Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are property of their lawful owners. This story is written for entertainment purposes only and no profit is made. No copyright infringement intended.

Spoilers: As far as Jack's career development goes, this follows the canon timeline of the whole show. However, the events of seasons 9 and 10 aren't mentioned. Biggest specific spoilers are for In the Line of Duty (S02E02), Beneath the Surface (S04E10) and Frozen (S06E04).

Timeline: The universe of this story goes AU little after Beneath the Surface and this story takes place 21 years later.

Genres: Drama/Family

Rating: T

Pairing: Sam/Jack though it's more in a past tense. This is not a fluffy story. Not exactly angsty either, just... You'll see.

A/N: Another future fic. I'm sure you're all getting tired of them already and I apologize for that. I haven't been able to find the pause button of my inspiration. Sometimes I just need a break from writing longer projects.

As you all probably know already, my general storylines are not that unique and this particular story has been written a million times already.

English is still a foreign language for me so I apologize for any and all grammar, spelling and factual errors in this story.

Home is where half of your heart is

It's Tuesday, a typical, boring, usual Tuesday, when a letter drops from between the junk mail. He always shakes the pile to see if there are any letters but it's been years since he's actually seen one.

He huffs and reads the beautiful, feminine writing on the address field. It's his old address, actually, but he used to play poker with the mailman so he brings the lost letters to his new house without a fuss whenever someone forgets the fact that he lived in DC for a few years and bought a new house when he got back. He should probably buy him a bottle of scotch or something, a wordless thank you.

The writing is not Cassie's, that much he knows, and he can't think of anyone else who would write him a letter but he decides to open it anyway. It's too small to be a bomb, he decides, and even a dangerous biotoxin would be a nice change for the days of a retired general. He always considered himself to be good at doing nothing but now there's been so much of it that even he is bored.

The letter smells faintly of vanilla, soft and sweet, with a hint of something flowery, and he finds himself thinking of a woman he hasn't seen for twenty years. But it's not her handwriting either so he unfolds the paper and starts reading.

Dear Mr. O'Neill

The reason why I'm writing this letter is that I believe you knew my mother.

I don't know much, just that she left before I was born.
I believe you two worked together but I might have misunderstood.
All my life we've been on the run, running from something nameless, changing names and towns and countries so fast that I lost count before I turned ten.

I've grown tired of the lies and decided to find something real.
If you'd like to answer some of my questions, buy a flight ticket somewhere, anywhere, and meet me at gate 25 at 1500 hours this Thursday. I will give your real ticket then.

I'll be wearing a green dress.

There is no signature. Instead there's some kind of simple drawing. There is a left half of a heart and a right half of a sun, merged together and colored with their respective colors, plus a wiggly line that might mean waves or music or even a cloud if he tilts his head right and squints while holding the paper at a 45 degree angle towards the light.

He peeks into the envelope just to make sure he's not missing anything and finds two pictures, worn and wrinkled like they had traveled in someone's pocket for a long time.

The first one he sees has a middle-aged woman, holding a cup of coffee with both of her hands, staring somewhere right of the camera. She's not smiling. Instead she seems to be lost in thought. He doesn't recognize her, even when he suspects who it could be, but finds himself wondering if that little frown on her face is a permanent feature or if it only comes out when she's thinking hard. It makes her look older than she probably is, harder, unreachable almost.

The second picture is different. There is a woman, not exactly young but younger, sitting on the hospital bed, holding a newborn baby. The texts at the end of the bed and on the wall are in a language he doesn't automatically recognize and eventually he turns to look at her face again.

And then he knows. It takes a couple of seconds but when he sees it, he can't ignore it. That's Carter, alright. He hasn't said that name for almost two decades, has managed to avoid thinking it for almost one, but now she's there, staring into the camera with a look that seems to be a mix of happiness and soul-crushing sadness.

Her hair is darker and a lot longer than he ever remembers seeing it, and her eyes look darker as well. He doesn't know if it's just the lighting or if she's wearing colored contacts. But there's something painfully familiar in her eyebrows, her nose, even in her smile though it's far from the illuminate grin he remembers so fondly. In the end it's her hands that convince him. He could never forget her hands. She's holding the baby in a way he's only seen her hold pieces of technology before. This is too valuable to break and I don't trust anyone else with it. Gentle but possessive, fiercely protective.

I believe you knew my mother, the letter started.

"I used to believe so, too," he finds himself mumbling despite the fact that there's no one to hear anymore. His dog died last year and he never got around to getting a new one, for the fear that the poor creature might have to outlive him one day.

He makes his way to the drawer and pulls out his passport. The girl never said he should bring one, but it feels right. He slips the pictures between the last pages because it's obvious that they're important to her and he's oddly touched by her faith in him, in getting them back one day.

He reads the letter through a couple more times, tries to find every detail, every little clue, but there's not much to work with. The one thing that catches his eye is the tense of the second sentence.

I believe you knew my mother.

It could be just her way of noting that it was years ago, that he used to know her once but doesn't anymore. But it could also mean something else, something a lot more final and he needs to sit down because a cold wave of fear washes over him when he considers the option that the woman he so deeply cared for might be no more.

But then again, she said "We've been on the run" instead of "We were on the run" which indicates that they are still running.

She left before I was born.

There's no indication of the girl's age, other than that she's older than ten. And less than twenty-one, because it's been twenty-one years and two months since Carter left without a word, ran away somewhere to Europe but they never managed to trace her. The girl is at least fifteen, he decides when he reads the letter a couple more times. Probably eighteen because she's planning to meet him at the airport and didn't mention anything about bringing her mother with her. So he'll be looking for a young woman in a green dress.

He decides to pack a bag because there's nothing but reruns on TV nowadays and apart from the lady next door who suffers from dementia and thinks he's her husband, he doesn't talk with anyone these days. An adventure sounds better than a biotoxin, anyway. Not by much but just a little.

The girl wants to meet him to get some answers but he has a few questions as well, about Carter and what the hell happened twenty years ago.

He adjusts the duffel on his shoulder and glances at the flight ticket in his hand one more time before he puts it in the breast pocket of his leather jacket. He bought a flight to Minneapolis in the end. It wasn't the cheapest option but he figured that if this mystery girl doesn't show up, he can at least go to his cabin and spend a week or two there. Hell, he should just stay the whole summer. He's not quite sure why he hasn't done that yet.

It's quarter to three and he's standing by the gate 25, watching the planes and people come and go. All of a sudden he gets a whiff of that same sweet scent that covered the letter and he turns around slowly.

There's a girl, standing maybe ten feet from him with her back towards him, wearing one of those long, simple dresses that reach all the way to the ground. It's army green in color, looking earthy and natural somehow. A thick, messy braid of dirty blond hair flows down her back, reaching halfway down of it. She's wearing brown sandals that are held in place with strands wrapped around her ankles, and probably calves as well, at least a dozen times. He can't help thinking that she looks bit like a fairy.

She doesn't look like she belongs here. He can imagine her running in the forest barefoot with the wind in her hair, but she seems out of place in this busy airport, surrounded with middle-aged men in crisp suits. She has a crocheted scarf on her shoulders, gray in color with red borders, and he wonders if she did it herself or if Carter learned to crochet at some point.

Finally he decides it's time to take the risky step and he walks to her and taps her on the shoulder. The girl turns around, startled at first, but then gives him a wide smile. Her eyes are blue, the exact same shade as Carter's, he realizes.

"Oh, there you are!" she says and sounds so excited that he starts wondering if he really should know her. "I feared you had gotten lost. Here is your ticket."

Her voice has an accent of some kind but he can't place it yet, not after so little words. He looks at the ticket and realizes it's for the flight that's already boarding. Dallas, the big sign says over the gate. But that's not the final destination, he realizes as he checks the ticket again. They're heading for Montreal. He wonders if that's where she's from or if she's just taking him somewhere safe, somewhere that won't reveal anything real of her. But she wrote him because she was tired of lies and wanted the truth so he's not sure.

"Shall we?" he asks and nods towards the checkpoint. She links her arm with his like she belongs there and they head to the gate. To his surprise she speaks perfect French to the lady who takes their tickets. Well, perfect as far as he can tell.

Changing names and towns and countries so fast that I lost count before I turned ten.

He finds himself wondering how many other languages she speaks. He knows she won't tell anything yet, not in the plane, not when there are this many people around, but he can live with that.

It's when they're making their way through the Dallas airport, walking fast to catch their flight, that he realizes he still doesn't know her name and he's not quite sure how to pronounce the drawing she draw at the end of the letter. Maybe it's something like an Indian name in the old movies, Half Heart Half Sun, but he doesn't know what that wiggly line over it means so he decides it's better not to mention it.

He glances over her shoulder when they pass the passport check at the gate and finds out her name is Amelie. But then he remembers the letter again and the words resonate in his head, pronounced with her slight French accent this time.

Changing names and towns and countries so fast that I lost count before I turned ten.

And he figures Amelie is not real either. He has a hunch that the symbol at the end of the letter is, though, that there's something very special about it. There is something close to sunshine about her, a lightness of some kind that makes people smile all around her but her own smile never reaches her eyes. There's also kindness, love, but also deep sadness, and he wonders if the fact that there's only half a heart holds any meaning.

Maybe it was supposed to mean something beautiful, be a combination of the two, but now it only has half of each. Bit of both but not enough of either. Half Heart Half Sun. When she gets settled in her seat in the plane, he notices a tiniest of tattoos on her big toe. It's the same wiggly line that was drawn next to the symbol at the end of the letter and he's dying to know the story behind it all but it has to wait a few more hours.

They're somewhere halfway between Dallas and Montreal when he reaches into the chest pocket of his leather jacket, pulls out the pictures and hands them back to her. Her eyes fill with tears and she nods before she puts them underneath the strap of her bra. He realizes she doesn't have any pockets in her dress but for some reason he thinks there's more to it. She put them on the left side, right above her heart.

"What is this place," he asks and lowers his duffel on the floor next to the door. The apartment is tiny, only slightly larger than a hotel room. The bathroom is on the left and after that the room widens into a combined living room, bedroom and kitchen. There's a queen size bed on the left, a couch on the right, and a tiny kitchen corner in the right back corner. It only has a fridge, a sink and a microwave, really.

The wallpapers are torn here and there and it's just one of those places where you expect to see used drug needles on the floors but there are none. The place is clean and smells faintly of lemon. All the textiles are new and bright and clean. It's just the overall look of the walls and floor and the whole building that gives it the rundown look. There was graffiti in the stairway and the elevator smelled slightly of urine. But this place right here, behind the locked door, is extremely clean, almost sterile, in its own way.

"A friend used to live here," she says and he's surprised to hear there's no accent in her voice this time. He also notices how the word friend doesn't sit quite right in her mouth, how she hesitates a fraction of a second too long before she says it, and he raises his eyebrows.

"Someone I used to sleep with," she corrects, still without an accent, and he nods.

"Mother will search for me," she explains and sits down at the end of the bed. "She won't find me here."

He's relieved to hear that Carter is alive and that sentence also reveals that she probably brought him to her current hometown but that relief is overrun by curiosity when he meets yet another puzzle about this girl. There's something off about the way she speaks, even now when the fake accent is gone. She sounds very formal and there's an odd note in her speech. Not quite an accent but something alike, the way she puts emphasis bit on the wrong place inside the words.

"Forgive me, I haven't spoken English for a long time," she says like she was reading his mind.

"It's OK," he says and sits down on the couch. He doesn't want to sit on the bed, knowing she's had sex there. It feels weird, even though he doesn't really know this girl. "I understand you just fine," he reassures her. "Do you have a name?"

"Not really, no," she says and shakes her head.

"Just Half Heart Half Sun then?"

She smiles and her hand raises to take the pictures from inside her bra.

"It is the only thing I have had forever. My mother told me it was a secret writing system, a language I guess, that she used with her friends when she was young. I thought perhaps you'd know it."

"No," he shakes his head. "I think it goes way back. The only secret language she used with me was math and that was so secret that even I had no idea what she was saying."

From the way the girl's face goes blank, he guesses that she has no idea what her mother used to do before she ran away.

"It means I wish good things for you," she explains the drawing. "And the wiggly line means home or together."

He smiles when he realizes the girl just called it wiggly line just like he has for the last two days.

"It has been mother's sign for me since I was born, the only thing that is real and doesn't change. When I was little... If I was upset, she used to hold me and draw it on my back, over and over again. I tattooed the home part on my skin when I realized I would never have house I could call home, my home would always be what I carry with me. I haven't shared the sign with anyone before but I wanted to share it with you."

"Why?"

She hesitates again, a little longer than she did with the word friend, and he hopes this time it means she's going to tell the truth on the first try.

"Because I think you might be my father," she says softly, those piercing blue eyes staring at him intensely for a briefest moment before they drop back to the pictures in her hand.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" He doesn't agree or deny, simply because he doesn't know. In an odd way it makes sense, though.

"I found her diaries. She wrote a lot about two people, Jonah and I think it was Terra."

"Thera," he automatically corrects.

"They were in love. They lived a simple life but they were happy. I only got to read it a couple of times because she usually hid her diaries very well but I got the impression that she was writing in code or something. I understood that I was their daughter."

"And how did you connect me as Jonah?"

"I didn't, not really. But even when she didn't write of Thera, she spoke of you more often than the others and I though I read something between the lines, some of the same emotions Thera had for Jonah. But it is only my idea of what happened and I probably jumped to conclusions too fast. I did not bring you here to demand anything from you."

"We were complicated, Carter and I."

"Carter?"

"Your mother."

"Is that her name?"

"Yeah, at least it used to be. Last name that is. Samantha was her first name. Sam."

She smiles a little and looks at the pictures she's still holding in her hands. "I never knew that," she admits. "But please, continue. You were telling about your history."

"We worked together. We weren't supposed to fall in love with each other. But then something happened and for a while we forgot who we are, forgot our roles and all the rules we were supposed to follow."

"Jonah and Thera," she sighs, her eyes wide, and he nods. "They were real? It wasn't code?"

He shakes his head. "No, it wasn't code. They were only intimate once. I never realized she might have gotten pregnant. She was on birth control, at least that's what I thought back then. I thought she ran away because she couldn't work with me anymore."

The girl swallows several times, fighting against the tears.

"I was an ass to her," he confesses because the girl has the right to know that her mother is not the monster of this story. "She tried to talk with me but I pushed her away. Then, one day, she just left. Quit her job and packed her bags without a single word to any of us."

"Did you look for her?"

"Two years. I followed what little leads we had for two years. Flew all around the world whenever I had time off from work. Frequently checked some databases for eight more but she was too good."

"Was it you she was running from?"

"Maybe," he admits. "But I think there was more to it." He remembers the NID who were a threat back then but they were wiped out a decade ago. Her physiology is unique because of Jolinar and he carries the Ancient gene. No doubt their child would have been a very interesting test subject for the NID.

"Does it have something to do with why I'm not allowed to go to a hospital?" the girl asks.

"Yes. But I don't think I should tell more about that. Let's just say that if the bad guys had caught you, it would have been bad, very bad."

"So mother did right when she left? Because she left to keep me safe and she managed that."

"I..." Did she do the right thing? Was it really the only option? "Yeah. She left to keep you safe and she achieved that. So yes, it was right. But it might not have been the only option. We'll never know."

"If she had stayed..." she starts but doesn't find the words to finish the sentence. But he thinks he knows what she's asking.

He tries to decide how much of the truth he'll tell and decides she deserves all of it. "We would have gotten in trouble at work but probably nothing worse than getting fired. You would have grown up with two parents who would have fought their best to keep you safe."

"And you and Mom?"

"Like I said, we were complicated."

"Did you love her?" the girl asks and he swallows. He has tried his best to keep that word out of his head, even harder than he tried to keep her name away. The ache it creates is almost physical.

"Yeah," he admits. "I did. But I don't know how she felt about me."

"In her diary-" the girl starts but he stops her with a hand signal.

"That's private," he says simply. "She wrote that for herself and I don't want to know."

"But..."

"No," he shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. It was twenty years ago and I'm not going to torture either one of us with the what-ifs. If I had known, I would have been a part of your life. But I didn't and that's a fact. But I'm here now."

The girl nods and turns to stare at the pictures again.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and then lowers the pictures on the bed next to her.

"I think we should go eat something."

It's late, he realizes when he glances at his watch. Almost ten already. But a dinner sounds great.

He sleeps on the couch. She laughs at him when he tells her why and the look in her eyes makes him suspect that there's something she'd like to tell about the couch as well, and probably the shower corner, based on that little glance of the bathroom door. He huffs and pulls the comforter a little higher, partially covering his head, waiting for sleep.

A daughter, the word suddenly flashes in front of his eyes and they snap open, staring at the immobile lump in the middle of the big bed. He has a daughter. A beautiful, fairy-like daughter who carries her home with her in a tattoo because she doesn't belong anywhere. And the funny thing is that for the first time in twenty years, he feels like he belongs somewhere, belongs to someone.

"Goodnight, Dad," she mumbles, probably unaware that he's still awake as well.

"Goodnight Half Heart Half Sun."

Her chuckles turn into sobs a moment later and he only hesitates a second before he takes his comforter and makes his way to the bed. He sits down behind her and puts his hand on her shoulder.

"It's OK," he whispers but she only cries harder and curls tighter into a ball. The comforter slips a little, revealing her shoulder, and he lowers his hand on the pale, bare skin. She's wearing a tank top and men's boxers to bed, a harsh opposite of the flowy dress she wore earlier. There are freckles on her skin, just like her mother's, he notices now.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asks because he has no idea what to do. He's never been good with crying women, and this one is his daughter. He could handle a child, a five-year-old, but how to comfort a young woman when he has no idea why she's crying?

"God, no," she quickly sobs out, sounding almost hysteric about the sheer thought.

"Alright," he says and gives her shoulder a squeeze. "Not going anywhere. Ever. You hear me?"

She sits up and wraps her arms around his neck. He gets them settled so that he's leaning his back against the headboard and she's sitting sideways on his lap. He tucks the comforter a little tighter around her and she snuggles close.

"You make my body hum," she mumbles. "Just like mommy does."

Mommy. It's the first time she has called her something other than mother. He suspects she has distanced herself from her mother lately, tired of the lies like she said in the letter, tried to find her own way in this world. A new label is just another way to enhance that distance. But now she's remembering the good times, times when her mother made her feel safe, when she was still mommy, someone dear, not just a person who gave birth to her.

When he's done with this analysis, he thinks about what she said and not just the words she used. Humming? Now that he focuses on it, he can feel it as well. Naquadah. Of course. Carter had it in her bloodstream so of course it moved to the girl as well. And he became a Tok'ra host years later, after almost being killed by an alien virus so there are remains in his system as well.

"Go to sleep Half Heart Half Sun."

"Could you give me a name? A real name? Something that stays?" she mumbles, half asleep already.

"I'll think about it. But it can wait until tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah."

They wake up when someone knocks on the door. Well, knocking isn't quite an accurate term because this sounds more like someone is trying to make his way through it without even waiting for it to be opened. The girl jumps and panics on his lap but he shushes her.

And then the person starts to yell. It's in French and he realizes that the person is a woman, not a man. She's angry and talking so fast that there's no way he can understand anything except the word merde and he knows that's not a good word. But then again, the tone of her voice would have told him just as much.

"It's mother," the girl whispers and he feels his chest tightening a little once again. Carter. On the other side of that door is Samantha Carter, the woman he hasn't seen for over two decades, yelling and screaming and swearing in French.

"She'll leave soon," Half Heart Half Sun whispers.

"She knows how to pick locks," he whispers back.

The yelling stops for a moment but then starts again and the girl rolls her eyes.

"She's yelling that she knows I have a man here."

He can't help chuckling a little.

Then he untangles the girl from his lap, slaps his thighs a couple of times because they've gone numb during the night, and gets up. He glances at the girl one more time and she nods her permission so he pulls on his pants and makes his way to the door.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door.

"What the hell is your problem?" he asks because he decided it's best to act like he has no idea who it is. And when he opens the door, he realizes how easy that is because there's nothing familiar about the woman, nothing at all. At least on first glance.

"Are you sleeping with my daughter?" she asks with a thick French accent and he wonders if that's fake or the result of not speaking English for years.

"Yes and no," he says and steps aside the best he can when she storms past him and into the room.

Carter starts to yell at the girl, in French, but she stops her.

"English, mother! We have company."

"You really want your latest fuckbuddy to hear what I'm saying to you?"

"Mother, meet my Dad. Dad, meet mother."

Carter swirls around and he can feel her eyes scanning his face, taking in the brown eyes, the scar on his eyebrow, even his lips, and then the differences since last time, the hair that's longer and grayer, whiter, the many, many wrinkles all around his face. He waves at her, slowly, almost sarcastically, because he doesn't trust his voice yet.

"Howdy," he finally says and the woman glares at him murderously.

He still struggles to understand that this is Carter, the brilliant scientist and an amazing 2IC he used to serve with, the woman he cared about a lot more than he was supposed to. Her eyes are the same blue but they hold none of the softness he remembers so well. They're hard and calculating, distant. Her hair has gone gray, or she dyed it gray, and it's pulled into a bun in the back of her neck, making her look even older. She's wearing glasses and they enhance the librarian look even more. They look good on her, though, so he's not complaining.

She's wearing black slacks, a white button-down shirt and a light, black jacket. She looks elegant and professional and he wonders how long it took before the civics started feeling natural on her. But when he looks closer, he starts to suspect that maybe they never did.

"Uh, we wiped out the NID a decade ago," he says because he feels like he should start somewhere. "In case that's what you've been running from. And if it was me... Well, I'm sorry but I busted that plan as well."

"How?"

"I wrote him a letter," Half Heart Half Sun says and gets up.

"How?" This time the question is aimed at her daughter.

"I read your diaries," she confesses. "Took me years to piece everything together. But eventually I found an address."

Carter pales and for a brief second he fears she might just pass out but Half Heart Half Sun guides her to sit on the couch. The girl smiles at him and he knows she chose the couch and not the bed because of the conversation they had last night. He wonders how much Carter knows about her daughter. Really knows about her.

Carter refuses to have the big conversations in a place like that so instead they pack their bags and drive to a small house in the suburbs.

The house is beautiful and flooded with light, almost like they were trying to flush away the darkness from their souls, he thinks, when he looks into her cold eyes once again. There's not much extra in the house, no collection of souvenirs or small porcelain figures. He finds himself wondering if they leave the furniture behind every time they leave. Probably. Because a moving truck would be too easy to track.

Carter drives a dark blue SUV that looks blue in bright light but black if there are any shadows, and he wonders if that is a deliberate way to make sure the car is harder to recognize. The windows are darkened so no one would notice if it was piled full of boxes. He wonders if they take even that much with them. What does it feel like to have nothing of your own?

Suddenly he realizes why the tattoo was in Half Heart's toe of all places. At first he thought it's easiest to hide there but now he thinks there's more to it. She said she got it to remind her that the only home she has is what she has with her. Wherever she stands, her home is right there in that moment.

He wants to bring her to Springs with him, wants to see her walking barefoot on the backyard, run along the trail that leads through the forest. There's something so pure about the girl, his daughter, and every second they spend in a city like this, where he can hear the cars every second and smell the gasoline and hot tarmac on every step, he fears that she will lose that. He fears for her soul more than he's ever feared for his own.

They sit down at the kitchen table, Half Heart Half Sun and him, next to each other. Carter snaps on the water kettle and brings three cups to the table, along with a selection of tea.

"You finally kicked your caffeine addiction?" he finds himself asking.

"Stomach ulcers," she says, her back turned to them as she searches the cabinet for some sugar and finally finds it in the back row. Half Heart Half Sun gets up and makes them sandwiches when it becomes obvious her mother is only going to offer tea.

Carter doesn't touch her sandwich. She stirs her chamomile tea over and over again but the spoon never makes a sound because it never touches the sides of the cup. He wonders what it's like, to focus every second of your existence in being unnoticeable, nothing special. It must be especially hard on someone like Carter, someone who's so extraordinary and brilliant but now has to keep a lid on herself.

He wonders what it would take to smooth that constant frown on her forehead. Would she relax if he ran his thumbs over it, gently massaging? Or would she only tense more? He doesn't belong in her life anymore but that's hard to comprehend because she's always belonged in his, even when he tried so hard to forget.

The morning sun is pouring over them from the large sliding doors, like it was mocking their dark thoughts and ordering them to cheer up already. But she resigned and he retired and neither of them is very good at following orders anymore. He wonders if the girl even knows who they used to be, and he wonders if it matters.

He should probably ask Carter if he really is the girl's father but it doesn't matter, not really. He's the only father she's ever had and he thinks Carter would have firmly denied it if it wasn't true. So he skips that conversation and they sip their teas in silence as he wonders what the next conversation should be.

"Your name is Grace," Carter says out of the blue and with a two second delay, lifts her gaze from her cup and meets her daughter's eyes. He can't help noticing that her speech still holds the thick accent and he thinks it might be real, from years of not speaking her native language. "I have never written it anywhere, I have never called you that, but that has been your name since the moment I found out I was pregnant. Grace O'Neill. Gracie."

It fits her, he thinks, when he turns to look a her. Grace. There's lots of that in her.

The girl's eyes are filled with tears and she grabs his hand and clings to it like it was her lifeline. It's only when he feels the slight buzzing in his body, the telltale sign of naquadah somewhere near, that he realizes the significance of the last name. He looks at Carter and nods, knowing there's not much he can say right now. She nods back and swirls her spoon around the cup once, twice, three times. It clings to the cup on the last round and he feels like the pattern is breaking all of a sudden, like she's slowly bursting free from the cage she's built for herself.

"It's good to see you, Carter," he whispers because he thinks she should know that. He's not angry, not really. How could he be? She gave up everything to keep their daughter safe and she succeeded.

"Carter died somewhere over the Atlantic ocean," she says and those cold blue eyes turn to look into his. He knows that's not quite true.

"No," he says and shakes his head. "That might be when you buried her but she's hard to kill. For all I know she's still gasping for breath in that coffin you built for her. But I can call you Sam if that makes you feel better."

"Sam died as well," she says with a shake of her head. "A lot later then Carter, but she died as well. There is nothing left of me for you to reach. I have built a new woman inside the old shell."

Now that she's getting used to English again, the accent is starting to fade a little. It's thick in some words and almost unnoticeable in others but there is that sense of something being off about her speech, like she's forcing the words into a wrong melody. And he wonders how much of what she says is true and how much she's exaggerating.

"Thera," he whispers and the frown on her face melts away for the first time and the softness is back in her eyes again, a tiniest of smiles gracing her lips. But it only lasts for a second before a new kind of coldness sets in and he knows she just rebuilt her walls higher than ever before.

"Nothing?" he whispers and quirks an eyebrow.

"It wasn't real. The only part of me you still recognize is a fantasy we shared."

"I think it was more real than anything else in our lives. It was us, stripped from the rules and regulations and limitations of the society. It was us, raw to the bone. How can you look at your daughter and say it wasn't real? Is she just fidget of your imagination?"

"She is the only real thing in my life," she says, dropping the words from her lips one by one like it was a fuse burning, getting closer and closer to the big explosion but it doesn't come. It feels almost like an implosion, to be honest, because it's like she turns back into herself after those words, buries herself so deep inside that foreign shell that no one can reach out for her anymore.

"I would have ran with you," he says. "If I had known, I would have packed a bag and left everything behind to go with you. It doesn't make a difference, I know that, but I want you to know it anyway."

She closes her eyes for a moment, swallows to keep the tears at bay and then nods at him and he nods back, knowing it's the closest thing to an absolution he will get from her.

"Grace?" he asks and squeezes the small hand he's still holding. "Wanna go for a walk?"

She nods, says she'll need to change and leaves the room. Carter gets up to clear away the cups and plates like this had been just a casual breakfast with friends, not something life-changing.

"I'll get the guest room ready," she says.

"I don't need to stay here," he says and gets up but she turns to look at him and lowers her walls a little and it's just like before, when they used to have complete conversations with just their eyes. And he knows what she's trying to say but apparently she's not so confident because she says it out loud as well.

"You are real. She should have you here."

It's only half of what she means, though. He is real to her and so is Gracie, but she doesn't trust herself to be real anymore. He can see the emptiness in her, how she fears she's nothing but a shell anymore, how she fears the vacuum inside her will pull her daughter in with her. She wants him to save the girl from her.

"And you're her mother. She needs you as well," he says because he fears that she might just leave, run away and start over somewhere else.

To his surprise, she steps forward and raises her hand to rest on his cheek, her thumb gently stroking the corner of his mouth. "I'm not going anywhere," she whispers. "Not anymore. There's no reason to run." She drops the hand and retreats to a safe distance again but he knows it's a start. She has no reason to run but he knows he has to make sure she has a reason to stay.

"Where exactly did you get that tattoo?" he asks when they're walking around the neighborhood.

She's wearing those sandals again, the ones that consist of a thin piece of leather between her foot and the ground and a bunch of wires that strap the thing to her foot and leg. And he wonders if she's wearing them because she would like to walk barefoot but can't do that in the city. This time she's wearing a knee-length, light green dress but it's just as flowy as the one she wore the day before. She opened the braid before they left and now her curly hair is flowing free in the wind. She's so much closer to what he imagines to be her true form.

"A friend of mine did it."

He remembers the apartment where she took him yesterday and wonders what kind of people she calls friends.

"She has a tattoo shop. A good place. Safe and clean. Why do you ask?"

"Would you mind if I get a matching one?" he asks, because he likes about the thought.

It means home. Or together.

He likes about the reminder that wherever he is, he has the ability, the choice, to make his home there if he wants. And he likes the other aspect of it, the idea that they're together now.

"I have a better idea," Grace says and takes his hand, pulling him towards the bus stop.

When they walk into the tattoo studio, Grace doesn't introduce him to her friend, just explains, in French, that he only speaks English. And Russian and little bit of Arabic plus the basics of Mandarin but she doesn't know any of that.

When, however, Grace explains that he wants a tattoo just like hers, the friend whispers an amused "Petit ami?" but he has no idea what it means.

Gracie shaking her head and answering with a "Papa" gives away the fact that he was assumed to be her boyfriend again. He wonders if she frequently sleeps with men three times her age but it doesn't really matter because they didn't come to introduce him, they came to get inked, so they just get started.

He gets the wiggly line on his big toe but he gets something else as well.

Grace gets the Half Heart Half Sun symbol tattooed on her neck, in the hairline behind her left ear. She said she wants it to be somewhere close, somewhere where she can touch it but where everyone doesn't see it. The left half is heart and the right half is sun. She leaves out the wiggly line because she already has that on her toe. And it makes sense in some odd way to have the other half of the symbol in her toe and other in her head, because that symbol is like a name to her, it's who she is, and the symbols on her skin mean just that. This is me. Everything between these signs is who I am.

He gets the same symbol but mirrored. Right half is heart, left is sun. Grace says it's because together they have one complete heart and one sun. Parents tattoo the names of their kids on their skin all the time, this is not all that different from that. Except in a way it is, because that symbol means so much more than just a title, it's everything she's had, the only true thing she's had all her life. It's like getting her DNA carved in his skin, everything she is, has been, will be. He is honored that she wants him to carry her with him wherever he goes.

His tattoo goes to the inside of his arm, halfway between his wrist and elbow. It will be hardly visible once the hair grows back, but he'll always know it's there.

He buys her an ice cream afterwards, because that's what fathers do when their kid is in pain. She laughs and keeps swiping the hair from her face because it keeps getting into her sundae.

He finds himself wondering in which country she had her first ice cream, what was the first language she learned, did she have a dog when she was little and if her mother ever knew how to push her high enough in the swings. Because he can see the fire in this girl, his girl, and he knows she would have pleaded to go higher and higher, until she felt like flying.

There's an odd kind of peace about her and he knows it comes from the fact that she's built her own peace, inside her, because she never stayed in one place long enough to learn how to draw it from the world around her. It's almost like she's floating an inch off the ground because she's learned to block out the world. It won't matter because she'll move, she'll get new name and story and nothing here will matter in the end. She has distanced herself from the world but at the same time she's so painfully here in every moment that he's never met anyone like that.

He glances at her sandal-clad feet that are swinging under the bench and sees the tattoo. She builds her home on the spot where she's standing. That's why she's here, but at the same time it's like she's living in a glass house in the middle of the crowd, never truly touching them.

But he thinks they're real to each other, him and the girl. He's not sure if he pulls her to the ground with him or if she's pulled him inside her glass bubble, but he's almost certain that they're at the same level of existence. He likes that.

Grace goes to bed early. She kisses both of her parents on the cheek and wishes them goodnight, in French for her mother and English for her father. And so the grown-ups are left alone at the kitchen table.

There is no sunlight anymore but the lights of the city are streaming in through the windows and he wonders why she even bothers with the lights in here because the sun and the street lamps offer more than enough.

She pours him a glass of wine without asking if he wants one, and sits on the other side of the table with her own drink. For the first time she removes her glasses in his company, and folds them on the table next to her glass. She massages her temples gently and for a brief moment that frown on her forehead disappears again.

"What was her first language?" he finally asks when it becomes obvious that she's not going to start a conversation.

"A mixture of English and Swedish," she says. "She's fluent in five languages and knows basics of a few more."

"Why Sweden?"

She shrugs. "Blue eyes and blond hair. I figured I'd fit right in as soon as I learn the language."

"Did you?"

"Well enough."

He doesn't ask when they moved out of there or why because it doesn't really matter. He doesn't ask what Grace's first word was or what color her favorite teddy bear was. He wants to, but at the same time he suspects it will hurt them both too much to think about that time. He wonders if there are pictures.

"I took her from you and you don't owe me anything," she speaks softly, her accent almost nonexistent in the whisper. "You are free to pretend I don't exist."

"I tried that for ten years," he admits. "It didn't work."

Because what we had... Something like that never really fades, he thinks but he doesn't dare to say it out loud. Not yet, not now. Maybe not ever. Because she's right, she has changed. But so has he. And there's no way of knowing how they fit together now that everything is new but at the same time so old and far away in the past.

He has the sudden urge to touch her and he reaches over the table to cover the fingers that are playing with the napkin next to her wine glass.

"I don't know," he says firmly when she turns to look at her, those blue eyes so full of questions. "I really don't know," he admits. "But you're real and so is our daughter and we can work our way up from there."

She nods and covers his hand with her left one so that it's sandwiched between both of her hands now and he finds himself thinking about immigration rules and forwarding his mail and if the demented lady next door will survive without him but he's almost certain she meets him for the first time every day so she should be fine and he turns his gaze back to Carter's hands because she's here and he doesn't want to miss a second of it.

They look different now, her hands. Familiar but different and he wonders how long it's been since they've held something like they held Grace in that picture, something irreplaceable because the last two decades have been a series of things that she can leave behind in a heartbeat if the time comes. He wonders what she does for a living now. Probably something meaningless, compared to saving the universe. Then again, any job is meaningless or at least less meaningful compared to that.

"You should take her to the park," Carter whispers and smiles at him. It's still far from the grin that used to lighten up the whole room but he can see her dimple now and that's a start. "I never learned how to push her high enough in the swings."

He smiles and wants to say something funny about how great minds think alike but he doesn't because he feels like they have a moment going on here and he doesn't want to break the mood.

"Maybe you should come with us," he says instead.

"I probably should."

And suddenly he can see it so clearly, the two of them pushing their adult daughter in a swing, laughing. She will probably insist on jumping from the swing which will probably result in at least some level of injury. And then they'll eat ice cream again, all three of them.

"What should I call you?" he asks carefully, not wanting to upset her but he needs a label of some kind because he doesn't even know what her passport says at the moment.

She looks thoughtful for a moment but finally nods when she reaches a conclusion. "Thera," she says and gives his hand a squeeze. "I think you should call me Thera until we find out how much of Sam or Carter is still alive."

He clears his throat, knowing his next words are bit risky but he just can't resist the temptation. "You know, if you need help reviving either one of them... A little mouth-to-mouth perhaps, I'm available. You know that, right?"

At first her eyes widen and he's certain she will blurt out an upset ramble about how he even dares to suggest something so, so scandalous but then the shock melts away and he sees a familiar twinkle in her blue eyes and that dimple is showing on her cheek again when she smiles. He decides to make it his personal mission to make her grin again. He's missed her smiles, more than he even realized.

"I think they'll be just fine," he states and gives her hand a squeeze.

She chuckles and shakes her head and he gets the distinct impression that they will all be fine in the end. Because sometimes home is right where you stand and he's determined to stand by these amazing women for the rest of his life.

~The End~

A/N: Reviews are always appreciated, especially so with this kind of writing exercises where I step outside my comfort zone.

Oh, and the idea with flight tickets was that he went through the security with the ticket he bought and then got into the plane with the one Grace gave her. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work on a major airport (I've done it by accident once myself) but I wanted to get them on their way as soon as possible so that the first chance for talking is once they get to Montreal.

Please DON'T ADD this to your story alerts. This is a ONESHOT (aka a one chapter story).