Hello there, sorry for the MAJOR delay in getting this chapter up; I'm in the north-east corridor of the US that got hit by that giant snowstorm a week ago. Power and internet have been hard to come by and a lot of places are just now getting juice back; as it is, my campus still looks like a tornado hit it.

Anywho, Here is the next chapter and, I promise, that 15 will be up on , as a special treat, it's over double the length of my usual chapters.

Thank you to my usual reviews, this one it for you!

Chapter 14 Misfires
In which lines blur to near-invisibility and Wingnut makes his entrance.

The sedatives were wearing off, thinning in places like threadbare cloth so sparse she could practically see reality through the holes. But the glimpses she was seeing weren't part of SG-1's reality; she could tell because they were part of her original one.

It was Jump City, the skyline as could only be seen from the Tower, and the teen took the chance to freak out at the realization, trying very very hard not to scream. She leaped to her feet, whipping her head back and forth, missing the familiar swish of her chest-length hair, and ran to the mirror.

A short, pale, indigo-haired boy looked back with wide green eyes.

Rodger?

The door behind her lid open and she spun to face an equally pale though much taller boy with equally green eyes, a mop of emerald hair sculpted into…something atop his head, adding several inches to his height.

"Everything alright in here, bro?" Steven asked, arching a brow. "I thought I heard a crash…"

"E-everything's fine, Steve. I just fell while meditating…" Victoria responded quickly, startled to hear her little brother's voice form the words.

Her twin gave her a long, hard stare before dropping it. "Alright, Dodge. I'll let you get back to it, then." He smirked. "I know how cranky you get when you don't meditate long enough…"

The second their brother was gone, the changeling turned back to the bureau, ignoring the looking glass and instead riffling through the drawers in search of her baby brother's meditation mirror. She soon found the object and went to the bed, sitting down on it in case things got messy.

Once settled, Victoria placed her brother's palm on the glass and chanted the well-known mantra.

"Avarath, Metrion, Zinthos."

She felt her spirit leave the foreign body and she flew into the mirror, intent on finding answers.

"Ooook, this is not what I had planned…" Rodger said, looking around the vast space. He wasn't really sure where he was, just that this was not where he had intended on being. Actually, he really didn't know where he had intended on being, but this void-thing definitely wasn't it.

He was looking for his sister, and after his mom had failed in bringing her back he had gone through all the spell books he could get his hands on. Several tomes in he had found this particular spell and, while it was written in a messy Celtic dialect, he had gotten enough to know the basics of it.

Or so he had thought.

Looking around at the utterly empty landscape, he had a feeling that he probably should have asked Rachel for help translating.

Something moved behind him and he spun to face its source, surprised to see a familiar black vortex opening in the air.

"Mom?" he called, not sure if he wanted it to be his mother; the last time she caught him trying out a spell without supervision he had been grounded for a month. The teen was understandably relieved when it was his oldest sister who came through.

"Ella!" Rodger cried, launching himself at the green sorceress the second she landed.

"Wingnut, what are you doing here?" she snapped, worry colouring her tone as she caught him in a tight hug.

"Where have you been? Everyone's been worried sick, especially Mom and Dad. They haven't left the island since you left and none of the grown-ups will tell us what happened," he replied, pulling back from his sister's embrace.

"That doesn't answer my question, Rodger," she responded crisply and he shied at the use of his first name; Victoria rarely used his first name, save for when she was mad at him.

"I was trying to do a tracer spell on our link," the thirteen-year-old muttered and his sister bit back a curse.

"A tracer spell? By yourself? You could have gotten into serious trouble, what were you thinking?"

"But I got it to work! We're in your mind, aren't we?" Victoria groaned, rubbing a temple to ward off the oncoming headache; the munchkin had a point.

"Yes, we are in my mind, but you didn't compensate for the force of my magic when you cast the spell; instead of just finding me, you switched our bodies. The only reason I was able to find you is because I went through your meditation mirror."

The boy paled as the ramifications of his actions sunk in and the changeling's heart softened as guilt set in.

"I'm sorry for snapping, Wingnut, I was just a little freaked out." She pulled him into a hug, ruffling his slightly darker hair. "I didn't expect to suddenly wake up in your room with Steven breaking down the door."

"You never answered my question, Elle…" he said as he tried to extract himself; his sister raised a brow in confusion. "Where have you been for the past few weeks? Mom and Dad haven't been talking to anyone and the uncles have been spending every spare minute in the computer lab with a bunch of broken pieces of something."

"Well…um… you remember how Uncle Dick finally got Mom to let me on a mission?" The boy nodded. "I got shot with some sort of ray-gun and got sent to a different reality."

"You mean like Larry's from?" The girl snickered at the thought of the hyperactive doppelganger and how SG-1 would react had he ended up with them.

"Sorta; you see, there are an infinite number of alternate realities, each stemming from decisions people make. Supposedly." God, she was starting to sound like Sam… Wait a sec… "Did you say a few weeks, Wingnut?"

The bluenet nodded. "Yeah, it's been, like, six weeks since you didn't come back. I was worried…"

Victoria gathered her brother in another hug, trying to process this new bit of information; time didn't flow at the same rate in different universes, a fact that actually made some sense if all things were relative.

"So did Mom manage to find you three days ago or was she trying to suck someone else out of their…dimension?"

"No, Mom found me," she replied, mouth twisting. "She mixed a tracer and a possessor together and was apparently trying to puppet me back. Someone on my side just managed to shake me out of it before she could finish Arella's spell."

Rodger's eyes widened to saucers. "She was using Arella's spell? How?"

"She probably had everything set up here and was channeling the magic through a few other people to boot. Did Steve help her?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah, but he wasn't happy about it."

"Surprise, surprise," the changeling muttered, rolling her eyes; she had never gotten along with her twin and he was probably the least effected by her absence.

"Hey Ella?" She snapped out of her thoughts and turned to her sibling.

"Yeah?"

"Are you ever going to come home?"

His entrancing green eyes caught her own violet ones and she was astounded at her brother's perceptiveness; he hadn't asked if she would be able to get home and had subtly left it as a choice that was within her power. Then again, he was a much stronger empath than either her or their mother, so his tuning into to her moods probably shouldn't have come as a surprise.

"I…I really don't know, Wingnut…" Had someone asked her the day before, she would have said hell no, but here and now, looking into her closest sibling's eyes, it was a suddenly a much harder choice. "The people who found me there… they've taken me in. Made me part of their family…"

"They trust you." The simplicity of his words stung her, but it was true; a large part of it boiled down to the fact that SG-1 trusted her in a way that no-one but the boy in front of her ever had.

"Yeah… Yeah, they do."

Rodger turned away and she could hear a faint sniffling that made her want to cry herself.

"Oh, Wingnut…. Come here…" Again, she wrapped her arms around her baby brother, wanting desperately to shield him from her own selfishness.

"I-I don't blame you, Ella…really I don't…" He sniffed loudly, dragging a forearm across his nose. "If I were in your place, I'd probably want to stay, too…"

"Thank you for that, Wing…" She buried her face in his thick midnight hair, trying to hold back her own tears; she was the big sister, damnit, she was supposed to be the strong one.

They stayed like that for a long while until their eyes had dried somewhat and the green teen turned her brother to face her.

"Tell you what, Wingnut; since you already strengthened our bond to the point where we can have this conversation, I'll add some to it so you can call if you ever need me."

His luminous green eyes grew to the size of dinner plates at her offer. "Really?"

She smiled."I wouldn't offer if I wasn't willing to do it."

"Thank you, Ella." Again, the thirteen-year-old jumped on her, hugging her tightly.

"Now, you have to do exactly what I say or this could turn out very badly. Got it?"

Rodger nodded and the two sat, legs folded and knees touching as the sorceress began issuing instructions. "Stop me if this is familiar, but first you have to clear your mind…"

"This feels really weird," Wingnut said when they were finally done with the spell.

Victoria grinned at his bluntness, wiping sweat off her brow as she took deep steadying breaths; strengthening such a weak bond to the point of easy communication took a lot of juice, and because her raw magic was stronger than her brother's, she had offered the lion's share, taking the brunt of the drainage.

"Well, now you should be able to reach me whenever you want, you'll just have to meditate." He shot her a quizzical look and she answered the unasked question. "I didn't strengthen it to the point of unconscious communication because then we'd have a hard time keeping each other out of our heads."

The boy's mouth formed an 'o' as the logic settled on him and he nodded his agreement.

"Hey, V?"

"Yeah?"

"How come I didn't end up in control of your body like you did in mine?"

"Hmm…." The girl scratched her head, thinking; the most probable reason was the fact that she was in a drug-induced state of unconsciousness, but she really wasn't about to tell her baby brother that. "I was meditating and am probably in a deeper state than you're used to…"

Rodger gave her a scrutinizing look, sensing the split-second of unease, but accepted the answer.

"We should probably get going soon; I can't tell how long it's been and there are people who'll be missing us…" Victoria said, really disliking her role as responsible older sibling.

"Before we go…" her brother muttered, kicking the non-existent ground. "Could you…sing for me?"

The sorceress smiled at his uncharacteristic bashfulness. "Sure thing, Wingnut. Any requests?"

A soft melody filled the emptiness and the girl's smile turned sad; she might have known that this would be his choice…

She waited for the music to begin again and came in, her soft voice slightly off pitch from months without real practice.

"It started out as a feeling; Which then grew into a hope; Which then turned into a quiet thought; Which then turned into a quiet word. And then that word grew louder and louder, 'til it was a battle cry; I'll come back, when you call me, no need to say good-bye…"

Coming in two days:

Chapter 15 Conversations

In which startling things are learned, new facts come to light, and the title should be self-evident.

PS. And, just a note, the song at the end is The Call by Regina Spektor. I don't own that in anything other than CD.