The Question

Author: BadgerGater

Spoilers: None

Season: Four or early Five

Rating: PG

Warnings: None. Except this isn’t typical Badger stuff

Pairing: Not saying

Summary: Sam’s thinking about the men in her life

Disclaimer: They're not mine. I acknowledge that the big important people at MGM, Gekko, Double Secret, etc. etc. own them, but I'm only taking them out to play and will return them when I'm done. No disrespect intended, no money changed hands, and I’m just havin’ fun.

Author's Notes: Just to prove I *can* write something different, and from a different perspective.

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I always pick the men I can't have.

Why do I do that?

I know, I think too much.

Or maybe not enough.

And really, I don't know if I *want* him, not to keep anyway, but I want him for now, for one night, one glorious evening.

(Don't giggle, Sam.)

I keep imagining what it would be like, and I can imagine a lot, a whole lot.

(Carter, get yourself together.)

I shouldn't be thinking about this. I have other, more important things to think about. But just try telling my brain not to think about the sexiest man I've met on the 142 planets I've visited?

It's not that I haven't met plenty of men, and liked a few, and sure, loved a few, not many, but a few.

There was Jonas.

Now *there* was a colossal mistake.

Seemed like a good idea at the time, but Holy Hannah, what a disaster.

I hate it when my Dad is right. Truthfully, that's half the reason why I accepted his ring, because I knew how much Dad would hate it. Yes, I did go through a spell like that, my wild streak as it were, a time when my first reaction to anything was, will Dad hate this? If the answer was yes, then I had to want it/do it/get it.

So I wanted Jonas, or so I thought.

I was sort of in love with Martouf, too, although I never could figure out how much of it was me and how much Jolinar. It's really confusing to have half the memories of someone else, an alien someone else no less, in your brain. Interesting, but frightening.

At least the Colonel understands, in his own inimitable way. I think. It's one of his most endearing qualities, the way he tries so hard to 'say' he understands, and the words never come out quite right, but the sentiment is there.

Yeah, sentiment. Hard to believe about a Special Forces trained Air Force Colonel, but he actually does have a mushy interior under that sarcastic exterior.

Right. Back to Martouf. Nice guy, really nice guy, very dear, very sweet, very sincere, a sly sense of humor that would sneak up on you, not over the top like the Colonel's.

Marty used to look at me with that sad, haunted smile, and I knew he was thinking of his beloved Jolinar. I know she loved him back, deeply and completely. Her memories showed me a thousand things about him that they'd learned about each other in their long life together, things two humans may never learn about each other. It made me imagine having a relationship like that, so total, so trusting, so true. I know it's a fairy tale and I'm a grown woman, an Air Force Major no less, and I should know better, but I really do have a heart. I just can't ever let anyone see it, not my Dad, not the General, and not my teammates. Can't ruin the image.

Although sometimes I'd like to smash the image, let it all out, tell them all to go to hell.

Sorry, drifting off topic here again.

Happens a lot when I think about men.

I can't ever make up my mind about them.

That's what I love about science. Science is always the same. It's there. It *is*. Elements act and react in certain ways, matter and energy and the laws of nature don't change. They don't hide behind the past, or deny the future or quote the rules. Science is... science. It's a constant.

I always needed a constant in my life, I think because I never had one. When I was a kid we moved all the time because of Dad's career. I'd just get settled in to a school and a neighborhood, start to make friends, and we'd have to move again. I hated it, and secretly, I hated Dad for it.

So, odd I'd become an Air Force officer myself, right?

Actually, no it's not. I just had to be better than him, and the only way I could prove that was to be in the Air Force, too. Get better grades at the Academy, get better personnel reviews; earn more medals; achieve the next rank faster; do things he's never done.

So, yes, I've spent my life trying to be not as good as my Dad, but better.

I think that's why I'm the way I am about men.

If I chose one I can't have, then he can't hurt me, can't betray me, can't be better than me in some way. I can be the one who decides when to walk away, on my own terms.

I walked away from Jonas, after I eventually saw who he really was. I didn't get the chance to walk away from Martouf, I never got to find out who he really was, at least from my own perspective. I never found out if he cared about me for me, or for her. That was a huge wall between us, one I don't think we could have surmounted in a hundred years.

Martouf was a dear, sweet being.

Losing him hurt.

A lot.

Then there was Narim.

I'm hopeful he's still alive out there, I really am.

I liked him, too. He was reserved, as all the Tollan are, or were, but I knew there was so much more beneath the surface. He was, or is (I keep telling myself he is), a gentle man, and a good man, so decent he couldn't believe his own leaders were lying to him. An honorable man who helped us save our world just because it was a good and decent thing to do.

If anyone survived that disaster, it would be Narim. He'd already survived one disaster, back when we'd rescued him from the original Tollana. I hope he found a way to escape again.

Orlin was a nice guy, too. Stranger than the others, but he just didn't understand, he'd never been human before.

(Right, Sam, another alien. What is this thing you have with aliens, girl? Even your father is one, sort of, now.)

But back to Orlin, another sweet, dear man, who wanted to do right. He's not dead, not really, but then of course, he was only alive as a human for a few days. But they were wonderful days, those days he spent in my house. Sometimes he scared me, and often he frustrated me, but he was tender and passionate. You didn't think we spent all our time talking about wormhole physics, did you?

He wanted to be fully human, and I gave him the chance. He gave me the chance to be fully human, too.

(Are you seeing a theme here, Sam, good and decent and sweet and gone?)

Just once in my life, I'd just like to be ordinary, not the smart one, not the one who gets ordered to save the planet. Again. Sometimes, I'd just like to complain about, I don't know, what other women complain about, dirty laundry or the dishwasher breaking down or the price of cantalopes. I don't know. I don't know what *normal* women do every day.

They sure don't fall in love with aliens.

Or men they can't have.

Like Joe.

Joe and I just clicked, immediately, irresistibly drawn together like electrically charged atoms around a nucleus. When he asked me to dinner, I felt like a teenager on her first date. No, actually, I felt like a woman, a desirable woman, because *he* made me feel that way. See, I hang around with the guys all the time, and I'm one of the guys. That's how I have to be on SG-1. I have to earn their respect, be part of the team, be one of the group, never falter, be not just human but superhuman. Sometimes, it's nearly impossible to be either, what with Colonel O'Neill and his bad jokes and Daniel going off on his tangents and the ever inscrutable Teal'c.

But then I met Joe, and Joe didn't see me that way. Maybe even more than any of the others, he saw Samantha. Not a prize to be won. Not a lost love reborn. Not an exotic alien. He saw *me*. I felt absolutely giddy. I thought about what I'd wear, even bought a new dress, a slinky black thing that I'll probably never wear now. I imagined where we'd go to eat and what he'd say and what I would say. I know, I know, I get carried away, but Joe was special. I think there could have been something between us, something more.

It's odd, but sometimes I feel like there *was* more. Somehow.

I suppose that's why I feel the way I do, this desperation. Maybe it's my biological clock ticking, the alarm about to go off any moment now, screaming, "too late, too late, too late, you waited too long." Not that I'm wild about kids, but some of the men I know are. And they can be cute. The kids, not the men. Well, them, too, if you think that overgrown 12 year olds (maybe I'm being too generous here, 8 year old is probably more like it) are charming; absent minded scholars are sweet; or tall dark mysterious aliens are...are mysterious, then maybe you don't get it.

I'm not sure I do, and I'm supposed to be the smart one.

Maybe the Colonel *is* right.

I think too much.

Maybe it's time I throw caution to the winds and take the bull by the horns (oh no, now I'm sounding like the Colonel), ignore the regulations and the possible repercussions, and do something about it, 'it' being, well, IT. You know.

So I worked up my courage, and went to find him. I was going to give him an ultimatum, ask the big question and demand an answer, offer him, well anything, everything, for just one night, and then it would have to be back to the status quo for us.

But I couldn't hold out any longer, couldn't keep living like this, denying what I felt, pretending it didn't exist, looking into those deep brown eyes, and wondering what he was hiding behind that expression I knew so well. He is a man filled with secrets, but on this one I have to know an answer.

Determined, I locked up my lab and went to hunt him down. I checked all the places where I could usually find him, and discovered him at last. I knocked on the door and entered at his call to 'come in.'

Sticking my hands in my pockets, I stood mute for a moment, my mouth suddenly dry. It was so hard to say those words, those words I'd wanted to say for so long. I let my eyes drift across his body, and up to his face, and the puzzled expression in those deep brown eyes.

"So, hey, Teal'c want to come to my place for dinner? And after, I've got some etchings you might want to look at."

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FINIS

(And Happy Birthday, Denise!!)