Getting the Band Back Together
Getting the Band Back Together
by E.M. Bonner
Category: Alternate Universe
Season: Season 9
Pairing: Jack/Sam
Rating: GEN
Warnings: none
Author's Notes: a279;IMHO, Stargate SG-1 should have ended after Season 8, but if they absolutely had to have Season 9, without O'Neill, and with Carter missing from the first five episodes, this is how they should
have handled it.
Author's Admission: I'm not sure what has really been bugging me more: Mitchell's hotshot attitude, or the fact that TPTB made him a Lt. Colonel and have not made it clear that Carter is in command of SG-1. The idea that she would come back from running the entire Stargate R&D operation to serve on
SG-1 if she wasn't still commanding the team is both ludicrous and insulting, and the only explanation I can see for it is the usual pandering to the young male audience demographic. So I've demoted Mitchell to Major, to avoid that problem entirely and see if it makes him a little less annoying.
Spoilers: though Season 9 "Beachhead". Some dialogue is gratefully borrowed (and adapted) from "Avalon, Part 1", written by Robert C. Cooper.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story was created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 08/13/06
Major Cameron Mitchell stood at attention in front of General Landry's desk as he heard the dream that had sustained him through the last two hellacious years of recovery hit the ground with a series of sickening crunches.
"I'm sorry, Major," the General said, shaking his head. "I don't know what you were promised when you transferred here to the SGC, or by whom, but SG-1 was disbanded some months ago."
"OK, so which unit is Colonel O'Neill commanding now? Can I be assigned to that unit?" After Antarctica, Mitchell wanted more than anything to be on the front line of the war against the Goa'uld, but somehow, serving with his heroes, under the man he knew had saved the planet, and his own sorry ass, had become an integral part of his vision of the future. He remembered, through a haze of pain-killers, O'Neill visiting him and the other wounded pilots from Blue Squadron some time after the battle. And despite the pain-killers, he was sure he remembered O'Neill promising him any assignment he wanted, if he got better.
"GENERAL O'Neill commanded the SGC for a year or so after you were shot down, son, but he's retired now. Colonel Collins is a fine officer, and after you've spent a couple of months with SG-4 getting your feet under you, I fully expect that you'll be given command of one of the new teams..."
"What about Major Carter, then?" Mitchell interrupted the General. "She must have a team of her own by now." If he couldn't serve under Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter, who could figure out anything, and was first in line to kick ass and take names when aliens attacked, was definitely his second choice. She had been his first Instructor Pilot in the F-302 transition course that she and ...General...O'Neill and Teal'c had taught when the F-302 was initially deployed.
"Lt. Colonel Carter, who commanded SG-1 until it was disbanded, has taken command of Stargate R&D at Area 51. She might have an opening for a test pilot, but I thought you were here at the SGC because you wanted this assignment, wanted to be on an SG team." General Landry had enough experience to realize that directly challenging the desire of a pilot who had barely survived a devastating combat crash to serve under officers he knew and trusted was probably not a good idea.
Some of Mitchell's intensity started to ramp down. He'd been to Area 51, and he didn't really want to go back. "Dr. Jackson?" he asked. He didn't really know the archaeologist personally, other than a momentary introduction when Jackson had come to visit the other members of SG-1 at Nellis, but he'd heard the stories. The Stargate program wouldn't exist if Daniel Jackson hadn't figured out how to work the Stargate. And Jackson's discoveries since then had materially advanced humankind's understanding of itself, or at least would have, if they could have been made public, in addition to saving Earth on a couple of occasions.
"He's actually on leave at the moment, but he's preparing to leave for Atlantis on the Daedalus in a couple of weeks. And before you ask, Teal'c is on Dakara. He's an important member of the High Council of the Free Jaffa Nation."
Mitchell's shoulders slumped slightly as he, momentarily, accepted defeat. "OK, General, SG-4 it is. Where do I report to Colonel Collins?" ****************
Mitchell reported to Colonel Collins, and started training with his team. He'd had the bad luck to report in during a lousy week for the SGC. The dialing computer malfunctioned, SG-14 brought back some kind of flesh-eating bacteria, SG-7 was wiped out entirely by some kind of alien device that no one understood (and no one was going to investigate further), Major Ferretti, who had been with the SGC since the first mission, was paralyzed in a caving accident and expected to retire on full disability, and members of SG-2, SG-9 and SG-16 came back wounded. Although his own first real mission with SG-4 was totally uneventful, Mitchell couldn't help but believe that things were not right at the SGC. General Landry was a good guy and everything, but he was in over his head. Too many of the experienced team leaders were gone. So Mitchell, in his arrogant naivete, decided to do something about it. He was going to get the band back together.
If he'd been a more analytical person, Mitchell might have realized how foolish it was for a fighter jock who'd been on base for all of nine days to diagnose what was wrong with the most secret, most critical command in the U.S. Air Force and then think he could personally fix it, but Mitchell was not a person plagued with self-doubt. The one person he had a definitive, accessible location on was Colonel Carter. So he put in a call to her at Area 51, only to find out that she was on leave and "expected back in three weeks, but since the Daedalus crew is having so many problems with the new Asgard hyperdrive, she might actually be back as soon as next week," according to the eager young lieutenant who had answered her phone.
Having left an urgent message for Colonel Carter to call him as soon as she returned, and unable to find Dr. Jackson, Mitchell turned to locating General O'Neill. He now knew enough about the SGC, its history, and its personnel to believe that he might be able to coax O'Neill out of retirement a third time. After days of research, and a lot of cajoling and conniving, he managed to obtain the General's home address from a sergeant in Personnel Records in St. Louis, and caught the next flight to, of all places, Las Vegas. From the stories the few remaining old-timers had told him, he'd kind of expected General O'Neill to retire to his cabin in Minnesota.
By the time Mitchell actually found General O'Neill's house, on a quiet back road in the desert near the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, he thought was ready for anything the General might say or do. He'd war-gamed the scenario every possible way. He was wearing his BDUs with the SGC patch, so the General wouldn't dismiss him through the peep-hole as some desk-bound paper-pusher. He hadn't called ahead, because O'Neill would likely avoid him, so he was pleased to find the General's truck parked in front of the modest adobe ranch house.
He knocked on the door, full of confidence. Thirty seconds passed, with no answer, but Mitchell thought he heard movement in the house. He knocked again. More movement, and maybe a voice. No. definitely a voice. There were no cars near the house besides the General's truck and his own rented Ford, and somehow O'Neill hadn't struck him as the socializing-with-the-neighbors-at 2-in-the-afternoon-on-a-weekday type. OK, maybe the guy was on the phone. Another minute, and he knocked again.
This time Mitchell heard, "Coming, already," in the annoyed tones that he'd been waiting more than a year to hear. The front door opened on his hero, in a t-shirt and jeans, looking like he'd just gotten back from a really exhausting mission.
"General O'Neill," he began, before his quarry even had the door all the way open.
"Retired," responded the grey-haired man, stepping fully into the open doorway, cradling a tiny infant against his left shoulder. "REALLY retired," he added with emphasis, as if he'd just remembered coming out of retirement before.
Mitchell opened his mouth and shut it again without saying anything. None of the scenarios he'd war-gamed included O'Neill answering the door carrying a baby.
"You want something?" the General asked irritably. The baby made a sort of gurgling sound, and O'Neill made a kind of rocking motion, reassuring the child with "Shh. S'okay."
"To talk to you. About the SGC. I'm Major Cameron Mitchell." He was trying, and failing, to get his groove back. He'd really expected O'Neill to remember him.
"Who sent you, Mitchell. And why?" O'Neill was as blunt as his reputation.
"I sent myself, sir. After Antarctica, I asked to be assigned to the SGC to work for you, General. When I finally got out of rehab, and got there, you were gone." Mitchell reached into his pocket and pulled out his SGC ID card, belatedly realizing that he needed to verify his clearance for codeword material.
"Mitchell. One of the '302 pilots who gave us cover fire. You took out an Al'kesh." Mitchell saw recognition, and approval, in O'Neill's eyes. "Didn't make it to McMurdo." It wasn't a question, but Mitchell answered it anyway.
"Took a hit in the left engine, then one right up the tail, sir."
"Knock off the sir, Mitchell. I'm PERMANENTLY retired."
Suddenly Mitchell's disappointment overcame what judgment he had. "How the hell could you just walk away. You may have defeated the worst of the Goa'uld, but Earth still has plenty of enemies out there and the SGC is in no shape to fight them any more. Do you know how many people we've lost just in the last two weeks?"
Mitchell's anger provoked more sounds of protest from the infant in O'Neill's arms, but O'Neill himself didn't respond in kind. Instead, he stepped back from the door, soothing the tiny child with startlingly blue eyes, and gestured Mitchell through the foyer into the sunny, somewhat untidy kitchen. When they were both seated at the old pine table, O'Neill looked at Mitchell again.
"I didn't just walk away, Major." O'Neill stared down at the infant in his arms, and a small smile appeared on his impassive countenance. O'Neill met his eyes again. "Some things are worth changing your plans for."
Mitchell finally got it. "Sorry, sir. I didn't even know you were married, or had a kid. How old is he...she..."
"My daughter Emma is four weeks old, Mitchell, and now you've made me lose a bet that she'd make it to six months before someone would try to haul me back to the SGC." Emma started to protest louder. O'Neill glanced at his watch, stood up and took a bottle from the refrigerator, and put the bottle in the microwave.
"General, I understand that you want to spend some time with your kid, but the SGC really needs you." Mitchell recounted everything that had gone wrong since he reported in, in one long verbal paragraph, so he'd get it all out before O'Neill interrupted. It was clear that he really, really believed that O'Neill needed to return. And surprisingly, O'Neill heard him out before he shot him down. Possibly because he was busy retrieving the bottle, settling back in his chair, and feeding his daughter.
"Major, a lifetime ago, I had a son. Charlie. He was nine years old when he died. I was on the same continent as he was for less than three of those years. I am not leaving Emma for anything less than the imminent end of the world, and then only if everyone else whose job it is to stop global cataclysm has failed. Not now, and not in six months. And frankly, it just sounds like you're havin' a bad week. We had worse." O'Neill wasn't angry, just intense.
"Look, it's not like anyone's asking you to go back to SG-1, to go off-world," Mitchell qualified his plea. "It's a desk job. You go home at night."
"Mitchell, even if anyone above General Landry in the chain of command actually wanted me back, which I doubt, the SGC is never just a desk job and there were a helluva lot of nights that I never went home. And even if it was a desk job, Emma needs me 24/7. So you're wasting your time."
O'Neill stood up with the baby and set down the bottle, his body language making it clear that he was showing Mitchell the door, and the force of his personality making it a silent order. Mitchell opened his mouth to try again, but this time O'Neill jumped in.
"No, Mitchell. What part of no don't you understand." O'Neill opened the front door and Mitchell, involuntarily, stepped back out it.
"Good luck," O'Neill added, as he shut the door in Mitchell's face.
Mitchell knocked, waited, and knocked again several times, until it became clear that the General was not coming back. As he got back in his rental car, dejected, to return to the airport, Mitchell realized he had never asked the General about his wife. After all, wasn't that what wives were for, to take care of the kids? ******************************
When Mitchell got back to the SGC, General Landry, who had no idea where he'd been, was waiting impatiently to tell him that recent events had accelerated the timetable for forming new, or at least replacement, SG teams.
"I know you've only had a few weeks to get your feet wet with SG-4, Mitchell, but Colonel Collins is very impressed with your performance. Given your previous outstanding record, I'm going to put you in command of SG-7. You'll need to recruit three more members for your team."
"General, has anyone ever considered that SG-7 might be an unlucky number?" Mitchell asked wryly, very aware that the entire team had been wiped out not once but twice.
General Landry was a man who focused on essentials. "Just get your team together, Major. Then if it really bothers you, we can talk about designations."
********************* As Mitchell was gathering his gear to move to his new office, he discovered that he'd missed a call from Colonel Carter while he was on the plane, but that Dr. Jackson had returned from his vacation. He went to beard the archeologist in his lab. "Dr. Jackson," Mitchell called through the open doorway, not immediately seeing anyone inside.
Jackson's head popped up from behind a counter. "Yeah?" he said, a little startled.
"Major Cameron Mitchell," he introduced himself, figuring the man wouldn't remember a single meeting almost three years before.
Jackson stood up, set the artifacts he was holding on the counter, and navigated his way around the packing crates that littered the lab to shake hands.
"I heard you were coming. I'm glad to get the chance to thank you in person. Are you...OK...I mean the rehab and everything?"
"Good as new, pretty much." Mitchell was at the point where he needed to make light of his injuries. "They...uh... told me you were leaving."
Jackson smiled. "Yes. Finally. You don't, uh you don't want to help?" he asked, gesturing at the packing.
"No, actually, I came to see if I could talk you into staying."
"You're kidding."
"I've been given command of SG-7. Which we're going to re-designate as soon as I've got a full team," he added hastily, not wanting the jinx to put off his potential recruit.
"Well, good for you. You uh you deserve it." Jackson looked kind of puzzled.
"I think the SGC still needs you. Everything seems to be going to hell around here and... I really want you on my team." Mitchell gave Jackson the persuading look that almost always worked. On lesser mortals.
"Whoa. There's lots of other guys." Jackson didn't seem remotely interested.
"You're the world's foremost expert on the Ancients." Flattery never hurt.
Jackson smiled. "Yes. And that's why I'm going to Atlantis: City of the Ancients."
"Listen. General O'Neill gave me the choice of any posting I wanted. I chose SG-1. That meant Colonel Carter, Teal'c, and yourself. Then I got here, and found that SG-1 was disbanded, and you three were going or gone." It wasn't the exact truth, but Mitchell figured that a little bending towards his new, more achievable goal was probably a good idea. Jackson continued packing. "You're a little late..."
"I wanted to be on the front line," Mitchell continued, " working with the best. I wanted to learn from you."
"Look, this is all very flattering, but uh "
"That's not the point."
Jackson stopped packing. "I'm sorry. I mean I know I owe you one; we all do. But our lives moved on while you were recovering."
"Listen, Jackson I don't want you to stay because you think you owe me one. Unless, of course, you're considering it."
"No."
"I want you to stay because you're needed. I just happen to be the guy who's asking."
"Try asking Doctor Moynahan instead," Jackson suggested. "She reads and speaks Ancient, Goa'uld, Asgard, and about a dozen Earth languages as well." He closed a crate and carried it out of his lab.
"Right," muttered Mitchell under his breath, frustrated. *************************
After his failure with Dr. Jackson, and his continuing inability to get in touch with Colonel Carter despite leaving her a number of messages, Mitchell got permission from General Landry to go to Dakara to visit Teal'c, on the condition that he actually interview at least ten people for the empty slots on SG-7 first. The interviews seemed to Mitchell to drag on interminably. The candidates were all bright, capable people...well, mostly...but they just couldn't measure up to the pictures he had in his mind of Carter, Jackson, and Teal'c.
When he got to Dakara and Teal'c greeted him with some warmth, Mitchell thought his luck might be changing. But the Jaffa councillor was no more interested in returning to Earth and the SGC than Dr. Jackson was in giving up his trip to Atlantis. Mitchell returned through the Stargate dejected, only to rebound when Chief Master Sgt. Harriman told him that Colonel Carter was calling him from the Daedalus. The ship was back in the solar system from its hyperdrive test, and they had a video uplink.
"Hi, Mitchell. I heard you'd made it to the SGC." Carter looked pale and tired, and she was inputting something into a tablet PC while they spoke.
"Hey, Colonel. It's good to see you." Just the chance to talk to his former IP made Mitchell smile.
"Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. We've been up to our ears double-checking the new hyperdrive. And then the uplink was jammed with the long-range plotting program being transmitted by the Asgard No need to bore you. How've you been? You look...recovered."
"Thanks. I think." Mitchell gathered himself to make his pitch. "Listen, Colonel come back and bring SG-1 back to life.
"I heard you've been recruiting," Carter laughed, interrupting. "But it's supposed to be for your own command. Congratulations, by the way."
"I'm not kidding. I'd give up SG-7 in a hot minute to serve on SG-1. We really need experienced team commanders. You can keep an eye on R & D in your spare time, just like you always have."
Carter half-smiled. "I have my reasons for wanting this job. Aside from the fact that it's a 'career enhancing assignment'." All Air Force officers learned early that to achieve high rank and get important commands, one did not simply have to get excellent Officer Efficiency Reports; one had to get them in positions which had responsibility for progressively more personnel and more important tactical assets as the officer was promoted upward.
"Oh screw 'career-enhancing'. I had my reasons for wanting THIS job. One of them was working with you. And please, do not say, 'that's nice.'"
"We'll still work together." Carter still appeared slightly amused
"It won't be the same. What if the world needs saving?" Mitchell had figured out that his litany of what was wrong at the SGC was not convincing anyone.
"Well, if the world needs saving, I'll be there to do what I can. But now that the Replicators have been destroyed, and Anubis is gone, and the System Lords are in disarray, I think you guys can handle it."
If she had meant to say anything more, it was interrupted by the Daedalus's loudspeaker. "Colonel Carter to the bridge. Colonel Carter, please report immediately to the bridge."
"Sorry, I gotta go." The video feed blanked out before Mitchell had a chance to say goodbye.
**********************
For the next few days, it didn't actually look to Mitchell like the World needed saving, just one unlucky archaeologist. When Vala Mal Doran, the ex-Goa'uld host who had hijacked the Prometheus almost two years before, appeared through the Stargate and prevented Daniel Jackson from leaving for Atlantis by binding him to her with a pair of Goa'uld bracelets that created an energy field requiring their wearers to remain in proximity to stay alive, Mitchell didn't know whether he should be kicking her ass through the halls of the SGC, or thanking her for unwittingly helping him start to get the band back together. Jackson missed his ride on the Daedalus, and Teal'c returned from Dakara to see if he could do anything about his friend's plight. And since the world didn't need saving or anything, the four of them went on a little treasure hunt, courtesy of a tablet that Vala brought and Jackson translated.
Of course, Murphy's Law being the only one that infallibly operated at the SGC, part of the 'treasure' they found in the Ancient, Merlin's, cavern under Glastonbury Tor just had to be an Ancient long-range communicator, and Jackson and Vala just had to accidentally activate it and send their consciousnesses into another galaxy and meet up with a whole new enemy. The Ori. And by the time another couple of weeks had gone by, and the Ori had started sending priors to THIS galaxy to either convert people to their religion or kill them if they refused to convert, it started to look like not just the world, but the whole galaxy was going to need saving again. And when you needed to save a galaxy, you definitely needed Lt. Colonel Sam Carter. So Mitchell put in another call to Area 51; and once again, he had to leave a message.
Of course, being a reasonably bright guy, Mitchell figured he didn't have to just wait for Carter to call him back. After all, Dr. Jackson, who was (at least from the mission reports Mitchell had read) probably Carter's best friend, was at least as worried about the Ori as Mitchell was. So Jackson should be more than willing to call Carter himself, explain the situation, and she'd be on the next flight into Peterson. Only for some reason, it didn't go down that way. ***
"I don't get it," Jackson said, sounding resigned. "You're career Air Force. You know no one stays in the same assignment for more than a few years."
"Dammit, Jackson, don't you want her back?" Mitchell was confused and angry.
"Of course I do. I miss her...more than you could ever understand. But R & D is a great assignment for her. Do you have any idea how frustrating it can be for people like us to find something fascinating on a mission whether it's an artifact or a piece of technology get back here, barely start deciphering it, have to leave it behind to go back out on another mission, and get back to find that whatever it is has been whisked away to Area 51? And she's...happy. Her family's happy. She actually gets to go home to them most nights. I'm not going to ask her to come back. It would be wrong."
It was clear to Mitchell that Jackson wasn't going to budge. What was it with families, anyway, he wondered, fully aware that he was the exception to the rule, having made it to major, likely to be on the next promotion list for lieutenant colonel, without getting married and having kids.
**********************
Mitchell was not a man to be discouraged. It was obvious how close Jackson and Carter were. Maybe Jackson wouldn't ask her to come back, but she might be convinced to come back now that he and Teal'c were on the team. Particularly with some of the really scary threats the Ori were making. So he put in another call to Area 51. Or tried to.
While he and Jackson and Teal'c and Vala had been busy meeting the Ori, there had been some kind of security breach at Area 51 and the counter-intelligence folks there were having sixteen kinds of fits. That was all he could find out after his attempts to get through to Carter, even on secure lines from the SGC, had been met with "all circuits are busy" for a couple of days. And he wouldn't even have learned that if he hadn't gotten on Harriman's good side. He was about to give it a rest, at least temporarily, when Harriman became even more of an unexpected ally.
"You know, sir," the Chief Master Sergeant who knew everything volunteered, "if it's really that important to get in touch with Colonel Carter, I'm sure General O'Neill has her secure satellite phone number."
It was a lead. And Mitchell was ready to grasp at straws. SG-7 wasn't due to go back through the Stargate for two more days, so he requested and got a day of leave and flew back to Las Vegas in the morning. He knew he'd never get O'Neill to help him over the phone.
*****************************
*Patience,* Mitchell counseled himself as he sat on the front steps of O'Neill's house. *Gotta work on the patience thing.* This time, it really appeared that the general wasn't home. His truck wasn't there and when Mitchell had knocked, a dog had started barking, and kept barking relatively consistently for the last half hour. If O'Neill had been there, he would have had to do something about the racket. Finally, when Mitchell had almost decided to go back and sit in his rental car, just to get a little further away from the noise, the general's truck pulled up and the general got out. It was clear from his expression that he was even less happy to see Mitchell than he had been the last time.
"Mitchell, you'd better not be here to tell me that Vala woman has done any kinda permanent damage to Daniel," O'Neill said gruffly, standing in front of his truck almost as if to protect it from the approaching officer.
"No, sir," Mitchell replied, wondering how O'Neill knew anything about the arrival of the interplanetary con artist and her magic bracelets. "Dr. Jackson's fine." When he got close enough to the general that he was sure no one could overhear, he added, "although they're still kinda stuck in close proximity 'cause of the energy field."
O'Neill rolled his eyes and his stern expression softened. "Yeah, Daniel always did have the worst luck with women." Then his eyes got worried again. "Teal'c OK?" he asked. "Yeah. Teal'c's fine." Mitchell assured him. "Although I dunno about this Gerak guy. He's the new big cheese on the Jaffa High Council. He and Teal'c..." Mitchell broke off, unsure if he still had O'Neill's attention, as the older man, obviously satisfied now that Mitchell wasn't some kind of unofficial notification team, had turned away, opened the back door of the truck cab and reached in to disengage his daughter's carrier from the child safety seat. It was clear from the remaining contents of the back seat that O'Neill had been grocery shopping. When he'd pulled the baby carrier clear, and grabbed a handful of the plastic grocery bags, O'Neill walked up the path to his front door. Mitchell, seeing an opportunity to make points, gathered up the rest of the grocery bags, the box of disposable diapers, and two six-packs of beer, juggled his load precariously, shut the truck door, and followed.
"Your wife always stick you with the grocery shopping, sir," Mitchell asked, trying to make conversation.
"My wife has far more important things to do than shopping, Mitchell. Besides, if I left it to her, we'd be living off pop-tarts and blue jello." O'Neill set Emma's carrier down to fumble in his pocket for his keys. "And I thought I told you to knock it off with the 'sir'." The barking had intensified as they stood on the porch, and when O'Neill opened the front door, a grey-muzzled, elderly-looking Corgi came waddling around it and jumped up on him.
"Down, Fred," the general ordered in his command voice, spoiling the pretense of sternness by fondling the dog's ears even before his front paws returned to the ground. The he picked up the baby carrier and took Emma and his handful of grocery bags on into the house and into the kitchen, obviously trusting that Fred, and Mitchell, would follow. And of course, they did, with Fred sniffing vigorously at Mitchell's trouser legs and almost tripping him, but not showing any signs of hostility.
"OK, Mitchell. What are ya here for this time?" O'Neill asked, setting his daughter down on the kitchen table and starting to unpack his groceries. He added a quiet "thanks" as Mitchell deposited his own armload on the counter.
"We got a major problem," Mitchell began, quickly holding up his hands and adding, "wait...I heard what you said before. I'm not here to ask you to come back to the SGC," as the retired general glared at him. "I really need to get hold of Colonel Carter, and I can't even get through to Area 51 because of something that's going on there. Chief Harriman said you'd be able to get in touch with her." Harriman's name seemed to be the magic word, because O'Neill backed way down.
"This Gerak guy can't be that much trouble," he began, proving to Mitchell that he'd been listening all along. "I mean I know he and Teal'c disagree on a lot of the political stuff, and he's not so hot on an alliance with Earth, but I don't see the Free Jaffa Nation coming to attack us, or what Carter could do about it, for that matter." O'Neill's tone was calmly challenging, but not hostile or snide.
"It's not the Jaffa. Dr. Jackson accidentally found a whole new enemy. One that might be even more dangerous than the Goa'uld." Mitchell could tell he had O'Neill's attention this time.
"Go on," said the older man, inscrutable. So while the retired general puttered around his kitchen putting away groceries, remembering his manners and offering Mitchell a beer, filling the dog's water bowl, feeding his daughter, and sorting the mail, Mitchell sat at his kitchen table and told him about the Ori what they had done; what they had threatened; and that they were really, definitely coming, and no one at the SGC had the vaguest idea how to stop them. As Mitchell spoke, O'Neill's face got grimmer and grimmer. He interrupted periodically to ask questions all the right strategic and tactical questions that Mitchell had been waiting to hear. And of course, he asked what Daniel and Teal'c thought about everything. The bond between the former SG-1 was vividly apparent to Mitchell; in Teal'c's instant return from Dakara when Jackson first ended up in the infirmary; in Jackson's selfless protectiveness of Carter's chance for a different life; in O'Neill's first anxious queries about Jackson and Teal'c's well-being; and in the photo stuck to O'Neill's refrigerator next to a couple of newborn Emma -- the General, Carter, and Jackson in civvies, sprawled together, laughing, on a dock at sunset, with Teal'c sitting properly beside them, in a place that might have been Minnesota.
When the two men finished their threat assessment, Emma was getting fussy again. O'Neill motioned Mitchell to keep his seat and left the room with the baby and the box of Pampers. Fred followed him. Mitchell fidgeted for the minutes they were gone his beer long since finished --wondering if he had convinced the general that the SGC needed Colonel Carter NOW, not whenever some two-bit investigation was finished and he could find her on his own. When they returned, Emma in a baby-sling against O'Neill's chest and Fred at his heels, the young major had to break the silence. But he didn't want to push the general.
"Fred certainly is devoted to you. Have you had him since he was a puppy?" he asked conversationally. It should have been an innocuous question, but the look on O'Neill's face was almost...haunted.
"Fred's Cassie's dog. College dorms have some stupid rule against pets, so Fred stays here with us during the semester. He's missing Cassie, so he sticks to me."
"Cassie?" Mitchell wasn't sure why O'Neill thought he knew who the girl was.
"Yeah. I forgot. Before your time. Cassie's Doc Frasier's daughter. She's a sophomore at Stanford now." There was pride and affection in O'Neill's voice, along with...something else. Mitchell remembered the name from the mission reports he'd read.
"Right. Janet Frasier was your CMO. She figured out how to use tretonin to replace Goa'uld symbiotes as the Jaffa immune system. Probably made Jaffa independence possible. Not to mention saving your ass and everyone else's half a dozen times." Mitchell had been damned impressed with what he'd read about Frasier, and wondered why the SGC had ever let her go. Not that he didn't like Dr. Lam...
"She was KIA on a rescue mission to P3X666. Staff weapon blast to the chest while she was working on a wounded airman. Cassie's an orphan, twice over." O'Neill must have been close to Frasier, too. Mitchell could hear the pain in his voice. Brilliant didn't mean your number couldn't come up, and it was always worse when the casualties had kids. But it sounded like O'Neill was looking after this Cassie OK. O'Neill turned away from him and went over to the sink, looking out the window into the desert landscape.
"Are you..." Mitchell began. O'Neill held up his hand to silence the younger man. After a long moment, he reached for the phone on the counter. He pressed a speed-dial button and waited for a moment.
"Carter...I know everything's hinky over there because of the investigation, but Major Mitchell -- he's here..... Daniel and Teal'c are on his team now and...dammit, Sam, I hate to say this, I know you're already drowning, but maybe you oughta talk to him. There's more to this than Daniel getting sandbagged by the bitch who hijacked Prometheus and missing his ride to Atlantis. They've run into a new bunch of bad guys....really bad, bad guys." There was a longish pause. "I'll tell him you'll have him met at the main gate." He hung up and turned back to face his visitor.
"Thank you, sir. We really need her. Now not later." Mitchell said apologetically, without understanding why he felt the need to apologize.
"I know, Mitchell. We always did," O'Neill said, smiling slightly. "And you always will," he added, his expression not changing as the smile left his eyes.
Mitchell stood up to leave, and O'Neill and the baby and Fred walked him to the door. O'Neill grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator on his way out of the kitchen, and a leash and two baseball caps -- one his own, the other a tiny one clearly meant for his daughter, off the coat rack. He put his daughter's hat on first, then his own and stuck the leash in his pocket.
"Going somewhere, sir?" Mitchell asked.
"It's a beautiful day, Mitchell. We're goin' for a walk, while we have the chance. Too cold for her to be outside for long in Colorado this time of year."
As O'Neill opened the front door wide to let them all out, the bright February sunlight gleamed off the silver frame of a single photo sitting on the hall table. O'Neill and Carter, in civvies; her head resting against his shoulder, with a very, very tiny Emma in her arms.
A hand on his shoulder kept Mitchell's feet moving out the door while his brain processed the explanation that solved all his mysteries. O'Neill shut the door behind them, made a gesture that might or might not have been a wave, and turned to walk, in the rolling gait that soothed babies through the ages, in the direction of the unseen lake, the elderly Corgi ambling at his side. As the retired general walked away, Cameron Mitchell finally realized what O'Neill had just sacrificed for the SGC, his country, and his planet.
End.
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Getting the Band Back Together
by E M BonnerStory Bemerkung:
a279;IMHO, Stargate SG-1 should have ended after Season 8, but if they absolutely had to have Season 9, without O'Neill, and with Carter missing from the first five episodes, this is how they should have handled it. Author's Admission: I'm not sure what has really been bugging me more: Mitchell's hotshot attitude, or the fact that TPTB made him a Lt. Colonel and have not made it clear that Carter is in command of SG-1. The idea that she would come back from running the entire Stargate R&D operation to serve on SG-1 if she wasn't still commanding the team is both ludicrous and insulting, and the only explanation I can see for it is the usual pandering to the young male audience demographic. So I've demoted Mitchell to Major, to avoid that problem entirely and see if it makes him a little less annoying.
Spoilers: though Season 9 "Beachhead". Some dialogue is gratefully borrowed (and adapted) from "Avalon, Part 1", written by Robert C. Cooper.
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