Disclaimer Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.

Sam walked down the hall, trying to ignore the exhaustion that hung over her like a cloud. This had been one of the longest, and shortest two weeks of her life.

She literally couldn't remember the last time she'd slept, or ate. After making multiple trips between the surface and the gate room, her body didn't know if twelve days or twelve hours had passed.

The crisis might have been over, but there was still a ton of work to do. Not just to clean up the mess left in the gate room when the bomb had detonated, but also to put the control room back together.

And all of this had to be accomplished while trying not to trip over the squadron of armed Marines permanently stationed in the gate room. Until they could get another iris made and put into place, those men were Earth's only line of defense, save the auto-destruct.

Fortunately, they had been able to recall the stranded off-world teams, all of whom, while tired and sick of rations, were okay. That was one blessing in this whole mess, at least no one else had died, she thought, her fingers tightening over the small items in her hands, the simple ball chain cutting into her flesh.

Reaching her destination, she paused, taking a few seconds to survey her surroundings. The room was quiet and nearly empty; only one nurse sat in the corner, obviously watching over the infirmary's sole occupant.

The nurse glanced up and smiled, waving Sam into the room. Sam followed her instructions, making her way over to the colonel's bed. The nurse stood up and plucked her coffee mug off the corner of her desk, holding it up to silently gesture her intent. Sam nodded and moved closer to the bed as the woman left, obviously on her way to the commissary for a break and some coffee.

Now alone, Sam stood beside his bed, her fingers again closing over the small pieces of metal in her hand.

'Think of something'. That's what he'd ordered her to do. And, with Teal'c's help, she had. A desperate, screwball, off the wall idea, but an idea nonetheless.

Siler cocked his head, not even questioning the quirk of physics that allowed him to lower a rope horizontally instead of vertically. He looked at her and she shook her head, walking past him. "The g-suits should help you withstand the higher gravity on the way down," Sam briefed the two colonels, feeling the need to explain as much of her plan as she could.

"What's this bomb we're delivering?" Cromwell asked as he put on his gloves.

"It's a shaped charge. We want to focus the explosive force toward the wormhole, hopefully with enough energy to cause it to jump, like what happened to us in Antarctica," Sam said, knowing that Cromwell wouldn't get the reference, but also knowing that he didn't need to. She just needed to make sure O'Neill understood.

"Right. Where is it?" O'Neill asked, cutting straight to the point as he slid his dog tags from around his neck.

"They're modifying the warhead's yield to my calculations and it's being flown in from Travis." She quashed the idea of telling him that she HOPED her calculations were right. While she had rather painful and very chilly knowledge that it was possible to jump a wormhole, she'd never had the chance to experiment and ascertain exactly how much force was needed to force a wormhole to abandon one gate for another. There were limits to how much General Hammond would let her play with the gate, and skipping wormholes was definitely beyond that limit.

"How long's all that going to take?" Cromwell asked, handing her his own dog tags, the gesture casual, as if he was just passing her a memo. He showed none of the gravity and seriousness the gesture meant. Dog tags were more than a simple piece of identification, she knew, they were a symbol, just like a policeman's badge; and usually something that a soldier only surrendered when he quit…or died.

"Well, sir, with any luck, about 5 minutes, relatively-"

"Relatively speaking," Jack interrupted, following suit, the bits of metal warm against her palm, still carrying his body's heat.

"Anytime you're ready, sirs. I don't know how much longer that iris's going to hold," Siler spoke up.

"They have to wait for the bomb," Sam said, torn between impatience and dread. She was impatient, almost eager to know if her plan would work, and desperately afraid that it would fail. As if on cue, Teal'c walked in, easily carrying the bulky explosive.

"You got better quick," Jack said, frowning at his teammate as he and Cromwell ducked under the ropes.

"It has, in fact, been several days," Teal'c said impassively, almost amused at his leader's words.

"Yeah. I knew that."

"Everyone who doesn't have to be here should go topside," Sam warned, securing herself in a harness as the two colonels did the same. Yes, the charge was shaped and SHOULD only detonate towards the stargate, but she really had no idea how everyone else would be affected. There would be some sort of a blast wave and she had no idea if the general structure of the gate room could handle the force of a bomb going off. Worse case scenario, part or all of the ceiling could collapse on top of them.

"Cromwell," O'Neill invited. The two men walked towards the front of the control room.

"Cannot the bomb be detonated by remote?" Teal'c asked, wisely seeking the safest option. It was one she wished she could take.

She shook her head. "It has to be set a certain distance from the gate and at an exact angle. The timer can't be set until they're into position because of the variance in time dilation."

"Man, she is-"

"Way smarter than we are. I know," Jack interrupted Cromwell, his words doing little to bolster Sam's confidence of her plan. Realistically, she wasn't all that sure it would work. But it was better than the original plan, which she KNEW would not work. Like the colonel always said, a long shot is better than no shot at all.

Unable to do more, she turned and watched in fascination as they floated out the control room window, absently shoving the two sets of dog tags into her pocket.

It'd worked. By some miracle of god, it had actually worked. The wormhole had been skipped to another gate and Earth was safe. And all it'd cost them was a few pounds of explosive and a man's life.

Her fingers rubbed over the raised letters of the dog tag. Cromwell, Frank. He'd died because of her, died carrying out the hair brained scheme of a woman he'd met only minutes - or had it been hours?- before.

"Captain?" General Hammond's voice startled her, pulling her back from her dark thoughts.

"Sir," she said, turning to face him, her back stiff.

"At ease." He waved her back. "How is he?" He nodded towards the unconscious figure in the bed. The colonel was asleep; his normal tan standing in stark contrast to the bright, bleached white of the bed linens. There was a bandage on his neck, although Sam knew those scratches were just superficial. His real injury had been simple blunt force trauma. The moment of detonation was still a blur to her.

She remembered her and Teal'c pulling frantically on the rope, desperate to get the colonel away from the bomb, fighting not only the clock, but the inexorable gravity of the black hole hundreds of light years away. She remembered the blast, a burst of bright light and then a heavy force striking her. The next thing she really recalled was sitting on the floor, debris scattered around her, absolutely stunned to still be alive.

"Fine, I guess," she finally answered, feeling the general's stare. She should have asked the nurse before the woman had left. In truth, she assumed he was okay. If he wasn't, Janet would have said something, right? No news was good news and all that.

"The colonel is tougher than you think," Hammond said, giving her a comforting smile, not appearing disappointed in her lack of knowledge. "He'll be up and complaining in no time," he reassured.

"Yes, sir," she muttered, not believing his words, but not up to contradicting him either. Maybe he was right. Maybe the colonel would be fine. Maybe she hadn't killed another person. "Sir, I'm sorry," she said, remembering the items in her hand. "I forgot." She separated Cromwell's from the colonel's and handed it to the general.

"Thank you, Captain," he said gravely, taking the dog tags from her. He'd been informed of Cromwell's death hours earlier, so she knew the information was nothing new. But there was a solemnity in her gesture, a certain note of reality represented by her giving him physical proof of the man's sacrifice.

She was making it official. Frank Cromwell had died carrying out her plan. She knew the general didn't blame her, that she was just doing her job, presenting ideas, outlining the risks and then letting her superiors decide whether or not they were worth it.

But the fact remained that Cromwell had died because of her, because of their faith in her and her plan.

"You should get some sleep," Hammond said, carefully wrapping the chain around the dog tags and placing them in his pocket. She knew they'd be given to Cromwell's family, presuming he had one. A final remembrance of his sacrifice, something to be put away with a folded flag and maybe a posthumous medal. A pitiful, but symbolic, payment for a life sacrificed saving a world from a danger it didn't even know existed.

Sam shook her head. "I'm okay, sir. I was going to-"

"The new iris won't be here for another twenty-four hours," he interrupted. "Until it's in place, the less people down in the control room, the better."

"That soon?" she asked, surprised. "I thought it'd take weeks."

"Plans were already underway to upgrade the present iris to a sturdier one. They've had good luck at Nellis creating a titanium-trinium alloy and they think it will be even stronger than the iris we lost. The black hole simply moved up the time table," he explained. "It'll be on a C-130 in the morning and, god willing, in place by this time tomorrow. Get some sleep," he ordered. "Once the stargate is secure, our next goal is to get things back to normal."

"Yes, sir," she answered as he turned, leaving her alone again.

She looked back down at the dog tags in her hand, her fingers tracing the imprints stamped into the aluminum. 'O'Neill, Jonathan J.' It could have been different. Just one simple quirk of fate and it could have been Colonel Cromwell lying in the bed and Colonel O'Neill's dog tags in the general's pocket.

She understood now. She knew the reason behind the shadows in his eyes, the pain she sometimes caught on his face when he thought no one was looking.

She'd thought it'd come from too many years in Special Ops and too much blood on his hands. Maybe from some of those 'damned distasteful things' he would never talk about, but it wasn't just that, she knew that now. He'd done it before, ordered men - ordered friends - to their deaths.

It was different if you were killing the enemy. They were the enemy, the 'bad guys'. And they were, usually, trying to kill you. It wasn't murder, it was survival.
Was that what she'd done? No. Not murder. Cromwell had chosen to go down the rope, chosen to carry out her plan, chosen to risk his life. He hadn't been following orders. Just like the colonel hadn't been following orders. He'd trusted her, trusted that her plan was going to work. Trusted that she had a solution, trusted her enough that he put his life on the line based solely on her word.

It humbled her that he felt that way. And it scared her. What if he trusted her too much? What if he didn't question her enough? What if he just accepted her word without making her prove that she was right?

What if his trust in her got him or someone else killed? What if she got complacent? Too confident in her own abilities and she stopped questioning?

In an instant, she understood. Understood the quips and jokes, understood why he seemed to hover at times.

It annoyed her when he did that, when he hovered and lurked, never bothering or interrupting, just there.

At first, she'd thought he'd wanted an explanation of what she was doing, and she'd tried to do that, to explain everything she was doing or going to do. But he'd always cut her off or tuned her out. It frustrated her because she couldn't figure out what he wanted. But now she knew.

Now she knew why he'd be gruff or short with her. Why he'd be so impatient at times with her analysis and fascination with her samples.

It wasn't because he didn't trust her, it was because he did. He didn't hover to belittle her, he did it to keep her, and Teal'c and Daniel, safe.

He was keeping her alert, not letting her get too distracted. He was teaching her how to stay alive, and how to keep others alive, teaching her how to make the life and death decisions she would have to make if she was ever going to have a future in command.

And he was teaching her how to trust, to learn to know when to step back and let others tell her and show her what to do. He was teaching her how to lead by showing her how to follow.

Looking down at the dog tags, she again ran her fingers over the raised letters, the aluminum smooth and warm under her touch. She would do it again. Somehow she knew that the day would come when she would again give the general a comrade's tags, when she would again be the bearer of death.

She would lose other friends, watch them die, go to their funerals, lie to their families. And, one day, it would be her. Someday, sometime, someone would bring back battered bits of metal bearing her name.

But that was someday, not today. Today they were alive, thanks to the sacrifice of one man. Carefully laying the dog tags on the bedside table, she paused for a second, then turned on her heel and slipped from the room, her mind already making a list of everything she needed to do.

~End~

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