TWENTY-ONE MONTHS LATER, OUR REALITY...

It was a quiet spring day at the SGC. The Ori threat had been defeated and the galaxy was rebuilding. The days were generally a lot less eventful than they had previously been, but no one was really complaining.

Sam was up in the control room, working on some bugs in the software that had just been upgraded. Eleven years after first designing the dialing software for the Stargate, she still liked to be involved whenever any changes were made. It was an opportunity to think back on how much her life had changed.

A smile crossed her face as a mug of coffee was set down on the desk beside her. "Thanks, Walter," she said as she reached for it.

"No problem," the technician replied as he sat in the chair beside hers. "Got any plans for the weekend?" It was early on a Friday afternoon and most of the base's personnel were eager for a bit of a break from work.

Sam looked down at her keyboard. "Yeah, I do," she replied as she started typing again. She didn't elaborate further. Her SG-1 teammates knew exactly what she was going for the weekend – a quick jaunt to Washington DC – but there was no need for that info to become public knowledge. It had been far too long since she'd been able to get away to visit Jack and Sam was greatly looking forward to the trip. They had begun a long-distance relationship shortly after Jack moved to Washington DC over two years earlier. Neither was entirely sure where it was going, but they tried to see each other whenever they could.

Walter was undeterred by her lack of details. "I'm going to be busy, too," he started to tell her, but was interrupted when the Gate started to light up from an incoming wormhole.

"Have we received an IDC?" Landry asked as he came down the stairs.

Walter checked the screen again and shook his head. "No, Sir."

"Audio?"

"Uh, coming through now," Walter replied before putting the stream on speaker.

"Stargate Command, this is Dr. Janet Fraiser."

Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Okay, definitely not was I was expecting…"

"Leave the iris closed," Landry ordered. If someone was trying to infiltrate the base, they were going to have to do a lot better than this.

"I know you're going to think this is a trick," the voice continued. "I would, too. But it's not. I've been to your reality before."

"Did she just say 'reality'?" Walter asked. Sam nodded slightly, intently listening.

"You gave my team the cure to the Prior's plague. Please, I'm requesting access to the SGC."

Landry hesitated before nodding to Walter. "Make sure the security team is ready, just in case."

Several guards had assembled with their guns at the ready before Walter sent the command to open the iris. As Sam and Landry watched through the control room window, Janet stepped through the gate, holding a little boy's hand and carrying a toddler. The gate shut down behind them.

"Stand down," Landry ordered the guards over the intercom before he and Sam headed down the stairs to the Gateroom.

"What's going on?" Sam asked. Janet was obviously hurt, with dried blood on the torn left sleeve of her BDUs and cuts and scrapes on her face. The children's clothes were muddy and a little ragged; they'd obviously all been through something very bad.

"Get a med team up here," Landry ordered.

"I'm fine," Janet tried to protest. Sam reached to take the toddler from her before she collapsed of exhaustion. "Thank you for letting me through."

"What happened?" Sam asked again. "Who are these guys?" She indicated the children.

Janet put a hand on the little boy's shoulder. He was looking back and forth between the adults with wide, curious eyes. "This is Jacob Daniel O'Neill," she introduced him, "And that's Abigail Charlotte O'Neill," she added for the toddler that seemed decidedly comfortable in Sam's arms.

"O'Neill?" Sam and General Landry asked at the same time, surprise plain on both of their faces.

Janet nodded. "Their parents are Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill."

Both officers struggled to process that news, especially Sam. "Why did you come here?" Landry asked the doctor.

"I had to. I promised I'd make sure they were safe."

"Safe from whom?" Sam asked, although she had a feeling that she already knew the answer.

"The Ori," Janet replied just as the medical team charged in. They instantly began attending to everyone and taking them to the infirmary. The rest of their questions would have to wait.

Down in the infirmary, Janet proved true the saying that doctors make the worst patients. Carolyn wanted to redo the rough stitches that had been used to close a gash on her arm, but she had no interest. "I need to tell you what happened," she insisted to Sam and Landry. "Please." They finally agreed, and the General waved his daughter away.

"What happened with the cure?" Sam asked as she sat beside her friend. "It didn't work?"

Janet shook her head. "No, it did…And that might have been worse." She sighed heavily as she remembered the nightmare that the past year and a half had been.

"Most of the planet's population was saved; SG-1 got back with the cure just in time. We continued to oppose the Ori throughout the galaxy, but our ability to fight back against them only made them more dangerous. About four months ago, they finally decided that Earth had to be destroyed, as a lesson to anyone else who thought of challenging their power." Sam and Landry's eyes widened, but neither said a word.

"We tried everything that we possibly could to stop them," Janet continued. "Our ships were no match for theirs, though. The Samantha Carter from my world was onboard the Apollo during a last stand. It was disabled, and the Daedalus just barely managed to transport the crew down to the SGC before it was destroyed. The Daedalus wasn't as lucky, though. There wasn't enough time to save their crew… Daniel was still on the ship when..." She paused there, too choked up to continue, and Sam gently reached to take her hand.

"We tried to evacuate as many people as possible to the Alpha Site. It just… it was all so quick. God, it was fast. Sam had been hurt on the Apollo, so I was able to make sure that she got through, and the little ones. Jack… He stayed at the SGC, trying to wait for just one more group of people, but they never came through." The last time she'd seen him, he'd been in the control room, waving them on. They'd kept in radio contact with the SGC viacthe gate in order to track the progress of the evacuation, but then the gate had suddenly disconnected and they weren't able to redial Earth. There was nothing left to dial.

The idea of Jack dying left Sam cold. In this universe, she had come so close to losing him so many times, but there had always been a miracle. Apparently in that reality, his luck had run out. It was sobering.

"How many made it?" Landry quietly asked.

"Less than two thousand," Janet replied, and the General almost choked. Two thousand out of six billion…

Sam slowly nodded, unable to imagine living through all of that. "You said that you promised to make sure that the children were safe?"

"Yeah… We didn't have enough of anything at the Alpha site, certainly not supplies. The Odyssey and Prometheus survived Earth's destruction, but were badly damaged. With their hyperdrives under repair, it took a few weeks for them to reach us. By then, my Sam… She tried so hard to hold on, but…" She took a shuddery deep breath. "She had broken ribs that punctured a lung. We tried surgery, but… we just didn't have what we needed. She got an infection… she didn't make it."

Almost as if it wasn't of her own volition, Sam turned around to look at the two children seated on a bed across the room. The idea that they'd lost both of their parents so quickly and been left alone at such a young age in a universe that was so incredibly cruel… She blinked back a few tears of sympathy.

"Before she died," Janet quietly continued, "She made me promise to take care of them and make sure that they were safe. And I would do anything for them, but… there's nothing for them there."

"So you brought them here," Landry stated.

She nodded. "The Odyssey and Prometheus tried to take everyone to the Pegasus Galaxy, to Atlantis. They were our only hope. But they couldn't take everyone at once...and the Ori found the Alpha Site in the meantime. We barely got away through the gate, and now... there's nothing. It scares me when I think about Jake and Abbie's futures. I don't want them to be waiting for the end; they deserve more than that. Their parents would have wanted them to have more. Martouf recreated a bridge between our realities so that I could bring them here. You helped us once before and I thought that you might do it again."

TBC...