AU: Jacob decides to follow Sam back to her office and assist with her role as General
Chapter 20: OCD Monsters and Candles
Monday, 21st June 2004 – Late Afternoon – Jacob Carter
After our impromptu catch up in the lab, we returned to the General's office, and I had to do a double take when I realised yet again that my daughter was the General sitting in this office. It was surreal to think that I had two versions of my daughter alive and here in two different roles, both of which suited her so well. The fact that I had come to terms with one of them being less than a decade younger than was the biggest shock of them all.
Pulling one of the visitors chairs out and around to the right side of her desk, I sat down almost next to her with a heavy – and rather theatrical – sigh that suggested my body ached. It didn't. Sel'mak saw to all my aches and pains within minutes of being blended. Sam looked at me with an almost comical glare. While I technically shouldn't be sitting in her office for no reason, let alone in a casual and very comfortable position like this, I felt we had earned the right to behave a little unorthodox. Picking up the stack of papers from her well labelled 'PR's to do' tray, I rifled through them while she continued to look on with a deep-set amusement on her face.
"What are you doing?" She asked while I idly put the papers in some kind of order based on which division placed the request, and whether they asked for one thing, two things or multiple things. I could never start working on something that was haphazard, and I knew my daughter was the same.
"Helping." I replied as I checked the order and found that my internal OCD monster was happy. Sel'mak scoffed in my mind, which I ignored because after three years, she knew what a pain in the ass I could be.
"Helping?"
"Yep. Might as well get these done before the next major crisis." I offered as I fanned what had to be almost ten individual requisitions in my hands.
"Are they in order by division and quantity?" She asked with a smirk. All I offered in reply was a cheesy smile because she knew me too well. She always had even if I worked hard to keep that part of me – along with the practical joker – hidden behind the layers of Major General Jacob Carter. She smiled, sat down and picked up her pen.
"Alright. Hit me." She agreed and held her hand out as if we were playing poker and not signing paperwork for mundane requests that a second-in-command – if she had one – could have been doing.
"Matches." I announced as I held up the first page. Her face crinkled in the most cute and amusing way.
"Matches?" Sam queried with confusion in her tone then almost snatched the requisition I held aloft. "What would anyone need matches?" She asked rhetorically as she read the reasoning for the purchase and sighed.
"It makes sense, in a strange kind of way." I commented as I perused the next requisition, which was for twenty 50-pound bags of baker's flour that the kitchen needed to feed cake every day to the masses of soldiers on this base. She scratched her signature on the 'matches' request and tossed it in the tray. "Candles, gas stoves, incense sticks…" I continued when she didn't comment on why Catering would need to 'light things on fire'.
"Incense sticks?" She fashioned an incredulous question with the two words while giving me an 'are you crazy' look prompting me to smirk as I handed over the 'baker's flour' request. She took the page from my fingers and dropped it to her desk. "Please don't tell me you're having fun with this?"
"Oh, I am having the time of my life, daughter, because it's not my job." I replied drily as the pen scratched again, then handed her the next one, "Egyptian papyrus." I announced with a deadpan tone.
"It is not!" She replied forcefully, but still almost tore the page from my hand.
"No, but I had you worried." I cut in as she saw that the requisition was for normal printer paper. She just scoffed and laughed then put her moniker on the line before tossing it in the tray then leaned heavily on her hands as she looked at the balance of requests in my hands that had become her responsibility a few hours ago.
"I have been here for less than three hours, and I already hate the paperwork." She grumbled. "No wonder Jack complained." She muttered at the end then almost savagely took the next one.
"If paperwork is all you do in this job, then be thankful." I commented and glanced in the direction of the dormant gate that laid one floor down and behind two heavy walls. I had been out there, and before Sel'mak, I had been responsible for sending men to far-flung parts of the Earth on missions, some of them never returning. I knew the price of wearing stars on your shoulders. I wasn't a job for the fainthearted.
"Yeah. I know. Jack was… God… his hair was almost white within the first year of doing this job." She replied a little more sheepishly than I was expecting. "He hated sending us out there."
"It's never an easy thing to do, Sam. Just remember, don't send a soldier to do a job that you wouldn't do yourself." I advised, even though I knew she had already done so much in her life on SG-1. As a General, she needed to know that it was OK to not just sit behind a desk. In fact, her subordinates would respect her more if she involved herself.
"Yeah, I know. He managed to walk through that Gate three more times before Washington. He smiled brightly every single time." She lamented sadly taking the next requisition from my outstretched fingertips. I wanted to ask so many things, but figured most of them should wait until we weren't in a room with cameras and people who could probably read lips.
"So, this sarcophagus..." I began but struggled with the right words because the only possible basis for the cover story was a request from the Tau'ri not long after Sel'mak and I blended to assist them with repairing Hathor's broken sarcophagus. A request that had been flatly denied and rightly so. Since the Tok'ra had confiscated the ruined device and had it destroyed beyond repair, I knew they had not reverse engineered that particular one. Not to say that they didn't try it with another unit. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least, what with the X-301 debacle.
"What about it?" She prompted, her eyes never leaving the pages before her.
"Is there more to the story? Any background that perhaps I should know about?" I asked because it seemed prudent that at least one member of the Tok'ra knew about this cover story in the event that we were quizzed by some industrious person. She snorted in a rather unladylike fashion while flicking her eyes up to me briefly.
"That's a no then." I prompted.
"It's a definite no. Kennedy's idea of a cover story is even worse than West's." She complained.
"Ah, so Deep Space..."
"...Radar Telemetry was West's idea according to Jack. Yeah." She confirmed. I handed another requisition to her, baulking at the sheer volume of coffee, sugar and creamer on the order.
"I can hear your brain ticking Dad." She said after a beat of me saying nothing.
"Your mother used to say that all the time." I commented, smiling at the memory of Debbie telling me to stop overthinking about something seven ways from Sunday. I guess we knew where Sam got that ability from. I handed her the final requisition, not even bothering to see what was listed on it. She looked at me with sorrow rimming her eyes. "I miss her, Sammie." I confessed softly.
"I know. In fact I have a new appreciation for just how much, and I'm sorry." She apologised. I smiled stiffly knowing she was talking about Jack even if she hadn't said as much. It wasn't her first apology, but now at least she knew the feeling from the point of view of someone deeply in love with the one she lost. Not to say that the original Sam didn't love Jack, she definitely did. But she was in denial, and she hadn't lost him. Not truly.
"So, background to the cover story?" She picked up my line of questioning as a deliberate subject change. "Kennedy says they delivered my body back to the Alpha site and attempted to bring me back to life, but the sarcophagus somehow aged me…" she looked up, puffed out her cheeks and gestured with one of her hands, then continued, "…X number of years." Her comment made me smirk, but I didn't get the chance to probe her on her age difference because the phone rang. The black one.
"Carter." She almost barked down the line, her lips tensing into a thin line moments later.
"Martin." She greeted with a pained sneer on her face. I'd had little to do with Martin Kennedy even when we worked a stone's throw from each other at the Pentagon, though I knew him to be particularly underhanded. He played the long game and often had lots of pieces at his disposal.
"You've done what?" She growled in a way that meant she didn't like what he was telling her. Suddenly, I felt that I had to know what his game was. Without asking, I felt Sel'mak slide into partial control. No flashing of eyes, no dipping of my head. That was all theatrics for outsiders anyway. My hearing sharpened remarkably and focused on the phone receiver.
"...frankly you had no intention of doing so." He said to my daughter. She turned her head slightly as if shielding her voice would work and whispered.
"He is not your puppet!"
"The JCS thinks otherwise. He has no choice, and neither do you, General." He said then hung up abruptly leaving her holding a dead receiver. Slowly she hung it up on its cradle while the anger she held abated and turned to cold fear.
"Sammie?" I prompted, leaning forward to place my hand reassuringly her arm.
"The JCS wanted me to issue orders to John." She answered my unasked question. "I refused on Saturday, but it seems..." Her voice was listless and a little shaky. "…they posted them before I even arrived." She finished, her fists clenching on the desk top.
"Impossible. He's too young." I replied instantly because he was, even if he had the mind and experience of a 52-year-old man. Having said that, he had matured markedly since I last saw him. Mind you, the last I time I had seen him was at a distance from Jack's truck last October when I persuaded Jack to drive past the school one afternoon just in time to see him walk outside looking tired and completely miserable.
"It's what he wants, Jacob." Jack's words rung in my mind as a looked at my daughter, watching while she pushed whatever it was that she was feeling behind the facade of the General. A knock on the door had us both turning our heads as the door opened a crack to reveal Doctor Woolsey.
"General, I was hoping..." The door opened a little more until he saw me. "Oh... my apologies..."
"It's OK, Doctor." She said after turning her pile of paperwork over and resting her hands - fingers linked - on top of them. "What do you need?" He stood tall trying to look indignant, his gaze settling on me.
"What I have to discuss is for General C..."
"Doctor." Sam interrupted, "We are both General Carter. Now, what's this about?" She cut to the chase while gesturing to the one vacant chair. He looked at me then Sam and finally the chair. Slowly, he walked in, closed the door and took to proffered seat.
"General. I'm here to inform you that you passed." He stated as if we had any idea that Sam was being tested for anything.
"I passed. Passed what? Wind, a person, a test?" She replied coolly, her full General mode well and truly back in control along with a little smarm I was still not used to hearing from her. Woolsey twisted a little in his chair and cleared his throat.
"The President ordered me to assess your ability to lead without compromise." He informed her but didn't elaborate on the details.
"The President of the United States of America ordered you to assess me." She repeated slowly and completely while pinning him with a stare that I could imagine would make a lesser man – or woman – shake in their boots. He looked at me, then her and nodded. "I see. Doctor, you've seen me in action for barely ten minutes." She spelled out for him.
"You are correct, General. Normally I would need several days to determine a person's suitability, except..." He pinned her with a nervous stare, "...would you really level the outpost?" He turned his explanation into a question tinged with a suitable amount of awe.
"In a heartbeat, Doctor." She replied without the slightest waver in her voice. It made me proud to see her sitting here calling the shots and doing so with grace and confidence.
"Why?" He pressed.
"Because, Doctor, he deserves every chance to come home to his family. He has worked tirelessly for years to save this planet." She replied with admiration and respect.
"But he started the war." I wanted to jump in here, but she didn't give me a chance.
"How could he have started a war that has raged for millennia? Ra was at Abydos. That is pretty much the corner store as far as the galaxy is concerned." She informed him. She was right. Ra had been hurting. He returned to Abydos to regroup. He needed slaves and an army. Earth would have been his next port of call if Jack and the original team had not gone through the Gate when they did.
"It was a matter of time." I added with a grim smile. The Doctor nodded and I got the distinct impression that he already believed that to be true.
"Your... sister may condemn you if it's destroyed." He continued, his words an attempt at fishing for us to make a mistake and reveal the deception around her and Samantha. If anything, Sam's presence here solidified Samantha's claim that she was her own person.
"My sister is foolhardy and completely in love. She has been since the moment she met him eight years ago." Sam replied and I instantly knew that this was a complete confession from the Samantha inside her. The part of her that had fallen in love with a man she couldn't have. I had known at the Air Medal presentation by the way she smiled when he addressed her, and how she silently caught her breath when she looked at him. It had been so obvious.
"I've shot, stabbed, and zatted Jack O'Neill many times over the years. I've hurt him in ways you can't even fathom, and while Samantha cried, she understood – just as he did – that it was my duty to do so." She finished and I could not help but wonder if she included the Za'tarc conversation in that. I had not been there, but Anise lamented over Freya's crush on Jack, her failed attempt at seducing him, how she suspected his heart belonged to the blonde Major, and how completely desolate he looked when he agreed to let her scramble his brain rather than let her hurt Sam. My respect for the man grew exponentially when Anise told me that.
Woolsey smiled tightly and nodded.
"You've answered my questions admirably General. I can see that you are most certainly two different people." He replied, "My apologies for doubting you." If I hadn't been present at the birth of one single Samantha Carter, I would have been fooled into believing that I had twin girls myself, her performance was so perfect. She managed to paint herself in two different lights that made the presence of two Samantha Carter's very plausible.
The Doctor stood and excused himself. Once the door clicked shut, I turned to find both Samantha and General Sam looking at me from one set of eyes, though she still refused to fully release the woman who loved her CO.
"Eight years, huh?" I prompted even though I had known since before Sel'mak that she loved him. She sniffed and smiled.
"Yep."
"So, what are you going to do?" I prompted her to action.
"I know what I want to do, but that's not really an option since I am in charge of this place now." She confessed to wanting to go out into the black to find Thor herself without saying so.
"Why not?" I prompted again, looking at her with my head tilted willing her to remember what I said earlier about not sending men to do a job you wouldn't do yourself.
"Well… I…" She began and looked at me. "I… I don't know." She replied, the sudden realisation of what I was saying seemed to awaken within her and she smiled. "I mean, I did go in my timeline. Teal'c and I."
"Teal'c's a good pilot." I commented and smiled. "You could do with another person who understands crystal technology." I added hoping she would pick up on my suggestion. She smiled and I immediately knew I should not have doubted her.
"Sel'mak knows the technology, and you could… we could talk some more." She suggested making me smile at the thought that I would get several days with my daughter. One of my daughters, because I definitely had two girls.
"Sounds good." I said as I came to my feet. "C'mon, let's go to dinner." I prompted even though it was earlier than our previously agreed time. She was a General now and could pretty much do what she wanted within reason.
"I'll meet you there." She replied, "I'd like to get out of this." She added fingering the heavy uniform jacket, and as much as I would have loved seeing her turn heads as she walked through O'Malley's wearing her authority and that uniform, I understood her need to get out of it.