Author's note: The clones are finally going to meet this chapter! Hope you enjoy :) Also, just to let you know, the plan is to have four chapters after this one. The story will end up at around 40k words.

Jack was bored out of his mind and it wasn't even twenty minutes into first period. He started drawing Homer Simpson in blue pen on the corner of his desk. Just some minor vandalism as a rebellion for the frustrating life he had to live.

Things had been tougher than usual since he ran into Carter last week. Seeing her was a fresh reminder of everything and everyone he lost. She looked beautiful, like she always did, and had been doing well. Once she'd gotten past the awkwardness of running into him, she seemed relaxed and happy. She was a Lieutenant Colonel now and was in a relationship with a guy who made her laugh and blush when they talked on the phone.

For a moment, Jack let himself indulge in the jealousy he felt over the fact that someone else was making her laugh and smile.

Someone who wasn't him.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a single thing he could do about it, not when he looked damn near thirty years younger than he actually was.

Jack wondered whether the other him - the "original" - had ever tried to make a move. Probably not, with their respective promotions and living on other sides of the country. She always deserved better than him anyway.

There'd been a moment, when she mentioned inviting herself to the cabin, that made him wonder if they'd worked things out, but it was just wishful thinking. She said it was a team trip and he believed her.

In that conversation, they talked more about Daniel and Teal'c than the General. It made Jack wonder if she and the "real Jack" had drifted apart in recent years. The thought made him feel unaccountably sad.

Jack finished the outline of Homer's head and carefully drew the bulbous circles for his eyes. There was a knock on the door and his teacher stopped talking. He kept drawing and didn't bother to lift his head.

Maybe he could sneak up to the cabin sometime this fall. He knew where the spare key was and the other him was no doubt busy being a big shot General.

Jack couldn't imagine a more miserable existence than having to kowtow to politicians on a daily basis, except for maybe being forced to go to high school a second time.

Carter had claimed that General O'Neill was happy, but she'd never been as good at reading him as she thought. If she had, she would've known how he felt about her.

Jack finished off the eyes and drew two curved lines of hair on the top of Homer's head. He heard some of his classmates whispering, but ignored them. These kids were always gossiping about stupid shit that didn't matter.

The fact was, none of this mattered. Getting good grades was easy. Continuing to show up to the classroom every day was difficult.

Interacting with kids who should have been in school with his son and not with him rubbed him the wrong way.

Being reminded that he was going to live the rest of his life without the people he cared most about was damn near impossible.

A trip to the cabin was exactly what he needed, Jack decided.

He needed to get a little piece of himself back, even if he had to steal it.

"Class," Mrs. Anderson said, "we have a new student who will be joining us for the rest of the year for AP Physics. She recently moved here from Nevada and her name is Samantha Jacobs."

Jack almost lifted his head to look at the new girl, but he forced himself to keep drawing. He couldn't spend the rest of his life looking up hopefully whenever he heard Carter's first name. It would set him up for even more disappointment than he already had.

"Samantha, why don't you tell us a little about yourself?"

Jack added the M-shaped line of hair on the side of Homer's head and then drew the curve of his ear.

"I lived in Colorado for a while, so it's nice to be back. I like science and astronomy and, um, I'm also working to fix up an old motorcycle that a relative gave me."

Jack resolutely finished drawing Homer's head and started to sketch a hand holding a donut. He wasn't going to think about Sam Carter just because a nerdy high school girl with the same first name was talking about motorcycles.

"You're in the right spot to talk about science and astronomy," Mrs. Anderson said. "And I'm sure that some of your classmates will be curious to hear about that motorcycle of yours. Now, class, can you all give Samantha a nice welcome?"

A cacophony of voices rang out.

"Hi Sam," Jack mumbled as he drew the arm connected to the hand holding the donut. The angle wasn't quite right and he suddenly wished he hadn't started this in pen without sketching it in pencil first. It was one thing to draw on the desk when he wasn't supposed to, it was another thing entirely to have a bad drawing immortalized for years.

"D'oh."

Maybe he could fix it when he drew the body.

"Jonathan, can you come up to the front?"

He frowned at the drawing on the desk and started to work on the shoulders.

"Jonathan Niel."

A pen poked his arm and Jack looked to the left.

"Dude!" Eric Delgado hissed. "Pay attention."

Jack followed his classmate's nod to the front of the classroom, where their teacher was frowning.

"Sorry," he apologized. "What was that?"

"Come up to the front, please. You're going to give Samantha a tour of the school while we finish reviewing the exam."

Jack let out a sigh. Although it would be nice to get out of the classroom, he didn't really want to show the new kid around.

"Sure, Mrs. Anderson."

He shifted his notebook over the drawing, got out of his seat, and walked to the front of the class.

"Everyone, we're moving onto question ten. I want you to turn to page 93 of your textbook."

As everyone started shuffling through the pages, Mrs. Anderson turned to him.

"I know it's boring going over the exam results when you aced the test," she whispered, "but you can't damage school property. Draw on paper, not on the desk. I expect you here during lunch to clean that up."

Jack felt anger flare inside him at the fact that he was being lectured by a woman so much younger than him about something so meaningless, but he pushed it down. Mrs. Anderson was one of the better teachers at the school and it wasn't her fault he was stuck here.

"Yes, ma'am."

She nodded, satisfied with that answer, and handed him a hall pass.

"I expect you back here in twenty minutes."

"Okay."

She gestured towards the door, where a lanky girl with shoulder-length blonde hair stood waiting with a notebook clutched to the front of her chest. She was wearing a blue backpack.

Jack walked over to her.

"You know, you can leave your stuff here. No one's going to take it."

The girl just stared at him for a second before responding. "I'll keep it with me for now. In case I need it."

He had no idea why she'd need a backpack full of stuff on a school tour, but he shrugged.

"Fine, let's go."

He opened the door and assumed she'd follow him. Mrs. Anderson started going through the next test question behind them.

"So, uh, Jonathan?" A tentative voice said behind him.

"You can call me Jack," he said. "Only the teachers use my full name."

He heard her take a shaky breath behind him and suddenly remembered how nerve-wracking it could be to be the new kid in school. He turned around and saw that she was still clutching that notebook to her chest like it was a shield.

"Jack, you can call me Sam."

That simple sentence coming out of that girl's mouth was almost too much.

It had barely been a week since he left his Sam standing on a street corner in Washington D.C. During that lunch she'd said the same thing, that he could call her Sam if he wanted since they obviously weren't in the same chain of command anymore. She sounded so casual with that suggestion, as if it wasn't a horrible tragedy to finally be out of her chain of command and still be unable to ask her out because he was a literal science experiment gone wrong.

"So, you have a motorcycle?" he asked the new girl, desperate to change the subject as he started walking them towards the library.

"Yes," she replied, "My, um, aunt thought I'd need it more than her. She travels a lot. Thought I could use a project if I got bored."

"Sweet."

Jack understood the importance of projects to alleviate boredom. His problem was that he didn't have very many exciting ones. His main goal was just to get through high school with good grades and make it to college where he could inch closer to having an adult life again.

He pointed out the library and gestured towards the administrative office that she'd probably already seen once this morning. They went past the cafeteria and the gym.

"So you did well on that exam?" Sam asked. "The one everyone else was going over?"

Jack looked over at her, momentarily distracted by how her wide blue eyes reminded him of the woman he was still trying to get over.

"It was an easy test. No big deal."

A grin spread across her face. "I'm proud of you."

Jack backed a step up. "You don't know me."

She winced and clutched the notebook tighter.

"I knew I'd mess this up. I'm sorry. That was weird."

It was weird and Jack was really confused. He had no idea why this random girl would say she was proud of him for doing well on a test.

"Yeah, a little weird. You often compliment strangers?"

She laughed and ducked her head and he was struck by a strange sense of familiarity.

"Not really, no."

"Maybe we should get back to the tour," Jack suggested.

He wanted to get this over with so that he could return to his desk and his mediocre drawing that he'd have to spend lunchtime trying to erase.

"Want to go outside instead?" she asked. "I don't really care about the tour."

Jack frowned and tried to figure out what the new girl's deal was. She didn't seem like the type to cut class and cause trouble, but you never could tell these days.

"Why?"

She shrugged, her stick-straight blonde hair falling over her shoulders. "I need some air. First day is a little more overwhelming than I thought it would be. I had a plan and I've already…nevermind. It's just overwhelming."

Jack could understand that. When he'd first been dropped off at this school, he'd been full of bravado to prove that this life change wouldn't hurt him and he could get through anything, but depression had hit pretty quickly afterwards. Surviving high school was easier said than done.

"I get that. Follow me."

Jack walked towards the door closet to the courtyard and led her outside. The sun was shining and it annoyed him because the weather should match his miserable mood. He couldn't believe he had to spend part of his morning being followed around by a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl named Sam who fixed motorcycles and reminded him of everything he lost.

The universe was a cruel place sometimes.

Jack reached into his pocket to grab his lighter and a cigarette from the almost empty carton that was shoved into his cargo pants.

He placed the cigarette in his mouth and flicked the lighter to start a flame. To his utter shock, Sam Jacobs pulled the cigarette out of his mouth before he could light it.

"You should quit. It's not good for you and it smells awful."

Jack grabbed the cigarette back.

"Excuse me, new girl, it's none of your business whether I smoke or not."

She plucked the cigarette out of his hands and broke it in half. He recognized that stubborn look on her face from somewhere.

"You've quit once before," Sam said. "You can do it again."

Jack froze.

"Do I know you?"

A tentative smile spread across her lips.

"I thought you could use a little company, sir."

She said the honorific like it was an inside joke.

Jack backed away from her, unsteady from the rush of sudden, untrustworthy emotions. He had to have misheard.

"What?"

Sam stood up and walked towards him. He looked more closely at those bright blue eyes and the shape of her face. Now that he thought about it, the hair reminded him of when Dr. Carter visited from the alternate reality.

It couldn't be.

He swore in every language he knew.

This couldn't be happening. He was dreaming or something. This girl in front of him who looked suspiciously like Sam Carter wasn't real.

"Did you ever tell Daniel that you spoke Arabic?" she asked with a curious tilt of her head.

"If I did, it would be so much harder to eavesdrop, Carter."

The words were out of his mouth before they could be censored by his brain.

"I mean…fuck." He was really out of practice. "Who the hell are you?"

Maybe he'd actually gone crazy. He'd been dancing around it the past couple years, but it seemed like he'd finally tipped over the edge and lost his mind. He had to have lost his mind because there was no way Sam Carter would do a stupid thing like cloning herself and joining him in high school.

No way.

She'd been a loyal second in command, but no one would subject themselves to this misery out of loyalty.

"I think you already know who I am, Jack."

He couldn't believe it.

It didn't matter that she looked like a younger version of the woman he'd known for years. It didn't matter that she knew things she shouldn't know.

Even if Carter had some half-assed plan to clone herself, there was no possible way that the other him–General O'Neill–would have sanctioned it.

"No, you can't be. This has got to be some sort of trick because the Sam Carter I know wouldn't do something this stupid."

Sam shrugged.

"I don't know. I've done some pretty stupid things for and because of you in the past and it usually worked out."

Several of those risky missions flashed through Jack's mind and he groaned in frustration.

"No more doing stupid things for me then," he said automatically. "That's an order."

Her lips quirked up in a half-smile. "You can't give me orders. We're not military anymore."

Jack's mind blanked out for a second before a little tendril of hope started to grow in his chest.

The woman in front of him wasn't under his command and they didn't have any military responsibilities. They were, for all intents and purposes, around the same age. She cloned herself because of him.

Was it out of loyalty? Or pity? Had he really seemed like so much of a mess in D.C. that she felt like she needed to save him?

Sam's need to fix every problem had always been her greatest strength and biggest weakness.

"Why did you do it?" he asked. "Why give your life up for me?"

The expression on Sam's youthful face softened.

"Never leave a man behind," she said. "You taught me that."

Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn't believe she was putting this all on him. Right now Sam probably felt all pumped up, thinking that she solved a problem, but soon she'd realize what it really meant to be stuck in a suburban Colorado high school. She'd be bored by the classes—even more than he was—and she'd be frustrated to not be seen as an expert. One day it would hit her that she no longer got to play with spaceships and naquadah reactors and then she'd resent him.

He never should have called out to her when he was in D.C.

Jack looked at her and felt something close to panic. She was Sam Carter and she wasn't, the same way he was and wasn't Jack O'Neill.

She shouldn't be here.

"I can't believe you did this." Jack hoped she didn't notice the shakiness of his voice.

Neither of them should exist, but at least his creation had been out of his control. Sam chose this life. It didn't make sense.

"I happen to think it was a good idea," Sam said. "Hopefully you will eventually too."

Her positive attitude was killing him because he knew how much it would hurt when she started to regret her actions.

Sam would never be able to see her family again. Eventually, that fact would settle in and then she'd blame him for all she lost.

"I told you that you couldn't fix this and you just went ahead and made it worse," Jack said with a shake of his head. "I specifically told you I didn't need you to do anything."

He tried not to feel guilty about the shocked look on her face.

"I wanted to help."

"Yeah, well, you helped yourself to a life of mind-numbing boredom and regret. Congrats."

The bell rang and he remembered that all of his stuff was still in the classroom. He needed to grab his backpack and get out of here. He couldn't deal with her now.

"I'll talk to you later."

Jack turned and walked back towards the school, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart as she called his name.