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kyiziWhat’s Simple is True
By Kyizi
Disclaimer: Stargate: SG1 and all related items do not belong to me. Only the story and all original characters therein are mine. No copyright infringement intended.
All notes etc in Chapter One
Previous Chapters
| Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine |
* * *
Part Ten
* * *
“Wakey, wakey, rise and shine!”
“Oomf!” Sam grunted and turned onto her stomach as Alice giggled and slid off her. When Sam cracked one eye open, she found her face mere centimetres from her daughter’s bright blue eyes. Alice giggled and leaned forward to rub their noses together.
“You’re being lazy again, Momma.”
“I am not lazy.”
“Uhu, you are,” Alice said with a cheeky smile. “And you’re heavy. Jack was making lots of funny noises when he carried you last night.”
Sam shot up so suddenly that she almost knocked Alice off the bed. Grabbing hold of the squirming six year old, Sam took inventory of herself and her surroundings. She was still wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the previous night at the barbeque, although she was now missing her shoes, and she was most definitely in Jack O’Neill’s bedroom. She was also very confused.
“Mom, will you please come downstairs and tell Sarah to stop being annoying?”
Sam glanced at the doorway where Liam was leaning against the frame, looking at her with an expression on his face that was so utterly and completely Orlin that her heart jumped in her chest and she was suddenly filled with so much guilt about where she was that she almost forgot to breath.
“Mom?”
“I’ll go tell Sarah to shut up,” Alice said in rare show of understanding and slid off the bed and out the door.
Liam walked tentatively towards her, still frowning, and stood beside the bed, unsure as to what to do next. Sam reached out to him, her fingers slowly trailing down his cheeks and tracing the frame of his face.
“You are so much like your father,” she whispered, smiling despite the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No, Liam, please don’t ever be sorry about that. Ever.” She pulled him into a hug. “You give me a little piece of him that I get to keep forever. You and the girls are all I have left of him.”
He let her hold him for longer than she thought he might. When he did finally pull away, he sat next to her on Jack’s bed and sighed. “Mom?” he said, looking up at her.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want you to be sad anymore.”
“Liam, honey, I’m not sad.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, you are. But…”
“But what?”
“But Dad wouldn’t want you to be sad. He hated it when you were sad.” Sam took a deep breath, but Liam continued before she could say anything. “I miss him. I miss him lots, but he told me something I forgot.”
“What’s that?” she asked, barely able to get the words past the lump in her throat.
“He told me that he was always with us. Ali says she can talk to his friends and they say he’s happy. I think he’s really watching us sometimes. Like he wants us to be happy and we don’t have to be happy without him because he’s still here.”
“I always knew you were a smart kid.”
“Jack carried you up.”
Sam cleared her throat. “So Alice informed me.”
“It was my idea.” Sam frowned when he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You fell asleep before Aunt Janet and Uncle Evan left and when Jack said we should get you out to the car I knew he wanted us to stay. Sarah was asleep so Uncle Teal’c put her in the Den, but Ali wanted to tuck you in.”
“Oh.” Sam wasn’t really sure what else she could say to that. Jack O’Neill had put her to bed and her daughter had tucked her in…and Liam had let it happen.
“I do like Jack,” he muttered a moment later. “But he’s not Dad.”
“And he’d never try to be.” Liam nodded and she sighed. “I know things seem very complicated, things are very complicated, but you and your sisters are the most important people in my life. Never forget that. There is so much that I need to fix here, Liam, so much that I can never take back or change, but I need to try to make it all okay. I hurt a lot of people and I can never change that, but I want to try to make it better.”
“You hurt Jack a lot, didn’t you?”
“A lot, a lot,” Sam said, repeating his favourite childhood phrase, and he smiled at her. “I’m sorry I can’t explain things with Jack, Liam, things were always complicated between us. I really hurt him and I hurt myself.”
“He loves you,” Liam said. She was so shocked by the statement that she couldn’t even begin to decipher the tone of his voice. He regarded her for a minute. “I don’t wanna go home, Mom. I don’t want to go back to my old school.”
“You’ve said that before. You always changed your mind.”
Liam shrugged. “Dad always said I ‘shouldn’t let them get to me’, but I hate it. I hate school. I hate that I’m smarter then everyone, because they hate me for it.”
“Liam, why didn’t you ever say anything?” Sam asked, unable to stop herself from wondering how she’d missed this. She hadn’t noticed how unhappy he was.
“Because you never did. You always used to do your work and you’d say stuff about how it was all wrong and Dad said you hated being smarter than everyone and not being allowed to tell them they were wrong, so I thought…”
“You thought that you weren’t allowed to say anything either.” Sam sighed. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I never meant for you to think that.”
“It’s okay. I like it when you teach me stuff. Stuff that’s really hard and not the stupid stuff we do at school.”
“What about your friends?”
“Jamie’s way older and he only hangs out with me when we go to see Aunt Terri and Uncle Mike.”
“And what about Peter and George?”
Liam shrugged. “We can email and stuff. I just… I wanna stay here with Uncle Daniel and Aunt Amy and…and Jack. I think Dad would want us to. And you’re happy.”
“Oh, Liam, you can’t make this decision based on what I want. It’s a big step and it’s not just you, it’s not even just us, your sisters have a life back home, too.”
“I just…Dad’s not there anymore. And everyone here knows who he really was and you get to be you here. I…I like you. I mean, who you are when you’re here. You’re still my mom, but you’re, I dunno, you’re more. Jack said you saved the planet a bunch of times and...” Liam sighed. “I just…home is where dad was, but he’s not there anymore and I don’t like that he’s not. And he always said ‘a house is just bricks, its people that build a home’.” Liam looked at her. “I think I get that now. Can we just…can I bring all my stuff and…and we could bring the rug dad dropped lasagne on when Ali and Sarah were babies?”
Sam laughed a little, still reeling and unsure as to what he was really saying to her. “Liam, I haven’t really thought about the future. I’m too worried about the now. One step at a time, okay. We’ll talk about it more later. Just focus on the now.”
Liam grinned suddenly. “Okay, because the now is so cool. Watch this.”
Frowning at him, Sam tried to figure out what he was up to. So, when he stood up to face her and winked at her, she was suddenly very curious. Curiosity, however, soon turned into blink panic when he evaporated in a swirl of light.
“Liam!”
“I’m right here, Mom.”
Sam stood up, whirled around in a circle, looked everywhere, but she still couldn’t see him. “Liam!”
“What’s going on?” Jack thundered into the room, he’d been on his way up the stairs when he heard her panicked call.
“Liam’s-”
“Right here!”
Jack’s reaction to her son suddenly re-appearing right next to him would have amused her greatly if her heart hadn’t stopped beating about sixty seconds before. Liam was grinning at her and, given that Jack had likely worked out what had been going on, she was faced with a matching one from her former CO.
“That was pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” Liam said nodding. “I was playing hide and seek with Ali and Sarah earlier and I found a great way to win.”
“I’ll say. Can you do it again?”
“Liam Daniel Walker! Don’t you ever do that to me again! Do I make myself clear?” Her voice suddenly thundered through the room and even Jack, who had never heard that tone from her before, looked startled. “And don’t you dare encourage him Jack O’Neill.”
“Sorry?” Liam said, gulping slightly.
“Yes, Sir,” Jack replied, a slight smile on his lips as he saluted her.
“This is not funny.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Janet said she wanted to know if I could do it when I wanted to, that’s what we’re doing today when we go into the mountain. I just wanted to try it first…without everyone watching.”
“Kid’s got a point.”
Sam glared and Jack, but he just raised his eyebrows at her. “Liam, go downstairs and make sure the girls aren’t driving your grandfather up the wall.” He turned and ran out of the room, clearly glad to be free of his mother’s disapproval. “And no disappearing.”
“He was just messin’ around, Carter.”
“He scared the life out of me, Jack. Don’t tell me I’m not allowed to be angry. He’s my son.” The moment she said the words, she wanted to take them back. She closed her eyes, let out a slow breath, and sat back onto the bed. “Jack, I didn’t mean it to sound like…like…God, I don’t know I just-”
“I know.”
“No, Jack, this is one time where you don’t know, because I don’t even know. I just…do you have any idea what Liam said to me less than five minutes ago?”
“I have an inkling?”
She hadn’t been expecting an answer. She turned to look at him and something in his eyes told her that she wasn’t the first person Liam might have had words with. She turned away and groaned, dropping her head into her hands.
“Oh, God, what did he say?”
Jack smiled. “He just let me know that I was no longer Public Enemy Number One.”
“How…exactly did he do that?”
“Sam.”
She met his gaze and she suddenly knew exactly what Liam had said to Jack. She just wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
“God, were we always this transparent?” she suddenly demanded and Jack laughed.
“Look, Carter…Sam, I don’t know what you think Liam told me, but listen to what I’m telling you. You accused me of something the other night and you didn’t give me the chance to tell you you were wrong. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when you get things wrong, you get them really wrong.”
“Jack, I-”
“No, it’s my turn to talk,” Jack said and she blinked. “You were the one who left it in the room that day. You had to be the one to let it out and I thought you knew that. I thought we all knew that. So maybe I was wrong, too. Look, whatever happened back then is done and we can’t change it. So let me tell you how I see things now.”
“Okay,” she said, acknowledging both what be had and hadn’t said. He was right, they couldn’t change the past. “So what now?”
“We’re done. I’m done. I’m done with all of this. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. I told you I could never stay mad at you long and I guess I’ve reached my limit. So I’m done with being angry at you. You can’t change the past and God knows I’ve done enough in my own that I wish I could change. I’m done. We’re fine. Good, even. Great, in fact. And I’m here. For whatever you need. Okay?”
Whatever he had expected her reaction to be, Sam was pretty sure he hadn’t expected it to be a punch in the face. She was sure, however, that he would never start a sentence with the words ‘we’re done’ ever again.
* * *
“How’s Mark?”
Sam turned to face Daniel, smiling widely. “He’s good. Dad’s here for another two weeks, so we’re taking the kids to Grand Rapids for five days next week. Janet thinks Liam should be stable enough with his…ability by then that it won’t be an issue and Sarah and Alice are going to be taught a few lessons on ‘what’s acceptable to talk about in front of the every day populace’, so it should be a good trip.”
“You realise, of course, that the adults are going to be outnumbered two to one, right?”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, but Hannah’s almost eighteen, so she’s not likely to be there much, Andrew’s sixteen so I can’t imagine him stirring up too much trouble, and James is eleven, so I’m hoping he and Liam will be happy enough with some video games and a few trips to the soccer pitch. That’ll even out the odds.”
“The kids seem excited about meeting their cousins.”
“Yeah,” Sam said softly. “They’re handling this all so well. They’ve gone from having no one but me and Kevin, and Terri, Mike and the kids, to having a huge family. I expected more problems than this, actually.”
“If there’s one thing that Katie’s taught me it’s that kids adapt very easily.”
“Yeah, it’s the parent’s that have the trouble,” she said with a sigh.
“Sam, you’re handling this.”
“I’m getting there.” She smiled and reached out to squeeze his hand. “You sure you’re okay to handle them this afternoon?”
“Yeah, if it’s still okay with you then Jack’s going to take Liam over to his. Matthew called in to see Jack and ask if Liam was still going to be around. He wasn’t sure, at the barbeque, if Liam would still be here.”
“No, that’s fine. Liam hasn’t played hockey since we left North Carolina. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked about finding someone to play with sooner, actually. Matthew’s Captain Ward’s kid, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, you met his mom, Elissa, the other night, too.”
“I remember. They seemed nice enough and if Jack’s going to be there I can’t see a problem with it.”
“I think that’s why he’s going,” Daniel said with a smile. “I think he figured you’d be more likely to let Liam play if you knew one of us was there to watch out for him and, God knows, I’m no good at hockey.”
Sam laughed, jumping when she heard the car horn outside. “That must be Paul. I’ll see you later.”
“Anytime, we’ve got no plans. Although, I’m warning you now that I’m cooking tonight, Tigh called; Amy’s mission’s been extended until tomorrow. Zalenka found some naquada.”
“You know, I’m not entirely sure I still have the clearance for you to be telling me this,” Sam said and Daniel snorted.
“Sam, things might be a bit up in the air right now, but there’s no way the SGC is planning on letting you go this time.” He smiled. “There’s no way we’re letting you go this time.”
There was a knock at the door and Sam smiled, kissing Daniel’s cheek before moving to answer it. Katie, however, had got there first and was currently attached to Paul’s left leg, squealing “fly me! Fly me!”
“Katie, leave the poor man alone,” Daniel said, stepping outside and attempting to detach his daughter. Paul, for his part, was laughing and attempting to oblige and was raising his leg off the ground with the young girl still attached.
“Girls!” Sam called, hearing her daughters shouting in the next room. “I’m going out and I want you to be good for your Uncle Daniel, okay?”
Somehow, despite the unanimous, “Yes, momma!” that followed her question, she had the feeling that Daniel was in for one hell of an afternoon. After her own experiences with Katie, however, she found that she didn’t have much sympathy for him.
They drove into town and found a small coffee shop that Sam had never seen before. She was pretty sure that the last time she’d been in that part of town it had been an arcade; she couldn’t say that it wasn’t an improvement.
“So,” she said as they settled into their chairs, her hands cupping a warm, strong coffee that was making her mouth water. She smiled wryly at him. “How’ve you been?”
He chuckled. “Good. Bad. Better. Not so good. Terrible. Okay. Take your pick.” He sighed. “Fifteen years is a long time.”
“Yeah, yeah, it is.”
He glanced at her and took a deep breath. “I take it you heard about Jessie.”
She nodded. “Janet and Cassie told me. Paul, I’m so sorry.”
He winced. “Did they tell you who she was?”
“She was your fiancé,” Sam said softly.
“Yeah, but did they…” he sighed. “Sam, I was engaged to…Jo’s mom was Jessie Bradford.”
“J-Jessica Bradford?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat. “But then…Oh, God.”
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t sure if they knew and I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Sam took steady breaths, calming her sudden desire to just burst into tears. She had been slowly getting the hang of things again and, once more, life had thrown her another curve ball.
Sam had had few close female friends in her whole life; being brought up on army bases and moving around a lot had meant that she had learnt to meet people she was willing to leave behind and not form any lasting friendships. It hadn’t taken her long to realise that boys were just easier that way. They didn’t want you to write to them when you left and they played sports, which Sam had always loved.
Her first real experience with a close female friend hadn’t arrived until she had been studying at university. Her dorm mate had been an energetic, sarcastic, overtly friendly (and very boy crazy) girl called Jessica Bradford. The girl was Sam’s complete opposite; short and curvy with long curly black hair, Jessica had never had trouble finding what she called ‘a good time’. And she had it in her head that she had to help Sam do the same.
Despite their outward differences, they were both intelligent young scientists and they had a lot more in common than Sam would have ever initially thought possible. When they had left university, Sam had found the first friend she didn’t want to leave behind. So, when they had both ended up in the Pentagon, Sam had thought her lucky stars were shining on her.
They had shared lab space, drank gallons of coffee together, gone drinking all night, and planned camping trips that had always gone wrong, but more than anything, Sam had a friend. Until she had met Janet, Sam hadn’t thought there would be another woman she would ever feel so close to. Even though their communication had become rather sporadic after her move to the SGC, Jessica was the one constant Sam had always thought would be in her life. She’d planned to track her friend down before going to visit her brother.
But Jessica was dead and, because she’d always kept her life before the SGC separate, no one had known to tell her.
“Sam?”
“Sorry,” she took another deep breath and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“It’s okay.” Paul smiled sadly. “No, it’s not okay. You more than anyone know that. But…”
“But it’s not as bad as it was.”
“Yeah, it’s not as bad as it was.”
“Does it really ‘get easier’?” she asked softly.
“No. No, it really doesn’t. It just…you think about it less and then you feel guilty about thinking about it less…but then your kid smiles at you and you realise that you’re not alone. And that it’s okay to not think about it sometimes. And that…maybe…maybe its okay to close that bit of your heart away for special occasions…when being sad is allowed.”
“Like yesterday?”
“Like yesterday.” He smiled. “But then you find that you’re allowed to think about the good stuff, too. And that’s not so bad.”
“I guess I can deal with that.”
“How long ago did...?”
Sam frowned. “Almost two years. Feels like longer sometimes and others…”
“It feels like you woke up next to them yesterday.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
They smiled at each other, before Paul grinned widely. “You’re the reason we got together, you know.” At her look, he continued. “When you…left, she was, God, she was so worried. We both were. She hadn’t known until you didn’t turn up to meet her a week later. She knew that you and I had been friends, and we both tried to get all the information we could from the SGC. I was transferred there about five months after you left and I was the only person she knew at the SGC, so she called me the day after I started. When I had no news, she told me she’d call me again the following day. She called me every day I was on base for five weeks. We…I guess we started talking about more than just you.”
He smiled at her and continued. “We didn’t have a lot in common, really, but we just…clicked. I think we talked every day for about a year before Rodney called me on it and told me I should just grow a pair and ask her out.”
“I’m surprised she hadn’t asked you by then,” Sam said, grinning. “She wasn’t exactly known for being subtle.”
“So I’ve heard.” There was a twinkle in his eyes that Sam wasn’t sure she liked. “I’ve heard a lot about failed camping trips and certain nights out…”
“You can’t blame any of that on me! She was the bad influence!”
Paul laughed. “Somehow, I can’t see Jessie voluntarily going to a Biker’s bar and then starting a br-”
“Oh, my God! You are never to tell anyone about that! Ever.”
Somehow, she didn’t find the twinkle in his eyes very reassuring.
* * *
“Good day?” Jack asked with a smile, stepping aside to let her in.
“Very long, very emotional day,” Sam replied with a tired smile, leading the way into the kitchen.
She and Paul had spent hours reminiscing over their pasts. They shared stories about Jessica that had Sam’s heart aching at what seemed like such a recent loss to her. Paul told her about Joanne’s birth and how Jessica had broken every finger on his left hand. She had told him about her life as Mrs. Annie Walker. He’d filled her in on everything from the SGC, including the things that no one else had wanted to tell her; about how angry Jack had been, even all those months later when Paul had transferred; about how long it took before Daniel learned to smile again, about how Teal’c had almost lost his way home forever, about everything she had yet to learn about those missing years.
Paul had also informed her that they had just caught Colonel Makepeace, who, as it turned out, had been the one to turn her in. Having intended to use her as leverage against the SGC, he had found himself empty handed when Hammond had played his last card.
Most of all, however, they had talked about the one thing that they were both having so much trouble with. They both called it by a different name, but whether it was called ‘Natalie’ or ‘Jack’, they had both come to the same conclusion. It didn’t matter how much they thought they had to get on with life, because although life moved on, moving with it wasn’t as easy as it was made out to be. They had to go at their own pace. And they had each other to lean on when things got rough. They had a lot of people to lean on when things got too hard to handle.
“Liam’s in the den blowing up aliens.” The brief moment of alarm on Sam’s face was enough to make him chuckle. “On a small screen,” he said wryly. “Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was practicing for the future.”
“I’d really rather that was something he never had to do.”
“I know.” He watched her for a few minutes, but, for once, she was barely aware of it. “What’s wrong?”
“Did…did you know I was friends with Jessica Bradford?” The look on his face was enough of an answer. “I didn’t think so. You know…I never realised how little you all knew about my life before the SGC. It never occurred to me until lately how little we all knew…did you realise that? That we…I was going to call her before we left to visit Mark. I was…God, I am so tired of crying!”
Sam took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She jerked when she felt his hands cupping her face. Her eyes flickered open, as his thumb caressed his jaw.
“I knew you,” he said softly. “The little details? They’re important, but they aren’t who you are, Sam. I knew you. And you knew me.”
She smiled at him, nodding her head slowly, almost nuzzling his palm. She wasn’t sure when she realised he was moving closer to her, or when her hands had moved to his chest, but there was one thing she was sure of.
“Jack,” she whispered. “It’s too soon. I’m sorry, it’s just…”
He nodded. “I know.” Smiling at her, he kissed her forehead and pulled her into a hug.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that, in his kitchen, holding onto each other tightly, but Sam knew that his words would be ringing in her head for a very long time.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
* * *
Two years later…
“Sarah! Alice! Hurry up or you’re going to be late for school!” Sam moved quickly around the kitchen, filling up the packed lunch boxes with fruit and a chocolate bar. As she turned around, she almost tripped over the hockey sticks that were leaning against the fridge.
“Liam, will you clear away your mess!” she cried, kicking them out of the way as she opened the fridge door and pulled out the juice boxes.
“Mom, Ali stole my pencils again!”
Sam groaned. “Alice, give your sister back her pencils and will the two of you please get a move on? Liam, how’s that homework coming?”
“It’s not here!”
Sighing at the frustration in her son’s voice, she closed the last box and walked out into the hallway. “What do you mean it’s not there? You finished it last night.”
Sam jumped when a voice behind her called out, “It’s in the den, Liam!” She turned in time to see Jack trying to sneak out the back door with the two hockey sticks she had almost fallen over. “Sorry,” he said meekly. “Forgot to put them away last night.”
Before she could reply, there was a sudden thundering on the stairs. “Slow down!” she cried as the girls came careering into the kitchen. “Will you please stop running down the stairs.”
“We weren’t running,” Sarah said, putting her lunch in her bag.
“We were running, then jumping,” Alice clarified with a cheeky grin.
The doorbell rang at the same time as one of the lunchboxes began floating mid-air and crossing the kitchen by itself.
“I’ll get it!” Sarah cried at the same time as Sam growled at the floating lunchbox.
“Liam! Make yourself visible right now.”
He appeared in front of the back door in time for Jack to almost walk into him. “You could see it?” he asked Sam, waving the lunchbox at her. “Damn, I thought I had it that time.”
“You made it work with the puck yesterday,” Jack said, ruffling his hair. “You’ll get it eventually.”
“But not until you’re on base or doing it with our permission,” Sam continued and Liam rolled his eyes.
“Mom?”
She turned as Sarah entered the kitchen again. “What is it, sweetie?” Sam asked. “Who was it?”
Sarah opened her mouth, but didn’t seem sure how to answer. “The lady inside Ali’s head is at the door.”
There was a tinkling of laughter behind her and suddenly a woman appeared.
“Hey Asha,” Alice said with a smile.
“Hello Alice.” The woman turned to smile at the rest of the room. “Hello Samantha.”
“Come on, we’ll be late for school,” Alice said. “And we get to play on the trampolines this morning.”
Jack cleared his throat. “I’ll take them,” he said, picking up his keys and looking back and forth between Sam and the smiling alien. “I’ll see you at the base?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, shaking her head. She turned to him and smiled. “Briefing at 0900?”
He nodded and gave her a quick kiss. “Okay, kids, let’s go.”
As Jack ushered her three children out of the door, Sam stared at the woman she hadn’t spoken to in over seventeen years and wondered whether or not she should be offering the Ancient a cup of coffee.
* * *
“Everything okay?”
Sam turned and smiled as Jack fell into step beside her. “Yeah, everything’s fine…just…strange.”
“Was, eh, was she your only visitor?”
Sam nodded. “Orlin’s gone. He’s…he’s around, but he’s…he’s not really the same. He doesn’t remember us.”
Jack winced. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Really. I think it’d be a lot harder if he was still here and he was…still Kevin.” They turned the corner, greeting SG2 as the team made their way to the infirmary for the post mission check up. “Asha just wanted to…check in, I guess,” she continued. “Make sure we were all okay.”
Jack nodded, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes. “And? Are you?” he asked quietly.
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Yeah,” she said softly, smiling at him. “I really am.” She glanced either way and, after making sure they were really alone, she pulled on his jacket and kissed him. She was ginning as she pulled back and so was Jack.
“Thank you, thank you for everything.” She said softly, both of them pulling apart when two members of SG4 walked around the corner. “I love you, Jack O’Neill.”
His grin widened and, regardless of the fact that the corridor was no longer empty, he pulled her into another kiss. “I love you, too, Sam.”
* * *
The End
Note: So, yeah, as I said, it’s a very old fic. I’m just glad to have it finally finished off. I hope you enjoyed and if there are any typos I’m unlikely to go back and change them and, yeah, there are plenty of clichés in there, I’m sure, but I’m quite happy to ignore them all!
* * *
By Kyizi
Disclaimer: Stargate: SG1 and all related items do not belong to me. Only the story and all original characters therein are mine. No copyright infringement intended.
All notes etc in Chapter One
Previous Chapters
| Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine |
* * *
Part Ten
* * *
“Wakey, wakey, rise and shine!”
“Oomf!” Sam grunted and turned onto her stomach as Alice giggled and slid off her. When Sam cracked one eye open, she found her face mere centimetres from her daughter’s bright blue eyes. Alice giggled and leaned forward to rub their noses together.
“You’re being lazy again, Momma.”
“I am not lazy.”
“Uhu, you are,” Alice said with a cheeky smile. “And you’re heavy. Jack was making lots of funny noises when he carried you last night.”
Sam shot up so suddenly that she almost knocked Alice off the bed. Grabbing hold of the squirming six year old, Sam took inventory of herself and her surroundings. She was still wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the previous night at the barbeque, although she was now missing her shoes, and she was most definitely in Jack O’Neill’s bedroom. She was also very confused.
“Mom, will you please come downstairs and tell Sarah to stop being annoying?”
Sam glanced at the doorway where Liam was leaning against the frame, looking at her with an expression on his face that was so utterly and completely Orlin that her heart jumped in her chest and she was suddenly filled with so much guilt about where she was that she almost forgot to breath.
“Mom?”
“I’ll go tell Sarah to shut up,” Alice said in rare show of understanding and slid off the bed and out the door.
Liam walked tentatively towards her, still frowning, and stood beside the bed, unsure as to what to do next. Sam reached out to him, her fingers slowly trailing down his cheeks and tracing the frame of his face.
“You are so much like your father,” she whispered, smiling despite the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No, Liam, please don’t ever be sorry about that. Ever.” She pulled him into a hug. “You give me a little piece of him that I get to keep forever. You and the girls are all I have left of him.”
He let her hold him for longer than she thought he might. When he did finally pull away, he sat next to her on Jack’s bed and sighed. “Mom?” he said, looking up at her.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want you to be sad anymore.”
“Liam, honey, I’m not sad.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, you are. But…”
“But what?”
“But Dad wouldn’t want you to be sad. He hated it when you were sad.” Sam took a deep breath, but Liam continued before she could say anything. “I miss him. I miss him lots, but he told me something I forgot.”
“What’s that?” she asked, barely able to get the words past the lump in her throat.
“He told me that he was always with us. Ali says she can talk to his friends and they say he’s happy. I think he’s really watching us sometimes. Like he wants us to be happy and we don’t have to be happy without him because he’s still here.”
“I always knew you were a smart kid.”
“Jack carried you up.”
Sam cleared her throat. “So Alice informed me.”
“It was my idea.” Sam frowned when he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You fell asleep before Aunt Janet and Uncle Evan left and when Jack said we should get you out to the car I knew he wanted us to stay. Sarah was asleep so Uncle Teal’c put her in the Den, but Ali wanted to tuck you in.”
“Oh.” Sam wasn’t really sure what else she could say to that. Jack O’Neill had put her to bed and her daughter had tucked her in…and Liam had let it happen.
“I do like Jack,” he muttered a moment later. “But he’s not Dad.”
“And he’d never try to be.” Liam nodded and she sighed. “I know things seem very complicated, things are very complicated, but you and your sisters are the most important people in my life. Never forget that. There is so much that I need to fix here, Liam, so much that I can never take back or change, but I need to try to make it all okay. I hurt a lot of people and I can never change that, but I want to try to make it better.”
“You hurt Jack a lot, didn’t you?”
“A lot, a lot,” Sam said, repeating his favourite childhood phrase, and he smiled at her. “I’m sorry I can’t explain things with Jack, Liam, things were always complicated between us. I really hurt him and I hurt myself.”
“He loves you,” Liam said. She was so shocked by the statement that she couldn’t even begin to decipher the tone of his voice. He regarded her for a minute. “I don’t wanna go home, Mom. I don’t want to go back to my old school.”
“You’ve said that before. You always changed your mind.”
Liam shrugged. “Dad always said I ‘shouldn’t let them get to me’, but I hate it. I hate school. I hate that I’m smarter then everyone, because they hate me for it.”
“Liam, why didn’t you ever say anything?” Sam asked, unable to stop herself from wondering how she’d missed this. She hadn’t noticed how unhappy he was.
“Because you never did. You always used to do your work and you’d say stuff about how it was all wrong and Dad said you hated being smarter than everyone and not being allowed to tell them they were wrong, so I thought…”
“You thought that you weren’t allowed to say anything either.” Sam sighed. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I never meant for you to think that.”
“It’s okay. I like it when you teach me stuff. Stuff that’s really hard and not the stupid stuff we do at school.”
“What about your friends?”
“Jamie’s way older and he only hangs out with me when we go to see Aunt Terri and Uncle Mike.”
“And what about Peter and George?”
Liam shrugged. “We can email and stuff. I just… I wanna stay here with Uncle Daniel and Aunt Amy and…and Jack. I think Dad would want us to. And you’re happy.”
“Oh, Liam, you can’t make this decision based on what I want. It’s a big step and it’s not just you, it’s not even just us, your sisters have a life back home, too.”
“I just…Dad’s not there anymore. And everyone here knows who he really was and you get to be you here. I…I like you. I mean, who you are when you’re here. You’re still my mom, but you’re, I dunno, you’re more. Jack said you saved the planet a bunch of times and...” Liam sighed. “I just…home is where dad was, but he’s not there anymore and I don’t like that he’s not. And he always said ‘a house is just bricks, its people that build a home’.” Liam looked at her. “I think I get that now. Can we just…can I bring all my stuff and…and we could bring the rug dad dropped lasagne on when Ali and Sarah were babies?”
Sam laughed a little, still reeling and unsure as to what he was really saying to her. “Liam, I haven’t really thought about the future. I’m too worried about the now. One step at a time, okay. We’ll talk about it more later. Just focus on the now.”
Liam grinned suddenly. “Okay, because the now is so cool. Watch this.”
Frowning at him, Sam tried to figure out what he was up to. So, when he stood up to face her and winked at her, she was suddenly very curious. Curiosity, however, soon turned into blink panic when he evaporated in a swirl of light.
“Liam!”
“I’m right here, Mom.”
Sam stood up, whirled around in a circle, looked everywhere, but she still couldn’t see him. “Liam!”
“What’s going on?” Jack thundered into the room, he’d been on his way up the stairs when he heard her panicked call.
“Liam’s-”
“Right here!”
Jack’s reaction to her son suddenly re-appearing right next to him would have amused her greatly if her heart hadn’t stopped beating about sixty seconds before. Liam was grinning at her and, given that Jack had likely worked out what had been going on, she was faced with a matching one from her former CO.
“That was pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” Liam said nodding. “I was playing hide and seek with Ali and Sarah earlier and I found a great way to win.”
“I’ll say. Can you do it again?”
“Liam Daniel Walker! Don’t you ever do that to me again! Do I make myself clear?” Her voice suddenly thundered through the room and even Jack, who had never heard that tone from her before, looked startled. “And don’t you dare encourage him Jack O’Neill.”
“Sorry?” Liam said, gulping slightly.
“Yes, Sir,” Jack replied, a slight smile on his lips as he saluted her.
“This is not funny.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Janet said she wanted to know if I could do it when I wanted to, that’s what we’re doing today when we go into the mountain. I just wanted to try it first…without everyone watching.”
“Kid’s got a point.”
Sam glared and Jack, but he just raised his eyebrows at her. “Liam, go downstairs and make sure the girls aren’t driving your grandfather up the wall.” He turned and ran out of the room, clearly glad to be free of his mother’s disapproval. “And no disappearing.”
“He was just messin’ around, Carter.”
“He scared the life out of me, Jack. Don’t tell me I’m not allowed to be angry. He’s my son.” The moment she said the words, she wanted to take them back. She closed her eyes, let out a slow breath, and sat back onto the bed. “Jack, I didn’t mean it to sound like…like…God, I don’t know I just-”
“I know.”
“No, Jack, this is one time where you don’t know, because I don’t even know. I just…do you have any idea what Liam said to me less than five minutes ago?”
“I have an inkling?”
She hadn’t been expecting an answer. She turned to look at him and something in his eyes told her that she wasn’t the first person Liam might have had words with. She turned away and groaned, dropping her head into her hands.
“Oh, God, what did he say?”
Jack smiled. “He just let me know that I was no longer Public Enemy Number One.”
“How…exactly did he do that?”
“Sam.”
She met his gaze and she suddenly knew exactly what Liam had said to Jack. She just wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
“God, were we always this transparent?” she suddenly demanded and Jack laughed.
“Look, Carter…Sam, I don’t know what you think Liam told me, but listen to what I’m telling you. You accused me of something the other night and you didn’t give me the chance to tell you you were wrong. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when you get things wrong, you get them really wrong.”
“Jack, I-”
“No, it’s my turn to talk,” Jack said and she blinked. “You were the one who left it in the room that day. You had to be the one to let it out and I thought you knew that. I thought we all knew that. So maybe I was wrong, too. Look, whatever happened back then is done and we can’t change it. So let me tell you how I see things now.”
“Okay,” she said, acknowledging both what be had and hadn’t said. He was right, they couldn’t change the past. “So what now?”
“We’re done. I’m done. I’m done with all of this. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. I told you I could never stay mad at you long and I guess I’ve reached my limit. So I’m done with being angry at you. You can’t change the past and God knows I’ve done enough in my own that I wish I could change. I’m done. We’re fine. Good, even. Great, in fact. And I’m here. For whatever you need. Okay?”
Whatever he had expected her reaction to be, Sam was pretty sure he hadn’t expected it to be a punch in the face. She was sure, however, that he would never start a sentence with the words ‘we’re done’ ever again.
* * *
“How’s Mark?”
Sam turned to face Daniel, smiling widely. “He’s good. Dad’s here for another two weeks, so we’re taking the kids to Grand Rapids for five days next week. Janet thinks Liam should be stable enough with his…ability by then that it won’t be an issue and Sarah and Alice are going to be taught a few lessons on ‘what’s acceptable to talk about in front of the every day populace’, so it should be a good trip.”
“You realise, of course, that the adults are going to be outnumbered two to one, right?”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, but Hannah’s almost eighteen, so she’s not likely to be there much, Andrew’s sixteen so I can’t imagine him stirring up too much trouble, and James is eleven, so I’m hoping he and Liam will be happy enough with some video games and a few trips to the soccer pitch. That’ll even out the odds.”
“The kids seem excited about meeting their cousins.”
“Yeah,” Sam said softly. “They’re handling this all so well. They’ve gone from having no one but me and Kevin, and Terri, Mike and the kids, to having a huge family. I expected more problems than this, actually.”
“If there’s one thing that Katie’s taught me it’s that kids adapt very easily.”
“Yeah, it’s the parent’s that have the trouble,” she said with a sigh.
“Sam, you’re handling this.”
“I’m getting there.” She smiled and reached out to squeeze his hand. “You sure you’re okay to handle them this afternoon?”
“Yeah, if it’s still okay with you then Jack’s going to take Liam over to his. Matthew called in to see Jack and ask if Liam was still going to be around. He wasn’t sure, at the barbeque, if Liam would still be here.”
“No, that’s fine. Liam hasn’t played hockey since we left North Carolina. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked about finding someone to play with sooner, actually. Matthew’s Captain Ward’s kid, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, you met his mom, Elissa, the other night, too.”
“I remember. They seemed nice enough and if Jack’s going to be there I can’t see a problem with it.”
“I think that’s why he’s going,” Daniel said with a smile. “I think he figured you’d be more likely to let Liam play if you knew one of us was there to watch out for him and, God knows, I’m no good at hockey.”
Sam laughed, jumping when she heard the car horn outside. “That must be Paul. I’ll see you later.”
“Anytime, we’ve got no plans. Although, I’m warning you now that I’m cooking tonight, Tigh called; Amy’s mission’s been extended until tomorrow. Zalenka found some naquada.”
“You know, I’m not entirely sure I still have the clearance for you to be telling me this,” Sam said and Daniel snorted.
“Sam, things might be a bit up in the air right now, but there’s no way the SGC is planning on letting you go this time.” He smiled. “There’s no way we’re letting you go this time.”
There was a knock at the door and Sam smiled, kissing Daniel’s cheek before moving to answer it. Katie, however, had got there first and was currently attached to Paul’s left leg, squealing “fly me! Fly me!”
“Katie, leave the poor man alone,” Daniel said, stepping outside and attempting to detach his daughter. Paul, for his part, was laughing and attempting to oblige and was raising his leg off the ground with the young girl still attached.
“Girls!” Sam called, hearing her daughters shouting in the next room. “I’m going out and I want you to be good for your Uncle Daniel, okay?”
Somehow, despite the unanimous, “Yes, momma!” that followed her question, she had the feeling that Daniel was in for one hell of an afternoon. After her own experiences with Katie, however, she found that she didn’t have much sympathy for him.
They drove into town and found a small coffee shop that Sam had never seen before. She was pretty sure that the last time she’d been in that part of town it had been an arcade; she couldn’t say that it wasn’t an improvement.
“So,” she said as they settled into their chairs, her hands cupping a warm, strong coffee that was making her mouth water. She smiled wryly at him. “How’ve you been?”
He chuckled. “Good. Bad. Better. Not so good. Terrible. Okay. Take your pick.” He sighed. “Fifteen years is a long time.”
“Yeah, yeah, it is.”
He glanced at her and took a deep breath. “I take it you heard about Jessie.”
She nodded. “Janet and Cassie told me. Paul, I’m so sorry.”
He winced. “Did they tell you who she was?”
“She was your fiancé,” Sam said softly.
“Yeah, but did they…” he sighed. “Sam, I was engaged to…Jo’s mom was Jessie Bradford.”
“J-Jessica Bradford?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat. “But then…Oh, God.”
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t sure if they knew and I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Sam took steady breaths, calming her sudden desire to just burst into tears. She had been slowly getting the hang of things again and, once more, life had thrown her another curve ball.
Sam had had few close female friends in her whole life; being brought up on army bases and moving around a lot had meant that she had learnt to meet people she was willing to leave behind and not form any lasting friendships. It hadn’t taken her long to realise that boys were just easier that way. They didn’t want you to write to them when you left and they played sports, which Sam had always loved.
Her first real experience with a close female friend hadn’t arrived until she had been studying at university. Her dorm mate had been an energetic, sarcastic, overtly friendly (and very boy crazy) girl called Jessica Bradford. The girl was Sam’s complete opposite; short and curvy with long curly black hair, Jessica had never had trouble finding what she called ‘a good time’. And she had it in her head that she had to help Sam do the same.
Despite their outward differences, they were both intelligent young scientists and they had a lot more in common than Sam would have ever initially thought possible. When they had left university, Sam had found the first friend she didn’t want to leave behind. So, when they had both ended up in the Pentagon, Sam had thought her lucky stars were shining on her.
They had shared lab space, drank gallons of coffee together, gone drinking all night, and planned camping trips that had always gone wrong, but more than anything, Sam had a friend. Until she had met Janet, Sam hadn’t thought there would be another woman she would ever feel so close to. Even though their communication had become rather sporadic after her move to the SGC, Jessica was the one constant Sam had always thought would be in her life. She’d planned to track her friend down before going to visit her brother.
But Jessica was dead and, because she’d always kept her life before the SGC separate, no one had known to tell her.
“Sam?”
“Sorry,” she took another deep breath and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“It’s okay.” Paul smiled sadly. “No, it’s not okay. You more than anyone know that. But…”
“But it’s not as bad as it was.”
“Yeah, it’s not as bad as it was.”
“Does it really ‘get easier’?” she asked softly.
“No. No, it really doesn’t. It just…you think about it less and then you feel guilty about thinking about it less…but then your kid smiles at you and you realise that you’re not alone. And that it’s okay to not think about it sometimes. And that…maybe…maybe its okay to close that bit of your heart away for special occasions…when being sad is allowed.”
“Like yesterday?”
“Like yesterday.” He smiled. “But then you find that you’re allowed to think about the good stuff, too. And that’s not so bad.”
“I guess I can deal with that.”
“How long ago did...?”
Sam frowned. “Almost two years. Feels like longer sometimes and others…”
“It feels like you woke up next to them yesterday.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
They smiled at each other, before Paul grinned widely. “You’re the reason we got together, you know.” At her look, he continued. “When you…left, she was, God, she was so worried. We both were. She hadn’t known until you didn’t turn up to meet her a week later. She knew that you and I had been friends, and we both tried to get all the information we could from the SGC. I was transferred there about five months after you left and I was the only person she knew at the SGC, so she called me the day after I started. When I had no news, she told me she’d call me again the following day. She called me every day I was on base for five weeks. We…I guess we started talking about more than just you.”
He smiled at her and continued. “We didn’t have a lot in common, really, but we just…clicked. I think we talked every day for about a year before Rodney called me on it and told me I should just grow a pair and ask her out.”
“I’m surprised she hadn’t asked you by then,” Sam said, grinning. “She wasn’t exactly known for being subtle.”
“So I’ve heard.” There was a twinkle in his eyes that Sam wasn’t sure she liked. “I’ve heard a lot about failed camping trips and certain nights out…”
“You can’t blame any of that on me! She was the bad influence!”
Paul laughed. “Somehow, I can’t see Jessie voluntarily going to a Biker’s bar and then starting a br-”
“Oh, my God! You are never to tell anyone about that! Ever.”
Somehow, she didn’t find the twinkle in his eyes very reassuring.
* * *
“Good day?” Jack asked with a smile, stepping aside to let her in.
“Very long, very emotional day,” Sam replied with a tired smile, leading the way into the kitchen.
She and Paul had spent hours reminiscing over their pasts. They shared stories about Jessica that had Sam’s heart aching at what seemed like such a recent loss to her. Paul told her about Joanne’s birth and how Jessica had broken every finger on his left hand. She had told him about her life as Mrs. Annie Walker. He’d filled her in on everything from the SGC, including the things that no one else had wanted to tell her; about how angry Jack had been, even all those months later when Paul had transferred; about how long it took before Daniel learned to smile again, about how Teal’c had almost lost his way home forever, about everything she had yet to learn about those missing years.
Paul had also informed her that they had just caught Colonel Makepeace, who, as it turned out, had been the one to turn her in. Having intended to use her as leverage against the SGC, he had found himself empty handed when Hammond had played his last card.
Most of all, however, they had talked about the one thing that they were both having so much trouble with. They both called it by a different name, but whether it was called ‘Natalie’ or ‘Jack’, they had both come to the same conclusion. It didn’t matter how much they thought they had to get on with life, because although life moved on, moving with it wasn’t as easy as it was made out to be. They had to go at their own pace. And they had each other to lean on when things got rough. They had a lot of people to lean on when things got too hard to handle.
“Liam’s in the den blowing up aliens.” The brief moment of alarm on Sam’s face was enough to make him chuckle. “On a small screen,” he said wryly. “Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was practicing for the future.”
“I’d really rather that was something he never had to do.”
“I know.” He watched her for a few minutes, but, for once, she was barely aware of it. “What’s wrong?”
“Did…did you know I was friends with Jessica Bradford?” The look on his face was enough of an answer. “I didn’t think so. You know…I never realised how little you all knew about my life before the SGC. It never occurred to me until lately how little we all knew…did you realise that? That we…I was going to call her before we left to visit Mark. I was…God, I am so tired of crying!”
Sam took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She jerked when she felt his hands cupping her face. Her eyes flickered open, as his thumb caressed his jaw.
“I knew you,” he said softly. “The little details? They’re important, but they aren’t who you are, Sam. I knew you. And you knew me.”
She smiled at him, nodding her head slowly, almost nuzzling his palm. She wasn’t sure when she realised he was moving closer to her, or when her hands had moved to his chest, but there was one thing she was sure of.
“Jack,” she whispered. “It’s too soon. I’m sorry, it’s just…”
He nodded. “I know.” Smiling at her, he kissed her forehead and pulled her into a hug.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that, in his kitchen, holding onto each other tightly, but Sam knew that his words would be ringing in her head for a very long time.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
* * *
Two years later…
“Sarah! Alice! Hurry up or you’re going to be late for school!” Sam moved quickly around the kitchen, filling up the packed lunch boxes with fruit and a chocolate bar. As she turned around, she almost tripped over the hockey sticks that were leaning against the fridge.
“Liam, will you clear away your mess!” she cried, kicking them out of the way as she opened the fridge door and pulled out the juice boxes.
“Mom, Ali stole my pencils again!”
Sam groaned. “Alice, give your sister back her pencils and will the two of you please get a move on? Liam, how’s that homework coming?”
“It’s not here!”
Sighing at the frustration in her son’s voice, she closed the last box and walked out into the hallway. “What do you mean it’s not there? You finished it last night.”
Sam jumped when a voice behind her called out, “It’s in the den, Liam!” She turned in time to see Jack trying to sneak out the back door with the two hockey sticks she had almost fallen over. “Sorry,” he said meekly. “Forgot to put them away last night.”
Before she could reply, there was a sudden thundering on the stairs. “Slow down!” she cried as the girls came careering into the kitchen. “Will you please stop running down the stairs.”
“We weren’t running,” Sarah said, putting her lunch in her bag.
“We were running, then jumping,” Alice clarified with a cheeky grin.
The doorbell rang at the same time as one of the lunchboxes began floating mid-air and crossing the kitchen by itself.
“I’ll get it!” Sarah cried at the same time as Sam growled at the floating lunchbox.
“Liam! Make yourself visible right now.”
He appeared in front of the back door in time for Jack to almost walk into him. “You could see it?” he asked Sam, waving the lunchbox at her. “Damn, I thought I had it that time.”
“You made it work with the puck yesterday,” Jack said, ruffling his hair. “You’ll get it eventually.”
“But not until you’re on base or doing it with our permission,” Sam continued and Liam rolled his eyes.
“Mom?”
She turned as Sarah entered the kitchen again. “What is it, sweetie?” Sam asked. “Who was it?”
Sarah opened her mouth, but didn’t seem sure how to answer. “The lady inside Ali’s head is at the door.”
There was a tinkling of laughter behind her and suddenly a woman appeared.
“Hey Asha,” Alice said with a smile.
“Hello Alice.” The woman turned to smile at the rest of the room. “Hello Samantha.”
“Come on, we’ll be late for school,” Alice said. “And we get to play on the trampolines this morning.”
Jack cleared his throat. “I’ll take them,” he said, picking up his keys and looking back and forth between Sam and the smiling alien. “I’ll see you at the base?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, shaking her head. She turned to him and smiled. “Briefing at 0900?”
He nodded and gave her a quick kiss. “Okay, kids, let’s go.”
As Jack ushered her three children out of the door, Sam stared at the woman she hadn’t spoken to in over seventeen years and wondered whether or not she should be offering the Ancient a cup of coffee.
* * *
“Everything okay?”
Sam turned and smiled as Jack fell into step beside her. “Yeah, everything’s fine…just…strange.”
“Was, eh, was she your only visitor?”
Sam nodded. “Orlin’s gone. He’s…he’s around, but he’s…he’s not really the same. He doesn’t remember us.”
Jack winced. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Really. I think it’d be a lot harder if he was still here and he was…still Kevin.” They turned the corner, greeting SG2 as the team made their way to the infirmary for the post mission check up. “Asha just wanted to…check in, I guess,” she continued. “Make sure we were all okay.”
Jack nodded, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes. “And? Are you?” he asked quietly.
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Yeah,” she said softly, smiling at him. “I really am.” She glanced either way and, after making sure they were really alone, she pulled on his jacket and kissed him. She was ginning as she pulled back and so was Jack.
“Thank you, thank you for everything.” She said softly, both of them pulling apart when two members of SG4 walked around the corner. “I love you, Jack O’Neill.”
His grin widened and, regardless of the fact that the corridor was no longer empty, he pulled her into another kiss. “I love you, too, Sam.”
* * *
The End
Note: So, yeah, as I said, it’s a very old fic. I’m just glad to have it finally finished off. I hope you enjoyed and if there are any typos I’m unlikely to go back and change them and, yeah, there are plenty of clichés in there, I’m sure, but I’m quite happy to ignore them all!
* * *