A/N: I don't own it, so please don't sue me. The title I borrowed from a song by the lovely Anna Nalick, and everyone else you should recgoize from MGM.

Cripes it's been a while since I've updated. And by a while I mean like, July '08. Oh my god, I should be shot.

Anyway, this is what actually prompted me to write my other piece, Suddenly. The original was deleted in a hiccup (I've since replaced that computer) and I finally feel comfortable enough with this piece, which wound up being much longer than I anticipated, to share it.

To those who didn't read Suddenly (don't feel bad, it's all right, but if you like this, I hope you give that a read) the general idea was the 'other' Jack from Continuum dealing with our guys suddenly showing up. This is about Sam coming to terms with being in the Continuum Timeline and her thoughts about all that's happened. This is not strictly limited to the movie or SG-1 and will deal lightly with the events on Atlantis and even less so, mention some of the characters in Universe (which, I must say, I rather like, so don't shoot me for that either). The idea that all of these characters are all still intertwined really fascinates me, so after my longest author's note ever please enjoy!

Breaking the Girl

Dead.

Jack was dead. Her Jack was dead, at the very least.

She hadn't wanted to leave him there, not there, not one some planet light years from home, not on some Tok'ra planet. She figured he would have hated that last part the most. She hadn't wanted to leave that slowly disappearing planet and come to this god forsaken Earth. Cameron had dragged her through the Gate and a part of her, a large part, hated him for it. She'd have rather stayed there than loose Jack.

Heartbroken and beaten that she was though, Daniel had needed her. Had needed them to get help. Cameron had known what was happening inside her head and had been trying his best to make her focus, to make her see what was happening around them, but it had been Daniel that caught her attention.

And he had been there. Jack.

He had been pleased to see her, even if he had been confused, not that he wasn't usually confused. She just sort of expected it now. But he had been happy, and that was a good thing because he was always happy to see her and if he was happy then maybe they were home and it had all just been some kind of terrible nightmare.

But it hadn't been him.

Oh sure, Sam conceded, it had looked like her Jack, and it had sounded like her Jack but it hadn't been him in the end. He was Jack O'Neill, but he wasn't her Jack. She was sure he was still Sara's Jack. She had been glad to hear that that Charlie was alive and well and safe but a part of her, that part of her that still hated Cameron for not letting her die there with him, was angry. Angry at Jack and Sara and Charlie even though she knew she had no right.

She didn't know this man.

But he knew her. Or had known her. The other Samantha Carter.

That's what hurt the most.

He looked at her and saw an astronaut brought back from the dead. To him, she was just a woman he had known. To him she was just some woman that was long dead, a casket, that she thought, rather morbidly, didn't even have a body in it. To him, she was just paperwork. He had said so.

But to her…to her, he was everything and he had no idea at all.

She couldn't take it, not anymore, not again.

They took Daniel from her and Cameron and sent them off to different parts of the country, never to see one another again. It was even her Daniel and Cameron that they were taking away from her, not theirs. Not that there was another Cameron Mitchell for her to confuse him with, a fact that had stung all of them. In the end, despite all of her cooperation, all of her work, all of her faith it had all boiled down to the same thing. No Jack. No Daniel. No astrophysics. No team; no any part of her old life. They hadn't even allowed her to keep her dog tags for comfort.

What did they expect her do with herself, anyway? She certainly had no idea.

So she bought herself a telescope and sat on her balcony every night with a bowl of Fruit Loops and stared up at the stars.

"How many do you think we've been to?" She could hear Jack's voice as clear as day ringing in her ears. She could hear Daniel moving behind her, snorting into his hand, ready with a sarcastic comment. She could feel Teal'c raise an eyebrow at her at their continued banter. She would meet his eyes and they'd share a look of amusement before turning back to the fire.

It was just all so damned real.

She knew her neighbors thought she was crazy, they had to, and Sam was half-convinced herself. Maybe more than half. She could hear them, hear her team, chattering sometimes and it first it had been like being on the Prometheus again. She wondered if her neighbors could hear her talking though the walls. She had moved in without so much as a word to anyone and spent all of her time on her balcony with her telescope. A few of them had tried to approach her, to make conversation with her, to be her friend, but Sam knew that they didn't understand and she didn't have the strength left to make them. She kept to herself as much as possible because, really, she didn't want to deal with them.

For weeks this carried on until one day, a day she knew she should be getting ready for Daniel's birthday but couldn't do a damn thing about, she was checking her mail. This as not terribly unusual, even at the early morning hour, for she always got her mail as early as possible partially to avoid dealing with her neighbors and partially because she hadn't quite kicked her military training.

"Hello," greeted the old woman who appeared at her side as she shut her mailbox. Sam started and her hand automatically fell to her side in search of a weapon that would never be there again, "you're that girl that moved into 214, aren't you?"

"Yeah," she answered with a polite smile. She'd seen the older woman around sometimes, but not often enough that she'd have thought to have a conversation.

"It's good to finally see you out. My name is Catherine Hardings."

"Sam," she said back.

"Sam? Is that all?" Catherine asked with a sparkle in her deep brown eyes that reminded her of another Catherine she had cared deeply for and she had to go on.

"Samantha…O'Neill."

It had almost been the truth. A Half-truth. They had talked about getting married when he finally retired again. Maybe he would have come to live with her on Atlantis, had she not been relieved of command, or maybe she would have gone back to Area 51, or even back to the SGC as a full time scientist.

That hardly mattered now.

"Samantha O'Neill? That's a nice name. It suits you. Sam," Catherine said as if she were trying it out and Sam wished she'd just leave her alone, that for once the universe would stop poking at her with that stick while she was down, "I see you, you know, at night out on your balcony. You always seem so lost, so broken. Always distracted, like you're not really here with us. What is that you're looking for?"

"I...I don't know," she had been startled, taken aback by the question, and that was the truth. Probably the only time she'd spoken the truth since they dropped her off of that damned bus all those weeks ago, and even if she did know she sure as hell wasn't going to tell this strange woman that had snuck up on her, "Not anymore."

"A man may spend his whole life searching for something he will never find," she shook her head, "No, not you. That is not your fate, Samantha O'Neill. You know what it is you're looking for, and you have indeed found it, I believe. The problem is, are you willing to go out and get it?"

Before Sam could respond, the old woman had shuffled away and she wondered what the hell the universe was playing at.

In that moment she wanted to call out and tell her the truth. That she was looking for a way home, a way to go back to her lover, to her friends and her life. She wanted to tell her that she should be drinking her first cup of coffee of the day with Daniel in her lab, laughing with him because it was so easy just for her to be around him and that later she'd be having tea after dinner with Teal'c and that they could talk about anything and everything because he'd been there for her when even Jack and Daniel hadn't been. She wanted to tell her about Jack and what an amazing man he was and that he was everything to her. She wanted to tell her that she'd banter with Cameron in her techno babble just to confuse him and that she was probably supposed to go shopping with Vala. She wanted to tell her about her team, about the brave men and women she'd known, about Janet, about her expedition and all of the amazing people she'd gotten to watch grow and begin to reach their full potentials right before her eyes.

She wanted to tell her that she didn't give a rat's ass about what Hank Landry said because this wasn't her life.

But she knew she couldn't because when all the cards were down, Samantha Carter always did what she thought to be right, regardless of how it might hurt her. She knew her reasons for resetting the timeline were purely selfish and that was fair to no one but herself.

Sometimes she wondered if it wasn't the other her that had gotten off lucky.

All right, a little bit darker and a little bit stranger than I usually take Sam, but *god* there was so much left open ended in that movie. All right, so, tell me what you think!