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"I'm looking for something a little easier to shout in a crisis, here."
...but before I try to wrangle my brain into giving a coherent explanation of the whole Ba'al|Sam|Anat saga, I'm going to do part 2 of the WIP meme. This one for bits of stuff I've written in my braintic file that I have no actual plans for fleshing out and writing, but have enough of a hook into or idea of context that I could work them into actual stories if I ever got the mind to.
Sam being, at the moment, my favorite character (having taken the title from Daniel some time ago), the magibrain likes to typecast itself as a Sam whump writer. This is why you don't want to be my favorite character: it only ever ends in pain. To be honest, one of the reasons I don't pursue writing a lot of these as eagerly as some of my other projects boils down to "There's only so many times you can write 'Something horrible happens to Sam, the boys go D: !!' before there's no drama left in it any more."
Anyway, these have braintic names. We're moving up in the world. One day there'll be a WIP meme with the fics that actually earn titles.
And then one day I might even post those fics.But that'd just be crazy.
=
. duat
SG-1 is consulting on some offworld project when a Goa'uld decides he Really Really Wants that planet and sends a bunch of ships down to claim it. The Tau'ri contingent finds its forces split, and the people nearest the Stargate are forced to retreat back through in hopes of bringing reinforcements to break through the Jaffa lines and get to the people stranded. Yeah, that doesn't happen. ...anyway, Sam is stuck on the planet behind enemy lines with one other Major, a Captain, and a bunch of Lieutenants, and ends up being the de-facto leader in trying to keep them all alive until the SGC can figure out how the hell to get them home. It's a grand fun romp through testing everyone's faith in the "no one gets left behind doctrine," as well as Sam's perfectionism turning a laser sight on both her command ability and her woodsmanship, but to be honest, half the appeal is Major Nathan Cwirko and his efforts to keep them all sane.
-
Cwirko had been hoping for one quiet day since they were cut off on this hellhole. At least it seemed they'd finally got one.
While the lieutenants argued about whether or not there was anything worth catching in the river, Cwirko flopped down on the dirt where the curve of the cliff and a fallen tree, draped over with vegetation, made a natural dugout. Of course, three seconds later there was Carter, eyeing it like she wasn't sure whether or not it would collapse, and then turning to eye the entire area like she was subjecting it to the same concerns.
Cwirko flexed his toes, leaned forward, and sighed. "Major, sit down. Take your shoes off."
"I'm fine," came Carter's automatic answer. Cwirko raised his eyebrows, focusing his attention on working some goddamn Duat stickerburrs out of the knots in his bootlaces.
"Never said you weren't fine," he said, half-beneath his breath. "We all know you're fine. Still doesn't mean you can't take two minutes to put your feet in the river. Who knows? Might even do you some good."
Carter, by that time, had completed a circuit of the tiny dugout and discovered that there were no Jaffa in the walls or hiding under any of the dirtpiles in the corners. She stopped, hand on her Ka-bar, looking at Cwirko strangely. If he had to guess, he'd say she'd only caught the last few words of what he'd been saying.
"The more you don't relax," he said, keeping his voice quiet and firm, "the more everyone else doesn't relax, too. And since you never relax, that gets to be a problem. So if you'll take a suggestion..." He glanced past her, scoping what he could see by habit. The forest on the river's other bank was clear of hostiles; Washburne and Costanza were standing at the near edge, one fishing things out of the river and the other scanning the treeline. Cwirko's eyes snapped back to Carter's face. "Siddown, take off your shoes, and dip your feet in the river like I'm doing. You might even enjoy it."
"If we need to run," Carter began.
Cwirko pried one boot off, and turned to the other. "You're wound up so tight you're gonna sprain something," he said. "Last we saw, Jaffas were miles off and going in the wrong direction. Take five."
Carter sighed, and looked to the trees again. Yes, Cwirko thought, there will definitely be Jaffa there this time.
Then, at least, she gave in, crouching down and working out her bootlaces. Cwirko glanced up – her laces were free of burrs and stained but not not caked over with mud, and came untied in a fraction of time his had. He stared. How, in–?
"There is something not quite human about you," he groused, and Carter tossed a boot at him. He caught it as she turned to join the boys at the river.
"Major, I'm hiding your shoes," he called, voice pitched not to carry.
"I know where you sleep," Carter called back, just as low.
He grinned. Hell, maybe there was hope yet. So long as he could keep them all joking.
=
. mindtrap
Sam gets hit by some sort of experimental energy weapon and gets rushed back to the SGC for medical attention. She's delirious, muttering about things that make no sense – like needing a new set of dress blues. Then she lapses into a not-coma characterized by elevated brain activity and constant REM. And her condition is degrading. Tok'ra intelligence reveals that this was a new weaponization of the sub-psychic interference that also fuels a Kara Kesh; it's locked Sam inside her own brain with a piece of unfinished mental/emotional business that has to be resolved in her mind before she can be brought out of it. (See also: Forever In A Day.) Osiris has recently demonstrated on Daniel that recall devices can be used to put a person into someone else's dreams, so after some discussion, Jack links up to see if he can bring her out, or can bring enough information out that he can go back in with a solution. He finds himself re-living portions of the same two days with her: about six months before Daniel opened the Stargate, while Sam was still a Captain working at the Pentagon. Unfortunately, this seems to mean her memories within the mind trap are also restricted to that time – she has no idea who Jack is, and soon becomes suspicious of this unknown Colonel following her around and taking an interest in her life...
-
Every time. Every time, she left the lecture chatting away with General Kerrigan, Kerrigan turned to retrieve his forgotten briefcase, she went on ahead, came to the doors to the hotel concourse, and stopped. And every time, the world fuzzed out at the edges and closed in on them like a old movie's circle fade, and the next scene was invariably the informal lunch two days earlier. And Jack would be stuck skipping from highlighted memory to highlighted memory along with Carter again, listening to lectures on the future of aeronautics. And he really didn't want to listen to those again. He'd begun to understand things, this last time.
But now the last lecture was out, the formal reception for Dr. Whats-his-name was about to begin, and Carter was leaving the conference room with General Kerrigan. He watched her reflection in the vase he'd stationed himself cattycorner from – she looked around, probably keeping an eye out for him, then went on toward the concourse.
Like clockwork.
He gave them forty seconds before following, keeping a casual-to-all-appearances distance and making sure to be conveniently elsewhere whenever it looked like Carter might pause or check her surroundings again. After a minute or so Kerrigan passed back by him, already looking a bit fuzzy around the edges. He ducked down a different hallway – her mind had provided the layout of the hotel, and that, at least, seemed stable – and turned the last corner to find a pistol pointed at him.
Kimber Pro Carry, it looked like. Good concealed weapon. Lightweight, light recoil, compact design, still more than enough firepower to make him very, very dead if need be at this range. He had no idea what that would mean for his real body, lying on an Infirmary bed with a recall device attached to his temple. What was that line? If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life?
"What?" he said, and put up both hands. "Oh, come on. Who brings a concealed weapon to an aeronautics conference?"
"I'm trapped in some kind of temporal anomaly, and I'm being stalked by someone with privileged information impersonating a member of the United States Air Force," Carter answered. "It seemed like the thing to do."
He'd been about to ask where she'd even managed to get a concealed weapon in the past two days, if she'd only picked it up to deal with him, but that line of inquiry was neatly derailed. "'scuse me. Impersonating?"
"I called in a favor," she said, and Jack got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Had someone pull information on Colonel Jack O'Neill. Apparently he's retired, living in Winter Park, Colorado."
"Aha! See?" he said, which was an inappropriate response to someone holding a pistol trained on him, but he didn't care. He could hear the world collapsing. "That's proof your mind is inventing things from what you know. Sara moved to Winter Park to be closer to her father; when I was re-activated for the first Stargate mission, I was living in Boulder, and... you're never going to buy this, are you?"
"That I'm actually delusional, under the influence of alien technology, nine years from now," Carter said "...no."
"Exactly. It sounds ridiculous. No one in their right mind would manufacture such a shoddy story, so it's got to be true."
She didn't look convinced.
Jack groaned, flexing his fingers on his still-raised hands. "Okay, what are you going to do? Hold me up until General Kerrigan gets back?"
"He's not coming back," Carter said. "That's not how it worked. He went to get his briefcase; I went on ahead. When he came through here I'd already gone on into the concourse."
...this was new. "Now, how can you know that?"
Carter shook her head, but the pistol remained steady. "I don't know how I know it; I just know," she said.
"That has to be it," he said. "Listen, something is keeping you in here. Something your mind won't let you put aside. We solve that, we can get you out of this, and I could help if you'd just tell me what's going on!"
She was silent.
He groaned. The world was beginning to go navy-blue-grey and staticky at the edges, and felt like it was tunneling. "Look, Carter. –Captain. Just tell me what happens behind that door."
"It's classified," Carter said.
"How is it classified? We're in a public hotel at a conference. What's going to happen here?"
She didn't answer.
"Fine," he said. "Then don't give me any of the details. Be vague. Say, 'I had a conversation with someone.' Or 'I saw something.' Anything. Throw me a bone. Throw me a verb!"
"It's classified," she said again, and the static grew one note closer.
"Listen," he said, waving a finger at... the edge of reality. "You hear that? That means that this thing is about to start over, and unless you're really looking forward to having that disappointing Reuben for the sixth time in a row, you know you have to do something different now."
"No." She shook her head. "There has to be something I missed. Something I could have seen before this happened."
"Before what happened?"
She grit her teeth. "If I can just–"
"Carter!"
Either the volume or the familiarity in his tone brought her up short.
He pressed both, raising his voice over the rising noise of the reset. "You're not going to find anything in your memories you haven't seen the last five times through. That headache you've been feeling? That's your brain succumbing to the trap. It's not going to get better. We have to figure out what's going on to bring you out of this, and we can't do that until we know what happened. The only way out of this is through that door!"
She took a deep breath, and her hands tightened on her gun. She'd grit her teeth, set her shoulders – it was an odd look, on her, in her dress blues. After a moment, he placed it.
Of course. This wasn't seven-years-in-the-field Carter; this was Pentagon-lab-coat Carter, who'd never lacked grit but wasn't leading a life where daily doses of adrenaline really factored in. "Whatever it is, you're afraid of it, aren't you?"
"What do you know about what happened here?" she asked. Her voice was deceptively quiet – either ready to shoot him, or looking for answers. Hard to tell.
"Wild guesses," he said. "Look, I know you don't know that I know you, but I... know you. And that's beginning to freak me out a little."
He could feel a tug at the back of his head, and glanced to the side. The blue end-of-the-world fog had closed around them, leaving him, her, and the door behind her a small circle of color and detail.
"Okay, listen!" he said, stepping forward and gambling that she wouldn't shoot him. "This entire situation is whacked. You know something is wrong, and I'm going to guess that I'm the only person in here who seems to know that, too, which makes trusting me, at this moment, your best bet. Something in there scares you. Okay, fair enough, but you know you're going to have to face it sooner or later. And hey, it might not be much, but at least I'm here as backup. Can we please, please move under the assumption that putting it off won't make it any more pleasant and just go through the door?"
She was almost convinced. He could feel it, in the hang in the tug in the air.
"Carter, what could have you, of all people, this scared?"
That did it. He supposed that if appealing to trust and logic didn't work, appealing to Carter's own machismo was a dirty but effective method. She let out a breath between her teeth, and lowered her weapon.
Then she gave him a long, cold look, and turned to put a hand on the door.
The blast-static of the trap reset pulled back, rubberbanding into the distance as she pushed the door to the Concourse open, closed her eyes, and stepped through.
=
. pitfightverse
Cribbed shamelessly from the post on the magibrain, which was itself cribbed shamelessly from my braintic file: Everybody's got to have that one 'verse. You know, that one where the team runs into a giant hall of mirror artifacts and Jack and Teal'c get sent through a malfunctioning one into a universe where Sam was never allowed to join the Stargate program and Kinsey probably took over and some other weird crap also happened, but the upshot of it all was that Earth got taken over by Mars or someone and the entire global and interstellar political arena has gone totally bizarre and crapsack? Like, the main economy in this universe is a sort of panem et circensis industry where the slightly-nuked Earth is only half-controlled by any Goa'uld, but that doesn't matter because the only way to bring in money and goods to survive is to be amusing to them, as they've more or less given up on converting the population into slave labor, and anyway, the punchline is that Sam spent the last six or so years of her life making a name for herself by pitfighting Jaffa.
Everyone's got to have that 'verse. Right?
-
"Don't really like me, do you?" Kotan asked.
Carter exhaled. "What gave you that idea?" she said. Her tone wasn't quite light enough to be inquisitive instead of sarcastic. Kotan looked down, kicking her heel against the table leg.
"...I guess I've been putting on a show, haven't I?" she said. "Playing it Tough Bitch. Posturing."
Carter put aside the scanner for long enough to pick up another component and shook Kotan a dark look. "A little."
Kotan grimaced an uneasy smile. "...sorry," she said.
Carter made a noise to indicate she'd heard her, but not to indicate much more.
Kotan kicked a time or two again. "If we're honest, Major, I'm jealous," she said.
Carter stopped what she was doing and looked up. "What? –jealous? Why?"
The look Kotan gave her was... somewhat unnerving, really. She'd never realized how much of her father was in her own expressions. This one was quietly Really? You can't tell?, with, uncharacteristically, a light edge of sheepish rue. "Why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "You managed to join the Stargate program. Hell, you made XO of their flagship team. You saved your world. And you spent the last seven years doing the kind of science I only wished I could. And I'm starting to realize that even if I throw myself into everything here, you're always going to be seven years smarter than me." She shrugged. "I spent six years in the pits. When the Goa'uld hit Earth, I wasn't in a position to do anything – I was at a conference in Nevada. The first time I so much as saw a Jaffa was after we'd already surrendered. I couldn't even contact the insurgencies."
"...wow," Carter said. "I guess I never thought about it in those terms."
Kotan folded her arms. "How else could you be seeing this?"
Carter made a couple of abortive gestures, trying to find a way to communicate. "I guess I was looking at you like – well – you worked at the Pentagon?" Kotan nodded. "Then you know how it is. And on a front-line assignment, it's even worse." She leaned back against the counter, gesturing out the door. "I've worked since I got here to be the kind of person no one could find fault with, and it's still like I'm on trial for the entire population of women in the military sometimes. I mean, I think I'm the equal of just about anyone on this base. But I'm on a team with a special-ops-trained Colonel and a former First Prime. I'm never going to prove that I'm just as tough as they are. You, on the other hand..."
She gestured to Kotan. Kotan looked down, as though taking stock of her collection of scars, most of which were hidden beneath the BDUs. "I've read your mission reports," she said. "The battle of the Alpha Site; the Prometheus incident. Incidents. Not to mention Saint Christina's, or goddamn Antarctica. You honestly think you're not tough enough?"
"You were considered too valuable to be sent offworld, and after six years in the pits you still managed to calibrate the quantum mirror terminus to stabilize your own pattern and locate the correct universe based on the quantum state of Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c," Carter pointed out. "You honestly think you're not smart enough?"
"...I guess I never thought about it that way," Kotan said.
Carter exhaled. "Yeah."
There was a moment of silence.
A sidelong smile developed on Kotan's face. "You know, maybe we could help each other out."
Carter tilted her head. "You mean, I give you a crash course in xenophysics, and you teach me to–"
"Pitfight?" Kotan said.
=
Three is a good number.
Sam being, at the moment, my favorite character (having taken the title from Daniel some time ago), the magibrain likes to typecast itself as a Sam whump writer. This is why you don't want to be my favorite character: it only ever ends in pain. To be honest, one of the reasons I don't pursue writing a lot of these as eagerly as some of my other projects boils down to "There's only so many times you can write 'Something horrible happens to Sam, the boys go D: !!' before there's no drama left in it any more."
Anyway, these have braintic names. We're moving up in the world. One day there'll be a WIP meme with the fics that actually earn titles.
And then one day I might even post those fics.
=
. duat
SG-1 is consulting on some offworld project when a Goa'uld decides he Really Really Wants that planet and sends a bunch of ships down to claim it. The Tau'ri contingent finds its forces split, and the people nearest the Stargate are forced to retreat back through in hopes of bringing reinforcements to break through the Jaffa lines and get to the people stranded. Yeah, that doesn't happen. ...anyway, Sam is stuck on the planet behind enemy lines with one other Major, a Captain, and a bunch of Lieutenants, and ends up being the de-facto leader in trying to keep them all alive until the SGC can figure out how the hell to get them home. It's a grand fun romp through testing everyone's faith in the "no one gets left behind doctrine," as well as Sam's perfectionism turning a laser sight on both her command ability and her woodsmanship, but to be honest, half the appeal is Major Nathan Cwirko and his efforts to keep them all sane.
-
Cwirko had been hoping for one quiet day since they were cut off on this hellhole. At least it seemed they'd finally got one.
While the lieutenants argued about whether or not there was anything worth catching in the river, Cwirko flopped down on the dirt where the curve of the cliff and a fallen tree, draped over with vegetation, made a natural dugout. Of course, three seconds later there was Carter, eyeing it like she wasn't sure whether or not it would collapse, and then turning to eye the entire area like she was subjecting it to the same concerns.
Cwirko flexed his toes, leaned forward, and sighed. "Major, sit down. Take your shoes off."
"I'm fine," came Carter's automatic answer. Cwirko raised his eyebrows, focusing his attention on working some goddamn Duat stickerburrs out of the knots in his bootlaces.
"Never said you weren't fine," he said, half-beneath his breath. "We all know you're fine. Still doesn't mean you can't take two minutes to put your feet in the river. Who knows? Might even do you some good."
Carter, by that time, had completed a circuit of the tiny dugout and discovered that there were no Jaffa in the walls or hiding under any of the dirtpiles in the corners. She stopped, hand on her Ka-bar, looking at Cwirko strangely. If he had to guess, he'd say she'd only caught the last few words of what he'd been saying.
"The more you don't relax," he said, keeping his voice quiet and firm, "the more everyone else doesn't relax, too. And since you never relax, that gets to be a problem. So if you'll take a suggestion..." He glanced past her, scoping what he could see by habit. The forest on the river's other bank was clear of hostiles; Washburne and Costanza were standing at the near edge, one fishing things out of the river and the other scanning the treeline. Cwirko's eyes snapped back to Carter's face. "Siddown, take off your shoes, and dip your feet in the river like I'm doing. You might even enjoy it."
"If we need to run," Carter began.
Cwirko pried one boot off, and turned to the other. "You're wound up so tight you're gonna sprain something," he said. "Last we saw, Jaffas were miles off and going in the wrong direction. Take five."
Carter sighed, and looked to the trees again. Yes, Cwirko thought, there will definitely be Jaffa there this time.
Then, at least, she gave in, crouching down and working out her bootlaces. Cwirko glanced up – her laces were free of burrs and stained but not not caked over with mud, and came untied in a fraction of time his had. He stared. How, in–?
"There is something not quite human about you," he groused, and Carter tossed a boot at him. He caught it as she turned to join the boys at the river.
"Major, I'm hiding your shoes," he called, voice pitched not to carry.
"I know where you sleep," Carter called back, just as low.
He grinned. Hell, maybe there was hope yet. So long as he could keep them all joking.
=
. mindtrap
Sam gets hit by some sort of experimental energy weapon and gets rushed back to the SGC for medical attention. She's delirious, muttering about things that make no sense – like needing a new set of dress blues. Then she lapses into a not-coma characterized by elevated brain activity and constant REM. And her condition is degrading. Tok'ra intelligence reveals that this was a new weaponization of the sub-psychic interference that also fuels a Kara Kesh; it's locked Sam inside her own brain with a piece of unfinished mental/emotional business that has to be resolved in her mind before she can be brought out of it. (See also: Forever In A Day.) Osiris has recently demonstrated on Daniel that recall devices can be used to put a person into someone else's dreams, so after some discussion, Jack links up to see if he can bring her out, or can bring enough information out that he can go back in with a solution. He finds himself re-living portions of the same two days with her: about six months before Daniel opened the Stargate, while Sam was still a Captain working at the Pentagon. Unfortunately, this seems to mean her memories within the mind trap are also restricted to that time – she has no idea who Jack is, and soon becomes suspicious of this unknown Colonel following her around and taking an interest in her life...
-
Every time. Every time, she left the lecture chatting away with General Kerrigan, Kerrigan turned to retrieve his forgotten briefcase, she went on ahead, came to the doors to the hotel concourse, and stopped. And every time, the world fuzzed out at the edges and closed in on them like a old movie's circle fade, and the next scene was invariably the informal lunch two days earlier. And Jack would be stuck skipping from highlighted memory to highlighted memory along with Carter again, listening to lectures on the future of aeronautics. And he really didn't want to listen to those again. He'd begun to understand things, this last time.
But now the last lecture was out, the formal reception for Dr. Whats-his-name was about to begin, and Carter was leaving the conference room with General Kerrigan. He watched her reflection in the vase he'd stationed himself cattycorner from – she looked around, probably keeping an eye out for him, then went on toward the concourse.
Like clockwork.
He gave them forty seconds before following, keeping a casual-to-all-appearances distance and making sure to be conveniently elsewhere whenever it looked like Carter might pause or check her surroundings again. After a minute or so Kerrigan passed back by him, already looking a bit fuzzy around the edges. He ducked down a different hallway – her mind had provided the layout of the hotel, and that, at least, seemed stable – and turned the last corner to find a pistol pointed at him.
Kimber Pro Carry, it looked like. Good concealed weapon. Lightweight, light recoil, compact design, still more than enough firepower to make him very, very dead if need be at this range. He had no idea what that would mean for his real body, lying on an Infirmary bed with a recall device attached to his temple. What was that line? If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life?
"What?" he said, and put up both hands. "Oh, come on. Who brings a concealed weapon to an aeronautics conference?"
"I'm trapped in some kind of temporal anomaly, and I'm being stalked by someone with privileged information impersonating a member of the United States Air Force," Carter answered. "It seemed like the thing to do."
He'd been about to ask where she'd even managed to get a concealed weapon in the past two days, if she'd only picked it up to deal with him, but that line of inquiry was neatly derailed. "'scuse me. Impersonating?"
"I called in a favor," she said, and Jack got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Had someone pull information on Colonel Jack O'Neill. Apparently he's retired, living in Winter Park, Colorado."
"Aha! See?" he said, which was an inappropriate response to someone holding a pistol trained on him, but he didn't care. He could hear the world collapsing. "That's proof your mind is inventing things from what you know. Sara moved to Winter Park to be closer to her father; when I was re-activated for the first Stargate mission, I was living in Boulder, and... you're never going to buy this, are you?"
"That I'm actually delusional, under the influence of alien technology, nine years from now," Carter said "...no."
"Exactly. It sounds ridiculous. No one in their right mind would manufacture such a shoddy story, so it's got to be true."
She didn't look convinced.
Jack groaned, flexing his fingers on his still-raised hands. "Okay, what are you going to do? Hold me up until General Kerrigan gets back?"
"He's not coming back," Carter said. "That's not how it worked. He went to get his briefcase; I went on ahead. When he came through here I'd already gone on into the concourse."
...this was new. "Now, how can you know that?"
Carter shook her head, but the pistol remained steady. "I don't know how I know it; I just know," she said.
"That has to be it," he said. "Listen, something is keeping you in here. Something your mind won't let you put aside. We solve that, we can get you out of this, and I could help if you'd just tell me what's going on!"
She was silent.
He groaned. The world was beginning to go navy-blue-grey and staticky at the edges, and felt like it was tunneling. "Look, Carter. –Captain. Just tell me what happens behind that door."
"It's classified," Carter said.
"How is it classified? We're in a public hotel at a conference. What's going to happen here?"
She didn't answer.
"Fine," he said. "Then don't give me any of the details. Be vague. Say, 'I had a conversation with someone.' Or 'I saw something.' Anything. Throw me a bone. Throw me a verb!"
"It's classified," she said again, and the static grew one note closer.
"Listen," he said, waving a finger at... the edge of reality. "You hear that? That means that this thing is about to start over, and unless you're really looking forward to having that disappointing Reuben for the sixth time in a row, you know you have to do something different now."
"No." She shook her head. "There has to be something I missed. Something I could have seen before this happened."
"Before what happened?"
She grit her teeth. "If I can just–"
"Carter!"
Either the volume or the familiarity in his tone brought her up short.
He pressed both, raising his voice over the rising noise of the reset. "You're not going to find anything in your memories you haven't seen the last five times through. That headache you've been feeling? That's your brain succumbing to the trap. It's not going to get better. We have to figure out what's going on to bring you out of this, and we can't do that until we know what happened. The only way out of this is through that door!"
She took a deep breath, and her hands tightened on her gun. She'd grit her teeth, set her shoulders – it was an odd look, on her, in her dress blues. After a moment, he placed it.
Of course. This wasn't seven-years-in-the-field Carter; this was Pentagon-lab-coat Carter, who'd never lacked grit but wasn't leading a life where daily doses of adrenaline really factored in. "Whatever it is, you're afraid of it, aren't you?"
"What do you know about what happened here?" she asked. Her voice was deceptively quiet – either ready to shoot him, or looking for answers. Hard to tell.
"Wild guesses," he said. "Look, I know you don't know that I know you, but I... know you. And that's beginning to freak me out a little."
He could feel a tug at the back of his head, and glanced to the side. The blue end-of-the-world fog had closed around them, leaving him, her, and the door behind her a small circle of color and detail.
"Okay, listen!" he said, stepping forward and gambling that she wouldn't shoot him. "This entire situation is whacked. You know something is wrong, and I'm going to guess that I'm the only person in here who seems to know that, too, which makes trusting me, at this moment, your best bet. Something in there scares you. Okay, fair enough, but you know you're going to have to face it sooner or later. And hey, it might not be much, but at least I'm here as backup. Can we please, please move under the assumption that putting it off won't make it any more pleasant and just go through the door?"
She was almost convinced. He could feel it, in the hang in the tug in the air.
"Carter, what could have you, of all people, this scared?"
That did it. He supposed that if appealing to trust and logic didn't work, appealing to Carter's own machismo was a dirty but effective method. She let out a breath between her teeth, and lowered her weapon.
Then she gave him a long, cold look, and turned to put a hand on the door.
The blast-static of the trap reset pulled back, rubberbanding into the distance as she pushed the door to the Concourse open, closed her eyes, and stepped through.
=
. pitfightverse
Cribbed shamelessly from the post on the magibrain, which was itself cribbed shamelessly from my braintic file: Everybody's got to have that one 'verse. You know, that one where the team runs into a giant hall of mirror artifacts and Jack and Teal'c get sent through a malfunctioning one into a universe where Sam was never allowed to join the Stargate program and Kinsey probably took over and some other weird crap also happened, but the upshot of it all was that Earth got taken over by Mars or someone and the entire global and interstellar political arena has gone totally bizarre and crapsack? Like, the main economy in this universe is a sort of panem et circensis industry where the slightly-nuked Earth is only half-controlled by any Goa'uld, but that doesn't matter because the only way to bring in money and goods to survive is to be amusing to them, as they've more or less given up on converting the population into slave labor, and anyway, the punchline is that Sam spent the last six or so years of her life making a name for herself by pitfighting Jaffa.
Everyone's got to have that 'verse. Right?
-
"Don't really like me, do you?" Kotan asked.
Carter exhaled. "What gave you that idea?" she said. Her tone wasn't quite light enough to be inquisitive instead of sarcastic. Kotan looked down, kicking her heel against the table leg.
"...I guess I've been putting on a show, haven't I?" she said. "Playing it Tough Bitch. Posturing."
Carter put aside the scanner for long enough to pick up another component and shook Kotan a dark look. "A little."
Kotan grimaced an uneasy smile. "...sorry," she said.
Carter made a noise to indicate she'd heard her, but not to indicate much more.
Kotan kicked a time or two again. "If we're honest, Major, I'm jealous," she said.
Carter stopped what she was doing and looked up. "What? –jealous? Why?"
The look Kotan gave her was... somewhat unnerving, really. She'd never realized how much of her father was in her own expressions. This one was quietly Really? You can't tell?, with, uncharacteristically, a light edge of sheepish rue. "Why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "You managed to join the Stargate program. Hell, you made XO of their flagship team. You saved your world. And you spent the last seven years doing the kind of science I only wished I could. And I'm starting to realize that even if I throw myself into everything here, you're always going to be seven years smarter than me." She shrugged. "I spent six years in the pits. When the Goa'uld hit Earth, I wasn't in a position to do anything – I was at a conference in Nevada. The first time I so much as saw a Jaffa was after we'd already surrendered. I couldn't even contact the insurgencies."
"...wow," Carter said. "I guess I never thought about it in those terms."
Kotan folded her arms. "How else could you be seeing this?"
Carter made a couple of abortive gestures, trying to find a way to communicate. "I guess I was looking at you like – well – you worked at the Pentagon?" Kotan nodded. "Then you know how it is. And on a front-line assignment, it's even worse." She leaned back against the counter, gesturing out the door. "I've worked since I got here to be the kind of person no one could find fault with, and it's still like I'm on trial for the entire population of women in the military sometimes. I mean, I think I'm the equal of just about anyone on this base. But I'm on a team with a special-ops-trained Colonel and a former First Prime. I'm never going to prove that I'm just as tough as they are. You, on the other hand..."
She gestured to Kotan. Kotan looked down, as though taking stock of her collection of scars, most of which were hidden beneath the BDUs. "I've read your mission reports," she said. "The battle of the Alpha Site; the Prometheus incident. Incidents. Not to mention Saint Christina's, or goddamn Antarctica. You honestly think you're not tough enough?"
"You were considered too valuable to be sent offworld, and after six years in the pits you still managed to calibrate the quantum mirror terminus to stabilize your own pattern and locate the correct universe based on the quantum state of Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c," Carter pointed out. "You honestly think you're not smart enough?"
"...I guess I never thought about it that way," Kotan said.
Carter exhaled. "Yeah."
There was a moment of silence.
A sidelong smile developed on Kotan's face. "You know, maybe we could help each other out."
Carter tilted her head. "You mean, I give you a crash course in xenophysics, and you teach me to–"
"Pitfight?" Kotan said.
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Three is a good number.