***
Definitions of the word ‘suspension’: Temporary removal from office or privileges; Abolition of a law or rule; Escalating distress or dread; A delay; A rhetorical device where the main idea is held over onto the end for the purpose of escalating curiosity or anxiety
***
Alli, Founder and President of the First National Chapter of the Anti-Martouf Association. "Don't play stupid with me. I'm better at it."
Welcome to my Insanity: http://www.geocities.com/rainrobinson/
The X-Files Funny Farm: http://go.to/XFFF/
AIM SN: UST Calliope
***
There was no grand epiphany, no startling revelation, just a warm, subtle sensation that grew with every passing day, a constant feeling of pleasant edginess. It was how I knew that I could fall in love with Colonel Jack O’Neill.
As easy as falling off the proverbial log. Easier, in fact, because falling equaled pain equaled fear. Here, there was no pain, no fear, only this great good feeling, this purely hormonal, irrational thrill every time my C.O. walked into the room.
But there /was/ pain, /was/ fear, though I didn’t realize it until P3X-797, the land of light and dark, and the subsequent... aftermath.
Jack had kissed me back. He’d responded to me before he’d gotten control of himself, and he’d kissed me on the neck, even after restraining me. It had taken me some time to recall what had happened during those virus-blurred hours, but I eventually did, and now every breath, every word, every touch was branded into my brain.
*Not like this...*
I’d done the sensible - if not ridiculous - thing and written it all out, getting it out of my system and into the open... on the lid of a pizza box, of all places, with a fancy fountain pen Daniel had given me for Christmas. "I like Jack O’Neill," I’d written, still gnawing on the last slice of pepperoni. "He finds me attractive, at least to some degree."
I refused to say that I was ‘in love’ with him. My mother had taught me that ‘love’ was a powerful word, one that shouldn’t be used or taken lightly, and one that was /over/used by every ardent teenager these days. But I /did/ like him, very much, and relationships had been started on far less.
But love - or like - wasn’t as simple as my beloved math, where the cosine of zero always equaled one, and Pythagorean’s theorem was right every time. It was complicated, forever changing; a million factors jumped in at every play, sometimes unforeseen and sometimes obvious. These specific ones were carved in stone: ‘mess around with someone you report to and risk everything you’ve pledged your life to and for.’ Simple enough.
Only it wasn’t.
Attraction versus reason.
So far reason had won out, attraction omnipresent but silent, lingering in the background while I fulfilled every duty, carried out every order. Sometimes I was severe in my adherence to reason, as though Captain and Samantha Carter could be cut apart into two distinctly separate biological entities.
Other times, though, usually when I returned to an empty house, I simply gave myself over to infatuation.
But here on Ma'at', so far removed from the guidelines that I secretly abhorred, away from the conflict spurred by rules and reason, how long could it possibly be before my walls crumbled to rubble, and attraction got the upper hand?
Not long at all, it seemed. Not even two months.
And now I knew something important.
I didn’t like Jack O’Neill.
I loved him.
Not anything specific... not just his smile or his sense of humor or his compassion, not just his body or his mind or his soul. Instead, of all of it. And once I had realized that, and finally understood that he was just as ready and willing as I had always been... everything had snapped into place. And sped like a runaway train.
Perhaps we were cursed.
Now, the flickering flames of our mutual desire seemed to have been doused by an ice-cold bucket of harsh reality. Depa'ma, where we were being relocated, was two full day’s ride from Ankh'ij. We were no longer simply a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Stargate, from home.
And it was like a slap in the face.
I mounted the horse provided for the trip - a muscular bay - and Jack got on behind me. Since I refused to sit sidesaddle like the other wives, quite a lot of my leg was revealed, but I was too defeated to care. Jack had his hands settled, feather-light, on my hips, and the full of his front was pressed against the full of my back, which made my body buzz with enjoyable excitement, but failed to alter my dour mood.
I’d simply gotten my hopes up, too high up about too many things. And although I wanted to do nothing more than bury my face in Jack’s chest and hide from this unkind world, I realized that love did nothing more than make you soft and vulnerable.
As I had many times before, I retreated into reason.
*
Oh, Sam...
She was tense and unresponsive again my chest, cold counterpoint to the magma running through my veins. I couldn’t help it any more than I could help being a man; the motion of the horse added to the heat of /her/ body produced an inevitable biological response in my own. Sure, it was embarrassing. But with me, embarrassment was almost always an afterthought.
She was holding the reins, though our horse seemed perfectly content to simply follow the horse butt in front of it, so not much steering was involved. The woods we rode thorough were dark and silent, and somehow, despite my sweet physical torment and the disparity of our situation, I managed to nod off.
***
"In front of me, Carter, in front of me!"
She grinned devilishly and caught the small white sphere easily when I lobbed it to her. The ball game was a whim, so we didn’t have gloves or hats to shield our eyes from the sun. We’d gotten the bat and ball at a sporting goods store on the way home from dinner and set out to a park Carter knew of about a half-hour from the base.
"Ya see, Teal’c," I shouted to the Jaffa, who was standing at the edge of the infield, behind second base. "Carter is the pitcher. She’s /supposed/ to throw the ball in /front/ of me so I can hit it." I leered at Sam and swung the bat menacingly.
"Then he runs here," said first basemen Danny, picking up the narrative as Carter pitched another ball. "If you throw the ball to me before he touches the bag, I can tag him and his turn is over. He’s out."
"Out of where?"
"The game. Temporarily. The object is to run to each base in order, before the ball gets there and you get tagged out by someone on the other team. When you end up back on home plate, where Jack is now, your team gets a point. The team with the most points after a certain time period wins."
Carter pitched again and I watched it go by. "That was a strike," she said angrily.
"Was not. Daniel?"
"Strike two," he said joyously.
I made a face and threw the ball back to Carter. Full count.
She pitched again and, gritting my teeth, I swung as hard as I could.
The bat and ball connected; a stinging vibration ran through my hands. I dropped the bat and ran, watching the ball as I went. It was a long, high popup to mid-center field. I grinned as Teal’c watched it fly over his head. Good thing we hadn’t explained all the rules to him.
I hit second and kept going. I smelled an in-the-park home run.
"Teal’c, throw it here!" cried Danny.
Up ahead, Carter had taken position with one foot on home plate, watching the relay, prepared to tag he out once she got the ball. Fat chance.
I left third base in the dust.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daniel launch the ball at Sam. The kid had a surprisingly good arm. I grimaced. I hadn’t slid home in, oh, a couple of years. It didn’t exactly work wonders on my knees. And if I hurt myself, both Hammond and Frasier would have my head.
I slid anyway.
Carter caught the ball.
I ran into her, but she touched the sphere to my leg as she fell.
A could of dust enveloped us, and we coughed.
"You’re out," wheezed Sam with a triumphant grin.
I glared, grabbed the ball, and stalked out to the pitcher’s mound. "Teal’c, you’re up..."
***
A horse whinnied and I opened my eyes.
Beyond the obscuring branches of tall, thick trees, I could see the sun, lighting the sky a brilliant blue. I yawned. How long had I been asleep?
The procession was obviously still in the woods, I noted, looking around at my surroundings. And Sam was in the same position she had been in when I’d dozed off. "I’ll take the reins," I offered, knowing she must have been awake all night.
Wordlessly, she relinquished the leather straps. I looped my arms around her waist to hold them with both hands.
"Remember that pickup game," I asked suddenly, mood still buoyed by the pleasant memory. "Couple months ago... you, me, Daniel and Teal’c?"
"Yeah," she said sadly.
"I wasn’t out."
Her spine straightened. "Yes, you were."
I chuckled, relieved to hear the fire return to her voice. I had to remember to keep her from feeling too sorry for herself. "I... don’t think so."
"I had the ball in my hands before you even dropped into a slide, /Colonel/."
I made a face at her back. "You’ve been up all night, /Captain/. Why don’t you get some sleep?"
"Whatever, sir."
Again, the convoy lapsed into total silence.
*
The Council building of Depa’ma rose out of the forest like an obelisk, tall, rectangular, yellowish-tan, with dark, circular windows.
"So these guys worship the everlasting Lego?"
I ignored Jack’s quip as best I could, allowing my lips to quirk slightly, nothing more. I actually felt like bursting into raucous laughter, but that would just have been a somewhat hysterical reaction to our present situation.
Jack kept his hands on my hips as I descended from the horse’s back, tensing when the animal was led away by a curious-looking militia member. I braced myself for another slew of stares and questions about our unusual coloring.
Surrounding the Lego-like building, backed right up against it, were hundreds of small bungalows, dwarfed by the larger structure. They were made of cinderblock, or something like it, and were the same sick yellow color as all the other constructions in sight.
We were assigned and dumped into a cottage even before we got our legs unbowed, or our backs straightened; as it was I doubted my hips would ever be the same again. Our new home was smaller than the apartment in Ankh'ij, and just as sparsely furnished, but at least the door had a deadbolt.
Jack turned the lock, gave a deep and empty sigh... and then put his arms around me.
I stiffened, but only for a second. After all, this wasn’t any sort of romantic embrace; there were no sensual overtures. This was just a friendly hug meant to convey nothing more rousing than warmth, comfort, and support.
At least, that was what reason told me.
*
"Who’s that kid?"
"Who? Oh, ignore him."
I was standing in a slow-moving line, arms filled with clothes, sheets, and everything else deemed necessary for life in Depa’ma. I had struck up a conversation with the man standing in front of me; when they weren’t wearing black or white, the natives were quite friendly. It was too bad their culture was so irreparably screwed up.
On the orders of Clera’s black-attired assistant, Gabrien, I’d left Sam in our little cubbyhole and gone to the courtyard in front of the vast Council building -- the Giant Lego. It was all more impressive than I had expected: nicely paved streets, tamed greenery all around, and tons and tons of men.
I’d gotten in line, observing those around me as was my habit. My gaze lingered on Gabrien, and for several moments I watched him stroll arrogantly through the courtyard, as though the gray-garbed men around him were nothing, as though he would just as soon crush them beneath his black boot as he would speak to them. If he’d only known how ridiculous he looked. His hair went halfway down his back, shaved in some strange pattern that didn’t seem so much of a pattern as a barber’s mistake trying to pass itself off as a pattern. I shuddered as I spotted another man with no hair save one long, thin braid draped over his left shoulder. Was such a hairstyle the mark of being in the militia? "Over my dead body," I muttered.
"What was that?" asked the man standing in front of me, turning around.
"Um, nothing. Sorry," I apologized. Might not be such a good idea to talk about dead bodies at what sounded to be a military instillation.
The man’s eyes lingered on my face - obviously alien - and then he gave a twitch of a smile. "I am Tashbern."
"Uh, Jack," I stuttered.
He cocked his head. "I saw you come in earlier. Your committed is the woman with the yellow hair?"
Despite myself, I grinned. "That’s right."
"You must come from far away, to look so different."
Understatement, I thought wryly. "We’re from Ankh'ij."
"You weren’t born there," he guessed wisely.
"No, we’re not. Actually, it’s a long story."
"I understand," said Tashbern, and he truly seemed to.
We reached the first booth, and the woman there gave us a sack. I peeked inside. Clothes, all of them black. /Wonderful/... this brought back memories.
I returned my attention to the crowd. Black suits were milling around, looking bored and maybe even disgusted to be so near so many ‘civilians’. They lounged on chairs and tables, idle and irked, not particularly rushed. "Are we... going to war?"
Tashbern laughed. "Where did you hear that?"
"Ankh'ij."
He nodded. "People get paranoid when they are called to duty. They think there must be some awful reason. But my own father is an officer of a militia squad - not this one, sadly - and every few years, men are called simply to build our fighting force in the case that there ever was a real threat."
I thought of Clera and the others, and wondered how much of a threat they felt that the Stargate posed. Enough to ignore their own fears and bury it?
We gathered blankets, toiletries, odds and ends, and were nearing the end of the line when I saw him. He was standing, not far away, where the woods ran up against the courtyard. "Who’s that kid?" I asked. ‘Kid’ was subjective. He had to be at least twenty or so, dressed in - shockingly enough - a white shirt and blue pants, with a full head of hair cut just above the shoulders. He watched the line and the crowd of militia almost hungrily, aware that I was looking at him but choosing to ignore the fact. His legs and arms were thick, not with fat, but with muscle. In fact, he was probably one of the best-looking guys I had ever seen, and I say that in the most manly way possible. His features were classic; he had the memorable kind of face found only in computer graphics and airbrushed ads, and nowhere in nature.
Nowhere, apparently, but here.
"Who? Oh, ignore him," Tashbern advised.
But I couldn’t tear my eyes from the young man. "Why?"
He sighed. "Do you know of that old rumor about colonies, in the woods? Where they don’t use the labor system?"
/That/ caught my attention. "I think so, yeah," I answered, thinking of Jerdess.
"Well, they are not simply rumors. They are the truth. And some of these revolutionaries, these outcasts, have the audacity to set up these colonies near /us/... less than a Réy’s walk from this very place."
"He’s one of them?"
"Undoubtedly. They make their own clothes, own food, but sometimes such things are scarce and they come here looking for work, for help."
"Help from who?"
"Them," said Tashbern exasperatedly, gesturing at the Lego.
"But doesn’t the Council want to get rid of the colonies?"
"Some members do. But this is Clera’s domain, and in her opinion they - and their shortages - are more useful in their present condition."
I frowned at that. Was there any aspect of Ma’at’an society that didn’t use or let themselves be used? "And you don’t have any problems with that?"
Tashbern’s anger flared, sudden and unexpected, so fierce that I took a step back, afraid of getting singed. "Allow me to tell you something of myself. I love this glorious land. I love this planet. Not because I am insane, or because I have a privileged family, like many have insinuated, nor because I have been brainwashed by the excellent tutor the Council provided for me. I joined this militia as soon as my other debts were worked off, not because I was enlisted but because I love this land. The Council can do no wrong."
He had me in agreement - or at least tolerance - right up until that last sentence.
I loved being in the Air Force, in the United States Military for that matter. For all that I might complain about the headache and the hassle, it was my niche. It was what I did and what I was good at... especially where the Stargate was concerned. I might not have the greatest opinion of myself when it came to many aspects of my life, but my job was not one of them. If nothing else, my excellence as an officer had been rammed down my throat by many a superfluous General, or at least the ones who didn’t know me too well.
I loved what I did, but I would never get to the point where I would unquestionably, infallibly, follow every order given to me, no matter where the order originated: Pope, President, or General. I’d butted heads with partisanship and political idiocy more times than I cared to keep track of, after all. And my allegiance to my own conscience had been, er... spectacularly demonstrated when I’d lied straight-faced to my superiors about the fate of Abydos years ago.
So Tashbern’s unflappable patriotism left a sour taste in my mouth.
Not your planet, I thought. Not your cause, not your morals, not your problem.
When I looked back, the young ‘rebel’ was gone.
I went home to Sam.
***
"Daniel? What are you doing?"
I didn’t look back at Janet, but kept my eyes focused on the night sky instead. It was a clear night, and the cosmos spinning above me seemed especially vast, especially impossible to navigate. Were Sam and Jack looking back? Could I see from this sad little parking lot the star that Ma’at’a revolved around? I knew I could figure that out simply by using the charts in the astronomy department, but I didn’t want to. I wanted things to remain a mystery. I wanted to wonder, like I had wondered when I was little: was someone looking back?
"Nothing," I finally replied. "Just thinking."
She perched next to me on the front bumper of my car. "I talked to Colonel Landseth tonight."
"Really?" I asked dryly.
"Yeah."
"She mention how /rude/ I was the other day?"
"Daniel, I don’t think that’s anything worth mentioning. I think if you actually spoke three civil words to her the woman would have a heart attack."
"Promise?"
"Daniel," she snapped, and I finally looked down on her. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but tired wisps hung around her face, giving the appearance of a much younger woman. "Landseth never did /anything/ to us. To you. You know that. The only thing she /didn’t/ do was turn down the chance to work here, and that’s no great crime. If she had passed up this post, who knows; the next person in could have been someone like Mayborne, who didn’t care about us, or the program, or especially about Sam and Jack. I don’t like it either, Daniel, and there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t..." Finally, with a sigh, she trailed off. "I don’t know what else to say to you."
"Hammond sent you out here, didn’t he?"
She shrugged. "You think I did this for my health? The Mayborne thing, though, that was all me."
"Very nice." Her hand touched my own and I looked down on it before returning my gaze to her face. "You know they aren’t even sending probes through to Ma’at’a anymore? ‘Too expensive’, according to the General. And I feel like we... we failed them, Janet. They would have done so much more for me, or you. Jack wouldn’t have rested until we were all together again, all safe, and the most I can do is have a tantrum now and then. It’s embarrassing."
"You aren’t Jack O’Neill," she reminded pointedly.
"Yeah. But you know what? I wish I was. I wish I could take his place, go back in time and... and /do/ something. Change something. It isn’t right, Janet. It isn’t fair."
"You don’t need to tell me that, Danny." Now Janet redirected her attention to the stars. "Life isn’t fair. And it should be. With all the crap we go through, it should be /more/ than fair. It should be on our side."
***
Our second morning in Depa’ma.
I wanted to cry.
I didn’t, of course.
Jack had spent the majority of the pervious afternoon meandering around the base, talking to people, getting to know our surroundings. I would have joined him but, even though there were no actual laws about ‘common’ women leaving the house unnecessarily, there seemed to be some kind of unspoken rule, some kind of taboo concerning it.
Which only put me in a worse mood.
He’d left soon after we’d arrived, on the orders of someone named Gabrien, one of Clera’s people, returning shortly carrying an armload of cloth and questionable bundles: our allotted ‘supplies’. He’d been in a foul mood, hardly speaking to me before venturing out again, mentioning only a man named Tashbern and a revolutionary colony.
I’d played the dutiful housewife, making the bed, putting things in their proper place, etceteras, until sundown, when Jack returned.
"Where have you been?" I asked, trying to keep the agitation in my voice to a minimum. No need for him to know I’d been worried, after all. He was a competent man. He could take care of himself.
"Around," he answered flippantly. "You know the kid I saw today? The one from the colony?"
I swallowed. "Yes."
"I talked to him. His name’s Parson; he's a nice guy."
"Wonderful," I answered evenly, refusing to become enthused.
Jack regarded me strangely, then went on.
"Apparently, his colony's closer than Tashbern or even Clera know, just an hour or two from here."
/That/ warranted a little excitement. "Could they help us?"
He looked hesitant. "You mean hide us?"
"I mean help us get back to the Stargate."
"If we escaped from this place, they'd come looking for us; you know that," Jack pointed out. "And those people are considered revolutionaries. They're in a difficult situation as it is. I don't want them to fall under the Council's attention any more than what's absolutely necessary."
A noble sentiment, and one I shared, deep down, but nothing that would help us get home. "Is it at least in the right direction?" I asked, resolute.
"Yeah," he sighed. "It's in the right direction. Parson explained the route pretty well... I could probably draw a map."
I grinned. "Great."
"But first things first."
"What?"
For the first time I realized that Jack was holding something. It was small, brown, worn, and most certainly rectangular. "A book?"
"Parson brought it to trade. It’s a children’s book... it has pictures..." He shrugged. "I thought it might help us learn their written language."
"Wait a minute," I interrupted sternly, feeling every bit the part of the disagreeable matron. "Trade? Hat did you trade for it?"
"Nothing of... value."
"But-"
"Don’t worry about it, Sam."
I scowled.
I wasn’t supposed to worry? He had to be kidding.
"They’re serving dinner down in the courtyard," he said, looking defeated. "Let’s go."
It was a request, not an order, but that’s what I imagined it as.
Now, it was morning, and what a morning it was.
I woke up pressed against Jack, cuddled up against his chest as though my sleeping mind had conveniently forgotten the friction between us. Even awake, I pushed it to the side, nestling closer to him, smiling as his arms unconsciously tightened around me.
Call it my guilty pleasure.
Unbidden, memories drifted back, errant bits of speech and emotion I hadn’t entirely covered with an icy shell. The realization that Jack had stayed behind on Ma’at’a with me when he could have escaped; my initial awkwardness to the ‘married’ farce; our first - public - kiss. The attack in the alley, my fear and desperation, our second - private - kiss. My confidence that we would soon be home; the feeling of things left undone; the passionate embrace that Jack had terminated so abruptly, so unexpectedly.
Clera. The militia. The relocation.
I was a scientist. I adored science because 99% of the time there was a definitive answer to your problem, question, or experiment. And I was certain that despite what people said about love being as predictable as weather, I fancied myself an expert forecaster. I was sure I could bring reason to every one of my actions here on Ma’at.
Such personal reevaluation was usually done in my journal, which still lay under my bed on Earth - or, more subtly, in mission reports we were required to fill out upon returning to the SGC. Having neither a diary nor a form, I composed my rationalities in my head.
‘I have great respect for Jack, and I’m attracted to him. Not a great start.
‘On Earth, rules were everything. I could look at those regulations, black and white, and tell myself that I had committed myself to this and there was no turning back. Look, but don’t touch. Keep a professional distance. No first names. Minimal downtime together. Anything more and I’d just be hurting myself.
‘Here, though, everything I pledged my life to seems so damn far away. Add to that the fact we’re supposed to ‘act married’... and that we have no one to turn to but each other.
‘When we kissed, after I was attacked, I don’t think either of us were thinking straight. We just as well might have been under the influence of another alien virus. We were scared and clingy and afraid to let the other out of our sight. It was a difficult situation and we both let ourselves get carried away by feelings. Latent feelings. Feelings we had suppressed for a long time, but here had nothing to suppress them. Not rules. Not duty. Not even our own diminishing willpower.
‘And then later, when I initiated that whole adolescent groping session... that had to be the most irresponsible, irrational thing I have /ever/ done. So what if I expected to be home in a few days, where there would be no more holding of hands, no more warm beds, no more evening embraces? So what? That’s no excuse.
‘So what’s my excuse for the way I’ve been acting? And what’s Jack’s? Why have we been behaving this way? How did one simple two-day trip change us so dramatically, from almost-lovers to... to Colonel O’Neill and Captain Carter?’
Would we have to start all over again?
Was Jack really as at home here as he seemed?
I closed my eyes tightly and let sleep take me.
I was so confused.
*
Nothing much was happening, and that was fine with me.
I remembered an old saying about how the more closely the government controlled something, the less efficiently it worked. This seemed to be the case here in Depa’ma. According to several men - including Tashbern, who’d seemed to cool down and forgive me for whatever I’d apparently done - our training as militia members should have started today. But instead, Clera, her committed, Petros, and her daughter, Emiko... had decided to have a ball.
I learned from Parson - still lurking about - and a couple long-term residents of the base that Clera’s parties were the best in the Council. She held it in the courtyard, and invited ‘all the best families’, "skimping on nothing... except entertainment," Parson added wryly. Of course, I knew exactly what he meant.
By far, the best part about it was the families that lived on the base got a day off.
I spent most of the morning talking to Parson. The kid was bright, and he smiled when I told him that, claiming to have had no formal, tutored education. As we discussed Ma’at’an politics, weather, and social classes, a tiny scrap of discomfort kept popping up, and I finally gave in and asked "Why are you being so... helpful?"
He seemed genuinely confused. "What? Do you think I am tricking you?"
"No, of course not," I lied. "I just know that everyone has their own motives. That doctor I told you about, Krivin; he helped us because he feels guilty for having led a privileged life. The people in Ankh'ij helped because that’s how their community operates. Everyone has reasons. What’s yours?"
He seemed to consider the question carefully, so serious it was almost funny, before answering. "This world is one with many problems. Our people recognized that and broke away. Every Réy, it seems, there are less of us. When we meet someone who sees these problems, we do what we can to give them courage to join us."
"Courage is no problem," I assured him. "The trouble is finding opportunity. But I already told you; Sam and I wouldn’t join your colony. We just want to return to the Sungate."
Naturally, I hadn’t explained /why/.
"I understand that," Parson said evenly. "But even contributing in the escape of two people is a victory for us."
We walked in silence for a few moments.
"Your Sam wouldn’t oppose to leaving this place?" he asked.
I smiled ruefully. "Actually, I think she’s already got our bags packed."
"She’s eager to leave?"
"Very."
"And you are not?"
I glanced up at him, surprised. "Of course I want to leave. I don’t appreciate being drafted here. Sam and I have our own lives where we come from, and we just want to get back."
"There’s nothing keeping you here in Depa’ma?"
"Nothing."
"That is fortunate."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why... is that good?"
He cocked his head at me, as though I was an amusing pet. "You /are/ from far away. The militia has always worked this way."
"Worked how?"
He was frighteningly solemn. "The Council never relocates single men to this place. Always families. You see, it’s too easy for a man with no family, no past, to escape, either from the base or during a duty. If you tried that, if you tried to leave this place without your Sam-"
"I would never do that," I said firmly.
"/If/ you did, she would be executed in retaliation."
I don’t know why it surprised me, but it did, and I looked to Clera’s Council building as though I could pinpoint her staring out one of the windows and ask her why, /why/, people of such potential were treated like slaves. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I am not. Every man here has a family. A committed if not children. Their lives hang in limbo, dictated by his actions." Parson’s voice turned hard and cold. "/This/ is one of the problems with this land. Not the fact that the Council would kill innocents - not that alone - but... but the fact that every season... someone leaves his family behind, sentencing them to death."
I swallowed hard. I thought of Jaldebay, the careless slacker I’d known in Ankh'ij. He’d compiled debts from many cities... was this how? Had he had a wife and children that’d he’d abandoned, simply to be free of the burden?
Even if he personally hadn’t committed such an offense, if still happened.
I felt numb and sick inside.
I brushed it away, at least as best as I could. I’d muse over it later.
"Are you ready for tonight?" I asked Parson with a smile.
He returned it. "I talked to Gabrien, and he even said that Clera would be glad to see me on stage again. I have to thank you, Jack. If she’s in a generous mood, she might trade my performance for a gown... or even a necklace, perhaps a ring. Anything I could present to Nakieta."
Nakieta, the woman, one who lived on the base and who he wished to propose to. "No problem. Want to practice some more?"
"I’d like that," said Parson, and we retreated into a private place.
*
When the sun had drifted almost directly overhead, I made up my mind. Jack had told me to wait here, and stay out of sight and notice, but I was going stir crazy. I had to get out.
I’d pulled on a drab green dress, one of the provisions Jack had picked up the day before. It was less conspicuous then the gowns Krivin had donated. Peeking outside earlier, I’d seen many women wearing the exact same thing, which made me feel a bit safer. Still, as I had known months ago, my coloring would never let me fit in completely.
I left the cottage with a fluttering stomach.
It was cool outside but the dress was practical: long-sleeved and made of thick material. The street circling the Council building, I discovered, was surprisingly busy, choked with more traffic than we’d seen since arriving. They came in all colors, militia black but also in gray, green, and blue. Common people, like myself, all in some sort of hurry.
I traced the perimeter of the building and found myself in the courtyard Jack had mentioned the night before. It was vast and grand: stone, porcelain sculpture, thick grass, lush trees.
The front door of the Council building - Clera’s home - looked less modern than the rest of the structure. It was a wide, stone-lipped semi-circle, like the front gate of a castle, or a grinning, toothy mouth. Here the swarm of men and women thickened. Voices were raised, faces animated and gestures wild. I caught the arm of a harried woman passing by. "What’s going on?" I asked, predictions of war fresh and frightening in my mind.
She pulled away. "A party, of course."
"A party?" Jesus, was that all?
She looked exasperated. "Yes, a party. Now, what are you doing?"
"I-"
"If you’re not doing anything, then quickly, inside." She pushed me towards the building. "Up the first set of stairs, third door on your left."
She gave me an extra little shove in that direction and then sped away, expertly threading through a knot of militiamen. I was left with two opinions: enter Clera’s home or return to the cottage?
Third door on the left.
*
I climbed the stairs, opened the third door on the left, and found myself in an expansive suite.
Like all things associated with the Council, it was white. White walls, white drapes, white sheets over tables, white vases holding flowers. White flowers.
Everything was immaculate, still, and silent, and for a second I wondered if I had wandered into an empty room, the wrong room. Then I heard the sound of a door opening, from deeper inside the apartment, and a voice. "Hello?" It was young and female.
"Hi?" I responded hesitantly, rounding the corner and coming face to face with a teen girl about my height. We stepped back in concert, and she quirked a smile. I appraised her quickly: bronze skin, ebony hair, large eyes, small nose and mouth, white robe. /Her/ attention went directly to my hair.
"What a strange color..." she mused. "Where are you from?"
"Not around here," I answered, giving the standard reply.
Her eyes sharpened. "Where?" This wasn’t vain trivia. She wanted to know exactly where I was from, and from the looks of things, she wanted to know now.
"Ankh'ij," I answered resolutely. The girl looked dubious.
"I know people from Ankh'ij. You look nothing like them."
"It’s a family trait," I answered, trying to hide my annoyance. "My mother had the same coloring."
She looked unsatisfied, but let the matter drop. "You name, then?"
"Sam."
"Did Redera send you?"
Had the busy woman in the courtyard been Redera? "I think..."
The young woman waved her hand. "No matter. The others are all busy; I need your help in getting ready for my mother’s party."
Understanding blossomed perfectly in my mind. ‘Sharp, Carter, real sharp. They’re going to have to send you through basic training again once you get back home.’ I should I noticed it sooner. "Your mother?" I repeated, just for conformation.
"Yes. I’m Clera’s daughter, Emiko."
*
Emiko, Krivin’s ex.
I wanted - badly - to bring him up. Then again, he was bound to be a sore subject, and I didn’t want to bring the anger of a Councilwoman’s daughter upon me.
"Who’s coming to this party?" I asked, brushing Emiko’s long, silken hair and trying to remember how to French braid.
"Only the best families," she answered haughtily.
"Who? Anyone I’d know from Ankh'ij?" I pressed.
She hesitated. I saw her shoulders tense. A-ha...
"What’s wrong, Emiko?" I asked in my kindliest voice.
"A doctor and his mother," she answered finally. "As you know, Ankh'ij is several days away by horse, but that is only because the route skirts the Bay of Judgement. They’re taking my mother’s ferry across and should be here soon."
Bingo.
"Do you know them?" I pushed.
"I do." She cleared her throat. "I..."
"What?"
"Nothing," she sighed.
*
"Sam? Are you here?"
It didn’t take me long to discover that Sam wasn’t in the house. I was immediately worried. Before, it had taken me longer to become so panicked; I’d gone from disquiet to concern to anxiety to controlled alarm. Now, here, I went straight from my constant state of low-level trepidation to horror. It was like a reflex.
The close call in Ankh'ij still haunted me, and the number of potentially ill-intentioned militiamen living here was frightening.
But the door had an inside lock... which was unlocked. The three windows were all intact and latched from inside. She’d probably just stepped out, I told myself, simply because I’d asked her not to.
Still, a million abhorrent thoughts chased themselves through my mind.
This could be nothing, said my logical side, desperately trying to regain control from my imagination. She’s not injured anymore so maybe she was given an assignment. Maybe she found someone to pal around with. Maybe she went to check out the party.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
By the time I’d extended my search to the courtyard, dusk was falling and Clera’s party was really starting to gear up. There was a band, a table of food, and a plethora of people to scowl at me at my obviously low status - denoted by my gray garb. White, light gray, soft pinks and blues and greens filled the stone enclosure, punctuated by the black uniforms of the military and the chocolate brown of house servants.
"Jack!"
For a second, I couldn’t tell what direction the shout came from; all I knew was that it wasn’t Sam, yet it sounded familiar. I turned in a full circle, and finally thought to scan an aesthetic stone bridge that arched up into a balcony, set into the Council building. Standing at the top was a young man, dressed in an embroidered gray tunic, waving, grinning.
"Krivin!" I yelled back, barely heard over the melee. The band was /loud/. I began threading my way towards the stairs... and that’s when I saw her.
***
"We gather now, to honor a fallen comrade, a man who won’t soon be forgotten, a man who’ll be missed by each and every person whose life he touched. Aaron Barrette was your normal soldier, didn’t consider himself to be a great man, just an adequate one. And he died doing what he always wanted to do, his entire life: keeping this country safe. He probably figured that he’d go down protecting America from some Communistic threat, or a tyrannical dictator, not saving my life and the life of my friend from an alien being on another planet... But that’s how it happened. We can be sorry, we can even blame ourselves, but it isn’t what Aaron would have wanted. He would have wanted us to get right on with our lives. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he used to tell me, all the time. And while we can - and will - grieve, we should do that: mourn the death of a great man and then move on. Destroy these /parasites/ so that his death won’t have been for nothing."
The bravado in Landseth’s voice didn’t quite reach her eyes, and as she stepped away from the podium I knew that she had done so prematurely, that there had been more to that speech of hers, but she hadn’t been able to continue.
I stared at her as she took her seat, not out of contempt for either weakness or harshness, but because she referred to me as her friend.
***
She was dressed in a gown I didn’t recognize: brown, bell-sleeved, with a low, squared neckline and slight bits of lacework. Her hair, which she’d neglected these past few months, and let grow pleasantly shaggy, had been cleaned, combed, and trimmed back into her preferred hairstyle. It glimmered like gold.
She stood wearing her professional smile: slight and skilled and, under it all, unnatural. It was the smile she gave to people she didn’t really like; the smile she gave when she was unhappy but didn’t want anyone to know it. The Mayborne smile. Beside her was a young girl - teenaged - with coal-black hair pulled into a luxurious braid and a flowing, elaborate white dress. Not old enough to be a Council member, but perhaps she was the child of one. Clera’s daughter, I remembered. Emiko. I spared a half-second of thought to wonder if Krivin would seek her out.
I started making my way in their direction. Emiko began to move towards the long table of food, and Sam followed, confirming my suspicion. Sam was attending to the young woman. I set my jaw. Something about the situation irked me; I suppose I simply didn’t like the thought of her being subservient to anyone, especially since it wasn’t in her nature. But it made sense. Sam was undoubtedly the most unique, most beautiful woman in Depa’ma. After all, only the best for Them. And of course even the best would look their best on this night of social flaunting.
Sam saw me when I was only halfway to where she stood. Her mouth quirked into an almost automatic smile... which quickly faded. I was in for it, I decided. I’d been gone nearly all day, and yesterday, too.. Plus she seemed to be just generally annoyed with me for some reason.
She touched Emiko on the arm and murmured something to her; the younger woman nodded and Sam melted into the crowd, moving away from me.
The band picked up speed.
So did I.
She vanished into a cluster of gray and blue, but reappeared a second later on the road, in the direction of the houses. I slipped between two black uniforms and a porcelain statuette of a deer-like creature and hurried after her.
The streets were not empty. They weren’t even quiet. It seemed that all the common folk who hadn’t been forced to work at the party were enjoying the fruits of the others’ labors. There were small fires here and there; children danced around them to the tune of the music, which could be clearly heard, despite the distance. Men and women, enjoying a bright time in this drab existence, mingled and laughed and even waltzed in the street. I didn’t pause to watch, but I did smile. Did all humans, no matter which planet they called home, have this infallible spirit? This fire, this lust, this determination to enjoy themselves no matter what conditions they were under? I had been in war. I’d seen humans in /very/ bad conditions. But for every bloody, gory scene etched into my memory there was a recollection of humor, lightheartedness... of camaraderie. It really was wonderful, not as disgustingly saccharine as it sounded.
I broke into a run, dodging people where I could, shouting apologies where I couldn’t. Even then I only caught up to Samantha at the front door of our little cottage. "Sam..." I tried to touch her arm, to stop her, but she stepped out of my easy reach.
"Get out of here," she said stiffly. Our little ‘yard’ seemed to be the single spot of darkness and anger on the whole long street. Next door, a small boy, leaping around a modest bonfire with a couple of playmates, stopped to watch us.
"And where exactly do you expect me to go?" I asked in the same confrontational tone. Not a good start. Jesus, hadn’t I learned anything from my arguments with Sara? I sighed and put myself between Sam and the door. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to lock me out of the house... at least not in her present state.
"Just go back to your friends," she said sullenly.
"My friends? Sam, what is this about?"
I thought she might simply turn away, disgusted with my ignorance, or try and beat some sense into me. Instead, she did the one thing I hadn’t expected.
She burst into tears --
-- then covered up the outburst quickly, swallowing her sobs and blinking the moisture away, avoiding eye contact.
"You’re just so /happy/ here," she explained, her voice thick, as though her throat was unwilling to relinquish the words. "You’ve got /all/ these people you’re meeting, /All/ these things you’re doing. You’re even trying to learn the language. It’s like you’ve totally given up all hope of ever getting back home." She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was looking directly at me. "Is that true? You don’t think we’re going to make it back, do you?"
***
"Am I your friend?"
Landseth turned away from the window, where she’d stood staring into the embarkation room for at least twenty minutes before I’d worked up the courage to approach her. I almost wished I hadn't. Her eyes were red and weepy; she’d obviously been crying.
When she was acting coarse and invincible, it was easy to despise her. It was measurably harder when she showed actual, human emotion. "Well, you aren’t my enemy," she responded in her usual, hard voice.
That was debatable. I stared at the floor, unable to believe I was doing this, being civil. "Listen, Colonel, what you said during the service... you shouldn’t blame yourself, all right? I mean, if this was anyone’s fault it was mine." Landseth rolled her eyes, pursing her lips in prelude to another bout of tears. "I know Aaron wouldn’t have blamed you, and... I don’t either."
She paced a bit away from the window, and crossed her arms against her chest. "No... no, this /is/ my fault, Jackson. It’s my fault because I’m the Colonel, okay? I’m the team leader; everything that goes wrong /is/ my fault. Nobody has to personally point the finger at me."
Slowly, I raised my head to look at her, and I can only imagine what the expression on my face must have been like, because she immediately wrinkled her nose and demanded, "What?"
"That..." I cleared my throat. "That just sounds very much like something Jack would say."
Landseth worked her mouth for a moment, and then seemed to come to a decision. "You think you could talk about him now? Both of them?" Unease passed over her features and she brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I’m just asking because I’m curious, Doctor. And very unhappy that I never got to meet them. I’m not looking for gossip or... or for anything else, besides a distraction from all of this."
I swallowed hard against something that tasted of acid and shook my head. "I’m sorry. I can’t." Two months. Two months and I still couldn’t broach the subject, and here this woman who blamed herself for another’s death had just stood before a huge gathering of officers and airmen and /admitted/ that...
I felt a niggling of respect.
"I understand," Landseth said quietly, and without another word, she let me leave.
***
He gave the ground his full and undivided attention, and didn’t speak for a second. I crossed my arms, more in defense than in impatience. What if he really did like it here? What if... where did that leave me?
"I /want/ to, Sam," he finally declared, intense. "I /want/ to get back more than anything. But it’s going to be hard. And we... we still have lives to live. I’m just /not/ willing to sacrifice the present for a future that may never happen. The reality is that the future might include this place." He rushed on as I opened my mouth to speak. "So yes, I’m trying to... get into the swing of things a little. Make this place less of a prison and more of a community."
His words stunned me; threw me into the past. When I’d transferred from the Pentagon, I’d been thrilled to be a part of the Stargate program, an attending, functioning member... but less ecstatic about the base itself. I understood the design, but I wasn’t happy about it. Here I was, weirdly far beneath the surface of the planet, all but locked in with a bunch of people I didn’t know - mostly men - and a bizarre piece of alien technology. Before I had gotten used to it all, and started to trust both the gate and my compatriots, that’s exactly what I had considered the SGC. A prison. A prison that I now considered a community, if not a downright - albeit extended - family.
"I’m trying to make this place into... a home, at least for the time being," he finished softly, so softly that if I hadn’t been standing so close I wouldn’t have been able to hear him.
"But what about Earth?" I insisted, still caught in the throes of homesick desperation.
He reached out for my arm, slowly, as though he expected me to flinch away. I let him touch me.
He spoke quietly, almost under his breath.
"Earth will always, /always/ be our goal. But home..."
He let his fingers drift down my arm, painstakingly gentle, until his fingers grazed my palm, and took my hand in his.
"Home will be wherever you are."
A shaky smile. I could see some of Jack’s old, sardonic attitude struggling to reassert itself. "As far as I’m concerned," he breathed. "I’ve got the best thing about Earth right here with me."
Again, time did that funny thing where it seemed to race and dawdle at the same time. His hand over mine was warm, and his eyes were the most penetrating things I had ever seen. They swallowed me, drawing me into bottomless depths, but at the same time, everything was right there in them. Every emotion he had ever hidden from me during those long, hard missions came floating to the surface, and I recognized each for what it was. Dismay, dread, disappointment. Hope, happiness, humor. Longing, lust... love.
Was this more than I had even hoped it could be?
Suddenly, the urge to embrace him was overpowering. In fact, it was staggering how badly I wanted to just put my arms around him, and feel his around me, and just /be/ with him. Am I being unreasonable? I wondered, wavering. Had my common sense taken another nosedive?
I checked.
Nope. It was still there. In fact, it was /telling/ me to do this. I could all but hear it speak to me. ‘Listen, you idiot. You know you love him. /Show it/.’
And then I was there, with no memory of even taking the necessary step forward. I was pressed close against him, my head turned against his shoulder and my forehead against his jaw. I gave the fiercest, most powerful hug I had ever given, arms burning with the strain, and Jack returned it in every way. I felt him give a deep and shuddering sigh. He’d really been worried that I would turn away, and leave him looking like an idiot.
I heard a giggle from behind me, childlike and boyish.
"Don’t look now," hissed Jack. "But I think we’re being watched."
We both felt the other chuckle, but he didn’t release me. I was glad.
The music, quite suddenly, stopped. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered but Jack.
But then the music began again, and I opened my eyes.
Four sets of two notes, played on what sounded like bells, amplified loudly enough so that they were easily heard. I couldn’t place them, but... "This song... sounds familiar," I began, feeling absurd.
Jack remained silent.
A voice added to the continuing, regular chime of bells, and a chill ran through me. A pleasant chill.
"Someday," sang the voice, deep, male. "When I’m awfully low, When the world is cold, I will feel a glow."
"That’s Parson," Jack whispered over the words, so that I could hear both him and the singer. "That’s what I traded to him for the book. A song."
"Just thinking of you, And the way you look tonight."
I smiled tremulously. "Tony Bennett? I never really thought of him as your ‘style’."
"I’m just full of surprises."
I knew where he had come up with the song, though; how could I not? The last time SG-1 had gone out to dinner together, it had been to a quiet Italian restaurant. They’d been playing this song as we’d walked in, and at first, I thought I’d just imagined Colonel O’Neill staring at me. Of course, now I knew I hadn’t been imagining anything.
"You taught him the song?" I asked, trying not to cry.
"I even sang it to him," said Jack bravely.
I laughed. "I wish I could have seen that."
"No you don’t."
"Oh, but you’re lovely, With your smile so warm."
"Clera’s pretty big on entertainment. If she likes the song, she might trade it for something Parson can give to his girlfriend."
"-I- like it," I professed.
"And your cheek so soft, There is nothing for me but to love you."
Jack took a step back, and we broke the embrace. "Do you?" he asked, trying to hide his earnestness.
"It’s very sweet," I said simply.
"Just the way you look tonight."
Jack took a deep breath. "In that case, would you like to dance?"
I grinned at his nervousness. "I’d love to," I announced, wondering how I'd gotten myself caught up in this delicious dream.
My arms went around his neck, he rested his around my hips, and for the remainder of the song we simply stayed like that, swaying, warm and happy... and in love.
The instrumentation wasn’t always entirely correct, but it played a small part in the song. And Parson only missed one note. Sure, he sounded nothing like Bennett, but, as they said, it was the thought that counted.
"With each word, your tenderness grows, Tearing my fear apart. And that laugh... that wrinkles your nose, Touches my foolish heart. Lovely... never, never change. Keep that breathless charm, Won’t you please arrange it? ‘Cause, I... I love you."
"I love you," whispered Jack into my ear at the exact moment. Tears that I had tried so hard to control now spilled over onto my cheeks; soaked into the fabric of his shirt.
"Just the way you look tonight."
I brought my head up from his shoulder. There wasn’t any debate, internal or otherwise. We didn’t even check the others’ response. We just kissed, and it was a wonderful kiss, slow and drunken and deliciously mutual.
Third time’s a charm.
Parson drew out the last line gratifyingly.
"Just... the way...you look... tonight..."
"Love you," I murmured past my tears.
For once, both love and reason had won.
***
"Daniel? You alright?"
I didn’t answer Janet immediately, knowing that she would understand my mood from my lack of response; the woman was pure doctor. Finally, crossing my arms behind my head and staring up at the ceiling, I muttered. "I don’t know."
She let a small sigh slip, and sat up, holding a sheet against her chest. "Daniel, if you’re having regrets, I’m... I’m just really sorry." She closed her eyes and seemed to be inwardly berating herself. "You’re vulnerable right now and I..."
She trailed off when she heard me laughing, opened her eyes and peered at me curiously. "Janet," I chuckled. "Are you afraid that you took /advantage/ of me?"
She seemed to see the humor in the situation, and tossed her long hair over one bare shoulder. "I’ve been known to bring men to their knees. Especially adorable, emotionally-scarred men." We shared a smile. She was the only one who could joke about something like that; she was just as scarred as I was, she simply hid it better. "Seriously, what are you thinking about?"
"A lot of things," I answered truthfully.
"Really? Like what?" she asked, lying back down against me.
"Like Landseth."
"Hey!" She jerked away from me, a playful frown on her face. "What are you doing thinking of /her/ at a time like this?"
I grinned. "I actually had a conversation with her today."
"You’re kidding? Too bad Aaron wasn’t around to see /that/." She wiggled up against me. "What else?"
"Jack and Sam." Janet remained silent. "I still don’t believe that they’re dead, you know? But at the same time, I can’t even bear to talk about them, or even think about... that’s weird, isn’t it?"
"You’re asking my professional opinion? Daniel, you are the epitome of weirdness."
"Thanks."
"That’s not all, is it?"
Again, I didn’t answer for a few moments. There /was/ something else, and her name was Sha’re. /And/ her name was Amonet. She was the woman who had killed my friend and teammate Aaron Barrette. And now she was dead.
Sha’re hadn’t been dead, either, but like Jack and Sam, she had been lost to me for a long time. Now she was lost to me forever. And the really gut-wrenching thing was that I /could/ have saved her. During the battle, I could simply have grabbed her and hauled her into the Stargate. She would have still been a Gou’ald but at least she would have been safe on Earth, away from Apophis and all the others, and we might have been able to...
But if I had taken the time to grab Sha’re, rather then simply shoot her, Amonet would have been able to use those last few seconds to finish frying Landseth’s brain with her ribbon device.
I had killed my wife to save the life of a woman whose existence I loathed. And then, not 24 hours later, I’d ended up in the bed of my most trusted, comfortable friend.
"No," I said. "That’s it."
Janet frowned at me, and opened her mouth to retort, but it was at that moment that her pager went off. Groaning, she leaned down, grabbed her pants from the floor beside the bed, and fished the tiny machine out of the pocket. Squinting at the display in the moonlight, she bit her lip, trying to make out the message.
And then she paled.
"Oh my God."
*
There she was, sitting on the edge of one of the infirmary beds, a woman I had almost given up on seeing again. And standing beside her, arms crossed defensively over his chest, was a man who I hadn’t seen in some time.
Because he was dead.
/Had/ been dead.
Janet murmured an oath and shot across the room to General Hammond, who was standing next to Teal’c and Landseth and looking positively beleaguered. I made my way to them more slowly, keeping my eyes on the two new arrivals every step of the way, edging around the room. Neither of them saw me at first, too busy watching the others and exchanging worried looks.
Her hair was longer, but it was her.
"Sam?"
*
"Alternate universe?" Landseth repeated. "I’ve read the report about Jackson’s little trip through it a while back. You’re saying that you people learned how to use it?"
"That’s right," answered Samantha stiffly. "And you don’t have to worry about the Gou’ald following us; I brought back the controller as well."
I simply couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Kawalsky’s presence was astounding as well, but come on, I’d already returned from the dead several times myself. This was /Sam/. It was her... she was back.
I knew that I was probably grinning like an idiot.
"And you want to remain here?" repeated Hammond, a tinge of disapproval in his voice.
The others heard it, too. "If you’ll have us," said Sam, toying with a strand of shoulder-length hair. "Our entire planet has been taken over by the Gou’ald. We don’t have anywhere else to go."
"Sir?" Landseth began, waiting until she had the general’s attention. "I know that this is your decision, yours and the President’s, but I’d just like to go on the record as being all for this. I’m sure SG-2 would welcome Major Kawalsky. And Captain Carter could... well sir, she could replace Aaron."
"Actually," Sam piped up hesitantly. "I’m a Major now."
"Oh."
"I’ll have to get authorization, of course," said Hammond, that little tic still there. "Doctor Jackson, Colonel, would you mind showing the Majors to their rooms?"
*
As we walked down the corridor, I tried very hard not to stare at Sam... until I realized that she was staring at me. Still, I managed to stave off my curiosity, at least until we reached her temporary quarters, and she invited me in to talk.
"Daniel, it’s... it’s so good to see you."
She hugged me, and I hugged back. In my head, I chanted a sort of heartbreaking mantra: It isn’t her. It isn’t her. Because it looked and sounded and /felt/ like her. It was her golden hair and blue eyes and the strength in her features, and it would have been so easy to convince myself that she had never left.
"You knew me in your reality?" I asked when she released me. "The... the other universe I went to, they’d never... I’d never joined the program."
"Knew you?" She was incredulous. "Of course, Daniel... we.... we were on SG-1 together. With Charlie and Teal’c and Jack."
"So Teal’c's a good guy?" I asked, relieved. She nodded. "And there’s five people on the team?"
"Of course," she replied, puzzled that I should even question. "Well, initially there was."
I winced, looking over her head, focusing on the rear was as I came up with a certain conclusion; it wasn’t any easier to make the second time around then it had the first. "I’m dead, aren’t I?"
Wordlessly, she sat down on the bed, and, feeling uncomfortable towering over her, I sat next to her.
"P2F-983," she said, in a noticeably subdued tone. "The natives called it Ma’at’a. We went there... just a regular mission. Explore, look for technology, for allies. You know the drill. We talked to their leaders about fighting the Gou’ald... and they just went insane on us. They called out their army and chased us all the way back to the Stargate."
Her eyes took on a far-away, haunted quality that was much too familiar. "Daniel, you were in the back, with Charlie. I don’t know what you were thinking; you weren’t even armed. They shot you, back of the head, just at the outskirts of the city. Didn’t even yell... but I heard the Colonel. He yelled your name and I looked back, and I saw him running back towards you. Charlie, he just kept running, and he pulled Jack with him. That’s when I knew that you were dead, because if there had even been the slightest chance they wouldn’t have left you there."
She swallowed, hard, and I could tell it was taking her every ounce of her self-control not to crack. "They caught up with Teal’c and me but there was this huge clearing leading up to the Stargate, and we didn’t have any choice but to run through it. I caught a couple of pellets in the back of the leg, but..." A hand went to her temples. "I didn’t even look back. I dialed in the address and sent the iris codes through, and I went through, and Teal’c followed... We came out the other end, and so did Charlie, but Jack... the Colonel."
"He didn’t make it," I whispered, sick at my use of the euphemism, sick of the entire tale, the tragic story that so closely paralleled my own.
"I didn’t even look back," she repeated harshly. "I think I was afraid of what I would find if I did, but that’s no excuse. The last time I ever saw him alive was in a glance over my shoulder. I’ve never... really forgiven myself for that."
"It wasn’t your fault."
"I don’t mean that I still blame myself for the attack," she elaborated vehemently. "But I hate myself for never... foreseeing it. Jack dying. I figured... I figured that I’d have all the time in the world to get to know him, to decide how I feel about him. /Felt/ about him." Sam shook her head slowly, gaze still distant. "It’s only been a couple months since we lost the both of you. Less then a week later we got a message from the Tok’ra that the Gou’ald were heading for Earth en mass. And we couldn’t think of a single way to stop them."
"I’m sorry," I said softly, feeling inadequate. "And I understand."
"Do you?"
"Yes. You... your counterpart and our Jack were lost on 983 as well.."
"Lost?" she asked pointedly.
I could barely hear her over the rush of blood in my ears. Listening to the Major’s story had given me a horrible, sick sinking sensation, rocketing me back to the chase on Ma’at’a. What had happened to the Daniel Jackson and Jack O’Neill in her universe could very well be the exact same thing that had transpired to my Sam and Jack. The young militia member we’d killed could have been telling the truth. I could have been deluding myself, and making an /idiot/ out of myself at the same time, for months.
"Dead," I hollowly clarified. "They’re dead."
***
Well, now we'd gone and done it. Taken the step from which there was no return. We'd felt emotions we'd never let ourselves feel, said words that couldn't be retrieved, done things that couldn't be undone.
Oh, had we ever done things...
I lay on my back, staring up at the darkness of the ceiling over the bed, listening to the cadence of my heart as it finally began to slow and steady. Or was it Sam's pulse I was hearing? It was hard to tell; we were lying so close.
I could still hear the music outside, and the happy clamor of the partygoers, but I hardly thought about it. All I could think was:
Wow. I'm glad that worked.
I hadn't been certain it would. I'd known Sam for a while, of course, but there was a difference between knowing how she liked her coffee and how she would accept my declaration.
The times I had personally complimented her ("Good job, Carter", "Great idea, Captain" and - only once - "Nice, um, outfit, Sam.") I had always received the same reaction. She just gave a little smile, a little nod. It was like she didn't really believe that I meant what I was telling here, or that I meant it, but only in a casual, offhanded way. So when it came to laying it all out on the table, as I'd done tonight, I was truly flying blind, hoping I had accurately judged her. I didn't want to seem too desperate, but I didn't want to seem detached about it, either. There was the thinnest of lines separating the two.
It seemed that I still had good instincts.
Sam lay against me, and I think I can safely say that her skin against mine was the most incredible sensation in the world. The heat and softness and sheer intimacy of it was as mind-blowing as...
Well, as the even greater intimacy we’d just shared.
I turned my head and looked at Sam. Her eyes were closed but I could tell she wasn’t asleep. "You know, I only have one regret."
To her credit, she didn’t find my words at all alarming. She just nodded her head, and between deep breaths asked "What’s that?"
"That we didn’t do this sooner."
She opened her eyes and raised a brow. "You mean two months ago?"
"I mean sooner."
"What about military regulations?" she asked, only half teasing. "Rules we... pledged to follow?"
I shrugged. "I don’t know if you’ve noticed," I joked. "But even since that first Abydos mission I haven’t been... all that fond of rules. In fact, it seemed that I’ve been bending them wherever I could. I guess that was just a warm-up for this."
She smiled, genuinely. "And if we get back home?"
"/When/ we get back home... I don’t see why anything has to change." She gave me a Look. "Okay, okay, maybe things will have to change. But not us. If the United States military wants us bad enough /they’ll/ have to change. Take us together. As an item."
"An item?"
"An item."
"And if they don’t want us that badly?" She was testing me now.
I shifted, and she moved closer. "Well, in that case..." I stared up into the darkness as though it was a magical portal, through which I could see the future. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam, head pillowed on the juncture of my shoulder and chest, looking in the same direction. "You’d go to work at some big, fancy lab... I’d become a burger-flipper... and whenever we wanted a vacation we’d make a call to the White House concerning a certain ‘star gate’..."
She giggled. I found myself grinning at the very sound. "That’s not very nice, Jack."
I looked over at her and said, deadpan, "I’m a bad boy."
She replied with an incredulous smirk.
I closed my eyes, and didn’t speak for several moments. "You know," I said, feeling sleep edging in almost immediately. "Maybe we shouldn’t have done this sooner. Maybe this was the perfect time."
Sam murmured drowsy agreement.
"In which case... I don’t... have any regrets... at all..."
***
"Hey."
I jerked and turned at the familiar voice, surprised by the Colonel’s casual tone. "Hey," I replied, watching as she entered the room and then turning back to the computer.
"What’re you up to?"
The informality wasn’t even forced. I wondered if we’d also received an alternate version of Landseth. "Going back through some missions," I answered, my eyebrows going up as pulled a chair up next to mine. "Some of our first as the old SG-1." That was how we differentiated between O’Neill’s team and Landseth’s: ‘old’ and ‘new’ SG-1. I almost wished they had somehow retired the number and just designated us SG-17 or whatever number was up next. Would have made things easier.
"Hathor," she read from the screen, and I saw her grin reflected in the monitor. "I must have memorized that report."
I sent her a dark look.
The Colonel looked mildly abashed. "Sorry, Doctor, don’t take any offense to that. It was pretty incredible though, don’t you think?"
"Oh, yeah," I muttered. "Real incredible."
"I only meant..."
"I know what you meant," I interrupted, clicking ahead a few more missions.
Landseth was silent for a few more moments, but, of course, unable to remain so. "I was talking to Sam."
"Hmm?"
"Yeah." Her tone was almost jubilant, and I had to turn and look at her. "Is she a lot like the woman you knew?"
My fingers hovered over the mouse as I thought. "Yeah. I guess she is." Then again, the only other person I had to compare her to was the Doctor Carter from the first alternate universe, the engaged one. And even though she hadn’t been a stranger, there was something about the woman who had just shown up on our doorstep that resonated with me. Her military bearing, maybe, or perhaps it was simply the connection she had with me.
"Did you talk to her about O’Neill at all?"
"Nope," I answered, stalwart, resuming my browsing.
"I did."
I looked at the Colonel out of the corner of my eye, wondering if that was really /mirth/ I was hearing in her voice. Sam had talked to this woman, /this woman/ about Jack? I felt a little miffed, but then again, I supposed there /were/ things that could only be discussed between members of the female persuasion.
"She was having an affair with him."
I nearly tipped out of my chair. "What?"
She laughed aloud at my shock; it was a foreign sound. "It had been going on for a couple months before the Ma’at’a mission. Apparently the entire team knew about it... General Hammond suspected but never said anything." Landseth folded her hands in her lap. "They went out one night, got drunk, made a mistake, woke up together the next morning and decided maybe it wasn’t such a mistake."
Well, that certainly sounded like the people I had known. "Why are you telling me this?" I asked, trying to modulate my voice.
Landseth shrugged. "She’s your friend, Jackson. And he was, too."
"Are you asking me if the people /I/ knew had been... doing that?"
"No!" With an irritated glower, she stood. "Doctor, I wish you’d stop trying to twist everything I say and do. Contrary to everything you seem to think, I’m /not/ out to get you."
I scowled at her, trying to remember that less than 48 hours ago Aaron Barrette had died.
Then again, so had Sha’re.
Standing, I opened my mouth to retort when a young Hispanic man - one of Janet’s people - skidded into the room.
"Doctor, Colonel? Doctor Frasier said to come to the infirmary immediately.
It’s Major Carter."
***
When the knock came in the morning, Sam was in the bathroom. I’d already cleaned up, dressed, and was pulling on my shoes, planning to run down to the courtyard and bring back breakfast.
Standing on the doorstep was Gabrien, Clera’s assistant. "Can I.... help you?"
"Your presence is requested at the Council building," he said stiffly. I feigned shock.
"A request? Well, ya don’t get many of those these days. Hold on a sec," I said, closing and locking the door before he had a chance to object.
Sam had just come out of the bathroom, her hair glistening with droplets of water. "My presence has been /requested/," I informed her, grinning. It seemed I couldn’t /keep/ from grinning, especially when I looked at her. Was I an idiot or what? "I can still pick up some breakfast on the way back."
She shook her head. "Don’t worry about it. I was going to go down and visit Emiko a little later anyway."
"To apologize for not coming back last night?"
Humor snapped in her eyes like flame. "That. /And/ to find out if she ever met up with Krivin."
I winced as I remembered seeing him the evening before, and tossing him aside for Sam. "Yeah..."
She smiled softly, stepped close, and kissed me. It was a cute, chaste little kiss on the side of the mouth. "You’d better get going," she advised.
Understandably, I was reluctant. The fact that I was in love with this woman had just recently come into the light, and I wanted to do nothing more than simply sit here and bask in the glow. But that simply wasn’t possible. It hadn’t really been possible at home, either, but it was /especially/ impossible here.
"I’ll be right back," I promised, and then I made myself leave.
*
It was cute. In fact, it was damn adorable.
I’d always known that Jack had this sweet, little-boy side of him. I saw it often when he was around children, Cassie especially. He related to them well because deep inside, past the scars and hatred and memories of war, he was just a big kid. Or maybe it was because being around children made him happy, remembering a time when the scars, the hatred, and the memories didn’t yet exist.
In either case, he reminded me of nothing so much as a little boy, used to getting his way and upset when another’s will was imposed upon him. In that way, he even reminded me of my brother, and how he would shriek and rail when his every wish wasn’t granted.
Far away, in the deepest reaches of my mind, was a lingering sense of foreboding. This was too easy. Nothing should be this easy. Not that I expected a plague to come down upon us because of the night before, but I had expected... something. Argument. Anger. Incompatibility.
But if anything, last night had quenched the anxiety I’d been feeling over the last few days. I was no longer ready to rip out Jack’s throat; he was no longer wincing at my every gesture. The morning had been pleasant and utterly without argument, and as for incompatibility... ha!
After the song had ended the night before, Jack and I had remained in the yard, clinging to each other almost franticly until the twittering of the neighbor boys was simply too distracting. So we went inside.
Again, there was no spoken questions, no silent conference. He kissed me and I kissed back; I unbuttoned his tunic and he pushed the sleeves of the dress off my shoulders. His hands were in my hair and on my sides and... and everywhere. I had expected - I’d had a lot of expectations - awkwardness, confusion, tentativeness, or mindless, soulless passion - but we’d made love like it was the most natural, rational thing in the world. And then, sated for the first time in far too long, we’d laid back and talked for a bit, finally drifting off to sleep.
It was like a huge, crushing weight had been shifted, or a brain-tingling tension relaxed. I think I had always known that, one way or another, our feelings would be revealed, but I had never let that knowledge register because I was afraid. Afraid of reaction. Afraid of rejection. Afraid that this huge glacier of frozen emotion would suddenly thaw, and I’d drown in it.
Turned out that the water was just fine.
***
"Janet, what's going on?"
The first thing I saw as I entered the room was Sam, lying in one of the beds, blankets pulled up to her waist. She was breathing hard, agonized and exhausted. But she was still enough herself that when she saw me, she managed a very worried, sympathetic frown.
"I'm not really sure," admitted Janet, fussing around her patient's bedside and casting nervous glances at Teal'c, and Kawalsky. "But the Major seems to have an idea."
Sam held her head in her hands. "I think so, but it can't..."
"What is it, Major?" asked Landseth, standing just beside me.
"Entropic cascade failure," she gasped. "It's theoretical, but..." She looked back up at me, her expression tight and pained. "It's /impossible/. Entropic cascade failure would only exist if there were two of me in the same reality. And you said that the Sam /here/ was dead."
I almost didn't register what she was telling me, what she meant by the wary, knowing look in her eyes. It was possible that I /didn't/ want to acknowledge what she meant. It had only been hours ago that I had finally been able to admit to myself that Jack and Sam had died on Ma'at'a, and now here I was, being told that that might not be the case after all.
"What are you trying to say, Major?"
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it and shuddered as another seizure ripped through her, and then gasped out "Either the theory is totally wrong, and for some reason it's just affecting me and not Charlie... or your Sam /isn't/ dead, Daniel."
"First things first," spoke up Janet before this could even sink in. "How do I treat this?"
"You can't," Sam answered grimly. "Which means I'm going to die here."
"We will not permit this to happen," Teal'c vowed. "If we returned you to your reality, this failure would cease, would it not?"
"Well, sure it would," spat Kawalsky, looking decidedly ill at ease. "But if you care to remember, our entire world has been overrun by the Gou'ald. If she goes back, they'll kill her."
With an air of authority, an aura I had once despised but now cherished, Landseth shouldered her way past me and into the center of attention.
"I don't think so."
***
Gabrien led me into the Council building itself. The experience was altogether intimidating. The gaping doorway, the sheer enormity of the structure, the number of guards milling around, glowering like ill-tempered mongrels.
We took an electrical lift - a sort of elevator with no sides, only a floor - to what I was certain simply had to be the top floor. Here, the walls were painted ivory. The drapes, the carpet, the furniture lining the corridor... they were all the same blinding shade of white. It all but screamed "Pretentious Council member ahead!"
He took me to room at the very end of the long hall and then left, closing the door behind him.
The room was surprising, to say the least. The carpet was royal blue. The couch was deep purple. The tables and chairs were a vibrant red. There were green plants, yellow walls, and multi-hued pictures. Crystal light fixtures sent bright geometric shapes dancing over every surface.
It made my eyes hurt to look at it.
But I /could/ understand Clera’s motivation for constructing such a room. Surrounded by white every waking moment, the Council had to get pretty desperate for color.
Standing at the circular window, wearing a black dress that made her appear rail-thin, was Clera. "Sit," she said without turning around. It wasn’t an entreaty.
Two months ago I would have protested, my ego too large to be submissive to somebody I didn’t respect. But, though - admittedly - my ego was still large, I had learned something important about these people: it didn’t get you anywhere to argue with them. I took a seat on a mustard-colored stool.
After a few moments, a pause I suspect was for my benefit, Clera turned around. Up close, she was still pretty, but now I could see that she was more than a simply sharp woman. Her face was angular, her body streamlined, her entire manner efficient and severe. A smile played on her thin, red lips. "I thought I saw you last night, Jack O’Neill from the planet Earth."
"I guess I’m kinda hard to miss," I said, failing to hide the contempt in my voice.
She didn’t seem to take offense, but stepped closer, setting /me/ on the defense. "Do you recognize me? I was present in Ankh'ij the day you and your people arrived."
I remained silent. Was I finally going to get some answers here? About damn time.
"I want you to know that I did not approve of the decision to remove you from the city. That was Bellent, and Bellent alone that initiated that course of action." She paused. "But... had it been left up to me... I would have had all four of you shot where you stood."
My heart leapt into my throat. I swallowed it, and reluctantly it returned to its appointed niche. "You guys aren’t really big on hospitality, are you?"
She ignored me. "Your team is responsible for the deaths of eleven of our men and you dare act in such a manner?"
"Yeah," I challenged, common sense abandoning me for a second. "Maybe Bellent should have listened to you."
She spun around, refusing to look at me. I rolled my eyes. Oh yeah. Real mature. "But we’re more valuable alive, aren’t we? So we can spend /our/ lives working for you?"
Clera glanced back over her shoulder at me. "What do you know of the Sungate?"
I hesitated exaggeratedly. "I don’t know... the last time I tried to bring this subject up, my committed and my friends and I were almost killed."
"Tell me what you know, and I swear on the life of my child that neither you nor Samantha will be harmed."
So now we were on a first name basis? And she had bothered to remember our names? Not strange if you considered the fact that we were the only ‘aliens’ on the planet, a bit odd when you remembered that until now we’d been treated just like every other citizen. "Oh, well, in that case..."
Clera scowled. Not in the mood, it seemed.
I sighed. "The Sungate, which we call the /Star/gate, well, the system was created by a race of aliens, a long, long time ago. Now a lot of planets the system connects are ruled by a race called the Gou’ald. They have this big old empire, but they’re nothing more than parasites... like snakes. They take over other races - like humans, us - as hosts. They... burrow their way into your brain and take control of your body. They’re pretty high on themselves and usually take the personas of local gods and goddesses. More than likely, Clera, Ma’at was a Gou’ald. She left for whatever reason... probably to serve her king, Ra, another Gou’ald. A couple of years ago, my team killed Ra... and perhaps Ma’at as well, by mistake," I assured. "My committed, my friends and I have been fighting against Apophis, Ra’s successor. We’re looking for allies. That’s why we came here."
It was basically the same thing we had told the Council upon meeting them, coupled with what Sam and I had deduced over the past months. It was also a lot for a member of such an inexperienced race to swallow, but I’d done /that/ on purpose.
Clera appeared mildly stunned, but nothing more. She crossed her arms over her chest. "You seem to know a lot about them."
"More than most, I guess," I answered cautiously, surprised by her lack of reaction. I’d expected a scream for Gabrien, or maybe a sentence for heresy. I’d never really believed that the whole Council was entirely convinced that SG-1 /had/ been from another planet, and weren’t just some locals looking for some special treatment.
"Good," replied Clera, startling me.
"And why exactly is that good?"
Clera didn’t answer immediately, walking across the room and pouring herself a glass of deep red liquid from a cut-crystal decanter. She sipped the drink slowly.
"I’m not sure if you know this," she said softly, like she was imparting a secret. "But I control the entire militia on this land mass, down to every man." She raised an eyebrow- the gesture was predatory - and indicated her black dress. The shoulders were lace and reminded me of a spindly spider web. That did make some sense. Clera had wanted us dead. Clera controlled the militia. Clera had told the militia she wanted us dead, or they had figured it out on their own, and instead of just driving us out, had purposely been trying to kill us. "Okay..."
She nursed her drink. "You know, after you were chased out of Ankh'ij, I ordered some of my men to return to the Sungate and block its opening with stones."
I leapt half out of my seat. "You /what/?" Dammit. No wonder there hadn’t been any rescue.
"Sadly, someone in Ankh'ij revealed this to Bellent and the others what I had done. He was... unpleased." A glower sharpened her features even further. "Was it you?"
I swallowed. Hard. Did that mean what I thought it did, that the gate was unobstructed again? "No. I didn’t think you'd tamper with it."
She nodded. "It’s true that many of the Council still believes in the old mythology, despite the facts. Thankfully, those facts and even that mythology has been hidden from the common people for generations."
"Why?"
"/Because/ two generations ago we found documents left behind when Ma’at departed to join Ra and the other Gou’ald!"
I stared. I hadn’t expected her to remember the names that clearly and speak them with such fluidity. How much did they really know about the Gou’ald? More than names, it seemed.
"Ma’at forced my ancestors to labor for her, and build her great temples. In Ankh'ij, Depa’ma, Fleu’r, Nat’kit... everywhere. People were terrified of her, worshipped her, and she gloried in that power. According to the old stories, she had her moments of grace and kindness, but oh, they were few.
"When historians digging through temple ruins found these documents, from our kind and Ma’at herself, she had been gone for 500 years. Supposably she had left a large contingent here, but they soon grew tired of their duties and left to join other sects. Willingly, we forgot her, and by the time of that great discovering, she was already a myth. A deity. A beloved goddess, a fair judge, a beautiful woman.
"Those who had unearthed proof to the contrary formed the first Council. It was decided that the public would not be informed of the discovery. It would result in chaos, absolute panic and anarchy. Since then, the knowledge has been passed down, shared by Council members but no one else. Not even my family knows the truth about dear Ma’at."
"Why were you so afraid of us?"
Clera looked at me, reproving. "We are still very cautious. You came through the Sungate, carrying weapons we had not seen, and with you was a man with an ancient symbol upon his brow. You dealt with the Gou’ald. That was enough for us to be wary of you."
I didn’t believe that was the entire reason, but I let it drop.
Clera placed the forgotten glass on the table. "Bellent had the Gate unblocked," she said with some anger. "Therefore, what happens will be blamed /solely/ on him... if we live long enough to place any blame at all."
My head spun. "If- What are you talking about?"
"I do not believe that Ma’at is dead." Clera’s face was exceedingly grim. "She and her forces have returned through the Sungate."
***
"You okay?" asked Landseth for the fifth time in as many minutes.
"I’m fine," I hissed, cradling my burned arm.
"I told you to stay in the storage room," she reproved.
"Since when do I listen to you?"
Kawalsky rolled his eyes at us.
There had been far less resistance at the alternate SGC than we had dared hope, and it had been strangely easy getting the removable hard drive in place and getting Sam through the Stargate. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t know if she had succeeded until she - and the Asgard - returned... and we just hoped that would happen before Apophis found us.
There had already been a small firefight between us and a couple of Jaffa, which was where I had gotten myself injured. I would have been more than injured - I would have been dead - if we hadn’t gotten some assistance from a small contingent of SG officers and airmen who had managed to survive the Gou’ald’s initial attack. Some people I’d never seen before. Others - such as Teal’c’s double - were very familiar to me. They all seemed shocked to see me and Landseth. After all, I’d been dead for months. As for the Colonel, apparently her counterpart had died three or four days ago, trying to defend the mountain.
"If Major Carter does not return soon," said the other Teal’c to himself, seeming strangely at ease with his double crouched just beside him. "You will have to return you our universe, or you will suffer the effects of the cascade failure."
"I will remain," answered our Teal’c.
"That it honorable. However..."
"Shh!" hissed the alternate version of Graham Simmons. "I don’t think that’s going to be an issue much longer. I hear something."
"The Asgard," said both the Teal’c, at the same time. Landseth and I shared a small smile.
*
"Thank you."
"For what?"
Sam tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The hair, the shoulder-length hair, that was the thing that had thrown me more than anything else about her... other than my knowledge of her relationship with Jack. The hair. Didn’t the Air Force have rules about length, or at least keeping it out of her face? Wouldn’t those rules be the same here? If something so mundane was different, what else was?
Many things, apparently.
"For everything," elaborated Sam, casting a glance at the mirror, where we could see Teal’c, Janet, and Landseth watching us from the other side. This universe’s Teal’c and Kawalsky at least pretended to me more discreet, moving surreptitiously around the room. "For helping us contact the Asgard... putting yourselves on the line for us. And..." she shrugged. "For giving me a chance to say goodbye to you."
"Ditto."
Sam’s brows raised. "She’s alive, Daniel. You know that much. And maybe he is, too. Don’t give up, okay? For me, for her... just don’t do it. Find them."
Pain dripped from her voice, choking her and setting me on edge. All I could do was nod. "Okay."
She smiled, and hugged me, and then she stepped away.
I faced the mirror, and then turned away from it, looking back at Kawalsky and wondering what exact circumstances had led to him surviving where the man I had known had died. In fact, I would have liked a lot more time to chart the differences and similarities... but Hammond was already getting antsy about locking the mirror down permanently, and I knew better than to push him. "Hey, Kawalsky," I called, teasing, jerking a thumb back through the small, irregular portal. "If you want to join us, you’re more than welcome. We /know/ you’re dead."
The other man grinned at my morbid joke. "You think I’m going to leave Sam here all alone? She was my best friend’s..."
He trailed off then, looking over at Major Carter almost warily. She didn’t seem too upset, though, and in fact, she hadn’t taken her eyes off of me. "I know," I addressed Kawalsky, looking at Sam. She ducked her head a bit, but managed to smile.
A definite pattern... one of death... and of love.
I went home.
***
As I left for the Council building, I was filled with sudden and inexplicable foreboding. It was like a massive, sharp-fanged monster chomping on my guts; it was hard to ignore.
The street was empty. Either our neighbors were too exhausted from the night before, or they were already at work... or they were hiding inside, aware of the weight of the air, laying in anticipation of very bad things.
*
I jumped to my feet. "You have /got/ to be kidding me. No."
"You know the Gou’ald better than any of my men do."
Oh, sure, what she said made perfect, perfect sense. I just hated it. Hated her. Fight Gou’ald? An entire contingent, perhaps? With boys I hardly knew? With unfamiliar weapons?
In Ankh’ij?
"I don’t-" I began, but Clera cut me off.
"I don’t believe you understand. I not giving you a choice." She smiled. It was a hard, cold, pointed smile. It wasn’t so much an expression as an icicle.
*
I had entered Clera’s home through the front door. The guards there hardly looked up, so I guessed that perhaps Emiko had informed them that I was coming. Either that or they just didn’t give a damn.
I was halfway up the side stairs when I heard footsteps and a loud, angry - familiar - voice. Elevator, I remembered, feeling unexplainable curiosity and anxiety tug me back down. The cause of the commotion passed me just as I burst into the room. There were lots of black uniforms - /that/ was immediately obvious. One was Clera’s assistant Gabrien. Another was-
"Jack!" My voice echoed off the stone walls.
He was the only one in gray, easily distinguishable, and the scowling black suits surrounded him. Like he was a prisoner.
No. This was not happening. This was /not/ happening. I refused to let this happen.
He saw me in the same instant and pushed two of the militiamen out of the way. As it did when it detected the slightest hint of violence, my brain went into combat/record mode, set to take everything in now and figure it out later, when I had the luxury of time.
But maybe I was out of practice, because as Jack grabbed me desperately, all I could think was 'Why now? Why us?'
"Sam!" Jack’s voice cut through my despondency. His eyes were frantic and filled with an anguish that was sincerely frightening in its intensity. "Ma’at’s back," he said.
I don’t know what I had thought he would say, but that certainly wasn’t it. "What?" I asked, feeling sick.
"Through the Stargate. They’re sending me and a bunch of kids back to Ankh’ij to fight her off."
I gasped. Ankh’ij? "Jack, if you can, you have to-"
"No."
"You have to. If you have the chance you have to get back."
Behind Jack, the rather peeved guards were regrouping and moving in with slitted eyes.
"Sam, if I do that, they’ll kill you."
My eyes went wide, but there was no time to process it, only time to speak. "I can take care of myself. But you have to let Hammond know we’re alive." Not to mention Danny, Teal’c, Janet, our families, everyone who must think us long dead.
Gabrien grabbed Jack’s arm and yanked him back. The hands that had held my waist were ripped away, and I felt cold and empty without them.
I didn’t have time to shout any last encouragement, or plea, or even one last oath of love and fidelity. With a pleading backwards glance, Jack was gone through the door, and the idle guards moved to prevent me from following them.
I stood in the middle of the front hall, alone.
Gone. He was gone, soon to be two days from Ankh’ij, if they took the ferry.
The monster that had been gnawing on my stomach earlier started in on my heart.
Numb, I turned to find Emiko standing at the foot of the stairs. She looked pale.
"I need to see your mother," I choked, despising the tremulous quality of my voice. "Where is she?"
Emiko’s face was soft and sympathetic, with a dash of concern and inquisitiveness added for good measure. And maybe in there somewhere was a little bit of shock.
"I’ll take you to her."
*
Emiko silently led me to her mother’s top-floor room, but didn’t follow me in. I could hardly blame her, because I didn’t even understand what I was doing. All I knew was that I was so goddamn tired of being picked up and transplanted and kicked around. Even if it was simply, personally symbolic, I had to do something. I had to release this rage and fear. And Clera was a perfect, if not dangerous, target.
The colors of the room were dizzying and overwhelming, so I trained my focus on Clera, who sat lounging on a green sofa, sipping a glass of red liquid. She glanced up when I entered, but didn’t seem particularly concerned. If anything, she was tired, stressed... and maybe even a little drunk. My temper flared. How dare she. How dare she live in such a palace, with the authority to send hundreds of men to unknown fate, and yet give herself this luxury...
I spoke softly, trying my very best to moderate my mood and voice, but my anger shone through all the same and the words seemed to bounce around the silent room for eternity.
"How could you?"
She sent a jaded glare in my direction.
"If you were anybody else, then maybe I could understand. But you were there in Ankh’ij. You know who we are, where we’re from. You know all we have on this world is each other."
If Clera was at all moved by my little speech, she didn’t show it in her face. In fact, she looked singularly unimpressed. "I was surprised that he wasn’t happier about it. You’ve spent years fighting the Gou’ald, haven’t you?" I blinked in surprise. "You’ve been here for... what is it now? More than 60 Réys? You aren’t afraid that you are loosing your skill, that you have forgotten how to fight?"
I saw no reason to lie. "Yes. We’re both... warriors. You should send me, too."
She snorted. "And look like a demon, sending a woman to battle? I think not."
"That’s ridiculous. We both know that women are just as good fighters as men. And we both know that you’re not sending them to fight Ma’at."
Again, she didn’t move a muscle, didn’t flinch, didn’t wince. She obviously hadn’t gotten where she was by being easy to read. Still, I could tell she was surprised.
"If a Gou’ald was trying to reclaim this planet we would all know it. They wouldn’t be discreet about it and they wouldn’t even be /slowed down/ by one small contingent. So what’s in Ankh’ij? Is it war after all? Or a colony you want wiped out?"
Finally, I got a reaction. Glass in hand, Clera stood. "Don’t pretend to understand anything." Her voice was slightly slurred, only strengthening my belief that the liquid in the decanter was a form of alcohol.
"Why?" I repeated impertinently, my anger and boldness growing to dangerous levels. "/Is/ this revenge for defending ourselves when your militia tried to kill us? For being a threat?"
I’ll admit it: I gasped when she hurled her glass up against the far wall. I jumped, too, watching the red fluid arc through the diamond-cut air and finally shatter against the wall with a sharp and frightening crash. "/You/ are /not/ a /threat/."
I struggled to retain some form of composure, and not bolt for the door. "Not to your safety, maybe. But the entire structure of your society? I think we’re a threat to that."
The look on Clera’s face - some combination of my attack and the alcohol had weakened her defenses - was terrible, but I plunged ahead. "I don’t think many people would appreciate finding out that their revered goddess was nothing more than a malevolent alien, and that their beloved Council has been hiding that fact for a very long time."
It was strange... even as I spoke, I listened to the words, and realized that my speech was subtly different, the inflections slightly skewed. I sounded a little bit like Jack.
"No one would believe you," Clera spat. "You’re only one woman, a strange-looking one at that, with no creditable history before 60 Réys ago. You’d be laughed at."
Oh, this was nice. For once, she was on the defensive. "Most people wouldn’t believe me. But a few would, and that’s how big things begin, Clera. With a few people."
Angrily, she paced away, and when she returned a second later, she had something in her hand.
A weapon. Pointed directly at me.
The floor, the walls, the ceiling, the horrible clashing colors, the red wine running down the legs of tables and chairs... it all fell away. Clera had taunted me, saying that I had lost my edge, but this, /this/ was my old combat response. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered except the threat, her, and the gun in her hand. And the fact that she was too close; there was no way I could dodge out of range. Her finger had a couple millimeters to cover, while I had a good distance longer.
"I just want to know... why?" I asked, changing tactics. The weapon was small and long and round, a miniature version of the tube - slade - weapons the militiamen carried. And just as deadly as the genuine article.
Clera was again utterly calm. "It’d be so much easier to just shoot you now and be done with it," she told me matter-of-factly. "Your committed - if that’s what he really is - won’t be returning."
I didn’t move, didn’t even blink, but the next breath I drew in shuddered slightly in my chest.
The barrel was aimed directly at my face and for a short, razor-edged second I was tempted to egg her on even further. Jack wasn’t coming back? Then please, put me out of my misery...
A door opened. Someone gasped. "Mother!"
The anger in Clera’s eyes dimmed and faded, replaced by shame. I dared to turn around, to confirm: Emiko.
The young woman’s face was full of shock and hurt, and her mouth hung open. Surely she hadn’t expected to venture inside to find her mother holding me at gunpoint. "What’s happening here?"
Clera let the weapon fall from her hand, just as easy as that, not even watching as it landed with a muffled ‘whump’ on the thick carpet. Slowly, my peripherals started to return; the world regained its vibrant color.
Emiko lifted her chin. "Sam, leave. Now."
"But-"
"I will you join you shortly."
I swallowed another protest and fled.
***
Sam,
I’m composing this letter in my head because, well, I don’t have any pen or paper, and even if I did, they’d be soaked. We’re on the ferry crossing the Bay of Judgement, and it’s pretty miserable, even by my standards. Everything and everyone is wet and soggy and pretty damn disgruntled. I hope no one takes offence to the fact that I’m just sitting here, staring into space.
I’m kicking myself for not saying goodbye. If something happens and I can’t get back to you, I’ll always hate myself for that, and for not trying harder, and for getting stuck on this planet in the first place. This isn’t your fault. This was never your fault. I’m in command and whatever goes wrong is automatically my fault.
At the same time I’m glad I didn’t say goodbye. I can’t help but feel that it would have totally jinxed everything if I had. And maybe I didn’t need to say the words. There’s no way in hell I can explain it but we have some kind of connection. We saw it back in Ankh’ij when you were attacked. I /knew/ I had to come save you. Hopefully you’ll /know/ that I’ll come back to you.
I talked to this kid Abnir who’s been on a couple of missions in these parts. Seems as though the Council tries to keep the militia away from the Stargate - I can guess the reason - so he’s never seen it and only heard about it in legends. According to Abnir, and from the sad little map I’ve composed in my head, our docking site will be a little closer to Ankh’ij itself than the Gate, so I guess we’ll find out then who we’re really fighting: Gou’ald or Ma’at’ans. None of the militia seems to know and none of the few officers seem too keen on sharing their info.
I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to use these weapons... and I’ve gotten to know these kids pretty well, too. I’m feeling slightly more hopeful than I was when we left, though every time I see the Depa’ma coast I feel like jumping overboard and swimming to shore. I almost did when Abnir told me that these little field trips can last for /months/.
Hold on, Sam.
Jack.
*
We docked at a sad little marina, barely large enough for the ferry, and started walking - as near I as could tell - northwest. Towards the Stargate.
I reminded myself that these were the King’s Woods and that there were supposably colonies out here, like the one Jerdess had belonged to. I tried to prepare myself to fire on innocent people who, like me, hated this system, and then realized I couldn’t talk myself into it. If I wasn’t going to fire on whoever our target was - and I was becoming increasingly sure it was not Gou’ald - then I would need to stay out of sight, where the officers couldn’t see me and hang me - and possibly Sam - for treason.
As it turned out, that wasn’t hard. We only moved at night, and even when it was broad daylight, it was dim under the shade of the trees. We traveled slow and careful, and it was two days before anything happened.
***
"The way I see it, sir, this is /proof/ that they’re alive. The only evidence we have to their fate one way or another. Now, it’s been over a month since we sent any kind of probe through. And I think, especially armed with this new information, we owe it to the Colonel and Captain to give it one last shot."
Stunned by what I was hearing, I pressed closer to the door.
"Did Doctor Jackson put you up to this?" I heard Hammond ask.
"No, sir," Landseth replied, sounding a tad indignant. "I’m just doing what I consider my duty... to Jackson as well as to O’Neill and Carter. I’ll go through myself. And Jackson and Teal’c and whoever... whoever you’d like to replace Aaron on this one, sir."
"You’re assuming that the gate on Ma’at’a will have been unblocked."
"Yes sir, I am."
There was a long moment of silence, and I marveled over what I was hearing. I’d been on my way to Hammond’s office to plead this exact same case... but it appeared that Kate Landseth had beaten me to it. I felt a strange twinge of gratitude.
"We’ll send a probe through," the General said finally, and I smiled.
***
Travane sighed. "It’s a colony."
His brother, Keron, looked unhappy. "Are you certain?"
"Yes," said Birlie, a skinny, gangly fellow. "You have vagrants who come here, or even pilgrims on their way to worship at the Sungate, and they decide that they do not wish to go back. They stay here. They grow their food, make their clothes, and work for themselves. They get special stones for working, which they trade for things they need."
Keron shook his head. "That’s craziness."
"It’s called capitalism," I offered. They ignored me.
Keron, Birlie, Travane, Raynel, Peritt and I were crouched behind a duo of fallen logs, peeing through the darkness at a spot of noise and light amid the trees. Devlen, our section leader - an officer - wrinkled his brow at the conversation, especially me - but said nothing. He was a nicer guy than some of the other officers. At least he didn’t chew people out.
Then, before I knew what was happening, one of the sections to our right started firing. Screams and eventually return fire came from the flanked colony, and soon everyone was shooting.
Everyone but me.
***
"We’re receiving telemetry from the MALP," announced Lieutenant Quinnlin, a note of amazement in her voice.
I looked over at Landseth and found her watching me, a smile playing on her lips. Beside me, Janet let out a little gasp at the news, and even Hammond looked surprised. This was it. This was what I had waited months for: the chance to go back; the chance to put things right again. I felt a flush of pride, knowing that I was following the wishes of the other Sam.
"Sir?" asked Landseth, and the General jolted out of his trance, not speaking, choosing instead to nod at the Colonel. She nodded back, and then looked around the crowded computer room at Teal’c, me, and Captain Kelly. Ian Kelly was a short, small-featured Marine with a dark complexion, a member of SG-3 who’d known Jack well and had quickly offered to fill in our recently vacated fourth spot. Janet, Quinnlin, and a half-dozen others had volunteered as well, surprising me. I’d always assumed that I’d been the only one who’d really believed they were alive; I didn’t think it was simply the ‘entropic cascade failure’ that had changed so many minds.
"Let’s go," said Landseth, and we filed out.
***
I couldn’t do it. Even as I knew the penalty for disobeying orders, I couldn’t fire on these innocent, helpless, and obviously intelligent people.
The talk of the Sungate had interested me. I wondered how close we were to it. There was obviously no way I could return home, especially with the concern that Clera would seal off the Gate again, and this time Bellent would agree with her. However, perhaps I could send a message... Rolling off to the side, into a shallow depression in the mossy ground, I reached into my pocket, and withdrew my SGC patch. Two days ago when Gabrien and the others had dragged me from the Council Building and from Sam, they had allowed me a brief stop at home, to gather my things (the less I already had, the less they had to supply me.) I’d been able to rip off the patch when my keepers weren’t looking. I felt bad for taking the token from Sam, but if this worked, it might convince Hammond to keep looking for us.
I slipped away. No one saw. No one cared. In fact, in my black uniform, I blended right in. Militiamen were running everywhere, angling for a better shot. The ground seemed to shake with their footfalls, the sounds of night warped and twisted with strange gunfire, and explosions that gave the trees a bluish hue.
I ran, circling the fighting. Ran as hard and fast as I could until the sounds of death and destruction receded somewhat and my breath came in little gasps.
I scrambled up a little rise in the ground and...
Oh My God...
The Stargate. And it was active.
Hammond? Daniel, Teal’c? My heart leapt. Or Ma’at? Or - somehow - Ma’at’ans? Or someone else entirely. There was a figure milling around the great structure’s base but all I could see was black. It was too damn dark...
No sooner had I completed that thought than I felt a thud in the right side of my stomach. Surprised, I looked down, thinking that someone had run into me. No one was there.
But I’d felt that kind of thud before. Not the thud of someone running into you. The thud - and subsequent agony - of a bullet.
I passed out before the pain even fully registered.
***
"What the hell happened?"
I could well understand Hammond’s confusion and shock... we’d only stepped through the Gate to Ma’at’a a half hour or so ago. And plus there was the fact that we didn’t simply walk back into the SGC: we stumbled, tripped, bled...
"We encountered no initial resistance," shouted Landseth over the closing of the iris. "But as we started moving towards the nearest city we started taking heavy fire."
"Someone was /shooting/ at you?" I don’t know why he sounded so surprised; it happened more often than not.
"I do not believe so," said Teal’c, supporting Kelly as he hobbled down the ramp. The Captain hadn’t been shot, but he’d demonstrated just how treacherous the sloping, rock-strewn ground could be, especially when you were running, especially at night. "It seemed that we merely became caught in the crossfire."
"We got our asses back to the Stargate in a hurry," Ian gasped. "A couple started over the edge of the gully, but..." He looked over at Landseth almost guiltily. We all knew how much firing on natives was frowned on... but it wasn’t as though we had much hope for planetary diplomacy with these people.
"Two or three more casualties won’t be paid much attention in a war," she said sulkily, brushing at wisps of red hair framing her face as a couple medics - neither of them Janet - arrived for Kelly. "And if you’re asking my opinion, yes sir, that was no minor skirmish."
Hammond nodded at the her, but his attention was focused more on her arm than her words. "Colonel, are you bleeding?"
She flushed slightly. "I just got winged..."
"Infirmary. Now."
Landseth nodded, and started out the room. Teal’c followed, and I moved to follow him... until the General stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. "You’re awfully quiet, Doctor."
I turned. "What would you like me to say? ‘Let us go back, sir. I know they’re alive. This might be our last chance.’" I moved away, out of his reach, taking pains to keep my voice calm and modulated. "Why bother? I know what you’re going to say. We could have all been killed. We might have been followed back like we were last time. We could have put everyone in danger, and you’ve already made it quite clear that Jack and Sam aren’t worth the risk."
Suddenly, the General looked... very old. Very tired.
"You know if it was my decision, son..."
"I know."
I knew.
***
"Sam? I would like to talk to you about something."
"What is it, Emiko?"
"I want you to move into this building. Don’t look at me like that! It makes sense. I don't like you living out there all by yourself. Some people have no ethics... it isn’t safe."
"I-"
"Sam, it’s been almost 20 Réys. And if you’re sure you are-"
"I am."
"Then don’t you agree it makes sense?"
"What about your mother?"
"I can take care of my mother, Sam. You’re my friend. I just want to help you.
"Well?"
"Okay. Tomorrow."
*
Packing, again.
Emiko was right. It had been almost a month since Jack had been sent off for Ankh’ij. From what I understood, this wasn’t terribly unusual, but Clera had sent a team across the bay to find out what was happening or had happened. I was so worried that I actually tried to keep him out of my head altogether. Jack was a good solider, probably the best fighting out there, but he was human, and he was mortal, and there were just some things that had nothing to do with skill.
And there was also the fact that Jack might not even be out there any more. He might have had an opportunity to go through the Stargate, and had taken it. Like I had begged him to.
I tried not to think about that, either.
The door of the cottage burst open. I dropped the shirt I was holding, and almost screamed in fright.
Parson stood there.
I’d seen him now and then, but had never talked to him. He was the singer of the song that had brought Jack and me together. In some distorted way he was to blame for some percent of my pain. And he was a bit of an outcast, a loner, a joke: a revolutionary colonist that spent a great deal of time in Depa’ma, working for Clera, embracing a great many things that his ‘people’ shunned.
"Sam?"
"What?" I asked nervously.
"You have to come with me."
"No I don’t," I disagreed.
He rolled his eyes at my refusal. "Clera’s scouts just returned. Emiko sent me; she said her mother thinks that Jack deserted. Apparently they didn’t find him... or his body."
/Thank God/... I almost melted with pure relief, but fear kept me in a more solid state.
* "Sam, if I do that, they’ll kill you."*
"They’ll kill me..." I murmured, still not totally understanding. Parson nodded emphatically.
"In retaliation, yes."
And Clera had it in for me anyway. I stuffed the last few items of clothing into its bag - including Jack’s patch-less SG jacket - and nodded to Parson. "Where are we going?"
"First, to my home. Then, to Ankh’ij."
***
* "Come on, Jack. This is getting tiresome" *
* "Any change?" "No." *
* "Are you sure he isn’t dead?" "Oh, yes. I knew I had forgotten to check for something." "You’re not very funny." "And /you/ are not very bright." *
I groaned. "Will you two please shut the hell up?"
I didn’t open my eyes. I knew from experience that that only made things worse, and I already had a headache of astronomic proportions. Besides, I had gotten along just fine for the past... however long I had been like this, in and out of utter darkness and excruciating pain. There were two voices, one male, one female. One I’d never heard before, but the other was familiar. It was Krivin.
Reluctantly, I cracked a lid and peered over at the young doctor. He was grinning jubilantly. "Welcome back, Jack," he grinned. His grin was /much/ too bright and /much/ too cheerful.
I turned my head and was surprised to see a window. The sky through it was a pale pink: either sunrise or sunset, it was hard to tell. "What time is it?"
Krivin laughed. "What time is it? It’s time to thank whatever God you worship that you are alive."
"Huh?"
He sat down beside me, and I spared only a brief glance for the pre-adolescent girl standing by the door. "It seems that you and your Sam have far too much in common. You were shot, Jack, in an engagement over 20 Réys ago. From what we can tell, you passed out, rolled down a slope, and quite nearly cracked your skull open on a slab of stone. Almost exactly what happened to Sam."
"Well, we try..." My tongue turned to putty as the doctor’s words sunk in. "20... I’ve been here for almost a /month/?"
"You were very sick," spoke up the girl at the door. She couldn’t have been older than 10 or 11, and was darker than Krivin, with long loose hair and a dark green dress. "You had a second sickness-"
"Infection," corrected Krivin.
"Whatever. And you wouldn’t wake up."
"You bled a lot," he agreed. "But it seems as though your body has repaired while your mind has taken a brief holiday. How does your head feel?"
"Fine... I have to get back to Depa’ma. Clera will think I deserted."
"She does."
"/What/?"
Krivin frowned. "Calm down. Emiko was here earlier today. She was able to sneak over this morning on the ferry."
I stared. "You two are..."
"Working together, for your sake... she’s come to like Sam a great deal. Yesterday, Clera announced that you had deserted, but when her people went to get Sam, she was not there. Evidently your friend Parson assisted her escape."
I fidgeted, wanting to sit. Not that this bed wasn’t incredibly comfortable, but I couldn’t lie around while Sam was, for lack of a better term, on the lam. "And?" I prompted.
"And Emiko said she’s bringing her here as soon as she can secure a boat across the bay."
"How long should that take?"
"30 Réys, at best. This is a... preferred city."
30 days... I’d been out of it for 20... that left at least a week until I could expect her. I groaned. Why was it that on this planet /everything/ seemed to take at least three times as long? Why couldn’t fate cooperate just this once? "And then? Can you help us get back to the Stargate?"
Krivin exchanged a look with the girl and stood. "That might be more difficult. A lot has happened since the last night you remember."
"Care to fill me in?"
The girl jumped in before Krivin could open his mouth. "Lel’tan - the colony in the King’s Woods, the one that the militia fired upon - was more... prepared than the Council assumed they were." She looked out the window, angry lines forming between her eyes. "Even now, the fight is going on. Clera sends her troops but every day more of our own people join /them/." She shook her head. "It just doesn’t make any sense."
I looked from her to Krivin, who seemed to be more than a little embarrassed. "Who’s this?"
His cheekbones reddened. "Deedra, my new assistant, my cousin."
"Well, Deedra," I shifted, wincing as my side twinged. "What doesn’t make any sense?"
"That people would go live out there when they have everything they need, right here," she explained, aggravated.
Krivin and I exchanged glances. "Deedra, let me tell you a little something about where I’m from..."
***
"You know I don’t blame you for any of this, Daniel. I don’t really blame anyone."
"Anyone? You don’t blame the Ma’at’ans?" demanded Janet, sitting close, her leg against mine and our fingers entwined. Hammond had received the shock of his life when we’d entered the embarkation room holding hands, but this was hard for both of us - we needed each other today - and damn it, I was tired of hiding our relationship when there was nothing wrong with it.
Jacob Carter worked his jaw around, considering, and I watched him. Or was that ‘them’? As much as the concept of the Tok’ra thrilled and delighted me, it set me on edge as well. They were against Apophis and the other System Lords, this was true, but I’d learned the hard way that the enemy of my enemy was not always my friend. And this included Selmak, the Tok’ra who occupied General Jacob Carter’s body.
Squeezing Janet’s hand to calm her, I realized that maybe I should stop whining about the Tok’ra’s single-mindedness and start counting my blessings. It was blind luck that we had encountered the Tok’ra; by all rights, we shouldn’t have. But it had happened, even though it was a long and messy story, and one that made the rebels scorn us for some time.
Back when SG-1 was still Landseth, Barrette, Teal’c and me, we had gated to a planet still under heavy Gou’ald control. In the usual SGC fashion, we had stirred things up, /blown/ things up, and if it hadn’t been for the Tok’ra spies working in the Gou’ald’s midst we never would have returned, in one piece or otherwise. Even then it was only because of our 'history' that they decided that we might be able to ally in some way. There was our destruction of two of Apophis’s ships - not to mention Ra - and the fact that we were acquaintances of Samantha Carter, one-time host to a certain Tok’ra by the name of Jolinar.
They nearly disbelieved us, and the one act of goodwill was the one that saved us. Jacob Carter, having been told not weeks earlier that his daughter was MIA, was loosing a battle with cancer. General Hammond had to pull so many strings that I was surprised when the entire fabric of the military /and/ the government didn’t fall to pieces around us, but he got clearance to not only /tell/ Jacob what his daughter had been lost accomplishing, but to give him the chance to become a host to an injured Tok’ra. A chance he had taken, saying that Sam was out there, somewhere, and he’d be damned if she’d return some day to the news of his death.
"Sam was my little girl," he said finally, deceptively calm and under control. "And of course I’ll always be angry at what happened to her. But she knew the risks, Daniel... Janet. Don’t think that she didn’t. And so did Jack."
"I wish you’d stop talking about them in the past tense," I replied quietly. "We know Sam’s alive. I trust the... Major Carter. She would have never gone through those cascade tremors if our Samantha wasn’t alive. And if she’s alive, maybe Jack is, too. You’re doing the same thing that Hammond is... giving up on them."
"I’ve known George for a long time," Jacob reproved immediately. "And even as a father I can’t help but agree with the orders he’s been given. And Selmak agrees with the Tok’ra Council. It’s too high of a risk for two people."
"So the Council won’t help us?"
Jacob’s head bowed, a telltale sign, but even then I was still startled by Selmak’s deeper, resonant voice. "It isn’t that they won’t.. They cannot. This will sound harsh, but we have more pressing issues than the retrieval of-"
"Of two people, yeah, I know."
"Think of it this way." Jacob again. "They’re still listed as MIA, right?"
As opposed to KIA. I was thankful when Janet spoke for me. "That isn’t much of a comfort. Sir."
Jacob nodded; he understood that, of course. I kicked myself for thinking he wouldn’t, and suddenly thought of Mark, Sam’s brother, Jacob’s son. I’d never met him, and yet I empathized with him deeply. He was the only remaining family member, and had no idea what father and sister were up to; in fact, he shunned the military. All he knew was that his father - formally ill with cancer - was now on some long-term classified assignment, and his sister who was supposed to be doing nothing more dangerous than analyzing radar telemetry was now missing in action. Maybe it was a good thing that I recognized this stranger’s pain... for too long I’d felt no one’s but my own.
There was a knock at the door of my quarters, where we’d gone to talk in private, and I called for whoever it was to enter.
Lieutenant Quinnlin stepped into the room, followed by two Tok’ra. One was a stranger to me, but the other was Martouf. He was a gangly, strangely-featured man whose symbiote - by odd coincidence or maybe fate - had carried on quite a long, committed relationship with Jolinar. Or so we’d been told. Sam had never mentioned his name to us after the incident, but then again, her possession by the Tok’ra had never been much fodder for small talk.
Martouf blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of my room, and then addressed Jacob: "We are prepared to leave."
"So am I," he returned, standing. Janet and I rose as well, and I watched Martouf as closely as I did the General. When I’d made my plea to the Council, for their help in rescuing Sam and Jack, Martouf had been one of our strongest supporters. Whether that was a gesture of friendship or a desperate attempt to recover some small part of Jolinar, his mate, I never knew. I never asked. I didn’t know him all that well, actually.
Casting a sorrowful glance over his shoulder, Jacob left in the company of Quinnlin and the Tok’ra. I sat back down, defeated, drained of energy mentally as well as physically and emotionally.
If Sam’s own /father/ wouldn’t help us, who the hell would?
***
It was far too long before Parson was able to find a spot on a ship with a captain who was willing to transport a ‘fugitive’ like me to another city. The colony was nice enough, but its proximity to Depa’ma was frightening and the entire wait frustrating. "I could have /walked/ there by now," I reminded Parson several times.
"Not a good idea," Parson reminded me in each instance, and Emiko, when she sneaked away to come check on me every now and then, agreed.
The ship was a dumpy little freighter that was making a return trip to Ankh’ij after dropping off clothes, food, and the like at the Council building. The captain was a chubby, leering grizzled old man who only needed an eye patch and a peg leg to be truly authentic. I caught him staring at me so many times during the short voyage that I was actually surprised I hadn’t removed a body part or two out of pure irritation.
Parson hadn’t come with me - room for one, he said. And besides, he had a budding singing career in Depa’ma. I’d taught him ‘Unforgettable’ and ‘Joy To The World" during my stay. It would be interesting to return to this world in a couple decades and see what their music industry had become.
It made for a lonely hour, especially with the old guy checking me out, but at the same time I was glad Parson hadn’t escorted me across the bay. I’d actually begun to like him, and he didn’t need to see me loosing my breakfast over the side of the ship.
"Water travel bothers some like that," said a friendly deckhand once. I just gave a sick smile.
The business dock we used was not the same one that the Council’s ferry used, the deckhand told me as we neared the shore, and he enlightened me on myriad regulations and restrictions that I had little to no interest in. The only thing that mattered was that this dock was even closer to Ankh’ij... closer to Jack.
I disembarked with the rest of the crew and didn’t waste any time slinging my bag over my shoulder and starting down the rather questionable-looking dirt road that they said lead into the city. "There’s a split in the trail up ahead," the deckhand called. "Take the right-hand path... it’ll keep you near the water, away from the inland area. And Lel’tan."
Hesitating, I asked, "Lel’tan?"
He looked a bit surprised at my ignorance. "The colony. The one rebelling, the one all the militia were sent to eliminate."
I closed my eyes briefly. Not Ma’at after all. Colonists. Like Parson. "Thank you," I said softly, and I started down the road.
*
It was nice by the water: cool without being cold, with plenty of birds and small animals to watch furrow through the surrounding brush. But it could only keep my mind occupied for so long. Barely half an hour had passed when I started... analyzing.
Parson had gotten me to Ankh’ij... but why Ankh’ij? He’d never said that he knew for certain that Jack was here; more than likely it was just an educated assumption. Because if he wasn’t dead, he was either waiting for me in Ankh’ij, or he’d returned to Earth. But why wait in Ankh’ij? Why not return to Depa’ma, or go through the Stargate for help?
Though it didn’t seem like it, it had been two months since I had last seen Jack. Two months... it was surreal. Time hadn’t dragged without him, it had flown, as though realizing that I didn’t want to live laboriously through those solitary days and nights without him. Sad and sappy, but damnably true. His absence was painfully acute, jabbing at me every few moments, right there will all my guilt and worry and anger. It didn’t matter where I was: in Depa’ma, in Parson’s colony, or hanging over the side of a freighter. The loneliness was as physical as any man.
After an hour or so, I stopped, ducking beneath the trees to rest, breath coming in little pumps. Out of practice, all right. And out of shape.
I smiled faintly, remembering how watchful Parson had been over me during my stay at his colony. I’d anticipated fear and suspicion from his friends and neighbors; after all, I was a runaway, a refugee, someone whom Clera was probably looking for with no small measure of anger. But instead they were more than happy to have me there with them, perfectly friendly and willing to show me around, eager to hear the true story of Ma’at... which I had been spreading like wildfire since the incident in Clera’s room two months ago. The whole of Depa’ma had probably heard the tale by now... I just hoped someone believed me. Clera wouldn’t appreciate it once she found out, and I didn’t want the risk to be all for naught.
Parson in particular had been attentive... if he hadn’t had a girlfriend I even would have said that he had a bit of a crush on me, embarrassing as that would have been. He escorted me around the colony, professing that whatever I wanted, he would try to get. "I don’t need this special treatment!" I exclaimed once, and his girlfriend, Nakieta, smiled.
"Yes, you do."
They were nice people, a bit hyper, a bit nervous... but nice, especially for rebels.
I took a sip of water and continued on.
*
"10 days... 10 days..."
"What’s a day?"
I glanced down at Deedra, perched on the edge of the table and staring at me with wide, inquisitive eyes. She seemed to think that I, having traveled between worlds, knew the answer to just about every question. Not even close... but I could answer this one.
"The same as a Réy," I explained absentmindedly, pacing across the room again and staring out the second floor window, down on the busy late-morning street. I honestly don’t know what I expected to see. I knew what I wanted to see, but I certainly wouldn’t place any bets on it.
"Well then, why don’t you just call it a Réy?" asked Deedra. I glanced back at her, wondering if she was being a smart-ass or if it was a legitimate question.
"Because that’s not what my people call it."
"But /your/ people look the same as /my/ people," she explained impatiently. "You’ve never explained /that/."
I sighed. Krivin had told me that Deedra’s mother was dead and her father so badly in debt that he was in some trouble with the Council. The doctor had taken the girl on - officially - as a trainee and assistant. Unofficially, she was just a pest, always full of more questions that either of us had the patience to answer.
I looked at Krivin, and he responded with a long-suffering gaze. It wasn’t exactly our place to explain to a ten-year-old that her people hadn’t originated from her home planet. That was a concept I imagined most people had difficulty with... I was surprised that Krivin had taken it as well as he had.
"I’ll tell you when you’re older," I said finally, and Deedra scowled. I felt bad about brushing her off - I /liked/ kids - but I had been stuck in this house for ten days - ten waking days, anyway - and I was going absolutely nuts. I finally had some sympathy for Sam, always stuck at ‘home’ while I was off at work. "I have to... go."
Krivin looked up from his medical journal again. "Excuse me?"
"I’m going insane in here, Krivin!"
"You just woke up from a... a coma," he protested, remembering the word I’d used. "And you /say/ you feel fine but I’m not sure if I should trust you or not."
I grinned. "You know me /too/ well. But I’m still leaving." I held up a hand to ward off the protests. "I’ll be back soon, okay? Just taking a little stroll... just an hour, all right?"
"What’s an hour?" Deedra again. I rolled my eyes.
"I’ll be back before lunch."
And then I was off, flying down the stairs, hearing Krivin hurrying after me. "You know, maybe Deedra should go with you, just in case...."
"Ooohhh no," I yelled back. No babysitting. No way was he going to pawn her off on me. I raced down the hall, opened the door, shouted, "Back before lunch, warden," and then I was free.
*
Ankh’ij, in all her splendor.
What a mess...
Seemed like all the townspeople, or at least the higher class ones, did all their shopping in the early afternoon. Laden carts lined the streets; men and women meandered up and down, hands full of bags and the colorful tags that signified any credit they might possess. They talked and touched and pointed, filling the air with a droning cacophony, almost a white noise.
It felt nice to be here again. My Ankh’ij memories, with a few exceptions, were undoubtedly preferable to my Depa’ma memories. Funny how one narrow bay could make such a difference.
But really, it was more than location. The people here were undeniably different, more infused with community spirit, reminiscent of Parson’s family-centered colony. The main Council building of the continent was here, but no one member had all the power, as in Depa’ma where Clera held every card. There were still black uniforms here and there, but not nearly as many as I was accustomed to.
Then again, there was the ‘skirmish’ the deckhand had warned me of...
I made my way down the main road, ignoring the few curious glances I earned, scanning the street for familiar faces... namely Jack’s. I guessed he’d be relatively easy to find, being as inconspicuous as I in this world of dark hair and eyes and faces.
If he was here at all.
Krivin, I realized. Of course. He was a higher class than most of the other people we had met here, and hopefully would know one way or the other what had happened to Jack. Emiko would have been the best source of information, of course, but even after I had told her the truth about Ma’at, she had been a reluctant ally. Loyalty to her mother, her people, her way of life, I suppose. I could only ask so much of her.
The sun beat down on my shoulders, warming me and urging me onward. I readjusted the bag on my shoulder, rubbed my hand absentmindedly over my stomach, and pushed myself through the pressing crowd. Now where was Krivin’s office? All these damn buildings looked the same.
I’ll ask directions, I realized in a flash of inspiration, and had started making my way to a knot of jabbering women when someone caught my shoulder. "Hey."
I turned, and my mouth dropped open in shock.
***
Even though the majority of Ankh’ij seemed to enjoy strolling around the marketplace, it just wasn’t the place for me. Too many people, for one. Civilians and militiamen and the occasional Council member. Too many prying eyes. Too many pointing fingers. You’d think they’d never seen a Caucasian before.
Well, okay, maybe they hadn’t.
Of course, the most awful threat came not from the gawkers but from the people who had already seen me, and knew who I was. They would know I wasn’t supposed to be there, or if they didn’t, they might mention my presence to someone who DID. At the best, I would be sent back to the fight against Lel’tan. At the worst... well, I didn’t want to think about the worst.
The only other place to go for a stroll was the quiet side streets, and I didn’t like that option, either. No one to talk to, nothing to look at, nothing to occupy my mind, nothing to keep me from thinking how long it had been since I’d seen Sam.
Two months. Obviously it didn’t seem that long to me, but just being aware of the time that had passed was painful. Emiko and Parson were sending her here, or trying to, and Emiko DID know where and how I was. But had she shared that information? Did Samantha know that I was here, waiting for her? Or did she just think she was being shipped around the continent by different people who wanted nothing to do with her?
Reluctantly, I turned left and started for the marketplace, the lesser of two evils at the moment.
*
I jumped away, but the man who had grabbed my shoulder held fast to the fabric. Shoppers hustled around me, not knowing the danger I was in, not giving me any viable escape route or even a sympathetic audience. I jerked away again, eyes frozen on the man’s face even as the woman behind me gave an indignant shout.
"You," he hissed. "I thought they sent you and your committed to Depa’ma?"
I narrowed my eyes at the militiaman. "That was you. You were the one who got us relocated."
He shrugged. "I couldn’t have the two of you running off and spreading stories about me. Most of the Council’s unscrupulous but there’s one or two who give a damn about the ‘rights’ of a little nothing like you."
He glowered, the same scowling smile he’d exhibited in the housing zone alley before attacking me. "You’re coming with me," he growled, smiling broadly. "You don’t have your committed to protect you this time." He yanked on my shoulder again. "Come on."
"No."
He gave a harsh laugh that actually attracted the momentary attention of a few shoppers. "You think you’re not going to get it for what you and your man did to me? He knocked out a tooth! I was laying unaware on that cold ground for the rest of the Réy! I had to explain that all to my superiors."
"Maybe that’s a sign..."
His face furrowed in confusion, and then crinkled in agony as I kicked him, hard, in the shin.
"...that you should leave me the hell /alone/!"
This is absurd, I thought as I dashed through the crowd, trying not to notice when I pushed someone to the ground. As though I don’t have enough problems, now I’m being chased by some obsessed, vengeful criminal who probably had just two things on his mind: rape and murder. And he /was/ chasing me; I could hear his heavy footfalls and the exclamations of pedestrians he carelessly shoved out of the way. Before, I’d been able to fight him off and, with Jack’s help, subdue him. But I was sick and exhausted and alone...
I ran up the street, towards where the crowd began to thin out. In open space he’d easily catch me, but if I could find a friendly house, perhaps even Krivin’s, I might be safe. Or I might not...
Practically feeling the militiaman’s breath on my neck, his hands around my throat, I put on extra speed, disregarding my cramping legs, swerved around a young boy pushing a wheeled cart in the opposite direction... and ran full force, head-on into a body. I ricocheted off and fell to the ground, watching out of the corner of my eye as the man that I’d smashed into also lost his balance. I tried to gather up my long skirt and stand, mumbling an apology, but the man’s hand caught my wrist, holding it tight. Oh no. Now wha-
"Sam?"
Finally, I looked up... into Jack O’Neill’s eyes. I blinked once, twice. Nope , he was still there. I gaped. This wasn’t a dream.
Jack’s face was practically glowing, but in his eyes I could see my own trepidation reflected. "What’s wrong?" he began, helping me up, holding me close, but I didn’t have to answer.
The militiaman shoved his way through the last throng of people and skidded to a halt. His lips curled into a snarl upon recognizing Jack, but I was gratified to see that he also turned a series of very interesting, very pale colors. "You must be kidding me..." he seethed, and then took off back in the direction he came. Not such a big man when confronted with somebody his own size, I thought, exhilarated.
"I didn’t realize he was still around," Jack murmured, curling his arm around my shoulders, watching the militiaman’s back recede into the crowd.
"He’s the one who got you transferred to Depa’ma," I answered... and then it hit me. What the hell were we doing having a /conversation/ when we hadn’t laid eyes on each other for two months? I laughed delightedly and turned to face and turned to face my husband.
My husband?
My husband.
I put my hands on his shoulders, still unable to fully convince myself of his reality, and he grinned as though coming to the same conclusion: why talk? His arms circled me and crushed me against him, and our mouths met and opened appreciatively, grateful for the taste, the reminder of the last night we’d spent together, the night we’d given into the inevitable and made love. I heard a few encouraging hollers coming from the crowd - /finally/ I had an audience - but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at that moment except for Jack. Not the attacker, not our ceaseless troubles, not even the Stargate and Earth.
He was the most important thing in my life.
When the need for oxygen was too great, we parted regretfully, breathing deeply, smiling idiotically. "Fancy... running... into you... here," I panted.
Still unconcerned with the spectators, he rested his forehead against mine. "We ended up fighting some colonists... I got shot."
I straightened, alarmed. "What?"
"Right in the gut... I was out for a while."
His tone was flippant but I blanched, remembering the havoc wreaked on my side by the slade gun. "I... I can’t believe you’re still alive," I said shakily
"That’s the thing." Jack’s brown creased; I knew he didn’t like what he was about to tell me. "It wasn’t a Ma’at’an weapon."
"Gou’ald?" I asked weakly, knowing that couldn’t be right.
My suspicions were quickly confirmed. "Human... standard armaments for SG teams."
I sighed deeply, not exactly sure how to interpret that, and stared at the ground. "I have some news of my own."
I waited for Jack to prod me, but he did more than that. He said what I was afraid to.
"You’re pregnant."
I looked back up at him, into his wide brown eyes. "Yeah," I softly acknowledged.
***
That night, curled against Janet, I had a vision.
When I told her about it later, I used the word ‘dream’.
In my ‘dream’, I walked into the embarkation room, prepared to gate off to some anonymous planet... but found it totally deserted... except for Sam.
For a while, I stared at her apprehensively, unsure if it was really her, or her double, returned to trick me and mess with my emotions. It was only when I noticed the short, clipped hairstyle that I relaxed, and called out, "Sam?"
She’d been standing with her back to me, staring up at the Stargate, and now she whirled as though surprised. "Oh. Hi Daniel."
"I’ve been looking for you," I told her dumbly.
Sam nodded, knowing this. "You should stop."
"What?" I exclaimed.
I jumped at the sound of doors opening behind me, spinning to see Jack entering the room. Like Sam, he wore fatigues and carried his weapon. "You should stop," he repeated, repositioning his cap as he crossed the room to stand next to Sam. "You have more important things to worry about."
"Like what?"
"Oh, come on, Daniel. Don’t make us do all the work here. What about Sha’re?"
"She’s dead," I answered flatly.
"Well /yeah/."
Sam gave her Colonel an annoyed frown. "Daniel, do you remember when you went to Abydos? The second time, to see Kasuf?"
It hadn’t been long after we’d lost the two of them. I nodded.
"Sha’re’s baby, Daniel. It was Apophis’s son. Now, you asked Teal’c if there was anything special about the child of two hosts... why it was forbidden. Do you remember what he told you?"
"Something about... genetic memories. No one believed him... /I/ didn’t. There’s nothing about it in mythology and Janet said it was pretty much impossible for an offspring to contain all of its parents’ knowledge. /Medically/ impossible."
"Yeah," quipped Jack. "But then again the Gou’ald are pretty much physically impossible too, ain’t they? I mean, here you got this big long mother of a snake..." he measured how long with his hands. "That manages to shoot right into your skull and-"
"Jack!"
"Sorry." He looked ashamed by Sam’s rebuke, but quickly recovered. "Go back to Abydos, okay, Daniel. The least you can do is tell Kasuf what happened to his daughter."
"What about the two of you?"
The Colonel and his Captain shared a strange glance, a brief, telling look that would have spoken volumes, had I been able to interpret it. "We’ll be okay," said Sam after the moment passed.
I blinked... and everything changed. Sam and Jack stood in the same place, looking at me, but there were other people there. Teal’c. Techies and the usual numbers of supernumeraries. "Yo, Daniel?" Jack was calling. "Earth to Doctor Jackson?"
"What?" I asked dazedly, looking behind me to see Hammond watching us. Before me stood the Stargate, glistening.
"’What’? Are you awake?"
"Yeah, I’m awake," I snapped, joining the others at the ramp.
"SG-1," called Hammond from the control room. "You are cleared for departure to P2F-983."
Jack threw the General a messy salute, and the four of us trudged up the ramp and stepped into the abyss.
To P2F-983.
Known to the natives as Ma’at’a.
***
"Hey Krivin, I don’t suppose you guys have anything called pizza... do you?"
Krivin looked up from his notebook, face blank. "Huh?" It was times like this when he reminded me uncannily of Daniel.
Sam sighed dramatically. "I’ll take that as a no."
I looked up from my writing and shared a smile with my wife. Sara had craved watermelon and peanut butter - sometimes separate, sometimes not - while pregnant with Charlie. For the last couple months, Sam had been pining away for distinctly Earth foods: Pop-Tarts, Coke, ice cream sandwiches... all wonderfully processed foods found nowhere on the planet. Which was probably subliminal. Or unconscious. Or whatever.
It was four months later, and between Sam, Deedra, and myself, Krivin’s office-slash-home was quite a cozy place. I hated intruding on the doctor and his cousin, but as he himself had said, we really didn’t have much of a choice. We couldn’t - and didn’t want to - return to Depa’ma. We couldn’t get to the Stargate, which was beyond the fighting at Lel’tan. There was nowhere else to go if we didn’t want to attract the unwelcome attention of the Council.
It was Krivin who made the first move, extending an invitation to stay with him and Deedra until the fighting ceased. At the time, however, I don’t think he really had any idea how long it would be until that day came.
So we’d been here for four months, or nearly. Sam’s pregnancy was more than obvious now, though she continued to be active, despite her doctor’s wishes and my own. While I struggled to learn the Ma’at’an language - my primary instructor being Deedra - Sam helped Krivin with his patients, who were mostly militiamen wounded in what had become, in everything but name, a war against Lel’tan. The trauma from a Slade weapon, having nearly been her own personal fate, must have been difficult to see almost every day, but she never complained. That was what had drawn me to her from the very day we’d met: her stubbornness, her stamina, her strength. A couple years ago, I wouldn’t have thought you could find such qualities so readily present in a woman. But they were present in Sam. And she was most certainly a woman.
*
Four months and seven days ago - that’d be about 130 Réys in Ma’at’an terms - Krivin, Jack and I had had a very strange, very tense, very awkward conversation.
"You’re with child?" Krivin’d asked, almost disbelievingly.
"Yes..." I’d assured him.
Krivin had looked from Jack to me and back again, and though he remained silent, I could all but read his mind. After all, the last he had heard, we were merely pretending to be married... it was all a ruse to fool the Council. And now... "Do you want..."
"Do we want what?" asked Jack nervously.
Krivin had crossed him arms, looking more uncomfortable than I had even seen him. "Do you want to keep this child?"
Naively, the first thing I thought was ‘adoption’. Which made no sense. Why carry a child to term and then give it up... to a stranger on an alien planet, nonetheless? It wasn’t until I saw the look on Jack’s face that I realized Krivin was implying not carrying the baby to term at all.
"There are... establishments - illegal establishments - that have treatments to... stop the growth... If that’s what you want."
There were only a thousand moral and psychological and emotional compunctions to deal with here, and to keep my skull from simply exploding I took a few seconds to make an organized flowchart in my mind. Jack and I had slept together, and as a result, I was pregnant. I could keep this child or I could have an abortion.
Could I? When it came down to the few political and societal debates I’d been a part of, I’d always claimed to be leaning more towards the pro-choice side. It was the woman’s body, and therefore her decision. Not the government’s, not anybody’s but hers. And as a result I should be able to look at the facts and make that decision: by earth standards, our ‘marriage’ wasn’t legal. By military standards, we’d already made a big mistake. And anybody with an ounce of common sense could see that this was not the place to have a baby... the state of medicine, the state of the /state/...
But I found myself unable to make this choice based on cold, hard facts. There were other issues. Jack and I were in love, and we’d conceived this child - however foolishly or unintentionally - out of that love. Was it right for me to want to terminate this pregnancy because it would be born out of wedlock? Because it would cause problems back home? Because things around here were iffy? Because I didn’t want to have to explain to this child that he or she was, technically, a mistake?
I wasn’t getting any younger, and neither was Jack. I knew I wanted to spend my life with him, damn the regs, and someday have a family with him. So what if someday came a little earlier than expected?
"Sam?"
Jack was watching me uneasily, and I let myself relax a bit. I didn’t even need to ask if he felt the same way. The tension in his shoulders and the worry in his eyes was enough to tell me that he was afraid that I would answer "Yes, that’s what I want".
I had reached out and touched his arm. "No. We’re keeping this baby."
Now, three months later, I didn’t regret it. Sometimes I joked that I did, but that was all it was: joking. Being pregnant was an experience I hadn’t really thought I’d ever have - my lifestyle and personality being what it was - and I was determined to enjoy myself to some degree, especially now that my morning sickness had passed. Some mornings, waking up next to Jack in the top-floor room Krivin had lent us, I simply stared at the ceiling, resting one hand on my stomach, and drifted. I’d imagine the tiny body growing inside me, and marvel at the miracle I had studied time and time again but never come close to understanding. I dreamed of returning to Earth, and sharing this time with my father and my brother, introducing the newborn baby to one side of his biological family. And I dreamed of my child’s surrogate family: Grandpa George, Aunt Janet, Uncles Danny and Teal’c. It was the same type of fantasies little girls have of their future families, modified for the situation.
I would think of returning home, and what Jack and my relationship would mean in the grand scheme of things. Before this, we could have foreseeably brushed off our tryst, pretended nothing had ever happened, go back to ‘work as usual’ with the subtle torture of knowing what we were missing by choosing the SGC over our own feelings, as we always had. At least this child’s existence kept us from putting ourselves through such torment. We couldn’t deny it.
Sometimes, especially as time progressed, the baby would begin to move, sending fluttering and eventually aching jabs through my abdomen, and I would rise, eager to start the new day. Other times, the child continued to sleep, and I would join it, curled in my husband’s arms.
*
Kriven made good use of us - me, especially - and so most of our socializing time came at night, when the doorstep and windows could no longer be cleaned, the beds remade, and when there weren’t usually any incoming injuries. Sometimes we’d all gather together, and sometimes Sam and I, exhausted, would retreat early to our room.
That was when reality would come flooding back, setting me adrift in a thousand emotions that I’d rather forget. My latest worries had been based on the child, of course, and the mother. I couldn’t help but feel that I’d cheated her out of something. Sharing this time with her family, her father and brother. Having her own doctor, equipped with the modern technology and medicine that had been a part of my ex-wife’s pregnancy every step of the way. Things should be so different. She should have a baby shower, at the very least. But one night, and that was all impossible.
Not that I didn’t want this baby; I did, very much. I loved Sam unabashedly, considered her my wife in every sense of the word, and the thought of becoming an actual family sent delightful chills up my spine. But the pregnancy itself was also another problem, another obstacle pilled atop a hundred others.
Sam pulled back the sheets. "You alright?" I queried, noting the bags under her eyes.
"You ask me that every night."
"And I expect an answer every night," I responded in my most military, most ‘Colonel’-like voice. Sam just rolled her eyes as she climbed into bed.
"I’m fine. Just... fat and uncoordinated."
"You aren’t uncoordinated."
"Thanks. I think."
We sat in silence for a few moments, minds drifting. "Jack..."
"Yeah?"
"I remind you of Sara, don’t I?"
Despite myself, I cringed. I’d been waiting for this to come up; I’d been expecting it for months, in fact, which was probably how long she’d been stewing over it, reluctant to say anything. I opened my mouth, eager to dispel her fears, and then decided that lying to her wouldn’t make her feel any better. She knew when I was lying.
It was true that sometimes when I looked at Sam the memories of my ex-wife came flashing back. But that was to be expected, wasn’t it? I tried again, attempting to phrase things so perfectly that I almost gave myself a headache with the effort. "I’ll always..." I shrugged, uncomfortable, but if the stay on this planet had taught me anything, it was the importance of voicing your feelings. Feelings. Blah. Kawalsky would be so disappointed. "I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for Sara and Charlie... especially Charlie. I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself for what happened... maybe I’m not supposed to be able to, I don’t know. But that doesn’t change the way I feel about this baby. And as for Sara..." Another shrug. My feelings toward Charlie were cut and dried... Sara was more of a gray area... more of a minefield. "We had our time, and it passed. I still love her but I can honestly say that I’m not /in/ love with her any longer." I considered this a big step... how long after Sara had left me had I convinced myself that I still wanted, needed, loved her? "I think maybe there’s one person that we’re meant to be with, ya know? It just took me a little longer to find her. To find you."
Sam, who’d been perfectly still and silent through the entire little speech, smiled. It was a wavering, watery, tremulous smile, and I hoped that she wasn’t about to burst into tears or anything. "I think," she gulped. "That that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard."
I reached up and gently touched her hair. Once again, it had surpassed shaggy and was starting to get long, straight rather than tousled, bangs fringing her face. "Really? You need to get out more."
***
"Tree... shirt... bed... eyes... paper..."
"Book."
"Book... house... horse..."
"Good." Deedra nodded encouragingly at Jack. "You learn quickly."
Jack looked over his shoulder at me, grinning a pleased grin. "Hear that?"
"I heard." When he turned back around I rolled my eyes, fighting a smile of my own. He seemed to really be getting the hang of the Ma’at’an written language. I played a role, acting tolerant as though I was simply humoring him, but in truth I was proud, and happy that he’d found something that he was good at, and enjoyed.
Krivin, Deedra, Jack and I were in the ‘gathering spot’, the living room for all intents and purposes, which was on the second floor, above the office. The doctor was sitting neatly in his armchair, engrossed in his notebook, where he took notes of the medical procedures he’d preformed during the day, made observations, guesses... I couldn’t read the thing but the time I spent with him only furthered my belief that he was an extraordinarily intelligent man. If he’d had a good Earth rearing and education, he’d probably be smarter than I was. He certainly had the capacity, and it seemed to run in the family. His cousin Deedra was beyond the "why" stage that every child goes through, but was still an extremely curious, inquisitive child. Her constant inquiries could be annoying, but it was nice to know that there was a generation of Ma’at’ans that would still be asking questions.
I watched Krivin and wondered if he ever wrote anything about Emiko in his book. With Clera focused on the fight against Lel’tan, and her father a flustered, superfluous man more vain than his daughter, Emiko was easily able to catch rides on the ferry to Ankh’ij every now and then. She was due to come in a few days; I didn’t know the actual date but Krivin’s attitude alerted me to her impending presence. He always acted more fidgety, more picky, and more insistent of a clean house whenever Emiko was supposed to visit... it was kinda cute.
Her visits were suppose to be to see me - we’d formed some kind of strange friendship during the time I’d spent with her. I’m not sure what created our dubious bond, if it was our mutual fear of Clera, or because of what I had told her about Ma’at - the truth - or simply because she was more protective of me and my pregnant status. One thing was sure: she didn’t come around simply to see me any longer. Krivin was a part of the equation as well. According to him, they had had a brief fling several seasons ago when she was in town with her mother, but all marriages of Council children were arranged, so, anticipating heartbreak, they had broken up.
I don’t know why they had decided to put themselves through all that for a second time, as they grew closer again. Perhaps it was knowing all that Jack and I had gone through to get to this point.
Jack and Deedra were sprawled side-by-side on the rug, a light and an open book between them. Most nights the young girl would hold these little lessons... I’d expected Jack to eventually become irked that he was being taught by a child, but he didn’t seem to mind in the least. He had a low opinion of his own intelligence, after all, and he loved kids. I sat in another chair, across from Krivin’s, curled up in it as best I could, a blanket over my legs. Now and then I would wince or shift as the baby moved. I was almost seven months pregnant.
"Action words," demanded Deedra, pointing again at the book.
Jack sighed at her relentlessness - they’d been at it since nightfall, over an hour ago - and leaned back against the side of my chair. "See... talk... read... walk... sit... take... be..."
Again, I smiled, and then grimaced, putting a hand to my stomach. For the past couple of weeks, I’d noticed that the baby seemed to be able to recognize the rumble of its father’s voice, moving whenever he spoke. I found it inexplicably endearing, and a little frightening on a level that I couldn’t completely recognize.
Of course, reasons were there. Nine months ago we’d been hardly more than friends... I could count the times I’d used his first name on one hand. Now, we kissed, we touched, and in two months we were going to have a son or daughter.
To the outside observer, things had moved very quickly for us, and I suppose even now and then I sat back and was amazed at the pace of things. We’d gone from friend to more with astonishing speed, considering our respective personalities and all the reasons not to get involved. Sometimes it seemed to me that we were either meant to be together, or were making a horrible, foolhardy mistake despite all the signs and reasons warning us away. But it also seemed that nothing was rushed, or hurried. It seemed natural, and lucky, and surreal. I’d always had a bit of a crush on ‘sir’; the attraction had been perpetually /there/, but I’d never let myself imagine this. Hell, I’d hadn’t ever thought to imagine these circumstances. Time and freedom, it appeared, was all we needed.
I dangled my hand over the armrest and drummed my fingers on top of Jack’s head, and ruffled his eternally-rumpled hair. He titled his chin in response.
"Describing words," demanded Deedra, eyeing the two of us. She had a low threshold for public displays of affection; she reminded me of Cassie in that way.
Jack sighed, reaching up and gently holding my hand. "Angry... loud.... smart... kind... beautiful..."
He looked up at me at that last one, eyes glittering when he saw my smile. Deedra muttered in disgust, closed her book, and stalked off in typical 10- year-old displeasure.
Jack chuckled and rose, perching on the armrest of my chair. I wondered if he’d been taking pointers from Krivin on ‘How To Keep Your Pregnant Wife From Feeling Less Than Grotesque’ or... or if this was how he’d acted with Sara. I put the thought from my mind, grabbed his hand, and put it against my stomach. "Talk."
"Huh?"
"Just say something."
He still looked puzzled but glanced toward Krivin. "Hey, warden, can we go for a walk tomorrow?"
The baby kicked, hard, against the wall of my stomach. Jack’s eyebrows raised in surprise. "Wow."
"He seems to recognize sarcasm," I joked.
"Great. It’s genetic, you know."
"Or maybe he’s just telling you to shut up."
I heard a chortle from Krivin’s direction as he closed his notebook and rose to his feet, regarding us fondly. Thinking of Emiko? Maybe it was from dealing with the effects of the Lel’tan fighting, or having his cousin here with him. Maybe it was the added responsibility of having us live here illegally, or his tenuous, touchy new relations with the Councilwoman’s daughter. But Krivin, like everything else here, had changed, and he wore the new maturity well. "I’m going to bed," he informed us; he’d been up early setting a broken arm. "Sam, don’t stay up much later; you need rest. And Jack-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go to bed, will you?"
Krivin rolled his eyes, an expression I’d noticed he’d picked up from us - and left the room.
A pause followed in his wake. Jack was silent, but despite his slumped posture I knew he hadn’t dozed off... he was thinking about something; I could almost hear the gears turning. I could guess what it was. Something we’d hastily spoken of, something overshadowed by the war and my pregnancy. Something that had happened six months ago and only remained as a memory and a scar.
"It was an SG team that shot you," I blurted.
Jack nodded, seeming not at all surprised that I’d broached the topic. "Yeah. Gou’alds use energy weapons and Ma’at’ans use Slades. This was one bullet. Krivin didn’t save it... he seemed to think it could just as easily have been a new weapon thought up by the colonists."
"You don’t think so?"
"You lived with Parson. You know they don’t have the technology or resources to do anything but stay alive."
"Then how are those people in Lel’tan holding on?"
"Maybe it’s like everyone’s been saying; they’re just really well-stocked. Maybe the Council isn’t trying as hard as they could. After all, all the colonists have to do is hold their position, and the militia isn’t able to surround them because the colony goes right up against the Bay. There are cliffs there that they can’t scale, or even get very close to. They could keep up for quite a long time."
"That’s what I’m afraid of." I closed my eyes. "If it was someone from the SGC who shot you... why? What were they doing coming through the Stargate now, after all this time? And why haven’t they come back?"
"I doubt it’s because the Stargate’s blocked again," he muttered. "It’s right in the middle of the fight now, and everyone in the area has better things to do at the moment."
"You think they - Hammond’s - afraid of coming out in the middle of a firefight?"
"Which is obviously what happened the first time around."
"If Hammond’s still around."
"If."
We were making some awfully big assumptions, after all. We were figuring that everything was as we had left it... Danny, Teal’c, Hammond... the entire SGC. The changes that could likely have taken place during the last nine months were too strange and surreal to consider right now.
"I don’t want you having the baby here," Jack said suddenly, decisively.
I was surprised. "I thought that was one of the reasons we were staying here, instead of joining Lel’tan... so there’d be a doctor?"
He turned to face me. "Sam, I looked though his notebook today. I know enough of their language to tell he’s /never/ delivered a baby. Not even close. Besides..." he cut off my retort. "What if there’s a problem? I at least want Janet there, if not a hospital of trained doctors and nurses, and technology..."
I couldn’t help but smirk at his adamant concern. "Women were having babies long before any of that stuff." He looked unconvinced. "Jack, please... I don’t think I convince you /and/ myself."
He faltered, and then had the sense to look abashed. "Sorry."
"Don’t be," I said earnestly. "This isn’t my first choice, either. We just have to make do... hope for the best."
Jack leaned closer. "This coming from the woman who flipped out when I tried to become a little familiar with the planet?"
I laid one of my small, cold hands on one of his large, warm ones, feeling silly. "I guess I was just... afraid I’d lose you to them.."
"Sorry," he said again, although this time his tone was light. "You’re not getting rid of me that easily. This sale’s final. No exchanges, returns, or refunds."
"Damn."
He smiled, and then he helped me up to bed.
*
The ferocity of the Council’s fight against Lel’tan didn’t diminish with time... if anything, it strengthened, and the streets of Ankh’ij seemed to empty accordingly. Many people were afraid to leave their homes, afraid of what they might run into during a casual stroll, afraid that the conflict would spread like wildfire to their doorsteps. Just as many, however - mostly laborers - left Ankh’ij with the express purpose of joining the rebellion, joining Lel’tan.
I admit that I rankled at having to stay in Ankh’ij; I felt as though by remaining I was defending the Council and their practices. But I was worried enough for Sam’s health and that of the baby that I knew I couldn’t subject them to the kind of life that would be lived in the colony.
The fact remained that there was virtually no way - save a two-week trip through the mountains to the north of the King’s Woods - to reach the Stargate without going through the middle of the battle.
Emiko visited now and again, sneaking away when her mother was busy, which was often. I tried to talk to her about confronting Clera, attempting to change her mind and reason that a compromise with the colony was necessary, but Emiko simply didn’t want to hear about it. She was an ally, but an uncertain one. It was obvious that she wanted to help us, but she was also a teenager, and had been brought up in such a way that she couldn’t totally abandon everything she’d been taught. I could tell myself I understood that, even if I couldn’t exactly identify with her.
Even Krivin thought a compromise was unlikely, but he might have just been agreeing with Emiko to get on her good side. Apparently, this kind of thing had happened before, and it always ended the way: in bloodshed. In the destruction of the colony and the colonists.
I’d ventured out that morning to pick up some stuff for Krivin from the depot down the road, which was a way station for shipments from the dock. Medicines, equipment, bandages, clean water, sterile solutions.... many of the same things we stockpiled in storerooms in the SGC, and that Janet and the other doctors were constantly mucking around with.
When I returned to Krivin, Emiko, Deedra, and Sam, there were another two people that hadn’t been there before. Two militiamen. One was injured, seemingly superficially, though blood ran down his face. He had special markings on his black uniform that signified that he was a part of the retrieval team, which found injured men on the battlefield and brought them in for help It was one of these men who had rescued me from the bottom of a hill months ago, and as a result I felt a certain amount of... tolerance for them.
The other militiaman was dead. A brown sheet lay atop his prone body; a peek of black fabric from underneath was the only thing to signify his position.
Slowly, I walked into the surgical bay, noting the sober attitude and, with some alarm, Sam’s pale face. I dropped my packages absentmindedly on the counter and went to her, curling an arm around her waist as though I thought I could protect her from this entire nightmare. I’d only been gone an hour or so. What could have happened in such a short period of time?
Most of Krivin’s patients were not fatally injured; ideally, they were taken to a field hospital, and only brought here in the case of an overflow. Most survived.
Not this one. And as much as I abhorred the militia, it was far too easy to remember that they were still human, simply being forced to do things that they didn’t want to do.
"What is it?" I asked, voice hushed to almost a reverent level, glancing around at Emiko’s respectful frown and the doctor’s grim glower. Deedra wasn’t there, I noted with relief.
Eyes downcast and troubled, Sam reached over and pulled the sheet away from the man’s face.
Now, some people insist that the dead look as though they could simply be sleeping. It’s untrue. There’s something missing from a corpse, a cadaver, every time. You can actually tell that there’s no life left in that person’s cells, no blood coursing through their veins. A vibration, the subtle cadence of life. I knew death. This was death, and I couldn’t mistake it as anything else, no matter how much I wanted to.
I also couldn’t mistake this man’s face.
"I knew him," said Krivin, sounding weak and helpless, replacing the cover. "His name’s Marten... he has a committed and three little boys."
It was the man who’d twice attacked Sam. The cold, glowering militiaman from the alley, and later, the marketplace.
A man who had a wife? Three children?
Damn, there it was. Sudden sympathy for someone you had every right and reason to despise. A conscience did that... it made you pity the poor bastard, and his family, and the reasons and circumstances that had led him to be the man we didn’t know my name but by act. It made you think, we never knew his name, and it made you think, what a shame, and it made you feel helpless, balls to bone. The conflicting emotions of reluctant grief and morbid justification declared war on my stomach.
War... I’d been in war. So had Sam. We’d been through this before. It never got any easier.
*
When Jack found me in our room later that night, I was propped up against the pillows, sobbing.
Through my tears, I could make out his face, stricken; he never was much for emotional displays. Nevertheless, he was across the room in an instant, easing next to me, his arm around my shoulders. I felt /awful/ - months of hormones and horror all coming to a head - but I let him pull me close. "What’s wrong?" he asked, his voice tender, which only made the cry all the harder.
"God, everything," I gulped ardently, clutching him. "I’m the size of a whale, we’re in the middle of a war, there’s no way we can get back..." I shuddered. "What if I can’t do this? If something happens to this baby I’ll... never forgive myself." A shiver raced up my spine, chased by sudden shame. "I guess I’m just scared. I’m sorry."
"Sorry?" Jack sounded incredulous. "For what?"
I had to remind myself that he had been through this before with Sara, not in such bizarre, trying circumstances, of course, but he had an edge in experience that I didn’t. "I don’t know." The feeling was baseless, actually. "For being afraid. That I can’t do this."
"Samantha..." A warm surge rushed over me, an odd little feeling that always sprang up when he used my full name. Not that I wanted him to go around calling me by it all the time - no more then he wanted me calling him Jonathan - but still, it was special. It was different, and said in a different tone of voice then I had ever heard him use while still under his command. "You have done /so/ much over the years, figured out so many things that I had no clue about. You always know what to do; even if you think you don’t, it comes to you. This is just one more thing that you can do that I will /never/ understand."
That, at least, brought a smile to my face, and I realized that I was calming down. "I think it was just from seeing that man today, knowing that he had a wife and kids and he still... it was just..."
"Overwhelming."
"Yeah." I sighed, thinking back, remembering, almost nostalgic over it all, looking around the modest room. "It’s going on a year, isn’t it? Since we’ve been here?"
"In a couple months," Jack confirmed.
Sleepy laugher bubbled in my throat. "Remember our first place?"
The apartment... it’s little bathroom, tiny closet, narrow bed. Our fear, not just of the Ma’at’ans, but of each other and ourselves. Fear that we would loose the urge to return home. Fear that we would loose our willpower. "How could I forget?" Jack asked dryly. "We were lucky, though. If we’d ended up in a place like Depa’ma right off the bat, we would have probably gone insane. We met Krivin here, and Bob, and Halsi."
I nodded, somewhat saddened by the mention of the friends we made but lost track of. Where are they now? Still in the housing zone? Or drafted by the militia? Transplanted somewhere else? A part of someone else’s life.
"So many people here," I yawned, my eyes drifting shut. /We’d/ been a part of so many lives, and they’ve been a part of ours, and no matter what the eventual outcome is, we won’t forget them, good or bad. The militia commander. The Accountant and his assistant, and his representative. Jerdess, Brandal, Seeber, Jaldebay, Bob, and their families.
The Council. Bellent, Clera, and the others. Emiko. Tashbern. Gabrien. The dead militiaman who’d had his own hand in drawing Jack and me closer, making us face down how much we meant to one another.
So many people...
Before I knew it, I was asleep.
***
"No!"
"Come on, Janet."
"Uh-uh. I’m refusing. No. Way."
"It’s tradition."
"And if I was into tradition, I would have been a real-estate saleswoman."
Bleary-eyed, Kathryn Landseth stumbled into the infirmary. "You know, there are people on this base trying to sleep." It was a joke; the SGC never slept. "And because it’s illegal to simply /shoot/ the both of you, I’ve been elected to come break up this little lovers’ quarrel. So what’s the problem?"
I ignored her. "How about a hyphen?"
Janet glared.
"Ah ha..." grinned Landseth triumphantly. "Let me guess. She’s refusing to change her name?"
Janet waved her fingers at me. "Daniel, this diamond is not /nearly/ big enough for me to be the butt of a thousand Janet Jackson jokes from here to eternity."
"Hyphen!"
"Hyphens are stupid!" she declared.
Landseth looked from my face to Janet’s. "You know, maybe I should just go grab some earplugs from supply and leave the two of you well enough alone."
I crossed my arms. Janet wasn’t marrying me for my name, and I wasn’t marrying her because she was a pushover. This ‘lovers’ quarrel’ could go on for some time, I knew... good thing the making-up part was always so worth it. "I think that would be a very good idea."
***
It was a few weeks later that I walked into that same bedroom to grab a coat from the closet and found Sam single-mindedly tearing the sheets from our bed. For a moment or two I simply stood and watched, what I imagined was a goofy grin plastered on my face, remembering, realizing all the differences here in Ma'at, and all the similarities.
Back on Earth, at the SGC, Sam had always /hated/ being injured. Not for the normal /pain/ part of being hurt, but because it effectively put her out of commission. I imagined that most people in the military felt that way: you don't often see immobile people in the Air Force. Movement - action - is life; it's what we do, and when we're not moving, we feel like we're not doing anything, and therefore, that we're useless. Sam just as much as anyone else, and maybe more because of the pesky - though I though imaginary - discrimination against military women.
But now, here, eight months pregnant on a hostile alien planet, she was about as vulnerable and immobile as a healthy person could be... and she wasn't letting that stop her. No, she still helped Krivin in the Clinic, despite the doctor's protests that she rest. She was up and down those infernal stairs all day: cleaning, keeping an eye on Deedra, minding patients... I knew for a fact that she would have been more comfortable in a role more befitting an Air Force Captain, and that she even envied my own duties: carrying shipments and shipment orders back and forth from the waystation, distributing medicines to outpatients, all covertly, since in the Council's eyes I was a wanted man. Obviously, there was no way any of the three of us were going to let her do /that/, but nevertheless Sam managed to stay active. And feeling useful, I suppose. Or maybe she just wanted to take her mind off certain other issues.
A month, I mused, watching. The smile slowly slipped from my face. I remembered my determination in the earlier months to get her home before her due date, but the fight separating us from that salvation was just as thick and bitter as ever. Only days earlier a doctor friend of Krivin's had been nailed down on the outskirts of the fighting. No one was being careful about what they shot at. The colonists couldn't afford to, and the militia didn't want to. In any case, entering the war zone would be suicide.
Finally, not wanting the startle Sam, I rapped on the open door. "Hey Carter," I said brusquely, reminding myself once more of the old days, when I could simply order her to do - or not do - something. "What're you doing?"
"Making the bed," she replied glibly, not even giving me a glance, which meant she'd probably noticed me standing here.
"I can see that," I answered, my voice still rough, although I knew full well that the old 'Colonel' act was /not/ going to work on her this time. "Will you go sit down?" Sara had been easier to deal with, at least, I recalled ruefully. In fact, she'd been perfectly willing to lay around and let me play footman. Of course, as an almost-first time father, I'd been willing to do her bidding... just as right now, I'd do just about anything to get Sam to take a break. "I'll take care of this."
"Ha," said Sam, not so much of a laugh as a flat statement of fact. She fanned a fresh sheet over the mattress and began to tuck it in.
"Ha?" I repeated, coming further into the room.
"You couldn't make a bed if your life depended on it," she announced, waddling around the bed.
"Guilty as charged," I admitted, giving up, opening the closet door. My SGC jacket, minus the patch - which was more than likely laying out in the woods somewhere - hung in the back. It caught my eye, as it always did, every time I opened the door, reminding me of the life I had left behind. "They didn't exactly cover it in Basic Training."
"They should," declared Sam, and I wondered if she was kidding around or if pregnancy had simply further warped her sense of humor. "You never know when life or death will depend on your being able to make decent hospital corners."
I smiled into the closet, pulling out a gray-green coat and shrugging it on. "Well, they had the schedule pretty full, between basket-weaving and bake sales."
Behind me, Sam chuckled... and then gave an infuriated groan. I spun back around. "Contraction?" She nodded, fighting back a wince as she lowered herself onto the half-made bed.
Wary, I approached. "You think this is just more of yesterday?" 'Yesterday' had been the day Sam had nearly given me a heart attack, when her contractions had started out of nowhere, and with both Krivin and Deedra out of the house. After only about a half hour, the labor pains had slowed and finally stopped, but I had made Krivin promise that he wouldn't leave us alone like that until the baby came. He'd nodded his almost confused consent, but my nerves were still buzzing. I knew a little first aid, but I'd never delivered a baby... hell, I'd been up near Sara's head when Charlie'd been born, and when the woman on Argos had gone into labor... well, I'd let /Daniel/ deal with that.
I tried to tell myself that I'd been through this before, I was ready.
/Hell/ no.
But I did put on the airs, for Sam’s sake. She assumed that since I’d already /been/ a father, I knew exactly what to expect, what to say and do. It wasn’t unreasonable, I suppose, but when had I ever been completely confident of myself in a setting that didn’t include camouflage and gunfire?
"Probably," she said, face scrunched up in consternation rather than in pain, relaxing as the contraction passed but still looking unsettled.
I wasn’t totally ignorant about childbirth. Sara’d stocked up on books and tapes and videos during her pregnancy, and despite my best efforts some of the information had leaked through and stuck. I knew that in a first pregnancy labor was almost always long; hers certainly had been. "Well, even if it this is the real thing," I said, trying to be comforting and sitting down beside her. "We’ve probably got a couple hours, at least. I’ll go tell Krivin and then we can go for a walk; that’s supposed to help."
"Jack..." Her tone was warning, but I caught the traces of fear that tinged it ever so slightly. "It probably isn’t. I mean, it can’t be. We have a whole month."
"Charlie was born two weeks early," I told her, reminding her of nothing she didn’t already know. Of course babies could be premature, especially in more... arduous conditions, which this was. We were on a planet that didn’t have sonograms, epidurals... any of it. They had some types of pain relief, of course, like the medication that Krivin had dispensed for Sam’s injuries almost a year ago, and later for my own wounds. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much in the ‘non-drowsy’ department; there wasn’t much of anything that wouldn’t completely knock her out as it took effect... and in there circumstances, that wasn’t really much of an option.
Sam gave a grudging nod, unhappily relenting that this /could/ be it. The fear was still there, and I wished with every bone in my body that there was something I could do or tell her that would make it go away. I’d already repeated uncountable times how much faith I had in her, how I knew she’d be able to do this, how much I trusted her, and loved her. But it seemed to be one of those things that she wouldn’t believe until she proved it to herself... and there was one way and one way only that she’d be able to do that. "I know, I know. Just..."
She stopped talking and pursed her lips together, hard, and my tension level rose a few more notches. Another contraction? Already? This wasn’t good. I mean, it was good, it just wasn’t... I held her hand until the moment passed, and then helped her lie back on the half-covered mattress. Even now her breaths were coming in shorter and harsher bursts, taking me years back to a place and time I usually found to difficult to recall, but was now virtually my own way to help Sam. "I’m going to go get Krivin," I told her, fighting to keep my voice at normal levels, and feeling awful leaving her like this. "Are you going to be okay?"
The solemnity of my voice actually make her crack a smile. It was a short, somewhat forced smile, but hell, it was there, and if it didn’t improve her mood it certainly did wonders for mine. "Air Force Captain," she reminded me confidently. "I can handle this."
I nodded as I left the room, more for my benefit than hers. So she’d ‘pulled out of a simulated bombing run in an F-16 at eight-plus Gs.’ So she’d ‘logged over a hundred hours in enemy airspace’.
This was something altogether different.
***
I don’t know exactly why I proposed to Janet, and I don’t know exactly why she said yes. As a result, I’m prone to speculating that what I did I did for the wrong reasons... I just can’t think of what they would be.
She’d been there for me through my guilt and depression, not to mention the introduction of Kathryn Landseth into our little collective. She’d helped me through the death of Barrette and Sha’re in her own... special way. Hammond had been quite /wary/ of learning about our relationship, but didn’t make a big of a deal about it as he could have; I think maybe he was sick and tired of arguing with me. In the interests of doctor-patient areas, my records were transferred to Doctor Vansati, the liaison between the SGC and the Academy Hospital. For emergency purposes, of course, I could still be treated by our dear Doctor Frasier.
We eventually put off the name debate for a later date... and speaking of date, we still hadn’t set one. We were both a little gun shy, I think. She was a divorcee and I was a... widow, and we were both sensitive to the other’s status. Sometimes I wondered if maybe she thought I saw her as merely a way to get over Sha’re... a rebound or a friendly screw. But I didn’t. These days, I wasn’t sure about many things, but I knew that I loved her. I loved her boldness and strength of character and her compassion... and her love for Cassie.
Cassie... She knew about the Stargate, and thus she hadn’t been kept in the dark concerning the whereabouts of Jack and Sam. Janet had explained to her, careful but straightforward, that they’d been lost on the planet and that we had no way of knowing if they were alive or not. The girl had accepted the information stonily, and I was the last person who could blame her. Sam had been her first - and best - friend on Earth, and Jack had been the closest thing she had to a father figure. A role I could never imagine filling as effortlessly as he had.
Cassie liked me all right; she always had. As the months passed, she grew more comfortable around me, and more prone to talking about her feelings. She didn’t believe that they were dead, she’d told me countless times.
Now, all these months later, with me in line as her adopted father, she still maintained that.
Armed with my one shred of ‘proof’, the information from /Major/ Carter, so did I. There was little, however, that either of us could do about it.
***
I kept telling myself that we probably had a lengthy wait ahead of us... but that didn’t stop my heart from trying to burst free of my chest, or my legs from taking the steps two and sometimes three at a time. I did a quick search of the second floor, not wanting to yell for the doctor; the sound would carry back up to Sam and I didn’t want to give her yet another thing to stress over. But Krivin wasn’t in any of the living or bedrooms, so I launched myself down yet another flight...
"Watch out!"
....And almost plowed directly into the young man, who’d doubtlessly been coming upstairs to see what all the stomping around was about. "It’s Sam," I said without preamble, pressing myself up against the side of the stairwell so that he could get by. "I think it’s the real thing this time."
Krivin looked wary, and a little confused, but not alarmed by any stretch of the imagination. "You think? How would you know?"
I looked away from his dark, searching eyes. I hadn’t told him, or Deedra, or really /anybody/ on Ma’at'a about Sara, and Charlie. For one, I’d never heard of a man on this planet having more than one spouse, unless he was a deserting criminal who was shunned by the population already. No separations, no divorces... And as for Charlie, I didn’t want to bring him up at all; it was hard enough for me to simply mention him in my conversations with Sam. His memory had definitely becoming less painful, numbed by time, distance, and exposure, but the guilt was still there, crushing me, when I remembered him. His youthful face, first steps, first ballgame, and how I had found him... I blamed myself, still. I didn’t know how Krivin and anyone else would react to learning these things about me, and I honestly didn’t want to find out. "I just do," I evaded lamely.
"You’re sure?"
"Yes!"
Krivin hesitated a second more, and then tromped down the stairs. Down, not up. I cast a desperate, fleeting glance in the direction of our room before making a series of exasperated noises, and following the doctor.
"Deedra!" I heard him call, his voice still infuriatingly even. "I want you to run and get Anaree." Wordlessly, she dashed around the corner just as I reached it, sprinting out the front door as only a young girl can do, her hair flying out behind her.
Praying for a moment of reprieve, I hurried down the narrow hallway and finally found Krivin in the surgical bay, clean towels in his arms. I reflected that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all that Krivin was a neat freak. "Who’s Anaree?"
"Woman of Bridigetti," he replied shortly.
"What?"
Krivin turned, and I was pleased to see some tension finally entering his face. "Bridigetti... the child-woman... goddess of..." He rolled his eyes at my blank expression. "The birthing matron."
I blinked, feeling foolish. "Midwife?"
Krivin simply shrugged, unfamiliar with the term, but it did make sense. It explained why there were no references to childbirth in the journal of a doctor who lived in a town where packs of children swarmed like friendly wasps. And there was also the fact that in most ancient earth cultures, the men had hardly anything to do with pregnancy. The woman carried the child, other women helped her give birth to it, and in some cases the delivery of a child didn’t even make much of a dent in everyday life. It had been a time for family and happiness, not medicated stress.
Obviously, some of Daniel’s ramblings had also stuck in my head.
It all seemed a little callous to me - drugs and droves of doctors were a woman’s prerogative - but unfortunately it seemed that we were in a very similar situation.
*
Anaree was a large woman, with a big voice, deep-set eyes rimmed with wrinkles, and black hair streaked with gray. She was also obviously very close to Krivin, location-wise; it was only ten tortuous minutes later that she marched into the house, Deedra at her heels, tromping up the stairs as though she knew precisely where she was headed. She took charge without asking or being asked, grabbing towels and water, striding assuredly into the bedroom... and closing the door in my face.
"Hey!" I exclaimed, reaching for the knob, but Krivin pulled my back, further out into the hallway, while Deedra watched with interest. "Krivin..."
"Don’t go in there," he told me, as one might admonish you for trying to stick your fingers in a light socket. "This is a woman’s duty."
So I’d been right. "Listen, I don’t care what kind of taboos you people have, or what ‘duties’... I’m not going to leave Sam all alone in there."
"She isn’t alone. Anaree is /very/ experienced," he assured, putting a hand on my arm, not so much to comfort me as to keep me nearby. "This is a woman’s duty," he repeated.
"What, so Deedra can go in there and I can’t?"
Krivin shrugged agreeably, and the girl’s eyes lit up. "Truly?"
"No!" I exclaimed, out of frustration more than anything. "On my world, this is something that the couple goes through together," I stressed. "Come on, she’s my wife!"
"Not technically," Krivin pointed out, avoiding my eyes all of a sudden..
Forgetting the drama in the next room, I pulled away from the doctor and stared at him. "That’s it? That’s what’s bothering you? That we aren’t officially ‘committed’?"
"It’s not done," he protested meekly. Behind him, Deedra’s jaw hung open at the very concept. Nope... definitely a bad idea to mention Sara.
"It’s on paper," I reminded both of them. "It was something suggested by your own Accountant. And I... I love her, Krivin. We wouldn’t even be in this position if I didn’t."
He nodded, but didn’t look at me. I heard muffled voices beyond the door and raised my voice; all three of us gravitated in the other direction. As much as I wanted to go in there, I didn’t, or I would BE in there instead of arguing about it. "And don’t tell me that you’re any alter boy... why’d you have any of Emiko’s clothes here in the first place, hmm?"
Deedra giggled furiously, and Krivin’s eyes lit up. "Emiko... she wanted to be here for this," he remembered, and rushed downstairs, presumably to pen a message to send to her. An hour there and an hour back, add another hour for travel time... the Councilwoman’s daughter would probably be here for the birth. All the same...
"I’m glad we have our priorities straight," I muttered, unhappily plopping down of the first step, casting baleful glances at the closed door.
There was a scuffle and I looked over at Deedra, sitting down beside me. "You and Sam... you aren’t committed?"
"Nope. Not technically, I guess."
"Well... how... why..." She scowled. "I don’t understand."
I clasped my hands around my knees. Sam and Krivin and I had talked about this, not telling her the whole truth for fear of totally freaking her out and possibly turning her against us. But she was like her cousin: bright and intuitive. And besides, who was to say that she wouldn’t take the reality behind Ma’at any worse than Krivin had? She was a kid, and kids adapted better then anything in nature.
"It’s a long story," I began. "But Sam and I aren’t from Ankh’ij. We aren’t from Ma’at’a. We came through the Sungate, in the woods, from another planet that we call Earth. The goddess you know as Ma’at... well, she’s an actual person, or at least she was. She’s probably dead but when she was alive she was a creature called a Gou’ald... a parasite... evil... We fight these Gou’ald - Sam and I and a lot of our friends - because they want to do what Ma’at did a long time ago, make slaves out of you and your people. They want to do that to my planet and if they succeeded maybe even to yours again. Our friends and us came to your planet hoping to find people who would fight with us. We talked to the Council and they... tried to kill us. They knew the truth about Ma’at - all of this - and they didn’t want us telling you. Our friends made it back here but Sam was hurt and I stayed behind with her because... because I was worried about her. Krivin helped her get better - that’s how we met him - and we lived here in Ankh’ij for a while before the Council made us go to Depa’ma. That’s where... where I realized that I loved Sam. We’d pretended to be mar- committed so we wouldn’t be split up, but it wasn’t until a lot later that I knew that I wanted to... to spend my life with her. But then I got sent back here, to fight the colonists, and I got injured." ‘By my own people’ I added, but thought it best not to add that bit of supposition. "And that’s where you came in."
To her credit, Deedra didn’t scream, or burst into tears, or go running down the stairs, wailing for her cousin. She was silent for a few minutes, while I watched her patiently. "You’re from another world?" she asked finally.
"Yeah."
Another spell of silence, as she tried to reconcile what she had been taught and what she had just been told.
"And Ma’at’s evil?"
"Um... yes."
Her dark eyes went unfocused as she absorbed all this, and I waited expectantly for her to pronounce me insane, or at least heretical.
"Alright," she said finally. "I just wanted to make sure I got all that."
I grinned at her, opening my mouth to tell her how brilliant she was and how one day she’d overthrown the whole damn Council, but it was at that moment that there was the squeaking sound of an opening door. Suddenly I was on my feet with no memory of ever clambering to them, and staring at a unruffled Anaree standing serenely in the partly-open doorway. "What’s wrong?" I asked at once, cursing myself for not being in there, not knowing... "What’s going on?"
"Nothing’s wrong," said Anaree, her loud voice strangely sated. "But your daughter is here."
***
Anaree moved away to let me pass, and then closed the door behind her.
"Sam?"
She lay on the bed, exactly where I had left her, a bundle of cloth pillowing her head and a brown sheet covering her lower half. Her hair was mused, her eyes closed, but her lips twitched in a smile when she heard my voice. "Nice trick, taking off like that."
Time seemed to slow; my whole world was putting one foot in front of the other, and yet I managed to respond. "Sorry. Apparently childbirth is a ‘woman’s duty’."
"If I remember correctly you were just as a much a part of this as I was."
At that, I smiled. "Oh yeah..." I sobered quickly, and cleared my throat. "It was... a girl?"
"It still is," Sam responded, opening her eyes.
"Where... where is she?"
"Right here."
I gaped at the diminutive bundle; Sam had been holding her and I hadn’t even noticed. I’d forgotten how tiny newborns were, I noted in a detached fashion, sinking next to my two girls on the bed. Flinching, Sam scooted up into more of a sitting position, and I moved to let her use me as a headboard, tugging the brown fabric away from the miniature cheeks and chin. This was impossible, I kept thinking. Impossible that after Charlie, God or Fate or whatever would let me have another chance. Give me another go at being a father. Forgive me, and let me try again.
If destiny or some supreme being could forgive me... could I start to forgive myself.
"She’s beautiful," I choked out, needing to say something. And it was true; she was possibly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I mean, okay, so her face was sort of red and scrunched up, and basically she looked pretty annoyed at being removed from her warm, dark suite in such a fashion... but her eyes were half-shut, revealing just a glimpse of brilliant blue, and her mouth moved silently, as though she was gearing up to speak. "I... I didn’t hear her cry."
"She whined a little," Sam murmured. "But she didn’t get turned upside-down and smacked on the butt, either. Anaree said that she’s breathing fine, and I trust her. She knows what she’s doing; they just go about things a little differently here, that’s all."
"I thought... I thought it would take a lot longer," I admitted. "Anaree came out... and I thought something was wrong..."
"I don’t know. It hurt, I guess... but it just felt like really strong cramps... not like anything they show on television. Anaree had these herbs and... It seemed like I had just started pushing and then Anaree was telling me that it was a girl. And I was just... so relieved... so thankful. I’d been scared, not just that something would go wrong but that I couldn’t do it. I’ve never been ‘the girl’. I didn’t play with barbies or have tea parties or pretend weddings when I was little. I was just afraid of being... less feminine then the next girl, or something, and that I wouldn’t be able to... pull this off."
"You did," I reminded her, still with the sense of being in some incredible dream that, any minute, would end with the insistent buzzing of my clock alarm. What was it about Ma’at, that this planet and its people could put us through such inconceivable situations, both good and bad, that there seemed to be no way that they could happen in real life. "And... I’m so proud of you."
She craned her neck up and looked at me, not smiling, not frowning, just looking. Praise... it was something I’d never given her enough of on Earth, partly because it wasn’t my style, partly because she never seemed to believe that I was being straight with her. She’d always seemed to think that I was simply feeding her platitudes, maybe setting her up for all fall or at the very least being insincere. She’d smile, and look away, and I was left with the impression ‘Yeah, sir, whatever’.
Now, she nodded her head slightly, and then returned her gaze to her daughter.
Our daughter.
Voices came from the hallway, and I remembered who I’d left out there. "Deedra, you can come in."
The knob turned, the door opened, and in crept the girl, timid at first, but her face shining with excitement. Close behind her, even more wary, was Krivin. His eyes went wide as he saw the tiny swathed bundle, and a smile reserved specifically for children stole onto his face. Lingering in the doorway, Anaree was watching all of us in an entirely different light.
Uh oh.
"I’ve had the... specifics of the situation explained to me," she began, brows knitted in bewilderment as she looked from one face to another, presumably searching for some signs of sanity. Evidently, quite a /lot/ had been explained to her, and I imagined it had begun with questions about blonde hair and blue eyes. "I’m sure that I can... gather some clothing and such... from others I helped." The cautious look on her face was amusing; it was the exact same expression that the people on Candid Camera wore milliseconds before the joke was revealed.
"Thank you," said Sam smoothly, trying to put the woman at ease; I took her calm attitude to mean that she thought we could trust this ‘birthing matron’ with /our/ secret. "I couldn’t have done it without you."
The matron’s expression cleared. /This/, at least, was a subject she was comfortable with. "I’m certain that is not true," she announced humbly, before returning her voice to its previously boisterous pitch as she began to retrieve her things - herbs, I suppose - from the foot of the bed. "Have you decided upon a name for the child?"
Surprised - though unsure why - I looked down at Sam, and she glanced up at me. Amazingly, the subject of names had never come up during the entire six months of her pregnancy that we had spent together. It wasn’t as though neither of us thought about it - I know I did - but it was never anything spoken aloud. I’d been almost afraid to bring it up, afraid to jinx the whole pregnancy by naming a child that could possibly never be. That was always a concern on Earth, as well - miscarriages, stillborn babies - but here the prospect had seemed especially real. No tests or technology to make sure the baby was healthy, nothing much in way of special nutrition or emergency procedures. In all honesty, I hadn’t let myself get worked up over the prospect of being a father again, because if something happened, I didn’t want to get too badly hurt. Not a second time. "No," said Sam. "We haven’t."
"Well, she needs a name," Anaree declared, as though we hadn’t known this. "The name of a relative or friend, perhaps? Or you may go to the house of the goddess of the young, of the child-woman."
"Who?" The baby started to fuss, and the mere sounds of her squeaky complaints almost brought tears to my eyes.
I blinked and tried to distract myself. "Um, the child-woman, right, Krivin? What was her name? Birgi... Brideget..."
"Bridget," said Sam abruptly.
"No, that wasn’t it. It was Bridigetti or something..."
"No," Sam admonished, looking into my eyes like I was the only person here, like Krivin, Deedra, and Anaree had simply ceased to exist. "The name. Bridget."
My gaze flickered down to my daughter.
Bridget?
"Bridget," I repeated, surprised at how fast the name grew on me. Maybe it was because I wanted to make Sam happy, or didn’t feel like spending hours debating over the subject, but... "I like that."
*
Bridget Teryn was almost a month old when we heard the news.
I was in the living room with Bridget and Deedra. Bridget was sleeping in the armchair, and Deedra was holding down my ankles as I attempted to do the impossible, or, as Jack playfully phrased it ‘return my body to its former glory’. In other words... sit ups.
"You look fine," Deedra insisted. "And I know you were up all night with the baby; you should get some rest."
25... 26... This was pathetic. I was already getting tired. "Deedra, put more weight on my feet; my legs are slipping."
She sighed. "If you’re doing this for Jack, he doesn’t care what you look like. He told me."
I smiled a smile that looked more like a grimace. "He’s a liar. Besides, -I- care what I look like." 31... 32... "And I’ll rest... when I can pump out fifty of these... without getting out of breath."
"Then maybe you should stop talking," said Deedra wryly.
I was on number 47 when Krivin ran into the room as though he was being chased. I stopped in mid crunch, which was fortunate, since Deedra leapt to her feet. "I heard... I heard..." he gasped.
"Shh!" I chided, nodding down at Bridget. The little dear was the lightest sleeper I’d ever encountered, but what else could you expect from the daughter of two military officers? "What did you hear?"
Krivin’s face was flushed as he trying to pace his breathing. "I was down at the way station and I heard... there’s been a truce!"
Tine stood still, or at least no one said anything for several moments. "Between Lel’tan and the Council?" I choked out finally.
"Called by Clera herself. Personally, I think she’s simply out of weapons and men. But they’ve called for a cease-fire and negotiations with the leaders of the colony in the market. Some even say that the Council is prepared to change the very structure of our society."
"Krivin, that’s wonderful." It was about time, I thought, that someone stood up to the Council. They weren’t all evil, no, and they had even started out with good intentions, but this ‘conspiracy of silence’ had gone on for much too long, coupled with a social system that trapped people in their own lives. It would be terrific for all of them, every person we’d met on Ma’at, if this could be the big event that changed everything, for the better.
"Yes, it is," Krivin agreed briskly. "This the chance you and Jack need. To escape. To get to the Sungate."
I gawked at him.
Damn, he was right.
And who knew how long this truce might last... if it was even legitimate.
I snapped into command mode; at least I hadn’t lost /that/ bit of flexibility. "Where’s Jack?"
"Distributing packages for me by the River of the-"
"I’ll go get him," piped Deedra, and she tore out of the room.
"It’s two of your miles to get there," Krivin reminded me as I began to run a mental list through my head. What we would have to bring - not much - and what we could leave behind - just about everything. "You might be stopped by either colonists or militiamen. And I don’t have any weapons to give you. The Council took yours."
"We’ll deal," I assured the doctor. "We’ll have to."
*
Hurried, frantic at the thought of the truce being simply a ruse, our good-byes were much too short. Everything Krivin had done for us, everything he had risked, no matter his motivation, was staggering. And the way his cousin had accepted us, never complaining about our unannounced and unlawful presence in her life was more than I could have hoped. Jack and Krivin shook hands like two consummate soldiers, parting after a battle, and I embraced the doctor with unabashed vigor, remembering Jack’s comment so long ago about ‘a crush’. Deedra hugged us energetically, and despite the fact that she’d never see us again, smiled brilliantly. I hoped that some day we could return to Ma’at'a, and see what had become of these people, especially this girl.
Finally, I turned to our last friend. "Emiko..." She enfolded me in a fierce hug, like a best friend, or a sister. She’d been living with us, essentially since Bridget’s birth, and she and Krivin planned to be committed when daily life had settled down. She’d quite possibly be giving up any chance of one day sitting on the Council... but didn’t seem too terribly upset about this fact.
"Take care of yourself, Sam," she stressed, pulling away. "You never did enough of that."
"I’ll keep an eye on her," Jack promised, smiling with his eyes. He didn’t hug Emiko, but they gave each other short and respectful nods. They’d never had much of a relationship, but at the very least they trusted one another through me. It was a good feeling.
"We have everything?" I joked; we had one satchel; the rest of the belongings that we’d accumulated over the course of the year were staying here. Even - and despite Krivin’s insistence - my SGC patch.
Let it hang in a museum some day, I thought with a smile.
"Bag?" asked Jack.
"Check."
"Food?"
"Check?"
"Baby?"
"Right here," I answered crisply, taking my daughter from Deedra. "All set, sir."
He grinned at the formality. All we needed was our cammies instead of these dull gray garments, and it’d be just like old times. Almost. "Well then, Carter, let’s head out."
***
FINI
Continued in 'Asylum'
Story Notes: alli@ecis.com
Timeline: Set late-second to third season; heavy for Point of View and Forever in a Day
Archive: S&J, Heliopolis. Others please ask.
Status: Finished!
Timeline: Set late-second to third season; heavy for Point of View and Forever in a Day
Archive: S&J, Heliopolis. Others please ask.
Status: Finished!
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]