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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

The end is nearly here. I'm sorry but chapters will be updated more quickly so keep tuned in and make sure to keep up with the events. Even after so much has happened, the best is yet to come. We're still chapters away from discovering the truth about Adrienne. And we say our final goodbye.

The end is coming… June 2006

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Before reading this chapter, you should realize something: if Jack wouldn't take Sam when she offering herself as a cavewoman in the first couple of episodes of SG-1, what could have changed that he took advantage of a woman with no memory? Is the Jack we once knew gone? Or was this ever our Jack to begin with?

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PART TWENTY-THREE: Permission to Love

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Two days later --- Mid-September 2004

Sam sat on her bed, her laptop open on her lap and her TV on mute, its light flashing before her in the cold night. Realizing she had been dead merely a few days ago, she scoffed and looked up from her energy consumption figures. There was an infomercial playing on TV for some new way to lose weight so she scoffed it off, closed the laptop, and went to the kitchen for something caffeinated to drink, humming to herself the first thing that came to mind.

When she came back, with her piece of chocolate in hand, there was a new presence in the room. She felt watched. "Hello?" she said. "Ree, is that you?"

Out of nowhere, Adrienne appeared as if she were being reintegrated bit by bit before her. "You called?"

"Damn it, Ree. You scared me."

"Yeah well, Dad told me to keep an eye on you tonight. And how'd you know it was me?" Sam laughed and went back to sit on the bed. Ree sat on the edge facing the TV and raised an eyebrow. "Feeling the flab, Sam?" she joked at the commercial, staring at the chocolate in her mother's hand.

Sam turned off the TV and Adrienne reluctantly went back to what she was sent to do. "Why does he want you to watch me? And what the hell are you doing out of the base?" Sam asked, going back to her figures.

"Still don't trust me, eh?" Her tone was playful but Sam really didn't trust her as she once did.

"First of all, last time I did, you killed me. And secondly, don't change the subject. What's he up to?" she asked, not bothering to take her eyes off the simulation.

"Ring shopping, I'd imagine," Ree said, got up, and went to the kitchen calmly despite being accused of murder by her own mother. "And I had to kill you, darling. You didn't leave me much of a choice."

"Ring shopping?" She was more alarmed to that than anything else. "What the hell's he thinking?"

"I think he wants to make it special or something. You never told me how he proposed."

"Well I can honestly say it was like a dream."

"Yes, love. That much I figured. Details!"

Sam raised an eyebrow. It seemed too much like late-night girl talk to her and she wasn't in the mood to share anything with Adrienne. If anything, she'd been cold to her for a while, and with reason.

"Don't bother me, Adrienne. I have work to do," she responded, going back to the screen.

"Ugh. You're impossible. You come back from the dead, get engaged, your entire office sinks, and you want to work?" She got up and walked around the bed to the bathroom. She wanted to see how it'd all changed. Not much had, which she found utterly pitiful.

Sam still ignored her. And then she stopped typing and looked up at the blank TV. "How did you get married?"

"How I got married?" Ree poked her head in from the bathroom. It didn't seem a good topic of discussion for her. It brought back bad memories.

"To Dionysus. I'm assuming he was the only one."

"Well no but it's just interesting you ask."

"How come?"

"Because you're my mother. Mothers don't ask their daughters advice on wedding coordination. Besides, it was kind of against my will. Sorry if I didn't pay attention to the décor," she said and walked out the bathroom, jumping onto the center of the bed and beginning to read a few of Sam's paper that had been scattered throughout. "Do you ever actually use this bed? Doing the Mulder thing?"

"Was I there, for the wedding I mean?" Sam asked seriously.

Adrienne looked up. "That doesn't matter now," she said and looked away, pretending to stare at some papers. "How is it you have work? The base is flooded! It won't be operational for months!"

"Yea about that, where are you guys staying?"

"Us aliens you mean? Well my room wasn't flooded. It was above 28. So I'm good for a little while. But the noise is incessant."

"Putting the doors back up?" Sam laughed.

"No, General Hammond yelling over the phone at some guy named Bob for not getting them a jet of some kind. Or it could have been something to do with the Jets. I dunno."

Sam laughed again. And then she veered back on topic. "Why wasn't I at your wedding? I want to know."

Ree's smile went away. "You were… You had work to do," she said quickly, cleared her throat and changed the subject again. "Oh! Dad and I feel kind of bad that you were um… dead for your birthday so he's planning something to that extent too."

"But why does he need you to watch me? It's 4 in the morning," Sam said, looking at her clock on the night table.

"Well honey if the base weren't flooded, where do you think you'd be?"

"Oh man. Do you think he's going to recreate it?"

"Recreate what?"

"The way he proposed. It was in the Gate room."

"You're both inside each other's heads, capable of creating any panorama in the freakin' universe and you go the Gate room? Have I mentioned you have no lives?"

"It was nice though. Everyone was there. He got on one knee and everything, and you know how he is about his knees."

Adrienne started laughing so hard she nearly fell out of the bed. "Where else did you go?"

"The kitchen."

"You and your damn yellow kitchens. I bet you he's going to want to put some crappy Simpsons wallpaper in the baby's room."

"What?" Sam snapped up. "What baby? What… Simpsons?"

"That what you did when I was born. He wasn't there but you said the wallpaper reminded of him. It was a little trim around the room of Maggie Simpson curled up with a teddy bear. Everything was yellow and blue. It was kind of cute if I hadn't looked how I do now."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No. I think you thought it was nice. You always tried to give me little mementos of him. The room, the name, the little trinkets that reminded you more than me."

"The name? His last name? Yea I've been wondering. Why 'Adrienne?'"

"You'll find out tomorrow. Well... tonight," she said, gesturing to the time.

"I'm not even tired," Sam said. "Why aren't I tired?"

"I killed you remember?"

A pause. "I opened those doors, didn't I? The day of the flood. That was me?"

Adrienne didn't respond, simply stared right back at her worried eyes.

"Damn it, Ree." She stopped for a moment and looked at Adrienne. She seemed apologetic, those same Jack puppy dog eyes. It made her smile. "Thanks… for killing me."

"What?" she asked, confused and expecting a lecture. "Did they forget the logic zone of your brain or something?"

"No I mean it. I know… I know your original plan was to kill me and leave me dead."

"No… I… I could never… Yeah, it was something like that."

"Why didn't you?"

Adrienne seemed to want to cry but she gulped it all back. "Well frankly darling you sort of saved yourself. I don't know what you did but that moment you showed me the yellow kitchen, something sort of clung onto the dream."

"I gave you humanity." she said, smiling. "And you gave me life."

"Well you were gonna die anyway. I just sped it up a little."

Sam squinted her eyes and scowled. She shut off the laptop and started to gather up the papers. "How did he die?" she asked quietly without looking up from her papers.

"You've wanted to ask that for a while, huh?" Adrienne said. She looked away too. "I'm sorry, Mom. I can't tell you that one."

"Why?"

"Because you told me never to remind you."

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Daniel and Janet had to talk. He took her back home the day of the flood. It was a quiet ride. It was a quiet goodbye, but Janet knew what it meant. She wouldn't be the ultimatum but here it was.

They stood at her front steps. It was midday. He took her hands in his and looked straight at her. Her face was blank. His was apologetic, and in a blink he just hugged her so hard that a tear left her of its own volition.

"Daniel, I…" she began but she gave up, smiled, and hugged him back.

"I wish I could have seen how the future played out the first time. I can't tell you if you'll be happier this way. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have you in my life. But Janet, don't leave us. Don't do it for me or because of me," he said from within her hair.

"We were something, weren't we?" she said. "I was never meant to be kidnapped, was I?"

Her tone was steady, almost eerily so. There was something different about her, something they had detached like bottling the very thing that made her Janet and selling it for profit. He didn't even want to imagine what they had done to her. She still refused to speak of it.

"Why do you ask?" he said, trying to prevent in her the pain of what might have been and what once was.

"Adrienne. She asked… my permission."

"For what?" he asked, disturbed and slightly shaken. Janet turned and opened the door.

"To love you," she said and went inside.

He stopped for a moment and smiled slightly with the same apologetic eyes. It was such a juvenile thing for Adrienne to do. But then, no matter how old or relatively young she looked, she had never had a childhood. She never dealt with crushes or the like. When she loved, no matter how much she feared it, it was with all her heart.

And he felt unworthy of it but if he had the chance, he'd give her the life she was robbed. It was a noble sentiment. Too bad he'd never get the chance.

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Ree and Sam spent the night talking about the past and the future and the annoying habits they'd noticed off each other. Dionysus didn't come up at all. Sam sensed it was a delicate subject and she'd gotten enough answers for a decade. Apparently, she had memorized the scores of the next dozen or so Superbowls in case she got stuck here and Jack managed to survive.

"Enough entertainment in that little man to last a decade," she said.

When it was 9:00 in the morning, Adrienne announced it was time for the first part of the surprise and that they'd have to go to Cheyenne. Sam didn't like all the mystery but she figured it was worth it to keep Jack enthused.

She wondered if it was going to be like this from now on. Jack would plan stupid romantic gestures to get her to leave the office. He'd be the soccer mom, the chef. She'd be eating charred beef and beer for the rest of her life. The car ride to base, she couldn't help smiling as she thought about their future.

It was ok to dream now. There was a chance now.

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The mess hall was clean but abandoned. It hadn't been flooded and most personnel had been sent home so it remained a haven of what once was. Normal operation was something they wouldn't hear for a while. But here she was.

Sam stood at the entrance to the mess. Both doors had been opened as far as they could go. All the tables had been cleared out and the back line, usually busy with hungry, gossiping airmen, was now devoid of life.

It was eerily quiet. But as soon as Sam took a step forward, she heard Adrienne snap her fingers behind her. The doors slammed shut and the table in the middle of the room was now in a white tablecloth and housed a single red rose in a thin, long vase.

Sam turned around to see the doors close and when she turned back to face the table, Jack was standing there in a black tux with his hands behind his back. And as soon as he saw her smile, Glenn Miller music began to play in the background. He smiled back and raised a remote control from behind his back and tossed it behind him, landing somewhere near the blue Jell-O.

She started to calmly walk towards him "It's not quite magical but I figure it's better than…" he began but she was already mere centimeters from him.

"You didn't have to," she whispered, looking him over with seductive eyes, slowly tip-toeing up to kiss him.

"Yeah well I don't want you to figure out what an idiot you're marrying."

"Oh sir, I figured that out a long time ago."

"'Sir?' Do you have any idea how much I love it when you say that?" he joked, planting a kiss on her neck.

She laughed but as his kisses got deeper, longer, she felt something rise in her. A heat. Her eyes turned the color of flame and she had to have him.

"Let's get out of here, now!" she insisted, already pushing him off her reluctantly and pulling him through the doors to the nearest VIP room.

"Sam, I don't think this…" but her kisses refused to let him speak. He knew something was wrong. Not that she would be so impulsive but that he would allow himself to do this twice now knowing that she wasn't in her right mind. That maybe this wasn't his Sam.

Or maybe… he wasn't her Jack.

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To be continued in PART TWENTY-FOUR:

--How will whatever's taken over Jack react to the news that not only has Adrienne known all along that it's in him but that she's taken advantage of the situation?

--How long before the end?

--Why don't we ever see the wedding?

--How will Jack take the news of the baby?

--How will Daniel ever be able to forget Adrienne after she's gone?

--What does it mean when a man raises a being he knows from birth to have the powers of a star?

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Stay tuned for the sequel, officially titled "Endless Night" coming July 2006.

LEVEL 28 comes to MySpace! Unfortunately, I'm unable to post the site on FanFiction because it's not letting it through the darn HTML thingy. But my MySpace name is AriadneInLove as always. Do find me. Or leave a review and I'll drop the address. Thanks to all!-Grace.