She's a 1965 Ford Mustang GT with a 200-horsepower V-8 engine, and her name is Annabel Lee. (Jackson would get a kick out of that. Well, first Jackson would narrow his eyes and purse his lips in that prissy little way of his, probably say something like didn't know they taught you how to read. But eventually he'd laugh.) She takes the curves like she was born to them, all steel and chrome and come on let's go, and he doesn't dare let her have her head, not the way he wants to. The paper-trip's good, but it's not that good. Last thing he needs is some backwater cop deciding to get curious.
Especially since none of the cops would know him here. Not anymore, at least.
That's the hardest thing to get used to. Sam had grabbed him, thirty stolen seconds as the hangar doors opened, before their minders caught up with them and broke them all apart. Remember this isn't your world, she'd said, quick and urgent, the little frown tucked up tight into her forehead saying that she was imparting wisdom hard-won that she'd hoped he wouldn't ever have to learn. Pretend we stepped through that Gate and came out somewhere you've never seen before. It's easier that way.
He wonders whether they really have done this before, whether Sam remembers, what other bits and pieces (a familiar question, never answered, never answerable) were never written down. They always wanted to protect him. Save one last bit of innocence, keep him from breaking against the strain. He's always known what they were doing, and he's always let it fly, trusted that they'd tell him what he needed to know and content to let the rest of it slide. Always thought one of them would be there to grab him by the scruff of the neck and keep him from doing something stupid, keep him from making the same damn mistake one of them had already made.
Hard to know if this isn't a mistake now, but he has to know. One last look, one last glimpse to convince the little voice in the back of his head that Sam's right, and then he'll settle in and move on and do --
-- something. He'll think of something. Can't restore cars for a living, not when you know what's out there. Gotta do something to keep himself busy for the next eighteen months or so; his calendar's clear until then, and then he has an appointment to keep.
So he pats Annabel's steering wheel and slows to take the bitch-ass turn off 25, where he (seventeen years old, convinced he could drive anything with wheels) once put Annabel's great-grandmother into the field when he skidded out on the treacherous gravel. County's been talking about re-paving this bit for coming up on forty years now, and they haven't ever done it. Annabel takes it like a racehorse, all sleek lines and steady motion.
"You'd like this one, T," he says, out loud, to the empty passenger seat where someone's supposed to be raising an eyebrow and asking him if perhaps he should slow their conveyance further. "She's got heart."
After all, while he's pretending this isn't his world, he might as well pretend his best friend is halfway across the galaxy, waiting for him to come back, waiting for a chance to mock him again.
He can feel his left leg better than he can feel his right leg now: long-excised nerves firing and flaring, the dim and distant CQD of long-sunk ships still trying to summon assistance.
It doesn't bother him as much as it should. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he opens his eyes and thinks there's something wrong with him, that he hasn't surrendered to bitterness or despair, that he hasn't become twisted and angry about what's been done to him -- angry about what he's lost, about the utter refusal of those he has tried to enlighten about what they should be doing to prepare. He can't seem to summon enough fire to climb back on the treadmill again. Let them live or let them die; he'll deal with it if and when it happens.
So many things lost to once upon a time, he knows -- but this isn't his world and these aren't his people, no matter whether they wear a familiar face or not, and he's done, he's done, he's done his part over and over again and every day he's lived since the first time he died, since the last time he died, is a gift. He'd learned that, realized it, remembered it, on the floor of an Ori cell. Once upon a time he would have gone down swinging and gotten back up again, fought all the way to the gates of Hell and come back again, never forgotten to keep the goal in his eyes -- but once upon a time was lifetimes and lifetimes ago.
He's learning to be all right with that.
He learns to walk with his prosthesis as well as he could on his own two feet, although he'll never run again. (But if you can't run, then they can't make you.) He sleeps ten hours a night for the first time in longer than he can remember. (He'd forgotten what it felt like to wake because he was finished sleeping, and not because his alarm was singing or his phone was summoning him to tourney.) He spends every spare penny he has on the books he piles around him, and he loses himself in old familiar friends and all the things he always said he'd get around to someday. (I'll have time to catch up on my reading when I'm dead, he'd started saying, a long time ago, just to see Jack splutter.)
Today he's reading Sun Tzu, and it's making him understand Jack a hell of a lot more, and he's thinking it's a tragedy he didn't think to read it when it would have done him any good. Still, it's hard for him to keep his eyes open. His medication makes him so sleepy.
As he's drifting off, book slipping from his insensate fingers to flutter uselessly against the duvet, the thought crosses his mind that he's not really sure how long it's been since he's had an actual substantive conversation with anyone, anything beyond please and thank you and you forgot your change. Other than ... himself. And that doesn't count.
It isn't important. He's tired of talking to people anyway.
Astrophysics. Aerospace. Engineering. Manufacturing. Material science. Mechanical engineering. Nuclear science. Statistical mechanics --
The moment the woman had started talking, she'd expected to hear it coming. (The General had taught her that cynicism, year over year, day in and day out -- but she's not letting herself think about the General anymore.) She'd listened to the doors slamming, one by one, ticked off in a sing-song voice by a woman whose every head-tilt screamed boredom, contempt. She'd never wished more that she'd picked up the General's ability, Daniel's ability, to always have some cutting remark at hand, ready to show her disdain.
She doesn't. She's never been good at that sort of thing.
So she takes the suitcase of clothes they provided and she pastes her very best smile on her lips, and she walks off their bus and thinks, in her heart of hearts: I tried once to do my duty to you, and once is all you get.
This is the sort of thing the General knows how to do as easily as breathing (but she's not thinking about the General, not thinking about Jack). Subterfuge doesn't come any more easily to her than witty repartee, but there was always a streak of rebellion in her, hidden deep and plastered over until SG-1 broke the bonds and set it free. She knows how to make her movements without being noticed.
It's her job now. Cam won't think of it and Daniel doesn't care. (Daniel has given up, Daniel has broken, and she knows because for a few minutes out there on the ice she broke too. She's starting to wonder how many more times she can piece herself back together before there's nothing left to repair, but loyalty to your country, always; loyalty to your government when it deserves it, and SG-1 Über Alles even when half of SG-1 is dead and gone.)
It's been seventy years since the timelines diverged, and if Ba'al has waited for seventy years, she's willing to gamble he might wait a little while longer. She sets the rendezvous-date for two and a half years from the day they all last saw each other. Time for their minders to grow careless, weary. Time for Cam to calm down, work out some of his disbelief and his nervous energy, to understand that this really is happening and they won't be able to fix it through the proper channels. Time for Daniel to heal, to learn his new limitations, to rest and recover and ready himself again.
Time for her to plan.
She practices answering to her new name, learns how to deny her old one, wears the ridiculous glasses they found for her to wear. She makes herself small, makes herself insignificant, in the eyes of those who are watching her. The good girl. The reasonable one. The one who won't be any problem.
The General taught her that, too. It means they won't expect it when she's the one who goes to set this right.
The quiet moments before battle have never troubled him the way they trouble so many of his brothers. He has seen many battles over the years; he has learned to find strength in the stillness.
He looks down upon the sphere that stretches beneath them. It is lovely: delicate, fragile, blue and white and green, spinning through a sea of black. Untouched. Unenslaved. A part of him quails, at being the one to lead the forces of their subjugation.
He silences it. There will be time, as time is reckoned, to come again as liberator, not as conqueror. His loyalty to his people must be foremost. He has made a bargain; he will not betray it, for his word, once given, is paramount, until such time as he realizes that word conflicts with the true purpose he has grown to embrace.
Freedom. If he should be called to Kheb with no more honor accrued to his name than the honor of being the one to open the path to liberation, it will be honor enough to ensure his ranks in the halls of the dead, no matter what other evils might weigh on the scales of his soul.
A moment, an indulgence: quiet contemplation of the beauty he sees. Then he goes to have several unobtrusive words with those who share his visions, to ensure that they are aware of what might come.
He believes his ally -- not Lord, not God, never again master, not anymore -- will keep his word. But it does not hurt to prepare for contingencies.
Charlie had been considering staying in Boston over the summer, taking summer classes to speed up the amount of time he has to spend doing undergrad before he can get to "the good stuff", but he's glad Charlie chose not to. He's got plenty of leave banked up; it's not a hardship to spend some of it with his kid, especially when the kid turned out pretty damn decent.
They're tearing down and rebuilding the old shed out back. It's a bit early for the beer he's got resting on one of the sawhorses -- all right, a lot early, and Sara had tsked at him, but he'd grinned at her and swatted her on the rear and she'd snapped the dishtowel at him, and then she'd put the dishtowel down and gone to pick up the nailgun to help. He's not doing much more than supervising, anyway. Charlie's head is bent down over the board he's cutting down to size, but when he stands up, he's taller and stronger than his father is. Sara bosses him and he bosses Charlie, and both of them have him wrapped their little fingers, and that's the way it's always been.
They say 'for God and country', but what they really mean is for this: stolen summer moments, the beer-chilled glass beneath his fingertips, the sunshine spilling down on his head, his family and his home and his life and his peace.
When he hears the sound of ships flying overhead, his reaction is automatic; he hasn't flown in years, not since they put the red beret on his head and told him it was his time to direct whole theatres, but old habits die hard, and he knows every single flight path for miles around. Whatever's up there, it's off course. He looks up.
Then he starts running.
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