Title: "Perfect Future"
Author: Jackie W.
Email:
Rating: PG-13
She told McKenzie the bare bones basics. It was three or four years in the future, a bold attack against Ba'al and the System Lords that had aligned themselves with him had pretty much eliminated the Goa'uld threat. She was married, and still working at the SGC. She pretended not to remember a lot of the little details, she hadn't remembered every bit of the other dreams so it didn't seem odd. In truth most of it was burned into her memory as if she had actually lived it.
It wasn't a perfect future, but it was darn close. She was no longer in the airforce, having been injured on a mission and gotten a medical discharge. Strangely, the events of the injury were the only fuzzy part. She just knew that she walked with a limp. She was married to Jack, and they had a daughter and another baby on the way. She had been hired back at the SGC as a civilian. Actually she remembered that part well. Jack had taken the promotion to General and was running the base, so when she was recovered enough to start back to work President Hayes had ordered him to see to it that she was re-hired. Jack had stammered out that there might be a conflict of interest. The President had laughed and said Hammond owed him $100, and to get their Stargate expert back on the job pronto. Then he'd told Jack he expected to be invited to the wedding.
And he had been.
With neither of them wanting to waste any time she'd gotten pregnant three months after they were married, and again when their daughter was twenty months old. Life with Jack O'Neill wasn't all a bed of roses. The man was stubborn and cranky and set in his ways. He was also totally in love with her, and showed her in a hundred little ways, which more than made up for everything else. It was future that was just right.
Now all she had to do was figure out a way to make it happen.
She started by breaking up with Pete. He was stunned, but she was firm. She would always think that he was a pretty special person, but she had come to realize that he wasn't the person she wanted to share the rest of her life with, and she felt it was time to move on. After all she assured herself, he had been prominently featured in six of her dreams and none of them had felt anywhere near as right as the one where she was with Jack O'Neill.
Her next step was to figure out what to do about her career. In her vision she'd had no choice, but voluntarily giving up something she had worked so long for was a hard decision. She held on tight to her vision of a perfect future and started to make plans. Despite the President's actions in her dream, she couldn't be sure that she would be hired back at the SGC if she and the Colonel, or General rather, got together. There would be a conflict interest. She thought long and hard about her options and then set up an appointment to meet with General Kerrigan. A teaching spot at the Academy was plan B.
In the mean time the visions ceased, follow up scans showed her brain activity was almost back to normal, and General O'Neill had accepted his new post as the head of the SGC. To Sam's surprise she was promoted to Lt. Colonel, giving her slight pause as to whether she should go ahead with her resignation or not. Her meeting with Kerrigan got postponed when he was called to Washington, so she decided not to over think the whole thing until they could get together. She and Teal'c and Daniel went out on a couple of short missions, and Sam enjoyed her time commanding SG1.
She met with Kerrigan on a Tuesday. As expected he was thrilled at even the possibility of getting her to teach at the Academy. With that assurance, she typed up her resignation and prepared to hand it in. However before she had a chance to do so, she was informed that SG1 was needed to take some new recruits through the gate, and when she saw the names on the files she had been handed she knew she had a whole new decision to make.
She recognized two of the names. One of the recruits, a young botanist, would discover a plant on one of her future missions that would prove to be the cure for several types of cancer. Sam's science team would work closely with her doing the analysis and testing. The other was to play a pivotal role in the attack on Ba'al that would bring down the System Lords. She had a strange feeling she shouldn't skip this mission.
It was only a day, and she could always hand in her resignation when she returned.
When the attack came, time seemed to slow down to a standstill for Sam. She had spotted movement in the trees and almost simultaneously noticed the cliff and position of the two recruits under it. She just had time to yell out a warning about the impending attack and take two steps forward before the staff blast came out of nowhere, hitting the rock face and sending several large chunks raining down. The two steps was just enough for her to get there in time to push the two out of the way. It was not enough of an advantage to get herself clear. She felt the incredible pain even as she tried to see what was going on with the battle behind her. As her vision narrowed to black she had only two thoughts.
She hoped that the rest of the team was safe, and she bet she was going to walk with a limp.
The next thing she knew she was awakening to the muted beeps and whirring sounds of the infirmary and to hushed voices talking by the side of her bed.
"She going to be devastated," Daniel was saying.
"Indeed," Teal'c replied.
Dr. Brightman was telling them she was waking up and Jack shooed them out. "I'll tell her the news. You guys take a break. Come back in half an hour, ok?" he suggested.
She waited a couple of minutes to gather her strength before she opened her eyes to meet a pair of very concerned brown ones watching over her. The love that was on display there (if only for a moment before he realized her eyes were open) gave her courage, and she knew she could handle anything that was coming.
"Hey," she whispered hoarsely.
He automatically reached to get her water and waited for her to take a few sips.
"Better?" he asked.
Sam nodded. "Did everyone else make it back ok?"
"They are all safe and sound thanks to you, Carter," Jack informed her.
"Good," she sighed in relief.
"Carter," he started, then hesitated. He hated having to do this.
"It's ok, Sir. How bad is it?" Sam asked and he remembered just whom he was dealing with.
"It's bad Carter. Your left leg is totally crushed. We put a call out to the Tok'ra, but there hasn't been any reply. Dr. Brightman said that with a lot of work you will be able to walk, but you'll never be 100%," he informed her.
In her heart she'd known that, but it still hurt to hear. She tried to tell herself that she had been going to resign anyway, but still ended up closing her eyes to ward off tears. A sudden vision of her future as she had dreamed it flashed before her eyes, and she found herself thinking that maybe you couldn't force your perfect future, you had to let it unfold naturally. Maybe this was the way it was supposed to happen, so that Lt. Chan could go on to cure cancer, and Lt. Deters could help bring down Ba'al, and she could have her happily ever after with Jack and 2.5 kids, and a team of science geeks to be in charge of.
She opened her eyes with a sigh to find those brown eyes suspiciously moist themselves, and she realized that those close to her didn't have the hope she had to hold onto. It would be up to her to let them know that it wasn't the end of the world for her, just a change in direction. She managed a weak smile and reached out to take his hand.
"You'll be here, right?" she asked.
Jack blinked in surprise. Did she have to ask? He'd take a leave of absence or resign if she needed him there more than his duties would allow.
"Of course. So will Daniel and Teal'c and Cassie. Hell, Hammond is even flying in," he told her.
Sam frowned. "I'm not dying or anything, am I?" she asked.
"You don't have to be dying for people to be concerned, Carter. Hammond was frantic when we told him, and the President practically ordered him here so that he could get first hand updates on you," Jack told her shaking his head at how dense she could be sometimes. "Didn't I tell you once that you were a National treasure? I'm not the only one that feels that way. The General is bringing one of the best Ortho guys in the country with him. He won't be given full security clearance, just enough to deal with any problems your unique physiology might cause."
Sam was slightly embarrassed, but grateful non-the-less. "Sounds like I'll be in good hands then," she told him.
"That's what Hammond promised me. This Doc is supposed to work wonders," Jack assured her.
"I didn't mean just medically," she smiled.
Jack was slightly taken back by the comment and the smile, but before he had a chance to respond Daniel and Teal'c came in with Dr. Brightman in tow. Two voices rang out simultaneously.
"Sam!"
"Colonel Carter."
"Hey guys. I'm glad to see you're both ok," she greeted them.
"We are well, Colonel Carter, it is you we are concerned for," Teal'c replied.
"Well it doesn't look like I'll be making any speedy getaways anytime in the near future, but I'm still alive, so that's a big plus in my book," she quipped wryly.
"Don't joke, Sam," Daniel begged.
"Alright," she conceded. "How about you tell me what happened after I nodded off out there," she requested.
"There was a small patrol of Jaffa, loyal to Ba'al. We think they were just scouting the planet. We really didn't stop to ask. Teal'c, Kristoff, Hemmer and I took them out and then ran over to see how you were. Chan and Deters were just bruised up. Chan broke her wrist, but everyone was able to walk except you. We made a stretcher and got you back to the Gate," Daniel recounted.
"Piece of cake," Sam teased.
"Sure," Daniel frowned, "Except of the part where there were six of us worried to death about you," he pointed out.
"Well, I'm glad everyone is ok, and thank you all for doing a good job of taking care of everything while I was indisposed," Sam said gratefully.
"Indeed it was your quick warning that allowed us to get the upper hand," Teal'c replied with a nod of his head.
Dr. Brightmen finally interrupted saying she wanted to check her patient over and then discuss her upcoming treatment with her.
"Can General O'Neill be there for that?" Sam requested, hoping she didn't sound like she was begging.
"Certainly. Come back in half an hour and I should be done with the exam, General," the doctor advised.
Daniel and Teal'c dragged Jack off to get him a quick sandwich since he hadn't left Sam's side for more than a bathroom break since they had returned almost fourteen hours previously. He wolfed it down, made a quick call to Washington to let the President know that Carter had woken up, and was waiting impatiently for the doctor to finish twenty-nine minutes later.
When he was called in he sat in the chair uncertainly wondering if Sam wanted anything more than moral support. She answered his dilemma be reaching over and grasping his hand and holding on tightly out of sight of the doctor as Brightman described in great detail the operations that would be needed to correct as much of the damage as possible to her leg. Most of it went over Jack's head, but he got the fact that it was going to be a long, painful process. When he looked at Sam he could tell she was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information that was being thrown at her.
"Doc, Carter here is still on a lot of pain meds, so let's keep it simple. She's going to need a bunch of surgeries. When do you plan on doing the first one, and how long before she can go home," Jack asked getting to the point.
Sam threw him a grateful look.
"Dr. Stevens will be here later today. He'll go over the x-rays, and probably want to evaluate Colonel Carter tomorrow. Then he'll set a time for surgery, probably the day after that. I'd say we are looking at two to three days post-op before she can go home with a cast on her leg," Dr. Brightman explained. "But she'll need to stay off it as much as possible."
"She'll have plenty of helpers," Jack assured him.
Dr. Brightman smiled. She'd only been at the SGC for five months, but it was obvious to everyone how close the current and former members of SG1 were.
"I'm sure she will," she murmured quietly noting the hands joined discretely out of sight.
Author: Jackie W.
Email:
Rating: PG-13
She told McKenzie the bare bones basics. It was three or four years in the future, a bold attack against Ba'al and the System Lords that had aligned themselves with him had pretty much eliminated the Goa'uld threat. She was married, and still working at the SGC. She pretended not to remember a lot of the little details, she hadn't remembered every bit of the other dreams so it didn't seem odd. In truth most of it was burned into her memory as if she had actually lived it.
It wasn't a perfect future, but it was darn close. She was no longer in the airforce, having been injured on a mission and gotten a medical discharge. Strangely, the events of the injury were the only fuzzy part. She just knew that she walked with a limp. She was married to Jack, and they had a daughter and another baby on the way. She had been hired back at the SGC as a civilian. Actually she remembered that part well. Jack had taken the promotion to General and was running the base, so when she was recovered enough to start back to work President Hayes had ordered him to see to it that she was re-hired. Jack had stammered out that there might be a conflict of interest. The President had laughed and said Hammond owed him $100, and to get their Stargate expert back on the job pronto. Then he'd told Jack he expected to be invited to the wedding.
And he had been.
With neither of them wanting to waste any time she'd gotten pregnant three months after they were married, and again when their daughter was twenty months old. Life with Jack O'Neill wasn't all a bed of roses. The man was stubborn and cranky and set in his ways. He was also totally in love with her, and showed her in a hundred little ways, which more than made up for everything else. It was future that was just right.
Now all she had to do was figure out a way to make it happen.
She started by breaking up with Pete. He was stunned, but she was firm. She would always think that he was a pretty special person, but she had come to realize that he wasn't the person she wanted to share the rest of her life with, and she felt it was time to move on. After all she assured herself, he had been prominently featured in six of her dreams and none of them had felt anywhere near as right as the one where she was with Jack O'Neill.
Her next step was to figure out what to do about her career. In her vision she'd had no choice, but voluntarily giving up something she had worked so long for was a hard decision. She held on tight to her vision of a perfect future and started to make plans. Despite the President's actions in her dream, she couldn't be sure that she would be hired back at the SGC if she and the Colonel, or General rather, got together. There would be a conflict interest. She thought long and hard about her options and then set up an appointment to meet with General Kerrigan. A teaching spot at the Academy was plan B.
In the mean time the visions ceased, follow up scans showed her brain activity was almost back to normal, and General O'Neill had accepted his new post as the head of the SGC. To Sam's surprise she was promoted to Lt. Colonel, giving her slight pause as to whether she should go ahead with her resignation or not. Her meeting with Kerrigan got postponed when he was called to Washington, so she decided not to over think the whole thing until they could get together. She and Teal'c and Daniel went out on a couple of short missions, and Sam enjoyed her time commanding SG1.
She met with Kerrigan on a Tuesday. As expected he was thrilled at even the possibility of getting her to teach at the Academy. With that assurance, she typed up her resignation and prepared to hand it in. However before she had a chance to do so, she was informed that SG1 was needed to take some new recruits through the gate, and when she saw the names on the files she had been handed she knew she had a whole new decision to make.
She recognized two of the names. One of the recruits, a young botanist, would discover a plant on one of her future missions that would prove to be the cure for several types of cancer. Sam's science team would work closely with her doing the analysis and testing. The other was to play a pivotal role in the attack on Ba'al that would bring down the System Lords. She had a strange feeling she shouldn't skip this mission.
It was only a day, and she could always hand in her resignation when she returned.
When the attack came, time seemed to slow down to a standstill for Sam. She had spotted movement in the trees and almost simultaneously noticed the cliff and position of the two recruits under it. She just had time to yell out a warning about the impending attack and take two steps forward before the staff blast came out of nowhere, hitting the rock face and sending several large chunks raining down. The two steps was just enough for her to get there in time to push the two out of the way. It was not enough of an advantage to get herself clear. She felt the incredible pain even as she tried to see what was going on with the battle behind her. As her vision narrowed to black she had only two thoughts.
She hoped that the rest of the team was safe, and she bet she was going to walk with a limp.
The next thing she knew she was awakening to the muted beeps and whirring sounds of the infirmary and to hushed voices talking by the side of her bed.
"She going to be devastated," Daniel was saying.
"Indeed," Teal'c replied.
Dr. Brightman was telling them she was waking up and Jack shooed them out. "I'll tell her the news. You guys take a break. Come back in half an hour, ok?" he suggested.
She waited a couple of minutes to gather her strength before she opened her eyes to meet a pair of very concerned brown ones watching over her. The love that was on display there (if only for a moment before he realized her eyes were open) gave her courage, and she knew she could handle anything that was coming.
"Hey," she whispered hoarsely.
He automatically reached to get her water and waited for her to take a few sips.
"Better?" he asked.
Sam nodded. "Did everyone else make it back ok?"
"They are all safe and sound thanks to you, Carter," Jack informed her.
"Good," she sighed in relief.
"Carter," he started, then hesitated. He hated having to do this.
"It's ok, Sir. How bad is it?" Sam asked and he remembered just whom he was dealing with.
"It's bad Carter. Your left leg is totally crushed. We put a call out to the Tok'ra, but there hasn't been any reply. Dr. Brightman said that with a lot of work you will be able to walk, but you'll never be 100%," he informed her.
In her heart she'd known that, but it still hurt to hear. She tried to tell herself that she had been going to resign anyway, but still ended up closing her eyes to ward off tears. A sudden vision of her future as she had dreamed it flashed before her eyes, and she found herself thinking that maybe you couldn't force your perfect future, you had to let it unfold naturally. Maybe this was the way it was supposed to happen, so that Lt. Chan could go on to cure cancer, and Lt. Deters could help bring down Ba'al, and she could have her happily ever after with Jack and 2.5 kids, and a team of science geeks to be in charge of.
She opened her eyes with a sigh to find those brown eyes suspiciously moist themselves, and she realized that those close to her didn't have the hope she had to hold onto. It would be up to her to let them know that it wasn't the end of the world for her, just a change in direction. She managed a weak smile and reached out to take his hand.
"You'll be here, right?" she asked.
Jack blinked in surprise. Did she have to ask? He'd take a leave of absence or resign if she needed him there more than his duties would allow.
"Of course. So will Daniel and Teal'c and Cassie. Hell, Hammond is even flying in," he told her.
Sam frowned. "I'm not dying or anything, am I?" she asked.
"You don't have to be dying for people to be concerned, Carter. Hammond was frantic when we told him, and the President practically ordered him here so that he could get first hand updates on you," Jack told her shaking his head at how dense she could be sometimes. "Didn't I tell you once that you were a National treasure? I'm not the only one that feels that way. The General is bringing one of the best Ortho guys in the country with him. He won't be given full security clearance, just enough to deal with any problems your unique physiology might cause."
Sam was slightly embarrassed, but grateful non-the-less. "Sounds like I'll be in good hands then," she told him.
"That's what Hammond promised me. This Doc is supposed to work wonders," Jack assured her.
"I didn't mean just medically," she smiled.
Jack was slightly taken back by the comment and the smile, but before he had a chance to respond Daniel and Teal'c came in with Dr. Brightman in tow. Two voices rang out simultaneously.
"Sam!"
"Colonel Carter."
"Hey guys. I'm glad to see you're both ok," she greeted them.
"We are well, Colonel Carter, it is you we are concerned for," Teal'c replied.
"Well it doesn't look like I'll be making any speedy getaways anytime in the near future, but I'm still alive, so that's a big plus in my book," she quipped wryly.
"Don't joke, Sam," Daniel begged.
"Alright," she conceded. "How about you tell me what happened after I nodded off out there," she requested.
"There was a small patrol of Jaffa, loyal to Ba'al. We think they were just scouting the planet. We really didn't stop to ask. Teal'c, Kristoff, Hemmer and I took them out and then ran over to see how you were. Chan and Deters were just bruised up. Chan broke her wrist, but everyone was able to walk except you. We made a stretcher and got you back to the Gate," Daniel recounted.
"Piece of cake," Sam teased.
"Sure," Daniel frowned, "Except of the part where there were six of us worried to death about you," he pointed out.
"Well, I'm glad everyone is ok, and thank you all for doing a good job of taking care of everything while I was indisposed," Sam said gratefully.
"Indeed it was your quick warning that allowed us to get the upper hand," Teal'c replied with a nod of his head.
Dr. Brightmen finally interrupted saying she wanted to check her patient over and then discuss her upcoming treatment with her.
"Can General O'Neill be there for that?" Sam requested, hoping she didn't sound like she was begging.
"Certainly. Come back in half an hour and I should be done with the exam, General," the doctor advised.
Daniel and Teal'c dragged Jack off to get him a quick sandwich since he hadn't left Sam's side for more than a bathroom break since they had returned almost fourteen hours previously. He wolfed it down, made a quick call to Washington to let the President know that Carter had woken up, and was waiting impatiently for the doctor to finish twenty-nine minutes later.
When he was called in he sat in the chair uncertainly wondering if Sam wanted anything more than moral support. She answered his dilemma be reaching over and grasping his hand and holding on tightly out of sight of the doctor as Brightman described in great detail the operations that would be needed to correct as much of the damage as possible to her leg. Most of it went over Jack's head, but he got the fact that it was going to be a long, painful process. When he looked at Sam he could tell she was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information that was being thrown at her.
"Doc, Carter here is still on a lot of pain meds, so let's keep it simple. She's going to need a bunch of surgeries. When do you plan on doing the first one, and how long before she can go home," Jack asked getting to the point.
Sam threw him a grateful look.
"Dr. Stevens will be here later today. He'll go over the x-rays, and probably want to evaluate Colonel Carter tomorrow. Then he'll set a time for surgery, probably the day after that. I'd say we are looking at two to three days post-op before she can go home with a cast on her leg," Dr. Brightman explained. "But she'll need to stay off it as much as possible."
"She'll have plenty of helpers," Jack assured him.
Dr. Brightman smiled. She'd only been at the SGC for five months, but it was obvious to everyone how close the current and former members of SG1 were.
"I'm sure she will," she murmured quietly noting the hands joined discretely out of sight.