(no subject)
Title: Outside the Lines
Author: Annerb
Rating: Mature (for violence and language in one section)
Summary: How far would you go to make your world right again?
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Team, S/J, 'Chain Reaction' AU
Author’s Note: The title of this fic and the idea were inspired by a song by Lisa Loeb (‘Would You Wander’) on the long commute home. I wanted a look at Sam, her reaction to a major character death and what she might be capable of if she was pushed to the ropes over the protection of her teammates. Here’s what I came up with.
Part 11: Momentum
The forested slope looked other-worldly in the moonlight. Back in her BDUs with a P-90 strapped to her chest, Sam could almost believe she was on another planet, that any moment she would hear the sounds of her teammates walking at her side. It only took once glance at the familiar stars to shatter the illusion, though. Sam knew she was truly alone.
Pushing such wistful thought aside, Sam adjusted her pack and continued to climb the steady slope winding through the trees.
Sam stood at attention before the desk of the President. If she had been there under any other circumstances, she was sure she would be glancing around in interest, taking in the Stuart painting of George Washington and the Eagle emblazoned carpet. But Sam had no energy for tourist worship.
The President must have sensed some of that, because he was eying her warily from behind his large desk a large file folder in his hands. Sam had just ignored another request to be at her ease. She didn’t want to be at ease. She just wanted them to get the hell on with it.
Davis obviously picked up on that because he spread a file open on the desk. “I received your email at 0800 hours yesterday morning and was able to verify it and get the ball rolling on warrants. We had been investigating various levels of the NID for illegal activity, but had been unable to come up with any evidence. You gave us the leverage we needed, Major.”
“You have done your country a great service, Major,” the President added. “The deaths of Hammond and O’Neill will not go unpunished.”
For the first time, Sam noticed that the President was angry. She had forgotten that he had always thought of Jack as a hero, no matter how often Jack had refused his offers for a dinner at the White House.
The President met her eyes steadily. “We will take care of this, I promise, Major.”
Sam found herself willing to believe him, even as she was unsure where that left her.
Davis continued updating her on the events of the last 24 hours. “We took Kinsey into custody yesterday morning. Within an hour he was trading information in exchange for his miserable life, as it is.”
“Meaning?” Sam asked with a growing sense of unease.
“Meaning that he is trading testimony in exchange for safe harbor.”
Sam snorted. “There’s no where he would be safe.”
“Not on Earth,” Davis commented mildly.
Sam’s stomach clenched at the thought of Kinsey wiling his life away on some distant tropical planet. Well, at least there was always a chance the Goa’uld might take interest in his new home.
“Please, Major,” the President said again, gesturing towards a chair.
Sam finally acquiesced, sinking into the chair, realizing that she was finally at the end. She had proven the guilt of the NID, she had made sure they paid for the deaths of her friends. The tension didn’t leave her shoulders, though.
“Any word from Daniel or Teal’c?” Sam forced herself to ask.
Davis and the President shared another inscrutable look. “Nothing about Dr. Jackson,” Davis said quietly. “It was our understanding that Mr. Teal’c had returned home for good?”
Sam sank further back in her chair, deflated. She couldn’t quite bring herself to speak of her hidden hopes for Teal’c and his desperate search. They should have heard something, anything by now.
Sam sighed and looked at the two men who were still watching her expectantly. She felt her brow crease. There was something in the tension of the room that caught Sam’s attention. Sam finally realized the surrealism of her situation. Uncovering a NID plot, no matter how far-reaching, was no reason for a personal meeting with the President.
Something wasn’t right.
Sam glanced from Davis to the President. “Why am I really here?” she asked bluntly.
She saw the President wince slightly and look at Davis.
“The truth is, Major, we lost contact with the SGC just over 20 hours ago,” Davis supplied.
“Excuse me?” Sam asked in disbelief, sitting forward in her chair.
“At 1130 hours yesterday we received a single message from the control room, informing us that they had a foothold situation and that they were implementing the Wildfire protocol.”
Sam felt blood pounding in her head. Within two hours of Kinsey’s arrest an alien force took over the SGC, forcing them to seal themselves off and sever all contact with the outside world? “What an interesting coincidence,” Sam mumbled as her mind whirled with the possibilities.
“We also have our doubts as to the veracity of the foothold situation, but we can’t risk going in to the Mountain.”
Sam could read between the lines. Chances were that the NID agents inside the SGC had gotten wind of Kinsey’s downfall and had fallen back on some sort of a backup plan. But the slightest chance that there was actually an alien incursion in the base kept them from sending in any troops. They were stuck.
Sam forced herself to meet the eyes of the President, finally realizing why she was really here. It had little to do with her work uncovering the NID conspiracy. Would they have even bothered to get her out of prison if this hadn’t happened? She wondered what she must look like to them. A slightly unstable Air Force Major who had taken to breaking in to high level government official’s homes.
They needed someone to enter the Mountain and check it out. Someone who knew the layout, the people. Someone who understood that they probably wouldn’t make it back out, hostile aliens or not. Someone expendable.
Suicide mission.
They knew she had nothing left to lose. Ostensibly, her choice was between going on this mission or rotting away in a cell with nothing but her memories to keep her company. The idea of going out in a blaze of glory for the good of the planet was undeniably appealing. Not that there wasn’t a small part of her that just wanted to tell them to shove it just on principle.
She wondered if this is how Jack felt when he was offered that first mission to Abydos. The thought of Jack was enough to cause her to shift uncomfortably in her chair.
In the end, she decided to take the mission not out of some misplaced sense of honor or responsibility to the SGC, but because in the calm of the after moments, the draining away of adrenaline, all that was left behind was the reality of the gaping holes in her life. She wasn’t ready to face all that she had lost. She wasn’t ready to live with what had become her new life.
“I take it this wouldn’t exactly be an officially sanctioned mission,” Sam said mildly.
Davis and the President both visibly relaxed, understanding that she had accepted.
Ten hours later she was tromping through the Colorado forest on a secret mission for the President with no back up. The last twenty four hours had been strange to say the least.
Sam was nearing the hatch at last, when all the hairs at the back of her neck stood straight up. She instinctively dropped to the ground and pulled her weapon. There was someone nearby. Sam strained her ears, filtering out the normal night sounds and the rumble of distant traffic. Minutes passed in excruciating slowness. Then she finally heard the distinct crunch of a foot shifting weight on the rough, uneven ground. Sam forced herself to remain in total stillness for another full minute before slowly circling around to the source of the sound.
Winding silently through the trees and brush, Sam finally spotted a single figure crouched behind a boulder just this side of the hatch. A sentinel, perhaps, sent to watch the only accessible entrance. Maybe she could get some answers as to what was going on below.
Sam crept ever closer and the figure remained clueless, his gaze raptly tied to the hatch ahead of him in the moonlight. One more step and Sam was close enough to press the muzzle of her gun into the back of the neck of the man kneeling before her.
The figure stiffened and let out an audible gasp.
Sam’s eyes glanced over the man, taking in his military issue BDUs. “Name and rank, soldier,” Sam demanded, grabbing the back of his jacket with her free hand.
The man began to twist around, but Sam just pressed her gun harder into his flesh.
“Sam?”
It was barely more than a low gasp, but Sam would recognize that voice anywhere. She lowered the gun and spun him around.
“Daniel?”
They stared at each other for long moments in the moonlight.
“Jesus, Daniel,” Sam whispered. “I thought…” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word dead, scared that it might break the magical spell that was sitting right in front of her.
“I know…I’m sorry.”
“How?” Sam asked inarticulately, completely thrown by the relief coursing through her veins at seeing him again.
“Bauer,” Daniel replied, pulling Sam down to sit next to him.
“Bauer?” Sam parroted in disbelief.
“Yeah. He heard what the NID had planned for me and gave me warning.” He smiled at Sam. “I think you earned yourself a life-long ally after the whole almost blowing the Mountain up because he didn’t listen to you thing.”
Sam mulled Daniel’s words over, remembering Bauer’s strange behavior in the infirmary and the habit he had developed of always asking her opinion. “He took a big risk tipping you off,” Sam commented.
“Yeah,” Daniel said with a shrug. “I think he knew what I was up to.”
Sam stared at Daniel. She had assumed she had gotten him in trouble with her impromptu visit to Maybourne. “What exactly were you up to, Daniel?”
“Everything was getting way out of control, Sam. SG teams sent on reckless missions for mysterious alien technology. Less and less people have been coming back from missions since the day Hammond died.”
Something that Sam hadn’t even noticed. There was no censure in Daniel’s voice, but the implication was there. She had been so tied up on revenge, on making the NID pay, that she hadn’t paid attention to what was happening to the people still in the SGC. Guilt began to rise in the back of Sam’s throat.
Daniel must have seen something of it on her face, because he shook his head. “Don’t Sam. I may not have been very supportive, but I know that what you were doing was important. Someone had to do it.”
Sam shook her head, letting it fall back onto the boulder behind her. Their disagreement over Wash seemed so long ago in the scheme of things. But it was always there, right beneath the surface.
Daniel must have been thinking about it to, because he said, “I’m sorry, Sam. I never should have questioned you-.”
Sam interrupted him. “No, Daniel. You should have. You did exactly what I needed you to do; you reminded me of the costs. While I was off getting my hands dirtier by the moment, you were here, taking care of all these people.”
Sam raised her head to meet Daniel’s eyes. She was nearly overwhelmed by the flash of affection she felt for him in that moment. He hadn’t refused to run out of some misplaced sense of pride or an inability to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. In typical Daniel fashion, he had understood the need for someone to stay behind and taken it upon himself.
“We’ve all done what we needed to do, Sam,” he said.
There was absolution for Sam in his words, but she couldn’t accept it.
Looking closer at Daniel, Sam noticed he looked gaunt and there was a new heaviness in his shoulders. It seemed that they had all been forced to play games they were ill-equipped to face.
“What can you tell me about what’s going on inside?” Sam asked, brusquely changing the subject.
Daniel looked like he might push for a moment, but they both knew that there were more important issues at hand. “I managed to keep in contact with people inside even after my supposed death.”
Sam looked sharply at Daniel. “You told people what was going on with the NID?” It was a risky move, not only putting people in danger, but deciding who was trustworthy.
“I didn’t have to, Sam. They aren’t stupid. Hammond and all of SG-1 disappear in a matter of months, not to mention that the missions are becoming recklessly dangerous, and people are going to start talking.”
Sam conceded the point. She had been far too suspicious of everyone around her to pay attention, but four years together had created a family out of the SGC.
“Who?”
Daniel shrugged. “Generally who you’d expect. Siler, Griff, Reynolds, Dixon. Major Lawrence, too. After all, half of SG-3 was lost on a crazy mission to retrieve naquadah before the weapons test.” He pulled off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Almost every active team has had at least one member injured or killed in the last two months. Only to be replaced by members hand-picked by Mathers.”
Sam could imagine the toll that would take on SGC staff. They all did a dangerous job, but the only thing that made it bearable was knowing two things. One, they would never be put in unnecessary danger; and two, they would never be left behind. In the new NID-controlled administration, those promises no longer meant anything.
“Even after I left, I managed to stay in contact with Siler.”
Sam looked at Daniel in askance.
He smiled wryly. “Siler has an old buddy named Lance Sterling. Didn’t you know?”
Sam found herself smiling back at him. She had to give Daniel credit. He had proven rather savvy.
“Last I heard from Siler, Mathers had accused Bauer of being under alien influence, and was about to lock down the facility. That was 24 hours ago. I’ve been hanging out here ever since, hoping that someone I knew might make it back out.”
Sam glanced at the hatch. “Well, there’s only one way to find out what’s going on down there.” She turned back to Daniel. “Feel up for a little breaking and entering? It seems to be my new hobby.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow in confusion, but seemed to accept that stories about her adventures would come later. For now, they had one last monster to put to rest.
Daniel grabbed Sam’s proffered hand and let her pull him to his feet. “With you, Sam, I’m up for anything,” he said with a smile.
And together, they made their way into the depths of the Mountain.
Part 12- Incursion
Sam wasn’t too surprised to find herself at gunpoint once again. People seemed to like threatening her with guns. To be honest, though, the more than slightly unstable gleam to Mathers’ eyes made the whole experience a bit disconcerting. He couldn’t quite seem to decide if he wanted to kill her.
Sam’s eyes darted to the ticking counter that cheerfully flashed, reminding her of the slowly approaching self-destruct. Around them, the air was full of discordant sounds. The slight whimper from Walter who lay crumpled near Sam’s feet mingled with the grinding sound of the Stargate springing to life. Red lights flashed and klaxons groaned and yet Mathers seemed immune to all of it. Griff’s evaluation of the Colonel’s mindset was unfortunately spot-on and Sam was beginning to doubt she would be able to talk him down.
“It’s over, Mathers. There’s no one coming for you. It’s over.”
Sam’s voice was firm and calm, but Mathers jumped as if she had barked at him. His eyes narrowed and his fingers clenched. “Well, you’re half right, Major. It certainly is over, at least for you.”
As a shot rang out, Sam’s only thought was that it was somehow right that she would die here in the control room among the blaring klaxons. It felt a bit like home.
Climbing down 28 levels on cool metal rungs was no mean feat and Sam could hear Daniel’s heavy breathing in the space above her. She couldn’t help but think of the last time she had done this, when the SGC had been taken over by aliens with duplicating technology. But she wasn’t alone this time.
At level 17, Sam cautiously pushed the solid door outwards. She listened patiently for any sounds in the hallway before stepping out into the hall. She had just turned back to signal Daniel to join her when she heard the distinct sound of a P-90 being readied to fire right behind her.
“Crap,” Sam mumbled as she raised her hands and slowly turned around to face her new friend. Her eyes met Daniel’s for a moment and she almost infinitesimally gestured for him to stay put. He nodded and retreated further into the dark shaft.
“Hands up!” called a no-nonsense voice from the end of the hall.
Sam dutifully raised her arms, but did not drop her weapon. She squinted down the dim hallway, but couldn’t see any faces beyond the bright flashlights trained on her.
There was a gasp from one of the figures. “Major Carter?” someone called out incredulously.
Sam nodded. “Reporting for duty,” Sam said facetiously with a flick of her hands.
Daniel, meanwhile, had abandoned his perch and climbed out into the hallway. “Major Griff,” he exclaimed.
“Dr. Jackson, good to see you.”
Soon Sam and Daniel were surrounded by a half dozen soldiers, all of them obviously overjoyed to see them.
Sam cleared her throat. “As nice as this little reunion is…I need a report on what the hell is going on down here.”
Everyone snapped to attention at her tone. Griff nodded and ordered three of the soldiers to continue patrolling level 17. Then he gestured for Sam and Daniel to follow him. “I’ll take you to our situation room and try to get you caught up to speed.”
Sam fell in behind him, her eyes roaming over the hallways as they passed. The whole Mountain seemed to be on minimal backup generators and was eerily silent. Flashing red lights just added to the effect that a great catastrophe had suddenly overtaken the normally bustling base. There was no laughter softening the walls, in fact, Sam didn’t see evidence of a single other person on the entire way to level 23.
Griff eventually led them into the MALP room where there was a large table set up in the middle of the room. Siler and Lawrence were both leaning against it deep in discussion.
“Look who the cat dragged in,” Griff announced dryly.
Siler looked delighted to see them both, but Sam just made her way to the table to find a large floor plan of the base stretched out on it.
“Fill me in,” she said brusquely.
“We now have control of levels 17 through 26, but we have not yet secured 27 and 28 or gained control of the Stargate.”
“We?”
“13 soldiers,” Griff clarified.
Sam nodded. “I’ve been informed that you have a foothold situation.”
Griff snorted rather indelicately. “No way. We’ve had a hostile take-over, but not by anything off-world.”
“Are you positive?” Sam asked. As it was, she could be sure that none of these men were Goa’uld, but she needed to be completely sure.
“Yes. Mathers just made that up so he could lock down the Mountain and remove Bauer from of the chain of command.”
“Where is Bauer?”
Griff pointed to a room on level 28. “Last we knew he was being kept here.”
Sam paced the length of the room. “Okay…so hypothetically, Mathers was informed of the implosion of the NID and decided he needed to shut down the Mountain…to what purpose though?”
Griff shrugged. “Not to escape, that’s for certain. He’s had plenty of opportunities to go through the gate.”
That was more than strange. Surely he knew that his only chance of escape was to get off-world. “How many men does he have?”
“He has five left.”
Sam quirked an eyebrow at him. “Left?”
Griff and Lawrence shared a smile. “We have ten others in custody in the brig on level 18.”
“And the rest of the personnel?”
“Right after he declared Wildfire, Mathers began sending people through to the Alpha Site. Practically emptied the Mountain. But some of us already knew about the shady dealings of the NID with Hammond and O’Neill, thanks to Daniel. There was no way we were just going to meekly go through the gate. We all rallied here and, well, planned a bit of a mutiny.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll let us all have nice little cells right next to each other,” Sam said with a smirk. Sam wandered over to a bank of TVs on the far wall, her mind still processing everything she had learned.
“Siler hacked into the security feeds for us,” Lawrence supplied.
“Nice,” she mildly commented as she skimmed the monitors. There were two men in the gate room and three stalking the halls outside. Sam’s eyes lingered on the image of Mathers pacing agitatedly in the control room. She pointed to a slight figure in the bottom corner. “Is that Walter?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Siler said. “Mathers has been holding him there. He won’t let anyone come through the gate, but it seems like Walter has been careful to put out a signal warning off-world teams not to come through.”
Sam tried not to think of the various teams that could have met a rather unspectacular end against the iris. Especially not Teal’c. “Has there been a lot of gate activity?”
Siler pointed to a list. “I’ve logged 6 off-world activations in the last 36 hours.”
Sam pushed thoughts of the gate aside. There would be plenty of time to sort it all out later. Instead, she stared blindly at the feed of Mathers for long minutes, trying to process everything and find the logical solution. “So,” she said eventually. “We have them outnumbered. Why not just storm level 28?”
“That was our next step,” Griff replied.
“But?” Sam asked when she detected a bit of hesitance in his tone.
Griff and Lawrence shared a look. “To be honest, we are a little wary of what Mathers might do if his back is pushed to the wall.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
Lawrence grimaced apologetically. “Frankly, Major, with no intent to speak poorly of a superior officer…he’s completely lost it. He’s cracked.”
Sam watched the man on the monitor again. He did seem highly agitated and was talking…though she couldn’t tell with whom. “Do you think he might harm Walter?”
“Or blow the whole Mountain to hell. He can do anything from down there, can’t he?”
At Griff’s words, something caught Sam’s attention in the lower corner of the screen. “Siler, do you have control of the cameras?”
“Yeah, we just haven’t because we didn’t want to draw attention to them.”
“I want to see the display screen right next to Walter’s left hand.”
Siler glanced at Griff, but he just shrugged. Sam was the gate expert after all. It took a few minutes for Siler to hack into the camera controls.
“Yeah, stop right there, and zoom in.” Mathers was now staring suspiciously into the camera, but Sam didn’t care. Because right before he shot out the camera, Sam saw something that made her blood run cold.
“Was that what I thought it was?” Daniel asked in a startled voice.
Sam turned away from the snowy fuzz of the screen and nodded. “Yeah. The self-destruct.” She met Griff’s eyes over the table. “You know what they say about insubordination. No time like the present.”
Griff gripped his weapon a little tighter and nodded firmly back at her with a grim smile.
Less than ten minutes later, Griff’s forces had efficiently mustered on level 28. Sam glanced around at the men and women crouched in the dark hallways, their determined faces barely visible in the low light. Pride swelled in her throat, knowing that the NID had thrown their worst at these people, but hadn’t broken them. Not by a long shot.
Sam shifted closer to Griff. “Give me five minutes to try and talk Mathers down and then take the gate room. That should leave at least eight more minutes on the self-destruct.” Sam hoped that Mathers would just step aside once he realized he was out numbered, but she was prepared to do whatever was necessary.
Griff studied her face for a long while, but he must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he finally nodded in agreement.
Before Sam pushed to her feet, her eyes met Daniel’s. She could see him pushing to his feet to follow her, but she shook her head. ‘Stay here,’ she gestured. His eyes glared mutinously, but Sam just stared back. Eventually, Daniel sighed and nodded once, sinking back to the floor.
Girff’s forces had already dealt with the one guard on this side of the gate room, so Sam had a clear shot at the blast door guarding the control room. She broke out her pocket knife and pried off the security panel. It didn’t take her much time at all to rewire the door mechanisms. Crossing the final wire, she gripped her P-90 and stepped to the side as the doors slowly slid open.
The room remained eerily quiet and Sam stayed low as she crept into the room. The main computer station came into view, but Walter was no longer sitting there. Another step into the room and she froze at the sound of Mathers’ voice.
“That’s far enough, Major.”
Sam dropped down behind the nearest counter for cover. Counting to three, she quickly leaned around the corner to get sight of the source of the voice.
Not five paces from Sam, Mathers held Walter in front of him like a shield with his gun pointed at his head.
Sam ducked back behind the counter and took a deep breath. “What is it that you want, Mathers?” Sam asked steadily.
“Want? I don’t want anything. I’m just following my orders!”
“And whose orders would those be?”
Mathers laughed coldly. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know. The brilliant Samantha Carter. They should have listened to me and dealt with you while they had the chance. The way they dealt with your dearly departed O’Neill.”
Sam took a deep breath and refused to rise to the bait. He was probably hoping she would lose it and charge at him with guns blazing. But Sam hadn’t come this far to do something that stupid. “It’s over, Mathers. You’ve lost.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. They’re coming for me. I just have to hold this base for a little longer.”
Sam was startled to hear a thread of insanity in his voice. “No one’s coming.” But before she could say anything else, she heard the sound of someone moving off to her right. Maybe she had been stupid after all; she had let Mathers distract her while someone flanked her.
Sam threw herself to the floor just in time to avoid the first shot. Quickly regaining her feet she charged at her new assailant, knocking the gun from his hand. She tried to raise her weapon, but the man’s foot connected with her wrist. With both of them disarmed, the struggle turned hand to hand.
Sam was intent on her opponent, but still registered the echo of gunfire in the room below and the sound of a struggle nearby. After almost a minute of dancing around each other’s blows, Sam finally found her opening. Her foot connected solidly with the back of the man’s knee, throwing him off balance. Following through, she finished him off with a sharp jab to the chin. He hit the floor with a sickening thud.
Her only thought now was to retrieve her weapon, but as she reached for it, Mathers called out. “I don’t think so, Major.”
Sam looked up to find Mather’s pointing a gun at her with Walter at his feet sporting a bloody lip and a blooming new shiner. Walter had obviously tried to help her as much as he could.
In the distance the sound of gunfire was winding down and Sam knew that Griff and his people had won. But not in time for her.
The sharp retort of a gun echoed through the control room.
Sam opened her eyes, trying to figure out where she had been hit, but there was no pain. She absently ran her hands over her body before raising her eyes. She wasn’t prepared for what she found.
Mathers was crumpled on the ground and behind him, Daniel stood with a Beretta gripped in his white-knuckled hands. His face was ashen, but determined. Daniel slowly lowered his arms, his eyes never leaving the bloody figure on the floor.
Sam must have made some sound because Daniel’s gaze met hers. There was nothing to say, so Sam just nodded once at him and turned to the bound Sergeant on the floor. Sam quickly untied him and glanced down at the Gate Room. Slamming her hand down on the intercom, she barked, “Griff! Get your ass up here, pronto!”
Once Griff arrived, the two officers quickly shut off the self-destruct. They had just finally allowed themselves a sigh of relief, when they heard a low groan behind them.
Griff automatically trained his weapon on Mathers. Sam knelt by the fallen man and pressed her fingers to his throat, feeling a steady pulse. Sam looked up at Daniel. “He’s alive,” she reassured him.
Daniel looked distinctly relieved and ran a shaky hand through his hair.
Sam moved to Daniel’s side and squeezed his arm. “Take him to the infirmary,” she said to Griff. Sam really wasn’t in any position to be giving orders, but no one seemed to question that she was in command. Griff and another airman not so gently heaved Mathers between them and dragged him out of the room. Another airman was carefully tying up Sam’s now conscious assailant.
“Major?” Walter interrupted, gesturing towards the gate. It seemed like hours had passed since Sam had first entered this room, and she had almost completely forgotten about the wormhole that was still rippling quietly behind the iris.
“Receiving IDC,” Walter clarified when Sam didn’t say anything.
“Who is it?” Sam asked.
“Teal’c. This is his fourth attempt. Mathers would never let him through,” Walter explained, his tone making it clear what he thought of that.
Sam felt her knees weaken and leaned against the nearest chair. “Open the iris and give him the all clear signal, Sergeant,” Sam ordered, her voice surprisingly steady.
“Yes, sir,” Walter replied with almost overstated respect, letting it be known to all that he was glad to be receiving her orders.
The iris slowly slid open and a few heart-stopping moments later, two figures appeared out of the brightness.
Jack.
He was actually there. He was leaning heavily against the solid bulk of Teal’c, but there nonetheless.
At her side, Daniel made an indistinct sound in the back of his throat and dashed down to the gate room.
Sam remained where she was, watching them from above. Then, ever so slowly, she released a long breath, one she had been holding for minutes, hours, weeks. She melted into a nearby chair, her eyes never leaving the threesome below.
Her team, whole again.
Jack’s head momentarily lifted from Teal’c’s shoulder, glancing blearily around the room.
Looking for her.
She had done it. She had saved her team. But Sam had the feeling she still had to learn the price of that gift. So she sat and breathed in and out and watched, acquiescing to the invisible barrier created by the vague feeling that she didn’t deserve to join them.
“Walter,” she ordered, after she watched Teal’c and Daniel lead Jack out of the gate room. “Dial the Alpha Site. It’s time to get our people back.”
Walter nodded eagerly and Sam forced her mind on the task at hand.
There would be more than enough time later for consequences.
Part 13-Honor
“In 1782, George Washington created the Badge of Military Merit. It was the first medal awarded by our nation's Armed Forces. But soon it fell into oblivion, and for decades no new medals were established. It was thought that a medal was too much like a European aristocratic title, while to fight for one's country in America was simply doing your democratic duty.
“So when the Medal of Honor was instituted during the Civil War it was agreed it would be given only for gallantry, at the risk of one's life above and beyond the call of duty. That's an extraordinarily high standard, one that precious few ever meet. The Medal of Honor is our highest military decoration, and we are here today to honor an American hero who is only the second woman to meet that mark.
“Major Samantha Carter, you have performed above and beyond the call of duty, risking your own life against entrenched enemies of the United States of America, uncovering conspiracies that threatened the sanctity of American honor and preserving the lives of fellow servicemen and women…”
Sam stood ramrod straight in her dress blues desperately trying not to remember the last time she had worn them at the edge of Jack’s grave. The President’s speech flowed over her, but she found she could no longer listen to words of praise and honor. She was scared that if she did she would rudely interrupt him to correct him. To remind him that there were more apt words to describe Samantha Carter, and that none of them were hero.
Murderer.
Sam swayed on the spot, but quickly stiffened her spine, hoping no one had seen. There was an endless sea of uniforms and suits, smiling politicians and insistent reporters jockeying for better locations. They all stood in the weak winter sun, pulling their coats tighter against the biting wind. But Sam was numb to all of it.
Soon she was shaking the President’s hand, murmuring the appropriate words with a plastic smile on her face. A large medal was pinned to her chest, made only heavier by its hypocrisy. Endless flashbulbs blinded her and anonymous hands gripped hers.
The formal ceremony bled over into an evening cocktail party where people asked her about her work at the Pentagon and how she enjoyed living in Washington. Sam’s work was still largely classified, but her refusal to divulge any details just made her more popular in her mystique. Every time she turned around, there was just another corpulent face and more pointed, pressing questions.
At midnight she managed to slip out of a side door and wander down the moonlight paths to the edge of the tumultuous Potomac. As she walked, her mind began to rebelliously think of the people who hadn’t been there tonight. Not that she really expected anyone, it was just that some part of her would have taken comfort in some familiar faces.
Not that she deserved it.
Sam walked a little further before she sighed and closed her eyes, resigned to letting the uncomfortable memories attack her once again.
They were all gathered at Jack’s house, celebrating his release from the infirmary. It was the first time they had all been alone together since everything had started, but Sam wasn’t naïve enough to think that it would be like old times. Daniel was chatting animatedly and even Teal’c was trying to participate, but nothing could disguise the cloud that hung over the gathering, or the foul mood that radiated off of Jack.
The last few weeks had been filled to the brim with investigations, in-depth briefings and, for Jack, a long recovery from a staff-blast wound, a broken arm and a severe case of pneumonia. He had never been one for sitting patiently in the infirmary, but Janet had insisted on bed rest. He’s spent all his time there, getting updates from Daniel and Teal’c on what was happening in the Mountain.
As for Sam, for some reason she hadn’t been able to quite bring herself to visit him. She’d claimed that she was busy, which she certainly had been, but none of her teammates were really be fooled. Once or twice she had stood slightly behind Daniel and Teal’c as they related the latest news, but she hadn’t even been able to meet his eyes. Daniel and Teal’c seemed to understand and never pushed her, but Jack was a different case entirely.
When Jack had first returned, Sam, like the coward she was, had only visited him at night when she was certain he was asleep, allowing herself the selfish luxury of touching his skin, just to prove to herself that he was really there. She’d let her eyes travel over his bandages and the scratches on his face, trying to establish what exactly had happened to him, all because she was too afraid to hear the story from his own lips.
Sam was exhausted from the roller coaster she had been on for the last couple of months, but now that she sat in Jack’s house that reeked of unspoken things, she found herself heartily wishing for the non-stop activity of the previous days.
Daniel had pulled out the brown bag Sam had forced on him and dropped it at Jack’s feet. “Thought you might want your money back,” he wryly commented with a smile. “Well, at least the part I didn’t spend.”
Jack glanced in the bag and turned to Sam. “So you did manage to figure that out.”
There was something testy in his tone and Sam felt herself stiffening. “It wasn’t that difficult, sir.”
“So I guess it’s just following my orders that’s so damn hard to do.”
Sam wasn’t surprised by his anger. It was more than just the fact that she had ignored his orders. He was also hurt by her behavior. He was no fool, and she found herself incapable of explaining why exactly she had evaded him so carefully at the SGC. Everything was just still too raw.
All in all, his anger was to be expected and Sam weathered it stoically. Before she could come up with a response, however, Daniel and Teal’c attempted to wrest control of the conversation away from them.
“Mathers’ hearing starts tomorrow,” Daniel smoothly interceded.
Jack stared at Sam a moment longer before turning away and taking a swig from a beer of which Janet would definitely not approve. “Yeah,” he said noncommittally. “But York still seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet.”
“Hopefully not literally,” Daniel commented.
Jack picked at the label of his beer, but didn’t even smile at Daniel’s quip. “No word on Wash?”
The atmosphere in the room rapidly changed. Sam could feel Daniel’s eyes on her and knew that Jack didn’t miss a second of the glance or the way Sam had undoubtedly paled.
“The investigation has revealed nothing of his whereabouts, O’Neill,” Teal’c commented mildly. Sam was impressed by the way he managed to not speak a single untruth and yet still protect her.
They shouldn’t have to protect her. And yet, she still sat quietly by and let them. Not even once had she stood up and admitted what she had done during all of the briefings she had been through. There was only one highly classified report that documented the complete truth, a truth Sam didn’t want to discuss even if it had been allowed. Necessary measures, it whispered. Sam had taken the flimsy excuse and never looked back, which was why she sat silently by and let Daniel and Teal’c lie for her.
Sam forced herself to meet Jack’s gaze and wasn’t surprised to see that he had already suspected her. It had been that way ever since he returned. On the rare occasions they were together, she could tell that the darkness that lurked in her eyes bothered him. She thought that perhaps part of him mourned the Major Carter that had died during his absence.
The idea forced her to her feet and out the back door.
Jack followed rather closely behind, probably spoiling for this confrontation from the moment he stepped through the wormhole and she hadn’t been there.
“Dammit, Carter. Why couldn’t you have just done what I asked?”
Sam had told herself to stay calm and just let him say what he wanted, but she was surprised by the immense swell of anger at his words. “Done as you asked…Run away and forget that people had been neutralized? That an organization capable of the murder of its own was now going to be Earth’s ambassador to the whole galaxy?”
She hadn’t looked at Jack during the whole tirade, but she could sense his surprise. Good, obedient Major Carter never dared yelled at Colonel O’Neill. But she was damn tired of him deluding himself into thinking that this was a simple case of following orders.
She turned to look at him. “You expected so little of me that you thought that after you were murdered, that I would just shrug and walk away. That I wouldn’t care…That’s complete bullshit.”
Jack stared stunned for a moment, before his eyes began to flash with matching anger. “I was hoping that you wouldn’t be that selfish. That maybe you would think of Daniel and Teal’c, or the other people who didn’t need to die.”
Sam took one involuntary step back, as if he had slapped her. She reflected that just a few weeks earlier, she might have felt threatening tears, but that Sam was a thing of the past. “I offered them a chance to go. I practically ordered them…but I wasn’t naïve enough to expect them to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”
“And Wash?” Jack asked in a low voice.
They were finally getting to the crux of the issue. “I didn’t do anything that you haven’t already done. That you wouldn’t do in my place.”
Jack finally sighed and took a few steps away from her. She tell that his anger was draining away. “I know that,” he finally admitted.
He sounded sad, tired and resigned. Sam found that she preferred his anger.
He rounded on her, his voice soft. “But you… This is about you, not me. There are some things you were never meant to understand. It was part of who you were.”
Were. Past tense, as in no longer.
Sam closed her eyes against the burgeoning pain in her chest. Her fingers bit into the railing. The ultimate cost for her actions was higher than she’d expected. But she still knew with absolute certainty that it was worth it. She opened her eyes, meeting Jack’s gaze head on.
“I would do it again,” she whispered. “A thousand times if need be.”
Jack sucked in his breath, as if surprised by her vehemence, by the conviction he saw in her eyes.
“I’m sorry if you can’t accept that,” she said before turning her back on him and disappearing inside.
Less than a week later, when a grateful, somewhat still awe-struck Bauer asked her if there was anything he could do to thank her for all her hard work, Sam had requested a transfer back to the Pentagon.
Jack never tried to talk her out of it.
Three months she had lived in Washington, her old stomping grounds. Any luster she may have projected on this place years before was sorely lacking. Not that her work at the Pentagon wasn’t fulfilling or interesting. It just wasn’t the same. But that was probably the point.
She wasn’t sure if she was punishing herself with self-imposed exile or if she maybe just couldn’t handle the thought of seeing Jack day in a day out, knowing that she had lost his esteem and whatever soft feelings she may have imagined him having. She wasn’t the same person who used to be on SG-1. All that was left was a woman haunted by nightmares, whose stomach twisted at the thought of ever holding a gun again.
Sam reached the edge of the river and leaned heavily on the railing, her eyes determinedly averted from the bright stars above. The swirling muddy waters of the Potomac were her new life. For a moment, she wished she had tears for all she had lost, but they had all dried up in a dark, echoing cell with the last of Wash’s blood.
Her fingers brushed over the medal pinned to her chest and she reflected that there were so many others that deserved this more that her. She thought of the fiercely determined faces of the SGC personnel in the dark. Daniel, gripping a weapon he despised, but firing anyway to save her life. Teal’c risking his life on the barest whisper of hope that his brother-in-arms might still draw breath.
But it was Sam, the one with dark secrets and blood on her hands, who was given this honor that was an insult to so many.
“Funny how it can feel more like a curse than an honor,” a voice observed placidly behind her.
Sam swung around to find Jack standing casually behind her in his dress blues. He had loosened the tie at this throat and his hands were characteristically shoved into his pockets.
She was more surprised by his sudden appearance than by his ability to somehow read her thoughts. Her eyes traveled over the orderly rows of various colored ribbons that decorated his chest and wondered how many of them represented unforgivable things he had been asked to do for the good of his country. But no one had asked Sam to do what she’d done, and she couldn’t quite pretend that she had done it in the name of her country.
Sam turned backed to the river and its turbulent waters before saying, “What are you doing here?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to tack on the ‘sir.’
She felt rather than saw him move up beside her and lean back on the low wall with his arms crossed. “It’s not everyday a member of my team receives the Medal of Honor,” he said mildly.
Sam fought back the urge to snort disbelievingly or remind him not so gently that she wasn’t a member of his team. Not anymore. Instead, she just remained silent.
They stood there a long time, neither of them speaking. After a while, she could feel the weight of his gaze, willing her to look at him. But she stubbornly kept her eyes lowered, fairly certain she didn’t really want to know why he was here.
Eventually, he sighed heavily in defeat and asked bluntly, “Why did you leave?”
They so rarely communicated this openly with each other that Sam was taken by surprise. “Why didn’t you stop me?” she countered without thinking.
Jack didn’t respond, but she could feel him shift uneasily next to her. Part of her wanted to laugh hysterically at them. They were both desperate for honest answers, but neither of them was willing to give them. Just another chapter in the twisted tale of Jack and Sam, she thought wryly.
From beneath lowered lashes, Sam turned her head slightly to observe the man leaning next to her. He seemed to have fully recovered from his injuries and illness, but there was still a gauntness to his features that was new, as if he hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly. Considering everything he had been through, it was no surprise.
Sam turned her head back to the water, refusing to let her mind travel down that path. But she knew what it must have cost him to come here to see her. Maybe he deserved a little truth. Maybe they both did.
Why did she leave?
“Wash,” she finally whispered in answer to his question.
The name hung between them and Sam wondered how such a tiny word could have so much power.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, his voice barely more than a sigh.
“I told myself I had to do it,” Sam continued in a louder voice, “but that was a lie. I didn’t.” It was the first time she had admitted it to herself, let alone to anyone else.
Jack didn’t respond, but just waited for her to finish.
Sam forced herself to look at him, needing to see his reaction. “I killed him because I wanted to. I wanted him to pay for what he had done to you,” she said.
Jack met her gaze head on, but there was no revulsion or disappointment. He just looked straight back at her. “I can’t tell you that it’s okay, because it’s not,” he said. “But you already know that.”
They were words she hadn’t even known she’d longed to hear, but they were just…right. It was a balm to her soul to hear someone acknowledge the dishonor of her actions rather than force her to stand tall while she was praised.
And somehow, miraculously, she felt a single tear travel a path down her cheek, proving that maybe there was a little human in her yet. She cried that tear for Hammond and Morris and for Wash’s sister and mother who hopefully would never know how far astray their loved one had gone. She cried it for herself and what she had willingly become and for the man in front of her who’d been forced to watch a subordinate assassinated just so they could get to him next.
Without hesitation Jack took one step closer to Sam and brushed that single tear from her face. “I was angry at the whole situation. I couldn’t handle the thought that you might have gone through all of this just for me,” he confessed, “but you can’t honestly believe that it makes me see you as anything less.”
Sam met his eyes with difficulty, but could clearly see that he spoke the truth. They both knew what she had done and exactly why she had done it. He wasn’t trying to excuse it or pretend it hadn’t happened. He just understood.
In that moment, Sam vividly remembered her broken confessions into Daniel’s damp shirt so many months before. How she had longed for just one chance to say the words she always wanted to say. How she had sworn to an empty grave that if fate somehow managed to bring him back that she wouldn’t squander anymore time to fear and restrictions.
But instead, she just stared at him and wondered if anyone ever bothered to learn anything from the past. Or if anyone ever kept their promises.
She opened her mouth, tried to force the words.
But maybe Jack somehow knew what she was struggling with, because he just gave her a tiny smile, held his hand out for hers and led her away from the turbulent winter waters.
With her hand grasped tightly in his, Sam decided that Daniel had been right. Jack did know. And maybe that was enough.
In the end, she had crossed the lines and left them all broken behind her. There was a high price for what she had done, but Jack wasn’t one of them. She could feel the curling tendrils of an even deeper bond between them and knew it would be enough to keep the darker nightmares at bay, whether she deserved it or not.
But Sam decided that it was no longer up to her. She leaned her head back and gazed at the endless stars, yearning to travel them once again. It was time for someone else to lead. So she closed her eyes and let Jack guide her where he may, with only one thought in her mind.
For him, she would do it all again.
~The End~
“If it's really love you would follow it forever
Would you wander for me?
Even though you think I'm lost and you know better
Would you wander for me?
Wandering is more than filling footprints right behind me
How far would you go outside the lines just to find me
When you see that I am gone to the edge and way beyond
Would you wander for me?
'Cause I'd wander for you.”
Would You Wander by Lisa Loeb
Author: Annerb
Rating: Mature (for violence and language in one section)
Summary: How far would you go to make your world right again?
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Team, S/J, 'Chain Reaction' AU
Author’s Note: The title of this fic and the idea were inspired by a song by Lisa Loeb (‘Would You Wander’) on the long commute home. I wanted a look at Sam, her reaction to a major character death and what she might be capable of if she was pushed to the ropes over the protection of her teammates. Here’s what I came up with.
Part 11: Momentum
The forested slope looked other-worldly in the moonlight. Back in her BDUs with a P-90 strapped to her chest, Sam could almost believe she was on another planet, that any moment she would hear the sounds of her teammates walking at her side. It only took once glance at the familiar stars to shatter the illusion, though. Sam knew she was truly alone.
Pushing such wistful thought aside, Sam adjusted her pack and continued to climb the steady slope winding through the trees.
Sam stood at attention before the desk of the President. If she had been there under any other circumstances, she was sure she would be glancing around in interest, taking in the Stuart painting of George Washington and the Eagle emblazoned carpet. But Sam had no energy for tourist worship.
The President must have sensed some of that, because he was eying her warily from behind his large desk a large file folder in his hands. Sam had just ignored another request to be at her ease. She didn’t want to be at ease. She just wanted them to get the hell on with it.
Davis obviously picked up on that because he spread a file open on the desk. “I received your email at 0800 hours yesterday morning and was able to verify it and get the ball rolling on warrants. We had been investigating various levels of the NID for illegal activity, but had been unable to come up with any evidence. You gave us the leverage we needed, Major.”
“You have done your country a great service, Major,” the President added. “The deaths of Hammond and O’Neill will not go unpunished.”
For the first time, Sam noticed that the President was angry. She had forgotten that he had always thought of Jack as a hero, no matter how often Jack had refused his offers for a dinner at the White House.
The President met her eyes steadily. “We will take care of this, I promise, Major.”
Sam found herself willing to believe him, even as she was unsure where that left her.
Davis continued updating her on the events of the last 24 hours. “We took Kinsey into custody yesterday morning. Within an hour he was trading information in exchange for his miserable life, as it is.”
“Meaning?” Sam asked with a growing sense of unease.
“Meaning that he is trading testimony in exchange for safe harbor.”
Sam snorted. “There’s no where he would be safe.”
“Not on Earth,” Davis commented mildly.
Sam’s stomach clenched at the thought of Kinsey wiling his life away on some distant tropical planet. Well, at least there was always a chance the Goa’uld might take interest in his new home.
“Please, Major,” the President said again, gesturing towards a chair.
Sam finally acquiesced, sinking into the chair, realizing that she was finally at the end. She had proven the guilt of the NID, she had made sure they paid for the deaths of her friends. The tension didn’t leave her shoulders, though.
“Any word from Daniel or Teal’c?” Sam forced herself to ask.
Davis and the President shared another inscrutable look. “Nothing about Dr. Jackson,” Davis said quietly. “It was our understanding that Mr. Teal’c had returned home for good?”
Sam sank further back in her chair, deflated. She couldn’t quite bring herself to speak of her hidden hopes for Teal’c and his desperate search. They should have heard something, anything by now.
Sam sighed and looked at the two men who were still watching her expectantly. She felt her brow crease. There was something in the tension of the room that caught Sam’s attention. Sam finally realized the surrealism of her situation. Uncovering a NID plot, no matter how far-reaching, was no reason for a personal meeting with the President.
Something wasn’t right.
Sam glanced from Davis to the President. “Why am I really here?” she asked bluntly.
She saw the President wince slightly and look at Davis.
“The truth is, Major, we lost contact with the SGC just over 20 hours ago,” Davis supplied.
“Excuse me?” Sam asked in disbelief, sitting forward in her chair.
“At 1130 hours yesterday we received a single message from the control room, informing us that they had a foothold situation and that they were implementing the Wildfire protocol.”
Sam felt blood pounding in her head. Within two hours of Kinsey’s arrest an alien force took over the SGC, forcing them to seal themselves off and sever all contact with the outside world? “What an interesting coincidence,” Sam mumbled as her mind whirled with the possibilities.
“We also have our doubts as to the veracity of the foothold situation, but we can’t risk going in to the Mountain.”
Sam could read between the lines. Chances were that the NID agents inside the SGC had gotten wind of Kinsey’s downfall and had fallen back on some sort of a backup plan. But the slightest chance that there was actually an alien incursion in the base kept them from sending in any troops. They were stuck.
Sam forced herself to meet the eyes of the President, finally realizing why she was really here. It had little to do with her work uncovering the NID conspiracy. Would they have even bothered to get her out of prison if this hadn’t happened? She wondered what she must look like to them. A slightly unstable Air Force Major who had taken to breaking in to high level government official’s homes.
They needed someone to enter the Mountain and check it out. Someone who knew the layout, the people. Someone who understood that they probably wouldn’t make it back out, hostile aliens or not. Someone expendable.
Suicide mission.
They knew she had nothing left to lose. Ostensibly, her choice was between going on this mission or rotting away in a cell with nothing but her memories to keep her company. The idea of going out in a blaze of glory for the good of the planet was undeniably appealing. Not that there wasn’t a small part of her that just wanted to tell them to shove it just on principle.
She wondered if this is how Jack felt when he was offered that first mission to Abydos. The thought of Jack was enough to cause her to shift uncomfortably in her chair.
In the end, she decided to take the mission not out of some misplaced sense of honor or responsibility to the SGC, but because in the calm of the after moments, the draining away of adrenaline, all that was left behind was the reality of the gaping holes in her life. She wasn’t ready to face all that she had lost. She wasn’t ready to live with what had become her new life.
“I take it this wouldn’t exactly be an officially sanctioned mission,” Sam said mildly.
Davis and the President both visibly relaxed, understanding that she had accepted.
Ten hours later she was tromping through the Colorado forest on a secret mission for the President with no back up. The last twenty four hours had been strange to say the least.
Sam was nearing the hatch at last, when all the hairs at the back of her neck stood straight up. She instinctively dropped to the ground and pulled her weapon. There was someone nearby. Sam strained her ears, filtering out the normal night sounds and the rumble of distant traffic. Minutes passed in excruciating slowness. Then she finally heard the distinct crunch of a foot shifting weight on the rough, uneven ground. Sam forced herself to remain in total stillness for another full minute before slowly circling around to the source of the sound.
Winding silently through the trees and brush, Sam finally spotted a single figure crouched behind a boulder just this side of the hatch. A sentinel, perhaps, sent to watch the only accessible entrance. Maybe she could get some answers as to what was going on below.
Sam crept ever closer and the figure remained clueless, his gaze raptly tied to the hatch ahead of him in the moonlight. One more step and Sam was close enough to press the muzzle of her gun into the back of the neck of the man kneeling before her.
The figure stiffened and let out an audible gasp.
Sam’s eyes glanced over the man, taking in his military issue BDUs. “Name and rank, soldier,” Sam demanded, grabbing the back of his jacket with her free hand.
The man began to twist around, but Sam just pressed her gun harder into his flesh.
“Sam?”
It was barely more than a low gasp, but Sam would recognize that voice anywhere. She lowered the gun and spun him around.
“Daniel?”
They stared at each other for long moments in the moonlight.
“Jesus, Daniel,” Sam whispered. “I thought…” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word dead, scared that it might break the magical spell that was sitting right in front of her.
“I know…I’m sorry.”
“How?” Sam asked inarticulately, completely thrown by the relief coursing through her veins at seeing him again.
“Bauer,” Daniel replied, pulling Sam down to sit next to him.
“Bauer?” Sam parroted in disbelief.
“Yeah. He heard what the NID had planned for me and gave me warning.” He smiled at Sam. “I think you earned yourself a life-long ally after the whole almost blowing the Mountain up because he didn’t listen to you thing.”
Sam mulled Daniel’s words over, remembering Bauer’s strange behavior in the infirmary and the habit he had developed of always asking her opinion. “He took a big risk tipping you off,” Sam commented.
“Yeah,” Daniel said with a shrug. “I think he knew what I was up to.”
Sam stared at Daniel. She had assumed she had gotten him in trouble with her impromptu visit to Maybourne. “What exactly were you up to, Daniel?”
“Everything was getting way out of control, Sam. SG teams sent on reckless missions for mysterious alien technology. Less and less people have been coming back from missions since the day Hammond died.”
Something that Sam hadn’t even noticed. There was no censure in Daniel’s voice, but the implication was there. She had been so tied up on revenge, on making the NID pay, that she hadn’t paid attention to what was happening to the people still in the SGC. Guilt began to rise in the back of Sam’s throat.
Daniel must have seen something of it on her face, because he shook his head. “Don’t Sam. I may not have been very supportive, but I know that what you were doing was important. Someone had to do it.”
Sam shook her head, letting it fall back onto the boulder behind her. Their disagreement over Wash seemed so long ago in the scheme of things. But it was always there, right beneath the surface.
Daniel must have been thinking about it to, because he said, “I’m sorry, Sam. I never should have questioned you-.”
Sam interrupted him. “No, Daniel. You should have. You did exactly what I needed you to do; you reminded me of the costs. While I was off getting my hands dirtier by the moment, you were here, taking care of all these people.”
Sam raised her head to meet Daniel’s eyes. She was nearly overwhelmed by the flash of affection she felt for him in that moment. He hadn’t refused to run out of some misplaced sense of pride or an inability to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. In typical Daniel fashion, he had understood the need for someone to stay behind and taken it upon himself.
“We’ve all done what we needed to do, Sam,” he said.
There was absolution for Sam in his words, but she couldn’t accept it.
Looking closer at Daniel, Sam noticed he looked gaunt and there was a new heaviness in his shoulders. It seemed that they had all been forced to play games they were ill-equipped to face.
“What can you tell me about what’s going on inside?” Sam asked, brusquely changing the subject.
Daniel looked like he might push for a moment, but they both knew that there were more important issues at hand. “I managed to keep in contact with people inside even after my supposed death.”
Sam looked sharply at Daniel. “You told people what was going on with the NID?” It was a risky move, not only putting people in danger, but deciding who was trustworthy.
“I didn’t have to, Sam. They aren’t stupid. Hammond and all of SG-1 disappear in a matter of months, not to mention that the missions are becoming recklessly dangerous, and people are going to start talking.”
Sam conceded the point. She had been far too suspicious of everyone around her to pay attention, but four years together had created a family out of the SGC.
“Who?”
Daniel shrugged. “Generally who you’d expect. Siler, Griff, Reynolds, Dixon. Major Lawrence, too. After all, half of SG-3 was lost on a crazy mission to retrieve naquadah before the weapons test.” He pulled off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Almost every active team has had at least one member injured or killed in the last two months. Only to be replaced by members hand-picked by Mathers.”
Sam could imagine the toll that would take on SGC staff. They all did a dangerous job, but the only thing that made it bearable was knowing two things. One, they would never be put in unnecessary danger; and two, they would never be left behind. In the new NID-controlled administration, those promises no longer meant anything.
“Even after I left, I managed to stay in contact with Siler.”
Sam looked at Daniel in askance.
He smiled wryly. “Siler has an old buddy named Lance Sterling. Didn’t you know?”
Sam found herself smiling back at him. She had to give Daniel credit. He had proven rather savvy.
“Last I heard from Siler, Mathers had accused Bauer of being under alien influence, and was about to lock down the facility. That was 24 hours ago. I’ve been hanging out here ever since, hoping that someone I knew might make it back out.”
Sam glanced at the hatch. “Well, there’s only one way to find out what’s going on down there.” She turned back to Daniel. “Feel up for a little breaking and entering? It seems to be my new hobby.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow in confusion, but seemed to accept that stories about her adventures would come later. For now, they had one last monster to put to rest.
Daniel grabbed Sam’s proffered hand and let her pull him to his feet. “With you, Sam, I’m up for anything,” he said with a smile.
And together, they made their way into the depths of the Mountain.
Part 12- Incursion
Sam wasn’t too surprised to find herself at gunpoint once again. People seemed to like threatening her with guns. To be honest, though, the more than slightly unstable gleam to Mathers’ eyes made the whole experience a bit disconcerting. He couldn’t quite seem to decide if he wanted to kill her.
Sam’s eyes darted to the ticking counter that cheerfully flashed, reminding her of the slowly approaching self-destruct. Around them, the air was full of discordant sounds. The slight whimper from Walter who lay crumpled near Sam’s feet mingled with the grinding sound of the Stargate springing to life. Red lights flashed and klaxons groaned and yet Mathers seemed immune to all of it. Griff’s evaluation of the Colonel’s mindset was unfortunately spot-on and Sam was beginning to doubt she would be able to talk him down.
“It’s over, Mathers. There’s no one coming for you. It’s over.”
Sam’s voice was firm and calm, but Mathers jumped as if she had barked at him. His eyes narrowed and his fingers clenched. “Well, you’re half right, Major. It certainly is over, at least for you.”
As a shot rang out, Sam’s only thought was that it was somehow right that she would die here in the control room among the blaring klaxons. It felt a bit like home.
Climbing down 28 levels on cool metal rungs was no mean feat and Sam could hear Daniel’s heavy breathing in the space above her. She couldn’t help but think of the last time she had done this, when the SGC had been taken over by aliens with duplicating technology. But she wasn’t alone this time.
At level 17, Sam cautiously pushed the solid door outwards. She listened patiently for any sounds in the hallway before stepping out into the hall. She had just turned back to signal Daniel to join her when she heard the distinct sound of a P-90 being readied to fire right behind her.
“Crap,” Sam mumbled as she raised her hands and slowly turned around to face her new friend. Her eyes met Daniel’s for a moment and she almost infinitesimally gestured for him to stay put. He nodded and retreated further into the dark shaft.
“Hands up!” called a no-nonsense voice from the end of the hall.
Sam dutifully raised her arms, but did not drop her weapon. She squinted down the dim hallway, but couldn’t see any faces beyond the bright flashlights trained on her.
There was a gasp from one of the figures. “Major Carter?” someone called out incredulously.
Sam nodded. “Reporting for duty,” Sam said facetiously with a flick of her hands.
Daniel, meanwhile, had abandoned his perch and climbed out into the hallway. “Major Griff,” he exclaimed.
“Dr. Jackson, good to see you.”
Soon Sam and Daniel were surrounded by a half dozen soldiers, all of them obviously overjoyed to see them.
Sam cleared her throat. “As nice as this little reunion is…I need a report on what the hell is going on down here.”
Everyone snapped to attention at her tone. Griff nodded and ordered three of the soldiers to continue patrolling level 17. Then he gestured for Sam and Daniel to follow him. “I’ll take you to our situation room and try to get you caught up to speed.”
Sam fell in behind him, her eyes roaming over the hallways as they passed. The whole Mountain seemed to be on minimal backup generators and was eerily silent. Flashing red lights just added to the effect that a great catastrophe had suddenly overtaken the normally bustling base. There was no laughter softening the walls, in fact, Sam didn’t see evidence of a single other person on the entire way to level 23.
Griff eventually led them into the MALP room where there was a large table set up in the middle of the room. Siler and Lawrence were both leaning against it deep in discussion.
“Look who the cat dragged in,” Griff announced dryly.
Siler looked delighted to see them both, but Sam just made her way to the table to find a large floor plan of the base stretched out on it.
“Fill me in,” she said brusquely.
“We now have control of levels 17 through 26, but we have not yet secured 27 and 28 or gained control of the Stargate.”
“We?”
“13 soldiers,” Griff clarified.
Sam nodded. “I’ve been informed that you have a foothold situation.”
Griff snorted rather indelicately. “No way. We’ve had a hostile take-over, but not by anything off-world.”
“Are you positive?” Sam asked. As it was, she could be sure that none of these men were Goa’uld, but she needed to be completely sure.
“Yes. Mathers just made that up so he could lock down the Mountain and remove Bauer from of the chain of command.”
“Where is Bauer?”
Griff pointed to a room on level 28. “Last we knew he was being kept here.”
Sam paced the length of the room. “Okay…so hypothetically, Mathers was informed of the implosion of the NID and decided he needed to shut down the Mountain…to what purpose though?”
Griff shrugged. “Not to escape, that’s for certain. He’s had plenty of opportunities to go through the gate.”
That was more than strange. Surely he knew that his only chance of escape was to get off-world. “How many men does he have?”
“He has five left.”
Sam quirked an eyebrow at him. “Left?”
Griff and Lawrence shared a smile. “We have ten others in custody in the brig on level 18.”
“And the rest of the personnel?”
“Right after he declared Wildfire, Mathers began sending people through to the Alpha Site. Practically emptied the Mountain. But some of us already knew about the shady dealings of the NID with Hammond and O’Neill, thanks to Daniel. There was no way we were just going to meekly go through the gate. We all rallied here and, well, planned a bit of a mutiny.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll let us all have nice little cells right next to each other,” Sam said with a smirk. Sam wandered over to a bank of TVs on the far wall, her mind still processing everything she had learned.
“Siler hacked into the security feeds for us,” Lawrence supplied.
“Nice,” she mildly commented as she skimmed the monitors. There were two men in the gate room and three stalking the halls outside. Sam’s eyes lingered on the image of Mathers pacing agitatedly in the control room. She pointed to a slight figure in the bottom corner. “Is that Walter?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Siler said. “Mathers has been holding him there. He won’t let anyone come through the gate, but it seems like Walter has been careful to put out a signal warning off-world teams not to come through.”
Sam tried not to think of the various teams that could have met a rather unspectacular end against the iris. Especially not Teal’c. “Has there been a lot of gate activity?”
Siler pointed to a list. “I’ve logged 6 off-world activations in the last 36 hours.”
Sam pushed thoughts of the gate aside. There would be plenty of time to sort it all out later. Instead, she stared blindly at the feed of Mathers for long minutes, trying to process everything and find the logical solution. “So,” she said eventually. “We have them outnumbered. Why not just storm level 28?”
“That was our next step,” Griff replied.
“But?” Sam asked when she detected a bit of hesitance in his tone.
Griff and Lawrence shared a look. “To be honest, we are a little wary of what Mathers might do if his back is pushed to the wall.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
Lawrence grimaced apologetically. “Frankly, Major, with no intent to speak poorly of a superior officer…he’s completely lost it. He’s cracked.”
Sam watched the man on the monitor again. He did seem highly agitated and was talking…though she couldn’t tell with whom. “Do you think he might harm Walter?”
“Or blow the whole Mountain to hell. He can do anything from down there, can’t he?”
At Griff’s words, something caught Sam’s attention in the lower corner of the screen. “Siler, do you have control of the cameras?”
“Yeah, we just haven’t because we didn’t want to draw attention to them.”
“I want to see the display screen right next to Walter’s left hand.”
Siler glanced at Griff, but he just shrugged. Sam was the gate expert after all. It took a few minutes for Siler to hack into the camera controls.
“Yeah, stop right there, and zoom in.” Mathers was now staring suspiciously into the camera, but Sam didn’t care. Because right before he shot out the camera, Sam saw something that made her blood run cold.
“Was that what I thought it was?” Daniel asked in a startled voice.
Sam turned away from the snowy fuzz of the screen and nodded. “Yeah. The self-destruct.” She met Griff’s eyes over the table. “You know what they say about insubordination. No time like the present.”
Griff gripped his weapon a little tighter and nodded firmly back at her with a grim smile.
Less than ten minutes later, Griff’s forces had efficiently mustered on level 28. Sam glanced around at the men and women crouched in the dark hallways, their determined faces barely visible in the low light. Pride swelled in her throat, knowing that the NID had thrown their worst at these people, but hadn’t broken them. Not by a long shot.
Sam shifted closer to Griff. “Give me five minutes to try and talk Mathers down and then take the gate room. That should leave at least eight more minutes on the self-destruct.” Sam hoped that Mathers would just step aside once he realized he was out numbered, but she was prepared to do whatever was necessary.
Griff studied her face for a long while, but he must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he finally nodded in agreement.
Before Sam pushed to her feet, her eyes met Daniel’s. She could see him pushing to his feet to follow her, but she shook her head. ‘Stay here,’ she gestured. His eyes glared mutinously, but Sam just stared back. Eventually, Daniel sighed and nodded once, sinking back to the floor.
Girff’s forces had already dealt with the one guard on this side of the gate room, so Sam had a clear shot at the blast door guarding the control room. She broke out her pocket knife and pried off the security panel. It didn’t take her much time at all to rewire the door mechanisms. Crossing the final wire, she gripped her P-90 and stepped to the side as the doors slowly slid open.
The room remained eerily quiet and Sam stayed low as she crept into the room. The main computer station came into view, but Walter was no longer sitting there. Another step into the room and she froze at the sound of Mathers’ voice.
“That’s far enough, Major.”
Sam dropped down behind the nearest counter for cover. Counting to three, she quickly leaned around the corner to get sight of the source of the voice.
Not five paces from Sam, Mathers held Walter in front of him like a shield with his gun pointed at his head.
Sam ducked back behind the counter and took a deep breath. “What is it that you want, Mathers?” Sam asked steadily.
“Want? I don’t want anything. I’m just following my orders!”
“And whose orders would those be?”
Mathers laughed coldly. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know. The brilliant Samantha Carter. They should have listened to me and dealt with you while they had the chance. The way they dealt with your dearly departed O’Neill.”
Sam took a deep breath and refused to rise to the bait. He was probably hoping she would lose it and charge at him with guns blazing. But Sam hadn’t come this far to do something that stupid. “It’s over, Mathers. You’ve lost.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. They’re coming for me. I just have to hold this base for a little longer.”
Sam was startled to hear a thread of insanity in his voice. “No one’s coming.” But before she could say anything else, she heard the sound of someone moving off to her right. Maybe she had been stupid after all; she had let Mathers distract her while someone flanked her.
Sam threw herself to the floor just in time to avoid the first shot. Quickly regaining her feet she charged at her new assailant, knocking the gun from his hand. She tried to raise her weapon, but the man’s foot connected with her wrist. With both of them disarmed, the struggle turned hand to hand.
Sam was intent on her opponent, but still registered the echo of gunfire in the room below and the sound of a struggle nearby. After almost a minute of dancing around each other’s blows, Sam finally found her opening. Her foot connected solidly with the back of the man’s knee, throwing him off balance. Following through, she finished him off with a sharp jab to the chin. He hit the floor with a sickening thud.
Her only thought now was to retrieve her weapon, but as she reached for it, Mathers called out. “I don’t think so, Major.”
Sam looked up to find Mather’s pointing a gun at her with Walter at his feet sporting a bloody lip and a blooming new shiner. Walter had obviously tried to help her as much as he could.
In the distance the sound of gunfire was winding down and Sam knew that Griff and his people had won. But not in time for her.
The sharp retort of a gun echoed through the control room.
Sam opened her eyes, trying to figure out where she had been hit, but there was no pain. She absently ran her hands over her body before raising her eyes. She wasn’t prepared for what she found.
Mathers was crumpled on the ground and behind him, Daniel stood with a Beretta gripped in his white-knuckled hands. His face was ashen, but determined. Daniel slowly lowered his arms, his eyes never leaving the bloody figure on the floor.
Sam must have made some sound because Daniel’s gaze met hers. There was nothing to say, so Sam just nodded once at him and turned to the bound Sergeant on the floor. Sam quickly untied him and glanced down at the Gate Room. Slamming her hand down on the intercom, she barked, “Griff! Get your ass up here, pronto!”
Once Griff arrived, the two officers quickly shut off the self-destruct. They had just finally allowed themselves a sigh of relief, when they heard a low groan behind them.
Griff automatically trained his weapon on Mathers. Sam knelt by the fallen man and pressed her fingers to his throat, feeling a steady pulse. Sam looked up at Daniel. “He’s alive,” she reassured him.
Daniel looked distinctly relieved and ran a shaky hand through his hair.
Sam moved to Daniel’s side and squeezed his arm. “Take him to the infirmary,” she said to Griff. Sam really wasn’t in any position to be giving orders, but no one seemed to question that she was in command. Griff and another airman not so gently heaved Mathers between them and dragged him out of the room. Another airman was carefully tying up Sam’s now conscious assailant.
“Major?” Walter interrupted, gesturing towards the gate. It seemed like hours had passed since Sam had first entered this room, and she had almost completely forgotten about the wormhole that was still rippling quietly behind the iris.
“Receiving IDC,” Walter clarified when Sam didn’t say anything.
“Who is it?” Sam asked.
“Teal’c. This is his fourth attempt. Mathers would never let him through,” Walter explained, his tone making it clear what he thought of that.
Sam felt her knees weaken and leaned against the nearest chair. “Open the iris and give him the all clear signal, Sergeant,” Sam ordered, her voice surprisingly steady.
“Yes, sir,” Walter replied with almost overstated respect, letting it be known to all that he was glad to be receiving her orders.
The iris slowly slid open and a few heart-stopping moments later, two figures appeared out of the brightness.
Jack.
He was actually there. He was leaning heavily against the solid bulk of Teal’c, but there nonetheless.
At her side, Daniel made an indistinct sound in the back of his throat and dashed down to the gate room.
Sam remained where she was, watching them from above. Then, ever so slowly, she released a long breath, one she had been holding for minutes, hours, weeks. She melted into a nearby chair, her eyes never leaving the threesome below.
Her team, whole again.
Jack’s head momentarily lifted from Teal’c’s shoulder, glancing blearily around the room.
Looking for her.
She had done it. She had saved her team. But Sam had the feeling she still had to learn the price of that gift. So she sat and breathed in and out and watched, acquiescing to the invisible barrier created by the vague feeling that she didn’t deserve to join them.
“Walter,” she ordered, after she watched Teal’c and Daniel lead Jack out of the gate room. “Dial the Alpha Site. It’s time to get our people back.”
Walter nodded eagerly and Sam forced her mind on the task at hand.
There would be more than enough time later for consequences.
Part 13-Honor
“In 1782, George Washington created the Badge of Military Merit. It was the first medal awarded by our nation's Armed Forces. But soon it fell into oblivion, and for decades no new medals were established. It was thought that a medal was too much like a European aristocratic title, while to fight for one's country in America was simply doing your democratic duty.
“So when the Medal of Honor was instituted during the Civil War it was agreed it would be given only for gallantry, at the risk of one's life above and beyond the call of duty. That's an extraordinarily high standard, one that precious few ever meet. The Medal of Honor is our highest military decoration, and we are here today to honor an American hero who is only the second woman to meet that mark.
“Major Samantha Carter, you have performed above and beyond the call of duty, risking your own life against entrenched enemies of the United States of America, uncovering conspiracies that threatened the sanctity of American honor and preserving the lives of fellow servicemen and women…”
Sam stood ramrod straight in her dress blues desperately trying not to remember the last time she had worn them at the edge of Jack’s grave. The President’s speech flowed over her, but she found she could no longer listen to words of praise and honor. She was scared that if she did she would rudely interrupt him to correct him. To remind him that there were more apt words to describe Samantha Carter, and that none of them were hero.
Murderer.
Sam swayed on the spot, but quickly stiffened her spine, hoping no one had seen. There was an endless sea of uniforms and suits, smiling politicians and insistent reporters jockeying for better locations. They all stood in the weak winter sun, pulling their coats tighter against the biting wind. But Sam was numb to all of it.
Soon she was shaking the President’s hand, murmuring the appropriate words with a plastic smile on her face. A large medal was pinned to her chest, made only heavier by its hypocrisy. Endless flashbulbs blinded her and anonymous hands gripped hers.
The formal ceremony bled over into an evening cocktail party where people asked her about her work at the Pentagon and how she enjoyed living in Washington. Sam’s work was still largely classified, but her refusal to divulge any details just made her more popular in her mystique. Every time she turned around, there was just another corpulent face and more pointed, pressing questions.
At midnight she managed to slip out of a side door and wander down the moonlight paths to the edge of the tumultuous Potomac. As she walked, her mind began to rebelliously think of the people who hadn’t been there tonight. Not that she really expected anyone, it was just that some part of her would have taken comfort in some familiar faces.
Not that she deserved it.
Sam walked a little further before she sighed and closed her eyes, resigned to letting the uncomfortable memories attack her once again.
They were all gathered at Jack’s house, celebrating his release from the infirmary. It was the first time they had all been alone together since everything had started, but Sam wasn’t naïve enough to think that it would be like old times. Daniel was chatting animatedly and even Teal’c was trying to participate, but nothing could disguise the cloud that hung over the gathering, or the foul mood that radiated off of Jack.
The last few weeks had been filled to the brim with investigations, in-depth briefings and, for Jack, a long recovery from a staff-blast wound, a broken arm and a severe case of pneumonia. He had never been one for sitting patiently in the infirmary, but Janet had insisted on bed rest. He’s spent all his time there, getting updates from Daniel and Teal’c on what was happening in the Mountain.
As for Sam, for some reason she hadn’t been able to quite bring herself to visit him. She’d claimed that she was busy, which she certainly had been, but none of her teammates were really be fooled. Once or twice she had stood slightly behind Daniel and Teal’c as they related the latest news, but she hadn’t even been able to meet his eyes. Daniel and Teal’c seemed to understand and never pushed her, but Jack was a different case entirely.
When Jack had first returned, Sam, like the coward she was, had only visited him at night when she was certain he was asleep, allowing herself the selfish luxury of touching his skin, just to prove to herself that he was really there. She’d let her eyes travel over his bandages and the scratches on his face, trying to establish what exactly had happened to him, all because she was too afraid to hear the story from his own lips.
Sam was exhausted from the roller coaster she had been on for the last couple of months, but now that she sat in Jack’s house that reeked of unspoken things, she found herself heartily wishing for the non-stop activity of the previous days.
Daniel had pulled out the brown bag Sam had forced on him and dropped it at Jack’s feet. “Thought you might want your money back,” he wryly commented with a smile. “Well, at least the part I didn’t spend.”
Jack glanced in the bag and turned to Sam. “So you did manage to figure that out.”
There was something testy in his tone and Sam felt herself stiffening. “It wasn’t that difficult, sir.”
“So I guess it’s just following my orders that’s so damn hard to do.”
Sam wasn’t surprised by his anger. It was more than just the fact that she had ignored his orders. He was also hurt by her behavior. He was no fool, and she found herself incapable of explaining why exactly she had evaded him so carefully at the SGC. Everything was just still too raw.
All in all, his anger was to be expected and Sam weathered it stoically. Before she could come up with a response, however, Daniel and Teal’c attempted to wrest control of the conversation away from them.
“Mathers’ hearing starts tomorrow,” Daniel smoothly interceded.
Jack stared at Sam a moment longer before turning away and taking a swig from a beer of which Janet would definitely not approve. “Yeah,” he said noncommittally. “But York still seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet.”
“Hopefully not literally,” Daniel commented.
Jack picked at the label of his beer, but didn’t even smile at Daniel’s quip. “No word on Wash?”
The atmosphere in the room rapidly changed. Sam could feel Daniel’s eyes on her and knew that Jack didn’t miss a second of the glance or the way Sam had undoubtedly paled.
“The investigation has revealed nothing of his whereabouts, O’Neill,” Teal’c commented mildly. Sam was impressed by the way he managed to not speak a single untruth and yet still protect her.
They shouldn’t have to protect her. And yet, she still sat quietly by and let them. Not even once had she stood up and admitted what she had done during all of the briefings she had been through. There was only one highly classified report that documented the complete truth, a truth Sam didn’t want to discuss even if it had been allowed. Necessary measures, it whispered. Sam had taken the flimsy excuse and never looked back, which was why she sat silently by and let Daniel and Teal’c lie for her.
Sam forced herself to meet Jack’s gaze and wasn’t surprised to see that he had already suspected her. It had been that way ever since he returned. On the rare occasions they were together, she could tell that the darkness that lurked in her eyes bothered him. She thought that perhaps part of him mourned the Major Carter that had died during his absence.
The idea forced her to her feet and out the back door.
Jack followed rather closely behind, probably spoiling for this confrontation from the moment he stepped through the wormhole and she hadn’t been there.
“Dammit, Carter. Why couldn’t you have just done what I asked?”
Sam had told herself to stay calm and just let him say what he wanted, but she was surprised by the immense swell of anger at his words. “Done as you asked…Run away and forget that people had been neutralized? That an organization capable of the murder of its own was now going to be Earth’s ambassador to the whole galaxy?”
She hadn’t looked at Jack during the whole tirade, but she could sense his surprise. Good, obedient Major Carter never dared yelled at Colonel O’Neill. But she was damn tired of him deluding himself into thinking that this was a simple case of following orders.
She turned to look at him. “You expected so little of me that you thought that after you were murdered, that I would just shrug and walk away. That I wouldn’t care…That’s complete bullshit.”
Jack stared stunned for a moment, before his eyes began to flash with matching anger. “I was hoping that you wouldn’t be that selfish. That maybe you would think of Daniel and Teal’c, or the other people who didn’t need to die.”
Sam took one involuntary step back, as if he had slapped her. She reflected that just a few weeks earlier, she might have felt threatening tears, but that Sam was a thing of the past. “I offered them a chance to go. I practically ordered them…but I wasn’t naïve enough to expect them to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”
“And Wash?” Jack asked in a low voice.
They were finally getting to the crux of the issue. “I didn’t do anything that you haven’t already done. That you wouldn’t do in my place.”
Jack finally sighed and took a few steps away from her. She tell that his anger was draining away. “I know that,” he finally admitted.
He sounded sad, tired and resigned. Sam found that she preferred his anger.
He rounded on her, his voice soft. “But you… This is about you, not me. There are some things you were never meant to understand. It was part of who you were.”
Were. Past tense, as in no longer.
Sam closed her eyes against the burgeoning pain in her chest. Her fingers bit into the railing. The ultimate cost for her actions was higher than she’d expected. But she still knew with absolute certainty that it was worth it. She opened her eyes, meeting Jack’s gaze head on.
“I would do it again,” she whispered. “A thousand times if need be.”
Jack sucked in his breath, as if surprised by her vehemence, by the conviction he saw in her eyes.
“I’m sorry if you can’t accept that,” she said before turning her back on him and disappearing inside.
Less than a week later, when a grateful, somewhat still awe-struck Bauer asked her if there was anything he could do to thank her for all her hard work, Sam had requested a transfer back to the Pentagon.
Jack never tried to talk her out of it.
Three months she had lived in Washington, her old stomping grounds. Any luster she may have projected on this place years before was sorely lacking. Not that her work at the Pentagon wasn’t fulfilling or interesting. It just wasn’t the same. But that was probably the point.
She wasn’t sure if she was punishing herself with self-imposed exile or if she maybe just couldn’t handle the thought of seeing Jack day in a day out, knowing that she had lost his esteem and whatever soft feelings she may have imagined him having. She wasn’t the same person who used to be on SG-1. All that was left was a woman haunted by nightmares, whose stomach twisted at the thought of ever holding a gun again.
Sam reached the edge of the river and leaned heavily on the railing, her eyes determinedly averted from the bright stars above. The swirling muddy waters of the Potomac were her new life. For a moment, she wished she had tears for all she had lost, but they had all dried up in a dark, echoing cell with the last of Wash’s blood.
Her fingers brushed over the medal pinned to her chest and she reflected that there were so many others that deserved this more that her. She thought of the fiercely determined faces of the SGC personnel in the dark. Daniel, gripping a weapon he despised, but firing anyway to save her life. Teal’c risking his life on the barest whisper of hope that his brother-in-arms might still draw breath.
But it was Sam, the one with dark secrets and blood on her hands, who was given this honor that was an insult to so many.
“Funny how it can feel more like a curse than an honor,” a voice observed placidly behind her.
Sam swung around to find Jack standing casually behind her in his dress blues. He had loosened the tie at this throat and his hands were characteristically shoved into his pockets.
She was more surprised by his sudden appearance than by his ability to somehow read her thoughts. Her eyes traveled over the orderly rows of various colored ribbons that decorated his chest and wondered how many of them represented unforgivable things he had been asked to do for the good of his country. But no one had asked Sam to do what she’d done, and she couldn’t quite pretend that she had done it in the name of her country.
Sam turned backed to the river and its turbulent waters before saying, “What are you doing here?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to tack on the ‘sir.’
She felt rather than saw him move up beside her and lean back on the low wall with his arms crossed. “It’s not everyday a member of my team receives the Medal of Honor,” he said mildly.
Sam fought back the urge to snort disbelievingly or remind him not so gently that she wasn’t a member of his team. Not anymore. Instead, she just remained silent.
They stood there a long time, neither of them speaking. After a while, she could feel the weight of his gaze, willing her to look at him. But she stubbornly kept her eyes lowered, fairly certain she didn’t really want to know why he was here.
Eventually, he sighed heavily in defeat and asked bluntly, “Why did you leave?”
They so rarely communicated this openly with each other that Sam was taken by surprise. “Why didn’t you stop me?” she countered without thinking.
Jack didn’t respond, but she could feel him shift uneasily next to her. Part of her wanted to laugh hysterically at them. They were both desperate for honest answers, but neither of them was willing to give them. Just another chapter in the twisted tale of Jack and Sam, she thought wryly.
From beneath lowered lashes, Sam turned her head slightly to observe the man leaning next to her. He seemed to have fully recovered from his injuries and illness, but there was still a gauntness to his features that was new, as if he hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly. Considering everything he had been through, it was no surprise.
Sam turned her head back to the water, refusing to let her mind travel down that path. But she knew what it must have cost him to come here to see her. Maybe he deserved a little truth. Maybe they both did.
Why did she leave?
“Wash,” she finally whispered in answer to his question.
The name hung between them and Sam wondered how such a tiny word could have so much power.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, his voice barely more than a sigh.
“I told myself I had to do it,” Sam continued in a louder voice, “but that was a lie. I didn’t.” It was the first time she had admitted it to herself, let alone to anyone else.
Jack didn’t respond, but just waited for her to finish.
Sam forced herself to look at him, needing to see his reaction. “I killed him because I wanted to. I wanted him to pay for what he had done to you,” she said.
Jack met her gaze head on, but there was no revulsion or disappointment. He just looked straight back at her. “I can’t tell you that it’s okay, because it’s not,” he said. “But you already know that.”
They were words she hadn’t even known she’d longed to hear, but they were just…right. It was a balm to her soul to hear someone acknowledge the dishonor of her actions rather than force her to stand tall while she was praised.
And somehow, miraculously, she felt a single tear travel a path down her cheek, proving that maybe there was a little human in her yet. She cried that tear for Hammond and Morris and for Wash’s sister and mother who hopefully would never know how far astray their loved one had gone. She cried it for herself and what she had willingly become and for the man in front of her who’d been forced to watch a subordinate assassinated just so they could get to him next.
Without hesitation Jack took one step closer to Sam and brushed that single tear from her face. “I was angry at the whole situation. I couldn’t handle the thought that you might have gone through all of this just for me,” he confessed, “but you can’t honestly believe that it makes me see you as anything less.”
Sam met his eyes with difficulty, but could clearly see that he spoke the truth. They both knew what she had done and exactly why she had done it. He wasn’t trying to excuse it or pretend it hadn’t happened. He just understood.
In that moment, Sam vividly remembered her broken confessions into Daniel’s damp shirt so many months before. How she had longed for just one chance to say the words she always wanted to say. How she had sworn to an empty grave that if fate somehow managed to bring him back that she wouldn’t squander anymore time to fear and restrictions.
But instead, she just stared at him and wondered if anyone ever bothered to learn anything from the past. Or if anyone ever kept their promises.
She opened her mouth, tried to force the words.
But maybe Jack somehow knew what she was struggling with, because he just gave her a tiny smile, held his hand out for hers and led her away from the turbulent winter waters.
With her hand grasped tightly in his, Sam decided that Daniel had been right. Jack did know. And maybe that was enough.
In the end, she had crossed the lines and left them all broken behind her. There was a high price for what she had done, but Jack wasn’t one of them. She could feel the curling tendrils of an even deeper bond between them and knew it would be enough to keep the darker nightmares at bay, whether she deserved it or not.
But Sam decided that it was no longer up to her. She leaned her head back and gazed at the endless stars, yearning to travel them once again. It was time for someone else to lead. So she closed her eyes and let Jack guide her where he may, with only one thought in her mind.
For him, she would do it all again.
~The End~
“If it's really love you would follow it forever
Would you wander for me?
Even though you think I'm lost and you know better
Would you wander for me?
Wandering is more than filling footprints right behind me
How far would you go outside the lines just to find me
When you see that I am gone to the edge and way beyond
Would you wander for me?
'Cause I'd wander for you.”
Would You Wander by Lisa Loeb