Title: An Alternate Point of View
Author: cyher, aka cyren2132
Author's Notes: I don't own anything. Some of the dialogue was lifted from the season 3 episode "Point of View" and for that credit goes to Jonathan Glassner, Brad Wright, Robert C. Cooper, and Tor Alexander Valenza. The show belongs to Viacom, Gekko Productions, et al.

Prologue

The corridors were thick with smoke and haze, but Dr. Samantha Carter ran as fast as her legs would carry her. She followed Major Kawalsky around this corner and that corner and by the time he stopped moving, Samantha wasn't even sure what part of the base she was in.

"Is this it?" she asked him. They were standing in front of a supply closet. To her it looked like every other supply closet on the base, and certainly not someplace the military would keep an advanced piece of alien technology.

"Yeah," Kawalsky said. "Jack showed me just before…" There was no need to finish the sentence. Samantha knew what 'just before,' meant. Just before Apophis' ship got close enough to be spotted from Earth. Just before he wiped out most of the major cities on the planet. Just before landing on the mountain and killing the only man she ever really loved. She knew what he meant..

Kawalsky glanced from side to side before firing three short shots into the locked door. With one more kick the room was open, and he quickly ushered Samantha inside. There it sat, in the middle of the closet. The quantum mirror: their last beacon of hope.

They had found it not long ago on P3X-233 surrounded by artifacts from hundreds of other planets. No one was sure of its exact origin, but once they realized what it was capable of—once they realized they could use it to travel to parallel realities that might hold the secret to defeating the Goa'uld—they had to have it.

No one had tried it yet. Well, no one except Daniel, but that had been an accident. It was a miracle that they got him back. Jack and Daniel were both gone now. Samantha struggled to hold back tears while Kawalsky searched for a safe reality. They saw four goa'uld occupied worlds, two that didn't appear to be worlds at all--just pools of multicolored light—and one world that was so dark there was no way to tell what they'd be walking into. Kawalsky kept trying. Daniel had shown him how to use the hand device, but it required a certain finesse that Kawalsky hadn't quite mastered.

They could hear the enemy filing down the hallway, led by the angry yells of the first prime of Apophis. Kawalsky switched from world to world, but everything seemed so wrong.

"JAFFA!" the first prime yelled, and the clang of armor on concrete grew louder.

Finally, a world appeared that didn't look like the others. He nodded at Samantha. As they reached out to touch the glass, he stopped and grabbed her shoulder.

"If anything happens to me," Jack had said, "You'll take care of her, right?" Kawalsky hadn't immediately said anything, for fear that even acknowledging the possibility would make it likely to happen. "She's my family, Charlie, please." Jack knew it annoyed Kawalsky when he called him Charlie, but that was Jack O'Neill for you. He could ask you a favor and piss you off all at the same time and still leave you wanting to help him.

"Do you think it's safe?" he asked Samantha, searching her eyes for an answer.

"I don't see any serpent guards," she said.

"That's not what I meant."

Samantha took Kawalsky's hand, gently sliding her fingers between his.

"I know."

Together they touched the mirror and disappeared.

"Hey, kids, what's the big emer—whoa!" Jack O'Neill said as he entered the SGC infirmary. "What happened to you?"

Carter looked up at him in surprise. It was nothing to the surprise Jack felt. In addition to long hair, which was definitely not within air force requirements and kind of freaked Jack out, his second in command also appeared to be about nine months pregnant.