Chapter 18: Goodbyes and Hellos

In the makeshift laboratory of Area 52, Sam had been working non-stop on the Ancient flux capacitor for the past forty-eight hours. Both Daniel and Cam had stopped in more than once insisting she get some sleep, but she wasn't having it. Each time she made an effort to catch a few winks, she would wake suddenly, wondering how she was going to alter the capacitor for an accurate jump of less than one hundred years duration.

Sam was relieved Colonel O'Neill had agreed to pilot the ship. Thinking of his reluctant acquiescence, she thought back to her Jack's reluctance in the beginning. In spite of herself, Sam smiled as she recalled her husband's teasing about the time machine. His complaints about her refusals to let him go back to watch the White Sox World Series appearance in 1906 had been only half in jest. He'd been so irritated with her. He probably thought she was putting him on about the accuracy factor of the flux capacitor. She wished she had been. It would make it a lot easier now.

As it was, if she miscalculated, the four of them would be forced to spend an indeterminate length of time in the past, waiting for the correct moment to intervene, risking further damage to the timeline, or, worse yet, overshoot the mark entirely. In spite of her years of experience, Sam was still hounded by her tendency to anticipate the worst possible scenarios. She thought she was on the right track, but there was no way to know until they made the jump. If all went well, that would be sometime tomorrow. We need to get home, she thought. I can't afford to be wrong. No pressure …

"Sam…" a familiar voice called from the doorway.

The sleep deprived astrophysicist turned to find her father, or at least this Jacob, standing there, looking at her with concern.

"Dad, what are you doing here?" Sam asked, doing her best to mask her emotions.

"Came to say goodbye to my little girl," Jacob said. "Your mother is in the next room. She wants to see you too."

Sam took a deep breath. She couldn't believe this was happening, saying goodbye to her parents again. Actually in her mother's case, she'd never had the chance to say goodbye. It was so hard to wrap her mind around all of this. In some ways it was the chance she'd never had. In others, it was too cruel to imagine.

"Okay," she said coolly with studied indifference. "Let me finish these calculations and I'll be right out."

President Carter wasn't fooled, but he decided to play along. "Alright, Sam," Jacob said softly. He had an inkling of how overwhelming this must be for the woman who was not quite his daughter. Despite her self assurance and accomplishments, she was human and the emotions of the moment were incredibly complex. He ought to know. The President of the United States wasn't doing so well himself right now. His own feelings were dangerously close to the surface. He reminded himself over and over again they were doing this for the well being of the planet; personal considerations had to be ignored in the interest of the big picture.

While Jacob quietly left the room to wait for Sam, closing the door behind him, Sam stopped what she was doing. She slowly lowered her head to the table in front of her. I don't need this right now, she thought. In the midst of complex calculations to determine the correct moment of reentry and customize the settings of the Puddle Jumper, the last thing she needed were the emotions rapidly closing in on her. The grief of her parents' deaths had resurfaced in spades; it was like she'd lost them yesterday. It's not fair, she thought. I need to be calm and logical, I can't be doing this.

One of the blessings of being over forty was the ability to realize life wasn't always fair or predictable. Stopping to think about it, Sam realized she'd learned that for certain the first time she'd stepped through the Stargate. She could do this, she'd done harder things. Things like watching her father die before her eyes two years ago. But Jack was with her then; how she wished her Jack could be with her now.

Then again she wasn't a woman who needed a man, any man to support her. Her feelings for Jack were about what and who she wanted in her life. She could survive, could do what needed to be done, without him if she had to do so. That being said, she'd really prefer to have him with her.

OoOoOo

Colonel Jack O'Neill had spent the weekend with his wife Kerry and their boys, Justin and Ryan. Now, on Monday morning, he was expected "back at work". As far as Kerry knew this would be a routine week, with Jack spending time both at Cheyenne Mountain and in Washington. If she was lucky, she'd see her husband at most once before the next weekend. Little did she know that if everything went as planned, this weekend would be their last time together as family.

As weekends went at the O'Neill home, it had been peaceful, almost bucolic. Jack had been uncharacteristically attentive, so much so, Kerry was a bit worried. She'd said as much by Saturday afternoon. Jack had done his best to reassure her, kissing her gently and taking her and the twins for an apparently carefree day at the zoo. He'd hidden his angst behind years of carefully studied subterfuge and done his best to appear a doting husband and father, at least for these last days.

His relationship with Kerry had been cool at best over the past few months. Though he loved the boys more than he could say Jack never stopped missing Sam. Kerry was a good woman and she'd been there for him when he'd needed her most, but without the boys it wouldn't have been enough for a marriage. That knowledge brought him more than a little guilt even before Colonel Carter had shown up.

Fortunately, the boys showed no signs they sensed anything amiss with their father. On the contrary, they clung to him as they always did on the rare days he devoted to them in their Colorado Springs home. He had no doubt that if this timeline continued his boys would grow up wishing their father was around more often. His Kerry hated Washington and for better or worse that was where he spent most of his time.

Sam was right. None of them had to know what was going to happen. They wouldn't be hurt, he told himself and no one would miss them. Though he couldn't believe it himself, he did believe Sam. She knew about these things, always had. Things no one should have to think about, he said in his own mind.

Sam's reassurances aside, Jack left his house with a heavy heart. Without words, he'd said his goodbyes. He'd cherish the memory for as long as fate allowed.

OoOoOo

Jacob had encouraged Kathleen to stay at home in Washington while he came to see Sam off. She wouldn't hear of it. Her daughter or not, she was saying goodbye to the woman who for all intents and purposes was Sam Carter, probably the woman she was meant to be, minus the all-encompassing tragedy of her son's death. Though Kathleen remained in the dark as to the details of the pending operation, she knew enough to realize things would never be the same once this particular mission was completed.

Kathleen was the first one Sam saw when she finally left the lab.

"Mom?" Sam called as soon as she saw her. Once out the door, she realized her antiseptic white coat was still in place and proceeded to remedy that situation.

All Kathleen needed was to hear Sam call for her. She opened her arms and Sam came to her with no further encouragement.

"I love you," Sam whispered in the First Lady's ear. This was her mother as she'd never had an opportunity to know her. The feelings of love and loyalty surfaced without conscious thought.

"I know, Sam," Kathleen responded, pulling back slightly from the embrace. "And I love you, my darling." Kathleen's hands came up to caress her daughter's familiar face. Sam couldn't miss the tears in the older woman's eyes.

"Come, sit," Kathleen said, leading Sam to the matching chairs a few steps away. Jacob was seated there waiting for them, his own anxiety thinly veiled beneath a fatherly smile.

"Your father won't tell me everything, but I believe you are leaving on a very dangerous mission," Kathleen said. "It's likely I'll never see you again."

"That is likely," Sam admitted, struggling with her own emotions. More than a week ago when she'd first met Kathleen, she'd shared her mother's fate in the original timeline. Whatever else she knew, Kathleen realized she'd died long ago in Sam's reality.

"I am so very proud of you," Kathleen said. "Never forget that."

And with those simple words, Kathleen said goodbye. President Carter took it from there.

OoOoOo

Soon after Sam's meeting with her mother, Jacob convened an unprecedented strategy session with his trusted friend Jack O'Neill and three people from another timeline, one of them his only daughter.

In an old, poorly furnished room, where the table was marked with decades old scuffs and the chair cushions had seen better days, the five conspirators met. Strong in their resolve, yet uncertain of the outcome, they conspired to bring an end to Ba'al's ill-conceived enslavement of the planet Earth. With any luck, the subtle invasion that had begun in the midst of a World War would end up being no more than a figment of Ba'al's deluded, sadistic imagination, something that never happened at all.

When the Goa'uld were finally vanquished, Ba'al was furious. Narrowly escaping the final siege with his miserable skin, the arrogant miscreant resolved to regain the absolute power he craved. By an unimaginable twist of fate, he'd captured a surviving Ori prior, fleeing from the onslaught of Earth's forces. The creature, near death itself, was able to teach Ba'al to use a surviving Supergate to travel backwards in time. Ba'al was convinced that a less sophisticated Earth would be easy pickings for him and an ideal way to rebuild his Empire. Besides, it would serve Jack O'Neill right. The upstart human had been his undoing in the first place. Now his people would be the foundation of a larger, grander empire.

Ba'al's original plan had been to travel at least one to two hundred years into the past. But he and the prior had miscalculated, landing them in a more advanced phase of human development than they had planned. By then, humans had discovered the Gate at Giza and were in the initial phases of exploring Stargate technology. Though the setting wasn't ideal, Ba'al made the most of it, easily intimidating the leaders of the time with the power of the one Mothership remaining in his control.

Daniel, during the time he'd spent sequestered in the "library" had accessed historical records, pinpointing the time where history began to diverge from that known in the original timeline. Comparing those records with top secret government records of Ba'al's original interactions with Earth leaders, Daniel had determined the team would work to arrive in April of 1945. The first time Ba'al's existence was documented officially was April 14, 1945. Everyone, including Daniel, realized it would take a miracle for them to arrive at exactly the correct time to stop any and all trace of Ba'al in Earth's earlier history. Still they could do their best.

Once everyone was as comfortable as they could be in the makeshift meeting room, the final planning session got underway. Jack had arrived shortly before the meeting began, an air of resignation hanging in his every movement. After three long hours of sifting information and rehashing pros and cons of various approaches, Colonel O'Neill spoke up, hoping to move things along.

"Carter knows how much I love listening to scientific mumbo jumbo," he said, doing his best to keep things light. "But let's cut to the chase. If I'm right, we're flying this contraption into the upper atmosphere. Then I'm gonna think happy thoughts of April 1945. These Ancient folks will wave a magic wand and presto-chango, we're all living before we were born. Does that about cover it?"

Sam couldn't help but smile. "That's the plan, Colonel," she said pleasantly enough.

"Yeah, then Daniel and I get to do the hard part," Cam teased.

TBC

A/N: In case I haven't mentioned it before alternate realities, timelines, universes give me a headache. It's probably the reason I haven't written any of these stories before. Hope this is holding together for you.

In any case, work is giving me a headache these days too. So next chapter, probably this weekend and not much sooner. Sorry.

Thanks for continuing to read. Reviews and any feedback are greatly appreciated.