Chapter 29: Continuum
"Tempting as it is, I'll be doing paperwork the whole time you're gone. Besides, one general looking over your shoulders is plenty." Landry commented with amusement.
"Yes, speaking of Jack..." Daniel began, pointing to the General's conspicuous absence from the boarding room.
"He went ahead with SG-3 to officially hand over the prisoner."
"Well, I guess he knows who we're dealing with." Samantha wasn't surprised to find Jack gone escorting Ba'al. It was the first time since her return from Atlantis that they had both been on an extra-planetary mission, leaving Grace alone in Cassandra's care. They hadn't been in the field together since the SGC's little extra-planetary party. She smiled. It was like old times... she was struggling to find her feet on Earth and within SG1. Exploratory missions seemed... more boring than life on Atlantis. Still, witnessing the extraction of Ba'al, seeing the last great master defeated... That was why she had joined SG1 and after more than eleven years, the Goa'uld would be defeated.
"Such precautions are unnecessary. Half of the free Jaffa fleet stands guard over the Tok'ra homeworld to ensure that the execution of Ba'al takes place as planned." Teal'c assured them. But the Jaffa warrior was aware that Jack and Ba'al had quite a record to keep.
TOK'RA'S WORLD - EXTRACTION ROOM
In the spacious hall, a large group of hooded Tok'ra were chanting in their language. Others carried weapons, standing still and silent, making sure the ceremony went smoothly. In a stasis chamber in one wall of the room was Ba'al, held in stasis. On the opposite side of the room was SG-1 and General O'Neill. They all looked tired or bored, the ceremony seemed endless, they had been up for hours. Next to Samantha, Jack yawned widely, showing his boredom and annoyance.
"Never in the history of boredom has anyone been more bored than I am right now." She smiled, amused at his childish attitude. If he could be so patient with Grace, putting up with hours and hours of the same game, never getting tired of it... Jack O'Neill's patience with the Tok'ra was still weak.
"Come on, sir, it's only been..." She glanced at her watch. "Whoa."
"It's almost over." Daniel informed them. Everyone turned to him, questioning. How the hell would he know ? "The crimes they're listing are starting to sound familiar."
"Crimes? That's what they've been crooning about for the last three hours?"
(...)
"I have nothing to say to the Tok'ra. SG-1 and General Jack O'Neill. Well, well." Jack couldn't help but resume the verbal jousting he had become accustomed to with Ba'al.
"How's tricks, B?" The sobriquet was delightfully chosen.
"I've been better, I'm afraid. And you ?" Worried falsely the Goa'uld
"Not so bad, actually. Quite good." Indeed, his wife was back on Earth. His daughter was growing up so fast that soon she would tell him he was going to be a grandfather. Everything was going well in Jack O'Neill's life, and his jovial air screamed it loud and clear.
"How nice for you." Ba'al laughed, his gaze shifting from Jack to Sam. Jack frowned, slightly menacing.
"How about those last words?" He didn't want Ba'al to investigate further.
"As you wish. Teal'c... I will always regret that you never became my First Prime. And uh, where is my dear Qetesh?"
"Well, Vala was here." Daniel looked worried, perhaps the Tok'ra ritual had brought back too many painful memories in his friend.
"Huh. Interesting." Ba'al sounded too pleased with himself to be honest, so Jack was quick to stop any sentimental thoughts in the Goa'uld's mind. Vala wouldn't help him.
"Oh, she's probably gone to the bathroom, for heaven's sake. I'm next in line, by the way. Can we get on with this?" Jack impatiently asked.
"There is one more thing. You've all made a terrible mistake." Ba'al told them.
"Yes, that is what they all say." Daniel remarked.
"There can be no doubt of your crimes. Teal'c added.
"What I mean to say is, I'm not the last of the Goa'uld System Lords, though I do admit I may be last of the clones. There were so many of us, it is difficult to be certain."
"Mitchell?"
"We tracked them all, sir. This one is the last one."
"You sure? That is, after all, why we've come, why we had to endure all that singing." Samantha gave him a half disapproving, half annoyed look. Why was he suddenly in Ba'al, questioning the work of SG1 ? While she was leading Atlantis Cameron had been an excellent leader for the team, Jack's lack of confidence hurt her.
"Get rid of the last bad guy, and then there's cake." Sam realized he was only half joking, that it wasn't Mitchell's skills he was questioning. Ba'al was a duplicitous, rotund Goa'uld. Jack wanted to make sure they were done with him.
"Carter?" Cameron turned to her, calling on his knowledge of the subject to the rescue.
"Well, as you know, in order to track his clones, Ba'al gave each of them a tracking device detectable from anywhere in the galaxy." She explained to her husband, once again. She remembered very well that breefing he had attended when SG1 had started to search for the clones. "Now he also placed one in himself, so we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a clone and the original.
"And because he was the original, he was the only one of us who possessed a tracking device that could be removed. So you see, the last of the Goa'uld System Lords, the last of my dear brothers, is still out there, and since, as of this moment he knows he's the last, he has very special plans for you."
""Plans", you say." Jack hoped that all the stories Ba'al was spouting with a certain aplomb were just bluster. A way to make sure he won one last time by trapping SG1.
"A recently completed failsafe device should an unfortunate circumstance such as my imminent death, arise. It was you who gave us the idea, actually. I suspect it has already been put into action." With that, Teal'c stepped forward until he was within a few feet of Ba'al, challenging the Goa'uld with his eyes.
"He lies." Jack approached almost immediately, preventing any outburst from the Jaffa.
"He does that, you know." He commented, gently placing his hand on the Jaffa's forearm, a way to encourage him to calm down.
"We shall see." Ba'al taunted them.
"It's time." Announced a Tok'ra.
"This is gonna be cool." Cameron enthused.
(...)
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY PEOPLE !?" There was nothing she could do to stop him. As always, Jack had a reaction she could not have predicted. Rushing toward Ba'al as the extraction injector approached him. She could only watch helplessly. Jack grabbing Ba'al. Ba'al untying one of his arms, grabbing the injector and then stabbing it into Jack's heart.
"SIR !" She rushed forward as Cameron opened fire on Ba'al, ending the clone's life. "JACK!" She knelt beside him, trying to help him.
"Sam." She grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
"JACK !" Daniel had just fallen to his knees beside them, just as helpless as she
"Go to the gate." Jack ordered them in a cavernous voice
"Not without you." Replied Samantha unable to realize that it was too late for him.
"Go." He squeezed her hand one last time, Samantha's worst nightmare came true. Life deserted the sweet brown eyes that made her heart beat faster with every glance. Jack O'Neill had just died. She wanted to scream, to beg, to plead him to come back, but it was impossible. She remained motionless, frozen, trying to analyze the situation.
"All right, you heard the man. Let's go!" Cameron lifted Daniel up and saw that Samantha was still kneeling beside her husband. "Carter." He pulled her by her jacket, untying her from her husband's body, walking her towards the door. "We'll figure it out Sam, but please hurry!" Cameron shouted at her as he pulled her toward the Gate.
(...)
She was on autopilot when she exited the wormhole. Secure the area. Make sure no danger was waiting for them. She scanned the cargo bay with the light of her P90. Nothing to report. At ease. She lowered the barrel of her weapon. She heard Cameron and Daniel call out to each other, but her mind was aware of what had just happened before her eyes. Jack... Oh my God. Jack was dead. Her mind seemed to split as her heart broke in her chest. Jack! She screamed, her mind screaming inside her head. Jack was dead. She had seen him die. He died. Jack... There was nothing she could do... She had frozen. She should have anticipated that he would rush to Ba'al, that he would demand to know what was going on, but she hadn't... She gasped as the grief and anguish of losing him ravaged her. She was suffocating. Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest. She was alone... Jack was gone. It was impossible... Impossible...
"Carter, what's going on?" Cameron's voice came to her, as if muffled. He scanned the cargo hold with his lamp, checking on Sam. "Sam?" He had raised his voice when he saw her hyperventilating near the ice wall.
"I don't know." She replied, haggard as she realized that everything that had happened was real.
"Look, I know what happened back there, but we need you in the here and now. Wherever or whenever that is." He stood beside her, anchoring her in reality, away from her pain.
"Right. Right." She pulls a device from her vest and turns it on.
(...)
She was on autopilot, walking away from Daniel with Cameron. Jack, Vala, Teal'c and now Daniel. The pain plagued her stomach. She could only hold on to the idea that they could turn back in time. That everything would return to normal. That she had to hold on. For Jack. For Grace. For Daniel. For Teal'c. For Vala. This became her mantra to keep going. She repeated, over and over, their names in her mind.
(...)
"Hey! Which one of you is Mitchell?" Her heart missed a beat. That voice. It could only be him... Or was it a hallucination?
"That'd be me." She knew that voice. She would have recognized it in a thousand. Jack!
"Jack O'Neill, Special Forces." He introduced himself. Special Forces?
"My god..." She sighed, a smile warming her face for the first time in hours. "Oh! We thought you were dead." She whispered.
"Well, back at you, ma'am." Ma'am? She frowned.
"Do you recognize her?" Cameron asked, asking the question that Sam didn't dare to formulate.
"Sure do." Jack confirmed, quickening her heartbeat. She smiled at him. He knew who she was.
"Sir, we've got to go back for Daniel." Sam begged.
"What we have to do is get you people off this ice. Major Wood?"
"Yes, Sire! I marked the "X" and dropped the buoy. It should be along any minute, sir."
"Mitchell, I don't know what you're doing in the Arctic with a dead astronaut, but I am going to need some answers." An astronaut? He didn't know who she was... to him.
(...)
She tried to explain to him what had happened. She concluded her presentation with a cryptic phrase.
"...but this time we came through it from an alternate timeline, one where, amongst other things, I'm not an astronaut." Daniel and Cameron exchanged a knowing look. Understanding the implication in Sama,tha's sentence. It was unsettling to stand in front of the carbon copy of her husband ... who didn't know who she was to him.
"Yeah, that's pretty much how I had it figured." He said sarcastically.
"Actually, she's telling the truth." Intervenes Daniel.
"And who are you ?" He didn't recognize Daniel.
"Daniel Jackson. Um, in the timeline where we come from, we've actually traveled to several hundred planets together." Informed the archaeologist.
"We", as in you and..."
"Yeah, in fact, in our timeline, I'm the closest thing you have to a best friend."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'd buy that." He said sarcastically. Jack, obviously he wasn't buying any of their story.
"Okay, you're from Minnesota." Daniel began to prove to him that what he was saying was true. Samantha was grateful that he was the one who would state the worst aspects of Jack's life, because there was only one way to prove their story.
"Yeah."
"Eleven years ago, your son accidentally shot himself with a loaded 9 millimeter he found in your closet..." Samantha closed her eyes and lowered her face. Even during their marriage, Charlie was a topic that was rarely discussed. Grace's birth had made Jack's memories less painful. He often talked about his big brother to their daugther, a picture of Charlie was also in their Grace's room. Nevertheless, they had a non-negotiable rule in their home, no guns. And Grace had been raised with the idea that guns were dangerous and used only by trained people.
"All right. Stop it right there. My kid is fine. He's at home, and he's fine! What the hell's wrong with you?" She felt the pain... Between joy and despair. Joy that Jack had never lost Charlie, who was going to college... Despair that if Charlie was still alive, then Jack had never been left by Sarah... And Grace didn't exist. Her daughter had disappeared into the nothingness of time.
"Obviously, some things are different in this timeline, but what you have to understand is ... " She tried to argue.
"No, I don't! I don't have to understand anything! More importantly, I don't want to. As far as I'm concerned, you people are nothing but a pile of paperwork waiting to happen." He had raised his voice at her. He had raised his voice at her, something that had rarely happened in their entire history. He didn't know her, he treated her like a stranger. This Jack was not her husband.
"Jack, please..." Tried to defend her Daniel
"And stop that!" He looks at them all for a moment and then starts to leave.
"You should at least warn your superiors that this planet is in great danger." Sam threw him, playing the whole thing.
"I'll get right on that." He pulls the memory stick from the flat panel then steps out.
(...)
"Sam..." Cameron had approached the corner of the room she had retreated to after Jack had left.
"I need a minute, Cameron. One minute." She sighed. Her face riveted to her feet. Tears rolled down her cheeks in silence.
"Sam... We're going to get to..."
"Please Daniel... Just a minute." She replied, her voice broken. She was crying for her husband, her daughter and their lives. She needed a minute. Just one minute. Then she would think about what she could do. What they should say to convince the government to act. Then she would fight to get her life back. She would give anything to get back, including sacrificing what had meant so much to her just weeks before... Atlantis. She would give everything she had to have Grace and Jack there.
(...)
The hardest part was to sink into this meaningless routine. A year... A year without having any contact with her old life. A year without having any contact with Daniel or Cameron. It was as if everything she had known had never existed. They had given her glasses and she was instructed to go out wearing them as much as possible. Kind of like Superman. It was ridiculous. She felt terribly alone. She was only waiting for one thing... a sign of what was to come : the Goa'uld invasion. She could not work in any field with her area of expertise. So, she lived off the military's annuity and in secret, she worked on a plan... A plan to regain their reality. A plan to get their lives back. It was the only thing that kept her from going crazy. The only thing keeping her alive.
(...)
"We're receiving another encoded message with new flight instructions. Message reads. "The Russians have the other one. "
Hope again. Hope that she could save the Earth... This one or theirs, that was yet to be determined. But the hope remained to see her daughter and her husband again.
(...)
"Because we can offer you the freedom of your people. This is Ba'al's failsafe. It has to be. I think this whole place is his time machine." Samantha had been thinking about this problem for an entire year. She had envisioned what Ba'al's machine might be and how it worked. Now she could confirm her theory. This was the chance she had been waiting for. The hope that they would all get their lives back. Their last and only hope. She had to make it happen. There was no other way.
(...)
"I've found one, but you're not going to like it!" Samantha exclaimed as she fixed her choice on a particular rash.
"Why not?" Cameron asked while reloading his weapon.
"It'll send us back to 1929." She shouted to be heard over the noise of the transport rings.
"That's ten years too soon!"
"Well, it'll have to do, because I'm just about out of bullets ..."
That's when Daniel was hit by a Jaffa spear in the abdomen. The scene seemed to unfold in slow motion for Samantha as she watched Daniel fall over the edge of the platform. Samantha couldn't look away for a split second in shock. Then she went back to work, knowing that if she could do it, this would never happen. Daniel would be alive in their reality
"Once I dial the Stargate, we'll have less than twenty seconds to get through!" She shouted to Cameron and Teal'c. She initiated the dialing on the onboard console.
"Dial it up and get your ass down here!" Cameron ordered. More Jaffa had just arrived. One aimed and shot Carter in the back as she dialed the code. She was killed instantly.
"Carter !" Mitchell shouted as the gate activated. Sam... Sam was dead. "Teal'c!" He called, but he had to get through the door. He couldn't wait. Mitchell dropped his weapon and ran towards the wormhole. Before he could follow, Teal'c was hit by three shots and fell to the ground.
(...)
"Begin the extraction process." Vala frowned in disgust as the tip of the syringe entered Ba'al's brain.
"Behold! The last of the System Lords!" The Tok'ra announced before smashing the vial on the ground.
"I guess that was worth seeing."
"What? That's all you have to say?"
"Well, you guys made it out like it was this big deal. I expected something more spectacular."
"Nope. That's pretty much the extraction ceremony, right there." Jack commented, stoic. Provoking a beginning of smile in Sam who hastened to mask it, circumstance obliges. "Yup. So, lunch, anyone ? " Silence answered him, so he hurried to specify. "I'm buying..."
"I'm in." Cameron agreed.
"Actually, sir, I was hoping that we could go over the plans for the new moon base." Samantha started to follow him, walking beside him, a radiant smile on her lips, worthy of a child talking about her toys received at Christmas.
"What moon base?" They start to walk away.
COLORADO SPRINGS - CARTER-O'NEILL HOUSE - GARDEN
"Oh, come on Sam..." Mitchell teased her. "You can say it now." They were seated at the table in the couple's home. Jack had kept his promise and paid for lunch. They had picked up take-out and the team had gathered in the garden. Grace was playing on the grass with a puppy recently given to her by her father. She had named him Newton, much to her father's dismay.
"Say what?" Jack asked as he passed the the raw vegetable dish to his wife, who smiled fondly.
"The General told me about it!" Mitchell continued. Samantha immediately gave Jack a reproachful look.
"Don't look at me like that ! I didn't say anything." He took offense, raising his hands in front of him. "I'm still trying to make up for the dog." He chuckled to a stoic Teal'c.
"Colonel Mitchell was talking about General Landry, Samantha Carter-O'Neill." Teal'c told them, revealing that he was also in the know. She smiled. The jaffa was the only one to use her married name when they were off base.
"What did the General tell you Cameron?" Daniel asked as he pushed his glasses back on his nose.
"Obviously, Space Monkey doesn't knon." commented Jack. "Which proves that I'm not the one who spilled the beans."
"That Sam is being approached to take command of the next Earth ship BC-304 type ... Code name 'Phoenix'." Cameron let out as he took a bite of beer-broiled steak.
"Who knows where she'll stop Cameron ? Who knows, she may be giving you orders at the SGC soon." Jack scoffed, receiving a punch from his wife in the biceps.
"Nothing's done yet." She admitted. "But it seemed to me that SG1 did very well without me when I was on Atlantis. So, why not have a new adventure." Grace's gleeful laughter filled the air as Newton licked her face. Samantha and Jack swiveled their heads at the same time to look at her, unaware that this happiness could have been taken away from them.
"By the way, what do you think Ba'al meant?" Jack questioned, changing the subject so as not to embarrass Sam further.
"Bah... It's best not to torture yourself with it." Cameron tossed. "Let's enjoy this good meal instead!"
"And the company of our friends." Teal'c completed.
"Indeed." They all replied in unison, before bursting into laughter.
END
Author's note: And this is the last chapter of this fanfiction. I can't hide the fact that I can't wait to read your opinion on this last chapter, or on the whole fanfiction if you haven't left a comment yet. To tell you the truth, I have other fanfiction ideas coming to me... I'll give myself some time, my professional life will start again soon but... I'm not giving up on SG1 and our favorite couple. Thanks for reading my work until the end, I'm waiting for your comments. Sincerely yours, Pow