Title: Zephyr
Author's LJ/DWJ/AO3: gabolange / gabolange / gabolange
Categories: character study, character: cam, character: daniel, character: jack, character: sam, character: teal'c, character: vala, era: futurefic, team, theme: super sam
Warnings: Secondary-character death
Author's Webpage/Fic list: nextnonsequitur
Link to story: Zephyr
Why this should be read: Set about ten years in the future, when Sam is the general in command of the SGC and the Stargate Program has just gone public, this lovely, pensive fic is a combination of turning-outward (Sam wrestling with the demands of presenting the Program to the world accurately and sympathetically via the unruly media) and turning-inward (the team, coming back together to mourn the passing of a longtime comrade, closing in tight on itself). Outstanding Sam characterization, plausible and poignant extrapolation, 2431 words.

Snippet of fic:

They stand together in front of Dakara’s gate, the first men and women to wear SG-1 on their shoulders. Their pictures have been flung across the Internet, the intrepid explorers who conquered space, so much younger then. Sam wonders, idly, what the public would make of this Jack O’Neill, now white-haired and heavyset. What they would think of Cam’s titanium joints or Daniel’s sarcastic wit, more cutting with each passing year.

How they could ever respond to Vala, who announces their arrival on Dakara with, “Jaffa ceremonies are almost as boring as Tok’ra ones.”

“Indeed they are not, Vala Mal Doran,” Teal’c intones by way of greeting, bowing his head in traditional form even as the group begins to cluster around him.

“Muscles!” Vala says. “Are so!”

“Nothing is worse than a symbiote extraction ceremony,” Jack says.

“I don’t know,” says Daniel. “Do you remember the fertility rites on P4X-171?”

And Sam has to smile—though she actually agrees with Vala—because they have converged on Teal’c, and the tradition has become their own, as Cam slaps Teal’c on the back before Vala jumps into his arms as if she were still a young woman. He spins her around and they kick up sand and dust as her hair flies.