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Five things Cameron Mitchell did instead of joining SG-1.
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Participation is open to all. If this is your own prompt, you're free to write to it (please do!). Post your list as a comment to this post, adding additional comments if you exceed the character limit. It's OK to post as Anonymous, then come out later or not as you choose. Responses will be screened until midday U.S. Pacific time April 16th to see what people come up with independently. You can still respond to the prompt after the unveiling, but April 16th is the official due date.
General info and a place to ask questions: the comm 'welcome' post.
Technical-support questions: tech help.
Suggestions: the suggestion box.
To supply a new prompt: the open call for prompts.
Responses containing spoilers for episodes that haven't broadcast on Sci Fi yet must include warnings IN CAPS in the subject headers. Thanks!
If you're posting a new response after the unveiling (4:15pm US Pacific on April 16), grab the link to your response comment and post it here.
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Anything you want, he thinks, sure. Anything.
1.
He’s never tried so hard at anything as he tries at this, at being able to walk again.
He’s never failed anything so important, but apparently endless determination isn’t enough this time. When he finally leaves the Air Force, two and a half years after the crash, it’s in a wheelchair with a medical discharge.
He’s got a car, fitted out so he can drive it with legs that only work some of the time, and it takes all of his concentration not to crash the damn thing when he forgets that he brakes with his hands.
He doesn’t realise he’s missed the turning until he’s leaving the state, his parents’ house far behind him.
Days later, he’s not sure how many, he ditches his cell phone and crosses the border into Canada. He doesn’t know how to explain to his parents that he’s not like his dad, he’s not strong enough. That he lost flying and walking, and the SGC and the Air Force, and he’d rather give everything else up than keep losing it.
Canada’s cold, and hard to navigate the further north he gets, the car slipping in snow that it’s not designed for.
He thinks about hitting the north coast, and keeps driving.
2.
The day he walks out of the hospital, on his own two legs, without sticks, is the best day of his life.
The day he resigns from the Air Force comes a damn close second though.
His father doesn’t ask, when Cam turns up on their doorstep three days later, but Cam tells him anyway, late that night, that he’s afraid like he never was before, afraid of it happening again because he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to do this again. His dad doesn’t say anything, and that’s how Cam knows he’s made the right decision.
It takes him six months to get up in a plane again, but when he does, he misses it so much he feels sick with it.
A year later, through friends of friends and a bank loan he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to pay off, he’s got six students lined up to learn to fly, a plane that’s all his, and miles of empty sky with nothing to worry about but birds.
He doesn’t regret anything.
3.
He thinks, right up to the moment that he gets asked to decide, that he’s going to ask for the SGC and SG-1. What comes out is a request to go back to flying, to pretending he doesn’t know anything about stargates and aliens and secret bases in Antarctica.
His dad’s always telling him about how losing his legs made him re-evaluate a lot of things and Cam’s starting to think he knows what that means. He wants to prove himself, to be part of this thing that almost cost him his life, but he’s too afraid of failing. These people save the world once a week on a good week, and they respect him for what happened in Antarctica. He doesn’t want to lose that.
He gets posted to a base in Germany, just temporary, they assure him, so he can get up to speed again before going back into combat flight. Cam nods, and starts brushing up on his German again, getting used to the feel of the controls, and remembering that he’s not got alien technology under his fingers any more.
He doesn’t tell anyone about the shakes and the throwing up every time he lands, even if he thinks some of them know already. It’ll go away, in the end.
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He first hears about Atlantis from one of the Marines he knew at the SGC, who shouldn’t be talking about it but tells him anyway, after she gets recruited for the mission for some gene she’s got. It’s a year after the crash, and Cam’s still not sure he’s ever going to walk again. He doesn’t hear from her again for months, and he can’t exactly ask if anyone has news from the place he isn’t meant to know exists.
She’s there when he finally gets a clean bill of health and has to start thinking about going back; she talks about a floating city, about life-sucking vampires and losing a quarter of the expedition, and technology that lights up for the right people. She says she’s signing on again, as soon as she’s done with her own round of physio for an arm shattered during the siege.
Cam asks, and he’s the golden boy of the Air Force right then so they say yes.
He hears a rumour about Dr Jackson joining them, but he’s not there when Cam turns up to be beamed aboard the Daedalus for the trip. What is there is Major John Sheppard, who’s so polite it hurts, and two civilians who glare at him like they’re contemplating feeding him to the Wraith.
“Don’t worry, son,” General Landry tells him, when he catches Cam’s expression. “They’ll get used to a new commanding officer.”
“Sir?” Cam asks, with a nasty suspicion that he knows exactly what he’s missing here.
“Congratulations,” Landry says, stepping back. “You’re the new commanding officer of the Atlantis base.”
The transportation beam chooses that moment to wash over them and Cam thinks, as he dematerialises, that this may not have been his best decision ever.
5.
It’s Cam’s firm opinion that you can’t join something that no longer exists; he certainly can’t join two letters, a dash and a number, whatever General Landry and Dr Jackson say, and there’s no way he can lead the SGC’s flagship team, even if it is made up of robots. He’s never even been part of a ground-based force, never mind led one through a stargate. Hell, until that day, he’s never even *seen* a stargate.
He sticks it out for the first day, but when he gets home, he freaks, there’s no other word for it, sitting at his kitchen table, watching his coffee go cold and wishing he had alcohol in the house. The idea of leading a bunch of new recruits through the gate makes him feel sick, especially if the files he’s looked at are anything to go by; the thought of being asked to lead the original SG-1, minus General O’Neill, assuming he can persuade them back, which is far from a sure thing, makes his hands shake.
He stays up all night, until it’s late enough to dial Landry’s number.
Forty-five minutes later, he hangs up the phone, no longer part of the SGC, on his way out of the Air Force, and thinks: now what?
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Excellent.
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Yeah - it's a good thing he ended up with SG-1's craziness after all I guess :)
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After his father’s accident, he never joined the military. Cameron wanted to, mind you. Wanted to so badly that he still pretends his car is a fighter jet, every evening when he’s driving home during the rush hour commute. He just couldn’t do that to his mother.
So, instead, he went to college in North Carolina and majored in Accounting. He played intramural basketball and the only flying he ever did was on the way up to pretty God damn good white boy dunks.
Cameron got his MBA and moved back to Kansas with his new bride, Annie. He lives near the air force base, because the price was right. He likes that he can hear the jets taking off, but mostly the price was right. Annie hates the noise, says it wakes the baby up all night. Cameron takes his babies…all four of them in turn over the years…outside to see the jets taking off. They eventually stop fearing the sonic booms, stop noticing the way the house rattles, but they’re never as interested in what kind of plane is passing overhead the way their father is.
2. He died.
Cameron’s job was so, so much safer than the soldiers on the ground. There were no IED’s in the sky, no insurgents hiding in the clouds, nothing except wee little anti-aircraft guns that couldn’t aim that high.
That’s what he told his Momma, but she had a husband without any legs and she knew better.
She has the flag, now, and the Purple Heart he got post-mortem. Her son is somewhere in Iraq, his body scattered in the desert with the pieces of his plane.
The only thing that gives Mrs. Mitchell comfort is the belief – the absolute certainty – that Cameron’s soul is still flying.
3. He married.
Cameron thought the fraternization rule was there for a reason. He’d seen couples sneak around before, and it never, ever, ended well. He’d also seen unrequited love between officers and enlisted, officers and officers, and Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell. That sucked.
So he didn’t sneak, and he told.
He told Sam Carter that he loved her, and somehow tricked her into liking him back. Never got SG-1 the way he planned, the way O’Neill promised. Never even got to go through the Gate.
That’s Sam’s job, and he likes to think that the comparatively simple things he does in the sky over Colorado are, in their own way, equally important.
4. He raged.
Cameron decided God existed and was an asshole the day he woke up in Walter Reed Hospital without any legs.
Colonel O’Neill still visited, still promised him the stars, said they owed him the moon.
What that amounts to now, though, is an honorable discharge and lifelong VA care. He can’t walk, can’t fly, and can’t lift his arm to hurl the medals they gave him against the wall.
Quadriplegics can’t lead SG-1. Can’t do anything at the SGC except get physical therapy, and that’s just agonizing for more than the usual reasons.
On his darkest days, he wishes he hadn’t saved the planet.
5. He served.
Ba’al handpicked Cameron to be one of the main palace slaves. Didn’t snake him, though – too paranoid about a rival getting that close. Cameron’s big and strong, and apparently he matches the aesthetic Ba’al’s interior designer was going for with the general appearance of the palace servants.
Cam’s job is to keep the torches in the rear hall lit. Yeah, the place has electricity. Central air and heat – the Goa’uld think certain human inventions are useful. But the torches give the palace character, give the lowly human slaves something to do other than pick dumb fights with the Jaffa or think up rebellions. Keep the place in spotless, shiny condition; avoid a more unpleasant life in the dungeons.
Cam doesn’t know what goes on outside the palace, but he can guess it’s both less boring and less safe that keeping the decorative torches lit.
He wants out, though. He’s going to be smart about it, not going to get caught. Cameron lights the torches outside the dungeon every morning, right about the time Ba’al sends for a favorite prisoner. He hears the poor guy screaming, and it makes him check and re-check the little plan in his head. Cameron doesn’t want to end up like the prisoner named Jack.
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Oh, god.
I hope he and Sam are very very happy in #3, and that he isn't pining too much in #1, because those two definitely beat the alternatives. *shudders dramatically*
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1. Became a model for leather pants
2. Went to Kansas and vegetated on his parent’s farm.
3. Went back to the F-302 program – flying was all he wanted to do.
4. Joined SG-7.
5. Moved to Australia because he liked the accents.