N is for Not Quite (G)
My second contribution to Quantum Mirror Alphabet Soup!
Summary: An alternate POV of an alternate reality. Canon, more or less, from POV. ~840 words.
N is for Not Quite
Sam's fingers ached from her tense grip on her weapon. She stared with burning eyes at the quiescent Mirror, willing it back to life.
The rest of her team had stepped through that not-quite-reflection and vanished from the SGC's reality. It felt even worse than being lost off-world without a working Stargate, stranded somewhere light years from Earth. DHDs could be fixed, and vast distances could always be somehow bridged; no matter how remote the chance, the possibility of rescue, either by the Tok'ra or the Asgard or even the Nox, would always be there. But her teammates had walked through the Quantum Mirror, a different kind of event horizon, three hours ago... and when the Mirror went blank to become an empty, stolid frame of naquadah mocking her solitary vigil, her hopes of ever seeing her teammates again seemed to wither into dust.
But she stayed there, waiting. Watching. They would get back if they could.
She tried to choke down her despair and frustration at being left behind like this. Yes, they'd learned the hard way that doubles couldn't co-exist in a single reality without catastrophic results. Matter versus anti-matter, one of the scientists had suggested with dark humor. Or antibodies converging on a foreign intruder. Chaos theory having the last word. Teal'c and the others, at least, knew their counterparts were dead. She'd tried to argue that the alterations to her DNA due to Goa'uld possession might trick entropy into thinking she and the Samantha Carter of the other reality were different people, but Janet had gently insisted that a former host and a current host were just too similar to take the risk.
Current host. She swallowed hard against the thought. Jolinar had been bad enough.
While Sam was honest enough with herself to admit that she didn't want to endure that kind of suffering, that wasn't why she'd reluctantly agreed to stay behind. It had been horrifying to watch the alternate version of the colonel seem to shake apart, agony etched on those normally stoic features. But it wasn't her fear of the pain of dissolution that stopped her from going through - at least, not the pain itself. It was the danger it represented, turning her into a potential weak link. Even if she could somehow pull a bait-and-switch - which itself seemed doubtful - the risk of being incapacitated at the worst possible moment would be a betrayal of her team. There would be no way to explain why the other reality's version of Amaunet was suddenly literally shaking herself apart. Jaffa were blindly loyal, not stupid; they would know that something was wrong. And the slightest hint of what they were trying to achieve would destroy their desperate plan to find the alternate reality's Asgard and beg them to help liberate the Earth.
Time dragged by, long minutes crawling like bugs. Tension and monotony, she knew, could be a dangerous mix. Taking a deep breath, Sam carefully eased her arms and legs, one muscle set at a time, so she would remain limber and ready to act. She had to have faith in them, she told herself sternly. They'd been warned that they would lose their lock of reality if the connection had to be broken, and there were dozens of reasons why it might have been necessary to shut down the Mirror. It might take a while, but she had to trust that her CO would find a way to discover their reality again and bring the rest of the team home.
There was no flash, no chime, no warning - the Mirror, quiescent for so long, was suddenly and abruptly alive. Instead of an empty frame showcasing the wall behind it, the Quantum Mirror now reflected both the strange reality and the person she'd so desperately hoped to see again. There was the colonel, standing in the storage room of the SGA, holding the Mirror's remote and squinting at the SGC reality where she'd been waiting all this time.
Her relief made her want to leap to her feet, but she straightened cautiously, eying the vision of her CO from behind the sandbags. Yes, he seemed all right: alert, unharmed, his own face lightening at the sight of her. She smiled in return, stepping forward.
"Colonel," she called, forgetting momentarily that sound didn't seem to carry across the realities. "Are you all right? What's going on?"
He blinked at her, then his shoulders seemed to droop. He said something she couldn't hear.
"Colonel Jackson?" she said again, taking another step.
He gave her a sad smile, raised a hand in farewell...
And vanished.
The glimpse of the alternate universe through the Mirror simply winked out.
Sam stared, frozen, at the empty frame of the Quantum Mirror. What... Why...
"Captain?" crackled a voice over the intercom. "What's your status?"
Her mouth worked, but she couldn't speak.
"Captain Carter, we registered an energy spike, but it's gone now."
"Gone," Sam repeated numbly, forcing the words through stiff lips. "Yes. It's gone."
Gone.
*
Summary: An alternate POV of an alternate reality. Canon, more or less, from POV. ~840 words.
N is for Not Quite
Sam's fingers ached from her tense grip on her weapon. She stared with burning eyes at the quiescent Mirror, willing it back to life.
The rest of her team had stepped through that not-quite-reflection and vanished from the SGC's reality. It felt even worse than being lost off-world without a working Stargate, stranded somewhere light years from Earth. DHDs could be fixed, and vast distances could always be somehow bridged; no matter how remote the chance, the possibility of rescue, either by the Tok'ra or the Asgard or even the Nox, would always be there. But her teammates had walked through the Quantum Mirror, a different kind of event horizon, three hours ago... and when the Mirror went blank to become an empty, stolid frame of naquadah mocking her solitary vigil, her hopes of ever seeing her teammates again seemed to wither into dust.
But she stayed there, waiting. Watching. They would get back if they could.
She tried to choke down her despair and frustration at being left behind like this. Yes, they'd learned the hard way that doubles couldn't co-exist in a single reality without catastrophic results. Matter versus anti-matter, one of the scientists had suggested with dark humor. Or antibodies converging on a foreign intruder. Chaos theory having the last word. Teal'c and the others, at least, knew their counterparts were dead. She'd tried to argue that the alterations to her DNA due to Goa'uld possession might trick entropy into thinking she and the Samantha Carter of the other reality were different people, but Janet had gently insisted that a former host and a current host were just too similar to take the risk.
Current host. She swallowed hard against the thought. Jolinar had been bad enough.
While Sam was honest enough with herself to admit that she didn't want to endure that kind of suffering, that wasn't why she'd reluctantly agreed to stay behind. It had been horrifying to watch the alternate version of the colonel seem to shake apart, agony etched on those normally stoic features. But it wasn't her fear of the pain of dissolution that stopped her from going through - at least, not the pain itself. It was the danger it represented, turning her into a potential weak link. Even if she could somehow pull a bait-and-switch - which itself seemed doubtful - the risk of being incapacitated at the worst possible moment would be a betrayal of her team. There would be no way to explain why the other reality's version of Amaunet was suddenly literally shaking herself apart. Jaffa were blindly loyal, not stupid; they would know that something was wrong. And the slightest hint of what they were trying to achieve would destroy their desperate plan to find the alternate reality's Asgard and beg them to help liberate the Earth.
Time dragged by, long minutes crawling like bugs. Tension and monotony, she knew, could be a dangerous mix. Taking a deep breath, Sam carefully eased her arms and legs, one muscle set at a time, so she would remain limber and ready to act. She had to have faith in them, she told herself sternly. They'd been warned that they would lose their lock of reality if the connection had to be broken, and there were dozens of reasons why it might have been necessary to shut down the Mirror. It might take a while, but she had to trust that her CO would find a way to discover their reality again and bring the rest of the team home.
There was no flash, no chime, no warning - the Mirror, quiescent for so long, was suddenly and abruptly alive. Instead of an empty frame showcasing the wall behind it, the Quantum Mirror now reflected both the strange reality and the person she'd so desperately hoped to see again. There was the colonel, standing in the storage room of the SGA, holding the Mirror's remote and squinting at the SGC reality where she'd been waiting all this time.
Her relief made her want to leap to her feet, but she straightened cautiously, eying the vision of her CO from behind the sandbags. Yes, he seemed all right: alert, unharmed, his own face lightening at the sight of her. She smiled in return, stepping forward.
"Colonel," she called, forgetting momentarily that sound didn't seem to carry across the realities. "Are you all right? What's going on?"
He blinked at her, then his shoulders seemed to droop. He said something she couldn't hear.
"Colonel Jackson?" she said again, taking another step.
He gave her a sad smile, raised a hand in farewell...
And vanished.
The glimpse of the alternate universe through the Mirror simply winked out.
Sam stared, frozen, at the empty frame of the Quantum Mirror. What... Why...
"Captain?" crackled a voice over the intercom. "What's your status?"
Her mouth worked, but she couldn't speak.
"Captain Carter, we registered an energy spike, but it's gone now."
"Gone," Sam repeated numbly, forcing the words through stiff lips. "Yes. It's gone."
Gone.
*