Jennifer Haley
She had spent most of her military career in the mountain. With the loss of Lt. Colonel Carter, she had quickly become the leading expert on the Stargate. Her only serious competition, the incredibly annoying Rodney McKay, had been on the Atlantis team. Her rise through the ranks had been slower than she would have liked but she wouldn't have traded her posting for anything. It had been the job of a lifetime. It still was. After her retirement two years earlier as a full colonel, she had signed on as a civilian consultant.
She looked around at the other old-timers gathered in the gateroom for today's “festivities.” Damn, she hated the Pentagon PR department for bringing a film crew to this event. Have some coffee, go to makeup, spill your guts in front of the camera please. The important stuff was still classified so their questions were inane at best. The science portion didn't make for good sound bites and the rest? How do you describe over four decades of war? How do you describe over four decades of war in family-friendly way? The loss of countless colleagues and friends?
She, like her late mentor, never married. She had watched her fellow officers struggle with trying to balance family life with the secret war being waged from the mountain. Even the first General O'Neill had failed to make it work, despite his wife having clearance. This was a posting for the single, the widowed, the divorced. The mountain claimed too many lives for it to be otherwise.
She didn't see Jack yet which wasn't much of a surprise. This had to be even more painful for him than for her. She had made friends with the younger O'Neill when he arrived to the SGC as a newly minted lieutenant. He had cut his ties to his former teammates when he decided to return to high school as keeping contact would have just been “too weird.” The elder Jack never told him about SG-1. No one had. He had shown up at the mountain expecting to see his old team. She was the one that had to tell him. He still hadn't forgiven the Tok'ra, or the other Jack. Now he was under orders to make nice and smile for the cameras. Oh yeah, he was probably still hiding in his office.
JD
As he followed Anise through the stargate, he felt a sense of trepidation. He had petitioned the High Council for permission to accompany Garshaw and was somewhat surprised when they agreed. This was the first direct contact with his mother's homeworld in many years and he was, after all, a mere infant by their standards.
He had been an infant by just about everyone's standards when the final breakdown of the Tok'ra alliance with Earth occurred. Direct contact had been cut off shortly after the loss of SG-1. Since then, the Tok'ra had managed to feed critical information to the SGC through various third parties. Earth had wanted no part of the Tok'ra at the time and his mother and aunt had been instrumental in setting up a series of fronts to obscure the source of the information. The tensions had eased over time but the mistrust remained.
He didn't know much about Earth. The sadness that shadowed his mother only became deeper when she spoke of Earth so he learned at an early age that it was a topic best left alone. “Aunt” Anise and her host had been more forthcoming although their knowledge of the Tau'ri homeworld was fairly limited. They were to able to tell him about the men whose names he bore. As he grew older, he realized that Anise had been more than fond of one of them. He knew his mother was unhappy with the council's decision to send Garshaw to Earth. That was why, beyond curiosity, he had to come.
Daniel Jackson
He still didn't believe he had agreed to come back. He still didn't believe that the Pentagon had bothered to find him. After the loss of rest of his team, he left the SGC. Not immediately, but soon after. He had been badly wounded and knew he would never go through the gate again. After more than a year of physical therapy, he could walk after a fashion but he would never regain his old mobility. He had accepted that, just as he had accepted the loss of his teammates. What he couldn't accept, and what finally made him leave the SGC, was Jack's behavior afterwards.
The SG-1 had been friends for years. They had gone through bad patches but at the end of the day, Daniel had always thought that they were friends, family even. It was after his promotion to general that Jack began to distance himself from them. Sam said it was the military way. Maybe it was, but after that last mission, Jack acted as though he barely remembered, or ever cared about, his old team. Daniel thought that they could work through it. He had been wrong.
In the weeks preceding that final, ill-fated mission, something had been wrong at the SGC. There was nothing he could put a finger on at the time. Strange silences when SG-1 entered a room, the odd look in the hallway. Sam had become increasingly tense. At the time, he thought it was due to her father's death and her breakup with the cop. During the early days of his recovery, before being moved from the SGC infirmary to a nursing home for physical therapy, he found out that there were rumors making the rounds about Sam and how she came by her promotions. Talk that she wasn't fit to command SG-1 and was going to be transferred out of the SGC altogether. Nothing blatant, just a hint here, a look there. There had been enough new personnel, as well as a few jealous colleagues, that the gossip found fertile ground. Even with Sam dead, the talk didn't stop. It was as if someone wanted to make sure her reputation was dead as well.
He tried to talk to Jack about what was happening. Jack shut him out. Daniel resigned from the SGC before completing PT. The Pentagon, loathe to lose their favorite archaeologist, convinced him to work at Area 51. He spent a few years there before finding a teaching position at a small college on the east coast. While he kept in contact with some of his old friends at the SGC, he never saw or spoke to Jack again.
Now he was back and once again there was a Jack O'Neill in charge of the SGC if his escort was to be believed. He shouldn't have been surprised. He had known the clone was destined for the Academy with an eye to getting him back into the SGC. He hoped this one wasn't the complete ass that the other had become.
Bringing his mind back to the present, he watched the iris open and the first of the Tok'ra delegation arrive. Lovely, they sent Anise. He didn't recognize the second figure through the gate. The third and final figure was quite a shock. The hair was too dark but he would have recognized that face anywhere. He just never expected to see it again. After all, Sam Carter was supposed to be dead.