Title: Getting a Life

Author: Sam938

Rating: PG 13

Summary: Sam decides to get a life; Jack decides to help, quietly, but they have a lot to learn about each other and it's October anyway; the ghosts and goblins are hanging around in Colorado.

Spoilers: Early into the series; way before season 4.

Archive: please ask.

Disclaimers: Don't own them, didn't create them, and this is purely for fun and not profit.

Status: Working on it.

Feedback: I'd very much appreciate it!

A/N. This story currently has 20 chapters written. It's not yet done. I'm trying.

1.

Sam Carter sat in her Volvo and stared out at the gold, roses and purples streaks of the early autumn Colorado sunset, the sky blazing, watching as the light finally faded behind the house into dusk. God, the view was beautiful; all of it. Even so, she knew the idea that had been forming in her head over the last few weeks was completely, totally and utterly nuts. Crazed; insane; ridiculous. And yet.. jeez.. it would be a lot of fun. And the Colonel had ordered her to "get a life" after all.

Huh. Like she didn't have one.

Well, maybe she should backtrack on that.

Besides, she wasn't sure that thinking about buying a house actually qualified as "getting a life." But who knew; she sure didn't. "Getting a life" had never really been her strong suit.

Damn the man anyway. He seemed to know exactly which buttons to press to annoy her, and consequently, whether he'd intended it or not, she was sitting on a hill, looking out at what was logically a complete wreck of a place, and contemplating putting her hard earned funds into said death trap, which was about the sum total of what she could afford in the Colorado real estate market. Even if the view was literally something to die for.

Saving the world just didn't translate into fortunes, unfortunately. She grinned, amused at the thought.

OK, enough of the Colonel and his meanderings, not to mention his puns. She was not, absolutely not, going to let his irreverent, throw off comments affect her decisions about something as serious as putting her life savings into a questionable proposition of real estate. Not a chance. Not a chance in hell.

But there was just something about the place…huh.

She got out the car and walked the property once again, like she'd done every night after she'd left the base for the last two weeks after she'd seen it for the first time.

Ok, so …it was a house. Just a house. No need to get all that excited about anything. It was just … bricks and stone and mortar and probably had horrific… no, definitely had horrific, seeing as she'd already checked, electrical wiring that was no where near code, plumbing that wasn't, and an interior that screamed late 70s, as in avocado green, orange and purples for gods sake. The appliances were beyond old; a good number of the windows were busted and planked over; the grounds were a disaster, no one had looked after them for years. Hell, no one had really LIVED in the house for years. There'd been some evidently shaky renters; probably drug dealers, considering.

And yet, she loved it. She looked it over again, trying to get past the problems and figure out just WHY she was so attracted to the place. It had really good bones; a well built brick Victorian with a history from the early days in Colorado Springs, when the prospectors were front and center. It also had a bit of land around the place, which was probably what she would be paying for if she were willing to ante up to the price. The probability was that the seller expected that it would be a teardown. Someone would come in and just bull doze the place --and that was something she just wasn't willing to tolerate.

The building just called to her -- crazy but true. It needed an owner, she needed a home and somehow it all seemed right. She could fix up the place or hire someone who could. The Colonel was right. She needed to "get a life" and bringing back this house was as good as it got.

So, the hell with it. She was going to go for it, but bid 50,000 under and see what happened. It'd been on the market for well over three years. Couldn't hurt to try.

That decided, she raised an imaginary glass of champagne in congratulations of her decision.

Huh. Now all she needed to do was find out if the Colonel was going to object to her living about a block and ½ away from him. Oh yeah, that was going to be an interesting conversation. But hey, she could stay out of his way. It was his problem, after all. He'd started the whole thing. Let him deal.

TBC..