by Whyagain
Samantha Carter was not a hummer. That may sound obvious or even flippant. To clarify, Samantha Carter did not hum, sing, chortle, or snap, or do anything else even remotely musical in nature, but she found herself walking down the hallway to the locker room humming and, quite to her surprise, almost singing.
"I once was lost, but now I'm found; I was blind, but now I see."
It was not as if she was extremely happy or anything similar. She was never singing happy. She wasn't unhappy--that wasn't it at all. She just never sang.
Still, she was alone. No one could hear her or her horrid singing voice or her extremely odd song choice, she reasoned over the spray of water. And there was nothing better than a hot shower, especially after being scrubbed quite unmercifully by an Air Force nurse-slash-soldier after two days of semi-unconsciousness and a previous four days of strandedness.
"Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come."
There was a terribly odd beat accompanying her tune, not nearly resembling the one she heard as a child in church. She vaguely wondered what that meant. And she wondered exactly what her sudden sense of song meant.
"When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun . . ."
All right, things could be better. She could be looking forward to an action-packed mission or a juicy naquada experiment instead of facing down two weeks of mandatory leave. Her vision could stop spinning and her stomach could stop lurching. Still, they could be worse. She could quite possibly be crazy. For all she knew, that knock on the head could have done in her nerves. Then, not only would she be crazy, but she would be crazy and singing. But, there was talk of cake. Things were looking up.
"Carter! You decent?"
And up.
"Yes, sir," she answered, toweling her hair somewhat closer to dry with one hand and hanging her uniform up with the other.
"Great. Daniel and Teal'C should be there already--with snacks," he said, shoving the rest of his locker haphazardly into a worn duffle. "Ready?"
He drove, not to her house, but to his.
Much to her dissent, Daniel, accompanied by Teal'C, drove her car to her house two days ago. She would have protested quite vocally, had she been conscious . . . of anything at all. Daniel had the unique ability to forget totally about the road and the cars and the passengers in pursuit of conversation or a rogue glasses case scuttling about the floor. She was sure the man tried hard enough, but it was just not in his personality to stare at anything that wasn't at least three-thousand years old and written in an alien language, much less the road.
And there was a shindig, but no cake.
There were burgers and hotdogs and coleslaw and beer, but no cake. There were cookies and salads and chips and beer, but no cake. Daniel did the shopping. He overdid it, but not on beer and not on cake.
"He will my shield and portion be," she found herself murmuring, "as long as life endures."
She watched Teal'C tell O'Neill he was singeing his burger. She watched Daniel sneeze into a napkin and chuck it onto the pile developing beside the garbage can. She watched her friends vie for control of the spatula and tussle over whose beer was whose.
It wasn't often they got to spent time together like this, the old team back as, well, a team. The colonel always had things to do, Teal'C was constantly off-world, Daniel was relentlessly moving, and she was . . . Well, it was hard to say quite what she was anymore. Before, she described herself through her work, through her achievements, then through her team. Now, now she didn't quite know where she stood. But it felt like home to have everyone together again. It felt better than she had felt in a long time.
"That saved a wretch like me," she sighed more than sang.
"Oh, for cryin' out loud!" she heard him cry. "Carter! Look at these burgers. They're perfect!" he attested, shaking a spatula at Teal'C.
"I disagree, O'Neill. Mine is quite dark around the edges."
"No, it is not. And how do you know which one is yours?"
"I have already picked out my first hamburger."
"Yeah, me too," came Daniel's voice from the kitchen where he was undoubtedly spooning various salads--potato, noodle, and green--into proper bowls. He claimed food wasn't food until it came out of the plastic containers and ingested with real, honest-to-gosh, metal silverware, but that was not necessarily true. "I have dibs on the second one from the left, second row."
"Mine is that one, O'Neill." Teal'C pointed to a rather fat, but still ever so slightly darkened, burger. He returned the stare, smiling in his triumph only a little.
"Yeah, okay. I didn't want that one, anyway," he mumbled more than cursed. "Carter? You want dibs before these two stick flags in all of them?"
She smiled from her place at the picnic table. She had not felt quite sturdy enough to stand any longer, not that she failed her med test or that she would complain. So she just smiled and shook her head.
"You sure? These two are like vultures," he snapped, jabbing the spatula at Teal'C's stomach.
"A life of joy and peace," she whispered.
With a significant look, he passed the spatula to Teal'C, who readily used the prize item to snatched up several burgers. Daniel, spying from the kitchen that control had been relinquished, or maybe usurped (it was hard to tell which), made a move for the grill.
"Hey, Carter. This is kind of your deal. You don't wanna mingle with your fans?"
She smiled. "I am mingling, in my own way. Besides, if it were strictly 'my thing,' sir, there would be no obligation on my part to do any mingling whatsoever."
He chuckled in complete assent and sat beside her on the picnic bench.
"Do you remember any songs from your childhood, sir? like rhymes, poems, songs . . . Anything?" she asked after a moment.
His face darkened as he answered: "I remember the ones Sara used to sing to Charlie."
"No, from your own childhood."
"No, not really." He took a breath, a swig, and another breath, and visibly relaxed a little. "I mean, I had to learn or relearn everything from Sara when Charlie was little--and I mean everything. My father wasn't really a nursery rhyme kind of guy. I did, however, sing every song in St. Peter's Fifth Avenue Standard Hymnal at one time or another."
How uncharted these waters, she thought hazily.
"Catholic, sir?"
"'O'Neill,' Carter. Had you any doubts?"
She just smiled.
"So, why do you ask? Need someone to sing you to sleep, Major?"
Her title struck her a little, but she blamed the conversation completely on the medication.
"When I was . . ." And she faltered. And she collected herself. "When I was up there, there were things I didn't write in the captain's log. There were things I omitted from my report."
"Things . . ."
It didn't really sound like a question, but it would take more than subtle discouragement to silence the small untruths she had ever so slightly avoided, against her disposition, telling.
"Yes, sir."
"Things. Alright."
"I--I saw things."
Blessedly, he was silent.
"I saw . . . people."
"Carter, you had a concussion. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw dancing bears wearing flying saucers for hats."
"I saw people I knew. And then, someone else."
He didn't laugh, but took another drink.
"I saw Teal'C and Daniel. I saw my father. You. And . . . I saw a little girl."
"A little girl."
Also not a question. She wondered at her progress.
"A little girl with blond hair and dark eyes," she affirmed quietly, trying to catch his reaction on his forward features. "I--I know why, or rather what, my other visions were, but, that little girl . . . I don't know."
"You're gonna have to back up a little."
She smiled ruefully. "I know. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But I've been reading about multiple personality disorders used as defense mechanisms, and I think that's what happened to me on that ship."
He looked at her in such a way as to question why she would ever be reading about such things, but never asked. "Still too fast," he told her instead, taking a quick swallow.
"My vision of Teal'C was the first one I saw. He told me to stay awake--helped me to stay alive. That's the most basic instinct any of us have, and he represented that part of me when I wasn't strong enough to recognize it for myself. Then I saw Daniel. He engaged my curiosity and my compassion, when I had no time for either. My father helped me to see myself as I really am--fears, insecurities, flaws--and urged me to change my life."
She chanced a wary look at his face as she paused.
"You know, I'm almost afraid to ask--"
"What you were? You were," and she paused. "You were my guiding light and my grounding rod. You were my determination, my drive, my resolve."
"Not the clown, then."
She flushed heavily, concentrating on the checkered red and white squares on the picnic cloth, knowing she had embarrassed him.
"And the little girl?"
"I--I don't know. She thwarted my attempts to free myself at first, distracted me, but she gave me the inspiration I ultimately needed. She could have been my inner child, my ingenuity, but I don't think so. She was so different from me."
"She led you to your idea?"
"She was playing and singing and blowing bubbles. It got me thinking about bubbles, and the idea was just there. Daniel, er, I-as-Daniel thought it could be the personification of the gas cloud, but I don't think that was it, either. I mean, it was a gas cloud. But, she saved me."
He sighed and sipped. "Just be lucky you didn't have a religious experience. I hear those can get ugly."
She looked at the side of his face, attempting again to gage his reaction. Not only were the waters here uncharted, but they were murky and covered in fog. She knew the ancient mapmakers used to mark unknown waters with the words "Here Be Monsters." For their sake, she certainly hoped not.
"So . . . What's this got to do with childrens' songs?"
"Since all of this, it's happened twice--I remembered two songs from my childhood. The little girl? She recited Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
"And?"
"Now it's Amazing Grace. The little girl told me her name was Grace. I think that has something to do with it, but I don't know what."
"You sure you didn't have a religious experience?"
"Yeah." She smiled. "Yeah, I'm sure."
Daniel abruptly plopped two dishes of potato salad on the table.
"Salad's on and burgers are coming, guys. I miss something?"
"Nah. Carter and I were just talking about religious experiences."
"You know, I've had so many religious experiences," Daniel started. He kept talking, but she couldn't listen without some sort of outburst. At the moment, Daniel's partner looked as if he regretted starting such a conversation. Instead, she went inside for the table settings and ketchup.
She returned to the full table just in time to hear Teal'C proclaiming, in a loud and irked manner, all gods false and the discussion closed. Smiling, she took her seat.
"So why were you guys talking about religion? Did you have an experience while you were on the ship or something, Sam?"
"No, Daniel. Of course, I should be feeling left out that you didn't come to visit me. You visited the colonel and Teal'C to help them through their ordeals, but you just had to be alive when I have mine."
Daniel smiled, mouth full of potato salad. "Not my fault."
"Major Carter is correct, Daniel Jackson. You did visit both O'Neill and myself."
"That's right. Why didn't you visit Carter? Some sort of scientist vendetta?"
"Well, I certainly couldn't visit her this time, being that I was out there looking for her with you guys and--uh--being human and everything. And I'm sure I had pressing, Ancient matters to attend to. There are rules, you know. I couldn't just show up where I wanted. I'm pretty sure I shouldn't even have visited you guys, but it was kind of necessary, I guess. Life and death kind of stuff."
"Isn't it always? But at least you can eat now. That's gotta be a plus."
"Did you not require sustenance while with the Ascended beings?"
She let the conversation wash over her, glad that it had taken the focus away from her. Her friends' concern could be a burden as much as it was a comfort sometimes. That she lied to them on a daily basis was a sin of the greatest magnitude, not to mention living the lie as part of that particular misdeed. She felt no remorse for betraying herself, for it was her choice to make. Still, she deserved their friendship as much as she deserved all the other false praises of the world, everyone ignorant of her secret betrayal.
It was the only secret she kept, the only one she ever knew. Being an officer's daughter, part of a military family, she was privy to plenty of circumstances she could not talk about, but they were always someone else' secrets. This secret was known to her alone, and it was not nearly as romantic a situation as it sounded. And when her heart and flesh should fail, she was sure she would take her secret with her.
But, today, she almost gave it away. The medication, the company, the location--nothing excused her flippant topic of conversation.
A little girl with light hair and dark eyes.
She knew now, figured it out as she was speaking the words to her superior and the notion's cause no less, who the child was, or at the least, where her image had come from. That little girl had her hair and his eyes. The full lips were hers, the stern nose his. The level brow certainly did not belong to her, though she remembered some resemblance around the cheekbones and complexion. She knew the face would haunt and tempt her in her dreams, and resolved not to speak of that little girl to anyone again, certainly not to him. She put those kinds of ideas and thoughts in a box and locked them away. It was her secret box, containing only one secret, that spawned a private world, the world she would call "mine" should the earth dissolve like snow and the sun forbear to shine.
"Carter, you gonna eat anything?"
"Hmm?"
He waved a hamburger in front of her. "Then we can have cake."
"There's cake?"
He smiled. "Of course there's cake!"
"How sweet the sound," she replied.
*~*~*~*~*
whyagain
november-december 2006
*~*~*~*~*
Amazing Grace
John Newton
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures. Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, Who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.