Chapter Text
Crichton opened his eyes, taking quick stock of the situation. He was lying on a clean linoleum floor. The hand he could see in front of him was coming out of an olive green sleeve rather than his leather coat. But in the other hand, he could still feel the bauble thingy that the trader had been trying to sell him.
So. Potential situations were: hijacked into slavery and/or capture and changed into new clothes; the bauble thingy had actually been a vid-game and he was starting at level one; magicked into another dimension; this was all in his head and he was lying unconscious while the girls probably blasted those traders’ heads off. Fan-freaking-tastic.
“Mitchell?” a voice prompted. Mitchell. A name he actually recognised. There was something that didn’t happen very often. “Cam, can you hear me?”
He looked as far around as his eyes would let him. There was a blonde woman in shapeless blue smock and matching trousers crouched beside him. “Where am I?”
“Still in the base,” she said, offering him a warm, sisterly smile. “Wouldn’t you know it, the one time you touch something in my lab and it causes you to black out. If only General O’Neill had gotten his lesson so quick.”
He stared at her. Sebaceans usually had accents varying between street Aussie and well-bred British. But she sounded very American. He got his hands under him and started levering himself up.
“Hey, whoa, take it easy,” she said, but she helped him turn and sit, and the hands she put on his shoulders felt steadying rather than confining. “We don’t know what happened to you. I’ve called a med team, so just… hang tight, okay?”
He stopped in the middle of rubbing his face to look at her again. “Hang… tight?” He’d maybe heard that phrase twice in the last few years. It was the kind of slang that didn’t translate in most languages.
“Yeah, we’ll get someone to look at you, and then figure out what happened,” she said, and ducked her head to try and get a better look at his eyes. “How are you feeling? That was a pretty nasty fall, to say nothing of how suddenly you blacked out. It’s weird, I must have touched that ball a dozen times and it’s never done anything to me. Do you still have it?”
He slowly lifted the bauble up to where they could both look at it. It didn’t look particularly special. Just a nicely carved rock that… didn’t match the markings he’d been looking at just before he blacked out. He blinked, and then frowned when the woman used a pair of tongs to lift it out of his fingers. He watched silently from under furrowed brows as she stood up and took it over to the table.
They were in a small lab.
A very… human looking lab. With computers and microscopes he recognised, as well as paper and clipboards. There was a white board on the wall. He looked down at himself, and saw he was wearing the same shapeless outfit as the woman, only his was army green. There were patches on their biceps, and he pulled at his sleeve to get a better look. SG, and a large ‘1’. English.
“Okay, Colonel Carter, we’re here,” another American voice announced, and they both looked around to see several people bustle through the door wearing lab coats and more army gear. The lead was a dark-haired woman with soft eyes, and she gave him a direct look. “I see you woke up, Colonel Mitchell. Any dizziness? Are you sore at all?”
When they started toward him, he scrambled to his feet and skittered backward, extending a hand toward them. “Back off.”
Everyone in the room froze, and he took another step back, suddenly aware of the lack of exits.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” he muttered under his breath. “Three times is getting to be a joke.”
He’d closed the wormhole between Earth and Tormented Space, and as far as he knew, the one in the PeaceKeeper territories was still undiscovered. Not to mention the fact that last he remembered, they’d been in the middle of the Uncharted Territories—and aboard Moya, who still fought to avoid wormholes like the plague. There was no possible way for him to be on Earth.
He supposed he could be on a planet that used something close enough to English to have the same alphabet. That tiny backwater place he’d visited his first month on Moya had used a language so similar to his that they’d been able to understand him perfectly. And Noranti’s language was pretty close too, according to Livvy. Close enough that they could converse just fine.
But be damned if these people didn’t sound like they came straight out of the mid-west.
So this was probably all in his head. The scarrans were still scared he was going to blow up the universe, so something this convincing had to be… Maldis, maybe?
“Colonel Mitchell?” the new woman asked.
When his only response was glaring at her a little more sharply, the blonde added a gentler, “Cam? Everything okay?”
“Who are you people?” he demanded. “Where am I?”
“You don’t recognise us?” the blonde asked cautiously, and at her glance, one of the newcomers disappeared out the door. “Do you know who you are?”
“My name is John Crichton,” he snapped, and the three people in the room stiffened very slightly. They exchanged quick looks, and he finished backing into the far corner, wishing there was something in the room more useful than a pen and lighter than a microscope. Something he could defend himself with. “And I am not interested in playing games. So you’re gonna tell me who you guys really are and what you want. Maldis? You wanna come out and play? This better not be Einstein!”
“Okay… John,” the blonde woman said gently. “I can see you’re a little confused.”
“Oh, lady, confused is not the word,” he spat, baring his teeth at her in a nasty grin. “Confusion and I are old pals. This, what you’re seeing here, is what we call anger. Extreme, insatiable anger.”
“Okay,” she said again, lowering her gaze and raising her hands. He recognised the body language – it was standard issue negotiation training. He’d sat through about three classes of it, and watched many, many shrinks use it, every time he found (or thought he found) himself on Earth. “Alright. You’re in a facility underneath the Cheyenne Military base. More specifically, my lab. I don’t recognise the name Maldis, and as far as I’m aware, Einstein was a physicist –”
“E equals MC Hammer, I know!” he snapped, and she raised her hands again. The woman in the lab coat took a step forward until he switched his glare to her. “Names, people. You want this little game to fly, you’re gonna have to do some world building. I’ll give you some credit for the new faces, but Cheyenne is an air force base, I did some basic training there. So come on, step it up with the new content.”
A man stepped into the doorway, big and burly, with some weird symbol on his head. Crichton pressed his hands against the wall, recognising an intention to intimidate when he saw it coming. He chuckled darkly. “Oh, come on, guys. You know enough to know about Cheyenne, you’re gonna know I’ve seen bigger and scarier than that! Hell, my best friend was worse than this guy!”
“Colonel Mitchell,” the man said, almost like a greeting. “Is something the matter?”
“I am not a colonel!” he yelled. “I am a commander, and my name is Crichton! I’m not playing make-believe!”
The guy quickly lifted a weird black device, and Crichton had a split-second to recognise it as a gun and duck before it went off. He felt the crackle of energy over his shoulder and swore before making a break for it, but the blonde chick got in his way. He would have just barrelled past her, but she hit the inside of his knee and his vision exploded with stars. He crashed into her, she shoved him back, the gun went off again, and he descended into blissful darkness.
Carolyn sighed as she put down her clipboard and pressed the intercom. “Physically, he’s fine, though I’d appreciate it if co-workers didn’t attack vulnerable parts of his physiology in future,” she added with a smirk toward Sam. “You know his legs are still prone to weakness, Colonel.”
“That’s why I went for them, on his instructions,” she explained when Landry looked at her sideways. “No, really. Mitchell made a point of telling us to hit him in the knees if he ever went crazy.”
Daniel grimaced but nodded to back her up. “Something about… better your enemy knows your weakness than you be your friend’s enemy with none. I don’t know, it was one of his team bonding days.”
Landry continued staring at them, caught between amusement and disapproval, for several seconds before going back to the viewing window and his daughter. “Any idea what’s going on in his head?”
“Uh, no, actually,” Carolyn admitted as she looked back over her shoulder. “His brainwave patterns are within reasonable limits, though he seems stressed, even unconscious. I can’t find any sub-atomic traces to account for any… I don’t know, transferral. This doesn’t seem to be medical.”
“So good bets are on the artefact,” Landry surmised, and turned toward Sam. “Alright, this is –”
Sudden movement alerted them all to not-Mitchell waking up. When his first move was halted by the restraints, he slumped back against the bed and began frantically looking around the lab. That stopped as soon as Carolyn stepped closer, as he yanked at the restraints again and glared at her instead, baring his teeth very slightly.
She gave him a patient look. “Take it easy, Colonel Mitchell. You’re still on base; we just wanted to check you out for any physical injuries. You’re fine.”
He said something too quietly for the intercom to pick up, and Carolyn pursed her lips but otherwise only turned to the window. “He still believes he’s someone else. I recommend continued restraints and possible sedation – he just threatened to kill me.”
“Promised!” not-Mitchell corrected loudly, then glared at the glass, chest heaving. “And that goes for all of you! You try and stick anything in my head, and there won’t be a damn thing that’ll save you!”
“Thank you, doctor,” Landry said grimly. “I’ll send some airmen down shortly. I’d appreciate a report on my desk within the next two hours.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a slight smile, and reached over to turn off her side of the intercom. They watched silently as she spoke to not-Mitchell, who threw back his head before grinding something out through clenched teeth and glaring at her until she backed away.
Sam shifted her weight a little, while Daniel let out a long breath and T’ealc folded his hands a little more tightly behind his back. It was unsettling.
Not the threat, though that had been odd to hear. As ruthless as Mitchell could be, he wasn’t really prone to such outbursts. But as unusual as it was, it was actually his expression that was strange. Mitchell wasn’t known for the fury currently etched across his face.
“Jackson, T’ealc, I’d appreciate it if you two would speak to him,” Landry said quietly. “Try and find out who he thinks he is, how he got here, and why he’s threatening my people. Carter, I want you working on that artefact. Find out what it is and where your team leader has gone.”
Cam’s first night on Moya was terrifying. He spent half his time getting a gun pointed at his head by the psycho Vala-lookalike and the rest of it varying between panic and fanboying because these aliens actually looked like aliens!
But that faded pretty quickly when he found the Vala-lookalike in what was clearly supposed to be a nursery, tears streaming down her face as she rocked a child that looked like his baby pictures.
“The body you’re inhabiting?” the grey girl murmured against his shoulder. “Her husband. Has a bad habit of getting mind-frelled. Made her promise to shoot him if he ever lost control again.”
“Huh,” he said, and realised he was in something deeper than he first thought.
He’d been escorted to a small concrete interrogation room, complete with one-way mirror and a couple of mindless guards. He was handcuffed and locked to a hard chair, while the big guy from earlier stood in front of a mirror and glared at him. The glasses guy from the med lab observation window was sitting opposite him, preparing a notebook and pen. It felt like a scene from a bad cop movie.
Crichton eyed the guns on the guards. They certainly looked like human military weapons, but he supposed he wouldn’t really know. His knowledge of weapons mostly reached from pulse weapons to atomic bombs. Home grown bullet-style guns were a little beyond him. “So this is Earth, right?” he asked quietly, and glasses guy looked up, apparently surprised by the question.
“Uh, yes. Yes, it is. You were expecting somewhere else?”
He just turned his head to face him, amused and not bothering to respond. Glasses waited expectantly for a few seconds, then drew a sharp breath and sat forward. “Okay then, let’s start with the basics. My name is Daniel Jackson, and behind –”
“Wait, say that again?” he interrupted.
Glasses blinked. “Daniel Jackson?”
“Daniel… Jackson,” he repeated, and swallowed, unable to stop his smile. “Okay, that’s a new one, I will give you that. You’re a little young to be James Spader, though I’d buy you as Jackson’s kid, maybe.”
“Uh… thank you?” Glasses’ head twitched slightly. “James Spader’s an actor, right?”
Crichton laughed, sitting back in his chair. “Yeah. The role I’m thinking of specifically is from the 1994 sci-fi classic Stargate,” he said, grinning when that made everyone in the room tense slightly. “Daniel Jackson, an absent minded linguist archaeologist known for his outlandish theories regarding the pyramids. You don’t really look like him.”
Glasses stared at him. “I… don’t, huh? This is a movie you’re talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“I… see,” he said, and scribbled some notes on the notepad, which Crichton noted were actually in messy but identifiable English. Nice attention to detail, he had to say. Then Glasses looked up, hesitated, and gestured over his shoulder to the big guy. “And the other… characters? T’ealc?”
“He’s a new one,” Crichton admitted, glancing at him. “Hey, big guy. Do me a favour and say the word ‘bath’.”
That earned him a silent stare from both his interrogators. He grinned back. “What? Come on, big guy, trust me, I won’t be offended if you can’t manage the mid-west. Just prove you don’t speak space-Aussie.” When they only continued to stare, he shrugged and went back to Glasses. “Well, I guess he’s not sebacean, anyway. When your guys use makeup, you go all out, not just that pretty shimmery eye shadow Big Guy has going on there. Nice headpiece by the way,” he added with a glance back at the wrestler.
“Oh…kay,” Glasses said slowly. “Um. Am I, that is, Daniel Jackson, the only character in this little… movie?”
“Big movie. Well, bigger than expected, anyway. And no, there were plenty. Jack O’Neil, Ra, Sha’uri, Kawalski…” He made a face and looked around at the guards. “You’re not gonna turn out to be any of them, are you, boys?”
Glasses’ jaw had clenched somewhere along the line, but he forced it to relax as he said, “No, no… No, none of them, unless Jack suddenly feels a need to drop by.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. Unless you want me to play the role, in which case we’re gonna have a problem,” he said brightly. “I may be a death seeker occasionally, but I need a spider bite or at least three near-death experiences before I get suicidal.”
“What?” Glasses stared at him for a second, then rubbed his forehead and tried again. “Tell you what. Let’s start this again. Who do you think you are?”
“My name is John Crichton, however I also go by Don Quixote and Dorothy Gale.”
“Uh huh.” Glasses barely even moved, let alone reacted, but still asked, “And us? Who do you think we are?”
“I don’t know. You say you’re Daniel Jackson, but like I said, I’m not getting the Spader reference unless he got a man-up haircut and spent the last ten years lifting books instead of hitting them.”
“Thank you,” he said blankly. “And the man behind me?”
He raised his eyebrows with an inviting smile. “Mr T. gone chill?”
The big guy’s head tilted slightly, unamused by the reference, so Crichton shrugged and went back to Glasses. “Next?”
“How about you tell me about this movie of yours?” he suggested. “You mentioned stargates.”
“Stargate. Singular,” he said. “Came out while I was at grad school, and my girlfriend was a history major that got off on riffing on movies. She’d pick apart the history, I’d start to pick apart the science, and then she’d stick her tongue down my throat. I got to know the movie pretty damn well, trying to find science to object to. There wasn’t much in it,” he confided, but Glasses was rubbing his temple again.
“I see. How about the plot?”
“Wasn’t much of that, either. It was a whole lotta conspiracy theory about aliens building the pyramids,” he said blandly. “Clearly a writer on board. But hey, his film, his propaganda.”
“And in a little more detail?” Glasses asked wearily. “What were these aliens?”
“Ugh. I don’t know, I wasn’t watching it for the story,” he said. “Ancient aliens used wormholes to travel the stars in giant floating pyramid tombs. Ra is actually an alien. Kurt Russell and James Spader team up to have wacky adventures, kill Ra, make Russell realise he can live on after his son’s death, show the world Spader wasn’t really as crazy as everyone thought, save the universe, whatever.”
Glasses waited, but Crichton had nothing more to add. It was almost ten years ago, and his memories of the movie mostly revolved around impassioned rants about screwed up mythology and frenzied sex on the couch. Glasses cycled his pen through the air for more. “And? The stargate…?”
He just smiled back. The reason he’d remembered the movie and the name of its protagonists so easily was because he’d spent a lot of the last three years bitching about every movie with a plot even vaguely related to the hell his life had become. Stargates made wormholes. “Watch the movie if you wanna know – I hear it’s still pretty good, all things considered.”
“Okay, this is going nowhere,” Glasses said, slapping his pen down before immediately picking it up again. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Commander John Crichton,” he said patiently. This was the second laziest interrogation he’d ever had, and this time he wasn’t worried about any of his friends. If not for the see-through attempt to learn about wormholes, he might have even enjoyed himself. “Astronaut. A member of IASA’s R and D division. Crew of Moya. Destroyer of Worlds. Most famed and wanted criminal in the known universe, though it’s been implied they’re dropping the charges,” he added to himself. He’d have to get someone to check on that when he got back. “Husband of Aeryn. Father of D’Argo. Pain in Pilot’s tendrils. How long would you like me to continue?”
But apparently he’d lost them somewhere, because Glasses was gaping at him again. “Destroyer of what?”
“Well. A couple of moons, helped with a command carrier, and I started on a solar system, but no actual worlds,” he admitted. “But I didn’t come up with the name.”
The big guy stepped forward, which was just as well because it looked like he’d broken Glasses. “Do you know the name Cameron Mitchell?”
“Only because I think that’s what you guys have been calling me,” he said, looking up at him. “But no, not especially. I did know a few Camerons growing up though. Cameron Levins tried to beat me up, first year of high school. Then he found out why you don’t mess with a smart jock.”
“Shut up,” Glasses demanded, then sighed and asked, “What is IASA?”
“IASA,” he repeated. When they continued staring, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, you know about Stargate but you don’t know IASA? What, are you guys patched into the pop-culture circuit or what? IASA! International Aeronautics and Space Administration!”
“You mean NASA,” said Glasses. “National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
He snorted. “Oh, how nice to see the government in my head is a little more honest with itself! Bit more jaded after our last trip back home, are we?”
“What?”
“No more ‘working for international success in space’?” he asked. “Only interested in getting the American people to Mars?”
“Wh- no,” he said, and then sat back. “My god, this has got to be some kind of evil plot to make me appreciate Mitchell. I can’t believe I am actually missing his rants about baking.”
“Indeed,” the big guy intoned. “I would expect someone attempting to impersonate Colonel Mitchell to make some attempt of… impersonation.”
“I am so sorry to disappoint,” Crichton said, fluttering his eyelashes. “But I am not trying to be anyone called Mitchell. Or Cameron. Or a Colonel. I am John Crichton. And as much fun as this is, I’d really like to wake up soon.”
“Exactly what do you think is going on here?” Glasses asked, apparently out of exasperation. “We didn’t bring you here. You are in our friend’s body! We want him back!”
Crichton smiled to himself and looked away, uninterested. He could see the play, and was in no mood to watch the world fall apart around him until he’d at least gotten to make out with a hot Ancient Egyptian version of Aeryn.
In the movie, the stargate had basically been a control collar for wormholes. Made them small and stable, allowing for near instantaneous travel to alien spaces. Clearly, he was supposed to step into this role as Cameron Mitchell, have a nice chat with their scientists about how the stargate worked, divulge all his theories and equations, and calmly hand the key to blowing up the universe to whoever his captor was.
And as much fun as that would be, he preferred to stonewall the interrogation. It wasn’t even that hard. His brain wasn’t getting sucked out of his ears, he wasn’t getting forced into sex, he wasn’t boiling from the inside out. Hell, he wasn’t even in that funky chair that stuck his legs up in the air while his interrogators melted into a pool around him. All truth told, this interrogation was lame even by human standards. Frankly, these guys sucked at it.
Besides, he was pretty sure Einstein sucked the wormhole weapon out of his subconscious, so there was nothing to really talk about.
He sat forward, making Glasses jerk back at the suddenness of his movement. “Okay, Danny-boy, let’s say I humour you and say this is an Invasion of the Body Snatchers moment. I’ve only ever seen mind-swap once before, and then we were all nice and close to each other, not a trillion miles across the Universe. How about you?”
Glasses tilted his head, awkwardly conceding the point. “This is… different than most body-swap experiences we’ve had before.”
“And this isn’t an Earth I recognise. I mean, come on, NASA? Your name is supposed to be Daniel Jackson and you’ve never heard of Stargate?” He shook his head, amused. “Nuh-uh. Someone would have made the joke to you in the last decade. Unless we’re in the past, which would kind of make sense… oh, god, this isn’t the eighties, is it?”
“No, it’s not the eighties… But the past could make sense… you said that movie came out in ’94?”
He nodded. “Yeah. When I was in grad school.”
“Me too, finishing up my second doctorate,” he said slowly, then looked at him carefully. “What year do you think this is?”
“I don’t know,” he said, making a face. “I’ve started counting cycles, not years. 2004? Five?”
“Try seven,” he said. “It’s 2007. September.”
Crichton waited for the other shoe, but judging from Glasses’ expression, that had been the great revelation he was coming to. He pillowed his chin in one hand and sighed. “Does this mean I missed my son’s terrible twos? Because I was there for my nephew’s and let me tell you, I am down with that.” When Glasses continued staring at him, he flicked his other hand where it was forced to lean against the other forearm. “Being on Earth is a slightly bigger deal to me.”
“Really?”
He blinked slowly, going back over the conversation. Surely he’d mentioned that…
“Where do you think you’re supposed to be?”
Huh. Apparently they’d missed his subtle cues. But oh well, whoever his real enemy was, they’d probably know that already. So he just shrugged and said, “Somewhere else.”
“Alright,” Glasses said, and pushed back a little to point to the mirror. “Do you recognise your reflection?”
Crichton let his eyes shift over Glasses’ shoulder to the mirror, and then blinked.
He hadn’t paid any attention to it before, aside from a quick confirmation that he was a brunet human male. But now he was looking… god damn.
It was him. Still John Crichton, with brown hair, blue eyes, thick neck and even the freckle on his eyelid. Slightly shorter hair than he’d had last he checked, but still him.
It was just that he looked… healthier. Like he’d somehow managed to sleep a whole night through in the past month. Less lines and wrinkles. His shoulders were slimmer too, like he’d lost a bit of weight and muscle mass. He slowly tilted his head to the side, examining the lack of scars on his left temple, and then pulled his hands around so he could touch the back of his skull. No scar from the chip. No dents from where D’Argo had bounced his head off the floor. He looked back at the mirror, and stared at his pale, healthy face.
God, had he ever really looked this young?
“I remember you,” he mumbled.
“So it’s not your face?”
Crichton almost answered ‘not anymore’, but stopped himself at the last second, knowing it would just confuse them. So he just swallowed and said, “No. I mean, yes, it… that’s me.”
Glasses tapped his pen against the notepad. “Anything missing? Any… symbols, marks, anything?”
A life time of terror and too many deaths. “Not especially.”
“Okay,” Glasses sighed loudly. “Let’s try this: ever heard of the Jaffa?”
Crichton blinked, pulling himself away from his reflection with an effort. “Say again?”
“The Jaffa.”
“The Disney villain?” he asked blankly. “Yeah, my nephew loved those movies.”
He felt, more than saw or heard, a subtle change in the room. A kind of awkward realisation from the guards behind him, though Glasses only looked confused and Big Guy seemed offended again. He looked down at Glasses. “There is a Disney Jaffa, Daniel Jackson?”
“I… don’t know. It’s been decades since I saw a Disney movie,” he admitted.
“Aladdin,” Crichton supplied, and then grinned and cranked on the ham. “‘Phenomenal cosmic power! Itty bitty living space’.”
Glasses raised his eyebrows and silently wrote ‘rent Aladdin’ in the margin of his notepad. “What about the Taur’i?”
“Taurine?”
“Taur’i.”
“Ooh, I got this. Some kind of… bull-person?” he guessed.
“And the Asgard?”
“Thor. Viking myth?” he said, pointing at him with both hands, and Glasses let his arms drop to the table, exasperated.
“You said you’re not from Earth. So what aliens do you know?”
“Lots.” He had no idea how this line of conversation could be useful to anyone who wanted to screw with him, but honestly, it was easier than dealing with a face he hadn’t seen in four years. “Why?”
“Because by identifying the alien species you’ve encountered, we can identify where in space you come from,” he snapped. “If we don’t know any of the ones you know, then you’re probably from a different reality.”
“Ooh, new theory,” he said. “Alternate realities. Shot through the wrong exit. You know what amazes me? No matter how many I visit, I’m the only one who never looks different. I’m never blue, or green, or grey. Still always me. When Einstein was doing it, it made sense, because I was trying to find something close to home, but this? This ain’t that. So what explanation do you have for this new reality where the only thing that’s different is my name and a movie?”
Glasses frowned at the onslaught of speech, then asked, “You’ve been to alternate realities before?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty Trekky,” he said. “Usually just long enough to die, of course, but beggars and choosers.”
“Die,” he repeated, then paused. “How many times have you died, Mr… Commander Crichton?” he asked, correcting himself after a quick glance at his notepad.
“That depends on who you ask. Personally, I think me still being here says I haven’t died,” he said. “Why? What’s your count?”
“Four, officially,” he said, making another note on his notepad. “The others don’t count on my permanent record.”
“Four times. Impressive number. Do tell, what’s that like?” he asked, and smiled charmingly when Glasses looked up from under his brow. “It’s something we all wanna know, you know. Bright lights? Long tunnels? Smiling gods? We’d ask Stark, who should know, you’d think, but the insanity’s kinda getting in the way of a straight answer. And even at my worst, I never broke the same way he did, so we have difficulties communicating. You seem pretty on the level, for a possibly drug-induced hallucination or magic mind-screwing, so any tips for the cross over?”
“Okay,” Glasses said, putting down his pen. “I need a break. T’ealc?”
“I shall remain a little longer,” Big guy intoned, and once Glasses had risen and started toward the door, he set his hands on the table and leaned down, intimidation tactics begun.
But Crichton wasn’t paying attention. The door had opened, and there was a familiar dark head beyond it. “Aeryn?”
“What?” Glasses asked, pausing in the doorway. Crichton stared, because the girl—woman—no, girl—peeking past his shoulder was definitely Aeryn. Pale skin, dark hair, eyes he would never be able to misplace. Looking openly… not stoic.
“Aeryn!” he shouted, shoving himself as far up as he could go. The chair caught him before he could even try to take a step, and he almost fell into Big Guy, who pushed him back down in the chair. With hands holding him down, Crichton stopped struggling to instead just gape at her.
She was in pigtails. And a simple black cotton shirt, with a green sweater tied around her waist. And she was staring at him with open concern.
Not fear, or anger, or determination. Just… concern.
“What’s the matter with him?” she asked Glasses, and he shook his head, still watching Crichton as he began gently leading her away.
“We don’t know yet.”
And then the door closed, leaving him feeling empty and aching and incredibly alone.
“He’s not even trying to be Mitchell. He seems pretty convinced we’re doing something to him,” Daniel said as he slumped back in the chair. They’d convened in the conference room to discuss their next move, since Daniel was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get anywhere, T’ealc had emerged from the interrogation looking perplexed, and Sam was coming up short. “I dunno, maybe he’s trying to lull us into a false sense of security?”
“I did not feel at all secure during our conversation,” T’ealc noted, and Daniel had to give him that. Not-Mitchell seemed a few steps short of stable.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m not any help,” Sam admitted, setting the artefact on the table between them. “I’ve been testing this thing for weeks now, and today hasn’t brought up any new results. I even tried mimicking his actions leading up to the change—under supervision, of course—” she added at Landry’s glance, “but all I got was the distinct impression I was wasting my time.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Daniel suggested. “Maybe this is just some… really weird scheme to keep us distracted from something bigger.”
“Like what?” asked Landry, and Daniel opened his mouth, then grimaced.
“I… don’t know.”
“Did he show any religious inclinations?” asked Sam. “Some hint of the Ori?”
“Um… he rants a lot more than Mitchell, but that’s about it.”
“No odd voice? No Goa’uld?”
“His accent isn’t coming through as strongly. Does that count?”
“Well, what did he talk about?”
“He thinks the stargate is from a movie,” he said, and Sam blinked.
“You mean Wormhole X-Treme.”
“No, I mean a movie. Called Stargate. Early nineties, apparently,” he said, and took a slow, patient breath. “I’m played by James Spader.”
Sam’s lips pressed together, while Landry didn’t do quite so well at hiding his smile. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah, I’m… just thrilled,” he said, before pushing the next topic forward. “So, anyone have any ideas? Maybe he expects us to show him the stargate to prove it’s real?”
“Could be,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Gives him access to it, maybe sabotage.”
“It’s how I’d do it,” Vala piped up, and they all looked at her. She stared back for a moment, then extended her hands in point. “What? It’s a good plan. Simple enough to play, and stupid enough that no one would ever suspect. At the very worst, you waste a few weeks building your target’s trust. Eventually someone’s going to slip up and leave you alone with what you want. Even taking Mitchell’s body makes some level of sense, because they probably know you’re not going to hurt him. Starve him, bore him to death, subject him to a few tests, sure, but you’re not going to torture someone as important as he is. Not while the worst he’s doing is making a few idle threats.” She shrugged and started inspecting her nails. “I’m just saying, I’ve pulled off worse.”
They continued staring at her for a few seconds, before Daniel awkwardly admitted, “She does have a point.”
“So what do we do?” asked Sam. “If what Vala is saying is true, then whoever this guy is, he’s clearly in it for the long haul.”
“Then so are we,” Landry said heavily. “We can transfer him to another facility. Wait to see how long it takes him to crack.”
“And what if it’s not?” asked Daniel. “What if something messed up is happening, and Mitchell needs our help? What if he’s trapped in whoever this guy thinks he is, and is waiting for us to bring him back?”
Sam pressed her lips together again, this time in concern. The unspoken statement—the one Mitchell himself would have made if he’d been there, echoed around the silent table. Mitchell knew the risks when he joined the air force, and even more when he joined SG-1. Being stranded in another person’s body, somewhere in the wide world or universe, was a small price to pay to keep the stargate and this planet safe.
But even if he had been there to say it, he also would have been the first one to add, “I’m all for going out for a cause, but I’m not doing it if there’s another option.”
Also not when the person he’d been swapped with had so far proved himself annoying, not evil.
“As General O’Neill has said previously,” T’ealc said slowly, “sometimes the only way to avoid a trap is to walk into it.”
“What, just show him the stargate?” asked Daniel.
“See how he responds,” he suggested. “If he truly believes it is a movie prop, his reaction will be different than someone who wishes to abuse its power.”
“No matter what, we get some insight into what he’s thinking,” Sam continued, nodding as she thought it through. “If we don’t believe his act, well then at least we have something to go on, right?”
“Vala should be there too,” Daniel said, and when they all looked at him, he gestured at her. “She said it herself! It’s the kind of scam she’d pull, right? So who better than to watch him and call him out on anything that doesn’t match up?”
Landry considered it for a minute, then nodded and stood up. “Go ahead. But I want a full squadron armed and ready if he tries anything. He’s also to remain cuffed, and I want a zat gun pointed at his back at all times.”
“Yes sir.”
Crichton decided he had to give these guys credit for one thing. PeaceKeepers weren’t this stoic.
He’d tried all the usual tricks. When the Big Guy was doing his I-will-stare-you-into-submission routine, he’d bantered. He’d tried goading him. Commented on everything in the room. Debated the chances of a thirty-something guy named Daniel Jackson never having heard of Stargate. He’d even done the Doberman trick, staring and growling and not even backing down when the Big Guy put him down.
That had at least gotten the guy out of the room, eventually. Apparently Colonel Mitchell wasn’t the growling type.
So he’d turned his attention on the guards. They proved even less entertaining, so he’d gotten bored and started thinking the situation through properly.
He’d decided there were definitely three possibilities still in play. One, these guys were on the level and he was legitimately in another reality. Albeit a weird one where the only differences were him, IASA, and a cult classic movie from the early nineties. Two, someone was screwing with his head to try and get wormhole information out of him. Whether that was through magic or technology, he didn’t particularly care, because it was still the same effect. Three, this was some kind of… test, maybe. The Ancients screwing with him to see if he’d take the bait.
So he spent a couple of minutes announcing to the world at large that he wasn’t interested. That he liked his brain with the amount of knowledge it had now, and if anyone was interested in giving him more, it had better be about how to be a good father, and/or make Aeryn appreciate the Three Stooges.
Unfortunately, all that did was further convince his guards he was completely insane. So he instead decided to consider what else had happened in 1994, and what he’d been doing when he wasn’t acting like he knew what wormholes were to turn on Jenny Cartwright. So far, he could remember lots of studying, arguing with DK, and Ace of Base.
At least singing ‘The Sign’ got a good reaction out of the storm troopers, even if it was just their audible sighs of frustration.
By the time Glasses finally come back, Crichton was mid-way through describing the Shawshank Redemption and why that prison was so much more interesting than the one he was currently in. He cut off in the middle of his sentence to smile an invitation at Glasses. “Round two?”
“New game,” he corrected, and stepped aside to reveal more guards, then nodded to the ones in the room. “Release his legs. We’re taking him to the gate.”
As he was manhandled up and frogmarched out of the room, Crichton saw Aeryn again. This time, she was watching him a little closer, so when she moved out of his sight, he tried to focus forward. If it was her—and if it was, he had to ask about the pigtails—he didn’t want to blow her cover. He just had to trust she knew what she was doing, and wait for her signal.
Big Guy and the blonde from earlier were both waiting in the next corridor, and joined their procession as they walked through a lot of very similar grey halls. He counted the turns anyway, right up until Glasses swiped a final door and they entered a massive hall, filled with soldiers pointing guns at him, and what he clearly recognised from too many hours looking for bad science.
“Oh, come on,” he mumbled, staring up at the stargate. It even had the symbols.
So… probably not alternate universe.
“Bigger than you were expecting?” Glasses asked lightly, and he gave him an annoyed look from the corner of his eye.
“Not as surrounded by Latinos wearing historically inaccurate costumes. You’re sticking with the Daniel Jackson thing?” He gave him another once-over to confirm he definitely wasn’t James Spader, then asked, “Parlez-vous Francais? Sprechen sie Deutsch? Ghe’or qastah nuq nadev?”
“Oui, ja, and I don’t recognise that last one,” he said.
“Klingon,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s Klingon, you half-assed mind-raping moron. What the hell is going on here?”
Glasses just frowned at him, then glanced off to the side, and despite himself, so did Crichton, only to flinch when he realised Aeryn had snuck up next to them. She was looking at him like – well, actually, on anyone else’s face, it might’ve looked like he was a very interesting puzzle, but on Aeryn, it just looked like she’d lost her mind.
She hesitated, then took his arm and smiled at Jackson. “Would you… give us a second? Thanks.” And then she pushed Crichton away from the guards and smiled up at him.
A real smile. Not baring her teeth in a terrified grin. Not a knowing smirk. A real smile. Crichton felt his blood run cold. “Aeryn…?”
“I don’t speak many other languages myself, so I don’t know what that means,” she said, just as quietly, and cocked her head like a bird, lifting her hand to wave a finger between them. “Just between us, is this a scam? I wouldn’t normally ask so bluntly, but um… to be honest I find myself believing you and that’s a very strange concept for me.”
He looked over her head at the soldiers, then back down to her face, and lowered his voice to below a whisper. “I need a sign, honey.”
“Sign?” she repeated, loudly, so he turned to face her straight-on.
Aeryn was not an actor. She could pretend to a certain extent, but only as far as being a PeaceKeeper and giving him respect. The more he stared into her open, cheerful expression, the more he realised… “Aeryn, wake up. I need you here.”
“Mmhm…” She folded one arm over her torso, the other propped on it so she could put a loose fist to her mouth in consideration. “So the um, the stargate. You’re… not… going to do anything to it?”
“It’s out of my head,” he hissed. “All of this is. I don’t – I don’t know who’s doing this, and for all I know you’re an illusion too, but this, the whole stargate thing, it’s from a movie. Someone is messing with my head.”
“Mmhm, mm,” she said, and then turned around so her back was to him. She whistled and twirled her finger in the air near her ear in the very human gesture for ‘crazy’, then hurried back to Glasses, where she bounced on her toes and reported, “Com-pletely off his head. Quite sad, really. I was getting to like Mitchell.”
“Great. Just… perfect,” Crichton spat, and lifted his cuffed hands to bury his face in.