Sequel to the one-shot, Never Really Knew. Broken bridges need to be rebuilt and friendships mended.

Learning to Trust, Part One

"So, to clarify…this whole past week, starting with the meeting on Tollana – which I worked really hard on, by the way….was a scam?" Daniel asked. Sam looked to him, then back to Hammond. Hope flittered in her chest, but was quickly killed when O'Neill's heartless words replayed themselves over and over in her mind. Was it truly possible that he'd been pretending the entire time?

"The Tollen, Asgard, and Nox had approached us with proof that we had been stealing technology from them.

"Us?" Sam asked incredulously. "You mean, the SGC?"

"Yes, they were ready to sever all ties with us when we convinced them that it had to be a rogue element outside the SGC."

"We insisted you bring the perpetrators to justice yourselves," said the councilwoman of Tollana with a whispery smile.

Sam felt frozen. True. It was true. O'Neill had been pretending the whole time. Knowing this, she waited for the gratefulness, the happiness to overwhelm her.

It didn't. In fact, what had been a small spark died completely.

If she knew O'Neill before, she didn't now.

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As the General led the Tollen representatives away, Sam retreated to her lab as quickly as possible, not waiting for O'Neill to address her. She wasn't ready to face the fact that she'd been, as Daniel so accurately put it, scammed.

Rubbing her hands together, she felt out of place and alone in the desolate lab she'd so often sought out as a refuge. Her attention briefly wandered to Colonel Makepeace, who'd been her commanding officer for only a week…

Honestly, Makepeace had the air of a man who didn't care. He called Teal'c "the Jaffa", seemed to blow off Daniel in the rudest way that even O'Neill had not managed, and he seemed to sneer her name as though she were no more than dirt on his size-twelve military issue combat boots.

So which is worse? she wondered bitterly. Being the dirt on Makepeace's shoe or pond scum of O'Neill's?