Walter, wearing a headband with flashing hearts, walked all over the base delivering Valentine cards before the start of his morning shift. Carter had been working in her lab for a couple of hours by then, and he knocked on the open door.

She looked up, and did a double take, before chuckling and saying, "'Morning Sergeant! Valentine's Day already?!"

He smiled politely and replied, "Yes, Colonel. I swear I'm going to take this off before my shift."

"That's ok - I knew that. What'cha got?"

He sorted through a pile of cards before handing her a sizeable chunk, saying, "You've beaten Major Robertson this year."

"Get out, really?! She gets one from every red-blooded male on base!"

"The Major's popularity points decreased when she insulted Doctor Jackson."

"Ouch -- looks like the guys on base are after him too!"

She put the cards down on her desk as he left the room, and she returned to work.

An hour later, O'Neill knocked on the open door, so she looked up from her work, and said, "Good morning, Sir."

"'Morning Carter, how doth the busy bee?"

"Sir?"

"Sorry, Cassie leant me her copy of Alice in Wonderland. It beats table tennis practice with Teal’c."

She chuckled as he idly fiddled with things on her desk. He noticed the cards and remarked, "Not got round to opening these?"

She shook her head and replied, "I've been here since four, working on various projects."

"All work and no play..."

He flicked through the envelopes and paused at several, "Oh, that's definitely Siler... yeah, Harriman... Davies... Reynolds... Balinsky?! Whatever... Ooh, that's easily Dannyboy... Teal’c... Bregman!? How'd he get this in the internal post?!... O'Brien... Hey, Ol' Walter McChevron tells me that you've got the most this year."

She looked up, blushed and replied, "That's what he told me. Apparently everyone's annoyed at Robertson for telling Daniel to suck a lolly, or something along those lines."

He chuckled before saying as he put the cards down, "Well, I better be off -- they got the potato order wrong! Briefing for the P9X-324 mission is in three hours."

"Yes, Sir."

Around twenty minutes before the briefing, she managed to pry herself from her various projects, and actually looked through her cards.

There were ones from all of the usual suspects on base, including a coy one from Daniel, a rather pretty one from Teal’c, a humorous one from O'Neill, a couple from the Pentagon, and one from a certain NID agent. But, what intrigued her the most was an immensely beautiful card with touching, if not somewhat odd, words inside, but no discernable sender ("How Does It Feel" by Westlife):

"True lovers never take it slowly

When they've found the one and only

Nothing can replace this feeling

Knowing someone loves you

It's painted with the pain and glory

Taking from a known sad story

Laying out my life before me

Fearing the unknown

Sharing never showed me much appeal

And now I'm only praying it's for real

So how does it feel

When I hold you in my arms

And you're lying next to me

Never wanting you to leave

Until I'll tell you how it feels

To be cradled like my dreams

And to know that you love me

No more wasting time in asking other people

How does it feel

How does it feel?

Forever taken you for granted

You give me everything I wanted

I'm so afraid that I might lose you

But time will let us see

If everything is real I'm feeling

Well maybe we've been only dreaming

And if it's gonna die to save it

Cos baby I believe

Nothing in the world could make it right

Cos baby loving you brings me to life

And how does it feel

When I hold you in my arms

And you're lying next to me

Never wanting you to leave

Until I'll tell you how it feels

To be cradled like my dreams

And to know that you love me

No more wasting time in asking other people

How does it feel

Nothing in the world could feel this right

Cos baby you're the best thing in my life

How does it feel

When I hold you in my arms

And you're lying next to me

Never wanting you to leave

Until I'll tell you how it feels

To be cradled like my dreams

And to know that you love me

No more wasting time in asking other people

How does it feel?"

She was touched by the words, but at the same time she was disturbed. Who could this be? The words were word processed and were glued into the card. She flicked through the cards and mentally putting names to faces, but still couldn't work it out.

She was still pondering this, when Daniel poked his head in and said with a smile, "Sam, you're late for a briefing."

She didn't seem to hear, so he advanced a few more steps and asked with concern, "Sam? Are you alright?"

She looked up, mentally shook herself, and replied, "Oh yeah, fine; just trying to work something out."

She glanced at her watch and immediately stood up, exclaiming, "Sht, I'm late for the briefing!"

He said, gesturing toward the door, "Yeah, that's what I came about. Are you sure you're alright?"

She nodded and left the room with him, as she put the card in her pocket.

On the walk to the briefing room, he asked her, "What were you trying to work out?"

She pulled the card out and replied, showing it to him, "Someone sent me this, and I haven't a friggin' clue who it is. I mean, I don't have friends as close as that, apart from you guys and Pete. Could it be a stalker again?"

He scanned the card and suggested, "Looking at it, it's someone who you've worked with for a long while, who's 'realised' that they love you, although it is a tad forward."

She playfully hit him and exclaimed, "You've got to be kiddin'! I'm no prize catch, even for someone pretty desperate! What type of wife would I be? I'm mostly off-world, and I'd hate to be some regular Mom, dropping off by kids at school in an SUV!"

He chuckled and asked, "What about Pete?"

She replied soberly, "I've been thinking of calling it off. I mean, I know he has the required security clearance, but he could never understand the full nature of my job, and plus I would have to go part-time, at least, with the off-world stuff. I don't think I could do that."

"Don't you love him?"

"That's a good question. I love him, but I can't give him everything he needs. He needs someone who'll always way there for him, who'd be willing to take a step back from their career to pop out babies, and who'd be pretty much a housewife. I feel really bad 'cos I accepted his proposal - how am I going to let him down without breaking his heart? Mind you, he's done well in the "guys I've loved stakes", 'cos he hasn't died... well, yet, anyway."

After the briefing and a spot of Special Forces snooping, Carter returned to her lab, where she analysed the ink on the envelope and the inside of the card. She compared the results with those of various pens and ink cartridges she acquired during her snooping spree. The envelope results matched several pens from Daniel's office, but the printer ink results matched ink cartridges from O'Neill's office.

This perplexed her -- she had talked to Daniel earlier and he seemed calm, confident and collected; not the usual emotions displayed by someone who had carried out something clandestine. Plus, whoever wrote the card could've borrowed the pen from Daniel's.

She had also talked to O'Neill earlier too, and apart from his behaviour being normal, sending a card as provocative as the card in front of her, to an officer under his command, would cost him his command position... if he was lucky. Not forgetting also that there could be a potential security breach on base if he hadn't written the card because someone would have had to have access to his computer in his office.

She decided to dust for prints, and the fingerprints that she knew shouldn't be there, apart from her own and O'Neill's, provoked her to sprint out of the room.

She sprinted into Daniel's office, shut the door behind her, and exclaimed to the surprised Archaeologist, as she threw the card down on his desk, "It was you! Why didn't you say anything?!"

He reddened profusely and ducked his head in embarrassment. She continued, her frustration growing by the minute, "All this time you've been seeing me differently, and you never said a word! How long has this been going on?!"

He replied, looking a little hurt, "I'm sorry Sam. I didn't have the courage to tell you face to face, so Jack persuaded me to write my feelings down. I wasn't going to send it but then it somehow 'accidentally' got mixed up with the Valentine's post."

She eventually calmed down, took a seat opposite him and said with a sigh, "I might as well be honest - I fell in love with you from the moment I met you on Abydos, but you were unavailable. I tried to convince myself to move on, and every guy I got involved with, died. I continued to love you, but then you died, and my world turned upside down. I figured it was some sort of karmic hint to never fall in love, and then you came back, but then I just thought it would be plain mean of me to foist myself on you, when you were just getting your memories back and remembering Sha're again."

His blue-eyed gaze met her own and she continued, "I don't know why I'm mad; perhaps it's my own frustration at never getting the chance to tell you of my own feelings. Quite simply, I love you and have for seven years. I suppose you dying and coming back was a sign - everyone else I loved just died. Perhaps my Black Widow curse has been lifted."

He replied with a shy smile, "I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. I was never sure whether you'd accept me, 'cos you're military and I'm just a liability."

She said sincerely, "No you're not! How could you say that?!"

She got up from her seat, stepped around his desk, crouched down and hugged him, saying, "You are the best friend a girl could have - don't you ever doubt that. You're a brilliant Archaeologist, Linguist, Colleague, friend and diplomat. The fact that you're a civilian shouldn't factor into the equation."

Mystery solved, he hugged her back, just as the door handle rattled, and O'Neill exclaimed, "For cryin' out loud! Daniel, what the Captain James T. Kirk could you be doing in there that would require the door to be locked?!"

Suddenly the door flew open, surprising the two scientists, and O'Neill remarked, "Funny looking translation you got here!"