She acknowledged the commander of GateTeam 1, "Captain Eriksson." He nodded his head in her direction and ran a practiced eye over her and Daniel to make sure they were properly equipped for the mission. He'd been thoroughly briefed and was well aware they'd both been doing this a long time more than he had. Still, she respected that he wasn't taking anything for granted. His team milled about behind him and seemed as eager to begin the mission as she was herself.
There were a few last minute remarks from General Landry; good luck and God speed sort of stuff here before the troops. None of the "I don't trust you, Colonel...watch your step and remember you're only out there to do the job we've assigned you" she'd earlier received from him behind the Admiral's closed door or the "Watch her--don't let her out of your sight" she was relatively sure the Captain had received during his own private session with the General.
Landry, like so many of the military men who had met Daniel over the years, seemed to hold no suspicions about him. It wasn't just the missing limb either. She'd seen it happen many, many times before. It was a tactical advantage that Jack for whatever reason had rarely capitalized on, but one she intended to exploit to its fullest. Military minds looked didn't look on him as an asset. Instead they saw him as someone who would slow the mission down: a scholar, a civilian, a hindrance, and a responsibility.
And that was exactly how she wanted these men to continue to think about him, so with exaggerated care, she turned and checked Daniel's pack as though she didn't quite trust his own preparations. "You sure the leg is up to this?" she asked him in a soft voice intended to reach their teammates' ears.
He frowned at her in momentary dismay, and she avoided his eyes. She might be capable of using him, but it would never come easy. They'd talked about the pain, the frustration with the doctors and therapists and the prosthetic. But the leg itself--or the lack of it--and what that meant to him, that they had never discussed. As a friend, she'd tried to keep the door open if he ever needed to talk about it but she'd left it up to him. Professionally, as a team leader, she'd hoped that her silence on the subject would speak for itself. That he would understand that it wasn't an issue, that she knew he was still a capable and productive member of SG-1. That he had not been compromised or diminished as far as she was concerned.
She thought that was probably as important to him as she knew it would be to her, and that's why she wouldn't meet his gaze. Not waiting for him to fumble out an answer or protest, she patted his shoulder bracingly and turned back to the Captain. "We're as ready as we can be, Captain," she said and was happy to see Eriksson narrow his eyes at Daniel for a brief moment.
Admiral Forester of the SGC seemed content to let the Air Force General see off his troops. He'd spent only a few moments with her outside of the hours of briefings they'd both slogged through. He'd used them to offer his thanks for her part in Baal's defeat, and to ask in a mild, inoffensive way if she found the Navy's SGC to compare at all favorably with the Air Force's. If he questioned her loyalty he didn't feel it necessary to throw the fact in her face. She had liked what she'd seen of him, but she did not regret that she was about to destroy his apparent high opinion of her.
She had after that last phone call thrown off all regrets. Her decision had been made. It was the only decision she could make. More than that, it was the right one. She'd been trained to make hard choices, and regrets played no part in them. All her focus from here on out had to be on fulfilling her mission, doing what had to be done, acting like the Air Force Colonel she was. Maggie Clark/O'Neill had never existed and never would.
They'd already spent the time necessary to find a reality that opened up not to another SGC storage room or lab but the alien one on P3R-233. The mission called for them to transition through the Mirror to the abandoned planet and there locate a communication system capable of contacting the Asgard.
If there was such a system on P3R-233 it was news to her. Certainly the planet had before it's destruction sent out a message that had reached all the way to Earth...but to the Asgard? Not unless they were insystem for one reason or another. But, there'd been enough of the truth in the story to sell it to the admirals and generals who'd okayed the mission. (Funny how this government that had sent them out to live their lives in deceit and dishonesty readily accepted their words and stories as the truth as though they did not know that there was no honor among thieves or truth among liars.)
The team secured the immediately vicinity and then spread out looking for equipment she'd described in great detail. Equipment which existed not even within her imagination. Almost immediately, Daniel 'tripped' in the dim lighting of their torches. He fell awkwardly in a heap near the base of the Mirror and stayed there. In the process, he damaged his prosthetic limb and proved she'd been crazy to insist he should be allowed on the mission. Worse he'd managed to turn off the remote as he went down so that they'd have to spend time searching not only for the communication system but also for their reality.
"I'm terribly sorry," he apologized earnestly. "I'm fine here. Just go ahead and find the comm system. I'll stay out of the way."
"Daniel," she protested. "You're hurt. We need to find our Earth and get you back. The mission can wait. Captain, we'll have to come back...chances are we still have time before the Replicators--"
One of the lieutenants interrupted her, "Surely, Captain, that's hardly necessary. The man says he's fine...it shouldn't take long to locate what we're looking for."
The captain looked to Commander Dyson, his second in command. "Begging the colonel's pardon, but if Dr. Johnson insists he is fine, we'd be wasting time we do not have to delay the mission, Sir. Rawlins and Cuhl can locate our reality and escort the doctor back to Earth while we continue on," the commander recommended.
"Right," the captain said decisively. Addressing the two lieutenants he said, "Rejoin us as soon as the doctor is safely back at the SGC."
Sam shook her head dejectedly at the order but did not persist in her attempt to get her friend the aid he needed. He winced as he rubbed his thigh and said, "I'll be all right. Don't worry about me."
"Spread out, men, let's get what we need and get out of here," Eriksson ordered. The men gave a chorus of 'aye, aye, Sir's and fanned out again while Rawlins and Cuhl began their task.
"Let me get him some Tylenol," Carter said before moving out to help with the search. Eriksson nodded his assent as he and his team moved out of the small storage room into the echoing chambers beyond it. She stripped off her pack and began to dig through it.
Both Rawlins, his head down fiddling with the remote, and Cuhl with his eyes peering into the dark rooms visible in the Mirror and ignoring what was going on around them fell with one shot of the Zat she produced from her pack. She tossed a second weapon to Daniel as soon as he had scrambled to his feet and they moved quickly and soundlessly together to follow the others out of the room.
The team's torches lit only small swatches of the large rooms and sent tall, eerie shadows skittering about them. Under their cover, she and Daniel moved into position and then she breathlessly reported into her radio, "Captain! We have incoming hostiles through the Mirror! We need back-" Daniel opened fire on the team members nearest the storage room. She waited a beat before taking down those farther on.
There had been no time or place where they could firm up or even formulate their plans, but there had been no need. Things could not have gone more smoothly.
"Let's grab our stuff and go," she said already moving back to the storage room where they'd left their packs along with Rawlins and Cuhl. She intended to be through the Gate and far away before anyone returned to consciousness.
"Wait, Sam," he said, and she paused in her hurry to hear what he had to say.
"It doesn't have to be this way, does it?" he asked. "All or nothing? Not with the Mirror."
"I don't understand," she said as she fumbled with her own torch to light his face enough to make out his features.
"Remember what you said back in my apartment?" She shook her head dumbly. There was a clock ticking away in her mind insisting that their time was limited unless she was prepared to risk injuring the members of the GateTeam. He knew all that. He also knew that she was indeed prepared to go even that far if he left her no alternative, so he rushed on, "About the alternate realities and how we couldn't really change them? Unless we went back in time there too, they'd continue on? They wouldn't be changed."
She shrugged her shoulders in apologetic incomprehension and started off once more towards their gear.
"Sam, think. We could find a reality so close to the one we've been stuck in...Jon and the boys--they could continue on." And finally what he was suggesting sunk in. She stumbled to a stop and threw an almost panicked look over her shoulder at him. "Couldn't they?" he asked.
She looked over the still forms of the men around her as though they held the answer to a question she couldn't even begin to formulate. Then she looked again at Daniel. "I don't know, Daniel. Maybe. It will take time...if we stay here-the GateTeam. If we go through the Gate, we take the chance they'll remove the Mirror and we'll lose it. We need to get them out of the way."
They worked rapidly to secure their fallen teammates before any of them had time to shake off the Zat's effects. Years before, she'd spent several frantic hours searching for Daniel here and knew exactly where there were a series of closet-like rooms which would make passable cells. By the time they'd locked the last of the team into solitary confinement, they could hear the muffled complaints of Rawlins and Cuhl as they fought their way back to consciousness. They left them to it while they went back to the Mirror.
"So," Daniel said as soon as they entered the room. "It will work, right?"
"It...it...in theory...it sounds like it might work. But I've go to think. Figure this out." She looked at him with the shadows of her doubts and fears hovering in her eyes. She'd worked hard to put all these soul-destroying what-ifs behind her and she was afraid to open the door to them again. But, if it was possible, if they could let both worlds live on, if Jon and the boys didn't have to be wiped out of existence...it would be worth every moment of torment she went through analyzing the possibility.
"Okay, you figure. I'll see how close of a reality we can find," Daniel said. She watched him begin to dial in various realities, but her mind was not on the assorted dark storerooms that flitted in and out of their view. It was a painful, dangerous thought, and she knew she was the last person who could be trusted to trace it's logic and potential and come up with an objective, honest appraisal.
Not to mention, the whole who's really who question that arose anytime these sorts of things intersected.
If they saved Jack and the world in this universe they were in right now (or any of them for that matter) hers were truthfully still lost in another, but for all practical, understandable, perceivable purposes? The Carter and Daniel who were rewritten into the reverting timeline would never know the difference. Their world would be righted and would continue on as it would have if Baal had never shaken its foundations. That was, had to be, her primary purpose.
And Jon and the boys...if in one reality or another, they let time go on in its unnatural course then at least in that one reality the man and boys she loved would continue to live on. Even if it wasn't the actual man and boys she herself had left just the day before.
"Daniel, I don't know if you can find one as close as it will have to be," she started to say doubtfully because she knew her own resolve to right the timeline, but she couldn't know anyone else's. Not even another Carter's. She would never entrust her world and Jack's life to someone who might at the last moment choose to stay where they were, choose to live out what time they had with Jon and not rock the boat, not take the chance that their fix-it job might not be successful. And even as she knew her own resolve, she knew how tempting that choice was.
She started to warn Daniel, but she didn't finished. Because the image that he pulled up in the Mirror then was so identical to the very moment she was living that she could see the words falter on her counterparts lips at the same time they did on her own.
She stared at her reflection in the Mirror and knew if Daniel's idea had any merit at all, it could be taken a step farther. If they could split realities and save both worlds in doing so...she met her own gaze through the Mirror and together they licked their lips and frowned at one another. If they could do that then one of the two to them staring at one another's wide eyed, white faces could stay behind.
There was no need for both of them to disappear in the mists of time. One could go back in time and save their world and the other could stay in the alternate reality with Jon and the boys and be there to help save their world the next time it was threatened. As it was certain to be if they were able to remove it from time's clutches.
And why wouldn't it work? A parallel reality arose at every fork of the road. Cam had created the world she was gazing into through the Mirror when he'd refused her pleas to join them after all. At least she thought that was a safe assumption, because his curious gaze from the Carter standing next to him on his side of the Mirror to her own face was the only difference she could spot between the two realities.
There might be more, but the important ones, the vital ones...she and Daniel there prepared to do what had to be done, no hesitation, no uncertainties just as they were. These mirrored selves had faced the same choices and came to the same conclusions or they would not be here in this split moment of time...both Daniels needing a hair cut, absently rubbing a tired hand over their aching thigh, staring curiously at one another; both Carters, dressed identically, running a hand through tousled hair, locking eyes in dawning realization and recognition.
Together they nodded their heads in acknowledgement. They'd made the same decisions, lived with the same regrets and fears, and chosen the same path. It was nothing in either of them that had placed them on opposite sides of the Mirror. They were the same person. If she trusted herself, she could trust the woman in the mirror. There was no reason for one of them to not stay behind in the preserved timeline. Not if this whole crazy idea of Daniel's worked.
The thought had always been that one or more of the three of them trapped in this misbegotten timeline would go back in the past and rewrite history to what it should be. That very act would effectively wipe out who ever didn't go back in time while the group that did would have to live their lives out back there (holding their breath and stepping very carefully in order to avoid additional damage to the timeline, of course). Either way none of them would be going back to the world they were determined to save. They died in their own pasts or they died when the timeline was rewritten.
And for one of them that was unchanged regardless of what hocus-pocus they could accomplish with Daniel's mirror trick. But, the second group couldn't go back in time and change a thing. Not if their purpose was to preserve the altered timeline and let the people and lives on that world that shouldn't be continue. And if that was the case then the Carter, Daniel, and Cam of that reality could live on as well. There was no need for them to die in their past and no possibility of them being rewritten by a timechange that wasn't going to happen.
All the soul-searching and guilt to bring her to this spot had been necessary so she could look into her counterpart's soul and know and attest that whichever one of them went or stayed the world to which they owed everything and the man whom they both loved more than any other would go on. They were each committed to the cause, but if at the same time one of them could somehow not betray the man and boys in a boat out somewhere on a quiet lake in Minnesota, then that made the task immeasurably easier for whichever one would see it through. And if one of them could benefit by staying, neither one of them was so foolish as to throw away that possibility.
"Okay," both of her said to their Daniels. "This could work..."
Cam stood on the one side of the Mirror and said to no one in particular, "What do you figure they did to me?" But he might as well have been absent from both realities for all the attention anyone paid him.
"Okay. I didn't think quite far enough ahead, I'm afraid," the Daniels said in unison to their respective Sams while staring at their counterparts in the Mirror. "How's this going to work?"
Both Sams put an open hand up to their mouth in thought before answering, "We switch over, unless..." and for the first time they took their eyes from the Mirror and looked at the man beside them, "...unless you don't want to go on. If," and here they bit their lip and threw a guilty glance at his leg, "You don't have to go...I could go on myself. You could let time..."
Both Daniels watched the Sam in the Mirror and avoided the eyes of the woman next to them. "Right," they said with a sigh. It was not a new thought to either of the men. Sam, when she'd thrown off the most of her depression and started to live again, had hauled him out of the deep well of despair behind her. Her focus and determination had opened up the doors of usefulness and purpose to him once more.
But, he hadn't found the happiness she had. He'd never scrounged up the courage or recklessness--whichever it would have been--to make that call to Janet. And he'd seen too clearly Sam's pain and fears to cast his net in less troubled waters. So, he'd long thought that when it came to it and they'd be forced to give up their lives here, however satisfactory or unsatisfactory they might be, and go back in time to do whatever it would take to right the timeline...well, he'd thought, if it wasn't a two man job, he'd let her go on alone. He'd let time wipe him out and start over with another Daniel.
And he wasn't sure that wasn't still what he wanted. But, it was far too early to tell at this point. He didn't even know how she planned to get back in time, let alone what she'd have to do back there to get the job done. She might very well need him.
"I'm going," both of him said and the Sams smiled up at them with tired relief that they didn't have the time or energy to disguise.
Cam frowned at the interchanges going on around him and said, "What about me?"
"I thought you were in on this," the Carter beside him said frowning over at him and for the first time no longer mirroring Sam.
"That's not what I meant--I told you I'd go along with this and I'm not backing out again. But, I mean if you go through to their reality and they come through to ours...where does that leave me?"
"That's not quite how it's going to work," the other Sam told him as she and her Daniel emerged from the Mirror to join them.
He coughed to cover the start she'd given him. "So like..."
"We're not trading places," his Carter explained to him.
He made a 'mmhmm' sort of sound and both Carters gave him an understanding smile and opened their mouths to give him an explanation, realized they would both be doing the same thing, and neither one continued on. He cleared his throat and turned to the woman who'd traveled to this world with him for an explanation.
With a cautious glance at her counterpart as though for permission, she complied, "It wouldn't gain us anything. We'll get a lot farther if we put our heads together and work things out first."
"Really?" he asked with the doubt clear in his voice.
"Of course," said the woman who hadn't traveled to this world with him. "In the end, we'll have to decide whose reality remains as it is and whose reverts back..." her explanation petered out as Cam strode over to his pack and rifled through it.
"What are you doing?" the Daniels both asked him curiously.
"I'm taking care of what I can see is going to become a very big problem before this is all over," he said producing a stick of the chalk they carried in their kits for marking trails. Brandishing it, he asked, "Who's first."
Both Daniels shook their heads, the Carters shrugged, and he rolled his eyes at them all.
"Just what are you intending to mark us with?" one of the Daniel's asked.
Taking that as a sign, Cam reached out and marked a large X on his right sleeve under his SGC patch. "How about that?" he asked examining his work.
"Very original," the Daniel said looking at his handiwork. His Carter said nothing but held out her own arm to receive her X.
"Do you feel better now?' the unmarked Daniel asked him.
"Very. Now," he said to the other Carter, "you were saying..."
"I was saying, we have a lot of work to do and I think we need to get started. I don't feel comfortable leaving Gate Team 1 locked up without even the simplest of facilities and only a limited amount of food and water." She didn't need to verify that these people had their own set of imprisoned teammates as they could all hear the muffled indignant calls coming from the outer room.
"So then?" both Daniel's prompted, and they put their collective heads together to find solutions to their two main problems.
If both timelines were to continue, then the Replicator problem they'd pretty much ignored and reckoned irrelevant had to be considered significant and worthy of their attention. And there was still the issue of how to get back into the past and stop Baal from losing the StarGate.
Neither problem seemed too daunting initially. After all they had instant access to an infinite number of realities some of which were bound to have disrupter technology, the Pegasus Replicator virus, or a working weapon at Dakara already modified to take out Replicators...none of which either of their realities had thanks to Baal's little excursion into the past. And surely in one of those multitudes of worlds there was a time machine or passageway they could use more successfully than Malikai had the Ancient machine on P4X-639. Somewhere, somehow Baal had found one...surely they could as well. There was also the possibility of locating a Puddle Jumper equipped with a time device along with someone with the Ancient gene willing to ferry them back through time.
All in all the possibilities seemed endless. So buoyed with hope and anxious to complete their mission, they ensured they would recognize their respective ways through the Mirrors home and began a treasure hunt across a myriad of realities.
They found relatively quickly that they'd been overly optimistic. There were in theory infinite universes but the great majority had never seen the development of the Ancients. The great majority of those that had had been destroyed by one cataclysmic cosmic event or another in the past million years or so. Very few of those that had survived thus far had managed to keep their quantum Mirrors (if they had had them to start with) intact and functioning...and on and on it went until the choices were much, much more limited than it would have seemed possible.
Which wasn't to say their task was impossible, but it was more involved that they'd anticipated and much longer than the GateTeam members locked in their solitary closets with only the water and rations from their packs to see them through found comfortable.
And at some point, it became apparent that Replicators were drawn to the energy signature of the Mirrors. The Replicator problem took on an unexpected urgency about then.
Thankfully, it was not a transdimensional problem. The Mirrors on the various worlds they acsessed and/or visited were not in use long enough to attract the unnatural creatures. But the Mirror they were using as their base of operations sent out its enticing energy signature throughout that particular reality. The Replicators responded promptly and in great numbers.
When they first heard the eerie, metallic clicking of thousands of mechanical insects arriving in the outer chamber, only the marked Carter and Cam were there.
"Tell me that's not what I think it is," Cam said.
"I wish I could," Carter said. "Listen, these Replicators have probably never faced an attack from humans...they probably will not see us as a threat-"
"Or Eriksson and his men?"
"As long as no one starts firing on them, they should just pass us by." That 'as long as' didn't go far when it became apparent that the bugs were after the Mirror itself. If they lost it they'd lose any hope of escaping this reality and making any difference in either of the worlds they'd left behind. They had no choice but to defend the Mirror at all cost.
Though they didn't know it at the time, the others had just successfully procured a disrupter from an SGC which had already decisively dealt with its bug problem and was willing to share with a couple of needy realities. If they had known of the pitched battle being fought on the other side of the Mirror, they would have rushed back to save the day.
As it was, they were much too late by the time they'd verified that this particularly cooperative reality had lost its Puddle Jumping Time machine in the distant past of Ancient Egypt, and its Jack O'Neill had been so spectacularly unimpressed with Malikai's experiments that he'd blown their time machine to bits. They said their thanks and received their 'good luck and God speed' from a General Hammond with a full head of white hair and Gated back to that reality's P3R-233.
Through the Mirror, they watched in shocked horror as Cam fell under the Replicator attack. They rushed through the portal with the disrupter to rescue a bruised and bleeding Carter from the same fate just in time. Shaking with shock and grief she wept in Daniel's arms while the other Carter did what she could to treat her wounds. His counterpart who'd taken just a fraction of a second longer in reaching her side than his alternate, was left standing ineffectively on the sidelines. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder for a brief moment and then turned to check on GateTeam 1.
"He didn't want to come," she said. "I shouldn't have asked him."
"You couldn't have known," Daniel murmured.
"Then how come you didn't bring yours?"
He sent a questioning look toward his Carter. She was studiously intent on cleaning a particularly nasty looking gash and left him to answer as best he could. "I don't really know. He'd made it clear he was done with us after Antarctica...I never--well, I feel awful about it now, but I never tried to see if he would change his mind."
"Don't," she said. "Feel awful, I mean. I should never have brought him here. He'd still be alive if I hadn't talked him in to coming."
The other Carter reluctantly joined their conversation. "No. He made his own decision. He knew the risks and he chose to accept them. Our Cam...I called him. I begged him to come with us, make a difference--he wouldn't. You didn't drag him out here to die; he made that choice himself." And there was little to say after that.
~*~*~*~*~*
The men locked in their cramped and lonely cells had had their own experiences of the Replicator attack. The creepy, metallic sounds would haunt their nights for years to come, but secured behind locked doors with no Replicator-enticing technology to draw the automatons to them, they survived the attack unscathed.
They were still in the dark about the original attack that had landed them in their cells and could only guess at what sort of battle they'd just heard. By then, they'd been confined for most of a day and well into the night. They'd spent a good deal of that time, fighting to dismantle doors or knock holes in walls and shouting muffled questions and plans back and forth. They'd learned very little from one another. Their whole team was present and accounted for which was certainly something to be thankful about.
But they'd had no word from either of the Colonels or Dr. Johnson which concerned Captain Eriksson considerably. The doctor, incapacitated from his fall, and Colonel O'Neill had both been in the Mirror room when the original attack had occurred. Colonel Mitchell had been only meters away from the door. Eriksson was fairly certain that he had responded to O'Neill's call for back-up which placed him right there as well.
His two men from the Mirror room had survived that attack uninjured but neither of them was at all clear about what had happened. It was altogether possible that the three members of the defunct SG-1 had been lost in the attack. The general might shake off the loss with a 'good riddance', but the admiral would be extremely displeased.
More than once as they had prepared for this mission, Forrester had emphasized how valuable he believed these three to be. "Mark my words, Captain," he'd said, "Earth needs these folks. It's not every world that is given fair warning about what's out there. They not only know what we're likely to run into, they've survived it. The folks wanting to shut them out are fools. Bring them back safely, Eriksson. Baal was just the beginning. We need these folks if we are going to survive out there."
Eriksson had looked around the dusty, abandoned rooms and felt sure there was nothing threatening in them. Except for possibly SG-1 themselves. He hated to admit it but he'd been more concerned with the general's suspicions than the admiral's concerns. As a result, he'd made the job of whoever had come through that Mirror easy. He might as well have handed SG-1 over to them himself.
~*~*~*~*~*
Daniel, walking quietly to avoid them hearing his echoing footsteps, listened to their anxious calls checking on the welfare of one another before he turned back to his own shaken teammates.
"Eriksson and the others seem okay," he reported from the doorway, and the silent group in the room raised their shattered faces to acknowledge him. He winced at the pain and sorrow in their gazes.
Except for the months they'd spent together in Antarctica, he and Cam had seen nothing of each other over their years of exile. Neither had made the slightest effort to keep in touch with each other before then or after. And truthfully, even in Antarctica they'd spent very little time together besides those Sam had orchestrated or the job had dictated. He'd been more angry than hurt when Cam had bailed out on them then. And it hadn't occurred to him to ask their old teammate to reconsider joining them when their long wait had drawn to a close. The shame he and his counterpart shared over that lack of concern and interest on their part mingled with their sorrow over Cam's death.
As for the Sams, it was one more command decision to weigh on their soul.
He frowned at the both of them. Neither was turned where he could see which wore Cam's X, but that was no longer a problem. His Sam had been ravaged by the bugs; her body and uniform bore the marks of that attack. She was also the one who'd convinced Cam to leave the safety of civilian life and journey with them to his death, and she couldn't have looked any guiltier for it if she'd shot him herself. But, the other Sam looked no less stricken, no less responsible.
And that he thought exemplified the spirit that had put all four of them in this room, attempting to deny fate and time, accepting the responsibility of righting what very well couldn't be righted. It was why they had not settled for second best in the altered timeline. They had responsibilities to those they'd left behind and to one another. And they were unable or unwilling to let them go.
Only Cam had found his new life a satisfactory substitute for the real thing. Cam. Well, that, he thought, decided which reality would continue on and which would be returned to the right timeline. Cam lived happily on in the other Sam and Daniel's world. That world would be left to continue on and their own would vanish in time. That was the decision he knew they would all come to in the end. Their guilt was too heavy for them to choose otherwise.
He'd misjudged only one thing in his train of thought.
His Sam fought against the painkillers her counterpart had doped her with and said, "We uh..." She shook her head then, slowly and purposely letting the physical pain the movement caused her to override her emotional suffering. Forcing herself to put that aside and get on with the mission, and pulling the rest of them along with her. Just as Cam had insisted she do in that frozen ship after Jack had been killed. She restarted, this time with the control she'd lacked the first time, "We managed to get what we need."
"What is it?" the other one asked. "Did the Replicators get it?" He watched them both in a sort of detached fascination. Their military training had taught them the necessity of pushing to the side everything but what mattered to the mission, and experience had showed them it was at times essential. But it was Jack who had taught them how to do it. He'd perfected that particular skill to an art form. Watching them, he couldn't help but see his lost friend, and it made him more determined than ever to see this thing through.
The drugs slowed and slurred her actions, but she shook her head 'no' and fumbled in one of her many vest pockets to pull out a carefully folded paper. The others all frowned at the smudges of blood staining it, but she didn't seem to notice them. She held the paper out to the other Sam. "It's the coordinates to Baal's time machine..."
The other Sam carefully unfolded the paper and stared numbly at the symbols on it. "Baal's time machine?"
"Yes. The reality we just returned from? The Tok'ra had discovered Baal's plans and blown it up before he could use it...but that's the planet it was on. You need to go there, figure it out, and fix things once and for all."
"And what about you?"
Her eyes flickered to the bloody paper and she gave a small shrug. "I don't think I'm going anywhere."
"Okay," her counterpart said with no sign she resented the full weight of the mantle of responsibility that had just landed with a heavy thud on her shoulders again. And with no indication, its presence settled the course of her life. The X'd Daniel had been wrong. His was the reality which would continue on giving Jon and the boys a chance to live out their lives. But it wasn't a life that Cam would have a chance to enjoy. The other reality with its still living Cam was the one that would be rewritten.
In that brief moment, it was determined which of the two women would go on as Colonel Samantha Carter and which would become Colonel Maggie O'Neill. It was a very significant moment though neither acknowledged it.
"Did you learn anything else about the machine?" Carter asked.
"No," O'Neill answered her.
"Okay," Carter said standing up. "You've got the disrupter. If any of the Replicators are left out there...you should be able to handle them."
"How will you explain what happened here?" the unmarked Daniel asked the injured woman both because he wanted to know and because he wanted it understood that he would not be staying behind to help sell the story, whatever it was.
The other Daniel answered for her, "What's to explain? It's obvious she's survived an attack. Cam and I didn't."
"Daniel," she said bleakly.
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sam. They might need the back up. You'll have family...you'll be okay without us." She shook her head in denial, but they'd both known his continued existence in her world had never been decided. "The Replicators ate through some of the packing crates out in the main room. I guess they must have had some tasty technology inside them that they couldn't resist sampling on their way. But you can say that's where we were being held. When we heard the Replicators attacking whoever was out here, we broke out afraid they were coming for us next.
As we tried to find a place to hide, we found the disrupter...it must have been one of the artifacts or maybe our captors lost it? How could you possibly know? You'd been unconscious or locked in that box the whole time. Anyway, by then it was too late for the bad guys, and for Cam and me." She looked uncertainly at him, and he said, "Look at you. We pull the bandages back off, snip the stitches...you stagger in there to release them, and collapse. By the time the doctors let anyone start pestering you for answers...you're going to be the hero of the hour. Trust me."
"But what about you?" she asked softly.
He shrugged and stole a line from Jack. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
Before the pain meds started to wear off, they undid all of Carter's attempts at first aid. The Daniels both gingerly helped Maggie to her feet. She swayed there between them trying to stay conscious and upright. Carter put her hands on her shoulders to steady her, and Maggie looked into her eyes seeking confirmation that she could trust her to continue their battle with time. The resolve was so clear in her counterpart's eyes that there was no need for words to pass between them.
She nodded her head in acknowledgement and said, "Thank you." Neither of them were going to end up back where they both wanted to be, but she by default was going to be left to love and be loved by Jon and the boys. She would live on and enjoy a life stolen from time. Carter would pay the price for that life, and they both knew it.
"Just be happy. Don't waste this opportunity wallowing in guilt or regret, okay?" Carter asked her.
"Okay," she agreed. She wasn't sure that would really be possible, but she meant to give it her best shot. It would be different when she went back; her duty to her world fulfilled and her loss of Jack final and irrevocable. In time, happiness might be something she could once again fully experience and not just a memory.
Carter turned back then to open a Mirrorway to the P3R-233 where another GateTeam banged in frustration against their cell doors; and Maggie allowed the Daniels to help her into the main room. They both hugged her carefully and left her leaning desperately against the door to one of the make-do cells. She waited a few minutes to give them time to reach the Mirror, and then called in a ragged, trembling voice that she did not need to fake, "Captain Eriksson? Are you here?"
Heliopolis Main Archive
A Stargate: SG-1 Fanfiction Site
Endless Realities
by OffworlderSite Navigation
Support Heliopolis