O is for Optimism
Cam has always been an optimist; it's kept him going for a long time now. But sometimes, he needs a little proof.
Written for Cam Alphabet Soup. Major spoilers for Continuum, including AU canon character deaths, and a certain episode in S2. 1,290 words. Rated PG.
O is for Optimism
Cam turned off the engine of his faithful, battered truck, listening to the usual grumbling rattle until the engine deigned to shut down completely. He cranked the window down another inch for more air, then slowly rubbed sweating palms against the hot plastic of the steering wheel.
Forty years of waiting, down to just a few days. If his memory still served him, after all these decades, today -- or tomorrow, or the day after -- he would finally get the proof he so desperately needed that they'd won.
Cam had always been grateful that optimism came easy to him. Training as a cadet, leading his squadron in battle, the dogfight over Antarctica, the grueling months of rehab, rebuilding SG-1, facing the Ori... He'd embraced every challenge with the confidence that he could succeed, that he would somehow fight or finagle his way to victory. His team, he knew, had looked at his buoyant attitude with a mixture of bemusement, amusement, and -- well, yes, irritation. But his unquenchable optimism had kept them going in some of their most desperate moments.
Cam had long since acknowledged that without that optimism, without the belief that they had reset the timeline, that they did bring reality back on track, he would've despaired long ago. Ten years of waiting to kill Ba'al, and then... nothing. No sign, no hint. No way to tell if time would unspool along well-trodden lines instead of caroming off some quantum disturbance and veering away from the future so many had labored so long to create.
He was an old man now. This was his last chance to find out if his dogged hope would be proved right.
He remembered Sam and Daniel arguing late into the night, on some quiet planet all those decades in the future, talking about time travel. Back then, he'd still been enchanted at the thought that time travel was not only more than theoretical, but he also had teammates who'd actually experienced it. Sam scribbled equations on the next blank page of the journal she snatched from Daniel's hands while Cam listened quietly to talk of temporal paradoxes and locked time loops.
"I've sometimes wondered," Daniel said at one point, hugging his knees and starting into flames tinted slightly purple by the alien driftwood that fueled it, "if we're already part of a tampered timeline."
"We know we are," Sam said reasonably, even as she turned over a page and continued her calculations. "General Hammond sent that note because he knew we would need it. There must be a closed time loop somewhere, somewhen, where that didn't happen -- but it's not ours. And how about the note we never wrote that warned us away from the Aschen? Or the ZPM we sent to Atlantis, with that videotape we never made?"
Daniel's brows drew together. "I'm thinking a little bigger than that." He released his grip on his knees to wave one hand in a vague circle. "Maybe we're in the middle of a great loop right now, and we have no idea what catalyst is going to go and make some change in the past that will make our very lives a possibility. It might not be us, of course. It might not even have something to with the Stargate. But if we've managed to twist time, who's to say that someone else won't do it? Or maybe this is a closed loop that can't survive, and something will wipe us out in an eye blink by changing enough of the past to make it impossible for us to exist."
Sam stopped scribbling and blinked at him. "You're very cheerful tonight."
Daniel looked a little sheepish. "Yeah, okay. Maybe there's a timeline where I brought enough coffee with me and we never had this conversation."
"But not this one," she said sympathetically, patting his knee companionably. "We'll ask Teal'c when he gets back from patrolling the perimeter. He sometimes has some extra coffee with him."
"It sounds to me," Cam interrupted, "that you're both suggesting that we can't change our destiny. That we're locked onto a path by someone else, and nothing we do matters."
"I don't believe that," Sam said immediately, her voice firm. "And not just because the math disagrees... oh, stop that," she snorted at Daniel, swatting him as he feigned shock at her words.
"I don't believe it, either," Daniel agreed, turning sober. "The Ancients, for all their power, don't dare try to tamper with reality. There's strength in the choices we make in our lives. I'd rather be human, and mortal, and have the ability to do."
"The Ori use that power, though," Cam said quietly, thinking of the Priors and the plagues they'd unleashed.
Daniel's eyes darkened a little, but he shrugged. "And we'll continue to search for the ability to stop them. Because we're human. And we can."
Sam nodded. "As human beings, we live one day at a time. We'll get there, Cam."
"Yes." Cam smiled. "I think we will."
Despite the heat, Cam shivered a little at the memory and all that had happened afterward. Teal'c had lived fifty years in a fraction of an instant, and now he'd had forty years of his own to contemplate the nature of time and the possible futility of trying to keep going on a hamster wheel. History seemed to be following its course, and the echo of Sam's voice in his head had robbed him of any temptation to try and change the tragedies of the era. He'd even wondered, in some of his bleaker moments, if he ought to kill himself to avoid inadvertent tampering with the timeline. But he clung to hope. It wasn't in his nature to despair.
And now, now he might just get the chance to see actual, physical proof that his team hadn't died for nothing, that he hadn't spent forty lonely years in false optimism for the chance to see the bright future of a free galaxy.
The right year. The right month. The right place. And, hopefully, the right day and the right hour.
Cam waited.
The sun was starting to dip toward the horizon when he finally saw it: a lumbering bus, painted in psychedelic colors. The driver, a bearded man with long, blond curls, pulled the bus into the parking lot just outside the best diner on this stretch of Route 66.
Cam held his breath as the doors opened and the passengers emerged.
Yes.
Jack O'Neill, his hair more brown than gray. Sam in a long, flowing skirt. Daniel's hair matched the pictures he'd seen of SG-1's earlier years, but Teal'c, instead of the smooth skull he'd expected, sported an unruly wig with a bandana tied across his forehead to hide his tattoo.
It was them. Traveling a loop within a loop, leaping lightly across thirty years and bringing proof to an old, tired man that the future he'd hoped to save was really waiting for him in a time he wouldn't live to see again.
Blinking against the tears that blurred his vision, Cam watched them walk across the blacktop towards the diner. He fixed their images in his mind: young, healthy, hopeful. He would savor this picture of them and use it to replace his anguished mental snapshots of a dying Sam and Daniel and Teal'c, aged and bitter yet determined to erase Ba'al's twisted timeline.
They'd given up everything to send him back to fix their present. Their presence now was the final confirmation that their sacrifice -- both their deaths and his lonely, empty life -- had all been worthwhile.
"Thanks, guys," he whispered.
Then, swiping a hand across his eyes, he turned on the motor, shifted the truck into gear, and drove away.
Written for Cam Alphabet Soup. Major spoilers for Continuum, including AU canon character deaths, and a certain episode in S2. 1,290 words. Rated PG.
O is for Optimism
Cam turned off the engine of his faithful, battered truck, listening to the usual grumbling rattle until the engine deigned to shut down completely. He cranked the window down another inch for more air, then slowly rubbed sweating palms against the hot plastic of the steering wheel.
Forty years of waiting, down to just a few days. If his memory still served him, after all these decades, today -- or tomorrow, or the day after -- he would finally get the proof he so desperately needed that they'd won.
Cam had always been grateful that optimism came easy to him. Training as a cadet, leading his squadron in battle, the dogfight over Antarctica, the grueling months of rehab, rebuilding SG-1, facing the Ori... He'd embraced every challenge with the confidence that he could succeed, that he would somehow fight or finagle his way to victory. His team, he knew, had looked at his buoyant attitude with a mixture of bemusement, amusement, and -- well, yes, irritation. But his unquenchable optimism had kept them going in some of their most desperate moments.
Cam had long since acknowledged that without that optimism, without the belief that they had reset the timeline, that they did bring reality back on track, he would've despaired long ago. Ten years of waiting to kill Ba'al, and then... nothing. No sign, no hint. No way to tell if time would unspool along well-trodden lines instead of caroming off some quantum disturbance and veering away from the future so many had labored so long to create.
He was an old man now. This was his last chance to find out if his dogged hope would be proved right.
He remembered Sam and Daniel arguing late into the night, on some quiet planet all those decades in the future, talking about time travel. Back then, he'd still been enchanted at the thought that time travel was not only more than theoretical, but he also had teammates who'd actually experienced it. Sam scribbled equations on the next blank page of the journal she snatched from Daniel's hands while Cam listened quietly to talk of temporal paradoxes and locked time loops.
"I've sometimes wondered," Daniel said at one point, hugging his knees and starting into flames tinted slightly purple by the alien driftwood that fueled it, "if we're already part of a tampered timeline."
"We know we are," Sam said reasonably, even as she turned over a page and continued her calculations. "General Hammond sent that note because he knew we would need it. There must be a closed time loop somewhere, somewhen, where that didn't happen -- but it's not ours. And how about the note we never wrote that warned us away from the Aschen? Or the ZPM we sent to Atlantis, with that videotape we never made?"
Daniel's brows drew together. "I'm thinking a little bigger than that." He released his grip on his knees to wave one hand in a vague circle. "Maybe we're in the middle of a great loop right now, and we have no idea what catalyst is going to go and make some change in the past that will make our very lives a possibility. It might not be us, of course. It might not even have something to with the Stargate. But if we've managed to twist time, who's to say that someone else won't do it? Or maybe this is a closed loop that can't survive, and something will wipe us out in an eye blink by changing enough of the past to make it impossible for us to exist."
Sam stopped scribbling and blinked at him. "You're very cheerful tonight."
Daniel looked a little sheepish. "Yeah, okay. Maybe there's a timeline where I brought enough coffee with me and we never had this conversation."
"But not this one," she said sympathetically, patting his knee companionably. "We'll ask Teal'c when he gets back from patrolling the perimeter. He sometimes has some extra coffee with him."
"It sounds to me," Cam interrupted, "that you're both suggesting that we can't change our destiny. That we're locked onto a path by someone else, and nothing we do matters."
"I don't believe that," Sam said immediately, her voice firm. "And not just because the math disagrees... oh, stop that," she snorted at Daniel, swatting him as he feigned shock at her words.
"I don't believe it, either," Daniel agreed, turning sober. "The Ancients, for all their power, don't dare try to tamper with reality. There's strength in the choices we make in our lives. I'd rather be human, and mortal, and have the ability to do."
"The Ori use that power, though," Cam said quietly, thinking of the Priors and the plagues they'd unleashed.
Daniel's eyes darkened a little, but he shrugged. "And we'll continue to search for the ability to stop them. Because we're human. And we can."
Sam nodded. "As human beings, we live one day at a time. We'll get there, Cam."
"Yes." Cam smiled. "I think we will."
Despite the heat, Cam shivered a little at the memory and all that had happened afterward. Teal'c had lived fifty years in a fraction of an instant, and now he'd had forty years of his own to contemplate the nature of time and the possible futility of trying to keep going on a hamster wheel. History seemed to be following its course, and the echo of Sam's voice in his head had robbed him of any temptation to try and change the tragedies of the era. He'd even wondered, in some of his bleaker moments, if he ought to kill himself to avoid inadvertent tampering with the timeline. But he clung to hope. It wasn't in his nature to despair.
And now, now he might just get the chance to see actual, physical proof that his team hadn't died for nothing, that he hadn't spent forty lonely years in false optimism for the chance to see the bright future of a free galaxy.
The right year. The right month. The right place. And, hopefully, the right day and the right hour.
Cam waited.
The sun was starting to dip toward the horizon when he finally saw it: a lumbering bus, painted in psychedelic colors. The driver, a bearded man with long, blond curls, pulled the bus into the parking lot just outside the best diner on this stretch of Route 66.
Cam held his breath as the doors opened and the passengers emerged.
Yes.
Jack O'Neill, his hair more brown than gray. Sam in a long, flowing skirt. Daniel's hair matched the pictures he'd seen of SG-1's earlier years, but Teal'c, instead of the smooth skull he'd expected, sported an unruly wig with a bandana tied across his forehead to hide his tattoo.
It was them. Traveling a loop within a loop, leaping lightly across thirty years and bringing proof to an old, tired man that the future he'd hoped to save was really waiting for him in a time he wouldn't live to see again.
Blinking against the tears that blurred his vision, Cam watched them walk across the blacktop towards the diner. He fixed their images in his mind: young, healthy, hopeful. He would savor this picture of them and use it to replace his anguished mental snapshots of a dying Sam and Daniel and Teal'c, aged and bitter yet determined to erase Ba'al's twisted timeline.
They'd given up everything to send him back to fix their present. Their presence now was the final confirmation that their sacrifice -- both their deaths and his lonely, empty life -- had all been worthwhile.
"Thanks, guys," he whispered.
Then, swiping a hand across his eyes, he turned on the motor, shifted the truck into gear, and drove away.