SG-1 Fic: Preserve Your Memories (They're All That's Left You)
Title: Preserve Your Memories (They're All That's Left You)
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson
Rating/Warning: R (non-explicit sex)
Disclaimer: Stargate and its universe are owned by MGM and many others, none of whom are me.
Word Count: 8992
Author's Note: Huge thanks to hiyacynth and surrealphantast for the fantastically patient and helpful betawork. This is set somewhere early season 5 (definitely after "Divide and Conquer" and before "Meridian"). It doesn't fit well into fandom genre labels - it's a het ship story at the surface but gen friendship at its heart.
Summary:
Daniel has done what Daniel does best - seamlessly merged into a new life and accepted this village as home. For their part, the villagers have been remarkably welcoming, admitting these tall strangers with lighter hair and skin into their midst even as Sam can't quite let herself fit. Sam knows Daniel doesn't expect it to be home forever, suspects he gave up long ago on anywhere being home forever. She also knows she can't seem to take that step.
She doesn't recognize the hallway. It doesn't remind her of the SGC - tunnels of concrete and colored pipes that have begun to feel more like home than anywhere has in a long time. It doesn't look like Tok'ra tunnels - alien crystalline constructs that take her breath away as she marvels at the engineering and Jolinar's memories of home echo in her mind. It doesn't feel like a Goa'uld ship - gaudy, gold, and smothering under the weight of an arrogant false god.
These tunnels simply are. White and featureless, with light that comes from everywhere and nowhere, and she casts no shadows however many circles she turns. She wishes she has paint to mark the walls, or an endless ball of string like Theseus brought into the labyrinth, but she has nothing. So she simply walks, faster and faster down endless corridors, and cannot tell if she is actually moving.
Ahead of her, for just a second, a flash of gray hair beneath a baseball cap disappears behind a corner. She picks up speed, hoping to catch him, but when she rounds the corner, he is gone. Stopping, she turns, pivoting in a wide circle, to see him again - just a flash of a hand holding a P-90. After all these years she recognizes how he carries it.
She runs as fast as she can, chasing the flashes, never seeing all of him, never catching him. Her lungs begin to burn and her legs threaten to give way, unable to sustain the full-on sprint. As she crashes to the ground she feels hands surround her, dragging her down. Thrashing, she shouts his name, a last desperate reach that echoes through the tunnels.
Sam opens her eyes to find Daniel's face hovering above hers, worry creasing his forehead. His hands wrap around each of her arms, holding her together, and his mouth is moving, a whisper barely reaching her ear that takes a minute before she can process it. "...okay, Sam. Sssh. Just a dream."
She sits up, pushing his hands away, and he falls back to sit in front of her, scrutinizing her face. Ignoring him, Sam looks around until she remembers where she is and swallows down the panicked disorientation welling up inside her. The clicking outside is just enough like crickets to calm her nerves and just alien enough to make every hair on her body stand on end. Shivering, she pulls up the blankets she was sleeping on, wrapping them tightly around her shoulders.
"Sam?" Daniel tries again, his voice tentative and reaching. When she finally meets his eyes he seems to relax. "The dream again?"
Sam shrugs. They've been in this place for nearly two months now, and the dream has come regularly, but with no pattern she can determine. If Daniel dreams, he either doesn't remember or doesn't tell her, but he is always there when she wakes. He's been by her side since the first morning, when she woke at dawn to find him asleep next to her. Initially, she was angry at Colonel O'Neill for not waking her for third watch. Only when she noticed the absence of O'Neill and Teal'c, the surroundings she didn't recognize, did she realize how much was actually wrong.
"Colonel O'Neill was there this time," Sam says quietly. "I kept catching glimpses of him, running after him, but he was always ahead of me."
Daniel nods. The dream is nothing new - sometimes she sees O'Neill or Teal'c, sometimes Hammond or her father, sometimes Janet or Cassie. And sometimes she encounters dead memories from her past - Jonas or Martouf. He looks like he wants to ask something else but far off a bell rings and Daniel turns his head as though he can see the village through the walls of their hut.
"C'mon, Sam, we've got to get ready," he says, pulling her to her feet. He heads outside to give her privacy so she can change into the rough skirt and loose shirt the village women have given her. Most days she wears pants like Daniel's, but he's convinced her to dress like the other women when they visit the village. She steps outside to find Daniel washing his face in a basin, and drops of water glisten in his beard when he smiles at her. As she takes her place at the basin, she notices how Daniel's hair is curling at the back of his neck and makes a note to cut it soon.
The walk down to the village takes about fifteen minutes, and the awakening birds call out their progress. Daniel wraps his arm around her waist as they walk, letting her lean into his side, grateful for his warmth in the coolness of the morning. At the outskirts of the village they are set upon by a herd of children, several of whom cling to Sam's skirt and most of whom clamor around Daniel, chattering faster than Sam can understand. It took Daniel over a week to figure out the basic language - some strange mix of Hebrew and Greek but with enough differences that he still gets words wrong. Sam has been much slower to pick any of it up, even with Daniel's patient instruction.
Sam swings one of the smaller girls onto her hip as Daniel begins to tell a story, something about a knight and a dragon from the words she catches, and he spreads his arms wide, running into the crowd of children and roaring to show them how the dragon attacks. The children scatter, squealing with laughter, and Sam can't help smiling herself. They love his stories, and Daniel seems to have a never-ending supply to offer them.
Daniel joins the other men, hauling the baskets of olive-like fruit to the press set up in the town square. Mara tugs on Sam's arm, pulling her to where the women are preparing containers for the oil. The women sing as they work, songs Sam doesn’t understand but that still cut her deep, and she settles into the rhythm they set. By the end of the day everyone is tired, but most of the village's crop has been pressed and prepared for trade. Sam and Daniel leave that night's feast early to head back, carrying two containers of oil that Mara assures will last them until the next harvest.
Daniel chatters about the process, how similar it is to how the ancient Greeks and Romans treated their olive crops, and theorizes about Mediterranean climates and cross-cultural similarities. Sam thinks it's just like the end of a mission, walking back to the 'gate with Colonel O'Neill rolling his eyes as Daniel speculatively babbles about whichever planet they are leaving and she shares amused looks with Teal'c. She stumbles when she realizes she went nearly the entire day without thinking about Stargate Command.
Teal'c stands before her in the robes the Jaffa wear when they aren't in armor, unusually vivid against the white. He looks like he expects something from her.
"Why are you not fighting, Major Carter?" he asks, and the lack of surprise in his voice is even worse than the disappointment. He always knew she wouldn't be strong enough, always knew one day she'd give up. "Have you forgotten us so quickly? A true warrior would never abandon the field of battle."
Before she can answer he turns his back to her - not a sign of trust but one of dismissal, because he doesn't think she's capable of hurting him - and walks away, fading into the whiteness. She runs after him, turning corner after corner but only catching the barest swish of robes.
"Teal'c," she calls, flinching as the echoes magnify her voice in the tunnel. "Let me find you! Help me!"
"You know what you must do," Teal'c's disembodied voice answers, floating through the tunnel from no direction at all. "Do your veins not contain the blood of a warrior?"
She finds a safety pin in her pocket and draws the point across her left palm, biting her tongue as the skin blooms open. She uses her right index finger to draw a red line on the wall, indicating where she has been and where she is heading. Each junction gets labeled, and she shivers when Teal'c's laughter echoes down the halls.
When she comes across one of her own marks she stops and stares. The line is growing, red spreading and spilling over the pristine white, multiplying exponentially like the bacteria colony she grew in high school biology - 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 - bigger and bigger. She imagines the wall throbbing, as though from a heartbeat and stumbles backwards, only to find the wall behind her is red, warm, and sticky as though it were actual blood.
Sam wakes with her mouth wide open but no scream escaping. Daniel is lying behind her with his arms wrapped around her, hands gripping each wrist, and she can see a line of red across her left palm, dried blood under the finger nails of her right hand. Daniel's face is pressed against her neck and he's quietly humming an old Earth lullaby into her ear.
After a minute she crosses her own arms at her chest, wrapping him tighter around her, needing to feel that he's real. He seems to understand, closing his arms and pushing his whole body against hers before he reaches a thumb to wipe the solitary tear off her cheek. They lie awake until dawn and his heart beats firm and steady against her back.
He rises and dresses in silence, privacy long since forgotten in their shared hut. "I have to go today, Sam," he says, looking down to where she is still curled up in the blankets. "Natan needs me to help with the traders and there is judging this afternoon."
Daniel has done what Daniel does best - seamlessly merged into a new life and accepted this village as home. For their part, the villagers have been remarkably welcoming, admitting these tall strangers with lighter hair and skin into their midst even as Sam can't quite let herself fit. Sam knows Daniel doesn't expect it to be home forever, suspects he gave up long ago on anywhere being home forever. She also knows she can't seem to take that step. She's had plenty of change in her life, plenty of new places to adapt herself to, but she's never been able to fully give herself over, to give up her past.
They still have no idea how they ended up here, but Sam thinks they were lucky. This planet has never heard of Goa'uld or Jaffa. Daniel wants to suspect it of being an Asgard protected planet, but there is no indication of Nordic influence, nothing they've found that could be used to contact the Asgard. They've yet to find anybody who's heard of or seen anything like a stargate.
The culture, primitive by Earth standards, values scholarship and wisdom, and Daniel was recognized for both soon after Natan and Mara found them in the woods and brought them here. Daniel has become known in the village as someone who can help broker trade and mediate disputes, but also as someone with knowledge to pass on. Sometimes Sam wonders if, with all these eager pupils, Daniel misses SGC at all.
"You know, Sam, you'd be more than welcome. I know you miss it." He's been trying to get Sam to teach also, to share her love for math and science with what he assures her will be eager pupils. She thinks she has the language down enough to start, even if they don't really have words for frequency or theorem or sub-atomic particle, but can't bring herself to try yet. Can't admit they might be here to stay. Daniel goes down to the village almost every day, but Sam spends most of her time around their hut.
Sam only shakes her head and watches him silently, not getting up to dress until he goes out the door. When she comes out he barely raises an eyebrow at her BDUs and tac vest, merely taking another bite of the apple in his hand (the alien fruits are so much like apples they've long since given up on calling them anything else). He knows what it means when she puts on the rarely worn uniform, knows she'll go away for a week or two, searching the surrounding area for any hints of where they are and how to get home. Daniel has enough confidence in her abilities and her loyalty to not doubt whether she'll come back safe.
Wet hair sticks to her neck after she washes her face, and she brushes it away in annoyance. The days here seem about as long as days on Earth, and the calendar they keep in the corner says they've been here for just longer than ten months. Her hair is almost long enough to tie back.
Daniel holds her gaze for a long minute before slinging his own pack over his shoulder. He'll come back tonight with food to supplement the garden Sam tends and the chickens who sometimes, grudgingly, give them eggs, and they both know he'll be eating alone.
"Good luck," he says quietly. "I hope you find what you're looking for." He heads down the hill without glancing back. Sam watches him shrink smaller and smaller until he disappears around a bend in the path before she heads out her own way.
The pine needles that crunch under her feet don't smell right.
"You said you'd never leave me." Cassie's voice is accusing and Sam is surprised to see her still the same age as when they found her on Hanka.
Janet stands behind Cassie, arms crossed at her chest, and looks disdainfully at Sam. "Cassie's been asking when you're coming home. You missed her birthday," Janet says, her voice clinically dispassionate. Sam knows Janet is shorter than her, and yet the doctor towers so high over her she has to strain her neck to see Janet's face.
"You missed mine too." Sam whirls around to find Mark standing behind her. "But then, that's nothing new, is it?"
"Your sister has more important things to do now," her father says, appearing close enough to his son to bump shoulders. "She doesn't care about the rest of the universe anymore. She doesn't think about us. I don’t see why we should think about her."
At that they all nod and, as one, vanish. Sam whirls around, thinks she catches a glimpse of Cassie's hair, hears the click of Janet's shoes, but only the white walls surround her. She picks a direction and runs, taking turns at random.
After her third left turn she runs into someone. He doesn't move, and she bounces back to see Jonas Hansen. The torn and muddied robes of godhood wrap around his frame.
"If you cared a little bit more about the rest of the universe and a little less about yourself, this never would have happened," he says, the corner of his mouth turning up into a sneer. "But it was always you first. Your pilot training, your PhD, your career. Your dreams were always more important than the people who tried to fit into them. You're a dangerous woman to care about."
Sam backs away until she runs into another body. Hands grip her shoulders and stubble grazes against her neck as Colonel O'Neill's voice rasps in her ear. "Sometimes the universe asks for more than you have. Sometimes you just have to give in and roll with it. And sometimes you have to speak up for yourself because the universe isn't listening. Now. Ready, set, RUN!"
She takes off like a shot, away from Jonas, careening off walls, stumbling and catching herself again and again.
Sam is no longer surprised to wake wrapped in Daniel's arms. More and more often they make it easier by going to sleep that way. She hasn't had one of the dreams in weeks, and the pounding of her heart sounds like drums in her head.
Daniel's hand rubs up and down her arm as he murmurs soothingly into her ear, still half-asleep himself. She curls into his touch, feeling her heart gradually slow as the adrenaline leaves her blood. Daniel's hand continues, rubbing her back and side, working its way, slowly, underneath the shirt she sleeps in.
His fingers grace along her ribs, circle over her stomach, trail back to her spine, and begin the journey again. When they finally reach up to cup a breast, stroke a nipple, she can't resist the small intake of breath. The pounding is returning to her ears, but slower this time and without the vestige of panic.
She widens her hips as his hand traces lower, fingers finally exploring the territory between her legs. He is slower, gentler than she wants but bats away the hand she reaches down to encourage him. When her climax finally arrives it is long and sweet, just intense enough to seize her muscles and arch her against him without overwhelming her.
After relaxing into his arms for a glorious minute she tries to roll over and return the favor, but he holds her still and plants a single, chaste, kiss on her cheek. Eventually her breathing matches his, lulling her to sleep.
When she wakes Daniel is outside, singing a song he told her was from Abydos - the first one Sha're taught him - and she lies for a few minutes listening to his voice. Before they came here, she'd never heard Daniel sing beyond a few rounds of "Happy Birthday." They'd gotten Teal'c to do karaoke once, but there didn’t seem to be enough beer on Earth to get Daniel up there. It's a shame, because he has a beautiful voice. Daniel doesn't have dreams like hers, but he sometimes talks in his sleep, and it's not uncommon for Sam to hear Sha're's name on his lips. The longing comes through in his song.
Sam stumbles outside and stretches tall in the sunlight. Daniel is tending their garden, back curving as he reaches down to pull a weed. When Sam comes over to him he has her close her eyes. His fingers gently prod her lips apart and something warm and round slips onto her tongue. She bites down onto the first tonkaberry of summer. The fruits look like cranberries, taste somewhere between a strawberry and a raspberry, and Daniel knows Sam loves them. Mouth still sticky with the juice, she reaches to grab his head, pulling him in for a berry-sweet kiss.
It has been nineteen months now, and Sam ties her hair back with a braided leather cord before joining Daniel in the morning's chores. Later, they head down to the village with what food they can spare. Three months ago a sickness, accidentally brought back by a group of traders, swept the village. Sam and Daniel, seemingly immune, helped all they could with quarantine and nursing, using all their knowledge but wishing desperately for Janet and a few supplies from Earth. Most survived, but many are still recovering and the late planting promises a weak harvest and a hard winter.
They drop the food off at Natan and Mara's house, knowing they'll distribute it to wherever it is most needed, and Sam leaves Daniel there to discuss trade and governing while she continues to the town hall. Two months before the sickness she gave in and began teaching, loving it just as much as Daniel said she would. The mornings are reserved for what could be useful to this society - the math to help ensure fair trade, geometry and engineering for water wheels and irrigation, basic biology for better crops and disease control. She saves the last hour of the day for herself and teaches whatever she misses most - basic explanations of relativity or cosmology, chemistry experiments and genetics.
There are two boys waiting for her outside the hall and they shout when they see her, running to show her their prize.
It's a small airplane she'd helped them build, whittling the wood and spreading cloth over the wings. The propeller turns with the aid of a coiled leather cord and they've managed a few short flights, maybe a foot off the ground. But now one of the wings is broken, the last few inches bending away at a thirty-degree angle and Sam freezes, remembering a plane that had crashed in Iraq, a metal wing similarly bent.
"Can you fix it? Can you fix it?" one of the boys asks, tugging at Sam's skirt while the other boy eagerly bounces on his toes.
Sam smiles and takes the toy, turning it over in her hands. "How do you think we should fix it?" she asks. They look at her, stunned for a second, and then start babbling about splints and tree sap, yarn and pieces of cloth, and what repair method might make the wing too heavy. Sam feels a sense of pride, hearing how they've learned to think.
Hours later she is on hands and knees, sketching a chalk diagram of the accretion disc around a black hole, five puzzled villagers sitting around her, when Daniel coughs behind her. She looks to find him standing in the doorway, setting sun a red glow behind his back, and tapping his wrist where a watch used to live. Sam bids her pupils farewell, promising to explain again later, and slips outside into the sunset.
Daniel takes her hand in his as they walk up the hill. "You looked happy," he says. "Like you're finally accepting this place."
"It's not that bad," she admits, squeezing his fingers. "But I still miss it." It's been months since she last felt the urge to get away, to wander through the woods searching for a clue on how to get home. She knows he won't say it, knows he doesn't begrudge her that stubborn hope, but also knows Daniel is grateful she stopped wandering. They both know, deep down, she'll never really stop looking.
Daniel swings their arms wide. "What do you think Jack would say if he saw us now?" he asks, grinning at her. His glasses sit crooked on his nose. They broke a while ago and she tried to solder them together again, but without proper tools they're far from perfect and the prescription is long out of date. He keeps wearing them anyway.
"Something sarcastic," she says out loud. "Tease me that I'm going to accidentally help these people blow up their sun." Ready to come home now, kids? he asks in her head and she hides the choked sob behind a cough as the overwhelming reality of where she and Daniel have landed themselves washes over her again. "Do you think they're still looking for us?" she asks.
Daniel considers for a minute. "Jack and Teal'c aren't the type to give up," he points out, holding her hand tighter. He doesn’t add what they both know - that the odds of finding them are, quite literally, astronomically slim.
The hallways are empty: white changing into white changing into white, and no voices call for her, no flashes of robe or hat beg her to chase. It makes her feel small and claustrophobic, like they've finally forgotten her, finally given up on her.
"Samantha." The voice echoes ghostly down the hallway, and Sam freezes. Her mother has never visited this labyrinth, and for that she is grateful, but this voice washes her back to childhood. "Samantha Carter," her mother's voice snaps again. It's the tone that means Sam is in trouble, that she found the half-dissected owl pellet Sam hid in the refrigerator, behind the leftover Chinese, or the failed chemistry experiment that might have exploded just a little in the pile of junk next to the garage. "What have you done, Samantha?"
Sam runs, turning corner after corner until she stops, because this room is different. Where before the walls were all sharp, straight lines, perfect right angles where they met the ceiling, this room has walls that bow out, rounding up to gently curve into the ceiling.
Martouf stands in the middle, eyes flashing briefly when he sees her. "I was hoping you'd come, Samantha," he says, arms reaching for her. "I knew you wouldn't leave me when I truly need you."
Sam smiles, stepping towards him, but freezes when she sees what he's holding. A live Goa'uld twists and turns in his hand, flapping its vestigial wings and opening its mouth to hiss at her. Martouf hushes it, stroking a finger down its spine until it calms.
"This is Jolinar, Samantha," Martouf says, his voice full of hope and love. "She's alive. We found her." His eyes flash and Lantash speaks. "We would like you to be the host, Samantha."
Sam doesn't want to, but finds herself agreeing, stepping forward. Martouf holds Jolinar out and Sam feels panic well inside her as the tail swishes. She wants to turn her head, to refuse, but there is someone behind her and her father's voice whispers in her ear, "Sssh, Sammy, it'll all be over soon," and then there are hands holding her jaw open and Jolinar is squirming inside.
In the flash of blending Sam instantly knows everything is wrong. The symbiote in her is not Jolinar, but Amaunet, and it is Apophis, not Lantash, inside of Martouf. She wants to scream, to cry, to claw at her neck and wrench Amaunet out, but she has already lost control of her body.
In her head Amaunet chuckles wickedly and lets go, releasing a flood into Sam's brain and she can't look away, can't ignore the images and feelings that pound into her. There is the cruelty of the Goa'uld, starkly contrasted by the strange love Amaunet and Apophis have for each other. Deeper down she is given Sha're - strength and revulsion, terror, embarrassment, and perseverance - horror at what her life has become and determination to not let it defeat her. Deeper still she finds the fierce, unquestioning love Sha're has for Daniel, beautiful memories of exploration and discovery and nights on Abydos.
It's too much, too many people mingling with the remnants of Jolinar already inside her, and there is no more room for Sam in her own head. She feels herself shatter, scattering into a million fragments.
Sam wakes, flinging herself away from Daniel and the blankets that have twisted around them, ignoring the grunt as her elbow finds his ribs. She stumbles outside, getting several steps from the door before she doubles over and vomits, emptying herself onto the cold ground. It takes several minutes on hands and knees for her to stop shaking, and she sits back on her heels, gasping the night air into her lungs.
Daniel pads up to her, silent on bare feet, and hands her a cup of water. She gratefully swishes the cool liquid around her tongue, spitting the first few mouthfuls onto the ground before taking a swallow. When he reaches for her she flinches away and his eyebrows shoot up in concern. He sits down, not touching her but close enough for her to reach out if she wants.
It is still early in the night and three moons glow in the sky, insistently reminding Sam that she really isn't on Earth. She pulls her knees in to her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins and tucking in her chin. Her braid reaches partway down her back, tickling between her shoulder blades.
"Do you still think about Sha're?" she asks. It's one of the many topics they've never discussed.
"Every day," he answers without hesitation. "I'll never forget her, never stop loving her. But I also know she'd want me to be happy, to not stop living because of her." Sam is momentarily jealous at the depth of Daniel's love and that which he received in return, but finds she can't begrudge him those memories, that solitary year of happiness life gave him.
"We're never going home, are we?" Sam asks quietly. She's never before uttered the words, but they've been buried inside her for a long time.
"Anything is possible," he reminds her. "But…I don't think so. You feel it too, don't you? A…permanence about this place?"
Sam nods. They've been settling for a while now. "I'm glad I'm not alone, though. Glad you're here with me." She still misses Teal'c and the colonel, misses Janet and Cassie and General Hammond and everyone else they've left behind. But she knows Teal'c would be restless here, frustrated at his inability to continue to fight for freedom for the Jaffa; and Colonel O'Neill has never been good at change he can't control, would fight it with every ounce of strength he had. But Daniel has stood by her side, taught her to adjust to, even treasure the life they've made. She makes a decision and takes his hand, leading him back into the hut.
Before he can talk she kisses him gently, working her hands beneath his shirt to stroke his back, finding muscles that have grown with the labor of life here. He returns the kiss, parting her lips with his tongue and drawing his hands up her sides.
They sink into the pile of blankets that has become their bed. Daniel's hands and mouth trace down her, beard tickling across her stomach. He brings her up to and over the edge, and as her body tightens something deeper within finally relaxes - a release three years in coming. He holds her patiently in the aftermath, and she wraps her arms around him, nuzzling into his neck.
After her body calms she guides him onto his back and, reaching down, slides him inside of her. They've been here for just over three years now, have been occasionally taking comfort in each other's bodies for a year and a half, but they've never crossed this one, last line.
Daniel's eyes snap open, pupils wide and locked to hers as he realizes what she is doing. Sam has never taken that final step into acceptance, that final step into the marriage the villagers all assume she shares with Daniel. Her birth control has long since worn off, and accepting the risk of pregnancy, of a family, means accepting that their lives are here now. She nods at his unspoken question, and slowly begins to rock, holding his gaze in her own.
When his lips begin to move around silent words, his hands begin to clench, she braces her legs against his hips and rolls him on top of her, letting him set the pace he needs at the end. His eyes finally close just before he comes with the smallest of grunts and, when he is finished, he levers himself down next to her. She runs her fingers through the thick hair on his head, her thumb across the sweat on his brow, and pulls him in for a kiss. He smiles wordlessly against her mouth.
Sam wakes before Daniel and slips out of his arms, pushing the blankets back in when he frowns at the sudden loss of warmth. The cold water and bite in the air startles her awake as she washes by the basin before slipping into the clean clothes they have hanging on the line and redoing the braid in her hair.
Daniel comes up behind her while she watches the sunrise, wrapping arms around her stomach and resting his head on her shoulder. His beard is scratchy on her neck.
"You know I love you," he says, voice still muzzy with sleep. She nods. Daniel loves her, and always has - not the way he loved Sha're, not the way both of them love Colonel O'Neill or Teal'c, Janet or Cassie, or everyone else, because Daniel seems to have enough love inside him for the entire universe. Before she knew him better, she used to worry that one day he'd stretch himself too thin, but instead he taught her the power behind loosening her detachment.
The wind that comes through the trees rattles the chimes outside their door. Their small hut, which Sam has only now started thinking of as home, has acquired an eclectic assortment of items over the years. Sam thinks it makes sense for anywhere she and Daniel live to look as if it belongs to a mad scientist. She's managed to bully her way into the blacksmith's shop when she needs a specific tool and she and Daniel are very close to having functional paper. Inside, wrapped in cloth, are glass lenses Sam hopes might, finally, get her a telescope.
Safe in Daniel's arms, she looks around, sees remnants of them both lying everywhere, sees how they've become a part of this place and how in turn it has seeped itself into their bones.
"This is home," she whispers, only realizing she spoke out loud when Daniel squeezes tighter around her middle.
The dreams don't come back for a long, long time.
She almost doesn't recognize the hallways. The whiteness has faded into a dull gray and the omnipresent lights are dimmer than they once were. The BDUs and tac vest feel alien on her body, and she lifts a hand to find her hair again cropped around her ears. She walks slowly, calmly through the gloom.
"The Goa'uld came," Colonel O'Neill's voice calls, tired and angry. "London fell. Washington D.C. Paris. Moscow. Chicago. Beijing. Denver. You weren't there to stop them. Guess we'll never have Paris now." For a crazy instant Sam hears piano music as his voice fades.
"Bow down before your god," Teal'c's First Prime voice has returned, and Sam can hear the clink of Jaffa armor as he moves. "Pray your lord will be merciful." She jumps at the loud click behind her and turns to find Teal'c pointing the glowing end of a staff weapon at her stomach. A gold emblem she doesn't recognize replaces the crest of Apophis he used to wear on his forehead. Before he can fire a wind rushes through the tunnel and blows him away.
"I'm sure you tried your best, Major," General Hammond says, standing at her right elbow. "I know if there was some way to get back and help us, you would have found it."
"Cassie's okay," Janet tells her, one arm in a sling. "I got her on the list for the alpha site."
"She gave up her spot for me," Cassie whispers.
"We're proud of you, hon," her dad says, and Sam whips around. Everyone else is gone, and the only people left in the corridor are her parents, standing arm in arm.
"We've always been proud," her mom says. "Always been proud of everything you've done."
"You've always put too much pressure on yourself, Sammy," her dad tells her, eyes twinkling. "It's good you finally let yourself live a little."
"But at what cost?" O'Neill's whisper rustles down the hallway.
Sam stirs slowly awake to find Daniel looking at her, one eye cloudy with cataracts. The years have turned his hair gray to match the white on her own head, and lines crease the corners of his eyes and across his forehead. He still looks beautiful to her. Some mornings he doesn't look as sharp, and it's clear to both of them that his memory is fading in and out, but neither of them mentions it. Today looks to be a good day.
Daniel stiffly rolls out of their bed, walking with a pronounced limp to the clothing he has piled on a chair. He broke the leg years ago, falling from an apple tree, and it never healed quite right, but only recently has it truly been slowing him down. Fatherhood had suited him and, though she'd adjusted to being a mother better than she expected, he'd slipped into the role of parent much more easily. Which was why he had tended to be the one chasing children out of apple trees while she got work done.
The village has grown, become a center for trade in the region and, more importantly to Daniel, a center for scholarship. Everyone in their town can read and write, and people travel from all over to study at the hall of learning that has been built on the hill where they lived before finally moving into town. Over the years, she and Daniel have struggled to find time to write down all they know, to teach it to anyone eager to learn, but she knows much will be lost when they die. She also knows they've set these people on the path to discovery, to learning for themselves.
"C'mon, sleepyhead," he says. "I'm sorry we still haven't found any coffee, but we've got to get moving." Much of the food here resembles food from Earth and Daniel has never forgiven the planet for having no substitute for coffee.
Sam stretches under the covers, yawning in the way Daniel says makes her look like a cat, and crawls out from the blankets, feeling the stiffness in her own aging joints. While digging for her good skirt, her hands brush against unfamiliar fabric and she pulls an old, tattered, olive-drab jacket out from its hiding place. She hugs the jacket to her, imagining she can still smell Earth on the sleeves. Midway through putting it back she pauses and removes the SG-1 patch from the sleeve, finding pins to attach it to the shoulder of her blouse.
Daniel has breakfast ready by the time she is dressed, obviously eager for the day ahead. When he sees the addition to her clothing he reaches a hand out to stroke the embroidery, careful as he would be with a sacred relic.
They open the door to shouts of "Daniel! Daniel!" as a clump of children runs toward them, lighter hair making their grandchildren stand out from the sea of dark heads. Sam still can't quite wrap her head around the idea that she has grandchildren, but they make her smile just the same.
"Story, story!" the children chant as they make their way back to the hill that was once home, Daniel and his cane setting the slow pace. They rarely make this trek anymore, but today is special. Sam smiles as Daniel launches into a retelling of Anansi stories, and the children giggle and gasp at all the right moments. Nothing has really changed over the years. Daniel still loves telling the stories, and children still love hearing them.
When they get close enough to see the telescope, Sam feels a surge of pride at what she'd finally managed to build. On one of the long journeys they took, spending months with trade caravans and other travelers, she and Daniel had finally found a glass-maker on a coastal town who could help her make the perfect lenses. Back home she'd spent a year with the village blacksmith before it was finally perfect, and she could open up the heavens to all who wanted to look.
The new building looms impressively, all marble and glass, each stone placed with infinite care. Inside is the first library anyone on this planet can remember existing and the collection it contains will only continue to grow. Today it will finally open to the public, the cornerstone to the hall of learning and the legacy Sam and Daniel will leave to their adopted people.
"I can't believe they actually went with the name," Sam whispers in Daniel's ear.
"I swear I was joking. I didn’t think they'd use it," Daniel tells her, eyes glinting as he again rubs the patch on her shoulder. "You have to admit, there is a certain irony to the Jack O'Neill Memorial Library."
There are speeches, and the feast that follows goes long into the night. Sam finds herself talking with Makin - a scholar from several towns over who seems determined to understand the wave-particle nature of light - when she looks up to see Daniel nodding off in front of the fire. She excuses herself and walks over to rescue the wineglass that is about to tip and stain his best pair of pants.
"Wuh? Sha're?" he asks, unfolding himself from sleep and blinking at her in puzzlement.
It's worse at night, and the wine doesn't help, so she doesn’t bother to correct him, simply guides him out of the chair and whispers in his ear, "It's time to go home, Daniel."
Sam recognizes the walls, back to their original whiteness, and is surprised to find Daniel standing next to her. In all these years he has been the one person to never appear in the corridors with her. Like her, he is young again, in his BDUs with light brown hair hidden under one of his bandanas.
He looks at her and then their surroundings in puzzlement, and when slow recognition dawns on his face she nods and slips her hand into his, ever so cautiously. He doesn't disappear, but stays very real and solid. Together, they begin to explore the corridors.
All they find is emptiness and more emptiness. Nobody appears in the hallways ahead, tantalizingly close but too far away to reach; no voices taunt them echoingly through the corridors. They don’t stop until they come across a pair of gravestones, carved in both English and the language of their adopted village, offering their names and information about where they were from. Earth's point of origin graces the top of each stone. The dates of death at the bottom are one month apart.
Daniel squeezes her hand and leads her away, curious about these corridors she's told him about. All they see is endless white, all they hear are the echoes of their footsteps.
When Daniel stops, Sam looks down to see their hands flicker like an Asgard hologram. He turns to her and opens his mouth, but is drawn away, fading into nothing and there are hands tugging at her, calling, "Sam, Sam, wake up, Sam."
The hands on her are not Daniel's. She tries to throw them off but they hold her tight. Grabbing a thumb, she yanks back, throwing her weight forward. Halfway up she freezes into a crouch when the words finally break through into her brain: "Carter! Carter! Calm down, geez. It's us. Don't bite me."
Sam looks up into Colonel O'Neill's eyes, sees Janet's worried face over his shoulder. "Daniel?" she asks, following O'Neill's gaze to her left where Daniel is sitting up, rubbing his head, with Teal'c hovering over him.
"What happened?" she asks. She thinks she remembers now, a building with white hallways and white rooms, Jack and Teal'c exploring one end while she and Daniel take the other.
"When you didn't meet us back at the entrance, Teal'c and I found the two of you here," O'Neill tells her. "You and Daniel were lying on the floor with those things" - he points above them where a series of cords hangs down from the ceiling - "stuck in your heads. When we couldn't wake you, I sent Teal'c back to the 'gate to get ole Doc Fraiser - didn't want to scramble the most valuable minds on Earth by yanking on random cords."
"So…it…" Sam starts.
"Wasn't real," Daniel finishes for her, looking around the room. His voice sends a shiver down Sam's spine.
"Sam," Janet says, pulling Sam's attention away from the room and shining a penlight into each of Sam's eyes. "I need to ask you a few questions." Sam correctly tells Janet her name, birthday and what she did last Tuesday (help Siler run a gate diagnostic and then spar with Teal'c before women's poker night), assuring her that she feels perfectly fine. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Daniel rise to his feet to examine something by the door.
"Okay, kids, lets get out of here before anything else goes wrong," O'Neill says, heading for the door. "I'm sure Doc Fraiser has lots of fun tests she wants to run on you."
"Just a minute, Jack," Daniel says, not looking away from the wall.
"No, Daniel. No minutes, no seconds. We're leaving now."
"This is important, Jack," Daniel insists, still not looking at him. Sam stands on legs that are more wobbly than she'd like and walks over to press against Daniel's side. It takes effort to remember not to grab his hand. With a shock, she realizes she knows the writing Daniel is intently staring at - it's the same language as the village.
Before she can read it, the colonel actually grabs both their shoulders to steer them out the door. When Daniel continues to protest O'Neill sighs, hands steering duty off to Teal'c, and grabs Daniel's camera to take a picture of the writing. "I'm not saying you can't come back to study this place, I'm saying that right now I need you two back at base so the doc can assure me that there's nothing wrong with you. Got it?"
Sam takes point with Janet on the trip back to the 'gate while Daniel stays in the middle with Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill watches their six. She's having a hard time meeting Daniel's eyes, a hard time figuring out what's real, but she is vividly aware of his presence behind her.
Janet keeps them a long time in the infirmary, running every test she can think of and, aside from some heightened brain activity, can find nothing different from their pre-mission tests. Before she lets Sam go she pulls the curtain and sits next to Sam on the bed.
"You've been quiet. Want to tell me about it?" she asks, placing her hand over the one Sam has lying on her knee. When Sam shakes her head Janet squeezes her fingers and reminds her, "You know where to find me when you do."
Two hours later they debrief General Hammond. Sam sits next to Teal'c and across from Colonel O'Neill, avoiding Daniel's line of sight. Daniel has translated the writing from the wall. The building was a ship, sent out to meet other cultures without exposing the creators to harm. "It's a little like Urgo," Daniel explains.
"So you two were singing 'row, row, row your boat' and eating pie the whole time?" O'Neill asks.
"No, Jack," Daniel says. "From what I can tell, they used our brains to create a virtual environment we'd believe was real. Then they could watch us interact and deal with problems, learn about how we operate and about the society we come from. All without us knowing. It's actually an interesting solution to the anthropological problem of how to observe a culture without affecting it. An anthropologist observing without interacting misses a lot, one who immerses himself into the culture will create changes."
"Like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle," Sam points out. "The act of observing a particle locks in its characteristics - collapsing its wavefunction at a quantum level - so you can't observe without making an impact."
"Exactly." Daniel smiles at her. "Though, this method has other problems - by putting us in this alien society they weren't really studying Earth culture, and it's a small sample size. For instance, Jack and Teal'c would probably have lived very differently."
"Indeed," Teal'c intones beside her and Sam stifles her grin at the way O'Neill's eyebrows shoot up.
"Wait. Hold on a minute," the colonel interrupts, waving his hands. "So…you two…" He's playing dense again. Probably.
"We lived out our lives on another world," Sam says quietly.
"You lived your…lives?" O'Neill says, looking skeptical. "Together? You couldn't have been out more than five hours."
"Yes, Jack," Daniel sighs, getting that look he gets when Sam is sure he wants to reach across the briefing table and wring the colonel's neck. "The human brain can process faster than real time. And I'm sure the technology behind it is impressive, right Sam?"
Sam nods, looking down at her hands. "Much more advanced than any other virtual environments we've seen, including the Gamekeeper's. Indistinguishable from reality."
"All right, people, you've had a long day," General Hammond breaks in. "I expect full reports on my desk. Major Carter, Doctor Jackson? Only what's pertinent to the mission." Sam stands as the general leaves, relieved by the short briefing and the acknowledgement of possible omissions. There are things, like virtual grandchildren, she'd rather not include in an official military report, and she'll have to talk to Daniel about what they're going to write.
Sam leaves the briefing room while Daniel is talking to Teal'c and heads for her lab, a little surprised to find it just how she left it, but then it has been only fifteen hours, not several decades. She picks up the pieces of the Goa'uld device she'd dismantled yesterday and begins sketching out how they fit together.
She's almost done when there is a knock at her door, and she looks up to see Daniel with two steaming mugs of coffee. She gratefully takes the one he hands her, remembering how long it's been since they've had coffee, and he settles onto the stool at the other side of her bench.
"You okay?" Daniel asks, sipping at his own mug.
"I think so," she tells him quietly. "It's weird."
He places a sheet of paper in front of her - it's the photo of the writing by the door, blown up large. "You can read this, right?" he asks. When she nods he points to the bottom. It's a simple note, left for whomever steps into the room, thanking them for the chance to learn and wishing long, happy lives.
Suddenly she has to know. "Did we…dream…the same thing? Was it you there with me or was it me imagining you? Not that it matters anyway, since none of it was actually real."
Daniel looks at her a minute and reaches out tentatively to lay a hand on the back of her neck, rubbing his fingers in her hairline and behind her ears in a way he never did before but was achingly familiar. This is her answer.
Sam leans into his touch a minute and then pulls away, shivering. "It felt so real," she says.
"Reality is just what we perceive it to be," he reminds her. "Science teaches you that."
"But it wasn't my life. Not really."
Daniel shrugs. He's done this before - when Sha're died - lived several weeks that never really happened, and while she's certainly no stranger to her brain being messed with, this was different, more real. Even now, the memories are becoming less clear as her brain adjusts to the fact that none of it happened, but she clings to them, not wanting to let them slip away like a dream.
After a few minutes of silence he stands, reaching out to briefly touch her hand. "Janet says there's no reason for us to have to stay on base," he says, heading for her door. He's always been the best at reading her, even before, and he can tell she needs to be alone. As she watches him leave a memory flashes through her mind. She's climbing the hill after two weeks wandering the forest, tired and feeling hope ebb away. The previous night's dream had been made all the worse by waking alone under the trees and hours later, still leaves her shaken. Ahead of her Daniel stands over their outdoor stove in the twilight, stirring a fresh pot of stew he'd made, somehow knowing she'd be back that night.
Sam finishes up her work, stops by to say good night to Teal'c, and heads home herself. She walks around her house, equally familiar and alien, and keeps expecting to see signs of Daniel - a scribbled sheet of paper on a table, pair of pants haphazardly flung on a chair, crooked pair of glasses left on the nightstand.
The hot bath she draws welcomes her, and she settles in with a book, staying until the water gets cold before slipping into fresh pajamas. Sam turns off all the lights and looks at her bed in the moonlight. The thought comes to her that she can't remember the last time she slept alone, but then she remembers she's slept alone most of her life. Suddenly it's all too much, too many memories surfacing and diving, too many of her lives trying to be the right one.
She throws on an old sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers before driving over to Daniel's apartment. He opens the door as though he's been expecting her and wraps her in his arms when she steps over the threshold.
"How do we go back?" she asks him. She doesn't know if she's asking to go back to their lives at SGC or their lives at the village.
"We take it one day at a time," he tells her. It's the last word either of them speaks tonight.
After toeing off her shoes, Sam curls up next to Daniel on his couch, burying her face in his shoulder as he puts an arm around her. It confuses her how familiar he smells. She can remember what he tastes like, remember every inch of his body, and yet none of it was real. She's never actually touched him, actually had him touch her. None of it happened.
He rests his chin on top of her head, and they sit in the darkness, saying volumes neither of them has words for. Tomorrow they'll be back at work, back on missions, back in their real lives as friends and teammates, back saving the universe. For now, this is all she wants.
After a while he starts humming softly. It's the song from Abydos.
~< *** >~
Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence a time of confidences.
Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you
- Simon and Garfunkel Bookends
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson
Rating/Warning: R (non-explicit sex)
Disclaimer: Stargate and its universe are owned by MGM and many others, none of whom are me.
Word Count: 8992
Author's Note: Huge thanks to hiyacynth and surrealphantast for the fantastically patient and helpful betawork. This is set somewhere early season 5 (definitely after "Divide and Conquer" and before "Meridian"). It doesn't fit well into fandom genre labels - it's a het ship story at the surface but gen friendship at its heart.
Summary:
Daniel has done what Daniel does best - seamlessly merged into a new life and accepted this village as home. For their part, the villagers have been remarkably welcoming, admitting these tall strangers with lighter hair and skin into their midst even as Sam can't quite let herself fit. Sam knows Daniel doesn't expect it to be home forever, suspects he gave up long ago on anywhere being home forever. She also knows she can't seem to take that step.
She doesn't recognize the hallway. It doesn't remind her of the SGC - tunnels of concrete and colored pipes that have begun to feel more like home than anywhere has in a long time. It doesn't look like Tok'ra tunnels - alien crystalline constructs that take her breath away as she marvels at the engineering and Jolinar's memories of home echo in her mind. It doesn't feel like a Goa'uld ship - gaudy, gold, and smothering under the weight of an arrogant false god.
These tunnels simply are. White and featureless, with light that comes from everywhere and nowhere, and she casts no shadows however many circles she turns. She wishes she has paint to mark the walls, or an endless ball of string like Theseus brought into the labyrinth, but she has nothing. So she simply walks, faster and faster down endless corridors, and cannot tell if she is actually moving.
Ahead of her, for just a second, a flash of gray hair beneath a baseball cap disappears behind a corner. She picks up speed, hoping to catch him, but when she rounds the corner, he is gone. Stopping, she turns, pivoting in a wide circle, to see him again - just a flash of a hand holding a P-90. After all these years she recognizes how he carries it.
She runs as fast as she can, chasing the flashes, never seeing all of him, never catching him. Her lungs begin to burn and her legs threaten to give way, unable to sustain the full-on sprint. As she crashes to the ground she feels hands surround her, dragging her down. Thrashing, she shouts his name, a last desperate reach that echoes through the tunnels.
Sam opens her eyes to find Daniel's face hovering above hers, worry creasing his forehead. His hands wrap around each of her arms, holding her together, and his mouth is moving, a whisper barely reaching her ear that takes a minute before she can process it. "...okay, Sam. Sssh. Just a dream."
She sits up, pushing his hands away, and he falls back to sit in front of her, scrutinizing her face. Ignoring him, Sam looks around until she remembers where she is and swallows down the panicked disorientation welling up inside her. The clicking outside is just enough like crickets to calm her nerves and just alien enough to make every hair on her body stand on end. Shivering, she pulls up the blankets she was sleeping on, wrapping them tightly around her shoulders.
"Sam?" Daniel tries again, his voice tentative and reaching. When she finally meets his eyes he seems to relax. "The dream again?"
Sam shrugs. They've been in this place for nearly two months now, and the dream has come regularly, but with no pattern she can determine. If Daniel dreams, he either doesn't remember or doesn't tell her, but he is always there when she wakes. He's been by her side since the first morning, when she woke at dawn to find him asleep next to her. Initially, she was angry at Colonel O'Neill for not waking her for third watch. Only when she noticed the absence of O'Neill and Teal'c, the surroundings she didn't recognize, did she realize how much was actually wrong.
"Colonel O'Neill was there this time," Sam says quietly. "I kept catching glimpses of him, running after him, but he was always ahead of me."
Daniel nods. The dream is nothing new - sometimes she sees O'Neill or Teal'c, sometimes Hammond or her father, sometimes Janet or Cassie. And sometimes she encounters dead memories from her past - Jonas or Martouf. He looks like he wants to ask something else but far off a bell rings and Daniel turns his head as though he can see the village through the walls of their hut.
"C'mon, Sam, we've got to get ready," he says, pulling her to her feet. He heads outside to give her privacy so she can change into the rough skirt and loose shirt the village women have given her. Most days she wears pants like Daniel's, but he's convinced her to dress like the other women when they visit the village. She steps outside to find Daniel washing his face in a basin, and drops of water glisten in his beard when he smiles at her. As she takes her place at the basin, she notices how Daniel's hair is curling at the back of his neck and makes a note to cut it soon.
The walk down to the village takes about fifteen minutes, and the awakening birds call out their progress. Daniel wraps his arm around her waist as they walk, letting her lean into his side, grateful for his warmth in the coolness of the morning. At the outskirts of the village they are set upon by a herd of children, several of whom cling to Sam's skirt and most of whom clamor around Daniel, chattering faster than Sam can understand. It took Daniel over a week to figure out the basic language - some strange mix of Hebrew and Greek but with enough differences that he still gets words wrong. Sam has been much slower to pick any of it up, even with Daniel's patient instruction.
Sam swings one of the smaller girls onto her hip as Daniel begins to tell a story, something about a knight and a dragon from the words she catches, and he spreads his arms wide, running into the crowd of children and roaring to show them how the dragon attacks. The children scatter, squealing with laughter, and Sam can't help smiling herself. They love his stories, and Daniel seems to have a never-ending supply to offer them.
Daniel joins the other men, hauling the baskets of olive-like fruit to the press set up in the town square. Mara tugs on Sam's arm, pulling her to where the women are preparing containers for the oil. The women sing as they work, songs Sam doesn’t understand but that still cut her deep, and she settles into the rhythm they set. By the end of the day everyone is tired, but most of the village's crop has been pressed and prepared for trade. Sam and Daniel leave that night's feast early to head back, carrying two containers of oil that Mara assures will last them until the next harvest.
Daniel chatters about the process, how similar it is to how the ancient Greeks and Romans treated their olive crops, and theorizes about Mediterranean climates and cross-cultural similarities. Sam thinks it's just like the end of a mission, walking back to the 'gate with Colonel O'Neill rolling his eyes as Daniel speculatively babbles about whichever planet they are leaving and she shares amused looks with Teal'c. She stumbles when she realizes she went nearly the entire day without thinking about Stargate Command.
Teal'c stands before her in the robes the Jaffa wear when they aren't in armor, unusually vivid against the white. He looks like he expects something from her.
"Why are you not fighting, Major Carter?" he asks, and the lack of surprise in his voice is even worse than the disappointment. He always knew she wouldn't be strong enough, always knew one day she'd give up. "Have you forgotten us so quickly? A true warrior would never abandon the field of battle."
Before she can answer he turns his back to her - not a sign of trust but one of dismissal, because he doesn't think she's capable of hurting him - and walks away, fading into the whiteness. She runs after him, turning corner after corner but only catching the barest swish of robes.
"Teal'c," she calls, flinching as the echoes magnify her voice in the tunnel. "Let me find you! Help me!"
"You know what you must do," Teal'c's disembodied voice answers, floating through the tunnel from no direction at all. "Do your veins not contain the blood of a warrior?"
She finds a safety pin in her pocket and draws the point across her left palm, biting her tongue as the skin blooms open. She uses her right index finger to draw a red line on the wall, indicating where she has been and where she is heading. Each junction gets labeled, and she shivers when Teal'c's laughter echoes down the halls.
When she comes across one of her own marks she stops and stares. The line is growing, red spreading and spilling over the pristine white, multiplying exponentially like the bacteria colony she grew in high school biology - 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 - bigger and bigger. She imagines the wall throbbing, as though from a heartbeat and stumbles backwards, only to find the wall behind her is red, warm, and sticky as though it were actual blood.
Sam wakes with her mouth wide open but no scream escaping. Daniel is lying behind her with his arms wrapped around her, hands gripping each wrist, and she can see a line of red across her left palm, dried blood under the finger nails of her right hand. Daniel's face is pressed against her neck and he's quietly humming an old Earth lullaby into her ear.
After a minute she crosses her own arms at her chest, wrapping him tighter around her, needing to feel that he's real. He seems to understand, closing his arms and pushing his whole body against hers before he reaches a thumb to wipe the solitary tear off her cheek. They lie awake until dawn and his heart beats firm and steady against her back.
He rises and dresses in silence, privacy long since forgotten in their shared hut. "I have to go today, Sam," he says, looking down to where she is still curled up in the blankets. "Natan needs me to help with the traders and there is judging this afternoon."
Daniel has done what Daniel does best - seamlessly merged into a new life and accepted this village as home. For their part, the villagers have been remarkably welcoming, admitting these tall strangers with lighter hair and skin into their midst even as Sam can't quite let herself fit. Sam knows Daniel doesn't expect it to be home forever, suspects he gave up long ago on anywhere being home forever. She also knows she can't seem to take that step. She's had plenty of change in her life, plenty of new places to adapt herself to, but she's never been able to fully give herself over, to give up her past.
They still have no idea how they ended up here, but Sam thinks they were lucky. This planet has never heard of Goa'uld or Jaffa. Daniel wants to suspect it of being an Asgard protected planet, but there is no indication of Nordic influence, nothing they've found that could be used to contact the Asgard. They've yet to find anybody who's heard of or seen anything like a stargate.
The culture, primitive by Earth standards, values scholarship and wisdom, and Daniel was recognized for both soon after Natan and Mara found them in the woods and brought them here. Daniel has become known in the village as someone who can help broker trade and mediate disputes, but also as someone with knowledge to pass on. Sometimes Sam wonders if, with all these eager pupils, Daniel misses SGC at all.
"You know, Sam, you'd be more than welcome. I know you miss it." He's been trying to get Sam to teach also, to share her love for math and science with what he assures her will be eager pupils. She thinks she has the language down enough to start, even if they don't really have words for frequency or theorem or sub-atomic particle, but can't bring herself to try yet. Can't admit they might be here to stay. Daniel goes down to the village almost every day, but Sam spends most of her time around their hut.
Sam only shakes her head and watches him silently, not getting up to dress until he goes out the door. When she comes out he barely raises an eyebrow at her BDUs and tac vest, merely taking another bite of the apple in his hand (the alien fruits are so much like apples they've long since given up on calling them anything else). He knows what it means when she puts on the rarely worn uniform, knows she'll go away for a week or two, searching the surrounding area for any hints of where they are and how to get home. Daniel has enough confidence in her abilities and her loyalty to not doubt whether she'll come back safe.
Wet hair sticks to her neck after she washes her face, and she brushes it away in annoyance. The days here seem about as long as days on Earth, and the calendar they keep in the corner says they've been here for just longer than ten months. Her hair is almost long enough to tie back.
Daniel holds her gaze for a long minute before slinging his own pack over his shoulder. He'll come back tonight with food to supplement the garden Sam tends and the chickens who sometimes, grudgingly, give them eggs, and they both know he'll be eating alone.
"Good luck," he says quietly. "I hope you find what you're looking for." He heads down the hill without glancing back. Sam watches him shrink smaller and smaller until he disappears around a bend in the path before she heads out her own way.
The pine needles that crunch under her feet don't smell right.
"You said you'd never leave me." Cassie's voice is accusing and Sam is surprised to see her still the same age as when they found her on Hanka.
Janet stands behind Cassie, arms crossed at her chest, and looks disdainfully at Sam. "Cassie's been asking when you're coming home. You missed her birthday," Janet says, her voice clinically dispassionate. Sam knows Janet is shorter than her, and yet the doctor towers so high over her she has to strain her neck to see Janet's face.
"You missed mine too." Sam whirls around to find Mark standing behind her. "But then, that's nothing new, is it?"
"Your sister has more important things to do now," her father says, appearing close enough to his son to bump shoulders. "She doesn't care about the rest of the universe anymore. She doesn't think about us. I don’t see why we should think about her."
At that they all nod and, as one, vanish. Sam whirls around, thinks she catches a glimpse of Cassie's hair, hears the click of Janet's shoes, but only the white walls surround her. She picks a direction and runs, taking turns at random.
After her third left turn she runs into someone. He doesn't move, and she bounces back to see Jonas Hansen. The torn and muddied robes of godhood wrap around his frame.
"If you cared a little bit more about the rest of the universe and a little less about yourself, this never would have happened," he says, the corner of his mouth turning up into a sneer. "But it was always you first. Your pilot training, your PhD, your career. Your dreams were always more important than the people who tried to fit into them. You're a dangerous woman to care about."
Sam backs away until she runs into another body. Hands grip her shoulders and stubble grazes against her neck as Colonel O'Neill's voice rasps in her ear. "Sometimes the universe asks for more than you have. Sometimes you just have to give in and roll with it. And sometimes you have to speak up for yourself because the universe isn't listening. Now. Ready, set, RUN!"
She takes off like a shot, away from Jonas, careening off walls, stumbling and catching herself again and again.
Sam is no longer surprised to wake wrapped in Daniel's arms. More and more often they make it easier by going to sleep that way. She hasn't had one of the dreams in weeks, and the pounding of her heart sounds like drums in her head.
Daniel's hand rubs up and down her arm as he murmurs soothingly into her ear, still half-asleep himself. She curls into his touch, feeling her heart gradually slow as the adrenaline leaves her blood. Daniel's hand continues, rubbing her back and side, working its way, slowly, underneath the shirt she sleeps in.
His fingers grace along her ribs, circle over her stomach, trail back to her spine, and begin the journey again. When they finally reach up to cup a breast, stroke a nipple, she can't resist the small intake of breath. The pounding is returning to her ears, but slower this time and without the vestige of panic.
She widens her hips as his hand traces lower, fingers finally exploring the territory between her legs. He is slower, gentler than she wants but bats away the hand she reaches down to encourage him. When her climax finally arrives it is long and sweet, just intense enough to seize her muscles and arch her against him without overwhelming her.
After relaxing into his arms for a glorious minute she tries to roll over and return the favor, but he holds her still and plants a single, chaste, kiss on her cheek. Eventually her breathing matches his, lulling her to sleep.
When she wakes Daniel is outside, singing a song he told her was from Abydos - the first one Sha're taught him - and she lies for a few minutes listening to his voice. Before they came here, she'd never heard Daniel sing beyond a few rounds of "Happy Birthday." They'd gotten Teal'c to do karaoke once, but there didn’t seem to be enough beer on Earth to get Daniel up there. It's a shame, because he has a beautiful voice. Daniel doesn't have dreams like hers, but he sometimes talks in his sleep, and it's not uncommon for Sam to hear Sha're's name on his lips. The longing comes through in his song.
Sam stumbles outside and stretches tall in the sunlight. Daniel is tending their garden, back curving as he reaches down to pull a weed. When Sam comes over to him he has her close her eyes. His fingers gently prod her lips apart and something warm and round slips onto her tongue. She bites down onto the first tonkaberry of summer. The fruits look like cranberries, taste somewhere between a strawberry and a raspberry, and Daniel knows Sam loves them. Mouth still sticky with the juice, she reaches to grab his head, pulling him in for a berry-sweet kiss.
It has been nineteen months now, and Sam ties her hair back with a braided leather cord before joining Daniel in the morning's chores. Later, they head down to the village with what food they can spare. Three months ago a sickness, accidentally brought back by a group of traders, swept the village. Sam and Daniel, seemingly immune, helped all they could with quarantine and nursing, using all their knowledge but wishing desperately for Janet and a few supplies from Earth. Most survived, but many are still recovering and the late planting promises a weak harvest and a hard winter.
They drop the food off at Natan and Mara's house, knowing they'll distribute it to wherever it is most needed, and Sam leaves Daniel there to discuss trade and governing while she continues to the town hall. Two months before the sickness she gave in and began teaching, loving it just as much as Daniel said she would. The mornings are reserved for what could be useful to this society - the math to help ensure fair trade, geometry and engineering for water wheels and irrigation, basic biology for better crops and disease control. She saves the last hour of the day for herself and teaches whatever she misses most - basic explanations of relativity or cosmology, chemistry experiments and genetics.
There are two boys waiting for her outside the hall and they shout when they see her, running to show her their prize.
It's a small airplane she'd helped them build, whittling the wood and spreading cloth over the wings. The propeller turns with the aid of a coiled leather cord and they've managed a few short flights, maybe a foot off the ground. But now one of the wings is broken, the last few inches bending away at a thirty-degree angle and Sam freezes, remembering a plane that had crashed in Iraq, a metal wing similarly bent.
"Can you fix it? Can you fix it?" one of the boys asks, tugging at Sam's skirt while the other boy eagerly bounces on his toes.
Sam smiles and takes the toy, turning it over in her hands. "How do you think we should fix it?" she asks. They look at her, stunned for a second, and then start babbling about splints and tree sap, yarn and pieces of cloth, and what repair method might make the wing too heavy. Sam feels a sense of pride, hearing how they've learned to think.
Hours later she is on hands and knees, sketching a chalk diagram of the accretion disc around a black hole, five puzzled villagers sitting around her, when Daniel coughs behind her. She looks to find him standing in the doorway, setting sun a red glow behind his back, and tapping his wrist where a watch used to live. Sam bids her pupils farewell, promising to explain again later, and slips outside into the sunset.
Daniel takes her hand in his as they walk up the hill. "You looked happy," he says. "Like you're finally accepting this place."
"It's not that bad," she admits, squeezing his fingers. "But I still miss it." It's been months since she last felt the urge to get away, to wander through the woods searching for a clue on how to get home. She knows he won't say it, knows he doesn't begrudge her that stubborn hope, but also knows Daniel is grateful she stopped wandering. They both know, deep down, she'll never really stop looking.
Daniel swings their arms wide. "What do you think Jack would say if he saw us now?" he asks, grinning at her. His glasses sit crooked on his nose. They broke a while ago and she tried to solder them together again, but without proper tools they're far from perfect and the prescription is long out of date. He keeps wearing them anyway.
"Something sarcastic," she says out loud. "Tease me that I'm going to accidentally help these people blow up their sun." Ready to come home now, kids? he asks in her head and she hides the choked sob behind a cough as the overwhelming reality of where she and Daniel have landed themselves washes over her again. "Do you think they're still looking for us?" she asks.
Daniel considers for a minute. "Jack and Teal'c aren't the type to give up," he points out, holding her hand tighter. He doesn’t add what they both know - that the odds of finding them are, quite literally, astronomically slim.
The hallways are empty: white changing into white changing into white, and no voices call for her, no flashes of robe or hat beg her to chase. It makes her feel small and claustrophobic, like they've finally forgotten her, finally given up on her.
"Samantha." The voice echoes ghostly down the hallway, and Sam freezes. Her mother has never visited this labyrinth, and for that she is grateful, but this voice washes her back to childhood. "Samantha Carter," her mother's voice snaps again. It's the tone that means Sam is in trouble, that she found the half-dissected owl pellet Sam hid in the refrigerator, behind the leftover Chinese, or the failed chemistry experiment that might have exploded just a little in the pile of junk next to the garage. "What have you done, Samantha?"
Sam runs, turning corner after corner until she stops, because this room is different. Where before the walls were all sharp, straight lines, perfect right angles where they met the ceiling, this room has walls that bow out, rounding up to gently curve into the ceiling.
Martouf stands in the middle, eyes flashing briefly when he sees her. "I was hoping you'd come, Samantha," he says, arms reaching for her. "I knew you wouldn't leave me when I truly need you."
Sam smiles, stepping towards him, but freezes when she sees what he's holding. A live Goa'uld twists and turns in his hand, flapping its vestigial wings and opening its mouth to hiss at her. Martouf hushes it, stroking a finger down its spine until it calms.
"This is Jolinar, Samantha," Martouf says, his voice full of hope and love. "She's alive. We found her." His eyes flash and Lantash speaks. "We would like you to be the host, Samantha."
Sam doesn't want to, but finds herself agreeing, stepping forward. Martouf holds Jolinar out and Sam feels panic well inside her as the tail swishes. She wants to turn her head, to refuse, but there is someone behind her and her father's voice whispers in her ear, "Sssh, Sammy, it'll all be over soon," and then there are hands holding her jaw open and Jolinar is squirming inside.
In the flash of blending Sam instantly knows everything is wrong. The symbiote in her is not Jolinar, but Amaunet, and it is Apophis, not Lantash, inside of Martouf. She wants to scream, to cry, to claw at her neck and wrench Amaunet out, but she has already lost control of her body.
In her head Amaunet chuckles wickedly and lets go, releasing a flood into Sam's brain and she can't look away, can't ignore the images and feelings that pound into her. There is the cruelty of the Goa'uld, starkly contrasted by the strange love Amaunet and Apophis have for each other. Deeper down she is given Sha're - strength and revulsion, terror, embarrassment, and perseverance - horror at what her life has become and determination to not let it defeat her. Deeper still she finds the fierce, unquestioning love Sha're has for Daniel, beautiful memories of exploration and discovery and nights on Abydos.
It's too much, too many people mingling with the remnants of Jolinar already inside her, and there is no more room for Sam in her own head. She feels herself shatter, scattering into a million fragments.
Sam wakes, flinging herself away from Daniel and the blankets that have twisted around them, ignoring the grunt as her elbow finds his ribs. She stumbles outside, getting several steps from the door before she doubles over and vomits, emptying herself onto the cold ground. It takes several minutes on hands and knees for her to stop shaking, and she sits back on her heels, gasping the night air into her lungs.
Daniel pads up to her, silent on bare feet, and hands her a cup of water. She gratefully swishes the cool liquid around her tongue, spitting the first few mouthfuls onto the ground before taking a swallow. When he reaches for her she flinches away and his eyebrows shoot up in concern. He sits down, not touching her but close enough for her to reach out if she wants.
It is still early in the night and three moons glow in the sky, insistently reminding Sam that she really isn't on Earth. She pulls her knees in to her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins and tucking in her chin. Her braid reaches partway down her back, tickling between her shoulder blades.
"Do you still think about Sha're?" she asks. It's one of the many topics they've never discussed.
"Every day," he answers without hesitation. "I'll never forget her, never stop loving her. But I also know she'd want me to be happy, to not stop living because of her." Sam is momentarily jealous at the depth of Daniel's love and that which he received in return, but finds she can't begrudge him those memories, that solitary year of happiness life gave him.
"We're never going home, are we?" Sam asks quietly. She's never before uttered the words, but they've been buried inside her for a long time.
"Anything is possible," he reminds her. "But…I don't think so. You feel it too, don't you? A…permanence about this place?"
Sam nods. They've been settling for a while now. "I'm glad I'm not alone, though. Glad you're here with me." She still misses Teal'c and the colonel, misses Janet and Cassie and General Hammond and everyone else they've left behind. But she knows Teal'c would be restless here, frustrated at his inability to continue to fight for freedom for the Jaffa; and Colonel O'Neill has never been good at change he can't control, would fight it with every ounce of strength he had. But Daniel has stood by her side, taught her to adjust to, even treasure the life they've made. She makes a decision and takes his hand, leading him back into the hut.
Before he can talk she kisses him gently, working her hands beneath his shirt to stroke his back, finding muscles that have grown with the labor of life here. He returns the kiss, parting her lips with his tongue and drawing his hands up her sides.
They sink into the pile of blankets that has become their bed. Daniel's hands and mouth trace down her, beard tickling across her stomach. He brings her up to and over the edge, and as her body tightens something deeper within finally relaxes - a release three years in coming. He holds her patiently in the aftermath, and she wraps her arms around him, nuzzling into his neck.
After her body calms she guides him onto his back and, reaching down, slides him inside of her. They've been here for just over three years now, have been occasionally taking comfort in each other's bodies for a year and a half, but they've never crossed this one, last line.
Daniel's eyes snap open, pupils wide and locked to hers as he realizes what she is doing. Sam has never taken that final step into acceptance, that final step into the marriage the villagers all assume she shares with Daniel. Her birth control has long since worn off, and accepting the risk of pregnancy, of a family, means accepting that their lives are here now. She nods at his unspoken question, and slowly begins to rock, holding his gaze in her own.
When his lips begin to move around silent words, his hands begin to clench, she braces her legs against his hips and rolls him on top of her, letting him set the pace he needs at the end. His eyes finally close just before he comes with the smallest of grunts and, when he is finished, he levers himself down next to her. She runs her fingers through the thick hair on his head, her thumb across the sweat on his brow, and pulls him in for a kiss. He smiles wordlessly against her mouth.
Sam wakes before Daniel and slips out of his arms, pushing the blankets back in when he frowns at the sudden loss of warmth. The cold water and bite in the air startles her awake as she washes by the basin before slipping into the clean clothes they have hanging on the line and redoing the braid in her hair.
Daniel comes up behind her while she watches the sunrise, wrapping arms around her stomach and resting his head on her shoulder. His beard is scratchy on her neck.
"You know I love you," he says, voice still muzzy with sleep. She nods. Daniel loves her, and always has - not the way he loved Sha're, not the way both of them love Colonel O'Neill or Teal'c, Janet or Cassie, or everyone else, because Daniel seems to have enough love inside him for the entire universe. Before she knew him better, she used to worry that one day he'd stretch himself too thin, but instead he taught her the power behind loosening her detachment.
The wind that comes through the trees rattles the chimes outside their door. Their small hut, which Sam has only now started thinking of as home, has acquired an eclectic assortment of items over the years. Sam thinks it makes sense for anywhere she and Daniel live to look as if it belongs to a mad scientist. She's managed to bully her way into the blacksmith's shop when she needs a specific tool and she and Daniel are very close to having functional paper. Inside, wrapped in cloth, are glass lenses Sam hopes might, finally, get her a telescope.
Safe in Daniel's arms, she looks around, sees remnants of them both lying everywhere, sees how they've become a part of this place and how in turn it has seeped itself into their bones.
"This is home," she whispers, only realizing she spoke out loud when Daniel squeezes tighter around her middle.
The dreams don't come back for a long, long time.
She almost doesn't recognize the hallways. The whiteness has faded into a dull gray and the omnipresent lights are dimmer than they once were. The BDUs and tac vest feel alien on her body, and she lifts a hand to find her hair again cropped around her ears. She walks slowly, calmly through the gloom.
"The Goa'uld came," Colonel O'Neill's voice calls, tired and angry. "London fell. Washington D.C. Paris. Moscow. Chicago. Beijing. Denver. You weren't there to stop them. Guess we'll never have Paris now." For a crazy instant Sam hears piano music as his voice fades.
"Bow down before your god," Teal'c's First Prime voice has returned, and Sam can hear the clink of Jaffa armor as he moves. "Pray your lord will be merciful." She jumps at the loud click behind her and turns to find Teal'c pointing the glowing end of a staff weapon at her stomach. A gold emblem she doesn't recognize replaces the crest of Apophis he used to wear on his forehead. Before he can fire a wind rushes through the tunnel and blows him away.
"I'm sure you tried your best, Major," General Hammond says, standing at her right elbow. "I know if there was some way to get back and help us, you would have found it."
"Cassie's okay," Janet tells her, one arm in a sling. "I got her on the list for the alpha site."
"She gave up her spot for me," Cassie whispers.
"We're proud of you, hon," her dad says, and Sam whips around. Everyone else is gone, and the only people left in the corridor are her parents, standing arm in arm.
"We've always been proud," her mom says. "Always been proud of everything you've done."
"You've always put too much pressure on yourself, Sammy," her dad tells her, eyes twinkling. "It's good you finally let yourself live a little."
"But at what cost?" O'Neill's whisper rustles down the hallway.
Sam stirs slowly awake to find Daniel looking at her, one eye cloudy with cataracts. The years have turned his hair gray to match the white on her own head, and lines crease the corners of his eyes and across his forehead. He still looks beautiful to her. Some mornings he doesn't look as sharp, and it's clear to both of them that his memory is fading in and out, but neither of them mentions it. Today looks to be a good day.
Daniel stiffly rolls out of their bed, walking with a pronounced limp to the clothing he has piled on a chair. He broke the leg years ago, falling from an apple tree, and it never healed quite right, but only recently has it truly been slowing him down. Fatherhood had suited him and, though she'd adjusted to being a mother better than she expected, he'd slipped into the role of parent much more easily. Which was why he had tended to be the one chasing children out of apple trees while she got work done.
The village has grown, become a center for trade in the region and, more importantly to Daniel, a center for scholarship. Everyone in their town can read and write, and people travel from all over to study at the hall of learning that has been built on the hill where they lived before finally moving into town. Over the years, she and Daniel have struggled to find time to write down all they know, to teach it to anyone eager to learn, but she knows much will be lost when they die. She also knows they've set these people on the path to discovery, to learning for themselves.
"C'mon, sleepyhead," he says. "I'm sorry we still haven't found any coffee, but we've got to get moving." Much of the food here resembles food from Earth and Daniel has never forgiven the planet for having no substitute for coffee.
Sam stretches under the covers, yawning in the way Daniel says makes her look like a cat, and crawls out from the blankets, feeling the stiffness in her own aging joints. While digging for her good skirt, her hands brush against unfamiliar fabric and she pulls an old, tattered, olive-drab jacket out from its hiding place. She hugs the jacket to her, imagining she can still smell Earth on the sleeves. Midway through putting it back she pauses and removes the SG-1 patch from the sleeve, finding pins to attach it to the shoulder of her blouse.
Daniel has breakfast ready by the time she is dressed, obviously eager for the day ahead. When he sees the addition to her clothing he reaches a hand out to stroke the embroidery, careful as he would be with a sacred relic.
They open the door to shouts of "Daniel! Daniel!" as a clump of children runs toward them, lighter hair making their grandchildren stand out from the sea of dark heads. Sam still can't quite wrap her head around the idea that she has grandchildren, but they make her smile just the same.
"Story, story!" the children chant as they make their way back to the hill that was once home, Daniel and his cane setting the slow pace. They rarely make this trek anymore, but today is special. Sam smiles as Daniel launches into a retelling of Anansi stories, and the children giggle and gasp at all the right moments. Nothing has really changed over the years. Daniel still loves telling the stories, and children still love hearing them.
When they get close enough to see the telescope, Sam feels a surge of pride at what she'd finally managed to build. On one of the long journeys they took, spending months with trade caravans and other travelers, she and Daniel had finally found a glass-maker on a coastal town who could help her make the perfect lenses. Back home she'd spent a year with the village blacksmith before it was finally perfect, and she could open up the heavens to all who wanted to look.
The new building looms impressively, all marble and glass, each stone placed with infinite care. Inside is the first library anyone on this planet can remember existing and the collection it contains will only continue to grow. Today it will finally open to the public, the cornerstone to the hall of learning and the legacy Sam and Daniel will leave to their adopted people.
"I can't believe they actually went with the name," Sam whispers in Daniel's ear.
"I swear I was joking. I didn’t think they'd use it," Daniel tells her, eyes glinting as he again rubs the patch on her shoulder. "You have to admit, there is a certain irony to the Jack O'Neill Memorial Library."
There are speeches, and the feast that follows goes long into the night. Sam finds herself talking with Makin - a scholar from several towns over who seems determined to understand the wave-particle nature of light - when she looks up to see Daniel nodding off in front of the fire. She excuses herself and walks over to rescue the wineglass that is about to tip and stain his best pair of pants.
"Wuh? Sha're?" he asks, unfolding himself from sleep and blinking at her in puzzlement.
It's worse at night, and the wine doesn't help, so she doesn’t bother to correct him, simply guides him out of the chair and whispers in his ear, "It's time to go home, Daniel."
Sam recognizes the walls, back to their original whiteness, and is surprised to find Daniel standing next to her. In all these years he has been the one person to never appear in the corridors with her. Like her, he is young again, in his BDUs with light brown hair hidden under one of his bandanas.
He looks at her and then their surroundings in puzzlement, and when slow recognition dawns on his face she nods and slips her hand into his, ever so cautiously. He doesn't disappear, but stays very real and solid. Together, they begin to explore the corridors.
All they find is emptiness and more emptiness. Nobody appears in the hallways ahead, tantalizingly close but too far away to reach; no voices taunt them echoingly through the corridors. They don’t stop until they come across a pair of gravestones, carved in both English and the language of their adopted village, offering their names and information about where they were from. Earth's point of origin graces the top of each stone. The dates of death at the bottom are one month apart.
Daniel squeezes her hand and leads her away, curious about these corridors she's told him about. All they see is endless white, all they hear are the echoes of their footsteps.
When Daniel stops, Sam looks down to see their hands flicker like an Asgard hologram. He turns to her and opens his mouth, but is drawn away, fading into nothing and there are hands tugging at her, calling, "Sam, Sam, wake up, Sam."
The hands on her are not Daniel's. She tries to throw them off but they hold her tight. Grabbing a thumb, she yanks back, throwing her weight forward. Halfway up she freezes into a crouch when the words finally break through into her brain: "Carter! Carter! Calm down, geez. It's us. Don't bite me."
Sam looks up into Colonel O'Neill's eyes, sees Janet's worried face over his shoulder. "Daniel?" she asks, following O'Neill's gaze to her left where Daniel is sitting up, rubbing his head, with Teal'c hovering over him.
"What happened?" she asks. She thinks she remembers now, a building with white hallways and white rooms, Jack and Teal'c exploring one end while she and Daniel take the other.
"When you didn't meet us back at the entrance, Teal'c and I found the two of you here," O'Neill tells her. "You and Daniel were lying on the floor with those things" - he points above them where a series of cords hangs down from the ceiling - "stuck in your heads. When we couldn't wake you, I sent Teal'c back to the 'gate to get ole Doc Fraiser - didn't want to scramble the most valuable minds on Earth by yanking on random cords."
"So…it…" Sam starts.
"Wasn't real," Daniel finishes for her, looking around the room. His voice sends a shiver down Sam's spine.
"Sam," Janet says, pulling Sam's attention away from the room and shining a penlight into each of Sam's eyes. "I need to ask you a few questions." Sam correctly tells Janet her name, birthday and what she did last Tuesday (help Siler run a gate diagnostic and then spar with Teal'c before women's poker night), assuring her that she feels perfectly fine. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Daniel rise to his feet to examine something by the door.
"Okay, kids, lets get out of here before anything else goes wrong," O'Neill says, heading for the door. "I'm sure Doc Fraiser has lots of fun tests she wants to run on you."
"Just a minute, Jack," Daniel says, not looking away from the wall.
"No, Daniel. No minutes, no seconds. We're leaving now."
"This is important, Jack," Daniel insists, still not looking at him. Sam stands on legs that are more wobbly than she'd like and walks over to press against Daniel's side. It takes effort to remember not to grab his hand. With a shock, she realizes she knows the writing Daniel is intently staring at - it's the same language as the village.
Before she can read it, the colonel actually grabs both their shoulders to steer them out the door. When Daniel continues to protest O'Neill sighs, hands steering duty off to Teal'c, and grabs Daniel's camera to take a picture of the writing. "I'm not saying you can't come back to study this place, I'm saying that right now I need you two back at base so the doc can assure me that there's nothing wrong with you. Got it?"
Sam takes point with Janet on the trip back to the 'gate while Daniel stays in the middle with Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill watches their six. She's having a hard time meeting Daniel's eyes, a hard time figuring out what's real, but she is vividly aware of his presence behind her.
Janet keeps them a long time in the infirmary, running every test she can think of and, aside from some heightened brain activity, can find nothing different from their pre-mission tests. Before she lets Sam go she pulls the curtain and sits next to Sam on the bed.
"You've been quiet. Want to tell me about it?" she asks, placing her hand over the one Sam has lying on her knee. When Sam shakes her head Janet squeezes her fingers and reminds her, "You know where to find me when you do."
Two hours later they debrief General Hammond. Sam sits next to Teal'c and across from Colonel O'Neill, avoiding Daniel's line of sight. Daniel has translated the writing from the wall. The building was a ship, sent out to meet other cultures without exposing the creators to harm. "It's a little like Urgo," Daniel explains.
"So you two were singing 'row, row, row your boat' and eating pie the whole time?" O'Neill asks.
"No, Jack," Daniel says. "From what I can tell, they used our brains to create a virtual environment we'd believe was real. Then they could watch us interact and deal with problems, learn about how we operate and about the society we come from. All without us knowing. It's actually an interesting solution to the anthropological problem of how to observe a culture without affecting it. An anthropologist observing without interacting misses a lot, one who immerses himself into the culture will create changes."
"Like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle," Sam points out. "The act of observing a particle locks in its characteristics - collapsing its wavefunction at a quantum level - so you can't observe without making an impact."
"Exactly." Daniel smiles at her. "Though, this method has other problems - by putting us in this alien society they weren't really studying Earth culture, and it's a small sample size. For instance, Jack and Teal'c would probably have lived very differently."
"Indeed," Teal'c intones beside her and Sam stifles her grin at the way O'Neill's eyebrows shoot up.
"Wait. Hold on a minute," the colonel interrupts, waving his hands. "So…you two…" He's playing dense again. Probably.
"We lived out our lives on another world," Sam says quietly.
"You lived your…lives?" O'Neill says, looking skeptical. "Together? You couldn't have been out more than five hours."
"Yes, Jack," Daniel sighs, getting that look he gets when Sam is sure he wants to reach across the briefing table and wring the colonel's neck. "The human brain can process faster than real time. And I'm sure the technology behind it is impressive, right Sam?"
Sam nods, looking down at her hands. "Much more advanced than any other virtual environments we've seen, including the Gamekeeper's. Indistinguishable from reality."
"All right, people, you've had a long day," General Hammond breaks in. "I expect full reports on my desk. Major Carter, Doctor Jackson? Only what's pertinent to the mission." Sam stands as the general leaves, relieved by the short briefing and the acknowledgement of possible omissions. There are things, like virtual grandchildren, she'd rather not include in an official military report, and she'll have to talk to Daniel about what they're going to write.
Sam leaves the briefing room while Daniel is talking to Teal'c and heads for her lab, a little surprised to find it just how she left it, but then it has been only fifteen hours, not several decades. She picks up the pieces of the Goa'uld device she'd dismantled yesterday and begins sketching out how they fit together.
She's almost done when there is a knock at her door, and she looks up to see Daniel with two steaming mugs of coffee. She gratefully takes the one he hands her, remembering how long it's been since they've had coffee, and he settles onto the stool at the other side of her bench.
"You okay?" Daniel asks, sipping at his own mug.
"I think so," she tells him quietly. "It's weird."
He places a sheet of paper in front of her - it's the photo of the writing by the door, blown up large. "You can read this, right?" he asks. When she nods he points to the bottom. It's a simple note, left for whomever steps into the room, thanking them for the chance to learn and wishing long, happy lives.
Suddenly she has to know. "Did we…dream…the same thing? Was it you there with me or was it me imagining you? Not that it matters anyway, since none of it was actually real."
Daniel looks at her a minute and reaches out tentatively to lay a hand on the back of her neck, rubbing his fingers in her hairline and behind her ears in a way he never did before but was achingly familiar. This is her answer.
Sam leans into his touch a minute and then pulls away, shivering. "It felt so real," she says.
"Reality is just what we perceive it to be," he reminds her. "Science teaches you that."
"But it wasn't my life. Not really."
Daniel shrugs. He's done this before - when Sha're died - lived several weeks that never really happened, and while she's certainly no stranger to her brain being messed with, this was different, more real. Even now, the memories are becoming less clear as her brain adjusts to the fact that none of it happened, but she clings to them, not wanting to let them slip away like a dream.
After a few minutes of silence he stands, reaching out to briefly touch her hand. "Janet says there's no reason for us to have to stay on base," he says, heading for her door. He's always been the best at reading her, even before, and he can tell she needs to be alone. As she watches him leave a memory flashes through her mind. She's climbing the hill after two weeks wandering the forest, tired and feeling hope ebb away. The previous night's dream had been made all the worse by waking alone under the trees and hours later, still leaves her shaken. Ahead of her Daniel stands over their outdoor stove in the twilight, stirring a fresh pot of stew he'd made, somehow knowing she'd be back that night.
Sam finishes up her work, stops by to say good night to Teal'c, and heads home herself. She walks around her house, equally familiar and alien, and keeps expecting to see signs of Daniel - a scribbled sheet of paper on a table, pair of pants haphazardly flung on a chair, crooked pair of glasses left on the nightstand.
The hot bath she draws welcomes her, and she settles in with a book, staying until the water gets cold before slipping into fresh pajamas. Sam turns off all the lights and looks at her bed in the moonlight. The thought comes to her that she can't remember the last time she slept alone, but then she remembers she's slept alone most of her life. Suddenly it's all too much, too many memories surfacing and diving, too many of her lives trying to be the right one.
She throws on an old sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers before driving over to Daniel's apartment. He opens the door as though he's been expecting her and wraps her in his arms when she steps over the threshold.
"How do we go back?" she asks him. She doesn't know if she's asking to go back to their lives at SGC or their lives at the village.
"We take it one day at a time," he tells her. It's the last word either of them speaks tonight.
After toeing off her shoes, Sam curls up next to Daniel on his couch, burying her face in his shoulder as he puts an arm around her. It confuses her how familiar he smells. She can remember what he tastes like, remember every inch of his body, and yet none of it was real. She's never actually touched him, actually had him touch her. None of it happened.
He rests his chin on top of her head, and they sit in the darkness, saying volumes neither of them has words for. Tomorrow they'll be back at work, back on missions, back in their real lives as friends and teammates, back saving the universe. For now, this is all she wants.
After a while he starts humming softly. It's the song from Abydos.
~< *** >~
Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence a time of confidences.
Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you
- Simon and Garfunkel Bookends