A/N: Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed, it's much appreciated. Hope you like this conclusion.

His desk is almost packed, although in truth Jack's never really considered it to be 'his'. He always felt as if he was just holding it until Hammond got back, and it still doesn't feel right that he never did. Jack misses Hammond, who is to this day the best commanding officer he ever served under, and the example after which Jack models his own command. As a result, leaving this office isn't nearly as difficult as it could be. It isn't going to be anywhere close to as tough as it was for him to leave SG-1, for example. As for leaving the SGC… that's going to be hard, although it's not as if he can't ever come back and visit. And who knows, maybe there will be other advantages.

There's a knock at the door and he calls for whomever it is to enter, wondering if it'll be the last time he does that. There's barely three hours until his last duty shift ends, so probably not, but still. It's coming. It's a weird thought. Jack feels slightly unmoored. This place has been his entire life for eight years. The idea that as of next week he'll be spending most of his days in the Pentagon, instead… It doesn't really compute.

Carter sticks her head around the door, sees him standing behind his desk with his hands in his pockets, and grins. "Got a second, sir?"

He waves her in. "For you, Carter, I can spare a whole minute."

She comes in and pushes the door shut behind her. Her eyes are warm, and he has the distinct impression that she can see right through him. "All packed, sir?"

He follows her gaze to the single cardboard box on his desk. He'd never had a desk before, and had had no idea what to put on it, so subsequently there was little that wasn't staying right where it was. "Oh yeah. It was a mission, but I persevered."

She looses a grin that could rival the death of a star. "Well, sir, I don't want to hold you up, but some of us were wondering if you'd like to mark the occasion with a few drinks later? I know you kind of wanted to sidle out unnoticed, but… no one seems to think we can let that happen, General."

He narrows his eyes. "I do not sidle, Carter."

"No, sir."

"I never sidle."

"Of course not, sir, I do apologise."

"I just… don't do goodbyes, that's all."

She nods, and for a second her smile dims and she glances at his chest rather than his face. "I can understand that, sir. But, General – maybe you don't realise quite how much you mean to everyone here. The troops would really appreciate a chance to show you how much you're going to be missed, sir."

He waits until she looks him in the eye again. He wonders how he's going to deal with not seeing her face every day, and already knows he's going to miss it as much as he misses sunlight after a shift spent down here below the mountain.

"All right, Carter."

Her face brightens. "You'll come?"

He smiles a little. "Sure. I have to dispel this whole 'sidling' thing, right?"

Carter grins again and Jack tries to take a snapshot of her with his mind, something indelible he can take with him with impunity. "That's great, sir. Thank you. O'Malley's OK? Say about 20 hundred?

He raises his eyebrows. "O'Malley's?"

She shrugs a little. "For old time's sake, sir."

"Old times, huh?" His voice has softened even more than he intended, and he sees the warmth in her eyes ratchet up a notch at his tone. "We had some good ones, didn't we, Colonel?"

"Yes sir," she says, quietly. "Some of the best."

He nods. "I'll be there, Carter."

She returns his nod and turns to leave. She's at the door when he calls her back again.

"Carter?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Tomorrow night, think you can make it to that bar on 115 we've been to a few times?"

She looks surprised for a second, a little puzzled. "You – want to move this goodbye thing to tomorrow, sir?"

He holds her gaze, because he doesn't do sidling. He's more the type to lob a grenade behind him as he leaves, and she's not marrying Pete Shanahan and he's going to Washington, and it's not a retirement but if there wasn't at least the possibility of an advantage to him leaving the SGC then really, why would he ever have agreed to take the job?

"No. I'm asking you to meet me for a drink. Tomorrow," he pauses, tapping his fingers on the desk next to him. "When this is no longer my office. When I am no longer stationed at Stargate Command."

She blinks once and he sees the precise moment that the realisation hits her as to what, exactly, he's asking. Carter stares at him, eyes wider than he's ever seen them, and he thinks she's going to say no, that she can't, that she'd better not, that-

"I'd like that," she says, with such quiet intensity that his mended-more-times-than-he-can-count heart actually skips a beat. "I'd like that a lot."

"Okay," he says, and Jack hadn't realised how afraid he was that she would say no until she'd said yes. "Good."

She blinks again, and he can see a faint flush rising up her neck, which puts him in mind of other times he's seen her blush and how much he's always loved it, and that how, in three hours' time, whatever happens, he'll be damned if he'll censor himself from thinking about such things ever again.

The place hasn't changed much since the last time he was here. The sign outside is still on the verge of giving up the ghost. Inside, the bar's still an island in the middle of the dropped floor, there are still booths still running around the outside. Jack orders a beer and picks a booth about half way down, sitting so that he can see the door. Carter – Sam, he reminds himself – isn't here yet, and he tries not to check his watch. She's not the sort to stand a guy up, he tells himself. If she'd changed her mind, she would have straight-up told him, not left him here alone to figure it out.

It's been a strange kind of day, the first in almost a decade where he woke up at home and didn't have to think about what was happening at Cheyenne Mountain. Not that he doesn't have a lot to do – Jack's decided to rent out his house in the Springs, so packing is the current priority. Not to mention the whole thing of finding somewhere to live in DC. And obviously, just because he didn't have to think about what was happening at the SGC didn't prevent him thinking about what might be happening at the SGC. He suspects he'll spend a lot of time doing that, at least at first.

And, of course, there's Carter, or more importantly the fact that he woke up this morning knowing that tonight the two of them were going on an honest to god date. Yeah, like he was going to be able to think about anything else with that on the horizon. The goodbye drinks at O'Malley's had been a particular type of torture. If she hadn't persuaded him to go along with it, he would have asked her to do this last night. No time like the present, why put off until tomorrow, yadda, yadda. As it was, Jack had spent all evening at a social event in her company, no longer directly her commanding officer but surrounded by exactly the sort of people around which he could do nothing but behave as her direct commanding officer.

It isn't that he's expecting something seismic to happen between them immediately, or even at all. Maybe it's too late for all that, maybe they've meant too many different things to each other over the years to even try that tack, and even if not then maybe it'll still be too much of a risk for her to contemplate.

All Jack O'Neill wants is to have a drink with Sam Carter. It's that simple. Just a drink, between two people who are just two people, with nothing else beyond their names attached. After eight years, he figures they're owed that much, at least.

Then the door opens and there she is, standing on the step that leads down to the bar, and a feeling flares in his chest so quickly and is of such magnitude that when it fades he feels lightheaded. He's still trying to recover from it when she picks him out and smiles slightly. Jack stands as she jogs down the step and strides towards him, direct, confident. She's carrying a crash helmet and is dressed in black leather pants and a leather jacket, which she unzips as she reaches him.

"Hi," she says, with a smile, resting the helmet on the table and running a hand through her mussed blonde hair and My God, Jack thinks, helplessly, How could I possibly ever stop loving this woman?

"Hey," he drawls. "Came on the bike, huh?"

"Yeah. Haven't had a chance to take her out for a while."

He nods. "The 115's a good run."

She smiles again. "It is. I'll just grab a drink and-"

"My round," he says. "What are you having?"

Carter names a beer and he heads for the bar. By the time he gets back she's taken off the jacket. Under it she's wearing a thin teal-coloured sweater that perfectly matches the colour of her eyes. It's made of something that looks so soft Jack has to stop himself reaching out to run his fingers down her arm. He puts down her glass and slides back into his seat, aware that his control over the evening is already in tatters because she's been here barely two seconds and what he really wants to do is ask her to come back to his place and never, ever leave.

"Cheers," she says, raising her beer and then looking at him over it as she takes a mouthful.

"Cheers," he says.

Carter puts her glass down and frames it with both hands. "So…"

He raises one eyebrow. "So?"

She laughs a little. It's playful, a little giddy, even, maybe. "So what are we doing here, sir?"

He grins back, catching her mood. "Hanging out?"

"Yeah?"

Jack's still smiling as he looks down at his the surface of his drink before looking back up at her again. "Look at it this way, Carter. Goodbye I don't do. But Hello… Hello I can get behind."

The look in her eyes takes on a serious edge, and he can see she gets it. "Okay," she says, softly.

"All right then," he says. "Hello, Sam. My name is Jack."

He hears the sharp little breath she pulls in, and then: "Hello… Jack. It's nice to meet you. At last."

They look at each other and he knows, just like that, that they're going to be okay.

They stay there until the bar closes, ordering burgers, monitoring their beer intake, laughing and joking and arguing about everything they can think of that has nothing to do with the fate of the world. They're just two people learning each other anew, trying to separate everything they know from everything they don't, trying to navigate around the weight of a history that has bound them so closely together while necessarily holding them apart. They both slip up a few times – she can't stop calling him 'sir', and 'Carter' comes far more naturally to him than 'Sam'.

"It's okay," he tells her after her latest apology. "One step at a time, right? At least… I'm hoping I'm not the only one who's had enough fun to want to hang out again?"

Sam flicks her gaze over him, slowly, before meeting his eyes, and there's a sudden flare of heat there that makes him catch his breath. She only holds his gaze for a second before dropping hers back to her drink. Her glass is nearly empty, and they're past last orders. The evening is coming to an end.

"It has been fun," she says, softly.

Something twists in his gut. "Do I sense a silent 'but' there at the end of that statement?"

Sam sighs. "There's still a chain of command, Jack. You're still a rank above me."

"I know."

"And all the while I'm leading SG-1 – I'm going to be away. A lot."

"I know that, too."

She tilts her head, eyes searching his, and even now, even after eight years, she takes his breath away. "I don't want to say goodbye either. Even if I wanted to, I know I can't. I've tried. But-" Sam shakes her head, breaks off.

Jack reaches out and strokes his hand over hers where it rests on the table. She turns her hand over and their fingers play together, tangling, untangling, tentative, wonderful.

"We've given everything," he says. "Over and over and over. We've put everything else first. And the Goa'uld are gone. We did that. We did."

She squeezes his hand. "So – what? You think we're owed this? You think that's how the Air Force will see it?"

"Well, I'm sure owed something, Sam, because believe me, Homeland Security was not my first choice."

"What was your first choice?"

"Retirement."

Her eyes widen a little at that. "You asked for it?"

"I did. They didn't want to grant it. And I told them the only way they'd get me to stay is if I got one thing. Just one. The only thing I want. The only thing I've wanted for a long, long time."

She stares at their entwined fingers and goes very, very still. "This?" she whispers. "Me?"

Jack reaches out with his other hand and touches her face, tipping her chin up so that she's looking at him again. "I'm not asking for certainties, Sam. I just want you to know that this… it's not as impossible as it was yesterday. We can hang out. We can get a drink together without it… being goodbye."

Her eyes fill with tears and she looks away, biting her lip. "I didn't… After everything, I wasn't even sure you still felt anything for me."

He smiles grimly. "What was it you called it once? 'That special ops way of shutting it all down'. I never really managed it. Not where you were concerned."

She sighs and wipes her hand over her face. "We'd better go. They're trying to close up."

Outside, her bike is standing beside his truck in the same pool of white light as it had four years previously, and Sam's obviously thinking the same thing, because once she's dumped her jacket and her helmet on the seat she says, "Remember the last time we were both here?"

Jack slides his hands into his pockets. "Oh yeah. I remember not being able to look at you in case someone saw my tongue hanging out of my mouth."

She gapes at him, astonished. "What? But you didn't talk to me all night, apart from three lines out here that made me think I was this close to a disciplinary."

"If I hadn't, I might have been the one actually up for a disciplinary." He looks her over and raises an eyebrow. "Not to put too fine a point on it, and at the risk of being wildly inappropriate, you in leathers and a close-fitting top has a pretty direct line to a very specific part of me."

It's too dark to see, but he's pretty sure she's blushing because her voice is gruff when she says, "I'm not sure I'm ready for all this straight Jack O'Neill talk."

He frowns. "Sorry."

"No-" she swings back towards him. "I like it."

"Yeah?"

Sam's fiddling with her bike key, not looking at him. She's silent for a long time, and when she speaks her voice is low, deliberate, as if she's making herself admit something she's tried to hide, even from herself.

"I wanted you so much that night," she says. "I remember staring at you from the other side of the bar, just willing you to do something, say something, to want me the way I wanted you. But you just… didn't."

For a minute he's speechless, and when he does find his voice, it's low and rough, even to his own ears. "I couldn't, Sam. You know that."

She nods. "But you hid it so well I didn't think it was there at all. I went home that night feeling like the biggest fool in the world, Jack."

"You want to know what I wanted to do that night?" he asks, roughly, pulling his hands out of his pockets, bunching them into fists at his sides. "You really want to know?"

He crosses the space between them so quickly it takes her utterly by surprise. Jack puts his hands to Sam's hips and pushes her up against the door of his truck, just hard enough to hold her there. He cuts her gasp off with a kiss he first thought of four years ago and has never stopped thinking of since. She makes the same sound in her throat that he remembers from all those years ago, and then she's kissing him back, hands gripping at his shoulders, dragging him closer, fingers threading through his hair. This isn't what he meant to do tonight, but suddenly anything else feels like wasting time and God knows they've already lost enough. He moves his lips to her neck and feels as well as hears her moan as she tips her head back. He slips his hands under her sweater and feels the muscles of her stomach ripple under his fingers as she gasps again.

"Jack," she says, voice fractured, breathless, finding his cheeks with her hands and pulling him back up to face her. "Jack. Take me home. Please, just take me home." He freezes for a second, looking at her, wondering if he's gone too far, if he's misunderstood and made a terrible mistake. Then she kisses him again, mouth open and hot, eyes smouldering, and whispers, "Your place is closer. We can get the bike tomorrow."

Jack watches the dawn rise through his window with his arm around a sleeping Sam Carter. She's got one arm draped over his stomach, her face against his chest. He's dozed on and off since she succumbed to sleep, but he's propped up against the headboard and hasn't wanted to move her. It's been too long coming, this night, it's been too close to never happening at all. He wants to remember how it feels to have her sleep against him the first time, how it feels to hear her breathing so close to him, to have her skin lying flush against his.

Unfortunately, though, he really, really needs the bathroom. Jack looks down at her, then strokes a finger over her cheek and whispers in her ear.

"Sam," he says, softly. "Time to wake up."

She shifts against him, screwing her eyes tighter, and then she hums, a slow, happy sound deep in her throat. Her eyes still shut, Sam smiles, pressing her face further into his chest, and then she opens her eyes and looks up at him.

"Hey," she says, throatily.

He smiles, losing all desire to leave the bed. Like, ever. "Hey."

"I'm not dreaming, am I?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Have a lot of dreams about me, do you, Colonel?"

She snickers, pressing her face against his chest again. Jack shifts a little, sliding down the bed until they're face to face. He brushes a hand through her hair, down her neck, down the naked filigree of her spine, and Sam sighs, a breath of happiness.

"I'll be right back," he murmurs, kissing her bare shoulder gently before he slides out of bed.

When he comes back, she's sitting up, his duvet wrapped across her chest, watching the same sunrise. He gets back into bed and pulls her against him.

"Okay?" Jack asks, because although he doesn't get the sense that either of them think they've made the wrong decision, he knows there's a lot more they need to unpack.

"Hmm," she murmurs. "You?"

"I feel," he says, pressing his lips against her forehead, "as if the world is more right now than it has been for ten years."

There's a sliver of silence, and she's got a look on her face that tells him she's contemplating something, so he waits her out.

"Jack," she says, eventually. "There's something I need to explain."

"Oh?"

"About… what happened with Pete."

He takes a breath, clears his throat. "No."

"But I feel as if-"

"Sam," he says, gently. "You don't need to explain. Not about Pete. Not about anything. You don't owe me anything, you never did."

She frowns, tracing her fingers up and down his arm, and it feels so good to have her touch him that he pulls her closer still. She's still thinking, he can tell, and there's something he needs to tell her that he thinks will set her mind at rest if only he can find the right way to say it.

"Listen," he says. "Sam, I need you to understand something very important."

Sam looks up at him, her eyes serious. Jack takes a breath and thinks for a moment, trying to frame the words.

"After Charlie died," he begins, and he feels her arms tighten around him, their warmth as soothing as the rising sun. "After Charlie died, I never thought there would be anything beautiful in my life ever again. And then there was you." He watches her eyes widen and then fill with tears that run down her face even as he wipes them away. "And Sam, even if this-" he gestured between them, "even if this had never happened, even if we had only stayed friends, even if you'd married Pete Shanahan and had a dozen children, you would still be the best thing that has happened to me in a very, very long time."

Sam pulls out of his arms, but only so she can lift herself up to his level. She cups his face in both hands and looks down at him, and in a straight contest the sunrise doesn't even get a showing.

"Did you leave the SGC for me?" she asks, quietly. "For this?"

"Yeah," he says, simply. "Not that I expected anything, per say, but… I wanted the chance. Just the chance."

She bites her lip and shakes her head. "You love Stargate Command."

"I do," he admits. "But – and I know this might be too soon, but in other ways it's about five years too late – I love you more, Sam. I always will."

She stares at him, eyes full of an emotion he doesn't want to name in case he's wrong.

"There's a research position going at Area 51," she says. "I'm going to take it."

He shifts a little. "You're going to give up SG-1?"

"Yes," she says. "I am. We'll see each other more regularly if I'm Nevada than if I'm leading SG-1."

"Sam… if you think you need to do this because of us, because of this - you don't. You really don't. I'd never ask you to do that."

"I know," she says. "And I'll miss it. But I love you, Jack," she says, quietly. "So much. We saw the stars together. We beat the Goa'uld together. And now you're what I want."

He reaches up to touch her face, his heart too full for words. Sam Carter smiles down at him. She's the most beautiful thing in his life, and he knows, without a doubt, that if he had to wait another eight years for her, he would.

"Tired?" he asks her, softly.

She raises an eyebrow, her grin turning so saucy that he feels his insides tighten. "Not even slightly, sir."

He grins. "Right answer, Colonel."

He flips her over, rolling her under him in one move that leaves her gasping with surprised laughter.

Outside the sun continues to rise. It's beautiful, but for him right then, it's not even worth a look.

[END]