Season: Ten
Warnings: Adult situations
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are not my property. I have written this story for the enjoyment of Stargate SG-1 fans all over the world. No copyright infringement is intended and no monetary gain is expected.
Chapter One
The first time Sam feels the merciless blade of real doubt slice through her insides is at the three-month mark, during dinner time. General Landry’s seemingly innocuous toast to the Asgard legacy, a treasure trove strangely unmentioned during ninety days of futilely attempting to escape their virtual prison, comes as a surprise.
Everyone but Cameron lifts their drinks briefly, painfully smiling at each other with varying degrees of poor enthusiasm and ignoring the young colonel’s glum detachment.
The toast makes Sam realize that the general is starting to lose hope despite his previously determined faith in her intellect. He is telling her, in his own veiled way, to give herself a break and start spending some of her work time on something other than her current project. His eyes tell her he is worried about her.
She has spent the past months doing nothing but trying to solve their problem, sleeping little, foregoing exercise, and hardly interacting with the others, but her attempts at finding a way to escape both the Asgard technology keeping them from leaving and the Ori killing blow that would end their lives in a blink, have been, so far, useless. They remain firmly stuck in space and time with no path of escape in sight.
Cameron continues to sullenly eat his dinner, his usually enthusiastic appetite replaced by a morose, automatic action of hand to mouth, fork disappearing between lips, inadequate chewing, and determined swallowing. His eyes remain fixed on his quickly emptying plate, his ears closed to Vala’s still incessant chatter, a chatter Sam suspects is meant to distract Daniel from following in Cam’s footsteps.
Her oldest and best friend has moments of panic accentuated by sudden flares of bizarre ideas he throws at her in his usually rapid, excited manner when she least expects him to. When she explains why his ideas won’t work, he smiles at her with a nod, telling her that it was worth bringing it up, and he leaves her alone to work. Vala, his shadow, follows him after giving Sam a wink of encouragement, daring him to a game of Parcheesi or a wrestle in the improvised gym.
Cameron suddenly mumbles something and excuses himself from the table as soon as his plate is empty. Five pairs of eyes follow his escape through the doors; then return to the plates set before them.
“You must be dying to dig into the database to see what gems the Asgard left for us in things aside from armament, weapons, and propulsion,” General Landry says a few seconds later.
Sam obligingly smiles, keeping up the pretense for everyone else’s benefit. “I’ve skimmed through some of it, but you’re right, there’s a lot I haven’t had a chance to investigate. There’s a wealth of information there that will take years to sort through.”
“Well,” Daniel unexpectedly interrupts, “It looks like you’ll have all the time you need.”
He has only briefly looked at Sam to say that which, not for the first time, makes her feel guilty for her failure so far. She exchanges a pained look with the general, then with an annoyed Vala. The alien woman bumps Daniel’s shoulder with hers to say, “What kind of talk is that? Sam will get us back home eventually. Don’t you ever doubt it!”
“If it was at all possible to do so, Sam would have found a way out already,” he retorts, biting his words angrily.
No one says anything for a few moments, but then Teal’c does, piercing Daniel with flinty black eyes.
“I do not doubt Colonel Carter’s abilities to eventually succeed.” He then looks at her. “You have always gotten us home before. You will not fail to do so again, however long that might take.”
“Thank you, Teal’c,” she softly replies, smiling at her old friend gratefully, but she feels as if her face is cracking.
She lets her growing locks fall forward in a useless effort to hide her distress. The growing ache of doubt mercilessly reasserts itself inside her stomach, making her push her plate away even though she has not finished her meal, and she finally excuses herself from the table politely, claiming to be tired.
Later that night, the cool pillow under her cheek meets the warm tears spilling from her closed eyelids, forming a wet spot on the satin sheets she prefers w22; the kind both she and Jack enjoy so much w22; and her thoughts return for the millionth time to him.
Her months of futile struggle have been nothing but a moment to her beloved general. He has not even started to miss her yet, but she has been wallowing in a miserable pond of anguish and craving for what seems like ages, ever since she realized just how difficult their current conundrum really is.
She despairs of ever seeing him again, of ever again feeling his calloused hands stroking her bare skin, of ever hearing his hoarsely whispered words in intimate moments when only the two of them exist in their private universe.
At first, she tried to focus on the fact that their world would eventually be as free of the Ori as they were of the Goa’uld and the Replicators thanks to the wonders they have inherited from the Asgard. It managed to cheer her up and encouraged her to work on their predicament without a allowing a single doubt that she would eventually come up with a solution.
Now her thoughts keep drifting to the empty side of her bed, to the empty side of Jack’s bed, and the fact that they may remain empty until she dies of old age. He’ll never know what kept her from returning to him, and she never wants to find out whether he will eventually find someone to fill that empty space between his satin sheets.
Cameron’s running footfalls echo hollowly through her cabin door. He is jogging through the ship again. He does that every time he can’t sleep. He does that every single morning. He does that sometimes during the day, at odd hours. She knows it is the one thing he does to keep him from losing his sanity.
On the following day, number ninety-one, Sam utilizes the Asgard replicating technology to make a cello. On that day, she reaches for something that will keep her own sanity intact.
TBC