fic: weightless and maybe (stargate sg1)
sjficathon ficathon: crazedturkey requested a Sam POV fic around watching her boyfriend get stabbed in Continuum and then meeting a guy who doesn't know her.
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: Keep on building the lie that you make up for all that you lack.
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATIONS: Sam/Jack
SPOILERS: Continuum
SOUNDTRACK: "Angel" (Sarah McLachlan)
ARCHIVING: Do not archive. Thank you.
THANKS TO: surreallis and lone_pyramid for the awesome betaing.
WORDS: 1,593
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Don't sue.
Copyright anr; May 2009.
* * * * *
Weightless and Maybe by anr
* * * * *
spend all your time waiting
for that second chance
for a break that would make it okay
*
MARCH
She has a script, a plan, a carefully theorised and thought out way to make him believe her. Believe them. She knows, knows, that when she convinces him, when she makes him understand, he will help them. He won't not be able to; history -- their history -- is irrefutable.
The phone rings twice before it's answered. "'Lo? Charlie speaking."
Her breath catches. Her heart stops.
"Hello?"
She hangs up.
*
APRIL
She builds her own telescope, buying the parts off eBay one at a time, shipping them to two different post office boxes; searching the sky each night for the constellations she knows and hoping that maybe, just maybe, there'll be a difference, an anomaly, something up there to make this life less real, not so believable, harder to accept.
There's not.
*
MAY
There's a Tuesday, thunderclouds rolling in from the west and The Simpsons on WBN, Homer asleep at his office desk and Lenny throwing paperclips at his head.
She doesn't remember much else after that.
*
JUNE
She buys three cell phones, upgrading the language sets and reprogramming the network access codes, customising the PIN prompts the same way she did a reality and two years ago when SG1 banded together to surprise Vala with a personalised novelty cell.
(Daniel's number is the coordinates to Abydos; Cam's is to the planet of the Sodan. She is P3R-118.)
Cam calls her first, startling her awake. "The Sodan," he says, "really? That's the best you could come up with?"
Her sudden grin hurts, tears welling before she can catch herself. "You would have preferred somewhere else? Vagonbrei, maybe?"
He scoffs. "Thanks, but I think I've slept enough the past few months."
"Yeah." She brushes her cheeks dry quickly. "Me too."
*
JULY
Her parents are still alive.
Both of them.
(But that's too much to deal with, too much to process. She can't --)
She calls Daniel and listens to him tell her about his afternoon at the local library, the differences in this earth's history over the last seventy years, each altered milestone a dissertation to cover the echo of another voice, the muffled sounds of her sobs, and the bitter, bitter quiet of her alias.
*
AUGUST
She has no qualifications to her (new) name, her only (fake) work experience a clerical position with the Air Reserve Personnel Center at Buckley AFB. Decades of study and experience and skills erased quicker than the wormhole trip that brought her here.
She applies for a job anyway, a data-entry position that she knows would typically be filled by college students trying to supplement their meagre living allowances, a position that promises nothing more than mind-numbing boredom but which might, just might, get her out of the apartment for a few hours every day. She's not sure which is more pathetic -- her reluctant acceptance of her place in this world, or the sharp ache she felt when she filled in her references, the name Jack O'Neill spiralling out before she could even think to check herself.
Paula from HR calls to tell her that she's been successful three days later, the job is hers -- "Your old boss told us all about that three thousand page document you typed up in less than five days. Impressive!" -- and she can start whenever she wants.
Sitting very, very still, cell clutched to her ear, she thinks, the Jack I know wouldn't have helped me to settle.
She tells Paula she's no longer looking for work.
*
SEPTEMBER
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
It's pathetic -- she's pathetic. Deleting his numbers from her contacts list, she tells herself to forget (this) him, to let (her) him go and move on. She's grieved, she's tried; it should be enough.
*
OCTOBER
Doctor Janet Fraiser, MD, is a captain in the Air Force, married twice, no children, attached to the 43rd Medical Group, Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina.
Sam finds a photo of her standing in a crowd at the Pope Regatta three years ago, hand raised to shield her eyes from sun glare, and emails the link to Daniel, no subject or text other than the date.
He doesn't reply. She understands completely.
*
NOVEMBER
(She dreams.)
She keeps waking up.
She thinks, sometimes, of that first Doctor Carter. She thinks, I get it now.
Her hair grows longer. (Still pathetic.)
*
DECEMBER
She buys a tree out of boredom, out of a mostly lapsed habit, dragging it back to the apartment three days before Christmas and sticking it in the corner of the living room, turning and turning and turning it until the perfect side's on show, the bent branches against the wall, shadowed and hidden, and she knows she's forgotten something, something obvious, but her tree looks mathematically precise from each other room corner, so.
Two days. Two days of eggnog and Lifetime movies and of watching the tree from the corner of her eye, texts from Daniel (why won't my internet work? help! tech support's closed for the holidays) and phone calls from Cam (if I hear one more, 'I'll be home for Christmas' --).
She wakes on Christmas morning to the sound of Jack's voice, a fading memory, four Christmases ago when they actually remembered to swap gifts for once: a Stargate ornament, Carter? now that's cool.
Her decorations are seventy years and a shipwreck away; she turns the tree back.
*
JANUARY
It takes her three realtors, two weeks of haggling and a new identity, but she buys the cabin on a Thursday, the previous owner a thirty-something year old stock broker who could care less about a rundown shack on a fishless pond in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota.
Though she knows she probably should, that they would most likely understand, she can't bring herself to tell the guys.
*
FEBRUARY
Daniel texts her, they're giving me a new leg, and for a moment all she can hear is Ferretti, three months into the program, holding court in the commissary with a battery of jokes that only barely qualified as humour.
Before she can stop herself, she texts back, two left? and regrets it immediately because nobody ever remembered Ferretti's jokes for a reason, damnit.
Her cell beeps and she opens it up almost reluctantly. Too right!
She laughs until she can't breathe.
*
MARCH
He's her second call, her mind racing too fast for a script, a plan, as she waits for the Air Force to come collect her.
"O'Neill."
Her thoughts still. Stop. And for one terrible, wonderful, moment she forgets everything, everything, except the fact he is here, here, real and whole and so goddamned alive --
"Hello?"
The world rushes back in on the shriek of a far above al'kesh. "I have a cabin, in Minnesota." She's talking too quickly, almost tripping over the words. "It's secluded -- you'll need your truck to get to it -- but it'll give you a chance. You and Charlie."
"Who is --"
She shakes her head, almost surprised to find her vision blurred. "Listen to me -- they'll hit the populated areas first. You're unprepared for this, despite everything we told you, but Ba'al won't be and he knows you. He'll want to see you, to make you watch --"
"Look, lady, I don't know who --"
"Jack!" Her hands are shaking, her body so tense she feels like she might finally shatter. She presses her free hand to the roof of her car for balance. "Jack," she repeats, more slowly, too slowly, "please. It doesn't matter now if I am who I say I am, or if I am who you think I was, because they're here now. They're here, and the only thing that matters is that you survive. Ba'al will want to make an example out of you, us, Earth -- he'll want this planet on its knees, and you can stand up to him but to do that you have to live. So forget what you're doing, where you are, forget everything else except getting yourself, you and your son, to safety."
There's silence when she breaks off to draw in a breath, two, dead air on the line and for a moment she thinks he's gone, that she's lost him again --
Then, "why should I believe you?"
Her eyes snap shut, a choked out laugh (sob?) catching in her throat as a dozen, a hundred thousand dozen, answers fight to break free: because I know you... worked with you... was your 2IC for too many years to count and travelled to an untold number of planets by your side and fought with you, for you, always...
"You're Jack O'Neill," she says simply, "and I am Sam Carter."
*
She calls Daniel third, speaks to Cam after that, and there are stars in the sky when she arrives at the command bunker.
She pretends she doesn't recognise any of them.
* * * * *
The End.
FEEDBACK: Always appreciated. *g*
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: Keep on building the lie that you make up for all that you lack.
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATIONS: Sam/Jack
SPOILERS: Continuum
SOUNDTRACK: "Angel" (Sarah McLachlan)
ARCHIVING: Do not archive. Thank you.
THANKS TO: surreallis and lone_pyramid for the awesome betaing.
WORDS: 1,593
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Don't sue.
Copyright anr; May 2009.
* * * * *
Weightless and Maybe by anr
* * * * *
spend all your time waiting
for that second chance
for a break that would make it okay
*
MARCH
She has a script, a plan, a carefully theorised and thought out way to make him believe her. Believe them. She knows, knows, that when she convinces him, when she makes him understand, he will help them. He won't not be able to; history -- their history -- is irrefutable.
The phone rings twice before it's answered. "'Lo? Charlie speaking."
Her breath catches. Her heart stops.
"Hello?"
She hangs up.
*
APRIL
She builds her own telescope, buying the parts off eBay one at a time, shipping them to two different post office boxes; searching the sky each night for the constellations she knows and hoping that maybe, just maybe, there'll be a difference, an anomaly, something up there to make this life less real, not so believable, harder to accept.
There's not.
*
MAY
There's a Tuesday, thunderclouds rolling in from the west and The Simpsons on WBN, Homer asleep at his office desk and Lenny throwing paperclips at his head.
She doesn't remember much else after that.
*
JUNE
She buys three cell phones, upgrading the language sets and reprogramming the network access codes, customising the PIN prompts the same way she did a reality and two years ago when SG1 banded together to surprise Vala with a personalised novelty cell.
(Daniel's number is the coordinates to Abydos; Cam's is to the planet of the Sodan. She is P3R-118.)
Cam calls her first, startling her awake. "The Sodan," he says, "really? That's the best you could come up with?"
Her sudden grin hurts, tears welling before she can catch herself. "You would have preferred somewhere else? Vagonbrei, maybe?"
He scoffs. "Thanks, but I think I've slept enough the past few months."
"Yeah." She brushes her cheeks dry quickly. "Me too."
*
JULY
Her parents are still alive.
Both of them.
(But that's too much to deal with, too much to process. She can't --)
She calls Daniel and listens to him tell her about his afternoon at the local library, the differences in this earth's history over the last seventy years, each altered milestone a dissertation to cover the echo of another voice, the muffled sounds of her sobs, and the bitter, bitter quiet of her alias.
*
AUGUST
She has no qualifications to her (new) name, her only (fake) work experience a clerical position with the Air Reserve Personnel Center at Buckley AFB. Decades of study and experience and skills erased quicker than the wormhole trip that brought her here.
She applies for a job anyway, a data-entry position that she knows would typically be filled by college students trying to supplement their meagre living allowances, a position that promises nothing more than mind-numbing boredom but which might, just might, get her out of the apartment for a few hours every day. She's not sure which is more pathetic -- her reluctant acceptance of her place in this world, or the sharp ache she felt when she filled in her references, the name Jack O'Neill spiralling out before she could even think to check herself.
Paula from HR calls to tell her that she's been successful three days later, the job is hers -- "Your old boss told us all about that three thousand page document you typed up in less than five days. Impressive!" -- and she can start whenever she wants.
Sitting very, very still, cell clutched to her ear, she thinks, the Jack I know wouldn't have helped me to settle.
She tells Paula she's no longer looking for work.
*
SEPTEMBER
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
"Hi, you've called the O'Neill residence. Leave a message after the beep."
It's pathetic -- she's pathetic. Deleting his numbers from her contacts list, she tells herself to forget (this) him, to let (her) him go and move on. She's grieved, she's tried; it should be enough.
*
OCTOBER
Doctor Janet Fraiser, MD, is a captain in the Air Force, married twice, no children, attached to the 43rd Medical Group, Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina.
Sam finds a photo of her standing in a crowd at the Pope Regatta three years ago, hand raised to shield her eyes from sun glare, and emails the link to Daniel, no subject or text other than the date.
He doesn't reply. She understands completely.
*
NOVEMBER
(She dreams.)
She keeps waking up.
She thinks, sometimes, of that first Doctor Carter. She thinks, I get it now.
Her hair grows longer. (Still pathetic.)
*
DECEMBER
She buys a tree out of boredom, out of a mostly lapsed habit, dragging it back to the apartment three days before Christmas and sticking it in the corner of the living room, turning and turning and turning it until the perfect side's on show, the bent branches against the wall, shadowed and hidden, and she knows she's forgotten something, something obvious, but her tree looks mathematically precise from each other room corner, so.
Two days. Two days of eggnog and Lifetime movies and of watching the tree from the corner of her eye, texts from Daniel (why won't my internet work? help! tech support's closed for the holidays) and phone calls from Cam (if I hear one more, 'I'll be home for Christmas' --).
She wakes on Christmas morning to the sound of Jack's voice, a fading memory, four Christmases ago when they actually remembered to swap gifts for once: a Stargate ornament, Carter? now that's cool.
Her decorations are seventy years and a shipwreck away; she turns the tree back.
*
JANUARY
It takes her three realtors, two weeks of haggling and a new identity, but she buys the cabin on a Thursday, the previous owner a thirty-something year old stock broker who could care less about a rundown shack on a fishless pond in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota.
Though she knows she probably should, that they would most likely understand, she can't bring herself to tell the guys.
*
FEBRUARY
Daniel texts her, they're giving me a new leg, and for a moment all she can hear is Ferretti, three months into the program, holding court in the commissary with a battery of jokes that only barely qualified as humour.
Before she can stop herself, she texts back, two left? and regrets it immediately because nobody ever remembered Ferretti's jokes for a reason, damnit.
Her cell beeps and she opens it up almost reluctantly. Too right!
She laughs until she can't breathe.
*
MARCH
He's her second call, her mind racing too fast for a script, a plan, as she waits for the Air Force to come collect her.
"O'Neill."
Her thoughts still. Stop. And for one terrible, wonderful, moment she forgets everything, everything, except the fact he is here, here, real and whole and so goddamned alive --
"Hello?"
The world rushes back in on the shriek of a far above al'kesh. "I have a cabin, in Minnesota." She's talking too quickly, almost tripping over the words. "It's secluded -- you'll need your truck to get to it -- but it'll give you a chance. You and Charlie."
"Who is --"
She shakes her head, almost surprised to find her vision blurred. "Listen to me -- they'll hit the populated areas first. You're unprepared for this, despite everything we told you, but Ba'al won't be and he knows you. He'll want to see you, to make you watch --"
"Look, lady, I don't know who --"
"Jack!" Her hands are shaking, her body so tense she feels like she might finally shatter. She presses her free hand to the roof of her car for balance. "Jack," she repeats, more slowly, too slowly, "please. It doesn't matter now if I am who I say I am, or if I am who you think I was, because they're here now. They're here, and the only thing that matters is that you survive. Ba'al will want to make an example out of you, us, Earth -- he'll want this planet on its knees, and you can stand up to him but to do that you have to live. So forget what you're doing, where you are, forget everything else except getting yourself, you and your son, to safety."
There's silence when she breaks off to draw in a breath, two, dead air on the line and for a moment she thinks he's gone, that she's lost him again --
Then, "why should I believe you?"
Her eyes snap shut, a choked out laugh (sob?) catching in her throat as a dozen, a hundred thousand dozen, answers fight to break free: because I know you... worked with you... was your 2IC for too many years to count and travelled to an untold number of planets by your side and fought with you, for you, always...
"You're Jack O'Neill," she says simply, "and I am Sam Carter."
*
She calls Daniel third, speaks to Cam after that, and there are stars in the sky when she arrives at the command bunker.
She pretends she doesn't recognise any of them.
* * * * *
The End.
FEEDBACK: Always appreciated. *g*