Her name was Jen: a perfectly nice name. She was actually a perfectly nice girl. Pretty, curvy, fun to be with. She had deep brown eyes and dark hair and a million-dollar smile. He met her when she visited his buddy Gabe - they'd gone to high school together in Tennessee. So, she had a perfectly nice Southern accent. Okay, it wasn't nice - it was hot.

Gabe said, "Meet us at the Bear Trap - I got a friend in town."

So he pulled on his best crappy jeans and a tee shirt and drove down to 19th and Harney. He wasn't looking for anything, he told himself. He and Danny had broken up their clandestine...thing...a couple of months back, and a little time alone wasn't a bad thing.

He got a cheap beer at the bar and looked around. Gabe could almost always be found at the pool tables, but no luck. He moved closer to the dance floor and burst out laughing. Gabe was out there, doing the white-boy shuffle. Gabe moved around to the side, and he could see Gabe's dance partner.

About three minutes later, he met Jen. Gabe introduced them, then staked out a table on the edge of the dance floor. They did the hand-shaking/introduction thing. She had tiny little hands and bitten off nails, and the shirt she was wearing had about half the material of a regular shirt, but it went well with the tiny little skirt and high-heeled shoes she had on.

She let him buy her a drink. Gabe skittered off to join a group of people waving him over and it was just him and Jen. They had one of those yelled conversations you have in bars, just enough to get the basics down. When he told her he was a pilot - usually his no-miss line - she just nodded and gave him that mega-watt smile. She moved in her chair, then slipped out of it to come stand in front of him. She took his hand and tried to pull him onto the dance floor.

He resisted - he was a worse dancer than Gabe was. He smiled, but shook his head. She tried one more pull, but he held his ground. She leaned in close enough to whisper in his ear: "Watch, then. I'll be back."

He watched. Out on the floor, she didn't lack for dance partners. She moved like she was built for the music, never faltering, even in the crush of people and perched on her high shoes. He watched, and so did she. No matter who she was dancing with, she kept her eyes on him. It had him shifting in his chair, and he had to straighten his legs out to hide that he was half-hard.

She'd told the truth. After a long time she came back to drop into her chair, breathing hard. He leaned over the table and motioned to her. She leaned in close. She smelled like clean sweat and some sort of perfume - not flowery and sweet - deeper and spicy. Her chest was sheened with sweat and a single drop rolled down her cleavage.

He caught his breath. "You want another drink?" he asked, waggling his beer bottle at her. She shook her head and smiled again, then pointed toward the door, flapping her hand to make a little breeze on her face.

Outside it was cooler. He sat down on the curb and smiled up at her. She huffed out a small laugh. "I don't think I can get down there without giving all of Omaha a free show."

He pulled himself back to his feet, then took her hand and led her to a half-wall down the sidewalk, boosting her up to sit.

"Better," she said. "My feet are killin' me."

They chatted for a while. She was easy to talk to and had interesting stuff to say. An hour later, he remembered Gabe.

"Where do you think Gabe went?" He grinned sheepishly when she gave him a "duh" look.

"You want me to give you a ride home?"

The look turned into a smile, one that was at least 50% smirk. "Your house or Gabe's house?"

He could feel the broad smile spreading across his face. "How about first one and then the other? You'd probably like to get some shoes that don't hurt your feet."

From the beginning, they could talk. About anything. She was smart and quick, and funny - exuberant and not afraid to be dorky or silly. They made out for hours - on his couch, then his bed. They were pretty much naked when he pulled up and put his hand on her hip and looked into her flushed face.

She explained that she couldn't have sex with him on the first date, laughingly telling him that would make her a "dirty whore."

"What about if you do it on the second date?" he asked.

The grin was back. "That would just make me a regular whore; I can live with that." His breath caught in his chest when she slid down the bed and blew his brains out. Thankfully, she considered breakfast to be the second date.

She went back to Atlanta three days later. He drove her to the airport. They didn't make any plans - neither one was really looking for anything.

He made it two days before getting her number from Gabe.

They talked on the phone. They were good at talking; she even got him describing his family and what it was like being in the Air Force and what it felt like to fly. He didn't have to ask her much - she told him about her job and her house and her friends, and she laughed at his jokes. They both hated to hang up the phone.

Two months and about $800 in phone bills later, he invited her to visit. She said she couldn't - the airfare was too expensive. He FedEx-ed her a ticket. They stayed in bed all week.

She came out twice more for weekends, and then he had to drive down to Florida to be in a friend's wedding. He worked it out so he could stop a few days in Atlanta. He got there and she handed him a beer. She didn't smile.

He sat in her kitchen and listened to her tell him she was dating someone else and that it was getting serious. She said she hadn't been looking for it - it just happened. He slept in the guest room, then left the next morning for Florida.

Back in Omaha, he didn't date. He wasn't pining, he just needed a break. One afternoon his CO called him in. He searched his mind, trying to figure out if he'd fucked up lately, but couldn't come up with anything. There was a blonde Lieutenant Colonel in the office. He snapped off a salute. She returned it and told him to sit down, and his CO left the room.

He signed a confidentiality agreement and she told him about a bunch of crazy stuff in Colorado Springs. She said they needed people like him - people who were smart and cross-trained and looking for new and exciting things to do.

He took the transfer.

Under the mountain, he saw some amazing shit. He went to other planets. He fought in a war that most people didn't even know about.

One day, Sergeant Harriman came to him. General O'Neill wanted to talk to him.

O'Neill didn't get up from behind his desk and waved off his salute. "So," he said. "You looking for adventure?"

"You mean more than I already have?"

O'Neill nodded. Then he told a fairly long story about genetics and lost cities and a different war and the need for an XO on a remote base. A really remote base.

He took the assignment. Before he left, he sent a postcard to Atlanta. He didn't put on a return address, and he simply wrote, "Dear Jen, I hope everything is working out for you," and signed his name.

Atlantis was beyond his imagining. His CO was laconic almost to the point of coma, and he was in charge of a bunch of Marines. He was also assigned to protect a cadre of science nerds from whatever threatened science nerds.

One day in the botany lab, he met David Parrish.

Evan Lorne decided that it was time to start looking.