Peering Through a Glass Darkly or Her Mother's Daughter
It rained the day he brought Sam home. The sky was gray and the air was unseasonably chilly. He didn't notice. She breathed in her first fresh air in seventeen days, and the clean smell of the rain made her smile.
A nurse wheeled her to the door and helped her gingerly out of the wheelchair while he pulled the truck around and parked as closely to the curb as he could. He ran across to open the door and help her in, and it was just as well that he was too excited at the prospect of getting her home to notice her already too-pale features whitening even further at the sight of the human-sized dent still visible in the passenger door.
He drove carefully, acutely conscious of her frailty. Instead of bristling under his protectiveness, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and endured the trip in strained silence. He placed a reassuring hand on her knee, and she smiled and placed her own hand with its black and blue bruises from the IV's over his and squeezed.
"I can't believe I'm finally going home," she said, her voice weak and her eyes still closed. He couldn't tell whether the pain meds weren't quite doing their job or if it was all too much for her. He thought he should have a snappy rejoinder for her or at least a confidant grin, but he couldn't work either one up...in fact, he counted himself lucky he wasn't crying by the time he pulled up next to the house.
When he opened the door to help her down, she didn't climb immediately out but leaned against him. He put his arms around her until after a moment she was ready to face her homecoming. "I love you, Sam," he whispered into her hair. She weakly shook her head against him. "What?" he asked confused. "I do, you know?"
She looked up at him and said, "I know...I know. You must have said it a thousand times since I woke up...and I love you, too." He smiled at her in rueful acknowledgment and didn't tell her he'd easily doubled that number the two and a half days she'd lain still and silent under the machines and the doctors couldn't tell him if she'd live or if she'd die.
"Want me to quit telling you, then?" he asked.
"No. I kind of like it...let's go in now. I'm ready to face the troops." And the troops were ready for her. They were all there anxiously waiting to see for themselves that she really was still with them. They'd all been up to the hospital, of course. All visited her with yet another bunch of flowers or balloons or both for the ledge by the window. They'd all shuffled about the too-hard, too-high hospital bed and avoided staring at the unfamiliar tubes and machines, the flashing screens of the monitors, the bruises, and the dressings.
They'd all been there to assure her of their love and concern in subdued, self-conscious hospital voices, and to assure themselves she really was going to make it. Still, he knew they wouldn't really believe it until she was home. Death had hovered too close at the hospital where they'd paced too many halls, drank too many cups of stale coffee, and stared too many hours out its glare-proof, empty windows trying desperately to believe that inevitably their waiting wasn't going to end with 'Taps' and a new white cross in the green grass of Arlington. She might have done better with a quiet homecoming, but he'd read their raw need to be there in their faces and he hadn't denied them the opportunity.
She was weak and shaky but capable of making the short walk from the pick-up to the couch. Not only capable, but recovered enough, he thought, to resent the implication she wasn't. So he hung back and let her although it took more effort for him not to help her than it did for her to shuffle along on her own. By the time they'd made their slow progression to the door, he'd taken all he could. He gathered her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold like a groom with his bride. He paused in the doorway and said, "Welcome home, Mrs. O'Neill," in an attempt to disguise his true intent and then carried her down the hallway to the living room where everyone greeted her with undisguised delight and relief.
Well, not quite everyone. Ally was off in never-never land where she'd been more or less since the accident. And Peter swayed on his feet in the middle of the floor and stared solemnly at her without his usual toothy grin. Jacob's joy at having her home had to be enough. He'd been lectured left and right about being careful around her and he did his two-year-old best. He'd climb carefully up to sit next to her and lay his head gently over on her for a few seconds, but then his excitement would send him scooting off the couch and bouncing about the room again. She watched him with a smile that couldn't quite hide her apprehension when he bounced too closely. When he settled briefly at her side, she rubbed his hair, kissed his upturned face, told him again and again how much she'd missed him, and blinked back tears of joy she didn't think he could understand.
In the center of the room, Peter fell down on his diaper when Jacob bounded by and clambered unsteadily back to his feet. He'd learned that while she'd been gone. He'd still been using the couch to stand the last time she'd been at home. Still been her nursing baby who'd given her a triumphant grin when he'd conquered each new step on the road to independence, but now he stared at her unsmiling and gave Lois and Cassy his grins. He'd refused to come anywhere near her at the hospital and apparently things weren't improved just because she was home. As far as he could understand, she'd abandoned him. He'd come around she knew, but...understanding didn't make his rejection any easier.
Her emotions were all too raw. Tears were always threatening to run down her cheeks and half the time she didn't feel like she could breathe because her throat was choked with sobs she was continually swallowing down. Perfectly normal reaction under the circumstances. Nothing to worry about kind nurses and hospital social workers had assured her...it would pass in time along with the pain and the nightmares. And in the meantime, she sat in her living room amidst all of the laughing and chattering people who loved her and wanted to weep.
It must have shown. Jack carefully sat down on the other side of her and put an arm around her. He leaned close and asked quietly, "Did you need me to send everyone away?"
"No," she said and they could both hear the tears in her voice. "It's not that...I want them here...I just need to cry for some reason."
"Well," he said holding out a box of Kleenex to her, "go for it." She laughed and shook her head, and the tears for the moment receded.
Peter chose that very moment to take his first, hesitant step. The room cheered his success, and he basked in their admiration. Daniel and Grandpa both grabbed the cameras, and with much shouted encouragement he repeated his momentous accomplishment for prosperity. He plopped down on his bottom, looked around at the smiling faces all turned his way, and suddenly grinned at Sam. At that moment, he forgave her everything. He hefted himself up once more to his feet and with determination triumphantly toddled the few steps to her.
Jack laughingly picked him up with a hug and sat him on his lap next to her. As though he understood the need for gentleness, Peter lay his head over onto her and patted her knees with his little baby hands. Sam smiled down on him through her tears, and from her other side, Jacob placed a brotherly hand on his back. Grandpa snapped a picture before turning and saying, "Let's get Ally over here for a family picture-Ally, come here."
Daniel sat down the video camera to take Ally's stiff shoulders and direct her over to the couch. Jack put out a hand and pulled her over to his side. She stood there rigid and blank through an entire barrage of pictures. Jack grinned like a man who has just been given the reprieve of a lifetime, and Sam smiled weakly beside him like a woman who had been told she'd survive but only partially believed it. Jacob and Peter grinned into the camera looking so much like their father that Hank wept when he picked up the developed pictures and almost wished he hadn't taken them. But, Lois enlarged and framed the best one and hung it over their new fireplace and it was all right after all.
When the flashing had finally stopped Sam tentatively said "Ally." She reached out a hand to brush a strand of loose hair out of her daughter's face, and Ally flinched from her touch. Sam pulled her hand back and said again, "Ally?" Ally turned her head to glare at Sam for a brief moment. Then she purposely turned her back on her and walked away. The message came through loudly and clearly.
Giving a snort of disbelief and outrage, Jack moved to put down Peter to deal with her, but Sam touched his arm and shook her head. "Let's give her some time," she said through tears she couldn't hide from him. He breathed out a frustrated sigh and settled back down beside her.
Ally marched out of the room and into her bedroom. She'd spent a lifetime shutting out the outside world by closing herself within her own mind. Never before had she needed to shut a door, but today, she carefully and quietly closed her bedroom door behind her. She put her back against it and slid down its pale yellow surface to huddle in a forlorn heap on the floor.
She'd punched her mother before, kicked her, elbowed her, head-butted her and generally caused her a good deal of pain...but never intentionally. Never had she purposely chosen to inflict pain on anyone. Until now. She'd meant to kick Carter while she was down. She'd meant to hurt her, crush her beneath the weight of her hate and anger, and make her cry. And she had succeeded.
She felt sick. A bitter taste filled her mouth and throat and she recognized it as the taste of treachery. Betrayal. She'd tasted it before.
No she hadn't. Carter had. Huddled against a different door. On board the Prometheus traveling home from another save-the-world-or-die-trying mission. Actually, a 'save-the-universe-and-all-that' sort of mission according to Sir. And she hadn't died trying though she'd wished she had.
It hadn't been her call and it hadn't been her choice, but it had been her hands that set the timer to run out before Fifth could escape, and it had been her mouth that had uttered the treacherous lies that betrayed his trust and robbed him of his chance to be something more than a heartless replicating machine. She'd obeyed orders, and she'd condemned an innocent man along with the guilty. She'd promised him acceptance and friendship, but it hadn't been within her power to make it happen. Instead, she'd given him exile and humiliation.
Ally swallowed down the bitter taste of her own betrayal and wondered about the memory of her mother's. It hadn't come from the Others...they'd compiled their database somewhere in the untold past long before Carter had smiled into Fifth's face and spoken her lies. And it wasn't Sir's because Carter, like Ally, had shut the door trying to hide her shame and guilt from him. He'd never witnessed the scene Ally was experiencing.
Ally thought perhaps it was not a memory at all, but just how he'd imagined she had reacted behind that closed door. But, Ally had his memories of that event too...and he hadn't even known about the door. He'd purposely stayed rooted to the chair on the bridge and left her to come to grips with how the mission had gone down anyway she could. He'd assumed that would involve a great deal of cursing, a certain amount of angry tears, and maybe a bit of wall pounding with a kick or two thrown in for good measure. He had expected and accepted that the anger and hate she was doubtlessly feeling was aimed at him, and he'd feared it wasn't something that they would ever be able to overcome. What he hadn't considered was that Carter was too busy hating herself to give him a passing thought.
No, only Carter had known what had happened behind that closed door. And what her memory of that day was doing in Ally's head was a mystery that Ally couldn't solve. Humans didn't pass their memories down to their offspring...well, in stories and old snap shots maybe, but not on the cellular level, not through the process of meiosis. And if they somehow did, any memories passed on via the mother wouldn't include her own memories because her eggs would have been formed before she had ever begun to amass any memories at all. Ally logically couldn't have Carter's memory, but she did.
She stared inward at the writhing mass of thoughts and memories that filled her head and wondered if there was more of her mother in there. She'd become adept at being able to pull Sir out when she needed him...she still couldn't always make heads or tails out of what she found, but she could usually find it. She'd even begun to be able to consciously find certain types of alien information, the diagrams and images that were universal enough for her to relate in some way to her own limited experiences. It was progress of a sort that had pleased her before when she'd hoped to use what she learned for him.
But it had held no joy since she'd chosen her path of vengeance and destruction. It had held instead only a bitter satisfaction that one day she'd master the Ancient knowledge-hadn't Carter promised her she would? But, there was no hurry. Revenge, they said, was a dish best served cold. Well, hers would be cold all right. Not because it would be better that way, but because treachery wasn't all she'd learned in his arms while her mother almost died.
Along with it, he'd taught her that for all her strength of purpose and all her ability, she was only a little girl. She'd held the power of life within her, but she hadn't had the power to break free from his grasp. There was no urgency in discovering the secrets of the Ancients because she was still too young and weak...she needed time to grow before she could act.
In the meantime, was there more of Carter hidden within the volumes of stuff inside her head or not? If there was--she would find it. Know your enemy was a precept he'd given her and one she'd been struggling to keep all her life-the enemy as far as she was concerned had changed but the precept still held true. She would track down what she could of Carter, and she would use it when the time came to strike her down.
She began a hunt for buried treasure in the recesses of her own mind. At first the results were disappointing...the echo of a man's voice saying, "I have cancer, Sam." She thought the voice might possibly be that of Grandpa Jacob and though it didn't prove anything conclusively, she couldn't find any time he'd said those words in Sir's hearing.
...the smell of baking cookies carrying with it waves of grief. It threw Ally for a loop because if she had to assign that memory to anyone it would be Grandma Shanahan and for certain sure her memories were not lurking in Ally's head--they were related in name only. The only genetic material they shared was in the form of Jacob and Peter. It couldn't be Grandma's memory; had to be Sir's or Carter's.
She traced it past a large amount of alien schematics for a machine whose purpose Ally couldn't begin to fathom and ran smack dab into the source of the grief. It belonged to Carter all right. Ally took one look and fled. She already had enough memories of her mother crying; she didn't need anymore. She huddled in a corner of her mind and fought to regain the equilibrium she needed to continue her search.
Sir came before she found it. He pushed gently against the door, and she sprang up and away for him to push it open. They stood staring at one another for a minute. She let him see the full measure of her hate in her eyes, and in return she saw the sorrow, pain, and fear it caused in his. He'd tried to talk to her more than once in the days since she'd woken on that couch next to Teal'c, but she'd averted her eyes and given him nothing to speak to. She hadn't wanted to hear his justifications. She already knew what they were and already knew they were weak and indefensible. Her strategy had worked; each time, he'd given up the attempt and retreated leaving her to her growing hatred.
Today, she saw, would be no different though she met his eyes and let him see the devastation he had wrought there and hoped he glimpsed the view of the future she proposed to one day rain down on him. A man sowed what he reaped; he had sown betrayal and he would reap it.
He sadly shook his head in denial of everything he read in her eyes, but it changed nothing. He sighed deeply and with an old man's voice said, "Everyone's gone...the boys went with your grandparents. I just put your mom to bed...she's still awake. You could go to her-let her know you love her." He looked at her hopefully, but she knew he couldn't really expect her to take him up on his suggestion.
When he spoke again, his voice had hardened and every enemy who had ever faced their defeat at his hand would have recognized it, "I'm the one, Ally...you want to blame someone for what happened, I'm the one. Blame me...leave her out of it. Whatever you think you are, whatever you're capable of--it's not enough." He turned without waiting for a reply and was gone. The force of his words left her shaking in his wake, but it wasn't enough to move her down the hall to her mother's side. She gathered her own resolve and closed the door behind him.
She would not be numbered among his vanquished foes. With determination, she returned to hunting down the bits and pieces of Carter that hid in her mind. It was difficult, but finding that first one or two made finding the next easier and soon she had collected a small pile of them.
It was, in one sense, her undoing. She'd gone seeking to feed her hate and feelings of betrayal, to harden her resolve and determination, to become even more the thing he feared. But, that was far from what she found.
Sir had given her a painful awareness that without extreme care she could turn into the evil she hated. She'd overridden that, trampled it under her hurt and anger until it couldn't touch her any longer. But, if the bits of him she possessed had been her conscience, what she held of Carter was her fail-safe*. What she saw when she looked into the mind and heart of her mother was not evil or treacherous. She dug deeper sure that eventually she would find the rot beneath the surface and reveal the true Samantha Carter...the one who could deny her daughter the destiny she'd promised her.
Carter wasn't perfect, but then she'd never said she was. As the daughter of a general, she could have coasted by on his stars, but she'd earned every promotion on her own merits and never been content to coast. Even when Jacob Carter had handed her NASA on a silver plate.
She'd taken perhaps a bit more pride in her abilities than she should have and accepted too easily the respect and admiration they gained her as her due, but she'd held on to her own sense of fallibility as well. Everyone else might have looked to her for all the answers, yet she'd never made the mistake of thinking she had them.
She'd held a gun on a lunatic bent on destroying an entire people and hadn't found the strength to pull the trigger to end his reign of terror. And the fact she'd once loved him only added to her shame because no one could say that if she hadn't given up on him he might have been a different man.
She'd run through an open Stargate more than once and left good people to die on the other side when maybe, just maybe, by staying she could have made a difference.
Jolinar had stained her soul with sins she could never cleanse though she would spend the rest of her life trying. But though she carried their burden, they weren't her sins.
She'd followed orders that she'd hated and paid the price in self-loathing and distrust. In doing so, she'd condemned Fifth, and a part of her had died in the process.
She'd overridden safety protocols and endangered an entire planet.
She'd made the bomb that had almost destroyed an entire civilization and Daniel with it. Made it and put it in the hand of the man she knew would use it.
She'd shirked at the thought of losing her mind and let Sir be the one to stick his head in the Ancient device...and then she'd been too cowardly to tell him that she counted his loss too high; that she loved him.
There were other sins and downfalls hidden in the bits and pieces of Sam Carter's life that Ally was able to uproot, but none of them were vindictive or cruel. She hadn't been as good as Sir and Ally herself had always seen her, but neither had she been ruthless or evil. She had acted in her own integrity and taken responsibility for her actions even when she despised them.
And there were strands of strength and goodness in their midst that for all she wanted to Ally could not deny. Carter had fought her own battles with bitterness against her dad, but she'd struggled through to find peace with him. She'd refused to leave Cassy even though she had believed she'd die with her-her assertions to Sir notwithstanding. She had had ever reason to rain destruction upon the Tok'ras' heads, but she hadn't...she hadn't even rained her contempt on them while they spouted off how they never took hosts against their will.
She'd put aside her own desires in the name of duty, acted against her own beliefs in the name of loyalty, and let go of her bitterness and anger in the name of survival...and Ally couldn't fault her for any of that no matter how badly she wanted to.
But, there was one event, she'd avoided...she'd always avoided Sir's version of the event and she would have liked to have avoided Carter's, but suddenly, faced with the crumbling of all the hate and righteous indignation she'd built up against her, she had no choice but to look into them both.
They were intimate and private memories that she'd always shied away from because she had instinctively understood they were not for her, but now she faced them anyway much as her mother had stepped into that small room going on five years before. It was there she knew she would find the seeds of her mother's betrayal. Sam Carter had conspired to bring Ally to life, to give her the knowledge of the Ancients and the ability to use it, and then when it was within Ally's grasp, she'd pulled it away. She'd watched her daughter struggle in the world she'd created for her, given her reason to believe it was worth the fight, and then abandoned it all and made every painful step of Ally's life journey meaningless.
She stared into her parents' hearts and minds at the time of her conception and found that what she'd always known was true...she had been conceived with deadly purpose and intent. Sir had intended her for just what she'd always believed. He hadn't liked what he was doing, in fact, he'd hated it, but he'd believed in it enough to see it through. It wasn't the first, and though he didn't know it then, it most likely hadn't been the last thing he'd found morally reprehensible but militarily necessary; and he'd never failed to do what had to be done.
And he hadn't doubted that Carter would do it as well. He'd known exactly what he was asking of her, but he hadn't allowed that to deter him. And he'd expected no less of her. She wore the same uniform he did. She was a fellow officer, and her being female only figured in because it was the one thing that made the mission feasible. He allowed the fact he loved her to factor in even less...it made it harder on him knowing what he was asking her, and easier because making love to her couldn't have come easier, but it hadn't been a consideration in his decision-making process.
He'd assumed then, and Ally had all the years since, that Carter was there for the same reasons he was. He'd forgotten that day, lost the resolve that made it possible, the urgency that made it necessary. His betrayal in that parking lot had been as much a betrayal of himself as of her.
But Carter. Carter had remembered it all. Hers had been the real betrayal...it justified Ally's desire to make them both suffer like they had made her suffer, it was her vindication.
But, it was bogus. Because she'd never known what made her mother agree to his plan, never understood why she'd let that door close behind her. There'd never been a betrayal just as there had never been an attack that time before she was born when she'd thought she'd been captured and imprisoned.
Because Carter hadn't stepped into that room to save the galaxy. She'd understood what he was suggesting and what it might mean to their side, but she hadn't considered the possible benefits worth the risks. There were too many ways things could go wrong, too many variables outside of their control...it was like handing dynamite to a two-year-old. Carter had thought the chances higher that they'd destroy the Earth than save it, that the whole, crazy idea would blow up in their faces.
And it almost had. Yet she hadn't nixed the mission. She'd considered it rationally and logically, she'd drawn the safe conclusion, and then she'd given the mission a go anyway. Because she trusted Colonel Jack O'Neill and because she loved him.
Time after time, the colonel had led them out to certain death and brought them back alive. There'd been more than enough missions she'd doubted his leadership capabilities; yet every time his choices, no matter how illogical or insane they seemed, had proven his uniform said 'colonel' for a reason. She trusted his instincts-he'd always brought them home. If he believed that this was what the situation required...who was she to argue? She'd swallowed down her own reservations and followed his lead like she had a hundred times before.
More than that she had loved him.
And that was the real reason why Ally was alive, not as a tool in a galactic battle of good and evil, but simply as a child accepted like a gift from a dying man by the woman who loved him. Everything Ally had believed about her conception and purpose had been right, but it also had been completely wrong...her mother had never measured her worth as a potential weapon. She hadn't sacrificed the job and life she loved because she'd believed the advantage Ally might one day bring to the battle would be worth it. She'd willingly paid the price to have Ally because she wanted her. Because she loved her.
There was no way she could have let Ally expose herself for what she was in that parking lot or give up her own life to heal her. Not because it would waste their opportunity to strike a blow at their enemies, but because it would be sacrificing the child she loved. Ally's righteous anger and pain were built not on objective truth but mistaken assumptions and conclusions. She had maliciously plotted revenge for an act that had never occurred.
There comes a time on the journey to adulthood where we all must come to the unwelcome realization that the trouble free, independent life we thought our parents were leading is anything but. That our parents are just as trapped by their own responsibilities and obligations as we are by their heartless demands to clean our rooms and our insurmountable mounds of homework. Rarely, we will meet someone who has obviously failed to let the awful truth set in and we are forced to restrain ourselves from clunking them over the head until they get the message. But, overall it is an understanding to which we all come. Sometimes necessity forces it upon us tragically early, while others hold on to the 'when I'm eighteen, I'm going to...' mentality until we sit on the front row of a high school auditorium with a tassel hanging ridiculously down the side of our heads and realize our time is up. But, either way it comes.
For Ally, it came that day when she peered into the life of her mother thinking she would find a justification for vengeance and found instead the constraining influence of love. She was a long way from completing that journey into adulthood, but she would never view her life in the same way again.
Jack O'Neill's daughter was capable of the same ruthless, willfulness he possessed. But, she was her mother's child as much as her father's; and she knew now that Sam Carter's daughter was made of different stuff. The hate and anger which had been building in her waiting for the day they would come pouring out of her to spew their evil destruction out on everything in their path could not stand in the face of what she'd glimpsed in that dark glass of her mother's memories. The safeties clamped down and the damage was contained.
And suddenly she couldn't begin to follow the reasoning that had produced it in the first place. How could she have believed Sir's action to preserve their secret weapon was a betrayal? She'd always known what he was capable of if that was what was required to accomplish his duty...that he would hold her while Carter died should not have come as a surprise. No, in the end, he'd acted exactly as he had to for the mission to proceed--he'd almost betrayed it all not in stopping her, but in allowing her to act at all.
And Carter...how had she blamed Carter for loving her enough to be willing to die in order to keep her safe. Hadn't Carter said that was what she would do all along? "I could stall them," she'd said, and they'd all known what she was saying. For the wrong reasons, it now appeared. But, the intent had been the same either way...and Ally had accepted the idea of her sacrifice without a murmur. If there had been a monster in that parking lot, it was Ally herself.
She lay her head on top of her folded knees and began to cry. Slow, silent tears at first and then heaving, sobbing cries that forced themselves out of her throat and brought Sir pushing against the door and into the room to gather her up in his arms.
He sat with her on the edge of her bed and held her from him to check for injuries before pulling her close. "Ally?" he asked, "What is it, honey? Can you tell me what's wrong?" But, Ally could do nothing but cling to him and continue to sob. He rocked her, patted her back, rubbed his hand over her hair, and told her again and again as though by saying it he could make it happen, "You're going to be all right. It's all right."
Ally wished it was true, but she was only a little girl without enough life experience to know that one way or another all things do pass...she couldn't believe she would survive the waves of sorrow, regret, and shame flooding her. Yet, eventually, exhaustion quieted her sobs and her tears dried.
Jack rocked his daughter and waited out the shuddering sighs that followed the worst of the crying and then the sniffles. He wasn't at all sure what had happened, but it was the first time in weeks she'd sat on his lap and cuddled against him. He'd missed her, and he'd feared he'd lost her for good...and for the good.
She was so small and vulnerable, just a little mite. But, within her she carried the seeds of Armageddon, and he'd feared as she had struggled and fought against him that he was setting in motion the end of the world. And every time she'd looked into his eyes since, he'd read the reality of his nightmares in her big, blue eyes.
He thought that might be different now though. "Look at me, Ally," he said. She raised her head to him and in her gaze he saw Sam. He smiled into her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. "I love you," he said. She cocked her head at him as though she had some questions about that, and he frowned at her. "You know that don't you?" She gave a small shrug in reply and he said, "Well, you should. I love you very much. You are my little girl, and I will always love you." Tears filled her eyes again, and he asked, "What?"
She didn't give him an answer and he was left guessing. "Are you...are you feeling bad because you've been mad at me-about what happened when your mom was hurt?" She hesitated a moment before nodding her head. "That's uh...you know. Things like that...it's normal to be mad. Bad things-terrible things happen to people and they want to...uh...punish someone for them. They think maybe that person could have stopped the bad thing from happening or...done something to fix it.
"It's was my idea, Ally. We were there because I wanted to go out. I didn't know what would happen, and I wish I'd listened to your mom and let her convince me to stay home. But, I couldn't know...
"And then...I wouldn't let you help....and she almost died because of it. It's only natural that you were mad about that. But, I hope...you see now--that I, uh, I'd have...I'd have done anything." His voice broke and he stopped long enough to fight down his own tears before continuing, "I'd have done anything, Ally, to save her-except for losing you." He shook his head. "She'd never have forgiven me if I would have saved her and sacrificed you...and...I couldn't do it anyway. I don't know what that makes me, but I..."
"I know," Ally said quietly.
"Do you?" he asked trying to not appear surprised she'd chosen to speak to him.
"Yes," she said, nodding, "saving Carter and exposing the mission would have been a waste of resources." He was glad he'd already schooled his features to hide his reaction. She began to cry again, "But, I wanted to help, I did. I knew how...I could see how. I don't want to have to make choices like that...I don't want to."
"Oh, baby...no one wants to...no one should have to. But, sometimes people do...sometimes, you're going to have, too...but this wasn't you, Ally. You didn't let anything happen to your-to Carter. You're just a little girl-it wasn't your choice. You would have helped her if you could have...she knows that."
Ally sadly shook her head. "She doesn't know I love her."
"Oh, I think she does, Ally-"
"I thought it was her fault...I hated her."
"For what?"
"For not letting me save her...I thought...she should have trusted me, she should have let me do it-I hated her. That's what she knows. Not that I love her, but that I hate her."
He blew air out of his cheeks and said, "She understands. She's pretty smart, you know. Way smarter than us. But, if you're worried about it--you could tell her."
The idea obviously upset the little girl. A look of fear crossed her face and she shook her head vehemently no.
"She'd like to hear it...why not?"
"You know."
"No, honey, I don't know. You can trust your mom...she'd never do anything to endanger you...you know that, right?"
"I can't trust anybody, " she said.
He blinked tears from his eyes at the desolation he could hear in her small voice. Oh, sweet little girl, he thought, what was I thinking...how could I choose to do this to you? He tried to reassure her, "You can trust Carter and me...Daniel and Teal'c, your Grandma and Grandpa."
"No one," she said, and he didn't know how to fight against her certainty.
"You're wrong, and it makes me very, very sad that you feel that way. We all love you...none of us would hurt you or let anything bad happen to you if we could help it. Certainly not your mama." He reached out a thumb and wiped tears from her cheek, but there was nothing he could do or say to wipe away the thoughts and memories she lived with of a thousand dangers. "Listen, you don't have to tell her in words, if you don't want to...just go be her little girl. She's missed you, you know?"
"I hurt her," Ally said. "She won't want to see me."
"You know, you might be a pretty, smart little girl and you might know lots of things other people don't know...but you don't know everything. Your mama's been begging to come home to you and Jacob and Peter every since she woke up...she very much wants to see you, honey...and she understands about you being mad-we talked about it, I know. She's not mad at you, I promise." He gave her a small push and Ally climbed off his lap and looked up at him uncertainly. He gave her an encouraging smile and said, "Go on."
She timidly walked down the hall and climbed silently into the bed next to Carter. She curled up next to her and carefully laid an arm on her shoulder. She was afraid of jarring her and hurting her further, and she was afraid of waking her and seeing the pain she'd caused there reflected in her mother's eyes.
But, when Carter's eyes, dull and unfocused under the pain meds, blinked at her, it was, as it always had been, only love that looked out of them at her. "Ally," Carter said and smiled.
Ally took in a deep breath and tried to find the courage to believe Sir. She opened her mouth to say the words, but they didn't come. In their place, she offered a small, tentative smile. Carter smiled back in surprise. "You have a beautiful smile," she said, her words sluggish and indistinct. Ally knew she did; she had Carter's smile...Sir had made sure of that. Carter placed her arm around Ally and shifted her closer. Ally buried her head against her and cuddled up into her like she had that long ago day when she had first been born. "I love you," her mother whispered, and Ally knew it was true. She raised her head to smile once more at her mother, but the meds had already pulled her back under.
Sir stuck his head around the door and smiled to see her curled up beside Carter. She smiled back, lay her head down again, and felt at peace with herself and with her world. He crept in and stretched out on the other side of Carter and they slept away the afternoon.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~
Every day, Sam grew stronger. Grandma and Grandpa Shanahan brought the boys home to stay though they spent their days and a good part of their evenings at the house. They insisted it was their pleasure to cook and clean, and Jack thanked God everyday he'd invited them to make the move. With them caring for the boys and watching over Sam, he was able to return to the Mountain, half-days at first but then full-time. One way or another, Sam could accept from them the mothering she couldn't from the rest of them.
She chafed under the solicitous care everyone else gave her. She was forced to fight to make the trip from the bedroom to the couch without someone hovering at her side. It was a given she wasn't allowed to pick up her own babies, and she figured she should be grateful they let her use the bathroom on her own. When she suggested maybe she should boot up her computer and see what her work load looked like, the resulting fireworks exhausted her much more than sitting for a few minutes at the machine could possibly have done.
It was all too much. Jack was no help; the less she did the happier he was. Janet was a bad as the others. Even Teal'c couldn't seem to get it through his thick skull she was ok. He treated her like a small child and watched her as though he expected her to collapse at any moment.
"Listen, I know they mean well...I do," she told Lois one day, "but...lock the door-don't let any of them in today. Please. I just can't deal with anymore of this! I might as well be back at the hospital."
"We can try," Lois said dubiously, "but if we do...it will be a toss-up whether they call Jack or the rescue squad first. You're just going to have to let them get it out of their system, Sam...you gave them a terrible scare. You gave us all a terrible scare. Give them another day or two..."
"I suppose you're right. We won't lock the door, but...they are all on the schedule for the day except Cassy. We've got to find her something to keep her busy."
"We'll send her off to the park with Jacob...Hank can use the break," Lois promised her, and Sam had spent the time feeling wonderfully liberated. She'd enjoyed holding Peter without someone saying, "Careful there" or "Better let me take him," taken a long shower without anyone knocking at the door to make sure she hadn't fainted, and she'd managed to type up her preliminary results to the work she'd been doing the day of the accident. That was probably a mistake...it would have been better to just have continued the work and not sent the report as Jack was not a happy camper when it filtered across his desk two days later...how was she to know he'd taken to actually reading reports since becoming a general?
Nevertheless, he did get the message: she was alive, and, if not well, at least on the road to recovery. He passed the word to cool it to the others, and she was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief without three people asking her if she was all right.
Life once again took on a sense of normality. She was able to get back to work though for every hour she did, it seemed she spent just about that long lying on the couch with Ally watching the boys play. Both because it took that much out of her and because it wasn't just everyone else she'd given a terrible scare. She was incredibly thankful to be alive.
Something had changed in Ally since the accident. The few times she'd been brought up to the hospital, she'd been so withdrawn and ...empty that Sam had thought they'd lost her, that she'd disappeared into never-never land and would never find her way back. She hadn't even given Jack the time of day but stood stiff and unseeing the whole time she'd been there, and Jack had admitted she was the same at home. And then that terrible moment when Ally had made it all too plain she knew the way back but had no intention of taking it. Sam shuddered every time she remembered the look in her daughter's eyes that day.
But it had never returned, and Ally had come back to them. To a degree she'd never been before. The world registered on Ally now. Though she never joined in, she watched the boys play. Twice Sam had seen her reach out a hesitant hand and pat Peter's back when she'd been rocking him to sleep.
After four years of never acknowledging their existence, she had begun to accept the Shanahans. One day she quietly appeared at Lois' side in the kitchen and solemnly watched her mix up a cake for Father's Day which had passed unnoticed and uncelebrated while Sam had been in the hospital. Her grandmother, having spent years tiptoeing around her sensitive granddaughter, had hardly known what to make of it.
Tentatively, she had offered Ally the beater to lick and just as tentatively Ally had reached out a hand to accept it. She'd stood awkwardly holding it. Lois had gently guided it to her mouth and marveled when Ally didn't stiffen at her touch. And when she'd asked, "Do you like that, sweetheart?" Ally had solemnly nodded her head. Lois had knelt beside her with her hands tightly clasped to keep herself from hugging the little girl and frightening her away and cried. Ally had soberly finished licking the beater, and Hank had stood frozen in the doorway afraid to move and wishing he had his camera.
A little later, Ally peered into the laundry room door while he folded laundry. He carefully approached her, wrapped her in a soft, warm towel fresh from the dryer, and picked her up. She had snuggled into the warmth and almost afraid to breathe he'd carried her out to the rocking chair and sat down with her. She'd sat there with him until the towel's warmth had faded away and then slipped out of his lap and off to find Sam. Those few moments holding Ally were the best present he had ever received-Father's Day, birthday, or Christmas.
And her thawing extended to the others as well...even Cassy. She'd join Teal'c on the couch while he watched Star Wars or some other movie. She wouldn't watch herself, just sit beside him. She'd listen to Jack and Daniel spar and once Daniel almost thought she'd laughed when he'd managed to score one on Jack. When Sam was beating Cassy at chess, Ally would occasional reach out a small finger to point out a move to Cassy...a development that left Jack shaking his head in wonder.
It was the smile that meant the most to Sam. Her somber-faced little girl was actually capable of appearing happy. It didn't happen often, but every now and then a smile would transform her face and she would be for an instant a normal little girl. The first time it happened, Sam had been so drugged up with pain meds she'd thought it was only a dream. She had never been happier to be proven wrong.
Ally's smiles seemed reserved for only the immediate family...Jack got the lion's share, and then she and Peter. Jacob got a few and just as surprising he also received an infrequent, exasperated sigh when he bounced too close to his sister or got too noisy.
"I don't know what's gotten into her," Sam told Jack. "But, if it's because of the accident-well, I'd-"
"Don't even think it," Jack cut her off. "Nothing would be worth going through that again!" Sam hadn't argued, but she thought seeing her daughter happy was worth it all. Even before Ally had been born, she'd accepted responsibility for Ally's happiness. It had been her call that condemned her child to a life that could never be ordinary. She'd placed on her daughter the responsibilities of the galaxy, and she'd understood they'd both pay for her selfishness. But, she'd never anticipated the awful isolation and terror Ally lived in. She'd thought Ally's life would be difficult, full of hard choices and dangers; but she hadn't thought it would be heartbreakingly sad. Seeing Ally smile healed more in Sam than a broken body.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Those days with Sam regaining her strength and health and Ally learning to smile were good days for them. Jack thought he had never appreciated the goodness of life more, but...
There was still a raft hidden in the riverbank waiting for a day he hoped wouldn't come even while he believed it was inevitable. And one of the first things Sam had asked him to do when she'd come out of the coma was to get some things to add to the supplies already stashed in his hidden little cubby hole, so he knew the future still cast a dark shadow in her mind as well.
But, it really wasn' t the future that worried him when he would look over and catch a brooding look on her face. He carefully avoided her eyes at those times, but he knew sooner or later he would have to answer to her for those few moments he'd hesitated in that parking lot. He put it off as long as he could giving things time to settle, giving her time to heal.
But one day, he lay down next to her in their bed, traced her face with his fingers, and said, "I need to know where we stand."
She didn't pull away from him, but she went still and quiet. She didn't ask what he meant, and when she answered he knew she understood exactly what he was asking.
"I don't know, Jack," she said. "You gambled with my daughter's life. How am I supposed to feel about that?" She gave a small sound that might have been a snort or might have been a cry. He waited silently for her to continue, because he had no answer for her. "All those years we were on the field together, all those impossible missions...and every time, we walked back through that Gate. No matter how bad it had been, no matter how bad the odds we always came back. And everyone would shake their heads and slap your back and talk about O'Neill's luck.
"But no one's luck holds out forever. Sooner or later it always runs out, but yours never did. Mission after mission you always brought us home. That's not luck. That's instinct, that's ability...being earthbound, I guess I'd forgotten that, but I won't again.
"You gambled my daughter's life and if you would have failed I would have died hating you, do you know that? Just like if things had ended differently I would have a dozen times or more out there...
"But you pulled another one out of the fire. There's a reason you've got two stars on your shoulder and why you'll have more before you hang up your uniform. I shouldn't have forgotten that. I should have trusted you...and I do, Sir, I do.
"I know you're who I want with Ally when they come for her. If anyone can keep her safe, it's you, Sir. I won't take her from you. We're here to stay."
She was wrong. He hadn't made a brilliant, strategic decision there in that parking lot...he'd done exactly what she'd thought he'd done. He'd gambled Ally's life for a chance to save hers. And with her words and with every continued breath she breathed, he'd hit the jackpot. But, not because of skill and not because of ability.
Dumb luck. That's all he'd ever had going for him, and it had failed him more than once...there was a grave with his son's name on it, there were scars on his body and his soul from that Iraqi prison, and men he'd brought back to their families in body bags to prove it. He didn't deserve her forgiveness and he didn't deserve her trust, but she fell asleep beside him believing that he had something more than dumb luck going for him.
With the exception of Daniel, she'd served on the field with him longer than anyone. He would have thought of all people she would have been the one to see him for what he really was, but he was happy enough to know she could be as wrong as the next guy.
Her and Daniel, the Bobbsey twins, the two smartest people he'd ever met and neither one of them with the sense to see him for what he was. "You're a better man than that!" Daniel, great all-powerful being that he was not, had insisted with the utmost sincerity and earnestness...
And he'd been just as wrong as Carter. Out on the field, he'd lived in dread of the day some alien technology like Urgo would provide them a front row look into his mind and expose him for what he really was. That Tok'ra device capable of showing them his every thought in Technicolor...he'd done his best to shield them both from the man he saw in the mirror.
Because he didn't want to see the look in their faces when they saw him. He shuddered at the thought, turned onto his back, and found Ally staring at him in the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains. He drew in a startled breath.
She tended to crawl into their bed some time in the night, but he usually sensed her long before she arrived to stand solemnly at his bedside. He knew when he wasn't there, she slid in next to Carter without waiting. But, she was always careful to make sure she didn't surprise him by creeping into his bed without his knowledge...because of all people she did know him, knew the danger he possessed, knew in his sleep training and experiences that he wished he'd never had might take over and sneaking up on him in his sleep might be the last thing she ever did.
He squirmed under her gaze: she was to his great regret and sorrow intimately acquainted with the man in the mirror. But, when he held out a welcoming arm, she gave him one of Carter's best smiles and scrambled up the bed and over him to wiggle into the warmth between him and Carter. He drew in a shocked breath, but it had nothing to do with the fact her feet were cold. She snuggled up beside him and fell asleep as easily as her mother had before her.
He had always dreaded the day he would look into Carter's eyes and see the horror, disgust, and disappointment that would be there when she finally saw him for who he really was. But...before Ally he was stripped down to his very core, and yet, she could still look at him with Carter's eyes and smile.
"Be your mother's daughter, not mine," he'd once silently begged her, and he realized now she was. He turned carefully to his side, encircled them both with his arm, and slept easily in their love.
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When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: (The Holy Bible, I Corinthians 13:11 and 12a)
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*A fail-safe or fail-secure describes a device which, if (or when) it fails, fails in a way that will cause no harm or at least a minimum of harm to other devices or danger to personnel. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-safe)
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Inside the Dragon's Egg
by OffworlderKapitel Bemerkung:
As I've stated before, this wasn't supposed to be this kind of story...I'm willing to concede there will be no happy ever after here, but I'm not willing to let this story end with States of Readiness. This is once again my attempt at damage control...Site Navigation
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