Title: Outside the Lines: Momentum
Author: Annerb
Rating: Teens
Summary: How far would you go to make your world right again?
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, S/J
Season: 4 (Alternative storyline for 'Chain Reaction')
Disclaimer: The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-1, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.

Momentum

The forested slope looked other-worldly in the moonlight. Back in her BDUs with a P-90 strapped to her chest, Sam could almost believe she was on another planet, that any moment she would hear the sounds of her teammates walking at her side. It only took once glance at the familiar stars to shatter the illusion, though. Sam knew she was truly alone.

Pushing such wistful thought aside, Sam adjusted her pack and continued to climb the steady slope winding through the trees.

Sam stood at attention before the desk of the President. If she had been there under any other circumstances, she was sure she would be glancing around in interest, taking in the Stuart painting of George Washington and the Eagle emblazoned carpet. But Sam had no energy for tourist worship.

The President must have sensed some of that, because he was eying her warily from behind his large desk a large file folder in his hands. Sam had just ignored another request to be at her ease. She didn't want to be at ease. She just wanted them to get the hell on with it.

Davis obviously picked up on that because he spread a file open on the desk. "I received your email at 0800 hours yesterday morning and was able to verify it and get the ball rolling on warrants. We had been investigating various levels of the NID for illegal activity, but had been unable to come up with any evidence. You gave us the leverage we needed, Major."

"You have done your country a great service, Major," the President added. "The deaths of Hammond and O'Neill will not go unpunished."

For the first time, Sam noticed that the President was angry. She had forgotten that he had always thought of Jack as a hero, no matter how often Jack had refused his offers for a dinner at the White House.

The President met her eyes steadily. "We will take care of this, I promise, Major."

Sam found herself willing to believe him, even as she was unsure where that left her.

Davis continued updating her on the events of the last 24 hours. "We took Kinsey into custody yesterday morning. Within an hour he was trading information in exchange for his miserable life, as it is."

"Meaning?" Sam asked with a growing sense of unease.

"Meaning that he is trading testimony in exchange for safe harbor."

Sam snorted. "There's no where he would be safe."

"Not on Earth," Davis commented mildly.

Sam's stomach clenched at the thought of Kinsey wiling his life away on some distant tropical planet. Well, at least there was always a chance the Goa'uld might take interest in his new home.

"Please, Major," the President said again, gesturing towards a chair.

Sam finally acquiesced, sinking into the chair, realizing that she was finally at the end. She had proven the guilt of the NID, she had made sure they paid for the deaths of her friends. The tension didn't leave her shoulders, though.

"Any word from Daniel or Teal'c?" Sam forced herself to ask.

Davis and the President shared another inscrutable look. "Nothing about Dr. Jackson," the President said quietly. "It was our understanding that Mr. Teal'c had returned home for good?"

Sam sank further back in her chair, deflated. She couldn't quite bring herself to speak of her hidden hopes for Teal'c and his desperate search. They should have heard something, anything by now.

Sam sighed and looked at the two men who were still watching her expectantly. She felt her brow crease. There was something in the tension of the room that caught Sam's attention. Sam finally realized the surrealism of her situation. Uncovering a NID plot, no matter how far-reaching, was no reason for a personal meeting with the President.

Something wasn't right.

Sam glanced from Davis to the President. "Why am I really here?" she asked bluntly.

She saw the President wince slightly and look at Davis.

"The truth is, Major, we lost contact with the SGC just over 20 hours ago," Davis supplied.

"Excuse me?" Sam asked in disbelief, sitting forward in her chair.

"At 1130 hours yesterday we received a single message from the control room, informing us that they had a foothold situation and that they were implementing the Wildfire protocol."

Sam felt blood pounding in her head. Within two hours of Kinsey's arrest an alien force took over the SGC, forcing them to seal themselves off and sever all contact with the outside world? "What an interesting coincidence," Sam mumbled as her mind whirled with the possibilities.

"We also have our doubts as to the veracity of the foothold situation, but we can't risk going in to the Mountain."

Sam could read between the lines. Chances were that the NID agents inside the SGC had gotten wind of Kinsey's downfall and had fallen back on some sort of a backup plan. But the slightest chance that there was actually an alien incursion in the base kept them from sending in any troops. They were stuck.

Sam forced herself to meet the eyes of the President, finally realizing why she was really here. It had little to do with her work uncovering the NID conspiracy. Would they have even bothered to get her out of prison if this hadn't happened? She wondered what she must look like to them. A slightly unstable Air Force Major who had taken to breaking in to high level government official's homes.

They needed someone to enter the Mountain and check it out. Someone who knew the layout, the people. Someone who understood that they probably wouldn't make it back out, hostile aliens or not. Someone expendable.

Suicide mission.

They knew she had nothing left to lose. Ostensibly, her choice was between going on this mission or rotting away in a cell with nothing but her memories to keep her company. The idea of going out in a blaze of glory for the good of the planet was undeniably appealing. Not that there wasn't a small part of her that just wanted to tell them to just shove it on principle.

She wondered if this is how Jack felt when he was offered that first mission to Abydos. The thought of Jack was enough to cause her to shift uncomfortably in her chair.

In the end, she decided to take the mission not out of some misplaced sense of honor or responsibility to the SGC, but because in the calm of the after moments, the draining away of adrenaline, all that was left behind was the reality of the gaping holes in her life. She wasn't ready to face all that she had lost. She wasn't ready to live with what had become her new life.

"I take it this wouldn't exactly be an officially sanctioned mission," Sam said mildly.

Davis and the President both visibly relaxed, understanding that she had accepted.

Ten hours later she was tromping through the Colorado forest on a secret mission for the President with no back up. The last twenty four hours had been strange to say the least.

Sam was nearing the hatch at last, when all the hairs at the back of her neck stood straight up. She instinctively dropped to the ground and pulled her weapon. There was someone nearby. Sam strained her ears, filtering out the normal night sounds and the rumble of distant traffic. Minutes passed in excruciating slowness. Then she finally heard the distinct crunch of a foot shifting weight on the rough, uneven ground. Sam forced herself to remain in total stillness for another full minute before slowly circling around to the source of the sound.

Winding silently through the trees and brush, Sam finally spotted a single figure crouched behind a boulder just this side of the hatch. A sentinel, perhaps, sent to watch the only accessible entrance. Maybe she could get some answers as to what was going on below.

Sam crept ever closer and the figure remained clueless, his gaze raptly tied to the hatch ahead of him in the moonlight. One more step and Sam was close enough to press the muzzle of her gun into the back of the neck of the man kneeling before her.

The figure stiffened and let out an audible gasp.

Sam's eyes glanced over the man, taking in his military issue BDUs. "Name and rank, soldier," Sam demanded, grabbing the back of his jacket with her free hand.

The man began to twist around, but Sam just pressed her gun harder into his flesh.

"Sam?"

It was barely more than a low gasp, but Sam would recognize that voice anywhere. She lowered the gun and spun him around.

"Daniel?"

They stared at each other for long moments in the moonlight.

"Jesus, Daniel," Sam whispered. "I thought…" She couldn't quite bring herself to say the word dead, scared that it might break the magical spell that was sitting right in front of her.

"I know…I'm sorry."

"How?" Sam asked inarticulately, completely thrown by the relief coursing through her veins at seeing him again.

"Bauer," Daniel replied, pulling Sam down to sit next to him.

"Bauer?" Sam parroted in disbelief.

"Yeah. He heard what the NID had planned for me and gave me warning." He smiled at Sam. "I think you earned yourself a life-long ally after the whole almost blowing the Mountain up because he didn't listen to you thing."

Sam mulled Daniel's words over, remembering Bauer's strange behavior in the infirmary and the habit he had developed of always asking her opinion. "He took a big risk tipping you off," Sam commented.

"Yeah," Daniel said with a shrug. "I think he knew what I was up to."

Sam stared at Daniel. She had assumed she had gotten him in trouble with her impromptu visit to Maybourne. "What exactly were you up to, Daniel?"

"Everything was getting way out of control, Sam. SG teams sent on reckless missions for mysterious alien technology. Less and less people have been coming back from missions since the day Hammond died."

Something that Sam hadn't even noticed. There was no censure in Daniel's voice, but the implication was there. She had been so tied up on revenge, on making the NID pay, that she hadn't paid attention to what was happening to the people still in the SGC. Guilt began to rise in the back of Sam's throat.

Daniel must have seen something of it on her face, because he shook his head. "Don't Sam. I may not have been very supportive, but I know that what you were doing was important. Someone had to do it."

Sam shook her head, letting it fall back onto the boulder behind her. Their disagreement over Wash seemed so long ago in the scheme of things. But it was always there, right beneath the surface.

Daniel must have been thinking about it to, because he said, "I'm sorry, Sam. I never should have questioned you-."

Sam interrupted him. "No, Daniel. You should have. You did exactly what I needed you to do; you reminded me of the costs. While I was off getting my hands dirtier by the moment, you were here, taking care of all these people."

Sam raised her head to meet Daniel's eyes. She was nearly overwhelmed by the flash of affection she felt for him in that moment. He hadn't refused to run out of some misplaced sense of pride or an inability to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. In typical Daniel fashion, he had understood the need for someone to stay behind and taken it upon himself.

"We've all done what we needed to do, Sam," he said softly.

There was absolution for Sam in his words, but she couldn't accept it.

Looking closer at Daniel, Sam noticed he looked gaunt and there was a new heaviness in his shoulders. It seemed that they had all been forced to play games they were ill-equipped to face.

"What can you tell me about what's going on inside?" Sam asked, brusquely changing the subject.

Daniel looked like he might push for a moment, but they both knew that there were more important issues at hand. "I managed to keep in contact with people inside even after my supposed death."

Sam looked sharply at Daniel. "You told people what was going on with the NID?" It was a risky move, not only putting people in danger, but deciding who was trustworthy.

"I didn't have to, Sam. They aren't stupid. Hammond and all of SG-1 disappear in a matter of months, not to mention that the missions are becoming recklessly dangerous, and people are going to start talking."

Sam conceded the point. She had been far too suspicious of everyone around her to pay attention, but four years together had created a family out of the SGC.

"Who?"

Daniel shrugged. "Generally who you'd expect. Siler, Griff, Reynolds, Dixon. Major Lawrence, too. After all, half of SG-3 was lost on a crazy mission to retrieve naquadah before the weapons test." He pulled off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Almost every active team has had at least one member injured or killed in the last two months. Only to be replaced by members hand-picked by Mathers."

Sam could imagine the toll that would take on SGC staff. They all did a dangerous job, but the only thing that made it bearable was knowing two things. One, they would never be put in unnecessary danger; and two, they would never be left behind. In the new NID-controlled administration, those promises no longer meant anything.

"Even after I left, I managed to stay in contact with Siler."

Sam looked at Daniel in askance.

He smiled wryly. "Siler has an old buddy named Lance Sterling. Didn't you know?"

Sam found herself smiling back at him. She had to give Daniel credit. He had proven rather savvy.

"Last I heard from Siler, Mathers had accused Bauer of being under alien influence, and was about to lock down the facility. That was 24 hours ago. I've been hanging out here ever since, hoping that someone I knew might make it back out."

Sam glanced at the hatch. "Well, there's only one way to find out what's going on down there." She turned back to Daniel. "Feel up for a little breaking and entering? It seems to be my new hobby."

Daniel raised an eyebrow in confusion, but seemed to accept that stories about her adventures would come later. For now, they had one last monster to put to rest.

Daniel grabbed Sam's proffered hand and let her pull him to his feet. "With you, Sam, I'm up for anything," he said with a smile.

And together, they made their way into the depths of the Mountain.