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May was always the hardest month to get through: it was almost summer but there was so much time spent waiting, for school to end and their birthday to come and for freedom and license to do what they wanted. For now all they could do was wait, and fume about how long it'd be before they were free from fifth grade and Mrs. Christensen, who droned and made them sit on opposite sides of the room and called Skipper 'Beauregard'.
Which did not make it fair when their Mama looked up over breakfast on a Saturday that was supposed to be all theirs and said, "Spencer, Skipper, you two are coming with me today to your aunt and uncle's." Which would've been okay, but it was followed right down with, "Your uncle Cameron's coming home from the Gulf this afternoon, and she needs a bit of a hand putting the house together."
Ella Mae didn't have to, because she was too little, and Susan Eileen didn't have to, since she was studying for the SAT; it was just them, which wasn't fair. They spent the whole morning fetching and carrying for Aunt Sassy, and making up beds and stirring batter and sweeping up floors (and then sweeping them again when the first time wasn't good enough). After lunch Aunt Sassy set them free, and they were out the back door and down the steps before she could even hope to think of anything to call them back for.
As a general policy, they didn't have a workshop for their various projects; their daddy gave them a corner of the garage to work on, which was useful, but not everything fit—and some bits were better kept private until the grand reveal. As a result, fragments of their planning stages tended to get scattered in their wake across Buncombe County. Skipper led, on a zigzag path to the creek until they were out of sight of the house, then doubled back to one of the few storage sheds left standing on the Mitchell homestead. This was their electrical workshop, cobbled together after years now of filching and gleaning and occasionally managing to obtain things easy and above-board.
Of course, they'd learned the hard way that nobody was going to believe they weren't up to anything; it was Skipper's stroke of genius after the last disaster to lay down a false trail, so they had to move aside a few piles of comic books and a pyramid of coke cans to lift the floorboard that concealed their equipment. The grownups had decided to give them the rest of the day, and nobody called them in; they were free to get down to work right away.
They counted too much on the homestead being busy with Uncle Cam coming home, didn't even keep half an ear cocked; everything was out and spread across the floor when the door opened. There wasn't time or place to stash it or cover it; they just froze like rabbits and looked guilty.
The girl at the door was about their Uncle Cam's age, tall, with short blonde hair; she pulled back a little at their expressions and said, in a soft northern voice, "I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"
Spence and Skipper traded looks, not quite sure what to say; then she came in a little further. "What are you working on?" They didn't answer, discretion being the better part of valour, as she examined the mess of batteries and wires.
"Are you Uncle Cam's girlfriend?" Skipper asked.
She smiled as if he'd said something really funny, shook her head. "I'm just a friend. My name's Sam."
"We're Spencer and Skipper," Skipper told her; she cocked her head a little, looking between them, like she was waiting for them to let her in on the joke.
"It's an alarm circuit," Spencer said. "Except it's for a door, and we're trying to make it work so it goes off the second time the door closes."
"But you don't want anybody to know you're working on it?"
They traded looks again; Skipper reluctantly said, "No."
"Then I guess I won't tell," she said, grinning. It was the kind of trouble grin they recognized. "Can I help?"
Skipper tried catching Spencer's eye, wanted to communicate caution, but Spencer wasn't looking at him. For the first time in his life, Spencer Griffith was in love.
*
After that, Aunt Sam got a posting she couldn't really talk about; her people were Aunt Sam's people, and their reach was sometimes scary. JD, inexplicably, came from Aunt Sam's people.
Then they got their briefings for the Stargate program and discovered the truth; it was more incredible than they'd ever imagined. What they'd been briefed on contained only the faintest mentions of aircraft, and mainly with the faint handwave of 'those boys down at Groom Lake'. Suddenly the nebulous connections of what they were now realizing was Homeworld—Aunt Sam's people—were drawing a picture bigger and more amazing than they'd guessed at after Uncle Cam's accident.
They tried not to assume too much about Aunt Sam, and the part she played. God knew there were enough people in on this secret; it was entirely likely she was just another face, had maybe never even set foot offworld at all. They knew she was at Area 51 (fucking Area 51, and little—grey—men, which was still too much to believe sometimes). They'd picked up, through things said or intuited, that she was the one who'd drawn Cam in through the F-302s; other than the early jump to Lieutenant Colonel there was no reason to jump to conclusions, think she'd been doing anything but playing with computers and airplane schematics and alien technology
The end of Spence's first week in the field, SG-9 trooped down to Major Benton's office for their unofficial weekly meeting. Lieutenant Andressen (Mary, 24, out of Iowa) stole a folding chair along the way and passed it off to Spencer, who was trying very hard to strike the right note with her; he had years and rank on her, but she'd been on SG-9 two years now and would cheerfully steamroller him into being her lackey if he gave her half a chance. When they got to Benton's office Spencer unfolded his chair and pulled it into the grouping around Benton's desk with the rest of the team.
Major Maricelli, Benton's 2IC, put his feet up on the corner of Benton's desk; Andressen peeled off her jacket and worked her bra off from underneath her shirt, then stuck it in her jacket's arm. Dr. Hopkins, their civilian expert, was nursing a cappuccino procured from God-knew-where. Except while in the field showing off for locals, they were hideously informal, which kept making Spencer twitch. He was making valiant efforts to address everyone properly and observe formalities, but it made him stick out a little, both on the team and on base. Apparently the only commanders who expected regular salutes here were the Russians, some of the Marines, and Landry.
(General Landry. General. Even if nobody else used it except within his hearing, and Spence could tell that after a week.)
"So, are we a five-man team now?" Hopkins asked Benton directly.
Benton flicked a glance to Andressen, who spread her hands: not touching it. "We are, in fact, a four-man, one-woman team," he said laconically. "But unless General Landry wants to steal Maricelli from me and re-form SG-1," (which was an injoke, and from the wryness of it, not funny at the bottom) "Spencer's staying with us. No, Mary, you cannot make him carry your shit; he still outranks you, and it's not that heavy."
Spencer tried not to break into a stupid grin; he'd divided his time in the last week between being told to stand out of the goddamn way and standing out of the goddamn way, and he'd been warned coming in that if your team didn't want you, you were out on your ass, no matter how good you were. This meant he'd—no, not that he'd made it; he was still an extra appendage that didn't quite fit. Most of the SGC didn't even see him as a person—just saw another fresh face and moved on, and he didn't know what he'd have to do to change that. But this meant they were giving him a chance, which was good, because he'd only been through the Stargate twice and was suddenly having a hard time imagining himself doing anything else.
They dealt with some other minor business—mostly for an upcoming week of missions Spencer would miss out on, thanks to training.
"And next week Maricelli and I have to put in an appearance at the IOA meeting," Benton said. "You kids have fun at team night; if you blow anything up, save video footage."
"We could just move nights," Andressen offered.
"Blasphemer," Hopkins said. "You speak of profaning our sacred rites. Team night is Tuesday. Team night always has been Tuesday. Team night always will be Tuesday."
"Amen," Benton said, rising; they all stood, recognizing a go bicker elsewhere tone, fond as it was. Maricelli stayed behind as they filed out.
Andressen got a few steps down the hall when she turned back, arms swinging. "Hey, Spencer," she said brightly, "I live in a rathole and Hopkins' wife is fussy about the furniture. Can we use your place next week? Tuesday's a classroom day for you, right?"
His place wasn't even unpacked, so—apparently he knew what he was doing with his weekend, now. "Sure," he said, "so long as you don't mind my brother being around."
She dimpled. "Oh, isn't he that cute one I've seen around?"
Um.
"He is indeed the handsomest man of my acquaintance," Spencer said gravely. "I hope one day to grow up just like him."
"Then he can definitely come." She tilted her head a little, still smiling. "Think he'll be glad to see me?"
"I think he'll be glad to meet my teammates, yes," he said.
There was a very small, unspoken moment, in which he nevertheless managed to communicate whatever it is you're asking me, the answer's probably 'no'. Then she smiled, actually smiled instead of that flirtatious grin, and said, "Tuesday, then. See you, Jake." Then she turned and walked down the hallway, leaving Spencer in a mild state of confusion.
He glanced at Hopkins. "Isn't she—?"
"Getting married at the end of the month to her doctor fiancé," the older man supplied. "Still, we had to check. If you'd fallen for it and made a pass at her, you really would be off the team. We're chummy, but not that chummy. Okay?"
"Yeah. Good to know." As off-balance as he felt, it was reassuring to know that his instincts were guiding him right. "See you Tuesday."
*
By Tuesday everything had been tidied or banished to the bedrooms. Andressen brought beer; Hopkins brought better beer, and some pretentious pizza that resembled what they actually served in Italy.
Before answering the Stargate's siren call, he'd worked for a UN agency, and before that he'd been a tenured professor of political science at Yale; his slouch always seemed a bit pretended. He was an esteemed professional in his field whose chances of day-to-day survival were now at least partly contingent on how chummy he was with a couple of twentysomethings on Tuesday nights. Spencer thanked him for the beer and felt for him, a little.
Still, Hopkins tried; he'd made Spencer feel welcome, like the rest of the team had, and was slowly coming around to treating him, if not as an intellectual equal, then as an intelligent younger man with potential. The whole team was coming round to him, Spencer thought, the same way SG-13 was drawing Skipper in. Teams needed to be close, or they didn't work.
SG-9 traditionally played a game of chess that involved four armies. Spencer had a brief moment of discomfort when he realized that next week they'd have to find a way to accommodate a fifth, which was chased down by hilarity and the thought, Hungry Hungry Hippos wouldn't work either. But the feeling of being an interloper probably wouldn't go away for a while now, so he'd just have to suck it up and remember that he wouldn't be on the team if they didn't want him.
As they set up and Skipper distributed napkins and coasters, Spencer said, "What did Major Benton mean last week, when he talked about Landry re-forming SG-1?"
Hopkins and Andressen traded looks. After a minute she shrugged and rolled her beer bottle between her hands. "So, SG-1 breaks up, right around the time General O'Neill gets promoted," she said. "And Landry takes over and thinks, the flagship team from the glory days needs to be re-invented, and he'll put his own spin on it, because the SGC desperately needs to learn his way of doing things." Her voice carded the words through with light distaste. "So he brings in this hotshot Army colonel, even though leadership of SG-1's always really been an Air Force honor, and anytime the Army gets anywhere near the Gate you can always see them practically drooling, they want to take us over so bad. At least the Marines aren't pretentious like that. Anyway.
"This colonel, he's got to put together his team, right? But he's never been through the Gate, he doesn't know shit. So he decides he wants experience, so instead of picking from the pool of people just waiting for their Gate assignments, he goes fucking canvassing. Cherrypicking people off teams. And one of the guys he picks doesn't want to leave his team, so Landry fucking orders him to take the reassignment. It's his new SG-1, so he's gotta have the best, right?"
Skipper set down his beer. "How long did they last?"
"Three months," Hopkins said softly. "Two killed in action. One's a vegetable, and that colonel will never get out of a wheelchair so long as he lives."
"Jesus," Skipper said faintly.
Spencer frowned. "So when Major Benton said, unless Landry re-forms SG-1..."
Andressen nodded. "Basically he was saying, unless Landry decides that he knows how we work better than we do and fucks things up again."
"It's our way of saying 'God willing'," Hopkins contributed.
"That's messed," Spencer said.
Andressen took a bite of her pizza and reached down to move a pawn. "Yep." Hopkins, who'd been waiting avidly for her to start, made his move instantly; Spencer had to take a second to think before he put a pawn in play.
"I keep hearing things about SG-1," Spencer said, "but nobody really explains who they were. It's just assumed that we know all about them. Makes it hard to ask."
"Fucking heroes," Andressen said, moving her knight. "Literally saved the world from total annihilation, like, ten times over."
"It's a matter of some debate," Hopkins volunteered (was content to sit back in the conversation unless he had knowledge to contribute, to drop in softly; he never lectured), "depending on what you qualify as 'total annihilation' and whether you require them to have done it all by themselves, or if backup is allowable." He made his move. "But I believe the traditional number is nine."
"Can't believe they didn't tell you this shit," Andressen added. "When I went through GT+O, you almost wouldn't believe any other team existed. SG-1 this, SG-1 that. Four members of SG-1 walk into a bar..."
"I believe General Landry has decided we were heading a little too far into the cult of hero-worship," Hopkins said.
She just snorted. "Anyway. Jake, what's your best SG-1 story? Guess it's up to us to indoctrinate them."
*
"Sam Carter?"
"What, you know her?
*
Date: 13 Jun 2007 08:47:57 UTC
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: You need a new job title
Preferably one that appropriately expresses for the uninitiated exactly how badass you really are.
Will we see you next week?
--Skipper
*
The next week held the slight edge of a carnival. The Gate went down for diagnostics and repairs, which meant everyone's duty rosters got entirely rearranged and some people got off completely. A good chunk of people on the Gate teams just took leave and disappeared. Andressen stuck around, but was going out of her mind trying to pull her wedding together at the last minute; Major Benton took his family to Disneyworld. The IOA sent people down, betting this was when they were least likely to get killed. They'd listened to enough griping about how they didn't know anything about SGC operations and the stresses people worked under. SG-9 ended up taking the brunt of that visit, since half the time they had to work closely with IOA negotiators. When Dr. Hopkins and Major Maricelli needed time to go duck their heads in water, Spencer got stuck trying to explain a system he didn't fully understand yet to people who didn't entirely care. Maricelli kept saying he was doing a good job, but it didn't feel like one.
By the end of the week, it was a hell of a relief to escape the Mountain with everybody else. On a brilliant and sunny late-June afternoon, the SGC's staff converged on a set of rented baseball diamonds for a wildly chaotic and meticulously orchestrated softball tournament.
In the crush of people, the covalent bonds of the Gate teams relaxed, a little; support staff and the Area 51 techs came too, and there was a scramble to put together a full team of nine before signups closed. Official policy said this was supposed to build community and cooperation, as if the ordinary daily grind of life at the SGC didn't.
Sometimes the scramble was a symptom of that chumminess (Spencer kept using Hopkins' word, because he didn't quite know how to describe the SGC's zeitgeist, except for the edge of "fucking insane" lying underneath it). Cheyenne Mountain's noncombatants and the Area 51 people (and the few members of SG-2 not in casts) were happy to fill in spaces when one or two teams couldn't round out a roster entirely. Sometimes the fragmentation was exactly that—every member of SG-4 was on a different team. The Russians were having a damn bad month, struggling under an idiot new commander just in at Moscow who hadn't even bothered to show up and watch, much less play. Gossip said he only considered being on a Gate team a shiny mark of prestige and not a real job. Still, rockiness aside, the Russians played good baseball, and their participation showed some kind of international cooperation. When SG-9 came up short they loaded up with the new Marines just out of training and gratifyingly cleaned up in their first game; Skipper pitched one wildly successful inning for them before somebody noticed and sent Spencer back onto the field.
After the games were finished, the crowds split up to head to a few different parties, since nobody had room to host the full complement of the SGC. People with families, wives and children, ended up at places like Sergeant Hastings' ice cream social; Spencer technically was invited to General Landry's barbeque for the IOA delegates, but he'd managed to inadvertently offend at least half of them, and if he had to tapdance around high-strung political players one more time this week he would not be answerable for his actions.
So Skipper and Spencer ended up going to Captain Booth's barbecue, which was out in the country, invitation-only, and had a security clearance requirement at the door so everyone could speak with relative freedom. Booth had struck a friendship with Skipper early, which was more than most SGC veterans did, and invited them to come over.
Captain Booth had joined the SGC six years ago as a lieutenant, and the chain of command found him so useful they never saw fit to move him. No early mortality rates for Booth; he loved his job and was probably a little insane, but in the most functional and adaptive way. Depending on whom they asked, he had balls of brass or iron; he'd seen fucking everything. Once he figured out that he'd be staying at the SGC for the foreseeable future he'd bought five acres outside of town, just for the quiet, and put down roots. Spencer and Skipper were a little unclear as to where the "quiet" came in, but suspected it actually meant the neighbours wouldn't phone in noise complaints every time he had a party.
They came to his place prepared; Skipper dropped meat for the grill off at the barbecue, and Spencer added their case of beer to the waist-high stack against the back porch before they pulled their lawnchairs up to join the running conversation.
They were comfortably settled into the circle (assorted scraps of SGs 5, 9, 13, and 19, and that poor Russian kid who didn't speak much English but was trying so hard) and laughing their asses off at Soong's imitation of Felger's recitation of The Great SG-1 Rescue of '02 when an arm entered Spencer's field of vision and took his beer.
"I'm not here," Sam Carter said, sotto voce, finally looking like the aunt he'd gotten to know over the years and not the formal, distant lieutenant colonel who consulted with the SGC sometimes. Her face under the pulled-down baseball cap was friendly, mischievous.
"Sure you ain't, Aunt Sam," Skipper said easily. "Let me guess, you've got the same stomach bug Spencer's got that's keeping him out of the IOA party?"
"Allergic reaction to Woolsey," Spencer contributed. "S'terrible."
Sam grinned. "It's going around, especially since someone thought charades would be a good idea. I think we'll get a few more people trickling in." Took another swig of his beer. "This is good. Can I get one?"
Whoever was closest to the wall of beer freed one up and they bucket-lined it down to her; she accepted it cheerfully and went down to see Booth at the barbecue and tell him about the incoming refugees.
"Mitchell's your cousin," Hilliard said. "Carter's your aunt. Hammond gonna be your grandpa next?" Skipper cuffed his head, as was a teammate's prerogative.
"She's not really your aunt, is she?" Russel asked.
"Seriously, I've never seen her not be formal with anybody." Fisher added.
"Aw, well, Spence and Sam, they go back a while," Skipper grinned, punching Spencer in the arm. "Not blood relations, though."
"Fucking shut up, man."
Brooks was leaning forward, rolling his beer between his hands. "Seriously?"
"Our cousin Cam served with her in the Gulf," Spence said, playing bored and weary. "She's been a friend of the family ever since."
Skipper grinned. "And how old were you when you got over that crush on her, Spence? Sixteen?"
"Dinosaurs walked the earth," Spence said. "My heart now belongs to that girl in Cataloguing and Translation who makes good coffee, what's her name?"
*
The party was mostly quieted as evening slipped over into honest night. Three of them ended up drinking together on Captain Booth's back porch, after the food had all been eaten. There was a bigger group down around the bonfire, and they'd probably go join it after this.
Sam leaned up against the back wall of the house, her beer cradled in her hands. Skipper was perched on the porch railing, and Spencer sat on the deck below him and a little to the right. The porch light cast odd shadows on them. The kitchen held a private, mellow party they didn't feel the need to burst in on.
"So?" Sam said, finally. "What do you think?"
"It's awesome." A smile broke out on Spencer's face. "Absolutely incredible."
The corner of Sam's mouth lifted, as she picked at her bottle label. "Dangerous, too." She glanced up at Skipper.
After a pause he said, "I just can't really believe you."
She frowned, innocent and confused. "What?"
"There we were, right under your nose, same year as her, and you choose to drag Hailey into the program early?" Skipper's High Dudgeon was never too impressive, especially not when he was drunk or very near thereto; a smile always came cracking through. "What were we, chopped liver?"
"You weren't astrophysicists."
Spencer looked up at his twin. "We picked the wrong majors."
"Nah," Skipper said expansively. "We ended up here anyway, didn't we? And we're not locked up in labs."
Sam grimaced, just a bit. "After a few years in the field, you might not mind a little drudgery and boredom."
Skipper took in a deep breath to come out with something he considered profoundly philosophical. Spencer just said, "We'll know that in a few years, then, won't we?"
"Yeah." She picked at the label again, peeled off a good swatch of it. "Listen, you two, don't get killed, okay? I don't want to have to explain it to your family again."
Because of Uncle Cam; because the Stargate had already taken its toll on their family once. The Battle for Antarctica was not counted as one of the times SG-1 had single-handedly saved the Earth from total annihilation, because of Uncle Cam and his people and the sacrifices they'd made. And Aunt Sam had been the one who failed to provide their Aunt Sassy with any real answers, even when it had killed her not to say.
"We'll try our hardest," Skipper said, which was as much as they could promise.
"Do better than that," Sam replied, which was uncharacteristic of her; the Sam they knew was usually so nice. They'd gotten to know the woman, not the officer; who she was, out here, was a different person from the visitor to Black Mountain. "Do better than I did."
"Well, now," Spencer said. "That's a hell of a job."
She fixed him with a look, steady and serious. "And you're going to do it. Trust your teams, trust each other, and do it."
She looked up at Skipper, too; she'd always been some form of comrade (apparently she'd taken breaks from trying to make the Stargate work by coming up with the schematics for their senior class prank equipment). Now she was an officer (Samantha Carter, Professional Ass-Kicker) and laying the burden she'd taken up on them, too.
They couldn't explain how they did it, but she knew them well enough not to blink when they both murmured, "Yes, ma'am," in unison.
They were Aunt Sam's people now.