Grace

by Aria

Chapter Forty

Rating: Same as the show.

Disclaimer: I don't own them; if I did then I would be a hell of a lot richer. No one's paying me to write this, so I'm not making any profit from writing it. I'm just killing time.

Spoilers: In the line of duty, Divide and Conquer, Beneath the Surface, Point of No Return, Tangent, Serpent's Venom, Grace, The Other Guys, Heroes.

Synopsis: Grace arrives through the Stargate, and it's not just Sam that can see her. Set a couple of months after Heroes, and Lost City.

Just in case you still haven't noticed - even chapters tell one reality, odds another.

This chapter is a bit grizzly. Those of the faint of heart may want to skim read sections.

-*-*-

"So, you're saying it's an alternate reality thingy, like that mirror on 233?"

"I don't even pretend to understand the physics that Ba'al's working on here, but that appears to be its goal." Daniel clarified.

"But I don't understand, Daniel," Janet began, chipping in, "What possible use could a Goa'ld have for something like that?"

"Who knows, maybe he hoped to find new technologies, or new slaves or Jaffa untouched by the rebellion?"

Jack let out a soft whistle, moving over to the alcove. "And I thought we could use it as the potty corner."

Daniel and Janet glanced at each other, rolling their eyes.

Daniel hit a button on a console and in the dark corner a door slid open, revealing blinding light for a second before an inner chamber appeared.

Jack clutched his ray gun to his chest and pushed his daughter back into the room behind the door jam. He stepped cautiously into the chamber. The room was bright blue and white, and in the centre were several rings, and more consoles, but no other entry or exit, and no enemy troops.

He returned to the main room. "Do you know how to activate it?"

Daniel shrugged.

"Well, work it out - it's plan B."

-*-*-

A tear dropped from Janet's eyes as the door slammed shut, amputating Jack's left leg through the tibia and fibula. Jack screamed out in pain and behind her Janet felt Grace shudder and screech.

Janet glanced over at the child for a split second before she ran over to Jack.

"Okay, I think it's locked."

Janet saw tears in Jack's eyes as she quickly assessed A,B and C.

"Geeze, Doc, can I have something for the pain."

Airway was fine then.

"Daniel!" Janet yelled out.

Daniel ran over, slipping on the floor. He grabbed the morphine from Janet's hastily dropped Mobimed pack and twisted it, breaking the seal before he removed the preloaded syringe. 100mg of morphine would kill Jack, if he weren't in so much pain, even still, it had to be given cautiously. Daniel knew this, starting with a 10mg shot into Jack's deltoid muscle.

Jack gritted his teeth. He knew from too much experience that pain relief from intramuscular morphine wasn't immediate. "Thanks Danny boy, but I got the pain control." He grasped for the morphine vial in Daniel's hand earning himself a needle stick puncture. He barely noticed it. Daniel looked at him.

"Plan B." Daniel nodded and looked over at Janet. She nodded slowly.

There was no oxygen, no stethoscope here, so short of a tension pneumothorax there was little she could do to help his breathing. Good job his laboured breathing seemed to be pain induced then.

Circulation, she had one bag of fluid, loads of cannulae. Haemorrhage control. She grabbed the rubber tourniquet and assessed Jack's leg. Too much muscle loss to grip below the knee. She took a tear laden deep breath and swiftly lifted the leg. She knelt against it, maintaining the leg above her as Jack screamed in pain. She wrapped the tourniquet around his thigh, his uniform acting as sleek, pushing something metal from one of his pockets so it wouldn't get caught under the tourniquet. When the rubber was fastened she squeezed the pump, watching the little digital pneumatic gauge.

She glanced across at Grace, her neice rocking with her fingers in her ears, her face turned away.

Janet pumped quickly and stiffly. She needed to manually inflate the tourniquet to at least 250 milimetres of mercury to stop the flow of blood from Jack's leg. She could feel the fluid, cooling on her back, and eventually the flow stopped.

Janet relaxed a little. When she placed the leg back down she watched for further bleeding and relaxed just a little further when there wasn't. Jack didn't wail out in pain this time. Jack's slower, still laboured breathing told her he was still in pain and so she checked the morphine needle over. Minimal scuffing from his uniform, so after giving another quick shot into his arm she pulled down his trousers a little, feeling for a pulse before changing the syringe for one of local anaesthetic and infiltrating the femoral nerve. Not the cautious ultrasound guided technique her anaesthesiology professor taught her, but effective none the least.

"Thanks, Doc." Janet nodded and slipped the largest cannula she had into his numb groin, loosing a little blood again before she hooked up the bag of fluid. She laid it over her shoulder and opened the infusion set wide.

Behind her the door jolted.

Janet shook at the sudden sound and swallowed hard. She'd never tried her hand at battlefield amputations, but she found herself praying she'd be given the chance to make Jack's stump even a little better.

"How's it coming Daniel?" Jack bellowed. Reminding a fearful Janet that he was indeed very much alive. Janet pulled his briefs and trousers up a little, taking care not to dislodge her hastily secured cannula.

Daniel ran over to hover over Jack. "It's warming up, it'll activate when it's done. You can only control it from inside the spheres then."

"Better get you closer then, Colonel." Janet muttered. She and Daniel both took an arm each and tugged him to lean against the nearest console. Another shake of the door pulled their attention away and they left him propped up.

"Grace?" Jack asked quietly. Janet nodded. She pulled off her bloody jacket and draped it over the Colonel's missing lower leg, before collecting the child.

Grace's face was bright red and tearstained. It took a few stubborn tugs to get her to unplug her ears and then she came over to her Daddy. Janet knelt her on her father's good side, keeping hold of his radial pulse and squeezing the fluid bag on the other.

"In a few minutes we're going to step into those circles there and things are going to be very different." Jack said squeezing his daughter's shoulder. "Uncle Daniel is going to make sure the place on the other side is safe, okay?"

Grace nodded quietly sobbing.

"None of the monsters there, okay?" Jack smiled at his daughter, pulling her against him. "Mommy and Daddy will be there, but they may be hard to find." Janet looked at Jack, startled, but he was just looking at his daughter with a expression of love and encouragement. She looked up and quickly caught Daniel's eyes. "They are going to love you, just like I do, just like Mommy does...but it might feel different at the beginning. It doesn't matter what is different in that place, but I can promise you that, okay."

Grace dipped her head between her daddy's shoulders and sobbed, "Why can't you come daddy?"

"I'll be there, Gracie."

The door jolted again and Grace froze, startled. Jack wrapped his free arm around his daughter before shaking the doctor loose of the second one and enveloping the tiny girl.

"Jack?" He heard a sternly concerned voice.

"Daniel." He admonished.

"Sir!" Janet began.

"Get my daughter through that mirror to safety, Doctor." Jack growled. "That's an order."

"Jack?"

"You too Daniel." His friend's shaking head appeared. "Someone has to make sure those bastards don't follow you."

The rings around the platform in the centre of the room came to life, they began spinning as three independant circles very slowly.

Jack heard them. "Go!"

Janet took a deep breath and placed her side arm down next to her commanding officer. She then tugged at Grace, turning her and pressing her into her own shoulder before rising from the ground.

"It's been an honour serving with you, sir." She said, watching as he collected her side arm and removed the safety catch.

He nodded, his gaze lingering on the infant in her arms before returning to the door. Daniel and she moved around opposing sides of the console and stepped onto the platform between the rings gradually speeding arcs.

The spinning circles created a strong wind around the edge of the platform and the two stood close together, holding Grace between them. Arcs of light Janet had initially thought were sparks from friction between the rings began to meet in the middle of circle and form a wall, pieces of different worlds. Some looked like the lab, some with Ba'al at work, some empty, but mainly the images were of the green night on the planet.

'Sam would've found this amazing' Janet thought, as Grace's eyes finally pulled from her chest to look around her again. Her eyes widened at the picture screen before her.

A jolt of a projectile hitting one of the rings disrupted an image and they looked out in the lab to see the door half up and the cold warriors legs taking an ineffective spray of Jack's gunfire.

Daniel pressed a small tablet against Grace's back and into Janet's hands. The expression on his face changed.

"Daniel?!"

"When you see a world that looks safe, press that symbol. It'll lock it."

Janet shook her head, incredulous.

"I've got the weapon, Janet, he doesn't stand a chance without it."

A tear dropped onto Grace's damp hair.

Daniel rotated his grip around the cold warrior blaster and looked at Janet again. He dropped his head down to her level and placed a quick chaste kiss on her lips. She responded for only a second before he pulled away. "You probably shouldn't jump through until the picture is complete though."

Daniel dove through the arcs of the rings, feeling one and then another hit him on the way through. He saw Janet's lips move to call his name as he landed on the floor in the lab again.

He moved to Jack and barely registered his friend's surprise before he aimed the weapon at the offending cold warrior feet. They fell to the floor, slumping largely just outside the doorway.

Jack smiled at Daniel, pulling himself to sit slightly higher. He reached out a hand which Daniel grabbed and pulled him to stand, they embraced as the door to the compartment began to slide closed again. There were worst things than dying in battle, side by side with your best friend.

Jack's radio crackled to life. "It has been an honour to serve with you, O'Neill." Teal'C's voice echoed around the room.

They laughed, patting each other's backs.

-*-*-

Teal'C smiled ironically in the power core control room and set off his explosives.

-*-*-

The room had dissolved into white, such was the speed of the rotating arcs around them, but Janet knew something had happened when she noted a patch of yellow. The picture was near complete, but was changing every few seconds. She held Grace as tightly as she could before taking the plunge and jumping through the picture wall.

The white dissolved in flames of yellow and eventually broke apart, joining the rubble of the exploded Goa'uld base, but not before Janet and Grace found themselves lying on the floor in a grassy clearing, with only the distant sound of owls.

Janet took a deep breath, sent a silent prayer of thanks and wondered what this reality held in store.

-*-*-

Well guys, that's the tale of Grace.

I hope you have enjoyed it and I look forward to the feedback.

There is an optional epilogue which not everyone will like and I will write soon. That said, I didn't realise that I'd been writing this story for over a year!

I have a few other ideas in the pipeline too, just to keep me ticking over 'til Revolutions is made!