Little tag for Continuum that's been bouncing around in my head ever since the first time I saw it. I watched the scene where the three of them appear to talk to the president, standing together like they had never been apart, and I remember thinking that their reunion must have been cute and I would have loved to have seen it. I'm sure this has been done to death, but I can't help that I always get attacked by rabid fluff plot bunnies, rather than angst or adventure ones. "Sigh" Oh well, here you go.

Stargate SG-1 belongs to MGM and not me.

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The flight from California to Washington DC seemed to take three times longer than it should have for someone used to wormhole travel and Asgard beaming technology, and Sam was becoming increasingly antsy. From the moment she had seen the Al'kesh fly over, to now, aboard an private Air Force jet, she had been running on nothing more than a bottle of water and nervous energy. Now that she knew she would be seeing her team soon and possibly doing what she lived to do, she was finally starting to feel like herself. Her military instincts were coming back with a vengeance, and she was starting to think like an officer again.

Except for one thing. For one of the first times in her military career, she hated her government. If they had been allowed to go and stop Ba'al a year ago, the world wouldn't be in this position now. No matter how much they had argued and told them that the System Lord was a threat, they had not listened, and now people were probably going to start dying.

This world didn't have the luxury of a SGC that was fully aware of the dangers out there in the galaxy, and had the wherewithal to do something about them. No semi-working weapons platform in Antarctica, no Apollo or Odyssey, no Stargate, and, due to the paranoia of certain people, no SG-1. Until now, when it was quite possibly too late to do anything.

Let them rot. It was an extremely uncharitable thought, and she instantly regretted it. She was only mad at a small handful of people compared to the billions of innocents that were going to be affected by Ba'al's arrival. She should blame her bitterness on the few, not the many.

Bitterness had come easily to her lately. A year of frustration would do that to you, she reflected. Frustration and more. Boredom, anger, depression, and a deep, crushing loneliness, her emotions had run the gambit over the past year.

A year in which her brain had stagnated in a meaningless job. She hadn't need to work, as the living allowance she was given was more than enough to pay for her meager needs, but doing nothing at all would have driven her completely insane.

A year of dealing with the looks of awe and confusion as people saw a woman who was, yet wasn't, her.

A year of knowing that two men she saw as her brothers were in the same country, only a phone call away, and she couldn't even hear their voices or know how they were doing.

Until she had called Daniel. Hearing the rumble of his half awake voice, a voice that, in an achingly familiar way, had steadily risen in excitement when he realized who he was talking to, made her want him to keep rambling just so she could listen to him speak. She had been worried out of her mind for her best friend, knowing how the Powers-That-Be had dumped him in some strange city to undergo what was probably going to be some difficult physical therapy.

She had wanted to be the one to call Cam as well, but the airman who had picked her up had told her it had already been taken care of. Damn. She had been looking forward to hearing that soft southern accent on the other end of the line, a voice that had been with her throughout her academy and flight school days, always egging her on to do better.

She tried to relax in her seat, get as comfortable as she could. She should be brainstorming. She should be coming up with that last desperate plan to save the day, but she found she couldn't bring herself to concentrate on that, despite the urgency. Not at this time. All she could think about right now was seeing her friends again.

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Sam's heart clenched with anticipation as the airman who had been escorting her opened the door, and she stepped into the small briefing room. Before she could even look around at the bland military décor, someone took two strides toward her, and she was engulfed in a bear hug, her feet almost leaving the ground. She instinctively tensed for a moment, then let herself melt into the strong arms holding her, returning the embrace and pressing her face into the warm shoulder in front of her, reacquainting herself to the scent of books and desert sand that was uniquely Daniel.

The last time she had seen him he had still been bound to a wheelchair, but she recalled his firm strides across the room and was actually having a slightly warmer feeling toward the government for providing her friend with an obviously state-of-the-art prosthetic. With him on his feet, she could finally be on the receiving end of a true Daniel hug. For someone who wasn't very tactile normally, he gave the best. It just wasn't in his nature to do anything half way. She found herself enveloped in warmth and security, a feeling enhanced by the knowledge that he only did this for people he truly loved. She had been shamelessly soliciting him for hugs since her father had died, and had missed this terribly for the past year.

While she was happy to stand there like that for as long as she could, she became worried when he didn't release her after a minute. That, and he hadn't said anything yet. A slight shaking of his shoulders and the tenseness of his body began to speak volumes to her on what the past year had been like for him.

She pulled back slightly. "Daniel?"

He lifted his head and looked at her. A wan smile was starting to show on his handsome face, but his normally bright blue eyes were dark with emotion. "I missed you, Sam. You have no idea how much I missed you."

"Where did they send you?"

"Manhattan."

New York? They had sent him to the city where his parents had died? The forgiveness she had started to feel toward her government over Daniel's leg went away, and she felt a new wave of anger start deep within her. Sure, they had healed him physically, but had done nothing to address his emotional scars.

Her issues over the past year suddenly seemed trivial compared to his, she realized. The Stargate Program wasn't his job, it was his life, and his team was his world. She talked about her team being like a family to her, but to Daniel, they truly were the only family he had left. The only people who knew him. They were the ones who knew he still suffered from crippling nightmares, and gently woke him from them. They were the ones who knew what "I'm fine" really meant, and made sure to get more information out of him.

But Jack (their Jack) was dead, Teal'c and Vala gone, she and Cam banished from his life, and there had been no one to look after him. Sam knew that beneath that fiercely independent exterior was someone who relied on his little support group way more than he would ever admit. She had always tried to be there for him, but they had left the one he really leaned on lying on the floor of a pyramid ,on another planet, in a different time.

She felt tears start to prick the corners of her eyes at the memory as she pulled her best friend back into another heartfelt embrace. Neither of them had had any chance to mourn the person who had been the anchor in their lives for so long, and now it was all coming out. A dampness against her neck told her that the feeling was mutual. They stood together and sobbed out a year's worth of grief. When they were finally spent, Daniel lifted his head from her shoulder and gave her a fond kiss on her crown, and rested his cheek there, sighing. Sam decided that the world could end right now, and she wouldn't care, she was just happy to be with him, to be there for him again.

"Hey, can I get in on this too? I'm getting lonely over here, " a soft voice drawled from the doorway.

Sam and Daniel broke from their embrace, chuckling and wiping tears from their eyes as they looked up at Mitchell, who had been leaning in the doorway quietly, giving his two teammates a moment together. Sam grinned at his lanky form, that, as usual, seemed comfortable no matter where it was. Different world or different time, Cam would never change. She had actually worried about him the least over the past year, just due to his ability to always land on his feet. He was one of the most adaptable people she knew, and could handle anything life threw at him. Even in a world where, apparently, he didn't exist.

He crossed the room and threw his arms around Sam and squeezed the breath out of her, then reached a long arm out and hooked it around Daniel's neck, pulling them all close together. Sam caught Daniel's eye over the other man's head, and they shared a smile. "You know Daniel, I think he missed us."

"Seems that way, doesn't it?"

Cam tightened his arms and looked fondly at them. "Of course I missed you. Do you have any idea where they dumped me? Right smack in the middle of suburbia hell. Without my two geniuses around to keep things interesting, I was slowly dying of boredom. Very slowly."

"Really?" Daniel said, the sparkle returning to his eyes. "Because I always pictured you finding something to occupy yourself. Maybe buying a muscle car of some sort and fixing it up. Something like that." He laughed when Mitchell narrowed his eyes at him.

"Jackson, I hate it when you do that."

Sam grinned as Daniel gave him his patented "what?" look, and couldn't help but join in. "Getting hit on by the hot neighbor… Some single mother, maybe."

"Carter! Would you two knock that off."

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "You mean, that's not what happened?"

"No, that is what happened, but that's beside the point." He huffed while Sam giggled and Daniel smirked.

She laughed harder at the surprised look on Cam's face a moment later when Daniel pulled the younger man into a firm hug. Cam's surprise quickly wore off and he returned the gesture, slapping Daniel on the back. "Yeah, I missed you too, buddy. My house had a basketball hoop and everything, and no one to play with." Cam's sharp eyes had noticed how steadily Daniel was standing. If Daniel had been outfitted with the kind of technology that she thought, the idea of him playing wasn't impossible.

That suspicion was confirmed when, rather than becoming defensive, Daniel smirked. "You really want to test that. I could kick your ass now that I'm bionic. The taxpayers would have a fit if they knew how much this leg cost them. Somehow, I don't think I mind."

They all had a good chuckle at that one. And, now that she was back with her team, Sam's brain could start functioning again. "So, what are we going to do? I mean, we should do something, right? This isn't our world, but it is our Ba'al. That makes us at least partially responsible. We should give the military any help we can to fight back."

Daniel looked like he wanted to argue that, but a glance from Mitchell grudgingly silenced him. "Do we really want to just sit here on our thumbs while our old pal Ba'al destroys Earth, even if it's not our Earth?" He looked at each of them. "I thought not. So, let's go save the world. After all, it's what SG-1 does." He smiled crookedly. "And besides, what else are we going to do with ourselves."

Sam felt the familiar elation as they stepped out of the room, unconsciously moving in sync with each other, like they had never been apart. And, just like that, the past year washed away, lost in the past, and Sam could think about the future, no matter how short it might be.

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The young Lieutenant that had been standing in the doorway during all this as a quiet observer was still slightly stunned. He didn't know who these people were that he was supposed to escort to see the President. He didn't quite understand most of their conversation. Their interaction was irregular to the military man, and he didn't need any more irregular goings on right now. He didn't know exactly what was going on out there to have all the higher ups worried, but you didn't have to be born yesterday to know it was some heavy shit.

But listening to this team, for it was obvious that's what they were, he couldn't help but think that, if they were the ones who were going to do something about it, that the world might be in pretty good hands.

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There you go, operation successful. The fluff has been removed from my brain and now I can get on with my life and my other projects. Read, enjoy, and let me know how I did.