Sam opens the door to see a man with glasses and very short hair.
"Mrs. O'Neill?" he asks nervously, giving her a look that she doesn't understand.
She nods her head, realizing that this is the first time anyone has ever called her that. Jack still insists on calling her "Carter," even though that stopped being her name about the time he met her.
"Walter!" Jack says, walking into the room and giving the man a hug.
"I'm not too early, am I?" the man asks with nerves in his voice. Sam isn't sure what part of the encounter is the strangest for her. The fact that this man is so nervous to be here, or that he was apparently expected, and her husband had neglected to tell her.
"No, you're fine," Jack says. "We're having company for supper," he informs his wife.
"I'll go start cooking," she says, a little frightened. She's not sure what is going on, but she's not the best cook. She hopes that she doesn't shame Jack.
"No need, Sha'uri makes me dinner each night, and she made extra for today," Walter says holding up a bag.
The smell comes out when he moves it. Sam really wants to be offended at what she's pretty sure is a slight, but the smell is so Kheb-like* that she can't quite muster the annoyance.
"I really want to talk about your work," Walter says, setting the bag down and unpacking it on the table.
"Well, of course, I'm not working on anything now," she says.
"Really? Jack mentioned something about life signs detectors," Water says.
Sam looks at Jack in surprise. "Walter is in charge of our base of operations. You don't have to hide the fact that I am a member of the resistance from him," Jack explains.
"Ah, ok, yeah, I'm working on something to that effect," she says.
"How exactly is it going to work?" Walter prompts.
"You don't want to hear all the details," Sam says, blushing.
"Walter is a gluten for details. He's big on technology. He's invented quite a few things to keep us out of dangers in the field. And a few things for comfort too. That ice box was his idea."
"Simple insulation," Water says with a blush.
"So hit them with the details, Carter," Jack says, digging into the food and leaning back on his chair.
"Why do you do that?" she asks.
The legs of the chair slam down with a clang, "Sorry," he says.
Sam rolls her eyes; she's not his mother, for crying out loud. She really doesn't care if he rocks on his chair or not, "Not that. Why do you insist on calling me 'Carter'. That's not my name anymore."
Walter looks away, feeling that he really shouldn't be part of this conversation.
"I know, it's just… you don't really feel like an O'Neill," he said quietly, hoping that she'll drop it.
Sam regrets having brought this up in front of Walter, and so turns to him, letting the technobabble cover him like an avalanche. Maybe it would be enough to block out all the things he heard before. Maybe he wouldn't even remember hearing about the shame of her sham wedding.
-0-0-0-
Sam picks up the dishes, expecting the usual symbiotic routine between her and her new husband. Instead, he says, "Why don't you take Walter out into the backyard? You can entertain him while I get this cleaned up."
Sam nods her head, and the two of them head outside. The night is crystal clear. The air is unnaturally still. It's the sort of air that foreshadows a thunderstorm. She can't quite believe the weather though. Storms almost never happen in Egypt. It causes a feeling of expectation that Sam doesn't even understand to coil in her stomach.
"How come you didn't bring your wives?" Sam asks.
Walter laughs a little under his breath, "I haven't got any."
Sam examines him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what she missed. No, the man is young and handsome, but he's certainly reached and passed the age of marriage. "Why not?"
Walter whispers, as it it's a scandalous secret, "My mom, she… well, I swore after what I saw that I'd only take a willing wife. That was the original reason I joined the resistance. Oh, to be sure, the Goa'uld have given me enough cause to hate them in the time that has passed since, but the first cause they ever gave me to hate them was the way my dad treated my mom."
"I'm sorry," Sam says, as she tries to figure out exactly what he meant by a 'willing wife'.
He looks up at the stars, "Aren't they amazing? I kind of envy Jack that he's actually been to some of them."
"Actually, very few of the stars that you can see from Earth have habitable planets orbiting them, and fewer of those actually have Stargates on them…" she begins.
"I know, but there is still something… almost poetic about it. Touching the stars," Walter murmurs.
She looks over at this man who bears his heart so easily to a women that he doesn't even now. She thinks there is something very unjust about the fact that he is unmarried. He would make a very good husband.
"Samantha, if it were up to you, how many children would you have?" he asks suddenly. He must feel that the comment is inappropriate even more acutely than she does, judging by the blush which steals up his cheeks as he asks it.
"It's really not up to me," she says.
"Right," he says, looking away. There is a pause, during which not even an insect stirs.
His hand brushes hers, and at first she thinks it's an accident. But the initial feather light contact changes to a palm pressed against hers, and then his fingers grasp hers.
There is no doubt about what is happening right now; Walter is betraying his best friend.
Her mind desperately reaches for some excuse she can use to make her way inside. She feels that she must get away from him as soon as she can. She has to tell Jack.
Maybe she shouldn't tell Jack. After all, the man is one of his best friends, and it would really hurt him to know what his friend had been doing behind his back. And they worked together, so it might damage one or both of their careers to have amnesty between them.
But she knows, with the guilt coiling in her stomach, and the strange sweaty unease in her hand that she is going to tell him.
She pulls the hand away in a flash, and wipes it on her dress. She is about to make some sort of a polite excuse to go inside, but she is saved from it by a flash of thunder, and the promised rain pouring down all around them.
He takes off his coat, and tries to throw it over her head to offer her protection from the downpour, but she takes off running, pretending that she didn't even see the action.
She runs into the kitchen dripping wet, and with a guilty look on her face.
"I'd better get going," Walter says when he enters the kitchen a few seconds after her.
"So soon? Is it because of the rain? You can borrow some of my clothes if it's just because you got wet," Jack offers.
"No, really, thank you, Jack, but I have to get going," Walter repeats, walking out of the room without another word.
When Jack is sure that his friend has left the house, he turns to his wife, and says, "What did you to do him?"
"What did I do to him?" Sam asks in an incredulous voice.
"Did you say something rude to him when he was out there?"
"No! He made a move! I'm just standing there, and he reaches over and grabs my hand!"
"Your hand," Jack says, somehow unmoved by this information.
"Yes!" Sam practically screams.
"I guess I should have talked to you before I invited him over," Jack says.
A horrible thought occurs to Sam, and her eyes widen with fear. "You're a wife-lender?"
Jack flinches at the insult. He would never take payment to allow another man to borrow his wife for a night. Not even a wife that he wasn't sleeping with himself. That was... even worse than forcing a woman who didn't love you to marry you against her will.
"It's nothing as bad as all of that, Sam. You just made a good point the other day, about it not being fair that I take your chance to be a mother away from you. You were right, I thought I was saving you from something, but you didn't have any choice in the matter. You deserve a choice in the matter, and I was trying to give you that."
"So you were going to what… hire Walter to father my children?" she asks in horror, remembering that he had asked her how many children she wanted to have. He had probably been calculating his stud fee, she thought glumly.
"Ne'tu no!" Jack exclaims in horror. "I was thinking of selling you to Walter. After some time, if both of you agreed to it. I'd never sell you to someone you weren't in love with, Samantha. I thought there might have been a chance of that with Walter. I think there might still be, after the initial shock of my going about this all the wrong way wears off. Walter is a good man. He's never been married. He plans on only taking one wife. He would treat you right, and allow you to work or not according to your wishes. He wants a big family. I know that you want kids, I don't know exactly how many, but that's something you could talk out amongst yourselves. Sam, I was wrong in what I did. I didn't want to see you go to one of those men. Someone who would see you as property only. It's a bad thing for men and women to meet for the first time on their wedding night. They become to one another nothing more than the source of pleasure. They never recognize each other as real people first and foremost. People need to get to know one another before they dart into the bedroom. I wanted to save you from a loveless marriage. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a real marriage."
Her eyes water at the thought of what Jack was trying to do for her. "I want a real marriage, with you, my husband," she says, touching his arm lightly.
"That's not possible," he says dismissively.
"Why not?"
"I'm in love with someone else," he says bluntly.
Sam stares at him, surprised by the words. She would have thought that the fact that he was already in love would have come up sometime in the days that she had known him. It also seemed like a particularly foolish move to be in love with one person while you entered into a sexless marriage with another person. It made her briefly wonder if her husband was all together sane.
"I've never been that opposed to polygamy, not when the wives are kind to one another. Although, I'd like to really be your wife before she entered the family. Especially if you already love her."
Jack doesn't look at her for the whole speech, and a new thought occurs to her mind. She has a whole sad romance about the unobtainable maiden written in her head before she even asks the question, "Who?"
He looks away from her, clearly hoping that she wasn't going to ask that question, "Sara."
"She's dead," Sam points out.
His eyes flash back to hers with fury in them, "I know that."
"Ok," Sam says, trying to calm him down after obviously having offended him, "I'm just pointing out that the fact that you love someone who has died shouldn't really prevent you from loving someone who is still living."
"You don't understand love, Sam; it's not something that you can just turn on or off for any reason. When it's there, it's there forever."
Sam takes a deep breath, knowing that she really doesn't have a right to speak on the subject. The only death she's suffered is her mother's, and she didn't really have any true memories of her mother. What's more, she liked her father all the more for having remained faithful to her mother in all the years since she'd died. How could she then go and advise Jack to do something different? Was it really out of her own selfish motives? Then she looks at the man before her and notices things she's not noticed before.
He wasn't as old as he looked. The wrinkles were all caused by the position his face assumed whenever it wasn't given a direct command of his brain. It wasn't a relaxed face, but a frown. The gray around the temples looked as if it was premature. And the eyes, those were more grief than anything else.
"Jack, what if it had been you that died? Would you want Sara to go on?" she asks.
He looks at her for a long second. "I would have liked her to feel like she could if she wanted to. But no, I would have wanted her to choose not to."
"Sara would want you to be happy, Jack."
He shakes his head, "I won't betray her too, Sam. She died because of me. And on that day, you have to understand that I died to."
She looks at him with surprise and alarm.
"I would have killed myself that day, but I couldn't because of Charlie. So I'm living now for Charlie. And because my work helps people. I'm not living because I enjoy it. If I were just a little bit more selfish, I would join Sara wherever she is, or isn't. I'm not exactly sure how the whole afterlife thing works."
Sam's heart is heavy. She reaches over, and grabs his hand. He looks at her, face questioning, but isn't wise enough to pull away from the danger like Sam did earlier with Walter. For her, this is a whole new experience. As her hand grips his, a thunderbolt and lightning crack simultaneously directly overhead. For a split second Sam, is sure that she's been struck by lightning. Perhaps she's even died from the process.
She looks at Jack, expecting to see some evidence of the tragedy. It's only then that she realizes that she hasn't been struck by lightning at pleasant jolt was caused completely by the union of their two bodies.
Jack feels it to, and he gives her hand a comforting squeeze.
"So you don't want me to find you a new husband?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "Are you going to start living?" she whispers. He stares at her, unanswering. She pulls him up by the hand and leads him outside.
"We're going to get struck by lightning, Sam," he tells her gruffly.
"Feel the rain, Jack, smell it!" she commands.
He stands motionless, trying to ignore the invigorating feeling the rare rain is giving his skin. Sam lets out a childish laugh, and spins around in the rain. She lifts up her head toward the sky, giggling as she catches the rain in her mouth.
"Carter, that water isn't even clean," Jack protests.
"Sam," she corrects, lowering her eyes to meet his.
"Sam," he says, cracking a tiny smile at the enjoyment she gets out of this.
She links her elbow with his, and she forces him to spin around, until a little giggle escapes his lips.
And for the first time in more than a year, living doesn't seem like a burden or a duty to Jack O'Neill. It feels like a gift.
*The Goa'uld, or at least the Jaffa heaven.