Title: Once Upon a Time in Egypt
Author's LJ/DWJ: ljs_lj
Categories: pre-series, Sam, AU, episode related
Warnings: none
Author's Webpage/Fic list: A Little Sign That She Cared
Link to story: Once Upon a Time in Egypt

Why this should be read: We can understand why Moebius!Daniel Jackson, who got shot down in his last presentation and never got hired by Catherine to unlock the Stargate, might end up teaching ESL eight years down the line. But how can we explain Sam's alternate history, and her failure to join the Air Force?

LJ, with lovely elegance, gently traces the ripples and swirls in history that led to the changes in Sam's backstory. Twisting tenses, the butterfly effect, shifting events, and a crucial moment... LJ tracks it all, and then lets it spool outwards all over again to the reality we know so well.

Thoughtful, unique, and beautifully done.


Once upon a time in Egypt, Ra, Sun-God, Husband-Father of Hathor, was displeased. Two slaves were brought before him, called instigators of rebellion. He disposed of the male, an old slave not worth the effort of keeping, and placed his dead, broken body on display for all to see. The female, her skin and eyes and hair as pale as the sands of Kemet and Abydos, he kept for his own pleasure, but when he approached her as her god he felt the naqadah in her veins. She slashed at him with a hidden knife and he slashed back. She fought and he fought her. She claimed to have not been an instigator of rebellion. She died.

Ra, son of Aten, Sun-God of Kemet and Abydos, was displeased.

The Chapa'ai he took with him to Abydos.




Once upon a time in Egypt, slaves rebelled and then were quieted. Their fury was great, their strength not in might but in numbers and hope. The hope died.

Jareth of Kemet did not go forth from the sands of Egypt.




Jareth of Kemet did not leave Egypt. He died there, among the sun-pale sands where once the great god Ra ruled, where the sun-disc shone and once the water-blue Chapa'ai once stood. He had no son. He had no grandson. He had no great-granddaughter called Micha who married a chieftain of the north peoples.

Micha, a daughter of Jareth of Kemet, was never born in the land of the Hellenes.