DISCLAIMER: All characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
"How do you mean, drift?" said Daniel. His arms were folded along the back of the chair, and he'd lowered his chin to rest on them. His hair, overdue for a cut again, flopped into his eyes. He looked like a college kid, not a married double PhD university lecturer come archeological pathfinder come space explorer.
Sam frowned. "I think he knew, almost from the beginning, that he was in trouble. When he thought I wasn't looking there'd be this weird expression on his face, like he was staring inside of himself, calculating the damage and how long he could last."
"He probably was," said the General quietly.
"Mmm," said Sam, white as her sheets. "Anyway."
It all went rapidly downhill from there. The laboured breathing. The coughing up blood. The increased lethargy, and lapses into unconsciousness. The body slowly but surely shutting down. She said, "I tried so hard to make the Gate work. I was his only hope, he was counting on me to save his life. He never put any pressure on me, he never criticised me once for being so useless, but I could see in his eyes that he was getting scared, that he thought he was going to die. It was all down to me and I couldn't do it, I couldn't make the damned thing work, and I didn't know why !"
Again Daniel reached for her hand, folded his fingers around hers. This time she didn't pull away. "Easy, Sam," he said. "It wasn't your fault."
"I couldn't believe it when you told me we'd been on Earth the whole time!" she cried. "How could I have missed that? It was an obvious conclusion, how could I have been so stupid?"
Daniel grinned, anxiously, trying to calm her down. "Hey, go easy on the stupid thing, will you? I mean, it took me three days to figure it out."
"Yes, but you're not an astrophysicist, Daniel," she said impatiently. "I am. I should have known. I should have thought."
"You did everything you could, Sam," the General said. "There's no call for self-reproach."
She said, "Or I could have tried dialling a different destination, a friendly world. But I was so fixated on getting him back to Earth that didn't occur to me, either! If I'd thought of that at the start we would have been home days ago, I could have spared him -- spared him --" She pressed her hands to her face, breathing tremulously.
Daniel said, "You're being too hard on yourself, Sam. You kept him alive. You activated a stargate that's been buried in ice for God knows how many thousands of years. You were freezing. Hungry. Injured. You --"
"Injured?" she spat, snatching her hands away. "I had a couple of lousy scratches and a headache, Daniel! I got worse than that in basic training. Stop making excuses for me, okay? I screwed up. End of story."
The General said, "We might just agree to disagree on that point, Captain. What happened next?"
"I abandoned him," she said. "I left him to die."
All three of us stared at each other. Me, Daniel, the General.
Daniel said, "Sam --"
Hammond said, "Captain Carter --"
I said, "Bullshit."
So then they all stared at me. I got off the bed. Stepped out of the shadow. I've never been so sure of anything in my life. "He knew he was dying. He didn't want you to see it. He didn't want you to die, too. So he ordered you to leave him, and save yourself."
"How do you --" Daniel began.
"Because I know him, Daniel. So do you." I looked at the General. "And you do, too, sir."
The General was nodding. His expression sad and admiring. "Yes. Yes, I do."
Sam said, "He begged me." She was staring into the past. Pain rising in her until it overflowed her eyes and ran down her cheeks. "He said, 'I'm dying.' And he told me to go. He said, 'It was an honour serving with you.' He was in pain. Afraid. Dying. And I abandoned him."
Gently, the General said, "You were following orders, Captain."
"I abandoned him," she repeated. "I failed him, and then I abandoned him."
"But you went back," said Daniel. "You were together when we found you. That's not abandoning him, is it?"
She was shaking. "He didn't know where we were, at the end. He thought I was --- someone else. He trusted me to get us out of there, and I didn't. I failed him." Her voice broke, and she sobbed. Pressed her knuckles to her mouth, eyes wide and appalled. Soldiers don't cry. Soldiers are tough. Detached. Always in control.
Yeah. Right.
I opened my mouth to clear the room, then. Give her the privacy she desperately needed, and a shoulder to cry on if she wanted one.
Daniel beat me to it.
"Sam, Sam, don't, please, Sam, come on, don't do this to yourself," he pleaded. His own voice breaking. Lunging out of the chair and onto the bed, gathering Sam in his arms and gentling her face to his chest, one hand smoothing her hair. "It's okay, it's okay, Sam, it's okay," he crooned, over and over.
"Oh, God," she wailed, muffled into his sweater. And wept without restraint, like a child.
Irrationally, as I watched Daniel comfort her, I thought of my own unlamented ex and his inability to so much as say 'poor you'. And I envied Sha're, the wife I'd never met, her brief love of this extraordinary man, her husband. Better brief than never is what I say.
It was good she was crying. Tears are a normal, healthy response to traumatic events, and if more soldiers gave themselves permission to cry on a friend's shoulder when they needed to, instead of bottling up their feelings and pretending that everything was okay when it wasn't, we'd have fewer suicides and mental health discharges in the US Military. Not to mention divorces, chronic depression and non-specific malaise.
Do I need to mention names?
I glanced at the General. He was frowning, eyes downcast. Uncomfortable. Another damned soldier. Thank God for Daniel.
"Listen to me," he said, when she'd cried herself out and eased free of his embrace. "It was an accident. All of it. If you want to blame someone, blame whoever it was that started firing on us and overloaded the gate in the first place. There was no reason for you to think you'd come through a second gate on Earth. And I only figured it out because you got that second gate working and set up a reaction in ours. If you hadn't, we never would have found you. So you see? You did save him, Sam. You did."
"Listen to Doctor Jackson, Captain," the General said. "He's right."
Sam nodded. "Yes, sir."
Yes, sir. In other words, I'm tired sir and I don't want to talk about this any more. I know you mean well, I know you think you understand, but you don't, and nothing you or Daniel can say will change what happened or how I feel about it.
"Okay," I said. "Time to let the Captain rest."
Once they were gone, I re-checked her vitals. Settled her in the bed. Plumped the pillows and straightened the blankets, all the little touches that Cass likes when she's not feeling well.
"Janet?"
I looked up from making another note on her chart. "Yes?"
Her eyes looked enormous. Bruised. "Is he really going to be all right?"
I replaced her chart. Perched on the side of the bed. "I think so. I won't lie to you, Sam. It was close. Another half hour and he would have been DOA. And you wouldn't have been far behind. But that didn't happen."
"He screamed," she whispered. "When I was setting his leg. I never -- he's always so --" She bit her lip. "I made him scream."
I sighed. "Sam. Any human being not paralysed from the waist down is going to scream when you set their tib/fib fractures without so much as an aspirin to distract them. Even Jack. So don't take it personally, okay?" She didn't look convinced. "Look," I said. "Between you and me and the bedpan, I've made him yelp a few times myself. I know how you feel. Hurting people is never pleasant. But sometimes you have to, and that's all there is to it."
She didn't look much older than Cass, huddled under the blankets. "He wouldn't let me near him, after I'd set his leg," she said. "Even after -- when he coughed up -- he kept saying he was fine. I knew he wasn't."
"So?" I said. "Once you'd set the leg, what more was there for you to do?"
"I could have got him out of there!" she retorted. "I could have thought things through properly, worked out we were on Earth, or dialled another world!"
Dear oh dear. Time for a sedative. She protested. I ignored her.
"Sleep," I said severely, capping the hypodermic. "And when you wake up, use the brains God gave you. What you did or didn't do is now irrelevant. The Colonel is alive, and so are you. Stop pulling out the gift horse's teeth, and take a moment to appreciate the miracle."
She blinked. Drowsily. "Yes, ma'am."
I waited till her eyes closed, and her breathing slowed. Tip toed out of the room and closed the door behind me.
Daniel was hovering. "Is she okay? God, I've never seen her so upset, ever. Is she okay?"
Dear Daniel. "No, I wouldn't say she's okay, exactly," I told him. "It's been a bad three days."
"It wasn't her fault," said Daniel, eyes wide and worried behind the glasses. "I meant what I said. We never would have found them without her."
I patted his arm. "You know that. I know that. The General knows it, too. But for Sam to know it, she'll have to hear it from the Colonel. And that's not going to be for a while, I'm afraid."
"So what do we do?"
"Give her space. Let her feel whatever she feels. Don't argue with her. Just be there."
Daniel smiled. "Always."
Always. Ah, yes. Love is indeed a many splendoured thing.
"I have some test results to check," I told him. "Get some rest. I'll see you later."
Late that night Jack woke up properly. I gave him Cassie's painting, and he laughed, painfully, so I declared him fit to travel. The next day we packed up our bits and our pieces and thanked the staff at McMurdo, who really had been great, yes, even Roger Abbot.
He eyed me with resigned speculation. "You know this whole business is going to itch me for the rest of my life, don't you?"
"Yeah," I said, grinning.
"You could at least pretend you were sorry!"
I shrugged. "I keep my beside manner for them who needs it."
"And a hell of a bedside manner it is, too," he replied. Watched the EMTs wheeling Jack down the corridor, towards the waiting helicopter. Smiled at the two-man escort party, one silent, one voluble, as they hurried to open the double doors. "You were right. He's .... tough. Just who the hell is he, anyway?"
It was the first time he'd asked. I shook my head. "A good man," I said. "A friend."
"Then he's lucky as well as tough," said Roger Abbot. And shocked us both by kissing my cheek. "See ya, Doc," he added, walking away. "It's been ... different."
The long flight home was uneventful. Jack slept through most of it. Sam met with the plastic surgeon, and was assured there'd be no scarring. Once I was convinced he truly was out of danger I transferred Jack to the USAF Academy hospital, where he had the extra surgery on his leg to pin and plate the bones, and he came through it just fine. A few days after that, when the worst of the pain was gone from his chest and ribs and leg, the pneumonia dwindled to slight breathlessness, and we were able to cut his medication by half, Bill Warner and I teamed up to tell him the bad news about his convalesence. Bad news as in it was going to take a minimum of three months of healing and physiotherapy to get him back to operational status.
Four if you don't stop swearing, Colonel.
Two days after that came school holidays. I took Cass into work with me every day, and she spent most of her time in Jack's room. Reading. Chattering. Painting. I was afraid she'd tire him out, or maybe even stir things that seemed to be sleeping pretty well, these days, but he said it was fine, he didn't mind. Very nonchalant, very offhand ... but watching him with her was like watching desert flowers bloom after rain.
Yes, all right. It's a sloppy, sentimental comparison. But I saw it. You didn't. He glowed.
On the last day of her mid term break, as I was passing his door on the way to a quick coffee break, I poked my head in to say hi. He had another visitor aside from Cass: Sam. She was in civvies, jeans and a tee shirt. I'd been busy, hadn't seen her for over a week. According to Daniel, who made it a point to visit Jack every day and always found me to say hi, she'd stopped beating herself up over what happened in Antarctica ... in public, anyway ... and seemed back to her old self.
Looking at her, though, I wasn't entirely convinced. There was something ... but I couldn't have told you what, exactly. Just .... something.
None of them noticed me standing there. Sam was sprawled in a chair, reading 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' aloud. Jack was watching Cass, who was camped on his bed. And Cass?
Cass was painting his cast.
Sam had reached the end of the story. "'-- And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention it to anyone else unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves. What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. Odd things they say -- even their looks -- will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?
"'And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right it was only the beginning of the adventures in Narnia.'" She closed the book. "The End."
Cass, her tongue peeking out between her lips, daubed a particularly lurid shade of green around the border of the cast at Jack's toes. "Just like us. Sort of."
"I'm sorry?" said Sam.
Cass made an impatient noise. Ah, the slowness of grownups. "You know. The wardrobe and Narnia. That's the Stargate and all the places you go. And I'm Lucy."
Sam flicked a quick grin at Jack, who raised his eyebrows. "And who is the Colonel?"
Cass screwed up her nose, thinking. "The Colonel is Mr Beaver, and Janet is Mrs Beaver," she said gravely, after due consideration. "Because they work so hard at making everything right for me."
Sam was having a hard time keeping her face straight. "Really?" she said, and stared round eyed at Jack. "Mr Beaver, hey?"
"Watch it, Captain," Jack growled. "I may not be able to reach you right now, but I have a long, long memory." Sam mimed terror, grinning. Jack sneered and said to Cass, "Okay, Miss Smartypants. Who's Captain Carter, then?"
"Oh, that's easy," said Cass, waving the paintbrush airily. "She's Aslan."
"Aslan?"
"Of course," said Cass. How can you be so slow?
"Any particular reason?" said Jack.
Cass rolled her eyes. "Well, because she is. Sam stood up for me. She took care of me when I was sick, even when it was dangerous. She was going to let herself die with me. Of course she's Aslan. Who else could she be?"
Electric silence. Sam stared at her fingernails. Jack stared at Sam.
"You're quite right, Cass," he said, eventually. "Who else, indeed."
Sam looked up, then. Eyes bright. Bottom lip quivering. "Colonel, I --"
He lifted a finger. "Ah. No arguments. Arguments make my temperature go up. For some strange reason they've got a prejudice against that kind of thing around here."
"Yes, but --"
"I said ah! You're Aslan. End of discussion." He was smiling as he said it, but his eyes were solemn and a shadow of memory lay over him like gauze.
I watched Sam think about it. Memories shifted across her face, too. Darkened her eyes and tightened her fingers on the book. At length she nodded. Swallowed. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
Jack shook his head. Shivered. "No. Thank you."
"Hey," said Cassandra. "Should I make this dog purple or yellow?"
"What?" said Jack. "What the heck are you doing to me, woman?"
Sam put the book under her chair and leaned in for a closer look. "Wow, that's a neat dog, Cass. It even looks a little bit like the Colonel. Paint it purple. With pink spots."
"What?" Jack bellowed. "What is it with you two? First I'm a beaver and now I'm a dog?"
Cass grinned across the bed at Sam. "I've got another paint brush. You want to help?"
"Gee," said Sam, very carefully not looking at Jack. "Thanks, Cass. I don't mind if I do."
Jack groaned. "Captain, I'm going to get you for this. Don't think I'm not going to get you for this."
Sam reached for the spare paint brush. "Oh, I'm sure you are, sir." She smiled at him. Sweetly. "But not for another four months. Pass the paint, Cass."
I left them to it.
Some days, I swear, it's just so damned good to be alive.