Again, thank you to my wonderful beta, beautiful-babee, for catching all my horrible mistakes, and for sticking with me no matter how terrible a client I am. :)
We're coming up on the last few chapters -- enjoy!
R2's Carter
If Carter had been thinking – really thinking – when she'd passed out, she might have had some doubts as to whether or not she'd wake up again. There was the fact that she was losing blood, that they were being hunted by things that were attracted to the scent of that blood, and that she was now a hundred and forty-some pound burden for Colonel O'Neill to manage, while avoiding said hunters. But, as it were, she hadn't really been thinking.
Well, except about lead jello, and what the colonel himself might taste like.
But that wasn't really thinking.
When her eyes did open, to the sight of a concrete ceiling and fluorescent lights, though, she felt a small wash of relief. She then felt the sting of too much brightness, and shut her eyes again, cringing away. She was in the infirmary; her brief venture into the world had given her enough information for that. Her left ankle ached dully, and as she took a moment to explore the reason, she came up with flashes of startling memories. Drowning, pain, teeth, Colonel O'Neill's fingers slipping through her own…
Her eyes shot open and she flinched at the lights, squinting and feeling reflexive tears prickle behind her eyelids. Somewhere nearby, a heart monitor beeped a little faster.
Turning her head sideways to let herself adjust to the light, she pressed a hand, complete with a catheter, to her forehead. The heart monitor, just a few feet away, was hooked up to her, and the heart beat that had accelerated was hers. The electrodes on her chest, now that she'd noticed them, itched slightly. The hand on her forehead moved down, drifting over the small bumps of the connectors beneath her whitish hospital gown, before settling by her side again.
The curtain parted and emitted Janet Fraiser, probably drawn by the beeping of her increased pulse. The doctor smiled at her, clipboard in hand.
"Hey," she said. "Good to see you awake."
Sam smiled back, struggling to sit up. Her ankle protested violently at the movement and she winced, settling back down against the pillow.
"Careful," warned Janet.
"How long was I out?" Sam asked, hand lifting to push back a piece of hair that had fallen over her eye.
"Just under two hours," the doctor informed her.
Carter's eyebrows rose. "That's all? The people we found had been out for—" She broke off, more important thoughts intruding. "Did they make it back? Are they okay?" She looked around uselessly at her room, curtained off from the rest of the infirmary. "Where's Colonel O'Neill? And what about the other team?"
"Whoa," Janet said kindly, holding up a hand. "Easy. Tell you what, I'll get the colonel for you, and, if you're feeling up to walking a bit, you can see for yourself."
"Wha—Janet!" Sam called after her as she slipped back out of the room. "Wait! That's not an answer…"
The sudden appearance of Colonel O'Neill's head poking around the curtain cut off any other protests she might have had. Seeing her half-sitting up in the bed, he entered the rest of the way. "Hi," he said, giving a small, rather awkward wave.
"Hi, sir," she said. "What happened?"
He eased himself down onto the bed by her knees, the motion looking like it hurt. She felt her brows draw together. Was that her fault? She knew he had a bad back. Had having to carry her all that way made it worse? Her fretting was interrupted when he started talking.
"You passed out," he began. "Venom in the bite, I guess. I picked you up—had to drop your pack, though. Hope you didn't have anything special in it." She shook her head. "Good. Anyway. The others had continued on ahead after you fell into the pond. They had to get going back. The things were all around us…"
Listening to the story of what had happened after she'd fainted only made her feel frustrated at her own uselessness. Dawson, the sole uninjured person in the group that had gone ahead, had had to half-drag Carey and watch out for Higgs, who was unarmed, all the way through a dark, hostile jungle, to an invisible rift. Just after crossing, Jack had caught up to them, despite having to carry Carter. Higgs had taken Dawson's gun, probably more effective with both his hands free, and Jack still had his, despite being occupied with Carter. It left them with one and a half guards against a world-full of predators. Someone had had the idea to use more flares, and Dawson had held one of those in the hand that wasn't keeping Carey upright.
The flare had helped, and they'd been fine until the three they had had burned out. Then, nearly to the Gate again, they'd met with a creature on the path. It had gone straight for Dawson and Carey, but Higgs had managed to get in a few good shots and it had stumbled, narrowly missing knocking them both into the mud. Then, leaving the dying thing behind without a second thought, they'd continued, and had met shortly later with another, just after stepping into the clearing to the Gate. It had gotten its teeth into Higgs' shoulder, sending the major to the ground.
"I was the only one with a gun," Jack said, looking a little guilty. "I uh… I dropped you." Carter's brows shot up. So that was why her back was aching a bit… "Gently, mind. As gently as I could, anyway. I needed to have my hands free." He eyed her, as if looking for either forgiveness or a reprimand.
"It's okay, sir," she said, laughing a bit. The image, she had to admit, was sort of amusing. Or maybe it was just the way he'd presented it, with that sheepish look.
"The ground was soft, in any case," the colonel added, shifting a little closer to her on the bed. "I managed the get the thing in the face. It let go of Higgs and he dialled out while I went back for you. Then, finally, we got here."
"I can't believe you all made it back," she said, impressed. "Is Carey alright? And Higgs? And you, sir? You look a little… sore."
He shrugged. "Just put the ol' back out a little, pulling you up out of the pond. Nothing to worry about. Higgs'll be fine – his bite isn't much worse than yours. Carey… well, they're working on her now. It doesn't look like she'll keep the arm."
Carter winced. "Poor girl," she murmured. The colonel nodded, and they sat in silence for a moment. Remembering the other team, she opened her mouth to ask after them, but was interrupted by the intercom.
"Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter, please report to the infirmary. Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter to the infirmary."
"That would be the other us, I suppose," said Jack.
It was a few minutes before they heard their own voices outside. "Don't think I'll ever get used to that," the colonel muttered.
Sam smiled. "It takes a while, sir," she said.
The curtains parted, revealing Dr. Fraiser, accompanied by the copies.
"Nope," said Jack. "Never gonna get used to it.
"As you can see," said Fraiser to the doubles, ignoring Sam's colonel, "They're doing well. Major Carter has a bite on her ankle, but it should be fully healed within a few weeks."
"A few weeks," Sam echoed.
"Fully healed," said Janet, now addressing her. "You'll be able to walk comfortably on it before that, but I wouldn't recommend anything strenuous." She turned back to the doubles. "If you'll follow me, Daniel's awake."
"They found him," Carter commented as the visitors left again, happy for her counterpart.
The colonel nodded. "He looks okay, too."
"Good," said Sam. "I don't know what I'd do if we lost Daniel."
The colonel shook his head. "Me neither. Nothing good, I bet."
The debriefing was to be about six hours later. Carter spent her time sleeping, eating, and trying to remember how to walk on crutches. The colonel, likewise, spent his time sleeping, eating, and teasing her as she tried to remember how to walk on crutches. Higgs spent his time fast asleep, Dawson was off somewhere, probably working on his report, and Carey spent most of her time in surgery, unconscious. The doubles had stayed for a while, talking with their Daniel, and then disappeared. Daniel, Younge, Cullins, and Jenson had dropped in to see how everyone was doing and drifted about for varying lengths of time, then left again.
The debriefing, when they finally returned to it, began with their various misadventures trying to recover their teammates. Carter and her double diverged for a few moments, discussing the echoes they seemed to have made of each other in their separate realities, both falling into the pond, both being bitten on the same leg, and so on. One of the colonels spoke up, a little dryly. "So it's like that movie," he said. "You know, with that actress?" Receiving only blank stares, he tried again. "You know, like the butterfly effect. Only with monsters. The dragonfly effect?" He considered. "Has a ring to it."
Higgs snickered quietly, and the Carters refrained from commenting.
After being called back to task by General Hammond, they moved on, and on, and on. It felt like hours, just rehashing the details of the past—forty-eight hours? Was it really only forty-eight hours? And that included the time they'd spent in the SGC. It had felt like days…
By the time the debriefing finished, fifty hours had passed since the initial incident. They dispersed tiredly, stiff from sitting for so long and sore from the punishment they'd been subjected to back on the planet. Carey was the only one to have made it back who wasn't at the briefing. The rest of them were granted guest quarters for the remaining two days of their stay, and they retired gladly.
Ideas had begun to brew in Carter's mind during the briefing, and she was looking forward to having a chance to work them out in more detail. The rift had remained stable for this long already, both with and without the Gate active. When the radio station's batteries ran out and it stopped transmitting, would the rift close? That was what she wanted to have a look at.
Sitting down at her desk, she opened the laptop the base had loaned her, and was just getting past the boot-up screen when a knock sounded at her door. Sighing and wondering if she was ever going to get any work done, she called for whoever it was to come in.
"Uh," said her own voice, "Hi."
She turned in the chair, not particularly wanting to stand. "Hi," she returned.
"I was… thinking," the double said slowly, "about the rift. It stayed stable – in the same place, in the same shape – for at least five hours. We activated the Gate several times during that, and it didn't seem to have any effect. I was wondering whether or not it's become freestanding, or if it's relying on the radio signal somehow."
Sam smiled a bit. "I was just thinking about the same thing," she said. "I was going to try to work some models, see if I could come up with an answer."
"Oh," said her copy. "Well, I can go if you'd rather work alone. But I've got my laptop. We could see what we could come up with together." She grinned.
"Two heads are better than one," they quipped at the same time, then flinched, identical.
"I hate it when that happens," Sam groaned. "God, remember Samantha? That was awful."
The copy laughed. "No kidding. Do you have any idea how many times Colonel O'Neill's made some kind of joke about it?"
"Yep," Sam said, wishing she didn't.
"Obviously," the double said, shaking her head a bit. "I keep forgetting we only diverged a few hours ago. Did we agree it was the pond thing?"
"Well," Sam said carefully, "You knew the gun was from Belgium. I had to guess. From that, we might've diverged a long time before, but stayed similar."
"Remarkably similar," the copy agreed. "What do you think the odds of that are?"
Sam shrugged. "Very low."
Her double nodded. "Very low. But I don't see what else it could be."
"Does it really matter?" asked Sam. "I mean, we did diverge at some point. It doesn't make much difference to the rift it we diverged a long time ago, does it?"
"I doubt it," the double said. "So, back to the initial topic? Let's get these computers set up."
They linked the two of them and opened the simulation software on the double's, saving their progress to both. Inputting parameters, however, turned out to be not as simple as they'd hoped.
"It's unpredictable," the copy pointed out, frustrated. "How are we supposed to predict it, if its very nature is unpredictable?"
"We don't know enough about it to work around that, either," Carter sighed, leaning on one hand and typing with the other. "We have the radio signal strength, but we don't know how much was actually being used by the Gate."
"We could calculate how much was being absorbed by the Gate, though," her twin said, sitting up a little straighter and hitting a few numbers. She paused, halfway through the first calculation. "No. It might have absorbed it, but some of the energy could've just been runoff into the ground instead of being used by the activator crystal." She slumped onto the desk. "It's useless. This doesn't tell us anything."
Sam found herself mirroring the posture. "I wish we could've gotten some readings somehow. Was it emitting energy? I didn't notice anything that behaved like an event horizon…" She sighed. "I hope we can get a good look when we go back."
The double nodded tiredly. "I hope it's still there when we go back," she murmured.
Carter considered for a moment. If it wasn't there, she and the rest of her group were in serious trouble. They would have to find a way to reopen it, or they would be stuck here. Within a week or two, they would be torn apart by matter displacement, a fate she did not look forward to experiencing.
She sighed again. Either the rift would be there, or it wouldn't. They couldn't change the outcome of that. They could only deal with the aftermath.
For a long moment, the two of them sat in silence, staring dully at their twin screens.
"Don't you have other work to do?" Sam asked, chin pressing into her arm as she spoke.
Her double's eyes looked over at her. "Not really," she said. "Normally after a mission, I go home for the night. Hammond's requested that we all stay on base until this is over, but there isn't much any of us have to do, in terms of work." She glanced back at the computer. "Would you prefer that I left? We're not really accomplishing much."
Sam considered for a beat. "No, that's alright. Unless you want to go."
"No," said the copy. "It's kind of… nice, sitting here with you. With myself." She frowned slightly. "Weird, but nice."
Sam laughed. "Yeah," she agreed.
There was another moment's silence, and then, "You know, the mirroring effect we noticed is interesting. Between our separate realities? Wonder what would have caused it."
"Maybe just coincidence," Sam shrugged.
"Maybe," said the double, apparently not as willing to let it go. "But…" She hesitated, sitting up again. Still slouched on the desk, Sam looked over at her. "Look, can I ask you something? It's a little… well, personal, but you are me."
"Sure," said Sam, a bit warily, sitting up as well. "What?"
The double hesitated again, seeming to consider how to begin. "After Daniel… When Daniel was taken, we had just gotten to the radio station."
"I know," said Carter. "You mentioned it in the debriefing."
"I didn't mention this," the double said, shaking her head. "I tried to go after him. I couldn't just let him die like that. Colonel O'Neill pulled me back – there was another creature heading for us. He locked us inside the station. I tried to get out again. I don't know, I wasn't thinking, I guess. I just couldn't sit there while Daniel was taken away."
Sam nodded. "I understand," she said. She'd probably have done the same thing.
"The colonel and I…" the double continued slowly. She was staring at her hands, folded on the table. "We were yelling at each other. I said I didn't care, that I'd go alone… He pushed me against the wall, shouting in my face that I had a job to do. He was right, obviously. I wasn't in my right mind…" She shook her head again. "I finally got a hold of myself and stopped fighting him. I cried. He… hugged me, I guess. I don't really remember. I think he might've cried too. Then he… he kissed me."
Sam felt her mouth fall open. "He what?" She couldn't have heard that right. The colonel would never—it went against all the rules they'd tried to keep between them—
"He kissed me," the double said again, pinking a bit.
Still shocked, Carter blinked and worked at formulating a rational question. "Did you…" she tried, "Did you kiss him back?"
Turning a darker pink, her twin nodded. "And then we…" She hid her face in her hands. "Oh my god… I can't believe we—"
Sam gaped. "You had sex with him?" she echoed, incredulous.
Mortified, the copy nodded. "Against the wall," she whispered, face still hidden beneath her hands.
"No wonder you didn't mention that at the debriefing…" Sam muttered. Holy Hannah. She had had sex with Colonel O'Neill? And against a wall, no less. "For crying out loud…"
The double almost flinched at the familiar expression. "I don't think… I don't think either of us really meant it. You know? I think we just needed something to distract us from the fact that we'd just lost Daniel, and—"
Knowing that was exactly the kind of thing she'd try to think, had she done the same thing, Carter didn't entirely buy it. "If Colonel O'Neill had died instead," she commented, "you wouldn't have had sex with Daniel, would you?"
Mutely, the copy shook her head. "But it isn't like we're suddenly… together, now," she said. "It's still in the room." How it could still be in the room after something like that, Sam didn't know. "Look," the double said, dropping her hands and looking over at her. "I just wanted to ask if something… similar had happened in your reality. But from your reaction, I'm guessing not."
Carter shook her head. "No," she said firmly. "Definitely not."
Her counterpart sighed slightly. "I should really get going," she said, standing. "I uh… I have work to do."
Ignoring the fact that she'd said she didn't have work to do just a few minutes before, Sam let her go. She turned back by the door. "You won't say anything, will you?" she asked, looking a bit worried.
"Of course not," Sam assured her. She couldn't. It would be like betraying herself.
The double nodded and reached for the doorknob. "Hey," said Sam, feeling a small grin creep across her face. "Wait. Was it good, at least?"
Her counterpart ducked her head, a mirrored grin spreading on her lips. "It was amazing," she admitted, then slipped around the opening door and was gone.
Sam stared after her. So, she'd gotten half an answer to one of her brink-of-unconscious quandaries. Now, all she had to figure out was what lead jello would taste like, because Colonel O'Neill tasted like amazing.
Though, she figured, maybe she should try to confirm that, because she could probably go without trying the jello.