A Sword in Agate - Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, I am just playing in the world
Previously: Ch 1
A Sword in Agate - Chapter 2
McLean, Virginia, May 29th, 1978
Sam ran up the garden with their empty plates and cups in hand, she put them on the table on the deck by the back door and turned her head to see him talking to his parents in an insistent tone, then dashing off with his grandmother's car keys after she handed them to him with an indulgent smile. She turned to find her father over by the grill talking with Colonel Hammond, who was wearing a rather garish floral print apron. His wife's doing no doubt. He was flipping some chicken cuts on the grill while taking a swig of beer from a bottle and joking with her father as she walked over.
"Hello, Samantha, would you like some chicken? They're almost done." He smiled at her as he held up one of the chicken legs with his tongs. She smiled back and shook her head as he put the meat back on the grill. Her father cupped the back of her neck and leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
"How are things going with the Mitchell kid, Sammie?" He smiled at her and she turned her head to see the boy's parents talking to Mrs. Davis, he must already be digging through his grandmother's car.
"Daddy, can I get your car keys, please?" She looked around to see if her mother was nearby before whispering conspiratorially, "He has Jeff Long and Doug Davis dolls in his stuff, if I get my Major Matt Mason and Sgt. Storm dolls we have all the 'Men in Space' to play with." Her father grinned at George Hammond as he straightened up from listening to her whispers.
"You brought them with you? You better not let your mother see you." He reached into his pocket to root out his keys as George chuckled from beside him.
"I won't, Dad, we'll just say they're his if she sees us." She held her hand out and he laid his keys in her eager palm. "Thanks, Daddy!" She turned and was about to dash off, but he put his hand on her shoulder and leaned down to whisper in her ear.
"Don't get your skirt dirty or your Mom won't care whose action figures they are." He grinned at her as she rolled her eyes at him in return and ran around the house to their car parked out front. She saw him waiting by her Dad's car as they'd agreed and she quickly unlocked the trunk to get at her bag and opened it to rummage through it, pulling out the two figures she'd brought with her and loading them into his arms. She closed everything up and took his grandmother's keys from his fingers while he juggled the dolls, trying not to drop them.
"I left my Matt Mason in the car since you said you had him." he explained and she nodded as they walked back around the house. "I'll see you at the creek." She nodded again and dashed off to her father to hand him his keys, he patted her head and stroked her cheek gently as she smiled. She then went to Grandma Mitchell and returned her keys to her, explaining that she had her grandson carrying everything as she hooked her thumb over her shoulder towards the bottom of the garden. She laughed pleasantly and stroked Sam's cheek just as her Dad had, nodding and smiling before sending her scurrying off. His grandmother was really nice.
She scampered across the grass towards the bottom of the garden, happy to have found someone who could make these usually dull gatherings the least bit bearable. The only other kid her age with parents in her Dad's circle of friends was Paul Davis and although he was a nice kid he was like an old man already. No fun at all. Mark hated doing anything at all energetic and practically never left Mom's side, she sighed at the thought of it. She had been so glad all those years ago when her Dad had told her that the baby her mother had been expecting was a boy. She thought she'd finally get someone to play with. She shook her head with a rueful smile. Mark didn't like to play.
Sam found if she wasn't playing then her head just filled up with all sorts of things whenever she looked at anything, sprinklers spraying water would have her thinking of multi-variable probability distribution fields, the hummingbirds in their garden would set her to thinking of variable pitch rotor blades, even a little earlier when she'd been waiting for him to return with hot dogs, the water flowing through the creek had her thinking of standing wave coherent interference patterns. Playing let her mind relax and he helped her play. She came around the hedge and found him setting up the figures on the chairs he'd brought back before they'd had hamburgers. He looked up when she came around and smiled. He had a nice smile. He looked down at the action figures and frowned slightly.
"Why didn't they ever make a girl doll to be one of Major Matt Mason's space buddies, seems dumb to me." He sounded so serious she just had to grin and chuckle as she sat in a chair after picking up the Jeff Long and Doug Davis figures he'd laid on it. She'd never seen these two dolls in their, respectively, blue and yellow suits. They were both civilians who were friends with Matt Mason and joined him in his adventures, She posed Jeff in his blue suit and chocolate coloured skin into a fairly combative pose and stood him on the seat of the chair next to hers.
"That's why I asked my Dad to get me Sgt. Storm." She pointed at the blond haired doll in the red suit. "Don't you think that's a pretty feminine face?" He looked at her in puzzlement as he picked up the figure. "Girly." she elaborated. He made a little 'oh' sound and scrutinised the figure's face. He nodded after a while. "Short hair though, which doesn't help."
"No law against girls with short hair is there?" he asked seriously again, but his eyes were sparkling in that way of his and she laughed.
"No, I guess not, do you think I'd look good with short hair then?" she asked with a teasing smile and flipped her long hair over her shoulder then bunched it up and held it back in a ponytail with her hand. She turned her head from side to side with a slight smile on her lips. He watched her for several seconds and the look in his eyes made her feel warm.
"I dunno, probably, I can't really tell," when he spoke so seriously it made her feel strange sometimes, "you look good with your hair like that too." She felt her cheeks warming up. He turned back to regard the figure in his hand and offered it to her. "Did you make up a girl character then? If you did you should make her a Major too, so she and Matt Mason can share the team." He always said the strangest things, but they made an odd sort of sense when she thought about it. She took the figure and looked at him... her. She chuckled.
"That's a good idea actually, or maybe she could be his boss." She gave him a challenging look, to see how he'd react to that idea, but she should have known better, one thing she knew about him was that his Grandma made sure he had a lot of respect for women. He just nodded happily as he posed Matt Mason next to Jeff Long.
"That works too."
Jack O'Neill's cabin, Minnesota, September 2008 (alternate timeline)
She stood inside the door to her room as he leant his forearm against the door frame and kissed her again, or a little more truthfully, she kissed him again. She pulled away and thought to herself for the thousandth time that his smile was bad for her continued sanity. He was about to back up a step as her hand pushed him back into the hall, but she grabbed onto his jacket instead and pulled him to her for another insistent kiss. After several seconds she balked again and pulled back. It was almost four in the morning, she needed to get to bed. She pushed him out for sure and he lifted an eyebrow at her, as if asking if she was going to pull him in again, but she narrowed her eyes at him with a studied smirk and closed the door. She heard a muffled 'I love you' whispered from the other side and she pressed her forehead against the wood of the door as she felt her knees go slightly weak. Turning around she leaned back against the closed door and looked up at the ceiling trying to gather her scattered thoughts and feelings. She raised her hands to cover her mouth, she could feel her lips still throbbing from the intensity of their kisses. She bit her lower lip with a smile and half-walked half-stumbled her way to the bed in the room she'd commandeered in the cabin and started rummaging in her bag for a change of clothes.
Cameron Mitchell told her he loved her. Her fingers stilled their movements as her mind entered a fugue state for a split second. She almost couldn't believe it. A part of her, a tiny, petty, hyper-rational part of her, was mad at him for taking twenty years to admit it to her, but it wasn't as if she could talk. She'd had a crush on him since the Academy and had never acted on it either, she'd blown her own chances to tell him. It didn't matter now. It didn't. He was hers and she wasn't going to let him get away. He'd made her a promise. She was going to make sure he had the chance to keep it, and until that happened she was going to be his, and then for years after that as well. She pulled out a sweatshirt and some sweatpants, coming to Jack's cabin so late in the year necessitated some warmer night clothes. She stopped again, her smile faltering as she thought of Jack O'Neill. She looked up and out of the window into the darkness of the surrounding forest. She blinked as her eyes began to sting suddenly. He was dead, her Jack was dead, even as the Jack in this timeline was alive and being kind of a jerk.
She turned and faced in the direction of the room Cam and Daniel would be sharing that night. She brought a hand up to her mouth as a thought suddenly entered her mind which brought her up short. Was she running from Jack's death? Was she running towards Cam so she could ignore what Jack dying meant? She thought she'd come to terms with the fact that she and Jack weren't going to be together. That some time between returning to the SGC from Area 51 and before leaving for Atlantis she'd decided Jack wasn't her future as she thought he once might have been. Then she saw him die, it had only been a month or so ago, and as she stood over him and his eyes glazed over she'd felt such a rush of guilt, the source of which she couldn't identify. She'd forced it down when Cam had grabbed her arm and pulled her away, but now... She raised her hands to her mouth again as it suddenly hit her. The sweatshirt she'd been holding tumbled to the floor as through her mind's eye she relived the moment he died. She'd never told him that she had come to terms with them only being friends. Did he die still thinking that she...? She looked in the direction of Cam once more. She was fairly certain he'd never known about her and Jack, but if he ever found out she didn't want him to think she was only with him because she couldn't be with Jack.
She grabbed her dropped sweatshirt and threw it on the bed and rushed to her messenger bag on the chair and searched the pockets for her 'team' phone. She needed to get her feelings down right now, so she could one day prove to him how she felt. She flipped it open and navigated to the camera functions, hitting record so it was filming with the secondary camera which faced her.
"Cam, I love you. I do. I love you. When I first saw you at the Academy, when we worked together through my courses and projects there, when we flew together in the Middle East. I realise now that I loved you then as well." She held a hand up to her mouth as she recalled all those times at the officer's mess when they'd talked about her becoming an astronaut, and then she'd gone to Washington, leaving him thinking she'd given up on that dream. She let her hand fall once more and looked into the camera again "You shared my dreams, Cam, you always did, and I... I shared yours, I really did. You know why I left now, you know why I couldn't tell you, but believe me, it nearly killed me that I couldn't." She looked down for several moments as she tried to organise her thoughts, but there was never an easy way to say these things. "We never had an understanding, we never even imagined we shared each others feelings. You know I've been engaged twice... I don't really want to talk about that, I need to talk about something else." She looked away to the side for a moment. "I need to talk about Jack." she whispered before looking back to the camera.
She let her hand holding the phone fall to her side as she could feel tears welling up. She walked over to the bed and sat down next to her bag. She held her phone in her lap and looked down into it again, passing a hand over her cheeks.
"Jack and I, for a while there, we were..." She chuckled and looked away, how can you describe something you don't know the shape of, something with unknown dimensions, unlearned extent, unquantified substance. "We were something... more than friends... never quite lovers... not because we didn't want it... we did, but..." she paused and looked into the camera again, "you know why, it was the same for you, right? Frat regs..." She looked down again, rubbing the skin on her wrist with her thumb. "I loved him, Cam. Not like I love you, I realise that now, but I loved him. I wanted... the chance to be with him. That's why I left the SGC before you arrived." She looked up into the camera again. "I realised while I was at Area 51 that it wasn't going to happen, neither one of us could move to bridge the gap that existed between us. I guess we just didn't have the strength to lay our heart directly in the firing line." She chuckled and looked back at the ceiling for a moment. "Like that song that was playing when I came to see you the night before you graduated. I couldn't just say to him 'you can have this heart to break.'" She lifted the phone and held it closer, staring forcefully into the camera, her eyes fierce. "I can say that to you, Cameron, I can give you my heart without reservation and if you need to, you can break it. I can do it because I know you're doing the same for me. I'm not running away from Jack or his death, I'm running towards where I belong. And that's you, Cameron. You're my home. Ever since you brought me back to SG-1, I've been running towards you. I know that now. I love you, Cam. With everything I have in me. Never doubt that." She stared into the camera for a long moment before she stopped recording and closed her phone. She felt drained. She opened the phone again and looked at the time, seeing it was well past four o'clock. She sighed then narrowed her eyes as she scrutinised the wallpaper, just something abstract and vapid that had come with the phone. She'd have to do something about it.
San Diego, California, September 2010
Cameron looked over to Sam as she drove their rental car through Muirlands, north of San Diego. She'd deny it, but she was nervous. He reached across and stroked her cheek, feeling the tension under her skin. She turned to look at him and her expression softened. Such a simple gesture which had such a profound effect. He smiled gently, still amazed at how much she trusted him, it was the only reason he could affect her that way. His hand had moved along with her cheek and he took the long lock of golden hair which hung down her cheek and let it run over his finger. She turned back to look at the road again, indicating to make a turn up ahead. If he could get her talking about something other than her family for a bit she might be able to relax before they arrived.
"You spoke with Daniel after we got back from Atlantis, right?" He reached over and turned the radio down to almost nothing before she replied. She nodded with a slight smile.
"Yes, he was very irritated with the 'constant interruption from the SGC' as he put it." Her gaze flicked over to Cam's before returning to the road and he grinned at the glint in them. She meant that he resented having to get his nose out of the books for five minutes every two days to give a sit rep without even having to leave the confines of the library.
"Happy as a clam then, is he?" he concluded and she nodded with a broad smile.
"Surprisingly, Teal'c says Vala is as well." She smiled at his quirked eyebrow when she glanced over. "You'd think she'd be bored out of her mind, but I think remembering her time on Odyssey has made her far more interested in learning about other people's legends and myths."
"There are only seven different stories after all." Cam said with a grin and Sam gave a small murmur of assent.
"So she's been talking to the townspeople while Daniel's been reading in the Library and they've been 'pooling their research' at the end of each day." She flashed a bright smile.
"I'm glad." His eyes flicked to the dark metal band wrapped snugly around his left wrist, he pulled his arm in and looked down at it. "Why do you think these things keep telling us not to take them off for a while." He turned his wrist over and over, happily smirking while it displayed the time for him. Sam glanced down at the band around her own left wrist, but looked up quickly again to focus on the road.
"It told me it had to calibrate the Archive." she replied. He grunted. When they'd returned to Atlantis wearing the clasps Rodney had threatened to cut Cam's hand off to get at the band on his wrist. Sam glared at him and he wised up quickly enough. The fact Dr. Keller was standing right next to Sam glaring away at him in the same way probably had something to do with it as well. The eggheads at the SGC had been similarly unhappy they couldn't get one of them off either Sam or Cam. General Landry just raised his eyebrows and smirked at them, shaking his head. He'd pretty much come to terms with the fact that SG-1 had become almost semi-autonomous since shifting operations to Selenis. He and General O'Neill seemed more than happy to share custody of Earth's premier SG team.
"Calibrate the Archive." He frowned slightly. "Don't know why it needs calibration." Sam shrugged her shoulders slightly as she turned into a leafy street with a mismatch of bungalows and two story homes on either side. She parked in front of a whitewashed house lined with flowering bushes along the front of the building. She sighed heavily and he took her hand and turned it over, kissing the heel of her palm before squeezing it gently. She smiled and nodded. "Well, not being able to take them off might make this sorta weird. People kinda look strangely at couples with matching accessories." He grinned and held his wrist up, only for his eyes to widen in surprise when the clasp shimmered and warped to look like a bulky digital watch. "What the Hell?" He looked over to Sam who was staring at her own wrist with her mouth slightly agape. Her band had similarly altered its appearance, changing into a silver watch with a rounded rectangular housing and an elongated elliptical analogue face, inset with blue tinged metalwork. He frowned at it. "That looks familiar." She looked up into his eyes before chuckling breathlessly and looking at the watch again as it nestled on the underside of her wrist..
"It should. You gave it to me as a birthday present in the alternate timeline. I loved this watch so much!" She looked up to him and grinned before leaning across to him and kissing him tenderly. "You have such good taste, sweetie." He laughed as she pulled away.
"I guess I do. I hope I don't wake up soon to find out the clerk at the store recommended it to me." He rubbed the back of his neck as she laughed, then turned to open his door. Cam stepped out onto the small pavement in front of the home of Mark Carter and Family. He looked over the roof of the car at Sam as she climbed out of the driver's side and saw her face split into a grin when he heard a high pitched squeal from behind him.
"Aunt Samantha!" cried a teenaged girl who came around from the side of house where a driveway disappeared, presumably leading to a garage. Sam came around the back of the car and leaned down as the girl ran straight into her arms. "It's so good to see you!"
"Hey, Lisa! How's my favourite tennis player?" She pulled away from the grinning girl slightly and stroked her hair with a very broad smirk. The very picture of an indulgent aunt. Cam grinned happily and Sam instantly turned to look at him with a glare. He raised his hands in surrender. The young girl turned towards Cam, looking him up and down. She turned to Sam with a curious look in her eyes.
"I'm fine Auntie Sam, more importantly, is this the guy?" She looked at Cam again. "Your fiancé?" Cam grinned and stepped forward, holding out his hand.
"Cameron Mitchell, pleasure to meet you, Lisa." He smiled as the girl took his hand and shook it, Sam held on to Lisa's shoulders. She leaned down to whisper in the girl's ear which had her giggling as she again eyed Cam sidelong then burbled a hello before running off back towards the rear of the house, motioning for them to follow. Sam watched her go before turning to Cam and holding out her hand, he took it and fell into step alongside her. "What did you say to her just then?" Sam glanced at him from the corner of her eye and smiled, but said nothing. He glared in response to her silence until they walked into the back yard to find Mark Carter standing over a grill and Lisa talking animatedly with a woman who must be her mother, Julia. A teenaged boy, slightly older than Lisa, was running around the bottom of the garden, wrestling a frisbee away from a labrador who barked excitedly, pouncing from side to side in front of him.
Mark hung his tongs off the side of the grill when he spotted them and rubbed his hands on a dish cloth as he walked over, flicking it to lie over his shoulder before holding out his arms to bring Sam into a small embrace, kissing her cheeks. He glanced at Cam while Sam made introductions.
"Hey Mark, it's good to see you, sorry it's been so long." she began apologetically, he gave her a rueful smile, having heard the same from their father so often before. "This is Cameron, he finally got up the courage to ask me out just last year." She chuckled at Cam's dramatic glare as he shook Mark's proffered hand.
"Sam tells me we've met before. When we were kids?" He looked between both of them until Cam replied.
"Yeah, back in '78, Memorial Day BBQ in McLean." he replied. Mark frowned slightly.
"1978? I was six in 1978." He looked at Sam for a moment as Cam chuckled.
"You certainly were." Cam declared. "You were very six." Mark chuckled himself and Sam smiled in relief when she saw it.
"I'm sure I was." He rubbed at his chin momentarily then pointed at Cam. "You were the kid with the Major Matt Mason action figures that Sam didn't have." Both Cam and Sam nodded with broad grins. "She was talking about you all the way home." Sam flushed bright red and turned away as Cam whirled on her with an evil smirk.
"I was talking about the dolls!" she declared without looking at him. Mark just started laughing as Julia and Lisa began walking over. Cam saw that the teenaged boy was walking over as well and when he spotted Cam watching him, tossed the frisbee in his direction. Cam caught it as the labrador chased after it and leapt up at him eagerly. Sam must have seen a chance at a reprieve as she began petting the dog who obligingly slobbered all over her hands. "Hey Scoundrel! How are you, boy?" The dog barked in reply as Sam stood up to greet her sister-in-law.
"So it's 'third time's the charm', is it, Sam?" Julia teased with a smile as she arrived and gave Sam a hug and kiss on the cheek. Sam tilted her head to the side and gave her a mock-glare. Julia chuckled a little and held her hand out for Cameron to shake. "Welcome to the family, Cameron. Please take good care of our Sam."
"I will... Julia, right?" he raised his eyebrows and she nodded happily as she went to stand by Mark with an arm around his waist. Lisa knelt down by Scoundrel and ruffled his chest as the last member of Mark Carter's brood arrived. "And you must be David." Cam held out his hand and returned the teenager's hand shake firmly. "It's really good meeting you all." Sam came and gave David a hug which he cringed at slightly as was the way with teenaged boys.
"Can I get you two anything to drink?" asked Julia as she began to make her way to the kitchen.
"I'll have a beer." replied Sam with a smile. "Do you want a hand, Jules?"
"No, Sam, you stay right there. Same for you, Cameron?" Julia enquired from the step at the back door. Cam shook his head.
"Not for me, I'm driving us back to the hotel." he replied. "Just a coke will do me fine." Julia nodded with a smile.
"Very responsible. Forward planning is good." Mark nodded with a lop-sided smile. Cam chuckled.
"Sam's idea. My idea of forward planning is a frontal assault with overwhelming firepower." Cam said with a serious face. Sam gave him a warning look.
"And does that work?" David asked.
"Surprisingly, not that often. Hence why Sam is in charge of all the planning." Cam replied. Mark chuckled and Lisa giggled looking up at her aunt. Sam shook her head.
"Don't listen to him, David. Cameron can be very strategic when he puts his mind to it." Sam poked Cam and her nephew grinned.
"Sure I can. When what I mean by 'overwhelming firepower' is 'nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.'" Cam elaborated and David laughed.
"Alright, Aunt Sam, he'll do." David pronounced with a smile as he began jogging down the garden while looking over his shoulder with a hand up. "Over here, Uncle Cameron!" Cam grinned and waved the frisbee in front of Scoundrel which had the dog wagging his tail excitedly. He then sent a backhand throw sailing across the garden for David to catch while the labrador ran after it, followed by Lisa moments after.
"Well, thanks a lot for your approval." Sam said with her hands on her hips as Cam smiled at her. He walked down the garden giving her a little look. Mark came to stand next to her and put his arm around her shoulder.
"Is he a good man?" he asked gently. She looked over at him and nodded once. Mark nodded as well before returning to the grill. Julia poked her head out of the back door as Cam threw the frisbee towards Lisa.
"Actually I think I will need a hand. Cameron, If you could help me in here?" She waved at him from the door and he smiled with a nod, then winked at Sam when he heard her groan, she obviously expected trouble. He waved to the kids and walked into the house, finding Julia arranging drinks on a tray as well as bowls of salad and bread. She pointed towards the sink indicating he should wash his hands. "Could you slice some tomatoes for me, please?" She smiled when he nodded and set to work. "You've known Sam a long time, right?" she asked while tearing open some lettuce.
"That's right, since the Academy. Though we met once before." he replied while pushing tomato slices to the edge of the chopping board. He paused and leant against the counter for a moment. He turned to look at his future sister-in-law, she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She was a shrewd one. "I admit I should have told her how I felt back then. I don't really have an excuse." He started on another tomato. Julia just replied with a non-committal noise.
"Sam is a strange bird." she began softly. "Sometimes she over-thinks things, as you'd expect from someone with a brain the size of a planet." She glanced over at him with a smile when he chuckled and nodded. "Other times she doesn't think at all. She just does." She lifted the colander out of the sink and closed the tap then leant her hip against the counter to face Cam. "The last two men she got engaged to... I think she did it after a lot of thinking. Just not about them, about other things." He turned a confused gaze to her. "She started dating them determined to be in a relationship." She handed Cam a bowl and he pushed the chopped and sliced tomato into it with his knife. He frowned as he handed the bowl back.
"I don't really like what you're implying." he admitted and Julia shrugged.
"I didn't expect you to. Did you know them?" she put the bowl down and handed him a jar of mayonnaise to be opened.
"I knew Jonas Hanson, but not Pete Shanahan." he replied after handing her the now open jar.
"What was he like?" she asked, preparing the tomato salad without looking at him. He frowned and crossed his arms while looking out the window.
"He was an egomaniacal douchebag with control issues." he breathed, not quite comfortable with the conversation. "I told Sam as much at the time when I heard she had started dating him." Julia nodded.
"She stopped talking to you for a while, I bet." she added and Cam nodded. "That's my point. She wasn't thinking about him when she was making her choices. She wasn't even thinking about herself." She walked to the table with the prepared bowl and put it on the tray with the other salads and bread. "On the other hand, she thinks about you, and about herself when she's with you. She told me that much when she admitted you two got engaged only a few of months after you started dating. She didn't over-think that decision." Cam leaned back against the counter as Julia looked him up and down. "That's why I think she's got it right this time. She has the balance right, she thinks about you and herself, not about being in a relationship." Cam smiled softly and let his gaze drop to the floor. "She retired for you, didn't she?" she asked softly and Cam only nodded, still not happy with that. She chuckled. "Usually when someone retires, they don't carry on doing the exact same job." She looked over at Cameron. "I don't know what it is the two of you do, but I can tell you both love it. Just..." she paused and looked out the window beyond Cam's shoulder, she must have been looking at her husband. She turned a stern gaze back to Cam. "Is she your first priority?"
"No." he declared without hesitation. Her eyes widened in surprise. "Sam and I both know that we'll have to make very hard choices in our job. That's what it means to do what we do." He stood up straight , walked towards the table and picked up the tray of food. "She'll say the exact same thing I just did." Julia just looked at him aghast. "I promise you one thing though, Sam won't be on her own. She and I are one." He turned towards the door and stopped when Julia called him back.
"I don't understand what that means." she admitted as he looked over his shoulder.
"It means that the job is the job, but Sam is my soul. Nothing in this universe, or any other, can keep me away from her." he explained only to be surprised by Sam at the open window.
"Hey, where's my beer?" she teased then frowned at the strained look on Julia's face. "What?"
"Julia asked me if you were my first priority." Cam told her. She smiled ruefully at him before turning to Julia.
"Jules, that's not the right question." she explained. Julia shook her head slightly so Sam turned back to Cam. "Cameron, where are you going to be when the time comes?" she asked seriously.
"At your side." he replied with even less hesitation than when he answered Julia's question, knowing it had already happened that way once to his alternate self. "No matter what."
On to Chapter 3