A Life Less Ordinary - Chapter Eight
Title: A Life Less Ordinary - Chapter Eight
Author: spazmeister
Pairing: S/J
Season: Nine
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Uh... AU, S/J ship, RepliCarter revisiting
A/N: Spoilers for everything up until the latter half of Season Eight. Everything from there is extreme AU Season Nine. If it seems bizarre, that's the point.
Across the room, Daniel watched Dr. Blane work on Felger. Though he’d initially shown signs of improving, his blood pressure was still dropping slightly. Sam had been in surgery for almost an hour now, with no word from Dr. Lam.
Sighing, he looked back at Teal’c and Cameron, two dark clouds of fury who’d failed to say a word since Sam had gone into surgery. He knew what they were thinking and feeling because he felt it too. Personally, he knew that words could not properly express how he felt about the situation. The way Sam had been brutalized and the fact that they’d been the ones to find her certainly hadn’t helped either. All kinds of violent ideas went through his mind, as he thought of what would happen when they found out who did this to her.
He could still remember the way she looked when the nurses had taken the defibrillator out for Carolyn. Both he and Teal’c had witnessed four attempts to get her heart started again, before they’d been shoved out of the way, and Sam had been wheeled into the OR. That’s when he first saw the change in Teal’c. Soon after that, Cameron had come charging in with the medical crew and Felger in tow. When he saw that Sam was in critical condition, he too changed. Daniel had opted to observe from the other side of the room. He was riddled with his own anger; he didn’t need those two unwittingly adding to the emotion.
Not to mention Jack. He hadn’t improved at all in the hours since they’d stabilized him. And now Sam was facing death, too.
Daniel shook his head in both annoyance and confusion. Nothing made sense here. Nothing. And just ten minutes prior, they’d been informed that the crystal SG-11 had discovered had gone missing before it could be properly analyzed. As it stood, the crystal still held a good chance of being a power source comparable to a ZPM. “Valuable” was an understatement, to say the least.
And all of this, every last bit, pointed to one person.
“The Other Samantha Carter knows something,” Daniel muttered into the quiet room, not really expecting anyone to respond.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Teal’c nearly spat. Daniel raised an eyebrow as he gazed at the floor, surprised that Teal’c had even bothered to speak.
Cameron simply shifted weight from one leg to the other and tightened his arms across his chest. “What he said.”
At that, Daniel turned to his two friends and nodded resolutely. “Well, I say it’s time we found out what.”
*******
BAM, BAM, BAM!
Without waiting for a reply, Cameron, Daniel and Teal’c barged into the Other Carter’s quarters. And, just as they’d been warned, she was sleeping.
“Wake up,” Daniel said, even harsher than he intended.
Other Carter did not respond.
That was all Teal’c needed to begin using force. Reaching passed Daniel and Cameron, he took one small shoulder and shook it hard.
Other Carter mumbled incoherently, then cursed before she turned around to finally face them. Her eyes squinted at the new light, but she could clearly make out the three men at her bedside. And she could see that they were anything but pleased.
Slowly, she sat up to greet her visitors. “What - what’s going on?” She couldn’t help but notice their combative stance. While she’d only known Colonel Mitchell for a brief time, she definitely recognized Daniel and Teal’c’s glare.
“You tell us,” Cameron suggested.
“What?” Samantha frowned and glanced at Daniel for clarification. “Is there something wrong?”
“Yes,” Daniel said as he stepped forward. “Something is very wrong.”
“What is it?” Samantha straightened. “Were you able to find the quantum mirror?”
“We haven’t exactly had an opportunity to check that out yet,” Cameron responded. “It seems we’ve been having crises left and right around here.”
“Crises?” Samantha asked, puzzled. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. But how else can you help me get home, if you don’t go back to the planet?”
“Easy,” Daniel began, “we don’t.”
Samantha’s eyes widened in confusion as she stood up. Unconsciously, the guys took one collective step back. “But, I don’t understand… You said you’d help me get back to my reality. You said you’d put the quantum mirror back together. You said you’d help me get back home!”
“Sit down, Dr. Carter,” Daniel ordered calmly. “Please. We’d like to ask you some more questions about your story.”
Samantha complied as Daniel took a step forward. “Story?”
“Of how you got to our reality,” Cameron explained. “We’d like to get as many details about that as we can.”
Sam swallowed hard and alternately looked each man in the eye. “I - I told you everything I know, everything that happened.”
“But some things still don’t make sense,” Daniel replied. “We’d like to make sure we’ve got our facts straight.”
Frowning, Samantha weighed her odds of understanding these men’s change of hearts. “I’m sorry, not to sound disrespectful or anything, but wouldn’t it be more appropriate for us to have this discussion with the general?”
“Oh, you mean General O’Neill?” Cameron asked.
Samantha faltered, and even paled slightly at the mention of his name. “Uh… sure. He is the general of the base, isn’t he?”
“Actually, no,” Daniel answered. “He was only keeping the spot warm until the base CO came back from a meeting in Washington.”
Samantha nodded, her relief evident. “So he’s gone then?”
“You could say that.” Daniel winced. “He’s in a coma.”
Despite her feelings about the man, she could not mask her shock. “How?”
“General O’Neill suffered a stroke last evening,” Cameron answered, once it became apparent that neither Daniel nor Teal’c would. “The damage is extensive. They don’t expect him to wake up, and if he does, he most likely won’t have proper use of his motor skills. It’s pretty bad… you sure you didn’t know about that already?”
“Know about that already?” Samantha frowned again, but this time, she couldn’t help but be angry. “How could I? No one’s spoken to me since two nights ago. I’ve basically kept to myself, slept most of the time. How could I possibly know about his stroke already?”
“You have a problem, Dr. Carter?” Cameron demanded.
“I have a problem with the idea of Daniel or Teal’c, from any reality, being unwilling to keep their promises,” Samantha shot back. “I’ve done nothing wrong here. I just want to go home. Have you even considered entropic cascade failure? It’s a horrible, horrible way to die. I need to get home now!”
Daniel paused before he stepped in. He could see that Cameron was getting emotional, and that Samantha was as well. Beside him, Teal’c looked about ready to throttle the woman. Her niceties and indignation were beginning to wan.
She didn’t look or sound the least bit cognizant of the situation they were facing, yet that meant nothing. Since her arrival, all Hell had broken loose, and both Sam and Jack’s lives were on the line. If she had answers, they had to get them from her before she caused any more damage.
“Did you or the General O’Neill from your reality ever find the crystal he’d been looking for?” he asked.
“No,” Samantha sighed. “I never saw it. But he’d been extremely adamant about finding it. Look, didn’t I mention this already?”
“It bears reaffirmation,” Teal’c responded quietly, his rage barely controlled. “If you indeed speak the truth, repetition should not be a problem.”
“Teal’c,” Samantha choked, “I’m telling the truth! Why would I lie?”
“What about General O’Neill’s body?” Cameron said suddenly.
Samantha swallowed again and searched his face for understanding. “What do you mean?”
Cameron rolled his eyes and barely contained a scoff, while Daniel sighed. “If you killed General O’Neill near the quantum mirror, we should be able to locate his body when we locate the mirror, correct?”
Samantha hesitated slightly, but she didn’t know why. Something was wrong with this line of questioning. “Yes.”
Cameron folded his arms again. Her hesitation spoke volumes. “So, you can honestly say that, should we go back to PZY-6203, we will find General O’Neill and the quantum mirror in a cave some 15 clicks away from the village.”
“I, I… I don’t know! Yes? I think. But that doesn’t sound right...” Samantha turned her eyes to the three men in front of her, her thoughts a mess. Something was wrong. “I know for a fact that I killed General O’Neill.”
“With what again?”
She paused ever so slightly. “A rock.”
“A big rock,” Daniel added for clarification.
“Y-yes. He bled to death from a wound in his head.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Cameron began. “You were able to sneak up on a man, who’s special ops trained, and who managed to shoot his way out of the SGC on his own while vaguely incapacitated, with a big rock? You just crept right up behind him and slammed it into his skull? Not even multiple times? Just once.”
Samantha was silent. Something didn’t add up.
“Now do you see why we find your story so hard to believe?” Cameron asked finally.
“Yes,” she croaked. “But I don’t know what else to say. That’s what happened. That’s… how I remember it.”
Daniel glanced at Cameron and Teal’c. She’d admitted that her story was off, but she hadn’t yet provided anything to explain that discrepancy. As he turned back to her, she looked like a lost girl, desperately hoping for clarification to find her, when in reality she should’ve had all of the answers.
“Memories can be very tricky sometimes,” Daniel offered quietly. “Sometimes we think we remember things the way that they were, when in reality we’ve subconsciously twisted them, so we don’t have to remember the horrible things that we’ve done.”
“Horrible?” Samantha repeated breathlessly. “Horrible? What about the horrible things that have been done to me? Or have you all forgotten that?” She paused with a twitch, wondering what was making her so jumpy, but unable to pinpoint the cause. “I am not the enemy here. I’ve tried to move on, I’ve tried to get passed what happened to me, but now you want to turn this around and make me the bad guy? I have been nothing but forthcoming. I haven’t caused any trouble. I just want to go home. And you’ve been unwilling to grant me even that reassurance.”
At this, genuine tears began to fall, despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. They stung her skin like acid, and once again she felt her body twitch ever so slightly. Without telling it to, her hand moved to wipe the tears from her eyes. These men were not her friends, they were not her family. And they would never truly understand how she was feeling.
Inexplicably, she got some satisfaction from knowing how confused they were. Despite her anger, she almost laughed in their faces.
And she couldn’t shake the unquenchable desire to prove to them that she was who she said she was. That was her ultimate goal, essentially what she’d been programmed to do, and she was failing. For some reason, she completely understood where he was coming from here. It suddenly clicked, and everything made sense. A final twitch in her arm told her that it was time. She had to end it. All of it.
The men grew restless as they watched the strange woman with their friend’s face watch them with eerily dead eyes. She was no longer crying, she was no longer yelling. All she could do was watch them. And occasionally, her gaze would move to the chair that was against the wall across the room and back again.
Teal’c noticed that she was gripping the sheets tightly, her knuckles white. He silently willed her to say something, anything to finally prove them wrong. He would have liked nothing more than to admit that he’d been paranoid, if it meant that the troubled woman sitting before him was innocent.
Hoping that he was giving her the courage to say more, Teal’c continued to look into her eyes for some unspoken truth. In time, he hoped she’d muster the strength to tell them what had really happened. But she didn’t make another sound until they collectively moved to the door, having had enough of the silence.
"Would it be such a crime if I've been lying all along?"
Author: spazmeister
Pairing: S/J
Season: Nine
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Uh... AU, S/J ship, RepliCarter revisiting
A/N: Spoilers for everything up until the latter half of Season Eight. Everything from there is extreme AU Season Nine. If it seems bizarre, that's the point.
Across the room, Daniel watched Dr. Blane work on Felger. Though he’d initially shown signs of improving, his blood pressure was still dropping slightly. Sam had been in surgery for almost an hour now, with no word from Dr. Lam.
Sighing, he looked back at Teal’c and Cameron, two dark clouds of fury who’d failed to say a word since Sam had gone into surgery. He knew what they were thinking and feeling because he felt it too. Personally, he knew that words could not properly express how he felt about the situation. The way Sam had been brutalized and the fact that they’d been the ones to find her certainly hadn’t helped either. All kinds of violent ideas went through his mind, as he thought of what would happen when they found out who did this to her.
He could still remember the way she looked when the nurses had taken the defibrillator out for Carolyn. Both he and Teal’c had witnessed four attempts to get her heart started again, before they’d been shoved out of the way, and Sam had been wheeled into the OR. That’s when he first saw the change in Teal’c. Soon after that, Cameron had come charging in with the medical crew and Felger in tow. When he saw that Sam was in critical condition, he too changed. Daniel had opted to observe from the other side of the room. He was riddled with his own anger; he didn’t need those two unwittingly adding to the emotion.
Not to mention Jack. He hadn’t improved at all in the hours since they’d stabilized him. And now Sam was facing death, too.
Daniel shook his head in both annoyance and confusion. Nothing made sense here. Nothing. And just ten minutes prior, they’d been informed that the crystal SG-11 had discovered had gone missing before it could be properly analyzed. As it stood, the crystal still held a good chance of being a power source comparable to a ZPM. “Valuable” was an understatement, to say the least.
And all of this, every last bit, pointed to one person.
“The Other Samantha Carter knows something,” Daniel muttered into the quiet room, not really expecting anyone to respond.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Teal’c nearly spat. Daniel raised an eyebrow as he gazed at the floor, surprised that Teal’c had even bothered to speak.
Cameron simply shifted weight from one leg to the other and tightened his arms across his chest. “What he said.”
At that, Daniel turned to his two friends and nodded resolutely. “Well, I say it’s time we found out what.”
*******
BAM, BAM, BAM!
Without waiting for a reply, Cameron, Daniel and Teal’c barged into the Other Carter’s quarters. And, just as they’d been warned, she was sleeping.
“Wake up,” Daniel said, even harsher than he intended.
Other Carter did not respond.
That was all Teal’c needed to begin using force. Reaching passed Daniel and Cameron, he took one small shoulder and shook it hard.
Other Carter mumbled incoherently, then cursed before she turned around to finally face them. Her eyes squinted at the new light, but she could clearly make out the three men at her bedside. And she could see that they were anything but pleased.
Slowly, she sat up to greet her visitors. “What - what’s going on?” She couldn’t help but notice their combative stance. While she’d only known Colonel Mitchell for a brief time, she definitely recognized Daniel and Teal’c’s glare.
“You tell us,” Cameron suggested.
“What?” Samantha frowned and glanced at Daniel for clarification. “Is there something wrong?”
“Yes,” Daniel said as he stepped forward. “Something is very wrong.”
“What is it?” Samantha straightened. “Were you able to find the quantum mirror?”
“We haven’t exactly had an opportunity to check that out yet,” Cameron responded. “It seems we’ve been having crises left and right around here.”
“Crises?” Samantha asked, puzzled. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. But how else can you help me get home, if you don’t go back to the planet?”
“Easy,” Daniel began, “we don’t.”
Samantha’s eyes widened in confusion as she stood up. Unconsciously, the guys took one collective step back. “But, I don’t understand… You said you’d help me get back to my reality. You said you’d put the quantum mirror back together. You said you’d help me get back home!”
“Sit down, Dr. Carter,” Daniel ordered calmly. “Please. We’d like to ask you some more questions about your story.”
Samantha complied as Daniel took a step forward. “Story?”
“Of how you got to our reality,” Cameron explained. “We’d like to get as many details about that as we can.”
Sam swallowed hard and alternately looked each man in the eye. “I - I told you everything I know, everything that happened.”
“But some things still don’t make sense,” Daniel replied. “We’d like to make sure we’ve got our facts straight.”
Frowning, Samantha weighed her odds of understanding these men’s change of hearts. “I’m sorry, not to sound disrespectful or anything, but wouldn’t it be more appropriate for us to have this discussion with the general?”
“Oh, you mean General O’Neill?” Cameron asked.
Samantha faltered, and even paled slightly at the mention of his name. “Uh… sure. He is the general of the base, isn’t he?”
“Actually, no,” Daniel answered. “He was only keeping the spot warm until the base CO came back from a meeting in Washington.”
Samantha nodded, her relief evident. “So he’s gone then?”
“You could say that.” Daniel winced. “He’s in a coma.”
Despite her feelings about the man, she could not mask her shock. “How?”
“General O’Neill suffered a stroke last evening,” Cameron answered, once it became apparent that neither Daniel nor Teal’c would. “The damage is extensive. They don’t expect him to wake up, and if he does, he most likely won’t have proper use of his motor skills. It’s pretty bad… you sure you didn’t know about that already?”
“Know about that already?” Samantha frowned again, but this time, she couldn’t help but be angry. “How could I? No one’s spoken to me since two nights ago. I’ve basically kept to myself, slept most of the time. How could I possibly know about his stroke already?”
“You have a problem, Dr. Carter?” Cameron demanded.
“I have a problem with the idea of Daniel or Teal’c, from any reality, being unwilling to keep their promises,” Samantha shot back. “I’ve done nothing wrong here. I just want to go home. Have you even considered entropic cascade failure? It’s a horrible, horrible way to die. I need to get home now!”
Daniel paused before he stepped in. He could see that Cameron was getting emotional, and that Samantha was as well. Beside him, Teal’c looked about ready to throttle the woman. Her niceties and indignation were beginning to wan.
She didn’t look or sound the least bit cognizant of the situation they were facing, yet that meant nothing. Since her arrival, all Hell had broken loose, and both Sam and Jack’s lives were on the line. If she had answers, they had to get them from her before she caused any more damage.
“Did you or the General O’Neill from your reality ever find the crystal he’d been looking for?” he asked.
“No,” Samantha sighed. “I never saw it. But he’d been extremely adamant about finding it. Look, didn’t I mention this already?”
“It bears reaffirmation,” Teal’c responded quietly, his rage barely controlled. “If you indeed speak the truth, repetition should not be a problem.”
“Teal’c,” Samantha choked, “I’m telling the truth! Why would I lie?”
“What about General O’Neill’s body?” Cameron said suddenly.
Samantha swallowed again and searched his face for understanding. “What do you mean?”
Cameron rolled his eyes and barely contained a scoff, while Daniel sighed. “If you killed General O’Neill near the quantum mirror, we should be able to locate his body when we locate the mirror, correct?”
Samantha hesitated slightly, but she didn’t know why. Something was wrong with this line of questioning. “Yes.”
Cameron folded his arms again. Her hesitation spoke volumes. “So, you can honestly say that, should we go back to PZY-6203, we will find General O’Neill and the quantum mirror in a cave some 15 clicks away from the village.”
“I, I… I don’t know! Yes? I think. But that doesn’t sound right...” Samantha turned her eyes to the three men in front of her, her thoughts a mess. Something was wrong. “I know for a fact that I killed General O’Neill.”
“With what again?”
She paused ever so slightly. “A rock.”
“A big rock,” Daniel added for clarification.
“Y-yes. He bled to death from a wound in his head.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Cameron began. “You were able to sneak up on a man, who’s special ops trained, and who managed to shoot his way out of the SGC on his own while vaguely incapacitated, with a big rock? You just crept right up behind him and slammed it into his skull? Not even multiple times? Just once.”
Samantha was silent. Something didn’t add up.
“Now do you see why we find your story so hard to believe?” Cameron asked finally.
“Yes,” she croaked. “But I don’t know what else to say. That’s what happened. That’s… how I remember it.”
Daniel glanced at Cameron and Teal’c. She’d admitted that her story was off, but she hadn’t yet provided anything to explain that discrepancy. As he turned back to her, she looked like a lost girl, desperately hoping for clarification to find her, when in reality she should’ve had all of the answers.
“Memories can be very tricky sometimes,” Daniel offered quietly. “Sometimes we think we remember things the way that they were, when in reality we’ve subconsciously twisted them, so we don’t have to remember the horrible things that we’ve done.”
“Horrible?” Samantha repeated breathlessly. “Horrible? What about the horrible things that have been done to me? Or have you all forgotten that?” She paused with a twitch, wondering what was making her so jumpy, but unable to pinpoint the cause. “I am not the enemy here. I’ve tried to move on, I’ve tried to get passed what happened to me, but now you want to turn this around and make me the bad guy? I have been nothing but forthcoming. I haven’t caused any trouble. I just want to go home. And you’ve been unwilling to grant me even that reassurance.”
At this, genuine tears began to fall, despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. They stung her skin like acid, and once again she felt her body twitch ever so slightly. Without telling it to, her hand moved to wipe the tears from her eyes. These men were not her friends, they were not her family. And they would never truly understand how she was feeling.
Inexplicably, she got some satisfaction from knowing how confused they were. Despite her anger, she almost laughed in their faces.
And she couldn’t shake the unquenchable desire to prove to them that she was who she said she was. That was her ultimate goal, essentially what she’d been programmed to do, and she was failing. For some reason, she completely understood where he was coming from here. It suddenly clicked, and everything made sense. A final twitch in her arm told her that it was time. She had to end it. All of it.
The men grew restless as they watched the strange woman with their friend’s face watch them with eerily dead eyes. She was no longer crying, she was no longer yelling. All she could do was watch them. And occasionally, her gaze would move to the chair that was against the wall across the room and back again.
Teal’c noticed that she was gripping the sheets tightly, her knuckles white. He silently willed her to say something, anything to finally prove them wrong. He would have liked nothing more than to admit that he’d been paranoid, if it meant that the troubled woman sitting before him was innocent.
Hoping that he was giving her the courage to say more, Teal’c continued to look into her eyes for some unspoken truth. In time, he hoped she’d muster the strength to tell them what had really happened. But she didn’t make another sound until they collectively moved to the door, having had enough of the silence.
"Would it be such a crime if I've been lying all along?"