The Standers' Rebellion was fought and won without Earth's involvement, consent, or even knowledge. The Aschen had been a welcome presence on the planet, promising protection from the Goa'uld and prosperity and health to everyone. And then, without a word of explanation or promise of return they were gone.
When Daniel Jackson activated Sam's machine on top of Cheyenne Mountain, he'd assumed it was some sort of communication device or maybe a homing beacon. He'd never considered it was a weapon; never thought his friends would drag him into a battle he had no desire to fight. When its soft, pulsing hum filled the air around him, he hadn't been sure what he should do. He hadn't expected it to emit an audible signal and considering he was aiding and abetting a known enemy of the state he found it more than a little disturbing. He'd built the thing and started it, but he hadn't meant to sign up for a prison term. He backed carefully away from it, but not too far because he was still hoping he'd hear from Sam.
The unexpected chirping of his cell phone doubled his heart rate. He breathed a sigh of relief when he answered and heard Teal'c's calm voice. But, it didn't last. His friend was calling to report the strange exodus of all the Aschen from the planet.
"That's odd," he said, trying to sound casual while looking with growing alarm at Sam's machine. "Are we looking at a full scale evacuation or a call to battle stations?" he asked. It's a coincidence, he told himself. It can't be the machine.
But, he knew it was. He had trusted Sam. It had never occurred to him she might ask him to paint a big, red target on Earth. And he tried not to believe that was what she'd done even now. He sat down in a discouraged hump next to her machine, but he couldn't convince himself to disconnect its power source. Deep down, he still trusted her. But, he'd have a lot to say if he ever saw Jack O'Neill again.
The next call was from the President. He was needed at the Travel Center. The StarGate had been activated, and they had received a coded transmission on the Center computer. He was to report there immediately to begin work on the translation. He was given clearance back into the abandoned SGC where the Aschen had installed a travel pad in the early days of their time on Earth.
Leaving the device still humming away, he was there within minutes of the call. Security met him at the pad and rushed him to the command center where he found General Hammond dressed in the casual clothes of his retirement and Teal'c in the robes of Chulak. He glanced down at his own sweater and jeans. They had come a long way from the SGC.
"What do we have?" he asked. He desperately wanted to tell the general of the machine he'd left running back in Colorado, but he bit his tongue. If it was the biggest mistake of his life, he didn't want Teal'c or the general drawn into his complicity.
"You tell me, Son," Hammond drawled. "The computer techs have managed to decompress the data stream, but we're not sure what language we're looking at. Get to work on it right away."
It didn't take Daniel long. The computer had not recognized the code, but he did. He had devised it years ago trapped in a cell along with the rest of SG-1. It had simply been an exercise to keep the monotony of imprisonment from driving him mad. Jack had spent the time snapping his watch cover and snarling at everyone, Teal'c had kelnoreemed, and he and Sam had played with numbers and letters to make a code known only to them. The one he was staring at right now. Amazing they'd both remembered it...more or less. There were a few things he had to guess at where either his or Sam's memory must have failed, but the message was clear enough when he was done.
Moments ago the Standers' Army initiated an attack against
the Aschen Confederation. You are asked to stand down and not
interfere in any way. This conflict does not involve you.
The Aschen are not the benevolent allies they appear. An
indictment against them is included in this transmission.
If, after you have had time to verify the facts we present,
you believe it would be of interest to your people to meet
with us, word may be left for us at (a set of coordinates followed).
The Stander Worlds will be seeking ways to minimize or repair
the damage caused by the Aschen. We believe you would be an
ally of great importance in this endeavor and offer you our
hand in friendship and mutual benefit should you wish to receive it."
Daniel felt sick. They had used him to strike a blow against Earth's one chance to defeat the Goa'uld and maybe get Sha're back. His anger and hurt over that was worse than his fear of Sam's machine being found and traced back to him. The discovery of the machine could lead to his imprisonment or even execution, but what did that matter? He had been betrayed by his friends and in return he had betrayed his world. With a sinking heart, he quickly set up a program to decode the large volume of material sent with the message, made excuses to the general, and rushed back to the Mountain.
There he found that the machine had apparently deactivated itself. He stared at it a long time as he replayed Sam's recent visit to the SGC. Despite everything, he couldn't believe she'd changed enough to destroy Earth's chances against the Goa'uld...not without good reason.
He carefully dismantled the device and secreted it away in his apartment. Sooner or later, he expected someone was bound to track down the pulse. When they did, it wouldn't be difficult to link him to it--the President had reached him at the Mountain after all!
The pulse had indeed been noted by several satellites and relay stations around the world, but in the confusion following the Aschen 'disappearance', questions which should have been asked weren't. The pulse was presumed to have been a worldwide warning signal the Aschen themselves had sent in response to the Standers' attack. No one even bothered to pinpoint its location.
In the following days, the SGC was reestablished and given control of the Travel Center until arrangements could be made to move the Gate back to Cheyenne Mountain. General Hammond was reinstated and ordered to try to trace the whereabouts of the Aschen and track down the 'evidence' the Standers had sent to verify its accuracy.
Tracing the Aschen proved to be impossible. Their 'homeworld' where SG-1 had first encountered them was deserted, no sign of them could be found on the planets the Standers had given them coordinates to verify their information, and they had no clue where else to look. The Aschen had been tightlipped about so much, but only now in retrospect did Earth realize how much.
Proving the evidence, however, was all too easy. Earth had come within a hair's breadth of disaster. Their hopes for a decisive blow against the Goa'uld were dashed. The Aschen had abandoned their technology, but without more knowledge it was next to useless. Deploying the bio-weapon without their expertise would be potentially too disastrous to contemplate. Perhaps in time, as they were able to access the Aschen computers and learn more, that option would still be available. For now, Earth was left just as vulnerable to the Goa'uld as ever.
The threat hadn't changed, but the political situation on Earth had been turned upside down. The world now knew of the StarGate and of worlds outside themselves. Though the power struggle over the Gate continued off and on, the revealing of the SGC worked in favor of the United States retaining control of the Gate. The world was fascinated with Gatetravel and was much more interested in seeing it continue than the fight over who got to control the strings. They basically wanted the program to just get on with it. Within the SGC, things quickly reverted to normal operations, albeit with civilian and government observers along for the ride.
The world was not as pleased with the Standers. The danger from the Aschen was past before they even knew it existed while the Goa'uld were still a very real and present danger. The general consensus was it was fine these unknown Standers had rid the world of the Aschen threat, but couldn't they have waited until the Goa'uld had been defeated? The distrust that should have been aimed at the Aschen was instead aimed at the Standers.
Earth felt they were best left alone. After the deceit of the Aschen, they could not take the Standers' offer of peace and mutual aid as gospel fact. Better to let it lie. Any race capable of defeating the Aschen was a potential threat to Earth.
That philosophy held true until the Goa'uld threat increased and threatened to swallow up Earth only weeks after the Aschen were eliminated. Suddenly, contact with the Standers was worth considering after all.
The Standers hadn't had the luxury to idly stand by and wait for Earth's response to their overture.
Their developed worlds had been thrown into chaos with the departing of the Aschen. The underground, which had been established on these worlds prior to the Rebellion, moved to create order and meet basic needs for which their worlds had become dependent on the Aschen. But, the transition was difficult and in some places protracted. They needed to understand the snare they had been freed from, and then brought together with the other Stander Worlds into a loose federation of planets working to reestablish their individual civilizations and find ways to aid one another in repairing the damage done to their worlds.
The less developed worlds were not so devastated by the loss of the Aschen. It was the loss of the men and women they'd sent to the Rebellion that crippled them. Many of the Standers weren't coming home. Over one-third had not survived to see the victory. Spread out equally over all the Stander Worlds this would have been a significant loss. Concentrated heavily on those planets with already limited populations it was a crushing blow. Action had to be taken quickly to provide the manpower they desperately needed to maintain their economies and social structures before they collapsed completely.
A ruling body of some sort had to be forged from the 47 worlds still supporting a population and all their varied peoples, cultures, and languages. Quickly. The task was formidable, but they had defeated the Aschen. Nothing was impossible. A rudimentary Council of Worlds was established within days of the Rebellion, but they had much work to do and a lack of leadership.
Besides the immediate objectives before them, they had the even more essential, long-term need of developing means to counteract the Aschen sterility practices. In a very real sense, they were building up their medical knowledge from scratch. Even the more advanced worlds had depended on the Aschen for their medical needs and allowed their own knowledge and technology to fall by the wayside. The Aschen had left behind a small amount of medical technology the Standers were capable of using, but they wouldn't touch it. They had learned the hard way; all too many of the Aschen 'cures' had not been cures at all.
Besides scrambling to set up the Council of Worlds and meet the immediate and future needs of their newborn federation, the Standers and their ally, the Danarians, were fighting for the lives of the casualties of their Rebellion. Except for the 55,000 the Asgard 'had done their magic trick' on, virtually all those who had Stood against the Aschen were injured to one degree or another; one-fourth of them were permanently maimed or disabled. It would be months before the field hospitals on Danara stood empty.
Among the wounded was the man the Standers believed had the leadership and determination to hold their federation together. He had led them to victory over the Aschen, and they needed him to lead them now. But, he was in no condition to Stand with them.
The beeps and hums around him told him he was in a hospital. A doctor moved into his line of sight. Not Frasier, but a gray-haired man who somehow managed to look the part without a white coat or stethoscope around his neck. O'Neill recognized him by the pinched, worried look on his face. Oh great, he thought, what have I done now?
"What's up, Doc?" he tried to say. He was shocked at how weak his voice sounded and doubted the doctor even heard him.
"Colonel O'Neill?" the doctor questioned him. "Can you hear me?"
"Yeah...I'm here," he managed to choke out wondering where here was. The walls were white and the room was far too bright for the infirmary at home. He blinked at them in confusion. Not home. "Where exactly would that be?" he asked.
The doctor peered at him with a concerned expression on his face and then answered, "You're probably a bit confused with all the pain meds we've pumped into you...you're in one of the field hospitals...on Danara."
Danara. The memories flooded in and drowned him. He was in a field of blood screaming while a madman chopped off his legs.
"Colonel O'Neill, it's over! It's over!" Someone was screaming in his face, holding his shoulders, and crying. George. The madman was done; it was George's turn. Only the man standing over him was dressed not in an ash-gray uniform stained with blood but in a clean blue shirt.
The field was gone, the blood was gone, but the medic remained. In a hospital room. On Danara. "I should have left you home," he gasped out when he understood what was happening.
The old man relaxed his grip on his shoulders and grinned into his face. "He's back. We can skip the sedative...think he's had plenty already," he said to someone out of O'Neill's field of vision.
"Looks like he's lost the IV and pulled stitches again...talk him down why we get him back together," that someone answered.
O'Neill looked at George, "Take it this isn't the first time I've been around?"
"You keep flashing back..." George answered, roughly wiping his cheeks and snuffling.
O'Neill decided not to notice. "Carter?" he asked instead.
"She's alive. So's the boy."
"Boy?"
"Yep, boy," the old man shrugged philosophically. "Nothing wrong with having a boy. Especially seeing he's so healthy the doctors keep shaking their heads about it. Seems the shape of your wife, he should be dead by now."
"How is she?"
"Well, Colonel," the gray-haired doctor pushed his way back into O'Neill's awareness to say, "I won't lie to you. She's not in good shape: multiple fractures head to thigh on her left side, trauma to her lungs, kidneys, and more significantly, her heart. Her left shoulder is basically shattered. The surgeons think they can put it back together with pins and plates, but...it's questionable if she'll ever regain the use of it again. The surgery will have to come later, right now we're just trying to get her stabilized...her blood pressure keeps bottoming out and her heart beat is erratic. Her pain level is unacceptably high, but we've already pushed the meds beyond anything anyone is comfortable with as far as the baby is concerned. We'd deliver him right now and hope he'd make it, but she'd never survive the surgery."
"Is she conscious?" he asked.
"She surfaces from time to time to ask about you, the baby, the men."
"Can I see her?"
"Colonel, I'm afraid you're not in much better shape than your wife. George and the others did a great job on you out in the field, but there was nothing they could do about the massive amount of blood you lost after the explosion. The strain on your heart from that loss coupled with the severe trauma of your injuries...personally, I thought you were a dead man when they brought you in. Second time in two days--I was the receiving doctor when they brought you back from Hakter," he explained. "All the blood you'd banked before the war, plasma, too...we pumped it into you then, though it was useless really. It ran out faster than we poured it in. If the Asgard had come even moments later...anyway, that's why we lowered your meds hoping you'd come to. We need to contact Earth."
"Earth?"
"Yes, presumably they'd have compatible blood...plasma if nothing else. There's none here for you. If we could contact your world--"
"No!"
"Colonel, I don't think you're going to make it if we don't."
O'Neill closed his eyes against the weariness and pain assailing him. "I can't..."
"You just have to give us the Gate coordinates, Sir," George encouraged him.
"You don't understand...they think I'm a traitor," he said as though it should explain everything. But it didn't. He dredged up the strength to continue, "All my adult life, I've served my country...the last few years, not just my country, the whole world. Now they think I'm a traitor. But, that's ok, see, 'cause I'm not. I can live with it, you know? But, if I was to give out Earth's coordinates..."
George broke in, "Colonel, we are your friends. You have to know that! You're lying in that bed because you were willing to fight and die for us. You must trust us!"
O'Neill shook his head, "I'm here because of Earth." George blinked against the truth in his voice. "I won't give you the coordinates...not for me. Carter?" The doctor and medic both shook their heads: blood from Earth might make the difference for him, but there was nothing more the doctors on Earth were likely to do for Carter than those on Danara were already doing. She would live or die regardless.
"She was arguing with me..." he protested weakly against what he saw in their faces.
"I've heard that," the doctor answered. "Frankly, I find it unbelievable."
"It's the truth though," George asserted.
O'Neill met George's eyes, "She made me promise I wouldn't give up...she didn't have that right if she's not sticking around."
The old Stander returned his look, "She's a strong one, Colonel. Don't be writing her off quite yet." He turned to the doctor and said, "None of you should."
He was right, of course. She survived day-by-day, slowly gaining strength until most of the doctors began to believe she was actually going to make it. Even then, several wanted to deliver the baby as soon as possible, but she would not consider it and the colonel refused to grant permission against her wishes.
In time, she was strong enough for the surgery on her shoulder. They spent hours rebuilding it with pins, screws, and plates and what bone they could salvage. And hours more removing bone fragments, finally having to close before they'd gotten them all or lose her on the table. Even after all their careful work, they still couldn't say whether she'd be able to ever use it again. The surgery set her back more than they had hoped, but she rallied and the doctors stopped whispering imminent doom in O'Neill's ears.
With access to compatible blood and plasma, his own initial recovery would have been relatively quick. Unfortunately, without it the Danarian doctors had few alternatives. By pumping saline solutions into him, they were able to keep his blood pressure from completely bottoming out, and by treating him in a hyperbaric chamber to hyperoxygenate what blood he did have, they managed to keep his organs oxygenated enough to avoid permanent damage. But, about the time Earth accepted the Standers' indictment against the Aschen, he was far from out of danger...and so was the Federation his actions had brought about.
Beeps and alarms going off...feet running, hushed voices issuing frantic orders. She came to alertness with the fear already rising in her throat. Gentle hands pulled her away from where she'd been curled at his side, settled her into a wheelchair, and pushed her out of the way. A doctor drew away from those huddled around him and came to stand beside her.
"His heart's failing...the amount of blood he lost is just too much." She felt the doctor's unspoken accusation in his words. If he died, it would be as much her fault as the Aschen's. When he'd refused to give them Earth's coordinates, they'd tried to talk her into it and she'd refused as well. The doctor cleared his throat and continued, "He's developed another fever...if it's an infection and we can't get it under control immediately--" he left unsaid what she couldn't bear to hear.
She was still at his bedside moments later when the news of Kaiyontra arrived. She thought the two blows together might be enough to kill her. She was glad he was unconscious and didn't have to know. If he was going to die, better he never had to know.
She looked into the mirror at a self she barely recognized. Deep and haunted eyes gazed back at her as though she were the stranger. The bruises on her face had faded to pale green splotches here and there. Only a few of the larger cuts and scrapes hadn't yet healed...they stood out as angry, red marks in her pale, gaunt face. Someone ran a comb through her hair and pulled a clean robe over her gown.
It was like facing Torantay all over again; leaving him for dead on Danara to lead her few against overwhelming numbers. They'd fussed around her then too, stitching wounds and changing body armor, but, in the end, it had fallen to her to be the one to give the word and lead them into the Bloodbath of Torantay. And today, she'd be the one to deliver this blow to all they'd fought for. The defense web linking all the StarGates of the Standers' worlds together carried with it the ability to activate the Gates simultaneously so the entire Federation could be addressed at one time. It had, up until now, never been used, but at her nod, the link was opened.
She struggled to say the words. They were the hardest she had ever spoken. "This is Carter ...it was just discovered the people of Kaiyontra chose to give up their fight. They are all dead. They committed mass suicide in the night." She faltered as tears choked her. Hands reached out to steady her. Somehow she managed to shake off both them and the tears to continue.
"This is not why we got up from the beaches of Hakter and went on to Stand at Torantay and Eonal. This is not why we held out through the Long Night. This is not why we have struggled through these endless days of pain and healing... please, we have only just finished burying the dead, the hospitals of Danara are still full of the wounded...give us time to seek solutions, to find ways to go on from here. Give us time to get our feet under us that we may Stand together for the future...please.
"Some might say that those on Kaiyontra chose life: not for themselves but for others we might be free to focus on now that their fight is ended. Some might call this a brave sacrifice...but, but...it isn't...it wasn't.
"This was an act of despair. I recognize it, because I've fought it from the moment the colonel fell at Hakter. You know it, too. You've fought it everyday knowing your worlds are dying out before your eyes. The colonel's fighting it even now. But I know the colonel. He will fight through this, and he will Stand again. And we can do the same! I call upon everyone of you to not give in to despair, to not follow Kaiyontra!"
The answers began to come immediately, harsh determined voices claiming hold on life and denying the specter of hopelessness and despair which had silenced an entire world and its people:
"Atal Stands and will continue to Stand."
"Gresht Stands and will not fall."
"This is Bralt on Hazeldor...we Stood with you at Hakter, Major, and followed you to Torantay. Glrat and Furta took the battle onto Eonal...you know we will Stand with you until there is none left to Stand."
There could be no answer from the dead worlds of Eonal, Torantay, Hakter, and now Kaiyontra, but all the others responded swearing their commitment to life. She clung to each of their statements as a lifeline, and the infant Standers' Federation pulled itself to a Stand.
Less than a week later, white-faced, gaunt, and very weak, their leader did the same. Colonel O'Neill painfully pulled himself to a Stand on prosthetic limbs to accept the Presidency of the Council of Worlds. Those who had followed him into battle had never doubted his ability to Stand against the odds. His unanimous election to the post had been made while the doctors were still holding out little or no hope for him.
"I think you'd be better off with someone besides an old, washed-out soldier to lead this new battle we're engaging in," he said in a voice so weak they'd had to put a mike on him. "But I promised the Standers on Torantay I'd Stand with them to regain what the Aschen took from us...if this is what you want, then it's what I'll do."
The shouts of affirmation blaring through the StarGate link in reply were enough to almost knock him down. His recovery was far from over. The prosthetics were cumbersome and his stumps painfully sensitive. The blood loss had been tremendous leaving him susceptible to wild blood pressure fluctuations, extreme weakness, slowed healing, and a continual overtaxing of his already failing heart. Phantom pains racked his body and threw him back to the scene of his amputations again and again. He needed time to rest and recover. Time to hold his wife and come to grips with all that had happened.
But there wasn't time to give it to him...he was needed to help set up the Council of Worlds. He was far too unstable to come to the Council so his hospital room became its first chambers. He faded in and out of sleep to the sound of voices arguing the fine points of its constitution as it was drafted and ratified at his bedside.
Council members were almost constantly in his room, working quietly while he or Carter slept and arguing vigorously when they were awake. Their arms steadied him when he took his first faltering steps on his prosthetics or overbalanced when he set at his bedside, massaged his spasming legs when he'd sat up too long, and performed his physical therapy as ably as any of his therapists. They called for his next dose of pain meds before he knew he needed it, and insisted he rest when he thought he could still push on.
And when he screamed on the field of Torantay, they wept in the hallway giving him what privacy they could until he returned to them on Danara. He hated every minute of it, but time was of the essence and only by working quickly could they hope to hold on to the more advanced worlds only loosely tied to the Federation. Without them the more devastated worlds had no chance for recovery or even survival.
The doctors weren't happy about it, but short of complete sedation they found it impossible to keep him down. And Carter was no different. Following Kaiyontra, she was driven to get the fertility research underway. She met with anyone who might have the training to begin that work at once. She had hoped they'd hear quickly from Earth. When they didn't, her disappointment was outweighed by her fear that without Earth's help whatever fix they were able to arrive at would come too late for Hazeldor and other of the planets with quickly dwindling populations. She couldn't allow the doctors' warnings to slow her down.
The physical battles she was fighting already kept her from accomplishing even a fraction of what she felt desperate to complete. On top of the demands her pregnancy made on her body, her injuries and therapies left her weak and exhausted. She spent more time sleeping than anything else, yet the doctors still felt she didn't take their concerns for her health seriously.
The opposite was actually the truth. If something happened, it was imperative that someone among the Standers understood the makings and maintaining of the CAADs and defense web. To that end, she spent what time she could diagramming every inch of her devices and writing out clear directions for anything that might require repair. It was a difficult task to perform one-armed from a hospital bed. Especially once the Council moved in. Mostly though, especially in the beginning, she slept through their noise; propped up in her bed next to the colonel's or curled on her side beside him in his.
She commandeered a nearby room to work in as her strength returned. Spending more and more time awake as her physical condition improved, she left them to their meetings to spend most of the day working alone or in Physical Therapy where the therapists tortured her in the hopes she might be able to use her left arm again. It was a painful process, but they were pleased with her progress.
The nights they spent together fighting through their own demons of pain and memories. His almost always came in the violent, loud thrashings of Torantay as though that one terrible incident had driven away everything else from his overworked subconscious. George was never far away and together they'd eventually bring him back to them until the next time. Hers came in vivid nightmares which jolted her awake and left her trembling in their wake. He'd hold her close while her breathing gradually calmed and she was able to sleep again.
He never asked and she never told him what they were about. The blast tearing through his body armor and into his chest on Hakter; his heart beating raggedly under her clenched fist as she tried to staunch the bleeding. Standers falling all around her while she desperately struggled up a hill she could never top. Lying in the dark surrounded by the cries and moans of the fallen on Torantay, fearing his child was dead within her and he was lying cold and lifeless on Danara. Hearing the explosion ripping him apart; watching the blood pouring out of what had once been his legs. And, of course, his nightmare was hers as well.
And there were others, too. The weird, terrifying nightmares of pregnancy made all the worse because of everything that had happened. Sad dreams of walking away from her dad, Daniel, Teal'c, her brother, even at times General Hammond. Finding herself on an unknown planet alone with his dead body. Nothing he needed to know about. Nothing she wanted to talk about it. She preferred even the time spent in Physical Therapy to the nights.
Unknowingly, George stepped into the colonel's shoes keeping a close eye on her: making sure she got her meds, ate, and rested. The old man had refused to go home, insisting his place was at the colonel's side and by extension then, hers. They'd both learned to depend on him and to sleep with his raspy snoring in the room. He'd been given a bed in a nearby room when one had opened up, but more often than not he got what little sleep he could on a cot in their room. He didn't let much escape his notice, but he did fail to recognize labor when it came. He could hardly be blamed as his training had skipped the pertinent material assuming it wouldn't be needed on a battlefield.
Working and refusing to acknowledge the contractions, she spent the day in denial. Only when night fell and she lay beside the colonel did she admit to herself she was in labor. The contractions had obligingly stayed irregular, short, and only occasionally intense enough to make her breath catch throughout the day. But now they came in ever stronger, relentless waves and refused to be ignored.
"Sir," she whispered into the dimly lit room and felt his arms encircling her.
"It'll be all right, Carter," he promised her. "You'll do just fine...and so will he."
She blinked back tears and tried to believe him. "You want George to call in the docs?" he asked knowing the old man couldn't be too far away.
"No! Not yet," she said. Even her orthopedist had found a reason he should be called when she started labor. Along with her internist, cardiologist, pulmonologist, two obstetricians who were adamant she would be wise to accept a c-section, and the pediatricians. Janet Frasier needn't have worried, this baby wasn't going to be born unassisted in the bushes: there would be enough doctors present to run a small hospital.
"Kay," he said and held her through the contractions. He could smell her fear, or maybe it was his own. The OB's and the cardiologist had each had a go at warning him of everything that could go wrong. He wished they'd kept their mouths shut.
But, he didn't have to be a psych to know only part of his fear was for Carter. She'd survived four years on SG-1 and Torantay; he had to believe she'd survive this.
He was afraid of being a father again. He'd been there in the temple when Baby Danel had been born, heard the cries of the mother and the ineffectual, worried words of the father, but he hadn't been there when Charlie was born. By the time he'd returned from the field it was all said and done. He was glad to have missed it. He'd never even asked Sarah about the birth. He'd held the little bundle that was his son and promised to be a good father. But, he'd failed miserably. Charlie was dead and he was to blame. He might as well have pulled the trigger himself. He didn't want that responsibility again.
And worse, he'd already failed this son. Already sent him onto the battlefield. Already almost cost him his life. He was afraid to look into the eyes of Carter's son knowing he'd counted his potential death an 'acceptable' risk in the war against the Aschen.
But, the contractions pulled them both farther and farther along. He'd broken two bones in her hand the night Samin Grate did his job, and her hold on his made him think she might return the favor. He rubbed his other hand on her lower back and wished he knew what to do for her. She labored silently, meeting each contraction with a death grip on his hand and a wide-eyed search for his eyes. Once she found him, she would relax into the contraction as though something she saw in him gave her the strength to ride it out. It left him oddly humbled.
Sometime in the night, George slipped out of the room for backup. The medical personnel entered quietly but thankfully kept their distance. They remained in the background except for applying more monitors as unobtrusively as they could, checking to make sure her IV port was still working, and topping off his own meds. He wasn't sure she was even aware they were there. Only when her breathing became loud and ragged and she cried out with the contractions did the Danarian midwife join them at the bed.
"It's all right, Sam," she said reassuringly. "You're doing fine. Almost done now." It was odd for O'Neill to hear that 'Sam'. The Standers as a whole referred to her as Major. It had been a long time since he had had the energy to wonder how hard she found the life to which he had brought her. Now he wondered, had she grown used to being Major Carter everyday to everyone around her? Did she daily long to hear Daniel or Janet or anyone at all call her Sam instead of a title of respect? Was she as sick as he was of always being the hero to those around them? As disgusted as he was they were erecting statues of them at the Council Chambers being built on Eonal?
"I'm sorry," he whispered to her, but she was far away from him, yelling back to the midwife, "I don't think so! I can't do this!"
The midwife gave a soft laugh. "Everyone says that, but you're doing beautifully. Look," she said laying out her birth supplies on the bedside table. "Your baby will be wrapped in this blanket and in your arms very, very soon now." Carter opened her mouth to answer but was hit by such a powerful contraction she drew in a breath to scream and found herself pushing instead.
That's it," the midwife said, "push whenever you need to." And she did, again and again. Sweat ran off of her and mingled with her tears. He could feel the anxiety of the doctors behind him rising with each push. They didn't come running so he knew the monitors must be showing things were fine, but he knew they weren't. He rubbed her hips and willed her his energy; brushed her damp hair from her eyes and wished everything over for her. "I'm sorry," he told her over and over again through each contraction, until she hissed at him to stop, just stop.
Suddenly in midpush she began to scream and move away from the midwife's hands. "That's your baby, Sam," the midwife told her. "Don't try to run away from him, stay with him. That's his head you're feeling...another push and it will be out. Reach down and feel it if you want...lots of hair on this boy. There we are...head's out. Rest a minute, no hurry here," the midwife said as she quickly ran an expert hand around the head feeling for the cord. O'Neill looked down at his son, still more in his mother than not, and couldn't begin to describe the feelings running through him.
"Here, Dad," the midwife told him. She guided him into place and with the next contraction the baby flopped into his waiting hands. For a brief second he held his son warm and wet against him and then he brought him up to Carter and gently settled him in her good arm.
"You're beautiful. You're perfect. And we love you," she told the baby even before she'd really seen him. She was right. The baby was perfect. He'd somehow survived the devastation of his father's war and been born perfect and whole. O'Neill could almost hear the relieved sighs of the docs behind him. Carter was fine and so was the baby. Careful not to lose his balance and fall on them, he gingerly leaned over and kissed the baby's soft head still matted with vernix and blood. Then he kissed her forehead and said, "You're beautiful and perfect, and I love you." She tore her eyes away from the baby long enough to smile at him. He smiled back. Life was exceptionally good.
Chance Jacob O'Neill was born at 2:22 in the Danarian morning, 20 and 3/4 inches long, 7 pounds even. When the news went over the Link, people on 46 separate worlds let out the collective breath they had held in fear for him in a rush of joy and optimism. The youngest Torantay Stander was alive and well. More than that, the symbol of all their hopes, the reason for all their sacrifices had endured the worst and emerged unscathed. His safe delivery came to symbolize the true end of the war in the hearts of the Standers...the dead were mourned and buried, it was time to leave them behind and embrace the future.
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The Standing Series
by OffworlderKapitel Bemerkung:
The Standers won their rebellion, but now they must struggle to survive in its aftermath.Kapitel Abschlussbemerkung:
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