Ripple Effect - Confluence of Circumstance - Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world
A/N: Here is another side story / companion piece to my series of SG-1 tales. This one will be different to the others in that I plan to keep adding to it little by little. It may spur me to add on to the other Ripple Effects later on.
Previously: Ch 1
Ripple Effect - Confluence of Circumstance - Chapter 2
Stargate Command, January 2006
This had to be some sort of Hell. Some god-like alien critter had intercepted him mid-transit through the wormhole and was subjecting him to some insane experiment, dredging up what could only be his worst possible nightmare. He absent-mindedly took a deep breath as the nurse directed him, it was practically a conditioned response now, the whole post-mission check-up. His cognitive centers actually disengaged from his body during them and he just let his mind wander, and right now it was wandering in the direction of thinking this had to be Hell. How else to explain her. Not just her, but the other half-dozen hers he'd seen yammering away together in a room on the way up here to the infirmary. Only a twisted, mindgame playing freak would do something like this.
Except he could tell it was real. He could tell that she wasn't some construct of his mind. Because she wasn't her. They weren't the same woman. He could tell that. The way she was staring at him from her own perch on the opposite bed told him she was just as freaked out and scared as he was.
"Major Lescott, in his office, with the phone." she said with a challenging look. He canted his head for a moment until he caught her reference.
"You used a laser mic, I listened in on the secretary's phone." he replied and she blinked and looked away. "New Year's Eve, 1989?" She looked up with wide eyes and blushed. Yeah, she remembered.
"We..." She paused and closed her eyes, he couldn't blame her, this was freaking him out too. "Cam and I went to Memorial Park to watch the fireworks. He needed some cheering up after the bowl game. When the New Year rolled around the singer jumped out into the crowd and kissed the nearest guy and we..." she trailed off and he just nodded. "I'm sorry I hit you." she breathed. "He'd just beamed me off and I was so relieved when I saw you and thought you were him and..." She turned aside with watery eyes as the nurses finished up at around the same time and walked away. He just looked down at the floor, unsure what he should be feeling right now. She was so much like her. So much. "I'm sorry about... you said she... I'm sorry." she was whispering as she turned to face him and he shook his head.
"I'm sorry too, you said he beamed you away as he was about to ram them. Ori?" he asked hesitantly, glancing over as she hunkered down slightly and nodded. "I'm sorry." He was prevented from saying anything further by the arrival of Dr. Carolyn Lam as she was juggling a pair of clipboards and clicking a pen before adding some notes.
"Right, sorry about this, I know this has to be incredibly confusing for both of you, but it's just incredibly confusing in general. You are something like the eighth and ninth groups to come in through this... 'inter-reality funnel' as we're calling it... and the first to come through alone." She glanced at each of them, at Cam's sad expression and Sam's look of shocked despair. "I won't ask why." She came to stand closer to Sam and laid her clipboards on the bed next to her while she rested a hand gently on the other woman's arm. "If you need to talk," she glanced at Cameron as well, "either of you. Someone will be available. Unfortunately you will have to go through a debriefing. I'm sorry, I can get them to hold off for a while, but you will eventually need to answer some questions about your own realities for us."
"You never know what little detail could be of help." Sam whispered as she turned an unsteady gaze on the younger woman who simply nodded.
"Would you like to rest-"
"No. I understand you're letting the other mes... Carters... work on the problem." Sam said curtly as she hopped off the bed. Carolyn nodded, but tried to hold Sam back with a hand. "Then I want to help. Now. Please." Dr. Lam just nodded after a moment and signalled to one of the SFs by the door who stepped forward and motioned for Sam to follow him. She began walking towards the door before stopping and turning to face Cameron. "Maybe we can..." She grimaced and closed her eyes.
"Yeah, maybe we can." he said softly, unsure what he'd just agreed to, knowing only that she looked like she needed for him to agree to it. Sam looked at him before nodding and walking out the door. He almost shuddered.
"The Sam Carter in your reality died?" asked Carolyn as she crossed her arms and walked over to his bed. Cam looked at her and nodded.
"Before we zeroed in on the formula for the cure. Before Gerak came and healed everyone." He choked up and looked down. "I... held..." He shook his head and hopped off the bed. "I don't even know what is happening. This seems like a nightmare." he whispered as he began to make his way out of the infirmary himself.
Stargate Command, January 2006
She had always known Cam had vast reserves of inner strength. She just never imagined they could be this deep. He had to be suffering, seeing all these Samantha Carters everywhere and his having just passed away. She wondered if she should be doing this, but to be honest, having both come through without teammates gave them more in common with each other than with the rest of them who had each other to lean on. She lifted her tray and walked over to the table where he was sitting in solitude. She hovered nearby for a while until he looked up and she raised her eyebrows enquiringly. He nodded and looked back down at his plate as she sat across from him.
"I'm not sure whether I'll be any sort of good company, but I'll try my best." he said softly and she nearly choked at how it immediately made her think of her own Cam. She pushed the thought away, it wasn't fair to anyone. "How's it going with the other Carters?" he asked as he pierced a meatball with his fork and put it in his mouth. She poked at her salad and smirked slightly.
"We work well together. Just don't ask us to write a paper about it because it will be a whole bunch of half-finished sentences which lead immediately into the next insight." She glanced up at him as he nodded slightly, watching her. "It makes me appreciate how I have to discipline my thoughts when explaining my theories to anyone. It actually helped on occasion when Cam always asked..." she trailed off with a faint smile. "You know what I mean." He nodded after he began to eat again.
"I loved scientist-mode Sam, always did. It's just that most times, we were on the clock." he muttered. She glanced up again with a slight knitting of her brow. She had to remember that the thing they both shared, the thing that set them apart from the rest, was they both had to speak in the past tense.
"Unfortunately, things aren't looking good. Every idea we come up with runs into some stumbling block or another. It's getting frustrating." she said softly while he nodded. She looked up as he chopped a meatball in half. "Cameron." He tensed slightly when she said his name, it was like a hesitation. He gave her a small 'hmm' as he carried on eating. "Why did you come through alone?" He chortled.
"Freak chance." he explained. "I got caught off-world when the wormhole Daniel and Teal'c took back to Earth fizzled out before I got to it. They just happened to already be at our SGC when I came here after the Ori arrived on P3R-278." Sam held up her hand to get him to look at her.
"Your open wormhole 'fizzled out'?" she asked and he nodded. "How long between that and when you came here?" She scrutinised his openly confused look.
"About eight hundred and fifty bottles of beer on the wall." he replied and she actually laughed. That was such a Cam thing to say. She blinked, wondering when the last time she'd laughed had been. She shook her head and forced her mind to working.
"I think your first wormhole was active at the time this rupture formed." she offered with a glance in his direction. "Can you describe what you mean by 'fizzled out'?"
"Hmm, the event horizon seemed to twist in the ring, and spark at the edges. Then it just dissolved away from the inside out." he described. She looked down.
"That's... that is odd." she admitted before looking up again. "Thanks, Cam. I think that might help us." She smiled at him and he blinked rapidly before looking down at his food and nodding.
"That's good." he offered with a slight furrow of his brows. They ate quietly for a while and Sam's guts were clenching tighter with each passing moment. He was Cameron, but he wasn't Cameron. All of her senses, all of her feelings and all of her heart told her he was Cameron. while all of her logic, all of her intellect and all of her mind told her he wasn't. She found her hand reaching across the table and resting gently atop his. He tensed slightly and she nearly pulled away, it was only because his hand relaxed a little under hers that she kept it resting there.
"I look at all the Carters and Mitchells and I see such close bonds between them. It doesn't seem to matter what reality they're from, they still care for one another." She didn't look up, but knew he was nodding. "Cameron and I, we... were just friends, but I had been hoping for more, been slowly working towards more... until we lost at Kallana and their ships came through." She dipped her head low and closed her eyes when she felt his other hand rest over the top of her fingers. "I never got to tell him. I... almost did a few times, but never..." she trailed off before looking up slowly. "What about you and your Sam?" she asked, a little hint of fear in her voice.
"Just friends." he said with a sigh. "Always hoped for more. I couldn't tell her in the end. Not like that. She wouldn't have gone peacefully." he whispered.
"Sorry." she said, her voice choking up, and pulled her hand away. He shook his head and picked up his fork once more.
Stargate Command, January 2006
He was walking down the corridor towards the rec-room, hoping to find anything that would distract him. They'd just finished watching a video of the basketball game in an improvised theatre, but it hadn't been the action on the screen which held his interest. Sam had sat next to him. He frowned slightly, she wasn't his Sam, but he didn't want to call her Carter as he did the others, it didn't feel right, not when she had no one else to use her given name.
She'd sat next to him as they watched. He'd not managed to get that much into the screening and being on the losing side didn't help even if he got the game high for assists. No, the game hadn't held his interest much. She had. Whenever a close play came up or someone tried for a long range jumper, she'd grab his arm or jump in her seat or hunch down with her hands over her face. He closed his eyes and sighed. It was strange, to say the least, feeling guilty about not feeling particularly guilty. It was there deep down, but his heart was just confused about the whole situation. She was Sam, but she wasn't Sam.
It wasn't long after the screening had been arranged that news had come down to the stranded SG teams that the plan had become one of containment as opposed to reversal. Even while this reality's Mitchell was preparing a room and coordinating to get all the Carters together for a block of time, his Carter was working with Kvasir and the Martouf that had come through the funnel to prepare an energy bomb to fire into the singularity in order to seal the rupture without returning anyone. Now they were just waiting. A part of him wasn't that upset about it.
"Hey! 2099!" He turned at the sound of his own voice calling him by his b-ball moniker. It was his team captain, the Mitchell in black BDUs whose SG-1 had been first through the 'gate in this funnel incident. He waited until his other self caught up with him and then fell into step alongside him. He glanced at the man and recognised the strange hesitancy in his posture. "This is kinda strange to bring up with you in your situation, but I suppose I probably should anyway." He frowned at the strange topic from the black-clad Mitchell. "If a time comes, you never know, just in case," he looked at Cam pointedly, "cut the green one." An odd sort of warning that didn't make much sense since he was likely never going home. Just then Mitchell's counterpart Carter walked up the corridor and seemed to share a look with him which was returned in kind.
"Mitchell, I was looking for you." she said softly. Cam tilted his head. "Your... well... the Carter in the bluish grey like yours." She motioned to his t-shirt and BDU trousers. "I think she needs you right now."
"What do you mean?" he asked hesitantly. "She and I aren't-"
"I know, I know, but... well, she talks to you. I think you can help her." she elaborated only to confuse him more. "Come with me." She reached out and grabbed his hand while giving her Mitchell another look, he only shrugged and followed behind Carter and Cameron, turning to engage the SFs in conversation. "She's kind of holed up in the women's locker room." Carter explained gently. Cam was about to speak when she just carried on. "She's just sat under the shower, not responding to any of us. I thought she might respond to you." she explained with a shrug. She pushed open a door and gave the Mitchell behind them a little shake of her head while she bustled Cameron inside. There were a few other Carters in there who just looked at him and then nodded, bustling out almost as a unit. This was just too strange. Carter stopped at the door and waved him on as he turned to look at her in confusion. What were they expecting him to be able to do?
He turned and walked on slowly until he reached the shower stalls, the curtains were drawn on one of them and the water was going full blast as steam rose up over the plastic sheeting into the rest of the locker room. He grimaced slightly and sighed, but turned around to lean against one of the columns between the stalls and slid down until he was seated on the floor. He heard some shuffling and shifting from behind the curtain.
"Sam, it's me." he said simply, unsure what exactly he could say. It wasn't as if he were her Cameron or anything, they weren't from the same reality, their only connection was their arrival time and how they both arrived alone. "I don't know what the problem is, but if you need someone to talk to, I'll listen." He closed his eyes, almost hoping she'd tell him to leave. There was only silence, minutes of silence, but he didn't feel as if he could leave unless she actually told him to.
"I've been using you." came a very soft voice, almost hidden by the noise of the shower. "I've been using you to keep from having to... face any of it." Cameron let his head hang down against his chest as he sighed. Of course. She'd just lost her team from what he could understand. Literally minutes before stepping through the 'gate to this reality.
"It's okay-" he began, trying to reassure her.
"No, it's not!" she cried as he heard movement and felt her close the gap between them so she was leaning against the wall by the plastic sheet. "You've only just... You buried her just two months ago and I've just been avoiding thinking about any of it at all." He turned his head towards the curtain, but said nothing. "I dialled Earth expecting to die on the other side of the wormhole." she whispered just loudly enough to cross the gap between them through the water and plastic. "Even if the iris was closed." His eyes widened in alarm and he turned himself to face the curtain and slipped a hand between the bottom of the sheet and the raised lip of the shower stall, it was immediately enclosed in grasping fingers from the other side.
"Sam, I don't think you want to die." he said softly and she squeezed his hands as she chortled mirthlessly.
"No, I didn't want to die. I just didn't care whether I lived anymore." she said in a broken monotone. "We'd failed in our mission, the Ori knew exactly where we were going in Prometheus and ambushed us." He felt her hands tugging at his and figured she was shrugging. "I suppose we might have been betrayed, it doesn't matter anyway. And now we're all stuck here." One of her hands slipped off his and he saw a gap emerge between the tiled column and the shower curtain and he looked at her profile as she glanced at him from behind the wall. "I've been working hard to try to get you home, I swear to you that I have." He nodded. "I need you to believe me, I don't want you to think I wasn't invested in the work just because I'm not going back myself." He frowned deeply and leaned forward slightly to look into her eyes. "There's nothing left for me to go back to, Cam. I was always going to ask to stay behind. This is a second chance, and I'd rather use it where I can make a difference." she whispered with a watery gaze. He could tell she was on the verge of tears despite the water all around them. "I'm still going to keep trying, right up until they close the rupture. I promise you."
"I believe you, Sam, and I believe in you." he said reassuringly. He held her hand as he had held Sam's those many weeks before. Lightly pressing each of her fingers in turn between his hand and a sliding thumb. He closed his eyes as memories of her hooked up to all that medical equipment in the isolation room washed over his mind. He forced the images back with difficulty before speaking again. "You're not alone anymore. Everyone here cares for you as if you were their own Sam." he breathed and he felt her fingers squeezing his while she chuckled silently.
"I know you believe that, Cam. You were always so stupidly optimistic." she said before audibly choking back a sob. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He gripped her hand tightly. "I did it again."
"It's okay, Sam, really, it's okay." he assured her as he peeked around the tiled column as she held her other hand to her eyes. "I don't mind. Honest." This was just too strange for him to really understand. Asking himself whether he should be feeling guilty or not when the feelings he was having were for a Sam who wasn't his Sam, but was so like his Sam she could be his Sam. And when he thought about how she would be feeling it just made his head swim. "I'm not your Cameron Mitchell, but I am still Cameron Mitchell. You're not my Sam Carter, but you are Sam Carter." he elaborated while shaking his head in his own confusion. "I don't want to think about the distinctions anymore." he admitted finally. He felt her hand slip out of his and he sighed, pulling his own hand back out from under the curtain. He stood up and leaned against the column for a moment. "That's how I feel. I'll just... I'll go now." he said softly as he caught her own movement as she stood up behind the plastic sheet before he turned around.
He took a step forward only to be surprised at finding arms slipped around him from behind and clutching at his chest as Sam pressed herself against his back. Water ran in rivulets down the skin of her arms as the warmth of the shower spread from her to him through his BDUs, soaking through the back of his slate grey shirt as she held on to him. He felt her heart pounding in her chest as it pressed against his back, felt the water which ran off her hair landing on his neck and shoulder as she laid her cheek against the back of his head, felt her fingers gripping tightly at the front of his shirt to keep from shaking. He reached up to take a hold of one of her wrists and pulled on it to bring her around in front of him and wrapped her in his embrace as she buried her face in his neck. He spread his hands across her back and rubbed gentle circles into her rapidly cooling skin as she shivered against him and scrunched up the front of his shirt in her fingers against her chest. A glance showed Carter approaching with a towel opened and raised and he nodded as she stepped up and wrapped Sam's shoulders in the soft white terrycloth and gently pulled her away from Cameron into an embrace of her own. Carter gave him a small grateful smile and he nodded as she led Sam past the line of lockers and out of sight. He glanced over his shoulder and sighed softly as he saw the shower was still running. He shook his head while looking down at his soaked clothes and shrugged. When he stepped out into the corridor again his SF escort looked at him curiously and he just shrugged once more while he walked towards the men's locker room, dripping water with each squeaking step of his boots.
"I think I'm going to need a change of clothes." he said softly to the Marine, who merely nodded in return.
On to Chapter 3