who daily conquers them anew
1.
Pete is making breakfast, frying eggs in a non-stick pan, when Sam screams. The sky is falling, green and flaking in long apple peel strips, and her mouth opens and sound comes out: unplanned, unintentional, unwanted. She's still screaming when he throws the pan to the floor. When it all melts away.
2.
Pete is making coffee. Sam throws up in the kitchen sink. (The world shatters. Shards of glass ripping through her flesh. She wakes up again, toes cold and hair a mess, and the Colonel is brewing coffee, making tea, boiling water, reading the funny pages-
Burning, drowning, nothing nothing nothing. Nothing.
The General. She remembers things, words and faces and she knows it's the General now, General O'Neill. General Jack O'Neill. Just call me Jack. Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack.
"His name is JACK," she screams. "General Jack O'Neill and that, that thing isn't him!"
A flash of light, silence. Pain.
A voice (her voice): "again.")
3.
This time, she knows where she is. Who she is. The ship is metal against her brain is arctic cold is fear. ("Again.") This time, she knows that this is wrong, that something's wrong, that the farmhouse apartment bunker tent house isn't real. She concentrates on the grating beneath her (bare, why isn't she wearing shoes?) feet. On the slightly copper air.
"I know you're out there," she says. "I know you're there." (This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real. She doesn't say. Holding the thought against her chest, cradling it and keeping it safe. This isn't real. A whisper. Shhhhhh, don't tell Daddy.)
Jack's outside with the dog. Sam sits inside, watches from the kitchen table. Watches. Watches as the dog swallows Jack whole, as its jaws close over the yard, the back porch, the gingham curtains, her feet her legs her waist her chest her head.
4.
The sun feels like sugar cookies taste, warm and buttery and sweet. The hand on her back soothing and circling and calming. She watches the breeze ruffle the curtains, listens to Carl Kasell discussing voter fraud in North Dakota.
"This is geek radio," he complains. "Nerd Pornography Radio."
"Jack," she says, "cliche. Also, not funny."
"Ah, but you love me anyway."
She smiles. "I do."
She feels like overripe fruit. Her skin is bursting, and his mouth moves over hers.
Fourteen mornings just like this. (Some grey and rainy outside, some bright and warm. Always, though, this bed this man this feeling.) Later, they will stumble out of bed, eat scrambled eggs and toast, sit outside on a blanket. Later, they will talk about Teal'c and Daniel and her father; they will reminisce and touch and his hands on her hip her waist her breast will burn.
A spot of black, of nothing, will flash in the corner of her eye.
Jack's fingers moving down, slipping under the waistband of her jeans, she will block out the missing bits of world. Of universe. His lips, soft and hard at once, will center her and keep her safe.
Now, though, now is morning sex and fuzzy tongues and that taste in the back of her throat. It's the fifteenth day (since she started counting the days). This might be happiness.
5.
Sixteenth day, seventeenth day, eighteenth day: rain, sun, snow. Love.
On the nineteenth day, she screams. Fire in her bones fire flame pain hot pain in her bones, Jack leaning over her kissing her and-
(Laughter. "Again.")
6.
Janet and Cassie are laughing in the kitchen. Teal'c is in the living room, playing Grand Theft Auto with Jack. Daniel's going on about his latest off-world crush, and Sam's pretending she doesn't know that he's really just telling her how much he misses their days on SG-1. Janet calls out, "come and get it," Janet-
Little mistakes. Sam wakes up, metal cold still and sharp, and looks into her own eyes.
"Huh," not-Sam never-Sam says, cocking her head. "I'll have to remember that."
7.
Christmas morning, sitting in front of the fire. Jack is behind her, playing with her hair, and she leans into him (trying to crawl inside). Somewhere, church bells chime. She ignores them, focusing instead on the feel of Jack's hands (his tongue, tracing the shell of her ear, his teeth).
"Merry Christmas," he whispers.
"Merry Christmas," she sighs.
"So," he asks, " have you been a good girl or a bad girl this year?"
She laughs. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
He growls, and she finds herself lying on the floor with her hands pinned above her head. She kisses him back.
8.
A cold hand, her hand (no no not her hand, not Sam's hand) on her thigh. She keeps her eyes closed. Braces herself-
9.
Off-word. Wet. Green. She and Daniel are discussing the possibility that the shrine he's been drooling over for days (which is odd, as she can't seem to remember any morning before today in anything but the vaguest sense) is actually a repository for Ancient technology. Teal'c is silent, as is Jack; the former as comforting as the latter is disarming. The rain feels milky and thick.
When the Goa'uld attack, Sam feels almost relieved. This, she thinks, she understands. This could be real.
Loud and painful and chaotic and maybe maybe maybe this is real this is true. Falling from the sky, fire, and Jack holding her close at the end.
10.
Sam holds onto reality, onto herself, longer this time. One day bleeding into ten bleeding into thirty, concentrating on blank spaces and wrong smells and-
"Sam? Is that you?" (Daniel's voice, soft and unsure.)
"Yo, Colonel, don't you think it's time you come back and take charge of this rag-tag team of yours?" (Jack. Not-being-funny.)
"Lt. Colonel Carter, we are here to take you home." (Teal'c. Stoic. Teal'c.)
She tries to open her eyes. Again and again and again she tries, and they are there (she can feel them there, somehow, underneath her skin) but everything is dark and cold and she still can't open her eyes. Fingers tracing her veins, checking for a pulse and then monitoring it.
There are gaps in her memory. Spaces where thoughts once dwelled. She feels her body moving, somehow, feels the air as it caresses her skin. (But she can't remember how to speak. How to see. She can't remember yesterday, or the day before, or the year before that.)
"C'mon, Sam, let's go home." (Jack. His hand in her hair.)
11.
Jack finally retires, and she fucks him on her desk half-way through his SGC farewell party. They are both slightly more than tipsy, though not quite completely drunk, and it's less than satisfying (which she tells him, prompting promises to "do better next time"). They make plans to have dinner in a week, provided she's not off-world. She won't be; they both know it'll be some time before the shrinks deem her ready, but they pretend it's an option anyway.
They pretend a lot of things, it seems, since she came back. (Since she came back broken, they don't say.)
Back at the party, Daniel is dancing with a pretty nurse and Teal'c is talking to one of the security guys. Sam and Jack walk in together (not-together); no one notices them, or, if they do, they aren't obvious about it. Everyone is laughing dancing drinking flirting.
"Unscheduled off-world activation," the alarm blares. When the shoot-out begins (at the OK Corral oh no not again) Sam loses track of everything but the feel of the zat and the smell of death. The screams.
(Her voice: "you've killed them, you know. That was you.")
(Her head: "nonononono." It's like a sudden fog rolling in, and suddenly she's looking into her own eyes.)
12.
"You can have it all back, you know," Not-Sam says. "All I ask is a little cooperation."
(Never.
Not yet.
Not-)
("Soon." And, echoing, "again.")