Author: Eventhorizon7
Rating: T
Categories: Hurt/Comfort/Romance
Spoilers: Meridian/Ripple Effect
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters they belong to Stargate SG-1 and MGM studios etc. I am making no money from them and sadly never will. If I did own them, believe me Sam and Daniel would have had much more fun with each other.
Summary: During a chance encounter with an alternate Daniel, Sam realises that there could be much more to her life.
Author's Notes: This is a Sam/Daniel pairing. Anyone not comfortable with this pairing should not read this story. Hope you enjoy. Please leave a review as they are like oxygen to authors and help to breathe life into new stories.
Ripples From The Heart.
Sometimes I think that I must be going crazy. That this bizarre and surreal situation is some figment of my overworked and tired imagination. Either that, or I'm in the middle of the most peculiar dream that I have ever experienced.
I mean, how else can I explain the fact that I'm standing in a room full of alternate versions of myself? Some so close to who I am that they could practically be Xeroxed copies of me, while other's so off the mark that they stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.
It is true that many have the same intellectual acumen as myself. Only two chose not to pursue science for their degrees, choosing instead to immerse themselves purely in the military side of our nature. Those who did take the same path as me have their own unique theories as to what is going on. This is both a blessing and a curse because each theory has to be checked out...in depth. Sometimes it's just so hard to wrap my brain around it all and contrary to what Mitchell might think, it isn't that easy working with...well...myself.
To say that it is freaking me out is a massive understatement.
I take a moment to look around , observing the body language of all the different Sam Carter's that surround me. Listening to their voices as they vocalise their thoughts. Watching as each individual me puts their mind to work on solving the problem at hand.
My head starts to swim with the cacophony of noise and I want to jam my hands over my ears and just tell them all to shut the hell up.
God! This is what it must be like to have multiple personality disorder.
Instead I take a deep breath and decide that it might be a better strategy if I just leave the room for a while and take a breather. I've been at it for over six hours and quite frankly I'm going around in ever decreasing circles.
I make my exit and walk slowly down the corridor back to my lab, at least that hasn't been overrun yet. Gradually the noise level decreases and I'm once more left alone with my own thoughts.
I can't believe that there are now officially eighteen alternate SG-1 teams deep within the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain. With each new emergence from the Stargate it looks more and more likely that General Landry's earlier words are becoming prophetic.
The SGC is literary becoming the ‘Grand Central Station of the Multi-verse.'
I sigh to myself as that unwanted thought drifts across my tired mind. Unless we can fathom this out, we are going to reach crisis point within the next few hours.
I cross the welcome threshold of my lab, enjoying the fact that my lights are low and that they throw shadows across the room. Sometimes it's good to have the juxtaposition between dark and light.
I do my best thinking in the dark.
I sink gratefully into my desk chair and fire up the laptop, humming softly to myself as I wait for it to reboot. Swiveling to my right, I snatch up the empty coffee pot and cross to the sink to wash it out. May as well get as comfortable as possible. I return the now clean pot to the stand and switch on the machine, the slurping sound of the percolator kicks in, followed by the welcome smell of the rich, dark brew as it seeps into the coffee pot below.
I inhale the fragrance as if it were the scent of a loved one.
"Costa Rican or Columbian?"
The voice momentarily startles me and I quickly glance around my lab trying to pinpoint its source.
"Daniel?"
What is he doing hiding in the shadows of my lab?
There is a long silence and I peer into the darkness, trying to pick out his silhouette in the gloom. I can see nothing.
"Daniel, are you okay?"
"I thought I would be strong enough to do this." He declares, his voice a soft whisper. "I thought I could do this without you noticing. A brief visit, nothing more. Enough to replenish my soul and be gone without you even being aware, but this is so much harder than I ever expected."
"Daniel?" I query again. "What are you talking about? What are you doing hiding in the shadows?"
I hear a muffled noise, the swish of clothing and I realise that he had been sitting on the floor and that he was now rising. I hear him take a first hesitant step and then stop as though he can't quite bring himself to face me. The unaccustomed hesitancy alone sends a jolt of alarm through my body.
Why is he acting like this? What has he found out about what's going on? Why is he so hesitant in my presence?
"Daniel, what the hell's going on? " There is a trace of fear in my voice that I don't like admitting to.
He must detect it too because suddenly I hear him take two quick steps forward, until he is bathed in the artificial light from one of the small lamps in the room.
Unwittingly I gasp as the light falls across the man before me.
This isn't the Daniel from my reality.
He isn't even close to being that Daniel.
Logically I should have known that this particular scenario was possible. After all wasn't I the one that posited the idea all those years ago. According to ‘string theory' for each alternate world that is almost identical to our own, there would be others, those strings furthest from the centre, that would evolve a dramatically different path.
There is no other explanation for the Daniel Jackson that stands before me. The one clothed in the full, Class A dress blues of a U.S. Air Force Colonel.
A full bird Colonel no less.
I gape at him wordlessly. My eyes sweeping over his uniformed body, taking in the insignias, the rows of medals, the name plate with the word ‘Jackson' neatly stamped into it. I notice that there are no silver wings pinned to his chest, an indication that he is not a pilot.
There are other noticeable differences. Gone are the glasses that so encapsulates the man that I have come to know. I wonder if they have been replaced by contacts or whether this Daniel never developed the stigmatism that befell my friend. His posture is different too, gone is the almost ever present slouch and I know that this Daniel would probably regard stuffing his hands in his pockets to be akin to a cardinal sin.
He stands tall, proud and so very self assured, all the hallmarks of a veteran military officer and I am curious as to how his life could have diverged so differently from the gentle archaeologist that I know.
"How do I measure up?" he asks, a hint of amusement in the intonation of his voice.
I shake my head, trying to clear it of all the unanswered questions that start to bubble to the forefront of my mind. I focus instead on the best way to answer his question.
"In all honesty, I'm not sure what to make of you." I raise my eyes to meet his. They are intensely blue. As blue as the Daniel that I know, but they are also guarded, hiding secrets that belong only to this man. "You are so very different from the Daniel Jackson that I know...sir."
It feels so alien calling him ‘sir.' The acknowledgement of his higher rank sounding foreign to my ears.
There is a long pregnant pause. Neither one of us knowing what to say or do next.
"Coffee?" I cross to the coffee machine and pull two mugs out from a cupboard underneath. I don't wait for a reply, if he is anything like my Daniel I know it's a given. I hear him walk up behind me as I pour the steaming brew into the mugs. I turn and pass one over to him, which he accepts gratefully. He takes the seat next to my workbench and I sit down in my desk chair, swiveling slightly so that I can face him better.
"So, why were you hiding in my lab, sir?" I bring the coffee mug up to my lips, blowing across the hot liquid to cool it down. I look across the rim of the mug and see a cloud of indecision cross his eyes as though he is contemplating whether to give up this particular piece of information.
"Have you ever had the compulsion to do something illogical and rash? Even though you know that in the end it can never change anything, that all it will do is cause you heartache and pain, but wanting...needing to do it anyway?" His eyes watch for my reaction, intense and bright.
"I can't say that I have, sir." I answer, knowing full well that I am telling him a bald face lie.
He raises both eyebrows in that distinctive Daniel expression that I know so well. The one that tells me that he doesn't believe a word of what I'm saying.
"Really?" His mouth quirks slightly at the edges and I can't help but smile softly back him.
"Well," I finally concede. "Not for a long time, Colonel."
"You can drop the Colonel. Call me, Daniel." He states, taking a careful sip of his hot coffee. "May I call you, Sam?"
He is asking permission for something that he takes for granted every day in my reality. It's yet another reminder of just how different he is. I nod my consent.
"You still haven't answered my question...Daniel?" I take a long pull of the coffee, feeling the warm liquid bathe the back of my throat, infusing me with its restorative properties.
He is silent for a very long time and I know that he is having an internal battle with himself. It is something I have seen Daniel do time and time again. Maybe I will have to reassess my earlier assumption, maybe in some ways they are still the same.
"Let's just call it the selfish whims of a foolish man and leave it at that." He pushes the coffee mug away from him and rises from his seat. "I'm assuming you have a lot of work to do. Don't let me keep you from it any longer. Good evening, Colonel Carter."
"No, wait, don't go." I grab at his sleeve and tug on it gently, not knowing why it was suddenly so important for me to have him stay, but it is. "You don't have to leave." I nod toward his unfinished beverage. "You haven't finished your coffee."
He looks down at the hand holding his sleeve and a wistful expression crosses his face. For a brief moment the memory he is remembering washes away some of the hard edges that surround his features, his lips break into a soft smile. Then in an instant it is gone replaced by an unmistakable sadness.
His hand covers mine and gently lifts it, turning it over so that he can scrutinise the palm of my hand.
"These hands are capable of so much." He tenderly strokes across my palm with his thumb, the sensation strangely intimate between us. "They have saved my life countless times, so proficient at handling a weapon, so deadly with their aim." His thumb starts to rub small circles against my wrist. "They can efficiently take apart and reassemble the most complex pieces of technology." His index finger traces a pattern across my palm and I have to fight against the urge to close my eyes against the feeling. "They have soothed me when I have felt at my most vulnerable. Encouraged me when I have felt despair." My hand is lifted toward him and I feel his lips place a soft tender kiss upon my fingers. "They have protectively cradled the most precious gift of all." He gives me a sorrow filled smile. "I miss them."
He lowers my hand back onto the surface of the workbench, covering it briefly with his own. It is only then that I notice the golden wedding band that adorns his ring finger.
"We are together in your reality?" I ask in a surprised voice. "We're married?"
His eyes sweep up to hold mine with their gaze and the shroud of sadness that I saw earlier wraps itself tightly around him. "We were married." The rest of his explanation seems to lodge in his throat and he swallows several times to clear it.
"What happened?" I ask, wanting and not wanting to hear his answer at the same time.
"You died."
The blue eyes that I have come to know so well fill with tears, a few escape the parapets of his eyelashes and cascade down his cheeks. A part of me instinctively wants to softly brush them away, to pull him into my arms and tell him that it is okay, but I know that I shouldn't.
This grief stricken man is not my Daniel and to all intents and purposes I look, act and sound like his deceased wife.
Nothing good could come from my trying to comfort him, all I would achieve is to painfully remind him of the very thing that he has lost. This must be so difficult for him, so hard for him to deal with not just seeing me, but all the other Samantha Carter's that are littering this base.
I guess I now understand how the alternate Sam Carter must have felt when she was confronted with her dead Jack O'Neill.
His posture has gone rigid, his hands clenched into tight fists as he tries to reign in his traitorous emotions. Slowly, his military decorum begins to reassert itself and I watch as he gradually regains control. He dashes the wet tears from his cheeks with an almost brusque swipe of his hands.
"I'm sorry you had to witness that."
"Don't be." His eyes narrow at my remark. "This must be torturous for you, seeing so many versions of someone you lost."
"More than you could ever imagine possible." His voice hitches slightly on the last word and he looks down at the floor until he can once more gather his composure. "I really should go. I've already taken up enough of your time. I should let you get back to trying to figure out how to put all this right."
"Please, stay." He raises his head to look at me, and I note the quizzical expression on his face. "If truth be told I wasn't getting too far with my theories." I confide sheepishly. "Plus, there are more than enough Sam Carter's working on the problem for me to take a break."
He scrutinises me for a long moment, his thumb and forefinger worrying at his bottom lip as he ponders my request. It feels as though he is looking right through me, as though he is looking for another reason as to why I am so adamant that he stays.
"You're curious, aren't you?" He finally asks, a small knowing smile, quirking up the side of his mouth. "You want to know about my reality?"
"A little curious perhaps?"
"Only a little?" He queries, that knowing look challenging me.
"Okay," I relent reluctantly, "maybe more than a little."
He retakes the seat next to mine, pulling the coffee mug back toward him. "Where would you like to start?"
There are a myriad of questions that I could ask him. Why did he join the military? Are his parents still alive in his world? Did he ascend? However, they are not the questions that are gnawing away at the forefront of my mind. The ones I want to ask are more personal and in a way much more dangerous.
They are the questions I have been ignoring for more years than I care to mention. Questions that I have steadfastly buried deep within my mind, because they threaten to destroy something that has become an intrinsic part of my life.
My friendship with Daniel.
This is the first reality where I have been with Daniel, where we are together as a couple. Does that mean that there could be a chance for us? That maybe my Daniel feels the same about me as this Daniel felt about his lost wife? I ask the question anyway, knowing that it is likely to open up a can of worms.
"I want to know about us?" His eyes slide away from mine to focus on the counter, his fingers playing with the rim of the coffee mug. Belatedly I realise how stupid I have been. How could I have been so callous when only moments earlier I had seen firsthand just how painful this subject was for him. I decide to back pedal. "I'm sorry. That was thoughtless of me. That's probably the last thing that you want to talk about."
"No. It's okay." He reassures me. "What do you want to know?"
"Are you sure?" He nods his head in agreement. "Then I guess I'd like to know how long were you married? Whether she was in the military and how did you get together?"
A genuine Daniel smile breaks across his lips, the one that he uses when something I have said has caused him amusement. "Where do I begin? Hmm, let's see." He pauses briefly to collect his thoughts. "Okay, the answer to your questions are as follows. We were married for six years, she was an air force Major and we got together due to the correct application of pressure."
"Excuse me?" I feel my eyebrows knitting together in confusion. "That last explanation needs...some explaining."
He chuckles at my confusion. "I bet it does, but don't blame me, those are your words, not mine."
"Huh?"
"Okay, I'll take pity on you." He declares, his blue eyes twinkling in merriment. He leans forward in his seat, taking my hands into his and holding them softly in his grasp. "Sam and I became lovers seven years ago. We had been tap dancing around the whole subject for two years prior to that, because she was my 2IC and I was her CO. One night she came over to my apartment and we had a long, long talk. We admitted everything that we felt for each other along with all the reasons why we couldn't pursue it. "
"But you decided to go ahead anyway?" I ask and he nods an affirmative. "I still don't get it, where does applying the right kind of pressure come into it?"
"According to Sam, any object in the physical world, no matter its tensile strength, can be manipulated, given the right amount of pressure is exerted at the correct stress point."
He smiles at me, waiting for the proverbial penny to drop and when it does I can't believe I've been so obtuse. "It means you decided to bend the rules...not break them."
"Who would have known that you," he pauses, " sorry.. she... had a flair for semantics." Daniel muses fondly before continuing. "We managed to hide everything under the radar for a year without giving the powers that be any reason to doubt our abilities or our professionalism. In the end we presented them with a fait accompli. We were married not long after that."
"But what about Sha're?" I ask, wondering what had happened to her in his reality.
"Sha're?" He replies, his eyes narrowing at the question. "Who is Sha're?"
"Your wife."
"My wife?"
"On Abydos." I confirm for him. His blank stare forces me to elaborate. "In our reality Daniel was married to Sha're on Abydos. He stayed with the Abydonian people for a year after the first mission returned to Earth. He was expecting to live out his life with her until Apophis stole her away and implanted her with a Goa'uld."
"I went to Abydos on the first mission, after Catherine Langford opened the gate, but I didn't get married and I certainly didn't live there for a year." He realises that this time it is his turn to elaborate. "I went on the mission in my capacity as a linguist. I was assigned to work alongside the first contact team. If the mission was compromised we had orders to blow the gate with a tactical nuclear weapon."
I realise that this is where my Daniel's path veers irrevocably away from this Daniel's. I have no doubt that the Daniel before me would have carried out his orders had he needed to, just like our Jack would have carried out his, if the device hadn't exploded on Ra's ship.
"SG-1 is the designated first contact team. It comprises of myself, Dr Elizabeth Weir, Major Mitchell and Teal'c. It's our job to instigate trade and diplomatic relations off world." He leans forward in his seat. "However, when things turn sour we are more than capable of fighting our way out of trouble."
I guess that answers my unvoiced question about what he does in the Air Force. I decide to curtail anymore questions regarding that area of his life and concentrate once more on my original enquiry.
"Were you and Sam happily married?"
"Very." He replies brushing a hand through his short cropped hair. "She gave me seven of the most wonderful years of my life and something much more precious." His hand dips into the inside pocket of his dress uniform and emerges holding between his fingers a couple of battered looking photographs. He places them on the workbench before sliding them tenderly toward me.
The first is their wedding photograph. The alternate version of myself beaming broadly dressed in a profusion of white silk. Standing next to her, is an equally beaming Daniel decked out in his best dress uniform, all shiny buttons and medals. An Air Force guard of honour, swords raised in salute, forms an archway in front of them as they emerge from the church service.
"That was the happiest day of my life." Daniel murmurs softly. "The second happiest, was the day that she was born."
His fingers gently drift across the second photograph, lingering over the outline of a little girl. She has long chestnut hair, soft blue eyes that speak of an intelligence far beyond her age. Her smile is unmistakably Daniel's even factoring in the missing two front teeth.
"How old is she?" I ask, studying the photograph in more detail. I can pick out similarities between this child and a younger version of myself at that age, although they are mixed within the qualities that she shares with her father.
"Her name is Amelie, she's five going on thirty." Daniel replies jokingly. "You wouldn't believe just how precocious she is. At two and a half she was taking some of her toys apart to see how they worked. At three she could speak four different languages."
"Must be something in the genes." I state, glancing across at him and he nods proudly at my statement.
I look back at the picture. The possibility that I could create someone so beautiful and precious with my Daniel causes my stomach to flip flop.
Will we ever get the chance?
"The worse thing I ever had to do was tell her that her mother had died." The pride and happiness of a few moments earlier have been swallowed by the chasm of sorrow that I had witnessed earlier. "I never knew grief could be so raw, until I held my sobbing child in my arms."
"You don't have to answer this if you don't want to," I find my hand slipping across his, closing around his fingers and giving them a comforting squeeze, "but how did it happen?"
"Kelowna happened." His voice is full of contempt, its coldness wrapping around those two words like a glacier.
"Wait a minute."Something in my brain clicks into place. "How long ago did this happen?"
"Just over a year ago. We were on an exchange visit. We were interested in their development of Naquadria. While I and the rest of SG-1 were out sightseeing, Sam took the chance to work in the lab with their scientists while they were experimenting with the substance." His eyes grow colder. "There was an accident. The substance became unstable. There was a deficiency in there containment procedures and everyone received a lethal dose of radiation." He shakes his head as if trying to deny the truth of his words. "Sam saved the lives of everyone on that planet. She deactivated the device when nobody else would go near it. She received ten times the fatal dosage."
"Oh my God!" My hand raises unconsciously to my mouth as I contemplate his words. In his reality I was the one who died of radiation poisoning. Given the fact that this Daniel is still mourning the loss of his wife, I can assume that in his reality they haven't made contact with Oma Desala or if they had, my alternate self either didn't qualify for Ascension or refused it.
"You can't possibly believe how terrible it is to watch someone you love slowly die in front of your eyes. To watch their body ravaged by radiation, see them convulsing in agony with the pain and knowing that there is nothing you can do to stop it."
I suddenly turn away, my own mind catapulted back to that awful chain of events in the infirmary five years before. When I watched my best friend slowly succumb to the overwhelming poisoning of his body. Realising at the worse possible moment that I was in fact watching helplessly as the man I loved died. Tears spring to my eyes, the pain as raw and agonising as it was all that time ago.
"Or maybe you do?" Daniel's voice is soft, his words tender with understanding.
I feel his hands on my shoulders, feel him gently turn me around to face him. My eyes are still streaming tears, still caught in the memories of the past. He cups my chin in his fingers and raises it up to look into his concerned eyes.
"Five years ago, it was my Daniel that died on Kelowna." I sob softly, my voice hitching on the words. "I watched him slowly die. Watched the radiation eat away his body, steal his mind. I watched him fade away and felt totally helpless. I couldn't even tell him the truth. I had to make it ambiguous. Even when I knew he was dying, I still refused to acknowledge what I felt."
"I don't understand." This Daniel's fingers softly caress the tears from my cheek. His thumb gently rubs across my quivering bottom lip. "I've seen your Daniel. I spoke to him. He helped to debrief my team."
"It's a long story, but everything I told you is true. I watched him die a slow and agonising death." I find myself drowning in the blueness of his eyes, eyes so much like my Daniel's. "I thought I had lost him. Thought I'd never have him back in my life again. If it wasn't for a meddling Ancient and Daniel's penchant for rule breaking I never would have."
Without my conscious assent, my hands have drifted, splaying against his chest. I can feel the coarseness of the uniform under my touch, the hard ridgelines and sharp angles of the medal ribbons under my fingertips. I can feel the slow, steady beat of his heart.
Warning bells are clanging loudly in my head, like a hundred klaxons going off at once. I should pull away, take a step back. This isn't even my Daniel. This one belongs to another Sam Carter, one with a lot more guts. One that made the conscious decision to go for what she wanted come what may.
Slowly our bodies move toward one another, my hands sliding up his uniformed chest to hang around his neck. Our lips inch closer together, my eyes slipping shut awaiting the sensation of his mouth upon mine.
Awareness suddenly engulfs me with all the aplomb of a cluster bomb.
I'm standing in my lab about to kiss an alternate version of Daniel. A Daniel still reeling from the death of his wife. Neither one of us will be kissing the person they want to be with.
My eyes fly open with that realisation and I take a step backward, my hands disengaging from his neck to hang limply at my sides. Embarrassment floods my cheeks, heating them almost to boiling point and my eyes dart around the room wanting to focus on anything other than the man standing in front of me.
"He doesn't know, does he?" I watch him back off a few paces, thankful for the extra space he is giving us. "You've never told him. Not even after five years?"
"No." I respond honestly, unsure myself at this point why I insist on keeping up the charade.
"Why?" He asks, curiosity in the tone of his voice.
"I don't know." I finally manage to look at him again. "Give me a couple of minutes though and I'm sure I could come up with a plausible excuse."
"You're denying yourself something good. Something pure and untainted. A level of love better than anything you have ever felt before." He crosses the room again, taking my shoulders in a firm grip. He shakes me gently. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't waste years that you can never get back."
"It might not be the same for us as it was for you in your reality." I declare, uncertainty and doubt once again asserting itself.
"If my Sam hadn't had the guts to end the ceaseless cycle of second guessing between us, then I might have been in the same boat as you are." His eyes lock with mine, the sadness and sorrow once more taking hold. "I would have lost her without telling her that I loved her. Without having the joy of holding my new born daughter in my arms." His hands cup my face between them. "Unlike you, I wouldn't have had a second chance after her death. What are you waiting for?"
"The right time." I know it's a feeble excuse even before the words leave my mouth.
"It's never the right time, Sam. You have to make it right." He releases my face, taking a step back. "If today has proven anything to you, then it should be the uncertainties that surround stepping through the Stargate."
He turns on his heels and walks toward the doorway, his body falling into shadow and light as he crosses in and out of the diffused lighting in the room. At the entrance he stops, turning around.
"Help me find a way back to my daughter. She is all I have left of Sam." He looks down at the retrieved photographs in his hand. " I can't lose her too."
"You won't." I promise, although at this stage I don't know how I am going to come up with an answer. " Somehow I'll get you back to her."
"While you're at it, you can promise me something else." His hand subconsciously runs across the gold wedding band.
"What is that?"
"Promise me you will find the courage that my Sam had. That as soon as this is over you will tell him that you love him."
That promise is going to be harder to fulfill as I have lived with my uncertainties for so long and I haven't a clue how my Daniel really feels about me. What if I get it totally wrong? What if I go out on a limb, only to have it sawn away behind me?
"Sam?"
"I'll try."
He nods his head, accepting my answer for what it is and steps through the doorway into the hall beyond. He pauses, looking back over his shoulder, a small frown wrinkling his brow.
"Don't trust the team in Black." His eyes fill with concern. "There is something about them, something that doesn't ring true." He takes a moment to sort through his thoughts. "They are not what they appear to be. Watch your backs." With that last passing remark, he walks away, down the hallway to where most of the alternates have been quartered.
I'm left alone in my lab pondering an indecisive future.
I cross to my desk chair and sink wearily into it. Tapping keys on the laptop, I bring the latest diagnostic of the convergence up onto the screen, my eyes playing across the data with renewed vigour.
I will find a way to get all the stranded teams back to their rightful realities. I will return them to the loved ones that they cherish and miss. If I have to work night after night I will solve this problem because now I have promises to keep.
Colonel Jackson has shown me that there could be a chance for me and Daniel in this reality. There is a possibility that we could find the joy and happiness that he found with my alternate other. When this is all over I will find the courage to tell Daniel exactly how I feel and pray that he feels the same. If we can discover a fraction of the love I have witnessed this night then we will be truly blessed.
I know now that the insight that I have seen is worth fighting for.
It's worth taking the risk.
The End