Stargate SG1 Fan Fiction ❯ The Secret Life of a Major General ❯ Chapter 24 ( Chapter 24 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter 24

Backyard, O’Neill’s Residence, Alexandria, VA
June 11, 2005
Late Morning

Hearing the chiming of his front door from his place seated on a lounging chair on his backyard patio, Jack cast one last look at Tyler and Emily playing happily in the sandbox before heading back through the house. Reaching his front door, he turned the knob and opened it. Jack’s left eyebrow rocketed upwards at seeing who was standing on his front steps.

“Carter.”

“Sir,” the blonde woman was casually dressed in faded blue jeans and a rose coloured blouse. Her fingers worried the bottom of her shirt as she looked him in the eye, “May I come in?”

“Sure.” Jack took a step back to permit her entrance and moved towards the kitchen. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Ah, no Sir.” Sam moved into the house, her blue eyes taking in the cozy furnishings and children’s toys scattered about in piles here and there on the floor.

“Okay, if this is going to take a while, we should move into the backyard,” Jack looked at her curiously.

“Yes Sir. It might,” Sam stated.

Jack nodded slowly and led the way to the backyard. As they stepped onto the back patio, Sam realised why Jack had said their talk had to take place outside. Two children with identical golden-brown hair and distinguishable at this distance only by their red and pink shirts were playing in a sandbox.

Sam’s breath caught. This had been the first time that she had seen either of the twins.

“The one in the red is Tyler,” Jack said softly seeing where she was looking as he retook his seat on the lounging chair. “Emily is wearing pink.”

Sam tore her eyes away from the sight of the twins to look at her former team commander. Her eyes took in his casual position on his lounger, jean clad legs stretched out before him and white t-shirt hugging his torso. Jack reached for a tall glass containing what she was sure was ice water instead of the bottle of beer she had come to expect from other visits to his house in the Springs.

“Actually, Sir,” Sam took a deep breath and plunged into the reason she had flown more than five hours between Nevada and Virginia. “I wanted to talk to you about them.”

“What about them?” Jack asked obliquely. “You going to be like Daniel, wanting to know why I didn’t tell you guys about them?”

“Yes. No.” Sam shook her head at her own answers. “I mean, yes I want to know why you didn’t tell us. But no, that isn’t the reason why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m here because of Oceanus.” Seeing no reaction from Jack she forged onwards. “More precisely about one of his machines.”

“What machine? Those snakes had a bit of hoard in Luxor.” Jack stated blandly.

“A DNA reader.”

Jack sipped from his glass as one eyebrow rose upwards questioningly.

“The machine was a DNA reader.”

“You’re certain that’s what it was?”

“Yes Sir, I spent all yesterday testing it and confirming those tests.”

“Oh?”

Feeling Jack was being even more obstinate than usual Sam forced herself to suppress the growl that threatened to escape from the back of her throat. “Yes Sir,” she said through nearly gritted teeth. “What those tests confirmed was that according to the device there is a 99.99% ‘probability’ of me being the children’s mother.”

Sam’s blue eyes turned into laser beams as they bore into Jack’s brown ones. “Why does it say those twins,” Sam stabbed a finger in the children’s direction, “are mine?!”

Jack kept his eyes locked with hers as he set his glass down on the table beside the lounger. After a long and uncomfortable staring contest Sam was the first to look away. The silence dragged on and Sam shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot as she studied the wood of the patio underfoot.

“Would it really matter if they were?” Jack finally questioned idly.

“Of course it would!” Sam exclaimed as she looked back into his face, a stunned expression on her face.

“Would it really Carter?” Jack asked in that same, dismissively soft tone. “You’re weeks away from marrying your cop and you don’t want children.”

“What does my marriage have to do with this? And what makes you think I don’t want children?” Sam demanded as she fisted her hands on her hips.

“You told me so.”

“I told you what?”

“That you didn’t want children.”

“When’d I do that?”

“Last year,” Jack answered as he rose to his feet. “When you showed me the cop’s ring.”

“I never said anything like that!” she protested.

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Then you heard wrong!” Sam yelled.

Jack shrugged as he gave her an apathetic look. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated. “You’re getting married—”

“Damnit Jack!” Sam exploded as she aggressively got right in his face. “It does matter! Are they mine?!”

“Daddy?” a frightened child’s voice from the sandbox interrupted their argument. Both adults turning towards the twins and Jack stepped off the patio and crossed the short distance to where the two were looking fearful, huddled together against a corner of the sandbox.

As he knelt in front of them the twins hurtled themselves at him to cling to Jack’s chest.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Jack soothed as he hugged them reassuringly. “We didn’t mean to scare you. Daddy’s sorry our voices got so loud.”

Sam was not able to hear what the twins said with their faces buried in Jack’s neck, but after soothing them some more he managed to coax them into accepting that it was lunchtime and they should all go inside.

The prospect of food seemed to cheer the twins up immensely as they released Jack to allow him to stand. Once their father was standing, each twin took a hand and began tugging him away from the sandbox and into house. Sam trailed in after them, following them to the kitchen that held a small four-person table with two of the chairs replaced by two identical wooden highchairs.

As Jack moved about the kitchen preparing lunch the children underfoot as they chattered away at him, Sam stood in the doorway and watched them. Finally as Jack lifted each twin into their highchair and set their bowl of chunky alphabet soup in front of them, Sam asked again.

“Are they mine Jack?”

Jack paused at the stove and kept his back to her as he spoke, “Carter, how could they be yours? You’ve never been pregnant. And besides, they aren’t really mine. They’re my sisters.”