Chapter 11 - Back

The ship rocked, the Ori blast nearly knocking Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter to the floor when a powerful hand stabilized her.

She blinked in surprise. "Sir?"

The man who helped her back to her feet looked so much like Jack except for the color of the blue eyes which worried for her. Without a word, he shook his head, and he pressed a note into her hands. At the same moment, a woman with graying brown curls took over the Asgard control console with remarkable efficiency, like she'd been running it all her life.

"Hey!"

The woman didn't turn around. "I'm severing the Asgard core and initiating a jump to hyperspace. Then we can talk."

Sam pulled her hand out of the man's grasp, still trying to figure out how exactly two people had just appeared in the chaos of the control room. "I can't let you do that."

The tall, lean stranger watching his companion's actions just grunted. "Read the note."

She unfolded the note, though she took a few more chances to study his face again. "Who are you? Why do you look like General O'Neill? And why do I have a note in my hands to help them?"

"Done!"

As the ship jumped to hyperspace, Jack's voice crackled over the intercom. "What's going on up there, Carter? I thought we were doing that time dilation thing."

Sam grabbed the zat which she leveled at the two strangers. "Sir, there's been a change of plan, and I have two people here who are going to explain why."

"Dad." Tears pricked the eyes of the woman in front of them as she instinctively took a step forward and then caught herself.

Jack paused as he walked in the door to the control room, as shocked by the woman's outburst as Sam was. "Dad?"

The man who looked only slightly less like Jack when standing beside him hissed something that sounded suspiciously like causality.

Sam exchanged looks with her commanding officer, his brown eyes ordering her to explain what was going on. "I don't know any more than you do, sir. Well, except that this woman severed the Asgard core from the ship's functions and engaged the hyperdrive with a crystal I've never seen before."

Jack eyed the zat in Sam's hands. "And you let her do this because—"

"Well, there was the fact that I didn't have much of a choice, but they also handed me this." She passed the note over to him.

Daniel, Vala, Cam, and Teal'c filed in after Jack, the control room feeling somewhat cramped with all eight of them inside.

Jack studied the note and then looked up at the two visitors. "Five minutes ago, there were only six people on board this ship. You wanna explain how you got here?"

The man rolled his eyes. "The usual way people get here."

Sam's brow furrowed. "The usual way?"

The woman elbowed him in the ribs. "My brother's making a bad joke that goes back to a Jim Croce song our dad used to sing after one too many beers."

All eyes turned to the General who shifted under the weight of their stares. "Don't look at me! I can't even spell Jim Croce, let alone sing it."

Sam cleared her throat, the tension growing with each second that passed. "So, if that was a joke, how did you get here?"

The woman shared a look with Jack's look-a-like before she turned back to Sam. "You're the astrophysicist. What do you think?"

All the eyes turned back to Sam, and she grimaced. "Okay. Uh, you know who I am, and I heard the term causality, so my guess is that you're time travelers."

Jack gaped at her. "Time travelers, Carter?"

She nodded. "My guess is that we tried the time dilation field, and it didn't go according to plan."

"And we got two new crew members in the usual way," Daniel murmured, studying the two newcomers. "So, someone had kids?"

Something about the two adults in front of her made Sam's stomach turn. "Yeah. Probably. Given the fact that one looks identical to Jack, and the other called Jack Dad. . ."

Jack blinked at her. "You think they're my kids."

Her cheeks pinked before she could confirm her suspicions. "And given how well they took to Asgard technology, and let's face it, I'm the only woman with blue eyes on this ship. . ."

Sam sank into the stool she kept by the console for long hours of work, suddenly a little lightheaded.

"You believe that they are your children as well, Colonel Carter."

Sam managed a weak smile, not sure whether she was grateful that the Jaffa had completed her thought or if she would have rather it hung unfinished in the air.

The silence stretched between them all before Jack scoffed. "Well, that's impossible."

Sam stiffened, remembering a time when Jack had interrupted Daniel's story about going to an alternate reality to rail on the idea of them being engaged in another life. "Actually, it's not, sir."

Jack gaped at her. "What? We weren't supposed to be in the time dilation field for any longer than a month, right? So, how could we have kids that are my age in a month?"

Vala eyed the new male in the room with unveiled appreciation which seemed to unnerve their guest. "Oh, I think we were in that field a lot longer than a month, General."

Jack threw a withering look in Vala's direction, and she shrank behind Teal'c and Daniel.

"I'm talking physics, sir. It's fairly likely that something went wrong. Maybe I underestimated how long it would take to replicate Merlin's phase technology. More likely, I determined it wouldn't even work. We must have been in that field a lot longer than a month while I, and my lab assistants, I guess, came up with another solution."

"This is so weird." Every eye turned to the brown-haired woman, her whisper to her brother almost echoing against the metal walls as they all tried to chew on Sam's suggestion.

Sam managed a matching smile. "You're telling me."

The other woman shook her head. "No, I mean, it's weird hearing sir and Carter." The woman shrugged as she seemed to have found a flaw between her memories and her report. "Well, not so much the Carter. In some ways, that was Dad's pet name for our mom. But what's really throwing me is that hair..."

Sam's hand went instinctively to her stylish bob. "What about my hair?"

"Maggie!"

The woman turned to her brother. "What, Jacob? It's not like they didn't suspect that had changed. They're smart people."

Jack raised his hands to stop them. "Here's a thought. Maybe we don't have this conversation in the same room as the ship's data recorder?"

Sam closed her eyes and pressed two fingers to the center of her forehead. This day was just getting worse.

"Samantha, wait up."

Sam stopped, allowing Vala the time she needed to catch up even though she would have much preferred getting a minute or two to breathe before trying to explain her thoughts and feelings to anyone else. "Yeah?"

"Just wanted to see how you're doing."

Sam winced. "You mean with the fact that I apparently have two children I've never met before who are at least fifteen years older than I am?"

"It's weird, isn't it?"

Sam nodded. "It's a little unsettling, yeah. I mean, they both seem to have studied the Asgard core for their entire lives, and I just got the thing yesterday. Not to mention that if they really are my kids, they should be well-versed in causality and how to protect the time-space continuum."

Vala stopped, taking a moment to study Sam. "You're the one who came up with the theory that they were your kids. Are you suggesting you were wrong?"

Sam shook her head. "No. All the evidence still supports that theory. I'm just—it's been a long day."

"Something about them being here bothers you."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Ya think?"

When Vala didn't follow her, she turned back. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine a world where I would be okay sending my children back in time the way these two came. So, I'm a little snippier than I normally would be."

It felt strange, almost, to see Vala's eyes so serious. "Believe me, I understand."

"Carter, a word?"

Sam stiffened as the General approached them. This was precisely why she'd bolted out of the control room after she set the computer to run a diagnostic after they got out of hyperspace. In her gut, she'd known that the moment Jack got the visitors settled, he would come looking for her.

"Vala, if you wouldn't mind?"

The alien nodded. "You'll come find me if you need to talk?"

Sam nodded. Then, she faced Jack, her posture stiffer than it might otherwise have been out of habit and respect for his military rank. "Sir."

Jack shook his head. "Maybe not a Carter and sir kind of day, Colonel."

She relaxed. "Yeah."

He gestured over his shoulder. "We should talk."

She exhaled as she nodded. "Yep."

"My quarters or yours?"

She inclined her head in the direction of her quarters. "Mine are closer."

He nodded. "Lead the way, Colonel."

They walked in awkward silence the thousand feet to her door. "So, kids. That's new."

Still trying to wrap her head around everything they'd learned in the last few minutes, Sam sat on the bed. "Yeah. Little bit."

"Any chance they're not on the level?"

The question didn't really surprise her, but that didn't mean it didn't still catch her off-guard. "Well, for one, they had a crystal which did exactly what I would have done if I'd had a chance to stop the ship and make repairs."

"And two?"

She stuffed her hands under her thighs. "Well, they weren't armed, sir. They haven't done anything except cooperate since they got here."

Jack nodded. "That's what I was thinking."

Sam sighed, the day's events catching up with her. She hadn't even finished processing her emotions about the Asgard's self-annihilation, and here she was facing having children from an alternate timeline. One in which she had screwed up badly.

Jack eyed her. "You okay?"

She tensed, her head hadn't stopped running through the dozens of possible futures which might have led to her allowing her children to go back in time to fix their parents' timeline. That singular thought took most of her energy, and she had a half dozen such trains of thought running simultaneously. "Not sure. You?"

He pulled up the chair from the small desk in the corner of her room. "We're speaking honestly here?"

"Do we have any other choice?"

"Good point." He sighed. "It's a little weird. Like when that alternate Dr. Carter came through a few years back. I mean, on the one hand, it feels familiar, but on the other. . ."

Sam shook her head. "Actually, sir, it's worse."

His eyebrows shot up. "Worse?"

"I mean, potentially worse. Dr. Carter came from an entire parallel universe. Even though we looked like each other and had similar experiences, we weren't the same person. She never joined the military, for example. Nothing she did or said in our world could really change the course of our development. No, si—Jack. What we're talking about is going back and starting a different timeline. For the universe at large, it would have a tiny effect on the time-space continuum, but—"

She could see the General's eyes glazing over, his hands even prepped to give her the wrap it up signal he usually gave her when she got too technical in her explanation.

"All I'm saying is that you and I will never actually be these kids' parents, but their parents were us at one time."

He blinked at her. "Never?"

He was misunderstanding her, and she didn't blame him. She'd done a terrible job of getting the complex idea out there. "What I mean is that even if we did everything the other us did, including have two children with their exact same DNA, they would never grow up to be exact duplicates of the people in the control room. So, we could never really be their parents, but—"

"But their parents started out as us."

She nodded, though she gestured backward. "Well, a slightly earlier version of us, but yeah."

"That's not confusing."

Sam offered him an apologetic nod. "Anyway, that's why it's actually worse than someone from an alternate reality. Their being in our timeline will impact our timeline in ways we can't predict."

"You don't think they should have come."

She shook her head. "No, sir, I don't."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Carter. . ."

She tensed, remembering his directive for her to call him by his first name. "Jack."

"So, what could this change?"

"For starters, the IOA is going to have a few questions when they read our reports."

Jack grimaced. "Yeah, well, we can't be court-martialed for something we haven't done yet."

Sam nodded. "Agreed, but that doesn't mean someone won't write a memo which could essentially tank each of our reputations."

Jack blew out a puff of air as he leaned his forehead on his hand. "Oy."

"Knowing that our future selves have children while marooned on a ship for sixty years may make it so we don't have the latitude in our world to pursue any such arrangement in our timeline without more serious consequences or drastic measures."

"Drastic measures?"

She tensed. "Resignation for one or both of us, sir."

"Right."

"The point is that these two coming here at this time could change all that. How our relationship, for lack of a better term, evolves, changes. Frankly, what might have gone well marooned on a ship might end horribly when exposed to the pressures of our jobs, living on earth, the IOA."

"Oh yeah, we're living the dream."

Sam looked at him with an almost apologetic look in her eye. "Besides our personal lives, having two travelers with firsthand knowledge and experience with the Asgard core now when we're just starting to get to know the technology will likely impact how quickly we understand and utilize the Asgard's legacy. That head start could have a significant impact on our technological development."

"In a good or a bad way?"

She crossed her arms, a chill running down her spine. "There's no way of knowing. I should never have let them come."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Fifty years from now, you'd be what? Ninety?"

She nodded. "Something like that."

"Maybe you didn't let them do anything."

She tensed as if the thought hadn't crossed her mind. "You mean. . ."

"Maybe there wasn't anyone else to send."

She chewed on that for a moment. "And they didn't want to leave anyone behind, so they brought each other."

Jack grimaced. "Bad?"

She shrugged. "Well, it would explain a few things."

"Such as?"

She pulled her legs up onto the bed, folding them into the same crisscrossed position she'd sat in often as a kid. "You didn't notice? They were wearing matching rings. Antique, tarnished rings. Presumably the rings that belonged to their parents. That's the kind of keepsake you'd hold on to if—"

"If you were trying to remember someone important to you."

She nodded. "Exactly."

They fell into silence before they both turned to each other.

"Jack."

"Sam."

They couldn't help but laugh as Jack motioned for Sam to go first. "We should probably talk about what happens next."

Jack nodded, relief on his features. "Yeah. So, what? I mean, do we get married?"

Sam had been about to talk about how to best utilize the intelligence they'd come on in the O'Neill time travelers when she froze, only her eyes widening in shock. "No, I mean—?"

Her brain finally caught up, processing his question. "Married?"

Jack rubbed his hands the way he had when he'd admitted to being in Malibu instead of Washington. "You were going on about preserving the timeline, and then you talked about rings, am I missing something?"

She blinked. "Was that a question or were you actually asking?"

Jack quirked his hands as if to ask her what she thought, to imply that he was just as confused as she was.

That nauseated feeling came back full force. "Uh. I just didn't think we were—I mean, we were talking about—"

Jack waved his hands in the air the way he did when he wanted to stop and start again. "No, hey. Wires were crossed. No harm, no foul."

Sam groaned. "See, this is what I'm talking about, Jack. Two people who appear to be our kids from a future we've avoided, that changes things. We were fine until—"

Jack put a hand on her shoulder. "Got it. Now, what were you were going to say?"

She pursed her lips to one side. "I think we need to figure out what we're going to do with the Wonder Twins."

The corner of Jack's eyes crinkled in laughter as he eyed her. "Wonder Twins?"

She grimaced. "Cheesy?"

He seemed to consider it. "It's growing on me. What did you have in mind?"

"Well, it should be fairly simple to fit them with the new identities and put them in R&D at Area 51."

He raised his eyebrow. "You don't think we should consult with them about what they want to do?"

Sam bit her lip. "Obviously, they shouldn't be locked into it if they don't want to, but their understanding of the Asgard core could be a huge advantage. The sooner we're able to put it to use. . ."

"The Asgard core is why the Ori were able to follow us through hyperspace. Are we really sure we want to put that in all our ships?"

Sam leaned her elbows on her knees. "Jack, fifty years of studying the Asgard database and the Asgard core could be a huge step forward for us."

"I thought you were all about causality, Carter."

She exhaled as she sat back up and crossed her arms. "At this point, separating them from the rest of SG-1 is the best way to minimize the damage. What they do or don't learn at Area 51 is secondary. Besides, it's only one option we could present to them. One way they could continue the work they've presumably spent their lives doing."

"Carter, we'd be their only family. You don't think they'd want Thanksgiving, Sunday dinners, and the whole shebang?"

That was what she was afraid of. She knew for a fact that Daniel still exchanged emails with the General's clone from time to time. How much more complicated would it get if they were to add two children from an alternate timeline to the mix? "Obviously, there are a few kinks to work out."

"Besides, if they lived their whole lives on this ship, what makes you think they would be ready for that kind of life?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, off the top of my head, they've never had a bank account, driven a car, gone grocery shopping. Did they ever actually have to make friends on their own?"

"Point taken." That had slipped her mind. "Well, it's not like the Air Force doesn't help aliens assimilate when we take them in as refugees." She brightened. "Maybe Cassie could—"

Jack threw her a look. "Oh, right. That'd work. What would you say to her? Hey, Cass, help teach our future kids all the stuff we apparently didn't despite having sixty years to do so without pesky little distractions like work?"

Sam couldn't help but chuckle. "Yeah, I guess it sounds a little ridiculous when you put it that way."

"Only a little?"

She watched the lines on his face, the same bitter disappointment that he tried to hide from her every time she rejected him. He understood—he always understood—but she couldn't help but wonder how much longer she could test his patience. "Jack, about the misunderstanding earlier, I wasn't saying no. I was just surprised. I mean, I realize you might have been asking a clarifying question instead of actually...uh, proposing any big changes, but—if the circumstances were different, and you were actually asking instead of, uh, just asking, I might—you know."

Jack searched her face for a moment before he stood. "All good, Carter. I should get up to the bridge again."

As he turned to go, she closed her eyes in self-deprecation. Well, that had been clear as mud. No wonder the poor man looked like she'd kicked his dog.

She stood, a surge of courage making it impossible for her to stay silent any longer. "You know, if I have to call you Jack, maybe you should call me Sam."

Jack turned back to her, one of his eyebrows raised. "Okay. And on the clock, maybe we use our ranks to differentiate."

"That's a good idea, General."

He hesitated a moment longer.

She stiffened, waiting for whatever was still on his mind. "Jack?"

"What do you think happened over those sixty years?"

A million ideas flooded her mind, but it felt too intimate, too personal to discuss most of them even with the man she'd presumably done them all with. Maybe there'd been a wedding. Obviously at least a few nights of passion. And if Jack thought she'd died by the time their new guests had arrived on board, it was a near certainty that Jack hadn't survived all those years.

She shook her head. "I don't know. What about you?"

He shrugged, apparently taking her cue about how much to disclose to one another about their imagined sixty years together. "And those names. Maggie and Jacob? I mean, I know where they got Jacob, but Maggie?"

Sam blushed. "Isn't she one of the Simpsons?"

"Yeah, but I would never have guessed in a million years that you'd let that fly."

A faint smile kissed her lips as she looked up at him. "I don't know, I kind of like it. Maggie O'Neill. Has a nice ring to it."

Jack was quiet for a minute. "Samantha. . ."

There was something different in the way he said her name when he spoke more than just the three-letter moniker everyone else used, something more intimate, more tender. "Yes?"

"Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I wanted a chance at that life they—the other us, I mean—lived. What are the chances?"

Sam frowned at him. "Which part, Jack? Frankly, I'm a little surprised that our future selves had kids at all."

Something about how she'd gone straight to their chances of parenthood seemed to make the General uncomfortable enough to shift his posture. "That's not—I mean, it's not not what I was thinking, but—"

"What are the chances I'd give up the Air Force?"

Jack shrugged as if she'd read his mind. "Wouldn't have to be you."

She nodded, letting her thoughts wander as they would. Interestingly enough, they wandered to the Prometheus. A faint smile played on her lips as she looked at him. "I guess you could say that I'm a safe bet."

Jack's lips quirked up as he pondered the words. "Safe bet, huh?"

She blushed, looking up at him as she waited for a response to her cryptic assurance.

"It's a start."