Author: Regency

Title: Friends, Colleagues, or Whatever Else

Spoilers: set early season two with some references to Secrets.

Categories: AU, gen, teamfic, friendship, some UST, angst

Rating: PG

Pairings: None intended; friendship intended, but some UST implied.

Word count: 3,630

Summary:  Chance encounters in Washington, D.C. lead Jacob to wonder about Sam’s relationships with the men in her life following her failed wedding to Jonas Hansen.

Author’s Note: Sequel to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Constructive criticism is Vick’s Vapor Rub for the soul and I can always use that. Please and thank you. ETA: Just saw a plot hole and closed it, I hope, convincingly.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Stargate SG-1. They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me.  No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

~!~

                Jacob would be lying if he said he wasn’t angry. Seven months down the line, he still felt the wayward, judging glances of the under-ranked in the halls of the Pentagon and he hated it. He hated that he had to go the extra mile to defend his only daughter. He hated that he’d never been able to defend her to her.  He’d been too angry at the Chapel and too busy afterward.

                Now, he had nothing but time and he couldn’t find her. She was buried a few hundred feet under at the heart of Cheyenne Mountain.  He was hard-pressed to leave a message on her phone, much less take her out to lunch.  He had nothing but time, yet hers was always filled with something, always, ever more important than him.

                He tried not to feel like this was karma for all the times she’d needed him as a girl and he’d had a government-issued excuse to fly the coop.  He used to tell himself that she’d always been her mother’s daughter.  He could finally admit that that wasn’t the way it had to be.

                He thought it was funny how a death sentence could change one’s perspective on their entire life. It was about the only thing he found funny right about now.

                Seated across the quiet coffee shop he’d retreated to when his office had begun to feel like a tomb-in-waiting, was his daughter in light civvies, wearing a glorious smile as she looked affectionately at one of the men he remembered from her wedding. Dark skin, darker eyes, and a ubiquitous hat were all he should have been from a distance, yet his presence seemed to fill the space.  From Jacob’s place tucked away to the left of the bar where the barista toiled, he should have been a shadow, only a hint of a man, but he was fully-realized, even in the blur that resulted from a pair of prescription eyeglasses Jacob should have replaced some time ago.

                The man was warmth personified, solemnity and grace.  Sam seemed almost painfully at ease, her back to the crowd as her companion’s gaze intermittently perused them.  They’re covering each other, Jacob observed, amazed and not nearly so at how easy it seemed. Her head swept back and forth in an absent arc that was thorough as it was unnecessary. They weren’t in a war zone—or on a training exercise, he mused with some derision for the excuse. They were safe, and yet, they watched.

                Sam laid a light hand on the man’s forearm and leaned in as though she had a secret to share. He did the same in kind, replying to her remark with only the faintest flicker at his lips and a the lift of an eyebrow so regal that Jacob was tempted to find out if somehow royalty had slipped into town unseen.

He was steady, terrifyingly steady, and he seemed absolutely enthralled with Jacob’s daughter. It seemed that she always attracted the deadly sort. Jacob was no fool, this man was exactly that.  One didn’t become as comfortable in their skin and sinew as this one seemed without trial.  Jacob knew, because he knew these kinds of men. Jacob knew because he’d been this kind of man.

And, he shouldn’t want his daughter anywhere near one of them.  Yet, there wasn’t any other type of man he’d trust to guard her. She was fearless and capable and possessed an irrepressible love of all things, sometimes, to the detriment of herself.  She needed someone to watch her back.  She needed someone to be the straight man so that she could smile, someone that could be the brick wall to her open door.  Maybe this man was the man. Maybe, he thought, all but ready to up and introduce himself to the gentleman who’d saved his daughter from what Jacob was sure would have been her biggest mistake.

He would have absolutely gone to say hello. He would have stopped skulking in the shadows of the falling sun if his pager hadn’t chosen, just then, to buzz and if they hadn’t decided, just then, to leave.  It was either a coincidence or fate conspiring to keep them apart.  Whichever it was, all the things he had to say would have to wait another day to be said.

After all, he had another day. Just not many after that.

~!~

                He was in the midst of asking a very lovely bird colonel to share a late lunch the next time he laid eyes on his daughter.  Two days had gone by and the speed of life was still set firmly to too damn fast, but there she was.

                She looked like her mother during a spring cleaning jag: jeans, short-sleeves, and sandals.  Just in walking by, she broke the hearts of two-hundred servicemen by having anyone at all on her arm.

                This one was different than the first, not much more than a boy in the face, if more than a veteran behind the eyes.  He wasn’t their kind. Their heads were ducked low together and they wore brilliant, uninhibited matching smiles on their faces.  Secrets, more secrets, Jacob noticed and they didn’t seem to mind, more than glad to continue on their way.  There were sights to see and they were little more than children—one a scientist and the other with the eager, searching look of one—set free to touch what they liked. 

Jacob swallowed a sigh, unaccountably worried, only to realize that he now had no stomach for lunch, or company, or even his daughter. Now, his head hurt.

                Still, he managed a crushing smile for the striking full-bird and asked for a rain check.

                Come some beautiful day in the neighborhood, he might even care enough to cash it.

Sadly, he’d stopped noticing beautiful days when his daughter was fifteen.

                Most likely because that’s when he’d stopped believing in them.

~!~

                Jacob felt somewhat better by the next afternoon. The sun was dimmer, allowing his now omnipresent headache to retreat to a faint, if musical, throb at the rear of his consciousness.  It was a small favor in the grand scheme of things, but he was grateful for those now.

                He found that he was more grateful for congressional meetings that ended ahead of schedule.  They never happened, not to him, but today had been a good day and apparently someone up there liked him for a change.  Although he liked to think it was his better angel saying hello or I love you, he tried not think of her too often; otherwise, he’d forget why he wanted to survive.

                Warmed by the memory of a woman so long gone that he doubted even her carbon footprint remained, Jacob was taken by surprise by two things at once.  His aide, Captain Lorde, lay dead ahead, waiting beside the open door of his car with a stack of stark white documents thick enough to make the Starr Report appear concise. And while he wasn’t overjoyed at the idea of being cloistered in the bowels of the Pentagon for another marathon signing session, that wasn’t what bothered him.

                It was them.

                One with eagles gleaming, wings even more so and blinding; the other with silver bars glittering as though with sentient pride at how well they’d been maintained, and wings equally as bright.  They looked as good side by side as any two soldiers in the same army, or Air Force, in their case.  Their steps were synchronized to boot camp perfection and Jacob should have been proud. That was his daughter over there and the fruit salad on her chest was nothing to shun.  Neither was that of the man beside her.

                And that, that concerned Jacob immensely.

                No man that decorated had any business in a noncom unit.  No man that decorated remained that fit while riding a desk. No, there was something more happening in his Sammie’s world than mere science—and he intended to find out what.

                In the meantime, he’d try not to notice the guiding hand that colonel lay on his daughter’s back. Or the way she seemed calmer with it than without it.

                Jacob could only battle one deception at a time and at least this one meant she wouldn’t be alone once he was gone.

                He guessed cancer really had altered his perspective.

~!~

                When all was said and done, he found himself abandoning the Four Seasons downstairs bar for someplace earthier.  He found it and he found salvation. He found salvation and found his not so little girl.

                Surrounded by her friends, her colleagues, or whatever they truly were to her, it almost broke his heart to see how little room there was for him.   It had been a choice, one he made long ago, yet he considered it no easier to live with in retrospect.  He had stepped out of her life as a father and remained only as a figurehead, a superior, a commanding, demanding voice on high.  He wasn’t real to her anymore, but he didn’t think there’d ever been a time when she wasn’t achingly real to him.

                He commended his heart for remaining that true, even if his spine had taken a holiday.

                The scant lighting gave him enough cover that he managed to make it to the bar unseen.  That was what he wanted anyway.  The courage that had moved him to speak with Sam in the days before had deserted him in the hours since.  He was just a man, not a hero, and those hot weeks in the sun, or in the dark, or in the rain would never come again. He briefly wondered at his worthiness to wear the blood- and bravery-stained medals on his chest.  Did he even have the guts to give them back?

                He doubted it. Not even the Dutch had brewed courage potent enough for that.

                This was his lifetime assembled: a half-empty weighted glass from which the comfort of scotch instead of love exuded; his daughter at a distance, her life so filled with every what and every who that could possibly please her that she had no surplus to miss him; and his son, his Mark, out of sight and far from reach.  He couldn’t imagine what his better angel would have to say when they finally saw each other again.

                Not quite if, no. He’d given up on if.  When was all the optimism he had left; the rest he bequeathed to Sammie in the hope that it would last her all her life-long.  It was the very last thing he possessed that she might want. The other things, she’d taken. Her mother’s smile, her kindness, the memories she’d left behind…All he’d gotten was her love and he’d squandered that. But his optimism he could share.

                Thoughts of her, trip-tropping across his mind, recollections faint and fading still, they were just enough for one more day.  His vows had never mentioned what to do when death had parted, when richer was lonelier, and worse was unbearable.  His vows had never said anything about carrying on. Not that that mattered, since he’s pretty sure that, given his track record, he would have failed at that, too.

                Jacob snorted, suddenly disgusted at his own maudlin mood.  He might not feel the hero, but he could never stand a depressive jackass, and right now he was nothing if not a depressive jackass.  His angel would have rolled her eyes and told him to take out the garbage before he infected the entire family with his bad humor.  That would have done it then and even the whisper of it did so now.  You’re always saving my life, he thought of her, wistfully. Then, he put the thought away. It was already frayed, no sense in tearing it in two.

                He threw a halfhearted glance into the sparse crowd, spying more than a single pair of eyes at his back.  One nearly black, one an unfamiliar shade of blue, and one keenly brown.  Sam’s men had him in their sights and he was oddly reassured to have been noticed. Nervous, but reassured.

                The blue-eyed man murmured something to the rest and made his approach. Jacob could have fled, taking shelter in the townhouse where he lived now, but that would have been too cowardly on a night when his angel had just saved him again.

                Jacob noted that he was tall once they were face to face. Hair too long to be military, face too open behind wired frames for a mercenary; he really was the boy he seemed, regardless of what the shadows in his gaze implied.

                “Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr Daniel Jackson and you are?”  It was a warm greeting, warmer than a stranger who’d been too many places too coincidentally to be trusted deserved. Jacob began to reconsider how good he felt about this one.

                “Jacob.”  It was an answer and that he was armed forces went without saying given than he was still in full mess dress.  If Sam had never mentioned him—and the young man couldn’t have hidden anything, much less recognition—then he saw no reason to be the bearer of uncomfortable news. If they hadn't recognized him from the wedding, well, those were the breaks, weren't they?

                “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Jacob,” he replied with the animated flourish of his eyebrows.  His emphasis on his truncated name went noticed but unacknowledged with a flourish of Jacob’s own.  “Okay, well, some friends and I were having a couple of drinks when we realized that we’d all seen you around here…recently.”  It was a further attempt to elicit some telling response from Jacob…that he summarily ignored, though he had begun to smile at a certain point.  He nearly felt bad for being so entertained.  He clearly isn’t trained for dealing with wily generals, Jacob mused with an audible chuckle.

                “I don’t know you and you don’t know me.  I think that about sums it up. How about you?”

                Jackson pushed up his glasses over his narrowed eyes and nodded.  “Yes, I suppose so.  Maybe my friends will have better luck.”

                Now, Jacob actually rolled his eyes in exasperation.  “Don’t tell me, it’s the big one and the one with enough fruit salad to end world hunger.”

                Jackson nodded again slightly, furrowing his excitable brow and tilting his head toward the table from whence he’d come.  “The very same.”

                “Well,” Jacob started, twisting on his nice comfy stool and sitting back against the bar, “bring ‘em on.”  And they came without much prompting, taking the first opportunity offered by the sudden departure of his daughter to the ladies’ room.

                Upon verifying the validity of his uniform and his rank, the colonel came to sharp attention.  The suspicion in his face was masked, but only just.  He doesn’t like interference, this one.  Jacob shrugged and told him to take it easy.  They didn’t have long; they might as well make this Inquisition short and sweet—for all their sakes.

                “Ask your questions. Sam’s never taken longer than necessary at anything, so you can bet she’ll be back in under ten minutes.”  He waved for them to take up stools of their own, knowing intuitively that they’d rather keep him covered, cornered, and trapped.  It was a standard field interrogation tactic that they had no cause to have mastered.

                “What right have you to refer Captain Carter with such familiarity,” asked the hulking, capped fellow who Jacob had earlier believed to hold his Sammie’s heart. Him, Jacob definitely recognized from the little scene Jonas had caused when his daughter informed everyone that she'd finally come to her senses.  The man hadn't spoken then, he hadn't needed to; his menacing glower, along with Jacob's and Mark's, had been enough to convince his almost-son-in-law not to push his luck. Because of his silence, this man had remained a mere blip within Jacob's recollections of that day.  Now, he'd taken on a life of his own. Jacob knew for a fact that anyone familiar with Western wedding tradition could have figured out his relation to Sam by now.

                Brows engaged in the workout of his life, Jacob suddenly had a headful more of questions than he had time.  Sammie, what the hell are you into? “I know her, very well.”

                “Generally, when one knows someone, sir, they make an attempt to speak to them when they’re in the same place. They don’t stare or…lurk.  Generally.”  The colonel, who Jacob had already pegged as less than rule-abiding, had all this to say.

                “No pun intended, of course,” quipped the doctor, though doctor of what Jacob had no idea.

                “Of course,” the colonel, nameplate stamped O’Neill, jibed as though he could banter the whole night through. Must be her CO, Jacob realized, recalling that moment on the Capitol steps that was far less comforting in hindsight.

                “Every time I saw Sam, she was busy or I was busy.  This is Washington, D.C., Colonel. Some of us do more than just pretend to work.”

                “Make that ‘a few of us’ and I might agree with you, sir.”

                Jacob shook his head, releasing a low whistle at the other man’s gall.  God, was I ever that cocky?  “Watch where you dance, airmen, everyone’s sense of humor isn’t as forgiving as mine.”

                “Yes, sir.”  Easing out of parade-rest, O’Neill tucked his hands into his pockets and began to rock on the balls of his feet.  Jacob noted the gesture because that was what he was trained to do, he noted it because the colonel wanted him to.  It was supposed to give Jacob a false sense of security in order to convince him to let his down his guard. That wasn’t about to happen. Kid thinks he’s got me pegged. Gotta be Special Ops.  It made all the sense in the city.

                “So, I’ve gotta ask. Do the three of you make it your business to chaperone Sam everywhere she goes?”

                “That depends on whether someone makes it their business to stalk her everywhere she goes.” Watching those eyebrows dancing to kingdom come, Jacob forced himself not to wonder whether they did that in the man’s sleep.  He didn’t think the inevitable laughter would make him appear any saner than they probably suspected he wasn’t.

                “Not stalking, random occurrences,” Jacob clarified, pressing on with what he hoped was convincing stoicism. “I was as surprised as any of you to find myself in the same place as her.  Trust me, that hasn’t happened once in years, much less three—or, I suppose, four—times over the course of five days.  The fact that we all ended up in the same bar strikes me as a touch of grace more than anything, and I’m the last one to invoke that sort of thing under any circumstances.”

                The doctor did his little head tilt thing combined with a grimace of pained skepticism.  “That seems…”

                “Highly unlikely,” the big one concluded, speaking for all three as far as Jacob could tell.

                In response, the general could only hold out his hands in surrender. Though, not without a little pride was mixed in it.  Jackson might have been surmountable on his lonesome, but his backup was seemingly foolproof.  Jacob was back to feeling good about these three men having his daughter’s back, in whatever business they did.  As much as he trusted her sheer mettle, it was a relief to know that she’d be in good hands without him.

                “With all due respect, sir,” said the full-bird to the two-star, “in my experience, nothing good ever comes from a general with nowhere to be.”

                “Because he’s always where he’s supposed to be, Colonel,” Jacob finished for him, because he’d lived it and he knew it, too.  That and the fact that someone had to keep the man in line, given that he’d pretty clearly failed at most forms of self-imposed discipline.

                “I’m just covering my people, sir.  If there’s some sort of surveillance concerning them I should have been informed about it.” 

A general tapped to do surveillance? That’ll happen.

                The guffaw came through loud and clear and unexpected.  It should have been Jacob, would have inevitably been Jacob—but it wasn’t Jacob.

                Standing behind the bulkiest among them, Jacob’s only daughter had hidden herself remarkably well from the two trained, if both former, Special Operations officers.  Any embarrassment he might have felt at being caught out was immediately swallowed by the overwhelming joy of being able to look his Sammie in the eye.

                She really was beautiful, her mother’s little girl.

                His little girl.

                She beamed his angel’s grin, if somewhat more bashfully than her mother ever had, and she let him pull her close and hold her tight.  He hadn’t done that in too long, hadn’t taken too many chances offered to be the daddy he used to be and the father she’d always deserved.

                “I just wanted to make sure you were safe, Sammie.” Not an excuse for cowardice, but for persistence.  Even if it had all been grace in the end.

                “I know, dad. I know,” she responded with such easy redemption that his brain sought a catch with which his heart couldn’t bother.

                And, those three men that never seemed far from his little girl’s side? They didn’t ask any more questions. Not what or why or even an astounded oh!  They simply nodded as if this entire ordeal made perfect sense, or someday would, and closed ranks around them.

                Jacob imagined that there were better places where he could have been, but he couldn’t think of a single one.  And, truthfully, he didn’t think that Sam could either.