FIC: Beginnings (SG-1, Sam/Janet, PG, 12100 words) [1/2]

[cdybedahl]

Over a year ago I wrote my first Sam/Janet story. It was about when the alternate Sam comes through the quantum mirror, and how she discovered that in this (FSVO "this") universe Sam and Janet had a relationship. It ended with her going back to her own universe, carrying a letter from our Janet to mirror-Janet. I got a bunch of comments along the lines of "So what happened then?!" about mirror-Sam and the letter. Well, this is what.

Note that this story only features one character from the actual series (mirror-Sam). The rest is made up, based on the usual stuff. So I guess it counts as AU-fic, or something along those lines. Just keep in mind that the people here aren't quite the normal Sam and Janet, ok?

The text is too long for a single LJ post, so it'll be split in two.

Beginnings, part 1

Written by Calle Dybedahl

Arrival

Colonel Janet Fraiser woke to the sound of birds singing and green-tinged light filtering through the fabric of her tent. The night chill still lingered, and drops of condensation lined the metal rods that held the tent up.

She adored this time of day. Sure, the birds weren't actually birds as such, being more closely analogous to Earth lizards, but their sounds were strikingly similar. And the light would still be a slightly strange color even if she left the tent, although her vision had almost adjusted to that.

The sound of a knuckle knocking on a wooden surface came through the tent fabric. She kept a small table next to the tent just for that.

"Colonel?" a voice said outside. Young, male. Her aide, lieutenant Greensmith.

"Just a moment, lieutenant," she said, pitching her voice loud. "I'll be out in a minute."

"No hurry, Colonel," came the reply. "There's an hour yet before the new batch are due to come through the gate. I just wanted to make sure you had time to get some coffee before that."

Janet couldn't help smiling. Greensmith was a good boy. Brevet-promoted in the field to fill one of the holes left after far too many killed soldiers. Just like she'd been. A few short months before, she'd been a captain. A field research medical officer, bright enough to reasonably expect an eventual promotion to Major and a position of Chief Medical Officer somewhere.

"Thank you, lieutenant," she said. "I'll be there in time."

Except there'd been a sudden alien invasion, wiping out all humanity's major population centers with orbital bombardment. By chance, she'd been at the top secret off-world base called Beta Site when the Goa'uld struck. By the time they'd managed to contact anybody in authority back home, they'd just told her that she was a colonel now, and to convert the base to Earth's first self-sufficient colony.

She made her way out of the sleeping bag and dressed. Her uniform still had her captain's bars on it, with something approximating a colonel's eagle drawn in marker pen next to them. She kind of liked it that way, so she hadn't even tried to get proper insignia. There were far more important things to get anyway, now that they could get things from Earth at all again.

One by one, the day's concerns popped into her mind as she gave her short hair a rough brushing. With some luck, she'd be able to squeeze in a quick shower after the next batch of colonists had safely arrived. There'd been a cryptic message about some VIP coming through, so she felt she had to be there, even though the regular arrivals were pretty much routine now.

She left the tent in search of caffeine.

When the time came for the Stargate to open, the early morning sunshine had been replaced with a steady drizzle. The gate itself was on top of a small and flat hill, looking out over the base camp turned permanent village. A wide path had been worn in the grass of the hill, and some day soon now they really should cover it with gravel or something, so it didn't turn to a long, steep mud pool every time it rained.

The gate started to spin. Chevrons slammed into place, and the activation bubble annihilated some raindrops before it settled into the familiar silvery ripple. A few seconds later, colonists started coming through.

"See anybody you recognize?" Janet said. She was standing off to the side, with Greensmith next to her holding a large umbrella.

"Not really," he said. "But don't VIPs usually go last?"

"Or first," Janet said. "How many are due to transfer over today?"

"About forty," he said. "With materials for another three prefab huts, hopefully. Plus food, fertilizer and a few more strains of barley to try out."

Janet sighed.

"You know," she said. "This really isn't what I signed up for."

"Me neither, sir," Greensmith said. "But, you know, this is probably more important than anything the recruiter even knew about."

"It probably is, at that..."

Janet's voice trailed off into silence. She'd just seen someone she recognized come through the gate. A scientist from the old Stargate Command. Someone she'd heard a lot about in the last few weeks.

"Is that Samantha Carter?" Greensmith said, disbelief clearly audible in his voice.

"Looks like it," Janet said. "She'd qualify as a VIP, I guess."

She'd met Carter back at the SGC, before the attack. They'd cooperated on a few research projects, figuring out the function of stuff that Janet and the rest of SG-3 had brought back through the gate. They'd got along quite well, and might have become friends if they'd seen more of each other. But then the Goa'uld attacked, and somehow Carter managed to bring in the Asgard and save the world.

When the gate closed, Janet headed for Carter. Nobody else she recognized had come through, and if there had been someone more VIP-worthy than Carter she would have recognized them. Carter was dressed unassumingly in khaki-colored pants, a sensible-looking coat and sturdy boots. Her long, blonde hair was tied up in a pony tail, which hung down onto the top her well-stuffed backpack.

She looked good.

"Doctor Carter?" Janet said when she was close enough to be heard.

Carter turned to her. An odd expression passed over her face, and then she smiled and offered her hand.

"Captain Fraiser!" she said. "It's a pleasure to see a familiar face."

Janet shook her hand.

"Actually, it's Colonel Fraiser these days," she said. "Or just plain Janet."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Carter said. She gestured vaguely towards Janet's shoulders. "I thought those meant..."

Janet smiled wryly. "They do," she said. "I'll get proper ones as soon as we reach the industrial age."

Carter's eyes flicked towards the fairly shabby camp in the distance.

"It's still rough, huh?" she said.

"It gets better," Janet said. "But you'll see for yourself soon enough. What brings you here, anyway?"

"They didn't say?" Carter looked surprised. "I'm one of the colonists. I'm here to stay. And help bring about that industrial age, hopefully."

"Oh," Janet said. "No, we only heard that someone important was coming through. I assumed it'd be some bigwig here for a visit."

She held out her hand to Carter.

"Samantha Carter," she said. "I hereby welcome you most warmly to the planet Promise. You'll be staying in..."

She turned to her aide. "Greensmith? Where will she be staying?"

Greensmith flipped through his clipboard full of papers.

"Building 24," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't spot your name earlier, ma'am, we could've arranged something better. This is just a bed in an eight-person hut."

"No, no, that's fine," Carter said. "I've had quite enough of special treatment for a few years already."

"In that case," Janet said, "I'd better let you catch up with the other colonists so you don't miss orientation."

"Yeah," Carter said. "Um, will I see you later?"

"Of course," Janet said. "It's still a very small world."

"Right. Of course."

Carter nodded at Greensmith and set off down the hill, hurrying to catch up with the rest.

Janet turned to Greensmith. "Did she seem a little weird to you?" she said.

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I never met her before."

"The one in the far corner on the left is free," someone said when Samantha stopped inside the door to building 24 and looked confused.

"Thanks," she mumbled.

Most of the building was a single large room, with windows on two sides and beds between the windows. There were wooden screens between the beds, to give some semblance of privacy. There was also a chest of drawers and a tiny table in each partition. The floor, walls and ceiling were made out of hastily painted plywood, and the furniture also showed clear signs of being cheap and quickly made. At the head of the bed folded and plastic-wrapped bed linen lay.

Samantha dropped her backpack on her bed and sat down next to it.

Look at the bright side, she thought. At least it's in the same universe where you were born. You're off Earth, with all it's bad memories. You're in a new place, where you can build a new life. And...

Her hand went to the pocket where she kept the letter.

All you have to do is work up the courage to hand it over. It's not that hard. The other Samantha Carter wouldn't hesitate.

"Hey," someone said.

Samantha looked up. A curvy, fairly young woman with long black hair was leaning against the screen separating Samantha's bit of the room from the next one.

"You missed the instructions, didn't you?" the woman said.

"Yeah," Samantha said. "I got caught up."

"Wasn't much anyway. Tomorrow we start working. We live here until we build something better. We eat whatever the military gives us until we grow or hunt something else. Dinner's at six. My name's Louisa."

Samantha looked at her.

"They gave you a new name?" she asked.

"No," Louisa said. "That part I added myself."

"Good," Samantha said. "I got a bit worried there for a moment."

"No you didn't."

Samantha smiled. "No," she said. "I didn't. I'm Samantha."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Louisa said. "I hope you don't snore."

She turned and returned into her own area.

A new life indeed.

Samantha got up from the bed and shrugged out of her coat. She picked the backpack up and opened it. If she was going to live here until she helped build a new home, she might as well unpack and get as comfortable as possible.

Dinner was served under a canvas roof spread over a large number of sturdy wooden tables and lots of rather rickety chairs. Samantha was no expert at judging crowds, but she guessed that somewhere close to five hundred people gathered to eat. The food wasn't exactly haute cuisine, but it was hot and plentiful. She, like everybody around here, ate heartily. Back on Earth, it had been a while since she'd been sure where her next meal would come from. One got into the habit of eating a lot when given the chance.

"Mind if I sit down?"

Samantha looked up. Colonel Fraiser was standing on the other side of the table, dinner tray in hand.

"No, of course not!" she said. "Please, have a seat."

Janet sat down.

"So," she said. "How's Earth?"

"Don't you get reports?" Samantha asked.

"Yes, I do," Janet said. "But I don't have the time to read them."

She put her fork down into a piece of vegetable that looked a lot like a green carrot.

"Our first extraterrestrial staple food," she said. "Contains several vitamins, a couple of valuable trace elements, and lots of digestible starch for energy. Almost better than potatoes. There's only one drawback."

Samantha waited.

"And that is?" she said when Janet popped the piece into her mouth, making it obvious that she wasn't going to continue without prompting.

Janet swallowed, then sighed.

"It tastes like broccoli," she said.

"That's a drawback?"

Janet put down her fork and glared at Samantha.

"I'm not sure if I want you on my planet," she said.

Samantha couldn't help but smile.

"I'm a pretty good scientist," she said. "If you let me stay, maybe I can find you something that's just as healthy but tastes like chocolate chip ice cream."

Janet pretended to think about it.

"All right," she said. "You can stay."

She put another forkful of beef stew into her mouth. In between a pair of lips exactly like ones that Samantha had kissed not long ago. Other lips that regularly kissed another Samantha Carter.

"Have I got something on my face?"

Samantha's train of thought abruptly derailed, and she felt herself blush.

"No," she said. "I was just... thinking."

"Nice thoughts, by the look of it."

Samantha gathered what courage she had.

"Um," she said. "I've got something for you."

Janet looked surprised. "For me?" she said. "Why doesn't it come through regular channels?"

"Because it's not from a regular source," Samantha said. "Not even close."

She reached into her coat pocket and took out the envelope she'd been carrying from the other universe. It was wrinkled and not particularly clean, but it was still intact and the writing on its front was still clearly legible. She handed it to Colonel Fraiser.

Janet looked at it and frowned.

"Dr Janet Fraiser," she read out loud. "No rank?"

"No," Samantha said. "Please open and read it in private."

"Oh-kay," Janet said. "Since you ask so nicely."

She put the envelope in her own pocket.

"Now," she continued. "Tell me about Earth."

Colonel Janet Fraiser sat down on her bed. It was long since dark outside, and she was exhausted. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day for everything that needed to be done, even with the local days of twenty-six hours and change. There was always another report to read, another plan to decide on, another crisis to handle, another personell problem to sort out, another...

She sighed and fell back onto the bed. From one of her pockets came the sound of crumpling paper.

Oh. Right. The mysterious letter Carter had given her. She fished it out of the pocket and looked at it.

"Dr Janet Fraiser," the writing on the front said. Handwritten, not typed.

Suddenly, she frowned and sat up.

Handwritten in her own handwriting. What the...?

She fished a knife from its sheath on her belt, quickly sliced the envelope open and fished out the paper waiting inside.

"Hello, Pudgy," the letter began. A chill traveled down Janet's spine. It had been a long time since she'd heard that nickname, and she'd thought that the only other person who knew of it had died in a car crash back in 1989.

"Don't worry," the letter continued, "nobody else knows about it. And if you burn this letter after you've read it, nobody ever will."

Blackmail? But no, she couldn't believe that of Carter. And the letter wasn't threatening anything.

"In college freshman year, you and Rebecca Dayton drank way, way too much at a frat party. You both fell asleep in her bed, and when you threw up in the middle of the night you just left and let her think she'd done it. You felt so bad for that that you bought her a Christmas present that was far more expensive than you could really afford. As a result, you lived off ramen noodles for an entire month."

A wry smile forced its way onto her face. Ah, college. So much fun. So many stupid acts.

Stupid acts that nobody else learned about. Ever. The smile turned to a frown.

"Senior year, you dated Maria Rodriguez for three months even though you couldn't stand her personality. But she had the most fantastic legs you'd ever seen, and when she got stoned she was absolutely amazing in bed."

Janet frowned again. She'd never told anybody about that, and at the time she'd lied through her teeth even to her friends about her feelings for Maria. For somebody else to know that, they'd have to be a mind reader.

Or they'd have to be Janet Fraiser. She looked again at the writing on the envelope. It still looked exactly like her own.

"Have I got your attention yet?" the letter went on. "I'll assume I have, and that you're dying to know where this letter comes from and who wrote it. To answer the second question first, I am Captain Janet Fraiser, Chief Medical Officer at Stargate Command, U.S. Air Force. And I am writing this to you from another reality."

She put the letter aside, got up from the bed and paced the tent. She had to catch her breath a little. Sure, she'd heard that Carter had somehow managed to get assistance from an alternate Earth, the people of which had told her how to contact the Asgard. But so far it had just been a fantastic story, something she did believe in but that still wasn't quite real.

A letter from herself made it real, and suddenly the weight of it crashed down on her like a ton of bricks. There were other Earths out there. With other Janet Fraisers. One of them was, obviously, CMO at Stargate Command. But there must be more, ones who made their choices differently than she had. One who did drop out of college to be an aid worker in Africa. One who did try for the acting career. One who got caught smoking dope at USAF Academy and got kicked out.

It made her head spin. She sat down on the bed again to read the rest of the letter.

"This is a log saw," the sergeant said. She held up a metal bow with a yard-long saw blade along the open side. "This, you use all by yourself, on logs that aren't too large."

The new arrivals were sitting on a slope out in the forest. The trees around them and the undergrowth looked a lot like that of southern Canada, if you didn't look too close. In front of them a couple of combat engineers stood. The task for the day was to cut down trees and make planks out of them. The planks would then be left to dry for a few months, and after that they could be used to build houses.

The sergeant held up a saw that was nothing but a foot-high and two-yard-long saw blade with a large handle at each end.

"This," she said, "is a timber saw. It takes two people to use it. We'll use it to cut logs down to planks. To do that, we place a log over a thin trench and saw up and down. Being on top sucks, because you have to straddle the trench. Being on bottom sucks because you get all the sawdust in your face."

Louisa turned towards Samantha.

"Gee," she said. "She makes it sound so tempting."

"Well," Samantha said. "Fresh air, exercise, what's not to like?"

Louisa turned back and looked at the sergeant, who was going on about how to properly use an axe.

"I could get to like her," she said. "Just look at those arms! Do you think she prefers top or bottom?"

"Maybe she prefers men."

Louisa snorted. "Then she's pretty much out of luck, isn't she?"

Samantha looked at her, confused. "What do you mean?"

"Take a look around you," Louisa said. "Check out the scenery."

She did. She couldn't see all of the people from where she sat, but more than three quarters of them were clearly visible. And of the thirty or so she could see, about twenty-five were women.

She looked questioningly at Louisa.

"We've got a whole planet to fill, remember?" Louisa said. "Better to start with a lot of females. It'll even out in the next generation."

Samantha felt stunned. It made sense, of course, but to use that sort of cold-hearted planning on humans... was probably necessary when it looked likely that the Earth might be destroyed at any moment.

"Didn't you pay attention at orientation back home?" Louisa said. "They covered all this after we were selected."

Samantha looked away.

"I wasn't at the orientation," she said. "I kind of called in a bunch of favors to get here, so I joined in late."

"Really," Louisa asked.

Before Samantha had a chance to make up a response, a two-person timber saw landed between them.

"You two," the sergeant said, "make planks. Do you remember what I said about that?"

They both looked up at her.

"Check," Louisa said. "Top keeps legs spread, bottom gets everything in the face."

The sergeant looked at Louisa for what felt to Samantha as a very long while.

"Yeah," she finally said. "That's it exactly. Just let me know if you need any help with that."

"So much for your theory," Louisa said when the sergeant was out of earshot. "I'll let you know tomorrow what she prefers."

Samantha laughed.

"You do that," she said. She got up from the ground and hefted the saw onto her shoulder.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get to work."

Towards sunset, they dragged their aching bodies out of the forest and back to the camp. Louisa had become steadily less talkative as the day proceeded, which Samantha quite liked. She wasn't much good at the social chatter at the best of times, and while she found she rather liked the immediacy of physical work it left her little energy to use for talking. With sunset fast approaching, they walked in silence through the fresh resiny smell left the trees. Or maybe it was coming from her hair. She and Louisa had kept switching positions in the plank-cutting trench, so both of them had sawdust stuck all over them.

"I can't make up my mind which I want more," Louisa said as the entered the camp, "dinner or a shower."

"Shower," Samantha said. "You can eat while you discuss the logistics of plank-cutting with the sergeant."

"Well, yes," Louisa said. "But I could equally well eat now and we do the discussing in the shower."

"Nah, I don't know," Samantha said. "Call me an old-fashioned prude if you will, but I don't think you should do the common showering until the relationship is at least half an hour old."

"You may have a point," Louisa said. "Let it be shower first. You coming?"

"No, too hungry," Samantha said. "I'll..."

"Doctor Carter?"

They both turned towards the interrupting voice. It came from lieutenant Greensmith.

"Yes?" Samantha said.

"Colonel Fraiser wonders if you'd like to have dinner with her," he said.

"The Colonel?" Louisa said. "Now I see why you had little interest in a mere sergeant!"

"It's not like that," Samantha said. "We knew each other before... Before."

She turned to Greensmith.

"Sure," she said. "I'll come. When?"

"Would an hour be enough for you to clean up?" he said. "There's no hurry, there's enough paperwork to keep the Colonel busy far into the night."

"Yeah," Samantha said. "That'll be fine."

"Good," he said. "An hour then, in the Colonel's tent."

"In her tent?" Louisa said when he'd left. "Do you think there will be candles?"

"It's not like that," Samantha protested. "We're hardly even friends."

"Right," Louisa said. "Sure."

"That was some letter you gave me," Janet said.

There were no candles. There was the inside of a well lived-in and quite big tent, with full standing height and a separate bedroom. In the outer room there was a desk, a few chairs, a couple of propane lanterns, one of which stood on a table. On the table a dinner had been laid out. With proper porcelain plates and silver cutlery, although the food was still based on packages from Earth augmented with some local vegetables.

"I have no idea what it said," Samantha said. "She just told me it'd be enough to convince you that it's for real, and..."

They'd passed through the appetizer before the letter got brought up. Until then, it had just been small talk. About logging, mostly.

"It did that all right," Janet said. "It feels very strange to get a letter from another version of yourself."

Samantha grimaced. "Try meeting another version of yourself," she said. "I still can't decide what weirded me out more, the similarities or the differences."

Janet pulled a gas-powered heater closer and started transferring food to her own plate.

"And she was in a relationship with the other version of me," she said.

"Yes," Samantha said.

"Did they look happy?"

"Yes. Very much so."

Janet pushed the heater over to Samantha, and watched her while she served herself. She was a beautiful woman, there was no question about that. Even now, with a few bruises and scratches, and the odd spot of hard-to-remove resin on her skin. She was smart, kind of funny and generally pleasant.

And Janet recommended her to herself. She alternated between finding that tempting and creepy.

"Is it why you came here?" she asked.

Samantha concentrated on her food for a little while.

"No," she said. "Or yes. Partly. I think."

"Well, that seems to cover all eventualities."

Samantha laughed a little.

"It does, doesn't it?"

She looked up at Janet.

"I've been carrying that letter around for months now," she said. "At times I was badly tempted to open it and see what it said, but... In the end I decided that Earth held nothing but bad memories for me, and that I wanted to try to start again elsewhere. Then it was just a question of exactly where to go. And this was the only place that really had anything that set it apart. So I came here."

Janet drank some orange juice. Reconstituted, from concentrate shipped in from Earth.

"And what set this place apart was me," she said.

Samantha briefly tilted her head to the side. "Well, yeah," she said. "I'm not expecting anything, it's just that..."

She caught Janet's gaze.

"The alternate me told me to give myself the chance to be happy. That's what I tried to do by coming here. Giving myself a chance."

Janet liked the sound of that.

"So you don't expect me to tear your clothes off and drag you to my bed?" she said.

Samantha frowned. "I don't think I'd like it if you did. I kind of want to get to know people first."

Janet smiled.

"Good," she said. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands.

"If this was an old kind of date, on Earth, before," she said, "then I'd ask about where you came from and what you'd done and who you knew and things like that. But now, asking that kind of thing would only be painful."

Samantha looked at her.

"This is a date?" she said.

"I'm having dinner alone with a beautiful, smart and nice woman," Janet said. "Sounds like date to me."

"Doesn't a date require at least a minimal level of interest?"

"You choose this planet because I'm here. That has to count as at least a minimal level of interest."

Samantha gestured vaguely towards Janet and then herself.

"I was more thinking of the other way around," she said.

"Did you miss the part about beautiful, smart and nice?" Janet said.

"Well, no, but there are plenty of women like that here."

Janet raised an eyebrow. "If there's anybody here even half as smart as you," she said, "I want to know about her right away. We need all the smart people we can get if we're going to survive here."

Samantha looked surprised.

"I'm just an astrophysicist," she said. "That's completely useless here."

"An astrophysicist with extensive experience in deciphering alien technology, extraterrestrial chemistry and non-human biology," Janet said. "And who keeps her head on straight in a crisis."

"Yes, but..."

"Come on!" Janet said. "Don't sell yourself short! You know quite well that if you could publish the work you've done for Stargate Command you'd have Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry and medicine."

Samantha looked away.

"If Stockholm still existed, maybe," she said.

"Yes," Janet said. "Sorry. It's difficult not to mention anything from before."

"Yeah," Samantha said. She looked back towards Janet.

"So, this is a date, is it?" she said.

"Definitely," Janet said.

"Are your dates usually teetotal?"

"Well, no, but any kind of drinkable alcohol is way down the priority list for shipment from Earth. There's been talk about setting up a still, but..."

Her voice trailed off as Samantha took a pint bottle from her coat pocket and put it on the table. "Glendronach Single Malt 12yr", the label on it said.

"Want some?" Samantha said.

"There's some dessert," Janet said. "With coffee. Whisky would go well with that."

"Good," Samantha said. She turned to her cooling dinner.

"So," she said. "What are your plans for the future, Colonel Fraiser?"

Janet looked at her.

"Please," she said. "Call me Janet."

It was late at night when Samantha returned to her alcove. She and Janet had ended up drinking the entire bottle of whisky, while lamenting that it almost certainly was the only one of its kind on the entire planet. They'd talked, about wishes and wants and, in spite of their intentions, of what had been. Samantha had told the story of how she saved the world, and had tried to describe how it had felt to kiss herself from another reality. Janet had, of course, a never-ending number of stories from her off-world missions. Samantha had read the reports from all of them already, but there were plenty of things that never made it into the official version for some reason or another. Many of them highly entertaining, it had turned out.

So it was with a smile on her lips, a song humming in her throat and the tingle from a quick peck on her cheek that Samantha made her slightly wobbly way through the darkness towards building 24 and her bed. She made an effort not to make any noise after she entered the house, so she wouldn't wake up her housemates. The irritatingly sober little voice at the back of her mind reminded her that drunk people never were as silent as they thought and she might as well not even try, but she ignored that. She wasn't particularly drunk anyway, she thought as she pulled on her oversized sleeping t-shirt and snuggled in under the blankets. Just enough to be nicely fuzzy. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the night. The creaking of the building in the wind. The chirping of the cricket-analogs outside. The snoring of Elma over in the corner. The soft crying of Louisa in the next partition over.

Samantha's eyes snapped open. Crying? Without thinking about it, she slid out of bed and tiptoed over to Louisa's bed. She sat down on the edge of it, behind Louisa's back.

"Hey," she said. "Bad date with the sergeant?"

It was a few moments before Louisa had caught her breath enough to reply.

"No," she said, "the date was fine."

"Are you going to see her again?" Samantha said, since she couldn't think of anything better.

"Maybe," Louisa said. "I don't know."

Samantha reached out and stroked Louisa's shoulder. Louisa turned over to face her, grabbed her hand and held on as if it was a life line and she was drowning. Without letting go of the hand, Samantha moved so she was leaning against the head of the bed, and Louisa's head was resting on her stomach.

"Why are you crying?" Samantha whispered. She stroked Louisa's dark hair with her free hand, hoping that it'd be taken as the comforting gesture it was meant as.

A strangled, bitter laugh mixed with the sobs.

"It's stupid," Louisa said.

"Pain's never stupid," Samantha said.

Louisa was silent for so long that Samantha started wondering if she'd fallen asleep.

"Back home," she finally said, "before..."

Samantha kept stroking her hair.

"I was never one for long relationships," Louisa went on. "I'd go clubbing, meet someone, be with them for a night or a week, move on. Some of my friends insisted that I had to be unhappy, but I wasn't. I liked my life."

Samantha remained silent.

"Thing was, after every time I'd met someone new, I'd call my sister. It was like a ritual we had. I'd call and say, hey, I met someone new. She'd say, wow, that's great, maybe this time it's Miss Right. And I'd say no, she's not, but she's got a great ass, or she's fantastic in the sack, or she's really funny, or she can get free tickets to Rangers games, or whatever it was that was special about them."

She wasn't sobbing any more, but Samantha could feel tears growing a wet patch in her shirt.

"So when I came back here tonight, I wanted to call her," Louisa said. "Only I can't do that ever again, because she was on Manhattan when the fucking Goa'uld blasted New York City."

Samantha closed her eyes and buried her face in Louisa's hair. For her inner eye, images of Jack being hit by multiple staff weapon blasts flickered past.

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled.

Again, the sad, strangled laugh.

"You lost people too, I'm sure," Louisa said. "I know I'm very, very far from the only one who lost someone. They said in the briefings before we came here that somewhere between a hundred million and a billion people worldwide died in the attack. And do you know what scares me most about those numbers?"

"No," Samantha mumbled. "What?"

"The span of them," Louisa said. "There's nine hundred million people that may or may not be dead, and we just don't know. It scares me stupid."

Samantha turned her head and rested her cheek on Louisa's scalp. For a while they just sat here, finding comfort in simple human presence.

"Sometimes I dream of her," Louisa said. Her voice was stable again, but still full of tired sadness.

"Your sister?" Samantha asked.

"Yes," Louisa said. "I dream that she survived the initial blasts, and got caught under the rubble. That she lay there for days, slowly dying. That she's scared and cries for her big sister to come save her, like when we were kids. I wake with my heart racing a thousand miles an hour, and I just want to rush over there and dig through the concrete with my bare hands."

"I watched my husband die," Samantha said. "He was shot, only yards away from me. There was nothing I could..."

Her voice died off.

"Oh," Louisa said. "I'm sorry."

"At least I never had to doubt what happened."

Again, the sat silent for a time. Again, Louisa broke the silence.

"Do you think it'll ever get better?" she said.

"Yes," Samantha said, without hesitation. "We're alive. We'll heal, and we'll rebuild, and we'll build anew. We just have to decide to do it, to go forward instead if getting stuck in what's gone."

She could almost hear Louisa think.

"Hey, Samantha?" she said after a while.

"Yes?" Samantha said.

"I met someone new."

It took her a few moments to get what Louisa was doing. When she did, she felt tears well up in her own eyes.

"Wow, that's great," Samantha said. "Maybe this time it's miss Right."

"Nah," Louisa said. "But you wouldn't believe what she can do with her tongue."

Samantha smiled through her tears.

"Tell me all about it," she said.

Comments

[eclecticfan.livejournal.com]

"I met someone new."

::sniff::

well, damn - made me all teary-eyed, very moving

loved reading the letter Janet wrote Janet - very neat