In the canon episode Ripple Effect we met an Alternate Universe version of SG1 that arrived in camouflage and featured Janet Fraiser and Martouf. At the end we learned that Sam had not only gone on a honeymoon but was now on maternity leave. This is the story of that Samantha Carter.

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His buddy's retirement party was in full swing and Jack was quietly working on his third beer while pretending it was his fifteenth. His friends were being particularly riotous but there was no sign that O'Malley's was ready to toss them out just yet. They'd been there for a while and Jack knew he could get them back under control if he needed to.

He'd stopped paying close attention to them anyway, when he'd first spotted the quietly dazzling woman sitting at a booth across the way. He'd seen her mostly in profile, which was fine because it was a stunning profile – lovely jawline, sweetly formed nose and brow, blond tousled hair. She was focused on her friends at the table, a group of women probably enjoying a girls' night out. When she turned her head to speak to their server, Jack finally got a good look at her whole face.

She could go to Hollywood with a face like that – delicate symmetry and stunning eyes, a smile that melted hearts. He wondered how every man in the room wasn't staring at her. He was only getting away with it because decades of Special Forces had taught him how to look without looking.

He had been trained to make assessments that didn't require direct stares. He could take in more with one oblique glance than most people could by looking straight at something. He'd been a commando for a long time – before the shit had hit the fan in his personal life and given him more than enough excuse to retire without the military arguing about letting go of someone with his level of clearance.

Yeah, they'd dragged him back in, and sent him on the trip of a lifetime. But he was out again now, and entitled to a night on the town raising hell with some old friends. It had been all he had planned, and he knew how these guys could get when they really got going, so someone had needed to come along to be the Designated Sane Person.

The woman smiled gratefully at their server, who walked away. Then she looked, casually and directly, at Jack.

For a single moment, O'Malley's seemed to have literally disappeared. There was quiet curiosity in her gaze, an awareness that men often stared at her and that he had been watching, in spite of his best efforts. Her frank gaze sharpened into keen interest and sent a flutter of skipped heartbeats through Jack's chest, made his breath come shallow. He hadn't been hit by the sight, the acknowledgment, of someone else this way since he was a teenager, not even with his ex-wife. The jolt of awareness blindsided him.

Christ, he was too old for this.

Slowly, she tilted her head. The hint of a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth and it seemed to Jack that she came just short of nodding to him before she turned back to her companions and reached for the drink in front of her.

Jack tried very hard to focus on his buddies for the next fifteen minutes or so. Then she got up and started towards the pool table with a few of her friends in tow. Jack watched as a few men tried to work up the courage to walk up to her and saw every attempt die with a single, forthright glance from her wide blue eyes. Four or five times between her table and the pool table it looked as if someone was going to try to hit on her. But they all quit before they even got started. She moved with a kind of quiet grace, a casual authority as she took up a pool cue and waited for her friend to rack up the balls.

Kawalsky's voice in his ear was an unwelcome disturbance. He wanted to stay in the dream state she had evoked. He needed to savor this sudden awareness. He felt vibrantly alert after months and years of numbness, of going through the motions, of going through life in a walking coma.

"Forget it, Jack," he said. "She's way out of your league."

All right, so this time he had been openly staring and had been caught. Did it matter? Kawalsky seemed to know who she was.

"Who is she?"

"You don't know?"

"No. Should I?"

"That's Captain Samantha Carter."

"That's Carter? The egghead who built the dialing computer?"

"The same one."

Jack turned back to watch her make a shot that banked two balls off the walls and sank them both in opposite pockets. A murmur of approval went up from the crowd.

"She's way smarter than you," said Kawalsky's voice in his ear. "Like I said, way out of your league."

Jack turned reluctantly back to his rowdy friends and lifted his beer.

"Yeah," he said, "you're probably right."

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An hour later he had lost track of Carter and decided he needed to get some air. He told his buddies he was going for a smoke, even though he was trying to quit and he wasn't planning to actually light up, and then slipped out into the night.

The nights were cool in Colorado Springs, even in the early summer. He had slipped into his jacket and walked only a few steps from the entrance to the curb by the parking lot when a shiny silver two-seater MG with the top down pulled up next to him.

Sam Carter was sitting inside it. The wind was feathering her hair and there was a small smile on her lips. Her strong, long-fingered hand was resting casually on the gear shift.

"Want a ride?" she asked. Her voice was low and rich. He would have recognized it anywhere, even though he had never heard it before.

Jack studied her cautiously. "Didn't your mother teach you not to give rides to strangers?"

"You're not a stranger. I know exactly who you are."

"Oh, you do?" He lifted his eyebrows in question.

"You're Colonel Jack O'Neill. You went on the mission to Abydos. In fact, you just got back," she waited a beat, letting him take that in. "In fact, I'd really like to talk to you about that."

"Oh, you would," he said.

"Very much," she said, nodding, "We can talk over coffee, or over drinks, but the way you were nursing that beer in there tells me that's not so much incentive."

Attentive, Jack thought. Observant. "There's a Starbucks about two blocks from here. Has a dark corner. Should be quiet this time of night."

"Get in. I'll drive."

She drove like a pro, handling the little two-seater as if she had been born to do it. She must fly like an ace. Wonder what she prefers in the air? Jack couldn't quite stop the thought.

They parked in the lot at the strip mall and ordered coffee. She hadn't put the top up and the chilly air had burned the alcohol out of him. He was looking forward to putting his hands around something tall and hot.

And by that he just meant coffee.

They sat down at a quiet table by the lightly burning fireplace. "So, Captain—"

"Sam," she said, quickly. "Please, call me Sam. This isn't official or anything."

The name resonated in his mind when she said it, set off a pulse wave of recognition. He looked at her and found her looking back with an open expression, eyes an astonishing clear blue crinkling a little at the corners when she smiled back at him.

It occurred to Jack that he had just given away that he knew who she was, but something told him she had already been aware of that. He held her gaze for an extra moment, long practiced at conveying calm, affable strength no matter what was going on inside him, and said, "Jack."

"Jack," she repeated.

It was a quiet, almost thoughtful echo, as though she was evaluating the name, deciding whether it fit, deciding it did. But his name shaping her mouth and being uttered in her voice sent a flash flood of awareness through him, a reaction that shocked the crap out of him.

It was the first physical reaction he'd had in two years, since his son had almost killed himself with Jack's own personal handgun. Charlie was fine – he'd had a broken collarbone and a whole lot of blood loss, but he had lived. Jack's son survived; his marriage and his self-esteem had not. Sara had left the state and taken Charlie with her, and they'd sold the house. He hadn't fought it. It had been the right thing at the time, for everyone. Sara was remarried already to a good guy. Charlie was happy and Jack got to see him and talk to him on the phone.

The shrinks said it had all been accidental and Charlie had woken up in the hospital with no memory of it at all.

His fault, either way.

Jack leaned forward and scooted closer to the table, putting his hands around his coffee and hoping Sam couldn't tell that his hands were shaking. "So what did you want to talk about?"

Lowering her voice, she said, "I should have been part of that mission."

He blinked. "Is that why I'm here? So you can complain?"

She shrugged, lifted a shoulder in a delicate motion. "No. I get it. I'm in an all-boys club and I don't get to make the decisions. But I was involved in the program for years and I was your best bet for finding a way a way to dial the Gate on Abydos if Dr. Jackson failed."

"It wasn't the dialing that was the problem. It was what to dial in the first place."

She leaned forward. "What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"The trip through the wormhole," she said, eagerly.

"It was…short. Cold."

He hadn't said much, but the way she sat back in her chair and got an inward, dreamy look on her face told him he'd said enough. "I can't believe after all those years they shut that program down."

"Why not? It's not like we can use it again. We can't go back there."

"I know," she said grimly.

"So what are you going to do now?" Jack asked, curiously.

"Well at the moment I'm stationed at Peterson and teaching at the Academy. I've thought about reapplying for the astronaut program."

"You trained to be an astronaut?"

"Yes. It's all I ever wanted to do until I found out about the Stargate."

After that the conversation got easier, and Jack relaxed. They ordered more coffee and a couple of Danish pastries. She talked a lot about her work and her interest in astronomy, which surprised him. He didn't mention the telescope on his roof because it would have seemed too much like he was hitting on her.

He skipped around his own life, hiding details about his work and his family. But he saw the deductions and conclusions happening behind her brilliant, too-beautiful eyes.

At some point Jack realized he was enjoying himself – really enjoying himself, more than he had in anyone's company in a long, long time. This is happy, he thought, with an odd wonderment, in the middle of an easygoing debate about the pros and cons of the F-15 Eagle. This is what contentment feels like.

They stayed until it was obvious the people who worked there wanted to close up and then they walked back out into the night. It didn't escape his notice that they moved in lockstep, pausing at the same moment on the sidewalk, already in perfect sync, the way it got when people had served in the same company for a very long time.

"Look," he said, "I don't want to push this and you'd be shocked how long it's been for me. But I would really like to see you again. I won't put you in the position of giving me a fake phone number, and I'm certainly not going to do some creepy stalker thing like looking you up at Peterson. But I'll give you my number and it can be entirely up to you."

Samantha smiled, and a blush stained her cheeks. "I'd like that," she said, quietly. "Can I give you a ride home?"

"No, I'll call a cab. Like I said, don't want to push it."

She understood. No awkward time in the car at his curb, no invitation to come in and have one more coffee.

"It's late. I should go," she said.

He nodded and watched her walk to her car, watched her turn the key and open the door.

"Call me," he said, before he could stop it, before he had time to think about how pathetic it sounded.

She turned and blinded him with a smile. "I will."

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