Chapter 24, part 1.

The night had already fallen over continental America, but here, in the middle of North Pacific, the sun was still setting. The carrier was steaming ahead at nearly thirty knots, its accompanying ships spread across a vast area in loose formation and, from the conversations on the bridge Alice had caught, the lack of airborne surveillance—due to their inability to launch any planes at the moment—was making everybody jumpy. Sure, they still had passive radar, but it could only see so far. It was both a little amusing and a little frustrating to think about the kind of sensors a BC-304 possessed—and how even a tenth of its abilities could boost the performance of that of a seafaring craft's.

She was standing near the window in the corner of the room, leaning heavily on the metal wall that came up to her chest. The windows were tilted out, so it was almost like resting on a balustrade. Beneath, she could see the deck with the poor 302 sitting in the middle like a wrecked and abandoned toy plane, and beyond was the vastness of the ocean and the empty horizon—she could no longer see the destroyers and cruisers in the falling twilight. This was not an unfamiliar sight—actually, it made her feel a little nostalgic due to the similarity to the view from one of the towers on Atlantis. The only difference was that at Atlantis, you never actually felt you were floating on water unless there was a huge storm—and even then it was not a given. Here, she could detect the gentle rolling of the floor beneath her; the wind was still blowing strong, creating waves that affected even the hundred thousand tons of steel that the carrier was made of. She imagined what it must have been like in a middle of a hurricane—like the one her father had been caught in sixteen years ago that had caused him to crash on this very deck… For the first time in her life she had an idea what he must have been thinking in the moments before it happened—what he must have gone through… if not for the structural toughness of the 302, she would probably have ended up just like him.

"Have you ever been on an aircraft carrier before, Major?" Captain Roland's voice interrupted her musings.

She turned sluggishly around to face him, the fatigue enveloping her like a blanket now. "No, sir, though I've seen it often enough from the shore."

He frowned. "How come? Have you served on a joint base somewhere?"

"No, sir. We used to accompany my dad when he was leaving on deployment—he served on a carrier. Actually, on this carrier," she added, her voice colored with the sadness that had crept up from pondering his fate.

The captain cocked his head to the side. "Your father was in the Navy?" He waited for her to nod and then continued inquiringly: "Was his name Eric by any chance?"

She blinked quickly, shocked out of her stupor. "Yes, sir. Did you know him?" She supposed she shouldn't be surprised—it was entirely possible for officers to cross paths one way or another. But it was unexpected.

"Oh, yes, he was my squadron commander," he replied, smiling warmly. "When they told us your name was Boyd I did think of him, but then got caught up in everything that happened—and you don't look like him. Though now that I know, well… maybe there is a bit of resemblance." He looked into her face curiously.

"My natural hair color is red." Alice's voice was wistful. "He gave me that, pale skin that burns instead of tanning and freckles, but not much more. And the chin, perhaps," she added as an afterthought: it was triangular just like her dad's, though the overall shape of her face was different to his.

Roland nodded. "I remember he often spoke of his kids—I think you have a brother, don't you?"

"Yes, sir, Jacob. He's in the Marine Corps." It was nice to think that dad thought of them and mentioned them to his colleagues while away at sea. She didn't know why he wouldn't, but somehow she'd never pictured him doing that before.

"Yes, Jacob—he called him Jake. He was always bragging about what smart and talented children he had," Roland reminisced, his voice taking on that nostalgic quality that often accompanied walking down the memory lane. "But I think he said you were going to be a scientist and your brother was a guitar player and wanted to pursue music as a career. Am I misremembering?"

"No, sir." She sighed. "That was our path before—well, before dad passed away. That changed everything. Though I am a scientist, in a sense," she added, trying not to focus on the morbid part of the sentence.

"Yes, a tragedy like that can have far-reaching consequences," he agreed gravely, ignoring her attempt at lightening the mood. "I was here when he crashed, you know. I had landed just before him, so I've seen it happen from the deck. It was horrible." He paused for a beat. "He'd saved my life that day. It would have been me if not for him."

Alice frowned. What was he talking about? How could Alice's father save him from a storm?

"I don't know what you mean. How did he save you?"

"Well, he took the shot that was intended for me," Roland explained, looking a little taken aback with the question.

"The shot?" She repeated, taking a step back and bumping into the metal wall behind her. "But—wait—what? They told me—they told us that he had crashed because of a bad storm?"

His eyebrows traveled all the way up. "A storm? Damn. So you don't know what happened?"

She licked her lips, suddenly dry. "After he'd died, a Navy admiral came to our house and explained that dad was running low on fuel and there was a really bad storm, and he couldn't land—he crashed… are you telling me that was a lie?"

He shook his head. "I don't know anything about that—but the mission had been classified, so I suspect they told you a cover story. You of all people certainly shouldn't find that odd. What is weird is that it had been declassified something like five years ago—or maybe six, that would make it ten years after the events. I'm surprised no one had informed you then."

Alice blinked quickly again. Six years ago she had been just starting her doctoral studies at AFIT. If this was true—if her father had been shot out of the sky and that's why he had crashed—why wouldn't anyone inform them? She and Jake were both in the Armed Forces for a few years already by then, and Uncle Simon—and then it clicked. Uncle Simon. Was it possible that he'd found out about this first and decided not to tell them? Even then, as a colonel, he had enough political weight in the military to swing that. And the more Alice thought about it, the more she was convinced that was what happened: somehow, for some unknown reason, Simon blocked the Navy from informing Eric's wife and kids about the real cause of his passing. Why!? She screamed in her head. Why would you keep that from us?! For so many years she thought her father's death was pointless. To find out now that he had died in combat, and saving a fellow pilot to boot—it was huge, it was earth-shattering. And heartbreaking. I've underestimated you for so long, daddy—I'm so sorry…

"Major?" Roland prompted delicately.

She shook her head, relegating the analysis of this new revelation to later. "Can you tell me what had really happened?"

"Sure. I remember it like it was yesterday." He leaned on a piece of equipment. "We were in the Persian Gulf at the time, just keeping an eye on the No-Fly Zones in Iraq. We knew something was brewing, but the intel was sketchy—something about smuggling routes, if I recall. Your father and I were tasked with patrolling the Northern NFZ, supplementing the Air Force's efforts, and doing a little aerial reconnaissance at the same time, you know, looking for any signs of anything untoward happening on the ground, too. It was Commander Boyd that spotted the tanker trucks first. We followed them all the way to the border crossing with Turkey—thus confirming the earlier intel reports. But that put us dangerously close to the Turkish airspace. It wasn't until the debrief afterwards that I learned that we've actually crossed it—but only by a couple miles. We were already back to the Iraqi NFZ when suddenly there was this Turkish F-16 coming onto us. Now, he definitely crossed the border, but he came onto us hard. Later we found out that there was a problem in their command structure—I still don't know if he was bribed, or just worked with Saddam, but one of their commanders decided since we did encroach on Turkey's airspace, he would teach us a lesson. He ordered the F-16 to shoot us down. I was so surprised that I reacted sluggishly. Of course we tried to contact him on the radio, talk him down—I mean, the Turks hosted the Air Force component of the operation that oversaw the No-Fly Zones, it wasn't like we weren't using their airspace on the daily. I was an idiot—I thought he'd listen, but of course he had his orders and he was eager to fulfill them. When he launched the missile, my heart stopped, I swear—and then Commander Boyd's Tomcat was there between me and the missile. It exploded far enough that it didn't manage to blow him up—just damaged his fighter badly. At that time the Turkish F-16 was recalled and I guess a frantic exchange between theirs and our commands ensued, but all I cared about at that moment was my commander and friend's well-being. I begged him to eject, but he decided to attempt a landing—he convinced the skipper he could do it. I went on ahead, so I saw him come down… he almost made it, too. It happened in a blink of an eye—one moment he was approaching correctly, the next his fighter was crashing, one wing instantly ripped off, fire engulfing the Tomcat instantly. It stopped barely a few yards from the edge of the runway—a little more and it would have slid into the ocean. The firefighting team managed to put it out with AFFF and they pulled Commander Boyd from inside the wreck. Miraculously, he was still alive… For a while there, I thought he'd pull through. He was airlifted to Ramstein and we got the call three days later that he'd passed away despite all their efforts." He paused, and for a long moment neither of them spoke; Alice was looking away, into the darkening horizon. Eventually, he sighed and continued: "I owe him my life. If he hadn't taken the force of that explosion, it would've caught me. I don't know why he insisted on trying to land, why he didn't eject…" He shook his head. "The mission was classified because, if it came out that a Turkish pilot shot at American aircraft, it would have been very bad for both sides—very embarrassing to Turkey, of course, and we needed their cooperation to maintain our presence there. It was declassified it after ten years as it's routinely done."

She didn't say anything for a long moment, looking into the distance, trying to reconcile what she'd heard with what she knew about these events—but of course it was useless. All she knew was a lie—even where her dad had finally died. Ramstein Air Base in Germany—half a world away from the American hospital they had been told he had passed away at. The reason for classifying the event was obvious to her, but the fact that they'd declassified it six years ago… she shook her head, trying to restrain her rising temper. It was not Roland's fault.

"Thank you," she told him. "For telling me the story." She paused for a beat and then asked: "What happened to the Turkish commander who gave the order?"

"As far as I know, he's rotting in a prison somewhere," he replied with vicious satisfaction. "As well he should. I am really sorry, Major. Your father was more than just my boss—he was a friend, too. I always regretted not being able to go to his funeral."

She nodded. "I've missed some funerals, too," she said to make him feel better. "This job… it takes a toll. I mean, it is what it is."

"Indeed." He looked down onto the deck, now flooded in artificial lights. "You know, what happened to you was not at all dissimilar to what had happened to him."

"Yeah, like father, like daughter, I guess," she quipped, though her tone was rather somber. "I hadn't known he had been shot, and it already seemed entirely too coincidental… There's a lot of that going around in my life lately," she added, thinking about the plane hijack and how lucky—or unlucky, depending on how one was looking at it—it was that she found herself on that particular flight. "At least I have a very good understanding of how he might have felt the moment before it happened," she added darkly.

"I knew him pretty well," the captain said, his voice low. "And I can tell with almost one hundred percent certainty that in that last moment he thought of you and your brother and mother."

She turned her face from him, trying to blink the tears away. It was perhaps not unexpected that she'd get choked up, but she didn't want to show it anyway. It was embarrassing.

"He would be very proud of you today, I'm sure," he added, making it even harder to regain her composure. "I've always felt like I owed him and there was no way to repay him. Maybe I can repay you. If there is anything I can do for you… anytime, anything—give me a call."

She nodded, still not looking at him. She was hoping Carter would contact them soon—they were coming up on the end of the second hour—but there was no radio communiqué to interrupt the painful conversation for now.

She turned around, leaned on the wall heavily again and looked down at her miserable fighter. Both wings gone, turned on its head, canopy shattered… and yet it did not burst into flames. It was not surprising, really—the Naquadah composite it was made of was durable enough to survive atmospheric reentry. If it were a Tomcat, like her father had flown, or a Super Hornet that had since supplanted the F-14 as the Navy's fighter-of-choice, or even her F-16—she would not have had a chance in hell of surviving this.

"I will," she promised. It wasn't like her to accept this kind of offer easily, but she knew very well how it felt to have a debt which could never be repaid. To have someone willingly sacrifice their life for you. But why didn't you eject, daddy? She thought. Why did you insist on trying to land? The answer was obvious: because that was who he was. A quiet, warm, kind man—but also resolute, with the will of steel and a charisma that preceded him like a cloud when he walked into a room. A man who never backed down from a challenge—a trait he had passed to both his kids—who always saw things through, even if they were hard. A complex man, full of contradictions. Small, freckled, boyish in size, withdrawn, always speaking with a measured, low voice—easily dismissed. And yet he managed to dwarf all the other alpha males in the race for advancement in the Navy, and became a Commander, leading his own squadron of fighters. "God, I'm just like him," she murmured in astonished realization. Small, quiet, dismissible—and a woman to boot. And yet hasn't she achieved a lot in these past few years? She was a pilot—a scientist—an engineer—a sharpshooter—a team leader—a person other people relied on. For the first time in a very long time she allowed herself to feel a little proud. Yes, there was a lot she'd fucked up—some of which was huge and unforgivable—but there were also things she'd gotten right. Hadn't she stopped five enemy fighters from reaching Earth just a few hours ago? And yeah, she did get shot at the same time—but she survived, against all odds. Wasn't that an achievement in and of itself, under the circumstances? Why, then, did it not feel like it? Why could she not feel glad just to be alive anymore? Why did she continue to look at angles she could use to criticize herself? Why did she have to be so hard on herself all the time?

And the answer came back, always the same, like a bad penny: because she didn't deserve to feel good about herself. Her failure—to get rid of Jareth, to save Karim—was like a huge rock in her path that threw shade on her entire life, her entire future. How was she supposed to move past it?

Lost in thought, she didn't notice when the captain stepped away, leaving her to her musings out of empathy—or maybe politeness, she didn't know. At some point, she heard him giving orders and that alerted her to the passage of time and the fact that he was no longer there, standing beside her. She shook her head—it hurt—as she leaned lower over the steel wall. Tired, sad, confused, in pain—both physical and emotional—it really came to her as no surprise that her personal cloud of darkness was back. It was too good to be true to expect it gone just because she'd escaped death. The very fact that it had disappeared for as long as it had was baffling. Perhaps Doctor Green would be able to make sense out of it.

It wasn't long after that when the communiqué from Carter finally came in, informing them that the 304 was only minutes away. Alice asked the captain to remove any people from the deck—she didn't see any, but that meant little, for it was pitch-black now outside, except for the floodlights that were still pointed to Alice's mangled fighter in the middle of the runway. She reminded him that all of it—her mission, what she'd told him and the admiral, and whatever he was about to see—was deeply classified and urged him to order his men to forget they ever saw anything. Before she could thank him for all his help and hospitality, he handed her his challenge coin—as a token of his admiration for her aerial exploits, certainly, but mostly for the sake of her father—and a few moments later, two bright white flashes removed her and the wrecked 302 from the carrier.

"I can't make heads or tails out of it," Alice admitted. She was sitting on one of Doctor Green's armchairs, leaning forward, propped up on her elbows. "I've been thinking about it all night and I still can't fully understand it. I mean, I get it—I survived something I shouldn't have, my brain was awash with dopamine and serotonin, made me feel happy for a while. But is that it? Just a chemical reaction?"

"Everything we feel is a chemical reaction on some level," Green noted. "I would suggest to concentrate on the reason why this reaction has taken place. Do you really think it's just because you survived?"

"I don't know, that's the thing." Alice sighed and straightened up. "It's not like this was the first time I've barely escaped with my life. I don't know why I reacted the way I did."

"Well, when it happened the previous time—when it was happening, did you believe you were going to die?" Green probed.

Alice thought about it. The last time she was risking her life was the hijack. It certainly had gotten her adrenaline up, but had she at any point really believed she was going to die? She hadn't really stopped to consider it then. She'd just done what she had had to do to save her own skin… it was certainly a possibility, but no, she didn't really think she was going to die. There were moments of doubt perhaps—the part when the last hijacker pushed the plane into a nosedive came to mind—but it was, more or less, routine for her. Nothing special. And, as she looked back at the months preceding that event, she realized it applied to most incidents. Even Cho's assault on her—while it was scary and made her feel extremely vulnerable—could not be called too much out of the norm.

"No," she replied, surprise clear in her voice. "I'm trying to remember when was the last time I was sure I was going to die—the last time I had the time to think about it. Mostly it all happens so quickly you don't even register it, really. You just act. But yesterday there was a moment—a long moment when I thought there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I couldn't get to the shore, and I couldn't eject—I didn't know about the carrier being so close then, so it looked like my path only led to going down with the plane, into the ocean. I already made my peace with death when General Carter asked if I could get to the carrier."

"You made your peace with death?" The doctor repeated, raising her eyebrows. "What does that mean exactly?"

Alice was quiet for a moment, trying to put her thoughts in order. "Well, at first it came as a surprise that I was going to die," she said eventually. "I've been close so many times, and I've always managed to escape by the skin of my teeth. It sort of seemed absurd that it should finally really happen now. And, really, I should have felt relieved, but I realized—I realized I didn't want to die."

"And that was a surprise, too?"

"Yes. I wasn't suicidal or anything," Alice rushed to add. "It's just that… there have been moments when it felt like death would be a—a welcome break to the feelings. An end to the suffering." Her voice was low and hollow. "I would never seek death on purpose, but I have to admit, sometimes the fact that my job is so dangerous seemed like a good thing and risking my life felt—I don't even know how to express it." She shook her head. "It just felt like I didn't really cared if I did die."

Green nodded understandingly. "And so when you realized that you actually do care…?"

"It was like a—a revelation," Alice admitted. "I wanted to live—but there I was, going in. What an irony, right? But, I don't know, all this time thinking about death… maybe it did prepare me a little for it. I knew there was nothing else I could do—no trick to pull… and, funnily enough, all I could think of was whether afterlife really existed or not. Wondering if I would meet my dad once again… I don't believe in afterlife," she added as a way of explanation. "But my parents were Catholic, I guess some of it must have rubbed off on me unawares."

"That is not unusual," Greed agreed. "People on death's door often revert back to their faith—it's normal to try and seek hope that dying doesn't really mean a final end to living."

Alice shrugged, but didn't comment, her mind still going over that moment in the fighter when she had been convinced she was a goner.

"And realizing that you don't want to die—how did that make you feel?" Green asked.

"I don't rightly know. Back then, I guess, a little sad that I wouldn't get to go on fighting." And then something clicked in her brain. "Hopeful. I felt hopeful. I mean, not like—I thought all hope was lost and that I was going down, but it made me realize that I had hoped, before, that I could get through this… funk."

"And now?" Green pressed. Alice didn't respond, so she continued: "You told me you wanted to get better."

"I do. But—until yesterday, I don't think I believed I ever would—not consciously, anyway. But it seems there was some hope in me all along." Alice shrugged again.

"Don't you think that's a good thing?"

"I don't know if it changes anything."

"How so?"

Alice looked away. "Doesn't make me more deserving."

Green sighed. "I know you feel like you deserve to suffer, but that's just untrue, Alice. Look at me." Alice did, reluctantly. "Have I told you about my husband?"

The sudden change of subject made Alice blink in surprise. "You've said he died a few months ago in a car crash."

"That's right. What I neglected to mention is that I was the driver—it was late, I was tired, and I dozed off at the wheel. I came out of the crash without a scratch. He was gone before the ambulance was there." Green's eyes were large and intense. "It has been enormously hard on me. Do you think I deserve to suffer?"

"Of course not. But it's different—it wasn't like you made a decision to kill him," Alice protested against the analogy.

"But I made the decision to get behind the wheel. I knew how tired I was, I knew how much fatigue affects one's reflexes, and yet I did it. That was my decision—and there were no other circumstances. We weren't in a hurry, we didn't absolutely have to drive that evening, I just wanted to be home. You were weighing safety of an entire ship full of people—and in fact of the entire galaxy in the long run—against one soul. And not even that—because if you hadn't done it, Karim would've most likely been captured and killed or forced to serve Jareth anyway. You would have been dead, the Gagarin would've been destroyed, Jareth would have free reign over the Milky Way—and Karim would've been just as dead. Tell me I'm wrong."

Alice bit her lip. "I shouldn't have allowed us to split up in the first place."

"Then all of you would've been captured and there would be no one to spring you out of the cell," Green parried.

Alice shook her head. "I mean the second time. After Perrault had been compromised, I told the team to split up to cover more ground—"

"Yes. And who's to say you would have managed to send the distress call to the Gagarin if you didn't?" Green interrupted her. "But even if we assume that you did make a mistake in judgment—which I don't believe you did—Alice, you can't blame yourself for all that. You didn't know what was going to happen."

"It's my job to prevent something like this, to keep my team safe," she contradicted. "My mistake caused Karim to die."

"I made a mistake getting into that car," Green said quietly. "Do I deserve to suffer for the rest of my days?" She repeated the question.

"It's—"

"We are more than our mistakes," the psychiatrist interrupted. "It's called growing—as long as we learn from our mistakes. I don't believe you made a mistake—but if you think you did, what have you learned from it?"

Alice looked away again. What was the lesson there? Do not split up under any circumstances? That was absurd. They often had to split up—it was a normal tactic, one that served them well on multiple occasions. But the concept of making a mistake required for there to be a correct path. She forced herself to examine it, for the very first time trying to be objective about it. What would have happened if they hadn't split up? The three of them would have been running from one place to another, trying to set up each element of their distraction plan. But would they have had enough time to do it? The goal had been to keep Jareth focused on other things while the subspace message to Earth's battlecruisers went out with their exact location. If they hadn't split up, the time between each individual attack would have been longer—maybe long enough for him to realize what was really going on. Maybe even long enough for him to catch them. Tactically, splitting up was the only viable solution. But if that was true, if it wasn't a mistake… why did it end up with tragedy?

"Have you ever thought that it might not have been your mistake?" Green asked quietly, correctly interpreting the silence; Alice had already noticed that she seemed to have witch-like instincts. "Maybe it was Karim's? Or perhaps no one's at all? Don't you think that it's possible to do everything right and still lose?"

Alice didn't respond again, her eyes still averted, her emotions in disarray. She was fighting the familiar impulse to stop this line of thinking, shove it into a box at the back of her mind. You want to get better, she had to remind herself. Be open. Just be open to it.

"Maybe," she allowed after a long moment. "I don't know."

"Okay." Green nodded. "Think about it, though, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Let's drop it for today. Let me just ask, how are you doing, physically? You've got pretty banged up yesterday. I'm surprised Doctor Lam let you out of the infirmary."

Alice shrugged, glad to navigate away from the more difficult topics—and then grimaced in pain. "Well, it's not ideal, but it's been worse. There's nothing that staying in the infirmary can really help with. My CT scan was clean—no spinal cord or brain injuries, thankfully. And all the rest—cracked ribs, scratches and bruises, cuts—they just have to heal on their own. So, no point in staying in the infirmary."

"Okay, but you could take it easy," Green suggested with a slight smile.

"I am, as much as I can," Alice promised. "Lab work is not too demanding on one's body. I don't need to go offworld for a few days."

"Few days hardly seem enough to recover from something like this."

"It will have to be enough because I have to keep up my cover."

Green shook her head disapprovingly in the exact same way Lam had done it when Alice was speaking to her a few hours earlier.

"If you say so," the psychiatrist agreed reluctantly. "Alright. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss today?"

"No, I think I've got enough to mull through," Alice replied morosely.

"Very true," Green agreed and walked Alice out the door.

"And how did she take it?" Carter asked curiously.

Alice shrugged and grimaced. She kept forgetting that the gesture inevitably sent a wave of pain through her back and neck. "Just as expected. She didn't even seem surprised—she said it was just like me to take in another stray. She keeps referring to herself that way because we met when I picked her up as she was hitchhiking from Denver to Colorado Springs." She snickered. "She didn't question why I would be taking Dalia in. And of course, she was happy to share the house."

"Good, one thing less." Carter nodded. "And the paperwork?"

"Last I heard, it's gonna take at least three weeks before we can even bring it to the judge."

"That's not too bad, I thought it would take longer."

"Apparently, the NID has gotten really good in creating new identities for aliens granted asylum in the States," Alice noted dryly. "I'm not sure I want to know how many of them are walking around there."

"Not that many." Carter smiled knowingly. "And what about your family? When are you telling them?"

Alice's returning smile was benign. "I've already told Jake—I mean he knows the real story, I just need to give him the cover one so he knows what to say to Mom. I'm gonna call them this weekend."

"And your Uncle Simon?"

"Well, we're not currently on speaking terms, so that's not really a consideration," she replied coolly. "I'll tell my cousins, though, and if I do that, it'll get to Simon one way or another."

Carter raised an eyebrow but, although visibly curious, didn't ask for the reason of cutting of contact between them. Alice was glad because she wasn't sure if she was now allowed to mention Jake's secret—was it still a secret if he came out to all his family and—at least non-military—friends? She'd need to ask him how he felt about it.

"Okay, looks like you're all set, then. Are you taking Dalia home tonight?" The general asked instead.

"Yeah. She's pretty excited. She tries to hide it, but I know staying on the base has been a real challenge for her. Mostly it's just boring." Alice shrugged and again cursed herself for doing it. "Tomorrow we'll take her shopping, that ought to blow her mind." Deanna was hyped about it, too. Alice hadn't been out with her for a long time.

Carter chuckled. "I'll bet. She's been behaving pretty well since you told her she could stay. Captain Scott told me she is quite bright, if one ignores the patina of hardiness on the outside."

"It was very nice of him to offer to help," Alice admitted and was puzzled at Carter's amused smirk. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing." She shook her head. "I think—" She was interrupted by the man himself, sticking his head into the room.

"Excuse me, ma'am, you have a phone call—it's from General O'Neill."

"Alright. Excuse me," she told Alice, rose and walked into her office to take it privately.

Captain Scott lingered for a moment to send a bright smile to Alice and it made her feel a bit awkward. And then it hit her. Oh, Lord, he's sweet on me! He hadn't offered help out of the goodness of his heart—he wanted to weasel his way into hers. What a ridiculous notion! He was cute, perhaps, but entirely not her type. What is your type, Boyd? Judging by her dating history: strong and silent or cocky and charming. She's only ever dated two guys in her entire life—if it could be called dating—so that was a pretty poor sample pool. There had been more men she'd spent the night with: Espinoza, her first; Stephen Foster, an old friend from school; Anthony, a fellow AFIT student; and Jude, a faculty member at the same school. As for the more long-term things… She had been in a short-lived relationship at AFIT with Peter McArthur—he was the cocky and charming one—and of course then Karim… As many months had passed since his death as they had been together, and yet still the thought of going out with anyone else seemed preposterous—much less with a soft cutie like Scott. It's not that it's a bad thing to be soft or cute, she argued in her own head. It's just that it doesn't get my juices flowing. Not that she was ever an extraordinarily sexual creature; she never really thought about it until the guy made his move. The only outlier, again, had been Karim. But even then, she mostly thought about how she felt about him emotionally rather than how he made her feel physically. That wasn't to say that she didn't like sex—she did, if done well, which wasn't a given—even her very limited experience proved that. Still, it wasn't like she was going around trying to find people to have sex with—she was looking, first and foremost, for an emotional connection. Maybe there was something wrong with her on that front. Maybe it was because she'd started so late in life. Either way, she didn't feel particularly concerned about it.

She responded with a weak smile of her own and Scott disappeared back into the corridor. How could she make it clear to him that it was a lost cause? Technically, it wouldn't be against the rules: they were both officers, he was her junior but not in the same chain of command—they both reported to Carter, not one to the other. Still, irrespective of how uninterested she was for other reasons, Alice had had enough of workplace romances to last her a lifetime. Other people found love on the outside—Watson was heads over heels for his wife, even after nine years of marriage, and one only needed to see the twinkle in Hailey's eyes when she spoke of her boyfriend to know they had something real, too. Perhaps, in time, Alice would be able to find someone for herself… though for now, the very idea felt like a betrayal—and an insult to Karim's memory. There was also the question of making further changes in the timeline that haunted her. Hadn't she messed with it enough already?

And as for Scott—she would just have to find a subtle way to telegraph to him that she was not interested. Or, otherwise, act neutral and if he ever got the courage to make a step—then she could tell him in no uncertain terms. She would prefer that eventuality—she didn't want to leave any wiggle room that nuance always invited.

Carter coming back to the room brought her back into the present. She began rising, but the general waved her back down.

"You'll be glad to know, it turns out your 302 is largely salvageable. They'll have to re-do most of the hull, jet engines and wings, but most of the electronics and the boosters aren't in bad condition."

"That's good." Alice nodded. It did make her feel a little better—now, instead of paying over a hundred million dollars to produce a new plane, the taxpayers would have to pay perhaps fifty or seventy million to fix the old one. "Did they find out why the ejection system didn't fire?"

The general shook her head. "Not yet, but they're still working on it. It shouldn't have happened."

"No, it shouldn't," Alice agreed.

"If it were anyone else in that cockpit—" Carter shook her head again. "That was really an amazing achievement, Alice. Even getting to the carrier—how many pilots could've made the calculations and adjustments on the fly like that? To actually glide there, in a 302? To land?"

"I didn't land, I crashed," Alice reminded her sourly. "And it all happened because I got shot."

"Well, yes, it would've been best if you hadn't been shot, of course, but that is not always something we can prevent in such circumstances."

"I should've prevented it—I should've been looking at the HUD, to check if that last Glider had been dispatched by Fernandez." Fernandez was the pilot of the 302 that had been destroyed right before the Glider had shot at her. She remembered him vaguely from her time at McMurdo and it made the whole thing even more horrifying.

A little crease formed between Carter's brows. "You were focusing on your target, you had all the reason to expect Fernandez to take care of the other one—and no reason to suspect that the explosion had been him, not the Glider."

"I should've checked," Alice insisted. "Don't let me off so easy, ma'am, it was my mistake."

The general sighed. "Major, tell me, how long were you in flight school before you became fully operational?"

It was Alice's turn to frown. "Two years."

"And how long was the training cycle for the 302 before you got your permanent assignment on the Prometheus?"

"Thirteen weeks. But, ma'am—"

"And then, on the Prometheus, how often did you do training sorties?"

"Four to five times a week," she replied, now getting the general's point, but unwilling to accept the premise. "But—"

"And how long it's been since you were part of a 302 squadron?" Carter continued insistently.

"Six years, but—"

"Six years since you've had any kind of regular practice," Carter interrupted again. "Alice, there is a reason why fighter pilots train all the time. In fact, all the military does that—practice makes perfect. I know you've been flying a Jumper in the meantime, but you and I both know that it's completely different. And sure, you've flown a 302 a few months ago on that rescue mission for SG-1, and quite well, but it would be insane to expect the same level of performance from you today as you've had six years ago. Don't beat yourself up for nothing. You've done extremely well on that mission overall—you were the one to warn us of the attack in the first place, you got rid of the Ha'taks using the Chair, you suggested a strategy that, in the end, got most of the hostiles to surrender, and then you went and splashed five of those remaining, preventing them from reaching the Earth. Don't sell yourself short."

"But I still got shot and crashed," Alice protested, not ready to abandon her trench.

"You crash-landed, which under the circumstances was an amazing feat in itself," Carter corrected. "We've lost two people that day—Fernandez and Urie. Do you think it was their fault?"

Yes, she wanted to say, but restrained herself. She had seen the battle replay at the debrief and knew that Urie had been shot down at the very beginning, before she had even joined; he had made a stupid mistake that had cost him his life. But Fernandez was good—very good. Whoever was in the Glider turned out to be better.

I got him, though, she thought to herself, unsure how she felt about it. Not until he'd gotten me, but then, even with one engine down and reduced maneuverability, I did get him in the end. It wasn't an entirely pleasant thought. It felt disingenuous—as if she was saying she was better than either Urie and Fernandez, which she didn't truly believe—did she?

"Of course not," she replied, because that was the only acceptable response. "They were just unlucky."

Carter smiled sadly. "I know it's not in our nature to speak ill of the dead—but while that may be true of Fernandez, you and I both know that Urie made a mistake and that's why he lost his life. That is why Fernandez is going to be receiving a Distinguished Flying Cross posthumously and Urie isn't."

Alice frowned. "Is that for sure?"

"Well, we haven't even started on the paperwork, but when the President of the United States says give them this award, it usually doesn't encounter much opposition." Carter grinned.

Alice caught the plural. "Them?"

"He included you in that order," Carter confirmed happily. "And I have to agree. This was really an amazing achievement, Major. Congratulations."

Alice didn't respond, merely pursed her lips, trying not to mouth off to her boss.

The general sighed. "I can see you're not convinced. Well, you're just gonna have to accept that other people have a higher opinion of you than you do of yourself." She paused for a moment and then added: "You know I couldn't do what you did. I did some flying in the early days, but never on fighters, and even later, whenever we ended up in a 302, it was always Jack flying first seat."

"Well, ma'am, you built the thing," Alice noted, feeling instantly defensive for her mentor.

"Yeah, and almost killed O'Neill and Teal'c on the first try," the older woman quipped half-jokingly. "Which is my point. We all make mistakes, we all lose sometimes. The measure of a person is how well they get up from the mat after they'd been knocked down."

Again, Alice kept her silence, thinking about how she'd allowed the dark cloud that had formed after she'd come back from the future to take over her life: she was always exhausted from lack of sleep, she was skinny as a skeleton because she was forgetting to eat, she was unable to spend time by herself unless she was focused on work—which was getting more difficult than ever lately—she had grown a temper and was always in a bad mood; not to mention flashbacks, dissociative episodes, and the omnipresent feeling of unreality. She did not get up from the mat very well at all.

Perhaps Carter read some of it in her face because her expression was gentle and compassionate as she added: "You're doing okay, Alice. As your boss, I have nothing but praise for you. As your friend, I am still concerned—but I am glad that you're still talking to Doctor Green. I hope it helps."

"Yeah, me too," Alice murmured, but too low for Carter to hear. Her words actually touched Alice. And she said: as your friend… It still shocked her a little that the general would consider her that.

Carter smiled, as if she had heard Alice's whispered admission. "Alright, Major. I'll let you go now. Thank you, you're dismissed."

"Thank you, ma'am."