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Five Roads Not Taken
I blame AmyCat for the majority of this story, with the exception of the part where I got writer's block for nearly two weeks on the final section of this. That was all me. *sigh*
Title: Five Roads Not Taken
Spoilers/Season: SG-1's Season 10 Episode "The Road Not Taken" and SGA General Spoilers
Synopsis: A look at what else was going on in the universe Sam visited during the episode "The Road Not Taken"
Rating: PG-13ish
Content Warning: Um, mild crossover with SGA, AU, blink and you miss it reference to non-con, blink and you miss it slash undertones, dead characters being not-so-dead because this is an AU and I want it that way. That should do it.
Disclaimer: Not mine. The characters of SG-1 all belong to people with a lot of money and I am just playing with them in a strictly not-for-profit kind of way.
[Apparently Live Journal will not let me post as one post. I guess 15 pages is too big for it. Second part will be posted in a new post momentarily...]
Five Roads Not Taken
1.
Jack bit back a groan as his knees collided with the hard surface. There were plush rugs everywhere in the room he had just been led to, but the guards somehow managed to find the one spot for his sensitive bones to be ground into the harsh metal.
“I could fix them for you, father, if you wish,” a soft voice whispered from behind him. He kept his gaze steady, focusing on the candles and the book on display before him. “Consider it a gift, no expectations attached. Simply a present from a child to its parent.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Tender and frail and oh so human. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, the briefest moments, he was wiling to give in. He could feel her warmth washing over him, a rush of fire to melt the ice in his veins. His eyes snapped back open, remembering the truth, remembering the blaze of devotion that burned in her from countless innocents, giving up their very souls to keep her strong.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, both knowing the words were a lie. He felt her grip painfully tighten for a moment before reluctantly releasing him.
“You are not,” she chided. “But if it helps to believe it, then I shall allow it.” She moved to stand before him, the fabric of her carefully embroidered gown brushing against him. “My Priors tell me you are not taking your studies seriously. They say you know the words, but refuse to let them into your heart.”
O’Neill fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I never was one for book stuff,” he quipped.
“You are smarter than you appear, father, don’t try to hide it,” she warned. The words were soft, but there was an underlying tension to her tone. “Once you accept the teachings, you will see what greatness they bring. The Ori have so much to offer, and yet you fail to reach for it, to embrace all that you could be.”
“I kind of like me the way I am,” he told her.
“As do I,” she agreed with a hint of a smile. “You are my father and I would not have it any other way.” He almost returned the gesture until she added, “Neither would the Ori. They chose you to create me, knowing your true potential.”
“They didn’t ask,” he ground out. They had been over this before, but it did nothing to dim the emotions behind his words. “They took from me without asking. They took from the poor woman who carried you without asking. I don’t care if she worshiped the Ori, what they did is tantamount to rape! The forced themselves on both of us to create the abomination that is you!”
A look of hurt flashed across her face for the briefest of moments before she schooled herself back to the image of calm. Her voice cracked at her next words though, giving her away. “I am your child. I’m sure that, given enough time, you will come to love me as much as you did Ch-...”
“Don’t!” he growled. “Don’t you dare speak his name. Charlie was born out of love and kindness. You were born out of possession. You know nothing of love!”
Her lip trembled, but she bit it down. “I know I love you and I always will, father. I know I love the woman who gave her life to birth me, who sacrificed herself for the love of Origin. I know my people love me as much as I love them myself.”
Jack grinned, steel and cold. “You don’t love your people, you use them. They only love you because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t.”
“They devote themselves to their Orici and to Origin knowing they shall ascend and live an eternity in bliss,” she recited.
“Except the Ori don’t actually let anyone ascend,” Jack countered. “That’s what makes you different from the Ancients. They don’t interfere, but they do let you join them if you make it on your own. They don’t use humans, would probably prefer to have nothing to do with them. The Ori consume them and destroy them before they risk the chance of having to share.”
“People worship the ones you call the Ancients, and yet they do nothing,” she pointed out, clearly struggling to keep her calm repose though it was apparent she was flustered.
“Yeah, but worshiping them doesn’t create power hungry, apocalyptic freaks, so I guess there’s a trade off.”
“You claim they did nothing to interfere, but you stand before me as proof against that,” she tried. “Your genes, your very genetic make up is but evidence of their interference in human affairs. They cannot deny the truth, the facts as plain as day. They most definitely played a role in human existence, just as the Ori have done in their own galaxy. For all their posturing, they are no better than what you perceive us to be.”
“The Ancients might have screwed around with humans,” he conceded, smirking at his own pun. “But, unlike the Ori, they don’t depend on blind faith of human followers to keep them alive.”
A slow smile spread across her face. He shivered at the way it mirrored his own when he was about to move in for a killing blow. “They wasted the energy gifted to them, but no more. Now that energy can be used by the true gods.”
He did not like the sound of this. A feeling of dread was growing in his stomach as he started to put things together.
“The Ancients passed their lineage into you and you have now passed it into me,” she explained. He closed his eyes, swallowing heavily as she confirmed his fears. “It was quite fortuitous that you ventured into our galaxy. Because of you, those who worship the Ancients shall have their faith wasted no more. The strength they offer the false gods flows through me, and I can redirect it to the true gods. The Ori grow stronger every day, and soon we shall overtake even the Ancients.”
“They will stop you,” he tried.
“But that would mean they would have to interfere with humankind, a law they banish their own kind for breaking,” she pointed out. She leaned close, her curls tickling his face as her breath ghosted across his ear. “Where do you think they go when they are banished?”
Standing again, she snapped her fingers and the door behind him opened. He could hear the shuffling of feet, the rustling as the harsh fabric of a Prior’s robes rubbed up against each other, and the steady thumping as a staff hit the floor with each step.
“In a matter of months the Ancients will be no more,” the Orici declared. “They will either drift into nothingness or be destroyed outright by our superior power. When that time comes, the Ori shall rule as they were destined to do so. Those who worship them shall be saved. Those who do not, shall be destroyed.” There was a softness to her eyes as she gazed down at him and said, “I do not wish you to be destroyed, father. To that end, I have found you a new teacher.”
He shook his head, almost wishing she would just kill him outright instead of stringing him along for so long. She had to know nothing could convince him to join her, his ties to Earth, his ties to his friends and family were too strong, meant too much to him to just give up. He believed in the freedom of the individual too much to give in to the mass slavery the Ori were proposing. “It’s not going to work,” he tried. “None of your Priors can convince me that Origin in the true path, if there even is one. What is it going to take for you to believe me?”
“Oh, I think you will find this Prior is a bit different from the others,” she smiled, gesturing for her servant to come forward.
He did, in all of hooded glory. Jack could make out the pale, scarred hands as the preacher reached to lower his hood, and knew there would be only burns and ash beneath it. He had been down this road too many times to expect anything else.
He bit back his surprise then when he saw the face of the man beneath the fabric. His friend, his colleague, a man who’s quiet strength had helped him out of the darkest time in his life and helped him enjoy simply being again, stood passively before him. His face wore the scars of the righteous, his bright blue eyes clouded with the knowledge of Origin. “Daniel?” he breathed, but the face held no recognition, only contempt.
The Prior glanced only briefly in his direction before focusing his attention on the Orici before him. He bowed his head and dutifully intoned, “Hallowed are the Ori.”
*****
2.
She paced the kitchen, the rubber soles of her shoes making soft noises against the meticulously cleaned linoleum, but she did not hear a sound. She was about to make her eighteenth, or possibly nineteenth, circuit of the table when a trembling hand reached out and grabbed her elbow.
“Mom, relax, she’s going to be fine,” Cassandra promised, but her eyes and fingertips betrayed her.
“All they told me was that there was an explosion, and then they hustled her off to security. They won’t let me see her, won’t let me talk to her,” Janet cried, knowing she had already said the words, but not caring anymore.
“I know, mom,” Cassie sighed, her own sorrow evident in her tone. She pulled her mother closer, a fleeting smile crossing her face as she realized she was now bigger than her caregiver. She tried to find something, anything, for them to hold on to, to keep their hopes alive. “But you saw her, right? Upright and walking? She was fine, she had to be.”
The elder Fraiser swiped at the tears daring to make their presence known. “I saw a blonde head surrounded by SFs,” she admitted, sitting heavily in the chair that was pulled out for her. The moment she stopped moving, her exhaustion threatened to overtake her. “Evan managed to sneak me a message that they had her in custody. Apparently she was spouting something about dimensional shifts and alternate realities and was convinced she was actually a Lieutenant Colonel instead of a Major.”
“Concussion?” her daughter guessed.
“Possibly,” Janet conceded. “But they would have sent her to the infirmary instead of lock up if they suspected that. Sergeant Harriman saw her, said she looked fine, but different.”
“Different how?”
“Shorter hair, different uniform, she didn’t even have her reading glasses with her, didn’t seem to need them.” She hung her head in her hands, grabbing tufts of hair and resisting the urge to pull them out.
Cassie seemed to ponder that for a moment, taking a seat across from her mother. “Could it be a trick? Could she be a fake sent by the Ori? Or another one of those replicator things?” she tried.
“I don’t know,” Janet answered honestly. “If she was either of those, or even another one of the alternate reality Sams, why won’t they let me know? Why won’t they let me see her? They’ve got Warner taking care of her. She said something to him, and the next thing I know, I’m cut off from her completely. I’m her doctor and listed as her next of kin! I deserve to know what’s going on with her!”
“If Uncle Daniel or Uncle Jack were still around, they would find a way,” Cassie pouted.
“Lorne is a nice guy,” Janet insisted. “When he was in charge of SG-2, they worked with Sam and Jack and Daniel all the time. He had helped to almost convince Teal’c to stay before the president pulled his ‘we’re more important than the fate of the galaxy’ crap. Colonel O’Neill pretty much single-handedly made certain Evan would get SG-1 when he left instead of leaving it to chance. Could you imagine someone like Makepeace in charge instead? He’s not Jack, but he’s a hell of a lot better than the other options.”
“I know,” he daughter sighed, dejectedly. She slumped in her chair and chewed at her lower lip. After a moment, she whispered, “It’s just that everything’s falling apart. Daniel’s gone, Jack’s gone, Teal’c’s gone, and now it looks like they’re taking Sam away too. I don’t care about the Ori anymore, I don’t care if they attack tomorrow, I just want my family back.”
Janet grabbed her hand from across the table, squeezing it tightly in her own. “We’ll get them back, honey. Jack will find Daniel and we’ll see Teal’c again, somehow. The important thing now is to make sure they don’t take our Sam away too, right?”
“Right,” Cassie reluctantly conceded.
Janet seemed to take strength in the thought. “If I know Sam, she’s probably working on a way to save the planet as we speak. She warned me just yesterday that she might be tied up in the labs for the next few days, and not to worry. I’m sure this has to be related to that. You’ll see, in a few days, she’ll be back home and tell us all about it.”
It was nearly three weeks later, after the world saw more of Major Samantha Carter than her own family did, that Janet received word that her Sam was never coming home again.
*****
3.
Doctor Elizabeth Weir smiled as she watched the interview again. She, like most of the members of her group, not to mention the world, had seen the truncated version of Major Samantha Carter’s interview when it first aired. Now she had her hands on a bootleg copy of the full event, right up to the point where Ms. Donovan patted the Major’s hand and told her, “Nice try.” It only served to solidify the idea in her mind that the Major was not ill, as the government offices immediately suggested, but was taking a chance and speaking her mind in this not-so-free country.
She only hoped it was enough. As the leader of the stateside cells of the resistance group, she had spies everywhere, including some pretty high up the food chain at
“Was it enough?” a familiar voice called her out of her thoughts.
She waited patiently for the man to limp his way to her desk, knowing better than to mention the cane or the stiff posture that caused her own muscles ache in sympathy with every hobbled step. “It will have to be,” she replied, gesturing to a well worn chair across from her and pausing the disk she kept watching.
“Do you think the wheelchair was too much?” Cameron asked, easing himself into the battered leather. Comfortable, he carefully leaned back and flipped his recently washed hair out of his eyes.
“Considering you really should use it more often than you do, surprisingly no,” she smiled wryly. “The stripping of your apartment down to nothing but a few grimy chairs and a bottle of whisky might have been pushing it though.”
“Hey, I love those chairs! Have had ‘em for years and they’ve never done me wrong,” he laughed.
“Anyway,” she rolled her eyes good naturedly, trying to move the conversation along. “I’m not going to ask where you hid the rest of your furniture, but I am going to congratulate you on a very convincing performance. You were most likely the extra push she needed to be convinced to speak out.”
He shrugged, the movement as stiff as his walking moments before. “I had some old friends from back on base help me with the hiding; the same good friends who tipped us off that I was apparently her teammate in the other universe, actually. It was their intel that gave us the plan, all I did was play my part.”
“Well, you did so very well,” she assured him. She pulled up a file on her battered old laptop, turning the screen to better show him what was displayed. “This is our next step. We’ve expanded our protests and demonstrations, but the big thing is to get another person inside. The way they are shutting Major Carter down right now, the chances are she’s going to disappear completely soon. If we can get someone else in the wings to be their next starlet, we would finally have full access to all the ins and out of
Mitchell looked at the name on the screen, cocking an eyebrow in thought. “You think he’s ready for this?”
“I think Doctor McKay is smart enough to handle both the pressure, and the president,” Weir told him. “The fact he may be saving his ex-wife will also help matters. Though, some of the others fear that, with his ego, he may just take over the mountain and rule the world for himself in a matter of months,” she grinned.
Cameron smiled along with her, knowing the man’s reputation. “Call him up and see if he’s willing to do more than just fund us,” he agreed, pushing himself cautiously up and out of his chair. “Not that funding is bad, but action is better.” Settling the cane in his hand, he started towards the door. As he reached for the handle, he paused and turned back around, waiting for her expectant look. “I almost forgot to ask, did you give any thought to the name Evan suggested? He said he got the idea talking to Carter, something about a reference from the other universe.”
“Atlantis?” she asked, seeming to ponder the option. A wry crook of her mouth was answer enough for him even before she added, “Sure, why not? The chances of us succeeding at this thing are about the same as finding a mythical lost city anyway. Works for me.”
*****
Continue to the next part because Live Journal is being weird...