AU: A freak accident aboard The Odyssey flings Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter back in time further than she expected or thought possible. Will she choose to preserve the original timeline, or will all hell break loose? How will her decisions affect the rest of the team both now and then?

Part 6 of my Lost and Found Universe. A short story explaining the 89 year old Sam Carter from previous stories.

Takes place during 10.22 Unending and 7.13 Grace using Air Dates for the timeline.

Time Dilation Activation = During 10.22 Unending where Colonel Carter activates the dilation bubble for the first time

NB: When I originally wrote 'Lost and Found', I used the Air Dates for the timeline then played with the days depending on story. I have attempted to align this series with the Arduino timeline. Unfortunately, doing so would mean that 'Happy Birthday Daddy' would be completely out of sync. So therefore, I will be keeping the Air Dates as the timeline for this series.

Chapter 1: Rewind

The Odyssey – Time Dilation Activation plus 50 years – undisclosed region of deep space – Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter

"I'm ready." I announced over the intercom.

"Do it, Sam!" Cameron replied, a touch of nervousness lacing his aged voice. His idea was fraught with risk, but at this stage, we didn't have a choice.

Fifty years. To be honest, we had stopped counting after General Landry left us. His loss had awakened a few home truths. Despite the outside world still being on normal time, Landry's death triggered the deep seated fear of losing other people close to us. For me that person was – and always would be – Jack, even if we had never made a go of things. The thought of losing him was insurmountable. He was my greatest regret. My second biggest was breaking contact with the alternate Samantha O'Neill after the Prometheus mission. My hallucination of the little girl called Grace looked just like an older version of her daughter. The daughter she had with Jack. My Jack. He never knew and I had foolishly let jealousy dictate the rest of my life rather than understanding and forgiveness.

I'd had the most amazing career up until we were suspended in time. It could have been greater still, may still would be if we could get out of this, but at what cost? If I could take one thing with me – one memory – it would be to tell myself to grab that man with both hands and kiss him the way I had always wanted to. Alas, since I would not remember, I was doomed to live this existence all over again without knowing it.

When I left on this voyage, I was 39 years old. Soon to be 40 and mere months away from full bird Colonel… now I was one of the oldest living active Lieutenant Colonel's.

"Sam?" Cameron prompted, breaking through the haze. Shaking my head clear of unproductive thoughts, I focused back on the monitor, images of Jack smiling back in the old days still dancing around my head.

"Stop it, Sam!" I muttered beratingly to myself as I hit the button that would preserve Teal'c's memory of this time, paving the way for him to save us and preserve the Asgard legacy.

The grainy feed flickered as the shield finished forming around Teal'c, using a substantial amount of our available power reserves. He would be the only one of us to remember any of this. If it worked. If it didn't, well we wouldn't be alive long enough to worry about the what ifs.

Half a century was a long time – well technically forty-nine years and six months – to work out how to reverse time in a localized field, with the last half year trying to work out how to boost the power high enough and long enough to trigger the reverse event. Unfortunately, with a dead ZPM and severely depleted Asgard power core, we had nothing. Except whatever time was left. Until Cam's brilliant idea.

It was risky using the Ori blast, but as it stood – if we maintained the dilation field – we would likely run out of power before the blast hit us, which meant we would freeze to death or asphyxiate when the life support failed. We had already shut down every non-essential system decades ago to conserve power. On the off chance that the power did last, the blast would hit us, and we would die very slowly either from the temperature generated by the super-heated hull of the ship, radiation from the blast, or if we were very unlucky, the vacuum of deep space when the hull finally breached. Either way, we would see our death coming without the power to do anything about it. It occurred to me that those people on the Titanic over a hundred years ago would have felt the same way. Seeing their death, knowing it was inevitable but powerless to stop it.

With shaky hands, I pushed the control device across the Asgard console, watching it light up. Praying for the science to go the way I theorized it would go. Hoping that the power was enough and not too much. If it was too much, the Asgard core could explode before the time-field reversal triggered. We would die. If the power was not enough, the core would not be able to trigger the reversal meaning we would die.

The appearance of sparks arcing across the console as I released the bubble was not a good sign.

"No! Please work!" I cursed. Moving another control device, the sparks arced out again, this time enveloping me in a shower of sparks not unlike a zat just as the Ori beam impacted. Strangely I could not feel anything akin to being shot by a zat despite the arcing crackles dancing up my arms and along my body. Then The Odyssey sparked some more and flickered, the bulkheads phasing out for a fraction of a second before rematerialising.

Looking around the room, I saw the whole ship flicker again and again, the vast blackness of space right in front of me – above me, below me – and then gone almost as fast. Something was wrong. The core was intact, the blast had hit, I could feel the vibration from the explosions, but the field had not reversed. Another flicker and I could see the stars through the floor and the bulkheads while the ship lurched, everything happening in slow motion.

Finally, everything stopped, and time started moving backwards. The problem was that I shouldn't have been able to see any of it. I should have been rewinding along with everything else – everyone else. Everyone except Teal'c. My confidante over the last forty years. The one person who knew my deep seated regrets, fears, and feelings of loss.

The ship flickered as my team walked past me, through me, around me.

"No!" I cried out to them – my friends – but they could not see or hear me. I was out of phase with them, with everything. "This can't be happening." I muttered for my own benefit. I watched as they grew younger by the second. Looking around me, I saw Cam and Vala, Daniel, Landry all moving around me – backwards. Some of the events I remembered. Some I didn't, withered by age and unimportance. They were talking with me, but I was not there with them.

"Teal'c!"

Spinning around as fast as my aged body could move, I broke into a loping jog, the best I could do in this body. Moving through the corridors, holding onto bulkheads for support, to where Teal'c had been encased in the field. Coming through the door, I saw him standing tall, eyes closed, the blue shimmering shield undulating around him as the explosions travelled along the bulkheads either side, keeping him safe so that he could help us avoid this disaster fifty years ago. Help them.

Just before the explosions engulfed the entire room, he opened his eyes to look straight at me. I saw his lips move, forming my name, a look of fear etched on his face. A look that told me that he knew as well as I did that this was goodbye. I would not be joining him back in time. Unless by some miracle that the explosions did not kill me, then I would likely remain 89 years old back in 2007, though such an eventuality was incredibly unlikely. The time continuum would not allow such an error without a correction somewhere along the line.

Would he remember me? Would anyone remember or would this event remove me from the timeline? I had no way of knowing. No theory to pull from. I would be there and then not there. A casualty of the mission. Only Teal'c would know the awful truth. I hoped he would tell Jack.

Tell him I was sorry. For not going to the cabin, for running away, for letting the fear of potential reprisals from the Air Force get in the way of an us once he moved to Washington.

Tell him I never stopped thinking about him.

Never stopped loving him.

Taking one last look at my friend, I held my hand up in the universal sign of goodbye before the ship flickered one last time and disappeared around me. Blackness. Cold. Nothing but space… and a… a ship? Was it possible?

Too late. Too late.

The last of my air ran out prompting my mouth to open in an attempt to suck in oxygen. A normal bodily reaction. But there was nothing. Only vacuum. The ship was still there, closer now. I knew it wouldn't reach me soon enough. The burning in my lungs and frost on my skin was all I could feel as my body began to shut down, my life running out.

My eyes close as light envelopes me.

Time Dilation Activation minus 3 years – undisclosed region of deep space, en-route to Jaffa rebel outpost – Teal'c

"This training facility. O'Neill is instructing new warriors?" Bra'tac asked as he took a seat in what I had come to know as the co-pilot's chair.

"He is." I responded with a smile. Master Bra'tac had been most interested in seeing O'Neill's training methods, convinced that his 138 years of experience could provide an already highly trained veteran warrior such as O'Neill with 'pointers'. Whilst I did not doubt that Bra'tac could impart some knowledge, he had little experience with Tau'ri weapons and subterfuge along with the ingrained 'leave no one behind' mantra, all of which were considered mandatory at the SGC.

"I would like to see this training." He stated, as I knew he would. The new planet – yet to be given a designation beyond the alpha numeric code P3X-179 – was not directly on our way to the rebel location, but it was also not far out of our way. Just as I began making adjustments to our heading, the Tel'tak's power fluctuated. Looking over to my Master, I noticed he was staring out the front. Turning my head, I saw the shadow of a ship I did not recognise appear, then disappear. Though the boxy style shape reminded me of Prometheus, it seemed larger and more advanced than the singular vessel in the Tau'ri fleet. Yet something told me that this ship was of Earth origin.

"An enemy. We must…"

"No!" I interrupted my Master. Looking harder as the ship appeared again, staying a little longer before shifting out of phase again. We were closer this time. "Tau'ri." I muttered.

"Tau'ri?" Bra'tac repeated, "Teal'c, are you sure?"

"I am not." I answered just as the ship appeared again, this time it was around us, through us and on fire. Explosions moving along its hull systematically. Pieces breaking apart. Standing up from my station, I moved through my ship seeing and unseeing foreign bulkheads, computers, people in uniforms remarkably like the SGC BDU – all of whom were here and not here. A dark haired woman, her hair tied up to look like equine tails out the sides of her head, an older man I did not recognise wearing a General's uniform.

Walking into the ring room, I was not prepared to see myself. Encased in a shield. Between us an aged Samantha Carter. Very aged. Hair almost white. Her back was partially to me, her hand held up in a form of wave. The other version of myself looked over her shoulder and straight at me, his eyes conveying a message just as the ship and its people disappeared again, both from the flickering and the inertia of our ship.

Turning from the room, I walked with purpose to the pilot's chair and started the process of moving the Tel'tak around.

"Teal'c. What are you doing?" Master Bra'tac asked in earnest.

"We must help her." I responded as I coaxed the controls to life and piloted the ship in an arcing circle back to where I estimated the other me would reappear. If he did.

"Help who?" Bra'tac asked, his eyes fixed outside. I did not answer him, too involved in my task. With the power fluctuations caused by whatever was happening out there, the maneuver took longer than it normally would. The unknown ship phased in and out several more times.

Eventually the cumbersome bulk managed the turn, heading back along its original path. The ghost ship flickered and sputtered, then lurched, the explosions receding, flames running backwards until there was nothing. Nothing but space, darkness, and a blonde woman.

"The rings!" I ordered the man who had been my mentor, my guide, my leader for more than half my life. He jumped up recognising my need to assist this woman while I navigated to a spot above her floating form. Checking my location and confirming her location via the proximity sensor, I called out, "Proceed!" The sound of rings engaging had me out of the chair and heading to the room.

Bra'tac looked upon the still woman, not having an idea how to make her breathe again. It was not the Jaffa way to administer first aid. It was an unnecessary action. Either the symbiote helped, or it did not. Coming to her side, I threw off the heavy breastplate of my Jaffa garb and kneeled before her. She was cold, lips blue, skin ice white. Closing my eyes, I recalled the training given to me by a younger version of the woman in front of me, visualising what I needed to do, hoping it would be enough.

Placing my hands on the center of her chest, I began compressions – 30 then 2 breaths, checking that her chest rose and fell with each one – 30 more compressions. 2 breaths. Then I should check for breathing.

Nothing.

Repeating the process over and over, at length she coughed, her eyes fluttering briefly as she seemingly came back to life. Responsive, though still unconscious.

Looking up at Bra'tac, I smiled and provided an answer to his unasked question about what I was doing. "She lives." I looked back to her then carefully rolled her onto her side arranging her limbs in the way Major Carter had instructed.

"In the words of O'Neill of Minnesota, well I'll be damned." Bra'tac replied, his smile broad and unwavering.