Spoilers for "Avalon"

One Month Later

It's impossible, Jack knows, to accept the job. It would mean uprooting his wife, his father-in-law, and his kids. It would mean that for the second time in their lives together, his wife's career would be taking a hit. He felt bad enough that he'd done that to her once, he didn't want to do it to her again.

Besides, if he took the job, he was going to have to be politician in Washington. He is pretty sure that he doesn't want that.

Well, she's going to be pretty mad at him if she finds out that he was offered the job from someone else. The Air Force is full of gossip, and he knows there is a chance that would happen if he doesn't tell her, so he goes to her office.

Crap, he thinks as he opens the door, she must already know. She's sitting there with a stern look on her face, and as soon as he comes into the room, she stands up and walks over to him.

"Jack, we have to talk about our careers," she says.

"I swear I was going to tell you!" he exclaims.

"You knew that I was offered a job at Area 51?" she asks looking at him startled.

"You were? That's great! You've been saying that you wish you could do more research, and this would be your chance. Of course, you wouldn't be going through the gate anymore, and I know how much you love that. What are you thinking?"

"You didn't know that I was offered this job until a minute ago, so what did you think I was talking about when you first walked in here?"

He fidgets, "It's not important now."

She puts a hand on his arm, and gives him a look which loosens his tongue.

"I got a job offer in Washington. I'd already decided no, I just thought you'd be mad if I didn't tell you before I gave them my official answer."

"Why did you decide no?" she asks softly.

"I didn't want to move our family."

"Well, that can't be it, because you seemed eager enough to move our family a couple of minutes ago to Nevada. Why was Washington so different?"

"Sam, your career took the hit when I moved here. I won't let it happen again."

"I never thought of it as my career taking the hit. I mean, I got to have a command."

"But you weren't on the front line team, Sam."

"Jack, I don't want your career to take the hit any more than you want mine too," she protests.

"Sam, I really don't want to be a politician," he admits.

She smiles at him. "Ok, but that still doesn't meant that we have to move. We could decide to turn both jobs down."

"Honey, I think we should talk to the kids before we make any decisions, but if you want this, I think you should have it."

"Are you sure?" Sam asks searching his eyes.

"Positive."

"So what are you going to do? You're not exactly scientist material."

"Well, we're going to use the Air Force's plan of trying to station married people near each other. If that doesn't work… then I retire."

"Jack."

"I retired before."

"Yes, because you were depressed."

"This time it will be because I am unbelievably happy," he says.

That Night

The O'Neill family comes together for a family meeting. Ty is fidgeting. Jenny is sitting on her father's lap manipulating his face with her hands, and giggling.

"You're not going to have another baby are you?" Hannah asks with disgust, looking at her little sister.

"Watch it, you were 'another baby' once, too," her brother warns.

"No, our family isn't getting any bigger. It might be moving," Jacks says.

"Transfer? Who was transferred?" Jacob says.

"I don't have orders, it's just an option," Sam says.

"I don't want to move away from Emma," Ty blurts.

It's like a punch in the gut for both Jack and Sam. Here was a girl who had been their daughter for more than half of her life, someone who still came over to their house once a week or so, someone who their children saw every day at school – and they hadn't even realized that they were talking about leaving her.

"We can't go," Sam agrees.

Jack kisses her temple, and Jacob whispers sorry. It's right, though, Sam feels it in her bones, it is right to stay.

A Month Later

The Space Pirate is back. She's dressed in the kind of outfit he's only ever seen in a dirty magazine. Not that he spends a lot of time looking at dirty magazines… there was a time when he was a teenager… but not now. The point was, she wasn't dressed the way you'd expect people, er ladies, to dress.

He'd kill his daughters if they ever went out in public in a getup like that.

She makes some joke about being pregnant with his kid, and he whirls out of the room, furious. If he's honest with himself, really honest, the main reason that he is mad is because he's thought about it. He's an idiot to have even considered it. He's already a struggling single dad with four kids, and one glance at a thief in skin tight clothes, and he's picturing her in a maternity dress.

Worse, he's picturing her in HIS DEAD WIFE's maternity dress. The blue one that dipped low around her swollen breasts, and tight across her belly.

This women is a stranger. Worse than a stranger, she's an enemy. She beat the crap out of him the last time that they were together. Why on Earth would he be picturing her carrying his child within her?

He doesn't even want to have more kids. Four is more than he could handle, especially with Cassie off the deep end, and Olivia reaching the snotty teenager phase.

The General's voice calls him back, and he has to face the flirty hussy. She hands him the tablet, and their fingers just barely avoid making contact.

He tells her that the thing is worthless.

She tells him that it's in code. As if she wasn't already making all of his dreams come true, she had to throw in a freaking code. She might as well call him Indie and take Sean Connery along for the adventure, and all of his dreams would be fulfilled.

The two of them bend over a translation, and Daniel suddenly has a flash back of something that he hasn't had in a long time. When he was a child, his family used to study things, together. His father and his mother and himself all bent over the same translation. He has missed that in the years that have passed since he was eight years old.

He loved his wives, and he loves his kids, but none of them has ever bent over an artifact and studied it with him like this.

Then she snaps some 'ceremonial marriage bracelet' on him, which apparently makes it so he can't get very far away from her without passing out.

Moment ruined.

Well, at least the adventure still seems pretty legit.

That Night

"Inviting me over to your house, how risqué!" Vala says, leaning on his car.

"Don't flatter yourself. You're going to be sleeping on the couch. The only reason you are coming over to my house is because those stupid bracelets didn't offer me a choice," he says, flinging the car door open.

"Of course you had a choice, darling; you could have stayed on base like the nice General advised you to."

"Cassie has a big test to study for, and couldn't watch the kids. Besides, they would be mad if I didn't spend the night with them before I left on a big trip. I always do."

Vala uses the opening of the car door to hide her stricken face, "Cassie is your wife? And kids… you never mentioned your kids. How many are there?"

Daniel laughs a little enjoying her discomfort. It's about time after all the times that she's made him squirm in the time that they've known each other. "Cassie is my daughter, and I have four kids in all."

"Four kids? One of them old enough to watch the others. What is she, like fourteen?" Vala asks nervously.

"Cassie is 20, Olivia is 12, Will is 4, and my baby Drew is 2," he says, turning the key and starting to drive. The vehicle makes a lot more noise than anything that Vala is used to, and she jumps when the motor starts.

"You don't look like you're old enough to have a kid that's twenty. How young do you reproduce on your world?"

He giggles, "I guess Cassie is kind of old for my kid. She's only nineteen years younger than me. She's adopted. I've known her since she was eleven, though. She's mine."

Vala sits in silence, absorbing these new facts, and trying to reconcile them with the man before her. "It's pretty brave of you, to adopt four children as a single dad."

"Will and Drew aren't adopted, and I wasn't single."

"Oh," there is a pause during which she fully expects him to explain. It was foolish of her, she realizes as the silence stretches on. "Are you single now?"

He touches the ring on his finger. She'd studied the Tau'ri long ago, in an underground school run by a man she'd hoodwinked into hiding her when she was hiding out after one of her scams when sour. Even more sour than her scams normally went. It was a ring that meant eternal bondage, not to a god, but to another human.

But he had used the past tense.

"My wife, Janet, died a little over a year ago."

There is so much emotion in his voice as he says these words that she catches a choke in her own throat. "I'm sorry," she says, almost in a whisper. She tries to think of something else to say. Something that would let him know that she understands. That she knows what it is to grieve. She could tell him about her mother, or her fiancé, or the Goa'uld who controlled her body for the better part of a decade.

In the end, it all sounds hallow. No matter what someone says to you when you have lost someone, it always sounds smaller than your own grief.

"I actually lost two wives," he says suddenly.

Vala feels like she has been punched in the gut. His face shows no emotion, but the air in the car is heavy with all the things that he will not say, all the things that he doesn't even dare feel.

"Sha're was murdered by the Goa'uld."

It's an old story. Older than this, the very first human planet, but it still smarts.

"I wasn't lying to you when I said that my people suffered from the Goa'uld," she tells him.

"I believe you. We adopted Cassie after Nirrti wiped out her entire planet."

Vala hadn't taken into account that his children might be from other words. She had assumed that the Ta'uri were a primitive people, taking their first stumbling steps into the world of interplanetary journeys.

"What Goa'uld is Olivia fleeing from?" she asks.

"Olivia is from Earth," he says.

She almost regrets the bracelets now. Forcing her way into his home. Yet, this conversation has proved to her, even more strongly, that she is doing the right thing.

That ring on his finger is proclaiming that he would let no one in except by force, and perhaps they need someone. All of them.

Just then, Daniel pulls up in front of Olivia's school. She is sitting on the steps talking to Ty. He's in the middle of a growth spurt, and is towering over her even as they sit. He tells some joke, and Olivia laughs harder than the joke, or any joke, would require, and bounces her head against his shoulder.

Ty is oblivious to her antics; he's watching a game of catch two boys have going on a few feet away in the grass.

"Livvy!" Daniel calls, making the girl say a hasty goodbye before heading for the car. As soon as Vala sees which one Olivia is, she says, "You're daughter knows that her boyfriend is gay, right?

Daniel rolls his eyes, annoyed that even an alien can pick up on that dynamic so quickly when his own daughter can't, "He's not her boyfriend, and we don't actually know that Ty's gay."

"I think you should tell her," Vala nods helpfully.

"Thank you for your opinion, shut your mouth," Daniel says as Olivia opens the door to the car.

Olivia stares at the women in the passenger seat for a few seconds before she sits down in the car, "Dad, is she your girlfriend?"

"Observant little thing. Vala Mal Doran. Pleased to meet you, Olivia. You're father has told me all about you," she says, twisting around in the seat so she can shake the girl's hand.

"She is not my girlfriend! I work with her. Reluctantly. She used some space technology to stick us together. Literally," Daniel says, holding up his wrist to his daughter.

"It was only a joke, Daniel! I can't understand why you would be so upset by the mere idea of spending time with me in a romantic context!"

"We're around my kids now, Vala, and I don't want my children having to get used to the idea of Daddy dating until Daddy is actually dating," he whispers to the women beside him. It's loud enough so his daughter hears him too, it was meant to be.

"I'm fine with it," Olivia says lightly.

"Really?" he asks, turning his head so quickly to look at her that it's not safe driving for a couple of seconds.

She giggles, "Yeah; you're way too hot to be a monk, dad. I know that eventually you're going to be back on the market. Besides, you were so sad after mom died, and I don't want you to be like that. I want to see you happy."

Daniel's heart clenches. His daughter doesn't think that he's happy. "Honey, I love my kids so much. I am over the moon happy with our family just the way it is. I don't want you to think that just because I needed help for my depression after your mother died that I don't love you with my whole heart."

Vala is surprised by the mention of mental health services, so quick and cavalier. She hadn't pegged Daniel as the sort of man who would get help with that sort of thing. She had figured him for the suffer-in-silence type.

"I know that, Dad. What I'm talking about is more than just not being sad. I still see it sometimes when you're reading a book to the boys or when you are translating some old rock. It's just… when Mom was still alive, you used to get that look on your face every time you looked at her. You guys were disgusting together. I want you to have that again," Olivia says with the firmness which clearly shows she's put a great deal of thought into this.

Daniel clears this throat, unwilling to believe that they've actually discussed all of this before someone who is practically a stranger to them both. "Well, Vala is not that person."

Vala's stomach clenches at the words. She knew, of course that there was nothing between Daniel, and herself. Still she wouldn't have dismissed him so quickly, so easily.

He loved deeply, this one. Perhaps too deeply for the likes of her.

"Anyway, talking about boys, there is a dance this weekend, and Ty asked me to go!" Olivia gushes.

"Ty asked you to go to a dance?" Daniel asks.

Olivia squeals, too exited to form her response into words.

"Like, together, he asked you to go to the dance with him?" Daniel asks.

"Duh, dad!" Olivia giggles.

"As friends?" Vala asks cautiously. She wonders if she should be the one to tell this little girl the news about her friend. Perhaps it would smart less if it came from someone who was almost a stranger. Well, either less or more, it was hard to tell.

"No, like as boyfriend and girlfriend. I can go, right, dad? I mean, your rule is that you have to meet the person before they can go on a date with your kid, but like it's Ty, right? You've known him longer than you've known me!"

"I don't have a problem with Ty," Daniel admits.

"So I can date him?" Olivia asks excitedly.

Daniel tries desperately to think of a way out of this. When he fails, he nods his head, causing another squeal of excitement from the backseat.