Chapter 2 - The Asgard

"We are giving you everything that we have—and know."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sam watched as Jack sank into the captain's chair of the Odyssey. Without him saying a word, she could sense that he had the same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that she did. Something was wrong if the Asgard wanted to give them everything. "Hey, buddy. Don't get me wrong, we appreciate the new toys, but—"

"But I thought the High Council was concerned we weren't ready for that kind of upgrade yet."

Jack looked up at Daniel, pointing at him as he nodded. "Yeah, what he said."

They're dying.

The thought passed through Sam's mind a split second before Thor confirmed that their latest attempts at reversing their cellular degeneration had left them with an incurable, rapidly progressing disease.

She looked down at the floor, finding it impossible to look the tiny alien in the eyes as he went on. It seemed impossible to imagine fighting a single battle—with the Ori or any other future foe—without the safety net of calling in an Asgard marker.

Though she would inevitably be needed so that Thor or one of his Asgard compatriots could teach her how to use the new Asgard core and show her what had been done to outfit the ship with its new technologies, Sam sank into the navigational chair as the rest of the team vanished. "Sir?"

Jack waved her concern away, his expression clouded and his eyes out of focus. "I'm fine, Carter."

She put a hand on his arm, and he looked into her face for the first time since Thor had left. "Jack. . ."

He squeezed her hand, his brown eyes sad. "Really, Carter. I'll be okay."

She ached to hold him, to kiss him as they grieved together, but she just nodded. "You know where to find me, right?"

He bobbed his head. "Like I said, Carter, I'm fine."

He mustered a weak smile, and she wondered who it was supposed to fool. "Okay."

She only looked back once as she walked off the bridge. He didn't look at her as she went.

"There must be more you can do."

Thor's expression changed almost imperceptibly as he tried to comfort her.

"It's not good enough."

Both Thor and Sam looked at the door to find Jack with a hard expression on his face.

"I have worked the better part of a year on this project, O'Neill. I have not only compiled the database of all our knowledge and technology but also on banking holographic representations of each Asgard to assist you in learning how to utilize what we have given."

Sam swallowed around the lump in her throat. "It won't be the same."

"Not the same? Carter, they just admitted they've been planning this for a year. A year."

"Sir. . ."

Thor raised a hand to stop Sam. "O'Neill, I understand that you are disappointed. I likewise regret that we cannot help you further. But it is clear. You are the Fifth Race. We give you all that we know in the hopes that you will not make the same mistakes as we have."

Jack bent down so that he was at eye level with the alien. "Well, tough."

"Is it so hard to believe that the Asgard would desire to face the end with courage rather than fear?"

Jack waved his hand in the air. "This isn't courage, buddy. This is capitulation, and I'm not just gonna stand by and watch as you destroy your whole planet instead of fighting back."

Sam caught his arm in her hand to try to calm him. "As much as I appreciate where you're coming from, sir, the Asgard have a point."

He whirled on her. "Excuse me?"

"The Asgard have incredibly advanced weapons and knowledge. That kind of knowledge was once in the hands of Anubis. It's in the hands of the Ori. While I'm not sure we would do it, you have to respect that they think it's the responsible thing to do."

"Responsibility is overrated, Carter."

She stiffened, reading in his eyes a deeper frustration than just the problem he had with the Asgard's proposed solution to their inevitable extinction. "Sir. . ."

"You have earned my respect, O'Neill. As have you, Colonel Carter." The Air Force officers turned to Thor, and Sam managed a thin, emotional smile. "More than that, you have earned my friendship."

Tears pricked Sam's eyes as she nodded. "Well, the feeling's mutual."

Jack was silent beside her.

"Please, do not be sad. The end of my people has been a long time coming. We have made too many irreversible mistakes in our development. Hopefully, you can learn something from it."

Sam eyed Jack, his volatility understandable but unpredictable.

Before he could say something to injure the Asgard's feelings further, Sam knelt in front of Thor and pulled him into a gentle hug. "We'll miss you."

As she pulled away, she looked at Jack whose eyes were locked with the Supreme Commander. "Look, you guys do what you want. I'm not watching."

The small alien hung his head with the first sign of something other than compassion or patience in his eyes.

Sam inhaled as she walked up to the door to Jack's quarters, her heart racing as she ran one hand over the chime that would announce her presence.

He opened the door with a raised eyebrow. "What?"

"I noticed you missed lunch. I thought I'd bring you something."

They'd been in the time dilation field for nearly two weeks, and except for fulfilling the duties they rotated through on the ship, he hadn't left his room. Daniel seemed to think that Jack was still grieving, but Sam wasn't sure.

"Not hungry."

She tried to smile. "Well, that in and of itself should say something, right? I mean, any time you would come into my lab to check in on me, you'd end up going to the mess hall afterward."

Jack eyed her. "Carter, the only reason I ever did that was so you'd have some idea of what time it was."

She blinked at him. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You and Daniel, you'd never leave your labs if I didn't come in and bug you. You would never have eaten or slept if I didn't casually mention that I was going for cake or tuna."

He walked further into his room, and she followed, setting the tray on a small table in the corner of the room.

"Sir, I think I should tell you. . ."

He quirked an eyebrow upward. "Tell me what?"

She heaved a sigh. "I was going to tell the whole team at the next debriefing, but the blast will hit us before we can get the ship fully out of phase."

Jack bounced a tennis ball against the wall. "So, it took two weeks to figure out it wouldn't work."

She nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Plan B?"

She winced. "I'll cover it in the briefing, but just assume that I've been through Plans A, B, and C. According to the simulations, none of them are going to work."

He bounced another ball against the wall. "So, we're stuck here."

He wasn't going to make this easy on her. "For now." She smacked her fist against her thigh. "I'm not giving up though. Gonna stay positive."

"Good for you."

He didn't even look at her as she spoke, and she cringed. "Look, I can't tell if this is just that you're angry about the Asgard or if you think I made a mistake in getting us stuck in a time dilation field—"

"Carter!"

She fell silent.

He inhaled, his tone softer and more in control. "Carter, I'm just a little out of sorts. I'll be okay."

She hesitated as she sat on the edge of his bed. "Sir, you're not the only one who misses them."

Jack looked over at her. "Yeah, I know."

"And I know we're stuck, but I'm not giving up."

"Maybe you should."

The words she had been about to say died in her throat. "What?"

"Carter, let's be honest. The only chance we have at being something other than sir and Carter is right here. Spending the next fifty or sixty years pretending like the rest of the universe doesn't exist. And you know it."

She chewed on the inside of her cheek. "What about the plan? Me transferring to Atlantis?"

He threw the tennis ball again. "It's a long shot, and you know it. We should just embrace our new reality and throw caution to the wind."

Sam reared back, his attitude catching her off-guard. "That's not the Jack O'Neill I know."

He caught the tennis ball before he turned back to her. "And of the two of us, you're the expert, eh?"

She bit back a sarcastic response. "Refresh my memory. Who was it who yelled at my dad for saying that we were going to die?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "That was different."

Sam sat up straighter, not above challenging his perception. "How?"

"For one, we're not in immediate danger."

She gestured out the window. "Do you, or do you not, remember the Ori beam right out there?"

"Immediate danger, Carter. Immediate."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, sir. We're not in immediate danger."

He turned away from her and threw the tennis ball at the wall again. "We're gonna be on this ship for a while, Carter. You should probably just call me Jack."

She stiffened. "We're going to get home."

He caught her eye, and she saw a strange doubt hiding in the corner.

Could it be that Jack O'Neill, infamous giver of pep talks, needed one himself? She pressed her fingers together in a steeple formation before she continued. "Do you remember when I got stuck in the nebula cloud on the Prometheus?"

"Was trying not to."

"I didn't exactly include everything that happened to me in that official report."

He didn't respond, but the way he let the tennis ball fall on the floor told her he was listening.

"Don't worry. It wasn't important to the mission. Even with a massive concussion, I knew that there was no chance you, Daniel, Teal'c, or my dad were on the ship with me."

She looked down at her hands. "Daniel tried to get me to study the nebula cloud, which he thought was manifesting itself to me in the form of a little girl. Teal'c tried to get me to protect myself from the corrosive gases of the nebula. My dad had a whole meaning of life chat that got me to start dating when I got back to Earth, but you—"

"What about me?"

She had a faint smile on her lips. "You gave me a pep talk. Even got the other guys to be quiet long enough to let me actually save myself."

She leaned forward. "I don't claim to be an expert on you, Jack, but you have been stranded in much more impossible situations than this before, and we always got you home before. For that matter, you and I have been stranded together before, and we still managed to get home. I don't think there's any reason to break the streak now."

"How long, Carter?"

"How long what?"

His brown eyes were dark and brooding as he searched her face. "How long do you think we're going to be stuck in this time dilation field?"

She tensed. "I don't know."

"Weeks?"

"Most likely."

"Months?"

"Maybe."

"Years?"

She shifted, uncomfortable. "It's possible."

He straightened, rolling his chair over to her. "I'm not going to spend years in this time dilation field being sir and Carter. I'll resign or what-have-you, but I can't do it, Sam."

Please don't ask me to.

She read the plea in his eyes, and it hung in the air between them as she nodded. "Understood."

"Call it one of the lessons I learned from the Asgard if you want to, but I'm not going to wait for some nebulous someday if we're going to live out the rest of our lives on this ship."

Sam looked down at her fingers, still entwined as she thought. "Give me one more month to get us home. If I can't figure something else out, we'll talk, okay?"

He held her gaze for a moment before he went back to tossing the tennis ball against the wall.