Beauty In The Broken

Cullett

"Charlie was born a week after the PSC treaty was signed. He was big and healthy and ornery, even though he was a little early." She grinned, remembering. "Director Ormond—he was put in charge of the SGA by the PSC—encouraged me to take several weeks to recuperate, but once the informational crystals came through from the Asgard, I went back to work."

Samantha indicated the papers in front of her on the desk again, tapping a different folder than before. "All of the medical information is in the marked file. His birth certificate is in there, too. If he survi—well, if I'm successful in getting him to your reality, you could use that to create an official record of him there. I named him Jacob Charles O'Neill, after my father—and after Jack's. I thought that he could take something of our world there with him."

The only indication that O'Neill was even listening showed in a tightness around his lips. Otherwise, he remained completely still.

"But if you'd rather call him something else—well—" Her smile fell a little. "It's up to you."

"Pause, Sergeant." Hammond's voice cut into the recording. "Teal'c, do you have that file in front of you?"

"I do, General Hammond."

"On what day was the child born?"

Teal'c perused the paperwork until he'd found it. "Jacob Charles O'Neill was born on the eighteenth of March."

Hammond nodded towards the screen. "And according to the time stamp on the screen, Doctor Carter made this recording on September the second."

"September second in her reality." Daniel gestured towards the screen. "Is there any way for us to know whether their dates are exactly coincident with ours?"

"I'm not sure it really matters, Daniel." Sam stood, walking to a spot across the table from where Teal'c hovered over the paperwork. "I mean—unless she's going to warn us about another attack that's imminent."

"That does not appear to be the case." Teal'c laid the folder on the table top and slid it across the smooth surface. "None of these documents have indicated that possibility."

"We were stuck in the time loop for nearly three months." Daniel pointed a look at Sam. "Would that have affected her timeline as well?"

"I don't know, to be honest." Carter frowned, shaking her head as she considered. "Theoretically, if that same archaeologist were conducting those same experiments in her reality, then yes. But she'd still be caught up in that loop unless someone else convinced him to stop."

"Which seems like the probable outcome." The General surmised. "Given that the child in our infirmary appears to be around the appropriate age he'd be if the time loop had affected them."

"According to this document, he'd be almost six months old now." Sam looked over at Hammond. "But having little to no experience with infants, I don't know how that relates to the baby upstairs."

"Seems right to this ol' grandpa." Hammond grinned. "He's a cute little guy. Maybe a tad big for his age, but right on target developmentally."

"Just to get this straight." This came from Sergeant Siler, who was staring at the rest of the group as if they were speaking an entirely different language. "If Doctor Carter's alternate reality had not been affected by the archaeologist who caused us to be caught up in that time loop thing a few months ago, then the baby would have aged three months past where we are today? So, he'd be closer to nine months old now, rather than nearly six."

"Yep. That's exactly right." Daniel emitted a strangled sort of snort. "A time loop mystery within the drama of an alternate reality. Holy buckets. We live weird lives."

Despite herself, Sam cracked a smile at that. It was quite possible that truer words had never been spoken.

Reaching out, Sam took the file that Teal'c had scooted towards her. Flipping it open, she scanned the top sheet. Charlie's birth certificate. It had been hand-written onto a pre-printed form—no doubt due to that reality's descent into chaos. Still—for whatever reason, seeing it in print made the child upstairs in the infirmary even more real. Mother's Maiden Name. Father's Name. Address. Interesting—Samantha had listed her home as their primary residence. That reality's Jack O'Neill must have moved in with her rather than the couple living in his house. Single, live birth. Eight pounds, fourteen ounces. Twenty one and three-quarters inches long. Odd that the certificate had been issued by the State of Colorado, when it seemed as if the State of Colorado had ceased to exist. As she reached the bottom of the certificate, Sam frowned.

She'd signed it. Or, rather, Samantha Carter-O'Neill had signed it. Another instance of that off-set carbon thing. Her own handwriting, signing a name that wasn't hers.

One more notation ticked in another box caught her attention. 'Father: Deceased.'

She couldn't help it. She looked over to where the Colonel was standing, leaning back against the glass observation window above the 'Gateroom. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was looking right back at her, his eyes completely unreadable.

Shaking herself a little, Sam flipped the folder closed and refocused down to the end of the table where General Hammond and Daniel were quietly discussing the markings on the maps. "Sir? Maybe we should continue with the recording."

"We probably should, Major." Nodding towards Uheda, Hammond reached for his chair and then sat back down. "Sergeant."

Sam lowered herself into the nearest seat, resting her arm on the table next to her. The image on the screen blipped once, and then came back to life.

"The Asgard sent through enormous amounts of information. After we figured out an interface with their crystalline units, the PSC ordered everyone in my department to sort through the information in search of something that might help us to secure the planet. They were looking for weapons. Or technologies that might help us fight the Goa'uld. Most of what was in the dump was information about Earth's multiple evolutionary cycles, which was fascinating, but not what we'd been tasked to find." She paused, scooting backwards in her chair, and leaning forward, more into frame.

"Eventually, we discovered something provocative." Samantha said. "In Antarctica, there is a second 'Gate. It's older than the 'Gate they dug out of Giza. And it has a functioning dialing device."

Sam looked over at the Colonel again, who was frowning down at his feet again. He must have felt her gaze on him, because he flicked a glance at her with a little shrug. Yes, they knew about the Antarctic 'Gate.

The woman on screen fidgeted a little, gearing up for something else. Her voice took on a new tone, darker—more serious. "But even more importantly, there's another site in Antarctica. Another artifact."

Sam sat up in her chair—suddenly wary.

"It's a weapon. A giant, powerful, terrifying weapon." Samantha shook her head, her expression tight. "It's of Ancient origin—made by the same people who created the 'Gate system, and it's just been sitting there for thousands of years."

"Pause, please." General Hammond stood, stepping towards the map that still lay spread out in front of Daniel. Tilting a look at Sam, he tapped at the otherwise unidentified markings. "Could this be what the second set of markings indicates?"

Sam rose to her feet, making her way across to where the General and Daniel stood, looking down at the topography of the bottom of the world. "We've never found any indication of anything in Antarctica other than the 'Gate and DHD we found there three years ago. But then—we never really had the opportunity to look."

"There's that whole Antarctic Treaty thing." The Colonel finally spoke. "We weren't allowed to do much more than we did."

"Especially if we didn't want to alert the rest of the world as to what we'd found." Daniel squinted at O'Neill. "Keeping the whole operation to bring the second 'Gate home a secret was dicey, at best."

The General scowled at his team. "I know that we've done satellite surveys of the area, but nothing has turned up."

"Well, nothing would, Sir." Sam raised a hand to run through the short strands of her hair. "Not if this weapon is buried deeply enough."

Daniel interlaced his fingers behind his head, blowing out an exasperated breath. "If it's been there for millions of years, who knows how much ice has built up around it. It's possible that it just appears to be another cavern like the one where Jack and Sam were stranded. Nobody would ever be the wiser."

"It is likely that the Ancient people who created the 'Gate system abandoned it because of encroaching environmental elements." Teal'c tilted his head to one side. "Inasmuch as they were highly advanced, they were still humans with human tolerances for uninhabitable temperatures."

"We think." Jack shrugged. "We really don't know much about them, do we?"

"Nope." Daniel sighed again. "Especially not since all that knowledge got sucked out of your brain."

"Thus saving his life." General Hammond pointed out. Nodding towards the front of the room, he said, "Go ahead, Uheda."

The young man pushed the button, and Samantha sprang to life again.

"The PCS sent a team to scout out the Antarctic site. Having just given birth, I stayed behind with the other scientists and learned more about the weapon. It's unlike anything we've ever encountered. It's basically a chair. Someone sits in that chair, and establishes a neurological interface with the technology." She leaned forward on the table, balancing on her forearms. "However, according to the data dumped on us by the Asgard, only specific people would be capable of establishing that interface. The Asgard refer to them as having 'The Mark of the Ancients'. I postulated that a segment of Earth's population might still be in possession of a piece of the genetic code of the Ancient 'Gate builders. I found numerous pieces of information in the dump that seemed to lend credence to my theory. I even found what I believed to be DNA profiles of some people from hundreds of years ago who carried the gene. The Asgard have been collecting data on humans for millennia. They kept excellent records."

She fiddled with the ring on her finger, shifting it back and forth as she framed her next statement. "So, we identified which gene is likely responsible for the neural-interface. And then we started testing people."

Her eyes danced off to the side again, and she offered a sad kind of half-smile. "As a scientist, you expect to make scientific discoveries. You never expect to be that scientific discovery."

Sam leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees, her hands folded tightly together. She could guess at some of what was coming, and her stomach roiled in revulsion.

"I was the only person in the mountain in whom the gene was present. Director Ormond instructed me to test Charlie—to see if he possessed it. When we ran his DNA, we found that he hadn't only inherited the gene from me—but also from his father."

"The PSC didn't confine their testing to the Mountain. They formed teams that went into every occupied territory possible and started testing for the gene all over the world. If people wanted food, or medicine, or shelter, they needed to submit for testing. If they were traveling from one territory to another, they were required to submit for testing. Every settlement our teams encountered got tested. Every safe zone. Every nomadic band the so-called peacekeeping squads came across has been forced to be tested. They've found seven of us so far. An elderly gentleman in what used to be Kenya, a few people in Western Europe. A teenaged boy in Argentina, and a middle-aged woman in Korea. Charlie, and me. The Security Council tested more than three million people over the course of a few weeks—and found only a handful of us who had the gene. And Charlie was the only one who inherited it from both parents."

She laughed—but it was a humorless thing. More bitter than anything else. "Me? I could probably use the chair and do some damage. For my son, this gene is one of his dominant traits. I could go into the science of it—imprinted genes, reversible tags, epigenetic inheritance—-stuff that we had only begun to delve into when the Goa'uld arrived. Sam, I'm sure you understand all that as well as I do. Add to your understanding what I've gleaned from the Asgard research into the matter. I've included as much information as I was able to steal from the lab. The Asgard have been working with cloning and DNA manipulation for thousands of years, building upon what they developed in conjunction with the Ancients. However—the upshot of all this is that my infant son possesses a genetic makeup that allows him to interface and control the most powerful weapon that mankind has ever encountered."

She pressed her lips together—her eyes growing hard. "And it's possible, based on the information found on the Asgard crystals, that he will develop other traits as he grows. It's entirely possible that Charlie will be able to access parts of his brain that are never active in other people. We don't really know what that entails, but the PSC wants to find out."

"Good lord in heaven above." General Hammond's words eked through the room. "He's just a baby."

"The Council is trying to replicate the weapon. I don't think they'll succeed—we simply aren't that advanced. But in preparation for that goal, Ormond and his advisors have decided that seven people will not be enough to protect the planet." Samantha sucked in a deep breath, blinking rapidly before straightening and refocusing in on the camera. "So, they want to make more. They want to breed an army of genetically modified warriors. And, apparently, birthing and raising soldiers will take too long. Therefore, the PSC wants to supplement other adult humans using a kind of CRISPR approach—using Charlie's DNA spliced into their genetic code."

Suddenly nauseated, Sam rose to her feet, covering her mouth with her palm. Turning away from the screen, she paced towards the rear of the room, stopping when she'd reached the wall. Her stomach was churning, her mind whirling. This was—-well, hell. 'Unbelievable' didn't quite cut it. This was beyond incomprehensible. There were no words for this level of hubris.

"Of course, I objected. Strenuously. I pleaded with the PSC, but they see Charlie and me as public commodities. It's almost as if we—and the others who have turned up with the Ancient gene—are now subject to a sick kind of eminent domain-–as if we're homesteads in the path of a freeway. The others have already been taken to a genetics laboratory outside of Cambridgeshire in the UK. It survived the initial purge by Apophis and is still fully functional. Charlie and I are supposed to be put on a transport plane within the next few days."

Her voice gained strength, her expression becoming something more resolute. "I won't allow this to happen. I won't allow my child to become a weapon. And I won't allow myself to become breeding stock for their herd of soldiers. They've told me that I will remain with him—that I'll be able to raise him. But I know that they're lying. I've seen the directive."

Quieter now, she leaned closer to the camera of her device. "One of the reasons that I remained in the mountain once things went south was to safeguard certain technologies that were dangerous or potentially harmful. I erased the records of some of the things we'd brought home—-changed some of the coding in the dialing sequence to lock out all but a few 'Gate addresses. I buried the samples of elemental naquadah that we'd brought home. I sabotaged some other items, rendering them useless. But I couldn't hide the quantum mirror. It's too large. I have, however, been concealing the controller."

She tilted her face to rest on her upturned hand. "I thought at first that I'd use the 'Gate to go to another planet. But they locked me out of the dialing system as soon as the genetic testing came back. I'm not allowed to leave the SGA. I'm blocked from accessing specific parts of the Mountain. But I can still access level eighteen, and that's where the mirror is."

"As soon as I get the chance, I'm going to take it. I know what will happen. I know that I will succumb to entropic cascade failure. But I also know that the PSC would rather kill me than let me escape. I've run probabilities, considered all my options, and this is the best one. So, I'm throwing my child on your mercy. On your humanity. Please keep him safe. Please just let him grow up in your normal, perfect world—your reality—and let him be a child."

She looked down at her hands, retreating into her own thoughts for several beats. When she raised her face to the camera again, she offered a shaky smile. "I've debated about saying this, but I think I have to."

"Sam—-I hope that you can find room in your life for Charlie. In my head, whenever I think about the end result of this, I see him with you, living in your home, as your child. It's probably a pipe-dream. I know that. But it would be so much easier for him to not know that he's ever lost me. I'm all that he's ever known. If you take him—well, he'd never know the difference. He'd simply continue as he has been."

Her eyes softened, then, shifting focus. "Colonel—he never got a chance to know Jack—my Jack—his father. But I hope that he gets the chance to know you. You're strong, smart, and kind—all the things I wish him to be. You're a good man. So much better than you believe you are."

"And I'm aware that you two aren't his parents." She wiped at a spot under her eyes with her index finger, not even bothering this time to blink back the tears she'd been fighting. "But you also are. Genetically, at least. I don't have any idea what his—my—our—genetics might mean in the long run. It's not as if any of us are levitating or reading minds, right? But for him—it could be different. Help guide him into adulthood. You can be who he needs to navigate what could be an unusual life. I know what I'm asking is most likely impossible and it's making you uncomfortable as hell. I'm aware that this is a massive imposition on you both. But he needs you. And you might just need him, too."

She sniffled, wiping at her cheeks with her fingertips. "Regardless. However this ends up, please let him know how much I loved him. Don't let him know how I died. Don't make me a martyr. I'm not sorry for what I've done. I don't regret anything. He is worth it. He deserves this chance. Please make sure he gets it."

Samantha leaned forward, extending her hand towards the device, and then the screen went black.

Silence. So quiet was the briefing room that Sam could hear her own breathing, her own pulse beating in her veins. She stood at the back of the room, bracing herself against the wall, her hands balled up in fists at her side. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Daniel and the General, both sitting with their heads down. Hammond's face was twisted into a dark scowl, while Jackson's expression was more thoughtful. Even Teal'c's broad face was wreathed in a fierce kind of devastated compassion.

And the Colonel? His pose mirrored Sam's. Back to the wall, his hands thrust into his pockets, his expression so dark that Sam had to look away. Anger. Pain. Frustration, maybe. But certainly nothing that looked like he welcomed this new complication in his life.

But did she?

She had no idea. How could she know anything for certain right now? When she was still haunted by images that infected her dreams—both asleep and awake. When she still ached for something—for someone—she had no business wanting. When she wasn't even certain who she was half the time—a military career woman, or an engineer fighting to save her people from an environmental disaster—-

How in the name of all that was holy could she have any idea what she wanted?

The other day, she'd looked at herself in the mirror and barely recognized the face reflected back at her. And it wasn't just the shorter hair, or the paleness of her sun-starved skin. It was more than that—a lack of direction, maybe. Or a loss of any sure knowledge of what her purpose was.

Thera had known. But then—Thera had been certain of many things. She'd felt like the best parts of Sam. Able to be and do things that Sam was too terrified to be and do.

A noise in the hall beyond the General's office broke into the silence, shaking Carter out of her thoughts. It wasn't alarms or any of the automated alerts. Not shouting. Not arms fire, or boots pounding. It sounded like—crying?

Sam moved away from the wall, sidling back down towards where Siler and Uheda were still working with the audio-visual equipment. She'd only made it halfway before Doctor Fraiser marched through the doorway. Her normally pristine lab coat was rather less-than-pristine, and her arms were full of a very, very angry child.

Red faced, his hair embroiled in an impressive display of 'bed head', he seemed to be leaking from everywhere—eyes, nose, and mouth. His screams filled the room, punctuated periodically by oddly staccato breathing that wracked his entire little body. But as soon as he'd filled his lungs again—well, damn. The base claxons had nothing on little Jacob Charles.

"All right, we give up." Janet scanned the room, finally finding Sam. Nearly shouting over the hysterical baby she held, she strode towards the Major. "We've tried everything. Food, a bottle, rocking, singing. We've changed his diaper and tried to play with him. We've coddled and begged and pleaded. Short of medical sedation—we've done it all."

"Janet—" In a moment of cowardly self-preservation, Sam backed away, stopping only when she came up hard against the briefing room table.

"So here." Shifting, Janet gripped the baby under his arms, extending the child out towards Sam as if he were a rabid gopher. "You try."

"Janet—" But all Sam could see was the baby. Wet, miserable, and screaming as if his heart were breaking. His little feet were kicking wildly in mid air, and his hands were stretching out towards her, his grubby fingers struggling to grab her. And his eyes—dark, wide eyes, the long lashes she'd noticed earlier now clumped with tears—those eyes equally confused and imploring. He recognized her. Well—not her—but—he recognized her.

Damn.

"Ba-ba!" He paused in his screeching just long enough to babble. And then—more shrieking. So loud—his wails pierced the air. A bubble of snot burst out of his left nostril as more tears ran unchecked down his ruddy cheeks. After another round of that oddly stilted breathing, he started again with the screeching. "Ba-ba!"

Janet shifted the frantic baby to one side, peering at Sam past his writhing little form. Her tone was gently insistent. "Sam."

There was nothing else to do. Taking a tentative step forwards, Carter held out her hands, accepting the child from Janet. Instinctively, she brought the baby to her body, settling his diapered bum on her forearm while supporting his back with her other hand. He collapsed against her chest, nestling his face against her throat, grasping the fabric of her t-shirt in his wet little fist. His other thumb immediately went into his mouth, sucking it around the last of his cries, as his breathing eased and his body relaxed.

"That's what I thought." Fraiser adjusted her coat, exhaling heavily. "He just wanted his mama."

"But I'm not—" But even to Sam's own ears, her protest sounded weak. Slowly, she pivoted until she was facing the rest of her team. For some stupid reason, she felt the need to say it again. "I'm not his mother."

General Hammond's face had gone all 'grandpa' again, and Daniel was biting back a smile. Even Teal'c's normally taciturn expression had softened into something rather nurturing.

Daniel's eyebrows flew up above the frames of his glasses. "Kinda looks like you are, Sam."

"Well, I'm not." She shook her head, but her body had started swaying back and forth. Innately comforting the baby she held. "I'm not."

"We know, Major Carter." Hammond started towards her, stopping at her side. He patted the child's head with one large hand, while his other arm fell across her shoulders in a show of fatherly support. "But until we can figure out what else to do, it looks like the little man here will need to stay with you."

It was only then that she allowed herself to find the Colonel. Still standing motionless against the observation window, his face still dark and impassive, his hands still deep in his pockets. He was looking towards her, his attention on the burden she carried rather than on her. He tensed his jaw once–twice—the stubble on his chin making him appear older than he was. Or maybe just more weary.

When he finally raised his eyes and met hers, well—hell.

What was it that Jonah had said? As they'd sat in the alcove behind the furnaces, when they'd first started to remember. They'd been catching images—fleeting glimpses of what their real lives were like. Enough to know that things weren't as they seemed—but not enough to know that they shouldn't be sitting so closely. That she shouldn't be resting her head on his shoulder. That he shouldn't press his cheek to the silk of her hair and breathe in her essence.

"I remember feeling feelings," he'd said.

"For me?"

"No. For Tor."

She'd laughed off his joke. And then later, she'd sighed against his throat as he'd expounded upon those feelings, as they'd reveled again within their forgetting.

His expression had softened—the terse line of his mouth easing into something less angry—less brooding. He'd made a decision. What it was, she couldn't have said for certain. Not for the world.

Sam watched as the Colonel lifted himself away from the glass, making his way steadily around the far end of the table. He moved past Teal'c, stepping gingerly through Siler's and Uheda's AV muddle, his long strides eating up the room until he stopped a few feet away from her.

"Jack." The General backed away from Carter so that he could see both of them easily. "Well, this is a hell of a mess, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir." O'Neill had responded to the General, but his gaze passed across Sam before indicating the child with a tilt of his head. "But if the little guy is stuck here, he'll need some things."

"I've already got one of my nurses rounding up a car seat." Janet had found a tissue in her pocket and was working on the guck on the shoulder of her lab coat. "I'm sure I can find a playpen or travel crib somewhere."

"I've got my truck. Plenty of room for all that stuff." Reaching out, he plucked Sam's leather riding jacket from the chair where she'd abandoned it earlier, slinging it over his arm. "C'mon, Carter. Let's go shopping."