Hey, everyone! This is my first foray into the land of SG-1 fanfiction, so please tell me what I can improve on. This will probably end up being about three parts, in case you were wondering. I hope you like it!

The Stargate closed and left them standing there, faces without names, people without identities. She had chattered with…herself…about how they were practically identical, but it was the practically part that bothered her. She wasn't even sure if she was technically alive. All that she knew was that she was Captain Doctor Samantha Carter, but she was not Captain Doctor Samantha Carter. She had half a mind to join the Colonel in strangling Harlan, because he had taken away everything from her: her job, her hopes, her dreams, her identity, her life. She felt useless, like a little girl in a costume of someone named "Sam" who she wasn't any more. She couldn't look anyone in the eye. These weren't even her friends. They were copies, cheap imitations of the real thing. She loved them fiercely nonetheless, because they were quite possibly the only people in the universe who understood her plight. She didn't know how to handle not being human, and she couldn't even do anything to take her mind off it.

She functioned. She behaved within the expected parameters for the unit labeled Samantha Carter. It was fine, for a bit, but it grated on her. And she just got tired.

She stopped responding to them. When Harlan screeched for "Samantha," or when Daniel called "Sam," or when Teal'c requested the presence of "Captain Carter," or even when Colonel O'Neill hollered for "Carter," she was silent. She had told them all multiple times that she was not any of those names. None of them belonged to her. She was a copy of that person, not the real thing, and she would not respond to someone else's name. If the Colonel asked her what she wantedto be called then, she would sink into a deep, trancelike silence that not even Daniel could coax her out of. She knew that someday she'd have to break out of this funk, but she figured that she had a few thousand years to do it.

This wasn't like her. She had always just taken things as they fell. She was strong. She had been devastated when she wasn't selected for the first Abydos mission, but she had persevered. She had been badly shaken when Jonas died, but she had handled it. She had been slightly traumatized when Apophis had killed all of them, but she had lived. She had been brokenhearted when the Colonel had fallen for an alien woman (okay, well, in all honesty the "marriage cake" probably had something to do with it) and ended up with the aging nanites, but she had kept her head above water and solved the problem. She had been downright offended by Hathor, but she and Janet had taken care of her rather effectively. She had had her mind played with and been convinced that one of her best friends was killed in front of her, but she had handled it well (actually far better than the others did, in her opinion). She had been stranded in Antarctica, with no way home and a dying colonel on her hands, but she hadn't given up. This had been their first mission after recovering. She knew that Captain Doctor Samantha Carter could handle anything, but that wasn't her anymore. She was strong, but sometimes even the strongest have to break. Still, she hated herself for sinking into this bottomless pit of emotion, which only made things worse for this woman without an identity, without a name.

She had been sitting in a remote corner of the factory for days, ignoring everyone and everything, before Daniel finally found her.

"Mind if I sit here?" he asked.

She shook her head and offered a ghost of a smile that she knew must look fairly pitiful. They sat there in silence for a while before she started to talk.

"Daniel?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"How are you coping with this?" she said somewhat angrily.

"What do you mean?"

"Doesn't it bother you that you aren't Doctor Daniel Jackson?"

"No, because I still am."

"No, you're not," she said.

"Yes, I am. There are just two of us. That doesn't make either of us less important."

"Daniel, that doesn't make sense."

"Sure it does. Think about it this way. Identical twins have the exact same genetics and grow up in almost exactly the same environment. A lot of them look and think almost exactly alike. Does that make either one of them less of a person?"

"This is different. We have the exact same memories. We've lived the exact same life. Until a couple of days ago, we were literally the same person. I didn't exist until then, so I'm a copy."

He sighed. "Back to the twins. You realize that during development, up until a point, they develop as a single organism before splitting into two. By your logic, that makes one of them a mere copy of the other. Sam, we're distinct from the moment we were created. We're real too, and we are equally important. We could have even squabbled about whether we got to go home if we didn't know that Maybourne would take us away to be experimented on like what almost happened to the Tollan. You are still Samantha Carter."

"But this is different. I'm not sure if we're even technically alive! I'm a machine, Daniel. A machine! I'm not human."

"Sam, even if we're not technically alive by whichever definition you're using, you should know that things change! You rewrite the laws of physics for fun before breakfast! Don't you remember that since scientists started developing artificial intelligence they have been postulating that machines can become sentient?"

"I guess you're right. Thanks," she said, tired of fighting, and offered a slightly more convincing smile. She didn't really believe him, but she knew that, now that they had found the place where she went to hide and cry, they would never give up trying to coax her out. She was too emotionally tired to put up with their persuasion.

"Will you come with me? Join the rest of us?" the stubborn archaeologist asked.

"Soon," she said, "I just need some time to process everything."

He left her alone then, albeit reluctantly. Only a few minutes passed before Colonel O'Neill walked up and sat down beside her, pulling her into a tight, comforting hug. She relaxed for the first time since she discovered that she was her own robot double and cried into his shoulder.

They stayed that way for hours until they heard Daniel calling for them. She reluctantly pulled away from his comforting embrace, wincing as the pain in her heart returned. The Colonel had been able to stave it off for a while, but now it was back full force.

"Carter?" he said tentatively.

"Hmm?"

"You okay?"The concern in his eyes was almost heartbreaking.

"Yeah," she lied. He didn't look convinced as he offered a hand to pull her up, but he didn't say anything else as they walked back together.