sam/jack + time travel au?
this is basically my macgyver/sg1 crossver idea that’s been in my head for ages (there’s a macgyver ep where mac has to eject over iraq and gets taken in and healed up by a family ANYWAY)
Listen basically, there’s a general idea the Sam gets thrown back in time to when and where Jack is being held as a POW in the Iraqi prison.
And she somehow ends up in that prison with him and she realizes this is a different Jack altogether--this Jack is nearer her own age and has been in this hellhole for much too long. And most importantly, he has no idea who she is. But he shakes and whimpers at night in the cell next to her and she promises him that she’ll get him out of here (and manages to bite back that she always saves his ass, always).
But one of her crazy whacky fucking plans does work and she reaches into his cell with an open, outreached hand and he finally gets to put a face to the voice that’s been talking to him through the wall and he can barely breathe through the sudden rush of want at the sight of her. She’s filthy and malnourished, just like he is, but her eyes are a wide, startling blue and when he takes her hand, he can feel her strength. This woman is his savior.
They stumble through the Iraqi desert together, curled into each other to ward off the cold from the rapidly dropping temperatures as the sun disappears behind san dunes. She also wraps herself around him and strokes his hair and presses kisses to his temple because he’s still whimpering and crying out in his sleep and God, what did they do to him?
How did she never know about this part of her CO’s life? How had she never known that his back was littered with scars--criss-crossing over his shoulders and neck. She holds him tighter and tries to quell the overwhelming rush of protection that she feels for this man.
Except they can’t stop what’s between them and Sam is too tired to try. She already had a crush on him in her timeline and now he looks at her like she’s the sun he must orbit around. In the Iraqi desert, as they stumble towards the general direction of where they hope a US base is located, they fall in love.
But it’s as they pass the border and the sun comes up over the horizon, as Jack is getting ready to make a declaration or a promise that he won’t leave her, that he’ll take her wherever he goes, she feels the pull of something and the last thing she sees is a young Jack O’Neill’s desperate brown eyes trained on her, terrified that she was never real at all, that she was a hallucination.
Sam calls out for him but it’s too late. She’s hurtling through space and time and landing back on the SGC ramp in front of the Stargate with a hard oomph.
Jack.
She tries to think about the pain of falling in love with someone decades before you meet them and then when you do meet them you have to wait almost a decade more? She realizes that all the while, the entire time that Sam has been on SG-1 up until this point, Jack has known her: known what she tastes like, knows if he strokes the curve of her ear she’ll shudder in his arms, knows she hates Coca Cola and loves Pepsi, knows her.
Jack has waited for her for fifteen years.
The SFs tell her that the Colonel signed out of the mountain ages ago and she doesn’t stop for mandatory medical evals and she promises Hammond she’ll be back to debrief, she just needs to go.
The drive to his home has never felt so long, but she knows he’s there waiting for her as much as she knows that her name is Samantha Carter and that she loves him.
He’s sitting on the front porch in a flannel shirt and a beer bottle in hand, waiting for her.
She doesn’t waste time, just crosses the yard and throws herself into his arms because she almost lost him before she knew him and then she found him in all the ways that matter and the knowledge that he’s been waiting for her all this time puts everything in perspective.
He chuckles and holds her tight, nose buried beneath her ear. “’Bout time, Carter.”
She fists the fabric of his shirt and tries to wrap herself around him completely. “Oh god, Jack.”
It’s been weeks of calling him Jack and she can’t—won’t— go back to Colonel or sir.
“You waited,” she says with awe, pulling away with wide eyes.
He shrugs, tracing the curve of her cheek to the bow of her lips. “You were worth the wait,” he grins.
It’s cheesy and it makes her laugh and she kisses him because she can’t just not kiss him anymore. He sighs into the kiss—relief and love and remembrance all in one.
“Finally,” he murmurs against her lips.
