Monday, May 10
Reality H382
Samantha raised her hands for the fourth time. For some reason, none of these realities were very receptive to visitors coming through the mirror. Maybourne, looking as dour as he had the first three times, did the same.
The very serious, very polite young airmen held them under guard until reinforcements arrived in the form of a lieutenant and a couple of sergeants. The sergeants patted them down and led them to a small lab nearby that was empty apart from the tables and benches.
"Sir, ma'am, please take seats and keep your hands where we can see them," the lieutenant said as the two sergeants took up positions on either side of the door.
She and Maybourne had decided that he would keep his mouth shut unless it proved necessary for him to speak. It seemed that he was considered to be less than trustworthy in most of the realities, but Makepeace didn't have anyone else to send with her and he refused to send her alone.
After complying with the instructions, Samantha cleared her throat. "Can we please see your base commander and Colonel Jack O'Neill?" she asked.
"They are already on their way, ma'am," he said. She nodded and settled back to wait. It didn't take long. Hammond was a three star here, but O'Neill was still a colonel. They walked in looking somber and wary. Then her eyes widened as Captain Carter and a Teal'c who was dressed in fatigues walked in behind them. So far, in the other realities, they hadn't been permitted to see anyone beyond a few guards, Hammond and O'Neill.
"What have we here?" Hammond asked. Seeing them one right after another was getting surreal, since none of them came across as quite the same level of asshole hers had been. "I'm guessing that you're not kidnappers since you surrendered yourselves so tamely. Why are you here?"
"It's kind of a long story, sir," she said. "I'm Lt. Samantha Carter from the reality that has been stealing Daniels." She steeled herself against the angry looks, though it was odd to see her own face so angry when all she felt was remorse. O'Neill looked frankly murderous, but Teal'c placed a hand on his shoulder to restrain him.
Hammond raised his eyebrows. "Again, why are you here?"
"Who do you plan to abduct and torture this time?" the other Carter demanded.
"Captain?" Hammond remonstrated and the woman subsided.
Samantha cleared her throat. "The man who was the moving force behind the kidnappings is dead," she said.
"So, your Jack O'Neill is dead, is he?" O'Neill asked. "Good riddance to him!"
"No sir," she said calmly.
"But you just –"
She interrupted the general. "General Hammond, in our reality, was a corrupt, greedy megalomaniac with an eye on the presidency," she said. That ambition, so well hidden in day to day life, had peppered his private notes. "He drugged our O'Neill to the point of insanity. Jack's now in a catatonic state and we're not confident he's going to come out of it." As O'Neill opened his mouth to speak, she raised a hand to forestall him. "And please don't say anything snide. He's still my commanding officer and my friend." O'Neill's eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut.
"All right, Lt. Carter," Hammond said. "Assuming that we take your word on all that, you still haven't said why you're here."
"We're trying to set the Daniels straight, get everyone back where they belong." They looked startled. "Now, your Daniel's Sha're is still alive, is free and they have two children, right?"
"How do you know any of that?" Carter asked. "He would never reveal that information to his captors."
"He didn't," Samantha said. "He's been out of our hands for a month and in the care of a much more normal SGC."
"From whom you stole their DanielJackson," Teal'c said matter-of-factly.
Samantha nodded, suppressing her emotions. "We want to return your Daniel to you –"
"What about the poor man you left here?" Carter asked.
Samantha grimaced. "That is, unfortunately, a problem," she said.
"How so?" Hammond asked suspiciously.
She had to remind herself that this wasn't the bastard she had hated so much. This was a different man who only looked and sounded like him. She took in a deep breath. "We only discovered this yesterday, but apparently our Hammond had the mirror in his reality destroyed."
There was silence, and Samantha felt her shoulders tense further at the heaviness of it. "Are you saying that you can't get him home?" Hammond asked.
Samantha shook her head. "Only that it will be difficult. They have evidently figured out some way to travel between realities without the aid of a mirror." She was about to explain further, but the other Carter interrupted her.
"How is that possible?" she asked.
"I don't know," Samantha admitted. "And I have very little to go on beyond video footage and readings taken six hours after they vanished. All I know for certain is that they returned the Daniel that was left with them to his reality and grabbed our most recent . . . victim . . . from the room we were keeping him in."
"But because they have no mirror . . ."
"We can't get theirs back to them."
"Surely the one they have will tell them he's not the right Daniel," Hammond said. "They sound very capable of working things out for themselves."
Samantha thought she had herself under control, but this hadn't come up in any of the other realities. A tear rolled down her cheek, and they all stared at her like she was crazy. "He can't," she said in a voice choked with emotion. "Before they got him out of our world, our Hammond killed him in a very permanent fashion. They undoubtedly think he's their own Daniel, and since he's dead, they have no reason to look any longer."
"And we have no way of contacting them," Carter said, her eyes narrowing with thought.
"Unless I . . . or you . . . or someone . . . can figure out how to get to them without requiring a mirror on their end, no," Samantha replied. "And the Daniel that's from the reality yours is currently staying in is dead." Despite her efforts, her voice got out of her control and she looked down at the table, willing her emotions away. She didn't have time for them right now.
"What happened?" Carter asked, her voice sounding a little more gentle. "How did he die?"
Maybourne cleared his throat. "I don't know how you folks feel about my counterpart here, he seems to be universally loathed elsewhere."
"He's a bastard and a half here," O'Neill said sweetly. "Why?"
Samantha sniffled and tried to regain her composure. "He's covering for me," she said, and O'Neill looked stunned.
"Are you really crying?" he asked.
She glared up at him. "My base commander drove one of my closest friends to kill another of my closest friends, then into kidnapping other versions of him and beating the living daylights out of them until he found one he thought he could control." She took in a breath. "Then, once we're finally moving on a plan to get him home and Hammond dealt with so this insanity stops, that guy gets rescued by the wrong people and killed. Jack kills Hammond, goes catatonic, and then I find out I can't get one of the Daniels home within this century. Meanwhile, I've been on drugs to make me depressed, passive and malleable for . . ." She shook her head and looked over at Maybourne. "How long?"
He looked uneasily at their hosts and said, "Roughly eighteen months."
She gulped and looked down. "Eighteen months . . ." She looked up into the eyes of the Jack that was in front of her. "How do you think I feel?"
"Pissed off," said the other Samantha Carter, staring at her in shock.
Samantha let out a burst of air that tossed her bangs around and said, "Got it in one."
None of them said anything for several moments, then the door opened. "Where is every . . ." The man that walked in stopped and stared. His words trailed off as he gazed around the room. It was a Daniel. Presumably the Daniel that belonged in G298. He looked back and forth between the two Samantha Carters for a moment, then stepped towards her. "Samantha?" he asked. "Is that you?" She nodded, though she didn't know for certain if he meant her or his own Carter.
"Dr. Jackson!" Hammond exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Someone told me where you guys headed off to, but not why. What happened? Why is Samantha crying?" He shook his head. "Why is she even here?" No one spoke for several moments and he began to look alarmed. "Samantha? What's happened?"
"Daniel, you shouldn't be here," Jack said, putting an arm around his shoulders and starting to lead him out of the room. "I'm sorry, someone should have left a message telling you to wait for us. We didn't –"
Daniel ducked out from under his arm. "Don't try to protect me, Jack. Samantha never hurt me once, she was just as cold as ice, and I've already told you why I think that was." He walked towards her and knelt down in front of her, putting a hand on her knee. "Are you okay? What's happened?"
The tears she'd been suppressing since the more recent Daniel's death came pouring out of her unexpectedly and this Daniel put his arms around her, shifting up onto the bench beside her. He didn't speak, which was just as well because she couldn't have handled any meaningless platitudes. She could hear Maybourne speaking to the others, but it took her what seemed like forever to regain her control.
Finally, she stopped crying and he handed her a couple of tissues out of a pocket pack and said, "Okay, now can you tell me what happened?"
She poured the whole story out to him, and he stared at her for a moment. She waited for his anger at their being unable to send him home. She waited for the fury and the devastation, and she could tell that the others were waiting as well.
He shrugged and reached up to wipe away a tear had squeezed out as she talked. "Don't worry, Samantha, it will be all right. He'll tell them he's not me, and they'll start looking again."
She shook her head. "He can't, Daniel. Don't you understand? Hammond killed him. His heart was turned into so much ground round!"
"I know that, Samantha, but they'll just pop him into the sarcophagus, and he'll be good as new. That was Thursday?" She nodded dumbly. "By now he's even out of sedation and over the withdrawals, or almost at any rate."
No one spoke. No one even moved. If someone had thought to drop a pin, they would all have been able to hear it hit. Apparently no one in this reality knew about the sarc, or one of them would have been sure to mention it. As the silence dragged on, she found her voice. "You have a sarcophagus?"
"Yeah, sure," he said casually. "So don't worry, he'll be telling them all about how he's the wrong Daniel. It's only a matter of time till they figure out how to send him home and find me. In fact, if the Daniel from here is in his reality now, you should take me there. It will save a step for them."
"You don't even know those people," Jack objected.
Daniel turned towards him. "She said they're a pretty normal SGC."
"And you believe her?" Jack asked incredulously.
Daniel squeezed her shoulders. "I trust her, Jack. She was the one decent person I met while I was there. Jack was loony, and I can see what you're talking about in his behavior, Samantha, thinking back on it. Hammond was always the one who freaked me out the most, really. Jack was scary, but malice radiated from Hammond's pores."
"Well, he's dead now," she said. "And Kinsey's stepped down as president. Our whole reality is getting better."
"That's great." He stood up and walked over to Hammond and the others. "I think we need to talk for a little while. Can you send them some water or something, and maybe some kind of snack?"
"Of course," Hammond said, looking bemused. He glanced over at Samantha. "Is there anything you need?"
"No, sir, I'm fine. I don't need anything."
They all left, Daniel dragging the lingering Teal'c and Jack out of the room. Samantha put her head down in her hands. "I didn't think I'd react like that," she said.
"It's all right," Maybourne said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think anybody thinks the worse of you for it."
"I came across as a hysterical idiot."
"You came across as a woman who's been pushed further than anyone should be. You've been through hell, Samantha."
"I've been through hell?" she exclaimed. "Did you see that? Daniel, who got beaten up and mangled while I did nothing about it but bring ice bags when I could get there, and he was trying to comfort me! Those men are unbelievable. They certainly, all of them, deserve better than they've gotten from us."
"What about the sarcophagus?" Maybourne asked. "It sounds like –"
"I'm not letting myself think about that," she said sharply. "I don't think I could cope if I let myself believe in it and something went wrong." She shook her head. "I have way too many things I can't think about right now. You didn't get to watch Daniel die." He opened his mouth, but she shook her head. "I know you've seen the video, but I saw it knowing that it was happening as I watched. His eyes . . . when he realized that he was dead . . . you didn't know him. You didn't spend hours trying to help him hold together because Hammond had a conniption if he let his emotions show. I want him to be alive . . . you don't know how much . . . but if I let myself believe it and he's not – I'll . . . I don't know what I'll do."
"Samantha, calm down," he said. "Just don't think too hard about it."
She took a deep breath, all too aware that she was closing on hysteria. "It's really hard not to, and it feels way too much like all the not thinking I did over the past eighteen months." Rage surged through her suddenly. "I wish that bastard was alive again so I could kill him!"
"Samantha!" Maybourne exclaimed, glancing uneasily at their guards and the cameras.
"He betrayed our trust, sir!" she said. "He coldly took our lives and made them serve his ends, even the lives of Daniels that never had the slightest connection to him, who just had the misfortune to be accessible to his team of kidnappers. He took from those Daniels every sense of security they could have by using a man that they would trust and believe in as their kidnapper. He jockeyed around with Jack's . . . what does Fraiser call it? His cocktail? He played around with Jack's mind until he didn't know if he was coming or going! And the net result is that no one in the universe trusts us, and we're no closer to defeating the Goa'uld than when we started."
"He should be cut into strips, sun-dried and fed to an Unas," Daniel said, coming back in with the others.
"That's what she said," Samantha exclaimed. "Unas hormones. There were Unas hormones in the stuff they were giving Jack, to make him more aggressive and possessive."
O'Neill's eyes widened and his face twisted into an expression of disgust. "Ick!" he said. "I mean . . . ick!" He shook his head, looking as if he was trying to think of something else to say. "Well, he's still an asshole!"
Samantha sighed. "Yes. But he's getting better . . . or he was."
"You don't get better from being an asshole!" O'Neill declared.
"He was learning, trying to –"
"I mean, from the sound of what you said, he was beating up on your Daniel well before they started drugging him."
Samantha grimaced. "Yes, but . . . as I understand it he was abused as a child."
"That's no excuse!"
"No, it's not," Daniel said. "But his Daniel had as much responsibility as he did to keep that relationship healthy."
O'Neill stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?! Horseshit!"
There commenced an argument the likes of which Samantha had never seen. She stared, open-mouthed and tense at the two of them. The Carter who belonged here edged around the pair of them over to Samantha's side. "Didn't your Daniel and Jack fight like this?" she asked.
"No," she said. "Never. Daniel would argue with just about anyone, but not Jack. They disagreed, but it was always quiet, private. When Jack said something Daniel objected to, his eyes would . . . it's hard to describe. He'd just get this look . . . this sort of pathetic, unhappy look . . ." She shrugged. "Anyway, Jack would realize that something was bugging him, and he'd take Daniel aside and they'd talk. Then Jack would come back and his opinion would have changed."
Carter blinked and glanced at the blazing argument going on two feet from them. "This is par for the course for my guys, though Sha're usually wades in at some point and makes them settle down." Carter bit her lip. "Or she did, when things were normal. Have you seen our Daniel?"
Samantha shook her head. "I haven't, not since they took him away," she said. "He . . . he was very defiant."
"Was he?" Carter asked, seeming suddenly very tense.
Samantha nodded. "And Jack . . . I think he was getting higher doses of drugs at that point, and . . . it wasn't good."
"Boys," Hammond said, raising his voice. O'Neill and Daniel both fell silent, looking mildly abashed. "I don't think we're here to discuss the shortcomings of a man who is unwell in another reality. We're here to discuss plans for . . ." He shook his head and looked at Daniel. "Son, are you sure? I'm none too happy about the notion of sending you out without knowing for certain what you might be getting yourself into."
"I'm sure I'll be –"
"No," O'Neill said suddenly. "He's not going alone. I absolutely refuse."
"What, you think there's a threat so you'd like to give them a hostage?" Daniel rolled his eyes. "You're overprotective, Jack. Incredibly overprotective."
"Somebody's got to be, since you're so damned willing to hand yourself over!" Jack growled. "Maybe I'm compensating for the other one."
Samantha shook her head. "Actually, no, he was very overprotective. That's actually what . . . started . . . um . . ." She fell silent under the collective stares.
"Are you saying your Jack hit your Daniel because he got hurt?"
"Yes," Samantha said.
"That doesn't make a lot of sense!"
"I know!" she snapped back.
Maybourne glared. "She got demoted trying to stop it from happening," he said angrily to Jack. "You really ought to stop thumping her for it."
Samantha gave him an irritated look. "He's not thumping me!" she said.
"He is. He keeps yelling at you as if you're somehow responsible."
"Fine, then I'll stop him myself!"
Maybourne stared at her, then sat down. "I'll just stay over here and be despised."
Samantha grimaced and put a hand on his shoulder. "Sorry, sir," she murmured. Then she turned back to O'Neill. "Look, my Jack has nothing to do with any of this right now. He's in a small padded room with a couple of shrinks who are trying to figure out how to get him back from Never Never Land. Could we not talk about him?"
O'Neill blinked and muttered something that sounded like an apology. Hammond stepped forward. "Quite right, lieutenant."
She flinched slightly and then gave him an apologetic look. "Sorry, every time my Hammond said something like that to me lately it made me want to . . ." She shook her head. "This is a mess. All I know is that your Daniel is in another reality where he's being cared for well, right, sir?" Maybourne nodded. "But that he has twin children whose second birthday he's missed, and he's been gone from here about two months."
The door opened and Samantha was ready to cry at the interruption. Then she saw who it was and sat down very suddenly. It was a beautiful dark-haired woman with an olive complexion. She was wearing a blue dress with a small floral print, and her hair was clipped back away from her face. It was Sha're, and her eyes searched the room quickly before settling on her face. "You have seen my Daniel, have you not?" she said urgently.
"Not for a month," Samantha said, trying to banish the image of the last time she'd seen him.
"I saw him three days ago," Maybourne said, and Sha're turned to him instantly.
"How is he?"
"Impatient," Maybourne said, sounding a little exasperated.
Sha're looked immeasurably relieved, and Jack closed his eyes. He walked forward and put his arm around Sha're's shoulders, and she reached up to squeeze his hand. Teal'c actually smiled and Samantha grinned. "That's good to hear," Hammond said.
"It is," Sha're said. "What must we do to bring him home?"
"Well, I'm going to go trade places with him," Daniel said.
"No!" she exclaimed. "We do not trade in people!"
"It's not like that, Sha're," Daniel said. "It's . . . I couldn't stay here once he's back."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't go home, and . . . and when he's back I'll be very happy for you and for everyone here, but . . . seeing you together, I'll die inside."
She looked at him with concern in her eyes and raised her hand to his cheek. "I believe I understand, but I will not permit you to go if you will not be safe."
"He will be," Samantha said. "The reality your Daniel is in is . . . well, it's what I'm beginning to realize is a pretty normal reality. Mine seems to be rather . . . odd."
Sha're turned towards Samantha and gazed measuringly at her. "You are not well," she said. "You need more rest."
Samantha shrugged. "I'm just about the only one who can clean up this mess," she said. "We have to go to the reality where your Daniel is and get him still . . ." She closed her eyes. "How much more time do we have, sir?" she asked Maybourne.
"Makepeace will be firing up the mirror in a little over ten minutes," he said.
"So, how can we resolve this?" Samantha asked.
No one spoke for a moment, then Sha're said, "I will return with you and accompany you to this other reality. If I am satisfied –"
"Hell no!" Jack yelled. He would have said more, but Sha're turned to him.
"Jonathon!" she said reprovingly.
He flushed and glared down at her. "Daniel would flay me alive if I let you go off like that."
"As will I if you attempt to interfere."
"Fine, then I'll go with you. I'm damn well not letting you go off alone."
"Isn't anyone going to consult me?" Hammond asked softly. Samantha stiffened at his tone, but both Sha're and O'Neill just looked sheepish.
"Of course, General Hammond, I would not dream of taking action without your permission," Sha're said. "But if you do not give me permission, we will have words."
"I believe that I should accompany Sha're," Teal'c said. Everyone started slightly at the sound from that direction. He had barely spoken since Samantha had arrived. "I am the best possible choice."
Samantha looked around at all of them. "There is one little problem that I don't think you're taking into consideration." Teal'c raised an eyebrow and Sha're's back straightened slightly. "I don't have permission to bring any of you back through the mirror besides Daniel." Sha're and O'Neill began speaking at the same time, and Teal'c looked affronted. Hammond silenced them, and Samantha nodded appreciatively at him. "I do have a suggestion, however. You folks hammer out what you'd find acceptable in terms of a way to handle this, and I'll go to the reality where your Daniel is and see how they feel about all of this. We were leaving them for last, so they don't really know what's going on."
"Very well," Hammond said. "Let's get you back to the mirror, then, so that you can go. When would you be returning?"
"Tomorrow, I think," Samantha said. "I suspect that's how long it will take to get everything hammered out on our end and in the other reality."
"We'll look forward to seeing you."