Title: "The Ex Factor"

Author: Jackie W.

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Season: Season 8 (Before Affinity)

Spoilers: Chimera, small ones up through Avatar. One possible spoiler for Threads.

Summary: Ex-wives cause Sam some heartache, and it takes an ex-General to put her life back on track.

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:

This piece totally stems from Muses making a list of creative ways to get rid of Pete (This is number 17 on the list) It had no ending for several months, then a line in the spoilers for Threads made a light bulb go off.

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When Sam Carter had first found out about Jack O'Neill's wife and son she had figured he would get back together with Sara someday. After all she had seen the look of fear in his eyes when he had realized that the crystal entity had been looking through his things, and the relief he had expressed when they had found Sara safe at the hospital. Sam had even pretended to be Sara that cold and desperate time in Antarctica when her CO had called out for her. She knew he still loved the woman.

And if she was perfectly honest with herself, that suspicion that he still had strong feelings for his wife had kept her out of Jack O'Neill's arms over the years as surely as her commitment to duty and the threat of court-marshal had. It was tough to risk it all when you weren't 100 sure whether you were his first choice or not. She had even gotten up the nerve to ask if Jack ever spoke to Sara that day at his house when the ancient knowledge was slowly killing him. She'd taken his refusal to talk about it as confirmation that he wasn't over his ex-wife.

So when she and Pete saw Jack and the former Mrs. O'Neill at a restaurant one Saturday night, she wasn't shocked. She was a bit surprised and desperately trying to deny to herself that she was hurt by the scene, but not shocked. The General hadn't spotted her so she never mentioned it to him. And she rationalized to herself that it was a good thing that she'd seen them. Now maybe she could finally fully let go of those feelings for Jack O'Neill that still occasionally reared their ugly head and move on once and for all.

Coincidentally, two weeks later when Sam was visiting Pete in Denver they bumped into his ex-wife and her new boyfriend in a restaurant. She was relieved to find that physically at least Lisa Shanahan was the polar opposite of her, short and with long dark hair. At least she knew that she didn't remind Pete of his ex. She hadn't failed to notice her similarity to Sara O'Neill.

Unfortunately her week-end in Denver was cut short as Sam was paged back to Colorado Springs during dessert. Between her schedule and Pete's it would be three weeks before they got to see each other again. Then the instant she opened her front door to let him in she knew something was wrong.

He looked at her with regret. "I'm sorry."

After he'd left Sam had sat down on her couch in shock. Even through the haze her logical brain was doing the math. What exactly were the odds that both of the men she had feelings for would go back to their ex-wives within a couple of months of each other?

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She didn't tell anyone about the break-up. She knew if she did it would get back to the General, and somehow now that he'd moved on she didn't want any pity from him. Daniel let slip one day that Jack wasn't joining them because he had plans. He was obviously curious and Sam was surprised that he didn't know.

"He's back with his ex-wife, Daniel," she told him.

"Sara?" Daniel asked in shock.

"Unless he has another ex-wife," Sam had teased. "Pete and I ran into them out one night."

Daniel hadn't said anything, but he thought it seemed odd. He decided to bring up the subject to Jack the next time the General wandered into his lab to bother him. He didn't have to wait long. The next morning Jack sat down with a loud sigh and mumbled something about requisition forms multiplying overnight on his desk. Daniel just smirked.

"I'm not kidding Daniel. When I left last night I had a nice manageable stack to deal with this morning before the first briefing. This morning I walk in and they are overflowing out of my in-box," he complained.

"You have an in box? I thought your whole desk was your in-box," Daniel commented.

"Ha! Very funny. Remind me again why I took this position?" Jack asked looking for something to fiddle with on the shelf next to him.

"Because you can do whatever you want," Daniel reminded him.

"As long as I fill it out in triplicate and seven people sign off on it," Jack grumbled.

"So what's up with you and Sara?" Daniel asked, not so subtly changing the subject.

"Sarah?" Jack asked frowning. "I haven't seen her since we all went out that night a few weeks ago," he replied.

"Not Sarah, as in my Sarah. Sara as in your ex-wife, Sara," Daniel clarified "Sam said you two were seeing each other again."

Jack frowned. "Not really. We had dinner one night, and I've been over at the house helping her go through things. She's getting married and selling the house, so she needed to clear out everything. We've been going through boxes of Charlie's stuff that we couldn't handle sorting before," Jack explained.

"Does Sam know that?" Daniel inquired.

"I don't think so, why?" Jack asked.

"Well, I think that she thinks that you are back together with Sara," Daniel told him.

"I don't know why she would think that, but I doubt she cares," Jack said with a sigh. "I'd better get back to my office before the damn paperwork replicates again," he said getting up and putting an end to the conversation.

"Oh, I think she cares, Jack," Daniel murmured after he'd left the lab.

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Now contrary to some peoples opinions, Daniel was very observant, and he knew that Sam should probably be told the truth about Jack's relationship with Sara as soon as possible before she did something stupid like getting herself engaged thinking Jack had moved on. However the archeologist was easily distracted and when SG6 brought him back a treasure trove of artifacts to study he buried himself in his lab for days and barely surfaced. So it wasn't until Sam got herself thrown in the brig for insubordination that he remembered there was situation brewing that needed his attention.

It all started when Jack got called to Washington for a several days of meetings. He left Reynolds in charge after insuring that SG1 was going to be around to lend a hand if anything happened. Sam planned on burying herself in her lab, and finally getting some work done on trying to figure out the power source that a small flashlight-like device found on P2R-389 was using. The darn thing had been sitting there turned on when SG14 found it and it was still working although it had probably been hundreds of years since it had last been touched. That was one hell of a battery.

She was in the middle of some very delicate experiments when suddenly the lights dimmed, and then after a moment went out entirely. As the emergency generators kicked in she was desperately trying to make sure that all of her equipment was shut down safely and hoping that she hadn't just lost hours worth of data when she was paged to the control room.

"Yeah, yeah, hold your horses" she muttered. "I only have two hands."

By the time she had made it to the control room, power had been restored. However Reynolds was having a fit because the iris was stuck halfway closed. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and in a manner of seconds she had the iris closed, and had checked to ensure all other systems were functioning correctly. Unfortunately, Reynolds couldn't resist chastising her for her slow response time.

"Colonel, when you are paged to the control room, it is expected that you will drop everything and get here on the double," he warned.

Now Sam hadn't been having a very good week as it was. She was depressed over her love-life that had totally fallen apart. On top of that, her reception into the ranks of team leaders had been less then welcoming and she was having to prove herself all over again. And just to make sure her week was totally miserable, a couple of lab techs had taken it upon themselves to take apart a delicate shielding technology and then had been unable to reassemble it causing her to spend several long nights in the lab fixing it. She'd been cranky to begin with, then just a couple of hours earlier she had realized she was missing the General coming in to bug her, and had decided that she really had reached rock bottom if that was the only thing she had to look forward to in her life. So it really wasn't surprising that she turned on Colonel Reynolds with more than a bit of fire in her eyes.

"I apologize, Sir," she said through gritted teeth, putting a sarcastic emphasis on the title. "Next time, I will let whatever I am working on in my lab simply blow up, Sir."

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It took Sam almost half an hour in the holding cell to calm down enough to admit to herself that she probably shouldn't have actually mumbled the "power hungry idiot" part aloud. One more thing she could blame Jack O'Neill for. Besides breaking her heart, the man was a terrible influence. Her eyes opened wide as she let that first part rattle around in her brain. Pete had broken her heart, not Jack. Right?

With a groan she curled up in a ball in the corner on the cot. She was so damned confused. She'd thought having guys die on her was bad. But she had to admit having them voluntarily leaving was much worse. Was she really that impossible to maintain a relationship with?

Daniel and Teal'c found her like that. Daniel immediately asked for her side of the story. Teal'c did not even need that. He simply offered to go knock some sense into Reynolds.

"No, Teal'c. Leave it be. We were both wrong," Sam sighed sitting up.

"And yet you are the only one in a cell," the Jaffa pointed out.

"True," Sam acknowledged. She knew, despite anything she might say that Reynolds would do well to steer clear of her friend for a long time to come.

"Jack's on his way back," Daniel told her, causing Sam to groan.

"It just keeps getting better and better," she complained.

While the General would most likely smooth things over and keep Reynolds from filing charges she was sure she would never hear the end of it. Maybe she should request an immediate transfer. It was getting harder and harder to find any joy in her job anyway. At least since she'd found out Jack was dating his ex-wife. Once again her brain had to do a few loops to catch up to what her subconscious was implying.

Damn the man.