Chapter Eleven: Re-Version
In an SGC so very, very far from ours

Daniel waved casually to the guards before stepping into his wife's lab, not entirely sure what to expect. What he found knocked him back a step. "Uh... redecorating?" he managed.

"What?" Sam glanced up from the box she was filling, eyes wide in surprise.

"You just... look like you're moving in, that's all." He wasn't sure he liked that. It meant that this Sam was stepping out of her shell, sure, getting more comfortable with them, and that was a good thing. But it just seemed so permanent. Like... acknowledgment of the fact that his wife was never coming back.

"It's just that this lab is a lot different from mine," she said absently, picking up something from the table, considering it for a moment, then putting it in the box. "Hey, since you're here, help me move this thing. I've got it all unplugged; it's just too heavy to move by myself."

Daniel just stared at her as she levered to her feet and crossed the lab to a bank of... Oh, who was he kidding? He'd never known what half of her equipment was or what it did. "That thing has to weigh four hundred pounds."

"Yeah, but it kind of slides. I just need you to make sure it doesn't tip."

He bit his lip. He really, really couldn't help her demolish his wife's second home.

"I promise, the two of us can do it," she pressed. "Siler and I have done it before." When he still didn't move, she seemed to pick up that his hesitation ran deeper – maybe, he thought, she could read him as well as he could read her. "Daniel? What's wrong?"

He shrugged. "I just... She's coming back," he said softly. He had to believe that.

Her eyes widened a little as she got his meaning. "Actually, that's what I'm working on," she assured him. "See, I was in my lab when this happened, but your Sam was asleep. So if one of us did something, it had to be me, right?"

"I... suppose."

"So what I'm trying to do – what I've been trying to do – is remember where everything was. Something I might have accidentally touched or activated, or... two devices that could interact, somehow, to cause this. I tried drawing it out, but it just wasn't working, so I thought if I could be here, could recreate the space, maybe it would help me remember."

"Oh." Well, he supposed he was okay with that. He started across the room toward her, but two sheets of paper on the nearly empty lab table caught his eye. They were sketches. Maps, almost, of the table, with the computer and several different objects he didn't recognize marked out. "This is what you were working on," he realized.

"Yeah. You gonna help me move this, or not?"

"Right. But, um... what are the odds you two would have the same stuff? I mean, assuming we're talking about two different realities here, they seem to be awfully different. She may not have the devices you need."

"That's probably true," she shrugged, "but it doesn't matter."

"Uh... how can that not matter?"

A broad smile spread across her face. "I know where they all came from. If I can pin it down to a few, we can go get them."

Her excitement was contagious... to a point. "You," he specified. "You can go get them. Personally, I like to stay on here on terra firma."

"Chicken," she teased.

With a shrug, he crossed the rest of the way and took a solid grip on the opposite side of the machine. "And frankly, I don't see how you can go back out there, with what you've already been through."

"Some things are too important, Daniel," she answered simply. "There are battles that have to be fought."

She braced herself to shove the tall rack, but Daniel put a foot up against it, blocking it. "I know. I just never thought we would be the ones fighting them. If my Sam went through what you went through, I just... don't know if I could handle that. If we could handle that."

"You," she grunted, shoving against it anyway until he moved his foot and helped her slide it, "are a lot stronger than you think."