Three Days Later
"Can we go to the toy store, Grandpa?" Tyler asks, looking up hopefully at his grandfather.
"We came here to get some things for the new house," Jacob reminds him.
"Things like toys?" the boy asks.
Jacob laughs, and turns into the toys store. Suddenly, his grandson starts sprinting away from him. "Tyler!" Jacob shouts in panic, as he runs after his son.
Tyler flings himself into a tall man's arms, shouting, "Daddy!"
The man picks him up with delight in his eyes, but says, "Where is your mother?"
Jacob stops his sprint, and looks at the man, utterly confused. Did that kid seriously just say 'Daddy'? What is going on here?
"At home," the boy says.
"How did you get here?" the man asks, now seeming a little bit worried.
"Grandpa," Tyler says, pointing to him.
The man with his grandson on his hip looks over at Jacob. "Hi. Jack O'Neill."
"Yeah right," Jacob says, looking daggers at him
"Grandpa, this is my daddy! He only left because he has bad handwriting," Tyler announces.
"What?" Jacob says, staring at the boy in confusion.
"Look, I'm willing to give you a more full explanation sometime when little ears aren't around," Jack says.
"Can I have my grandson back?" Jacob asks, with his mouth in a firm line.
Jack nods his head, and takes a step forward to hand the kid over to Jacob. Tyler wraps his arms around Jack's neck, "No, Daddy, you can't leave," he whines.
Well, Jacob can't very well take the kid away from him now. "Ok, little man, how about… Jack hangs out with us until we're done in the toy store."
"And then I'll see you after Mommy and I come back from our… trip," Jack reminds him.
"'Kay," Tyler agrees. Then he turns to his grandfather, "And you can't call him Jack anymore. He changed his name to Daddy."
Jacob can't help but smile.
"Daddy, toy stores are for kids. What are you doing here?" Tyler asks.
"Well, I might have been here looking for something a little boy might enjoy," Jack says with a grin.
Tyler bounces in his arms, "Am I the boy? Am I the boy?"
Jack laughs, "You are."
Tyler's eyes grow round, "What are you going to get me?"
"Tyler," his grandfather scolds.
"I was thinking of a catcher's mitt," Jack says.
"My size?" the boy asks hopefully.
"Exactly," Jack says.
"Grandpa, Daddy tried to teach me to play baseball. But I couldn't catch it, and I cried. He told me the glove was too big, and we went in and made puzzles. I'm good at puzzles." Suddenly another thought occurs to the little boy, "Daddy, what if I still not good at baseball?"
"Then I'll come back here and buy you some new puzzles," Jack replies.
Damn, Jack is getting harder to hate, Jacob thinks to himself. This man may have been an ass to his daughter, but he seemed to get pretty good at the fatherhood thing.
-0-0-0-
The closer Charlie gets to his Grandpa's car, the tighter his grip on his father's neck. Ever since he found a glove that fit, he's refused to take it off his hand, and it keeps knocking Jack in the head.
"Buddy, it's time for you to go home now," Jack whispers in the boy's ear.
"Daddy's coming too," the boy says firmly.
"Honey, your grandpa just got here, you want some time with him," Jack says.
"Grandpa isn't leaving," Tyler says sadly.
Jack pulls the boy away far enough that he can look him in the eye, "I'm not leaving, either, Ty."
Jacob clears his throat to keep tears out of his eyes. "Jack, why don't you meet us at the house?"
"You're sure?" Jack asks carefully.
Jacob nods. He can't believe he is actually inviting the man who broke his daughter's heart over. But this boy, he needs his father right now. He knows he would be causing trauma to the kid to make his father leave him.
"I want to ride with Daddy," Tyler says, wrapping his arms tighter around his father's neck.
Jacob starts to protest, but Jack already has it covered, "I'm sorry, bud, that isn't going to happen. I don't have a car seat yet. But you be good for your Grandpa, and I'll see you in a couple of minutes," Jack leans forward so there are only a couple of inches between him and a man that he's barely met.
"Ok," Tyler says, turning and leaping into his grandfather's arms.
-0-0-0-
Sam and her father are sitting next to each other on the deck as Jack and his son play catch in the front yard. The correctly-sized mitt helped, but the kid is still a little bit clumsy. The kid is nervous about making mistakes, but every time he drops the ball Jack tells a joke or makes a mistake on his own to make the kid more comfortable.
"He's spending a lot of time with Tyler, isn't he," Jacob asks.
"Well, he has a lot of time to make up for," Sam says.
"He does," Jacob says bitterly.
Sam looks at her father, "That wasn't his fault."
"I don't know what kind of crap he fed you, but I was there when you were pregnant and terrified. There is no excuse for what he did to you, Sammy."
"He never gave me a fake number. He just writes his stupid ones like sevens," she whispers.
"No, Sammy, I looked for him, if there was a Jack O'Neill in the Air Force I would have found him," he says firmly.
"He wasn't in the Air Force after the war," she whispers.
"Didn't he have your number?" Jacob demands, annoyed by the previous sentence.
"He called it, and when Mark answered early in the morning, he assumed…" Sam says.
"Oh," Jacob says, nodding. This man should have known his daughter better than that. Not that Sammy didn't have the chance to be with lots of men, but she didn't take very many up on the opportunity.
"He got depressed, suicidal, that's why he left the Air Force," Sam whispers.
"So… what is he doing now?" Jacob asks softly. He can't help but wonder if his grandson has an unemployed man for a father.
"He's back in the Air Force, we're on the same team. Jack is trying to get to move things around at work, he wants to be here for him when I'm traveling," Sam says softly.
"You letting him watch Tyler alone?" Jacob says in surprise.
"I'm going to have to, dad," she says.
"No, Sam, you don't have to," her father says softly.
"He could take Tyler from me," she whispers.
"No way in hell is anyone taking that boy from you. You're his mother. What the hell did he say? Did he threaten you?" Jacob demands, barely able to keep his voice below a bellow.
"No, Jack hasn't said anything about it. But he could, dad. Anytime he wants to. I've got to… keep him happy," Sam says quietly.
"Sammy, what happened is not your fault. You were cleared," her father says softly, looking at the kid.
"Don't tell Jack what happened to Tyler, please," she says, turning to him, pleading.
"Of course not," Jacob says, his stomach twisting. So, Tyler's dad is back in the picture, and Sam is worried that it is all going to go to hell. Perfect.
Two Days Later
Jack is a good commander. You can tell that, because he notices right away that Sam isn't going through the gate with the rest of the team. He hangs back with her.
"Captain?" he asks. It feels weird for him to be referring to her with rank. He still calls her by her last name when he's at her house. But that's a lot more personal than a rank.
"Oh, don't worry, Colonel. I won't let you down," Sam promises, offering a smile. She really needs him to think that she's good at her job. Maybe if he thinks that, he'll also believe she's a good mother. God, why had she fed the kid pizza on the first day they came over? She always fed her kid good food. But it was the day of a move, for God's sake.
"Good. I was going to say 'ladies first'." Jack says with a cocky grin. Both of them walk toward the shimmering pool of a Stargate.
She has never seen anything so wonderful in her whole life. She has read about the Stargate for years, but up close and personal it was far more amazing than anything she's ever seen in her whole life, "My God. Look at this! I mean, the energy the 'gate must release to create a stable wormhole is… it's astronomical, to use exactly the right word!" She lets a finger touch it, and waves move out from it as if it were a pond with ripples. "You can actually see the fluctuation in the event horizon!" she murmurs in awe.
He puts a hand on the small of her back, and pushes her through the event horizon before taking one step to fall into the wormhole after her.
Sam knew that going through the wormhole wasn't going to be fun. She wasn't just bragging when she talked about the things she'd experienced. But this was nothing like being a pilot, or a soldier, or even like giving birth. It was worse.
"Ugh. I think I'm going to be sick, ugh," Sam groans. She immediately regrets it. She's supposed be making herself look professional.
"Maybe you shouldn't have had that big lunch, huh?" Jack laughs. Suddenly a bunch of people in strangely old-fashioned clothing pop out of nowhere with the guns loaded. Each of them lower their own guns on the people.
Then Daniel comes out from behind a pillar, and holds his hands up in the air saying, "Cha'hali! Cha'hali. Lower your guns." Guns go down all around, and then Daniel grins, looking at Jack, "Hello, Jack. Welcome back."
Jack grins in Daniel's direction, and then walks right past him to Skaara. Skaara salutes, and Jack returns the gesture before pulling him into a hug. Sam's stomach twists in jealousy. She'd read about Skaara in the mission reports of course, but she hadn't realized that he and Jack were like this. Jeeze, Jack was good with all kids of all ages. She was still figuring out how to be the mother of a small child. She was pretty sure that she wouldn't be good with a teenager.
After Jack and Skaara greet one another, Jack turns to Daniel and says, "Daniel, how you doing?"
"Uh, good, you?" Daniel says, fairly awkwardly. Jack might be good with kids, but he wasn't good with scientists, Sam thinks glumly, knowing that she herself is a scientist.
More greetings go around the group, including the unveiling of Daniel's completely gorgeous foreign wife.
Sam is feeling quite insecure so she starts talking technobabble. That is definitely one area in which she shines, "Amazing. This is what was missing from the dig at Giza. This is how they controlled it! It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system on Earth."
Daniel and Jack are looking at each other, completely confused about she's talking about.
Sam doesn't notice that she's not getting the approval she wants so desperately, "Look how small it is!"
"Captain!" Jack practically yells, finally getting her attention. She turns and looks at him as he holds up his hand, indicating Daniel.
"Oh right, excuse me. Doctor Jackson, I presume. I'm Doctor Samantha Carter," she says, extending her hand to him.
Then they start talking mission objectives, and Sam works to catch up. She's been in charge before. But she's never been in charge in the battle against hostile aliens.
-0-0-0-
Skaara comes up to Jack as he's sitting at the party. He has a thick accent, but he speaks English now. "O'Neill… your lighter?" he offers, holding it out.
Jack smiles at him. Now that he has a kid, he has even a greater relationship with Skaara. "No, it's yours, I gave that to you to keep. Remember?" he says with a smile.
"Thank you, "Skaara says, leaving.
"You know he's never had that out of his sight the whole time you were gone," Daniel tells him.
"Yeah?" Jack says with a smile. Right now, Jack wants to gather up Charlie and Daniel, the closest things that he's had to a best friend, and tell them that he has a son. But they'd have questions, especially Daniel. Questions that it would be very awkward to answer when Sam was within earshot.
-0-0-0
Jack is walking down the hallway after the mission, thinking about the fact that tomorrow he will get to see his son again. He's also contemplating whether or not he could get away with a phone call this late tonight.
He sees Daniel standing there and greets them. He's looking almost as bad as Jack was right after he Sam left.
Except, Jack realizes, Daniel is much worse off. He lost a wife. A wife who died because she refused to let some alien take her as his wife. A wife who died right in his arms.*
"Hey," Jack says.
"They don't know what to do with me. And I don't know what to do with myself," Daniel says with a laugh that isn't really a laugh.
"C'mon, let's get out of here," Jack says, knowing that this is more important than calling his son, at least for the night.
-0-0-0-
Jack's gut is wrenching as he listens to Daniel talk about his wife. He knows that he shouldn't be jealous of Daniel. He just lost his wife, after all. But he had a wife, for a year. Jack only got Samantha for three months. And now, it looked like he was going to have to look at her… at work… at their homes as they shuffled the kid back and forth, every day for the rest of his lie. And there would never again be anything between them.
"I have a son," Jack blurts.
Daniel stares at him, blinking for several seconds. "What?"
"He's… three," Jack informs him.
"You're telling me that when you were seriously considering blowing yourself up on Abydos last year, you had a freaking toddler depending on you?" Daniel demands in a voice edged in anger. Jack doesn't understand exactly why there is so much anger in his voice. He doesn't know that Daniel is an orphan.
"No… well… yes, but I didn't know about him," Jack stammers.
"So, if the mom kept you from it so long, why now?" Daniel asks.
"We, ah… lost contact. It was a misunderstanding, but neither of us really had a way to get a hold of the other one."
"So what changed," Daniel says.
"Ah…Tyler's mom is Captain Carter," Jack admits.
"Sam? You knocked up Sam?" Daniel says.
"'Knocked up'?" Jack says with a look of disapproval.
"Sorry, that was disrespectful, I'm just surprised. She's really beautiful."
"Hey!" Jack protests.
"Sorry," Daniel laughs.
"I didn't look surprised that your wife was beautiful," Jack says.
Daniel laughs again, "So are you and Sam going to get married?"
"Oh, that's highly unlikely," Jack says, taking a swig of his bear.
"Why?" Daniel probes companionably.
Jack sighs, "Well, she hasn't… exactly put up with any of my advances. She's letting me around the kid. I don't want to push things… I can't lose the chance to be around them."
"She wouldn't keep you from your son," Daniel says with absolute certainly, even though they've only had a few technobabble conversations.
"I don't know, she's really overprotective of him."
"If she keeps him from you, you could sue for custody," Daniel points out.
Jack shakes his head, "I can't imagine doing that to her, it would destroy her."
"It's ok, you're going to get to know that kid of yours."
"And we're going to bring your wife back," Jack promises.
*Ok, we're moving farther from cannon, I'll admit it.