When Charlie and Hammond, followed closely by McKay, entered before SG-1 had even dusted themselves off, Jack’s suspicions were confirmed and he fixed them with a stern look. "I guess ‘privacy’ means something different in this timeline. Next time I’ll try to make myself clearer." He couldn’t deny that in disregarding his request they had helped Casper, however he was not at all pleased that these strangers, for that was what they basically were, had witnessed the most horrendous, personal violations of himself and his kids…well, technically it was their alternate selves but he wasn’t about to quibble semantics. He knew his team, and one thing every one of SG-1 valued was keeping their private lives private. At the same time he couldn’t really blame the rebels. Had the situations been reversed, and he had people who until this morning had been ‘Ba’al’s lapdogs’ on his base, there was no way he’d leave them unobserved. But, Charlie had handed over his command to him, and if they were going to have any chance of fixing the timeline, Jack had to be sure that his orders were not open for interpretation. He ignored the little voice in his head that started a litany of the times Jack had been creative with orders given to him, ending with the cliché ‘like father, like son’.

For a moment Charlie looked guilty, his eyes darting to the hidden camera, then lifted his chin defiantly. "You would have done differently?"

Father and son, leader to leader, locked stubborn gazes then Jack gave a hint of a smile. "Nope, but just don’t do it to us again." He strode over to the box of surveillance photos that had been put aside near the backpacks and tipped them out onto the table. "Okay, we’re going to put the trip down memory lane on hold for now and work on how Balls changed it in the first place. Everyone double checks every shot to make sure we don’t miss something."

With nods of agreement, they all reached for the pile of pictures that hopefully would hold the key to one of their mission tasks. For a while only the sound of shuffling paper was heard, then the silence was broken by questions from SG-1 to the rebels to translate some of the hand written notes on the back of the shots. Questions turned to quiet comments and easy chatter started up around the table.

"For cryin’ out loud, look at what Balls has done to the SGC." Jack passed the photo of the military base to Sam with a snort of disgust.

She grimaced at the gaudy gold paneling that had been installed in the ’gate room. "Typical Goa’uld taste. Ostentatious and nonexistent."

"He added that early on after he discovered Fort Knox." Charlie fished through a few pictures and produced another shot, this one the hallway of level twenty-eight and the open elevator at the end showing the same decoration. "There are scribes from his original slaves whose sole job is to emboss the walls."

"I’ve always meant to ask," Sam passed the shot down to Daniel. "Besides concealing the codes to open the doors and such, do the walls actually say anything?"

"Since we’re normally skulking, hiding, shooting, running and causing general mayhem, when would I have had the chance to check?" The linguist studied the picture but the resolution wasn’t clear enough to make out many of the glyphs.

Annika quirked an eyebrow in disbelief. She knew her husband, going on nine years of running around Goa’uld ships covered in script and he hadn’t translated one of them? "My Love, pull the other leg, it’s got bells on."

"And look, there goes a flying pig!" Jack was equally skeptical.

"Indeed I have." Teal’c didn’t look up from the photo of an alkesh cargo bay, identifying the goods and dismissing them as irrelevant. "They mainly are historical records of the Goa’uld who owns the ship, battles they have won, worlds conquered, usually greatly over-exaggerated."

"Wonder if Ba’al kept up the tradition?" Annika rifled through the photos looking for a clearer shot of the SGC walls.

Daniel helped her search. "I doubt he would have told the truth, but Snake pride would have compelled him to leave a clue."

"If you don’t mind me saying so," Charlie swapped photos with Sam. "What Ba’al did to you guys was inconceivably vindictive."

"Eight years of putting up with his Snakiness and you’re only now picking that up?" Jack wisecracked. "Son, it’s in a snakehead’s nature."

"Not like that," he contradicted. "Ba’al has killed and tortured many people, but to the general masses that was a show of force to incite fear and maintain his dominance. With you it seemed more…personal. He must really hate you."

"Well, we’re not on his Christmas card list," Annika quipped putting aside a photo of one of the NORAD barracks that had been changed into Jaffa quarters.

"I have to agree with CJ," Hammond pressed Charlie’s point. "There’s no denying Ba’al is the nastiest sonofabitch I’ve ever encountered, but what I saw in those visions was revenge."

"That explains the when." Sam voiced what her teammates had just realized. "He got to us before SG-1 was formed, kept us separated so we couldn’t become a team…"

"Then spent the next eight years humiliating and degrading us," Annika finished. "Jeez, tell a snake he’s got a little pecker and he changes history. Who knew he had such a fragile ego?"

Happy to have at least one thing suitably explained, SG-1 returned their attention to the pile of photos with renewed vigor. The rebels, however, were more than a little stunned by the redhead’s comment.

McKay, who had been unusually silent until now, cleared his throat. "Am I hearing impaired or did you just say you questioned Ba’al’s…er…masculinity?"

"Didn’t just question it. By the time Jack and I finished with him he was limper than a cooked noodle." Annika shared a wide grin with her partner in crime at the memory. "Ah, good times, huh, Jack?"

"Yeah, that was some of our best snake-baiting work." The colonel gave a cheeky smirk, discarding another photo.

"Could you tell us about that?" Charlie asked hopefully, a little shyly. "And the other ‘snake-baiting’?" For a moment he wasn’t a rebel leader fighting against the Goa’uld, he was a boy with a yearning to learn about the man who was his dad.

"I’m not going anywhere."

Jack launched into some of his finer snake-baiting moments, with the rest of his team adding their own two cents, since most of the events they described had been a joint effort. From there the conversation inevitably turned to their other missions, and as they continued on with their work with the photos, SG-1 had a rapt audience as they told of the Asgard, the Nox, the Unas and the other quirky aliens they’d met over the years.

"Harlan was a most interesting individual," Teal’c recalled.

"You had to mention that little runt, didn’t you?" Jack rolled his eyes. "He was the biggest pain in the ass…all that hand waving and Kumbaya-ing…"

"Com-traya-ing." The linguist in Daniel compelled him to correct. "He was harmless."

"He was loopy."

"Eleven thousand years alone would do that," he shot back.

There was a collective groan from the rest of the original members of SG-1 and the rebels encouraged a detailed description of that time. McKay was particularly interested in the nanite technology and Sam explained to the scientist what they had learned, while Jack, Daniel and Teal’c recounted to Charlie and Hammond the bizarre things Urgo had made them do.

"You weren’t there for that, Annika?" Hammond asked.

"Nope," Annika shook her head. "I’m only a recent addition. My favorite moment to date was congaing into the ‘gate room to stop a foothold situation."

"Now that’s a story I’d like to hear," the general chuckled.

Teal’c listened with only half an ear to the story of that particular evening, the photo he’d just picked up making him frown. It was a candid shot of two people in a neatly manicured courtyard. The man and woman looked familiar to him, though he couldn’t place the faces. "Charlie O’Neill, who are these people?" He slid the picture to the young man who was rifling through another stack.

He glanced at the picture, still laughing at his father’s account of pretend drunkenness to confuse Qebehsenuef. "Doctor Jackson’s parents."

Conversations and laughter were abruptly cut off, every member of SG-1 snapping heads around to the young man.

"Who did you say?" Daniel was already reaching for the photo.

"Your parents." Charlie didn’t understand their shock. "They are Doctors Claire and Melburn Jackson, aren’t they?"

Daniel could only stare at the photo of the two people. They looked a lot older than his childhood memory of them, yet there was no mistaking that they were his mom and dad. "When were these taken?" he asked hoarsely, dragging his eyes away from the figures to look for a date stamp but found none.

"About three months ago. They live in the NORAD compound where the families of key personnel are. We thought they were being given special treatment, lives of luxury…but given what we now know of what Ba’al put you through, they are probably being held as collateral to keep you in check." Charlie wasn’t sure if any of them heard him. They seemed to be having a silent conversation between themselves.

"Give us the room?" Jack phrased it as a question, but his tone brokered no argument. "And this time turn off the camera."

Though confused, the three rose and silently left closing the door behind them, leaving an equally silent SG-1 alone.

"T, double check that, will you please?" Jack asked quietly, waving a hand in the general vicinity of where Charlie had guiltily looked when caught out earlier. Being the tallest of the team he’d have the least trouble reaching the tiny lens to disable it.

It took just a few seconds for Teal’c to locate the camera in the shadows. The tiny light that indicated it was in use was covered by a thin strip of duct tape. He ripped it off. For a second the bulb shone red, then blinked out. "It has been turned off, O’Neill."

"Casper, do you sense any other listening devices?"

Annika focused her mind and did a sweep of the room, running her hands over the rock walls and furniture. "None."

It was a delaying tactic. Jack knew it. His team knew it. No one wanted to say it out loud.

Eventually Jack spoke. "Before we say what we think we know, let’s make sure what we’re thinking isn’t an overactive imagination or a collective stroke or…or… something."

"We have been wrong before." Sam tried to sound hopeful. She failed miserably.

It was with great reluctance that Daniel drew the laptop closer to him and began a search. He knew what he was looking for. Since the inception of the internet, libraries had created databases of newspaper articles going back as far as the 1800s. He typed in, ‘The New York Times’ and added the date August thirteenth, 1973. Despite the evidence still clutched in his hand, his heart pounded in relief at the front page headline. ‘TRAGEDY AT THE N.Y. MUSEUM OF ART’. He clung to the hope that Charlie had made an error, that the people in the photo were only uncanny look-alikes. The relief lasted all of a second, turning to dread as he read out loud the opening paragraph. "Historians are mourning the loss of one of Egypt’s ancient relics, the antechamber entrance to a temple of Atum, which was destroyed in a freak accident yesterday. Witnesses reported that it was divine intervention that no one was injured when the chain lifting the capstone snapped as it was being assembled. The priceless artifact was on loan from the Egyptian government and was to be the focal point of an up and coming exhibition…" his voice tapered off into heavy silence.

"Uh…Charlie said families of key personnel," Annika said uneasily. "The other us…we were…are…"

"We get it, Casper," Jack said grimly. "Sam…"

The major was already typing in a similar search on the other laptop, this one for ‘The Washington Post’ ten years later. "Mom’s accident made it to the second page because the drunk driver was so high over the limit." She never made it beyond the front page.

Her sigh told the others all that they needed to know, but she read out the headline anyway. "‘BANKER MURDERED AT LOCAL BAR’. William Mahone’s body was found in the men’s room of ‘The Dubliner’ at nine o’clock last night. Police are looking for a tall, white male seen exiting the men’s room a few minutes before the victim was discovered. Motive for the killing is unclear though the investigating officer reported the evidence points to a professional hit."

"William Mahone was the man responsible for your mother’s accident?" Teal’c asked.

Numbly the blonde nodded.

Annika scooted her chair closer to Daniel needing not only to access the computer, but the comfort of contact with him. She bookmarked ‘The New York Times’ and started her own search, typing in a date five years ago for the New York City area. "Dad, was on a business trip…there was a train derailment…"

The articles that started to list down the screen told that the accident had still occurred. She felt guilty at the stab of relief that shot through her, then Daniel’s clammy hand closed over hers.

"That happened after Ba’al arrived," he said softly, hating to be the one to point out the determining factor and see the pain of realization in those violet depths. "The accident still happened but…"

"Our families were in Ba’al’s hands." With a heavy heart Annika did a second search, this one of the local newspaper where they had been living. She scanned the obituaries. "Dad wasn’t on the train."

"Ba’al didn’t need to specifically change the timeline in your case, he did that by default when he invaded Earth and took you." Sam couldn’t stop the stab of irrational jealousy at that knowledge. Annika was the ‘lucky one’ in this mess. They wouldn’t have to fix her dad’s death, it would be a byproduct. Immediately she hated herself. It wouldn’t be any easier on Annika than it would be on any of them.

"As he did not need to alter my life." Teal’c followed the logical progression of the major’s comment. "Apophis did not come through Earth’s Stargate and abduct Sergeant Ketering, starting the sequence of events that led to my defection."

"Sam, check out my file again. Look for a report that my gun was reported missing or a requisition slip for a replacement berretta." Jack was clutching at straws, hoping with every breath of his body that Ba’al had simply heisted the gun rather taken a more direct approach.

It took only a minute for Sam to squash his hopes. "Sorry, Jack."

The colonel snatched up the hospital gown and thrust it at Annika. "Tell me Ba’al simply delayed Charlie at school, or somehow got me home earlier that day or wrote me a damned note to hide my gun in a better spot so Charlie couldn’t find it."

The desperation in Jack’s voice echoed what they all were feeling, and the psychic ran her hands all over the green cotton. However the gown had already revealed its secrets and her gift remained dormant. "I…I could try touching Charlie, try to prompt a vision, but he’d have to be thinking about it. He will probably guess what the change was."

Jack shook his head. "He’s not to know."

"O’Neill, Charlie currently is armed with a nine millimeter berretta."

"You think it’s Jack’s old gun?" Daniel raised an eyebrow at Teal’c’s suggestive tone. "Is that likely?"

"One way to find out." Sam was on her feet and strode to the door. She saw Charlie, Hammond and McKay standing a few meters away keeping the other people back out of earshot from the briefing room. She called the young man over.

He approached, his curiosity as apparent as his concern. "Everything okay?" The major’s face was tense and a quick glance beyond her shoulder and he saw the others were just as strained.

"Not really," she replied honestly, then hurried on before he could probe any further. "You’re nine mil, was that originally Jack’s?"

Perplexed at the question, he nodded. "When Ba’al took him, Dad didn’t get the chance to get it from the lockbox. I’ve been using it ever since."

"Can we borrow it?"

Charlie slipped the gun from the waist of his pants, but held on to it as though weighing the options. "Ba’al changed something in Dad’s life, didn’t he?"

Sam shuttered her features and deliberately misunderstood him. "He changed everyone’s lives." She picked up the gun, took a step backwards into the room and waited for Charlie to move away.

For a second he looked like he was going to ignore the not so subtle hint, then with a thoughtful frown headed back to his colleagues.

The major placed the gun on the table in front of Annika and retook her seat. Without comment the psychic closed her hand around the butt.

The memory device worked its magic and all of them saw the images. The gun’s recent history mixed with its earlier one, showing Jaffa being killed and wounded, to Jack using it for target practice to renew his marksman’s certificate and the ops he used it on. The scene changed to the O’Neill house and a much smaller hand than Jack’s was holding it. Silently they watched how the Jaffa stopped the tragic accident of Charlie’s death from happening.

Annika put down the gun and slid it away from her, yanking the memory device from her temple. "I can’t believe Ba’al could be so cruel…I mean I know he’s a sadistic bastard but this…"

Daniel was numb, as the he took in the magnitude of not only what Ba’al had done but of what they would have to do to rectify the timeline. "Well, it explains why Ba’al had Janet get such detailed records of our lives."

"Not really a consolation at this point, Daniel," Jack snapped.

"Why would he do this?" Daniel ignored his friend’s waspishness. "Changing our lives specifically was unnecessary. All he had to do was invade Earth before Apophis."

"The Ba’al of our time, he’s meticulous in his planning." Sam was sounding out her thoughts. "What’s the biggest obstacle he’s faced since becoming a System Lord?"

"His over inflated ego?" Jack’s defense mechanism of sarcasm had kicked in.

Annika figured out the answer to Sam’s question. "SG-1."

The major nodded. "Ba’al knew how many Goa’uld had fallen directly because of us. We’ve thwarted his own plans time and time again. Through the zatarc technology he had access to other non-Goa’uld plots that we have stopped, quite often by Lady Luck being on our side. Missions like P3R-118..."

"Refresh my memory on that one." Jack was working on the theory that if he was busy thinking up smartass comments he wouldn’t have to think about the next part of this day. "The details are fuzzy."

Daniel shot Jack a sharp look, unsure if he realized how true his wisecrack had been. "The ice planet on which our minds were stamped blocking our memories and we were used as slave labor."

"Ah. How could I forget?" The twist to Jack’s lips was directed at himself at the unintentional connection to his quip.

Annika understood what Sam was getting at. She saw it everyday with their entwined auras. "Even without your memories you knew something was wrong and were drawn to each other."

"Is there a point in there somewhere?" Jack saw the dawning light on the other’s faces and waited not so patiently for someone to explain it to him.

"We are but a product of our experiences."

Jack glared at the Jaffa. Riddles he expected from Daniel, not Teal’c. What made it worse was that Sam, Daniel and Annika all gave a single nod of agreement. When Annika spoke, he listened though he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to like the answer.

"Ba’al wanted to change the psychological instinctive link that we have with each other. The deaths of our loved ones affected us on a fundamental level, changed us. He altered the most traumatic events in our lives in the hope that it would change the people we became."

"But it backfired, kind of," Daniel pointed out. "Even though we were kept separated we were working on ways to stop Ba’al, and Teal’c was still planning to overthrow Apophis."

Annika shrugged. "We’re talking of Ba’al’s mindset. I guess he didn’t realize that some aspects of our personalities are ingrained regardless of what life throws at us."

Jack wasn’t concerned about what their other selves had or had not done. "All Ba’al had to do was kill us. He had the opportunity when he captured us…them, whatever."

"You’re thinking as a military man, Jack, not a Goa’uld." Daniel’s voice was flat. "If he killed us, then he wouldn’t have had the pleasure of torturing us, bending us to his will."

"So messing with our lives was a…a…backup plan." Annika didn’t know what was worse. That Ba’al had specifically targeted them or that they were an afterthought.

Sam sighed. "Regardless of why or what he did, it doesn’t change what we have to do."

Three heads gave despondent nods of agreement.

Jack, however, shook his head angrily. "The what changes everything."

Sam matched Jack’s stubborn jaw. "We still have to change things back."

"No. We don’t."

"But, sir-"

"No, Carter. We don’t have to do anything. Ba’al has done what all of us have wished for. To go back to the day of their deaths and change it so it never happened."

"But at what cost?" Daniel butted in. "Earth is enslaved, millions have died at his hand…"

"Right now I don’t care about that. Where in the rule book does it say that we have to fix everything?" He looked at each of them and saw tormented looks with a touch of guilt and stubbornly pressed his point. "Look me in the eye and tell me that the thought didn’t cross your minds." No one took him up on the offer. "Yes, it’s selfish, but don’t we deserve a bit of selfishness after all the crap we have put up with? Not only in our time but in this one?"

In response of seeing his teammates squirm and his own reluctance at what had to be done, Teal’c spoke. "It appears another psychological ploy of Ba’al’s has been identified. In saving the life of your loved ones, he was hoping we would not have the fortitude to rectify the timeline."

"Well, I guess good ol’ Balls hit the jackpot, because I don’t." Jack shoved his chair back. "He won. The fat lady has sung. Hole in one. Checkmate."

The others were too stunned at the outburst to even try to stop the colonel from stalking from the room.

"No change?" His eyes slid to the small Ancient pedestal at the side of the room. A pale red light glowed warningly in its center.

"No, but it is early yet," she replied, her eyes not moving from two viewing portals.

The portals were two of many that lined three of the walls of the Great Hall, each ‘screen’ showing a different place in the universe. The two views she was focused on were as different as night and day despite being located on the same planet. One showed a small room of golden walls with scientific equipment, the other a cavernous hall housing numerous artifacts. However, the people in both views were oblivious to the fact that they were being watched. A transparent force field protected the observers from detection, so that even if the people looked directly at them, they would see nothing amiss.

"Do you still think our actions were unwise?" he asked.

"What’s done is done. The consequences we shall know soon enough."

He once again glanced at the pedestal with its constant red glow. "That we will."