DISCLAIMER: I only borrowed them for a while. MGM and whoever can
have them back whenever they want.
SERIES: The tenth in a series of vignettes from those close to Sam/Janet.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author
Outside Looking In:
Daniel Jackson
By Celievamp
I haven't had any `real' family for a long time. I was an only child, my parents died when I was small in a terrible accident which I unfortunately witnessed, my grandfather could not take me in and I went into foster care. I dealt with it. It made me the person that I am. Then I discovered the secret of the Stargate, met Jack O'Neill and went to Abydos. I gained a beautiful wife, brothers, a father, an extended family.
Apophis destroyed that. I came back to Earth alone. I started again. The SGC became my family, particularly SG1. We were so much more than a team. Jack O'Neill and Teal'c were my brothers, Sam Carter and Janet Fraiser my sisters. General George Hammond became like a father to me and Cassie a favourite niece.
I don't know when I realised that Sam and Janet were more than friends. A couple of months after we rescued Cassie I think I saw that the possibility was there. A close easy friendship and an unspoken attraction had developed into something more as they shared the responsibility for bringing up Cassie. They were a couple, lovers. Teal'c figured it out before I did. Probably before they did. Nothing escapes him. Jack… Jack sometimes sees only what he wants to see. Especially where Sam Carter is concerned.
I was just happy that Sam was happy. I liked Janet. If things had been different – yeah, I might have wanted more of a relationship with her. But by the time I figured that out and was free to do something about it she was with Sam and you could see that she had everything she had ever wanted out of life: a fulfilling, exciting career, a daughter, a woman who loved her.
I know they could both get into a lot of trouble if certain people found out about them. I'm pretty sure the General knows but as long as they don't do anything to draw attention to it he's happy to ignore it. This is why I don't understand the military's problem with gays. They're both better people for it. More relaxed, less driven. Doesn't mean that either of them have slackened off their workload any. Sam's less fatalistic than she was: she has something to go home for now. I worried in the early days that I had two death or glory merchants to handle – maybe three if you include Teal'c's interpretation of the Jaffa honour code. And Janet has a safety valve. She has someone she can rely on, someone to hold on to when the dichotomy between military procedure and medical ethics is too much for her to take. Someone to reassure her that the failure was not hers when she loses someone she thought she should have saved.
Before I got my memory back I asked Sam if we had ever been involved. I've never seen anyone backpedal so fast. It did make me wonder for a moment or two what kind of person I had been before I ascended, whether I had ever hurt her. I know I did, once. I know I was suffering from sarcophagus withdrawal at the time but I would do anything to take back what I said to her. And then I realised that I had hurt her terribly. I had died. And I remembered those moments before I died, how she cried, how she told me that she loved me and hated herself for waiting so long to tell me. I remember how Janet had come in and comforted her. How hard Janet had fought to save me, still arguing, still fighting when Jack told her to let me go. My death hurt them both so much.
I don't know if it made them stronger. Maybe it just made them draw on each other even more. We had begun to believe we were charmed, invincible, I think. We had beaten the odds too many times. I mean, looking back, I don't even know what the hell I was doing in that room. I'm not that kind of scientist. It was much more Sam's field. But she could see that Jack hadn't exactly hit it off with the locals and was off doing damage limitation to ensure we got some of this naquadriah to study. And damn it I wanted to get my point across. For once I wanted to argue for the option that didn't involve anyone getting killed.
Maybe that was the good that came of it. I died and Sam did not. I have no one to mourn me – not as a lover. I don't mean to belittle in any way what Jack and Sam, Teal'c and Janet and even Cassie and General Hammond went through when I died. But Sam's death would have destroyed Cassie and Janet. And it would have been so hard for the rest of us as well.
The End