Daniel stepped through the door of Sam's lab to find her once again rapt in her calculations. She stood at her lab table, her weight heavy on her elbows as she stared at the collection of whiteboards on the other side of it. "Made any progress?" he asked.

She glanced up at him with a smile but did not, he noticed, jump in surprise. Her nerves were one of the many things that seemed to have calmed in the two weeks since SG-9 had been deployed. "I've cut another point-two seconds off the dialing sequence. It's not much, but-"

"It adds up," he finished for her.

"Yeah. And it's only been a few weeks, so I'm fairly confident that with more time, I can cut it down much more."

"I'm sure you can." As of yet, there didn't seem to be anything she couldn't do. The comment earned him a brilliant grin before she turned back to her calculations, and he watched her for a moment, smiling as she worked. "You seem much happier," he commented idly.

Okay, that was maybe the wrong thing to say. Her sideways glance was dark. "Happier than... what?"

"Well, than you were. Before. I mean... when Captain Hanson was here. You know, 'cause you and he... uh..." He finally trailed into silence, pinned in her icy glare. "I'll shut up now."

"That would be a good idea."

"Right. I just meant... that it's good to see you happy again," he finished weakly.

She arched a brow at him. "I'm... annoyed and touched, all at once, Doctor Jackson."

He cringed. "Ouch. We're back to titles again, huh? Maybe I really ought to head to the infirmary to get the FMS looked at, after all."

"Excuse me?"

"Foot-in-mouth syndrome," he supplied. "I've, uh, been told my case is quite serious."

Well, at least that earned him the smile, even if it was a little sad. "It's not so bad. It's nothing worse than what everyone else has been saying."

"Yeah?" He couldn't help but feel bad for her – he'd heard some of the speculation himself. From Jack, of all people. He slid onto one of the lab stools. "Wanna talk about it?"

She considered that for a moment and apparently decided she did, because she perched on one of the stools beside him. "You know what the worst thing is about being a woman in the military?"

"Uh..." He could only imagine. "Knowing that every man in the room is staring at your legs when you wear your dress blues?"

She sighed. "They're not all staring at my legs, Daniel, though they're certainly not looking at my face, either. But I'm used to that."

"Then I have no idea," he shrugged.

"It's being defined by the men around you. More, by which ones you have and have not slept with. And I really thought this place would be different, you know, a clean start, but now... Now I'm nothing more than Jonas Hanson's poor ex-fiancée. Again."

"Really? That's funny," Daniel said, "because I still think of you as Doctor Samantha Carter, the world's leading expert on wormhole theory."

A tiny, crooked smile crossed her face. "You do?"

"I do. We all have skeletons in our pasts, Sam. That's why man invented closets."

The words had no more than left his mouth before he realized his mistake and prayed she wouldn't catch it. Of course, he wasn't that lucky. "Really?" she challenged. "Man? And here I thought woman invented closets to store all of her high heels and lingerie and froofy princess dresses."

"Right." He slid off the stool with a grimace. "Off I go to the infirmary, then, to get that foot surgically removed."

He was almost out the door when she called softly, "Daniel?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

He blinked. "For what?"

She chewed on her lip for a moment and shrugged. "Giving a damn."

"Jack would tell you that's one of my worst qualities," he quipped, pulling the door shut behind him.