Sam is baking bread. It's something she sucks at. Her father just bought bread. But she's married now, and wives make bread. So, undeterred by previous failures, she's kneading the bread into submission. She stops to wipe a tendril of hair away from her face, and leaves a streak of flower behind on her face as she does it.
Jack walks up behind her, and enjoys the sight of her hands beating the bread into submission.
"I'm going to a mission, Sam," he tells her.
"Wait a second," she says, rubbing her hands on her apron.
It occurs to him that he should get a water jug for the kitchen. Sure, there is cooking water, but it would be nice for her to have somewhere to wash her hands.
She rushes into the main room, and puts a small rectangular object into his hand. "Here."
"Sweetie, you're going to have to tell me what it is."
She giggles, "Yeah, that might be helpful."
"Just a little bit."
"It's the promised life signs detector. It's to keep you safe," she says, giving him a light peck on the cheek.
"Thanks," he says, leaning forward to give her a kiss that knocks even the totally stable Samantha Carter off balance. She leans the middle of her arm against his shoulder in order to steady herself. She looks at him with a happy drunk face. Of course, he doesn't know what her drunk face really looks like. He's never even seen her drink.
-0-0-0-
Sam opens the door to see a tall, serious-looking woman who looks oddly familiar.
The woman looks at her, totally confused, "Where is Jonny?"
"Jonny? You mean Jack?" Sam asks, befuddled.
"Yeah, my son. He's mysteriously gone somewhere that I can't be told about again, isn't he?"
Sam smiles and nods. She looks at the woman critically, and she can see now that this woman is Jack's mother. She just can't believe that he never mentioned her before. He mentioned his dad once. But he'd talked about him in the past tense, hadn't he? She had just assumed that they were either dead or out of the picture. Jack had seemed much older and more experienced than her. Although, now that she really did the math, the odds were that his parents were still alive.
"You're not his usual babysitter. Nothing happened to Sha're, did it?" the woman asks with worry.
"I'm his wife," Sam says with some trepidation. She isn't sure how this revelation is going to be greeted by this woman. And that would be because Jack had denied her any knowledge of the woman.
"He got re-married?" the woman asks.
Sam flinches, remembering that she isn't his first wife. Now she's the one who feels like she is doing some kind of disservice to Sara. She nods numbly.
"Finally," the woman says, crossing the threshold and pulling Sam into a hug.
Just then Cassie mews to inform Sam that she has woken up from her nap.
"Was that a cat? Has Jonny become a cat person?" Mrs. O'Neill asks in surprise.
Sam laughs, "No. There isn't much chance of that! It's our daughter."
"Exactly how long have you been married to my son?"
"Not that long. She's not really ours. I mean, genetically."
"Ah, you've been married before," the woman says, trying to hide her disappointment. She'd never thought her son would end up with a second hand wife. She is going to have to work hard to hide her shame.
Sam shakes her head, "I mean, Jack bought her. She was a slave."
The woman pauses. "I will never understand that son of mine."
"Well, I have to get Cassie. I'll… be right back," Sam explains, finding herself just a little grateful to take a short break from the woman. She figured when she was out of the room she would figure out exactly what was going on. But she found that the few seconds that it took to retrieve her daughter was not nearly long enough to solve the problem of her mother-in-law.
"So, how long have been married?" the woman asks as she trails after Sam as she goes to the kitchen.
"Almost a month. Did you say hi to your grandson?" she asks, tilting her head to Charlie on the floor.
"He's little. It's not like he understands anything," the woman says.
"Actually, language development primarily occurs during these years," Sam says. "Charlie, say hi to your grandma."
Charlie smiles and starts to crawl toward her. But his grandmother waves him off dismissively, "He doesn't know me."
"Ok, but he could know you, if you talk to him."
The woman looks at her, "He's too young to form memories."
"If that were true, I'd have no memories of my mother."
"Your mother died?" the woman asks with a sudden trace of compassion that surprises Sam. "Were your father's other wives good to you?"
"He didn't have any," Sam admits.
"But a child can't grow up without a mother," the woman states with the same certainty that Sam stated that no-one could survive a staff blast.
"My father took care of me," she says.
"Your father?" Mrs. O'Neill says completely puzzled.
"Jack has been taking care of Charlie," Sam defends.
"No, no, he's been borrowing Daniel's wife… Sha're. That's how he's been getting by."
Sam's face turns read at the besmirching of her friend and husband's name. "He didn't borrow her!"
"Well, he borrowed her for part of the wifely duties, even if he didn't borrow her for all of them."
"Sha're might have helped Jack with his son, but he was the one raising Charlie, really," she tells her.
Her mother in law looks at her, scandalized.
"Are you hungry?" Sam asks her.
The woman nods.
"Ok… I'm not good at predicting what people are going to want. So just tell me what to make."
"Do you have juice?"
Sam pours her a cup.
"So, you like kids, then?" her mother in law asks, as Sam holds the bottle for the baby.
"Yeah," Sam says with a wide grin.
"Myself, I never got to into that. I was a lot luckier than you. I had four sister wives. Two of them were really into kids. So they did most of the kid stuff. I worked."
"Oh, I work sometimes too."
"Yeah?"
Sam immediately realizes that she's put her foot in her mouth. She can't talk about her work to much without revealing the resistance, and she really can't do that. "Ah… I just tinker with some machines."
"Well, if you're good at tinkering, the Goa'uld pay a pretty high price for that kind of thing."
"They certainly do."
"'Course it would be hard to do this with the blackout."
"Yeah, it's hard for the Goa'uld to do anything," Sam says, hiding a smile.
"Am!" Charlie demands from the floor. "Potty!"
"Ok, little man," Sam says to him. "Here, hold your granddaughter for a second," she says to her mother-in-law, before picking the small boy off the ground.
"No, wait!" the woman protests.
"You'll be fine," Sam assures her.
-0-0-0-
Jack can't believe the sight that reaches his eyes when he enters the house. His mom pleading with his daughter, "Please baby, if you'll just be quiet, your mother will return."
"Mom?" he questions, shocked.
"Thank Ra you've come, Jonathan," she says, rushing over and putting the baby in her son's arms.
"You looked pretty domestic there for a little bit," he says with a giggle in his voice.
"She hates me! She didn't stop crying from the moment that new wife of yours put her in my arms."
"That's not because she hates you, Mom, that's just what babies do."
"You've really been raising… that son of yours ever since his mother died?" she asks with a tone of clear mystification.
"His name is Charlie, and yeah, mom, I have," Jack says, trying not to be more offended than he had a right to be.
She shakes her head. "See, I thought the good thing about polygamy was that everyone got to do what they wanted with their lives. The women could work or raise the kids as they saw fit. When there is only one wife she doesn't have a choice but to raise the kids."
"But what if the husband wants to take part in raising his own children? Shouldn't he have that right too?"
"I suppose that is true, but it just never occurred to me that someone, least of all a man might want to help take care of their babies."
Jack looks down at the baby in her arms, and gives her a huge grin. She responds to it with a tiny giggle. It's early for her to be reacting like that. Early enough that he's not entirely sure that it really happened. Jack grins even wider at that realization.
"You made her stop crying," his mother says in awe.
"Babies sense fear, Mom. If you're terrified to take care of them, they are going to know that. They're going to respond to it."
Sam comes out of the bathroom, holding Charlie's tiny hand in hers.
"Dada!" he says, running toward his father. He points to his grandmother. "Ooo?"
"That's your grandma," Jack explains.
Charlie's brow furrows.
"She's my mother," Jack goes on.
Charlie still looks confused.
"A mother is someone who takes care of you," Jack continues to explain.
"Ma!" Charlie exclaims, putting his arms around his father.
This causes laughter all around the room, which is of course greatly offensive to the little boy.
"You have to be a girl in order to be a mother," Jack corrects his son.
Charlie thinks about this for a long moment, before turning to Sam with a question on his face (the laughter killed his confidence). "Ma?"
Jack is just about to correct his assumption when he sees the tears in the corner of Sam's eyes. He meets her eyes with her as he says, "Yeah, Charlie, that is your mother."
Charlie smiles at her and falls into her arms. Then he pulls away with his adorable brow furrow, "Am? Ma?"
"You can call me either one," Sam informs him.
Charlie nods, and seems to be thinking about it even more carefully, "Ma," he decides with a firm nod of his head.
"Good choice, son," Jack says, picking up the boy and tickling his sides.
-0-0-0-
Jack's mom was in town on business, so she would be staying with them for a few days. This meant that Sam and Jack got to share a bed.
"So your mom, she's warm," Sam says with a laugh as she lays down next to him.
"Yeah, that's not exactly the word that I would chose to describe her."
Sam grows serious, "Jack it must have been hard growing up with her as your mother."
"It's not like she ever did anything to take care of me."
"I know; that was kind of my point. It would have been nice to have a mother that was really involved in your life when you were growing up."
"I had a lot of adults that were really involved in my life. I had two mother-aunts that were great with me."
"It's not the same."
"No, but it was pretty close to having a mom and a dad. You know, Sam, we're not going to be Cassie's real parents, either. But she is going to have two adults that love her and live with her, and take care with her. That's all that's going to matter. I had four parents that I lived with. Two of them really loved me and took care of me."
"I'm sorry your parents weren't there for you, Jack," she whispers.
"A lot of people are really hard on polygamy. But what I saw of it growing up, Sam, it's good. I mean, things wouldn't have turned out well if I'd only had my parents. I would have been ignored. That's the great thing about multiple parents. The failings of one are taken care of by another."
Sam's heart clenches. A few weeks ago, she thought that she was would be willing to share him, but she is certain now that she could never do that. That she's not strong enough to do that.
"So you've considered polygamy?" she asks nervously.
He laughs at her nerves, "Oh, honey, I don't have any plans of that for us. It only works when the husband won't play favorites, and the wives won't get jealous. I don't think neither of those things would ever be true in our case."
"That's some pretty high standards. I don't think that most polygamist families would meet that criteria," she says, thinking on that Jacksons.
"I know. Most people have a favorite wife, and they're done for."
"Daniel," she says.
"Yeah, he would have been a lot better off if his favorite wife had stayed as his only wife."
"Why did he marry someone else?" Sam asks, nervous that this to could happen to her.
"They were four years into a marriage and didn't have any children. So he married Farida. He regretted it almost instantly; if you want to talk about a jealous woman she would be the perfect image of one. So he married Hosna so part of Farida's fury could be unleashed on her instead of Sha're."
"How did that work out for him?"
"More chaos, and a lot more kids. You know, it's funny," Jack laughs a little bit bitterly, "He wanted kids so bad. But as soon as he had them, he went about ignoring the kids the second that they were born. Me, I am terrified of having more kids. But I sure as hell love the ones that I have."
She runs a finger through his hair, "I have a little trouble picturing Daniel as a bad father."
"Oh, he's not really a bad father. He isn't really a father at all. And the only reason you can't picture him as a bad father is because you think he's handsome. Woman often make the flaw of equating looks with nobleness. Men have a worse flaw, but many only care about the looks."
"I don't think Daniel is handsome," Sam protests.
He raises an eyebrow at her silently.
"Ok, I do."
He smiles at her, but it's a sad smile. He has just been reminded that she is much younger than he is.
"But I wouldn't want him for a husband."
"Because he's taken three times over?"
"No," she says with a pause. "I guess now the fact that he isn't a good father is part of the reason. But even before that, I just felt..." she shrugs, "I like the way he looks. And the way he talks. And I really think he's a good man. But he's just not you."
Jack smiles and puts an arm around her, pulling her closer to himself. "I love you, Carter."
"Not Carter," she says, catching his eyes with her own brilliant blue orbs.
"Ok, I love you, Sam."
"And I love you, O'Neill."