A Story That Doesn't Have... (Stargate SG-1 - gen, 2180 words)
For the latest Stargate SG-1 Alphabet Soup, the theme was kidfic and I love kidfic but have found out that loving and being able to write...? two different things. After three false and extremely not good starts, I managed the following... the letter I was given was E and there are no Suitable Goa'uldable Gods that I could find starting with that, so I think I cheated, in that my E word is 'end'...
A Story That Doesn't Have...
Oooohkay. Jack didn't know the chair he was sitting in - in the infirmary after a mission gone bust again - had to be the hardest and most painful they had, or why the book he had to balance on one knee had to be one of the oldest, biggest, thickest and - ouch - heaviest in the SGC's considerable collection, but apparently they both did. So he winced, shifted a little in an attempt to ease the weight, and fixed that smile on his face, the one he used all over the galaxy for 'friendly and harmless', and carefully settled a soft warm and disconcertingly tiny body in his lap.
He opened the book and rebalanced it carefully at the right page. Because yes, it had to be the right one, two tiny hands kept trying to reach out and flip the pages if it wasn't, and nearly sent the book, reader and audience into a pile on the floor. Tears before bedtime, anyone?
He was supposed to be telling the story, damn it, and he was going to. Right through to the End... or whatever End they could find.
"Once upon a time," he started, as earnestly as he could, given the look in the oh so serious gaze currently fixed on his face, "there was this Very Important Team of Explorers." So okay, earnestness wasn't exactly going to cut it this time, but he plowed on gamely. "A Major who was way smarter than most people, a Great Big Jaffa with a snake in his tummy - no don't look like that, the snake doesn't hurt him and he won’t let it hurt little kids - a Colonel who is the Hero of the Whole Damn Galaxy Here, and who goes grayer by the day trying to keep this Very Important Team alive, and...
"Daniel."
He thought about this for a moment, feeling that gaze watching him.
"Now everything in this story -? is all Daniel's fault. It's almost always Daniel's fault. Daniel may be a fully grown adult, and way smarter than all people except maybe the Major - I did say maybe, didn't I? thought so - but the Colonel-Hero of the Whole Damn Galaxy learned long ago to assume straight off that no matter what it is, it's always gonna be all Daniel's fault."
Jack paused for a moment, and gently pulled one fat little thumb out of a small, pursed mouth. Wide eyes stared up at him with a mixture of rebuke and, yes, cranky tantrum in the offing, so he sighed, and put the thumb back where it could pop back in the downturned mouth.
The last thing he and the whole SGC needed now was a tantrum.
He ran a light hand over the small blonde head. "You following so far? Yes I know, it's one of those stories, isn't it? The ones Daniel tells much better. So anyway... this Team has lots of stories where they get to go to other planets, and the Major and Daniel get into trouble, and the Jaffa and the Colonel do their best to get them out of it again.
"So Once Upon a Time, like I said, there was this Very Important Team, and they went to a place far, far away, which Daniel had convinced everyone would be worth getting into trouble for, not that he put it that way, but that's what it always comes down to, in all the stories. Daniel thought it would be worth it, so everyone else did too. That's because Daniel is... Daniel.
"Actually, scratch that. Daniel didn't just think it would be worth it, he thought it would be fascinating and magical and fabulous and so he didn't shut up about it all the way through the Stargate and down the not yellow not brick road that the Team found on the other side.
"Me, I thought the place looked like Kansas, myself. But never mind that, back to the story.
"So here's our Very Important Team, following the road down to yet another fascinating ruined city that did look like Oz - well, it looked to me like an Oz designed by megalomaniac snakes with crap style and a taste of Early Ancient Evildom run riot, then left for a few thousand years of hurricanes and floods. Damn ugly, but the sort of ruins that Daniel always gets wound up like a five year old on a sugar high about -
"And no, you can't have sugar. Or coffee or chocolate. Doctors orders. You can argue the point with the Doctor later." Jack stopped and looked down at the frowning little face. "Probably much, much later."
"Anyway... the Team, being Very Important and all that, decide to explore. And that's where the story really starts, as it always does, doesn't it?
"Don't look at me like that. I'm just telling the story, not making it up."
One little hand pointed to the page in the big, heavy and hard to balance book.
"We haven't got to her yet."
The little hand banged down - ouch again - on the book. "Hey! Who's telling this - okay okay, don't cry, we'll get to her soon. Very soon."
The little hand lifted to bang again.
"Soon as in right now."
Jack took a deep, long-suffering sight and shifted the book again.
"Once upon a different time - way earlier than the once upon a time of the Very Important Team who this story is supposed to be about - there was one of Daniel's beloved Ancient gods - goddesses, sorry - called... crap, Yohooool.... something something."
The little hand smacked down again - amazingly hard and this time on Jack's own hand.
"... Or not. Look, I don't know how it's said, we need to get one of the geeks to do it." Another smack. "Stop that. I can smack harder than you, and you know it." Big blue eyes gazed up, pleading. "Crap, just..."
Big blue eyes won, like he knew they would.
"Yooo-hoool-tee-cet-l. Close enough?" A shake of the head. "Look, do you wanna spend an hour listening to me get it wrong, or can I get on with the story? Anyway.
"There was this, what does it say, Aztec Yooo-hoool-tee-whatever and don't you smack me again, goddess of children and infants. That's what it says in this big book, anyway. There was, shocking I know, also this Goa'uld snake Yooo-hoool-tee-whatever, as usual claiming to be the same thing. And guess whose planet and ruined city this Very Important Team had landed up in in this story? You betcha.
"Maybe the Team should have guessed something would go wrong because of all the kitschy gold decoration... things, done in the usual Evil Theme Park Empress style, of baby alien snakes and what they were doing to what looked like munchkins. Lots of munchkins. Lots of very.... small munchkins. This is a Goa'uld goddess of children and infants we're talking about, after all.
"So this is where the story really starts. Not that there even would be a story, if it weren't for Daniel. The Team would have poked around a bit, the smart Major would have taken some measurements and readings, the Great Big Jaffa would have... protected them, and the Colonel-Hero of the Whole Damn Galaxy would have called time and taken them home. But Daniel was there, and Daniel was all excited and thrilled and talking at a million miles an hour, and Daniel just had to go and touch something, didn't he?
"And that's really where the story really starts, because it's so often Daniel who goes and does whatever the story needs to get started and something happening, even though most of the time the Colonel-Hero of the Whole Damn Galaxy would be perfectly happy to not have a story start at all, because in this once upon a time universe it tends to go to hell way too often before the end. But anyway, Daniel had to touch one of the gold baby snakes, because he's Daniel and it... came to life.
"No really." Jack nodded his head as the little lips began to tremble. "Went all glowy, too, before it... bit him.
"Of course, the Great Big Jaffa shot it dead, and so did the Major, and so did the Colonel. Took quite a lot of killing, too. Then a bunch of other snakes did the same thing, and the Great Big Jaffa and the Major and the Colonel shot them. Daniel would have shot them too, yes, but Daniel was lying in a heap on the ground, and the Great Big Jaffa had to stop shooting so he could pick him up and the Very Important and Wanting to Get The Hell Out of There Team could... get the hell out of there.
"The Team's had a crapload of experience getting the hell out of there, so they're pretty good at it. But all the time they were getting the hell out of there and back to the Stargate, something was happening to Daniel. Something bad."
The eyes started to fill, and the little hand pointed to the page on the book and the picture Jack was covering up with his much bigger hand.
"Yep, something like that." He took his hand away, looking down at the drawing of a dauntingly unfriendly looking Aztec figure surrounded by much smaller - and either scared stiff or horribly, possibly dead - munchkin-or-infant-like ones.
"And this is where the story goes weird, or more weird than normal. Because by the time the Team got the hell out of there and back to the Stargate, Daniel..."
Was an infant too.
But Jack, looking at the infant balanced on his other knee (and way lighter than the book Daniel insisted they needed, if just for the name. And the picture.) couldn't quite bring himself to say the words.
They'd flung themselves into the Stargate, Teal'c holding a strapping six foot archaeologist with all too curious hands... and come out with Teal'c trying to hang on to a tiny, limp form almost drowning in his uniform. The tiny, limp form of a one-year-old at best, by the doctors' assessment.
Jack didn't like to remember what that had been like, or what had happened when the infant woke. And stared at him. And screamed fit to bring the whole mountain down. He didn't like the other geeks' endless questions about what the ("hell, we can see what it's done, Carter! - and no, I don't want to wonder if it's done anything worse!"), he didn't like the doctors' endless prodding and poking that brought on the screams again ("how much blood do those vampires need, it's not as if he has that much at the minute anyway?") and more than anything he didn't like the fact that the General wasn't about to let anyone go back to Yooo-hoool-tee-whatever's planet to find something to fix... Daniel.
Jack cleared his throat, and if his arm tightened around the tiny body in his arms, his eyes wandering around the dimly lit, cluttered book-lined cavern that was adult Daniel's office, and the only place the baby Daniel stopped crying.
In this office.
In Jack's arms, on his lap.
Listening to Jack's voice, telling him what had happened.
Jack wasn't sure that the baby understood what he was saying, but the part of him that was irredeemably Daniel sure understood when Jack had the wrong damn page of the book on old gods-turned-Goa'ulds, or got one of those damned tongue-twisting names wrong, so some of it seemed to be getting through, so he seemed to understand some of it.
And hell, it made as much sense as the mission report was going to. Story, report, fairy tale, fiasco.... these days, it was sometimes hard to tell the difference, especially to a child, a child they didn't know how to turn back into ...Daniel.
Soooooo... oooohkay
"Once Upon a Time," he said again, staring at the book so he didn't have to meet that gaze again, "there was a Very Important Team, and they started a story. And I'd tell you the ending, I really would, but...
"It doesn't have an Ending. And between you and me, Daniel, it might not.
"Ever."
-the end-
(PS - if anyone is interested, the Aztec goddess/Gou'ald Jack cannot pronounce is Yohaulticetl, supposedly a guardian of infants in mythology. I couldn't find much on her, but anything would be more than Jack would know, so I didn't mind...