DISCLAIMER: Yeah, the SG-1 guys are all property of MGM, World
Gekko Corp and Double Secret productions. This is all in fun, no
infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. All other
characters, ideas, etc., herein are copyrighted to the author.
TITLE: IMMEDIATE PERCEPTION
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://www.beautyinshadows.net
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Angst, Alternate Reality RippleFic, Sam/Pete, past
Sam/Martouf, a whisper of Sam/Jack
ARCHIVE: Yes, just let me know.
SUMMARY: "These days...things were left behind."
"Immediate Perception"
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2006
She sees them all around her. A sea of reflections; Alice
through the looking glass; through a glass darkly; a doorway to
the other side. A room of Sam Carters, yet only one of them is
she. She understands the physics and the connections and the
continuity, but human nature binds her to the limited scope of
identity.
She remembers being fascinated by mirrors long before she saw her
friends step into one. Seated at her mother's elegant vanity,
silver combs and antique perfume bottles scattered before her,
she watched the reflections in the backward room she could never
quite touch. She understood the physics from a very young age--
the bending and meeting of particles and beams of light. She
understood the states of matter, the deceptive solidity of the
glass. She remembers pressing her fingers to the cold reflection
and imagining she could feel its infinitesimal melting.
Sam Carter remembers watching her mother's image as she moved
about her room, dressing, chatting, always rushing, but never
neglecting to touch Sam's hair as she passed. Sam remembers
wondering if this flipside world, filled with people they would
never know, might linger after its initiating parallel had faded.
She remembers staring into her mother's mirror for endless hours
in the months after the accident, straining to catch a lingering
beam of light, a thin whisper of a reflection gone awry, a
pattern of molecules misplaced in space and time.
She sits in the commissary amidst more than a dozen reflections;
all living, breathing, touching, feeling.
The floor moves and she closes her eyes as Martouf moves past.
She hadn't expected this. She remembers the scent of his skin in
the first flickers of dawn, still feels him cradling her beneath
the heavy comforter she brought from the basement each deepest
winter. He had never lived anywhere so cold as Colorado. She
remembers the acrid blackness in her nostrils in the wake of
staff weapons fire, the cold of her lover's flesh as she clutched
his body to her chest, screaming into her radio even as she felt
his essence slip away.
She wonders how many women in this room have watched this man
die.
A few warm smiles speak of gentler memories. Thick swallows and
evasive glances tell of darker pains.
Sam Carter--*which is who she is, she doesn't know what else to
call herself, even if every body in this room responds to the
same*--Sam curls her fingers into a ball, thumbs her wedding band
and thinks of some place more like home.
The words and phrases eating at the air--'maybe', 'trying our
best', 'determined', 'prioritizing', 'we promise you'--are making
her nauseous and she shies off the coffee. She knows enough of
these women to know when "she" is placating the needy.
She knows all about the Ori, the plagues, sworn duties, and the
greater good; she's set her own mountain's self-destruct more
than a dozen times. But the truth is, in this moment in a
laboratory room she's lived in eaten in slept in cried in never
been in, she simply can't soldier up and stomach the thought of
never seeing home.
She is caught here, in memories mixed up with immediate
perception, when another Carter zeroes in upon her.
"Who are you married to?" this Carter asks, blunt and direct and
as unaware of this fact as Sam herself is known to have been.
Sam watches her for a moment, follows her gaze to the ring, and
thinks absurdly that she should lighten her own hair again next
weekend, because this Carter has something closer to the shade
Sam had been aiming for and missed.
"Pete," she replies simply. His name on her tongue tastes of
comfort and something more. Her job is getting harder each day.
She remembers a time when her nemesis was isolation. The notion
of being trapped comfortably offworld with Daniel and Teal'c and
the Colonel had felt too much like family to feel enough like
fear.
These days...things were left behind.
The interested Carter frowns with her eyes above a congenial
smile. "Pete?" she asks.
And Sam realizes this Carter and her matching Pete Shanahan have
never met. She starts to wonder if the man she loves is a kind
of anomaly in the multiversal scheme of things; a little more
than a one in six billion. She scans the room for wedding rings,
can't see everyone clearly, but she only spots a few bits of
silver or gold. She knows from earlier talk that at least one of
the rings, maybe more, mean marriage to Jack O'Neill. And
that...she doesn't want to think about. She's too off balance
already, tonight.
"He's an old friend of Mark's," Sam says to this ringless Carter
who awaits a reply, "He's a cop."
Curious Carter nods. "Oh, hey, that's great. Congratulations."
"Thanks."
She looks like she's going to ask something more, but she's
distracted by the Carter who seems to live on coffee and thinks
everyone else should, too.
Sam wonders if that Carter's universe is balanced by a Daniel on
decaf.
She steps away from the clinging groups and leans her back
against the wall. She wonders how all these reflections can
focus more clearly on the work than she herself, how they can not
look afraid.
She thinks again it has something to do with family, and the
rooms of Teal'c's and Daniel's down the hall.
Two Carters at a nearby table are talking animatedly, and Sam
recognizes her own fervor in discovery. These two are onto
something. A long shot possibility. She takes a step forward,
means to join in their energetic debate. But in the moment
before she crosses their space, another reflection of herself
catches her eyes. The line of this one's jaw, something in the
concerned wrinkles beside her eyes, and Sam flashes to the still
shadows of her parents' bedroom and a silent piece of glass that
refused to give back anything it had taken.
Sam had never believed those who said she looked like her mother.
Until now.
This distant Carter combs her fingers through her longish hair,
rubs at her stiff neck. For a moment, her clear blue gaze seems
to drift and waver. Something glimmers in the lines of her face.
Something Sam recognizes.
A flash of light against military green and she sees the wedding
ring, not much different in design from her own.
She recognizes the tightness across the bridge of this woman's
nose, the hollow ache beneath the polished poise. This Carter
needs to get home. In a way most of the women in this room
cannot understand.
One of the two enlivened Carters before her grasps the arm of the
other and says, "But that's the problem, right? It would only
give any kind of manageable odds if--"
"--if we took the wormhole out of the equation," Sam finishes.
The other Carters look up, but they are not surprised. Why would
they be?
She takes a seat at their small table, glances at the open laptop
and wonders where this SGC found all the extra hardware, if their
budget is larger than the one back home. The numbers on the
screen are a kind of comfort. She knows how to play this role.
There is a task at hand, a need to focus upon. Because maybe
that Carter at the edge of her vision, now leaning on a table and
trying to follow what the others are saying, maybe that Carter
cried herself to sleep on Pete's lap three nights ago. Maybe she
needs to go home and say thank you somehow she can't quite
fathom, because she hasn't let anyone give her that kind of
comfort since she was ten years old. Maybe that Carter is scared
and blessed and lucky all in one knot in the pit of her stomach.
Maybe she's wondering how much longer she can work this job and
how long she really wants to.
Maybe that Carter needs to go home.
*****
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