Chapter Text
There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen – Sam Carter can’t remember who said that. One of the bad guys, anyway. It seems true enough. A couple of weeks ago she’d made an appointment with a florist. She had been idling along, one day dissolving into the next, a few missions of no great importance, experimenting and tinkering in her lab – drifting rather than walking towards the aisle and the cake and the flowers and not really thinking too hard about any of it. Then, out of nowhere: Ba’al, Anubis, evil twin, Dakara; Daniel dead and Daniel back again, evil twin dead, Anubis dead, Selmak dead, then her father, dead. No more war, no flowers, no wedding, no parents, no Pete; and to top it all off Kerry Johnson – Agent Kerry Johnson, with her skinny blue jeans and her curly hair and her blinding white smile and her insidious bowl of salad – all in the space of a couple of weeks.
It’s enough to destabilize the steadiest of minds and Sam Carter’s mind has never been all that steady. Frantic energy has gotten her out of plenty of scrapes over the years, but it has its downsides. On balance, Sam thinks she’d much rather be a Teal’c. Teal’c, who can save a situation by calm instead of frenzy. Teal’c, who can say whatever he needs to say in a handful of words (or none at all,) and never stammers or seizes up or chickens out. Teal’c, who has never cried in public and almost certainly never cried in private, either. On an intellectual level Sam knows it’s actually very hard being Teal’c – it takes strength and discipline and self - mastery and all that Jaffa stuff. Her father was pretty good at it, too, but try as he might, he could never quite teach it to her. So now she’s sitting in a bar with all her friends and silently envying Teal’c – because deep inside, Lt Colonel Samantha Carter is now a total wreck.
It was bound to happen eventually. The sense that not all was well had hit her all of a sudden after the Prometheus and especially after Fifth. Apparent change of heart notwithstanding, she has always suspected that he never quite put her back together when he was done with her; and even as the nightmares started to wane, the sense of indefinable unease only sank deeper into her bones. Apart from anything else, she has never really been able to shake the creeping suspicion that it’s all a dream – all one elaborate, finely constructed nightmare – and all this time she’s been half on edge, awaiting the inevitable sucker - punch. Now, of course, her anticipation has at last been satisfied, the great flurry of disasters has been and gone and all she can feel is empty; and maybe that’s the ultimate torture, a new horror to satiate Fifth’s appetite for vengeance after all the sensory agonies have grown stale. Endless emptiness – forever, or at least until he gets bored again. But the worst part is she can’t quite believe it; it’s too easy an excuse. In her gut she knows it doesn’t feel like a fantasy; more like reality finally crashing down to earth.
She takes a sip of her beer. The situation probably calls for something stronger – the General would’ve chosen whisky – but Sam has never been quite that adventurous. In any case, she rode here on her Indian, she’s already turned down more than one offer to drive her home, and going back on that now feels like it would amount to a serious loss of face.
Sam doesn’t drink. She didn’t when Daniel died, or when Janet died, or when Daniel died again, or when the General got back from Edora, or when the General got back from Ba’al. She didn’t, really, even after Fifth. There was always a war on, after all. At social occasions she consumes the necessary minimum for nobody to bring it up, but she doesn’t like getting drunk and doesn’t know how to act when she is drunk. So it was hard, at first – trying to sneak in a few too many sips on the one night when everyone is watching – but now, mercifully, she’s just a little too far gone to care.
She’s not going to over-do it.
O’malley’s is doing excellent business tonight, probably on the General’s orders. Daniel picks up the next round, not that anyone’s counting. He divvies up the drinks and takes his place opposite Sam.
‘You know, not to put too fine a point on it,’ he says, ‘but there are a lot of stars at this table for a poor archaeologist to be buying the drinks.’
Okay, maybe somebody is counting.
‘It’s the Free World, Daniel. No excuse for being poor. You want a bump in your salary, go find yourself a real job.’
The General is seated at the head of the table, to Daniel’s right – watching her intently, but pretending not to. If the beer wasn’t already making her self - conscious enough, that would do the trick.
‘If DanielJackson is of no further use to you here, then perhaps you will release him to Atlantis?’ Teal’c wonders – playing Devil’s Advocate with a perfect deadpan, as is his custom.
‘I keep trying, T – they just won’t take him.’
That’s a lie, and everybody knows it.
Secretly Sam’s glad that the General is being so stubborn about it. Hypocritically, she wants Daniel to stay even as she’s weighing the benefits and pitfalls of fleeing to Nevada in the middle of the night. Teal’c is already leaving, and nobody’s going to try and stop him. Daniel’s departure at this point would be so final as to be almost poetic.
‘Far be it from me to meddle in the affairs of your Command, Jack,’ says General Hammond, just in from Washington for the occasion and seated to Sam’s left, ‘but there’s a lot to be said for Atlantis. They may need Dr Jackson more than you do.’
‘See, sir, that’s exactly what I expected them to say. You, however, are an Air Force Officer. As far as I’m concerned, he’s our property unless they wanna adopt him.’
He doesn’t really have a case, and he knows it. In truth, the General doesn’t want Daniel gone for the same reason Sam doesn’t: he isn’t ready to break up the band. Even though it isn’t his band any more. Even though the old days are gone and never coming back. Even though Daniel and Teal’c have already moved on.
Even though he has already moved on.
She’s not here tonight. Did he invite her? How long before she starts showing up as a matter of course? Pointlessly, stupidly, Sam starts imagining what it would’ve been like. Hi, Agent Johnson! No – Kerry. Hi Kerry. So glad you could make it! The General never brought any girls here before, you must be special! Can I get you something to drink? Something to eat? Are you cold? Oh, no, it’s just that it’s Colorado in the middle of Fall and all you’ve got is that little pink top with your boobs half way out, so I figured you must be…never mind. Last Sunday? Oh, don’t worry about that. I just came over to ask if I could borrow his…lawn mower. Or something. I don’t usually come to his house. Ever. We’re just work friends. Friends friends friends friends friends…
She knew, really, the moment she saw her in his office. The little stab of instant jealousy, the silent klaxons blaring in her brain, the last, desperate scramble to his backyard; the pathetic, stumbling speech; the confidence in her perfect smile, the way she popped up out of nowhere like she already owned the place; the friendly invitation to stay at his house for dinner as if she was already Kerry O’neill.
There isn’t even going to be a contest. Sam Carter has already humiliated herself plenty enough for one week. Month. Year. And that posting in galactically very near but terrestrially very far away Nevada is starting to look real cozy.
She takes another pull of her beer.
They play a game of pool, and the General wipes the table without very much effort. Sam misses some shots she really shouldn’t. Daniel makes for the bathroom, Teal’c for the bar – to fetch beer for everyone else, and a large tankard of water for himself – leaving Sam alone with the General on the way back to their table. A young, good looking, sandy haired Lieutenant of about thirty intercepts her half way there.
‘Colonel Carter!’ he waves her down with a Texan drawl that’s vaguely reminiscent of George Hammond. ‘How’re you doing? I’m sorry, that was a stupid question. I’m real sorry about your father.’
She swivels around and answers him with her long - practiced everything’s fine! voice and regulation smile. ‘Thank you, uh…’
Damnit.
‘...Lieutenant.’
If the Lieutenant takes any offense at being forgotten about, he does a remarkable job of hiding it. ‘How’s the fiancé?’ He asks. He means where’s the fiancé, of course, but fortunately she already has an answer ready - made for that.
‘Pete? He’s, uh, he’s doing fine, thank you. Good, I mean. He’s good! He’s on a job tonight and he couldn’t get away, though.’
Smooth.
She’s going to have to break the news at some point, but definitely not tonight. Not in front of everyone, and preferably not anywhere within a five mile radius of the General.
‘Huh,’ says the Lieutenant, in a tone obviously intended to convey more disapproval than surprise. ‘Well, Colonel, might I interest you in a game or two?’
‘Uh, no, thank you, Lieutenant. Actually, I just got beat by…’ She swivels around to where she thought he was standing, only to find him nowhere in evidence. ‘...By General O’neill.’
The Lieutenant shakes his head with an easy laugh. ‘No, thank you Colonel, I’d rather keep my money. I only propositioned you ‘cause I thought I might take you for a Colonel’s paycheck. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go find myself a better mark. My condolences again.’
‘You too,’ she answers automatically, then dies a little inside, and tries not to visibly cringe. ‘I mean, er, thank you, Lieutenant. Thanks a lot.’
A few times after that sterling performance, she drags herself reluctantly to her feet again and does the rounds, because it’s the thing to do. These people all came to support her, and therefore hiding herself in the corner is an attractive but non - viable option. She seems to know a little over half of their names, although all of them know her, which is entirely her fault. Like all military units that don’t technically exist, they’re a pretty tight - knit bunch, and she’s been there for seven years. But she spent most of those years in her lab. She could’ve got a life if she wanted to. If she really tried. She could’ve showed up to all the Christmas parties, at least. She could’ve gone to Minnesota…
‘Gentlemen. Ladies.’ The General’s voice rings out from the middle of the room a couple of minutes after she finds her seat again, not loud but easily audible above the din. ‘Your attention please.’
For the first time all evening, O’malley’s goes quiet.
‘As you all know, Jacob Carter was a pain in the ass.’
(Appreciative laughter.)
‘On the other hand, he was brave, loyal, smarter than almost all of us, and he got us out of a hell of a lot of scrapes over the years. He never forgot where he came from, and he always came through for us when we needed him. He did his duty to the last moment. And, more important than any of that, he somehow managed to produce the finest officer the US Air Force has ever known, who we all have to thank for the continued existence of our little outfit, and…a lot of other places.’
He raises his glass.
‘Jacob Carter.’
She flashes him a watery smile that she hopes will convey some measure of gratitude, because she doesn’t trust herself to speak. She didn’t cry in front of Jacob, she doesn’t cry in front of USAF personnel, and most of all she doesn’t cry in front of him. It’s a pretty pointless exercise tonight. She knows he can tell.
She sticks around for a couple minutes more, then tells them she needs some air. She can feel their eyes on the back of her head until the moment she steps out into the cold.
The sky is blank. There’s no moon tonight. No stars. No lights in the car park. She thinks maybe she prefers it that way, for once. She’s tired of being seen.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star…
Jacob taught her the constellations, so it’s only right that they’re absent now. Aires, Taurus, Gemini. Cancer. If anything, the only aberration here is that tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, they’ll all be back, exactly the same as they always were, and her father won’t. Her father, who was supposed to outlive her by a hundred years. Her father, who this time a week ago was with her and Ba’al – of all people – half way around the galaxy, to all appearances fit as a fiddle, winning an impossible war.
It’s not fair.
Or is it?
There it is – the thought that’s going to gnaw away at her insides until there’s nothing left to kill.
Maybe.
Maybe she could have saved him, if only she realized anything was wrong. She did it before. She’s done plenty more outlandish things in the meantime. She saved the General, even if it meant flying to another galaxy. She could have tried something. Had there really not been any signs, or had she just been too wrapped up in her own problems to notice?
The wind whips up around her ankles and she almost loses her footing, which she tells herself is because of the heels and the gravel and not because of the beer. Slowly, a little gingerly, she places one foot in front of the other until her Indian materializes out of the gloom. She can’t very comfortably ride away in Class As and heels – her BDUs are still in her bag inside the bar – but now that seems like a minor concern. She needs to escape. She needs to get back to the empty house where nobody’s watching her before all her composure finally evaporates. She needs –
‘Sam?’
Daniel. How long has she been out here?
‘What’re you doing?’
She totters around to face him, props herself up against the bike, and stares up at the starless sky for a few seconds before answering.
‘Just thinking.’
He doesn’t buy it.
‘Sam, you can’t ride that thing,’ he says, continuing towards her and possibly increasing his pace ever so slightly, although his tone remains light. ‘Don’t you know how much you’ve had to drink?’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ she lies, though the words come out a little too hurriedly and definitely a little slurred. ‘I just needed to…’
He stops a few feet in front of her. No judgement in his eyes – only carefully concealed pity. She hates that.
‘Yeah,’ he says, relieving her of the obligation to finish her thought. ‘I know.’
Damnit. For no obvious reason, the tears she’s been so carefully guarding all night – all week – suddenly rush through to the surface, and she can’t blink them away.
At least it’s Daniel.
‘Hey,’ he steps towards her, and she closes the distance willingly, and it takes all her remaining willpower to bite back a sob.
‘I called it off,’ she blurts, entirely unprovoked, into his shirt, silent tears soaking their way into the cotton.
She knows he understood her, because for a brief moment he goes very still; but he recovers quickly. ‘Shhh,’ he murmurs, his hand moving reassuringly up and down over her back. ‘It’ll be okay.’
Breathe. That’s always the first step. She tries to inhale, but the air rushes into her lungs in a shuddering gasp, then immediately out again, and she isn’t any better off.
‘I couldn’t go through with it, Daniel. I couldn’t…’
‘I know, Sam,’ he repeats again. ‘Believe me, I know.’
They stay like that for a minute or two – her crying quietly, almost inaudibly, though there’s nobody else to hear; him equally silent, but holding her upright nevertheless. She doesn’t think she could stand without him. Eventually he pulls away and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a large bundle of napkins he evidently swiped from the table. Hurriedly she wipes her eyes and cheeks and contorts her lips into a sad imitation of a smile.
‘God, Daniel,’ she croaks, ‘what am I gonna do without you?’
‘Without me?’ He frowns and seems to think about it for a moment. ‘Oh! Atlantis? Don’t worry about that,’ he waves his hand dismissively. ‘I only keep going on about it to mess with Jack.’
Poison. She’s poison. First the General’s backyard, then her father’s deathbed, then Pete, and now this. For a solid week now, she’s managed to screw up something major every time she opened her mouth.
‘No,’ she tells him, screwing her eyes shut and shaking her head past the point of dizziness to emphasize the point. ‘Don’t. Don’t do that.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t even think about staying here for me,’ she says thickly, though she has to force the words out of her mouth almost at gunpoint. ‘It’s not – I’ve got no right…’
‘Hey.’ He meets her eyes, and now even the pity is hidden. ‘It’s just a job, Sam.’
She nearly scoffs at that. To the best of her knowledge, nothing has ever been just a job to Daniel Jackson. Now she’s going to have to talk him into it, even if it breaks her down just a little more.
‘Come on,’ he takes her hand and squeezes it. ‘Jack can take you home. He’s been on bread and water all night.’
‘No,’ she answers – again, too quickly – because the only thing worse at this point than trying to keep up appearances for the entire Stargate Command would be trying to keep up appearances for him. She wipes her eyes again and sniffs. ‘’S’okay. Let’s go back inside.’
Back into the bar, back into the warmth and light, and only now does she realize she’s been shivering from the cold. The General is talking to Teal’c at their table, though he clocks them as soon as they set foot inside.
‘What did I miss?’ she asks him as she settles a little unsteadily into her seat.
His piercing, penetrating gaze falls upon her face, and he regards her for maybe half a second before answering; there is not the slightest change in his expression, but she knows that her eyes are red.
‘Oh, nothin’ much. Teal’c had a pretty good conga line going at one point, but you’ll have to take my word for it.’
She turns to Teal’c, silent and unmoving as ever beside him.
‘Indeed.’
Absurdly - against all reason - she almost grins.
People begin to filter out not long after that. Most of them seek her out before they do. She tries to tell them that she’s grateful, although the words sound hollow and inadequate no matter how many times she says them. The clamor at the bar fades to a low hum.
‘It’s a nice party, Colonel,’ says Hammond, with a contemplative look in his eyes that makes Sam think he’s remembering parties that came and went long before she was born. ‘Jacob would’ve liked it.’
She nods slowly, thoughtfully, as if every reference to her father in the past tense doesn’t cut her to the bone. ‘He would’ve liked the music.’
The jukebox at O’malley’s is an artifact old enough to be almost of interest to Daniel Jackson, and the music is of the kind that SG-1’s minivan groupies from 1969 would have already called “square.” It stings her ears; every note a fresh reminder of the gaping void in her chest. But she can’t say that.
‘You too, right, sir?’ She meets the General’s eyes for a brief moment, then looks away just as quickly. ‘Brings back the good old days, huh?’
Making jokes about his age is good. For his part, the General always seems to like it when she makes fun of him; and to everyone else, it maybe makes her seem a little less desperate.
‘Carter,’ he answers, a devilish sort of smile playing on the corner of his mouth, ‘I seriously doubt that you have the slightest concept of what the good old days looked like, and I shudder to imagine what you’d think of me if you did.’
A gentle rebuff, but it stings a little more, all the same. She never did figure out that “life” he’s been telling her about all these years, after all, and now it seems highly improbable that she ever will. If she was being completely honest, she’d tell him that she does have a very vague idea of how he misspent his youth, because she used to worship him like a schoolgirl, and Kawalsky had one or two stories to tell before he died. She also knows that most of those exploits coincided with him topping his class at the Academy, which really puts her own stint there in perspective. He only plays the fool so well because he never felt the slightest inclination to prove himself to anybody. She finds it almost impossible to imagine what that must be like.
‘Jacob might’ve given him a run for his money, if you can believe it,’ says Hammond, with that same nostalgic twinkle in his eye as before. ‘When he first met Colonel O’neill, he told me to keep you the hell away from him – said he’d be a bad influence on you. I don’t think he liked how much he reminded him of himself.’
More likely he knew I’d go running after him like a dog after a…bone, she thinks, but Hammond knows that already. Fools rush in, Sam, her father had told her after his first meeting with Jonas Hanson. She had been twenty three years old, gullible and in love. She hadn’t seen any reason to wait.
You’re young. You’ve got plenty of time. Just make sure you’ve got somebody by the time I kick the bucket.
His remarks upon meeting her commanding officer in the hotel lobby had been rather more to the point.
The guy’s an asshole, Sam. Believe me, I know the type.
‘...And he wasn’t too keen on the Air Force, either, despite what he may have told you. In the end, he only joined because your grandpa wouldn’t let up.’
Sam's head snaps to attention; her mind had been wandering, to be sure, but she’s certain she heard him right. Of all the anecdotes she’s heard about her father tonight, that is the one she least expected. It seems almost impossible to imagine that Jacob Carter, living embodiment of the United States Air Force, had ever thought about doing anything else, and yet…
You joined the Air Force because of me.
Is it really so simple – so tidy? Different people doing mostly the same things for mostly the same reasons, never changing very much from one generation to the next, and never realizing it? Until, of course, somebody manages to screw it all up, and the whole cycle collapses, like a dying star, into a black hole.
I love my job.
And really, she does. She loves the excitement, the adrenaline, the unknown – the tinkering, figuring things out on the fly. As long as it was going, she didn’t even mind the war. If nothing else, the war was a purpose: an indisputable, unquestionable reason to get up at 0600 every morning. Absolute certainty that she was useful; necessary, even. Proof of what she could do. An excuse to blow stuff up. She didn’t relish it – not the terror and the death. Not the killing. But the camaraderie with her team. Camaraderie with her father, even if they hadn’t seen each other much. The family she’d never had before. It made her feel alive.
And now?
She needs another drink.
She takes a long gulp and stares gloomily at her glass. She’s never really looked at a glass of beer before. It’s a strange shape – decagonal at the bottom, cylindrical at the top. Different from the others; the odd one out. She twists it slightly one way and then the other, watching the light dance across its surface and refract onto the dark table. Refraction is pretty. Light is pretty.
‘We need a proper victory party,’ Daniel decides, when the conversation begins to ebb and he senses that everybody needs cheering up again. ‘Invite Bra’tac, Ry’ac, Thor…’
‘Jonas,’ Sam supplies over the top of her beer.
‘Right! Jonas!’ He gesticulates expansively with his glass, causing her head to spin a little as her eyes try reflexively to follow the motion. ‘It’s funny – I’ve read all his notes and papers, but I barely even met the guy. It’s like I know him better than anyone, but I don’t know him at all, you know?’
Trust Daniel to take a turn for the philosophical.
‘Have you guys heard anything from him?’ He asks.
There’s a long beat of silence before Sam remembers. ‘He sent me a message on my birthday. Got the timing right and everything.’
Her thirty - sixth birthday. Not that anyone’s counting.
‘Has JonasQuinn yet won the hand of the woman he was pursuing on Langara?’ asks Teal’c.
‘God, I don’t know.’ Sam wracks her increasingly sluggish brain for a few moments, but in the end she’s sure that she really doesn’t. A year ago she knew Jonas Quinn about as well as anybody else alive. Now she hasn’t heard from him for three months – no, four? – and she doesn’t know whether or not he’s married. And he’s no further away than Daniel or Teal’c are going to be…
The conversation ventures further and further back in time after that – SG-1’s greatest hits, by way of the people who should and should not be invited to the victory party, mostly according to Daniel Jackson. Hammond necessarily takes a back seat; Teal’c pipes up only occasionally, and the General, seated as he is at the end of their table, seems mostly content to fade into the background, watching and listening but very rarely speaking. For such a magnetic personality, he’s always had a peculiar knack for making himself invisible when he wants to be.
Or maybe she’s just not looking at him.
Jacob pops in and out of their conversation, naturally – but mostly, they just talk. Sam nods along and quirks her lips in a vaguely upwards direction whenever seems appropriate. There are plenty enough memories at the table to fill a night of conversation without straying anywhere too touchy – and, under the influence of a steady stream of alcohol, she at long last begins to feel a little numb. Idling along, drifting; just like she had been two weeks ago, before an invasion, a phone call, and somebody else’s dinner date upended her entire existence. Listening to the jumbled contents of years gone by – terrible, dangerous, but at least they had always been together – it’s difficult not to sense a deep and immeasurable feeling of melancholy hanging over them all like a thundercloud, but with every tick of the minute hand towards midnight, her senses become duller and the pain more diffuse. The hum at the bar dies to a murmur.
‘Actually,’ says Daniel, when at length the topic of conversation circles all the way back to the beginning, ‘She – Catherine, I mean – got me right after I was thrown out of my apartment. When they told me the Air Force wanted me to translate hieroglyphs, I thought it was a lie for sure. Didn’t know who they were, but I thought they must be looking for buried treasure, and maybe they’d shoot me as soon as I figured out where it was, ‘cause I was the only Egyptologist nobody’d miss. If I had any money, I probably wouldn’t have taken the flight.’
Teal’c nods sagely. ‘Perhaps your impoverishment and vagrancy were the work of fate, DanielJackson?’
As much to her own surprise as anyone else’s, Sam actually giggles at that. She ducks her head in an honest attempt to hide it, but doesn’t do a very good job, earning herself a disapproving glare from the archaeologist.
‘When General West told me it was better than NASA, I – hic! – didn’t believe it, either…’ She covers her mouth with her fist as though she thinks it might be a viable cure for the hiccups; Daniel snorts his amusement and chokes on his beer, and Sam almost laughs in return.
‘...Not ‘till I saw the Stargate,’ she finishes, and her own voice sounds almost as faraway as Hammond's. Though her mind has grown foggy, Sam can still see it, as clear as the first time. She inclines her head towards the old man, who still seems to be quietly reminiscing to himself through all the talk of parties and missions he only ever heard about. ‘’Course, I have you to thank for that, sir.’
‘And plenty else besides,’ he replies, and for the first time all night, his expression breaks into a grin. ‘Jacob met your mother in a bar not unlike this one. Did he ever tell you about that?'
Sam nods her head. He pauses for a long while, looking bizarrely mischievous. She wonders idly whether he used to be like that.
At length he continues: 'We were stationed at MacDill before we shipped out. I was a First Lieutenant and he was a Second Lieutenant, but I ran out of money for drinks, so I got to pretend to be his aide for the night. Seven weeks later I was the best man at their wedding. I think your poor mother still thought she was marrying a Colonel.’
Sam smiles back at him through the pang of sorrow. She has heard the story before – one of the few stories her father ever told about her mother – but, oddly enough, never that crucial little detail. Then, belatedly but all at once, the realization hits her.
Seven weeks.
Not years. Not months. Weeks.
It lands harder than almost anything else.
‘Guess I did her one better,’ she muses – perhaps a little sourly – swilling the last dregs of beer around the bottom of her glass, attempting a wry smile and coming up with a sort of grimace. ‘Thought I was marrying a General.’
On reflection, it wasn’t a very clever thing to say. It wasn’t all that funny; and, impaired as she is, she nevertheless realizes pretty quickly that mostly, she just succeeded in making herself seem even more pathetic. Still, it takes her a couple of seconds to realize that something’s really wrong; the whole table has suddenly gone very still, and everybody’s looking at her funny. One of Teal’c eyebrows is raised, and both of Hammond’s. To the right of Hammond is Daniel, whose mouth is hanging half - open, and to the right of Daniel –
Oh, fuck.