Chapter 2. Many thanks again to my awesome beta Wendy:-D. R&R...please:-P
2001
Walking into the Briefing Room, Colonel Jack O'Neill saw General George Hammond standing at the window, overlooking the Stargate below.
"You rang, Sir?" O'Neill said, making his presence known.
"Colonel, it seems we have more visitors from the mirror." Hammond spoke with his eyes still trained on the room below.
"Sir, I thought we destroyed it after the Doctor Carter incident?"
"Apparently not, I am I'm having that situation looked into now."
"Who came through the mirror, sir?"
"Another version of Major Carter came through with a small child," Hammond answered. "The alternate Carter is in critical but stable condition at the moment. Dr. Warner says it looks like she was hit twice by a staff weapon. We are currently trying to contact Major Carter. But as you know she is off-world working on a Tok'ra device with Dr. Jackson, Dr. Fraiser and Jacob."
"What about the child, sir?" Hammond knew O'Neill had a soft spot for children and would want all available details on the child. It was one of the reasons he had asked O'Neill to come, even though the situation didn't call for it. Hammond also knew that having familiar faces around when the alternate Carter woke up would be comforting. Since Hammond didn't know if Teal'c was friend or foe in the reality she came from, that only left O'Neill since the others were off-world.
"Dr. Warner says the little girl is alright. She seems to be in shock right now but that is to be expected." Finally turning towards O'Neill, Hammond added, "she isn't responding to anyone right now."
"Sir?" O'Neill questioned as Hammond nodded his head and watched as O'Neill left the room before he turned to look back at the Stargate.
As O'Neill walked into the infirmary he noticed the alternate Carter hooked up to every machine imaginable. Pausing only to recollect himself, and to remind himself that it wasn't his Carter; she was safe off-world with her father, Daniel, and Janet. He resumed walking towards her.
Cuddled up on her left side was a little girl with blond hair- done up in what used to be neat piggy tails, wearing a little pink dress. She had found a niche where the wires weren't. At first glance O'Neill thought she was asleep, but on closer inspection he noticed that her little eyelids were open and her face was tear laden. She was just staring at all the machines beeping and buzzing next to Alternate Carter.
Putting his hand on the edge of the bed, the little girl took her eyes off the machines and looked at O'Neill for the first time. Recognition showed in her sad little eyes of whom O'Neill was and she moved to sit up. Throwing her arms up in the universal sign for 'pick me up.' Gracefully he moved around the bed and picked up the little girl; who could be no older than 4 and was as light as a feather.
The little girl immediately buried her head into his shoulder and started to cry. Doing the only thing he could, he grabbed a chair and sat down. He started rubbing smooth circles of comfort on the child's back.
Able to now take a closer look at the little girl, O'Neill noticed the signs of a bad day. Her little dress, pink with a little brown bear with a heart on his stomach, was splattered with blood and streaked with dirt. The sleeves showed signs of being a tissue for far to many tears from a girl her age. Looking at her face once more, he saw a set of brown eyes staring back at him.
"So munchkin, what's your name?" He whispered. The girl buried herself back into O'Neill's side but not too much that she couldn't peak out and see him.
"Mommy said in this reality you might not know my name," she looked even more troubled as she continued to speak. "She even said I might not even exist because at every point in a person's life there are different paths, and at…" she started to reply in a little voice barely higher than a whisper and on the verge of tears, until O'Neill cut her off.
"Ah munchkin, you have been listening to your mom too much. How about we try this again." He said with a smile, "what's your name?"
"My name is Elizabeth Mary O'Neill, but everyone calls me Liz, and I'm 4 and a half." O'Neill smiled at the 'and a half'. Charlie had been the same way, halves were very important at that age, even cake worthy. As for her last name, he knew the eyes looked familiar, just like Charlie's.
"Well, Liz, would you like to tell me what happened?"
Liz looked down for a long moment and just when O'Neill thought she was going to say no, her little voice started replaying the events in a dialogue beyond her years. She told O'Neill about how Apophis had attacked. Jack mused that it must have been in much the same way the other two alternate realities that they had encountered so far. There was a difference; Apophis had a new weapon in his arsenal, a bio weapon. Just like anything biological, some people were immune and some weren't. Liz stated that her family had all survived the bio attack along with a small group of other people on base. She told of how her father had died trying to hold off Aphphis' ground attack so that they could get to the mirror, and how her sister had died as she ran back to her father and had been shot in the process.
"O'Neill's never leave anyone behind," Liz said, as tears ran down her face, "Mommy said we had to, Daddy, she said we couldn't go back, we had to get to the mirror." She cried out. Between the cries, sniffles and hiccups she was able to add, "she said we were no good dead, we needed to help everyone by getting a sample of the weapon and all her work to a new reality so we can find a cure to help."
Taking a break and trying to hold in his emotions, O'Neill was shocked at all he had heard. The little girl had been through too much and through all the tears she had given a grisly account of the facts. O'Neill couldn't think of anything to say, so he continued to rub soothing circles on Liz's back as he hopped Hammond had gotten a hold of his Major Carter.
"What seems to be the problem, sir?" Carter asked as she walked into the Briefing room followed by Dr. Jackson, and Dr. Fraiser. They came as fast as they could when they were informed to report back to Earth immediately.
"Take a seat. We are still waiting for Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill before we start." At that moment Teal'c walked into the room, nodding his head in acknowledgement of those already there before taking his usual seat just as O'Neill walked into the room, with Liz attached to his left side.
"Sorry I'm late, sir." O'Neill said.
"What is Grace doing here, Sir?" Carter questioned before she could remind herself of her location. She didn't remember Grace owning a dress like the one she wore, and what had happened to her? She looked like she had been in a fight.
Hammond and O'Neill looked at Carter, along with Teal'c and Jackson. Frasier was the only one still looking at Liz, she studied the little girl as best she could from across the room.
"Colonel, why is she here? I thought I told you to leave her in the infirmary." Hammond spoke up.
"Sorry, Sir, but she wouldn't let go of me." O'Neill stated, as he tried to remove Liz, but she held on tighter. "Anyways, I got her to talk and she might be able to shed more on the current predicament than she told me." Then he turned his attention towards Carter and asked, "who's Grace?"
The little girl, that was still stuck to O'Neill like glue, started giggling and peaked her head out enough from O'Neill's jacket to look at him. "She mixes us up just like my mommy does," and then pointed to herself with a cocky smirk, "I'm Liz, not Grace." No one in the room failed to notice the sharp intake of breath that Carter took as Liz started to giggle into O'Neill's chest again.
Hammond decided he needed to take command of the situation. "At 0800 we had two visitors come through the mirror. I already have a team looking into why the mirror wasn't destroyed like it was supposed to have been. Liz here is one of the two people that came through." Hammond then turned his attention to Carter before he continued to speak, "the other person was Major Carter." Carter just nodded her head in acknowledgement of the facts before Hammond filled them in on the rest of the details he knew. Then O'Neill and Liz filled in with all the information they had. Dr. Fraiser and Carter both looked ready to bolt when they heard of the bio weapon and research the other Carter had done, but had stayed put until O'Neill and Liz had finished. Just as Hammond was getting ready to dismiss Fraiser and Carter to work on the weapon, O'Neill chimed in with the question he was sure Carter had hoped he would forget about,
"Carter, who's Grace?"