The Blonde in the BDU by Meriem Clayton

This story was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt has been made to copyright any characters which may not have been originally created by the author, and no profit is made from this work of fiction. Any original characters and the stories themselves are the property of the author.

Daniel watched the two beautiful blondes in BDUs. They sat together at a table at the back of the cafeteria, speaking about something very privately, their heads together. One of them gestured gracefully and his mother's sapphire and diamond ring flashed in the light. Then they laughed and gave each other a quick hug. They hadn't noticed him come in and he was glad. He loved both of them and watching them, unobserved, was a pure pleasure.

It was the curse of his nature that he was quite capable of loving two women at the same time and had, in fact, made a habit of it. He was married to one of them and dear friends with the other. Everyone was happy with their lives. No one knew that at times, despite his love for his wife, there was a sharp twinge of longing deep down for his friend.

They looked up and saw him. They waved at him and he started back toward them, basking in the warmth of their smiles. He was a happy man and he regretted nothing.

The painful twists and turns that were price of his happiness started out with a more alcohol than he could handle.

Ooooh booooy, am I drunk, Daniel told himself. How many brain cells have I killed in the last two hours? Can't remember how to figure that out. I should know which proves I've killed a whole lot already. This is so stupid. Why didn't I just buy a bottle of something and take it home where I'm not likely to get mugged or give in to the come hither looks from that woman at the other end of the bar who probably has an STD? No glasses. What the hell did I do with them? Need to be sure that's not a man at the end of the bar coming on to me. Wouldn't be the first time. That would show Sam if she drove me straight into the arms of my own sex. Nope – it wouldn't be me. Bad plan.

"Let me have another," he said to the bartender.

"Sir, I think you've had enough. Would you like me to call you a cab?"

Too damn many lawsuits, he groused silently. These guys are afraid of their own shadow. If Jack was sitting on this bar stool, the guy would have already sold him twice the amount of alcohol he's served me. It's discrimination. You're shouldn't be cut off if you could still say discrimination and use it in a sentence, should you? I guess I didn't say it out loud so it doesn't count. I should get a class action lawsuit going for archeologists or maybe guys with glasses 'cept I don't have any at the moment."

Out loud, Daniel responded belligerently, "No I do not want a cab and I do not think I've had enough. I demand you give me another drink or..." He bogged down without any idea of what an appropriate threat would be.

"Hey, it's good to see another face from Cheyenne Mountain," a female voice said behind him. Strong, slim fingers tapped the emblem on the sleeve of his camo jacket. An athletic looking blonde slid onto the stool next to his.

He tore his eyes off the bartender and looked up to see ... well, Sam. She was strangely out of focus. It was more than the result of his missing glasses, but he couldn't put his finger on exactly why. She was fresher faced, more energetic somehow. My God, how can I resent her going hot and heavy with Jack if it's this good for her? he wondered remorsefully.

"You know, I was about to leave and I overheard the bartender offering to call you a cab. We're working for the same command." She pointed at her own sleeve. "Let me give you a lift." Her voice was a little off too, a shade deep. Maybe she has a cold, he speculated.

"Carter, I don't think your boy friend would like it," he said. Given the state of their relationship at the moment, Carter seemed far more appropriate than her first name. His elbow slid almost flat on the bar, but it was too hard to hold his head up any more. She seemed surprised by his statement. Something egged him on to say, "Don't tell me he's one of those 'open relationship' guys. I would never have thought."

"We broke up," she said, rather abruptly. "Come on now, you need to get in bed."

"Why haven't we ever gotten in bed?" Daniel lamented. "I'm such a frigging coward. I should have made a move."

"How about because we don't really know each other?" she asked, sliding an arm under him and showing surprising strength in getting him to his feet. She felt soft but firm under his arm and she smelled wonderful. He didn't remember Sam smelling quite so lemony, but he really liked it.

"Do we really any of us ever know each other?" Daniel had segued into the philosophical phase of drunkenness. She didn't respond, focused as she was in getting him through the door.

They were out the door now and negotiating the sidewalk to the parking lot. He tripped over a slightly raised cement paving block and fell heavily against her. His mouth ended up inches from hers and he thought, What the hell? and kissed her. She made a token push at him, but then got into the kiss. He gave it everything he had learned from Sha're and every other woman he'd known, some with centuries of experience.

"That was rather amazing," she said. "I don't think I've ever been turned on by an almost falling down drunk man before. Of course the fact that you are extremely handsome and buff and have the most beautiful blue eyes I've ever seen doesn't hurt. If I wasn't an officer and a gentlewoman, I'd take you home and take advantage of you while you were too drunk to fight me off."

Daniel couldn't believe it was this easy. He'd wanted her forever without any hope. All he had to do was get drunk?

She got them walking again until they reached a cute little red RSX-Type S. When did she get that car? She held him up while she fumbled with the keys and got the door open. The cool air had sobered him up a little. She didn't have that much trouble loading him in. "Okay, what's your address?" she asked after she got into the driver's seat.

That's right, he'd moved after he'd given up his lease because he thought he was going to Atlantis and she hadn't been to his place since then. He told her and she pulled out into traffic. He quickly found himself hanging onto the seat. The affair with Jack had certainly rubbed off on her in one way. She'd always been a fairly conservative driver. Now, she was driving with Jack's 'I'm secretly pretending I'm in a NASCAR event' flair.

They reached his condo and she got him out of the car and up to his door. He tried without success to get the key in the lock. She took over the job, shoved the key in her pocket to free up her hand, and guided him over the threshold and into the living room where she pushed him down on the couch. He grabbed her and pulled him down with him as he dropped. They kissed again then and it was even better.

She won her way free and said, "I really meant what I said about not taking advantage. How about if I come back tomorrow early afternoon, say 1300 hours, and drive you over to your car? We can see how we like each other in daylight and sober."

"Honey, I've seen you in daylight when I was cold sober. You were spectacular," Daniel said, reaching for her futilely.

"Probably not, but just the same, that's how we're going to play it," she said. She darted back into arm's reach quickly enough to give him a quick, sweet, closed mouth kiss and then she was gone.

Daniel slid down the back of the couch until he was slumped over and immediately went to sleep. When he woke up, his mouth tasted foul, his head was pounding, and he felt like a pretzel. "You are too old for sleeping in your clothes on a couch," he said to the room in general. "Man that was a hell of a dream."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew it hadn't been a dream. There were blonde hairs on his sleeve and the memories were almost as tangible. Sam had broken up with Jack? When? She had just told him over the phone yesterday afternoon that she and Jack were together, confirming suspicions he had been entertaining for weeks. That had been the occasion for leaving the Mountain in his BDU and going straight to a bar to get drunk without passing Go or collecting $200. How had Sam gotten back from her trip to DC that fast?

There had been something about 1300 hours. Cripes. She was coming over at 1:00. He wasn't at all sure his wristwatch would still be on his wrist, but there it was. He fumbled it around so he could read it. 12:30. He looked down at himself and smelled the stale alcohol. He was going to have to move it. Daniel realized that the whole tipsy thing might have been vaguely quixotic in the dark but it would simply be off putting in a street person kind of way in broad daylight.

He stood up quickly and immediately grabbed his head. Ouch. Throbbing like a damn tom-tom. The thing to do is go upstairs, get in the shower, clear your head, and try to remember what really happened, he ordered himself. He shucked off the jacket and only then noticed it wasn't his. I was so damn upset I walked out of the mountain with Colonel Dalton's jacket on, he realized. He didn't have the energy to try to even reconstruct how that had happened. He did notice that the missing glasses were in the pocket, but he left them there since he was heading up to the shower.

At just moments before 1:00, he was back downstairs and peering at himself in the front hall mirror. He had on the soft blue v-neck sweater Sam had given him for Christmas the year before last and a pair of jeans. Looking good but not trying too hard, he hoped. He still couldn't figure out what had happened to him the night before, but he wanted to keep all his options open.

There was a light rap on the door. He pulled it open to see not Sam, but almost Sam on his front doorstep. She was in jeans and a close fitting royal blue knit top under a brown suede jacket. Her blonde hair was tousled and her face was innocent of make up, innocent in general because she was young. This is Sam morphed back to her mid to late-twenties, a fraction of an inch taller, he thought. Maybe innocent is the wrong word. Why am I thinking Kitten with a Whip?

He was staring at her without speaking. "Oh dear, I don't look as good to you in daylight as I did in that parking lot," she said, sounding a little embarrassed.

"You look wonderful," Daniel said because she did. His final thought was that Sam should hope to be this hot without any help from cosmetics.

"Oh good. You clean up really well yourself." She thrust out a Starbucks and said, "I thought you could probably use some coffee. Do you want to go straight over and get your car or do you want to drink the coffee first?"

"This is just lovely," he said and accepted the coffee gratefully. Always a coffee fiend, he was now a coffee fiend with a hangover. "Come on in. I guess I think I need to drink this before I go outside."

He sat down on the couch and she sat down next to him. They sipped their coffees together in silence for a moment. "So your last name is Dalton," she said, "from your jacket pocket last night. What's the first name?"

"Daniel," he said and started to explain about the last name, but she had started up again. "I'm Rain, Rain Carter."

He looked her in disbelief at her last name, but she misunderstood. "Yeah I know – Rain and the middle name is Sunflower. My mother was a hippy who grew into a crackhead. I'm just lucky she had me before the crack. God knows what the name would have been then." He shook his head as if to clear it. "I know that I laid the heavy stuff on you right away, but I'd rather know now, before I get involved with you, if you are going to get weird because I was illegitimate and the state took me after Mamma got sent to jail."

"Foster homes?" Daniel croaked.

"For a year or so until they tracked down my bio father. He adopted me legally so that's why it's Rain Carter, not Rain Fisher."

Daniel looked down at his cup. It had betrayed him by turning out to have a bottom. "I need more of this," he said sadly.

"Let's go get your car then. We can stop at the Starbucks on the way and get refueled. If you still want to go with me?"

"I'm a foster homes vet myself," Daniel said. "Lead on."

They stood. He started to grab the camo jacket and then realized he wasn't in uniform. He wasn't military, but he wore the uniform for work as if he was. Real military didn't wear parts of the uniform without the whole uniform. He grabbed his own soft brown leather jacket from the front hall closet. Rain held up his keys, "If you're looking for these, I walked off with them without intending to last night." He accepted them gratefully.

As they started to go out the door, she stopped and said, "Can you do one thing for me? If last night was a mirage, I like to know about it as soon as possible and not waste either of our time."

Daniel thought, she is something else. She looks like Sam, she's got the same last name, but the resemblance stops there. This woman is as frank about her feelings with herself and everyone else as anyone I've ever met.

She was looking at him hopefully, "Okay?" she asked.

He was pretty sure he knew what she had in mind, but it was all so crazy he had to ask, "You want me to kiss you?"

"Do you want to?"

Did he ever. He had no idea who she was beyond her name and her job locale or why she looked like Sam or had Sam's last name. That would all have to be solved, but right now he wanted to know just as much as she did if kissing her would feel like he'd always imagined kissing Sam would feel, like it had felt last night. He ran his fingers lightly over her cheek and then cupped it and rubbed his thumb over her lips. She closed her eyes and smiled slightly. He put his other arm around her waist and pulled her against him. He moved his hand from her check and into her soft hair. Her arms were twined around him. At last he lowered his mouth to hers and they kissed. At first, it was a very nice closed mouth kiss. That went so well that they both parted their lips and made it into something deliciously coffee flavored. It was a long kiss that neither of them wanted to end. A car drove by outside and some kids honked their horn at the couple framed in a kiss in the doorway and yelled something. Daniel and Rain broke apart and laughed.

"I've got my whole day free," she said.

Daniel found himself saying, "I'm good for the entire weekend."

Daniel leaned back comfortably in her little car and watched the pleasant streets go by. "So what do you do at the Mountain?" he asked.

"Tell you what, Daniel," she said. "Let's not talk about the Mountain or our jobs this weekend. Jobs define people too much, define our reaction to them. So do life circumstances. 'Oh, you've been divorced. You must be x and y.' Let's talk about ideas and things that interest us."

"Okay," he said. With all the opening gambits he had learned over the years taken off the table, he was stumped for anything to say.

"Tell me what the most interesting thing is to you in the entire world that's not classified," she challenged him.

The answer was inevitable. He began to talk about ancient Egypt. By the third sentence, she was grinning widely and lit up like a Christmas tree. "Am I that interesting or is this something you really like too?" he asked, not sure how to interpret her response.

"Daniel, I could listen to you talk about watching paint dry and it would probably draw me in," she said, "but, yeah, Egypt is near and dear to my heart." She reached over and pushed the knob to turn on the CD player. Her Boise sound system treated them to a recording by an Egyptian artist. She gestured to the CD player and said, "Voila. Are you familiar with Dr. Mavis Fisher's work? What did you think of her theories on Egyptian religion?"

His mouth was hanging open. Dr. Fisher had been very well respected in her day, if controversial. She had been one of the few to reference him without a heavy dose of sneering. However, she was the sort of archeologist known only to other archeologists. She had never written anything in the popular vein. Rain was looking increasingly too perfect for him. He realized with a start that he hadn't felt any pain over same the whole time he'd been with her. Maybe he was actually asleep. He'd passed out in the bar, drinking to forget Sam, and this whole thing was a dream.

"I never thought a fish could look cute before," she said, cocking her head at him and smiling in such a way that the comment was implausibly flirtatious.

He blushed slightly and closed his mouth. He considered her question carefully for a second and then gave her his opinion to which she listened attentively. As they went into Starbucks, she was attempting to refute one of his points. The girl behind the counter eavesdropped. When they ordered, she said, "What I want to know is did they really wear as much eye makeup as they always show you in the movies like 'The Mummy' and how do you think they put it on?" Looking at her heavily made up face, it was clear that the whole topic was of great importance to her. Daniel patiently tried to give her the executive summary on Egyptian make up. Rain chimed in with a couple of points that hadn't occurred to him.

This was entirely too much for the man waiting in line behind him, "Maybe you have all day, but I have some place to be," he snarled at them, ending the discussion.

The man with a schedule bided his time and then jostled Rain, accidentally on purpose, as she walked to a table in the back with her cappuccino. She smiled pleasantly at him and, in a very polite tone of voice, called him hideous things in Greek and Egyptian-accented Arabic. Daniel sniggered and then added some choice epithets in the same languages. They continued to speak in Arabic, enjoying the absolute privacy of a conversation in a language that none of the white-bread suburbanites around them were likely to know.

The first thing Daniel said after they sat down was "You're related to Mavis Fisher, aren't you?"

"She was my grandmother," Rain said. "I grew up on digs with her all over the world. My mom drifted in and out. It was my grandmother who raised me until she died when I was 9." She gestured at him with her spoon. "That, sir, was a personal detail which means I get to ask how you learned to speak Arabic and Greek so well."

"You aren't going to believe the coincidence. My parents were also archeologists. I grew up on digs too until they died when I was a little younger than you were when you lost your grandmother."

Rain shocked him by responding to his statement by reaching up and clutching the small gold cross that hung at her neck. She took his reaction in and said, ruefully, "Being a hooker's daughter doesn't bother you, but you've got problems with me being a Catholic?"

Daniel bit his lip. "I'm an agnostic at best. Your religious faith doesn't bother me as long as you don't try to convert me. I do have to ask why you reacted like that."

"You're going to regret asking me but here goes. I just had a toxic break up with a guy I thought I loved. One of the main things wrong with the relationship was that we had nothing in common and he resented the fact that I was smarter than he was -- I guess when I was putting warning labels all over myself I should have told you that I was technically on the rebound. Anyway, here's where the cross grabbing part comes in. I didn't start to heal until I spent an hour in a church praying that God would help me meet a guy who could satisfy me mentally, someone, oh, spookily like you." She looked pointedly at his feet. "Hiking boots? That's too bad. You could run a lot better in Nikes."

Daniel took her hand in both of his. "Rain, I'm not running." She rose slightly, leaned over, and kissed him. He had to take one hand back to finish his coffee but the other stayed possessively over hers. They left hand in hand with an afternoon and a whole new relationship to explore spread out before them.

Chapter 2

They stopped at a Gas 'n Gro when Rain noticed that she was running on fumes. Since she was there anyway, she decided she needed some milk. Daniel went into the convenience store with her and, while she was paying for the milk and gas, he indulged his secret fascination with the National Inquirer, something he could never bring himself to actually purchase. Suddenly he heard the sound of something hitting the floor. Several small brightly colored balls came rolling past him. He whirled around and saw a man in a ski mask holding a gun on Rain. An empty cardboard box, printed with the words "Happy Bouncy Balls," was on its side on the floor. From his angle, he could see that the clerk was cowering behind the counter. Rain was babbling in Greek, doing a very good imitation of a woman scared out of her mind. However, what she was babbling was "If I throw the milk at him, I think I can surprise him and knock his aim off. What do you think?"

Daniel took a step forward and said with a heavy Greek accent, "My wife she no speak English good like me."

The robber said, "Shut her the f__k up or I'll have to."

Daniel said, in Greek, "That's too risky."

Rain said, still in Greek, "If I fall on my knees, I might be able to come up under his arm, depending on the angle he's holding the gun."

The robber said, sounding increasingly agitated, "I TOLD you to shut her the f__k up."

"Please. She is stupid woman. Be patient," Daniel pleaded.

Rain fell to her knees, her hands clasped together and raised as if in prayer. She was sobbing silently and real tears were running down her face. The robber appeared indecisive about where to point the gun.

"All the time she is praying. I should leave her in Greece," Daniel said, trying to sound put upon.

The robber's attention was now directed at Daniel, his gun wavering between the two of them. The sobbing woman groveling in front of him must have looked less and less a threat. Rain exploded upwards while Daniel hit the floor. The gun flew out of the robber's hand, arched across the store, hit the floor, and fired a shot that went into the ceiling. Before Rain could get a hold on the bandit, he had drawn a knife. She rolled away from him and in the next moment Daniel kicked the knife out of his hand and delivered a blow that knocked him down. The clerk emerged from the counter, ashen faced and trembling. "Hot damn," he said and immediately called 911. Daniel flipped the robber over on his stomach and subdued him with his arm behind his back while he twisted ineffectually.

Rain foraged through the store's shelves and returned with two extension chords. She sat down on the robber's legs next to Daniel and handed him an extension chord. Daniel tied up his hands and Rain his feet. Daniel then experienced the kiss that would allow him to win at the party game, "What's the most unusual place you ever kissed a woman?" Surely, "sitting next to her on a robber's ass" had to win hands down.

"Stupid woman?" she asked, teasingly.

"I also said you were my wife. Clearly it was all a pack of lies," he defended himself. "You were incredible."

"So were you." Two police officers came running into the store to find them kissing once again, still sitting on the robber. One cleared his throat and then they both cleared their throats. Daniel and Rain broke apart. The robber snarled, "Get them off me. I got the right not to have nobody sitting on me."

Daniel ignored him and said, "I suppose you want us to get off the suspect?"

One of the cops suppressed a chuckle. He offered Daniel a hand and then took his statement. The other cop helped Rain up and got hers. Daniel was devoutly grateful for the separate interrogations, since he had to give his last name. He realized that he had to correct the mistake Rain had made about who he was before she heard it from someone else.

Rain was giggling on the way back to the car. "That cop was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He had the hardest time understanding that I really wasn't your wife."

When she put the key in the ignition, he put his hand over hers. "Wait a minute, Rain. There's something I need to clear up. Last night, I wasn't wearing my own jacket. I was upset when I left the Mountain and walked off with someone else's without noticing. I'm not Colonel Dalton."

She looked at him in mock horror. "Just tell me the someone you really are, considering the rules about fraternization, isn't an enlisted man?"

"No."

"Your name really isn't Landry."

"Nothing like that."

She widened her eyes even further, her fake horror now at a comic apex, "Oh God, are you in another branch of the service? Please tell me you're not a ... Marine!"

He was laughing now. "No."

"Then I can't see how it would matter. So who are you, oh rose who would smell as sweet by any other name?"

"My last name is Jackson."

"That would make you Daniel Jackson." A look of dawning comprehension cross her face, "Dr. Daniel Jackson? The Dr. Daniel Jackson?"

He said, slightly embarrassed, "Yes."

Her mouth fell open and he said, "I never thought a fish could look hot before." He leaned over and captured her mouth and kissed her.

That led to another kiss, when there was a rapping on the window. They separated and Rain put the window part way down. One of the cops from the convenience store said, "You two are genuine heroes, but you still shouldn't be making out parked here in broad daylight."

"Thank you, officer. We'll remember that," Rain said meekly.

He looked at Daniel in admiration. "I bet you're a damn Energizer bunny," and then stepped back, shaking his head and watching them, hands on his hips.

Daniel gasped, "Please get me out of here," and Rain immediately started the car. Daniel lasted about half a block before he exploded with laughter. Rain started laughing and quickly pulled over. She collapsed across the steering wheel, laughing harder and harder.

"Are you?" she got out.

"Am I what?"

"An Energizer Bunny?"

He waggled his eyebrows at her. "I'll have to let you be the judge."

They finally got to the bar and Daniel discovered that he didn't have his glasses. She seemed to find that really endearing and drove him back to his place to get them without complaint. There was one unpleasant moment when he got back into the car at his condo with his glasses. She said, quite troubled, "In the bar last night, you were talking about how you should have made a move on me before. Who did you think you were talking to?"

He sighed. "You know. You're just looking for confirmation."

"You caught me. Since I came to the Mountain, at least five people have told me I look a lot like Colonel Carter. I had heard it before at the Academy. I think the last name being the same adds to people seeing the resemblance. When we've kissed, have you been pretending I was her?"

He slipped a hand under her chin and gently lifted her face so she was looking into his eyes. "You look less like her to me by the minute. The only commonality other than the physical one is that you're probably as brilliant as she is. It stops there. You know how sometimes you tell a father that his kids look alike and he'll be surprised because to him, knowing them like he does, they look quite different?" She nodded. "It's like that."

At last they arrived at the bar parking lot for the second time. Daniel reluctantly got out of her warm car and reclaimed his own to follow her to her apartment in his. It was early evening and they decided to go get some Egyptian food for dinner. He was definitely in withdrawal, alone in his car. It was as if some angel had dropped down from heaven and allowed him to design his own Sam without several of the things that hadn't worked out to well for him about the old one.

When he pulled up next to her in the apartment complex, she asked, "You want to come up and see my place?"

He followed her up the stairs, watching her cute little backside in the soft jeans, molded through long use to her athletic form, and thought, Take this slow, Daniel. This is just too good to be true. He took the glasses off again. The look was working for him with her and he was afraid of jinxing anything about this amazing day.

Her apartment was a wonderful eclectic hodgepodge. There were books everywhere on a wide variety of topics. There was a huge ant farm and an aquarium and in between them, a bookshelf with a collection of Star Trek books, DVDs, and memorabilia. She came to stand beside him as he was leaning close to the ant farm. The lack of glasses was making it difficult to follow their movements. She slipped a hand into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to put your hand on a man's ass unless you were ready for what might happen?" he said huskily. He turned toward her and slid his hands down her back to rest on her sweet backside. He pulled her against him and kissed her slowly and expertly while working his hands.

She moaned, planted her hands on his chest, and pushed away slightly. "I shouldn't have done that. It's just, well, has anyone ever told you how wonderful you look leaning over? Damn I'd better tell you this fast before I do anything else stupid. I should have told you before now. God I am such an idiot."

"You're married? You've had a sex change operation? What?" Daniel asked, impatient for her to shut up and resume kissing him.

"Nothing like that. It's just, well, I don't want to end up like my mother. The only way to be sure is to wait for marriage. I'm obviously not adverse to making out, but I don't do sex." She screwed up her face and squeezed her eyes shut like someone expecting to be punched.

He laughed and dropped kisses on her eyelids. "I'm not upset with you, really. I don't do casual sex although my standards aren't quite as high as yours. I'm fine with it. I'd like to know the boundaries, that's all."

"You are unbelievable!" she exclaimed. "Why aren't you married and totally off limits with some super jealous wife who knows that every woman out there would like some of what she's got."

"You're the best thing that's happened to my ego in years," he said softly. "I'd like to resume the kissing part now if that's all right with you."

Monday, Daniel sat at his desk, grinning like an idiot. His eyes were unfocused. Although the door was directly in his line of sight, he didn't really see it. A throat clearing intruded into his awareness. He squeezed his eyes together momentarily and opened them to see Sam.

"Daniel, are you okay?" she asked. She didn't sound concerned as much as fishing for information. Surely no one could think anyone who looked as sappy as he did was in a bad place.

"I am quite okay. Some would say I am spectacular," he said, in code to himself. Rain had told him over the weekend in so many different ways that he was wonderful that he almost believed it.

"Oookay. Look, I've just been visited by Rumor Rita."

Rumor Rita was renowned for being the one person who would tell you what people were saying about you. She would come and sit in your office, look at you sympathetically, and reluctantly tell you, for your own good, about the gossip on your private life. "Oh Sam, are they are already talking about you and Jack? That must be uncomfortable."

She looked slightly taken aback. "No." She hesitated. "This is kind of awkward actually. Maybe I should have just let Rita visit you too."

"What?"

"The rumor is about you and me."

"Huh!?!" Daniel said. Crap, he thought. Things are going so well with Rain and I. If she hears something about Sam and me, it could make real trouble.

"Is the thought of people linking us together THAT distasteful?" Sam asked. She sounded a little insulted.

He picked up the cooling cup of coffee next to him and took a swallow to give himself some time. "It would make trouble for you with Jack, right?" Daniel said, finally. "What's the rumor?"

He was talking another drink when she said, "Supposedly a whole bunch of people who went out to dinner together to celebrate Freddie Gardner's promotion to Captain saw you and I making out, leaning up against a car in the parking lot of that Egyptian restaurant over on 10th."

Daniel spewed coffee and knocked over the cup. She leaped back. There was a lot of clean up to do that kept them occupied for a few minutes afterwards.

"I suppose it was just two people who looked a lot like us," Sam said when they were finally able to resume their conversation. "You're not even dating anyone and certainly wouldn't be acting all passionate with somebody in a semi-public place.

"Really," he said. He was surprised that he was less hurt than annoyed by her consistent underestimation of him.

She seemed to sense that the statement had come out wrong. "I didn't mean you couldn't get a date. I just thought you were sort of past the woman chasing phase." She hadn't helped much.

"Unlike Jack who at, what, fifty-five? fifty-six? is still high on some sort of natural Viagra and probably just goes and goes, rather like the Energizer Bunny?"

"That's uncalled for," Sam said.

"I'll tell you what I'll do for you, Carter," Daniel said. "My girl friend and I will find an opportunity to make our relationship clear under circumstances where no one will think she's you."

"Did you say your girl friend?" Sam said doubtfully.

"Yup," Daniel said. "If you will excuse me, I've got some things to do before the meeting at 1100." He pulled one of the papers on his desk toward him and began reading. Sam was left with no option other than leaving.

Late that afternoon, he negotiated the level two down from his looking for the office Rain shared with three other captains. She gave him a huge smile when he walked in. The other two officers in the room exchanged meaningful looks. One stood up and said, "Hey Perez, let's go get some coffee."

Rain smiled gratefully at the two as they left. Perez winked and pulled the door almost shut behind him. "I heard you and Colonel Carter were making out at the Egyptian restaurant last night. You do get around," Rain said.

"She came to see me about it this morning."

"I guess she was concerned that she couldn't remember doing it. At her age, you do start getting forgetful," Rain said.

"Be careful, honey, I'm as old as she is," he laughed. "She really pissed me off about it, to tell you the truth. I said something stupid like I'd find a way to make sure everyone knew who my girl friend really was. Then I realized we never discussed whether to go public with this or not."

"Did you really mean what you said to Colonel Carter or were you just mouthing off? I mean do you really want to go public?

"Do you?"

The door swung open and an officer walked in with a newspaper. He looked stunned when he saw Daniel perched on Rain's desk. He looked down at the paper and back at the two of them and finally said, "You got to see this."

"What Jaworski?" Rain asked.

Jaworski stuck the paper out at them wordlessly. Daniel took it and leaned over to share it with Rain. It was the local section of the evening's newspaper. There was a large picture of Rain and Daniel kissing, seated on the robber, evidently captured by the security cameras in the convenience store. The caption said, "Heroic lovebirds." The story identified them both by name.

Rain said, "Oh my, that's one for the scrapbook." She slanted a look at Daniel to gauge his reaction.

He shook his head. "Let's hope this doesn't get picked up by the national news services. I can see the National Inquirer's spin on this now. "Loony archeologist says space aliens helped him capture robber with girl friend." Rain and Daniel stared at each other for a moment, contemplating that outcome, and then burst into laughter. Jaworski joined in, somewhat uncertainly.

When they all had calmed down, Rain asked, "Is everyone talking about this?"

He nodded. "I just came from the cafeteria. This has completely eclipsed both the upcoming visit by the Secretary of State and the improved zat weapons found on P3H79. I had to pay a sergeant $20 for the paper. They are in huge demand."

"We can avoid everyone and lay low OR..." Daniel said.

"Go face it head on immediately and show that we don't care," she finished. Rain stood up and came around her desk. "After you," she said. They headed to the cafeteria with Jaworski right behind them.

Outside the cafeteria door, Daniel stopped, looked at Rain, and asked, "Are you ready?" She nodded and they walked in.

Chapter 3

An immediate hush fell over the roughly fifty people in the large cafeteria dining room. Then Perez jumped to his feet and called out, "Let's hear it for the heroic lovebirds!"

There was a huge round of applause and catcalls. Daniel and Rain both bowed and waved and went over to get coffee. The room quieted down just a hair above the normal buzz. A very amused sounding voice spoke from behind them. "I'm thinking I may be able to sell my copies of your mission reports, for the signatures you know."

They turned around to see Cam Mitchell, leaning against the counter and looking very entertained. Daniel grinned. "Hey, bring in copies and Rain and I'll sign them for you, right Rain?"

"Within limits. If I sign too many, my hand will freeze up and I'll have trouble firing my rifle," Rain chuckled.

Daniel remembered his manners, "Colonel Cameron Mitchell, this is Captain Rain Carter. Captain Carter, Colonel Mitchell."

Rain saluted and Cam acknowledged it. "Good to meet you Captain. Any relationship to Colonel Samantha Carter?"

"I don't know anything about my dad's family, sir," Rain said. "If there is, I don't know about it."

"There is a certain resemblance," Cam said.

"That's what they tell me," she said. "I haven't actually seen Colonel Carter yet."

"Here's your opportunity," he said. He inclined his head toward the door. Sam and Teal'c had just entered. The room got quiet again as Teal'c headed straight for Daniel and Cam and Sam trailed along behind. Seeing the two women together was remarkable. Rain merely looked very interested. After all, she had been forewarned. Sam on the other hand looked slightly ill and definitely in shock.

Cam took the responsibility for the introductions this time and Daniel just watched. "This is really amazing," Sam said. "I have to wonder if we're related. What's your father's name?"

"Jacob Carter," Rain said.

They all gaped at her. Finally Sam found her voice, "As in my father, General Jacob Carter?"

"No, no. My dad is allergic to the military. I initially applied to the Air Force Academy to annoy him."

Sam said, "Would his full name by any chance be Jacob Mark Carter?"

"Right." Rain looked excited. "How are you related to him?"

"That's my brother's name." She looked at Teal'c and Daniel who were puzzled. "Mark always went by his middle name when we were kids to avoid confusion with dad. After he left home, he started using his first name." Sam asked, "It's not that unusual a name. Let's make sure who we're talking about. About how old is he? Where does he live?"

Rain said, "He's in his early 40's and, at least as of six years ago, he lived in Denver."

Sam glared at Rain. "Just what are you about?" Hostility was plain in her voice. "My brother has two kids. Neither of them are named Rain or are anywhere near as old as you are. This is a creative way to get Daniel's attention, but I don't think it is at all amusing."

Rain's expression went blank. Her voice got very cold and she straightened to attention. Daniel remembered being a foster child, hoping more than once that he had found a family, only to have the bottom drop out on him. "Begging the Colonel's pardon, but the Colonel's brother got my mother pregnant when he was 16. He took no responsibility for me at the time. After she was out of the picture, the state located him. He adopted me, but his wife didn't think I'd be a good influence on my half-siblings so I was shipped off to a boarding school. Under the circumstances, he apparently chose not to mention it to anyone in the family. May I be dismissed?"

Sam stood frozen and Cam gave Rain a nod of dismissal. She turned and walked toward the door. Daniel paused long enough to look at Sam with absolute loathing. He felt Rain's pain and his own. "Nice, really nice," he spat out. Mentally he finished the sentence, 'You bitch,' but was able to choke the words back. He turned and quickly went after Rain. He didn't know what the effect of it all was on Sam but he didn't care. He was focused on Rain.

Daniel caught up with Rain in the hall. "Rain," he said softly. "I'm sorry."

She looked at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Don't worry about it."

He spotted an empty conference room and pulled her into it, shutting the door. He put his arms around her. "Sam's really a great person. That was out of character for her. Maybe it was because she still hasn't dealt with her father – your grandfather – dying the way he did a year ago."

"Or," she said, a little spitefully, "maybe she was jealous. I am sort of the before to her after. There is a little mileage on her. Not to mention the fact that I've got your attention."

He laughed bitterly. "She's never seen me as a man. That didn't enter in."

Rain looked at him dubiously. "Either she's an idiot or she's lying to you then."

He cupped her face in his hands. "I know I shouldn't say what I'm about to say. My brain is telling me we're both at a vulnerable place, that your resemblance to Sam has to be affecting me somehow, that my, well, reputation and past history has to be messing with your head." He stopped and brushed her lips with his. "On the other hand, my heart is telling me that I'm falling in love with you. That I want to fight dragons for you and tilt at windmills and protect you from saber tooth tigers."

She was gazing at him mistily. She dashed away a tear and said, "I've had a long string of failed relationships with the wrong men. If you're going to bail on me, please do it now. I can't handle caring any more than I already do and then losing you.

They kissed then. It was a tender, cherishing kiss with a promise behind it on both their parts. Afterwards, he said, "Come over to my place tonight. Let me cook us something and we can watch a DVD."

That evening, he was busy in his kitchen with Rain providing deliberately unhelpful supervision, perched on a stool at the counter separating it from the great room, when the phone rang the first time. Rain picked it up, said, "Hello," and listened. She covered the mouthpiece and said, "Do you want to talk to a radio station?"

He shook his head. "Dr. Jackson is busy." She was apparently interrupted. "Yes, this is Captain Carter. I'm afraid I can't talk to you either."

She hung up and resumed her kibitzing about his pasta cooking technique when the phone rang again. Again Rain answered. This time she didn't bother to consult Daniel. "Dr. Jackson is not available for interviews. Never mind who I am. Good evening."

He raised an eyebrow. "A television station." Daniel wiped his hands on a towel and leaned over to remove the jack from the back of the phone.

Fifteen minutes later, someone rang the doorbell and then knocked on the door. Daniel and Rain exchanged a long look. "You expecting anyone?" she asked.

He went quickly to a window that allowed him to look out at the front door and the street. "I do believe it's the television station." He quickly locked the front door, jerked the curtains shut, and returned to her.

They managed to ignore the insistent pounding on the front door and gradually relaxed with an excellent meal and then watched a Star Trek movie with the sound turned down and a constant running commentary between the two of them. She fell asleep against him during a second DVD and he picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, removed her shoes, and settled her comfortably. He returned to the great room and slept fitfully on the sofa, fretting about the implications of the play the convenience store story was getting.

In the morning, he was awakened by a gentle kiss on the cheek. "It's 0700. I imagine you need to be on the base by 0800? I've got until 1000 today so I made breakfast."

He stirred groggily. "Yeah, thanks. Do I smell coffee?" he asked hopefully.

"Right here," she said and produced a mug.

"Could you be any more perfect?" he asked.

She smiled, shrugged, and turned on the television to catch the morning news. He was just reentering the room, dressed and shaved, when something on the screen caught his eye. "Rain, Rain," he said insistently, drawing her attention from pouring herself another cup of coffee. He turned up the sound.

"The Heroic Lovebirds, as they have been dubbed, have captured the fascination of America," the morning show personality was saying. "The story is inspiring, they are both very photogenic, and blogs have given the story new life because of Dr. Jackson's reputation. Jackson has been featured prominently recently on several blogs dealing with alien abduction. His work in the early 90's claiming that aliens built the pyramids in Egypt was derided by other archeologists and he hasn't published since then. A blogger interested in the subject discovered his work about a month ago and it has been getting increasing play. These Web sites regard the fact that he has been working on a classified project for the government ever since he quit publishing as evidence that he was right. There is a great deal of speculation about his evident disappearances for a year in 1996 and again in 2002."

Her co-host said, "The government has refused to comment on the project in which Dr. Jackson is involved. It'll be interesting to see how this story plays out." They then turned to a discussion of psychiatry for dogs.

Daniel switched off the TV. "I'm on the Web?" He went hurriedly into the bedroom he used as a home office and brought up his personal laptop, Rain right behind him. He Googled himself and sifted in horror through Web site after Web site.

In addition to direct discussion of his scholarly work, there were a few old photos of him and a couple of candid type recent shots, taken on the street, that made him think someone had found his address and had been watching him. There was also one Web site where there was actually a discussion by multiple women about how cute he was.

"You didn't know?"

"Honest to God, Rain. I usually have very little idea of what's going on here on Earth. It isn't that interesting. On top of that, I've been off world most of the past month."

"My boy friend is being panted after by women I haven't even met. Look at this one," she indicated the screen. "She wants to have your baby. I don't really like that."

Moments later, Mitchell called to tell him they were going off world on an extended mission to keep him out of circulation while the media hype cooled. Rain looked thoughtful and checked her answering machine. She had a similar call from her CO. She left hurriedly to go back to her apartment earlier than she had thought she needed to. When she opened the door, they were treated to the sight of another television station's van pulling up. Daniel groaned and hoped with everything in him that a couple of weeks would be enough for this story to be supplanted by another.

Immediately after arriving at the Mountain, they were both called into a meeting with General Landry, Cam Mitchell, Rain's commanding officer, and an officer from the Air Force's public relations staff. It was impossible to fault either of them for their action in the convenience store or their relationship and no one tried. The topic of the meeting was how to answer press inquiries on the incident until the next new flavor of the month drove it from public attention. The press officer did allow that they had been monitoring the recent interest in Daniel on the Web.

He informed them that the Air Force would simply state that it had no knowledge of, or interest in, Daniel's archeological credentials or research. He was employed, and had been employed, as a linguist and had performed exceptionally in that function. In addition to refusing to discuss his job at all on the grounds that it was classified, Daniel was to disavow any interest in archeology and say that he had not been active in that field since going to work for the Air Force. If asked, he would say he had no comment on his earlier conclusions as he had not revisited them in light of current research.

Daniel felt dismayed by what was being asked of him and it showed on his face. The press officer had the good grace to say, "The Air Force regrets asking this of you. When the Stargate is revealed, as it ultimately will have to be, all your work will be vindicated at that time."

Landry said, "Forget regrets. The Air Force apologizes that it has to ask this of a man who has been a genuine hero in the service of his country and his planet."

The press officer hastened to say, "Of course."

In the end Daniel acquiesced, having no other choice. Rain simply was reminded that everything about her job was classified.

After they walked out of the office, Daniel said, "I don't know if I can handle being separated from you right after I've found you.

"I love being with you, but this has all been a little fast. I feel just a little crowded," she said. "Separation will be a good way to confirm that this is real, to understand how we really feel."

Daniel felt an icy wave of panic wash over him and thought, just as long as it's not a good way for you to realize that I'm a lot older, come with tons of baggage, and you could do better.

Chapter 4

Sam stood in the cafeteria, watching Daniel follow Rain out. She was vibrating with controlled rage, most of it directed at Daniel, not the young blond interloper. He was supposed to be her best friend and he had chosen a stranger over her. It particularly stung because she had been so excited to see him and had been trying to connect with him all day, just missing him. Most of her flight back from Washington the day before had been spent rehearsing all the things she had wanted to talk with him about. That's what weekends with Jack did. The entire time they were together, she couldn't talk about her work, except superficially, and she couldn't share things that she read or indulge in scientific speculation on the world around her. She always woke up Sunday morning, intellectually starved. She was sometimes relieved to leave Sunday afternoon. It was such a dismaying reaction that she usually pushed it down deep and seldom acknowledged it. This past Sunday, the desire to leave had been impossible to ignore. She had literally fled because of the discussion she had had with Jack, the discussion she wanted to talk over with her sympathetic friend, Daniel.

Sam had said, "Cassie called me last week. She's going to go ahead with the semester abroad next semester. She was hinting that we should have the wedding before she went so she wouldn't have to fly back," Her attention was divided between her words and a hunt for spicy brown mustard in Jack's refrigerator.

"The wedding?" Jack had said. "As in our wedding?"

"Right." She had begun to conclude that the dried up jar of French's garden variety mustard she'd already unearthed was it for his supply of the condiment.

"Sam, look at me." She had obediently closed the refrigerator door and turned. "I don't remember any discussion about our getting married except in the sense of someday at some distant unspecified point."

She had had a sinking feeling, but had clung to the hope that it was simply the need to get on the same page. "Just a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about how I have maybe a couple more years to reasonably expect to be able to have kids. You didn't say anything."

He hadn't said anything once again for a long moment. "Look, Sam, I don't really want to have kids of my own. I'm past that point in life and I already had a kid and lost him. We can borrow our friends' kids for an afternoon, take them on outings, be some kid's favorite honorary aunt and uncle. Having our own just isn't realistic. Maybe I didn't say anything a couple of weeks ago. I honestly don't remember the conversation. Was the TV on or anything when you were talking to me? Maybe I wasn't really listening."

She had let it go. Jack had been so casual about the whole thing that she hadn't known where to start. Daniel was such a good listener. She had so looked forward to his encouragement and instead he was running out of the cafeteria on the heels of some little liar.

Cam said, very quietly, but with steel under his words, "You should call your brother. Daniel believes Captain Carter. I don't want to take our team out with this hanging over us."

She bristled and looked at Mitchell, whom she regarded as only nominally her commanding officer. "Yes, Colonel, I'll have to do that." He raised his eyebrows at her tone which had been unreasonably snippy. She decided against apologizing and made curt farewells.

When she returned to her office, she decided to investigate Rain Carter. Between her personal connections and the information available to her at her clearance level, she was able to learn that Rain had an exemplary, unblemished military record. She had been promoted to first lieutenant immediately after the required 24 months at second lieutenant and to captain as soon as permissible after three years at first lieutenant. Her SG unit had been formed to conduct extended liaisons with governments and particularly the military on other worlds. Rain had relevant experience through assignments at various embassies on Earth and work with other military organizations. She was fluent in Greek, Arabic, Russian, Swahili, and all the Romance languages, except for Romanian, and had some facility in a dozen. Sam called three different faculty members at the Academy with whom she had maintained some contact. She learned from the first two that Rain had graduated near the top of her class and hit pay dirt with the third, a man who had actually had Rain in class.

"I wondered at the time, given the last name and the resemblance, if you were related and here you are calling me," the anthropologist said, happy to have his hypothesis confirmed.

"Actually, I don't know that we are related, but she's stationed with me now and my curiosity is really piqued."

"I'd be glad to tell you about her, but you have to promise me you'll let me know if it turns out she is a relative. Kinship patterns fascinate me," he demanded, in mock seriousness.

Sam grimaced. If this woman was her niece, she wasn't sure she was going to want to put out an all points bulletin. Her own behavior so far would look extremely ungracious. She had a sneaking suspicion that it was ungracious even if Rain wasn't related to her, but she was trying not to think about it. "Sure," she said.

"Well, it's all good. She is an engaging young woman, open and friendly, with an excellent sense of humor. She was a brilliant student, but also socially very adept. She's one of those people who never knew a stranger."

Sam thanked him and went home feeling extremely uneasy. Rain sounded like a better fit to Daniel as a friend than she was and she didn't like that at all. Her anger at Daniel had cooled and she fretted about how this young woman had pulled him in. She worried at what Rain's motivation might have been to go after a middle-aged academic type on a base full of sexy, macho officers close to her own age. Daniel was going to be hurt; Sam was sure of it.

The physical resemblance coupled with the last name was amazing, but stranger things had happened. Maybe they were third or fourth cousins and both throwbacks to a shared multi-great grandparent. Her father had not been close to his extended family and she had no idea what relatives she had lurking out there in the woodwork. It was possible. She stubbornly resisted the notion that Rain could be telling the truth, but Cam had requested that she call Mark. Just to say that she had, she tried to call him first thing. She got Julie instead.

"Mark isn't here. Why do you want to talk to him? Is something wrong?" her sister-in-law asked.

"We haven't spoken in awhile. I wanted to touch base."

"It will probably be late before he gets in," Julie said, her words inoffensive, but the tone unwelcoming as always.

"Still, could you please have him call me tonight?"

"I don't understand why that's necessary if there's no particular reason."

"Julie, I'm very likely to go out of town on an extended assignment any day now. Please have him call me."

"I'll give him the message," Julie said, huffily.

Sam looked at the phone balefully after hanging up. She knew from past experience that when she did eventually talk to Mark, it wouldn't be tonight. Julie would manage the message in such a way that Mark would not receive it immediately, but no blame could attach to Julie. If Sam called back later this evening, Julie would answer the phone, no matter what. Sam quite honestly didn't know how Mark could tolerate her possessiveness.

The next day, Sam was not having a good morning. Despite being practically certain that Julie would sabotage the message to Mark, she had stayed up late, hoping to hear from him. Feeling little rested, she had been greeted, over her morning coffee, with television footage of Daniel kissing a younger version of herself. She felt oddly cheated. It was as if she had kissed Daniel, but hadn't had an opportunity to enjoy it. She was surprised at herself for entertaining the thought. Wouldn't kissing Daniel be like kissing Mark? What was to enjoy?

Just as she was set to leave home, she got a call from Mitchell. "We've shuffled things and we're going out on a two to three week mission, leaving this afternoon. Did you talk to your brother?"

"Couldn't get him."

"Really," Mitchell said. Sam thought she detected the slightest doubt in his voice that she had given it an honest try and it annoyed her considerably.

"Yes, really."

"I guess the confirmation of the relationship will have to be put off awhile then," he said.

"Or the confirmation of the lack of relationship," Sam shot back.

Immediately after hanging up with Cam, Jack called. "Interesting news about our archeologist. His phone is busy. What gives?"

"He's infatuated with the young captain from the convenience store. Get this. She's claiming to be my niece."

"Claiming? She isn't?"

"I don't see how. Jack, I'm really worried about Daniel. Why in earth would some young woman make a play for him unless she was up to no good?"

"I can't believe that I, a man, am having to tell you this, but an awful lot of women seem to find Dr. Daniel Jackson very, very attractive. Of course, I've spoiled you for other men," Jack teased, "so maybe you don't see it."

On the way into the base, she had attacked the problem from another angle. What was Daniel's interest in Rain? Wouldn't the resemblance to Sam invoke the same brother-sister creepiness that had occurred to her earlier? She thought back to her conversation with him when she told him about her relationship with Jack. He had been clearly upset. Maybe she had misinterpreted his reaction. She had attributed it to protectiveness and concern that there would be some real problems for Jack and Sam. What if Daniel didn't see her in a sisterly way and was jealous? Was she honest with herself when she said she didn't find him sexy or attractive?

Once they were off world, it was clear Daniel hated to think that Rain would be out of reach for three weeks, give or take. He drove Sam, Teal'c, and Mitchell crazy, fretting about her out loud, or staring off into space, worrying about her silently. Cam actually asked Landry to include a status on SG-20 in their daily communiqués through the gate. Landry, perhaps feeling guilty about the way Daniel was going to be forced to tacitly repudiate his own work to the public, complied without comment.

For the first week of the mission, Daniel and Sam didn't speak directly to each other if it could be avoided. Finally, she sought him out. "Daniel, this is awful. Is there anything we can do to clear the air?"

Daniel shrugged. "It's between the two of you," he responded, poking at the fire with a stick and not making eye contact.

"You seemed as upset as she was," Sam observed.

"I know how it feels, Sam, to think you've found a family and then be rejected. I don't trust myself around your brother right now. You don't treat a child like that. Although I'll give him credit for providing a school for her. My grandfather just left me to the mercies of the foster care system."

"Maybe you're confusing pity or protectiveness with love," she said. She paused then resumed speaking slowly and awkwardly, "Daniel, she looks so much like me. You seemed really upset when I told you about Jack. I've been wondering if maybe you have some feelings for me I didn't realize and, well..." Her voice died away and she studied her hands.

"Oh really? There's nothing wrong with your ego, is there?" he observed curtly. "The resemblance caught my attention at first. How could it not? But she is absolutely nothing like you. The differences are so striking that she really doesn't look that much like you to me any more. Just to name a few things: She's gifted with languages and grew up on archeological digs like I did. Archeology, anthropology, and linguistics fascinate her and she knows quite a bit about them. She loves to listen to me talk and doesn't cut me off or dismiss my ideas in front of other people. She is totally honest with herself and me. She wants a guy who is focused on a life of the mind. She sees me as a man instead of some sort of girl friend to whom you describe your lust for mutual acquaintances. She thinks I'm hot." He laughed. "Do I need to go on?"

Sam shook her head. She started to say something, but stopped and went to find Teal'c. Later, she lay in her sleeping bag and stewed. She had to do something to get Daniel to come to his senses and out of the clutches of this adventuress. She was extremely annoyed over his implication from the comparison to Rain that she, Sam, wasn't honest with herself. A small voice in her head reminded her of the difficulty she was having facing the problems that had surfaced with Jack, understanding the depths of her unwillingness to consider Rain as her niece, or considering a relationship between Rain and Daniel. She kept telling that little voice to shut up.

About 2:00 AM, she decided to use shock therapy on Daniel. She crept into his tent and leaned over him. She ran her knuckles down his check and then slid her hand down his side to pull him close as she stretched out against him. She brushed his lips with hers and teased his mouth apart. Then she kissed him, deeply and intimately. He didn't fully wake up, but he immediately began to kiss her back. She was stunned by how good he was at it. She'd intended to wow him with a kiss, but hadn't expected to be wowed herself. He pulled her even closer and rolled over on top of her. She went white hot.

A lighting strike suddenly lit up the tent interior and a loud roll of thunder followed close behind. Daniel jerked fully awake. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded and rolled off her.

"Daniel, I've thought about this a lot and I'm worried about how you and Rain could get hurt if you're confusing your feelings for me with feelings for her. I thought you needed a standard of comparison."

There was another lightning flash and in that brief moment, she thought he looked wounded. It was quickly dark again and he sounded more derisive than hurt when he said, "That's insane. Sam, that's the sort of stupid idea that someone comes up with in the middle of the night and feels like an idiot about by the next morning."

She was devastated. The kiss had been possibly the best of her entire life and he thought it was crazy, or did he? Maybe he was hurt because she had basically said that she hadn't kissed him because she wanted him, but because she was making a point. "You're telling me you didn't enjoy that, that you didn't feel anything?"

"Of course I enjoyed it. I was half asleep and going on instinct. It proves nothing about Rain and me or you and me for that matter."

"You're not being honest with yourself," she said. She felt even more wounded but unable to quit picking at the wound.

"I'm not being honest with myself? Try this one on. You've wondered about me on some level for a long time, but you couldn't admit it because you had so much of your identity committed to the idea that you were meant for Jack. So you finally came up with some way you could justify kissing me without betraying the whole Jack gestalt. Let me give you a basis of comparison," he said and rolled back on top of her, pinned her hands on either side of her head, and kissed her, expertly, thoroughly, and very, very intimately. Despite the sleeping bag between them, she could feel his hard, muscular body. She didn't want to give him any satisfaction by showing enjoyment, but her body instantly betrayed her. Jack was wonderful, but Daniel was younger and stronger. His beautifully cut lips were lusher and fit her better. He had an uncanny ability to sense exactly how she was reacting and play to her lead.

Then he stopped and moved away and she felt cold. "There's no reason to not tell you the truth at this point," he said. He sounded very remote, very far away. "I've been in love with you since shortly after they took Sha're. I could see how you felt about Jack and I did a damn good job of hiding it. Still, I must have been hoping in some corner of myself that you'd get over it because it killed me when you told me you were with him. Then Rain happened. It's sort of like when something has been hurting physically. It feels SO good just to have it stop. When I'm with her, I'm free of you and it's wonderful. I'm tired of my life being on hold. I want a wife, a home, a family."

They lay in silence listening to the rain beating down on the tent roof. I'm tired of waiting for a husband, a home, and a family myself. Maybe we should form a support group, Sam thought sarcastically.

"I hate to ask you to get wet, but you can't spend the night in my tent," he requested at last. He sounded very tired.

They were off world for another 10 days. They continued to avoid each other, but the undertones were different. Before it was anger and hurt. Now, for Sam, it was hurt, embarrassment, and confusion. She blushed when they made eye contact. When opportunities arose to look at him in a t-sheet molded to his body in the tropical heat, or even once, without a shirt, her mouth was dry. Generally he didn't seem to notice, but once he caught her. She blushed fiery red. His expression was unreadable.

Cam Mitchell asked her, on the next to the last day, "What's going on with you and Jackson?"

"What do you mean?" she said and hoped she sounded innocent.

"You act really weird around each other. At first I thought it was over that scene in the cafeteria – there seemed to be anger and some hurt feelings. Then one night I saw you running back to your tent in the middle of the night in the rain. I thought you went to relieve yourself except that after that the two of you have acted strange."

"I think you are imagining things. I'm sure he told you the same thing."

"He's a civilian, but you're career military. I know you would never lose sight of your duty and your career so far that you'd be in another soldier's tent fraternizing when we were deployed."

"Thank you for your vote of confidence," she answered stiffly, knowing full well that he did believe she had been with Daniel in his tent, fraternizing but was let it go for now.

"But Carter, for your own good, I have got to point out that if you keep covertly watching each other like you wanted to rip each other's clothes off, people are going to assume you broke the rules any way."

"Wait a minute. You think he's watching me like that?" Sam hoped devoutly that the satisfaction that information gave her didn't betray itself in her voice.

"I know he is," Mitchell said. "We got a good team here. I would suggest that you back off and let him enjoy his hot young thing. You've got your own love life right? The two of you can't be on this team and be together so just quit making things hard for each other."

When they came through the gate, Sam was stunned to see Jack waiting next to General Landry when they came down the ramp. They greeted each other with the appropriate professional distance for an on-duty situation. She wished she had had some sort of advance warning. Without mental preparation, she was afraid that some of the guiltiness she felt showed. Daniel did much better at acting normally, or so it seemed to her.

"What brings you here, Jack?" Daniel asked, as Jack accompanied Sam, Teal'c, Mitchell, and himself to the briefing room.

"You're going to dinner with me tonight Daniel. Some place very public where people can see our friendship and my respect for you."

"That's necessary?" Daniel asked. "This whole convenience store thing has become that ugly?"

"In a word: yes. There are actually congressmen demanding to know why a 'kook' like you is employed by the Air Force. We've been staying with the official line that whatever your reputation was as an archeologist, it was years ago and your credentials as a linguist are impeccable. Unfortunately the lunatic fringe and a respectable minority of fellow travelers have been waving you around like some sort of a banner."

"Maybe I should just go back off world. I could go join SG-20. The world they're working on has some interesting Ancient ruins."

Jack chuckled. "That'd be a real sacrifice, wouldn't it? For now, let's go to dinner. Mitchell, Sam, it's up to you whether you want to make the same public statement or not. Teal'c, I think perhaps you might not be the right person to come along and convey the point that there's nothing alien involved." Teal'c smiled ever so slightly and nodded.

Cam looked a little wounded. "You must have a fairly low opinion of me if you think I'd give that a second thought."

They were looking at Sam. Before she could rouse herself from her stunned state over the whole situation, Daniel quickly said, "There's no reason why any of you have to tarnish your reputations."

"Oh for God's sake, Daniel," Jack snorted. "You're eating with me if I have to take you at gun point."

Sam chimed in belatedly, "What he said."

That night Sam lay in Jack's arms at the small condo he kept locally. She said softly, "That was a wonderful thing you did for Daniel. I don't know how much difference it will make, but sometimes a lot of small gestures come together and turn the tide. I understand the Chairman of the Department of Archeology at the University of Chicago made a statement on the Chicago NBC affiliate last night to the effect that Daniel followed appropriate scientific procedures and presented his arguments accompanied by supporting evidence. You could disagree as a colleague with his conclusions, but it was uncalled for and unprofessional to attack another scientist on a personal level who follows appropriate procedures because you don't agree with his interpretation of the data."

"We need Prince Andrew to announce he's getting married to one of George W's daughters or Oshama Bin Ladin to convert to Catholicism," Jack said. He ran a hand lightly down her body. "Enough about Daniel. Let's quit thinking about him and think about ourselves for awhile."

As he began to kiss her, Sam found herself unable to do as Jack suggested. Jack's kiss and her memory of kissing Daniel tangled in her mind and suddenly she felt utterly unsure of everything.

Chapter 5

Daniel ached to see Rain. He needed the healing balm of her presence to drive Sam once again out of his head. A major curse of his emotional make up was the ability to love two women at the same time. He had decided he was truly in love with Rain, but he was still in love with Sam. He remembered unhappily how bedeviled he'd been, loving Sam while he still loved Sha're.

He rapped on the door jamb of Mitchell's office. Cam was looking intently at the screen of his laptop. He didn't look up, but said, "Hey, Jackson. How are your accommodations at the base working?"

Daniel shrugged. He'd been given one of the guest quarters temporarily. His home was too hard to defend during the media siege. "I don't care much where I sleep. It's okay."

Cam turned the laptop toward Daniel and scrolled through a series of screen captures. They couldn't get to the Internet from inside the Mountain because they were a classified installation. Someone else had done that work on the outside and sent it to Mitchell. "Some other groups who don't care one way or the other about aliens, but believe the government is one huge conspiracy and watch this or that for their hobby have teamed up with your fans. They're pointing out the inordinate number of times Kinsey came here compared to any other military base and the frequent visits by other highly placed government officials and high ranking foreign military officers."

"So, it's not just me any more?"

"Oh, no. Somehow, they've come up with the fact that people go into the Mountain and don't come out for really long time periods. There is the high death rate for personnel stationed on a base in the United States. Several ex-spouses of SG team members-- did you know that there seems to be an unusually high divorce rate for people in the SGC, or rather the Ra Project under its code name? – have commented on how their exes would come home from what was supposedly a day inside a mountain with sunburns, cuts and bruises, and other odd physical conditions. Some talked in their sleep about really weird stuff. There's more. Lots of little details that don't mean much alone, but as it's all getting pieced together, do sound very suspicious."

"Maybe now's the time this all goes public," Daniel said. He hoped so. It had bothered him for some time that the government was hiding something like this from the people who were paying for it.

"Landry's gone to DC. The President's called a meeting to discuss it." Cam closed the laptop most of the way. "That's not why you're here though, right?"

"I was actually serious when I suggested a couple of days ago that I be allowed to go to P4G67 and do some work on those ruins."

"Daniel, your girl friend, who is very publicly your girl friend at this point, is there. You know the rules," Cam responded. He wasn't unsympathetic, but there was no getting around the regulations for something like this.

Daniel leaned back and rubbed his face. "I know. I guess that was pretty lame, but I really want to see her."

"Would it help if you went somewhere else for a couple of days, somewhere Sam wasn't?"

"You're too damn astute about people Mitchell," Daniel said ruefully. He came forward in his chair and leaned one elbow on Cam's desk. "At this point, I'd welcome some of Jack's obliviousness."

"It doesn't take a whole lot of astuteness," Cam said. "Thank God Jack is oblivious about some things. When we were at dinner, I couldn't help but notice the sidelong looks Sam was giving you. You do a bit better."

Daniel picked at a little tear on Cam's desk calendar. Cam moved it out of reach and handed him a Koosh ball. "Let's not dismantle my office," Cam said, laughing a little.

Daniel grimaced and started working the ball. "I've had years of practice hiding how I feel about some things." He looked up at Cam. "I've got a reputation for wearing my feelings on my sleeve, but there are some really deep hurts that I learned to protect a long time ago. That doesn't mean I don't understand them or acknowledge them to myself. One of the things that I love about Rain is that she knows herself so well. She knows what she's feeling, faces up to it, and tells you exactly where you stand. Sam, well, Sam's a mess in that regard. I don't have any patience with it any more."

"Tell me about it," Cam said. Without anything being said, Daniel knew Cam was referring to his problematic relationship with the conflicted Dr. Carolyn Lam.

Daniel considered the offer to go offworld and said, "I think that's actually a good idea. Is SG-20 still not expected back until next Wednesday?"

Cam nodded. "I checked for you this morning. Any ideas about a useful short term assignment?"

Daniel thought about it a moment. "I've consulted with Dr. Mumbaba a couple of times already about what he's doing on P3G789. He sent a question back for me this morning. I could go in person."

Cam said, "I'll grease the skids for you. Why don't you plan on going through at 1100 hours and staying a couple of days unless you hear differently from me?"

"I'm glad you're both here," Sam said, startling them both slightly.

Daniel started to get up. "I was just leaving actually."

"Please wait a minute. You need to hear this." Cam indicated his other visitor's chair, but she remained standing, twisting her hands but not saying anything.

Finally Cam said gently, "We need to hear?????"

"Right. I finally got a hold of my brother, Mark. His wife is a real piece of work. Sometimes I think it would be easier getting through to the president." She closed her eyes for a moment. "I owe Rain an apology. Mark confirmed that she's his daughter. Julie, my sister in law, made such a stink about her when he found out her mother was in prison and Rain was in foster care that he caved in to Julie's demands that Rain not live with them. He's tortured about it. He said he's been trying to contact Rain for years. She returns letters unopened and always has an unlisted phone number. He even came to see her once and she politely told him to go away and shut the door in his face." She hesitated. "You might as well know, Daniel. He saw the news clip about the convenience store and is upset about Rain being involved with you. He thinks you are too old for her."

"After dumping her in a boarding school, he's all protective? Talk about a piece of work!" Daniel said. "You can hardly blame Rain for wanting nothing to do with him." He didn't feel friendly to Sam right now or sympathetic to her distress.

"I can understand why she wouldn't want contact with Mark. I hope she'll give me a second chance though. Let me get to know her." Sam looked imploringly at Daniel. "Will you talk to her?"

Daniel sighed. "Sam, I'm not making any promises. She's been hurt enough and I'm not going to try to talk her into anything." He stood. "If you'll excuse me, I need to get ready for the mission."

Hunkered shoulder deep at the bottom of a shallow excavation pit, Daniel was into the second day of working with John Mumbaba on a very intriguing find. Mumbaba looked like the classic stereotype of an archeologist, like Daniel himself might have looked if there had been no SGC. He was haphazardly dressed in clothes that hung loosely on his wiry frame, his wire rimmed glasses perched at the end of a nose that, like everything else on his leathery face, was eclipsed by his huge bushy beard. The pavement that was painstakingly being uncovered had already been shown to have a small, incised design very close to one of the mammoth designs carved into the Chilean coastal desert. It appeared now that it might contain a second.

A second archeologist, Dr. Lorraine Clark, was working farther along the pit with a soldier. Daniel had no creditability with her at all. She had taken one look at his trendy haircut and buff physical condition and decided he was all flash. "What real scientist had time to look that good?" was her question, voiced in a stage whisper to Mumbaba. The frumpy, dumpy Dr. Clark certainly hadn't expended any energy in that direction. She had commented about how someone "had neglected to put the right set of clothes on the Ken doll archeologist before they sent him through" and expressed surprise that Daniel had been willing to get his hands dirty by actually assisting with working the site.

Daniel sighed thinking that Sam thought he was a sexless academic who couldn't be taken seriously romantically and Dr. Clark thought he was a pretty boy who couldn't be taken seriously as a scientist. The tabloid's latest nickname for him was "Ninja Archeologist" based on the widely circulated still from the video of him with his leg in the follow through of the kick that disarmed the robber and his right arm beginning its swing to knock the fellow out. That wasn't helping his scientific creditability either. He couldn't win for losing.

He heard distant shouts and gunfire. It was an empty world as far as sentient life was concerned and they had seen little in the way of animals larger than a rabbit. Security had loosened up and there wasn't even a guard standing sentry near the pit. The soldier had his P-90 and a side arm and Daniel, in yet another damning detail from the point of view of Dr. Clark, also wore a side arm through force of habit. Daniel stood to try to determine what was happening at the camp located near the Stargate and almost a mile from them.

His com and Sergeant Juarez's clicked on. They both heard, "We got some huge creatures coming at us. They're sort of like sabertooths if sabertooths were plated with armor like armadillos. Maybe 8 or 9. They're very fast. They seem to survive a hit and keep coming. It's hard to penetrate the armor. We got no idea if they're coming your way, but you'd better get a perimeter set up stat."

They all got out of the pit quickly and Juarez indicated with a quick gesture that Daniel and Mumbaba should join him and Dr. Clark. "I figure we get up there," Juarez said pointing to a pile of large stones and other rubble from the ruined structure that had once stood here. It was about 10 feet high less than 100 yards away. "It should be easier to defend."

They ran in that direction hampered by the slower pace that Clark and Mumbaba could maintain. Juarez and Daniel divided the environs and kept it scanned. Juarez asked Daniel to go up first and help pull the scientists up while he pushed from below. Clark was safe on top and Mumbaba on his way up when Daniel saw 5 of the things heading toward them at a hard to believe rate of speed. Then Mumbaba slipped. They lost their margin of safety, starting over with him. The cats were closing as Juarez started up.

Daniel began firing. He hit the lead cat multiple times and it kept coming. It was literally three feet from Juarez when it staggered and fell. The other cats had now caught up, but the sergeant was out of immediate danger, squatting next to Daniel. Juarez had the P-90 but Clark screamed and clutched at him when a cat scrambled part way up and knocked it out of his hands. It skittered down the mound. Daniel and Juarez were now reduced to side arms only.

They held the animals at bay and two more eventually dropped. The cats became more and more manic and began to leap against the rubble and stones, despite the repeated hits from the sidearms. One in an incredible dying leap scrambled part way up and lashed out with a wicked claw. Daniel shoved Clark behind him as Juarez shot it point blank between the eyes. As it fell, it raked Daniel's arm as he shielded the woman.

Only two cats were left and they fled when SG-17, coming to their rescue, got within firing range. Dr. Clark was blubbering in Daniel's arms and thanking him incoherently for saving her life. Daniel's arm was bleeding profusely, but she seemed to be oblivious to the fact that she was throwing her considerable weight against a wounded man's arm. Juarez none too gently pulled her away and helped her descend to one of the new arrivals. Daniel needed help getting down, his arm throbbing with excruciating pain. The claws had literally cut to the bone in one place although no muscles appeared to be severed. The amount of blood loss was making him light headed and strong hands immediately put something over the wound and applied pressure as soon as he was down from the rock.

When they came back through the gate, they were met by Landry, Dr. Carolyn Lam and a team with a gurney for Daniel, and the rest of SG-1. Daniel wanted to be macho and insist that he could walk to the infirmary, but his legs were like rubber and it was simply beyond him. Sam walked along beside the gurney and took his good hand. He didn't want her to, but he didn't have the energy to stop her. "I'm so sorry," she blurted out.

"Unless you're a cross between an armadillo and a tiger in another identity, you've got nothing to be sorry about," he said in a weak attempt at humor.

There were unshed tears in her big blue eyes. "We both know why you decided you had to go off world. Just accept my apology. Okay?"

He nodded. They'd reached the infirmary and she released his hand. Carolyn insisted that he stay there overnight and had given him something for pain that made him drowsy. He was drifting close to sleep, when there was approaching activity outside his curtained bed. Someone was badly hurt and was being rushed in for treatment. Some sixth sense made him struggle to alertness and woozily get to his feet. Teal'c immediately shot out of the chair where he was sitting in vigil and put his arm around his waist. There were people milling around in the corridor outside and Teal'c helped him stagger to the door. His instincts were, damn them, right on. One of the men was the CO of SG-20.

The man saw Daniel, sagging against Teal'c, and swiftly went to his side. "You don't look like you should be out of bed," he said.

"It's Rain, isn't it?"

Her CO sighed. "Yes and Kovak. We don't know for sure what happened, but we think someone put some sort of poison in something they were given to eat or drink. There are some bitter factions on that world and not everyone likes our decision as to whom we are going to work with."

"I've got to see her," Daniel said.

"None of us can now man. They're working on them. Both of them are in critical condition. We just have to wait. Seriously, I think you should wait in your bed."

Daniel quit fighting him and went back to bed, but not back to sleep. The throbbing in his arm was hardly noticeable, he was so frantic in his worry about Rain. It was hours later and he was about to get up again, when an exhausted Carolyn Lam slit the curtains, confirmed that he was awake, and pulled them back. "She'll live Daniel. It was touch and go, but we beat it." Mitchell came to stand beside her, evidently having relieved Teal'c in the morning.

"There's still something wrong," Daniel said. The look on her face didn't seem like total satisfaction.

"We lost Kovak. It was really a close thing, Daniel. She was barely conscious but I saw her lips moving and I think she was praying. Maybe that made the difference. Who knows. I'm not sure that this hasn't damaged her system in some way. I've ordered a full round of tests."

"Can I see her? I'm really much stronger."

"Sure. How about you use a wheelchair though. Just to make me happy."

A short time later, Sam appeared. She said, "Mitchell called me. She's going to be fine, right?"

Daniel said, "Carolyn's running tests just to make sure that there hasn't been any kind of systemic damage."

Daniel sat next to Rain for slow hours, with Sam coming in frequently to check on them. She told Daniel that she was uncertain as to how Rain would feel if the first thing she saw when she woke up was the face of someone she disliked. At last Rain stirred and called out his name. "I'm here, honey," he said.

"Don't leave," she said.

"I won't." He hit the call button to let the nursing staff know that Rain was conscious. He got out of the wheelchair, feeling only a little dizzy and weak, and got out of the path of the medical staff who had things to do.

The day wore on and Rain didn't rally. The poison had ravaged her and Carolyn became increasingly anxious to pin point the cause for the symptoms she was seeing. Daniel never left except when the nursing staff insisted on treating him like a patient and checking him. He was recovering rapidly and his problems were now localized in a sore and nonfunctional arm. Carolyn told him he was discharged which had no practical effect on his presence in the infirmary.

Sam left only a couple of times to attend to pressing business but stayed most of the day, out of Rain's sight. He didn't mind her presence. She was united with him in concern for Rain. He spent time with her while Rain slept.

Toward the end of the day, Rain said, "Colonel Carter's here, isn't she? I heard her voice."

"Yes."

"Because she's worried about you?"

"She knows that you are really her niece. She's very upset that she hurt you and wants a second chance. She'd be here as my friend even if that wasn't true, but she's devastated for you too. Do you mind?"

"I don't want a family thing with her, but I'm bad off." Daniel shook his head, started to interrupt her. "I know I am. I'll take all the support I can get and prayers and I want you to have all the support you need. Look at your arm." She stopped to gather her energy. "Let's quit playing games."

Daniel went and beckoned to Sam who looked into Rain's face with a tremulous smile on her own. "I'm so sorry for the way I acted. Ever since dad died, I'm very protective of family. I'm glad you'll let me support you here."

As the crisis went into its second twenty-four hours, Daniel and Sam dozed on either side of Rain's bed. Everything they had worried about before seemed secondary to simple survival for the woman in the bed between them.

Chapter 6

Daniel woke with a start to see Carolyn Lam examining Rain, quietly and efficiently. Sam sagged in her chair, still asleep on the other side of the bed. She finished up, looked over, noticed Daniel awake, and jerked her head for him to follow her out of the vicinity of the bed.

"How's she doing?" Daniel asked.

"I think she's finally getting better."

"Do you have any idea what was going on?" he asked.

Carolyn shook her head, "She seemed to have all her major systems starting to fail and now they're not. The whole thing is utterly strange. I'm not one for miracles, but I don't have a scientific explanation."

Mitchell entered the room and they turned to watch him approach. He looked perturbed. "Hey, it's good news," Daniel said.

"I know. I am really happy about her recovery. HOWEVER Sam called Rain's father yesterday morning and told him that Rain had been hurt. That has led to a huge mess," Cam explained.

"He's demanding to see her," Daniel guessed.

"Give the man a Ph.D., but then I guess someone already did that. That wouldn't be so bad, but when he was informed that she was in a classified installation, couldn't be moved, and he wouldn't be admitted, he started calling people."

"People... I bet you don't mean his next door neighbor and poker buddies," Carolyn said.

"Actually they may have been included. Mark's done right well for himself in recent years. He's a big time real estate developer in Denver and has got some pretty influential neighbors. He's a major contributor to the Democratic Party. So we've got members of Congress asking what sort of things are going on in here that we refuse to describe what's wrong with her and are keeping her from her father."

Carolyn said, "And from their mouths to the media, right?"

Daniel said, "Let's be fair guys. It isn't right that this place is a secret. I am not planning on blowing the whistle, but maybe it's time someone did. This is what the press is for, isn't it? To ask these kinds of questions and keep our government honest?"

Sam had roused and come to join their group, stretching and yawning. "You do choose to become fair minded about the opposition at the oddest times," she commented. "I'm sorry I've made trouble, but surely her father had a right to know?" Mitchell shrugged and Daniel looked dubious. Sam acted as if she didn't notice the unenthusiastic reception her statement had received. "So what does Landry say to do about it?"

"He's still in DC, but he phoned and told everyone to keep their mouths shut. Rain's recovering. Maybe she can leave the Mountain in a day or two and that would help a little. Kovak's family has been notified of his death and that's just kicked the whole thing up a notch. They are making a fuss too and getting plenty of an audience. I don't know how much Rain can accomplish."

Rain had awakened during their consultation and got their attention by banging on the metal bars at the side of the bed. Daniel went to brief her. The others left and when Sam returned to the bedside, Rain was weakly but persistently cross-examining Daniel. "You've been here for days, yes or no?"

"That doesn't matter."

"Yes or no, darling?" she insisted. There was definite iron in that thready voice.

"Okay. I'm fine. Sam was here with me most of the time," he said, grasping at straws.

"That doesn't have anything to with a wounded man wearing himself out. I don't want to see you for at least 6 hours, maybe more. There are plenty of other people who can sit with me if I need it and you just told me I'm getting better."

Daniel said, "I'm much happier being here."

"Well, I'm not much happier about it. Get out. Colonel," she appealed to Sam, "please get him out of here."

"Only if you'll call me Sam when we're not relating to each other in an on duty capacity," Sam said.

Rain shook her head slightly. "Maybe I'm beginning to understand where some of my more defining traits came from. Okay, Sam, please get my boyfriend out of here before he wrecks himself."

Daniel stood up reluctantly, kissed Rain on the cheek, and followed Sam out of the infirmary.

"I'd like to go home and get some stuff," Daniel said. "I think I have some things that could entertain her and I'm running out of clothes."

"You ready to run the gauntlet?"

"Surely you don't think the press has my house staked out after all this time when I haven't even been home? Mitchell told me I wasn't really the main focus of the story any more anyway. Look, I can't drive with my arm like this. Can you take me?"

Sam agreed, happy to feel like she was contributing something concrete. They took Sam's car and rode in silence at first. Daniel was clearly exhausted and Sam wasn't feeling exactly fresh herself. Daniel broke the silence by saying, "It was bad enough worrying about her before she got hurt. I don't know if I can handle being on a different team after this."

"Daniel, she's a young and, I think, from studying her record, a very ambitious officer. She is not going to take herself out of combat because you're worried about her."

"You studied her record?" Daniel straightened up and glared at Sam.

"Daniel, she was claiming to be my niece. Can you really blame me?"

"I guess not." He clutched his hair, "So what DO I do? It's not just the danger to her. It's going to be a little hard for us to have kids, if she's going through the gate."

Sam nearly ran the car off the road. She took several deep breaths. "Have kids? You're already planning on getting married? I find it hard to believe she's on board with starting a family at this point."

"I told you Sam. I've waited a long time. I've seen my 40th birthday."

"So have I," Sam said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "That doesn't mean that your partner has the same agenda."

"Jack doesn't want kids," Daniel guessed.

"It's not an issue. We don't have a wedding planned."

"Exactly."

"What does that mean?" Sam asked.

"If you were as honest with yourself as Rain is with herself, you'd know," Daniel responded.

"Speaks the great master of looking at things realistically," Sam spat out. That was the end of the conversation until Sam exclaimed, "There's something wrong with the tire. The car's pulling."

They were an area of strip commercial development and she eased the car off the road into a gas station sandwiched between a MacDonald's and a Lowe's. Daniel got out and said, "You have a major flat tire. You got a spare, right?"

He opened up the trunk and started rooting around with his good arm. "Daniel," Sam said, getting out of the car, "what the hell are you doing?" Her voice was perhaps overloud because she was still quite aggravated with him. "You've got a seriously wounded arm. Back off and let me deal with this."

Daniel noticed a man who had been filling his car at the next pump gaping at them. He abandoned the hose in the gas tank and pulled a cell phone off his belt. "Sam," Daniel said quietly, "I think we've attracted the wrong sort of attention."

She followed the direction of his gaze to the man on the cell phone who kept looking over in their direction. "I hate it when you're right," she said, begrudgingly.

A man emerged, somewhat belatedly in Daniel's opinion, from the bowels of the station. "Can I help you?" he asked, not sounding terribly interested in doing so.

Daniel remembered fondly when gas stations were for more than standing by and watching patrons fill their own cars and then selling them ersatz cappuccino that gave the real stuff a bad name. "If you wouldn't mind assisting my friend with her tire, I've got an injured arm and we need to get on our way."

He looked at them both like he didn't understand "help" or maybe "tire." "Please," Sam added.

"You're those Heroic Lovebirds, aren't yah?" he asked.

"Not exactly," Daniel said.

He chose to ignore the disavowal and made the situation much worse by adding the opinion, "I thought you were a whole lot younger and juicier on TV, lady," he said to Sam. "You just never know what you're looking at, do you?"

Sam had a tire iron in her hand and Daniel thought that for a moment, she was contemplating beaning the man with it. The attendant redeemed himself in a very partial way by going to work to quickly and effectively get the spare on the car. Unfortunately, as he was putting the tire iron back in Sam's trunk, he collided with Sam who was trying to assist with putting in the tire they had removed. The tire iron flew up and hit Daniel's arm. He cried out in serious pain.

They got back on the road with Sam muttering to herself and Daniel periodically emitting small moans. He said, "I think it's started bleeding again."

"Do you want to go to the hospital or something?"

"Let's just finish what we came to do. It'll probably stop."

They pulled up in front of Daniel's and had just gotten out of the car when, probably as a result of the cell call at the station, a television channel's van pulled up at the same time. "Maybe we should get in the car and just drive away," Daniel suggested.

"That might look pretty guilty? What do you think?"

Their moment of indecision cost them because a reporter trailed by a guy with a camera was almost on them. The reporter, a pretty young woman, looked confused as she looked at Sam when she got closer. "Dr. Jackson? Captain Carter?" she asked.

"Colonel Carter," Sam said reflexively and then winced at having revealed the information.

"I don't understand," the reporter said.

The cameraman rolled his eyes. "It's not the same woman," he said. He wasn't very patient. Perhaps this particular reporter was not one of those who had won her spot through hard hitting investigative reporting.

"Okay," the reporter said. She clearly decided that she who hesitates is lost and plunged right into questioning Daniel, uncertainties not withstanding. "Dr. Jackson, you appear to be hurt. Did this happen on the job in the Mountain?"

Daniel was caught flat footed. He was all prepared to discuss Rain's problem, but, in some colossal oversight, hadn't really considered how to explain his own problem. "It was a freak accident, right, Colonel Carter?"

"Utterly freakish," Sam said. It was clear that if Daniel expected her to be the one to come up with inventive lies, it was outside of her job description.

"Could you describe what happened in more detail?"

"No. All activities in our program are classified," Daniel said stoutly. He began to steer Sam toward the door.

"Do you have any comment about your girl friend, Rain Carter's hospitalization?"

"No," Daniel said, pulling out his keys.

"How does she feel about you running around on her with her double while she is lying in a hospital bed?" asked the reporter.

Her cameraman gave her a look that seemed to say, "We are part of the REPUTABLE media," but she was unabashed.

"This is her aunt," Daniel said. "Rain told us both to leave and get some rest. Okay?"

He had the door open now, Sam went through quickly, and he closed it in the reporter's face.

He looked a little pale and Sam quickly shepherded him to the couch. She eased the coat back that was draped over his arm. There was a respectable blood stain showing on the bandage. "I think we need to get you back to Dr. Lam," she said, her concern plain in her voice.

"Damn it, Sam. Let's do what we came here for first, okay?" he said. His vehement words were less effective than they might have been given the pain in his voice. Daniel appreciated the way that Sam moved quickly, gathering up what he directed her to. She worked so rapidly that they were ready to depart again in ten minutes.

They were gathering their strength to go back through the door and out to the car when Sam said, "She isn't at all worried about me, is she?"

"Huh?" was all Daniel could muster. Daniel was beginning to be concerned that all the medication he had taken in the past couple of days had caused some loss of mental function.

"Rain. She sent you off with me as if there was no reason not to. She didn't see it as you running around with possible competition like that reporter did."

"Should she? You're her aunt and she's in a hospital bed."

"No. Of course not." Sam grabbed her purse, took Daniel's good hand, and pulled him to his feet. "I'm pretty strong, but I don't think I can carry you. Let's get you back to the Mountain and your doctor while you can still do it under your own steam."

Chapter 7

As Jack walked through the artificially lit, institutional halls of the SGC on his way to the infirmary, he thought how much he really liked being back, despite the underground grimness of the place. He often wished he hadn't left. He reminded himself that if he hadn't, he wouldn't be with Sam. A thought he'd been trying to ignore for weeks came once again, the thought that maybe it would be nice to have an excuse to end it with Sam. She was crowding him, wanting things he didn't have in him any more.

They say, "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it." Jack really believed that it was always better to not think about the future, because even if it turned out well, if it wasn't like what you had imagined, it would be a let down. The situation with Sam proved he was right.

All those years lusting for Sam, he had focused on how hot she was, how exciting it would be making love to her. The reality hadn't turned out to be some sort of sexual fantasy come true. He had gained a wonderfully considerate, tender woman, who wanted to do things for him, in every aspect but one. If he tried to move away from extremely conventional sex in any way, she was uncomfortable. Even if she tried to accommodate him, it shut her down. He thought that deep inside Sam was a good little Catholic girl who had learned too well for his purposes what the nuns had taught her about sex belonging in marriage. What they were doing without even an engagement ring on her finger was really bothering her on some level.

He was willing to bet that once she got married, she'd loosen up some, but it wasn't a sure thing. It was one of the factors, if he was honest with himself, that was causing him to hold back on the marriage. The main reason was simply the fuss and bother. If they could just go quietly to a justice of the peace somewhere, fine. It was her first wedding, however, and she'd already said things that indicated she had daydreamed forever of the whole dog and pony show. Even worse, if the little Catholic girl raised her head any further and wanted to be married in the church, he'd first have to go through a damn annulment proceeding to end his marriage to Sara.

Sara. Ah, there was a thought. Every time there was an awkward mismatch of sexual preferences with him and Sam, he found himself remembering Sara. There hadn't been anything Sara wouldn't do. She had been wild before she had settled down with him. The expert Sara had been the teacher and he had been a very grateful and apt pupil. As he approached the infirmary, he remembered actually having his hand on the phone, poised to phone Sara yesterday, and forcing himself to call a halt. He wasn't free to make that call, even in the guise of just getting back in contact.

He walked into the outer room of the infirmary, heard voices, and slowed down a little, wanting to know what was going on before he barged in. It was Daniel and someone else, someone who sounded a little like Sam. This must be her niece. He had no qualms about eavesdropping and stepped softly to beside the door where he could glimpse the two alone in a four bed ward, but they wouldn't be likely to notice him. Rain had climbed out of her bed and was sitting next to Daniel on his. They were talking about how they both felt pretty good and wanted to make a break for it.

"I think Dr. Lam is under orders to keep us here," Rain said darkly.

Daniel kissed the top of her head and said, "Why do you think that?"

"It makes us easier to control."

Daniel suggested reasonably, "They could just order us to stay on base, right? There are no reporters in here."

"Maybe they don't want to order us to stay on the base because that would look bad. Like there was something to hide."

"Rain, who would know that they ordered us to stay on the base? Are you going to tell them?"

"Enough talk," she said. "Let's go."

"Are you proposing to leave the Mountain? You don't have quarters on base."

"I don't want to piss off Mitchell and Landry," she said. "I am hoping to make major in record time. Can I go to the guest quarters with you?"

"Isn't that against some sort of rule?" Daniel asked.

"Yes it is," Jack said, deciding it was time to make an appearance. He strolled across the room to stand before the two huddled together on the bed like a schoolmaster who'd just caught them red-handed and was considering what to set them to writing on the blackboard a few hundred times.

"Hey Jack," Daniel said a bit sheepishly.

"Get the paranoia under control, kiddies. No one is requiring you to stay in here for non-medical reasons," Jack said. "Listen, I've spoken with Dr. Lam and she agrees you should both leave the infirmary. General Landry thinks you should stay on the base, Daniel. That arm just looks bad. The President is taking a day or two to think over the advice he got about going public. In the meantime, we need to continue to try to keep this story as low key as possible. Captain Carter needs to meet her father." He pulled the local daily newspaper out from behind his back and pointed to an editorial about how the Air Force was treating the families of its airmen.

"Begging the general's pardon, but I haven't spoken with my father as a matter of choice for about 9 years. I would prefer to leave it that way," Rain said, lifting her chin, struggling to look respectful but not doing very well.

"The Air Force can't order her to take an action like that in her private life, can it?" Daniel asked, appalled.

"The captain's father has created some serious problems for the Air Force. She just told you that she wants to make major in record time. What do you think the wise thing would be for her to do?" Jack asked.

Rain sighed and said, "Point taken."

"Sam could go with you," Daniel suggested.

"I don't want to be double teamed and pressured to get into the family or something," Rain said.

Jack said, "I'll go with you. I've met Mark a couple of times."

"Would you really do that for me sir?" Rain said, astounded.

"Surely Daniel has told you that he is one of my closest friends?" Jack asked raising an eyebrow. "The man appears to be besotted with you so that makes you part of the Daniel package. Now, we have just used up my quota for discussing feelings for a day or two, so just get yourself together and meet me at Landry's office by," he paused and looked at his watch, "16:00 hours. I'll call Mark Carter and set up the meeting, if you want me to."

"Thanks a lot, Jack," Daniel said. "I don't like her being forced into this, but I feel a lot better with you there. You're a good friend."

"Didn't I tell you I was already over quota on feelings?" Jack warned, only partly teasing and left.

Later, he escorted Rain to his sporty little car. She made a point of admiring it before she got in. She actually clapped her hands as he squealed out of the parking lot. "All right. This is fun driving. Daniel drives like he has an Oldsmobile, even though he doesn't. My driving makes him nervous, although he never says anything, just clings to the seat."

Jack laughed. He didn't mind some young woman telling him he was a little wild. Sometimes he thought one of Sam's major appeals for him was the ego boost he got at her ignoring the handsome, younger Dr. Jackson and picking him, a much older man instead.

The meeting with Mark Carter was at a hotel near the airport. Jack and Rain were immediately confronted after getting out of the car by a reporter who, perhaps, had just finished getting more information from Mark about yet another instance of suspect behavior by the Air Force in the escalating focus on Cheyenne Mountain. "Captain Carter, you appear to be well. What really has caused the Air Force to keep you sequestered in the Mountain?" he asked.

"I'm an Air Force officer," Rain said, blandly. "I was doing my job."

"What do you know about the death of Lieutenant Kovak?" was the next question.

Jack said, "Excuse me." He shoved past the young man, pushing him aside with his shoulder and ushering Rain through the door of the hotel. They were being pursued into the hotel. Jack nodded at Rain, who already knew the room number, and then body blocked the reporter from following her until she had disappeared down the hall and into an elevator.

There was a tense moment and then the reporter backed off. Jack made his way to Mark Carter's floor alone. He knocked on the door and Rain opened it, looking very relieved.

Mark had a suite and was seated on the sofa, his suit jacket thrown over the back of a chair and his shirt sleeves rolled up for comfort. He immediately stood and extended a hand to Jack. "General O'Neill, it's good to see you."

Jack shook his hand and simply said, "Mark."

Mark said, "It's amazing how much Rain looks like my sister. When I first met her as a girl, I could see a resemblance, but I had no idea that it would flower to be so striking."

"Yupe," Jack said.

They sat in heavy silence. Mark said, "Sam told me Rain was seriously ill. She's denying that there's any problem. Can you clarify?"

Jack said, "She was accidentally poisoned. It was serious until they got it out of her system."

"Poisoned?" Mark exploded. "What the hell is going on in there?"

"I'm a soldier, Mr. Carter," Rain said, her voice icy. "We get exposed to risks. That's our job."

Mark threw up his hands. "I'm sorry. It is your job. I'm sorry I apparently made trouble for you, insisting that I be allowed to see you." He walked to the window and looked out. "You think I wronged you by sending you to that school."

"Brilliant," Rain said.

"We make choices Rain and then sometimes that means there no more choices left."
He turned to look at her. "My wife has serious mental problems. If I had had you in the house, I couldn't have protected you and my other children. She's clever and she comes from a rich family. If I leave, I lose your half-brother and sister. In another 3 years it won't matter."

Rain was looking at him stony faced. "Rain, haven't you ever been in combat when you had men down and you had to make decisions to try to save as many as you could, to do the least damage?"

The anguish on the man's face was inescapable. Rain was completely still. Jack was surprised to hear himself say, "I have. Too many times." He looked at Rain. "Rain, I think I should go back to the lobby and let you talk with your dad. What do you think?"

She nodded mutely. He sat in the lobby and glared at everyone in sight. The lobby cleared out. Two more reporters showed up, but after being shut down by Jack, they loitered around outside. About a half an hour after Jack had left her with Mark, Rain appeared with her father. They went outside to the reporters and Mark said, "I just want to put it on the record that I've spoken with my daughter and she has assured me that she is fine. I probably overreacted, as many fathers would in the circumstances." There were many more questions, but Mark had nothing further to say and Jack and Rain steadfastly refused comment.

When they were safely back in his car, she said, "Can we please go somewhere and have a beer or something. I don't want to go back to Daniel this bummed out. It will upset him even more and he doesn't need that right now."

Jack drove until he saw an upscale restaurant. "Money usually helps with people leaving you alone. Let's try their bar."

They sat down. Jack ordered a Guinness as did Rain. They made small talk until the waiter deposited their drinks and walked off. Rain said, "Look, this is very awkward what with you being a superior officer and all, but I have to talk to someone who really knows Daniel well and things are sort of tense still between me and my – does this ever sound weird – my aunt."

"I'm glad to listen. Don't expect me to have a lot of touchy feely feedback for you though," Jack said.

"Can I count on you to treat it all as confidential?"

He nodded. She said, "Well then, here's the thing. I am so in love with Daniel! I've never felt this way, this strongly before. I didn't know they made men this wonderful. All I have to do is look at him and my heart flips over. I tried not to love him this much. I was afraid of getting hurt because he's clearly on the rebound. It bothers me too that he doesn't share my religious faith, but our time apart made realize how empty life already had become without him. Then I almost died. It makes you think, you know?"

Jack definitely knew the truth of that statement. She fell silent. Jack said, "BUT?"

"But I'm afraid that in the end I wouldn't make him happy and that, ultimately, would ruin it for me too."

"What's not to make him happy? You've got it all from what I can see and he's crazy about you."

"I look like Sam, right? When I met him – you can't tell anyone this – he was really drunk and he thought I was her. He kissed me very thoroughly thinking I was her. There's absolutely no question in my mind that he was in love with her before he met me. He assures me that that I'm so different from her in so many other ways that we don't even look that alike to him anymore. If she wasn't sort of coming at him sideways the way she seems to be, maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal, but it makes me really insecure."

Jack was puzzled about the "coming at him sidewise comment," but he was getting a really bad feeling about what he was going to hear next. "Then there's this whole kids and family thing. Like you said, I'm ambitious. I want kids, but I need to have my career better established first. He and Sam were sitting with me for hours. I was conscious and awake a lot more than they realized. At one point, I felt like I was sitting with my parents. They were talking about how many kids was the ideal number and whether it was better for the oldest to be a boy and how far apart they should be spaced. Sam brought up adopting because she was worried that she was too old to have as many as she wanted. Then they started talking about what kind of houses they wanted with all the kids."

Jack stared off in the middle distance, picturing the two of them, talking enthusiastically together the way he had seen them a million times. Ouch.

"That's not the worst. Apparently, she kissed him recently, after he and I got together, but I think before she knew she really was my aunt, to make him reconsider whether he was really in love with me or just going through transference from her. He was pretty upset about it when she brought it up – it made him feel like he had betrayed me even though it had just been the one time and she was the one who initiated it."

"She kissed him?" Jack thundered. "Sam kissed Daniel?"

"Yeah?" Rain said. "Look I know they are teammates, but it was just the once. It isn't like they are having a relationship."

Jack waved his hands helplessly in the air and thought fast. She would be mortified if she found out now that he and Sam were involved. He prayed that she didn't listen to gossip any time soon or listen to the right gossip anyway. ""It's against the rules. She's military. I would expect better of her,"
he temporized.

"The thing is, General O'Neill, I want to be sure I can make him happier than she can. I want to be sure that they aren't really in love with each other, but aren't not together for stupid reasons, like being teammates or who knows what. How do I do that?"

Jack gave her one of his long, hooded, and utterly unreadable looks. "The two of us are going to find some underhanded way to maneuver them into having to face this and either put it aside or get together," he said at last.

"Sir, I had no idea of getting you involved. I mean, it's my love life."

"It's also the love lives of two of my oldest friends," Jack answered, thinking and of my lover who has all sorts of things going on I knew nothing about.

Chapter 8

Jack drove Rain back to the Mountain, but this time she ignored his driving. In fact, she was sunk deep within a brown study and barely responded to his one attempt at conversation. Since Jack was actually happier with silence, there wasn't a second one. When they reached the Mountain, Rain hesitated before getting out of the car. "Sir, I really appreciate the personal interest you've taken in my problems. I hope you know I would never have discussed Daniel's private life with you if he hadn't told me several times before I met you that you, Teal'c, and my aunt were his closest friends. I knew that if you two were that close, there was no way you could have missed his feelings for Sam."

Jack felt like a complete and total idiot in response to that comment and certainly wasn't going contradict her and confirm his cluelessness. "I knew that and you can count on my discretion."

"I've been thinking a lot about the idea we discussed of getting them up to your cabin with us and then somehow abandoning them so they're trapped together and have to work things out." She twisted her hands and Jack thought, with surprise, Sam does that too. "I'm just not comfortable with that. Daniel and I have been totally honest with each other. It was out of character for me to have eavesdropped on them when they thought I was unconscious and it's bothering the hell out me. I don't want to compound it by more plotting. Thanks though for working with me on the problem." He contented himself with a nod as she got out of the car.

He sat for awhile, watching her go on into the yawning cave opening that held the entrance to the Mountain, thinking about the open questions in his mind about Sam. He came to two decisions. He was going ahead with the cabin. He was sure Rain wouldn't rat him out. He couldn't believe she would be SO over the top honest that she would ever tell Daniel that she had discussed him with Jack the way she had or that she had initially been part of the plot. Secondly, if Sam was going to be running around kissing Daniel, he had every right to at least see Sara.

Before heading for his airplane back to DC, he took out his cell and called Daniel about the cabin.

Daniel was sitting in his allotted guest quarters. He was trying to focus on the book open in front of him, but he was distracted. How old are you, Daniel Jackson? He chastised himself. No woman has even preoccupied you to this extent. He thought about the classic profile of the early 40ish male making a fool of himself over a young woman. I'm not wearing gold chains and haven't bought a sports car. There's no toupee or hair implants, he reassured himself. Of course, he knew, with his healthy head of hair, he didn't really deserve any credit for the last one. Suddenly he had a panicked image of himself in just a few years, his waist line thickening, his hair, however much was left, going grey, crows feet sprouting at the corners of his eyes, and Rain, in her early thirties, going after some young Marine. Jack, you dog, how do you do it? he wondered.

As if summoned by his thought, the phone rang and Jack was on the other end. He was feeling so guilty about having kissed Jack's girl friend that he almost hung up as soon as he heard Jack's voice. Instead, Daniel swallowed and responded to his greeting.

"Listen, Daniel, this media storm is really annoying. I think we all need to get away. Sam and I are going up to my cabin for the weekend, weekend after next, and I want you and Teal'c to come and, of course, Rain, since you two are joined at the hip. Do you think it would be a good idea to include Mitchell?"

"Whoa, Jack. I'm not sure it's a good idea to include Rain and me at this point."

"I already talked to her, Daniel. She was all for it."

"Your cabin isn't that big, Jack. She... she doesn't believe in sex before marriage. We're not sleeping together. Where are you going to put everyone?"

"I really didn't need that insight into your sex life. There are three bedrooms, Daniel. The biggest one will work for you, Teal'c, and even Mitchell – I'll leave that invite for you to decide -- without you even having to share a bed. Sam's flying a light plane up there. She needs to log some hours. Talk with her about the flight arrangements."

"Jack, I -."

"You don't have to thank me, Daniel. I'm glad to do it." There was a click and Daniel was left holding the phone.

There was a knock at the door. He thought it was probably Mitchell. Cam had talked about dropping by before he went home for the evening. He opened the door and was delighted to find Rain. He smiled and pulled her inside, closing the door behind her. Then the thought struck him. "Didn't Jack say this was against the rules?" he asked, his initial delight in seeing her replaced by concern.

"I think that depends on what we do in here," she said.

His expression grew rueful. "Then there may be issues. I haven't really been alone with you for over three weeks, since we each went on our missions. I don't know if I can keep my hands off you." He smiled ruefully, "Or, at any rate, my one working hand."

She moved closer until she was just a few inches away. "I've missed you too.

Daniel grimaced and moved away from her. He wanted desperately to know if she'd resolved the question about their future she'd posed before she left, but he was afraid. "So, how'd it go with your dad?"

"I have some things to think over. I want to talk to you about them – just not right now."

"Was it weird hanging out with Jack? His being an uber-general and all?"

"He's a great guy and a good listener. Daniel, I did talk to him a little about us. I needed advice from someone who knows you well. You don't mind, do you?"

Daniel raised an eyebrow. He could imagine some unfortunate turns that conversation could have taken and, in a cowardly fashion, he decided he didn't want to know, not now anyway. "Depends on whether you made me look good or not– just kidding. We've got nothing to be ashamed of." That last part came out sounding a little annoyed and he winced. There was truly, lamentably, nothing, but he understood and supported Rain's ideas about sex. It was just making him crazy.

Suddenly, he couldn't stand it any longer; he had to know. He blurted out, "Before you left, you said I was crowding you and that we needed time apart to be sure. I'm probably forcing things, but I have to know. What do you think now?"

"Are you asking because you've had second thoughts? Maybe you're thinking that you can work it out with Colonel Carter, with Sam, after all?"

He cupped her cheek in his good hand. "You heard us talking in the hospital didn't you?"

"I need to tell you that I didn't let on all the time when I was awake. I didn't really plot it. It's just that I came to and you two were talking about stuff." Her voice trailed away.

Daniel felt sick. He didn't blame her for eavesdropping. He doubted if there were many people alive who could have resisted the temptation. He leaned his forehead against hers. "I will never be unfaithful to you again as long as we're together, I promise."

"She initiated it, right, the kiss?"

"Yes, she did. She thought she was making a point, reminding me that she was the one I really cared about. In all fairness, Rain, she didn't know you were her niece. She thought you were a liar and she was trying to prevent me from some unfortunate transference of emotions because of the resemblance. It made me mad though that she thought I was confused when I think she's a mess herself. So then I kissed her to show her that maybe she has feelings for me she hasn't admitted. That's what makes me feel unfaithful. Do you forgive me?"

Rain gasped. Daniel felt guilty, but he was sure they needed the truth. "Does she? Does she have feelings for you?" Rain asked a little unsteadily.

"I don't know, but it doesn't matter. I've made my choice." He pulled back and ran his thumb over her cheek. He asked again, in a husky voice, "Do you forgive me?"

She nodded. He tried to kiss her, but she stopped him. "There's one other question."

Jack's little voice was at him again. I'm turning into Joan of Arc, or something, he thought, hearing voices. The little voice said, No, Jack. You're just doing things you aren't proud of. Jack shut up the little voice again as ruthlessly as he had shut Daniel up on more than one mission.

As he was getting into his car at the airport, his cell rang. He was tired of his own thoughts and decided to answer it even though it was an unknown caller. "Hello, Mr. O'Neill," a cheery voice said. "I'm Sister Michael Jacobs. I've been trying to reach you for days. I work for the Archdiocese of Boston and I'd be very grateful for a few moments of your time."

"I really not interested in making a donation," Jack said and started to hang up.

"Mr. O'Neill, please. This has to do with annulment proceedings, not fund raising."

"Excuse me?" Jack said. His mind was whirling. If Sam had done an end-run around him to get his annulment going, it wouldn't be the folks in Boston handling it. The nun was calling him Mr. O'Neill. Maybe it was mistaken identity. "Frankly, I don't understand," Jack said. He had plenty of practice being deliberately obtuse and he was irritated enough by life in general at the moment to deploy it full force.

"You wife, Sara Churchill O'Neill Kennedy has started an annulment proceedings through our Archdiocese. I would just like to ask you some preliminary questions to assist with the required investigation."

"Kennedy?" Jack said. "How could she have added another last name if she was still married to me?"

"She obtained a civil divorce and remarried and that's the name she is using legally."

"She and her current husband want to get their marriage blessed?" Jack said, his voice rising a little.

"Actually, Sara is a widow. She has become very active in her parish and is bothered by having been married outside the church. I believe she just is seeking to tidy up spiritual loose ends. Sara has been so helpful with a number of our ministries and I'm hoping we can do this as painlessly as possible for everyone."

"Spiritually, she and I are still one flesh," Jack said, being a complete hypocrite. "You're talking about an amputation. There's no way that can be painless. I want to talk with her before this goes any further. I'll call you back." He hung up abruptly which started the little voice off again. He had not been raised to be rude to nuns.

Jack was seething. Never mind that he had been contemplating a possible annulment on his part if Sam demanded it and he couldn't hold out. Somehow he had always envisioned Sara in the wings, just waiting for him to be ready to seek her out again. He laughed derisively at himself. When did you turn into such an egomaniac? he chastised himself. Despite that he couldn't stop himself from thinking, It's a good thing this Kennedy bozo is dead because I have a good mind to kill him, again.

He decided he was going to Boston to talk with Sara face to face. He knew exactly where she lived, having used the considerable resources at his disposal to find that out weeks before.

"Are you still okay with our not sleeping together? Do you think I'm a tease because we make out, but I always stop you?" Rain asked Daniel.

"I want you so badly I ache, but I don't think you're a tease. I do think we need to start thinking about getting married damn fast. I know you're skittish about kids and we've got a mismatch there, but if I have to choose between some kids I've never met and you, I take you. I'm going crazy with thinking about being inside you. If we can't get a resolution to this soon, I'm going to ask for months off world because I'm afraid that I might do something we'd both regret if I'm with you."

She was staring at him with her eyes as wide as saucers. "You want to marry me?"

"There's no one else in the room," he said. He was trying to joke, but he could feel a big stamp marked Reject coming down on his forehead.

"I'm... not... Sam."

"Thank God for that," he said. "Yes or no or," he hesitated, "maybe you need more time?"

"You honestly wouldn't resent my not having kids for a few years?"

"How do you feel about adoption," he asked, an edge of desperation in his voice.

"You want your own kids."

"Actually, that doesn't really matter. I was in the foster care system long enough to know that biology isn't the answer one way or another. I just want, I guess, the word is belonging."

"You'd be content to be the primary caregiver?" He could tell she thought she was really pushing the envelope, that she was sure what his answer would be. She was definitely a casualty of spending all her time with military men.

"Honey, there'd be plenty for me to do without going off world. Some of it could be done at home and there is good day care out there. Like I said, if it was you and no kids, I'd pick that over no you, but if we can find a way with kids in it, I would really like to." He looked at her intently. "Are you trying to put up all the barriers you can think of to hold me off?"

"No, dear Lord no. I just want to know now. I don't want to let myself be happy and then have the rug pulled out from under me."

"We're a real tribute to the foster care system of America, aren't we?" he asked her tenderly.

Tears were flowing freely down her face. "Would you marry me in the Catholic church?"

"I'd marry you naked in the middle of Times Square if that's what it took."

Her face was a kaleidoscope. He didn't think he had ever seen that many emotions chase themselves on one person's face over a short period of time. She was thrilled, worried, loving, scared, happy, but, finally, the last emotion to take hold was naked lust. She closed the remaining inches between them and quite literally attacked him. She kissed him greedily and hard while pulling his shirt open. The sling holding his injured arm was an impediment to removing the shirt and she left it in place but pushed it away from his chest. She ran her hands over his bare skin and kept kissing him, turned to one side to spare his arm. He didn't know what to do. She had never acted quite like this before. He kissed her back but kept his free hand in neutral territory. One of her hands slid down to his waist and started fumbling with his belt buckle. He caught it in his own and pushed it away. "What are you doing?"

"I am tired of following rules. I want you and I don't want to lose you to some other woman who's more available than I am.

"Rain, you're going to destroy us, if you're not careful, with this insecurity about Sam. I've told you that you're the one I want."

She freed her hand and went after his belt again. He let it go for a little bit. He knew he would have to stop her soon, that her religious beliefs and her feelings about being a hooker's daughter would make her miserable after the fact if he let her give herself to him. In the meantime, he cupped her sweet backside. He didn't stop her from unbuckling his belt and starting on his zipper, but when she touched him intimately, he knew it was now or never and he pushed her away.

"No, Rain. I love you too much to let you do something you don't want to do, not deep down. I am not going to leave you for Sam. What we have is much more than sex. If you'll think about it, you know that."

She looked at him stunned and then became very embarrassed. She averted her eyes as he put his pants back together and pulled a clean t-shirt out of a drawer to replace his ruined shirt. He walked back to her when he was fully respectable and said, "Now, honey, do you see why we need to think about a marriage in the very near future?"

The next evening he boarded the 6:00 shuttle, planning to see her, and be back in DC early the next evening. A short time later, he was standing on the front doorstep of a pleasant, rambling house in an older neighborhood. The door was yanked open immediately after he hit the buzzer by a gangly teenaged boy whose face immediately fell when he saw Jack. "Oh, hi," he said.

"Hello. I'm thinking I might be at the wrong house. I'm looking for Sara. Sara...Kennedy." That last hurt.

"I'll get her." The boy immediately disappeared back into the house, yelling, "Mom, door." Jack thought, Great. I'm going to have to explain to some strange woman that I have the wrong Sara Kennedy.

But then he heard a familiar voice return the shouted hail, "All right all ready, Charlie, I'm on my way." His blood froze and he seriously considered whether he'd seen any signs that he had veered into the Twilight Zone. Sara did a double take when she saw Jack, but she recovered quickly. She pulled him into the house and said, "I can't say that I'm really surprised. You were contacted about the annulment, I guess?"

They went into her pleasant living room and she steered him to one end of the couch. She sat facing him and pulled a beautifully worked embroidered pillow into her lap and hugged it. "How could you name your kid, Charlie?" Jack demanded.

"Think, Jack," Sara said. "Charlie's 15. He's my stepson. His mother and my late husband named him Charles."

A little girl about five came pelting into the room and stopped abruptly when she saw Jack. She smiled shyly at him and went to Sara's side. "Mama, I want to have my snack. Can we do my blood?"

Sara called, "Alexa, honey, can you come help your sister with her numbers?"

A blonde girl in her early teens, pretty now with the promise of great future beauty, came quickly into the room. "Sure, Mom," she said willingly and took the little girl's hand.

"Jack, this is my daughter, Alexa, and my daughter, Melissa. Girls, this is my first husband, Jack O'Neill."

Both girls looked at him with great interest out of big blue eyes. Sara said, laughing, "Go on, girls. You need to go do Melissa's numbers."

After they left, Jack looked a question at Sara. "Alexa is also my stepdaughter. She's such a helpful kid which is really important because Melissa is diabetic. Technically, Melissa's a foster child, but she's been with me since she was a month old. We need to do blood tests on her to see her blood sugar level and adjust what she eats accordingly."

Jack was overwhelmed. He just stared at her. He was allergic to children and she had sought them out, not just children, but children with problems that could mean they would die on her. Finally he got out, "Why the annulment after all this time?"

"I've gone back to the church and am very active in my parish. Most of the men I meet are practicing Catholics. It's just a matter of time before I connect with one of them and want to get married again." She threw the pillow at him then and said, "I want to hear all about what you're doing."

They talked for a solid three hours with short breaks for Sara to put Melissa in bed and to make sure the other two were doing homework. Sara talked about her third career, computer programming, her involvement with the parish, how she had taken up hot air ballooning, and the litter of kittens she was trying to give away. She was all over the place, full of passions and interests. Jack talked more than he normally did, but it was still short hand information.

Meanwhile, Jack inched his way closer to her over time and finally, sitting close to her, he tried to kiss her. She disengaged and got up to face him, hands on hips. "Jack, what the hell are you doing here? You're involved with that nice Dr. Carter?" He was astounded. She answered his unspoken question, "I'm still in touch with several of the other wives. Our friends have done well and several are part of the upper echelon in DC just like you are. The rumors about you and your young lover are well circulated."

"Sam and I are... well we're having some problems." Sara just looked at him. "She wants kids." Sara was still looking at him. She had gotten more information out of him with that look when they were together. "We're not that physically compatible." He got the rest of it out in a rush, "I thought maybe there was still something with you and me."

"Oh Jack," she half laughed but there wasn't much mirth in it. "I'll tell you what I think the situation is. I divorced you because I wanted to live and you were dead and buried. It was either climb down in the grave with you and Charlie or leave you. You're still dead. You haven't really smiled, not a smile devoid of a sarcastic edge, since you got here. You won't let yourself feel anything so you objectify this poor woman, confine your relationship to sex, and then evaluate her on her performance, ignoring your general piss poor performance as a lover – being good in bed doesn't compensate for being a lousy lover in every other respect.

He had stood up, furious, but was strangely unable to walk away. Maybe it was the tears welling up in her eyes. He thought she was saying what she was saying because she cared. She came closer, laid a hand on his arm, and looked earnestly into his face.

"Life holds joy and laughter and vivid colors and new experiences all mingled in with the pain that makes you appreciate those things. I want to live right up until the day I die. Jack, either find a way to be reborn into life or stay away from the living. Necrophilia just doesn't work for anyone in the long run." She didn't bother to define the ten-dollar word for him. She knew how smart he really was and that he understood that she was referring to sex with the dead.

He said, "I think this has worked out really well." He walked toward the door, pausing to turn back to her, his hand on the doorknob. "I'll sign the papers, Sara."

Sam was drinking coffee and eating a piece of cardboard masquerading as a Danish when Rain and Daniel came into the cafeteria seating area holding trays. They must have been behind her in line. She paused, the pastry half way to her mouth, waiting to see what they would do. She thought there had been some peace made between her and Daniel over the whole kiss debacle while Rain was lying in her hospital bed. Rain had seemed willing, as well, to make peace. Now the artificial circumstances of life threatening illness were gone. Would they avoid her?

Daniel wasn't looking at her which took some doing since she was directly in front of him, but Rain met her eyes and when Sam smiled welcomingly, Rain smiled back. Rain started toward Sam and Daniel had no option but to trail behind. "Good morning, you two," Sam said brightly. The "you two" cut inside, but it was the reality of things.

"Good morning, Colonel," Rain said, a little uncertain on the Colonel. "We're on duty right?" she added by explanation.

"Of course."

"Morning, Sam," Daniel said.

"I'd love to have you join me," Sam invited. There then ensued a really strange conversation over the next ten minutes or so. Sam said relatively little. Her brain was so busy, she didn't want to spare the cycles. She would watch the sweet gestures Daniel made toward Rain, the way he looked at her, the way he complemented her, the way he jumped up to get her more sugar, and think, Aw, I wish Jack would do that. The next minute, she'd think, You know Daniel smiles easily but he practically never says anything funny and Jack is a hoot. Then she'd think, Isn't it great to be having such an intellectually challenging conversation, only to think seconds later, Jack never dithers over anything quite like this. It was exhausting. Finally, she pushed it all to the back of her brain and decided to aggressively rejoin the conversation.

"I talked with my brother, Rain. He seemed hopeful. He said you were very fair when he saw you the day before yesterday."

Rain shrugged. "People are seldom the monsters you make them out to be when you don't actually have to deal with them."

"Jack thought you were pretty upset though," Sam added.

"Jack? When did you talk with him?" Her tone seemed strangely sharp.

"It was kind of weird. He's given to calling me in the middle of the night. For some reason, he finds it a lot easier to tell me he loves me or say anything at all mushy over the phone when I'm groggy than he does in person. But last night, I couldn't really figure out what was going on with him." She saw Rain's befuddled look and said, lowering her voice slightly, "You did know that Jack and I are," she hesitated and Daniel helpfully supplied, "Lovers?"

Rain's hand flew to her mouth and she said, "Oh my God."

Sam felt her hackles rise. "Look, the age difference isn't much more than you and Daniel. I guess the women in our family prefer older men." That didn't come out too well and she saw Daniel look a little annoyed.

"No, no," Rain said, "that's not it." She looked around. All the tables were full of people grabbing breakfast. "How about we take a little walk?"

Sam and Daniel exchanged looks and the three rose and strolled to the elevator. "Here's the thing," Rain said. "I had no idea. It never crossed my mind. I thought you were interested in Daniel if you were interested in anyone. I really needed to talk to someone I could trust who was close to Daniel. I told Jack about The Kiss."

"The Kiss," Sam echoed, capitalizing it with her voice just as Rain had done. "How did you know?"

Daniel said, "She was awake when we didn't realize it in the infirmary and heard us."

Sam winced. "That was stupid of us. How did he react?"

"He was indignant. He made it seem like it was the regulations thing, you being on the same team."

"Curious," Sam said. "Anger is what I would have expected too but when he called me there was none of that."

Daniel shook his head, "The weekend after next at his cabin is going to be interesting."

Rain looked at him askance. "What weekend?"

"He told me you were on board with the idea," Daniel said, puzzled now himself.

Rain shook her head and blew out a long breath. "That rascal. I told him I didn't want to be part of-" She bit off her words.

Sam's eyes widened. She knew Jack O'Neill and she immediately figured it out. "He's half convinced I'm cheating on him with Daniel and he has some plan that he's going to get Daniel and me up there and find out the truth." She looked at Rain's face and quickly said, "You know there's nothing going on, don't you? The Kiss was stupid. I didn't trust you and I thought I understood what was going on with Daniel. I was trying to protect him and I was way out of bounds." She knew damn well that wasn't the whole truth, but it was her story and she was sticking to it. If she did have feelings for Daniel that she had denied all these years, she had no choice but to continue to deny them. He wasn't interested. Her niece would be devastated. Then there was Jack, whom, in spite of everything, she still loved.

Rain nodded. "That's what Daniel keeps telling me. Still, I am SO sorry for being the cause of all these problems with Jack."

Sam laughed, surprising them all. "This is so Jack. This is a like a really dumb plot some little kid would come up with. You know, most of his plans were like that when he was leading SG-1, but it was amazing. Half the time they worked."

Daniel looked at Sam and said, "Maybe it's time he has something backfire on him."

Sam looked thoughtful and said, "Ya think?"

Chapter 9

In the ensuing week, a tentative companionship established itself between the three of them, made possible by the fact that almost everything was out in the open. Rain knew all about The Kiss and Daniel had finally persuaded her that it was nothing to worry about although he was still waiting for an answer to his proposal. Rain also now believed that Sam was sincere about wanting to get to know her. Daniel had relaxed around Sam, now that it was clear she accepted his relationship with Rain. As for Sam, Daniel continued to be amazed that after so many years of self-delusion and denial, she was being painfully honest with herself about Jack and her feelings for him.

Daniel caught the little sideways looks Sam sometimes gave him and guessed that Sam was finally honest with herself about her feelings for him as well. He was grateful she wasn't sharing those insights. He valued the fragile trust Sam had established with Rain and, more importantly, he knew that if Sam really came after him, he would be severely tempted. The choice would be horrific and he would rather not have it to make.

Jack, the cipher at the middle of many conversations with Sam, was nowhere in evidence. Sam had talked to him a few times and he had been, for Jack, unusually sweet. She had tried to bring up The Kiss, but he wasn't having any of it. He had sent her flowers twice, which made a total of two times he had done so in their entire relationship, but he had discouraged her from coming to DC. They concluded that Jack was trying to work out how he felt about everything and had crawled off into an emotional cave somewhere until the process was complete.

Uncertainty over Jack was overlaid with the general tension that hung over the entire SGC. The media interest and public scrutiny continued and the whole base had intuited that the SGC might be about to become public knowledge. Endless speculation prevailed. Scientists were working hard on neglected draft papers, motivated by the possibility of publication ahead. Many were convinced that anyone who had actually been off-world should be able to parlay this into something marketable. One popular indoor sport was to speculate what it would be like to do the talk show rounds. The bands Event Horizon and Chevron Encoded, the latter with Walter on the drums, were formed and their members half seriously, half jokingly, talked about a record deal.

The implications for them personally were significant. Sam, Daniel, and Rain were lunching with Teal'c and Cam when Rain looked at the others and said, "Why do I feel like Daniel and I dislodged a pebble that caused an avalanche?"

Cam laughed, "Because you did?"

Daniel said, "It wasn't on purpose, but I can't be sorry if it all comes out."

Teal'c surprised them by saying gravely, "This could cause many problems for you. Sudden celebrity can be a headache. I tasted some of that myself when I was made First Prime. Be prepared for all your relationships to take on new dimensions that you don't quite understand."

Sam bit her lip. "If it happens, I hope for limited disclosure. I can't help fretting about Cassie's friends discovering she is an alien or people considering Daniel to be some form of fallen angel."

"Fallen angel?" Daniel said incredulously.

"It's the closest analogy in any of our religions or myths that I can come up with to descending after ascending," she said.

"Fallen angels are devils, right?" Rain said. "That hardly applies to Daniel." She couldn't avoid a very sappy expression as she said his name. Cam sniggered and looked at Sam, rolling his eyes. The "Heroic Lovebirds" took a lot of ribbing.

Sam, Daniel, and Rain had found one way to cope with it all by plotting increasingly ridiculous ways to turn Jack's time at the cabin on its head. Daniel knew that Rain was really secure about him when she actually suggested that Daniel and Sam let Jack discover them making out. Daniel had reminded her of all the ways Jack knew how to kill a man without breaking a sweat and she had laughingly withdrew the plan.

With the cabin weekend almost upon them, a SG-1 meeting was hastily called for an emergency mission. Daniel walked into the briefing room and was shocked to see Jack wearing a BDU and seated at the table. If it had not been for Mitchell and Landry's presence, he would have been looking for a dog in glasses and the Way Back Machine. "Nice of you to join us, Dr. Jackson," Jack said, making a federal case out of Daniel's slight tardiness, as he had so many times in the past.

Daniel sat down without making any excuses between Sam and Teal'c, both of whom seemed a little bewildered. General Landry said, "There are two topics to discuss. The first–and this as classified as they come–is that the president has just about finalized the decision to reveal the Gate, but he doesn't want people to have to deal with the fact of sentient extraterrestrial life, access to and from the rest of the universe provided by the Gate, and the Ori threat and other such dangers all at once. He's considering starting out by revealing merely that we are in touch with life on other planets. Colson paved the way for us last year with that flap over Thor. Once that has died down, then we tell people about the Gate. We might never reveal the threats. Maybe we'll have licked the Ori by then."

Sam said, "Sir, I don't understand why we are privy to this information."

Landry nodded. "Our president understands media manipulation. You can't be a president any more if you don't, right? He wants photogenic, real faces attached to all this that people will like and trust. Jack and Daniel are both out there already as is Captain Rain Carter. Sam, unfortunately, you're not probably going to be viewed as too trustworthy since you were the official face on our lie about Thor. General O'Neill, Dr. Jackson, and Captain Carter are photogenic and have had sympathetic media coverage lately." Listening to Landry, Daniel wasn't sure that the gradual progression from the hue and cry about him as a kook to the majority of the press portraying him as a misunderstood and persecuted scientist with a storybook romance was totally a good thing. "When you get back from this next mission, the public relations people want to start working with you to prepare you to help carry the message and reassure people during this first wave."

Daniel felt badly for Sam. Her situation was similar to what had happened to him recently; following orders had forced her to be untrue to herself.

General Landry said, "Moving on to topic two, we've had a crisis come up on P4H789 during the night. General O'Neill just got here from DC and is going to command the mission."

Daniel looked at Cam who didn't really seem upset. Landry caught the look. "Colonel Mitchell suggested that General O'Neill command since General O'Neill needs to accompany you in any case." He paused, looking a bit embarrassed. "Colonel Carter, we'd like you to sit this one out." Sam blushed and Jack looked uncomfortable. Everyone in the room knew that it was their status as lovers that had her off the mission, but no one was about to say anything. Daniel felt even worse for her.

Landry cleared his throat and continued, "P4H789 has a bloody insurrection going on. The government, with whom we have had a very nice trade agreement, and the rebels will only agree to talk to us about a truce and the extraction of our 32 personnel on the planet if Dr. Jackson and General O'Neill, who brokered the original trade agreement, negotiate for us. We're prepared to send men to apply force if required, but we hope to avoid it."

Landry nodded to Mitchell to continue and he said, "There are a couple hundred locals who have been working directly with us, supporting us. Things look really dicey for them if the rebels win. Actually, not so hot if they don't. The rebellion is part of a general xenophobic reaction to the Gate. The only difference between the legal government and the rebels is the degree of isolationism they seek to impose. The rebels want to bury the Gate and kill everyone who's had contact with us. We are hoping we can negotiate the support personnel's extraction too."

They all sat feeling sickened at the thought. Like everyone alive in the 70's, the images of the last plane out of Saigon were burned in their minds. Whatever you thought about the correctness of American presence on foreign soil, the US owed something to those who had taken the risk of working with the Americans.

Sam said, "Sir, Daniel's arm is still not fully healed. Surely sending him into a combat situation is problematic."

Daniel said, torn between exasperation that she was speaking for him once again and being touched that she cared, said, "It doesn't sound like I'll be in combat. The government still controls the gate, right?"

"Correct. Colonel Carter, we did consider that factor but after consulting with Dr. Lam and considering the cost if there are no negotiations, it seemed to make sense."

"When do we leave, GeneralO'Neill?" Teal'c asked.

"I hope your ponies are already saddled, because we are riding out in forty-five minutes," came the answer.

Daniel filed out of the room with the others and thought, this should be interesting. You've got a negotiating team where one man knows the other has been making out with his girl friend. He rapidly went to find Rain to say goodbye. She shut the door to the office, mercifully empty except for them, and said, "Come back to me. I don't want to get a reputation as a black widow."

He was puzzling that one out when she kissed him with so much love that he felt blessed by angels. "Okay. I'm pretty sure you have the engagement ring on you. Let's have it," she demanded next.

He pulled her questing fingers out of his pocket. "I'll get it myself, thank you." He tugged a chain out of the neck of his BDU, slipped it off his head, and removed the beautiful sapphire and diamond ring. "This was my mother's. She'd be so pleased to see you wearing it."

He slipped it on her finger and kissed her. His arm was stiff and sore but no longer in the sling and he could pull her satisfyingly close. He started to leave and she pulled him back. "Wait a minute. We're very modern here. I have one for you too." She produced a carved gold ring for him. He had to run to the gateroom to not be late, once again.

They stepped out on a planet where there was no birdsong and the distant thump of bombardment could be heard. White faced men and women, their expressions taut with worry conducted Daniel and Jack to the neutral site selected for the meeting. Cam and Teal'c accompanied them as bodyguards. One SG team came through with them and stayed at the Gate to relay messages back. Another remained on ready, waiting for orders that they might have to use their far superior weaponry to fight themselves clear and solve the problem through force.

The negotiations were tedious and went in circles. After two hours, Daniel and Jack took advantage of a recess to walk out on the roof with Cam and Teal'c, staying in a sheltered area this close to the ground currently disputed between the two forces where they could hear the shots, shouts, and screams of active fighting. "I don't like this," Jack said. "I don't sense any interest in coming to terms with us. I think they're stalling."

"The curious part is that both sides are doing it," Daniel said. The men exchanged thoughtful looks. "What if they've come to some sort of truce, some way to carve things up, and murdering us is part of the package?" Daniel asked.

Jack said, "I really hate it when you're right, Daniel."

"We know where our guys are through the personal tracking devices," Cam stated, "and we definitely have superior weaponry. You guys are the ones in the room. If you think things are dubious, I think we should trust your instincts."

"What about the native support personnel?" Teal'c asked.

"We know where they are too. When things started to get so unfriendly, most of them moved into a sort of ghetto not far from the Gate."

Daniel said, "Maybe it's time to consider this a lost cause. I don't want to keep stubbornly pursuing negotiations if it's likely that our people are going to die because we didn't take action."

Jack looked at Daniel. "You've grown up, Danny Boy. You're able to see now that not everybody can be saved and sometimes you have to take care of your own."

Daniel looked at him, his clear blue eyes troubled. "I hate it, but it's true. I say we walk away from these negotiations. Maybe that will surprise them and buy us a little time."

They informed the SG personnel waiting at the Gate and returned to the negotiation room. Cam and Teal'c positioned themselves outside so they could take out the local guards standing around if need be. Jack rose and said, "My colleague and I would like to return to our home world to seek additional direction from our government. We have not been able to offer terms that are satisfactory to you and require the approval of our superiors to offer anything else."

The rebel leader and the president of the legitimate government exchanged looks. "Do you believe that you may be able to persuade your government to give us the technology we have requested?" The president asked.

Jack looked concerned. "I think it will take some in-person persuasion."

There was begrudging agreement that the Tauri could leave temporarily. Daniel felt the hair stand up on his neck as he walked out of the room. They joined Teal'c and Cam and got in an armored car for transport back to the gate. Teal'c immediately noticed and signaled to the others that their route did not appear to be back to the Gate. They all reached down in their packs to ready small portable gas masks so they could extract them quickly. Cam and Teal'c each surreptitiously took a small capsule from a pocket and broke it.

They all held their breath as Cam let his roll onto the floor and Teal'c slipped one into the driver's compartment and the colorless and odorless gas seeped out. After a minute the personnel in the car with them were affected enough that Jack's team could clap their masks on and breathe and then deal with the groggy enemy. The car was weaving as the driver struggled to fight off the gas and Teal'c thrust his arm through the opening from the back of the van, knocked him out, and then thrust his upper body through to quickly grab the wheel. He reached down and knocked the driver's leg so that his foot came off the accelerator and the car shuddered to a halt, inches from the wall of a building.

They contacted the Gate and discovered that there was a fight between local troops and SG personnel at the Gate. The first priority of the other SG teams was to go to the hostage SGC staff, the second, to the local supporters. SG-1 was on their own for awhile. No one would be able to come to their aid in their position about two miles from the Gate and, according to the intelligence they received, in the midst of the old part of the city where their native supporters were lying low.

There was heavy bombardment coming down between them and the Gate now. Things got even worse when they saw a company of soldiers approaching several blocks away on the broad main street where their car had ended up. Jack led them through the rat's warren of narrow streets and alleys. Twice they came around corners to encounter enemy parties. Teal'c got a flesh wound in one calf and was limping. They were pressed against the wall of an alley and could hear a really large party of soldiers approaching. Suddenly, a lean man appeared seemingly from nowhere and said, "You Tauri. Come with me. I have a place for you to hide."

They looked at him with some suspicion. Exasperation and fear crossed his face as the boots of the enemy sounded closer. "I work for the Tauri. My family and I are hiding close by. Come with me and quickly."

Their options being limited, they followed him down the alley. Just as they reached a narrow flight of stairs leading down to a cellar, a small patrol came around the building and began to fire. They returned the fire and took the enemy down but there was a sharp cry and they saw that their Good Samaritan had been shot. Daniel quickly improvised something to bind his wound and help with staunch the blood flow. Cam picked their wounded friend up and said, "Where?"

The man was able to direct them into the cellar and through a hidden door. In the little windowless room beyond, a girl around 6 was trying to calm a crying toddler. A boy of 8 or 9 sat next to a very pregnant woman who was moaning in pain. All but the little boy cowered in fright when they burst into the room. The boy was clearly also afraid, but he was so plainly trying to be the man, to be brave.

Cam laid the man on a pallet of rags and Jack pulled a med kit out of his backpack. The man said, "I'm Robert De Lonas." He indicated the woman and said, "My sister, Mina. Her husband is dead but a few weeks from the flu. We had a terrible plague of it. Many blame the Tauri even though they tried to help us with medicines. This is her son, Donny." The little girl had come to his side with the crying child. He said, with great pride, "This is my daughter Astrid, and my little boy, Jon. Their mother also died in the flu."

The woman gritted out, "The baby. I think it's coming."

Teal'c had sagged to the floor, his face contorted with pain. Daniel realized that perhaps his wound was worse than they had suspected. He would be no help. Cam said with slightly misplaced levity, "I don't know nothing about birthing no babies." He immediately sobered and said, "Honestly, I've never even seen a movie of it."

Jack said, "I've never done it but I've seen it done."

Daniel said, "I helped with one once in a village in the Yucatan but I'm still fundamentally one-handed. I guess it's you and me, Jack."

For hours that went on until it was dark outside, the woman struggled to have her baby. It was a breech birth and Jack at last clumsily turned the child and it emerged screaming. They cleaned it up and handed it to the mother but just as quickly had to take it back when she hemorrhaged. She grabbed Jack's hand and said, "Promise me you'll save my children. Promise me you'll see to it that my children are taken care of."

Jack looked at the tiny girl in his arms and the desperation on the face of the mother and said, "I will take care of them if you can't. Hold on. Our people are coming. They will be able to help you."

Daniel became worried about the fate of the other SG teams and those they were supposed to rescue. It was the middle of the night and he didn't think the woman would last much longer. The bombardment outside had moved closer and hits were coming close to the building. He had not been able to raise anyone on the com for at least an hour. Jack had carried Robert to his sister's side and he sat leaning against the wall, her hand in his. Cam had taken charge of the baby for awhile from Jack and it slept in his arms. Robert's children had fallen asleep, leaning against Daniel, but Mina's little boy sat at alert, a knife in his hand, on the other side of his dying mother. Daniel watched as Jack went to the boy's side and began to talk to him quietly. He couldn't hear the words, but he watched the child relax and then lay the knife down. The boy and the man sat in conversation as pieces of masonry began to fall off the walls, the shelling becoming very close. Mina cried out and then was still. Daniel checked her pulse and confirmed that she was gone. The man looked at him in anguish, his face barely visible in the light of the one flashlight they had lit. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Another shell hit the floor above them and the far corner of the room fell in. Daniel went back to Robert's children and pulled them close. The little boy clutched Jack's arm. Cam shielded the newborn in his arms with his body. Robert said to Daniel, "I heard the promise made to my sister. I ask you sir, should anything happens to me, will you see that my children are taken care of? I beg you."

As Jack had, Daniel did the only thing he could. "I promise to take care of them." Another shell landed directly above them and the roof caved in. A heavy beam fell across the man and his sister and narrowly missed Jack and Donny. Cam and Teal'c and the baby were on the other side of a pile of rubble. Daniel and his two charges were unhurt, shielded by a large wooden panel that protected him but also trapped him in place. They called to each other and everyone answered except for Robert. Jack and Donny worked steadily moving rubble away to free Daniel. Then they tackled the much bigger problem of getting to Cam, Teal'c, and the baby.

The bombardment had let up temporarily as they worked. Suddenly they froze at the sound of footsteps above them. A blinding light shone down in their faces. Daniel began groping for his weapon. "Daniel, Jack, thank God," a voice behind the light said. "Where are Teal'c and Cam?"

"It's you Sam! Am I ever glad to see you," Daniel exclaimed.

"We need help to get to Cam and Teal'c," Jack said, not wasting time on greetings.

As they worked Sam explained that two more SG teams had been sent through as reinforcements. Things were going very badly. They had rescued most of the SG staff, but had been able to save very few of the native support personnel. They needed to fall back to the gate as quickly as possible.

"These kids are coming with us," Jack said.

"Of course," Sam said. "We can hardly leave them here."

The little boy said, "You promised my mother. I heard you. You promised her you'd take care of me and my baby sister."

Jack smiled at him. "Yes I did and I will."

The child pointed at Daniel. He promised my uncle to take care of my cousins."

Daniel squatted down, "And I will. Now let's finish getting the others free."

With the additional help, it only took a few more minutes to get to the others. Cam was unconscious, the baby still in his arms. "One of the stones fell on his head," Teal'c said.

Jack took the baby and turned to Sam. He placed it tenderly in her arms and said, "Don't say I never gave you anything."

Donny said, "Is she your wife?" The rest of the squad within earshot stopped moving to hear the answer.

Jack looked anxiously at Sam. "I hope she will be soon."

"How soon," he continued to quiz Jack.

"That's up to her," Jack said.

Daniel didn't even try to hide his smile when Sam said, "How about as soon as you can get an annulment?"

"Already working on it," Jack said, stunning everyone within hearing.

"So," Donny said, "am I in the wedding?"

"Talk to her about the wedding arrangements," Jack stage whispered.

The improvised litter for Cam was ready and they moved out. Daniel carried both his charges and two men supported Cam. They made their way to a small square where other parties of survivors found in the quarter rendezvoused. The trip back to the Gate was harrowing. Daniel had never been this scared for himself. The toddler screamed but the little girl was incredibly brave. She's Rain's kid already, Daniel thought.

Then they were through the Gate and coming down to the ramp to immediately meet the medical team. One of them tried to take the baby from Sam. She said, "I'll take her to the infirmary. Daniel and Jack also refused to part with their charges. Rain came running along the corridor to Daniel's side. "Who is this?" she asked.

Daniel replied, "I just adopted two children I guess. Their father lost his life but before he did, he may well have saved ours. He asked me to promise to take care of them. I hope that means we just adopted two children."

Rain looked at him with such love, her face shone. "You're the primary caregiver, right?" she asked softly.

"Check," Daniel said.

They had just reached the Infirmary and Donny turned to look at Daniel. "Is this lady your wife?"

"Soon," Daniel said. The kid was a regular matchmaker. "And, I imagine you can be in the wedding."

Rain arched an eyebrow. Daniel explained. "Jack adopted a couple of kids too. That one was already campaigning to be in Jack and Sam's wedding so I thought he was kind of on a roll."

Rain asked, "Can I hold the little one?"

"He's wet," Daniel said, "and quite filthy."

"Is this a test?" she asked.

"No, honey, but it's going to be our life for awhile."

Jack, Daniel, Sam, and Rain stayed with the children as they were examined and cleaned up. Jack said, "I guess this is really going to change the nature of our weekend at the cabin." Daniel, Sam, and Rain looked at each other and exploded in laughter. Jack failed to get any explanation from them for their hilarity.

Just before they left the infirmary to take the children to get food, Donny stood before the adults and asked, very seriously, "Do any of you have any idea how to make a wedding?"

Jack was the only one who could avoid laughing. "I did it once before so I guess they'll all just have to listen to me, won't they?"

The child looked them all over, clearly considering that idea quite seriously. At last he leaned on Jack's knee and said in a loud whisper, "They don't look like they ever listen to anyone."