"Well, everything looks good. For a premie, she's in wonderful health," reported Janet Frasier after examining the baby. Captain O'Neill had explained that his wife had died merely hours ago after giving birth to the tiny baby girl as the Goa'uld invaded their Earth. "Aren't you sweetheart? Her name's Sammy?"

"Samantha Sara O'Neill, for my mothers."

"Samantha? As in..."

"Samantha Carter, yeah. They're not together in this reality are they...because of the regs?"

"No, they're not together." Something in her voice told him it wasn't because the feelings weren't there. Maybe he'd have to give them a little nudge. The last few days had taught him that life was precious. They shouldn't waste what time they had because of some damned rules.

"Alright, J.J. Let's go talk to great-grandpa George," said Charlie as he gathered his daughter's tiny form into the crook of his arm.

"Why don't you leave them here with me?" suggested Dr. Frasier.

"I think you'd better come to the meeting with us," Charlie told her as he took his son by the hand. With a confused frown Janet took the toddler's other hand and together they walked towards the briefing room.

"Captain O'Neill, I don't think this meeting is an appropriate place for your children," Hammond reprimanded as the group entered the briefing room. Chuck Kawalsky and all four members of SG-1 had already taken seats around the large conference table with General Hammond seated at the head.

"Well, General. Since I'm not letting them out of my sight, we have a problem. J.J. go sit on Grandpa's lap," Charlie told his son letting go of the boy's hand.

Colonel O'Neill pushed his chair back slightly, expecting the little boy to come to him. Almost everyone was surprised when he stopped at Daniel Jackson's chair.

"Ahh...your grandpa is over there, J.J."

"You're his other grandfather, Daniel," Kawalsky informed the surprised archaeologist. "You adopted Cassie when you married Janet."

"Cassie?" asked Dr. Frasier. "What does Cassie have to do with anything?"

"Janet, Cassie was my wife. J.J. and Sammy are your grandchildren," Charlie informed his could-have-been-mother-in-law.

"Then...oh, God. Not Cassie! She can't die that way. No!"

Charlie rose quickly from his chair to go to the distraught woman. "Not your Cassie, Janet. Your Cassie is still a teenager remember? And I'm dead in this reality. What happened to my Cassie won't happen here. Your daughter is fine! She will be fine. It's my Cassie that's gone. Not yours."

Janet looked down at the infant sleeping contentedly in her father's arms. She took Sammy from him, cradling the child to her chest. "Let me hold her for awhile." Charlie nodded, knowing she needed to hold her almost-granddaughter safe while she came to terms with how her "other" daughter had died in this alternate world he'd come from, and returned to his seat at the table.

"Alright, so let me get this straight," demanded Daniel. "In your reality, Charlie didn't kill himself with Jack's gun."

"No, Mom found me playing with it, and when she tried to take it away it went off. She died."

"I remarried though?" asked Jack.

"Yeah, in our reality Sam went on the first Abydos mission. You got to be friends with her as well as Daniel. She really laid into you on Abydos, Jack, about going on that mission when you had Charlie to think of," Kawalsky told them. "When you got back you retired to raise Charlie. You and Sam got married about a year later."

"That's three," stated Daniel with a smirk.

"Shut up, Daniel" he was told by both Sam and Jack. General Hammond just gave his two officers a considering look while Charlie and Kawalsky continued their story.

"When Apophis first came through the 'Gate, Sam was working on it. She was taken. When they came to tell Dad that there'd been an 'accident', he didn't believe their bullshit story. He made them take him to General Hammond. When they finally told him the truth, he insisted on leading the team through the gate."

"What did he do with you? You couldn't have been more than 11 at the time," asked Jack.

"General Hammond's wife took care of us. If you hadn't made it back, you'd left instructions for Granddad Jacob to get custody."

"Us?"

Charlie reached into his pocket and brought out a battered wallet, which he passed over to Colonel O'Neill. "Jake and Sara were 3 months old," he said. "Mom had just gotten back from maternity leave." Jack O'Neill hungrily eyed the snapshot of the two young infants, then began flipping through the other photos in the wallet. "Who's this?" he asked holding up another photo.

"Katie. She was born 2 years after you rejoined the Air Force."

"But the regulations..."

"You were already married, and the SGC needed you here. General Hammond got the President to make an exception considering the astronomically small number of people qualified for the position that could actually keep their mouth shut," explained Kawalsky. "The original leader of SG-1 in our reality couldn't and caused a major security nightmare."

"What did we do with the kids when we went on missions?" asked Sam as she looked at the photos Colonel O'Neill had passed on to her.

"Janet or General Hammond took us some of the time. Grandpa Mike took us as well. Grandpa Jacob would come take us to visit the Tok'ra when we got older if they were somewhere secure."

"What?!"

"You guys have some pretty smart kids. Charlie was about 15 when he figured out what you guys did at the SGC," explained Kawalsky. "I don't know how old the twins were, but Katie had it figured out by the time she was six."

"I was thirteen actually. I just have Dad's knack for keeping my mouth shut. No one realized I knew until I was fifteen."

"My kids get their smarts from their moms," joked Colonel O'Neill with a wink to Major Carter.

"You've still got them believing your dumb soldier routine?"

"What dumb soldier routine, Captain."

"Oh come on, Mom...er Major. He's got that not-so-amateur observatory set up on the roof. You think he doesn't understand science? He makes you explain things 'cause he likes to hear the sound of your voice, and he does it to Uncle Daniel and the others just to be perverse." Sam blushed at this explanation from the man who could have been her stepson before glancing at her commanding officer. From the sheepish expression on his face, she could tell Charlie was dead on in his explanation of his father's behavior. "Do you really think a 'dumb old soldier' would make the rank of 2 star general in this day and age? So how many doctorates do you have, Dad?" The rest of SG-1 noticed that neither their colonel nor their commanding general would meet their eyes.

"Two star, you say?" inquired Jack trying to avoid the silent question being posed to him by his team.

"Doctorate in what?" asked Sam in a deadly voice.

"Ahhh...military science was the first one. Followed that up with military history, and I'm working on one in astronomy right now. Learning about the Stargate inspired me to go after this one, I guess."

"You have two doctorates and are working on a third?" asked Daniel.

"Uhh..yeah, well I needed something to do with all the time I've spent in the infirmary during my career. I started when I was doing Black Ops."

"We're going to talk, sir. After the meeting is over," Samantha Carter warned her CO.

"Looking forward to it, Carter."

"I'm a little confused though. Charlie would only be 15 if he'd survived. You look quite a bit older than that, Captain."

Kawalsky looked over at General Hammond. "Sir, we'd already evacuated all the non-essential personnel off-world to several rallying points. The snakeheads had the 'Gate blocked though for the few of us that stayed behind. Sam and Charlie figured out how to MacGyver the Quantum Mirror to the 'Gate so we could dial out to AU's. We got most of our people out to various AU's where they either didn't exist or were already dead, but cobbling the Mirror to the 'Gate caused a...what did you call it Charlie?"

"Temporal feedback."

"Right. So we've ended up in different times as well as different AU's."

"What about Sam and our kids?" asked O'Neill.

"You guys sent the kids through to Grandpa Jacob as soon as things started going bad. Janet and Daniel will be with them by now as well. Mom didn't want to leave Dad...she..uhhh" His voice trailed off as he looked between his father and the woman he thought of as his mother.

"She died. The attack that injured the General back there...she was killed. I think that's the real reason why he didn't come through the gate," Kawalsky explained.

"What?" asked Carter.

"He wanted to be with you, Mom. He didn't want to delay his reunion with you a second longer than was necessary to get the kids to safety."

"How did you override our computers?" asked Hammond bringing the conversation back on topic. He was all too aware of the speculative looks flying between O'Neill and his 2IC.

"General, Mom wrote 90% of the software running those computers, and I followed in her footsteps when I joined the SGC. Over the years, I've re-written a lot of it. Remember, sir. I'm from about 15 years in your future. There's nothing you could have done to keep me out."

"What was J.J. still doing there?" asked Daniel of the child snuggled in his lap.

"J.J. was going to be in the last group of kids through the 'Gate to the evacuation sites along with Cassie. A few minutes before they were supposed to leave Cassie started bleeding. In the confusion of trying to save Cassie, J.J. didn't make it to the 'Gate. That was the last group that got out before the Goa'uld blocked the 'Gate."

"So how are we going to get you back to your time and AU?" asked Daniel.

"You don't. You destroyed your Mirror remember? We're stuck."

J.J. who had surprised his father by sitting quietly during the discussion pushed himself out of his grandfather's lap and ran to his father. "I wan' Mama! I don' wanna stay hewe! Gam'pa Danny don' know me, and dey wook funny! I wanna leave, Daddy! Now!" Charlie held his son in his arms trying his best to comfort the distraught boy.

"I want your mama too, son, but remember what we talked about when Great-Grandpa Nick died. Mama's gone to heaven to be with Great-Grandpa Nick. So we can't see her now, but she's always with us." Charlie continued to rock his sobbing son back and forth not bothering to hide the tears trailing down his own face. "And your grandmas and grandpas look funny and don't know you because they're younger. They still love you the same though, and that's all that matters, J.J. I know what's happening is scary, but it's going to be all right."

"Colonel O'Neill, Dr. Jackson, why don't you help the captain get his children settled. I'm sure they could use some sleep. Carter and Frasier, why don't you go into town and buy what little Sammy will need for the next couple days," requested Hammond. "Colonel Kawalsky, you and I can finish this debriefing without the others."

A chorus of "yes, sir" came from those around the table as those that had been requested to leave stood. General Hammond and Kawalsky watched as the others filed from the room and the door closed before they continued.

"This is going to be hard on all of them, sir" Kawalsky commented.

"You don't think there's any way we'll be able to return you to your own Earth?"

"You can't return us to our Earth...our Earth is gone. Maybe we'll find a way to return to our own reality, but Earth is gone. Sir, I'm not even sure we should return. We would be assets to your SGC if we stayed, General. Charlie is as intelligent as his parents are. He was working in the lab with Sam by the time he was 16, and I have at least a decade more experience fighting the Goa'uld than anyone here because of the time thing."

"Don't you want to return to your family, Colonel?"

"What's left of my family just walked out that door, General. It's selfish, I know, but those kids are better off here than as refugees, sir. Charlie's family is here, even if they aren't exactly the family he grew up with."

"I'll take that under advisement, Colonel."