The Other Side of the Time Loop (Cassandra, PG-13), by Yvi [SG1]

[yvi]

Title: The Other Side of the Time Loop
Author: Yvi
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Cassandra/other (background pairing)
Characters: Cassandra Fraiser
Genre: ~gen, AU, futurefic, episode-related
Prompt: From fignewton in the phoenix_gate challenge: There must have been a closed time loop when SG-1 ended up stranded in the future, before Cassie and/or Sam somehow got word back to the past to have Cassie waiting at the right moment. What was life like for Cassie in the loop where SG-1 never came back from 1969?
Timeline/Spoilers: AU after 1969
Summary: When the members of SG1 don't return from their adventure in 1969, Cassandra's whole life is turned upside down.
Word Count: ~4,500
Author's Notes: Song lines taken from Natalie Imbruglia's “Come September”. Thanks a lot to cnidarian for beta-reading.

The Other Side of the Time Loop
by Yvi

[her bones will ache
her mouth will shake]

Three days after SG1 stepped through the gate that day, Janet told her.

Cassandra knew that there were bad news immediately. Her mother came home from work over an hour late, she looked like she hadn't slept at all the previous night and the way she looked at Cassandra... that picture would stay with her forever.

Janet spoke calmly with her, explained to her that SG1 was overdue from a mission, that the teams sent after them had not been able to find them and that this did not mean that they were dead. Insisted that there was still hope that they would turn up. Then she tried to hug Cassandra.

Cassandra escaped her grasp and fled to her room. She locked herself in and did not say anything for the rest of the day. There was no crying. When she looked back on that day later she didn't remember what she had thought. She only remembered sitting on her bed with her favorite fluffy blanket, staring into space and hearing the dog bark outside her room a few times.

She came out of her room for dinner and let herself be hugged by Janet, who cried a bit and assured her that it was still possible for them to come back. That they had fought the odds before and beat them. But Cassandra wondered whether her mother actually believed it or whether she just wanted to make it easier for Cassandra

The next day, the phone rang and Janet was called to the SGC. Cassandra tried to not be too hopeful, but she couldn't help it and when Janet came back late in the evening, tired and exhausted, and told her that there had been an accident off-world involving SG3, she cried.

“I am so sorry, honey,” Janet said and held her as she wept her eyes out.

For the next weeks, anytime the phone rang, anytime Janet was working late, Cassandra felt the hope rise in her again. And every time, she was crushed when she found out it was just one of Janet's friends checking in or a team having come back late.

It got better after that. There were the nightmares, yes, and there were the times when she thought about calling Sam to play some chess or Jack to go for a walk with the dog. Then, only a few seconds later, she would remember that this was impossible.

[and as the passion dies
her magic heart will break]

Cassandra celebrated her thirteenth birthday with a few friends. They ate cake in the kitchen and Cassandra put one chair too much at the kitchen table. When Janet asked, she claimed she had miscalculated the number of people coming.

She wasn't sure whether Janet believed her. The chair had been for Sam.

She got more presents from her mother than anytime before or after. Only later did Cassandra understand that Janet had tried to compensate for the loss of SG1 and on that day, she told her mother she loved her.

[She'll fly to France]

A year after the day they stepped through the gate and didn't return, SG1 was declared missing in action, presumed dead. Cassandra refused to go to the memorial service.

“They aren't dead,” she shouted at her mother and banged the door closed. She didn't come out of her room until Janet returned from the service. Both had eyes red from crying and they ate dinner in silence.

But the nightmares of Sam coming back as a Goa'uld and of how SG1 died stopped that night.

Cassandra felt like they could get on with life again.

[cause there's no chance]

She was sixteen when the general told her the whole story. SG1 had been gone for three and a half years.

“General Hammond wants to talk to us,” Janet said.

Cassandra had rarely ever spoken to the general and she couldn't imagine any reason for it other than SG1. “What about? Did they find anything?”

“I don't know. He just said he'd come by tomorrow afternoon.”

And so he told them over a cup of coffee what happened to him as a young soldier and how he saw Sam's injured hand that day and gave her the note. He told them that he knew that SG1 had never been to the planet they dialed over three years ago, but had instead traveled into the past.

“What if they were stuck there?” she asked. The general shook his head and told her how, if they did, they weren't alive anymore or they would have gotten in contact with the SGC.

He said he was sorry and that he just wanted them to know what happened, but that this would never be in the official reports. And that he had waited for them to come back for the last year and just wanted Cassandra and Janet to know.

Cassandra wasn't sure whether she wanted to know.

The next few years, she often found herself looking at old people on the streets, wondering how Sam, Daniel, Jack and Teal'c would look like now. Once, she saw an old lady and ran after her. When she called her Sam she was told that the lady's name was Rose.

She had a nightmare that night, the first in almost three years. SG1 was stuck in the past with no money, nowhere to go and a timeline to preserve. They died homeless and alone in her dream.

She woke up screaming and hoped that Janet hadn't heard her.

[no hope for Cinderella
come September]

At seventeen, over four years after losing the people she considered her aunt and uncles, Cassandra lost her mother.

There was a Goa'uld attack and Janet went out to save people in the field and never came back. General Hammond was the one to tell her.

He was sorry and she saw in his eyes that it broke his heart to shatter hers.

It did shatter hers. Later, she didn't even remember the days after the news. The next thing she remembered was waking up on the psychiatric ward of a hospital. They told her she had had a nervous breakdown, refused to speak and to eat.

Cassandra had missed the memorial service. She hadn't been to her mother's and she hadn't been to that of the people she had considered her surrogate family.

They released her after another week. Her boyfriend picked her up to take her home, but Cassandra felt like she had nowhere to go. She came back to what she had used to call home and in every corner there were memories of Janet. When she broke down after half an hour of gathering things she might need, he took her to his parents'.

It wasn't home. But it would do until she could live on her own.

Weeks later, she returned to her former home and spent days sorting through everything Janet had left her. She kept two boxes full of memories and threw the rest away. As soon as she turned 18 she sold the house to the first buyer with the help of General Hammond. She didn't want it to be hers.

Cassandra would never have to go into debt for college. But all she wanted to have was a family and she couldn't buy that with all the money in the world.

[her violet sky
will need to cry]

Despite her problems, Cassandra graduated on top of her class. A few of the top universities wanted her, as well as the military on the recommendation of the retired General Hammond.

Being in the military was what had killed them. It took all that she had to politely refuse the offer of the Air Force Academy. She knew that George meant well.

They met sometimes, she and the general. She played with his grandchildren and talked to his daughter and played chess with him and then she left for her own world again.

She loved science. And so, she chose the career path that Sam and Janet had chosen for themselves, but without joining the military. Physics turned out to be not for her, but she was good at biology.

Biology seemed like a good way to fight the Goa'uld.

['cause if it doesn't rain
then everything will die]

Cassandra never much cared for men after she broke up with her first boyfriend. But when she met Alexander, a visiting student from France, she fell hard for him. She thought he was the love of her life.

The next semester, she moved to Lilles for a semester abroad. She was intoxicated by the foreign culture, the wonderful food and the beautiful language, which she quickly learned. Europe was so different from the United States and Cassandra wondered why she had never really seen the planet that she now viewed as hers.

That semester, she learned more about herself and the world she lived in than in the twenty years before that, and she didn't need to go to other planets for it.

They got engaged on her twenty-first birthday. It was a beautiful proposal with Alexander kneeling down before her after a romantic picnic in a park and making her cry by his speech.

Two months later, Cassandra was on a plane back to the US, trying to keep the tears at bay.

“I am sorry,” he had said.

As if he really was sorry for sleeping with her friend.

Cassandra hated people who said “I am sorry.”

[she needs to heal
she needs to feel]

At twenty-two, just days after receiving her Bachelor's degree in Biomedicine, Cassandra went into General Landry's office and asked him for a job. She didn't want to do field work, she wanted to do research on ways to fight the Goa'uld.

The general was reluctant at first, but welcomed her with open arms when she told him of some ideas she had had about Goa'uld physiology and how to block their neurotransmitters so that only the Goa'uld would die and not the host.

She started work exactly ten years after SG1 had last stepped through the gate. There had never been another team designated SG1 afterwards.

Very few of the personnel still knew her. There were a few nurses who had been there when Cassandra had come through the gate, too frightened to really notice them and she remembered Sergeant Siler. But so many had died in those ten years.

So many deaths she never knew about, so many funerals she never attended.

The day she was introduced to the science team as a new researcher and started her training, she promised herself again that she would make them proud. Sam, Daniel, Janet, the dead soldiers, scientists, engineers and all the others. This had to end.

She would make them proud.

[something more than tender
come September]

Working at the SGC was stressful and sometimes very frustrating. Nevertheless, she woke up on most days eager to get to work.

Cassandra started to live for her work. After half a year, she asked for quarters on base and usually spent around four nights a week in them. Her flat in town was nice and cozy, but she preferred the clean and white lab where she was working on establishing a Goa'uld tissue line so that in the future, they could test promising substances on them.

But even though she buried herself in work, she couldn't help making friends. She started hanging out with Jennifer Hailey when her team was on Earth and loved to talk about things unrelated to the Stargate with her: sports, TV shows, movies, everything they thought normal people talked about.

Even so, work was her number one priority and she quickly advanced to be the expert on Goa'uld physiology. Teams started to bring back cell samples from every dead Goa'uld or Jaffa they could get samples from and several times they could study live ones. The knowledge that Cassandra found on how to fight the Goa'uld was invaluable. She even discovered a few substances that could be used to kill them, but they always required close contact to the Goa'uld and thus couldn't be used in the field. She received her PhD three years afterwards, but no one outside the SGC ever saw her thesis.

The war between humans and Goa'uld grew fiercer every year and Cassandra experienced more then her share of sleepless nights when they knew a Goa'uld attack on Earth was planned. In those nights she remembered SG-1 and wondered how the world would look like had they come back. Maybe the war would have been over by now.

[everything wrong
gonna be alright]

They met the Furlings when she was twenty-eight, after more people had died from the war with the Goa'uld. The Furlings were a friendly species, not completely unlike humans, but their civilization had fallen into ruins. It took the Stargate teams several missions to even found out that this race were the legendary Furlings. But then they discovered the remains of their technology hidden away in chambers deep under the earth. Cassandra was now the leader of the experimental Biology unit in the Stargate Center and analyzed some of the biological agents the teams brought back.

The results looked promising. The viruses designed by the Furlings only years before the unexplained collapse of their civilizations targeted neurotransmitters used only by Goa'uld that were joined with their hosts. This was a way to not affect the Jaffa who had, after years of being talked to by Bra'tac and his followers, partially joined the Ta'uri. They would still be able to use the Goa'uld as their immune system. Many of the SG-teams now had a Jaffa in their midst. Cassandra was confident that vaccines could be designed to give to the Tok'ra.

[come September]

After two years of research, the Furlings, Cassandra and her team had a break-through. The virus was highly infectious, but only used humans as an intermediate host and was detected and killed by the immune systems after a few days. The vaccine for the Tok'ra worked and they also had a cure should something go wrong. And the virus led to the death of the Goa'uld, not that of the host.

They were faced with the difficult decision of whether to release it or not. Then the Goa'uld System Lords Cronus, Apophis and Sokar made an alliance and started wiping out whole planets inhabited by Jaffa and humans.

On September 25 2014 they released the virus. They celebrated that night, because two years of long days and sleepless nights seemed over.

Three months later they celebrated again. The Tok'ra reported that most of the Goa'uld and all of the System Lords were dead. They tested humans from different worlds and all showed antibodies to the virus, but no virus infection anymore.

Cassandra had more than one reason to be happy: she met her future husband at the party following the defeat of the Goa'uld.

[the souls that burn
will twist and turn ]

After many dozens of very close situations, the Stargate center was finally revealed to the public one year after the defeat of the Goa'uld. The reaction was not as positive as the teams had hoped. Many groups were outraged that the US had started this expedition without international considerations, which Cassandra could understand. Then governments fought over who should be in control of the Stargate, with Egypt claiming it as theirs. The actions of the SGC were publicly criticized. Monotheistic religious groups were outraged about the information that Sokar had impersonated the devil on Earth, polytheistic groups denied that the Goa'uld had posed as Gods and been worshiped. There were demonstrations for closing the Stargate before something worse than the Goa'uld happened. Trust in the governments, politicians and soldiers sunk to a record low. Two terrorist attacks on the SGC had to be subverted.

Chaos broke out in many cities across the world as people were scared on an impending attack on Earth and prepared for the worst. Police actions were taken, which resulted in more chaos.

Cassandra watched all this from the relatively safe environment of Cheyenne Mountain. She had married a month before the public revelation and, as her husband was a civilian member of SG-14, they spent this difficult time together.

Nine months later, they had their first child which they called Catherine Janet, after Catherine Langford whose discovery had brought them together and the mother that had left Cassandra too early.

[and find you in the dark]

The chaos did not stop, the world did not suddenly go silent again.

Military governments were formed. Soldiers shot down civilians. Whole countries became unable to function.

Cassandra soaked in what little news they were able to get and held her baby closely. This was not the future she had fought for.

[no matter where you run]

Slowly, democratic governments re-formed. It didn't make things better.

Bombs exploded. Threats were made.

There was war between the United States and several Central and South American countries.

Russia was at war with the European Union.

Cassandra had thought that the war between the Ta'uri/Jaffa alliance would be the last big war. She had been mistaken.

George Hammond died, but he did so peacefully and Cassandra got to say goodbye the day before in hospital. Cassandra just wished his last years hadn't been tainted by the chaos surrounding the Stargate project.

When Catherine got the news that she would soon have a brother, the world was not a peaceful place to be; Cassandra and her husband decided to accept the offer she had received several times already – they went to live with the Furlings.

Over the years of doing research with them, Cassandra had established several bonds of friendship with their people and they were very welcoming towards the human newcomers.

[she's made her mark
but lost her spark]

The Furling homeworld never felt quite as much like home as the Stargate Center and Colorado Springs had, but Cassandra grew happy there.

She went back to Earth for the birth of her son, who she and David named Lucas Robin. She didn't want to give her second child a dead person's name.

Every week, they dialed Earth's address and spoke to people on the base. Things were slowly getting better on Earth.

Cassandra tried to meet with Jennifer once a week. Jennifer now lived on the Alpha side, occasionally returning to Earth to help rebuilding. She asked Cassandra to come back with her a few times, but Cassandra only wanted to come back when things were okay again.

[and what she's pushing for
she can't remember]

Two years later, they went back to Earth. It was a different Earth; now that the wars had ended, peace was restored, but the living situation of most humans was different. Humans were different.

The Stargate program was practically closed. The energy needed to sustain gate travel could not be provided by the USA anymore and so there were only bi-weekly check-ins with the people living off-world.

Some of them returned, just as Cassandra and David did. Some decided to stay off-world, holding on to the life they had built there.

Cassandra knew Lucas and Catherine had problems adjusting to life on Earth and when one day her husband brought home a dog to keep them company, Cassandra was reminded strongly of how she had come to Earth.

And of the person who had given her a dog back then. She didn't think of them much anymore, of Jack and Sam and Daniel and Teal'c. She didn't even think of Janet much anymore.

It sickened her that she could have forgotten about these people who had been so important to her once and she started crying at the thought. Her husband tried to calm her down, but she couldn't tell him why she was so angry with herself. She didn't want to admit that she had not thought about her deceased mother for weeks. So he could just hold her and tell her everything would be alright.

[everything wrong
gonna be alright]

The world they lived in improved over the years. Epidemics stopped sweeping across the poor regions of the world that had been made even poorer by the rich countries fighting wars against each other.

Cassandra watched her kids grow up. It made her happy. There were times of sadness – David had a heart attack at age 32, Lucas had a lot of problems at school – but they were greatly outnumbered by the times of joy and laughter she found with her family.

She continued to work at the Stargate Center, as a leader of the science team and the official liaison to the Furlings. It was rewarding – after getting rid of the Goa'uld, they finally had time to concentrate on all the things that were getting side-lined the years before. The artifacts and samples that they didn't have time to look at because the Goa'uld were the priority.

It was fascinating work. Slowly, field units were re-established. Cassandra's husband wasn't declared fit enough for duty and Cassandra secretly liked it better that way. The Goa'uld were gone, but there were still dangers out there. This way, when she came home after a day's work, she knew her children and her husband were there, waiting for her.

[come September]

In 2026, at the age of 42, Cassandra became the first civilian leader of the Stargate Center. She stayed in this position until her husband died of another heart attack eight years later. Her children were grown up already at that point, but she still wanted to be there for them more.

During her eight years of leading the SGC, Cassandra established several treaties with other planets that resulted in very good trading relationships. She opened the Stargate Center to scientists from all over the world and established several outposts on different planets. Jaffa and a few humans from around the galaxy came to live on Earth with special permissions from the United Nations.

After Cassandra stepped down from her position, she was dearly missed by everyone working there. But she was happy with her decision and started to travel around the world again. She also spent a couple of weeks each year off-world, visiting the most wonderful planets the universe had to offer.

[she will run
she'll drink the sun]

She was staying at the Stargate Center for a medical check-up before going through the gate to the Furling home world when the impossible happened.

Cassandra was in the gate room when the Stargate started to spin. For years the SGC hadn't used the iris and so when an iris code came through, the gate technician on duty was surprised.

“Check it against the codes we used to have,” Cassandra told him and even though she wasn't in charge anymore, he did so.

A few seconds later, four bodies came flying through the Stargate when the gave her the results of his check.

“It's SG1, ma'am.”

But Cassandra was already on her way down the stairs.

[shining just for you
instead of everyone]

“Sam?”

The blond woman raised her head. Her face looked exactly like the last time Cassandra had seen her, but her clothes were very strange. Still, there was no mistaking the familiar features, it really was Sam.

One of the others got up and looked around. Cassandra immediately recognized Jack and a smile spread across her face. “Where are we, Carter?”

“Well, it looks like the gate room, sir,” Sam answered Jack.

Sam stood up and looked at Cassandra. “Who are you?” she asked.

But Cassandra was still too shocked at seeing them to answer her.

“If I have to take a wild guess, I'd say we didn't quite hit the right time,” Daniel said. Like the others, he was wearing strange clothes. Especially Teal'c was wearing clothes that Cassandra had only seen in movies. She remembered George telling her when he had met SG1 in his past – 1969.

“Don't you recognize me, Sam?”

Sam looked at her, confused. “I don't think I do...,” she said.

“Do we know you?” Daniel asked.

But sudden realization dawned on Sam's face.

“Oh my God... Cassandra?”

“Cassandra?” Teal'c asked.

Cassandra nodded, tears welling up in her eyes.

Jack stared at her. “As in Cassie Fraiser?”

She nodded again. “Sam...” She wanted to say so much to the other woman, but couldn't get the words out.

[everything wrong]

“How far into the future did we travel?” Daniel asked.

They were in the briefing room now. Cassandra could not stop looking at the familiar and yet strange faces of the four new arrivals.

“The year is 2039,” she answered and saw the shock on the faces of the SG1 team members.

“What happened to you?” Doctor Jal, the new leader of the Stargate program asked. “As far as we are concerned, you died more than forty years ago.”

Sam wanted to say something, but Cassandra was faster. “Actually, that's not quite correct. They traveled into the past and never came back.”

“How do you know that?” Jack asked.

“George... General Hammond told me and Janet when I was sixteen. He never told anyone else about it.”

“Sir, I think maybe we shouldn't ask a lot of questions,” Sam said

“Why not?”

Sam sighed. “We shouldn't take any information back with us. We can go back, can't we?”

Cassandra looked at the base commander. He nodded. “Yes, I am pretty sure we can send you back. Colonel Hailey recently uncovered a device that can help you. We have not dared to test it yet, though...”

“Then we shall be the first to test it,” Teal'c said and his team members nodded.

Cassandra wanted to say something, wanted to say that they couldn't leave already, she had so much to tell them, but her mouth didn't form the words. Sam, Jack, Daniel and Teal'c did not belong here, they belonged to their own time..

[gonna be alright]

“What will happen when you step through?” Cassandra asked.

“As far as I can tell, an alternate timeline starts existing in which we return into our own time.”

“What will happen to this timeline? Will it cease to exist?”

Sam shook her head. “No. It will continue to exist parallel to the other one.”

“I don't want to say goodbye to you. I lost you once already.”

“I am sorry, Cassie. I never meant to leave you.”

“I know, Sam.”

[come September]

Cassandra died peacefully in her own bed on March 17, 2067, at the age of 83.

She knew there were now an infinite number of Cassandras out there who had their Sams back and whose lives would look very different from hers.