The moment the General had started to yell again, Daniel had quickly grabbed Mia and shoved her out of the lab, following close behind and shutting the door against the swelling storm inside. Foxworth was waiting for them in the hall, stoically pretending he hadn't heard a thing. Grateful for that, Daniel marched them both away from the lab as quickly as possible, praying that no one else in the vicinity would be able to hear the General's heartfelt tirade through the thick walls and closed door. Daniel winced as he thought of his friend's obvious dilemma. Letting Sam go would be a terrible blow to the SGC, but on the other hand, Mia had been right. On some level, this was precisely what they had both wanted for a very long time.
"I'm really sorry, Daniel," whispered Mia guiltily. "I honestly didn't even think before I spoke. It just sort of slipped out."
"That's ok," said Daniel reassuringly. "They needed to get this out in the open eventually. Now is as good a time as any." Mia looked at him doubtfully. "Ok, well, maybe the timing wasn't perfect," he admitted, "but it is something they should both consider before Jack bursts into the Pentagon demanding a retraction of Sam's new orders."
"Can he actually do that?," asked Mia, somewhat awed. "I was under the impression that military orders were fairly final."
"I doubt he'd succeed, but I certainly wouldn't put it past him to try," Daniel responded candidly. "I've been trying for months to convince him to let me join the Atlantis expedition, and his response has been nearly the same as what you just witnessed every time. I honestly think he just doesn't like change, especially when it involves letting go of the people he's grown to care about."
Mia thought about that a while, silently agreeing with Daniel's assessment. The Jack O'Neill she had known had been forced by circumstance to let go of nearly everyone he had ever loved. He had lost his son Charlie some nine years before she was born in a terrible accident, pushing his wife at the time away with his self-recrimination and grief. Then he'd been given a second chance in Egypt with her mother, and Mia could still remember the overwhelming love they had shared with each other and herself. But there, again, fate had struck cruelly against him, taking her mother and unborn brother from them in a breached labour. Her father had never recovered from that second loss, taking his own life days later. Mia had hated him a long time after that, unable to understand how he, too, could have abandoned her so easily. Daniel had tried his best to reassure her that he had never meant to leave her, that his grief over losing Sam had blinded him to what he still had, but she had never been able to appreciate before now the full depth of his need to have someone strong, patient and level-headed by his side. A child could never have filled that role, and she knew that her father had never bonded with Daniel and Teal'c the way this Jack O'Neill had. She could see now, in this strange recreation of her father, that under that mask of self-assurance and military authority, he was as desperately afraid to be alone as she had been at the age of three, with both her parents suddenly gone and no one to go to save the two strange "uncles" she had barely known. And yet, there she was, once again watching this broken man being stripped of the people he loved, bound by duty never to even so much as let them know the full extent of what it meant for him to have them in his life.
Mia shuddered. She did not envy General Jack O'Neill in the least. Even if he accepted this change as the opportunity she had presented it to be, she knew he'd still be faced with difficulties. The only way the Sam and Jack of this timeline could act on their mutual affection would be to stay out of the same chain of command...which at the moment meant putting the better part of two states between them.