Ironically, Cam still doesn't know that much about alternate timelines. Now that he's saved the world and the Stargate from disaster, and ensured the continuation of the Mitchell family line, he has no idea what will happen.
Is his future -- past? -- self still going to travel to that planet to watch Ba'al's clone get de-wormed? Will he go on traveling through the gate with SG-1? God, he hopes so. But there's no way to find out.
Right now, all he knows is that it's 1939 and he's living in a world he's only read about in books. History books.
Eddie and Vera have been real nice, but Cam can't stay with them. He's already interfered in their lives too much, given too much away. If he has to leave he might as well find a way to do what he knows: fight bad guys and fly planes.
He gets himself hired on as a hand on a steamer heading East, and Eddie drives him down to the docks to see him off.
"Listen," his grandfather says, staring out at the ships with his hands in his pockets. "I don't know how to say--"
"Don't," Cameron says, not looking at him, either. This is hard enough without having to say I didn't do it for you, I did it to save the galaxy.
"Well, then I reckon I'll just give you the good news. Vera's -- she and I, we're gonna have a baby."
Cameron grins up at the hull of the ships above him, the sky blue and stiff with salty breezes beyond that, and counts backward from his father's birthday. He turns to shake Eddie's hand.
"Congratulations," he says. "That's wonderful. Congratulations."
"Listen, I--"
Cameron just grins at him and pumps his hand again. A ship's whistle blows nearby, overwhelmingly loud.
"I gotta go," Cam shouts, and Eddie nods.
He takes two steps, then another, before he turns back to look at his grandfather, standing there on the docks with his hands in his pockets.
"Frank," he yells, over the sounds of the ships around them. "His name is Frank."
Eddie nods, and returns Cam's grin with an identical one. "You bet," he says.
--
When he gets to London, Cam goes directly to enlist. He knows how to fly planes, he says, and he's here to fight the Nazis. It's all true. He doesn't bother to lie about his name, either. But every day he gets closer to fifty, and even though he won't be born for another twenty-five years, he's a little too old for this, so he does take some liberties with his age.
"Welcome to the R.A.F., Lieutenant Mitchell," the recruiter says, and Cam shakes his hand with a smile on his face. It's been a long time since anyone called him Lieutenant, but he likes the sound of it.
Standing on the runway, he's surrounded by planes that still look like museum pieces to him, even after ten years in this timeline. As the air raid sirens sing out their warning across the runway and he runs for his plane with the other pilots, Cam knows he's in the right place.
He's always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, to have a death that really means something. And sure, of course he wants to live, too, travel to distant lands and meet beautiful women and maybe bring up a whole passel of kids in the country somewhere. That's all possible now because of him, because he's here in 1939. He can't say why he's so sure, but deep down he knows. Vera will have that baby on October 12, and they'll name him Frank, and then little Cameron will come along and one day he'll travel through the Stargate again.
It won't be him, though. It'll be a different Cam, a Colonel in the U.S.A.F. Right now, Lieutenant Mitchell of the Royal Air Force has a job to do, and a different war to win.
