Fic: In 1969, A Family was Born
In 1969, A Family was Born
‘Verses: SG1 episode 1969, and season four-ish of Eureka
Summary:In 1969 (SG1 Episode AU), Sam Carter gave birth to a baby boy and gave it up for adoption. Years later, Jack Carter finds out that his history qualified him for Eureka. And nobody knew.
*sg1*erka*
Allison Blake walked into the Sherriff’s office regretfully. She had a feeling that she was going to deliver an ugly surprise. Her eyes met Jo Lupo’s first and she jerked her head toward the door.
Jo was surprised but grabbed her jacket. She had been a black ops soldier for too long to be insulted. Sometimes, a girl just didn’t need to know. “I’m going for a coffee. You want one?”
Jack looked up at the question. His eyes narrowed. “Yes, please,” he said. He waited until the door closed behind the deputy. “What’s so important that Jo can’t know?”
Well, since he had asked directly… “Did you know you were adopted?”
Jack blinked and laughed. “What kind of joke is this? Do you know how many background checks I’ve gone through? Someone would have mentioned it before now.”
“No one else does a complete DNA scan as a matter of course. Not to mention, we also acquired your parents’ DNA for a study of genetics.”
Jack stared.
Allison felt the need to spell it out. “Jack, your parents are not genetically related to you.”
“How did no one find this out sooner?”
“Because someone invented the best background for you that I have ever seen. My guess is that you were given to your parents within days of your birth. Your paper background passes the most stringent check we administer. I’m not sure how that was accomplished in 1969.”
Jack was suddenly glad he was sitting.
*sg1*erka*
Jack avoided Allison for a couple of weeks. She had honored his request to keep this quiet. She did warn him that for security reasons, someone was going to have to investigate more. The two easily agreed that Henry would be the neutral arbitrator and would investigate. With Jack’s parents (adoptive, boy was it going to take a while to get used to that) dead, no one knew what really happened all those years ago. Jack was excused from his job several weekends in a row to go through all the boxes his sister had packed away when his parents died. He didn’t find anything. Then through some genius method that Jack would probably never understand, Henry found out that someone was keeping electronic tabs on Jack. Everything from his high school diploma to his transfer to Eureka was documented. Also, every report that Jack had filed as a US Marshal or as Sheriff was copied and sent to the mysterious recipient.
Without telling Fargo why anyone would be checking up on their sheriff, he was tasked with seeing where the electronic flags concerning Jack Carter were going. Fargo was successful and found an e-mail account that had been created 1999. Everything concerning Jack had been sent to it. Fargo also figured out that currently two different people were accessing it. One was accessing it in DC and the other in Denver, Colorado. Both were using public computers.
Alison had called Jack in to hear the news. Also, she warned him that Fargo had tripped some sort of safety feature and shut down the e-mail account. Jack was still in a state of shock. If the e-mail account was on behalf of his (biological) parents as Alison and Henry assumed, why would they be so tetchy about Jack trying to find them? Why didn’t they want Jack to know about them?
Did Jack want to know about them?
He didn’t know. He did have some questions that he wanted answered.
*sg1*erka*
“So Sheriff, where’s the best fishing.”
Jack gaped at the general. Wasn’t he the new head-honcho, here for GD?
The general seemed to read his mind. “Carter will take care of GD.” He waved at the pretty blonde colonel who was arguing and winning against Stark. “I’m just here to sign off on whatever she wants. Fishing?”
“I’ve got a favorite fishing hole, sir,” Jack admitted.
“Jack or O’Neill,” the general corrected. “Sir is only for when I have to call you on the carpet. Let’s go?”
“I’ve got to check in with my deputy and get my pole.”
The general grinned at him. He waved over Vincent. “I’ll get the goodies.”
Jack finally rejoined the general twenty minutes later. He had had to escape both Jo and Allison telling him to make nice with O’Neill. The man had incredible power over Eureka, and the two of them slowing him down would not make a good impression. Jack found the general waiting at his jeep, playing with a yo-yo and ignoring the stares from all the geniuses not-so-subtly watching.
“Ready?” he called to Jack.
“Ready.”
O’Neill didn’t mind the drive or the walk down to the river. He carried Vincent’s picnic basket and his own fishing pole without a complaint. O’Neill sat in the grass and cast a line. Then he dug a pair of beer bottles out of the basket and handed one to Jack.
Jack liked this kind of undemanding silence. Henry was Jack’s best friend for a multitude of reasons, but this was something that they would never be able to share. O’Neill caught and released several fish, each time slightly petulant. His attitude indicated that the fish were hassling him.
“You should come to my cabin some time and fish,” O’Neill said.
“Is there fish in your lake?” Jack teased. “Or is it just an excuse to sit on the dock and drink?”
O’Neill grinned at him. “It didn’t used to have any, but one of our time-travel… adventures changed that.”
Jack blinked. “How did that happen?”
O’Neill shrugged. “Long story. Carter can explain the science.”
“I won’t understand the science,” Jack admitted.
“You’ve had your own time-travel trips,” O’Neill stated.
“How did you… why would you say that?” It wasn’t in any report.
O’Neill wasn’t looking at him, but reeling in his line. “I’ve spent an entire career reading between the lines or writing so that others could read between the lines. Did you go forward or back?”
“Back.” Jack still felt a stab of pain every time he remembered it and every time he knew that Henry had taken most of his memories of that time.
“Stuck here?”
“Yeah.”
“You left something important behind.” Again O’Neill said it as a statement.
“I was married to Ali and we were about to have a little girl. Nothing went right when I tried to recreate the future.” Jack hadn’t confessed that out loud before.
O’Neill turned to look at him. “In 1999, Carter and I and our team went back to 1969. We were there for about a year. When we returned to 1999, we had to leave our baby boy behind.” O’Neill stood with a painful grunt. “You know where to find us if you want to know more.” O’Neill walked away.
Jack couldn’t do anything but sit there, stunned.
Jack didn’t know how long he sat there, his emotions running the gamut. He was furious with… everything. He was mourning lost chances. He was amazed with the fantastic tale that he believed in his gut. In his calmer moments, he realized that he wanted a DNA test and he wanted to know more.
*sg1*erka*
It was dark before Jack gathered up the basket, his tackle box and his fishing pole. He carried everything to the jeep and then wondered how the general (his father) got back to town. Jack drove straight to his home and looked up what he could about General Jack O’Neill and Colonel Samantha Carter. Even with his GD clearance, he couldn’t find reports of their time travel incident. He did find proof that Samantha was Stark-smart. He knew she had to be, but each published paper made him feel inferior. It did explain Zoë’s stunning intellect though.
And his father was a different kind of smart. He did end up a general somehow. It seemed like Jack had two overachieving parents, were they disappointed that he was only a sheriff? Jack sat and thought so long and hard that the computer defaulted to the screensaver and SARAH dimmed the lights believing that he was resting.
“Dad, what’s going on?” his daughter’s voice cut through his heavy thoughts.
Jack didn’t know how to reply.
“Dad, are you sick? I can have SARAH call Allison. Should I call?”
“No. I’m just in a bit of shock.”
“Are you fired? I know you sometimes don’t get along with the GD oversight committees.”
“No.” Jack made an effort to pull himself together. “This portion of the oversight committee is pretty level headed.” And very well connected, Jack realized. The two must have pulled favors to get them this assignment within weeks of Fargo shutting down their secret on-line repository of the History of Jack Carter. “I just got some shocking news,” he finally told her.
“Does this have anything to do with whatever made you a walking zombie two weeks ago? Or do you have a new reason for the zombie impression?”
“Same reason, with a twist.”
“Are you going to tell me now?”
“Your Grandma and Grandpa Carter are not my biological parents.”
Zoë was stunned and sat on the couch with a thump. “You’re sure?”
“Allison’s sure.”
“Wow.” Zoë shook her head. “I mean wow!”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know who is?” Zoë apparently could absorb the information quicker than he could.
“Hence today’s zombie time.”
Zoë leaned forward. “Who? Are they alive?”
“Definitely alive. It’s General Jack O’Neill and Colonel Carter.”
Zoë thought through what she knew of the pair. She had seen them around town as the resident geniuses were trying to make a good impression. “She’s not that old. Is that why they gave you to Grandma and Grandpa Carter?”
“I was born during a time-travel incident.”
Zoë gaped. Jack decided to go back to the office while she was stunned speechless. He didn’t have the answers to her inevitable questions, but he would look for them.
*sg1*erka*
It took two days of avoiding the military pair (and sending Henry to collect DNA) before Jack decided that he definitely wanted to know more and Zoë was chomping at his restrictions. If Jack didn’t approach his parents soon, his daughter would.
“So what happened?” Jack finally asked O’Neill and Carter.
The general and the colonel looked at each other. Finally the general spoke. “We were departing for a mission in 1999, a team of four, but something went wrong and we ended up in 1968. Carter and Daniel had enough clues that we should have been able to return but there were complications on our first attempt. We were nearly arrested and we couldn’t let Murray, a teammate, get arrested. Our next attempt could not happen for several months. Two hippies had taken us in and knew enough that we had pinned our hopes on that first attempt and were upset. They were just trying to cheer us up.”
“They drugged you,” Jack surmised.
Both of the Air Force officers nodded.
“We had this thing going on for years, but with regs…” O’Neill shrugged. “Our next transport out was in thirty-nine weeks. It was a good thing you were early. We knew that what we had to go through to return to the correct date was going to be really hard on a baby. And then things went wrong during delivery and we had to take Carter to a hospital for help three days before everything came together.”
“Your parents were there,” the colonel finally spoke. She wasn’t crying but her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “They had just lost their son. Daniel talked with them, mostly your father. A lot, I’m sure, being Daniel. It was their last name and their situation that caught his attention. He approached O’Neill about leaving you with them.”
“So I went and talked with your mother,” O’Neill took over the narrative. “I told her the truth minus all of the classified and time-travel. I told her that we would make the paperwork look like you were their son and the dead son was ours. She wanted assurance that we would never approach you and claim you. We gave our word.”
“I asked for one thing,” Samantha Carter spoke. “We picked your parents partly due to their name, but mostly because of their characters, so in a way you would have my last name, so I asked that they name you Jack after your biological father.”
“Between Daniel sweet-talking and distracting those he could and Murray intimidating and bribing others and Carter in the computer system, we walked out with Mr. And Mrs. Carter’s biological son and you remained with them.”
“You kept track of me.”
“As much as we could. But you were a baby when we left and an adult by the time we could reconnect.”
“I understand why you didn’t approach me before GD, ‘cause then it’d look like you two were having sex as minors. But why did you wait until Alison’s DNA tests?”
“Beside’s our promise to your parents? I was still under Jack’s command,” Sam started. “And Jack’s command base is crazier than GD and Eureka.”
“Hench the time travel mission,” O’Neill admitted. He paused and then added, “We were scared. You had your life. There was fear of rejection. There was fear of it coming out that we had sex while in the same command structure. We only got away with it the first time because Carter’s best friend ran the infirmary and didn’t report it.” He eyed Jack for only a moment. “So what do ya wanna do?”
“Well, my daughter wants to meet you, so dinner at my place?”
The colonel and the general checked with each other before agreeing. “Sounds good,” Carter answered with a smile. “I’ve been wanting to meet her since 1999.”
“Is there any other family that will be popping out of the woodwork?” Jack thought he was teasing but the general stuffed his hands in his pockets and his eyes began to twinkle.
“Well, there’s the other two of the mission, Daniel and Murray, who are you honorary uncles.”
“And then there’s Cassie,” Carter added. “I have custody of her since her adoptive mother, my best friend was KIA.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“We bought a vacation home on the outskirts for when we have leave. You can come visit anytime and we won’t be intruding on your life. And then there’s my clone,” the general said. “He’s about the age of Zoë.”
Jack tripped and fell and generally made a fool out of himself. Crazy than Eureka, they had said. They had meant it. “Really? A clone?”
“He’s looking into property prices in Eureka. Wants to move here.” O’Neill, the bastard, smirked. “Says it’s ‘cause of the fishing spots and the excellent school system.”
Crazier was moving to Eureka. Jack tried to imagine walking around town and seeing the clone of his father working on homework with his daughter and his brain cracked just a little.
*sg1*erka*
‘Verses: SG1 episode 1969, and season four-ish of Eureka
Summary:In 1969 (SG1 Episode AU), Sam Carter gave birth to a baby boy and gave it up for adoption. Years later, Jack Carter finds out that his history qualified him for Eureka. And nobody knew.
*sg1*erka*
Allison Blake walked into the Sherriff’s office regretfully. She had a feeling that she was going to deliver an ugly surprise. Her eyes met Jo Lupo’s first and she jerked her head toward the door.
Jo was surprised but grabbed her jacket. She had been a black ops soldier for too long to be insulted. Sometimes, a girl just didn’t need to know. “I’m going for a coffee. You want one?”
Jack looked up at the question. His eyes narrowed. “Yes, please,” he said. He waited until the door closed behind the deputy. “What’s so important that Jo can’t know?”
Well, since he had asked directly… “Did you know you were adopted?”
Jack blinked and laughed. “What kind of joke is this? Do you know how many background checks I’ve gone through? Someone would have mentioned it before now.”
“No one else does a complete DNA scan as a matter of course. Not to mention, we also acquired your parents’ DNA for a study of genetics.”
Jack stared.
Allison felt the need to spell it out. “Jack, your parents are not genetically related to you.”
“How did no one find this out sooner?”
“Because someone invented the best background for you that I have ever seen. My guess is that you were given to your parents within days of your birth. Your paper background passes the most stringent check we administer. I’m not sure how that was accomplished in 1969.”
Jack was suddenly glad he was sitting.
*sg1*erka*
Jack avoided Allison for a couple of weeks. She had honored his request to keep this quiet. She did warn him that for security reasons, someone was going to have to investigate more. The two easily agreed that Henry would be the neutral arbitrator and would investigate. With Jack’s parents (adoptive, boy was it going to take a while to get used to that) dead, no one knew what really happened all those years ago. Jack was excused from his job several weekends in a row to go through all the boxes his sister had packed away when his parents died. He didn’t find anything. Then through some genius method that Jack would probably never understand, Henry found out that someone was keeping electronic tabs on Jack. Everything from his high school diploma to his transfer to Eureka was documented. Also, every report that Jack had filed as a US Marshal or as Sheriff was copied and sent to the mysterious recipient.
Without telling Fargo why anyone would be checking up on their sheriff, he was tasked with seeing where the electronic flags concerning Jack Carter were going. Fargo was successful and found an e-mail account that had been created 1999. Everything concerning Jack had been sent to it. Fargo also figured out that currently two different people were accessing it. One was accessing it in DC and the other in Denver, Colorado. Both were using public computers.
Alison had called Jack in to hear the news. Also, she warned him that Fargo had tripped some sort of safety feature and shut down the e-mail account. Jack was still in a state of shock. If the e-mail account was on behalf of his (biological) parents as Alison and Henry assumed, why would they be so tetchy about Jack trying to find them? Why didn’t they want Jack to know about them?
Did Jack want to know about them?
He didn’t know. He did have some questions that he wanted answered.
*sg1*erka*
“So Sheriff, where’s the best fishing.”
Jack gaped at the general. Wasn’t he the new head-honcho, here for GD?
The general seemed to read his mind. “Carter will take care of GD.” He waved at the pretty blonde colonel who was arguing and winning against Stark. “I’m just here to sign off on whatever she wants. Fishing?”
“I’ve got a favorite fishing hole, sir,” Jack admitted.
“Jack or O’Neill,” the general corrected. “Sir is only for when I have to call you on the carpet. Let’s go?”
“I’ve got to check in with my deputy and get my pole.”
The general grinned at him. He waved over Vincent. “I’ll get the goodies.”
Jack finally rejoined the general twenty minutes later. He had had to escape both Jo and Allison telling him to make nice with O’Neill. The man had incredible power over Eureka, and the two of them slowing him down would not make a good impression. Jack found the general waiting at his jeep, playing with a yo-yo and ignoring the stares from all the geniuses not-so-subtly watching.
“Ready?” he called to Jack.
“Ready.”
O’Neill didn’t mind the drive or the walk down to the river. He carried Vincent’s picnic basket and his own fishing pole without a complaint. O’Neill sat in the grass and cast a line. Then he dug a pair of beer bottles out of the basket and handed one to Jack.
Jack liked this kind of undemanding silence. Henry was Jack’s best friend for a multitude of reasons, but this was something that they would never be able to share. O’Neill caught and released several fish, each time slightly petulant. His attitude indicated that the fish were hassling him.
“You should come to my cabin some time and fish,” O’Neill said.
“Is there fish in your lake?” Jack teased. “Or is it just an excuse to sit on the dock and drink?”
O’Neill grinned at him. “It didn’t used to have any, but one of our time-travel… adventures changed that.”
Jack blinked. “How did that happen?”
O’Neill shrugged. “Long story. Carter can explain the science.”
“I won’t understand the science,” Jack admitted.
“You’ve had your own time-travel trips,” O’Neill stated.
“How did you… why would you say that?” It wasn’t in any report.
O’Neill wasn’t looking at him, but reeling in his line. “I’ve spent an entire career reading between the lines or writing so that others could read between the lines. Did you go forward or back?”
“Back.” Jack still felt a stab of pain every time he remembered it and every time he knew that Henry had taken most of his memories of that time.
“Stuck here?”
“Yeah.”
“You left something important behind.” Again O’Neill said it as a statement.
“I was married to Ali and we were about to have a little girl. Nothing went right when I tried to recreate the future.” Jack hadn’t confessed that out loud before.
O’Neill turned to look at him. “In 1999, Carter and I and our team went back to 1969. We were there for about a year. When we returned to 1999, we had to leave our baby boy behind.” O’Neill stood with a painful grunt. “You know where to find us if you want to know more.” O’Neill walked away.
Jack couldn’t do anything but sit there, stunned.
Jack didn’t know how long he sat there, his emotions running the gamut. He was furious with… everything. He was mourning lost chances. He was amazed with the fantastic tale that he believed in his gut. In his calmer moments, he realized that he wanted a DNA test and he wanted to know more.
*sg1*erka*
It was dark before Jack gathered up the basket, his tackle box and his fishing pole. He carried everything to the jeep and then wondered how the general (his father) got back to town. Jack drove straight to his home and looked up what he could about General Jack O’Neill and Colonel Samantha Carter. Even with his GD clearance, he couldn’t find reports of their time travel incident. He did find proof that Samantha was Stark-smart. He knew she had to be, but each published paper made him feel inferior. It did explain Zoë’s stunning intellect though.
And his father was a different kind of smart. He did end up a general somehow. It seemed like Jack had two overachieving parents, were they disappointed that he was only a sheriff? Jack sat and thought so long and hard that the computer defaulted to the screensaver and SARAH dimmed the lights believing that he was resting.
“Dad, what’s going on?” his daughter’s voice cut through his heavy thoughts.
Jack didn’t know how to reply.
“Dad, are you sick? I can have SARAH call Allison. Should I call?”
“No. I’m just in a bit of shock.”
“Are you fired? I know you sometimes don’t get along with the GD oversight committees.”
“No.” Jack made an effort to pull himself together. “This portion of the oversight committee is pretty level headed.” And very well connected, Jack realized. The two must have pulled favors to get them this assignment within weeks of Fargo shutting down their secret on-line repository of the History of Jack Carter. “I just got some shocking news,” he finally told her.
“Does this have anything to do with whatever made you a walking zombie two weeks ago? Or do you have a new reason for the zombie impression?”
“Same reason, with a twist.”
“Are you going to tell me now?”
“Your Grandma and Grandpa Carter are not my biological parents.”
Zoë was stunned and sat on the couch with a thump. “You’re sure?”
“Allison’s sure.”
“Wow.” Zoë shook her head. “I mean wow!”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know who is?” Zoë apparently could absorb the information quicker than he could.
“Hence today’s zombie time.”
Zoë leaned forward. “Who? Are they alive?”
“Definitely alive. It’s General Jack O’Neill and Colonel Carter.”
Zoë thought through what she knew of the pair. She had seen them around town as the resident geniuses were trying to make a good impression. “She’s not that old. Is that why they gave you to Grandma and Grandpa Carter?”
“I was born during a time-travel incident.”
Zoë gaped. Jack decided to go back to the office while she was stunned speechless. He didn’t have the answers to her inevitable questions, but he would look for them.
*sg1*erka*
It took two days of avoiding the military pair (and sending Henry to collect DNA) before Jack decided that he definitely wanted to know more and Zoë was chomping at his restrictions. If Jack didn’t approach his parents soon, his daughter would.
“So what happened?” Jack finally asked O’Neill and Carter.
The general and the colonel looked at each other. Finally the general spoke. “We were departing for a mission in 1999, a team of four, but something went wrong and we ended up in 1968. Carter and Daniel had enough clues that we should have been able to return but there were complications on our first attempt. We were nearly arrested and we couldn’t let Murray, a teammate, get arrested. Our next attempt could not happen for several months. Two hippies had taken us in and knew enough that we had pinned our hopes on that first attempt and were upset. They were just trying to cheer us up.”
“They drugged you,” Jack surmised.
Both of the Air Force officers nodded.
“We had this thing going on for years, but with regs…” O’Neill shrugged. “Our next transport out was in thirty-nine weeks. It was a good thing you were early. We knew that what we had to go through to return to the correct date was going to be really hard on a baby. And then things went wrong during delivery and we had to take Carter to a hospital for help three days before everything came together.”
“Your parents were there,” the colonel finally spoke. She wasn’t crying but her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “They had just lost their son. Daniel talked with them, mostly your father. A lot, I’m sure, being Daniel. It was their last name and their situation that caught his attention. He approached O’Neill about leaving you with them.”
“So I went and talked with your mother,” O’Neill took over the narrative. “I told her the truth minus all of the classified and time-travel. I told her that we would make the paperwork look like you were their son and the dead son was ours. She wanted assurance that we would never approach you and claim you. We gave our word.”
“I asked for one thing,” Samantha Carter spoke. “We picked your parents partly due to their name, but mostly because of their characters, so in a way you would have my last name, so I asked that they name you Jack after your biological father.”
“Between Daniel sweet-talking and distracting those he could and Murray intimidating and bribing others and Carter in the computer system, we walked out with Mr. And Mrs. Carter’s biological son and you remained with them.”
“You kept track of me.”
“As much as we could. But you were a baby when we left and an adult by the time we could reconnect.”
“I understand why you didn’t approach me before GD, ‘cause then it’d look like you two were having sex as minors. But why did you wait until Alison’s DNA tests?”
“Beside’s our promise to your parents? I was still under Jack’s command,” Sam started. “And Jack’s command base is crazier than GD and Eureka.”
“Hench the time travel mission,” O’Neill admitted. He paused and then added, “We were scared. You had your life. There was fear of rejection. There was fear of it coming out that we had sex while in the same command structure. We only got away with it the first time because Carter’s best friend ran the infirmary and didn’t report it.” He eyed Jack for only a moment. “So what do ya wanna do?”
“Well, my daughter wants to meet you, so dinner at my place?”
The colonel and the general checked with each other before agreeing. “Sounds good,” Carter answered with a smile. “I’ve been wanting to meet her since 1999.”
“Is there any other family that will be popping out of the woodwork?” Jack thought he was teasing but the general stuffed his hands in his pockets and his eyes began to twinkle.
“Well, there’s the other two of the mission, Daniel and Murray, who are you honorary uncles.”
“And then there’s Cassie,” Carter added. “I have custody of her since her adoptive mother, my best friend was KIA.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“We bought a vacation home on the outskirts for when we have leave. You can come visit anytime and we won’t be intruding on your life. And then there’s my clone,” the general said. “He’s about the age of Zoë.”
Jack tripped and fell and generally made a fool out of himself. Crazy than Eureka, they had said. They had meant it. “Really? A clone?”
“He’s looking into property prices in Eureka. Wants to move here.” O’Neill, the bastard, smirked. “Says it’s ‘cause of the fishing spots and the excellent school system.”
Crazier was moving to Eureka. Jack tried to imagine walking around town and seeing the clone of his father working on homework with his daughter and his brain cracked just a little.
*sg1*erka*