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: REFLECTIONS IN THE QUANTUM GLASS
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://www.beautyinshadows.net
RATING: Let's say ADULT to be safe...
CATEGORIES: Angst, Alternate Realities, Romance, Sam/Jack, Sam/Daniel, Sam/Pete, Adventure
WARNINGS: Major character death (in ONE reality, but not "ours")
SPOILERS: Through mid-season 8. Turns AU just before "Affinity".
ARCHIVE: Only on my website until completed. After that, just ask me.
SUMMARY: "...it feels like somewhere....somehow, in some other life...this happened...differently."
Thanks to my fabulous betas: Teddy E, annaK, and Amilyn
"Reflections In the Quantum Glass"
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
Copyright (c) 2005
Chapter 1
Asgard Council of Classification and Evolution -- Reality #59738-A (Our Known Reality)
-- 27 hours Post-Mission to P3X-666
Daniel Jackson watched the toes of his boots align with the tiles of the floor as he walked. He moved ever forward, following the red and green guidelines like a child in a blacktop chalk game.
He circled the infirmary, the medical laboratories. And he hovered. Like he had all day.
Because he couldn't shake the irrational sense that Janet's presence was just strong enough here he could still feel her. The urgent tension in his stomach told him it would linger only a few hours longer. He couldn't leave this area. He couldn't miss these last few moments. He couldn't...leave.
He was circling the floor for at least the fourteenth time, wandering down the hallway toward the single occupancy patient rooms, when he saw Jack's door swing open, and he saw Sam slip into the hallway, her back toward him.
She looked at the wall as she started down the hallway, brushed surreptitiously at the corner of her eye, hiding from the airmen who passed. She'd been crying, he knew that in an instant. Hell, it wasn't as though anyone would have blamed her. Half the base had been in tears in the last twenty-four hours.
Janet deserved as much.
But Daniel quickened his pace. He needed to catch up with Sam. Because as much as he wanted to crawl out of his own skin right now and banish the past 24 hours into a black hole, Sam was having a harder time with all of this than he. He could see it in her posture, in the steadiness missing from her customary cool gaze. She had lost her best friend, she had watched her niece-daughter-almost-little-girl lose a second mother, this time not so far from the age Sam had lost her own. But there was more than that. He sensed...fear.
His hand moved up to brush Sam's elbow as his steps came into stride with hers. "Hey, Sam," he said softly.
She caught her breath and glanced his way. She didn't quite meet his gaze. "Hey, Daniel. How are you doing?" So sincere. So gentle. That was Sam. Take care of everyone else, avoid the reverse at all cost. Not so different from Janet, when it came to that.
"I'm hanging in there," he said, honestly. He hated every breath he was forced to draw, but the cold truth was he knew he would be fine. He would suck it up, and bear his scars and move on as he had after every loss in his life. He had learned the fragility of man too early in his time on this plane to be surprised by it now. Two days from now, two years from now, two months from now, this woman at his side might go down in a firefight right in front of his eyes. Or die in a car crash. Or fall from a cliff. These thoughts never truly left him. But today...they cut deeper than expected.
"Yeah?" she asked, truly meeting his gaze for a moment with an openness that was hard to withstand. "Really? I mean, I know I haven't--"
"It's okay, Sam. We're all just surviving. I'm okay."
She swallowed hard and nodded. They walked in silence, and he found he was able, and perhaps even needed to leave this area for a while. He trailed along beside Sam, eventually finding himself crossing the threshold into her lab.
"How's Jack?" he asked, realizing he had meant to ask first thing.
Sam half-turned, and he could catch more clearly the pink blotches on her pale skin and just how much she had been crying. A deeper concern focused his stream of thoughts through the haze.
"He's okay," she said. "He's sore, but they're letting him go home today." Her voice was shaking, and her facial muscles tightened as she spoke. She bit down on the inside of her cheek and looked away. Her breath caught and he saw her eyes fill with tears.
"Hey," he said softly, moving closer. Her gaze flickered to the door, the security camera, and it was only a split second gesture, but he saw the self-consciousness, the long engrained safeguards of the soldier, and he read every thought behind her eyes like words on a screen. Sam Carter didn't cry. Not at work. It wasn't allowed. Which meant this wasn't about Janet. Not exclusively. Because Sam had no issues with openly mourning. Mourning showed respect for the fallen, not weakness in the survivor.
Anywhere else he would have pulled her into his arms. So rarely did he have the luxury of offering his touch when she hurt. And when he did, she drank in the warmth with a thirst that made him ache. Daniel had considered Doctor Samantha Carter his best friend for seven years. He had but scratched the surface of the woman.
He had known this for a long time.
Daniel stepped forward, mimicking the tentative movements of a man approaching a bird. He touched a hand to Sam's forearm, squeezed gently, assuring her he meant to offer nothing more. The muscles quivered beneath his fingers. "This isn't all about Janet," he said matter-of-factly. "What is it, Sam? Jack's been hurt before. We've had lots of close calls. Why is this one harder?"
She looked at him in the artificial light, skin so pale, not at all the splash of gold and warmth she could be beneath desert suns. She shook her head, shrugged. "Honestly, Daniel? I don't know. It's just...," she narrowed her eyes, drew a careful breath through her scarcely parted lips, and he could see her wild mind racing landscapes beyond his reach, "...it feels like...like somewhere....somehow, in some other life, I don't know...like this happened...differently."
For a moment she looked at him with a glimmer of utter sincerity that trickled feather touches down his spine. Then her gaze fell away and she cleared her throat. "I don’t know," she said again. "I'm just...tired."
He squeezed her arm, closed his other hand around her wrist. "I know. We all are."
*****
Asgard Council of Classification and Evolution -- Reality #59749-F
-- 2 minutes Post-Mission to P3X-666
The medics swarm, but she hardly hears them. No one is trying to pull her away, not with any force, and she sure as hell isn't going without a fight.
"Sir. Can you hear me?"
He's too pale, too pale, too damn pale, she's never seen him like this, even when--
"Pulse is dropping. We need to get him into OR stat. Get him on the gurney. On three. One, two, THREE."
His eyelids flutter at the movement, and Sam is instantly alert to the connection. She can feel his presence in the room. He is conscious. "Sir?"
He can barely hold his eyes open. She's not sure how clearly he's focusing, but she sees the recognition, and his hand fumbles toward her. She catches his fingers in hers, and lifts his too cold palm to her cheek. "I'm right here, sir. You're gonna be okay."
He's shaking his head. Speaking steals a toll she feels in her own lungs; his words are slurred and breathless. "Love. You," he says.
She trembles in places she didn't know she could feel. "No." Passion blurs into anger as she grips his wrist. "NO. Don't you do that. You are going to be fine. You're not dying on me, you're not--"
"Love you, Sam," he whispers, and his fingers pat at her cheek.
She slips. Her hand caresses his cheek, tears bleeding into her voice. "I love you, too, Baby. I love you. But you're gonna be fine."
"Ma'am, we have to move him," a firm voice says beside her. She pulls back as they jerk the gurney to its height and snap the joints into place. He half opens his eyes as they start to move away. His hand is still caught in hers, and on instinct driven by the horror of breaking the threads, she dives forward and kisses his lips. She tastes his blood, but she feels his response and his warmth and her vision swims.
A second later, and he's five feet away. Someone is holding her back, and a woman's voice is shouting, "He's coding! Move, move, move!" Someone on top of the gurney, straddling Jack's prone figure as he's whisked out of her sight.
"No...NO...." There are hands gripping her arms, hard enough to bruise, holding her in place, and she's pulling, but she's not fighting, because this is her family, her team, and she knows they're doing what they have to do...
She turns and meets General Hammond's ghostly countenance through the crowd. She chooses to see the horror at her actions and not the portent of what is to come. She jerks her chin with a bitter set to her mouth that is little more than a lifeline. "Court martial me," she says. She doesn't give a flying fuck right now.
He drops his gaze to the floor and closes and uncloses his fists, and she doesn't want to think that he knows none of this will matter.
She stops pulling and turns to backtrack and the hands gripping her arms loosen their grasp. She thinks maybe the hands belonged to Siler, but she can't stop to focus, not yet. "We need Janet," she says. "He'd want Janet. Where the hell is Doctor Frasier?" she shouts to the soldiers coming through the gate. One of the figures is Daniel.
"Where is Janet?" she repeats.
Daniel's face is as white as Hammond's and streaked with someone's blood.
"Are you okay?" she manages.
He nods dumbly. "Sam, move back."
"What?"
"Just move back."
She takes a few steps as he pushes at her, but she's tired of being pushed, and everything is moving too fast, slipping out from under her...
"No, Daniel, Jack's been hit. Bad. He's going into surgery, but he was coding, and he needs Janet, we need--"
"Oh, God..." Daniel breathes. But he's still putting himself between her and the path up the ramp. "Oh, God, Sam..." He sounds sick, and she focuses on him again for a moment, checking once more that he isn't hurt, he can't be hurt...
A stretcher is emerging from the gate.
"Sam, just stay here with me." Daniel says, never turning to look, keeping his gaze on her.
She meets his blue eyes with her own, and the motion of green and brown and too much red whirls around them; feels like they two are floating above the rush.
"Look at me," he says. And she finds she can't do anything else. If she does, she might fall. His hands are gripping her forearms, and they are face to face. The stretcher moves past her but she doesn't look. The bearers are not rushing. They're not rushing.
She shakes her head, never breaking blue on blue. "No," she says shortly.
Daniel swallows hard, and in that moment he is the strongest she has ever known.
"Staff blast. Too late. I was there," is all he says.
"Oh, God..." Her voice cracks and breaks. She doesn't know the sound as her own. She glances around but sees nothing. She's looking for a way to escape.
"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God..."
"Come on." Daniel's voice is raw. Ragged. Slashed. But he turns her to walk down the ramp, and his arm wraps around her stomach hard, holding her up more than he knows. He grips her hair and pulls it back from her face. "We're gonna go check on Jack."
And she walks with him, pushing through the crowd, boots slamming into the iron grating in concert.
She has to keep moving.
Keep moving.
*****
5 minutes down.
"Give me 50 milligrams of epi, and raise it to 300 joules!"
"One, two, three--CLEAR!"
Daniel's hands are gripping her arms so hard it hurts.
"Jack...Oh, God...Jack..."
Daniel's voice is shaking. Or maybe it's hers.
*****
7 minutes down.
"Nothing. I need some more help over here, Stat! Come on, Colonel..."
"Major Carter. Daniel Jackson."
"He's not responding, Teal'c."
"Sam, look at me. Sam."
"Oh, God, Jack." Her pulse pounds in her ears and none of the voices make sense.
He's so pale. He's so pale.
"Major Carter, are you hurt?"
"I think she's all right..."
*****
"Come on, Carter, we're 200 miles from the SGC in a freakin' field. You really think anyone is gonna see you kiss me?"
"Sir, it's not...I mean, I know we're..." She sags with a defeated smile. "Sir, we could get court martialed. I'm serious. I know we--but our whole careers..."
Then his mouth is on hers and there are dandelions leaving yellow smears on her face and in her hair, and she's laughing and she hasn't laughed like this since she was thirteen. This simple fact terrifies her.
"It's very important that I know whether you're ticklish, Carter."
"What?"
"It's crucial to me. I've wondered for years, and the suspense might kill me. I am old, you know."
"I'm not ticklish," she says, with nothing like a straight face, and she's wondering where the hell Major Carter has gone.
He narrows his golden-brown eyes in the sunlight and says, "Uh-hunh. I'm gonna have to test that assertion."
"No!" she shrieks. She actually shrieks, and it's nuts, this is not her and maybe this is more her than she's ever been. She doesn't know and she doesn't care because she's risking everything and she's never felt so safe in her life.
She's laughing so hard, she doesn't notice when 'Sir' becomes 'Jack'.
Seven years and she can finally laugh out loud at his stupid jokes.
*****
10 minutes down.
"Doctor, should we..."
"Not yet, nurse. Keep it up. On my mark."
She doesn't know her own voice. "No. No... Come on...Jack..."
"Sam..."
"Shut up, Daniel."
She hates him. She hates everyone. She can't breathe.
"I'm sorry."
"No."
Dandelions in her hair and calloused fingers at her temple.
*****
15 minutes down.
"What the hell are you talking about? Keep going!"
"Major..."
"NO! Goddammit, you think Janet would stop now?! DO YOU? Daniel, would you tell them!"
The light is all wrong. It's too grey in here and she can't quite focus on anyone's face.
"Oh, God, Janet..."
*****
"Carter, are you okay?"
"Yes, sir, I'm fine."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." If you just stop using that soft tone with me, that throaty, tender, whisper that makes me forget I have legs and I'm supposed to be all right on my own.
"Hey..."
Dammit. Damn him. She grips her coffee mug.
He waits.
"Bad dream," she says at last.
"Yeah?"
She bites her lip and nods. "I'm fine, I just..."
"Hey. Come here."
He smells like beer. And she doesn't care.
*****
17 minutes down.
"...making every attempt to contact the Tok'ra, but so far there has been no response..."
"...still might hear something..."
"...wish we could..."
"...of the resistance..."
"One, two, three--CLEAR!"
*****
20 minutes down.
"Where the fuck is my dad!?"
"Sam, please, just..." Tears in Daniel's throat, soaking into the back of her shoulder.
"Let go of me!"
The infirmary smells like burning incense.
*****
"Carter, you are so damn beautiful."
"Shut up, sir."
"What?! I'm serious."
"Stop."
"Carter. Sam. You. Are. Beautiful."
She's shaking. A minute ago it was funny, and now she's shaking. How does he do that? He scares her.
"Thank you," she says quietly.
*****
30 minutes down.
"I'm calling it."
"WHAT? NO! Don't you dare, don't you DARE!"
He's still there, I can still hold his hand, I can still touch his face...
"Sam. SAM!"
*****
"I like women. I've just got a little problem with scientists."
"Havin' a good time now, sir."
*****
"Ma'am, it's been 30 minutes, you can't--"
"I love you, Carter. Always have."
"Major Carter!"
Teal'c in her shadow, Sergeant Siler gripping her arm.
A blur and pain.
"Oh, God, Sergeant, I'm sorry..."
"It's okay, Ma'am. It's okay."
"I'm sorry...I..."
Blood on Siler's nose. Blood all over her clothes.
*****
"SIIIIIIRRRRR!"
Gunfire. Staff blasts. Sunshine and blood and smoke and noise. Were there dandelions on P3X-666? Do Jaffa children make dandelion chains?
"Where the hell is Frasier?!"
*****
"Why can't I use it?" A shout coming out as a whisper.
"Major, he's beyond the healing device. The blast did too much damage to his heart. There's nothing more we can do. I'm so--"
"Get off of me."
*****
"I won't go anywhere, Carter."
"I'm scared."
"My Sam Carter? Scared?"
"Scared as all hell."
"Hey. Carter. It's me. We'll be okay."
"We're not supposed to do this."
"When have we ever done what we were supposed to do?" A hand in her hair. "We'll figure this out." The tenderness coils deep in her stomach. "Besides, my knees only have another year or two of field duty in 'em anyway. Hell, probably not even that."
"Take me home, Jack."
"You got it."
*****
Time of death 16:48.
Hallways. Doors. Voices. Flickers of lights.
Dizzy. Can't hear. Beeping. Infirmary. Her lab. Teal'c. Daniel. Shouting in the distance. Slam of her door.
Silence. Dark.
"Oh God...oh, God...oh, God..."
Can't breathe.
Can't breathe.
The scream rips at her own ears and she doesn't feel the door against her back as she slides to the floor. She's so cold.
*****
"Sleep, Carter. You think so much. No more bad dreams."
The whisper of lips on her forehead.
*****
"Jack..."
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
"Jack..."
*****
(End Chapter 1. Continued in Chapter 2...)
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