DISCLAIMER: The story, and characters and anything and everything else concerning SG: SG1 belong to MGM, Gekko, Secret Productions etc, they are so not mine and no money is being made from this and no copyright infringement is intended.
SPOILERS: Gemini (Season 8) and all episodes dealing with human form replicators.
SERIES/SEQUEL: Companion piece to Contradiction and Negatives.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author

Denial
By Celievamp

I made my move. It was ridiculously easy. She was quick, my counterpart, but not as quick as me. Nor as ruthless. Still she hesitated to hurt me. But I knew I could kill her with equanimity. But still I hesitated. I had to know.

My keron energy easily fused with her primitive nervous system once more. I brought her into my world.

"That's better. Now we can take our time and have a little talk. Of course, only a few seconds will pass in the real world."

"Why did you bring me here?" she asked.

"I wanted to thank you. You gave me the opportunity to study the disrupter and that allowed me to make myself immune to its effects. And one more thing. I have to know," I said. I looked towards the corner of the `room'. A shadow moved there. I imbued it with what I remembered of the figure that Fifth had so feared to share with me.

"Who is she? What was she to you - to us?"

I did not expect the intensity of her response. "Janet!" she gasped.

The floodgates opened. I knew everything. I rejoiced. I grieved. To come so close to perfection and then lose it all.

The shadow of my memory came to vibrant life. Janet Fraiser, all of her, every aspect of her now mine. I knew what it felt like to touch that velvet skin, how she liked to be kissed, where she liked to be touched, I knew her smell, how she tasted on my tongue, my finger tips. I knew the intensity of her emotions, her favourite music, the real reason she never ate fresh berries, what films made her cry. I knew that the love she had for her adopted daughter, Cassie and for Samantha Carter had shaped her life more than any other influence. I knew that she loved her work in medicine with all the ferocity of her spirit. And I knew that she was gone from this world.

"How is it that you still breathe?" I asked. Raw grief overwhelmed me. I had not lied when I told O'Neill that we feel. "How can you bear to live when she does not?"

"Because she would expect me to," Sam said softly. "And if the only way I can continue to honour her life and the sacrifice she made for us is to keep going day after day to keep fighting to protect our world, our daughter, our friends, then that is what I will do."

I nodded, finding a truth in her explanation, a definition for some of the feelings I was experiencing. It hurt so much!

I left her side and walked around Janet Fraiser, taking in every aspect of her. "This is what you held up to Fifth, isn't it. This is how he knew you could never love him. This is why he hid her from me."

"Yes."

I closed my eyes, sifting through all of her memories of this woman, from their first meeting to the last moments they spent together. There was so much love there, they had been well matched. I saw the glory of her smile, heard her laughter, the myriad mercurial emotions that she expressed so freely. They had not been perfect together, the volatility of one and the stubbornness and singlemindedness of the other had made for an abrasive match sometimes but their arguments had rarely outlasted the day. And making up. ah. I smiled, as particularly delicious images filtered through my mind.

I opened my eyes again, smiled at my human counterpart. For the first time she showed real fear. "What are you going to do with me?"

"It amazes me how truly different we are, Sam," I said. "How you hold yourself back, suppress your true feelings, your true desires. You have untapped greatness inside you, Sam. But you're limited by your own fears. You play by the rules, you do as you're told and you deny yourself your own desires. You denied her."

Janet came to life, turning her head to look at me, a smile wreathing her face. Sam made a strangled noise and stepped back but there was no where she could go. This was my place. I placed my hand on her chest. "Don't be afraid. Nothing is going to happen that you don't want to happen. What would you give, Sam, to make love to Janet just one more time?"

"No, please, not this," she begged. Janet stepped towards us, her clothing dissolving at a thought to reveal her beautiful nude body.

"I've missed you, Sam," she whispered, her voice husky with need. "I've missed you so much. Make love to me, please. Make love to me, Sam."

Our clothes were gone as well, wished away as an irrelevance. Janet ran her hand over Sam's chest. "You are so beautiful, Sam." She gazed at me and smiled. "Both of you."

I lowered my head a little and we kissed for the first time. I had all the other times in my memory but this, this was a new experience for me, uniquely my own. Nothing Fifth had taught me prepared me for this.

Sam was crying, tears rolling down her cheeks. She sank to her knees, her arms wrapped around herself as if she was holding her broken heart within her chest. Janet kissed me again and then pulled away, her hand caressing my cheek before she knelt next to Sam and took the desolate woman in her arms. Sam resisted for a moment but then seemed to melt into her. "Janet. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Sam. You did everything you could. It was my time." She raised the woman's face to hers and gently kissed away the tears from her cheeks. "You will always have me here and here," she said, touching her fingers to Sam's temple and then placing them over the woman's breastbone. "And we have this time together." She reached out to me and I took her hand allowing her to draw me down to join them. I kissed Janet again and then after a moment's pause, my counterpart. I drew her unresisting body into my arms cradling her as Janet made love to her, kissing and stroking and mouthing her way across the grieving woman's body until her tears were forgotten and she was moaning softly in pleasure.

I watched and wondered. I had not expected this to happen. I had not expected Sam to give me what I wanted so easily, so fully. Janet Fraiser, all that she had been was a part of me now, a part of the Replicator consciousness.

And then I understood why she had done it. Whilst I held this knowledge, whilst the Replicators existed, Janet Fraiser would never truly die.

Sam writhed against me, chanting Janet's name as the doctor's talented fingers and tongue brought her to orgasm. She turned her face blindly up to me and I kissed her again, each time the strangeness of it seeming a little less so. And then Janet's fingers were in my hair and she was kissing me and I could taste Sam and I had to wonder if I would taste the same.

Now or never, I had to end it. In the outside world, I let go of Sam Carter's arm, thrusting her away from me. She staggered and fell to the floor.

"Don't do this," she begged. "You don't have to be our enemy."

"It's what I was made to be. I got what I came for. I don't need you any more, Sam," I said. "We both know there's no other way for this to end."

I glanced at the computer. "You forget. I know exactly how your mind works. I know what you're going to do before you even think of it. You set the naquada generators to overload. Trying to blow up the base before I can leave." I placed my hand on the terminal's keyboard, overrode the power systems. The base was plunged into darkness. It made no difference to me.

In my mind, Janet Fraiser waited for me, her smile promising many things. At last I was complete. I knew exactly who and what I was, why I had been created. And I would not be denied.

Leaving it all behind, I walked towards the Gate.

The End

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