Author's Note: My first one-shot post on in quite some time! Man, I've just got a soft spot for Cam/Carolyn. For those of you who don't recognize the name, her full name is Dr. Carolyn Lam, and she's Landry's daughter -- remember her now?
Spoilers for "Window of Opportunity," "Grace," and hints at Stargate: Continuum.
Please review!
"Sir," said Cameron curiously, "if you don't mind my bringing this up…"
"Yes?" General O'Neill took a long drink from his beer.
"It seems like you've been all over time and back."
O'Neill put down the beer and blinked at the colonel. Cam could just see him thinking, Where did this come from? "I guess you could say that," he said finally.
"It's just that I'm starting to wonder if I haven't experienced some of that too," Cameron explained. "Especially with that Ba'al incident –"
"Don't even talk about him," said O'Neill instantly. His frown was almost comical. "I hate Ba'al. Hated him. Whatever."
Cameron reflected on how bizarre it was to be invited to dinner by your superior officer, whom you didn't really know, and who used to head your team. "I just have a gut feeling that something happened and I don't remember it."
O'Neill sighed. "Mitchell… if there's one thing I learned from being on SG-1, it's that you never remember everything. And if you do, no one else does."
"Is that a subtle reference to the time loop incident, sir?" Cam had always wondered about that one. O'Neill's and Teal'c's reports had been rather… succinct.
"Maybe," said the general evasively.
Now Cam had to press on. "You know, I was thinking about that the other day, and it occurred to me that you must have figured out at some point the sorts of things you could do without getting in trouble for them."
"You mean you talked to Daniel about it," O'Neill put in.
"Well, yeah."
"We might not have thought of it if he hadn't brought it up in one of the loops," said O'Neill, seemingly reminiscing now. Cameron silently swore to remember that look for Sam's sake. "Of course, if we hadn't spent so much time fooling around we'd probably have gotten it fixed more quickly. But…"
"You don't have any regrets?" Cameron suggested.
O'Neill grinned. "None at all."
Cameron pursed his lips. He was getting more curious by the second. "What sorts of things did you do when you were… fooling around? If you don't mind my asking. Sir."
"Oh, we golfed through the Stargate, I brought my bike into the SGC…" O'Neill paused, thinking. "I learned to make a decent pot. Oh, and I kissed Carter."
Cameron stared as the general grinned broadly. "You what?"
"We were pretty much done with the translation! I figured, if this was the last loop to be forgotten, I might as well go out on a limb. Besides… why not?"
He did have a point there, so Cam took a minute to respond. "How did you manage to get away with that, sir? Even if it was going to be forgotten, no one but you would have known that."
O'Neill waved a hand. "I resigned first so no one would get in the way. It was just seconds before the loop started over, anyway."
Cameron had to think about this for another long moment. "Wow," he said finally.
"Oh, hey, don't tell anyone, though," O'Neill added, holding up a warning finger.
Cam shook his head, grinning. "I won't, sir. If you didn't kill me, Sam would."
He couldn't help but bring it up anyway when he came to lunch the next day, even if he wasn't specific about it.
"Indeed, Colonel Mitchell," was Teal'c's response. "I did many things that I would not have done, had I not known they would be forgotten mere hours later."
At which point he promptly stood up and left the table. Cameron and Sam sat there looking at each other, slightly bewildered.
"He must really have done some strange things if he doesn't want to talk about it," said Sam at last.
Cameron shrugged. "Wouldn't we all?"
Sam nodded slowly as she dug a fork into her cake. Though Cam knew from experience that she preferred jello to anything else, today there hadn't been anything else. "I guess you've got a point. Still, sometimes it's hard to do things, even if you know they're not going to be remembered."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Cam asked, watching her curiously.
"Well, you know that time I got stuck on the Prometheus in that cloud, and the crew was captured by an alien vessel that was also stuck in the cloud."
"Yeah, I read the report." Cameron frowned at her, thinking. "You got a pretty bad concussion, from what I recall."
"Bad enough to make me hallucinate, in fact." Sam smiled at his startled look. "I came pretty close, but I didn't do anything I would have regretted, had it been real."
Cam sighed and shook his head. "Your loss," he remarked. "Although come to think of it, I'm not sure I could have done it either." He paused. "What was it you considered doing?"
Sam flushed. "Oh – kissing… someone," she said, and then got up rather hurriedly.
Kissing General O'Neill, Cameron thought with a grin. He knew that look on her face.
The following afternoon, Cam found himself on the forest planet P8X-927 with the rest of SG-1. It was a standard reconnaissance mission, and none of them were expecting to run into any real danger, although of course that was always a possibility.
"I'm detecting an unusual energy reading from that direction," said Sam, looking down at her little beeping device and pointing.
Okay, so unusual energy readings often indicated that bad things were to come. "Let's be careful," said Cameron as he started in the direction she'd indicated.
They walked for quite a while before Sam finally stopped them.
"In there." She pointed at a particularly dense patch of trees.
Cameron shot her a dry look. "How are we supposed to get in?"
Sam just shrugged, so Cam did the first thing that occurred to him: he started to push his way through the trees.
"Uh, Mitchell, maybe you shouldn't –" Daniel said suddenly, but his words came too late. Before Cameron could even look around, he felt a sharp prick in his arm. Dizziness was immediate; moments later, he collapsed to the ground and lay there, staring up at the trees.
"Cameron!" Sam shouted, her voice sounding like it was far away.
Everything was going blurry. Cam rolled his head around, but it didn't make anything any clearer. Finally, hardly aware that his teammates had gotten to him and were shaking him, he gave up and blacked out.
"… seriously, Mitchell, it's time to get up."
He was starting to regain consciousness, but he felt dizzy still, and his body seemed to weigh a lot more than it was supposed to.
"S-sir?" he muttered. What was General O'Neill doing here?
"Mitchell." O'Neill was kneeling on the ground next to him, peering into his eyes. "Glad to have you back with us."
Cameron coughed. He didn't appear to have moved from where he had fallen down, and he couldn't see anyone else with the general. "Us?"
"Well, okay, me. But that's beside the point," said O'Neill briskly. He reached down to tug at Cameron's sleeve. "You've gotta get up."
"Why?" Cameron murmured, even as he dragged himself into a sitting position.
"Because you're never going to wake up if you don't start moving around," O'Neill replied.
Cam stared at him. "Wait, I'm not awake?"
O'Neill sighed. "Mitchell, do you really think your team would have left you here, unconscious, and then sent me to deal with it?"
He had a point. Cameron stared down at his hands. Everything looked normal, apart from the slight blur around the edges that meant he wasn't quite aware, but no matter how much he blinked, the blur wouldn't go away. Perhaps that was part of it.
"So… you're not real."
"I'm as real as anything else around here," said O'Neill cheerfully, "which is to say, no, not really."
Cameron sighed and got to his feet. He knew now what was going on, he thought. The general was telling him to get up because he knew, in his mind, that he might have a better chance of regaining consciousness if he didn't just lie there in the darkness.
Then again, it could just make it worse, if this was a dream that was trying to trap him. But what other choice did he have? He was aware now.
O'Neill watched him as he stumbled out of the grove of trees. Suddenly the general was on the other side with him, despite having not moved an inch. "Mitchell."
"Sir?"
"You know what you should do now."
Cam was startled. What the hell did this mean?
When he remained silent, O'Neill sighed and clarified, "Remember what you talked about with me, and then Carter?"
"You mean not remembering anything?" Cam asked.
"No, I mean doing things you might regret if you were doing them where someone else was going to remember it," said O'Neill, "but that you really want to do if only you had the chance."
That was it. He was going crazy. What was he supposed to do when he was stuck here in the middle of nowhere?
Even as he thought that, Cameron knew he was wrong. There was a Stargate on this planet, he knew that. It was back the way they'd come, and since this was a realistic sort of dream (apart from O'Neill's being there), there was no reason it shouldn't still be there. In fact, there was no reason the SGC shouldn't be on the other end if he dialed Earth, since according to his subconscious that was what was supposed to be there.
And in the SGC…
"See? You've got it," said O'Neill.
A slow smile touched Cameron's lips. "Sam almost kissed you, you know," he said, since the real O'Neill wasn't going to know what he said.
"Did she?" O'Neill didn't sound surprised. Cam wouldn't have been surprised either.
Ten dream-minutes later, Cameron was standing in front of the DHD. He dialed. The Stargate became active. Everything was going as planned.
He walked up to the event horizon and stepped through. A second later, there was the ramp, and there was his team coming up to meet him.
"Cameron, it's good to have you back," said Sam, hugging him, but he wasn't paying attention. Behind her, another woman was walking into the 'Gate room, which made sense, because it was her Cam had come to see.
"Dr. Lam," he said, pulling away from Sam and going to meet the doctor.
"Colonel Mitchell," she said simply.
Their eyes locked, and in that instant, Cameron became aware that she knew exactly what he was about to do. Furthermore, she was okay with it, despite SG-1 standing right next to them. If nothing else had proved this was a dream, that did it now.
Leaning forward, Cam pressed his lips against Carolyn's and closed his eyes.
He opened them again when he realized he could no longer feel her lips. In fact, he was lying down, and he wasn't in the 'Gate room anymore, or even on P8X-927 – he was in the infirmary.
Carolyn was still there, however, her back to him at the moment, but not for long.
"Colonel, you're awake."
"I'm awake," Cameron repeated, for lack of a better thing to say. Then he grinned at her for no good reason.
She blinked, but said nothing, just turned back to her clipboard. Either she knew what he was thinking, or she wasn't even aware he liked her. Well… that was the way of things.
I'm going to have to thank General O'Neill later, Cameron thought.