Five things that SG-1 have found to be universal constants, no matter how many alternate realities t
1. Sam Carter has blonde hair.
Naturally, too, with the a few Clairol highlights. And oddly enough, Sam is proud of this. No matter what length, no matter what style, all of her alternates are blondes.
None of SG-1 seems to understand why this consistency is important, not even when they meet Candy Carter, a mohawked stripper working at the trashy club by the airport.
Candy smiled a grin that was missing a few teeth and touched her head.
“They wanted me to die my hair pink,” she said. “But I wouldn’t do it.”
Sam smiled back, keeping her lips tight around her own perfect teeth. “Good for you,” she said.
2. Vala always hits on Daniel.
Even the universe where he’s a woman. The universe where she’s a man. The universe where they’re the right genders, but both homosexual.
Even on the primordial world, where humans got stuck somewhere between chimps and Neandertals, a much more innocent Vala swung from six trees over to knock a much dumber Daniel off his branch.
Sam thinks it’s adorable. Daniel refuses to talk about it. Vala, of course, thinks itis awesome because she and her alternates can tag-team the object of their affections.
3. The Tok’ra annoy the living hell out of Jack O’Neill.
This is nicely consistent.
The alternate Jacks rant just like the real one, and it’s amusing to watch. It’s even more fun to run back to the original Jack and tell him about the universe where he’s very much the same, and yet, is married to Anise.
4. Syllogism: If Cameron Mitchell knows about the Stargate program, he crashed in Antarctica.
Sometimes he lived, sometimes he died, sometimes he was paralyzed. But he always, always crashed.
Cam finds meeting the Mitchells who escaped that experience very, very strange. They don’t know about the SGC, they don’t know about trying to save the planet, and they’re just…not him.
He recognizes the Mitchells that did crash. Even though they’re not him - sometimes profoundly not him - he feels a connection.
And he tells every single one of them: “I crashed, too. We all did. You couldn’t do anything to avoid it.”
He doesn’t mention that there are Mitchells who didn’t crash, but only because they didn’t fly in the first place. The able-bodied Mitchells do occasionally ask, and he’s honest. He knows they’ve wondered, maybe wished for a different past. His legs hurt like motherfuckers during cold fronts, so even if he’s not waking up screaming from PTSD like some of the Mitchells, he’s never going to forget - never going to be able to ignore the memories.
But there are Mitchells who cannot ask questions. He tells them it wasn’t their fault, that it was fate, that he crashed, that every Mitchell who took off that day crashed.
He thinks he would want to hear that if he’d never been able to get out of that hospital bed, if he had a tube down his throat so he could breathe, if he’d forgotten to get that DNR before he took of that day. Some of these Mitchells can only blink at him. Some can talk, can move an arm. They’re likely to say “Oh,” which he completely understands.
One Mitchell, a paraplegic, said “Oh,” and then threw an emesis basin at Cam’s head. He understands that, too.
5. Another syllogism: If Teal’c defected, the SGC defeats the Goa’uld.
If he doesn’t, Earth loses. Or is losing. These are pretty shitty worlds to visit.
Each time they come back from seeing one, to their own safe - for the moment, anyhow - little planet.
Teal’c gets a lot of hugs after those visits.
And a lot of grateful but frozen looks, because there is no defecting Ori warrior to help them, now.