Memories of the Heart by Betty Bokor
Sam/Daniel. A mission goes horribly wrong while Sam's life is changed forever. Spoilers: All seasons, including 10 to the end.
Disclaimer: The Stargate original characters belong to MGM/Showtime, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Film Corp. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.

Memories of the Heart

Chapter 20

A.N. Hi. If you are enjoying the story, please, be kind and let me know. Thanks.

For the next three months Sam divided her time between getting her new house ready for the arrival of the baby and getting herself ready for him and for her new responsibilities at the S.G.C.

Among those responsibilities was to start the collection of materials to write a book about the Stargate Program. It had not been decided who would actually write it and the possibility of making it all public was still very far in the future, but it was a very interesting task. At the beginning Sam had thought that adding up to Bregman's work was something Landry had come up with to keep her occupied until it was her time to take charge of the Command, but soon she realized her new mission would take most of her time at work and slowly invade much of her free time. The more information she collected, the more she understood how important it was to preserve everything that she received.

Sometimes it surprised her to know that newer members of the SG teams had learned exaggerated and embellished accounts of some of SG-1's most memorable missions. Many times it amused her that not everybody knew she was that "Sam", the Sam from SG-1. Other times it left her in awe that many thought that Carter and O'Neill were somehow romantically involved.

What never failed to move her was how everyone had something kind to say about Daniel. Vala was the most insistent in underscoring his compassionate nature and how —in spite of the snarkiness and the contempt that she always managed to get out of him— he always ended up showing how much he cared, even through the smallest of gestures.

It was not that anyone thought he was a saint or anything like it; it was just that they saw the effort he put into trying to find redeeming qualities in mostly everybody. Sam tried to decide if that trait of his personality had allowed him to endure his years in foster care and the constant succession of tragedies that plagued his life, or if he had developed such characteristic as a defense mechanism because of his misfortune.

In any case, she only wished she could have the chance to see him at least one more time to tell him about the baby. As her pregnancy advanced she discovered every little joy that carrying a life inside of her ─not a Tok'ra or a Goa'uld fortunately─ brought and she wished she could get to share any of them with him.

Besides her job, what took most of her free time was the new house. Shortly after coming back from Atlantis, she had decided to search for a new house that would be more conducive to raising a child in it. She wanted a couple of extra rooms and a fenced yard in the back.

She had been looking for only a week, when she went to an estate sale in an old house. The pregnancy had given her an uncharacteristic ─for her─ urge for nesting, and she found herself often buying pillows, cozy blankets, comfortable rockers, and other objects she had never thought of as necessary in her house.

While walking around the old house, she got to the almost empty library, on the second floor, and, as she peeked inside the studio adjacent to it, she suddenly imagined that room as Daniel's own room. She could see all the books she had in storage nicely arranged around in the library, along with many of the artifacts and pieces of art he had collected, and she could see his desk in the spacious studio.

She walked into the room and discovered that there were too rooms connected to the library and a private bathroom.

"My father was a writer," a voice interrupted her thoughts.

"Excuse me?" Sam said as she turned to look at the woman talking to her.

"My father was a writer and this was his own little world. He would hide in here for days when he had a big project on his mind." She paused and then stretched her hand toward Sam with a smile. "Hi, I'm Deb."

"Hi, I'm Sam. I'm sorry I got into this room. It just reminded me of a friend."

"It's okay. Don't worry. As soon as the estate sale is over, we'll put the house on the market. We all have our own places now and, regardless of how much we love this house, we can't keep it."

"You're selling it?"

"Yes. Are you interested?"

"Oh, well, yes, I'm looking for a new house," she unconsciously touched her belly, "but this is too big. How many rooms?"

"Besides these two attached to the library, there's a master and two more bedrooms on this floor, all with their own bathroom, and downstairs there's the office, the guest suite, the playroom, and the maid's quarters. Besides the den, the breakfast area, and the formal dining and living rooms."

"Wow, that's huge."

"That's mainly the reason why we have to sell it, but you should see something else before you say no."

Sam smiled at Deb's enthusiasm. "What?"

"There's like an enclosed garden between the playroom and the den, all surrounded with glass walls. That used to be my mother's favorite place of the house."

Without even seeing it, Sam could already imagine all the possibilities. "What about the yard? Is it fenced?"

"There's a hedge all around it, but if you need something else, I don't think it would be difficult to build. Besides, there's a covered deck in the back, where we all used to play as kids."

Sam smiled again. Shortly after, Deb took her for a tour of the house. When she went home, Sam took a look at her finances. She had saved mostly everything she had earned since she got into the Program. She did not even have time to spend the money. Besides, she had inherited part of her father's estate. And all of Daniel's.

When she had met him, Daniel did not have anything at all; not even clothes of his own. Over the years, he had saved as consistently as she had. He had also inherited from his grandfather Nick, after the government had finally declared him dead.

She looked at the statement of his accounts. She had been in such a rush before going to Atlantis, that she had not even peeked. Wow! He certainly earned more than Rodney… and everyone else she knew. Most of the S.G.C. personnel were paid according to their military rank. Scientists got paid according to their function and position in the program. Daniel had been the one to actually give birth to the program ─before him it had merely been a research into the unknown─ and then he had occupied numerous positions, besides being a permanent member of SG-1. He had been the Head of the Linguistics, the Historical Research, and the Archeological Departments, and he had trained mostly everybody who worked in them until then.

She could buy the house without much effort. She had to buy it. Even if Daniel never came back, she was going to build his world in that library. He wanted her son to grow up surrounded by the objects his father was passionate about and as many images and memories as she could get. His diaries would be the first thing she would place there.

Three weeks later, she had all of SG-1 helping her clean the house. By the end of the month, she had moved in and, slowly, she was starting to fix the baby's room and Daniel's library.