Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Captain Jack O’Neill returned from his trip to another universe apparently with no ill effects and grumbling about how they’d retrieved him just before an actual home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner in his Minnesotan cabin.

If Lieutenant Commander Sam Carter was frustrated at how little he shared about his experience beyond that, well, that was her own problem, and one she knew how to solve…she hacked into the secure server to listen to his unedited log.

Truthfully, the log didn’t really provide much more information.

There was a careful note of the individuals he’d encountered and the wry acknowledgement that Colonel Samantha Carter had immediately realised he was an interloper and contained him. The admiring note in his voice sparked a low burn of jealousy which Sam tried desperately to smother.

He’d made no mention that he’d likely woken up in bed with that Carter and that his counterpart had been married to her in the other universe. Sam knew he’d seen their own reports which had made brief mention of the relationship, but he hadn’t raised it with her and Sam took his silence as an unspoken order to ignore it.

Time moved on.

Missions slipped by one by one.

Occasionally Sam sometimes thought back to the other universe and wondered if they’d encountered the same challenges. Apart from highlighting potential enemies they might encounter, the other Jack had remained reticent arguing the divergence was huge and any information might send them down the wrong rabbit hole instead of working it out for themselves.

Had they lost their Captain for months when he’d been trapped on a planet with thick atmospheric radiation preventing them from rescuing him? Had they almost lost their Cheyenne to what seemed like an alien incursion every other week? Had they had Daniel die only to be miraculously brought back to life by an alien entity? Had each mission also brought their Sam and Jack simultaneously closer and yet heartbreakingly further apart?

Occasionally, the questions would drift wistfully through Sam’s mind and slip away again without resolution. The teased for invitation to fishing that alternate Jack had been certain her Jack would offer her had never transpired.

More missions came and went.

Maybe in other universes’ Sam and Jack had gotten together, but it was definitely remaining as only a theoretical possibility in theirs.

And Sam was fine with that.

Absolutely fine.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t have options.

She was attractive. Intelligent. A good person.

A really advanced alien had followed her home once.

Another had tried to romance her and had ended up with her cat.

There was the maybe-flirtation she had going on with Commander Malcolm Barrett of Starfleet Internal Affairs.

Her brother had offered to set her up.

And she didn’t want advanced aliens, or flirting with Barrett, or to be set up because she wanted Jack O’Neill in all of his silver-haired grumpiness.

God. She had it bad.

Sam shook her head, winced at the pain, and tried to focus on the problem at hand which wasn’t her love life.

No, her current problem was being stuck completely alone on an experimental starship in the middle of a spatial anomaly.

Sam sat down hard in the Captain’s chair and stared out at the pink soup through the viewscreen. She had a mild concussion from being thrown across the Engine room when they’d been enveloped by the anomaly. She’d woken to find the crew had abandoned ship and left her behind.

Jack was going to be furious with them.

He’d already been furious about having Sam snaffled for the mission by Captain Ronson on the basis that the ship was her design so who better to have on board for its primary test run?

Not thinking about Jack, about the Captain, Sam remonstrated with herself firmly. She had to focus on getting out of the anomaly and to safety. Thinking about her love life, or rather the lack of any kind of love life, wasn’t important.

When was it going to be important though?

Sam sighed heavily, the sound echoing across the empty bridge.

Sam had been in love with Jack for a long time. There were days when she thought he felt the same, and days when she thought he definitely only felt friendship for her.

Some days she wished that she could talk to her alternate self. Had that Sam Carter ever felt conflicted about putting her career first? Had she ever given up on the idea of getting together with Jack before they’d gotten together?

Sam gave a frustrated huff and pushed out of the Captain’s chair, making her way to her usual station: science.

“Computer, run a forward scan on the anomaly,” Sam ordered briskly. She had to focus on getting herself out of the anomaly, hopefully with the ship.

“Scan in progress,” the computer chirped back cheerfully.

“Time to completion?” Sam checked.

“Two standard hours,” the computer relayed.

Two hours.

Tremendous.

Sam rolled her shoulders, wincing at the aches and stiffness. She was bruised under her science tunic. Thankfully, she’d been wearing pants due to being in Engineering, otherwise she’d have ended up with her legs scraped up.

“Well…”

The dry voice behind her had her whirling around, reaching for the phaser she’d holstered to her side and…

Another Samantha Carter sat in the Captain’s chair looking at her in complete bemusement.

“This is unexpected,” her other self continued, her wide eyes drinking in every detail, “and weird. Very weird.”

o-O-o

Until her unexpected transport to what appeared to be another universe, Colonel Samantha Carter had been having a fairly boring day.

Well, if you counted commanding a spaceship fairly boring.

Which most of the time, Sam did not.

Her childhood dream had been to be an astronaut, to pilot the space shuttles. Getting to command her own spaceship? Yes, childhood dream fulfilled.

Except.

Those childhood dreams hadn’t included the hours of paperwork. Of slowly getting from point A to point B. From sometimes feeling like she and her crew were nothing more than glorified cruise ship operators rather than Earth’s best defence against any kind of alien threat.

She loved her job.

She did.

She loved being a leader, being in command.

But, boy, there were days she missed the adventure of the Stargate and being on its frontline team.

Of course, even ex-members of SG1 were still members of SG1. It was an unspoken rule and one that Sam knew she, Jack and Jonas appreciated. Maybe only Daniel and Teal’c were still out there with Cameron and Vala, but they were still a team, a family.

If on the boring days she was wistful for the past, it was normal. Jack felt the same and he had it worse than her. At least she didn’t have to spend hours in meeting after meeting with Pentagon paper-pushers.

And boring days were to be enjoyed and savoured; it meant that nobody was shooting at them. She shouldn’t want to have anything other than boring days.

Maybe she could blame her adrenaline junkie side for the thrill which had shot through her when she’d gone from sitting on the bridge of her own ship to suddenly transporting to another without any warning.

Alternate universe, her mind supplied helpfully, seeing another Samantha Carter sat in the chair to the right across from Sam’s own position. She wore a familiar uniform and Sam made the connection instantly.

She was in the Star Trek universe Jack had encountered at Thanksgiving.

But she was in the universe with her counterpart rather than swapping so something other than an ancient artefact had to be involved.

Possibly, the pink swirly mass outside of the ship.

Sam stood up, glad of her practical olive flight suit. She gave a nostalgic look at the hairstyle her counterpart was sporting – the blonde bob had suited her – and forced herself not to reach up and check her own chignon.

“I’m Colonel Samantha Carter of the United States Air Force,” Sam began crisply, “and commander of the General Hammond.”

The other Sam pushed shakily out of her seat to face her – Sam did not like how wobbly she looked – and grimaced. “Lieutenant Commander Samantha Carter of Starfleet, science officer and second-in-command of the U.S.S Cheyenne.”

“Your status, Commander?” asked Sam gently, renaming her Carter in her own mind to differentiate them.

“This is an experimental starship,” Carter said tersely. “We encountered the anomaly outside approximately five hours ago. There was a lot of turbulence. I went to assist Engineering and…I was thrown across the room and knocked out. When I regained consciousness, I was alone and the ship’s computer has confirmed the rest of the crew evacuated.”

That was a horribly familiar scenario.

Although Sam’s experience on the Prometheus had been compounded by an alien ship and rather than an anomaly, they’d been inside a nebula. Not to mention, Sam had hallucinated her guests. Or had she?

“I’m assuming you’re the same universe General O’Neill visited at Thanksgiving?” Sam checked.

Her counterpart slowly nodded. “We hosted the General a few years ago, yes.”

Years? But that meant… the time differential was amazing. Proof that time did move at different speeds in separate universes and…so not the point.

“Any clue as to why I’m here?” Sam asked bluntly.

Carter blushed and rubbed her head, revealing a sizeable bruise on her forehead. “I think I was…” she began before biting her lip. “I wished I’d had the chance to speak to you rather than the General and…” she gestured at Sam.

“OK,” Sam said calmly, “you wished to talk with me and somehow that happened. You haven’t touched anything resembling the thing that brought the General here?”

“No,” Carter confirmed. “There’s nothing on the ship with the capability to transport you here from your universe.”

They both turned to the forward view screen and the anomaly.

“I’m running a scan,” Carter offered. “We should get the results in another hour or so.” She grimaced again. “Maybe I should try wishing you back to your own universe?”

“Or maybe you hold off on that until I help you get out of this anomaly?” Sam suggested wryly. “When this happened to me, I would have given my left arm for an actual person to be with me.”

Carter looked incredibly relieved. “Yes. Thank you.”

Sam smiled at her. “Besides, you’re saving me from paperwork.”

Carter gave a thin laugh.

Sam pointed at her head. “You have quite a bump. Have you run a medical scan?”

Carter winced. “Not yet.”

“You’ll have to walk me through it,” Sam said, keeping her voice matter-of-fact. “I’m not used to your technology.”

It only took a few moments for Carter to retrieve a medical tricorder from a nearby locker and for her to walk Sam through the basics.

“You have a moderately severe concussion,” Sam read the diagnosis. “Rest and no stress is advised.”

Carter snorted inelegantly and Sam’s lips twitched.

Sam administered the pain relief the tricorder suggested and was pleased when Carter’s pinched expression softened a touch.

The computer beeped at them. “Scan of anomaly is complete.”

Carter immediately turned for her monitor, tapping instructions quickly to bring up the results. Sam hovered over her shoulder, her mind rushing to make sense of the graphs and readouts.

“All the escape pods are caught in the anomaly,” Sam noted.

Carter gave a grim nod. “They probably thought it was stationary and we hit it.”

“Instead, it’s slowly moving but carrying us and now the pods along in its wake,” Sam finished.

“We need a push to break free, something strong enough to propel us out of the anomaly’s energy field,” Carter surmised.

“I used a hyperdrive bubble to break free of the nebula,” Sam mused out loud. “Would going to warp inside the anomaly enable you to do the same?”

“Maybe,” Carter agreed, “but I’d have to recalibrate the shields for the exit. I think the moment of impact was the reason why the shields failed in the first place so…”

“Change the frequency, maybe align?” suggested Sam.

Carter frowned. “What about the escape pods?”

“I extended the bubble around another ship caught in the nebula,” Sam said, “could you do the same with the escape pods?”

“Maybe…” Carter’s blue eyes lit up with a familiar determination. She started calling out instructions to the computer and Sam stood back, satisfied she’d helped.

o-O-o

Even though she’d asked for her alternate self, seeing her, talking with her was incredibly disconcerting, Sam mused as her gaze flickered from the monitor to the Colonel stood behind her. She tapped in a final instruction.

“Shield recalibration will complete in one hour,” the computer informed her primly.

“One hour,” the Colonel sighed, “you know recalibrating the shield on my ship would take over a day?”

Sam raised an eyebrow.

“OK,” the Colonel conceded with a grin, “three hours if I bypassed all the safeties.”

Sam smiled warmly at the older woman. She fidgeted for a moment, her fingers tangling together in her lap. “I, uh…” she took a breath, “I didn’t wish you here to help me get out of anomaly. I, uh…”

“Needed help thinking about your life?” prompted the Colonel with a knowing look. She leaned back against the arm of the Captain’s chair. “I know when I was stuck on my own I did nothing but question myself about my choices.” Her eyes narrowed. “About my relationship with Jack.”

Sam blushed. “I know you’re married to your Jack O’Neill.”

The Colonel nodded. “I am, but it took us a while to get to where we are now.”

“How did you do it?” Sam blurted out. She snapped her mouth shut, horrified at the bluntness of her question.

Her alternate counterpart sighed in what Sam wanted to believe was sympathy.

“It wasn’t easy,” the Colonel began. “There was a lot of miscommunication between Jack and I before we sorted ourselves out.” Her lips twisted into a bittersweet smile. “I almost got married to someone Mark set me up with.”

Sam swallowed hard at that.

“Mostly, when I was trapped on the ship, I got caught up in my own head,” the Colonel said thoughtfully, “I imagined what Jack would say to me, guessed at what he meant when they were my words, my fears.”

“That he only saw you as a friend,” Sam said softly.

The Colonel nodded. “Jack and I…I reported to him. He was the senior officer in our relationship. As much as I knew that fact, I don’t think I ever truly understood the impact of it on Jack’s thinking, on his actions, until after we got together and talked about it.”

It was like a light bulb going off above her head.

“He’s protecting my career,” she stated.

“Protecting you,” the Colonel corrected. “He won’t compromise your reputation.” She shifted weight. “Moreover, it’s the reason why he cannot make the first move.” She waggled her eyebrows expressively.

Sam flushed at that. “He has to know how I feel though…” her voice trailed away as the Colonel shook her head.

“Maybe he knows you care for him,” the Colonel smiled sadly, “maybe he even knows you care for him more than you should. But he’s…he’s never going to quite believe he’s your choice.” She straightened. “If you want this to happen, you’re going to have to be brave and go after what you want.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s difficult with the regulations…”

“No, that’s not an issue,” Sam cut in. “I mean, there’s paperwork and we’d need an exception because of the direct command but it’s not prohibited.” Just not encouraged.

The Colonel blinked. “Right, well, in that case; what’s stopping you?”

“Your Jack said he would ask me to go fishing, but…” Sam shrugged and met her counterpart’s surprised gaze, “but he never has.”

The Colonel tilted her head and Sam wondered if she did that when she was thinking.

“How often do you get back to Earth?”

Sam bit her lip. “Not often, why?”

“Jack would invite me fishing at his cabin when we got leave,” the Colonel explained. “For us, that leave is always on Earth, but I get the impression that’s not the case here?”

“No,” Sam replied, wondering why the Colonel had zeroed in on that.

“So maybe he hasn’t asked you fishing, but maybe he’s asked in other ways?” The Colonel sent her a pointed look.

It was like a box in her head sprang open and suddenly all she could see were the moments when Jack had invited her to spend shore leave with him – a museum visit on Vila IV, the Nova Vulcan Academy on Sharlon III, the aquarium on Lolvania…

Of course, he’d always invited Daniel or Teal’c along too, and Sam had always had other plans – experiments she’d wanted to run, a spa day with Janet, taking Cassie for the day, or…how had she not clued in that Jack’s offers were the equivalent of fishing?

And when they had been on Earth…Sam usually already had plans with her Dad and her brother, plans which meant that Jack would never have offered something which would have taken time away from her family.

Damn it. Jack had just teased her about a trip to some obscure art exhibition on quantum mechanics on Starbase 31 which was the Cheyenne’s next stop. She hadn’t even given him a reply before the transporter beam had whisked her away to the Prometheus.

She was an idiot.

The Colonel made a humming sound. “Yeah, that was pretty much how I felt when I worked things out.”

“So, Jack is interested in me but he’s never going to make a move,” Sam concluded, a weird mix of happiness and angst circling in her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

The Colonel smiled and disappeared.

Into thin air.

As though she was never there.

Sam started, almost leaping from her chair before she sat back down heavily.

Holy Hannah.

She guessed whatever had brought the Colonel to her had realised that the purpose of the visit was complete. She just hoped her counterpart had made it back to the right universe.

o-O-o

Sam cast out the line and settled back in the deck chair with a hum of contentment that she was back in her own universe and fishing with Jack.

Beside her, Jack sat back down. He handed over one of the beers he held and took a gulp of his own.

Sam sipped hers and set it aside.

It was a beautiful day; blue skies, fluffy white clouds here and there; sunlight caressed Sam’s face, its warmth making her smile. The scent of wood and earth, the dank green of the lake…it seeped through Sam’s defences and made her feel grounded.

She’d needed this, Sam mused, especially after her visit to the Star Trek universe. She still had no real explanation of how she’d been pulled from her own into theirs beyond the hypothesis that the anomaly was somewhat responsible.

“You’re thinking about your universe hopping again, aren’t you?” Jack’s wry voice yanked her out of her thoughts.

“Maybe,” Sam allowed.

“How did he not ask her fishing?” Jack grumbled.

Sam bit her lip to stop herself from chuckling. “You’re really stuck on that part.”

“He’s an idiot, Carter,” Jack muttered.

“She was too fixated on fishing because you told her that he would ask her,” Sam pointed out dryly.

Jack’s brown eyes twinkled with amusement. “So…fishing’s our thing.”

“Fishing’s our thing, Jack,” Sam agreed laughing.

“You think they’ll make it anyway?” asked Jack, thumbing the condensation off the neck of his beer bottle.

Sam grinned. “It’s theoretically possible.”

Jack groaned but he leaned over and kissed her, long and slow and perfect.

o-O-o

Sam opened her eyes and blinked at the familiar sight of the Cheyenne’s infirmary ceiling.

Oh, thank God.

She was home.

She breathed out a sigh of relief.

A movement by her bed had her head turning.

Jack sat on a stool looking for all the universe as though he had nothing better to do than sit by her side.

Even though he had a starship to captain.

Her heart clenched tightly and made her blink back tears.

“Hey,” he said. He reached over and helped her adjust the bed so she was somewhat upright, to get a sip of water. “The doc will be along,” he said, “she said you just needed rest.”

There was concern shining brightly in his eyes and she wondered at the idea of how she’d ever thought he didn’t care for her, didn’t love her the same way she loved him.

“Sorry to worry you,” Sam murmured.

“Eh,” Jack shrugged as though to dismiss the hours when the Prometheus had been missing and the Cheyenne had been searching. “Ronson said you were a rock star. He’s put you in for a commendation.”

Sam wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t really do that much.”

Jack looked at her with a raised eyebrow which was far too reminiscent of Teal’c. “Did you or did you not save your ass and all their asses with that warp bubble stunt?”

Her lips twitched at his irreverent description. “I had help.”

“So I understand,” Jack quipped. “Colonel Carter, huh?”

“She was great,” Sam said, her fingers twisting in the thin blanket.

“Of course she was great, Carter,” Jack commented, “she’s you.“

And Sam remembered the faint twist of jealousy she’d once had hearing Jack talk about the other universe. Maybe, just maybe, the admiration hadn’t been for the Colonel so much as it had been for her.

“Are we still headed for Starbase 31?” Sam asked, her heart beat picking up with nerves.

Jack looked momentarily thrown by the change of topic but nodded. “Yeah, we’re headed there at warp five so we’ll still make our scheduled stop.”

Sam took a deep breath. “Then if the invite’s still open, Jack, I’d like to attend that art exhibition you mentioned.”

There was a moment of perfect silence. A heartbeat. A breath.

Jack’s chocolate gaze warmed as he held her eyes. “You sure about that, Carter?”

“Certain enough that we’re going to need to fill in Form 3-Alpha-81-Delta,” Sam replied firmly.

His answering smile was perfect.

He reached out and slipped his hand into hers, tangled together their fingers. She held onto him tightly.

Maybe in another universe they would never take the step and they’d remain only theoretically possible, but, well…Sam had always excelled at practical demonstrations.

fin.