It was Monday morning and Colonel Jack O'Neill had just sat down at his desk with his first cup of coffee. As he shuffled the papers from out of his IN basket to the center of his desk someone rapped sharply on his door.
He had just eaten breakfast with Daniel and Teal'c so he wasn't expecting them to show up at his door, much less knock on it, cause they wouldn't anyway...so three minus two equaled one and it must be Carter. "Come in."
He was wrong. It wasn't Carter, it was Doctor Janet Fraiser complete with her white Napoleonic Power Monger jacket. "Good Morning, Doc. What can I do for you and have a cup of coffee, it's fresh."
She looked at him seriously and stepped directly in front of his desk. "Colonel, may I speak with you?"
"Of course you can." He tried to look calm and reply affably while wondering Why the hell is she looking at me like that for? O'Neill indicated the uncomfortable looking infamous tan, vinyl chair. "Have a seat." I've got to get another chair. That chair is gonna get me killed one day. He got up made a circular track to the Mr. Coffee and reheated his cooling cup. "Are you sure I can't offer you some coffee?" He tried not to sound like he was babbling, he but thought he might be. "It's some of Daniel's bean stuff. He just ground it this weekend."
Fraiser remained sitting prim and proper on the vinyl chair. "No thank you Colonel, I've already had my two cups this morning."
He retraced his steps back to behind his desk. "Well, you're not here for my coffee and I haven't missed any appointments that I know of...so why are you here? Not that you shouldn't come here, I mean, you're all ways welcome here, anytime...just why now?" Jeez, I sounded pathetic. Why is she here? She never comes here. What have I done? Or the team done? Daniel...had he had an appointment on Friday?
Doctor Janet Fraiser watched Colonel O'Neill as he sat down in the old-fashioned wooden desk chair. She had him cold. He doesn't have a clue why I'm here, and he's scared spitless. Janet kept a straight face. "How is Doctor Jackson doing? I heard he called in sick on Friday and spent the weekend with you." It wasn't really an accusation of anything, but she was curious and he might drop his guard.
"Daniel?" God, it was Danny, I'll kill him right after she leaves. "Uh, Daniel's fine...actually, he'd come over and we'd uh, stayed up late and uh, well he's got a few billion hours of comp time due him, o I let him sleep in." That was sort of true anyway. "Why? Was there a problem? Do you want to see him?" Jack had the phone in his hand all ready.
"I only need to see him if he's ill, Colonel. But you say he's fine so...no, I don't." She remained stone-faced. "But you told the Officer of the Day that he was ill."
"No, I said he wasn't feeling well." That had been true enough, Jackson had been a Danny-sicle when he'd pulled the young man down off his roof Friday morning at three thirty a.m. He had almost called her for advice but after a cup of hot chocolate, a hot shower and eleven hours of sleep Daniel had seemed to recuperate nicely. The man worked too hard and then the vision thing had shaken him up a little...hell, it had shaken Jack up a lot after he'd heard the whole story. Ghosts on his observation deck he didn't need. Though if I have to have one, at least it was someone I get along with, kinda.
"So Dr. Jackson spent the night with you and he felt better the next morning?"
"Yea, yea he did." Jack nodded enthusiastically. "Woke up about noon and ate me out of house and home. You know Danny. Three things he does really well is translating, working, sleeping and eating."
"Actually that's four things, Colonel O'Neill."
"Uhn, yea," He agreed brightly. "Yes it is." They sat a moment and looked at each other, two combatants measuring their Adversary. "Can I 'do' something for you, Doc? I mean you seldom come to my office. Can I help you in some way?" Pathetic, Jack, really pathetic.
"Well, actually Colonel, Major Carter and I had dinner together the other night..."
Oh, god...she heard about it, Carter told her... I'm a dead man... d-e-a-d. He cocked his head to the side and gamely tried to appear interested without confessing anything vital. "Oh?"
"She said that she had a very 'interesting' evening after the last bar-b-cue." There, Jack, worm your way out of this one. She smiled menacingly at him.
Shit, now I have to kill Carter too. "Oh, she did, did she?"
"Yes, she then asked me some rather interesting questions for a woman in her position."
"Wha...erm, what position would that be, Doc?" He continued on bravely. Missionary...oh, god... I did not think that! I SO did not think that!
" Her position as an unmarried, active-duty female Officer in the U.S. Air Force. She told me that she and Doctor Jackson were considering some actions that might not be in her best interest, career wise." She continued to look serious. There, Bucko. Chew on that!
"Her best interest?" O'Neill looked at the Doctor; surprised that she would approach him with this. "Her best interest?" Like I can MAKE Carter do anything she doesn't want too. He knew that she knew, he just couldn't believe that not only could Janet not think was a good idea but that he had enough sway over Carter to persuade her to do something she didn't want to.
"Colonel, permission to speak freely?" Like you could stop me!
"Of course, Doctor." Like I could stop her?
"Colonel O'Neill, it has come to my attention that the other evening, while in your cups, you made a very inappropriate suggestion to two of your subordinates." Janet put on her best Military Doctor/Major face. "While it won't affect Doctor Jackson's career AT ALL, it will put a great strain on Major Carter's future in the U.S. Air Force. Now, I know you didn't do it in your capacity as their Commanding Officer; but you did overstep your bounds as both a friend and authority figure. Just the fact that you even 'think' it's a good idea; holds enough sway with the two of them to even consider actually 'doing' something like this is evidenced by the time and effort that they are putting into 'researching' this idea of yours. Major Carter has the potential to go a long way in the Air Force, to succeed where other women have been stymied in their career progression. This could directly effect her advancement and effectively reduce her future capability to both succeed in her career and make rank. Colonel, I find it reprehensible that you would use your influence to even suggest such activities between your subordinates." Janet watched the older man's face shift into his 'resistance' mode. For a split second she felt badly that she was doing this but it had to be said. So what do you say about that, Jack?
O'Neill sat and thought for several minutes. He couldn't fault Janet. He knew she was right. It shouldn't be that way, but it was. There was always going to be someone in Carter's chain of command that would look askance at her. Either they would see her as an unwed mother, or the wife of Dr. Daniel Jackson, a civilian or Jack O'Neill, a retired Colonel. She would no longer be viewed as a career officer: but a woman, a mother, a wife or something else. Someone else. The question was...would it be enough to satisfy Carter; or would a glass ceiling lock her into a position that she would find unacceptable. He couldn't answer that, only Samantha Carter could.
He sighed and looked over at his adversary, if that was what she was. Then he realized that no, she wasn't. She was Carter's friend. Janet Fraiser was someone who had suffered the same slings and arrows of outrageous fate that Carter had as a woman in the Air Force. A woman who was a single mother and would always be different than her colleagues. The sad part was, it was sort of his fault there too. If they hadn't brought Cassandra home with them from her decimated planet, Janet would still be a single woman. Not a re- constituted parent for an orphan girl. So, what could he say? He sighed and ran his hands through his graying hair.
"Doctor Fraiser, you are correct." O'Neill replied, deciding that honesty was the best here. "Guilty as charged. I did make an inappropriate suggestion to them when I was, as you so delicately put it, in my cups or more precisely drunk to the point of telling them how and what I really 'felt' about them." He looked up at her. "My only excuse is that I care too much for the both of them and that may not be good enough." He sighed and put his hands on his head, leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling for a minute to gather his thoughts. "You see, Doc. One of the disadvantages of living past, long past when you expected to is that you can see your mistakes." He shifted back down and looked across his desk at her again. "I had everything a man could want, Doc. I had it all...a nice house, a beautiful wife, a great kid...but I screwed up. I thought my career, my job, was more important than them. So, I played the game and did my job. I was gone too much, didn't give enough, didn't try hard enough and I fucked it up. I lost my boy, my wife left me, the house didn't matter without them and the job just seemed like so much of a bad, pitiful joke." He got up and walked across the room to the wall where he stared unseeing at his awards. "I learned too late that my life had been meaningless. That it wasn't worth living anymore. Then I met this guy, this geeky, nerdy guy who managed to get through all my self-hate, my pity and my callousness. And I started to care again, but when I got back... well, it was too late. I had lost it all but because of him; I started to find things to live for again. Then I met this other person, a young woman, whom I started to care about also...way more than I should, like him. And then I saw them start to lose people, people they cared about, saw them going the same way I had." O'Neill turned around to face the Doctor. "Janet, the one thing that I have learned in my misspent, godforsaken life is that things and places and papers on the wall, they don't mean a goddamn thing...not in the long run. What means anything at all is that you're happy with yourself, that you've got someone to hold on to, and that you do what you love with whom you love. And they do love each other, hell, in a perfect world they probably would have met and fallen in love anyway."
"But Jack." Fraiser said softly. "What about her feelings for you, and yours for her?"
"After all you've put me through and you ask me that?" He looked at her in amazement. "Sure, I love her and she loves me and I love Danny and he loves me but they love each other like nothing you've ever seen. And believe me, that's way better." He stopped for a moment, then continued on. "They're like...equal. I can't even begin to keep up with them. Not an hour after Carter met Daniel, they were off...talking about planetary shift, and Gate co-ordinates and figuring out the right mathematics to program the computers to make everything work. God, it was...scary." He laughed. "Keep up? Hell, I couldn't even see their dust. And they're still doing it. Danny'll say this and then Carter'll say that and off they go, spinning off into the stratosphere like an F-17. So high and fast, no human eye can track them." He laughed and shook his head. "You've seen them. It's like trying to watch a stealth bomber in action. You saw it take off but suddenly there's bombs everywhere and you swear by all that's holy you don't know where they came from."
Fraiser had to join his laughter at his analogy. She had to admit...he was right.
"Look, Doc." He straightened up and tipped his head to look at her. "If Sha'uri had not been taken, if Martouff or Nareem hadn't died, well I would never have made any such suggestion. Not even if I had been drunk on my ass. But, they did...and my two kids were suffering. All I did was make a suggestion. Hell, the next day I went to both of them and tried to take it back. But I guess they kinda like the idea or those two sure wouldn't be paying the attention to it that they are. You know they're both stubborn enough and damn well smart enough to know what they want and if this is what they want...I'm all for it. They can stay in the SGC, do their jobs and still have a little frosting on their cake and eat it too. Why the hell not? And if they decide against it, well, they'll tell me where to get off. They've certainly done that before."
She had to nod. They had done it before and she did know they'd buck Jack O'Neill in a heartbeat if they didn't think it was correct...and feasible. "You're right." She finally admitted. "But Colonel, it had to be said."
"Yea, I suppose so...and I guess it's better from you. At least I know your heart's in the right place." He looked at her and smiled. "And we know they're doing their homework."
"That's certainly true enough. Trust those two to do their research." Janet smiled up at him. "That offer for a cup of coffee still good?"
"Of course." He poured her one and handed it to her. Then he picked his up and raised it in an impromptu toast. "To Danny and Carter, and whatever they decide. At the very least, it'll be interesting." Interesting, hell! It'll be a screaming panic!
The Doctor raised her cup and tapped it against his. "Amen to that, Colonel. That's for sure." Interesting, hell! It'll be a screaming panic!
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