The Ability by Alli Snow

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Story Notes: Title: The Ability

Author: Alli (alli@ecis.com)

Rating: PG

Category: Future story, SJR, angst

Archive: SJA and Heliopolis

The Andromeda Series
1. The Assignment
2. The Aide
3. The Afterglow
4. The Arising
5. The Allusion
6. The Attack
7. The Accident
8. The Anger
9. The Alien
10. The Archeologist
11. The Absence
12. The Advance
13. The Adversary
14. The Ability

* * * * *

|| Jack O'Neill ||

I was welcomed awake by the soft, methodical chime of machines measuring heart rate, breathing, and brain activity. Mutes voices. The tap-squeak of new shoes against newly-laid linoleum. All sounds I had become much too comfortable waking up to. Automatically, I flexed my fingers and toes, the first step in my customary check that everything was in working order, and then I groaned. "Not again..."

"Funny," replied a nearby voice. "I said the same thing when they brought you in."

Balefully, I opened one eye against the inordinate brightness of the infirmary lights and glared at Janet Frasier. The woman stood, chin lifted and arms crossed, reveling in the power she held over the weak and helpless. "Go away," I begged.

She smiled at me, a remarkably gentle expression. "Well, Colonel... besides a few scrapes and bruises here and there, you were our only injury this afternoon. You should feel special."

I craned my neck and looked down upon my own body. "Damn right," I agreed listlessly, feeling pain but unable to pinpoint it. "What am I in for this time?"

At this Janet hesitated. "Internal bleeding."

"Sweet." I raised one hand and patted down my body, searching for injury and finding nothing immediate, only a dull ache beyond my solar plexus. "How'd I manage that?"

"We were hoping you could tell us," Janet admitted, nibble fingers turning an IV bag towards her and sharp eyes checking for anything abnormal. Finding nothing, she checked the other end of the drip line, making sure the needle was still firmly taped into my vein. I tried not to wince. I'd faced down staff weapons and Naqueda bombs, but needles still scared the bejesus out of me.

"I wasn't hit."

"That's the thing," she sighed. "Other than where we opened you up, there's not a speck of external damage. You--"

"Opened me up?" I wrinkled my nose to express how much I disliked the thought of anybody - even Janet Frasier - mucking around in my insides.

Her mouth was set as firm as her voice. "Colonel, you were the last one through the Stargate. You came through half-conscious and obviously in a lot of pain. We sedated you and took you right into surgery, and we did what we could to get the bleeding to stop."

The way she phrased that would have caused me to fidget nervously had I been a bit more mobile. 'We did what we could'? That sounded suspiciously like it meant that they hadn't been able to do ENOUGH, and that was cause for worry. I hung onto the fact that I knew Janet wouldn't keep anything serious from me, not in a million years, no matter how frosty we'd been towards each other lately. "You didn't leave anything in there, did you?" I tried to joke.

As expected, she ignored me. "The only thing I can think that would have caused damage like this is a ribbon device."

I shook my head, stopping when the motion made my vision swim. "I didn't even see a Gou'ald the whole time we were there. All there were with Jaffa with staff--"

The pain in my lower chest suddenly flared, and the blipping monitors that surrounded me started getting excited. Janet's eyes went wide, darting from the machines to my horrified face. "Colonel?"

"Get the General."

"Sir--"

"Get Hammond. And Tony. Tony's okay... isn't he?" As the panic grew I felt the power of speech began to dance away; either the pain or the pain medication or a combination of the two, I thought distantly, praying that I'd be able to maintain control of my faculties long enough to tell my tale.

"He's fine," said Janet, taking a step towards the door. "I'll be right back."

|| Janet Frasier ||

"The Tok'ra kid... he hit the first glyph but the Jaffa got him right away... started taking defensive positions, but then this woman jumped up, ran towards the DHD... started entering glyphs for Earth... I told... told Tony..."

It was the pain medication, I tried to tell myself, the medication he'd insisted the didn't need but which I'd administered over his protests. O'Neill was notoriously macho, especially when it came to my infirmary... but now I was beginning to regret my decision. Not only were the Colonel's words slurred and his sentences disjointed, but he seemed, well, out of it.

Tony, looking supremely nervous, crossed his arms and continued the story for his bedridden friend. "He told me to send the iris code through. Took a second or two to figure out why, but as soon as the Tok'ra woman engaged the Stargate--"

Jack shook his head vigorously and interrupted Warren with a swiping hand. "Wasn't Tok'ra," he mumbled. "It was Carter."

I felt my eyebrows reach for my hairline, saw similar expressions of surprise and confusion on the faces of Hammond and Daniel. Teal'c even looked skeptical, while it appeared Tony had been expecting this to some degree. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of my interns standing in the doorway, hanging on the frame, seemingly entranced by the exchange. I couldn't be bothered to tell her to leave.

"Captain?" Hammond addressed Warren, and if the General's skepticism hadn't been apparent before it was now obvious, simply by the tone of his voice.

Tony Warren shrugged helplessly, continuing the story. "The Tok'ra started hurrying for the Gate, and the woman at the DHD got shot... around here." He waved a hand ambiguously between his own chest and sternum. "I, um... I saw the Colonel take a step forward; shouted that she had to be dead. He... he yelled something at me, sounded like 'Sam', and then he took off towards her. I went to follow, but one of the Tok'ra grabbed my arm and pulled me into the Stargate with him. Probably thought he was doing me a favor, getting me out of there. The rest of the team and most of the others were already through."

"Did you SEE Colonel Carter?" pressed Hammond. He'd left off the 'Lieutenant' part, I realized distantly. Good, those extra three syllables were bothersome.

"For cryin' ou' loud," slurred Jack angrily. "I mebbe doped up ta the gills 'ere, but I know wha' I saw. I ran over to 'er and then Martouf showed up. Told me she wa'... dead... but tha' he could help 'er. Tol' me ta go an' I did... don't know WHY I did, but I did... goddamn it..."

"No, sir," answered Warren quietly, shooting a guilty look at his grumbling C.O. "But then, I couldn't see the woman very clearly at all so..."

Hammond straightened, the signal that he was taking back control of the conversation. "Colonel, as I'm sure Dr. Frasier informed you, you came back through the Stargate in a state of... disarray, over four hours ago."

"We had to sedate you and plus the anesthetic during the surgery..." I interjected helpfully, not adding that he'd bounced back from the combined tranq effect impossibly quickly. I'd chalked it up to another biological oddity that was Jack O'Neill.

"We returned the Tok'ra to their base almost immediately," the General went on. "But I'll dial them up right this moment; ask to talk to Martouf or Jadae."

"And Jacob," said Daniel thoughtfully, the first time he'd spoken since being summoned for this impromptu little meeting. "He might be able to... clear this up for us."

"What is there remaining to be 'cleared up'?" asked Teal'c with the slightest touch of impatience. "If Colonel Carter is present at the base than O'Neill was mistaken, if he was correct and she took part in the strike against Deault, she is dead."

A chill swept fleetingly though the room just then, as though someone had left a hatch open to the surface, as though Sam's ghost had come to agree with Teal'c's pronouncement. I shivered, and saw Daniel catch the small movement. Sam dead... I couldn't accept it. I wouldn't. It was so much easier to blame it on pain meds, to brush it off as Jack's less-than-lucid state and his obvious infatuation with the woman, then to be forced to reconcile that she was DEAD, murdered on a mission we'd been told she wouldn't even be a part of.

With a final glance at all of us, taking everything in, sorting it, considering it as only a general could and making his decision smoothly, Hammond motioned me away from O'Neill's bed. Daniel - still watching me carefully - and Tony - whose face was a melting pot of a thousand conflicting emotions - drifted over with us, but Teal'c remained beside his Colonel. He said nothing, merely clasping his hands behind his back in customary parade rest, silent, watchful, defending.

Even after all this time...

"What's your opinion, Doctor?" asked Hammond, quite simply. Unfortunately, it wasn't such a simple thing to answer.

"Do you mean, do I think he's making this all up? Of course not. Do I think he's crazy? Not exactly, no. However, he has been though a lot lately, and I don't just mean today."

Hammond nodded. "I'm aware that he was having... personal problems with Sam. That's part of the reason I let her go with the Tok'ra."

"I don't care what was going on between the two of them," attested Tony, shaking his head resolutely. "But he misses her as much as any of us, maybe more."

"Well, then, doesn't it stand to reason that he could be wrong about this?" the general queried, looking genuinely befuddled. "Maybe the Tok'ra he saw resembled Carter in some way, and Colonel O'Neill simply... saw what he wanted to see."

"With respect, sir," said Daniel quietly. "I can't imagine why he'd want to see Sam dead."

Hammond absorbed this quickly, nodding again and mentioning - under his breath, almost to himself - "We're not going to get any answers until we talk to the Tok'ra."

"I'll get right on it, sir," Tony volunteered a bit too eagerly, hurrying out the door before the general even had a chance to reply. Warren had liked Sam - liked her a lot, I reflected. They'd gone on a date or two - though Sam had refused to CALL them dates - and they'd gotten along surprisingly well. In the end, she'd distanced herself from him as well, but he carried the capacity to care for and about her as much as any of us who had known her longer. This was hard for him, too. We had to remember that.

"Okay. Assuming Jack's right, and what he's telling us he saw actually happened," began Daniel, getting the familiar gleam in his eye that warned everyone in the vicinity that he was gearing up into lecture mode. "I'm more concerned about Martouf's part in this. And Jadae's. Why tell us that Sam wasn't going to be a part of the strike? I mean, maybe it was a last minute thing, but I have trouble believing that. And what did Martouf mean when he told Jack he could help Sam?"

"A sarcophagus," I said instantly.

"That's the first thing I thought, too. But remember, the Tok'ra don't use them."

"Sam isn't a Tok'ra," I countered.

"In a way, she is. That's one of the first things Garshaw said to us, after all, that in a way we're also Tok'ra. Against Ra, against the System Lords. They recognize the danger that comes from using the sarcophagus to prolong one's life; they won't even do it to further their cause. And you've got to remember that their standards are pretty high when it comes to their morals and values. Even if Martouf has access to one, I can't believe he'd actually use it. Not even for Sam."

'Not even for Sam', I repeated in my mind, hearing the words echo off a thousand unspoken thoughts and fears, sneaking a look back at the nearly delirious Colonel. For his own sake, for Sam's and for ours, I dearly hoped he was wrong. I hoped Daniel was wrong. I hoped SOMEONE was wrong, because if they were all right, if Sam was really gone and the Tok'ra couldn't or wouldn't bring her back to us... "Then the only other option I can come up with is that she wasn't dead, just badly injured, and Martouf was going to take her somewhere where they could--"

"Make her a host," finished Daniel flatly, looking both enraptured and disgusted. Becoming a host to a Tok'ra could very well save an injured person, especially if the symbiote was strong; surely it was preferable to death. But all three of us - and Tony, and Teal'c, AND the Colonel - knew of Sam's deep and abiding aversion to ever making that... commitment. That fear was Jolinar's doing, of course, and there was also the stigma placed upon the process by the Tok'ra's more bloodthirsty counterparts to take into account. None of us could ever imagine ourselves willing to take that plunge, allies or not, and we couldn't fault her for her feelings.

Hammond looked back and forth between us, knowing what we weren't saying and what it all meant. "We need to talk to the Tok'ra," he said again, with a new sense of urgency, and as I nodded my emphatic agreement, he turned and left.

"She isn't dead," O'Neill insisted in what would have been a shout, had there been an inkling of strength and force behind it. "I don' care wha' he said, she's not."

"I hope not," murmured Daniel.

I went to the Colonel's bedside, resting a hand on his shoulder as much to keep him vertical as for comfort and consolation. What I'd been unable to admit to any of them - even Daniel - was how certain I had been, watching Jack pitch out of the event horizon onto the unforgiving ramp, that he would die. That he would never recover from his enigmatic injuries. And as weak as he was now, as confused and muddled and unfocused, it was more than I had dared hope for. His luck could have run out; we could have easily lost him on the table, trying to stop up bleeding from a source we couldn't locate. He could have been gone, and now he was not only conscious but argumentative and unruly. It was a miracle, another in a long line of SG-1 marvels.

But the General was on his way to speak to the Tok'ra, who could very well admit that they had lied and by doing so confirm our worst fears. Jack was all right now but only because he was holding fast and firm to Martouf's promise to help Sam, to bring her back. What would happen if he was to awake from his drugged stupor to find that the Tok'ra had lied again, that all they had to offer in apology was Sam's body and their deepest condolences? Would his recovery be so fleeting then, with this horrible news waiting on the other side of the infirmary door?

They taught us in school that no small part of the healing process was mental, had to do with state of mind, positive attitude. That's more than just mumbo-jumbo, it has to do with body chemistry and brain activity, which is how that 'laughter being the best medicine' cliché came to be. What if NO ONE was wrong, what if the relentless fighter, the obstinate ass in Jack O'Neill didn't resurface, what if...

"She's alive," said Jack, looking up at me with half-closed but nonetheless angelic eyes.

"Okay."

|| Jack O'Neill ||

I was haunted by her blue eyes, her exuberant smile, her graceful buoyancy, but I refused to believe that Sam was the one doing the haunting. In between lapses of complete unconsciousness and half-realized agony, I conceived snatches of murky inspiration and chaotic method. Sam was alive. I couldn't explain how or why; it was just something I KNEW, something I could feel in my bones. Never had I been so absolutely SURE about something; never had I been so certain that it hurt, so confident that it frightened me.

When I was next able to open my eyes - and keep them open for an extended period of time - I found myself looking into the pleased, pretty face of one of Janet's young interns. There seemed to be a half dozen of them flitting around at any one time, most with connections to the Pentagon or SGC personnel that somehow made them more trustworthy than the average Joe. With the teams recently expanded and more research departments being opened all the time, though, Janet needed all the help she could get, and generally the interns were acceptable. They were a bit more experienced than the nurses, usually getting in, doing their job, and getting out without speaking two words to you. I was perfectly happy with this attitude. It was different with Janet, but most of the time doctors waltzed in, not knowing a damn thing about you but pretending to be your best buddy. It made me sick.

The woman looking down on me smiled. She was a cute little thing, half my age with braided brown hair falling over her narrow shoulder, eyes to match, and a childish spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Vaguely I recalled seeing her here and there, but I'd never spoken to her personally. "How are you feeling?" she asked, her voice soft and mellow.

"Peachy," I croaked. "The General--"

"He's still trying to get in contact with the Tok'ra."

"Still?" It felt as though days had gone by.

The woman nodded. "You've been out for a couple hours... scared everybody when your temperature started to rise. We thought you were coming down with an infection but it seems to have leveled--"

"I feel fine," I snapped, less then interested in talking about myself. "The Tok'ra?"

"Last I heard, they were refusing contact because of security reasons. Something about Deault's Jaffa perhaps figuring out where they were." She shrugged regretfully. "I'm sorry I can't tell you more."

"Security reasons," I repeated incredulously, righteous anger almost giving me the strength to march right down to that control room. Almost. I knew exactly what 'security reasons' meant. I'd been right, something had happened to Sam, and they didn't have the balls to tell us the truth.

The intern ran her fingers across her braid almost nervously, watching me with a new and almost hungry look in her eyes. "Sir... permission to say something that might sound a little strange?"

I raised an eyebrow. What in the world - or the universe - could be considered strange in the SGC? "Yeah, sure."

She fidgeted, leaning against the bed's railing. "I've been looking over your records. Nothing especially secret, just standard medical history. You've been kind of... off-kilter for a while now."

I tensed. Was it that obvious? "I've been having some problems with my team."

"Why?"

"What do mean, 'why'?" I snapped.

She shook her head, as though disappointed that I hadn't given her question a straight answer. "I heard you talking earlier. You really believe that Samantha Carter's alive?"

"Yes," I answered, without even a moment's thought.

"How can you be so sure? Especially if everything you've said is true."

"Listen..."

"Julie. Julie Piper."

"Listen, Piper, I can't exactly explain it to you, okay? I can't even explain it to myself, and that's not going to go over well with everyone else. It's not enough for the General but at the moment it's good enough for me. I suppose that sounds weird."

Piper shook her head. "No, I think it's romantic."

I looked away from her.

"May 3, 2004," she informed me. "P2C-260. I looked it up, cross-referenced it with your files and Carter's. Not only don't I think it's weird, I think there's a very clear explanation for it."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I snapped, starting to wonder why I was ever having this conversation, what this near-stranger meant by bringing all this up. As a Colonel and a patient I was of course well within my rights to tell her to leave, but somehow I couldn't say the words. "It was a Gou'ald lab. That cave was just some kind of anteroom to keep their enemies from getting inside and stealing their technology." Sure, there hadn't BEEN much technology inside the cavern, but who knew how long it had been abandoned? Daniel hadn't even finished translating the tablet Carter had found.

"That's exactly what I mean," said Piper triumphantly. "You remembered the planet. You knew exactly what I was talking about. That's when it started, wasn't it? You had dreams about her, more vivid than anything you've ever experienced. Your feelings toward each other simply became more and more intense until it totally overwhelmed you. There's such a thing as knowing someone TOO well, when all you can think about it THEM, when all you see and hear inside your head and out is THAT person. That's what happened to you and Carter, and it happened in that chamber."

I stared with unabashed disbelief at the woman, at her shining eyes, at the conviction in her voice. Even with drugs still flowing freely in my bloodstream, even with my own limited intellect, I knew exactly what she was saying. "You're talking about telepathy, aren't you?"

She swept the braid back over her shoulder. "I started working here only a few weeks before you went to that planet. I tried to get dispensation to visit it with the science teams, but according to the brass there was no real 'reason' for me to go. I thought it was too bad, especially after you and Carter... well, I'd always hoped that I'd be able to prove something."

"Telepathy?"

"Tell me it doesn't make any sense," she challenged. "Tell me it sounds absolutely impossible."

I opened my mouth to tell her just that, that she had an overactive imagination, too much time on her hands, and nothing more. But my spells of 'insanity' over the past few months were real. My profound longing to see Sam again. My certitude that she was safe. How my attitude towards her had become so psychotically unstable. In the end, all I could tell Piper was "It sounds a little strange."

She merely shrugged. "Well, I warned you about THAT."

|| Teal'c ||

"Who's going to tell him?" sighed Doctor Frasier.

The air in the control room was viscous and heavy, as though bad news could transform the very molecules it was comprised of into something too substantial to breathe. Indeed, Daniel Jackson, his hand touching Doctor Frasier's shoulder, seemed to be having some difficulty drawing breath. Anthony Warren appeared to be in shock, having forgotten his need for oxygen altogether, and even General Hammond, one of the most composed, self-possessed men I had ever met looked as though he was utterly aghast.

I had prepared myself for this news.

"I will tell him," I vowed to my friends, to Hammond and Captain Warren, the Doctor and Daniel. I would tell him what the Tok'ra representative had told us: that Carter and Martouf had not returned to the base or to the jump site, and had not been present on Deault's world. The Tok'ra were certain that this could mean only that they had been captured or killed by the Jaffa there, because where else would they go?

Where else indeed?

Sitting in front of me, positioned in front of the computer where the unfortunate transmission had been received, Graham Simmons did not move at all.

Yes, there was still the possibility that Martouf had taken Samantha Carter somewhere, but where exactly would that be? And to what purpose? Even if it had been to get her to a sarcophagus, surely they would have returned to the base by now, or at least contacted a member of the Tok'ra or Tau'ri. Certainly Lieutenant Colonel Carter knew how important she was to us, how much we valued her friendship and missed her presence.

Only perhaps she did not.

Tearfully, Doctor Frasier addressed the General. "I don't know how this is going to affect Jack, sir. He was so certain, and to find out she's probably dead--"

"She's alive."

The doctor sucked in such a sharp breath that it nearly sounded like a scream, and the others, faces registering alarm, whirled in Colonel O'Neill's direction.

He was still somewhat pale, and his eyes were hooded, but he was dressed and stood tall in the doorway of the room. Behind him, in the hallway, a thin woman with brown hair and eyes watched him with both awe and pride.

"Colonel!" gasped Frasier, and I watched her carefully for any sign that she might be having a medical problem of her own. "What the hell are you doing up? I am ordering you to get back to the infirmary this instant! Now!"

"No need, Doc," said O'Neill quite calmly.

The woman, who I now realized was one of the doctor's assistants, stepped forward. "It's true, Janet. We were talking, and then suddenly he just... sat up. The rattling in his lungs is gone, his temperature's back to normal... and most importantly, there isn't a mark on him. Not even from the surgery. Not a scratch. He's in perfect health."

Doctor Frasier made a small choking sound that indicated disbelief.

"And so's Carter," declared O'Neill, casting a sideways glance at the assistant. "I have no idea what's going on or what this is about, but I don't care what the Tok'ra told you. Either they're lying or they really don't know what happened. Either way, we've got to find her."

"Son, we've got an alien armada showing up on our doorstep in a matter of weeks." General Hammond's voice wavered slightly, the only testement to his incredulity at the entire situation. "I hate to say it, but we've got bigger things to worry about."

"Yes, sir," O'Neill replied, his eyes flashing in the dim light. "Just remember this: The Tok'ra might know what's going on. They might have lied to us about Carter.

What else have they lied about?"

The End.

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