Fitting The Bill

Intra-Continuum. Before Cam, Sam, and Daniel leave the Presidential bunker. Ba'al hasn't attacked yet. Earth needs someone to sit in the Ancient Barker Lounger. One-shot.

"You said we're going to need someone with the Ancient Gene. Who fits the bill?" President Hayes asked.

"Jack?" Daniel suggested.

"He tried powering the Chair up when we were still trying to find Atlantis—he couldn't even get it to recline without the Ancient knowledge in his brain," Sam said. "Doctor Beckett posited that the knowledge of the Ancients gave the General's ATA ranking a boost."

"Sheppard," Cam said. "The mission files said he can make that Ancient tech stuff work like magic."

Sam, who had been agreeing with Cam about John Sheppard being the best man for the job—she had spent nearly a year with him as her second in command while she tried to fill Elizabeth's shoes on Atlantis, and she was even willing to admit that they had become friends, at least as much as they could given the circumstances that brought them together, and the way Sheppard controlled Ancient technology was so natural one would think he'd lived his whole life around the stuff—looked at Cam when she realized that the world they were trying to save was already vastly different from the one they were used to. "We don't know who he is in this reality, though. In ours he was still in the Air Force. In this one he could have been thrown in Leavenworth for disobeying orders in Afghanistan. He could have never even been Air Force—he could have gone into the private sector like his father."

"Can't hurt to check," Daniel pointed out.

"We might know the man you want controlling the Chair, sir," Sam said to Hayes.

The President would have smiled if he hadn't overheard half of what SG-1 was whispering to each other. "Who?" Hayes asked, a name being something he hadn't quite caught.

"We don't know what he goes by in this reality, but in ours he'd a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force," Cam said.

"Major," Sam corrected. "He didn't get promoted until after his first year in Atlantis."

"Alright. Air Force. Lieutenant Colonel or Major," Hayes said, an aide at the desk the president was leaning against typing the information into the computer. "Name?"

"John Sheppard, sir," Sam said. "S-h-e-double-p-a-r-d," she added, to avoid confusion. "Brown hair, green eyes, six-foot-one, about one-eighty-five, one-ninety."

There was silence in the group for a moment until the aide said, "Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, stationed at Andrews AFB… currently on leave for two weeks… two days left… oh; he's on his honeymoon, sir. His itinerary indicates he would be staying in the DC area."

"Who the hell honeymoons in DC when they're stationed at Andrews?" Cam frowned.

"His new wife, maiden name Miss—sorry; Doctor Elizabeth Weir. She's been on tap to leave for South Korea for the UN negotiation about their nuclear weapons tests; the UN wants her to stay local, I guess," the aide said, shrugging.

"Sheppard and Weir?" Cam asked, eyebrows raised.

"Huh. Guess this reality isn't as different from our own as we thought," Sam said before turning to leave. "Sheppard's your guy. You might want to bring Weir in, too—she's come in handy in our timeline," she called over her shoulder as she led her team—because they would always be her team, even if they were missing two members and the timeline was all screwed up—toward the surface where they would be taken to the jets they would fly to where the Navy—weird as that was—was running the Stargate Program.

Hopefully nothing else would go wrong while they were on the way to the 'Gate.

It's my birthday and I'll post if I want to... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

SPACE, a TV station here in Canada, was playing a Canada Day Stargate Move Marathon (though, really, three movies does not a marathon make) and while I was watching Continuum this story popped into my head. Since in 501 of ATLANTIS Sam left to deal with the last Ba'al clone, and dealing with the last Ba'al clone was the opening plot of Continuum, it stands to reason that Continuum is set after ATLANTIS S4/501, while Arc Of Truth came before Sam left for Midway Station as seen in ATLANTIS 401/402

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my little birthday posting.

Manic Penguin