She sat in her lab, tears coursing down her cheeks.
General Higgins's request for a rescue mission had, of course, been denied.
The part of her brain not occupied with her grief speculated idly on how many times she had sat in this lab, crying over O'Neill.
Too many times.
How many times had she sat in this lab, crying over the loss of someone she loved?
Too many times.
Daniel, Janet, Jack...
One dead, only to rise again. One lost to her forever. And one condemned to a life of eternal suffering she could do nothing to ease.
"Argh!"
The cry of anguish tore itself from her throat and she savagely pushed a neat pile of lab reports to the floor, trying to quell the raging urge to smash all the delicate equipment of her lab. She hated being powerless, the feeling of futility, of uselessness, more than anything else.
The moment she had not dared to dream off, the revelation that Yes! The Man You Love Is Not Dead, Samantha. The Second Chance You Crave Is Here! had come, but in a way more terrible than she could have ever imagined in the depths of any nightmarish dream.
She wiped her cheeks and began picking the papers off the floor, her moment of aggression passing. Unthinkingly she began running her thumb over her wedding band.
Pete...
She heaved a sigh often synonymous with her husband's name. Jack O'Neill's death had ended the illusion she had blinded herself with, all the way down the aisle and to the altar.
And beyond.
Pete was lovely, Pete was wonderful, Pete was caring and loving and kind and sexy and...
... and not Jack O'Neill.
She cared for Pete, loved him maybe. But, if she had ever been a subscriber to over-romanticised notions of love, which she hadn't, she would have said her heart belonged to O'Neill. His death had robbed her of the happiness she shared with Pete, somehow. When he had been alive, when they had existed side by side knowing that each of them would rather die themselves than lose the other... when that stupid romantic cliche of forever wanting and never getting had still existed, she had somehow found a kind of happiness with Pete. She suspected, on some subconscious level, Pete might have been a stopgap until the 'never getting' had ended... even though she had never expected it to end on any conscious level.
And now O'Neill was gone? Now that 'never getting' was a certainty to the end of her days?
She felt miserable with Pete, and he miserable with her. It was as if her ability to love had died with O'Neill.
Except he isn't dead.
She sat back down and placed her chin in her hands.
No. He's worse than dead.
There was nothing she could do to bring him home.
No, argued that infuriatingly rational part of her brain, There is nothing that you are willing to do that could bring him home.
And suddenly, in a moment of icy clarity the religious might claim as God-given, she saw the answer.
She would remember later, her thought. The Thought, it deserved a capitalisation. It was a thought so alien to her nature, so very spiritual when at heart she was scientific through and through. It was a thought that betrayed her years of military training, a thought that had no goal, no clearly defined boundaries. In short, it was a thought from the very core of Samantha Carter she thought she had murdered with logic a very long time ago.
The path is laid before my feet. All I have to do is find the courage to walk it.
She stood up and stalked out of her lab, the old Carter remembering to turn off the light behind her.
Pete was surprised when his wife practically leapt up from the sofa, where she had been apparently gazing unseeing at a dark television screen, and into his arms.
"What's happened?" he asked, a wonderful feeling of relief flooding through him she embraced him. Perhaps, just maybe, the woman he had married had returned.
"He's not dead Pete. He's not dead."
The feeling vanished, replaced by an icy dread, the fear of loss.
"O'Neill... Your commander?"
"Yes," she replied, voice muffled as she spoke into his shoulder. "But we can't rescue him."
He hugged her tightly, relief washing over him again. She was upset and she was turning to him for comfort... the alien Sam, the cold stranger who had returned home every night since the apparent death of her CO, was gone. She was kissing him, tears streaming down her face, and asking him to make it better...
...Which of course he couldn't do, but the fact that she was asking, the fact she had run to his arms without hesitation, without him offering...
He kissed her back passionately, hiding the broad smile that would have been perversely out of place, given the situation.
She dressed in the dark, silently, his breathing steady and deep. She realised, ashamedly, she felt a little dirty. She would shower at the SGC, rid her body of the taint of her husband. She pulled her wedding band off her finger and placed it on the bedside table, by the lamp where he would see it and not knock it off in the morning.
Her hand was on the door knob when he sighed and spoke.
"It was a goodbye, wasn't it?"
She froze, unable to form any kind of coherent sentence.
He continued anyway, his question rhetorical, and certainly not requiring a verbal answer from her; her silence was answer enough. "All of it. Tonight. It was your way of saying goodbye."
She found her voice. "Pete.. I..."
"I won't be here if... when you get back," he said, his voice strong in the blackness, "I'll move my stuff out." He paused. "I love you Sam."
"I love-"
"No. No you don't. Don't lie."
She bit her lip, tears once again threatening to spill from her eyes. "I do love you Pete," she said, her voice strong, "But... not enough. I'm sorry that it had to be like this. You deserve better."
"Good luck Sam," he said, unable to think of any other reply, his voice thick. "I imagine you're going to need it."
She paused for a moment.
"Thank you. For everything."
The door clicked shut behind her and a few moments later he heard the front door slam, followed by the sound of her car starting and pulling away.
Pete started to sob.
She drove too fast, surprised at her lack of emotion. She didn't feel sad, or even guilty about leaving Pete. In a way, it was a long time coming. But she didn't feel happy, either, or relieved. She felt nothing, no more emotion than she would at carrying out her most basic duties at the SGC. Maybe later she would feel sadness, loss, guilt.
But not now. Now Pete was simply the first tick on a very long mental checklist.
So she drove too fast, an all pervading sense of urgency driving her actions.
Thirty minutes after leaving her husband she arrived at the SGC. The staff on the surface were unsurprised to see her, it was certainly no rare occurrence for Colonel Carter to return to the base at any time of the day or night, if experiments in her lab or more pressing duty called.
Firstly, she showered in her on base quarters and dressed in BDUs. She had an odd feeling as she neatly folded her jeans and jumper, that it would be an awfully long time before she would be wearing such clothes again.
It was two o'clock in the morning when she began walking to the control room, her heart thumping with a nervous anticipation. A sleepy technician was on duty, suppressing a yawn as she entered the control room.
"Morning Ma'am."
"Morning Sergeant. Uh... I've been running some simulations in my lab... I wanted to do some fiddling with the 'gate control systems. I figured now would be the best time to do it."
The technician looked confused for a moment. He blinked. He wasn't paid to figure out the idiosyncrasies of higher ranking officers. He nodded. "Of course Ma'am... do you need to use my station?"
"No. It's fine. I just thought I'd warn you before I started..."
He nodded, stifling another yawn.
She sat down at another station and began typing furiously.
It took twenty minutes for her to complete the programme. When she was finished she stood up and smiled at the technician. "All done."
He smiled back, bored senseless. "Yes ma'am."
She pressed the enter button on her keyboard and thrust her crossed fingers into her pocket as she hurried away.
"What the...?"
The technician glanced up at the lights as they flickered before going out.
"A power-cut?"
Emergency lighting cast eerie green shadows in the control room. He felt a growing sense of unease.
Unease became full blown panic as before his eyes the blast shields groaned ominously into place, the familiar sound of the Stargate beginning a dialling sequence almost obscured by the metallic noise.
He pounded his keyboard to no avail, his screen showing no abnormal activity from the 'Gate.
"General Higgins to the control room!" he shouted into his microphone in abject panic, unable even to sound the alarm for an unauthorised 'gate activation.
There was the terribly familiar sound of the Stargate engaging, the kawoosh and then... nothing.
General Higgins entered at a run as the blast doors began to roll back. Colonel Carter was standing on the ramp, right in front of the event horizon. She was dressed in BDUs, carrying a standard issue backpack and even equipped with a zat.
"I'm sorry!" she shouted, meeting his eyes.
Then she stepped backwards into the watery pool and was gone. A flabbergasted General stared in complete disbelief, mouth open in shock.
The Stargate disengaged, leaving the gateroom in the disconcerting green dark of the emergency lighting system.