Summary:
"He takes a deep breath. 'You got hurt again,' he mumbles. 'Except, this time…'
'This time what?'
Jonas squeezes his eyes shut. 'This time I think you died.'"
OR
Present-Day AU. A malfunctioning time travel device and a harrowing mission force Sam and Jonas to finally confront what happened in Florida. But they're running out of time to clear the air before Jonas' latest vision comes true - a vision of Sam's impending death. Sequel to "band-aids don't fix bullet holes."
A/N: Hello again! After a long and torturous road, we're finally at the most pivotal chapter. I've been really excited to get to this bit for awhile, so I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As always, thank you so much for your support ❤️ I can't express enough how much I appreciate it.
CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER
-depiction of medical distress
Chapter 16: how to save a life
Sam doesn't know if she screams.
All she knows is the sensation of falling through empty space, the world rushing past her in a frenzied blur. Her body feels as if it's being torn apart - cold air clawing at her skin and yanking her limbs in every direction. The longer she falls, the more the pain grows, and at some point she worries that she's going to black out and land in the past in an unconscious heap. But just when she thinks she can't bear the agony of the jump any longer, she hits the ground with a loud thump.
Sam blinks a few times, fighting back a wave of nausea. Eventually, the world stops spinning, and realizes that she's lying in a tunnel. A very familiar tunnel, lit overhead by an eerie blue glow.
Sam bolts upright, letting out a gasp. It worked, she thinks, her heart leaping in her chest. Holy shit, it worked.
There's no time to marvel at her success, however. Sam glances back at the crystal, which she's now holding in her lap. It's still active, but its light seems to have dimmed somewhat, no doubt indicating a decrease in power. She prays that it'll still have enough energy to complete the second jump.
She stuffs the crystal into her backpack and takes stock of her surroundings. From the looks of it, she seems to be in the cavern's exit tunnel, the one she escaped through after Jonas died. The crystal must have dropped her in the general vicinity of her memory rather than in the exact place at the exact moment. Or, at least, that's what she hopes. If it messed up the timing and brought her back too late, then this whole journey will have been for nothing, and she can't have that.
Once she gets her bearings, Sam heads in the direction she thinks will lead back to the cavern. It doesn't take long before she spies the opening up ahead. Please don't be too late, she begs, moving as fast as her legs will carry her.
"Sam."
The unexpected sound hits her with a force so great that it nearly brings her to her knees. It can't be. It can't. But it is. It's his voice. Jonas' voice. The voice she thought she'd never hear again.
"Sam, I have to…tell you something."
Sam's head starts to spin. He's alive. Oh god, he's alive. Fighting to survive, yes, but alive and breathing and speaking her name. She isn't too late. She actually made it in time. She can save him.
She can save him.
"Jonas," she whispers, her eyes filling with tears.
She sprints the rest of the way up the tunnel, ducking behind the lip of the entrance when she approaches. As much as she wants to rush forward and gather Jonas into her arms, she still has to wait until her past self leaves the cavern. She peeks around the corner, watching the all-too familiar scene with morbid fascination as her own voice reaches her ears.
"Jonas, I have to go right now," past-her is saying. "You can tell me later, okay?"
Sam's breath catches when she sees Jonas lying on the ground, his body contorted in pain but still very much alive. A lump begins to rise in her throat, but she swallows it back, willing herself to focus. She'll have time to succumb to her emotions later. Right now she's on a mission.
Jonas is shaking his head, clutching her past self's hand in his own. "No…" he croaks, his voice weak. "It has to be…now."
Past-her fidgets restlessly. "Okay," she says. "What is it?"
Sam's stomach lurches. She knows what's coming next - the moment that's haunted her day in and day out, imprisoning her in a cage of her own regret. A part of her can't bear to relive it, even from a distance. But another part of her forces herself not to look away. She deserves to witness the aftermath of her failure, to see the way her silence hurt him more than words ever could.
"Sam, I love you."
Sam battles another surge of tears as the words sink in. She wants yet again to run to his side, to hold him close and give him the answer he deserves. But instead she watches her past self stare back at him - saying nothing, giving him nothing. She can't quite make out Jonas' face, but the tension in the air says it all. She broke his heart. She broke his heart and left him to die, and she can never, ever forgive herself -
Get it together, Carter, a voice in her mind scolds. You came here to fix this.
Right, she needs to focus. Suppressing a sob, she continues to watch as past-her rises to her feet, picks a glow rod up off the ground, and disappears into the other tunnel.
Now, she thinks.
Sam springs into action. The moment she's sure her past self is gone, she leaps out from her hiding place and makes a beeline for Jonas. He's writhing in pain and gasping for air, but the coughing hasn't started yet, so she knows she still has a little bit more time.
"Jonas," she chokes out, dropping to her knees.
His skin is deathly pale and a web of purple veins is starting to creep up his neck. But when his eyes - his beautiful, blue-green eyes - meet hers, she knows he's still there.
"Jonas," she repeats, cradling his face as her resolve finally breaks. Her body starts to tremble as she lets out a sob. "Oh, Jonas."
Jonas peers up at her in confusion. "Sam?" he mumbles. "How did you…you just went - "
Sam interrupts him with a kiss, stroking his hair when she pulls away. "I don't have time to explain," she says. "You just have to trust me, okay?"
He nods, although the look of confusion remains. Sam moves so that she's sitting by his shoulders and hauls his upper body onto her lap.
Jonas' breathing starts to grow shallow. "Sam," he gasps, his eyes widening with fear. "Sam…I can't…breathe…"
"I've got you," she cuts in, desperation now gnawing at her insides. She reaches behind her and pulls the crystal out of her backpack. It glows again on contact, but the light is even dimmer than it was before. She fights back a surge of panic. "I need you to hold onto this, all right?"
Jonas frowns. "You found…a crystal?"
Sam balances the crystal on his stomach and places his hands on either end. The fading light starts to flicker. "I'll tell you later," she replies, curling her hands around his own. "Right now I need you to close your eyes and hold on tight, you got that?"
He nods again, his chest heaving. "Yeah."
"Okay."
Sam leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead before squeezing her eyes shut. She draws up her prepared memory, the image of Celia's lab just before she left to make the jump.
Jonas coughs.
Heart pounding, Sam tightens her grip on the crystal and focuses even harder. The crystal starts to hum, then stops.
Jonas coughs again.
Sam's chest seizes in terror. The crystal can't be out of power, not yet. "Come on," she urges, opening her eyes. "Come on!"
Jonas coughs a third time.
A scream of frustration works its way up her throat, but she pushes it down. "Come on," she repeats. "Come on, please!"
"Sam," Jonas wheezes, his eyes fluttering open. "Sam, I don't think…I don't think I'm gonna make it - "
"Don't you dare!" she shrieks, her vision blurring with more tears. "Don't you dare give up on me!"
"Sam - "
"No!"
"Sam, it's okay - "
"No, it's not," she sobs. "I can't lose you. Not again."
The crystal suddenly comes to life.
Before Sam can cry out in relief, the humming resumes, followed by the loud buzzing. Jonas' jaw drops open in shock, but the buzzing sets off another round of coughs, and this time he can't seem to stop.
"Jonas!" Sam cries. "Oh god, it's okay. It's okay, it's okay, it's going to be okay - "
Another electric jolt shoots through her body, and in a flash, the cavern disappears.
Celia holds back a sigh as she watches Sam disappear down the hallway.
She wishes she could do more to help. She can only imagine what it must've been like, to watch Jonas succumb to the venom and be powerless to stop it. When Sam reunited with their group back on the planet, she was an inconsolable mess. Cam had to hold her against him the whole way back to the 'gate. At the time, Celia had never seen the colonel in such a state. Sam was usually so calm and composed even in the most harrowing of circumstances, so to witness her completely fall apart was nothing less than a total shock. Celia still remembers the echo of her sobs and the way she clung to Cam during their trek, as if she needed something solid to anchor her to reality lest she collapse to the ground and slip away without it.
Celia suspects, however, that Sam didn't particularly want to accept reality. She probably still doesn't, and Celia can't blame her. Sam never said a word about her relationship with Jonas, but it didn't take a genius to recognize the bond between them. The loss of someone that close to you, someone you could've loved, must feel like losing a part of yourself. Celia wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. She shudders to think of how she would've felt in that situation, if she was forced to watch Cam die in front of her without any real means of saving him.
Sam finally rounds a corner at the end of the hall, and Celia takes that as her cue to return to her work. It's no use dwelling on the past, she supposes, although if that time travel device in Lab 26 actually worked, then maybe the past could be fixed. That sort of thing isn't Celia's area of expertise though, so she's not sure if the notion is anything more than wishful thinking. She knows that SG-1 has meddled with time before. But those incidents seem to be wild exceptions to the rule, and she's almost certain that General Landry doesn't want to make a habit of them.
Celia walks back to her work station and slips onto her stool. She's about to re-adjust her microscope when the lab table suddenly starts to shake. Celia draws back, startled. At first she thinks it's an earthquake, but when the base alarms remain silent, she realizes that something else must be happening.
A loud popping sound causes her to jump out of her seat.
Celia stumbles backward, nearly tripping over her stool in the process. The lab table stills, a momentary silence following in its wake. But then another sound shatters that silence, this one somewhat quieter and much more human.
It's the sound of crying.
Startled once again, Celia rushes towards it. But when at last she sees the source of the commotion, she stops dead in her tracks.
"Celia," a familiar voice sobs. "Celia, I need your help."
Celia opens and closes her mouth a few times, her mind reeling with shock.
"Celia," the voice repeats, more urgently this time. "Celia, please, he's running out of time."
Celia blinks, taking in the sight before her. For there, sitting on the floor just past the doorway, is none other than Colonel Samantha Carter.
Holding a living, breathing Jonas Quinn in her arms.
"Celia!" Sam cries, her voice growing desperate. "Celia, please, he's - "
Jonas starts to cough.
Celia finally snaps out of her trance and runs towards them, kneeling on the ground by Jonas' side. "Sam, what happened? I just saw you leave - "
"The crystal…I jumped…" Sam chokes. Celia looks down and sees the object in question lying across Jonas' stomach. It's flickering with a faint, almost ghostly light. All at once, the pieces fall into place. Somehow, Sam managed to make the time travel device work, and she brought Jonas back with her in the hopes that she could get a second chance at saving him.
Celia doesn't have time to fully process this, however, because Jonas' coughing begins to worsen. "Celia," Sam says again, her eyes flooding with tears. "Celia, please, he needs the antidote now!"
Jonas' body starts to convulse, and Sam lets out an anguished cry. "Oh god," she sobs, frantically grabbing his face and then his arms and then his face again. "Jonas, you have to stay with me! I need you to stay with me - "
Celia doesn't waste any more time. She leaps to her feet and makes a mad dash for the cooler. Hands shaking, she throws open the door and pulls out two vials of anti-venom serum, pausing only to retrieve a syringe from a nearby cabinet. Jonas is still convulsing when she returns.
"Sam, I need you to hold him as still as you can," she says, gripping the colonel's arm. "I'm going to inject one dose, and if that doesn't work right away, I'll administer another, okay?"
Sam nods, tears streaming down her face. "Okay."
Sam releases Jonas' face to steady his shoulders, all the while begging him to hold on just a little while longer. Once he's as secure as can be, Celia preps the syringe, extends his right arm, and plunges the needle into his skin.
Nothing happens.
"It's not working!" Sam wails. "Celia, it's not working. Oh god, it's not working - "
Without hesitation,Celia refills the syringe and injects the second dose. "Come on, Jonas," she pleads, her own eyes filling with tears. "Come on, you've got to fight it. You can do this. Fight."
Jonas goes still, his eyes slipping closed.
"No!" Sam screams, doubling over and clutching his shirt. "Jonas, please, no. No, no, no - "
A sharp gasp cuts her off. All of a sudden, Jonas' chest fills with air and his eyes snap open. "S-Sam?" he croaks, gazing up at her.
Sam cries out in relief. "Jonas?"
"Sam…" he repeats, his breaths growing more even. "I think…I think I can breathe now..."
At that, Sam finally breaks down, her whole body shuddering as the sobs overtake her. Celia finds herself crying along with her.
"Sam," Jonas mumbles, "where are we?"
Celia watches, teary-eyed, as Sam smiles down at him. "You're home," she answers, stroking his face.
Jonas' brow furrows in confusion. "Home?" he asks, still holding Sam's gaze.
Sam nods. "Yes," she murmurs, threading her fingers through his hair. "You're home, Jonas, and you're going to be okay."
A/N: The title of this chapter is taken from the song "How to Save a Life" by The Fray.
This was one of my favorite chapters to write, not just for the ending, but also for the tension leading up to it. In a way I feel like it's a reverse parallel of the escalating tension in Chapter 11, which led up to Jonas' death instead of his survival. All that being said, I do like the ending here best. That last bit when the anti-venom serum starts to work and Jonas regains consciousness almost brought me to tears while I was writing it. I debated extending this chapter past that scene, but I ultimately decided to save what comes next for the following chapter. The "you're home" moment is such a powerful note to end on that I think adding a scene after it would've cheapened the effect.