Idea: The SG-1 team may have gone home from 1969, but a young Hammond who has many reasons to doubt himself over the years before they meet again has to take the long way around.
There had been times when General Hammond had thought he'd dreamed that incident back in the 1960s. People didn't travel through time, and alien devices were the realm of science fiction, not reality. Then, he replaced General West and laid eyes on the Stargate.
The day Apophis appeared, he knew that the pieces were falling into place, though he didn't know exactly where they fit. The quartet who had appeared out of thin air when the gate room had been a nuclear missile silo hadn't told him all that much.
It had been strange seeing a younger looking Colonel O'Neill, a Colonel O'Neill who was younger than him.
He knew that he had to allow Daniel Jackson to join the team, because Daniel Jackson was on the team, but he had to do it in a way that didn't let on that he had known, as there was a possibility that that would change events and create the sort of paradox that could destroy the universe. Wouldn't that be lovely. He'd be standing there in the afterlife, and everyone there would be pointing and going "Hey, that's the jackass who destroyed the universe!".
That twenty-four hour wait had been the longest wait in his life even though he knew that SG-1 would return.
When Colonel O'Neill, Captain Carter, and Daniel Jackson returned, they brought with them the final piece of the puzzle and set the events that led to his past - and started him down the path that led here - rolling.
While he was happy to see Teal'c once more, he wasn't happy about the headache getting the man on SG-1 where he belonged would cause.
It had better be worth it in the end, because it sure as hell didn't look like it was now.