NOTES: Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed and left encouragement or thoughts - it's very much appreciated! And so our story draws towards it's close.

Reflections

Chapter Eleven

As she rode the elevator down to her lab and stifled the urge to hum in the silence of the empty space, Sam decided she wasn't going to mention the breach to Samuel at all.

Last night, Malcolm indicated that General Hammond would be informed of the breach since it was one of his officers that had instigated it. The NID was willing to leave the discipline of the offending subordinate to the General - at least, this time they were. What happened afterwards would be in Samuel's hands - how he comported himself in future.

Privately, Sam was hoping there was a reasonable explanation for Samuel's actions. She was willing to concede that he might have reasons for wanting to check her entry in the NID database. There were moments when she wouldn't have minded taking a peek at their estimation of her - seeing herself through someone else's eyes for a change.

However, any urge to do so had always been stifled in the knowledge that the NID had traces on all entry points into the system. Sam had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar before. It was only the fact that she'd had equally incriminating evidence against Colonel Simmons that had stopped her from getting anything more than a quiet warning against further hacking attempts.

In the last couple of years, there'd been no need to break into the NID. She had her source in Agent Barrett, as he had a source in her, and while neither of them were willing to go directly against the organisations which held their loyalty, there'd been several situations in which their interaction had been mutually profitable.

She wondered if Samuel had collaborated with Agent Barrett to clear Jack's name from the attempted murder of Kinsey. And she wondered what Malcolm thought of Samuel. He hadn't given her any indications one way or the other, keeping carefully neutral as he spoke with her and Jack last night.

Of course, he hadn't given any indication that he'd interrupted them as they made out on Jack's couch, either, but for that one apology at the start.

Sam smiled, just a little, and hoped that she didn't look like some moonstruck adolescent the morning after her first sexual experience.

Although, technicallly, it was her first sexual experience - at least, with this man.

It's still no reason for you to get all silly about it, she reminded herself, trying to be stern.

But, God, it was difficult!

The walk to her lab was short and punctuated by greetings from several people already up and about. At this hour of the morning, most of them were also military personnel. The civilian personnel tended to arrive later and stay back later, although in the last couple of weeks, Sam had worked as late as any of the civilians, trying to ignore the issues in her life that she didn't care to face just yet.

At least one of the issues had been comforably - and literally - put to bed. She smiled to herself as she strolled down the corridor. After a leisurely 'wake up call' this morning, Jack had seen her off with a kiss that turned into a whole series of them, and she'd come very close to calling in sick and spending the day with him.

But duty called. Her smile dimmed a little.

It vanished completely as she turned the corner and nearly tripped over the prone body of the SF usually on duty in this section of the corridor. Only a quick sidestep stopped her from treading on him.

She knelt down beside him, looking for any signs of attack or injury. At a single glance, there were none, and she found his pulse and saw his chest rise. So he was alive, if not conscious.

Sam stood, intending to reach for the wall phone by the entrance to her lab, and stopped.

Samuel was watching her from just inside the lab, the handsome features carefully neutral. In one hand, he held the ovoid pointer that SG-4 had retrieved off the loincloth-wearing locals only a couple of days ago.

"Drag him into the lab," he said quietly. "And close the door behind you."

A chill calmness descended upon her as she turned and did what he told her. Then she stood and faced him, holding out her hands to indicate her defencelessness.

It seemed surprisingly dark in the lab, although she didn't know if that was the lack of lighting or just the gentle air of menace he'd acquired in the last sixteen hours. And Sam knew better than to discount the possibility of ruthlessness in him; under desperate circumstances, her own behaviour had never been all that commendable.

Of course, her definition of desperate circumstances was vastly different to his.

"Were you ever intending to stay around here?" It had to be asked. Had they really been so thoroughly fooled by him, or had other factors contributed to this turning?

He smiled at her, oddly bittersweet. "As a matter of fact, I was. Right up until two nights ago when the NID caught one of my programs making its way into their system."

"And that's a reason to run?"

The smile faded, leaving only the barest trace of its presence on his face. "It is for me."

Sam shook her head, "You had to know they wouldn't respond well to it."

"I thought I was sharper than they were." He shrugged. "Stupid of me, I guess. Considering they came up against the Amazing Samantha Carter more than once, I should have expected they'd keep traces on the system."

It was a compliment, if a backhanded one.

It seemed Sam wasn't the only one who'd been dealing with professional issues.

"It doesn't have to be this way," she said quietly.

The wide mouth pulled sideways, presenting a deep sardonicism that aged his face by years. "Unfortunately, I think it does, Sam. And don't bother trying to talk me down. Credit me with enough intelligence to have explored all the options available."

Sam took his point. Still, that didn't stop her from asking, "What will you do?"

His mouth quirked slightly. "Nothing that I'm going to tell you," came the evenly-voiced reply. "I don't feel any particular need to gloat, Sam, I just want out."

Out of the SGC, out of this world, out of this galaxy and universe where he wasn't him.

Sam saw where this was going and wasn't sure she liked it.

"And I'm your ticket to the Stargate?"

His finger moved slightly along the handle of the ovoid. "Yes, Sam," he said. A stream of glowing white poured from the point of the weapon as he answered her question was gentle reluctance. "I'm afraid you are."

The world didn't so much go away as gently fade into insignificance around her.

Sam was conscious and aware, but unable to struggle, to fight. She could keep herself upright, but little more than that; it was as though everything around her was veiled, blurred, like the haze of a gentle drizzle in a foggy night.

There was nothing gentle about the way Samuel took out everyone who came out before them as they walked through the corridor. If they moved, he took them out with the weapon, the white beam lancing out and diffusing just ahead of the target, like the fog that surrounded Sam.

She was conscious of his arm, fastened diagonally across her body, holding her as a shield against the people who tried to fight back. They had guns, but he had her - Colonel Sam Carter - and that was enough to make the SFs hold their fire.

"It's not that I want to hurt anyone," Samuel said quietly in her ear as they stepped into the elevator and he pressed the button for sub-level 27 and the Gateroom. "I just don't care to be on the run for the rest of my life. And I will be, sooner or later. Old habits." He said. She saw his profile edge into the periphery of her vision, over her shoulder, as they turned and faced the doors.

She wanted to say that he didn't have to be on the run. That he didn't have to do this - although, given the trail of unconscious personnel they'd left behind them, it was probably a bit late to give reassurance on that point.

Besides, a part of her wanted to kick his ass for what he was doing.

And while Sam recognised that he should be stopped before he made it through the Stargate, another part of her coolly catalogued that he was, in and of himself, no threat to the SGC. His goal was not to destroy Earth, the SGC, or even her; he simply wanted out.

As the LED numbers on the panel increased, showing them descending into the bowels of the mountain, she felt Samuel transfer the weapon to his left hand, and fumbled in his trousers pocket with his right.

She'd regained just enough control of her limbs to lash out at him. Her shoulder knocked his arm, briefly unsettling him. In return, he slapped her, hard enough that the world around her blazed fiercely in a momentary negative as she stumbled against the wall of the elevator.

A moment later, pain lanced through her shoulder, agony as though someone had stabbed a knife through skin and muscle and bone. The blues, greens and greys of the elevator box around her exploded into star-spangled whites and yellows, excruciating torment. She might had yelped or screamed, she didn't know. The veil between her and the world did not protect her from pain.

When she could look up again, Samuel towered over her, a swipe card in his right hand as he pointed the weapon at her with his left.

In her lab, the ovoid had gleamed with understated elegance; now it shone with the sleek menace of gunmetal. Doubtless it had looked ludicrous in the hands of primitive cultures; in Samuel's hands it looked deadly.

He'd have to be disarmed before she could properly take him out. Except that she didn't presently possess enough co-ordination to be any threat to him. And pain was an effective deterrent.

She could just focus on the eyes that gleamed beyond the 'barrel' of the weapon; eyes the same shape and colour as her own, but whose lashes were slightly darker and shorter, and whose expression was cool and stony as they regarded her.

"Shouldn't have done that, Sam." He sounded more irritated than angry, like Daniel when he was bothered by someone in the middle of a translation.

She was hauled up without gentleness. This time, she felt the barrel of the weapon caress her throat as he pressed the card into her hand. "When the doors open, swipe it in the reader. And although we're known for being clever, I wouldn't try anything smart, because if you've thought about it, I've already done so and made contingency plans. At the least, I have a weapon capable of doing a lot more than merely stunning people - as you've felt."

Sam felt the cool plastic surface of the card resting against her lax palm. She couldn't quite curl her fingers around it, her muscular control wasn't that good.

Which was quite a problem considering that now she really did want to kick his ass.

She felt him switch the weapon between his hands, and as the doors opened. She caught a glimpse of startled faces as his left arm clasped her firmly before him, and the right arm pointed the weapon in a wide sweep, encompassing the whole area before them. A random thread of recollection pulled at her memory: she'd learned that move from her Dad when she was fifteen.

It seemed he'd changed the settings on the weapon. This time, instead of shooting at people, it simply began emitting a slight buzzing noise that grated on her nerves. The noise made Sam itchy, inside and out, but had a slightly different effect on the men and women outside the elevator. They folded up like so many cardboard cutouts, collapsing on the floor like marionettes with their strings cut.

"Swipe the card, Sam." The voice in her ear was gentle, but inflexible. Her mother's tones when Sam had whined, far different from the inflexible notes of her father's authoritarian demeanour. It seemed she wasn't the only one who could sound like their mothers.

She swiped the card through the reader.

And frowned as her fingers curled around the edges of the card, the thin edge biting gently into her flesh.

Her reflexes were coming back to her. Not enough that she could match him - not yet.

But give her a bit of time...

Sam mentally grimaced to herself as she realised she didn't have time. Samuel was pushing her ahead of him, down the corridor to the Gateroom. She hadn't heard any alarms, or any warnings - there was no sign that anyone had any idea of what was happening in the base.

At least, not until she swiped the card through the reader again, noting that her co-ordination was improving. She took pains to make sure he didn't notice it, though - she was careful to hold the card loosely in her hand and stumble a little as he half-hauled her through the blast door.

The alarms sounded even as the blast door opened.

It was possible that someone up on the labs level had found the fallen men and women there and alerted the General.

Of course, once he dealt with the SFs on duty in the Gateroom, it would have been fairly obvious to the control room technicians that they had a problem on their hands.

Sam struggled to sweep away the cobwebs of her mind, even as SFs crumpled like so many candy wrappers. She did her best impression of 'stunned mullet' and concentrated on regaining conscious control of her body, even as her mind flittered through the possibilities.

If she found herself in a place she didn't know, full of people she didn't know, how would she behave? How would she respond? What would she expect and how would she deal with the matter of getting out?

Samuel wasn't her. But he was a lot like her. That likeness was enough to give her an edge in predicting him; all she had to do was match the mindset with which he'd arrived at the SGC and work from there.

The veil was lifting about her by degrees, every moment giving her greater clarity and consciousness. It was like standing in the cold predawn air as the sun rose and the darkness gave way to the brightening day.

Up in the control room, she could see the startled expression of the technicians, the General's narrow-eyed gaze as he watched the situation unfold below him.

The reverberations of the PA throbbed in her veins, and she could just make out the words they represented, "Colonel Samuel Carter, you are hereby ordered to stand down."

"With all due respect, General, I think I'll decline," Samuel said lightly. "However I would appreciate it if you would get Sergeant Doyostov to start dialling the gate. P7T-102 would be a nice change of scenery about now."

She could hear his words flowing past her ear a lot more easily than the diffuse sounds of the General's voice over the PA as he came back with the answer.

"You know that's not going to happen."

"Oh, I think it is," Samuel said lightly.

Sam saw the weapon reverse in his hand. There was a moment when she felt panic, before it turned to pain.

Like wildfire spreading through her veins, it wracked through her like electrocution, seared her nerve endings until she was nothing but agony. She'd never before been so conscious of how fragile her flesh was, how delicately it held together.

Now she was.

She knew her face twisted in reflection of the agony through which he was putting her body; knew that they saw it in the Gateroom, the General, the technicians, possibly even her team-mates, although she couldn't see them there.

Samuel still held her against him, the weapon's tip now cool where moments before it had burned. His voice was equally cool as he said, "You can watch this or you can open the gate, General. Your choice."

Sam knew the pain was coming and braced herself.

It didn't help. This time, the pain was total and complete, incandescing through her nerves, flaying skin and burning flesh to the bone. She wasn't Sam Carter, but a mere burned skeleton, like Luke's aunt and uncle on Tattooine.

Impossible not to let a little mewling whimper escape her lips: the torture was too strong for her; everyone had their breaking point, and this was hers. She only realised she was crying when her body stopped screaming at her long enough for her to actually feel the tears dripping down her cheeks. Air wheezed through her lungs, desperately trying to assimilate enough oxygen to heal what her mind thought was wrong with her body.

But her hands were whole. Her sight confirmed it, even if touch was numb in the face of prolonged pain.

Her hands were whole and clutching the access card he'd given her. Even as she hung, limp, over his arm, she begn clenching her fingers and could have screamed when the movement sent a crackle of pain up her arm.

She tried again.

Pain can be made your servant in times of need. Like a goad to the hindquarters of a beast, it can drive you as fiercely as ambition or desperation.

The fragment of memory was offered up from the depths of her subconscious. The voice of the man giving the admonition was as clear in her mind as was Samuel's voice in her ear. "Incidentally, this weapon is a bit like a zat. You can keep applying it, but sooner or later, the human body reaches the threshold of how much pain it can take and simply shuts down."

His voice rang through the empty gateroom, but didn't stir the SFs on the floor. They lay as though dead, although Sam focused hard on one of the closer bodies and saw him move.

Then she yelped as the weapon pressed into her side, unexpectedly; but the interlude was brief, done to make a point. "So, General?" Samuel said with every evidence of geniality. "Are we going to do this the hard way? Or the very hard way?"

She didn't need to look at the General to know he felt the tension between professional policy and personal affection for the people he commanded.

And Sam didn't need to be told which way he would go. They had little idea what Samuel had done to their systems in the three weeks he'd been about the base. They couldn't afford to let him go and later discover he'd left a ticking time bomb in their systems.

"I can't do that, Colonel."

Samuel took a deep breath, almost like a sigh. His chest rose and fell against Sam's back as he said, "Then I'd like the record to show that I did this entirely under duress." He lifted his head a little, and spoke to the empty air, "Voice-activated systems. Initiate protocol 210-782-3018-override. Initiate protocol 210-777-1494-activate."

She couldn't hear the cries of surprise as the control room computers began a dialling sequence, but she could hear the Stargate grinding behind her, could see the astonishment on the face of General Hammond when she lifted her head.

"Colonel--"

"As I told Sam here, I only want off this planet," he said calmly. "Once I'm gone from here, I'm out of your hair."

Sam heard the moment when the General realised that her torture had been unnecessary. "Why didn't you do that from the start then?"

"I wanted to see how far you'd go with the equality thing," he said. This time, his voice was coolly distant, like a scientist dispassionately observing a chemical reaction. "Or whether you'd fold at the sight of such a fair, fragile colleage in pain." Sam's only view was of the Gateramp's grille, but his mockery needed no seeing. It was there in his voice as he added, "So far, you're doing pretty well." He jiggled her in his arms. "So's she."

He had no idea.

Sam's fingers clenched around the card. The pain was still there, a nagging ache, but it had done more than weaken her: it had broken through the last of the hazy fog that surrounded her.

It was partly the dialling Stargate that motivated her. He was getting closer to his goal of getting off-world, and while she might have been willing to help him if he'd asked when she first walked into her lab this morning, that was long gone.

The access card slipped to the ground as Sam grabbed his wrist in both hands and jerked the point of the weapon towards them both. As she did so, she stepped around the tip of the weapon, and twisted her hands in opposing directions.

It was a move she'd learned in second grade, fighting in the schoolyards with the tomboy girls. Sam had never been one for girl politics, she preferred the direct route. The move wasn't difficult for someone physically weak - as her wrists had learned when she was eight.

And it shocked him enough that she managed to slam the weapon from his hand, and send it skittering across the floor to land somewhere behind the Stargate.

Her instincts told her that General Hammond would be sending reinforcements down to the Gateroom, even now.

They wouldn't reach her in time.

Although she didn't know it, she guessed that at least one of the codes Samuel had given would relate to locking down the Gateroom, and deactivating all input to the dialling computer. There was no point in starting a dial-out program if it was only going to be stopped halfway through.

The other one would have been the code to dial a present planet; any planet, it didn't matter. Once he was off earth, he could hop through one Stargate or a dozen, and the galaxy was a big place if you were one man looking for somewhere to go.

So the Gateroom was locked down, the SFs on the floor were out of it, and likely to be so for a while longer; it was just Sam against Samuel.

Carter vs. Carter.

Showdown time.

He'd lashed out with his fist, and his punch caught her squarely in the ribcage, without any gentleness. She stumbled back, letting go of his arm, but retained her feet instead of falling to the ground.

He had the advantage of weight and reach. She couldn't allow him too close, or he'd pin her too easily. Neither could she let him get too far, or he'd just grab for one of the SF's weapons, and they'd be back at square one again.

And Sam didn't kid herself that he wouldn't shoot her if he needed time to get away. She wasn't him. It was his own hide he wanted to preserve.

The main advantage she possessed was that she'd had practise fighting against stronger opponents. So she was used to this.

Somehow, she doubted Samuel was used to fighting a woman. That was an advantage, too.

On the down side, her body was still coping with the pain of whatever that weapon had done to her. His wasn't.

She wasn't him.

But if I was...

Five chevrons were lit up on the Stargate, and the inner ring clicked to the sixth.

He leapt for her, assured in his strength and her weakness, and she let him take her down, as assured in his weakness and her ability to use it.

Samuel had one weak spot that Sam never had and never would.

She turned slightly as he grabbed her, and tried to twist her arm behind her back. She managed to move her arm enough that he couldn't get the grip he'd hoped for, and swept his legs out from beneath him.

He dragged them both down.

But Sam wasn't finished.

As they fell to the floor, she rolled them so gravity was on her side. Her fist slammed into his groin, knuckles grinding deep into his crotch.

He doubled up in agony, making one choked noise of pain and protest, and she could almost hear the hisses of the men watching from the control room.

That was one punch she hadn't pulled. No rest for the wicked, no mercy for the sinners.

Sam wasn't done. Not quite. He'd curled up around his injury, his fingers clutching at her wrists with a punshing grip. She let herself be shoved away, then slammed both hands into his, swinging them like a club. She was quite intent on making sure he wouldn't be thinking of anything for at least the next few minutes.

Sam had little doubt that the guys of the base would be giving her a wide berth for a couple of weeks after this. Right now, she couldn't care less.

Right now, her body ached all over, like she'd run all day and all night, fighting off Jaffa as she carried Teal'c over her shoulder.

God, she hurt!

But she wasn't finished. She couldn't be finished.

As the Stargate opened behind her with a whoosh of light and energy, Sam staggered to the nearest SF and yanked his gun from his leg holster, cocked it, and pointed it coolly at the still curled-up Samuel.

Then she reached for some nice, solid wall to prop her up.

"Colonel Carter?" General Hammond's voice echoed through the PA system, and while it still jarred her bones, it wasn't as bad as it had been before.

Then again, she was feeling kind of dizzy. "Clear, sir." She kept her eyes fixed on the man who lay on the floor, several yards away.

"We have the techs and the SFs working to get through to you, Colonel. Just hold on."

Sam held on and wished for a bed.

- TBC -