To Elle's supreme disgruntlement, Dr. Frasier was not kidding about waking her up every three hours and checking on her. "I'm lucid, I'm not gonna forget my name, I am gonna forget what year it is, let me sleeeeeep," she whined after a well-meaning nurse jostled her awake for the third time to check her breathing and pupil responsiveness.

The nurse laughed. "This is the last one, honey. After this, you can sleep as much as you want."

"Yay." Elle turned over and jammed the pillow over her head.

She woke up a few hours later to the dulcet sounds of someone throwing up their entire guts. She sat up, pulled the curtain to the side, and found four Marines at various stages of 'gonna-hurl.' "What happened?" she asked, bewildered.

One of the nurses hurried by with a bowl. "Undercooked meat on an alien planet. Idiots."

Elle put a hand over her mouth, trying to hide her laugh. "I'm so sorry," she said and hid her face back in her pillow, giggling.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," said the nearest Marine, and groaned.

Dr. Jackson stuck his head into the infirmary. "Janet! How's, oh, you're awake." He came over to Elle's bedside. "How are you feeling?"

Elle assessed her injuries. "Better," she said. "Headache greatly reduced. Still kind of dizzy. Light is still, uh, bright."

"Think you can eat?" he asked and cringed as one of the Marines behind them started throwing up. "Not here, obviously."

"I haven't been cleared to leave," Elle said, placing her hands over her ears. "Ugh."

Dr. Frasier hurried by with anti-emetics. "Oh, Daniel, yes, she can leave. She's in VIP quarters."

"Good. Come on." Daniel grabbed her backpack and hurried her out of the infirmary to escape the sounds of alien salmonella. "You've been asleep for a good sixteen hours," he said. "You want to shower and change first?"

"Yes, please," Elle said gratefully.

He led her to the elevator and then down a hallway of doors. Everyone who passed her did a quick double-take and kept walking. "These are VIP guest quarters. You're in here for now. Sam scrounged up some clothes that might fit you. We didn't know if you had anything else in your bag."

Elle surveyed the grey, concrete room, the bed, the desk, and the neatly folded pile of clothes and toiletries. "Thank you," she said.

He gave her a grin. "I know what it's like to come from an alien planet with only the clothes on your back. It's gonna be okay. I promise." He gestured at the door in the corner of the room. "That's your bathroom. Take as long as you want. I'll be down the hall in the VIP lounge doing some reading, so there's no rush. There's an MP stationed at that elevator if you need anything, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you." She waited as he left and closed the door behind him. She locked it and turned to survey the room again. No cameras were visible, which was actually an odd concept. No well-meaning AI in the ceiling. No computers. No nothing. "Don't cry," she told herself fiercely, moving further into the room. "You're already dehydrated. You don't need another headache. You're fine. Don't cry."

She took the pile of stuff into the bathroom. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, and conditioner. Soap. A set of pajamas. A set of clean, small, unmarked BDU's. Socks. A stack of towels. A packaged razor. She started pulling stuff out of her backpack. Two sets of clothes, plus the bloodstained, ruined ones. Full survival gear. Tricorder, phaser, med kit. Swiss Family Robinson. "Hang on. What are you doing in here?" Elle distinctly remembered having the book on her shelf on the Enterprise. No. She'd put it in her bag when Riker had told her they were going to stay on-planet for a week. It had made the jump with her. She opened the book and found the written inscription. For Elle, in case you ever need to build a treehouse into a tree home. - J. T. Kirk.

The tears began to well up against her will. "What about a mountain of concrete?" she asked, hugging the book to her chest. "How am I supposed to do this, captain? Again? You know, I would've taken DS9 and Shapeshifters over this." Then again, how do you compare one war against slavers versus another? She took a deep, shaky breath and exhaled slowly as her chin wobbled traitorously.

"Shower," she told herself firmly, looking at her bedraggled reflection in the mirror. It took her twenty minutes to take the braids out of her hair, her hands trembling with a mix of exhaustion and hunger. She finally tugged the last gold threads out and got in the shower. The hot water felt amazing, but as soon as she washed the smudged kohl from her eyes, she burst into tears.

She cried unashamedly through her whole shower and spent the last two minutes running cold water over her eyes. "Not too disastrous," she decided and swept her hair back into a loose braid.

The BDU's were well-worn and soft, and they fit her well enough. Elle put on the colorful sports socks and dug her 24th-century combat boots out of her backpack. They were dusty.

She stared at them for a long time. That was alien dust, the only remnant of the planet of the Chantho conglomeration. How long had the planet lasted once everyone had flown to "Utopia"? How long had the Futurekind lasted before tearing each other apart in the dark and the cold?

She rinsed them in the sink. It was probably a biohazard, alien dust. They didn't have decontamination fields... should probably bring that up at some point.

Clean and dressed, she felt a little more human. She left her room and walked cautiously down the hallway. It opened up into a lounge with couches, a TV, and a coffee bar. Daniel was there, slouched into one of the sofas, drinking coffee and looking at paperwork. "Hey," he said, putting the papers down. "Feel better?"

"Yeah," Elle said, giving him a wan smile. "Hungry, though."

"Good. It's cafeteria food, but it's pretty good." He dumped his paper coffee cup in the trash. "Come on."

They walked down more identical concrete halls. It was nearly as labyrinthic as the Enterprise and half as aesthetic. "Another set of maps," Elle said with a sigh.

Daniel gestured. "Well, from here, you can just follow your nose to the cafeteria."

They walked into the mess hall. All the people in there turned to look at them, and Elle felt the palpable curiosity in the air. They're Marines and Air Force. Don't show any weakness. She lifted her chin and followed Daniel through the food line.

"No chicken nuggets, sorry, but there are burgers," Daniel said.

Elle got her burger, her fries, a piece of pie, and a cup of Dr. Pepper and followed Dr. Jackson to an empty table near the corner. She took a sip of soda, no ice, and teared up on the spot.

"Good as you remembered?" he asked, giving her a sympathetic smile.

"Yeah," Elle choked out and wiped her eyes with a napkin. She sniffed. "What, um, what are you working on?"

Daniel allowed the change in subject. "I'm working on a translation of what I think is an account of a Goa'uld ruling over Babylon."

Elle chewed her burger. "Akkadian?"

"Yes. It's actually very interesting..." And he was off in full professor mode. He finally cut himself off after Elle started in on her pie. "Sorry," he said. "I tend to ramble."

"I don't mind it at all," Elle said, shooting him a grin. "My, uh, Captain Picard was an amateur archaeologist. I grew up with nerds of the highest order. If I don't hear a lecture on someone's chosen field about once a day, I feel deprived."

He grinned back at her. "Just keep hanging out with me and Sam, then. You'll get your money's worth."

Elle poked at the last bit of whipped cream on the plate. "I would love that," she said honestly. "You don't even know how much I would love that. I'd like to know, though, what's going to happen to me."

"That is a good question," Daniel said. "Right now, you're under the protection of Stargate Command as a refugee. You'll have a lot of options. You can choose your path, but more immediately, you need to heal, and we'd like to know the full story. What we call a debriefing."

"I can do that," Elle said.

"How's your head?" he asked instead, raising an eyebrow.

"Hurts," she admitted.

"Okay. Would you like to go back to your room for a couple of hours and sleep, and then we can meet with the rest of the team and General Hammond?"

"Sounds good," Elle said. She appreciated that Daniel was her appointed liaison with SGC. Besides being her actual favorite character from the series, he was a civilian who understood losing your whole world - and he was quieter than the army types, which her headache appreciated.

They cleaned up, and he escorted her back to her quarters. "Two hours," Daniel reminded her.

Elle sank down on the bed and buried her face in her pillows. Two hours, then you get to tell your life story. Before she could even worry about it, she fell asleep.

-/\-

She woke up two hours later when she heard knocking. "Huh?" She stumbled over and opened the door. "I'm up," she told Daniel. "One sec." She closed the door again.

"Game face, Elle," she told herself in the mirror as she washed her face. She tied her hair up in a ponytail and tugged the wrinkles out of her clothes.

"Ready?" Daniel asked when she opened the door again.

"Ready," she agreed and followed him out.

Daniel escorted her up to the oft-seen conference room, where SG1 and General Hammond were waiting. "General, this is Elle Wilcott. Elle, this is General Hammond, our base commander," Daniel said, ushering Elle to the empty chair next to his usual spot across from Jack.

"Hello," General Hammond said, shaking Elle's hand. "Welcome to the SGC. Should I also say, welcome back to Earth?"

"Thank you, General," Elle said, giving him a slight smile. "So, do you guys have a policy for dealing with people from different universes, or do I just start talking?"

"We don't have a policy," O'Neill said. "But you can start at the beginning, and when you come to the end, you can stop. That's generally how it's done unless you're Daniel."

"Excellent advice, Colonel," Elle said dryly. "I see your English degree is a reality in this universe."

"His what?" Sam asked.

"It's a quote from Alice in Wonderland," Elle said. "Or, Murder Must Advertise. You know, Captain Picard and I had this exact conversation."

"Probably because you don't make any sense," O'Neill said mildly.

"Excuse me, Miss Wilcott, was it?" Hammond glanced at Daniel and then back to Elle. "I haven't exactly gone through the Stargate recently. What language are you speaking?"

"...English?" she ventured a guess, looking at Daniel.

He gave a tiny shake of his head. "What you were speaking before, you said Federation Standard?" he said. "But there have been a few words that I didn't catch."

"Standard," Elle realized. "Sorry. I thought I had it on... I must have turned it off in my sleep." She poked at her forearm and felt the answering buzz of the universal translator. "Okay, how's that? Is it English now?"

"What is that?" Sam asked.

"Universal translator," Elle said.

"Of course," Daniel realized, leaning back in his chair. "You didn't originally come through the Stargate."

"What?" Elle asked, and then realized, "Hang on, so how come I was having to learn Goa'uld over there, but you guys all seem to understand it?"

"So you're not speaking English right now?" O'Neill asked at the same time.

General Hammond cleared his throat. "One at a time, people," he scolded mildly. "Miss Wilcott?"

"How does the translation work?" Elle asked.

Daniel and Sam exchanged a glance, and Sam waved a hand. "As far as we can understand it," Daniel said, "the DHD's provide a translation field approximately twenty miles square around the Stargate. Anyone who travels through the Stargate can understand anyone else within that radius. If the Stargate is off the grid or hasn't been used in a long time, or both, then the translation field doesn't come online for a while. If you arrived by ship or however you got on that planet, you wouldn't have been able to access it. Our Stargate doesn't have a DHD, so it took us some time to get back into the network. But if you don't travel through the stargates, it doesn't work on you." He gestured at her arm. "You have a translator in your arm?"

"Yes," Elle said. "A universal translator. It has all the languages in the Federation in it, and it can pick up new languages fairly quickly. I didn't know how long I was going to be there before I could escape, so I was teaching myself Goa'uld off the translator. Oh, and to answer your question, Colonel, I speak a mix of English and Federation Standard because of the time travel. Standard is, well, the standard of communication, but everyone has translators, and English has some really specific words and puns that I favor."

"The time travel?" Hammond said, shooting O'Neill a glance. "Perhaps we can start at the beginning. Who are you? Where did you come from?"

Elle sighed. "Yes, sir. It's a long story."

"We have time," Hammond said.

"Yes, sir." Elle took a deep breath, quieted her emotions, and folded her hands on the table in front of her. Debrief. "My name is Eleanor Wilcott. I am from a universe where this universe is fictional. Like Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc."

"We have those," Jack said.

"I am a fan of the Star Wars films," Teal'c said.

Elle smothered a grin. "Cool. Me too. But you, this place, these planets, the characters, the events, the technology, it's all part of what we call the Stargate franchise. It came out in the '90s and 2000s, and the first movie and the SG1 show are programs I have seen multiple times, as well as the other one that comes later. You specifically are from Stargate: SG1, what I believe is the end of season two, early season three, based on the length of Dr. Jackson's hair."

"You mean the non-length," Jack said and was unsubtly kicked in the ankle by Daniel, who did not change his expression of fascination.

"That's..." Hammond trailed off.

"I know," Elle said apologetically. "It's a lot to take in. But your show is quite popular, and you guys are some of my favorite characters ever."

"How many years does this show cover?" Sam asked.

"Uh, from the events of finding the Stargate in Giza to, approximately, the late 2010s," Elle said. "I know all your futures. Sorry."

"Okay," Jack said. "Lottery numbers in there, perhaps?"

"Sorry," Elle deadpanned. "They didn't encourage gambling on TV."

"But how did you get here?" Hammond asked.

Elle grimaced. Took another deep breath. Glanced at Jack. Looked away. "Right. The year 2018. I had just turned 13. I went to sleep in my bed at home, and I, well, we think it was carbon monoxide poisoning. I woke up in cargo bay two of the starship Enterprise, the original Star Trek series. I thought I was dreaming until the aliens actually spoke to me and told me what year it was. I was smack dab in the middle of Journey to Babel, ambassadors and assassins and all. We discovered that I have an unstable quantum signature and that when I am in mortal injury, my signature destabilizes. As I'm dying, I decohere from that time to another time or universe that matches more closely to my new quantum signature."

"So you died," Jack said sharply. "When you were thirteen."

"Yes," Elle said. "Sorry."

"I'm sorry," Daniel said, half-raising a hand, coincidentally taking the attention off of Colonel O'Neill, who was going through all the triggered emotions of a father who'd lost his child only a few years previously, "What's a quantum signature?"

"It's," Elle blew out a breath. "Have you found the quantum mirror already? That device that lets you go to a parallel universe?"

"Yes," Daniel said slowly. "I went to a parallel universe."

"Okay," Elle said. "Each universe has its own frequency at which it vibrates. The quantum mirror scans other frequencies and finds you parallel or alternate universes. Based on what I saw in episodes, they have to be fairly close so you can find them in the mirror. So, when I died, I stopped matching my universe, and I stabilized in the Star Trek universe. It's a fairly absolute thing. You can't spend forever in a universe that's not your own. It's bad for your subatomic structure."

"Move on before Captain Carter's brain explodes," O'Neill said dryly, seemingly recovered from the topic of children dying in their own homes. "So you ended up in Star Trek, on the Enterprise. Then what?"

"Oh, they kept me," Elle said. "I knew everything about them, their missions, the aliens they were going to encounter. 90% of the stuff I knew was classified, and it was deemed safer to keep me on the Enterprise, in the middle of the action, than try and keep me on Earth, where the politicians and the intelligence agencies could get at me."

The SGC members shared a glance, probably all thinking about their own pests of intelligence agencies. "I can see why," Jack muttered.

"Yes," Elle said. "And I wanted to help. So they took over my education, and I became their civilian mission consultant." She smiled wistfully. "Poor Chief Giotto. I was a trial to him like any civilian would be, but he ended up pioneering the regulations for civilian crewmembers that are still being used a hundred years later."

"What happened then?" Teal'c asked gently when Elle paused.

Elle gave a wobbly smile. "I was gonna be sixteen. I qualified for away missions and surveys. Easy stuff. We were on an ocean planet, taking samples of water and krill. Uh, there was a whale with poisonous fins that wanted the krill we were on top of."

Everyone winced.

"Yeah," Elle said, reading their expressions. "It, uh, was like a scene from Jaws. The boat splintered, and I got snagged by one of those fins. Uh, I drowned. And I woke up almost a hundred years in the future, spitting up ocean water. They actually did replace that carpet, by the way. Guinan totally lied to me."

They winced again. "Kid," O'Neill said.

Elle shook her head. "If I don't laugh about it, I'm gonna cry, and I don't want to do that."

Daniel got up and got her a cup of coffee.

"Thanks," Elle said, wrapping her hands around the warm mug. It was grounding. "Anyway. Uh, it was the same universe, just forward in time, because Spock and Bones and Sarek recognized me. They were old. And, same thing. I knew the crew of the Enterprise-D, and I knew even more about the 24th century because of the three different shows, TNG, DS9, and Voyager, but this time, backed up by my knowledge of real science and history. Captain Picard agreed to keep me as a civilian consultant. And it was great. They were already group parenting Wesley, and I got added into the mix as a sibling. I had friends, I got my pilot's license, I was taking remote classes from Star Fleet Academy, and I still had friends and relatives from the past that I knew." She took a sip of coffee. "I was gonna go visit Earth. I was gonna go see David Marcus-Kirk, finally. I was gonna see if I could meet Commander Chakotay before the Cardassians threatened the border worlds. I had all these plans..."

"And then what happened?" Sam asked.

Elle shook her head, refocused. "Uh, do you guys remember that episode where a giant lightning crystal wiped out a bunch of colonies?"

"No," Teal'c said honestly.

"Well," Elle said grimly, "I don't recommend being electrocuted to death. It hurts like a, well, lightning bolt to the chest." She huffed a laugh. "And we thought we had it in the bag. We were three weeks early. We were going to have everything in place to protect ourselves. But the crystalline entity was too fast, too unpredictable. So, I got zapped and ended up in the dust of an alien planet. That was, uh, six weeks ago? Eight? Something like that. The day lengths didn't match up."

"And you ran into the Goa'uld," O'Neill said, brow furrowing.

"Uh, no," Elle said. "I was in Doctor Who."

"What?"

"Yeah," Elle said. "I woke up, had all this heart arrhythmia, and found the TARDIS. In real life, this blue police box just sitting there. I met the Doctor, and Martha, and Jack Harkness. Oh, you guys don't have that yet. Uh, the 10th iteration of the Doctor. They restarted the show in my world in 2005, and I watched quite a lot of it in Star Trek." She patted her belt. "I actually got this from the Doctor's TARDIS. He knew who I was and had met me as his younger self, so he knew I would be coming eventually. Which is nice for me, it means that I go back someday. That means I repeat universes, which lends credence to Data's idea that my quantum decoherence is influenced by my subconscious."

"In what way?" Sam asked.

"I've only ever ended up in universes that I know," Elle said. "Universes that had a huge influence on my life when I was a kid."

"All the sci-fi universes," Jack said fondly. "Geek."

Elle scoffed. "Please," she said primly. "I am a nerd, like my father before me."

Teal'c raised an approving eyebrow at the quote. "Your parents taught you these fictional universes," he said.

"Yes," Elle said. "And I was homeschooled. I had a lot of time to read and watch things that interested me."

"Nerd," Jack said.

"And proud of it," Elle agreed. "Anyways. It was an episode where I'd ended up. Martha confirmed the TARDIS had fixed my arrhythmia, and I found my scars." She held up her arm to inspect it. "You know, they were a lot worse. The whole Ancient Egyptian oil and rosewater thing really made them diminish." She shook her head. "Anyways. I was there for about twelve hours. And then we ran into the Master, the Doctor's archenemy. He recognized me, also, and apparently does not like future-me. He shot me to get me out of the way." She pressed a hand to her shoulder. "So that's when I died and then woke up on Kepher's planet."

"You died four times," O'Neill said flatly.

"Yes," Elle said. "And your arrival almost made it a fifth, so thanks for that."

He made an inarticulate noise, loosely transcribed as "gaah" and got up to get a cup of coffee.

"What happened when you woke up?" Sam asked.

Elle shrugged. "I tried to figure out where I was. I saw the Stargate, and I knew that Earth was out there somewhere. I figured I could try and remember the address to another planet, since I knew you had the iris to protect this gate. That's when the Jaffa caught me in the woods. Kepher decided I would make a passable servant and tossed me in with the other girls."

"Did, uh," Daniel started and got stuck.

"No," Elle said, shaking her head. "Thank the Great Bird, I wasn't pretty enough to be that kind of servant. We were left alone. The Jaffa would not tolerate anyone messing with their god's property, even the slaves. I kept my head down, tried to get information, and I realized the Tau'ri, you guys, were out there. So I decided I just needed to escape. I dredged up the memory of Abydos' gate address, found the planet's point of origin, and planted a bomb in the communications room to cover my getaway. Then you guys showed up." She wrinkled her nose. "Kepher suspected me of being a spy and tried to torture me for information. You got captured after that bit. And here we are." She rubbed at her forehead, trying to ease her headache. "Earth, at long last, home of baseball and capitalism and chicken nuggets."

"That is so incredible that I believe you," Hammond said, shaking his head.

Elle smiled wryly. "I can chart you a ship's path through a solar system if you need proof of my technical skills."

"Yes, please," Sam said. "What do you know about hyperspace?"

Hammond held up a hand. "Before we get into that, let's discuss Miss Wilcott's future."

"Well, obviously, we're going to hire her," O'Neill said, his tone of voice matter of fact.

Hammond gave him a Look.

"Come on, sir, look at her," O'Neill replied, waving a hand at her. "She's perfect for this program. Human, from the future, knows our future, knows all the aliens, knows how to build stuff from the future-"

"Knows the languages," Daniel added.

"Knows the science," Sam added.

Hammond nodded. "You would be an asset to this command," he told Elle, "but you are so young, and you've just come from a difficult experience."

"Admiral," Elle started and corrected herself, "sorry, General. I don't know what's in my future, but I do know that if I didn't help the people that I admire and respect, the same ones who are protecting this planet, I would not be able to live with myself. My whole life, I have been invested in this universe, and if I can spare anyone pain or death, I want to do it."

"You don't really know us," Sam pointed out.

"I do," Elle replied. "It's weird to think about, so don't think about it too hard. The faces may change depending on casting choices, but your characters in my universe were written so similar to the characters written in the Star Trek versions of the shows and what I've already seen of you in real life... you guys are the best of the best. And from what you've said has already happened, the episodes are accurate."

"That's something I don't understand," Sam said. "When we went back in time to 1969, we couldn't risk any information getting out. And the people in Star Trek, they let you tell them the future, change the future, just like that?"

"The future is not written in stone," Elle said, "except for when it is."

Jack sighed. "Please do not get geeky on us. You were doing so well."

Elle smothered a grin. "Okay. Imagine time like a river. Within the river, there are eddies, currents, and rocks. It keeps moving forward, but you can go upstream. If you do, you can change the current downstream. Time is kind of like that. There are fixed points, things that will always happen, no matter what else changes. Time will compensate. Certain people will always die, certain events will always happen, that kind of thing. Everything else is fluid. Everything else can change. But the river still stays on the same general path. It still trucks along, still eddies in the same spots." She gestured vaguely. "I changed a lot in the 23rd century. For example, I straight-up told Kirk not to get promoted too early. Things were different. He'd married and had kids and had a long career as a captain before becoming an admiral. Other people had changed, too, but everything was still the same. The same races entered the Federation. The same people I was expecting on the Enterprise-D were right where they were in the show. Even the paradoxes stayed the same."

"In what way?" Sam asked.

"Well, if you remember that episode... in one timestream, the Enterprise-C never reached a Klingon outpost, and so the Federation was in a war with the Klingons. Tasha Yar went back in time with the Enterprise-C, saved the day, and the Federation never got into a war with the Klingons." Elle tapped her head. "Thanks to meddling with so many spacetime distortions, I remember the whole thing. I have two sets of memories of that year. One, I was shipped off to Earth and living with Dr. McCoy, working at Star Fleet HQ to fight the Klingons and hold time until the Enterprise-C completed its loop. The other, I stayed on the Enterprise and we were never at war. Everything happened like in the episode, and the year that never was saved the day."

"Okay," Sam said, still suspicious.

Elle held out a hand. "Look, I even asked Q. Do you know who Q is?"

"Annoying, judgy, god-kind of person," Sam said.

"Yes," Elle said. "I met him a few times, and he and his continuum..." She paused and glanced up at the ceiling. "I'm about to spill all your secrets if you're interested in stopping me," she said loudly.

Nothing happened.

"Ugh," Elle muttered. "He's never around when you actually need him."

"Oookay?" O'Neill said. "Was something supposed to happen?"

Elle sighed. "Let's put it this way. You know the Simpsons? Old man yells at cloud? You'll understand the feeling intimately in a few years. They never want to help. They just sit there and judge." She shook her head. "Anyway. Q, at some point, let me know that because I'm not part of that original timeline, I am not under their jurisdiction. I could change the future with impunity because I knew what was fixed in the timeline and what was not. For example, Picard and Crusher getting married? A big deal to all persons involved but not actually relevant to the fixed points of the universe. The Borg arriving at Wolf 359 and Sisko's wife dying? Fixed point. Even with all the work we did, she still died, he's still going to become the Bajoran prophet. Many, many things are flexible. And if they're not, even with all my efforts, they'll still happen." Elle shrugged. "By and large, time repairs itself. They let me have that power because I was responsible. If I wasn't," she shrugged again. "Q could have disappeared me on the spot. He didn't."

"Fascinating," Teal'c said.

"That's one word for it," Jack said, rubbing his forehead.

"And besides," Elle said. "A lot of episodes don't happen the way they show, anyways. There are no instances of plot-based stupidity because they're real people with real protocols and training. The whole 'oh, the redshirts always die' is not true. I'm sure you don't just stand there and let yourselves get shot at by Jaffa in real life."

"Okay," O'Neill said. "We are definitely keeping you. Right, General?"

Hammond met Elle's gaze and gave her a tiny smile. "Welcome to the Stargate program," he said. "We'll attach you to SG1 as a civilian assistant. We'll get you the paperwork and the clearance to work with the SGC. Until we get your identity papers, I can't allow you off the base."

"I understand," Elle said, refusing to melt in relief.

"May I walk you to your room?" Teal'c asked after Hammond dismissed them.

"Yes, thank you," Elle replied, stifling a yawn.

"We'll come get you for dinner," O'Neill told her.

"Yes, sir."

"Just Jack," he said.

"Yes, sir," Elle said again, deadpan.

Jack waved a hand. "Shoo, get out of here," he said, mock-disgruntled.

Elle laughed and followed Teal'c out of the room.

"May I ask you a question, Elle Wilcott?" Teal'c asked as they got out of the elevator.

"Sure," Elle said.

"The future of the Jaffa," Teal'c said and left it there.

Elle smiled up at him. "Yes," she said. "The Jaffa gain their freedom."

"Thank you," Teal'c said, his voice heavy with emotion.

"That's all you," Elle replied. "You'll get there in the end. And I'll do everything I can to help." She frowned, thinking of Kepher's cold smile. "No one should serve false gods."

"Indeed," Teal'c said. "I am glad you were able to escape." They came to Elle's door, and he bowed his head. "I will leave you to your rest."

Elle kicked her shoes off and lay down on the bed. She was officially in the SGC. She had a place, a future. They liked her and, even better, believed her. Everything was going to be okay.

She fell asleep before she could even think of her next steps. Concussions were the worst.

-/\-

Elle woke up an hour later, still groggy and emotionally exhausted. She stared up at the ceiling. "You should get up," she said out loud. "You have to go eat dinner in a couple of hours. You need to think."

Her body did not want to cooperate. Now that she was finally safe, the grief was rising to the top. Intellectually, Elle knew this. Losing everyone and everything for the third time... tears rolled down her face. There it was. She rolled over and let herself cry until she fell back asleep.

A soft knock woke her up.

"One sec," Elle called. She rolled out of bed and washed her face. She still looked terrible, but oh well. She opened the door to find Sam. "Hey."

"Hi." Sam waited patiently while Elle put on her boots. "We've got to get you some regular clothes, huh?"

Elle frowned. "It's the 20th century. I don't have any money."

Sam gave her a smile. "It's okay. Once you've signed your consultant paperwork, you'll get your account with hazard pay and POW backpay."

"You didn't even know I existed," Elle pointed out.

"Doesn't matter. You helped us escape an enemy base. That's worth something."

They went to the mess hall. People stared again, but this time, they whispered furiously amongst themselves. "Uh-oh," Elle said dryly. "I've made the rumor mill."

"It'll die down," Sam assured her. "But new, exciting civilians..." she shrugged.

They sat down with the rest of SG1, and Jack slid over a piece of pie to Elle's side of the table. The whispering doubled. "Making a point?" Daniel asked.

Jack shrugged. "I'm not gonna let anyone else snatch our new consultant for a different team."

"You're still mad at SG7?" Daniel asked, eyes twinkling.

"You are our archaeologist. They can get their own." Jack pointed at Elle. "Not you, though. Not until we get you combat-rated."

"I am combat-rated. In the future," Elle said.

"Not for the 20th century."

"I could blow something else up," Elle offered. "Or beat up that Marine over there. I trained with people with twice my bone density."

Jack squinted at her. "No."

Elle grinned and ate her pie.

By the time dinner was over, she was exhausted again.

"I was thinking tomorrow," Jack said casually, "Sgt Harriman should have your forms up. We could go off base and get you some real clothes and stuff for your room. We'll have to move you, by the way, to long-term quarters. You want to be Teal'c's neighbor?"

Elle nodded. "Makes sense to me. That'll be cool. In fact, Teal'c, I know you meditate, um," she faltered.

"You are welcome to join me at any time," Teal'c said, inclining his head.

"Thank you," Elle said with a sigh of relief. "I haven't been able to in, oh, 300 years?"

Jack barked out a laugh. "That long, huh?"

They put their trays away, and Jack walked her to her quarters. "You gonna be okay?" he asked.

Elle gave a wry smile. "Yeah. Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with loss."

He patted her shoulder. "Hang in there, kiddo. Get some rest."