The Furlings 3

The Subtle Air

by Celievamp

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asc/celievamp/cats03.php
Summary: Still fighting to get fit after her encounter with the Entity, Sam finds that a recalcitrant cat puts her in further danger

Furling scowled at her from under the kitchen table. Sam sighed, turned back to the sink watching her blood wash away from the deep scratches down her forearm under the steady stream of cold water from the tap. Schroedinger had never tried to do his experiment for real, she realised anew. Try to put an unwilling cat into any kind of box and you will lose. Painfully.

The bleeding seemed to be slowing though the raw flesh was beginning to sting. Furling hissed at her balefully as she moved away from the sink towards the kitchen drawer where Janet kept the first aid supplies.

If she was very very lucky the flesh wounds on her arm would be the end of it. The Carter-Fraiser household had learnt the hard way that Furling was a cat with a very decided view on life and her place in it. Anything that upset that world view was dealt with severely. And the cat had proven to have a long memory and a keen if slightly twisted sense of justice and a belief in old testament style punishment systems.

Somehow she had to get her cat to the vets to get its annual shots. Janet had been very explicit on this. Furling was Sam's cat, Sam's problem. Especially as the animal seemed to hate her with an intensity that only a feline mind was capable of sustaining.

Janet was wrong. Furling did not hate her. Furling hated everyone.

Sam winced as she slathered antiseptic salve over the raw scored flesh and debated whether to put a dressing over it or just leave it. Either way Janet was bound to see it and ask questions. Furling was already on notice of eviction after the incident with the curtains and the latest damage to the flower beds. This could be the end of a beautiful friendship.

"What am I going to do with you, Furball?" she asked. "Because if it comes down to a choice between you and Janet, your next stop is the Animal Shelter, understand?"

Large amber eyes regarded her suspiciously and with just a hint of contempt.

Sam sighed, washed and dried off her hands and then went to get Furling's box from the hall. She would have one last attempt at getting the cat into the box and if it failed, well, she would just have to see if the vet made housecalls.

She opened the kitchen door to the hall and Furling streaked out past her. Sam made a grab for him and the cat twisted in her grasp dashing between her feet. Sam lost her balance and fell awkwardly, hitting her head against the hall table and upending its contents over herself as she fell, her left arm twisted under her body. Sam groaned and then lay still, a thin trickle of blood colouring her pale hair.

******

Furling sat on the stairs and looked through the banister rails at her human. It was unusually still. After a few moments she came back downstairs again and sat and watched the woman some more. She yowled sharply, a sound that usually got some reaction from her human, but this time she did not stir. This was not right.

The white stick that usually sat on the table began to sing a song. Furling pawed at it and a voice came out of the stick. It was the other human's voice, the small dark furred one that fed her when the light haired one was not around.

"Sam? Sam, you've got the phone on speakermode. Sam? Are you there?"

Furling yowled and licked the light haired one's cheek. She did not react.

"Sam, I can hear the cat, so you must be still there. Sam Carter! Quit playing games and answer me! This isn't funny any more!"

Furling knew this tone of voice from the small dark furred one. It meant that she had done something wrong. She yowled and pawed at the white stick again. The sound stopped.

Furling nosed at the stick but it did not sing again nor speak with the dark furred one's voice. She nuzzled at the light haired one again, purring in her ear as she did when she wanted to wake her when it was time for breakfast but the light haired one did not respond.

******

Janet put the phone down. Something was wrong. Janet hadn't intended to speak to her at all, just leave a message on the voicemail reminding her to take the casserole out of the freezer if they wanted to eat tonight. According to her original schedule Sam should have been on her way to the vets with the cat by now. Yet she had definitely heard Furling yowling in the background before the phone went dead. Maybe Sam was just running late. But she had to admit that Sam wasn't known for her practical jokes.

Janet picked up her pen then put it down again, her mind running through the possibilities whether she wanted it or not. If Sam was running late she would have rung, told her of the change of plan. Sam planned her life like a military campaign. She was never late, not for anything, not without giving notice. Still, there was a first time for everything. And Furling had sounded royally pissed about something. If something had happened to Sam .

Sam was still confined to light duties. Every test Janet had run had come back normal but Janet found it hard to believe that her lover was truly okay. Sam had been dispossessed of her own body by an alien AI, her consciousness transferred to the base computer as if she were no more than a particularly complex computer programme. And then somehow Janet had transferred her back. It should not have worked. Neither of them had been able to adequately explain how it had worked.

With a sigh Janet turned back to her report but she couldn't settle to it. Something was wrong. She did not know how she knew, she just did. She glanced at the clock and then at her schedule. She was not due to get off duty for another four hours but there were no teams expected back this afternoon. The Infirmary was quiet. Dr Warner owed her a favour.

She was probably making something out of nothing. Probably. Hopefully. At the worst they would have her paranoia to laugh about as they spent their stolen afternoon together. She picked up the phone and dialed his number. "Robert. hi, it's Janet. Could you do me a huge favour."

******

Sam opened her eyes. There were blue flowers everywhere. She recognized them from Planet `Allergy Hell', the place where she had met Sabelle who had claimed to be a Furling. Or she had a major drug induced hallucination. The last thing she remembered was being at home, chasing the damn cat so that she could get it into the carrybox and take it to the vets. And this gate address wasn't on their list to visit again - ever if Daniel got his way. And no one had believed her story of meeting Furlings in the first place. It was just another mission that O'Neill teased her about - another one where she got naked.

You make one small mistake on a mission and you get teased about it forever by Colonel `It's my sidearm, I swear,' O'Neill.

At least this time she was fully clothed if not actually in uniform. And not out of her skull on hallucogenic pollen. At least she didn't think she was. But then she hadn't been aware that she was high as a kite last time either. Something else she noticed - this time there were no cats - and no Sabelle. Oh, and no team. She was alone.

She sat up slowly, checking herself for injuries. Her left wrist hurt when she tried to move it, it looked bruised and slightly swollen but she did not think it was broken. Apart from that and a lump on her head and the scratches on her arm from where Furling had clawed her, she seemed to be fine. The scratches were still very fresh - her skin still faintly greasy from the antibiotic cream she had smeared on earlier - so she knew that not much time had passed since they had been inflicted. Which made the mystery of how she had got here all the greater.

Always presuming she really was here. This could be just a vivid dream. Or a hallucination. Just what she needed. Maybe `it' had never gone away after all. Maybe it had just folded itself into her subconscious somewhere just waiting for an opportunity to unfold itself and take her prisoner in her own body once more. Maybe she had been under its control all along, it had engineered her apparent return to consciousness just to hide itself, just to lull everyone into a false sense of security before.

Maybe she was just a little paranoid? It was destroyed, gone. She was alive. She was alone in her head again. Experimentally she pinched herself, digging her fingers into her thigh. It certainly hurt enough to be real, she thought, rubbing her leg. But then it had when she was trapped in the dark well of nothingness that the Entity had caged her in. What the hell was going on? Janet had said there seemed to be no permanent damage from the process she had gone through. She hadn't had a headache in almost a week.

Well she certainly had one now. Carefully she probed the bruise on her temple, flinching when she found the small cut just under her hairline. She remembered trying to catch the cat, tripping over her own feet, falling, the hall table not quite breaking her fall .

None of which was any help at the moment. Turning, she started to walk back up the rise in the direction of the ruined temple and the Stargate.

They were waiting for her in the ruins of the temple, sitting on the fallen walls and broken columns, basking in the sunshine. Some were in the form of cats, others in humanoid shape. One started to walk towards her. She recognised her immediately. Sabelle.

"Well met, Samantha Carter. I wondered if our paths would cross again," the cat-woman smiled, embraced Sam. After a moment's hesitation Sam returned the embrace.

"It's good to see you, Sabelle. Though I am a little confused as to how I got here."

"Your mind walks with us. I did not think you would develop the skill so quickly." Sabelle led her to a seat on the sun-warmed wall and perched beside her, regarding her silently.

Sam tried to make some sense of it all. So she was dreaming - or unconscious - there was the bump on the head, her injured wrist and the headache as evidence of some kind of trauma that might have propelled her here. Maybe her consciousness had got used to walking around on its own.

"I think my visit here is accidental. I certainly didn't set out to."

"No matter. You are here now, that is the important thing. Do you remember now what I told you the last time we were together?" The look on Sabelle's face was enigmatic, there was something else going on here too deep and subtle for Sam to comprehend.

Sam shook her head. The Furling had told her many things but she remembered only fragments. Sabelle reached up, stroked her face. And Sam remembered.

"All Furling are cats but not all cats are Furling," Sabelle explained, reaching out to stroke Sam's face again. "We were right about you, Samantha. There is much in store for you, such a wonderful journey. When the time comes, you will know what to do. Never doubt yourself, Samantha." She reached in and kissed Sam softly on the lips. "It is unlikely that we will meet again, but I will never forget you. And I want you to remember what we talked about, about being true to who you really are, what you really believe. No more shapeshifting in here."

The contact was abruptly lost as Sabelle drew back her hand as if Sam's skin had burnt her. "Such things!" she whispered. "Such terrible things!"

"I don't understand." Sam frowned. And then it came to her. Sabelle must have sensed some of the things Sam had been through since their last encounter - Jolinar for one, the Entity for another. Other highpoints such as her imprisonment and torture on Netu, being captured by Hathor, brainwashed by Seth, the Gamekeeper, the memory stamp, the whole zatar'c thing. "It's okay, Sabelle. I'm okay. well, more or less."

The young woman had tears in her eyes. "We forget. We forget how it is out there. We live such protected lives here. I am sorry, so sorry."

"Why? None of it was your fault, it had nothing to do with you. And there are good things too. You must have seen those." Sam closed her eyes, thought about the people they had saved, the wonderful things they had seen on their journey, Cassie, Janet. so many images of Janet to share. "You see, I don't shapeshift from myself any more."

"I am very glad to hear it, Samantha," Sabelle smiled. A half-grown kitten wandered over to investigate Sam's toes, reaching up to sniff at her. She was a handsome beast, pale gold/wheat fur and blue eyes.

"My daughter," Sabelle said. "She's normally shy of strangers."

"She's beautiful," Sam said softly. The kitten whisked off, chasing her tail, disappearing around the side of a column. A few seconds later a little girl with long golden curls wearing a white sundress ran past, chasing a boy who was a little older, both of them shrieking with laughter.

"Sabelle - when I was last here - did you do something to me?" Sam asked carefully.

Sabelle did not answer straight away. Several of her feline companions had stopped what they were doing and were watching their interaction closely. Sam wondered if this was some sort of test. "We saw the possibility within you. I brought it a little closer to the light, that is all. But I did not expect it to develop so precipitately," Sabelle looked troubled again. "I thought I had safeguarded against that. But your mind has been touched by many, each leaving an echo behind them, as I did. The changes are incremental but powerful. This last, it almost destroyed you. When the love of your mate restored you to yourself some of what I had set in place to protect you was displaced."

"From what Janet said I'm damn lucky I wasn't seriously brain damaged," Sam shuddered. She had tried very hard not to think about that possibility.

"You owe her more than you know," Sabelle said. Again Sam had the distinct impression that there was more going on here than she could comprehend. It was possible. The Ancients and the Asgard had shaped their race from its earliest beginnings. Perhaps the Furlings had had a hand in there as well. She remembered something else. All Furlings were cats but not all cats were Furlings. What if. but that seemed too ridiculous. A whole alien race hiding in plain sight. She turned her thoughts back to her current predicament.

"So where am I really?" Sam asked. Sabelle touched her shoulder and the world swam dizzily for a moment before resolving into the hallway of the house she shared with Janet. Janet was kneeling by her slumped body.

"And it is time for you to begin your journey again. She calls for you. She is worried about you, Samantha."

Sam blinked. For a second she had felt a ghost sensation, someone touching her cheek. She felt a strange tugging sensation deep inside. "Sabelle? How."

"Wish it and it will be so."

Sam wished it. The world went away.

"Sam?"

She blinked fuzzily. Her head hurt and her wrist ached. She was lying on the hall floor at home. Something had happened whilst she was unconscious, a dream of sorts but already the details were fading from her mind. Sam tried to concentrate on the here and now. Janet was on her knees beside her, looking down on her, an anxious expression on her face.

"Sam hun, are you okay?"

*****

Janet rang the house twice from her cell phone on the way home but got no reply on either occasion. There could be many many innocent explanations - the cat or Sam had knocked the phone off the hook, Sam was indeed on her way to the vets without noticing the phone's displacement, there was a fault on the line again.

Or perhaps Sam was lying dead or injured somewhere in the house. An accident, an attack by an opportunistic prowler, an unforeseen side- effect from what had happened with the Entity. Something she had missed. Janet shook herself, redoubled her concentration on the road skating just under the speed limit as she drove the relatively short distance from the Mountain to her house.

Sam's car was still in the driveway. Janet had reluctantly cleared her to drive a few days earlier. The cat's carrybox was on the porch - empty, the door closed and latched. Unless Furling was even more of a Houdini than Janet gave him credit for, Sam had never got as far as getting him in the box. The front door was unlocked. She opened the door and a flurry of white and tortoiseshell streaked past her and into the hedge. Furling. So they had never got to the vet. Sunlight through the open door glinted on gold and a flash of liquid red. Oh god.

A second later and she was on her knees beside her unconscious lover, carefully rolling her into the recovery position. There was a bruise coming out on her temple and a small cut that had just about stopped bleeding just under her hairline. Her left wrist looked bruised and was already swollen. There were a set of livid scratches up her forearm. God, she was so pale. Janet shuddered as she flashed back to the moment O'Neill had zatted Sam for the second time. Janet had run around the corner in time to see Sam crumple lifelessly to the floor. Precious seconds wasted as she had just stood there before the Colonel began to do CPR. She had wanted to stop him, to tell him that it was useless. One shot knocked you out, two shots killed. Zat 101. They all knew that. But as O'Neill gasped at her Sam had still been standing after the first shot. The Entity had just brushed it off. So maybe. A minute later the Code Blue team were lifting Sam's limp body onto a gurney. They got her breathing again on the way back to the Infirmary. The rest.

The rest was something that Janet never wanted to remember but seemed fated to do so, too often for her peace of mind at the moment. Sam's Living Will. No Extreme Measures. If they had figured it out thirty seconds later, Sam would have been dead. Janet would have ended her life.

But that was then. Not now. Sam was breathing normally, already stirring at her tentative touch. She muttered something. A name. Not hers. Familiar though. She had heard it before. Sounded like Sable. Sabelle. where had she heard that name before. pull yourself together Fraiser, Janet told herself sternly. "Sam?"

Blue eyes blinked dazedly up at her.

"Sam hun, are you okay?"

"J'net?"

Janet smiled, tears pricking at her eyes. "Yeah. Can you remember what happened, Sam?" She had already noted the hall table was pretty much a write off, its contents strewn across the tiles.

"Stupid cat. fell. hit the table I think. Furling. ow!" the latter as she tried to lever herself into a sitting position and put weight on her injured wrist. "Damn. ow!... that better not be broken. Colonel's gonna be pissed if I have to take more time out."

Janet helped her to her feet and across the hall into the den, lowering her onto the couch. "Stay there, get your bearings whilst I get the med kit. You hit your head pretty hard. And I think your wrist is just sprained rather than broken. How do you feel now?"

"A bit woozy but it's passing," Sam blinked, her brow furrowing. "What are you doing here anyway? You're on duty until six."

"Quiet afternoon so I took some personal time. Thought I'd come home early to surprise you," Janet lied. "Unfortunately you were way ahead of me." Literally turning the tables on me, she thought, but did not dare say aloud. She went to fetch her medical kit from the car.

She returned a few minutes later with her medical kit and two icepacks she had rescued from the freezer, both wrapped in teatowels, one of which she carefully laid under Sam's injured wrist, the other she gave to Sam to hold to her aching head.

"Your puns are getting worse by the way," Sam said as Janet performed a few basic neurological tests.

"What?"

"That turning the tables remark," Sam said.

Janet stared at her for a moment. She could have sworn she hadn't said that aloud but then she had been pretty distracted. "Sorry," she said. "Couldn't resist." Quickly she cleaned up the small cut and closed it with a butterfly stitch and applied a dressing. Sam seemed to be fine now but she had been unconscious for a while so Janet was taking no chances. "I'll drive us back to the Infirmary, keep you in for observation just to make sure you're okay."

"Please Jan, I've spent enough time in the infirmary lately. Can't you just look after me here? I feel fine, honest. The headache's already fading. And you said my wrist was just sprained. A couple of Tylenol and an Ace bandage and I'll be good as new. Please!" Huge blue eyes gazed up at her pleadingly - a look that had assured Samantha Carter of everything she wanted since she was an infant, Janet was sure. And the worse thing was that she was usually totally unaware of the effect she had. Janet knew she had lost.

She sighed. "Okay, we'll do it your way. But the first sign of anything else and I'm taking you in." She bandaged Sam's wrist and checked her neurological reactions one more time before giving her the Tylenol. "You stay here and rest. I'll go and tidy up the hall and then see if I can find your damn cat."

*****

"I have to get away from here. I have to get back to the Gate."

The words whispered in her head in the air around her. Sam realised that one or more people were tuning into her thoughts repeating them aloud. They stopped, searching for her, searching for the source. Faces turned towards her and she panicked and ran, the crowd following her.

Stop!

The crowd stopped as one. Then started to edge around her, enclosing but not touching her, hemming her in, their whispers echoing her fear her growing panic.

`Please don't hurt me please please oh god what's happening why are they doing this what's happening to me please stop please stop please stop stop stop sto.'

"Sam!"

Sam Carter jerked awake, her arms raised as if to protect herself from some unseen assailant, her breath coming in pained gasps, bonewracking shudders running through her. Janet was kneeling beside her, one hand on her shoulder, the other reaching out, gentling her cheek. Sam realised that she was crying.

"Sam, are you with me?" Janet asked, her expression searching. Sam managed to nod and then turned collapsing into Janet's arms, shuddering with reaction.

"Oh god, Janet. Just hold me, please just hold me. That was." she shuddered.

"You started shouting about five minutes ago. I couldn't break you out of it. You were terrified. What did you dream, sweetheart, can you remember? You were shouting stop, please stop, over and over again."

The details were already fading from her mind but not the emotions, the dislocation, the sheer terror.

"There were people all around me. I couldn't get free of them. Anything I was thinking they were saying, hundreds of voices repeating my thoughts, my fears." she shuddered. "Feeding off it. I couldn't get away from them, away from the voices." She took a deep breath, fighting for control again. "What the hell's wrong with me?"

It went deeper than just a dream. Several times in the last few days she had thought she heard people talking when there was no one there. Just before she left for the evening she had heard the Colonel complain loudly that she always found just one more doohickey to play with and for crying out loud could she just get a life! When she had turned round to remonstrate with him there had been no one there. He had walked in to her lab a couple of minutes later to invite her up to the Commissary for a break with the guys.

Then there was the guy in the store, the one with the bad skin and the hot little eyes. She thought she had heard him say something to her, something so obscene, so horrible that there was no way he could have said it aloud. The store was crowded - and yet no one else reacted to his words. He had not said it quietly. And surely someone else would have reacted if he had said what she thought he said. She had turned to face him, to confront him and he had almost scuttled away from her, panic in his eyes.

"It was just a bad dream, Sam. Why do you think something's wrong with you?" Janet said. Her voice grew more concerned. "Has something happened - something you haven't told me?" The hand stroking her hair stilled for a moment. "Sam?"

"No-nothing," Sam gulped. "Nothing really. Just, just jumping at shadows I suppose." The lie sat heavily on her, but how could she tell her lover she thought she was going insane?

"I want you to consider for a moment, Sam, that you might just be feeling a little anxious about going through the Gate again. You've been through a devastating experience. Hell, you were brain dead. I had to. I was supposed to." Janet turned away, unable to finish her sentence.

"You think it's just anxiety?" Sam asked. She was not so sure. Anxiety she had dealt with before. Anxiety was like the downside of the adrenaline rush. This was something much worse, something she didn't want to contemplate. Feelings she had no business having if she wanted to retain her active status.

Janet was still upset, her own demons pricking her now. Sam instinctively knew the best cure for both their ills. She enfolded the smaller woman in her arms and held her close, running her fingers over the soft warm skin, feeling Janet gradually melt into her, holding her tightly, giving and receiving comfort in equal measure.

She was too tired to think about it any more. She lay back against the pillows, drawing her lover down with her. If it was anything more than just a peculiarly vivid nightmare then she'd deal with it when it came.

******

*Nothing I do will ever be good enough for her why do I even bother*

Sam stopped, turned to look at Felger. "Jay, did you say something?"

He looked up at her, curious, eager to please as ever. "I didn't say anything, Major Carter - at least I don't think I did."

*Why doesn't he look at me that way?*

The whisper was soft, distinctly female. Sam turned to catch Chloe, Felger's assistant glance in the doorway in passing.

This was beginning to seriously freak her out. The echoes of her dream were still with her. It could be just her imagination. but somehow she knew it was more than that. This had happened before the dream and whatever it was it seemed to be escalating. She needed to get this sorted now. Janet was going to have her ass as it was for hiding this much from her.

"Jay, I need to go check something out. Keep running the simulations," Sam said.

All the way down to the infirmary she kept getting odd flashes of thoughts, ideas running through her head. It happened every time she passed within a few feet of someone. It could not be that she was picking up their thoughts. That was impossible. Okay, she had been working at the SGC long enough to know that very little was impossible. So unlikely then. There had to be a logical explanation. Telepathy did not just spontaneously develop. And she hadn't touched anything. weird recently. She hadn't been through the Gate for almost a month since the mission with the homicidal glowworms. In the week since she had been allowed back on limited duty she had been working almost exclusively on a new variant of her naquada generator and had not had chance to play with any new gizmo's that had come through the Gate for ages.

So what the hell was going on with her? She had not had any other `odd' encounters or even hit her head recently. not since. Furling. Furlings. Sabelle

"Sam, is everything okay?"

She realized that she had just been standing in the corridor outside the infirmary doors. She had zoned out. A half memory of talking to Sabelle of all people, of being told that something had awakened within her. Was that what this was? Janet reached out, touched her hand. "Sam?"

*I wish she'd take better care of herself. She looks so pale lately. There's definitely something going on with her. But I can't say anything to her not even if I am her wife, her doctor. She just brushes me off, like the bad dream last night.*

"I'm fine Janet, really!" Sam said automatically.

"Sure you are," Janet said. "You just zoned out. But humour me. When did you last eat something?" *She must know that I noticed she didn't eat breakfast this morning. And she said she ate on base before she came home last night. But did she?*

"I got a sandwich and a glass of milk an hour or so ago. Ask Daniel if you don't believe me. He sat with me in the canteen," Sam said, unable to keep the hurt tone out of her voice. Janet did not trust her.

"I believe you, Sam. Okay, so it's not that then," Janet said. *I know I shouldn't worry about her so she can look after herself but I love her. There are so few ways I can show her that when we're on duty so of course I fuss. Sam means everything to me. If something happens to her, if I missed something I'd never forgive myself. never*

Sam flinched as out of nowhere an avalanche of images careened through her mind. All variations of her lying still and silent on an infirmary bed at one time or another over the years, sometimes visibly injured, at other times with no visible injury. *radiation poisoning from the world where the giant aliens and the crystal. that goddam bitch Jolinar. the entity god that was the worst I was going to kill her pull the plug and watch her die watch her die*

Sam put her hands over her ears. "Janet, stop, please, stop thinking about that so loud it hurts. Hurts!"

*what?* "Sam, what's happening, what's wrong?" Sam felt her knees buckle as her consciousness strained under the onslaught. It was as if a wall or a dam broke inside her without warning. Suddenly she was not only hearing Janet's mind but the thoughts of everyone else in the vicinity. She didn't think she made any noise. Janet clung to her, followed her down to the floor as consciousness spiralled away.

******

A space. White light. The subtle scent of flowers. A warm breeze. Something tickling her. Sam Carter opened her eyes. She was back on Sabelle's planet.

"Not again!" she whispered. The terrible confusion in her mind seemed to have passed but she knew that she was different and that this place had something to do with it. Something had happened, something had changed within her, whether it was a delayed side effect of the Entity's assault on her or something Sabelle had done to her.

But that had been a dream hadn't it? As this had to be. She had been in the Infirmary. She had collapsed in the Infirmary after hearing what. voices? The thoughts of her fellow SGC members. Janet's thoughts, Janet's worry over her, the anxiety and guilt and terror that still gnawed at her from what she had almost done: carrying out Sam's living will, taking her off the machines that were all that was keeping her alive.

It was too much to take in. She drifted for a while. Someone touched her hair. Sam struggled to open her eyes against the too bright light. The voices the confusion came back with vicious intensity.

"Janet? Help me please. I can't. I can't."

"It is I, Sabelle," the soft voice said. "You should not be here again, Samantha. It is not safe for you to travel so far so soon."

"Something has gone wrong," Sam sobbed. "I'm hearing the thoughts of others in my head. It's too much, too overwhelming. If this was your `gift' I don't want it, I can't. it's too intense. I'm losing myself, losing my mind."

"I cannot take it back," Sabelle said. "I only brought to the surface an ability that was already there. Though I did not expect it to manifest so soon. But perhaps I can teach you to control it, to shield yourself against the other minds until you need to use your gift." She helped Sam to sit up.

"Can you hear the other minds now?"

Tearfully Sam nodded. Contact with the minds of the Furling was if anything even more disturbing than with her fellow humans. As well as the thoughts verbalizing in her mind there were images, emotions, things she had no referents to or comprehension of. And above all else was what she could only assume was Janet's concern for her, a high wild note on the edge of dissonance.

She was falling, dissolving. She pressed her fists to her temples as if trying to force the invading thoughts out. Then she felt Sabelle's cool fingers touch her forehead, just above the bridge of her nose, her other hand cradling the back of Sam's skull.

*Can you hear me, Sam?*

"Yes," Sam whispered. *Yes, I hear you.*

Her mind seemed to shift, her perceptions seeming to go into slowmo for a second. Then it was as if everything switched one-eighty for a moment and then reverted. She was not where she had been. She was.

Standing in her own head, with Sabelle standing in front of her. Around her mist swirled shadows shifted forming and reforming and the voices echoed, doubling and redoubling, laughing, screaming, shouting, singing.

"You must learn to shield yourself Samantha. Control your ability. Or it will destroy you."

"How?" Sam asked wildly. "How do I do that?" The cacophony was more than she could stand.

Sabelle reached out, seeming to grab a handful of the mist. It shimmered in her hands, seeming to solidify into what looked like a pane of smoked glass, the pattern constantly shifting. "You have it within you. Build your shield."

Tentatively Sam reached out for the mist, feeling it pull like taffy for a moment before solidifying into a sheet of glass similar to the one Sabelle held. Sabelle touched hers to the ground where it stood on edge. She motioned Sam to set hers next to it in a similar manner and the two pieces fused into one.

Sam made another pane and then another and another, setting them in a rough circle around her then starting the second level. It was not just her imagination that the noises were diminishing.

The finished structure was something like an igloo, cocooning her. The noises had gone. She was alone in her head once more. "Is that it?" she asked.

Sabelle nodded. "The shields cannot be broken except by the most powerful of minds. And if you should want to use your ability, press your hand to the shield and think of the person whose mind you want to touch."

Sam immediately thought of Janet, the concern she must be feeling right now, and pressed her hand to the smooth glassy surface.

*Pulse is still elevated, blood pressure low but firming up again. Her electrolytes are all over the place. Dammit, Sam, why do you keep doing this to yourself? CT scan results should be in within the next half hour I got them to push it through as a priority. Oh god, baby, just wake up, please. Don't do this to me again!*

"Janet." Sam whispered. "I have to go. she needs me. She's so scared."

"You know what you need to do," Sabelle smiled warmly, reaching out to embrace her again.

"Will I remember any of this?" Sam asked. "Will I remember how to do this?"

"You will remember what you need to know when you need to know it," Sabelle said. Sam glared at her.

"I'll take that as a yes, then," she sighed, closed her eyes and wished herself home.

******

She opened her eyes and immediately scrunched them closed again. The light was piercingly bright.

"Sam?"

"Janet?" She risked opening her eyes, turning her head towards the sound of Janet's voice.

"How are you feeling?"

"A little fuzzy. what happened?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Sam thought for a moment. "I was in my lab running some experiments with Felger. I wasn't feeling well. nothing serious, just. anyway, I decided to check in with you. I came down to the Infirmary. and. that's all I remember."

There was more but she could not speak of that now, perhaps never. Janet's mind was quieter now, relief that she was awake and aware soothing over the flare of panic. Beneath the shield that Sabelle had helped her build the mental voices of the others were reduced to something of a background hum, almost soothing, a connection to the outside world, to her humanity.

"I found you standing in the corridor outside the Infirmary. You had zoned out. I asked you some questions - you replied but you weren't really with me, then you clutched your head and just went down. You've been unconscious for about two hours."

"What was it?" Sam asked.

"I'm not sure yet to be honest. I'm still waiting some test results. What I can say for certain is that your electrolyte balance was way off. It might just be your metabolism readjusting itself after what happened. It's only been a few weeks after all. I'm afraid I can't clear you for gate travel again yet though Sam. Not until I'm absolutely certain this has settled down."

It would take her time to understand, to assimilate completely but Sam knew that she had to keep her new ability secret for her own safety as much as anything else. Certain elements were already far too interested in her because of Jolinar and her experiences with the entity. If they discovered that she was now a fully fledged telepath, well. If Sam Carter was resolved on one thing it was that she would be nobody's lab rat. Present company excepted. She gazed up at the deep brown eyes of the woman she was certain loved her more than she deserved.

And she did not need to be a telepath to know that.

END