Post 'Our Legacy' Episode Tags

Summary: A series of episode tags following the events of my story 'Our Legacy', in which Sam and Jack travel forward in time to the year 2034, and have an adventure before being sent home. Read that story first, or this won't make sense. Basically what I will be doing is changing or adding to episodes, to show how they were affected or changed by Sam and Jack's time travelling adventure.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters nor profit from their use - I merely toy with them for my own amusement.

Season 4 Episode 20 - Entity
Episode summary: An alien entity takes over Sam's body. After hostile negotiations with Jack, it runs from the infirmary and appears to attempt to transplant itself into the base mainframe. Jack shoots Sam once with a zat, with no effect. He shoots again. Sam's body is kept alive by life-support machines, but she is declared braindead. However, the entity had transplanted Sam's mind into the base mainframe, and she manages to communicate to Daniel that she is there. They successfully transfer her back into her own body.

It was all Jack could do to keep his face blank, and prevent the violent maelstrom of emotions swirling in him from spilling out on his expression. Instead he stood with Daniel and Teal'c and watched as the Janet Fraiser and her nurses flitted around Sam like flies, hooking her up to heart monitors and IVs. His fists clenched against his sides, fingernails digging into his palms, checking his impulse to swat the nurses out of the way and go to her.

Dr Fraiser had explained that Carter's body had been through an incredible stress and there was a real concern that she would have another cardiac episode. Hearts weren't designed to receive so many violent electrical shocks in such a short space of time. She looked so fragile, pale and weak.

At least she was alive.

He thought he'd killed her. He thought he'd killed his future, his kids. He shot her twice with a zat. He had hesitated with his finger on the trigger, and he wondered retrospectively if he would have had the strength to make the same decision and shoot to kill, if he hadn't known – or thought he'd known – from their recent escapade in the year 2034 that she would live to see old age no matter what. That question had plagued him as he had sat at her bedside while she'd lain brain-dead on life support. How could she be gone? Didn't they have an ironclad guarantee that she'd make it?

Well, she had made it, against the odds. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to any god that cared, that Daniel had kept his head and noticed Sam's message before he'd pulled the plug on his future and ruined the timeline irrevocably.

An eternity later, Doc Fraiser finished whatever she was doing, shooed away the nurses, and beckoned the three of them over to Sam's bedside. Jack took the position closest to Sam, stopping just short of touching her. He looked at her, and she blinked back at him with a faint smile on her tired, pale face.

He tore his gaze away and looked to Fraiser. "Doc?" He prompted.

"We'll keep Major Carter under close observation for the next day or two, and see how things go. Now that she's free of the alien entity however, I am hopeful that she'll make a full recovery."

He swallowed his intense sigh of relief. "Good. That's good."

He drummed his fingers on the bed beside Sam's hand.

"How are you feeling?" Daniel asked her.

"Tired. Sore." Sam said, her voice hoarse. "But alive, so there's that."

"We are extremely relieved that you survived." Teal'c said, his voice low and heartfelt. "We feared the worst."

Sam smiled at the big guy. Jack's drumming fingers clenched into a fist.

"I'm going to have to kick you out now, sir. My patient needs some peace and quiet to rest." Janet said, directing her statement to Jack as the team leader.

"We'll let you rest, then." Daniel said to Sam. "We'll pop by again a bit later."

Daniel nudged his shoulder when Jack didn't move.

"In a minute." He said. He looked to Fraiser for permission.

"Only a minute, Colonel. I'll be back to check." Janet said, and she, Daniel and Teal'c left the two of them alone.

Jack looked at Sam, and she looked back at him. "That was a close one." He said softly.

"We knew it would work out though, right?" She whispered back.

Jack looked at her in silence for a moment. "I had to shoot you. Twice, with a zat. And then you were brain dead, and you have that damn living will …"

Sam winced. "Sorry about that. I did it before …" She trailed off.

"Yeah, I know." He blew out a harsh breath, releasing some tension. "How sure are we that the future is set in stone? Could I have actually killed you and ruined the timeline?"

Sam closed her eyes, looking exhausted. "Theoretically, yes. We're not invulnerable. If we both put guns to our heads, we could force a change in the future as we saw it. But barring any extraordinary measures, as long as we do our best to act in the way we would have done before our trip to 2034, we should be fine."

Jack shifted uneasily. "That's the thing, though. I think I might already have changed things."

Sam's blue eyes flew open and looked at him widely. "Sir? What do you mean?"

He looked her in the eye and took a deep breath. "I had a split second to make a decision. To shoot you a second time, or not. We thought it was trying to get itself into the base mainframe, we didn't know it was transferring you. It was a choice between you, or the SGC. But …" He ran a hand through his hair. "… but in the back of my mind, I knew you were alive in 2034. So I took the shot."

"You would have done it anyway. You wouldn't have sacrificed the SGC, the safety of the planet, for me."

"Wouldn't I?" He shook his head. "I guess we'll never know. But what if that was the call I was supposed to make? What if that's what the other guy did, and now I've changed things?"

"Sir, I honestly don't believe you would have made a different decision. You'd have done what needed to be done."

"Would you have?" He asked her. He immediately regretted it. A look of pain crossed her already drawn face. "Never mind."

"The bottom line is that I'm alive and the base is safe. That will have to be enough."

"Yeah." He gave into temptation and took her hand, taking comfort in the feel of her skin.

"Sir, time's up." Fraiser's voice preceded the sound of her heels crossing the concrete floor, and Jack dropped Sam's hand quickly, standing.

"Rest up, Carter." He said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Yes sir."