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 22
A.N. Hi. If you are enjoying the story, please, be kind and let me know. Thanks.
The months passed very fast for Sam after that day. Becoming the head of the S.G.C. meant hours and hours of work and tons of ─as Jack had warned her─ paperwork. Her advanced pregnancy did not make the task easier, but she counted on Walter Harriman to aid her every step of the way. Some days she thought Harriman could take control of the Command and nobody would notice the difference.
Most of Sam's days started worrying about the problems at the S.G.C. and ended at home getting ready for motherhood. Though she still believed there was a chance that Daniel would come back, she tried not to center her expectations on that possibility. If he came back, it would be wonderful, but if he could not do it, she would have to keep on going without him.
Many changes took place during those first days. After months of distress, Sam finally got her old teammates to accept a new member. Cameron, Teal'c, and Vala were joined by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Davis and SG-1 went back to being a four-member team. Since Daniel's disappearance, Cameron had refused to accept any permanent replacement for him. Sam remembered Jack's behavior before Jonas Quinn had joined the team and decided not to intervene, but, when the recently promoted Davis requested to become a member of one of the teams, she decided to give him a chance. She was impressed by the effort and time Davis had put in learning many of the different alien languages Daniel had deciphered and she knew well his experience as negotiator during the time he had spent as the Pentagon liaison with the S.G.C. After a couple of missions together, the rest of SG-1 welcomed him as their new fourth member.
Dr. Carolyn Lam left her post at the base to go back to her work in a civilian hospital. Sam brought Jennifer Keller from Atlantis to replace her, as Carson Beckett's clone was allowed to return to the head of the Medicine Department in the Pegasus Galaxy outpost.
Slowly, Sam got used to the changing rhythm of her new job. It was similar to Atlantis, but in a much larger scale, with many more lives depending on her decisions. For someone who had blown up a planet, as Jack liked to remind her, the responsibility was huge, but manageable.
Her house was ready for the arrival of the baby. She had not only fixed the baby's room, adjacent to hers, but also the playroom on the first floor. She had also transformed the maid's quarters into a small apartment for Cassie.
After her graduation from college, Cassie had come back to Colorado Springs to work in the Stargate Program. She felt she had always been a part of it and now she had a chance to be something more than a visitor. While she worked on her graduate studies, she was going to participate as a new recruit for the Wormhole Physics department and, at the same time, continue the collection of data for the Memory of the program.
Although Sam had hired a nanny to take care of the baby while she was at work, Cassie offered to replace her whenever she had free time. That way she would thank Sam for allowing her to live in her house for free.
The morning of October 15th. started as any other, but soon changed as Sam began having contractions. By midday, they were so close to each other, that she agreed to go to the Infirmary. Jennifer was waiting for her. In a few minutes, all of SG-1 was outside the Infirmary, waiting for news. Vala, who had helped Sam with her Lamaze classes, was ready to help. Teal'c almost felt as nervous as he had when his own son had been born.
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Daniel fell on his cot, unable to move one more muscle. It hurt everywhere.
It was not the same pain as he had felt so many times before, after a battle. There were no real physical injuries. His body was simply exhausted. He could not remember when was the last time that he had had more than four hours of sleep and when he had not spent the whole day working on that damned farm.
At first, after he had suddenly been transported to his new prison, he had welcomed the change. No more battles. No more bloodshed. No more having to kill in order to survive.
He had counted nine months in his former prison and, at least that he could track, twelve visits to the Labs. In the three months he had spent in the farm, there had been no experiments, but soon he had learned that his new lifestyle was not much better than the previous one. He got up every day before the sun was up and he never went to bed until after midnight. He was certain that all his ─and the other prisoners'─ work was designed to have an abundant crop to feed the new wave of combatant slaves. He did not know if he would have to return to fighting, but he was quite sure that he would be eating what he was growing, if he was allowed to survive.
Though the guards had the same powerful weapons and guarded the prison with the same fierceness they had shown before, Daniel had started imagining possibilities to escape. At least now he had contact with the other prisoners and he had already figured out that he was not the only one who wanted to be free. What hindered him the most was the complete lack of knowledge about where they were and what was beyond the fields they worked. He was not going to give up nonetheless. He not only wanted to go back to Sam; he also wanted a chance to see his son.
He was about to fall asleep, trying to forget about the complaints and whines from the other men lying around him, when he felt a strong pull, as if an invisible force were trying to grab him. He was perplexed for a moment and then he decided to try to reach Sam. He had not been able to concentrate deep enough to do it since he had been taken there, but, now, he felt there was an opposite force trying to connect from the other side.