AN: Written fot the sgrarepairings 2008 fic battle on livejournal, for the prompt 'not enough time', with the main characters being Jack O'Neill and Thor. Gen. Enjoy.
The Asgard as a race may be running out of time, but Thor knows, with the wisdom born from of millennia of experience, that it is one of the best clones of its personality to ever have existed. Supreme Commander Thor the XVIIth, arguably the most successful incarnation in history, was perhaps a better tactician, through a lucky glitch of synapses. The XXIVth had the highest influence a single individual had ever exerted over the High Council, unsurpassed even long after its time. The XXXVIIIth designed, in a fit of pique over malfunctioning communication devices, the basics of the system still used six thousand years later.
The XLVIth, the last one to exist, has its own triumphs – it kept the Replicators at bay. It balanced the deception of the Protected Planets Treaty on a knife's edge of Goa'uld greed and fear, knowing just when to intervene. One of its interventions found heirs for the Asgard, in the form of the Tau'ri.
It was the one to evaluate not only the capacity, but the contents of Jack O'Neill's mind from a military standpoint, and it was its decision not to terminate the human, but instead to remove the Alteran knowledge from his brain and send him home, Earthward.
Thor had its reasons, beyond the human's innate 'goodness', for what it did. For, bar perhaps the original one, Thor number 46 had the strongest trait of… 'adaptability', it supposed, out of every single incarnation ever created. It knew how to suit circumstances to its needs, or maybe its needs to circumstances, and in a human who would later become its friend, it saw an opportunity.
Thus, it has its own triumphs, personal and maybe a little spiteful towards its predecessor, unfitting of a member of such 'enlightened' race as the Asgard but there nonetheless. It had not only allies but a genuine friend outside its own race. It breaks the smooth succession of clones and has developed the kind of personality traits – even quirks – that the great XVIIth would be abjectly horrified at.
Thor will be remembered.
Let the Tau'ri have Asgard technology and history, and even culture as a curiosity. Thor is an individual. It knows, from evaluations it had to perform, how much its human friend's mind can absorb without overloading. Not the knowledge of an entire race, not by a long shot, but the memories of one being, one which he has come to genuinely care about?
Perhaps not easily, but certainly gladly. O'Neill is sentimental like that, and Thor would value this even if the sentimentality weren't about to guarantee its continued existence.
O'Neill is not a child, but he is still absurdly young by Asgard standards. The technological knowledge they are to be gifted with, coupled with ingenuity that is the Tau'ri's own, should keep him alive for a relatively long time if judiciously applied, and Thor's memories – convictions - personality - with him.
And if not, if Jack one day sacrificed himself and died before his time, Thor knows its friend and heir will only do it if necessary, and for a good cause. It is sure that, were it to be alive to witness it, it would agree with the human's decision.
The Asgard may be out of time, but Thor is not only an Asgard, and it can spare a few hours to visit a friend for the last time and ask a favour that it knows will be granted, not out of obligation but affection.
Take that, asshole. – it thinks at its past self – selves? – with pettiness which feels strangely good. Uplifting. Humorous. Irreverent.
The feeling reminds it of O'Neill, and Thor smiles, as much as its face will let it.