From Hereon After III: A Matter of Trust

By Alli Snow

Chapter 1

The faces that stared at me from around the table were nothing less than accusing. Maybe there had been a time when I would have doubted my own perceptions, when I would have wondered if I was making a proverbial mountain out of a molehill... but not now. Not now. I couldn't afford to have doubts. I couldn't afford to break concentration, or stop thinking for even a second, because Janet's life and all of our futures were hanging by the slimmest of threads at the topmost precipice of that damned proverbial mountain.

Janet had been taken by the Goa'uld. Whether they wanted to make her a host straight off and get information from her that Duke - the spy, the real spy - hadn't been able to communicate, or wanted to use her as bait first... we didn't and couldn't know for sure. But regardless of the situation, regardless of anything the Asgaard said, we had to find her. We were obligated.

Teal'c and Daniel had been injured in that same ambush. Teal'c would be fine, but Daniel was near death and probably would have been dead if not for Asgaard medical technology. They didn't have the ability to heal him fast enough to save him, so they had put him in a stasis field similar to the kind Thor had used during that first incident with the Replicators. Eventually we would meet up with some other Asgaard, and they would get Daniel back on his feet. He would be okay. I had to keep telling myself of that. He would be okay.

The mystery of the origin of Osiris' Goa'uld minions had been solved. I couldn't remember the planet designation but I remembered the place itself well enough. I hadn't realized until that mission how much I trusted and relied on my ability to sense Goa'uld, a gift I hadn't willingly received and that I'd resented for a long time afterwards. But the idea that there had been Goa'uld in our midst for all that time without my knowledge had been even more unnerving.

It begged several questions - namely, how Osiris had found out about that planet in the first place - but at last we had answers to some other quandaries. For example, I imagined it would be easier for her to keep a reign on these Goa'uld then the normal variety who had thousands of years of genetic memories of conquest and bloodshed running through their veins. And more importantly it explained why I hadn't sensed anything these past few years, not from Gena or Ilonka or any other possible suspects, and why they hadn't been in a rush to make me a host. Why should they? I was hardly a threat to them if I couldn't even tell who they were. And in some ways I was more useful to them as I was. After all, the Asgaard detector didn't sense Naqueda, it scanned the brain. If Osiris had expected me to infiltrate a suspected network working against her, she couldn't have made me a host first.

But was that what she had wanted, what Gena Dirae - and maybe even a Goa'uld inside Ilonka Waters - had wanted? Was I the pawn? The unwitting double agent? They obviously hadn't trusted me with their real mission because they'd kept up the ridiculous pretense of needing to find Jack for the good of the country. They'd known my weaknesses and they'd played them. And now here I was, so close to giving them what I suspected they wanted in the first place.

"You can't be serious," barked Davis, his lips twisted in a half-smile in case I revealed that I'd been joking all along. "That's what they wanted you to do to begin with. I thought the idea behind you defecting was so Jack would be SAFE?"

I hated the term 'defecting'. It made it sound like I had broken, that by ditching Ilonka at that motel in Virginia I had done something strange, wrong, something unlike me. "I don't like it any more then you do," I said bluntly. "But you asked for solutions and there's mine. I honestly believe that Dirae thinks of me as a... protégé. That to an extent she DOES trust me. But at the same time she doesn't know me very well. She didn't know me before I left the SGC. She'd read reports but..." I chanced a look at Jack out of the corner of my eye, hoping it wouldn't seem like I was being flirtatious. "But we know how certain things can be left out of reports. I think we can pull it off," I finished, frankly.

I looked over at Jack again, this time holding his gaze more steadily. He had to be thinking the very same thing I was: Am I a pawn? Have I been fooled? Am I being used? Am I LETTING myself be used? I'd been partly exonerated by our revelation about Duke, but their trust in me at this point was fragile and my 'solution' to this problem wasn't doing anything to reinforce it. In their minds they'd been taking a chance trusting me from the very beginning, but now I was asking Jack to put his head in the lion's mouth. This was no longer a matter of keeping me contained until I either proved my loyalty or slipped up. It was something that none of us would have thought twice about before Ilonka came into our lives. This was an active risk, life or death. But what about Janet's life?

"If we can make it into D.C.," I insisted, "we can get into Janus. That's where Dirae's office is, probably where Goa'uld headquarters is to boot. And chances are they'll have Janet nearby, too. It's not one of the most secure buildings in the world for nothing," I said wryly.

"If it is so secure," asked Teal'c cryptically, "how do you propose we get inside?"

"I can GET in," I said firmly. It was mostly true. I could get us in; I just wasn't sure how FAR in. Past the front doors everything was up to Dirae. Or Ilonka. Or the snake in one or both of their heads. "Look, you're just going to have to trust me. I know you don't think you can, but... I just don't see any other way."

Thor eyed Jack. "It is your choice, O'Neill."

He was still staring at me as though he thought the force of his concentration would make me crack, make me admit what he thought was the truth. Feeling slightly sick I folded my hands on the table in front of me. I returned the attention defensively, challengingly, as I had the day we'd met. I'd had something to prove then and it seemed now that I still did. It was such a moment of déjà vu, in fact, such a vivid flashback to that poignant moment, that if the life of a friend hadn't been hanging in the balance I might have asked him to arm wrestle.

Jack was the first to break eye contact, and he blinked and shook his head as though waking from a dream. "Osiris already made the decision for us," he said finally. "She's right... we don't really have any other choice."

But I wish we did, said his tone of voice.

Thor didn't argue the point. "We have to get to D.C.," I told him, not allowing myself even the smallest flush of triumph. They weren't going along with me because of trust but because they were out of options. I'd had more backhanded compliments, but not many. "You guys... you need to worry about keeping safe and out of sight. Osiris knows for sure now that she's not alone up here."

"Our technology is far superior to anything the Goa'uld have -" Thor started, but I interrupted, disgusted by his naiveté.

"That's what the Tollan thought, too. But you know as well as I do... Osiris knows you're here. Somewhere."

Paul rubbed his right temple. "How do you figure?"

Jarl answered, sounding peeved. "We've just recently discovered a dampening field covering a great area of land surrounding this Janus building. We believe it is meant to prevent both Goa'uld rings and Asgaard transporter beams from--"

"From transporting someone into that area," I interrupted. "It's a buffer zone. Its very presence tell us they're onto us. But it's not just that. We can't just... 'beam' in, even if it was technically possible. The place is absolutely crawling with surveillance and we can't let them see us arriving in a big flash of white light. That's exactly what they're looking for. In fact they may be scanning the entire area from orbit, maybe the whole city, for signs of advanced technology. We can't take the risk. This all depends on me looking like I still haven't figured out what's going on. We're going to have to arrive by a more Earthly means. We have to look vulnerable."

"It should be easy to appear vulnerable when we are," said Teal'c.

Jack shrugged and spread his hands. "You said the car you stole is out of juice... I guess there's always Granddad's truck, but I don't know if it would get us out of the county, much less all the way back to D.C. And my truck's halfway across the country."

"What about your car, Major Carter?" came a helpful, even voice. I looked towards Thor, but he hadn't spoken. Glancing towards the doorway, I saw that Jarl had surreptitiously slipped inside.

"My car..." I shook my head, impressed. "You really did tail me the whole way, didn't you?"

"We monitored your progress," Jarl admitted, and Jack shot him a dark look. "At least until you exchanged vehicles. We were not anticipating that move. However... perhaps the Goa'uld were tracking you as well. This could work to our benefit."

I smiled. Apparently I had eluded more then the FBI. And Jarl was right; it was possible the Goa'uld would have no idea I'd been to Minnesota. "You know where my car is, then?"

"Yes," said Jarl snobbishly. "According to our tracking sensors, it is currently within the boundaries of the land you refer to as 'Kentucky'."

"Kentucky?" I echoed, glancing at my watch which set to Minnesota time. "That's got to be about an eight, nine hour drive... we wouldn't be getting into D.C. until early tomorrow morning."

Peripherally I noticed Jarl taking Thor aside, and the geometry of the room amplified their voices enough for me to overhear. "What about the--" Jarl began, but Thor cut him off.

"We will discuss that matter later." Thor glanced in my direction and I looked away.

Jack didn't even try to mask his displeasure, but I had to wonder if he was unhappy about the same thing I was. Yes, eight hours was more time then I had really planned on waiting before our little shootout at the Janus corral, and there was the very reasonable worry that already too much time had passed since Janet's abduction. But the other factor weighing on my mind was that much time alone in a car with Jack. It was trivial... downright adolescent... but I was actually afraid of the prospect.

For the last day or so things had been going very well between us. I'd stopped trying to force him to trust me and he'd stopped trying to push me away every time I came near him. And that was the problem. He hadn't pushed me away when he should have. And he'd trusted me when he shouldn't. And now, because of that ridiculous bit of teenage groping in his garage, we were back to a very uncomfortable place again. It hadn't sunk in yet, not when we were so overwhelmed by this trauma. But it would undoubtedly sink in somewhere between Kentucky and D.C.

When he asked me why, I wanted to be somewhere where I could make a clean getaway. Not strapped into my seat an arm's reach from him, with nothing outside but the roaring highway.

Chapter 2

Eight or nine hours.

Longer then I'd thought, but maybe not completely unwelcome. After all, it would mean we'd get to this mysterious Janus building in the morning rather then the middle of the night. In my own mind the cover of darkness was preferable; however, I had to remind my own mind that this was not a case of covert ops, missions best accomplished when the lights were out. We were walking right up to the door, we were ringing the doorbell, we were... insane. Better to be insane in broad daylight, or at least it seemed that way to me.

The drive, though, the drive would be the really insane part. Quite possibly by the time we arrived we wouldn't care if we were walking into the open arms of death just so long as we could get away from each other.

That was assuming that this wasn't a part of Osiris's plan, of course, for Sam to drive off with me and... and what? What could possibly be more dangerous and more stupid than for us to come looking for the Goa'uld? Literally looking for trouble. No... at least if Carter was planning on killing me or something equally horrifying, she was being partially honest about it.

"Eight hours is fine," I said finally, realizing that I was the current object of scrutiny from everyone in the room, except for Carter who was giving her watch her absolute full attention. "If they were... going to do anything to Frasier, they would have done it already. And if they haven't, it's because they're waiting for us."

"They'll wait," said Carter quietly.

"Then let's go."

She looked less then thrilled. She wasn't the only one.

Nevertheless, fifteen minutes later we were being dropped down into an empty, dark, mildew-smelling garage in northeastern Kentucky. The structure was closed off but music and other sounds of merriment could be heard in the adjoining house. "And we weren't invited?" I complained to Carter, whispering even though it was doubtful anyone inside would hear me over the racket.

She shushed me anyway, slinking through the garage like she expected burglar alarms to go off at any moment. "If he's found my spare, we're going to have to invite ourselves," she whispered, opening the passenger's side door and slipping into the seat.

I went around to the other side, and squeezed myself into the driver's seat, frowning at the car: it was one of those electric things that looked like it was made of tinfoil and plastic and would be blown off the road by a stiff breeze. "Why'd you get one of these?"

"Shhh," said Carter again, rummaging through the glove compartment. "When I got it, it made sense... with gas prices and everything. Plus the government gave us a tax break."

I snorted. "Well yeah, it was the only way they could get people to buy the things. What are you looking for anyway? A 'spare'?"

She nodded, still pushing her hands through wads of paper and plastic and a general untidiness that I wouldn't have expected from the likes of Carter. "You know... how some people have an extra key in case they get locked out of their car?"

Now I was only more confused. "Yeah... but this is inside your car."

She looked sheepish. "Well, I never got around to actually putting it somewhere safe."

"Good thing our friend here didn't lock the doors, huh?" I asked, dryly.

Sam merely shrugged. "Common criminal mentality. They never expect someone's going to steal what they've rightfully stolen."

"Well, guess you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Her fist closed around something small that glittered faintly in the dull overhead light, and Carter smiled. "Shut up," she told me cheerfully.

"You know, there's being insubordinate and then there's being just plain rude," I complained. I moved to get out of the car, but Sam's hand on my shoulder stopped me. "What?"

Maybe it was only a trick of the light, but I thought I saw a strange vulnerability in her eyes, only half-masked by an uncertain smile. "What, you don't want to drive?" she asked, offering me the key after only a brief moment of hesitation.

I hesitated myself, not sure what to think. In a way it felt like she was offering up a truce. By handing over the key she was handing over a morsel of control that rightfully belonged to her. And with things so incredibly out of control that was an important gift indeed.

"That is," Carter amended, looking sly, "if you think you can handle it."

Or maybe it wasn't a truce after all. Maybe this was just the next stage in the long, drawn-out, multifaceted, incredibly complex game we were embroiled in. This was the next test, the next trial: take the key or don't take the key? I looked up from the small bit of metal and into Carter's eyes, which were focused intently on me and not reflecting any of the teasing in her voice. Looking for an answer there only brought me more questions.

The door connecting the garage and the house was thrown open. We both jumped at the sudden explosion of light and bad music. A tall shape was silhouetted in the doorway, looking back into the house. "I'm just getting another beer!" a male voice shouted over the ruckus, and then, before we could even close the doors, "Hey, Pete! Someone's stealing the car!"

That was enough to kick-start us both; we slammed the doors shut. Carter closed the glove compartment with a loud snap, bracing herself against the dash, and I turned the key in the ignition so brutally I was surprised when it didn't break off inside the column.

The car came to life with a pathetic whirrrrr. I jammed it into reverse and – no time to look for Pete's GDO – put my foot down on the accelerator. The garage door crumpled above and around us, proving to be made of an even more flimsy tinfoil then the car. By the time Pete and a few of his buddies had rushed into the garage from the house we were careening back down his driveway and into a mercifully empty street. Dodging the wrecked remnants of the garage door they ran after us, weaving drunkenly, but I'd shoved it into drive before we could roll up the opposite curb. Tires spun and then caught, and we were launched almost noiselessly down the road. The last thing I saw in the rearview mirror was a couple of Pete's buddies shaking their fists in the air at us like angry old men.

Sam pulled on her seat belt at the first stop, fastening it with a loud, meaningful click and clinging to the door molding with one hand. She glared at me wordlessly.

"Yeah," I declared, feeling manly, strapping on my own belt with one hand. "I think I can handle the hamster under your hood here. Where was this piece of junk MADE? I told you, we should have taken my truck..."

"I'm driving next time," Carter told me through gritted teeth.

By the time we got to Charleston, she had taken over the wheel anyway; I could only sit in that cramped front seat for so long. So we'd switched places: she was driving, which meant that she had control of the radio, but I was able to push back the passenger's seat and stretch my legs out a few precious extra inches.

So far the trip had been made in blissful silence covered up by the meaningless radio blather; there were still some points we needed to discuss, but that could wait until Virginia at least. I preferred to not think about what a stupid thing I was doing until I was basically too close to turn away from it. And as for those OTHER things we needed to talk about... well, NEED was such a strange word. And the music and not-talking was so nice...

Carter changed lanes to pass an even slower car, changed back, fidgeted, and turned off the radio. It had started to rain, an unexpected summer storm that seemed too much like an omen for my peace of mind. For a few minutes, that was the only sound: the black water coming down all around us, punctuated by the low screeching of the wipers. Outside lights made weird patterns on the rain-splattered windows.

Chapter 3

I originally turned off the music in order to speak, but the second the car was plunged into silence I lost my nerve. I couldn't even put my finger on what I wanted to say, never mind how I wanted to say it. So I just clutched the steering wheel a little harder and stared ahead into the darkness, too confused to say anything but too embarrassed to turn the radio back on.

Jack, God bless him, finally broke the tension with a simple, surprising statement. "You know... I was wrong. We were both wrong."

I didn't look away from the road but I prompted him – "About what?" – just glad to have something to say.

"We said that we didn't matter," he responded easily, as though he was just making a passing comment on the weather. I wanted to sneak a look at his expression but I couldn't, and not just because the roads were so treacherous. "That it wasn't about us. That's wrong... it's not true. That's exactly what it's about. People like us."

I snorted; I couldn't help myself. The phrase 'people like us' was just too ridiculous to let pass unchallenged. "What, you think a lot of people have this problem?"

"Yeah," Jack answered, a slight edge in his voice. "As a matter of fact, I do. Look what this country – look what this would is turning into. Look what people are becoming."

"They're becoming hosts," I said flatly.

"They're becoming people who don't have anything to believe in," he corrected me. "Who don't have anyone to trust. So they lie to each other and they lie to themselves. They aren't who they say they are. Why do you think this whole... infiltration thing has been so easy for Osiris? Because she's just that good? No, it's because people are already so fake and so turned towards themselves and ignorant of everything going on around them that they wouldn't even notice if someone they loved was a Goa'uld."

"How would they notice?" I asked scornfully. "They couldn't notice."

"I noticed!" he snapped, his voice so sharp in the confined space that it startled me and my foot slipped off the accelerator. We lurched momentarily, then steadied, and he added, "Maybe Cassie was the one who actually found out, but I knew there was something up a long time before you – before Jolinar went nuts in the Gate Room. And there's something now," he accused. "There's something you're not saying."

Frowning angrily, I fumbled with one hand for the heater. I suddenly felt raw and icy. Maybe because it was cold outside, or maybe because something Jack had said had let the cold INSIDE. Was he actually comparing my actions now to when I'd been a host? That was unfair... and unlike him. He knew – he was one of the few people who really knew – what hell that had been for me, and how much grief I carried around because of it. No matter how much good my connection with Jolinar had eventually done, I could still never think of it as a good thing. I could never look back on it without shuddering. So if that wasn't it, what? Did he actually take pride in the fact that he had sensed some change in me before all hell broke loose? Or did he just take it as a sign: a sign that he knew me? A sign that he still knew me, no matter what else had changed? I sighed. "Maybe I have been lying."

Even without looking at him, I could tell Jack's hackles were rising. "About what?" he asked tensely.

"Maybe we've both been lying," I amended.

"I didn't lie."

I sighed again. What was the saying about being doomed to repeat the past if you didn't learn from it? It was hard to learn from the past if you never dealt with it, and as a result here we were doing and saying the same things all over again. "Then you left something out," I said significantly, taking advantage of a clear spot of road to glance in his direction.

My words and my tone had not been lost on him; his eyes widened and he jerkily brought his chair back up into a sitting position. "Whoa," he started, sounding panicky. "Okay, you know, that's neither here NOR there."

I flexed my fingers over the wheel, feeling strangely calm, oddly empowered. I'd expected to feel claustrophobic, confined here with him, and I did... but I also felt powerful. I could just say what I had to say and he would just have to deal with it. We would BOTH have to deal with it. No running away.

"Fine," I said firmly. "If you won't say it, I will. I think I'm still in love with you."

Saying the words wasn't as liberating as I expected. It was frightening as hell, certainly, to hear them, to almost see them suspended in the air in front of me, knowing I couldn't take them back. But Jack's reaction wasn't what I'd imagined, either. He sat up even straighter, nearly leaning towards the windshield now, and sputtered, "That doesn't make... make any sense. How can you STILL be when you never were in the first place?"

"What?!"

"What?"

An SUV fishtailed across the highway in front of me, angling for the off-ramp. I cursed softly, at the driver and at Jack. "Do you have amnesia?" I didn't wait for an answer. "You are such an idiot. I told you I was... I practically spelled it out for you," I blurted, surprising myself. Right. It was always really interesting what you would say when you weren't thinking.

Jack was as obstinate as always. "You never said 'love'."

"Neither did you."

He shook his head. "You know what, this is stupid... it doesn't matter—"

"I thought you said it did," I said nastily.

"It doesn't matter because that person... I'm not that person anymore. And neither are you. The Samantha Carter I had feel... that I was in love with might as well have died four years ago."

"Of course she did. You killed her when you left." My throat felt thick, constricted. I hadn't meant to say that aloud, but there it was. No taking it back.

Chapter 4

The temperature in the car seemed to have dropped, but I kept plugging ahead. Like with Ilonka, it was a matter of momentum and I took advantage of it. If I didn't say this now I never would.

But that didn't mean I actually wanted to.

"It was never about budget cuts, was it?" I asked, rubbing a hand across my face. "It wasn't about Dawson's death, either."

Carter was scornful, her voice still leaking emotion. "Oh, sure. I left the SGC because I couldn't BEAR to be away from you." She strangled the steering wheel. "I've got news for you. If I'd actually felt that way, I would have been knocking on your door the day you retired. I didn't HAVE to go anywhere."

"You were afraid," I said dismissively.

"I was NOT afraid!"

"Yes, you were," I maintained. "And I can say that because I was afraid too. Actually, I'm still afraid."

Sam was silent, eyes focused on the road ahead with steely intensity. After a mile or so, however, her curiosity got the better of her. "Why are you afraid?"

I gave a bitter laugh. There were so many reasons for me to be afraid right now, the least of which was what lay at the end of the road. "This conversation doesn't give you enough of a hint? 'I love you, you're an idiot'?"

Carter licked her lips nervously. "What's so strange about that?" she asked shrewdly. "I've always thought you were an idiot."

I smiled, but it was a bitter smile to match the laugh. "I'm scared because I don't have any control over the way I feel."

Her brow furrowed. I could tell without asking that she thought that was a pretty dumb thing to be scared of. Since when did anybody have control over that, I could almost hear her thinking. "Neither do I," she said bluntly, trying to give me a way out. But I couldn't take it. And I couldn't lie and pretend that her words made me feel any better.

"I know," I said sadly. "That scares me too."

We switched again in Covington, Virginia and Sam, now able to drill holes in my head with her eyes, took up the questioning. "Why'd you give me the address to the cabin, really? You couldn't have known that this would happen."

I jiggled the heater. There didn't seem to be any warm air coming out of the vents. "I guess... I just hoped you'd understand what it meant."

Her tone was slightly mocking, mostly amused. "That... you wanted me to come to your cabin?"

I refused to be entertained. "That I still wanted you in my life," I said seriously.

Sam, one leg propped up on the dashboard, shrugged indifferently. "You were the one who left."

Damn heater. Maybe it really was working, and it was just as worthless as the rest of the car? "Just because I left the SGC didn't mean –"'

"That's not what I meant."

Well, if she didn't mean what it sounded like she meant, there was only one logical conclusion. "You meant Ilonka." It all cycled around to her, anyway, didn't it? I would never had imagined that a woman I had broken up with so long ago would still play such a ludicrously large role in my life so far down the line.

"I..." Sam pulled her leg back down, fidgeting. "Yeah. You made it pretty clear that you were moving on. That you were more then happy to do so."

"You had every right to do the same thing," I said, in my own defense.

"Maybe. Or maybe I just didn't feel like wasting my time with a substitute."

I bristled. It wasn't that I couldn't take her cracks at Ilonka. That I was used to. It was her outright assumption that I would actually go out looking for a place-filler, that I would devote that much of my life to someone I didn't really, honestly care about. Maybe she was right. I wasn't sure now and I didn't think I'd ever be absolutely, one hundred percent certain. But dammit, I didn't like the assumption. "Ilonka wasn't a substitute, and it wasn't wasted time. Our relationship was... meaningful."

Sam crossed her arms over her chest. "That's not what she told me," she said petulantly. "She said it was fun. For kicks." She squirmed again. "For sex."

I had to force myself to pay attention on the storm outside and not the maelstrom of emotions eating away at my insides. "She wouldn't have said that," I told her, but I couldn't even convince myself. Everything else in my life was screwed up now; why not this too?

"Maybe she wouldn't," said Sam cagily. "But the thing in her head sure knew what to say to push my buttons."

"Why would that make you mad?" I asked incredulously. In all honesty I would have thought that she'd be happy to hear that it had just been some soulless fling, just a long-term itch that needed scratching, something enjoyable but inconsequential. What could have made her happier than that?

"I knew she meant more to you then that," answered Sam, surprising me with her evenness. "I knew how important the two of you were to each other. If I hadn't... I would have..." She coughed politely.

"You would have what?"

Sam's voice was barely perceptible over the gentle buzz of the heater and the lessening patter of rain. "Done what you... meant for me to do. Shown up on your doorstep that night. But I knew she would be there."

"Ah."

She was half right. The night of the day I had retired, leaving behind not just the Air Force but the SGC and three of the closest friends I'd ever had, Ilonka was there at the house with me. We were supposed to be celebrating, although I wasn't very sure what was worth celebrating. It was a milestone in my life, sure, but not all milestones warrant a party. Maybe for Ilonka it was a private party. Maybe she was celebrating the fact that I was spending the evening with her and not... anybody else. Especially a blonde, five foot nine anybody else.

She knew the truth, of course. I hadn't come out and told her the whole story but I hadn't tried to hide it from her, either. The pangs of unresolved emotion in my heart... they were still there whenever Sam walked into the room. Being with someone else hadn't changed that. It hadn't even lessened it. I had gotten better at hiding it and refocusing my attention, that was all.

Ilonka made a passable spaghetti dinner and I spent most of the meal sneaking glances at the front door and the phone. I wanted Sam to come, to call. I admitted it wholly now: I wanted... her. It wasn't Ilonka's fault. It wasn't anything she had or hadn't done. She just wasn't Sam. The importance of that was clear to me now. Now. Great timing, Jack, as always.

I still felt like I was betraying Ilonka. Not just thinking about betraying her, not just fantasizing about it, but actually being unfaithful through my thoughts and feelings. It wasn't right of me to want to just throw away the past because suddenly someone else was available. That wasn't the right thing to do... and it wasn't like me. But feeling guilty couldn't and didn't make me stop having those thoughts, just like the almighty regulations had never stopped me from having those feelings.

If only they could have.

During dessert – Oreo cookies and coffee – Ilonka's pager went off. She got up to make a call and came back with a sad smile. "They need me back in Washington."

I got up. "Trouble?"

She shrugged. "You know Miller. Thinks everything is top-secret. Wouldn't say over the phone, but if they let Miller make the call it's probably just a paperwork snafu or something."

I had no idea who Miller was. "Right. Have any idea when you'll be back in town?"

"When do I ever?" she laughed, gathering up her purse and coat and snagging a few extra Oreos before pulling me into a tight embrace. "But it'll be soon," she whispered, her lips against my ear. "Congratulations, Jack."

Gently, I pulled away. "Why do you say that? Congratulations?"

She was flustered. "I don't know... I guess it's just something you say to somebody when something big happens."

Something big? Was this really that big? Actually, what was bothering me was the absence of drama. My first night as a free man: I had built it up so much in my head, and this was just not how I had envisioned it.

I walked Ilonka to the door, where she turned and gave me a very critical once-over. "What's going to happen to SG-1 now, Jack?" she asked.

Strange question. I shrugged. "It'll go on without me. Actually, I recommended to Hammond that Carter take over. I know she's kind of young to be a team leader, but she's ready... plus I don't think Daniel and Teal'c would give anyone else a moment's peace... not if Makepeace was any indication."

Ilonka was smiling and nodding before I'd even finished. "I see. Well... I'm sure she'll do well. She had a good teacher."

I tried to take the comment as it was meant, a compliment, but the end result was more grimace than smile. Thankfully, by that time, Ilonka was already down the driveway and getting into her car. She waved perkily as she pulled out. It was all I could do to simply raise my hand.

Chapter 5

I sighed, resting my head against the cool glass of the window. Outside, dawn was just starting to touch the sky, to brighten it with all kinds of beautiful shades, but I didn't have the energy to appreciate any of it.

Ilonka hadn't been at Jack's late that night, he'd said. I'd known that. It was what I hadn't known that had invariably made the difference.

"I went out driving that night, after I went home," I said, my voice flat and uninflected in my own ears. "Actually I hadn't even planned on GOING home, but... Dustan kind of insisted on it. For all of us. Daniel invited us over for the evening, Janet too. They accepted, but..."

But I'd wanted to keep my options open. I hadn't wanted to sit around Daniel's apartment either thinking and talking about Jack, or studiously NOT talking about him and thinking about him anyway. I knew I would keep thinking about how wrong it was, for us to all be together and for him to be off with... her. About how differently I had pictured this day, this night: the chains that would be released and the opportunities that would open up. But Jack O'Neill and I, I'd realized as I'd turned Daniel down on his offer, had just wound up trading in one set of chains for another. How very Shakespearean.

I changed and I got into my car to go home, but I didn't get off at my exit. I just kept going. The actions of merging, passing, checking mirrors, checking gas, taking exits, avoiding big rigs, changing directions, avoiding finding the setting sun in my eyes, avoiding bad drivers, checking my speed... it helped me think and it allowed me to NOT think at the same time. It calmed me, like it always had. Maybe in the back of my mind seeing road signs fly by, watching the miles tick past, helped me to remember that... it goes on. Potholes and all. Corny as it sounds, like a highway, life goes on.

The downside being that it's a one-way trip.

Once back in Colorado Springs I filled up my car and started for my house... but again I overshot the exit, this time without realizing it. By that time it was dusk, the time of night when the whole world turns into a basket of dingy laundry: washed out, grayed out, hazy and sleepy. It didn't occur to me that I had driven to O'Neill's house until I was actually going by.

I looked in time to see him and Ilonka in the front doorway, and then I had passed.

It was like waking from a dream -- into a worse dream; I had to make a decision, and quickly. Reaching the end of the street I fretted momentarily and then turned right. And right again. And again, until I had completely circled the block and was back on his street. Every passing second the world darkened, the night deepened. I turned off my headlights, hoping that he wouldn't recognize my somewhat distinctive car on the second pass if he hadn't on the first.

Ilonka passed me driving in the other direction. I turned my head, even though I didn't think she'd be able to see my face. Would she know the car? I watched the rearview mirror for the red flash of brake lights, for her to screech to a stop, jump out of her car, yank me out of mine and demand what I was doing skulking around her man's house. But nothing happened. She just kept going, turning right at the corner, towards the highway.

I still felt like I was doing something illegal.

When I spotted O'Neill's front yard again it was empty. The lights were on inside but the door was closed. The empty driveway - his truck was parked on the street - yawned before me like a neatly-rectangular tar pit.

My heart hammering, my hands on the steering wheel strangely sticky, I drove past again, to the end of the street, and flipped a U so I pointed in the same direction Ilonka had. When I was across the street from his house I pulled against the curb, shut off the engine and sat there in silence.

Well, I demanded of my unconscious mind, you got me this far. What now? Unfortunately for me, unconscious minds - while occasionally helpful - aren't big talkers.

I returned my attention to the house. Apparently he was alone. If I went up to his door, if he opened it, there would be no pert, pony-tailed head peeking over his shoulder. We could talk, we could have it be just us, and... and that was the problem. The rock and the hard place and every other cliched metaphor that the Colonel... that Jack had ever ridiculed. I needed to do this but I was terrified. Not of him, not of myself, not of the memory of the tension that had settled over my lab when he'd come to visit that one last time. It wasn't a fear of the present that kept me in my car, doors securely locked, it was a fear of the future. I didn't want to look back on this night in a few years and regret my actions. I didn't want to find myself thinking "Damn, I wish I had just driven away."

He'd chosen his own path, a path that led away from me, and I had to accept that. I couldn't fight it, couldn't try to change it, couldn't take advantage of it or even briefly entertain the notion because... I would regret it. I was no idiot. He was alone. If I went up to his door, if I went inside, WE would be alone, on the first night since we'd met that our being together could be totally without professional consequences. Something would happen; neither of us would have the heart or the will to stop it.

But there were other consequences to consider now, much more personal concerns. He was with her now, and showing up at his door on this night of all nights would be akin to offering myself to him. Akin to emotional manipulation. We would be together, and it would probably be wonderful, but wherever Ilonka had driven wouldn't keep her. She would come back, and Jack would be faced with the choice: me or her, her or me. Sam or Ilonka, Ilonka or Sam; how many times those names, that phrase, those five syllables had resounded in my brain. How could I force him to make a choice like that. How could I put him in that position with a clear conscience? How could I claim to love him if I didn't do what was best for him?

Maybe it was fear that initiated that line of reasoning, maybe it was the swiftest path to a conclusion that my craven heart most wished to take. Maybe it was the truth and even years later I couldn't see it for what it was. Whatever method, fact or fiction, the end result was the same: I sat there a moment longer, collecting my wits, and then I went home. Once there I unplugged my phone from the wall and placed it in a desk drawer; out of sight out of mind, or so I hoped. I poured over some paperwork that I'd brought home, preparing my reports meticulously, working hard until my eyes started to blur and my head ached, and then I went to bed. There was no restless tossing, there were no dreams. I feel asleep quickly, slept deeply, and woke refreshed... if in a somewhat numbed state. Menial labor: better then alcohol.

Damn, I thought, looking out at the brightening sky, I wish I hadn't just driven away. Selfish, yes. But painfully true.

Jack, still behind the wheel, looked suddenly tired. "You were right there," he mumbled, shaking his head minutely. "Right across the street. And you didn't..." he trailed off, his head moving more vigorously now. "I can't believe it."

The words, the tone, stabbed at me like an outright accusation. "I didn't want to make you have to choose," I persisted, shrinking back against the door as though wounded. Didn't he understand the favor I had done him?

"No..." he said, more vehemently. "What you did was prevent me from making my own decision. You KEPT me from making a choice."

My throat tightened, burned. Heat rose from my cheeks and pressed in on my eyes. So he WAS accusing me. But was it really an accusation if it was the truth? He was an adult. We both were. Were now and had been then. Had I really been so lacking in self confidence and self control that I hadn't been able to think straight? To give the two of us enough credit to think first and act second? God, I'd been an egotistical little jerk, thinking we would just fall into bed the second I walked through the door...

"There wouldn't have been a choice," Jack added, toning his voice down again.

I looked at him askance, eyes still hot and puffy with lack of sleep and repressed emotion. Bastard. "That easy of a decision?" I asked bitterly. Apparently those last two years had been just THAT good.

"Yeah," he answered almost fondly, eyes straight ahead on the road but the ghost of a sad smile playing in the lines of his face. "I would have chosen you."

My head snapped back front-and-center again, staring out at the lightening sky and speeding cars without really seeing any of it. My eyes still felt hot but the rest of me was as cold as I'd ever been during those torturous days and nights in Antarctica. Little jolts of elation and hysteria shivered through the marrow of my bones, starting deep within and spreading outwards like spikes of electricity. I opened my mouth, letting out a rush of air I hadn't realized I'd been holding in my lungs. My reply was barely more then a whisper: "Don't say that."

His jaw was set in that familiar I-mean-business clench. "It's the truth."

"No."

"I did love Ilonka -"

"I don't want to hear this."

"- but I loved you more."

"Stop!"

Easy to admit that I was still in love with him. Much, much harder to hear that he had been, long ago and far away. The present and the past were not compatible, and no matter how much we wished that our feelings could just... time travel... they couldn't, any more then we could. This was one problem even a Stargate and a solar flare couldn't fix.

"Why should I?" he replied evenly, emphatically, turning his head to look at me.

Gritting my teeth, avoiding eye contact, I muttered, "Watch the road."

He did, but he didn't get the hint. "Why don't you want to hear it?"

Not going to answer that one, I thought angrily. I crossed my arms. Pursed my lips. Blinked. Oh God, bad idea. Apparently I'd been storing up tears ever since we started this conversation - thick hot tears - and now to my great embarrassment, they made their debut.

"Because it means... I made a mistake." My voice sounded awful, like someone had driven over my vocal cords, and the breaths I took between words were wet and shuddery. "I was THERE, I was across the STREET, and my life has been a living hell since I left and if I'd just... if I hadn't been afraid, if I'd gone to you, I could ... could have spent all those years not being completely miserable." I swallowed loudly, sucking in air through my mouth instead of my nose. "I made a mistake, and... I regret it." Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the window again, striving for calm. "You know, there's only one thing I wanted out of my life, at least since I was old enough to understand it. It wasn't to get into space or to have a family or even to make Dad proud of me... the only thing I really wanted was to live my life without regrets. And," I was unable to suppress a bitter chuckle, "I think I was doing pretty damn good until you came along."

Or maybe not. I'd regretted my deteriorated relationship with my father, my brother. I'd regretted being too wrapped up in work to notice the years falling silently behind me. I couldn't begin to blame all that on someone else... but it seemed like the right thing to say. Right for me, not him.

We continued in silence after that, at least until Jack was forced to ask for directions; seemed he still got lost in Washington. Sweet.

As we pulled onto the home stretch, I sat up fully and wiped my face with my hands. Fate was approaching... or more correctly, WE were approaching it. Jack must have sensed the change in mood because he said, in a surprisingly small voice, "One more question."

I didn't even have the wherewithal to be anxious of what he might ask, not anymore. "Now would be the time," I said, punctuating that statement with, "turn right up there."

He nodded, and then he asked, "What's with 'Jack'?"

I blinked at him in surprise, and this time my eyes stayed dry. "That's your name, isn't it?"

"You know what I mean. Turn right here?"

"No, at the stoplight. And no, I don't know what you mean. Is this another one of those 'offensive' things again? Because if memory serves, you're the one who asked me to call you that."

"And you said it like it was a dirty word." He turned right, taking the opportunity to glare at my obstinacy. "Then you show up at the cabin acting like it's the only thing you've ever called me."

I wasn't surprised that it bothered him so much. I'd seen the way he'd flinched the first time I'd used his first name, the way he'd almost done a double take to make sure I was who he'd thought. I'd used the name comfortably, something I hadn't been able to do before. Makepeace, Kawalsky, and a handful of other officers at the SGC, not to mention the civilians, had called him 'Jack' with hardly a second thought. But for me it had been the number-one symbolic way of creating a prim and professional distance between us. I could get away with a lot, and did. I could occasionally be ever so slightly insubordinate and know I could risk it. I could touch him when he was hurt and smile when I wanted to, because he was Sir, he was Colonel, he was O'Neill. He was never Jack. For that all to change so suddenly - in his eyes - it must have been jarring.

I composed my answer carefully. "I guess... I wasn't really sure about you at first. And I knew it would throw you off, so..."

He grunted. "Yeah. Maybe. But that first time... I know calculation when I see it and that wasn't it."

My eyes flickered to our surroundings. Close, we were getting close. Fine. Just FINE. "What, you think I've never talked about you since I left the SGC? That I haven't even thought about you? Turn left onto Bolton."

"What does that have to do with it?" he demanded, making the turn.

"It has to do with memories," I nearly growled. "When I left, it HURT, okay? It hurt worse to remember what I'd left behind, and that's a whole other regret I don't even want to get into. It hurt to remember the friends that I missed." I paused, took a breath, let it out slowly, and dived right in. There would never be a better time. Maybe there would never be another time, ever, and this was one regret I didn't want to take to the grave. "Colonel O'Neill was my commanding officer for more than seven years. When I was injured or sick, he was worried about me. When I was missing, he did whatever he had to do to find me. I was never positive if he was my friend or not, but I knew he cared just as much as I knew I cared about him. I… loved him. He was one of the most important people in my life, then and now and always. I came out here and just... thinking that rank, that name provoked this... intense nostalgia. It hurt to remember... 'Sir'."

I didn't look at him. Couldn't.

"Jack," I said boldly, "Jack, on the other hand, was someone I never knew. Maybe Daniel or Teal'c knew him, General Hammond probably did, but… I didn't. Not that I didn't want to, maybe, it just... wasn't meant to be." Painful to say. Romantic, but not. The anti-fairy tale ending. "Jack had a… a fishing pole in his hand instead of a gun. He was the guy who visited elementary schools on his downtime instead of going to a club or a bar. He was a father to Charlie, a husband to Sara... he was the man who loved Laira and fell in love with Ilonka Waters while I watched." I shook my head derisively. "I never knew the man. And it's so much easier to think of a stranger. Hurts a lot less." Sighing, I pointed, "It's that building over there. In front of the flagpole."

He pulled into the parking lot. The grass was just as yellow and brittle as ever. The heat was beginning to build even though the sun hadn't fully risen. Across the street two kids dressed all in black drank Pepsis and watched us with slitted eyes.

Jack turned off the car and left the eyes in the ignition. The Janus building loomed before us like a warehouse of danger and death. Neither of us made the first move to get out, even though we knew Janet's time was counting down... if it hadn't already run out altogether.

"Am I still a stranger?" asked Jack.

I turned my head and looked at him, really looked at him for the first time in a long time, and he looked back at me. There was something familiar in there, buried deep inside, as though I was looking directly into his genetic code, seeing everything that had been, was and would be. The pervasive hum of his mind, the steady cadence of his heart, and all the malignancies that lurked within. I could see the man I'd trusted and respected with my whole being, once upon a time. But there was something between us, separating us like a force shield, like a wall of glass that needed washing. They obscured my vision, distorted his face, the light in his eyes. Maybe the shield was time, maybe distance, maybe fear. Maybe those were all words for the same thing.

"Yes," I said finally.

I added silently: but that's good. That will make this easier.

Chapter 6

The building - Janus, Carter had called it - was imposing, I had to admit. Maybe it was because I knew there were Goa'uld inside, maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. But that big, gray box - surrounded by the other big gray boxes that comprised the business park - reminded me of a castle awaiting a siege. The small windows would be perfect for aiming arrows through. The flat roof was ideal for pouring down boiling hot oil on intruders. Once I had the image in my head, it wouldn't go away.

Carter was silent, tense. At first I wondered if it had anything to do with my questions, but as we crossed the brown, weather-stripped lawn I admitted to myself: she wasn't pissed off, she was afraid. Afraid of what was in that building.

This was insane. Insane. Thor wouldn't even be able to bring us up if things got nasty. If one of us was injured, we wouldn't be able to look to the Asgaard for help because Daniel was occupying the one human stasis pod; if he was taken out, he would die. All of these things kept running through my mind but nonetheless my feet kept moving, taking me to the front door.

In a way I welcomed whatever was waiting for us on the other side. Whatever form the enemy might take, we could deal with them; of that I had complete confidence. It was the other stuff we weren't quite as good at, and it had been that way back when we were SG-1, too. We could plan a mission to the detail, execute with minimal damage to ourselves… it was when we got back that things sometimes got messy. The injuries, the hurt feelings. The "I told you that wasn't going to work" conversations followed by the "You're alive, aren't you?" conversations. The brief moment of relief that everyone WAS alive… but a moment was all you could allow yourself, because there were more details to plan.

For a long time neither Sam-- Carter nor I had had any real enemy to contend with. Maybe that was why we'd turned on each other, on ourselves. Maybe we just needed to fight with someone so badly we'd resorted to whoever was closest.

I tried not to take offense at what she had said about my being a stranger. It wasn't fair of me TO take offense, because hadn't I caught myself thinking the exact same thing only days ago? Hadn't I admitted to myself that I wasn't so much in love with the Sam Carter of today as I was the Sam Carter of years past? The only difference was that I hadn't been man enough to say it out loud.

Carter reached the door first, opened it, and held it for me. Her eyes were downcast, her limbs stiff, but I stepped over the threshold without saying anything. It was strange, following her lead like this; the "Colonel O'Neill" in me was part uncomfortable with this reversal of roles, but "Jack" had humbled enough by now to accept that this was her turf. As I turned this over in my head, she followed; by the time I realized that we were in a teeny tiny waiting room, the outer doors locked behind us with a smug, solid thump.

A vertical seam marked the inner doors, but there were no knobs or handles. I reached for them anyway but Sam placed her hand over mind, stopping me. Her head was slightly inclined, and when I looked in the same direction I could see a tiny camera mounted in the corner near the ceiling. There were some other protrusions there, too; probably speakers and a mike.

"State your names and business," demanded a voice from the general direction of that corner. The voice was male, young, and if I wasn't mistaken sounded somewhat perplexed. Either the boss hadn't told him to be on the lookout for anyone matching our descriptions, or he HAD been told but hadn't imagined we'd be so stupid as to actually come turn ourselves in.

I almost laughed, almost told the guy: never underestimate the stupidity of desperate people in desperate situations.

Carter licked her lips quickly and addressed the camera: "Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter and-" she glanced at me "-Colonel Jack O'Neill, retired. Authorization code nine three six delta. We're here to see General Dirae. We don't have an appointment, but I think she'll see us if you give her our names."

My attention wandered briefly, then refocused on the speakers. Next to them on the wall were vents that might as well have had their purpose labeled in big block letters. The young man on the other end of that camera was taking an awful long time to respond.

Carter's fingers still brushed against mine. Now she actually reached over and took my hand in hers, squeezing it quickly, holding on tightly. Not knowing what to do, keeping my eyes still fixed on the vents, I squeezed back. Her skin was moist but her grip was firm, reassuring, and it helped me realize something: this was no longer an issue of whether or not I trusted her. I just HAD to, there was no choice. And the fact that I was here with her, even after the drive, even after that godawful conversation, meant that I did.

One little ambiguity cleared up. It almost made me want to smile... almost. I trusted her.

The internal mechanisms of the inner door abruptly whirred and, with the distinct 'clank' of a deadbolt sliding free and the hiss of cool air, the thick gray metal slabs jutted out, away from us. Carter yanked her hand out of mine in a near-panic. Her look of palpable relief was fleeting, but I caught her eye as she reached out to push open the doors; she was surprised - and maybe even a little bit worried - that we hadn't been gassed. "Security measure," she muttered as we moved out of the range of the anteroom mike and into a long, dark, air-conditioned hallway. "I thought they'd at least want to stall..."

I nodded minutely, eyeing the plain white doors, the blank gray walls. I felt like I'd stepped into a mental institution. "They were expecting us."

"Maybe," replied Carter, but she didn't elaborate.

Our footsteps, tapping against the floor and echoing off the walls and ceiling, reminded me of the rain. We continued walking in silence; Carter's pace never faltered and she kept her eyes focused straight ahead. I looked up, down, side to side, everywhere and at everything I could, doing my damnedest to commit it all to memory... but there was nothing to memorize besides the institutional scheme and obsessive sameness of every inch of the corridor.

When a door opened several yards in front of us, I almost wasn't prepared. And no matter how much time I'd spent thinking about it - no matter how many lectures I'd gotten over the past few days about the possibility, no matter how much I trusted Sam Carter - I was still completely and utterly unready to see Ilonka step over the threshold and into the hallway.

Her posture was perfect, as always. Spine straight, shoulders thrown back, chin and eyes raised. Her white blouse, black jacket and straight black skirt were immaculate, as though her clothes had been ironed only after she'd put them on. Her brassy hair was done up neatly, her makeup was tasteful and appropriate, her skin seemed tanned and healthy... and her eyes captured mine with no effort whatsoever. Dark brown, deep, so full of emotions that I couldn't even separate one from the other. Of course I'd never been very good at that emotional analysis stuff; I couldn't even tell what I was feeling just then -- surprise, certainly, and concern, but also a tidal wave of other thoughts and feelings that were too chaotic just now to make sense of.

"Jack," she said simply, but I thought I detected an odd tremble in that painfully familiar voice. It was something I couldn't remember having ever noticed before. She pursed her lips and added, with more strength and gusto, "Colonel, I'm glad to see you're doing well."

She couldn't be a Goa'uld. No, she wasn't. I didn't have Thor's little toy with me, but I didn't need it. This was Ilonka; I could tell. I felt shameful in my certainty, felt like a betrayer, but that didn't change what I KNEW. I smiled a smile that was too large and too tight to possibly come off as genuine and shrugged with a looseness I didn't feel. "Actually I was doing a lot better before I got dragged out here," I informed her, trying to sound annoyed when all I wanted to do was stand here and stare at Ilonka until she broke down in the face of my sheer will and confessed any and all wrong-doings. "What's so important that my retirement had to be interrupted?"

Ilonka lifted her chin a few degrees higher and forced herself to meet my eyes. It was something she did, something she had always done, something that smacked of masochism . She wanted to look down, look away, break eye contact, but she was too stubborn to let herself. To her way of thinking it would be a sign of weakness. "You should probably be... formally debriefed," she said with just the slightest tinge of regret in her voice, and just the vaguest hint of fondness in her eyes. "I'd hate to impose where it's not my place."

A second door opened, the one directly across the hall from the room Ilonka had stepped out of. We were joined by another woman - shorter, older, with a dusky complexion and short salt-and-pepper hair - wearing a stiff black suit. Directly on her heels was a surprisingly young man with an disproportionately thick neck and absurdly large hands; I could recognize hired muscle when I saw it. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Colonel," said the woman briskly and with an actress's practiced ease. "I'm General Dirae; feel free to call me Gena. I'm glad you could join us. We have a lot to talk about. If you wouldn't mind following Lieutenant Gomez here, we can get started and get this over with as soon as possible." Her eyes shifted to Carter, and she smiled a surprisingly friendly, almost maternal smile. "Sam, if you wouldn't mind staying here, I'd like to speak to you."

Hands clasped behind her back, she nodded crisply and Dirae returned the expression with another smile. Just before Gomez indicated that I should follow him I glanced over at Ilonka and felt the knot of fear in my stomach - a knot that had loosened slightly with our civil reception - tighten once again. Ilonka's gaze had shifted to Sam - who seemed to be ignoring her - and the expression on her face wasn't exactly one of unbridled gratitude or respect. It wasn't even one of grudging tolerance. We'd all known before coming here that I would be the most at risk, the most vulnerable; I was the one they'd been trying to find for whatever sick and twisted reason. But the feelings of dread stirred up by that brief glimpse of cold resentment weren't for my benefit. Sam was in danger here just as much as I was... maybe even more. And now they wanted to split us up.

I hesitated for just a moment, feet temporarily glued to the floor, wondering if I should protest that I didn't want to lose touch with Carter. But it would have done more harm than good, I realized a split second later, taking a slow step towards Gomez. We had to play this cool, not just for Dirae but for Ilonka as well. We couldn't risk piquing the General's curiosity... and I didn't dare pique Ilonka's jealousy.

Jealousy? Was that what that look was? Was that all it was?

Gomez turned his broad back on me, striding purposely down the long corridor towards what seemed like elevator doors at the end. I had no choice but to follow, but I made sure my shoulder brushed against Carter's as I stepped past her.

With great difficulty I avoided Ilonka's eyes, but I could feel them following my progress down the hallway. It took everything I had to keep from looking back.

Chapter 7

Both Gena and Ilonka Waters were completely silent until Jack stepped into the elevator and the double doors closed behind him. They watched him carefully for every inch of the trip, as though expecting someone to jump out - or beam down - and snatch him from their greedy hands. I almost wished someone would.

Janet. Remember Janet.

But then the elevator closed and the two women looked back at me, and I had a hard time remember anything besides how badly I wanted to punch them both across their faces. An odd bubble of collegiate trivia floated up from my subconscious: a treatise on how much more peaceful and civilized the world would be if it was run by women instead of men. What a load of crap, I thought, trying to keep my disdain concealed behind a neutral mask. Women had the same issues, the same power struggles, the same penchant for head games that men did... only instead of shooting you in the face, they would stab you in the back.

"Good work, Sam," said Gena with surprising warmth. "You completed your mission... although I can't say I entirely approve of your... tactics." She might as well have winked and nudged me in the ribs, as saucy as she sounded. She didn't give a damn about how I had done it, she was just glad it had been done.

"I did have my reasons, ma'am," I answered, trying to sound properly amused and conspiratorial, but Ilonka jumped in.

"And what would those reasons be, if I may ask?"

I could have corrected her, could have pertly replied that no, she couldn't ask. Gena wouldn't have rebuked me; she might have even laughed. Ilonka had screwed up and I had come through... or that was what I hoped she thought. I was the General's new golden girl, at least until we found Janet and broke the hell out of here. I could have told Ilonka that my reasons were none of her damn business, but I couldn't take the chance. Still addressing Gena, watching Ilonka only out of the corner of my eye, I answered smartly: "General, it was my observation Colonel Waters' history with Colonel O'Neill might be liability in retrieving him. I also thought I knew where he was, but that I would have to hurry to catch him. I didn't think I would be able to convince either you or Colonel Waters of my plan in time."

Gena seemed delighted by my initiative; Ilonka - seen peripherally - appeared ready to spit. "Is that the kind of protocol you learned at the SGC, Lieutenant Colonel?" asked the younger woman. "Playing fast and loose with the rules whenever it serves your best interests?"

"I thought it was serving the best interests of this country, Colonel," I said smoothly, finally bestowing upon her the honor of my attention. Ilonka's made no effort to hide her contempt; she looked as though she had just gotten a whiff of raw sewage mixed with toxic waste.

General Dirae - if that was her real name - chuckled at my unfailing patriotism and shook her head. "If it works, it works. In any case, I should head downstairs. Ilonka, can you..."

"I'll take care of the rest, ma'am," she replied with a deferential nod, and she gestured towards the open door from which she'd entered the hallway. "This way, please," she entreated through gritted teeth, staring at me challengingly.

Obvious to the tension, Gena turned on her heel and started eagerly down the corridor towards the elevator - my stomach twisted and flipped with anxiety - and I turned towards the doorway and the room beyond: an empty office. I'd only just stepped over the threshold when I felt Ilonka's hands against my back, pushing me into the room... hard.

I stumbled, didn't fall, whirled around in time to see dear Colonel Waters slamming the door behind her. Despite myself I stepped back, certain that if she got too close she'd slap me across the face like an irate soap opera villainess. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"You stupid little bitch," she hissed, reinforcing the villainess stereotype and blatantly ignoring my question. "What do you think you're doing?"

Drawing myself up I snapped, "Doing my job."

Ilonka laughed humorously. "Doing your job? No, Samantha," she drawled. "You're doing THEIR job. From hereon out, YOU are responsible for everything that happens. I want you to remember that. YOU."

Bitter, desperate wench. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She scoffed. "You know, you may be stupid, but you don't lie well."

"Do you think we could skip over the third-grade insults and stick with facts, Colonel?" I asked. "I've got better things to do then stand here and take this."

Again, she spoke right over me. "You know exactly what I mean. You know about the Goa'uld or else you wouldn't have run off half-cocked like you did, and you wouldn't have stayed away for so long."

"Goa'uld," I repeated skeptically, trying not to let her see how badly I was shaken. The truth was that I had never expected her to admit the truth so quickly, so easily, no matter how perceptive she was or how much she thought I knew. Gena had gone to great lengths to make this look like just another standard military operation and Ilonka was blowing that cover with hardly a flinch. When she didn't bother elaborating, simply choosing to glare at me icily, I decided there would be no better time for me to take this chance. "What do they want with him?"

With a smug flourish Ilonka folded her arms over her chest. "She wants to know about the Asgaard. Where they are, how many of them, what they know. She'll play the charade for as long as she can, of course, try to make it look like there's the slightest chance that the 'concerns of the Air Force' could be genuine. But when he doesn't cooperate..." In a rare show of weakness, she averted her eyes and shook her head. "I hope they show you what's left of him when they're done. I want you to have to live with that sight for the rest of your miserable life."

A coldness started to spread through me, starting in my stomach and moving out through my extremities. Doubt. God, I was doubting myself and starting to wonder if this was more than just an act. "I don't know why you think you can blame this on me," I said sharply, fighting away fear with temper. "I did what I was told to do by a superior officer. I didn't know. You were given the same assignment."

"Yes, I was," Ilonka agreed, meeting my eyes challengingly. "But the difference was that I never intended to complete that assignment."

"What do you mean?" The question slipped out before I could stop myself, before I could think about what I was asking. The cold, sick feeling spread even further out and I partly blamed it for hampering my judgment. But there was also the strange fact that Ilonka's words rang true. "You couldn't have found him even if you wanted to," I added hastily.

Her smile was back, thin and unconvincing, lifting only one side of her mouth. "You think I don't know about the cabin?"

Well... shit. "It wasn't on the papers you gave me," I answered edgily, my mind racing. Jack had said that he'd never told Ilonka about the property, but someone must have found out... someone had sent soldiers after us...

And someone had sent Duke.

Sighing, Ilonka uncrossed her arms and placed her fists on her hips. If the stance was supposed to make her look more intimidating, more impressive, it didn't work. Over the last few days I'd become far too accustomed to reading people's expressions, analyzing them and making decisions based on them, and everything about her spoke of doubt and defensiveness. "When Jack and I were seeing each other, he'd go off on his own sometimes. At first it was just when I was in Washington, but he kept spending more and more time away... at one point he was gone for weeks. I couldn't bring myself to ask... I thought that if he wanted me to know, he'd tell me."

"Yeah, and you're just the polite type, aren't you? Where did you think he went?"

Ilonka didn't answer, but for the second time since we had arrived her piercing stare flickered and briefly faded. It was more then just a shift from anger to defensiveness... it was vulnerability, and so help me God it was a pleasure to see. "You thought he was going to see me," I said quietly, hoping not to sound too pleased. "To locate me, or... you thought we were having an affair?"

She didn't acknowledge me, but she didn't refute the claim, either. Fists clenching even tighter, she muttered. "It didn't matter why... either way I needed to know."

"You mean Osiris needed to know. You were already working for her by that point, weren't you?" I accused, trying to remember to keep my voice down to a level that wouldn't permeate the walls.

Again I was ignored. "They'd started the program... putting symbiotes into animals, using them as hosts. It sounded insane at first but in theory, it made sense. Many times animals - cats and dogs especially - can go places humans can't. They would make excellent spies, the only drawback being their decreased ability to communicate. But all the cat had to do was get to Jack's phone." She shrugged. "I brought it over to his house one weekend and it stowed away in his truck the next time he made his trip. It took a while for it to get the right opportunity but eventually it was able to get inside while Jack was out and dial the number. I traced it back and found out exactly where he was." She smiled again; a small, self-satisfied smile. "Of course I never told anyone. Even the Goa'uld have rules about employing company equipment for personal use."

And the severance package probably wouldn't have come with retirement benefits, I thought morbidly. "This program is still running, then?"

"Unfortunately, this case was the exception and not the rule. The program didn't always work that well. Some of the symbiotes didn't appreciate being regulated to animal bodies; they'd get out and go renegade, taking human hosts without permission. It caused us quite a lot of trouble."

"I'm sure it did," I said flatly. I was sickened, not only at her breezy explanation of how she and her Goa'uld friends had infected Jack's life, but also the cavalier way in which she described other human beings being taken as hosts. Didn't she understand... didn't she even have the slightest inkling of what that was like? "So you found out about the cabin years ago. Then what?"

"When he disappeared from Colorado Springs we of course began looking up where else he could be. After the background check didn't make any mention of a property in Minnesota... I had a suspicion. Which was confirmed, again, by the cat." She chuckled. "I have to admit, I'm astounded by its loyalty. I'd have thought that it would have become wild or taken over some fisherman by this point."

"How nice for you."

Ilonka shrugged off the comment. "I held off telling them as long as possible. We knew that the Asgaard were intercepting the messages but I couldn't be sure that Jack was involved and I didn't want to bring him into this unless I was positive. And then when I began to realize how badly they wanted him, how serious she is... I knew I wouldn't be able to. To put him in danger like that." Her eyes darkened. "I just didn't count on you playing along with them."

"I've been playing along?" Gathering my courage I took a step forward. "If I've heard you right, you've just admitted to committing treason. Helping the Goa'uld, aiding Osiris. For years. You think you're blameless here? You really think this is my fault?"

"Let me tell you a little story," said Ilonka scornfully. "I was at home when they came. Visiting my family in Texas. We were at church, ironic as that sounds. It's a small town, old-fashioned. Most of us were there that morning... which is why they waited until then to come. I'm sure you've figured out that that's their MO. But it wasn't just that. They knew I was there. She came looking for me... Osiris did. She gave me a choice between being a host, and being an ally."

Ally, collaborator. I vastly preferred our term. "Oh, well, if it was for your own self-preservation, then never mind..."

"It wasn't!" she snapped. "I knew I would never be able to stop them myself. Even if I brought it to the attention of someone else, I had no idea how big the problem was... how fully Osiris had infiltrated. I knew that if I could gain Osiris's trust I could use her like she wanted to use me. You have to understand: she didn't just want another host. She wanted me to be put somewhere sensitive, somewhere people knew what signs to look for and might even run the occasional MRI. If they had made me a host..."

"...They would never have been able to implant you as the SGC liaison," I finished, feeling nauseous. I'd known that the Goa'uld had been here for years, and I had felt very strongly that Ilonka had something to do with them... but I'd always assumed that her involvement had been recent, starting some time after I'd left. "You were working for them before I even met you."

"Not working for them," she corrected me vehemently. "Working within them--"

Furious, I took a step closer, interrupting her with a sharp swipe of my hand. "What happened to Paul Davis wasn't an accident, was it?"

Chapter 8

There were no buttons in the elevator, no lights indicating what level we were on, not even a phone to alert the outside world in case the car broke down. The metallic walls were completely smooth except for the vertical seam that marked the double doors.

The car stopped after only a few seconds of travel and from the way my stomach had dropped I assumed that we were underground... maybe two or three floors beneath the ground level. The fact that there was a subterranean section to the building wasn't surprising, but I had to wonder just how extensive it was. Just a couple basement rooms... or a holding dock for Osiris's ship and a dozen steaming containers of Goa'uld symbiotes?

I shuddered despite myself, but Gomez's back was to me and he didn't notice.

The doors opened onto a corridor exactly like the one we'd just left... only Carter, Ilonka and their CO weren't standing midway down it. Otherwise it might have seemed that we hadn't moved at all. As Gomez led the way, I wonder if that little bit of disorientation was deliberate.

I had to admit, Osiris was doing a remarkably good job keeping things low key. One of the Goa'uld's biggest weaknesses was their desire to flaunt their power, to mix up brute strength and baseless intimidation. That had been the problem for the Jaffa, after all. They'd gone around dolled up in their nifty metal suits because it scared the bejesus out of the primitive populations they'd enslaved... but that didn't do them any favors when they came across an SG-team. Once we'd figured out which kind of bullets most effectively pierced their armor, all it did was make them bigger, clumsier targets.

The Goa'uld themselves had a definite thing for cosmetics and theatrical garb. While Osiris would have needed to keep things looking above-board aboveground, the deeper we traveled into the facility the more surprised I became at the absence of rich tapestries and gold leaf. Dirae, allegedly a Goa'uld or at least a Collaborator, had looked positively conservative in that black suit.

Gomez abruptly stopped, reached for the handle of a door - just another door like all the rest; I wondered how he knew that this was the one he wanted - and pulled it open. He motioned me inside and I went, looking around distrustfully. I wasn't sure what I expected - probably something with glowing eyes - but the room was empty.

"The General will be with you shortly," said Gomez as soon as I was inside, and he closed the door behind me.

I was alone.

This was unexpected. Not that it opened up many options. Gomez had either locked the door or would be standing guard just outside it, so I wouldn't have a chance to go scouting around for Doc before my visitor arrived.

I turned in a small circle, taking in my surroundings. They weren't much to look at. Four gray walls enclosing a room about the size of the observation lab back at the SGC. A floor covered with cheap blue carpeting. A gunmetal gray desk, very utilitarian, and two straight-backed black plastic chairs. Comfy.

No windows, of course. No other doors besides the one opening into the hallway. The walls were unadorned... although one of them seemed a little TOO smooth, a little too unmarred. An improvement on the one-way window, I decided, not giving it too much attention in case I was already being observed from the other side.

Jack O'Neill rule of combat, number one: Never underestimate the enemy.

Jack O'Neill rule of combat, number two: Always let the enemy underestimate you.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and whistled. Off-key, just in case there was a mike in the room too.

I passed the time thinking, while simultaneously trying to make it look like I wasn't. I played with my watch strap. I tied and retied my shoe laces. I sat in one of the plastic chairs and counted the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. And I thought. About Carter and what Dirae had wanted to say to her. About Ilonka and why she'd looked at Carter like she had... why she had looked at ME like she had. I thought about Thor and Jarl high overhead and the Goa'uld somewhere near, Teal'c injured and Daniel in stasis and Doc Frasier somewhere close. We hoped.

They hadn't checked me for weapons or a bug, at least not physically. There might have been some kind of scanning equipment in the anteroom - or in this room, for all I knew - but so far there hadn't been anything overt. There hadn't been anything threatening. It all had a clandestine flavor to it, but so did the SGC. If this whole runaround reminded me of anything it was military theatrics, not Goa'uld clichés.

The door opened without warning or pretense and in stepped the General. Gomez could be seen hovering just outside, and then the door closed and it was just me and Dirae.

Dirae. Interesting name. Daniel had mentioned that it sounded familiar, but considering how much the guy read that didn't help much.

She made a beeline for the second chair, dragging it across the floor so she could sit directly across the table from me. "Colonel," she greeted with a sharp smile, placing her hands in her lap.

"Retired," I reminded her, as though to explain why I hadn't made any move to stand when she'd entered the room. But she hadn't seemed to expect such an action, either.

"Of course." She sat back in the chair and cocked her head slightly, as though trying to view me from a different angle. "You're a difficult man to get in contact with. Something to do with that Special Ops training, perhaps?" she inquired, and I didn't get the feeling she was making a joke.

I made one of my own. "I don't know. The telemarketers seem pretty good at tracking me down. Maybe you should have called them?"

Dirae angled her head to the opposite side, vaguely amused. "Sam came through for us."

Uh-huh... "Well, yes, she does that."

Her dark eyes crinkled in the corners. "You taught her well, then."

No. That I couldn't agree with, facetiously or not. I hadn't taught her well enough, obviously, because if I had Dawson would still be alive. Or even if that mission had had the exact same result, Sam might have come through it better. I hadn't been there, as a C.O. or anything else, before, during or after the incident. I'd failed her. Failed my second in command, my friend, the woman I... I swallowed thickly, surfacing from the torrent of emotions in time to hear Dirae's first real question. "May I inquire as to the nature of your fascination with Kentucky?"

Her formal phrasing, I thought, sounded oddly mocking. I tried to ignore my hypersensitive perceptions and focus on the facts; Dirae had been tracking Sam's car and she didn't care if I was aware of the fact. "I take it you've never been to Kentucky."

The General traced the line of her jaw with the knuckle of her thumb. "Can't say that I have."

"Oh, well, you don't know what you're missing. Gena"

Her eyes had drifted thoughtfully to the dull tabletop, and now her gaze lifted again to meet mine. Maybe it was the way I'd paused before saying her name, maybe there was the same hint of derision in my voice that there was in hers, or maybe it was something completely different. But a peculiar insight passed between us in that moment, understanding like an electrical current.

She stared me down with cat-like eyes. Do you know?

I stared right back. Yeah sure ya betcha.

Chapter 9

Ilonka blinked rapidly, as though there was something in her eye. "What." It wasn't a question, just a sound, just a way to stall and make me reconsider. When I refused to answer she set her mouth in a hard line and huffed through her nose. "I can't believe you would accuse me of something like that. You think I had something to do with what happened to Davis."

Again, not a question. She was going to make me spell it out, make me go out on a limb. It was a short limb, however, and sturdy. "I think you knew what was going to happen to him. If you knew Osiris wanted to place you in the SGC, then you knew there was one big obstacle that needed to be removed first."

"I didn't think they'd try to kill him," Ilonka maintained.

"You didn't think the Goa'uld might want to kill someone?" I asked incredulously. "What did you think they'd do? Reassign him to Alaska? Threaten his family until he backed out on his own? I think you're confusing the Goa'uld with the NID. Some morals, different tactics. You knew. You knew from the beginning..."

I stopped. Closed my eyes. Let the knowledge sink in like hypothermia, chilling my bones.

"You knew," I said again, feeling oddly breathless. A strange sound escaped my throat, half mirthless laughter and half gasp. My eyes opened. Ilonka's pained expression hadn't changed. "You knew, and that was why you pursued Jack. To get close to him. In case Osiris wanted him taken out, quick and discreet."

"That's not it at all," she said hoarsely.

"I think it is."

She spoke over me. "I knew why I'd been assigned to the SGC but I didn't know what for. In the beginning my only duty was to pass on information. Military information, things that might not end up in the final draft of your reports. Jack had nothing to do with that. And Osiris had nothing to do with me and Jack. I 'pursued' him because I cared about him."

"And you didn't realize how dangerous that was?" I retorted. "Even if Jack hadn't been a target before, he sure was once you got involved with him. If there's anything the Goa'uld know it's how to use the people we love against us, to use our feelings against us. The second Osiris found out that you 'cared about' Jack, he was in danger. And you can bet your life that Osiris DID find out."

"She didn't. That's what I've discovered, Samantha. You accuse me of being cowardly and selfish by keeping quiet, but I've gotten the Goa'uld to trust me and I've learned things." Her eyes shone with resentment and fervor. "These are underling Goa'uld that Osiris brought from the Unas planet... they aren't like Jaffa. They aren't dependent on Osiris for anything besides instructions. And they're not too impressed with those lately. They want to revolt, take the invasion public." She stepped forward, her eyes two dark coals in the center of her rigid face. "Gena's one of their leaders, and she's prepared to betray Osiris."

I held my tongue between my teeth, forcing myself to think before I spoke. I'd come into this partnership determined to keep private issues private, to keep the past the past, and now here I was dredging up old memories despite myself while Ilonka struggled to get us on track. "Gena's a Goa'uld?" I asked finally.

Dark humor glistened in Ilonka's shadowed eyes. "Somebody didn't take high school Latin. 'Gena'. Regina." She paused expectantly.

"Queen," I said softly.

"And 'Dirae'. Also a Latin name. Ancient Roman mythology. Literally it means "The terrible"." She paused again, waiting me to jump in with the answer and smiling scornfully when I didn't. "I've done my own research. It's one of the names for the Furies, Roman goddesses of vengeance." No wonder Daniel had thought the name familiar. "Gena Dirae," Ilonka clarified a final time. "Queen of the Furies. You know, if nothing else, the Goa'uld are quite poetic. And the others respond to that. Osiris isn't even here half the time; Gena is. And they know their 'Queen' won't hold them back the same way their 'Lord' has."

"But Gena's still playing the role of the dutiful second in command?"

Ilonka's lips twisted. "Something you'd know about," she murmured. "Yes, actually. That's why your friend Frasier is here. And you, I suppose: a little gift for Lord Osiris. They were also supposed to capture Jackson, but the men Gena sent were inept. And yes," she added, as though reading my mind. "Gena sent them, not me. I only discovered the plan after the fact. And I knew that when you found out, you and Jack would take some... crazy, rash action. That's what you do." Her tone was simultaneously jealous and condescending. "I came here, dispatched the closest cops... but I guess you managed to give them the slip."

I raised my eyebrows. Dispatched cops? Did the Goa'uld have the same access to the I-SPI system that the Asgaard did?

Ilonka continued: "We've had to 'quarantine' them back at their station in Elysia. God only knows what they think they saw. And I'm not looking forward to explaining it to Gena, either."

Explaining it? Why, I wondered, would she need to explain anything if... oh. Oh. "You know, you can't keep playing this charade. Sooner or later you'll end up on the losing side. You have the information you wanted to get. You have the knowledge. Let us put it to good use."

"It's not that easy."

"It can be."

Ilonka stared at me for a long moment, and then indicated a paper bag on the floor against the wall, a bag I hadn't noticed with all the commotion. "There's some clothes in there for you," she said, her voice oddly flat. "Put them on. I'll be waiting outside." And with that she opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind her, leaving me blinking in confusion at her rapid exit.

Shaking my head, I retrieved the paper back and emptied the contents into my hands. It wasn't one of the restrictive black suits I had expected, the kind of suit that Ilonka and Gena were wearing. It was my dress uniform, the same one I had worn into Gena's office mere days ago, but from the smell it had been laundered. Despite that - or maybe because of that - the pool of familiar blue fabric made me feel slightly sick. As though the colors were vaguely threatening. As though they were mocking me. As though Gena and Ilonka were mocking me.

"That's why your friend Frasier is here. And you, I suppose: a little gift for Lord Osiris."

My options were limited. I changed quickly, my body going through the motions while my mind whirled frantically. I'd started out thinking that Ilonka was blatantly lying to me, later decided that she was merely fooling herself into believing a cover story, but now - despite my own biases - I found that I believed what she had told me. Maybe because it was all so patently human. Ilonka Waters was scared. She'd been scared when Osiris had approached her - too scared to tell the Goa'uld to go to hell - and she was scared now, so used to the way things were that the way things could be seemed an impossibly frightening concept. I wanted to think that I would have behaved differently, that I would never agreed to Osiris' proposition in the first place, or that I would have gone double-agent at the first available opportunity. But I had to acknowledge that I would have been scared too. I was afraid now, the same as Ilonka. The paths our fear took us down would probably decide how this ended.

The best, most attainable goal right now was to convince Ilonka to turn. It was Plan A. We'd suspected that she was a collaborator, of course, but she was still a human being and a member of the United States Air Force to boot. Maybe she could be bought, I'd explained to Jack, Thor and the others aboard the ship, but maybe she could be brought back. Maybe all she needed was a kick in the ass and a reminder about who she was, where she came from.

Now I knew where she came from: a little town in Texas where her friends and family had all been made into hosts, Goa'uld infiltrators.

Besides, she didn't want any reminders from me. I was nothing to her. No, I was worse than nothing; I was something. I was a target for her slurs and a wrongdoer, in instances both real and imagined. She'd claimed that Jack had said terrible, soul-rending things about me... yet she'd also feared that we'd been having some kind of long-distance affair. I smiled absurdly.

Well, that was why Jack was here. Even if Ilonka wouldn't listen to me - and she wouldn't; her abrupt termination of the conversation was proof enough of that - then she would certainly listen to him. He'd always been able to reach her, back at the SGC when Colonel Waters - as I'd forced myself to think of her then - had held the meager power of interpreting orders from the Pentagon. Colonel O'Neill - as I'd forced myself to think of HIM - had been able to convince her to take risks, to twist and sometimes even forgo the words of her superiors, actions which had indirectly saved the lives of SGC personnel. Sure, Jack O'Neill could be a charmer when the mood struck, but she'd always seemed to have an especially soft place for him. It was why no one, myself included, had been very surprised when they had started seeing each other.

Just sex, my foot.

Ilonka cared about Jack, that much she had made explicit. She certainly cared enough about him to be furious that I had brought him here, put him in harm's way. As though my bringing him here - even if Ilonka didn't understand my motives - meant that I cared about him any less. She didn't understand that Jack and I had never had the luxury of protecting each other from necessary risks. And this, this was just such a case.

I opened the door and stepped into the hallway to find Ilonka doing the same thing, exiting a room directly across the corridor. She was repositioning and smoothing down her black suit, and when she saw me she gave me a cold, challenging look. "Let's go," she said.

Briskly she led the way down the hall and together we entered the same elevator Jack had not long ago. Ilonka didn't push any buttons - there were none - but nevertheless the car began to move. "Where are we going?" I asked, still feeling uncomfortable in my uniform.

"Downstairs," said Ilonka cryptically, sliding her hands down her suit again.

I fell silent, recognizing the slight bulge underneath the suit, near Ilonka's hip. It had been a while since I'd seen one, longer since I'd used one myself, but I was no stranger to the shape and form.

She was carrying a gun.

Chapter 10

Dirae left soon after that. When she opened the door, I couldn't see Gomez - or anyone else - standing guard outside. And I didn't hear any kind of lock engage after the door closed behind her.

Mindlessly I paced the room, still fighting the urge to bang on the too-blank wall I knew had to be concealing some kind of one-way-window. My pulse, which had slowed during the wait, was racing again. 'Fight or flight' was kicking in and I was mentally kicking myself in the ass. Why had I let on that I knew? Why? It was way too early, I hadn't even seen Ilonka yet... smart, Jack, real smart...

Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe Dirae had a perfectly good reason for stalking out in the middle of the conversation. Maybe she wasn't on the way to prepare a bucket of Goa'uld so she could stick my head in it. Maybe she wasn't off to do the same to Doc for the plain and simple reason she intuited that I was here as part of a rescue. Maybe she wasn't suspecting Sam and...

Damn it. To hell with this waiting, to hell with whoever might be watching. With a furtive look at nothing in particular I crossed the room and yanked the door... right out of Ilonka's hand.

She was standing on the other side, in the hallway, a startled look on her face. She was still dressed in that black suit. And she was alone.

A long, tense moment passed, but Ilonka recovered first. "Going somewhere?" she asked, a quirky half-smile playing on her lips.

I stepped back into the room, not sure of what to say, not even sure that my brain was running on all cylinders. Ilonka followed me, closing the door behind her and then leaning against it. "Hello Jack." Her voice was strained, but her eyes were still strong and piercing, prolonging my sudden inability to speak. "It's nice to see you, too," Ilonka added sardonically, after my silence stretched past the ten second mark.

"Nice to see you..." I mumbled. And then, with slightly more composure, "So... what are you doing here?"

She frowned, seemingly confused. "I work here."

I turned away from her, letting my gaze sweep over the one-way window again. I just knew I was going to end up kicking myself for this later, but... "Really?" I asked the opposite wall, the very picture of ignorance. "I thought you had a nice little surveillance job out in Colorado."

I heard her suck in a sharp breath as she left her position in front of the door and crossed the room, circling the desk until it was between the two of us. She glared.

"Sorry if I messed that up for you," I said softly.

She pursed her lips. "I don't know what Samantha's told you about me--"

"A lot," I interrupted. "And you know what? I think at least most of it is the truth."

Ilonka bristled, drawing herself up. "You really believe her over me?" she demanded, sounding genuinely upset.

Her anger was infectious. "This isn't a matter of you versus Sam. This is me making up my own mind, Ilonka. Don't try to make more of it then there is." She had a habit of doing that, observant as she was; she tried to read between the lines, decipher, extrapolate. That was useful in our work, but way too often in our personal lives it had been reduced to gossip, pointless accusations, total hearsay taken as fact. Sometimes it had seemed like Ilonka lived in her own little world - the world according to her - on which the rest of us were just misinformed tourists. It had been endearing while the relationship had been pleasant and frustrating once things had started going downhill, like so many other things.

Ilonka heaved such a long-suffering sigh that I knew she was less then convinced this didn't have anything to do with Carter. "So... what?" she asked incredulously, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and back again. "You really think I'm working for the Goa'uld? That I believe Osiris is a god? That I would knowingly want to hurt the people I care about?"

My eyes flickered to the fake wall, surprised that Ilonka would say things like that in front of an audience, and this time she caught my gaze. "No one's watching," she said firmly. "Now... do you really think that?"

Tucking that piece of information away I answered her truthfully: "No. No I don't. But you have to admit it doesn't look good." That presumption of innocence, that benefit of the doubt, was a lot more than I had given Sam. I had thought I'd feel better if I gave it to Ilonka but now I just felt worse, like I should have been harsh with Ilonka to make up for my earlier bad behavior with Carter. God, this being considerate thing was a pain in the ass.

Ilonka nodded thoughtfully, acknowledging the truth of what I'd said. She stepped forward to the metal table and perched on the corner. "Then let me tell you the truth," she said, looking up and meeting my eyes belatedly. "I'm undercover."

"Undercover?"

Ilonka nodded again, this time more eagerly, and leaned across the table towards me. "Osiris conscripted me... I didn't really have any choice, but I've been listening and learning... spying. And they trust me."

"Okay." I pulled out the closest chair - the one Dirae had been sitting in - and lowered myself into it. I had to tilt my head up slightly to address Ilonka. "And you've been passing this information on to... who?"

Her enthusiasm faltered. "No one," she admitted, insisting, "I didn't know who I could trust. There ARE collaborators out there, idiots who think we can't win even if we tried. And there are Goa'uld in high positions; I didn't know if I could keep all this from eventually reaching their ears. If I'm compromised--"

"The information doesn't do anyone any good if it stays with you," I interrupted, my voice louder then I had expected in the smallish room. Or maybe it wasn't the room. Maybe it was me. I found myself flashing back to that night on the Asgaard ship when the list of planned infestations had come through. If Thor hadn't had the balls - figuratively speaking - to go against his leaders, steal the ship and come warn us, Cassie and I would have become hosts in the next few weeks. And eventually the same would have happened to Daniel, Doc, everyone else at the SGC... and Ilonka would have just LET it happen. "You could have helped people and you didn't."

Ilonka appeared taken aback, which for her was usual. But she recovered quickly and the volume of her voice rose as well. "No one helped the people in my town when Osiris came for them. And I wasn't going to let it happen to you. I was going to warn you, but before I got the chance you... disappeared."

I shifted in my seat. "Fine. You weren't going to let it happen to me. I appreciate that, thanks." I was being sarcastic and she knew it. "But what about all the other people this has happened to? People we know and people we don't. No one deserves to have to live like that." She opened her mouth, but I cut her off. "I'm sorry about happened to your town, Ilonka, I really am. But you can help them the best by helping us. If you can give us names, places, we can get the Tok'ra to save those people from a living hell. But first you need to help us."

Ilonka's crossed her arms. "'Us'," she repeated sullenly.

"Yes," I answered, feeling angry again. "You, me, Carter, and Doc Frasier. We're in this together."

In the same flat tone: "And then what? Go public with this? Announce that there's an ongoing alien invasion?" She laughed mirthlessly. "Half the world would think we'd all lost our senses or that it's some ridiculous hoax, and the other half WOULD believe us and would proceed to destroy civilization as we know it. It would make the old Salem witch hunts look tame by comparison."

"Fine," I barked. "Then we go to the SGC first. There's hardly any chance that they could have gotten a foothold there. We have Doc test everyone before they're told. We contact the Tok'ra, the new Tollan colony, we get them to help--"

"It won't work," Ilonka said dismissively, standing again. "Osiris has spies in the Tok'ra. Double agents. The second they catch wind that the Tau'ri are looking for help to remove symbiotes from large numbers of hosts, the Goa'uld will be on to us. They'll sense a threat and unite under Osiris. We can't afford to let that happen."

I stood also, not because I wanted to follow her lead but because I was increasingly uncomfortable with the way she was staring down on me. "What do you mean?"

Looking unexpectedly furtive, Ilonka skirted the table and stood close, her voice little more than a whisper. "Gena's a Goa'uld," she said, her enthusiasm returning with every word. "She and many of the others are unhappy with how slowly the invasion is going. They're THIS close to revolting against Osiris and when that happens I'll be even higher up in their chain of command. I'll be able to find out even more and do even more damage."

"And then what?" I asked, mimicking her earlier question. "If the Goa'uld unhappy that it's going slowly that means they're going to want to speed it up. Right? Maybe even give up the whole infiltration thing and go straight for an outright attack? How many more people would die or be made hosts before you'd be able to do enough 'damage'?"

She didn't so much as hesitate: "I could do a lot more if I had your help."

There was a tentative, feather-light pressure against my chest; out of the corner of my eye I could see her right hand resting there. Her eyes were imploring and the beginnings of a small smile lurked in the corners of her mouth, as though she had already predicted how I would answer.

Swallowing - and it was surprisingly difficult - I asked, "What would I have to do?"

Chapter 11

The room was long and narrow, and there was nowhere to sit. I could have leaned against the opposite wall and still have seen everything, but hearing the conversation with any great accuracy required that I stand closer. There were no speakers transmitting what was said in the room next door, no way to record any of it, and I had to rely on the sound that filtered through the thin one-way window.

Ilonka's motivations for putting me in here hadn't been immediately obvious. There was no one else in the room, nothing really to stop me from leaving as soon as she did. Except for the fact that one of the long walls was in fact a window into the adjacent room. And, for a time, the only person in that room was Jack.

He looked nervous - pacing and frowning - but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Several times his eyes flickered in my direction, as though he should have seen me, but he didn't. Jack seemed to know he was being watched but he had no way of knowing who was doing the watching... and I had no way of telling him. Briefly I considered knocking on the window, but before I could decide whether or not that was wise Jack seemed to lunge at the door. He opened it and then he froze; from my awkward position I couldn't see why. And then he retreated, stepping back into the room, and I saw very clearly.

Ilonka. Of course. This was her chance to get her claws into him again, and she'd made sure I had front row seats.

She told him that no one was watching.

For a while, the show was bearable. Jack didn't exactly rush into Ilonka's arms, or she into his, and things seemed to be at best strained - and at worst hostile - between them. Ilonka gave an abbreviated version of her sob story, and Jack brought up some of the same points I had... a fact that she didn't seem to appreciate.

He said that he believed me. But he also said that he believed her.

When I started getting worried was when Ilonka decided times were desperate enough to warrant standing well within Jack's personal space. Her back was angled towards me - purposely? I wasn't about to rule it out - so I couldn't see her expression, but her body language was suddenly and unexpectedly... friendly. And, try as I might, I couldn't hear what she was saying.

Whatever she had said, Jack promptly replied. He must have been whispering - they both must have been - but I could see his face well enough to catch a few words: Goa'uld, attack, damage.

As though they'd been talking about something far more intimate then alien incursions, Ilonka gently placed her hand against his chest. I tensed despite myself, an ancient inborn response triggered by a rival encroaching on something that was mine. Ancient, inborn, and ridiculous. Jack didn't belong to anyone, least of all me, but I supposed I cared enough about him that it didn't matter. And, I told myself, my concern wasn't all due to petty territorial issues; not only was Ilonka desperate and emotionally unstable - at least from my admittedly-biased point of view - she was armed. Her just being in the same room with Jack was worrying, and actual physical contact just raised my hackles that much further.

I started to realize - maybe for the first time since this whole crisis had started, maybe for the first time ever - that what I was dealing with wasn't just two people who were, in their own separate ways, connected to the situation and to me. These two people, as much as I hated to think about it, had a past... a history... memories and experiences that we're just theirs and had nothing to do with me or the circumstances the three of us now found ourselves in. And I started to feel just the slightest bit of shame, as though this bit of eavesdropping had been my idea, as though I was seeing something I simply shouldn't be seeing.

Ilonka said something - I could hear her voice but the words were unintelligible. Jack replied, and his lips were easy to read.

"What would I have to do?"

She brightened noticeably, bringing her hands together in an almost prayerful fashion. Letting the volume of her voice rise again, she explained, "You'd have to make the Goa'uld think you're on their side."

With his trademark incredulity in full force, Jack shook his head. He took a step away from Ilonka as well, which was gratifying. "Me. Join the Goa'uld. They'd never believe that."

"It would take a little work," Ilonka agreed smoothly, "but it could be done. You don't understand how they think... I do. They're egotists, Jack. Thousands of years of being worshipped as gods will do that to a species. I don't think they even fully understand why the Tau'ri rebelled against them so long ago, or why we fight now. They're perfectly willing-- almost eager to see a former adversary realize the... error of his ways. They want to believe. We can take advantage of that." Leave it to Ilonka Waters, I thought scornfully, to spend crucial intelligence-gathering years analyzing the Goa'uld superiority complex. Then again, it was something she had in common with them.

"Goa'uld psychology," I thought I heard Jack mutter, and I smiled. "What do you mean by 'a little work'? You mean I'd have to actually DO something that would convince them I've... turned over a new collaborative leaf?"

"Yes..." said Ilonka in a slow, squirrelly way. My smile vanished.

"And I suppose you already have something in mind?"

Tucking an imaginary strand of hair behind one ear, she nodded and looked him up and down anxiously, as though trying to gauge his reaction to the answer she hadn't yet given. Finally, and with some reluctance, she replied, "Tell Gena where to find the Asgaard... how many there are and what they know about the Goa'uld presence here."

Jack blinked. Let his mouth fall slightly open. Blinked again. Still waiting for the punch line, I thought, feeling sick and useless. Eventually he managed to spit out, "You're kidding me, right?"

"No," was the cool reply.

He raised his eyebrows, waited for a reaction, a recant - got neither - and turned away from her. His face, from what I could see, was filled with mingled doubt and disgust - not a very pretty combination - but as far as I was concerned it was the most beautiful expression I had ever seen. He shook his head again, this time in disbelief. "Sure, Ilonka. Why don't I just give you Thor's home phone number while I'm at it?"

Staring at his back with dismay and some reproach, she insisted, "Jack, it's the only way."

He didn't move his feet, merely glancing over his shoulder at her. "Sounds like a pretty crappy way to me."

"Do you WANT them to make you a host?" There was a fine note of hysteria in her voice now, an edge that had threatened to emerge earlier, when it had just been the two of us. When she had talked about my having to live with what they would do to Jack. She really did care about him, I realized, watching her take a hesitant step in his direction. Lines of fear and stress were beginning to stand out around her mouth and eyes. If only I'd seen this part of her before, I though despondently, maybe I wouldn't have jumped to conclusions. Maybe she would have trusted me and let me in on her secret. Maybe we could have worked together instead of working against each other. Maybe we would have even been able to bring her into the inner circle, where her knowledge could have been put to actual use.

Sure, it would be been weird. Definitely uncomfortable. And if I'd ended up watching Jack and Ilonka's old flame ignite in my face I would have never forgiven myself. But that was the thing about the if-onlys accompanying twenty-twenty hindsight; even the worst case scenario suddenly didn't seem so bad.

The worst case scenario here made death look like a welcome respite.

The argued for a while longer, Jack refusing while trying to keep from saying anything we might all regret later. Our best chance for finding Janet and getting out of here, after all, was still with the venerable Colonel Waters. We had to hold our tongues, play nice and try to cajole her into playing with us. Details could be sorted out later, once the dampening field was either turned down or turned off and Thor was able to bring us - all of us - back to the ship.

A large part of that plan, unfortunately, depended on how much Ilonka wanted to redeem herself.

They bickered, and the next time Jack turned away from Ilonka she sent an irritated glare in my general direction, nodding brusquely.

That was my cue.

A few moments later I was standing in the doorway of the room I'd just been looking into. The new perspective was somewhat disconcerting but it was a relief that now when Jack looked my way he actually SAW me. In fact, I saw his eyes flicker from me to the false wall and back again. He was no fool.

I walked into the room but didn't close the door, and Ilonka didn't ask me to. She greeted me crisply - "It's about time" - and seemed to take up a defensive position directly between myself and Jack. "This was the plan, hmm? Bring him here, use him against me for your own purposes."

I bit back a reply that included my opinion of Ilonka's delusions of grandeur and risked a glance over her shoulder at Jack, who looked perturbed. "The only plan we had was to try to get you to understand the lives you could save if you help us. Not me... us. All of us."

"You're a good person, Ilonka," said Jack, and she turned to him, putting her back to me. "I understand that you're angry about what happened to your family... but the truth is you're probably the only person who can keep that from happening to anyone else. Me giving up information on the Asgaard isn't going to help them... it's just going to hurt."

"Yes, it is," she agreed, her voice echoing off the smooth walls, cracking with emotion. "It's certainly going to hurt when they torture you for the information when you refuse to give it voluntarily."

"That won't happen if--"

She broke in: "I can't believe you're still listening to this woman, Jack. She's the one who gave you the cold-shoulder in the first place, and now you're willing to play her little games just so she can get back at me?"

His expression was incredulous. "What are you TALKING about? She doesn't care about 'getting back' at you--"

"Are you going to give me the information about the Asgaard," she snapped, still facing Jack, "or not?"

He set his jaw, stared, and then shook his head imperceptibly. "You know I won't."

Ilonka let her shoulders sag for the barest fraction of a second, and then straightened. She'd always had amazing posture, a determined presence.

I wondered, also for the barest fraction of a second, what exactly she had just determined. Then I looked back at Jack's face, and saw something there I didn't know how to react to.

Fear.

Not fear of me. He was still looking at Ilonka. Fear of HER.

His eyes shifted. Met mine.

Fear FOR me.

He took a step forward, and I took a step back. Everything between us was blurry, indistinct. Everything between us was Ilonka and the gun in her hand.

Chapter 12

"Wait!"

At first I thought I'd been successful, that by shouting out I'd made Ilonka pause for the two seconds it would take for me to reach and disarm her. Then I realized that the sound of my noise had covered the faint cobra-hiss of the silenced Beretta firing.

Even then, my brain refused to process the truth. Sam was fine, completely fine. Ilonka had fired a shot, but she had missed, perhaps intentionally. After all, Sam still standing, even though she appeared shocked. There was no pool of blood on the ground.

No, no pool. Just a spot on Sam's blouse against her stomach, a small red blotch like a ketchup stain. She raised one hand towards the blemish but it was as though her arm didn't have the strength. She had been in the middle of a backwards step when Ilonka had pulled the trigger; now she finished that step, putting her weight on her back leg. For a moment she teetered precariously... and then she fell.

Immediately I pushed forward, but Ilonka stepped up swiftly, blocking my passage and my view of Sam as she hit the floor with a solid thump and a barely audible groan. For an instant - before I backed away, repulsed and horrified - I was nose to nose with Ilonka Waters.

"What the hell are you doing?"

I retreated quickly, sickened by the conviction on her face and mindful of the gun she was still holding. But it wasn't pointed in my direction. Although she continued to face me, Ilonka aimed the gun at Sam. Sam, on her back on the ground, the blood slowly seeping through her blouse, her arms limp at her sides and her head lolling, breath coming in shuddering pulses. The gun aimed at Sam, who was no threat... injured, dying, almost dead, beyond my reach there in front of the open door, and even if I reached her, pushed past Ilonka to reach her, what could I do, what could I possibly do...

I knew, distantly, that I must look insane, that my face must be filled with panic, that I was brimming with emotions I hadn't had to encounter with or even recall in years. But I was less bothered by the image of my own wild eyes and more disturbed by Ilonka's cool composure. She'd never actually even SEEN real combat that I knew of, yet here she had just shot down an unarmed woman, shot her in cold blood, shot her without reason or warning... and she was as calm and poised as I'd ever seen her.

Maybe that was just a façade. Maybe there was a shimmer of guilt and regret in there somewhere, deep down. I didn't know for sure, didn't care. I not only figured I looked insane, I felt the part as well.

"I'm saving you from yourself," Ilonka said calmly, almost sympathetic. "I know you don't understand now, but you'll understand later and you'll thank me... I swear you will."

Scratch that. I wasn't insane, she was. Not bothering to answer, I took another step forward - intending to twist the gun out of her hand - but she was anticipating the move. Gracefully she stepped away, back, closer to Sam, and once again aimed the semiautomatic at her head.

Why? It was ridiculous -- she was flat on the floor, one hand now draped across the slowly spreading stain... fading fast, I could feel it in my bones. No threat to anyone, least of all someone with a gun. Nevertheless Ilonka held her ground, and I was afraid to move any closer.

"We have a sarcophagus," said the crazed woman in an almost gentle tone. "Tell me about the Asgaard, and I promise: I'll personally see that she's healed. But if you lie to me -" her tone was that of a grade school teacher, infuriatingly placating yet willfully firm "-or if you try to rush me, Jack..." She nodded down at her weapon. "Well, there are limits to what even a sarcophagus can repair."

Including, I thought dimly, several well-placed bullets in one's brain. "You can't do this," I said, consciously trying to imbue my voice with some authority, but Ilonka had learned how to manipulate authority... and I had taught her how to do it.

"I have to," she replied evenly. "If it's the only way to get the information from you, then it's the only way to save you from what they're going to do. And I want to save you, Jack. I love you."

But the words, to me, seemed as cold and absurd as a smile without meaning or passion.

My gaze trailed from Ilonka's determined face, down her long, black-clad arm, lingered on the extended barrel of the gun, and rested on Sam's face. Her chest still moved with heavy, painful breaths but her eyes had closed. Death was coming and she was being forced to retreat.

We were losing her. I was losing her. She was six feet away and I was losing her forever.

A sarcophagus could change that, bring her back, make her whole again. All that would remain of this incident would be the stains and tears in her shirt, and while that wouldn't be a welcome reminder, but the tissue underneath would be smooth and unbroken. If I told Ilonka about the Asgaard, their ship, their political situation, maybe that would be enough. Thor would be expecting failure like that; we were, after all, only human. He would be able to evade Osiris and continue to help Earth at the same time, and Sam would live.

Only... what was to keep them from doing this again? What if every time they wanted something from me, some kernel of knowledge I'd painstakingly picked up over the years, they put a bullet in her? Or what if they tried the same trick with me? What I was thinking of, what I was contemplating doing was playing the Goa'uld's game... and playing that game was exactly what had sucked Ilonka in.

"I'm not going to tell you anything," I said evenly, sternly but softly, hoping Sam wouldn't hear the words and know that I was signing her death certificate. If Thor's position was compromised, if Dirae used that information against Osiris, it might tip the balance. The Goa'uld spread far and wide might decide to unite with Gena Dirae, who would no doubt step up the invasion at the first chance. The number of people who would die and the number who would wish they had died in the days and weeks and months to follow... it was past imagining. It was what I'd spent the last part of my professional career fighting against. I couldn't just throw that away now... not even to save a life. Her life.

Ilonka stared at me for a long moment, surprised, angry and saddened all at once. Surprised that her little incentive hadn't worked, angry for the same reason, and the sadness... why? Did she think she'd misjudged me, that I was a heartless bastard who would let someone die in front of him when he had the chance to stop it? Was she regretting, for a moment, what she had done? Or was it just pity that I was so brainwashed by Sam Carter that I couldn't even spot my own salvation for what it was?

"We don't have a sarcophagus anyway," she said hotly, focusing on the gun once more as I waited for the bottom to drop out of the world.

But then the form of an avenging angel appeared in the doorway.

I blinked, feeling fear rise up to clench at my heart.

"Waters... what's going on here?"

No. Not an angel after all. If anything, a demon: Gina Dirae had returned. But I'd be damned if I wasn't weirdly relieved to see her, if only because she looked horrified at the scene in front of her.

Ilonka underwent a speedy transformation, letting the gun fall to her side as she stepped away from Sam. She then transferred the gun to her other hand, holding it by the elongated barrel, and promptly handed the weapon to the stunned faux General. "She had a gun," said Ilonka swiftly. "She tried to kill me. There was a struggle and it went off."

Dirae looked up from Sam's prone body and I used the moment of distraction to edge around the table, kneeling down by her side. The amount of blood was still relatively small, but it multiplied in my eyes like kaleidoscope images.

"Impossible," said Dirae, sounding nervous. "They were both checked for munitions at the door."

"General," said Ilonka with false hesitancy, "if I could share an observation with you..."

I didn't know what to do. I'd dealt with injured parties on the battlefield more then I cared to think about, knew basic first aid and a few variations thrown in for fun, but I didn't know what to do. A thousand contradictory thoughts echoed through my mind with absolutely no effect.

"What is it?"

Sam was still breathing, still alive, but she seemed so fragile that I was afraid to even touch her. Afraid that even looking at her too long would snap the thread that was keeping her attached to the world of the living. Looking up at Ilonka and Dirae was just as bad, though, because attracting their attention wasn't high on my list of bright ideas.

"I've begun to suspect that some of the guards in this building are working for Osiris," said Ilonka in her honey-smooth voice. "I didn't say anything because I did not truly believe any of them would dare go against you, but this... this makes me wonder if perhaps our Lord -" said with sarcasm "-has not already tainted the minds of others. Including Sam Carter."

I tensed but didn't look up. Couldn't.

"She might have been sent to kill me and then you," Ilonka finished, sounding just a little strained. She'd never been a good liar... or so I'd always thought. If I thought about it now, of course, she'd been lying to me for years. What was one little fib about Sam being an assassin?

"Osiris did not want her harmed," Dirae was murmuring.

"I guess now we know why," said Ilonka deliberately.

There was a terrible moment as Dirae thought, and Ilonka waited, and I tried to remain as quiet and motionless as was humanly possible while inwardly panicking. No. Couldn't panic any more then I could move. Panicking was pointless, counterproductive. Think, Jack, dammit. There's got to be something you can do besides crouching here waiting for her to stop breathing!

In the end, though, there really wasn't anything I could do, and Dirae made the first move. She grunted: "Then we have no choice but to confront her with these facts."

Ilonka's reply was quick and neutral, "When is our Lord arriving?"

"At any moment. Osiris' escorts had to ring down under cover of darkness, and outside the field." She paused and I could feel a chilling wait that told me, with total certainty, that both women were looking my way. "Has he told you nothing?"

Ilonka hesitated before answering, "I don't believe he knows anything."

"He knows now." Dirae grunted again. "Leave him here. Leave both of them. We shall present this scene to Osiris. If your suspicions are correct we will have gained a victory. If not, he will make a more-than-fitting replacement."

Form the corner of my eye I saw her turn on her heel, heard the footsteps as she marched down the hallway. Ilonka didn't immediately follow; she moved back into the room for a moment, and then returned to where she had been speaking to Dirae, apparently waiting for me to look up at her. "Jack--"

"Go to hell." The words erupted without my permission. I'd wanted to go on ignoring her, hurt her with silence because I couldn't hurt her the way she'd hurt me, but the verbal explosion came before I could stop it. I clamped my lips together, eyes still fixed on a point on the floor next to Sam, praying like I hadn't prayed in a long time that the ground would open up and swallow us both.

The floor remind solid and firm, but Ilonka apparently got the point. After another painfully silent moment she left, trailing after Dirae like the slave she was, closing the door as she went.

Chapter 13

There was no pain. I'd expected pain during that millisecond I'd had to expect anything. I'd always figured that there was a great deal of pain involved in getting shot, based solely on the reactions of others. Their shouts and screams had conjured up images of agony and fire, ripping and tearing, hot blood spurting. But there was no pain, no heat. If anything, I was cold... and numb.

There was a thick, smothering pressure against my back. Dimly I realized that I was on the floor, and the only real pressure was that of gravity. I just wasn't sure why I was on the ground if I wasn't feeling any pain.

With great effort and concentration I moved my hand onto my stomach, where Ilonka's gun had been pointed, and felt the sticky wetness soaking through my shirt. The sensation was like another gun going off inside my brain. Anger crackled - she'd shot me, the bitch had actually shot me - but faded quickly.

Fading...

Darkness fell in on me, but only because I'd closed my eyes. I considered opening them but there didn't really seem to be any point in that. I was tired now, on top of being cold and numb. What was the point in fighting it?

Sounds from the outside world trickled into my ears, voices speaking, but the words didn't make sense. Ilonka was still there, and then there was another presence, darker and with a familiar bite. The Fury Queen. The Terrible. If I'd been able to sense her like this two years ago, I never would have gotten into this situation to begin with.

And then there was Jack. His voice, garbled but angry. And the decisive thump of a door being shut, liking the closing of a casket.

Fading...

Sensation. I jerked and tried to open my eyes but was only halfway successful. There were strong fingers closing against my wrist, holding, waiting. Checking for a pulse, it occurred to me. A pulse was a good thing to have. I hoped I had one.

A rough voice, close now and not quite as muffled. "Sam?"

I struggled to keep my eyes open, but it was dark anyway. I couldn't see his face, couldn't see much of anything, just the familiar nightmare, shifting black on black.

"Sam, I need you to stay with me."

As though it were up to me.

My eyes were as cold as the rest of me, and dry, so I tried to blink. It was hard, and everything was so fuzzy that I wasn't sure if I had succeeded or if I had just slipped away. His fingers weren't looking for my pulse anymore and I wondered if that was a good sign or not. He was still touching me, his hands running up and down my arms, against my face. The contact felt so good and warm, but it only repelled the coldness so far.

I still couldn't feel my legs.

I tried to tell him but my words seemed as unintelligible as his had earlier. It was like I couldn't work up enough force to push the words out of my mouth; gravity kept pulling them back down. Everything was a struggle, things I had always done without thinking, things as simple and necessary as breathing. Things as beyond my control as having a steady heartbeat.

"Sam? Carter!"

Once more I jerked, irrationally irritated. The spasm brought a burst of color into my vision again, and for a second I saw him. I just wasn't sure who he was. He was looking down at me expectantly, his eyes two dark pits of fear... and while the eyes weren't immediately familiar, the fear in them was. I heard my own voice from within the recesses of my mind: "Colonel..."

Fading...

Chapter 14

"Sam, I need you to stay with me."

The universe didn't much care what I needed, however, and as much as I tried to tell myself that the relatively small amount of blood was a good thing, and that just because she was unresponsive didn't necessarily mean that she was dying... I wasn't exactly convincing. From what I could see there was no exit wound, but that wasn't necessarily encouraging. There had to be internal bleeding... and who knew what else had been damaged?

Sam's eyelashes fluttered momentary, and my heart ricocheted off my ribs and into my throat. Her lips moved, apparently trying to form some word between gasping breaths. I leaned closer and managed to catch the gist of her message: "Can't feel... my legs..."

Stunned, my breath vying with my heart for space, I sat back slightly. Looked at her legs. Still there, long and slender, disappearing under the conservative blue skirt... but she couldn't feel them.

That answered one question, then.

Thor could fix it, of course, just like he'd repaired Davis' broken back. The question was, would he be able to? As was the case with Daniel, would Sam stay alive long enough to be healed? And now that I remembered Daniel and his current situation, it looked more and more like a moot point. Even if we got Sam back up to the ship, in order to heal her we'd have to take Daniel out of stasis. Chances were that would kill him.

So, Jack, what'll it be? Thor would leave it up to you, after all, you are his favorite human. So which one? What are you going to do? Murder - for all intents and purposes - one of your best friends, or stand back and let Sam die? Which one? Hurry now, time's a-wasting.

No point in thinking about that now. First we had to stay alive long enough to get out of this mess. Then maybe we could chance a regular hospital, at least long enough for them to stabilize her, stop the bleeding. Then once we had Frasier we could send her back down to the SGC with Daniel to patch him up, and Thor and Jarl would have Sam running around again in no time. I just had to keep her awake. "Sam?" No response. Out of habit: "Carter!"

She spasmed, her eyes flying open again but not focusing on anything much. Another pained breath passed her lips. "Colonel..."

My heart plummeted back into my stomach and I sucked in a quick lung-full of air. So. Colonel. I could retire, I could move hundreds of miles away from the last place anybody had called me that, and I still couldn't escape it. Not even from her. Maybe especially from her. I'd always be 'Colonel' before I'd be 'Jack', no matter how many times she said it. In her memories, at least now, I was still the man she'd admitted to loving. That was something. Not nearly enough, but something.

There was a sound in the corridor, beyond the door. A male voice. Shit.

I touched Sam on the arm again and rose unsteadily to my feet. Osiris would be here any minute, according to Dirae. Any minute. I had to find some way to defend myself - defend Sam - even if it was pointless... just to have something to do. I scanned the room quickly, mainly because there wasn't much to scan. Two chairs and a table that could, perhaps, be used as weapons, the semiautomatic sitting on top of table, and...

Whoa.

I blinked and looked again. It was still there. The gun, Ilonka's silenced M9, was sitting the table. She'd left it behind. Intentionally. She'd probably tried to clue me in, but I'd told her to go to hell.

With a furtive look towards the false wall I picked up the Beretta and looked it over. If I was being watched, someone would have been in here as soon as Ilonka had placed the gun on the table. As quietly as possible I turned the metal table onto its side, positioning the top towards the door so as to give me the best possible shielding. Hunkering down behind this dubious shelter, the M9 a familiar and strangely pleasant weight in my hands, I tried not to think about Sam. She was still lying near the door, out in the open although not in the direct line of fire. I was afraid of moving her, nervous about the voices in the corridor, about Osiris' ETA... and really, it didn't matter. This would all be over one way or the other in a couple minutes.

The door swung open.

Seconds.

Dirae's stride was long, brisk and confident, and she was distracted by the woman behind her, a svelte redhead in a long burgundy caftan. Then came Lieutenant Gomez and a young black man with short cropped hair, and somewhere in the back of this gathering - Ilonka. Wisely, she was holding back, anticipating my defensive, but the other four were completely unprepared.

Perfect.

Dirae stopped in her tracks, apparently stunned by the sight of an armed man half-hidden by an overturned table. Gomez and his buddy had slightly better reaction time, and they were also armed with M9s - unsilenced - but there was that all-important lag as they reached back for their firearms. Gomez took two unapologetic rounds in the chest before he could pull his; the other guard actually got off a shot of his own - it ricocheted off the corner of the table and lodged in the ceiling - before he joined his comrade on the floor hardly five feet from Sam. The shots that came from my gun were still whisper-soft, but each round further compressed the baffles and it wouldn't be long before the silencer was completely useless.

Gomez wasn't moving. The other man groaned softly but made no move towards his M9, which lay half under him. I'd expected more resistance... but I'd also expected all the worker bees in this particular hive to be Goa'uld. Judging from how easily they'd gone done, I suspected these two were collaborators.

The two confirmed Goa'uld seemed to have decided they'd seen enough. The women made a comical break for the door at the same time, a blur of black and red, but Ilonka had moved out of the hallway to intercept them. She jumped inside, slamming the door behind her and bracing herself against it. "Move!" screamed the woman I could only assume was Osiris, based the pictures of Sarah Gardner that Daniel had shown me.

Rising, I skirted the overturned table and came up as close behind Osiris and Dirae as I dared. If they'd been armed they wouldn't have run, I reasoned -- and then reason took a backseat as Dirae whirled and lunged at me, a sharp blade pulled from a hidden pocket; it gleamed in the harsh lights. She moved faster then I would have though possible and I let loose an animalistic sound of pain as two inches of the six-inch skive was imbedded in my left forearm. Moving without thought, I jammed the M9 up against Dirae's ribs and gave the trigger two quick pulls.

Dirae jerked, jolted, stumbled away, taking the knife with her and collapsing in much the same way Sam had only moments earlier.

I was able to turn my attention, however momentarily, to Ilonka and Osiris. The former was trying to disentangle Gomez's semiautomatic from his holster - seemingly having overlooked the other guard's discarded weapon - while still blocking the door. The latter, her curly hair standing wildly on end, was fumbling for something in the folds of her caftan.

"Don't move!" I shouted, my voice hoarse with pain but still tremendously loud in the enclosed space. Osiris disregarded the warning, finally pulling her right hand out of her pocket, wrist and fingertips adorned with a smaller but no-less-tacky version of a Goa'uld hand device. Wordlessly she brought her left hand down on top of the gold-and-ruby contraption and a shimmering bronze aura enveloped her from head to toe. From behind the personal force field she stared at me defiantly, no longer deigning to run.

"Gena!" Wrongly assuming that I was now in control of the situation, Ilonka surrendered the struggle with the tangled handgun and dashed across the charged space between Osiris and me. I tried to only watch her out of the corner of my eye, to keep my full attention on the mightily pissed off Lord Osiris, but the sheer stupidity of Ilonka's actions astounded me. Dirae was on the back, breathing slowly, but her eyes were open and angry. She wasn't going to die, but even the Goa'uld parasite wouldn't be able to heal the host's body instantaneously. Hunched down next to the black and bloody form of her commanding officer, Ilonka looked up me furiously. "You didn't have to shoot her!"

Before I could even try to make any sense of that, Osiris - not as distracted by the side show as I was - took a step towards me, merely glancing at Sam; at this point, she was only one of a growing number of bleeding bodies. I was still aiming the M9 at Osiris, straight and true, but the Goa'uld didn't seem particularly impressed. Maybe she thought I was out of ammo -- maybe she just didn't care. The last personal shield I had seen had completely deflected automatic weapons fire.

Another step. "O'Neill," said Osiris smoothly, smiling a twisted smile. "I wondered if I'd ever have the pleasure of meeting you. You've no idea how sad I was to hear that you'd abandoned your planet's pointless battle."

My legs wanted to take a step back, but - bravely or otherwise - I held my ground. "Oh yeah, I'm sure you were real disappointed. Probably more disappointed to hear about Daniel, though, right? You send them," I gestured to Dirae and Ilonka, "to pick you up a new host or two, and look what happens. You just can't find good help these days, can you?" Before she could answer, I rambled on, stalling. "Of course, I can't say having Daniel as a host was a particular bright career move either. Or Doc, Carter, me... Sarah's kind of nobody, not a lot of connections outside work, right? Very incognito. You'd have more problems with someone a little more high-profile, especially someone with classified knowledge. Of course... what's the fun of raining holy hell on Earth as a nobody? I suppose Goa'uld generally don't do incognito all that well."

Doing her best to look bored, Osiris tilted her head to the side. "Are you done?"

I wondered if her hand device could protect her and mash me up against the back wall at the same time, and then I figured I was about to find out. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Good."

I'd intended to throw myself to the side, empty the clip in Osiris' general direction, maybe scramble back behind the table... but the onslaught never came. The door burst open once more, and a tall figured dressed all in black exploded into the room.

A young man with a Zat in his hand.

Osiris turned to aim her palm at this strange new arrival, but the kid was marginally quicker. He squeezed the Zat's trigger - somewhat awkwardly, but squeezed it all the same - and the blue strands of energy crackled around the fringes of the force field. "Again!" I shouted, ducking and scuffling out of the way in case the Zat fire went wide. The kid, although obviously unfamiliar with the weapon, nevertheless had good aim; blue sparks wrestled with bronze... and bronze lost. The force field was down, but that didn't mean Osiris was without recourse.

The young man didn't need me to tell him again; eyes full of wild excitement, he squeezed the trigger on Osiris a third time and the befuddled Goa'uld dropped like a stone.

"Man!" shouted the kid, wiping his brow with one dirty black sleeve. "Dude said three would make them disintegrate."

Starring too stupidly for several seconds too long, I wasn't sure what was more bizarre: the mere presence of this person, the fact that he had probably saved my life, or the fact that he had used the words 'dude' and 'disintegrate' in the same sentence. "Who said?" I finally asked, my voice cracking with strain.

The kid - not a kid, really, in his mid-twenties, Hispanic with dark brown eyes - gave me a vaguely incredulous look. "Murray." He held out the Zat. "Dude took Mark, said they were going to get your doctor or something, said to give this to you. Man, you gotta tell me when I can get one of those."

I yanked the Zat from his hand. Murray. Teal'c. How could Teal'c possibly be here? I raced back over to Sam, guilt rising up in my throat all over again. She was still breathing but her coloring was far too reminiscent of Thor's for my liking. From the corner of my eye, I saw the kid approach. "Shit..." he muttered.

No kidding. I looked up again and finally recognized him as one of the hooligans who'd been standing out in the oppressive morning heat, drinking sodas, when we'd arrived at Janus. Somehow the Asgaard had penetrated the dampening field and Teal'c had conscripted this boy and his friend into service. Handed him a Zat and sent him looking for us. Jesus, Teal'c. "Why're you doing this?"

The kid blinked, but he was no more surprised by my question then I was. He shrugged. "Something to do. You know you're bleeding?"

The knife wound. It was a neat, narrow cut just below my sleeve, but it was bleeding freely. I'd been able to ignore it before, but now that I'd been reminded the pain came leeching back. I grimaced. "So I am."

The kid's eyes drifted back to Sam. "She going to be okay?"

I didn't bother answering. Stupid question. Of course she was going to be okay, because if she wasn't, Ilonka--

Ilonka.

As though on cue, a harsh gagging sound came from behind the boy in black. He whirled and I caught the briefest glimpse of Ilonka, leaning over Dirae... clutching at her own throat and retching heavily. A thin trickle of blood was coming from the now-deceased Air Force General's mouth. I opened my mouth to warn the kid that he was in trouble, to call out to Ilonka for no good reason, but a familiar white blur descended on me and whisked me away before the words could take form.

Chapter 15

Power thrummed above me, beneath me, around me, a never-ending pattern of coldness and heat pulses of dark and light alternating and congealing, skipping and mixing. And somewhere, almost hidden by the frenzy, a faintly irritating pain in my back.

I didn't know what to expect when I opened my eyes... but I wasn't surprised when it was the cool, curving walls of an Asgaard ship. The room was familiar, and so was the softness under my head. I was on a sleeping bag in the same room I'd spent that first night on the ship, I finally realized, and I wasn't alone. If I turned my head slightly I could see Jack, lying on an adjacent bag. He was facing me, but his eyes were closed. He was sleeping.

And then he wasn't.

Quickly he pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes with the back of one of his hands. "You're awake," he said unnecessarily, and then: "How do you feel?"

My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with medical gauze and I wasn't sure that I could work up the saliva or the energy to reply. But I was lethargic, nothing more, and the words came eventually. "Not dead."

"Very funny." He reached out, putting his hand on some part of my body I couldn't see given my horizontal position -- probably nothing more tawdry then my leg or arm. In any case there was no sensation, and he seemed to realize it immediately. "You can't feel that?"

I tried to swallow, but there was nothing to force down my throat. "No," I said, trying to not sound disappointed that not all of my injures had been repaired. Wasn't it enough that I was here, that I was having this conversation with him? So what if I never moved under my own power again?

Yeah, right.

Jack, however, didn't seem concerned. He moved onto the edge of my bag and picked up my right hand, holding it between both of his. It was a disconcerting thing to see a limb you knew was yours being manipulated, but without feeling it actually happening. Glancing at me almost shyly, he began to rub the dead hand and forearm. "I think it's just a side-effect of the Asgaard healing technology; Davis and Daniel had the same problem but--"

"Daniel?" I said sharply, startling Jack. Daniel -- if they'd healed me, they must have taken him out of stasis. How could he be alive?

Jack looked down and sighed deeply. "I don't know how to even begin..."

"Not how," I snapped, feeling more awake and aware by the second, even if I was still paralyzed. "When. Now."

Still rubbing his hands over mine, he shrugged. "There was another ship, an Asgaard ship, on its way to Earth before we left for Janus. Thor and Jarl knew about it, but they didn't tell us. Obviously. Didn't want there to be any chance of the information getting to Osiris."

I remembered Jarl and Thor's aborted conversation before we'd left...

"What about the--"

"We will discuss that matter later."

... and I nodded, my gaze drifting from his face to my hand. There was no real tactile sensation yet, but there was pressure; I could feel his thumb pressing into my palm, firmly massaging the numb flesh. Silently, he placed that hand back on the bag and picked up my left one, repeating the motions.

"Of course, Thor figured this new ship was just coming to tow them back home. Turns out his little mutiny made a big impression on everyone back home. There hadn't been anything like it in eons... or something. About the time Dirae was rolling out the red carpet for us, this new Asgaard captain was using his infinitely-superior, er, equipment to heal Daniel."

I continued to listen silently as Jack explained and continued to rub some life back into my insensate arms and legs. The lights were dimmed, his voice was familiar and comforting, and despite my vulnerability I felt completely calm... almost tranquil. I might have drifted off to sleep if not for the story Jack had to tell.

We seriously owed the Asgaard -- that's what it came down to. The new ship's captain - Jack thought his name was Stan, but that was doubtful - had been able to recalibrate his ship's sensors to break through the dampening field surrounding D.C. The subcutaneous marker Thor had implanted on Jack weeks earlier as part of the cabin's security system also served as a tracker... something Jack was a little annoyed Thor hadn't mentioned either.

After pinpointing our location, the Asgaard had dropped Davis and Teal'c onto the sidewalk next to Janus -- there was a second field surrounding the building itself which was too dense to penetrate. The only witnesses had been two young men dressed all in black, and they had willingly believed Davis' cover story: that the brilliant flash of the transporter was actually a new technology devised by the untrustworthy U.S. government. Davis, thinking fast, had explained that he and Teal'c were saboteurs, rebels of some kind here to rescue friends held by the CIA without reason or provocation inside the Janus building. It was the perfect explanation for a couple anarchy-enamored, anti-military punks; the two men - Mark and Hector - had volunteered to help.

As for Janus, one of the best-defended buildings in D.C... "Overconfidence," explained Jack, massaging my hands again. "Same as always. They can set up dampening fields, state of the art security systems, they can train a whole platoon of guards... but they can't get it into their heads that they might have to actually USE any of it against the pathetic Earthlings."

I winced. Pins and needles were starting to awaken all over my body and every time pressure was put on my skin and muscles the pain increased. Refusing to complain - because pain was a welcome alternative to paralysis - I hissed between gritted teeth, "In other words..."

"In other words, reinforced doors and knock-out gas are crap against a really determined Jaffa with a Zat."

Once inside the four had split up. Within the building Jack's tracer had been easier to locate with a device 'Stan' had given Teal'c for just such a use. He'd sent Davis and one of the boys to search the mostly likely floors while he and the other kid had traveled on several levels deeper into the subterranean complex. It was in the very bottom-most floor, he had reported, that the Goa'uld presence finally became obvious.

Six plainclothes Jaffa - Osiris' - who had been surprised and summarily taken out of action. Gold walls. Raised hieroglyphs. Lots of burgundy. And the two most important elements: the dampening field generator, and Janet.

Although locked up in one of the Goa'uld's typically-charming cells she'd been unharmed, practically untouched; no one had wanted to mar another one of Gena Dirae's gifts to Lord Osiris, after all. The field generators had received three molecular-disturbing hits from the Zat, and Thor had been able to bring us up without incident.

Several minutes later, according to Jarl, Mark and Hector had been seen exiting Janus at a flat-out run. They'd been closely followed by two thick-necked types in olive green, but the foot chase had been short; the kids had quickly lost their pursuers in the urban jungle of the city. What they did now, Jack guessed, had a lot to do with whether or not they thought anyone would believe them... and how closely they wanted to stick to their aloof, anti-social image.

There was more to tell - a lot more - but some of it would have to come from me and I didn't want to do it here. Pleasantly surprised to realize that the pain had all but faded, I slowly pushed myself into a sitting position. "I know the Asgaard are probably going to want to talk to me, but..."

"There's a lot of things the Asgaard want to do right now," interrupted Jack. "But I told them we're on stand-down for the next twenty-four hours. Whatever they want or need to do, they can do without us until then. Besides," he added, looking almost sly, "I figured you'd want to get out of here."

I let him help me to my feet, but I walked to the transport pad under my own power. It felt wonderful. We ran into one of Thor's crew on the way there, and Jack gave him a brief report to take to his captain: "And if he so much as PAGES me in the next twenty-four hours, tell him I'll break his little pencil neck."

A few minutes later we were dropped back into Jack's living room, the very room we'd been yanked out of eons ago... it seemed. Paul had stayed up on the ship, so the cabin was dark and quiet. Dark... Puzzled, I glanced out of the nearest window -- the broken one. The sky was indeed black and star-studded. "I guess I was out of it for a while," I murmured.

Jack began wandering around, turning on lights. "Transporter lag?"

"Maybe," I said, more to myself then him, taking a seat on the coach. I found myself staring down at my clothing. I hadn't noticed before but I was still in my uniform, still in the bullet-ruined and blood-soaked blouse, although by now the viscous fluid had dried and hardened. My stomach was empty but that didn't stop it from pushing a thick wave of bile up my throat. Gagging discreetly, I began to unbutton the stained blouse, shrugging it off and rolling it into a tacky ball at the same moment Jack reentered the room. He blinked at the sight of me on his couch in skirt and bra. "Uh... I think your clothes are done," he muttered, moving into the kitchen. "Probably a little wrinkled, but..." he tossed over his shoulder.

I made a beeline for the garage. My clothes were still in the bottom of the washer and they were certainly wrinkled; they probably weren't even clean. But at least they weren't covered in blood. Standing there in the chilly garage, counting on Jack to make himself scarce for a few minutes at least, I stripped out of the skirt and the bra before pulling on the jeans and kelly-green T-shirt I'd worn here. I made a quick stop at the bathroom, where I vigorously washed my face and hands and gave my hair an uninspired brushing - vain attempts to feel a little more human, even if I didn't look it - before returning to the living room.

Jack was there, sitting in one of the armchairs with his eyes closed. Inwardly sighing, I skirted the coffee table and reclaimed my seat on the couch. After a few moments of silence I spoke up. "Listen, if you want to do this later..."

"I'm awake," he responded quickly, opening his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He looked almost as tired as I felt, and nearly as reluctant to talk. "It's just that..." He let his hand fall into his lap. "Dirae's host is dead. She came after me with a knife and I shot her." A weighty pause. "The snake went into Ilonka."

Jesus. "How?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

Jack's gaze was wavering, troubled. "I think she let it." He sighed. "That's what Dirae says, anyway, not that Goa'uld are known for being particularly truthful..."

Still I got the sense that he believed Gena Dirae in this case. Something he'd seen - and I wasn't going to ask what, not now - had led him to believe that Ilonka Waters would willingly become a Goa'uld host. I felt sick again, not from the sight of blood but from the mere thought of such delusion. "The Asgaard have her in custody?" I asked, if only to redirect the conversation.

"And Osiris. And a couple other Goa'uld, and Osiris' Jaffa... they're going to turn everyone over to the Tok'ra, let them decide where to go from here. That is... everyone except Ilonka." He shook himself. "Dirae. Whatever. They're taking her back to be interrogated."

I nodded slowly, focusing my attention on my hands. "She represents an unknown to them. Who knows what other technology these new Goa'uld might have picked up since Osiris picked THEM up? It makes sense they'd want to find out about any new threats first. Cover their asses." And they couldn't interrogate the symbiote if it wasn't in a host. Glancing up uncertainly, I asked, "When they're done..."

"They're going to extract the snake and send Ilonka back here," answered Jack, simultaneously leaning forward and pushing himself back into the chair.

I hesitated, then posed a second question. "And when they do..."

His anger was quiet, stilted, but very real. "She should be charged with treason and attempted murder," he said flatly.

Chapter 16

Sam's reaction was surprising. I hadn't expected her to jump up and exuberantly cheer my statement, but I hadn't expected her to look so uncomfortable with it either. "Something wrong?" I asked, more curtly then I'd intended.

Leaning against the armrest of the old couch, dressed in badly wrinkled clothing with her hair hanging into her eyes, Sam looked bedraggled and no less then exhausted. "Maybe you should cut her some slack," she suggested, not quite looking at me.

"'Cut her some slack'?" I echoed, incredulous. I felt like an absolute ass, yelling at her at a time like this, but my mouth - rather than my brain - was running this show. "She hated you. She tried to kill you. Did you forget that part?"

Pushing her hair back, Sam turned a surprisingly stern expression on me. "It isn't what you think. It didn't matter who I was; I could have been anybody as long as... She was trying to protect you."

I grunted. "Yeah. She told me the same thing. I didn't believe it then and I don't now."

"Well you should," was the sharp reply. "She knew about this place from the beginning. When you two were still together, and you'd disappear for days and weeks at a time... she got suspicious. She thought... she's the one who sent Duke up here. Years ago, so he could get in here and make the call that would tell her where you were."

That damn cat. It really WAS all his fault. "I guess that's what I get for not reading my phone bill," I snarled, although my malice was directed mostly at myself.

"You're assuming Ilonka didn't have the capability to erase the charge from your bill altogether. Anyway, she knew you were up here. She knew the whole time. She knew when we started working together. And she didn't tell me because she didn't trust me, and she wanted to protect you." She shook her head ruefully. "She gave me quite a tongue-lashing at Janus. She basically felt I'd undermined her efforts by dragging you there. And maybe she was right."

The idea of Ilonka going to any great lengths on my behalf was startling... and a little creepy. "She still tried to kill you," I maintained, absently rubbing the spot on my arm where the knife wound - now healed - had been. "And you can't tell me she didn't take at least a little pleasure out of it. Maybe Ilonka was trying to keep me safe," I conceded, "but first and foremost she was looking out for number one. If she really wanted to protect me she would have come to me, the SGC, somebody with this information years ago. But she wanted to stay on what she thought was the winning side."

"She wasn't necessarily wrong about that," said Sam tiredly. "Where do we go from here? We have a Foothold Situation if there ever was one. The Goa'uld are on this planet. It won't be long until they realize both their leaders are gone, and then what'll they do? We still can't stop an all-out attack."

"I know, I know." I rubbed my face again. "Maybe if you feel up to it, we'll go up a little early tomorrow... see about getting the SGC in the loop. Between the Asgaard and Dustan we might come up with something." But we weren't going to think of anything remotely helpful when we were this tired. Tired and hungry, I amended, and I made a mental note to ask Paul to do some shopping for us in the morning. "We should probably get some rest. Almost dying takes a lot out of you."

Sam nodded and stood, but I felt rooted to the chair by my very words. I could have died today, sure, but she had come a lot closer. As far as I was concerned it was Sam's sheer stubbornness and tenacity that had allowed her to hang on until the Asgaard had been able to bring us up. Nothing I had done had played any part in that... and in a way, I was indirectly responsible for her getting shot in the first place.

And it wasn't just that. Ever since she'd arrived I'd been treating her like a stranger. No, worse then that; I'd been treating her like an enemy. I could blame Thor all I wanted, I could explain for hours about issues with trust and my own undying conviction that I'd been a failure and that Sam had left Colorado because she had wanted to. The truth was that I'd held her at arm's length, not because I had honestly believed she was a threat to planetary security, but because I'd known she was a threat to my own peace of mind. She'd left, and I'd thought I could move on. She returned, and I realized all that moving on BS had been a farce.

We'd thought that things had been complicated back when chain of command issues had muddied the matters. We'd really had no idea how very complicated 'complicated' could get.

Sam hadn't moved. She was still standing, looking at me with a puzzled and slightly worried expression. "You okay?"

"Not really." It was finally sinking into me, as it hadn't these past few busy and stressful days, what a sorry excuse of a human being I had been... that definitely didn't qualify as 'okay'. "Listen, if you want me to go back up to the ship..."

I wouldn't look at her, so she sat down again. "This is your house," she said, her concern seeming to grow. "Why would I want you to leave?"

"Because..." I struggled for the right words. Here she was being so normal and honest with me, here we were having a conversation the likes of which I could barely recall, here she was seeming to have overlooked my sheer and unforgivable stupidity... while I knew without a doubt in my mind that I was undeserving of any of it. "I understand if you're still mad at me," I attempted, wincing at how trivial that sounded.

Sam immediately lowered her eyes, staring into her lap for a long moment and finally heaving a deep sigh. "You think this is about blame... forgiveness."

Well, yeah. "How can it not be?"

She looked back up, seeming even more tired but also more resolved than she had in a long time. "Because it isn't. Because I don't want it to be." I tried to interrupt, to tell her it wasn't always about what she wanted, but she raised a hand to silence me. "We've both done some really stupid things. We've both been childish and untrusting and... masochistic, to tell the truth."

"Can't disagree with that," I muttered, scrubbing a hand through my hair.

"And we've both suffered because of it," Sam continued, her voice growing softer and more compelling. "I don't want this to become a trial over who was right and who was wrong, or who acted improperly when, or who's at fault and who has to decide to forgive whom. That kind of blame game... it's never-ending. Trust me, I know. And I don't want to deal with it. I want to put this behind me as a very painful learning experience and move on with my life. I want to stop looking back and wondering what I could have done differently because it's pointless and it only leads to more second-guessing and regrets. I'm tired of regretting things. It's time for me to finally accept how things are and deal with them."

"And you can just... do that?" I asked, surprised and a little envious.

"When I compare it to the alternative, yes. And I think you can too. Because if we go with the alternative..." She shrugged, and spread her formerly clasped hands wide. "Then I won't be able to stay. And I WANT to stay."

Her sudden intensity unsteadied me. "In Minnesota?"

She smiled briefly, gently. Sadly. "With you."

"Oh."

No more intelligent words came to mind. No words at all, for that matter. Had she just said... what I thought she'd said? Had she actually just dropped what I thought she'd dropped into my lap for me and me alone to deal with? Let go of the past, Jack, she'd said. Move on, or figure you're sabotaging your own happiness.

On the other hand...

Stretching out the kinks in her newly-knit spine, Sam stood again. "I'm going to get some rest," she said mildly, edging past my chair. "We'll talk more in the morning." She brushed her hand lightly over my shoulder, and then I heard her footsteps receding into the back of the cabin.

I waited until I heard the bedroom door close, and then I pushed myself back into the recliner and groaned. Then sagged. Sighed. Closed my eyes against an onrushing headache. It was a pretty crappy way of ending things, this night of all nights, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe things would look brighter once the sun was up. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

Chapter 17

Once in the guest bedroom I stripped off my wrinkled jeans, pulled back the quilt and top sheet of the slightly-dilapidated bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. Stared into space for a few minutes. Glanced around at the dark, cobweb-cluttered corners of the room. Tried to stop thinking. Finally I laid down, staring up into the dark, cobweb-cluttered ceiling instead. At least the sheets seemed clean.

I found myself listening carefully for sounds in the cabin. Not for intruders, but for Jack, for any auditory indications that he was going to bed, too. Creaking floorboards, the gurgle of water in the pipes... but there was nothing. I couldn't blame him. I didn't expect to get any rest either; I'd needed the privacy more than anything else.

Pulling up my shirt, I lightly ran my hand across my stomach. The skin there was perfect... or at least as perfect as it had ever been. No scars, no indication whatsoever that I'd been shot - fatally, all things being equal - and somehow that seemed more miraculous then the fact that I could wiggle my toes. I wondered, with an odd sense of apprehension, if the Asgaard were going to expect some kind of payback for everything they'd done today to pull our asses out of the fire. If one day, Godfather style, they would arrive and ask of us a favor... or if, like Jack and me, they realized that the game of one-upmanship was a pointless one.

Not that the two of us were models of that particular philosophical system. Not at this point. Saying that you wanted to let go of all the guilt and all the pain was easy enough; talking about your goals was always a cinch compared to actually achieving them. And really, achieving your goals was nothing compared to FAILING to achieve them. That's what I was really afraid of... trying and failing. But what other choice did we have? What other choice did I have?

I wasn't doing this for Jack, and I wasn't doing it to be a saint, a martyr, or to somehow atone for my own immeasurable screw-ups. I was doing it for me because everything I had told him was true. I wanted to start fresh. I wanted a do-over. I wanted to stop grimacing at the past and go back to the days of looking forward, back when each sunrise was as full of hope and promise as it was fear and death. I wasn't doing this for Jack. In fact, he wasn't even a real part of the equation, I told myself vehemently. If he could put the past behind him, if he could move on with me, then all the better for the both of us. If not... it would be unfortunate, but it wouldn't stop me from doing what I had to do to make my life livable again.

Zealously reminding myself that I'd vowed to stop thinking for the night, I turned onto my side and shut my eyes tightly. If I just lay here with my eyes closed for long enough, eventually I would fall--

THUD THUD THUD

--asleep.

Groggily I raised my head from the pillow, the sand in my eyes and the sour taste in my mouth the only real indicator that I had in fact dozed off. The door was still closed, but someone was knocking on it. "Sam," came an insistent whisper from the other side, and my heart jumped into my throat.

Not receiving a response, Jack slowly opened the door even as I was sliding out of bed, pulling my pants and shoes back on. "What is it?" I demanded, my voice sleep-slurred but painfully anxious.

He stood in the doorway, and when I glanced up I could see that he was confused by my demeanor. Eventually his expression cleared and he shook his head. "It's not that," he said vaguely, gesturing for me to follow him down the hall and into the living room. He pulled a multicolored afghan from the back of the couch and shook it out, pretending not to notice as a paper-dry moth fluttered lifelessly to the floor. Throwing the knit blanket over my shoulders, he grabbed me by the wrist and began to pull me towards the door. "Come on."

Bewildered and still half-asleep, I didn't put up much of a fight. "Where are we going?"

He towed me through the front door, down the porch, and towards the wooded area behind the cabin. "For a little walk," he answered buoyantly.

Eventually the cool morning air woke me to the point where I could - under my own steam - keep up with Jack's rather ambitious pace, even though he usually remained several paces ahead of me. He didn't attempt to explain why we were making a completely impulsive trek through the summer-dried wilds of Minnesota, and I didn't even bother asking. Finally, as the trees began to thin out, Jack made a disgruntled sound. "I swear there used to be more trees around here."

"When?" I asked, pulling the afghan tighter around my bare arms.

"When I was a kid. We'd come up here with-- it was the O'Neill summer vacation spot."

Well. That could certainly explain why he'd spent several years trying to drag people up here; it must have brought back pleasant memories. Assuming they were pleasant, of course. There was an equal possibility that his family's vacations had qualified as a circle of Hell and he frequented this place as some kind of penance for past misdeeds. I could have asked, but I didn't; I just followed Jack's lead, occasionally catching up with him, sometimes drifting behind, taking in the mysterious, misty early-morning beauty of the place. Eventually I felt the ground rising beneath my feet with every step, a gentle incline that could first be felt only in my ankles, then my calves, then my knees and my thighs. The foliage thinned enough for me to see that we were approaching the apex of a small, gentle hill. Once at the top we could see the lake that we'd skirted - a dark shape shrouded by silvery fog - and a vague orange glow I could only assume came from a light left on in the cabin. I was surprised by how we'd traveled.

Standing at the top with Jack, I took a few deep breaths of the cool air. There was just something about the world in the morning; no matter where you were - Colorado or Minnesota or even Washington, D.C. - it seemed remarkably cleaner and fresher then it did at any other point during day. I glanced at the man at my side, puzzled but a little bemused by the expression on his face as he surveyed the land in front of us... as though he had never seen it before, or at least not from this angle. But I was sure he had, and that was why we were here. "What's going to happen?" I asked. I didn't need to try to keep my voice soft; everything else was so preternaturally quiet that it seemed I was incapable of speaking loudly.

Shoving his hands half into his pockets, Jack continued looking ahead. "The sun's going to rise," he said simply.

And it did. And the gray, misty pre-dawn world became something else entirely. The sky shifted from dull lavender to deep azure in what seemed like a matter of seconds, the surrounding flora cast off a worn, faded hue and burst into brilliant color, and the silver fog rolled towards us from their direction of the lake. The translucent mist moved sinuously through the trees and then pulled itself across the open space at the base of the hill, parting and continuing on behind us. Jack didn't look back, however, so I didn't either; I faced forward and watched the fog thicken and deepen until the ground was covered by an opaque blanket of it. The ground at the bottom of the incline was no longer visible and appeared - for a brief but powerful second - to no longer be there, to have vanished completely or maybe to have simply dropped out from under us.

The illusion was scientifically cheap but the swift wave of vertigo was real, and I caught my breath.

The sun continued to rise. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to. I was no more a tree-hugger than I was a martyred saint, no hypersensitive environmentalist like the man who had sold me my car, but the pure beauty and simplicity was, for the moment, too fragile to allow words.

The sun continued to rise, to warm. In time - maybe minutes, maybe an hour - most of the fog had burned off, appearing to have retreated back into the lake like a ghostly Loch Ness monster. Maybe Nessie had a cousin here in Minnesota, I thought, and the absurdity made me smile. Without thinking I glanced again at Jack and found that this time he was looking at me with a peculiar expression on his face. "What'd you think?" he asked softly, eagerly but with caution. My heart sank, realizing he no doubt expected me to 'suck the fun' out of this... but then I realized my smile had been the most important part of my answer.

"I see why you kept threatening to take me here," I said lightly, and then I sobered slightly, enough so he would take my next statement seriously. "It's wonderful. It really is."

He seemed suddenly shy, a bashful student publicly praised by the teacher, and he looked furtively from me to the lake and back again. Pushing his hands deeper into his pockets, he told me, "You're the first person I've brought up here."

It was obviously something he was uncomfortable admitting, because he immediately looked back towards the water, the muscles in his face and neck tensing. Simultaneously touched and confused, I continued staring at him, openly, frankly, trying to gain more insight than a pretty view, trying to understand why my being here was such an intense thing for him.

For him, I thought. It wasn't just that I was here, it was that I was here with him. 'What'd you think?' he had asked, and again I thought of the bashful student, timidly sharing a favorite toy with his teacher or parent or even just his friend, reticent because what he was sharing reflected upon him as a person. What we'd just seen had been so simple, so natural, yet so strangely beautiful... I could see why it appealed to Jack and why it wouldn't have had the same effect on everyone. I was glad and somewhat shocked that it had had the desired effect on me. Maybe I wasn't as jaded as I'd thought. Or maybe I was, but that could be changed.

That's what I'd been obsessing over, after all: the desire, the urgent need for change. I'd assumed that I could do it myself, that it was a matter of willpower and personal strength, but in the light of day that kind of thinking seemed not only flimsy but downright egotistical. I couldn't help myself any more than Jack and I had been able to help ourselves in Janus. We'd needed outside help then and I hadn't felt badly about that because I consciously knew that there was nothing shameful about needed assistance in a combat situation. The same applied here, with us. It had to.

Standing on that sun-drenched hill, a strange sense of calm settled over me as I accepted the obvious and the inevitable: no one can save themselves. Maybe it was a flaw in the species, or maybe it was humanity's greatest strengths, but either way it was a simple, natural, strange but beautiful truth: we can't save ourselves, but we can save each other.

Jack was, after all, a part of the equation. So were Daniel, Teal'c, Janet, Cassie, Paul. So were the Asgaard. We were each other's salvation: nothing more, nothing less. Consciously or otherwise, Jack had already taken a step down that road, had already made the first overtures simply by bringing me here, by sharing something personal, something intimate with me... and me alone. I'd been touched by the gesture, but now I was moved by the risk he had taken; if I had been unimpressed with the mist, the sun and the cool breeze, even if I hadn't said it aloud he would have known. And this place would have lost something for him, some of the... magic would have burned away like the fog. He'd been vulnerable, he'd surrendered control, and I understood that sacrifice and I - simply, naturally, strangely and beautifully - loved him for it.

I loved him. Wow. I felt my gaze turn inward for a moment, felt my insides seize painfully and then relax. I still loved him. I'd said it in the car on the way to Janus, but I hadn't been any more honest or genuine then than I had earlier when I'd waltzed through his house in a towel. Or when I'd used his first name at every opportunity, just to see him wince. I'd been testing him, teasing him, all the while successfully convincing myself that I was a blameless pawn, fate's scapegoat. Well I was being honest now. And genuine. I really did love him. And I was going to prove that by not telling him.

Eventually we started walking back towards the cabin, slower this time and side by side except for when the landscape forced us apart. Even then the separation was brief. He didn't say a word. Neither did I, and for once it wasn't because my mind was racing too wildly to permit speech. For once, my mind was blissfully blank.

Arriving back at the cabin, we found that a visitor had left us a present... not Santa Claus come down the chimney, but close enough. On the kitchen table was a large paper bag from Raley's Supermarket, and next to it a note scrawled on the back of the receipt: 'Thought you might be hungry. Milk and beer in the fridge. Daniel and Frasier have gone to talk to Dustan. Thor says 18 hours. See you then. Have fun. Paul'.

Jack rolled his eyes. "'Have fun'?" I asked incredulously, and then I laughed out loud as I saw the contents of the bag: a variety of snack and junk foods, a half-dozen Styrofoam cups of Ramen noodles... and a large box of Lucky Charms.

"Inside joke?" asked Jack lightly.

Setting about locating the cupboard where Jack kept his dishes - successful on the second try - I just smiled. "I like the marshmallows." Jack, who'd never had a problem with eating high-sugar kids' cereal before, shrugged, grabbed two spoons from the drainer and retrieved the milk. We sat down at the kitchen table together and talked about stupid things: baseball, the upcoming Seinfeld spin-off, Daniel's new haircut. We didn't talk about Thor, or Dustan, or the precious 18 hours of freedom ticking away, or having fun. It was enough just having life.

In no time, between the two of us, we'd polished off the box. Despite the inescapable sugar rush I was surprised to note that my eyes felt hot and grainy. Jack looked every bit as fatigued as I imagined I did, and I wondered if he'd gotten any sleep at all.

We took turns in the bathroom, scraping marshmallow remnants off our teeth and tongue and showering away the stink of the Goa'uld facility. Some blood had dried on my back and I started, then shuddered, watching it swirling down the drain. By the time I left the bathroom Jack had finished picking up in the kitchen and was drifting down the hallway towards what I assumed was his bedroom. "I'm gonna..." he gestured behind himself, opening the door.

So he hadn't slept. I nodded, nudging open the door of the guest room. "Me too," I said, figuring that a couple extra hours couldn't hurt, not considering what we likely would be facing in the days and weeks and months to come.

"17 hours," said Jack wryly, and then he slipped into his room.

Chapter 18

The next time I opened my eyes, the clock on the bedside table informed me in bold red numbers that 17 hours was now 12 hours. It was a little after noon, not that that was obvious in my bedroom. The back of the cabin was usually cool, and the window not only faced south-east but was also shrouded by foliage that had sprung up too near the house for the forest service's liking. Not that they cared these days. These days, anyone who lived outside 'civilization' was abnormal and probably developmentally challenged and deserved to be toasted by wildfire if they were too stupid to cut back those perilous trees.

Sighing, I closed my eyes, tried to forget about the time and go back to sleep... when I realized that I wasn't alone in the room.

Scratch that. I wasn't alone in my BED. The mattress was old and prone to fold at the slightest pressure, but even without that tell-tale sign I would have known. Slowly, carefully, I rolled from my side onto my back.

I wasn't exactly surprised to see Sam, but I wasn't exactly NOT surprised, either. After all, she was the only person who could possibly BE here - the alternatives were far too creepy to even consider, especially when I was only dressed in a T-shirt and boxers - but her presence hadn't been expected.

Her breathing was slow and even. She appeared to be fast asleep, but she seemed to sense my attention as an actual, substantial weight and blinked open her eyes only a few seconds later. The bed was only a double; she was close and suddenly shy. Or maybe not shy. Maybe... sly. "I hope you don't mind," she said, searching my face, perhaps for an indication that I DID mind... or perhaps for something completely different.

Rolling onto my other side, facing her now, I searched for a response that would sound neither rude nor erotic. None came to mind and, more comfortable with the former then the latter, I quirked my lips and asked, "Was there something wrong with your bed?" Yeah. Way to go, Romeo.

Sam smiled. Yeah, definitely sly. Verging on coy. "You weren't in it," she answered, and then looked pleasantly shocked at her own boldness. She wasn't the only one.

"Well, you never invited me," I reminded her, as though invading a bed sans invitation was something I was incapable of imagining. And, where Sam was considered, I kind of was.

Rolling onto her side now, smiling winning at me, she moved from coy to downright seductive. "Then consider this your standing invitation," said Sam, and then she kissed me, breezing right through seductive, completely skipping over provocative and going straight for the erotic that had eluded me earlier. Not now, though, no way. The kiss was a sudden jolt of lightning, animating me like Frankenstein's monster, stimulating my entire body... some parts more than others. For a while my brain was reduced to processing tiny flashes of information: pushing my hand through her hair... her nails gently scratching my back through the T-shirt... a sudden awkwardness as our bare legs bumped and banged into each other before finally sliding together, entwined. And then, of course, there was her mouth. Warm. Eager. Open. All the invitation I needed. Almost.

With every last ounce of willpower I broke the kiss; I wasn't strong enough to pull away altogether, but I did manage to slide my mouth down to the collar of her shirt. It was the only thing she was wearing... besides her panties, of course, but I was trying to keep my thoughts above her waist for the time being if only for the sake of my willpower. My hands on her arms, my lips against her neck, I also tried to forget about certain above-waist features long enough to mumble my question: "Tell me this isn't going to be like last time." At least, those were the words in my mind. I couldn't vouch for how they actually sounded because there was too much blood rushing in my ears for me to hear properly.

Last time: a truly pathetic display of the power of hormones and idiocy, a lame but weirdly sexy and also aborted make-out session against my washing machine. Aborted being the key word. Aborted thanks to the spastic antics of said washing machine, and also a sudden rise of, um, conscience. If this was just another timely mistake - or at least if Sam thought it was - I wanted to know now so that we could stop now, because it would probably take me the rest of our remaining hours to make myself publicly presentable.

But Sam didn't seem fazed by the question. I had the strangest feeling that she'd expected it, that she was in control now, utterly, of me, the situation... of herself. Her hands moved over parts of my body that hadn't been touched since... well, in a long time, and she bared her neck to me encouragingly. "Not like last time," she promised breathlessly. I hesitated, not completely convinced even though I wanted very badly to be, and she made a little sound of impatience. Shaking off my grasp, she grabbed a hold of my wrists and purposefully placed my hands on her waist. Underneath the shirt, which had begun to ride up. "Jack," she said firmly.

That was all the invitation I needed. And 'Jack' was the only thing she said for a time. A long time.

Afterwards - I couldn't see what time it was because the clock had been knocked off the nightstand - we lay side by side... and laughed. It was soft, almost gentle, but it was laughter all the same. I'd once heard that insanity was the only response to an insane word, and in a way that was perfectly logical, but in retrospect I knew I'd pick great sex and a good laugh over dementia any day of the week. There was something both cleansing and invigorating about the first two, while the last was just a cheap escape. "So what brought that on?" I asked, once I felt somewhat in control of myself again.

I was staring up at the ceiling, but I could hear Sam's smile in her voice. A very, very satisfied smile, I was pleased to note. "We needed it," she said contentedly.

"Uh-huh," I said slowly, recognizing the truth in what she said but not wanting to deal in truths right now. I paused, as though deep in consideration, and then announced thoughtfully, "I think we need more of it."

She laughed again - it was almost a giggle - and playfully slapped my bare chest with the back of her hand. "You think you're still a young man?" she teased.

I glanced at her as she tucked one arm behind her head. "Do YOU think I am?"

"I didn't say that being a young man was a good thing," Sam answered, scrutinizing me suggestively. Eventually her expression shifted from jovial to solemn, then solemn to tender. "I think I'll keep you like you are," she said finally, and her eyes seemed to be the brightest things in the dim room.

I almost asked her if - and indeed, why - she wanted to keep me with my many faults intact, with memories of distrusting her and even resenting her intact... but then I remembered that we were moving on. Or at least we were trying to. "I appreciate that," I replied, blindly groping for and finding her free hand, squeezing it, hoping she understood the statement on more than one level.

She squeezed back.

Silence descended... or tried to. The sounds of nature outside the window, the sounds of our own breathing, even the sounds of hearts beating overpowered silence and banished it to another part of the house.

Epilogue

"We've been through this."

"What?"

I adjusted the microphone/earpiece set and raised my voice. "I said, Daniel, we've been through this. I'm not having another one stay here."

On the other end of the line, on Thor's ship, Daniel sighed so explosively I almost expected to feel a puff of breath in my ear. "Jack, she's only fourteen."

"Yeah, I know," I said, pacing my living room with my arms crossed. "She's a teenager. They're demons."

"I heard that!" Cassie's voice was tiny but clearly recognizable, and I scowled at no one in particular.

"Daniel, do you have me on speakerphone?"

"Anyway," he rushed on, ignoring me, "Her parents are still hosts, she doesn't have anyone to stay with... and you know the kids need more attention anyway. They need to know they're going to be safe, Jack, we can't just drop them in some orphanage and expect them to be able to act like everything's normal."

"You've got space," I countered, walking into the guest bedroom and giving it a quick look-over.

"No... the Moore twins are still staying with me. I can't expect a fourteen year old girl to room with two eight year old boys. That's cruel and unusual punishment." He paused briefly, then rushed on. "I know you and Sam like your privacy..."

"Oh, shut up, Daniel," I said impassively, entering the living room again, still stalking like I expected someone to be impressed with the caveman routine. But it was to no avail; the only other living creature here was a furry, worthless feline thing currently perched on the back of the couch.

"How's six-o-clock sound?" said Daniel perkily. He just loved an audience.

"Seven," I shot back, just to be contrary.

"See you at six!" was the triumphant reply. "By the way, Sam's on her way home but she said she was going to drop off at the road. Bye!" And he disconnected before I could tell him... well, much of anything.

Shaking my head, I pulled off the headset and replaced it with my baseball cap; the autumn afternoon sun was usually fierce today. On my way to the door I glanced, again, at Duke. The snake had been taken out of him, of course, probably sent wherever they'd sent Ilonka and Dirae. Sam had talked me into keeping the cat, and in truth he'd become a habit. A bad one. I wasn't a cat person, not by a long shot, and Duke just... creeped me out. I couldn't help remembering how much Tok'ra knowledge Sam had retained after Jolinar. So how much of the Goa'uld's intelligence was still flitting around Duke's tiny kitty brain? The ability to use a phone, maybe? The ability to understand human speech, maybe? Sometimes I noticed him looking at me, watching me so directly, and I wondered.

"Nothing long-distance," I told him, and stepped out into the sunshine.

The stroll down Abydos Way wasn't unpleasant but I walked quickly, curious as to why Sam wouldn't just drop herself in the cabin like she usually did. We - she and I, plus Daniel, Frasier, Cass and of course Davis - were all equipped with tracers and wired into The Carter's computer now, which meant we could use the transporter system independently. It had been Thor's idea, and he'd first approached Sam with it. His way of saying sorry, I supposed. I glanced up automatically, as though I could see the Asgaard ship with my naked eye in broad daylight. Thor had been here for months now, and likely wouldn't be leaving any time soon. His superiors had placed him in command of the mission to 'eradicate the Goa'uld presence from Earth', no doubt expecting that being anchored in a relatively dull harbor indefinitely would give Thor pause the next time he wanted to steal a brand-new spaceship. None of us had any plans to tell Stan and the other Asgaard that Thor was perfectly happy in his role as teeny gray guardian angel to six billion people.

After a while I thought I'd missed Sam, that she'd transported in behind me, and then I saw her sitting on the elevated edge of the road, against a tree, near one of the lasers. She smiled knowingly at me. "We're going to have a boarder tonight," I said quickly, before she got any ideas. "Teenage girl from Nebraska. We think her parents are in L.A."

Sam's smile dimmed, and she nodded. The children were the hardest for most of us. "We had another kid today, too," she said, standing as I approached. "Thankfully we were able to save his dad as well."

By 'save', she of course meant that she'd been able to use borrowed Tok'ra technology to extract from the man - and his son - a pair of nasty, gross, seriously-unhappy, naquada-less Goa'uld symbiotes. That was what she did now, along with Davis and twenty-seven airmen and Marines from the SGC, as well as almost fifteen civilians we'd saved in the past months using Osiris' lists. Daniel, Cass and I were backup, and Frasier was on call whenever we needed her. They were very quiet, very subtle extractions, over fifty so far. And every soul had kept their promise not to take the story of the Goa'uld invasion past the steadily-growing circle of survivors. There was something about being rescued from life as a host that just made people feel cooperative. They listened to what we told them, and they agreed about the panic the news could cause. "So far," we'd say, "the Goa'uld haven't landed on a new leader. They're famous for their power struggles and Osiris and Dirae's capture left a big hole for them to fight over. But attack them directly, and they'll unite, and a lot more people will go through what you did... or worse."

Actually, that wasn't entirely true. There were no new symbiotes being shipped in... but there were still several thousand running amuck on Earth. And they could still cause a lot of damage if they tried. They weren't trying now, because they were scared and confused, but that could change at any time.

"They've got family in Canada," Sam continued, still speaking of the boy and his father. "They'll stay there for now... and yes, they promised," she said, anticipating my question. "I told them we'd check in in a week."

"The mom?"

Sam shook her head regretfully. "We're not sure yet. There's a sister, too." She sighed and looked at the ground. "They were in a theater when it happened. Just decided to go to the movies as a family and..." She trailed off. I reached over, put a hand on her shoulder, letting her know that I was here if she needed more.

It only took a minute for her to compose herself, however, and when she looked back up she seemed almost cheerful again. "Anyway... they had something for you."

I blinked, letting my hand drop back down. "For me?"

"Well..." She smiled. "I told them about you."

"And what exactly did you tell them?" I asked, faking suspicion.

In answer, Sam put her lips together and let out a shrill whistle. From behind her, in the trees on the shoulder, came a frenzied crashing... and then a huge animal was suddenly there, leaping down into the road with us. For a second, I cursed myself for not bringing my gun. And then I realized that the huge animal was grinning exuberantly, showing more tongue then teeth, wagging its tail and dancing between our legs in a profoundly non-threatening manner. It was a massive, positively thrilled golden retriever.

"His name is Prince," said Sam as I leaned over to pet the dog. Prince immediately demanded a belly rub, proving to all parties present that he was indeed a male. "He's three and a half. Left to fend for himself for almost three weeks after his family was taken, but he was still in the backyard when we went back to their house to pack."

"How'd he manage that?" I asked, kneeling on the ground now and giving Prince a good rubdown. The retriever was in immediate puppy bliss.

"The Trevors have a pool," Sam answered, kneeling down next to me. "And they keep the pet food in an outside shed... which Prince here had no qualms about breaking into." The dog's large ears perked up at the sound of his own name. "Anyway, Mr. Trevor was worried about taking him with them... if anything else happened to them he said, and well... I thought you could use the company. And Duke needs someone to keep him in line."

She fell silent, watching me lavish attention on the poor abandoned animal, and when I glanced over at Sam she had her eyebrows raised expectantly. "Jealous?" I asked, leering wickedly.

"Hardly." She stood, pulling the cap off my head and placing it on her own. "You want to keep him?"

"Are you kidding?" I rose to my feet as well. Prince sprang up, looked bereft for a few minutes, and then went back to being mindlessly happy. We began the walk back to the house and he was careful to keep us in sight. "Thanks," I added, moving close enough to take her hand. "I'll tell Cass and Jarl to keep a close eye out for any Trevors."

"Thanks," she echoed, pulling away after a moment and linking her arm with mine instead. After a moment her arm had slipped around me, and mine around her. Prince trotted nearby. We walked.

The sun was still hot. The lake was still fishless. The world was still in need of saving. But this spot - and the future - suddenly looked brighter and more beautiful than ever.