Sam was walking down the hall when she heard a groaning noise from inside the gym. It was a sound she would have known anywhere. She hesitated for a moment at the door and walked in. Sam's eyes swept the half dark room and landed on a figure doing bench presses on a weight bench in the corner.

Sam's breath caught in her throat when she saw him. Instead of sweats and a t-shirt he was wearing his olive drab pants and bare-chested. It was like seeing a ghost, and yet, he wasn't the same man. His body was hard, even leaner than her Jack's had been, evidence of the prolonged battle with the replicator's. His hair was longer than she'd ever seen Jack grow it, probably because of the war as well. Jack released one final groan of effort and sat up. The perspiration ran off his forehead and his body glistened with sweat.

Jack looked around the room for the next weightmachine and saw Sam staring at him. He didn't say anything, just looked back at her, his eyes registering everything Sam was feeling. The initial happiness at seeing the person walk into a room, quickly crushed by the remembrance of their death, and the return of the memory of loosing them, as fresh as if it were yesterday. And for that moment Sam wished she hadn't come.

But Jack was nothing if not quick to recover, and his eyes soon became guarded, which may have hurt Sam almost as much as his pain had, if she hadn't also detected that he was beginning to trust her. If she hadn't needed for him to keep her at a certain distance just to stay sane.

Sam sat down on the bench of the wait machine across from him.

"What did she look like?" Sam asked. Sensing he was looking her over for differences just as she had been doing to him a moment ago.

"What?" Jack knew who she meant, but the question didn't make any sense.

"Maybe it's crazy but, I keep wanting to know how we were different."

"There's nothing crazy about it." Jack stated. "Believe me, and I'm in a position to know, if there's anything that makes a person self-conscious it's knowing there's more of you out there somewhere."

"So what did she look like?" Sam repeated, because out of all the things she wanted to know about the 'other Sam' that was the easiest question to ask.

"She looked a lot like you" Jack started with the obvious. "She was a little skinnier than you are, toward the end. Not as clean, a lot more tired. We knew they were coming for months. The closer they came the less we slept, until the last two or three days when we didn't sleep at all. She stopped cutting her hair because she didn't have the time, so it grew out long and tangled because she didn't have time to brush it." Jack paused.

"So one day she just cut it all off," Jack held his hand up above his ear to illustrate how short it was. "with a scissors, during a five minute break. It looked absolutely terrible." Jack remembered. "I don't think I've ever felt more proud of anyone in my life"

Sam closed her eyes and rubbed her eyelids.

"Are you okay?" Jack asked her.

"I don't know" Sam answered. "I'm feeling really confused right now."

"Tell me about it" Jack exhaled.

"I'd better go" Sam stood up.

Jack followed suit.

"I'll see you tomorrow" Sam told him.

Jack nodded. "Yeah"

Sam walked to the door.

"Carter"

Sam froze.

"I'm not him you know" Jack searched her face.

"I know" Sam said the words and walked out the door. But right now she wasn't sure believed him. He had the same softness in his eyes, the same wit, sarcasm, the same ways of dealing with loss. She knew there were differences, but he was so the same. As far as she could tell this Jack wasn't any more different fromthe man she'd lost than the Jack O'Neill she'd met years ago in the briefing room was.

Sam walked down the hallway toward the locker room. She didn't know where she was going, or who –if anyone- she could talk to. But she did know one thing, if she stayed in the mountain any longer, she was going to loose her mind.