New SG1 FanFiction: The General, The Colonel, their Child and His Mother ~ Teens ~ 1 of 4
Title: The General, The Colonel, their Child and His Mother
Author: AM Richardson
Email: audrich08 @ yahoo.com
Category: SG1 Complete Story. Set in the TV Universe up to S9 then Alternate Reality after that, Future Fluff
Rating: Teens
Content Warning: Fluff
Season: AU S9
Spoilers: Umm.. loads as in vague mentions of past missions but nothing specific.
Archive: Sure!
Summary: Epilogue/Sequel to ‘Naquadah Tipped Warheads & Banana Smoothies’
Disclaimer: Just playing, not mine, if you’re looking to sue, you’re looking in the wrong place!
Status: COMPLETE - 1 of 4
Author’s Notes: Thank you to Gwen, Tracy And Lily who read it before you did and made the *best* suggestions - any mistakes left are my own.
And this is for Gwen, because purely and simply we really are sisters separated by an accident of a large ocean :D
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
If he tried really hard, he could just about remember her.
The smell of her after they made love, her perfect teeth (damn her) and the adorable crows feet when she smiled.
When they began beating the crap out him again, he wondered if he would remember her when he was dead.
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
Sam could cope with the midnight feed, the 2am feed, the 6am feed, but the 4am one was a killer.
Huddled in her (too expensive for what it is) Bloomingdale’s nursery chair at four am complete with afghan throw barely covering her cold legs, a nagging bladder and sucking baby was not the picture of maternal bliss that she had hoped for, largely because she was terrified of falling asleep and dropping the kid.
One moment of inattention and *whoops*, Baby is plunged onto a worryingly unforeseen sharp edge of said Bloomingdale’s chair and before she would know it, a screaming 911 call and an enquiry by the Child Protective Services would follow.
Two nights of that and Jake slept in her room. Occasionally he even made it as far as his bassinet rather than her bed; screw what the *advice* said about co-sleeping (and she should know, because she’d read it all) Jake was not their child, he was *hers* and if mom and kid got a better night’s sleep together, then in her bed he slept.
Sam was also beginning to realize that the best advice she had heard was - not to listen to any advice. During those dozy quiet hours with Jake firmly latched on and feeding happily, she would gaze over the curve of her breast into his half closed eyes and *feel* her child’s needs.
She also wondered if she was going to be able to exist without a nursing brassiere again.
Any worries that Sam had over post natal depression had vanished along with the baby manuals the day after his birth. She could clearly remember the moment of waking up next to him in the infirmary. Struggling upright, she managed to roll off the hospital bed with her tender undercarriage and pull the bassinet nearer for a better view. Her son. *Their* son. His face was so perfect as if carved from an apple, with sweeping eyelashes and tufts of ginger hair, with Jack’s forehead and a mouth that was her own. He was perfect. She was so incredibly lucky and she knew it.
Nothing had really prepared her for the almost constant state of fatigue that she would find herself existing in. The first three days while she recovered in the infirmary had been manageable. More than manageable. There was literally a garrison of volunteers to watch over her child while she showered, ate and dressed. All she had to do was try to get the hang of breastfeeding. Blood clots on her nipples and a crying child ensured she would find the Best Position even if it meant dangling upside down from some bizarre Goa’uld torture device while being prodded with pain sticks.
Luckily, she didn’t have to go to such extremes but at home there was just her and Jake.
Jake’s needs.
Jake’s demands.
Jake’s *diapers*.
On the fifth day, she called the infirmary in a total state of panic convinced Jake must have miraculously walked over to the kitchen and accessed the cabinets to commandeer the peanut butter jar because that stool surely wasn’t normal! It took Becky Rush ten minutes to reassure Sam that it was okay for a newborn’s excreta to look like that.
Bring on the pain sticks.
When he cried for the first time, Sam thought it was quite bearable, rather sweet, actually.
How moronically naive! By day six, Jake could reduce her to a gibbering wreck in just two minutes if she couldn’t get her nursing brassiere unclipped fast enough. She longed for a nice hot bubble bath to soothe her bruised body parts but her toilette had to be conducted as quickly as possible in between feeds. Twice she had washed her hair after the 2am feed that finally finished at 2:52 am just because that was when Jake seemed to sleep at his deepest. She was determined not to fulfill the stereotype of the new mother that stayed in her dressing gown all day but a couple of times she wore the same clothes that she had on the day before just because they were still flung over the nightstand where she had left them the previous evening.
There had been a vague plan of a DVD fitness program, to tide her over before she could get to the gym, take advantage of the outrageously expensive daycare and attain the sylph like figure that she had in her 20s, of course. But the DVD was gathering dust next to the TV, still snuggled in its wrapper because mom was too tired to open it. Her pre-baby figure was slowly reappearing but not as quickly as she would have liked. She certainly knew her uterus was getting back into shape judging by the strange things it got up to while she was nursing.
Adrenalin rush? Oh yeah.
A couple of times, she had ventured out into the November chill, her child muffled up like a Michelin man, comfortably ensconced in his newborn baby Klik’n’Lok seat and pushed in his stroller to the local store where a variety of women would bill and coo over him and Sam - to her own amazement - loved it.
She was mystified by the preponderance of baby stuff that was dual and multi-purpose, and just in case you weren’t sure, the manufacturers reminded their customers by including both tasks in the product’s name:
Klik’n’Lok
Sit’n’Play
Ride’n’Sing
Sam wondered if the baby store had a Wine’n’Chocolate aisle because that would be infinitely more effective at getting her child to sleep than a Musik’n’Lights Dreamz Maker.
Once she had screwed her courage to the sticking post, fitted Jake’s car seat into her Volvo (not without some language that would have made her own mom wash her mouth out with soap and water) and drove to the Mall in downtown Colorado Springs, singing all the dumb songs she could think of, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers being Jake’s favorites. By the time she got there, her son had filled a particularly sludgy diaper with more mire and Sam ended up changing him in the car and giving herself a spectacular backache while she was at it. After ten minutes of wandering around the Mall listening to muzak, she quit and found she couldn’t get home fast enough.
Jake was screaming for a feed even before she turned into her street and it didn’t help that the elderly lady who lived next door, (who *just* happened to be pruning her hedge at the moment Jake used his little lungs to their fullest capacity), helpfully called out that babyboy just needed a hug from his mommy when Sam was attempting to divest her vehicle of all the baby stuff that had become absolutely vital while trying to soothe her grizzling child. Although she had made it up the steps with gear and baby, unlocking the door proved awkward and yes, she had ensured she bumped her child’s head on the door frame while blundering through. She could swear she could feel Grandma Hedge Clippings’ eyes boring right through her back.
One hour later, after a rapid breastfeed that hurt like hell, Sam could barely drag herself off the sofa to do something with all the mess she had made when the phone rang.
The cheery “Hi Sam, it’s Daniel, how’s it going?” was enough to send her off into a crying fit that lasted until he pushed his way through the front door debris and promised her that next time she went to the Mall, she would be accompanied by Daniel Jackson, Doctor of archeology, part-time nanny and full time friend.
And no, she did not have post-natal depression.
She was just beat.
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
The next day was a Wednesday
The date was November 21st, 2007.
It was a day that Sam would remember for the rest of her life.
An uncooperative arm flailed back and forth forcing a smile out of his exhausted mom while Sam tried to detain the sprightly limb and insert it (without breaking a delicate ulna) into a jaunty sailor style top that would stay white for all of five minutes.
“Seriously, why is so much baby stuff white? It’s such a dumb color, isn’t it, Jake?”
She just had to stop and gaze one more time into her son’s eyes. “You’re so beautiful!”
A kiss onto his chest followed. “Love you, child of mine,” and she tossed her ponytail back from her shoulders. She really must get her hair cut.
Her doorbell rang.
Ah. The dilemma. Should she leave him happily gurgling away on the floor, or dare she risk picking him up and causing an objection? She opted for the former. Trotting over to her front door and pushing aside the privacy curtain, she could see it was Daniel - why hadn’t he used his key?
She clicked open the deadlocks, threw open the door and spun back to her kicking child.
“Hey! You’re early! Come on in, I’m just finishing changing His Majesty!”
There was no need to fear; Jake had not yet attained the skill of rolling over at 15 days old and the 2cm down to the floor had not been breached. He pedaled his long legs and cooed as Sam bent over him to pop up his blue sailor’s pants. “There you go, all done!” She smiled and scooped Jake up to turn him around to see his Uncle Daniel..
..who was standing unnaturally still with the SGC Families Liaison officer behind him.
Her arms came about her child’s body to draw him in. “What? What is it? You’ve found his body?”
Jake began to root for a feed and dribbled down her left breast.
Daniel half held his arms out, his eyes searching hers. “Here, let me take him and I’ll explain.”
The Mother’s arms closed in a little more tightly, causing the baby to fuss. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
The one thing that had got Sam through those long nights of feeding and solitude were memories of her child’s father and the final acceptance that she was bringing their son up as a single parent; she had to hold it together for the life they had made.
She had a feeling her plans were about to undergo a 360 faceplant.
The FLO stepped forward with her mouth opening to start a little speech - Sam was trying to remember her name - Kelly, Kelsey, something kute beginning with a ‘K’ because the girl was barely past her mid-20s; what was the base thinking of employing someone who hadn’t experienced life at all in Sam’s subjective and skewed opinion. “Not you, him. Daniel, you tell me.”
She seemed to have activated her rude gene.
Screw it, she’d apologize later.
She repeated. “Daniel?”
Jake began to cry and Daniel gestured abruptly to the sofa. “*Tell* *me*,” she hissed.
Daniel looked as though he was about to join her son in his lament.
“We’ve found him.”
Sam’s living room dipped and swirled.
“He’s injured but conscious and asking for you.”
Her heart stopped. Her heart was brought to a standstill and she gave her last air to their son with a whisper-kiss breathed onto the boy-hair that was straight from his father. “W-Where?” she stammered.
“At the SGC.”
360.
Pitch and yaw.
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
“Sam you don’t have to do this,” Daniel repeated for what seemed like the gazillionth time as he twisted in the front passenger seat to face her in the rear.
Rain pattered onto the roof of the staff car as it snaked its way through the residuals of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the I-25, the FLO (actual name Kirsty) driving and Sam fiddling with one of Jake’s socks as he lay asleep in the baby-seat.
“I know.” Her gray response matched the November weather; she didn’t wonder if the rain would turn to sleet later.
Her lover.
The father of her child that he knew nothing about.
Back from the dead.
Why wasn’t she jumping for joy?
Daniel cleared his throat in a manner that politely suggested please-look-up-and-see-me.
She complied, her thoughts in freefall.
“As I said, we told him you were on leave and that we weren’t sure where you were; we didn’t lie to him; we’ve said nothing about Jake. It was Lam’s suggestion and I think it was sensible. He was pretty cut up about Ferretti and Garcia. You can leave this until you get your head around it; Jack has been in and out of it since Carolyn stuck him with an IV.”
He sighed at her non-committal nod.
Sam watched the rivulets chase down the fogged car window, desperately trying to process what Daniel had told her while she sat stunned on her own sofa.
Several weeks ago she had endured a turbulent ride to Fort Leavenworth to work with prisoner S-250-498-Z, otherwise known as Derek Bricksdale to locate a spare Alkesh in orbit around the moon. The frequency harmonics of the shield seemed too random to be a standard cloak and Sam’s old team at area 51 were mooting the possibility of it being a homing beacon.
They were right.
Teal’c, Cameron and SG-3 had activated the signal and the Alkesh flew them directly to a remote moon in a system on the edge of Lyra being used as a secret base by Ba’al. Jack’s worst nightmares come true. Sam knew full well how the memories of his first imprisonment had ensured some very deep psychological scars - she had held him while he moaned and cursed in his sleep and didn’t dare suggest the psychs. For him to have been captured by that rat-bastard again and held for all this time - Sam couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. Actually, yes she could; she’d read the file from before, she just couldn’t imagine how he had *coped*.
It also seemed that Ba’al was not actually *the* Ba’al. He had been playing god in more ways than one because the SG team had encountered two fully grown Ba’als and one more in the final process of regeneration in a cloning facility that looked as though it had been utilized recently.
Jack had been unexpectedly located thanks to his sub-dermal transponder - one of McKay’s geeky Star Trek ideas. Apparently the signal was singing like a songbird as soon as the Alkesh exited hyperspace, so that was one more she owed the irritating Canadian.
Saved my baby.
Saved my lover.
From thereon it was a standard S&R, complicated by the fact that General O’Neill had some sort of serious spinal injury, the details of which Daniel didn’t know.
He did know that Jack couldn’t move his legs, let alone walk.
O’Neill was recovered with a minimum of fuss and firepower and transported to a nearby Stargate where two medics had accompanied him back to the SGC leaving SG-3, Cam and Teal’c to find out what else Ba’al had been up to and pilot the Alkesh home at the end of the mission.
Job done, no sweat, and they continue where they left off.
Only they couldn’t, could they?
Jack badly injured, physically and... mentally?
And herself? She had given birth to a child he had no knowledge of and had come very close to betraying him in the worst way.
Things couldn’t be more different. Or messed up.
The desire to unclip Jake from his seat and make off down the parkway was intense.
The hand on her knee was warm. “Sam. I meant what I said. No-one will expect you to confront this today.”
She gave Daniel her full attention for the first time that day.
“Maybe not, but I do.”
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
To Be Continued
Author: AM Richardson
Email: audrich08 @ yahoo.com
Category: SG1 Complete Story. Set in the TV Universe up to S9 then Alternate Reality after that, Future Fluff
Rating: Teens
Content Warning: Fluff
Season: AU S9
Spoilers: Umm.. loads as in vague mentions of past missions but nothing specific.
Archive: Sure!
Summary: Epilogue/Sequel to ‘Naquadah Tipped Warheads & Banana Smoothies’
Disclaimer: Just playing, not mine, if you’re looking to sue, you’re looking in the wrong place!
Status: COMPLETE - 1 of 4
Author’s Notes: Thank you to Gwen, Tracy And Lily who read it before you did and made the *best* suggestions - any mistakes left are my own.
And this is for Gwen, because purely and simply we really are sisters separated by an accident of a large ocean :D
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
If he tried really hard, he could just about remember her.
The smell of her after they made love, her perfect teeth (damn her) and the adorable crows feet when she smiled.
When they began beating the crap out him again, he wondered if he would remember her when he was dead.
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
Sam could cope with the midnight feed, the 2am feed, the 6am feed, but the 4am one was a killer.
Huddled in her (too expensive for what it is) Bloomingdale’s nursery chair at four am complete with afghan throw barely covering her cold legs, a nagging bladder and sucking baby was not the picture of maternal bliss that she had hoped for, largely because she was terrified of falling asleep and dropping the kid.
One moment of inattention and *whoops*, Baby is plunged onto a worryingly unforeseen sharp edge of said Bloomingdale’s chair and before she would know it, a screaming 911 call and an enquiry by the Child Protective Services would follow.
Two nights of that and Jake slept in her room. Occasionally he even made it as far as his bassinet rather than her bed; screw what the *advice* said about co-sleeping (and she should know, because she’d read it all) Jake was not their child, he was *hers* and if mom and kid got a better night’s sleep together, then in her bed he slept.
Sam was also beginning to realize that the best advice she had heard was - not to listen to any advice. During those dozy quiet hours with Jake firmly latched on and feeding happily, she would gaze over the curve of her breast into his half closed eyes and *feel* her child’s needs.
She also wondered if she was going to be able to exist without a nursing brassiere again.
Any worries that Sam had over post natal depression had vanished along with the baby manuals the day after his birth. She could clearly remember the moment of waking up next to him in the infirmary. Struggling upright, she managed to roll off the hospital bed with her tender undercarriage and pull the bassinet nearer for a better view. Her son. *Their* son. His face was so perfect as if carved from an apple, with sweeping eyelashes and tufts of ginger hair, with Jack’s forehead and a mouth that was her own. He was perfect. She was so incredibly lucky and she knew it.
Nothing had really prepared her for the almost constant state of fatigue that she would find herself existing in. The first three days while she recovered in the infirmary had been manageable. More than manageable. There was literally a garrison of volunteers to watch over her child while she showered, ate and dressed. All she had to do was try to get the hang of breastfeeding. Blood clots on her nipples and a crying child ensured she would find the Best Position even if it meant dangling upside down from some bizarre Goa’uld torture device while being prodded with pain sticks.
Luckily, she didn’t have to go to such extremes but at home there was just her and Jake.
Jake’s needs.
Jake’s demands.
Jake’s *diapers*.
On the fifth day, she called the infirmary in a total state of panic convinced Jake must have miraculously walked over to the kitchen and accessed the cabinets to commandeer the peanut butter jar because that stool surely wasn’t normal! It took Becky Rush ten minutes to reassure Sam that it was okay for a newborn’s excreta to look like that.
Bring on the pain sticks.
When he cried for the first time, Sam thought it was quite bearable, rather sweet, actually.
How moronically naive! By day six, Jake could reduce her to a gibbering wreck in just two minutes if she couldn’t get her nursing brassiere unclipped fast enough. She longed for a nice hot bubble bath to soothe her bruised body parts but her toilette had to be conducted as quickly as possible in between feeds. Twice she had washed her hair after the 2am feed that finally finished at 2:52 am just because that was when Jake seemed to sleep at his deepest. She was determined not to fulfill the stereotype of the new mother that stayed in her dressing gown all day but a couple of times she wore the same clothes that she had on the day before just because they were still flung over the nightstand where she had left them the previous evening.
There had been a vague plan of a DVD fitness program, to tide her over before she could get to the gym, take advantage of the outrageously expensive daycare and attain the sylph like figure that she had in her 20s, of course. But the DVD was gathering dust next to the TV, still snuggled in its wrapper because mom was too tired to open it. Her pre-baby figure was slowly reappearing but not as quickly as she would have liked. She certainly knew her uterus was getting back into shape judging by the strange things it got up to while she was nursing.
Adrenalin rush? Oh yeah.
A couple of times, she had ventured out into the November chill, her child muffled up like a Michelin man, comfortably ensconced in his newborn baby Klik’n’Lok seat and pushed in his stroller to the local store where a variety of women would bill and coo over him and Sam - to her own amazement - loved it.
She was mystified by the preponderance of baby stuff that was dual and multi-purpose, and just in case you weren’t sure, the manufacturers reminded their customers by including both tasks in the product’s name:
Klik’n’Lok
Sit’n’Play
Ride’n’Sing
Sam wondered if the baby store had a Wine’n’Chocolate aisle because that would be infinitely more effective at getting her child to sleep than a Musik’n’Lights Dreamz Maker.
Once she had screwed her courage to the sticking post, fitted Jake’s car seat into her Volvo (not without some language that would have made her own mom wash her mouth out with soap and water) and drove to the Mall in downtown Colorado Springs, singing all the dumb songs she could think of, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers being Jake’s favorites. By the time she got there, her son had filled a particularly sludgy diaper with more mire and Sam ended up changing him in the car and giving herself a spectacular backache while she was at it. After ten minutes of wandering around the Mall listening to muzak, she quit and found she couldn’t get home fast enough.
Jake was screaming for a feed even before she turned into her street and it didn’t help that the elderly lady who lived next door, (who *just* happened to be pruning her hedge at the moment Jake used his little lungs to their fullest capacity), helpfully called out that babyboy just needed a hug from his mommy when Sam was attempting to divest her vehicle of all the baby stuff that had become absolutely vital while trying to soothe her grizzling child. Although she had made it up the steps with gear and baby, unlocking the door proved awkward and yes, she had ensured she bumped her child’s head on the door frame while blundering through. She could swear she could feel Grandma Hedge Clippings’ eyes boring right through her back.
One hour later, after a rapid breastfeed that hurt like hell, Sam could barely drag herself off the sofa to do something with all the mess she had made when the phone rang.
The cheery “Hi Sam, it’s Daniel, how’s it going?” was enough to send her off into a crying fit that lasted until he pushed his way through the front door debris and promised her that next time she went to the Mall, she would be accompanied by Daniel Jackson, Doctor of archeology, part-time nanny and full time friend.
And no, she did not have post-natal depression.
She was just beat.
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
The next day was a Wednesday
The date was November 21st, 2007.
It was a day that Sam would remember for the rest of her life.
An uncooperative arm flailed back and forth forcing a smile out of his exhausted mom while Sam tried to detain the sprightly limb and insert it (without breaking a delicate ulna) into a jaunty sailor style top that would stay white for all of five minutes.
“Seriously, why is so much baby stuff white? It’s such a dumb color, isn’t it, Jake?”
She just had to stop and gaze one more time into her son’s eyes. “You’re so beautiful!”
A kiss onto his chest followed. “Love you, child of mine,” and she tossed her ponytail back from her shoulders. She really must get her hair cut.
Her doorbell rang.
Ah. The dilemma. Should she leave him happily gurgling away on the floor, or dare she risk picking him up and causing an objection? She opted for the former. Trotting over to her front door and pushing aside the privacy curtain, she could see it was Daniel - why hadn’t he used his key?
She clicked open the deadlocks, threw open the door and spun back to her kicking child.
“Hey! You’re early! Come on in, I’m just finishing changing His Majesty!”
There was no need to fear; Jake had not yet attained the skill of rolling over at 15 days old and the 2cm down to the floor had not been breached. He pedaled his long legs and cooed as Sam bent over him to pop up his blue sailor’s pants. “There you go, all done!” She smiled and scooped Jake up to turn him around to see his Uncle Daniel..
..who was standing unnaturally still with the SGC Families Liaison officer behind him.
Her arms came about her child’s body to draw him in. “What? What is it? You’ve found his body?”
Jake began to root for a feed and dribbled down her left breast.
Daniel half held his arms out, his eyes searching hers. “Here, let me take him and I’ll explain.”
The Mother’s arms closed in a little more tightly, causing the baby to fuss. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
The one thing that had got Sam through those long nights of feeding and solitude were memories of her child’s father and the final acceptance that she was bringing their son up as a single parent; she had to hold it together for the life they had made.
She had a feeling her plans were about to undergo a 360 faceplant.
The FLO stepped forward with her mouth opening to start a little speech - Sam was trying to remember her name - Kelly, Kelsey, something kute beginning with a ‘K’ because the girl was barely past her mid-20s; what was the base thinking of employing someone who hadn’t experienced life at all in Sam’s subjective and skewed opinion. “Not you, him. Daniel, you tell me.”
She seemed to have activated her rude gene.
Screw it, she’d apologize later.
She repeated. “Daniel?”
Jake began to cry and Daniel gestured abruptly to the sofa. “*Tell* *me*,” she hissed.
Daniel looked as though he was about to join her son in his lament.
“We’ve found him.”
Sam’s living room dipped and swirled.
“He’s injured but conscious and asking for you.”
Her heart stopped. Her heart was brought to a standstill and she gave her last air to their son with a whisper-kiss breathed onto the boy-hair that was straight from his father. “W-Where?” she stammered.
“At the SGC.”
360.
Pitch and yaw.
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
“Sam you don’t have to do this,” Daniel repeated for what seemed like the gazillionth time as he twisted in the front passenger seat to face her in the rear.
Rain pattered onto the roof of the staff car as it snaked its way through the residuals of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the I-25, the FLO (actual name Kirsty) driving and Sam fiddling with one of Jake’s socks as he lay asleep in the baby-seat.
“I know.” Her gray response matched the November weather; she didn’t wonder if the rain would turn to sleet later.
Her lover.
The father of her child that he knew nothing about.
Back from the dead.
Why wasn’t she jumping for joy?
Daniel cleared his throat in a manner that politely suggested please-look-up-and-see-me.
She complied, her thoughts in freefall.
“As I said, we told him you were on leave and that we weren’t sure where you were; we didn’t lie to him; we’ve said nothing about Jake. It was Lam’s suggestion and I think it was sensible. He was pretty cut up about Ferretti and Garcia. You can leave this until you get your head around it; Jack has been in and out of it since Carolyn stuck him with an IV.”
He sighed at her non-committal nod.
Sam watched the rivulets chase down the fogged car window, desperately trying to process what Daniel had told her while she sat stunned on her own sofa.
Several weeks ago she had endured a turbulent ride to Fort Leavenworth to work with prisoner S-250-498-Z, otherwise known as Derek Bricksdale to locate a spare Alkesh in orbit around the moon. The frequency harmonics of the shield seemed too random to be a standard cloak and Sam’s old team at area 51 were mooting the possibility of it being a homing beacon.
They were right.
Teal’c, Cameron and SG-3 had activated the signal and the Alkesh flew them directly to a remote moon in a system on the edge of Lyra being used as a secret base by Ba’al. Jack’s worst nightmares come true. Sam knew full well how the memories of his first imprisonment had ensured some very deep psychological scars - she had held him while he moaned and cursed in his sleep and didn’t dare suggest the psychs. For him to have been captured by that rat-bastard again and held for all this time - Sam couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. Actually, yes she could; she’d read the file from before, she just couldn’t imagine how he had *coped*.
It also seemed that Ba’al was not actually *the* Ba’al. He had been playing god in more ways than one because the SG team had encountered two fully grown Ba’als and one more in the final process of regeneration in a cloning facility that looked as though it had been utilized recently.
Jack had been unexpectedly located thanks to his sub-dermal transponder - one of McKay’s geeky Star Trek ideas. Apparently the signal was singing like a songbird as soon as the Alkesh exited hyperspace, so that was one more she owed the irritating Canadian.
Saved my baby.
Saved my lover.
From thereon it was a standard S&R, complicated by the fact that General O’Neill had some sort of serious spinal injury, the details of which Daniel didn’t know.
He did know that Jack couldn’t move his legs, let alone walk.
O’Neill was recovered with a minimum of fuss and firepower and transported to a nearby Stargate where two medics had accompanied him back to the SGC leaving SG-3, Cam and Teal’c to find out what else Ba’al had been up to and pilot the Alkesh home at the end of the mission.
Job done, no sweat, and they continue where they left off.
Only they couldn’t, could they?
Jack badly injured, physically and... mentally?
And herself? She had given birth to a child he had no knowledge of and had come very close to betraying him in the worst way.
Things couldn’t be more different. Or messed up.
The desire to unclip Jake from his seat and make off down the parkway was intense.
The hand on her knee was warm. “Sam. I meant what I said. No-one will expect you to confront this today.”
She gave Daniel her full attention for the first time that day.
“Maybe not, but I do.”
SJSJSJSJSJSJ
To Be Continued