Work Text:
The Gate bloomed, and with it, the void inside her rushed into a place that had only known delight.
Don't.
Nothing before, no threat, invasion, battle, black hole dragging them down, had ever threatened that wellspring: her fierce joy in this engine of her invisible kingdom, joining worlds and minds and friends more astonishing than foes.
. . . for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain . . .
Don't think.
It had never diminished: the anticipation, the frisson of wonder when another team left, returned; when the unimagined, unimaginable scenes arrived from the MALPs trundling prosaically out the continually changing other side; when they . . . when she stepped in moments through to another world.
Don't think.
Don't remember.
***
Coming home from Orban:
"You gave her her chance, sir. To change her people. She'll grow u..."
"You must have been just like her, Carter. Noticing everything. Always thinking."
"No one's that smart, that focused, as a normal child . . . well, 'normal' doesn't exactly describe . . ."
"What started you on the science . . . stuff?"
"Magic, Colonel."
"Carter?"
"In fairy tales, sir, in fantasies, the ones you never forget, there are powers, invisible forces around you; a hidden world so vivid . . . and in physics class I found out it was true. That's how reality is made: pattern and energy, beautifully proportioned, interwoven . . . and you can learn the secrets. You can visit the strange lands, touch the unicorns, coax a single jewel from the dragon."
Softly, achingly, "That's what they took from her?"
"That's what she'll find again, sir. It's not, it's not, but it is almost worth it . . . seeing the universe again, new."
***
He had entered with the General, his empty eyes passing formally over her and Teal'c and Janet, obviously not expecting Daniel to be there. Without looking up to the control room he pivoted, fixing his eyes on the stargate, his face closed and set.
Unendurable: a meaningless word, an oxymoron. At least, for the living. She endured. The top of Janet's head turned in the corner of her eye; she felt Teal'c shift behind her. Unable to forgo a last look, she watched O'Neill not quite meet the General's eye as he bent down for his duffel and headed up the ramp with averted gaze, slowing a little as he reached the top.
"Colonel ... " She thought for a moment she had said it, but it was Hammond's voice that stopped him, head hung and back tense with denial. She held the futile, unaccepted salute until the Gate took him away.
***
She left promptly at the end of her shift, for the first time in months, and headed up the mountain. She had barely caught sight of Daniel's abrupt exit from the control room; distantly recognised the touch of Teal'c's hand on her shoulder as they filed silently from the gateroom. She wanted their company, but couldn't face it; they seemed to feel the same.
Muscles. Tendons. Scaffolding bones, sliding joints, nerves transmitting messages. Grip, push, hoist. Slip and catch. Gasp. Don't think. Perceive position, leverage, effort, motion. Off the path, straight up, the hard way. Move. Don't think.
Don't remember.
She hauled herself, panting, onto a ridge and walked into the woods, not looking back or down, her wet back chilling as she entered the shadows.
"Trees, trees and more . . ."
Don't.
A familiar log by a stream. Sit. Listen. Breathe. Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, trace elements, your choice of gaseous smog components: doesn't matter. Same number of molecules per unit of volume at a given temperature and pressure. In and out. Avogadro's number rides again. Physical laws. A line you don't cross, a barrier you can't pass . . . until quantum tunneling rears its fuzzy, uncertain head
Still okay out there, Schroedinger? It was good to see you again . . .
Never . . .
Don't.
"These things have a nasty habit of going off when you least expect it. Try not to think too much."
Don't remember.
Wrapping her arms around herself she jumped to her feet, overshooting and stumbling a little on her way to a sun-dappled rock at the stream's edge.
"Cold . . . I'm a little chilly. But I'm me, I'm . . . "
Don't!
Patches of sun lay like hands on her shoulders and the stream whispered.
"Can't we take these things off?"
"I don't know, you tell me. Mine's in pretty deep."
"Yeah, you're right. Pulling them out could cause some pretty nasty collateral damage."
"Yeah, we don't want that . . ."
There's no forgetting.
***
She knew she should climb down before dark. Teal'c and Janet would worry. And Daniel, when he noticed. The General . . .
Don't think.
Don't remember.
Don't feel.
Stand.
Automatically calculating celestial longitude and declination she looked up as she left the trees. Even at night the star would have been too faint to see; she looked where she knew it was, remembering the rain of fire in its planet's sky and a woman she liked.
Make him happy.
_____
End