When he finally finds Carter, it's too damned late. He'd followed her trail through their broken-down plans to a crumbling high school just outside of destroyed, Lucian-run Sedona – but she was already dead, splayed on the stairs to the school's gymnasium, buried under fallen rubble, her head cracked in with some kind of blunt object and her long blonde hair matted with blood too brown to be recent. And the baby -
- the baby was trapped too, but alive, her wide eyes frightened, connecting with Cam's, wailing -
Cam doesn't think. It's Grace, after all. He moves.
Three seconds too late, he realizes that the rubble had been placed on top of Sam and that the whole damned thing is a trap.
He doesn't see where the Lucians came from, but he puts up a good fight nonetheless, as befits the leader of SG-1 – one bullet in Stoneface's head, another in Skinny's gut, a few teeth knocked out of the mouth of some guy that could have been Ventrell's brother. But in the end it's the warlord Massim Elait himself that shoves Mitchell against the wall of the old gymnasium, causing pain to lance through his teeth and down his neck, his opponent growling his victory like an animal might. The surviving Lucians bind Mitchell's hands and feet in the meantime; Elait's teeth are ragged and his breath unkempt, sour with too much wine. His words are hot in Mitchell's ear.
Nearby, the baby cries.
"Tell us the location of Icarus Base, or things will go very badly for you," Eliat hisses.
And Mitchell's own breath comes ragged, touched by the memory of the world as it was. "Can't. Won't," he says, dragging in oxygen. Then there's a cold blade on the back of his neck. "You already ruined everything. Might of thought of that while you still had -"
"Your planet is dead, yes. But you are the senior officer left from your Stargate Command. You must know of Icarus Base," Elait whispers again.
Mitchell spits. It dribbles down the side of his chin, catching in the stubble from days and days of travel, and lands on the wall where it glistens in the light of the Lucian flashlights. Elias pushes his head forward, rubbing his cheek in it. Gross, but it makes the point for both of them.
"Okay, okay... I'll tell you. Icarus Base is... up yours," Mitchell replies.
"What a pity," says the warlord, and cuts Mitchell's throat.
The last thing Mitchell hears is Grace crying so hard she hiccups.
Mitchell and Jackson were at the bar when the world ended.
Specifically, they were at the bar at the Broadmoor Hotel, in matching tuxedos of all things, getting refills for the ladies – for Vala, some kind of pomegranate martini, and another White Russian for Amy, who didn't know about the diamond ring burning a hole in Mitchell's pocket. The ballroom glittered with lights suspended from the ceiling – stars and constellations, suns and planets and tinsel and Christmas lights, an astrophysicist's dream wedding. The couple both wore their dress blues; there was no white dress for Samantha, no black tuxedo for the General, not after all they'd been through.
And all Mitchell could think looking out on the dance floor, watching the O'Neills fail hilariously to waltz, his arms around Amy's warm shoulders, was that things were pretty damned perfect.
Five minutes later, Amy and Vala were dead, and half of Colorado Springs with them - and Samantha Carter O'Neill was struggling to her feet, newly a widow.
The Lucians swept over the country like vultures, like black-banded cockroaches, looking for Icarus in the ruins.
SG-1 runs.
They're good at running.
Carter never takes the ring off. It's a slight gold thing, meant to stay out of the way in the field and the lab, with no ornamentation besides some wording etched inside in blocky, beautiful Ancient – tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens.
In the future, Mitchell won't call it "waking up," "coming to," or anything of the sort. There was nothing – nothing at all – and then light so bright he's convinced his eyes had never been used before, air so smoky and dull it hurts his lungs, a lack of pain in his hip where he should have had a dozen titanium pins. He opens his eyes and finds nothing but a broken classroom and the severe face of a woman in Lucian black. Young at first glance, but no; the lines around her mouth spell out her years, and the dark eyes are full of the kind of hate only decades can develop.
"Princess Buttercup, I presume," Mitchell coughs out.
There are Lucian jarheads hanging about, apparently, and eight seconds later he's already got a split lip and five broken ribs.
"I am Massim Kiva," she says, her voice as hard and bright as naquadah. Mitchell's stomach turns; he's SG-1, he knows the name. This is Eliat's daughter, the commander of the ha'tak that destroyed Cheyenne Mountain and three other worlds. He drags himself backward, away from the woman, his back hitting the wall with some pain.
Yeah, you've made your point, thinks Mitchell, breathing shallowly. Times like this he's thankful for the crash; after Antarctica, a few broken ribs aren't too much of a problem, it's what comes next that's the issue -
I'm coming for you, Grace, Mitchell thinks. I won't let them take you.
Kiva presses her lips together. "You must stop this nonsense, Colonel Mitchell. You have no country; the Lucian Alliance holds your planet and your Stargate. Your America is dead, as is your team. Tell us the name of the planet where Icarus lies, or we will kill you as many times as it takes for you to be compliant."
Mitchell drags himself to his feet, kicking at the chains binding him to the wall. He thinks of the mission report from O'Neill's experience being held by Ba'al, and closes his eyes, fixing in his head a vision of Jackson spouting nonsense about Ascension. Mitchell hopes against hope that he's dead, that he's not somewhere getting the same treatment. It's okay, he thinks to himself. I'm SG-1. I can do this. "Sarcophagus," he wheezes, his eyes narrowing at Kiva. "That's all you got? I'm SG-1, we've all been-there-done-that, oh yeah, gimme some sugar, baby -"
Mitchell doesn't get to finish the sentence before he discovers what it feels like to be zatted twice.
They find out Carter's pregnant two months after the fall of the Mountain, fleeing the Alliance patrols just outside of Topeka. Jackson – he was still with them then, still kicking, still mourning Vala – threw a party to celebrate. Nothing like the kind of holy-shit-we're-still-alive dinners they used to have at O'Malley's after the bad missions, not even their traditional celebratory pizza and beer and Pepsi-for-Teal'c, but they did have a fire and a can of Hormel chili, and that was something.
They talked names in the ruins of a firebombed 7-11, splitting a can of beer between themselves (evidence that not much was left of civilization here, or else the beer would have been long gone) like it was holy communion. Carter gave them a dirty look, swished a sip around in her mouth, closed her eyes and spat it out, meeting Cam's gaze. The three of them decided on Jack or Charlie for a boy, and Grace or Janet for a girl.
The next nine months would have been hard enough with the Air Force hospital and the best obstetricians the commander of Homeworld Security could have located – Carter's injuries after ten years on SG-1 and the fact that she was over forty made pregnancy inherently dangerous.
And then after Jackson was taken and Teal'c sacrificed himself to save Cam and Sam, the last two members of SG-1 were left starved in a barn for two months, Carter's pre-eclampsia making it too difficult to move. But she survived, and the baby -
- the baby she named Grace, their hope.
When the pain gets too tough, when it feels like he's back freezing his life away in Antarctica and Kiva has his femoral artery open to the nuclear sky, he thinks of the baby, of Carter, of Jackson and Vala and the good times, of the way the world once was.
He is SG-1.
He will keep the hope alive.
The sixth time Mitchell dies, he's left outside in the ash-haunted Arizona afternoon, tied to a post in the middle of the complex in his underwear. ("Why not naked?" he'd asked Kiva. "You scared you couldn't handle it?") The nuclear snow around him is thick enough that he can hardly tell that this place used to be a shopping mall; even abandoned to winter, he can still smell the rotting bodies stacked up by the Lucians behind the broken Wal-Mart. He will last long enough, he thinks, to know that he's not going to get the privilege of joining them in their oblivion. Not until the Lucians get what they want.
Icarus, Icarus. I hope you have flown.
The laughs bubble up unbidden, even though he doesn't think anything is very funny at the moment.
"You can make it stop," he hears. Kiva, in winter gear.
He starts to shiver, and his mind is just bright enough to remember what he's supposed to say to that. "C-Cameron Mitchell, Colonel, United States Air Force, date of birth -"
"So be it," says the woman, and leaves.
He knows what's going to happen next: Violent shivering. Muscle spasms. Sluggish thinking. Tachycardia.
Death.
What they had wasn't a marriage. That was only for Jack and a world that could handle more than bare survival. But posing as new parents garnered them sympathy as they crossed the United States hunting for Jackson – it got them places to sleep, milk and formula for Grace, and cans of green beans for her mother. The days grew colder. Darker. Hungrier. Wherever they went, the Lucians tracked them; Carter dyed her hair, Mitchell grew a beard, they adopted British accents. They hid under blankets as patrols went by, bribed settlement leaders with Carter's mechanical skills, leaving a trail of functioning generators and modified solar panels along their path.
They lived together, fought together, breathed together.
And one night he'd mentioned love, that he'd always loved her from the moment he saw her in her plane during the Gulf War. He said he'd always love Grace, too, that he would love her dead father and raise her as O'Neill would - or die trying. She'd said nothing – but then her hand was in his and her lips against his, and there's no more talking for a while.
Still, her wedding ring is the one thing she won't barter for food.
"I can bring Colonel Carter back, you know." It's Eliat himself this time, splayed on a chair in furs and common beads like a Neanderthal pimp king. Vaguely, Mitchell sees gold, hieroglyphs, the symbol of some blurry dead false god – Mitchell realizes in the time it takes him to spit blood on the floor that he's on the bridge of some Goa'uld's co-opted ha'tak. Getting uncomfortable down there, with what you did? Liking the nuclear winter? Going to fucking Disney World? Mitchell thinks. And then he wonders: Oh, God, did I say anything? Did they use a memory device? Are we on the way to the Alpha Site?
Mitchell's mouth is dry, his lips chapped, his voice barely used when he addresses Elait. "I would never do that to her," he manages before the desire overtakes him. He fixes his mind on hope - "Where's Grace?"
Eliat's voice is velvet. "I could just kill you again," he says. "Enough times in the sarcophagus and you won't care about your child. You won't care about your woman. You won't care about anything but -" he runs his fingers over the side of the sarcophagus. Mitchell's body responds like an addict's, burning for the sarcophagus despite the shame of needing it more than Carter, more than the baby, and he forces himself to look at his feet. He feels hot blood at his temple; it drips to the corner of his mouth and he tastes it.
I'm alive, he thinks. I'm still alive, which means I still have a chance at getting out of here. Concentrate, Mitchell. Do it for Sam, for Grace, for Jackson and Teal'c and the General.
"You should know by now," Mitchell croaks, "that I was never privy to any of the information about the Icarus Project. I was just a team leader. And even if I did know, I'd never tell."
He wrenches his eyes shut, running the words like a mantra - I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free -
Eliat has a piano wire this time. He makes sure Mitchell is gasping for breath, nearly blue, before finishing him off.
Sometimes, he calls her Amy.
Sometimes, she calls him Jack.
It doesn't matter. They are each other's refuge from the dark, freezing, ashen day, and every day is closer to victory.
There's a ghost across the room, a ghost with wide blue eyes and flat blonde hair that falls around her face in jagged wisps, held back over her shoulder in a tight military braid. The sarcophagus unfolds in his head, patterns of gold and silver and brandy-heady, and so he takes a moment to place her – he's too entranced with the life running back into his veins, the disgusting high of it all, the loss he feels when he's dragged away, the desperate thing he he feels when Kiva comes towards him and draws her finger down his jawbone, preparing to kill him one more time.
- oh, God, he thinks. God in the sweetest heaven.
"Sam, baby."
Is his voice really that broken?
"Just tell them," says Carter. She's dressed in black, a high-collared leather uniform that seems terribly wrong to him. "Tell them about Icarus. I'm sick of being dead."
Mitchell's eyes flicker to Carter's hands. There's no ring there, glinting in the sick orange light of the ha'tak, and his mouth goes dry. "How many times do I have to tell you bastards," he whispered, "The only people who know where Icarus is are dead, and you'd never tell. So just get it over with, already."
Sam raises her gun, and with a very Lucian cant to her head, fires.
The belly wound is messy, and the pain unbearable, and he bleeds out alone after she leaves.
Grace's first birthday passes quietly. Sam's already trying to teach the kid advanced physics, and Cam just wants her to stop putting things in her mouth that don't belong there.
Can't blame her. They're all hungry.
They've joined some former military personnel in Texas, a loose confederation of Marines, Army and Air Force feeling each other out and fighting a guerilla war against the Lucian presence in Austin. When they find out Carter's not only the highest-ranking officer around but a member of the organization that caused the death of Earth, there's a vote (which is hilarious, Mitchell thinks – since when did Marines vote?). Half to expel her; half-and-a-quarter to place her in command.
One day Mitchell's exploring the ruins of an old Trust base with a team, two Marines and a guy they knew back at the SGC, a lieutenant who hadn't yet been offworld during the Lucian invasion, and he discovers something incredible.
Information. About a ditched Trust al'kesh. At some school in Arizona.
It's worth taking a chance that the ship still might be there. Carter and Mitchell make immediate plans. They could get to the Alpha Site, and contact their off-world allies – and then everything would be all right. They could find Jackson (if he was still alive; Mitchell doubted it, but Carter never lost faith).
They're back on some planet. There's a window in his cell, and an outdoors somewhere beyond it.
Mitchell can hear alien birds, the rustling of leaves, the kind battery of a warm but windy day. Not Earth, then. It reminds him of the springtime on the farm where he grew up, and of that planet with the fields of long blue grass, the grass that swayed in the breeze like drunken line dancers on a Saturday night. And then the sarcophagus-shit hits him like a ton of bricks, and he just lets it envelop him like a blanket and drown out the future.
The door opens only seconds later, and Mitchell recognizes Kiva's lean form, the dark hair drawn back, the no-nonsense set of her shoulders. He recognizes the bundle in her arms a few seconds later – oh, how long has it been?
The child has grown. She has pretty blonde ringlets and Carter's blue eyes, a thumb in her mouth, realization on her face - "Papa," she cries, and Kiva lets her run over to Mitchell, and hugging her is like hugging sunshine, his nose in her hair smelling the baby shampoo like liquid courage, and the strength builds in his chest, runs to his hands where he's drawing them across a face that looks so much like hers, like hope, not blood, ran in her veins – and suddenly -
"Ayana, that's enough. Come here." Kiva snaps her fingers.
Grace wriggles from Mitchell's grasp, and returns to Kiva, who sweeps her up with a practiced air. A mother's embrace.
Mitchell struggles at his bonds.
"We named her Ayana," Kiva says, in a measured tone. "She is my daughter. Oh, not of my body, of course, but of my heart." The bitch ruffles Grace's pretty blonde hair, tilts the child's chin to look into those intelligent blue eyes. "Massim Ayana, such a remarkable child – so smart, so incredible, the last and best of the Tau'ri, their scion, so to speak. The very last, as the case may be – and she'll never know it, will she, sweetheart?" And then Kiva's voice devolves, slips into the baby-talk he'd seen from his sisters, his aunts, his mother, and the very thought of it makes him retch - "My gorgeous daughter, my sweet Lucian princess -"
Mitchell's mouth is dry, his words lost somewhere in the fog of his lost soul, his last word her name.
He goes down fighting, just like he always knew he would.