Author's note – thank you to everyone for reading this piece and for those who've been kind enough to review and message in particular. I am completely bowled over by the support. This chapter is a bit more serious and speaks to John's motives. Hope you like it – and please, pretty please, let me know what you think, it keeps me motivated.

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Chapter 3

John nearly fell off the fence when Sam walked out her back door in cut-off denim shorts and a cropped white tank top.

He'd been trying to tie a passion-fruit vine onto the brand new trellis he'd just attached to the top of her fence and had one foot on the fence post with the other swung over the top of the trellis so he had both hands free for the fiddly job. Sam's sudden appearance was enough to make him let go of the vine, with the inevitable result that he was suddenly windmilling both arms to regain his balance. Kinda caught you on the hop there, didn't she buddy!

He'd been working on her garden for nearly 2 months now but he'd only seen Sam a couple of times. She didn't explain where she'd been on the weekends she wasn't around and he knew better than to actually ask her.

After the first time she'd been much calmer. She was never anything less than friendly but he knew she had herself ruthlessly under control. He hadn't been aware of her eyes following his body as he worked again but the fact she didn't ever get near enough that she might accidentally touch him made him think she wasn't completely indifferent either. She was just Sam being Sam; cutting out the things she couldn't control and that made him incredibly sad. Where was the man who should be her lover, the father of her children, the man who should have been holding her when she laughed and when she cried? Jack O'Neill, I swear you really need your ass kicked.

So that's why he was here instead. John, with youth and experience on his side, was willing to play a long game and, meanwhile he'd look after her in the myriad tiny ways he could. He'd make sure her lawn was mowed, he'd stake her passion-fruit vines, he'd rake the leaves and clean out her gutters when autumn came and in winter he'd clear the snow from her drive. Yep, John was settling himself in for the long haul.

Because making the decision to become John,the commitment to living that life, had meant saying goodbye to his friends. To them he was the clone and they still had Jack so essentially nothing changed but to him, at the time, he had still been Jack and it had hurt. They weren't just his friends, they'd been his family and it had hurt for a long time, a dull lonely ache that had followed him everywhere and coloured everything he tried to do. He had missed their company. Daniel's gentle and incisive intelligence, quick to anger but just as quick to forgive; Tealc's warrior outlook and the slightly bemused curiosity with which he faced the vagaries of this new planet and it's baffling diversity of occupants. But the hardest part, by a long way, had been missing Sam. He had had months when he'd thought his heart was literally broken; the pain as real and physical as any he'd ever experienced. He'd woken with it, carried it through his days and dreaded the nights for the dreams they sent him. Gentle dreams of stroking the hair from her face and letting her baffle him with science. Exhilarating dreams of being free to tell her he loved her, of the family they should have had and of allowing himself to grow old with her; to grow old together. And finally the sweet, earthy dreams of making love to her with a passion that had taxed even his newly teenage libido. But above and beyond all of this had been the dawning realisation, now she was gone from it, of exactly how central to every facet of his life Samantha Carter had actually become.

The defining moment had come a little over six months earlier when he'd finally given in to another issue that had been haunting his heart and sent a mail to Jack asking if he could possibly have a picture of Charlie. The reply had been terse. Jack would meet him after school one night and he could have his photo.

In fact Jack had taken him home, to a box containing a copy of every photo he had of Charlie as well as a small shirt that, when John closed his eyes, he could imagine still carried the trace of a child long dead. He had cried at the compassion of the gift and Jack had been appalled.

John had tried to explain the things he'd learned about himself, about the both of them, and Jack hadn't wanted to know. John had been left with the sad realisation that some of the best of who he was had come from having been Jack O'Neill but he was definitely on his own from here on in.

So he'd gone back to the warmth of his foster family, to the wise people who asked few questions but still managed to convey their utter faith in him and his ability to get through this, and allowed himself to settle into their wordless embrace. He moved on.

But he'd be damned if he'd let Jack screw up Sam's life just because he was too scared and tied up too tight in his own head to be able to make her as happy as she deserved to be.

So here he was.

Ever the practical tactician, he'd mapped out a plan of action and run with it. He wasn't in a hurry and he wasn't going anywhere.

Or at least he hadn't been, until Sam had walked out her back door in …not much.

So now, balance recovered, he was standing on top of a fence, swearing quietly to himself, his hands on his hips and gazing at a vine that had slithered out of reach while a half naked Carter sat on her porch and giggled at him. It was a situation that would have strained the patience of better ex-O'Neill's than him.

'QUIT GIGGLING, get your BUTT OVER HERE and HELP ME!'

Aw Crap!