Travelers Return, by Redbyrd (PG)
Rec Category: Samantha Carter
Pairing: none
Categories: Samantha Carter, gen, episode related, angst, character study
Warnings: none
Author on LJ: redbyrd_sgfic
Author's Website: Redbyrd's Stargate Fiction
Link: Travelers Return; LJ comments on the fic are here.
Why This Must Be Read: Redbyrd is one of my favorite authors, especially for her ability to offer a new and unique perspective on Stargate episodes - usually by focusing on an unusual POV. This might be AU Kalwalsky in POV, or Krista in Affinity, or Stephen Raynor in The Curse. This story is a little bit different - after all, Sam is hardly a minor character! - but all the same, in the oodleplex of episode tags about The Serpent's Lair, I have never seen another one written from Sam's point-of-view.
There's Redbyrd's usual loving attention to detail, including the puzzled guard at the checkpoint who doesn't understand how they can sign in when they never signed out. Most importantly, though, this is Sam-the-soldier, dazed and wondering whether she's going to face that court martial she worried about before they went AWOL through the Stargate, still feeling that twinge of isolation at being the single woman on a team with three men - but at the same time, this is also Sam-of-SG-1, standing at Jack and Teal'c and Daniel's side, and deciding that "team" means more to her, now, than anything else.
The sergeant looked at his log, then back at the colonel. "I'm sorry sir, but I don't show you as having logged out."
The major interrupted firmly. "That's not your concern, sergeant. They're cleared."
O'Neill caught the man's eye and shrugged in a 'sorry' kind of way. Yeah, they were puzzled. We bypassed the card reader, since our ID was all in our lockers, twenty floors down.
We were supposed to have our handprints scanned the halfway checkpoint. Hey, we still have those, I thought. At least until O'Neill stopped and grimaced, holding up his right hand and saying, "I need to use the other one today." The guard nodded, typing in the commands that would verify the colonel's left handprint instead.
I gasped softly. His palm was bruised purple with a curved row of oozing toothmarks standing out red and swollen. I hadn't realized I'd broken the skin. That had to hurt like anything. I started to flush, "Sir-"
He gave me a quelling look. "Don't worry about it, Carter. I'll have Fraiser take a look at it shortly."
I stopped, still embarrassed about biting him. If it weren't for Daniel, he'd be teasing me unmercifully over it. If it weren't for Daniel. I suppressed a shiver. It still didn't make sense to me how he could have been so sure that this reality would be the same as the other one he'd experienced, but thank god he was.
I used to believe what I've been told all my life about how smart I am. Then I met Daniel. I may get from A to B and on through G faster than most people. Daniel just skips from A to J, giving us a hopeful look halfway through the explanation and saying, "So, you see where I'm going with this?" Even he can't-couldn't- always explain how his intuition led him to the answer. God. How long will it be before I can stop thinking of him in the present tense?
O'Neill frowned as the major punched the lowest level. "I'd have expected 27," he said. "For debriefing?"
I half-expected the holding cells on level 19 myself, but maybe we were going to get off the hook on account of having saved the world because the major said, "There's a bit of a celebration in the gate room, sir."
"Ah," was O'Neill's only comment.
Teal'c met my gaze with a certain amount of dismay while Bra'tac looked on with phlegmatic incomprehension Frankly, I'd rather they shot me, or barring that, wait until I'd slept for twenty hours. But I kept my mouth shut like a good soldier. Later. I could cry later. Along with laughing, screaming and drinking something seriously alcoholic because after going AWOL, capture, escape, near-death, losing a good friend, and saving the world, I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling.