Ripple Effect - Confluence of Circumstance - Chapter 13
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world
A/N: Here is another side story / companion piece to my series of SG-1 tales. This one will be different to the others in that I plan to keep adding to it little by little. It may spur me to add on to the other Ripple Effects later on.
Previously: Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11 | Ch 12
Ripple Effect - Confluence of Circumstance - Chapter 13
Cameron Mitchell's house, Colorado Springs, May 2006 (alternate reality)
Sam killed the engine of her P1800 after parking in Cam's driveway and just sat in silence for a moment with a silly smile on her face, thinking back to the weekend when she'd sat on the workbench in his garage as he hoisted the small inline four back into the front of the Volvo. She'd helped him reconnect it to the transmission and electrics then helped him check over everything from mechanical range of motion to fluid levels. She remembered how nervous she'd been as she sat in the driver's seat after he'd put a bit of fuel in the tank and stood next to the front wheel well, looking into the open engine bay. It took a few goes to get everything going after he'd primed the fuel lines and given her the signal, but when the engine finally turned over it was as if Sam heard her baby singing again for the first time since she'd bought her back in Cambridge. She had cried.
Since then Cam had done some work on the exterior of the car, but he admitted he'd need to take her somewhere to do justice to the interior. She just shook her head as she ran her hand over the dash before stepping out of the car and moving to open the trunk to get her groceries. She was going to make him some paella today, so she'd bought mussels and prawns and scallops as well as mixed vegetables and lots of spices. They'd kept up the three nights a week routine of cooking for each other for several weeks now, even if they were off-world and the meal was just some variety of MRE. One of them would make sure to bring something along to spice it up, invariably letting Daniel and Teal'c in on it as well. They'd gone out to eat also, on dates to restaurants, or just for a quick meal before catching a movie, or when visiting friends. Carolyn, for instance, enjoyed foisting her cooking on the unwary sometimes, especially her father. All told, they ate far more meals together than apart and they both liked it that way. She walked to his front door and unlocked it with her key.
"Cameron, I'm home." she called out loudly before freezing with the door only partly closed. He poked his head in from around the corner to his... their... living room, watching her carefully while she turned to look at him with wide eyes.
"You sure about that?" he asked and she could only nod slowly in response. He gave her a little smile before his head disappeared from sight again. "Better close the door then." She complied and hurried to the kitchen, finding him coming in from the dining room. She dropped her ingredients on the central island and moved over to slip into his embrace. She nestled her head into the crook of his neck and he lifted a hand to run his fingers into her hair. "We'll figure it all out, sweetness." She chuckled and nodded, squeezing him tightly.
"I suppose this was always my home, in this reality. This is where I first stayed after getting off base after all." she offered simply. Cam chuckled and nodded. He pushed her back slightly and tilted her head up so he could kiss her gently, then brushed the fingers of both his hands over her cheeks and into her hair.
"Remember, that day in the other reality when I asked you to come with me to mine, and you teased me about asking you to move in with me?" he murmured softly as her smile grew slowly from the feel of his fingers against her skin and the remembrance of the day. She nodded, her eyes shining brightly to match her smile. He leaned forward and pressed his cheek to hers so his lips were just over her ear. "Would you like to move in with me, Sam?" he asked in a whisper. She giggled and nodded, kissing his lips after he pulled back.
Stargate Command, May 2006 (alternate reality)
"Damn it, Mitchell! You loitering there isn't going to make me work faster!" Daniel cried after glancing up from his notebooks for the eighth time to find Cam hovering with intent near his table. In between their other missions, the archaeologist had been researching everything he could get his hands on about the planet whose address they'd found in the phasing device's logs. Even getting his body hijacked by Vala - admittedly, intentionally - had only slowed him down for a day.
"I know, Jackson. I just love messing with you." he replied with a grin before sitting down in a chair opposite Daniel's position and tossing an apple he'd brought from the mess towards the archaeologist.
"Can't you go bother, Sam?" asked the linguist as he vainly tried to return his attention to the manuscript he'd been translating for the last three hours.
"I could I suppose." Cam murmured before pausing for a long moment. "She likes it though." Daniel glared at his friend over the rim of his glasses and pointed a finger at him.
"There are limits, Mitchell." he warned in a low, threatening voice. "Boundaries which must not be crossed. You don't get to bother me for your own amusement. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, there are things up with which I will not put." Cam looked at Daniel askance and took a bite out of his own apple.
"Wasn't he talking about ending sentences with prepositions?" he asked. Daniel's lips pressed together into a thin line.
"You weren't supposed to know that." he muttered.
"I bet you hate dangling participles too." Cam teased.
"Shut up." Daniel warned as Cam began chuckling. He took another bite of his apple and frowned slightly at the scrutinising gaze he was getting from the linguist. "How goes the preparation for the whole cohabiting thing?" Daniel asked before taking a big chunk out of the apple he'd been idly turning over in his hands. Cam chewed thoughtfully for a few moments before replying.
"Still a lot to discuss." he began as Daniel canted his head slightly. "Not intent, mind, just details, big and small. That sort of thing." he elaborated, the linguist smiled slightly and nodded before falling quiet for a long minute as he frowned slightly in Cam's direction. He knew his friend was debating whether to voice something... touchy.
"Were you this close to... with..." his head dropped slightly as he sighed. "If she hadn't died, if she..." Cam lifted a hand to his forehead and rubbed the skin over his brow as he looked off to one of Daniel's shelves.
"That visit to the alternate reality, it opened my eyes, Jackson." he said softly. "It made me realise that Sam is... was..." He gritted his teeth at the awkwardness of it all. "Sam is who I want to be with. Meant to be with. She's my touchstone." He looked over at Daniel and something about the look in his eyes made the linguist close his own. "Would Sam and I be moving in together right now if she hadn't died? I can't answer that. I just can't. I loved her, Daniel, I still do, but Sam, this Sam, she's not the same woman. She isn't. But she's Sam and if I try to separate them in my head, in my heart... I can't do it, Daniel."
"You'd feel guilty?"
"No! I'd go crazy! It would mess me up." He took in a deep breath before continuing. "I'll never forget her, Jackson, but Sam isn't a replacement for her. I can't really explain it." Daniel stood up and walked around his table. He thumped Cam's shoulder with the fist still clutching his half-eaten apple and began pulling him up from his seat.
"Come on, fly boy, let's go bother Sam in her lab."
Ori Supergate, above P3Y-229, June 2006 (alternate reality)
"Oh, my God." Sam stared out of the corner of her eye at the vast ripples flowing across the event horizon of the massive wormhole which had just formed inside the Supergate. Her gaze flicked back towards the battle raging in the distance as several O'Neill class battlecruisers were engaging the Do'ci's flagship after it spilled out of hyperspace almost right on top of the small fleet of Free Jaffa, Tok'ra and Tau'ri ships. The Korolev arrived soon after the Supergate established a wormhole and Teal'c had even managed to convince the Lucian Alliance to bring in a handful of ships. She watched as Odyssey's Asgard beam weapons fired away at the massive Ori ship as it crept into range, the four arcs of its hull enclosing a huge ball of light which she knew powered the vessel in some way she couldn't fathom. The powerful shields seemed to buckle and warp under the assault, but did not fail. And now the Ori were going to get reinforcements from their home galaxy through this wormhole.
She felt it, as a tingling in her skin, when the first ship came through. She flinched involuntarily at the sight of it emerging from the Supergate. She almost laughed when she saw it wasn't anywhere near as large as the Do'ci's ship. She shook her head at the ridiculousness of her fears, such a monster couldn't fit through the 'gate anyway. Then again, just one of them was more than enough. How many of these smaller ships would come through was the question. How many did they have to stop. She tried her radio again, desperately hoping someone could beam her aboard. She had an awful feeling coursing through her entire body as she watched the bone white hull of the Ori ship slipping through the event horizon. She had to get on the Korolev, Cam was on the Korolev. The shooting started almost immediately, even before the last of the six ships emerged. The Asgard fleet did its best to draw off the massive flagship from the main battle, but that left only Odyssey and the Korolev with anything which could even dent these ships' shields. She remembered just how ineffective the Prometheus' weapons had been. She was shouting into her radio now, even though she knew no one would be able to beam her aboard, not with their shields up.
The Ha'taks swooped in, Odyssey and Korolev combined their fire on one of the Ori ships. Sam's breath caught in her throat when she saw the Asgard beams cut through the shields and rip into its hull. Several of the Ha'taks added their plasma beams to the attack and the ship exploded, its siblings drifting away from the blast waves of its erupting power core. Their own weapons were taking a terrible toll on the Tok'ra and Jaffa vessels. Sam gritted her teeth in frustration as she could only watch as those energy lances she still remembered in her nightmares tore through shield and hull and right on through to the space beyond each ship they destroyed. If only the Asgard could stop that flagship, if only they could do now what they hadn't been able to do over the ten months and pierce its shields before it fled once more into hyperspace. If they could then the O'Neill-class cruisers could... she looked around at the twisted metal tumbling through space ahead of the line of Ori warships. The flagship slipped away into hyperspace and all the Asgard ships slipped after it save Kvasir's, it could not be allowed a moment's respite and they knew it. Kvasir wheeled his vessel about and came up alongside Odyssey as it and the Korolev once more poured out their wrath against the Ori, another vessel succumbing to the power of the Asgard weapons.
Then Sam's heart stopped. Time solidified around her, congealed and then fractured as she watched a pair of energy beams slicing through space towards the Korolev. She saw its shields flare greenish-yellow, then dimple, then warp and then cave in. A fraction of a second which never ended, which she fervently hoped would never, ever end. Her jaw went slack when time did go on, her eyes welled up when the next beat of her heart signalled the lance ripping through the Korolev's neck and splitting the vessel asunder, her mind went blank when something inside the great ship's belly erupted in a silent torrent of fire and gas and twisted trinium alloy.
She heard her heart thumping in her chest. Still beating. Still counting out the moments of her life, every moment she had already lived since he'd surely died. Her vision went slightly clouded, blurred, not from tears, but from the pressure behind her eyes, the surge and roar she could feel and hear in the base of her skull and the depths of her ear canals, each thump from her treacherous heart causing her head to nod back and forth slightly from the force of its beat. Her dull eyes could no longer see the Ori ships moving away under power after destroying Kvasir's O'Neill-class cruiser, leaving her in the emptiness of infinity with nothing but the wreckage of two galaxies' defenders and the beating of her own invidious heart. She tilted her head back and took in a great lungful of air before screaming out her rage and terror into the confines of her spacesuit. Leaving only a single word left in her entire existence as she clenched her jaw, screwed shut her eyes against the tears and whispered his name for only herself to hear in the darkness she could only imagine in her nightmares.
"Cameron."
To be continued in Season 10