For fallenbelle: Five secrets about Samantha Carter that she doesn't want you to know.
1. She didn't always want to be an astrophysicist. She didn't even always want to be an astronaut. Her first great aspiration was too trite for words, because from the ages of four to nine, she had wanted nothing more than to be a ballerina when she grew up. She had the tutu and the lessons and she used the same single minded drive that she now uses to save the world on a nearly daily basis to find the center of balance in a pirouette.
After all, when she pranced around the house in ballet costumes and fairy wands, her father knew what to do with her, twirling her around so fast that she had no recourse but to giggle and bury her head in his shoulder like the daughter who was average and ordinary like the one he imagined when he was away.
It was when she took apart the refrigerator to try and fix the buzzing her mother was always complaining about that Jacob froze.
2. It was obvious to everyone that Sam didn't take to Vala right away. But the reason – well. How could Sam possibly explain that some part of her was jealous, because in a few weeks Vala had entrenched herself into this new, strange version of SG-1 in a way Sam was still struggling to do? Or that she sort of resented how warm Teal'c was with the new arrival when he had yet to refer to Sam as anything but "Colonel Carter" despite nine years of fighting side by side. Or that she envied the way she could get away with anything, because people just seemed to expect the ridiculous and scandalous from Vala, while Sam was stuck as the ever dependable one.
Mostly, she couldn't find words to explain that she resented Vala merely because she wasn't Janet. It was ridiculous and silly, but Sam hadn't exactly had a lot of female friends in her life, and no one had ever bothered to tell her how far and how long the bonds of that friendship should stretch.
Finally, it occurred to her in passing that Janet would have found Vala hysterical.
Somehow, being nice to her seemed easier after that.
3. She never, ever lets herself forget her mistakes. In fact, often times, she has them on a repeating loop in her head. And while other people might find constantly working in the face of their failures paralyzing, Sam finds it centering. It reminds her that when she screws up, people die. Which sounds egotistical, except that she knows it's true.
So when people tease her about working too much, it's easy to laugh them off. Because at least when she's five minutes from totally collapsing, she's not being lulled into a false sense of complacency.
4. She has a notebook locked up at home of ideas she will never show anyone – especially not the United States Air Force. One of the drawbacks of having a mind that works in ways even she doesn't understand is that sometimes, her brain gets away from her. The power she knows is contained on those pages could destroy…everything. And because she has a conscience, she will never willingly let people see that notebook.
But somehow, she quite force herself to get rid of it.
5. She had loved her job at Area 51. A lot. It was days of science and brainstorming and being able to work an eight hours day (okay, eleven) without having to worry about alarms every half hour and being called away from a sensitive experiment. There were no guns (except the laser one she had been working on reverse engineering) and no threat of impending doom.
She had had weekends off regularly, and used them for the social life that she had spent way too much time imagining over the past few years. She had helped Cassie study and taken Jack to all of her favorite D.C. haunts and made love to him on her kitchen counter. With this job, she was given the freedom to consider the future. (It was easier to plan ahead when you weren't running from explosions every few days.) She had started thinking about a house and a dog and the husband she might consider proposing to, even if it was all cliché and a little trite. Maybe even a baby, if she could con Jack into it and get over the whole paralyzing fear aspect of things.
Sam hadn't realized how ready for that life she was until it had been taken away.