We Do
We Do
by Meriem Clayton
Summary: Sequel to I Did Say I Do. Sam and Daniel are working out their marriage complicated by problems with Jack and learning to cope with an astounding new ability. Mitchell and Lam mature their relationship.
Category: Drama, Romance
Season: Season 9
Pairing: Daniel/Sam, Jack/Sara, other pairing
Rating: 13+
Warnings: minor language, sexual situations
Author's Notes: Thanks to my wonderful betas, Monica and Jess
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story was created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 10/01/05
Chapter 1
"Oh, Sam," Daniel breathed. He was infamous for his ability to run on, but his wife's name was all he could get past a throat tightened with awe, desire, and overwhelming love. She stood halfway down the stairs from the landing. A wall sconce glowed softly behind her and showcased her slender body in something gossamer and blue. At the moment, Sam looked to Daniel like every erotic fantasy he had ever had which was no surprise. He had speculated idly a few days before as to what Sam COULD wear that would make her anything but ultimately erotic for him and had come up blank.
"So you approve?" she asked, practicing her come hither look. She knew the answer, of course. A coy Colonel Samantha Carter-Jackson, acting the seductress, was something he was still getting used to, but definitely not complaining about.
He answered by standing up, ignoring the pile of papers that went in six different directions and his book sliding off his lap and landing at peril to its spine. Daniel made straight for his wife, crumbling several of the pages heedlessly underfoot, and reached out to embrace her. That was when they discovered that he was still holding a pen in one hand. He threw it aside and neither of them cared that an ink spot began to spread on the carpet. In their soberer moments, they had noticed that their passion was lowering the resale value of their home, but there weren't many sober moments.
Daniel picked her up and carried her back up the stairs to their bedroom. They had last been in the bed not four hours before. The comforter and two of the four pillows were on the floor and the sheets were tangled. Sam's military training and natural sense of order would normally have manifested itself in a bed with covers smooth enough to pass inspection in a barracks, but, these days, bed making sometimes seemed pointless.
"Can I undress you?" she asked.
He nodded, bemused. He was still learning what she liked best, but he already knew that two things that lit her up were wrestling half seriously and eventually letting him win and for him to allow her to undress him while he did nothing. She made a game of removing his clothes in such a way that it took great force of will to remain passive. It was a contest to see how long he could go before he shifted into taking control. This evening was not a personal best for him. He was only minus his shirt and shoes when he grabbed her hands and began kissing her breathless.
He needed those memories the next day to shore up his courage. Walter mentioned to him in passing, when he ran into him getting coffee that Jack was on the base and in Landry's office. Daniel hadn't spoken to Jack in person since he married Sam. He told himself Jack had to have cooled down by now and realized that the marriage had just happened, out of his control or Sam's. If they hadn't been forced to stay together for awhile for complicated diplomatic reasons, it would never have become real. He had called Jack, determined not to lose a friendship with years behind it. More accurately put, he had tried to call him. The General was always unavailable to Dr. Jackson. His admin assured Daniel that his call would be returned as soon as the General finished his meeting or whatever else he was supposedly doing. Sure he would.
"All right, Daniel, just take yourself down there, lurk around and catch him when he finishes with Landry. There's only one door out of that office. He won't be able to escape you," he told himself.
Standing in the hall outside the office, he felt like an idiot. He nodded politely to the various personnel who occasionally strolled by. Mostly he just stood there. The corridor wasn't heavily traveled at this time of day. He began to wonder if Jack was really there any more. Maybe he could listen just enough to make sure he hadn't already left. He stepped up close to the door after he reassured himself that there wasn't anyone coming. He knew it was going to look like he was eavesdropping.
One of the voices was definitely Jack's and the volume was rising. He didn't have to press his ear against the door to make out what was being said. Jack sounded really angry, too angry to exercise his typical modicum of discretion. "How the hell could a woman like Samantha Carter settle for a ... a metrosexual, airy fairy, arty farty, bleeding heart like Danny Boy Jackson?"
He couldn't make out what Landry actually said but his tones were soothing. He undoubtedly was trying to calm Jack down. The next blast proved that it hadn't worked. "The only explanation that I can come up with is that she wants someone who won't mind letting her be the boss. She's been his commanding officer. He's used to taking orders from her."
There was one more attempt by Landry to cool things down and then Jack really tore it for Daniel. Invective directed at him and only indirectly at Sam was one thing, but next Jack said, "Hank, face it. She's not really comfortable with being a woman. She married a girl so she could be the man."
Eavesdroppers never hear good about themselves, but this was beyond anything he could have imagined. Even when he first went to Abydos and couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, the characterization would have been inaccurate. He looked up and down the corridor again, now not only grateful that no one had seen him at the door, but even more grateful that no one had heard Jack.
He turned and walked off, not sure he could manage to talk to Jack without blowing up. Unfortunately, the elevator took its sweet time coming and just as the doors were shutting, a uniformed arm was inserted followed by Jack himself. Jack hesitated as if he was going to get out again, but the doors had already shut while they stared at each other.
"Jack," Daniel said curtly, "here on official business?"
"Yeah, uh, some detail I needed to chat with Landry about. One of those things better in person. You know."
Daniel was gratified that Jack looked very uncomfortable and was having trouble meeting his eyes. Some imp made him push it. "Be sure to drop by Sam's office and tell her hello. Say, why don't you come out to the house for dinner tonight? We can get caught up."
Jack just stared at him. The doors were starting to open. Jack reached over and pushed the door close button and held it. "Cut the crap, Daniel," he said brusquely. "There's no way SHE hasn't told you that we were having a thing when she married you. I was never a gracious loser and I don't forgive very easily either. You obviously didn't think much of our friendship when you went after my woman." He released the button, fixed Daniel with one of his patented glares for a moment, and got out of the elevator.
Considerably unsettled, Daniel went back to his office where he sat, trying to process the conversation. This just wasn't Jack. Jack was a really good guy. He wasn't mean and he wasn't petty and he'd been both today. Something else as going on but the more he circled around it, the murkier it got.
There was a token rap on his door jamb and he looked up to see Cam Mitchell. "Got a moment?" he asked.
"Sure." Daniel hurriedly removed a stack of papers from his visitor's chair and invited Cam to sit down.
"Things okay?" Cam asked, scrutinizing Daniel's face.
Most of the time the fact that Cam was a lot better with people than Jack was a plus for Daniel but at the moment, he would have preferred some Jack style obliviousness. "Sure. Why wouldn't they be?"
"Don't know. Just ever since you broke up my band - I'm not sure whether it was you or Carter that gets cast as Yoko Ono," Cam looked at him in mostly feigned irritation over the fact that Sam had to leave SG1 after she and Daniel decided to have a real marriage, "ever since then you've been one happy man. The only sign of any strain I've seen in weeks is you missing her fiercely the whole time we're off world, but the rest of the time, you're walking around like a poster child for satisfaction."
Daniel shook his head. "Thanks for the concern, Mitchell, but whatever's going on with me would be a personal problem. It won't interfere with my performance."
Cam looked unconvinced but apparently decided to move on. He slid a sheet of paper in front of Daniel. "This is everything Dr. Lam and I can remember Hanna told us about a legend her people have." Hanna had been on Earth as an observer in the service of the P4D92, ridiculously known to its people as Poopoo, to verify that the appropriate protocols were observed surrounding Sam and Daniel's marriage. Sam's adoption into Poopoo's royal family to allow negotiations with Earth had backfired and placed obligations on Sam with respect to her marriage to Daniel that were not a pleasant surprise, at least not at first.
"A Poopoo legend?" Daniel asked and neither man could resist a silly grin. The name just did it for both of them.
"She's not really one of them. Her people are apparently sort of a nomadic group who wander around, hiring out as empaths. Of course, on Poopoo they have to be related to you before they'll conduct any kind of business, so they adopted her. Anyway, it's one of their legends."
"I can't understand how I missed that," Daniel said.
"That would be because when someone's got your attention, you're a really good listener, but you're in a fog most of the rest of the time. You didn't chat with her the way we did." He tapped the paper. "I'm thinking it describes a world somewhere in the gate system. According to the legend, there's something there that helps to create empaths."
"I'll see what I can do," Daniel said, absently, already lost in what he was reading.
"Great!" Cam stood. "We've got a routine mission tomorrow and then I've scheduled us to go to Hanna's world on Friday."
"Friday? I'm supposed to figure this out by Friday? Do you know how many worlds there are in the gate system?"
"Hey. I didn't mean to insult you. If you think you can figure out it by Thursday, I can move it up." Daniel just gave him a dirty look and waved him off.
That evening, Sam was sitting in bed, frowning at her laptop when Daniel got in beside her. She immediately looked up from the screen and smiled at him. He leaned over and kissed her softly, then slipped his hand under the front of her robe and his tongue in her mouth at the same time. She moaned, grabbed a fistful of his hair at the back of his head, and pulled him closer. Suddenly the hard surfaces of the laptop were jammed into both of them. They broke apart and Sam laughed. "Time out to close up the laptop."
"It's a good thing we stopped anyway. I wanted to talk to you about the security system."
"What security system?" she asked.
"Exactly. We should really have something Sam, don't you think?"
"I never missed it but if you're afraid, Daniel, we should do it."
Daniel gave her a sad look. "You think I'm saying this because I'm scared? You really don't think much of me in the traditional masculine sense do you?"
She was flabbergasted and pantomimed reacting to an incoming missile. "Where did that come from. I meant like afraid we'd be robbed. What the hell are you talking about?"
"When you and Jack were together, I bet you just roamed around bad neighborhoods daring each other to take on muggers," Daniel said, his improbable scenario failing to make his point. He knew he sounded like an idiot as soon as it was out of his mouth.
"Jack and I were together for, oh, two weeks tops, even though he refuses to acknowledge the fact that I had already broken it off when I came back here. During that time he put himself at risk from nothing more threatening than a paper cut or maybe dislocating his jaw by yawning too vigorously during one of those interminable meetings he sits through. Get a grip." She had gone from bewilderment to belligerence. "What's with throwing Jack in my face by the way? You never did that before."
Daniel deflated. "I'm sorry. That was out of line. It's just, well, I've kind of got Jack, Macho Man on the brain at the moment. I was trying to find the opportunity to tell you. Jack's in town and he was out at Cheyenne Mountain today."
"How could I not know about this?"
"You were off-world all day, remember and then we came straight home." Daniel reached down and snagged the blanket, pulling it up over both of them. He pleated it and plucked at fuzz. Sam watched him, fascinated.
"Are you going to tell me the rest of the story or are you going to pick lint all night?" She took the sting out of her words by leaning over and capturing his hands. She lifted one to her lips and pressed a kiss on his palm. "Please tell me, Danny."
"I didn't actually see him. I heard he was in Landry's office and went to try to talk with him. I've had no contact with him since before we got married. I wanted to make peace. I sort of eavesdropped and I learned my lesson about that for the rest of my life. He told Landry that he couldn't understand how a woman like you could possibly marry someone so metrosexual and a bunch of other similar things - mostly insults only in Jack's mind." Daniel winced. "Metrosexual. I'm not, not the whole stereotype. I mean, I sure don't dress well. So okay, I like art, I'm a gourmet cook, and I'm not into sports, none of which are things of which I am ashamed. I'm not mad at being described that way. I'm mad at his dismissiveness of men who haven't been in dozens of bar fights and care whether their shirt color coordinates with their pants. I've heard those narrow definitions of masculinity all my life and they piss me off." He sat fuming, furious all over again.
"That's not all he said or all you're mad about, is it?" she prodded gently.
"He said something to the effect that you wanted someone you could boss around. Someone who would meekly do whatever you told them to. He said you wanted a marriage where you could be the man."
"Because I was having trouble with being a woman," she finished grimly.
"How did... I mean I didn't..." Daniel floundered. "Oh, you're guessing." He drew her against him and dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Of course it isn't true, none of it, and Jack knows it."
"Exactly. That's how much I hurt him. He's not like that. Not mean. We both know it. He has to explain my rejection of him in favor of you in some way that doesn't make him look bad to himself. It was really working for him that they forced us to get married on Poopoo after we unintentionally scandalized local custom." She didn't bat an eye at the name. It had become too familiar to amuse her any more. "It's a rude shock to him that we discovered that we really liked being married to each other."
Sam looked up into Daniel's eyes. "Somehow, we've got to heal things with him, as much for our own sakes as his. Maybe when we have the reaffirming of our vows and the belated wedding reception we've been talking about, we could make something happen."
"Oh yeah. Like a scene of mammoth proportions. I can just see the part where they say `If anyone knows why this man and this woman should not be joined together.'"
"They don't do that any more. I studied up on it when Pete and I, that is, you know," she finished lamely. "I'm sorry for bringing him up."
"Sam, I have you. Pete doesn't. He has no power to bother me." Daniel brought that statement home by kissing her deeply.
Later, much later, they settled back into a comfortable position for extended cuddling and Sam said, "The funny part is you've freed me somehow to be more feminine than I've ever been with anyone in my life, but I'll kick your ass," she laughed, "if you tell anyone."
"This is going to tear it," Daniel said to Cam the next day as they crouched behind the inadequate shelter of the DHD and returned hostile fire.
"Teal'c and Surat should be circled around them in just another moment," Cam said, clapping Daniel on the back and firing several more rounds.
"I'm not worried about them!" Daniel said, first gesturing with his weapon and then firing.
"Ah, yes," Cam said. "I'm rather worried about that too."
"Does she hold out on you after or get weepy, I mean if she thinks you took too many risks?" Daniel asked curiously. He immediately blushed and said, "I'm sorry. That was way out of line."
"I'll tell if you'll tell."
"Weepy. Trying not to cry but on the verge. God, she'd kill me if she knew I told you that," Daniel said, appalled at the compulsion to share that had overwhelmed him. "Okay, don't leave me hanging here."
"Neither. If it's just we were attacked, she's fine - hell, I'm a soldier and it's my job. BUT if she thinks I've been a glory hound, stuck my neck out, she gets really, really mad, chews me out for a long time using some interesting medical terms, and then kisses me like she's afraid she'll never see me again."
Daniel looked at the younger man speculatively. "That sounds quite interesting," he said a little wistfully.
Just then firing erupted and their attackers began shooting randomly at the unseen Teal'c and Surat. It was but a matter of moments after that until the other team members joined them and they were able to dial home.
They came down the ramp to find Dr. Carolyn Lam and Colonel Samantha Carter-Jackson shoulder to shoulder with General Landry. No one looked happy, although Daniel expected that Landry's unease was connected more with fearing that his daughter on his left would explode inappropriately at Cam if she heard anything at all to indicate he took fire unnecessarily and that one of his best officers on his right would get weepy when she noticed, as he had, that there was a hole from some sort of projectile weapon in her husband's hat. "Run into some problems, Mitchell?"
"Opportunities to hone our fighting skills, sir," Cam responded.
"Uh, huh. Let's adjourn to the briefing room for to discuss the details. Mitchell, Jackson, Teal'c, Surat, let's go. We'll see you later, Doctor, Colonel."
That evening, Sam lay against Daniel, her cheek to his chest. He stroked her hair without it requiring thought, slipping into sleep, when he felt something wet on his chest. He looked down and saw the tears running faster and faster. The silent crying segued into loud, gulping sobs.
"Sam, honey, whatever is the matter?"
The sobbing grew even louder and she jerked against him.
"You have to tell me. Are you in pain? Is it something I did? Please, honey, please."
"You can't go," she wailed. "I can't take it again."
"You're talking about the mission Friday?" He was quite honestly surprised. She'd gotten weepy when he had near misses in the past but nothing like this. She was military. This is what the military did, go on missions, sometimes into hostile territory. They'd done it together for years.
"Yeah. You can't do it any more. You... just... can't."
"It's my job, Sam. You go on missions. I don't like it but I have faith in your ability to handle whatever is out there." He stiffened and sat up.
She answered him quickly, concerned at his reaction. "I'm sorry for crying all over you, but Daniel, I go crazy when you're off planet without me. It's not that I don't respect your fighting skills or think you're some sort of, oh what did they used to say, 90 pound weakling." She ran her hand lightly down his well muscled chest and over his near washboard abs and then back up his biceps. "You are so not. It's just that I'm afraid that something will happen and I'll lose you. If you go, I want to go too." She sniffed and dashed tears away. "Damn, I don't want to start crying again."
"Do you want me to see if I can just work on the base? I'm sure there'd be plenty for me to do."
"You'd miss it too much. What I want is a miracle that allows us to go out as a team." She looked determinedly ahead. "I've been thinking about resigning my commission. Husband and wife teams are not unknown. Your parents worked together, right? If we were on one of the follow up teams that don't expect combat, surely..."
"Sam, you will not resign your commission." He lifted her chin up so she was looking him in the eyes again. "Look, let me do this mission. It's a little late to back out and it could really be important. Then, we'll look at it. We're pretty damn brilliant. We both know it. Modesty isn't really appropriate here. Surely, if there's a way, we'll figure it out."
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Chapter 2
Much was expected of the planet targeted for SG1's next off-world mission. It was disappointing that the readings transmitted back by the MALP were quite average, neither alarming or particularly promising. The reconnaissance pictures showed a mildly sloping landscape with bands of trees along small, sluggish streams. Tough, scrubby grass and low bushes filled in the ground between. A few rodent-like animals scurried about, their forays out from under cover never lasting more than seconds. There were no larger animals in sight and the air in the vicinity seemed empty of anything larger than small insects. In the distance, something was circling, but without a point of reference, they couldn't tell how far away it was and, hence, how large.
Cam leaned over the monitor studying the video and then straightened and said to General Landry. "Given the readings, it's difficult to understand why this planet is so important to Hanna's people."
"Frankly, Colonel, I'm letting you go with your instincts on this one. I'm not at all convinced there's anything to it," Landry said. He swept his hand toward the door and Cam followed him out. "On another topic, how's Surat working out as a team member?" Landry asked.
"Could I please have Carter back? Jackson's not military. Surely there's some way around the regulations."
"Not exactly an answer, Colonel," Landry said. "And no you can't. It's too dangerous for people who are emotionally involved to be in combat situations together." He put a hand on Cam's shoulder and steered him a short distance away from a knot of airmen talking in the corridor. "Speaking of which, you and Dr. Lam aren't sharing off world terrain going forward. I hope you're clear on that. This isn't the place to get into it, but I want you in my office tomorrow at 0900 hours for a little discussion."
Landry walked off, leaving Cam to wonder if this was going to be the classic "what are your intentions with respect to my daughter?" confrontation. It downright spooked him to realize that Landry knew that Cam was seeing his daughter. He'd suspected as much and Daniel had told him he thought Landry knew but Cam had hoped that somehow it wasn't true.
He made time for a quick trip to the infirmary. "Dr. Lam, could I speak with you for a moment?" he asked politely. Was that nurse smirking? Landry had him paranoid. Weeks ago, he had mapped out every likely hidey hole where he could kiss Dr. Lam for a minute or two unobserved. He was obsessed. He had never let a woman get to him like this before. He had a stellar career behind him with an unblemished record and everything to lose by acting like a horny, love-starved teenager. He reasoned that he only sought out the Carolyn fix when his head got so full of her he wasn't focusing where he needed to. That made it all in the line of duty and something he could rationalize.
He pulled her into the little hallway behind the examining room and then into a supply closet. "Your dad knows about us," he said.
It was too dark in the small space to really see her face but he could hear the amusement in her voice. "Sure he does. You're just paranoid."
"He told me that he wants me in his office at 0900 hours tomorrow to discuss it. You're not paranoid if people really are after you."
Her voice didn't sound amused any more. "He has no right to meddle in my personal life."
"Caro, where are we right now? It's not like our relationship has nothing to do with the base." He spread his hand on the small of her back and pulled her closer. He butterflied light kisses around her mouth and then kissed her in earnest, his other hand buried in her hair. When they broke apart, he continued, "I don't think this is as big a secret as you want it to be and all the gossip is probably making it more disruptive than if we were open about having a relationship. We're not assigned to the same team and you're not under my command - or vice versa."
She pushed him away. "No pressure, Cam. I told you that from the beginning."
"Caro, I..."
"We're done in here," she said. She opened the door and left. He stood there for a long while, wishing he could understand what her problem was. There was so much she refused to talk with him about. Her evasiveness was alien to his nature, but then perhaps that was part of the interest. At last he shook himself a little, thinking, "I've reduced myself to standing around in dark supply closets. By myself, even. This is not good."
Later that day on the alien planet which, so far, was just as boring up close and personal as it had been through the MALP, Cam and Daniel slogged off in one direction and Teal'c and Surat in the other. Cam had so arranged it because he wanted another opportunity to pick Daniel's brain. He was operating on the presupposition that if he just prodded at Daniel long enough, the answer always fell out. So far it was working for him.
"What do you think it would be, if the legend is true, that could make someone empathic?" he asked, looking at Daniel expectantly.
"Look, Mitchell, I'm not even sure this is the right planet. And," Daniel held up a hand to forestall Cam, "don't start asking me for percentages of probability again. Sometimes I think you're pretending that you're Kirk and I'm Spock."
"I am not. Dr. Lam would kill me if I was hitting on that many alien babes," Cam said indignantly. He looked speculatively at Daniel. "I do think you should consider the pointed ears, however. Since you shaved off the beard, we look too much alike. I don't want some ET you've pissed off shooting me by accident."
"What's with the `Dr. Lam' when you're talking to me? I know damn well that the two of you are on first name basis, or maybe not even that. Maybe more like a `Sweetie Cakes' and `Honeykins' basis," Daniel said. The boy was definitely not himself, Cam thought. Granted he needed a comeback for the pointed ears but that was verging on pure O'Neill.
"Is that what you and Sam call each other?" he asked, intrigued by the possible insight into doings at the Carter-Jackson manse.
"Noooo," Daniel said. "Look I'm sorry if I'm hard to live with. I just can't keep doing this. If Sam and I can't go on missions together, I'm going to have to ask for planetside assignments only.
"We were Wham with George Michael. Then we were just George Michael. Now you want to bail?" Daniel just looked at him. "Okay. Okay. That's a topic for later. For right now, what do you think we should be looking for that could make an empath out of someone?"
"That would be more Dr. Lam's territory or someone else with some physiological or pharmacological training than mine. I thought better of you than that, Mitchell. Jack tended to think if you were a scientist you knew all science or at least he pretended that was what he thought. You don't have the same need to hide your intelligence."
"Thank you, I think." Cam added to himself, "and we're still more than a little hard to live with." Time to change the subject. "Well, here we are, supposedly on some wide spot in the road held sacred by Hanna's people and I, for one, am feeling a little set up." Cam gestured theatrically. "Could this BE any more boring?"
His com buzzed and he keyed it on. "Mitchell."
"Colonel," Surat came back, urgency in his voice. "Something very big is coming at you in the sky on your 6. It's some sort of huge bird like thing. It started to swoop down on Teal'c and he hit it with his staff weapon."
Within seconds, Surat's warning was superfluous. A huge flying animal darkened the sky. It was more like a pterodactyl than a modern bird with not a feather in sight. It hissed audibly and circled them, its huge, leathery wings flapping powerfully and creating a small breeze. Cam and Daniel both had their weapons drawn, looking for an opportunity. Cam's instincts told him that if they didn't hit it just right, it would just keep coming. Teal'c and Surat had warned it off but he saw a wound of some sort on the right wing, oozing ocher blood. It hissed again. It was very angry and it wasn't going anywhere.
"What do you suggest as a strategy here, Mitchell," Daniel asked, reasonably calm under the circumstances.
Cam thought, "You got to love the man. He's not a soldier but he's made himself into something so close in combat you can't tell the difference." He told Daniel, "No magic here, Daniel. We don't have any cover in sight. Surat and Teal'c are on their way. I suggest we hold out if we can and then if we all fire together, surely we can take it down."
"Okay," Daniel said nervously, still holding together.
Then it all went sour. The thing darted, faster than anyone would have believed possible for something that ungainly. For whatever reason, it had picked Daniel. Cam started firing immediately but it had Daniel completely covered by its wings. He hit the small head that had arched down and was biting at Daniel and the brain exploded. It collapsed on Daniel twitching. Now the concern was that there was better than three hundred pounds of dead meat on top of a possibly injured man.
"Daniel," he called urgently but there was no answer. The dead animal was impossible to move. He hauled at it in frustration and then the rest of the team arrived and they were able to get it off Daniel. He was still and there was a deep gash on his shoulder and some shallow cuts on his neck. "Thank God it missed the jugular," Cam thought.
"We must get him back to the infirmary as fast as possible," Teal'c said, his distress evidenced by his uncharacteristic stating of the obvious.
"Let's try to stop the bleeding first," Surat said and Cam nodded, trusting the medic training that was part of the new team member's background.
Surat applied a quick field dressing and then Teal'c picked up Daniel and ran, cradling him in his arms. Cam ran point and Surat brought up the rear, all three scanning constantly for more of these flying demons. Cam was sure he had never managed to call up Earth faster on the DHD.
Teal'c never broke stride as he came down the ramp. He kept running, Daniel in his arms, all the way to the infirmary. "What happened?" Carolyn rapped out as they came spilling in the door. "Put him there," she directed before they had time to answer.
"Something birdlike bit him," Cam gasped, not out of breath from running but from barely coping with the emotions assaulting him.
Carolyn took Daniel's vitals and then deftly removed the bandage and cleaned off the wounds. "It's not that bad. In and of itself, it doesn't explain his condition."
"What condition?" It was Sam's frantic voice from behind Cam.
"Cam, please take her out here. I need to be able to focus."
Cam looked at Teal'c who nodded and steered Sam out of the infirmary. He heard Teal'c murmuring softly to Sam who was desperately pleading to go back to Daniel. "There must have been venom involved," Carolyn said and signaled the nurse to start drawing blood.
Daniel started abruptly and opened his eyes. They were wild and unfocused. He got a vise-like grip on Cam's arm, amazing for someone who was shaking and burning up. Cam could feel the warmth through his sleeve. "Sam, Sam," he demanded urgently. "Get Sam. Fast."
She heard him - he was shouting - and broke free of Teal'c. She pushed past Cam and he didn't stop her. "I'm here," she said, looking as frightened as Cam felt. They wanted Daniel to regain consciousness but this was manic.
"Kiss me. Kiss me," he said insistently.
She leaned forward and tried to give him a gentle kiss. It was as if he summoned every ounce of strength in his trembling body. He clamped on to the back of her head and forced her into a different type of kiss altogether. Cam found himself feeling a little embarrassed to be watching. He met Carolyn's eyes and saw that she was feeling it as well. It was a primal sort of claiming. Sam started in surprise but she didn't fight it. It went on for so long that he began to wonder how they were getting enough oxygen. When it ended, Daniel looked at her for the briefest of moments and then went limp.
Carolyn immediately stepped forward and firmly moved Sam aside. She clearly expected to find a patient in distress, but after a moment, she stepped back and said, "He'll be okay. He's just asleep."
"I want to stay here. Please don't make me go," Sam said piteously. She was clutching Daniel's hand.
"No, of course not," Carolyn said, gently. Cam pulled a chair over to the side of the bed and got Sam to sit in it although she never relinquished her hold on her husband.
"I'd like to stay too, if that would be all right with you," Cam requested softly.
She nodded but he wasn't even sure she understood what he was asking. He and Teal'c talked and agreed that Cam would stay until dawn and then Teal'c would relieve him.
Cam watched for hours and Daniel slept on. It wasn't peaceful sleep. He could see his teammate's eyeballs jerking under his eyelids. It would seem he was dreaming powerful dreams and he moaned and protested and cried out repeatedly. After only a few minutes, Sam fell deeply asleep. Her sleep was also troubled. Cam loosened her hand from Daniel's, picked her up, and laid her on the neighboring cot, fortuitously empty.
Nurses came in and out, but Cam became convinced there was something very big happening that was being missed by the medical personnel. At first he thought he was imagining it, but close attention convinced him he wasn't. Carolyn came in and walked up behind him and caused him to literally jump a foot out of his chair. "Caro," he said, too spooked to be careful with her name, "it's like they're connected. He moans and she moans. She mutters and he mutters."
"You're just tired, love," Carolyn said, making no effort to be discrete herself. It was the middle of the night and they were alone.
"Check it for yourself," he said. He stood behind her, his arms around her waist, and his cheek against her hair, while she watched. At first she was relaxed against him, just humoring her tired, stressed out boyfriend. Then he could feel when she started to believe because she tensed in his arms.
"If I'm really seeing what I think I'm seeing, wow, it'd be unprecedented," she said. "She needs to be hooked up to a monitor too so we can see confirm that they are really tracking each other and on what level."
She started to move but Cam didn't release her immediately. He turned her to look at him. "I'm glad Jackson's got someone like you seeing to him. I'm in awe of what you can do and how you do it." He kissed her and it was a beautiful kiss. Cam felt transported to somewhere else that was all his Caro. When it was over, her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him with an uncomplicated love shining out of her brown eyes for just a moment before he saw the old hurts and confusions come back to trouble her.
Daniel's voice startled them. "Sam and I need to go home."
Cam looked to see Daniel, sitting up now in the other bed, all medical device connections stripped off. "He's right. We're both fine. It would be really good for us to go home." Sam was sitting up in her own bed.
"I don't think so," Carolyn said.
"Examine me," Daniel requested softly. "If you don't find anything, can you really keep us here?"
Carolyn did an efficient quick exam and frowned. "Everything's normal. It's like nothing happened to you." She checked him over again, even more meticulously and thoroughly. She walked over to Sam's bed and examined her.
"That's curious," Cam thought. "Neither of them seem to find that strange. Sam isn't a patient here and yet Carolyn's examining her. It's as if they know something is off."
"Sam, you're fine," Carolyn announced. Cam was sure she was delighted her patients were well, but would almost have welcomed some indication that she and Cam had not been hallucinating.
Daniel swung his legs around and got up, a little unsteady for a moment, but after a couple of steps, he was walking normally. Sam got up as well and went to put her arm around him. "How about if Daniel could borrow some scrubs," she suggested. I don't really want any late night personnel to be getting in on my personal viewing rights to his backside."
Daniel reached around rather futilely to the back of his hospital gown. "You do have a point, Sam."
"I don't agree with this," Carolyn protested. "You need to stay here under observation."
Sam left Daniel and came close to her. She laid a hand on Carolyn's arm and said, very softly. "Forget the past. If you've lost patients, this isn't like what happened before."
Cam spent a lot of time in the infirmary and he knew where the scrubs were. He left Carolyn wordlessly staring at Sam, quickly located a pair, and tossed them to Daniel. Daniel pulled the bottoms on under the gown and went to work on putting on the top. Carolyn finally came to life. "I guess I can't keep you here," she said reluctantly.
Daniel came forward and put an arm around her and gave her a little hug. "Sam and I just need to be alone together and deal with this. We'll be fine."
Sam and Daniel left hand in hand. Carolyn turned to Cam. "Deal with what? What made me go along with that? What just happened here?"
Chapter 3
Sam and Daniel made very slow love that night. It wasn't that they weren't ravenous for each other. They had been that since the first touch. It was the unaccustomed nature of what they were experiencing that they wanted to savor. Both of them pushed any attempt to understand it off until afterwards. Instinctively, they knew that understanding would not be easy or even pleasant and that hard decisions would follow.
This WAS very pleasant though, this exploration of what they could now do together. She kissed him and ran her hand over his chest and the heat and the need rose in him. He ran his hand down to her backside and squeezed and he felt her excitement in warm waves. Each of them was resonating with not only their own pleasure but also their partner's. When the climax came, it was two crescendos for each of them, feeding back on each other and growing. It was the most intoxicating thing either had ever known.
The first thing Daniel said as they lay sprawled, completely satisfied, was, "I don't understand how empaths can avoid being complete sex addicts."
"Is that what we are?" Sam asked.
"I'll sign up for it," he said, reaching for her.
"Daniel, stop it." She swatted his hand away. "I don't mean do you think we're sex addicts. I mean, so you think we're empaths now?"
"You felt what I was feeling as well as your own reactions just now in that incredible mind-blowing sex we just had, right? And, back there in the infirmary, the waves of sorrow, guilt, and fear rolling off Carolyn were thick."
"How is this possible that I'm empathic? If it was from the bite, how could it react on me too?" Sam was sitting up, chin on her knees, in scientific mode now.
"I think we have to face the fact that it's an inhabitation. When I kissed you, I'm guessing whatever was in me split and went into you too," Daniel said.
"I don't feel like anything's taken me over. Remember I've been there, done that." Sam looked doubtful and considered her own remark. "Of course, that could be the point."
"The only time I felt any compulsion was when I kissed you. I hope to God I didn't hurt you Sam. I swear, I was convinced at the time I had to."
She laid her hand on his cheek. "You don't really have to swear anything to me, darling, not ever again. I can sense that you weren't lying."
Daniel turned his face into her hand and kissed it. "We have a lot to figure out and until we do, I think we had better not share."
She nodded, "Right. The NID would just love to get their hands on an empath."
He pulled her across his lap. "We do have a problem with Carolyn and Cam. They saw that we were linked somehow."
"What was that? It seems to me like it was more than just sensing your feelings. I felt like I was in your dream with you." She huffed. "Weird. Really weird."
"Maybe the connection between empaths as to opposed to with other people is different. We should attack this like any other scientific problem that's been put before us, Sam. Form hypotheses, run experiments, take our own observations, make our decisions from hard data, not gut feelings."
"I've got an experiment I want to try right now," she said. She got out of bed and walked to the door. "Can you feel me now?" she asked, imitating the Verizon commercial.
"Oh yes." As tired as he was, that particular feeling was hard to ignore. He started to get up, but she held up her hand.
Sam walked to the top of the stairs. "Can you feel me now?"
"Get back in here," he growled.
Daniel heard her go down the stairs. "Can you feel me now?" she called from the foot of the stairs. This time he had to stop to think about it. Since what she had been feeling was the same thing he was feeling himself, it took a little sorting. "It's very faint," he called back.
She went into the kitchen and shouted, "Can you feel me now?"
Nothing. He was pretty sure he felt nothing -- that is nothing from her. He was feeling plenty on his own. He bolted out of bed and ran down the stairs. He found her in the kitchen. "You were out of range the last time." He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and started back upstairs. "We're going to do a different experiment now."
When they finally decided it was time to get some sleep, the sun was coming up. They slept like the dead until early afternoon when the next door neighbor's power mower assaulted Daniel's ears and demanded that he get up. He stirred and stretched, keeping one arm around his sleeping wife. She actively resisted waking up and there wasn't normally a lot of care required not to disturb her. This morning, her eyes opened instantly. He shook his head, hoping he was wrong. "What woke you up, honey?" he asked. His eyes were scrunched slightly like a man prepared for a blow.
"What are you worried about?" she asked and then immediately her eyes opened wide and she knew. "I woke up because you woke up. Something about the surge of energy and alertness woke me."
They looked at each other. "So, either we sleep apart or you're going to become a morning person," Daniel said.
"And you get to be more of a night owl," she said, following through to the conclusion. "We could end up very tired, but I'd rather be tired than not sleep with you."
"Up side, great sex. Down side, no sleep." Daniel leaned over, twined his hand in her tousled hair and kissed her neck. Even though she immediately reached out to him, he jerked back like he had been scalded. "You hate me doing that in the morning," he said. He was stunned.
"No, Daniel. Not hate. Sometimes I really like it and I always get to liking it after a little bit. I just wake up sort of grumpy and unhappy about waking up most of the time and need a little space."
"Why have you never told me this?"
"I love you. I didn't want you to feel rejected and, like I said, usually I just have to give it a little time." She looked at him anxiously. "Please don't be hurt."
"You can tell I'm not. I'm touched you were bothering to pretend. Sure illustrates down side number two though. No more white lies for the Carter-Jacksons."
They were both rather quiet after that as they got out of bed, did the bathroom rituals, and dressed. There were surprises everywhere and most of them hadn't been good so far. Reacting to Sam's tension, Daniel said, "I hate that this is preying on you. Somehow I think it'll come out okay. We just have a lot to learn. I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better."
She was standing next to the closet and reached in to pull out his black leather pants. "You could wear these."
"To clean the house with you?"
"I see your point. It's just that looking at you in these pants does something to me."
"You are really good for a man's ego," Daniel said and kissed her on the forehead. "Maybe this evening I could be persuaded to put them on if I get to pick something out for you to wear."
Daniel was very glad he had resisted the black leather pants when he opened the door to go out for the paper and found himself face to face with Cam and Carolyn. "Now this is full service medicine," he said. There was a smile on his face that made it clear he was glad to see them despite his teasing, "I thought the AMA had outlawed house calls or something."
"We were concerned about you," Carolyn said. "I wondered how your wound was doing." Daniel's hand went to his shoulder where the corner of the large dressing was visible above his open throated flannel shirt.
"And wondering if we've become Pod People or something," Daniel thought. "We've got to be careful."
Aloud, he said, in as welcoming a fashion as he could manage, "Hey, I'm sorry. I don't know where my head was. Please come in." He opened the door wide for them and called out, "Honey, Cam and Carolyn are here."
He ushered them into the living room. Sam appeared immediately and greeted them with pleasure. "Can I get you something to drink? Have you had lunch?"
"Actually," Cam said. "We were thinking you'd let us take you out to lunch if you were still feeling all right. Otherwise, we were going to get you some carryout."
Daniel was intrigued by the fact that he wasn't picking up much from either of them now, but at the door when he had been inches away from Cam and Carolyn, he'd sensed something from both of them. So distance was a factor, yet Sam was several feet away from him and he knew she was feeling positive things about the invitation. It appeared there were variations in the distance required. Still he realized that he had to ask for her opinion. Not to do so would be evidence that there was some sort of a link. "What do you think, honey? We were talking about running by Jack's but we can do that later this afternoon, right?" He caught the surprise at the suggestion they should go to Jack's, but, then, immediate acceptance.
Sam also made a point of a verbal assent. "I'd love to. Actually, we just got up and I'm ravenous. I'd love to head for food this minute if you all agree."
Thirty minutes later they were seated in a Cracker Barrel, chosen because it allowed Daniel and Sam to have breakfast while their companions had lunch and it routinely served the biscuits and cornbread that Cam loved to eat any time, day or night. "You've got to love these people," Cam said. "I can get my southern cooking fix almost anywhere now."
"We're all so happy for you," Carolyn said. There was a slight edge in her voice.
"Caro, you said you didn't mind it the last time we were here." His tone was a little defensive. Daniel was sitting between them and their hands were inches away as all of them leaned on the table, holding menus. Daniel could tell Cam was being completely honest. She'd definitely sandbagged him.
"I'm sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night myself. It's fine Cam as long as we're not here more than a couple of times a month," Carolyn said.
"You lie, you lie," Daniel told himself. He had to find a way to turn this off. He didn't want to know all the little games people played with each other.
They had already discussed how Daniel and Sam were feeling in the car as Cam drove them to the restaurant. Carolyn now introduced a rather surprising new topic. "I wanted to offer to help you organize the reception and second wedding ceremony you're planning."
"Wow. That's really generous," Sam said. "We've been having trouble getting very far with the arrangements. There's so much to think about and we've had trouble focusing."
Cam was looking at Carolyn as if she'd grown two heads. "You, Carolyn Lam, Doctor of Medicine, the woman I've been, um, seeing for months, you want to help someone plan a wedding?"
"I have no intention of ever marrying myself but that doesn't mean I'm allergic to other people's weddings," she said to him tartly. Turning back to Sam, she said, "That's why I enjoy helping with them so much. Makes up for not having one of my own." Her tone of voice was bright and cheerful and her expression matched, yet Sam and Daniel both reeled at the pain that was underneath. The unhappiness her announcement caused her boyfriend ratcheted the emotional temperature up another degree. It was a struggle for Daniel to keep it all from showing on his face. He saw Sam raise her menu and instantly knew why.
"We accept, right Daniel?" Sam said in haste. He nodded.
"Let's talk about what sort of thing you had in mind," Carolyn suggested. Cam had settled back, crossed his arms, and was watching her as if she was a floor show, an intriguing concept for a Cracker Barrel.
"You know," Daniel said, "I don't know about Sam, but my feelings about the whole thing are more along the lines of knowing what I don't want rather than any clear picture of what I do want."
"Yeah," Sam said. "Actually I think that's sort of where I am at this point too. Like I don't want the whole wedding to be a series of photo opportunities where we're posing all the time."
"I don't want any little paper umbrellas in anything," Daniel said. "They make me crazy for some reason."
"Or the hooky poky. I really don't want a DJ telling us all to do the hooky poky," Sam said.
"How do you feel about the bunny hop?" Cam asked. "If you've had a lot to drink and you're sort of queasy, it can be bad."
"I'm not planning on being queasy, but I still think it gives bunnies a bad name," Daniel said. "Do we need to start writing this down?"
Carolyn nodded, rooting around in her purse and producing a prescription pad. She scribbled for a moment. "Okay, I'm caught up."
"I don't want a wedding gown I can't run in."
"Why do you need to run, honey? We're already married so bolting won't help," Daniel asked.
"I just don't like feeling at any point in time that if something happened, I wouldn't be able to react to the fullest extent," Sam explained.
"Like an alien invasion," Cam said helpfully.
"Like that's totally impossible," Sam said.
"I don't want the ceremony performed by an Ori prior," Daniel contributed.
"This list will be impossible if we start throwing things in that wouldn't ever happen. We've got to stick with typical American wedding events that we don't like," Carolyn said, with mock seriousness. She shook her pen at them. "Ground rules, people, ground rules."
"If you'd spent the hours I've spent in prostration, you'd want to be sure you never had to endure it again," Daniel said laughing but rubbing his knees. It wasn't totally a joke.
"I don't think we should write our own vows. Neither one of us is a poet," Sam said.
"I can just imagine the vows you guys could come up with. Major source of entertainment," Cam said. The tables around them were empty, but he still lowered his voice. "Even if you go to an alternate universe, I will not forsake you. We will walk hand in hand through the event horizons of life. I will put you before all others except my P90." He nodded, more ideas coming. "And you're marrying Daniel so rather than `until death do us part' something like `until you're really dead for good and we're completely sure you aren't coming back' would have to be used. Daniel's vows would include a discourse on cultural differences in marriage vows and would go on for 10 minutes even though he'd be talking really fast the whole time."
They were all laughing by the time he finished. It just went downhill from there. By the time they left some time later, full and sloshing from several cups of coffee, they were all in a very good mood even if they weren't actually much closer to any wedding plans. When they let Sam and Daniel off at their place, Carolyn said quietly to Sam, "We'll do lunch and get some real decisions made next week."
Sam smiled her agreement. Daniel put his arm around her and they waved them off. "THAT was fascinating," he observed.
"Yessiree you betcha, to quote a certain someone we're evidently going to go see in a few minutes," Sam said.
"It's a good idea, don't you think? If he was at the Mountain on a Friday, he's probably spending the weekend here in that little condo he bought after he went to DC and found out he couldn't stay away."
"I do. It's sort of a low level pain for me all the time, knowing he's so unhappy."
As they started to walk into the house, she said, "Do you think they're still suspicious of us?"
"They were paying close attention at first but I don't think either one of us did anything unusual, because they were pretty relaxed by the time we parted company."
Sam observed, "What a contrast between Carolyn and Cam, huh? Cam's the kind of person an empath needs to hang out with. He just puts out happiness and optimism and energy almost all the time. If he's got any traumas lurking, I didn't pick up on them. The only time he was down was when she found some little way to remind him that he's just passing through." Daniel didn't need to state his complete agreement.
As they neared Jack's a little later, Daniel stopped the car a block off. "No need to warn him. We need to sort of sneak up."
Sam said, "I think we need to flank him. I swear I wouldn't put it past him to either bolt out the back or refuse to answer the door."
"One of us goes around back to cover the second scenario, but what if he won't answer?"
"We just hang on the bell, bang on the door, yell, make a total scene," she suggested.
"Really, you'd really do that?" He was fascinated. He pulled her over and kissed her. "Even though I can read your emotions, you can still surprise me. That's good news right? Okay, give me one more for courage and let's go."
They kissed much more thoroughly this time. Daniel said thoughtfully, "I've never made love in a car, have you?"
"No," she denied emphatically. He raised an eyebrow, able to tell she wasn't being completely honest. "Just making out pretty hot and heavy, really."
"You don't think....?" He looked at the backseat.
"Please tell me you're not seriously suggesting something like that in this neighborhood and in broad daylight," she said, scandalized and, then, realizing he was teasing her, she relaxed. Laughing, she tapped him playfully. "Okay, you made me feel better. We should think about finding a really secluded place someday just to expand our horizons."
They got out of the car and walked to Jack's house. Sam disappeared around the back and Daniel stepped up to the front porch. He waited a moment for her to be in place and then rang the doorbell. The door opened immediately and Jack said, "What the HELL do you want?"
Chapter 4
"We wanted to talk to you," Daniel said remaining calm in the face of Jack's belligerent greeting.
"Are you speaking about yourself with the royal `we' these days, Daniel? You do seem to be alone here. I kind of like the use of the royal we. It warns everyone that you're a royal pain." Jack crossed his arms and looked him in a distinctly unfriendly way.
"I'm here too," Sam said as she came around the house.
"You two nitwits actually thought I'd sneak out the back," Jack said. "Don't flatter yourself. I don't have any trouble telling you to your face to go away."
"We're not going away, Jack, so you might as well step aside and let us in," Daniel said, still calm. The emotions Jack was projecting were complex. He yearned for them but there was a thick layer of fear and hurt dominating everything else.
"Please Jack," Daniel said and he stepped forward and put his hand on his friend's shoulder. He didn't know if he had any ability at all to project emotion but he mentally pushed all the caring and concern he felt toward Jack. Jack shook him off but he stepped aside as requested.
"Do you want a beer?" Jack asked. "I'm having one, maybe two." Without waiting for a response he went to the kitchen and came back with four bottles. There was already a bottle opener and a couple of empties sitting on the coffee table. He handed them each their bottle and sat in the one armchair. Daniel looked at Sam. He thought the couch was too far away to get the read he needed on what Jack was feeling. He shoved the bottles to one side and sat down on the heavy coffee table. Sam perched on the arm of Jack's chair.
"How about some respect for personal space here," Jack said.
They ignored him. Sam said, "Jack, you haven't been yourself. You've been avoiding dealing with the change in our relationship and lashing out instead, being pretty rotten to both of us."
"Puleese," Jack said. "Don't be such a baby."
"Or a girl?" Daniel asked. He was still searching for the rhythm involved with making the right statements to provoke a telling emotion. He couldn't read thoughts, after all, and it didn't help to get emotions if you didn't know their object.
The emotional response to the reference to his insulting comments about Daniel was surprise and embarrassment. Good, he hadn't meant it. However, the spoken response was, "If the apron fits, wear it."
"Something else is going on with you, Jack," Sam said shrewdly, searching his face. "Something else that has nothing to do with us." Ah, Sam had hit on something. "Is it the job?" No, Daniel could tell, that wasn't it.
Daniel looked at Jack's face and was suddenly struck by how much he had aged in the past few months. He'd been too upset to really key in on that in their one encounter in the elevator. Jack looked tired, very tired. He had been lean, but now he was almost gaunt. "You're sick," he stated, flatly.
"Of you! Just leave -- both of you. You can take your beers with you. Never say I'm not a generous host." He didn't want them to go, but he was afraid. It was thick and black and palpable.
Sam took one of his hands and Daniel the other. Jack tried to pull his hands away but not as hard as he could have if he had meant his words. This man was still a fighting force to be reckoned with. Sam said softly, "Jack, we'll never be together as lovers but I do love you. We were a team for years and in my heart, we're still a team. You and me and Daniel and Teal'c. We faced death so many ways and we won because we didn't face it alone. Please don't shut us out."
"Okay," he said with a slight smile. "If you're going to refuse to go away and the two of you insist on sitting on top of me, let's move to the couch. This is just weird looking at Danny here amid the beer bottles. And I got to have a hand free. It's too hard to drink beer like this."
They relocated to the couch, one on each side of him. Sam took his hand again but Daniel laid his arm across the back of the couch just above his shoulders.
"We could have a three-way," Jack suggested, his face settled in its usual inscrutable lines.
"Give up on it, Jack. You're not scaring us off," Sam said laughing.
Jack sighed, closed his eyes, and dropped his head. The three sat for several minutes in a silence broken only by the swish of a car passing by outside and the ticking of an overloud clock that became increasingly irritating.
Daniel realized that there was something else that needed to be made plain. "Maybe you're afraid of being pitied. This thing has you running like physical danger never did because you're afraid of people putting you in another category with little kids and old people. You don't want people to treat you differently, keep things from you, make your decisions for you. Well, you should know I don't pity you. I'm too scared of you to pity you."
Jack snorted, "You're not afraid of me Daniel. Actually, I don't think you're afraid of much, not for yourself anyway." He picked up Daniel's full bottle from the coffee table and then Sam's and held them up, shaking his head. "You two are real party animals." He swapped his empty bottle for the second beer he'd brought out with him.
"Quit stalling," Daniel said.
"Maybe I should make you guess what the disease is," he said with a glint in his eye. "If you're right, I'll show you my medical records. If you're wrong, you get to fork over my copay."
"Maybe we should both jump you and pummel you into submission," Sam said.
"Okay, already. Here's the thing. It's the big C," Jack said.
Sam made a small gasping sound, "Could there be a mistake?" she asked but without any real hope.
"Nope. They took a lump out of my arm right after you told me you were married to Daniel. I had found out about it the week before. They thought they got it all and there wasn't any need for chemo or radiation. This time, there's going to have to be both. About four months for the entire chemo part. I decided I'd rather do it here in Colorado. The radiation treatments are just another month and I should be able to manage them after I return to duty."
"Did they give you any odds," Daniel asked.
"Not good ones." He bite his lip, "Really bad ones, actually. It's like the bookmakers are all cozying up to the cancer and I'm the underdog."
"Oh Jack," Sam said bereft, "Landry must have told you that the last time I tried to use the Goa'uld healer, it didn't work. It actually made things worse. Ever since I failed with Daniel..."
"He did. I was still thinking about asking you to try, but it seemed to make more sense to try the chemo and radiation first and only resort to the healing device if that fails. I also asked Landry about contacting the Asgard on my behalf. He told me how he'd already sent a message when the Ori popped up and so far there's been no answer."
"Right and now we can't turn to the Tok'ra either," Daniel said, dispiritedly, stating the obvious.
They all sat considering the perfectly good options not available to them. Then Sam said, "Were you planning on just crawling back to this condo and being really sick all by yourself after your treatments?"
"What else would you suggest?" Jack asked. "I don't want to hire some stranger. I'm not that into people you know."
Daniel said, impulsively, "We've got a guest room that only gets used once in a blue moon for Cassie. Stay with us, particularly if treatment makes you very sick at all."
Sam agreed immediately. She wasn't upset with Daniel for not checking with her. "Look, you'd be doing us a favor. It's a good half an hour drive over here and I don't want to be wasting time on it a couple of times a day." He gave her a funny look. "You don't think you could keep us away, do you?"
Daniel could tell Jack was feeling crowded. "We can talk about that later. I think it's time for a rip roaring game of miniature golf."
They both looked at Daniel with their mouths open. "I don't play golf," Jack said patiently. "I mean I have hit golf balls into the event horizon with Teal'c, but that's a really big hole compared to the cheesy things they give you on golf courses."
"When was that?" Sam asked, sure she would have noticed or heard about it.
"My little secret," Jack said. "Anyway, Daniel you have even less golfing experience than I do."
"Exactly. This gives us an even playing field, right? Nobody's any good at it," he explained.
"Hello. Probably because nobody gives a rat's ass," Jack said.
"It'll be fun," Daniel said enthusiastically. "Mitchell was telling me he and his girl friend went last weekend and had a blast. It'll get us out in the fresh air. No offense Jack, but your place has this definite stale beer aroma." Daniel stood up. "You want to drive or shall we?"
"Since I don't have the foggiest idea where a miniature golf course might be, that would be you."
Jack chuckled as they exited the condo and had to walk a block. "You really did thought I'd try to duck out or something didn't you?"
"You taught us to be prepared for anything in a combat situation," Daniel said.
As Sam was getting in the driver's seat, Jack raised his eyebrows. "It's her car, Jack," Daniel said, a trifle exasperated.
Jack caught Daniel's arm as Daniel grabbed the door handle. "You know, Daniel, I don't really think you're a girl although you are almost pretty enough."
"I know," Daniel said, batting his eyes at Jack comically, "but I'm already taken."
By the third hole at the miniature golf course, it was apparent that two highly trained Air Force officers and their heavily coached civilian companion were losing battles and well on their way to total defeat. Military preparedness was failing utterly. They were stymied by a windmill affair at an angle to the initial fairway that provided just a short window of opportunity to get between the revolving blades after you banked off the metal plate straight ahead of the its. A little boy and his sister came up behind them and shifted impatiently. Finally the boy asked, "Do you MIND if we play through?"
They stood back and watched as he and his sister three putted the hole. Daniel looked over at his wife's intent face. "No fair trying to calculate angular momentum or some such thing Sam. That IS what you're doing, right?"
She shrugged, a little embarrassed. "All that expensive training. Might as well use it huh?" She resumed her frowning.
"This is fraking embarrassing," Jack said.
"Fraking?" Daniel asked.
"Try to keep up with pop culture Daniel. It's what all the cool sci fi guys say now," Jack said smugly. "If we could just shoot the motor out, you know, that would solve it."
"I think they would frown on the use of a P90 in the middle of all these little kids," Daniel answered.
"Ya think?"
Sam said, "We have an incorrect basic premise here. We're a team. We're not playing this like a team. I'm going to going to see to it that the two of you get through then one of you has to come back for me." She rubbed her hands together and grabbed the windmill blade to slow it a moment. Daniel hit through. She grabbed it again for Jack. Then Jack returned the favor. They hi-fived. The little boy, just now finishing the hole in front of them said, "I'm reporting you."
"Hey, we let you play through didn't we?" Jack called after him. "No gratitude at all in the younger generation. It's a disgrace." The little sister stuck her tongue out at him and he reciprocated.
"Maybe we've sucked all the pleasure we're going to out of miniature golf," Sam said, steering Jack in the opposite direction from the little boy who was coming back their way with the manager. "Daniel was going to make this wonderful pasta thing he does. Why don't you come over for dinner?"
They were at the car now. "Sam, we've definitely smoked the peace pipe and I really appreciate the invitation for tonight and for during my chemo. But it's going to take some time for me to get used to being around the two of you as a couple and not having it gall me. I just stuck my tongue out at a little girl. I'd like to think that was some kind of response to strain. Let's do this in small steps. Maybe if I get really sick with the treatment, I'll break down and say yes to a little visit but I'm not there yet."
"Here's an idea. We talked about the team. You need to tell T. He should be part of this. How about we ask him to dinner, say Wednesday. Would you be willing to come?" Daniel invited.
"If you promise me Teal'c is absolutely the last person you're going to speak one word to about this."
After they came home, Sam said, "We didn't ask him if he would be in our wedding party. I guess it's too early."
"Definitely, but I never thought we'd get this far. We've got a powerful tool in what we can sense now. What's been running through my mind is a mental image of someone from NID with this power. It makes my blood run cold. We may never be able to tell anyone about this."
"You know what," Sam said. "I just had an intriguing thought. We're like superheroes sort of with special powers. We should have our special superhero costumes. I've already designed yours in my head. It starts with the..."
Daniel put his hand over her mouth, "Enough about the black leather pants. And wait until you see, Colonel Doctor Carter-Jackson, what your superhero costume looks like."
"Oh really?" she asked very interested. "One thing though. It had better not involve a thong because those things are REALLLLY uncomfortable."
"I hadn't really thought about a thong but now that you mention it..."
Suddenly she grabbed his hand, flipped him over her shoulder onto his back, and was sitting straddling him. "
"Say that again," she said.
Instead of answering, he initiated a series of moves that ended with her pinned under him. "Thong," he whispered in her ear.
"Whatever you say," she cooed and pulled his head down into an enthusiastic kiss.
Their first day as empaths at an end, they were not, on balance, unhappy.
Chapter 5
This does feel a little like being Clark Kent, Daniel admitted to himself as he walked into his lab Monday and headed toward the back to shelve the book he'd carried in. He was mild-mannered archeologist, Dr. Daniel Jackson, who was really Mindreader. He and Sam had had a serious case of the giggles coming up with one ridiculous superhero name and costume after another for each other the night before. Remembering how much fun they had had, he struck a pose and pantomimed rushing through the air ala Superman.
"Is this a new form of meditation like Tai Kwan-Do?" a deep voice asked from the doorway.
Daniel hypothesized that he hadn't sensed Teal'c's presence because he was almost at the back of the lab and Teal'c was just inside the door. Moderately embarrassed, he decided to immediately change the subject. "I'm glad you stopped by T. We want to ask you over to dinner on Wednesday. Jack's coming."
"If O'Neill is coming this, I do not understand. As I informed you, when I requested of O'Neill that he at least talk with you, he was most emphatic." Teal'c had tried to intercede after Daniel had shared with him his difficulties in getting Jack to take his calls. "I have not seen the cows skating home on the ice as of yet."
"It's rather amazing," Daniel agreed. "Sam is very pleased and so am I. Can you come?"
"I will be there with small musical devices attached to my person," Teal'c said in a polite tone of voice.
"That's wonderful," Daniel said. "Come hungry. I'm planning on making a lot of food."
"And I will bring Guinness."
"Thanks, Teal'c," Daniel said. Jaffa custom required that Teal'c show up with something. That something had become Guinness years before. Then Jack had become a less frequent part of their get togethers and the Guinness reserve grew in Sam and Daniel's individual refrigerators, but no one wanted to say anything to Teal'c.
As the morning wore on, Daniel missed Sam more and more. It was like this every day but, today, it seemed more acute. He had faint misgivings that their empathic abilities could turn out to be a little like the bracelets that had bound him to Vala. Misgivings or not, by 10:00, he ran out of self-discipline and went to her lab. It was crowded with several other scientists gathered around a piece of newly recovered Ancient technology. He smiled perfunctorily at everyone and pulled his wife out into the hall, mercifully empty at the moment.
"We've got to get better at this, Daniel. You wouldn't believe the amount of jealousy, arrogance, and smugness there is in that room from people I always thought were quite civil," Sam said with a shake of her head.
Daniel confined himself to a sympathetic look and inarticulate sound of agreement and pulled her along the corridor to a sort of janitorial closet he had scouted before going to her lab. He had been afraid her place would be as full of colleagues as his was at the moment and he really needed to be in private with her. He waited until the hall was empty again and then yanked the closet door open, pulled her inside with him, and closed the door. "What a relief. I can't feel anyone but you," he breathed.
"It's bad, isn't it?"
"Sam, it's horrible. People I thought were friendly hate me or each other or they're miserably unhappy about something. Not everyone and not to the same degree, but if I can't learn to dial this down, I just don't know. I faked a cold so I could stay yards away from people most of the time and avoid sensing their feelings."
Daniel couldn't see her at all. The closet defined pitch black. He could smell her, a clean smell with a little lemon thrown in, maybe from her shampoo. He could feel her lithe body against him, the skin soft, but the body firm except where she pressed against his chest. He could sense her beginning to desire him and his own need for her grew immediately. "Oh, Sam, if you weren't in this with me, I don't know what I'd do."
She ran her hands up his arms to find his face and pulled his head down to her. They began to kiss and were swamped with each other's sensations. That was when the door was jerked open and they broke apart to see Cam Mitchell and Dr. Carolyn Lam framed against the corridor light. "Good morning all," Cam said. He tried half-heartedly to suppress his laughter, but burst into a huge guffaw within moments.
Daniel couldn't resist Cam's good humor. He smiled back. "My wife and I were mostly done with our inventory of the cleaning supplies and would be glad to allow the two of you to take over. I think all that was left was checking out the Lysol."
He towed Sam out of the closet. She was blushing and laughing at the same time as was Carolyn. Cam said, "We had a make out closet in high school, but it wasn't half this nice."
Carolyn said, "There was the darkroom - I was on the yearbook staff - but it reeked."
Sam and Daniel exchanged glances. Sam said, "Two little geeks here. I didn't even know about make out closets. You?" she asked Daniel.
"I don't think I kissed anyone anywhere, in or out of a closet, in high school," Daniel laughed.
"My handsome late bloomer," Sam said and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
They stood there for a moment before General Landry's voice came from behind them. "Have we had some sort of spill or something?"
"No, sir," Cam answered. "We were all just curious about what was in here."
Landry looked at the four faces. Sam was blushing. Daniel looked like he had a little lipstick on the corner of his mouth. Mitchell and his daughter both looked strained, struggling to master their expressions. "Carry on," he finally said and strolled away.
As soon as he was truly around the corner, they all burst out in laughter. "We certainly can't keep meeting like this," Cam said.
Daniel was finding it therapeutic to take refuge in cooking and went all out to prepare for Wednesday's dinner. The emotional drain at the Mountain wasn't letting up. He had discovered that most of the time, Mitchell was something like an aspirin. He'd go hang out with him for a short time and the man's good nature and lack of an agenda served as a restorative.
Sam was considerably tenser than Daniel at this point. Carolyn and Sam had had lunch together Monday and Tuesday to discuss the wedding festivities, recruiting their friend, Bay, to help the second day. There was now an impressive checklist of activities that the women had divided between themselves to prepare for the renewal of vows ceremony and reception. The cost for all this planning efficiency was Sam soaking up a couple of healthy doses of Carolyn's suppressed trauma with respect to marriage. "For Cam's sake, hers, and my own," Sam had sighed to him, "I've got to help that woman get rid of her demons."
"My sake too, honey," Daniel reminded her. "If you're unhappy than so am I, now more than ever."
As fallout from the wedding planning, Daniel had discovered he suddenly had a number of action items, most of which were fine with him, but he had balked at being asked to pick out a band for the reception. "Sam, that's on the extravagant side, isn't it?" he asked when they discussed it Tuesday evening.
"I've got some money from Dad's estate. I want this to be special. It's the only wedding I'm going to have." Sam narrowed her eyes at him. "It's not the money Daniel. Come clean."
"Okay. I can't dance. I seriously doubt whether I have any rhythm. I get in trouble trying to clap along when people start doing that in time to music."
"It's not lack of coordination or grace, Daniel," she said. She crossed the kitchen to him, slid her arms around his waist and nuzzled his neck. "It's a beautiful thing watching you fight and you have real panache when you fire a P90."
He looked at her quizzically. "Is this typical military love talk?"
"We military types don't like to waste a lot of time on talk," she corrected him. She kissed him intimately and rubbed against him. He picked her up, set her on the counter, and proceeded to show that he knew how to not talk as well.
He had hoped that was the end of the dancing discussion but the last thing she said to him, just as he was falling asleep, was "Think dancing lessons." Daniel had a strange dream in which there was a little creature pirouetting all over the room in a tutu. It informed him that it's name was Dangermouse and the two of them were going to learn to dance the Macarena together. He woke up in a cold sweat which meant Sam awakened as well. He pulled her into a warm embrace and drifted back off to sleep mumbling, "Don't want to dance with rodents."
Wednesday evening, Teal'c arrived punctually with the promised Guinness. "Things smell quite good DanielJackson," he said, sniffing the air appreciatively. Daniel waved him toward the appetizers and took his drink order. Things were quite pleasant for awhile, but as the minutes ticked away and the appetizers dwindled, there was still no Jack.
"I warned you about the cows who are not skating," Teal'c said gravely.
The doorbell rang and Daniel jumped up, gave Teal'c a "see?" look and went to the door. It was an unapologetic Jack who thrust a bottle of wine at Daniel and entered to greet Teal'c enthusiastically. The meal came off without a hitch, but the conversation was about nothing in particular. Daniel and Sam served Baked Alaska and coffee for dessert. Even when there were just little puddles of ice cream and crumbs of cakes left on their plates, there had still been nothing important discussed. Daniel looked at Sam and she gave him a tiny nod.
"Sam and I would like to talk with both of you about a sort of second wedding and reception we're doing. It's tentatively scheduled in three months. Mitchell and Teal'c were our only close friends at the first one and it was, well, not close to what Sam had always dreamed about."
Sam took over. "We wanted to ask both of you to consider being part of the wedding party as groomsmen." Daniel and Sam had talked about asking Jack one on one but had concluded that it was important for all of them that he did this and they needed to work every angle they could to give him no chance but to say yes.
"I am greatly honored. Will I be able to wear a hat?" Teal'c asked. Sam and Daniel nodded. "If so, I accept."
Jack was still gawking at both of them. "Did I not say something about little steps? Getting used to you two in little steps?"
"You have three months, Jack. You could walk to Denver by then." Daniel said, mildly. He could tell that Jack was very conflicted but there was definitely great pleasure at the invitation.
"Let me think about it, okay?" Jack leaned back. "You know, Sara and I did the same thing, had a second ceremony with a reception."
"Really? How did that come to pass?" Daniel asked. He was fascinated by the emotions surfacing in Jack's mind.
"We were engaged, I was going through training for special ops, and we had a wedding all planned for two weeks after the end of my training. Then they decided to deploy us early. We drove to Vegas and got married in a wedding chapel with just Hank Landry and his ex-wife as witnesses. So after I came back, she wanted the whole enchilada. We had a band at the reception, the whole thing. We were actually a pretty good pair on the dance floor."
Sam said, "Daniel and I really need dance lessons. I want a band at our reception and neither one of us can dance really." Daniel sensed there was more going on in her mind than the question alone suggested. He appreciated her little lie to make it less like he was some hopeless geek holding her back. "It's really embarrassing to think about going to some class somewhere. Anyway it might be kind of hard to work into our schedule."
Jack said, "I'd teach you, but we'd need a woman who can dance too." They all considered the problem.
"We could ask around," Daniel said. "Say, to get back to what we were talking about before, I'm curious, are you still in touch with Sara?"
"Some years I get Christmas cards which is how I know she moved here. Strangest thing but I actually thought I saw her at a 7-11 a month ago. Then yesterday, when I was on the highway, I was almost positive she went by in a car.
"Maybe you should give her a call sometime," Daniel suggested. That got a very interesting reaction emotionally and no expression at all on the surface.
Sam refilled everyone's coffee and they chatted further about the wedding plans. Sam and Daniel began giving Jack very pointed looks which he studiously ignored. At last Teal'c said, "If you do not tell me what is going on, I will have to come to my own conclusions."
"T?" Jack said.
"They keep looking at you as if you are supposed to say something but you do not," was Teal'c's implacable response.
"What conclusion would you be coming to on our own?" Jack asked.
"I was considering the possibility that you have decided that you are a woman trapped in a man's body and you are having a sex change operation."
Teal'c deliberately provocative answer caused Jack to spew coffee and Daniel and Sam to explode in laughter. After some mopping up of the coffee and glaring by Jack, they all settled back into their places and just looked at each other.
"Okay, okay," Jack said, begrudgingly. "I have cancer related to a lump in my arm. It's been removed but I am going to need four months of chemotherapy followed by a month or so of radiation treatments."
"I feared that you were ill, O'Neill," Teal'c said. "This is not as bad as my worst fears. There is a treatment that has a chance of curing you. I was afraid that you would be under a death sentence."
Jack was clearly surprised. "What made you think I was ill?"
"Many things, but most of all the way you were acting toward your friends," Teal'c responded. Jack ducked his head, acknowledging the gentle chiding.
"You know that we are all here with you in this fight," Teal'c continued. He stood and went around the table. Jack stood in response and Teal'c hugged him. Sam and Daniel were on their feet too. They joined in embracing Jack. The team was together again and, for once, Jack let himself be loved.
Chapter 6
A notepad rested on Sam's lap as she sat, propped up against the headboard. Daniel was sitting, cross-legged, facing her with a pile of closely written sheets in Ancient next to him. Her pen was poised over the paper as he formulated a thought. "The four observations we did in the cafeteria today confirmed that it definitely makes a difference whether we are touching each other as to how far away the subject can be for us to pick up on his emotions."
"I don't think we need to do any more experiments along that line except to establish the limits," Sam agreed, adding that conclusion to the day's notes. Daniel would translate them to a code of his invention in Ancient and they would burn the originals in the fireplace.
"I'd say that Liz MacDuff was at least 10 feet away from us when we picked up on her," Daniel said, "so the limit has to be at least that far."
"She was looking in your direction and definitely thinking warm thoughts and you weren't exactly unaware of her," Sam snarled.
"In the first place, you haven't a leg to stand on when it comes to noticing good looking members of the opposite sex. Do you think I don't catch what you try to suppress when you look at Mitchell sometimes? In the second place, Liz could have been noticing someone behind me, Sam. Just because you're obsessed with me doesn't mean everyone else is."
Sam stuck her tongue out and tossed a pillow at him. "Daniel, if you have no idea by now of how most women react to you, it's willful and deliberate ignorance on your part. Practically every woman we walk by projects some something."
"Do you have any idea how many guys I've been tempted to punch out in the past few days?" Daniel asked her. "You have quite an effect on the male population. Of course, if someone's looking at us together, we don't really know which one of us they're reacting to."
Sam made a face. "I really don't want to intrude into people's personal sexual preferences. This empath thing is a case of toooo much information most of the time!"
Daniel picked her feet up and put them on his lap and began to massage them. He watched her face relax and felt the tension leave her physical body and her emotions. She dropped the notepad on the floor and said, "The rest of my body wants equal time. Come here."
The next day was a Saturday and it found Sam and Daniel parked on a quiet suburban street. "I thought you were saying we were getting too much information and we're about to tail Jack's ex-wife? That seems like rather aggressive pursuit of information to me," Daniel said, sipping coffee from a large traveling mug and looking at his wife over his glasses.
"Daniel," she said apropos of nothing, "when did you have lasic surgery?"
"Huh?"
She pounced. "Okay, not lasic but something. I can tell you're hiding something." She grabbed his glasses from his face before he could stop her and put them on. "These don't have any correction in them!" She removed them and brandished them at him. "Explain yourself."
Daniel looked at her sheepishly. "Okay. When I came back after I was ascended, my vision was probably 20/20. People were weirded out enough and I didn't want it to seem like I wasn't the same person when everyone expected me to need my glasses. The glasses always seemed to help make people listen to me more seriously as a scientist too."
"You fraud," she said. "I bet you deliberately fail your eye exams. Also, Daniel, when I first met you and you were this very young, hunky guy, you might have needed some help with credibility but... "
"So I'm not young or I'm not hunky?"
"What do you think?" she asked and leaned over and kissed him.
"What made you ask in the first place?" he laughed.
"Daniel, you don't wear them half the time. It's absolutely erratic when you seem to need them and when you don't. I bet Cameron figures it out one of these days. Why not just tell everyone you got lasic and quit fooling with them."
He expelled a breath and glanced down the street. "Sam, Sam, she's getting in her car."
Sam took the car out of park and hung back until Sara had pulled out and was almost to the corner before leaving their parking place. "You are really into this whole cop, surveillance thing, aren't you?" he asked her.
"Daniel, we need to know if she still cares about Jack the way Jack so clearly still cares about her. You felt it just like I did when he was remembering their wedding. You don't need our empathic abilities to draw the conclusion that she's really on his mind with this business of thinking he sees her everywhere."
They followed Sara to a Wal-Mart. She parked and they parked two rows away. Inside they were immediately greeted by a friendly woman who welcomed them to the store. They smiled at her, but the slight delay was enough for them to lose sight of Sara. At least, it was very refreshing that Daniel could sense that the greeter quite honestly did seem to be glad to be there and glad they were too. They had learned to prize sincere, happy people.
"Let's split up. You go work your way in from the right half and I'll start at the left half," Daniel suggested.
Daniel felt faintly idiotic, cruising the aisles looking for a woman he had only met once and would have to count on recognizing mainly from the clothes she had been wearing when she left her house. In the plastic containers aisle, he spotted her picking up a stack of individual serving type of containers. With any luck, you're not going to be needing those any more, he thought, steeling himself for the encounter. "Hi," he said brightly. "Haven't we met?"
Sara stood and looked at him, her expression pleasant but confused. Daniel was grateful that so far she wasn't nervous. He was grateful that he had shaved off that God awful beard. Sam had told him after the fact that it had made him look like a serial killer. "I don't think so," Sara said.
"Be patient with me a moment," Daniel said. He continued to work on looking as inoffensive and nonthreatening as possible. "I know," he said triumphantly. "It was years ago, about 7 or 8 years maybe. I was working with Jack, Jack O'Neill, when there was that incident with the child who looked a lot like your son, Charlie. I'm Daniel Jackson."
She went from being calm and mildly interested to generating some waves of powerful emotion. "You work with my ex-husband?" she asked. It came out almost as a squeak.
"He's been promoted so we stay in touch, but we don't actually work together any more. I don't know if you heard, but he's a general now and he's got a high powered assignment in DC. I'm still at Cheyenne Mountain. Actually, that's not exactly true. I mean about Jack being in DC. He's decided to take a few months leave of absence here in town and regroup. There's been a lot of pressure in the last couple of years."
"So is he all right?" she asked. She was struggling to show only moderate and polite interest but oh my, the yearning under the surface.
"He's okay. Coming off of a lot of stress as I said and maybe a little lonely."
"He's not involved with anyone then I guess?" Her faade was still casually polite but underneath it was another story.
Daniel could feel Sam approaching before she came around the corner and interrupted the conversation. "Sam, honey, look who I ran into."
Sam came toward him, maintaining a polite but puzzled expression. "Remember when we worked that incident with Jack years ago, you know with the child? This is Sara. Sara, this is my wife, Sam Carter Jackson."
Sam's face cleared. "How delightful to see you again."
"It's really nice to see you too," Sara said politely.
"This is going to sound really crazy," Daniel said. "I mean you don't really know us, but we'd love to talk with you a little and get some insight into Jack. We've been his best friends for years, but some things are still a bit of a mystery to us and lately he's not really been himself."
Sara was clearly torn. "I don't want to offend you, but I really don't know you. I mean I do remember meeting you both sort of, but I don't really know anything about your relationship with Jack. Jack wouldn't welcome me talking about him with people I didn't know anything about." She laughed. "Hell, Jack wouldn't welcome me talking about him with his closest friends."
"Of course. You're absolutely right. That was really a stupid suggestion. In fact, we owe you an apology. How about you let us take you out to lunch and we won't talk about Jack at all." Daniel could sense a lot of loneliness. He knew she was tired of eating alone and keeping her own company. He worked at projecting as much friendliness and warmth her way as he could. Sam and he had come to the conclusion that they did have some limited ability to project feelings.
Sam took up the banner, "There's a Cracker Barrel right next door. We can meet you there." Sara was hesitating. "Look Jack's saved both of our lives, multiple times. We've been on a lot of very secret missions together." Sam faked chagrin at having been indiscrete and Daniel tried to look disapproving. "I shouldn't have told you that." She sighed. "The thing is we owe him a lot and, well, he's let some things slip about how important you still are to him. Let's just say that doing something nice for you would definitely make us feel that we were paying him back a little." It worked. Now Sara probably felt like she would be prying information out of them and not the other way around. At least that was Daniel's guess at the excitement and curiosity she was now feeling.
"I haven't done anything impulsive for ages," Sara said. "Why not? It's not like my calendar is all filled up."
"You're definitely playing this thing by ear, aren't you?" Sam asked Daniel as they went out to their car. "This is beginning to remind me of one of Jack's plan C's."
"Works for him." He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. "Do I dare call Jack and try to get him to meet us for lunch?"
"NOW?"
"Pushing it too fast?" Daniel asked, searching her blue eyes.
"Well, yes, but I don't know if we'll have another shot any time soon so I guess I have to go along with you. Look, how about we call him. He had the chemo on Monday so he's probably feeling up to it by now. If he can't or won't come at the drop of a hat like this, then it wasn't meant to be."
They got in the car and Daniel called Jack on his cell. It rang repeatedly until the answering machine picked up. "Jack, it's Daniel. It's about 12:15. Look we're out running errands and decided to stop at the Cracker Barrel next to Wal-Mart on Carson Blvd for lunch. If you get this anytime in the next half hour, why don't you come on over. You know Cracker Barrel. We won't get a table for a good half hour anyway. We just found out something you will never believe about Davis and Woolsey."
"Davis and Woolsey?"
"Hey, I was improvising. Help me think of something exciting about those two guys."
As Daniel predicted, it was a half hour wait before they were able to be seated at Cracker Barrel. They used the time exactly as the marketing geniuses who had created the chain intended, browsing through the extensive gift shop that constituted the waiting area. Daniel suggested, tongue in cheek, that maybe Sam and he should register at Cracker Barrel for wedding gifts. The service wasn't offered, of course, but going through the collection of mostly tacky mixed with some good and coming up with anything they would want and then thinking of how they would use it got them all laughing.
To be sure there was a place for Jack, they got a table for five. Daniel told Sara that their friends and coworkers, Cameron Mitchell and Carolyn Lam, ate there frequently and, on the off chance they wandered in, they wanted to be able to invite them to join their party. Of course this resulted in the announcement out in the gift shop, "Jackson, party of five, Jackson, five," when their name came up on the waiting list. This cracked Sam up and got a smile from a couple of the other waiting dinners. Daniel confessed he had always wanted to do it.
"I guess you can't name any of your children Tito, Germaine, or Michael," Sara said, displaying more knowledge of the group than either Daniel or Sam possessed.
"I, uh, need to go to the ladies room," Sam suddenly announced and bolted out of her chair.
"I hope she's okay," Sara said. "You're not already working on a little LaToya or Janet are you?" Daniel realized that she thought Sam had morning sickness but Daniel could see that Sam had spotted Jack and was leading him over to ensure that he didn't get away. As they had schemed, Sara's back was to the door and she was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.
"The crazy thing is, Jack, remember how you kept saying that you thought you had seen Sara? We actually ran into her just now," Sam said, just as they reached the table.
Jack went rigid and froze in place. Sara turned in her chair at the name Jack and was white as a sheet. Sam literally dragged Jack to a chair and pushed him into it. "Look who we found," Sam said.
Sara gave her a betrayed, wounded look, but then she looked at her ex-husband's frozen expression and the stiff lines of his body and her face transformed into a soft, tentative smile. "Hello, Jack," she said. "It's really good to see you."
Jack cleared his throat. "Sara, this is amazing. You look exactly the way you did the last time I saw you."
"I hope that's a good thing," she said and laughed a little.
The waitress, Antoinette according to her name tag, arrived and they ordered. Daniel couldn't help but notice, that with her Day-Glo hair, she wasn't the run of the mill Cracker Barrel waitress. Jack and Sara simply seconded Sam's order. They clearly didn't care what they ordered and they didn't eat much of it. When Antoinette came back to refill the coffee, she stage whispered to Jack, "I could have told you that you wouldn't like that girly salad. Are you sure I can't get you a mess of bacon or ham and some eggs?" Jack looked at her with real appreciation, grateful that she noticed his preferences, Daniel thought, in contrast to Sam and Daniel riding roughshod over him. Still Jack shook his head. Daniel worried that even when he wasn't nauseated from the chemo, Jack just didn't eat.
Jack said relatively little, but he didn't take his eyes away from Sara except to occasionally glare at Daniel or Sam. Daniel knew there would be hell to pay later for this transparent set up. Sara was delightful. It was clear to Sam and Daniel why Jack had fallen in love with her in the first place. Toward the end of the meal, Sam decided it was time for another risky move.
"Daniel and I are really in a bad place. It's my fault really since I'm the one insisting on a band at our reception. Neither of us can dance, but I've always had this dream of dancing at my wedding. Jack offered to teach us, but he realized we really needed a woman to work with us too. He was telling us that you guys were quite the dancers. You don't suppose you could help Jack teach us to dance?"
Sara bit her lip. She was putting out both desire and fear. Daniel supposed she was afraid Jack would feel crowded. When Jack didn't say anything, Sara said, "What do you think Jack? I haven't danced in years, but maybe it's like riding a bicycle."
Then Daniel's lie early in the afternoon suddenly became fact. "Well, hello, hello," Cam said. They looked up to see the officer and a moderately unhappy looking Carolyn. There was a flurry of introductions. Daniel got up and pulled a sixth chair from an adjoining table and insisted that Cam and Carolyn join them.
"I thought you were making them up," Sara whispered to Daniel. He whispered back, "Actually I kind of was."
"Do you guys swing dance?" Sam asked.
Carolyn groaned. "One of us does."
Cam said, "I keep telling her she'd really enjoy it if she gave it a chance."
"I've got an idea," Sam said. "Jack and Sara just agreed to give Daniel and me dancing lessons, for the reception, you know. You guys are in the wedding party and you're going to have to dance. Why don't we all get together at our place next weekend and we can have a group lesson." Daniel quickly reviewed Jack's chemo schedule, as he was sure Sam had before she made the suggestion. It should be almost time for another treatment. Hopefully, he'd be physically up to it since the real sickness so far was confined to the first three or four days at most.
She turned to Jack and Carolyn who looked totally stunned by how fast the situation had gotten away from them. "Would that be okay with you guys?"
Cam seemed to take their agreement as a given and before they could get themselves together enough to respond, suggested, "If you're going to get the wedding party up to speed, you'd better bring Teal'c into it to."
"I bet Bay would be glad to come and act as his partner," Carolyn offered. They segued into logistical planning with the two instructors still looking completely poleaxed and unable to get a word in edgewise.
That evening, as they cuddled in front of the TV watching the Battlestar Galactica episode they had recorded earlier, Daniel told Sam. "We're doing the right thing for everyone else, Sam, with the dancing lessons, but I wish to God there was some way out of it."
"Something really bad happened to you with dancing," she stated. There was no question about the feelings of humiliation and unhappiness rolling off Daniel.
"I was years ahead of myself in school. I didn't fit in and I certainly didn't know how to behave in social situations. I got drafted to take my foster parents' daughter to some dance and it was a nightmare. They were sniggering at me and my awkward attempts to dance with the poor girl and she was dying of embarrassment."
"Oh Daniel," Sam sighed, "but think of all the people who were big deals in high school who are loosing their hair, overweight, and in dead end jobs today. Then look at you Dr. Dr. Daniel Jackson, interstellar hero, and all around hunk. He who laughs last, laughs loudest."
"The people we were as teenagers don't ever really go away Sam," Daniel said. "They're hiding in there somewhere."
"Really," she said, pulling back and looking at him thoughtfully. "What sort of sexual fantasies did teenaged Danny have anyway?"
Daniel couldn't believe how embarrassed the question made him. "For God's sake, Sam, I may not have been able to get a date, but that doesn't mean I wasn't as horny as the next guy. I have NO intention of discussing this."
"I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours," she offered.
He was still too embarrassed to be affected by the desire she was beginning to project. He had a sinking feeling she wasn't going to leave this alone. "It was just typical stuff. Some beautiful, very special, girl is crazy for me and can't get enough of me."
"What exactly does she do?"
"Sam, give it up."
"What exactly does she do? You won't be sorry. Tell me."
"To begin with she rips off my clothes," he offered, warily. Sam began ripping his clothes off.
"And..."
Daniel was finally beginning to get into this. "She starts kissing me all over and I do mean all over." Daniel moaned with pleasure as Sam began to act out that part of the fantasy. Daniel thought to himself before he lost the capability to think rationally, who says dreams don't come true?
Chapter 7
"My granny alllwaaays used to say `if they're getting the milk for free, why would they buy the cow.'"
"Mitchell, we were talking about your love life a moment ago, weren't we? How did we get into dairy products?" Daniel asked.
"How did I wind up talking to you about my love life?" Cam replied. Daniel just waited him out. He wasn't sure how it had happened, but Dr. Daniel Jackson had morphed turned into his own personal Dr. Ruth. Maybe guys boasted about conquests, some guys anyway. He'd been raised that a gentleman didn't do that. On the other hand, guys having touchy feeling conversations about their feelings seemed wrong for a different set of reasons. Despite that, he had gotten into the habit lately with Daniel. The archeologist seemed to find nothing odd about it and was a really intuitive listener, at least until Cam started throwing in back country aphorisms.
"She was talking about how a girl should not put out before marriage because if the guy didn't need to marry her to get her into bed, according to my granny, he'd never walk down the aisle with her," Cam finally explained.
"But, in this case, you feel like you're the cow, right?" Daniel deduced.
"I guess I'm just too much of a good old boy. It makes me squirm. I want to get married and she's allergic to the concept. I gave in and we moved in together a week ago, right, and here I am, providing the whole range of products from skim milk to yogurt. She's all fat and happy and not one bit more receptive to marriage." He hastened to correct himself. "Metaphorically speaking I mean. I don't want to consider what would happen if she thought I said she was fat."
"Which is more painful - being with her like this or being without her -- because those look like the only two choices to me?" Daniel asked him, leaning forward sympathetically.
"I'm not sure I know any more." Cam leaned back and jammed his hands in his pockets. He immediately jumped like there was a tarantula in one of them. "Crap. I've still got her keys in my pocket. She handed them to me for some damn reason when we came in this morning. At least she didn't ask me to carry her purse. I hate that. She's probably calling all over the place trying to find me to get them back."
They both looked over at Daniel's phone and simultaneously noticed that the jack was out of the back. "Why?" Cam asked.
"I was trying to concentrate and it kept ringing."
"How many days ago was that?" Cam asked.
Daniel winced and went on counterattack. "Tell you what, you'd better hot foot it down there with her keys."
Cam went quickly to the infirmary and entered, holding the keys out in front of him like a flag of truce. Carolyn looked up and said, "Thank God. I've been really handicapped without them."
He handed them to her. "How about a thank you?" He meant it to be teasing, but it came out a little belligerent. She'd been hard to live with ever since the weekend and it was wearing on him.
"How about you explain where you've been all morning?"
"Dr. Lam," he said, mindful of the nurse standing by, "let's talk about this in your office." He steered her toward the small room and closed the door.
"Cam, I do not have time to talk. I've lost a lot of ground fooling around over these keys." She tried to reach past him for the knob.
"I'm NOT letting you out of here until you tell me why you've been so annoyed with me for the last couple of days," he said firmly.
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "As you would say, `Now THIS is what I'm talking about.' You have the sensitivity of a post."
"Something set off your assessment of me as oaken. I think it started when we went to the Cracker Barrel."
"In itself a very sensitive thing to do, taking me, there considering I hate the place." Her face was implacable.
"You SAID you didn't mind it as long as it was only a couple of times a month. I actually wrote the DATE down in my PDA for the last time we were there so I could make sure we weren't exceeding your limits." He pulled the PDA and waved it at her. "Do you want to see?"
She shook her head. He continued, "And EVEN if you don't like the food, would you have wanted to miss out on watching General Jack O'Neill behave like a love sick zombie with a poker up his butt?"
"I think the poor man was miserable. That you could enjoy that whole scene merely proves my point. I can just imagine how I'd have felt if my ex-husband had suddenly shown up for lunch. And as to your PDA," she pushed it toward him, "real sensitivity is not something you automate. Why can't you be more like Daniel? Look how attuned he is to Sam? It's uncanny how he always seems to understand how she feels. He is definitely a dream husband."
Damn uncanny, Cam thought to himself. "Carolyn, remember after Daniel was bitten by that thing and he and Sam were having synchronized movements?"
"We have no hard evidence that they really were. I've thought about it and it was late at night and we were very tired. When you see something that makes absolutely no sense, it's frequently because you're not really seeing it. And if you want to explain away another man's sensitivity by blaming it on something alien, I think it makes you look pretty bad."
"Let's rewind a moment," he said, "to that comment about your ex-husband. I don't remember ever hearing that there was one of those." He raised an eyebrow and looked at her expectantly.
"We were married for ... five minutes... give or take. I didn't think it was worth mentioning."
Okay," he said. "That's fine. End of discussion. I'll leave you here to fantasize about being married to Daniel Jackson in some other life. Do consider whether he would kiss you like this though." He pulled her to him, all stiff and uncooperative, dug the fingers of one hand into her hair and kissed her passionately and, if he did say so himself, consummately well, while the other hand roamed, caressing her. She could never resist him, just as he couldn't resist her, and she melted immediately. She swayed slightly when he let her got, looking even angrier because she had given in.
"I have a mound of paperwork on my desk. Why don't you go on home this evening without me," he said as he left. "I'll catch a ride or a cab or something."
When he went back to his office, his message light was blinking. There was a voice mail informing him of an unscheduled meeting in minutes. He just knew Daniel's phone was still sans a jack and he went to pick him up on the way. "Briefing at 1000 hours, Jackson," he said, sticking his head into Daniel's office.
"It's like 0959 right now," Daniel said.
"My point exactly. Get your rear in gear."
Daniel grabbed a notebook and a pen and trailed after Cam moving rapidly down the corridor. "It didn't come up on my Outlook Calendar."
"Nope. I think it's rather sudden."
"The General didn't catch you in a closet with Dr. Lam or something did he?" Daniel asked. Cam chuckled to himself. Clearly Daniel thought a little payback for summarily hustling him around was in order.
"For your information, that happened a few weeks ago and we already had our `little talk.'
"But you're not going to tell me about it?" Daniel said, his tone of voice indicating the question was strictly rhetorical.
"Maybe if we both get drunk enough someday that we won't remember the conversation the next morning."
"Then what would be the point?" Daniel asked.
"Exactly."
They were approaching the conference room. Out of the blue, Daniel asked, "Why would Sam be in an SG-1 meeting?"
Cam looked at him, an arrested expression on his face, "What makes you think she is?"
Daniel floundered around a bit and eventually said, "I heard her voice. Didn't you?"
"In a word, no."
Their entry into the room stopped their conversation. Daniel went to sit next to Sam who didn't look at all surprised to see him enter. General Landry began by saying, "I've asked Colonel Carter-Jackson to join us because we are going to need her assistance for a diplomatic mission to Poopoo as soon as we can get something set up on the other end. The NID has requested that we attempt to retain the services of Hanna or another of her people here on Earth for a trial program."
"Might I ask what sort of a trial program, Sir?" Sam requested.
Landry looked uncomfortable. "They're not planning on EXPERIMENTING on her."
"Won't we need more information than that if we're going to persuade her to sign on?" Cam asked.
"Of course." Landry was picking his words very carefully. "First, though, I want to make clear that this mission is sanctioned by the President. It is viewed as a hiring decision involving individuals, not acquisition of technology or an alliance. Therefore, it is defined as an administrative act and not under the international watchdog committee. It has been made very clear to me by both the President and the Joint Chiefs that because opinions might differ, this is to be kept very quiet, even within the SGC."
Cam was sure that Daniel was angry, really angry. Jackson hated this sort of politics. Cam knew, however, that the somewhat entertaining explosions that used to be Daniel's mode of expressing moral conscience had moderated under Sam's influence. Daniel started to open his mouth and Cam saw a brief expression of pain. I bet Sam is clamped down on his leg to cool him off, Cam theorized. He dropped his pen so he could duck under the table. Yup, she had a vise grip on his thigh. That's going to leave quit a bruise, he thought sympathetically.
Daniel said, with remarkable calm, "It appears, General, as if the United States is considering acquiring the services of an empath without anyone else knowing they have one working for them. Would that be a fair statement?"
Landry nodded curtly. "Let's move on to ..."
"Sir," Daniel persisted, "I'm confused then about the orders. Couldn't having an empath present at, oh, some negotiation be as dangerous to the other side as most of the alien technology we've acquired if the other parties don't know about her or him?"
It was clear to Cam that Landry was extremely uncomfortable with what he had been asked to do. Still he was being a good soldier. "We didn't write the accords, Dr. Jackson. There may be a loophole here just because empaths didn't occur to anyone, but there is a loophole none the less. And let's keep it in perspective. It's not like Hanna and her people can read minds. It's just emotions."
"Sir, I respectfully suggest that there is a lot more to this ability than initially meets the eye. Reading emotions can almost be reading minds if it's done right. You just ask the right leading questions or present the right actions so that you know to what it is the emotion is attached." Sam's moderating influence had evaporated by now and Daniel was speaking rapidly, in full cry. "The ramifications are a lot wider than what might occur to someone at first. For instance, you can figure out someone's sexual orientation by noticing when they are feeling lust and when they're not. People should have a right to decide whether they want that to be public information or not. This ability is a massive invasive of individual privacy. Is this really something we want to unleash in our country?"
Daniel sagged back in his chair spent. He shot a quick apprehensive look, not at Landry but at Cam. It's almost as if he can tell I'm really focused on him, Cam thought. From Daniel's expression he imagined Daniel thinking, "Shit, shit shit. When are you going to learn to shut up Daniel?"
"I can tell you've given this a lot of thought, Dr. Jackson, but it isn't our decision to make. I expect you to do your duty and follow Colonel Mitchell's orders on this mission as you would on any other. Are you going to have a problem with that?" Landry asked.
"No," Daniel acquiesced.
Landry looked at Teal'c, Surat, Cam, and Sam and got commitment from each of them as well.
Daniel said unhappily through subsequent briefing on the meat of what they were to offer and the associated terms, but he said nothing further.
As the halls cleared out and things quieted down to the more subdued rhythms of the evening in the SGC, Cam decided he needed to straighten up his office. He was career military so there wasn't much out of place but it gave him an excuse to slam a lot of things around in a satisfactory way. It palled quickly. Cam wasn't the solitary sort. He decided he'd go see if Daniel was interested in some one-on-one basketball. Something told him that Daniel, like himself, wouldn't be in a big hurry to get home tonight. Sam had been looking most displeased with him. Cam had noticed him rubbing his thigh as he walked out of the conference room.
"Yo, Daniel," he said, walking in and plopping down in the guest chair. Daniel was indeed still there and, amazingly, his office looked like it had been cleaned up a little.
"Cam, you're still here," Daniel said, unenthusiastically.
"You want me to leave?" Cam offered.
"No. I'm just grumpy."
"You weren't too keen on the whole empath recruitment scenario," Cam said.
Daniel shot him a quick, unreadable look, before he returned to retrieving papers out from behind a book shelf he had pulled slightly away from the wall. "Do you think it's a good idea?"
"There'd be pluses," Cam said. "It would make it a lot easy to tell who was lying in court or in negotiations. The good people would be safer."
"Except that sociopaths and psychopaths don't feel guilt. They lie without compunction or guilty emotions. It wouldn't be that easy," Daniel retorted.
"On the down side, I guess your head is the only place a lot of people can retreat to any more. It's a lot harder to have any privacy," Cam said slowly. "There is also the fact that when the other nations found out what we did, they'd never trust us again. Not that they really do now, but it would get much worse."
"Think of the empaths. Do you think once the NID got their hands on them, they would ever be free again?" Daniel suddenly had gone from dispirited to very impassioned.
And then Cam knew, he just knew. Daniel had a dawning expression of horror which he tried to douse. "I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy," Cam muttered. "Daniel," he said, standing up, "you and I need to go someplace and have a drink, someplace far removed from here. Now."
"I don't really want to stop what I'm ..."
"I don't think you really want to have the conversation we're going to have here. Nor do I think you want to put it off while I have wilder and wilder thoughts," Cam said. He walked over to Daniel, took the papers out of his hand, grabbed Daniel's knapsack from the desk, and steered him out the door.
When they arrived at Daniel's car, Cam put his hand out for the keys. "Look, Mitchell, it is MY car," Daniel protested.
"I know where I want to go and I don't trust you very far at the moment," Cam said. "Give."
Cam drove them outside of town and up a winding road to a pull off that looked down on the city. "If you're planning on making out, I'm not interested," Daniel said. He got out of the car and walked toward the sheer drop.
"Daniel, you're an empath. Something happened back there on the planet where you got attacked by that flying whatever it was and it made you an empath."
Daniel laughed. It sounded forced to Cam. "You're crazy, Mitchell. How could being bitten have led to my being an empath?"
"I don't have the foggiest but I'm sure the NID can figure it out." He saw Daniel's back stiffen.
"You'd do that to me?" he asked.
"Damn it, no I wouldn't, but Daniel, we can't just pretend that you don't have this ability. We go into situations all the time where it could make a life or death difference. I think I agree with your arguments about keeping this quiet for the foreseeable future, but I want you to work with me, to use it to keep our team safe and help us fight for truth, justice, and biscuits on Sunday."
"Do you think I haven't been?" Daniel said, curtly.
"You've been handicapped because you've had to hide it from me and because I don't understand what you can do. I guess you can project feelings as well as read them - I mean I watched Sam moan with your pain the night after you were bitten?"
"I don't know what you think you saw but no. I've tried. Sometimes I think it makes a tiny bit of difference, but I've no experimental evidence to verify it." Daniel turned around and looked at Cam. "It's not magic. I have to be almost touching someone, a couple of feet away if they're feeling something really strongly, and I can only read."
"We were at least thirty feet away when you knew Sam was in the conference room," Cam challenged.
"I was afraid you'd go after that like a dog with a bone," Daniel complained. "It's different with Sam. I can sense her even farther away than that."
"Because.....help me out here." Daniel didn't respond. "Because you love her?" He shook his head. He looked hard at Daniel and pounced. "Because she is a fraking empath too! I KNEW IT. I don't understand it but I KNOW IT."
Daniel buried his face in his hands. "Please Mitchell. This whole thing is my fault. I love her more than life itself and I cannot bear to think what would happen to her if you convinced anyone else of these wild ideas."
Cam put his hands on Daniel's shoulders. "Daniel, I swear to you that I will not tell another soul about this unless we talk about it and decide that's the right thing to do."
Daniel looked up at him, hope welling in his eyes. Cam realized Daniel was reading him, discovering that he was completely sincere. Daniel made a sigh of relief, grabbed Cam, and hugged him.
"Hey Daniel. I thought you said you didn't want to make out," Cam said after a moment.
Daniel said. "You have my thanks and my promise to do whatever I can do with this ability without betraying Sam and myself."
Daniel drove Cam home. Cam was too exhilarated by what had happened to be bothered by the possible impending scene with Carolyn. In the back of his mind, he realized he had added another layer of complexity to their relationship by now having something huge he couldn't share with her but he didn't want to deal with that now. He unlocked the door and walked into a dark living room. By the light bleeding in from the kitchen, he could just make out a dark figure on the couch. His soldier's instincts kicked in for just a moment, but the sniffling sound and subsequent nose blowing told him this wasn't an intruder. He dropped his keys on the little table next to the arm chair and shucked his coat as he walked toward her. He knelt by the side of the couch and said softly, "You okay, Caro?"
"You're not mad? Not mad at me for not telling you I was married before and being such a witch?" she asked in a little girl voice.
He reached out and wiped tears from her cheek. "Oh darlin', did I make you cry? I never want to make you cry."
He gathered her in his arms and rocked her back and forth gently. "You know me. I don't stay mad long. I do something about it if I have to but I don't stay mad."
"I know. I was afraid you had done something about it," she confessed. "Gone somewhere else for the night and were only going to show up to get your stuff, preferably when I wasn't home."
"Carolyn, I love you like in I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I can't leave. I shouldn't tell you that because then I don't negotiate from a position of strength, but I can't play games with you either."
"Come here," she commanded him and pulled him onto the couch. "It's a big couch and there isn't much of me."
He stretched out beside her and felt her small boned body, both so fragile and so strong. He wiped the rest of the tears from her cheeks and began kissing her. At first it was very gentle but she wasn't having that. She captured his mouth and savaged it. She pulled him on top of her and arched up against him. He raised up on his elbows and looked down at her. He took a deep breath and put the plan into place that had been lingering at the back of his mind ever since he talked to Daniel that morning. "Carolyn, I'm not going to move out unless you throw me out and I look forward to holding you and kissing you BUT."
"BUT?"
"I want to get married. I've not made any secret about it. Acting exactly as if we were married without marriage, it makes a mockery of how I feel about you, of how I guess I always thought these things were supposed to be. I've waited a long time to find a woman I want to become one with. I'm sure I'll be enormously frustrated but I'd feel better about everything if we stopped ... making love."
In the thick silence that surrounded them after that bombshell, Cam dusted off some of the prayers his granny had taught him long ago and prayed that this would work.
Chapter 8
"Oh Daniel," she murmured, "that feels better than anything should be allowed to feel."
He grinned and continued massaging her feet and legs, gradually working his way up her body. He trailed kisses along her thighs and higher as he worked. Her hands were clutched in his hair. The pleasure resonance between empaths fed her pleasure to him and his pleasure in that pleasure back in a loop that had her yearning so fiercely that suddenly the contact wasn't enough. "Come here," she growled throatily and tugged on his head. He didn't obey quickly, but instead worked his way up her body, thoroughly kissing every part of her on the way to her mouth. She was moaning and thrashing her head back and forth by the time he reached her breasts. His detour to savor them was ecstasy.
"Oh...my....God," she gasped.
He was leaning over her now and laid a finger on her lips. "You asked me to remind you we aren't alone in the house," he whispered. She sucked at the finger and nodded.
He came down off his elbows so his weight was fully on her. He knew she loved feeling his strength, his muscles, his male animalness that way. Daniel kissed her long and hard and then nuzzled her neck while caressing her where she so desperately needed him to be. She lost her self control and screamed his name. That was just the first time that night.
Breakfast the next morning was, in a word, strained. Sam was refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Daniel wasn't much better. Both blushed easily. Cam and Jack had joined forces and were having a great time producing blushes.
"You know, when you invited me to stay with you temporarily after Carolyn threw me out on my ear, it never occurred to me to inquire about the sound proofing."
"Me neither," Jack said, "When that bout of the, ur, flu got so serious that it was tough to be alone, I asked about bathroom facilities, but not soundproofing."
"What do you think the decibel level was?" Cam asked.
"We could get some measurement equipment. Be prepared. I'd like to establish experimentally which is more significant, the shared wall you have Mitchell, or being directly opposite like I am," Jack mused.
"It's nice to see you taking an interest in science and technology, Jack," Daniel said, his voice laced with quite a bit of sarcasm, particularly for him.
Sam looked up at both of their house guests. She stood and leaned menacingly, across the table. "You are both having a wonderful time, aren't you? May I remind you that I am perfectly capable of short sheeting your beds, putting spiders in them, or finding some other way of retaliating." She walked away from the table to go back upstairs. They were almost cowed until they heard a faint snigger escape her just as she reached the stairs.
"I guess she's not THAT upset," Jack said. He didn't sound repentant.
"You could cut back on the teasing," Daniel said. "It's a little awkward for both of us knowing that our past and present commanding officers are now aware that my wife is what they call a....
"Screamer?" Jack said helpfully.
"You dog, Jackson," Cam said with admiration. "What are you doing to that woman, anyway?" Jack snorted, his expression mirroring Cam's.
"Not answering," Daniel said. He couldn't help but sound a little smug. Two supermacho Air Force kickass guys were admiring his prowess. It was good for the ego. It almost made up for the craziness of suddenly doubling the size of their household.
Daniel stretched and looked over at Cam. "So, speaking of commanding officers, do you think we'll finally go on this hot, we had to talk about it immediately, but has yet to happen after a week and a half, mission on Monday?"
"You'd really like to get it over with, wouldn't you?" Cam asked him. Daniel knew Cam had seen both Daniel and Sam get tenser and tenser about the mission to try to enlist empaths ever since they'd been briefed on it.
"Hurray up and wait, that's the military," Jack said. He studied Daniel, which made Daniel squirm a little. Jack saw too much, even if he didn't let on. How long would it be before he figured out what Cam had? Daniel was tired of hiding from everyone. Surely they could trust Jack? Jack narrowed his eyes at both of them. "I don't really get why you are so tense about this empath mission."
"Oh really, Jack?" Daniel tried to keep from getting cranked up again on the topic. "You think we should be recruiting empaths? I guess you wouldn't mind an empath sitting around and watching you with Sara and figuring out that you are still desperately in love with the woman."
"Oh, yeah?" Cam said. He looked very interested. Daniel winced a little guiltily. He'd tried to set up a code of ethics for himself on what he could do with what he sensed and he had just broken it. Because Cam knew he was an empath, Cam knew that this wasn't teasing - this was the truth. It really wasn't any of Cam's business.
"That turned ugly fast," Jack said, making light of the comment but Daniel felt the absolute agreement going on in Jack's mind. He had to get this man together with Sara as fast as possible. Who knew how much longer Jack had? "What we need is another of those dancing sessions," Jack said. "That was a lot of fun. It'd help to relax you."
Cam and Daniel looked at Jack in disbelief. Sam had returned as Jack was speaking and she also regarded him incredulously. Daniel could imagine what was going through each of their minds. While Jack and Sara had floated by, gracefully demonstrating how it was to be done, most of the rest of the group had been miserable. Even when they had partnered with the others in turn, Jack and Sara were mentally still dancing together, smiling at each other across the room. Of course Teal'c hadn't really had a bad time. The big man was amazingly graceful and had caught on immediately and Liz MacDuff had seemed to be enjoying herself. She had been a last minute replacement for Dr. Bay DeBar, Carolyn's colleague and close friend, as Teal'c's partner. Bay had unexpectedly been called out of town and Cam had invited Liz on the spur of the moment, unable, like most of the men on the base, to resist the attractive and winsome young woman. Liz's presence had ruined the evening for Sam who had watched Daniel like a hawk. The more he knew he shouldn't be noticing Liz as a woman, the harder it was for Daniel to ignore her.
Carolyn and Cam had been very awkward together. When the evening had been planned, they had been expected to be partners. Then they had their giant blow up and Cam had been summarily asked to leave their shared home. Carolyn danced with Teal'c and Cam with Liz. Liz smiled sunnily and seemed to enjoy the Colonel's southern charm. Carolyn had spent the entire time looking daggers at both Cam and Liz and stepping all over Teal'c from lack of attention. Cam had done a better job of hiding his misery, but just being in the same room with Carolyn but not WITH her had made him a black hole of unhappiness. Daniel, of course, felt Sam's unhappiness as well as much of the other misery in the room. He'd had a headache for at least 24 hours afterwards.
Rousing himself from his unpleasant memories, Cam said, "We do have a mission on Monday but it's to P5G893. The word is that they actually were able to fend off a prior. Command wants us to go and check out what they did."
"Routine, right?" Sam asked. She continued to detest Daniel going into danger without her and had been talking more and more frequently with him about resigning her commission so that they could perhaps work together.
"Completely routine," Cam assured her.
He lied, unintentionally of course. Mid-afternoon of the next day, the claxons sounded and an unscheduled activation of the gate galvanized everyone in the gate room. The access code for SG-1 was received and immediately afterwards, they literally tumbled through, Cam and Daniel stumbling under Teal'c's inert weight. Surat rapped out, "Man down. We need a stretcher stat."
Teal'c was raced to the infirmary, Cam and Daniel right behind him. They got him into the operating room. They heard a scream and a clatter of instruments outside. Daniel investigated and found a white faced Carolyn, shaking in reaction. "They just said that there was someone wounded on SG1." She searched Daniel's face anxiously. "Tell me it's not Cam."
"It's Teal'c." She tried to break free, to go to the operating room. "Carolyn, what happened? Who did you lose?"
He watched her straighten, put her mask back in place, and her walls up. "I don't know what you're talking about Dr. Jackson."
"You loved a soldier and he died, am I right?" Daniel asked, piecing together her emotions at this moment and other reactions he had observed.
She didn't have to answer him out loud. He felt the answer. He hated to press her when she was upset, but this was when he would get the answers. "You were part of the medical team that should have saved him." He received confirmation for that stab in the dark as well.
"That's enough," she snarled. "Let me go to my patient."
Oh my, Cam, Daniel thought as he watched her go into the operating area. She's afraid to love a soldier all the way because they die. She doesn't feel like she deserves to be happy because she couldn't save the man she loved. Cam had told her that Carolyn had revealed a previous marriage. He now thought that she probably married some bozo, quite on purpose on some level, because it was all she thought she deserved.
Cam emerged in a moment, ejected as non-medical personnel. "She's really upset," he said. He didn't need to identify `she.' "Do you know what it's all about?"
Daniel hissed, "Cam, I told you. I don't think it's right for me to be sharing things I find out about people without their knowledge with you when it isn't mission related."
Cam steered Daniel toward Carolyn's office. As soon as they had some privacy, he said, "You told me that if Hanna hadn't revealed to you that Sam loved you back, you don't know how much longer it might have been before the two of you got together."
"That was different."
"I fail to see how," Cam said.
Daniel looked at Cam for a long moment. He so clearly loved Carolyn with all his heart and soul and Daniel had come to believe that it was probably hopeless. "Look, Cam, she's really damaged. I can sense her feelings, but I can't fix them. I think she was in love with someone who was a soldier who got hurt somehow and she couldn't save him as a doctor. She's full of guilt and self-hatred over that and she doesn't trust letting herself love someone in the military. I think you need to move on."
Cam shook his head. "No, Daniel, don't tell me that." Black despair filled the room.
"She has to heal herself, Cam. You can't do it. If you want to still hope, hope that she's had something wonderful with you for a little bit and losing that will motivate her to try to get help." He clapped Cam on the back. "We need to go find out what's up with our teammate and," he lifted his head, "my wife just got here and she's really upset."
Sam was moving in their direction when they emerged from the office. "I couldn't find out who was hurt, but as soon as I came in here I realized it wasn't you." The relief was plain on her face. She looked at Cam and her eyes widened. "Is it Surat or is it Teal'c?"
"It's Teal'c," Daniel said gently.
"How bad?" she asked. By now, Daniel had his arms around her.
Cam did the dump of what they knew. "We don't know yet. He took a hit in the upper chest as we were trying to get back through the gate. I don't understand why he's unconscious."
They waited together anxiously, joined by Jean-Claude Surat, until Carolyn emerged and Teal'c was wheeled out and put into a bed. She was very brusque with all of them, but they didn't care when they heard that Teal'c would be fine. By the next morning, he was awake and demonstrably on the mend. They could all believe her in their hearts now that they had they evidence for themselves. Landry told them all to go home and no one argued. They were walking to the car, trying to get their heads back into normal life when Sam gasped, "Daniel, we were supposed to meet the priest last night. I forgot all about it."
"He's getting rather dubious about all the times we've had to reschedule. You think we'll be able to get all the required meetings in before the ceremony? We could always get a justice of the peace or something." Daniel asked, hoping the answer would eliminate the Catholic Church. He really didn't like getting married in a church and Sam knew it.
"Daniel, I know you don't like this part of it, but it would have been so important to my mother and, I guess those years in a Catholic grade school are still buried somewhere in me. It's how I always thought my wedding would be."
"I know," he said and squeezed her hand.
By late afternoon, they were all up and dressed and had joined Jack who was flipping channels looking for and discarding, once he found it, one sports event after another. "Extreme channel surfing, eh?" Cam asked.
"It's the only sport I'm strong enough for any more," Jack said.
"Your head is already in how sick you're going to be tomorrow," Sam said, her voice quiet.
"I do feel like I'm coming down with the flu again," Jack said. He gave her a dirty look for the revealing comment in front of Cam.
Cam expelled a breath. "Jack, don't worry about Sam letting something slip. I already told her I didn't buy the whole flu story. What's going on?"
Jack said, "Is there going to be anybody left on the planet who doesn't know?" He rolled his eyes. "Okay, if you MUST know, I have cancer and my next chemo treatment is tomorrow."
"There is someone else on the planet who should know," Daniel said. "Sara."
"I don't want her being with me out of pity," Jack said. "End of discussion."
"Not really," Daniel said. He leaned over and took the remote from Jack and switched off the TV.
"So now that I'm in a weakened condition, you're going to try to intimidate me, Danny Boy? I remember you when you didn't have any idea which end of the rifle the bullets came out and Sha're could probably have kicked your ass if she hadn't wanted to do something else with it."
Daniel ignored the attack. "Jack, the woman is in love with you. She regrets more than anything else in her life, except the death of your son, letting your marriage end. She spends a lot of time trying to figure out what she could have done differently to have gotten through to you, to have held on. She's scared to death this opportunity will slip away and she'll loose you again."
"She tell you that?" Jack asked challengingly.
"No."
"Then you can't possibly know it. You got nothing but conjecture. You got butkiss."
Cam said, "Actually, Jack, if he tells you something like that, he's going to be right. I've seen his ... perceptiveness... in action too many times to doubt it."
Jack just snorted. Daniel looked at Sam indicating Jack slightly with his head. She returned his look steadily. "Yeah, go ahead," she said.
"What, are you reading his mind?" Jack jeered at Sam's answer to a question that didn't seem to have been asked.
"We can't really read minds," Sam said, "just emotions, but if there are enough contextual clues, it's almost the same thing."
Jack was staring at her. Daniel said, "We're both empaths. Something happened on a mission before you came back here for treatment. We've hidden it for a number of reasons, but mainly because our life and our freedom would be over if the NID or any number of other people knew what we can do."
Jack looked at Cam. "You knew this? They told YOU?"
Cam shook his head. "No, Jack. I figured it out. You would have too before much longer."
"And your empathic powers tell both of you, not just Daniel, that Sara is in love with me?" Jack questioned. Jack was so quickly past the wonder of empathy that Daniel's head was spinning. He thought, if you might not have much time left, you've got to focus on what matters most to you.
"Yes," Sam affirmed. "Jack, if I were you, I would tell her about the cancer. That will cause her to want to be your nurse. That's what we women do. We want to care for the ones we love when they're hurting. Forget your pride and work every advantage that you've got. You both deserve to be together and you don't want to waste any time dancing around getting there."
"It wouldn't be fair to saddle her with a possibly dying man," Jack protested, half-heartedly.
"She's already involved. You won't be able to hide your death from her if you do die from this thing. How do you think that would make her feel? If she hasn't gotten over you in ten years, she's not going to get over you any time soon."
Cam's cell phone rang and he ignored it. Then Daniel's cell phone sounded and he also ignored it. They faintly heard Sam's cell phone from upstairs. They were ready to answer by now, but Sam knew she wouldn't make it up there before it went into voice mail. They waited for the phone in the kitchen to ring, figuring that it would be next. Daniel actually got up and walked in the direction of the kitchen so that he was only a step away when it happened. After picking it up and answering it, he said, "It's for you," and extended the phone toward Cam. "Landry."
Cam walked quickly to the phone. "Yes, sir," he said and then just listened for awhile. At last he said, "Sir, is it possible this could be delayed until Friday? There's sort of a personal situation here." He listened further and grimaced. "I see, sir. I'll inform them and we'll be there by," he looked at his watch, "1900 hours."
Cam came back into the living room. "The Poopoo thing is on. After messing around for days, the NID now has to go this exact minute."
There was silence and Daniel and Sam looked at Jack. He shrugged and said, "It might just be a day or two right? I've come home from the chemo alone before. I can manage it."
Daniel pulled out his cell, flipped it open, and put it on the coffee table in front of Jack. "Call Sara. If you don't I will."
Jack took the phone and looked at it as if it was alive. "This is nothing compared to fighting the Goa'uld," Cam said.
A short time later, they watched as Sara's car pulled into the driveway just as they turned off Sam and Daniel's street. Cam spoke for all of them, "One mission successful anyway."
Daniel added, "And let's hope we can have a real big failure on the one to Poopoo."
"Amen," his wife and friend chorused in agreement.
Chapter 9
Although it was morning at the mountain, it was late afternoon on Poopoo when they walked through the gate. Bel Min and Kil Min Bei were waiting for them with a large contingent of people. It appeared the latest local fashion trend was to dress so that you resembled a vaguely promiscuous sprite. It was not a forgiving style and Kil Min Bei was more than a little disturbing as were some of the other members of the greeting party. There was a great outcry of welcome and embracing of Daniel and Sam. The rest of the party, not related to anyone, was barely given a perfunctory nod. Cam and Surat were not at all bothered by being ignored, but it appeared to annoy the self-importance of the NID man accompanying them, Jim Cabreza. He already regarded the inhabitants of the place with disdain, misled as previous Tauri had been by the ridiculous name of the place and the appearance of its inhabitants who always looked like they were appearing in some demented off broadway production.
As soon as the initial greetings were past, there was a great deal of distress at Sam and Daniel's inappropriate attire. Sam, as an adopted daughter of the house and Daniel as her husband, were casting an ill light on the image of the whole family. They were immediately hustled off to change into something more appropriate. Daniel would have laughed at the results on Sam if he hadn't known how ridiculous he looked as well. He knew he would be hearing about this from Cam and Surat for a long time.
They rejoined their party for the first of four banquets over the next two days. The food was, as before, most disgusting, but years of field work and then his SG-1 experience had taught Daniel how to look like he was eating stomach turning food, ingest the minimum possible, and get the rest down without vomiting. He suspected it was like the advice that mothers used to give their daughters before their wedding nights in Victorian England to steel them for what they believed would be a horrific and unpleasant experience, "Just think of God, the queen, and your country. It will all be over soon."
Poor Jean-Paul was exiled with Cabreza to the far end of the dining hall. As non-relatives, neither counted. Surat regaled them afterwards with the stories of Cabreza's extreme difficulties with the food. Surat had been in Special Forces in some amazing circumstances. His point of view was that anything that kept him from starving and didn't involve cannibalism was cool.
When they had told Bel Min that Cam was "of their household" now because he was living with them, he got to join them at the head table. The three took advantage of this isolation from Cabreza to get their negotiations out of the way immediately.
Bel Min said readily, "Hanna has left. There are no other of her people here."
Cam asked through Daniel, "Is there any way to contact them?"
Bel Min shrugged. "We have an agreed upon sort of message drop with another planet and sometimes they answer. Most of the time, they ignore them for years."
Daniel was delighted to hear that and even happier with the next question Bel Min had. "What purpose do your people have for wishing to hire an empath?"
Cam said, looking warningly at Daniel and said, "I trust you to translate this the way I say it."
Daniel nodded. Cam said, "I believe they want to explore possibilities that an empath could offer for us in all areas."
Bel Min narrowed his eyes. He was no fool and he had seen the interplay prior to translation. "Do any of these involve covert uses? Instances where other parties would not know of the empathic abilities?"
When Daniel translated, Cam slowly nodded. "This is not acceptable under our laws." Daniel looked rather puzzled, thinking of Hanna. Bel Min looked horrified. "You did not understand the word observer when Hanna was sent home with you? For us that particular word means the observation of an empath. You have my deep apologies."
They talked further of the ethics involving empathy. In the end, Bel Min understood that the dour looking man named Cabreza needed a show to convince him that an honest effort had been made by the others to get Hanna or someone like her. He also read between the lines that they wouldn't mind giving him a hard time.
They returned four days later and were sitting in the conference room waiting for the debrief. Cam leaned over and said en sotto voice to Daniel, "This is going to be a lot of fun." He was straight-faced and, if Daniel had not been an empath, he might have taken it as sarcasm since there was definitely going to be a lot of upset and possibly yelling and screaming -- not the good kind either. He could perceive, however, that Cam considered it a pleasure to quash this whole empath thing in its infancy when they told the General that they had failed completely to find or retain any empaths on Poopoo.
Daniel was sitting between Cam and his wife. Surat, Teal'c, and Cabreza were across the table. Teal'c was bandaged and moving slowly. He hadn't gone on the mission but he was there as part of the team. General Landry had just taken a seat and looked from the fuming Cabreza to the carefully blank faced members of SG-1. He nodded at Cam and said, "Let's have your report, Colonel."
Cam threw his hands out and said, "It's quite simple, sir. Hanna had left the planet weeks ago. They have no idea how to contact her or her people. Evidently they just show up when they are in the mood to do so."
"I'm a little surprised that it took almost four days to discover that," Landry said, his eyebrows raised.
Cabreza said in clipped tones that dripped with displeasure, "We spent two entire days eating one feast after another of truly deplorable food. Several things were on the menu that I don't honesty think humans were ever designed to ingest. There was also an unacceptable level of drinking on duty."
"Mr. Cabreza spent at least half his time in the facilities throwing up," Surat volunteered. "His testimony of what happened for almost the entire trip is certainly colored by his gastrointestinal problems."
"If I might add," Daniel interjected, "the customs are quite strong in this area. If we had refused to eat or drink with them, they wouldn't have told us anything." He cleared his throat and looked at Cam. "There was another road block."
"No need to pause for dramatic effect, Dr. Jackson, I'm listening," Landry said.
Daniel colored slightly. "Yes sir. When we did start negotiating, we encountered an entire barrage of questions as to what laws we had in place governing the ways in which empaths could be used by the government and how the general population was to be protected from them. We, of course, deferred those inquiries to Mr. Cabreza."
It was Cabreza's turn to color up. He looked almost apoplectic. "That was a degree of interference in our internal affairs as a world that was quite unacceptable."
"And you had no answer for it because we don't have any policy, not to mention laws, in place to prevent misuse of empathy," Landry observed mildly.
"Due to the fact that it was not really their business, I crafted an answer that described the policy that I am certain we will adopt. Your Dr. Jackson refused to translate it."
"It was a lie, sir. It has not been our policy to lie to our allies," Daniel said.
Sam spoke for the first time. "In any case, Hanna wasn't there and it didn't matter what they thought about our policies."
"I demand that we return to Poopoo in force and throw a little scare into them. We need to make sure that they were not lying to us just to keep their empaths for themselves," Crabreza said, his voice rising.
"Take on an entire world with technology roughly equivalent to our own? Destroy an alliance that is doing quite nicely for us? In just a few words, Mr. Cabreza, I don't think so." Landry stood up. "I believe this meeting is over."
Sam followed Landry out of the conference room and spoke to him privately. Daniel knew exactly what was on her mind. As strongly as possible, he concentrated on feelings of concern and disapproval, but she ignored him. Landry nodded and they started to walk off together.
"What's that all about?" Cam asked, curiously. "You don't look too happy."
Daniel said, "I'd rather not say right now. Things are still in the negotiation stage."
As they got into the car later, Cam leaned forward between the seats, looked at Daniel riding shotgun, and asked, "Does she always drive?"
"She hates my car," he said. "It isn't clean enough for her. Too many papers and books and empty Styrofoam cups."
"SHE is right here in the car," Sam said, a little irritated with being talked about in the third person in her presence.
"Good because I have a question for you," Cam said. "What was that about with Landry?"
Daniel put a hand on her knee. He was turned toward her, giving her his full attention. "Cameron I don't think we should lay this on you while I'm driving," she answered, eyes straight ahead.
"What!?!"
"Honey," Daniel said, "this is really sort of a classified conversation. I don't want to have it at home. Jack's maybe still kind of weak and he doesn't need to hear this now. Let's drive out a little ways to some place private Cam took me to." He turned toward the backseat. "How about directing her?"
When they arrived at the pull off where Cam had told Daniel he knew they were empaths, they all piled out of the car. Sam said, "If you brought him up here to make out, he's mine you know."
Cam said, "What sort of youth did you people have anyway that when you see a nice overlook in the country, you immediately assume it was a make out spot. Actually, I should be the one bringing that up because there aren't too many good parking spots in my part of North Carolina I don't know well."
"I never parked with anyone," Sam said. "Dad would have found out somehow, but I had some friends who never tired of a sort of running travelogue on make out spots they had visited."
Daniel said, "You're forgetting, honey, you and I...." They both produced their trademark blushes.
"Too much information, once again," Cam said, good naturedly. "Enough stalling." He leaned against the car, expectantly.
"Okay," Sam said. "I can't handle our not going through the gate together any more. It was SO much better this time, being there together. And WE were so much more effective. We hadn't mentioned to you yet but whereas our individual range for picking up emotions isn't more than a couple of feet, when we are together we can read people even ten feet away. We know without a doubt that no one was lying to us about Hanna not being there and her people being out of touch."
"Hot damn!" Cam said. Then he said, "But that's the last thing I'm going to hear that I'm going to like, isn't it?"
"It's the whole Yoko Ono thing," Sam said. "I told Landry I wanted to negotiate a way that I could resign my commission and Daniel and I could work as a couple, go out with the scientific teams that don't get deployed until after everything is all safe. There are plenty of very effective husband and wife scientific teams. It really shouldn't be against regulations."
"You're trying to take Daniel off SG-1," Cam said. His voice was flat and extremely unfriendly.
"I'm sorry, Cameron, I really am, but it can't go on like this. I was also thinking that if I wasn't in the military, I would have more control over my life. We could be more flexible in how we keep this empath thing hidden."
"I guess I should be flattered that you think highly enough of me that you clearly don't expect me to blackmail you with my knowledge of your powers to keep you from going through this." Cam studied the ground a minute. He looked back up to ask, "So what did Landry say?"
"He called Daniel in and talked with both of us together. He said he had some calls to make. He was not happy about it. He likes things the way they are, but he was being fair."
Cam sighed deeply and decided to make the best of it. He said, "Well, I'm warning you people no group marriages! You can't have T."
They arrived home to find the house dark. They all panicked a little. Had Jack had such an adverse reaction he had had to be hospitalized? Sam found the envelope addressed to Daniel and her proposed up on the coffee table. She tore it open and read it out loud, even though Cam and Daniel were crowding her, reading over her shoulders.
"Sara and I have decided that I might as well go back to my house. There's more space there and she can have a bedroom of her own so that she can be around to help me out. You two were great to take me in. Tell Cam he should still put a sound measurement device in my old room and let me know what he finds out. Yours, Jack."
"All right!" Daniel said and he and Cam hi-fived.
"This is just the best," Sam said. "I hated the fact that our marriage made him feel so left out."
"I'll bet there'll be dancing at that wedding," Cam said.
"You think they'll get remarried?" Daniel said.
"Why do you ask me questions like that when I'm sure you know exactly what I thought?"
"I don't want to weird you out," Daniel said.
"Hey," Cam said. "You know how superheroes always have a support team that doesn't have superpowers but knows all about theirs and sort of run interference. That's me."
"Like the butler on Batman?" Sam asked, laughing.
"Nah. Think of someone else. He's old and probably never going to get another girl friend. I'm still hopeful," Cam answered. "Speaking of which, I've been thinking of asking Liz MacDuff out. Maybe she'd like to go dancing."
Daniel thought, that's part of what I love about the guy. He's just determined to be happy. He misses Carolyn but he'll go on. "Sounds like a plan," he said.
Three months later, Daniel and Sam sat companionably in front of the fire, turning the pages of the scrapbook Sam had just finished about their second wedding and the reception. They'd had a professional photographer but they liked this homier effort, Sam's first scrapbook ever, better. She'd told Daniel that somehow as long as she was a military officer, scrapbooking had just seemed too suburban. He thought she had been surprised by how free leaving the military had actually made her feel. Neither one of them really regretted the less adventuresome SG teams they now joined as a team although they both missed working with Cam. Always the optimist, he kept trying to get them approved to work SG-1 together and would probably never give up trying to make it happen.
Sam ran her finger along the edge of the picture of the wedding party: Cassie, Mark's wife Julie, and Carolyn, Teal'c, Cam, and Jack. Daniel had found it impossible to determine which of these men should be the best man so they drew straws. Teal'c had won the honor. There was Mark walking Sam down the aisle, just passing the pews where there were sprays of roses on each side for the parents who had gone on to glory.
There were several candids of the various guests. One of Sam's favorites was the picture of Antoinette, the waitress from Cracker Barrel. They'd been back on several occasions with Cam and, against all odds ended up with her as their waitress almost every time. She had overheard them talking about the wedding and jokingly expressed an interest in coming. Daniel had called her bluff and there she was with her brother in tow as an escort. She'd told Daniel that her boyfriend balked at eating the Egyptian food to be served at the reception.
There were many pictures of everyone dancing on the patio behind the Egyptian restaurant where they had held the reception: Cassie with Jack, Jack with Sara, Cam with Liz, Carolyn with her father, Bay in the arms of someone extremely good looking she had brought as a guest -- Daniel couldn't remember his name but thought he had said he was an actor -- Lina Ragen, Sam's exercise buddy from the Mountain, dancing with Antoinette's hunky brother, Mark and Julie, Walter and Antoinette, and the bridal couple together.
Daniel kissed the top of Sam's head. "Turned out well didn't it?"
"You weren't even smitten with lightning for daring, as a heathen, to get married in the Catholic church," Sam teased.
"I was worried about that," Daniel said. "I haven't died and come back in over a year now." "Now Jack and Sara are talking about their own ceremony although it's months off because he was adamant about not even starting to plan it until he got done with all the treatments and had a clean bill of health. I just wish Cam and Carolyn..." her voice trailed off.
"Maybe Liz would make him happier. From what he's told me about her, they have a lot more in common than he did with Carolyn. Or maybe Cam and Carolyn are in the middle part of the novel where the couple encounters all kinds of problems before they can be together," Daniel suggested.
"Are we at the happy ending?" she asked and kissed him lightly.
"Of this volume anyway," her husband answered. "Enough talking Colonel Doctor Carter-Jackson twice over." He pulled her to her feet, they turned out the light, and went upstairs and peace and happiness reigned.
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Meriem Clayton
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