It was pure hell going back to work on Monday. For the first day in either of their careers they considered calling in sick. The only problem with that was that Jack's secretary knew where he was and would get suspicious if both he and Sam called in.

They had a long good-bye. Sam dropped him off at the airport for his jump flight only a few minutes early, they got a weird look from the pilot when Jack pecked her cheek and ran aboard the plane. Sam scowled at him, which was enough to make him turn around and walk away as quickly as he could manage without getting a few weird looks himself.

And so there she was; sitting at her desk poking at the 'doohickey' in front of her with no real interest.

I wish you were here, or that I was there, or that we both were anywhere together…

Jack, you're making this even harder than it should be.

Hey, don't tell me about hard… She blushed bright red to the empty lab. She'd found it remarkably funny earlier in the weekend when her thoughts had given him a little… lift. These thoughts had been a pleasant diversion for the pair of them in the few hours that they were apart, but prevented any real work to be done.

"Sam?"

What?

No, Sam, that's Daniel. He's actually in the room with you.

"Oh."

"What?"

"Hi, Daniel," Sam smiled, wishing her blush would go away. "What's going on?"

"We were scheduled for a briefing about twenty minutes ago- we were wondering if you were going to show up."

"Oh no!" Jack's laughter didn't help her scramble to get her things together and follow Daniel up to the briefing room.

"Jack doing a lot of thinking today?" Daniel asked after they got into the elevator.

"You could say that," she said, almost dropping her books when a particularly vivid memory of their weekend together filled her mind.

"Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

"He's singing again, Daniel; singing and telling blonde jokes."

I do not tell blonde jokes.

Why not?

Well, I happen to have a lot of respect for this one blonde I know, making most blonde jokes seem... untrue.

Well thank you, Jack, but I've been blonde my whole life, I probably know all the jokes you could tell me.

Oh, then I won't hold back… Sam groaned as he launched into the tale of the blonde and the scratch&sniff sticker on the bottom of the pool.

"What?"

"Why did the blonde climb the glass wall?" She asked him.

"What?" He hadn't realized that she'd switched topics- as far as he was aware they were still talking about her health.

"To see what was on the other side."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It's a blonde joke. Dumb blondes… get it?"

"Why wouldn't she just look through the wall to see what was on the other side?"

"Because. She's a dumb blonde."

Daniel didn't get to respond because the pair of them had entered the briefing room, where an annoyed looking General Landry, and Mitchell sat waiting. Teal'c was expressionless as usual, though he did look a little annoyed, for Sam's experience.

"Sorry," she apologized, mostly to Teal'c.

"So: why do you think you two still have this connection thing going on?" Mitchell asked, not particularly eager to get to the official business of the briefing. Sam could only shrug.

"Than Ancients wanted their own little cheat down here."

"But you haven't really done anything we couldn't do already," Daniel put in.

Well thank you Daniel I feel so loved…

Jack-- pay attention to your own meeting.

Fine, fine…

"We now have an unlimited supply of ZPM's should we need any, we have the use of our own force-shields…"

"What about Merlin's weapon? We really need to find that," Mitchell pointed out.

"But the Ancients didn't even acknowledge that that existed, Daniel," Sam reminded her friend. "So I don't think they'd give us that knowledge-"

She cut herself off, distracted by something she saw under Daniel's hands. It was a diagram he'd traced out of one of the books from Merlin's library. Her mind started flashing and she went into what had become know as 'Ancient Phase.' She began mumbling to herself and Jack in rapid Ancient- a habit that had surfaced over time- and grabbed the stack of papers out from under Daniel's folded hands.

"Sam, what?"

Is this the 'gate address?

Would it be that simple- just turn it upside down?

Well, the door to get to the weapon on Dakara was easy enough; just spin some symbols around…

Yeah, but that was a wall that barely resembled a door- I'm still celebrating the fact that you even noticed it.

What about the symbols on the edges, here? She traced a finger along the symbols she was pointing to.

"Sam, can you read that!" Daniel seemed really excited. "I wasn't able to translate it, the symbols were different from other Ancient. Didn't translate into proper Latin, I couldn't find a common-"

Sam tuned him out.

Is it the Code?

I think so.

You should get over here as fast as you can.

I'm already booking my flight on the web…

It's like you can read my mind or something!

Very funny, Sam.

I try. What time will you get here?

21:00 hours.

So late?

I need time to convince the President to let me go back down there- I just got back.

But that was just personal vacation, not business.

Actually I told him we were trying to figure some stuff out with our telepathy… stuff.

Well that's just great. Now we've got to come up with some product for that?

No, I already told him we were unsuccessful even after an entire weekend spent on it.

Well, you should've said something; we could've tried to put some 'discovery' in there.

I think we spent our weekend just fine. Don't you?

You know I do.

That's what I thought.

I know.

OFerCryinOutLoud- enough already.

You started it.

I'm a bad influence.

That's a matter of opinion.

Their conversation was broken when Jack's secretary informed him that the President was on line one for him, and Daniel poked Sam in the side of the face.

"You still in there?"

"What?" She asked in Ancient. Worry creased her friends' faces- memories flooding back of Jack's previous experiences. "Sorry, what?" She transferred back to English.

"What happened?"

"He's on his way."

"Why?"

"This," she showed them the image she'd pulled out of Daniel's stack."

"You can read it?"

"It's the Code."

"The Code?" Mitchell didn't sound impressed.

"Yes. When the Ancients learned how to ascend they decided to encode their most precious documents, for lack of a better word. Their biggest secrets, the things that could destroy them even in their enlightened state, their histories; all the big stuff, it was all put in Code. The Code was developed to keep everybody else out- it makes absolutely no sense to anybody that isn't… wasn't… hasn't… it's complicated."

"Isn't-wasn't-hasn't what?"

"Died, ascended, a number of other qualities. As I said, it's complicated."

"It's the Ancients, when are they not complicated?" Sam only smiled.

Now we've got a reason for all this crap with our heads. Jack was smiling.

Finally.

I'm currently suffering from writer's block on this one- email me with ideas! Where should this story go? What the hell is this Code thing i just came up with...:)