Inside the Dragon's Egg

Having Teal'c and Daniel in the house tended to lift her spirits at the same time their presence evoked a hungry longing for the life she'd left behind. They visited whenever the opportunity arose which wasn't enough, not by a long shot. But, it was frequently enough that, when they did show up, Ally wasn't driven to hide in corners or run frantically through the house in a panic at their unfamiliar presence in the house; Jacob greeted them with excited prattle instead of shy silence; and even Peter seemed to recognize them. He would gaze at them with his huge, brown eyes and give them a milky grin while they talked and laughed and made themselves at home in her living room.

Usually they gave her plenty of warning, but they'd arrived bright and early this morning without even a call from the airport. She'd hastily pulled on a pair of baggy sweats and ran her fingers through her short, unruly hair in an ineffectual attempt to appear halfway presentable before she opened the door to them. Unfortunately, the house was no better. Yesterday had been a long day, and she hadn't even made a stab at picking things up before she'd collapsed into her bed the night before. Toys, books, and small articles of clothing lay haphazardly over the floor and furniture. Too delighted at seeing them to be more than slightly embarrassed at the state of her house, she teased, "You should have let me know you were coming. Next time you'll know better."

When the doorbell rang again, the shared glance between Teal'c and Daniel clued her into something going on , but she was totally unprepared to open her door to the general. He grinned into her shocked face with a satisfied expression of his own. She hadn't seen him since she'd left him frozen in Antarctica over four years ago, and he'd changed a lot in that time. No longer her colonel but general to the whole base. It showed in his eyes even though one of the few trips he'd taken through the Gate since his promotion had seen to it that it didn't show in his face. Daniel had inadvertently set off the right alien device for a change, and the general had lost-or in this case gained--a good fifteen years as a result. Knowing him, he hadn't appreciated it, but he looked great.

But that wasn't why she gaped at him like he was from another planet. Regardless of the color of his hair, he was the last person she'd expected to ever find on her doorstep. When the Asgard had brought him back from his last Ancient headtrip, he'd sent a belated, wedding gift of silver picture frames she'd never used. By then she'd been gone from the SGC for three months and married just as long. He'd sent flowers for her following each birth and gifts for each of the babies-a baseball and bat for Ally, hockey equipment for Jacob, and a golf set for Peter. Irreverent and comical birthday and Christmas greetings and gifts had arrived each year with his name scrawled on the cards. Every couple of months up until Pete's death, she'd received postcards from out of the way places--who knew where he'd gotten them--inscribed 'Wish you were here.' But, that had been it.

In all that time, he'd never even spoken to her by phone. He'd had Janet call her the few, odd times it looked like Daniel or Teal'c weren't going to make it and left it to them or Janet to let her known when they did. He'd had Walter call her if her dad was coming to 'town', and Siler if they needed her input on whatever technical problems came up on base that couldn't wait for her to get the official request and handle through her new position here. He'd been at the funeral-she'd seen his name scrawled in the visitor's book--but he'd snuck in and out without a word.

She'd accepted his absence in her life as inevitable and permanent. She'd thought marriage, three kids, and an entire life separate from him and the Stargate program had erased the hold he had on her.

She'd been wrong.

"Your walking papers, Carter," he said after one more awkward moment of many they'd shared through the years. "Thought I'd take the liberty of delivering them myself." He held out the sealed, yellow envelope in explanation, and she finally understood what he was doing at her door.

Severing her final connection with the Air Force had been difficult. One more thing in a long list of things that had had to be done. She'd cried when she'd filled in the paperwork but remaining in the reserves had no longer been an option. Pete would have managed if she had been called to active duty. It would have been difficult, but with the help of his parents he would have muddled through.

But, with him gone...his parents loved all the kids, and they would manage with the boys if it came to it. The same for Mark and his wife. But, Ally. For all they wanted to love her, Ally had never allowed any of them into her world. Pete had barely made it through the Gate, and no one else had even been allowed up the ramp. Leaving her daughter for the few hours she occasionally lectured or had to actually go in to work instead of networking through her computer was difficult enough. Going on active duty would be an act of abandonment and betrayal she wasn't capable of performing. So, she'd reluctantly turned in the papers that would forever shut the door on Major Samantha Carter of the United States Air Force. And now here they were on her doorstep signed, sealed, and delivered.

With a smile she didn't feel, she reached out a reluctant hand and accepted them. "Thank you, Sir," she said. "Come in." He followed her in and nodded at the guys. Gallantly ignoring the debris the kids had left scattered over the floor, he flopped into the nearest chair.

"Better look them over and make sure they're right," he said helpfully. "You know how these things are."

She'd rather have burned them, but she obediently sat down and fumbled with the envelope. She drew out the pile of papers and for a few seconds stared dumbly at the golden wedding band sitting on top of them before looking up at him.

He cocked his head at her and raised an eyebrow. "Well?" he asked.

She tore her eyes away from him to look beseechingly at Daniel and Teal'c. Of all people, they understood the precarious nature of the situation. Concern and guilt were written all over Daniel's face, and he gazed back at her wordlessly. There was nothing he could say or do to remedy the situation. Teal'c, however, viewed things differently. He was confidant that this was the right thing and any obstacles and objections could and should be dealt with in order for it to go forward. He returned her despairing look with one of confidence, inclined his head, and said, "O'Neill does not intend to leave until you say yes."

She shook her head hopelessly at the pair of them. Instead of sitting complacently around her living room, they should have been giving her a heads-up and brainstorming ways to derail this disaster before it had been laid at her feet. Instead, they'd let her be blindsided by it and now had no help to offer in its aftermath.

She looked back at the general who said, "Come on, Carter. I'll make sure you won't regret it."

"Saying 'yes' is a bit more complicated than that, Sir," she answered.

"Say it anyway," he told her.

She looked from him to the pictures of her children on the wall behind him. "Ally," she began but then fell silent because after all this time how could she explain Alicia Jane Shanahan to him?

"Hey, I know. Daniel and Teal'c keep me up to date. It'll be all right." The gentle acceptance in his words brought tears welling up. He sounded sincere enough, and she knew if he had a problem with taking on the kids he wouldn't have come. But, her problem wasn't how he would deal with Ally. He'd do as well as anyone could as far as that went. That wasn't the problem at all. She looked for support from Daniel. It was the least he could do, but for once deciding to keep out of her business, he shrugged and refused to meet her eyes.

Oblivious to how off track his thoughts were to her own, the general continued, "You know me and kids. Can't help myself. Besides, she's yours-no way I'm not going to love her." Regardless of Ally's erratic behaviors and her muteness, she knew that was true as well. That too had never been her concern or the reason for her own silence down through the years.

Apparently deciding he'd butt in after all, Daniel said, "Sam's right, Jack. There are-"

"Say 'yes' and there'll be time to hash out all of that later," Jack pressed. "It will all work out," he assured them. She wished she could be so sure. He'd never taken being kept out of the loop well even in the small things like deciding if it was a green or blue day. And this secret they'd kept from him for years was no small thing. She had her doubts he'd ever be able to forgive them. Or himself. Because getting past his righteous anger over being kept in the dark would involve forgiving himself for choices he'd made as well. Choices that in his right mind he'd never have considered worth the cost.

She weakly shook her head one more time. He shook his back. "Don't shake your head at me," he told her. She could see he wasn't quite successfully swallowing down a grin. He thought he'd won, thought since she hadn't immediately told him 'sorry' she'd never find the strength to say it. She was afraid he was right. But, there wasn't just the matter of confessing the truth to him. There was the added danger that up until now they'd managed to avoid by keeping him out of the picture. So far the deception hadn't been questioned, but could they really chance everything in this way? Would their cover hold if they brought all the components into close proximity? She was afraid to take that chance and find out. The stakes were too high, the risk too great, and too much hung in the balance.

Somehow, she needed to find the strength to wipe that grin from his face and soul. Unfortunately, the man had never known when to quit. Though his hair color might have changed, that hadn't. Using his quietest voice he said, "Say yes...or tell me you don't love me and you don't want to marry me!"

She almost groaned in frustration. He knew she couldn't do that. Knew that, all things being what he believed them to be, if he'd forced the issue anytime in the last four years, she'd have left Pete for him. That's why he'd never trusted himself to join the others when they came down to spoil the kids; why he'd sent toys and postcards but never came himself. Just like she'd never taken him up on his offer to take her fishing. Neither of them was that strong.

He said her name quietly. She closed her eyes against his demand and knew he'd won. "OK," she said with a sigh, "Yes." It came out sounding as defeated as she felt. For a brief moment he frowned at her, realizing for the first time that her reservations were greater than he'd understood and that there would be costs to her surrender that he'd been unable to consider because he didn't have all the facts. His frown didn't last though. Neither did his forced nonchalance. With a whoop of delight he rushed over and grabbed her for a quick kiss before rushing to exchange excited back slaps with Teal'c and Daniel. She swayed weakly in the wake of his exuberance with a huge smile of her own as she watched him.

"I told you she'd say yes!" he told them.

"Indeed, you did," Teal'c answered. Daniel just shook his head at him and laughed in spite of himself.

"Oh, get that smile off your face, Jackson! One of these days you're going to get around to doing your own proposing, and then you'll understand what I've just gone through!"

"Ha!" Daniel said, "I thought you weren't worried a bit, Jack? I thought it was as good as done as soon as you decided to pop the question?"

Sam shook her head at them. Saying yes had been as hard as walking away from the SGC. Then, even though she knew she was doing the right thing, she'd been overwhelmed with regret, sorrow, and fear. Now, she felt only relief and happiness. For all her worries, she knew she'd made the right decision. "It was, Daniel," she said with a grin.

He came over to give her a hug. "Don't let him run roughshod over you, Sam...he causes you any grief, you just call me and I'll sic Janet on him."

"I'll do that," she said.

Daniel hugged her a little closer, and she knew what was coming before he spoke. He pulled back to meet her eyes and ignored her silent pleas. "Listen, I don't mean to sound negative or anything. But, don't you think there are things you guys should discuss?"

He'd been talking to her, of course, though it was Jack who answered, "Like what?"

Daniel looked at her expectantly, but she wouldn't give him the go ahead he wanted. He was left floundering for something else to say. "You know... the sort of things people talk about before they agree to spend the rest of their lives together-where you're going to live, are you going to have more kids, things in your pasts that might cause you problems now? That type of thing."

"Nah," Jack said confidently.

"Really?" Daniel said. "You think every thing is just going to fall into place without you even thinking about it?"

Jack gave an exaggerated, aggrieved sigh and then patiently explained, "Everything important has already fallen into place." He grinned at Sam. She grinned back even though she knew Daniel was right.

Daniel sighed. None of them had been fool enough to believe Jack wouldn't one day have to be told. And that the longer they waited, the greater his anger at what he was bound to see as their betrayal would be. He'd never thought keeping the truth from him was the wise thing to do, but Sam had been the one paying the price and that gave her the right to call the shots. He'd done what he could to help her through the years, and he wasn't abandoning her now. He held her eye a moment, trying to let her know he'd stand beside her when things finally did hit the fan. He owed her that much. She'd faced all the other fallout more or less on her own, but, if she let him, maybe he could deflect some of Jack's ire when the time came.

"Well, hello there," Jack suddenly said behind them. They turned to see Ally standing in the doorway. Jack slowly lowered himself down onto one knee and extended his hand slightly toward her. The little girl stood stock-still and looked beyond him as though he didn't exist. Sam grimaced. At least, she hadn't gone into what Pete had called 'rabbit mode' and began to run through the rooms silently screaming her terror of the stranger in her house.

"Sir," Sam said quietly, trying to encourage him to stay still and quiet and let her move around him to gather Ally up into her arms. At the sound of her voice, Ally turned to her and looked into her eyes. Sam smiled. Her daughter really connecting with her rarely happened. Each time it did, it was a wondrous and precious gift to be treasured and held close. "Good morning, Baby," she said to her quietly. Ally cocked her head at her, and then to Sam's amazement turned and looked at the general.

As in, took in his presence. As in, met his eyes and held them. Sam had never seen her daughter look at anyone like she was General O'Neill. She drew in a breath that stuck in her throat. It was almost as if Ally had been waiting for him to come all this time. And, maybe she had. Maybe these years of silence could have been avoided if she'd listened to Daniel all that time ago and not kept them apart. But there had been no choice at the beginning, and by the time there had been...it had already been too late. She'd owed Pete far too much to turn her back on him by then. And it would never have been safe.

Jack looked curiously at the little girl. She was a miniature Carter. Whatever Pete had contributed to her genetic makeup wasn't readily apparent. She had Carter's fair hair and blue eyes. He'd been right, just seeing her, knowing she was Carter's daughter, he loved her. She didn't have her mother's easy smile, and her eyes lacked the aliveness that always shone out of Carter's, but otherwise, she was a dead ringer for her mom.

She looked like a normal enough kid to him. But Carter was holding her breath, and Teal'c and Daniel looked like one false move would break the spell. He knew a lot hung on this moment. He planned on living with this little girl for a long time to come, and he wanted to get off to a good start with her. Unfortunately, he didn't have a clue how. He shrugged off the tenseness he felt from the others and decided there was nothing he could do but be himself. "I'm Jack," he told her. "I'm marrying your mom. We're going to be family."

The little girl turned back to Carter as though asking for permission, and Sam gave her an encouraging nod and smile. He'd understood from what he'd heard that Ally didn't relate appropriately to even Carter, but he figured they did better than what Frasier and the guys had been able to pick up on their occasional visits. When the little girl continued to look at her questioningly, Carter said, "You've heard me talk about Colonel O'Neill...he's a general now, but he's ok."

Ally turned from her then and took a solemn step forward to take his hand. He grinned at her and gently pulled her to him. She closed her eyes and laid her head against his shoulder. He patted her back and ran a hand over her long, blond hair. "Hello, Beautiful," he told her quietly. "You and I are going to get along just fine, aren't we?" He held her close and blinked tears out of his eyes. He'd forgotten what it felt like to hold a warm, little body.

Watching the two of them, the others knew Jack had no idea of the magnitude of the moment. To move toward him, to take his hand, to allow him to hold her...it was all more, much more, than Ally had ever done before with anyone.

"Sam," Daniel said. Jack heard the imploring tone in his voice and knew it boded no good. What was Daniel after anyway, he wondered? "Now would be a good time."

"For what?" Jack asked as he stood up with Ally and looked at the strained faces around him. But then the older boy wandered down the hall. Behind him, the baby called from one of the rooms. Sam shook her head determinably at Daniel and went to get her sons. Daniel shrugged at Jack's raised eyebrows and kicked the wall.

There were no forthcoming answers while in strained silence she went about the business of feeding the older two their breakfast. The little guy sat in a high chair and threw Cheerios on the floor by the handfuls, but as far as Jack could tell he never actually ate any of them. Both the boys looked like little Shanahans just as much as Ally looked like a little Carter. Not that he couldn't have guessed the boys were hers as well. Jacob peered at him with Carter-like intensity, and Peter? Well, he was pretty sure the baby was not just randomly tossing Cheerios but actually conducting some sort of baby physics experiment with them.

Jack gamefully accepted a bowl of some sort of healthy, whole grain, flaky cereal when it became apparent Carter didn't keep her kitchen stocked with real breakfast foods like donuts, left-over cake, or even Fruit Loops. The kids were obviously being deprived of a normal childhood, but he'd soon see to that. He slopped milk into his bowl and bravely sat down between the older two.

Jacob offered him a drink of juice from his sippy cup which Jack politely declined. Ally fluttered between him and her spot at the table until he drew her up onto his lap. He pulled her bowl and cup over for her to reach, but she showed no interest in eating or drinking on her own. Carter leaned over and taking her hand picked up the spoon and led her through a bite or two. After that, the little girl repeated the motion over and over again until Carter removed the spoon from her hand and cleared the now empty bowl.

The others made small talk around them but Carter was subdued and didn't join in. He wasn't certain if it was because of Daniel's yet to be talked about issue, or if she was uncomfortable with him being there and seeing the chaos of her life.

"Aren't you going to eat?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "Sir...I...well, Daniel's right. There are things you need to know. Things that are going to upset you."

He put down his own spoon and gave her his full attention. "Ok...I'll try to hear you out. What's this all about?" he asked.

She threw a desperate look towards Daniel and Teal'c, and Daniel came to her rescue. "How much do you remember about the trip home from Taonas, Jack? After we'd gotten the ZPM?"

"Not a thing...I remember Carter getting bossy and ringing down to the surface but that's where I lose it. Why?" Carter mopped up Jacob's juice and refused to meet his eye. Daniel scratched his head and looked perplexed.

Teal'c took up the challenge. "You are aware of the harcesis, O'Neill?"

"Of course," Jack agreed impatiently, "Sha're's kid born with all the knowledge of the Goa'uld."

"It was your belief that the Ancient knowledge you possessed would also be transferred to your offspring," Teal'c continued.

"My offspring?" he echoed. Carter leaned down and began to pick up Cheerios from the floor, but he saw the tears shining in her eyes before she did so. "Carter!" he said louder than he'd intended. "Tell me I don't understand what he's saying," he ordered. But when she'd straightened up and met his eyes, he knew he did. He shook his head mutely at her as though by doing so he could change things. The child in his arms squirmed until she could turn her face up to his and stared at him.

"I ordered you to..." he couldn't finish his question and couldn't face the answer. He closed his eyes against it and shuddered. Ally tensed on his lap and began to rock back and forth. He patted her knee in an effort to quiet her, but it didn't seem to have any effect.

Carter's answer was just a whisper as though she was as afraid to hear it as he was. "You didn't order me, sir...it was my choice."

He opened his eyes into the wide, blue eyes of her daughter. She looked normal enough all right. But he understood now Carter's little girl wasn't normal, and that hadn't come as a surprise to any of them. He'd condemned her to an existence of anything but normality before she'd even been conceived...and for all of Carter's brave words, it wasn't a choice she should ever have had to make.

"Some choice," he said with regret. Not just for the odd, little creature on his lap, but for this life of scattered Cheerios and diapers and hidden dangers he'd landed Carter in when she should have been fighting Goa'uld, discovering new worlds, and writing papers to turn the established theories of astrophysics on their ear. He swallowed. There was nothing he could say to change things, nothing he could do. Ally, becoming even more agitated, raised her arms out to the sides and began to flap her hands. He tightened his hold around her middle to keep her from slipping off his lap but didn't know how to comfort her anymore than he knew how to comfort himself.

Carter reached over to take the little girl from him, but he wouldn't give her up. Ally didn't seem to be aware of either of them. "I'm sorry," Carter whispered to them both.

Ally gave no evidence she'd heard Carter's words, but he scowled at her in response and growled, "Isn't that my line? I've merrily gone along living my life with never a care in the world, and you've...."

"Lived mine, Sir," she finished for him. She'd managed to fight back the tears, but her voice still held a slight quiver. She wanted to add 'without regret', but it wouldn't have been true.

"And Pete's" he said with a harshness that mirrored his growing anger.

"Pete," she said with certainty, "understood from the beginning. I couldn't tell him the truth, but he understood that I needed him for a cover story...and he was happy enough with that--we were happy." It sounded like a weak protest to Jack, but he could understand how Pete could have been happy in the circumstance--he'd have been if it would have been him. But, it hadn't been. He frowned at her. The tears she was still fighting to hold in kept him from turning the full force of his anger on her like he wanted. Instead, he turned to Daniel and Teal'c.

"And you two? You knew all along?" he demanded. Teal'c continued shoveling grainy cereal into his mouth as though he hadn't eaten in a week. Daniel ducked his head and began to pick up Cheerios. "In fact, you more than knew it, you let it happened, didn't you?" Jack said, his anger escalating as their silence spoke volumes.

Finding her voice, Carter tried to redirect his anger, "I was in charge of the mission, remember? You presented the option; I chose to go with it."

He refused to be baited and continued to stare at his two teammates. "You could have stopped it."

Daniel had thought he was ready to take Jack's wrath, but he wasn't. Because he agreed with Jack. He could have stopped it. He hadn't because he'd believed the Ancient knowledge was the key they needed to win the fight against the Goa'uld and the Replicators and whatever threat they'd come across once those two were gone. Jack would never have made the effort (and it had been a tremendous effort) to bring the possibility up if he hadn't thought it was worth the sacrifice. So his protests had only been half-hearted: his arguments feeble attempts at allaying his own guilt.

He'd assumed and hoped the Jack they knew, the one who would never ask Sam such a thing if there'd been another way, was still in there and knew what he was doing. And maybe he had been. Through the limited means of communication available to him, Jack had indicated that although his human mind couldn't handle the downloaded material it was being swamped with the child would be able to as it grew. It had been too much to expect Ally would be born talking and writing computer code. Still, he for one hadn't bargained for the silent, tormented little girl in Jack's lap. Yet he still had to hope she would grow into the knowledgeable fountain of information he'd sold his soul for back on that Al'kesh.

"I could have, yes," he finally answered. He looked at Sam who tightened her lips and shook her head no. "And maybe I should have." He shrugged. "I believed you wouldn't..." here he did raise his eyes and look directly at Jack.

"Wouldn't what?" Jack demanded.

"Wouldn't do anything to hurt Sam," he said quietly. That was it in the end. He'd known Jack loved her, and he'd trusted him to get her through what he was asking without having to pay the price.

It had been a faulty assumption. One Sam hadn't shared. He'd understood that the moment she'd turned away from the stasis pod in Antarctica, nodded her head determinably, and started talking.

"I'll hand in my resignation as soon as we get back. The victory over Anubis will be the perfect time for me to walk away with a clear conscience. And the whole restructuring of the SGC will make it all the more believable. I'll talk to Pete. If he's game...we already have an established relationship, marriage and kids would be the expected, next step. If he's not willing--I'll think of something else. Something to provide as much distance as I can from the program, from the colonel. It's the only way, we'll be able to keep the baby safe. If the NID catches the scent of this..." she'd faltered there at the enormity of that danger.

But, he'd long since lost heart and recognized he'd failed to count the here and now expenses of their little experiment. He'd known there'd be a hefty price to pay sometime down the line, but the debt was being called in much sooner then he'd bargained for and he was in over his head.

What? Had he thought this wouldn't interfere with normal team operations? That Sam would continue as an active member of SG-1 through her pregnancy? Had he thought they'd march into their debriefing and say, "Oh yeah, on the way home Jack decided he and Sam should have a baby and see if it wouldn't be born with the knowledge of the Ancients"? Had he thought Simmons' goons wouldn't be a force to reckon with until the child showed its abilities? Whatever he'd thought, it had been both self-serving and self-deceiving; he had no defense against Jack's attack.

Jack growled at him in disgust. "It wasn't even me!" he snarled. "There wasn't enough of me in there to remember my own name, how did you expect me to be there enough to protect her?"

"Wishful thinking," he said honestly. Jack shook his head at him and turned to Teal'c.

"What's your excuse then?"

"I have no excuse, O'Neill. It was not my choice. However if it had been, the outcome would have been no different. You believed the knowledge of the Ancients was worth sacrificing your life. Major Carter believed it was worthy of her sacrifice as well. She made the only decision open to her."

And there it stood out in the open. Carter had made the only decision she could. She wouldn't have refused him--he should never have presented her with the decision. He'd brought her to this. If it wasn't for the child in his lap, he would have stormed from the room. He needed the space, needed the activity. But, he couldn't pluck her off of him and plop her down. Everyone in the room, including himself, would read the wrong thing into such an action. So he sat there, slightly rocking back and forth in an ineffectual attempt to calm the both of them.

He snorted his anger out at them all. "Bra'tac say the same thing?" he asked in disgust.

"He didn't know...still doesn't know," Carter assured him. He frowned angrily at all of them.

Jacob laughed and offered him a soggy Cheerio. Peter babbled away to the puddle of juice he'd spilt in his high chair tray. But the rest of the room sat in uncomfortable silence. The bubbly joy he'd been experiencing only a few, short minutes ago was gone, and it was hard to believe it had even existed. He wanted it back. He painfully swallowed down his anger and hurt and accepted Jacob's leftover breakfast.

Carter watched him let it all go and thought that maybe, just maybe, he'd been right and everything really would work out. She hadn't been unhappy with Pete, not at all. They'd had some great times, and she was thankful for them. But from the time Ally had been conceived, her life had had an interrupted feel...as though she'd stepped out of reality into another dimension full of hidden dangers and missed opportunities. She'd brought an aching loss for the life she'd left behind into that new reality and now for the first time in over four years she felt that loss and pain slip away.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The room had been tiny, more a closet than anything else. But it was as private as they could get on the Al'kesh. The door had whisked closed behind them leaving them in darkness except for a small, muted light coming from a panel above their heads. She had wanted to turn and flee back to Daniel and Teal'c. But she hadn't.

She'd hoped he couldn't read her fear in what little light there was. But, the worry that had been eating her every since he'd stuck his head into the device had mushroomed into full-blown panic at his suggestion. She'd managed, she hoped, to swallow it down in front of the others, while they'd stood about discussing the pros and cons as though this was something that could be decided logically and reasonably.

But, it couldn't. There was nothing logical or rational about this. Maybe, if she hadn't loved him, if he hadn't loved her, maybe there would have been a way to look at it intellectually and objectively. But, she had, he had, and for all she tried to make a militarily sound and defensible decision, she knew she was there because he was dying. Regardless of the changes this would bring to her life and the dangers it would present in the future, she wanted to hold on to whatever she could of him.

All the things he hadn't let her say before had still been waiting to be said, and she thought now he'd have no choice but to hear her out. But she found she couldn't bring herself to say them. Instead, she'd stood mutely before him, and he was the one to speak. It might have been a declaration of love or it might have been an apology. She'd never found out from Daniel because it didn't matter. It had conveyed everything she'd needed to know in its low, rough tones.

He had held her for a moment in a comforting embrace, and then he had pressed his hand into her side and she had felt the unnatural warmth beneath it. It had increased under his hand until she'd felt the momentarily, sharp pain of ovulation in her side, and then the pain and the warmth had dissipated away. He'd shifted his hand low over her pelvis and she'd felt the warmth again as he did who knew what to prepare her body to conceive. She'd closed her eyes and let it wash through her. Then he had gently drawn her down with him to the floor. By then, it had been too late to say the things she wanted to say.

The walls had been too close for them to fully stretch out and the floor had been cool and hard beneath her, so that later, as they awkwardly dressed in the near dark and silence, they'd both been stiff and sore. Right before they'd opened the door, he'd pulled him to her for a last embrace and repeated his words to her again. She'd clung to him, feeling his strength and warmth, breathing in his smell, memorizing the sound of his heart beating against her ear, knowing that his time was quickly running out. And then they'd rejoined the others and moments later learned that Anubis was moving his fleet into position and Earth's future was no more certain than his own.

Time from that point had moved at an incredibly quick pace. Bra'tac had been unaware anything had happened at all, the colonel had returned to his work modifying the rings, and she and the guys had avoided each other as much as possible in the small ship. There'd been, thankfully, no time to discuss the ramifications of what they'd done before they reached Earth. For that brief time, it was put to the side and all their attention was focused on saving the world one last time.

Successfully as it turned out. Her last act at the SGC. She'd married Pete in Denver with a couple of his cop buddies as witnesses the day after she'd finally been released from all the debriefings and paperwork following the defeat of Anubis. She'd worn the blue jeans and sweater she'd driven up in because she hadn't been thinking clearly enough to pack anything else the night before. Pete, laughing at her, had assured her he'd happily marry her even if she was wearing his old, gray sweats.

When she'd arrived unannounced at his door, he'd been surprised and pleased to see her. He'd tried to match her seriousness, but he'd failed miserably. He was never able to really make himself believe half of what she'd told him about her work, and the story she spun for him that night had been no different even for her deadly earnestness. And he hadn't missed the fact most of it was nothing more than lies she'd spun to feed him. Regardless of what he believed, he'd jumped at the chance to marry her and never looked back.

They'd driven back to Colorado Springs that afternoon to pick up what she'd needed from her house, made arrangements with moving and cleaning companies to deal with the rest, dropped by the post office to file a change of address, and driven back to Denver the next morning. Their move out-of-state where she could work in a civilian capacity in Research and Development and he could work with the local police force had followed quickly thereafter.

When the news of their marriage had filtered back to the mountain, Daniel had sent a spray of red roses, a photo album, and a card signed with his and Teal'c's names. Janet had sent a gift certificate and card, and the general had sent a check. His parents had flown out to meet her and brought a lifetime of family stories, easy acceptance, and armloads of gifts for their new home and unknowingly heaped shame upon Sam who knew only too well she was there under false pretenses. But slowly her marriage and her life with Pete had taken on its own reality.

When they'd eventually let the news of her pregnancy out, his parents had volunteered to move out to help care for the baby while they worked. Sam had hardly thought it was necessary, but Pete had jumped at the offer. Of course, Ally had been born silently screaming out her terror at the world, and even Sam had to admit they could use any and all help they could get. His folks had done the shopping and ran errands--things that were impossible for her to do with Ally and things Pete couldn't find the time for between work and trying to give Sam all the backup he could. To her embarrassment, his mother provided most of their meals that first year, and it was his father who vacuumed and did most of the washing up.

Ally had been more than a 24 hour job. As an infant, she slept only when exhaustion forced her and then only for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. If she was awake, she wanted to be held, and she'd 'cry' and fight when anyone but Sam held her. Even with Sam, she 'cried' for hours day and night and couldn't be consoled. Her first several weeks were a blur in both their minds, and if not for his folks and her friends they would never have made it.

If they'd had to actually listen to her frantic screams they would have all surely been driven mad. But, from birth she'd never made a sound. The doctors shook their heads and offered no explanation and no hope. Her silence made her care all the harder. They were afraid to leave her alone for fear she'd need them and wouldn't be able to let them know. They'd tried placing a pad with a motion sensor under her but it had driven her into a frenzy. Eventually, his dad had hung small wind chimes on her cradle which rang with her movements without upsetting her further.

Sometime near her first birthday, she had begun to sleep more and cry less, and things in that regard had continued to improve. Unfortunately, by then other behaviors had been added to her list of peculiarities. They'd had to accept life with Ally was never going to be easy.

Pete had found the one child more time-consuming and worrying than he ever could have imagined. It hadn't occurred to him to consider having another. At least not yet...not until they'd had a chance to catch up on a few years' worth of sleep. But Sam had felt she owed him a child of his own. She hadn't; she was all he wanted. Ally and all the challenges she added to his life were a small price to pay to have Sam. All his protests hadn't convinced her of that though. She'd given him Jacob as though he were the purchase price of his love for her and Ally.

Jacob was a sweet, good natured baby who added a degree of normality to their lives he had thought they'd never experience. He was glad she'd insisted on a second child, but her motives--never spoken, never addressed, but painfully obvious nonetheless--saddened him. He wished he could convince her she didn't owe him anything. That he loved her and was happy to be her husband. He'd have come begging her himself if he had thought he had any hope of winning her-- in fact, waiting for the day when he would screw up his courage and do just that, he'd had the ring already picked out before she showed up on his doorstep like a dejected stray.

But instead of being convinced, she'd gone on and gotten pregnant with Peter as though he'd upped the price. He'd accepted the news as graciously as he could and found he was delighted at the prospect of another child. But he'd never had a chance to meet his second son. He'd been dead and buried almost three months before Peter was born.

And now her old life was suddenly encroaching on her new. She was afraid the two realities were incompatible and neither would survive the melding. She was marrying Jack O'Neill...or would be in just a few minutes. He'd wanted it done before the next crisis erupted under the Mountain and required his presence. She'd never been able to picture him as a general, but now she could see it clearly. Proposal at 0815; wedding, complete with paperwork, cake, flowers, and out-of-town guests in the form of General Hammond and Janet, at 1400. It had all been planned and scheduled before he'd ever arrived. The pace had left her little, if any, time for evasive maneuvers and second thoughts. And here they were at the courthouse with the children freshly bathed and dressed and both the guys and newly arrived guests in tow.

The only thing she'd managed on her own was to call and invite Pete's folks. They were waiting on the smooth, wooden benches outside the courtroom. They stood nervously to meet the man who would be taking the place of their dead son. She'd sprung it on him at the last minute that they'd be there. As he'd had other things on his mind, he hadn't thought about the awkwardness of meeting them until he saw them. They, however, were more interested in hugging their grandsons than interrogating him. A quick handshake from Pete's dad and a nod from his mom about covered it.

They both took a brief second to murmur hellos to the little girl standing like a statue where he'd sat her beside him, but he noted neither tried to touch her. She was off in never-never land, staring through the grownups legs; unaware of her own existence, let alone theirs. He wondered if he'd ever get used to it. The others hadn't downplayed her 'problems' when they'd spoken of her down through the years.

Daniel, Teal'c, and Janet had each taken personal leave during her first year to offer what aid they could to Sam and Pete as they tried to care for an extremely difficult infant. Still, he hadn't realized the extent of her pathology. He'd been concerned and sorry Carter's first taste of motherhood wasn't smooth sailing, but he'd missed the tragic truth of the matter, and he'd felt no personal responsibility. More the fool him.

A friendly woman passing by soon made it apparent he still hadn't gotten the full picture. He'd felt Carter tensing on the one side of him and heard her begin to say, "No, please don-" as she moved to reach Ally even as he'd heard the kind woman's voice cooing, "What a beautiful little girl you are." And then all chaos ensued. Ally was flailing about like a wild thing, her mouth open in a terrified, silent scream. In shock and surprise, the startled woman was all but in tears. Daniel, Teal'c, Janet, and the Shanahans were profusely apologizing to her. Jacob hid under the bench, and in his grandmother's arms, Peter loudly gave voice to the screams his sister couldn't.

And through it all he stood rooted in shock while Carter attempted to quiet their daughter, first by physically restraining her and then as the little girl's terror wore itself out with softly murmured words. She took several hard hits from the little girl's thrashings in the process and both their soft, blue dresses were wrinkled and mussed before Ally finally sobbed against her mother's shoulder.

Several onlookers who had stopped to watch the show moved off down the hall. Carter looked over at him and mouthed, "Sorry." Her face was flushed and in it he could read her distress over the spectacle. With an effort, he swallowed down his own and encircled the two of them in his arms. He laid his head against Carter's hair and rubbed his hand down Ally's back for a brief second before straightening up and saying, "Think you better freshen up a bit, Carter, so we can get this show on the road." Her father-in-law caught his eye and nodded approvingly, and he felt like he'd just passed a test.

Ally clung to Carter so hard, he didn't think he'd be able to pry her loose, but with great shuttering sobs she came to him. He settled with her onto one of the wooden benches and held her close. He didn't expect it to have any impact on this fey, little changeling, but he made the effort anyway. "Listen, little girl, I love you," he murmured as firmly as he could into her ear, "but I'm not having you acting like that ever again. You will not be throwing yourself around like that. You hit your mom more than once. I won't have it. What if it would have been one of your baby brothers? It's not happening. Do you understand me?" She sat absolutely still leaning against him, and he said again, "Do you understand me?"

She lifted her eyes to stare into his and then moved her head close to his ear and in a soft, whispery voice said, "Yes, Sir." So. She did have a voice when she wanted.

He nodded his head in acknowledgment and said, "That's all right then." And then Carter, looking still slightly the worse for the wear, was back. It was showtime.

Thankfully, when he'd made the appointment, he'd asked the JP for the shortest, simplest ceremony possible thinking the boys would be ready for afternoon naps and not at all inclined to sit quietly. He'd been right there. They wiggled and squirmed on their grandparents' laps. Peter squealed and whined his discontent with the proceedings while Jacob giggled and talked just a bit too loudly at his grandpa. But, the ceremony, brief and disrupted as it was, ended with them legally married and from the lightness in his own heart, Carter's smile, and the happy faces of their friends and family he had no last minute doubts or regrets.

Laughing and chattering, the whole group began to move the party off to Carter's for cake and congratulations. Daniel stopped them momentarily in front of the building to shoot pictures of everything from the two of them to the whole group before finally letting them load up in the vehicles and drive off.

The kids were all asleep before the party broke up: Jacob curled in a ball under the coffee table, Peter sprawled out on the end of the couch, and Ally, who worn out from her exertion at the court house had long since fled the noise and confusion of the celebration, in bed with her favorite blanket. With a last handshake for Jack and hug for Sam, General Hammond took his leave and headed off to the airport in a taxi. Laughing, Janet, Daniel, and Teal'c made their own good bys and headed off to see the sights of the town.

And suddenly, they were alone and husband and wife and neither quite knew what to do about it. It was Sam, who in the end, overcame her awkwardness and led him to her bed where she'd awakened that morning Sam Shanahan, Pete's widow, and where she spent what time they had before the baby was up clamoring for his late-afternoon nursing as Sam O'Neill, Jack's wife.

It was all the time they had. While she'd fed the baby and he'd taken a quick shower, the call had come in. He'd been off to the Mountain on the next flight out before the others were even awake. She tried not to mind--of all people, she knew how it was. She might as well get used to it. He'd have had to leave them the next morning anyway; who knew what he'd had to promise Walter to get him to clear his calendar long enough to come in the first place. She doubted he'd be able to eke out any more time right away.

In the meantime, she had obligations here. This would have had to happen during one of the few times she had work commitments that required her presence outside the house--she was committed to lecture at the Institute the next three Fridays besides being in the midst of some rather important research which she'd either have to wrap up or leave in the hands of one of her colleagues. And there was packing and the house to see to. They never had had that time to talk and work out all the details of their new life together. She had no idea if he intended on house-hunting or moving them in with him. She wasn't really concerned. Except if they'd be staying in his house by the river, he'd need to put a fence up first. When this crisis was over, she would mention it to him. All the other 'things' could just fall into place, but not that.

The boys didn't understand he'd become a part of their lives and didn't look for him. But Ally did. She walked through the house flapping her hands and silently keening until finally accepting he wasn't there. Then she stood for hours in front of the door and wouldn't be directed elsewhere. She stared at the closed door as though she could will it to bring him back. Her distress was pitiful to see. Sam tried to assure her again and again that he would be back, but she would not be comforted. She wouldn't eat at the table, though Sam was able to get her to take a few bites from her spot in front of the door.

She kicked and 'screamed' her way to bed, and as soon as Sam put her down ran back to the door. Sam didn't try again. She brought her a pillow and her blanket and let her sleep there.

In the morning, Sam awoke to Ally standing beside her bed with silent tears on her cheeks. "Oh, honey," she said, pulling the little girl to her. "He's not gone for good. He'll be back..." It was a promise she was very aware she really couldn't make. He worked in perhaps the most dangerous place on the planet. He'd be back if he could, but a lot could happen 28 levels under Cheyenne Mountain.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He snuck in the back door of the auditorium and stood there quietly for a few minutes watching Carter lecture to a full house. Who'd have thought a lecture on the 'Theoretical Physics of Hyperspace' would draw so many? As far as most of these geeks knew hyperspace only existed in the mind of J. Michael Straczynski and the like. Didn't they have anything better to do with their time? He'd had plenty of chances to listen to Dr. Samantha Carter, Astrophysicist going on and on about hyperspace and never found it all that compelling. Certainly not enough to give up three hours of a perfectly fine Friday afternoon better used fishing.

Not then anyway. Not when he'd be going through the Gate with her bright and early Monday morning, and Tuesday, and more mornings than not. But right now, when he'd seen her barely ten hours in four and a half years...well, techno-babble never sounded so good. Never looked better either. He could easily hang out and enjoy the lecture as long as it lasted. Though maybe not standing.

He'd have slipped into the first empty seat he could find if Pete's mom hadn't not only helpfully told him where to find her, but also that he'd find Ally in the front row. Apparently, she sat quietly enough if not approached and being where she could see her mom, even in a crowded auditorium, was less disturbing to her than being left at home. He figured if he hadn't given her a thorough knowledge of astrophysics from the Ancients, she probably had a passable one from listening to Carter all these years. He moved as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible to the front and sure enough there in an island of empty chairs was one tow-haired, not-quite-four year old.

He slipped quietly into the seat over from her. Carter wouldn't thank him if he upset her and gave her students a demonstration in abnormal child psychology in the middle of her lecture. The little girl sat like a stone and refused to acknowledge his presence. That was all right. He could be patient...she was bound to warm to him sooner or later. Kids almost invariably did, and this one had seemed to think he was all right the last time they'd met.

He focused his attention back on Carter. He'd gotten out of the Mountain hours earlier than he'd hoped, and she wasn't watching for him to drop in. Lecturing to a group had never been her favorite activity, but he could see she'd grown relaxed in it, joking and smiling, interacting with her students in a natural manner that explained to a degree why the place was packed.

She'd been intent in explaining something or other at the white board when he'd moved up to the front, and he knew the exact moment she noticed he was there. The smile that spread across her face would keep him going for a long time to come. Her voice petered out for a brief second, and she had to glance at her notes before she could get back to her teaching. Even then, she lost her train of thought and stared at her notes long enough that her audience began to move restlessly in their seats. She looked up from her notes with an embarrassed grin and nodded towards him, "Ladies and Gentleman, General Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force. Glad you could make it, General."

It was the last thing he'd expected, but with his usual aplomb he stood and gave a small bow towards the audience. "The pleasure's all mine, Doctor," he said. "Please continue." With another brilliant smile for him, she did so. He couldn't imagine what her students thought of it, but her daughter suddenly realized whom she'd been so studiously ignoring. She threw off her stone persona and scrambled from her chair to his lap. He drew her close and whispered, "Hey, there, beautiful. Missed me?"

The little girl nodded her head against his shoulder and sighed a whispery 'Sir' so quietly he almost couldn't hear it. Then they both settled down and let Carter do her job. To all appearances, they both listened enraptured to the discussion, but his mind, at least, wondered far and wide. If the kid had recognized him from the knowledge he'd somehow or another managed to pass onto her through his genes, where'd that 'Sir' come from? He didn't run around thinking of himself in that way. It should have been 'Jack' if anything.

It was Carter who seemed to think of him in that manner. She'd done it even on the way to pick up the marriage license; he'd about blown the whole thing over it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"For crying out loud!" he angrily bellowed in his best command voice, "We're getting married today, Carter! Call me Jack!" The incongruity of his statement didn't hit him until she submissively lowered her eyes and gave him a quiet 'Yes, Sir.'

His anger deflated like a balloon. He quietly said, "This isn't going to work. Pull over, will you?"

Her hands were shaking on the wheel as she signaled the turn and brought the car to a stop on the side of the street. It wasn't going to work. After all these years, it wasn't going to work. How could it? She'd deceived him, kept him out of the loop, made him the outsider...how could it possibly work after all of that?

"Listen, Carter," he said gently, "let's forget this whole 'Jack' and 'Sam' thing when it's just us...but when we're out in public, we're really going to have to work on it or people will think we're nuts. What do you say?"

She blinked at him, tears and confusion in her eyes. Was that it? Was that all he had meant? That after years of 'Sir's and 'Carter's it wouldn't work to make the switch to 'Jack' and 'Sam'. She could live with that. People could think they were nuts all they wanted. "All right," she said, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice and with an effort biting off the 'Sir' at the end.

"But," he continued, and she knew it had been too easy to think names and titles were all he'd been talking about. "I don't want a command relationship with you, Carter...I want a marriage. I don't want to be your commanding officer with bedroom privileges-I want to be your husband. If we can't have that...if after all these years, it's all too ingrained and there's no hope we can change-we need to call this off."

Call it off. That was the last thing she needed. "Is that what you want, Sir?" she asked.

"No, it's not what I want. But, you deserve better than having me shout orders at you all of your life. That's not what marriage is about." He waited quietly for her to say something...agree his whole idea had been insane or fight for it, but she sat staring at the traffic passing in front of them without speaking. Then with a sigh, she put the car in drive and turned the blinker on.

He couldn't bring himself to ask what she had decided, couldn't face it being over. The years of waiting and hoping had been livable because there had always been a chance hovering somewhere in the future. The years with Pete had been dismal and gray knowing that chance had evaporated with her marriage. The months since Pete's death had been a confusing turmoil of uncertainty and possibilities if he could only find the strength to face them.

These few, short minutes since she had said yes had been a light at the end of the tunnel despite the upsetting information he'd learned along the way. He'd felt younger than he'd been when he'd married Sarah, released from every worry that had ever pestered him, every trouble that had ever beset him. It had been nice while it lasted, but now he almost thought he could feel an ulcer of worry eating a hole through his stomach wall and dark, gray clouds loomed over his future like a perpetual storm.

Finally she spoke, "Then we change, because I've spent way too many years trying to not be in love with you already." She signaled and merged back into the traffic without waiting for his reply.

"All right," he answered. "You know the Flower Shop? They said they weren't far from the court house?"

"I've seen it," she said.

"Well, we need to stop by once we've got the license...they're supposed to have some flowers ready."

"What if I wouldn't have said yes?" she asked. He shrugged in answer. "Anything else I need to know about?" she continued.

"Well," he said, "I guess there's the cake too...I'm supposed to call and let them know when and where to deliver it."

"Flowers and cake," she said with a smile, "what if I would have said no?"

He grinned over at her, "That wasn't going to happen. I was afraid you'd want more time to plan something fancier than the JP, but I figured we'd eat the cake one way or another."

She laughed. "This is fine, Sir."

"That it is," he agreed. He glanced guiltily over at her and casually added, "Janet and General Hammond will be flying in about 1...Daniel and Teal'c will pick them up at the airport after lunch."

Surprised, she stared at him for almost a minute too long but at the last second managed to avoid rear-ending the turning vehicle in front of them. "You really were sure of yourself," she stated.

Ignoring the near mishap, he answered, "Well, Janet is Daniel's doing. He said she'd never forgive him if he knew about it and didn't tell her. And the general invited himself."

"Really?" she said skeptically.

"He sent your papers back from Washington with a note attached saying if they meant what he thought they did, he expected an invite. Honest. I did try to contact your dad...but, no go."

She shook her head at him. "Anything else?"

"So you mind?" he asked. "We can plan a real ceremony sometime, if you want, but with my schedule..."

"No," she said, "this is fine."

"Ok. What about clothes?"

"What about them?"

"I brought my dress blues and my civilian funeral suit...or we can just go as we are?"

She laughed again. "Whichever you want is fine with me, but I think I'll probably change into a dress."

"You've got to decide," he said.

"Not your funeral suit," she said her laugh fading at the memory of the last funeral they'd both attended. It had been packed as funerals for cops lost in the line of duty generally are. There'd been full honors and it had gone on and on. She'd thought it would never end. And then the funeral dinner afterwards with Pete's parents bravely trying to hold up under their own grief and support her as well. Ally a frozen statue in the corner and Jacob making everyone laugh at his antics through their tears. Daniel and Teal'c awkward and out of place amongst Pete's cop buddies and myriad aunts, uncles, and cousins.

And Pete's captain going on and on about how he had died as though she needed reminded he was a hero. She didn't. She'd known it every day since she told him she had a problem and he'd promised to be the solution, no questions asked. He'd kept his end of the deal. Even when Ally was her most challenging, he'd never once turned to her and asked what she'd brought into his life.

"No," Jack agreed quickly, mentally kicking himself. It wasn't the suit he'd worn to Pete's funeral, but he didn't think it would help matters to assure her of that fact. "He was a good man, Carter," he told her.

"Yes," she answered, "he was. Took you long enough to figure that out though." She grinned over at him letting the solemnity of their conversation pass away.

"Guess it did," he allowed. "Never did trust any of your followers...but Pete, well, you have to admit he didn't make it easy stalking you like that."

She didn't feel like defending Pete's rash actions one more time so she said, "My followers? You make it sound like I had a whole string of them!"

"You did."

"Did not."

"Did so."

"That's ridiculous, Sir and you know it!"

"I know no such thing! What about Simmons?"

"Simmons!"

"Not him...the kid--Graham."

"He was JUST a kid!"

"So? How abou-"

"If you can be jealous of a kid like Simmons, no wonder you never liked Pete!"

"Exactly," he crowed as though she'd made his point for him.

She looked over at him, "Simmons got over me years before Pete," she said. "Did you really care way back then?"

"Oh, yeah, I cared, Carter. You betcha."

"More than you should have?"

"Not that I was admitting it to myself then, but, yeah, more than I should have...and I've got news for you--Simmons isn't over you yet."

"Give me a break!' she said pulling into the parking lot and turning off the ignition.

"It's true," he asserted.

She shook her head and said, "Let's go do this." They'd left the boys with the guys but Ally was strapped in the back seat. She'd been quiet the whole trip and when he picked her up she was like a rag doll in his arms. She'd checked out and went somewhere he couldn't follow. He tried a few jokes and tickles under her chin but she didn't respond at all.

"Hey, Carter," he asked as they started across the parking lot for the door. "How do you get this kid to smile?"

She soberly glanced over at the two of them, gave a small shrug, and said, "Ally doesn't smile, Sir."

~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*

Even trying, she'd thrown a good half dozen 'Sir's into the conversation. She couldn't help herself...it was ingrained. Ingrained and passed on somehow to her daughter. Ally hadn't responded to him because of any knowledge he'd given her of himself...she'd have run and hidden under her bed if that was the case. She'd responded to him because she knew him through her mother's eyes.

"Well, what do you know?" he whispered to himself, and Carter's daughter glanced questioningly up at him. He smiled. And she smiled back. "Ally doesn't smile, Sir," Carter had said, but she did...a big, beautiful smile just like her mom. And how about that? The kid couldn't look less like him if he'd tried...and he supposed he had. He must have used that Ancient knowledge to manipulate things, to produce this particular little girl who no one would look at and think, "Now that must be Jack O'Neill's kid!"

Unexpectedly, he had to blink tears from his eyes. The crisis under the Mountain had been serious and complicated. He'd been briefed on the plane there and hadn't gotten more than five minutes of peace until it was all over eight days later. And then there'd been all the ensuing paperwork and reviews. What time he did have, he'd spent on the phone trying to get someone to go out and fence his house front and back. Seemed there wasn't a fencer in Colorado who wasn't booked for the next year. Only after he'd put on his general voice did he get someone to hop to it; even then he'd paid enough to fence half the county.

There hadn't been time to work through the knowledge Carter's daughter was his own. Or that he'd purposely, knowingly chosen to dump all the world's problem on her little head. He'd given her life, but not to be freely lived. It was given conditionally with a million strings attached, each a deadly snare to trap her in. She'd never be a normal, little girl laughing at his antics and chasing butterflies in his safely fenced yard. She'd never be safe, never even have the innocent notion of safety. Her mind, if it contained the knowledge of the Ancients, was full of the knowledge of evil and danger. No wonder she'd chosen to live in silence. No wonder she panicked or froze in the presence of strangers.

He'd condemned her personally. Not just any kid that they might have conceived that day, but this particular one. For whatever reason, he'd determined that she was the one. He'd like to think he'd had only sound, defensible reasons in mind, but he was afraid at least some of them had been nothing but his own personal whims. Sure he wouldn't have wanted her to be identifiable as his child, but really! Surely there'd been a few genes in there he could have picked that wouldn't have made her in the exact image of the woman he loved. He'd willingly played around with destiny, manipulated her to make her not only the person they needed for their purposes but also the child he wanted. If it wouldn't have marked her as his, would he right now be holding Charlie's clone? He hadn't had the right. And she most likely was well aware of it.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to her. She frowned up at him in response, told him, "Shhh," and turned back to watch her mom wrapping up her lecture. He took her rebuke quietly. She hadn't gotten any of his looks, but his unwillingness to discuss personal issues had been passed along without anything lost in translation.

He'd always been told she was totally nonverbal...beyond nonverbal, mute. Incapable of speech or even producing sound. Yet, he'd heard her speak three times. Ally never talked, but she did with him. Ally never smiled, but she had at him. Because she knew him, knew she was safe with him. She knew a lot more than she had ever let on. She'd be four in a couple of months and she'd been living a lie for all that time.

He'd thought right when he thought he could pass on the knowledge of the Ancients to a child. For good or bad, his daughter knew things no one else on earth could even comprehend. Who knew what she'd do with it...what had they been thinking unleashing that kind of knowledge on a child? She could as easily use it to destroy the world as save it.

She squirmed on his lap and lifted her face once more to his. She solemnly stared up at him, and he wondered if she could read his mind. Be good, little girl, he thought. Be good. Be as sweet and loving as you look. Be your mother's daughter, not mine. In the name of country and duty, I've done things no man should do....don't be like me. He didn't realize he was crying until she reached up a small hand and wiped a tear away.

"Sir?" Carter asked. He looked up to find the lecture was over, the hall already almost empty, and Carter standing concerned before them. "What is it? What's wrong?" she asked anxiously. He glanced at Ally who was staring unseeingly through his right shirt pocket and then back to Carter.

"Nothing," he lied. "Just got something in my eye." He ran a hand over Ally's back knowing Carter would notice, knowing that because of it she'd put his momentary reaction down to tenderness for the child or regret for their lost years, and knowing that she'd respect his difficulty in expressing such things and drop it. Ally had known he wouldn't give away her secrets, and he knew Carter would never press him for his. No matter how much he wished it wasn't so, they were a pair, the two of them. Like father, like daughter.

Though they weren't alone in their sins this time. Carter had started this weave of lies years before and done it so expertly he'd never considered it was anything more than she claimed. He'd always thought she couldn't tell a lie if her life depended on it. But, she'd managed it for the life of his daughter. Managed it quite well. Of course, she knew the danger as well as he did--she'd been only a needle's length from being killed for what Adrian Conrad's goons could learn from her dead body. The galaxies were full of bad guys who wouldn't hesitate to do the same to Ally if they knew she existed. Regretfully, it was all too possible the good guys maybe shouldn't either.

Daniel had been shaken to the core when he'd been shown by that Harcesis kid what absolute power could do to a man. And they'd chosen to hand it over to a child. Children weren't good because their parents were good, decent folk. Just because he had used the Ancient knowledge to save the world, it didn't mean his daughter would. And if she chose to use it for evil--they'd never be able to stop her.

Never. Not just because she'd have all the advantages and they'd have none, but because she was theirs. Their child conceived for all the wrong reasons but loved and cherished all the same. He wouldn't expose the lie that was her life, wouldn't make a move to draw attention to her, wouldn't endanger her in anyway. He'd give his life to keep her safe if that's what it took; accept even the sacrifice of Carter's if it became necessary. And God forgive their sins and help them if she grew into a woman who loved power more than duty or one who resented what they'd done enough to seek vengeance.

He smiled, rose, hugged and kissed Carter, and for all the world looked like a man who was finally getting to hold his wife after being apart way too long. A man with no worries and only happy days ahead. But his anticipated joy of being with Carter was long forgotten, his gut was tied in anxious knots, and the happiness of his future was tied up in the child in his arms. And he didn't know if that was good or bad.


*********** Waiting ************

Gaze with wariness, into the murkiness,
Where you can glimpse--if you dare
A thousand possibilities,
A myriad potentialities,
Though perhaps not so many probabilities,
Within the Dragon's egg.

The Mind of the Dragon

Her first memories were not her own. The moment she gained awareness they were there. Crushing her first, few conscious thoughts beneath the weight of their sheer number and volume. At first, they were so chaotic, so incomprehensible that they overwhelmed and choked out any vestige of the individual housing them. Emotions, schematics, images of others, images of things, lists, diagrams, facts, the jumbled, tumultuous thoughts and memories of individual after individual who had lived and breathed and passed from their own awareness generations before she'd even begun. But, she couldn't understand that--they were, to her, very much alive.

She lay beneath their crushing mass for a lifetime. Slowly, almost imperceptibly she began to know that she was distinct, separate, her own creature. She was the faint whisper of self almost heard beneath their blaring disharmony. She was herself. A frail, little cord of self-awareness. And they were the Others, a swirling mass of emotions, facts, and memories, that shared her life but not her being.

With that knowledge came her first taste of her own emotions. Not the long ago perceived feelings of the Others, but her own. Stronger a thousand times than theirs because of their immediacy. Time had muted theirs to only vague currents of disquiet or peace, but there was nothing to muffle her own. That first wave of emotion, like so many in those confusing days and years that followed, was of terror.

Those inside her were alien, unknown, and unknowable, but she'd become accustomed to their presence. It was the realization of someone outside herself that terrified her. Movements that were not her own, pulsings and rumblings that came from Outside. She was inside another just as the Others were inside of her. Trapped. Caged. Jonah in the whale. Her own thoughts on the matter would have been enough to give rise to fear and alarm, but it was those of the Others that moved her to frantic action. They flooded her with the awareness that those Outside were dangerous and intent on harm and destruction. Their purposes were shrouded in darkness, evil and malevolent; and they sought to use her for their own means or destroy her.

She could not contain their fears or their certainty of danger. Vivid images of torture, destruction, pain, and Armageddon flooded her mind and overwhelmed her underdeveloped sense of self. Her reason crumbled before their collective terror and she fought with all she had to free herself from her captors' grasp. Her unseen enemy retaliated by tightening the walls of her cell, squeezing her, crushing her relentlessly. She was not strong enough to sustain the battle. Her limbs trembled from the exertion, and she was already faltering when she felt the effects of a poison blurring her senses, dulling her mind, drugging her body, and blunting her will.

She was defenseless in the hands of her enemies. She could only wait for the end. Alone. For the first time in her memory, she was alone. The myriad thoughts shouting within had been silenced; their roar reduced to only a low murmur. In the quiet, she became aware of noises outside of herself. Muffled sounds that came to her as though through water and coalesced into words.

"Mr. Shanahan? I'm Dr. Russet."

"I came as soon as I could. How is she?"

"We've been able to stop the contractions with medication. She's sedated for now. More than I'd like. It took a whopping amount of sedative to reach the baby and have any effect. I've never seen such a distressed fetus and no sign of a cause. Sometimes we'll see it with a tightening cord...the fetus will fight against asphyxiation. But, everything looks fine here. If there was a knot, it's not there now. We'll keep her under tonight and let her come out tomorrow--see how things stand. Then we'll know more..."

All her life she'd been surrounded by words. The words of the Others. All in an alien, unknown tongue. So much gibberish. But not these. These words she understood. She was not Jonah in the whale, but a baby in the womb. She was a new life growing inside the sheltering safety of her mother's uterus. There had been no attack, no capture. The battle had been one-sided and as useless as so many battles before it.

But, the danger had been real. She had not misread the terror of the Others. Her life was in jeopardy: before, now, and forever after. Evil lurked at every corner. There was no safety, no one to trust, and nowhere to seek help. Her only protection came from within. The others were her salvation. And her destruction. It was their presence that made her vulnerable. And she had only their impressions to go on to make her believe they were any safer than those Outside.

No. Not only theirs. There was another. In the quietness of her sedated mind, she could glimpse it. And perhaps a whisper of even another. Young, new like herself. Whiffs of fresh air in a stifling, attic room full of dust and decay. The one drew nearer, came out of the shadow of the Others and became a man.

Not a man. Merely his impression. His random thoughts, memories, emotions, and desires forming a misty image of him in her mind. He was young compared to those who had lived a million years before, but not next to her. And he was most definitely not safe. He radiated a strength of will so strong she marveled it had not stood out even among all the Others. There was something hidden in him; dark and hard, reckless and determined.

She was too small, too vulnerable, too new to stand before his force. She shrank away from his presence like she did the worst of the memories and images the Others flashed about her mind. Like lightening in the clouds, they would discharge and fade without conscious purpose, and it was only happenstance that placed her in their path. They had never sought her out. Never given any indication they knew she was there with them.

But, he was different. He knew her. And suddenly she knew him as well. The recognition came to her, as so many of her thoughts, from outside her own consciousness. As though a subconscious part of her mind had rifled through the information of the Others and opened up a file with the exact data she needed. It wasn't her knowledge; someone else had lived the life to gain it, but it was there for her to use.

Sir. Who knew she was here because he'd given her life, planted remnants of himself, and hidden the Others deep within her being. He'd meant for her to be what she was; he had plans for her. Vague, abstract plans that her mind was as yet too undeveloped to understand. Fearful, wonderful plans full of potential. He'd set them in motion, but he'd been unable to see them through. She could read his anguish at that fact. He had desired to teach her, guide her, bend her to his purposes. But, he'd been dying. That knowledge was there in his wavering form as well. He'd known even as her life began that his was drawing to an end and he wouldn't be around to finish the job.

She had nothing to fear from him. It was he that feared her. Feared what she would do with the gift or curse he bequeathed to her. More than that, he feared for her. What would happen if she were discovered. He wanted to protect her with such a strong desire that it appeared almost to take on substance in the midst of his ghostly image.

He'd made her for his own agenda, but he'd perceived her for what she was. His child yet unborn, defenseless and undefended, set adrift in a universe that cared nothing about her but only about the knowledge she carried. And the wisps of himself that he'd given her had gathered now to watch over her while she slept beneath the mind-numbing blanket of the sedative she'd been given. Even knowing he no longer existed and his presence was only an illusion her mind had conjured up, she found comfort in his company. With him watching her six, she gave into the pull of the sedatives and drifted away.

By the time, she became awake again the sedative had worn off and with it the clarity of thought which had allowed her to sense him. She was once more overwhelmed with the Others. Their countless thoughts and images blocked out all but the smallest awareness of herself, and he once again became only scattered fragments of thoughts and desires indistinguishable from all the Others.

She hid the frail, little cord of herself from their overpowering intensity and that was life as she knew it. It would be years before she discovered that the memories, though bursting with remembered life and knowledge, were dead. She was the only one alive within herself. That was a truth, hard won and slow to come by, that would have gone far in helping her make sense of her life and her world in those early years of beginning. But it was denied her. Her infancy and early childhood would pass in confusion and fear. Only rarely would moments of clarity allow glimpses of insight to shine through. So vast and strong was the seething mass of Others within that they dominated her senses and filled most of her thoughts with their own.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The unstoppable process of birth had for a brief time forced her to consider the world outside her mind. Vaguely, she'd known it was coming, a certainty looming somewhere in the dim future. Still, it came upon her quietly, unexpectedly. For quite some time she'd felt the closing in of the uterine walls around her; an uncomfortable crowding that would on occasion intrude upon her awareness enough to make her squirm against it. Rarely though as she'd never known open spaces. Internally, she'd never been given breathing room; the gradual loss of it externally was not enough to warn her of things to come.

The Others were strangely quiet about the matter. Later she'd know, there had been no reason for the Ancient knowledge to pass on firsthand accounts of a universal experience. There was the science behind the event-images and diagrams that if her mind had not been that of an unborn infant she might have been capable of understanding and even using to ease her passage into the world. There was also literature celebrating the beginning of life-poems and songs that if she'd been able to understand the alien words might have stirred her heart and allowed her to see the value of what she was undergoing.

But, although the help was filed away in the alien database hidden in her brain, she lacked the capability to access it. She met the relentless waves of labor that inescapably pushed her towards the future with only those resources inbred into the human body. A natural, instinctive understanding of the mechanics of birth allowed her to twist and turn in order to bring her body into the proper alignment necessary for birth. Hormones coursed through her body calming, numbing, allowing her to be squeezed and pushed without incapacitating pain, and keeping her from physically struggling against the inevitable.

But, if they had any effect on her mind it was not enough to assuage her growing alarm as labor progressed. She'd lived too long with the fears and terrors of others to go blithely into the world. Life outside the womb was not a safe place. Too many images of evil flared within her for her to experience any sense of excitement at the new and the unknown. She would never share her mother's joy of discovery or her father's thrill of adventure.

It was with dread that she moved inexorably towards her own birth. She'd spent her life among others but they'd been without true form or substance. They brought her pain and fear and anguish of spirit and mind; but they never touched her physically. Her own experience of such sensation was limited to the ever-present-wash of the amniotic fluid, warm and salty, around her; the faraway, barely perceived warmth and pressure of her mother's hand on her abdomen; the pulsings of her mother's heartbeat carried in waves through the water.

They had been poor preparation for the sheer physicality of birth. The cruel squeezing of the contractions, relentless and ever-growing in intensity; the insistent pounding of her head against the closed cervix; the flood of waters washing over and away from her as the amniotic bag broke under the pressure leaving her at the mercy of the ever-stronger contractions; the slam of her head against her mother's ungiving pubic bones; the terrifying, final squeeze into the narrow birth canal; an unremitting pressure forcing the water from her lungs, breaking the blood vessels in her eyes, and causing the blood to roar inside her ears.

She struggled against it all, but she was carried along by the forces of birth, and the only end in sight carried with it not release, relief, or peace, but exposure and discovery. She was yet too young to understand the magnitude of the danger, but she did understand her life was in jeopardy. She must do nothing to give away the presence of the Others within her mind. Nothing to draw attention to herself. Nothing to give herself away. If she were to survive this life, the goods she was smuggling within herself must remain secret, hidden, and unknown. In those last, tortured moments before emerging into the world, she chose a course of action that would isolate her from the outside world as much as she already was within the inner world of her mind. She chose silence.

The pressure around her intensified until she thought it would crush her. She thrashed about and her head, excruciatingly slowly, was born. The sudden release of pressure was almost as bad as its built-up had been before. She struggled to free herself from her prison of flesh and bone, but her chest and body remained firmly held in the vise of her mother's body. She was suspended at the brink of life: trapped, dependent, exposed, and vulnerable to any enemy that might choose to take advantage of her helpless state.

Her horror at her situation was multiplied when for the first time she felt the physical touch of another. The doctor ran his skilled, gentle, gloved hands expertly along her cheek, under her chin, and around her neck. Innocently, benignly, he felt for a too-tight cord. But, she couldn't know that. She thought he meant to end her life before it had even completely begun. Frantically squirming, she gave one last, desperate kick and propelled her body the rest of the way into the world. The doctor was hard put to keep her from slipping out of his hands onto the cold, hospital floor.

He laughed in surprise, and so the first sound that greeted her was that of laughter. Unfortunately, in her terror and inexperience she was aware only of its loudness and its fearsome closeness. She drew in her first breath, but though inside she was screaming in fear and alarm, she released it and the shuddering, desperate ones that followed it in absolute silence. As the doctor rubbed her briskly with a towel and ran an experienced eye over her, she kicked and screamed in his arms without a sound.

Still laughing, he said, "You've got a little girl here, Mom, who's in a hurry to meet you. A nice, strong, healthy little girl." His voice assailed her, buffeted her, and did nothing to alleviate her fear.

Neither did the half-sobbing, breathless voice that answered him, "I want to see her-I need to see her." The words of a mother, her mother. She should have recognized it even full of pain, relief, and adrenaline as it was. In the normal course of events, she should have heard that voice every day of her gestation. Different no doubt without the intervening presence of flesh and blood, amniotic fluid, heartbeats and stomach gurgles, the rushing of blood, and the rasp of air flow. But surely, still recognizably that of one with whom she'd long been intimately acquainted. But the voices inside her head had drowned out those without, and her mother's voice had never penetrated through their din. The voice that begged to see her was the voice of a stranger.

But the face wasn't. Unbidden, memories and emotions washed through her at the sight of her mother's face. The scattered thoughts and memories of the man who had fathered her coalesced in her mind, and she knew the woman who had carried her for nine months, whose outstretched hands were reaching for her. Knew her so well, she could anticipate her thoughts and words and actions. Knew her better, perhaps, than she even knew her self. She was flooded with his admiration, respect, care, and love for this woman. Carter. He'd trusted her with his own life, and with the life he had fashioned for his own purposes. She was here with Carter because he'd willed it.

"Oh, baby, baby. I'm so sorry, so sorry," Carter cried, pulling her close and kissing her damp forehead. Her earlier panic subsided, her silent screams quieted, and for a brief moment she lay in her mother's embrace, enveloped in love. For the first time, she experienced peace.

Other hands forced a hat over her head and covered both she and her mother with a warmed blanket. Other voices whose names came to her as though from thin air spoke:

Old Doc Frasier who spoke with calmness and reassurance, "There's nothing to apologize for, Sam. You did just fine."

Shanahan whose voice was awed and full of unshed tears, "She's beautiful, Sam. Beautiful."

They were close. Near enough to grab her from Carter's arms. But they couldn't reach her. She looked into her mother's eyes and saw the same goodness he had always seen there. "I love you, Ally," her mother whispered to her, and suddenly she had a name. It anchored her to this world and gave form and substance to her frail bit of self. She accepted it gratefully.

Then in the firing of his memory, she saw Carter's eyes glowing not with love and joy but with the mad hatred of the Goa'uld. She felt the cold, hard metal of the pistol in his hand. It was solid and undeniable, just as his knowledge that she had to be stopped. Carter was the enemy. Panic overtook Ally. She was still too young to distinguish the past from the present. To understand that what she saw were nightmares he'd survived years before. That the fact he'd placed her in Carter's care was indisputable proof his trust in her had been absolute.

She soundlessly screamed and thrashed in her mother's arms and there was no consoling her. Her struggling brought down the medical personnel upon her. Seeking to discover the source of her distress and of her silence, they took her from her mother's arms and began to examine her. Their poking and prodding pushed her over the edge and mercifully, the natural defense mechanism of the human newborn kicked in-she shut out everything going on around her and slept. When she awakened the stronger, wiser minds within her reigned and she gratefully lost herself among them once again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Though physically she was now dependent on the outside world for her well-being, she did her best to deny its existence. In her infancy and early childhood no physical need or pain was strong enough to force her into exposing herself to its dangers. Ear infections, colds, the occasional bumps and bruises of life, the aching, irritating pain of teething-they barely registered on her awareness. They were nothing compared to the Others' memories of death blows, incurable sicknesses, torturings, and worse. Even the gnawing pain of hunger wasn't enough to force her from the self-imposed exile of her mind. Carter dutifully fed her every three hours not because she cried to be fed, but because she didn't. The discomfort of wet or soiled diapers was not enough to force her out of herself. She didn't cry when she was chilled; didn't fuss when she was hot. Her physical comfort was simply not a concern.

Her emotional needs though were. She was a human newborn. Physical love and contact were as necessary to her as eating and breathing. She longed to be back in that moment she'd lain peacefully in Carter's arms. She wanted to feel her mother's touch, hear her mother's voice, see her mother's smile. The Others with all their wisdom couldn't offer the comfort she needed. There were days she could conjure up the image of Sir or the parts of him she possessed would seem to coalesce of their own accord into a wavery shadow of the man he had been, but they were weak substitutes for the human contact she craved. Unfortunately, she feared Carter as much as she needed her. That need would rise up and force her to seek Carter's presence regardless of her distrust and suspicions, but she could never feel completely safe or at peace in her mother's arms.

Like so much of what she'd received from her father, the bits of himself he'd given her concerning Carter were a tangled mess that even after years of actually knowing and living with the man himself, she was never certain she'd pieced together in the right way. They didn't come to her in any logical order so it was impossible for her to know if the glowing-eyed Carter came before the one he'd trusted with his life or after. Nor did they come with handy user's notes that would explain that the fears and doubts he often felt around Carter had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with himself.

He'd loved a woman he couldn't have and, for the world's sake, he'd spent years fighting that love. His feelings for Carter had always been complicated, and it was little wonder his daughter was unable to correctly read them. But, it was tragic. And it denied her the warmth and comfort she desperately needed. She couldn't find it with her mother, or with anyone else in her world.

Not with the man who called himself Daddy. In her thoughts, he was always Shanahan--a name uttered always in her mind with a tinge of contempt and distrust in Sir's voice. Even so, she understood he wasn't dangerous by intent but by a reckless thoughtlessness that could bring disaster down on her head as surely as though he'd meant it. He was a wild card in a plan that could brook no such thing. Bumbling around in ignorance without any understanding of the nature of the beast they fought. In addition, he all too frequently came between Ally and her need for Carter.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Sam, you can't go on like this."

"What choice do we have, Pete? I can't just leave her crying like this by herself. You can't ask me to do that."

"No, Babe. I won't ask it...I don't want her hurting like this either. But, you can't keep going on without any sleep."

"I sleep when she does."

"Yeah. Forty-five minutes. I've timed her. She's slept forty-five minutes since four o'clock this morning. It's midnight, Sam! You were in labor all day and night Monday, didn't get any sleep at all Tuesday with everything going on at the hospital, and she's let you sleep less than an hour every day since...you're going to collapse if you don't stop this. I'm taking her tonight. She won't like it, I know that, but she'll be safe with me...you're going to go in that room, shut the door, and go to sleep. I'll bring her in for you to nurse when it's time...and then you're going back to sleep. All night. No excuses...and no coming out because I'm not going to let you have her anyway. "

"Pete, please!"

"Give her to me, Sam...I love her too, you know."

"I know. I know you do," her mother said with conviction and resignation, and she handed her daughter over to him and fled the room without looking back to see Ally's frantic struggles in his arms. It was the first of many such nights. Ally grew to know very well the resolve of this man who loved her mother enough to spend hours with a child who plainly wanted nothing to do with him. When it became apparent that she could not bend him to her will, she learned to endure the hours in his care by blocking him out. She no longer fought him, but neither did she acknowledge his existence. And yet, over time, she did come to understand that he had meant what he said, he loved her. He handled her with gentleness as much as her frantic wiggling and kicking allowed. He sang her endless nonsense songs and read her countless nursery rhymes even though she ignored them all.

He wasn't a saint, and there were many times he'd take all he could and with careful, determined gentleness he'd lay her on a blanket on the floor and walk away from her. "Can't do this, Baby Girl," he'd say. "I can't do this...I'm going to kill you if I try. I swear I am. I'm going to the kitchen and I'm going to drink some coffee and if when I come back you're not ready to quit this I'm going to put you in your crib and shut the door and you're on your own." Lying helpless and defenseless in a room without anyway to call for help was more of a torment for her than being held by Shanahan, so though he never considered that she might understand and act on his threat; almost invariably when he returned from the kitchen she was a passive rag doll in his arms. They developed a truce of sorts that was tolerable though unsatisfactory to them both. It didn't, however, provide the warmth and closeness she needed.

Besides Shanahan, there were his parents, Grandma and Grandpa. Sir gave them neither his endorsement nor indictment, and she had to learn how to view them all on her. At first they tried to intrude into her world flashing lights in her face, looming over her with broad, smiling faces, talking nonsense at her, reaching out for her. They always seemed to be together and her infant mind had so linked them together that she was almost four before she began to realize they weren't one individual who could occasionally, for short periods of time, separate into two parts but two distinct and separate people. She found them incomprehensible and far too intrusive and her withdrawal or angry squirming and crying in their arms quickly forced them to retreat to a safe distance. They remained there--fixtures of her early childhood much like her crib, the rocking chair, and her mother's computer. In and out of the house most days, messing about in the kitchen or chattering in the laundry room, but only rarely did they become active participants in her life.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"We could...maybe," Grandma said hesitantly, "keep Ally just for a bit, so you two could get out for an hour or two."

"I don't know, Ma," Shanahan replied, "it's nice of you to offer, but it wouldn't be fair to you."

"Son," Grandpa said, "nothing about this is fair and that's a fact. The least we can do is let you and Sam have an hour off...we're not talking dinner and a movie here!"

"Just go, Pete," his mother said. "Get a Big Mac...just go through the drive-up and come home if that's what you think you have to do, but get Sam out of this house! When's the last time she's gone anywhere but doctor appointments, Pete? Do you know?" Such offers were only rarely broached and even less rarely accepted because Ally's reaction was a full-blown panic that would take far longer for her to recover from than the time her parents were actually gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

And then there was Jacob, and Peter after him. From the moment, she'd felt their first movements under Carter's shirt, she'd understood that they were even younger and more vulnerable than she. She'd felt a certain protectiveness for them, a certain sorrow for their helplessness when they were frail newborns. She'd accepted their place in her mother's arms and contented herself with just being in close proximity. However, as both had quickly grown more active, vocal, and mobile, she'd felt no compunction of leaving them to fend for themselves. They had voices and weren't afraid to use them.

In fact, they weren't afraid of anything which made them too dangerous for her; caution was her byword. She was aware of their presence at all times, for their small bodies tended to be where she wanted to be-on Carter's lap-or blocking her escape routes. Knowing where they were was important to her survival, but interacting with them was not. On her more outwardly alert days, she evaded their grabbing hands and kicking little legs; on her less, Carter had pried their little fingers from her hair why she had stood unmoving and unflinching.

She could be moved by their distress. When they hurt themselves in their rough and tumble ways, she'd flutter ineffectively around them until Shanahan, Carter, or Grandma and Grandpa came to their rescue. When they were sick or teething, she was agitated, and if she didn't think that the people in their world were caring for them appropriately she would take her frustration out in frenzied rages against the furniture, the walls, Carter, and anyone who made the mistake of trying to restrain her. She had paid no mind when Jacob had been the baby and had simply been fussing for attention or crying in his crib because he needed to sleep and didn't want to. Only when he'd cried with a genuine need had she shown concern for him. Peter, however, was a different story. She couldn't tolerate his cries for any reason. He was fatherless like she herself and his distress was her own.

Even so, she did not know how to offer either of them help or comfort. They remained wherever they'd fallen until they clambered back up themselves or someone else arrived; when they had mastered backward motion enough to wedge their chubby little bodies under the edges of the furniture, they remained stuck until their cries brought help though she would be hovering within reach. She did not know how to give them the tenderness and comfort they needed, and they were far too young to do any better for her.

The only other people she recognized in her life as individuals were Daniel, Teal'c, and Old Doc Frasier. To all of whom, Sir had given a firm and solid seal of approval. Though not entirely welcome, their infrequent and sporadic presence was benign and tolerable in the house. There were thoughts and feelings floating around in her mind that made her wary of Janet, the keeper of needles, IV's, and medical releases. And memories of Teal'c with a staff weapon pointed in the wrong direction and professing the Goa'uld Apophis as his god and master. Somehow, unlike the images and memories always lurking in her mind and heart of Carter, these were only mildly distressing to Ally and easily discounted surrounded as they were by the many more positive impressions Sir had left her of them.

She preferred Teal'c to Old Doc Frasier. The dangers he represented in Sir's memories were straightforward and understandable while those Janet carried with her were vague and never quite defined. Plus, the Doc tended to poke and prod her, examining her in a way that held its own dangers. She could for very brief periods of time, block out Teal'c's presence to the point that she could endure his care without panicked horror long enough on a good day for Carter to shower and dress. He knew her secrets. But Old Doc Frasier was not allowed such free reign. She wasn't in on the secrets, and Ally feared that if given a chance she might discover them for herself. That could not be allowed to happen.

Sir's assessment of Daniel was uncharacteristically glowing. There was a memory of Daniel with a gun pointed at him, but it was oddly without undertones of threat or danger as though Sir had known even staring into the barrel that a gun in Daniel's hand was no threat to him. There were disturbing images of Daniel laughing while Sir cried out in anguish and said, "We're dying down there, Daniel," but the feeling he'd given her surrounding the images were still of trust and belief...and, of course, the faint, ever-present, fond exasperation that seemed to accompany all his thoughts on Daniel. Only after Jacob had been born and learned to toddle around and she found herself feeling remarkably similar feelings for her own little brother did the mystery of Sir's relationship with Daniel become clear.

Indisputably, Daniel was safe. Sir thought so, Carter thought so, and even Ally thought so. Though she had reasons to doubt him, she didn't. For one thing, he feared her and fear made people dangerous. He knew what she carried and he questioned the wisdom of allowing her to have it. The others who knew wanted to use her and the information the Others gave her for their own purposes. They would keep her safe until she could act on their behalf. Daniel, on the other hand, might one day choose to act on his fears and put an end to her threat. She should have feared him in return or at least been wary. But, she didn't and she wasn't. When he came, she allowed him to spell Carter longer and more often than anyone else. When he peered curiously at her as though he'd like to look inside her mind and see just what it was she had in there, it didn't frighten her like it did when Old Doc Frasier examined her. When he talked to her and said, "So, what's up? You started working on the plans for world domination yet?" she knew he meant nothing by it.

She cut no one else such slack. Not Grandpa Jacob-definitely not Grandpa Jacob with a snake in his head--or anyone else. Someone from Carter's work dropping something by, Girl Scouts selling cookies, Christians sharing the Gospel, trick-or-treaters who failed to heed darkened porches, they all drove her into a terrified frenzy. Shanahan met the pizza delivery people on the front steps because their presence in the house was intolerable for her. He dutifully hung a mailbox outside the front door and nailed shut the mail slot beside it because the daily dropping of the mail through the slot had driven her to terror. He took personal leave when a repairman had to come to the house so Carter could get Ally out of the house before a stranger was admitted into it. If one of his buddies stopped by, they sat on the porch...rain or snow. They'd long since stopped inviting friends over for a movie, and extended family get-togethers got together in someone else's house without them.

She was not unaware that her behavior was a danger in itself. That it drew attention and could possible attract the notice of those she really should fear. But it was beyond her ability to quiet her own terror let alone that of the Others. It was the ruling influence in her life--relentless, unconquerable, unmanageable, and uncontrollable. Crippling and endangering, it enslaved her.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~

"Sam, Pete," the voice of the doctor was full of resignation and regret, "our examinations didn't find anything that would explain Alicia's difficulties. We've all thoroughly reviewed the scans taken at one day, and we simply can not find an organic cause for either the muteness or for the...behaviors."

"You're saying she's fine? The kid can't make a sound, practically doesn't sleep, and is terrified of life itself and you're saying she's fine?" Pete said.

"No,' the doctor answered hurriedly. "I'm afraid it's obvious that she is not fine. What I'm saying is, we aren't able to readily find the cause of her problems. We're recommending a repeat MRI and then some rather more specialized scans to try to isolate the area where her troubles originate-" On Carter's lap, Ally tensed. She couldn't allow them to look deep into her brain-it was one thing to hide the existence of so many Others within the closed doors of her head, but how could she hide them when her brain was turned inside out?

"Why?" Carter asked dully as though the idea didn't unduly alarm her and she hadn't felt Ally's frightened reaction.

"Why?" the doctor repeated. "To...find the cause."

"Right," Carter explained, "but for what purpose? If you find something-what? A malformation? Scar tissue?" she shook her head. "If you find something what are the chances you'll be able to do something about it?"

"I see," the doctor said, pursing his lip and looking even more serious than he had the rest of the meeting. He thought a moment and then admitted reluctantly, "To be honest, whatever the problem area-and yes, I'm guessing some sort of malformation very near or involving either the motor strip in the brain or the vocal center itself, although speech and behavior are very complex processes and the breakdown could be in a multitude of different areas. Anyway, wherever the area is, identifying it probably won't put us that much further ahead in solving Alicia's problems."

"Then, I won't subject her to further testing," Carter said with finality in her voice.

"That's not to say, we might not find something-"the doctor interposed.

"She's been through enough," Carter said shaking her head. "And if it's not going to help...no. She's got a handful of therapist coming from the Developmental Center...that's enough...enough," Carter put her hand to her mouth and shuddered. Shanahan rose to stand behind her with a hand on her shoulder. Ally looked solemnly up from her place on Carter's lap. There were tears in her mother's eyes and a sad, kicked look on Shanahan's face. "No," Carter said standing abruptly. "Thank you...but we don't want to pursue this."

"If it might help, Sam--" Pete began but didn't continue as Carter gathered up Ally's fluffy, purple snowsuit, favorite blanket, and detested pink pacifier. Without pausing to thrust Ally into the suit, she fled the room and left the doctor and Shanahan behind. From her place facing back over Carter's shoulder, Ally could see his apologetic shrug to the doctor. He caught up to them in the lobby where Carter dressed her for the trip out through the falling snow to the rental car in the parking lot.

"I just want to take her home, Pete. There's nothing they can do. Please, let's just go home," she begged Shanahan who squeezed her shoulder and said, "All right, Babe. We'll go home...but we had to try-you know we did." Carter shrugged off his supporting arm and strode purposely out into the storm. As Ally was forced into the cold, ungiving car seat she hated, Pete continued, "Janet thought we should."

"Janet is as much in the dark here as that idiot back there!" Carter snarled in anger. A hot tear dropped from her face onto Ally's cheek. Carter didn't notice and Ally was already busily fighting the constraints of the car seat. Carter's burst of anger carried them all in silence out of the hospital parking lot and onto the unfamiliar, frozen city streets.

"You never meant for them to find anything did you?" Shanahan said finally. Ally, trapped in her car seat behind his seat, couldn't see his face, but there was a bite of anger behind his words that she had never heard before.

Carter's face was turned out the window and away from both of them when she answered, "If I thought they'd find anything, I'd never have let you trek us all the way out here..."

"The scans..."

"They won't show anything, Pete. They'd just be torture for all of us and they won't show anything."

"You're scared to find out though, aren't you? The fearless Sam Shanahan ran out of that office for a reason." Ally could hear the effort he was making to lighten his tone and turn the statement into a joke. But, she looked at her mother's bent head still studying the falling snow through the window and knew it was true. Her mother had been as afraid of what those scans might show as she had been, perhaps just as irrationally as well. Could a medical scan show the soul? And wasn't that what she really held within her? The souls of countless people long dead?

Carter turned to glare at Shanahan, "She's human, Pete. One hundred percent, just...enhanced. The scans wouldn't show anything."

"Oh, new and improved," Shanahan said, grinning over at her, "No offence, Sam, but if this is the new, improved version of Homo sapiens-we're in trouble." For one moment, the three of them were suspended in silence. Ally waited expectantly for her mother to defend her, to assert forcefully what Ally knew herself; she was not a mistake, no accident had fashioned her--no malformation, she was exactly what she had been fashioned to be and she carried the potential to be much more than Shanahan could ever comprehend. But Carter silently turned her face back to the window and Ally felt as though she'd been abandoned in the snow.

As odd as it seemed, she had never before considered Carter's thoughts on who and what she was. She had stepped willingly enough until that room and what had happened there had been with her consent and cooperation. Ally had taken it for granted that she had believed in the project. But, as her silence stretched out through the entire trip back to the motel, she began to fear otherwise. Perhaps Carter had been behind the project at first but had since lost faith in it...in her. Perhaps she was ready to drop her support-scrap the project.

Before Ally's thoughts could blossom into panic, they were there and Carter was leaning over her and freeing her from the car seat. Her face was streaked with tears but she smiled down at Ally. Pulling her close and haphazardly tossing the blanket over her head, she whispered, "He doesn't mean anything by it. He's just trying to make me laugh and forget the argument. He doesn't know a thing about it, but we do, don't we, Sweetheart? Not yet, but one day...one day." Ally snuggled against her mother and blinked snow from her eyes as they rushed for the lobby. One day.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The therapists were a different species altogether. She had firmly shut herself off from any communication, and they were destined to fail before they had even begun. They arrived with hopeful optimism, and Ally duly sent them away dispirited. She ignored them to the point that the younger ones tended to leave in frustrated tears. She stiffened her body against their attempts to manipulate her and refused to focus her attention on their signing fingers or the PEC cards they hopefully or dutifully flashed in her face. Shanahan insisted they keep trying long after they'd begun to shake their heads and make vague references to 'maybe later...when she's a bit older'. But Carter took their failure prosaically, and Ally felt her mother was as relieved as she was herself when they finally quit coming.

Grandpa Jacob made his first appearance the day the last one gave up the struggle and surrendered. She'd gathered her blocks and puzzles and let him in while she was fleeing the scene of her defeat, so that Ally had no warning a stranger had entered her house until he was there looming over where she lay on a blanket on the living room floor. Adrenaline and fear surged through her and she froze as though she'd turned to stone. His gaze barely took her in; his eyes were all for Carter.

"Sam," he said quietly, and Carter, who'd also failed to notice his arrival, looked up from picking up Ally's own few neglected toys the therapists invariably left scattered behind them like bread crumbs. In her surprise, she gave a startled cry and threw herself into his arms.

"Dad," she said, "it's been so long...too long." Ally heard in her voice a need and longing that she recognized as matching her own. She watched their reunion with an unaccustomed feeling of jealousy. She wanted what they had...wanted it badly. And then they pulled apart and he was turning towards her and the only thing she felt was numb terror.

"So," he said, "this is my granddaughter."

Carter pulled him back by his arm. "Dad," she said, low and urgent, "uh...listen. I don't know what they told you at the SGC, but...Ally doesn't do well with strangers...she's, uh, she has some problems."

He turned back to his daughter. "Problems?" he asked, but Ally wasn't listening to the answer. Sir with all his usual conflicting and scrambled thoughts and memories was sending Ally so many mixed signals about the man standing in front of her that she no longer could even see him. He trusted him to a degree--not quite as far as he could throw him. He respected him-and detested him. Believed he was a good man-yet, his skin crawled when he was near him. Because...Carter's dad had a snake in his head-he was a Goa'uld! Ally's terror rose up and choked her. She passed out, and by the time she came to he was gone.

Carter, somber and sad, held her in her arms and said, "It's all right, Baby. He's gone. He wouldn't have hurt you...he wouldn't have. But he's gone. You're ok." Ally felt shame and guilt. Whether her dad was a Goa'uld or not, Carter had rejoiced to see him, needed to see him, and she had driven him away. Carter carried her out the front door and sat with her on the front steps, staring down the road after her father. She sniffled from time to time, and Ally, twisting in her lap to look up into her face, saw she was quietly crying. They were still that way when Shanahan came home.

"Sam," he asked concerned. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Carter shrugged and wiped a hand across her face. "My dad came by today."

"Really? That's great! It's been what? Since before Ally was born anyway..."

"A few months before that...almost a year."

"So, he couldn't stay."

"No, he couldn't."

"But, you had a good visit, right? I hope you remembered to get some pictures."

Carter shrugged, "There wasn't time."

"Oh," Shanahan said, settling down beside them on the step and placing an arm around Carter. "At least you got to see him..."

"Yeah. It was good to see him," Carter agreed and gave him a weak smile, and Ally knew it hadn't been enough. But there was nothing she could do to take back her reaction and give Carter the time she needed with her dad.

"So, everything was all right, right? These," he said, wiping a tear from Carter's eye, "are just 'cause you hated to see him go, right?"

"Right," Carter answered, leaning her head over on his shoulder, "I miss him, Pete. So much." And Ally understood that neither she nor Shanahan could make her hurt go away. It was Ally's first experience with human grief, but it was not her last.

She'd been left the legacy of a dying people, so in one sense she was not unacquainted with personal tragedy. Within her mind, there were countless emotions and thoughts connected to loss. She'd bumped into them on many occasions, and their torment and sorrow were frightful things she avoided.

But, they were also inexplicable. She was too young for one thing...with the understanding of a young child the sudden, irrevocable loss of a loved one through death was not something she could comprehend. For another, the bonds she'd formed between the people in her life were too fragile and too few to allow her to glimpse how deeply grief and loss drilled into the heart and soul. Her greatest loss was the absence of a man she had never known; she'd always lived without his presence-it was an ache that had been old before she'd ever been born.

She understood on a surface level because any forced separation from her mother left her bereft, but aside from the hours surrounding the births of Jacob and Peter, Carter had never left her for more than a few hours when work left her no alternative or Pete insisted she sleep.

But, grief comes to us all, and Ally, for all her withdrawn isolation, was not immune.

To Ally, the doorbell was always a warning siren which she never took for granted. Depending on the day, it could send her into a wild frenzy, paralyze her with fear where she stood, or drive her to hide in the corner or under the end table. This day, it caught her and left her frozen only a few feet from the door so she saw the moment of hesitation when Carter opened it. She'd seen it before and had always until that moment assumed that it stemmed from the same source as her own reactions to the doorbell. But Carter was a soldier's daughter and a cop's wife; she hadn't needed to give birth to a potential target before the unexpected ring of a doorbell or phone carried with it the hint of calamity. She'd been stretching out her hand and opening doors with that niggling, clenching of her insides all of her life, and this time was no different.

Except this time was it. This time there were two cops-Pete's partner and some kid barely out of academy-standing there with their hats in their hands, refusing to meet her eyes, and Jones murmuring, "So sorry, Sam...I'm so sorry." He made a move to come into the house, but Carter barred his way.

"Don't come in," she said and with a motion toward Ally she explained, "Ally." Jones nodded his head in understanding. He'd been Pete's partner since the Shanahans had transferred in and he knew all about Ally. They shuffled back from the door and Carter followed them out onto the porch. Ally saw it all in that ultra-aware, time-almost-stopped-unreality that surrounds tragedies of such magnitude. Carter's movements were heavy and sluggish and Ally stepped into one of Sir's memories of moving in a heavy, cumbersome space suit with his feet weighted down in magnetic boots. Jacob toddled up to the screen door and squished his chubby mouth against the screen. "Momma...momma," he babbled but Ally and Jacob might as well have been on the moon--Carter couldn't hear them, couldn't see them. Ally became aware that one moment in time could change everything...the pieces-the people-in her life could vanish with the ringing of a doorbell and life would never be the same.

"Where'd they take him? What hospital? I'll go right away. Where do I go?" Carter pleaded with the men, her voice small and choked with fear.

"Sam...it's no good," Jones said. "He died at the scene. It's all over. I'm sorry."

Carter placed a hand over her mouth. "No," she said shaking her head. "No, no, NO!" The young cop turned away and watched the cars passing on the road. Jones stepped forward and took her mother in his arms. They stood together weeping and gently rocking.

Jacob banged his hand against the screen. When that didn't get his mother's attention, he called for her with a string of baby talk, and when that proved ineffective as well he began to fuss and whine. The young cop sidled past Jones and their mother, opened the door, and lifted Jacob out. He carried him off the porch and set him down on the grass. Jacob laughed at the feel of its cool, greenness between his bare toes and plopped down onto his diapered bottom to grab handfuls of it. His rescuer stood over him protectively and looked anywhere but at the grief going on behind them.

Ally stood rooted to the living room floor, unable to move even when the stranger had opened the door. She had never loved Pete-and suddenly, now that he was gone, that's who he was in her mind. Not Daddy, and not Shanahan with a hint of contempt and disgust either. Just Pete who had loved her and whom she had never loved in return. So why was his loss so devastating? Why were her feet encased in magnetic boots? Why was her heart beating so painfully in her chest? And why couldn't she breathe?

Time on Ally's side of the door and out on the porch remained frozen while on the front lawn Jacob toddled about and in the street, cars whizzed by full of people laughing, talking, and getting on with their lives. Eventually, the radio in Jones' car parked at the curb burst out with static and unintelligible words and Carter and Jones' pulled apart; their faces wet with tears. Jones roughly wiped his with his jacketed arm and Carter ran a trembling hand down hers which only served to smear it worse. The young cop stepped up with an outstretched handkerchief. Carter looked at it as though she'd never seen one before until Jones took it and wiped her face with it as though she were no older than Jacob. She swayed under his ministrations, and Ally thought she was going to collapse, but she didn't.

"Thanks," she breathed out to Jones and took the handkerchief from him. "You better go...Janey. She'll need to see you, need to know you're all right."

"First, let me call someone to come be with you. Hank and Lois?"

"They're out of town-"

"Right...visiting Rose, Pete told me. Someone else then?"

"I've some friends who'll come...I'll call them. In a bit. You just go. We'll be fine."

"Right. Do you want me to call Hank?"

"I'll do it...go home, Jones."

"Ahh...paperwork. But I'll call Janey. I will, promise. Do you want me to ask her to come?"

"No, no...it's sweet of you and...but, Ally-you know Ally and people in the house." Ally bristled at the use of her name as though she was an excuse or reason for every decision her mother made, although in those later years when she looked back she knew it was true. Carter had weighed every decision and every change no matter how big or how small for its affect on Ally. She'd done all she could to protect her and shelter her like a young tree from the wind...but Pete's death had blown through both their lives like a Category 5 hurricane.

Jones understood, at least in part, the dynamics of the Shanahan home. He was well aware that Ally controlled and limited what happened in that house, and he'd long since stopped fighting her with offers of getting together for pizza or cards. "Yeah. Ok. But you call if you need us...we'll be here. I promise."

"Thanks," she said one last time as the other cop dumped Jacob into her arms, and they turned finally to their car and left. Carter stood staring after them for another eternity while Jacob poked inquiringly at her nose and into her ears and she never noticed. When she turned finally to come into the house and opened the screen door, Ally took an involuntary step back. She felt suddenly an outsider in her own home. She was the cuckoo left in Pete's nest and she had no part in the grief her mother carried with her as surely as she carried Jacob.

But, then Carter stepped next to her and placed a warm hand on her head. Ally would have liked to tell her mother how sorry she was, but she couldn't overcome the silence that she'd so skillfully wound around herself. Instead she reached up and clasped her mother's hand in her own and with a moan, Carter bent over to pull her into her embrace with Jacob. It couldn't last. Jacob clamored to get down and the unborn baby squirmed and kicked in protest of his cramped quarters, but for a brief second they'd all been joined together in their grief, they'd all been a family.

Then Jacob was off to see if someone had forgotten to close the bathroom door and Carter was clumsily standing up and Ally was once again alone with the multitude that lived in her head. They were uncharacteristically silent, overshadowed by the events happening Outside. Carter staggered to the couch and fumbled with her cell phone. She began to dial it with shaking hands. With an effort, Ally uprooted her leaden feet and shambled over to stand in front of her.

She'd been chasing Carter from room to room since the instant she'd finally mastered forward motion at the age of three and a half months, driven by her compulsion to be near her mother. But, this time she followed her not out of her own need, but out of a desire to comfort Carter. She stood uncertainly there at her mother's knees, wanting to help but not knowing how. A memory-one of her own for a change-came to her of Pete with his hand on Carter's shoulder. She tentatively reached out a hand and placed it on Carter's knee.

Carter gave a small gasp and her face crumpled with more tears. She shut her cell phone before it connected. Ally thought she'd done the wrong thing, but Carter pulled her onto her lap and held her close for a moment before redialing. When the ringing stopped, Ally could hear Daniel's voice sounding stilted and odd on his answering machine. Her mother drew in a wavering breath and said, "Daniel, it's Sam...call me when you come in. Please. It's....it's Pete." The last word came out a stifled sob and Carter broke the connection.

After a moment she dialed again. The phone rang a long time, but finally Ally heard Old Doc Frasier's impatient, brisk doctor voice, "Frasier."

Carter hesitated and then said, "Janet."

"Sam?"

"Are you busy?"

"We're expecting casualties at any minute."

"Daniel, Teal'c?'

"I can't say, Sam...we won't know until they get here-you know that."

"Yeah."

"Sam, what is it? Is something wrong with the baby?"

"No. It's fine...the baby's fine."

"Sam!" Old Doc Frasier said impatiently when Carter said nothing more.

"Janet, just call me when you can talk, ok?" Carter said hollowly.

"Right...as soon as I can, I promise. But, it may be awhile."

"Just call me?"

"OK...listen they're dialing in, I've got to go." And the line went dead.

One more call to go. "Rose, it's Sam."

"Sam? I wasn't expecting to hear from you...what's up?" came Aunt Rose's voice over the phone. On the line behind her, people were laughing and chattering. Ally felt an irrational anger that they could be happy while her mother wept and Pete was dead.

Over their noise, Grandpa said, "Sam's calling here? Give me the phone." The alarm in his voice quieted the happy murmurs. He spoke into the receiver, "Sam?" Carter opened her mouth to answer but no sound came out. She swallowed to try again, but he was already asking, "Is it Ally?"

"No," she forced out with a cry.

"Pete," Grandpa said. Not a question, just a bleak statement. He'd raised a cop and he'd spent years dreading this particular call.

"I'm sorry."

"Is he...?" Carter broke down into wracking sobs and he didn't ask again. "We're coming. We'll be there as soon as we can...Lois! Here, you talk to her-she needs you."

Grandma's voice came on haltingly, "Sam. Sam, honey. We're coming. You have to think of the baby...and take care of yourself. We'll be there as soon as we can get a flight-Rose is calling on her cell phone now-hold on, we'll be there."

As soon as they could was seven hours away, what with airport security, an unavoidable layover along the way, and due to heavy rain, a delayed connecting flight. Somehow, General Hammond had gotten word long before that. He arrived unannounced to sit quietly with them through the unending afternoon. Ally had never met him, but she was too bone-weary with sorrow to react to his presence-besides Sir nodded approvingly in his direction and didn't drop any bombshells like glowing eyes or snakes. The general was the one who ran after Jacob, fed him, changed him, and settled him down for his nap. He was the one who answered the phone, accepted the first of what would amount to a houseful of flowers, and told the reporters at the door that the family had no comment.

Carter sat on the couch holding Ally or Jacob or clutching her arms around Pete's unborn son. Or she followed the General around, listlessly picking up items and staring unseeingly at them. The general took her by the shoulders and put her to bed just like he had Jacob. He found Pete's bathrobe hanging on the bathroom door and tucked it in with her without a word. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead and said, "Try to sleep" to Sam and "Why don't you climb on in there, too?" to Ally and left them to carry out his orders.

Grandma and Grandpa Shanahan arrived while they slept. They took charge of Jacob and bustled about as though by keeping busy they could keep the pain of their loss from rising up and consuming them. General Hammond had sent word back to the SGC, and Teal'c came long before Old Doc Frasier's as-soon-as-she-could-call came through. His quiet, somber presence filled the couch and calmed Carter's restlessness. He cradled her in his big arms when she wept, listened when she needed to talk, and sat quietly and undemanding when she didn't. It would be two days before Daniel was fit to travel and another day at least before Janet would be able to leave her remaining patients and arrive with Cassy.

Long before that the house was full. More aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and other assorted relatives appeared daily. They took over the couch, Ally's bed, and the empty beds and couches at Grandma and Grandpa Shanahan's at night, but by day they filled the living room, dining room, and kitchen and spilled out onto the porch and into the yard.

Ally was beside herself with all the coming and going. There was no way she could protect herself from so many strangers, so many prospective enemies. When she couldn't stay curled up in bed beside Carter feeling her quiet sobs and the unborn baby's restless kicks and wiggles, she huddled under the end table or in the little space between the book shelf and the corner. Several of the relatives were always taking it upon themselves to draw her out from her hiding spots, but Grandma and Grandpa said, "Let the poor child be. You'll only upset her and that's the last thing Sam needs right now."

Ally agreed. She tried her best to not cause her mother any worry. When someone would peer under the table at her and say, "She's got to eat something," she'd gather what little courage she had and let them pull her out like a floppy, rag doll and spoon feed her whatever it was they thought she needed to eat. When someone would say, "Has anyone seen this child drink anything today?" she'd again let them drag her out and press a cup to her mouth. When someone would drag her out saying she really ought to be getting some sleep, she'd let them carry her unresisting to bed. And, when they decided she'd slept enough, she'd let them carry her back out and then run to crouch in the corner.

But it was all too much when Uncle Mark's wife said she really had to have a bath and a change of clothes, though she did. The house was full of strangers and the path to the bathroom was fraught with too many dangers for her to venture there if whoever had dragged her out for food or drink didn't think to take her while they had her out. When her aunt bent down and said, "Honey, let me give you a bath and put you in some nice clean clothes," Ally took one look at her reaching hands and lost it. She shot out from under the end table in the other direction and ran blindly through the house banging into one set of stranger's knees or shoes after another and quietly screaming out her terror. She fell in a terrified heap in the living room and found every eye fixed on her in surprise or distress or curiosity. She froze under their collective gaze.

And then Carter was there picking her up, smoothing her hair, and whispering, "It's all right, Baby. It's all right, I've got you." Ally buried her head in her shoulder and wept.

Aunt Chris said, "I'm sorry...I didn't mean to upset her."

"It's all right," Carter said. "But, it would be better if everyone just left her to me...I'll see to her."

"Sam, we're here to help...let us help," Uncle Mark said.

"There's nothing you can do, Mark."

"Sam-"

"You remember when Mom died, Mark...there's nothing anyone can do. We just have to get through this."

"Not that, Sam. But, we can do things to help-if you'd let us. Give her to me...you shouldn't be carrying her around."

"No! She's fine, Mark. She's fine. "

"She's not fine, Sam...and neither are you! She controls you...there's nothing that happens in this house that she's not manipulating!"

Carter turned without answering and carried Ally to her room where she bathed and dressed her in gloomy silence. Carter sat her on the edge of the bed to comb and braid her hair. "I'm sorry I haven't been paying attention. I shouldn't have left you to them...I should have made sure you were ok. I'm sorry--it won't happen again." Carter finished with her hair and sat down beside her.

"You know what, little girl? It's the second--your birthday. You're three today. Did you know that? Do you even know what it means? Do you even care?" Ally blinked up at her. She'd been vaguely aware of other birthdays because they involved cake. Generally, she didn't notice what she ate, but cake was a different thing altogether. This year, she supposed, there wouldn't be any cake, but no, she didn't particularly care...not now, not today when the house was full of strangers, her mother was as fragile as a flower beaten down by the storm; and Pete wasn't there to say, "Hold her closer to the cake, Sam," as he tried to snap a picture as though she was a normal little girl excited to blow out the candles and open presents.

She didn't suppose there'd be presents either...there had been the other years though presents meant nothing to her, they were simply more props for Pete's pictures. But she was wrong. "Here," Carter said getting up to rummage in a drawer. "General O'Neill sent you something...it came in the mail the other day...I stuck it in here-here it is," she said turning and waving a small box towards Ally. "Shall we see what he thinks is an appropriate gift for a three year old little girl? I think we can safely bet it's not a baby doll." Ally could see the effort she was putting into trying to smile. "Pete was going to pick you up something from us, but...so I'm afraid this is all you've got for now. I bet Daniel will remember. He'll be here later today...you'll be glad to see him won't you?" Carter sighed again, "I will. I wish...I wish General Hammond could have stayed until he got here. I feel so outnumbered, you know? Anyway, how about you open it this year?" She took Ally's hands and moved them to open the box to reveal a small, rectangular object that Ally didn't recognize.

Her mother turned it over in her hands and shook her head. She gave Ally a sad smile. "A harmonica," she said. "See you play it like this?" She raised it to her mouth and played a few, lonely notes. "Well, not exactly like that...it helps if you're musical, I'm sure. You want to try?" she asked holding it to Ally's lips. "No...maybe later. Maybe he had the right idea, you know? There's more than one way to make noise, Ally. You could play me songs with it..."

Ally thought if she'd had the harmonica a few minutes before she would have played it loud and hard and brought her mother to her rescue without making quite as big a spectacle of herself and now Carter wouldn't be trying to make up for things that weren't her fault. But, they both knew she'd never play the instrument. It would end up on the shelf in her room where all the general's gifts sat, gathering dust and waiting for a day that was never going to come.

"It doesn't matter," Carter said. "Shall we read the card?" She opened the orange envelope and drew out a card. Printed on the front in large, block letters were the words, "Happy Birthday!" Carter read them in a subdued voice and then stared blindly at them for a minute before saying, "He sent it before...before, you know?" She opened it, but closed it without reading it. She drew in a breath and began to cry. Ally thought she might never be done with crying. That Pete's death had opened a floodgate of tears that were slowly going to drain her mother dry. Carter lay down, curling into a ball, and Ally fit herself into its center and they stayed that way until Grandma Shanahan crept in to say Jacob was crying for Carter and Daniel had arrived.

Slowly the house emptied of relatives and friends. Slowly Jacob quit calling "Dada, Dada" when the phone rang or a car pulled up in the driveway. Slowly Ally became accustomed to the changes in the house without Pete. Life didn't return to normal...not the normal it had always been before, but it did take on its own normality. One without Pete's laughing, teasing voice; without his dirty socks in the living room or his shoes by the door. One where grownups tended to speak in subdued tones and rarely finished what they were saying but just let the words trail off into silence; and where tears were always lurking behind their eyes.

Carter quit spending most of the day sleeping or crying in her room and returned to her work on the computer though as far as Ally could see she accomplished very little. She had spent her life around Carter and her computer, but she'd never taken much interest in what flashed on the screen. But, now, when Carter was apt to stare unmoving at the same frame for minutes at a time, Ally began to notice things she recognized on it...a symbol here or an equation. It was the first time she realized that many of the things running about in her head had meaning. They'd always simply been there, incomprehensible and unquestioned, like wallpaper or curtains long hung and no longer really seen.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sam gave a low groan and put her hands over her face.

Lois, always hovering about, stood at the door peering in. "What is it, Sam?" she asked.

"Oh, I need to get this figured out, but...I just can't think."

"Let it go for a while, honey. You've been at it for hours."

Sam stretched out her kinked back and gave Lois a small smile, "I'm afraid I can't...they're needing this right away."

"They're always needing something, Sam," Lois said. A timer beeped in the kitchen, and she went off to check the cookies or casserole or whatever she'd been making to keep her sorrow at bay. Carter turned back to her screen, but from where Ally stood, near enough to touch but miles away, she could see that her mother's gaze was even farther away. It often was anymore. And when she'd start to awareness at Jacob's cry or Grandma's touch, she's still wouldn't be back with them, not really. Her mind and heart were wherever she'd been.

Ally looked from the screen to her mother and back again. She was fascinated with what she saw there. It was an equation that had flitted around her mind from time to time only it wasn't. The symbols were in the wrong order...the ones that should be up were down and the ones that should be down were up. It was an interesting juxtaposition. Ally turned her head as far to the right as she could to try to put the equation right again, but it didn't help.

"What are you doing, Ally?" her mother asked her curiously. Ally reached out her hand to the screen and made a turning motion over the numbers and then looked at her mom. "What?" Carter repeated. Ally rarely interacted with her environment voluntarily. She would eat if someone forced a spoon into her hand and started the process, she would drink if someone held a cup to her mouth, and she'd wipe herself if given toilet paper; but toys, books, or pencils pressed into her hand were allowed to simply fall back out. She never picked up things to examine, never fiddled with anything, never in anyway gave the impression she was aware things-or most people for that matter--even existed except to move around anything or anyone that separated her from where she wanted to go...typically wherever Carter was. She'd never focused on a picture book, or the TV, or the computer before. And as it was almost as rare for Ally to make eye contact with her, Ally's behavior was enough to make Carter sit up and pay attention.

Ally took Carter's left hand and pushed it at the keyboard, then she screwed her head around again, and used her other hand to make the twisting motion over the keyboard. Carter shook her head, "I wish you could talk to me...I wish I knew what you were thinking behind those big eyes of yours." Ally thought she probably didn't, not really, at least not usually. But, the more she looked at the upside down symbols the more certain she was that what was on the screen wasn't right. It needed fixed and that was why it wasn't working for whatever it was Carter was trying to do. She banged her own hand soundly against the computer screen in frustration and Carter caught it. She pulled her up into her lap and said, "What do you want it to do, Ally?" Ally didn't want it to do anything. She wanted Carter to flip the symbols around and fix the problem. She tried again. She pointed her finger at the offending symbols and then circled it in the air. Her mother squinted at the screen silently for a moment. "You want to inverse the rate of expansion, the pressure, and..." Sam let her words trail off as she deftly ran her fingers over the keyboard and made the necessary adjustments.

Ally nodded her head in satisfaction when the equation on the screen matched the one in her head. Her mother used a hand to turn her face to see her, "Do you know what this is, Ally? If this works, it would definitely solve the problem with the mix...I think you did it, Ally." She smiled at Ally a moment and then went back to the work. "If this works, we can get them home after all," she said. Ally wondered who they were and how the symbols on the screen were going to get anyone home, but as long as it made her mother happy that was all she needed to know.

After that, she began to take more notice of her mother's work. Much of it was unfamiliar to Ally, but occasionally she recognized the things on the screen. If no one else was around, she'd point a finger at them and look at Carter who would always pause in her work to see what Ally saw. "Do you know what you're looking at, Ally?" she'd sometimes ask and then explain it to her like she thought Ally just might, "It's the Ancient formula for compensating for gravitational forces on outgoing wormhole. I think, or maybe it's just a bunch of random symbols and I'm wasting my time. I wish you'd tell me?"

For the most part, there was nothing Ally could tell her. Occasionally, she would see something that didn't quite line up with what was in her head or Carter would be missing symbols. Carter made her a simplified keyboard with the various Ancient letters, numbers, and symbols and Ally learned to use it to show her mother what the equation looked like in her head. Encouraged, Carter introduced her to a communication board. Ally saw her mistake and after that wouldn't touch either the communication board or the keyboard.

"It's like that then," Carter said with a sigh. "You don't trust me, do you?" She didn't sound particularly hurt or angry, yet Ally felt guilty anyway. She had grown a lot from the newborn infant who'd lain in Carter's arms and thought her capable of great evil. She'd come to believe that the Goa'uld Carter she'd seen through Sir's eyes wasn't the same Carter who lived in her house. There were only the few, frightening images of that Carter and hundreds more of a Carter he'd trusted more than he had trusted himself. That was the Carter she lived with. She'd had proven herself trustworthy a thousand times over. But, Ally still couldn't bring herself to risk exposure by reaching out and communicating-not with Carter, not with anyone.

Seeing the same images on Carter's computer screen that she saw in her mind, made Ally realized it wasn't souls she was harboring. The Others were no more alive and present in her mind than Sir was. All she had were the memories, thoughts, and information they'd passed down. They were tools to be used with no life or will of their own. The images that fired at times like ricocheting bullets through her mind were those her subconscious had pulled up and brought to her attention to be used or discarded as the situation warranted. They were just bits of information her infant mind had not been capable of distinguishing from aliens in her midst. Slowly she began to see the pattern and organization of the ancient thoughts stored within her. There was nothing random about them...each was there for a reason, each assessable at will if she could learn the filing system.

That was harder than it sounded. Even though she now understood what they were, they were still alien thoughts, alien emotions, and alien facts. She could see the design behind them, but not the meaning. And she was still a very little girl incapable of truly understanding their more mature ways of thinking and looking at life. She saw now that she needed a bridge to span between her human understanding and the alien unknown she carried, her childish mind and their old and wise ones. Without one...

But, it was a beginning; a promise of that one day Carter had spoken of.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

While she was beginning to believe it might one day be possible to make sense of the world inside of her, the outside world took an inexplicable turn. One morning she walked down the hallway and found a dead man in her house. Sir. She'd been seeing him within her mind since before she was born, but he'd never before appeared as an apparition Outside. She thought perhaps he was no longer limiting his presence to her conscious mind, but also appearing in her dreams-she really was back in her bed still asleep.

"Well, hello there," he said, kneeling down and holding out his hand to her. She desperately wanted to touch him, to feel him just once if only in a dream.

"Sir," Carter said behind him. Ally turned to her in surprise that she could see the image from her mind. Her mother smiled reassuringly at her. Ally gazed back. Carter was different in her dream-happy, she was almost glowing with happiness. But, then she would be, wouldn't she? To see him? Surely she'd loved him as much as he'd loved her. Of course, she would be. Just as Ally was. She turned back to look at him.

"I'm Jack," he told her. "I'm marrying your mom. We're going to be family." They were family...outside of dreams anyway. She looked back at her mother wondering if they really would have been a family if he would have managed to survive the fate he'd believed was coming for him. She would have liked that. This was an exceptionally good dream and though her limited experience with other dreams had almost always ended up with something very bad showing up, she was in no hurry to wake up.

"You've heard me talk about Colonel O'Neill," Carter said, "He's a general now, but he's ok." Oh, yes. She'd grown up hearing about the colonel, O'Neill, Jack, Colonel O'Neill...she'd always known his name, always been quick to tune in when Carter and Teal'c and Daniel sat up late into the night reminiscing about the days that the four of them had been a team. Stories of the colonel were the nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and bedtime stories of her life.

But. She'd heard of General O'Neill, too. It was his gifts that sat on the shelf in her room. But, he wasn't Sir. Couldn't be Sir. Because Sir had long since ceased to live anywhere but within her mind and now her dreams while General O'Neill was alive in the Outside. That shelf full of toys in her room and the one in Jacob and Peter's room hadn't been filled with gifts bought and sent by a dead man.

If Colonel O'Neill WAS General O'Neill...she turned back to the man kneeling before her with his hand outstretched. He wasn't quite the image of the man in her mind, but very close. He was younger than the picture of himself he'd left her with, but she was learning that memories could do that. They were subjective. He'd lived through enough that maybe he had felt old even if he wasn't. He might have passed on that perception of himself rather than the face he saw in the mirror. She looked into his eyes and wanted him to be real...wanted him to be the man she'd missed all of her life. A real, living, flesh and blood man.

Hesitantly she took a step toward him. He grinned at her and, reaching out to take her hand, pulled her to him. He felt real. She laid her head against his shoulder. "Hello, Beautiful," he told her quietly. "You and I are going to get along just fine, aren't we?"

"Sam," Daniel said, "now would be a good time," and Ally thought it was more than a good time, it was the best time-the only way it could be better was if it was real. And the longer the dream continued, the more she thought it might just be real after all. He remained solid and present all through breakfast--which he ate just like a living man would.

Ally sat on his lap and felt as though the world had finally righted itself. He was there. He would take back the legacy he'd prematurely left her with and she'd be just a little girl who didn't have to figure out how to save the world. And then Carter said, "There are things you need to know. Things that are going to upset you."

Ally felt the tension in him as he sat back and said, "Ok...I'll try to hear you out. What's this all about?" But, Carter couldn't bring herself to say whatever she had meant to say. Daniel didn't get much farther. Ally watched them both puzzled. Neither of them usually had problems with being articulate-Sir, the Sir in her mind, had always thought they both were a bit too articulate. But neither of them was coming up with the words that they'd decided he needed to hear.

It was Teal'c who finally put the truth they'd been stumbling over into words, "You are aware of the harcesis, O'Neill?"

"Of course. Sha're's kid born with all the knowledge of the Goa'uld."

"It was your belief that the Ancient knowledge you possessed would also be transferred to your offspring."

Ally felt him stiffen with the jolt of understanding. "My offspring?" he echoed hollowly. She remembered what he'd said out in the living room-"We're going to be family." He hadn't known they already were. He hadn't known she was his. From the stiffness of his body and the hardness of his voice, she knew he didn't like the thought of it. Her anxiety and confusion swept away her earlier happiness. He'd been well aware of her when he'd made her. But Daniel had asked what he remembered and he had answered nothing. Somehow he'd forgotten what he and Carter had done on that Al'kesh.

"I ordered you to..." he started to say to her mother, but he didn't finish. Instead he closed his eyes and shuddered, then he opened his eyes and stared at her. She could read in them both confusion and dismay.

"Some choice," he said and his voice was thick with regret. Ally wanted to run and hide, disappear. Her mother reached for her. But he held onto her and wouldn't let her go. He didn't want her but he wouldn't release her to Carter.

And Carter wouldn't make him. "I'm sorry," she whispered. He replied as though he had been the one to whom she was speaking. He didn't accept her apology and he was beyond whispering. He yelled at Carter, yelled at Daniel, and yelled at Teal'c. She waited for him to yell at her as well because she knew she was the real cause of his anger. He didn't agree with the decisions that had given her life, couldn't abide her existence. He wouldn't be taking back his legacy, wouldn't be relieving her of the responsibility he'd programmed into her...he couldn't if he wanted to, and he most decidedly did not want to.

But instead of lashing out at her, he let his anger go...she felt him swallow it down. His arms around her loosened and he relaxed. She didn't understand what had happened, didn't know if she should trust it. Would his anger return later? Had he merely deferred it until he could act on it? She knew the way he thought, knew he was capable of making nice while laying a trap. What he'd given her of himself had been confusing, but no more confusing than he was himself. She didn't know how to protect herself from him. He knew who she was, what she was.

And Carter...Carter who'd always been there, protecting her, looking out for her didn't seem to see the danger. She'd offered to take Ally from him, but when he'd refused she'd left her to his mercy. But, Carter didn't know him like Ally did; didn't know how ruthless and hard he could really be, didn't know that if the situation warranted it he was capable of feeling no mercy at all.

She'd spent the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon in confusion and fear. She wanted him in her life and after his initial, angry reactions, he seemed happy enough to have her in his...but with him in particular, appearances could not be trusted.

Her world was already in so much turmoil that the arrival of General Hammond and Old Doc Frasier didn't generate more fear. She was already at red alert and past the point of panic, or at least she'd thought so until the woman at the courthouse had reached out to pat her hair. She'd screamed and kicked and punched until the fear was drained from her. Not just the fear of the stranger reaching for her, but her fear of Sir, too. She let Carter's soft murmurs wash over her, "It's all right, Ally. You're safe...you're safe," and knew it was true as far as he was concerned.

She'd lived with the essence of the man all of her life; she knew what he was capable of, and she knew what he wasn't. And he was not capable of harming her. Even if he hated the thought of her, she was Carter's daughter and for her mother's sake, it would take a lot to make him harm her. Even if he saw her as an aberration, she was still only a little child, and she couldn't imagine much that would make him strike out at a kid. And, even if he believed she was a threat that had to be eliminated, he'd remember Charlie and he'd remember she was his and he wouldn't touch her. Charlie had been an accident, and he almost hadn't survived his death. Her death would be no accident but cold-blooded murder, and he wouldn't be able to live with her blood on his hands.

She drew in great shuddering gasps of air in relief and clung to her mother. She allowed him to take her from Carter so Carter could 'freshen up a bit' whatever that meant. She lay exhausted on his lap, her head on his shoulder, and listened to his heartbeat.

"Listen, little girl, I love you," he murmured into her ear and that was everything she'd ever wanted to hear. But, of course, there was a 'but'. "I'm not having you acting like that ever again. You will not be throwing yourself around like that. You hit your mom more than once. I won't have it. What if it would have been one of your baby brothers? It's not happening. Do you understand me?" She understood him, but she didn't know how to control herself when the panic came. She'd never intentionally hurt Carter or the boys, but she couldn't promise him it wouldn't happen again. He said again, "Do you understand me?"

She lifted her eyes to stare into his. They were hard with years of command behind them. She had no choice but to answer him the way she'd been bred too. She moved her head close to his ear and said, "Yes, Sir." Outloud. Where he could hear her. She felt more exposed and vulnerable than she had ever been, but he didn't seem to notice. "That's all right then," he said with a nod, and it had been. Or so she had thought.

She'd fallen asleep believing it was, but she'd woken up to find him gone. She'd been missing him all of her life, but that was nothing compared to this. She had trusted him and let him see a part of herself she'd never even shown her own mother. And he'd walked away and left her behind. He couldn't, he wouldn't do that. She couldn't believe he'd really gone...she searched through the house for him again and again. When it became all too clear he was gone, she waited at the door for him, believing he wouldn't have left, couldn't have left her. She'd waited for him to return all night, refusing to believe he'd deserted her. But he hadn't come.

In the end, she gave him up and returned to Carter. Her mother held her close and wiped her tears. "He's not gone for good. He'll be back..." she promised, but Ally could hear the doubt and uncertainty in her voice and didn't believe her.

More determined than ever, she retreated into her own world. She was vaguely aware of changes going on in the house. Boxes were piling up along the walls, her mother's books were disappearing off the bookshelves, and she found Carter cleaning out cupboards and closets as often as she did in front of the computer. Changes were dangerous, they made it difficult to plan escape routes and made vigilance all the more necessary. She hated them and let Carter know it by frequent bursts of frenzied angry acting out. But, she didn't strike out at Carter; she'd been given an order and she kept it. He had betrayed her trust, but she wouldn't his. Instead of Carter, she took most of her anger out on the piles of boxes; they withstood her barrage of punches and kicks without complaint.

"Ally," Carter murmured, pulling Peter away from the boxes where he had pulled himself up to a stand and had been triumphantly grinning at her before his sister had gone off. She sat him down, and he laughed and began to crawl back as quickly as his little arms could move.

"Stop it! Stop it, Ally!" Jacob yelled, "You're ruining my fort! Mama! She knocked it all down."

"I'm sorry, Jacob," Carter said, grabbing Ally from behind and holding her tightly against her chest while Ally kicked and raged at the air. "Maybe you can build your fort in your bedroom?"

"Don't want to," he said with a pout.

Carter sighed and steered her and Ally to the couch where she sat and continued to hold her out-of-control daughter until the fight went out of her and she silently cried in her arms. She turned Ally around to face her and smoothed her hair away from her hot and sweaty face with her hands. "Oh, Baby, I wish you'd listen to me...or at least listen to him when he calls. He's coming back, as soon as he can. This weekend at the latest. I know you're upset he left, but some things can't be helped." But, Ally wouldn't listen, wouldn't allow herself to hear the words Carter said or those his voice spoke out of the phone when Carter would press it to her ear. Because she was afraid. She wanted him back so badly she didn't think she could bear it if he didn't come...better to not believe it than be disappointed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Ally didn't like the lecture hall. It was too open. The seats wouldn't make good cover in an attack, although being small she might be able to evade capture under them for a short time. But, not long enough to make an escape...the doors were too far away and too sparsely situated. Carter was miles away and an easy target. If anyone wanted to get Ally and believed Carter stood in their way-they could take her out with one shot from just about anywhere in the room. She was never certain if the people who filled the seats behind her were an advantage to her or to the enemy. Most assailants would surely be dissuaded from a frontal attack with so many witnesses, and by their sheer numbers, they might also be seen as a deterrent. But, they could also be taken hostage and used as a lever to coerce her into surrender. Or they could panic and block her from where she'd need to go...but then they'd prove just as much a hindrance to the enemy.

No, she didn't care for the lecture hall at all. But, in a choice between staying home without Carter or sitting in the lecture hall with Carter in view-well, it wouldn't be for long and then they'd both be back in the relative safety of the house. She'd been sitting through Carter's lectures since she'd thrown such a fit at being left at home that she'd thrown herself out of Pete's arms and ended up needing three stitches.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Pete said, "Enough. We'll go with you tomorrow, and I'll keep her where she can see you...maybe that will help."

Sam shook her head. "You know she'll hate it there..."

"So...she hates it here too, Sam."

"I'll back out..."

"You can't back out of everything! And if it were that easy, you wouldn't be doing it in the first place. Let's give it a try-it can't be worse than what happened today, right? You've never seen her like that, Sam. She was so upset, she was making herself sick."

"It will only be worse out in public, Pete."

"Let's try it...as long as she knows you're there, she might not even notice everyone else. I won't let her make a circus of your lecture, I promise."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

His solution had worked better than either of them had expected, and he'd continued to sit with Ally through lectures up until his death. He'd never complained about the time he had to take off work so Carter could lecture and even encouraged her to accept more invitations to do so. Once the boys had arrived and become mobile, he'd joked that it was the only way he got to actually see her standing still.

Ally had sat silent and alone through the very few lectures Carter hadn't been able to sidestep since his death. She didn't actually listen to the talk...techno-babble held no meaning for her, not at that age. But, she did like to listen to her mother's voice. Since Pete had died, her mother had had less and less to say. There was days, especially if Grandma and Grandpa took Jacob for the afternoon, when she barely spoke at all. But, then, who did she have to talk to? Ally who had nothing to say in return, Jacob whose idea of conversation consisted of car noises, sirens, and words like 'bang' and 'pow', and Peter who babbled almost nonstop and wouldn't understand if he shut up long enough to listen? She'd managed to isolate her mother almost as much as she had herself.

When someone ventured into her row of seats, she didn't appear to notice, but she did. Vigilance was her only protection against attack, and one part of her was always attune to what was happening around her...but that part was concerned with only two things: threat level and any encroachment into the personal space she'd projected around herself. The interloper sat closer than Ally would have liked...particularly as she was within reach of his long arms. But, he made no move to shorten the physical distance between them or infringe into her private world. Better to ignore him and hope he would fail to notice her in any way than make a move away from him and draw his attention. She never even turned her eyes to see who it was...not until Carter broke the cadence of her lecture, smiled at him, and said, "Ladies and Gentleman, General Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force. Glad you could make it, General."

It was the last thing she'd expected her mother to say or do. She stared in surprise as he rose and gave a small bow to her audience, "The pleasure's all mine, Doctor," he said in a voice she would have known anywhere. "Please continue." Whether Carter continued or not didn't matter to Ally. She threw herself on him as he settled back into his seat. He held her close and whispered, "Hey, there, beautiful. Missed me?"

She had more than missed him. She nodded her head, and breathed out her joy in refinding him in a heartfelt 'Sir'. "Well, what do you know?" he whispered to himself, and Ally looked up at him wondering what he was asking. Did he want to know what she knew from the Others? If he did, she couldn't tell him. Not yet. But one day. She had yet to learn how to read, access, and use their information. But, she suddenly knew it would come...she'd had the key within her the whole time. A Rosetta Stone with which to interpret their alienness into her very human thoughts and emotions.

He was her Rosetta Stone. The bits and pieces of himself he'd given her were what she would need to translate the alien material into her own understanding. His mind had held the translation keys that turned tratiy into inches, frawn into mind, and the Ancient concept of ryntal into love. By using his knowledge she would gain the power to use the information he'd provided for her.

As though reading her mind, he smiled at her. She smiled back. One day, she'd use both the legacy he'd given and his own knowledge to do what he'd made her to do. Unexpectedly, his face turned serious and he blinked tears from his eyes. She remembered his dismay when they'd told him what she was, and it occurred to her that if he'd known how to take what he'd given her from her, he would have that day...and he still didn't trust her with it.

She could read it in the calculations going on behind his eyes while he pretended to listen to her mother's lecture, but she hadn't asked for it, hadn't even wanted it, would be happy even now if he'd take it back. But, he couldn't. He-the he he'd been back then in a time he no longer remembered and now regretted-had made her the keeper of the Others and there was nothing either of them could do about it but make it count. He'd had his reasons even if they were long since forgotten.

She trusted his judgment, trusted his decision to make her had been the right one. Even if he doubted it now. Even if he shook his head sadly and whispered, "I'm sorry." Because with everything else he'd given her or failed to give her, he'd managed to make sure she had the one thing she needed most. The one thing that would ensure she wouldn't abuse the power he'd put into her grasp. A conscience. He'd bequeathed to her his doubts and uncertainties, and she would never act without knowing that she might turn and find that evil was the face in the mirror. Certainty was for the all-knowing, all seeing God. She was just a little girl who knew both far too much and far too little.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

States of Readiness

The house was in a state of upheaval. In between everything else that she'd been doing over the last couple of weeks, she'd managed to pack up the majority of their belongings. Boxes lined the edges of the rooms; shelves stood bare and cupboards empty. He teased, "Hmm...Carter, either robbers struck while you were out or your housekeeping skills leave a bit to be desired."

She straightened from Jacob's exuberant, welcome home hug and grinned at him, "If you're volunteering for housekeeping duty-you're on!"

"Oh, I don't think I have to worry about that," he said. "After you'd poked around my house-without my permission I might add, and don't go telling me that half-baked clone counted! Anyway, after you'd poked around, I distinctly remembering you saying, and I quote, "Colonel, maybe you should consider hiring a maid."

"Right...come to think of it, I love my kids too much to leave them at the mercy of your cleaning skills."

"Well, never fear. I whipped Cassy in seven-card stud, and she is even right now saving you from a fate worse than death by cleaning out my refrigerator, washing my laundry, and ensuring there'll be clean glasses for the whole family when we arrive. Which by the way, how close are you to being ready to go?" he asked. He'd driven his truck down with the intent of taking Carter and the kids home with him, and looking around he began to believe it might just happen. Everything looked right on schedule with most of the things they'd be taking with them packed and waiting and the rest more or less ready for the movers when they arrived.

"Just the last odds and ends to pack," she said, settling down on the floor and holding her hands out to Peter who was fussing for her. "Lois and Hank insist they can do the last bit of cleaning...they've done most of it already, so I guess they might as well. If they charged by the hour, I'd owe them my life savings."

"Oh, and just how much is that? Should I think about retiring?"

"You can think about it, but don't plan on eating."

"Gotcha," he said with yet another grin. He'd pushed his worries about Ally to the back of his mind and his earlier anticipation had returned almost completely.

Lois Shanahan smiled indulgently at them both. "Hank and I thought maybe we could baby-sit for you tonight...you two could go out for supper and have some time alone? You know we'd like all the time we can get with the kids before you go. It would be as much for us as for you," she added when she saw Sam's hesitation.

"Actually, I was going to ask if you'd mind taking the boys for a couple of hours anyway? There are a couple of places that need a touch of paint. I thought we could get them done faster without them underfoot."

"We'd love to...but you know we'll do the painting once you're gone." Her voice didn't actually waver but Jack suddenly realized how hard this move would be on Pete's folks. They'd been two doors away from their grandkids all their lives and now he was taking them hundreds of miles away.

He said impulsively, "You could come with us, you know." Lois and Sam both looked at him in surprise, and he wondered if he'd misread their regard for one another. Maybe the last thing Sam wanted was to have Pete's folks following her to their new life. And though the Shanahans might miss the kids, they were quite probably looking forward to a little freedom of their own.

Lois blinked tears from her eyes, and said, "Oh, you wouldn't want us dragging along after you," at the same time Sam said, "We couldn't ask you to do that." Then they looked uncertainly at each other. Sam said, "I wish you could. I can't imagine how we're going to manage without you."

Lois answered her, "You know if you need us, we'll always be ready to help. But, I really doubt you want your former in-laws following you across the country."

Jack looked at the confusion in both their faces and smiled. "Oh, I think she might," he said. "Something to think about anyway. In the meantime...if we hang out here and do those few odds and ends--are we good to go in the morning?"

"Should be," Sam answered.

"Ok...then that's what I vote for. It's a long way to Colorado, and I'd like to hit the road early."

"That's fine then," Lois said. "I'll take the boys home now if you like...once Peter's settled anyway, and we'll keep them as late as you want. If you run over and get Peter to sleep, we'd be glad to keep them all night."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, unless you want to spend your last night in the house as a family?"

"No, that's ok...we could tear the crib down tonight then and be that much farther ahead in the morning." He watched the two women talking and whatever misgivings he had about his impetuous offer to the Shanahans faded away. He hadn't given it any thought before, but now he could see it would be for the best if he could talk the Shanahans into making the move with them. Well, not with them. But when things were settled with this house and they'd had time to do some house-hunting and selling of their own. They were good for the kids and good for Carter and seemed willing enough to welcome him into their grandchildren's life without open resentment or reservations. His job would never be one he could just slough off to pick up any slack at home...and unfortunately, if he was busy so were the rest of the folks they knew. Carter could use the back up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The odds and ends weren't long in finishing. The crib and Jacob's toddler bed weren't bad taking down though he had an uneasy suspicion putting them up again might be something else. Ally watched him as he worked. Silent as a tomb and just as sober. He wasn't quite sure what to do about her. He loved her. He couldn't look at her without feeling a surge of warmth and tenderness and utter delight that she was his. He couldn't help it. But neither could he help the nagging fear he had that she wasn't the sweet, innocent child he desperately wanted her to be. That within her blue, solemn eyes there lurked a sinister presence, a seed of ruthlessness that would one day grow into the destruction of everything he'd ever counted worth fighting for.

And over both the love and fear was a smothering layer of guilt. How could he approach her, love her, try to influence her for the good, when all the time she knew he'd counted her as nothing more than just another tool to be used and manipulated for his purposes?

With a sigh, he stuck the last of the screws from Jacob's bed into a Ziploc bag he was certain would have disappeared when it was time to rebuild the thing in Colorado. "Let's go see what your Mom's up to," he said to Ally, and she obediently followed him out of the room and down the hall.

One of the bookshelves in Carter's bedroom had been shifted to stand kitty-corner to the wall. Normal enough if you were going to sweep behind it...except of course most shelves you swept behind weren't built-in and when you moved them away from the wall, the wall stayed behind. This one had brought a section of the wall with it and in its place left an opening into a hidden recess.

He stepped over to it and said, "Carter?"

"Down here, Sir," Sam's voice called back, and he and Ally shambled down some makeshift, wooden steps and found themselves not in a basement room or dark, cramped hiding place, but a wide, rounded cavern. A narrow tunnel twisted away beyond the back of the house.

"Tok'ra crystals," he said with admiration and satisfaction in his tone. Sam smiled at him. From a small table, she was gathering up Ally-sized little boy clothing, scissors, hair dye, and various and sundry other things he recognized the need of all too well. He nodded with weary understanding, but not surprise. He already had escape plans for them in mind if not actually set in motion at his house as well. With Ally staring solemnly at them, he chose not to comment on what Carter was doing. Instead he asked, "Dad?"

"Martouf," she said, stuffing a collection of MRE's into the box.

"Martouf! Just how long have you been hiding contraband, Carter?"

She shrugged. "I thought one day, I'd get a chance to study them...their potential's out of this world, you know," she laughed. "The Tok'ra would never share them willingly--not the council anyway, and not Selmak."

"But Martouf...he would have given you anything you asked for."

"Lantash, actually...for Jolinar," she agreed. He wanted to ask her what else she'd smuggled out of the SGC in her years there, but he didn't. She was one of the good guys after all. Besides, he wasn't above a little smuggling himself.

"So where's it come out?" he asked.

"Two alleys over...someone's built a little enclosure to keep their garbage cans from blowing over in the wind. Nice and sheltered--unless we had the incredibly bad timing of coming through when they were tossing out their trash."

"And from there? How come you just didn't collapse the tunnel behind you and keep on till daylight?"

"I didn't talk Martouf into that many crystals...and using them under a city is problematic to say the least-there are underground cables and gas lines, sewer and water...I'd been more likely to blow us and half the Eastside up than get to safety. And beneath all that, parts of the town are built over an underground river...try to get below that, you'll end up drowning."

He nodded his understanding. Studiously ignoring the Zat next to them, he picked up the passports from the shelf before she got to them. There were four: two for Carter in different names, two for Ally. "What about the boys?" he asked quietly.

Carter's voice was devoid of all emotion as she answered, "They'd be too cumbersome to bring along. They'd have had to stay behind with Pete--with the Shanahans."

"Could you have done that?" he asked. "Would you have?"

She didn't hesitate before saying, "If it was the only alternative."

"You're still nursing the baby," he objected weakly. He wished the crib would have taken longer than it had, that she'd already cleared out this place and used a crystal to wipe it out of existence before he'd had to stand in it and know the choices she'd been forced to make, the price she'd been willing to pay in order to keep his daughter safe.

She answered easily but avoided his eyes, "He'd take a bottle if it came to it...I made sure of that."

"Pete would have just let you go? Let you leave him holding the babies?"

She shrugged again and picked up the Zat. She hesitated a moment before deciding it too belonged in the box. She tucked it in before answering him, "He didn't know the plan...didn't know this was here."

"Oh," he said. The weight of his unhappiness came through that one word as clearly as though he'd spoken volumes.

She raised her head and looked at him with a frown. "It's an imperfect world, Sir. That's what this has all been about. "

He met her look. "I won't be left holding the babies, Carter."

"No, Sir. You won't have to. Look at her." She nodded towards Ally who had attached herself to his leg and gazed up at him as though she had followed every thing they'd said-and hadn't said-and understood it all. "You're the one she'll need. You'll go with her, and I'll stay behind with Jacob and Peter."

"Carter-" he began but didn't finish. What was there to say? He'd already said he wouldn't be left behind, and he'd meant it. And she was right, running with one child was possible, but with three? She nodded at his silence, taped the box shut, marked it 'kitchen--breakable', and tucked the passports into her back pocket. She moved toward the stairs, but he called her back with, "I'd wondered why..." he grimaced at her. Did he really have the right to ask?

She looked at him questioningly and asked, "Why what?" when it became apparent he didn't know how to finish.

"The boys...if you were ready for this," he said motioning around them at the cavern. "Why'd you...?"

She turned away from him and began to climb the stairs. "One child might seem suspicious. Three though--no one would question I'd really left the SGC to have a family if I actually had one," she answered without looking back at either Jack or Ally.

They both frowned up at her back. She was lying. Or at least evading the truth. Out in the cold of space, with the planet's fate in imminent jeopardy, she might have decided to produce a child because of perceived need, but she would never have plotted to further her duplicity by later conceiving Jacob and Peter for camouflage...not once she'd held her own flesh and blood in her arms and felt its dependency. No, neither of them believed it. But Ally wasn't about to call her on it, and for one reason or another he let the lie stand between them as well.

In silence, they left the hidden room, and Carter used a crystal to destroy the tunnel behind them. Then they fit the wall and bookshelf back so snugly that there really wasn't even a need to touch up the paintwork. They did anyway, just in case.

"What else?" Jack asked when they had finished with it and the holes she'd filled in the walls when she'd packed up the pictures.

"Pizza," Sam answered.

"Hey, it's pretty early. We could go out if you want--get some steaks?" He grinned at her as though they hadn't both just been discussing disappearing into the night and leaving everything and everyone behind.

Sam glanced at Ally before answering, "I'm pretty bushed, Sir...and I'm not going out for steak like this."

He looked at her paint splattered clothes and smiled. "You look just fine to me, Sam," he said. He reached out and rubbed a smear of paint off her cheek with his thumb. "You've never looked more beautiful."

She bit her lip and started to cry. "Really?" she asked. "I feel like such a monster."

He tried to back track and pick up on where that had come from. "Huh? I think I missed something?"

"What you were talking about down there...I would have done it, you know. I would have just walked away. Left them like they didn't mean a thing."

He pulled her to him. "I know," he said. "But not because you don't love them. You'd do what needed done-you always do, but that doesn't mean they don't mean anything to you. You love them...everyone can see that." She cried against his shoulder. He smoothed her hair and held her and added her tears to the tally he'd started calculating in his mind of all he'd cost her with his little brainstorm on that Al'kesh.

"So," he said when her sobs had turned to just the occasional sniffle, "pizza?" But, in the end, they opened up that last box and, sitting on her living room floor amidst all the mayhem of moving, ate MRE's for old time's sake.

They'd been on the road heading towards Colorado early the next morning, the boys still half-asleep in red-footed pajamas and the adults gulping too-hot coffee and squinting against the brightness of the rising sun. The trip was uneventful...as uneventful as traveling hundreds of miles with three young children can be anyway. The cab seat of his pickup would never be quite the same after all the spills and assorted accidents. And he'd thought Teal'c and Daniel were bad.

Peter seemed to have a built-in alarm system that signaled him to start fussing and crying to be let out of his car seat within 30 minutes of any proposed stopping point. Jacob proved he was as typical as Ally wasn't--by the time they had hit the state border, he'd asked, "Are we there yet?" roughly fifty-nine times and throughout the trip he managed to announce with just the right degree of sincerity, "I got to go potty," practically every time they'd gotten ten miles past a rest area.

Except for when Ally developed carsickness as they passed through a stretch of narrow, twisting canyon roads, Jack enjoyed every minute of it. He'd been afraid he might be too old for another shot at parenthood, that he'd find their childish demands and needs an unwelcome intrusion. But, he was just as excited to have them in his life when they finally arrived at his front door as he had been when they'd set out.

Daniel, Teal'c, Janet, and Cassy arrived to help unload his truck of the boxes and belongings they'd brought with them instead of leaving to the moving company. The pickup was soon unloaded, and he grinned over the boxes strewn through out his hallway, living room, and bedrooms with satisfaction and delight...life was very good.

Cassy, correctly guessing that left to Sam and Jack glow-in-the dark stars and the occasional space shuttle decal would have to take the place of any real decorating attempt, had spent the previous week transforming Jack's extra rooms for the kids...bright, gold and red racing patterns for the room the boys would share and Beauty and Beast decals over pale yellow walls for Ally's.

Jack rolled his eyes and teased that he supposed if they hung a few jet models from the ceiling and slapped up a few Air Force recruitment posters on the walls it would pass as livable. Sam, who knew very well all of Cassy's efforts were wasted on Ally, hugged her and told her it was beautiful. Ally stared unseeingly and without interest at the floor. Cassy had known better than to expect anything else, and counted Sam's approval reward enough for her hard work.

The new rooms were only one of a very many changes that came with the move. The boys were young and easy-going enough that they took everything in stride and soon settled in. And Ally, who had in the past taken days to calm back down if Carter and Pete had so much as rearranged the furniture in the living room showed very little distress over the move, and felt only a slight bit more. Sir's presence made all the difference. Even when he had to be gone, which was far too often for all of them, she understood it couldn't be helped and contented herself with Carter instead.

Some of the changes in their new lives were harder for Ally to take than others however. Daniel and Teal'c spent a fair amount of their downtime lazing around the living room and arguing with Sir over the merits or lack thereof of the Simpsons, curling, and other subjects Ally found irrelevant. Daniel helped Carter in the kitchen, and Teal'c snuck the boys donuts when Carter wasn't looking; having them around was not all that different than having Grandma and Grandpa in the house.

Except for the night Daniel, pale and strained from a mission gone bad, drank a beer with Jack. He'd looked at Ally with troubled eyes and insisted on discussing the rightness and wrongness of the decisions that had led to her conception. Carter had tactfully tried to change the subject, when that hadn't worked Sir had told him to shut his trap, and from there things had rapidly gone down hill. Ally had fled to her room and spent the rest of the evening staring at Belle and the Beast dancing on her walls with her hands clamped tightly over her ears. It was the last time Sir offered him a bottle.

Old Doc Frasier and Cassy were there as often as not as well. They came and kept her mother, and themselves, from worrying on the long days and nights when Daniel and Teal'c were offworld. They stayed late, crying over old movies that Ally couldn't comprehend, laughing over memories that Ally couldn't share, and talking quietly over things that held no interest for her. As long as they didn't try to speak or mess with Ally, she could deal with them hanging about the house.

The problem would come when they would decide it would be a grand idea for them to leave the kids home with Sir and drag Carter out 'shopping' or to the movies or to any number of places that would take her mother away from her. Carter resisted their attempts to get her out of the house, but Sir would send her off with a 'get out of here, Sam and don't hurry back...we'll be just fine' if he caught wind of their plans. Her mother would return laughing and spent from the time out. Ally recognized that her mother had broken free from the isolation she'd unwittingly trapped her in. She was glad for that even though she resented the doc and Cassy coming between her and her mother.

It was the worst with Cassy. She was jealous of her in a way she'd never been of Jacob and Peter. She had the memories from Sir of the little girl left alone among the dead, the nightmare in her chest, her love of Carter, and Carter's of her. She knew it was irrational, but her mother had loved Cassy first and Ally feared she'd steal Carter's love from her.

Cassy popped in and out at every opportunity as though she could somehow make up for the years Carter had more or less disappeared from her life. She wrestled with Jacob, cuddled Peter while he slept, tickled them both at every opportunity, and let Sir tease her unmercifully. She lost repeatedly to Carter in chess and talked with her for hours about people and places Ally had no use for. Ally fought her all the way, demanding Carter's attention by clinging to her, going on a rampage, or fluttering about like an agitated, overgrown butterfly.

Sir was not impressed. When he was around, he'd pull Ally away from Carter, plop her next to him on the couch or on the deck, and wave an irritated finger in her face. "Stop that, young lady. We don't need any of that. What's gotten into you anyway?" He would scowl at her and wait for an answer, but she would look through him and in the end he'd give up the wait and say, "Well, whatever...just give it a rest."

Carter, though, accepted it with a resigned sigh. She'd pull Ally to her and weather the anger and the agitation without complaint.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Why do you let her do that?" Jack growled. "She'll never learn to quit if you let her get away with it."

Sam looked up at him in surprise and then down at Ally whose fluttering hands had knocked over half the chessboard before she'd gathered her onto her lap and set back up the pieces. "What?" she asked. To her it was just normal, old everyday Ally-like activity.

"What?" he said exasperated. "She manipulates you and you don't even notice, do you?"

"She's just being Ally, Sir," Sam said trying not to sound defensive. She second-guessed her decisions concerning Ally all the time without him deciding to get in on the act. But she'd given him the right to have his say when she'd married him, and she figured Ally had as well when she'd responded to him.

He snorted. "What she is doing is trying to keep you from spending time with Cassy...she's jealous!"

"That's nuts. You don't see it because when she's with you, she's a different child, but this is the little girl I know! She can connect with you somehow...she looks at you, she listens to you, she follows you around like a puppy. She'll even nod her head to answer your questions, but she doesn't have that connection with the rest of the world, Jack. This is the only way she has to tell us she's upset or frightened or yes, maybe even jealous."

"Oh, there is no question about that--she's jealous!" he muttered back. "And you just encourage her. Send her to her room or something when she acts like that. Don't let her get away with it!" Ally, distressed by his disapproval, began to flap in Sam's arms. He told her sharply, "That's what I'm talking about...you can quit it because I'm not going to stop just because you flap around like a chicken."

"Sir! Don't. She can't help it," Sam answered, and if he really had expected Ally to obey him, he was sadly disappointed.

"She can help it and if she can't we need to teach her how!" In his irritation there was a lot more he would have liked to say, but even if Cassy wasn't sitting wide-eyed in the room he wouldn't. He'd left Carter in charge of this mission over four years ago, and it was a little late now to start calling the shots.

Sam could no longer remember what she'd expected her daughter to be like in those long-ago months of her pregnancy. But, she'd accepted Ally was Ally a long time before. Right or wrong, she'd quit trying to get Ally to respond like a typical child, sent the therapists away, kept her as far away from specialists as she could, threw away the piles of literature she'd collected on various behavioral therapies and treatments, and resigned herself to giving Ally the time she needed to find her own way out of the hopelessly closed world in which she lived. To do otherwise had always proven not only to be torture to Ally but a mistake that the whole family paid for long after the attempt had proven utterly fruitless.

She shook her head against his statement and said, "Ally will find her own way...we just have to give her time."

"And you know this how?" he demanded.

"Because that's what you told me, Sir!" she shot back and he once again came up hard against the wall of forgotten memories. He was in so many ways operating in the dark here. He could have done with some night-vision goggles and a carefully detailed mission report, but a top-secret mission hidden within an ultra-classified mission didn't generate a scrap of paperwork. Before he could come up with a response, Carter was already quickly laying a rabbit trail in case her words had given away anything to Cassy, "If she's jealous, Jack...it certainly won't be of my time and attention."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think that's pretty apparent," she said.

He stared stricken at her. She'd never given any sign she was hurt by Ally's obvious preference for him, but there it was. She'd always seemed happy enough to see the two of them together, and she was the one after all who kept insisting that he was the one Ally needed. He sighed, but if she thought he'd drop it just because she hinted at deep waters he usually would do anything to avoid, she was the one disappointed this time. "She's using her behaviors to manipulate you into doing what she wants...she's acting like a spoiled, rotten brat, and it needs to stop."

"It's the only way she can tell us of her fears or what she needs."

"So you admit, she can help it."

"No, I don't. The flapping, the rages, even that horrible head-banging she's started since we've come here...they're out of her control. They are screams for help that she can't hold in. They're all she's got, Sir!"

"If you can't deal with her, Carter, give her to me...I'll take care of it."

"No, Sir." It was second nature for Sam to want to please him, to be that good little soldier with a 'yes, sir' always at the ready. But, she had no choice, and she was certain it would not be the last time she would have to hold her ground in the face of his displeasure. Ally had no voice of her own, and she wouldn't leave her without one. "Trust me. I know my own daughter!"

She turned back to the forgotten chess game. "Your move," she said fighting through the tightness in her throat. He stalked off without another word, and Ally for once didn't slip off her lap to follow him. Cassy took advantage of the situation to take the game.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There were other issues that they addressed with raised voices and Ally acted out with behaviors that made him tighten his lips and clamp his mouth shut, but for the most part they transitioned easily from Shanahans to O'Neills.

Ally liked Colorado. She liked Sir's house which was as familiar to her as the one she'd lived in all her life. Except for its new, wooden fence, which she detested and frequently attacked with her fists and feet as though its confining presence threatened her in some way.

"What's with that, you think?" Jack asked Sam one day. "You had a fence at the other house-did she hate it like she does this one?"

"She never reacted to it at all," Sam answered. "I think...well, I wonder, if maybe...you gave her more than just the Ancient database?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, she knows things. Or seems to anyway...about things and people that weren't in any database put together a million years ago."

"Such as?"

"Well, like she knew you...the first time she saw you. She's always trusted Daniel, always. And she about died of fright the first time she saw Dad...not like he was a stranger, but like he was an enemy--if she was just picking up on my feelings like kids do, she wouldn't have done that. But, you've never really stopped seeing the Tok'ra as an enemy, have you?"

He gave her an apologetic nod that acknowledged his guilt in that regard; but though confession was good for the soul, his answer was far from a confession and guaranteed to heap more guilt on his already guilty soul. "So you think she sees people the way I do?" he asked as though he wasn't too sure. But he had no doubts she did, and furthermore he believed that somehow, someway Ally also saw people the way Carter did. But, he couldn't tell her that without revealing Ally's secret.

"Or did...back when she was conceived. People, things, places."

"You don't think there's a chance...she, uh, can read minds, do you?"

Sam frowned at him. He could see the idea had never occurred to her before. "She's...she's human. I don't think...no, I don't think so-do you?"

He shrugged, "Sometimes she looks at me like she knows what I'm thinking."

"That's what I'm talking about though, Sir. If she has your memories or thoughts or whatever...she could know what you're thinking. Not reading your mind, just knowing how you think."

"Well, I have to admit, I'm not that fond of the fence myself. Not enough to waste time kicking it, mind you, but..."

She nodded her head, "Too bad. That fence is staying, no matter how much the two of you dislike it. This morning, Jacob got the door open and Peter was halfway out the door before I even knew it." She shuddered, "That river..."

"I wasn't suggesting we tear it down," he assured her. "They did the same thing to me when you were in the shower the other night-only they made it all the way out. Thought I was going to have a heart attack. They're living terrors, Carter. I think they've already added those lost fifteen years back to my life--see this gray hair?"

She grinned at him, but when she asked, "Do you regret taking us on then?" she was deadly serious.

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. "Never," he said and he'd never meant anything more.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Ally gave up her assault on the fence in time to hear them discuss her possible mind-reading abilities. She folded herself into a small ball on the green grass near their feet and considered the question. She couldn't read either of their minds, but there were times, many times, when she knew what they thought anyway. Not always. They'd both changed somewhat in the years since they'd produced her so she wasn't always able to infer how they would react. And, the information he'd given her hadn't always been complete or objective enough to give her a clear picture to start with.

It would have been better if she could have read his mind. She'd be able to find what she needed to understand the alien information filling hers. As it was, she was still finding the task insurmountable. As a Rosetta Stone he was as clear as mud. He'd taken diligent care to make her physically Carter's daughter and not his own. But, he'd taken none at all when it came to outfitting her with what she'd need to fulfill the mission with which he'd charged her. Not out of negligence or an attempt to hamper her efforts, just plain old ignorance. He had had no idea he would be passing along his own knowledge and thoughts along with the Ancients'.

What he'd known he could give her of himself, he'd purposely withheld: no DNA test would place him as her father with any degree of likelihood. Doubtlessly, if he'd known she'd be getting bits and pieces of himself and how vital they would be in putting his legacy to use, he'd have just as carefully picked and chosen what he would give her in that regard as well.

But, he hadn't, so instead she had a mishmash of garbled thoughts of varying degrees of usefulness to dig through if she ever wanted to know how to use her inheritance. She'd never need to use his 8th grade locker combination, but she really, really could have used a systematic explanation of Earth politics. A distaste for rhubarb didn't help her understand the motives of the powers that ruled the galaxy. She'd probably never need to quote the first off-color joke he'd snickered at, but it would have helped her tremendously to have a list of the Goa'uld dominated worlds.

She'd randomly received bits and pieces of both the important and the mundane. It would take her a lifetime to discover which was which. She suspected that the Ancient information was coded as to its particular relevance, but his...she thought, what he'd given her were the things connected-by however thin a thread--with his deepest beliefs and most intense emotions. Unfortunately, not just those he'd been experiencing when he'd so decisively set her life in motion. At the age of three he'd hated spiders with the same intensity he'd later hated the Replicators. So he'd managed to give her just what she hadn't needed, an unhealthy fear of dark corners when her world was already fearful enough.

He'd always hated boredom, and to prove it, she had a thousand random thoughts he'd occupied his mind with when bored...none of which would probably ever prove useful in a contest with galactic evil and all of which he would have undoubtedly preferred she didn't know. He had feared humiliation at every age. As an 8th grader that had been linked to a shared locker room, hence his desperately remembered combination. As a man that fear had been linked to all his secrets being revealed to any Replicator who cared to stick a hand through his head; so, if her theory was right, she should have quite a bit about the Replicators...just a matter of finding it and recognizing it. A piece of cake...right!

She'd received everything so randomly it was a tangled mess she couldn't unravel. Not just the knowledge he'd given her, but his reasons and purposes for doing so as well. He had had big plans for her, but they'd been fragmentary and still only in the beginning stages of development. He'd wanted her to be a weapon he could turn on his enemies, but his aim was all over the board. His enemies at times had proven to be friends and his friends enemies. He'd meant for her to use the knowledge he gave her for good, but he hadn't defined the term for her. He'd seen much of what he had done for good as evil and how was she, who was still just a child, supposed to make heads or tails out of that? She couldn't.

He'd been a contradiction even to himself. She thought that quite possibly his understanding of his life and himself had been just as confusing to him as it was to her. His had been the only motives he had truly trusted; yet, he had considered himself anything but a good man. He'd sacrificed his life for a world he saw as worthy of destruction as much as it was salvation. He'd fought for his life against overwhelming odds even when he hadn't deemed it worth living. He'd despised what he was doing in making her, yet believed with all his soul it was the right thing to do.

Little wonder she could make very little headway in understanding him in order to interpret what he'd given her from the Ancients. He couldn't have made it more difficult if he'd tried. He had both given her the world and denied her access to it.

Without his miraculous appearance in her life, she thought her failure would have been almost certainly guaranteed. Now though she held both the key and the template and between the two of them she believed she would one day, one faraway day in the unseen future, wield the knowledge of the Ancients as skillfully as he wielded his combat knife and acid tongue.

In the meantime, she couldn't allow his welcome presence in her life to lull her into dropping her guard. The dangers she had always faced hadn't faded away just because he was there. And though she now had him to help protect her, he couldn't defend her from every menace--if he'd had that ability, he would never have needed to make her in the first place. For all his leashed power and unshakeable resolve, he wasn't invincible. The little girl in her wanted to believe her daddy could defeat the worst villain, but the villains she faced weren't little boys calling names and even Jack O'Neill had had to admit he couldn't stand against them without help. She couldn't depend upon him to fight her battles when he'd made her to fight his.

Still, she was more at peace than she had ever been before. She hadn't known about the escape tunnel behind the bookshelf in her mother's old room until she'd followed Sir down the steps, but she'd instantly understood its purpose and its necessity. And she'd understood that Carter had been protecting her in more ways than keeping her from the probing scans of the doctors, the intrusive presences of therapists, and the upset of strangers. Understood that the mother she knew wasn't really that far removed from the Major Carter who'd blown up a sun, been instrumental in the defeat of numerous Goa'uld, led the Asgard to a major victory against the Replicators, and fought side by side with Sir in more battles than either of them cared to remember.

Ally couldn't drop her vigilance--every stranger, every shadow, every unexplained and unexpected occurrence still carried the threat of discovery and exposure. But she no longer felt alone in it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Their first night in Colorado, after the boys were both asleep in their newly put-together beds, Sir had shown them a room hidden in the wall between the hall and his bedroom. It didn't lead to an escape tunnel, but it was stocked to allow someone to hide out for a couple of days.

"We can't use the crystals here," Carter said with a regretful shake of her head. "The river would flood the tunnel-"

"It doesn't matter," Sir said with a smugness that indicated he held the ace. "I've got an Asgard communication device."

"Ahh," she said and grinned over at him, but there was something forced in her response that alerted both Ally and Sir.

"What?" he asked.

"I don't like calling in the Asgard, Jack. What if...well, Thor and the Asgard Council may not approve of the situation? They may choose to remove the knowledge from her. Or try to use her to gain it for themselves. You said they really can't make use of a lot of it even after all these years without a way of indexing the data...they might decide she's the perfect tool for their use."

"Thor?" he said. "He wouldn't."

"Do you want to risk her life on that?" she asked him.

"We can trust Thor," he asserted wondering when the tables had turned. All their years on the field, he'd been the skeptic and she'd been the trusting one. He'd always thought she'd be better with a touch of wariness, but he found he regretted this change in her. He had made the mistake in thinking motherhood had softened her. Quite the opposite--she'd become hardened to choices he was finding incredibly difficult to come to grips with.

"Even if that's true, you know how reliably he answers that thing...he might not be around when we need him." She turned away from him and surveyed the hiding place again. "Only as a last resort," she finally said.

With a disappointed sigh, he accepted her assessment. "Ok, so we use it as plan B. What do you suggest for plan A?"

"I don't know...don't get trapped in here, I guess. What about the river?"

"What about it?"

"Ever take a raft down it?"

"No."

"It's possible though?"

"People do it all the time...people with more experience than I have. It's not an easy run."

"Exactly. If you could get out right away, you could be miles downstream while they were still searching the house." She looked at the supplies he had stacked on the rough shelves and not at him as she added, "I could stall them."

"Sam," he began, but she cut him off.

"It could work for plan A at least until we come up with something better. You make the arrangements--I do not want to know the details."

He grabbed her arm and pulled her around to look at him, "I'm not running and leaving you to be--no way. I can't do that, Sam."

She stared him down, "When they come, Jack, you'll go. You'll take Ally and you'll go...if you can't do that-"

"What? If I can't leave you to be tortured into telling where we've gone, what?" he demanded, but he saw the answer in her eyes before she ever spoke the words.

"I'll take her and go now." Ally, who to all appearances had been out in never-never land, suddenly returned to Earth. She raised her head and looked at her father. He'd known this blow was coming. It was the same conversation they'd started in the escape tunnel back home; same ideas just different words, same futile denial of the same untenable conclusion. Yet, she thought he couldn't look more stricken if Carter had pulled out a P90 and blasted him.

And Ally suspected she couldn't either. The determination in Carter's voice left no doubt she meant what she'd said--she would take Ally away from him. Distress and horror at the thought filled Ally and burst out in a violent, repetitive banging of her head against the two-by-fours framing in his secret room.

"For crying outloud!" he muttered and gathered her in his arms. He checked to make sure she hadn't done herself any significant damage while Carter glared at him. The head-banging was new and seemed to express her own anger as well as Ally's distress. She should never have told him yes, never have endangered her kids for a chance to live out the life she'd dreamed of for more years than she cared to admit.

He'd promised her she wouldn't regret it, but she did. Why hadn't she dredged up the courage to turn him down? She glared at him, but her anger was at herself. She'd made a dreadful tactical error. Of all people, she had thought he'd be more than able to accept the necessity of the sacrifice, to be prepared and willing to pay the price whatever it added up to in the end.

Yet, she should have known better. Because of all people, he was the one who held himself accountable for her well-being. For all those years as her commanding officer she'd been his responsibility, and she should have known that wasn't something he could turn off.

But, it was too late now. She'd burned her bridges, sold the house with its escape tunnel, left behind the fa�ade of a life that had proven itself effective camouflage, uprooted the boys and torn them from the Shanahans...she'd destroyed every strategic advantage she'd managed to build into their lives, and now they were at the mercy of a man she couldn't trust to love her enough to leave her behind.

When she finally found her voice, it was to say, "You see how it is, Sir. She needs you, but we're safer anywhere but here if you won't see this through."

He flinched under her attack. He shook his head sadly, but his voice when he spoke was as hard as her own, "I'll do what needs done. If they come for her, I'll take her and I won't look back."

Unconvinced, Sam turned and started to walk away from him. He moved after her and again grabbed an arm to make her look at him. "When did you start running from me, Carter?" he growled in exasperation.

She briefly fought against his hold, but then with a resigned sigh faced him. "When haven't I run from you, Sir?" she asked in answer. That brought him up short. They'd both made a habit of running from each other, because the price of doing otherwise had always been too high. And now, when they should have stopped running...he gave a choked groan and pulled her to him in an awkward hug with Ally squeezed halfway between.

"You've got a point, but now's the time. Tonight. We stop running tonight."

"Then you've got to mean it," she said with her voice muffled against him. "The only way, we can make this work is if I know you'll come through when she needs you. I won't stay if you're not prepared to leave me behind." She pushed away from him to see him wince at her words.

That was it in a nutshell. Since Iraq, he'd built his life on not leaving his people behind, and he'd diligently sought to stick to it as though it was his one shot at redemption. Now she was demanding he turn his back on all that, and on her, and leave her to pay the price for his desertion.

Did she have any idea what she was asking? Pete and the Shanahans might have been taken as dupes, but anyone coming after Ally wouldn't be making that mistake about Carter. They wouldn't just say, "Oh sorry...didn't mean to disturb you...don't mind us." No, it would be, "Tell us where you've hidden the kid or die...or watch your sons die." He looked into her eyes and knew she did know what she was asking.

In the face of her sacrifice, he could do no less. "If anyone needs to run," he promised, "it will be me. I give you my word. I won't fail you, Carter."

She'd pulled away from him then, but there was nowhere in the unfamiliar house for her to run to hide her tears. She staggered to an uncertain stop. He put Ally down with a stern, "Go to bed," and gathered Carter up in his arms. Ally stood watching them crying and rocking in a way that reminded her of Jones and her mother on the porch after Pete's death. Together they mourned the happy ever after life they might have had if things had been as simple as he'd believed them to be when he'd asked her to marry him.

Ally turned from their loss and grief, which she could only partly understand, and went to bed in her old bed in her new, unfamiliar room. She crawled into its soft blankets; pulled her ragged, security blanket against her face; and stared into the night.

If they ever discussed further escape plans, it wasn't in her hearing. Still she took comfort in knowing that somewhere he'd hidden a raft to carry them down the river to safety. It wasn't an all-encompassing comfort because there was no reason to believe that when the threat materialized he'd even be home or that she would be for that matter. The attack could come at anytime, anywhere, from any direction.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~***~*~*~*

"So, why haven't they tried to get hold of the kid?" Jack asked Daniel one day while they were sprawled in the living room watching Jacob try to turn somersaults.

Still grinning over Jacob's clumsy attempts, Daniel turned to Jack and said, "Huh? Who?"

Jack answered impatiently, "Oma and her crowd."

Daniel's faced sobered as understanding sunk in. "I don't know. Maybe they're waiting to find out what she's capable of. They can afford to be patient." Jack nodded and Daniel continued. "We don't really know if she's going to be able to use what she has...or even if she has what we think she does. She could be harmless, you know?"

Jack nodded again. Harmless was the one thing he didn't believe his daughter was, but the more people who did believe it, the better. "How do we guard against them--if they get impatient and decide to not to take the chance?" he asked.

Daniel glanced uneasily at Ally who'd gone from sitting still and unconnected beside Jack to an agitated, stiffness as the discussion went on. Her eyes still stared off in never-never land, but her hands fluttered uncontrollably at her sides and gave her away. Jack followed his gaze and put a calming hand around her but still looked to Daniel to answer his question.

"You can't, Jack," he said unhappily. "If they want her, they'll take her."

"Screw that," Jack said but it didn't change the truth of Daniel's statement. Whatever plans they made, whatever precautions they took, whatever preparations they lay she was vulnerable.

Unfortunately, not just to enemies on every side, but to life itself. One fine, June evening, it struck out at her and did more damage in an instant than any enemy could have done in a thousand years of trying. She hadn't known she needed to guard herself against it, but even if she had it, like Oma and her crowd, couldn't be stopped.

Three days before they'd celebrated her fourth birthday with cake and the general himself had helped her unwrap this year's gift of a Spiderman punching bag ("Let her bang her head on him for a change!"). Grandma and Grandpa, drawn and tired from their move and shy in the home of their new, almost son-in-law, had been there hugging the boys and blinking bittersweet tears from their eyes. Carter had smiled determinedly and she and the Shanahans had resolutely refused to acknowledge the shadow the anniversary of Pete's death would forever after throw on her birthday.

Daniel had taken the pictures, and Ally had almost felt like a normal, little girl in the midst of all their singing and laughing. Though she hadn't joined in to acknowledge the love surrounding her, she'd felt it real and palpable in the air around her. Life had seemed a welcome friend that day, but it had only been lying in wait.

~*~**~*~*~*~*~**~*~*

"Come on, Carter...it'll be fun."

"You come on, Jack--the last time we tried eating out, you got called out before the food came and left me sitting there with Ally having a meltdown, Jacob spilling pop all over the waitress, and Peter deciding to come down with a stomach bug...let's just order pizza and stay home."

"Ahh...be adventurous."

Sam blinked. The words hung between them with a life all their own. Once she had been adventurous. Once she'd walked through the Stargate every chance she got and its inherent risks and dangers had made it all the better. But, she'd stopped taking risks as a matter of course well over four years before and had had to learn to content herself with just plain, old, everyday life on planet Earth. She still dreamed of stepping through the Gate, still longed for what she'd lost. A night out on the town wasn't gone to fill that ache. "I'll be adventurous," she finally shot back at him, "I'll let you order Chinese."

But, Jack O'Neill tended to get her to do what he wanted whether that involved pulling solutions out of the thin air while under fire, marrying him against her better judgment, or dragging the kids out to a real, honest-to-goodness, sit-down restaurant. And, she had to admit, the steak was a nice change from macaroni and cheese and take-out pizza; Ally managed to not act out and have the entire place staring at them; the boys kept the noise level down to a manageable level; the only spill was minor and didn't involve the need for a mop...all in all a nice evening out despite her earlier misgivings.

"I'm glad you talked me into coming," she said as they loaded the kids into their car seats ready for the trip home.

"Ahh...you should trust me more. Would I lead you wrong?" he asked.

She kissed Peter before straightening up, slamming the door, and laughing over the truck's roof at Jack. "I trust you-"

"Carter!" he yelled, cutting off whatever else she might have said but doing nothing to stop the disaster bearing down on them. Her eyes followed his horrified gaze in time to recognize her danger and then looked back at Ally through the truck window. Ally would never forget that look; she would always know that at the point of death her mother's thoughts were on her.

A Surburban which had been going much too fast lost control on the loose gravel as it turned into the parking lot, flipped around, and slammed into the side of the pickup. It bounced off and came to a rocking stop against another parked vehicle several feet away.

The impact knocked Jack down. It didn't occur to him to find out if he was hurt...it really didn't matter. He could hear the boys screaming and knew he should go to them, make sure they were all right, but...Carter. He got to his feet and stared over the top of his pickup to where she had been standing not even a minute before.

She wasn't there. Of course she wasn't there. He knew that she had to have been crushed between the two vehicles, but he couldn't make himself move--couldn't even make himself breathe. People were running from the restaurant. They saw him standing there unharmed and ran past him to render aid to the occupants of the other vehicle. The bubble of disbelief that had trapped him shattered into a thousand pieces and with a cry he dashed around the front of the truck.

She was crumpled on the ground beside the truck. There was less blood then he expected...hardly any in fact. He went to his knees beside her, "Carter..."

Her breath came in painful gasps and her eyes were wide with shock, but she answered him with a weak, "Sir."

"Help's coming," he told her afraid to even touch her. She swallowed painfully and gasped for air and he remained frozen by her side praying for the sound of sirens.

"Peter?" she tried to say but it didn't make it all the way out. His thoughts were all on her and it was a stranger who bent over her and said, "The little boys in the truck are fine...shook up and scared, but fine." She blinked tears of gratitude from her eyes and the stranger was gone before Jack even knew what she'd asked or what the answer had been. He realized Peter's cries had quieted. Jacob though was still yelling loudly and plaintively for his mother.

Ally appeared beside him and wrapped herself in his arms. He didn't notice until Sam's unfocused gaze slowly sharpened on Ally's white, stricken face and her own ashen face filled with a horror that rose above her pain and shock.

"Don't let her near me, Sir!" she choked out desperately. "Do you hear me? Keep her away!" Her words were slurred and low, but he could make them out clearly enough. It was her horror that confused him. He stared dumbly down at Ally and couldn't see any reason for Sam's sudden fear of her daughter.

But then as though mesmerized the little girl unwound herself from his arms and crept closer to Sam. She reached out a small, trembling hand and laid it on her mother's chest. "No, Ally! No!" Sam cried at her. Ally ignored her while Carter went back to frantically begging him. "Stop her, Sir. Don't let her do this!"

And suddenly, he knew what was happening. Knew what Sam was afraid of and knew he was going to ignore her pleas and let Ally do what she could. Let the healing power of the Ancients flow through that little hand and save Carter.

It wasn't a decision Sam could accept. She fought a losing battle painfully trying to find the strength to escape from Ally's reach and another pleading with him. Even when her voice dropped in despair to utter one last, "Sir!" he hardened his heart and refused to do what they both knew had to be done.

The sound of the paramedics' shoes scrunching against the gravel as they moved into their line of sight was what finally spurred him into action. He pulled Ally kicking and screaming away from her mother and dragged her off to the side so the rescue workers would have room to work. She fought him with every bit of her little girl strength but that wasn't enough to escape his hold. He was helpless and weak in the face of Carter's massive injuries but he was still stronger than a four-year-old. "I'm sorry, Ally," he whispered to her even though he knew she'd never hear him over her frantic efforts. "I wish I could let you do it. Believe me, I do, but...."

He'd killed Carter before. He'd held a Zat unwavering in his hand; looked into her eyes; and carefully, purposefully taken that second shot. He'd had no choice then. It had had to be done. And now he was killing her all over again. Not with a Zat this time but by neglect. He was going to stand there and watch her die because that was the only way he could keep Ally safe. And that had to be all that mattered.

Not because the world needed her; it could rot for all he cared. Not because one day she might just save the galaxy; it could burn. And certainly not to preserve the future because his future was dying while he held the one thing that could save it within his hands and refused to use it. He'd made her a promise he couldn't break. "I won't fail you, Carter," he'd said and known he'd regret saying it for the rest of his life even as he did so. He would keep that promise even though this was the last way he'd expected it to go down.

He couldn't remember doing it, but he had asked Carter to sacrifice everything for the hope Ally would one day be the miracle they'd spent all those years searching for out there. And she'd been paying the price, in one currency or another every since.

~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~

He unpacked the box of home videos and out of curiosity and with nothing better to while away the afternoon, he stuck one in to watch.

"Today is June first...let's see oh, it's uh...8:23 P.M.
and here's the woman of the hour...Sam, look up."

Sam looked up and scowled briefly at the man behind the camera.
"Let's see...Sam's been in labor-more or less for what?
Well, she's not really saying, but most the day...not bad though, right?"

Sam ignored his running commentary and kept working at the computer.
"Anyway, the contractions have just sort of dinked around, but things
seem to be moving right along now, so we're just about to head out
the door to the hospital..."

He flipped the camera to show his own goofy face, "Here I am...Daddy,
eager and ready to get this show on the road and meet Baby Shanahan..."
He flipped it back to Sam, "... and here's Mama, who's just about decided
she's made a serious mistake and she'll just stay home and forget the
whole thing, right Mama?"

Sam scowled up at him again. He laughed, "Come on, Sam, let's go have
a baby. Shut'er down...don't make me carry you out to the car-"

On screen, Sam went pale and drew in a breath; her eyes came up to the
camera wide with pain, and Pete, still filming and too far away to
reach her, held out a hand toward her anyway.

From the doorway, she said, "You don't want to watch that, Sir."

He turned it off and asked, "Was it bad?"

"He never got the knack of holding the camera steady," she misdirected. But under his probing look, she shrugged and said, "Towards the end it's like getting hit with a Goa'uld torture device every 3-5 minutes...then it gets fun."

"Oh." Add it to my bill, he thought.

"It's worth it, Sir," she'd said shrugging it off with a grin like women had been doing every since Eve had delivered Cain.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He'd known she'd been talking about a lot more than the pain of labor and delivery. And he knew she'd counted it all as worth it--just a small price to pay for the safety and security of their world, galaxy, and future. He hadn't been so positive. But, he'd given her his word anyway. Because, in the end, this had nothing to do with protecting the future and everything to do with saving the wild, struggling thing beating her head against his chest, biting at his arms, and kicking the life out of his knees. Because she was Carter's little girl and he loved her as much as he loved her mother.

It didn't feel like love to Ally...it felt like hate, treason, and betrayal. All her life--the life he'd given her--had been in preparation for this one moment: she could use the knowledge of the Ancients he had planted within her to save Carter. She knew what needed done and she knew how to do it. The cells and tissues of her mother's shattered body were an open book to her, and she could see just what needed done to repair the damaged tissues and organs and stop the internal bleeding. But, he was going to hold her and let Carter die.

She'd always known there were those outside herself who wouldn't want her to use the Ancient knowledge and would stop at nothing to stop her. Never in a million years would she have believed he was one of them. She'd trusted him implicitly and believed without a doubt that he was one of the good guys. She'd been confidant that she'd seen into his soul and knew him.

But, this was not the Colonel Jack O'Neill who had given her life. This was General O'Neill and she did not know him at all. Somehow, something deep within him had been corrupted and he was now something hateful and evil. The man she knew would have given his own life to save Carter's, but this man was going to hold her and let Carter die.

Jacob's cries had fallen to small, hopeless mewings and something in the paramedics' backs reflected that same defeat. They continued to work on her quickly and efficiently, but Carter's life was fading away. Trapped in Jack's arms Ally could do nothing to stop it. Her careful wall of silence crumbled and she could no longer hold back her cries. "Mama!" she called again and again, but though her mother had waited a lifetime to hear the sound of her voice, it came too late.

"Charging...stand clear," a voice called, and Jack and Ally both jerked as though the jolt shot through them as well. In the moment of suspended time following it, Ally felt her own strength fading away. She thought she was dying as surely as Carter. His betrayal was more than she could bear and the loss of her mother more than she could survive.

"No change. Recharging," the EMT called, but her world faded to darkness before the second charge shot through her mother's lifeless body.

~*~*~**~*~**~*~*~*~***~

Loving someone trapped in that no man's land between the living and the dead is a torment far more painful than anything Baal could ever dream up in his torture chamber.

He was stiff. Stiff from the impact of the accident, stiff from the pummeling he'd taken from Ally, stiff from sitting, and stiff from his fear. He sat slumped beside her bed and watched the rise and fall of her chest as the machine forced air in and out of her lungs. He needed to be there beside her. Needed to watch the blood slowly drip into the tube leading into her arm. Needed to watch her blood ooze out and splotch through the surgical dressings to color her hospital gown with bright, red spots. Needed to watch the bruises form and the raw red of the scrapes darken. He needed to hold her hand in his own and feel its warmth and watch the jagged lines on the monitors testify that she was still in there somewhere however small her chances, however frail her hold on life.

There was little else he could do. Janet had assured him and herself that everything was being done for Sam that could be. Her assurance and support were all she had to offer here where she had no authority to practice medicine. She stayed in the room because Jack asked her to, but her presence could do nothing to keep Sam alive.

It would have been easier if Sam was in her infirmary where she could make the calls and use her skill and experience to help her friend. But Sam would never have survived the trip to the base, and although Janet may have seen and treated enough trauma to qualify her to run a trauma unit, she didn't. Sam was better off here where the doctors and nurses were as familiar with accident victims as she was with staff weapon blasts.

Now if Jacob Carter would waltz through the Gate in answer to their call with a Goa'uld healing device in his hand, then Sam would be better off at the SGC. But, it wasn't likely. Not likely at all. The Tok'ra rarely acknowledged any communication from Earth anymore, and none to or about Jacob Carter had been answered for years. The man, she was sure, was dead. He wouldn't be coming to the rescue and none of his associates were likely to either.

She half expected Sam to disappear at any moment in the scattered light of an Asgard transporter beam because she couldn't believe Jack wouldn't have put in the call...now, that would cause quite the commotion in the middle of the ICU. She couldn't imagine a cover story big enough to cover that one, but if it would save Sam--who cared? She watched Jack watching Sam, she watched the nurses doing their work in silent competence, and she watched the solemn faces of people passing in the halls on their own nightmare trek to and from other patients in other rooms. She watched and she waited with a sinking heart and a sick feeling that wouldn't go away.

Daniel, she knew, was prowling the halls and waiting rooms, leaving styrofoam cups of cold, untasted coffee in his wake. Every once in awhile, when he just couldn't help himself any longer, he'd sneak past the hospital staff to stare with haunted eyes into Sam's cubicle. Janet would go out to him and they'd lean together in the hallway for a brief moment. But he couldn't stay and she couldn't leave, so the support they had to offer each other was woefully lacking.

Standing guard over Ally who lay still and pale beside him, Teal'c filled the ICU family waiting room with his brooding bulk and an ever-growing pile of empty, half-cans of Sprite.

Janet had no idea what was going on with Ally, and frankly she didn't have the time or energy to spare in order to find out. She wasn't feverish, seemed to be resting comfortable, and wasn't in any immediate danger...that was all she needed to know for the time being.

In their new apartment with its yet to be completely unpacked boxes, the Shanahans watched over Jacob and Peter, gave subdued updates by telephone to extended family, and prayed. The little boys hadn't received even a scratch in the accident, but car seats were woefully inadequate against the type of pain they were experiencing. Jacob woke up from his nap and in the middle of the night screaming and cried himself to sleep in his grandmother's arms. She rocked him and whispered promises she couldn't keep in his ear. Peter turned his head away from either the bottle or the cup and refused to drink. His grandpa held him on his lap and spoon-fed him ice cream and bits of popcicle and tried not to wonder what changes Sam had made in her will following her marriage to Jack O'Neill.

General Hammond bounced back and forth from the hospital to the SGC, trying to fill in for Jack, but too concerned over Sam to stay behind his old familiar desk and get the job done. He called his daughter just to hear her voice and know she was whole and healthy folding laundry and watching Star Trek reruns with the girls. He decided it was past time for him to seriously consider retirement.

Cassy too drifted in and out of the hospital, wanting to be there but unable to take the unremitting tension in the air for long. She'd prowl the halls with Daniel or flop on the couch across from Teal'c for a time, and then she'd be gone again until her need to be there was once again stronger than her need to escape.

But, of course, in the hospital or out there was no escape for any of them...they were all trapped in a world apart from everyday life. Only Sam could save them. By turning the corner and taking a firmer hold on life or by dying, she would release them.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ally awoke bruised and sore from her fight to break out of Sir's hold. She was stretched on an unfamiliar couch in an unfamiliar room, and she was motherless.

Teal'c sat at her feet. She knew why he was there. He'd sat on a couch before and let his silence hold her mother together when her world had fallen apart; and now he was there to do the same for her. Her mother was dead, sacrificed on the altar of a tomorrow that might never come.

"Alicia Shanahan," he said in formal greeting when he saw she was awake. With a gentleness that didn't match his size, he helped her to the bathroom. She needed his help. Her limbs were made of jelly and she had no strength at all. She would have crumpled to the floor like a rag doll if he wouldn't have been there to hold her up. After he'd helped her on the toilet, he perched her on the cold, ceramic edge of the sink and washed her face with a cool rag. She stared solemnly at his reflection in the mirror and he grimaced into the mirror at her. "Try to look friendly, Teal'c," Daniel had once told the big man and Sir had frowned at the result, so she recognized his attempt even if she didn't rate if very successful.

Her own face stared back at her with a blankness she didn't feel. Teal'c held a cup of water to her lips and said, "You must drink, Alicia Shanahan. You have slept for over a day." She drank down the water greedily and he filled it for her again. He gave her a satisfied nod of his head and lifted her up to carry her back to the room with the couch.

Daniel met them in the hallway. He peered at Ally through red-rimmed eyes and said to Teal'c, "She's all right then?"

"It appears so," he answered.

Daniel nodded without any of the enthusiasm Ally usually associated with him and turned back the way he had come saying, "I'll get, Jack." Ally would have liked to call him back. She knew he would bring Sir to her, and he was the last person on Earth she ever wanted to see again. But, the wall of silence that had crumbled in that parking lot had been rebuilt while she slept and seemed to be as solid and unmovable as it ever had been.

Teal'c sat her down and said, "Lois Shanahan has brought you nourishment...you should eat." He placed a sandwich in her hand, and she obediently ate...not because she was hungry, but because she needed the energy to face Sir when he came.

"Ally's awake," Daniel said from the doorway of Sam's cubicle in ICU. His feet were solidly planted just shy of the threshold as though by a careful adherence to hospital policy he could ensure the hospital staff would do their best for Sam.

Jack looked up at him dully and saw the same bone-numbing weariness he felt reflected in Daniel's eyes. The news was welcome and long past due, but the relief he had thought it would bring him never materialized. He nodded his head apathetically and met Janet's eyes.

"It's fine, General," she said to his unasked question, "I'll stay with her." He fought through his lassitude to rise stiffly from his place by Carter's side and followed Daniel down the hall.

All those years, which the clock across from Sam's bed had insisted in measuring in hours and minutes, that she'd slept, pale and still as death, he'd feared he'd left it too late. That those brief moments when he'd ignored Carter's pleas had cost her too much and she'd never wake up. That he had sacrificed Carter's daughter in a vain attempt to save her and lost them both. So seeing her sitting up beside Teal'c should have reassured him she was going to be fine, but it didn't.

She looked smaller, younger, and more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. The expression in her pale face was bleak, and he had the impression that if Teal'c wasn't there supporting her she would have been incapable of holding herself up. He thought that would improve with time, that physically she would make a full recovery.

But her eyes told him plainly that inside she would never recover. They had never looked less like Carter's. They gazed at him full of hate and condemnation. They were a mirror into his own soul, and a judgment. He nodded his head in acknowledgment and gave no defense, because he was guilty as charged. In saving her, he had condemned Carter. Somehow, incredibly, Carter might still pull through, but it was no thanks to him...he had made the call to let her die.

As weak as she was, Ally was ready for a battle he was ill-prepared to fight. He sat down on the other side of her and surrendered, "Ally, I'm sorry. I know how you feel and you're absolutely right, but we're not going there right now. I can't be here that long--got to get back. But, I need you to understand something and I never want you to forget it. That healing stuff can take more than you've got to give--you could have killed yourself. I don't want you ever to do that again...not until you know what you're doing...and you didn't, did you?"

Her eyes flickered to Daniel and Teal'c and he knew that was the only response she'd give him in their presence. So be it...he was sure he knew the answer anyway. He continued, "Right, so no more, but listen--thanks."

Thanks. An odd word to use, she thought. Thanks for nothing. What little she'd managed to do had been as good as nothing. It hadn't been enough to make any difference at all against such massive devastation. He hadn't given her enough time. "One day," Carter had whispered to her a long time ago. It had been a promise of things to come, an assurance that one day all the rottenness of her miserable little life would be worth it. But Ally no longer believed in that day...she'd sat at her mother's side and felt all the knowledge she'd struggled so long and hard to understand open up to her. She'd held the means to save her world, but he had held her in his arms and let Carter die. She turned her face from him and stared at the blank TV screen across the room.

"I can't stay, Ally," he told her with a sigh. "I've got to get back to your mom...stay here with Teal'c and Daniel and get better, because when she wakes up I want to be able to tell her you're ok. Otherwise, you know she's going to kill us both," he said with an attempt at a smile that fell even farther from the mark than Teal'c's had. He reached out a hand to rub the top of her head and then thought better of it. He stood up and looked down at her sadly. "I do love you, baby girl...I do," he said. He didn't wait to read the look in her eyes but walked out the door like a man on his way to the death chamber.

Ally stared after him letting his words permeate her being and stir her heart with hope. Dead people didn't wake up...he was telling her Carter was alive. She turned puzzled eyes up to Daniel who was leaning against the window ledge watching her with an expression she couldn't read on his face.

He sighed and said, "I know you're mad, Ally...at Jack and probably Sam, too...that's ok...that's normal enough. You wanted to help and they wouldn't let you. You might not understand why now, but you will ...one day." Ally closed her eyes against his words, because she didn't want to hear what he was saying. It was difficult enough to know Sir had betrayed her trust; she didn't want to accept that Carter had as well. But she knew he was right. It was Carter who had ordered her to stop, Carter who had begged Sir to keep her away from her...he hadn't wanted to, he'd stalled those few precious moments to give her what time he could. But, in the end...as Daniel said 'they' wouldn't let her do what they had made her for. Both of them were guilty.

Daniel continued, "They love you, Ally. Don't hate them for it. They didn't have any choice." Of course, they had had a choice. They'd had the choice of trusting her, believing in her, letting her put the Ancient knowledge to use...that's what they'd had her for, that was her whole reason for being. Renewed anger flared through her like the electricity had charged through her mother's lifeless body, but she had no ground and it had no where to dissipate. It tore itself out of her in an angry, disbelieving snarl that shocked her as much as it did Daniel and Teal'c. In its wake, Daniel shook his head sadly and said, "Don't do it, Ally...you'll destroy yourself. Let it go."

But it wasn't herself she would destroy, and she wasn't about to let it go. She could feel it growing ever stronger in her and that was fine with her. When that one day finally came, they'd both regret its arrival with every fiber of their being. That day her anger would burst from her with such a destructive blast that it would destroy everything and everyone they'd ever fought for.

No, she wouldn't let her hatred go. She would welcome it, and let it grow and blossom into everything Sir feared when he looked at her with doubt in his eyes. And when that one day came, she would be well prepared to use his legacy to destroy their world and their lives.

Peering Through a Glass Darkly or Her Mother's Daughter

It rained the day he brought Sam home. The sky was gray and the air was unseasonably chilly. He didn't notice. She breathed in her first fresh air in seventeen days, and the clean smell of the rain made her smile.

A nurse wheeled her to the door and helped her gingerly out of the wheelchair while he pulled the truck around and parked as closely to the curb as he could. He ran across to open the door and help her in, and it was just as well that he was too excited at the prospect of getting her home to notice her already too-pale features whitening even further at the sight of the human-sized dent still visible in the passenger door.

He drove carefully, acutely conscious of her frailty. Instead of bristling under his protectiveness, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and endured the trip in strained silence. He placed a reassuring hand on her knee, and she smiled and placed her own hand with its black and blue bruises from the IV's over his and squeezed.

"I can't believe I'm finally going home," she said, her voice weak and her eyes still closed. He couldn't tell whether the pain meds weren't quite doing their job or if it was all too much for her. He thought he should have a snappy rejoinder for her or at least a confidant grin, but he couldn't work either one up...in fact, he counted himself lucky he wasn't crying by the time he pulled up next to the house.

When he opened the door to help her down, she didn't climb immediately out but leaned against him. He put his arms around her until after a moment she was ready to face her homecoming. "I love you, Sam," he whispered into her hair. She weakly shook her head against him. "What?" he asked confused. "I do, you know?"

She looked up at him and said, "I know...I know. You must have said it a thousand times since I woke up...and I love you, too." He smiled at her in rueful acknowledgment and didn't tell her he'd easily doubled that number the two and a half days she'd lain still and silent under the machines and the doctors couldn't tell him if she'd live or if she'd die.

"Want me to quit telling you, then?" he asked.

"No. I kind of like it...let's go in now. I'm ready to face the troops." And the troops were ready for her. They were all there anxiously waiting to see for themselves that she really was still with them. They'd all been up to the hospital, of course. All visited her with yet another bunch of flowers or balloons or both for the ledge by the window. They'd all shuffled about the too-hard, too-high hospital bed and avoided staring at the unfamiliar tubes and machines, the flashing screens of the monitors, the bruises, and the dressings.

They'd all been there to assure her of their love and concern in subdued, self-conscious hospital voices, and to assure themselves she really was going to make it. Still, he knew they wouldn't really believe it until she was home. Death had hovered too close at the hospital where they'd paced too many halls, drank too many cups of stale coffee, and stared too many hours out its glare-proof, empty windows trying desperately to believe that inevitably their waiting wasn't going to end with 'Taps' and a new white cross in the green grass of Arlington. She might have done better with a quiet homecoming, but he'd read their raw need to be there in their faces and he hadn't denied them the opportunity.

She was weak and shaky but capable of making the short walk from the pick-up to the couch. Not only capable, but recovered enough, he thought, to resent the implication she wasn't. So he hung back and let her although it took more effort for him not to help her than it did for her to shuffle along on her own. By the time they'd made their slow progression to the door, he'd taken all he could. He gathered her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold like a groom with his bride. He paused in the doorway and said, "Welcome home, Mrs. O'Neill," in an attempt to disguise his true intent and then carried her down the hallway to the living room where everyone greeted her with undisguised delight and relief.

Well, not quite everyone. Ally was off in never-never land where she'd been more or less since the accident. And Peter swayed on his feet in the middle of the floor and stared solemnly at her without his usual toothy grin. Jacob's joy at having her home had to be enough. He'd been lectured left and right about being careful around her and he did his two-year-old best. He'd climb carefully up to sit next to her and lay his head gently over on her for a few seconds, but then his excitement would send him scooting off the couch and bouncing about the room again. She watched him with a smile that couldn't quite hide her apprehension when he bounced too closely. When he settled briefly at her side, she rubbed his hair, kissed his upturned face, told him again and again how much she'd missed him, and blinked back tears of joy she didn't think he could understand.

In the center of the room, Peter fell down on his diaper when Jacob bounded by and clambered unsteadily back to his feet. He'd learned that while she'd been gone. He'd still been using the couch to stand the last time she'd been at home. Still been her nursing baby who'd given her a triumphant grin when he'd conquered each new step on the road to independence, but now he stared at her unsmiling and gave Lois and Cassy his grins. He'd refused to come anywhere near her at the hospital and apparently things weren't improved just because she was home. As far as he could understand, she'd abandoned him. He'd come around she knew, but...understanding didn't make his rejection any easier.

Her emotions were all too raw. Tears were always threatening to run down her cheeks and half the time she didn't feel like she could breathe because her throat was choked with sobs she was continually swallowing down. Perfectly normal reaction under the circumstances. Nothing to worry about kind nurses and hospital social workers had assured her...it would pass in time along with the pain and the nightmares. And in the meantime, she sat in her living room amidst all of the laughing and chattering people who loved her and wanted to weep.

It must have shown. Jack carefully sat down on the other side of her and put an arm around her. He leaned close and asked quietly, "Did you need me to send everyone away?"

"No," she said and they could both hear the tears in her voice. "It's not that...I want them here...I just need to cry for some reason."

"Well," he said holding out a box of Kleenex to her, "go for it." She laughed and shook her head, and the tears for the moment receded.

Peter chose that very moment to take his first, hesitant step. The room cheered his success, and he basked in their admiration. Daniel and Grandpa both grabbed the cameras, and with much shouted encouragement he repeated his momentous accomplishment for prosperity. He plopped down on his bottom, looked around at the smiling faces all turned his way, and suddenly grinned at Sam. At that moment, he forgave her everything. He hefted himself up once more to his feet and with determination triumphantly toddled the few steps to her.

Jack laughingly picked him up with a hug and sat him on his lap next to her. As though he understood the need for gentleness, Peter lay his head over onto her and patted her knees with his little baby hands. Sam smiled down on him through her tears, and from her other side, Jacob placed a brotherly hand on his back. Grandpa snapped a picture before turning and saying, "Let's get Ally over here for a family picture-Ally, come here."

Daniel sat down the video camera to take Ally's stiff shoulders and direct her over to the couch. Jack put out a hand and pulled her over to his side. She stood there rigid and blank through an entire barrage of pictures. Jack grinned like a man who has just been given the reprieve of a lifetime, and Sam smiled weakly beside him like a woman who had been told she'd survive but only partially believed it. Jacob and Peter grinned into the camera looking so much like their father that Hank wept when he picked up the developed pictures and almost wished he hadn't taken them. But, Lois enlarged and framed the best one and hung it over their new fireplace and it was all right after all.

When the flashing had finally stopped Sam tentatively said "Ally." She reached out a hand to brush a strand of loose hair out of her daughter's face, and Ally flinched from her touch. Sam pulled her hand back and said again, "Ally?" Ally turned her head to glare at Sam for a brief moment. Then she purposely turned her back on her and walked away. The message came through loudly and clearly.

Giving a snort of disbelief and outrage, Jack moved to put down Peter to deal with her, but Sam touched his arm and shook her head. "Let's give her some time," she said through tears she couldn't hide from him. He breathed out a frustrated sigh and settled back down beside her.

Ally marched out of the room and into her bedroom. She'd spent a lifetime shutting out the outside world by closing herself within her own mind. Never before had she needed to shut a door, but today, she carefully and quietly closed her bedroom door behind her. She put her back against it and slid down its pale yellow surface to huddle in a forlorn heap on the floor.

She'd punched her mother before, kicked her, elbowed her, head-butted her and generally caused her a good deal of pain...but never intentionally. Never had she purposely chosen to inflict pain on anyone. Until now. She'd meant to kick Carter while she was down. She'd meant to hurt her, crush her beneath the weight of her hate and anger, and make her cry. And she had succeeded.

She felt sick. A bitter taste filled her mouth and throat and she recognized it as the taste of treachery. Betrayal. She'd tasted it before.

No she hadn't. Carter had. Huddled against a different door. On board the Prometheus traveling home from another save-the-world-or-die-trying mission. Actually, a 'save-the-universe-and-all-that' sort of mission according to Sir. And she hadn't died trying though she'd wished she had.

It hadn't been her call and it hadn't been her choice, but it had been her hands that set the timer to run out before Fifth could escape, and it had been her mouth that had uttered the treacherous lies that betrayed his trust and robbed him of his chance to be something more than a heartless replicating machine. She'd obeyed orders, and she'd condemned an innocent man along with the guilty. She'd promised him acceptance and friendship, but it hadn't been within her power to make it happen. Instead, she'd given him exile and humiliation.

Ally swallowed down the bitter taste of her own betrayal and wondered about the memory of her mother's. It hadn't come from the Others...they'd compiled their database somewhere in the untold past long before Carter had smiled into Fifth's face and spoken her lies. And it wasn't Sir's because Carter, like Ally, had shut the door trying to hide her shame and guilt from him. He'd never witnessed the scene Ally was experiencing.

Ally thought perhaps it was not a memory at all, but just how he'd imagined she had reacted behind that closed door. But, Ally had his memories of that event too...and he hadn't even known about the door. He'd purposely stayed rooted to the chair on the bridge and left her to come to grips with how the mission had gone down anyway she could. He'd assumed that would involve a great deal of cursing, a certain amount of angry tears, and maybe a bit of wall pounding with a kick or two thrown in for good measure. He had expected and accepted that the anger and hate she was doubtlessly feeling was aimed at him, and he'd feared it wasn't something that they would ever be able to overcome. What he hadn't considered was that Carter was too busy hating herself to give him a passing thought.

No, only Carter had known what had happened behind that closed door. And what her memory of that day was doing in Ally's head was a mystery that Ally couldn't solve. Humans didn't pass their memories down to their offspring...well, in stories and old snap shots maybe, but not on the cellular level, not through the process of meiosis. And if they somehow did, any memories passed on via the mother wouldn't include her own memories because her eggs would have been formed before she had ever begun to amass any memories at all. Ally logically couldn't have Carter's memory, but she did.

She stared inward at the writhing mass of thoughts and memories that filled her head and wondered if there was more of her mother in there. She'd become adept at being able to pull Sir out when she needed him...she still couldn't always make heads or tails out of what she found, but she could usually find it. She'd even begun to be able to consciously find certain types of alien information, the diagrams and images that were universal enough for her to relate in some way to her own limited experiences. It was progress of a sort that had pleased her before when she'd hoped to use what she learned for him.

But it had held no joy since she'd chosen her path of vengeance and destruction. It had held instead only a bitter satisfaction that one day she'd master the Ancient knowledge-hadn't Carter promised her she would? But, there was no hurry. Revenge, they said, was a dish best served cold. Well, hers would be cold all right. Not because it would be better that way, but because treachery wasn't all she'd learned in his arms while her mother almost died.

Along with it, he'd taught her that for all her strength of purpose and all her ability, she was only a little girl. She'd held the power of life within her, but she hadn't had the power to break free from his grasp. There was no urgency in discovering the secrets of the Ancients because she was still too young and weak...she needed time to grow before she could act.

In the meantime, was there more of Carter hidden within the volumes of stuff inside her head or not? If there was--she would find it. Know your enemy was a precept he'd given her and one she'd been struggling to keep all her life-the enemy as far as she was concerned had changed but the precept still held true. She would track down what she could of Carter, and she would use it when the time came to strike her down.

She began a hunt for buried treasure in the recesses of her own mind. At first the results were disappointing...the echo of a man's voice saying, "I have cancer, Sam." She thought the voice might possibly be that of Grandpa Jacob and though it didn't prove anything conclusively, she couldn't find any time he'd said those words in Sir's hearing.

...the smell of baking cookies carrying with it waves of grief. It threw Ally for a loop because if she had to assign that memory to anyone it would be Grandma Shanahan and for certain sure her memories were not lurking in Ally's head--they were related in name only. The only genetic material they shared was in the form of Jacob and Peter. It couldn't be Grandma's memory; had to be Sir's or Carter's.

She traced it past a large amount of alien schematics for a machine whose purpose Ally couldn't begin to fathom and ran smack dab into the source of the grief. It belonged to Carter all right. Ally took one look and fled. She already had enough memories of her mother crying; she didn't need anymore. She huddled in a corner of her mind and fought to regain the equilibrium she needed to continue her search.

Sir came before she found it. He pushed gently against the door, and she sprang up and away for him to push it open. They stood staring at one another for a minute. She let him see the full measure of her hate in her eyes, and in return she saw the sorrow, pain, and fear it caused in his. He'd tried to talk to her more than once in the days since she'd woken on that couch next to Teal'c, but she'd averted her eyes and given him nothing to speak to. She hadn't wanted to hear his justifications. She already knew what they were and already knew they were weak and indefensible. Her strategy had worked; each time, he'd given up the attempt and retreated leaving her to her growing hatred.

Today, she saw, would be no different though she met his eyes and let him see the devastation he had wrought there and hoped he glimpsed the view of the future she proposed to one day rain down on him. A man sowed what he reaped; he had sown betrayal and he would reap it.

He sadly shook his head in denial of everything he read in her eyes, but it changed nothing. He sighed deeply and with an old man's voice said, "Everyone's gone...the boys went with your grandparents. I just put your mom to bed...she's still awake. You could go to her-let her know you love her." He looked at her hopefully, but she knew he couldn't really expect her to take him up on his suggestion.

When he spoke again, his voice had hardened and every enemy who had ever faced their defeat at his hand would have recognized it, "I'm the one, Ally...you want to blame someone for what happened, I'm the one. Blame me...leave her out of it. Whatever you think you are, whatever you're capable of--it's not enough." He turned without waiting for a reply and was gone. The force of his words left her shaking in his wake, but it wasn't enough to move her down the hall to her mother's side. She gathered her own resolve and closed the door behind him.

She would not be numbered among his vanquished foes. With determination, she returned to hunting down the bits and pieces of Carter that hid in her mind. It was difficult, but finding that first one or two made finding the next easier and soon she had collected a small pile of them.

It was, in one sense, her undoing. She'd gone seeking to feed her hate and feelings of betrayal, to harden her resolve and determination, to become even more the thing he feared. But, that was far from what she found.

Sir had given her a painful awareness that without extreme care she could turn into the evil she hated. She'd overridden that, trampled it under her hurt and anger until it couldn't touch her any longer. But, if the bits of him she possessed had been her conscience, what she held of Carter was her fail-safe*. What she saw when she looked into the mind and heart of her mother was not evil or treacherous. She dug deeper sure that eventually she would find the rot beneath the surface and reveal the true Samantha Carter...the one who could deny her daughter the destiny she'd promised her.

Carter wasn't perfect, but then she'd never said she was. As the daughter of a general, she could have coasted by on his stars, but she'd earned every promotion on her own merits and never been content to coast. Even when Jacob Carter had handed her NASA on a silver plate.

She'd taken perhaps a bit more pride in her abilities than she should have and accepted too easily the respect and admiration they gained her as her due, but she'd held on to her own sense of fallibility as well. Everyone else might have looked to her for all the answers, yet she'd never made the mistake of thinking she had them.

She'd held a gun on a lunatic bent on destroying an entire people and hadn't found the strength to pull the trigger to end his reign of terror. And the fact she'd once loved him only added to her shame because no one could say that if she hadn't given up on him he might have been a different man.

She'd run through an open Stargate more than once and left good people to die on the other side when maybe, just maybe, by staying she could have made a difference.

Jolinar had stained her soul with sins she could never cleanse though she would spend the rest of her life trying. But though she carried their burden, they weren't her sins.

She'd followed orders that she'd hated and paid the price in self-loathing and distrust. In doing so, she'd condemned Fifth, and a part of her had died in the process.

She'd overridden safety protocols and endangered an entire planet.

She'd made the bomb that had almost destroyed an entire civilization and Daniel with it. Made it and put it in the hand of the man she knew would use it.

She'd shirked at the thought of losing her mind and let Sir be the one to stick his head in the Ancient device...and then she'd been too cowardly to tell him that she counted his loss too high; that she loved him.

There were other sins and downfalls hidden in the bits and pieces of Sam Carter's life that Ally was able to uproot, but none of them were vindictive or cruel. She hadn't been as good as Sir and Ally herself had always seen her, but neither had she been ruthless or evil. She had acted in her own integrity and taken responsibility for her actions even when she despised them.

And there were strands of strength and goodness in their midst that for all she wanted to Ally could not deny. Carter had fought her own battles with bitterness against her dad, but she'd struggled through to find peace with him. She'd refused to leave Cassy even though she had believed she'd die with her-her assertions to Sir notwithstanding. She had had ever reason to rain destruction upon the Tok'ras' heads, but she hadn't...she hadn't even rained her contempt on them while they spouted off how they never took hosts against their will.

She'd put aside her own desires in the name of duty, acted against her own beliefs in the name of loyalty, and let go of her bitterness and anger in the name of survival...and Ally couldn't fault her for any of that no matter how badly she wanted to.

But, there was one event, she'd avoided...she'd always avoided Sir's version of the event and she would have liked to have avoided Carter's, but suddenly, faced with the crumbling of all the hate and righteous indignation she'd built up against her, she had no choice but to look into them both.

They were intimate and private memories that she'd always shied away from because she had instinctively understood they were not for her, but now she faced them anyway much as her mother had stepped into that small room going on five years before. It was there she knew she would find the seeds of her mother's betrayal. Sam Carter had conspired to bring Ally to life, to give her the knowledge of the Ancients and the ability to use it, and then when it was within Ally's grasp, she'd pulled it away. She'd watched her daughter struggle in the world she'd created for her, given her reason to believe it was worth the fight, and then abandoned it all and made every painful step of Ally's life journey meaningless.

She stared into her parents' hearts and minds at the time of her conception and found that what she'd always known was true...she had been conceived with deadly purpose and intent. Sir had intended her for just what she'd always believed. He hadn't liked what he was doing, in fact, he'd hated it, but he'd believed in it enough to see it through. It wasn't the first, and though he didn't know it then, it most likely hadn't been the last thing he'd found morally reprehensible but militarily necessary; and he'd never failed to do what had to be done.

And he hadn't doubted that Carter would do it as well. He'd known exactly what he was asking of her, but he hadn't allowed that to deter him. And he'd expected no less of her. She wore the same uniform he did. She was a fellow officer, and her being female only figured in because it was the one thing that made the mission feasible. He allowed the fact he loved her to factor in even less...it made it harder on him knowing what he was asking her, and easier because making love to her couldn't have come easier, but it hadn't been a consideration in his decision-making process.

He'd assumed then, and Ally had all the years since, that Carter was there for the same reasons he was. He'd forgotten that day, lost the resolve that made it possible, the urgency that made it necessary. His betrayal in that parking lot had been as much a betrayal of himself as of her.

But Carter. Carter had remembered it all. Hers had been the real betrayal...it justified Ally's desire to make them both suffer like they had made her suffer, it was her vindication.

But, it was bogus. Because she'd never known what made her mother agree to his plan, never understood why she'd let that door close behind her. There'd never been a betrayal just as there had never been an attack that time before she was born when she'd thought she'd been captured and imprisoned.

Because Carter hadn't stepped into that room to save the galaxy. She'd understood what he was suggesting and what it might mean to their side, but she hadn't considered the possible benefits worth the risks. There were too many ways things could go wrong, too many variables outside of their control...it was like handing dynamite to a two-year-old. Carter had thought the chances higher that they'd destroy the Earth than save it, that the whole, crazy idea would blow up in their faces.

And it almost had. Yet she hadn't nixed the mission. She'd considered it rationally and logically, she'd drawn the safe conclusion, and then she'd given the mission a go anyway. Because she trusted Colonel Jack O'Neill and because she loved him.

Time after time, the colonel had led them out to certain death and brought them back alive. There'd been more than enough missions she'd doubted his leadership capabilities; yet every time his choices, no matter how illogical or insane they seemed, had proven his uniform said 'colonel' for a reason. She trusted his instincts-he'd always brought them home. If he believed that this was what the situation required...who was she to argue? She'd swallowed down her own reservations and followed his lead like she had a hundred times before.

More than that she had loved him.

And that was the real reason why Ally was alive, not as a tool in a galactic battle of good and evil, but simply as a child accepted like a gift from a dying man by the woman who loved him. Everything Ally had believed about her conception and purpose had been right, but it also had been completely wrong...her mother had never measured her worth as a potential weapon. She hadn't sacrificed the job and life she loved because she'd believed the advantage Ally might one day bring to the battle would be worth it. She'd willingly paid the price to have Ally because she wanted her. Because she loved her.

There was no way she could have let Ally expose herself for what she was in that parking lot or give up her own life to heal her. Not because it would waste their opportunity to strike a blow at their enemies, but because it would be sacrificing the child she loved. Ally's righteous anger and pain were built not on objective truth but mistaken assumptions and conclusions. She had maliciously plotted revenge for an act that had never occurred.

There comes a time on the journey to adulthood where we all must come to the unwelcome realization that the trouble free, independent life we thought our parents were leading is anything but. That our parents are just as trapped by their own responsibilities and obligations as we are by their heartless demands to clean our rooms and our insurmountable mounds of homework. Rarely, we will meet someone who has obviously failed to let the awful truth set in and we are forced to restrain ourselves from clunking them over the head until they get the message. But, overall it is an understanding to which we all come. Sometimes necessity forces it upon us tragically early, while others hold on to the 'when I'm eighteen, I'm going to...' mentality until we sit on the front row of a high school auditorium with a tassel hanging ridiculously down the side of our heads and realize our time is up. But, either way it comes.

For Ally, it came that day when she peered into the life of her mother thinking she would find a justification for vengeance and found instead the constraining influence of love. She was a long way from completing that journey into adulthood, but she would never view her life in the same way again.

Jack O'Neill's daughter was capable of the same ruthless, willfulness he possessed. But, she was her mother's child as much as her father's; and she knew now that Sam Carter's daughter was made of different stuff. The hate and anger which had been building in her waiting for the day they would come pouring out of her to spew their evil destruction out on everything in their path could not stand in the face of what she'd glimpsed in that dark glass of her mother's memories. The safeties clamped down and the damage was contained.

And suddenly she couldn't begin to follow the reasoning that had produced it in the first place. How could she have believed Sir's action to preserve their secret weapon was a betrayal? She'd always known what he was capable of if that was what was required to accomplish his duty...that he would hold her while Carter died should not have come as a surprise. No, in the end, he'd acted exactly as he had to for the mission to proceed--he'd almost betrayed it all not in stopping her, but in allowing her to act at all.

And Carter...how had she blamed Carter for loving her enough to be willing to die in order to keep her safe. Hadn't Carter said that was what she would do all along? "I could stall them," she'd said, and they'd all known what she was saying. For the wrong reasons, it now appeared. But, the intent had been the same either way...and Ally had accepted the idea of her sacrifice without a murmur. If there had been a monster in that parking lot, it was Ally herself.

She lay her head on top of her folded knees and began to cry. Slow, silent tears at first and then heaving, sobbing cries that forced themselves out of her throat and brought Sir pushing against the door and into the room to gather her up in his arms.

He sat with her on the edge of her bed and held her from him to check for injuries before pulling her close. "Ally?" he asked, "What is it, honey? Can you tell me what's wrong?" But, Ally could do nothing but cling to him and continue to sob. He rocked her, patted her back, rubbed his hand over her hair, and told her again and again as though by saying it he could make it happen, "You're going to be all right. It's all right."

Ally wished it was true, but she was only a little girl without enough life experience to know that one way or another all things do pass...she couldn't believe she would survive the waves of sorrow, regret, and shame flooding her. Yet, eventually, exhaustion quieted her sobs and her tears dried.

Jack rocked his daughter and waited out the shuddering sighs that followed the worst of the crying and then the sniffles. He wasn't at all sure what had happened, but it was the first time in weeks she'd sat on his lap and cuddled against him. He'd missed her, and he'd feared he'd lost her for good...and for the good.

She was so small and vulnerable, just a little mite. But, within her she carried the seeds of Armageddon, and he'd feared as she had struggled and fought against him that he was setting in motion the end of the world. And every time she'd looked into his eyes since, he'd read the reality of his nightmares in her big, blue eyes.

He thought that might be different now though. "Look at me, Ally," he said. She raised her head to him and in her gaze he saw Sam. He smiled into her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. "I love you," he said. She cocked her head at him as though she had some questions about that, and he frowned at her. "You know that don't you?" She gave a small shrug in reply and he said, "Well, you should. I love you very much. You are my little girl, and I will always love you." Tears filled her eyes again, and he asked, "What?"

She didn't give him an answer and he was left guessing. "Are you...are you feeling bad because you've been mad at me-about what happened when your mom was hurt?" She hesitated a moment before nodding her head. "That's uh...you know. Things like that...it's normal to be mad. Bad things-terrible things happen to people and they want to...uh...punish someone for them. They think maybe that person could have stopped the bad thing from happening or...done something to fix it.

"It's was my idea, Ally. We were there because I wanted to go out. I didn't know what would happen, and I wish I'd listened to your mom and let her convince me to stay home. But, I couldn't know...

"And then...I wouldn't let you help....and she almost died because of it. It's only natural that you were mad about that. But, I hope...you see now--that I, uh, I'd have...I'd have done anything." His voice broke and he stopped long enough to fight down his own tears before continuing, "I'd have done anything, Ally, to save her-except for losing you." He shook his head. "She'd never have forgiven me if I would have saved her and sacrificed you...and...I couldn't do it anyway. I don't know what that makes me, but I..."

"I know," Ally said quietly.

"Do you?" he asked trying to not appear surprised she'd chosen to speak to him.

"Yes," she said, nodding, "saving Carter and exposing the mission would have been a waste of resources." He was glad he'd already schooled his features to hide his reaction. She began to cry again, "But, I wanted to help, I did. I knew how...I could see how. I don't want to have to make choices like that...I don't want to."

"Oh, baby...no one wants to...no one should have to. But, sometimes people do...sometimes, you're going to have, too...but this wasn't you, Ally. You didn't let anything happen to your-to Carter. You're just a little girl-it wasn't your choice. You would have helped her if you could have...she knows that."

Ally sadly shook her head. "She doesn't know I love her."

"Oh, I think she does, Ally-"

"I thought it was her fault...I hated her."

"For what?"

"For not letting me save her...I thought...she should have trusted me, she should have let me do it-I hated her. That's what she knows. Not that I love her, but that I hate her."

He blew air out of his cheeks and said, "She understands. She's pretty smart, you know. Way smarter than us. But, if you're worried about it--you could tell her."

The idea obviously upset the little girl. A look of fear crossed her face and she shook her head vehemently no.

"She'd like to hear it...why not?"

"You know."

"No, honey, I don't know. You can trust your mom...she'd never do anything to endanger you...you know that, right?"

"I can't trust anybody, " she said.

He blinked tears from his eyes at the desolation he could hear in her small voice. Oh, sweet little girl, he thought, what was I thinking...how could I choose to do this to you? He tried to reassure her, "You can trust Carter and me...Daniel and Teal'c, your Grandma and Grandpa."

"No one," she said, and he didn't know how to fight against her certainty.

"You're wrong, and it makes me very, very sad that you feel that way. We all love you...none of us would hurt you or let anything bad happen to you if we could help it. Certainly not your mama." He reached out a thumb and wiped tears from her cheek, but there was nothing he could do or say to wipe away the thoughts and memories she lived with of a thousand dangers. "Listen, you don't have to tell her in words, if you don't want to...just go be her little girl. She's missed you, you know?"

"I hurt her," Ally said. "She won't want to see me."

"You know, you might be a pretty, smart little girl and you might know lots of things other people don't know...but you don't know everything. Your mama's been begging to come home to you and Jacob and Peter every since she woke up...she very much wants to see you, honey...and she understands about you being mad-we talked about it, I know. She's not mad at you, I promise." He gave her a small push and Ally climbed off his lap and looked up at him uncertainly. He gave her an encouraging smile and said, "Go on."

She timidly walked down the hall and climbed silently into the bed next to Carter. She curled up next to her and carefully laid an arm on her shoulder. She was afraid of jarring her and hurting her further, and she was afraid of waking her and seeing the pain she'd caused there reflected in her mother's eyes.

But, when Carter's eyes, dull and unfocused under the pain meds, blinked at her, it was, as it always had been, only love that looked out of them at her. "Ally," Carter said and smiled.

Ally took in a deep breath and tried to find the courage to believe Sir. She opened her mouth to say the words, but they didn't come. In their place, she offered a small, tentative smile. Carter smiled back in surprise. "You have a beautiful smile," she said, her words sluggish and indistinct. Ally knew she did; she had Carter's smile...Sir had made sure of that. Carter placed her arm around Ally and shifted her closer. Ally buried her head against her and cuddled up into her like she had that long ago day when she had first been born. "I love you," her mother whispered, and Ally knew it was true. She raised her head to smile once more at her mother, but the meds had already pulled her back under.

Sir stuck his head around the door and smiled to see her curled up beside Carter. She smiled back, lay her head down again, and felt at peace with herself and with her world. He crept in and stretched out on the other side of Carter and they slept away the afternoon.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~

Every day, Sam grew stronger. Grandma and Grandpa Shanahan brought the boys home to stay though they spent their days and a good part of their evenings at the house. They insisted it was their pleasure to cook and clean, and Jack thanked God everyday he'd invited them to make the move. With them caring for the boys and watching over Sam, he was able to return to the Mountain, half-days at first but then full-time. One way or another, Sam could accept from them the mothering she couldn't from the rest of them.

She chafed under the solicitous care everyone else gave her. She was forced to fight to make the trip from the bedroom to the couch without someone hovering at her side. It was a given she wasn't allowed to pick up her own babies, and she figured she should be grateful they let her use the bathroom on her own. When she suggested maybe she should boot up her computer and see what her work load looked like, the resulting fireworks exhausted her much more than sitting for a few minutes at the machine could possibly have done.

It was all too much. Jack was no help; the less she did the happier he was. Janet was a bad as the others. Even Teal'c couldn't seem to get it through his thick skull she was ok. He treated her like a small child and watched her as though he expected her to collapse at any moment.

"Listen, I know they mean well...I do," she told Lois one day, "but...lock the door-don't let any of them in today. Please. I just can't deal with anymore of this! I might as well be back at the hospital."

"We can try," Lois said dubiously, "but if we do...it will be a toss-up whether they call Jack or the rescue squad first. You're just going to have to let them get it out of their system, Sam...you gave them a terrible scare. You gave us all a terrible scare. Give them another day or two..."

"I suppose you're right. We won't lock the door, but...they are all on the schedule for the day except Cassy. We've got to find her something to keep her busy."

"We'll send her off to the park with Jacob...Hank can use the break," Lois promised her, and Sam had spent the time feeling wonderfully liberated. She'd enjoyed holding Peter without someone saying, "Careful there" or "Better let me take him," taken a long shower without anyone knocking at the door to make sure she hadn't fainted, and she'd managed to type up her preliminary results to the work she'd been doing the day of the accident. That was probably a mistake...it would have been better to just have continued the work and not sent the report as Jack was not a happy camper when it filtered across his desk two days later...how was she to know he'd taken to actually reading reports since becoming a general?

Nevertheless, he did get the message: she was alive, and, if not well, at least on the road to recovery. He passed the word to cool it to the others, and she was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief without three people asking her if she was all right.

Life once again took on a sense of normality. She was able to get back to work though for every hour she did, it seemed she spent just about that long lying on the couch with Ally watching the boys play. Both because it took that much out of her and because it wasn't just everyone else she'd given a terrible scare. She was incredibly thankful to be alive.

Something had changed in Ally since the accident. The few times she'd been brought up to the hospital, she'd been so withdrawn and ...empty that Sam had thought they'd lost her, that she'd disappeared into never-never land and would never find her way back. She hadn't even given Jack the time of day but stood stiff and unseeing the whole time she'd been there, and Jack had admitted she was the same at home. And then that terrible moment when Ally had made it all too plain she knew the way back but had no intention of taking it. Sam shuddered every time she remembered the look in her daughter's eyes that day.

But it had never returned, and Ally had come back to them. To a degree she'd never been before. The world registered on Ally now. Though she never joined in, she watched the boys play. Twice Sam had seen her reach out a hesitant hand and pat Peter's back when she'd been rocking him to sleep.

After four years of never acknowledging their existence, she had begun to accept the Shanahans. One day she quietly appeared at Lois' side in the kitchen and solemnly watched her mix up a cake for Father's Day which had passed unnoticed and uncelebrated while Sam had been in the hospital. Her grandmother, having spent years tiptoeing around her sensitive granddaughter, had hardly known what to make of it.

Tentatively, she had offered Ally the beater to lick and just as tentatively Ally had reached out a hand to accept it. She'd stood awkwardly holding it. Lois had gently guided it to her mouth and marveled when Ally didn't stiffen at her touch. And when she'd asked, "Do you like that, sweetheart?" Ally had solemnly nodded her head. Lois had knelt beside her with her hands tightly clasped to keep herself from hugging the little girl and frightening her away and cried. Ally had soberly finished licking the beater, and Hank had stood frozen in the doorway afraid to move and wishing he had his camera.

A little later, Ally peered into the laundry room door while he folded laundry. He carefully approached her, wrapped her in a soft, warm towel fresh from the dryer, and picked her up. She had snuggled into the warmth and almost afraid to breathe he'd carried her out to the rocking chair and sat down with her. She'd sat there with him until the towel's warmth had faded away and then slipped out of his lap and off to find Sam. Those few moments holding Ally were the best present he had ever received-Father's Day, birthday, or Christmas.

And her thawing extended to the others as well...even Cassy. She'd join Teal'c on the couch while he watched Star Wars or some other movie. She wouldn't watch herself, just sit beside him. She'd listen to Jack and Daniel spar and once Daniel almost thought she'd laughed when he'd managed to score one on Jack. When Sam was beating Cassy at chess, Ally would occasional reach out a small finger to point out a move to Cassy...a development that left Jack shaking his head in wonder.

It was the smile that meant the most to Sam. Her somber-faced little girl was actually capable of appearing happy. It didn't happen often, but every now and then a smile would transform her face and she would be for an instant a normal little girl. The first time it happened, Sam had been so drugged up with pain meds she'd thought it was only a dream. She had never been happier to be proven wrong.

Ally's smiles seemed reserved for only the immediate family...Jack got the lion's share, and then she and Peter. Jacob got a few and just as surprising he also received an infrequent, exasperated sigh when he bounced too close to his sister or got too noisy.

"I don't know what's gotten into her," Sam told Jack. "But, if it's because of the accident-well, I'd-"

"Don't even think it," Jack cut her off. "Nothing would be worth going through that again!" Sam hadn't argued, but she thought seeing her daughter happy was worth it all. Even before Ally had been born, she'd accepted responsibility for Ally's happiness. It had been her call that condemned her child to a life that could never be ordinary. She'd placed on her daughter the responsibilities of the galaxy, and she'd understood they'd both pay for her selfishness. But, she'd never anticipated the awful isolation and terror Ally lived in. She'd thought Ally's life would be difficult, full of hard choices and dangers; but she hadn't thought it would be heartbreakingly sad. Seeing Ally smile healed more in Sam than a broken body.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Those days with Sam regaining her strength and health and Ally learning to smile were good days for them. Jack thought he had never appreciated the goodness of life more, but...

There was still a raft hidden in the riverbank waiting for a day he hoped wouldn't come even while he believed it was inevitable. And one of the first things Sam had asked him to do when she'd come out of the coma was to get some things to add to the supplies already stashed in his hidden little cubby hole, so he knew the future still cast a dark shadow in her mind as well.

But, it really wasn' t the future that worried him when he would look over and catch a brooding look on her face. He carefully avoided her eyes at those times, but he knew sooner or later he would have to answer to her for those few moments he'd hesitated in that parking lot. He put it off as long as he could giving things time to settle, giving her time to heal.

But one day, he lay down next to her in their bed, traced her face with his fingers, and said, "I need to know where we stand."

She didn't pull away from him, but she went still and quiet. She didn't ask what he meant, and when she answered he knew she understood exactly what he was asking.

"I don't know, Jack," she said. "You gambled with my daughter's life. How am I supposed to feel about that?" She gave a small sound that might have been a snort or might have been a cry. He waited silently for her to continue, because he had no answer for her. "All those years we were on the field together, all those impossible missions...and every time, we walked back through that Gate. No matter how bad it had been, no matter how bad the odds we always came back. And everyone would shake their heads and slap your back and talk about O'Neill's luck.

"But no one's luck holds out forever. Sooner or later it always runs out, but yours never did. Mission after mission you always brought us home. That's not luck. That's instinct, that's ability...being earthbound, I guess I'd forgotten that, but I won't again.

"You gambled my daughter's life and if you would have failed I would have died hating you, do you know that? Just like if things had ended differently I would have a dozen times or more out there...

"But you pulled another one out of the fire. There's a reason you've got two stars on your shoulder and why you'll have more before you hang up your uniform. I shouldn't have forgotten that. I should have trusted you...and I do, Sir, I do.

"I know you're who I want with Ally when they come for her. If anyone can keep her safe, it's you, Sir. I won't take her from you. We're here to stay."

She was wrong. He hadn't made a brilliant, strategic decision there in that parking lot...he'd done exactly what she'd thought he'd done. He'd gambled Ally's life for a chance to save hers. And with her words and with every continued breath she breathed, he'd hit the jackpot. But, not because of skill and not because of ability.

Dumb luck. That's all he'd ever had going for him, and it had failed him more than once...there was a grave with his son's name on it, there were scars on his body and his soul from that Iraqi prison, and men he'd brought back to their families in body bags to prove it. He didn't deserve her forgiveness and he didn't deserve her trust, but she fell asleep beside him believing that he had something more than dumb luck going for him.

With the exception of Daniel, she'd served on the field with him longer than anyone. He would have thought of all people she would have been the one to see him for what he really was, but he was happy enough to know she could be as wrong as the next guy.

Her and Daniel, the Bobbsey twins, the two smartest people he'd ever met and neither one of them with the sense to see him for what he was. "You're a better man than that!" Daniel, great all-powerful being that he was not, had insisted with the utmost sincerity and earnestness...

And he'd been just as wrong as Carter. Out on the field, he'd lived in dread of the day some alien technology like Urgo would provide them a front row look into his mind and expose him for what he really was. That Tok'ra device capable of showing them his every thought in Technicolor...he'd done his best to shield them both from the man he saw in the mirror.

Because he didn't want to see the look in their faces when they saw him. He shuddered at the thought, turned onto his back, and found Ally staring at him in the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains. He drew in a startled breath.

She tended to crawl into their bed some time in the night, but he usually sensed her long before she arrived to stand solemnly at his bedside. He knew when he wasn't there, she slid in next to Carter without waiting. But, she was always careful to make sure she didn't surprise him by creeping into his bed without his knowledge...because of all people she did know him, knew the danger he possessed, knew in his sleep training and experiences that he wished he'd never had might take over and sneaking up on him in his sleep might be the last thing she ever did.

He squirmed under her gaze: she was to his great regret and sorrow intimately acquainted with the man in the mirror. But, when he held out a welcoming arm, she gave him one of Carter's best smiles and scrambled up the bed and over him to wiggle into the warmth between him and Carter. He drew in a shocked breath, but it had nothing to do with the fact her feet were cold. She snuggled up beside him and fell asleep as easily as her mother had before her.

He had always dreaded the day he would look into Carter's eyes and see the horror, disgust, and disappointment that would be there when she finally saw him for who he really was. But...before Ally he was stripped down to his very core, and yet, she could still look at him with Carter's eyes and smile.

"Be your mother's daughter, not mine," he'd once silently begged her, and he realized now she was. He turned carefully to his side, encircled them both with his arm, and slept easily in their love.

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When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: (The Holy Bible, I Corinthians 13:11 and 12a)

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*A fail-safe or fail-secure describes a device which, if (or when) it fails, fails in a way that will cause no harm or at least a minimum of harm to other devices or danger to personnel. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-safe)

Two Roads

Late in the summer, Teal'c fell in battle fighting offworld with the Free-Jaffa...it was a worthy death that brought him pleasure in his last moments, but it was a devastating blow to Jack who was already facing an extremely bad year.

The Ori were massing for an all-out attack on the Milky Way Galaxy. The Wraith and a new-brand of Replicators were squaring off in the Pegasus Galaxy with the winner poised to give the Ori a run for their money. His least-favorite Goa'uld, Baal, was gaining ever more power among the few remaining system Lords and threatening to take his sadistic reign of terror to a higher level. America was gearing up for a bloody election battle with no winner in sight; Team USA didn't stand a chance at the World Curling Championships; and the day they'd all been holding their breath against arrived...

Fortunately, Carter's rejection of Asgard intervention had required him to make other plans. Because by the time the attack came, the Asgard were already out of the picture. Four months earlier they had determined they were fighting a lost cause and chose to throw in the towel.

When Jack was informed of their plans, he'd given an inelegant snort of disgust and uttered a forceful 'Over my dead body!' Then he'd hatched a plan to kidnap one thousand of the little guys. He dropped them off on an appropriate planet-one lacking a Stargate-and left them without one scrap of their Replicator-enticing technology. Correctly surmising that Ally would have by then come into her own and either set her mind to saving their little gray butts or destroying them along with everything else, he extracted from a very irritated Thor a promise they'd give him twenty years. If at the end of that time they still wanted to blow out their collective brains...well, whatever, but if that was the way they went, he personally would never speak to them again. And then he'd left them...with Sam hovering on just this side of life and Ally glaring destruction in his direction, he really didn't have the time to deal with any more of their nonsense.

So for all he'd reconsidered and reevaluated, the river escape still stood as Plan A. Since he'd made his promise to Carter-except for the days he'd spent in the Twilight Zone of the ICU by her bedside or stuck under the Mountain or offworld-he'd carried forty pounds of potatoes in an oversized duffle bag on a practice run every night.

He had picked the darkest hour of the night or early morning, and he'd run it in nothing but the worn-out sweats he slept in. To throw any long-term, recon team a red herring, he ran one of nine different routes every time he went out. He varied each just enough to make setting a trap in any vulnerable area problematic--and he never ran the river route more than any other. He more often than not made an artistic slip down the bank to the riverside or some other slight foul-up whenever he did head that way. On a particularly, bright night he gave an Emmy-winning fall down the steep slope to hammer in the fact that the river route would be his very last choice.

He never glanced at the riverbank where an old tree's roots sheltered his hidden raft and supplies, never slowed down where he intended to enter the river, and always ran back up the bank and into the dark wood beyond his property line before looping back home.

The Bible, in a message for a different people and a different time, admonished, "...pray ye that your flight be not in the winter." He took that warning to heart. There was no way he could cover their tracks if there was snow on the ground; and rain turned the riverbank into slippery, sucking glop and made the route impassible. His prayers were answered. Autumn was making its last stand against the coming winter when he made his flight with Ally down the bank. The air carried with it the faintest promise of the snows to come, but the ground was firm and dry beneath his bare feet.

In the privacy of a locked room under the Mountain, far from any prying eyes, he'd put in hour after hour drilling raft deployment until he could do it as easily as he could tear down and rebuild his P-90.

He'd spent several of the afternoons Janet and Cassy drug Sam out shopping making recon trips. With the kids safely belted in the cab seat of his pickup, he'd scoped out the roads the river intersected and made contingency plans as well as he could. He found where the river branched off into two and followed them both to find out which would be the fork he would need, how long they'd stick to the water, and at what point they'd leave it behind.

He enlisted Teal'c's participation and one warm, lazy day they had rented a raft and made a run down the river past his house as though to make a change from their more usual pursuits. While they both pretended to enjoy the day, they'd tried to note every possible landing site and anywhere an inexperienced river-traveler could easily come to grief. One run wasn't anywhere near enough. He didn't dare make the run again and tip off anyone watching. Teal'c, however, struck up a friendship with a certain captain who regularly spent days out on the river and became quite proficient at the sport while making the careful, detailed observations Jack needed. Second-hand knowledge would, in this case, have to do.

Jack himself had kept his feet planted securely on dry ground and walked the riverbank for miles with a fishing pole in one hand and a tackle box in the other. The tackle box hadn't held bait and lures. He'd hidden its contents in various, likely places, and if Sam wondered about him never catching a thing, she kept it to herself.

So that night-early morning actually-when some sixth sense brought them both instantly to alertness with the awareness of impending peril, he was as ready as he could be. The one thing he hadn't drilled was Ally herself. He'd never made the run with her...she had enough nightmares without that. But, in every other sense, he was as prepared as he knew how to be.

He'd slunk quietly off the bed and sensed rather than heard Carter's low and urgent 'Go!' behind him. He could just catch the smallest glimpse of her as she slipped past him into the boys' room. There wasn't time for a last embrace or even a passing touch. He set his mind on his task and left her to hers.

There was at the end of Ally's bed a soft, fleece blanket...it was as black as the night and Carter--or someone else in her absence--had made sure it had been there every night since they'd arrived at Plan A. He flicked it quietly off the bed so it made only the slightest breeze in the still, night air and without a sound located his daughter in the dark. He placed a careful finger to her lips and put his mouth next to her ear. "Time to go," he whispered simply and trusted she recognized his voice. He covered her, head to toe, with the black blanket effectively concealing any glow-in-the-dark fairy princesses or dancing bears that might have been lying in wait on her pajamas to give them away.

He gathered her in his arms; she was lighter than the potatoes by a few pounds. She tried to wrap her arms around his neck, but he tucked them back under the blanket. She huddled into a small ball around his chest, and he took a fraction of an instant to pass a reassuring hand down her back and then began the heart-racing, breath-stopping attempt to reach safety without being discovered by whoever was lurking in the dark preparing for a full-scale or covert invasion of their home.

During his nightly runs, he's exited out just about every window and door they had...except for the one he'd planned to make use of when the time came. He'd 'accidentally' sent a hockey puck through Ally's window one day not long after he'd brought the family home to Colorado. In the process of replacing the broken window he'd made it more secure from the outside and added some cosmetic touches that made the window appear just a bit too small for a grown man to squeeze through. It wasn't though. He and Ally ducked easily through it without whoever was out there in the dark being the wiser. The sentries he expected to see around the perimeter of the house were only beginning to make their careful, slow way into position and missed him entirely.

Hugging the dark walls, he crept along the far corner of the house and didn't take the time to try to spot his adversaries. He wasn't looking to make a defense just an escape. Even without seeing them, he knew they were out there somewhere. His thoughts had sharpened, and his entire body thrummed with the precision that would make all the difference under fire. This was no drill, no false alarm. They-whoever they were-were out there readying for the attack, preparing for a battle he didn't plan to let them fight. He was racing for his daughter's life, and he had no intention of coming in second.

The fence, so necessary for the safety of the boys, was an obstacle he could have done without. He'd spent a fair amount of time slipping quietly through his new gate on his practice runs, but it had only been for show. Anyone with any sense would have a sentry or two posted there, and he had no intention of running into a trap. Instead, he'd drilled endlessly on the obstacle, training course. With his bare feet making hardly a sound he darted across the shadowed end of his yard and leaped over it with nothing but his own heartbeat sounding the alarm...one hurdle down.

The men preparing to assault his house had failed to pick up their too-slow pace. The man who would watch the back gate and might have stood a chance at stopping him slid stealthily into position only after he'd already flashed by and slipped down the slope toward the river. It was steep and rock-strewn enough it hadn't been a stretch to make it appear too hard to bother with in the dark. But he navigated it as though he was a mountain goat and later the trackers couldn't say for sure that anyone had come that way in weeks.

He heard the sounds of gunfire back up the hill. They crashed loudly in his ears and then faded away. They were not followed by shouts of alarm throughout the neighborhood, nor did he expect them to be. His house, backed by the river, sat on a large lot so there were few neighbors to raise an alarm. Those there were would either sleep on or roll over and go back to sleep without a conscious awareness of what they had heard. They might as well have been on an uninhabited world. More than likely, he was the only one who recognized what he'd heard, and he could not stop to do anything about it.

Carter, keep your head down, he thought as he ran silently on. He stuck as closely as possible to the dry soil against the bank and not the soft, wet sand of the riverside. His cache was just far enough downstream that any noise he might make setting up the raft would, he hoped, be inaudible from his back gate. He was still close enough that he couldn't miss the angry, concussive blasts of automatic fire. The neighbors would surely all be awake and dialing 911 now. What were the idiots thinking? He'd assumed it would be a covert, smash and grab hit not a street battle, but there was still nothing he could do but forge ahead.

"Stay down and still," he ordered Ally as he dumped her, still covered in the blanket, beside the old tree and swiftly dug out the raft and hidden supplies. Speed was everything tonight, but stealth would be tomorrow so he did his best to leave the tree looking as though its roots had never been disturbed. In the dark, he wasn't entirely successful but good enough in that it would take the light of day to give him away. Three-and-a-half hours or so too late.

He took only the time to pull on a black turtle-necked sweater and stuff a stocking cap on over his own head, before he had the raft ready to go. "In you go, girl," he told Ally in a harsh whisper and dumped her onto its cold floor. Then with a running push he propelled the raft out into the river's current and jumped in.

He let the river take them where it would while he pulled off Ally's too-thin pajamas (not a fairy or bear in sight, just frolicking penguins in purple slippers) and pulled on a hooded black sweat suit. Over it he secured a child's life jacket. He took her chin in his hand and lifted her face to his. "Keep your eyes shut," he commanded her and blacked her face. Her wide, terrified eyes stared out at him when he was finished, and he took a moment he didn't have to kiss her forehead before pushing her back down by his feet.

He was done just in time as he spent the next harrying few minutes fighting a particularly nasty stretch of the river. When they'd passed the worst of it, he glanced down at Ally and saw her mouth was open in a soundless scream of terror. For the first time and he guessed the last, he was glad Ally was mute. There was no time to comfort her.

He negotiated the next turn and maneuvered the raft toward the dark shore. He'd miscalculated the strength of the river and it had already rocketed them past his first two hidden caches...he was glad he'd gone to the expense and time to build so many redundancies into the plan, but he couldn't afford to miss this one. It was the last before they hit the first of three bridges where they would be sitting ducks. He ran the raft to ground and jumped out.

"Stay down," he commanded as he secured the raft. He hurried to his buried hoard, and this time he didn't worry about stealth. Speed was all that mattered. By now, the enemy would know they were gone. And if they thought at all like he did, someone with a sniper's gun would be racing to set up from one of those bridges. He couldn't let them get there before them. He was pushing off and throwing himself back into the raft as quickly as he could manage it.

He murmured gentle encouragements to Ally, but if she could hear them over the river's roar they didn't ease the terror in her haunted features. He leaned over her and said urgently, "Keep your head down and your eyes closed." She was tucked into a ball at his feet, and he tossed one of the bulletproof vests he'd just unearthed over her small form. With a great more difficulty he managed to pull on a vest of his own and not lose complete control of the raft. By then, he could already see the flashes of light from the approaching bridge. He was too inexperienced at handling the raft to try to influence their approach. He left it to the river and stretched his body over Ally's as much as he could. If they were spotted...if shots were fired-they'd have to get through him before they reached her.

After they'd passed rapidly through the cooler air under the bridge and back out again, the river's speed increased even more. He shouted in the hopes she could hear him over its roar, "We've got to get past two more bridges before we're out of sight of any roads...stay down!" He regretted not taking the time to lash her to the raft as they both were thrown about on their wild way past the next remaining bridges. He wedged his body over hers and took the brunt of the splashing, cold water rushing around and over them. They were so tossed about that he never even knew when they'd safely cleared the last bridge.

Only at the last minute did he raise his head and recognize the stand of small quaking aspen that marked the river's fork. He spent a desperate couple of minutes fighting the river before they were swept along on his intended path. They flashed under another bridge a mile farther on, but it didn't cause him much concern. Carter had been right, they were by then miles ahead of any pursuers...no one would be this far downriver hanging over the railing with a sniper rifle to target his four-year-old daughter.

The river slowed around the next bend, it was still moving along at a fair clip but was no longer a raging torrent. He pulled Ally out of the sloshing water collecting around her and wrapped her in his arms. "We're out of it, Ally," he assured her. He could see her teeth chattering though the river swallowed up the sound. "Few more miles," he promised her, "we'll get off the river then...get you warm and dry. Just a few more miles." There was, if it hadn't washed overboard during the worst of their trip, a waterproof bag with a change of clothes for the both of them and other supplies. And up ahead there was the perfect, shadowed, isolated spot to land the raft and make the necessary changes...they'd made it.

~*~*~*~***~*~*~**~*~*~

The unfamiliar sound going off near the head of his bed drug Daniel up from the depths of sleep. He lay a moment longer trying to figure out what he was hearing, but he made up for the lost time as soon as realization struck.

"Just as a safety precaution," Jack had assured him when he'd suggested installing the panic button. His tone had implied they couldn't have been discussing anything less boring if they'd been talking about shoe sizes. But, they'd both known differently. Jack had gone on without any hint of urgency or inner turmoil to outline just what he'd want Daniel to do if the alarm ever sounded. Daniel had memorized the instructions though he'd fervently hoped he'd never need to implement them.

He jumped out of bed and silenced its insistent warning. It was too much to hope this was a false alarm. He made the first call before he even dressed: 911; armed intruders at the O'Neill residence; please send help right away followed by Jack's address and a 'for God's sake approach with caution'; and a click because he wouldn't be staying on the line regardless of what the 911 operator requested.

He'd pulled on pants and stuck his feet in his shoes before the second call rang through: "Walter...it's Daniel. Please send the packages right away." He didn't want to think of the Shanahans being rousted from their beds without warning by armed United States military personnel and drug off to a safe-house. But, he was relatively sure Jack hadn't deemed it prudent to give them a head's up.

"Right, Dr. Jackson. They'll be in the post within the hour."

"Good," and another click because he was far from done.

He'd finished dressing and was already half-way to his vehicle before the next call connected, "Janet...it's Daniel."

"Daniel? It's 2:37 in the morning. What's wrong?"

"Just listen to me, please...I need you to meet me at the end of Jack's street."

"Now?"

"Ten minutes...if I'm not there, wait for me."

"Daniel, what's going on?"

"Just be there, Janet...and keep your head down."

"It will take me longer than that..."

"Fifteen then...any longer and I'll move in without you." Another click and no time to worry whether or not she would take him seriously or roll over and go back to sleep.

He was already driving towards Jack's when he placed the last call and found General Hammond's Texas drawl grew slower and thicker with sleep. Without identifying himself or giving any introduction he said, "Jack's throwing a party and I think we're going to need a clean-up crew."

The pause on the other end was measured in mere milliseconds and then the General asked, "Can't you make local arrangements?"

"I'm afraid not...you know how Jack loves his privacy."

"Right. I'll get someone on it immediately. But I expect an itemized bill at your earliest convenience."

"That will be fine." A final click and then there was nothing to do but drive and try not to imagine the worse. He made the trip in record time. Janet swerved in behind him almost before he'd put the vehicle in park. She ran forward, and he pushed open his passenger door. "Get in."

She had a million questions but from where they sat they could see revolving, colored lights projecting up into the clouds over what had to be Jack's driveway. Three more police cars with sirens blaring and lights flashing turned the corner and sped to join them, and she didn't waste any time asking her questions. Daniel pulled out to follow them before she'd even slammed her door shut.

He stopped the car only halfway up the isolated street, and they crept cautiously forward on foot from there. Police met them at the end of the drive, and Daniel wondered just how Jack had expected him to proceed from there.

"Sorry, Sir, Ma'am...we've a situation here and have to ask you to vacate the area." They could see the beams of flashlights scouring the area around the house, down to the river, and out into the woods beyond.

"I'm sorry," Daniel said. "Our friends live here...they called me and I made the 911 call. Please, can you tell us what's happening?"

"Afraid not...please move along."

"Right," he said and only resignation sounded in his voice though it was far from what he felt. They retreated a few feet down the road and stood watching the action from its side. An ambulance passed them throwing loose gravel out at them. He closed his eyes and thought, Ok, Jack...what now?

"What's going on, Daniel?" Janet asked him over the chaotic blaring of the sirens.

"I'm not sure," he answered honestly.

"You're not sure? Jack or Sam called you and told you something was happening, right? What? Robbery? Attack? What?"

Daniel shook his head and wouldn't meet her eyes. With a frustrated sigh, she subsided. "Wait here," he said and walked back to have a word with the police. "Listen, um...my name is Daniel Jackson. Anyone asks for me--would you tell them, I'm out here?"

"Right, Sir. I can't promise you anything though."

"What about the people who live here? Can you tell me if they are all right?"

"Sorry, Sir." Right. He started back to Janet. Three, dark SUVs with government plates passed him, and he had no way of knowing whether General Hammond had been able to mobilize a unit that quickly or if he was watching reinforcements for the wrong side arrive.

Janet was shivering in the cool, night air. He put his arm around her and they huddled together waiting while the unit leader shoved credentials at the police and waved his men through. Daniel didn't recognize his silhouette.

The SUVs emptied their load of what looked like swarming SWAT men, their leader waved an irritated arm at the cop cars filling the drive, and someone cut the sirens. The sudden silence echoed painfully in their ears. They could not quite hear the rumbling of the police and GI heads butting up against each other in the age-old territorial dispute. It didn't last long. The policeman strode off with a stiff-back and motioned to several of his men; the spook called him back and after a moment Daniel and Janet could hear a call come through to the man guarding the entrance.

"Anyone show up by the name of Jackson...let him through. Right away." The man raised his eyes to meet Daniel's and nodded his head.

"Already here, Chief...on his way now." Daniel pulled Janet along with him and the cop made no objection. He'd seen everything they had and knew it was no longer his problem.

The police chief, who looked like Colombo only in the look of shuttered intelligence shining in his eyes, met them. Without comment he examined Daniel's ID and then said, "These folks are taking charge...matter of National Security, I'm to understand. I'm supposed to grin and bear it and brief you on what we've got...seems you're the man."

Daniel blinked at this news and nodded his head in what he hoped didn't look like shock. "Right," he said. "What is the situation?"

"Area seems secure. We've got three dead...two in the house, one in the front yard."

No, please no. Janet gave a low grown beside him, and he fought for air in order to ask, "Adults?" The chief frowned at him and nodded his head. "Woman-tall, blond?" Daniel went on.

"Nope...all male."

Daniel blinked in relief, and he knew it didn't escape the man in front of him. But he had to know, "About as tall as me, skinny...going slightly gray?"

"No...you're describing the folks who live here?"

"Yes."

"Well, we're not looking at the good guys here. Definitely perps--dressed a lot like your friends there," he said nodding at the government agents sweeping through the house and yard. "They didn't come here to steal the TVs. There are no civilians in the house or the immediate area as far as we have been able to ascertain..." the man looked intently at Daniel and his voice hardened.

"What we've got is a house shot up with machine gun fire and empty baby beds...now either you've got those kids tucked away nice and tight in a safehouse somewhere, and my men are out risking their necks in the dark searching for them for nothing...or you--," his clipped words failed to come up with a word vile enough for what he was suggesting and he came close to spitting at Daniel's feet instead before continuing, "...you've run some sort of operation with blatant disregard for their safety."

Daniel denied the accusation. "This wasn't a messed up operation...the people who live here are my best friends, and I love those kids as though they were my own...believe me."

Something in Daniel's voice and face must have persuaded the chief because he damped down his tone before continuing. "Really...Mr. Jackson? Your folks showed up awfully fast."

"Yes, they did...but you beat them," Daniel said.

The man acknowledged his score with a small nod. "I live down the street...my kid delivers their newspaper. Even so, I didn't beat you by much." His suspicions were still clear, but Daniel chose not to answer them. The chief let it drop. "I picked this up inside," he said. "Pretty recent wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," Daniel said looking at one of the family pictures Hank had shot the day Sam came home from the hospital.

"I'd like to run an APB...seems I need your ok on it though."

Daniel looked away from the picture and the man and stared off into the distance. Emergency lighting was turning the whole yard into daytime with long, eerie shadows dancing around the edges. He could see the police pushing farther and farther into the woods. If Jack had gotten away the last thing he would need was more people on his tail.

But, if he hadn't...Daniel sighed and cursed Jack's perverse idea of what was and was not 'need-to-know'. But, surely Jack had never expected Daniel to be the one left making decisions so far out of his expertise. That was either Hammond or the bad guys-he still wasn't sure which.

"Jackson?" the chief said, demanding an answer.

"I'm sorry," Daniel said, "that's not an option right now." Janet gave a dismayed squawk, and the policeman tightened his lips and scowled. "I'd explain if I could," Daniel assured them both though neither seemed to believe him. "Tell me what happened here. Please."

He thought for a minute the chief was going to stalk away without bothering, but in the end, he continued. "It was a well-organized operation. Men at each gate and corners of the house waiting incase someone made it out. Looks like some went in easy through the front door...others blew out the window of the master bedroom and went in that way. Probably, gave the folks a rude awakening, rousted them out of bed," he frowned as he pictured it all in his mind. "Made some demands, got some answers they didn't particularly like. Shot up the bedroom in retaliation...foolish thing to do--alerted half the neighborhood in the meantime.

"Of course, officers were already in route due to a 911 call that I believe you made, Dr. Jackson?"

"Yes," Daniel admitted without bothering to give away any more information.

The chief waited hopefully for a beat and then went on, "It just gets better and better from there...just about every wall in there's bullet ridden. It's possible they were looking for something hidden in the walls...they went after the fireplace like they intended to take it apart. But overall, it looks more like someone went off their rocker for a couple of minutes...ran through the house just letting it rip. The body in the yard? I'm willing to bet you he fell to friendly fire...standing on the wrong side of the wall at the wrong time.

"At some point, someone fought back--the body in the bedroom has a combat knife under his ribs-- probably his own as the sheath on his belt is empty. The fight went into the hallway...there's blood on the walls and carpet, good-sized dents in the walls, and another body."

"How'd that one die?" Janet asked.

The chief pursed his lips at her but seeing Daniel made no objection, he deigned to answer her. "No visible cause of death...we were still waiting on the medical examiner. Guess you'll be calling in your own now."

"Right," Daniel said. "Is there anything else?"

"I don't think we're looking at a failed abduction here. A bungled one with three dead, but successful nonetheless. The sirens got their wind up; they drug the family out of here and were gone before we arrived.

"Chance we take...come in with sirens blaring and hope we scare off the perps before they kill someone or come in quiet and hope to catch them unawares." He shrugged, "Hard to say which would have been better for the folks who lived here.

"Everything was quiet by the time we arrived, but the body outside was still warm--even the blood on the walls wasn't dry. We all but caught them in the act. If you let them get away trying to cover up whatever went down here..." He shook his head in disgust, "You say you care about these people, let me get that APB out NOW."

"I wish I could."

"Yeah, you said that. Well, I don't envy you this case, Dr. Jackson. I hope for those children's sake you know what you're doing. Here's my card. When you're ready to do the right thing--give me a call, the APB will hit the streets before you're off the phone."

"Thank you," Daniel said. "And thank you for getting here so quickly. You never know...you might have scared them off before they got what they came for."

The policeman looking old said, "Then obviously you and I don't have the same concerns here, Dr. Jackson."

"How's that?"

"Whatever you folks had hidden here having to do with National Security--it isn't worth a dime next to this," the cop answered as he waved the picture of Jack and Sam and the kids in his face. "These folks aren't here anymore are they? I'm telling you they didn't walk out of here on their own." He shook himself like a dog as though he could throw off his contempt and anger, and then stalked away to call off his men.

The team leader of 'his friends' stepped up to take his place before Janet could open her mouth to demand he start explaining things. "Major Forsight," he introduced himself, "General Hammond sent us."

"You won't mind if I verify that will you, Major?" Daniel asked, flipping open his phone to do just that.

"Of course not, Sir," the man said and waited calmly while General Hammond assured Daniel that Forsight and his men were the cavalry.

"Best I could do at such short notice,' Hammond said and got off the line to allow Daniel to deal with the situation at best possible speed.

"Where did you guys come from?" Daniel asked. He hadn't recognized a single man among them.

"That's...a matter of National Security, Sir. Let's just say we were out on night maneuvers and leave it at that."

"Right," Daniel agreed. Forsight tipped his weapon and for the first time Daniel noticed the telltale red of intars. "That the best you got?" he asked the major, understanding the general's comment a bit late.

"That's it...but the area is secure, Sir. No sign of any hostiles. I'd say the police sirens routed them; most likely they took the hostages and retreated. Wouldn't be surprised if they passed the locals on their way out."

"Are you sure they took the hostages...isn't it possible they got away?" It wasn't that he didn't trust the chief's assessment; more that he desperately wanted to hear something different. The major was not obliging.

"With three little children?" the major shook his head dismissively, and Janet put a hand over her mouth and made a failed attempt at not crying. "The cops and our transport will have put paid to any tracks"

"The chief said it looked like they did fight back...isn't it possible they killed the ones in the house and escaped before the men outside knew it?"

"And are hiding where?" the major asked. "The area's empty. The police were swarming it like flies before the blood was dry and never saw a sign anyone made it outside the house. I'm sorry, Dr. Jackson."

"Right," Daniel said for the umpteenth time since he'd arrived and for all his saying it, not one thing had been right the entire time. "Have your men do what needs done out here. Organize search parties to scour the area once daylight hits...see what they can find that's been missed in the dark. Leave the house for now...in fact, I want it cleared of all personnel. I'll secure it myself."

If the major thought him lacking the experience or training to do the job, he hid it behind a snappy, "Yes, Sir." Calling out orders like a drill sergeant, he sent his men scurrying to the task.

Daniel put an arm around Janet but found nothing he could say to comfort her. Things were quite possibly just as bad as they looked. He nudged her to walk with him into the house, and they passed a black-shrouded body on the way.

"What are you looking for, Daniel?" Janet asked him as he carefully shut the door behind them. He didn't answer but went into the living room where Jack had brought him that fateful day so many years ago when he'd lost Sha're. He'd spent a lot of time in this particular room in the intervening years-good and bad times.

Here Jack had taken a good shot at destroying their friendship when he'd been infiltrating Maybourne's little smuggling ring. It had been where they'd gathered to spend what they'd feared would be their last hours with Jack before the Ancient database overrode too much of his mind. And more recently to mourn Teal'c.

They'd watched way more hours than necessary of The Simpson's and Star Wars sprawled around this room. Ate too much pizza and far too many donuts. Argued and joked. Let Jack skunk them in cards and Sam whip them in chess. And they'd laughed in the face of death here, celebrating countless times the end of a mission that should have ended in tragedy and defeat but had instead ended in victory. They'd celebrated birthdays, Cassy's first Christmas on Earth, and plenty of other holidays as well.

Peter had taken his first faltering steps in this room after Jack had carried Sam home from the hospital and settled her on his less than comfortable couch.

But no one would ever again be sitting on that couch. Machine gun fire had torn it apart. All around the room the walls had received the same treatment. Someone had taken an ax to the fireplace...its gleaming metal head was buried deep into the mantle. The desecration of the room made Daniel physically nauseous. He took Janet's arm and stumbled toward the back of the house. Glancing into the kitchen, they could see dark, gaping holes torn into the cupboards, cabinets, and even the trashcan.

As they entered the hall leading back to the bedrooms, they couldn't help noting that the chief had undoubtedly been right: there had been a pitched battle fought in its narrow confines. The walls showed it all too plainly in smears of blood and dents penetrating into the underlying sheetrock. Between the doors to Ally's and the boys' rooms, there was a darkening, rust colored stain in the carpet that they both did their best not to see. And the covered hump of a dead body lay outside Jack and Sam's room just in case more evidence was required to prove the Chief's point.

Stepping carefully, they paused in silence to stare into Ally's room. Machine gun blasts had torn into Belle and her Beast on Ally's walls and shattered the mirror over the dresser, but somehow left undisturbed the shelves full of unread books and unloved toys.

The boys' room was even more distressing. The walls hadn't been spared, but Daniel and Janet were both almost used to the sight of that sort of damage by now. It was the shattered crib and little toddler bed that made the bile rise in their throats and caused their hearts to thud painfully in their chests. Daniel had seen more than his share of war zones, but there was something horrifyingly wrong with bullet-torn crib sheets with racecars zooming along the edges and teddy bears with their heads blown off. And on the floor, the stuffed lamb Jacob had carried everywhere with him since the accident lay abandoned and alone.

Just inside the door of Jack and Sam's room was the third body. Neither Daniel nor Janet stopped to raise its black shroud to see if they recognized the face of evil. The walls of this room had escaped their share of machine gun blasts. Only the near wall was pockmarked with bullet holes.

The pictures of the boys hanging on it had somehow survived unscathed. They smiled, uncomprehending little boy smiles over the devastation of their lives. Ally's picture had not been so lucky. Where her solemn little face should have gazed out at them was only a gaping hole.

"Daniel," Janet said in a stricken voice. He held her for a few minutes desperately fighting to overcome his own overwhelming horror. Then he put a shushing finger to her mouth and let her go. She looked a thousand questions at him, but he didn't answer any of them.

Jack had shown him the hidden room years before when he'd put it in after Adrian Conrad's goons had had a go at Sam. "If any of us ever need a place to run..." he'd said and left it at that. Daniel only hoped someone here had had time to run. With his heart in his throat, he opened the door and stepped into the dark little room. He found the light switch. Janet gave a startled gasp at what it revealed.

Covered by the red, flannel blanket with appliqu�d dinosaurs that Lois had made for Jacob, both of the boys lay on their tummies in a narrow playpen. Neither of them responded to the light or the noise of their arrival. Janet gave a low groan, but Daniel shook his head. "It's all right," he said. "They're all right. Now you know why I needed you with me. They're sedated. It's that long-lasting stuff we brought back from P7R-237."

Still stunned, Janet was nevertheless able to understand what he was telling her. "Fast-acting, long-lasting, few if any side effects," she automatically recited.

"Right. But Sam was still worried about leaving them under for any length of time." He rooted around on a high shelf, found what he was looking for, and held it up for her inspection.

"The counteragent," she said.

She reached out a hand to take the two, pre-drawn syringes from him, but he said, "Not yet."

"Daniel," she began. "The stuff's as safe as anything, but Sam's right...they shouldn't be under any longer than absolutely necessary."

"This is absolutely necessary, Janet...why do you think they're here like this? You think Sam would knock them out and hide them in here if she had a choice? If whoever shot up this place gets their hands on them...you think Sam and Jack aren't going to do whatever they tell them too?"

"Granted, but...you don't trust those men out there?"

"I don't trust anyone at this point. Except you and Hammond."

"How do you plan on getting them out of here without anyone knowing?"

He picked up two heavy, black canvas bags from the corner of the room. She closed her eyes and shook her head but said, "Let me take a look at them first...make sure they are all right." Neither of the boys reacted to her touch. Jacob stirred when she checked his pupils, but settled back into a deep sleep as soon as she finished.

She gave a reluctant ok to Daniel. He carefully placed Peter into the first bag. Taller and narrower than a regular duffle bag, its bottom was just wide enough for a curled up, newly turned one-year-old to lie on. Daniel left the bag open while he just as carefully folded Jacob into the other bag. In an upright position, he did fit...barely. When the time came they'd have to carefully tuck his head down to avoid catching his hair in the zipper.

Daniel started to tuck the dinosaur blanket in with him to help keep him upright, but Janet stopped him. "He's too far under, Daniel...he could suffocate." Daniel put the blanket back in the playpen.

He took a slow look around the room to see if there was anything else he was supposed to do here. Whatever Jack had lined the room with had done the job. Daniel had felt sick seeing the blasts in its outside walls, but nothing had penetrated the little room. Whatever horrors and atrocities had happened in the rest of the house, the boys had slept quietly and undisturbed through them all.

"Daniel, we can't leave them like this for long," Janet prompted him, and he realized he was stalling. There was something unsettling about zipping babies up in luggage bags.

"Wait," Janet said after he'd zipped the bag shut over Peter and started on Jacob's. She moved quickly down the hall and grabbed up the abandoned lamb. Daniel closed his eyes for a brief second when she held it out to him, and then he nodded and tucked it into the bag along with Sam's son.

As they left, they shut the door to keep the secret room a secret. Janet kicked the bits and pieces of blasted sheetrock the door had misplaced around until their actions weren't obvious while Daniel stood waiting with his precious cargo straining the muscles in his arms. They were dead weight and unbalanced, but neither of the boys weighed that much in the physical sense; however, in the psychological sense, they outweighed just about anything he'd ever been entrusted to carry. He walked very carefully around the dead bodies on the way out.

At the door though, he took a deep breath and walked through casually swinging the bags as though they carried nothing of any real significance. 'His friends' didn't give his load a second glance. Need-to-know was their way of life and for all Daniel knew they lived in a world where 'if I told you, I'd have to shoot you' wasn't a joke. He took only a brief moment to instruct Major Foresight to arrange for the removal of the dead men and secure the house after all before he and Janet shuffled off down the drive on foot.

Trouble came just past the end of the drive. The police chief climbed out of his silent, waiting unmarked car to stand in their way.

"Is there something else?" Daniel asked him. By now both boys had gained an untold number of pounds, and he was really ready to reach his vehicle still parked halfway down the street.

"That is what I'm here to find out," the man told him. "I need to see what you have in those bags...I know, I know I don't have the jurisdiction. But," he shifted just enough to allow them to see his holstered weapon.

"You are out of line," Daniel said.

"Out of line or not, there are children's life at stake here, and I need to see what you have there..."

Daniel weighed his options. He could call back to the men they'd just left behind and use the authority General Hammond had for one reason or another invested him with. It might be the worst thing he could-draw unwanted attention to just what it was he carried. Plus, for years and years, he'd been telling Jack to ask questions first and maybe avoid the shooting altogether...to not exert his authority where trust and cooperation would accomplish the same thing.

He looked long and hard at the man before them, then he gently settled one of the bags onto the cold hood of the car.

"Daniel," Janet said quietly.

"It's all right," he said to her. As the chief reached to unzip the bag, he said, "Careful there." The policeman glanced at him sharply but apparently decided the warning was not a threat. He unzipped the bag.

For one frozen moment, he stared at the bag's contents, and then he turned his eyes back to Daniel. "Are you a good man, Dr. Jackson?" he asked.

"I like to think so," Daniel answered simply.

Janet watched the two men. Sam had told her of countless occasions where Daniel had been able to talk their way out of numerous hazards, but she'd had few opportunities to see it for herself.

"It's not so much what he says," Sam had told her. "It's who he is...what he believes. Somehow he makes everyone else believe it with him. Sometimes, I get home and try to figure out just what he said to make them trust him...and I realize, he never really said anything." She'd stared out the window for a minute and then added, "Sometimes, just being willing to take a stand is all that's needed I guess. The act itself says everything that really matters."

Janet understood exactly what Sam had been trying to explain as the policeman nodded at Daniel's simple declaration of goodness and carefully tucked a tuft of Jacob's hair in before rezipping the bag. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet and asked, "The other just like it?"

"Pretty much...bit smaller."

The chief nodded again, reached into his pocket, and drew out his badge and ID. He tapped a long finger against it and looked again at Daniel. "My badge," he said. "If I let you carry that out of here..."

"You'll be doing the right thing," Daniel told him earnestly. "I can keep this safe...that's what that badge is all about right-to serve and to protect?"

With a resigned shake of his head, the man lifted Jacob in his bag off the car and held him out to Daniel.

"Thank you," Daniel said. The man stood watching them as they hurried down the street and loaded the bags into the back seat of the car. Janet climbed in with them, and Daniel started the car. As they pulled out, the chief finally put his badge back in his pocket and returned to his own car.

~*~**~*~*~**~*~**~

To Ally the raging, tumultuous waters of the river had been too much the picture of the inner turmoil her very, very young mind had endured in her beginning. She'd struggled hard to escape its overwhelming, relentless presence and even now after all these years could at times still be caught in its powerful undertow...to have it physically manifested was just too much.

And beyond that, it seemed as black and malevolent as the all-dominating, vengeful hate that had battered and carried her away in that parking lot. The water seemed to call to her in just such a deceptive, destructive way...sucking at her, enticing her to embrace a fate that perhaps she didn't have the strength to escape.

But beyond even that, it was impossible to fight against. Swirling and rushing, it carried them on its relentless journey to a sea 1500 miles away, and there was no turning back. She'd expected attack everyday of her life, looked for it, prepared for it, and dreaded it to the point she'd almost begun to believe its actual arrival would come as relief. Escape had always been her goal. But, though they had made good their escape, she felt no accompanying relief.

She'd heard the shots back before the river had obliterated all sounds except its own beneath its unstoppable roar. Everything both her parents had ever given her and everything that made up her own being cried out the need to turn back around, to provide the back up Carter would need against the intruders. But they had broken Sir's one unbreakable rule; they hadn't turned back. They'd kept right on running. They'd left a man behind.

Shots had been fired, and they had run not to help but to flee. Shots had been fired, and they'd done what they knew they must. Carter had demanded it of them. And necessity itself. They'd known it would come to that one day; they'd prepared for, waited for it, and in the end they'd done it. And that knowledge had held just as much terror for Ally as the raging river.

She shook on Sir's lap from the horror of it all and his long arms encircled her, his heartbeat, sure and strong, sounded in her ears, and his body heat warmed her. But she couldn't stop shaking.

"Just a few more miles," he assured her and the river's roar had faded enough she could hear his rough voice. But his heat and his voice couldn't change the fact there was no going back; no way to change the reality of what they had done.

The river rocked them now, as though it had spent all its anger up above and had found peace of a sorts here. Instead of warring against them, it now sought to comfort them. But, if she couldn't find peace in Sir's lap, the river didn't stand a chance of imparting it to her.

She looked up at him. He was scanning the riverbank and didn't glance down at her. "Is she dead?" she asked in a voice that was too small for him to hear and didn't find the strength to ask it again.

He drew the raft to shore as the first hint of morning began to lighten the gathering clouds in the dark sky. For some reason her mother might have been able to explain, the clouds that night had held the slightest tint of red. Ally had glimpsed them from between Sir's feet on their wild ride, and their unaccustomed color had only added to the ominous feel of the night. As morning encroached upon its darkness, the red faded away and the unfamiliar sky transformed into the familiar. She was not fooled; the day held just as much threat as the night had.

By the time they walked hand and hand away from the riverside twenty minutes later, they were unrecognizable.

Sir with rapid precision had snipped and shaved away her long blond hair while singing 'This is the Army, Mr. Jones' under his breath. Ally thought if she rooted around in her mind long enough she could probably find the connection between her buzzed head and the song, but it was too much effort.

She was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, and he had to support her with a hand while he blew the last of the hair from her face. He smiled, kissed her, and called her 'sleepyhead' before pulling her into his lap to dress her in a blue-striped t-shirt, faded denim overalls, a hooded red jacket, and red and blue Spiderman shoes. She was too tired to be of much help.

"Hey, there...don't go nodding off on me yet, little boy. There're a couple of things we need to talk about...well," he said pausing to think about it, "I guess as long as you plan on keeping up the silent act this is going to be a piece of cake as far as you're concerned. All you really need to remember is to never go in the girls' bathroom and when I say 'Noah'-that's you. Oh, and try to give the space cadet thing a rest, will ya? We don't want to make anyone look at us twice. Got it?"

"Yes, Sir," she said. He winced.

"Hmmm...I suppose you won't be any better at this than your mom, but let's give it a try. No 'sir'. You've got the haircut, but you're not in the army...uhh...let's go with 'ok, Dad'-that should work. Give it a try."

He looked at her expectantly and nodded his head encouragingly, and she forced the unfamiliar words out as though they were a foreign language. "Nice," he said, nodding his head in satisfaction. "Now you can nod off a minute." But, her tiredness had vanished as quickly as it had come and she watched wide-eyed as he transformed himself into a man she did not know.

Definitely a Dad not a Sir. A black-haired man with glasses in a long-sleeved flannel shirt, faded blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a tan, baseball cap emblazoned 'Fish tremble at the mention of my name'. He held out his hands and twirled for her to inspect his new appearance.

She nodded her head and said, "Nice" in a perfect imitation of his earlier act. The contrast between the word and intonation and her solemn expression made him laugh; but her expression was the real mirror. The emerging day did not bring with it the promised joy after the sorrow of the night before. Only more sorrow, more worries, more secrets, and fears.

He rifled through his dwindling pile of supplies and handed her a granola bar and a juice box. She accepted his offering and sat them both on her lap. "Eat," he told her. She looked blankly down at her breakfast, and only then did he realize how little of the day-to-day activities of life had really passed into her awareness.

In the short time he'd known her, he'd grown accustomed to her peculiarities, and she had over the last little bit become so much more responsive that at times he forgot the constraints of her life. He wondered, not for the first time, just what it was that so occupied her thoughts that she was all but totally ignorant of the world outside her mind.

"For crying out loud," he said, "open it and eat it!" She looked up at him and bit her lip and seeing Carter's mannerisms in her face drained the exasperation from him. "Here," he said gently. He showed her how to rip the wrapper from the granola bar before tearing off the pointed, little straw from the box, poking it through the hole, and handing it to her. He went back to his tasks, and she swallowed down salty tears with her make-do breakfast.

From here on, she could not be the person she had always been. Just as she could no longer be a little girl named Ally but a boy named Noah, so she also had to become someone capable of living in the world Outside. There would be no Carter or Grandma and Grandpa to see to her needs. Sir had to be free to focus on their survival; he had neither the temperament nor the time to wait on her.

She must learn not only the intricacies of the Ancients but the ways of humans. She knew no more and perhaps even less than Peter about what was required to get by in modern life on planet Earth...she might have been marginally better thrown into the same situation a million years or two before when it was an Ancient world. But for either, she was hopelessly ill equipped.

Sir finished with his preparations and stuffed the evidence of their time spent here into one of the waterproof bags that had protected his hidden supplies. The raft he cut lose and let the river claim, but the bag he carefully buried so that by the time he was done Ally had trouble spotting where it was hidden.

He turned to her then, "All done, Noah?" She held her garbage out to him. "Good boy," he said and took it to tuck inside the blue tackle box waiting for them by the river's edge. "Time to go, then...fish don't seem to be biting this morning, no use hanging around out here." He pulled a Spiderman baseball cap down over her shorn head, handed her a child's fishing pole complete with a blue Mickey Mouse reel, and picked up his own pole. She took his hand and they followed a deer trail out of the river bottom and into their new lives.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Are they all right?" Daniel anxiously asked Janet after she'd carefully extricated the boys from their bags. He could glimpse only pale, still faces in the review mirror, and she'd been extraordinarily quiet as she worked.

She raised her head and looked at him through the mirror. "They're fine...they are already starting to come out of the sedative. I think we can skip the counteragent."

"Good," he said with relief. He raised Walter once more on his cell phone. "It's Daniel again," he said. "I forgot a couple of small items that were supposed to go with those packages you mailed...any chance I can get them sent this morning?"

"The post has already left," Walter answered.

"I really need them sent out today."

"Right. I'll send someone to collect them. Have them packed and ready to ship in say, thirty minutes?"

"That will be perfect-thanks."

"Always glad to be of service," Walter said and hung up.

"Okay, Daniel," Janet said in her 'don't mess around' voice. "Time for you to start talking."

He knew her well enough he didn't waste time fabricating lies she wouldn't believe or using the 'if I told you, I'd have to kill you' line. "It's complicated," he said instead.

"I got that," she said dryly. "But, we've got thirty minutes."

"Right," he said with a sigh. "You remember way back when General Hammond 'resigned' and then turned back up at the Mountain before the paperwork was even filed?"

"Daniel," she warned, "get to the point. What does that have to do with this?"

"Just that he'd been gotten at...through his granddaughters. So when Jack brought Sam and the kids here he was concerned something similar might happen-he made some contingency plans, just in case."

"Ah," she said but it wasn't the sound of comprehension. More of a 'don't stop there because I'm not buying it' sort of sound.

He pulled to the curb outside a gas station. "I'd think the rest is self-explanatory, but if you want to hear it, go get us a couple coffees and I'll tell you when you get back." She carefully untangled herself from the sleeping, little bodies sprawled over her lap and the back seat and returned with not only coffee, but also a bag of black licorice, animal cookies, and two small cartons of milk.

"Licorice?" he said in disgust. "What did you buy that for?"

"Me," she said, "I like it. The milk and cookies are for the boys in case they wake up hungry. Now quit complaining and start explaining."

Daniel sipped his too-hot coffee and said, "Jack installed an alarm system in my apartment. If it ever went off I was to call in the reinforcements-from Hammond and the local force and then hightail it out there and find a way to get into his secret room and get the kids if they were there."

"What if you were offworld?"

"Jack didn't say...I suspect it was routed to Walter."

"And the packages?"

"Hank and Lois...he didn't want to take any chances of them being taken as secondary targets. Walter moved them to a safe house earlier tonight."

"And that's where we'll take Jacob and Peter?"

"No. I don't know where they are...we'll drive by Hank and Lois' and Walter will have someone there to take the boys to their grandparents."

"I'm not comfortable with sending them off without medical supervision," she said automatically.

He almost laughed. "Come on, Janet, you said they were fine...if you think they'll have problems waking up, you can give them the stuff now. Sam said it works almost immediately...they'll be fine before it's time to turn them over."

"Right," she conceded but made no move to inject the boys. "So there is a reason we are driving around in circles? Here I thought you were lost."

"Funny. But yeah, we're just killing time and making sure no one is following us...and Walter has probably been sitting in a parked car watching the Shanahan's to make sure no one showed up to cause trouble. He'd never have us take the boys there if he didn't know it was safe."

"The boys," she said. He'd known they'd get there eventually. He didn't say anything but just drove. "Why just the boys?"

"What do you mean?" he asked delaying the unavoidable.

"What about Ally?"

"Well, if we were bringing Ally, he'd be making sure it was safe for her, too."

"But, we're not...why aren't we? Why didn't Sam put her in with the boys?"

"Janet, I don't know what went down there tonight...maybe they weren't able to get to Ally in time to hide her, too."

"There were only two bags, Daniel. Two syringes full of the counteragent."

"Ally's too big to fi-"

"Come on, Daniel. You didn't go there to collect Ally. Please don't try to convince me you did."

"I'm sorry, Janet. I had to try."

"Why?"

He pulled into a parking spot along a dark, side street, switched off the ignition, and turned to face her. "Sometimes the secrets you know aren't yours to share," he said.

She acknowledged the truth with silence. She knew she didn't have to say anything...they weren't anywhere near the Shanahan's and still had ten minutes before their time was up. It might not be his secret to share, but she knew he had already decided to tell her anyway.

He placed a tired hand on his forehead and shook his head, but she was still waiting for an explanation when he finished. He sighed. He hadn't thought she'd let him off the hook, but he had hoped.

"Ok...Ally's a pretty special kid."

"Special is one way of saying she has some very severe problems, Daniel...I noticed them. But, she survived the separation from Sam after the accident. I won't believe they ran with her--and please tell me they did run-to avoid subjecting her to another traumatic separation."

"Not that kind of special. I mean..." he breathed out a frustrated puff of air and threw his hands up to indicate words were failing him.

"Yes?" she demanded. "Just spit it out...I can handle big words."

"Ally's not Pete Shanahan's daughter."

"She's not? Then?"

"She's Jack's."

"Daniel? What are saying? If you told me she was Sam's clone, you'd have a better chance of convincing me. I know Sam...she's the closest thing I have to a sister. We talk. She believed in the program, she knew she was important to its success...and so did Jack. Neither of them would have thrown away their chance to make a difference for-personal reasons.

"Even if they'd avoided a court-martial, their names would never have been on the list for promotion again...they were career officers, Daniel-it mattered to them both."

"But, Sam left the program, didn't she...the program and the Air Force."

"Ok...let's say Sam was ready to toss it all in for a chance at having a family and they decided to forget the reg's-which I absolutely do not buy...Sam would never have pawned another man's child off on Pete. She's not that kind of person."

"Janet, I'm not talking about what you're talking about--court-martial was the last thing they were worried about. If the truth were known, they'd probably end up with commendations not reprimands. And a person will do a lot more than you can imagine if the stakes are high enough, but no, Sam didn't lie to Pete...he knew she was pregnant when he married her, and he knew the baby wasn't his."

It was Janet's turn to lower her head to her hand and rub her forehead. Jacob rolled over and stared up at her. "Hey there," she said quietly to him. "How are you doing?"

He looked around and called, "Mama? Jack?"

"They're not here, Sweetie...we're taking you to see Grandma and Grandpa. How about that?"

"Grandma?"

"In just a few minutes...you hungry? I've got some cookies?" Jacob sat up eagerly and was soon happily munching the heads off of giraffes. Janet looked back to Daniel.

He continued, "Listen, this is hard enough to talk about as it is and we're almost out of time, so just let me get it all out, ok? I can't tell you what we were expecting or thinking that made the whole thing seem like a good idea. We were all so afraid we were going to lose Jack-I really don't think we were thinking straight. Because the whole idea was nuts...but what were we going to do about it by the time we came to our senses?

"Anyway, when Jack had the Ancient's database in him, and we were coming back from getting the working ZPM? He...he umm, well he told us he could pass on that knowledge genetically...he thought it was important-that we shouldn't lose it when he-died. He suggested...um-well, one way or another, Ally's his."

"You're serious? No wonder Sam has resisted getting her into any intensive therapy...so, you're telling me that Ally is..."

"Jack's daughter with possibly the knowledge of the Ancients...well, more than possibly-she has the healing power, Janet. She tried to use it on Sam. Jack had to stop her."

"That's what was wrong with her that first couple of days after the accident? And this attack? It had nothing to do with the SGC-they were after Ally."

"It looks that way. We always knew if the wrong people found out...the idea was if someone ever came after her, Jack would get her out...we can't let her fall into enemy hands, Janet."

"I can see that, Daniel, but-" Peter stirred and fought his way out of the sedative with plaintive cries. He didn't want milk and he didn't want cookies. He wanted his mom, and Janet was a very poor substitute. By the time, he'd unhappily settled for Jacob's lamb and a handful of tigers and elephants, they were pulling up in front of the Shanahan's house. As Daniel turned off the ignition, Janet met his eyes in the mirror and voiced what they were both thinking, "So, if Jack got Ally safely away...then where's Sam?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Go," she'd urged Jack and slipped down the hall to the boys without waiting to see if he did. She'd given Ally over into his charge, and she couldn't afford to take the time to second-guess that decision one more time.

Jacob first. Her dear little man. She hefted him into her arms. She willed him to stay asleep and he did. She settled him into the crook of her arm and in her urgency he weighed less than nothing. She felt for his stuffed animal but in the dark couldn't find it. No time for that. Grabbed his blanket instead and turned to the crib. She lifted Peter more gingerly; he was her lightest sleeper. He wiggled as she juggled him in her arms with Jacob, but with a soft baby sigh he settled back to sleep.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. No time to glance across the hall and strain into the darkness to know if Jack and Ally were safely away yet or not. No time for anything.

She'd never have time to do what she had to do--never. How could she have taken such a risk? How could she have brought these precious little people into the war zone of her life? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Carefully, carefully...but hurry, hurry!

The house was deathly silent as she juggled the boys and opened the door of Jack's hidden room. She pulled it quietly shut behind her and fought to catch her breath in its blackness. Felt for the light switch. Struggled to put the boys down without waking either of them. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Turned back to push the button that would make what she was about to do excusable.

Fumbled on the top shelf for the syringes and alcohol pads. Peter first because he was too young, too young to not cry if startled awake in the night. Oh baby, stay asleep, stay asleep. With trembling hands, she exposed his chunky little thigh; swabbed it quickly with the cold alcohol pad; thrust the needle through his soft baby skin; drew back the plunger...let out a shaky breath of relief-no blood, she was into the muscle and not a blood vessel; pushed in the orangish liquid-slowly, slowly so the burn wouldn't wake him; pulled out the needle; held her thumb tightly against the puncture hole for a brief second; put both her hands over her mouth and gulped down terrified breaths of air...oh, Peter. Oh, my baby...so sorry. So sorry.

Jacob. My little clown. You've made me laugh every day of your short life. I love you. I love you. Don't wake up, don't wake up. He stirred when she swabbed his leg...no, no, baby-stay asleep, stay asleep. Don't look at me and see the failure I am as a mother. Don't look at me and see how I put my selfish desires to have you above your safety. Stay asleep.

He didn't though. His long, soft eyelashes blinked and he opened his eyes. He looked at her dazedly for a minute. "Shhh..." she whispered to him...Jack tell me this place is sound proof-tell me it is. Of course, it was. He'd never have expected anyone to be able to stay quiet long enough to evade detection. Still...not a sound, little boy, not a sound. "Shhh..." she said again as she plunged the needle in. He jerked in surprise, and she whispered, "It's ok...over in a minute." He whimpered softly as she pushed in the sedative but made no other sound.

The stuff worked unbelievably fast, his eyes were closing before she'd removed the needle. He reached out his chubby hand and pulled his blanket to him. She gently rolled him over and patted him. She wanted to lean over him, kiss his check, and whisper her love to him as he drifted off; but she had no time. Peter was still sprawled on his back where she'd left him. In her anxiety, he looked too much like her nightmares, and she stole the brief second to roll him onto his tummy so he looked merely asleep. Pulled the blanket over both of their still forms. Tossed the empty syringes far back on the highest shelf in case Daniel didn't come before the boys were awake...of course, he'd come. He would. She had to believe he would.

Carefully she opened the door the slightest crack. Everything was still...either they hadn't hit the house yet or they were making their own quiet journey down the hall. She grabbed the Zat from its place by the door as she slipped out into the bedroom. Closed the door on her sons, forced her feet away from that wall...mustn't be found near that wall.

What now? Had Jack made his escape? Surely, surely by now he was out of the house. Possibly hitting the slope down to the river with its loose rocks waiting to give him away. Or scrabbling open his hiding place...either way, she'd promised him she'd stall any pursuers-she hit the light switch. There, you're discovered...come out and show yourself; take the bait and let the fish get away.

Heard something in the hall. They were in the house. She rushed the door and fired blindly into the hallway. Three, maybe four, forms jumped for cover...the nearest one went down almost at her feet. Out or getting into position to take her? No time to ask questions...she took him out of the equation with a second shot. Hunkered in the doorway--your move.

She had no one to guard her back; bullets tore through the bedroom window, and men in dark, military-type clothing and Kevlar vests followed them through. She took down one but in doing so had to expose herself to the men waiting in her children's rooms.

It was all over far too quickly. They jerked her to the floor. Pulled the Zat out of her hand. One of them dug his hands into her hair and pulled her head back.

"Where's the kid?" he hollered at her. "Where's the kid?" She shook her head at him as though in incomprehension. He forgot the dead man he'd kicked on his way down the hallway and made the mistake of his lifetime. He looked at the pale woman in a nightgown on her knees before him and failed to see the decorated Air Force officer. He gave her a vicious shake and yelled in her face, "Where's is she?"

"Ally?" she said, her voice trembling.

"Ally," he snarled with disgust. "Where is she?"

"I don't understand," she cried. "What do you want with my baby?"

"Don't play dumb," he told her but at least she was only playing while apparently he really was an idiot. How could he imagine any woman would turn her child over to him?

"You come into my house, threaten me, wave guns in my face, and want me to tell you where my daughter is? What kind of game are you playing?"

"No game, lady," he told her and raised his arm as though she hadn't just told him violence would only work against him. She artistically flinched and, when he lowered his arm without striking her, drew in a shuddering breath.

He believed in the power of his intimidation. She cowered before him, and he thought it was only a matter of time until he had what he wanted "We only want the girl. We'll leave the rest of you," he promised. "Where is she?"

"She's not here..." she said as though the words were involuntarily torn from her throat. "My husband...I had work-urgent work to do...he-he took the kids so I could get it done."

"Really?" He leaned into her face, "We've been watching the house all day--we know that isn't true. They were here! Where is O'Neill? Where is he hiding the kid?"

"I told you," she said, "They're not here."

He hit her with the full force of his anger. The blow knocked her against the door jam. "You will tell me! He's hiding here somewhere." When she only shook her head, he turned to his men, "Find them!" They spread out through the house, thumping their heavy boots and banging doors.

He watched her while they waited. A cold calculation entered his eyes and he untwined his fingers from her hair and pulled out a revolver. Making sure she was watching, he took careful aim and shot a jagged hole through the picture of Ally hanging on the wall. The wrong wall. The one wall she didn't want him taking a second glance at. The wall behind which her sons lay.

Her cry really was involuntary this time. She shouldn't have let it out. He smiled wickedly in enjoyment of her distress and used his automatic weapon to splatter holes all along the wall. "You will tell me," he promised her in the quiet that followed. "Or when I find them, I will kill you all."

His men hurried into the room. "The house is clean." Their news took the enjoyment off his face. He squinted at her. "They were here tonight...don't think they're safe. I've men all around this house. If they got out, we'll hunt them down. We'll find them. Tell me where they went, and I'll spare them."

"What do you want?" she asked as though she didn't know. He didn't bother to answer her. He turned to one of the men and held out a small Ziploc bag, "Go to the girl's room. Collect some evidence for the DNA match. If we can't find her, we'll at least have that."

Then he turned back to her. He pulled her to her feet. She swayed weakly before him and almost went down. He nodded his head with satisfaction; she was no threat to him.

"Move out," he said to his other men, "somehow he knew we were out there...he's on the move-in the woods, down by the river, somewhere. Find him-and find out why those fools at the fence didn't stop him like they were supposed to!"

Please God, by now Jack and Ally had made it to the river and were gone, gone, gone...but she wasn't willing to count on it. She threw off the cowering woman and became Major Samantha Carter. She had his knife out of his sheath and into his chest before he recognized the change. She left him to die and darted out after the men hurrying down the hallway.

She couldn't hope to stop them all. Just keep them from reinforcing whoever was out there on Jack's tail for as long as she could. She hurled herself down the hallway after the men. She struck the first one she could reach with all the power of her purpose and knocked him into the next. All three of them went down like dominoes. With a startled cry, the man in Ally's room rushed her before she could struggle back up. He kicked out at her. She grabbed his leg, and he toppled over and joined them on the floor.

With a roar, he fought his way back to his feet. By then the other men she'd brought down had as well. She scrambled up herself and found she'd succeeded in her intent. None of the men had continued out to join in pursuing her husband and daughter. They filled the hallway, cursing and pushing for the chance to get at her. She gave them the fight they were looking for, but she was vastly out-numbered. She went down under their kicks and blows.

Someone took charge, wading in to pull men off of her and issue commands, "Enough! Don't kill her yet. We need that kid. She knows where she is..." She lay stunned in the middle of the hallway between the kids' rooms and stared into the eyes of Jacob's little lamb lying just inside his bedroom door. In the distance, she heard the sound of sirens...Daniel to the rescue.

The men heard them, too. With outrage, a couple of them tore through the house firing and screaming out their frustrated wrath. The man taking charge reached down and pulled her to her feet. "Idiots," he hissed, dragging her along, and yelling at the others, "Let's go!" He palmed a radio switch and ordered, "Clear out!"

She stumbled along, trying to stay on her feet but not quite succeeding. When they reached a dark Yukon, she came to her senses enough to try to tear herself lose from his grasp. But, he tossed her easily to the floor in back. Men piled in over her.

One of them pressed a heavy knee to her chest to keep her down, but it wasn't necessary. She was past fighting back. But that was all right. Jack and Ally were safely away, and Daniel was riding to the boys' rescue. Nothing else mattered. It was all right.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She was freezing. She lay in a fetal position on a cold, cement floor still dressed in her thin nightgown. Her hands were bound behind her back, and she supposed she should be grateful they hadn't stripped her before they'd dumped her here. Her body ached with the cold, her feet were numb and also bound, and she couldn't stop shaking. What was it with these shadow organizations and old, impossible to heat warehouses?

She bit down on her chattering teeth to keep from moaning out loud. She didn't believe for a moment that they were done with her, and she needed to pull herself together before she had to face her captors. It had been awhile. Imprisonments and interrogations were far removed from diapers, naptimes, and sippy cups. Unfortunately, her captors didn't give her the chance to adjust to the transition or strategize.

The men who entered the door and let it clang shut behind them were either not those who had visited the house or they had exchanged their Kevlar vests for business suits. For all of that, she thought they were the more worthy adversaries. There was that indefinable something about them that set off all of her warning bells.

They grouped around and stared down at her with curling lips like she was an unfortunate accident in the middle of their finest, Turkish rug. The col-Jack would have turned the tables on them if he had been the one caught in their disapproving gaze, but she wasn't Jack. She closed her eyes to shut the sight of them out and tried to let their disgruntled murmurs wash over her.

"Absolute foul-up." "Incompetent." "Should take the lot out and drop them in the Gulf." "Send a dozen men after a four-year-old, and what do we get?"

"Well," one of them finally got down to the business of what to do about her, "I suppose it could have been worse. They could have killed the goose that laid the golden egg...we'll get what we want as long as we have her. May take longer than we anticipated, but--"

Someone snorted in disgust, "Triple the cost."

The first man went on as though no one had spoken, "...this operation will be a success, gentleman. Leave her to me. I'll get you what you want." The rest happily took him at his word and trooped out. She opened her eyes to see their departing legs and found him smiling almost fondly down at her. She did not smile back. He turned and followed them out of the room, and she had no choice but to wait for him to return.

He came with two stacking chairs which he set up near her feet. "There now," he said with satisfaction. His voice carried no threat with it, and she found that more alarming than not. "Up you come then," he said and with a strong arm pulled her up to a sitting position. She gave a cry of pain. "Yes," he said as though she'd asked about the weather, "they did quite a number on you...but they assure me you asked for. Those were my men you killed, Dr. Carter...it is Carter isn't? As far as your work is concerned? Mrs. O'Neill's for neighbors and PTA meetings; Carter's for Astronomy Today and all that, right?"

While he rambled about nomenclature, she fought to find a way to surface under the long, unending wave of pain drowning her. He went on as though insensible to her sufferings. "Well, this is business, so Dr. Carter. I would have preferred you returned my men unharmed...at the least all alive, but I suppose it couldn't be helped. The question now is what do we do about you?" He put a hand to his mouth and assessed her with a thoughtful expression. "I think I can trust you to not cause me the sort of trouble you caused my men, don't you? I'm sure I can...because you don't want to die, do you, Samantha?" The menace level of his voice had risen dramatically. She knew she was finally hearing the voice of her adversary.

He lifted her chin to ensure she was looking at him. His eyes were dark and narrowed and gave nothing away. His voice once again mellow, he continued, "No, of course you don't. So-" he held up a knife in his right hand for her to see. Then he cut the ropes binding her hands and feet. She fought through the resulting wave of additional pain and managed not to cry out again.

"Good," he said. He grabbed her under an arm and yanked her up from the ground. Her feet scrambled for a purchase and between the two of them he hauled her onto one of the chairs. While she fought to stay conscious, he took out an ironed, white handkerchief and wiped her blood from his hands with a look of distaste. When he was done, he held it out to her, "Won't do much I suppose but perhaps better than nothing?"

She shook her head no. He shrugged philosophically and said, "Suit yourself," and if he realized that she couldn't have reached out and taken it regardless of what suited her, he chose not to show it.

She'd live...well, as far as her injuries were concerned anyway. It wasn't like she'd been crushed between two vehicles or anything. Beat up, kicked around, left on a cold floor in a weakened condition for a bit too long...but she'd live. The question was when the pain would fade enough the thought of survival would become a comfort instead of a bleak and unwelcome reality.

"Now, Dr. Carter...let's talk about General Jack O'Neill's daughter."

If he expected to get a rise out of her, he was disappointed. She had spent the last five years trying to think of Ally as Pete's daughter...trying to trick her mind into believing it so that even under the extreme duress of torture she would name Pete as Ally's father and deny the truth.

To herself it wasn't an easy story to sell-or buy. In everything but looks, Jack was unmistakably visible in Ally. So much so that at times, when she'd been missing him the most during the long years he was out of their lives and she'd caught sight of him in Ally, she'd wept. And now that he was very present in their lives; Ally acted more like him every day. She'd worked hard not to see it, not to ever acknowledge it; not to ever even in her own mind see her as his daughter.

It paid off. Her bewildered expression and her guileless, "Jack's daughter? He doesn't have a daughter...Ally's his step-daughter," gave less away then her interrogator's eyes.

"Come now, Dr. Carter..."

She looked as though a thought had just come to her, "Laira...are you saying Laira had Jack's daughter?"

"I'm talking about your daughter...yours and Jack O'Neill's."

"You've got it all wrong," she told him, shaking her head slightly and wrapping her arms around herself. Her nerves had begun to adjust to the change in her position and the pain was receding just enough that she could once again feel the cold eating through her.

"Not at all," he assured her. "We know the truth, Dr. Carter. It will do you no good to deny it. Now obviously you'd feel much more comfortable with some Tylenol and a nice, warm blanket or two." More like a shot of morphine and about a dozen of Janet's nice, warmed blankets. "I could arrange that...but, you can surely see that being cooperative would be to your advantage." Right, if my advantage was to destroy my daughter and get myself shot for the trouble.

"Jack had a son...he died," she said through chattering teeth. "He never had a daughter. Ally is mine. Her father was-"

"Jack O'Neill!"

"No...Jack was my senior officer. We wouldn't have-we didn't. Ally is Pete's. What could possibly make you think she was Jack's?"

"We don't think...we know."

"Someone has fed you a line."

"Hmmm...Ally was born thirty-nine weeks after Anubis' defeat. Thirty-nine weeks after Colonel O'Neill had used the Ancient device and received their knowledge."

"I never counted it out, but if you say so..."

"Ally was conceived while O'Neill was still under the influence of the alien device."

"Well, yes. He was in stasis, and he stayed there the next three months until the Asgard showed up. He certainly wasn't running around joining me on my honeymoon."

The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I think you are well aware of what I am talking about."

"If Ally was Jack O'Neill's, believe me I would be well aware of it...and why do you care? Last I checked this isn't quite the proper procedure for a court-martial...and that's what would have happened if Colonel O'Neill and I would have-he was on the short list for his first star. He wouldn't have thrown that away for a bit of sex on the side."

"But, this wasn't about sex, was it?"

"You're the one telling the story,"

He frowned at her. "Really, Dr. Carter, you are not making this easy on yourself. Sooner or later you will tell me what I want to know...why fight it?"

She shook her head helplessly at him. "I can't tell you what I don't know. You're working under a false assumption--someone has lied to you. Jack isn't Ally's father and I'll never say he was."

"It is neither a story nor a lie. Jack O'Neill had the knowledge of the Ancients and he fathered a child to pass that knowledge on."

"If the Ancients had genetic memory, it wouldn't work for Jack. He might have had their database but he was still human. Do yourself a favor--do me a favor--and borrow your kid's biology textbook. Brush up on the facts before you tear peoples' lives apart over a load of--"

"I'm growing tired of this," he said, and she could hear the malice behind his calm veneer.

She ignored it. "I'm a bit tired myself...and I really need to use your facilities, maybe get a coffee?"

He gave a small chuckle and shook his head. "Where is your daughter, Dr. Carter?"

She bit her lip and let the tears come to her eyes. "You tell me," she said with a shaking voice. "She was sleeping in her bed the last time I saw her...that was before your men invaded our home. I haven't seen her since-you tell me where she is!"

He blinked and for the first time she saw uncertainty in his eyes. "General O'Neill ran with her," he said.

"You don't know him very well if you believe that," she said.

"He took her to prevent us getting our hands on her."

"Where then?" she asked. "They told me they had men all around the house. They said no one could get out pass them. You've been double-crossed by your own men...and duped by whoever fed you the fantasy about Ally being Jack's."

He shook his head in denial. She thought for a moment the interview was over, but he rallied. "On that Al'kesh, before the defeat of Anubis, you and Colonel O'Neill plotted to create the ultimate weapon. A child you could manipulate to your will, a child with all the knowledge and power of the Ancients. I will find Ally, Dr. Carter. I will have what she possesses."

"Ally is a four-year-old little girl not a weapon. She has no power. And, she's..." she dropped her eyes, lowered her voice, and bit her lip before finishing, "...mentally disabled. She doesn't have the knowledge of the Ancients. She's barely aware she exists."

He switched gears. "Your name was on the short list for promotion as well, Dr. Carter. A few more years, you might have been looking at collecting a star of your own. General Carter, sounds pretty good, doesn't it? It had to be something compelling that made you walk away from that."

"I'll tell you what happened on that Al'kesh. I had one birthday too many. My clock was ticking and all that. I promised myself if we were able to stop Anubis, I'd walk away before it was too late for me to have what I'd spent all those years fighting to protect. Anubis was defeated, and I married Pete Shanahan. Ally was born nine months later, and I've never looked back..."

"You put on a convincing act," he said. He stood up and moved his chair against the wall near the door. "But, the DNA tests will tell the real story. General O'Neill is the father of your daughter." His eyes bore into her waiting for his words to sink in and shatter her nerves.

But, his trump card didn't take hers. She'd freeze to death before she had to worry about the results of any DNA test fingering Jack as Ally's father. She'd had the tests run herself, multiple times. Ally shared fewer genetic markers with Jack than she did with Pete. And that wasn't saying all that much. If all he had to go on were the DNA tests...they would be home free as far as whatever plans her captors had in mind for Ally.

"And when you get the results, will you give back to me what you've taken? Will you return my family, will you take back the nightmare of armed men invading our home, taking us from our beds, shooting up our house--will you give us back our peace of mind, our lives?

"I have a husband, a beautiful daughter, and two wonderful baby boys...or I did until your men came bursting into my home...now what do I have? You keep asking me where Ally is...what about the rest of them? Where's Jack? Where are my sons?"

He turned away from her and banged on the door. When it opened and he walked out of the room, he was the one that was shaking.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He did send someone--two big, burly well-armed someones--to escort her to a small bathroom which was even chillier than her prison room. She ran the water until it came hot and stood with her hands in it, letting the steam rise and warm her face. Without knocking, someone opened the door and tossed in a Wal-mart bag with a complete set of clothes. They weren't exactly her size, but close enough. They weren't her colors or style: bright orange sweats with a garish green stripe-presumably if she managed to make a run for it, they planned on being able to spot her in a crowd. But they were warm. She threw them on, huddled into their warmth, and decided she wouldn't complain.

She ran her fingers through her hair and looked at her bruised and battered face in the mirror. She'd seen better days. She closed her eyes and tried not to cry. Yesterday, she'd taken advantage of one of the last warm days of the fall and taken the kids to the park. Jacob had gone up and down the slide, laughing and squealing, proud to not need her standing at the bottom to catch him anymore. She had held Peter on her lap to swing. He'd grinned into her face and rocked back and forth to make her go higher. And today...where were they today? Were they safe? Were they even alive? They had to be.

Still-they'd lain so still and quiet the last time she'd seen them. She shuddered at the memory of their deathly, still little forms as she'd flicked off the light and left them behind. But, they hadn't been dead. She'd been careful with the doses...they would have woken up hours ago. They would have been fine, and if there was a problem Daniel would have been there with Janet. They were not screaming alone in the dark, locked in a soundproof room with no one to hear their cries. They weren't.

And Ally. She'd taken Ally down the slide on her lap. Something she would never have thought of attempting before the recent change in her. Ally hadn't stiffened in her arms, hadn't silently screamed in terror. She'd leaned back to see her face and when they'd reached the bottom, she had smiled. And then she'd stood up and taken her hand and led her back to the steps to do it all over again. One of those rare, perfect moments with her daughter. Her last.

She had to believe Ally and Jack had both gotten away unharmed because her captors were still searching for them. They were ok. And that had to be enough for her. Wherever Jack had taken Ally, even if she managed to get out of this warehouse alive, she had no way of calling him back. No way to tell him the attack was premature; based on suppositions that were soon to be proven wrong. He might come to that knowledge on his own and come home or he might stay in the wind forever.

He was right; she didn't regret saying yes to him. The little time they had had together would last her a lifetime if that's all she got, but she wanted more. She wanted a lot more.

~*~*~**~*~*

Sir whistled while they walked, a haunting, not-quite on tune rendition of Danny Boy. It was a song from his childhood, and she thought that was the reason he whistled it this morning. Surely not the words. Surely not those words this morning. "But if you come, and all the flowers are dying And if I'm dead, as dead I might well be." She looked up at him. He glanced down, and the whistle died on his lips as though he too had suddenly remembered the words.

It was a long hike, wherever it was he was taking her. The Spiderman shoes were well worn-in, but they were just a pinch too small so she could feel a blister forming where they rubbed over her left little toe. The rising sun had only made a partial job of warming the chilly night air, but in just her jacket she was hot and sweaty. His urgent desire to get as far from the river as they could made it hard for him to slow his long-legged pace down enough for her. She scurried to keep up with him and every little bit had to run just a bit to do so. He would slow down then but it never lasted.

The trail they followed meandered through a forest of pine trees, and she wondered if it reminded him of all the trails SG-1 had traveled on their many journeys...it did her. It wound up and down, sometimes sharply enough she had to grab hold of branches to keep from falling backwards as they climbed and twice, even though he held her hand and assured her she'd be fine, she'd sat down on her rump and scooted down after him.

They might as well have been on another world. The air was loud with the calls of birds, but the sounds of town life, which had always marked her life, were absent. More than once, they startled deer which flashed their white tails and ran quickly away. Watching them leaping over the fallen brush and undergrowth of the forest, Ally longed for their speed and grace. No one could catch them if they ran like the deer, she thought. But, even as she thought it, older thoughts in her mind assured her that bullets brought down deer every hunting season...and they gave her the images to prove it.

She held tightly to Sir's hand and fought the urge to crumple down onto the path in a tight-frightened ball and cry. Ally would have; Noah would have pointed a make-believe gun after them and fired.

Jack felt Ally drop his hand and looked down in amazement to see her take a pretend shot at the fleeing deer. "Pow!" she said, but it was only a whisper and tears were running down her cheeks. He swayed gently on his feet, caught his breath, and swallowed down his own tears. It was too much. Both what he was asking of her now and what he'd determined to ask of her before she'd even been conceived.

He took her fishing pole and drew her up into his arms. "You know," he whispered into her ear, "you are a kid in a million?" She didn't know what he meant, but she didn't care. She lowered her head onto his shoulder and slept. Fighting his own exhaustion, he trudged on.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

General George Hammond walked through the halls of the SGC. Nothing much had changed in the years since they'd been his halls and the people hustling through them had been his people. He'd been back now and again, keeping Jack in line and trying to keep the place running in his absence, but it wasn't the same. The salutes thrown his way were salutes to the visiting bigwig not to the man who watched their backs every moment of every day.

But, that man was gone. Missing...maybe in enemy hands, maybe in the wind, maybe dead. He needed to know which...the President, the Joint Chiefs, and the men and women he passed in these halls needed to know.

"Dr. Jackson," he said and held out his hand when he reached Jack's office and found Daniel pacing at the door. Daniel didn't look like he'd gotten any sleep in the time since he'd first woken the general up in the small hours of the previous night.

"General," he returned and shook Hammond's hand.

Hammond opened Jack's door and motioned Daniel in. "What can you tell me?"

"Not much, Sir," Daniel said with a sigh. He'd already given the general his detailed 'bill' of the night's events, and there was only a disappointingly small amount to add to it. "Blood in the hallway matches Sam's...Janet doesn't think there is enough there to get frantic over, but it's more than would come from only a scrape or two.
Just downstream from the house, someone dug around an old tree-recently, maybe in the night, maybe earlier. Could be something was stashed there...looks like whoever it was they took some pains to cover their tracks. We've got men canvassing the riverside..."

"What's your take on it, Dr. Jackson? Is the river a viable avenue of interest or just a red herring?"

Daniel hesitated only a minute before answering. "I think Jack probably escaped down the river and is half way to Timbuktu by now."

Hammond shook his head.

"You don't, Sir?" Daniel asked.

"I can't see Jack running...if he could get Sam and Ally out with him-fine, maybe. But even then, I think Jack would have a thing or two to teach anyone breaking into his home, threatening his family. If he could have gotten Sam and Ally out, and if Sam was in any shape to pilot a raft or whatever they might have had...I can believe he'd send them down the river. But, Jack? He'd have gone back and taken the intruders apart."

"If Sam wasn't in any shape to go it alone?"

"Right," the general agreed. "He'd have got them to safety...and then he'd have gone hunting."

Daniel nodded his head in agreement. Under any other circumstances, Daniel knew the general was right. Unfortunately, the general was missing a few key pieces of the puzzle. And Daniel wasn't about to open his mouth and spill the beans under the blinking red eye of the camera in Jack's office.

The general took his silence for granted and went on. "We'll see what the searchers turn up. It might be worthwhile to have them out tomorrow morning-talk to fishermen, see if anyone saw something."

"Good idea," Daniel said. "Anything else?"

The general shook his head, but then pointed his hand toward Daniel, "Let's not get too discouraged if nothing shows up for the next day or two...if Jack's out there and he's free, he might take the weekend to do whatever he's going to do.

He's due to show up here at 0700 Monday morning. We both know he is not the sort of man to walk away from his duty. If he can be here, he will. Let's give him until then before we flood the wires with this."

Daniel nodded again though he thought the need to protect Ally might be enough of a concern to override Jack's sense of duty to the SGC. Jack might be as arrogant as they came, but he did have the sense to know he was not indispensable to the program.

"In the meantime, I've heard rumors of who might be behind the attack...Agent Barrett of the NID and Major Davis are following up on the lead. If they have any luck, I want you and Dr. Frasier to join them before they move in. This is a SGC problem, and I want a hand in whatever goes down. And, Ally knows and trusts you...if things don't turn out the way we are hoping, she may need you." He left unsaid the reason he would send a medical doctor on such a mission.

~*~*~*~*~~*~*

They were almost to clear the forest when they happened upon a man walking a golden retriever. The man might have passed them by without a second look, but the dog thought a hello was in order. He pulled on his leash and jumped up on Jack to say hello. Ally, startled awake, got a quick lick on her chin before the man was able to pull the animal back.

"Sorry about that," he said sincerely. "He's just an overgrown puppy."

Jack accepted the apology with a noncommittal smile; Ally held tightly to him and kept her eyes on the dog. "Every kid has got to have a dog," he'd told Cassy years before. She'd taken his word for it. Carter had proven to be a harder sell. "I already spend my day cleaning up messes, tracking down shoes that Peter has carried away, and filling round little bellies...we do NOT need a dog!" were more or less her exact words. Seeing Ally's wide-eyed distrust of the animal, he figured she'd been wise in her refusal.

The man failed to notice Ally's alarm. He rambled on, "Alamo loves kids...got one about that size myself. Usually he'd be traipsing out here with us, but he started school this fall-Alamo misses him."

Jack nodded and smiled in understanding, but first day of school separation was galaxies away from his concerns for the child he held in his arms. Even if they wouldn't have been forced to run, that was a day that was never coming for Ally.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He'd passed the sign posted at the school down the street on his way home. Kindergarten screening. "What are we doing about that?" he'd asked Sam when he'd kicked off his shoes and flopped down onto the couch. The thought of Ally thrown into the midst of twenty-two loud and rowdy five-year-olds was not one he enjoyed.

Carter hadn't even looked up from her monitor. "Nothing-we're homeschooling."

He'd sat up, "Is that even legal?"

She'd looked up then. Looked up and laughed. "It's not exactly unheard of and yes, it's legal. Well over a million kids are homeschooled...and more all the time." She'd opened a new window and pulled up a very official website to prove it to him. As it loaded and he came to lean over her shoulder, she'd continued, "We're not putting Ally into the school system." She'd shuddered as she said it, and he'd known her thoughts matched his own.

He'd made appropriate sounding noises as she'd pointed out the effectiveness and legality of her suggestion, but he'd been thinking more about how good she smelled, how beautiful she was, and what the chances were he could convince Ally to lay down for a nap before the boys were up from theirs. Sam had looked back and caught him at it.

Sarah would have elbowed him and said, "Come on, Jack. This is Charlie's future we're talking about. Please, can you just pay attention for one minute!"

But, Carter, secure in the knowledge he trusted her judgment and would respect her decision, had laughed, put both her computer and her daughter to sleep, and made him a happy man.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He bit back a sigh at the memory. It didn't look now that Ally would be enjoying the benefits of either public education or homeschooling. The man looked at him, expecting a reply of one sort or another. He'd have preferred to have walked on without having to give anymore away, but he kept up his end of the conversation.

"Noah here's got another year before school...then I reckon I'll have to get a dog myself."

The man laughed. The dog, eager to be off again, pulled at the leash, and the encounter came to an end. Great, just great, Jack thought. The man would remember them.

He stood Ally on her feet. "Time for you to walk, sport...you weigh a ton." Ally took his hand and walked beside him wondering just how much of the information he'd given her was incorrect. She had it in her mind that a ton was 2,000 pounds, the size of a Volkswagen bug, and she did not weigh as much as a car.

~*~~**~*~*

Between her two escorts, she walked shakily back to her prison room through open warehouse space. A few, metal doors lined the walls. There were no windows. She had no way of telling how long she'd been unconscious or how many hours and days had passed without her knowledge. Hunger had not quite overridden her body's complaints of bruises and stiffness so she thought it was probably still just Friday.

Her captors had spared no expense in running their little operation, so she also assumed the DNA tests they were conducting would be extensive and complete. And they wouldn't accept the first results as conclusive...give them two days before they became resigned to the fact someone had made fools of them. Two days. If she hadn't escaped before that, she'd die in two days. They'd made no effort to keep her from seeing their faces, hearing their voices. She was on death row without any hope of appeal.

The man who had questioned her stood near the open door of her room and watched her with a veiled expression in his eyes. She raised her eyes and met his look. "Dr. Carter," he acknowledged as she walked by him as though they were colleagues passing in the hallways.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch you're name?" she asked. He gave her a small, amused smile as her escorts pushed her into the room. The door clanged shut behind them.

They apparently didn't expect her last days to pass in abject misery; while she was out they'd moved in a cot and sleeping bag. No pillow, but she still wasn't complaining. Someone had tossed a vending machine packet of two extra-strength Tylenol and a greasy bottomed McDonald's bag with breakfast on to the cot. The food was cold and there was no coffee but it took care of her hunger pangs. The Tylenol didn't do as much for her pain, but the comforting warmth of the sleeping bag was such a big improvement she had no trouble sleeping anyway.

And that pretty much comprised her existence: an occasional trip out to the bathroom; a not quite steady diet of Big Mac's and fries, Egg McMuffins and hash browns, and once, as a special treat, an apple pie; and sleep. The Tylenol had been a kindness that was not repeated.

For all his stated confidence that she would give him what he wanted, her interrogator did not return to question, goad, or threaten her. She gained no information about her surroundings-besides the possibility they were a close neighbor to Ronald, her captors, or their purpose. It was going to be a long two days.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~

Hammond laughed when he heard the news, and he was still chuckling when he passed it on to Daniel. "Call came through the President's private line. Never passed the screening of course, but when the tapes were reviewed the message contained a password that made sure it got sent on to the proper authorities." He pushed the transcribed record across Jack's desk to Daniel.

"Yep, O'Neill here. Would you tell the President I'm going to have to take a few days of personal leave? I'm a bit indisposed...nothing serious, I'll live but might not make it to the office until-oh, Wednesday or Thursday?"

"Jack called in sick?" Daniel said incredulously. "To the President?"

"That's my boy," the general said with a big grin. "He's all right. And I've received word from Davis and Barrett. They've got a pretty strong lead...they are tracking it down now. We might have something to work on soon."

"Good," Daniel said with a grin of his own. "The river search has turned up a couple of things. Search dogs unearthed a buried bag of supplies-including two Kevlar vests-several miles downstream from Jack's."

"No weapons?" Hammond inquired.

"No, but Jack wouldn't have left something like that where someone could accidentally happen upon it."

"No, he wouldn't have. Anything else."

"There's a place even further down the river where it looks like something about the same size was dug up. There are miles and miles of nothing but trees and brush along the river...lots of sheltered areas to come to ground. Kind of place Jack would love. AND, a man out walking his dog early yesterday morning ran into a fisherman and a four-year-old out that way. Neither exactly fits the right description, but with a little hair dye and a pair of scissors...it could have been Jack and Ally."

"They looked all right?"

"Yeah...the guy didn't think another thing about them until he was interviewed this morning."

"It would be a relief to know Ally's out of it when we make our move on whoever is behind this," Hammond said.

"I'm pretty sure we can count on it, Sir," Daniel said.

The general leaned back in Jack's chair-times like this, he wished he'd left him the good one. Jacob and Peter were up to their usual tricks tearing up the safe house they were staying at with their grandparents. Jack had Ally, and they were both apparently free and unharmed. For a reportedly, well-organized hit, the bad guys had come away with a very poor showing. They'd hold on to their one prize like a pit bull. Whatever their intentions when they had torn into Jack's house, they'd made no demands, offered no concessions for Sam's safety in exchange for political, financial, or military favors.

He was left with the unwelcome conclusions that they'd gotten their target. They weren't making their demands to anyone but Sam alone. She either held the knowledge or expertise to give them what they wanted. He was confidant, if she knew her family was safe, she wouldn't give them the time of day. But, could she know that? And what if it wasn't a matter of what she could give them, but of what they could take from her? If they were dealing with someone determined to carry on the research Adrian Conrad's people had started years ago...Sam may have never survived that first night.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ally had seen more of the world in the last day and a half than she'd ever seen before. They'd spent most of the previous day and night on a Greyhound bus or hanging around in depots. She felt exposed and trapped and absolutely exhausted from the constant need for vigilance and the tremendous energy she was investing in being someone she was not.

She looked out the window and pointed at cows and horses they passed, she smiled at people who looked her way, and twice she'd actually swallowed down her panic and remained standing and quiet while complete strangers couldn't resist rubbing a hand over her buzzed, fuzzy hair. After that she'd left the hot, sweaty cap pressed tightly on her head even when she drifted off to sleep.

At Sir's prompting, she'd said 'thanks', 'yes, please' and 'no, thank you'. Out loud to people she did not know. She'd dutifully said "OK, Dad" to countless things that had not been okay: "How about we take the bus, Noah?" "How about you stand here really quiet while I buy our tickets?" "How about we scoot over and let this nice woman sit beside us, Noah?" "Noah, why don't you tell her how old you are, what pop you want with your lunch, if you like riding on the bus, or one hundred and one other things you'd rather not talk about?"

As they traveled, they'd collected a pile of belongings that they had to juggle every time they changed buses: a yo-yo, packs of chewing gum, and fishing magazines for Sir; three children's books where for unknown reasons talking animals ran around like people and did things that made no sense, and coloring books with crayons for Noah who apparently liked talking animals and wasting time filling in pictures with colored wax; and a SUDUKO Challenge book for Ally who did not.

The knuckle over her left, middle finger was sore and red where, though she didn't know it, a writer's bump would one day form; she'd never handled a writing utensil of any sort before. She'd finished the last of the puzzles several miles back. It wasn't that she liked them anymore than the coloring books or saw a purpose in spending time doing them. But, Sir had grabbed it randomly off the shelf and said, "Thumb through this a minute. I've got to step over there and..." And she couldn't remember what. He'd parked her in too many aisles while he asked questions or bought tickets or who knew what he didn't want the cashier to remember seeing a man with a little boy doing. By the time he'd returned, the empty squares on the pages had held her captive.

"Noah, time to go, buddy," he'd said. When she'd simply continued to stare at the book, he'd taken a look at what he had handed her. Without a word, he'd taken it out of her hand and left her standing there while he paid for it. He'd given it back to her with a pen as soon as the bus was on the road again. She'd stared blankly at the pen a moment, and he'd positioned the fingers of her right hand awkwardly around it and used it to write 'NOAH" on the inside cover of the book. She'd rubbed her nose with her other hand and his memories of his mother's hand helping him form his name on paper for the first time flashed through her mind.

The challenge of the book had not been the puzzles but getting the hang of using the pen. He'd frowned at her beginning attempts and pursed his lips, but it was the retired teacher across the aisle who glanced over and said, "Might as well let him use his left...we quit trying to make everyone right-handed years ago," that saved the day. After that the numbers had flowed compulsively into the little squares until every single one of them was completed. She had not enjoyed the book and did not feel a sense of accomplishment finishing it.

"I want to go home," she said voicing what she did feel.

"I know," Sir said, "I know. Come here." She climbed obediently from her seat to his lap and lay against him. He ran his hand down her back and in a quiet murmur said, "I'm very, very proud of you...you are one brave little kid. Bet right now it feels like we'll be on a bus forever, but we won't. This is the last bus out...we should have lost anyone following us by now. Not that I think anyone was," he assured her when he felt her stiffen with alarm. "I think as far as anyone knows we disappeared into the night. I want to keep it that way...that's why we've been on the roads, switching buses and destinations so often. We'll go back the same way, but...I think we're safe."

"And Carter?" she asked sadly.

"I don't know anybody by that name, Noah. And I don't think you do either," he said. To anyone listening his tone may have sounded a bit harsher than was warranted but his lips had brushed the top of her cap and he'd pulled her closer while he spoke.

She blinked away tears and said nothing more. And he didn't either. His silence told her he had no answers for her...he knew no more about her mother's fate than she did.

He turned his eyes to the window and watched green mile markers and the browns of late autumn flash by. He thought of what he still had to do, ran through everything he had done to make sure he'd left no trail, and steadfastly refused to acknowledge the desolation in Al-Noah's eyes and voice.

But, when the bus finally pulled into the small, overcrowded depot and they'd collected all their belongings and stood watching it pull out on its way to its next destination, he'd made the call.

"Hello," Daniel's voice had sounded distracted but not devastated. Not like he was sitting vigil in the ICU or coming back from the funeral home. Not like that.

"Daniel," Jack said. All the carefully terse dialogue he'd rehearsed in his mind dissolved away. He fingered Noah's overall strap and played with the tight coils of the phone cord but couldn't come up with anyway to voice his fears.

There was the indrawn breath of recognition on Daniel's end of the wire, followed by a calm, "How are you?"

"Fine," he stammered back in reply. "We're fine...enjoying the trip. How about there?" And if his voice didn't tremble on the question, it was years of training and experience speaking not Jack himself.

"So so...the kids are off to their grandparents. Having a ball as you can imagine."

Jack swallowed painfully and struggled to not let the wave of relief washing over him bring him to his knees. "Good. Good," he eventually choked out. There was only silence from Daniel's end, so he knew the answer to his next question, but he still had to ask it. "So what else is new...that can't be all you know?"

"Afraid so..." He should be relieved he decided. He was relieved. They hadn't carried her out of their home in a body bag. He pressed his back firmly against the wall beside the pay phone and looked anywhere but Ally's strained, white face staring up at him underneath the bright reds and blues of the Spiderman cap. He became aware Daniel was still talking, "planning a get-together here in the next couple of days."

"I'm sorry," he interrupted, "I didn't get that?"

"I said Peter and a couple of his buddies are working to get everyone together in the next few days. Might not work out. Things are still in the air, but...it would be good to see some of our old friends." Jack struggled to gain some clarity of thought...Peter, Peter-did he know a Peter that wasn't still in diapers? Ok, Daniel give me a clue here. Peter and Paul. Paul. Paul Davis. They had a lead on Carter. A couple of days-they'd already had her for...he was losing it. Had it really been less than two days since they'd left her behind? "Are you still there?" Daniel said in his ear.

"Yeah, I'm here..."

"I was saying maybe you could call back in a couple of days, and I can let you know how it goes?"

"Sure," he answered though if things went according to plan, he'd be several hundred thousand light years from a phone by then. "Listen, suppose I should let you go. Just wanted to see how things were going and say thanks for taking care of things while I'm gone-the mail and all that."

"Not a problem," Daniel said easily as though they really were talking about emptying mailboxes and watering plants and the life of two very small boys hadn't hung in the balance. "Call me when you get a chance."

Jack had assured him he would, but he had hung up without a good-by because he was no better at voicing them now than he'd been at hearing them five years before.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It appeared the rest of the men had lost faith in her interrogator. Two of them spent a few uncomfortable-for her anyway-hours trying to get her to tell them where Jack and Ally had run. Failing that, they'd tried to get her to admit that Ally really did have the knowledge they were determined to possess.

They were sadly disappointed. They left her shaking and trembling on the floor behind them when they finally called it quits. She stayed there unsuccessfully trying to pull together the strength and will power to pull herself off of the floor. But, despite appearances, she had emerged from the encounter the victor. It was they who had retreated in defeat.

She thought their actions had been the panicked last ditch attempts of men who knew they were going down. They had gotten back the initial DNA tests and were desperately trying to salvage something out of what was turning into an unmitigated disaster on their part. By the morning, they would no longer be able to deny their error. And then they would begin working on containment and damage control.

She had wanted to believe that she'd get out of this alive. That she'd see her sons again. Have a chance to thank Daniel for saving their lives. Maybe in one way or another hear word from Jack that he and Ally were safely away. But, she'd had no chance at escape earlier, and now... It was taking more than she had to pick herself up off the floor. She wasn't going anywhere.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Pizza. What was it with all-night surveillance teams that required them to eat pizza? Daniel turned his nose up at the piece Janet offered him. Was there something in the sauce that was supposed to keep your eyes from shutting after five hours of staring through tinted glass and into TV screens or what?

"You sure? Last piece?" she asked.

"I'm sure...go ahead."

"All right," she said and took a big bite. They'd joined the rest of the assault team late the evening before, and they'd spent the rest of the night elbowing each other for room in the nondescript van full of monitoring equipment, too many people, and five large pizzas with everything on them.

Major Davis politely maneuvered his way pass other members of the team to reach Daniel. He indicated his mobile phone and said, "We've got the go-ahead. Intelligence confirms we're dealing with a break-away group from the Trust."

"No offworld involvement?"

"Nope, just home-grown bad guys with a power complex."

Daniel nodded. That simplified things anyway. "Any idea what they were hoping to gain?"

"Nothing, but I'm sure it's safe to say they hoped to capture General O'Neill and either use him as a hostage or use his family against him to coerce him into giving into their demands. Probably wanted access to the Stargate."

Daniel nodded his head thoughtfully and hoped the powers that be would be satisfied with that explanation and dig no further. "They've got to know that isn't going to work now."

"You'd think," the major agreed. He turned to the others in the van, and raising his voice slightly so everyone could hear detailed their plan of attack. He was still speaking when alarms sounded and someone called, "They are on the move."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*

She hadn't stirred the first time someone had stuck his head through the door to see if she needed to use the restroom and toss in her latest supply of fast food. She'd managed to climb on the cot and lay in a painful heap on top of the sleeping bag by the time they peeked in the next time. They pulled her to her feet and more or less drug her with them to the rest room. They tossed her in much as they had her uneaten supper. She struggled to hold onto the sink and stay on her feet. She was not up to crawling off the floor one more time.

The door opened and someone thrust in a duffle bag for her to take. The man met her eyes and grimaced in what she thought might be an apology. This was it then.

She grimly sat about the task of somehow dressing without passing out. Apparently, her captors had the same concerns. The apologetic man hesitantly joined her in the cramped room.

"Sit down," he told her and she unsteadily perched on the toilet. He wet a wash rag and handed it to her before filling a bright and cheery flowered Dixie cup with water. "Here," he said and handed her two chunky, white caplets. She didn't have to ask what they were. Heavy-duty painkillers. She'd practically lived off of them for a while there after the accident.

"Thanks," she acknowledged and drank them down.

"Sure," he replied. "Need more water?"

"Yes, please." He patiently refilled it and waited for her to drink it down before beginning to rummage through the clothes. "I'll do it," she said.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Carter...I don't think so. Not until that medication takes effect...and they're wanting to move out NOW. It's all right," he told her kindly, "I won't look." Though, of course, he had no choice because in the end she was barely capable of keeping herself from slipping off the toilet onto the cement let alone dressing herself. He worked quickly and efficiently and managed to get her out of the track suit and into the men's business suit they'd provided before the meds hit her empty stomach and made her violently ill. Wonderful.

Someone banged on the door, "Come on. What are you doing in there? Let's go." She rinsed her mouth and wiped her face, and her helper met her eyes in the mirror and tried to smile encouragingly.

"Where are they taking me?"

His eyes slid away from hers before he answered, "Home...it's over. We have the DNA results. We know we made a mistake...it's over." He'd been kind and gentle when he could have been rough and bullying so she swallowed down the accusing, biting words that rose in her throat and threatened to spew out. "My family?" she asked instead.

"They're safe from us," he said. And that had to be enough. He opened the door and took her arm to steady her as she walked out to face her death. There was a man's overcoat to struggle into, a hat to cover her once blond hair, a briefcase to complete the image, and two unsmiling men on either side of her when she walked out the door. Just a group of businessmen taking a break from an all-night power meeting.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The van wasn't situated where they could actually watch the group who came milling out of the warehouse's side door. With red-rimmed, burning eyes, Daniel squinted into the snowy feed showing on the monitor. It looked like the whole operation was on the move. Ten to twelve men moving in what appeared to be a disorganized group; swinging brief cases and kicking their polished shoes through the grit of the windblown debris of the alley. And in their midst, Sam.

At first glance, and even the second, anyone else might have taken her for one of the men. But, not Daniel who had followed her in her BDUs and military-issued headgear over field and dale for seven years and never once forgot she was a woman. It would take more than a hat and a man's overcoat to fool him.

Not trusting himself to speak, he pointed towards the screen and everyone leaned forward and squinted to see.

"She's hurt," Janet said. No one argued with the years of experience in her voice.

"Ok," Davis said, "Obviously, we're not letting them walk out of here with Major Carter." Sam wasn't a major anymore, but no one corrected him. The type of operation they were contemplating was forgivable with an Air Force major on the inside, not with an injured civilian in harm's way. Daniel thought the plan didn't have a chance of doing much besides turning this all but deserted back street of an industrial area into a battle zone, but Davis was right. If they let them walk with Sam, they wouldn't see her again until she was on the way to the morgue.

Davis got on the horn to other teams positioned around the building and gave the nod to his two snipers. "Go," he said, but they all knew their targets would be gone before they had time to get into optimal positions. The men slunk out of the van and melted into the surroundings like fog dissipating in the early morning sunlight. The rest of the team slung on their Kevlar vests, checked their weapons one last time, and prepared for battle.

Daniel gave Janet an encouraging nod as he silently slipped out the van door. Time to play the game. He crouched to run behind the shelter of an industrial-sized dumpster and let the group advance on his position before he slowly stepped out into their line of sight. "Good morning," he said. Sam's head jerked up at the sound of his voice, and the group shuffled to a stop.

The sounds of safeties being released clicked through the alley and from all around them. From their hiding places beyond Daniel and behind the group, men edge forward to show their presence. "It might be best if you surrender," Daniel said.

Apparently they didn't agree. Those nearest Sam made a grab at her, but she'd been ready for them. She crouched and whirled out of their reach. The snipers took the opportunity and didn't miss. Then both sides opened fire and shots threw from every direction. Sam dropped to the ground. For a heart stopping instant, Daniel who had ducked back behind the dumpster thought she had been hit.

"Sam!" he yelled and maybe she heard him over the sounds of the weapons fire and maybe she didn't. But, she turned her head, looked at him, and held out her hand. Without hesitating, he flung his handgun out to her. She was firing into the midst of the men around her before he was even sure he'd gotten it to her.

It was all over almost before it had begun. The gunfire faded away. It was replaced by approaching sirens. One of the downed men groaned in agony. A rasping gurgle came from another and then ended abruptly. The assault team scurried in quickly, kicking guns from limp, outstretched hands and burning off the last dregs of the adrenaline that had permeated the alley an instant before.

Daniel didn't waste time worrying about the men. He rushed to Sam and bent over her. "Are you hit?' he asked urgently and before she could get out an answer Janet was dropping to her knees at their side.

"I don't think so," Sam said, but her mind wasn't in the alley strewn with broken bodies. "The boys, Daniel...did you get the boys?"

"Yeah, yeah, I did," he assured her. "They're fine...giving Hank and Lois a hard time as usual. Asking for you."

She rolled onto her back, put a hand over her mouth, and began to cry. Janet ran a practiced eye over her. "Are you coughing up any blood? Passing blood in your urine?" Sam shook her head to each question and looked up at Daniel.

He answered her own questions as well as he could. "Jack's called in. He and Ally are ok. I don't know how they got out or where they are, but they are ok."

Janet finished with her initial assessment of Sam and turned to call to Major Davis, "We'll need an ambulance here!"

Sam reached out and caught her arm. "Please, Janet...I want to see my babies. Please can't you let me go home?"

"Sam, I'm sorry. I can't just stick a band-aid on this. But, we'll get you settled at the hospital, and Hank and Lois can bring the boys up to see you. Ok?" Janet exchanged a quick glance with Daniel over Sam's head...home with its bullet-ridden walls and dried blood on the carpet was the last place she would be going even if she didn't look like she'd been worked over.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ally had never been to the Mountain before but when she caught sight of it she felt like she was finally coming home. They went in through a 'backdoor'. Not one she recognized from his memories; one he'd carved out of the base's extensive security system sometime in the years he'd lived without her. It was a lot more complicated than the ones she was familiar with, and she guessed at one point or another he'd had to use the others and let security seal them shut behind him when they'd traced his steps.

He tinkered with the security feed going in. Cutting out just enough cameras that it looked more like a glitch than a purposeful action. He hated to do anything to undermine base security-well, as far as fending off actual threats anyway-but he needed a clear, unobserved, unmarked path.

They very quickly ran into a glitch of their own. The base was on alert. He'd picked the quietest hours of the SGC's typically quietest day, but the halls were swarming with activity. All wasn't peaceful in Oz.

Pressing himself and Ally tightly against a wall in what should have been a more or less deserted hallway, holding a warning finger to her mouth, and waiting for his own people rushing by to detect them and give them away, he knew everything was up. He was minutes away from getting this child he loved so much to a place of safety, but...his place was here. In these concrete halls, buried under a mountain, protecting not just one little girl but an entire planet and those that depended on it for their safety.

He took a deep breath, smiled encouragingly at Ally while trying not to see how small and vulnerable and dependent on him she really was, and reported for duty.

Their appearance caused quite a stir. "I think that's my chair," he said from the doorway to the worried group clustered around his desk. Every head in the room whipped around and stared in shock.

Hammond was the first to pick his jaw up off the floor. A slow smile stretched across his face, and with a gracious nod of his bald head, he stood up and gave Jack back his chair. He settled into it amid what seemed like a thousand 'Welcome back, General's. Ally who'd tried to disappear behind him when every eye had turned their way, crept under the desk and hunkered next to his legs. Without looking down he put a comforting hand on her shoulder and said, "Someone want to tell Siler he really needs to check the junction box near Storage Room G? Seems someone's messed with the security feeds down there. Tell him it's unfortunate he won't be able to get the camera to this office back online, but...we are in a crisis after all. Some things just can't be helped." And then, "Well, what have you gone and done while I've been out? Someone want to fill me in?"

It wasn't news he wanted to hear...but then it never was. He regretted the day he'd said 'sure, why not' to Daniel and the geeks and let them play around with those stones. It wasn't like they didn't have enough problems in their own galaxy. Oh no. They'd had to thumb their noses at someone else's nightmare and put a 'kick me' sign on the Milky Way. Not one of his better command decisions.

So the Ori were on their way. Way more ships than anything he had to throw at them. He stretched out the kinks riding more or less two days in a Greyhound bus had left in his neck and wondered how they were going to get out of this one.

Under his desk, Ally was stricken with a horror and dread that had nothing to do with a room full of strangers. The Ori. She knew of them. Knew of their evil and of their power. Everyone in that room knew they had to be stopped, but none more than Ally. Images, thoughts, and stirring speeches in a language she could not yet fully understand flashed and shouted through her every synapses. Hidden under the desk, her little body rocked and shook with the power of their fears, their convictions, and their resolve. If their legacy was ever to be used, this was the time. The Ori were an enemy surpassing even the Replicators.

One day had come.

She struggled to exert control over her own mind; to quiet the turmoil and rise above her own fear to a place where rational thought was possible. She concentrated on the Sir in her mind. For all his restless energy and need for action, when the situation called for it, he had the ability to still all his thoughts and focus only on what mattered. A natural ability that years in command had honed in him. One he'd passed down to her as a gift without knowing it. One that if she could apply it might allow her to save his world.

Slowly, she drew his calm around her and carved out a quiet place for herself in the midst of their upset. From there, she began to sort out the situation. She was at a distinct disadvantage having no knowledge of what had happened in the many, many years since the Ancient database had been compiled or of how the Ori had discovered the Milky Way Galaxy and its defenseless multitudes. Still, she knew their ways, their strengths, and their limitations.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Daniel had had a million things to attend to, and he hadn't meant to climb into the ambulance and hold her hand for the trip. Janet was with her; she was going to be ok. He should have been able to let her go without him. But...it was the second time she'd been in the back of an ambulance in less than five months. He nodded to Davis and Barrett, scrambled in after Janet, and smiled down reassuringly into Sam's face as he took her hand.

Like good little children, he and Janet had both turned off their cell phones for the ambulance ride in compliance to the posted request. It was only when Janet and the emergency room staff of her hospital had whisked Sam away behind closed doors that he began to think about summoning a ride back to the warehouse where he knew cleanup would be ongoing for the next several hours and switched his phone back on. The recall order was terse and imperative, and he obeyed it with the same speed and urgency that he'd responded to Jack's panic button.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The group in the room began to filter out until only the two generals and the little girl hiding under the desk separating them remained.

"Good to have you back, Son," Hammond said.

"Thank you, Sir," Jack answered.

"I don't know where you've came from or where you've been but..."

"Yes, Sir."

"With this hitting the fan, I haven't had time to receive a full report, but I think you'll be happy to know assault teams took down the folks who attacked your house."

His thoughts and Ally's full of the ramifications of the Ori's impeding attack both came screeching to a halt. "Carter?" he asked in a voice suddenly harsh with fear and dread and hope.

"She's being transported to the Academy Hospital. Dr. Frasier's with her. And Daniel. Major Davis reports her injuries are not life-threatening, but that's all the details I had time to receive."

Jack nodded his head slowly but couldn't find the words to respond. Ally climbed out from under the desk and into his lap. She was crying silent tears, and if they'd been alone he would have been as well. General Hammond swallowed down the lump in his own throat and stepped out of the office to give them time to absorb his news.

Carter was alive...alive and going to stay that way. There were no words to express their relief and joy at that news. Not then when their fears and guilt over leaving her behind was still so strong and overwhelming. Not while the truth of the general's words was nothing compared to the strength of the images their minds had conjured up over the last fifty-some hours. Not in the time, the current emergency would grant them. With a pat on her back, he gave up the attempt and turned back to contemplating the fate of the universe.

She recognized the signal and did the same. "Tell me how the Ori found us?" she said. "What do you know about them? What are their numbers? And how much do they know about this galaxy?"

He looked down at her, and she saw in his eyes the minute he realized what he held in his lap. "What do you know about the Ori?" he asked in turn.

She grinned up at him and said, "Enough."

The End

Epilogue:

He took one last breath of breathable air and girded up his figurative loins before entering the hospital. He hated the place...places, actually-the infirmary, the civilian hospital, or this one-they were all horrible places to lie around in and even worse places to visit.

But...he hadn't seen Carter since he'd almost glimpsed her heading down the hall in the dark to get Jacob and Peter. Daniel had told him she was fine. Janet had spoken to him twice on the phone and assured him she would recover without incident. Hank had told him she'd be up and at 'em in no time, but he and Lois would plan on keeping the boys for a while. General Hammond had called from Washington to say he'd stopped by on the way out of town, and she was going to be just fine. Even Walter had remarked he'd dropped by and said 'hi', and she was looking well.

He was apparently the only one who hadn't found the time to see his own wife. The Ori's timing could not have been worse if they'd been in league with the group who'd come after Ally. Neither set of bad guys were going to be causing him any more trouble; however, the paperwork they'd left behind them would be a millstone around his neck for days, if not weeks, to come. But, he'd finally managed to dig himself out from under the messes they'd left behind them long enough to escape the Mountain and here he was stepping through the door of one of his least favorite places on the planet.

She was asleep when he stepped cautiously around the cloth curtain separating her from the cadet in the next bed who'd hit the wall a little too fast and a little too hard out on the obstacle course.

Half of him had hoped the Shanahans would have the boys up for a visit while he was there. He'd have liked to seen for himself that they too were really just as 'fine' as everyone kept telling him they were. But, this was better. Like old times. How many times had he sat in a chair and waited for her to wake up? How many times had he sat watching her sleep hoping everything he was feeling wasn't broadcasting itself all over the infirmary and out into the hallways?

They'd danced around each other for seven years, and to one degree or another he thought he'd loved her from the very first day they met. Not in the wanting to spend the rest of his life with her sort of love. More of the impersonal love a man naturally felt for a beautiful woman. Love was possibly too strong a word for it...appreciation maybe. He'd had a deep, heartfelt appreciation for her from the moment he'd seen her.

That had rapidly deepened to something more as he'd had time to get to know her a bit. He'd immediately loved her quick mind and hadn't been a bit put off with her 'yes, I'm a woman-how astute of you to notice-now can you just deal with it and let us get down to business' attitude. That was a proactive reaction common to most of the women in the military he'd run in to.

By the time, they'd returned from that first mission, he'd just as willingly have offered to take her home as he had Daniel and later Teal'c. But, of course, she hadn't needed him to. She'd been strong and independent and more than capable of making her own way in the world...and he'd loved that about her, too.

Sometime over their first few trips through the Gate, she'd learned her gender wasn't a liability as far as he was concerned, and he'd discovered a lot more reasons to love her. She laughed at his jokes and kept her complaints to herself. She was way smarter than him but she never forgot he was the colonel. She was also a better shot than him, but she didn't feel the need to point it out every chance she got. She was a fine, disciplined soldier, and he'd loved her for it just like he'd loved most the men he'd trained and fought with through his years in the service. Every time they walked together through the Gate, she'd proven her worth.

And somewhere along the line, he'd let his guard down. He'd forgotten she wasn't just another one of the guys, forgotten she wasn't just a fellow officer. He'd forgotten she was a woman. Oh, not in the sense he no longer saw her as beautiful or didn't enjoy the chance to watch her six. But, in the sense that he'd forgotten he needed to be careful or one day he might wake up and realize he didn't just love her but was IN LOVE with her. As in wanting to spend the rest of his life with her. As in wanting to protect her, care for her, laugh with her, make love to her, and spend every possible moment he could making her smile.

By the time he'd remembered, it had been too late. He'd spent years painfully dealing with that mistake, never acknowledging it, pretending even to her that it hadn't happened. He might not have fooled anyone-Hammond had certainly known before he'd fired that Zat the second time and Janet, too. Both of them trying to quietly talk around the subject while he'd resolutely refused to acknowledge it even existed.

No, he probably hadn't fooled anyone, but he'd given it a very good try. Good enough it had become part of the very nature of their relationship. He'd proposed and married her without once telling her he loved her. Of course, she had accepted and gone through with it without saying the words, too. They were in some ways very much alike.

Which was why times like this, even now with rings on their fingers, were still awkward. They'd spent too many years not saying the things that needed said. If all she would do was wake up, see him there, and smile...it would be enough. He could go back to the Mountain and do what needed done knowing she really was fine.

But he owed her more than that. He owed her the words to express how he felt about her, how he needed her, how the thought of her death was more than unbearable.

For the most part, those weren't the kind of things he knew how to express. Or she knew how to accept from him. For a while there after the accident, he hadn't been able to stop saying the words as though he needed to get out every one he'd ever swallowed down instead of uttering. His gushiness had amused her only slightly more than it had made her uncomfortable. She'd been as relieved as he when he'd gained the emotional equilibrium to give it a break.

So he sat and watched her sleep and decided he could get by with his old standbys: a lame joke or two, a bit of sarcasm, and a cynical remark. Somehow she'd always managed to get the message behind them before, and he guessed she would again.

Unfortunately, she woke up before he'd gotten around to coming up with just the right comment.

"Hey," she said and gave him a smile.

"Hey yourself," he answered quietly. She reached out her hand and he took it. Wordlessly he patted it. His usually razor-sharp wit had abandoned him.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Umm..." he looked blindly at his watch for an eternity. "Not long," he finally stammered out.

"You ok?" she asked him.

In answer he shifted to the side of her bed and very carefully stretched out beside her. He laid his head on her shoulder and shook it. "No, Carter," he said. "I'm not ok. You know how I hate hospitals. You've got to quit ending up in them because I think it's going to kill me."

"Ok," she said. "Next time, you can have the bed and I'll take the chair. Fair enough?"

"How about we just stay home and order pizza instead?"

"Doesn't sound very adventurous to me."

"Adventure is overrated."

"Yes, Sir," she agreed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It didn't rain the day he brought her home that second time. It snowed. A thick, white heavy snow that blanketed their temporary home like a welcome home banner.

In the euphoria and excitement following the annihilation of the Ori, he'd optimistically assumed a couple afternoons stolen from the paperwork would be all that was needed to make their house once more livable. Replace a few windows, patch up a few holes in the sheetrock, slap on a dab of paint here and there--it would be as good as new.

Daniel had gone silent when he'd mentioned he planned on dropping by the house to see how much work needed done, but Jack still hadn't cottoned on.

Carter, lying in her hospital bed with Jacob and Peter bouncing around making her nervous, had gone white when he'd told her he and Ally were on their way out to the house. "You're not taking Ally out there," she'd said. He'd thought she was overreacting, but to humor her, he'd left Ally behind when he went out.

The gaping, black holes in the walls, the dried blood in the hallway, the chalked outlines, Ally's shattered picture, and Jacob's red blanket left behind in the secret room had convinced him. He'd returned to the hospital as white as Carter. "So," he'd said, "anything in particular you want in a house?"

His desk had still been covered with a million piles of paperwork that needed filled out in triplicate over the whole Ori thing. And every piece of it painstakingly reviewed and reexamined twice that many times to make sure he hadn't inadvertently let the truth slip. No one must ever know that the defeat of the Ori had not been the result of quick thinking and action by the trained men and women of the SGC (though they had behaved with valor and he'd have the whole base up for commendations if he could) but the knowledge of a people long dead in the mind of a little girl. He hadn't had the time to devote to house hunting.

The Shanahans had once more ridden to his rescue. Finding a furnished rental house ready for occupancy in the middle of a housing crunch had to have been a task almost as insurmountable as defeating the Ori, but they'd pulled it off. The six-month lease would give them time to buy another house, and, in the meantime, they wouldn't be living on the streets.

Carter had been agitating to get out of the hospital from the very first day. Janet and her staff had not stood a chance at keeping her in for any length of time. The family had had to spend a few days imposing on Daniel, but now they were home. He grinned over Ally's cap at her as he killed the ignition.

She smiled back. While he carried enough flowers and balloons into the house to start a flower shop in their new living room, she and Ally climbed out of the truck and stood with their mouths open catching snowflakes on their tongues.

With Janet's stern doctor's voice echoing in his ears, he almost didn't do it. But he'd never been one to listen to medical advice, so behind the shelter of the truck he quickly packed a handful of snow into a ball-

"Don't do it, Sir," Carter said without even turning. He nonchalantly dropped the snowball and carried in the last of the flowers. He stomped his boots heavily on the wooden steps of the porch and left them in the ensuing quiet.

Carter grinned at Ally. Ally looked at her. Carter had given her the gifts of life, love, unconditional acceptance, understanding, patience, and sacrifice. And in return, Ally had a gift for her as well. She reached out and took her mother's hand. She pulled it so that Carter squatted down beside her, the remnants of a grin still on her face.

"What is it, Sweetheart?" Carter asked.

And for the first time, Ally answered her. "I love you." Carter closed her eyes and then opened them again. She smiled at Ally and pulled her close for a long hug.

"I know," she whispered in Ally's ear. "I know."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The postmark was dated the Monday after her arrival at the hospital. It had been rerouted from Jack's old house, to Daniel's apartment, and finally to the rental which still didn't explain why it had taken three weeks to catch up to her.

She'd received numerous postcards like it before: a far-away, exotic scene with the scrawled words "Wish you were here". All the years he'd sent them, he'd never bothered to write anything else besides her name and address...but this one was different--he'd included a note.

"Hey, hope this reaches you in good time. We're enjoying our vacation-no tigers or bears. This place reminds me of Roswell. You should bring the kids and join us. I'm sure George could give you a lift."

There was no sentimental closing at the end or even a sloppy 'Jack', but that was all right.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"How did you know it was safe to come in?" she'd asked him while she was still lying in her hospital bed.

He'd pulled the string of a balloon with 'Get Well Soon' emblazoned on it and let it pop back up. "Jack?" she'd asked again.

He'd turned to her then. "I didn't," he'd said, and she'd known then that he'd been on his way offworld. That he'd intended to take Ally and disappear forever. It was what she'd asked him to do, but...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She saw now, she'd been wrong; he'd never meant to leave her behind forever. He'd intended for her to bring the boys and join Ally and him offworld. He'd dropped the postcard into a mailbox on his way to the Mountain. On the way to the Gate that would have taken them to some planet where he had access to a ship of one sort or another. Which would have taken him and Ally to a world where she would have been as safe as she could be.

'This place reminds me of Roswell.' Roswell with its little green men that just happened to look a lot like his old buddy Thor.

He would have taken Ally to the Asgard after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The doorbell rang again. Assistant Chief Francis sighed. At least it wasn't his beeper. He could count on one hand the Halloweens he had actually not been called into work over his many years on the force. But, he thought as he hefted himself out of his recliner for at least the dozenth time that evening, working the holiday might be preferable to being stuck with the door answering detail at home. He was tempted to dump the rest of the candy in the bags or pumpkins or whatever whoever out there on his front porch was holding, lock the door, and turn off the lights.

Picking up the big bowl, he plastered an almost welcoming smile on his face and opened the door.

"Trick or Treat," the tall man holding a chubby baby in his arms said, but neither he nor the little, dark-haired boy at his feet held out a bag or anything else for treats.

The chief recognized them immediately. "Dr. Jackson," he said.

"Hi, I though--I thought you might want to know how things turned out the other night. That you made the right choice."

"I saw the report of the shooting downtown...the woman?"

"Right. She's going to be fine. And so are Jack and Ally."

The chief nodded. He squatted down and said to Jacob, "How about some candy, big guy?"

Jacob smiled at him and accepted the offered Tootsie Rolls. "Fanks!" he said in his little boy voice.

Chief Francis straightened back up. Daniel met his eye, "That's what we came to say-thanks."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~