Safe
Rose Stetson
Summary: For the first time in years, the shoe is on the other foot, and Colonel Samantha Carter doesn't like how it fits.
Timeline: Missing scenes from SGU 2x13 "Alliances"
Author's note: For years, I'd sworn off SGU because those first few episodes seemed so different from SG-1 and Atlantis. But then the pandemic hit, and I couldn't quite get enough Stargate anything. So, I gave it another shot. What surprised me was how much RDA was in the first season. What surprised me next was how some of the events in Universe would have impacted SG-1 in one way or another. Here's one of those times. Keep those tissues handy. There are parts of this one that are tear-jerkers. -RS
"Major, report."
Colonel Samantha Carter turned to her navigation officer.
"Nothing yet, ma'am."
Sam's jaw tensed. Chatter about an attack on Homeworld Command. A Lucian Alliance attack. She'd never guessed twenty years ago that she might miss fighting the goa'uld one day, but here she was. Nostalgic for the good old days.
"302 pilots standing by?"
The officer nodded. "Awaiting your orders, ma'am."
Sam checked the controls and screens, a nervous habit from her days at R&D. Everything was in perfectly working order. Now, all she had to do was...
"Colonel?"
Sam's head snapped up. "Yes?"
"We're receiving a message from Homeworld Command."
Her heart lightened. Jack. "On screen."
The officer almost seemed apologetic, like he knew that what he was about to say wouldn't please her. "I'm sorry, ma'am. Text only. From Colonel Telford."
Sam felt sick, but she batted it away. She couldn't afford the emotion that might undo her right here and right now if she wasn't careful. She'd once sacrificed two 302 pilots to save the rest of her crew when the Lucian Alliance's Icarus base was compromised. She wasn't about to endanger them all because of her own feelings.
Instead, her blue eyes held the gaze of the navigation officer. "The attack?"
He nodded. "Homeworld Command is a pile of rubble, ma'am. Naquadria bomb suspected. Uncertain radiation levels."
It took every military instinct Sam has cultivated over the past twenty years not to rush out of the room and vomit.
They'd lost Daniel to naquadria bomb testing. To radiation poisoning. That alone took her mind to some dark spaces, but if Telford was the one communicating... If Telford was the one issuing orders from the mobile command unit...
She remembered the tent they'd set up outside Cheyenne Mountain during the whole wormhole connection to a black hole incident. Hammond had been there. Hammond, Davis, Teal'c, and her.
Then-Colonel O'Neill had been down in the belly of the SGC, prepared to sacrifice himself to save the planet.
If this was anything like that...
For a moment, it was as if the world stood still. Everything hurt too much to do more than just stand there and absorb it all. So much for not giving into her emotions.
"Ma'am?"
Sam shook her head, hoping to clear her mind. Command. Subordinates. Ready.
She turned to her people. "Run scans to find survivors, and beam our people up if you can. Tell the infirmary to get ready for guests. Send the 302s in stealth mode. Hopefully, we can get a lock on the Lucian Alliance vessel that did this, and take it out."
Sam hesitated a moment longer, her voice seizing with what she was about to say. "And if General O'Neill calls, route the message directly to my quarters."
"Yes, ma'am."
Even twelve hours later, when she handed the bridge over to her second in command, she couldn't sleep. She knew she should. Knew she had to if she was going to keep going. But she hadn't heard from him. Didn't know if he was alive or dead.
She hated Schrodinger and his darn cat. Maybe Narim was right. It was cruel to play with someone's emotions like this. Even if it was just a way to describe the mechanics of quantum physics.
She lay down on her bed, a thousand questions racing through her mind.
Was he safe? Why hadn't he contacted her? Did she tell him she loved him last time they talked? Had she taken him for granted in the last few years? What would she do if he really was gone? What would she do if he wasn't gone, just sick... What would she do if he had hours, not years left with her?
Guilt pulsed through her in the darkness. God, this must have been what it was like for him when she was on Atlantis, now here. Never really knowing she was safe unless they were on comms.
She blinked away tears.
Damn the Lucian Alliance.
She'd hunt every last one of them down if they'd killed him.
A chime on her laptop stole her attention.
Her heart squeezed. Please.
She connected to the video call, the tears shaking loose faster than she could process when she saw his lined face. He looked older, worn, but he was alive. It took a moment for the audio to connect, but she just breathed in the sight of him. He was alive.
Her breathing turned ragged as her emotions threatened to give way to oncoming sobs.
He mustered a smile when he saw her. "I'm okay, Carter. I was at the White House when the bomb hit. President wouldn't let me leave until—"
She didn't process his words after that. Just dropped her face to her hands as relief destroyed the last of her defenses.
In the back of her mind, she knew that he probably felt helpless, that he wanted to tug her close as much as she wanted his arms around her. It probably wasn't fair for her to do that to him, to force him to watch as she cried, unable to do a damn thing to help.
Unfortunately, the tears were coming whether she wanted them to or not.
Jack's silence stretched into several minutes before Sam was able to calm herself enough to brush the tears out of her eyes and take some semblance of a normal breath.
"I'm sorry, Jack. I just saw your face, and—" Her voice wobbled again.
"I get it, Carter."
There was compassion in his voice, a gruff tenderness she'd come to love over the years.
It was like when they'd come back from '666. How her grief about Janet had intermingled with her relief for Jack. How there'd been a lingering guilt for that relief, like it was evidence that she would have sacrificed Janet if it meant saving Jack. She wouldn't have, but that didn't make her feel any less conflicted.
Even just that much of the memory shuddered through her whole body.
Instinctively, Jack reached for her, apparently forgetting for a second that they were on a secure video chat.
The action made her feel a little more alone than normal, like this distance was too much to take for much longer. And yet, it proved that nothing could ever really come between them. One day, they'd get to grow old together like a normal couple. That time just hadn't come yet.
Her eyes were gritty and swollen, and she wiped at them again, hoping not to dry them but to restore her face to its normal coloration. "It's good to see your face."
His eyes were somber as he nodded. "Yours, too."
He paused, then sighed. "We lost Senator Michaels and Dr. Covel."
Sam swallowed as she nodded. "Colonel Telford reported that. They were connected to Destiny?"
"Possibly. We won't know for sure until we go through the rubble and find the communication stones."
The thought that they'd lost more of the Destiny crew weighed on Carter heavily. She may not have worked on the science with Rush to get the first Icarus base up and running, but she'd gotten to know the crew as she ferried them back and forth from Earth. Even felt a bit of empathy for getting stuck on a spaceship with limited means for returning home. In another life, she'd apparently spent almost sixty years with only five other people for company. Sixty years out of sync with the rest of the universe. Sixty years without Jack.
By comparison, life on the Hammond was significantly less bleak. In some ways, she was even closer to Jack now than when she'd returned to SG-1 a few years back.
"Carter?"
Sam's head snapped up. "General?"
Jack exhaled slowly. Then, he brought one hand up to rub his eyes. "Tomorrow will be better."
His voice almost lifted at the end, like it was a question instead of a statement.
She managed a quiet, somber smile. "Yes, it will."
He swallowed. "You have leave coming up?"
She nodded.
"We should go fishing."
The memory of Jack asking her to go fishing and then getting beamed up by the Asgard brought an unexpected smile to her lips. "That sounds nice. Think you can get away?"
He shrugged. "They say I'm the boss. So, in theory, I can do whatever I want."
She studied him as he took a sip of whatever was in his mug. "Jack..."
He raised the mug so she could see it. "Carter, it's green tea. With all those anti flavorings, anti accidents—what are those things called again?"
"Antioxidants?"
He nodded and pointed through the screen at her. "Those. Look. It's still got the teabag and everything. And when they finally let me go home, I didn't make beer-drenched steak for dinner. I had some quinoa, chicken, butternut squash thing. I think there was even a little kale."
She couldn't help but chuckle, though after a day like today, she wouldn't have begrudged him a cup of coffee or a beer-drenched steak. "I trust you."
Though his expression grew a little less somber, she could hear the message in his voice loud and clear. I'm doing everything I can to make sure growing old together is a possibility.
God, she loved him.
He must have read the look in her eyes because he winked at her. A tiny admission that he felt the same way.
She stretched and yawned, her body apparently now asking for the sleep it had denied her only a few minutes earlier.
"Carter?"
"Hm?"
His voice was thick with emotion. "Come home safe, okay?"
That feeling of guilt came back. For years, she'd been right there alongside him when he was in danger. When she wasn't, he was the one risking his life. Usually to save hers.
Unbidden, she remembered the look he'd given her when he had offered to let the Tok'ra try to remove his za'tarc programming. That tiny hope in his eye wishing she'd know why he was doing it. Which, of course, was the reason she finally admitted what they'd been holding back. To save him from himself.
Another wave of tears threatened to crest over her, but she managed a thin smile. "Will do."
"Good, 'cuz I've got a cabin in Minnesota with your name on it. Peaceful pond. Good company. And all the bass you can eat."
Her heart threatened to explode with all the tenderness she felt for this man who'd come into her life in the most unexpected of ways. "Can't wait."
There was a chime indicating a message from the bridge. She sighed, knowing that her moment of rest was over for now. "Jack, before I go-"
"I know. Me, too."
She might have blown a kiss if they weren't on an official channel. Instead, she just nodded. "Keep the lights on until I get back?"
He looked tired again, but there was more hope in his expression than there'd been even just a moment earlier. "Always."