Chapter 8: Cenotaph

The team looked up as Sheppard re-entered the briefing room. The shields on the window over looking the 'gate room were down so there had been no way to watch 'evacuation group theta' depart. It would seem that every time they got an answer – or a vague allusion that could pass as one – twice as many questions would pop up. It had been ridiculous of them to assume that any of this would be easy; in fact, there was no need for them to stay. They had arrived far too early. Lexy was sixteen, with far more issues than any one of them could have expected, and no one had the faintest idea of how the teenager was supposed to defeat her sister. They should go back, return to 2008, and find another way around the problem, maybe the Asguard were wrong, and the Nox and the Furlings. Maybe Lexy wasn't the key to defeating Adria. The device they had used was temperamental, volatile and dangerous; there was no telling where they would end up if they tried another jump forwards, their best bet was to jump back. The date would be stored within the device's memory, and between the two of them, Sam found herself thinking, she and Mckay should be able to locate the data and, in layman's terms, put the device in a theoretical rewind.

"Sorry about that," Sheppard smiled at them as he took his seat at the briefing room table.

"What's this about evacuation?" Sam inquired before Mckay did. She could see he was itching for a moment where he could jump in and start pointing things out in his usual acerbic manner, making snide remarks and in general just being unnecessarily cruel, even if he wasn't essentially aware of the fact.

"The threat Adria poses is huge. She hasn't made an attempt on Earth in quite some time; however she is attacking planets nearby. Arthur's Mantle is failing," he reported sadly "the shield is shrinking rapidly – it's only protecting a third of the planets it once did,"

Sam and Mckay shared a look.

"We're evacuating everyone we can who is reachable and under the protection of the shield as fast as we can,"

"You've gone public?" Mckay's tone was accusing and Sam winced at how forceful it sounded but Sheppard, it seemed, was unfazed. The blonde found herself feeling a wave of amazement that the man could not only put up with the caustic barbs but deliver them back with as much wit and finesse as the scientist had first given, and over the years this had not seemed to dwindle in the slightest.

"No," Sheppard replied calmly but firmly, "not yet. Woolsey wants too but we're keeping it under wraps for now. Evacuating all high profile politicians, academics and their families as fast as we can - there's a small Earth colony being established with the help of the Athosians on an uninhabited planet in the Pegasus Galaxy,"

"Are you serious?" Cam leaned forwards on the table, fixing Sheppard with a penetrating stare "isn't that a little-?"

"We don't have a choice," Carter said from her position in the doorway "the longer we keep Arthur's Mantle at full power, the less time we have,"

"What about everyone else?" Vala asked suddenly, "are you just going to let them die?"

Sheppard's eyes narrowed and he tensed, jaw setting firmly as he watched her carefully, dozens of emotions flickering across his face but none staying long enough to quantify precisely how he felt in regards to her inadvertent accusation. "We're doing what we can," and his voice sounded so soft, almost broken that Vala felt guilty, "we can't just tell the world about the Stargate Program," he glanced at Carter in the doorway, as if sharing some untold truth that strengthened them both to just think about for a moment. "Look," he said, and suddenly he didn't look so accommodating, "I'm not going to try and explain it; you won't understand,"

Sam glanced at Mckay and saw something akin to concern in his eyes; a flicker of emotion there for a friend who wasn't really his friend, but it was there and it was real. Sam hated the sympathy worming its way in to her chest, because it meant she was inclined to stay, to help, to save a world that she didn't belong in. They needed to go home; soon.


Janet Wells eyed the chocolate pudding in front of her somewhat distastefully. She had been hoping for jello but it had long gone by the time she had gotten in line at the commissary. The post mission medical checks were tedious at the best of times but when crossing the barrier between Atlantis and Earth they were so much stricter, for obvious reasons, but that did not make it any less irksome. Her father was manning a team currently off-world and they weren't scheduled to return for several more days, and her mother… Janet felt a pang in her stomach at the thought of her mother.

Marci was blissfully unaware of what her husband and daughter did for a living, and at times, Janet was jealous of her mother's naivety, the beauty she still believed the world to be, that Janet had to pretend it was every time she came back to see her. She had to put on the rose coloured glasses and pretend like she didn't watch her friends get slaughtered before her eyes, hadn't seen commanding officers burned alive by Adria as she proclaimed herself a God in place of the fallen Ori. The Stargate Program, even as it separated you from the rest of the world, drew you closer to the men and women you worked with and going home sometimes, seeing her mom… it was like a foreign land, a world she no longer recognized filled with the rich smell of baking from the kitchen, creaky floorboards and a bedroom decorated with models of fighter jets and posters of great expanses of sky that showed a freedom that wasn't as true as it looked in the photograph.

Sometimes she wondered if it would be easier just to not go back, to stay on Atlantis, within the SGC. She would see her father; get to hear how her mother was without having to see her, without having to lie because that was the hardest part. It wasn't having to say 'sorry mom, national security' or 'I can't tell you, you know that' that hurt, it was the real lies, the ones where she smiled and laughed and joked, acted like everything was okay because it wasn't. Adria could attack at any day and who knew how long they would survive if that happened. Besides, she had it good. Better than some, better than Lexy and she felt guilty that she ever contemplated locking her mother out like that because she can see, every time Lexy is around them, how badly she wants it; a family. Even when Lexy has the most extended family Janet has ever seen, and then the thought of never seeing her mother again almost tears Janet apart, and she realises she could never walk away.

The pudding was lukewarm and both tasted and looked awful but she choked it down anyway; pushing the empty pot and spoon across the table and gulping half a bottle of water down to get the foul taste from her lips. Her stomach had been in knots from the moment she'd been told who was in the base and for a moment she had been ready to jump for joy. Ready to shout and cheer and do all the things she had assumed friends do for one another but Lexy wasn't pleased, she was unreadable. Retreating back under the cool, hard exterior nobody could shift, not even Rodney. Though this was more due to lack of trying; the astrophysicist was annoyingly faithful in the old 'she'll come to me' idiom when it came to the young girl and the stupid thing was, Lexy was yet to prove him wrong.

Janet had known Lexy her whole life; the only time during which they had ever really been apart was in the first three and a half years of the younger girl's residence on Atlantis. Janet had, had no knowledge of where her friend was and what she was doing there, no one would tell her, no one could, because at that point she had been as naïve as her mother. Tucked up save in her cosy little room with nothing more worrying to consider than math homework and petty arguments with friends that never mattered. Then, the moment Janet had qualified for the air force and had been fully disclosed in regards to the Stargate Program as per recommendation of her father, and Generals Mitchell and Carter, she had requested a transfer to Atlantis. With Jack O'Neill backing her every move and Sheppard handling the paperwork, it had not taken long before she was stationed on the Pegasus outpost.

Nevertheless it had taken some time to grow accustomed to the young woman which had replaced the little girl she had led around by the hand for so many years. Lexy was impossible, she outshone everyone around her, lighting up a room without even realising what she was doing. Her personality was witty and at times abrasive, talents she had no doubt adopted from Rodney. Perhaps more perplexing still, was that people could not help but be drawn to her, and yet, surprisingly enough, very few did it out of pity. Lexy was brilliant, she was intelligent to the point even Rodney, in his absurd little ways, complimented her for it. She was a gifted fighter and Janet could safely say that if she could choose anyone to have watching her six it would be, without a shadow of a doubt, Lexy Jackson.

"Janet?"

The voice sent chills down her spine. Janet found herself paralysed for a moment. The accent was so familiar, so distinct her heart was hammering in her chest, an adrenalin rush she didn't need coursing through her veins as part of her mind tried to convince her that it was impossible. That she couldn't be standing there but the young captain knew that it was all to possible but still… she forced herself to look up. Her own dark hair, though short, had fallen in her face and she shook her fringe away from her eyes as she forced herself to look at the woman in front of her.

"Mrs. Jackson," she replied tightly, blood roaring in her ears, a moment later she back-pedalled; "you have already married him right? You're not from before then… oh man, dad would kill me if I just messed that up…"

Vala found herself smiling a little at the younger woman's capitulating. She took a seat and her smiled faded when Janet flinched, scooting her chair back a little to try and disguise the involuntary movement, "yes," she assured her "a year,"

Janet nodded curtly. "Congratulations." She wanted to run, to get up and just keep running until her legs couldn't carry her any further, this felt so wrong, a face she had not seen in so many years, whose named haunted the halls even now… she shouldn't be here talking to Vala. Lexy would hate her for it. "Listen uh-"

"What happened?" Vala cut her off, recognizing an avoidance tactic when she saw one – she was married to Daniel Jackson; she knew them all and then some – but she needed this, maybe it was wrong, ambushing the girl, but somebody had to be willing to say something.

"Excuse me?" her tone was almost accusatory and it took every ounce of self-control she had not to start jumping to conclusions.

Vala gave her a pained look.

Janet got to her feet. "Shouldn't you be with the airmen? I thought General Sheppard had you all under escort,"

"I slipped out," the alien woman responded absently, glancing over her shoulder almost guiltily, "please Janet-"

"You should be talking to Lexy," she said, "come on," gesturing she had for the commissary doors, ignoring the few dozen pairs of eyes focussing on the woman who was following in her wake.

"I'm dead," Vala deadpanned. "Daniel's dead. Lexy doesn't want to talk to us. No one will tell us anything,"

Janet thumbed the button for the elevator; "you can't expect everyone to answer all your questions. Maybe its best if you don't know what happened,"

Some things really are better left unsaid. You don't need to know everything because then you have to deal with the good and the bad. Janet hated to think of the innocence she had held before joining the Stargate Program for the simple reason that it was a jarring reminder of powerlessness she did not want to recall, but this was different. Curiosity is an evil thing; it consumes you, takes you over and forces you in to doing things you would not normally do just to get an answer to a question you don't need.

"I have a right to know,"

"No Mrs. Jackson," Janet corrected softly as they stepped into the empty elevator, "you don't."


"Where's Vala got to?" Cam asked, not looking up from the comic book he was reading as he sat leaning against the headboard of his bed.

Mckay and Teal'c were sat at the small table in the corner of the room, playing a game of chess, an uncomfortable air of animosity shimmering between the two of them, as if the last thing they wanted to be doing was playing a board game against one another and Daniel was stood just inside the doorway.

"I don't know," Daniel said, "I was wondering whether she'd come here,"

"Haven't seen her," Cam answered needlessly, flipping the page, "could be with Sam – she and her future self went off earlier to talk about Arthur's Mantle,"

"I should be helping with that;" Mckay scowled, almost sounding jealous, "I was the one that got it working in the first place, if they would-"

Cam rolled his eyes, as if he had heard the argument one too many times in the last hour for it to matter anymore. Daniel smirked at his blatant disregarding of the astrophysicist's outrage.

"I believe General Carter wished to speak with Colonel Carter alone," Teal'c intoned, and then he raised an eyebrow, adding with a vaguely teasing note to his voice, "perhaps they had grown wearisome of your company,"

Mckay looked suitably offended by the remark. The jaffa's expression bore no malice and his words were merely a statement of fact; expressing his opinion had not been a intentional barb at the guest-member of SG1 personally.

"You know what she wanted?" Daniel asked, rocking back on his heels and trying to clear the hostile silence that had fallen.

"No idea," Cam peered over the top of his book "probably something to do with Arthur's Mantle,"


"I don't know what you expect me to do;" Sam said honestly, eyes skimming over the device's schematics, "is it just the power source?"

Carter shook her head, "the power is fine. It's the device itself. It's like it's wearing down,"

Thousands of years old the device may be, but it was absurd to think of a piece of Ancient technology breaking down due to old age and over use, at least not without a shower of sparks and temporarily affecting someone's mental capacity.

Sam looked at her older counterpart curiously. "Mckay might be able to help," she said grudgingly.

Carter shook her head. "I'd rather not call on Doctor Mckay's services until absolutely necessary,"

Sam frowned and despite the fact that they were essentially the same person, she could not figure out what was going on in Carter's head. The tone was unfamiliar as was much of this time. Things looked the same, faces just slightly aged versions of the people she saw everyday, greeted in the commissary and watched stumble, exhausted and soaking wet back through the Stargate but all the while they would be grinning through the sweat and grime of alien river water, laughing at the antics of the villagers they had just encountered. There was no laughter here. Everything looked the same; nothing was.

The ghosts of a past she knew nothing about, memories just out of reach, haunted the corridors, heavy in the air as soldier and civilian alike glided past one another almost oblivious to any existence other than their own. It was defeat that made the air taste bitter, misplaced guilt that weighed upon them all, as if they had long since conceded their losses and the only reason they were still fighting was because the alternative was far worse. They were soldiers, and they weren't capable of dying begging on their knees for a life that wouldn't be worth living, they would rather die in a war they could never win than that.

Her chest ached as she thought about it and all of a sudden she found herself missing home, her house, the people she knew rather than this morbid imitation… she missed Jack.

"You okay?" Carter asked; her expression on of sincere concern.

Sam hesitated, "I don't know," she replied honestly "I just… I don't understand what went wrong,"

Carter gave her a wry smile "it hasn't all been like this," she tried to reassure her younger self. The spark in Sam's eyes that had long since faded from her own was bright and Carter knew she had to keep her counterpart's hopes up, even if it would ultimately get them here. Besides, there was still a chance, that by time-travelling they would be able to change what was yet to come for them; "we've had good times too,"

Sam nodded. Of course that was true, there had to have been some; it wasn't possible for them to have had sixteen years of complete desolation and pain, but for some reason that didn't make it any easier to believe.

Carter thought about it for a minute, as if contemplating if any of what she had just said was provable without telling her counterpart too much, tapping her finger absently; "mid-December on Atlantis,"

Sam could not help but smile when she noticed the gesturel. "Jack?"

Carter gave her a smug look, smiling almost playfully "you know I can't tell you that,"


Perhaps she had been spending too much time with Vala, because it had been inordinately easy to get the young airman to look away long enough for her to be able to take a walk by herself. Sam felt a stab of guilt regarding the young man, fresh-faced and eager to please he was obviously new to the program and the honour of being asked to escort time-travelling visitors must have been awe-inspiring for him therefore he would have been in two minds about reporting that he had lost track of his charge. She understood the people of this time's need to protect their guests, but there was so much being left unsaid, vague references and allusions to things that were unnecessary for them to be mentioned at all. Why was everything such a big secret? And if they were so desperate that their guests didn't find out, why make it so obvious that there was more going on than meets the eye?

The cold, hard facts were what they had come for, the whole reason for them jumping into the future; however it seemed that the facts were covered in lies and personal issues that needed either resolving or brushing aside long enough that the answers they needed to give could be given the opportunity to breathe. These people were so different to the one's she knew, they were darker, dejected even, grasping at straws with no explanation as to why; how could things have gotten so bad? How could everybody change so much they were barely recognizable in sixteen years?

She was uncomfortable. She hated the fact that on the surface everything gave the illusion of being the same and she reached out and ran her fingers across the chilled, concrete walls, a tangible reminder that some things had stayed the same, but the things that really, truly mattered? They hadn't and she could not figure out why.

There was no purpose in her steps, she was walking at a normal speed so as not to attract attention to herself and because if she walk to slowly, her footsteps echoed off the walls and she found that concentrating on them was unnerving and left her off guard and for some reason she felt the need to be on edge, constantly looking over her shoulder for something she couldn't quite see. The corridors were nearly empty, the occasional marine moving swiftly past, barely even noticing her presence and a linguist Sam recognized from Daniel's department glanced at her once, doing a rapid double take before ducking her head and moving off; if Sam remember correctly she was a new recruit to the SGC back in 2008, her face showed minimal signs of aging but her look of surprise was enough to give it all away.

As Sam turned the corner she realised she was walking in the direction of the infirmary, something laughable ironic about the fact tickled at the back of her mind; that she would instinctively move to the hospital still, after all this time, when she needed advice on a situation. It had been four years since Janet's death – twenty in this period… - but she still found herself searching her old friend out without even thinking about it, it brought a lump to her throat as she remembered, images contorting in front of her eyes… the reporter who had been documenting the SGC nosing his way into everything, flashing that God-forsaken camera in their faces as they mourned a loss that shattered everyone, the look on Daniel's face as he subjected himself to watching that recording again and again, searching for a way out, an excuse for himself that he didn't need, because no matter how much he may have thought at the time, it was not his fault. It was a horrible accident that no one could have prevented, and Janet had died doing what she loved, helping people… Sam thought of Janet Wells, the pretty young woman who had walked through the Stargate with Rodney Mckay; Janet would be honoured that Wells had named his daughter after her and even more so with what she had become.

Sam came to a stop, eyes skimming across the expanse of concrete in front of her; the wall outside the infirmary was not plain like the others, not smooth like she remembered, and she reached out to trace her fingers across the indentations in the wall; carved into it, at the top, were the words 'May 14, 2013; It was an Honour to Serve'. Beneath the lettering were columns of names; lists of the dead.

Sam found her eyes darting down the list, names she recognized and names she didn't, each one bringing a new, harrowing sense of loss to her chest, bearing down her furiously as if this was some how something she had experienced herself; Lt. Colonel Sarah Abbot, Dr. Nicholas Ballard, Sergeant Dean C. Bennet, Corporal David L. Crawson, Captain Jackie M. Fanning, Dr. Charlotte T. Groves, Major Gregory Johnson, Captain James D. Ludlow, Isobel J. Mckay…

Mckay? Isobel… who…? Sam blinked and shook her head and checked again, the name was still there, as clear and sharp as all the others and she reached out to trace the name carved in the cool concrete. Maybe there was another Mckay… that was too much of coincidence. She knew Mckay's sister, Jeannie, her husband Kaleb Miller, and their daughter Madison but no Isobel.

Her chest tightened once again when she finally mustered up the courage to look away, and read the other names, observe the memorial in its entirety. May 14, 2013… that must have been the siege… Sam felt another wave of frustration, even though she knew that they could not know everything that did not stop the curiosity, the need to know something, anything more than what they already did.

How had things gotten so bad that it had to come to this?


Carter and Rodney both looked up as Sam walked in. She was hovering in the doorway and Rodney smiled a little before turning back to Carter. "I better get going – I'm supposed to be having a meeting with Sheppard in a few minutes," he rolled his eyes characteristically, as if he was unable to quite comprehend why he had to schedule meetings to speak with his former team leader and friend, "I'll see you for dinner?" the statement was posed as a question, the inflection on his voice sounded strained.

Carter nodded, "see you later Rodney,"

Rodney nodded, "bye," he muttered as he skirted past the younger version of the woman with whom he had just been making dinner plans.

Sam waited until he was gone; avoiding looking at him so she did not ask him the question that was dominating her thoughts. It was long enough for Carter to go about reviewing a sheet of notes in front of her before looking up, the piercing blue gaze of eyes so familiar to Sam's own unnerving her.

"Is everything all right?" Carter asked.

Sam hesitated, wondering for a moment whether she had a right to ask, and even if she was asking the right person but surely it would be easier to talk to herself than to Mckay because surely in any era, the man had the power to cut you to the quick without even trying.

It was probably none of her business, she probably had no sound reason to query it but something was telling her to. Something was nagging at her and it would not relent because they were being told nothing, and maybe this would open the lines of communication; a direct, personal question that did not relate to Lexy but allowed them to have something to build on… should she even be asking? Finally, she sighed, ignored any sense of logic or reason that had come into her head since entering the lab and responded; "who was Isobel?"

Next Chapter: Humans are curious by nature, clumsy and foolish, advancing too fast for our own good. We ask questions purely because it gives us a drive to do something else, to find out something we didn't know before, however, it is all too often that we find the answers we receive, are not the ones we wanted in the first place.