Damage Control
By, ShadowWriter33
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate SG-1 or it's characters. However, an alternate version of myself in a reality far, far away, not only owns the show but is part of the team as well. Meanwhile in this reality everything is owned by MGM Global Holdings, Inc. etc.
No profit was made from this story. No infringement of copyright was intended.
Warning: Mild language. Can't think of anything else.
Spoilers: Anything between seasons 1 through 9.
Author's Note: I do the best I can editing but I'm sure there are mistakes so I apologize. Also I have no medical knowledge so forgive any mistakes there as well.
Summery: Team bonding fic for 'Collateral Damage' but takes place after 'Ripple Effect'. The team have to wait out a space anomaly while on an uninhabited planet and end up confronting some overdue issues.
Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell stared unseeingly into the flames of the small campfire. Through the haze in his mind he couldn't help but compare these flames to those flames of before. The ones that rose up from the desert floor on the narrow dusty road where a convoy of innocent refugees should never have been.
Sometimes Cam couldn't decide what would be worse, if he had seen their faces and knew how many deaths he had been responsible for, or the endless number of faceless ghosts that haunted him continuously. Some days Mitchell would have given anything just to know once and for all who and how many had been in that convoy. Yet other days when the colonel saw children playing in the park and heard the sound of their laughter echoing on the wind he was thankful that he didn't know.
Cam knew he would never be free of guilt from the horror of what happened; the events of that day would haunt him for the rest of his life. Time would never erase what had happened nor ease his conscience; he knew there would always be nights when he would awake in a cold sweat gasping for breath, heart trying to hammer out of his chest, his throat trying to choke back the bile that had been churned up from a vivid nightmare filled with those nameless faces.
But time and keeping busy had at least made those nights fewer and further between. Keeping his mind busy and staying in motion had kept him on a functional level, helped him to keep from thinking about it too often.
As the years passed and Mitchell's involvement with the Stargate program grew, Cameron had been able to keep that memory where it belonged; compartmentalized in the back of his mind, where it only caught him off guard in the dead of night or when he thought too much.
Until now.
Now one of the very things that had helped keep his mind off the event was the very thing that had brought it all blaring back into the present in full techno-color detail. Reliving the memory had been every bit as bad as the real thing because thanks to that damn memory manipulator machine, everything you experienced was as real to the mind as though it were happening right then. Only it was worse because the second time around you knew what was going to happen; only you couldn't do a damn thing to stop it.
On top of that Mitchell still had a vague recollection of murdering Reya. Her cries as his hands bashed her to death with a statue, Dr. Amuro had said he shouldn't remember any of it, but it had been replayed one hundred too many times in Cam's head by that damn device for him to ever be able to forget it.
To make matters worse - if that were even possible – the rest of SG-1 probably thought he was some kind of murderer for real now.
"Unless Colonel Mitchell has made a habit of killing innocent people… we're out of options."
"I may have what you need."
Yeah that little conversation was sure to have raised some eyebrows and instilled some doubts.
"What do you think?"
It took Cam longer than it should have for his brain to realize that Jackson was speaking and that the question was directed at him. "Hello. Earth to Mitchell…"
"Huh?" The colonel finally looked up into three sets of worried eyes.
"Cam are you alright?" Carter asked.
"Yeah I'm good." The colonel shifted uncomfortably under the triple scrutiny. Trying to deflect the stares he asked, "Jackson did you really just say 'Earth to Mitchell'?"
"Um, yes." Daniel answered slowly unsure of what Cam was getting at, "Why?" "Well I was just wondering how that statement applies when you're not actually on Earth. I mean shouldn't it be something like: P4X-833 to… whoever you're addressing?" His attempt at humor fell somewhat flat as Jackson, Carter, and Teal'c continued to stare at him. "I'm just sayin'." Cam held his hands up in mock surrender.
"Cam are you sure you're alright?" Sam asked again.
"You mean other than being stuck on this uninhabited planet for the next forty three hours with nothing to do and nowhere to go with most of our supplies being at the bottom of a river somewhere while we wait on some space anomaly some hundreds of light years away to get over with so that we can safely dial back to Earth without having to worry about the Stargate accidentally sending us back in time to 1969 or dropping us off in some other reality with alternate evil twins of ourselves? I'm great."
"That's not what I mean Cam and you know it." Carter replied patiently.
"Well what do you mean Sam because I don't know what you're talking about." Cam lied, "Not everybody's a super genius like you, so we can't all keep up with your train of thought."
Teal'c, never one to beat around the bush stated it more eloquently, "I believe Colonel Carter is referring to your behavior since the events which took place on Galar."
Silence met the Jaffa's blunt statement; even after all his years living on Earth Teal'c couldn't understand the Tau'ri's constant tendency to 'dance around the truth' as O'Neill would put it.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean." Cam asked slowly, an edge creeping into his usually jovial voice.
"Look," Daniel interjected, trying to smooth things out, "I think what Teal'c is trying to say is that you haven't exactly been yourself since the…incident with the memory device. Which is perfectly understandable of course." He quickly added when the colonel's eyes hardened at the insinuation.
"Why don't you all just say what you really mean!" Mitchell snapped as he jumped to his feet giving all of them a glare that a Jaffa could be proud of, "You don't trust me any more cause you think that I'm some kind of murderer…"
"What!" Three shocked voices interrupted the tirade.
"Cam what are talking about?" Sam asked, "You were cleared of Reya's murder, we know that, hell we're the ones that helped convince you that you didn't do it. You proved that…"
"That I didn't kill Reya." Cam finished for her, "And how exactly did I prove that Sam? Huh? Don't tell me that you don't remember that part!"
Realization slowly dawned on the rest of SG-1. None of them knew what memory Cam had had to relive. In the short time the team had been working together they'd all come to like the younger man quite well, but other than the colonel's crash in Antarctica and his assignment to the SGC, none of them really knew that much about him. Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c had worked together for nine years in and out of life and death situations all the time; there was very little that the three didn't know about each other.
Sometimes they forgot that about Mitchell. That he didn't know them nor they him as well as they thought.
Even so not one of them thought for a minute that the man was a murderer. Though in all honesty they'd been shocked when the man told Dr. Marell that he had the memory they needed. Whatever that memory was it had been obvious that it was hard for him. It had affected him even worse than the memory of Reya's murder by his own hands, which was saying something.
Human curiosity had made them more than a little curious about what that memory entailed, but not because they doubted Mitchell or didn't trust him.
However, Cam mistook their shocked silence as an affirmation of what his mixed-up mind already suspected and stormed off into the woods on the pretext of looking for more fire wood before the others could stop him.
The heavy silence was finally broken when Daniel spoke, "So let me get this straight. Mitchell thinks that we think that he's a murderer?"
"Why would he possibly give him that idea?" Carter asked, not really expecting an answer. However she got one anyway.
"I believe it is guilt Colonel Carter." Teal'c stated. "Colonel Mitchell felt guilty for Dr. Varrick's death even after we convinced him that he was not at fault…" "Why would he feel guilty for Reya's death after he knew he didn't do it?" Daniel interrupted.
"Because he is a warrior Daniel Jackson. He was present when Dr. Varrick was killed and was unable to render assistance. He feels responsible for her death. Then Colonel Mitchell was forced to relive another memory, in front of us, in which an innocent person was apparently killed by his hand."
"Teal'c is right." Sam said, "Cam blames himself for what happened to Reya as well as for whatever happened in that memory and he automatically assumed that we'd blame him too."
"That's crazy." Jackson replied.
"Think about it Daniel, add the memory device incident, his alternate self taking us prisoner, and his insecurities about leading SG-1, together with everything else that's happened and I think it actually makes since. From his point of view at least."
"His insecurities about leading SG-1? Since when has Mitchell been insecure about that?" Daniel asked incredulously, remembering the colonel's boundless enthusiasm for 'getting the band back together'.
"Colonel Mitchell is a confident and capable warrior Daniel Jackson, however, in light of SG-1's past successes under the leadership of Colonel O'Neill he doubts himself as an adequate replacement. He feels he must continually earn our trust and respect and I believe is afraid of doing something wrong and loosing it."
"And he told you all of this?" Jackson asked.
"He did not."
"Than how do you know all that Teal'c?" The archaeologist was confused.
"A warrior's intuition." Was the cryptic answer.
"It makes sense Daniel." Carter took pity on the usually quick-to-understand-man, "Cam acts like he doesn't have a care in the world and isn't afraid of anything. But that's not true; he's terrified of screwing up or letting one of his team get hurt. He feels like he's got to prove himself constantly and is always comparing his decisions to what O'Neill would do. And let's be honest they are some pretty big shoes to fill. It was the same way when Jonas joined the team." Sam inwardly cringed at her own analogy, even after all the time that had passed it was still hard to remember when Daniel wasn't part of the team, "He spent so much time trying to live up to your reputation and trying to do what he thought you would have done that it took a long time for him to realize he had his own qualities that we could respect him for. He could never replace you Daniel, but we never expected him to."
"Wow. I never realized…" Daniel quietly trailed off.
"Yeah." Carter agreed.
"Should we not attempt to locate Colonel Mitchell and rectify the situation." Teal'c broke the contemplative silence.
"I really doubt that he's going to reply to a radio hail the mood he was in when he left." Jackson pointed out.
"True but he has been gone a while. And it's getting dark." Sam said with a note of worry.
"I will look for him." Teal'c stated, as the big Jaffa rose gracefully to his feet. "Hold up Teal'c, I'll go with you." Daniel said standing.
"Guess I'll just sit here and wait." Carter muttered to herself as they disappeared into the surrounding forest. Someone had to remain at camp and guard what meager supplies they had left.
Sam wasn't sure what they were going to tell the General when they made it back to the SGC about how they'd lost their supplies, but the truth was simply out of the question. There was no way in the world – any world – that the members of the elite flagship team SG-1 was going to admit they had lost their supplies to the mischievous whims of some crazy hybrid space monkey gone wild.
The unusual monkey-like creature – that Mitchell had commented looked a little like that girl's alien pet in 'Lost In Space' – had come out of nowhere the day before and with a strength belying it's small stature, grabbed up their supply packs from where they were piled near the bank of the river and proceeded to pitch them into the racing water with an unnatural glee.
Yeah, there was no way that SG-1 would be admitting that in this lifetime.
So Colonel Carter sat in silence at their small camp in the woods, keeping an eye out in case the creature came back or had any little cousins running around.
Idly she wondered if the others had found Cam yet.
SG1-SG1-SG1-SG1
Cam sat despondently on a downed log near the rivers edge, his head held in his hands. His BDU's were dripping wet from his impromptu dip in the water. He had ventured further away from the camp than he'd originally intended and ended back up by the river. Out of the corner of his eye he'd caught a glimpse of something bulky and black bobbing up and down near the bank. Upon closer investigation he realized that one of the supply packs that they'd lost yesterday due to that devious creature had floated downstream and caught it's strap on a piece of shrubbery. In his distracted state he hadn't noticed how unstable the bank was until he was underwater. Thankfully he managed to keep close to the shore and didn't get pulled into the racing current. The colonel managed to pull himself and the pack out of the river relatively easily, and it wasn't until he pulled himself up to sit on the log that he noticed the gash on his left leg that went nearly from his knee to his ankle. Thankfully it wasn't bleeding heavily but it stung like hell whenever he moved it let alone put weight on it.
The fall hadn't done any good for his head either. Cam had had the perpetual headache ever since they'd left Galar, a fact he had taken great pains to hide from Dr. Lam, General Landry, and his team. Of course the beating he took from the alternate Teal'c hadn't exactly helped.
Between the constant pounding behind his eyes, the guilt that hounded him from both Reya's murder and the deaths of the innocent refugee's; the nightmares and sleepless nights, Cam was beginning to find it hard to keep his focus.
He also hadn't slept since before they left for what was supposed to be a quick in and out mission for Sam and Daniel to check out some ruins that turned out to be worth zilch; he had feigned sleep the night before afraid he'd wake up yelling from a nightmare in front of the team.
No need to look more pathetic in front of them than he already did.
But with the lack of sleep before he'd left topped with no sleep the night before Cam knew he wouldn't be able to keep it up for another forty three hours until they could gate back to the SGC.
Why hadn't Sam realized the space anomaly was there before they'd gated to the time forsaken uninhabited planet full of demonic monkeys with whacked up senses of humor?
It was starting to get dark and Cam knew he needed to head back to camp whether he wanted to or not. The colonel didn't relish the thought of facing the rest of SG-1 after their short confrontation earlier, nor did he look forward to describing his bedraggled appearance or admitting that he had fell into the river.
Mitchell also had no idea what kind of reactions to expect from them when he went back. Would they be ticked off at him for leaving before they could finish letting him have a piece of their mind? Would they want to share the camp with their suspected murderer team leader? Would they even want him to be part of the team at all when they finally got back to Earth or would they kick him off the team and let Carter go back to leading SG-1 like she had when O'Neill got promoted to General and put in charge of Stargate Command?
All of the questions, guilt, and worry were taking their toll on the weary man and he just couldn't find the strength needed to get up and make it back to camp and face the condemnation he feared he would see in the team's eyes.
So absorbed in the pounding headache from hell that raged in his skull, the colonel didn't hear the footsteps approaching.
SG1-SG1-SG1-SG1
Daniel and Teal'c had been looking for Cam and were starting to get worried before they finally saw Mitchell in the distance sitting dejectedly on a log with his head bowed buried in his hands.
As they neared the two realized that the colonel was dripping wet from head to toe and looked like the poster child for misery.
"What on Earth…I mean what on P4X-833," Daniel amended his question, remembering Cameron's earlier comment, "happened to you?"
"Jackson what the hell are you doing out here?" Mitchell asked quietly as he slowly lifted his head from his hands to look up at them as they circled around the log to stand in front of him.
"Looking for you." The archaeologist answered honestly, "It was getting dark and we were getting worried."
"Don't think I'm smart enough to find the camp back by myself?" Cam asked bitterly, his temper rising as his guilt and fatigue robbed him of control.
"What? No! Nothing like that…we…just…"
"Ya know Jackson for a man who speaks twenty seven different languages your doin' a hell of a job expressing yourself. So why don't you just cut the crap and say what you mean!"
Daniel was shocked silent by the usually amicable man's hostility. Before he could come up with a proper retort, however, he took a good look at the colonel's face. The bags under his eyes attested to little sleep and he looked more haggard than Daniel had ever seen him. And his eyes, Mitchell's eyes is what stopped Jackson cold. They held a haunted look that rocked Daniel to his core. Whatever retort he might have planned to say died on his lips.
"You are injured Colonel Mitchell." Teal'c's pronouncement broke Daniel out of his reverie.
"What happened to your leg?" Daniel asked worriedly as he knelt down to inspect the laceration. Cam tried to scoot away from the archaeologist's probing fingers claiming he was fine, but felt his shoulders ensnared in a vice-like grip as Teal'c held him still.
"Damn this is going to need stitches." Jackson announced grimly, nine years on SG-1 had made the once squeamish man far more comfortable and proficient with wounds than he cared to admit.
Deciding it was best to get back to camp before darkness settled in completely they began to hoist the now shivering man to his feet.
"Damn it!" The colonel cursed, trying unsuccessfully to shake out of Teal'c's firm grip, "I can walk by myself."
"I am aware of that Colonel Mitchell, as I am also aware that there is no shame in one warrior accepting help from another when one is injured." Teal'c stated as he pulled one of Mitchell's arms over his shoulder and began guiding them back to camp.
Daniel picked up the soppy supply bag and followed along side ready to offer his assistance if Teal'c needed help getting the colonel back.
The walk through the dense forest was quiet except for Cam's slightly labored breathing and occasional grunts of pain whenever he bumped his leg against a tree root or shrub.
Teal'c noticed Cam shivering harder as the night air grew cooler and knew they would have to get him out of his wet clothing as soon as possible. The Jaffa also felt Mitchell leaning heavier and heavier on him the further they walked; not that he minded shouldering the extra weight, but he was beginning to worry that the colonel was hurt worse than they had first ascertained.
"You must remain awake Colonel Mitchell." Teal'c gave the man a slight shake as they walked when he felt him trying to nod off.
"I am awake." Came the mumbled response.
"Indeed." Teal'c raised an eyebrow in fond amusement.
Soon the campfire came into view, and Sam jumped up when she saw the three approaching; Teal'c half carrying the colonel.
"What happened?" She asked quickly.
"I'm not sure," Daniel answered her as he sat down the pack he'd been carrying, "but my best guess is that Mitchell found one of our packs in the river and ended up in there with it before he got it out. He cut his left leg up pretty good in the process."
Carefully Teal'c eased his burden down helping the shivering man lean back against the trunk of a tree. Cam finally begin to come out of his stupor as he felt hands pulling his vest off and start working on his jacket.
"Whoa there big guy." He stuttered out through chattering teeth as he ineffectually tried to push Teal'c's hands away from him, "I'm flattered but you really ain't my type."
"And what is your type?" Daniel asked as he knelt down to help Teal'c get the struggling man's wet t-shirt off, while Carter dug through their meager first-aid supplies looking for gauze and antiseptic.
"Well it sure ain't tall, dark, and menacing." Cam muttered, which earned a grin from the archaeologist and a raised eyebrow from Teal'c.
Soon they had Mitchell out of everything but his boxers – which he'd flat out refused to part with – and wrapped in an emergency blanket lying by the fire.
Sam moved the blanket away from Cam's leg and had Teal'c hold the appendage still while she cleaned the wound as best she could before wrapping it tightly in a field bandage.
Whether Cam had passed out or simply fell asleep they couldn't be sure but the colonel was currently oblivious to the world.
TBC
End Note: I know the mission and anomaly have been a bit vague, but I don't have much time to devote to the story so I'm mostly focusing on the team. Also the idea of Mitchell having insecurities comes from the episode Avalon where he was talking to Carter over the video feed and said "What if the world needs saving because I screwed up."
If you read the story I'd love to know what you thought.