Episode Tag: S3 Point of View
Sequel: Mirror, Mirror
Characters: SG-1, SGC, and assorted metaverse cast.

ESRB Rating: Teen - Mild Violence, Language
Themes: Episode Tag, Daniel-centric, Angst, some H/C
Season: S3
Spoilers: Ep - Point of View, one brief offhanded mention of S6 Sarah.

Written: January 06

Doctor Samantha Carter ducked her head as the fire fight continued on all around them. Her long hair swirled into her face and she had to shove it back to double check their destination.

“Major, come on!” She held the mirror’s remote firmly in her hand as she watched Kawalsky squeeze off another long lick from his machine gun. He, in turn, shouted down the hall: “Jackson, move it!” When SG-1’s archeologist tumbled into the small room, Kawalsky shouted again. “We have to go back for the General!”

“I can’t shut it down! We won’t find this window again in time - we have to go NOW!” Samantha motioned between themselves and the mirror with both the remote and the gun she held gingerly. It was a dark look the major gave her, but an argument he couldn’t really refute. Throwing down one last line of cover fire, he rolled a grenade down the hall and urged all three of them to reach for the glass that would send them into an Area 51… somewhere.

Jack looked from… hell, from Kawalsky, to General Hammond to this wide eyed and vulnerable looking Sam Carter. This was all just… too much. He enjoyed ‘playing dumb’, but this was seriously going too fast for him to get his head around. He’d been up past the first elevator on his way home for cryin’ out loud, when Hammond’s request had pulled him back down. “Is he talking about that alternate reality thing Daniel futzed with on two thirty-three?”

“Who’s Daniel?” Sparing only a glance to his suddenly not dead friend Charlie and his question, Jack instead waited to hear Hammond’s answer. Except it was Carter— Samantha who spoke up. It might look like a ‘Carter’, but Jack could see plain as day this was not a ‘Carter’. This was a ‘Samantha’ even if she tried to pawn herself off as a ‘Sam’. “We can’t be followed, if that’s what you’re worried about. We brought the remote through with us.” Jack still only had a perplexed squint for the assembled.

Hammond sighed before weighing in. “I’ve ordered the device sent here under heavy guard.” He looked about as confused as Jack felt, so that buoyed him up some. Company. So to speak.

“From where we come from,” Kawalsky said, shoving his hands into his pockets with a hunch of his shoulders. “The Goa’uld just took over the world, Colonel.” Jack had another round of incredulous looks for those assembled around Sam’s bed.

“Wow. Jack.” A second woman joined their impromptu meeting. From the corner of his eye, O’Neill could see she’d just come from Doc Frasier’s direction. She threw Sam an emotional look before wetting her lips and pushing her glasses up. Why did that gesture look so hauntingly familiar?

“Wow. Me.” He looked the woman over, from her brilliant blue eyes and honey brown hair, to the way she sunk her chin to her chest and wound her long arms around herself in a defensive gesture. The standard airman blue jumpsuit only drove the point home rather then obscure it in any way. Oh hell. Very wow indeed. “Doctor Jackson, I presume?”

“What do I know?! Everything!” SG-1 was assembled around the long table in the conference room watching Doctor Carter’s initial interrogation tape from Nellis. Jack was actually paying attention, Carter was simply transfixed. Daniel and Teal’c watched with their own mixture of fascination and interest; Daniel had the leg up as he at least had some minimal exposure to situations like these. Teal’c was just used to seeing the odd and perplexing on a daily basis.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” the woman on the tape gasped with exasperation. Jack turned and exchanged a wide-eyed look with Sam across the conference table. ‘Yeah, that was definitely weird,’ he thought. Sam… Doctor Carter, that is, continued explaining her situation to her unseen interviewer.

When she mentioned the Goa’uld’s arrival and their enslavement of the world’s population, Hammond paused the video and clicked on the lights, all with a wave of the same remote. Immediately conversation broke out, even if Jack was still struggling to get a handle on the situation. He was incredibly serious and not in the least bit joking when he threw out the phrase ‘alternate alternate reality’. Hammond clicked the lights and video combo to let Doctor Carter explain the situation further.

When the playback resumed, it was clear the woman was tired and frustrated. This was only the highlights of her interview, after all. Who knew how long it’d be going on by this point. She, much as the other Doctor Carter had explained to Daniel in the… ‘alternate alternate reality’, explained that quantum theory dictated that for each and every possible choice that could be made, a different reality could spring from those consequences, resulting in countless realities. Forks in cosmic roads when you made the choice between the red jello or the blue one. The idea still boggled Daniel, still made Jack question his place in the world, made Teal’c arch an eyebrow and threw Carter’s mind into overdrive. Hammond simply watched them each process it all in their own way.

The lights came back on and the conversation surged forward again. “Alright, so it’s possible there’s an alternate version of myself out there who actually understands what the hell you’re talking about?” Jack was back to joking, which let Hammond know that even if his second in command didn’t understand the situation in full, he understood enough to be able to move forward with it. Which was good enough for him. It certainly wasn’t like George really understood it all. Daniel, also knowing Jack’s use of comedy as a defense, played into a bit by making a face and rolling his eyes up. Probably not, it supplied helpfully.

“They’ve asked to be debriefed,” Hammond continued, glancing down at Jack who suddenly squirmed. The Colonel shrugged his shoulders, found the table top riveting, and tried his best not to look contrite as he fiddled his fingers together. Carter and Daniel frowned. Teal’c regarded O’Neill with another arch of his eyebrow. “But,” George went on, only mildly exasperated with the man. “There’s one more piece I’d like you to see.”

He pointed the remote up again, hitting the lights and fast forwarding the tape to the next interrogation. They’d already had a brief stint of Kawalsky’s, and he wished like hell Jack had said something to his team like George had asked him to. His people were already thrown for a loop, he didn’t want to dump more on their plate. Still… he really couldn’t blame him, he supposed.

The playback came to rest on a fairly attractive young woman despite the smudges to her face and crumpled state of her black uniform. Her hair came to about her shoulders and was thick. That was easy enough to tell by the way it framed her narrow face and hung heavy behind her ears. She wore rounded glasses over a straight nose, and the way the video was paused, sculpted eyebrows were raised over the rims. Her full mouth was in a precursor to a pout.

“Oh, God. Is that…?” Carter caught on first. Jack just hunched his shoulders further down into his high backed chair trying to not feel Teal’c’s eyes bore into him. She leaned forward in her seat again which made Daniel blink next to her. What did Sam get that he didn’t? It made him look the woman on the video over again and something… funny tugged at his conscious. He knew he should be getting something here. It was literally right in front of him. Something big. Something important? Something that was making his stomach drop out of him like it would do when you were climbing the hill on an exceedingly tall roller coaster. General Hammond hit play.

“For the record,” the unseen Nellis officer began. “Please state your name and occupation.”

The woman swallowed, drummed her fingers along the edge of the table, and then finally spoke. “My name is Doctor Elizabeth Jackson, I’m an archeologist, and a member of SG-1.”

Daniel blinked, his mouth dropping open softly in shock. Not only was he finally not dead in a reality, but: “I’m a woman?”

Jack turned back around as Hammond paused the tape, a forced smile in place as he lifted his hands. “Surprise.”

“But how…?” Instinctually, Daniel turned towards Sam for explanation. She’d already laced her fingers and in a familiar gesture opened and relaced them.

“Well. Theoretically… conception is something of a ‘choice’. In a, uh, matter of speaking.” She leaned her elbow against the table and turned herself towards the perplexed man. “High school biology: all human embryos begin as female, double X, and only later gain the Y chromosome. It would appear,” and her hand lifted to gesture towards the frozen image. “Elizabeth Jackson never gained a Y chromosome. But, for all intents and purposes, she’s Daniel Jackson. Or,” and Carter couldn’t help a wry grin. “You’re Elizabeth Jackson.”

“So,” Daniel said with a frown, his eyebrows coming together over the bridge of his nose. He got this whole thing, sure. But he didn’t really get it. Not really. This was… wow. “So, what you’re saying is, not only is there a Jack out there somewhere who can follow quantum theory, there’s a — a ‘Jacqueline’ O’Neill too?” Jack noticeably squirmed in his seat again. It was only passingly amusing when it was happening to someone else.

Sam shrugged, opening and relacing her fingers again. “Possibly. It’s all very… theoretical.” Although, she had to say to herself. Probable apparently. She only had to look back on the screen for her proof after all. There were glances shot all around the room, but eventually all of them came back to rest on the archaeologist. Their archaeologist.

He let loose a heavy sigh, drawing his glasses off his face and rubbing at his eye with the back of his wrist. “This is too weird,” was Daniel’s conclusion. It wasn’t a stretch for everyone to silently agree with him.

Stepping into the conversation, Hammond reminded them, “They want to be debriefed and I’d like you all to participate.” He waited until he got four acknowledgments before turning towards the door. “Airman? Show them in.” The woman smartly bobbed her head and turned to fetch their guests. Sam and Daniel shared a moment of… well, what was one supposed to feel when meeting yourself from an alternate reality? But they shared it with a knowing look between them before Major Kawalsky burst onto the scene.

“What the hell is he doing here?!” He went to make a lunge at Teal’c, but several airmen drew their sidearms and pointed them unerringly at the man. An SF grabbed at his shoulder. Jack barked out a warning, shoving himself up to stand quickly. Teal’c remained seated, leaving a bland expression on his wide face for the enraged officer. Daniel had been sweating bullets to meet this other Doctor Jackson, but he shoved that aside to jump to the Jaffa’s defense.

“He’s a member of SG-1.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“Oh, uhm. Uhm… I’m Daniel Jackson. Also a member of SG-1.” Kawalsky stewed in Teal’c’s general direction for half a breath before he turned back in a hard stare.

“Daniel Jackson?” Daniel slid his hands into his pockets under the weight of several pairs of eyes in the room. When he thought he could manage it, he looked past the other Sam to… her.

Elizabeth Jackson could only blink her wide blue eyes towards… herself? Absently, General Hammond couldn’t stop from compairing it to the look Daniel had had only moments before. The similarity ripped right pasted uncanny and went straight for unnerving. It made George reset his shoulders straighter.

Stepping around her Sam, Elizabeth came up to Daniel and openly stared at him. He didn’t really want to, it was rude after all, but he did like wise. It wasn’t every day you saw yourself perfectly rendered in the opposite gender.

With placating words and some familiar shoulder patting from Jack, Kawalsky was finally calmed down, though under no uncertain terms did he let Teal’c know he wasn’t going to be watching him. And then the Carters were exchanging some terse words, heated looks shooting between the women. Daniel and Elizabeth were oblivious to it all, still looking the other in the eye. He lifted his arm and pointed through his sleeve to a spot just outside his armpit. Her eyes went wide as she nodded. Daniel’s went wide. Who knew what they exchanged, but it surprised them both apparently.

Sam resumed her seat, Teal’c sat up straighter, Samantha went to sit next to Jack and Kawalsky sat next to her. Elizabeth shyly moved to sit next to Daniel and the two Jacksons exchanged bashful and embarrassed glances. “This is too weird,” she muttered, pulling the chair out to sit in.

The briefing was awkward on every level it could possibly be awkward on. There was only one Major Kawalsky, you could separate the Carters with either a ‘Doctor’ or a ‘Major’, but both Jackson’s were doctors. Both on SG-1s. Both archeologists. And just figuring out what to call everyone was arguably the easiest part. The topics themselves were wild and radical. Quantum mirrors, alternate realities, and the events that had lead these three desperate people here in the first place.

Kawalsky’s voice was thick as gravel when he ground out, “We want to stay.”

“That is,” Samantha continued cautiously. “If… we’re wanted.” Jack gave her a long look. Daniel’s mouth was pursed fiercely in thought as he slowly swung his attention towards General Hammond. Elizabeth looked at Daniel, unconscious to the fact her mouth was a perfect carbon copy to his.

“General Hammond. Sir.” She didn’t know when she’d started talking, but Elizabeth was acutely aware when all eyes were on her suddenly. Her tongue darted out to lick her lips before she pressed on, keeping her attention focused on the General. “We just left behind everyone we know. Everyone we ever cared about.” Her voice got thick as she turned to look straight at Jack. “I’ve watched my entire team — my friends — die over these last few days, trying our best to secure and hold the mountain long enough to get everyone through to the Beta site.” Elizabeth swallowed hard, but held Jack’s eyes fiercely. “Each of us has watched someone close to us die in the last five days. We’d be lucky if it was just one.”

Samantha looked down at her clasped hands in her lap. A part of her had always been jealous of Ellie being on Jack’s team, a relationship the two of them sharring that she could never possibly be a part of. Going through the gate together on galaxy-spanning missions, meeting aliens, saving the day — all while she kept the home fires buring back at the SGA for them. She may have married Jack O’Neill, but it was Elizabeth Jackson who knew all his secrets.

But all that had been forgotten when they’d both lost the most important man in their lives. The man that was now sitting very much alive next to her.

“If you’re not going to give us a second chance,” Samantha said softly to her hands. “Then… I don’t know any of you.” Jack and Elizabeth were still locked in a stare. ‘Those are Daniel’s eyes,’ Jack wondered. ‘But not. Not really. They’re… they’re “Daniella’s”. But they’ve seen a lot. Too much. And they know me. Too well.’ He had to look away quickly and regain ground inside himself.

“Well exactly,” Jack said with an edge he hadn’t meant to hone. “You don’t know any of us. And we don’t know you. For all we know, you could be her evil twin. And you,” he motioned between Daniel and Elizabeth. “Well…” He squinted as his analogy fell through. “But then, we’d been dealing with clichés, and you know how I hate cliches. No actually, you—” his finger jabbing at Carter. “—know how I feel about those.” God. His face ran through a gamut of confused expressions before he just stopped his damn tongue from wagging anymore. Carter gave him a wry crinkle of her brow.

Hammond took control of the situation before it got any further out of hand. “That isn’t a decision I can make, Major,” towards Kawalsky. “Doctors,” for Samantha and Elizabeth. “But I’ll take it under consideration when I speak with my superiors. In the mean time, I think you understand why you’ll have to remain on base?” He motioned towards an airman, one who already knew where their guests were temporarily assigned.

He stood, effectively dismissing the lot of them. Jack looked down the table at Kawalsky with a resigned hunch of his shoulder. The Carters looked hard at each other again, clearly weighing the other’s life choices. And Daniel and Elizabeth exchanged another once over before all three moved off with their escourt.

Leaving Hammond’s office, Jack nearly mowed Daniel down when he took the turn leading into the hallway proper. “Whoa there, big fella!” Jack’s hands went out to Daniel’s shoulders before their foreheads made contact.

“Sorry,” the other man said with embarrassment. “I was just… for the… on my way to ask if…. Has the General heard anything back yet from—”

“They can stay.” Sliding his hands into his pockets, Jack set a casual pace, turning them in the direction Daniel had just come from. “Hammond doesn’t like it, but they can stay. I was… just on my way to tell them.”

“I’ll tell Elizabeth.” Daniel didn’t even hesitate. Jack was almost envious of the man’s open fascination with it all. He only had this awkward uneasiness to claim for his part. His best friend was back from the dead (again) and apparently he’d been married to another Carter. Danny here just had to deal with a… sex change. Jack rubbed at his temple. This whole thing was just too nutty for words.

“Okay. You grab… you, I’ll take Doctor Carter, and then I’ll swing by Kawalsky.” He’d save the hardest for last. Daniel nodded, sliding his own hands into his pockets in a silent mirror of Jack. They parted ways at the VIP suite’s T-juncture.

They were staring at each other again. It’d all started right and proper: Daniel had knocked, Elizabeth had answered and invited him in and then… then, they’d fallen to the staring.

She broke first. “I’m a man.” Daniel could only grin ruefully.

“Or I’m a woman,” he allowed. His eyes can’t possibly be THAT blue, could they? Daniel would have to ask Sam. His Sam. “Cosmic forks in the road, wayward Y chromosomes, you know.”

They hunched their shoulders self consciously, sliding their hands into their pockets. “Okay. Strange, but….” Daniel blinked at Elizabeth, Elizabeth blinked at Daniel. Yes. Strange.

Clearing his throat, Daniel started again. Alone this time. “So…” He drew the single word out, trying to make it fill the awkward silence. “So, uhm. Yeah. General Hammond’s gotten word: you can stay.”

Turning her head, she looked out past Daniel’s shoulder at nothing and repeated, “We can stay.” Elizabeth’s voice was exhausted but wound tight like a coil around her throat. It was clear the weight of her last week was heavy inside her.

She swallowed a few times before inviting her metaverse doppleganger to join her at the small table. A laptop and note filled legal pad were already designating a work station, but Elizabeth quickly pushed those aside. When she caught Daniel’s eyebrow arching in question, she only smiled wanly and cast a hand over the project. “Trying to compare seminal points in history.”

He didn’t even need to ask any further — he’d know what he’d be looking for if their places were switched. So he “Ah’ed” and nodded his head knowingly. ‘God. This really is me.’ This wasn’t like the Carters, a left turn instead of a right, an academic versus a solider. This was Daniel. Just Daniel with a Double X to her DNA.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Because this was ‘him’, Daniel knew she’d say no. But he also knew only too well how much she needed to unload the weight in her heart. He’d literally been in her shoes, after all. It was never easy being a civilian inside the war machine of the military. More so when the war machine was actually churning all around you, chewing up your friends and splashing your shoes with their blood.

Reaching out to pick up her pen and fiddle with it, Elizabeth shook her head which dislodged a lank of hair from behind her ear. Daniel’s fingers were suddenly itching to push it back for her. The irony that he was having to restrain himself from coddling… himself… the way he hated to be coddled was not lost to him. “No, I’m okay,” was her predictable response. But they both knew she was lying. Really both knew. They let it go for now, though. Instead, Daniel turned the conversation to one of a more academic bend.

“Well okay then. Let’s… let’s compare some life notes then, shall we? I have to admit I’m dying of curiosity.”

Elizabeth Jackson couldn’t help but grin warmly. Because she was curious too. Did a boy who’d watched his parents die and had then been denied by his sole surviving relative work out better then a girl in those shoes?

They had gotten down to such nitty gritty details as their SAT scores and allergies.

Their childhood and adolescence were remarkably parallel, up to and including some of the less pleasant incidences. They’d read the same books, had the same friends, learned the same things at the same times. They’d had the same university professors, had gone on the same summer digs, had even done the same research, sighting the same obscure resources. Catherine Langford had approached each of them at their failed lecture. Sarah had chided them both for even coming forward with such ‘preposterous ideas’. A newspaper had given them the last piece of the Stargate’s puzzle. Their love lives had some obvious divergence’s, but even then, they ran so close to similar that they echoed into one another.

“So… you and Sha’re?” Ellie couldn’t help but grin around the spoon of her airman delivered jello. Her Sha’re was dead. Murdered, along with the child, by Heru’ur while trying to escape with Apophis just after having given birth. But she would always be Elizabeth’s “sister”, in heart if not necessarly blood. “I just have such a hard time seeing her with anyone.” Let alone her… self. “Though, if you say she approached Kasuf about… it… well. I guess I could see that. She always had such a spirit about her.”

Daniel had a grin of his own, having absconded with her dinner tray’s salad. “You should talk. Skaa’ra? He’s, what, five years younger then you? Us?” She ducked her head and blushed, but a blind man couldn’t miss the pain that lanced across her face. It bent around her like a bittersweet embrace.

Continuing in a soft tone, he shared, “My Sha’re was captured by Apophis and then turned into a host. My Skaa’ra too. I joined SG-1 to find them. They’re still out there somewhere. Waiting for me.” Elizabeth was already nodding.

“Kasuf had just given Skaa’ra and I permission to officially begin courting the next spring when Jack and his team came back through the gate. I… I’d been so eager to show them the cartouche room. Sha’re had teased me to ‘go play with my friends’ and Skaa’ra…” Again she blushed, but didn’t elaborate. Daniel was pretty sure he could guess anyway. “I was such… I was so stupid to have dug up the gate. Why did I do that, wasn’t what I had good enough?” It was his turn to nod. These were questions he still asked himself daily.

Her spoon hit the half-empty dessert cup with a clatter before she pushed the whole thing away. Drawing her feet up on the edge of the chair, Elizabeth folded her arms around herself before she went on. Because there was no stopping now: a dam had been broken somewhere inside of her. “We heard the gunfire. Jack was such an ass, shoving me to the back while his team went charging ahead barrels a’blazin’. But… it was all over by the time we really got there. And then they’d told me that… that Sha’re and Skaa’ra had been taken. A few others too, but the two of them…” Daniel could only continue to nod. Yes, he knew this pain even if his Sha’re was still technically alive. He had no idea how deep hers cut, though.

“Skaa’ra — my Skaa’ra. Is dead. Also dead.” Tears made her eyes shine bluer. “He, along with that Jaffa of yours. Teal’c. They were personally leading the assault against the mountain. There… there was a point, somewhere up in NORAD, when he, Feretti and I were in a hall. I thought I had him. I thought he heard me. That I could get through to the real Skaa’ra and not Klorel. But then he reached out, with that ribbon device….” Elizabeth’s own hand lifted as tears ran down her cheeks. Wet tracks ran unchecked down Daniel’s. “Feretti held the grenade in his hand even as he dropped the pin. You could— you could see his entire body spasming. And Klorel just… smirked.” It was just too much, and she had to put her head down against her knees. Her head was too heavy. Her shoulders were too heavy. Her heart was too heavy.

“I honestly don’t know how I made it out of there in time. I wasn’t going to leave except that Jack had come over the radio and…” Her voice was muffled against her thigh, but Daniel had no trouble hearing her. Jack had ordered her. He only knew too well how Jack O’Neill, like no other person in the world, could make him… her… them do things they didn’t think they could. Like leave the most precious person in their lives there to die by a grenade. To die by a grenade while that precious person was draining the life of their friend. It was a tableau Daniel couldn’t even fathom.

He suddenly found himself kneeling before the woman, drawing her to him in a fierce and desperate embrace. Her tears splashed hotly against his neck while his soaked the collar of her jumpsuit. It wasn’t just this pain they shared, it was all the pain in their entire lives they cried for. Because for once — really, for the very first time — they could know with confidence they weren’t burdening anyone, being pitied for pities sake.

That someone truly understood.

They’d shuffled themselves to lean against the foot of the bed by the time Jack knocked on the door. As was his usual fashion, he knocked and opened the door more or less in one fluid motion. What he saw made his eyebrows jog together in surprise.

Daniel sat on the floor with his legs straight out, back propped up by the foot board, arms wrapped tight against Elizabeth while his chin was sunk against her shoulder. Elizabeth had her own arms wrapped tightly up across his chest and over his shoulder, legs curled under herself, face turned into Daniel’s chest. Jack could easily see they’d both been crying, but now they both sat peacefully. Sleeping.

He cleared his throat, one hand left on the doorknob while the other fumbled down into his pocket. Jack had the distinct impression he was barging in on something… intimate. Daniel saved him by opening one heavy lidded eye. Then both eyes were blinking at him as the archaeologist was gently shaking the woman in his arms into an equally as wakeful state. It didn’t escape the Colonel’s attention that they both shared the same, almost childish expression: lips pouting, eyelids half mast, glasses somewhat askew as they went to rub an eye. The whole thing gave him the willies, that was for damn sure.

“Uh, hey… guys. Sorry for… yeah.” He let the doorknob go, shoving his other hand into its pocket. “Something of an emergency with Sam— Doctor Carter. Need you in the infirmary.” Jack made sure to catch Daniel’s bloodshot eye, waiting for an acknowledgment.

“Is she okay?” Instead of Daniel, it was Elizabeth, pulling herself up suddenly and straightening her glasses. The worried urgency in her voice was unmistakable. There was a brief tangle of limbs as the Jacksons stood, but soon enough they were both standing front and center, hands on their hips. “What’s wrong?” Now it was Daniel asking.

“I, uh. I don’t pretend to get it to be honest. Something about some seizures or convulsive shock, but really, it’s worse then that.” O’Neill winced away from the panicked expression Elizabeth turned towards him. “Frasier’s working on it now, but she’s asked to see everybody.” And he brought a hand out to motion towards the woman. By everybody, the doctor meant ‘everyone not from ’round these parts’.

It turned out he had to follow the Jacksons instead of the other way around.

“Not medical, temporal. Entropic cascade failure!”

“On the cellular level?”

“Yes!”

“It must be a side effect of travel through the Quantum Mirror.”

“But I thought it’d take years, not days.”

At the best of times, it was hard enough to keep up with one Samantha Carter, but now dealing with two… Elizabeth could only wrap her arms around herself tighter as she watched her friend — what. Break down on a molecular level?

Kawalsky was able to watch while Jack flinched. “Then why don’t I have it. Or Ellie.” He turned towards his own archeologist, catching her eye briefly. She didn’t, right? No, she didn’t. A simple conversation carried out with just a flicker of brown meeting blue. Together they turned back towards the Carters.

Major Carter held on to Sam’s hand like it was something precious that needed to be kept anchored. “I’m guessing Doctor Carter has it because I’m here. The increased entropic energy created by both of us existing at the same time could theoretically be causing a temporal distortion.”

“Not theoretical anymore,” Elizabeth’s Sam manage to grunt.

“So because I’m dead here, I’m not going to have….” Kawalsky didn’t finish. Couldn’t, really.

“But what about us?” Daniel motioned between himself and Elizabeth. “We both exist. Yet she isn’t having these… entropic failures.”

Samantha, even while breathing hard, had an answer. “Probably because you’re not actually the same person. You’re as close as you can be without actually being the same, but Ellie’s a woman. And you’re a man. It must be enough of a difference to—” But she was wracked again by another ‘convulsion’. The display made Elizabeth curl into herself further. More subconsciously then consciously, Daniel slid an arm around her shoulders.

The ever practical Janet Frasier brought them back to the here and now. “So how do I treat this.”

“You can’t,” Doctor Carter gasped as she came down.

“The longer she’s here, the worse it’s going to get,” Major Carter clarified.

“I’m going to die here.”

Surging forward, Elizabeth brushed past Janet and took Sam’s other hand. “God, no. We’ll figure something out.” Major Carter and Jack were having a bit of a verbal tussle, but all she caught at the end was Kawalsky’s “If she goes back, the Goa’uld will have her killed.”

Jack frowned hard, sighing through his nose as he assessed the situation. With a curl of his finger, he called both his SG-1 and Kawalsky to him. “We have to brief Hammond on this. Elizabeth, can you—”

“Of course.” He didn’t even need to ask; of course she’d stay with Sam. Janet had already gone round to the other side, adjusting equipment she hoped was easing Doctor Carter’s pain at least somewhat.

“Good. We’ll let you know.”

Daniel looked Elizabeth over, unable to resist asking himself if he ever looked that helpless or… vulnerable. He licked his lips before turning to traipse after Jack’s squad of skeptics.

Janet let her pull a stool up so she could keep a hold of Sam’s hand. The doctor knew it was pointless to ask Elizabeth Jackson to ease herself back or give Doctor Carter room. It seemed to be something both women needed, and as she couldn’t really do anything other then monitor her patient’s health - she failed to see any harm in it.

Blue eyes met blue eyes as they each regarded each other solemnly. Ellie held on to Sam’s hand gently, but with determination. And she let it be crushed when the woman suffered through another seizure.

“They’re going to think of something, Sam,” Elizabeth breathed, pushing the other woman’s hair back behind her ear and smoothing a hand across her forehead. “They’ve got a Jack, they’ve got a me, they’ve got a you — there’s nothing in the universe that can stop us, you know that. Any universe.” Her grin was forced, but it tried valiantly.

“We couldn’t stop the Goa’uld.” This was her friend, and she loved her very much, but Sam wasn’t going to let Elizabeth color anything with her box of rose colored crayons. And indeed, the brunette’s demeanor faltered.

“No, we didn’t. And we’ve lost a lot because of it. Some of us more than others.” Now Sam was faltering. Damn it, leave it to Jackson to take it to heart and blame herself. And then, on top of that, put Sam’s grief in front of her own, like it really was more important. It made her sigh and hang her head.

“I won’t lie to you, Sam. I… yeah. I loved him too.” Her thumb was caressing Sam’s hand gently as Elizabeth’s voice fell soft. “He was strong, smarter then he ever wanted to let on, brave, handsome…. But we were never meant to be together like that. Like… like I know you sometimes worried about. Jack was more the yin to my yang. Something that balanced and completed who I was and let me face what I had to do for Abydos, for Skaa’ra, for Sha’re.” Oh, she was tired. So tired of this weight. But Sam needed to know this. Elizabeth owed this to her.

“But he loved you, Sam. Really, truly, with every breath he could take loved you.” A grin skimmed her mouth as she remembered. Sam’s head was still bowed. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many nights I was stuck off world with that jerk praising everything from your last memo to the color of your nail polish. You were everything to him, Sammy. You gave him a reason. Made it all worth it for him.”

Samantha finally looked up at her friend, tears bright in her eyes but unshed. How many late nights had she worked over a project with this woman? How many pots of coffee had they shared, candy bars jimmied out of the vending machines, naughty jokes sent over email, cartons of take-out eaten while watching sad, sappy movies with Janet and Cassie? How many times had Sam waited outside of ICU while their own Frasier patched Elizabeth up after yet another near fatal incident on some off world mission? She knew she never had to worry about Elizabeth being away with Jack, but now… now her heart knew what her mind had known for years. “I’m so sorry, El. You know I never…”

“Maybe, maybe not. But now you know for sure either way, hmm?” Sam hadn’t seen Jack — their Jack — die. Elizabeth had, and it hadn’t been pretty. But it’d been with all the honor and dignity of a born and bred solider, defending his all until the very last. He’d bought them at least another day with his sacrifice, and that had been enough for Samantha to convince General Hammond to let her try the Quantum Mirror. Jack had saved the life of his love. Elizabeth liked to think he knew that.

But now it was up to Elizabeth, and this SG-1, to make sure it stayed that way.

About forty-five minutes had passed when Major Carter came back down to the infirmary. Doctor Carter had stabilized somewhat and she and Elizabeth were still talking quietly to one another. A lot had been shared in that forty-five minutes and both women looked happier for it.

“Excuse me, Doctor Carter? I, uh. I need your help with a project. We’ve got a working theory on how to get you back to your own world, saving it hopefully in the process.” Carter looked between the doctor and Elizabeth. It was mixed reactions to say the least.

“But how?” Samantha was pushing herself up and out of bed already. Then the conversation swung into Carterese and Elizabeth was mostly lost. Power sources and fields of decay and generated fluctuations in staff weapon crystals. It went on like that for some time. She did, however, get a hold of the broad strokes of their plan while Sam got back into her jumpsuit: Daniel Jackson had suggested ‘lending their fate’, as it was, to their universe. If they couldn’t stop the Goa’uld on their own, they’d borrow the tactics of someone who had.

Major Carter explained they had a way to contact a race known as the Asgard and she needed Doctor Carter’s help on powering up some sort of super generator for this entire endeavor to work. Jack would lead, Kawalsky was showing Daniel how the Quantum Mirror worked, and Teal’c would be going as a strategic advantage in terms of railroading the Jaffa that undoubtedly crawled around the SGA by this point.

Dropping her chin and folding her arms across her chest, Elizabeth couldn’t help but notice the distinct lack of anything in regards to her part being discussed. “So what about me. What’s needed of me to get this working?” The Carters exchanged a look. Maybe like she and Daniel, they didn’t need to say much. Because they just knew.

“I’ll be in the lab. Colonel O’Neill said he’d meet us there.” Nodding one last time at them both, Major Carter took her leave while Sam turned to face her.

Samantha reached out to take her hands, holding them like small girls might when playing London Bridges. “Ellie… you can stay. You’re not suffering from the entropic failure.”

“No, but I’m not about to abandon you! Or Charlie. Just tell me what to do.” Her eyebrows lifted over her glasses. “I could work the mirror. I know how to do it, Daniel doesn’t. I don’t need to be taught anything.”

“Elizabeth.” Samantha’s tone was firm, but rich in compassion. “We might not make this happen. We could die. I— I want to know that at least one of us will be able to carry our work on. In a world that can actually do something with it. And what if we do succeeded? What kind of world is going to be waiting for you? One that isn’t going to need archaeologists anytime soon, I can tell you that. So, what, you’ll turn into a little solider to carry the SGA on? That isn’t you, you know that.” The blonde sighed, squeezing her friend’s hands. “And… didn’t you say Skaa’ra was alive in this world?”

Elizabeth had to turn her face away. She’d be a liar of the worst caliber if she tried to deny she hadn’t already thought on that fact long and hard. But he wasn’t her Skaa’ra in this world. It may not be the same. “It wasn’t the same between you and Jack here. What if….”

“Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter have entirely different circumstances then Jack and I had. But from what you told me Daniel told you, the Skaa’ra of this world is all but identical. Find him, Ellie.” Tugging, Samantha pulled her into a hug. “Find him here. How could he not love you?”

Before there could be further arguments, Samantha pulled away and headed out of the infirmary. Elizabeth was left to wrestling through things alone.

Daniel was already dressed in his black BDUs, ready to go. He was just leaving his office with his spare pair of glasses when Elizabeth caught him. “We have to talk,” was all she gave him time for, stopping his door from closing with a firm straight armed gesture and breezing past him into the musty confines. Thinning his mouth, he turned back around to follow.

This time the door had the chance to close, a gentle frown setting up on Daniel’s face as he watched the other Doctor Jackson marvel at the cubby holes on the wall. Thankfully she was shaking herself back around before he had the chance to ask if this really needed his participation too. He was pretty sure, after all, that she could look at things without his help.

“Sam— my Sam wants me to stay. Kawalsky agrees with her.” Her hands found her hips as she turned to regard Daniel fully.

He had a nod ready. “It’d been mentioned at the briefing. The President’s invitation is still standing — you’re more then welcome to stay and work within the SGC.”

“Wouldn’t I be abandoning them, then?” Elizabeth could ask this of him when she couldn’t ask this of anyone else. He’d know what she meant, what she felt, the guilt she’d carry afterwards either way.

Yeah. Daniel knew what she was asking alright. Letting a sigh out, he sunk his chin to his chest as he thought. “You’re going to feel like you are, but you’re not. Not really. You can’t abandon someone who tells you exactly what to do.” His mouth curled into a soft grin before he went on. “They’re right, too, about the state of your world if we manage to pull this off. The SGA is going to have to completely revamp itself, and I don’t doubt for the next ten years at least it’s going to focus almost exclusively on gaining defensive technology. And that’s not to mention the state of the world in general outside the mountain. Doctor Carter and Major Kawalsky are marching straight back into a dystopia.”

“It feels wrong. Selfish.” She frowned and frowned hard, eyebrows drawn heavy across her brow.

“I know,” was his soft response. Reaching out, he gathered her into his arms and she eagerly accepted. Who knew why, but it was just so easy for them to do this. To touch, to comfort one another. There should be an awkward inhibition between them one would think, but instead… there simply wasn’t. There was just this: this other person who finally understood. “Stay,” he whispered into her hair.

“You don’t mind?” Her voice was just as much a whisper, breath warm on the part of his neck still exposed by his uniform. “I’d essentially be elbowing in on your entire life. I may be equipped differently, but we’re still both the Doctor Jackson who translated the secrets of the Stargate.”

The rumble of his amusement tickled her nose as his shoulder bounced. Kissing the top of her head, he pushed her back but held her by her shoulders. “I’ve never had a sister. Let alone a… a twin. Elbow in. Please.”

Elizabeth couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “You know how Jack hates cliches.” But the dotted line had all but been signed on this particular deal. She reached up to push his glasses back up his nose. Now all that stood in the way was one extremely dangerous mission through the Quantum Mirror. “Fine. But come back. I still want to see what you did to my studio.”

Their full mouths curled into smirks before Daniel shot off a crooked salute. Then he was leaving to join the rest of his team, and Elizabeth was out to find Major Carter and offer her helping hands. On this side of the glass.

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