Complete
Drama, Romance
Other
pairing
Season
6
Spoilers
for First Commandment, There But for the Grace of God, Point of View, Divide and
Conquer, Meridian
Disclaimers:
Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, The SciFi Channel, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.
The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.
This fic deals with the fact that Daniel is 'no longer with the team' in Season 6. If this gives you problems, you might want to read something different, but come on people: You're getting him back in Season 7, and by all accounts, you're getting him back nekkid. Can't we all just get along now?
Acknowledgements:
Thanks
be to Sho,
The
great, the great, the great.
The Prophet, 18th January 2003
Colonel Jack O'Neill watched in a state of dumb fascination while the SGC's scientists worked over their latest doohickey. While he had no real interest in the science, the ordered chaos of their frenzied activity had an almost hypnotic effect on him, and he found himself wondering exactly how they kept from getting in each others' way. Currently, Major Carter and Captain Briggs were arguing the relative pros and cons of opening the doohickey's casing to see what was inside or carrying out further tests – Briggs thought that opening the case would be dangerous, Carter said the same about hitting the thing with x-rays and high-powered scanning radar – while Jonas Quinn and Louise Stillwell were translating the inscriptions on the casing.
The sound of his team's designation coming over the PA system brought Jack out of his trance.
"...to General Hammond's office, immediately," the announcement finished. "I say again; SG-1 report to the General Hammond's office immediately."
Jack, Sam and Jonas met Teal'c on the way, and they arrived in General Hammond's office all together. The General was speaking on the phone, but waved them in anyway and motioned for them to sit.
"Alright," he said. "I'm putting you on the speaker." There was a short pause. "Yes, she is; along with the rest of her team. One moment."
Hammond put the caller on hold and set down the handset. "This person called ten minutes ago, asking for you, Major Carter," he said. "I want you all to hear him out and tell me what you think."
"What does he want?" Jack asked.
"I'll let him explain that," Hammond replied. He seems to get cranky when he's kept waiting, so let's not."
The General reached out and switched the phone to speaker mode. "Go ahead, Major," he said.
"Hello," Sam said, leaning forward slightly. She knew that the government issue speakerphone would pick up her voice from the far side of the room, but some instinct always told her she should be close. "This is Major Carter speaking."
"Major?" The caller asked. "But you're a doctor too, right? An astrophysicist and wormhole expert?"
Sam said nothing, just stared in horror at the telephone.
"Major Carter?"
"I...yes," Sam replied, finally. "I'm...that's right. But you...You can't be..."
"I am," the man assured her. "Look; just bring a laptop and all the research data you have on TEC failure to...you know what TEC failure is?"
"Temporal entropic cascade failure at the cellular level," Sam said, beginning to understand. "It's a side-effect of interdimensional travel."
"Good," the man said. "Now there's a little house in the woods, about fifteen miles from the eastern edge of town. Jack O'Neill...You know Jack O'Neill?"
"Yes."
"Of course you do. He knows where. Bring the laptop – one with a USB port, if you use them – and the data to the house. Come alone, unarmed, and quickly; I'll explain when you arrive." The telephone clicked.
Sam looked at her friends. Jack appeared to be as appalled as she was, while Jonas was just confused. Teal'c was as inscrutable as ever.
"Well?" Hammond asked.
"That was..." Jack began, but paused, as though unwilling to say it.
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c finished.
"Huh?" Jonas asked. "How is that possible?"
"Well," Sam said, slowly, trying to sound calm in the hope that she could feel it. "If he's interested in TEC failure, then this is probably a Daniel from a parallel Earth. We've seen it before, after all; and our Daniel passed through the quantum mirror himself."
"But we destroyed the quantum mirror," Jack pointed out. "Didn't we?"
"Yes, Sir," Sam agreed. "But we've found at least one way to cross the dimensional barrier using the Stargate, and Jason devised a means of inducing quantum phase shift in a teltac, which at least one version of Daniel besides our own got a chance to see. But there's only one way to find out for certain," she added, addressing herself mainly to General Hammond.
"I'm uneasy about letting you go alone," Hammond admitted. "We don't know what might be going on here. It could be someone using an alien cloaking device, as easily as an alternate Dr Jackson; probably more easily."
"But why, Sir?" Sam asked. "If another rogue NID group wanted to get me alone and capture me, they could jump me at my house. They've done it before," she reminded them. "This seems too elaborate; too far-fetched."
"They might hope that Daniel could get something out of you," Jack suggested. "Something they couldn't be sure of getting, even with torture."
"It still seems a strange way to go about it. Why tell you all where I'll be going? Do you know the place he's talking about, by the way?"
Jack nodded. "I was looking at moving there after Charlie died. It was quiet and out of the way, and I felt like disappearing at the time. It's isolated and hard to approach without being seen; but hard to find at all if you don't know where you're going."
"You ever tell anyone about it?" Sam asked, softly, knowing that it was still hard for Jack to talk about his son's death.
"Never," Jack admitted.
"So how does he know?"
Jack shrugged. "I'm not saying don't go. Just let us go with you."
"He said to come alone."
"Yeah," Jack replied. "And that's what worries me. I don't trust people who say 'come alone and unarmed'; it suggests that they don't trust you."
"I agree," Teal'c said. "If he does not want you ready for a fight, he must suspect that you might see a need to be."
Sam looked at her friends, conflicting feelings of love and frustration in her heart. "Colonel, Teal'c; this is Daniel. Whatever his world has thrown at him..."
"I know," Jack sighed. "But I still don't like it. Anyway," he added, suspiciously. "Why would an alternate Daniel be worried about TEC failure? He doesn't have a double in this world; Kawalsky was doing just fine when he came here with Dr Carter."
Sam shook her head. "He wouldn't begin to break down straight away, but in twenty or thirty years he would be suffering the same kind of spasms, albeit at longer intervals." She turned to General Hammond again. "Sir, I think I should go; and alone. Although," she added. "I'd feel a lot better about it if the rest of SG-1 were somewhere near at hand."
Hammond nodded. "Colonel O'Neill; how well do you know the area around this house?"
"Pretty well," Jack replied. "I used to hike up there sometimes when I needed to clear my head, just walk around. I scouted it pretty well when I was thinking of moving."
"Could you approach unobserved?"
"Maybe. Depending on how good a watcher I was up against."
"Major Carter," Hammond said. "You'll go up unarmed, but wearing body armour and carrying a panic button. If there's any trouble, hit the button and the rest of SG-1 and SG-3 will close in under Colonel O'Neill's command. Colonel; assemble SG-3 and brief your teams on the approach. Major; get whatever you need ready."
"Yes, Sir," Sam replied.
*
1448hrs
Sam drove slowly up the heavily-wooded track towards the house. It was a rough but sturdy structure of warped wooden planks, and quite small. From Jack's description and sketched plan, Sam knew that its single storey housed a bedroom, lounge, kitchen and bathroom, with a large storm cellar beneath. A battered old pick-up was parked out front. In the fading autumnal light, the whole clearing looked bleak and vaguely threatening, but Sam reminded herself that she had friends all around her, waiting for her signal, although the falling leaves meant that they were further back than she would have liked.
She saw the man waiting for her as she stopped the car, and her breath caught in her throat. She had come here to meet Daniel, but in all honesty she had not really expected him to be here – not on a visceral level – and to see him, his face, after a year without him, was more of a shock than she could have expected. Tears welled in her eyes at the memory of her absent friend, gone but not dead, and never to be forgotten.
No less of a shock was his manner. This Daniel Jackson held himself tall and straight, like a soldier, and seemed quite at home with the pistol in his hand. Sam did not recognise the weapon, in fact it did not look quite like any weapon she had seen before. It was squat, black and somewhat bulbous, but exuded the compact, brooding menace she always associated with weapons designed purely to deliver a killing force at close range. Daniel had coordinated with the colour of the pistol, and was dressed in black leather pants and boots, and a black t-shirt. Sam had to admit the look suited Daniel, although the sight of him standing there made her shiver to the marrow.
Sam climbed out of the car, slowly, keeping her hands visible and holding up the laptop in front of her.
"Dr Jackson, I presume?" She asked, rhetorically.
"You know me?" He seemed a little taken aback. "The limited surveys we were able to carry out suggested it was very rare for us to have met."
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said, genuinely.
"Come inside," Daniel said, tersely, glancing nervously around the clearing. "I don't want one of your Marine friends to start feeling lucky."
"How...?" Sam began. She could have kicked herself.
"I didn't," Daniel confirmed. "But it seemed unlikely that Earth's most valuable resource would be left unguarded."
"Most valuable..." Sam was flattered.
"Inside," Daniel ordered, his voice flat and controlled.
"Of course," Sam agreed.
Daniel stood back to let her past, just out of grabbing distance. Her Daniel would never have been so wary, and it was eerie to see him move that way. It was the way that she moved; the way a soldier moved.
In the hallway a long black leather coat hung on a peg, a small silver shield emblem on each shoulder. Sam brushed past it, and went on into the hall, with Daniel following her. Somehow, Sam did not feel quite safe with this Daniel walking behind her.
*
Sam walked into the living room and stopped in alarm. The room was dark, the lights all switched off, but she could make out a figure, seated on a chair. It was a woman, her head covered by a cloth sack, and a black leather jacket draped across her shoulders. The jacket was quite singular in design, with four heavy buckles to fasten it across the front, the same shield emblems on the shoulders as the coat in the hall, and a silver badge in the shape of a pair of crossed dagger on the breast, above a nameplate that read: 'Jackson'.
"Nice jacket," she commented, trying to keep her voice level.
"Major Carter?" The woman asked.
"Captain Kawalsky?"
"Quiet," Daniel told Amy, pushing past Sam. "You'll use too much air if you talk."
"Well you know what would help with that," Amy retorted. "If you took the goddamn bag off my head!"
Sam winced at the brittleness in Amy's voice, and felt a seething anger at the other Daniel for treating her this way. If it was a shock for Sam to find that a man she thought she knew had taken a hostage and put a sack on her head, how much more alarming must it have been for Amy to be that hostage, taken by the man she had loved and lost.
"Just stay calm," Daniel said, gently, as he moved to a table. He holstered the pistol, and stooped to activate a laptop.
As he did so, Sam glanced around the room for possible weapons, but came up empty. The furniture – the table, two armchairs and a small settee – was too heavy for her to lift; the table looked as though it should have matching chairs, but these had been removed. A circle in the dust by the fireside showed that a set of fire irons had likewise been taken from the room, and a mounting board on the wall hung empty, bereft of its rightful shotgun. Given the disused air of the place, it was likely that the gun had been gone for years, but the chairs and fire irons had probably been moved by Daniel in preparation for her arrival.
"Forty-nine hours and twenty-one minutes," Daniel said, turning back to Sam.
"What?"
"You have forty-nine hours and twenty-one minutes to find a way to prevent catastrophic temporal entropic cascade failure due to cross-dimensional travel; otherwise I will be forced to kill...my hostage," he said, with such icy calm that Sam thought she must have imagined the momentary catch in his voice.
"What?" Sam demanded, furious. "You can't be serious."
"Deadly serious," Daniel assured her.
At that moment, the air of the cabin was broken by a harsh scream, and Daniel's head snapped to the door of one of the bedrooms. Sam made a decision, and lunged at Daniel, moving to pin him in an arm lock. With unexpected speed and grace, Daniel half-turned and snapped his right foot out, catching Sam hard in the gut. The air exploded from her lungs in a gasping whoosh, and she fell hard to the floor.
"Get your breath back," he advised. "Don't try to run. Based on Sam Carter's theories, she has fifty-three hours and twenty minutes left, so you have forty-nine hours and twenty minutes to find a cure." He turned and disappeared into the bedroom.
"What was that?" Sam gasped, breathing hard, spots flashing before her eyes.
"He hit you?" Amy asked, disbelieving.
"Yes," Sam replied. "And it was a good kick. I'd never have thought Daniel could move like that."
"He's not like our Daniel," Amy agreed. "In some ways. In others he's just the same."
"He threatened to kill you," Sam reminded her. "Don't dwell on the similarities. I should just have brought the rest of the gang up here to kick his ass."
"I'm glad you didn't, Major," Amy said.
Sam grimaced. A hostage, restrained, would make any attempt to capture the other Daniel far more complicated, and she had no way to communicate the situation to anyone. Moreover, she had no idea what this experience might do to Captain Kawalsky's already delicate emotional state.
"I guess we should try to keep that as a last resort," Sam said. "Have you found anything out about him?"
Amy shook her head. "Not much."
"You want me to take that bag off?" Sam asked.
"No, thank you, Ma'am," she replied. "I don't know why he put it on me, but I'd rather keep it there. I don't want to see him."
Sam nodded, although Amy could not se her. "So you don't know much," she said. "What's not much?"
Amy shrugged. "He's from an alternate universe, but I don't know how he got here; he has a female companion, probably dying of TEC failure. I can't find out anything more because he won't talk to me. He seems to get angry with me when I speak, and I don't want to make him angry. He's tougher than my...our Daniel; harder I mean. He'll do things our Daniel wouldn't have done."
"Like our Daniel wouldn't have tied a woman to a chair," Sam suggested.
"Not even if she wanted him to," Amy agreed.
Sam smiled, faintly. "Too much information, Kawalsky."
"Sorry, Ma'am. But in some ways he's the same," Amy went on. "He doesn't want me talking, but when I said I was cold he put his jacket over me and...He did that the first day I met him, at Charlie's funeral, and it was just the same: The gentleness, and the slight hesitancy; almost like he felt he shouldn't touch me."
Amy shook her head, dispelling the reminiscence. "And he knows you," she added. "Or his world's you, anyway. He knew exactly who he wanted to contact."
"Which is how he got me here," Sam said. "But what about you?"
"I was going up the stairs to my apartment when I felt a shock between my shoulder blades; kind of like a zat blast, but...hotter. I blacked out and woke up here; the spot where I got hit still hurts like hell."
"We'll get you out of this," Sam promised. "I'll try to find a way to stop his friend from dying, whoever she is" – and I think I may have a shrewd idea, she thought to herself – "but whatever happens, we won't let him kill you."
"Thank you, Ma'am," Amy said. "But I don't think it'll be an issue. He's harder, yes; but he's still Daniel. I don't...I can't believe he'd hurt me."
Sam sighed. She did not want to believe it any more than Amy, but she no longer had a choice. There was a chance one of her subordinates was in danger, and as the ranking officer, she now had to believe it. If push came to shove, she would have to do whatever it took to protect the young Captain. The trouble was, given this Daniel's strength and skill, she was not sure what she could do without a weapon.
*
After a few minutes, the cries from the next room stopped, and a few minutes after that, Daniel returned, looking drained and harrowed. Clearly, whoever was suffering in the next room, he cared for her deeply.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you," he said to Sam. He clearly meant it, but in his manner Sam saw that his regret would not slow him down if he felt that he needed to do the same thing again. "This laptop contains all of Captain Carter's notes that I could salvage from our pod's data core."
"Pod?"
"Escape pod," Daniel explained. "We landed about twenty miles away; as close as I could get with the manoeuvrability we had remaining. The data is encrypted," he went on. "But I've unlocked all of the files on TEC failure so you can compare notes with...Well, with yourself. There may be more that's of use to you," he added. "Places she went that you didn't; technologies she studied. You can keep all of the information, whatever happens."
"Thank you, so much," Sam muttered, joining him at the table. "When I can't stop you murdering Captain Kawalsky, I'm sure the information in here will be a great comfort."
"Don't talk that way!" Daniel snapped. "Do you think I'm doing this out of some sick desire for control. God! Sam. You know me better than..." He stopped himself.
"Let her go," Sam suggested, softly. "I'll help you, if only for the sake of your companion."
Daniel frowned. "You don't understand," he said. "I would never willingly raise a hand against Amy, but I have no choice. If you don't have a solution in forty-eight hours and fifty-nine minutes, I will have no choice but to kill her."
"There's always a choice," Sam said, attaching a cable between her laptop and Daniel's.
"Not for me. Not any longer."
*
Wednesday, 2025hrs
Sam worked in silence, comparing her own research with that of the other Sam Carter. She found herself wondering if it was vanity to be struck by the brilliance of her counterpart's work, but for all that it was brilliant, it was also largely useless for finding a 'cure' for TEC failure. Like Sam herself, the other Carter had been forced to conclude that the entropic cascade effect was a nigh-absolute barrier to feasible inter-dimensional travel. Only by restricting your visits to worlds where an alternate version of yourself did not exist – or, as Astarte had done, by eliminating your entropic rival – could your long-term survival be assured.
She had been working now for almost thirty hours, with only fitful bursts of sleep, fuelled by Daniel's field rations and aided by a large pot of very strong coffee. She was feeling light-headed, and her eyes were having trouble focusing. Twice more, Daniel had gone to attend his companion. Each interval had been shorter, and each episode longer.
Sam gave a cavernous yawn as Daniel returned.
"Get some sleep," he suggested. "I'll wake you in a few hours, but you won't be any good to me exhausted."
"I'm alright," Sam insisted.
"How about you?" Daniel asked Amy.
"My arms hurt," she retorted, angrily. She was tired and her control was slipping, leaving only her slow-burning fury to mask her fear and doubt. "But I'll live, assuming you don't kill me."
"Do you want to lie down? I can take you into the other bedroom."
Amy gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, how long I've waited to hear that," she mocked, tearfully.
Daniel turned away, his own composure slipping, and for a moment he looked utterly desolate. He turned from Amy without a word, and sat back at the table. He reached out, and poured himself another coffee.
"It's her isn't it?" Sam said. "Next door. That's Amy Kawalsky."
"Jackson," Daniel said, quietly, leaning closer to Sam. "Amy Jackson." He had obviously not meant for Amy to hear, but the gasp that issued through the sacking told them he had failed.
"Oh my God," Amy whispered, shocked.
"Tell me about it," Sam said, sympathetically. "We helped you, didn't we?" She asked Daniel. "We sent the Gate booster so that Dr Carter could contact the Asgard. You became a commissar in the United Earth Defence Force after your wife was killed."
Daniel looked away from her. "How did you...?" He began, then answered his own question. "Hope."
Sam nodded. "They found us. Jason told me..." She broke off. That particular memory was too personal to share with anyone but a close and trusted friend, and although she had almost forgotten it, >this Daniel was not her friend. "What happened?" She asked.
Daniel sighed. "Just find a way," he told her.
"I can listen while I work," she assured him.
"I know," he admitted, wearily. "We...Sam and I were good friends." He sat down opposite her. "She was the one who brought me into the Destiny Project as supervising commissar."
"The Destiny Project?"
Daniel nodded. "The files are in the laptop," he explained. "Since the Asgard intervened directly to protect Earth from Goa'uld attack, they were unable to add us to the Protected Planets Treaty. Therefore, they posted three battleships in the solar system, and taught us what little of their science we could understand on a practical level. We had got as far as composing a squadron of hybrid interceptor craft, using a blend of Asgard, human and Goa'uld technology when something happened. Suddenly, the Asgard told us that they could only keep one ship in orbit, and our position was looking decidedly less secure. That was when the Supreme Commander of the UEDF – General Hammond – placed General Kawalsky and Captain Carter in charge of creating a ship to defend Earth in the event that the third Asgard vessel were called away as well.
"They called this project Destiny."
"Sam began working with every technology at her disposal: home-grown, captured Goa'uld, anything she had turned up on offworld missions. She also used what the Asgard had given us...and more that they had not. Without their knowing, she had learned enough to begin work on an Asgard reactor."
"My God!" Sam gasped. "She stole technology from the Asgard?"
"We were desperate," Daniel said, simply. "They were our allies, but it was apparent from the little that they told us that whatever was going on in their neck of the woods, they were getting their butts kicked. We couldn't rely on them being around, and we couldn't rely on them giving us their technology fast enough to be any good to us.
"But Sam needed help; lots of it. She knew and trusted me from the early days after the invasion, so she and the General brought me on board to vet personnel and handle internal security. This was the Earth's most important endeavour, so they had to be absolutely sure of their staff. I made certain that those we recruited were not only loyal to their world, but also loyal to the UEDF before national or religious concerns. We couldn't afford any internal clashes."
Sam could not suppress a shudder to hear Daniel's voice talk so coolly of excluding people based on their cultural ideologies. If they had not hurt so many people, the Daniel she knew would have argued that the Goa'uld had every right to hold themselves up as gods if that was their custom.
"Don't do that," Daniel said, in a cold, hard voice.
"Do what?" Sam asked.
"Judge us," Daniel replied. "You have no idea what it was like. How it feels to watch your world dying around you." He took a step towards Sam, his hands clenching unconsciously.
"What about me?" Amy asked, drawing Daniel's attention from Sam.
"You...She was the top candidate for the position of test pilot," Daniel said. "General Kawalsky argued against it, but I talked him around. I'd been impressed by your determination, and I wanted to spend more time around y..." He caught himself again, and winced as though in pain.
"The work took place on another world," he went on, turning back to Sam. "One not on the Abydos cartouche. It was our best kept secret, and we managed to keep it that way while we worked. Amy and I fell in love, and we were married on the eve of the ship's christening. We called her the Spear of Longinus, and she was a beauty."
"Longinus?" Sam asked.
"He was a Roman centurion," Amy told her. "He pierced the side of Jesus Christ upon the cross with his lance, which became the Spear of Destiny. Forever after, the spear dripped blood from its tip, and no wound struck with it would ever heal."
Daniel winced again, presumably reminded by Amy of his own dying lover. "That is correct, and we hoped with the Longinus to do just that to the Goa'uld: Inflict wounds that they could not heal."
Sam was incredulous. "With one ship? I think you were being a little overoptimistic."
Daniel shook his head. "The Longinus was a wonder," he said. "With the reactor Sam built, it could mount Asgard defensive shields and weapons; we could have wiped out a Goa'uld battle fleet with her."
"But you didn't," Sam guessed, feeling slightly nauseous to hear Daniel Jackson extol the martial might of a warship with the same enthusiasm her friend would have devoted to an ancient temple or a linguistic anomaly.
"No," Daniel agreed. "We were forced to deploy the Longinus before we had completed her shakedown and testing. A Goa'uld we had never encountered before launched an attack on Earth, and destroyed the Asgard battleship. We pushed the engines too hard to reach Earth before everything was destroyed, and overtaxed the power relays. The shields failed, and we were forced to go to our back-up defences, which were completely untested."
"Back-up defences?"
Daniel nodded. "Sam based them on the quantum resolution field; basically they shunted incoming fire into an alternate dimension."
"Oh," Sam said, noncommittally, choosing not to voice her opinion on how stupid a decision that had been.
Plainly Daniel picked up on her tone. "We didn't always have good choices," he told her, defending his friend. "We were desperate. We needed everything that might have given us an edge, and we were rather pushed for time."
"So what happened?" Sam asked.
"Anubis' shields resisted our weapons," Daniel explained. "So we were forced to charge them well beyond their designed capacity. We blew out every relay in the offensive circuit, but it was enough. We blew Anubis' command vessel out of the sky and scattered his fleet, but at the cost of the Longinus. There were fires across the board, and then the quantum shield destabilised, and began creating a distortion that threatened to tear the ship apart. We abandoned ship, and the Longinus just...disappeared behind us. Then an energy wave hit, catching the hindmost escape pods, including ours. I think it must have been that wave that sent us through to your universe."
"Probably released by the collapsing shield," Sam agreed.
"Yes," Daniel snapped back, impatiently, and for a moment he was transformed; hard and cruel, with barely a vestige of the man she had known. "So you were right, it was a stupid idea."
"I didn't mean..." Sam began, but Daniel cut her off.
"Yes, you did," he told her, harshly. "You always do. You always have to be right, Sam, and everyone has to know it."
"That's not...!"
"Isn't it?"
Sam fell silent.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you," Daniel said, relenting. "But it's not easy. My wife is dying – again – and you're trying to score points against yourself. I know you don't mean it," he added. "Probably don't know you're doing it, but it makes you seem even more like my friend, and each time I remember that you're not her, I remember that I don't know if she's even alive or dead."
"I'm sorry," Sam assured him, not wanting to argue the point and bring that cold-hearted stranger to the surface again. For the first time, Sam genuinely believed that Daniel might pull the trigger on Amy; or on her.
"I think you're right," she said. "I do need to sleep for a while."
*
Thursday, 0216hrs
Sam was woken by Amy's screams, and hurried out of the bedroom to see what was happening. She wondered if her comrades could hear the screams; what they thought that they meant. Clearly, even if they could hear them, they did not believe them to warrant an attack on the house, which was probably good news for her and their Amy.
With some relief, Sam confirmed that it was still the other Amy screaming. She checked her watch and saw that she had been sleeping for almost three hours.
"Kawalsky?" She whispered, softly. "Are you awake?"
"I was," Amy croaked, her mouth sounding very dry. "But I woke up. Wait; that's not right."
"Here," Sam said. She found the tie around the mouth of the bag and loosened it, then drew the makeshift hood from Amy's head. The young Captain's dark hair was tangled and unruly, and a nasty purple bruise was spreading over the bridge of her nose.
"What happened to your face?" Sam demanded, hotly.
"I fell," Amy replied. "When he stunned me, I fell against my door and hit my nose. It wasn't him. Aside from zatting me, he's been very gentle." She looked around. "Is there water anywhere, Ma'am? I could really use some water."
"Just a second," Sam said.
She went back to the table and fetched a canteen, tipping it to wet Amy's lips and let her drink a little. Then she gathered some of Daniel's rations, and fed them to the younger woman. "I'd untie you, but those knots look solid and I don't have a knife. Besides, I don't want him getting jittery."
"That's okay," Amy assured her. "I understand the situation."
"How long has he had you in here?"
Amy shrugged. "What day is it?"
"Wednesday."
"Oh," Amy laughed. "Only about a day and a half then," she replied. "Not much longer than you, probably, but time gets very confusing with your head in a bag," she added.
"How are you holding up?"
"Not bad, considering. I'm getting hungry, but he's let me have a drink every few hours or something – through a straw, mind – and besides the bruise and my ego I'm not hurt. Emotionally...I'm looking less peachy. I mean, I'm beyond confused by all this."
"I can imagine," Sam said. She was rattled enough by this, and Amy's feelings for their Daniel could only make it worse for her.
"Amy Jackson," she said, disbelieving. "I just don't know what to make of it. Does that mean..." Amy broke off at the sound of the bedroom door, her eyes widening as she looked over Sam's shoulder. "Mahamana!" She mumbled, at a loss for words.
Sam glanced over her shoulder at Daniel, then back to Amy, whose mouth was hanging slightly open, and her heart sank. Of course, she thought, sadly. How could she resist.
"Put that back!" Daniel snapped, angrily.
"What?" Sam asked, momentarily lost.
"Get back!" Daniel ordered, striding over. As Sam backed away, he swept up the sack and dropped it back over Amy's head.
"Leave her alone!" Sam told him. "Isn't this bad enough for her, without keeping her in the dark?"
"I'm not..." Daniel began. "I don't..."
"You don't what? Want to see the face of the woman you're going to murder?"
"I don't have a choice!" Daniel exploded. "I can not let her die!"
"Daniel!"
Sam looked at Amy in confusion, before she realised that the plaintive cry had come from the bedroom; from the other Amy.
"Stay away from her," Daniel ordered, then he was gone again.
"She's getting worse," Amy realised.
"Yes," Sam agreed, tugging the sack away again.
"He'll get mad again," Amy warned.
Sam smiled, sadly. "I know, but I want him to look at you. He doesn't want to, because he knows if he does he can't kill you." She shook her head. "I don't think he'll do it anyway," she said. "I can't believe Daniel could be capable of killing in cold blood; not in any world."
"Not for himself," Amy agreed. "But to save someone he loved?"
Sam shook her head again, harder. "No. Not you; he can't."
"I wish I could be so sure," Amy admitted. "But the more I see of him, the less like Daniel he seems. Although...I almost wish I hadn't seen him, because...it brought so much back to me."
"So that was an expression of nostalgia on your face?" Sam asked, gently mocking, and hoping thereby to draw the younger woman's mind away from her problems.
"Oh yeah," Amy agreed, chuckling. "Nostalgia. And leather. I know he's not my Daniel, and I know he's threatened to kill me, but damn he looks hot. And he married me," she added.
"He married the other you," Sam corrected. "We have no idea what she was like."
"We know she's a pilot; like me."
Sam shook her head. "From the sound of it, she's some hot-shot, daredevil barnstormer. I know you aced the flight exams, but you're not a career flyer."
Amy sighed. "I'd kind of like to get to know her," she admitted. "Compare notes; see where we each went wrong."
"It's not all you'd think," Sam assured her.
"Can you help her?"
"I don't think so," Sam confessed, in a low voice. "I won't stop looking, but short of enclosing her in a quantum resolution field or finding a way to send her to another universe..." She sighed, disconsolately. "And we can't build a QRF, and I don't know any way to send someone to an alternate universe."
"You'll come up with something," Amy assured her. "You always do."
"Not always," Sam murmured.
"Often enough," Amy said. "They don't call you Scotty for your Celtic roots, you know."
Sam looked up, and gave a short laugh. "Who calls me Scotty?"
"Everyone at the SGC," Amy told her. "Because you have a reputation as a miracle worker."
Sam laughed again, but quickly sobered. "I'm afraid it's not true," she said. "I can't work miracles, and this time I don't think I'm going to make it." She looked Amy in the eyes. "And since I can't see any way for the marines to take the house before Daniel has time to shoot us both, that means that unless I'm right about Daniel, one of you is going to die."
"Maybe it should be me," Amy said, quietly.
"What?" Sam asked, horrified.
"Never mind. You'd better put the bag back," she added. "Whatever his feelings, I don't think it's doing me any good to look at him."
*
Thursday, 1521hrs
Sam pressed her eyes shut. The desperate cries from the bedroom had become an almost constant soundtrack to her work, and while at first distracting, they had faded into monotony, so that now she only noticed the brief silences. Daniel spent most of his time with his Amy, growing more and more desperate and angry, while the other Amy had been reduced to tears by the screams of her counterpart. Sam felt her own heart going out to the poor woman, but she could not afford to let up in her work with less than an hour remaining until Daniel's deadline and no solution in sight.
"May I see her," Sam asked, as Daniel paced up and down. He had moved this world's Amy to the second bedroom to rest – and to insulate himself from the sound of her tears – leaving him alone with Sam for the moment.
"Why?"
Sam sighed. "Because I'm going square-eyed staring at this screen. I need to look at something else for a bit, and if I'm working to save this woman's life...I'd like at least to meet her."
"One moment," Daniel said, and disappeared through the door.
While he was gone, Sam checked on Amy, who still lay on the bed, unbound but unmoving.
"Did you try the windows?" Sam asked.
Amy looked up, slowly, and shook her head. "He's not going to be that slack," she assured her superior officer, in a slow, small voice. "Besides, I won't leave you here with him. He wouldn't take it well if I escaped."
"That's my problem," Sam told Amy. "He's going to kill you if you don't go."
"Maybe," Amy admitted.
Sam felt a growing knot of despair in her stomach. As near as she could figure it, it was at some point not long after her first sight of Daniel that Amy had suddenly and quietly broken. Most of the spark and the fight had gone out of her at that moment, and the rest was draining away.
"I'm going to speak to the other one," Sam told Amy. "Daniel is bound to go with me, so you take that opportunity and make a run for it. Send Colonel O'Neill and the marines in, but tell them not to shoot to kill unless absolutely necessary."
Before the young woman could reply, Sam heard a noise and turned away, shutting the door moments before Daniel entered the main room.
"She'll see you," he said. "But don't try anything. I'll be right behind you."
Having met herself, and this other Daniel, Sam had thought herself prepared to encounter the double of a woman she knew only tangentially, as a colleague and as a friend of friends. She was wrong.
In the other cases, there had been differences, but this Amy Kawalsky was almost a carbon copy of the other, down to the cut of her hair. They were so much alike that Sam could almost believe that the Jacksons were playing an elaborate hoax, with her running between the two rooms; except that this woman was clearly in no state to run anywhere. The only distinctions that she could make out were that the original – scientific understanding notwithstanding, Sam could not help thinking of them that way – Amy's face had been pale from fear and wet with tears, instead of from fever and sweating, and that in this woman she could sense no trace of naquada. She had never been possessed by Thoth.
The woman sitting on the bed looked scared and confused, but there was the defiant flare in her eyes that had always impressed Sam; the flare that was now gone from the original. In a moment of anger at the young Captain's surrender, Sam actually found herself agreeing that maybe this woman had more right to go on.
"Hello Sam," the other Amy croaked, feebly. Her voice was hoarse from screaming; a condition Sam knew too well to mistake.
"Officer Kawalsky," Sam greeted her, with a lump in her throat. "Or Officer Jackson, I should say."
"And I should say, Major Carter," Amy corrected herself. "After all, you weren't the best man at our wedding."
"I was best man?" Sam asked, somewhat incredulous. She felt a great outpouring of sympathy for Amy Jackson. Sam had hoped that she might be able to sway this woman to go willingly to her fate, and so save Amy, but she realised that she had made a mistake. She could no more ask this woman to give up her life than she would ask it of the Amy in the other room, and moreover, she could not now wash her hands of the woman's death when she failed to help her.
"It's alright, Daniel," Amy Jackson said. "You can leave us alone to talk."
"Amy..."
"I don't need your protection, Daniel," she told him, patiently. "Not even now."
"I know," he said, softly, a catch in his voice.
Sam looked at Daniel, and saw that what was happening to Amy was killing him as surely as it was her. He must be brimming over with pity and concern, and tearing himself apart keeping that hidden; knowing that Amy wanted neither. Sam knew very well what that was like. During the period of temporary insanity that was her engagement to Jonas Hanson, he had once been badly injured. He had rejected every attempt she had made to comfort him, or help him do things, sometimes becoming spiteful and violent, hating to be reminded of his incapacity. Although she did not know her as her team-mates did, Sam felt certain that Amy Kawalsky – or Amy Jackson – must have felt the same way.
"I'll be right outside," Daniel told Amy.
"I know you will," she assured him.
Daniel stooped and kissed his wife gently on the lips. She raised a hand and ran her fingers through his hair, but her arm shook, as though even this small movement were a great effort. Then Daniel pressed her hand in his, and reluctantly stepped outside.
Sam looked down at Amy Jackson. Amy Jackson looked up at Sam.
"Do you know what he's going to do?" Sam asked.
"Ah," Amy said. "Straight to the punch. Naturally I know," she went on. "You don't really think my husband would off my dimensional double without telling me." Her words were light, but when she talked about killing Amy Kawalsky, her already tremulous voice shook even more.
Sam hung her head, unable to say any more.
"You wanted to ask if I was okay with this; didn't you?" Amy asked. "Well, of course I'm not. We're talking about killing me. About making my parents lose a child; my brothers lose a sister. But I don't want to die," she quavered. "I'm scared, Sam...Major Carter," she corrected herself. "I can feel myself dying, and I'm so damn scared!"
The two women were still for a long moment, each avoiding the other's gaze. At last, Sam looked at Amy, reached down and gently took her hand. She felt frail, as though her bones would break if Sam pressed down too hard. Looking more closely, Sam realised that she seemed almost fuzzy and translucent. This she knew was a side-effect of the resonance cascade failure, as the molecules of her body interacted progressively less and less with a world to which she did not belong, by now only partially reflecting the light.
"I...I can't save you," Sam admitted.
Amy nodded. "I'm not sure either of us believed you could," she admitted. "We just...We didn't want to have to do the other thing."
"Then don't," Sam said, ware of the enormity of her request.
Tears welled in Amy's eyes, and she hung her head. "I'm sorry," she said, sincerely. "I'm not that brave." She tried to smile, a thin, fragile expression, but at that moment she twisted in the clutches of another TEC seizure, screaming and writhing as the entropic forces threatened to expose the impossible coincidence of factors that made up Amy Jackson. Sam looked around, impotently, and noted a mattress up against the window, no doubt to keep those outside from hearing her cries.
The door opened, and Daniel entered. "Time's up," he said. "You should get back to work."
Sam stood and turned, facing him. She took a deep breath, and bit the bullet. "It's no good," she told him. "There's no way to save her. There's nothing anyone could do in the time between arrival and complete destabilisation."
"There must be!" Daniel pleaded.
"There isn't," Sam assured him, solemnly, praying that she was right; that he could not kill Amy, even to save her.
"Then that's it," Daniel sighed. "I'm sorry."
He turned and walked purposefully from the room.
"Oh crap," Sam murmured.
*
Sam was so appalled by the expression of grim resolve on Daniel's face that it was several moments before she was able to follow, her legs feeling like lead weights even once she was moving. She emerged in time to see Amy Kawalsky step calmly from the other bedroom, followed by Daniel, covering her with his pistol.
"Daniel; don't do this," Sam begged.
"It's alright," Amy replied, with stoic calm. "I thought about it and...Please don't tell my folks," she said. "Let them think it was me who made it."
"That's crazy talk, Captain."
"No," Amy insisted. "It's better this way. He needs her."
Sam shook her head in frustration. "Captain, you will not do this."
"She isn't doing anything," Daniel said, his voice tight with control. "It will be quick," he promised Amy. "No pain."
"Thank you."
"This is insanity!" Sam cried.
"I can't let her go!" Daniel shouted back, voice cracking with emotion. "I can't let her die!"
"So you'll kill her instead?" Sam asked.
"It's different..."
"No, it isn't," Sam assured him. "Because she isn't different. In this world, you were different, but they were the same."
"Major..." Amy began.
"Shut up!" Sam snapped, her frustration at the girl's apathy boiling over. "Daniel...!"
"No!" He bellowed, raising the pistol. Amy closed her eyes.
"Daniel. Stop."
Sam turned at the sound of the fragile voice, and took a step back to let Amy Jackson move past her. She was so dissipated now that she seemed almost ethereal, and Sam felt that her counterpart's estimated time to complete disintegration might have been a little conservative.
"Amy..." Daniel whispered, desperately.
"No," she told him. "Sam's right. We don't have the right to chose her over me."
"But I can't choose her over you!" Daniel insisted.
"This isn't choosing anyone," his wife replied. "I'm dying, and I hate it, but that's the way it is."
"It doesn't have to be."
"I think maybe it does. We don't belong here, darling, and I can't name a single reason why I should live and she shouldn't."
"I need you," Daniel sobbed.
Sam moved around, then slowly drew Amy Kawalsky away from the two interdimensional travellers.
"We can't do this," Amy Jackson said. "I think it was when I was trying to remember where I was and which Sam was talking to me that I realised: I can't see a difference. I know they're not the same, but...somehow they are. I know you, Daniel, and I don't think you could live with yourself if you killed her, because you know deep down that you're killing me."
Sam felt torn apart, caught between an intense sympathy for the pain of the two people before her and concern for the life of the one at her side.
"It would destroy us," Amy Jackson went on. "We couldn't live with each other, and that would be worse than losing you to death. I know it would be worse for you too."
"Amy." Daniel was weeping openly now; both of them were, and Sam realised that she was as well.
With a cry of pain, Amy Jackson fell suddenly into another seizure, and Daniel caught her, cradling her as he sank to his knees. Sam knew that she should seize her moment to wrestle the gun from him, but it felt wrong to interrupt this moment.
After a long, long time, Amy Jackson fell silent.
"Baby?" Daniel asked.
"Hey," Amy croaked. There was barely any life left in her, and her body looked like a shimmer of moonlight in Daniel's arms.
"I can't make it alone," Daniel told her.
"I'm sorry," she replied.
"It's okay."
Daniel held Amy tightly, and they kissed. She began to flicker in and out, knotting her hands in the back of his t-shirt as the pain wracked her body. He clung to her with his left arm, pressing her so hard against him that her nebulous form seemed almost to be being absorbed by his black-clad body. Then in his right hand, Daniel raised the pistol, and pressed it against Amy's side.
"No!" Amy Kawalsky cried, but the couple were beyond noticing anything but each other. Daniel pulled the trigger, and three blasts of energy leaped from the barrel of the gun, twining around the lovers, binding them into their final, fatal embrace.
And then they were gone, and nothing remained to mark their passing.
With hands that seemed strangely numb, Sam reached under her belt, and found the panic button; having heard Amy scream in the living room, the marines were already half-way there. Jack kicked in the door and led the charge, only to find Sam and Amy kneeling in the centre of the floor, staring blankly at a few drifting wisps of smoke.
*
Three weeks later
Sam walked slowly up the steps to the mezzanine door, dragging her heels a little. She did not, in all honesty, want to be here, but she knew that she had to be, because no one else could do what she had to do. She reached the top of the steps and rang the doorbell. After a long pause, the door cracked open.
"Major!" Amy Kawalsky looked surprised. She looked well, but there was a haunted flicker in the depths of her eyes.
"Captain Kawalsky," Sam greeted the woman. "Can I come in?"
Amy swung the door wide. "Sure," she said. "Please excuse the mess."
"I've gotten used to it," Sam assured her, walking into Amy's apartment. It was cluttered, but no worse than her workshop at home or the way that Daniel's old apartment had been. "Odd little place this," she commented.
The apartment was located on floor two-and-a-half of an old brownstone, perched above a ludicrously ornate portico that consumed much of the front second-storey facing of the block, and nestled beneath a storage nook on the third. It had a low ceiling, but not so low that even Jack would have had to duck to avoid bumping his head. There were windows only in the front walls, so the hall was rather dark, but the lounge and bedroom were well lit.
Sam followed Amy through to the front room. It was decorated with an assortment of antiquities, and had about it a smell of old dust and paper that put Sam in mind of libraries. Amy sat, but Sam walked around, looking at the items on display. Casting her eyes about, she found without much surprise that she recognised a number of the artefacts.
"Can I get you anything, Major Carter?" Amy asked, brightly. "Coffee, tea; probably a little early for anything stronger."
"No, thank you," Sam replied.
"Did you get much useful information from D...From his laptop?"
Sam shook her head. "I'm sure it's there, but the encryption is like nothing I've seen. Maybe he planned to give me the passwords at some point, but as it is..." she shrugged, and turned back to the shelves. "This was Daniel's, wasn't it?" She asked, holding up a small figurine or Egyptian origin. It was a bust of a young woman who bore a marked resemblance to Sha're, and so had been very precious to Daniel.
Amy looked slightly uncomfortable, as though she had been caught doing something naughty, even though her possession of the object was quite legal. "Colonel O'Neill didn't know what to do with Daniel's things," she explained. "Asked if I'd like some of them."
Sam nodded. "Yes; he told me," she said. "So all of these are his?"
"No," Amy replied. "Some of them I bought myself. Some he gave me as presents. Those three" – she pointed to a glass case, holding a triad of statuettes in the form of the three wise monkeys – "were a gift from Dr Rothman. Charlie bought me the Navajo mask."
"How about this?" Sam asked, lifting an objected that looked a little out of place. It was a particularly well-made combat knife, with a bayonet blade; twelve inches of razor-edged steel. "That belonged to JF," Amy said.
"And this?" Sam held up a small gold-and-turquoise pendant that had been hung around the neck of a large South American fetish statue. "Oh; David Solomon gave me the pendant, but I can't wear gold; it's an allergy. I picked up the fetish in Bogotá when I was down there with Keyes' security detail."
Sam nodded again. "Captain. Amy. Does it strike you that these items have anything in common?"
"Ma'am?"
Sam sighed. "Death, Kawalsky. They're all connected with death."
"A lot of the Egyptian stuff is funereal," Amy admitted. "But the mask is a fertility totem, and..."
"No, Kawalsky," Sam interrupted. "I mean they were all given to you, or belonged to, people you know who died. Daniel's collection; your brother's mask. JF died at Atum Base, Lieutenant Solomon died offworld while you were working undercover. The fetish might not have belonged to someone who died, but you got it during a trip where half your detail were killed. You're displaying Dr Rothman's present in a glass case that's actually Daniel's fish tank turned upside down, and I noticed you still have the other Daniel's jacket."
Amy hunched her shoulders defensively. "I think you're making too much of this," she said.
"Am I?" I came into the archaeology lab while you working a few months ago, and I saw you were wearing glasses. I didn't think I'd seen you wearing them before, and then I realised: You're a certified Air Force pilot; you can't possibly have corrected vision. Next time I saw you working...Can I see your glasses, please?"
Reluctantly, Amy dug a pair of narrow-framed spectacles out of her pocket and handed them to the older woman. Sam turned them over in her hands, and poked her fingers through the empty frames.
"These are Daniel's, aren't they?"
Amy shrugged.
Sam sighed. "Listen. I'm not here to judge you. I've got some experience of losing guys I care about myself," she admitted, ruefully. "I know losing Daniel hit you hard, and I understand why running into his double screwed you up, but do you really think offering to die was the way to cope?"
"I just felt..."
"You felt that your life without Daniel was meaningless," Sam said. "It isn't, and he'd be the first to tell you that. This isn't the first time you've tried to martyr yourself, Amy. Teal'c told me about you wanting to go off with Sekhmet. I know that was her price for helping us, but he said you seemed less reluctant than he would have expected."
"I'm not suicidal," Amy insisted.
"I know that," Sam assured her. "But you do seem to be a little too keen to escape your life."
"It just..." Tears welled in Amy's eyes. "I always thought we'd work it out in the end; me and Daniel. When I saw them together, I thought: 'That's right. That's how it was supposed to be'."
"Listen to me," Sam said. "There is no 'right' in this. There aren't universes where it went right, and ones where it went wrong. I'm sorry it didn't work out with Daniel, but I won't say that it was wrong that you two never got together; anymore than I'd say that it's wrong that Martouf died the way he did. It was obscene and horrible and unfair, and I hate it, but at the universal scale of things, it was not something that shouldn't have happened, because there is no plan; not on that level.
"Daniel was not meant to pass on, but he was not meant to stay behind with you either. All that is true is that in our world he has gone. It hurts, it's not fair, and we all wish he hadn't; but it's the only truth that matters, and you have to live with it like the rest of us do." She sat down, facing Amy, her own eyes brimming with tears now. "If you loved Daniel," she said. "If that love means anything, you have to keep on living the way he would have wanted you to. He never would have wanted to see you surround yourself with death, and keep on trying to escape the world, and he certainly wouldn't have wanted you to die."
Amy hung her head. "I'm trying," she said.
"No you're not," Sam told her. "But I wouldn't have bothered coming here if I thought you weren't capable of it. You're back at work tomorrow?"
Amy nodded. She had been so traumatised by her experiences that General Hammond had excused her from debriefing, and granted her three weeks compassionate leave to recover from the ordeal.
"So come back, do your work. Go on offworld missions, meet interesting people and – hopefully – don't end up having to kill them. When you come back, remember what you learned from Daniel when you're studying artefacts he would have found fascinating, but don't dwell on the fact that he's not here to see them. Take time off to socialise with your friends." Sam grinned, realising that the last piece of advice was a little hypocritical. "You know; it's healthy to get away from work at least, ooh...Once, twice a month."
Amy smiled back.
"Enjoy what you have," Sam pressed. "Don't dwell on what you've lost."
"What if I can't?"
"You can," Sam insisted. "Or Daniel wouldn't have found you as interesting as I know he did."
Amy blushed slightly, then paled. "It may not matter," she said. "I have a debriefing and a psych review to pass before I get reassigned to SG-11. The Air Force tend to frown on things like attempted suicide."
Sam smiled at her. "What do you mean, attempted suicide? Daniel's alternate tried to kill you."
"And I told him to do it," Amy reminded Sam.
Sam shook her head. "All General Hammond has so far is my report; there's nothing in that about offering yourself as a sacrificial lamb. That's why I'm here instead of Colonel O'Neill or one of the others: Because they don't know what really happened in that house, and maybe they never have to find out."
Amy looked at Sam as though she had grown an extra head.
"Stop that," Sam said. "It's not like I've never broken regs before. You're right; that's the kind of thing that would ruin your career – and with good reason – but I happen to believe, and I know that General Hammond and the rest of SG-1 agree with me, that your career is worth saving. I mean, come on; you made Captain younger than I did, and there's only a few officers can say that."
"I made Captain because a loony General wanted to nail me," Amy interjected.
"You made Captain for helping to catch that loony," Sam corrected. "Everyone knows how much Daniel's...departure hurt you, and we've all made allowances for your grief. But pretty soon that's going to stop being a good enough excuse for flirting with self-destruction, and you'll be looking at forced resignation, if you're lucky. But see, I think you can stop making a habit of martyrdom, and get yourself back on track. Prove me right, and you'll go a long way without any help from me; prove me wrong, and I will see to it that you're asked to resign."
Sam stood up, and held out her hand to Amy. "So what do you say?" She asked. "You can make a go of it, or you can quit now and spend the rest of your life alone with your ghosts."
Amy looked up, slowly. Then she stood, and took Sam's hand. "Thank you, Major Carter," she said.
Sam held Amy's gaze, reading the young woman's soul in her eyes. To do this, to look inside someone and see the truth in their heart, was a skill that Sam had always associated with leadership. Her father had possessed the ability for as long as she could remember, as did Colonel O'Neill, General Hammond, and Teal'c. Jonas Hanson had always been able to do it, which was part of what had drawn Sam to him, right until the end, but it was not an ability she had noticed in herself until some time after joining SG-1.
At last, Sam smiled, satisfied by what she saw. "Thank you, Captain Kawalsky," she replied. "I hate being proved wrong."