Under a Cloudless Sky
Dec. 18th, 2011 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stringertheoryTitle: Under a Cloudless Sky
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Alt!Samantha Carter, Alt!Daniel Jackson
Word Count: 3576
Categories: AU, drama, angst
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoiler-ish for "Point of View" (3.6). Set in the AU after the Goa'uld attack.
Summary: Prompt fic. "Alt-Sam tracks down alt-Daniel... The leftovers of what might-have-been SG-1, and where they go from there"
Notes: Extra special thank you tofignewton for both the prompt and the beta.
He is working a dig in Mexico when the first crackly radio reports start. They begin with stories of mysterious flying objects and end with the cities of the world burning. By the next day, he has seen for himself the large, strange planes as they fly over the site, their passage making the air pulse and the ground quiver. The fearful voice on the broadcast calls them spaceships, before the radios go silent.
It takes Daniel almost two weeks to get back to the States, using every method of transportation he can find. He spends another week living in an overcrowded, military-run shelter outside of San Antonio. Through word of mouth, he discovers that his city—and his apartment and his things and his life—was one of those hit in the attack. On his seventh day at the shelter, he is given a medium-sized box full of clothes, toiletries, and essentials. The box sags slightly on the bottom, and he keeps an arm tucked under it as young soldiers in camo direct him and others onto a waiting bus.
They drive past the city on the way to their destination. At the outskirts, before and after mingle in unsettling dioramas—a row of stores with displays still in their windows surrounded on both sides by lots full of rubble; a house split in half as if by a gigantic chainsaw, the visible interior like a giant's dollhouse. Farther into the city, the devastation is complete: buildings completely obliterated, entire areas razed so harshly nothing but bare dirt remains.
On the eastern side of the ruined city is a small clustering of subdivisions that were not damaged in the attack. Some of the houses are still occupied; Daniel spots the flutter of a curtain in the window of a split-level as they pass by. But many are not. In the tiny front yards, weeds have taken over where fallen leaves have not. In one driveway, a child's bike lays on its side, handlebar streamers stirring in the windstream of the bus. One house has its front door wide open. The bus stops periodically as they weave through the abandoned suburbia and drops off passengers. They are mostly families who approach the houses as nervous units, arms around one another, hands clasped tightly to hold each other together. Casting uncertain glances over their shoulders, they cautiously walk through someone else's front door to make a new home for themselves. As soon as the door shuts behind them, the bus moves away.
The private sharing Daniel's seat confides to him in an undertone that they are trying to free up as much space as possible at the shelter. “It's only temporary, sir,” the young man says reassuringly, “until a more permanent solution can be found.”
Daniel is one of the last to be dropped off and the only person who is alone. He steps off the bus in front of an adobe-style one-story. The garage is open and empty. A couple of hardy cacti stand guard at one side of the front door. The door opens easily under his touch. He walks in and shuts it behind him, hearing the squeak of brakes as the bus pulls away from the curb outside. He stands in the dark, cool hallway and just breathes.
She shows up at his door on a Tuesday afternoon. The autumn wind rattles the leaves on the trees and pulls her hair across her face. She tucks it behind one ear with an air of frustration and stares up at him from the cracked concrete walkway. There is a dark sedan parked on the street. The mailbox still reads “LKER” where he was unable to scrape off all the letters. The door hangs open, squeaking in the breeze.
Her clothes are new—he can tell by the slightly stiff way they fit, the hint of awkwardness in how she wears them. It's true of most people these days. They're all starting over.
He shifts inside his own clothes and gives a polite, “Yes?”
She's studying him, an inexplicable flare of recognition cutting through the shadows in her eyes. Unconsciously, he tightens his hand on the doorknob.
“Dr. Jackson, Daniel Jackson?” It's a question, but it doesn't sound like one.
“Yes?” he repeats. The word is wary, but he manages to keep it from being accusatory.
“My name is Dr. Samantha Carter. May we talk?”
The name whispers at the back of his mind and he sifts through memories with practiced efficiency until he finds the connection.
“Dr. Carter? Of the SGA?”
“That's me.” Her mouth twitches as if she plans to smile but has forgotten how. She pulls a hand out of her coat pocket to gesture behind him, into the house. “Can we?”
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he has nothing better to do, so he steps back and waves her in. Shutting the door behind them, he leads the way into the tiny living room.
There isn't much in the space—a worn sofa, a wooden chair, a poster of a pyramid that looks out of place. A large box fills the solitary armchair, its open flaps revealing the mementos of the family that once lived in the house. A few items were missed: a carved wooden elephant stares balefully at them from in front of the fireplace, and an entire army of tiny glass figurines is laid out on a shelf in the built-in bookcase. Faint outlines on the walls show where pictures once hung. They are stacked under the window, their faces turned toward the wall.
The television in the corner is already coated in a thick layer of dust. Beside it, a new radio stands on a rickety table. Daniel strides over and cuts off the jazz issuing from it with a soft click. In the silence, the ticks of the clock on the wall sound impossibly loud. Three twenty six in the afternoon. He has no idea what the date is.
Sinking onto the chair, he gestures for Dr. Carter to take the sofa. She lowers herself onto it carefully and sets her bag by her feet, her eyes still scanning his face. Twitching under the steady gaze, he shifts in his seat and clears his throat.
“You wanted to speak with me?”
She startles slightly. “Yes, I did.” She pauses. “What I want to talk to you about, what I want to tell you—it's a little strange. You know about the SGA, about—” She gives a little wave of her hand.
“Yes.”
“How much do you know?”
She is watching him shrewdly now, in a way that makes him study her in turn.
“I know that we were attacked by aliens who looked like us, but weren't. That they came in spaceships.” He realizes he's reciting the information in a dry monotone, like the dull-voiced announcer on the nationwide news broadcast that airs every evening at six. “That they had technology beyond our understanding—”
“That they'd been here before?” she cuts in.
He looks at her sharply. There is a secret in her eyes. “What?” he asks flatly.
“They're called the Goa'uld,” she says, “and they've been here before, a long time ago.” She's gauging his reactions. “In ancient Egypt.”
The bottom drops out of his stomach and his heart leaps into his throat. For a split second, he feels lightheaded, all the drab, washed-out colors of the living room suddenly coming into bright, clear focus. As his lungs remember how to process air, Dr. Carter digs into the bag at her feet and pulls out a thin folder. Sliding out a document, she hands it over to him. Daniel stares blankly at his own words.
“You posited a few years ago that the pyramids were more than they seemed.”
“The dates didn't match up,” he murmurs, flipping idly through the paper, the relic of an old life that seems to have belonged to someone else.
“You were right.”
She says it simply. He stares at her for a long moment, the words echoing in his mind. He lets out a reflexive, mirthless laugh.
“Well I guess that shows the critics.”
He gives the paper back to her, not particularly wanting to hold it. Instead of putting it back in the folder and tucking it away, she stares at it for a moment.
“How much do you know about how the planet was saved?”
He shrugs. “As much as the next person, I suppose.” He gestured toward the ceiling. “Allies from space showed up to save the day.” He tries to inject some humor into his voice, but it comes out suspiciously bitter in tone. If Dr. Carter notices, she doesn't seem to mind.
“The real story is how we gained those allies,” she says. The shrewd look is back, as if she is measuring him. “Do you know anything about parallel realities?”
“A little.” He stares her down. “I take it they're no longer theoretical?”
“Not in the least.”
Dust motes catch a beam of sunshine as it streaks across the room between them. Daniel contemplates a world in which cities are still standing, in which the skies have always been empty. A world in which he isn't a ridiculed failure, in which parents aren't estranged from their sons.
“So these allies came from another reality?”
“Not exactly.” She glances off toward the windows, as if collecting her thoughts. “We went to another reality—myself and a fellow SGA member—by means of a quantum mirror, which allows us to travel to any other reality that also has the mirror. We went through when the SGA itself was under attack.”
“To get help?” Daniel asks. She hesitates, and in that pause he can hear, To get away.
“We found a reality not unlike our own. The people there knew a very powerful race called the Asgard—”
“Norse,” he says instinctively.
Dr. Carter bobbles her head. “Sort of. That's another long story. But the people in the other reality knew how to find the Asgard and they came back with us to give me the chance to do so. I met the Asgard here, in our reality, and they came and—” she makes a sweeping motion with her hand “—took away the Goa'uld.”
“That was nice of them,” he says dryly. Dr. Carter tilts her head a little and one corner of her mouth curls up as if she is uncertain what he means by his tone.
“Apparently they've been an enemy of the Goa'uld for millennia. The people in the other reality met them years ago.”
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. In the pause, Daniel can hear the clock again, ticking away.
“What was the other reality like?” he asks curiously.
“Almost the same as here,” she replies. “There were people there that we knew—” she flinches almost imperceptibly “—like the people we knew here. I met my duplicate,” she says, a smile in her voice. “And I met you.”
Daniel blinks at her. “You did?”
She nods. “You were one of the lead scientists at the SGC, their version of the SGA. You'd been there from the very beginning—you made Gate travel possible in the first place.”
Daniel stares at her. “I did,” he says blankly.
She looks at him with that same odd, searching expression, and gives the faintest hint of a smile. It's small, but sincere, and it changes her face.
“Want to see it?” she asks, and there is a promise and a plea in the question.
It only takes him ten minutes to pack his scant possessions in a small duffel bag. After a second's thought, he unplugs the radio and drops it in on top of his socks. He leaves the pyramid poster on the wall and doesn't bother to lock the door behind him.
Tossing his bag into the back, he slides into the passenger seat of the sedan. The interior is spotless, the kind of clean that only comes with a brand new vehicle. The smell makes him a little nauseous, so he cracks a window as they turn out of the subdivision. Cool air blowing on his face, he leans back in the seat and sighs. Dr. Carter takes a direct route to the base, following the main roads that have been cleared. Most of the base was destroyed in the attack, but a couple of the runways survived. He is surprised when they pull up beside not a military plane as he expected, but a small private jet. Dr. Carter sees the look he gives the plane as they step out of the car.
“It's one of the president's,” she explains.
“You borrow his planes often?” Daniel jokes. He shoulders his bag and follows her to the stairs.
“Well, he offered.” She throws a soft smile at him over her shoulder before ducking inside.
They land at the airbase a couple of hours after takeoff. A car is waiting for them—a dark SUV this time—and Dr. Carter joins Daniel in the back seat. Through the window, Daniel can see the various stages of reconstruction going on around the base. Intact buildings stand beside burnt-out shells. Here and there groups of workers can be seen, dotted along scaffolding or carting supplies back and forth. Dr. Carter follows his gaze.
“We weren't hit until near the end,” she tells him, “so we didn't sustain as much damage as some of the other bases. Definitely not as much as the cities.”
The driver maintains a sedate pace, which allows Daniel to take in the view. As they approach the mountain, he ducks his head to see it through the windshield. Dr. Carter points out the peak that rises above the base itself. It looks as if something large and heavy had been dragged across its top. A rough, bare area of dark earth covers the mountain peak like a bald spot.
“That's where the Goa'uld ship landed,” Dr. Carter says.
Daniel nods, the strange name rattling in his mind. “Oh, naturally.”
They pass through a few checkpoints before reaching the mountain itself. The driver lets them out at the entrance and Dr. Carter gets them inside without any complications. At the check-in, a young man in military clothes gives Daniel a white badge emblazoned with the word VISITOR. Daniel clips it to his chest pocket and follows Dr. Carter into the elevator. They ride in silence down several stories before switching to another elevator that takes them down even further.
The hallway they emerge into is bright and clean, but scorch marks still mar the concrete walls. Here and there, the walls bear a hole or two, or a lighter area showing a recent patch job. He follows Dr. Carter through labyrinthine turns until they climb a short staircase into a room packed with people and equipment. An older man dressed in military uniform is talking to a younger man bearing a clipboard. Dr. Carter joins them, but Daniel is drawn to the view outside the large picture windows that dominate one wall. Beneath the windows is a long panel of controls and monitors manned by two people. Daniel comes to stand just behind one of them. The man pauses and looks up at Daniel, but Daniel barely notices.
Beyond the windows is a large ring of some sort, standing upright in the center of the room. There are scorch marks on the walls here, too, some quite large. Daniel senses someone come to stand beside him. He points.
“The Stargate.”
“Yes,” Dr. Carter says.
From his other side comes a deep voice. “You're just in time, Dr. Jackson.”
“Dr. Jackson, General Hammond,” Dr. Carter makes the introduction.
Daniel extends his hand, and the general takes it in a firm, confident grip. He glances at the watch on his other wrist and clarifies his statement.
“We have a team returning in just a minute or so now.” General Hammond gives him a smile. “You'll enjoy this.”
The general turns to stare into the room. Dr. Carter is doing the same, so Daniel joins them.
When asked later, he is unable to quite find the words to describe his first encounter with the Stargate. With a deep clunk, the Gate begins to spin. There is a low whine, a faint vibration humming in the air, working through the floor and into his feet. Then there is an eruption of water but not-water (the kawoosh, Dr. Carter calls it later, with a playful smile) from the Gate, coming straight at them. Daniel flinches away, but he is the only one. The event horizon—Dr. Carter supplies the term as he stares, open-mouthed, at the now active Gate—settles into a gently undulating pool. And then people walk through it—from it—and into the room.
He's still a bit flabbergasted when the general and Dr. Carter walk him down to check out the Gate up close. He clatters up the ramp and holds out a tentative hand. The Gate is cool and rough under his touch. His fingers tingle slightly from the contact.
Stepping back, he studies the symbols inscribed on the Gate.
“These look familiar,” he says, half to himself. “I've seen something like this before, what is it...”
“I'm not surprised,” Dr. Carter says from behind him. “They're the—”
“Constellations!” he says with a snap of his fingers. He spins around with a grin. “They represent the constellations!”
Dr. Carter looks surprised and the general seems inordinately pleased. Daniel walks down to join them. He turns to look back at the Gate, running through the constellations in his mind and giving a name to the symbols he can see.
“This is amazing,” he finally says, “but I'm still not entirely sure why you've brought me here.”
“We'd like you to work for us,” Dr. Carter says.
“Doing what?”
“Anthropolgy, archaeology, linguistics—all the things you already do.”
“We tend to bring back a lot of items from our travels,” General Hammond says, tossing a thumb over his shoulder at the gate. “We could use someone with your particular skill set.”
Daniel turns to stare at the Gate, tries to contemplate the universe beyond it. “I won't lie and say I'm not interested, but I don't know if I have the proper qualifications.” Another thought strikes him. “And shouldn't you already have someone doing the job?”
“No,” Dr. Carter says softly, curtly.
General Hammond's eyes flick in her direction before he speaks. “We lost people in the attacks. Besides which, Dr. Carter thinks you could make a significant impact here. Based on what she's told me, I agree.”
Daniel knows enough of the story to extrapolate the events that have led him here. The idea of being a substitute rankles him, and he feels himself tense at the thought. He catches Dr. Carter's eyes.
“I'm not him.”
The reaction is subtle, but he's looking for it. She shakes it off quickly and straightens, her hands coming apart and falling to her sides. There is aching understanding in her eyes, but she answers him calmly.
“I know, but I think you should have the opportunity he's already had.” She pauses. “And I'd like to have the opportunity to work with you.”
She gives him a tentative smile, and there's a bit of pain and a bit of hope in it. Whatever she has lost, she is willing to start over. Daniel feels a flicker of hope, too, and smiles back.
He turns back to the Gate, eyes tracing its shape, all the contours and patterns and symbols. The lights hum around him and he can feel the weight of the mountain like another presence. Dr. Carter and the general wait patiently while he ponders. After a minute or two, he looks over.
“Do I get to go through?” he asks, gesturing to the Gate.
Dr. Carter and General Hammond share a look.
“I think that can be arranged,” the general replies with a smile.
Daniel stuffs his hands in his pockets. His fingers find a small ball of lint in the right one. He sighs and feels all of his life, all the before-this-moment, fading away on that breath. He lets it go.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Dr. Carter repeats.
Daniel turns to her fully and shrugs. “Okay.”
He can see her making a memory out of the moment, the shift in her eyes as she pulls everything around her in tight just for a second. Then she relaxes and steps back from the ramp.
“Why don't I show you around?” she says.
Daniel walks down to join her. “That would be great.”
He pauses to look back at the Gate, and makes his own memory.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Alt!Samantha Carter, Alt!Daniel Jackson
Word Count: 3576
Categories: AU, drama, angst
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoiler-ish for "Point of View" (3.6). Set in the AU after the Goa'uld attack.
Summary: Prompt fic. "Alt-Sam tracks down alt-Daniel... The leftovers of what might-have-been SG-1, and where they go from there"
Notes: Extra special thank you to
fignewton for both the prompt and the beta.He is working a dig in Mexico when the first crackly radio reports start. They begin with stories of mysterious flying objects and end with the cities of the world burning. By the next day, he has seen for himself the large, strange planes as they fly over the site, their passage making the air pulse and the ground quiver. The fearful voice on the broadcast calls them spaceships, before the radios go silent.
It takes Daniel almost two weeks to get back to the States, using every method of transportation he can find. He spends another week living in an overcrowded, military-run shelter outside of San Antonio. Through word of mouth, he discovers that his city—and his apartment and his things and his life—was one of those hit in the attack. On his seventh day at the shelter, he is given a medium-sized box full of clothes, toiletries, and essentials. The box sags slightly on the bottom, and he keeps an arm tucked under it as young soldiers in camo direct him and others onto a waiting bus.
They drive past the city on the way to their destination. At the outskirts, before and after mingle in unsettling dioramas—a row of stores with displays still in their windows surrounded on both sides by lots full of rubble; a house split in half as if by a gigantic chainsaw, the visible interior like a giant's dollhouse. Farther into the city, the devastation is complete: buildings completely obliterated, entire areas razed so harshly nothing but bare dirt remains.
On the eastern side of the ruined city is a small clustering of subdivisions that were not damaged in the attack. Some of the houses are still occupied; Daniel spots the flutter of a curtain in the window of a split-level as they pass by. But many are not. In the tiny front yards, weeds have taken over where fallen leaves have not. In one driveway, a child's bike lays on its side, handlebar streamers stirring in the windstream of the bus. One house has its front door wide open. The bus stops periodically as they weave through the abandoned suburbia and drops off passengers. They are mostly families who approach the houses as nervous units, arms around one another, hands clasped tightly to hold each other together. Casting uncertain glances over their shoulders, they cautiously walk through someone else's front door to make a new home for themselves. As soon as the door shuts behind them, the bus moves away.
The private sharing Daniel's seat confides to him in an undertone that they are trying to free up as much space as possible at the shelter. “It's only temporary, sir,” the young man says reassuringly, “until a more permanent solution can be found.”
Daniel is one of the last to be dropped off and the only person who is alone. He steps off the bus in front of an adobe-style one-story. The garage is open and empty. A couple of hardy cacti stand guard at one side of the front door. The door opens easily under his touch. He walks in and shuts it behind him, hearing the squeak of brakes as the bus pulls away from the curb outside. He stands in the dark, cool hallway and just breathes.
She shows up at his door on a Tuesday afternoon. The autumn wind rattles the leaves on the trees and pulls her hair across her face. She tucks it behind one ear with an air of frustration and stares up at him from the cracked concrete walkway. There is a dark sedan parked on the street. The mailbox still reads “LKER” where he was unable to scrape off all the letters. The door hangs open, squeaking in the breeze.
Her clothes are new—he can tell by the slightly stiff way they fit, the hint of awkwardness in how she wears them. It's true of most people these days. They're all starting over.
He shifts inside his own clothes and gives a polite, “Yes?”
She's studying him, an inexplicable flare of recognition cutting through the shadows in her eyes. Unconsciously, he tightens his hand on the doorknob.
“Dr. Jackson, Daniel Jackson?” It's a question, but it doesn't sound like one.
“Yes?” he repeats. The word is wary, but he manages to keep it from being accusatory.
“My name is Dr. Samantha Carter. May we talk?”
The name whispers at the back of his mind and he sifts through memories with practiced efficiency until he finds the connection.
“Dr. Carter? Of the SGA?”
“That's me.” Her mouth twitches as if she plans to smile but has forgotten how. She pulls a hand out of her coat pocket to gesture behind him, into the house. “Can we?”
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he has nothing better to do, so he steps back and waves her in. Shutting the door behind them, he leads the way into the tiny living room.
There isn't much in the space—a worn sofa, a wooden chair, a poster of a pyramid that looks out of place. A large box fills the solitary armchair, its open flaps revealing the mementos of the family that once lived in the house. A few items were missed: a carved wooden elephant stares balefully at them from in front of the fireplace, and an entire army of tiny glass figurines is laid out on a shelf in the built-in bookcase. Faint outlines on the walls show where pictures once hung. They are stacked under the window, their faces turned toward the wall.
The television in the corner is already coated in a thick layer of dust. Beside it, a new radio stands on a rickety table. Daniel strides over and cuts off the jazz issuing from it with a soft click. In the silence, the ticks of the clock on the wall sound impossibly loud. Three twenty six in the afternoon. He has no idea what the date is.
Sinking onto the chair, he gestures for Dr. Carter to take the sofa. She lowers herself onto it carefully and sets her bag by her feet, her eyes still scanning his face. Twitching under the steady gaze, he shifts in his seat and clears his throat.
“You wanted to speak with me?”
She startles slightly. “Yes, I did.” She pauses. “What I want to talk to you about, what I want to tell you—it's a little strange. You know about the SGA, about—” She gives a little wave of her hand.
“Yes.”
“How much do you know?”
She is watching him shrewdly now, in a way that makes him study her in turn.
“I know that we were attacked by aliens who looked like us, but weren't. That they came in spaceships.” He realizes he's reciting the information in a dry monotone, like the dull-voiced announcer on the nationwide news broadcast that airs every evening at six. “That they had technology beyond our understanding—”
“That they'd been here before?” she cuts in.
He looks at her sharply. There is a secret in her eyes. “What?” he asks flatly.
“They're called the Goa'uld,” she says, “and they've been here before, a long time ago.” She's gauging his reactions. “In ancient Egypt.”
The bottom drops out of his stomach and his heart leaps into his throat. For a split second, he feels lightheaded, all the drab, washed-out colors of the living room suddenly coming into bright, clear focus. As his lungs remember how to process air, Dr. Carter digs into the bag at her feet and pulls out a thin folder. Sliding out a document, she hands it over to him. Daniel stares blankly at his own words.
“You posited a few years ago that the pyramids were more than they seemed.”
“The dates didn't match up,” he murmurs, flipping idly through the paper, the relic of an old life that seems to have belonged to someone else.
“You were right.”
She says it simply. He stares at her for a long moment, the words echoing in his mind. He lets out a reflexive, mirthless laugh.
“Well I guess that shows the critics.”
He gives the paper back to her, not particularly wanting to hold it. Instead of putting it back in the folder and tucking it away, she stares at it for a moment.
“How much do you know about how the planet was saved?”
He shrugs. “As much as the next person, I suppose.” He gestured toward the ceiling. “Allies from space showed up to save the day.” He tries to inject some humor into his voice, but it comes out suspiciously bitter in tone. If Dr. Carter notices, she doesn't seem to mind.
“The real story is how we gained those allies,” she says. The shrewd look is back, as if she is measuring him. “Do you know anything about parallel realities?”
“A little.” He stares her down. “I take it they're no longer theoretical?”
“Not in the least.”
Dust motes catch a beam of sunshine as it streaks across the room between them. Daniel contemplates a world in which cities are still standing, in which the skies have always been empty. A world in which he isn't a ridiculed failure, in which parents aren't estranged from their sons.
“So these allies came from another reality?”
“Not exactly.” She glances off toward the windows, as if collecting her thoughts. “We went to another reality—myself and a fellow SGA member—by means of a quantum mirror, which allows us to travel to any other reality that also has the mirror. We went through when the SGA itself was under attack.”
“To get help?” Daniel asks. She hesitates, and in that pause he can hear, To get away.
“We found a reality not unlike our own. The people there knew a very powerful race called the Asgard—”
“Norse,” he says instinctively.
Dr. Carter bobbles her head. “Sort of. That's another long story. But the people in the other reality knew how to find the Asgard and they came back with us to give me the chance to do so. I met the Asgard here, in our reality, and they came and—” she makes a sweeping motion with her hand “—took away the Goa'uld.”
“That was nice of them,” he says dryly. Dr. Carter tilts her head a little and one corner of her mouth curls up as if she is uncertain what he means by his tone.
“Apparently they've been an enemy of the Goa'uld for millennia. The people in the other reality met them years ago.”
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. In the pause, Daniel can hear the clock again, ticking away.
“What was the other reality like?” he asks curiously.
“Almost the same as here,” she replies. “There were people there that we knew—” she flinches almost imperceptibly “—like the people we knew here. I met my duplicate,” she says, a smile in her voice. “And I met you.”
Daniel blinks at her. “You did?”
She nods. “You were one of the lead scientists at the SGC, their version of the SGA. You'd been there from the very beginning—you made Gate travel possible in the first place.”
Daniel stares at her. “I did,” he says blankly.
She looks at him with that same odd, searching expression, and gives the faintest hint of a smile. It's small, but sincere, and it changes her face.
“Want to see it?” she asks, and there is a promise and a plea in the question.
It only takes him ten minutes to pack his scant possessions in a small duffel bag. After a second's thought, he unplugs the radio and drops it in on top of his socks. He leaves the pyramid poster on the wall and doesn't bother to lock the door behind him.
Tossing his bag into the back, he slides into the passenger seat of the sedan. The interior is spotless, the kind of clean that only comes with a brand new vehicle. The smell makes him a little nauseous, so he cracks a window as they turn out of the subdivision. Cool air blowing on his face, he leans back in the seat and sighs. Dr. Carter takes a direct route to the base, following the main roads that have been cleared. Most of the base was destroyed in the attack, but a couple of the runways survived. He is surprised when they pull up beside not a military plane as he expected, but a small private jet. Dr. Carter sees the look he gives the plane as they step out of the car.
“It's one of the president's,” she explains.
“You borrow his planes often?” Daniel jokes. He shoulders his bag and follows her to the stairs.
“Well, he offered.” She throws a soft smile at him over her shoulder before ducking inside.
They land at the airbase a couple of hours after takeoff. A car is waiting for them—a dark SUV this time—and Dr. Carter joins Daniel in the back seat. Through the window, Daniel can see the various stages of reconstruction going on around the base. Intact buildings stand beside burnt-out shells. Here and there groups of workers can be seen, dotted along scaffolding or carting supplies back and forth. Dr. Carter follows his gaze.
“We weren't hit until near the end,” she tells him, “so we didn't sustain as much damage as some of the other bases. Definitely not as much as the cities.”
The driver maintains a sedate pace, which allows Daniel to take in the view. As they approach the mountain, he ducks his head to see it through the windshield. Dr. Carter points out the peak that rises above the base itself. It looks as if something large and heavy had been dragged across its top. A rough, bare area of dark earth covers the mountain peak like a bald spot.
“That's where the Goa'uld ship landed,” Dr. Carter says.
Daniel nods, the strange name rattling in his mind. “Oh, naturally.”
They pass through a few checkpoints before reaching the mountain itself. The driver lets them out at the entrance and Dr. Carter gets them inside without any complications. At the check-in, a young man in military clothes gives Daniel a white badge emblazoned with the word VISITOR. Daniel clips it to his chest pocket and follows Dr. Carter into the elevator. They ride in silence down several stories before switching to another elevator that takes them down even further.
The hallway they emerge into is bright and clean, but scorch marks still mar the concrete walls. Here and there, the walls bear a hole or two, or a lighter area showing a recent patch job. He follows Dr. Carter through labyrinthine turns until they climb a short staircase into a room packed with people and equipment. An older man dressed in military uniform is talking to a younger man bearing a clipboard. Dr. Carter joins them, but Daniel is drawn to the view outside the large picture windows that dominate one wall. Beneath the windows is a long panel of controls and monitors manned by two people. Daniel comes to stand just behind one of them. The man pauses and looks up at Daniel, but Daniel barely notices.
Beyond the windows is a large ring of some sort, standing upright in the center of the room. There are scorch marks on the walls here, too, some quite large. Daniel senses someone come to stand beside him. He points.
“The Stargate.”
“Yes,” Dr. Carter says.
From his other side comes a deep voice. “You're just in time, Dr. Jackson.”
“Dr. Jackson, General Hammond,” Dr. Carter makes the introduction.
Daniel extends his hand, and the general takes it in a firm, confident grip. He glances at the watch on his other wrist and clarifies his statement.
“We have a team returning in just a minute or so now.” General Hammond gives him a smile. “You'll enjoy this.”
The general turns to stare into the room. Dr. Carter is doing the same, so Daniel joins them.
When asked later, he is unable to quite find the words to describe his first encounter with the Stargate. With a deep clunk, the Gate begins to spin. There is a low whine, a faint vibration humming in the air, working through the floor and into his feet. Then there is an eruption of water but not-water (the kawoosh, Dr. Carter calls it later, with a playful smile) from the Gate, coming straight at them. Daniel flinches away, but he is the only one. The event horizon—Dr. Carter supplies the term as he stares, open-mouthed, at the now active Gate—settles into a gently undulating pool. And then people walk through it—from it—and into the room.
He's still a bit flabbergasted when the general and Dr. Carter walk him down to check out the Gate up close. He clatters up the ramp and holds out a tentative hand. The Gate is cool and rough under his touch. His fingers tingle slightly from the contact.
Stepping back, he studies the symbols inscribed on the Gate.
“These look familiar,” he says, half to himself. “I've seen something like this before, what is it...”
“I'm not surprised,” Dr. Carter says from behind him. “They're the—”
“Constellations!” he says with a snap of his fingers. He spins around with a grin. “They represent the constellations!”
Dr. Carter looks surprised and the general seems inordinately pleased. Daniel walks down to join them. He turns to look back at the Gate, running through the constellations in his mind and giving a name to the symbols he can see.
“This is amazing,” he finally says, “but I'm still not entirely sure why you've brought me here.”
“We'd like you to work for us,” Dr. Carter says.
“Doing what?”
“Anthropolgy, archaeology, linguistics—all the things you already do.”
“We tend to bring back a lot of items from our travels,” General Hammond says, tossing a thumb over his shoulder at the gate. “We could use someone with your particular skill set.”
Daniel turns to stare at the Gate, tries to contemplate the universe beyond it. “I won't lie and say I'm not interested, but I don't know if I have the proper qualifications.” Another thought strikes him. “And shouldn't you already have someone doing the job?”
“No,” Dr. Carter says softly, curtly.
General Hammond's eyes flick in her direction before he speaks. “We lost people in the attacks. Besides which, Dr. Carter thinks you could make a significant impact here. Based on what she's told me, I agree.”
Daniel knows enough of the story to extrapolate the events that have led him here. The idea of being a substitute rankles him, and he feels himself tense at the thought. He catches Dr. Carter's eyes.
“I'm not him.”
The reaction is subtle, but he's looking for it. She shakes it off quickly and straightens, her hands coming apart and falling to her sides. There is aching understanding in her eyes, but she answers him calmly.
“I know, but I think you should have the opportunity he's already had.” She pauses. “And I'd like to have the opportunity to work with you.”
She gives him a tentative smile, and there's a bit of pain and a bit of hope in it. Whatever she has lost, she is willing to start over. Daniel feels a flicker of hope, too, and smiles back.
He turns back to the Gate, eyes tracing its shape, all the contours and patterns and symbols. The lights hum around him and he can feel the weight of the mountain like another presence. Dr. Carter and the general wait patiently while he ponders. After a minute or two, he looks over.
“Do I get to go through?” he asks, gesturing to the Gate.
Dr. Carter and General Hammond share a look.
“I think that can be arranged,” the general replies with a smile.
Daniel stuffs his hands in his pockets. His fingers find a small ball of lint in the right one. He sighs and feels all of his life, all the before-this-moment, fading away on that breath. He lets it go.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Dr. Carter repeats.
Daniel turns to her fully and shrugs. “Okay.”
He can see her making a memory out of the moment, the shift in her eyes as she pulls everything around her in tight just for a second. Then she relaxes and steps back from the ramp.
“Why don't I show you around?” she says.
Daniel walks down to join her. “That would be great.”
He pauses to look back at the Gate, and makes his own memory.