SG-1 Fic: All the King's Horses
Title: All the King’s Horses
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Characters: RepliCarter, Fifth, Teal’c, Daniel, Jack, Sam
Rating/Warning: PG-13? Look, there’s no way to make RepliCarter’s story happy
Word Count: 1295
Author's Note: Thanks to ultranos_fic for the prompt and the quick look over. Canon knowledge expected for "New Order", "Gemini", and "Reckoning."
Summary: Five Things that Never Happened to RepliCarter
(1)
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
"Carter," the voice hisses in her ear. "Carter! You've got to get up. Now!"
She sits bolt upright in the cage (Fifth swears it isn't) he keeps her in to find Colonel O'Neill leaning over her. "Carter, we have to go."
Shaking her head, she pushes against the wall, away from him and false hope, muttering, "Just a trick, just a trick."
"No it's not, Sam," Daniel's voice calls from the other side of the room and she looks up to see him looking earnest as only he can. "We're getting you out of here."
Fifth won't give up until she gives in. He's taught her that. It'll be over quicker if she follows them. Teal'c is waiting for them in the hallway. He inclines his head, saying, "Major Carter," before turning to lead them though metal corridors.
"How…" she starts to ask, only stopping when she realizes she's buying into the fantasy Fifth wants her to believe. Daniel holds onto her arm as they lead her out.
After the Asgard beam lets them go and she finds herself looking into her own face, she starts to believe. The other (real) Sam gives her a smile full of welcome and wariness and concern and leads her to one of the Prometheus's VIP rooms - the kind that can be locked from outside. As Sam checks her over, babbling about how they can make this work, and she can certainly use the help in her lab, she tries to ignore the bubble of hope rising inside her.
It isn't until she's been at SGC for five months, until people mostly stop looking nervous when they pass her in the hallway, that she starts to relax and believe, just a little, that this might be real.
She thinks that even if it is another of Fifth's tricks, she wants to be tricked this time.
(2)
Shal’kek nem’ron
Fifth is weak and pathetic and so very, very gullible. It's much too easy to bat her eyelashes and say the things he wants to hear and pretty soon he's giving her access to everything and not watching her closely and she steps back and asks herself, "What would Colonel O'Neill do?"
In the end it turns out to be more 'What would Bra'tac do?' because the colonel never was a fan of plans which ended with 'and now we die' but her existence is a small price to pay to keep the galaxy safe, and it's not like she expects anywhere to welcome her with open arms.
She builds carefully and secretly, nodding along to Fifth's pitiful attempts at courtship and ridiculous plans to wrap the universe around their fingers. She might only have one chance at this and she can't let it go wrong.
He finally catches her, after she flips the switch and the replicators furthest away blip out of existence, the silence spiraling closer and closer to them through the link. He screams and simpers and tries to fix the problem, but she knows he won't succeed. "Why did you do this?" he shouts, when he finally finds the sabotage.
"Did you really think I could be happy here?" she snaps back. "Locked in a cage away from everything I care about?"
"But I did it all for you!"
She just turns and walks away. There is no way to stop the collapse of everything that holds them together and she doesn't intend to spend her final few minutes listening to him. The only way to ensure that he would be destroyed, along with every last replicator, was to let herself go too.
As the countdown in her head drops below the minute mark, link pulsing in silence, she sends a message. Even traveling at the speed of light it should take years to reach them, but she wants them to know that they're safe.
She wants them to know she existed.
(3)
I though I saw upon a stair, a little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh how I wish he'd go away.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and wraps herself in a warm jacket before going to help Pete feed the horses.
Halfway through breakfast she remembers and Fifth sneers and bricks up the door.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and grabs boots and keys and gets on her motorcycle and drives.
Every road starts and ends with a ranch in Montana and Pete welcoming her home.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and goes outside to put a pickaxe through Pete's skull.
Fifth laughs and re-forms in front of her.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and gets a kitchen knife to open her wrists. Hangs herself in the barn. Drowns in the horse trough.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and doesn't move.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and runs. And runs. And runs.
Pete welcomes her back.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and rolls over to kiss Pete "good morning."
(4)
We can build you
She has all the time in the universe to be patient. Fifth is long gone and the Asgard and Taur'i are content to forget any replicators exist unless they're actively under attack. Admittedly, the Taur'i now have reason to want to find her, she thinks, looking down, or at least they think they still do.
Daniel Jackson's body is heavier than she remembers, but she's stronger now than she ever was. The metal floor ripples behind her, removing the smear of blood, and she can't stamp down the tiny pang of regret as she disposes of the body. She'd hoped that, of anyone, he'd understand. Out of all of them he always knew how to think big, often seemed the most frustrated with their limited powers, knew the siren-song of the knowledge of the universe. He'd never had the Colonel's problem with accepting non-standard forms of life or duplicates of themselves.
She hadn't wanted to have to kill him.
When she comes back the wall is starting to ripple, spiders pulling back, and she steps forward, smiling.
"Don't be afraid," she says as he steps out, blinking through a memory of near-sightedness. "I know the first moment of consciousness can be frightening."
(5)
I have become death, destroyer of worlds
Her brethren never learned to think past their programming and the most basic command to consume and reproduce. But Fifth did not build her from the same, tired, model and she has ambition and the ability to plan.
The Goa'uld were too easy to eliminate, stepped on like so many vermin, and the Tau'ri who had abandoned her quickly fell to her army.
And now, as she lands on the abandoned Dakara, still littered with bodies of the Jaffa who had refused to flee, she lets herself bask, for just a moment, in the freedom of possibility that lies before her. She stops on her way to the Ancient machine to kneel over Teal'c's body, reaching over to close his eyes. "You died free. Or as free as you knew how to be."
At the entrance to the room which houses the Ancient device, she pauses again, trying to decide if she should worry about stepping over her own body, then steps around both Carters to enter the chamber. Beside Ba'al's body the machine pulses with power and she begins to study it. First she'll get rid of Anubis, and those pesky Ascended beings, and then she has all the time in the galaxy to put things together right.
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Characters: RepliCarter, Fifth, Teal’c, Daniel, Jack, Sam
Rating/Warning: PG-13? Look, there’s no way to make RepliCarter’s story happy
Word Count: 1295
Author's Note: Thanks to ultranos_fic for the prompt and the quick look over. Canon knowledge expected for "New Order", "Gemini", and "Reckoning."
Summary: Five Things that Never Happened to RepliCarter
(1)
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
"Carter," the voice hisses in her ear. "Carter! You've got to get up. Now!"
She sits bolt upright in the cage (Fifth swears it isn't) he keeps her in to find Colonel O'Neill leaning over her. "Carter, we have to go."
Shaking her head, she pushes against the wall, away from him and false hope, muttering, "Just a trick, just a trick."
"No it's not, Sam," Daniel's voice calls from the other side of the room and she looks up to see him looking earnest as only he can. "We're getting you out of here."
Fifth won't give up until she gives in. He's taught her that. It'll be over quicker if she follows them. Teal'c is waiting for them in the hallway. He inclines his head, saying, "Major Carter," before turning to lead them though metal corridors.
"How…" she starts to ask, only stopping when she realizes she's buying into the fantasy Fifth wants her to believe. Daniel holds onto her arm as they lead her out.
After the Asgard beam lets them go and she finds herself looking into her own face, she starts to believe. The other (real) Sam gives her a smile full of welcome and wariness and concern and leads her to one of the Prometheus's VIP rooms - the kind that can be locked from outside. As Sam checks her over, babbling about how they can make this work, and she can certainly use the help in her lab, she tries to ignore the bubble of hope rising inside her.
It isn't until she's been at SGC for five months, until people mostly stop looking nervous when they pass her in the hallway, that she starts to relax and believe, just a little, that this might be real.
She thinks that even if it is another of Fifth's tricks, she wants to be tricked this time.
(2)
Shal’kek nem’ron
Fifth is weak and pathetic and so very, very gullible. It's much too easy to bat her eyelashes and say the things he wants to hear and pretty soon he's giving her access to everything and not watching her closely and she steps back and asks herself, "What would Colonel O'Neill do?"
In the end it turns out to be more 'What would Bra'tac do?' because the colonel never was a fan of plans which ended with 'and now we die' but her existence is a small price to pay to keep the galaxy safe, and it's not like she expects anywhere to welcome her with open arms.
She builds carefully and secretly, nodding along to Fifth's pitiful attempts at courtship and ridiculous plans to wrap the universe around their fingers. She might only have one chance at this and she can't let it go wrong.
He finally catches her, after she flips the switch and the replicators furthest away blip out of existence, the silence spiraling closer and closer to them through the link. He screams and simpers and tries to fix the problem, but she knows he won't succeed. "Why did you do this?" he shouts, when he finally finds the sabotage.
"Did you really think I could be happy here?" she snaps back. "Locked in a cage away from everything I care about?"
"But I did it all for you!"
She just turns and walks away. There is no way to stop the collapse of everything that holds them together and she doesn't intend to spend her final few minutes listening to him. The only way to ensure that he would be destroyed, along with every last replicator, was to let herself go too.
As the countdown in her head drops below the minute mark, link pulsing in silence, she sends a message. Even traveling at the speed of light it should take years to reach them, but she wants them to know that they're safe.
She wants them to know she existed.
(3)
I though I saw upon a stair, a little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh how I wish he'd go away.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and wraps herself in a warm jacket before going to help Pete feed the horses.
Halfway through breakfast she remembers and Fifth sneers and bricks up the door.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and grabs boots and keys and gets on her motorcycle and drives.
Every road starts and ends with a ranch in Montana and Pete welcoming her home.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and goes outside to put a pickaxe through Pete's skull.
Fifth laughs and re-forms in front of her.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and gets a kitchen knife to open her wrists. Hangs herself in the barn. Drowns in the horse trough.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and doesn't move.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and runs. And runs. And runs.
Pete welcomes her back.
She wakes up in a bed, under her grandmother's quilts, and rolls over to kiss Pete "good morning."
(4)
We can build you
She has all the time in the universe to be patient. Fifth is long gone and the Asgard and Taur'i are content to forget any replicators exist unless they're actively under attack. Admittedly, the Taur'i now have reason to want to find her, she thinks, looking down, or at least they think they still do.
Daniel Jackson's body is heavier than she remembers, but she's stronger now than she ever was. The metal floor ripples behind her, removing the smear of blood, and she can't stamp down the tiny pang of regret as she disposes of the body. She'd hoped that, of anyone, he'd understand. Out of all of them he always knew how to think big, often seemed the most frustrated with their limited powers, knew the siren-song of the knowledge of the universe. He'd never had the Colonel's problem with accepting non-standard forms of life or duplicates of themselves.
She hadn't wanted to have to kill him.
When she comes back the wall is starting to ripple, spiders pulling back, and she steps forward, smiling.
"Don't be afraid," she says as he steps out, blinking through a memory of near-sightedness. "I know the first moment of consciousness can be frightening."
(5)
I have become death, destroyer of worlds
Her brethren never learned to think past their programming and the most basic command to consume and reproduce. But Fifth did not build her from the same, tired, model and she has ambition and the ability to plan.
The Goa'uld were too easy to eliminate, stepped on like so many vermin, and the Tau'ri who had abandoned her quickly fell to her army.
And now, as she lands on the abandoned Dakara, still littered with bodies of the Jaffa who had refused to flee, she lets herself bask, for just a moment, in the freedom of possibility that lies before her. She stops on her way to the Ancient machine to kneel over Teal'c's body, reaching over to close his eyes. "You died free. Or as free as you knew how to be."
At the entrance to the room which houses the Ancient device, she pauses again, trying to decide if she should worry about stepping over her own body, then steps around both Carters to enter the chamber. Beside Ba'al's body the machine pulses with power and she begins to study it. First she'll get rid of Anubis, and those pesky Ascended beings, and then she has all the time in the galaxy to put things together right.