Fic: Operation Stepford
I'm so sorry it's taken me ... months to upload this! i just sort of forgot - :( :( sorrryy - and i hate it when author's do that so feel free to ... well not hit me cause i'm a whimp ... :(
anyway, am laid up in bed w/ a torn ligament in my ankle (... slightly painful) when i got an review from the lovely getcarter1701 and so - for her - here it is. :) Part 3.
Title Operation Stepford
Part Three
World: Stargate
Pairing: Sam/Jack (... have I ever written anything else?)
Summary: When given a mission by themselves in a world that they're not sure they understand - Col. O'Neill and Maj. Carter are forced to navigate the dark, and treacherous waters of Operation Stepford
Sam knew the definition of surreal. It referred to such things as the paintings of Salvador Dali; the image of a Purple Hippopotamus serving toasted sandwiches or (in Jack’s personal opinion), the red tape and bureaucracy associated with running the SGC.
So she knew that to use the term surreal to explain the dinner with the Pollack family wasn’t right. There were no purple hippopotamuses serving tea or a melting watch over the candelabra.
And yet the entire dinner was bizarre at best. She sat next to Jack and listened as Robert told them about how his work as an engineer for a private company took him all over the world all the while wondering exactly which worlds he had been to. He mentioned a ‘beautiful view of rolling hills and dales, with a city resting precariously on the edge of a cliff,’ and Jack vaguely wondered if it was the city of Ramdin on P3X-852 (yes, he did remember the numerical code assigned to planets).
James remained silent for most of the evening, only smiling occasionally when Jack mentioned how intelligent the boy was.
“Yes,” Rebecca had smiled a smile that Jack would later define as ‘political’. “We are quite proud of his intellect.”
“Now Jack, maybe you could help me,” Robert started. “I’ve been trying to get Jim to get out more. Start playing sport, making friends, going to the movies. He tends to stay at home a lot and we want to get him out.”
Jack had been surprised at how well spoken Robert had been. He had imagined him to be more of a thug and similar to a couple of men in his memory from his Special Ops days. He had forgotten that Robert was a chemical engineer and, as far as the background check could tell, was a very good one at that.
Robert was calmly spoken and seemed to treat James with kindness and civility. The only indication of anything worrying was a flinch James accidently gave when Robert spread his hands wide to illustrate a point.
They sat drinking coffee and Sam figured now was as good a time as any to have a bit of a look around. “Mind if I use your bathroom?” she asked and Rebecca smiled and pointed her in the right direction.
Sam smiled and rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder, “Back in a sec.”
She ducked up the stairs and had to marvel for a moment at the beauty of the house, Ambassadors it seemed, got paid a heck of a lot more than Astrophysicists.
She tried several doors on her way to the bathroom finding a linen cupboard, master bedroom, James’s bedroom and a study. A quick look through the study found that it must have been Rebecca’s, and that according to all the papers in the room, she really was the Ambassador from Georgia.
Just before the bathroom, she found a locked door. It looked just like all the others, with no discerning marks and tragically no sign on it saying “Keep Out, Alien Technology Inside”. With a quick dash to the bathroom, she made it back to the table without anybody noticing anything strange (or so she hoped).
The evening finished with a promise to invite them over for dinner after Rebecca had finished her next conference. Jack lightly placed a hand on Sam’s back and led the way back across the street. “Lovely people,” he smirked.
“Oh just delightful,” Sam smiled. “Pity about the world domination.”
He grinned, “Damned inconvenient.”
Sam was quiet for a moment, thinking over Robert’s interactions with them over dinner. While nice and charming when greeting them, it was the cold voice Sam could hear in the kitchen, the snarky jokes about the meal and the look he gave Jack when finding out he was a history teacher was eerily reminiscent. They said good night and promised to have them over once their house was organised and started the walk down the street. “What’s up?” Jack asked, walking close to her with his hands in his pockets.
“Nothing,” she smiled.
“Sam, really. What’s up?”
She smiled sadly, “Robert reminds me of someone I used to know.”
“Jerk?”
“Jonas.”
Jack stopped, an eyebrow raised and confusion written over his entire face. “That jerk reminds you of smiling, banana loving, weather channel watching Jonas Quinn?”
She wasn’t sure if he meant to, but his ability to make her laugh or at least smile when she felt like the opposite really was amazing. “No, Jonas Hansen.”
He lightly brushed her elbow and nodded, “Yeah, I picked up on that.”
The next day as his history lesson finished, Jack called the Pollack boy back. “James?” Jack leant against his desk and waited for the boy to reach him. James had been quieter than usual today and the solider in him had noticed how the boy limped and favoured his left side. “Everything okay James?” he asked.
The boy just shrugged, “Yes Sir.”
Jack knew better than the push it, so just smiled. “Sam … Mrs Denton had an idea. She thought you might like to get in some more work with her and maybe me. Do some more sciency stuff.”
“She said sciency stuff?”
Jack smirked - the kid was catching on quickly, “Okay, not that word. But she used some big word that I don’t know.”
James crossed his arms over his chest and gave him a stern look, “She says that you’re lying whenever you say that.”
Jack sighed, “She’s a very smart woman.”
“She said that too.” Jack chuckled and leant back in his chair.
“We have a plan, if you’d like.” He said. “Mrs Denton has a whole lot of stuff on the stars and planets and astrophysics. You said you’d read some stuff about that already?”
James blushed, “One of Rachel’s old boyfriends was studying it. He left a journal at our place one time.”
“Your sister was dating an astrophysics student?” Somehow, everything he’d head about Rachel Pollack spoke against this, and the look James was giving him seemed to agree. “She wanted to seem smart, died her hair brown, bought glasses. It lasted about a week.”
Jack smirked and nodded, he remembered people like that. “You’re very advanced for your age James, if you understand even the introduction to a journal like that.”
James just smiled and shrugged, “It made sense to me. Things like that always do.”
“You’re a lot like Sam,” Jack told him and made a note to tell Sam about the look of pure pride on the boy’s face. “Anyway, the plan is - should you wish to accept it - there’s this after school tutoring thing that we can do. You can stay for an hour one day a week and Mrs Denton can do some enrichment stuff, go through some of the harder physics concepts that you’ll probably be interested in.”
James’s face fell. Jack had seen the glimmer of excitement when he’d first mentioned the tutoring. “Sir, My parents don’t know I’m doing physics. How will I tell my Dad that I want to do more?”
“We would make sure to finish by 1600-“
The boy looked confused for a moment and Jack had another moment of realization that not everybody he spoke with lately, had a military mindset (or had acquired one) - this hadn’t happened too often, but it did occasionally. “Sorry, 4.00 in the afternoon.”
James bit his lip and wrung his hands for a moment. “Sir. Can I tell you something?”
Jack sat down in his chair, and indicated that boy could pull one up. “Absolutely James.”
“Can you promise not to tell anybody?”
Jack sighed, “I can’t do that James. But I can swear that I won’t tell anybody without talking to you first.”
James sat in the chair; it was almost as though he was trying to make himself as small as physically possible. When it had become apparent that there was an issue with James, Jack had done as much research as he could. In the past couple of weeks, he had learnt more about the internet and google than he had ever needed to know. But, according to his research (and his in-depth discussions with the Nurse), there were no clear rules for how a child who had been abused should act. Some become bullies, acting out at every possible junction; while others (like James) delve further into themselves, and become the victims. “You can tell Mrs Denton,” he murmured. “I don’t mind that.”
Jack nodded, “okay, I’ll talk to her.”
“What do you think of my Dad?”
Jack bit his lip, “I think you know what I think of your Dad.” He smiled reassuringly.
“I’ve read things,” James told him, “About Dads like him. They go to prison right?”
Jack shrugged, “Sometimes. When things are easier.”
“You mean cause of my Mum?”
Jack had to nod. “It’s a difficult situation James. But understand this, nobody, nobody - not even your father, has the right to treat you badly. You are a strong, intelligent, special kid. And if your father can’t see that then he’s more of an idiot than I thought.”
“He says I’m not being a man.” James said in a voice that was starting to tremble. “That I need to be a man. And I’m being a wimp. I’m letting him down. Then he’ll get angry. Or drunk. Or both. And he’ll ...” the boy stopped and looked up from his lap to Jack. “I get scared. I’m sorry. I don’t want to. I want to be strong and I want to ignore him - that’s what they say I should do. But I can’t. He scares me.”
Jack leant forward and made sure the boy could see him. “There are certain times when it is absolutely fine to get scared. It doesn’t make you weak, it doesn’t make you anything like that at all. It makes you perfectly normal. I get scared about stuff. Mrs Denton gets scared about stuff. I’m absolutely positive that even the President of the United States gets scared.”
James nodded silently before looking back down at his lap. “What do I do Mr Denton?” He sounded so lost and alone that Jack desperately wanted to grab any projectile weapon he could get his hands on and go visit Robert Pollack, mission directives be damned.
“Well, for a start, we’ll begin this tutoring this afternoon. Then, whenever you get scared - the door to our house is always open. One of us will usually be around, so if you get scared or if you just want to escape for a while, feel free to come and use our observatory.”
“You have an observatory?”
Jack grinned, “Yup.”
James stood up and stubbornly wiped at his eyes. “Thank you Mr Denton.”
Jack stood and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder with a sad smile. “Anytime James. Mrs Denton and I are always around.”
That night over dinner they laid out everything they knew about Robert and his family. They did this with a CD on loudly, and only speaking when it absolutely necessary. They went through the details of the Pollack’s days as far as they knew. Mr Pollack left (they for assumed work) at roughly 0645 and returned no earlier than 1800. The tracer on his car led them to an office building for Sibuna Enterprises (a relatively new company specialising in state of the art machinery and nanotechnology) and yes, alarm bells had sounded in both of their heads with the possibility that Robert was supplying this company with stolen alien tech for their products. Rebecca’s schedule was significantly less predicable. In any one day she may be flying across multiple states, in meetings with high officials and on one occasion - the president himself.
For the moment, they couldn’t do anything but observe until they received word from the SGC as to how to go about getting around the Diplomatic issue.
Sam sat at the dinning table, a pad of paper in front of her as she wrote the name of Robert’s company over and over again. She wasn’t paying attention, her mind instead running through any details she might have remembered about Diplomatic Immunity. Suddenly a hand grasped her own and she looked up to see her Commanding Officer staring at the page in front of her. The look on his face was almost furious and she turned to look at the words on the page. She’s simply written Sibuna over and over again. “Write it backwards,” Jack told her.
She quickly wrote it down, getting halfway before she gasped.
S-I-B-U-N-A
A-N-U-B-I-S
“Shit.”
“How did I not see that?” Sam muttered.
“Forget it maj-“ Jack stopped and looked around the room, leaning against the table. “Sam, don’t worry about it. It’s a spelling mistake.”
Sam looked up at him and he nodded, he would be getting in contact with the General that night. “This just got …”
“Bigger than we anticipated.” Sam said diplomatically.
“Much.”
He sat on the stairs and looked through the notes he had made in the small book. “Problem is, we have nothing to get them on.”
She sat next to him and nodded, “Its all conjecture.”
He nodded but pointed to the scribbles in her hand, “But you’re the best speller in the world,” he managed to smile, “You can’t have screwed that up.”
She just shook her head, “I cheated once.”
That distracted him. “What?”
She shrugged, “4th grade spelling bee. I wanted to win so I wrote the word I knew they’d use on my shoe.”
He turned to face her fully, crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her intently. “You, Samantha … Denton, cheated on a spelling bee?”
She nodded, “Yup. The word was Wednesday. I still have to sound it out to spell it.”
Jack laughed and rested a hand on her shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze before he got up and went to the phone. “I’m going to give him a call. Do you want to have a look at the dinner options?”
“I’m going to need pizza,” she told him candidly. “And perhaps chocolate too.”
He gave her a look that said fine by me and grabbed his mobile before heading out into the back garden.
When he came back in, Sam could tell the call hadn’t gone well. “Wait and see,” Jack grumbled. “That’s all we can do.”
She sighed, “Nothing’s happened yet. Perhaps they’re just leaking things out. Maybe there isn’t a big plan.”
He just shrugged, “There’s always a bigger picture Sam.”
The next morning Sam took advantage of her spare lesson after lunch and went into the city to see what she could find out about Robert Pollack’s work place. Sibuna Enterprises took up the entirety of a twenty eight-storey office building made almost completely out of glass. The sun shone off it as she walked up with her cover storey of trying to get a job as a physicist with them (if Robert found her, she could say that teaching was getting dull and she wanted to be back to the real science). She got to the lobby and introduced herself, stating she had an appointment (which she had made earlier this morning with their HR manager).
“I’m sorry Mrs Denton,” the receptionist told her. “I don’t have an appointment for you.” The young lady was prim and proper (something Sam remembered her mother saying, and it seemed apt here). She wore a black suit and had her reddish hair pulled back tightly from her face. She gave Sam a look that almost said who do you think you are?
“I made one this morning,” Sam replied, “With a Ms Rayne? She said you’d have pass for me?”
The woman nodded, “Yes, I know. However the position you would have been considered for was filled earlier this morning. I’m afraid we have nothing here for you.”
Sam frowned but nodded, not wanting to make a scene and have herself noticed too much. “That’s too bad,” she sighed. “Could I use your bathroom before I go?”
The woman looked lost for a moment before shrugged and pointing down a corridor. “Just through there”
The lobby was all marble and glass, with a front desk in the centre and two doors that required an ID card on either side of it. The bathrooms were not even through those doors, they were in a small alcove to the left. As Sam walked in she noted that there was no way to get to or from the bathrooms without being seen, nor was there any where to hide between A and B. The actual bathroom wasn’t anything special; simplistic and clean being the key points. She did a thorough look around the area though, hoping that there may have been some way to get out. There wasn’t even a ventilation shaft, instead the cool air seemed to be coming through the far wall. She moved closer and it appeared that the entire wall was made out of a material that allowed the cool air to be pushed through the fibres. She sighed and left, it would take more than a fake ID to get into that building.
So far they had been unable to bug the Pollack house due to the diplomatic immunity (something Jack was beginning to curse on an hourly basis) but the lack of information was proving difficult. It soon became apparent that something was going to have to give.
“A dinner party,” Sam suggested.
“What?”
She smiled, “We’ll just invite them over. The Pollacks and the people next to them. Just invite them over.”
“A dinner party?”
She nodded. “This Friday should work. Shall we go and invite people?”
Jack found himself walking down the street to Dianne Archer’s place as Sam chatted amicable about what they could do Friday night. “I’ll have to go food shopping,” she sighed. “I swear I’ve never had to go to the supermarket as often as I have lately.”
Jack smiled and let himself (just for the length of this street) believe that this was actually happening, that he and Sam were actually about to throw a dinner party together.
Dianne opened the door with Grace in her arms. At the prospect of a dinner party her face lit up and she juggled her daughter in her arms. “Sounds fantastic,” she told them. “What do I need to bring?”
Jasper and Tim were equally exuberant. Sam had run into them quite often during her morning run (she got up too early for Jack to join her most of the time) and the three of them had become quite close. “Oh, I may a fantastic chocolate and almond cake,” Jasper told her. “I know it’s a bit too clichéd and camp, but,” he shrugged but Sam grinned.
“Clichéd and camp is perfectly alright,” she told him, “Especially when it provides cake.”
Tragically, the Horace’s would be unable to make it, something about their eldest and a meeting with the school. Sam had forgotten, of course, a conversation she’d had with the English teacher earlier that day about Junior Horace being called in for a meeting about a punch-up under the bleachers.
Next on the list was the Pollack household. James answered the door and immediately brightened at the sight of them. “Hey kiddo,” Jack smiled. “Got a parent around?”
“My Dad,” the boy said and went to find him. Robert Pollack had obviously just returned from work and was in the middle of throwing his paperwork on the table.
“Can I help you?”
Jack nodded, “We’re having a dinner party Friday night. Wanted to know if the three of you would like to come.”
Robert seemed to straighten up and paste a smile on his face at the polite invitation - almost as if he remembered that he couldn’t treat these people badly. “We’d love to.” He said, “Rebecca may be out of town, but James and I will be there.”
“Great,” Jack nodded and led Sam down the path winking at James as they went.
They’d left the newcomers for last. Sam knocked on the door, taking a great amount of comfort from the warm hand Jack had still on her back. A woman answered, dressed in what looked like a silk dressing down. She was tall and extremely thin. Her hair was a sort of blonde that was more silver than yellow, her skin was pale and her nails were long and a sort of teal green. “Yes?”
“Hi,” Sam smiled. “We’re your neighbours from across the street? We were just wondering if you and your husband would like to come to a dinner party Friday night? We’re new as well you see, and just wanted a chance to get to know everybody.”
The woman seemed to study them for a moment before shaking her head. “Sorry. We’ll be out of town Friday night. Maybe next time.”
Sam nodded, “I’m Sam by the way. And this is my husband Jack.” She held out her hand and the woman took it, shaking it with a tight grip.
“Lucia,” she said.
“What do you do Lucia,” Sam said. “We’re teachers.”
“I’m a scientist,” she said shortly. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got dinner on the stove, I have to get back to it. It was nice meeting you.”
“You too,” Sam said and she and Jack left.
“Nice work,” Jack murmured as they reached their house.
James’s tutoring sessions went off without a hitch. There were a couple of other teachers and students dotted around the library as the afternoons wore on and Sam and James (occasionally Jack) would find a corner and set up. Sam had a couple of journals that she’d managed to get a hold of and a text book she had borrowed from the cupboard in the science lab. They worked through various tasks and Jack watched as Sam lit up as she went into more and more detail about the science she had spent her entire life studying.
He knew she loved teaching, and would probably be lecturing more often at the academy when they got back; but he could tell immediately that this was what she would gladly be spending the rest of her life doing. And if the looks on James’s face were anything to go by, he would be following pretty quickly.
Over the past few weeks, Sam had become very good at telling when things were exceptionally bad at home. James would be quiet and set to work immediately. Sometimes - on the really bad days - he wouldn’t wear a watch and refuse to acknowledge when 1600 hours had come and it was time to go home.
Luke Archer, Dianne’s son, on the other hand, was more like Jack. He could spend hours under the stars and be more interested in the stories that surrounded them rather than the distance, speed, weight and momentum they had. Jack had loved every minute when the boy was over at their place, looking through the telescope and telling the stories of the constellations.
Yes, it had reminded him of Charlie. But Luke was a different little boy. Charlie had only liked the stories like Orion the hunter and the great battles. Luke was perfectly happy to hear everything Jack could come up with - whether or not it was true.
Dianne and Grace would spend the time downstairs with Sam, chatting over everything under the sky (as far as he could tell) and he and Luke would be up in the observatory.
Sam came and met Jack at the door to his last class one minute after the final bell had rung. “Come on,” she said. “Time to go.”
Jack looked up and nodded, he wasn’t going to screw up the schedule for the evening. Sam had everything planned down to the minute the guests arrived. “I’ll drop you home, then go and grab the wine,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”
She smiled gratefully at him. “Thanks.” She went straight to the kitchen and began to cook. She had figured out last night that there were three reasons she was so nervous about tonight. First, of course, was the fact that they were hoping to get information from Robert Pollack, the second being that she was naturally nervous about her first dinner party and finally she was absolutely positive that she was going to prove that all those jokes about her lack-of-cooking-ability really were just that; jokes.
By the time Dianne and Terry had arrived, the entrée was warming in the oven and the mains were ready to be thrown in. Dianne had a bottle of wine in her hand and Terry was holding Grace close. Luke sat on the couch and took the book Jack gave him “It’s about Orion,” Jack explained and showed the boy the pictures of a hunter against the constellation.
Terry sat nearby and bounced Grace lightly on his knee, discussing the hockey results with Jack while Dianne and Sam stood by the fire talking.
Jasper arrived next, his cake (while fantastic) being eclipsed by his grin. “Just wait,” he said. “Wait till Tim gets here.”
Try as they might, they couldn’t get any further information from him - he just stood with his glass of wine and grinned. “You’re scaring the children,” Jack smirked. Luke looked up at him with a confused look, “But I’m not scared.”
James and Robert were the next to come in, shaking the rain off their jackets. James sat down next to Luke and looked through the book with him and Jack took Robert into the kitchen to get the man a beer.
By the time the entrees were ready, Sam led everybody through to the dining room, just as Tim burst through the door. “I’m sorry I’m late!” he exclaimed. With a quick kiss on Sam’s cheek, a nod to Jack he went to stand next to Jasper. “We don’t want to steal your night Samantha,” he said and Sam shook her head.
“Go ahead.”
Everybody took a seat around the table and waited expectantly for one of the men to talk. “Come on!” Sam grinned. “What is it?”
Tim held up a photograph. It was a pretty simple photograph but most around the table could immediately tell the significance. “I want you all to meet Harry and his twin sister Mandy.” The twins couldn’t have been older than 18 months, but were both adorable with deep olive skin and dark eyes. “They will be joining our little cul-de-sac on Monday.”
“Monday!”
“Twins!”
“Congratulations!” Hugs flew around the room as Sam and Dianne engulfed both men. Jack grabbed Tim’s hand and shook it strongly while Terry raised a toast.
The vast majority of the dinner was spent discussing out the two men would be adapting to suit the kids. They were discussing the possibility of moving somewhere a little more affordable over the main course and Tim summed up their situation perfectly: “Going through all this shit was so worth it.”
The photograph of the twins sat at the head of the table, leaning against Jack’s glass so everybody could see it. “Apparently we have to make a will,” Jasper was saying, “We have to provide somebody suitable to take our places if anything happens.”
“So we just have to find your brother,” Tim laughed, “He’s in … Nepal now?”
“Tokyo,” Jasper smirked. “How did you choose Di?”
Dianne glanced at Terry quickly, “We haven’t actually got anybody.” She told them with a slight shrug. “I don’t have anybody left and Terry was an only child. We’ve moved around so much there just was never anybody around.”
They went quiet for a moment when Jasper turned to Sam with a sly look. “Come on then Mrs Denton. You’re the only ones here that live in such a big house, all on your lonesomes…”
Sam blushed and Jack coughed to hide his smirk. “It’s more of a right time thing,” Sam finally said. She turned to Dianne with a small smile, “We’re a bit like you, we’ve moved around so much that it just never felt right.”
“And now?”
Jack glanced at Sam with a very slightly smile, “Now it’s on the table.”
James smiled at him, “Your kids are going to be smart,” he said and Jack laughed. They had been talking about how there shouldn’t be too many people in the world with Sam’s level of IQ in the world during their last tutoring session.
“And play hockey,” Sam added. “Jack wouldn’t let them get to eighteen months old without being able to play hockey.”
“He’s teaching me!” Luke piped up.
Terry smirked, “Yup, he’s turning my boy into a Capital!”
“Rather that then Samantha teaching them to spell,” Robert said with a grin.
Sam felt the blood drain from her face and stopped herself from looking at Jack. “Pardon?”
“Oh you were telling me the other day, you wrote Wednesday on your shoe in a spelling bee.”
“Oh?” Sam caught the nod Jack was giving her and went on. “I don’t remember talking about that with you. When was that?” Better to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about and keep him in the dark a little longer than go with his comment and risk having him figure out that they knew they were being bugged.
Robert seemed to realise that he had made a mistake; he stopped and looked between the two of them, “Didn’t you? Last week when you were having dinner with Rebecca and myself?”
Sam just shook her head and shrugged, “I don’t know how you found out about that.” She turned to the others with a smile, “I cheated on a spelling bee in the fourth grade.”
Dianne burst out laughing and began to tell the story of how she was writing a last minute essay in the middle of a mathematics exam.
Jack went to get another bottle of wine from the kitchen and leant over Sam’s shoulder, “Rookie,” he whispered and kissed her cheek. Sam blushed and watched him go before turning back to Jasper and his plans for the new nursery.
Sam was shaken awake the next morning before the sun had come up. She looked around confused for a moment before she saw Jack standing by her bedside with two duffle bags by his feet. “Come on,” he said softly. “Road trip.”
She didn’t ask any questions - either because she knew she wouldn’t get an answer, or because she knew something important was going on (she hadn’t quite decided on which yet). She just followed up down the stairs and into a waiting cab.
The cab dropped them off at the airport where, instead of getting a plane, they went straight to the rental company and rented a car under the names Luke and Leah Walker. Then they drove.
They were silent again for the trip, Sam absently listened to the radio while staring out the window while Jack concentrated on getting wherever the hell they were going.
When he eventually stopped, it seemed as though he had just stopped randomly along the latest piece of road. There were no signs, no physical manifestations of civilisation (god she missed Daniel), and not even a dirt track. Jack pulled their bags from the trunk and led her through the woods. “I’ve got this friend,” he finally said. “Owes me a favour.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
Jack shrugged, “Probably. But it’s more than likely that it would be more dangerous for us to stay there at the moment.”
“Why? What’s happened?” Sam’s mind suddenly went through a hundred and three scenarios for how the situation could have changed from last night. None of which would explain why they were in the middle of nowhere with what looked like just enough things for a one night stay.
He stopped and turned back to her. “Just wait it out okay? I’ll explain it when we get there.”
“Can you tell me where there is?”
Jack just pointed ahead of them, “There’s a house; about half a klick that way.”
She nodded and continued to follow him.
Of course, Jack was right (though how he knew how to find this place was completely beyond her). The house they found was little more than a log hut. He opened the front door with a key taken from his pocket and let them inside. She imagined this was a lot like his cabin in Minnesota. It had a warm woven rug over the floor and a worn leather couch opposite the stone fireplace. There was one room to the side, which she assumed was the bedroom and another door just off to the left that must have been the bathroom. The kitchen was small but serviceable and the entire place had the sort of feel of a dear Grandmother’s house - or at least somewhere where you were immediately safe.
“Want to tell me what’s going on now?”
Jack turned back to her and dumped the bags just next to the couch before speaking with a wry smile, “Two months ago you would never had spoken that way to me Major.” She just nodded, there wasn’t anything she could say to that - two months ago she hadn’t been play-acting a marriage with him? Two months ago she was so stuck in her role of the perfect officer that she hadn’t let herself believe that he was anything but her CO?
He didn’t say anything else, but turned away from her. She let him be - knowing it could be ages (if not years) before he ever told her what was wrong. She went through the first bag, which produced pasta for dinner so she decided to test the hypothesis that the way to a man was through his stomach.
She wasn’t sure what he was doing while she cooked. He had gone outside and not been heard from since.
She knew that part of the reason they were here was to have a break from the bugs that Robert had proven were through their house. A secondary motive may have been to spend some time as Colonel and Major: to forcibly remind themselves that they were not the happily married Dentons, but Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter of the USAF to whom the fraternisation regulations most definitely applied.
As she watched the pasta boil, Sam wondered if returning to Colonel and Major was even possible anymore. Did she even want to?
Slipping into the role of Jack’s wife had been dangerously easy. She had put on that silver ring and the regs were a thing of a long distant past.
Staring absently into the pot of pasta, she ran over everything that had happened in the past couple of months. She remembered the sight of Jack with Luke, Grace and James and the way her heart stopped the minute he held the baby girl. She remembered the nights of eating dinner in the kitchen after having made it together. His face after she came back inside after a run. His hands as they passed her coffee number ten. His smile the moment they found blue jello in the supermarket.
And she knew.
It wasn’t like being struck by lightning or a deep realization, there was no thirty-piece orchestra involved with swelling music, the lighting didn’t change; and the world definitely didn’t stop. But Sam just knew. She couldn’t go back. Being here, and being called Major Carter only served to bring the point glaringly home. She couldn’t just ignore it - not anymore.
She shook her head and refused to continue those trains of thought. She may have come to the ultimate romantic realization - but that didn’t mean she had to start thinking like a Danielle Steele novel.
By the time Jack had come back inside Sam had lit the fireplace and served up dinner. She was halfway through hers when he came inside, shook the cold off his jacket and sat down next to her. “We have a problem,” He told her.
She smirked, “Ya think?”
He chuckled as she used his phrase and turned to face her. “Major, we can’t-“
“Jack.”
It was his name that stopped him. He had this whole speech planned - that’s what he had been doing outside. Trudging around in the woods talking to himself. It was a good speech too - Daniel would be proud. But then she said his name.
She’d called him by name a lot lately - she could hardly call her husband ‘Colonel’ or ‘Sir’. But he’d figured she was always taking to Jack Denton. It was the same sort of thing that happened occasionally off world when she was asleep. She’d murmur ‘Jonah’ and he knew she was talking to a part of him - but not to him. That was how she spoke to Jack Denton.
This was different. This was just like those few times (few times) when she seemed to be speaking to every part of him. To the Colonel, to Jonah, to her CO, to Jack.
She only used this when the world was ending or had ended and been resurrected. This was shouted out of cells when aliens had taken over her body or when she had survived being alone on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere. This was a special circumstances sort of thing. And here she was, sitting on a couch on earth (which, for the moment was in relatively no imminent danger), looking at him like that and saying his name.
“Yes?”
“I don’t care.”
Okay, this … he hadn’t expected this. When he’d planned the little 24 hours of ‘let’s return to our version of normal,’ he had not expected her to say no.
“Care about what?”
She smiled, “You know what I’m talking about. When this is all over, I’m going to resign. I’ll work in the same capacity as Daniel, although perhaps on a different team.”
“I don’t think so Major! There is no way in hell that you’re going to resign. You’re too important to the program … hell you are the program!”
“And what? I’m just supposed to keep working 24/7 with no life and no hope of ever getting one? I’m supposed to be perfectly okay with my most successful relationship being with a guy who had me followed? I’m supposed to accept that I’m never going to get to be with the guy I’m in-“
“Don’t say it.”
They were quiet for a moment, with Jack standing; his arms in his pockets and head down and Sam kneeling on the couch glaring at him. “I’m not allowed to make my own decisions? Jack come on! I’m a big girl now. I’m allowed to decide if seven years spent by myself is too long. I’m allowed to decide when it’s time to think about being with the man I-“
“Don’t say it!”
“Love! Jesus Christ Jack!” She got off the couch and gave him a terrifying glare. “I. Love. You. Get that through your head. I’m in love with you. Have been for a while now,” she rolled her eyes and looked back at him. “Why is that so hard for you to get?”
Oh. That was an easy question! ‘Cause the minute she admitted that, he would be picking her up and dragging her to the bedroom where - eventually - he would call General Hammond and give in his immediate resignation.
He did manage to control himself though. “Jack?” He looked up and saw her smiling softly. How the hell could this woman read him so easily? Sara had stood in the doorway ordering him to speak, Sam got him, she got that it was hard for him to believe something like that - let alone say anything. “I love you. That hasn’t changed in six years and it’s not going to change now.” She sat back down on the couch and held her hands tightly in her lap. “I’m so sorry about Pete. I know I hurt you.”
“That’s not true,” he finally spoke, “I wanted you to be happy.”
“That’s true,” she smiled softly at him, “But I know I hurt you. If I didn’t see it - which I did - then Daniel telling me every couple of days had the fact drilled into me.”
Jack smirked, he missed Daniel. “Ah. But I still wanted you to be happy.”
“Is it so hard to believe that it would only happen with you?”
“Yes.” Jack said before he could censor himself.
Sam deflated, taking his hand and sitting down next to him on the couch. “Please believe me. I’m big enough to make my own decisions and this one was made years and years ago. I want to be with you Jack.”
Jack didn’t say anything but stared at her intently. She let him for a few moments before deciding that enough was enough.
They had seven years of unresolved sexual tension.
She leant over, getting onto her knees and taking his face in her hands. “I love you Jack,” and she kissed him. Slowly she ran her hands through his hair, pulling him closer. He finally seemed to get the hint; his hands ran along the hem of her shirt, pulling her into his lap.
“Bedroom.” He breathed against her neck. “Now.”
He didn’t let go of her as he pulled her up off the couch, or as he pulled her shirt over her head or even as she helped him out of his jeans.
He didn’t let go of her until about eleven the next day when she finally told him that yes, sex was fantastic but if she didn’t eat something soon she’d faint. He just laughed and followed her into the kitchen. “So what now?” she asked.
Jack just smirked, “This was all your idea.”
Sam gave him a look, one raised eyebrow and arms crossed. “Sorry, you look like Teal’c.”
“That was kind of the point,” she told him. “If it was all my idea, then maybe I’ll just revoke the privileges.”
“Privileges?”
“Well, sex for one.”
Jack silently turned to the stove and began to cook while Sam laughed happily from the counter.
anyway, am laid up in bed w/ a torn ligament in my ankle (... slightly painful) when i got an review from the lovely getcarter1701 and so - for her - here it is. :) Part 3.
Title Operation Stepford
Part Three
World: Stargate
Pairing: Sam/Jack (... have I ever written anything else?)
Summary: When given a mission by themselves in a world that they're not sure they understand - Col. O'Neill and Maj. Carter are forced to navigate the dark, and treacherous waters of Operation Stepford
Sam knew the definition of surreal. It referred to such things as the paintings of Salvador Dali; the image of a Purple Hippopotamus serving toasted sandwiches or (in Jack’s personal opinion), the red tape and bureaucracy associated with running the SGC.
So she knew that to use the term surreal to explain the dinner with the Pollack family wasn’t right. There were no purple hippopotamuses serving tea or a melting watch over the candelabra.
And yet the entire dinner was bizarre at best. She sat next to Jack and listened as Robert told them about how his work as an engineer for a private company took him all over the world all the while wondering exactly which worlds he had been to. He mentioned a ‘beautiful view of rolling hills and dales, with a city resting precariously on the edge of a cliff,’ and Jack vaguely wondered if it was the city of Ramdin on P3X-852 (yes, he did remember the numerical code assigned to planets).
James remained silent for most of the evening, only smiling occasionally when Jack mentioned how intelligent the boy was.
“Yes,” Rebecca had smiled a smile that Jack would later define as ‘political’. “We are quite proud of his intellect.”
“Now Jack, maybe you could help me,” Robert started. “I’ve been trying to get Jim to get out more. Start playing sport, making friends, going to the movies. He tends to stay at home a lot and we want to get him out.”
Jack had been surprised at how well spoken Robert had been. He had imagined him to be more of a thug and similar to a couple of men in his memory from his Special Ops days. He had forgotten that Robert was a chemical engineer and, as far as the background check could tell, was a very good one at that.
Robert was calmly spoken and seemed to treat James with kindness and civility. The only indication of anything worrying was a flinch James accidently gave when Robert spread his hands wide to illustrate a point.
They sat drinking coffee and Sam figured now was as good a time as any to have a bit of a look around. “Mind if I use your bathroom?” she asked and Rebecca smiled and pointed her in the right direction.
Sam smiled and rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder, “Back in a sec.”
She ducked up the stairs and had to marvel for a moment at the beauty of the house, Ambassadors it seemed, got paid a heck of a lot more than Astrophysicists.
She tried several doors on her way to the bathroom finding a linen cupboard, master bedroom, James’s bedroom and a study. A quick look through the study found that it must have been Rebecca’s, and that according to all the papers in the room, she really was the Ambassador from Georgia.
Just before the bathroom, she found a locked door. It looked just like all the others, with no discerning marks and tragically no sign on it saying “Keep Out, Alien Technology Inside”. With a quick dash to the bathroom, she made it back to the table without anybody noticing anything strange (or so she hoped).
The evening finished with a promise to invite them over for dinner after Rebecca had finished her next conference. Jack lightly placed a hand on Sam’s back and led the way back across the street. “Lovely people,” he smirked.
“Oh just delightful,” Sam smiled. “Pity about the world domination.”
He grinned, “Damned inconvenient.”
Sam was quiet for a moment, thinking over Robert’s interactions with them over dinner. While nice and charming when greeting them, it was the cold voice Sam could hear in the kitchen, the snarky jokes about the meal and the look he gave Jack when finding out he was a history teacher was eerily reminiscent. They said good night and promised to have them over once their house was organised and started the walk down the street. “What’s up?” Jack asked, walking close to her with his hands in his pockets.
“Nothing,” she smiled.
“Sam, really. What’s up?”
She smiled sadly, “Robert reminds me of someone I used to know.”
“Jerk?”
“Jonas.”
Jack stopped, an eyebrow raised and confusion written over his entire face. “That jerk reminds you of smiling, banana loving, weather channel watching Jonas Quinn?”
She wasn’t sure if he meant to, but his ability to make her laugh or at least smile when she felt like the opposite really was amazing. “No, Jonas Hansen.”
He lightly brushed her elbow and nodded, “Yeah, I picked up on that.”
The next day as his history lesson finished, Jack called the Pollack boy back. “James?” Jack leant against his desk and waited for the boy to reach him. James had been quieter than usual today and the solider in him had noticed how the boy limped and favoured his left side. “Everything okay James?” he asked.
The boy just shrugged, “Yes Sir.”
Jack knew better than the push it, so just smiled. “Sam … Mrs Denton had an idea. She thought you might like to get in some more work with her and maybe me. Do some more sciency stuff.”
“She said sciency stuff?”
Jack smirked - the kid was catching on quickly, “Okay, not that word. But she used some big word that I don’t know.”
James crossed his arms over his chest and gave him a stern look, “She says that you’re lying whenever you say that.”
Jack sighed, “She’s a very smart woman.”
“She said that too.” Jack chuckled and leant back in his chair.
“We have a plan, if you’d like.” He said. “Mrs Denton has a whole lot of stuff on the stars and planets and astrophysics. You said you’d read some stuff about that already?”
James blushed, “One of Rachel’s old boyfriends was studying it. He left a journal at our place one time.”
“Your sister was dating an astrophysics student?” Somehow, everything he’d head about Rachel Pollack spoke against this, and the look James was giving him seemed to agree. “She wanted to seem smart, died her hair brown, bought glasses. It lasted about a week.”
Jack smirked and nodded, he remembered people like that. “You’re very advanced for your age James, if you understand even the introduction to a journal like that.”
James just smiled and shrugged, “It made sense to me. Things like that always do.”
“You’re a lot like Sam,” Jack told him and made a note to tell Sam about the look of pure pride on the boy’s face. “Anyway, the plan is - should you wish to accept it - there’s this after school tutoring thing that we can do. You can stay for an hour one day a week and Mrs Denton can do some enrichment stuff, go through some of the harder physics concepts that you’ll probably be interested in.”
James’s face fell. Jack had seen the glimmer of excitement when he’d first mentioned the tutoring. “Sir, My parents don’t know I’m doing physics. How will I tell my Dad that I want to do more?”
“We would make sure to finish by 1600-“
The boy looked confused for a moment and Jack had another moment of realization that not everybody he spoke with lately, had a military mindset (or had acquired one) - this hadn’t happened too often, but it did occasionally. “Sorry, 4.00 in the afternoon.”
James bit his lip and wrung his hands for a moment. “Sir. Can I tell you something?”
Jack sat down in his chair, and indicated that boy could pull one up. “Absolutely James.”
“Can you promise not to tell anybody?”
Jack sighed, “I can’t do that James. But I can swear that I won’t tell anybody without talking to you first.”
James sat in the chair; it was almost as though he was trying to make himself as small as physically possible. When it had become apparent that there was an issue with James, Jack had done as much research as he could. In the past couple of weeks, he had learnt more about the internet and google than he had ever needed to know. But, according to his research (and his in-depth discussions with the Nurse), there were no clear rules for how a child who had been abused should act. Some become bullies, acting out at every possible junction; while others (like James) delve further into themselves, and become the victims. “You can tell Mrs Denton,” he murmured. “I don’t mind that.”
Jack nodded, “okay, I’ll talk to her.”
“What do you think of my Dad?”
Jack bit his lip, “I think you know what I think of your Dad.” He smiled reassuringly.
“I’ve read things,” James told him, “About Dads like him. They go to prison right?”
Jack shrugged, “Sometimes. When things are easier.”
“You mean cause of my Mum?”
Jack had to nod. “It’s a difficult situation James. But understand this, nobody, nobody - not even your father, has the right to treat you badly. You are a strong, intelligent, special kid. And if your father can’t see that then he’s more of an idiot than I thought.”
“He says I’m not being a man.” James said in a voice that was starting to tremble. “That I need to be a man. And I’m being a wimp. I’m letting him down. Then he’ll get angry. Or drunk. Or both. And he’ll ...” the boy stopped and looked up from his lap to Jack. “I get scared. I’m sorry. I don’t want to. I want to be strong and I want to ignore him - that’s what they say I should do. But I can’t. He scares me.”
Jack leant forward and made sure the boy could see him. “There are certain times when it is absolutely fine to get scared. It doesn’t make you weak, it doesn’t make you anything like that at all. It makes you perfectly normal. I get scared about stuff. Mrs Denton gets scared about stuff. I’m absolutely positive that even the President of the United States gets scared.”
James nodded silently before looking back down at his lap. “What do I do Mr Denton?” He sounded so lost and alone that Jack desperately wanted to grab any projectile weapon he could get his hands on and go visit Robert Pollack, mission directives be damned.
“Well, for a start, we’ll begin this tutoring this afternoon. Then, whenever you get scared - the door to our house is always open. One of us will usually be around, so if you get scared or if you just want to escape for a while, feel free to come and use our observatory.”
“You have an observatory?”
Jack grinned, “Yup.”
James stood up and stubbornly wiped at his eyes. “Thank you Mr Denton.”
Jack stood and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder with a sad smile. “Anytime James. Mrs Denton and I are always around.”
That night over dinner they laid out everything they knew about Robert and his family. They did this with a CD on loudly, and only speaking when it absolutely necessary. They went through the details of the Pollack’s days as far as they knew. Mr Pollack left (they for assumed work) at roughly 0645 and returned no earlier than 1800. The tracer on his car led them to an office building for Sibuna Enterprises (a relatively new company specialising in state of the art machinery and nanotechnology) and yes, alarm bells had sounded in both of their heads with the possibility that Robert was supplying this company with stolen alien tech for their products. Rebecca’s schedule was significantly less predicable. In any one day she may be flying across multiple states, in meetings with high officials and on one occasion - the president himself.
For the moment, they couldn’t do anything but observe until they received word from the SGC as to how to go about getting around the Diplomatic issue.
Sam sat at the dinning table, a pad of paper in front of her as she wrote the name of Robert’s company over and over again. She wasn’t paying attention, her mind instead running through any details she might have remembered about Diplomatic Immunity. Suddenly a hand grasped her own and she looked up to see her Commanding Officer staring at the page in front of her. The look on his face was almost furious and she turned to look at the words on the page. She’s simply written Sibuna over and over again. “Write it backwards,” Jack told her.
She quickly wrote it down, getting halfway before she gasped.
S-I-B-U-N-A
A-N-U-B-I-S
“Shit.”
“How did I not see that?” Sam muttered.
“Forget it maj-“ Jack stopped and looked around the room, leaning against the table. “Sam, don’t worry about it. It’s a spelling mistake.”
Sam looked up at him and he nodded, he would be getting in contact with the General that night. “This just got …”
“Bigger than we anticipated.” Sam said diplomatically.
“Much.”
He sat on the stairs and looked through the notes he had made in the small book. “Problem is, we have nothing to get them on.”
She sat next to him and nodded, “Its all conjecture.”
He nodded but pointed to the scribbles in her hand, “But you’re the best speller in the world,” he managed to smile, “You can’t have screwed that up.”
She just shook her head, “I cheated once.”
That distracted him. “What?”
She shrugged, “4th grade spelling bee. I wanted to win so I wrote the word I knew they’d use on my shoe.”
He turned to face her fully, crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her intently. “You, Samantha … Denton, cheated on a spelling bee?”
She nodded, “Yup. The word was Wednesday. I still have to sound it out to spell it.”
Jack laughed and rested a hand on her shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze before he got up and went to the phone. “I’m going to give him a call. Do you want to have a look at the dinner options?”
“I’m going to need pizza,” she told him candidly. “And perhaps chocolate too.”
He gave her a look that said fine by me and grabbed his mobile before heading out into the back garden.
When he came back in, Sam could tell the call hadn’t gone well. “Wait and see,” Jack grumbled. “That’s all we can do.”
She sighed, “Nothing’s happened yet. Perhaps they’re just leaking things out. Maybe there isn’t a big plan.”
He just shrugged, “There’s always a bigger picture Sam.”
The next morning Sam took advantage of her spare lesson after lunch and went into the city to see what she could find out about Robert Pollack’s work place. Sibuna Enterprises took up the entirety of a twenty eight-storey office building made almost completely out of glass. The sun shone off it as she walked up with her cover storey of trying to get a job as a physicist with them (if Robert found her, she could say that teaching was getting dull and she wanted to be back to the real science). She got to the lobby and introduced herself, stating she had an appointment (which she had made earlier this morning with their HR manager).
“I’m sorry Mrs Denton,” the receptionist told her. “I don’t have an appointment for you.” The young lady was prim and proper (something Sam remembered her mother saying, and it seemed apt here). She wore a black suit and had her reddish hair pulled back tightly from her face. She gave Sam a look that almost said who do you think you are?
“I made one this morning,” Sam replied, “With a Ms Rayne? She said you’d have pass for me?”
The woman nodded, “Yes, I know. However the position you would have been considered for was filled earlier this morning. I’m afraid we have nothing here for you.”
Sam frowned but nodded, not wanting to make a scene and have herself noticed too much. “That’s too bad,” she sighed. “Could I use your bathroom before I go?”
The woman looked lost for a moment before shrugged and pointing down a corridor. “Just through there”
The lobby was all marble and glass, with a front desk in the centre and two doors that required an ID card on either side of it. The bathrooms were not even through those doors, they were in a small alcove to the left. As Sam walked in she noted that there was no way to get to or from the bathrooms without being seen, nor was there any where to hide between A and B. The actual bathroom wasn’t anything special; simplistic and clean being the key points. She did a thorough look around the area though, hoping that there may have been some way to get out. There wasn’t even a ventilation shaft, instead the cool air seemed to be coming through the far wall. She moved closer and it appeared that the entire wall was made out of a material that allowed the cool air to be pushed through the fibres. She sighed and left, it would take more than a fake ID to get into that building.
So far they had been unable to bug the Pollack house due to the diplomatic immunity (something Jack was beginning to curse on an hourly basis) but the lack of information was proving difficult. It soon became apparent that something was going to have to give.
“A dinner party,” Sam suggested.
“What?”
She smiled, “We’ll just invite them over. The Pollacks and the people next to them. Just invite them over.”
“A dinner party?”
She nodded. “This Friday should work. Shall we go and invite people?”
Jack found himself walking down the street to Dianne Archer’s place as Sam chatted amicable about what they could do Friday night. “I’ll have to go food shopping,” she sighed. “I swear I’ve never had to go to the supermarket as often as I have lately.”
Jack smiled and let himself (just for the length of this street) believe that this was actually happening, that he and Sam were actually about to throw a dinner party together.
Dianne opened the door with Grace in her arms. At the prospect of a dinner party her face lit up and she juggled her daughter in her arms. “Sounds fantastic,” she told them. “What do I need to bring?”
Jasper and Tim were equally exuberant. Sam had run into them quite often during her morning run (she got up too early for Jack to join her most of the time) and the three of them had become quite close. “Oh, I may a fantastic chocolate and almond cake,” Jasper told her. “I know it’s a bit too clichéd and camp, but,” he shrugged but Sam grinned.
“Clichéd and camp is perfectly alright,” she told him, “Especially when it provides cake.”
Tragically, the Horace’s would be unable to make it, something about their eldest and a meeting with the school. Sam had forgotten, of course, a conversation she’d had with the English teacher earlier that day about Junior Horace being called in for a meeting about a punch-up under the bleachers.
Next on the list was the Pollack household. James answered the door and immediately brightened at the sight of them. “Hey kiddo,” Jack smiled. “Got a parent around?”
“My Dad,” the boy said and went to find him. Robert Pollack had obviously just returned from work and was in the middle of throwing his paperwork on the table.
“Can I help you?”
Jack nodded, “We’re having a dinner party Friday night. Wanted to know if the three of you would like to come.”
Robert seemed to straighten up and paste a smile on his face at the polite invitation - almost as if he remembered that he couldn’t treat these people badly. “We’d love to.” He said, “Rebecca may be out of town, but James and I will be there.”
“Great,” Jack nodded and led Sam down the path winking at James as they went.
They’d left the newcomers for last. Sam knocked on the door, taking a great amount of comfort from the warm hand Jack had still on her back. A woman answered, dressed in what looked like a silk dressing down. She was tall and extremely thin. Her hair was a sort of blonde that was more silver than yellow, her skin was pale and her nails were long and a sort of teal green. “Yes?”
“Hi,” Sam smiled. “We’re your neighbours from across the street? We were just wondering if you and your husband would like to come to a dinner party Friday night? We’re new as well you see, and just wanted a chance to get to know everybody.”
The woman seemed to study them for a moment before shaking her head. “Sorry. We’ll be out of town Friday night. Maybe next time.”
Sam nodded, “I’m Sam by the way. And this is my husband Jack.” She held out her hand and the woman took it, shaking it with a tight grip.
“Lucia,” she said.
“What do you do Lucia,” Sam said. “We’re teachers.”
“I’m a scientist,” she said shortly. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got dinner on the stove, I have to get back to it. It was nice meeting you.”
“You too,” Sam said and she and Jack left.
“Nice work,” Jack murmured as they reached their house.
James’s tutoring sessions went off without a hitch. There were a couple of other teachers and students dotted around the library as the afternoons wore on and Sam and James (occasionally Jack) would find a corner and set up. Sam had a couple of journals that she’d managed to get a hold of and a text book she had borrowed from the cupboard in the science lab. They worked through various tasks and Jack watched as Sam lit up as she went into more and more detail about the science she had spent her entire life studying.
He knew she loved teaching, and would probably be lecturing more often at the academy when they got back; but he could tell immediately that this was what she would gladly be spending the rest of her life doing. And if the looks on James’s face were anything to go by, he would be following pretty quickly.
Over the past few weeks, Sam had become very good at telling when things were exceptionally bad at home. James would be quiet and set to work immediately. Sometimes - on the really bad days - he wouldn’t wear a watch and refuse to acknowledge when 1600 hours had come and it was time to go home.
Luke Archer, Dianne’s son, on the other hand, was more like Jack. He could spend hours under the stars and be more interested in the stories that surrounded them rather than the distance, speed, weight and momentum they had. Jack had loved every minute when the boy was over at their place, looking through the telescope and telling the stories of the constellations.
Yes, it had reminded him of Charlie. But Luke was a different little boy. Charlie had only liked the stories like Orion the hunter and the great battles. Luke was perfectly happy to hear everything Jack could come up with - whether or not it was true.
Dianne and Grace would spend the time downstairs with Sam, chatting over everything under the sky (as far as he could tell) and he and Luke would be up in the observatory.
Sam came and met Jack at the door to his last class one minute after the final bell had rung. “Come on,” she said. “Time to go.”
Jack looked up and nodded, he wasn’t going to screw up the schedule for the evening. Sam had everything planned down to the minute the guests arrived. “I’ll drop you home, then go and grab the wine,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”
She smiled gratefully at him. “Thanks.” She went straight to the kitchen and began to cook. She had figured out last night that there were three reasons she was so nervous about tonight. First, of course, was the fact that they were hoping to get information from Robert Pollack, the second being that she was naturally nervous about her first dinner party and finally she was absolutely positive that she was going to prove that all those jokes about her lack-of-cooking-ability really were just that; jokes.
By the time Dianne and Terry had arrived, the entrée was warming in the oven and the mains were ready to be thrown in. Dianne had a bottle of wine in her hand and Terry was holding Grace close. Luke sat on the couch and took the book Jack gave him “It’s about Orion,” Jack explained and showed the boy the pictures of a hunter against the constellation.
Terry sat nearby and bounced Grace lightly on his knee, discussing the hockey results with Jack while Dianne and Sam stood by the fire talking.
Jasper arrived next, his cake (while fantastic) being eclipsed by his grin. “Just wait,” he said. “Wait till Tim gets here.”
Try as they might, they couldn’t get any further information from him - he just stood with his glass of wine and grinned. “You’re scaring the children,” Jack smirked. Luke looked up at him with a confused look, “But I’m not scared.”
James and Robert were the next to come in, shaking the rain off their jackets. James sat down next to Luke and looked through the book with him and Jack took Robert into the kitchen to get the man a beer.
By the time the entrees were ready, Sam led everybody through to the dining room, just as Tim burst through the door. “I’m sorry I’m late!” he exclaimed. With a quick kiss on Sam’s cheek, a nod to Jack he went to stand next to Jasper. “We don’t want to steal your night Samantha,” he said and Sam shook her head.
“Go ahead.”
Everybody took a seat around the table and waited expectantly for one of the men to talk. “Come on!” Sam grinned. “What is it?”
Tim held up a photograph. It was a pretty simple photograph but most around the table could immediately tell the significance. “I want you all to meet Harry and his twin sister Mandy.” The twins couldn’t have been older than 18 months, but were both adorable with deep olive skin and dark eyes. “They will be joining our little cul-de-sac on Monday.”
“Monday!”
“Twins!”
“Congratulations!” Hugs flew around the room as Sam and Dianne engulfed both men. Jack grabbed Tim’s hand and shook it strongly while Terry raised a toast.
The vast majority of the dinner was spent discussing out the two men would be adapting to suit the kids. They were discussing the possibility of moving somewhere a little more affordable over the main course and Tim summed up their situation perfectly: “Going through all this shit was so worth it.”
The photograph of the twins sat at the head of the table, leaning against Jack’s glass so everybody could see it. “Apparently we have to make a will,” Jasper was saying, “We have to provide somebody suitable to take our places if anything happens.”
“So we just have to find your brother,” Tim laughed, “He’s in … Nepal now?”
“Tokyo,” Jasper smirked. “How did you choose Di?”
Dianne glanced at Terry quickly, “We haven’t actually got anybody.” She told them with a slight shrug. “I don’t have anybody left and Terry was an only child. We’ve moved around so much there just was never anybody around.”
They went quiet for a moment when Jasper turned to Sam with a sly look. “Come on then Mrs Denton. You’re the only ones here that live in such a big house, all on your lonesomes…”
Sam blushed and Jack coughed to hide his smirk. “It’s more of a right time thing,” Sam finally said. She turned to Dianne with a small smile, “We’re a bit like you, we’ve moved around so much that it just never felt right.”
“And now?”
Jack glanced at Sam with a very slightly smile, “Now it’s on the table.”
James smiled at him, “Your kids are going to be smart,” he said and Jack laughed. They had been talking about how there shouldn’t be too many people in the world with Sam’s level of IQ in the world during their last tutoring session.
“And play hockey,” Sam added. “Jack wouldn’t let them get to eighteen months old without being able to play hockey.”
“He’s teaching me!” Luke piped up.
Terry smirked, “Yup, he’s turning my boy into a Capital!”
“Rather that then Samantha teaching them to spell,” Robert said with a grin.
Sam felt the blood drain from her face and stopped herself from looking at Jack. “Pardon?”
“Oh you were telling me the other day, you wrote Wednesday on your shoe in a spelling bee.”
“Oh?” Sam caught the nod Jack was giving her and went on. “I don’t remember talking about that with you. When was that?” Better to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about and keep him in the dark a little longer than go with his comment and risk having him figure out that they knew they were being bugged.
Robert seemed to realise that he had made a mistake; he stopped and looked between the two of them, “Didn’t you? Last week when you were having dinner with Rebecca and myself?”
Sam just shook her head and shrugged, “I don’t know how you found out about that.” She turned to the others with a smile, “I cheated on a spelling bee in the fourth grade.”
Dianne burst out laughing and began to tell the story of how she was writing a last minute essay in the middle of a mathematics exam.
Jack went to get another bottle of wine from the kitchen and leant over Sam’s shoulder, “Rookie,” he whispered and kissed her cheek. Sam blushed and watched him go before turning back to Jasper and his plans for the new nursery.
Sam was shaken awake the next morning before the sun had come up. She looked around confused for a moment before she saw Jack standing by her bedside with two duffle bags by his feet. “Come on,” he said softly. “Road trip.”
She didn’t ask any questions - either because she knew she wouldn’t get an answer, or because she knew something important was going on (she hadn’t quite decided on which yet). She just followed up down the stairs and into a waiting cab.
The cab dropped them off at the airport where, instead of getting a plane, they went straight to the rental company and rented a car under the names Luke and Leah Walker. Then they drove.
They were silent again for the trip, Sam absently listened to the radio while staring out the window while Jack concentrated on getting wherever the hell they were going.
When he eventually stopped, it seemed as though he had just stopped randomly along the latest piece of road. There were no signs, no physical manifestations of civilisation (god she missed Daniel), and not even a dirt track. Jack pulled their bags from the trunk and led her through the woods. “I’ve got this friend,” he finally said. “Owes me a favour.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
Jack shrugged, “Probably. But it’s more than likely that it would be more dangerous for us to stay there at the moment.”
“Why? What’s happened?” Sam’s mind suddenly went through a hundred and three scenarios for how the situation could have changed from last night. None of which would explain why they were in the middle of nowhere with what looked like just enough things for a one night stay.
He stopped and turned back to her. “Just wait it out okay? I’ll explain it when we get there.”
“Can you tell me where there is?”
Jack just pointed ahead of them, “There’s a house; about half a klick that way.”
She nodded and continued to follow him.
Of course, Jack was right (though how he knew how to find this place was completely beyond her). The house they found was little more than a log hut. He opened the front door with a key taken from his pocket and let them inside. She imagined this was a lot like his cabin in Minnesota. It had a warm woven rug over the floor and a worn leather couch opposite the stone fireplace. There was one room to the side, which she assumed was the bedroom and another door just off to the left that must have been the bathroom. The kitchen was small but serviceable and the entire place had the sort of feel of a dear Grandmother’s house - or at least somewhere where you were immediately safe.
“Want to tell me what’s going on now?”
Jack turned back to her and dumped the bags just next to the couch before speaking with a wry smile, “Two months ago you would never had spoken that way to me Major.” She just nodded, there wasn’t anything she could say to that - two months ago she hadn’t been play-acting a marriage with him? Two months ago she was so stuck in her role of the perfect officer that she hadn’t let herself believe that he was anything but her CO?
He didn’t say anything else, but turned away from her. She let him be - knowing it could be ages (if not years) before he ever told her what was wrong. She went through the first bag, which produced pasta for dinner so she decided to test the hypothesis that the way to a man was through his stomach.
She wasn’t sure what he was doing while she cooked. He had gone outside and not been heard from since.
She knew that part of the reason they were here was to have a break from the bugs that Robert had proven were through their house. A secondary motive may have been to spend some time as Colonel and Major: to forcibly remind themselves that they were not the happily married Dentons, but Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter of the USAF to whom the fraternisation regulations most definitely applied.
As she watched the pasta boil, Sam wondered if returning to Colonel and Major was even possible anymore. Did she even want to?
Slipping into the role of Jack’s wife had been dangerously easy. She had put on that silver ring and the regs were a thing of a long distant past.
Staring absently into the pot of pasta, she ran over everything that had happened in the past couple of months. She remembered the sight of Jack with Luke, Grace and James and the way her heart stopped the minute he held the baby girl. She remembered the nights of eating dinner in the kitchen after having made it together. His face after she came back inside after a run. His hands as they passed her coffee number ten. His smile the moment they found blue jello in the supermarket.
And she knew.
It wasn’t like being struck by lightning or a deep realization, there was no thirty-piece orchestra involved with swelling music, the lighting didn’t change; and the world definitely didn’t stop. But Sam just knew. She couldn’t go back. Being here, and being called Major Carter only served to bring the point glaringly home. She couldn’t just ignore it - not anymore.
She shook her head and refused to continue those trains of thought. She may have come to the ultimate romantic realization - but that didn’t mean she had to start thinking like a Danielle Steele novel.
By the time Jack had come back inside Sam had lit the fireplace and served up dinner. She was halfway through hers when he came inside, shook the cold off his jacket and sat down next to her. “We have a problem,” He told her.
She smirked, “Ya think?”
He chuckled as she used his phrase and turned to face her. “Major, we can’t-“
“Jack.”
It was his name that stopped him. He had this whole speech planned - that’s what he had been doing outside. Trudging around in the woods talking to himself. It was a good speech too - Daniel would be proud. But then she said his name.
She’d called him by name a lot lately - she could hardly call her husband ‘Colonel’ or ‘Sir’. But he’d figured she was always taking to Jack Denton. It was the same sort of thing that happened occasionally off world when she was asleep. She’d murmur ‘Jonah’ and he knew she was talking to a part of him - but not to him. That was how she spoke to Jack Denton.
This was different. This was just like those few times (few times) when she seemed to be speaking to every part of him. To the Colonel, to Jonah, to her CO, to Jack.
She only used this when the world was ending or had ended and been resurrected. This was shouted out of cells when aliens had taken over her body or when she had survived being alone on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere. This was a special circumstances sort of thing. And here she was, sitting on a couch on earth (which, for the moment was in relatively no imminent danger), looking at him like that and saying his name.
“Yes?”
“I don’t care.”
Okay, this … he hadn’t expected this. When he’d planned the little 24 hours of ‘let’s return to our version of normal,’ he had not expected her to say no.
“Care about what?”
She smiled, “You know what I’m talking about. When this is all over, I’m going to resign. I’ll work in the same capacity as Daniel, although perhaps on a different team.”
“I don’t think so Major! There is no way in hell that you’re going to resign. You’re too important to the program … hell you are the program!”
“And what? I’m just supposed to keep working 24/7 with no life and no hope of ever getting one? I’m supposed to be perfectly okay with my most successful relationship being with a guy who had me followed? I’m supposed to accept that I’m never going to get to be with the guy I’m in-“
“Don’t say it.”
They were quiet for a moment, with Jack standing; his arms in his pockets and head down and Sam kneeling on the couch glaring at him. “I’m not allowed to make my own decisions? Jack come on! I’m a big girl now. I’m allowed to decide if seven years spent by myself is too long. I’m allowed to decide when it’s time to think about being with the man I-“
“Don’t say it!”
“Love! Jesus Christ Jack!” She got off the couch and gave him a terrifying glare. “I. Love. You. Get that through your head. I’m in love with you. Have been for a while now,” she rolled her eyes and looked back at him. “Why is that so hard for you to get?”
Oh. That was an easy question! ‘Cause the minute she admitted that, he would be picking her up and dragging her to the bedroom where - eventually - he would call General Hammond and give in his immediate resignation.
He did manage to control himself though. “Jack?” He looked up and saw her smiling softly. How the hell could this woman read him so easily? Sara had stood in the doorway ordering him to speak, Sam got him, she got that it was hard for him to believe something like that - let alone say anything. “I love you. That hasn’t changed in six years and it’s not going to change now.” She sat back down on the couch and held her hands tightly in her lap. “I’m so sorry about Pete. I know I hurt you.”
“That’s not true,” he finally spoke, “I wanted you to be happy.”
“That’s true,” she smiled softly at him, “But I know I hurt you. If I didn’t see it - which I did - then Daniel telling me every couple of days had the fact drilled into me.”
Jack smirked, he missed Daniel. “Ah. But I still wanted you to be happy.”
“Is it so hard to believe that it would only happen with you?”
“Yes.” Jack said before he could censor himself.
Sam deflated, taking his hand and sitting down next to him on the couch. “Please believe me. I’m big enough to make my own decisions and this one was made years and years ago. I want to be with you Jack.”
Jack didn’t say anything but stared at her intently. She let him for a few moments before deciding that enough was enough.
They had seven years of unresolved sexual tension.
She leant over, getting onto her knees and taking his face in her hands. “I love you Jack,” and she kissed him. Slowly she ran her hands through his hair, pulling him closer. He finally seemed to get the hint; his hands ran along the hem of her shirt, pulling her into his lap.
“Bedroom.” He breathed against her neck. “Now.”
He didn’t let go of her as he pulled her up off the couch, or as he pulled her shirt over her head or even as she helped him out of his jeans.
He didn’t let go of her until about eleven the next day when she finally told him that yes, sex was fantastic but if she didn’t eat something soon she’d faint. He just laughed and followed her into the kitchen. “So what now?” she asked.
Jack just smirked, “This was all your idea.”
Sam gave him a look, one raised eyebrow and arms crossed. “Sorry, you look like Teal’c.”
“That was kind of the point,” she told him. “If it was all my idea, then maybe I’ll just revoke the privileges.”
“Privileges?”
“Well, sex for one.”
Jack silently turned to the stove and began to cook while Sam laughed happily from the counter.