She slept twenty-three of the twenty-five hours she spent in flight and arrived in Minnesota refreshed and a day earlier than she'd left McMurdo. It was just as well.
Jon had taken the boys out of school for the first few days of her visit and then there'd been the weekend. By the time she'd seen, heard, and done all they wanted her to do, she was more exhausted than she could ever remember being.
"I don't know how you keep up with them," she told Jon on one of the rare occasions they'd actually had a moment to sit on the couch and do nothing. He'd laughed, and David had appeared at her knee with a chessboard.
"You said you'd teach me to play," he said.
"That I did. Set it up." And that pretty much summed up the first five days of her visit.
The last days never happened.
"Carter," she automatically answered her phone when it roused her from a deep sleep. Still more than halfway asleep, she didn't catch her mistake. Jon heard it though. It sent a jolt through him, but it only told him what he already knew.
He hadn't wanted to know, and he certainly hadn't wanted to invade her privacy. But, if one day her picture did appear on the cover of the Enquirer...he didn't want to be as shocked as the boys. Someone would have to be there to answer their questions, and that someone was most likely going to be him.
Besides, it wasn't like she wouldn't tell him if she could.
He'd spent a fair amount of time online and at the library reading the articles, looking at her pictures, and listening to her interviews, final words, and even her eulogy. The articles had told him among other things that Dr. Samantha Carter's father, like Maggie's, had been career military. The pictures had proven Marla right; they were the spitting image of each other. The interviews were even more convincing; the voice, the expressions, the smile they were all Maggie, a younger, more...optimistic Maggie, but still very recognizably her.
He'd found listening to the recording of Samantha Carter's last words ("Thank you, Sir. It's been an honor. [This in response to a message from the President expressing the nation's appreciation for her sacrifice] Endeavour out.") unbearably difficult in much the same way he couldn't take remembering that last 'Love you guys' Jamie had called on her way out the door.
He hadn't needed to hear the name coming from her own lips to know that he was married to Samantha Carter, a woman who was living a very corporeal existence more than five years after her well-documented death.
He rolled over slowly to watch her. The darkness obscured her features and turned her face into that of a stranger. A stranger who was physically sitting on the edge of his bed but was who knew how far away. A stranger who'd come to visit as he'd asked but who had yet to truly introduce herself. A stranger he loved. He reached out a hand to place a hand on her shoulder and claim her as the woman he knew and loved, but something stopped him.
Listening to her end of the conversation, he knew that whatever the call was about it wasn't good news.
"Of course," she said, "I'll be ready in the hour, Sir, but if it's them, and I'm sure it is--we're not anywhere near ready for this. What is the status of the Gate?" she sighed in frustration at the answer and shook her head. "That's not good enough. Sir, I think we need to bring the civilians in on this."
She turned then and looked at him. She didn't give him an apologetic grimace at finding the call had awakened him, neither did she give him a reassuring smile to tell him it was business and nothing to do with him. Instead she stared at him as though he were the stranger in her bed as she continued, "I agree, Sir, but-we've got no one sitting in the chair, Mr. President."
Mr. President? As in The Mr. President? Was he actually lying in his bed listening to her speak to the President of the United States of America? Those meetings she'd attended in Washington...there were lots of meetings going on in Washington and only a few of them went on in the White House. He'd had no reason to assume hers had...but Mr. President?
She was focused on the voice in her ear and the thoughts in her mind and if she saw his consternation it didn't register. She said, maybe to The President of the United States and maybe not, "And without it, conventional weapons--right, I've said it all before and I'll continue to say it: we're dead in the water without the weapon. But right now I've got someone who might just be able to blow those ships out of the water...I'd like permission to bring him in. Sir."
"Right here. With me. Yes, Sir, I am aware I will have some explaining to do...but right now? Thank you, Sir. Good luck to you, too." She broke the connection and only then did her eyes seem to register him. Their focused intensity softened and he knew she'd put her mind to telling him her leave was over.
"Jon, I need to get back to Antarctica...now, tonight. And I need you to go with me."
"Me?" he stammered when her words sunk in. "I gathered you were on your way, but...I've got work in the morning and the boys have school. If I keep them out any longer the truancy board is going to have my name."
"That doesn't matter right now. Call Matt and Danny. See if one of them can come stay with the boys--get them to school and practice and wherever else they need to go. You've got to come with me," she said urgently, "and our transportation will be here any minute." She thrust her phone out towards him, but he was still shaking his head at the ludicrousness of her suggestion.
"Fine. I'll do it myself. Get dressed. Now." Even while she'd been arguing with him, she'd been stripping off her nightgown and pulling on the uniform she'd hung in the closet next to his wedding suit five days before. He watched her still trying to get his head around what was going on.
"Jon," she snapped at him and he slowly began to believe the soft-spoken woman he and his sons loved could actually be an Air Force colonel. She shook her head at his failure to get moving and dialed her phone.
"Matt, this is Col-this is Maggie. Your dad and I need to go away for a few days...right away, now...um, can you and Debbie...? Yeah. It's important. I'm not sure...less than a week, I'd think. It's an emergency and I don't have time to explain...Thanks. Thanks a lot." She snapped the phone shut and tossed it to him. He automatically caught it. "Call work and tell them you'll be gone," she ordered him. When he made no move to obey she said, "Or don't. I'm sure when this is over, we'll be able to get your record cleared."
"That...that really was The President on the phone?"
"Yes."
"And, he's going to square it with the mill if I'm gone a week????"
She shrugged as she tossed things into her bag, "Probably not in person...just an aide or someone."
"Oh," he said shaking his head as though all of this made sense, "Sure...that will go over well in the break room."
"This isn't a joke, Jon," she began in exasperation, but the lights from a vehicle pulling up outside flashed in the window. She flew out of the room to get the door before the kids were woken up by the bell. "Get ready now or I'll have them drag you out of here in your shorts," she warned him in a hissed whisper over her shoulder.
By the time he joined Maggie and their guests in the living room, several of the boys were sticking their heads out of their bedroom doors. "Come on out," he told them quietly, "and get your brothers." When they'd all assembled in their rumpled pajamas, he said, "Maggie and I are going off for a quick trip..." and handled the fallout from that announcement as well as he could while Maggie threw unhappy, concerned looks their way and talked quietly and urgently to the three uniformed men perched stiffly on his living room couch.
"Who are those men?" Ty asked suspiciously. "They can't take Maggie away, she has two more days!"
Bryan stuck his hand in Jon's and added, "And you aren't supposed to go away. Ever."
"You can't," Alex said. "You don't have a map."
"All right, boys," Maggie said from the doorway. Jon looked up to see the men had already gone and Maggie poised to follow them. "We've got to go." The boys flocked her with protests and hugs. For a brief moment it looked like the Marines might need to come back in to extricate the pair of them, but she made short work of pulling him away from his sons and dragging him out the door.
The boys were left crying after them. And if he'd been confused and unhappy before that scene, he was downright upset and angered now. He threw her an unhappy glare from his seat beside the driver. She glanced up at him with regret clear in her face, but there was no time for her to offer an apology or him to voice his displeasure before the men on either side of her were thrusting clipboards in her face while murmuring and pointing here and there on the papers as though they needed her blessing. She threw him a repentant look and promptly forgot him.
He watched her frowning over this paper, rapidly scanning over another before shaking her head, pointing out something on yet another, and quietly asking to be shown something else. He watched the men rifle through their piles of folders and clipboards of papers to produce what she was looking for, watched them look to her for direction and instruction, heard their murmured 'Yes, Ma'am's, and tried to reconcile the woman he knew (or didn't as was becoming all the more apparent) with this woman before him.
Once out of the residential area, their transport suddenly produced lights and sirens, and they were summarily running across the tarmac to board a military jet that would make mincemeat of those twenty-five hours she'd spent flying home.
"Mr. O'Neill, I'm Colonel Davis, United States Air Force," a man stated holding out his hand and directing him off to one side of the plane while Maggie and her cohorts pushed farther on. He sighed in irritation and shook the man's hand. "I understand you'll be making the trip with us. If you'll take a seat and secure your restraints there are some papers we need you to look through and sign before we arrive in McMurdo."
There were roughly thirty pages of papers and not one designed to make him feel any better about leaving his sons home and finally getting his chance to fly with the Air Force. He dutifully signed each one anyway because what were they going to do if he refused? Hand him a parachute, a compass, and a map and say, "Okay, fella, so long?"
"Thank you, Sir. We'll be in the air a few more hours, you might want to get some sleep."
"No. I want some answers. I've signed all your papers promising I'll die or sacrifice my firstborn before I tell a soul what I see or hear here...so how about giving me something to make it worthwhile?"
"I'm sorry, Sir. I believe that the Colonel will brief you later."
"Fine. Then how about you take me to Maggie?"
"Maggie? Colonel O'Neill? She's in conference at the moment."
"Right. Of course, she is. All right. I give up. How about a movie?"
"Sorry, Sir."
"Peanuts?'
"I'll see what I can do, Sir," Davis said with a small smile.
"You do that," Jon said and sighed. It was going to be a long trip. He watched the clouds pass quickly by beneath them and wondered how the boys were doing.
When Maggie eventually made her way back to him, his mood had not improved. Before she could even speak, he snarled, "You have a funny way of keeping us out of whatever it is you're up too."
She nodded wearily in acknowledgement and took the seat beside him. "This has nothing to do with that."
"Really? And just what does it have to do with?"
She looked him in the eye and answered, "National security...global security--it's all the same thing in this case. Earth is about to be attacked, Jon."
"Earth's about to be attacked, Jon? Is that the best you can do? I feel like I'm in a video game. And I hate playing games."
"I know, but this isn't a game. Do you really think the President of the United States would have sent a jet like this to ferry us to McMurdo for the fun of it? This is it...we're the first line of defense against what's coming out there. I know you're upset about leaving the boys like that--I am, too. And I know you hate not knowing what's going on. I promise I'll tell you what I can, but don't expect miracles--it won't be nearly enough to satisfy you. I'm sorry, I wish it were."
"Ok," he said throwing up his hands. "Give me what you've got."
"There are a group of technically advanced bad guys in the universe. They're called the Goa'uld. They're egomaniacs who enslave entire planets and destroy anyone who stands in their way. Obviously, we have no intention of letting Earth fall into their hands. There were, a million or so years ago, another group of aliens who have since died out. They left behind them various pieces of technology, one of which we hope to use in order to fight back the Goa'uld."
He nodded his head and gave her a go on look though he was buying none of it. She rubbed a tired hand over her face and went on, "The problem with the Ancient technology is that it is coded to operate only if it is activated by an Ancient."
"The long gone aliens?"
"Right. My team and I have been trying to find ways to interface our systems with it, but so far we haven't found a way to bypass the need for an Ancient. I tried. Please believe me, I tried. I never wanted to bring you down here."
"Stop right there and tell me just what I am doing down here. I know the gray's gaining ground but I'm not exactly ancient."
She gave him a weak smile that wasn't enough to ease his ever-mounting alarm or calm his ire. "The Ancient technology recognizes anyone with a specific gene...it's extremely rare in the population, but a few people living today have it. You are one of them."
"Me? I have some million or so year old alien gene?"
She raised a hand in a 'close enough' gesture and said, "Yes."
"You want to explain that to me?"
She shook her head. "Sorry, Sir...the biologists and xenobiologists will be working on that one for years to come." She laid her head back and closed her eyes. "If Baal gives us the time anyway." She stifled a yawn and worked a kink out of her neck, and he knew she needed to rest.
Yesterday, he would have let her. But, today he didn't feel like doing her any favors. He wanted answers and she was going to give them to him. "How do you know?"
She fought to open her eyes and asked, "Know what, Sir?"
He frowned at her. "Listen, you might be wearing the uniform and all but enough with the Sir's, all right?"
"Right. Sorry."
"Enough with the sorry's already too. Just tell me how do you know I have that Ancient gene? It was that blood work you talked me into a while back, wasn't it? Mine and the boys. It's not enough you've dragged me into this you want to pull them in too?"
"They're already in it, Jon!" she answered him in the same angry tone he was using. "When Baal comes there will be no schools or hockey games, no fishing, no boats out on the lake. Just death and endless drudgery, torture and atrocities you don't want to know about! And I'm just as upset about them being a part of any of that as you are! Where do you think I've been the last three months?"
She visibly calmed herself before going on, "The blood samples were to try to isolate the gene so we could identify military personnel with the same factor. I knew you had the gene, I hoped some of the boys might have inherited it and that by comparing all the samples we might find it faster...it was never to identify the boys as potential users of the technology."
He was not particularly mollified, "That's one thing you better be telling the truth about. If what ever you've got planned doesn't work, I don't want them anywhere near a weapons installation that will be the first thing targeted by your friend up there!"
"I agree. We will not be bringing them down here. I can get the President to guarantee you that in writing if you don't trust me."
"Maybe I should!" he snapped.
She whitened before his anger but managed to hold onto the fact she had a job to do. "I'll get Davis on it," she told him almost calmly. "He'll be getting you settled and briefed on the types of spacecraft Baal will be sending up against you."
"Against me? Me personally?" he asked.
"Against Earth and against the weapon once you bring it into the fight. He won't be expecting it. You'll have the element of surprise."
"I think you have me confused with someone else. I'm not your man. You need a soldier...someone who knows how to fight. By the sounds of it, several thousands of someones who know how to fight. Me, I just fish."
"You only need three things to win this battle, Jon...the Ancient gene which you already have, the certainty that you have to stop Baal from destroying Earth and the boys right along with it, and the willingness to do the job!"
"Really? And armed with all that I can take on the galactic bad guys?"
"Take them on and win."
"Must be quite the space gun."
"Not exactly, but it's extremely effective. It will do the job--if you'll cooperate."
"You can't know that. You don't have anyone in the 'chair'. That's what you told the President. You've never even test fired the thing, have you?"
"I've seen it work in another time and place. I've seen one of these weapons take out a force comparable to Baal's."
"Well, where's the GIJoe who fired it then? He'd have a much better chance of stopping Armageddon than I would!"
A stillness came over her at his words, and he thought he'd hit another dead end. But in a deceptively calm and emotionless voice she answered him, "He died."
He stared at her in disbelief, "Using the weapon?"
"No, no. Later. Baal killed him."
He knew he was missing something because this topic was too charged for her, but he couldn't quite connect the dots. "So, this weapon has already proven ineffective against this guy?"
"Not at all. This weapon is for planetary defense, it's stationary. He died on another planet, in a one-to-one confrontation with Baal."
"Another planet?" he asked weakly, suddenly more than tired of all of this. "When you said, we were from different worlds-"
His words were cut off when Colonel Davis hurried down the aisle and stopped before them, "Colonel, Baal's fleet is on the move. They are advancing past Jupiter right now, and they've sent what Colonel Mitchell has identified as long-range reconnaissance ships ahead. We're getting reports of sightings from all over the globe."
She sagged at the news but nodded her head in acknowledgement. At that moment, the jet banked violently to the left and went into a dive. She reached out and grabbed a handful of Davis' jacket to keep him from careening off into the bulkhead.
Jon fought down a wave of nausea and held tightly to the arms of his seat. "What was that?" he demanded.
"Evasive maneuvers--we must have picked up one of the gliders," she explained quickly to him and then turned to Davis, "Tell the pilot to divert from McMurdo--we can't lead that ship to the base!"
"He won't take those orders from me, Ma'am," Davis said. She nodded in resignation and rose to go to the front herself. As she hurried off she brushed her hand quickly across Jon's shoulder but didn't spare the time to speak to him again.
Colonel Davis did give him a brief, "Please, remain in your seat, Sir," before he too scurried away. Jon stared after them wondering who was going to keep the pair of them from flying into the nearest bulkhead if the pilot was forced into taking farther evasive maneuvers.
He'd been right to wonder because the next time was even steeper and rougher than the first. And things didn't improve from there. Even in his seat he was violently thrown around and had quite a time locating the airsickness bags before the energy bar Colonel Davis had found him earlier left him on the second roll. All in all the flight was definitely not making him regret his decision to marry Jamie instead of joining the Air Force.
But the chaotic flight was nothing compared to the turbulent turn of his mind. And even the most violent of twists and dives couldn't quell the question which was consuming him: how could she possibly know he had the Ancient gene?
She couldn't. Not if he was just the father of some boys she met by chance on the shore of the lake and one thing led to another. Not from the blood samples. She'd confirmed that herself; they were still trying to isolate the gene--they couldn't identify it yet. But, she knew he had it. How? And what did it mean that she knew? He was afraid to answer that.
~~~~~~~
There'd been a day, after Maggie had already left for Antarctica and before she returned, when he and the little boys had been sprawled around the living room watching an old Star Trek rerun. It had been a day just like a lot of others, and then Travis had stuck his head in to ask what was for supper. The happenings on the screen had drawn him in as well.
Drawn him in and entranced him. From the doorway where he was still standing, Travis had pointed at the TV and nodded toward a bearded Spock from an alternate reality frowning at Captain Kirk. "Is that it?" he asked. "Is that what's up with Maggie?"
The boys took it as a joke. As, of course, they would because they all knew that Maggie lived in a different world from them. One where Jello came in blue as well as the more traditional colors; the Minnesota Golden Gophers had not held the national championship since 2003 as though their three consecutive wins in '05, '06, and '07 had never happened; Mars bars were awkwardly called Snickers Almond Bars; and Walmart was open 24 hours a day. The differences between their world and Maggie's were small and insignificant enough to be passed over with nothing more than a laugh and a 'guess I wasn't thinking', and the boys had delighted in catching her out in them whenever they could.
They bandied the idea around during the commercial and then promptly forgot it when the show came back on.
Travis had not been as ready to let the idea go. "Dad?' he persisted.
"Of course not, Travis. That's just TV--well, it's Star Trek, so of course it's not Just TV," he quickly amended before he was attacked from every side. "But it's not real. Maggie's just too smart--she knows too much and sometimes the unimportant stuff gets mixed up in there and comes out a bunch of nonsense. Nothing as out of this world as that," he said motioning at the TV where good old Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were gathered around the Captain's chair once more safely back in their own dimension or universe or whatever it was.
Travis gave him a disappointed look as though aware he was as unwilling as he was unable to answer his questions. He'd gone off to raid the refrigerator and left Jon pursing his lips behind him.
Jon had spent a few minutes the next day googling alternate/parallel universes until he got a headache and came to his senses...he was not really contemplating the possibility he was living in a sci-fi story. Lots of folks confused their facts way more than Maggie.
~~~~~~~
That had been back before he was hurtling through the clouds with an alien spacecraft on his tail. He was finding it much more difficult to dismiss the suggestion now.
Because how could she possibly know he had the gene unless she'd learned it...how'd she put it? In another time and place.
"You're very much like him," she'd said of her dead husband. Remembering her stillness, her intensity as she'd spoken of him, he belatedly connected the dots and knew that was who had sat in the chair in that other place and time. He'd had the gene, too...she'd known that because she'd watched him use it. "You're very much like him," she'd said, but surely not that very much like him. Surely not.
Yet, how many times in the three weeks before she had had to report to McMurdo had she known exactly what he wanted and how he liked things? When she'd returned from shopping with the boys with his favorite brands and purchases, he'd figured the boys had paid more attention to what they were eating then he'd assumed. The same when she ordered pizza. And maybe that had been the case, but when they'd stood frowning over the glass case at the jewelers' she'd unerringly pointed at the very set he knew in the end he would have picked. And, when he'd reluctantly decided he'd wear a suit for the wedding, the first one she plucked off of the rack was the very one he eventually chose.
How could she have known his preferences like that and how could she know he had that alien gene?
"You're very much like him," she'd said.
And what was it Daniel had said, "Come on, Sam...you're right, he's not Jack. But those boys? Why didn't you tell me they were so...so Jack?" Of course, he wasn't Jack. So how could his sons be so like another man's that seeing them would shock and grieve his friend?
Spock with a beard but still undeniably Spock. "Is that it? Is that what's up with Maggie?" Travis had asked and he hadn't thought it was possible, but...how could she know he had the gene? Could Travis have hit the nail on the head that day seeing the alternate Spock?
"I can't join you in your world, Jon...and you do not want to join me in mine!"
she'd said, and that had been hard enough to respond to when he thought she was speaking metaphorically. But, if her world literally wasn't his, if she'd come here from another reality or whatever it would be, if she'd left Jack behind dead in another time and place and came here...
The jet rolled wildly to the left and he used another bag to rid his roiling stomach of the last of its contents wishing he could do the same for the thoughts whirling about in his mind.
Eventually, the wild twists and dives leveled out, and he was left to assume they'd managed to lose the enemy ship. She came to him shortly thereafter, looking a bit haggard and with her uniform somewhat mussed. He silently watched her make her way down the aisle, and neither of them spoke speak until she'd slid into the seat next to him.
"We'll be arriving at McMurdo very shortly...we won't have much time. I'd hoped--well, it doesn't matter now. Baal's fleet could reach Earth at anytime. You should call the boys, Jon-"
"And tell them what exactly?"
"It doesn't matter, just let them hear your voice and know they're not alone in this-"
"Lying's your game not mine. They are alone in this because you dragged me down here. I should be with them!"
"Not if you want to save them," she answered quietly and her voice was steady with a conviction that he couldn't rattle. "We don't have time to argue. Davis will be here soon to brief you on the enemy ships. I've got to get back up there...I'll see you on the ground."
"Whatever, just go," he said.
She nodded her head and stood up but she didn't leave.
"Something else?" he asked.
"I love you," she said. "I just wanted you to know." She turned and began to walk away.
He almost let her go. But, despite his suspicions and despite the fact she'd forced him down here and expected him to save the world, he couldn't do it.
She'd begged him not to drag her into his world and he hadn't listened. She'd warned him he didn't want to join her in hers, and he'd shrugged it off. She was at fault, perhaps, for a good many things, but he was the one who hadn't read the warning signs and hadn't believed the danger.
She'd openly told him she was deceiving him, and he was the fool who'd conned himself into believing she was incapable of it...he'd been wrong beyond comprehension, but that was hardly her fault. And it wouldn't help him live with himself if in his anger and confusion he let her walk away and she didn't survive the coming battle.
"Maggie," he said urgently and she turned to look back at him. He released his restraint to stand up. "Come here," he said, and she slipped into his arms for a brief moment. "I love you, too," he told her. Despite everything he meant it.
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