Chapter 12 - Talking

"Well, they're every bit as irreverent, brilliant, and stubborn as their parents."

Sam tensed as Daniel walked into the control room. "Is this where I say I'm so proud?"

Daniel groaned. "Don't get me wrong, I get why you and Jack don't want to interrogate them, but they won't say a thing. Not a single thing. I can't even get them to tell me what I learned from the Asgard database, and it's not like that's going to change anytime soon."

Sam dropped her hands in her lap. "What do you want us to do, Daniel? There's a chance they've already irreparably damaged the timeline. Even telling you something you think is going to be harmless could have immeasurable consequences we can't possibly predict."

Daniel fell silent as Sam turned back to her work, a third diagnostic of the ship's systems since they'd dropped out of hyperspace a couple of hours earlier to assess whatever damage the two new passengers had done to the Asgard core and hyperdrive engines. "You wanna talk about it?"

She didn't look up. "About what?"

"I don't know. Whatever's on your mind."

Sam sighed before she turned away from her work. "I know you're frustrated that they aren't telling you what they know, but maybe you should just count your blessings."

Daniel studied her. "Count my blessings?"

She dropped her gaze to her hands. "All I'm saying is that life's a little complicated right now given what little we do know about them."

Daniel nodded absently. "Yeah, how are you and Jack doing with this?"

Sam looked up, chagrined that Daniel had pinpointed her concerns so easily. "We're fine. I mean, this is the job, right? Living on the front lines of science and technology, which usually means we run into weird, unexpected phenomena."

"Yeah, but I doubt even the IOA could fault you for being a little freaked out by meeting kids you don't remember having who are fifteen years older than you and whose father appears to be the man who was your commanding officer for eight years."

Sam raised a finger. "Do you remember what the General said about the data recorder?"

Daniel seemed to ignore her. "Sam, it's okay if this is a little weird. It's even okay if it doesn't seem real."

She wished that had been what bothered her. "That's just it, Daniel. I know it's real. I look at them, and it's like my brain is trying to remember memories it hasn't even made yet. They're my kids, and I can feel it in my bones, but how do I explain that to them or to General O'Neill or to the IOA for that matter?"

She sighed and stood. "This diagnostic is going to take a while. I think I'm going to go for a walk. Try to clear my head."

Daniel stepped in front of her before she could leave the control room. "Maybe the very reasons you don't want to talk to Maggie and Jacob are the same reasons why you need to."

He hadn't even finished speaking before she shook her head. "Daniel, there's no way I can be objective enough—"

He stuck a finger up in the air to silence her. "Notice I said talk, not interrogate. I'll handle the actual intel gathering. You go talk to your kids."

She took a moment to process his words before she nodded. "Okay."

Nausea rippled through her stomach worse than ever before, except for maybe the first time she'd walked through the Gate to Abydos. Still, she managed to keep her hold on the two lunch trays as Mitchell opened the holding cell door for her.

"Thanks."

"Knock twice when you're ready to get out again."

Sam nodded, the protocol ingrained into her mind from years of working at the SGC. She grimaced. The last time she'd done this, she'd been faced with a prisoner who had her face, mostly the same thoughts and experiences, and more than a few secrets.

Actually, come to think of it, that was a lot more common in her line of work than most people would have guessed.

She turned on a bright smile for the mysterious passengers in the room. "I thought you might be hungry. It's meatloaf today."

Jacob, the tall man who looked so much like Jack that she had to consciously remind herself not to call him sir, gave her a strange look from where he stood at the opposite side of the room leaning his forearm against the wall.

Maggie, the woman with the grayish brown curls who was Sam's height and build, looked up from her seat. "Let me guess, Colonel Mitchell picked the menu for the day?"

"Uh, I think so. Why?"

Jacob eyed her warily. "Our mom hated meatloaf. I mean, she'd choke it down if she had to, but she usually passed the actual meatloaf to Dad or Teal'c and just eat the trimmings."

Sam's interest piqued. "Interesting. I don't mind it."

Maggie's eye dropped for a millisecond to a brown leather journal on the table in front of her. "According to Dad, the reason she hated meatloaf was because of us. It was the one thing she never could stomach after being pregnant with us."

That incongruity between her timeline and theirs struck again, and she wondered if she'd ever be able to stomach meatloaf again, thanks to the toll such cognitive dissonance took on her emotional and mental energies. "Good to know." She motioned between the two adults. "So, you two are. . ."

"Twins." They spoke in unison as if they'd spent a lifetime speaking the same words simultaneously.

Maggie grinned as she took a bite of the mashed potatoes. "Two for the price of one, Dad always said."

"Maggie."

The woman rolled her eyes as she looked at her brother. "I'm not forgetting causality, Jake. Keep your shirt on."

Jacob looked at Sam with a glance that seemed to say, Now you see what I've had to put up with all my life. "Sorry, Colonel. My sister's not great with impulse control as you can see."

Maggie threw a fake smile in his direction. "The day my brother has an impulse, he won't know what to do with it."

This was an interesting development. Jack's personality in Maggie. Sam's in Jacob. That wasn't the slightest bit unnerving at all.

Sam sat in the third chair in the room as Jacob moved to sit with his sister in front of their lunch. "So, Jacob. You were named for your grandfather?"

Though he had his utensils in his hands and was prepared to cut his first bite into his meatloaf, he let his eyes drift closed in a way that made Sam wonder if he didn't think he was in a room full of idiots. "You would know. Jacob Carter was your father after all, was he not?"

Sam managed a thin smile. It was like talking to Rodney McKay, but she couldn't tell if he was naturally that arrogant or if he was just putting up emotional armor to protect himself. "Well, as weird as it sounds, I kind of wish he were here to meet you. I think this whole experience would have fascinated him. I kind of think that he would have been relieved he didn't have to worry about my future."

"Mom actually didn't talk much about him."

Sam looked at Maggie in surprise. "Sixty years, and she didn't mention him?"

Jacob and Maggie shook their heads in synchronicity. "I mean, there was the odd Christmas memory or Holy Hannah, but Mom didn't talk much about life on Earth in general."

Sam sank into her chair, pondering that unexpected bit of news for a moment. "Huh? I wonder why that was."

Maggie played with her green beans. "I don't think she liked thinking about all the things she thought we'd missed out on. I mean, this is the only home we've ever known."

There was a long moment before Jacob spoke. "Uh, you know, causality only works in one direction."

She looked up. "What?"

Maggie blinked at her brother. "I think what Jake's trying to say is that he'd like to hear more about Grandpa Jacob. Frankly, so would I."

Sam studied the man in front of her, giving herself a moment to process what observations her mind was running through. "You know, for all your physical similarities to—uh, your father—your temperament also kind of reminds me of mine."

The twins blinked at her. "It does?" Their voices rang out in unison.

Sam pointed between the twins, an amused smile playing on her features. "Do you two do that often?"

They looked at each other before they spoke in tandem. "Do what?"

Sam chuckled. "That. Talk at the same time."

Maggie and Jacob shrugged. "It's a twin thing."

That was going to take some getting used to. "Apparently."

"You were saying I remind you of Grandpa Jacob?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, uh, my dad was the person who taught me how serious it was to follow rules. He was Air Force like me and General O'Neill, but unlike the General, he was by-the-book all the way." Her thoughts went back to a time when her dad had laughed more easily and smiled more often. "He, uh, kind of relied on the Air Force to find a way to cope with life after my mom died. My brother hated it, but I—I guess I found it comforting."

She shifted in her chair, getting more personal than she'd intended. Even now, it was all she could do not to come up with an excuse to leave the room so she could recollect her emotions. "Anyway, you're reserved, thoughtful, and you like rules. Your mother named you well."

Memories of her family were difficult even now—in some ways, especially now. With both her parents gone, it was hard to go back and think of her childhood without feeling an excessive sentimentality she normally resisted. But there was something in looking at evidence of an entire life which had been rolled back in favor of getting home that filled her with a pressing sadness. But how could you lose something you'd never had?

Sam cleared her throat as she stood. "I'm sorry, um, I need to check on a diagnostic. Let Mitchell know when you're done eating, and he'll take your trays."

Maggie caught her by the hand, a strange understanding written in the woman's brown eyes. Jack's brown eyes. "She was a good mother, Colonel. We can't tell you much, but we can tell you that."

Sam patted Maggie's hand as tears moistened her eyes and a gentle smile drifted onto her lips. "Thank you, Mags."

Maggie recoiled from Sam, the blood draining from her face.

The Colonel's brow furrowed as she studied her future self's daughter and then at Jacob. "Maggie? Are you all right?"

Jacob wrapped an arm around his sister's shoulders to comfort her before he turned mournful eyes to Sam. His voice was thick with emotion. "You're more like our mom than you think."

Sam stiffened, wrapping her arms around her middle. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

Maggie turned tear-filled eyes to her. "It's okay. It's just that this morning—everyone we ever loved died."

"The ones who were left anyway," Jacob corrected.

Sam leaned forward. "Left?"

Maggie and Jacob turned apologetic smiles to her, and she shook her head. "Causality. Right."

"All I'm going to say is that SG-1 was in that field for almost sixty years. Even with the best Asgard technology at your—at our fingertips—"

Sam tensed. "I get it. Without making the same mistake as the Asgard, we would have had casualties in that amount of time."

Jacob stared at her. "I didn't realize how much I took my mother's intelligence for granted until now."

Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"

Maggie's hands started moving in circles to try to explain. "Imagine for a second that Colonel Carter somehow met Cadet O'Neill."

Sam's eyebrows twitched. That was an interesting idea. Meeting Jack before he was a Colonel? She wasn't sure she could really picture that. Well, she could visualize it thanks to the younger clone, but she wasn't sure she could really imagine what Jack might have really been like without the heaviness of his Black Ops experiences or the tragedy of losing Charlie. "I think I get what you're trying to say. There's something undeveloped about meeting someone earlier in their timeline than you expected?"

Jacob shook his head. "Not undeveloped, exactly. More like under-developed. There's a lot about you that's still the same, such as mannerisms and facial expressions. But there are things about you that are different. I don't know, more innocent, I guess. Like you're in there, but you haven't had all the experiences that shape you to be the woman who—" He fell silent, and Maggie gripped his hand with a knowing look.

Even without knowing the twins for more than a few minutes, she could tell he'd been about to say something that would have fallen under the taboo category of causality. She wondered if Jack had been right. Maybe she hadn't survived, but if she hadn't, her death must have been awfully recent.

Tears streaked down her cheeks as Maggie finished for him. "Became our mom."

Sam nodded as she moved to the door. She paused as a thought crossed her mind. "What if we had a memorial service for all the people you lost in that timeline? I mean, this is more Daniel's area of expertise than mine, maybe that would help you guys make a fresh start in this timeline."

The siblings looked at each other for a moment as Jacob exhaled. "We'll think about it. Sounds like the kind of out-of-the-box thinking our parents raised us on."

Sam wondered what other out-of-the-box ideas they were talking about, but thought better of asking about them. "Then, I guess I'll leave you to it. I'll warn Daniel I gave you the idea about the memorial service and see if Vala and General O'Neill will help me get something planned."

"Thanks, Mom."

Her eyes widened, and she stared at the twins with a surprising churning of emotion in her chest. She knew Jacob had likely slipped when he'd called her that, but she couldn't get past the way it landed on her heart. "You know, that's the first time anyone's called me that without joking about me being a killjoy."

Maggie smiled at her. "How's it feel?"

She wanted to lie to them, wanted to say she didn't feel anything, but their eyes... "It actually felt pretty great. I don't pretend to be your mother, but I can't imagine she was anything but proud of you both."

Almost on impulse, she walked over, leaned over the table, and hugged the twins simultaneously.

Maggie's arms were around her immediately, and Jacob's arms joined a few moments after he recovered from what Sam suspected was his initial shock. She swallowed down emotion. "Thank you for giving it all up to come help me. That can't have been easy."

When she pulled away, Jacob's eyes were solemn. "It's what our parents would have done."