Title: Fork in the Road

Author: Chocolatequeen

Rating: K

Summary: AU Sam/Jack. "For every possible universe, there are an infinite number of variations, diverging at every choice we make like forks in a road." AlterSam, Point of View. After their confessions in Divide and Conquer, an alternate Sam and Jack do not leave their feelings in the room. How does that one decision change their universe?

Chapter One: Two Roads Diverged

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Yogi Berra

"Because I care about her—a lot more than I'm supposed to." Jack's words echoed so loudly in Sam's mind that she barely caught Anise's declaration that he was not a za'tarc.

"Now retest me," she ordered, moving to take Jack's place. She quickly and efficiently released the bands holding him in the chair and switched places with him. Once he'd strapped her in, she studiously avoided looking at him, focusing her attention instead on Anise.

Taking that as a sign to begin, Anise began her new line of questioning. "Major Carter, how did you feel when you realized you were trapped on the opposite side of the force shield from Colonel O'Neill?"

"I was relieved," she said without hesitation. "He was free, he could get out before the explosives went off."

"When it became clear he had no intention of leaving you, what did you do?"

"I tried to get him to leave, but he wouldn't." She took a deep breath, remembering exactly what had happened. The machine wanted details and she would give it details. "I told him there wasn't time, that he needed to go, but he just kept fighting with the force shield."

"And time was running out," Anise prompted.

Her words reawakened the panic she'd felt when she realized Jack wouldn't leave her--she could almost hear the hum of the force shield, so strong was the emotion. "I told him to go, but... he finally looked at me, and that's when I knew."

Even as lost as she was in her memories, Sam felt the tension in the room ratchet up a few notches. "When you knew what?"

"When I knew why he wouldn't leave me. I knew I couldn't ask him to, because I knew if our positions were reversed, I wouldn't have left him either." She stopped, hoping she wouldn't have to divulge anything else about her feelings for her commanding officer.

Anise glanced down at the display and frowned almost imperceptibly. "Why is that?" she prodded, and Sam knew there was no getting around it.

"Because," she answered, looking at Jack for the first time since she'd sat down, "I care about him too--a lot more than I'm supposed to."

Once again, the words were so powerful that she almost missed hearing the Tok'ra clear her. "Thank you," she said. Jack was moving toward her before the words were out of her mouth, and his presence in her personal space so soon after their mutual admissions was almost too much for her. The last few minutes had torn down all the walls she'd built around her feelings for him, and she desperately needed time alone to rebuild them.

"Carter," he said quietly as he undid the last strap. He moved into a corner of the room, giving them as much privacy as he could. They would only have a minute before the world interrupted, but this was her chance to put back some of those walls. If they could just leave this whole conversation here in the room, pretend it had never happened…

Her lightning fast thoughts were stalled by one stray question from her sub-conscious. Can you do that? She wanted to say yes, but then she remembered the look in his eyes when he'd told the whole room how much he cared for her and her certainty wavered.

"Carter?" he said again, her name a question now.

She played with the cuffs of her sleeves for a moment before looking up at him. In his eyes, she could see that he was aware of the fork in the road in front of them as well, and he was leaving the decision up to her. She didn't know which path to take though. If she chose the first one, they would simply continue on as they had before, ignoring the growing feelings between them in order to maintain the harmony of their working relationship. That familiar road stretched out in front of her without a single bend or curve. The other path was hazier. What would happen if they talked about it? Could they talk and then return to what they had been before? There was no way… their ranks kept them apart, what would be the point…

Her mind was still whirling with the possibilities, but their precious moment of time was almost over. "I don't know sir," she finally said. She wanted nothing more than for this conversation to be over, but she just couldn't give him an answer—not yet.

He looked her up and down and then said, "All right. We'll think about it later then."

"Yes sir," she said, feeling relieved that she'd managed to push the decision back to another day. Yet somehow, even as they changed the topic back to the identity of the za'tarc, she had the feeling that by not deciding today, she'd taken that fork in the road.