Title: "Perfect Future"

Rating: PG-13

Classification: SJ UST/Romance

Season: Season 8

Spoilers: Up through New Order part II.

Summary: Sam didn't believe the vision of her future Fifth created. Just what would she believe?

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and places are the property of MGM, World Gekko Corp and Double Secret Productions. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment, not monetary purposes, and no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. Previously unrecognized characters and places, and this story, are copyrighted to the author. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Author's Notes:

Muse has had this idea rattling around for a bit. It has changed direction several times, but would never morph into anything solid until New Order. Then it all made perfect sense. Since I have been on vacation a lot, Muse had decided she should get some time off too and refuses to work on our nice angsty fic, so this is sort of like her summer beach book.

This story assumes some time lags in the last part of New Order. I'm assuming Weir wasn't packing her desk the instant Jack returned, that he took more than a day to make his decision and that the actual ceremony at the end was several weeks after they returned.

In the days following their return from their latest adventures everyone was watching both O'Neill and Carter closely for any signs that they were having difficulty coping. O'Neill had been close to death after saving the planet, and who knew what he had experienced in stasis. Carter had been tortured. There was valid cause for concern. O'Neill quickly put everyone's minds to rest. He was obviously back to his old self, and Dr. Weir was convinced enough of that fact that she agreed with the President and Joint Chiefs that he should be offered the opportunity to head up the SGC when she took on her new assignment

Carter was a different story entirely. She was ordered to mandatory counseling and after three seasons in the last week she was still looking tired. But she swore she was ok, just having trouble getting a good night's sleep. Everyone assumed she was having nightmares, it would certainly be understandable. In some ways she thought she would prefer that to the dreams she was actually experiencing. Every night she dreamed a different future for herself, and would awaken at the point where the events just didn't ring true and lay there for the rest of the night unable to get back to sleep. It was like she was trapped in constant variations of what Fifth had tried to get her to believe was reality.

To date they had all been imperfect futures. Like the one Fifth had created, they had each rang false. In Fifth's version she had been suffering from stress. Well that was just wrong. Sam didn't suffer from stress, she plowed her way through it. Jolinar was the only time she could ever remember actually being in danger of going over the edge. After she'd survived that she figured she could make it through anything. And she certainly wouldn't leave the SGC. She would need Daniel and Teal'c and the Colonel to get through. Nope any future that didn't include them just wasn't right.

McKenzie was fascinated if a bit stumped by her dreams. He was looking for signs of Post Traumatic Stress and these dreams didn't seem to fit the norm. What he had overlooked was the fact that Fifth had been messing with her mind, and in the process had stimulated the unused portions of Sam's brain. And while the brain activity was slowly returning to normal it was currently allowing her to experience extremely vivid dreams that were followed logical progressions to create possible futures for her. Futures that she dismissed as not being the one she wanted, without even realizing that that was what she was doing.

Inevitably, one night twelve days after they had returned, she saw the perfect future. The one that fit, that gave her a life she wanted. And when that happened, Sam Carter didn't wake up.

When she didn't show up for work the next day a concerned Dr. Weir sent her teammates over to investigate. When they got no answer at her house, Teal'c used his key to let them in. They found her in bed, sound asleep, but they couldn't wake her. It was a very panicked Daniel who called the SGC and requested a medical team. It was another two hours before they had arrived, examined Sam, whisked her into a borrowed ambulance sent over by the Academy Hospital, and got her back to the SGC infirmary. Through it all she never showed any signs of regaining consciousness.

Tests were taken, a neurologist called in, McKenzie was consulted, and the male members of SG1 went quietly crazy waiting for answers. Finally the next morning, after Sam had been out for more than 36 hours, they were called to the briefing room for an update. Dr. Sanford the neurologist started out by bringing up Carter's brain scans and pointing out the newly active areas. McKenzie told them about the dreams that now looked like they might have actually been visions of a sort. Daniel asked pertinent questions, Teal'c listened intently and Jack just got more and more frustrated.

"Ok, enough!" he finally demanded. "In simple English, what the hell is the matter with Carter?"

The doctors all looked at him for a stunned moment, and then Dr. Brightman the new CMO began to explain.

"We think she has been having visions of possible futures in her dreams," she said, feeling really strange even voicing such an opinion. She was new to the SGC and hadn't seen enough strange things for this not to seem, well, weird.

"So why isn't she waking up this time?" Jack asked getting to the point.

There was silence. For all their postulating, the three doctors hadn't been able to come up with an answer for that one yet. Luckily one of the non-medical doctors in the room had many years experience with the strange and unpredictable goings on at the SGC and he did have a good theory.

"Maybe," Daniel suggested, "she finally found a future she liked."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow, but so did everyone else at the table as they considered that.

"Dr. McKenzie, you said that Sam always felt as if the events in her dreams were off, that they couldn't be happening because they weren't right, and she would know it wasn't real and wake up," Daniel pointed out.

"Yes, she said sometimes it felt like she was fighting her way out of the dream back to reality," McKenzie said nodding, beginning to buy into what Daniel was suggesting.

"So if it didn't seem off, if the future she was envisioning was perfect, she would have no reason to fight her way out of it," Daniel stressed.

There was quite a bit of discussion at this point. Dr. Weir let the doctors discuss the possibility for a few minutes and then interrupted herself. "People," she barked rapping on the table for good measure. Once they had quieted down she continued. "While this is all very interesting, the crux of the matter is how do we wake the Major up?"

Once again they were silent as they contemplated the answer. This time it was Dr. McKenzie who came up with the solution.

"She said that in the realities that she wasn't around the SGC she always knew instantly that it was wrong because she would never totally cut herself off from everyone here. She would stay in touch with Dr. Jackson, Teal'c and the Colonel. So in this dream at least one of them must be around. Maybe it's as simple as one of them asking her to wake up."

"We tried that at her house," Jack said with a sigh.

Daniel frowned. "No, I tried, Teal'c tried. You didn't," he pointed out.

Six sets of eyes turned towards him and Jack O'Neill found that it took everything in him not to turn beat red. He resorted to his standard comeback. "What?" he demanded.

"Maybe you just need to ask her to wake up," Daniel repeated. "If you are part of her vision, it might just work."

After an uncomfortable moment Jack sighed. "Oh. For crying out loud let's get this over with," he said jumping to his feet and leading the entourage up to the infirmary.

Once they were all down hovering around Sam's bed, Jack was clueless what to do. Finally he reached out and gave her shoulder a shove and called out, "Carter, wake up. We need you to wake up Major," he spoke firmly.

Her only reaction was a slight frown.

"Jack, it's her future, maybe she's not a major. Drop the rank," Daniel suggested.

That made sense. He tried again a bit louder and firmer on the shoulder shake. "Carter, wake up!"

The frown on her face grew.

"Perhaps you should try calling her Samantha," Teal'c quietly suggested.

"I would never call her Samantha," Jack protested. He raked a hand through his hair. He knew what the Jaffa was getting at, but if he was going to give this a valid try he didn't particularly want an audience.

"Maybe we should call Shanahan," Jack suggested.

"Keep trying Jack," Daniel told him, recognizing that the man was stalling.

To Jack's surprise Dr. Weir came to his rescue. "Maybe the rest of us should leave. Colonel O'Neill can call Dr. Brightman if she is needed. We are probably just confusing matters with our chatter," she said, ushering the rest of the group out.

Then Jack was alone. It didn't make it any easier. He spent a minute pouring himself some water, then burned another minute up getting a chair to sit in and pulling it up to Sam's bedside. Finally he took her hand in his, took a deep breath and imagined his perfect future. He leaned forward so that he could whisper in her ear.

"Sam, it's time to wake up," he told her in a soft sing-songy voice.

The frown left her face, and he saw a smile form in its place.

"Come on Sam, time to get up," he encouraged, running his free hand down her cheek.

To his surprise and relief she murmured in her sleep. "Five more minutes, Jack."

"You're out of time Sammy. You have to wake up now," he told her.

His heart almost leaped out of his chest when those blue eyes blinked open and she gave him a blurry grin.

"Ok, I'm awake," she assured him. Then her eyes opened wide as she realized she was in the infirmary. "Jack what the hell is going on? How did I get here?"

"Sam, I'm going to get the Doc in here, and then we can explain everything, ok?" Jack asked gently.

She nodded, still looking confused. Jack moved quickly to the door, sure that the group hadn't gone far. Sure enough they were all gathered in the corridor.

"She's awake, and confused," Jack told them. Dr. Brightman immediately rushed inside. Jack stopped the rest of them. "One person is probably enough for her to deal with at the moment," he advised. "I'll be back out in a minute."

There was no way he was going to let Carter deal with this on her own, nor did he want a lot of witnesses to anything she might say in her confusion. But he should have known that Carter would be way ahead of him already. By the time they made it back to her bedside she just looked up with tears in her eyes.

"It was another dream wasn't it," she whispered.

Jack nodded. The look of desolation she was quickly masking was painful to observe. He stood by her side as the doctor took her blood pressure, and ran a couple of quick tests. He watched as minute by minute she composed herself. By the time the doctor declared that there were no immediate concerns, and they let the rest of the group in, no one would ever know how much it was costing her to act normally except for the two people who had witnessed that moment.

Daniel broke the ice. "Sam it's good to see you awake. That must have been some dream."

Jack watched with pride as she took the comment in stride. "It was. It was the future and the battle with the Goa'uld was pretty much over," she told them. Then she cracked a rueful smile. "And you were there, and you, and you," she commented pointing to each of her teammates.

"Well it's good to have you back Dorothy," Jack assured her.

"Thank you, Sir," she told him.

"I'll be expecting to see you this afternoon, Major," Dr. McKenzie informed her. "We will have a lot to discuss."

Jack saw a momentary flicker of panic cross her face, before she settled into a determined smile.

"Of course, Doctor," she agreed.

But somehow Jack knew that she should never tell anyone exactly what had been in that dream.

She told McKenzie the bare bones basics. It was three or four years in the future, a bold attack against Ba'al and the System Lords that had aligned themselves with him had pretty much eliminated the Goa'uld threat. She was married, and still working at the SGC. She pretended not to remember a lot of the little details, she hadn't remembered every bit of the other dreams so it didn't seem odd. In truth most of it was burned into her memory as if she had actually lived it.

It wasn't a perfect future, but it was darn close. She was no longer in the airforce, having been injured on a mission and gotten a medical discharge. Strangely, the events of the injury were the only fuzzy part. She just knew that she walked with a limp. She was married to Jack, and they had a daughter and another baby on the way. She had been hired back at the SGC as a civilian. Actually she remembered that part well. Jack had taken the promotion to General and was running the base, so when she was recovered enough to start back to work President Hayes had ordered him to see to it that she was re-hired. Jack had stammered out that there might be a conflict of interest. The President had laughed and said Hammond owed him $100, and to get their Stargate expert back on the job pronto. Then he'd told Jack he expected to be invited to the wedding.

And he had been.

With neither of them wanting to waste any time she'd gotten pregnant three months after they were married, and again when their daughter was twenty months old. Life with Jack O'Neill wasn't all a bed of roses. The man was stubborn and cranky and set in his ways. He was also totally in love with her, and showed her in a hundred little ways, which more than made up for everything else. It was future that was just right.

Now all she had to do was figure out a way to make it happen.

She started by breaking up with Pete. He was stunned, but she was firm. She would always think that he was a pretty special person, but she had come to realize that he wasn't the person she wanted to share the rest of her life with, and she felt it was time to move on. After all she assured herself, he had been prominently featured in six of her dreams and none of them had felt anywhere near as right as the one where she was with Jack O'Neill.

Her next step was to figure out what to do about her career. In her vision she'd had no choice, but voluntarily giving up something she had worked so long for was a hard decision. She held on tight to her vision of a perfect future and started to make plans. Despite the President's actions in her dream, she couldn't be sure that she would be hired back at the SGC if she and the Colonel, or General rather, got together. There would be a conflict interest. She thought long and hard about her options and then set up an appointment to meet with General Kerrigan. A teaching spot at the Academy was plan B.

In the mean time the visions ceased, follow up scans showed her brain activity was almost back to normal, and General O'Neill had accepted his new post as the head of the SGC. To Sam's surprise she was promoted to Lt. Colonel, giving her slight pause as to whether she should go ahead with her resignation or not. Her meeting with Kerrigan got postponed when he was called to Washington, so she decided not to over think the whole thing until they could get together. She and Teal'c and Daniel went out on a couple of short missions, and Sam enjoyed her time commanding SG1.

She met with Kerrigan on a Tuesday. As expected he was thrilled at even the possibility of getting her to teach at the Academy. With that assurance, she typed up her resignation and prepared to hand it in. However before she had a chance to do so, she was informed that SG1 was needed to take some new recruits through the gate, and when she saw the names on the files she had been handed she knew she had a whole new decision to make.

She recognized two of the names. One of the recruits, a young botanist, would discover a plant on one of her future missions that would prove to be the cure for several types of cancer. Sam's science team would work closely with her doing the analysis and testing. The other was to play a pivotal role in the attack on Ba'al that would bring down the System Lords. She had a strange feeling she shouldn't skip this mission.

It was only a day, and she could always hand in her resignation when she returned.

When the attack came, time seemed to slow down to a standstill for Sam. She had spotted movement in the trees and almost simultaneously noticed the cliff and position of the two recruits under it. She just had time to yell out a warning about the impending attack and take two steps forward before the staff blast came out of nowhere, hitting the rock face and sending several large chunks raining down. The two steps was just enough for her to get there in time to push the two out of the way. It was not enough of an advantage to get herself clear. She felt the incredible pain even as she tried to see what was going on with the battle behind her. As her vision narrowed to black she had only two thoughts.

She hoped that the rest of the team was safe, and she bet she was going to walk with a limp.

The next thing she knew she was awakening to the muted beeps and whirring sounds of the infirmary and to hushed voices talking by the side of her bed.

"She going to be devastated," Daniel was saying.

"Indeed," Teal'c replied.

Dr. Brightman was telling them she was waking up and Jack shooed them out. "I'll tell her the news. You guys take a break. Come back in half an hour, ok?" he suggested.

She waited a couple of minutes to gather her strength before she opened her eyes to meet a pair of very concerned brown ones watching over her. The love that was on display there (if only for a moment before he realized her eyes were open) gave her courage, and she knew she could handle anything that was coming.

"Hey," she whispered hoarsely.

He automatically reached to get her water and waited for her to take a few sips.

"Better?" he asked.

Sam nodded. "Did everyone else make it back ok?"

"They are all safe and sound thanks to you, Carter," Jack informed her.

"Good," she sighed in relief.

"Carter," he started, then hesitated. He hated having to do this.

"It's ok, Sir. How bad is it?" Sam asked and he remembered just whom he was dealing with.

"It's bad Carter. Your left leg is totally crushed. We put a call out to the Tok'ra, but there hasn't been any reply. Dr. Brightman said that with a lot of work you will be able to walk, but you'll never be 100%," he informed her.

In her heart she'd known that, but it still hurt to hear. She tried to tell herself that she had been going to resign anyway, but still ended up closing her eyes to ward off tears. A sudden vision of her future as she had dreamed it flashed before her eyes, and she found herself thinking that maybe you couldn't force your perfect future, you had to let it unfold naturally. Maybe this was the way it was supposed to happen, so that Lt. Chan could go on to cure cancer, and Lt. Deters could help bring down Ba'al, and she could have her happily ever after with Jack and 2.5 kids, and a team of science geeks to be in charge of.

She opened her eyes with a sigh to find those brown eyes suspiciously moist themselves, and she realized that those close to her didn't have the hope she had to hold onto. It would be up to her to let them know that it wasn't the end of the world for her, just a change in direction. She managed a weak smile and reached out to take his hand.

"You'll be here, right?" she asked.

Jack blinked in surprise. Did she have to ask? He'd take a leave of absence or resign if she needed him there more than his duties would allow.

"Of course. So will Daniel and Teal'c and Cassie. Hell, Hammond is even flying in," he told her.

Sam frowned. "I'm not dying or anything, am I?" she asked.

"You don't have to be dying for people to be concerned, Carter. Hammond was frantic when we told him, and the President practically ordered him here so that he could get first hand updates on you," Jack told her shaking his head at how dense she could be sometimes. "Didn't I tell you once that you were a National treasure? I'm not the only one that feels that way. The General is bringing one of the best Ortho guys in the country with him. He won't be given full security clearance, just enough to deal with any problems your unique physiology might cause."

Sam was slightly embarrassed, but grateful non-the-less. "Sounds like I'll be in good hands then," she told him.

"That's what Hammond promised me. This Doc is supposed to work wonders," Jack assured her.

"I didn't mean just medically," she smiled.

Jack was slightly taken back by the comment and the smile, but before he had a chance to respond Daniel and Teal'c came in with Dr. Brightman in tow. Two voices rang out simultaneously.

"Sam!"

"Colonel Carter."

"Hey guys. I'm glad to see you're both ok," she greeted them.

"We are well, Colonel Carter, it is you we are concerned for," Teal'c replied.

"Well it doesn't look like I'll be making any speedy getaways anytime in the near future, but I'm still alive, so that's a big plus in my book," she quipped wryly.

"Don't joke, Sam," Daniel begged.

"Alright," she conceded. "How about you tell me what happened after I nodded off out there," she requested.

"There was a small patrol of Jaffa, loyal to Ba'al. We think they were just scouting the planet. We really didn't stop to ask. Teal'c, Kristoff, Hemmer and I took them out and then ran over to see how you were. Chan and Deters were just bruised up. Chan broke her wrist, but everyone was able to walk except you. We made a stretcher and got you back to the Gate," Daniel recounted.

"Piece of cake," Sam teased.

"Sure," Daniel frowned, "Except of the part where there were six of us worried to death about you," he pointed out.

"Well, I'm glad everyone is ok, and thank you all for doing a good job of taking care of everything while I was indisposed," Sam said gratefully.

"Indeed it was your quick warning that allowed us to get the upper hand," Teal'c replied with a nod of his head.

Dr. Brightmen finally interrupted saying she wanted to check her patient over and then discuss her upcoming treatment with her.

"Can General O'Neill be there for that?" Sam requested, hoping she didn't sound like she was begging.

"Certainly. Come back in half an hour and I should be done with the exam, General," the doctor advised.

Daniel and Teal'c dragged Jack off to get him a quick sandwich since he hadn't left Sam's side for more than a bathroom break since they had returned almost fourteen hours previously. He wolfed it down, made a quick call to Washington to let the President know that Carter had woken up, and was waiting impatiently for the doctor to finish twenty-nine minutes later.

When he was called in he sat in the chair uncertainly wondering if Sam wanted anything more than moral support. She answered his dilemma be reaching over and grasping his hand and holding on tightly out of sight of the doctor as Brightman described in great detail the operations that would be needed to correct as much of the damage as possible to her leg. Most of it went over Jack's head, but he got the fact that it was going to be a long, painful process. When he looked at Sam he could tell she was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information that was being thrown at her.

"Doc, Carter here is still on a lot of pain meds, so let's keep it simple. She's going to need a bunch of surgeries. When do you plan on doing the first one, and how long before she can go home," Jack asked getting to the point.

Sam threw him a grateful look.

"Dr. Stevens will be here later today. He'll go over the x-rays, and probably want to evaluate Colonel Carter tomorrow. Then he'll set a time for surgery, probably the day after that. I'd say we are looking at two to three days post-op before she can go home with a cast on her leg," Dr. Brightman explained. "But she'll need to stay off it as much as possible."

"She'll have plenty of helpers," Jack assured him.

Dr. Brightman smiled. She'd only been at the SGC for five months, but it was obvious to everyone how close the current and former members of SG1 were.

"I'm sure she will," she murmured quietly noting the hands joined discretely out of sight.

Hammond and the orthopedic surgeon arrived in a flurry several hours later to find Sam sound asleep. Dr. Stevens went off with Dr. Brightman to go over the x-rays and Hammond headed to his old office to find O'Neill. Dr. Jackson had been sitting with Sam and told him they had finally shooed Jack out once she'd fallen asleep again.

Jack was staring at some requisition forms on his desk trying to focus on them when Hammond knocked on the open door. He was relieved to see the man. Quite frankly an entire squadron of Jaffa could have walked through the gate at this point at Jack would have been oblivious. It was good to have someone here as backup.

"General, it's good to see you Sir," he said standing as the now three star general entered.

"You look like hell, Jack," George Hammond told the younger man. Motioning for him to sit.

"It's been a long two days," Jack acknowledged.

"How is she handling things?" Hammond asked.

"Frankly, she's so doped up at this point that I'm not sure how much she's comprehended. She knows it's bad, and she knows that she has a long road ahead of her. But she's Carter, and she's playing it pretty close to the vest so far," Jack sighed. The only signs she had given of how this was affecting her had been her request for him to stay while the doctor explained things and the death grip she'd had on his hand the whole time.

"Well, the Joint Chiefs and the President want to assure her that she will always have a job here at the SGC. And she is not to worry about medical care or how long she is unable to work. She will be taken care of," Hammond assured Jack. "In addition, I am authorized to temporarily relieve you whenever you think you need leave to help care for her," Hammond told him.

The first pieces of news were expected. He hadn't lied when he told Sam he wasn't the only one who realized how important she was to the planet. She was the Stargate expert, especially now that McKay was off to parts unknown. The last part of Hammond's statement gave him pause until he realized that chain of command was no longer a problem. Sam would be officially discharged from the Air Force, most likely by the end of the month.

He didn't know if the sudden tightening in his chest was due to excitement at the thought, or panic.

The first surgery went well and two days later Sam was ready to go home. Hammond had stayed in Colorado Springs visiting his family and checking on Sam's progress. Now he insisted that Jack take a few days off to help her to get settled. Knowing the base was in the best of hands, Jack agreed. Since the rest of SG1 was grounded until they could decide on a new team configuration, all three men were available to help Sam home.

When Hammond visited her before she left Sam couldn't resist rolling her eyes and asking him, "Are you sure you can spare all three of them, Sir? Maybe one or two of them are needed elsewhere for a few days?"

He chuckled and said, "They wouldn't go anywhere right now even if I ordered it, Colonel. You should know that."

Sam nodded and smiled. She was one lucky girl and she knew it. She was about to be pampered and fussed over by the three most eligible bachelors at the SGC. She hoped they all survived the experience.

As it turned out Sam was glad for all of the help. Her cast was unwieldy and the doctors had been most insistent about her staying off of her feet. Teal'c proved to be invaluable and possessed a saintly patience as he carted her from the couch to bed, and back during the day, and even into the bathroom when needed without making her blush. Daniel made sure that she had something other that pizza and take-out to eat, which would have been her choices if left to Jack's care.

The real surprise came the first time Sam tried to change clothes. Since none of her pants or sweats would fit over her cast she was trying to decide which ones to sacrifice to be cut up when Jack went out to his truck and brought back in a bag of cheap sweatpants one size bigger that Sam's norm.

"I thought these might come in handy," he said as he took scissors to the left leg of a pair. "You want them big so you can easily get them on and off over the cast," he pointed out. "Just pull the drawstring tight at the waist and they should be fine."

His thoughtfulness was a surprise, but then that was the General she thought. His actions always spoke louder than his words. The real shock came though when she had problems getting her fresh underwear on. The bra had been no problem and she was total dressed on top, but reaching down to get the panties on over her left foot was impossible. Her body just couldn't bend that far over the full-length cast when her knee was totally immobilized in a straight position. When Daniel finally yelled in through the door to see if she was ok, she paused for a moment and then asked if he could send in Jack. Making sure she was totally covered by a blanket, she had him come in and shut the door, then stammered out the problem. She wasn't sure which of them was redder, and she wished that Cassie was home from college or that Janet's ghost would magically appear to help her out.

To his credit, Jack didn't make any sarcastic remarks, just slid the garment over her feet and pushed it up to her knees where the blanket ended. Then he took the sweats from her and did the same with those. Once he was back out in the hallway the irony of the situation struck him. He'd had a lot of fantasies over the last seven years about removing Carter's clothes. Putting them on her had never been featured, yet had been strangely erotic.

'Not surprising Jack. You find Carter in BDU's erotic,' he thought with a shake of his head.

Meanwhile, back in the bedroom Sam had raised up her hips and shimmied the garments into place then laid back to catch her breath.

'Wow that had taken a lot of energy' she thought, then snorted. That so wasn't why she was breathing hard.

After a few days it was decided that the three men would take shifts at Sam's and return to work as much as possible. Jack took the evenings unless there was a crisis on base, and Daniel and Teal'c split the days. Sam devised a method of getting dressed after a couple of days of experimentation (and two frustrated calls out to Jack to rescue her). Hammond returned to Washington, and Sam's second surgery was set to take place in two weeks, when Cassie would be home for spring break. Immediately after that surgery Bray'tac sent a message requesting Teal'c's assistance and he went off for an unspecified period of time. Daniel was splitting his time between his lab and going out with teams that needed someone to translate. Jack was able to spend time with Sam almost every day, and they fell into the habit of having dinner together.

The good news was that after the second surgery they had shortened the cast and told Sam she could be bit more mobile which had improved her mood greatly. Jack was concerned therefore when he got her discharge papers. He hoped that making it official wasn't going to set her back again.

She knew as soon as he came through the front door that something was up, and he knew that she knew, so he didn't beat around the bush. He pulled out the papers and showed her where she needed to sign. She was surprised to find that she was having trouble keeping her hand steady. After he'd put the paperwork back in his briefcase he sat down next to her and gathered her into his arms.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

Sam let his arms comfort her, but slowly realized that her momentary grief was not what was keeping her from moving out of his embrace. Damn he smelled so good. She smiled into his shoulder. And as of a couple of minutes ago she could officially enjoy this without it being wrong. Her smile grew.

He must have noticed a change in her, be cause he pulled back slightly and was surprised to see her with a goofy grin on her face. Then he looked into her eyes and felt his own grin growing. She buried her face back in his shoulder with a chuckle.

"Hey, are you laughing at me?" he complained.

"At us. I'm laughing at us, Jack," she told him, and he felt warm in all the right places at the sound of his name. She looked up at him and shook her head. She still felt that her future needed to unfold naturally but it couldn't hurt to give it a nudge in the right direction.

So she leaned forward and kissed him.

It took a minute for him to react, and then Sam Carter was in for the ride of her life. Good lord. If she'd know the man could kiss like that she never would have made it through the first year on SG1. Hell she'd have resigned that first day in the briefing room and thrown herself into his arms right then and there. She had a brief fleeting thought of how shocked Hammond would have been by that before she lost the ability to think at all as Jack's hand found their way under her top.

They came up for air eventually, both looking slightly dazed. Sam's first coherent thought was that that had been one powerful nudge. Then Jack was kissing her again and she had much better things to think about.

She woke in the morning slowly, relishing the feel of the arms wrapped around her, the solid weight of a hand resting on her ribcage just below he breasts, and the strong legs intertwined with hers. Best of all was the rhythmic breathing against her neck and signs of Jack's arousal that she felt pressed against her back.

'Please don't let it be a dream this time,' she thought as she struggled to open her eyes. She felt Jack's breathing change as she did so, and turned carefully in his arms to face him, keeping her casted leg out of the way as much as possible. Sleepy blue eyes met sleepy brown ones.

"So. Not a dream," Jack sighed echoing Sam's previous thoughts.

"If it is, don't wake me up this time," Sam murmured burying her face in his neck and pressing her lips against his skin, loving the smell and taste of him.

"Was this what you were dreaming about?" he asked curiously.

"Maybe I shouldn't say. I wouldn't want to influence anything," she replied with a frown..

"Why not?" he asked with a raised eyebrow. Then he sighed. "Fine, I'll tell you some of my dreams and you can see if they fit in with yours," he proposed, as one hand began to trace a path down her body. "First off, there is a lot of nakedness," he confessed, earning him a soft punch in the arm. "Oh like there isn't any in your dream," he accused.

Sam had to give him that one. "Definite nakedness," she confessed blushing.

"Then there is fishing," he continued.

"Real fishing?" she asked skeptically.

Jack looked sheepish. "No that one pretty much always involves nakedness too," he admitted and Sam gave a satisfied smirk. She'd always known they'd never actually fish if they went to his cabin.

"I'm sensing a theme here," she teased.

"Then there is the one with you in a white dress and Jacob walking you down the aisle," he added watching her carefully. To his relief she smiled and nodded and he could swear there were suddenly tears in her eyes. "Of course that one ends up with us on our wedding night and honeymoon and a lot more nakedness," he grinned. "Did I miss anything?"

She almost said no, but there really was one more thing to make it a perfect future and she needed to know that he wanted it too.

"Well, my dream actually took place after the nakedness and fishing and white dress and more nakedness," she told him, "so there was one more thing. Actually two more." She took a deep breath. "Mine included a daughter and another baby on the way."

Jack's heart swelled. He hadn't dared to dream that for himself but it was something he was open to as long as Sam was the mother of those children. He knew she was watching for his reaction now as anxiously as he had watched for hers when he mentioned marriage. "Just two kids?" he asked meeting her eyes with a twinkle in his.

She smiled her megawatt smile. "That's as far into the future as I saw. After that who knows?" she offered.

"I guess after that we'll just have to make it up as we go along," he suggested.

"That sounds perfect," she whispered.

THE END