Cam Alphabet Soup
My thanks to the 25 authors who collaborated to write 27 stories for Cam Alphabet Soup: Pennkife, MacBeth, Camshaft, Traycer, Redbyrd, 11am Street, Jedibuttercup, Gategremlyn, Hummingfly, Skieswideopen, Aelfgyfu, Da Angel, Campylobacter, Fig Newton, Staranise, Kayim, Crazedturkey, SG_Wonderland, Cleo the Muse, Magistrate, Gingasaur, Madders Ahatter, Sid, and Stringertheory. Special thanks to our new cooks: sidlj, madders_ahatter, camshaft22, rinkafic, kayim, gingasaur, magibrain, skieswideopen, and stringertheory, and to MacBeth for writing a backup letter at the last minute!
Enjoy some 21,000 words of Cameron Mitchell! Story lengths range from 150 words to just under 3,000. Ratings range from G to PG-13. Expect spoilers throughout the entire series, including canon (AU) character deaths.
Story text is as written by the authors, but minor HTML coding has been changed (removal of smart quotes, for example) and scene breaks have been altered to allow for more uniformity in page style.
Shorter ficlets are posted here in full, with links to the author's individual LJ for feeback; due to LJ posting constraints, longer fic is excerpted, with links to the author's journal for the full story. The entire anthology is posted in full, without excerpts, over at Dreamwidth.
Readers are strongly encouraged to follow the links to the authors' individual journals and leave feedback.
A is for Antarctica
by penknife
The thing Cam remembers most clearly about Antarctica isn't the actual crash. He remembers trying to eject, wrestling with the controls as they went down, but the transition from crashing to crashed is lost somewhere, a black box he can't open.
He remembers thinking that somebody should close that goddamned window, and then understanding that the front windshield of the F-302 was broken. He remembers he kept trying to move his legs. He remembers pretending that it wasn't important that he couldn't; it was an ice field out there, where was he planning to go?
He remembers that eventually it really didn't seem important anymore. He'd stopped feeling so cold, and even though he knew that was bad, he was tired of shivering, so he wasn't complaining. It seemed like the best thing to do might be to just close his eyes, except for the radio chatter that kept waking him up, reminding him that he hadn't finished the job.
He remembers when he understood that the radio chatter had changed: They're coming from the surface. I don't know what they are. They're cutting the enemy fleet to shreds! My God! It's beautiful!
They're Ancient weapons. It's SG-1. They found what they were looking for!
The enemy ships are being destroyed! They're just exploding everywhere we look!
He remembers his satisfaction then: they won, so it was all worth it. He understood perfectly well that he was going to die -- he didn't feel cold anymore, didn't feel anything -- but that didn't seem scary anymore. It was easier than he'd ever imagined. So this is how you do it, he thought; you just close your eyes and say goodnight.
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B is for Boondocks
by lolmac
It was Cameron Mitchell's twenty-third trip through the Gate, so the number wasn't anything special or different. What was different was the landscape.
Teal'c looked impassive. Carter looked distracted. Jackson looked annoyed. Cam looked around and drew a nice deep breath, full of the smell of green grasses and dusty earth. Under the wide empty sky, rippling waves of grass ran out to the horizon in every direction from the Gate, a lone point of stone and metal in a sea of green and brown and bronze and gold.
Carter pulled out her compass and the widget-o-meter she'd developed for calibrating terrestrial compasses to work with extraterrestrial planetary magnetic fields. Teal'c began to wade through the hip-deep grass, heading unerringly, Cam assumed, for the spot where the UVA had splatted when its instrumentation was knocked out by that same unusually strong planetary magnetic field. Jackson and Cam followed the clear trail of bent and crushed grasses to where the MALP had gotten stuck.
Cam gave a cursory glance at the wheels and couldn't see any reason for the breakdown. Well, as long as the planet wasn't hostile, Landry would send out technicians and retrieve the Air Force's Very Expensive Property. He got a good hold on the flanges, scrambled and clambered on top of the thing and looked around.
Jackson squinted up at him. "See anything?"
"Nope." Cam pivoted slowly. "Nothing but miles and miles of . . . miles and miles."
"No trees, huh?" Jackson's grin had that private, in-joke look to it.
"Trees?"
"That was a joke of Jack's. I don't think he ever put it in the reports." A shrug. "Nothing at all? You'd think there'd have to be something . . . I mean, there's a Gate, so . . . "
Cam finished his pirouette and pointed. "Over there. Long way off, but there's a kind of a shadow. That's trees. In country like this, where there's trees, there's water. And where there's water, there might be a settlement."
Jackson brightened, then narrowed his eyes. "How far off?"
"Bit of a walk. Nice day for it, though."
"Are you always this cheerful?"
"Hell, it could always be worse. Like I like to remind myself," Cam said as he hopped down off the MALP, "at least I'm not in Kansas any more."
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C is for Chinese
Understanding
by camshaft22
Cameron Mitchell, leader of SG-1 leaned forward and pressed the elevator button, feeling exhausted and irritated. The IOA was really starting to piss him off and they didn't even realize what utter fools they were. He stepped onto the elevator just as the Chinese IOA representative Chen Xiaoyi entered.
"Colonel," she greeted.
"Representative," Cam told her politely.
All of a sudden, the power flickered off and the elevator stopped. Cam rolled his eyes, annoyed at the universe.
"It should be ok. They'll have everything back to normal soon, Representative."
"I hope so, Colonel."
Cam nodded and looked at her. He took a deep breath and started speaking in Mandarin. "我知道都不会有问题，尤其是你，但你所说的是非常粗鲁，非常不专业。我能讲流利的普通话和流利的广东话和您的建议，我是白痴，不适合我的位置Jackson博士是多余的."
She looked briefly surprised. "你有我真诚的道歉，上校。我不会再次犯这样的错误."
Cam nodded as the power came back on and they rose to the surface.
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D is for Destiny
Patterns of Destiny
by traycer_
History used to be important to Cameron Mitchell. His whole world was shaped by past events that played out in the books he had to study in school. Christopher Columbus, John Hancock, Adolph Hitler and Theodore Roosevelt were just a few of the names he remembered - all people who played a part in the historical flows of time. But now, as he stood on the threshold of a new era, history seemed to be a moot point. Some of it hadn't even happened yet.
He stared at the bombers that lined the tarmac, waiting his turn to take a spin, wondering at the irony of his life. He was a still a fighter, no doubt about that, but on a whole different level. Where before he was fighting aliens and soaring through the galaxy, now he was reduced to flying bombers preparing for a war only he knew was coming.
Things could be worse, he told himself for what seemed like the thousandth time. Ba'al could have succeeded in his plan to change history. Cam smiled grimly at that thought. That was a great victory in his mind. Ten years of his life spent preparing for that moment and revenge really was a sweet feeling, especially after wiping the arrogant smirk off the Goa'uld's face just before he put a bullet in his brain.
The last of the Ba'al's was dead, but Cam was now trapped here in a past that he had no wish to be a part of. He sent a half-hearted salute to his friend Ben who then took off down the runway, engines roaring as the bomber lifted its nose toward the heavens.
History be damned, Cam thought, as a thrill of adrenalin rushed through him. The bombers were antiquated compared to what he was used to flying, but at least he was still flying. Can't beat that.
He watched, his eyes squinting as sunlight shone through the sunglasses he wore, until Ben was out of sight. Being a part of the past sometimes had its advantages, Cam thought with a grin. His friend talked occasionally about his son, George, and even though he could never come right out and tell him, Cam would always have one up on Ben Hammond.
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E is for Exertion
by redbyrd_sgfic
Mitchell's legs burned with fatigue and buckled as he tried to force them to move, but he was pushing himself up again, even before the physical therapist could say, "Let's try once more, Colonel." He'd always been pig-stubborn, as his granma used to say, but since the crash he'd found reserves of obdurate will that sometimes surprised even him. 'Adversity builds character' he thought. 'And why do we need character? To cope with adversity.' His dad had told him that once. He grasped the bars and tried to force his shaking legs to move, accepting the pain. Pain was good. Far better than the terrifying lack of sensation after the accident- he pushed thoughts of the past behind him, and focused forward. His left foot moved, dragging and he shifted to put weight on it, looking past the end of the parallel bars. He had O'Neill's word- "Get well soon. And when you do, you can do anything you want, and I mean… professionally… anything you want." Bastard probably thought he was safe making that promise. He remembered the doctor telling him he was unlikely to walk again. O'Neill must have known that. Weren't they both going to be surprised...
The trees were wobbling gently somewhere past his feet, and someone was prodding him in the ribs with a stick. Staff. Jolan. Sodan warrior. The last few days came swimming back. The fight at the Gate. Learning the Sodan fighting style. Or not. He rolled away from the stick, feeling the bruises where Jolan had thrown him down and came to his feet. "Show me that one again," he said, in his breeziest and most annoying tone. The trees gave a final lurch and his vision sharpened. Not concussed, just knocked silly for a moment, he judged.
Jolan frowned. "You are slow and weak."
Mitchell smiled. "But persistent." Mitchell knew that the advantages were all with the Sodan, and that his best chance lay in talking his way out of this, not fighting. But continuing to fight meant the opportunity to talk. And also--Mitchell had never been a believer in odds. Time enough to deal with failure if he failed. It was balancing act- stay flexible, choose a course, then pursue it without holding back. PT, qualifying for gate travel, putting the band back together- poor odds had never yet stopped Mitchell from trying. He was determined that Jolan was going to become another of the long list of people Cameron Mitchell had surprised in the past. "Show me that one again," he repeated, and shifted his weight to block the Sodan's attack.
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F is F-302
by 11am_street
Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell would never forget when his first briefing on the Stargate Program. He has just recently returned from a particularly horrible mission, which had resulted in a terrible injury for one of his friends and was, once again, considering resigning from the Air Force.
Mitchell recalled his amazement upon being briefed on the project, on the variety of missions the SG teams had gone trough from first contact with new races to finding or even creating new technology to fight against a powerful enemy. Cameron particularly remembered reading about SG-1 and thinking how he would love to be part of that team. However, it was when he saw the F-302 fighter-interceptors that Mitchell felt he found his true calling.
And, as he lay broken in the cockpit of the F-302 crashed on the ground in Antarctica, he couldn't help but think: "It was worth it."
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G is for Gate
The One, Two Story
by jedibuttercup
One, Cam thinks with a touch of wonder, as he steps for the first time into the shimmering disc of an event horizon.
He's read about it. Seen pictures, in files husbanded for self-reward after endless rounds of physical therapy. Heard stories from those who've taken this step before him. But none of that compares to actually making the journey: to crossing millions of miles in the time it takes to take one breath.
He shivers as he steps out the other end, drinking in the air of an entire other world. He might as well have put on a pair of seven league boots; it's that magical, and that much a fulfillment of an impossible dream. Even if he's not so much on SG-1 as he is SG-1 at present... he's just stepped through a Stargate to the cradle of an entire alien civilization. How amazing is that?
He takes a moment, staring around at the ornate columns of Dakara and the robed Jaffa with the gold tattoo waiting for him, taking a mental snapshot for posterity. Teal'c, in his native setting: somehow even more impressive than he'd seemed in camo and Kevlar back on Earth. Though there's nothing even remotely yielding about him, despite his nod of welcome-- yeah, Cam's not going to get the answer he wants from him today.
But that's all right. Cam knows better than anyone the value of persistence; he wouldn't even be there if he didn't. Showing up is about affirming his intention, not winning. It would have been nice, mind you; but he's just spent two years living life one milestone at a time, commemorating each setback and success with inches forward on his mental metric. It's nothing new.
He enjoys the conversation as long as it lasts, then returns to the Gate and watches the event horizon whoosh into being.
"Two", he murmurs, remembering the way it felt under his hand: warm, living metal, relic and symbol of a civilization long gone to dust.
The journey of a thousand miles. He smiles wryly to himself and crosses into the blue.
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H is for History
by gategremlyn
The Odyssey was a big ship, a damn big ship, but not big enough that he couldn't hear Jackson complaining about his ill treatment all the way back to the infirmary. Cam covered his smile with his hand, not sure if he was allowed to smile at a general even if it was General Jack O'Neill.
"Daniel, get your ass back into bed."
"I just got out of bed."
"Which is why you now need to get back in it."
"Which is why-- That makes no sense, Jack."
"Mitchell?" General O'Neill turned around and Cam straightened up, wiping the smile off his face.
"Yes, sir?"
"Did I put you in command of SG-1?"
"Yes, sir." Cam wanted that to be a question, but under the circumstances he kept it a statement.
"Are you now or have you ever been in charge of SG-1?" O'Neill put up his free hand--the hand not currently keeping Jackson from escaping. "Let me rephrase that. Have you ever managed to be in charge of Doctor Daniel Jackson?"
"Jack! Leave the poor guy alone. You make it sound like he's my jailer."
"No, sir," Cam said. "I have never been in charge of SG-1 except on paper. And I've definitely never been in charge of Doctor Jackson. I don't think he's listened to a single order I've given since I started." That was no lie.
"Good," O'Neill said. "I'm glad it's not just me. I'd tell you to post a guard outside the infirmary, but I don't think we have the staff for it at the moment." With Cam's help, and with Jackson complaining every step of the way, they got a pale and shaking former prior into bed. O'Neill pulled up a chair and put his feet on the mattress. "Relieve me in four hours."
"Oh, for the love of.... Mitchell, he's kidding."
"I am not kidding. Now go get some shut-eye and a shower. We'll be here when you get back."
Cam kept a straight face and even managed a salute before he left.
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I is for Improv
by hummingfly67
"Improvise," Jackson's panicked voice hisses in their ears.
Cameron blinks once, thinking rapidly, and does as the man said. Hauling Vala into his arms, he ignores her indignant huff and plants his lips on her mouth. He shifts his weight forward to push her back into the rough stone wall they had been loitering near as they surveilled the drinking establishment their targets had entered several minutes ago. She responds immediately and enthusiastically, body suddenly pliant, yet Cameron senses no ulterior motive, merely co-operation and obedience. And most likely, a healthy dose of preservation.
One of her hands lands at his mid-back, the other chastely at his waist, and it takes him a chagrined second to realize she has cleverly positioned herself to be able to grab his gun if necessary. His own hands are nowhere near her gun. With a shift of his hips, he rectifies the matter, feeling Vala's lips twitch against his.
God knows he thinks of her as more of an annoying little sister than anything else now, but damn the woman can kiss. He is only human, and certain her instincts have long been to use all the weapons in her arsenal. It's quite the arsenal.
"ALL CLEAR! ALL CLEAR!" Jackson sounds peeved and slightly scandalized, and Cameron suspects the buzzing in his ear had probably been their teammate's call to stand down. Unintentionally ignored.
Cameron pulls away, not embarrassed to admit to himself it is a bit reluctantly, and meets Vala's laughing eyes.
Flashing him a flirty, wide-mouthed grin, she murmurs, "Someone's cranky."
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J is for Jello
by skieswideopen
SG-1 has a thing about Jell-O. It takes Cam a while to catch onto this, and longer still to decipher it--Teal'c's references to Jell-O wrestling don't help there--but he thinks he eventually figures it out, even if he doesn't quite understand it.
It starts with Teal'c looking at him disapprovingly when he sits down with his lunch.
"What?" Cam asks, a little defensive because Teal'c's disapproving eyebrow-raise is intimidating even when you know he won't actually do anything. Probably. (Cam still finds it kind of awesome that he's having lunch with SG-1--with the real SG-1--but there are days when they leave him wanting to tear out his hair.)
"Is that not the last bowl of blue Jell-o, Colonel Mitchell?"
"Maybe?" Cam wasn't actually paying that much attention; he'd mostly picked blue because there wasn't any green and he'd had red yesterday. Military food was nothing if not predictable.
"Sam likes the blue," Jackson explains, spoon paused halfway between soup and mouth.
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J is for Jogging
by skieswideopen
When Teal'c finally spills a few details about their fifty years aboard Odyssey--not many, mind you, and none of them the things Cam really wants to know, but he's curious enough that he'll take what he can get--it doesn't surprise him to learn that he spent a good chunk of time running through the empty corridors of the ship. Cam's always been a runner, always in motion. Running to think. Running to not-think. Running to escape whatever happened to be troubling him at the time. Except that there was no escape during those years on Odyssey, and Cam knows from experience that you can't really run on a ship anyway--too many sharp turns to get up to a proper speed--so he figures he really spent fifty years jogging.
He shudders at the thought. Five decades when jogging through dull grey metal corridors was the only forward movement he could get. Five decades of walls closing in tighter and tighter while he jogged and jogged and went nowhere, and he can imagine the slow suffocation of that experience, can feel those walls closing in on him day-by-day until he can't breathe, sensations so strong enough that he wonders whether his alternate-future self hasn't somehow transmitted those memories backwards through space and time.
He suspects he must have lost it eventually during those fifty years, and Teal'c's too kind to tell him that part.
Cam thinks about it again when O'Neill makes him the offer. It's not really a surprise--the SG-1 he'd fought to join is gone now, scattered across two galaxies, and Sam's had her own ship for six months. It's the natural next step if he wants to make general. And he does. Most days.
But narrow grey corridors crowd his thoughts when he looks at the paperwork, and it takes a long moment and a couple of deep breaths before he can bring himself to accept the offer.
The next morning, Cam takes his Mustang out of the city limits, west to Green Mountain Falls and open air and tree-lined trails.
He brings his running shoes.
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K is for Keraunophobia
by rinkafic
When he was a child and a storm came in the night, Cameron's mother would come to his room and hold him. Momma would cuddle him and sing his favorite songs until the thunder and lightning stopped, or he fell asleep. On those rare occasions when he was still awake at storm's end, she would tuck him in and try to comfort him with stories of angels bowling in heaven. But the next time a storm came, he would cry for her again. Even the humorous image of halo-wearing, toga clad angels frolicking at a bowling alley didn't ease his fears.
When he got to middle school and he still huddled under the covers or in a corner quaking with fear at the first crack of thunder, his mom and dad took him to a psychiatrist to try to help him. With the doctor's patient help, he slowly learned ways to cope with his fear, ways to carry on through the storm without running and hiding. But the fear never went away. He was always nervous in a storm.
The big test of his fairly well honed coping mechanisms came when he got to basic training after college and had to be out marching with his squad in a downpour. Savage and dangerous lightning flashed across the sky and thunder bouncing off the mountains that surrounded the camp. He managed to hold it together. Thankfully, his squad was off duty the next day and he was able to settle his nerves that night by tossing back more than a few brewskis.
Once he became a pilot, being closer to the storm, flying through them, and especially being able to fly above them helped to settle his fear. Slowly over his time in flight school and his early years in the Air Force, he was able to cope with the stress brought on by storms without the need of alcohol to dull his nerves. No one suspected he had once been debilitated by a little light and noise.
He still didn't like storms. Not at all. But he could deal with the fear.
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L is for Learning
by aelfgyfu_mead
The infirmary hummed quietly--not at all the level of noise Cam would have expected with every bed in sight filled. He wanted noise--something, anything to pull him back from remembering how the whole mission went to hell from the moment he pushed what he thought was just a damned light switch. The low voices and occasional groan acted as a soundtrack to his mental replay of everything that happened after Khalek fell out of the stasis pod, every wrong choice he'd made, every opportunity he'd missed. He still felt dizzy from being thrown into a wall, but vertigo and nausea weren't enough to distract him.
"You need this bed," Cam tried when the doctor finally reached him. "You don't need to have me laying around the infirmary when you got all these seriously injured people."
He wasn't sure if she actually corrected him to "lying" before Lam looked up from his chart, or if his concussed brain just imagined that bit.
"Nice try, Colonel," the doctor told him humorlessly. "You need this bed as much as anyone else in this area, and more than the people I've let go. You're staying here, under observation, until tomorrow morning."
"Hey, I was in good enough shape to shoot the bad guy!" Was he trying to convince her, or trying to convince himself he'd done enough?
"I heard that Khalek stopped your bullets, and it was Dr. Jackson's that took him out." He got the hint of a smile this time, which normally would have cheered him.
Cam went through the motions of playing along with humor. "Naw--once Jackson hit him the first time, he couldn't stop me any more. Landed every shot, right in his chest."
"Chest?" Lam looked genuinely surprised, even lowering his chart. "You were at point-blank range against a nearly ascended being, and you didn't take a head shot?"
Huh. She had a point there, Cam had to admit. Then again, Jackson hadn't gone for the head, either. And why was the doctor asking him this?
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M is for Mortality
by da_angel729
One, two, three, he counts every scar on his skin, and wishes there weren't so many.
The biggest is a jagged thin line down his leg, from knee to mid calf. He hates it and loves it, and it is both his worst scar and his best.
It nearly ended his career, and his life. And it got him into the Stargate program.
It doesn't cause him pain, now. It did, before the therapy, and the surgery, and he--and his doctors--are still surprised he regained the full use of it.
Cam just smiles when people see it, ignores the looks, the whispers, and doesn't say anything. Doesn't admit that he knows he's lucky to be walking, and alive, after that crash.
He loves the Air Force, and the SGC, and all it represents. Can't imagine being anywhere else. He doesn't mind seeing the scar, or when others notice it.
It reminds him he's alive.
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N Is for What Do You Call Him?
by campylobacter
"Spearhead member, I did not copy your last." Reynolds moans and sets down his radio. "Can't get a twenty on any of my team through this EM interference. And when I can pick up anything, everyone sounds like a prepubescent robot low on batteries."
"Lemme give it a shot." Cam adjusts his earpiece and thumbs on his radio. "Sierra Golf Uno, this is your leader. Report."
Leave it to the OCD types to twitch whenever he bends protocol. Colonel Reynolds isn't that type, but SG-1 hadn't been apprised of the whole Spearhead Leader-Spearhead One-Two-Three protocol before backup arrived.
(Something) Cam, can't disable (something something) worse (something something) over. Even through the static and distortion he can tell whose voice it is; she's the only one who usually calls him Cam.
"Sam, advise you hold tight and we'll send Sierra Golf Three. Repeat, hold tight, sending backup. Over."
I copy that, Cam.
"Colonel Carter's stationed here," Cam points to a meander in the river on the hasty map printout from the UAV.
Reynolds nods and clicks on his radio. "Spearhead One, eighty-six the northwest route and head south for the cliff overhang. Repeat, cancel northwest route, head south..."
(Something something) ambush (something) cluster(something) some help, Mitchell. The voice is deep and slow, like it's being delayed by a black hole, but with weird, fast whines on random syllables. Yet only one SG-1 member calls him the same thing General O'Neill calls him.
"Jackson's in trouble." Cam shakes his head; he thought he'd stationed the archaeologist at the safest vantage point. "T-man, you got a clear line on Jackson's hostiles?"
Cameron (something) Muscles hostage (something something something) half klick downstream.
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O is for Optimism
by sg_fignewton
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.
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P is for Pie
by staranise
"It's a pastry blender, Daniel," Cam said.
Daniel gave the device one more slightly-dubious look, then set it back in the baking drawer. After a minute he dislodged a spatula from a jumble of cookie cutters and passed it over to Cam.
"Point of a pastry blender," Cam said, as he poured the wet ingredients into the flour and attacked them vigorously with the spatula, "is to introduce the flour and butter thorough through the mix, but not enough to make dough. That way you don't get pie crust that tastes like leather." He paused for a minute to wipe sticky dough off the spatula with a butterknife. "Unlike this bad boy, which is leavened. I really don't recommend pizza on pie crust, come to think of it."
"Cereal grains have ten thousand years of history," Daniel said casually, as Cam worked. "Though the ancient Greeks considered pastry a guilty pleasure, if they ate it at all. There's a disparaging reference to the Thracians in the fourth century BC as 'butter-eaters'. It was a barbarian's dish, probably due to the difficulty of keeping butter in the Athenian climate."
"Huh." Cam put a wet cloth over the bowl of pizza dough and set it on the windowsill. "So much for baklava. Guess there's something to be said for civilization after all. When's Teal'c showing up? He said his--ah--that thing has to go in the oven by four, and I've got a pecan pie in the freezer that I want to put in after it."
"Ansciaphras," Daniel said smoothly. "Pickled leaf vegetables. Quite tasty, actually. We got the recipe from the Argosians. Trips there are much less eventful when we know what they're cooking in the food."
"Well," Cam said brightly after digesting that for a quiet moment, "More dishes the merrier. It's nice that he wants to contribute."
Daniel folded his arms on the counter. "Mitchell, I worry about you sometimes."
"Don't know if you've noticed yet, Jackson," Cam said conspiratorially, leaning over, "but unlike you, I was told to keep my lip buttoned as a child. You dazzle 'em with brilliance, sure, but you'd be surprised as hell what you can get out of people with niceness and a little pie."
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Q is for Quiet
by kayim
For the most part, Cameron Mitchell hates the quiet.
Silence reminds him being in the hospital, after the F-302 crash. By virtue of his rank, he was given a private room. By virtue of the extent of his injuries, he was given a wide berth. Doctors and nurses came in like clockwork, prodding and poking, offering reassuring lies, keeping their whispered doubts to themselves. Occasionally a friend would visit, but conversations hung awkwardly in the air between them -- how do you reminisce about old football games when one of you may never walk again?
But in between those visits, there was quiet. Just him, alone with his regrets and fears, the memories of the crash keeping him awake in the dark.
And then, after barely making it through that with his sanity in tact, SG1 came into his life, completely and utterly shattered the silence around him.
Sam, with her constant theorising that goes way above his head. Jackson, with more knowledge than any one person should ever have. Vala, who just never stops talking. And Teal'c. Okay, so maybe Teal'c's not so much with the silence-destroying, but his presence is enough to fill the empty void.
The sounds of gunfire and yells for cover. Alarm bells and warning klaxons. The unmistakable music of the Stargate dialling.
He can't imagine his life without the sounds of them.
Except for those precious few moments when he is inside the wormhole. Complete nothingness, for less than a single breath, but pure, unadulterated silence. A perfect instant. No memories, no regrets, no fears. Just quiet.
It's hard to come by, and he can't help but appreciate it, but still, for the most part, Cameron Mitchell hates the quiet.
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R is for Running
by crazedturkey
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
There were days when that would be the only sound Cam would hear.
It would echo down the hallways, bouncing off the metal ceilings, almost seeming to come up behind him on the endless circuit.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
When he was younger, sometimes Cam felt bad about the running. There was his dad, stuck on the porch in that horrible chair, unable to feel let alone move his legs.
It was a complicated guilt that Cam still hadn't reconciled even many years later. But it disappeared when he was on the road. Somehow when he was on the road, everything dissolved. Everything reduced. Everything centred to just that sound.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
The time in the hospital was like torture. Cam was terrified, petrified, that he would lose it, lose the road. Lose the rhythm.
Outwardly he was the picture of calm, the model of an active, engaged patient. Working hard on his physical therapy. Positive about his recovery.
Inwardly he was certain he would end up like his father.
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S if for Neither Stars Nor Bars
by sg_wonderland
Cam could have flown home; in fact, he very nearly did. But there was something about that flat open road that called to him. His dad used to joke that it was the 'prairie boy' in him; that somewhere deep within, he still held a genetic stamp of bravely crossing those Western plains in a Conestoga wagon. If it had been summer, he would have taken the bike but he settled for his Mustang with the windows wide open and the heat turned up, his foot so heavy on the accelerator that he was a state trooper's dream-come-true. Even at that speed, he felt like he was standing still or, worse yet, losing ground.
He didn't know if he was racing toward nothing or in a head-long rush to get away from something.
***
He embraced the normalcy of his family farm almost desperately; Kansas seemed a million miles away from the SGC. Relaxing into the quiet, he let his mother fuss over him, let his dad beat him at poker, took long walks through the barren fields. In no time, the fragile wheat and corn would be planted, would poke through the earth to seek the sun.
"So, are you going to tell me what's wrong?" Cam squinted up as his dad worked his way through the dusty barn to sit on the bench seat salvaged from a long abandoned truck.
"Sounds like you need to change the air filter," Cam shifted the Tootsie Pop in his mouth as he tinkered with the car.
"Not the car, son. What's wrong with you?" He gave his son a stern look. "You haven't started smoking again, have you?"
Cam toasted him with the lollipop. "That's what these things are for. And there's nothing wrong with me."
"You drop in unexpected. You're not eating, you're not sleeping and you've walked from here to Omaha and back." His voice softened. "Talk to me, boy."
Cam started to deny it again then dropped his head onto the car. "Something happened, Dad. Something really, really bad."
"Tell me what you can." Frank patted the seat beside him.
He flopped down beside his father, giving his dirty hands most of his attention. "We lost a guy."
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T is for Top Gun
by cleothemuse
"I mean, what are the odds of that, huh?"
Major Cameron Mitchell waved at the bartender, signaling for a beer for his buddy. "You got me, Red. Maybe the brass just decided to draw names from a hat, or threw darts at a personnel listing." He grinned to show he was joking, but the truth was, he didn't really care.
What indeed were the odds that they would end up being recruited for the same top-secret training mission in Colorado? Cam and James "Red" Redmond had been classmates in Joint Specialized Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, and were fierce competitors in an already highly-competitive program. Adding to their rivalry were their differing branches: Red was Navy, while Cam was Air Force. By the time they'd earned their wings, the two men had become good friends, and celebrated their new postings by getting rip-roaring drunk the night before Cam left for advanced training in Arizona, and Red for the same in Mississippi. They didn't expect to see one another again.
A little over a year ago, Cam was involved in a mission over Afghanistan that had ended in disaster due to faulty intelligence. Having been the man to drop the bomb on a convoy later reported to have been full of refugees, Cam had been tempted to resign. After a long talk with his dad, he decided against leaving the Air Force outright, but put in a request to transition to a test pilot program.
A week later, Cam accepted a position in a new program codenamed "Kipling", but it was a year and a promotion later before his transfer orders came through, during which time he had been convinced funding had failed to surface. The same day his papers arrived, he received a call from Red, who'd tracked him down to tell him he'd been reassigned to Peterson Air Force Base "to show you plumbers what a real stick looks like." They compared notes and discovered they were both on Kipling, though neither pilot had been told anything about the new program other than when and where to report.
So, here they were, the Saturday before the start of Kipling, and both had already put away a number of drinks swapping stories. They were dressed in street clothes, but the bar they were recommended was a common hang-out for off-duty military personnel, and half the room had the sort of regulation haircuts that identified them to the mostly-female civilian barflys. With Red now plied with enough liquid courage to chat up the cute brunette who'd just squeezed in next to him, Cam slid off his stool to check out the action at the pool tables.
A statuesque blonde was holding court, with a stack of bills piled on the edge of the table while she bent over, carefully lining up a shot. Ignoring the leering comments her shapely posterior was earning her, she broke the rack expertly, sending both a stripe and a solid into pockets. With the table still open, she then lined up her next shot, pocketing two more stripes. Three decisive shots later, all of the striped balls were cleared, and she was calling a corner pocket for the eight ball, before banking it twice and sinking it, too.
"I should've known better," moaned one of the guys standing near the table, shaking his head and hanging up his own cue.
"I did warn you, Captain," the blonde grinned, folding her winnings and jamming the cash into her jeans pocket.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered meekly, letting his buddies lead him off with good-natured jibes.
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U is for Undefeated
by lolmac
In 1934, Glenn Cunningham was the fastest man alive.
In 1908, Cunningham was a bed-ridden cripple, both legs fire-shriveled, one foot toeless.
Cam thinks about Cunningham a lot. Mostly in the mornings, during the part of the morning when he has energy to spare for thinking.
Cam's gotten very good at focusing. It's become his most important survival skill. He likes to focus on the heel of his left foot, because by 10 am, that's the only part of his legs that doesn't hurt.
For as much of the day as he can, he focuses. He focuses on the end of the treadmill, walking and running and hobbling towards it. He'll crawl if he has to. He'll get there. That's where the Gate is. He focuses: he puts the Gate at the end of the treadmill. Unlike other treadmills, he knows he's going to get to the end of this one. He just has to keep moving, keep pushing. When the pain and exhaustion darken the room in front of his eyes, when he can't see the Gate any more, he keeps on moving towards it anyway. He knows it's there.
Like Cam, Cunningham was from Kansas. They get some crazy storms in Kansas, summer and winter. Cam's seen some amazing rainbows there, blazing across the sky after a bad storm. Pots of gold. There's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. And by all the gods of brutal pain and sacrifice, he's going to get there.
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V is for Video Games
by gingasaur
It is by no means a difficult game. Cute, cuddly animals ripping each other's throats out in crimson showers of pixelated blood is bizarre, but it doesn't take an engineer to play it.
So why does Cam keep watching his fuzzy boxing hare get pummeled by unblockable kicks to his sweet little face?
It isn't simply loss at this point: it's a systematic disassembling of all his hard-earned credibility. How is he supposed to get any kind of respect around here when he can't even coordinate the proper punches to take the evil Mr. Bunnykins' head off?
"You're supposed to play Teal'c when?"
"Thursday."
Siler laughs, perhaps louder than he meant to. He clears his throat. "Sorry, sir."
Cam waves a dismissive hand. "No, I deserve it after that thrashing. How the hell did you make those energy beams-"
But Siler just shrugs helplessly; he'll be overdue for a scheduled maintenance if he stays any longer.
"Good luck, Colonel," he says on his way out.
Cam rubs a hand over his face. Time to go back to training mode.
***
He hones his skills against fluffy computerized combatants, but these battles against artificial intelligence just don't compare to human unpredictability. He needs another person to play with him or the precious remnants of his ego will be smeared across the floor come Thursday.
Luckily, he knows two surefire ways to get Sam out of her lab: by dragging her, or by simply pushing her buttons.
"I'm not afraid you'll beat me."
Bingo.
"Well then," Cam taunts. "Come play."
Sam glares at him. "If I do, you have to leave me alone for the rest of the day."
"Done."
"I mean it. I'll eat dinner when I'm ready."
"You got it," Cam assures her. "Let's go."
He's practiced his heart out. He's ready for this. Sam's declaration that she hasn't played in a long time is comforting, too.
"Ready?" Cam asks.
"Ready," Sam sighs.
They begin.
And then they end, within ten seconds of starting, because Sam's big-eyed, bushy-tailed bunny beats the stuffing out of Cam's with a dazzling flurry of punches that not only activates that energy beam thing, but knocks his rabbit clear across the stage and back again. He settles in a smoking heap in the center of the screen while Sam's rabbit wiggles her nose triumphantly.
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W is for Wait What
by draegonhawke
They gathered in the briefing room with no idea what to expect, hoping it would be news about Vala. Landry strolled in with a stack of folders as they were getting situated, looking like he knew something the rest of them didn't. As per usual.
"General," Daniel greeted. "What's this about?"
Landry took his seat, and tapped the edges of the folders against the table. "While the SGC is continuing to look into the whereabouts of Ms. Mal Doran, SG-1 has something somewhat more immediate to take care of," he said.
"More immediate," Daniel said. Landry looked at him.
"Much as I wish I could give you something constructive to do regarding Vala's disappearance, all our leads have gone cold," he said. "So, yes. More immediate. I need you to patch up a rather large potential embarrassment for the SGC."
Sam raised her eyebrows. "An 'embarrassment', sir?"
"Potential. Probably just a misunderstanding. It has to do with Colonel Mitchell," Landry said, and looked across at him. He didn't seem overly concerned, though. More... quietly amused.
Cam, who had been idly toying with a wooden pencil, looked up. "Me? Why? What did I do?"
"There have been certain aspersions cast on your appointment to lead SG-1," Landry said, with an expression that said Someday, we'll look back on this and laugh. Well, you'll look back on this and laugh. I'm already laughing. "You know, the usual. Nepotism. That sort of thing."
"Nepotism?" Daniel asked, before Cam could say anything. Landry held up a hand.
"Hear me out," he said. "A couple of the lab boys have been spending their time mapping out the genomes of everyone in the SGC." He flipped the folders onto the table. "And apparently, they started with all the members of SG-1." He gave a quiet, curtailed chuckle. "I think the rationale was, 'they're all freaks and mutants anyway.'"
"Charmed," Cam said, and took one of the folders. "What's that have to do with me?"
"Well, take a look," Landry said.
They did.
Daniel paged through a couple of sheets, then paused. "Wait a minute, why is Jack's information in here?"
"Members of SG-1, past and present," Landry said. "Apparently General O'Neill left a few vials of blood in Infirmary storage when he left for Washington."
"Uh-oh," Sam said. Cam glanced at her.
"'Uh-oh'?"
"And, she gets it," Landry said, and raised his eyebrows at Cameron. "Colonel Mitchell, you may want to compare your own record with General O'Neill's."
"Okay," Cam said, and pulled out the relevant pages. "And what am I looking for?"
Then he trailed off.
Teal'c, beside him, arched an eyebrow.
"For those of you who skipped out on your highschool biology," Landry said, "what you're looking at there is two distinctly related individuals. Colonel Mitchell? If our lab was certified by the AABB, that right there would be admissible in a court of law as evidence that Jack O'Neill was your father."
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X is for X-ray
by madders_ahatter
"Hold still, I just need to take a couple more," Dr Lam instructed Cam as she adjusted the x-ray machine.
Holding still wasn't a problem. It was moving that hurt like the devil, but he wasn't about to tell her that.
"What's the matter, didn't you get my best side?" Cam gave her his most charming smile.
Carolyn shot back a smile of her own. She wasn't entirely immune to the colonel's charisma, but neither was she about to let him get the upper hand.
"I didn't think you had a 'best' side, Colonel Mitchell," she countered, with a slight quirk of her eyebrows that led him to wonder if he'd just been complimented or insulted.
She finished up and gave him a nod. "Okay, you can relax. I'll just check these for secondary injuries."
Cam tried, but relaxation didn't come easy. He allowed himself a grimace while the Doc was distracted. Even so, he was counting his blessings. He'd been through far worse than this and come out okay. He cast a glance at the pink scar tissue on his left side, a souvenir from his near-fatal run in with the Sodan. He could feel the familiar aching in his legs that returned every time he remembered how close he'd come to being crippled for life. A deep breath banished the memory. The ache would fade momentarily.
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Y is for YouTube
by sidlj
It's the nature of the internet. You surf, you click, you follow so many links you're not sure how you wind up wherever it is you find yourself. Cam starts out his Sunday morning reading the front webpage of his hometown newspaper. Maybe something there made him nostalgic (go figure) and so he searches YouTube for some favorite old songs. Nearly an hour later, coffee mug long empty, Cam clicks a vid link almost at random.
He nearly falls out of his chair.
That's Jackson. Different glasses, longer hair, more-than-mildly inebriated. Singing karaoke. And that's not even the wildest part.
He's not alone. There's Teal'c. In a cowboy hat. Getting down.
"I am hallucinating," Cam announces to himself. He looks accusingly at his empty mug. He looks at the monitor. He hears a very familiar voice coming through his speakers.
"Shake it, Daniel!"
"Ah!" Cam looks to see who posted the video. He busts out laughing. "Astrosammiekins?"
He's still laughing as he cranks up the volume and leans back, hands clasped behind his head, to enjoy the show.
Won't you take me to… Funkytown?
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Z is for Zero
by stringertheory
Some cultures don't have a zero, don't have a concept or a signifier for nothing. Cam remembers reading that somewhere, or seeing it in a documentary. Or maybe it was Jackson who first told him.
Jackson had said something about a culture -- the Babylonians or the Persians or some long-dead society on P-whatever (or, hell, maybe all three) -- not having a zero. It had been interesting, but considering that he'd brought up the fact while they were battling a deceptive countdown -- "...which may or may not have a zero -- based on the markings, this society appears to be related to the Babylonians, who had no symbol for zero -- so either we have five or four--" "Jackson!" -- interest had quickly evaporated in favor of self-preservation.
The memory rushes back to Cam as he shifts his grip on the yoke, tension coiled in every square inch of his body. Around him, the Odyssey crew stands in tense silence as the ship glides toward the tiny speck of white that is Sam, hanging in space near the Supergate. With one eye on Sam and the other on the gauges in front of him, Cam tries to imagine having no way to name the entire concept that zero defines.
Zero. Zilch. Zip. He cannot calculate his life without zero.
He'd been a good kid, though a wild streak near the end of high school had tarnished that reputation. His mother's heavy sighs and shouted warnings hadn't done much to tame him; the call of his last carefree days was too tempting in light of everything that was looming ahead of him. But his father met him on the front porch in the dark of a Thursday morning and gave Cam the one bit of advice that could turn him around.
"The Air Force has a zero tolerance policy, son," he said quietly while they sat in rocking chairs, the porch boards creaking beneath them and the crickets singing like the church choir.
That conversation helped Cam stay centered for years, kept him from pushing back when authority pushed him on. The finality of zero tolerance was a warning siren against bad decisions, resounding inside his head in his father's voice. It kept him focused on his dreams instead of the heady lure of recklessness that sometimes rose inside him, usually at the worst times. Even today, the de facto leader of the world's most elite military team, traveling through space and time and whatever else there is to travel through, sitting at the controls of the most expensive aircraft ever built, the warning of zero tolerance still echoes in the back of his mind.
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Enjoy some 21,000 words of Cameron Mitchell! Story lengths range from 150 words to just under 3,000. Ratings range from G to PG-13. Expect spoilers throughout the entire series, including canon (AU) character deaths.
Story text is as written by the authors, but minor HTML coding has been changed (removal of smart quotes, for example) and scene breaks have been altered to allow for more uniformity in page style.
Shorter ficlets are posted here in full, with links to the author's individual LJ for feeback; due to LJ posting constraints, longer fic is excerpted, with links to the author's journal for the full story. The entire anthology is posted in full, without excerpts, over at Dreamwidth.
Readers are strongly encouraged to follow the links to the authors' individual journals and leave feedback.
A is for Antarctica
by penknife
The thing Cam remembers most clearly about Antarctica isn't the actual crash. He remembers trying to eject, wrestling with the controls as they went down, but the transition from crashing to crashed is lost somewhere, a black box he can't open.
He remembers thinking that somebody should close that goddamned window, and then understanding that the front windshield of the F-302 was broken. He remembers he kept trying to move his legs. He remembers pretending that it wasn't important that he couldn't; it was an ice field out there, where was he planning to go?
He remembers that eventually it really didn't seem important anymore. He'd stopped feeling so cold, and even though he knew that was bad, he was tired of shivering, so he wasn't complaining. It seemed like the best thing to do might be to just close his eyes, except for the radio chatter that kept waking him up, reminding him that he hadn't finished the job.
He remembers when he understood that the radio chatter had changed: They're coming from the surface. I don't know what they are. They're cutting the enemy fleet to shreds! My God! It's beautiful!
They're Ancient weapons. It's SG-1. They found what they were looking for!
The enemy ships are being destroyed! They're just exploding everywhere we look!
He remembers his satisfaction then: they won, so it was all worth it. He understood perfectly well that he was going to die -- he didn't feel cold anymore, didn't feel anything -- but that didn't seem scary anymore. It was easier than he'd ever imagined. So this is how you do it, he thought; you just close your eyes and say goodnight.
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B is for Boondocks
by lolmac
It was Cameron Mitchell's twenty-third trip through the Gate, so the number wasn't anything special or different. What was different was the landscape.
Teal'c looked impassive. Carter looked distracted. Jackson looked annoyed. Cam looked around and drew a nice deep breath, full of the smell of green grasses and dusty earth. Under the wide empty sky, rippling waves of grass ran out to the horizon in every direction from the Gate, a lone point of stone and metal in a sea of green and brown and bronze and gold.
Carter pulled out her compass and the widget-o-meter she'd developed for calibrating terrestrial compasses to work with extraterrestrial planetary magnetic fields. Teal'c began to wade through the hip-deep grass, heading unerringly, Cam assumed, for the spot where the UVA had splatted when its instrumentation was knocked out by that same unusually strong planetary magnetic field. Jackson and Cam followed the clear trail of bent and crushed grasses to where the MALP had gotten stuck.
Cam gave a cursory glance at the wheels and couldn't see any reason for the breakdown. Well, as long as the planet wasn't hostile, Landry would send out technicians and retrieve the Air Force's Very Expensive Property. He got a good hold on the flanges, scrambled and clambered on top of the thing and looked around.
Jackson squinted up at him. "See anything?"
"Nope." Cam pivoted slowly. "Nothing but miles and miles of . . . miles and miles."
"No trees, huh?" Jackson's grin had that private, in-joke look to it.
"Trees?"
"That was a joke of Jack's. I don't think he ever put it in the reports." A shrug. "Nothing at all? You'd think there'd have to be something . . . I mean, there's a Gate, so . . . "
Cam finished his pirouette and pointed. "Over there. Long way off, but there's a kind of a shadow. That's trees. In country like this, where there's trees, there's water. And where there's water, there might be a settlement."
Jackson brightened, then narrowed his eyes. "How far off?"
"Bit of a walk. Nice day for it, though."
"Are you always this cheerful?"
"Hell, it could always be worse. Like I like to remind myself," Cam said as he hopped down off the MALP, "at least I'm not in Kansas any more."
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C is for Chinese
Understanding
by camshaft22
Cameron Mitchell, leader of SG-1 leaned forward and pressed the elevator button, feeling exhausted and irritated. The IOA was really starting to piss him off and they didn't even realize what utter fools they were. He stepped onto the elevator just as the Chinese IOA representative Chen Xiaoyi entered.
"Colonel," she greeted.
"Representative," Cam told her politely.
All of a sudden, the power flickered off and the elevator stopped. Cam rolled his eyes, annoyed at the universe.
"It should be ok. They'll have everything back to normal soon, Representative."
"I hope so, Colonel."
Cam nodded and looked at her. He took a deep breath and started speaking in Mandarin. "我知道都不会有问题，尤其是你，但你所说的是非常粗鲁，非常不专业。我能讲流利的普通话和流利的广东话和您的建议，我是白痴，不适合我的位置Jackson博士是多余的."
She looked briefly surprised. "你有我真诚的道歉，上校。我不会再次犯这样的错误."
Cam nodded as the power came back on and they rose to the surface.
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D is for Destiny
Patterns of Destiny
by traycer_
History used to be important to Cameron Mitchell. His whole world was shaped by past events that played out in the books he had to study in school. Christopher Columbus, John Hancock, Adolph Hitler and Theodore Roosevelt were just a few of the names he remembered - all people who played a part in the historical flows of time. But now, as he stood on the threshold of a new era, history seemed to be a moot point. Some of it hadn't even happened yet.
He stared at the bombers that lined the tarmac, waiting his turn to take a spin, wondering at the irony of his life. He was a still a fighter, no doubt about that, but on a whole different level. Where before he was fighting aliens and soaring through the galaxy, now he was reduced to flying bombers preparing for a war only he knew was coming.
Things could be worse, he told himself for what seemed like the thousandth time. Ba'al could have succeeded in his plan to change history. Cam smiled grimly at that thought. That was a great victory in his mind. Ten years of his life spent preparing for that moment and revenge really was a sweet feeling, especially after wiping the arrogant smirk off the Goa'uld's face just before he put a bullet in his brain.
The last of the Ba'al's was dead, but Cam was now trapped here in a past that he had no wish to be a part of. He sent a half-hearted salute to his friend Ben who then took off down the runway, engines roaring as the bomber lifted its nose toward the heavens.
History be damned, Cam thought, as a thrill of adrenalin rushed through him. The bombers were antiquated compared to what he was used to flying, but at least he was still flying. Can't beat that.
He watched, his eyes squinting as sunlight shone through the sunglasses he wore, until Ben was out of sight. Being a part of the past sometimes had its advantages, Cam thought with a grin. His friend talked occasionally about his son, George, and even though he could never come right out and tell him, Cam would always have one up on Ben Hammond.
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E is for Exertion
by redbyrd_sgfic
Mitchell's legs burned with fatigue and buckled as he tried to force them to move, but he was pushing himself up again, even before the physical therapist could say, "Let's try once more, Colonel." He'd always been pig-stubborn, as his granma used to say, but since the crash he'd found reserves of obdurate will that sometimes surprised even him. 'Adversity builds character' he thought. 'And why do we need character? To cope with adversity.' His dad had told him that once. He grasped the bars and tried to force his shaking legs to move, accepting the pain. Pain was good. Far better than the terrifying lack of sensation after the accident- he pushed thoughts of the past behind him, and focused forward. His left foot moved, dragging and he shifted to put weight on it, looking past the end of the parallel bars. He had O'Neill's word- "Get well soon. And when you do, you can do anything you want, and I mean… professionally… anything you want." Bastard probably thought he was safe making that promise. He remembered the doctor telling him he was unlikely to walk again. O'Neill must have known that. Weren't they both going to be surprised...
The trees were wobbling gently somewhere past his feet, and someone was prodding him in the ribs with a stick. Staff. Jolan. Sodan warrior. The last few days came swimming back. The fight at the Gate. Learning the Sodan fighting style. Or not. He rolled away from the stick, feeling the bruises where Jolan had thrown him down and came to his feet. "Show me that one again," he said, in his breeziest and most annoying tone. The trees gave a final lurch and his vision sharpened. Not concussed, just knocked silly for a moment, he judged.
Jolan frowned. "You are slow and weak."
Mitchell smiled. "But persistent." Mitchell knew that the advantages were all with the Sodan, and that his best chance lay in talking his way out of this, not fighting. But continuing to fight meant the opportunity to talk. And also--Mitchell had never been a believer in odds. Time enough to deal with failure if he failed. It was balancing act- stay flexible, choose a course, then pursue it without holding back. PT, qualifying for gate travel, putting the band back together- poor odds had never yet stopped Mitchell from trying. He was determined that Jolan was going to become another of the long list of people Cameron Mitchell had surprised in the past. "Show me that one again," he repeated, and shifted his weight to block the Sodan's attack.
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F is F-302
by 11am_street
Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell would never forget when his first briefing on the Stargate Program. He has just recently returned from a particularly horrible mission, which had resulted in a terrible injury for one of his friends and was, once again, considering resigning from the Air Force.
Mitchell recalled his amazement upon being briefed on the project, on the variety of missions the SG teams had gone trough from first contact with new races to finding or even creating new technology to fight against a powerful enemy. Cameron particularly remembered reading about SG-1 and thinking how he would love to be part of that team. However, it was when he saw the F-302 fighter-interceptors that Mitchell felt he found his true calling.
And, as he lay broken in the cockpit of the F-302 crashed on the ground in Antarctica, he couldn't help but think: "It was worth it."
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G is for Gate
The One, Two Story
by jedibuttercup
One, Cam thinks with a touch of wonder, as he steps for the first time into the shimmering disc of an event horizon.
He's read about it. Seen pictures, in files husbanded for self-reward after endless rounds of physical therapy. Heard stories from those who've taken this step before him. But none of that compares to actually making the journey: to crossing millions of miles in the time it takes to take one breath.
He shivers as he steps out the other end, drinking in the air of an entire other world. He might as well have put on a pair of seven league boots; it's that magical, and that much a fulfillment of an impossible dream. Even if he's not so much on SG-1 as he is SG-1 at present... he's just stepped through a Stargate to the cradle of an entire alien civilization. How amazing is that?
He takes a moment, staring around at the ornate columns of Dakara and the robed Jaffa with the gold tattoo waiting for him, taking a mental snapshot for posterity. Teal'c, in his native setting: somehow even more impressive than he'd seemed in camo and Kevlar back on Earth. Though there's nothing even remotely yielding about him, despite his nod of welcome-- yeah, Cam's not going to get the answer he wants from him today.
But that's all right. Cam knows better than anyone the value of persistence; he wouldn't even be there if he didn't. Showing up is about affirming his intention, not winning. It would have been nice, mind you; but he's just spent two years living life one milestone at a time, commemorating each setback and success with inches forward on his mental metric. It's nothing new.
He enjoys the conversation as long as it lasts, then returns to the Gate and watches the event horizon whoosh into being.
"Two", he murmurs, remembering the way it felt under his hand: warm, living metal, relic and symbol of a civilization long gone to dust.
The journey of a thousand miles. He smiles wryly to himself and crosses into the blue.
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H is for History
by gategremlyn
The Odyssey was a big ship, a damn big ship, but not big enough that he couldn't hear Jackson complaining about his ill treatment all the way back to the infirmary. Cam covered his smile with his hand, not sure if he was allowed to smile at a general even if it was General Jack O'Neill.
"Daniel, get your ass back into bed."
"I just got out of bed."
"Which is why you now need to get back in it."
"Which is why-- That makes no sense, Jack."
"Mitchell?" General O'Neill turned around and Cam straightened up, wiping the smile off his face.
"Yes, sir?"
"Did I put you in command of SG-1?"
"Yes, sir." Cam wanted that to be a question, but under the circumstances he kept it a statement.
"Are you now or have you ever been in charge of SG-1?" O'Neill put up his free hand--the hand not currently keeping Jackson from escaping. "Let me rephrase that. Have you ever managed to be in charge of Doctor Daniel Jackson?"
"Jack! Leave the poor guy alone. You make it sound like he's my jailer."
"No, sir," Cam said. "I have never been in charge of SG-1 except on paper. And I've definitely never been in charge of Doctor Jackson. I don't think he's listened to a single order I've given since I started." That was no lie.
"Good," O'Neill said. "I'm glad it's not just me. I'd tell you to post a guard outside the infirmary, but I don't think we have the staff for it at the moment." With Cam's help, and with Jackson complaining every step of the way, they got a pale and shaking former prior into bed. O'Neill pulled up a chair and put his feet on the mattress. "Relieve me in four hours."
"Oh, for the love of.... Mitchell, he's kidding."
"I am not kidding. Now go get some shut-eye and a shower. We'll be here when you get back."
Cam kept a straight face and even managed a salute before he left.
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I is for Improv
by hummingfly67
"Improvise," Jackson's panicked voice hisses in their ears.
Cameron blinks once, thinking rapidly, and does as the man said. Hauling Vala into his arms, he ignores her indignant huff and plants his lips on her mouth. He shifts his weight forward to push her back into the rough stone wall they had been loitering near as they surveilled the drinking establishment their targets had entered several minutes ago. She responds immediately and enthusiastically, body suddenly pliant, yet Cameron senses no ulterior motive, merely co-operation and obedience. And most likely, a healthy dose of preservation.
One of her hands lands at his mid-back, the other chastely at his waist, and it takes him a chagrined second to realize she has cleverly positioned herself to be able to grab his gun if necessary. His own hands are nowhere near her gun. With a shift of his hips, he rectifies the matter, feeling Vala's lips twitch against his.
God knows he thinks of her as more of an annoying little sister than anything else now, but damn the woman can kiss. He is only human, and certain her instincts have long been to use all the weapons in her arsenal. It's quite the arsenal.
"ALL CLEAR! ALL CLEAR!" Jackson sounds peeved and slightly scandalized, and Cameron suspects the buzzing in his ear had probably been their teammate's call to stand down. Unintentionally ignored.
Cameron pulls away, not embarrassed to admit to himself it is a bit reluctantly, and meets Vala's laughing eyes.
Flashing him a flirty, wide-mouthed grin, she murmurs, "Someone's cranky."
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J is for Jello
by skieswideopen
SG-1 has a thing about Jell-O. It takes Cam a while to catch onto this, and longer still to decipher it--Teal'c's references to Jell-O wrestling don't help there--but he thinks he eventually figures it out, even if he doesn't quite understand it.
It starts with Teal'c looking at him disapprovingly when he sits down with his lunch.
"What?" Cam asks, a little defensive because Teal'c's disapproving eyebrow-raise is intimidating even when you know he won't actually do anything. Probably. (Cam still finds it kind of awesome that he's having lunch with SG-1--with the real SG-1--but there are days when they leave him wanting to tear out his hair.)
"Is that not the last bowl of blue Jell-o, Colonel Mitchell?"
"Maybe?" Cam wasn't actually paying that much attention; he'd mostly picked blue because there wasn't any green and he'd had red yesterday. Military food was nothing if not predictable.
"Sam likes the blue," Jackson explains, spoon paused halfway between soup and mouth.
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J is for Jogging
by skieswideopen
When Teal'c finally spills a few details about their fifty years aboard Odyssey--not many, mind you, and none of them the things Cam really wants to know, but he's curious enough that he'll take what he can get--it doesn't surprise him to learn that he spent a good chunk of time running through the empty corridors of the ship. Cam's always been a runner, always in motion. Running to think. Running to not-think. Running to escape whatever happened to be troubling him at the time. Except that there was no escape during those years on Odyssey, and Cam knows from experience that you can't really run on a ship anyway--too many sharp turns to get up to a proper speed--so he figures he really spent fifty years jogging.
He shudders at the thought. Five decades when jogging through dull grey metal corridors was the only forward movement he could get. Five decades of walls closing in tighter and tighter while he jogged and jogged and went nowhere, and he can imagine the slow suffocation of that experience, can feel those walls closing in on him day-by-day until he can't breathe, sensations so strong enough that he wonders whether his alternate-future self hasn't somehow transmitted those memories backwards through space and time.
He suspects he must have lost it eventually during those fifty years, and Teal'c's too kind to tell him that part.
Cam thinks about it again when O'Neill makes him the offer. It's not really a surprise--the SG-1 he'd fought to join is gone now, scattered across two galaxies, and Sam's had her own ship for six months. It's the natural next step if he wants to make general. And he does. Most days.
But narrow grey corridors crowd his thoughts when he looks at the paperwork, and it takes a long moment and a couple of deep breaths before he can bring himself to accept the offer.
The next morning, Cam takes his Mustang out of the city limits, west to Green Mountain Falls and open air and tree-lined trails.
He brings his running shoes.
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K is for Keraunophobia
by rinkafic
When he was a child and a storm came in the night, Cameron's mother would come to his room and hold him. Momma would cuddle him and sing his favorite songs until the thunder and lightning stopped, or he fell asleep. On those rare occasions when he was still awake at storm's end, she would tuck him in and try to comfort him with stories of angels bowling in heaven. But the next time a storm came, he would cry for her again. Even the humorous image of halo-wearing, toga clad angels frolicking at a bowling alley didn't ease his fears.
When he got to middle school and he still huddled under the covers or in a corner quaking with fear at the first crack of thunder, his mom and dad took him to a psychiatrist to try to help him. With the doctor's patient help, he slowly learned ways to cope with his fear, ways to carry on through the storm without running and hiding. But the fear never went away. He was always nervous in a storm.
The big test of his fairly well honed coping mechanisms came when he got to basic training after college and had to be out marching with his squad in a downpour. Savage and dangerous lightning flashed across the sky and thunder bouncing off the mountains that surrounded the camp. He managed to hold it together. Thankfully, his squad was off duty the next day and he was able to settle his nerves that night by tossing back more than a few brewskis.
Once he became a pilot, being closer to the storm, flying through them, and especially being able to fly above them helped to settle his fear. Slowly over his time in flight school and his early years in the Air Force, he was able to cope with the stress brought on by storms without the need of alcohol to dull his nerves. No one suspected he had once been debilitated by a little light and noise.
He still didn't like storms. Not at all. But he could deal with the fear.
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L is for Learning
by aelfgyfu_mead
The infirmary hummed quietly--not at all the level of noise Cam would have expected with every bed in sight filled. He wanted noise--something, anything to pull him back from remembering how the whole mission went to hell from the moment he pushed what he thought was just a damned light switch. The low voices and occasional groan acted as a soundtrack to his mental replay of everything that happened after Khalek fell out of the stasis pod, every wrong choice he'd made, every opportunity he'd missed. He still felt dizzy from being thrown into a wall, but vertigo and nausea weren't enough to distract him.
"You need this bed," Cam tried when the doctor finally reached him. "You don't need to have me laying around the infirmary when you got all these seriously injured people."
He wasn't sure if she actually corrected him to "lying" before Lam looked up from his chart, or if his concussed brain just imagined that bit.
"Nice try, Colonel," the doctor told him humorlessly. "You need this bed as much as anyone else in this area, and more than the people I've let go. You're staying here, under observation, until tomorrow morning."
"Hey, I was in good enough shape to shoot the bad guy!" Was he trying to convince her, or trying to convince himself he'd done enough?
"I heard that Khalek stopped your bullets, and it was Dr. Jackson's that took him out." He got the hint of a smile this time, which normally would have cheered him.
Cam went through the motions of playing along with humor. "Naw--once Jackson hit him the first time, he couldn't stop me any more. Landed every shot, right in his chest."
"Chest?" Lam looked genuinely surprised, even lowering his chart. "You were at point-blank range against a nearly ascended being, and you didn't take a head shot?"
Huh. She had a point there, Cam had to admit. Then again, Jackson hadn't gone for the head, either. And why was the doctor asking him this?
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M is for Mortality
by da_angel729
One, two, three, he counts every scar on his skin, and wishes there weren't so many.
The biggest is a jagged thin line down his leg, from knee to mid calf. He hates it and loves it, and it is both his worst scar and his best.
It nearly ended his career, and his life. And it got him into the Stargate program.
It doesn't cause him pain, now. It did, before the therapy, and the surgery, and he--and his doctors--are still surprised he regained the full use of it.
Cam just smiles when people see it, ignores the looks, the whispers, and doesn't say anything. Doesn't admit that he knows he's lucky to be walking, and alive, after that crash.
He loves the Air Force, and the SGC, and all it represents. Can't imagine being anywhere else. He doesn't mind seeing the scar, or when others notice it.
It reminds him he's alive.
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N Is for What Do You Call Him?
by campylobacter
"Spearhead member, I did not copy your last." Reynolds moans and sets down his radio. "Can't get a twenty on any of my team through this EM interference. And when I can pick up anything, everyone sounds like a prepubescent robot low on batteries."
"Lemme give it a shot." Cam adjusts his earpiece and thumbs on his radio. "Sierra Golf Uno, this is your leader. Report."
Leave it to the OCD types to twitch whenever he bends protocol. Colonel Reynolds isn't that type, but SG-1 hadn't been apprised of the whole Spearhead Leader-Spearhead One-Two-Three protocol before backup arrived.
(Something) Cam, can't disable (something something) worse (something something) over. Even through the static and distortion he can tell whose voice it is; she's the only one who usually calls him Cam.
"Sam, advise you hold tight and we'll send Sierra Golf Three. Repeat, hold tight, sending backup. Over."
I copy that, Cam.
"Colonel Carter's stationed here," Cam points to a meander in the river on the hasty map printout from the UAV.
Reynolds nods and clicks on his radio. "Spearhead One, eighty-six the northwest route and head south for the cliff overhang. Repeat, cancel northwest route, head south..."
(Something something) ambush (something) cluster(something) some help, Mitchell. The voice is deep and slow, like it's being delayed by a black hole, but with weird, fast whines on random syllables. Yet only one SG-1 member calls him the same thing General O'Neill calls him.
"Jackson's in trouble." Cam shakes his head; he thought he'd stationed the archaeologist at the safest vantage point. "T-man, you got a clear line on Jackson's hostiles?"
Cameron (something) Muscles hostage (something something something) half klick downstream.
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O is for Optimism
by sg_fignewton
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.
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P is for Pie
by staranise
"It's a pastry blender, Daniel," Cam said.
Daniel gave the device one more slightly-dubious look, then set it back in the baking drawer. After a minute he dislodged a spatula from a jumble of cookie cutters and passed it over to Cam.
"Point of a pastry blender," Cam said, as he poured the wet ingredients into the flour and attacked them vigorously with the spatula, "is to introduce the flour and butter thorough through the mix, but not enough to make dough. That way you don't get pie crust that tastes like leather." He paused for a minute to wipe sticky dough off the spatula with a butterknife. "Unlike this bad boy, which is leavened. I really don't recommend pizza on pie crust, come to think of it."
"Cereal grains have ten thousand years of history," Daniel said casually, as Cam worked. "Though the ancient Greeks considered pastry a guilty pleasure, if they ate it at all. There's a disparaging reference to the Thracians in the fourth century BC as 'butter-eaters'. It was a barbarian's dish, probably due to the difficulty of keeping butter in the Athenian climate."
"Huh." Cam put a wet cloth over the bowl of pizza dough and set it on the windowsill. "So much for baklava. Guess there's something to be said for civilization after all. When's Teal'c showing up? He said his--ah--that thing has to go in the oven by four, and I've got a pecan pie in the freezer that I want to put in after it."
"Ansciaphras," Daniel said smoothly. "Pickled leaf vegetables. Quite tasty, actually. We got the recipe from the Argosians. Trips there are much less eventful when we know what they're cooking in the food."
"Well," Cam said brightly after digesting that for a quiet moment, "More dishes the merrier. It's nice that he wants to contribute."
Daniel folded his arms on the counter. "Mitchell, I worry about you sometimes."
"Don't know if you've noticed yet, Jackson," Cam said conspiratorially, leaning over, "but unlike you, I was told to keep my lip buttoned as a child. You dazzle 'em with brilliance, sure, but you'd be surprised as hell what you can get out of people with niceness and a little pie."
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Q is for Quiet
by kayim
For the most part, Cameron Mitchell hates the quiet.
Silence reminds him being in the hospital, after the F-302 crash. By virtue of his rank, he was given a private room. By virtue of the extent of his injuries, he was given a wide berth. Doctors and nurses came in like clockwork, prodding and poking, offering reassuring lies, keeping their whispered doubts to themselves. Occasionally a friend would visit, but conversations hung awkwardly in the air between them -- how do you reminisce about old football games when one of you may never walk again?
But in between those visits, there was quiet. Just him, alone with his regrets and fears, the memories of the crash keeping him awake in the dark.
And then, after barely making it through that with his sanity in tact, SG1 came into his life, completely and utterly shattered the silence around him.
Sam, with her constant theorising that goes way above his head. Jackson, with more knowledge than any one person should ever have. Vala, who just never stops talking. And Teal'c. Okay, so maybe Teal'c's not so much with the silence-destroying, but his presence is enough to fill the empty void.
The sounds of gunfire and yells for cover. Alarm bells and warning klaxons. The unmistakable music of the Stargate dialling.
He can't imagine his life without the sounds of them.
Except for those precious few moments when he is inside the wormhole. Complete nothingness, for less than a single breath, but pure, unadulterated silence. A perfect instant. No memories, no regrets, no fears. Just quiet.
It's hard to come by, and he can't help but appreciate it, but still, for the most part, Cameron Mitchell hates the quiet.
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R is for Running
by crazedturkey
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
There were days when that would be the only sound Cam would hear.
It would echo down the hallways, bouncing off the metal ceilings, almost seeming to come up behind him on the endless circuit.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
When he was younger, sometimes Cam felt bad about the running. There was his dad, stuck on the porch in that horrible chair, unable to feel let alone move his legs.
It was a complicated guilt that Cam still hadn't reconciled even many years later. But it disappeared when he was on the road. Somehow when he was on the road, everything dissolved. Everything reduced. Everything centred to just that sound.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
The time in the hospital was like torture. Cam was terrified, petrified, that he would lose it, lose the road. Lose the rhythm.
Outwardly he was the picture of calm, the model of an active, engaged patient. Working hard on his physical therapy. Positive about his recovery.
Inwardly he was certain he would end up like his father.
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S if for Neither Stars Nor Bars
by sg_wonderland
Cam could have flown home; in fact, he very nearly did. But there was something about that flat open road that called to him. His dad used to joke that it was the 'prairie boy' in him; that somewhere deep within, he still held a genetic stamp of bravely crossing those Western plains in a Conestoga wagon. If it had been summer, he would have taken the bike but he settled for his Mustang with the windows wide open and the heat turned up, his foot so heavy on the accelerator that he was a state trooper's dream-come-true. Even at that speed, he felt like he was standing still or, worse yet, losing ground.
He didn't know if he was racing toward nothing or in a head-long rush to get away from something.
***
He embraced the normalcy of his family farm almost desperately; Kansas seemed a million miles away from the SGC. Relaxing into the quiet, he let his mother fuss over him, let his dad beat him at poker, took long walks through the barren fields. In no time, the fragile wheat and corn would be planted, would poke through the earth to seek the sun.
"So, are you going to tell me what's wrong?" Cam squinted up as his dad worked his way through the dusty barn to sit on the bench seat salvaged from a long abandoned truck.
"Sounds like you need to change the air filter," Cam shifted the Tootsie Pop in his mouth as he tinkered with the car.
"Not the car, son. What's wrong with you?" He gave his son a stern look. "You haven't started smoking again, have you?"
Cam toasted him with the lollipop. "That's what these things are for. And there's nothing wrong with me."
"You drop in unexpected. You're not eating, you're not sleeping and you've walked from here to Omaha and back." His voice softened. "Talk to me, boy."
Cam started to deny it again then dropped his head onto the car. "Something happened, Dad. Something really, really bad."
"Tell me what you can." Frank patted the seat beside him.
He flopped down beside his father, giving his dirty hands most of his attention. "We lost a guy."
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T is for Top Gun
by cleothemuse
"I mean, what are the odds of that, huh?"
Major Cameron Mitchell waved at the bartender, signaling for a beer for his buddy. "You got me, Red. Maybe the brass just decided to draw names from a hat, or threw darts at a personnel listing." He grinned to show he was joking, but the truth was, he didn't really care.
What indeed were the odds that they would end up being recruited for the same top-secret training mission in Colorado? Cam and James "Red" Redmond had been classmates in Joint Specialized Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, and were fierce competitors in an already highly-competitive program. Adding to their rivalry were their differing branches: Red was Navy, while Cam was Air Force. By the time they'd earned their wings, the two men had become good friends, and celebrated their new postings by getting rip-roaring drunk the night before Cam left for advanced training in Arizona, and Red for the same in Mississippi. They didn't expect to see one another again.
A little over a year ago, Cam was involved in a mission over Afghanistan that had ended in disaster due to faulty intelligence. Having been the man to drop the bomb on a convoy later reported to have been full of refugees, Cam had been tempted to resign. After a long talk with his dad, he decided against leaving the Air Force outright, but put in a request to transition to a test pilot program.
A week later, Cam accepted a position in a new program codenamed "Kipling", but it was a year and a promotion later before his transfer orders came through, during which time he had been convinced funding had failed to surface. The same day his papers arrived, he received a call from Red, who'd tracked him down to tell him he'd been reassigned to Peterson Air Force Base "to show you plumbers what a real stick looks like." They compared notes and discovered they were both on Kipling, though neither pilot had been told anything about the new program other than when and where to report.
So, here they were, the Saturday before the start of Kipling, and both had already put away a number of drinks swapping stories. They were dressed in street clothes, but the bar they were recommended was a common hang-out for off-duty military personnel, and half the room had the sort of regulation haircuts that identified them to the mostly-female civilian barflys. With Red now plied with enough liquid courage to chat up the cute brunette who'd just squeezed in next to him, Cam slid off his stool to check out the action at the pool tables.
A statuesque blonde was holding court, with a stack of bills piled on the edge of the table while she bent over, carefully lining up a shot. Ignoring the leering comments her shapely posterior was earning her, she broke the rack expertly, sending both a stripe and a solid into pockets. With the table still open, she then lined up her next shot, pocketing two more stripes. Three decisive shots later, all of the striped balls were cleared, and she was calling a corner pocket for the eight ball, before banking it twice and sinking it, too.
"I should've known better," moaned one of the guys standing near the table, shaking his head and hanging up his own cue.
"I did warn you, Captain," the blonde grinned, folding her winnings and jamming the cash into her jeans pocket.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered meekly, letting his buddies lead him off with good-natured jibes.
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U is for Undefeated
by lolmac
In 1934, Glenn Cunningham was the fastest man alive.
In 1908, Cunningham was a bed-ridden cripple, both legs fire-shriveled, one foot toeless.
Cam thinks about Cunningham a lot. Mostly in the mornings, during the part of the morning when he has energy to spare for thinking.
Cam's gotten very good at focusing. It's become his most important survival skill. He likes to focus on the heel of his left foot, because by 10 am, that's the only part of his legs that doesn't hurt.
For as much of the day as he can, he focuses. He focuses on the end of the treadmill, walking and running and hobbling towards it. He'll crawl if he has to. He'll get there. That's where the Gate is. He focuses: he puts the Gate at the end of the treadmill. Unlike other treadmills, he knows he's going to get to the end of this one. He just has to keep moving, keep pushing. When the pain and exhaustion darken the room in front of his eyes, when he can't see the Gate any more, he keeps on moving towards it anyway. He knows it's there.
Like Cam, Cunningham was from Kansas. They get some crazy storms in Kansas, summer and winter. Cam's seen some amazing rainbows there, blazing across the sky after a bad storm. Pots of gold. There's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. And by all the gods of brutal pain and sacrifice, he's going to get there.
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V is for Video Games
by gingasaur
It is by no means a difficult game. Cute, cuddly animals ripping each other's throats out in crimson showers of pixelated blood is bizarre, but it doesn't take an engineer to play it.
So why does Cam keep watching his fuzzy boxing hare get pummeled by unblockable kicks to his sweet little face?
It isn't simply loss at this point: it's a systematic disassembling of all his hard-earned credibility. How is he supposed to get any kind of respect around here when he can't even coordinate the proper punches to take the evil Mr. Bunnykins' head off?
"You're supposed to play Teal'c when?"
"Thursday."
Siler laughs, perhaps louder than he meant to. He clears his throat. "Sorry, sir."
Cam waves a dismissive hand. "No, I deserve it after that thrashing. How the hell did you make those energy beams-"
But Siler just shrugs helplessly; he'll be overdue for a scheduled maintenance if he stays any longer.
"Good luck, Colonel," he says on his way out.
Cam rubs a hand over his face. Time to go back to training mode.
***
He hones his skills against fluffy computerized combatants, but these battles against artificial intelligence just don't compare to human unpredictability. He needs another person to play with him or the precious remnants of his ego will be smeared across the floor come Thursday.
Luckily, he knows two surefire ways to get Sam out of her lab: by dragging her, or by simply pushing her buttons.
"I'm not afraid you'll beat me."
Bingo.
"Well then," Cam taunts. "Come play."
Sam glares at him. "If I do, you have to leave me alone for the rest of the day."
"Done."
"I mean it. I'll eat dinner when I'm ready."
"You got it," Cam assures her. "Let's go."
He's practiced his heart out. He's ready for this. Sam's declaration that she hasn't played in a long time is comforting, too.
"Ready?" Cam asks.
"Ready," Sam sighs.
They begin.
And then they end, within ten seconds of starting, because Sam's big-eyed, bushy-tailed bunny beats the stuffing out of Cam's with a dazzling flurry of punches that not only activates that energy beam thing, but knocks his rabbit clear across the stage and back again. He settles in a smoking heap in the center of the screen while Sam's rabbit wiggles her nose triumphantly.
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W is for Wait What
by draegonhawke
They gathered in the briefing room with no idea what to expect, hoping it would be news about Vala. Landry strolled in with a stack of folders as they were getting situated, looking like he knew something the rest of them didn't. As per usual.
"General," Daniel greeted. "What's this about?"
Landry took his seat, and tapped the edges of the folders against the table. "While the SGC is continuing to look into the whereabouts of Ms. Mal Doran, SG-1 has something somewhat more immediate to take care of," he said.
"More immediate," Daniel said. Landry looked at him.
"Much as I wish I could give you something constructive to do regarding Vala's disappearance, all our leads have gone cold," he said. "So, yes. More immediate. I need you to patch up a rather large potential embarrassment for the SGC."
Sam raised her eyebrows. "An 'embarrassment', sir?"
"Potential. Probably just a misunderstanding. It has to do with Colonel Mitchell," Landry said, and looked across at him. He didn't seem overly concerned, though. More... quietly amused.
Cam, who had been idly toying with a wooden pencil, looked up. "Me? Why? What did I do?"
"There have been certain aspersions cast on your appointment to lead SG-1," Landry said, with an expression that said Someday, we'll look back on this and laugh. Well, you'll look back on this and laugh. I'm already laughing. "You know, the usual. Nepotism. That sort of thing."
"Nepotism?" Daniel asked, before Cam could say anything. Landry held up a hand.
"Hear me out," he said. "A couple of the lab boys have been spending their time mapping out the genomes of everyone in the SGC." He flipped the folders onto the table. "And apparently, they started with all the members of SG-1." He gave a quiet, curtailed chuckle. "I think the rationale was, 'they're all freaks and mutants anyway.'"
"Charmed," Cam said, and took one of the folders. "What's that have to do with me?"
"Well, take a look," Landry said.
They did.
Daniel paged through a couple of sheets, then paused. "Wait a minute, why is Jack's information in here?"
"Members of SG-1, past and present," Landry said. "Apparently General O'Neill left a few vials of blood in Infirmary storage when he left for Washington."
"Uh-oh," Sam said. Cam glanced at her.
"'Uh-oh'?"
"And, she gets it," Landry said, and raised his eyebrows at Cameron. "Colonel Mitchell, you may want to compare your own record with General O'Neill's."
"Okay," Cam said, and pulled out the relevant pages. "And what am I looking for?"
Then he trailed off.
Teal'c, beside him, arched an eyebrow.
"For those of you who skipped out on your highschool biology," Landry said, "what you're looking at there is two distinctly related individuals. Colonel Mitchell? If our lab was certified by the AABB, that right there would be admissible in a court of law as evidence that Jack O'Neill was your father."
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X is for X-ray
by madders_ahatter
"Hold still, I just need to take a couple more," Dr Lam instructed Cam as she adjusted the x-ray machine.
Holding still wasn't a problem. It was moving that hurt like the devil, but he wasn't about to tell her that.
"What's the matter, didn't you get my best side?" Cam gave her his most charming smile.
Carolyn shot back a smile of her own. She wasn't entirely immune to the colonel's charisma, but neither was she about to let him get the upper hand.
"I didn't think you had a 'best' side, Colonel Mitchell," she countered, with a slight quirk of her eyebrows that led him to wonder if he'd just been complimented or insulted.
She finished up and gave him a nod. "Okay, you can relax. I'll just check these for secondary injuries."
Cam tried, but relaxation didn't come easy. He allowed himself a grimace while the Doc was distracted. Even so, he was counting his blessings. He'd been through far worse than this and come out okay. He cast a glance at the pink scar tissue on his left side, a souvenir from his near-fatal run in with the Sodan. He could feel the familiar aching in his legs that returned every time he remembered how close he'd come to being crippled for life. A deep breath banished the memory. The ache would fade momentarily.
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Y is for YouTube
by sidlj
It's the nature of the internet. You surf, you click, you follow so many links you're not sure how you wind up wherever it is you find yourself. Cam starts out his Sunday morning reading the front webpage of his hometown newspaper. Maybe something there made him nostalgic (go figure) and so he searches YouTube for some favorite old songs. Nearly an hour later, coffee mug long empty, Cam clicks a vid link almost at random.
He nearly falls out of his chair.
That's Jackson. Different glasses, longer hair, more-than-mildly inebriated. Singing karaoke. And that's not even the wildest part.
He's not alone. There's Teal'c. In a cowboy hat. Getting down.
"I am hallucinating," Cam announces to himself. He looks accusingly at his empty mug. He looks at the monitor. He hears a very familiar voice coming through his speakers.
"Shake it, Daniel!"
"Ah!" Cam looks to see who posted the video. He busts out laughing. "Astrosammiekins?"
He's still laughing as he cranks up the volume and leans back, hands clasped behind his head, to enjoy the show.
Won't you take me to… Funkytown?
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Z is for Zero
by stringertheory
Some cultures don't have a zero, don't have a concept or a signifier for nothing. Cam remembers reading that somewhere, or seeing it in a documentary. Or maybe it was Jackson who first told him.
Jackson had said something about a culture -- the Babylonians or the Persians or some long-dead society on P-whatever (or, hell, maybe all three) -- not having a zero. It had been interesting, but considering that he'd brought up the fact while they were battling a deceptive countdown -- "...which may or may not have a zero -- based on the markings, this society appears to be related to the Babylonians, who had no symbol for zero -- so either we have five or four--" "Jackson!" -- interest had quickly evaporated in favor of self-preservation.
The memory rushes back to Cam as he shifts his grip on the yoke, tension coiled in every square inch of his body. Around him, the Odyssey crew stands in tense silence as the ship glides toward the tiny speck of white that is Sam, hanging in space near the Supergate. With one eye on Sam and the other on the gauges in front of him, Cam tries to imagine having no way to name the entire concept that zero defines.
Zero. Zilch. Zip. He cannot calculate his life without zero.
He'd been a good kid, though a wild streak near the end of high school had tarnished that reputation. His mother's heavy sighs and shouted warnings hadn't done much to tame him; the call of his last carefree days was too tempting in light of everything that was looming ahead of him. But his father met him on the front porch in the dark of a Thursday morning and gave Cam the one bit of advice that could turn him around.
"The Air Force has a zero tolerance policy, son," he said quietly while they sat in rocking chairs, the porch boards creaking beneath them and the crickets singing like the church choir.
That conversation helped Cam stay centered for years, kept him from pushing back when authority pushed him on. The finality of zero tolerance was a warning siren against bad decisions, resounding inside his head in his father's voice. It kept him focused on his dreams instead of the heady lure of recklessness that sometimes rose inside him, usually at the worst times. Even today, the de facto leader of the world's most elite military team, traveling through space and time and whatever else there is to travel through, sitting at the controls of the most expensive aircraft ever built, the warning of zero tolerance still echoes in the back of his mind.
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