AN: Thanks for all the lovely reviews, particularly thoe more detailed ones! And now, back to O'Malleys.
Sam watched him, concerned. This night was not shaping up well so far. He wasn't talking much more than he had in the rec room earlier, and she was babbling incoherently to fill the silence as she did when she was nervous. And he was drinking a lot more. "Is something wrong, Jack?" she asked.
"I'm fine," he said. "You? Any problems?"
"Fine." Sam shrugged. "The only symptom of pregnancy I've gotten so far is occasional mild nausea. No biggie. They're doing all kinds of tests to make sure that the virus didn't do anything, or the radiation I was exposed to on the two missions after the virus, or gate travel. So far, everything looks good, they tell me."
"So the kid won't have six fingers and glow in the dark?" Jack lifted an eyebrow.
"At this point, it doesn't look likely," Sam said with half a smile. It was the first thing he'd said to her since the meeting with Hammond that wasn't an answer to a direct question. She waited for a few seconds to see if he'd say something more, but all Jack did was play with his beer, which he seemed to find more interesting than actually drinking it would be. As the silence grew awkward, she realized she'd have to be the one to keep the conversation going. She didn't like the Simpsons, had never watched hockey, and Jack certainly wasn't going to be interested in her lab reports; even she wasn't interested in them. "So what did you think of the Nox? Daniel said you only talked to three of them—a man, a woman, and a boy—and never got a look at their technology, but they sound like interesting people.
"Yes, they were." Jack shifted in his chair. "Lya was sweet, even if I did think she was nuts at the time. Still think they're a little whacko, but after seeing their city, at least they're not stupid."
"Yeah, it sounds like they can take care of themselves," Sam agreed. "I still hope Apophis doesn't decide to go after them—superior technology can only do so much. I mean, look at the Goa'uld. Their technology is far more advanced than ours is, but every time we've come up against them so far, we've won."
"Yeah, but we've been lucky," Jack replied. The waitress was there with their food, and he leaned back to give her room. He waited till the waitress was gone to continue. "All it's gonna take is one, maybe two motherships in orbit and we're toast."
"Yeah—I read Teal'c's report on the kind of damage one of those things can do." Sam took a bite of her baked potato. It was so much better than the cafeteria could produce. "Still, you and Daniel took one out at Abydos."
"Yeah. Like I said, we were lucky." Jack shrugged. "Let's hope the Goa'uld never get lucky with the Nox."
"Let's hope." Sam raised her diet coke in salute. "So how did Daniel do?" she asked. "This turned his first real 'combat' mission. He asked me about the military mindset, when he stopped by my lab after the debriefing."
Jack concentrated on cutting his steak, not looking up at her. "He did ok." A sip of beer. "Like he did on Abydos, the first time. So, you two are getting to be good friends?"
"Yeah." Sam smiled. "He's a sweet guy. He's been there for me since this whole thing started."
"Good." He still wasn't meeting her eyes.
"He was so different from last time," Sam said into the phone cradled in her shoulder. "I just couldn't believe it." She really needed more furniture; the recliner was comfy, but she just wanted to stretch out on a nice big couch right now.
"I wonder why he was so different," Janet mused. "Is something bothering him?"
"How should I know? I'm only carrying his baby. Why should he talk to me?" Sam grimaced and shifted the phone to the other side. "I'm sorry, didn't mean to take that out on you. It was just so frustrating. It's like he expects me to be a mind-reader and pick up what he wants by osmosis. Okay, I've figured out that abortion's really unthinkable to him. I get that. I'm not going to have one. I told him that. I apologized for suggesting it; he's still giving me the cold shoulder. At least, I assume that's why he wasn't talking tonight. I mean, sometimes he was almost fine. But then he'd go right back into silent mode! When Daniel said he doesn't talk, I thought he was exaggerating. Jack O'Neill has a smart remark for everything, right? No, Daniel was right on target. Jack O'Neill doesn't talk about anything important. And I'm getting sick of it!" Her voice had risen to a shrill high that even Sam barely recognized. Oh, God, were the dreaded pregnancy hormone swings she'd heard about starting to kick in?
"Honey, I don't know what his problem is, but there is no man on God's green earth who is worth getting that worked up over," came Janet's voice over the phone. "If he's going to be a moody bastard, well, you can't change that. But you do have to take care of yourself and the baby."
"I know," Sam admitted, feeling drained and fighting for composure. She was a scientist! A military officer! She'd always prided herself on being as tough as any man she'd come up against, and not a weepy woman. You had to be, to make it in the military. And here she was, turning into the thing she'd always scorned. It was a sad comeuppance.
"You know, maybe he'll get better again," Janet continued. "Maybe he'll turn into a devoted partner and father. Maybe not. But whatever he does, you can't let him get you down. You're a strong woman, Sam, and a smart one. You can handle this. I'll be here for you, and so will Doctor Jackson, no matter what happens."
"Thanks, Janet," Sam admitted. "That means a lot to me." She glanced at the VCR. Was it that late already? On cue, she fought back a yawn. "And speaking of taking care of myself, it's time to get myself and baby off to bed."
"See you tomorrow."
Jack and Teal'c wandered into the cafeteria the next morning to find, as had become usual, Sam and Daniel already there, talking earnestly. Jack wondered what the big guy at his back thought of all this; Teal'c had said little, so far, but Jack knew he observed everything that went on around him. They grabbed their breakfast, and Jack raised an eyebrow at the sheer amount of food on T's tray. Besides large portions of waffles, scrambled eggs, and sausage, he had a mound of fruit and several biscuits. How he ate like that and kept from turning into a blimp had been a question Jack had wondered about since the first time he'd seen the guy eat.
They sat down at the table with their fellow teammates and the three humans watched with a bit of disbelief as Teal'c began attacking his mound of food with a single-minded determination unmatched by most teenage boys.
After a brief silence, Daniel spoke up. "So, how are you doing, Jack?"
"Fine," Jack said, taking a bite of his waffles. "Hammond's given me a stack of personnel folders as thick as I am tall to look over—they're really trying to find people they can bring in."
"I know," Sam said. "They've got a stack of dossiers like that of civilian scientists for me, too. They were waiting for me in my lab, when I got in this morning. Wonder why they all came at once like that?"
"Oh, I gave up pondering the mysteries of the military bureaucracy years ago, Captain."
"Y'know, we do need some more anthropologists and linguistics specialists, too," Daniel pointed out. "That is, if they really are serious about doing cultural studies of the worlds we encounter. Even just to translate the stuff the teams are starting to find to see if it's worth further study, we need more people."
"Don't feel left out, Danny boy," Jack said. It came out a little snider than he'd intended. "I'm sure that as the biggest and best language geek on base, you'll get your very own pile of personnel folders soon enough, whenever they figure out they really do need more geeks. Good luck." He could feel Teal'c's eyes on him, and studiously did not look at the man to his left. He couldn't miss Sam's glare, however, as she was seated across from him.
"Do you have anybody in mind that you'd specifically like to have?" Sam asked him. "If so, you can tell General Hammond, and he can start the recruiting process in motion."
Daniel hesitated. "Well, I burned most of my bridges pretty thoroughly before Catherine Langford recruited me for this project. A lot of the top people I'd like to have wouldn't listen to any offer from me even if they got security clearance. Robert Rothman might be interested, though; he was one of my grad students, and while he didn't buy my theories, he didn't really mind them, either."
Teal'c was great at Ping-Pong. Better than Jack was, usually. He approached the game with the same absolute dedication he gave to everything; Jack was therefore surprised than usual when Teal'c spoke in the middle of a set.
"You should not take your frustrations with Captain Carter out on Daniel Jackson."
"What?" The alien had spoken up at just the right moment, too, Jack grumbled to himself as he retrieved the ball. If he'd said anything about it, though, T would probably give him some inscrutable reply that a mere observation shouldn't have been enough to break his focus on the game. He retrieved the ball from the corner it had bounced to—that was the one thing about uniform gray concrete walls and floor; they made the ping-pong ball stand out.
"Whatever unhappiness or anger you feel about the way Captain Carter is handling the situation you both have found yourselves in, and whatever problems you have with yourself, you should not make Daniel Jackson bear the brunt of them," Teal'c explained patiently, waiting for him to serve again. "You undermine the unity of our team when you do so."
"I'm not taking it out on Daniel!" Jack frowned as Teal'c just watched him impassively. "Okay, so, maybe a little. It's just … he's annoying me all on his own, besides Sam." He served the ball.
They continued with the game in silence for a few minutes, but Jack could feel Teal'c waiting for him to say more. It was a very effective interrogation tactic, he realized. But, what the hell. Even he needed to talk to someone sometime, and with Kawalsky dead and Lou Ferreti busy with his first command, Teal'c was the only friend he had with clearance that he could talk to about this.
"It's just, almost every time I see either one on base, they're together, chattering away like there's no one else in the world," Jack admitted.
"They are both quite voluble about many subjects," Teal'c said.
"Yeah. And they both keep trying to pester me about how I feel about everything."
There was silence as Teal'c considered this. Just when Jack thought the conversation was over, he spoke up again. "As the mother of your child, Captain Carter deserves your confidences, and requires them. As one of your closest friends, Daniel Jackson sincerely wishes to help you in this difficult time. And if you were to confide in them as they need and deserve, perhaps they would not then need to support each other, and you would have less cause to be jealous."
"I'm not jealous!" Jack missed the ball and threw his racket down on the table. Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow at him in silence.