Daniel arrived before she did, but then he had fewer good bys to say.
Neither of them had wasted anytime getting there. When Rear Admiral Forrester called inviting them to come down and 'consult' on the Gate, they'd both jumped at the chance. They'd been waiting well over two years for the chance to get near the StarGate and no one had to ask them twice.
She'd known eventually, if they bided their time, proved their trustworthiness to the authorities, never made a move or reference that would tip their hand...this day had had to come.
(And for all their blustered indignation over finding out she'd married the O'Neill of this world right under their noses, the authorities had taken comfort in that. They'd believed she'd traded her world for theirs as easily as green Jello for blue. Jack for Jon as though they were interchangeable. She'd been completely truthful with Landry when looking back she might have been wiser to play that scene differently. Fortunately the brutal truth had escaped him and those over him. Jon was not Jack; they were mistaken to assume that even in her weakest moments she didn't hold onto that one truth. She'd spent untold hours convincing these people of so many of their mistakes, but that was not one of them.)
The need for 'consultation' had not come as a surprise to any of SG-1. In the course of rewriting history in his favor, Baal had had no choice but to undo every victory Earth had made in the ten years of the StarGate program. In doing so, he had once again unleashed on the universe far more enemies than the Goa'uld themselves. It had been only a matter of time before one of them made their presence known, and this world was not so different from their own that it would not have something to say about that.
So although she looked with abhorrence and revulsion at the Replicator blocks scattered under the glass of the case before them, she was not surprised. Daniel, looking at her face and not the deactivated remnants of a battle they'd already fought and won more than once before, said quietly, "Yeah, my thoughts exactly."
She looked up to meet his gaze and make sure he understood that she was right there with him. Regardless of the good bys that had slowed her down, she was no more willing than he was to let this long-awaited opportunity pass them by.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Since the defeat of Baal, she'd divided her time between her ongoing work with the Ancient technology and the family. The urgency with which she'd fervently struggled to bring the weapon on line was gone leaving her free to spend more time at home and less in the lab. They'd collected huge amounts of data that needed analyzed and studied about the Ancient weapon and technology, and as that was just as well done from a secured computer lab in Minnesota as the installment in Antarctica...well, it was a lot easier and quicker to run home to celebrate one of the boys' birthdays, take part in their parent-teacher conferences, or spend a few hours fishing.
Here in this world she found a balance between work and home that she'd never found in her own. In part or perhaps mainly because they'd given her no place in whatever (if any) StarGate program they'd developed. She was left, like she'd left the civilians back home, dependent on people she did not know to fight battles she could not imagine without her knowledge, input, or help. She didn't like being in the dark. Not one bit. She wanted to know what she was up against and she wanted to be right there in the fight.
But, as for the rest of it? It was nice to have long hours with the people she loved enjoying a world very much like the one she'd fought for all those years. It was good to know that regardless of how painful and hard the choices they'd made had been, they'd been right to put the fight before themselves. It was a good life they'd sacrificed themselves to preserve and well worth all it had cost them...
The balance between that good life and her work was rather precarious because there was never a time when her work didn't call to her with its siren song or one when the pressures and needs of every day life didn't place their demands on her to be home, to be more involved in the boys' lives, to spend more time with her husband, to be Maggie instead of Colonel O'Neill.
Not that Jon and the older boys didn't try their hardest to keep their own desires and needs as well as those of the littler boys from exerting undue pressure on her. He'd promised her they'd be happy with whatever time she could spare them, and he did his best to make sure she didn't have to know they frequently weren't. She didn't fault him when his best often fell short because she knew he'd set himself an impossible task with that promise anyway.
Still, they were happy despite the occasional difficulties she had in keeping all of the balls in the air.
She'd delegated the majority of the work to others and turned a blind eye to the rest to spend most of the summer in the boat with them. That Herculean effort had not gone unappreciated or unnoted. She'd earned herself as many reproof-free all-nighters in the lab as she could physically handle, as many murmured phone consultations through supper as she would ever need, and an almost infinite amount of free "Earth to Maggie...where are you?" moments when she was physically present with them but mentally at work. Not a bad return at all when it had been her pleasure and she wouldn't have traded those moments for anything.
Anything but the world as she knew it should be. These wonderful young lives that she was blessed to share, this lovely man who swallowed down all his fears and questions to love her in spite of them...for all she loved them, for all she treasured every moment she had with them, they had no place in reality. Not the reality that must take precedence anyway.
They were a lovely dream that she consoled herself with and would hate to see slip away, but when the time came, when the chance to wake up to a new day in the real world arrived...she'd shake off the dream and rejoin reality. Her reality, the one that had the right to exist because it was the true one. The one to which she owed her loyalty because she'd sworn it freely, without any reservations whatsoever, without any purpose of evasion, and without the point of Baal's sword at her neck.
Every moment she spent loving Jon and his sons made what would one day have to come more difficult, but it never brought it into question.
She'd spent the most terrifying hours of her life puking her guts up into the toilet and praying she'd miscalculated her dates, but even that hadn't swayed her determination to one day wipe this world and its people from existence. She'd wept in relief when the test had come back negative and she'd done what had to be done to make sure she never had to live through that particular horror again. But not because it would have stopped her from doing the job.
She didn't think she could have loved the boys more if she'd borne them herself. But not being the one who'd put them in harm's way to begin with helped her bear the guilt of what she would one day do. She would be responsible for wiping them from existence but not for placing them in this doomed world to start with. Baal would share the guilt with her for them; she alone would bear it for a child she conceived and brought into this world. Jon would certainly have no share in that burden; and even Daniel wouldn't be able to help her carry it when everything else had been put right and this was only a memory of a time that had never existed.
That unbearable guilt would eventually have destroyed her but only later. After she'd carried out the actions that would condemn this world, when she lived out her solitary and wary end back in her own past.
Unless they were somehow able to right the timeline in such a way she was rewritten by time and mercifully lost the memory of what she'd done. That unlikely scenario was in one sense imminently more desirable. She wouldn't have to mourn this man, these children, this life...but in another way that too was a sorrow. She couldn't deny that it hurt to think that even the memory of them might be forever lost. She loved them, and she did not want to forget their trusting faces, their laughing voices.
"Who taught you to fish, Maggie?" Travis laughed and they'd all joined in. Because Jon had taught them almost before they could walk. Jack, on the other hand, had taught her. To one catching a fish was as simple as throwing out a hook and line; to the other it was so unlikely that he could be content fishing in a pond without any fish at all.
"Watch what I can do, Maggie!" one of them was always calling, and she would always watch with delight in her eyes because she knew she'd been granted a great privilege in being able to share in the wonder of their lives.
"You know, I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't come to the lake. I thought we were happy, that we were fine, but...we needed you. We still do. I'm so thankful you came to our world," he'd told her in one of those rare moments when he'd felt compelled to try to put his feelings for her into words.
She'd kissed him in response, held him close in the dimness of their shared bed but otherwise she'd answered him only with silence. Because, she'd done him no favors in joining his world, and the very existence of it was the destruction of her own.
When she wasn't focusing on what she'd lost, she was happy, very happy in his world, sharing in their lives, being there in his embrace. It would have been a wonderful fantasy if it wasn't such a bitter reality. For she always carried within her the knowledge that its existence doomed her world, and her own continued existence would one day do the same to theirs. She could not answer him easily and honestly, "There's no where else I'd rather be."
Because there was. No matter how happy she was here, she never forgot it wasn't the way it should be, the people she loved here were not who they should have been or even worse should not even be at all.
"You think too much," Jack would have told her if he'd been the one holding her. But Jon just kissed her back and refused to acknowledge or question her silence. Even so she suspected that it hadn't gone unnoticed.
It was possible that in her guilt she endowed him with more of Jack's qualities than he actually possessed. Maybe he really was content to accept the little he'd learned about her world and not follow it on to its inevitable conclusion. Maybe he didn't instinctively see into her soul and know she would gladly trade his world for her own. Maybe. Or maybe he was just too smart to fight with words what he knew was a battle of the heart.
Certainly, he couldn't begin to guess that one day she'd have the opportunity. He might know she was only in his life by default, but at least he didn't know there was any possibility she'd ever be able to do anything about that. She was sure of that because he held her, loved her, and trusted her. And she wasn't giving him too many of Jack's qualities to know that if he knew, if he even suspected that she was capable of that sort of betrayal there would be no place for her in his life.
"You think too much," Jack had complained more than once, and she knew at least in this case it would have been easier if she didn't. What did it mean that she could steal pleasure and even happiness in this world with a man whose life and happiness she fully intended to wipe out of existence at the first opportunity?
Was she the biggest hypocrite or the most ordinary of people? Wasn't it human nature to accept what happiness you could in whatever circumstance you found yourself in, all the time knowing things could be...better.
God help her, 'better' was the word she had to put there every time she followed this train of thought.
'Different' would fill in that blank just as well, without any of the soul-searching, self-recriminations that 'better' carried with it. 'Different' acknowledged a sad truth of her messed up life; 'better' condemned her. But, even in Jon's arms with the boys sleeping peacefully in their nearby cabins and the waves gently rocking the boat and moonlight quietly washing everything in its peaceful light, it was the only word she cut put in that blank. Whatever that made her.
~*~*~*~*~*~
She met Daniel's eyes without wavering, and let him read the shameful truth in hers. He nodded in understanding without any hint of blame or judgment. Because regardless of her self-guilt and condemnation she had committed no sin in loving Jon and the boys and she would commit no murder or betrayal when she let time take them. The crime and sin would be in turning her back on her own reality and letting theirs continue.
Daniel shifted to balance his weight enough to put a hand on her shoulder and let his presence speak of her innocence and the rightness of her decision. She gave him a sad smile of sincere gratitude because even though she couldn't trust her own judgment in this she could Daniel's.
"As a member of SG-1, he was our voice. Our conscience. He was a very courageous man. He was a good man. For those of us lucky enough to know him, he was also a friend." Jack had prematurely eulogized him a great many years before. Back when she'd still been young enough and optimistic enough to not understand how great a compliment the colonel had been paying the idealist in their midst.
She wasn't so young now and her optimism had bled out into the dirt of a far distant planet. She understood now. That hand on her shoulder meant a great deal.
"Tell us what you've got," she said turning decisively to the admiral, and they both listened attentively. But not for a clue as to how to stop the Replicators from following whatever SG teams this world was sending out there home. With any luck, time would erase them from the picture long before that became a real concern.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"So what's it looking like?" Jon asked when she called him from her assigned quarters later that night. "Will you be heading home anytime soon?"
"I think so," she answered, and he missed all those little signs he'd learnt signaled a lie when she spoke to him face to face and hung up a happy man.
Charlie had promised to bring his family home for a few days at the end of the month, and he was looking forward to having everyone there. Danny and Kayla had been making little comments about Florida lately, and he was afraid they were working up the nerve to tell him they were thinking of moving. It was only a matter of time before he'd have family spread from one end of the country to the other with no hope of ever getting everyone home at the same time.
He could usually smile and say, "Go and have fun," when she answered the phone and got that look in her eyes, but this time he really, really wanted her home. Okay, so he always wanted her home, but usually he could stifle his desire and not beg her to stay home like Ty was wont to do. He hadn't been able to stop himself from asking when she thought she'd be home, but he would act his age and not pester her about it any farther. Especially as it didn't sound like he'd need to. She'd give her input on whatever they were doing wherever they were doing it and then fly home in plenty of time to not ruin their plans.
He carefully maneuvered around to hang up the phone without waking the newest O'Neill sleeping in a little bundle against his chest. The little guy was the first of the grandkids born close enough for him to get in his share of cuddling, and he welcomed every opportunity to babysit that came his way. He was a bit rusty as this was also the first born when he didn't have any little ones of his own, but the baby didn't seem to notice.
~*~*~*~*~*~
They spent two days at the SGC, feigning interest and showing due concern for the Replicator threat, before Daniel discovered the Mirror. She'd been stuck in briefings most of those two days, and it had been left to him to worm his way into the vault and get a look at what if anything the fledging program had managed to drag home.
Armed with info they'd freely given back when they thought this world might have been an ally instead of an enemy, this SGC hadn't had to waste time chasing around planets looking for interesting and useful technologies. Daniel recognized many of the items in the vault, but it was the Mirror that made his visit worthwhile.
He made a show of examining a communication stone while he thought about the Mirror and something she'd told him a year and a half before, "...in an alternate reality, there'd be no putting things right again--unless we started messing around with time there, too. All we could really do would be try to influence the course of events happening while we were there...we might alter the future but the past would remain unchanged."
It was something he'd considered off and on every since he'd met Jon and the boys that first time. She'd been terrified of staying with Jon O'Neill and his dark haired sons for a good many reasons. Some of them had been the same old fears that had kept her and Jack apart all those years. Some had been new fears surrounding her own conflicting feelings of loyalty and love. And some had been those they'd fought over that day in the cabin; that her lies and extended times away would destroy the family. He'd done what he could to convince her none of them were worth missing out on what she'd find out there in the boat.
Others of her fears though, he'd had nothing with which to counter them. The fear that her hands would be tied and she'd be unable to save them from Baal's evil reach. Time had alleviated that particular fear but there were others. The universe was full of bad guys and who knew when they'd turn their eyes on Earth? As long as they were unable to right the universe, as long as they lived in this timeline, she carried their protection and well-being as a sacred trust...one she feared she'd fail.
But over all her fears had been this one. This horrible knowledge that one day not only would she fail to stop destruction from coming to them, she'd willingly bring it down on them herself. She--both of them actually--needed to put things right, but the only way to do that would destroy this world.
But what if...what if they turned this around? Made this altered timeline an alternate reality? Couldn't they change time here thereby doing what they both knew had to be done--wiping the past seventy-odd years with everyone who'd lived in them out of existence and saving their own world and timeline--while letting these people and their world continue in another reality? Isn't that what she'd told him?
With the Mirror, couldn't they enter into a reality that was so close to this one as to be all but indistinguishable, save it from the Replicators, and leave it to go on without them while they came back here and found a way home? It wouldn't be a perfect solution...Jon and the boys would be erased from time here, but they'd live on elsewhere. And maybe he was oversimplifying and missing something, but he'd find it easier to act knowing that in at least one reality they would continue on and he knew she would as well.
He smiled hesitantly over at the seaman assigned to 'assist' him and said, "I don't see exactly what I'm looking for, but there are several things here that might prove useful. Can we get them moved to the lab Colonel O'Neill is using?"
~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam, her mind running in a thousand different directions, read through the list of items he'd procured with only a passing interest. Her goal centered around gaining access to the StarGate and the people here were not making that easy. She had yet to even see what sort of a security set up they'd have to circumvent to get to the Gate. Who knew what system this SGC was using to power and run the Gate itself. They should have the DHD from Antarctica which would make hacking into the system vital only in locking down the area until they could make good their escape. But, it was possible they'd gone with a system more like she'd outlined in her 'book' of the StarGate.
Getting through the Gate was the essential first step in righting time. Where they'd go after that...well, first things first. Their hands were effectively tied here with no hope of finding the solution they needed. Out there where anything was possible, she had a vague idea of studying Malikai's disastrous experiment a bit closer. Or making a visit to the Tok'ra, if they could locate them. Somehow Baal had found a way back in time; the Tok'ra would be the most likely--
Her mind came to an abrupt stop at the fifth item on Daniel's list: Quantum Mirror and remote. She looked up at him with awakening interest.
"So," he said casually, "what do you think? Any possibilities there?"
Her chest tightened in mingled hope and surprise and made it difficult to choke out an answer. She faked a cough hoping to cover from whomever was monitoring every move they made the fact he'd just handed her dynamite. For all of that, she didn't see the potential in the Mirror that Daniel had. She grabbed it and ran with it not because she thought it might be the way out of her moral and emotional dilemma but because she saw immediately that it could be their ticket off of Earth.
When she'd gathered what calmness she could, she said as though disappointed with his findings, "I guess it was extremely unlikely they would have found a disrupter in this universe...we'd never have had one ourselves if Jack hadn't accessed the Ancient database. No one here's had the urgent need to take that risk--besides which they are too leery of drawing attention to themselves to attempt contact with the Asgard."
She sighed and pushed her hair off of her forehead and then gave Daniel's mission the go with, "It's possible we could isolate the risks though." She tapped her finger on his list. "We could approach them in an alternate reality. If we found one with the Mirror still in situ on P3R-233, we could contact the Asgard from there without them knowing what reality or possibly even planet we were from," she shrugged again. "It's a possibility anyway, if we can't find something on our own."
"On our own?" he played along. "Against the Replicators? Not with what this world has to offer. We need the Asgard or the Wraith-"
"You're right. I'll talk to the admiral."
~~~~~
"The Wraith?" Landry sputtered in disbelief as though he hadn't already heard the preposterousness of that suggestion on the security tapes before she arrived in his office.
"Right," she said. "The Asgard then." He frowned at her knowing he'd just been manipulated but with a sigh he threw up a resigned hand and that at least went far easier than she had thought possible. Certainly easier than it would probably be to find a reality where the Asgard hadn't fallen to the Replicators long before...but, of course, that wasn't their purpose in arriving on the alternate P3R-233.
Convincing him that she and Daniel were both essential to the team going through the Mirror had been quite a bit more difficult. In the end, he had, however, thrown up both of his hands in resignation, and they joined the half-dozen naval officers that comprised GateTeam 1 and made their prison break.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Jon hadn't believed her. Not because he guessed her intentions, but because he understood her love of a challenge. Wherever she was heading that would take her out of contact for 'just a few hours, a day or two at the most' it was to work on something that wouldn't be an easy fix. He knew once she got her teeth into it...well, they might be lucky if she made it home on time after all.
Still he tried, like he always did, not to let her know how much he hated this part of their life together. He smiled as though she could hear it in his voice and said, "Don't forget to call as soon as you get back so the boys don't worry."
"I won't," she assured him.
"And don't forget I love you." And she assured him that was something else she wouldn't forget, but she'd hung up long before he was ready to let her go.
She'd gotten sick after making that particular phone call, choking on those final unpalatable lies. Afterwards, she had cried in the echoing chill of the female officers head with her forehead pressed against the ungiving glass of the mirror until she had no tears left to cry. When she was done, she splashed cold water over her hot, flushed cheeks and rinsed the bile from her mouth.
And then because she had to go on living with herself a little longer, she called him again. Not to warn him; what good would it do for him to know what they were about to do? Not to soften her betrayal; what could she possibly say that would excuse or lessen her determination to destroy his world?
Not a thing, and she hadn't tried. Instead, she urged him to go to the boat. It was late in the year, and it had already been secured for the winter; the boys had school and practice; and he had work...she knew, she knew. But he should go to the boat she'd told him anyway and got off the line before she was forced to leave him with one more lie.
And what had he thought of that phone call? What had she expected him to think of it? Had he known then what she was telling him?
She had never been sure just how much of the situation he'd understood and guessed. Certainly, she'd never sat him down and explained any of it in detail, and he'd never demanded any answers after that night at McMurdo. He'd understood then much more than he should have, but had he understood he was the man with the short straw? That the two worlds were not compatible and as far as she would always be concerned his world would not be the last one standing?
She hoped he hadn't.
So why had she made that already deeply regretted call? Had she wanted him to know, wanted to end their life together with the truth there between them even if she couldn't say it? No, not if that meant him having to bear the pain of her rejection. She couldn't not even for conscience sake have intended that.
No, that last call had been all for herself. She'd made it in a moment of weakness. When the end came, she wanted to be able to picture the boys and him happy and together laughing in the boat. What she was about to do...she needed to picture them there.
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