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When Samantha Carter had been younger, the soul-name on her skin almost hadn’t fit on her slender wrist. The letters had been dark enough to read when she was five, but they hadn’t had enough space to be clearly legible until she was almost thirteen.
Sam didn’t generally give it much thought, not when there was so much to learn, so many things to study. She saw the other girls at school giggling and comparing names, but Sam never joined in. She didn’t think they’d understand her worry when the eight letters on her skin intermittently tinged blood red around the edges— red names were the sign that a person’s soul-mate had died, but how could someone Sam’s age be in danger that often?
But Sam forgot all about her own soul-mate’s potential danger the night her father came home, expressionless, her mother’s name on his wrist a bright, bloody red.
*
When Jonathan O’Neill was five years old, he fell off his bike, rolled down a gravel-covered hill and broke his left wrist. Six weeks later, the cast came off, but his wrist was nothing more than a map of weirdly-angled scars.
At the time, Jack hadn’t cared. But as he’d gotten older, he’d watched the dark lines appear among the scars, completely illegible except for the beginning letter. He wasn’t sure he believed in something like the magic that put his supposed soul-mate’s name on his wrist, but just in case, he tried to only date girls whose names began with ‘S’.
*
Sam joined the Air Force, and didn’t give a second thought to her soul-name. She had physics and flying and what more could a girl want? Besides, she was a scientist, and she wasn’t sure that she believed in soul-mates, anyway. There was no way to tell, even if she did ever meet him, if that someone named Jonathan really was her soul-mate, or that she was his. And if her father was any example, finding a soul-mate was only a sure way to heartbreak.
Still, she wondered sometimes if there was someone out there with her name on his wrist, and if it ever began to turn faintly red, like hers still sometimes did, when she pulled off things she’d been sure would kill her.
She wondered if he worried about her when it did.
*
Even if Jack wasn’t sure he actually had a soul-mate, he knew he’d gotten lucky with Sara. She was beautiful and smart and tough. Her wrist said Jack in clear elegant letters and when they said their vows, he added one extra, silently, that if he was really her soul-mate, he would always make her happy.
Sara knew what she was getting into, marrying a military man. She never complained at moving for every assignment, never asked him to tell her where he was going, but the first time he left on a mission he couldn’t promise he’d come back from, she wrapped a thick cloth around her left wrist, and didn’t take it off until he came home.
“I don’t want to see it happen,” she said, softly, and Jack didn’t ask her what she meant.
It was comforting, actually, for Jack to look at the mangled name on his wrist, to know that no matter what happened or how badly a mission might go, Sara would be safe.
Sara and the baby.
And if that wasn’t motivation to survive anything the Air Force threw at him, he didn’t know what was.
*
When they started dating, Jonas Hanson had seemed to be exactly what Sam, in her younger, less cynical years, had imagined her soul-mate would be. He was Air Force, too— Jonathan Elias, shortened to ‘Jonas’ by a younger brother learning to talk— and unlike most of the guys she had dated, he hadn’t been threatened by her intelligence.
Things had been going so well that Sam almost didn’t see when they started to go so badly. She and Jonas had talked about the future, kids and retirement and a house in the suburbs. But slowly, he began talking like everything had already been decided, like it was a forgone conclusion that Sam would agree with anything he said.
She wondered, for a fraction of a second, if that’s how a soul-bond relationship was supposed to work— before coming to her senses and giving back the ring.
Sam took three days’ leave to put herself back in order, and on the fourth morning, she opened her apartment door to find an older woman on the other side.
“Captain Carter?” the woman said. “I’m Catherine Langford. And I’m here to read you into the Stargate Program.”
*
When Charlie died, Jack’s whole world shattered. Sara blamed him, which was only fair, because it was his fault. He had thought it was safe— the gun had been in his duffel, folded into a clean uniform and unloaded, the clips rolled into a t-shirt on the other end of his bag.
He should have realized that if the idiots in some of his old units had managed to load a gun, then a kid as smart as Charlie could figure it out, too.
Jack made the funeral arrangements with the kind of numb detachment he’d only ever used in the very worst combat situations. He found himself rubbing a thumb over the scarred name on his own wrist and realized suddenly that somewhere, out there, there was another person with Charlie’s name on their wrist, now in the blood-red letters of the dead.
Sara hadn’t spoken to him since they’d returned, alone, from the hospital, except when she had to, and even then, her voice was clipped and flat. Jack didn’t blame her, and he’d have understood if she never spoke to him again.
Standing in the cemetery long after everyone else had gone, Jack pulled off his wrist brace and stared at the ragged ‘S’ on his skin. For the first time, he desperately wished that he wasn’t Sara’s soul-mate.
Because she deserved so much better than him.
*
A team had gone through the stargate and back again before Sam even knew that they’d moved to manned missions, and she was furious.
“Sir, I’ve been working on this project for two years,” she said, to General West. “My team should have been notified when the stargate was activated.”
“Timing was critical, captain,” said West. “We had a narrow window of opportunity. And you’re being informed now.”
Sam took a deep breath. “Sir, my knowledge and experience with the stargate device could have been a great asset to Colonel O’Neill’s team.”
“It was decided that if we ever found a way to activate the stargate, your team could not be risked by sending you through, captain.”
“I know, sir, and I understand.” She didn’t, but she knew better than to say so. “But I could have provided valuable technical assistance from Earth.”
“Your orders were clear, and the subject is closed,” said West. “There are to be no more teams going through the stargate.”
*
Captain-Doctor Samantha Carter was exactly Jack’s type, and he hated himself a little for that. He’d made up his mind to dislike her on general principle, until she put Kawalski in his place and challenged him to arm wrestle.
After that, he told himself, there should be at least a professional distance, because they were both officers… but even he didn’t really believe that. Because Sam had become his friend, not just his teammate, and he tried to forget the ridiculous things he’d thought at first meeting her.
As if she would be his soul-mate anyway. She was much too young, for one thing, too smart and ambitious to be stuck with an old guy like him.
But that didn’t stop him from wondering, sometimes. From running a finger over the scars on his wrist and wondering whether she could be the one for him.
*
I am sorry, said the voice in Sam’s head. She knew that voice, recognized it as her own, as two…three… sets of memories began to overlap in her mind— Jolinar of Malksure, an agent of the Tok’Ra, and her former host, Rosha. I would not commit such an act if I were not desperate, Jolinar continued. Agents of the Goa’uld have sent an ashrak to kill me, and I must survive to warn Lantash/Martouf.
Sam felt emotions attached to those names— love, affection, worry, fear. But she clung to her own anger at having her body invaded. That doesn’t give you the right, she growled. You’re no better than the Goa’uld!
The mental presence of Jolinar seemed to recoil. I must warn them, she repeated. Martouf will already feel Rosha’s name fade to blood on his wrist. I must go to them before the Goa’uld can take them from me. She paused. Only those with a soul can have a soul-mate. Look at your own wrist, Samantha, and see what is written there.
Jolinar didn’t release her completely, but Sam felt some measure of control as they loosened her standard-issue brace. Her own soul-mate’s name was there, in familiar stark letters. And just below, so that the two names overlapped, it said Lantash.
And he is… his host is Martouf? Sam asked.
Yes, said Jolinar. They live as one, as I did with Rosha.
Like you want to do with me, said Sam.
I do not have a choice! said Jolinar, and Sam thought she could hear a note of fear in the Tok’Ra’s mental voice. I will never forgive myself for what I am doing to you, Samantha Carter, but I cannot fail in my mission.
Sam’s fingers snapped her brace back in place, but she had no control over the movement. She shouted, screamed, at Jolinar, but she was a passenger in her own body as the Tok’Ra tracked the ashrak, even as the Goa’uld assassin tracked her.
Sam felt the agony of Jolinar’s death, when the symbiote gave up her own life to save Sam’s, and she managed to stay conscious long enough to watch the alien letters of Lantash’s name fade from her wrist as though they had never been there.
*
In another reality, Jack was Samantha Carter’s soul-mate.
Of course, the other him was dead in that reality, which did nothing to make him feel any better for wondering if his Carter— not his Carter, just this reality’s Carter— had his name on her wrist, too.
He wondered if it was worse for her, having him hanging around with her dead husband’s face while she and his— not his— Carter looked for a way to send her home. Jack was torn between wanting to avoid Dr. Carter entirely, possibly for both their sakes, and wanting to stay nearby and give her anything she might need from him.
“You’re really not him,” she said, sadly, when she pulled back from their brief kiss. “Can I… Would you tell me what your wrist says?”
Jack shook his head. “Don’t know. Broke my wrist as a kid, and it never grew in right.”
“Despite our differences, we’re a lot alike,” said Dr. Carter. “Your Sam and me. And I know what my Jack’s wrist said.”
“Your Jack was a lucky man,” he said, and watched her walk through the quantum mirror.
In the weeks that followed, Jack found himself rubbing at the ragged ‘S’ on his wrist, asking himself questions he really, really didn’t like. Which only got worse when he found himself stranded on Edora.
Laira wore the blood-red name of her late husband openly on her arm, a sign that she wasn’t looking for another, but she was also honest in her pursuit of him. He didn’t think she loved him, but she could provide him a home and she clearly thought he could be a father to her son.
Jack wasn’t so sure.
The SGC, and especially SG-1, didn’t leave their people behind, as a rule, but with the ‘gate buried beneath tons of rock by the meteor strikes, could they really justify the time and resources it would take to rescue him? Could he really wake up every day expecting them to come, only to be disappointed as the sun went down?
He leaned on his shovel, taking a break from yet another day of trying to dig out the ‘gate, and realized he’d been rubbing at his wrist through his standard-issue brace— just as the ground opened up at his feet.
Jack helped dig Teal’c out of the cavern the activating ‘gate had created, feeling oddly detached as the rest of SG-1 followed not far behind. The entire plan had ‘Carter’ written all over it, and he had no idea how to feel about that.
Laira didn’t try and convince him to stay. She touched his covered wrist, softly, and said, “You still search for her.”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
*
There was a word on Thera’s wrist.
At least, she thought it was a word. There wasn’t much reading to be done this deep underground, and her mind struggled to match sounds to the crisp, dark letters on her skin. Jonathan, it said, which sounded like something important. Like a name.
Thera kept it wrapped with a scrap of cloth from her tunic, noticing the number of others who had clearly done the same. She couldn’t tell if Jonah was one of them— he’d put wrappings on both wrists, over his jacket, to keep his sleeves in place.
“We’re supposed to know what they mean!” insisted Karlan. He wore his mark openly and it was different than hers, a vertical line of unfamiliar symbols instead of letters. “They aren’t just random, they’re important.”
“They’re just birthmarks,” Thera told him, but the words sounded wrong in her head, like she was repeating a conclusion she’d been told without knowing any of the facts to back it up. “There’s no pattern to them, Karlan, you know that.”
“But there is,” he insisted, even as they led him back to the infirmary, the worst case of night-sickness they’d ever seen.
Part of Thera believed him, somehow. Her fingers kept straying to her wrist, worrying the edges of the wrapping there, wondering… Was it a name? Was there a person out there somewhere with that name, with her name on his own wrist, looking for her?
She let her head rest on Jonah’s shoulder. “Do you think he’s right, though?” she asked, softly. “That what we remember is real, and the marks on our wrists are really names?”
He shrugged, careful not to jostle her. “Don’t have one,” he admitted. “Must have screwed up my wrist somehow, can’t read anything but the first symbol.”
“Ah,” she said.
And when they’d gotten their memories back, when she remembered her own name and his, Sam couldn’t help but wonder if the letter on Jack’s wrist was an ‘S’.
*
There were letters on Ba’al’s wrist.
It was a seemingly-inconsequential detail, but Jack had long-since trained himself to focus on things like that to distract himself from the pain. So, letters, two lines of them, across the skin of Ba’al’s wrist, clearly visible when he rolled up his overly-ostentatious sleeves. The top set was the dried-blood red of a soul-mate centuries dead, but the bottom was a vibrant black, written in the Goa’uld letters Jack had never bothered to learn.
He wasn’t sure which was worse, proof that Ba’al had a soul, or the further implication that there was another living being whose soul was compatible with it.
Guessing random words that made puns with Ba’al’s name got him through the first three bouts in the sarcophagus, but the more times he was revived, the more times he was dragged back from oblivion to another round of increasingly-creative torture, the less he was able to force his brain to create a snappy come-back. And there was nothing Jack could do to stop it. He might have, maybe, been able to kill himself, but he had no way to prevent Ba’al from bringing him back to life. Again.
Jack found himself absently running a thumb over his left wrist, as he sat at the bottom of a cell waiting to die again. With a start, he realized that there was less scar tissue than he remembered being there, more smooth skin. He glanced down, then immediately slammed his palm over the now-visible letters.
Maybe if he died a few more times, he could forget that his wrist now read S-A-M…
*
Jack had been gone, lost somewhere with Maybourne, for six days when the name on her wrist began to turn red at the edges.
Sam hadn’t meant to snap at Bill Lee, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel guilty for it, either. She wasn’t the reason they needed him back, soul-name or not— Jack O’Neill was too important to the Stargate Program, to Earth, to be left behind, no matter what it took.
The fact that she could practically feel her soul-name changing color had nothing to do with it.
Sitting in the dark locker room, she stared at the red-tinged letters. Sam had lied to herself for so long that she’d almost believed it, that Jack couldn’t possibly be her soul-mate. But she knew that he was. It didn’t change anything— the regulations were still the same, even if she dared to hope that it was her name on Jack’s wrist.
But she couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that she didn’t feel an overwhelming relief to hear the steady beat of the heart monitor when they got him back to the infirmary, and to see the letters of his name solidify back to deep, permanent black.
*
Jack— not Jack, but not not Jack, either— hadn’t known he was a clone when he woke up. He hadn’t thought about his soul-name, just like he regularly didn’t think about it, but especially not when he was, as far as he knew, suddenly transformed into a teenager.
Then, his older self— the real Jack O’Neill— appeared, and he was suddenly glad he’d never taken off the brace he wore over his left wrist, never even peeked in the shower. His wrist wouldn’t have the scars, since this body had never been five, never fallen down a hill and broken it. The name on this wrist might be whole, easily legible, and while he was accepting things, he was willing to admit, at least to himself, that he was scared to look know for sure what it said.
If it said anything.
He was only a copy, after all. No one had ever been able to pinpoint the source of soul-names, how or why they appeared, and he had no reason to believe that there was a name on his wrist at all.
He tried not to think about it as he let the Air Force make plans for him to give up his entire life, as they fabricated paperwork— medical records, school records, government documents— to make him a new person, his own person. And it wasn’t until he’d finished his (second) first day of high school and come home to an empty apartment that he finally dared to look.
There was a name on his wrist. Clear, dark letters that read, Tara.
The name rang in his head until the next day at school, when the beautiful, blonde teenaged clone of Sam Carter smiled and held out her own wrist, equally stark letters spelling the name he’d chosen, John.
“How…?” he breathed.
Her smile broadened. “Let’s find out.”
*
“Why do grown-ups always make themselves unhappy?” asked the little girl. “You know who that name belongs to.”
“It’s not that simple,” Sam protested, unconsciously putting a hand over the brace on her wrist.
She knew that the girl was just a hallucination, a part of her own injured brain, but she had never been able to back down from a fight, even with herself.
“But isn’t that why you get a name in the first place?” the girl continued. “You’re supposed to find somebody who makes your soul complete. And you found him, Sam.”
“That doesn’t mean I get to keep him,” said Sam— if she was going to argue with herself, she should at least be honest. “Life isn’t a fairy tale, and we won’t get to live happily ever after.”
“Why not?”
Sam’s head was pounding. She was injured, probably deteriorating, and she still had no idea where the crew of the Prometheus had gone, let alone how to get them back. She didn’t have time to argue with herself.
“Because life isn’t fair,” she snapped – and she had never said anything more true.
The universe proved that soon after, when Jack downloaded an Ancient database into his head.
Again.
Somehow, it was both easier and more terrifying than the first time he’d done it. They knew what was happening and how it would progress, but with every unanswered call to the Asgard, there was less chance of getting him back from it.
Slowly, Jack lost the ability to speak English, then to speak at all. Daniel understood most of the Ancient, Teal’c was well-versed in silent communication, but Sam still knew Jack best. She found herself touching the brace on her wrist more than usual, as though she could feel the dark letters underneath.
In orbit above Praclarush Taonas, Sam resisted Jack’s efforts to give her command. She knew it was irrational, that she was in denial of his condition, but she couldn’t help it. Jack just rested his fingers on her wrist, smiling that shy smile of his, and she folded instantly.
But even the Ancient power source they found on the planet couldn’t distract her from how quickly Jack deteriorated on the way back to Earth. He hadn’t spoken for hours when they brought him to the Ancient stasis chamber, but just before Jack stepped inside, he pressed his hand to his wrist – still covered by his brace – then to his heart, then to hers.
Sam bit back a sob. “I know,” she said, and he smiled as the stasis activated.
*
Replicator Carter had no name on her wrist.
She had been wearing a jacket when she arrived and given everything going on, it hadn’t even occurred to Jack to wonder about her soul-name. But then she took the jacket off to reveal a sleeveless top and bare arms – blank, not just without a soul-name but without any of the scars the real Carter had – he felt he should have known.
The real Carter seemed to be equally fascinated and disturbed by her duplicate. When RepliCarter gestured with her bare wrist, Sam kept touching the standard-issue brace she wore over her own.
Jack had a pretty good idea what name was under there, now. If it had been someone else’s – anyone else’s – he’s sure Sam would have told him as soon as he’d come out of stasis. But she hadn’t said anything, so neither had he. There was nothing they could do about it now, anyway.
He was sure RepliCarter couldn’t be trusted, no matter how much she looked and sounded like the original. But her plan was too good to pass up, even if it was a trap, and blowing up Fifth was almost worth releasing a disrupter-proof replicator with questionable morals into the galaxy.
“I wanted to believe her,” said Sam, when Jack found her in her lab after RepliCarter had left. She didn’t look up from the deactivated replicator tiles she was studying. “She was me, and I didn’t want to believe I could—”
“She’s not you,” Jack interrupted, and Sam looked up sharply. “She’s Fifth’s twisted version of you.”
“Was she?”
“Didn’t you see her wrist, Carter? Blank.”
“Because she erased it,” said Sam. “I shared her memories, sir. Fifth made her with his name.”
“All the more reason she isn’t you,” Jack replied. “She might have your brain and your memories, but she doesn’t have your soul.”
He touched the brace over her wrist with just the tips of his fingers. Neither of them were ready to admit that they were each other’s soul-mates, but knowing was still a comfort.
Sam managed a smile. “Thanks.”
*
In another timeline, a Jack who’d stayed retired blinked at a Sam who’d never joined the Air Force at all, as their puddle jumper was surrounded by Jaffa.
“You told me your soul-mate was Daniel,” he said.
She smiled sheepishly. “I lied. I wanted to get to know you better.”
And later, after kissing and being rescued, Jack found Sam tinkering with the jumper’s engine.
“About the soul-mate thing,” Jack began, “You don’t…”
“I don’t know who it is,” Sam admitted. “I’ve never met them.”
“But Sam is short for Samantha?” he pressed. When she nodded, he opened his military-issue wrist brace to show her name in clear dark letters.
Behind her glasses, her eyes were wide. “And maybe Jack is short for Jonathan?”
“It is,” he said, slowly. “But how…?”
Jack trailed off as she undid her brace, his own full name spelled out on her slender wrist.
Sam smiled. “I was hoping.”
*
“This is great,” said Sam, casting her fishing line out into the pond.
“I told you,” Jack replied.
“I can’t believe we didn’t do this years ago.”
Jack cast his own line. “Nah. Let’s not dwell. We’re here now.”
“Yes, we are,” Sam agreed.
She held out her hand – her left, wrist facing upward, with the clear dark letters of Jack’s name shining in the sunlight. Jack switched his fishing pole to his left hand, flexing the scars on his wrist that now only partially obscured Sam’s name, and laced their fingers together.
“I figure that makes us pretty lucky, don’t you think, Samantha?”
They were headed in different directions, Jack to D.C. and Homeworld Security, Sam to R&D and Groom Lake, but that didn’t matter when they could be together in all the ways that really mattered. It had felt like their futures were a thousand miles apart when they were sitting at the same briefing table, but now Sam knew they were on the same path, even on opposite sides of the country.
“I think you’re right, Jonathan,” she agreed.
Jack grinned and lifted their joined hands to kiss her knuckles, as Daniel and Tea’c came around the cabin to join them.
THE END