There is a pounding on the door in the middle of the night. Charlie starts to scream for his father and Sam alternately. Cassie also cries in terror.
"I'll get the kids, you get the door," Sam tells Jack when they meet in the hallway.
A few minutes later, she walks out with a kid on each hip. Jack is standing before George.
"What?" Sam asks worried.
"Sam, you need to come with me now. I don't want someone to drag you out of here."
Sam looks at Jack, terrified.
"What?" Sam says with her voice shaking.
"Look, I don't know what going to happen. But I do know it's about the power outage."
Sam raises her eyebrows, "It actually worked."
"Yeah, and when you get there, you aren't go to be excited about your success," George warns.
She hands the kids to Jack. He sets his son down gently on the floor. Then, still holding his daughter, he leans forward and pulls Sam into a passionate kiss. It reminds her of the strange new sensation that she felt the morning his hand was under her shirt. She didn't know that he could do that with only his lips.
"You come back safe to this family, ok?" he whispers.
Sam nods her head, and bites back tears. She can't cry today. Her only chance of survival is to play this coy. To pretend that she has no idea what kind of danger she's in.
-0-0-0-
"You're the one who did this?" Ba'al says, his eyes flashing at Sam, "But you're nothing more than a human, and a women besides."
"Well, I told them that it wasn't finished. I told them not to use it," she defends. She is working really hard to keep her breath steady. Jack said that these people didn't understand lies and trickery. She's hoping they also doing understand sabotage either.
"Ah, you did it by accident; well, that explains it then. This is exactly the kind of screw up you humans do."
"Why would anyone cause a power outage on purpose?" Sam asks in a deadpan innocent voice.
Ba'al glares at her critically.
"Well, if you did it by accident you're not going to be much help in fixing it. Take her back, and don't accept any more technology from humans. I've been telling Ra that it's bad practice for a millennium now."
"I'll take her back, but I'm not going to challenge Ra," George replies.
"Yes, yes, of course," Ba'al says dismissively.
-0-0-0-
"Hey, Sam," Janet says as Sam opens the door.
"Hi, Jack's not here right now," she says as she invites her inside with a wave of her hand.
"Right, well that's ok. I was just going to drop this off," Janet says, holding up a jar of small buds.
"What does Jack need medicine for?" Sam asks confused and concerned.
"It's not for Jack. I mean… he requested it, but it's not really for him, so it's actually best that I'm here to explain how to take them. Some people take it every day, others do it for just fourteen days around ovulation, but you're going to have to be super aware of your cycle if you go with that method. You just take a teaspoon each day, and it tastes awful, but…" it's only then that Janet notices Sam's face. "Jack didn't tell you?"
"No, what does the medicine do?" Sam asks.
"Honey, this makes it so you don't have a baby," Janet says, "I can't believe Jack would get this without talking to you."
"Well, actually, you can," Sam says, taking the bottle from her with a smile.
"Yeah, I can," Janet says.
"This is actually one of Jack's speaking without speaking things, and there is actually a sweet gesture underneath. He's trying to take care of me. We'll talk about it, and everything will be fine."
"Do you actually want me to leave the medicine?" Janet asks.
Sam nods. Then she looks at Janet, and notices a fresh red scrape at the corner of her face, hidden by her hair.
Sam pulls a wisp of hair away to look at it more closely, "What's this?"
"Nothing," Janet says.
"It's not nothing. There is a huge scratch on your face, how did you get it?"
"I got scratched by a tree branch," Janet says, kicking herself for making Jack's job sound even more dangerous to the young bride.
"That's not what that would look like," Sam says, being altogether too familiar with different kinds of wounds since she became Jack's bride.
"Right, well, it's classified."
"That's a wound from a finger nail," Sam informs her.
"Well, one of the patients was having a hallucination, and they kind of went crazy, and they ended up scraping me," Janet says.
Sam sets her mouth in a firm line, "Janet, you're married, right?"
Janet nods, but refuses to make eye contact with her friend.
"Can you tell me something about your husband?" Sam asks.
"This is not what it looks like," Janet says.
"I've seen you two times with wounds that can't really be explained any other way," Sam tells her.
"It's just classified things. If you were in the resistance, all of this would make sense."
Sam glares at her with disbelief, "Should I ask Jack about that?"
Janet look at her with fear in her eyes.
"Horus, Janet, how could you possibly be afraid of telling me this? If your husband is a jerk who beats you, that's no reason for you to be unwilling to tell me."
"Well, there isn't really much point in telling you. It's not like you could do anything about it. So why would I want you to do a whole bunch of worrying over something that you can't change?"
"I wish I could," Sam says.
"Yeah, well, property can't really complain," Janet says.
"Maybe someone could buy you. I know of someone who works for the resistance that's looking for a wife."
"Yeah? Well, he should go to an auction."
"Janet, he's a good guy. This could be a better life for you."
"Samantha, I appreciate it, but in my experience, getting sold doesn't exactly improve your situation."
"Janet, he's a good guy," Sam insists.
"How do you know that? You don't know that about anyone. You don't know that until the wedding night, when you see how rough he is. You don't know until he hits you or starves you or scratches you. Better the devil you know than the one you don't, Sam. I've had worse than this ass."
Sam looks at her, "Maybe Jack…"
Janet shakes her head, "No-one can help, ok, so just be glad that you're one of the lucky ones. You are one of the lucky ones, right?"
"Oh Ra, Janet! Jack would never hurt me!"
"Ok, good," Janet smiles.
"How many times have you been married?" Sam asks.
"Five."
"And… all of them?" Sam asks softly.
Janet closes her eyes. "Ah… to varying degrees. Yeah."
"I'm so sorry."
"Can we just… not talk about it?"
"I just… Janet, what does he do?" Sam asks softly.
"Sam, what did I just say? It won't help for you to know. I'm going to get going."
"Wait, Janet, do you want to have a drink or a snack with me, or something?"
Janet just stares at her.
"Do you have female friends, Janet?"
Janet shakes her head.
"Well, I'd like to be one. A friend... and, you know, somewhere you can run if things ever get… dangerous at home."
"Just forget it," Janet says, starting to walk away.
"Ok, then just a friend," Sam says.
Janet nods her head, and sits down at the table. "Sam, you wouldn't tell anyone about this, would you?"
Sam shakes her head. Janet gives her a firm look. "I would if I thought it would help you, but I really don't think it would."
-0-0-0-
"What are these?" Sam asks, shaking the bottle of seeds in Jack's face as soon as he comes home.
Jack flinches, "Janet was supposed to give them to me."
"Ok, and you were, what, planning on slipping them into my food or something?" she asks, puzzled by his reaction.
"Of course not," he says.
"Ok, so why exactly were you getting things to prevent a baby without me?"
"I didn't know how you'd feel about it," he says bashfully.
She shakes her head at him. They'd already talked about not having a baby anytime in the near future. "You know, a really good way to figure out how I feel would be to talk to be about it."
He smiles. "You're right."
"Ok, so my question is… why do we need these right now?" she asks, shaking the bottle.
"Yeah, we don't need them now," he confesses.
"But you're thinking soon?" she asks, smirking at him.
"I wanted us to be ready for… soon."
"Jack, I know we talked about this before. And Cassie is little, really little. So I don't really want to have a kid right now. But I have to ask you. Are we ever going to have a kid together?"
He looks at her, "I can't do that. I would do anything for you Sam, but you can't ask me to do that. You can ask me to risk your life."
"That's not what it would be, Jack, it's not that dangerous to give birth. I know that it feels that way because of Sara, and because of my mom. But most women give birth, several times, and live, Jack. A pregnancy is not a death sentence."
"I know that you're right. You are completely right. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm never going to be ok with you being pregnant. With me making you pregnant. Ok, if you want more kids, we can have them like we had Cassie. I know that it's not what you want, it's not ideal, ok. And if it's not enough for you, if this won't make you happy, then we can figure something else out."
"No, Jack," she says, lightly touching his arm, "I want you no matter if we have kids more kids or not. I'm disappointed, but it's not a deal-breaker. We have kids, Jack; great kids. And I want to be married to you, for real."
"You're sure?" he asks softly.
"Yeah, this isn't exactly the kind of thing that you want to lie about."
"Right."
"So, should I like take these now?"
"Not yet."
"Ok, so... how will I know?"
"You start taking them when you feel like you're ready."
"Ok," she says as he walks out of the room. As soon as he is out of sight, she pops a few of the flower buds into her mouth. They definitely taste oily and gross. But they are also going to be worth it.