bokor
Sam/Daniel. Sam deserves a promotion and Daniel is willing to help her. Sam has her own plans.
Spoilers: All seasons, including 9 and 10.
Disclaimer: The Stargate original characters belong to MGM/Showtime, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Film Corp. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.

The Power of Politics

Chapter 3

Sam closed the door after Colonel Paul Davis and sat back at her desk. She was upset, but she did not want Davis to notice. Since the Stargate Program had become public, her life had been transformed into a never-ending succession of social events. She had wanted to command the SGC in peacetime to be certain that all the scientific and cultural possibilities of traveling through the wormholes were properly used. Now she spent more time smiling for the journalists than actually commanding anything. Daniel was lucky, because SG-1 had not stopped going through the gate at all. He was having the time of his life.

Davis wanted Sam to make her marriage a more public event. As the man in charge of the Public Relations of the mountain, he had charted every movement she had made in front of the press. The constant attention of the media had been almost crushing, but Davis had handled it with a firm hand. The problem was that almost a year after her marriage –and eight months since being appointed Commander of the SGC– she was still not pregnant, something Davis had imagined would happen soon after her wedding. He had thought that Sam and Daniel would be pressed to get a child before Sam became too old to have a first pregnancy without complications, but nothing had happened. The press had not found the couple very alluring. She was a soldier and he was a scientist. They were not movie stars and ordinary people found it difficult to relate to all their heroism and intelligence. They were too far out.

Davis wanted to show that they were as normal as every other couple in the world, but Sam and Daniel were making it difficult. They never had misunderstandings or lovers' quarrels. They always solved all their difficulties in a rational manner. Daniel searched for different options and Sam walked through them until one of them suited them both.

They did not try to hide in the corners of the SGC to have a little romantic interlude either. No; they were always proper and correct. If he had not seen how much they cared for each other, Davis would have thought that the whole marriage was a charade. So, he decided to plan a little, to make something happen that would attract the attention of the public to them. One April afternoon he sat in his office and started carefully planning the events that would put the Jacksons in every magazine cover and newspaper headline of the country. The Program needed a boost in publicity, especially now that the wars were over and their funding was not a Defense matter anymore.

Sam, on the other hand, was happy with the way her marriage was going. She was not willing to make it a publicity affair. She was still hoping it would become a real marriage before lending it to that. Time was running out, though. Jack was set to retire in December, which meant she had less than a year to make it work or surrender Daniel to Jack.

She had been handling it like a military operation. She prepared her strategy very carefully. Her plan was characterized by its economy and its simplicity.

She started with the offense. First, she had to flank the enemy army. Jack probably had no clue about her feelings for Daniel, so he would be unprepared for the attack. Surprise would be her best ally. Some days she felt guilty about doing that to the General, but when she looked at Daniel and felt confident that she could make him happy, she forgot all her scruples.

She became a perfect wife, even better than she thought she would ever be. She did not cook much, but she made sure that they always had appetizing and nutritious meals at the table, even if she had to get a caterer to provide them. Daniel made his share, too; he cooked as often as his duties on SG-1 allowed him and he helped around the house.

Sam also made certain that the house was always clean and tidy and that everything was there when needed. She did not want Daniel to think that she was not capable of handling her new job and her housewife responsibilities at the same time. After a while, she discovered that she enjoyed doing little tasks to make their house more comfortable and cozy, and she started doing things just for the pleasure they brought to her, more than as part of her plan. Daniel commented on more than one occasion how good it was to come home to Sam instead of to an empty apartment. Sam agreed with him, but she felt like the concealment of her real feelings about the matter was almost an ambush to Daniel's good intentions. Then she reminded herself that all is fair in love and war.

On another front, she did not want to defend herself from Jack's influence in Daniel's life, so she made it hard for her former CO to have access to her husband in any unsupervised manner. It was sort of a siege, a blockade. She was always there when Jack came to visit Colorado and she made sure Daniel was not on Earth if she had a previous engagement that would keep her from chaperoning them. Being Daniel's boss helped immensely. She was aware that Daniel had frequent conversations on the phone with Jack, but that did not bother her. Besides, she was sure that Daniel would never be unfaithful to her as long as they were married. She knew she could not direct a frontal assault to Daniel's position, so she needed him to surrender to her. By surrounding her target and cutting his supply of Jack, she was simply fortifying her own position.

She enlisted the cooperation of some of her friends –unaware of her real intentions– to achieve her goals. Cameron Mitchell was dating Carolyn Lam those days and Sam got her old friend to share some of their outings with them. They did many things together; such as going to the movies, having nice dinners at local restaurants, or making little weekend trips. All the time they spent with the other couple, Daniel had to play his part as her husband and she took advantage of every second. She considered their joint dates as raids, sudden little attacks on the enemy lines not designed to hold ground, but to weaken her opponent's position.

Walter Harriman was always there to aide her with any of her needs and friends as Hammond or Cassie, who had no idea of the reality of their marriage, always lent a hand by treating them as a real couple.

To address the concentration of her troops –she only had one soldier and he was unaware of the battle going on– she had sold her house and urged Daniel to sell his in order to buy a house together. She wanted a battlefield free of memories from the past. She wanted to be the one making new memories. She completely rejected the idea of having separate bedrooms. She justified it by explaining that if anything ever happened, it would not do any good for the publicity of the SGC to find them sleeping in different rooms. In any case, that had not worked very well because Daniel simply had gone to bed every night, laid on his side and fallen asleep in a matter of minutes. No matter what she did, even if she inadvertently cuddled with him during the night, he was unfazed. He would wake up in the morning, disentangle himself with a smile, and go about his day as if nothing had happened.

For Christmas they accepted Jack's invitation to go to Washington. It was a risky maneuver, sort of a charge, an advance into enemy territory, but she was willing to engage in close combat if it was required. It was a battle that would affect the rest of her life. Nonetheless, nothing happened. She observed that Jack and Daniel had a couple of moments when they found an excuse to have a talk on their own, but it was not too unnerving for her. It was worse when she noticed Jack get slightly upset in his living room when Sam sat by Daniel's side on the couch, snuggled against him, and rested her head on his shoulder. She could have missed it, but, because she was alert, she caught the look that Jack gave Daniel and how immediately Daniel found an excuse to stand up and walk to the kitchen. Jack's sign of jealousy gave her proof that she had penetrated the enemy lines and was well on her way to victory.

If she thought about it, Daniel never rejected her gestures of endearment. They had always intruded in each other's personal spaces and it was not much different now. She was only using the hugging, the touching, and the slightly public kissing as part of her warfare.

Another one of her offensive strategies was the counter attack. Well, it was mostly defensive. Every time Daniel brought Jack into a conversation, she swiftly changed the subject. She tried to camouflage her intentions by using different diversion techniques each time. She did not want Daniel to become estranged from Jack. She just wanted him to see that he could be happier and have far less complications in his life if he chose her. She unconsciously resented the fact that Jack had been flirting with her all those years, knowing he was not going to take it any further. What if she had put her hopes in him? What would have happened when she finally found out that Jack was not truly interested in her?

Some days she thought that even if Jack was interested in her, if he had really meant it all those years, he had not come to her rescue as Daniel had. He probably had known about the obstacle that Sam's marital status had become in the continuation of her career and he had done nothing about it, not even alert her. He could have been the one marrying her. It was about time that he retired and one year more or less would have not made a real difference, unless his fame or the public appreciation he had gotten from his post were more important than her.

There was always something more important than her for Jack, but not for Daniel.

Nevertheless, her tactics seemed to have achieved many small victories for her. Over the months, Daniel had slowly let her cross the barriers that he had built around his private emotions after so much pain. They had been able to discuss events such as his parents' death or Sha're's final message to him. Sam could relate in good measure, because she had lost her mother in her teenage years and her father so recently, and because she had lost so many men she had cared about, starting with Jonas Hansen and following with Narim, Martouf, Orlin, even Joe Faxon. She felt like she had gained access to the main fortress without the need of any artillery bombardment. She actually felt it was an honor that Daniel confided in her and she confided many of her own feelings to him, except the ones that concerned him.

The more time she spent with Daniel, the more she loved him. It was easy to see through his soul having him so close to her. His compassion, his generosity, his capacity to be open-minded about everything, moved her to try to improve herself. She was well aware of the words she had uttered to him as he lay dying after Kelowna. He had changed her. She knew what mattered and what really mattered to her was to make him happy and to make up for some many years of suffering.

Daniel, on the other hand, had built new barriers around him that were invisible to Sam. Sharing every day with her had made it hard not to fall for her, but whenever he felt near the edge of the abyss, he had held onto the only fragile branch keeping him from plunging: he could not betray his friend. He would not betray Jack.

Over the months, Daniel had settled into the comfortable rhythm of married life. Coming home with Sam, always having a warm meal on the table, allowing himself to spend leisure time doing fun things with her, had changed his life. It was the first time that he had felt so at ease. He had memories of life with his parents, always on the go, from one dig to another, from one exhibition to the next. Life with Sha're had not been easy either. Yes, she had loved him as no one else had loved him before. Yes, she had been there exclusively for him. Yes, there had been no obstacles for their love on Abydos, but life had been as hard as any life in a primitive society has always been. Not even having potable water to drink some days could certainly put a crimp in your happiness. And there had also been his professional misgivings. He had the chance every day to prove that his theories, which had made his colleagues laugh him out of Academia, were true, but he could not even discuss it with anyone who had knowledge enough to understand the magnitude of his discoveries.

Now, he had it all. Since the Program had become public, his theories had been recognized as valid and his reputation had become unblemished. All those who had laughed at his expense, had had to bow to his foresight. He did not care about so much recognition. He was just happy that he did not have to hide his ideas for fear of ridicule anymore. Besides, he was still able to travel through the gate and now he had better chances at choosing his destination, considering that the aim of the trips was mostly scientific. Cameron's function in most of the missions was to escort the scientists around and keep them from trouble. Cam had admitted to him that he was happy with that, now that he was thinking of starting a family with Carolyn.

What made him happy the most was Sam. He knew that he would never have a chance to explore anything beyond friendship, but he was enjoying every minute with her. If he did not know about the feelings that Sam and Jack shared, he would have allowed himself to believe that Sam loved him. Well, she loved him, just in a different way.

They were both so compatible, so perfect for each other in so many ways, that it made it easy to share their lives. He felt comfortable talking to her about his feelings. He had fun going out with her, sharing his knowledge of history and languages as she shared her science. And she was so beautiful, especially when she was smiling. No wonder Jack was in love with her. Sam had a beauty that was more than physical; it encompassed all of her. He felt blessed that he could be part of her life even for a short period of time.

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