AN1: You like me, you really like me! Ask, and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find. I commented that it would be nice to have longer reviews than just "good chapter" and not only do I get longer reviews I get more of them, as well! Thanks to all of you who did so, I greatly appreciate it. I may not respond here to all your comments, but I am reading them and appreciate them all very much. Thank you!

AN2: Since some people have asked questions about the chronology, let me explain. I'm using the order the episodes were broadcast in which is not the same as the order they were produced (which is the order on the DVDs). The broadcast chronology for S1 is as follows:
Children of the Gods
The Enemy Within
Emancipation
The Broca Divide
The First Commandment
Cold Lazarus
The Nox
Brief Candle
Thor's Hammer
The Torment of Tantalus
Bloodlines
Fire and Water
Hathor
Singularity
Cor-Ai
Enigma
Solitudes
Tin Man
There But For the Grace of God
Politics
Within the Serpent's Grasp
We are now between Cold Lazarus and The Nox.

AN3: myblackrose: Sam is a very analytical person. She's a born scientist. If there's a tactical or scientific situation that affects people, she's going to consider the logical side of the problem (the situation as a whole) before she thinks of the feelings of the people involved. It's not that she's callous (though she sometimes comes off that way), just that she's very focused. Jack, otoh, is much more likely to focus on the people involved. It's exactly reversed from gender stereotypes, but it makes sense with their characters and I like that SG isn't afraid to do that. The reality that this is a baby that's inside her is going to come later.

AN4: Diane: Please remember that this is very early in the series. They haven't really formed a strong bond as teammates yet to work with. See the chronology above--they only went on five missions together, total, before Sam was grounded.

AN5: Yes, Sam knows about Charlie. She learned about him in Cold Lazarus.

On with the show!

"So Dad just stood there, looking at Mark and I, his dress blues dripping wet—we were horrified. I mean, he can really be a hard-ass when he wants to be. If we'd managed to get Mom like we were planning, that would have been one thing. But Dad just picked up the plane that had 'dive bombed' him, inspected it, and shot a look at Mark. 'If that's the best you can do, airman,' he said, 'you're going to be grounded until you're accuracy improves.' And that traitor Mark pointed a finger at me and said, 'But it was her idea! She set it up!'" Sam shook her head and took a swallow of water. "I was grounded for a week, and when that was up Dad and I went over my trap and he showed me what I'd done wrong. He was great, really."

"Your Dad was in the Air Force?" Jack asked, uneasily. They'd been talking for over an hour on everything from Rocky and Bullwinkle to sports to childhood stories, and she'd mentioned her father, but not his career. The idea of having to deal with a man whose daughter he'd knocked up was bad enough. Sam was enough younger than him that her father probably wouldn't be all that much older than he was, and he knew how he'd react if a daughter of his were in Sam's position. He'd skin the guy that did it alive.

"Yeah. Major General Jacob Carter, retired. His last posting was at the Pentagon, and he still lives in DC." Sam looked down on her plate, chewing on her lower lip. "I don't know how I'm going to tell him about … this. The baby. God, I can just imagine how he's going to react."

Jack leaned back, heart sinking. So could he. What were the odds that Sam's dad knew Hammond? When you got up to that rank, the pool of fellow officers was such that everybody knew everybody else, at least in passing. Jack might not have the greatest respect for rank, but he'd never dated a general's daughter before, either. Sam was an adult woman, fully capable of taking care of herself. But did her Dad realize that? "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked, praying she'd say no.

"No." Sam shook her head. "I think having you there when I tell him would only make things worse."

"Can your Mom do anything to help soften him up?"

Sadness passed over her face, of an old grief remembered. "Mom died when I was in High School. Killed by a drunk driver. Mark … didn't take it very well. He blames Dad and the military for her death. They haven't spoken in years, as far as I know, and Mark doesn't much care for me, either. Being in the Air Force myself."

"Why? What does your Dad's career have to do with some idiot drunk? Unless he was the drunk."

"My dad, drunk driving?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "No. He was supposed to pick her up, but his meeting ran late so she caught a cab. Mark thinks that if Dad had picked her up and she hadn't been in a cab, the drunk wouldn't have killed her. He might be right about it, but it's not like there was anything Dad or anyone else could have done to predict that chain of events. Chaos theory in action. It could just as easily have happened some different way."

"Chaos theory." Jack took a sip of his beer. "Isn't that the one from Jurassic Park?"

"Yeah. The hummingbird flaps its wings in Times Square and causes a hurricane in China." Sam sat up a little straighter as she warmed to her subject. "See, every second there are a million different things going on that can affect the future, some of them we can see and predict and most that we can't." Her eyes were shining, and Jack watched in bemusement as she rattled on, enthusiasm glowing from every pore. "Just sitting here, talking, puts air molecules in motion, which puts other air molecules in motion, which given enough time and enough other factors eventually becomes big enough to affect the weather. It's why a weatherman can't forecast more than a few days in advance—there's no way of predicting all the random interactions that go into forming a weather system. And that's just on the macroscopic level. It works on a quantum level, as well. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that—"

"Sam," he said, desperate to break into her monologue. He'd seen her or Daniel go off into one of those science geek raptures at work a time or two, but seeing her go into one off-duty was kind of scary.

"Sorry, Jack," Sam said with a hint of embarrassment. "I know, not everyone finds all this as interesting as I do. But it's hard to remember sometimes."

"I know," Jack said. "And it's actually kind of cute, most of the time. I was just thinking that with you as the mother, what's the chance I'm gonna understand anything that comes out of this kid's mouth by the time he's five? I'm gonna have to be careful with him, make sure he has some stupid hobbies just out of self-defense. Fishing. And the Simpsons. Early on." He nodded emphatically and took another sip of his beer.

"So you want a boy?" Sam asked carefully, looking down at the remains of her dessert.

"Boy, girl, doesn't matter. All I want is ten fingers, ten toes, and a healthy body in between them."

Sam nodded, then changed the subject as she'd done all evening when the topic turned to the baby. "So, what about your family? What are they doing now? You have two brothers, you said."

"And a sister." Jack looked away. She had a right to know about her baby's family, even if this wasn't a subject he liked to discuss. "Typical Irish Catholic family. Dad was a cop in Chicago. Still lives there. One brother's a priest, the other's a cop, just like every generation of O'Neill's since Noah's Ark. Jenny's a housewife. Mom died a few years ago. Lots of cousins on both sides. I don't keep in touch with any of them, besides Christmas cards."

"Why not?"

He shrugged. "I've been stationed all over the world, mostly in places the US isn't officially involved in doing things the US isn't officially doing. When I'm gone I'm out of contact completely, and when I'm back I can't talk about anything I've seen or done. It's hard to keep in touch with people like that, especially people who aren't military and don't have any idea what it's like. And it's not like I was ever very close to any of them. Sara kept in touch with them more than I did, made sure we didn't miss anything too important. After Charlie's death and the divorce …"

A brief silence passed before Sam broke it. "Irish Catholic," she said. "How much are they likely to object to the baby being raised Episcopalian? Do you object?"

Jack shook his head. "Nah. I've been lapsed for a long time. Dad won't like it, but I don't really know what the others will think." He paused. "Even Dad won't be too shocked, though, considering I'm the black sheep of the family."

"Black sheep?" Sam frowned. "How? You're a successful Air Force senior officer."

"But I'm not a priest or a cop," Jack pointed out. "Besides, they all remember how I came to enlist."

"You were enlisted?" Sam said in surprise.

"Yeah," Jack said with some pride; making the jump from enlisted to officer wasn't easy, but he'd done it. "I became an officer because I wanted to be a pilot. But they thought I was more useful in special ops, so that's where I ended back up."

"Ah." Sam cocked her head. "So, just how did you come to enlist in the Air Force?"

Jack took a deep breath. "Well, that's a long story involving a date with one of the hottest girls in school, a neighbor's car that I 'borrowed' without asking permission, and a juvie judge who didn't want to give jail time to the oldest son of the precinct's Cop of the Year."

"This I gotta hear," Sam said with a smile.

Sam lay in her bed that night staring at the ceiling. This was absolutely ridiculous. She'd hit it right off with Jack, no doubt. He was a nice guy, funny, entertaining, good company. And this unnerved her? True, Jonas had been all of those things, and she'd hit it off with him right away over a meal at a local bar-and-grill. And both Jonas and Jack came out of a special ops background the likes of which she really didn't want to know more about. But that was where the similarities stopped. She hoped.

And then there was the fact that Jack had talked, briefly, about his family, but he hadn't mentioned his son or his ex-wife even once. Understandable, it had to be a painful subject for the poor guy, but they'd been an important part of his life for years. If she was thinking, however hypothetically, of taking the other woman's place as Jack's significant other and the mother of his child, she'd like to know a little bit more about the competition. Besides the obvious physical similarities, that was; now that she thought about it, Sara O'Neill was a leggy blond with short hair, probably a few years older than Sam was. Which brought up another issue; from the outside, it was going to look like Jack had just traded Sara in for the younger model. What were his friends and family going to think? This was so sudden.

Well, she knew he didn't keep in touch with his family much, but he hadn't mentioned many friends either, at least not current ones. Sam had a habit of getting buried in her lab. Her boyfriends before Jonas had generally dragged her out into their social circle, and she'd actually kind of liked that. In fact, come to think of it she'd never really heard him talk about friends outside of his team. Being a loner was bad; Jonas had been a loner. She shook her head. Jack was not Jonas, and comparing the two men was an insult to him. Losing touch with people was hardly an indicator of a disturbed mind, especially in the military where moving every couple of years was the rule, not the exception. It was an issue she almost always had trouble with, herself.

Sam groaned and rubbed her forehead. Whatever happened between the two of them, with her career, with the baby, it wasn't going to get solved by laying here staring at the ceiling. She turned over on her right side, pulled the thick comforter higher, and shut her eyes determinedly.