Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He could not believe that no one else had noticed her.

Sure, he was only a clone of Jack O'Neill, but that also meant his eyes were thirty years younger, and he knew a hot girl when he saw one.

Well, okay, maybe 'hot' wasn't quite the right word.

She was thin bordering on scrawny, caught in the awkward stage of adolescence. She had her blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid and wore thick-rimmed glasses, a skirt at least a foot longer than any other girl's, and a cardigan sweater. She carried a stack of books nearly as big as she was, nodding as she listened attentively to the high school vice principal explain something to her.

He dimly heard the bell ring overhead as he watched her thank the vice principal and continue toward him, her attention focused on balancing the tower of books in her arms.

She glanced up and saw him, realizing at the same time he did that they were the only two people left in the corridor.

"Carter," he breathed.

The fifteen-year-old clone of Sam Carter grinned. "Hello, sir."

"Carter."

Her grin didn't fade in the slightest. "Sorry. Hello, Jack."

"Carter," he repeated, then finally managed more words, "What are you doing here?"

She grinned again. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Of course I— Carter! What in hell possessed you to clone yourself!?"

Was she crazy? For all her talk of 'second chances', he knew high school hadn't exactly been the best time in her life. So what could motivate a PhD-level genius to go from astrophysics back to algebra?

She was looking at him now, an expression he recognized as part 'I know you're not really this clueless' mixed with something else he had never seen so openly on her face, and that he knew instantly he wanted to see there a thousand more times, especially directed at him.

It was love.

"Oh," was all he could manage, but she beamed at him, blue eyes dancing.

"I kept 'Carter' as my middle name," she said. "My first name is 'Tara'."

"As in... Thera?"

She nodded. "Plus, it's Arabic for 'star'."

"I like it," he said, and grinned at her blush. "I went with 'John'."

She rebalanced the stack of books so she could hold out her hand. "Nice to meet you, John."

The second his fingers closed around hers, he knew he was lost. Her books tumbled, forgotten, to the floor as he pulled her close. He wrapped an arm around her waist, but she was faster, winding both of her own around his neck and drawing him into a spectacular kiss.

It was better than the alien-virus-induced kiss, he thought, threading his fingers through her hair and tightening his arm around her. Better than when they were memory-stamped. Better even than the time loop kiss, because they were both going to remember this one.

And it was absolutely worth the detention they got for making out in the school hallway.

Chapter Text

She had wondered if he would notice her.

It wasn’t as though he’d have any idea what she looked like at this age, but if his ex-wife was any indication, he’d always had a type. She tried to pay attention to the vice principal’s explanation, but she couldn’t help continued glances around the crowded hallways of the high school, hoping to see him.

The bell rang, and the vice principal pointed her toward her first classroom. She thanked him, trying not to overbalance the pile of books in her arms, then she froze.

Jack’s clone was standing by the next row of lockers, the only other person left in the hallway as classroom doors began to close.

“Carter,” he breathed.

She grinned. “Hello, sir.”

“Carter,” he repeated.

She kept grinning, because it wasn’t insubordination now. “Sorry. Hello, Jack.”

“Carter,” he said again. “What are you doing here?”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course I— Carter! What in hell possessed you to clone yourself!?”

She knew exactly what had possessed her, and she knew that he knew it, too. The expression on his face was the same as every other time he’d been rescued from a mission gone wrong, a mix of happiness that they’d come back for him and frustration that they’d put themselves in danger to do it.

He thought he wasn’t worth the risk, but she knew better. Jack O’Neill was worth everything she’d be giving up to be sixteen again, and more, and she could see the moment it registered on his face.

“Oh,” he breathed, and she beamed at him.

“I kept ‘Carter’ as my middle name,” she explained. “My first name is ‘Tara’.”

“As in… Thera?” he asked.

Even as clones, they were still on the same page, and she nodded. “Plus, it’s Arabic for ‘star’.”

“I like it,” he said, and from his grin, he must have been able to see the flush she felt. “I went with ‘John’.”

She shifted the stack of books to one arm and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, John.”

He reached out to take it, and the moment his fingers closed around hers, she felt it, the same thrill that she’d always felt at his touch. Her books tumbled to the floor as he pulled her close and she threw her arms around his neck, unable to resist tugging him into a deep kiss.

One of the textbooks had landed to lean against her calf, but she ignored it, focused on the feeling of finally— for good, because no way was she giving this up now— being in his arms.

And it was only the first of several detentions they got for making out in the school hallway.

Chapter Text

Tara had forgotten how fast rumors flew through a high school.

In the childhood of her adult self, moving around so much with her dad’s military postings had made her always the new kid, so she’d been prepared for that as a teenage clone. She’d thought that a school like Mountain Springs High, located near the Air Force Academy and bases, would be used to students coming and going, even in the middle of the semester, but it seemed like her arrival was just the thing to get the rumor mill going.

By the beginning of her second period class, most of the other students were giving her looks, but it wasn’t third period algebra that the girl sitting in front of Tara turned around in her seat to ask, “Did you really get detention for making out with John Nelson in the hallway?”

It had only been a month since Jack had been cloned and John had started high school, but Tara wasn’t surprised that everyone knew him. He was smart and funny and kind and such a kid at heart as his adult self that she knew this version wouldn’t have any trouble making friends with his new class of high school students.

But in all the planning and conjecture that Samantha Carter had done before she’d cloned herself, she’d somehow never stopped to consider how knowing the clone of Jack O’Neill would alter her own clone’s school experience.

“Yes,” Tara said, now. “Yes, I did.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “No way! Detention for kissing? You must have really been going at it.:

Tara felt herself blushing. “Well, I…”

“Did you know him at your old school?” the girl asked. “Have you be dating long? Is he a good kisser?”

“I…” Tara said again.

“C’mon, spill!”

“We met over the summer,” said Tara, thinking fast – why had it not occurred to her adult self to come up with a fictional backstory for this? “On vacation. We aren’t dating – I didn’t know he went to this school, and I didn’t know I’d be going here, too.”

The girl sighed dreamily. “That sounds so romantic. Just like that old movie my mom loves, the musical with the card race. Um… Grease.”

“I…”

Tara didn’t know what to say to that, but luckily at that moment, the bell rang and class began. It was a good thing she still had all her older self’s knowledge of math, because she didn’t hear a single word of the algebra lesson, lost in her own thoughts until the bell rang again.

She had lunch during the next period, so she joined the flow of students headed for the cafeteria. Tara was so busy keeping her head down to avoid the sudden stares and whispers that she also missed the person coming up behind her until they touched her shoulder.

The cloning process must have also duplicated her muscle memory, because she acted without thinking, grabbing the person’s wrist and spinning them against the wall, arm twisted behind their back.

It was John, who grinned at her over his shoulder. “I can finally tell you how hot that is.”

She let him go and stepped back. “John…”

“Hey,” he said, softly, then scowled at the small crowd that had stopped to watch. “Nothing to see here. The new kid was just showing me why you don’t sneak up on people.”

John slid a hand under her elbow and led her toward the cafeteria doors. Whispers started up again, but he steered her away from everyone. “I’ve got lunch this period, too,” he said. “We should talk.”

Tara nodded and took a lunch tray from the stack. Then, she frowned. “How do you know I have lunch this period?”

“I saw your schedule while we were picking up your books earlier, after we, um…”

“Kissed,” said Tara. She wasn’t going to deny it.

“Right, that,” John agreed.

They paid for their meals – well, they scanned their student ID cards, Tara would have to get used to that – but as soon as they reached the main cafeteria seating area, the other students began whispering and staring again.

“It’s a beautiful day,” John said, brightly. “Let’s eat outside.”

“Sure,” said Tara.

The outside tables had clearly seen better days but they were acceptably clean, so Tara headed for the one farthest from the door and set down her tray. John sat across from her and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry about the rumors.”

Tara blinked, surprised. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you like that, right in the hallway,” John continued. “It’s your first day and you didn’t need a joker like me ruining it for you. I want to blame it on teenage hormones, but I know the original me would have done the same thing if he could get away with it.”

Tara let out a snort of laughter. “That’s what you think I’m worried about right now? My reputation?”

“Uh… no?”

“Because if that’s what I was worried about,” she continued, poking her ‘pasta’ with a plastic fork, “then getting detention for making out with one of the most popular boys in school would definitely improve my standing.”

“I’m not that popular,” John protested.

“Everyone seems to know you. And like you. That sounds like popularity to me.”

He shrugged. “I’m still new and mysterious.”

“Then maybe that kiss helped your reputation.”

“Carter—” said John, but cut himself off, clearly at a loss for words.

Tara had been leaning on the table, hands on either side of her tray, and she reached across to him, the edges of their fingers just touching. But they were allowed to touch now – Tara turned her hand over slowly and laced their fingers together.

John drew a shaky breath, then blurted, “Please tell me you didn’t do this out of pity.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I can’t—” he tried again. “I need this to be real, Carter. If you did this out of some kind of… of ‘leave no one behind’, I don’t— I can’t—”

Tara squeezed his hand. “I did this because I’m selfish,” she said, sharply. “I saved the world, repeatedly. I died for my country and they still wouldn’t let me have the one thing I wanted, the one thing I had never been allowed to even hope for.”

“Command of your own spaceship?” John suggested and Tara let out a shaky laugh.

“You,” she corrected softly. “We were both too hung up on duty and responsibility not to be on SG-1. But then this happened and I didn’t even think twice. The month it took getting here was mostly convincing General Hammond to go along with it, and getting all my faked documents set up.”

“Carter…”

“And there’s no reason why we can’t have this. No rank, no responsibilities… no age difference. All those times we saved the world, we can finally have this. If… if that’s still something you want?”

“Are you kidding me?” asked John. “Yes, Carter, yes. I…” he trailed off with a breathless laugh. “I always thought our job would kill me long before I could remotely have any chance of this. And if it didn’t – if some miracle let me live long enough to retire again – I’d be too old to be the kind of man you deserve. But now you’re telling me that you being here, ready to face high school all over again, for a chance at a life with me is selfish?”

John took a deep breath.

“Are you sure I’m not dead?”

Tara squeezed his hand again. “Very sure.”

He smiled. “Because you are just about all my dreams come true.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Just about?”

“There’s no beer and we’re not fishing.”

“Ah,” Tara laughed. “We can fix that. I’ve always wanted to go fishing with you.”

“You still think that’s selfish?”

“I plan to be very selfish with you, John Nelson.”

He brought their joined hands up to press a kiss to her knuckles. “As of this exact moment, I’m all yours, Tara Carter… you know, you never did tell me your last name.”

“Carpenter,” she said.

John grinned. “I could change that.”

“Not until after college,” said Tara. “I—”

From inside, the bell rang loudly.

“What?” said Tara. “That can’t have been our whole lunch break!”

John stood, coming around the table to kiss her properly. “We have English together next period,” he said. “I’ll hold your hand the whole way there.”

“Deal,” she said, as they packed up the trash from their lunches. “Oh, hang on. You aren’t trying out for the track team, are you?”

He frowned. “Sports try outs aren’t until next week, and I was thinking of going out for hockey. Why?”

“Because I might have told a girl in math – so by now the whole school knows – that we met over summer vacation and didn’t know we’d be at the same school.”

It took a moment for him to get it, then John grinned. “Come on, then, Sandra Dee, let’s get to class.”

Chapter Text

The flyers for the Valentine's Day dance went up in January, as soon as everyone came back from winter break. They were a lurid pink, covered in hearts, splattered with glitter, and posted on every wall.

"So," said John, catching up with Tara outside her calculus class and taking her over-stuffed backpack. "You wanna go?"

"To the Valentine's Day dance?" she asked, incredulous.

Then, she actually stopped to think about it. She'd never gone to those sort of things the first time she'd been in high school, when she'd been Samantha Carter. With her dad always transferring between bases, she was always the new kid, the class dork, the ugly duckling. She'd never even been asked.

But this time around, things were different. Yes, she was still a geek (as John liked to remind her) but with her adult self's confidence, she was able to enjoy herself the way she couldn't have when she was actually sixteen. Plus, it didn't hurt her image in the slightest that she was dating the captain of the hockey team, who wasn't popular so much as universally well-liked and who adored her more than just a little.

"Hey, Carter," said John, which was exactly why she'd made that her middle name. "You okay?"

Tara blinked, then grinned. "I'm fine. And I'd love to go to the dance with you."

"Sweet," he said and kissed her, right in the middle of the hallway.

"John," she protested, rolling her eyes, but making no move to stop him.

"C'mon, Carter," he grinned. "I just got a date with the hottest girl in school."

"John," she said again, because while she'd hit her growth spurt and was nearly her full height, she wasn't even close to having the kind of curves her original/older self had.

"Hottest girl in school," John repeated, firmly. "Beauty's only skin deep, Carter— my girl's gotta have a brain to go along with a body like that. Not to mention a smart mouth and a good right hook."

It took significant effort for Tara to scowl at him. "What have I told you about calling me your girl?"

His grin was unabashed. "That I shouldn't say things unless I'm prepared to back them up?"

Tara closed her eyes, allowing her smile to form. Clearly, the swirl of teenage hormones was getting to him— she didn't remember the adult Jack being like this, even under the influence of alien substances. Then again, maybe this was just the result of him having behaved himself so well all those years when duty and regulation were all that kept them apart.

"Hey," said John, softly, taking her hand and threading their fingers together. "I'd have done it, too, you know."

She blinked at him.

John smiled, soft and affectionate. "If it had been you Loki had cloned, I couldn't have let you do this alone. Going through high school again is worth it if I can have you with me."

She grinned and leaned up to kiss him.

Chapter Text

She was not going to be one of those girls who celebrated weekly and monthly anniversaries.

Of course, Tara thought, scowling across the classroom where one of the cheerleaders was hanging all over a football player— and she really, really did not want to know where either of their hands were— if your relationship was only going to last a month and a half, maybe measuring by weeks wasn't so ridiculous.

The bell rang overhead, signaling the end of the school day. She grabbed her backpack, hurrying out of the room to avoid more cheerleader/football player PDA she knew was taking place out in the hall.

Tara had just opened her locker and pulled out her coat when a voice said, "Hey, Carter."

John leaned against the locker beside hers, grinning.

"Hello, yourself," she replied.

"You don't have Geek Club today, do you?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes. "It's Science Club, and no. Mr. Smith has the flu."

"Well, good," said John, reaching out to take her backpack, like he always did. "Then what do you say we go get something to eat?"

"Sure," she agreed, fighting the ridiculous smile that threatened.

Tara had been wondering how she could suggest just that— because even if she wasn't one of those girls who celebrated week-by-week, she couldn't help feeling a little more than pleased that she and John had been going out for six months, to the day.

"Should I change?" she asked, only half-teasing. Surely, he hadn't been keeping track of how long they'd been dating... had he?

John made a show of looking her up and down. Even with the confidence of her adult memories, Tara was still self-conscious of her sixteen-year-old body. She never wore the tight-fitting, skin-revealing sorts of clothes that were popular now, preferring practical jeans and button-down sweaters which were not always the most flattering things she could have chosen.

But John's grin was openly admiring as he reached out to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Don't change, Carter," he said, voice pitched low so that only she could hear. "Never change."

She blushed, despite herself, but gave a soft snort. "Does that line work with all the girls."

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know, Carter, I've only ever used it on you. Is it working?"

Tara laughed. "What do you think?"

John leaned down and kissed her. "Happy six-month anniversary."

Chapter Text

Tara had taken several trips to the mall to pick the perfect prom dress, a simple strapless design that started out cobalt blue at the neckline and faded to black at the hem, dotted through with tiny silver crystals that winked like stars. John had been speechless for a solid thirty seconds when she’d come down the stairs in it, her hair pulled up with matching crystal pins.

After three hours of dancing in the packed gymnasium, though, the dress’s best feature was the low back, which allowed her to press her spine to the cool wall.

“That is so cheating, Carter,” muttered John. He had his jacket over one arm, tie loose and sleeves rolled up, but his face was still a little flushed. “Any chance you’ll share?”

She laughed. “Sorry.”

He leaned against the wall beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. “You go to yours, first time around?”

Tara shook her head. “No. I was always moving schools back then, so I didn’t have any friends to go with, and… nobody asked me.”

“Fools, all of them,” said John. “I’d have asked you in a heartbeat.”

She regarded him for a moment. He probably would have, Tara thought, if it hadn’t been for the age difference, if they’d met as Sam and Jack at the same ages. John played the big-man-on-campus hockey captain, but really he was just as much of a dork as Tara was.

Tara smiled. “This time was more than enough.”

He grinned back, and leaned in to kiss her. “Excellent…”

Chapter Text

“Recruiting NID agents a little young, aren’t they?” asked John, holding his gun steady on the young woman they’d found sneaking around the college library.

“The what now?” she said. “Is that a fraternity?”

“Maybe you know them as the Trust,” suggested Tara. She held the girl’s weapon, some kind of steampunk ray gun – it looked like a toy, but John wasn’t taking any chances.

“Never heard of ‘em,” said the young woman. “I’m with the government.”

“So are they,” John said, darkly.

“Yeah, but I’m from the good part,” she insisted. “Secret Service. Well, kind of. I mean—”

“What did you do with the six students that have gone missing in the last two weeks?” Tara demanded.

The girl blinked. “We only heard about five.”

John glanced at Tara, who nodded, and he lowered his gun. “Secret Service, huh?”

“A… branch of it,” the young woman hedged. “Agent Claudia Donovan.”

Tara held out her hand. “Tara,” she said, “and this is John.”

“Suspicious types?” said Donovan. “Okey-dokey.”

John frowned. “Just like that?”

“Sure,” she said. “Because I got a DNA sample when you grabbed me and the test should be done right about…”

“Wait, don’t!” said Tara.

Donovan frowned, then looked John up and down. “You don’t look like a fifty-five-year-old Air Force general.”

“That’s classified…” John began, but the girl kept looking at her strange device.

“Oh, my god,” she said. “Oh, my god, you’re a clone.”

“What?” said Tara. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing as cloning.”

Donovan blinked. “You are a terrible liar. And—” her device beeped again, “—not thirty-nine and a lieutenant colonel. Who— Whoa!”

John had raised his gun again. “Classified,” he repeated.

She raised her hands. “Hey, I get that, believe me. I don’t go spilling secrets that aren’t mine, dude. So, you don’t ask about my secret agency, I don’t ask where you two came from. Deal?”

He hesitated. “Carter?”

“Six missing students,” said Tara. “I say we trust her.”

John put the gun away again. “Okay.”

Donovan – Claudia – grinned. “Great! How do you both feel about purple goo?”

Chapter Text

The town of Hopewell, Illinois, had three traffic lights, one police car, an old-fashioned diner that served the best apple cobbler in four counties and, as of June, two new residents.

They were newlyweds, just back from their honeymoon— she taught science up at the high school, and he'd been hired as deputy fire chief. They'd bought the old MacArthur place on the hill, and were steadily fixing it up. Some of the older ladies brought them casseroles, and word quickly spread that John and Tara Nelson were a very nice young couple indeed.

"So, Carter," asked John, one night after dinner. "Is this really the kind of life you were hoping for?"

They were up on the roof, squashed together in an almost-too-small lawn chair beside their brand-new telescope.

Tara took a deep breath and snuggled closer under his arm. "The only reason we could never want this before is because the world needed us— the original us, Sam-and-Jack us. We both took our duties too seriously to let ourselves want anything else. But now we're John and Tara, and we can want anything we want."

John frowned, trying to follow her logic, then smiled. "Then you're happy?"

"Ridiculously so," she replied, smiling back. "I'm not saying I don't miss it, sometimes, being on the cutting edge. But the kids are great, and that whole 'shaping young minds' thing really is rewarding, and every night, I come home to you. What's not to like?"

He grinned and pulled her closer. "The fire chief told me today that I got hired because he's planning to retire. So, I thought, in a year or two, when we've got the house all squared away... that spare bedroom would make a really nice nursery."

"Yes," she said, and kissed him. "Yes, it would."

Chapter Text

They move to Hopewell because it’s the middle of nowhere. Because it’s nowhere near any military or scientific centers of the country, because it’s a place where no one would ever expect to find Jack O’Neill and Sam Carter, and therefore it’s the perfect place for newlyweds John and Tara Nelson.

John likes the house at once. The ‘old MacArthur place’ everyone in town calls it, long after they’ve moved in. It needs some repairs— okay, a lot of repair— but Tara still knows how to build nuclear bombs and John has always been good with his hands. It’s a lot of work, but slowly the house becomes theirs and John hardly finds himself thinking about his old life at all. He’s a simple guy, with simple tastes, and the country life suits him just fine.

He just isn’t sure the same is true for Tara.

John is perfectly willing to admit that he’s happy here, in the middle of nowhere. As Hopewell’s newest firefighter, he is still doing good and saving lives, just for a smaller percentage of the universe than he had been before. But Tara had been used to the cutting-edge of military science and now she teaches ninth-through-twelfth grade.

Truth be told, John still feels a little guilty for dragging her out here. Cloning herself was Sam’s— Tara’s— own idea, he knows that, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’d done it entirely because of him. She’d become a teenager again, gone to community college as though she didn’t still remember enough for a dozen PhDs, moved with him to the absolute middle of nowhere, all without a single word of complaint, but John couldn’t see what she got out of the deal, except for him.

The house is quiet when John gets home from work, just the front porch light to ward off the coming night. Coming up the front walk, he can see the buds of flowers they’ve planted, just beginning to come up, as much a promise of the future as the room they’ve just begun painting as a nursery.

“Tara!” he calls, deliberately not worrying.

“Back here!” she replies.

John finds her on the back porch (which still needs to be washed and painted) with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a steaming mug cradled in both hands.

“Hey,” says Tara, leaning up for a kiss. “I was just out here enjoying the view.”

She gestures, vaguely, and John looks out over their yard. It’s bordered by trees on two sides, and on the third by an overgrown field that used to be a pasture or a vegetable garden or something. Really, there’s nothing but grass and trees as far as the eye can see, but Tara just leans against his side and keeps looking.

“It’s so… quiet, out here,” she says, after a long moment. “Even twenty-eight floors under a mountain, there was always noise, always so much that needed to be done. Here…”

“Yeah,” John agrees, and settles in beside her.

Chapter Text

John had always thought it was kinder not to try and contact the original Jack O’Neill.

He remembered being Jack, up until the point he’d been cloned, and if he’d had to keep on going like he had been, knowing that somewhere out there, there was a version of himself who lived an ordinary but fulfilling life and came home to a version of Sam Carter he was married to… well, he probably preferred not to have a constant reminder.

Really, John found he didn’t dwell too much on his ‘original’ life. Sure, he didn’t save the world from evil aliens anymore, but just last week he’d saved Suzie Marco’s cat from a tree, and her mom had made him brownies.

He’d never gotten brownies for anything at the SGC.

And he had Tara to share his new life with. Secretly, he’d been worried that it wouldn’t be enough for her, without ground-breaking physics and alien doohickeys. But then he’d come downstairs one morning to find her taking apart their toaster with every ounce of scientific joy she’d shown while disassembling naquadah bombs, and that had made him feel better.

With the Hopewell fire chief retiring and John training to take his place, he hadn’t even thought about stargates, or aliens, or risking his life every other day in a long time.

That was, until an envelope came in the mail, addressed in rather familiar handwriting to ‘Mr. and Mrs. J. Nelson’.

“That’s Daniel’s handwriting,” said Tara, and pulled it open. “You are cordially invited to the wedding of Colonel Samantha Carter and Major General Jack O’Neill, on June sixteenth…”

“Well, finally,” said John, grinning. “Are we going?”

Tara rested a hand on the slight swell of her middle and grinned back at him. “Undomesticated equines couldn’t keep us away.”

Chapter Text

It was strange to be back at Cheyenne Mountain. Even stranger not to be in uniform, and stranger still to be in formal civilian clothes.

“John? Tara?”

It was Cassie, looking elegantly grown-up in a chocolate brown dress, her hair in waves around her shoulders.

“Oh, my god,” she continued. “You look just like pictures of Jack and Sam when they were younger.”

John smirked. “We are Jack and Sam when they were younger.”

Cassie grinned back, and hugged them both. “It’s good to see you, and… Tara! You’re—”

“Pregnant,” Tara finished. “Four months along.”

“Congratulations!” said Cassie, with another hug. “But you’d better hurry up and get to the Gate Room, though, we’re going to start soon.”

“But you’re one of the bridesmaids,” said Tara. “Shouldn’t you be helping Sam?”

“Sam is just fine. It’s Vala who’s freaking out.”

“Who?” asked John.

Cassie just grinned. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. Go on in, I’ll catch up with you later.”

It was a beautiful ceremony. Sam and Jack both wore their dress uniforms. Bra’tac officiated from the base of the ‘gate ramp. Daniel, Teal’c and Jonas Quinn, looking worn but still smiling, stood for Jack; on Sam’s side were Cassie, a brunette that must be Vala, and Cam Mitchell, an old friend from the Academy.

Tara clung tight to John’s hand as Sam came down the aisle. If her face showed that much love when she looked at John, it was no wonder he sometimes acted like they were still on their honeymoon.

“Hey, you okay?” John asked softly.

She swiped at her eyes. “I’m just so happy for them,” she said, smiling. “I thought— Sam thought I might be her only chance for happiness. I’m glad we were wrong.”

John squeezed her hand. “Me, too.”

Chapter Text

John woke very slowly, to the half-numb floating sensation that meant he was on the really good painkillers. He lay still for a moment, until he could start to feel some of the aches creeping back.

His left arm felt worse than the other— possibly he’d broken it— and a series of dull throbs traveled down his left side when he breathed in— probably a collection of really nice bruises. He tried to move his right hand and felt fingers tighten around his own.

“Hey,” said a familiar voice.

John opened his eyes to see Tara standing beside his bed, one hand curled around his, the other resting on her very round middle.

“Finally awake?” she asked, with a smile that was half-teasing, half-relieved.

He blinked. “What happened? I feel like a building collapsed on me.”

“Not a whole building,” she said. “Not even a whole wall. But that was enough to bust you up pretty good.”

“Ah,” said John. “How good?”

Tara fidgeted with the edge of his blanket. “Not as bad as I was afraid of,” she admitted. “And before you get worried— yes, you got everyone out before it came down.”

“Good. How long was I out?”

“Only a few hours,” Tara told him. “The doctors wanted you out while they fixed your arm.”

“And I appreciate that. Because I remember this one time in Antarctica when I had a broken leg…”

“That was a lifetime ago,” Tara protested, and it had been— years ago, when they’d been so much older.

They smiled at each other for a moment, then her smile fell. “You’re lucky you only have a concussion and a broken arm,” she said. “If you had managed to get yourself killed, John Nelson, it would be going much, much worse for you right now.”

John’s cast-covered arm was heavy, but he reached up to rest his hand beside Tara’s over her stomach. “I want to promise that I’ll never leave you, Carter,” he said, softly. “Either of you. But you know I can’t. we don’t leave people behind.”

“I know,” she agreed. “That’s one of the things I love best about you. But you can promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I will,” he said, without hesitation.

Losing Charlie, and the despair that had followed, weren’t something he’d get over easily, if ever, and he planned on spending as much time as he could not taking his second chance for granted.

“Good,” said Tara. “Now, scoot over.”

“Why?” John asked, even as he slid over a few inches.

His wife didn’t answer. She just lowered the railing on the side of his hospital bed and climbed in beside him, the baby pressed in between them.

“They want to observe you for a few hours,” she said. “Then we can go home. But I could use a nap first.”

“Sounds good,” John agreed.

Everything still hurt, and he knew he’d be on desk duty until his arm healed, but just then, John couldn’t have felt better.

Chapter Text

Most of the time, Tara completely forgot that she was a clone. She was usually too busy making lesson plans and grading exams and worrying about John every time the fire siren went off, even when she knew it was more likely to be a cat stuck in a tree than an actual fire. She didn’t even think of herself as ‘Sam Carter’ anymore, she was ‘Tara Nelson’, even in her own head.

But then someone would ask her a question, a perfectly ordinary question, about her grader school, or her parents, or her first kiss and she had to stop and think about her answer so she wouldn’t reveal too much.

Sometimes, Tara wished that cloning her body hadn’t meant cloning her mind, that she could have rewound her memories and started off believing she really was sixteen. It had been a little easier after they’d graduated high school— in college, she still had to pretend a lot, but science education was different enough from her original studies that it really felt like doing it for the first time. But she knew she couldn’t have erased all those years. As hard as it had been to go from being a PhD-level genius to a junior in high school, keeping her memories of Jack had been worth it.

Tara— Sam, then, she’d been Sam when she made the decision to go through with it— had known that she could fall in love with Jack— John, he was John by then— again, and even more easily without the fraternization rules or the age difference. But she liked knowing how much she had been missing all those years, because it made her that much more grateful for what they had.

“Honey, I’m home!” called John.

Tara looked up from her lesson plan, smile widening when she saw the small bouquet of flowers he held out to her. “They’re beautiful,” she said, closing her book and pushing her chair back from the table. “Are you in trouble?”

“I hope not. It’s our anniversary, Carter.”

She frowned. “No that’s not for another—”

“Fourteen years ago today,” John interrupted, smiling, “the day a genius captain with a chip on her shoulder walked into a briefing and challenged me to arm wrestle.”

Tara smiled and took the flowers, breathing in their scent. “Did you win?” she teased.

John leaned in and kissed her. “Oh, yeah.”

Chapter Text

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” Tara sang along with the radio, as she began hanging ornaments on their Christmas tree.

“La la, fa la la, la la la fa!” added one-year-old Danni, from her bouncing seat in the living room doorway. She was way off-key and couldn’t keep her las and fas straight, but she more than made up for it with youthful enthusiasm.

“’Tis the season to be jolly,” Tara continued.

“La fa, la la fa, la la fa la!” added Danni, giggling.

Tara smiled and picked up another ornament. The high school’s winter break had started the day before, and she was enjoying the chance to spend her whole day with their daughter.

Just then, the front door opened with a jingle of sleigh bells and the scent of evergreen— the tree was artificial, but the wreath was real— as John came inside. “Merry Christmas to my two favorite girls,” he said.

“You’re about a week early,” said Tara, but Danni yelled, “Daddy!” and bounced excitedly in her seat.

John scooped her up the instant he’d shed his coat and boots. “Danielle Grace Nelson, were you helping Mommy decorate the tree without me?”

“Yup,” said Danni, every inch her father’s daughter.

Tara leaned against her husband’s shoulder. “Everything okay?” she asked, softly.

He kissed her, then said, “A couple of the other fire departments are doing a toy drive, asked if we’d join in. I’m just feeling very… grateful, just now, that’s all.”

She smiled. “Grateful enough to make some of your famous hot chocolate?”

John smiled back and kissed her again. “Absolutely.”

Chapter Text

“And don’t forget to read chapter twelve, on thermodynamics!” called Tara, as the bell rang and the students of her last-period class headed for the door.

“Any chance for extra credit on that?” asked a voice.

She looked up to find John leaning in her classroom doorway, smiling as he continued, “Because I could really use some one-on-one instruction.”

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Tara laughed. “That is terrible, don’t do that.”

John’s smile didn’t falter in the slightest. “You ready to get out of here, Carter?”

He took her bag of lesson plans and papers that needed to be graded, slinging it over one shoulder as they took the back stairs down to the employee parking lot. “What about that place over in Springfield, with the fish tank?”

Tara frowned. “But you hate that place.”

“I do,” he admitted, easily. “But you love it.”

“It’s not my birthday, is it?” she joked, but her smile faded when he didn’t laugh. “John?”

“It is, kinda. An anniversary, in a way.”

“Anniversary?” she repeated, then realized what he meant. Tara glanced around, but the lot was empty. “Today is the day I was cloned. But we’ve never celebrated those before.”

“Ten years, Tara,” said John, softly. “I just… I don’t think I could have done this without you. Not and have been happy.”

“I don’t regret my decision,” she said, reading the question in his eyes, and caught his hand, lacing their fingers together. “Not for a minute. I don’t miss being Major Samantha Carter, when I have the chance to be Mrs. Tara Nelson.”

John kissed her, pressed up against his truck, right there in the middle of the high school parking lot. “Happy Cloning Day, Tara,” he said, when they broke for air.

She grinned. “Yes, it is.”

Chapter Text

“Should you even be here?” asked Tara, when she answered the door.

“Technically… no,” said Sam. “Can I come in?”

“You’d better,” her clone replied, and took a step back. Tara paused, then blurted, “Is it bad?”

Sam blinked. “No!” she said. “Well, not the way you think. Is, um, John home?”

“No, he’s at the fire station. If it’s not… Why are you here, Sam?”

The older woman paused, and Tara took a moment to just look at her. On one hand, it was a glimpse of how she’d look herself in another couple decades, but on the other, she could see the way military life had taken Sam in a completely different direction.

“I’m here to give you a heads up,” the general said. “Declassification is coming— not the whole thing, not all at once, but we’ve started running simulations, and even the first round is going to be big.”

“Huh,” said Tara. “I could use a cup of coffee. You want one?”

“Sure,” the other woman said, automatically, then frowned. “You’re not surprised?”

Tara shook her head. “I’ve been waiting for it,” she said. “John, too. We’ve been watching things, seeing the ‘new’ tech coming out. You’ve done just about everything you can without actually admitting there are aliens, haven’t you? And now you have to admit there are aliens.”

“Pretty much,” Sam agreed, accepting the mug her clone passed her. “But I wanted to talk with you, beforehand. There are some things that are staying classified, even once we reveal the whole program. And you and John should have the choice to decide who knows what about you.”

“I’ve thought about it,” said Tara, cradling her own mug. “I thought about it a lot. Admitting everything. Claiming my— our— past. But then I thought about the life I have now. John’s Battalion Chief now, highest-ranking for the whole district. Danni just graduated from law school, if you can believe it, and she’s starting up a firm right here in town.”

“I think I understand,” said Sam. “Actually, I envy you. As Chief of Staff for the Air Force, I’m front-and-center for all of this stuff. You probably know how much I’m not looking forward to it.”

“I know exactly,” Tara laughed. “But actually…”

Sam hastily swallowed her sip of coffee. “What?”

“Remember that whole it’s not an Asgard, it’s a hologram thing?” asked Tara. “You can’t really deny that the older I get, the more I look like… well, you. Enough people mentioned it around town, and I thought, rather than just flat-out denial, which as you know is typically pretty suspicious, I claimed I was your second cousin.”

“Identical cousins?” said Sam, smiling. “Like Patty Duke?”

Her clone smiled back. “I’m not supposed to be old enough to remember that, you know,” she joked. “But yeah. Means you can visit for Christmas, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that,” the older woman told her. “Jack on the other hand…”

Tara laughed. “He’s still not over the clone thing, is he? To be honest, I don’t think John is, either.”

“Then we definitely have to get them together,” said Sam. The two women smiled at each other for a moment, then she said, more seriously, “I know we agreed to more-or-less stay away from each other, but if you need anything, you or John or Danni…”

“I know, Sam,” said Tara. “Do you have to get back right away?”

“Nope,” the general said, grinning. “And I brought pictures.”

Tara grinned, too. “I’ll get mine.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, that is just not fair,” said Jack.

“What?” chorused four voices, two of them downright identical, and he scowled again.

When Sam had reconnected with her clone and invited their family to join them for Christmas, somehow he hadn’t expected this. A.J. had always looked like her mother, except for inheriting his brown eyes, and he’d gotten used to seeing them together. But he hadn’t seen Tara since she’d been cloned at sixteen, and hadn’t even considered that any kid of their clones would look so much like her – like Sam – too.

No one could resist four Carter smiles.

Chapter Text

“I just want to be clear on this,” said John. “You still have a chance to back out.”

Tara scowled at him, clearly about to offer one of her famous tirades, but he quickly held up a calming hand.

“I need to say this,” he said. “I know you cloned yourself to stay with me. But that was a decision Samantha Carter made. It’s been six years, you’re Tara Carpenter now. You have a whole life ahead of you to do anything you want, with anyone you want. So I need you to think about this. Really, actually think.”

She smiled, catching the hand he was still holding up. “There is no version of me, by any name, who doesn’t want you. When I was Sam Carter, I loved Jack O’Neill, even when it was against every regulation and almost guaranteed to end in heartbreak. And now that I’m Tara Carpenter, I love John Nelson, who if I’m not mistaken, is about to ask me to marry him.”

John let out a surprised laugh. “I should have known you’d know,” he said. Without fanfare, he pulled out a small box from the pocket of his battered coat. “Tara Carter Carptenter, will you marry me?”

Tara smiled and kissed him. “Yeahsureyoubetcha.”