A frantic knocking causes Sam to rush to the door. Farida is standing there, holding a child in each hand. "I'm sorry to bother you, but my sister wives are gone. Could you watch my kids? My brother is sick. He's unmarried, and has no one to nurse him."

"Of course, is it serious?" Sam asks.

"I don't know. I left a note, so as soon as a sister wife returns, she will come to retrieve the kids," the woman says as she hands the babies into Sam's hands. Sam looks at the two kids in her arms. The older one is a bit bigger than Charlie. The other one is a baby, like a tiny baby. Still red-faced with newness.

Sam lays the older one down, while she examines the small baby.

The feeling of holding a tiny baby in your arms is intoxicating in a way she'd never imagined before. Her heart feels like a thousand pounds of lead. She missed this with Charlie. A year ago, when she was living her life, her… mostly son was this tiny. And she's never, ever going to get to be the mother of someone like this. That's it, her chance is gone.

"'Am?" Charlie asks, pulling on her leg. It is only then that Sam realizes that she's been sobbing for minutes. The two older children are both distressed by this.

"I'm fine, little man," she says, smiling at him.

She's trying to be grateful. She really is. She could end up married to someone who didn't have kids, and then have none herself. She could have ended up marrying Jack when Charlie was much older, and missed most of his life.

It would be easier if there was still some sort of hope. Some chance that she might still have a baby of her own.

-0-0-0-

Jack hears the wailing two houses away from his home. When he gets a little bit closer, he is faced with the undeniable fact that the crying is coming from his own house.

He opens the door to see Sam rocking the wailing baby, tears pouring down her own face at a tempo that is, if possible, a little faster and more frantic then the ones that are coming down the baby's face.

"Jack, the baby won't stop crying!" she exclaims, looking relieved as he comes in the house, but still looking worried, and sad, and miserable in every way.

"He's probably just hungry," Jack says, taking the baby out of her arms.

"Oh, well, he's just hungry. That's great, considering he about six months too young to eat anything I can provide!" she exclaims.

"Well, we're just going to have to get you some milk, aren't we, little one?" Jack says calmly.

"Jack, babies can't just drink cow's milk," she informs him, shocked that she actually knows more about babies than he does.

"Ah… You're right, they can't just drink cow's milk, but there is a special milk that they make for babies. We have some around here," he says, handing the baby back to her as he digs through a couple of cupboards searching for what he wants. He mixes the powder with some water. He puts it on a pan which he lowers carefully over the fire. Meanwhile, he puts together some complicated thing which is obviously the delivery mechanism for the milk.

"I'm sorry… I don't know anything," Sam says, now having moved past the sobs and into quiet self loathing.

"You know a lot of thing you just haven't been around babies much."

"You're so good at this."

"I wasn't when Charlie was born. I was much more clueless than you are right now. You're going to get it. Sam, is there anything that you haven't been good at in your life?"

She shakes her head slowly.

"Ok, see, you're going to be absolutely fine! Why don't you feed him?" Jack asks as he passes the warmed bottle to her.

After she takes the bottle from him, their hands overlap for a few seconds more than is strictly necessary.

"Is this stuff left over from when Charlie was little?" Sam asks, only now having realized that Charlie must have been feed by the same artificial means.

"Sort of."

"What exactly does that mean?"

"Well, it's been used since then."

"Oh, do Daniel's kids end up here often?" she asks, a little worried about the increase in child rearing her already limited talents are going to have to endure.

"No. I mean, it's happened once or twice, but that's not really the reason I keep this around."

She expects the rest of the story to come out then, but it doesn't for several long minutes. "Ok, so what's the reason?" she prompts.

"You know about the slave trade, right?" he asks.

She nods her head. What does he take her for, an idiot?

"Ok, well, did you know that some of the 'slaves' are tiny babies, and that they often die from neglect in their new owner's home?"

Sam feels like her heart is boiling within her. How could they do that?

"So, ah… sometimes, if the resistance has funds, they buy them. Then they try to reunite them with their parents. When that isn't possible, they find parents who really want a kid, and they give them the 'slave', but not as a slave. As a son or a daughter. So it works out good for everyone involved. Ah… well, sometimes the search for parents takes some time, and during that time, the kid needs somewhere to stay."

If Sam wasn't already head over heels in love with him, this would have done it. "So you're one of those places they stay?"

"Look, now that you're in the picture, we don't have to do it anymore, and it's not like they were always here. We actually only had a couple a year for a few weeks at a time. It was mostly Sara's idea. We tried so hard to have a kid, and the babies helped when it looked like that wasn't in the cards for us."

"But you kept doing it even after Charlie was born, and Sara died," she points out.

"Yeah," he mutters.

"I want to keep doing it now. I mean… maybe not for a while, until I get used to this whole parenting thing. But it's a beautiful thing, and I want to be part of a beautiful thing."

"She wants one of those," Jack says to himself. And Jack wonders if he isn't too selfish for not giving one to her.

-0-0-0-

This is a long way out of Walter's usual duties. But, most of the things he does on a day-to-day business are out of his range of duties. In the resistance, you do what you have to do. Today, that includes the care to a newborn baby girl. A newborn baby who wouldn't stop crying.

"Janet, can't you do something with her?"

The doctor glares at him.

"It's not because you're a woman, if that's what you're thinking!" he defends.

"Right," Janet says with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

"Honestly! It's because you're a doctor."

"She's not sick, she's just little," Janet tells him.

"She cries every time that I set her down."

"So, then stop setting her down."

"I do have a job to do," he whines.

"And right now that job includes taking care of the newly-acquired Cassandra from unknown planet."

"Where is Jack?" Walter mumbles.

"He's with his wife."

"Probably making a bunch more of these things," Walter mutters, with just a touch of bitterness left over from the fact that he doesn't have a whole lot a chance with the lovely Samantha O'Neill.

Janet glares at him, "Men are useless," she concludes, taking the tiny baby from him. But she is quite busy today. She is suddenly kicking herself for not clearing Jack for duty today.

And he and his wife probably are making one of these right now.

-0-0-0-

God, that sound. Charlie used to make that sound. He made it right in his mother's arms when she was dying. It woke Jack up a thousand times in the weeks that followed. It was the only thing that kept him tied to the earth. Without that sweet little mewing sound, he never would have found a reason to get out of bed.

Why exactly is a newborn mewing at a resistance base?

He follows the sound to see a baby wrapped tightly in blankets, and laying in a something that usually serves as a food basket.

Jack shakes his head at the inconsiderateness of this action, and scoops the tiny girl into his arms.

"Hey, who do you belong to?" he asks her.

"No one at present," Janet says.

"Well, what planet does she need to be returned to? Attachment is really important with ones this young. We don't want to lose any time."

"We have no idea where she is from."

"Well, you are going to have to track down the people that she was sold with, and interview all of them on the location of their home planet, and if they knew the little girl before transportation."

Janet just barely manages to stop herself from rolling her eyes at her superior officer. This is the sort of thing a green behind the ears cadet could figure out to do. "We tried that. We talked to every single one of them, and not one of them were from her home planet."

"Well, we have to figure something out. She's so tiny, and someone is certainly missing this little girl a whole awful lot!" he says a little angrily.

"I know, sir, but there is really nothing to do. The universe is large, and without some kind of a clue, we are never going to be able to figure out where she was originally from."

He stares at her, "Who's taking her temporarily?"

"I don't know. I already know that two of the people who usually do it are unavailable," she says.

"I'll… look after her. She shouldn't be here in a food basket at the infirmary," Jack mumbles.

Janet ignores the reproach in what he says to her, because she knows that it is mostly caused by the emotion of the moment.

"Ok, I'll change your mission schedule," she says.

"Crap, I did have a mission today," he says, looking despondent.

"Go take care of the baby, that's just as important," Janet assures him, "It's nothing that can't be rescheduled."

He is almost out of her door before he turns to her, looking lost, "Janet, no-one has a claim on her, do they?"

She looks at his face edged with pain, and is relieved that she can say, "No, Jack, if temporary became permanent, that would be ok.

-0-0-0-

"Sam, can you get the formula ready?" Jack asks as he enters the room holding the tiny baby.

"Sure, whose baby is she?" Sam asks.

"Ah… no-one's." At Sam's questioning look he continues, "She was sold as a slave."

"Oh, so we're going to take care of her until they can find her parents."

"They've already tried to find her parents. They couldn't."

"Jack, you can't just pick up a baby like a stray," she says.

He looks at her with such an intense look of pleading that he feels sorry for her reproach. "Sam, we can take her back."

She touches his hand lightly, "I'm not saying no, Jack. But maybe we should leave this one for a wife who can't give her husband a child. I want our kids to really be ours, at least our first one," she says with a little blush.

He can't stand the fact that he is causing her pain, "Sam, we aren't going to have any natural children."

She stares at him trying to comprehend. "Staff weapons blast?" she guesses.

"Ra!*" he exclaims, "No, nothing nearly as painful. Sam, after Sara, I just couldn't… I won't survive another loss like that. When we're ready for… that, I'll get some stuff from Janet to keep you from getting pregnant. It just isn't worth the risk. And right now, there aren't any parents on the waiting list. If we don't take her, I don't know what will happen to her. She'll probably bounce around in houses until she's old enough to be hired out as an indentured servant."

"So you guys wouldn't really saving her all that much. After all, indentured servant isn't actually a whole lot better than slave."

"Yes, but twelve is a lot better than a few days old. If she'd been sold as a slave to anyone except for the resistance, she wouldn't have made it to adulthood. Babies need to be held and loved just as much as they need to be fed and changed. People don't do that sort of thing for their slaves."

Sam looks at the little thing. "She would have died?"

He nods.

Sam puts out her hands. "What's her name?"

"Cassandra."

She feels the same about holding this tiny baby that she did when she held Charlie. "You're sure her parents aren't out there looking for her?"

"Oh, I'm sure they are. But I'm also equally sure that we're never going to be able to get the two of them together."

Sam bites her lip. "She's a beautiful baby."

"I could see the other day that you really wanted a baby. But she is really close to Charlie's age, maybe you wanted to wait a few years before…"

"Then it wouldn't be Cassie."

He smiles, "No, it wouldn't be Cassie."

She looks up at him with terror in her eyes, "I don't know what I'm doing, Jack! You can't let me look after her by myself."

"You said that you didn't know what you were doing with Charlie, and you've been just fine with him."

"I know, but he's old!"

Jack smiles.

"You know what I mean; a toddler is easy compared to a newborn."

"No parent would ever say that a toddler is easy, Sam. And you are perfectly capable of doing this. I'll help you, and Sha'uri will help you. But if you don't want to do this…" he trails off, feeling that he really needs to give her an out, but really, really, hoping that she isn't going to take it.

"Do they know that you don't intend to give her back?" Sam says playfully, but she really wants the information about how sure he was that she was going to say yes, and how likely it is that someone is going to come and take her baby away from her.

He smiles, "Janet knows that there is a chance this could go either way."

"We have to… get Charlie. What if he doesn't like her?" Sam says nervously.

"Then he'll get over it. These kids are going to decide that they love and hate each other at least a thousand different times before they are anything close to grown up. You can't take the moods of a child too seriously."

Sam carefully sits down on the floor so she won't jostle the baby. "Charlie, can you come here?" she asks.

He sets a block down, and looks around himself for the nearest thing that he could climb up on in order to walk over by Sam. Unfortunately for him, the nearest thing happens to actually be Sam, so he just crawls over.

It's only when he tries to crawl onto her lap that he realizes for the first time that something new is going on. He looks at the baby in her arms with suspicion, and says, "Ooo?"

"It's a baby," Sam offers, in an attempt to expand his vocabulary.

"It's our baby," Jack says, more to the point. A point, however, which is lost on the small boy who doesn't have a firm enough grasp of language to differentiate between the meanings of the two sentences.

"Ooo," Charlie says, clearly feeling as if his question has not been answered.

"Cassie," Sam explains.

"EEE!" Charlie shouts near her face.

The baby starts crying in terror.

"Charlie!" Sam exclaims.

Charlie leans backward, trying to get away from the scolding. He loses his balance and topples backwards. Jack stretches out his hand to catch him just before his head makes contact with the floor. He briefly wonders if this whole thing wasn't a mistake. Maybe Sam is going to start having the evil stepmother thing going on with Charlie now that she has her "own" kid. Of course, this is pretty ridiculous, because Charlie, having been with her for one week longer than the tiny baby, is more "hers."

"Oh Ra, Charlie!" she says, grabbing the kid out of Jack's hand. "Are you ok? I'm so sorry."

He sticks out his lip in a pout, clearly not willing to forgive her too quickly.

"You just have to be quiet around the baby," Jack explains.

"Eee," Charlie says, extending his lip in a much larger and more exaggerated pout.

"Are you hungry, Charlie? Because I'm pretty sure that Cassie is. So how about Sam makes food for our little girl while I make food for our little boy?"

Charlie brightens at that prospect.

*You know, like we would say "oh God". 'Cause Ra is their God.