Sometimes the universe accepts our intentions at face value. Sometimes it has other plans. And sometimes, the road home is longer than you think.
Jack O’Neill’s one-time best friend had sacrificed himself while helping Jack save Earth from a black hole. But was he really gone? The past be damned; Jack wasn’t about to leave Frank Cromwell behind if he could help it.
Lost on a planet in rebellion against the Goa’uld, and with no knowledge of the gate address for Earth, Cromwell finds unexpected allies while waiting for the chance to go home. But he is unprepared for a shocking discovery that will take him on an odyssey that no one could have anticipated.
Status: Work-in-progress, with regular updates
Season: Season 2
Episode Spoilers/Tags: major for A Matter of Time, plus minor tags for The Torment of Tantalus, Cold Lazarus and for The Tok’ra, Pts. I & II. Possible oblique references to events of other episodes from the pilot up to the end of Season 2.
Missing Scenes: A Matter of Time
Category: This is basically a Gen drama, and will also include a mystery to be solved, a bit of angst, some action, adventure and a small romantic subplot between a nominally-canon character and an original character. Should also be considered AU, in that A) someone considered to have died in the series is presented as alive in this story, B) we will be meeting an Earth-origin culture that was addressed later in the series, but I am giving it a different spin than the series did, and C) this story will also introduce a non-canon subgroup of a canon alien species.
Disclaimer: Standard. Stargate SG-1, its characters and all related entities are property of Stargate SG-1 Productions (II) Inc., MGM Worldwide Television Productions Inc., Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp and Showtime Networks Inc / The SciFi Channel. No copyright infringement is intended. I am in no way affiliated with any of the foregoing entities; these are not my characters, I’m merely taking them out for a little exercise and fresh air, I’m not making any money from this, etc. (In fact, if I did own the Stargate franchise, elements of this story would have formed part of a major arc, and at least one group of aliens would have been a little less hardassed. Also, Seasons 8, 9 and 10 would have been very different. Well… Ahem. Anyway.)
Special Note: I can but stand on the shoulders of giants. Many thanks to the extremely talented (and difficult-to-reach) Flora and Gallagater, authors of some very fine Frank Cromwell-centric fic that has unfortunately fallen mostly off the internet, which is why I have archived it here on my own site. Flora’s trilogy of A Light in Dark Places, All Go Down Together, and What Love Remains, along with her collaboration with Gallagater on So Builds An Absolute Trust have proven inspirational to me — although I began this story before reading any of theirs — and if it seems that I have adopted their take on Frank and Jack’s prior history together as essentially ‘true’, this is because of the astounding quality of their work. I find I cannot improve upon it, only embellish. Reading them, while not completely necessary to understanding my story, will provide more depth to anyone choosing to do so. It should be noted that the interactions between Jack and Sara, and between Sara and Lisa, from What Love Remains wouldn’t actually have occurred in the universe in which my story takes place, for timeline-related reasons which will become obvious to my readers, but the interactions between Frank and Sara from that story ring very true to my own universe.
All credit for the existence of Lisa Cromwell, Captain Stuart, Sergeant Douglas and the 121st Special Tactics team goes to Flora, for they are her inventions. I am only borrowing them, and will forever remain more deeply indebted to her genius than I can express.
A big “you rock!” to my friend Richard M. for editing duties and general feedback. The same to fellow fan and ficcer Nzie, who helped me to navigate the shadows within Jack O’Neill’s mind, and to Sealurk, for diligent beta reading and much encouragement.
Author’s Note on the Story and Its Setting
Please be aware that while there are descendants of a Welsh culture addressed in later seasons of SG-1, my universe is alternative and this is a different Welsh group from the canon culture. The people of Tir n’Awyr were taken from the British Isles on Earth around the beginning of Roman occupation. They were spirited away and enslaved by a completely original Goa’uld posing as the deity Belatucadros no later than the 1st century CE, which is roughly four to five centuries prior to what might be considered “Arthurian” times. None of what I do in this story is intended to tie in with the canon Welsh arc in any way, because those events don’t exist in my universe. Nor do the Ori.
Also, any modern or near-modern Welsh language used in this story is intended to stand in for a hypothetical related language, Pridanic, descended from the Brythonic language of the time when these people were taken from Earth. Brythonic was one of the two major language groups of the British Isles in pre-Saxon, pre-Roman times, and later went on to produce Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric, Breton and possibly other tongues. In the period from 100 BCE to ca. 150 CE, the time during which the Celtic peoples in this story were taken from Earth, Brythonic is postulated to have been one common language, possibly with two dialects. I am taking some license with the idea that another language evolved from Brythonic in off-world isolation would be at least close enough for a Welsh speaker to learn easily, although given the strong motivation of utter necessity it might not be entirely unlikely. But in any case, if invoking artistic license is what it takes so that poor Frank can at least manage to communicate, then I’m all for it!
I will use a similar convention with regard to any other languages that crop up; if you, the reader, run across a Gaelic phrase in this work, it is intended to stand in for something evolved from a Goidelic language of the period spanning roughly 200 BCE to 200CE. Note that I am not a professional linguist (I only wish I could afford that much education!), nor do I play one on TV, and I’m just doing the best I can with online resources. I think I’m learning some of both Welsh and Scottish Gaelic in the process, so that’s not a bad thing. Thank you for your understanding.
This story is for D.C., wherever he may be. Godspeed, my friend.