Author's Note: Forgive me for the next two chapters. They were excruciating to write. I almost made them all one chapter, but it was a monster chapter (over 7k words) and this was the best place to cut it. Just know, this isn't where it ends. As General Hammond (RIP) said once, "It's always darkest before the dawn." Tissues and hugs, friends. - RS

Chapter 8 - Living

Something was wrong. Sam could feel it in her bones as Jack rolled upright in bed. Instead of addressing it, she tugged on his hand and offered him her brightest smile. "Hey. It's Saturday. I thought we were going to stay in bed."

Pain lined Jack's face as he leaned down to kiss her. "As tempting as that offer is, I told Jake I'd give him another chess lesson."

He turned to go, but she didn't let go of his hand. "Jack. . ."

He could read the worry in her eyes the way she could read the agony in his. "I'm fine."

"Let me run some scans just to be sure."

"Carter. . ."

Though she'd promised herself she wouldn't get emotional, she felt the panic rising. If she lost him, she didn't know what she'd do. "If they come back clean, I'll drop it. Promise."

"Carter, they're not going to come back clean. I'm eighty-two years old. Something's gonna come back problematic. You forget, I've been down this road before."

She shook her head the way she did whenever he didn't quite get something right. "That was different. It was artificial aging because of the Argosian nanites in your blood."

"Didn't feel different."

The same feeling of helplessness which had reared its head every time Jack had gone missing and when her dad had been sick and refused to let her visit clenched like a fist in her stomach. She knew Jack wouldn't appreciate her motherhenning, so she just smiled. "Okay, then, I'll see you for lunch in a couple of hours."

Jack eyed her as if he'd expected this to be a longer fight. "Okay. Sounds good."

He shuffled to the door to their quarters before he turned back to her. "Look, if it will put your mind at ease. . ."

She glanced up, relief undoubtedly showing in her features. "Yes?"

His shoulders slumped as he gave up the fight. "Maybe we can run the scans after lunch."

Sam stared at the computer screen, the blood turning to ice in her veins. This was one of the few times she'd hoped she was wrong. According to these scans, however, she'd been just as right as Jack usually thought she would be.

Somehow reclaiming the energy of his youth, Jack strolled into the room with a smile. "Let me guess, I'm just old."

Sam turned away from her husband as tears stung her eyes, something she could never hide from him.

"Carter?" His voice hinted at the doubt her actions must have instigated.

I'm Samantha Carter. I can do this. She straightened her back as she looked back at her husband with all the love she'd ever had for him.

His eyes questioned hers, and her will wavered.

"Okay, Jack, do you want the good news or the bad news?"

Jack's bravado slipped as he sat beside her. "There's good news?"

She nodded. "I've run your medical scans through a program to compare your results with the data we have in the Asgard core since Daniel hasn't found the plans for an Asgard medical pod yet. Otherwise, we could just manufacture the parts and stick you in there—"

Jack waved at her. "Stop stalling, Carter. What are you saying?"

"The good news is that according to the program, with few exceptions, you've never been healthier."

He studied every curve of her face. "Yeah, I'll tell my cracking joints. You said there were a few exceptions?"

Sam's lower lip trembled. She turned back to the computer and pulled up one of the scans. "I don't know if it's because of how long we've been in space or if it's because of some arterial blockage—"

"Carter?"

She showed him the scan on the computer. "Based on the observations the Asgard have made on humans over the last several millennia, your heart is enlarged."

"Okay. And that means?"

She wished Janet was here. Or Carolyn Lam. Or anyone else who could deliver this news without the added emotion that Sam was feeling. "There's no way to know how or when, but your heart is giving out. It could be a heart attack, stroke, blood clot, or plain old heart failure."

He was quiet, just sitting next to her for a few moments as he pondered what she had to say. "Well, it's not like we didn't know I would die one day."

The matter-of-fact way he said it threatened Sam's attempt to keep her composure, and she turned away from him.

"Hey." Jack's hand slipped into hers, and she patted his frigid hand with her other hand as the tears she wanted to hide streamed silently down her cheeks.

She wiped at her cheeks, trying to dry them as carefully as possible. "Don't tell me it will be okay. Don't tell me we had an entire life together. Thirty years feels too short."

She hung onto her sanity by a thread as he brushed her hair back from her face. "This isn't your fault."

She closed her eyes as her heart squeezed in agony. "Yes, Jack, it is. If we were home, they could treat this, but we don't have an Asgard medical pod. We just have the observations that the Asgard made about the human condition, and I'm not that—" She choked on her emotion. "Not that kind of doctor."

He brushed a thumb over her cheek before he leaned in and kissed her, his lips coaxing hers with the same gentleness she now associated with this warrior. She yielded to him as tears slipped down her cheeks. How many more kisses like this would they share before he was gone?

He didn't pull back after their kiss ended, just dropped his face from her lips to her shoulder as she clung to him. The first time he'd held her like this flashed across her mind, reminding of how he'd trembled, shivered, after shoving Hathor over the rails and into the cryogenic stasis chamber.

So much had changed since then, but even then, that embrace had warned her that there was something more than admiration growing deep in her heart.

"Do me a favor?" His voice was no louder than a whisper, and there was a strange mixture of fear and regret coloring his tone.

"Anything."

"Don't tell anyone."

She pulled away, watching his eyes for some sign that he was joking. Unfortunately, he'd never looked more serious in his life.

"The last thing I need right now is for everyone to act like I'm some ticking time bomb. When and if there's something I can't hide from anyone, I'll tell them."

She wanted to tell him she couldn't do it, tell him that everyone had the right to share the impact he'd had on their lives. How could she look her kids in the eye knowing they would hate her when this came out? Before she could form the words, however, she bobbed her head. "Okay. In the meantime, we should get you something for the pain you're feeling."

He winced. "Noticed that, huh?"

"Yeah. I'll also see if I can find something in the Asgard database in case there's something I can find that will help."

He swallowed before he spoke. "I don't want you obsessing over this, Sam. Do what you gotta do, but I'd rather have a few weeks chock full of memories than a decade of lying in a bed, waiting to die. Sam?"

She looked down again when he pressed his finger under her chin and encouraged her to look back at him. "I heard you."

"It was worth the wait, you know."

Her head snapped up. "The wait?"

"You, the kids, all of this. It was worth waiting for."

Her lips fell open. "Jack, our thirty years could have been forty—was forty or more in some universes."

He pressed a shaky finger to her lips to silence her. "I'm not greedy, Carter. We've had a good life. A life I'm not sure I really believed we could have, if I'm honest."

"Because I locked us in a time dilation field."

He kissed her again. "No, Carter, because you saved us in a time dilation field. Mitchell might groan, but I never pretended I wouldn't have been happy in a tiny cabin in the woods of Minnesota for the rest of my days."

She shook her head as she watched him. "You haven't gone fishing in over thirty years, and you're not angry with me. Why is that?"

She leaned in as he cupped her cheek in his hand. "It was never about the fishing, Carter."

"Carter, I can't see a thing under this blindfold."

Sam guided her husband down the winding corridor of the Odyssey. "You're not supposed to."

"I know it's my birthday, but I wasn't kidding when I said all I wanted was a family dinner."

"And we'll have a family dinner. Tomorrow night. On your actual birthday."

"Samantha. . ."

She rolled her eyes as they came closer to the bridge. "Stop complaining. We're almost there."

Her heart pounded with anxiety and enthusiasm in equal measure as she sat Jack in the camping chair and removed the blindfold.

Jack looked at the makeshift pool in front of him. "What the devil. . .?"

Sam handed him the fishing pole with the red bow on it. "Happy birthday, Jack."

His jaw dropped. "Fishing, Sam? I'm turning eighty-three, and you thought you'd take me fishing?"

She bit her lip as she pulled out what would have to pass as Guinness, thanks to the Asgard matter converter. "Bad idea?"

He took the beer from her and unscrewed the cap as he considered it. "Aw, hell, I've had worse birthdays."

She giggled. "Like the time we were on PX3 920?"

Jack shuddered. "Did you have to bring that one up?"

She giggled. "Oh, come on, you always said that running from some primitive tribe was your idea of a good time!"

"Carter. They shot me, and I was so full of whatever narcotics they laced the arrow tip with that I started—"

She smiled at him sweetly, like she didn't know exactly why he hated that particular mission. "That you started what, Jack?"

He clammed up. "That I could have sworn I was back in the seventies."

She snorted as she screwed the cap off her own beer. "I wondered how you would avoid saying the words singing Jimmy Buffett songs."

Jack took a swig of his beer, a grin playing on his features. "So you do remember that mission, do you?"

She laughed. "How could I forget?"

"I can't imagine you could forget that one anymore than I could when you drank that stuff on 595 and took off all your—"

She rolled her eyes as she settled into the camp chair beside him. "You're juvenile, you know that?"

"Hey, it was the first time I got a look at that mole on your—"

She cast her fishing line into the water. "Keep it up, and you won't see that mole for a long while, buddy."

Jack smirked as he cast his own line beside hers. "Now, that would be a shame."

She rested the fishing pole against her thigh as she reached for his hand. "I'm only sorry we couldn't do this with trees and fresh air and—"

"Carter."

She sighed, releasing her guilt. "I was thinking we could leave everything for a week or so. That way you can bring the kids."

"Teal'c might enjoy fishing better if he doesn't have to worry about mosquitos."

Sam laughed. "Sure. That's why he didn't like it."

Jack threw a look in her direction. "Et tu, Brute?"

She grinned. "I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. You're always welcome to ask him again."

"How many times did I ask you to go fishing with me before you caved?"

Sam tensed. "Three? Four? I don't really remember. All I know is that at least two of those times, you got beamed up by the Asgard before I ever got to give you more than my knee-jerk answer."

They grew quiet as they remembered a race which most of the world outside their time dilation bubble didn't even know was gone yet.

Jack cleared his throat. "Do you realize we've been married almost thirty years, and this is only the second time I've taken you fishing?"

She chuckled. "Technically, I took you this time, Jack."

"Semantics."

She grew thoughtful as she stared at the space outside the ship and then at the clear water in the shallow pool she and Daniel had rigged up for this fishing trip. "Let me guess, this is something we would have done more of if the last thirty years had been spent on Earth?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't know. If you had gone off and worked on Atlantis, I could see us knocking back a couple of cold ones with some fishing off one of the piers."

Sam shook her head as she pondered his statement. "Lost City of Atlantis, and all you want to do is fish. Sounds about right."

Jack reeled in his line so he could cast it out into a fishless pond again. "I am who I am."

Sam turned her attention back to her fishing line, hoping that Jack wouldn't catch the melancholy look that crossed her face. One more birthday. One last fishing trip.

Jack caught her hand in his, pulling her attention back to him. "Don't think of sad things tonight, Sam. Only happy, okay?"

"Yes, sir." She forced a smile to her lips even as Jack frowned at her return to his military rank. "In honor of your birthday, I put trout on the menu tomorrow night."

"So we can pretend like we caught it?"

Sam chuckled. "Yeah. Something like that."

"I like the way you think."

Sam leaned against the door, hugging herself as she watched Daniel take his notes on the Asgard database. "Hey."

Daniel didn't look away from his work. "Hey. Maggie's working out with Teal'c today, and I think Jacob's gardening."

"I'm an awful friend if you think the only reason I came to visit is because I'm looking for my kids."

Daniel turned back to look at her, his keen insight bright in his eyes. "Not awful. Just busy. What's up?"

She took a step inside, the holographic script on the walls simultaneously inspiring and overwhelming her. "Why do you do it? Knowing everything is gonna die with you?"

Daniel smiled at her. "Is it, though? Thanks to a friend of mine, I have a couple apprentices ready to take over for me."

Sam wanted to muster some enthusiasm or hope at his words. Maggie and Jacob had spent their lives preparing to take over the ship one day, though no one would ever have admitted it back then. Back then, they'd all still hoped that one day they'd come out of it. Still, all they'd done was prolong their day of reckoning.

Daniel must have sensed her troubled thoughts because he stepped closer to her, his eyes turned away from the Asgard tablets in his hands. "I know you, Sam. There's more to this existential question than just curiosity. It's Jack, isn't it?"

She walked past him, turning her gaze to the record on display. True to her word, she had told no one, but that didn't mean Jack hadn't gotten some concerned looks over the dinner table when his hands trembled or his cough broke through the laughter.

Sam had even caught worried looks passing between the twins, though they said nothing. She recognized the looks in their eyes as the one which had haunted her when her dad had been sick. Their dad was no more interested in letting his kids watch his body lose a battle than her father had been.

"It's everything. My kids should be getting married, starting their careers, having families of their own. Instead, they're sparring with a Jaffa or tending a hydroponic garden. What kind of life did I give them, trapped in this metal box in the middle of nowhere with a threat of impending doom perpetually in the back of their minds?"

"I doubt they'd describe it that way."

She scoffed. "This is all they know, and maybe that's a blessing. This way, they won't hate me."

Daniel was silent, his footsteps quiet as he shuffled back onto the podium. "I know you guys think I'm crazy, but the truth is, I would go crazy if I didn't keep doing this. Besides, you haven't given up."

Sam crossed her arms as she studied the glyphs in the air above her. Somewhere between Jack's diagnosis six months ago and now, that's exactly what she had done, opting instead for mid-morning snuggles, Sunday brunch, family jam sessions, and sitting with her toes in a tiny simulated pond, fishing. "Yes, I have."

She exchanged a sad smile with Daniel before she walked out of the room.