Memory Lane

by

romansilence

(romansilenceyahoo.de)

Copyright: The characters of the shows "Stargate SG-1" don't belong to me but the lucky guys at Showtime Productions, Gekko et al. I just take them out to play. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit will be made. The story however is mine, archiving only with my permission.

Rating: R-13, no sex but some remembered violence – and there's also a lot of hurt and angst; so, be warned.

Warning: This story depicts a loving relationship between two consenting adult women.

Pairing: Sam/Janet (established relationship)

Timeline: Season seven; just before Heroes; thus: Heroes-fixit, with a lot of flashbacks.

Language: This story is some sort of experiment. For the first time I used phrases of a language I know next to nothing about. I claim full responsibility for the German parts, but I know literally nothing about the Russian language. When the internet didn't give up any satisfactory solutions I asked for help and was answered (Oh, Goddess, don't you just love mailing lists). Svetla and Jen saved me from total embarrassment. You'll find a list with translations and the pronunciation of the Russian parts (provided by Jen) at the end of the story.

Thanks: So, this time my thanks go not only to Pam and Mary, my beta readers, but also to my valiant language knights Svetla and Jen. You guys rock and I would have been totally lost without your help.

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Summary: Did you ever wonder why Samantha was not part of the first Abydos mission? Did you ever wonder why General West and not General Hammond was the one in charge? Here's an answer. – And while fixing SNAFUS: well, just think of Heroes.

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Doctor Janet Fraiser jumped up and glared evilly at the computer screen that just had jolted her out of a very sensual dream about her lover of six years by announcing, "You have mail!"

Janet had fallen asleep at the desk in Samantha's lab at the base, a place to which she often retired when her blonde partner was on a mission. Her official justification was that even in her office there were far too many distractions popping up to get her paperwork don with one or the other of her people coming in with a question or any member of the SGC insisting that only the CMO herself would possibly be able to treat their bruises and scrapes. No one ever wondered why she never She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and stared at the insistently flashing mail icon.

Samantha usually re-routed her private account to Janet's station when going off-world. The brunette automatically opened the mail program and found that the message was addressed to an account she never had seen before.

The message was marked urgent. There was no sender identification and no subject header. It was not signed and consisted of only a few words.

Ah-nah oo-mee-rai-yet.
Pree-yehz-zhai kahk mozh-nah skahr-yay-yeh.

Janet was at a loss. The letters were Cyrillic but her lover had never mentioned having friends in Russia.

SG-1 was scheduled to stay on M3X-997 for another two days. Janet had cleared them for light duty only, and so, Daniel had a shot at the temple ruins the UAV survey of the uninhabited moon had brought up.

A quiet but insistent voice told the doctor to simply ignore the message but her gut feeling was of another opinion. So, she transferred the few words to her PDA and went to the control room. She would be just in time for SG-1's daily report.

Daniel obviously was in an archaeologist's heaven, while the others seemed very relaxed and genuinely bored, even Teal'c. Samantha had an indulgent smile on her face when Jack told the General about the prodigious fishing grounds next to the ruins.

While the Colonel still was bragging, Janet sent the message to her lover. Samantha's smile disappeared in a flash and a dark cloud fell over her face,

"Janet, when did the message come through?"

"About five or ten minutes ago, Sam."

"General Hammond, I request permission to return to Earth, immediately. – Janet, please show the message to the General."

General Hammond's face rarely showed what he was feeling but after taking hold of Janet's PDA, he looked as if some prehistoric monster just had raised its head. He whispered,

"Ah-nah oo-mee-rai-yet. Pree-yehz-zhai kahk mozh-nah skahr-yay-yeh. She's dying. Come fast." He whispered and then added in his command voice. "Permission granted, Major Carter. Colonel, do you want a replacement for your XO or can you manage on your own?"

The smart-ass remark Jack probably had had in mind died on his lips when he saw Samantha's stormy blue eyes.

"No, Sir. It's a rather quiet little moon. T and I have everything under control."

"Then proceed. Close the gate, Siler. Doctor Fraiser, prepare to make Major Carter's post-mission check-up right here, and send her to my office as soon as you're done."

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Without waiting for her reply, the General was gone, with her PDA still in hand.

Janet grabbed the emergency med kit and rushed down to the Gate room. The metal ring whooshed to life the moment she entered the big room. A few heartbeats later, Samantha stepped through the event horizon.

Her face was a closed off mask, but over the years the small doctor had learned to read her lover. She knew that Samantha was deeply troubled. She was fighting not to lose her outer calm; but despite her best efforts Janet could see the pain in those incredibly blue eyes. She longed to take her in her arms and to comfort her; instead she busied herself with a superficial check-up that only barely followed the guidelines she had personally enforced.

Janet knew her lover well enough to be certain that she now needed distance and not cuddling to keep from breaking down in front of the whole SGC. But she also was unwilling to let her go through whatever was to come all alone. So, she whispered in her ear. "Let me be at your side, Sam."

For a split second the mask slipped and surprisingly the blonde nodded. Janet's surprise grew when she didn't have to resort to some basically phoney medical reasons to get the General's permission to accompany her lover.

He simply said, "Take all the time you need Majors – there's nothing important scheduled and the reporter the President wants us to talk to will just have to do with your XOs."

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They quickly changed into pilot jumpsuits, grabbed their always prepared bags with changes of clothes and other necessities, and were driven to the USAF airport outside of Colorado Springs where an F-16C was being prepped for them.

Though an Air Force Major herself, Janet had never seen the inside of one of the Fighting Falcons up close and personal. She could have written up a report about the injuries one could sustain from the special make-up of the cockpit, but she never had experienced it first hand. And now she would sit in the back seat to fly to the other end of the continent, to Nome, Alaska. At the base there a helicopter would stand by to bring them across the Bering Sea to the port-town Provideniya in Russia. A car would be waiting to take them the last leg of their journey.

This much she had learned from General Hammond who had startled her by squeezing her shoulder and quietly telling her to take good care of Samantha. She still didn't have the faintest idea where they finally would end up and why.

Janet couldn't help but feel a great deal of apprehension about the whole situation. However, her need to be with her lover, to offer any support she could as soon as the blonde was ready to accept help was stronger than her misgivings. What Samantha now definitively didn't need was a cartload full of questions.

Except for the blonde fighter pilot reassuring her that flying the powerful aircraft was easier than riding her Harley, they had not spoken much. So, the brunette idly studied the numerous buttons and lights in front of her and tried to make sense of them in a doomed attempt to keep her mind from speculating.

Samantha and General Hammond obviously hadn't had any problems to decipher the message. On a rational level Janet understood that it could be quite a tactical advantage to understand your (former) enemy's language. It was even greater an advantage if your enemy didn't know you had this skill. The small doctor didn't have access to General Hammond's complete personal file, but Samantha's didn't mention any knowledge of foreign languages other than Spanish and German; and as far as she remembered her service file she never had been posted anywhere near Russia or the USSR prior to joining the SGC.

Yes, the Russians now were their allies, officially and in the Stargate Program; they even had their own team, but still… She didn't trust them. Janet was honest enough with herself to admit that her dislike of every thing Russian had nothing to do with residual effects of the cold war or some other political reason. It only had to do with Samantha's nightmares.

With everything her lover had been through over the years, the doctor was surprised that she slept at all. Her dreams often were troubled and Janet had to calm her down or even wake her up. Whenever she had to work closely with the Russian team, the dreams tended to get out of hand, to the point that the usually brave and stoic blonde dreaded to go back to sleep.

Janet closed her eyes and remembered the first time this had happened. It had been after the incident with this weird water planet when the team had shipped out to Siberia to help the Russian scientists. After their return, they had had to stay under observation in the infirmary to make sure that there were no lingering side effects from the contact with these strange life forms.

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Janet checked on her favourite team every hour; everyone knew that she was extremely protective of all four of them. Even Warner who had the sensibility of a frozen mammoth wouldn't dare to suggest that the CMO was wasting her time by personally watching over them, though for once they all seemed to be okay.

Jack and Daniel were sleeping peacefully, Teal'c was in a deep state of Kel'no'rem, and Samantha was pretending to be asleep. The small doctor used the eerie quiet of the night shift to fight the ever growing mountain of paperwork. Every now and then she looked up to make sure that every thing was still alright out there. When Samantha suddenly began to thrash around in her sleep and cry, she was at her side in the blink of an eye and hastily closed the flimsy privacy curtain around the bed.

Janet made sure that all the security camera would catch was her silhouette looming over the bed. She gently stroked Samantha's face and whispered endearments. Usually this was enough to ease her lover back to a more peaceful sleep. But this night soft touches and tender words could not break through the hold the nightmare had of the blonde. She continued to whimper and thrash around and cry.

"Sam, Sammy-baby, come back to me," Janet said while nudging her shoulder. "Wake up. Open these baby-blues for me. That's an order, Major." And the blonde obeyed. "It's all right, Sam. You just had a bad dream."

"Please hold me, Jan."

Samantha never showed weakness when on base. It must have been a very, very bad dream. Without hesitation the small doctor scooped her lover in her arms. The blonde gratefully cuddled against her. For long minutes, Janet gently stroked her back and Samantha's breathing slowly returned to normal.

"Don't let me go back to sleep, Janet. I don't want to dream."

The brunette was shocked speechless by the pleading tone and the fear in her partner's voice, and held her tighter. She was tempted to ask about the dream but knew from experience that the taller woman would never open up if she prodded her now.

"Let's go to my office, baby. The couch there is more comfortable to sit and talk. I'll tell you about my day and then we can play a round of Scrabble. You don't have to go back to sleep if you don't want to, baby."

They got the board and the letters out but in the end, Samantha had started to talk to keep from falling asleep. She had talked about her childhood; how her mother had been her best friend and playmate and what it had felt like to lose her.

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Janet returned to the present when she felt a sudden change in velocity. She observed with baited breath how Sam manoeuvred close to a freighter and expertly connected with a filler pipe while making small talk with the captain of the other aircraft. They quickly were back to their previous cruising speed.

"Great show, Sam."

"We aim to please, Janet." The words were meant to sound light and carefree but Samantha's voice was far from it.

Janet sensed the younger woman's pain and decided that it was time to distract her lover from her obviously disturbing thoughts. "So, did we need to refuel or did you only want to show off, Sam?" she asked teasingly.

"If you want me to show off, I can do a few loops and rolls. But yes, we needed to refuel. These babies are fast but they're not really made for long distance runs. It's close to 3.000 miles from Colorado to Nome, and our flight plan adds another 150 miles. Maximum speed is Mach 2. We're going at Mach 1.7, that's 1275 miles per hour. We're about to cross over into Canadian airspace."

"Is this why we had to refuel this early?" Janet wanted to keep her lover going. She probably would learn more about F-16 fighters than she ever wanted to know, but she also loved to listen to her lover's voice and it would keep Samantha from brooding too much over whatever awaited them at their destination.

Two and a half hours after their take-off at Colorado Springs, Samantha landed the Viper at Nome's Air Force base, and five minutes later the helicopter that would bring them to Russia was air borne.

Janet positively hated helicopters. They could take your head off and were far too loud. The actual mechanics and physics involved in flying were just too close to the surface to let her keep her comfort zone. They made her feel vulnerable and mortal, and just outright scared her.

She grabbed Samantha's hand like a lifeline and held on for dear life. The blonde squeezed back, knowing of her lover's aversion to helicopters, and Janet immediately felt better.

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From the very beginning Cassandra had been fascinated by all things technical. She wanted to use them, wanted to know how they worked and why they worked. Her favourite toys were the tools in what once had been Janet's two-car garage and now, a month after Samantha had moved in with them – supposedly to help the doctor raising the alien pre-teen – now gave a good impression of a cross between a working shed and a high-tech car repair. Cassandra loved to take things apart but on top of her list was everything remotely connected to flying.

So, to indulge the girl and give her lover a treat, Samantha had arranged a helicopter joyride over Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods. It should have been a surprise but Cassandra knew all along that something was up and was bubbly with anticipation. Neither Samantha nor the girl saw the expression of dread crossing Janet's face when the colourful sign 'Babington aviation Surveys and Fun Rides' came into view.

They stopped the car next to an office building. Janet openly stared at the steel-bodied incarnation of impending doom only a few dozen paces away. She considered simply waiting it out on the ground, but in the end she wouldn't have been able to stand Samantha's and Cassandra's disappointed puppy dog eyes.

They were greeted by a tall woman, tall enough to tower even over Samantha. Janet suspected that she would have been able to see eye to eye with Teal'c without craning her neck. She closed her arms around the blonde and swung her around. This greeting distracted her enough from the metal monster in front of her to hear Samantha introducing Cassandra and her.

"Mickey, meet Cassy and Janet, my family."

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"You alright, Janet?" Samantha asked and motioned for her to activate the microphone of the headset she was wearing. "You were squeezing the life out of my hand, and now you're smiling that wonderful smile of yours. What's up?"

"I was just remembering the first time you took me on a helicopter ride. I was so insanely proud when you introduced Cassy and me as your family," the brunette answered after double-checking that their conversation could not be overheard by the pilot. "I could have kissed you right then."

"Could have fooled me. I thought you wanted to kick me into next week when we returned from the ride," Samantha answered with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

That was what Janet reacted to by reaffirming her grip on the blonde's hand. "Everything will be okay, baby."

Samantha turned intense blue eyes on her smaller lover and answered. "Yes, eventually it will be, Jan, but right now I hurt."

"I'll be with you, every step of the way."

They fell silent for the rest of the 300 miles' flight to Provideniya.

The closer they came to their destination, the more rigid Samantha sat in her seat. The usually imperceptible lines around her eyes were now clearly visible; her jaw was set, and her mouth was close to snap in a tight line. Janet's lover rarely showed this many outward signs of stress and exhaustion, not even when everyone else would have collapsed hours ago.

Janet really longed to know what from her past had the power to haunt her strong partner to such a degree. No one at the SGC, not even her team mates, would believe that the strong, controlled, unflappable Major Carter was even capable of assuming such a facial expression; no one with the possible exception of General George Hammond.

The General was friends with her father and had known her lover for her whole life though both of them successfully kept their private relationship out of the base and everyday life. He knew about them. He probably had known before either of them had been ready to admit to their feelings. His support was why she now was sitting where she was sitting and holding the hand of the most important person in her life.

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The helicopter began to descend and Janet chanced a glance outside. What she had seen of Nome had given her the impression of a quiet little town with a somewhat rural feeling in a sea of green. Provideniya was grey, countless shades of grey. The sun was shining, and yet everything seemed dull. A patrol ship was cruising under them, unmoving cranes, and an ugly, supposedly utilitarian architecture didn't do anything to improve Janet's state of mind.

They touched ground at the military harbour. A uniformed man stood next to a big, black limousine and greeted them – at least that's what Janet thought he was doing. Samantha answered in Russian.

They exchanged a few sentences, and the small doctor witnessed as the quiet desperation her lover had settled into during the flight was replaced by anger. She snapped a few words that every soldier in every army of the world would recognise as an order. The man cast an uneasy glance in her direction, saluted, and opened the door to the back seat.

Janet had no idea how good her lover's mastery of the foreign language really was but to her ears it was sexy as hell. Samantha's voice gained a new musical quality that went straight to her heart.

When the car rolled from the dock, she became aware that they were still holding hands. Not that she minded but she also couldn't shake the feeling that the short argument had had something to do with this. Janet considered asking the blonde what it really had been about but she also knew her lover well. She knew now was not the time.

The windows of the car, though pitch black on the outside, allowed an unimpeded view from the interior.

They left the dock area, drove past office blocks, and living quarters with freshly laundered clothes on small balconies. At the checkpoint, they simply were waved through without having to stop. Someone very high up on the food chain must have authorised their journey. The rest of the town turned out to be more colourful, with advertising signs, cars of unknown design, and of all things a McDonald's. There were lots of people hurrying along or ambling around.

This sign of normal, everyday life made Janet feel better but it surprisingly also made her more sensitive to the rigid tension emanating from her lover. So, she did the only thing she could think of: she put her left hand on top of Samantha's left holding her right and began to gently stroke its back with her thumb. Sometimes, she did things like this in debriefing sessions that had the potential to hurt her partner.

By then they had left the town and were following a smooth path lined by fields.

Samantha turned towards her lover and simply shook her head. The brunette immediately stopped the caress and removed her hand. The small gesture had told her more about Samantha's state of mind then any of Mackenzie's psych evaluations ever would.

For now, Samantha needed to distance herself from her feelings. She needed to feel in control to keep the tenuous hold she had on her emotions.

Her rigid posture and tightly controlled breathing reminded Janet of the surprisingly short debriefing after Orlin's ascension.

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She and Cassandra had been on a short mother-daughter-vacation when the alien had decided to follow Samantha to Earth. With O'Neill and Hammond paying more credence to the blonde's word than the NID or Mackenzie ever would, she and Cassandra had temporarily ended up at the General's house. It had been a very nerve wrecking time; her mind didn't stop speculating about what Samantha was doing with the alien male. She didn't fear losing her lover, but that didn't keep her from worrying.

Even after the remnants of the one-time-one-way Stargate had been removed to be studied at Area 51, their house, especially the basement, was still a mess and General Hammond extended their temporary sanctuary at his home.

Samantha had held up the façade of the good little soldier during the debriefing but as soon as the door to the guest room closed behind them she had broken down in sobs. Janet had cradled her in her arms. They had cried together; and Samantha had told her about the mind meld and other things not mentioned in her official report or the illegal surveillance tapes of the NID. It had taken more than one night of tears and long, repeated conversations to let the blonde successfully deal with the feeling of guilt she had over Orlin's death.

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The small doctor couldn't shake the feeling that this time the fall-out would be far worse, and her lover would need more than just a couple of days to cope with whatever was waiting for them.

TO BE CONTINUED

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