Daniel met them as they disembarked. He gave Maggie a hurried awkward hug and Jon a quick nod.
"You didn't get here a minute too soon," he told them as they hurried into the building and on into an elevator. "They've gone into orbit. China and Russia are going ballistic...literally, if Hayes can't talk them out of it. That's the global report. Locally, the powers that be are not happy with you pulling this particular rabbit out of the hat."
"They can crucify me later," she told him shortly.
"They can forget the whole thing! They grilled us for five days. His name came up more than enough for them to know there wasn't a StarGate program without him. It's not your fault they didn't have the sense to see they'd eventually need to locate him."
"There's that," she said throwing uneasy glances at Jon that Daniel failed to heed. Jon, for once didn't pretend he wasn't listening but met her glance openly and defiantly.
"It's their own incompetence that kept them from connecting the one to the other."
"Maybe, but they would have had his name specified on my list of noncontacts if any of us had told them there was a personal connection...they'll have me there."
"You didn't exactly marry him behind their backs. You filed all the paperwork and got all the authorization you needed. If they can't figure out that the O'Neill you left behind--"
"Daniel!" she interrupted him, "Any minute now this world is going to start taking some heavy damage...let's concentrate on that right now, okay?"
Daniel looked over at Jon and nodded. "Right. So McKay is all but holding a gun on Shepherd to keep him in the chair. Not that it's doing any good for him to be there."
"So, even with Baal banging on the door...nothing?"
"Nope. He wants out to go join his unit...thinks he'd do more good there. I dare say he's right at this point."
"Beckett?"
"He was scared of the weapon before; now he's petrified...I can't believe he ever got up the courage to step foot in Atlantis."
"He didn't. That was another Beckett," she said as the elevator finally arrived at their destination. A group of worried folks greeted them and began escorting them rapidly down the hallway.
One elbowed to the front to inform them, "China just fired missiles on two of the motherships...the missiles were destroyed and Baal is retaliating. We have reports Beijing is being hit heavily. The President has ordered you to precede at best possible speed." By the time the speaker had finished with his report, they were skidding to a stop at what Jon took to be their destination because at its center was a large, throne-like chair.
He hadn't been expecting an actual chair...more a weapon, a high-tech, futuristic weapon. This was a bit fancy for the average dining room, but it definitely fell a bit short of his expectations. And apparently of the soldier sitting in it.
"Colonel O'Neill," he growled as soon as he caught sight of Maggie, "this is a waste of time...I--"
"Absolutely," she cut him off, "go join your unit if you want, Captain Shepherd."
The man sputtered to a surprised stop and then jumped up and out of the chair. "Yes, Ma'am," he said, glared at one of the men, and pushed his way out of the room before she could change her mind.
"Ugh! Now what did you go and do that for?" the recipient of Shepherd's glare squawked. "We need him! He's a complete-"
"Shut up, McKay!" she hissed at him before turning to Jon and saying, "Sit down." Jon uneasily stepped toward the chair but hesitated at its side. "Jon, people are dying right now. We need you. Sit down."
"Who's this?" McKay began. One of the military men stepped over to him and said, "I believe the colonel ordered you to be quiet. If you have a problem with following her orders..." McKay turned pale and decided he had nothing more to say.
Jon tentatively took Shepherd's place in the chair. And was immediately forced back against it as it lit up and reclined back like a super-charged dentist chair.
"Okay," McKay said promptly forgetting his orders. "That's more like it."
Jon looked at Maggie. "Is it supposed to do that?"
She grinned at him. "You bet. Just relax-"
At that point, Davis forced his way through the mob crowding into the room and announced, "Moscow has begun firing missiles. The Goa'uld are now moving their motherships to target major cities around the globe. We're getting unsubstantiated reports that D.C. and New York have both taken hits..." His words were followed by first a disbelieving, horrified silence and then a rush of murmured exclamations.
"Jon, look at me," Maggie ordered him, but he was trying to figure out just what time it was and where his sons were. He could picture them white-faced huddled around the TV watching the end of the world. He suddenly felt as sick as he had in the twisting, turning jet.
"Cam, get these people out of here!" she ordered and a few of the military officers began clearing the room. When most of the crowd was gone, she turned back to him, "Jon, the only way to stop what you just heard is to do this."
He met her eyes and nodded his head. "OK. What do I have to do?"
"Just concentrate. The chair will do the rest."
"Right," he said. He licked his lips, swallowed hard, and closed his eyes.
"Think about stopping them before they kill anyone else...the drones are ready to go, they just need you to direct them. Think about the schematics Davis showed you and think about bringing those ships down. Don't shoot down our own aircraft, target the enemy."
"Right," he said again. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying but all he could think about were his sons. Charlie and his family in Portland; Matt and Debbie and their baby not yet even born; Danny and...that girl; and the boys at home, frightened and alone, needing him. He wanted them safe, he wanted them away from all of this, and he wanted this over with so he could be home with them.
With the strength of that desire fueling him, the chair did the rest. Thousands of drones activated and poured up into the sky and on into the atmosphere seeking out every Goa'uld vessel and destroying each one. The fleet fell in a matter of three minutes and fourteen seconds.
"Jon," she said from a great distance, "don't use more of the drones than you have to. We need some in reserve."
It took him a moment to know she was talking to him and a moment more to understand what she was saying. He looked out over the Earth and found the enemy vessels were all gone. They would not threaten the boys again. He released the rest of the drones, let them power down and lie dormant once more. And then he did the same with the chair.
As soon as he dropped his concentration, he was swamped with the sounds of cheers and yells from the hallway. There was a celebration going on out there.
He opened his eyes and found Maggie grinning at him. Behind her, Daniel and another colonel nodded and smiled with satisfaction.
"That's it, right?" he asked just to be sure.
"Oh, yeah," Daniel answered him. "That pretty much takes care of the problem."
"I want to talk to the boys," he said.
"Well, seeing how you just saved the world, I think we can let you do that," a stocky man in uniform said from the doorway. "And then I believe the President would like to speak to you."
Maggie and the colonel both jumped to attention and murmured, "General."
"At ease, Mitchell. Help Mr. O'Neill call home. Make sure he remembers the nondisclosure agreement he signed while he's at it. But you and I, Colonel," he said to Maggie, "are going to have a talk." He motioned with his head to the side of the room, and with a 'Yes, Sir' she followed him over. Daniel started to join them but the general shook his head a decisive no.
"It's all right, Daniel," Maggie said quietly and Daniel subsided. Jon watched the pair of them uneasily until Danny answered the phone back home, and then he was too busy trying to reassure himself that his sons really were all right and them that he and Maggie were fine.
He found to his relief that the youngest boys had never realized the seriousness of the situation. They were still largely unhappy that he and Maggie had run off, but the reports and TV images of the alien attack had hardly seemed real to them at all. For them, it was the stuff of fantasy and adventure. Unfortunately, the others were all old enough to have understood at least partly the danger and horror. It would take much more than a few minutes on the phone to get them through the trauma, but he did what he could.
In the meantime, Maggie and the general had their talk. He would occasionally glance that way and see them still going at it. It was easy to see that the general was not at all pleased with her even if she had just saved the world. At times their voices rose until they intruded into his conversations.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
"You agreed to not have any unapproved contact with anyone from your previous life, Colonel. Do you deny that?"
"No, Sir. But I do respectfully deny that I broke that agreement."
"Really. Than what is HE doing here?" the general waved his hand in Jon's direction.
"That, General Landry, is Jon O'Neill. He's a civilian, works in a lumber mill, has ten sons, and spends his summers fishing. He is not the man I knew, Sir, and he is not the man you think he is."
"Could have fooled me."
******
"You purposely withheld information!"
"We were trying to convince you that Baal was a threat, that one day he'd show up and do exactly what he tried to do today...the fact the general and I were married didn't really play into that. Sir."
******
"So he knows nothing?"
"I didn't say that, General. I said I haven't told him anything. But, they don't award stars to men who can't make inferences and draw their own conclusions--he's not the man you think he is, Sir, but I think we have to assume after this incident he's not completely in the dark."
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
That was a wise assumption. Whatever doubts he'd still had when they'd landed had long since disappeared. And he was even angrier than General Landry about the whole situation. But then it had been a bit more personal to him than it had been to the general. A far bit more.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
He knew as soon as he opened the door; the quarters someone eventually showed him to were not empty guest rooms. The walls were plastered with the notes and pictures the boys had sent her along with more than a few of the maps Alex had been compelled to supply her. His wedding picture stood on the desk, and the boys' school pictures were stuck in the frame of the corkboard over it. In the middle of the board, there was a printed copy of an email he'd sent her once when he'd been missing her even worse than usual.
He had insisted on marrying her. He was old fashioned enough to believe in it, and he had little kids in the boat for goodness' sakes! And that had all been true, but even more he'd wanted it in writing, wanted it legal and binding so the next time she decided it was a mistake it would be all the harder for her to run. She'd gone along with him, said her vows there in front of the judge with the little boys giggling on the courthouse benches and the older ones tugging uncomfortably on their brand new ties.
But it had all been a sham. And now that he thought about it probably invalid anyway, because she'd perjured herself signing a false name to the marriage license.
He prowled through the small rooms shamelessly examining her things. The uniforms hung neatly in the closet, the sweats she slept in folded inspection ready in the drawers. The bare cupboards and the small refrigerator emptied of everything but a bottle of ketchup and a small lockbox in the tiny freezer. The medicine cabinet stocked with nothing more than a bottle of Tylenol and an extra, unopened tube of toothpaste. Except for the pictures and maps...she hadn't lived here anymore than she had at her cabin. It had been the same at the house, when she'd packed her bags and gone there was virtually nothing to prove she'd ever been there with them.
Temporary housing. That's what these rooms were. What the cabin had been. What his house had been. "You can be in our world. You're more than welcome," he'd told her meaning forever, but he knew now she'd only taken him up on his offer to come for a visit.
She'd never intended to stay. They'd needed him to sit in that chair and she'd made sure he'd be available when the time came. The danger was over now. She no longer needed him. And he had to face the fact, she had never loved him. She'd loved the man who'd sat in the chair in some other time and place.
"You're very much like him," she'd said. But not close enough.
"He is not the man you think he is," she'd told the general. Close enough to fool Landry, close enough to use, close enough that she'd had no trouble manipulating him. But not close enough for her to keep now that she no longer needed him. Not close enough for her to love.
~*~*~*~*~*~
She sighed as she walked wearily down the hallway towards her quarters. She felt that she'd done nothing but fight battles for the past...what? She couldn't guess and she was far too tired to figure it out with all the time changes and the Date Line...and it didn't matter anyway. She was dead on her feet, and she knew waiting for her behind her closed door would be the most difficult battle of the day (or days...whichever it worked out to be).
Which was saying a tremendous amount because it had started with literally dragging Jon from the arms of his crying children and culminated with finally and decisively giving Baal exactly what he deserved. Thrown in for good measure had been the game of cat and mouse in the skies over Antarctica, the dressing down from Landry, and Cam's desertion.
*****
"Well, it's been one wild ride, Carter," Cam told her in his slow drawl when she'd hung up from taking the President's congratulatory call.
"It certainly has." She'd grinned over at him, for one brief moment savoring the victory instead of dreading its consequences.
"Listen, it's been an honor to serve on SG-1. We made a good team, but..."
"But, what?" she asked knowing the moment was over.
"We've made the world a better place, saved it from Baal." He shrugged, "That's enough for me. I can't live a double life. Either I'm all for this one or I'm all for that one; and seeing that one is out of reach..." She'd stared numbly at him, not really believing what she was hearing. He went on anyway, "I'm done, Sam. I know you and Jackson won't quit into you've gotten back there, finished the job. But whatever the two of you cook up--you'll go on without me. Understand?"
Of the six billion people on the planet, she probably should have been the one to understand. But, she hadn't.
"Just like that? You're just going to walk away?"
"Yep. Just like that," he said. And just like that he'd nodded his head in a silent farewell and walked away.
*****
And as though that hadn't been enough there'd also been the talks she'd had with the boys over the phone.
Matt, only half-joking: "Listen, Maggie, next time you have an emergency see if you can pick a better time, will ya? We really needed Dad home during all this."
Alex, as sober and as sad as a funeral: "The TV said they wiped Beijing right off the map...how are you and Daddy ever going to find the way home now?"
Zech, sniffing into the receiver: "We were really, really scared and we want you to come home. We want you and Daddy to come home now. How come you had to go away and take Daddy right when we needed you?"
Ty had sobbed so much she had only known what he was saying because he'd said it so often before.
David, who had been her anchor and her friend when she needed them both badly: "If I'd known you would take Dad away from us, I'd never have asked him to marry you. You shouldn't have done that, Maggie. We need him here. With us."
Only Bryan had made the call bearable: "Did you see any of the ships, Maggie? They showed them on TV, zipping all over the sky! And the drones? Oh, wow! You should have seen it! It was the coolest thing ever!"
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
'The coolest thing ever' she thought and couldn't have agreed more. But she wasn't celebrating. All around her the base was; and people all over the world even though they couldn't begin to guess how serious their situation had been. She didn't have to guess. She knew. They had done a great thing today, and she'd had a part in that. She should have been laughing and dancing in the hallways with the others. But she wasn't.
Jon wasn't Jack, but she knew what she'd seen in his eyes on the jet and on the base. She'd known in the end she'd destroy him if she stayed with him and she'd been right. Already, she'd made great inroads in turning the happy-go-lucky fisherman she loved in this world into the hardened soldier she'd always feared in the man she loved in her own world.
And now he waited for her behind that closed door and she had no defense or excuse to offer him.
The room was dark with only a small light shining from under the bathroom door to help her make out his tall form sitting up against the headboard of her bed. She took a deep breath and walked into the room, letting the door close with a decisive click behind her.
"So," he said in his low, rough voice.
"So," she answered. She didn't know what he wanted her to say. She knew any apology she could offer would be received with angry recriminations; any excuse shot down with caustic sarcasm. She'd been here before, sometimes rightly ("We are watching good men die in slow motion, Captain!") and sometimes wrongly and there was no way for her to win. She knew sooner or later he'd say what he had to say and she'd stand before him condemned.
She came and stood by the bed. He shifted his long legs over to make room for her and she sat on its edge. "General Landry will be flying out of here in four or five hours...that's the earliest I can get you home to the boys."
"That's it then?"
"I hope not. I'll be recommending they offer you a civilian contract. Now that they've seen it work and know what it can do, I think Shepherd and Beckett will get somewhere with activating the chair, but we'll get a lot farther if we can call on you from time to time--I know you won't want to leave the boys much, if at all, but we'll take what we can get."
"We'll take what we can get...didn't I say something very much like that to you a long time ago?"
"Not that long ago."
"Long enough, Sam." She didn't flinch when he used her name and made no denial or acknowledgement. Because he wouldn't have accepted the one and he didn't need the other. He gave her time to react, but when she didn't he went on, "Tell me something, Sam, who do you make love to in the dark? Him or me, Jack or Jon, the general or the mill worker?"
It was an unfair question because as he well knew she didn't make love in the dark. She had always insisted they left at least a small light on. Because she had been afraid to find out the answer to that very question. She shook her head but couldn't draw in enough breath to answer him even if she'd known what to say.
He took her silence for an answer. "Yeah. That's what I thought. So, I catch that flight in the morning and you...?"
Tears ran down her cheeks and she didn't bother to fight them. She was already fighting one losing battle and couldn't spare the energy. "Jon," she said but didn't know how to ask him, beg him not to hate her.
"Don't say it. I don't want to hear it. You did what you had to do to save the world...I got that. The end justifies the means and all that. And truthfully, I can't fault you. They made me sign my life away too. Not to the same degree, but close enough for me to know you couldn't have warned me any more openly without ending up locked up somewhere instead of being out here saving the world.
"You know what? I don't even think you could help it, making the boys and me love you...I believe you really never meant for that to happen. Your plan would have been just as effective if you'd just been a family friend, wouldn't it have? You'd have known where to find me when you needed me. I'm the one who wouldn't take no for the answer and forced you into this charade-"
"It was...it was never a charade, Jon, and I never had a plan to use you! I know it looks that way, meeting up with you like that. It looks like I set out to find you, but I didn't."
"Come on! Just for tonight, can't we lock the door and leave the lies outside? Don't you owe me that?"
"I'm telling you the truth! I didn't come to Minnesota to find you."
"Then why?"
"He loved the area, went there whenever he could get away. He said it was what the Goa'uld were really after in their quest for galactic domination. It was his anchor I always thought, the place that gave him the strength to keep fighting no matter how long the battle dragged on. I never had a place like that...I came to Minnesota hoping to find that. Because I knew if I didn't find the strength to keep fighting, I'd surrender, give up the fight, disappear.
"I didn't come looking for you. I know right where his cabin used to be... I would have looked for you there if I'd wanted to find you--a good hundred miles away.
"You were, in fact, the last person I ever wanted to meet. I missed him constantly, do you think I wanted to see his face on a stranger?" She buried her face in her hands and cried.
He reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. "That's the truth?"
She nodded.
"But once you met me, you felt...what? That you could hold on to a bit of him by being with me?"
"No!"
"Then why is my ring on your finger? Why did you let me move you into my house, why did you let my sons believe you loved us?"
"Because I did, because I do!"
He shook his head, "No. You love him, you told me so yourself."
"I do...I do love him. I always will. And you've always known that. But I love you too.
"You are not Jack O'Neill, and if you were I would have skipped town the minute you introduced yourself to me in the street. I couldn't have...I couldn't." She closed her eyes and bit her lips and through her tears said, "I love you, Jon. You're not him, and I don't want you to be--I love you just the way you are."
For a long moment the only sound was her muffled sobs, and then he said, "Okay. I can live with that."
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