A/N: So here's a new chapter. Sorry things have been so slow in coming. This last part is driving me up the hall. I don't know if it's because I don't have enough of it framed, or because I have too firm an idea to let me shape it the way I need to for it to work. I know- the two are mutually exclusive, but hey... I don't dictate how the muse works.
But I got another (very) rough draft of a chapter done today, so I'm posting this nice long one. You may like this, you might not. Let me know either way! It feeds the creativity!
Enjoy!
When Janet came in from the kitchen, she was surprised to see Daniel in the living room instead of Cam. But the man's apparent ease and the closed bedroom door was clue enough that all was well with her patient. With all of her patients.
And now she was presented with the perfect opportunity to approach Daniel about the questions still simmering in her mind, just itching to be answered. But she kept her stride measured and even as she crossed to sit next to where Daniel sat on the sofa, his pant leg rolled up as he adjusted his prosthesis. He tried not to react to her proximity, but Janet could see his frame tense as she settled on cushion next to him.
"She's not really Sam, is she?"
The question took the man off guard, but not nearly so much as she would expect from a man free of deception. And in that moment her suspicions about Sam were confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt. But instead of betrayal and horror she felt only confusion.
Why the charade? Why keep the truth from her? She'd sought them out, not the other way around. She'd clearly been ready to sacrifice what she had to save their friend. She waited for an explanation.
Daniel sighed. "She is Samantha Carter. She's just… not the Samantha Carter you know."
"What does that mean?"
For a long moment, Daniel hesitated. She saw him gathering his thoughts—whether to tell her the truth, or to spin a lie, she wasn't sure. "It's a long story…"
"We've got time." She was on the verge of finally getting some answers, and she wasn't backing down. Not this time.
It was a long moment before Daniel seemed to realize that no excuse was going to come riding to his rescue. Cam and Samantha remained quiet behind their closed door, and there was no phone to start ringing, no visitors to ring the doorbell. He was stuck and they both knew it. Janet was counting on it.
"She's Sam Carter, but she's not the Mission Commander."
Frustration bubbled up in Janet's gut, but she refused to let it show. "But she has her same smile, the same tics… That's not something you can fake."
Daniel's lips pressed into a thin line. "Janet… I—I don't know how much I can tell you. We don't belong here, none of us. This isn't our world, and we're trying to go home, but we can't."
"Why not?" She didn't know what he meant.
"Because it puts everything you know at risk. Everything everyone knows. In order for us to go home, all this will disappear."
Janet blinked. "Are you terrorists? Is that why Sam was incarcerated?"
"No. Yes." Daniel tried to backtrack. "Look, it's confusing, and there's really no way for me to explain without you thinking we're crazy—"
"Oh, I'm halfway there already," she delivered smoothly. She was trying to withhold judgement, but Daniel wasn't giving her much of a choice. He was spewing gibberish, and she knew he damn well knew it.
He sighed. "Look—"
"Daniel, I've never seen you before in my life, and yet you look at me like we were best friends. And Sam tells me over and over that I don't know her, that she doesn't know me—"
"It's true. All of it."
"Then you tell me how she knows my name, and how she recognized me as soon as I recognized her. She is my friend."
"Yes, she is. But she's not the friend who you've known all these years. She's different…"
"Because of the shuttle crash? I saw the scars on her forehead—"
"Not because of the shuttle crash. She was never on that shuttle, Janet," Daniel uttered carefully. "And Mission Commander Carter didn't survive the crash. She died. Her body was never recovered."
Tears burned at Janet's eyes. She still didn't understand, not completely, but something clicked. Her suspicion was confirmed, even if her mind couldn't wrap itself around the particulars. Her friend was dead. That woman in that bedroom was someone different. Not the right Sam.
"Then why was she locked up?" Janet asked, working past the lump growing in her throat.
"She's a threat. The guys in DC were afraid what would happen if the world believed Commander Carter was alive. And they were afraid what she might do, to go home."
"And where exactly is home for you three?" She was partially afraid of what his answer would be. Part of her expected to tell her they were trying to return to their spaceship and fly away home to Mars.
"Aw, well… I guess you could say… Crap." A hand rubbed over his eyes, his head tilting back as he gathered his wits. "What do you know about alternate universes?"
Janet's brow arched. "Not much." Besides that it was largely theoretical and rarely taken seriously in polite company.
"The theory is that there are many different versions of reality; like a stack of books with the same characters, but each one marked by different decisions, and the events triggered by those decisions. Some are very similar, but others are vastly diverse."
"So… you think you're from one of these… books?"
Daniel hedged slightly, his lips pulling into a grimace. "Not exactly," he returned finally. "More like, someone took our book—mine, Sam's and Cam's—and erased the last fifty pages. They changed a specific point in our story, and then rewrote the book from there."
Janet processed that for a long moment. . "You're talking about time travel. You're saying someone changed the past."
"Yes!" Daniel chirped excitedly. "Yes, exactly!"
But she shook her head, trying to dispel the growing shroud of insanity. "And yet, you didn't get erased with everything else."
Another moment of hesitation from Daniel. If he was going to feed her a line of bull, he might as well have the decency to be forthcoming about it. But before she could tell him so, he continued.
"We had jumped out of the book momentarily, at the instant everything reset. When we jumped back into it, it wasn't the same story. It wasn't the same story. Sam's dead, Cam was never born, and…"
"And you?"
A wry grin split his lips. "Well, your Daniel Jackson is where I used to be, before I was recruited by the Air Force. That part wasn't really surprising. But you—"
He cut himself off abruptly, but Janet caught onto it immediately. Like a dog with a bone, she refused to let it go. "You knew me in this other timeline, didn't you? That's why you looked at me like that when we first met." Or rather, when she first met him. He'd already known her. God, it was making her head hurt. "You and Sam both looked at me like I was a—"
Like she was a ghost. The same way she had looked at Sam, that day in the facility. Dear God.
"You died almost five years ago," Daniel supplied softly, reading the path her mind had taken. "In combat. You refused to leave a wounded airman, and you were caught in the crossfire."
Janet's throat closed in an instant, the growing lump threatening to strangle her. It was suddenly very real. However crazy, however outlandish, the grief in Daniel's eyes was honest. So incredibly heartfelt that she could no longer dismiss his story as a mere fantasy.
"Oh my god…"
"You saved that man's life that day, Janet. You sent him home to his pregnant wife, and that little girl has her father still. Because of you." He was trying to reass1ure her, but she couldn't swallow it. "They named her Janet."
Janet felt tears burning at the edges of her eyes. But she couldn't afford to lose it. Not yet. Not here. Not with Sam in the next room. Not-Sam.
"Tell me something else," she pleaded, her voice edging into desperation. "Something happy about me—about her, in your world. Not death. Not—not that."
Daniel's eyes widened, then warmed with sudden inspiration. His features softened, and the tension bled from him as he reached out and covered her hand with his. "The first year we met, we rescued a little girl named Cassandra from a poisoned village. She lost her family, her home… everything." His gaze locked on Janet's holding her captive. "You took her in. You adopted her. Raised her. Loved her. And she loves you."
Sobs locked in her chest, freezing her lungs and riveting her to the spot. For a long moment, the world went silent around her, and a roaring in her ears was all she could comprehend. But then the weight of Daniel's earnest truth slammed into her with the force of an avalanche, and Janet could barely find her feet in the tumultuous waves that threatened to swallow her whole.
Daniel moved to help her, but she waved him back, finding steady ground a few feet from her previous perch on the sofa. She pulled in one lungful of air, and then another. "I need to go outside," she managed, after a conscious effort to keep her stomach from crawling up her esophagus.
"I need some air."
His response was a nod, and a concerned word of warning to stay close. Like she needed it.
She barely made it to the end of the short little pier at the edge of the lake before she shakily lowered herself to the rough wooden planks. The forest that had once been vibrant with life and warm with security was now pale, stark in the light of her new knowledge. But still she gazed at its reflection in the pond, still and smooth as glass.
If she dropped a stone into it, she knew it would shatter as her own world had done.
