The characters in this story are the property of the original companies involved in the production of Firefly and Stargate SG-1. I'm just doing this for fun and don't benefit financially in anyway from playing with these characters. No intellectual property rights violations intended.
FireGate
First, there was darkness. And then, there was music.
O'Neill listened- "What the hell… Carter, I can't see… do you hear that?"
"I can't see, either." Carter responded. "What do you think it is?"
"Beethoven 6th Symphony, Pastorale." O'Neill replied.
"Let me rephrase that, sir." Carter said, her voice a whisper in the pitch-blackness. "Who's making it, and where are we?" She tilted her head up and took a step back, right into something hard.
"Ow! Carter! I think you just split my lip." O'Neill touched his mouth gingerly. "Don't move." The music still played, louder now, with no apparent source or direction, but its tranquility made the utter blackness feel calming rather than threatening. He put his hand out and touched her back. "Is that you?"
"Yes. I'm not moving, I promise." Carter could see absolutely nothing.
"Carter, you don't feel- right." O'Neill ran his hand over her shoulders. Instead of the nylon covered Kevlar vest he was expecting, there was soft, smooth fabric, like silk but more substantial.
Carter touched her stomach and felt the same fabric Her weapons were gone. "I'm going to turn around, sir." She pivoted slowly, careful not to bump into anyone- or anything. O'Neill's hand felt the same lovely fabric- and then it didn't.
"Sir?" Carter didn't move.
"Sorry, Carter." O'Neill quickly took his hand away.
"I think I'm in a dress- a ball gown, actually." Carter said.
A low-cut ball gown, O'Neill thought. He wished he could see her. As if on cue, the room began to brighten, imperceptibly at first, while the music continued.
Carter was just able to perceive O'Neill's face. Concerned, she reached up to touch his lips.
"Carter?" O'Neill didn't mind what she was doing, but would like some kind of an explanation. Especially since she was so close, and evidently, so exposed.
"You said I hurt you when I bumped in to you." She was satisfied that he was all right. She took a step back as the lights came up.
"Sir." Sam said in surprise, her eyes wide. "You've changed."
"Damn. This is worse than dress blues." He had on a white suit - not a tuxedo- but something much more old-fashioned with a blue waist sash and stand-up collar edged in blue braid, vaguely reminiscent of a Civil War officer's uniform. Sam smiled smugly. "You look quite dashing, General O'Neill."
"I've been demoted to Colonel Sanders."
They looked at each other. "This is a hallucination, sir." Carter was sure of it. "I think the replicators have us."
"No, Carter. They'd never put us somewhere this nice," he said, looking her over, "would they?"
She looked down at the ice-blue silk taffeta ball gown she was wearing, tight in the waist with a full skirt, short sleeves, and a low, rounded neckline that accentuated, among other attributes, her graceful neck, shown off to further advantage by her short military haircut. She blushed. "I'd rather have my BDUs back."
"I'd rather you didn't." O'Neill took his eyes off of her long enough to notice they were in a high-ceilinged room, with silk swags draping from the walls and intricately detailed wallpaper. There was one door out. He walked over to it and opened it slowly, just a crack.
Inside was an opulent, lively party in full swing. He quickly shut the door and put his back against it as if it were full of wild Unas instead of happy people. "What were we doing before we got here?"
"Sleeping, sir. We got caught on P4X435 overnight because the iris jammed and it was too late to bother going to the Alpha site. We slept in one of the Ancient buildings that was still left standing."
"Sleeping." He thought. "Are we still?"
"It's a pretty elaborate dream, sir." Carter said. "Most people have visual or auditory dreams, but seldom tactile ones."
"Tactile?"
"Like this." Carter took his hand and put it on her bare arm. "I feel real, don't I?"
"Very." O'Neill ran his hand down her arm.
She surmised it might be more dangerous in here than out there. "We're all dressed up with somewhere to go, Sir." She nodded toward the door. "Let's have a look."
O'Neill shrugged and turned around in front of the doorway. He cocked his head. "Handel?"
"It's right there, sir." Sam pointed to the doorknob.
"No, the composer."
Sam tried not to smile. Jack gave her a wry grin and opened the door. There stood a magnificent array of beautifully dressed women and elegantly appointed men, talking and laughing in the most gorgeous ballroom either of them had ever seen.
"This trumps the White House." Jack looked around. Across the room he saw what obviously must be a bar and tables upon tables of food too pretty to eat. He started to make his way in that direction, but was held up by Carter who abruptly pulled him back.
"Wait a minute, sir. We've been disarmed."
He looked at her with a quirky smile. "No, only me."
At that moment an extremely beautiful dark-haired woman who exuded an air of self-confidence approached them. "Hello," she bowed slightly to them, lovely in her cream-colored dress. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Inara Serra. And you're in my dream."
Jack and Sam stared at each other. It had to be a replicator. Yet, she said they were in her dream, and the rare times the replicators did that was with the sole intent of terrorizing their captives with the ugly visions in their replicator minds. This hardly seemed to be the current situation.
"I'm General Jack O'Neill." He held out his hand. Inara looked at it with a delicately arched eyebrow.
"Colonel Samantha Carter," Sam added.
Inara smiled. "A Colonel! Malcolm will be most pleased."
"What? He's got a thing against Generals?" Jack protested. He stopped. "Whose Malcolm?"
"A good friend." Inara smiled sadly. "Let's just say his superiors disappointed him once, many years ago."
Jack stared at her. He was still very suspicious that all was not what it appeared to be. He was sure this was the most advanced, beautiful, and personable replicator he had ever seen.
"Aren't you supposed to be in my head?" Jack asked, suspiciously.
"No." Inara was puzzled. "I purchased a night in the dream chamber with the sole purpose of remembering this party which I had attended years ago. It was a very important night to me."
Sam detected a hint of happy nostalgia in her voice. "So this is a virtual reality for you?" Inara nodded. "How did we get here?" Sam asked.
"When one uses the dream chamber, all the memories of that event surface. But not all events are retained completely, and somehow the program fills in appropriate details. However, you two are the first people I've met whom I did not know from other circumstances." Inara was clearly as puzzled as they. "I thought I needed to find out who you were."
Jack was getting confused. "Why don't I just grab you two ladies a drink?"
"No," Inara insisted. "First, you must be introduced. Follow me, please." Jack shrugged, and held out his arm. Sam accepted, and they followed Inara up the marble entrance steps. Inara was about to speak with the announcer, when she turned to Jack and Sam. "Do you have weapons?"
"I wish." Jack said. Sam shook her head. Inara then leaned over and whispered into the announcer's ear.
"General Jack O'Neill and Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter."
Sam blushed as they descended the steps, which only served to make her more beautiful. Jack was surprised that the attention didn't make him nervous. He looked at Sam, confused by what he was feeling. He'd felt the same way when she'd split the rope with a single shot from her P-90 that day at the Jaffa camp- only this seemed a lot more personal.
Inara rejoined them, more curious than ever. Her practiced eye noted immediately that the way they stood, walked and talked together was altogether too intimate for a pair of officers joined only by their work.
"All right, now how about something to drink?" Jack asked.
"No thank you." Inara replied.
"Make mine a double." Sam said, desperately. She watched Jack leave, strikingly handsome in his unusual uniform.
"You are his companion- or his wife?" Inara questioned, noticing the look in Sam's eyes. "You are certainly beautiful enough to choose either."
Sam blushed. "I'm not..."
"Of course, I'm so sorry. You're a Colonel, so I must assume you're not his companion." Now Inara felt embarassed. She'd assumed a woman that beautiful, and with that extraordinarily rare hair color, would surely be a much sought-after companion.
Sam tried to explain. "No, well, companion would be close, I guess. Mostly we work together … we're not allowed to have- more of a relationship than that."
Inara trained her lovely, perceptive eyes on Sam. "I'm sorry." She stopped to think. "That's an odd combination. Companions don't work with their clients. We are… companions. We provide our clients with personalized social and sexual interactions."
Sam blinked. "Social and sexual interactions?" Wait until Jack heard this. On the other hand, she couldn't imagine herself telling him.
"You are not from here, Colonel Carter." Inara smiled. "You have the same view of my profession as Malcolm does."
"No, we're from earth." Carter dodged the second half of her statement.
Inara's face turned white. "That can't be. Earth-that-was is just a legend. It can't sustain life. That is why we explored the rest of the galaxy. You are on a planet called Persephone."
Now, it was Sam's turn to be shocked. "What- what year is it?"
"The Alliance still uses Earth years. It is 2517 A.D."
At that moment, Jack returned with her drink. "Have a nice chat, ladies?" He noticed Sam's face, more pale than usual. He put an arm around her. "Sam?"
"We're in 2517 A.D." Sam gratefully took a gulp from the glass of champagne he offered.
Jack stared at Inara. "You're off by 500 years."
"No, General, this dream is in 2517 A.D. You are, I'm quite sure, back in the dream chamber on a planet we call Persephone, and you call…"
"P4X435." Sam said. Persephone had a much more elegant ring to it. She suddenly felt very ordinary and uncultured next to Inara.
"May we sit?" Inara motioned to an open door leading to a large balcony. The three of them sat at a small finely crafted wooden table of vaguely Oriental design. "It'll be a few minutes before Malcolm is able to get away and there's someone else I wish to avoid, for now."
"So, Inara, you never said what we, of all the people in this universe, are doing in your dream." Jack sat back, sipping his champagne, his eyes watching her face very closely.
"There must be something about you and Colonel Carter that the dream chamber detected five hundred years ago, something that is very similar to my dream." Inara shook her lovely head.
Sam turned to Jack. "Brain waves are just low-level energy waves, sir. It's possible the chamber- that we thought was simply a building- stored our dreams and filed them away until they fit the specs for someone else's. And now we're here, and Inara's dream is somehow being sent back to us." She shrugged. "The Ancients could travel through time at will- why not a few brain waves?"
Jack looked at her. "So how to we get out?"
"When we wake up, it will be over." Inara smiled, then turned to watch as a brown-haired man as tall and as handsome as Jack strode up to the table. He wore a cutaway suit that matched his hair, and a golden vest.
"Inara, I see you've made yourself a passel of new friends." He smiled. Inara rose.
"Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter, meet Captain Malcolm Reynolds." She gracefully motioned toward Sam, who stood up and offered her hand.
"No need to stand, Colonel." He kissed her hand, which shocked Sam and irritated Jack. "I would enjoy hearing of your exploits in the War." He bowed deeply and smiled warmly at her.
"And General Jack O'Neill." She nodded toward Jack.
Malcolm shook his hand stiffly. "Well, we're most grateful that you allowed your Colonel here to keep herself alive."
"What?" Jack asked, bristling at Reynolds's tone.
"You're a General. Aren't you good at leaving people behind?" Malcolm couldn't resist the jab.
Jack and Malcolm lunged at each other, and there would have been a fight had not Inara stepped in front of Mal and Sam grabbed Jack around his waist.
"It's not the same war!" Sam exclaimed. "It's five hundred years in the future- or past!" She let Jack go, but he remained standing, tense.
"What?" Malcolm asked, still glaring at Jack, remembering how he and his troops had been abandoned in Serenity Valley.
"They're from Earth-that-was. Five hundred years ago they found this dream chamber and spent the night in it. Their dreams put them here, in my dream." Inara explained.
Sam looked at Inara with a puzzled expression. "You just told Malcolm he's in a dream."
Inara smiled. "It's my dream. It'll still happen as it should."
"For crying out loud, will someone tell me why we're in it?" Jack sat back down, frustrated, the champagne splashing over the top of his glass. He was tired of everyone's apparent fascination with the problem and no plan to do anything about it.
"Sir, I told you." Sam touched his arm.
"Okay, why us?" He felt like pounding his head on the table.
Malcolm pulled a chair up to the table. "Well, there's kind of a resemblance here."
Sam didn't see any.
"We've got a couple of right fine-lookin' women, a handsome man," Inara kicked him under the table, "All right, two handsome men with military backgrounds…"
"I'm not a companion." Sam interjected. Jack looked at her, puzzled.
"Good for you," Malcolm said, casting an eye at Inara.
"Perhaps," Inara said, lifting her head, her dark eyes flashing at Malcolm, "the similarity is that Samantha Carter has had an offer from a gentlemen, as well."
Sam could feel the muscles in Jacks arm tense under her hand. He stood up. "Another drink, Sam?"
Malcolm stood, as well. "I'll go with you. Inara?"
The ladies shook their heads. The events were confusing enough as they were.
Sam looked at Inara, whose eyes were glistening with tears. "I get the feeling that this other man is not the one you'd choose, if you could." She took Inara's hand, beautifully manicured in contrast to her own.
Inara nodded. "My work comes between Malcolm and me."
Sam swallowed hard. "We have more in common than Malcolm guessed."
Inara looked at Sam. "You have had an offer- of marriage, I suppose- but he's not the one you love, either?"
Sam shook her head. "I'm not sure."
"That's an incredible coincidence." Inara stood to look out over the beautiful city. "I believe, then, that you must also be in love with Jack O'Neill. And your work keeps you apart."
She turned around and smiled. "This is why you're in my dream, Samantha Carter. I'm just re-living the past- but you're creating your future."
She walked over to Sam, and held out her hand, "Let's go."
Jack and Malcolm stood near the bar, Malcolm ceaselessly scanning the dance floor. They were playing Tchaikovsky now, and the room flowed with movement and spinning colors.
"For what it's worth," Jack said, "I'm sorry you and your people got left behind."
"What was left of my people." Malcolm said, darkly. "All of my superior officers were killed, and the only ones left by the time they got around to picking us up were me and my 2IC- a corporal."
"Damn." Jack was quiet. He'd never known such massive indifference to the troops on the ground. "We don't do that."
"Who's 'we'?" Malcolm stared out into the room.
"The United States Air Force."
"Well, that no-good United States Air Force is in the Alliance now. But it was my own people, the anti-Alliance rebels, that left us."
They were silent for a moment. "Let it go. It'll just keep eating at you." Jack said.
"You want to fix my life? Tell me how to do that."
Jack was hardly in a position to comment. Then he noticed Malcolm's face visibly brighten, the thunderclouds leaving his eyes. He followed Mal's gaze across the room, and there stood Inara. And Sam.
Tell me how to do that.
Jack leaned against the bar, watching the two women pick their way through the crowd, while Malcolm continued his obsessive surveillance.
"You're making me nervous. Why don't you tell me what you're looking for and we can both watch." Jack took another drink of champagne. He couldn't quite figure out why all the hard stuff was served heated, and all the beer was Chinese.
Malcolm looked at Jack and laughed. "You help me watch? Why, you can't keep your eyes off of your pretty little Colonel. You're useless." Then the smile vanished from his face and he turned back to look out at the room. "Inara's had an offer from a disrespectful little weasel and I intend to put a stop to it." Mal knocked back his drink. "They came together. He's here somewhere."
"Ah, I thought I detected some sparkage back there." Jack said. "So you're going to take this guy down and marry her yourself, is that it?" He could hardly wait to see how this played out. He hoped it wouldn't come to dueling.
Malcolm looked at Jack, set his drink down on the counter and picked up another. "I can't marry her right now, because of our- situation, you might say. But I ain't lettin' her make a disastrous mistake. And then someday, maybe I will."
Jack was silent. It couldn't really be that easy. Could it?
At that moment, Inara and Sam approached, a beautiful yin and yang: Dark and light, sultry and radiant, delicate and strong.
Jack held out his had. "Shall we dance?" He smiled, his deep brown eyes sparkling.
"You can dance?" Sam was stunned.
"It's just a waltz. Hurry before they change it to something tougher." Jack led her out into the room, put his hand around her waist and spun her around, a little rusty at first, but then keeping perfect time. Sam tried to avoid stepping on her skirt while at the same time matching his steps. They were both laughing.
Inara thought they looked beautiful together, and very happy. "They're in love, but they don't know it."
"They know it," Malcolm said, "They just won't admit it." He put his glass on the bar and stared at her.
Inara turned to go. Malcolm caught her arm. "Where are you going?"
"To find Atherton." Her eyes dared Mal to comment.
"Surely he'd allow one dance." Malcolm bowed and held out his hand. Inara smiled with relief and took it.
The music changed from a waltz into an intricate social dance. Exhausted, Sam pulled Jack off of the floor. "I see what you mean by "tougher," she said. For a moment they watched Mal and Inara move effortlessly through the routine, perfectly matched and lovely to watch. Then they went to the balcony to get some air.
"I've never heard you laugh before." Sam said, walking over to the railing, her skirt brushing by the empty chairs.
"I never had a good enough reason." Jack came up beside her, his hand around her waist. They looked down at the beautiful city, glowing in every direction. A warm breeze wafted in from the dark desert beyond.
"This is one hell of a dream." Jack said, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his jacket. "I hope that's all it is."
"What do you mean?" Sam was a little disappointed.
"I just mean- I hope we get out of it. I like my life. This isn't real."
"It's real enough to me." Sam put her hands on the railing and tilted her head back to let the breeze flow over her. Jack couldn't help but notice there were tiny beads of sweat still clinging to her throat and breasts, which rose and fell with the exertion from the dance, and the silent panting through her parted lips.
It was suddenly real enough for him, too.
He put his hand under her head and gently kissed her, tightening his grip on her waist. He pulled her close and rubbed his face against her soft, golden hair. "It's just a dream, Sam, it's all right," as if it was she who needed the reassurance.
She put her hands on his broad shoulders, and felt caught, trapped by his eyes, and knew she couldn't get away even if she wanted to. Sam slowly ran her fingers over the back of his neck and into his steel-grey hair. "I hope I'll remember it when I wake up," she said, kissing him again, deeply, as he gently caressed her smooth, white throat, drawing his fingers down over her cleavage and under the delicate edge of the dress.
Jack pressed his body into hers. "God, Sam." He was shaking with desire, hotter now than when they'd left the dance- and bodice-ripping no longer sounded like an historical joke.
Suddenly, above her pounding heart, Sam thought she heard Inara cry in dismay, "Oh, Mal…"
Then there was darkness, and there was no music.
"Sam?" Jack was breathing hard, but she wasn't in his arms.
"Jack?"
"Are we back in that room again?"
"I don't think so." Sam felt around her. "I'm laying down- I think we're back on P4X345."
"No. We're still in that dream." Jack whispered, his voice low and insistent.
Sam felt him next to her, close enough to feel his heartbeat. Her fingertips touched his muscled arm below his standard-issue t-shirt. "You seem real to me."
"It's a tactile dream, Sam." He found her face, then lips, then her entire body; and they finished what they had started five hundred years in the future.
The morning sun eventually cracked the black, moonless sky. Carter and O'Neill geared up to go give the gate another try, neither saying much more than what was necessary to get under way. They'd received a transmission and got the go-ahead to come home.
"Hell of a night, Carter." O'Neill said, his sunglasses on, looking straight ahead as he walked, smiling. "I need to get back out in the field more."
"Yes, sir." Carter smiled at him. "I learned a couple of things from Inara."
"Just from her?" O'Neill smirked.
"Permission to hit a superior officer."
"Denied." O'Neill thought for a moment. "I picked up a little from Mal, too."
"What do you think happened to them?" Carter wondered as they approached the gate.
"Will happen to them?" O'Neill teased her. She was the time travel expert, after all. He stopped, and crossed his arms across the top of his P-90. "I'm sure they'll be all right."
"You are?" Carter looked at him in surprise, and then began dialing. The event horizon opened. "You sound so certain."
"Well, Carter," O'Neill said, taking her face in his hands. Her eye color reminded him of the dress she'd worn- when? He kissed her one last time.
"They're a lot like us."