The Times That Weren't - Chapter 8

[alvericff]

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

Previously: Ch1 | Ch 2  | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7
The Times That Weren't - Chapter 8

Giza, Egypt, November 1929

Cam flew out of the event horizon staring at wooden beams pushing against an oddly angled corner at regular intervals. He felt an odd tugging as if he was being pulled back from where he'd just come while his inner ear was screaming at him that down wasn't down anymore, and he realised why. He was staring at a ceiling not a wall and the 'gate on this side wasn't upright, it was lying flat, which meant he was falling back towards it and the event horizon. He tried twisting in the air, as he finally got his bearings he realised he was a good ten feet above the ground and just starting to fall back down, which meant he only had a couple of moments before he was dematerialised against the event horizon of the incoming wormhole underneath him.

It was all for nothing. Losing Daniel, losing Sam, almost certainly losing Teal'c and Vala slash Qetesh. All of it for nothing because he was going to cease to exist once he fell into the shimmering blue pool he'd turned himself in mid-air to face. The tears he was still shedding since Sam died in his arms stung his eyes so he closed them. Let his last few moments be spent thinking of Sam. He let her smile play across his mind's eye, let the remembered melody of her voice soothe him and the gentleness of her touch play against his memories of her. He heard the gate disengage just before he was sure he was about to pass into it and he opened his eyes in alarm and hope just in time to slam into the wooden slats of the floor. It knocked the wind from him and there was something stabbing him in the side. When he could move he tried to roll onto his back, then gasped for breath when his diaphragm stopped its spasms. Coughing and clutching at his side he felt a wetness on his hand, blood. He moaned and cried out in pain from the fall and the gash he now felt in his abdomen. Turning again he saw the sharp angles of a small stone statue, red blood staining it as it lay on its side. That wouldn't have caused too much damage at least.

"Gah, Mary and Joseph!" The pain reminded him he was still alive and the memories of the last few minutes played out in his mind again. Watching her eyes shut as she said she loved him, he raised his hand to his temple, realised it was clenched tightly. He felt the metal chain against his cheek, opening his hand he looked at the ring resting against his palm and the sobs started immediately. She was gone. "No, no, no, no, no, no..." his voice trailed off into shudders as he curled up into a ball.

"Are you alright." The softness of the voice meant he almost missed it. He opened his misty, tear filled eyes and he saw a young girl crouched on her hands and knees, her head tilted so she could look at his face. "You're bleeding." He blinked, trying to think. Sam said the 'gate would take him back to 1929. Sam... He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed deeply, shuddering. Later, have to focus now. 1929. The Stargate is in Giza. Professor Langford would have been studying it. He opened his eyes and looked around, he was in a large wooden building, filled to its high rafters with shelves full of shaped rocks, fragments of pottery, the odd sculpture or piece of metal work. And a large space cleared in the center of the single large room where the Stargate was held aloft on a series of wooden trestles, held up to height of about four feet, obviously for detailed study of the markings on the inner ring. He tried to get onto his hands and knees, his right hand scraped against a hole in the floor and slipped in up to the elbow. He cried out in pain and his hand opened involuntarily, releasing the ring and chain he was holding. Looking at the hole, about a foot in diameter, bevelled on the inner surface, almost perfectly circular as if it had been cut out by a laser, he realised almost instantly that it had been caused by the vortex funnel from the rear of the Stargate created when the kawoosh reversed itself back into the event horizon, And now he'd lost Sam's ring in there somewhere. "Mister, what was that blue thing that came out of the ring?" He looked up at the girl and he realised who she had to be.

"Catherine, I need a light, please. I've just dropped something down this hole." he said, avoiding her question, hoping that hearing her name would convince the girl to trust him a little. She looked at him puzzled for a moment then looked down to his arm still elbow deep in the hole in the floor, a hole she probably didn't remember being there before. She nodded and got up, running to a shelf where excavation supplies were kept and retrieved a lantern. She quickly busied herself lighting it and ran back. Cam was peering into the hole when she got back, it couldn't be too deep. Probably just a couple of feet, like a raised floor. He thanked her and lowered the lantern into the hole, confirming his suspicions when he saw the hard packed, dusty ground below him. His eyes roved in the flickering light, looking for a reflection from the dirt and soon found it, laying the lantern down on the ground he reached towards the flickering he'd seen and his fingers passed over a chain in the earth, pulling carefully he managed to maneuver enough to get a good grip on both ends of the chain so the ring wouldn't fall from it and pulled it up, retrieving the lantern as well. He straightened, holding the ring in his hand and blowing the dirt from it. He knelt back onto his haunches unable to take his eyes off the platinum band.

"It's very pretty." came a gentle voice from just behind him. "Is it for your sweetheart?" He turned and looked into the face of the young Catherine Langford, barely eight or nine he guessed, before turning to look back at the ring. He cleared his throat.

"Yes. It's my wife's wedding ring. We were married five months ago," he chuckled involuntarily remembering where he was, "nearly eighty years from now." He laughed out loud then found it turning into sobs again, and he felt a small hand against his shoulder, he turned to the girl again. "I lost her. I lost her." He clenched his jaw and closed his fist over the ring. "I made a promise! I will make it happen!" His eyes flew open and he stuffed a hand into his jacket, reaching for the inside pocket, he sighed in relief to find the folded sheet of paper he was looking for and looked down at the ring again. It would drive him mad. He still had to live until he could kill Ba'al. If he didn't then nothing would matter. If he didn't push it away right now he'd go mad. He could grieve after Ba'al was dead. "I'm sorry, Sam. I need some time." he muttered softly. He turned fully towards the young girl and took hold of her hand as she yelped in surprise. "Catherine, listen to me. I need you to hold on to this for me," he dangled the ring on its chain in front of her and let it drop into her open hand as he held it up, "hold onto it and then give it to Samantha Carter. Understand? You must give this ring to Samantha Carter. Can you do that for me, Catherine?" She looked at him speechless and with wide, frightened eyes for several seconds before gulping and nodding. "Please remember that, Samantha Carter." He slumped slightly and winced in pain, looking down he remembered his injured side. The bleeding had stopped on its own, it just stung now. Not like Daniel's... "Oh, and remember the name Daniel Jackson, okay?" He looked at Catherine again. "Dr. Daniel Jackson. It's very important!" He stared into her eyes until she nodded again, her little fist clenched tight against the ring and clutched against her chest. "Thank you. I need a towel and some water. Can you get that for me?" She nodded and ran off. He looked down at his side then at the statue he'd landed on. Stabbed by the pointed ears of Anubis, right through his leather jacket. He had to clean his wound and any of his blood lying around here before he left. He looked off towards the door the young girl had ran out of. "Please don't bring anybody back with you." He muttered softly.

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 3,315 days relative

Sam followed behind him into the flight bay, one corner of which he'd taken over years ago to put together his project. She looked over to it and was surprised to find the whole thing encased in a smooth metal dome and not the mess of wires and machinery she'd last seen a couple of years ago. She had very little call to come down to the flight bay. She was never going to have to go find Cam to make sure he fed himself. She hadn't known him to ever skip a meal in all the days they'd spent on this tub. As usual, he was the one who came to fetch her. The way he always had since their Academy days.

"That looks pretty slick, Cam. You've done a lot of work on it." she said, proud of him. He beamed at her over his shoulder.

"Sure did, once I got all the grav panels installed around the holosphere and checked all the power connections between them there wasn't a need to keep it lookin' like a bomb had gone off in here. He chuckled and walked her around the back where a control console and the main simulator computer resided, he flicked a few switches and a deep hum started as lights came on and a low rumble filled her ears. "I use the F302s main powerplant to actually power the thing, keeps it off Odyssey's grid, and it's not as if I'm gonna need it to actually power the engines. Took most of the thruster assemblies off it three years ago." She nodded at the ingenuity of his solution. Cam had, for a while now, been a proponent of making sure not to overly tax the Neutrino-ion power core the Asgard had installed. His reasoning was always 'Sam needs the power' and would look into other sources of generation whenever possible. He'd already cannibalised the small powerplants of several of the F302s to run some of Odyssey's seldom used systems. Sam just thought he liked it when she praised him. He motioned her to a sliding panel beside the console and she opened it, looking inside for a moment and blinking in surprise. It was as if she was looking at the flight bay except the domed simulator didn't exist. She walked to the corner of the building and looked around at the parked 302s opposite them and ran back to the door to look inside. There they were, they weren't parked exactly as in real life, but they might as well have been. It looked... real.

"Cam, I'm not even inside the thing and I'm already astounded." She looked at him in wonder. "This is amazing." He chuckled and she stepped inside. Cam took out a remote from the pocket of his flightsuit and pressed some keys on the screen and the scene flashed to display a black backdrop with superimposed gridlines in bright yellow. She laughed. "A spherical holodeck!" Cam chuckled.

"Yeah, though not a perfect sphere of course. It's centred on the cockpit, so it kind of ends about three quarters of the way down the lower hemisphere." He indicated where the floor levelled off. "Doesn't make much difference 'cause you can't really see those areas from the cockpit. Same with behind and below the 302." He indicated the large struts and jacks attached to the bottom of the fighter, which incorporated the entry gantry and steps as well as lifts to position the craft into the center of the sphere when the simulation was to start. They could also give the craft a jolt to simulate impacts. Cam led her towards the steps and she climbed up and got in the second seat while he climbed into the pilot's seat. He again played with his remote and the jacks lifted the craft up into the sphere and Sam watched the entry gantry fold away out of sight underneath the ship. "Alright, now the computer models the holoprojections based on the position of the cockpit from the ground. It'll do its best to properly warp and shape the image on the display panels and what gets projected as a hologram so it looks 'right' from anywhere the craft is, but it's better and simpler when the cockpit is at the origin of the sphere." He pressed the buttons and the holoprojectors came to life and it was like the craft was back on the flight deck 10 feet below with a perfect view of the flight bay around them. She leaned against the glass of the canopy as it closed and Cam was right, she just couldn't see the non-spherical section under the fighter. "I kept a lot of what some might consider useless stuff, like the landing gear, but I did it for a reason. All of those little things add to the tactile feedback, and it's one less thing I have to simulate. Hence keeping 90% of the actual fighter intact."

She could have sworn he kicked the thrusters into life just then, the back of her seat was rumbling just as it would had the thruster assemblies still been attached and she realised he'd put as much work into the interior of the ship as he had the exterior simulator. Just then she noticed something odd with the panel readouts in front of her.

"Cam, my console's readouts are in Ancient." she said in confusion.

"Oh, sorry! I forgot about that." he replied sheepishly. "Jackson's been teaching me Ancient and Asgard, it helps when interfacing with their tech to get the nuances. So I've been practicing everywhere I can." She shook her head and smiled, Cam Mitchell had become quite the scholar over these years on the ship, but he had promised to spend them productively after all. "Hit the center right button twice and then the top left three times, that will reset the language to English." She hit the selector switches around the display in the sequence he gave while boxes with options appeared on her screen and sure enough the screen blanked out and came back up in her native tongue. By that time Cam was 'taxiing' to the end of the flight deck and spinning the craft in place to line up for a take off. "Ready, darlin'?" he asked over his shoulder, they weren't wearing helmets, but then again, he had told her he'd switched off collision detection for this test flight and they weren't actually flying. She gave him the thumbs-up and he nodded and pushed the throttle open gradually, taking the F302 smoothly up to take off speed and out of the flight bay, climbing and banking right in a graceful curve she could actually feel. For a second she panicked, it felt so real she was afraid they were going to leave the time-dilation field and she nearly called out to Cam in dismay. Then she remembered it was a simulation and her jaw dropped. She looked out of the cockpit as he banked around Odyssey and saw it floating in space with not a single Ori ship in sight. She was just in orbit over P3X-474 as if on a pleasure cruise.

"Cam, I... I don't know what to say. I could have sworn it was real. I... I'm speechless." she breathed and he chuckled.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, darling. I added grav plates for a reason, you know." He turned the fighter sharply and angled it towards the planet, she gasped at the beauty of it as it grew in her view and filled the windows. Then she started to feel it. The pull of gravity as they approached the planet. Cam levelled out into re-entry angles and she felt the shuddering and buffeting of the atmosphere. There were flames rising from the edges of the nose and wings! She held her breath in wonder as she was jounced along for another ten seconds before Cam kicked in the air-breathing jets with a huge whine and a whoosh. He again angled for a steep dive and they dropped through the planet's atmosphere like a rocket powered stone. Very soon they were at 30,000 feet and she heard the loud bang of the sonic boom as they broke the sound barrier and kept accelerating as they dove, she was definitely being pushed back into her seat. She could see surface features becoming more distinct and sharp as they descended, very soon they were at 5,000 feet and Cam started pulling out of the dive and she couldn't help it as she began whooping at the feel of the g-forces through the ships internal dampeners. "The grav plates are simulating real gravity levels and the dampeners are reacting to the internal controls and grav sensors just like they would in real life. Again, no need to simulate the reduced g-forces when I can get the ship's own systems to work as normal." he said once her exhilarated laughter had died down. He angled down and slowed back below the sound barrier, descending into the canyon they were overflying. She felt him weave left and right through the ravines then pitched the ship on it's side as they flew down a straight length of canyon, he inched the craft closer to the wall as she looked at the rockface flying by at 300 miles an hour not 10 feet beyond the cockpit, definitely projected inside the sphere as a hologram, not just displayed on the panels. Cam twisted away and up, throttling the engine to max again, leaving another sonic boom in his wake. She checked the speed a few moments later and they were pushing Mach 2.6 flying over scrubland and Cam kicked in the ramjets, and she felt the pounding behind her back as she was pressed into her seat again and their speed started climbing again past Mach 3 then 4. She was flying. She was really flying. She hadn't done this in nearly ten years and she had no idea just how much she'd missed it until this moment. The tears came unbidden to her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the sobs. "Sam? You okay?" Cam looked over his shoulder, throwing the fighter into a climb as he did so. "Sam, baby? What's wrong?"

"Can you stop it, Cam? Please?" she begged weakly. Cam instantly whipped out his remote and a quickly tapped in command sequence smoothly drew down the power in the grav plates and the holoprojectors showed the black background and yellow gridlines again. The fighter shuddered slightly as it lowered and the gantry unfolded itself to sit next to the cockpit once more and the canopy slid forward off to the edge of the nose. Cam clambered out and went to the back seat to take Sam's cheeks in his hands. He looked scared and panicky and she forced herself to smile. "That was the most amazing thing." He looked at her puzzled. "It was real, Cam. We were flying! Sweetie, you're amazing." She smiled as he wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.

"Baby, I did it for you. So we could fly together." he said and she stood up bringing his lips to hers as they embraced.

Cameron Mitchell's house, Colorado Springs, Christmas Day 2009

Cam checked his jacket pocket for the ninth time to make sure he had everything. Locking the door he turned towards the black Mustang parked in his driveway with the engine rumbling and smiled at Sam who was seated in the passenger seat with her hands up to one of the heaters in the dash. She was looking at him and smiling, her nose red with the cold and hooked her head back, mouthing a 'come on' from behind the glass of her window. He dropped the ring on its chain under his shirt and zipped up his leather flight jacket and fished out some driving gloves from the pockets and put them on as he crunched through the thin layer of snow which had fallen since he'd cleaned the path and driveway the day before. Today was the day. It was just him and Sam today. Daniel had finally relented, after months of cajoling, and taken Vala to Las Vegas. Sam warned him to stay out of any chapels and he had looked horrified. Teal'c was off-world, visiting Rya'c and his wife Kar'yn on Hak'tyl. Of course no-one mentioned that Ishtah lived in the same settlement. So Cam had Sam all to himself on this sunny, crisp Christmas Day. He walked around the car and got in the driver's side, when he closed the door he found Sam leaning over the gear stick and he automatically leaned over and kissed her softly, yep, that red nose was cold against his cheek, he smiled against her lips.

"What?" asked Sam as she pulled away.

"Your nose is cold." He put the car into reverse and took the playful slap Sam gave his arm, he turned to her smiling before carefully backing out onto the street and driving off towards Route 24 from his home just north of Old Colorado City. "Hey I like it. That's why I smiled." This seemed to mollify her a bit.

"Where are we going at this ungodly hour anyway?" She glanced at him and crossed her arms against her parka. "I was very warm and cosy under your duvet until your hateful alarm went off at 0500. I think I deserve an explanation." He looked at her sheepishly, knowing she wouldn't like his answer.

"It's a surprise." He tried to ignore the pointed scowl directed at him from the passenger's seat. "I brought something to listen to though." He fished into his jacket and retrieved the tape box in there, handing it to Sam who was pushing some strands of her sandy brown hair, that had not been tied into her pony tail, back behind her ear. She took the box and turned it over in her hand and her eyes widened. It looked the same as the tapes which had been stored in Cam's parents' house detailing the efforts of SG-1 to repair the time continuum from Ba'al's interference. She took out the tape and stuck it into the tape deck in the dash, pressing play.

"Cam, my boy," came the slow pronounced drawl of the eighty year old Mitchell, "this here is all the parts I didn't include in the report for the brass. Mostly 'cause it ain't any of their damn business, but also 'cause I gotta keep a promise I made to Sam." Sam's eyes widened as she listened to the old man speaking about him and his Sam kissing and starting a relationship at Jack's cabin in Minnesota and about how they could only see each other a few days every few weeks, but also how those days made them both so happy. When he came to the part describing their wedding in Mexico, Sam was speechless, holding a hand to her lips. He surprised her by stopping the tape there and reaching into his jacket again, fishing out a folded piece of paper which he handed to her. Sam unfolded it and her hands were shaking slightly as she looked at a marriage certificate with her name on it. She frowned slightly when she read Cam's name.

"Cameron James Mitchell? I thought your middle name was Daniel." She looked at him. He turned and shrugged at her smiling.

"I had an Uncle James, my Dad's younger brother, he died when they were kids. Way I figure it my parents in the original timeline gave me his name, but on the next go around after Ba'al was killed, they chose my great-granddad's best friend," he gave Sam a serious look, "Daniel Carter." Sam gasped then grinned. "Seemed he moved to Auburn after my great-granddad passed on and kinda made himself the unofficial guardian of the whole clan."

"You think-" she started.

"I do." he finished.

"That's so strange, Cam." she said in wonder. "Have you noticed anything else he's spoken of which didn't happen how you remember it?" At his shake of the head she reached over to start the tape again and looked hard at the certificate in her hand for a moment before pressing it against her chest under the parka she'd unzipped as the car warmed up. The older Mitchell carried on talking about his few days with his Sam, how they spent time with each other and with Daniel, how they worked together on the plans for the subspace communicator they were building, and the events which really took place when Sam died, not the edited version he'd left in his report, but exactly how Sam died in his arms. Sam stopped the tape and she had to close her eyes against the tears. Cam was sure the emotional and broken quality of his older self's voice on the tape was having a deep effect on her. The old man had had to stop several times himself as he related the events.

Cam looked down the road trying to find a spot at which he could stop for a bit, there was just snow covered trees on snow covered hills beyond deep snow covered run off areas dropping off on either side of the road, until he spotted a little entrance to what looked like a private road which he quickly stopped at. Reaching over he took Sam into his arms, careful not to knock the gear stick too much and she cried softly against his shoulder. He'd listened to the tape several times already and it still brought a lump to his throat the size of the Grand Tetons, but this had been Sam's first listen, and it was describing her own death. He stroked her hair and made gentle reassuring noises in her ear until she'd recovered sufficiently to pull away. He wiped the tears from her cheeks and kissed her gently, stroking her face. She sat back and pressed play on the tape again, listening as he described arriving in 1929 and finding Catherine Langford there when he came through the Stargate. Then his voice broke once more in remembrance and Cam watched Sam's face as the next words were spoken.

"Sam, if you're listenin', please forgive me. I gave Catherine your ring and told her to give it to you. If she didn't, I'm sorry, so incredibly sorry, but I just couldn't keep it with me. I had to live to be able to kill Ba'al. If I'd kept it I woulda gone crazy with grief. As it was I nearly didn't make it. After I ended him, I let myself grieve, darlin', I swear. I sailed back across the Atlantic and joined up with the RAF hopin' that maybe..." The old man's voice broke again and Sam stopped the tape and turned to look at Cam. The tears forming again didn't hide the look of anger in her eyes.

"You were hoping you'd be killed?" she demanded in a low angry voice. Cam sighed and nodded. "Did you think that maybe that way you'd do less damage to the timeline?" Her anger was ebbing slowly.

"That seemed to have been part of the reason." Cam offered sadly and winced at the flash of anger in her eyes again.

"You think I'd want you to kill yourself if I died?" Sam's tears were falling again and he reached up to wipe them away, he was glad she let him.

"No. I think I'm a selfish bastard who can't live without you." he said softly. She pressed play again and heard the same arguments that Cam had just iterated, spelled out by the Cam on the tape. He then went on to describe how he'd attempted to verify that the timeline had corrected itself, visiting New York in 1965 and New Mexico in 1968. Sam's eyes widened at that and recounted the story her mother had once told her of an old man who held her hand as she was in labour. She covered her mouth in awe before unpausing the tape once more to hear him describe his visit to an observatory in New Jersey in the summer of 1969, which confirmed to him that things had been put right. Sam was smiling happily at that and at the description of him visiting little baby Cameron in 1970. "Say, do you still have those rose-tinted glasses by any chance? He mentioned them in the note he included with the tape and the ring." Sam looked at him in surprise.

"Yes, somewhere, you want to see me in them maybe?" she teased him and he grinned, simply nodding.

They set off again and Cam realised they weren't far off from where he had to get off Route 24 and onto Green Mountain Falls Road. Sam looked out the window as he turned left and crossed over the opposite carriageway of the 24 and drove around the long curve into the small town in the middle of Pike National Forest. He followed the road past several houses and turned left onto the main street at the north end of the town. They drove past a little church building with a high angled roof, a bell tower at the corner and an establishment date of 1889 over the whitewashed doors. Further down they passed a deli on the opposite side and then turned left again around the Pine Gables Tavern and parked the car under some trees separating them from a small lake.

Cam got out, and walked to the other side of the car, waiting as Sam joined him and looked around the small town.

"It's a beautiful place, Cam, it really is." she said and looped her arm around his when he offered it to her. He lead her down the road a little past the line of trees until they reached a small bridge leading out onto the lake, benches and lamps lined the sides and on the opposite end was a small circular island with a square gazebo in the center, topped by a conical, peaked roof. The snow lay thick over the bridge, railings and benches, it piled high on the small island, the trees all around the lake were also blanketed in white. Sam breathed in a soft gasp and leaned in tight to him as he walked her out across the bridge, she turned on the spot and made a small circuit of the island to look at the views over the lake into the trees. "Did I mention yet, this place is beautiful." she breathed, a wide smile across her lips. She turned to Cam and the look he caught in her eyes caused him to smile slightly, she looked a bit afraid, as if looking at him like she knew what was coming. Well he had to admit to himself he'd never been the best at hiding his emotions at times and now was a big moment for him. "Cam?" Her voice was slightly tremulous and he reached out and took her hand.

"Sam, I brought you here because I wanted some place," he indicated the view around them, "magical, but most importantly, some place on Earth." He took her other hand in his and looked into her eyes. Oh, she definitely knew what was coming. If he had to, he intended to keep her here by holding onto her hands, but she didn't seem to be inclined that way. "I love you, Sam, I always have." As he spoke the words he saw tears forming in her eyes, but this time tears of joy and he pressed on with a smile. "I love you, from beyond time, from the other side of a paradox, from within memories which no longer exist. I love you, Samantha Carter and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you'll do me the honour of being my wife." She had started nodding halfway through and just launched herself at him, breathing 'yes' over and over again into his ear as she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. He pulled back slightly and kissed her deeply, tasting her, feeling her melt into him in the middle of this frozen, magical vista. He pulled back again and fished into his jacket for the third and final item he'd brought with him, holding it out in front of Sam so she could see the golden band and the diamonds running together in a small starburst on the top of it. "This was given to me by my Grandma. She told me to give it to a woman who loved macaroons." Sam laughed, but then came up short and looked at him in alarm. "I know, I know, we're gonna have to go apologise to her since you hate 'em. It can't be helped though 'cause you're the only one who could possibly wear this ring, Sam." She nodded, and grinned as he slipped it on to her finger after she ripped off her glove.

"I love you, Cam!" She wrapped her arms around him again, pressing her cold, red nose into his cheek. "Five months, five decades, I don't care. As long as it's with you."

On to the Epilogue