Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, For They Lie in the Path of Danger
Title: Parade Rest
Rating: G
Warning: Spoilers for Stargate: Continuum
Character: Samantha Carter
Summary: And deep inside, the soldier waits until she's needed.
Author's Note: Had this kicking around in the back of my head since first watching Continuum. The other idea might join this soon... or not.
Something changes, in that year they spend out of time. Sam expects to be restless, resistive, enduring the agony of itchy fingers with nothing to fix or tinker with. When she finally settles into the life the Air Force has set up for her, though, no one could have been more surprised than she was when the urge to do something didn’t reappear.
They have been stranded in similar situations before, and each time she had been forced to deal with the compulsion to fix it fix it fix it. Waiting drove her mad, and the inability to create a solution rubbed her raw with each passing moment; on more than a handful of occasions, her teammates had had to isolate or sit on her to stop the inevitable self-destruction when the need to make things right pushed her past her breaking point.
But here, in the one place she should have been most helpless and driven to scheme, to find all the loopholes until they could set the timeline back the way it should have been, Carter is more at peace than she has been for the last ten years.
She settles into the mundane routine without a problem, letting the life of Emily Watkins become her own and finding a simple pleasure in going grocery shopping, tending her garden, buying a car. This was the normality she has sought for so long and here it is, offered on a silver platter with only the catch that she not attempt to repair the timeline. Samantha thinks that she should object to that last bit, or the threat of Ba’al’s existence should trouble her, but when she searches her heart for the seed of unhappiness, she doesn’t find it.
When she sits in a Starbucks and tries to draw a diagram of a naquadah generator, the numbers and images come easily enough - but without the intuitive building of a 3D design, listing of necessary materials, power usage computations, scenarios she needs it for. It’s then that she wonders if she’s lost the person she used to be, and whether or not she should try to find Lieutenant Colonel Sam Carter.
And then the al’kesh screams overhead, and she pulls out her phone to dial a number she shouldn’t have known, and a voice inside her mind whispers, Let’s do this. She understands, then, that Sam Carter had been sleeping in anticipation of this moment, and welcomes the surge of brilliance and fix it fix it fix it that comes with the awakening of this other self, this true personality.
So she rises, and saves the world again.
-
“Carter?”
Sam blinks, taking her eyes off the waitress taking a smoke outside the window - Emily, according to her name tag - and glances at her former CO. Jack lifts an eyebrow, hand stilled halfway to his mouth with the requisite piece of cake on his fork as the others laugh and talk without noticing their silence.
“Hmm? Oh. It’s nothing.” And she takes another sip of her water, letting the warm feeling of déjà vu settle into her like a comforting promise.
You have been happy.
Rating: G
Warning: Spoilers for Stargate: Continuum
Character: Samantha Carter
Summary: And deep inside, the soldier waits until she's needed.
Author's Note: Had this kicking around in the back of my head since first watching Continuum. The other idea might join this soon... or not.
Something changes, in that year they spend out of time. Sam expects to be restless, resistive, enduring the agony of itchy fingers with nothing to fix or tinker with. When she finally settles into the life the Air Force has set up for her, though, no one could have been more surprised than she was when the urge to do something didn’t reappear.
They have been stranded in similar situations before, and each time she had been forced to deal with the compulsion to fix it fix it fix it. Waiting drove her mad, and the inability to create a solution rubbed her raw with each passing moment; on more than a handful of occasions, her teammates had had to isolate or sit on her to stop the inevitable self-destruction when the need to make things right pushed her past her breaking point.
But here, in the one place she should have been most helpless and driven to scheme, to find all the loopholes until they could set the timeline back the way it should have been, Carter is more at peace than she has been for the last ten years.
She settles into the mundane routine without a problem, letting the life of Emily Watkins become her own and finding a simple pleasure in going grocery shopping, tending her garden, buying a car. This was the normality she has sought for so long and here it is, offered on a silver platter with only the catch that she not attempt to repair the timeline. Samantha thinks that she should object to that last bit, or the threat of Ba’al’s existence should trouble her, but when she searches her heart for the seed of unhappiness, she doesn’t find it.
When she sits in a Starbucks and tries to draw a diagram of a naquadah generator, the numbers and images come easily enough - but without the intuitive building of a 3D design, listing of necessary materials, power usage computations, scenarios she needs it for. It’s then that she wonders if she’s lost the person she used to be, and whether or not she should try to find Lieutenant Colonel Sam Carter.
And then the al’kesh screams overhead, and she pulls out her phone to dial a number she shouldn’t have known, and a voice inside her mind whispers, Let’s do this. She understands, then, that Sam Carter had been sleeping in anticipation of this moment, and welcomes the surge of brilliance and fix it fix it fix it that comes with the awakening of this other self, this true personality.
So she rises, and saves the world again.
-
“Carter?”
Sam blinks, taking her eyes off the waitress taking a smoke outside the window - Emily, according to her name tag - and glances at her former CO. Jack lifts an eyebrow, hand stilled halfway to his mouth with the requisite piece of cake on his fork as the others laugh and talk without noticing their silence.
“Hmm? Oh. It’s nothing.” And she takes another sip of her water, letting the warm feeling of déjà vu settle into her like a comforting promise.
You have been happy.