A/N The year is 2014. Jack is retired from the Air Force. He and Sam are married and living together in DC.

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Sam heard the key in the lock of the condo's door, then the familiar footsteps. Jack was earlier than he'd said he would be and from the heaviness and quickness of those footsteps, he was on the wrong side of annoyed.

"Sam!"

"Office," she answered.

She turned from the desk with what she hoped was a calm, welcoming smile as he came in the door. He was still in his gym clothes – loose sweat shirt that proclaimed 'Property of the Air Force', gray sweat pants and his running shoes. That was unusual. He must have skipped his run around the track.

Before she could say another word, he had dropped the latest issue of Time Magazine in her lap and demanded,

"Who the hell are they?"

Sam looked at the cover and into her own eyes – if she'd been twenty nine again, without the fine lines from too much squinting at tiny bits of technology and worrying about the fate of the world. The woman on the cover had brunette hair but the resemblance was unmistakable.

The man with her was all too obviously Jack O'Neill in his early thirties – rugged good looks, dark brown hair, broad shoulders and good knees. They had been photographed back to back, from the waist up, but slanted towards the viewer. Their shoulders were pressed together. Their arms were folded in a stance of confidence and defiance. They were looking directly into the camera with shit-eating grins pulling at the lips.

The headline above their heads proclaimed The New Wizards of Aerospace.

Damn, Samantha thought.

"Where did that come from?" she asked.

"You know, that's a funny story," Jack didn't sound at all like he was amused by this, "There I was all finished working out on the machines at the gym and crossing the lobby to the running track and I stop to put my foot on a chair to tie my shoes and guess what's staring back at me from the stack of magazines on the table?"

Sam winced. Crap, of all the ways for him to find out.

"You know who he is," she said, slowly.

"John James O'Neil," Jack snapped, "My clone. Who is that with him? Please tell me you have a cousin four times removed who looks exactly like you and then explain how they know each other!"

Holy Hannah, he's pissed, Sam thought.

"Jack," she used the quiet, reasonable tone Daniel had taught her. She was comfortable enough with him to look him directly in the eyes, but for a moment it took her breath away. After two knee replacement surgeries, hair that had bleached out to snow white and a commitment to getting back in shape, the man was still the most incredibly handsome thing she had ever seen.

Even spitting mad.

"Do not 'Jack' me," he said.

"Should I go back to 'sir'?" she countered.

That brought him up short. Sam had faced down armies of Jaffa, Replicators, Wraith and the Ori. One pissed off retired Air Force General wasn't likely to make her blink. He took a breath and let it out.

"Tell me what's going on," he said.

Sam answered him in one quickly spoken sentence.

"Ten years ago we asked Thor to reproduce Loki's cloning technique to make a clone of me."

"You did what? Why? Wait! Who is 'we'?"

"Me and Daniel," she admitted.

Jack stared at her and then grumbled a long string of expletives worthy of his military rank. When he was done he said,

"And Thor did this?"

"It was my choice," Sam said, "Look they named ships after you and Daniel. I don't think Thor was any happier about the clone being on his own than we were. Partly he did it because Daniel asked and because I wanted it. Mostly he did it for you."

"And you wanted it because?" Jack began. There was hesitation in his voice now. "So there'd be somebody else around who ... "

Who knew where Jack had been, what this Jack was, who knew what this Jack knew, who was in the same situation. So duplicate Jack wouldn't be the only one of 'him' in the universe.

The words passed between them unspoken but understood.

"A little bit of that," Sam admitted. "Those were more Daniel's reasons."

"And your reasons?" he asked.

"Reason," she corrected, "There was only one. I love you and I believed even then that you loved me, even though I knew you were pushing me away at the time. It was a way to be together and that was something I wanted so desperately I was thinking about resigning my commission. I knew my clone would understand and want the chance to be with you."

Jack continued to stare at her. There was a little voice in his head yelling at him that he would have done exactly the same thing rather than let her be alone. He forcibly told it to shut up.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

Sam lifted one shoulder in a mild shrug. "Need to know? It wasn't your choice really. I didn't think you'd ever find out. Why are they on the cover of Time?"

"You're looking at the Co-CEOs of SJO Technologies," Jack answered.

Sam's eyes flew open. "Sam and JJ O'Neil are us? I thought they were brothers!"

"Obviously not!" Jack returned.

Sam sank back in her chair and stared at the opposite wall. SJO Technologies was a very young company that had rocketed to success over the last five years. What they were doing in the fields of aerospace, flight and artificial intelligence was off the scale.

"Jesus Christ, Sam," Jack said, running his fingers through his hair, "How the hell did you pull off getting her into society?"

"Agent Barrett helped us, through the witness protection program. She wanted to take my –our – mother's last name so she became Samantha Pierce. After that we found her a foster family in Colorado Springs and she enrolled in the same High School. I didn't track them after that. It seemed invasive."

Jack was torn between admiration and wanting to throttle her.

"You know what you did was a massive security risk? Right?" he asked.

He got another eloquent shoulder lift in return. "So did you when you decided your clone should live. You going to tell on me?" she asked.

Jack slumped against the doorway and stared at the toes of his running shoes.

"Jack," she said, and waited for him to look at her, "I love you. I loved you and it didn't look like we were ever going to be together. Fate, or Chance or Loki or something handed me a chance to make that happen. You can't tell me you didn't think about it back then?"

"No," he said, bluntly, "I didn't. But I've never been as far out of the box as you and Daniel."

Sam stood up and went to him, invaded his personal space, nudged his feet apart so she could stand between them and leaned on him.

The frown between his eyebrows lessened. She stood up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his. She let her hips press against his. He resisted and then kissed back. When they parted he said,

"You are not going to distract me from this with sex."

"I'm not?" she asked, with just a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"No," he didn't sound at all sure about that.

"Jack," her voice had so much love in it his chest hurt, "I didn't even know if it would work. With every moment they lived a different life they became less and less 'you and me' and more who they would become in a different reality. They could have wound up not wanting anything to do with each other. But my Sam came into existence knowing everything I knew, knowing why I had wanted her to have a chance. She wanted this too; and look at them! They're successful, happy. They're together. Can't that be enough?"

Jack sighed. "It might have been."

Sam nuzzled his chin and then kissed her way down to the pulse at the base of his throat, sucking gently.

"Why isn't it enough?" she asked, softly.

"Because of an email I got yesterday."

"That said?"

"The military is meeting next week with SJO Technologies to see if some of our programs, including the Star Gate Program, can benefit from their work."

"Good for them," Sam said, meaning it sincerely and still trying to get his mind on other things.

"Sam," Jack said, impatiently, "What is my new position with the government?"

"Senior Consultant for the Star Gate Program."

As she said it the implication fell on her like a missile strike. She stepped back and looked up at him. He watched her 'get it.'

"Uh-huh," he said, "Next week, I have to be at that meeting."

Sam swallowed, looked away, looked back and then swallowed again.

"Holy Hannah," she said.

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TBC