Friendship Alphabet Soup
My thanks to the authors who made Friendship Alphabet Soup a reality: Aelfgyfu, Annieb, Eilidh, Elder Bonnie, Fig Newton, Gategremlyn, Gillian, Immertreu, Ivorygates, Jedibuttercup, Julie, Maddersahatter, Magickmoons, Magistrate, Magnavox, Roeskva, Sallymn, Stringertheory, Tallulah Rasa, Topazowl, Thothmes, Traycer, Wonderland, and Zeilfanaat. A salute of the ladle to our new cooks, Magnavox, Immertreu, and Zeilfanaat, and much appreciation to the regulars who help make these Soups happen, time and time again. Special thanks to Stringertheory and Annieb for providing us with second stories as last-minute fills!
There are 26 stories of different friendships here for you to enjoy. This time, Friendship Alphabet Soup clocks in at over 57,000 words. Blame Credit for this goes to Eilidh, who easily breaks all Soup records with a word count of over 17,000!
Story text is as written by the authors, but minor HTML coding has been changed and scene breaks have been altered to allow for more uniformity in page style. Expect spoilers throughout the movie and the series, and references to canonical character deaths. Ratings range from G to PG-13.
Due to LJ posting constraints, most of the fics are excerpted, with links to the author's journal for the full story. The entire anthology is posted in full, without excerpts, over at Dreamwidth (except Eildidh's, which exceeds even DW's limits). Readers are strongly encouraged to follow the links to the authors' individual journals and leave feedback.
A is for Absinthia (Jack and Teal'c)
by magnavox_23
Teal'c sees Jack's figure, barely illuminated by the lights from the townhouse. Outside in the cool evening air, muted sounds from the party inside battle with the crickets' song.
Jack is seated, almost cross-legged on the grass, head tilted towards the sky. His stillness would cause Teal'c concern, but somehow he knows there is a slight smile upon the general... ex-general's lips. Jack's retirement party is still in full swing despite Jack's absence.
"You can keep staring at the back of my head, as long as you tell me I'm not thinning out on top," Jack speaks to the sky.
"You are a hirsute yet kempt warrior, O'Neill," Teal'c intones.
Jack's eyes narrow. "Get over here."
Teal'c effortlessly lowers himself to the ground, and Jack looks at him sideways.
"I envy you that," Jack gestures to Teal'c's easy pose.
"Do not," Teal'c replies firmly, "it has come at too high a price."
Jack winces in response, and turns his face once more to the heavens. Teal'c follows his gaze and looks skyward up at the few stars visible in the night's sky. He lets himself meditate on their hypnotic twinkling, awaiting Jack's next words.
"Look, I know you don't normally..." Jack trails off, producing a bottle of green liquid. Its peridot hue dances inside the glass, before settling as Jack rests the bottle before him. "Absinthe," he continues aimlessly, "Invented by the Swiss, stolen by the French..."
"It would be an honor, O'Neill, as a leader's final request." Teal'c studies the amount of liquor left in the bottle and the slight pinkness to Jack's cheeks he can see in the dim light.
"Oh, Teal'c, I haven't been your commanding officer in a long time... and what do you mean 'final request'? I'm retiring, not dying, sheesh!"
Teal'c keeps his expression open, but neutral.
"I don't like you when I'm drunk," Jack mutters to himself, and Teal'c suspects Jack has the beginnings of a pout.
"You lie poorly, O'Neill."
continued
B is for Battle Ready (Catherine and Janet)
by sg_wonderland
"General Hammond, I have to repeat that I firmly believe this is a mistake." Dr. Janet Fraiser jammed her hands in her lab coat, clearly frustrated.
"Dr. Langford passed her physical?" General Hammond flipped through the file on his desk.
"Yes, sir, she did. However, her age notwithstanding, SG-1 could be gating into a hostile environment. Dr. Langford is..."
"An old broad?" They both turned to face the woman climbing the stairs and coming into the briefing room. "I appreciate your concern, Dr. Fraiser. But my mind's made up. I am going to the planet. I have to go."
"I would be lax in my duties at a doctor if I didn't object..."
"I realize you have no idea how healthy I am, you just have my word for the fact that I'm tough as boot leather. Very old boot leather." Her dark eyes gleamed mischievously.
"Catherine!" Daniel protested behind her. "You're not old!"
Catherine patted his arm. "Oh, Daniel, only someone as na?ve as you would say that. I am old." She turned back to face Dr. Fraiser. "Please try to understand. Ernest could be out there. I have to see for myself, with my own eyes, what happened to him. Besides, I suspect this is my only shot of going through the gate. I can't see General Hammond agreeing to let me join an SG team."
Frustrated, Fraiser curtly asked for permission to return to the infirmary.
*
Dr. Fraiser had to admit, reluctantly, that Catherine Langford had suffered no ill effects of her trip through the Stargate. No physical effects, anyway. However, the older woman was currently sitting on a gurney looking down at the hands she was constantly twisting.
Reaching out, the doctor stilled those restless hands. "I believe Dr. Littlefield will be fine, in time. He needs to gain some weight and I can't even begin to imagine how to introduce him to this world..."
"When can he go home?"
"Home?"
"I won't have him staying here any longer than necessary," Catherine snapped. "When the Air Force releases him, I'm taking him home with me."
continued
C is for Captured and Cooperation (Jack and Martouf)
by roeskva
"No! You will just get captured as well!" Martouf grabbed hold of O'Neill and pulled him down behind a large rock.
"The Jaffa are taking my team mates! I can't just let them do that!" O'Neill exclaimed.
"You getting captured with them - or killed - will not help them," Martouf insisted.
Frustrated, but having to admit the truth in that, O'Neill watched as the large group of Jaffa dialled the Stargate and walked through, taking his team members with them.
"All right, we saw the address, let's follow them!" O'Neill got up and started running towards the DHD.
Martouf hurried after him. "Wait! If you go through now, like that, you will be captured. There will be guards, so we need some sort of disguise."
O'Neill stopped, groaning. "I should never have agreed to let you come with us!"
"The Jaffa would still have attacked. The only possible difference would be that they would now have all members of SG-1."
O'Neill grumbled something barely audible about insufferable Tok'ra, but conceded the point. "Okay - I'll blame Daniel then, for always wanting to study some damn ruins!" He glared at the Stargate. "Those Jaffa - what Goa'uld did they belong to?"
"Mehen. He is an ally of Heru'ur, and previously of Ra. He is a fairly powerful, though still minor, System Lord."
"This is his planet?"
"No, as I told you during the debriefing, the planet is abandoned. It originally belonged to Ra." Martouf sighed. "A world being abandoned is never a guarantee that a Goa'uld will not send a scouting party from time to time. It was just bad luck that it happened while we were here."
"That could be motto of SG-1," O'Neill grumbled.
continued
D is for Don't Touch (Cam and Daniel)
by elder_bonnie
A waterfall of grainy dust fell away under Cam's fingers. He stepped away from the ancient stone wall and hastily brushed his hand against his BDU's, casting a nervous glance at Daniel.
The good doctor didn't look up from his notes. "Don't. Touch."
"Sorry," Cam offered, looking over the wall again. It was covered in some pretty intricate carvings - symbols and decorative filigree that Daniel assured him were all part of the same language. It was a language he was having apparent difficulty identifying, however.
"How's it coming?"
Daniel grunted and lifted his head to squint up at the wall. The alcove they stood under was all part of the same open-air stone structure, and the sun was just past its zenith, casting short but sharp shadows.
"That good, huh? Anything I can help with?"
"Yeah." Daniel looked back down at his notes. "You can stop talking."
Cam raised a hand in surrender and stepped away, turning to look out over the field of rubble and ruins they were in the midst of. "I wonder how the silt deposits analysis is going," he wondered aloud, trying to imagine Teal'c standing in watch, equally bored, as Sam collected river silt on the other end of the valley.
"You still think this is more exciting?" Daniel asked with good humor.
Cam turned back toward Daniel and the wall. "Eh. I didn't wanna get my boots wet." One of the designs looked a bit more deeply engraved than the rest and its shape made Cam think of a doorknob. He lifted his AK-47 and poked it gently.
The wall snapped as if on a spring lever and whirled around impossibly fast, rotating 180 degrees. Daniel was hit with the far left side and thrown toward Cam, his body slamming into the unadorned wall behind them. The ground under Cam's feet seemed to be connected to the mechanism and he was lurched forward, the wall crashing into his pack and throwing him into the pitch dark.
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E is for Energy (Daniel and Skaara)
by immertreu
Daniel Jackson had been on Abydos for more than a month, but more often than not he still felt like a stranger among these people he now called family. Sha're, Skaara and Kasuf had welcomed him with open arms, but Daniel still had trouble accepting everything that had happened to him in such a short time.
He had been vindicated, traveled to another planet, incited a rebellion and killed a "god", and, most importantly, he'd found the love of his life.
Sha're was a wonder to him, perfect in too many ways to tell. She knew his heart like no one else. She loved to tease him, too, but she also taught him everything he needed to know in this new environment. Daniel was no stranger to sand and wastelands - his travels with his parents before their untimely deaths had often led them to equally hot and dirty digs in Egypt and Jordan - but Abydos' dangers were different from that of Earth's deserts.
Therefore, wherever Daniel went, someone made sure to follow him and keep an eye on the curious but sometimes oblivious member of their tribe that had suddenly appeared in their midst. Sha're would never forgive her family and friends if anything were to happen to her new husband. There were still predators about, even though Ra and his minions had perished.
Inwardly grinning at the thought of a furious Sha're demanding why her husband had fallen prey to a sandworm or walked off a cliff, Daniel slowly made his way up a dune right outside the city gates and looked down the slanted slope facing away from Nagada. He didn't want to go far, he just needed some space for himself, a place to think.
Today it was Skaara's turn to follow Daniel, and although he had pretended not to notice the younger man trailing him, Daniel sighed and waited for his brother-in-law to join him on the crest of the sandy hill.
Skaara grinned when he caught up with his new brother. He wasn't in the least intimated by the unwelcoming stare and stiff posture the other man adopted. Jack O'Neill had been much more scarier when they first met.
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F is for Flummoxed by the Fourth Race (Daniel and Robert)
by sallymn
"So I don't think it's an alien Book of the Dead," Robert said slowly, looking at Daniel over the top of his glasses. "Rather a pity, I have to say I prefer aliens that way. What do you think?"
Daniel blinked. "I'm thinking that if you and Dr Fuentes," he gave a brief, disbelieving thought of the fruitbat-faced senior linguist working with Robert on this one, "are giving a report on this to General Hammond in the near future, I want to be there."
Robert frowned. "Well actually..."
"Robert, I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Respect and esteem Hammond as he truly did, Daniel could not resist the prospect of the preternaturally unflappable head of Stargate Command having to keep a straight face as he absorbed the news about the piece of archaic alien apparatus acquired so proudly by SG-2 and being studied so carefully, so thoroughly and oh-so-slowly by Rothman, Fuentes and their little team. Yes, it was definitely made by the Furlings, the last of the 'Alliance of Four Great Races' (they'd met two of said races, the Asgards and the annoyingly perfect Nox, and Daniel had his suspicions that he at least now knew an Ancient) and the only one for whom they were still totally unable to crack the written language or the sparse, rarely found contraptions. But no, it was not only not anything the military could use for good or bad - aka weaponry - but it wasn't even the highly esoteric but reasonably respectable cache of ancient information and lore that they'd believed.
SG-2 would be almost as disillusioned - if not as appalled - as Sam would. But to be fair, Daniel mused, determinedly not thinking about Sam as he studied the alien lettering that covered both pictures of the device and of the decaying site it had been found on, it was certainly helping with the deciphering of the language. And it was helping to keep his mind off his missing team for - oh, what was it now? Forty minutes? That had to be a record over the last seven days...
General Hammond, egged on by his CMO, had ordered the entire SGC to keep Daniel distracted while he was recovering from surgery and fretting about the rest of SG-1, wherever they had vanished to while he'd been too busy getting over the surgery to be with them. Daniel knew that, and appreciated the way academic and military alike were doing their collective best to obey... and failing miserably, almost as miserably as Daniel was doing distracting himself.
The Rothman-Fuentes report, hundreds of pages on what was proving to be a technological Enquire-Within-Upon-A-Highly-And-Unexpectedly-Specific-Everything was doing a way better job.
continued
G is for Giving (George and Janet)
Those Who Give the Most
by annieb1955
It's not the first time he's sat here. It's become something he's had to do rather more often than he wants to. Usually though he's not sitting vigil alone. Today he's chosen solitude over support. He wants to pay tribute in his own quiet way, away from those he knows are grieving just as much as he is. He's supposed to be in charge, stoic and strong, and he needs to present that face to the rest of his people. They rely on that quiet strength of purpose of his. But he can't quite find that stoicism within himself today. Not just yet. He'll dig deep and find it later, plaster a layer of authority over the sorrow and the inevitable guilt he knows he wears plainly on his face. Later. Now he just wants to lower his defences and grieve for his friend.
He covers her hand with his own, squeezes it gently. Such small hands for one who'd done so much with them. With these hands, now cold and still, she'd given caring and kindness; healing and mending broken bodies at times against almost insurmountable odds. He's seen those hands bring comfort to small scared children, perform delicate and intricate surgery on the wounded - both friend and foe alike, convey friendship and empathy to colleagues and all those she'd cared for.
She'd been a doctor, an officer, a soldier, a mother, and a friend. She'd packed so much love and laughter and living into her far too short life. He'll miss her wise counsel, her smile that touched her wide expressive eyes, her kindness. He'll miss her, all that she had been and all that she had yet to become. There'll be no dancing at her daughter's wedding, no grandchildren to take into her welcoming arms and heart. And he rages against the unfairness of it all.
"I'm sorry," he says, finally breaking the silence of the quiet cubicle where he sits shielded from the sympathetic, sorrowing gazes of those who'd also known and worked with her. "This isn't right and it isn't fair. You had so much left to give. If I could have sacrificed myself for you, I would have in a heartbeat." He can almost hear her voice whisper, "I know" in his mind.
"I'll keep an eye on Cassie for you," he goes on, "we all will. She's one of us, part of our family. And she'll be just fine. She's a strong young woman, a daughter to be proud of. You did a wonderful job raising her. But you know all that."
He leans forward and brushes her still lustrous hair away from her forehead. "What you don't know, what this General finds so hard to say to those lost under his command, is how much I'll miss you. You were more than a trusted colleague, much more than a valued officer. You were my friend."
He stands up, wipes a hand roughly across his tear-damp eyes then salutes her. "Vale, Major," he says, his voice broken and rough. He reaches out and pats her hand one last time. "Goodbye, Janet."
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H is for Home (George and Jack)
by zeilfanaat
It was with a weary sigh that Major General Hammond started his walk towards his own front door. He loved his job as the head of the SGC, even if it had cost him the few hairs he'd had left at the start of his assignment here. He just wasn't particularly fond of having to go back to the mountain when he had his two granddaughters over. Why couldn't this crisis have cropped up tomorrow or yesterday?
No, scrap yesterday. Yesterday had had its own crises. Come to think of it, tomorrow probably would have plenty as well. Still, was one crisis-free day too much to ask?
Perhaps he should have anticipated it. With Jack on medical leave, Colonel Reynolds in the infirmary, leaving Dixon in charge, it was almost like taunting fate to expect an uninterrupted day with the girls.
And of course, this just happened to be one of those days that neither his daughter nor his son-in-law would be able to come back straight away. He'd hesitated for a moment, considering the Colonel's injuries, but still went ahead and called him. Tessa and Kayla trusted Jack, and more importantly, Hammond trusted him.
His musings had brought him to his front door, and he paused there for a moment. He wondered if Jack would have started dinner preparations yet. The few times the Colonel had ended up looking after the girls around dinnertime, he actually had. In this case, George thought the twisted knee and bruised ribs would have kept the man from making the effort. To be perfectly honest, George didn't feel much like cooking either today. They would probably order take-out.
Already running through a mental list of what kind of take-out the girls would like, he opened the door. Immediately a waft of a very recognisable dish came to greet him, along with the sounds of giggles and the gruff voice of his Second in Command.
continued
I is for Infirmary (Janet and Teal'c)
Those Who Wait
by stringertheory
Janet had never minded working the night shift. When she was first starting out, she was often assigned the late shift as the lowest member of the totem pole, so she had become accustomed to the hours. Even as she moved up the ranks, she would take on night shifts from other doctors and nurses who had children at home. She appreciated the quiet, the pervasive sense of rest and healing found in darkened wards after visiting hours.
Moving underground to the SGC, dozens of floors below daylight, hadn't changed that.
They set their timetable by the rotation of other planets, so 'night' came to be a relative term, but Janet strove to maintain - as nearly as possible - the normal operating hours of a military infirmary. And between 23:00 and 06:00, that meant lowered lights and lowered voices. Under her regime, nighttime in the SGC infirmary became hallowed ground that no one - lowliest private to highest general - dared sully. Night was her sanctuary, the time when it felt like the chaos of the day was contained, set right, and on its way to being better when the sun came up. It was one of the few times she felt completely in control, or at least not entirely out of control.
So much of what she came up against in the SGC was beyond her conventional medical training. Even with experimental treatments and an ever-expanding knowledge base, usually her instructions ended with "wait and see." When you were relying on untested methods to battle unfamiliar ailments, you just had to watch and see what happened. And as much as they dealt with the alien, there was still plenty of garden-variety military damage to go around. Add in the fact that the entire base seemed comprised of trouble magnets, and her hands - and beds - were usually full.
The only beds currently occupied held the human portion of SG-1, recuperating from a mixture of combat, escape, and alien narcotics. Janet ghosted past Jack, who she'd had to sedate two hours or so earlier to keep him from exacerbating his injuries, to check on Sam, who still hadn't come to. According to Daniel, she'd received the biggest dose of the drug and had lost consciousness about halfway back to the Gate. Her vitals were stable, though, and her brain scans indicated a deep sleep, so Janet refused to be worried. She shifted around Sam's bed to check on Daniel himself, who had finally fallen asleep. He was resting quietly, the pain medication having kicked in, and Janet let herself relax.
Nerves of steel - and the sanctity of the nighttime quiet - were the only reasons she didn't jump out of her skin when she turned back around and found Teal'c sitting between Jack and Sam. He was in the space she had vacated only minutes before and she marveled once again at how quietly someone his size could move when he chose to.
continued
J is for Jeopardy (Daniel and Jack)
by gategremlyn
Colonel Jack O'Neill: "We can back him up, sir. I'd like Daniel back on the team."
*
Daniel stood in the briefing room alone. Hammond had approved a return mission to P3R636 in three days. But after that piece of good news Jack, Sam, Teal'c, and General Hammond had all left without a word or a glance in his direction. Daniel swallowed hard. He expected nothing else-deserved nothing else-but it still hurt. He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking and made his way back to his office. He kept his head down, not wanting to see the disdain, or worse the pity, in the eyes of the passing personnel.
Once in his office, he closed his door and simply stood in the middle of the room. His books, artifacts, computer, they were all there looking as they had before his catastrophic addiction to the sarcophagus. He'd apologized to Sam, and Sam being Sam had accepted his apology. But the hurt was still there. He couldn't unsay the words, he could only ask to be forgiven. They hadn't spoken since. He'd apologized to Janet, and Janet being Janet had accepted his apology. Her understanding was almost worse than Sam's reticence: "You were under the influence of the sarcophagus, Daniel. That wasn't really you." But he knew the sarcophagus only amplified what was already there. Teal'c acknowledged his apology with a simple nod of his head.
He still hadn't moved from the middle of the room. He didn't know if he'd ever move again. With any luck the floor would open up and swallow him, saving him the trouble of making the decision. The floor didn't open up. Finally, Daniel pulled his hands out of his pockets, wiped the sweat on his pant leg, and walked to his desk. He touched the frame of Sha're's picture, Sha're his life and his hope. The only apology he could give her was to find her. He pulled out his notepad. If they were going back to the planet, he needed to have a well-thought-out plan.
Twelve hours later, Daniel came up for air. His back ached from long hours bending over his desk; his head ached too. He didn't know if the headache was from concentrating so hard or a leftover from withdrawal. It was from working too hard; it had to be. He dropped the pencil on the desk, shaking out his cramped fingers. He need to eat and then sleep for a few hours.
He stood in the center of the room again and turned: books, artifacts, computer, notepad, pencils, but no Sam or Teal'c. And definitely no Jack. No one had come by to drag him away to eat; no one had come by to see if he was okay. That too he expected, but it hurt.
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K is for Kismet (Cam and Ferguson)
having perhaps the better claim
by jedibuttercup
Cam paused outside the door of the conference room where the latest SG-1 to fall through the interdimensional wormhole had been temporarily set up, and smiled as their team leader looked up from his conference with anther Daniel, a Teal'c, and a lieutenant Cam hadn't met before.
Objectively, he knew their SGC had been taking less than a third of the teams who'd dialed in from other universes; it was just luck that the ones who'd been under fire at the time and were willing to try temporary exile over certain death were mostly SG-1s, and mostly SG-1s under the command of Lts. Colonel Cameron Mitchell. Something about the universes most likely to be pulled into the confluence being the ones with the fewest differences from their universe's timeline... which said a few things about his trouble-magnet status he could have done without having confirmed, and said a few more about the apparent inevitability of his place in the program that had been nagging at him.
He absolutely believed that God had a plan; but he'd also been raised in the school of faith that believed it was up to each person to take what they were given and make their own go of it. Free will; no such thing as kismet. And given all the possible things he could have said and done over the course of his life... no few of which had collided in seemingly unpredictable ways to bring him to the SGC... meeting so many near-identical Cameron Mitchells had been a little vertigo-inducing.
It was really nice to see that in at least one other universe, he'd been capable of learning a little restraint. He'd always thought Fergie would have beat him out for the 302 slot, if he hadn't been injured saving Cam's sorry ass first.
"Well if isn't Bryce Ferguson, as I live and breathe," Cam said, walking into the room.
"Funny you should put it that way," Bryce replied, quirking a smile as he shook Cam's hand. There was a twist to the corner of his mouth, though, and a tightening at the corners of his eyes that reminded Cam of Teal'c and Jackson meeting that Janet Frasier, earlier, or Sam greeting Martouf; a unique hazard of a job where 'multiverse theory of quantum physics' was even a thing.
"Ah," Cam replied, wincing. So it wasn't that he'd managed restraint; it was that Bryce hadn't taken that shrapnel for him, for whatever reason. "Wondered about that. There but for the grace went I, huh?"
continued
L is for Listening (Daniel and George)
by annieb1955
Daniel doesn't think he's ever known anyone who's really listened to him the way George Hammond does. Even when the General doesn't agree with most, or some, or all of what Daniel's saying he can tell just by that certain look in Hammond's eyes, or the tilt of his head that he's listening to what Daniel is trying to convey.
And on those days when Daniel has wanted to beat his head against any available hard surface in the SGC, when he feels that no one - not Teal'c or Sam or hell, even or maybe especially Jack, understands what he's trying to get across, he'll look up and catch George Hammond's eye and know that he's listening. Listening and doing his damndest to understand.
It means a lot to Daniel. He's been ignored and downright vilified for much of what he's said over his professional career. Hammond gets him though, even when some of what Daniel's saying sails right over that bald Texan head. And every time it happens it warms Daniel inside and he hangs onto every instance of it and stores each memory up against those days when George Hammond is gone and maybe there won't be anyone who listens in quite the same way.
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M is for Motorcycle (Teal'c and Sam)
by crazedturkey
He pulls the edge of his beanie further down across his forehead. People stare at him as he walks past and he worries that it has slipped upwards, betraying the metal burned into the skin of his forehead. Daniel Jackson, somehow noticing his discomfort on a previous excursion, had earnestly reassured him that it was more to do with his size and the colour of his skin. Teal'c still worries every time. Earth is new to him and right now it is his only home. His friends are kindly allowing him the privilege of these off base excursions. He will not risk them.
Today he is slightly more uncertain than usual, although he will not betray it. Daniel Jackson is reliable in that they will be certain to attend some form of museum or gallery. With Colonel O'Neill it is always bowling followed by beer or beer followed by bowling. However Major Samantha Carter is an unknown quality.
She smiles at his side, looking different out of her uniform but relaxed in a pair of jeans and a black leather jacket.
"I'm sorry I haven't found the time to take you out sooner, Teal'c," she says with a small smile. "I've just been so busy, you know, with all the stuff happening in the lab. I don't want you to think it doesn't mean I don't value our friendship, because I do, value our friendship, I mean." She closes her eyes and sighs. "I'm babbling aren't I?"
Teal'c has spent much of his life using as few words as possible to convey his meaning and is still not sure, even after several years, how to handle Samantha Carter's verbosity. He decides to incline his head and say, "Your dedication to your work is admirable, Samantha Carter. I value both that and our friendship."
By the beaming smile she returns him, he knows he has done well. That makes him happy, because even as she baffles him he enjoys the young warrior's energy.
continued
N is for Name (Cassie and Jack)
by madders_ahatter
SG-1 arrived at Janet Fraiser's front door with Cassie, who was holding her new dog.
"What's this then?" Janet queried, her puzzled frown soon belied by the upturned crinkle at the corners of her mouth.
"It's the rules," Cassie reiterated what she'd told Sam. It was strange that so many people here didn't seem to know their own rules. "Every Earth kid has to have a dog. Jack told me."
"Oh, well, if Colonel O'Neill said so, then I guess it must be true. You'd better bring him in."
She stood aside and Cassie led the team into her temporary - or possibly permanent if Sam had guessed right - home.
At a gesture from Janet, the others moved to take seats in her comfortable living room, while Cassie sat on the floor playing with her new pet.
Janet pulled Jack aside. "I thought I was taking in one stray, not two," she scolded good-naturedly.
"Hey, he's not a stray," Jack objected. "I picked him out from the pound myself this morning. He's got all his certificates. He's fit and healthy and ready to go." Jack pulled several sheets of paper out of his waterproof jacket pocket and handed them to Janet.
"Does he have a name?" Janet wanted to know, scanning the vaccine records and the report of his neutering operation. The puppy had evidently had a slight adverse reaction to the anesthetic and been sick for a couple of days, but other than that he seemed okay.
"Ooh, good point!" Jack moved over beside Cassie and squatted down, grimacing at the creaking of his knees. "We gotta give this little feller a name."
He addressed the whole group then, as if giving orders at a briefing session.
"It's very important that we find the perfect name. Any ideas?"
"You sound like T S Eliot on the naming of cats," Daniel observed with a grin.
"Oh, believe me, naming dogs is way trickier," Jack assured him, winking at Cassie and ruffling the pooch behind the ear.
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O is for O Club and Oval Office (George and Henry Hayes)
by ivorygates
The first time they met was in Korea (PACAF, 4 AF, flying the F-100 out of Osan AFB, with the bright lights and big city of Seoul about an hour away). Both Air Force, both newly-commissioned First Lieutenants, but aside from that they had nothing in common: Lieutenant George S. Hammond was by the book, West Texas, bootstrap education and wings through OTS. Lieutenant Henry R. H. Hayes was old Boston, old money, Academy ring and daredevil attitude. George was saving his money to go home and put a ring on his girl's finger. Henry'd left a bride behind in Back Bay (as he said frequently), but it didn't seem to slow him down in his attentions to the opposite sex. The two of them knew each other the way pilots in the same fighter group will: bought each other drinks, played some pickup basketball, bitched about flight time and missions and mechanics. Henry was a card player, and George wasn't, so that was about it: Academy boys tended to flock together. Some were doing their five-year hitch and getting out, some talked about making General. George wasn't one of the "ring and the book" set, but he was planning on the long haul, even if everybody knew it was tough to stay in and move up in peacetime.
And there wasn't going to be another war. Was there? Even Korea was a UN force, with the USA tossing some rolling thunder in to sweeten the pot. Not the same as a war. (Some of the boys bitched about that, but George's daddy had been at Pearl. One of the lucky ones.)
The first time George got to see the real Henry Hayes was that November. George didn't hear about Dallas that day until he got to the mess: the news had broken around 0330 local, and Armed Forces Radio was still pretending it hadn't happened, but everybody knew. Flags were at half-mast, everybody was in shock. He still doesn't remember much about that day, other than his feelings of disbelief. The President of the United States had been murdered.
That night, Henry came banging on his door, out of uniform, bottle in hand. He was very drunk. It was hard to make out what he was saying, other than to blame all of Texas (and George by extension: well, George was here) for JFK's death. All George knew was that he'd better get Henry out of sight before the CO had to write him up.
He didn't get much sleep that night, but he did get to know Henry Hayes.
continued
P is for Patches of Sunshine (Daniel and Vala)
by eilidh17
Light had not reached inside the old temple in hundreds of years. The upper floors were gone; sheared off, crumbled away in some ancient quake that had taken out a substantial part of the surrounding city. The room Daniel and Sam stood in was all that remained of an archive that once held thousands of tablets and scrolls, and given shelter to scribes who labored away to preserve the history of the Mekrit.
Even this room, which smelled of time and decay, had not escaped the encroachment of the forest that had all but grown over the old city. Only one wall was free, and that one had been split open at one time to form a grotesque doorway in place of one that had been lost. The other walls were mostly covered in a build-up of sand and clay, though in some places Daniel could just see a hint of what was hidden underneath.
The wall he was working on, gently teasing away centuries of grime and dirt, was in desperate need of preservation. What little of its fa?ade he could see was cracked and peeling away, and the once vibrant colors that washed across its surface were virtually faded beyond recognition. There was writing though, crude and almost totally worn away in places, most likely by time and exposure to the elements.
"Looks Greek to me," Sam said, peering over his shoulder and adding the light of her flashlight to his.
Daniel directed the beam of his light up to the very top of the wall, to where the writing was more uniform and recent, and slightly more preserved. "It is," he said with no real enthusiasm, because he was totally distracted with what little he had managed to translate so far. "At first glance it looks like whoever carved these inscriptions was taken from Earth around the Hellenistic era, despite some phrasing that seems a little out of place. However, I'm also seeing some Byzantine influences. Classical era. The writing is all over the place... historically."
"Can you compensate?"
"I have been," he said dryly. "Would be helpful if the lighting was a little better."
continued
Q is for Quintessential (Daniel and Oma)
by tallulah_rasa
What am I going to do with you, Daniel?" Oma sighed, gazing out across time and space. Still, she waited -- as patiently as if temporal reality mattered -- until a power generator on one particular planet exploded, until a single man on another planet drifted into sleep. Only then did she materialize; did she will walls and floors and tables into existence; did she slide into a booth; did she gently shepherd Daniel Jackson into the booth across from her.
Daniel looked around with a rueful smile, picked up his fork, and poked at the steaming plate of waffles in front of him. "I take it that's a rhetorical question," he said.
Oma gave him what was, in any dimension or level of existence, a look. "This isn't a joke, Daniel. The Others wouldn't be pleased if they knew what you'd done."
Daniel frowned. "I still don't really get how the Ascended can be all-powerful, but not all-knowing," he said.
"Nevertheless, the rules are--" Oma began.
"You probably aren't the best...uh being...to talk to me about rules," Daniel observed, reaching for the syrup.
"Has anyone ever been able to?"
"Also rhetorical, I'm assuming," Daniel said, wrinkling his nose as a thin amber stream trickled from the bottle. "I'm sorry, Oma, but you can't give someone unlimited power and then ask them not to use it."
"I ask that you use judgment, Daniel. Discretion. Understanding."
"I did," Daniel said. "Jack was in trouble."
"As are many people every day, Daniel."
"But right then," Daniel said mulishly, "it was Jack."
Oma took what was, in any dimension or level of existence, a deep breath. "Things unfold as they must," she said, enunciating each word clearly, carefully, seriously.
"Well, maybe this is what's meant to unfold. That I'm here, helping my friends. Who are, by the way, trying to help the universe."
Oma sighed again. Daniel went back to his waffles.
"He saw me," Daniel said. He carefully cut a waffle into precise sections, and then looked up. "Jack. He saw me."
Oma nodded.
"The others...never have. Is there a reason...?"
"If you know the window is open, then you are more likely to feel the breeze," Oma said after a moment.
Daniel narrowed his eyes and put down his fork. "You just say those things to make me crazy, don't you?"
continued
R is for Rapport (Daniel and Teal'c)
by fignewton
The first time Daniel Jackson meditated with Teal'c, it was more or less unplanned.
While he was deeply skeptical of Shau'nac's claim, the potential opportunity to suborn the Goa'uld's young to the Jaffa cause - not to mention his unspoken desire to ensure that Shau'nac survived - impelled Teal'c to risk his life. Unsure of the possibilities, Teal'c prudently asked his teammates to keep watch over him when he tried to disprove Shau'nac's claim that it was possible to communicate with a symbiote. Despite the gravity of the situation, he was inwardly amused that O'Neill considered the dangers he might pose to others due to the symbiote's influence, while Daniel Jackson questioned the threat to Teal'c's own life.
No matter. He placed his safety in their hands and turned his thoughts inward, focusing on his own heartbeat and slowing its steady flutter within his chest.
As his state of kel no reem gradually deepened, a small part of his mind was interested to note that his perception of the room began to narrow and fade. Normally, a Jaffa in kel no reem retained a keen awareness of his surroundings, even if outsider eyes might assume he was oblivious; it would be fatal, after all, if kel no reem left the Jaffa helpless and vulnerable to attack. In the first minutes, he was keenly aware of the movements of the others: Major Carter had taken a military stance at the doorway, shoulders squared and eyes alert. He could hear O'Neill's restless footsteps as he paced the small room. He sensed Daniel Jackson's breathing as the man settled on the floor opposite him, unconsciously mirroring Teal'c's own pose as they watched and waited. None of this surprised him. But as he plunged recklessly beyond the normal threshold to achieve a far deeper state of kel no reem than he had ever attempted before, he began to lose the ability to sense his surroundings. His discernment of Major Carter's presence, then O'Neill's, were lost to the rapidly dwindling focus outside his own self. Daniel Jackson's presence lingered a few moments longer, perhaps because he, too, was in a primitive meditative state by now. Even that welcoming reassurance was soon lost as his heartbeat stuttered and slowed, until there was nothing left but a sense of...
(death)
(father!)
Shaken by the unexpected flash of non-memory, Teal'c composed himself to try again.
Days later, with Tanith's betrayal laid bare and the bitter mourning rituals for Shau'nac complete, Daniel Jackson appeared at the door of his quarters late in the evening.
"May I join you when you kel no reem?" he asked.
Teal'c regarded him, puzzled. "Humans cannot kel no reem, Daniel Jackson."
"No," he agreed. "But they can meditate, and they do."
Teal'c tilted his head thoughtfully. "It is not a companionable activity."
"No," Daniel Jackson said again. "But I offer my company, just the same."
continued
S is for Second Chance (Jonas and Teal'c)
by stringertheory
Without looking up from his plate, Teal'c knew Jonas Quinn had entered the commissary. The shift in the air alerted him to Jonas's arrival, the impact of his presence rippling through the assembled personnel like a stone thrown into still water. Though obvious to anyone paying attention, the effect was subtle. There was no pause in conversation, and no gazes follow Jonas on his walk through the tables - though more than a few eyes flickered in his direction as he passed by. The feel of the room simply changed, a faint tone of blame, anger, and cool consideration settling over the crowd.
The familiar combination rang with memories for Teal'c, but he ignored their whispers to observe Jonas. He had no doubt that Jonas had felt the change in the room - he was as astute an observer of people as the man whose office he now occupied had been - but if the scrutiny bothered him, he didn't let it show. He approached the food line with his normal gait, back straight and a generically friendly expression on his face. As Jonas filled his tray and turned to find a seat, Teal'c watched the room closely.
No one made any motions to exclude Jonas from their tables, but none welcomed him, either. Instead, they avoided his eyes and gave no indication that they noticed him at all. If not for the fact that the room hummed with everyone's overwhelming awareness of Jonas, the overall impression of their actions would be that he simply did not exist.
Jonas, for his part, never faltered, walking decisively between the tables, expression still blandly pleasant. However, Teal'c could see in his eyes how much the rejection - or at least lack of invitation - bothered him. Not just because he wanted to belong, but because he genuinely wanted to interact with and get to know the people here, in his new home. And because he was concerned that such acceptance might be beyond him. Teal'c doubted that, though.
The majority of people, it seemed, had taken a neutral stance on Jonas, content to wait and see what he would do with himself now. Jonas had done much to help himself in that regard by returning to Earth with the naquadriah, and with his eagerness to learn and to help in any way possible. Many did not blame him for Daniel Jackson's choices, and those who felt he bore a measure of responsibility did not blatantly condemn him with their actions. There were even some who sympathized with him, who understood the weight of bad decisions and the burden of penance. Teal'c counted himself among them.
continued
T is for Trying Times (Daniel and Janet)
by topazowl
Janet managed to make it home before collapsing in floods of tears. How could she have done that? Committed one of her best friends to mental care. She lay on the sofa and cried until she threw up. Exhausted, she fell into an uneasy sleep and that was how Cassie found her when the child minder brought her home after school. Not understanding the distress but realising her mother was traumatised, Cassie grabbed the phone and dialled Sam at the mountain.
"Come on, come on," whispered Cassie, waiting for Captain Samantha Carter to pick up the phone. She was about to put the phone down and try Uncle Daniel or Uncle Jack when a subdued Sam answered with a very solemn "Hello."
"Sam, Sam, Mommy's so upset. What happened?" Cassie could hear Sam take a big breath.
"Can I speak to Janet, please Cassie?"
"She's too upset," was Cassie's reply which set Sam in motion and with "I'll be there as soon as possible," she put the phone down and went in search of reinforcements.
By the time Sam, Jack and Teal'c arrived, Janet had gained some semblance of control but the sight of her three friends set her off again and, as Sam comforted her, it was left to Jack to explain to Cassie that Daniel had had a bit of a breakdown and that her mom felt responsible, "even though she isn't," he hastened to add. Explanations over and Janet settled, three quarters of SG1 headed home. Emotional crisis abated for a while and Cassie in bed, Janet reflected on her friendship with Daniel and as to why it had affected her so much.
[Thoughts by Janet:]
- Daniel is a geek. A very friendly, fair-minded academic who is living in a soldier's world. Stubborn, argumentative, hot, a lousy patient, hot, a good friend.
- Why is he a good friend? He listens well, he cares, he would give his life for anyone or anything he believed in, he helps me ground myself, he's just nice!.
- Why do I think he's gone crazy? He is stressed, gate travel did this, he's a genius (which can border on madness), he's overwrought.
- Why did I agree to section him? I DON'T KNOW!!
Tears were flowing again and Janet was very pleased when Cassie had gone to school next morning and she was able to get back to the mountain.
continued
U is for Uninhabited Planets (Cam and Vala)
by magickmoons
Pain pulled Cam back to consciousness, and he kind of wished it hadn't. As far as he could tell, there wasn't any part of him that didn't hurt to some degree, ranging from an annoying twinge to agony. As agony seemed to center around his lower back and down his left leg, he decided to focus on something else.
He tried to look around, but had to stop almost immediately when his neck went from 'Ow' to 'On Fire.' He could see enough to know that he wasn't in the SGC infirmary, or any type of medical facility. Dark, jagged stone formed the walls and ceiling around him. The only light seemed to be daylight coming from somewhere on his right.
"Wha happ'n'd?"
Light footsteps brought Vala into his line of sight, and she crouched down beside him with a neutral expression that didn't quite cover the worry.
"You were caught in a rockslide. It was fairly impressive, really. Even more so that you survived. Once I found you, I pulled you into this lovely cave."
He grunted. "Not s'posed to..."
"Move you, I know. But I thought that you might prefer not to buried under a pile of rubble while waiting for certified medical professionals," she retorted defensively.
As if to emphasize her point, Cam could hear the sound of debris rolling somewhere outside. Scattered memories flashed through his mind: the flash of panic as he felt the ground give way beneath him, rocks hurling themselves against his body, dirt and dust clogging his nose and throat till he thought couldn't breathe.
"No, you did good. S'better in here." He heard the slurring in his own voice and wondered how many of those rocks had found his head.
continued
V is for Vegas Road Trip (Sam and Vala)
"When I've Got Nothing On But the Radio"
by splash_the_cat
The sound of the car door slamming shut jolted Sam awake. She blinked against the unexpected glare of sunlight until her eyes adjusted enough to see an advertisement for Fishlake National Forest on a dilapidated sign.
"Well, Sleeping Beauty, nice to see you join the party." Vala, whose return to the car had woken Sam, held out a bottle of water and the prescription bottle of Sam's painkillers.
Sam struggled to sit up, the pull of her skin around her wound making her hiss. She took the bottle of water and let Vala open the medication and tip the pills into her hand. "Do I dare ask where we are?"
"One of your states. I think it starts with a 'U'."
Sam choked down the mouthful of water she'd taken to chase the pills, which now felt like they were lodged in her throat. "We're in Utah? Why are we in Utah?"
"Because the map said this was the shortest route."
Sam sagged back into her seat. "Do I even want to know where we're going? You know, since when we got in the car, I was under the impression I was letting you drive me to the grocery store across town."
"That was your plan." Vala started the car, smoothly putting it into gear and backing out of the parking spot in front of the gas station. She'd gotten her driver's license only a week before, but had badgered Sam into teaching her the mechanics of "your inefficient combustion contraption" months ago. "I had a better one."
"In Utah."
"Please. While charming at points, Utah has nothing on Las Vegas." At a red light, Vala reached out and tipped Sam's chin up. "You look pale."
That was because Sam felt like crap. The painkillers made her sleepy and slow, and she avoided them as much as she could, but today had been bad and already exhausted from too little sleep, she'd swallowed them down before they left for the store and dozed off even before Vala had pulled out of the driveway. Forty year old bodies didn't bounce back from major trauma with quite so much verve as she had even a few years before.
Still, she hadn't expected she'd sleep right through a state line. "Being kidnapped doesn't agree with me."
Vala's grin didn't agree with that assessment. "It will once you are settled in a lounge chair by the side of the pool, with a delicious drink in your hand and the whole of Las Vegas to explore."
"Oh God. Just tell me it's not the Luxor."
continued
W is for Where There's a Will or an Or (Jack and Siler)
by thothmes
As far as Sgt. Siler was concerned, officers were like the weather, hard to predict with any accuracy, beyond the ordinary person's control, and capable of greatly affecting the tenor of a working man's day. And like the weather, most of the activity they generated was made way up high where the air was thin, and fell alike on the just and the unjust down below. His personal approach in dealing with all this was to try to keep his head down and keep going, regardless. What can't be changed must be endured, and in general, it wasn't worth having too much of an opinion about the weather.
Now no one had ever asserted that Sgt. Siler was the most adroit or lucky of men. He was no stranger to the infirmary, and he did seem to draw more than his share of stray electricity. He himself considered the number of shocks and jolts he had received to be the natural result of working with the Stargate and the massive electrical infrastructure that was needed to run it. The infirmary, where Siler found himself from time to time, was one of the places where officers and enlisted men encountered each other with regularity, and that was where he first encountered Col. O'Neill.
The Colonel was sitting on one of the beds, his right knee in a wrap-around brace, snugged tight with velcro. He had three rolls of gauze, still in their plastic packaging, which he was juggling to pass the time, and he looked up, without missing a pass, to see Sgt. Siler between two airmen, holding his own right wrist, showing the palm which bore a rapidly blistering electrical burn, and with a rather alarming set of black eyes from where the wrench had flown up to hit him between the eyes.
"Woah! Sparky! Next time duck!" the Colonel offered.
"Yes, sir," said the Sergeant, deadpan, as his fellows lead him to an available bed.
continued
X is for X-rays (Janet and Sam)
by aelfgyfu_mead
"The object continues to be reabsorbed at a regular rate. Just the way it grew in the first place. It should be gone by late morning." Janet saw reflections of her own relief in the tired faces of SG-1. They'd verified that the object was getting smaller before they could even move Cassandra out of the old nuclear facility. Here at the Air Force Academy Hospital, they had the equipment to observe it with more precision.
"And that process will continue to happen even if you all sleep for what's left of the night," Janet said firmly. "You've all been through the wringer, and you should go home now. Doctor's orders, sir," she added, singling out O'Neill. If he went, the rest of his team would follow. Most importantly, O'Neill didn't need to be at a hospital again worrying about yet another child.
She could see him wavering, about to protest despite his obvious discomfort at the place. She pitched her voice low. "I'll still be here, and it might be less frightening for Cassandra if everyone she knew on this planet did not hover around her."
O'Neill's eyes flickered between her, the nurses' station, and the room she wasn't letting them enter now. The little girl was exhausted too and didn't need that much company. "Okay," he said, and soon enough he was moving away, Daniel and Teal'c following after saying quick goodbyes.
Captain Carter did not move. "I know they're a little loud," she said quietly, "and that might be a bit much right now. But can I go back in and see her? I won't bother her."
Carter was no less tired than the others, but she didn't look like she would sleep any time soon. Daniel had told Janet about Carter's refusal to follow orders and leave Cassandra.
"I'm sure she'd like that," Janet said.
"I told her I wouldn't leave her," Carter said for the fifth or sixth time that night as Janet led her the short way down the hall. "Oh, she's asleep!" she whispered.
Sure enough, the girl's breathing was low and regular, and she didn't stir when they drew near her bedside. It had only been a few minutes since the last x-ray.
"Maybe I can just sit here with her?" Carter said so quietly that Janet could hardly hear her. The look on her face spoke louder: a mix of longing and fear. Or perhaps Janet could read it so well because she felt it herself, and she was afraid she knew what caused it.
continued
Y is for Yearling (Sha'uri and Skaara)
by draegonhawke
Ra's chariot had sunk beneath the ground and all of Abydos's children should have been curled in bed, their blankets pulled over their noses so that Apophis would not catch the scent of their breath. But Sha'uri woke to a small form burrowing under the covers beside her, body warm and lithe. A moment later, a grinning, breathless voice said "Sister. Come see!"
She hnnfed and swatted halfheartedly, but her brother ducked her hand. In any case, she couldn't be too angry at him: in a few more turns of the daughter moon she would be a woman - unwed, but a woman still - and this would be profane. But now they were children, and she could hold on to that, and try to enjoy her brother's visit and whatever mischief he had in mind.
Because it was always mischief, with Skaara.
"You must come," he said, and his voice had the absolute certainty of one his age. "Come on, sister, wake up."
"I am awake," she groused. "How could anyone sleep with you bothering them?" She found his shoulder under the blanket and gave him a shove, and he tumbled away and took the blanket with him. She stood up, into the night chill, and reached for her cloak.
"Sandals, sister," Skaara said, and rooted around in the darkness until he found them. They landed in front of her feet with two plops. "Come on, hurry!"
"Has Ra descended to Abydos?" Sha'uri muttered, slipping her feet into the sandals. Skaara had always been an enthusiastic boy. She just wished that his enthusiasm didn't extend to these dark patches of the night.
And, if she were honest, she wished that in part because she could have taken the darkness to sneak back into the caves Father had forbidden, light a torch, and watch the light flicker over the images on the wall. So illuminated, they would seem to move - and even though symbols beyond the was and the Eye were forbidden, Sha'uri could imagine that they would speak to her. Like her father's voice when he performed rites in the temple, the meaning was only muddled by distance, and if she was quiet enough and listened carefully enough she would have that secret knowledge shared by priests and gods. But she hadn't taken Skaara there - she doubted her brother could keep a secret - and so on nights when he woke her, her curiosity was put aside.
She stamped her feet to be sure the sandals held firm. "Go on, then," she whispered. Careful not to wake anyone who might hear. "What have you found?"
Skaara grinned at her and took of running, and Sha'uri rushed after him.
continued
Z is for Zebra (Jonas and Nyan)
Meeting of the Minds
by traycer_
As far as Jonas Quinn was concerned, differences made life interesting. Finding and discovering new concepts of life always gave him a distinct thrill. But now, after being on Earth for only a few days, the different life forms had him confused and lost for what seemed to be the first time in his life.
He had always felt confident in his knowledge of all things, living and dead, but now he faltered under the strangeness of the things his new neighbors took for granted. It was an experience he didn't like very much. It made him feel lost and alone, feelings that were compounded by the fact that he was no longer welcomed on his own planet, an outcast from old friends and allies.
He was determined to get past all that, though. He hoped to become more involved in SG-1, provided he could earn the trust of Colonel O'Neill. And he had an entire library of this world's inhabitants at his fingertips. It was called the Internet, and Jonas took advantage of this tool the moment he was given access. Between that and the fascinating information he found in Daniel Jackson's office, Jonas couldn't help but believe he would eventually be confident in whatever conversation he found himself in.
Having that knowledge would also be a boost in showing O'Neil he was qualified to be on his team.
He stared at the screen, watching the animals in the video graze in a green plateau of grass. There were a few trees in the background, but Jonas was mainly interested in the animals, trying to find a correlation to the species he was used to back on his planet. The body shape reminded him of the horses he had studied the day before, except these animals were white with black stripes. Zebras, the description stated. He watched them, thinking that if he had to come right out and compare it to anything, he'd have to say the animals closely resembled the...
"They're called zebras," a voice said from behind him. Jonas jerked with a start, then whirled around. His heart beat rapidly in his chest as he stared at the stranger in the doorway.
"Zebras," Jonas said, trying his best to calm down.
"Yes." The man gave a small smile. "Sorry to scare you."
"It's okay," Jonas said with a slight shake of his head. "I guess I was too involved in what I was watching."
The newcomer nodded, then stuck out his hand. "I'm Nyan," he said. "You must be Jonas."
continued
There are 26 stories of different friendships here for you to enjoy. This time, Friendship Alphabet Soup clocks in at over 57,000 words. Blame Credit for this goes to Eilidh, who easily breaks all Soup records with a word count of over 17,000!
Story text is as written by the authors, but minor HTML coding has been changed and scene breaks have been altered to allow for more uniformity in page style. Expect spoilers throughout the movie and the series, and references to canonical character deaths. Ratings range from G to PG-13.
Due to LJ posting constraints, most of the fics are excerpted, with links to the author's journal for the full story. The entire anthology is posted in full, without excerpts, over at Dreamwidth (except Eildidh's, which exceeds even DW's limits). Readers are strongly encouraged to follow the links to the authors' individual journals and leave feedback.
A is for Absinthia (Jack and Teal'c)
by magnavox_23
Teal'c sees Jack's figure, barely illuminated by the lights from the townhouse. Outside in the cool evening air, muted sounds from the party inside battle with the crickets' song.
Jack is seated, almost cross-legged on the grass, head tilted towards the sky. His stillness would cause Teal'c concern, but somehow he knows there is a slight smile upon the general... ex-general's lips. Jack's retirement party is still in full swing despite Jack's absence.
"You can keep staring at the back of my head, as long as you tell me I'm not thinning out on top," Jack speaks to the sky.
"You are a hirsute yet kempt warrior, O'Neill," Teal'c intones.
Jack's eyes narrow. "Get over here."
Teal'c effortlessly lowers himself to the ground, and Jack looks at him sideways.
"I envy you that," Jack gestures to Teal'c's easy pose.
"Do not," Teal'c replies firmly, "it has come at too high a price."
Jack winces in response, and turns his face once more to the heavens. Teal'c follows his gaze and looks skyward up at the few stars visible in the night's sky. He lets himself meditate on their hypnotic twinkling, awaiting Jack's next words.
"Look, I know you don't normally..." Jack trails off, producing a bottle of green liquid. Its peridot hue dances inside the glass, before settling as Jack rests the bottle before him. "Absinthe," he continues aimlessly, "Invented by the Swiss, stolen by the French..."
"It would be an honor, O'Neill, as a leader's final request." Teal'c studies the amount of liquor left in the bottle and the slight pinkness to Jack's cheeks he can see in the dim light.
"Oh, Teal'c, I haven't been your commanding officer in a long time... and what do you mean 'final request'? I'm retiring, not dying, sheesh!"
Teal'c keeps his expression open, but neutral.
"I don't like you when I'm drunk," Jack mutters to himself, and Teal'c suspects Jack has the beginnings of a pout.
"You lie poorly, O'Neill."
continued
B is for Battle Ready (Catherine and Janet)
by sg_wonderland
"General Hammond, I have to repeat that I firmly believe this is a mistake." Dr. Janet Fraiser jammed her hands in her lab coat, clearly frustrated.
"Dr. Langford passed her physical?" General Hammond flipped through the file on his desk.
"Yes, sir, she did. However, her age notwithstanding, SG-1 could be gating into a hostile environment. Dr. Langford is..."
"An old broad?" They both turned to face the woman climbing the stairs and coming into the briefing room. "I appreciate your concern, Dr. Fraiser. But my mind's made up. I am going to the planet. I have to go."
"I would be lax in my duties at a doctor if I didn't object..."
"I realize you have no idea how healthy I am, you just have my word for the fact that I'm tough as boot leather. Very old boot leather." Her dark eyes gleamed mischievously.
"Catherine!" Daniel protested behind her. "You're not old!"
Catherine patted his arm. "Oh, Daniel, only someone as na?ve as you would say that. I am old." She turned back to face Dr. Fraiser. "Please try to understand. Ernest could be out there. I have to see for myself, with my own eyes, what happened to him. Besides, I suspect this is my only shot of going through the gate. I can't see General Hammond agreeing to let me join an SG team."
Frustrated, Fraiser curtly asked for permission to return to the infirmary.
*
Dr. Fraiser had to admit, reluctantly, that Catherine Langford had suffered no ill effects of her trip through the Stargate. No physical effects, anyway. However, the older woman was currently sitting on a gurney looking down at the hands she was constantly twisting.
Reaching out, the doctor stilled those restless hands. "I believe Dr. Littlefield will be fine, in time. He needs to gain some weight and I can't even begin to imagine how to introduce him to this world..."
"When can he go home?"
"Home?"
"I won't have him staying here any longer than necessary," Catherine snapped. "When the Air Force releases him, I'm taking him home with me."
continued
C is for Captured and Cooperation (Jack and Martouf)
by roeskva
"No! You will just get captured as well!" Martouf grabbed hold of O'Neill and pulled him down behind a large rock.
"The Jaffa are taking my team mates! I can't just let them do that!" O'Neill exclaimed.
"You getting captured with them - or killed - will not help them," Martouf insisted.
Frustrated, but having to admit the truth in that, O'Neill watched as the large group of Jaffa dialled the Stargate and walked through, taking his team members with them.
"All right, we saw the address, let's follow them!" O'Neill got up and started running towards the DHD.
Martouf hurried after him. "Wait! If you go through now, like that, you will be captured. There will be guards, so we need some sort of disguise."
O'Neill stopped, groaning. "I should never have agreed to let you come with us!"
"The Jaffa would still have attacked. The only possible difference would be that they would now have all members of SG-1."
O'Neill grumbled something barely audible about insufferable Tok'ra, but conceded the point. "Okay - I'll blame Daniel then, for always wanting to study some damn ruins!" He glared at the Stargate. "Those Jaffa - what Goa'uld did they belong to?"
"Mehen. He is an ally of Heru'ur, and previously of Ra. He is a fairly powerful, though still minor, System Lord."
"This is his planet?"
"No, as I told you during the debriefing, the planet is abandoned. It originally belonged to Ra." Martouf sighed. "A world being abandoned is never a guarantee that a Goa'uld will not send a scouting party from time to time. It was just bad luck that it happened while we were here."
"That could be motto of SG-1," O'Neill grumbled.
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D is for Don't Touch (Cam and Daniel)
by elder_bonnie
A waterfall of grainy dust fell away under Cam's fingers. He stepped away from the ancient stone wall and hastily brushed his hand against his BDU's, casting a nervous glance at Daniel.
The good doctor didn't look up from his notes. "Don't. Touch."
"Sorry," Cam offered, looking over the wall again. It was covered in some pretty intricate carvings - symbols and decorative filigree that Daniel assured him were all part of the same language. It was a language he was having apparent difficulty identifying, however.
"How's it coming?"
Daniel grunted and lifted his head to squint up at the wall. The alcove they stood under was all part of the same open-air stone structure, and the sun was just past its zenith, casting short but sharp shadows.
"That good, huh? Anything I can help with?"
"Yeah." Daniel looked back down at his notes. "You can stop talking."
Cam raised a hand in surrender and stepped away, turning to look out over the field of rubble and ruins they were in the midst of. "I wonder how the silt deposits analysis is going," he wondered aloud, trying to imagine Teal'c standing in watch, equally bored, as Sam collected river silt on the other end of the valley.
"You still think this is more exciting?" Daniel asked with good humor.
Cam turned back toward Daniel and the wall. "Eh. I didn't wanna get my boots wet." One of the designs looked a bit more deeply engraved than the rest and its shape made Cam think of a doorknob. He lifted his AK-47 and poked it gently.
The wall snapped as if on a spring lever and whirled around impossibly fast, rotating 180 degrees. Daniel was hit with the far left side and thrown toward Cam, his body slamming into the unadorned wall behind them. The ground under Cam's feet seemed to be connected to the mechanism and he was lurched forward, the wall crashing into his pack and throwing him into the pitch dark.
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E is for Energy (Daniel and Skaara)
by immertreu
Daniel Jackson had been on Abydos for more than a month, but more often than not he still felt like a stranger among these people he now called family. Sha're, Skaara and Kasuf had welcomed him with open arms, but Daniel still had trouble accepting everything that had happened to him in such a short time.
He had been vindicated, traveled to another planet, incited a rebellion and killed a "god", and, most importantly, he'd found the love of his life.
Sha're was a wonder to him, perfect in too many ways to tell. She knew his heart like no one else. She loved to tease him, too, but she also taught him everything he needed to know in this new environment. Daniel was no stranger to sand and wastelands - his travels with his parents before their untimely deaths had often led them to equally hot and dirty digs in Egypt and Jordan - but Abydos' dangers were different from that of Earth's deserts.
Therefore, wherever Daniel went, someone made sure to follow him and keep an eye on the curious but sometimes oblivious member of their tribe that had suddenly appeared in their midst. Sha're would never forgive her family and friends if anything were to happen to her new husband. There were still predators about, even though Ra and his minions had perished.
Inwardly grinning at the thought of a furious Sha're demanding why her husband had fallen prey to a sandworm or walked off a cliff, Daniel slowly made his way up a dune right outside the city gates and looked down the slanted slope facing away from Nagada. He didn't want to go far, he just needed some space for himself, a place to think.
Today it was Skaara's turn to follow Daniel, and although he had pretended not to notice the younger man trailing him, Daniel sighed and waited for his brother-in-law to join him on the crest of the sandy hill.
Skaara grinned when he caught up with his new brother. He wasn't in the least intimated by the unwelcoming stare and stiff posture the other man adopted. Jack O'Neill had been much more scarier when they first met.
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F is for Flummoxed by the Fourth Race (Daniel and Robert)
by sallymn
"So I don't think it's an alien Book of the Dead," Robert said slowly, looking at Daniel over the top of his glasses. "Rather a pity, I have to say I prefer aliens that way. What do you think?"
Daniel blinked. "I'm thinking that if you and Dr Fuentes," he gave a brief, disbelieving thought of the fruitbat-faced senior linguist working with Robert on this one, "are giving a report on this to General Hammond in the near future, I want to be there."
Robert frowned. "Well actually..."
"Robert, I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Respect and esteem Hammond as he truly did, Daniel could not resist the prospect of the preternaturally unflappable head of Stargate Command having to keep a straight face as he absorbed the news about the piece of archaic alien apparatus acquired so proudly by SG-2 and being studied so carefully, so thoroughly and oh-so-slowly by Rothman, Fuentes and their little team. Yes, it was definitely made by the Furlings, the last of the 'Alliance of Four Great Races' (they'd met two of said races, the Asgards and the annoyingly perfect Nox, and Daniel had his suspicions that he at least now knew an Ancient) and the only one for whom they were still totally unable to crack the written language or the sparse, rarely found contraptions. But no, it was not only not anything the military could use for good or bad - aka weaponry - but it wasn't even the highly esoteric but reasonably respectable cache of ancient information and lore that they'd believed.
SG-2 would be almost as disillusioned - if not as appalled - as Sam would. But to be fair, Daniel mused, determinedly not thinking about Sam as he studied the alien lettering that covered both pictures of the device and of the decaying site it had been found on, it was certainly helping with the deciphering of the language. And it was helping to keep his mind off his missing team for - oh, what was it now? Forty minutes? That had to be a record over the last seven days...
General Hammond, egged on by his CMO, had ordered the entire SGC to keep Daniel distracted while he was recovering from surgery and fretting about the rest of SG-1, wherever they had vanished to while he'd been too busy getting over the surgery to be with them. Daniel knew that, and appreciated the way academic and military alike were doing their collective best to obey... and failing miserably, almost as miserably as Daniel was doing distracting himself.
The Rothman-Fuentes report, hundreds of pages on what was proving to be a technological Enquire-Within-Upon-A-Highly-And-Unexpectedly-Specific-Everything was doing a way better job.
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G is for Giving (George and Janet)
Those Who Give the Most
by annieb1955
It's not the first time he's sat here. It's become something he's had to do rather more often than he wants to. Usually though he's not sitting vigil alone. Today he's chosen solitude over support. He wants to pay tribute in his own quiet way, away from those he knows are grieving just as much as he is. He's supposed to be in charge, stoic and strong, and he needs to present that face to the rest of his people. They rely on that quiet strength of purpose of his. But he can't quite find that stoicism within himself today. Not just yet. He'll dig deep and find it later, plaster a layer of authority over the sorrow and the inevitable guilt he knows he wears plainly on his face. Later. Now he just wants to lower his defences and grieve for his friend.
He covers her hand with his own, squeezes it gently. Such small hands for one who'd done so much with them. With these hands, now cold and still, she'd given caring and kindness; healing and mending broken bodies at times against almost insurmountable odds. He's seen those hands bring comfort to small scared children, perform delicate and intricate surgery on the wounded - both friend and foe alike, convey friendship and empathy to colleagues and all those she'd cared for.
She'd been a doctor, an officer, a soldier, a mother, and a friend. She'd packed so much love and laughter and living into her far too short life. He'll miss her wise counsel, her smile that touched her wide expressive eyes, her kindness. He'll miss her, all that she had been and all that she had yet to become. There'll be no dancing at her daughter's wedding, no grandchildren to take into her welcoming arms and heart. And he rages against the unfairness of it all.
"I'm sorry," he says, finally breaking the silence of the quiet cubicle where he sits shielded from the sympathetic, sorrowing gazes of those who'd also known and worked with her. "This isn't right and it isn't fair. You had so much left to give. If I could have sacrificed myself for you, I would have in a heartbeat." He can almost hear her voice whisper, "I know" in his mind.
"I'll keep an eye on Cassie for you," he goes on, "we all will. She's one of us, part of our family. And she'll be just fine. She's a strong young woman, a daughter to be proud of. You did a wonderful job raising her. But you know all that."
He leans forward and brushes her still lustrous hair away from her forehead. "What you don't know, what this General finds so hard to say to those lost under his command, is how much I'll miss you. You were more than a trusted colleague, much more than a valued officer. You were my friend."
He stands up, wipes a hand roughly across his tear-damp eyes then salutes her. "Vale, Major," he says, his voice broken and rough. He reaches out and pats her hand one last time. "Goodbye, Janet."
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H is for Home (George and Jack)
by zeilfanaat
It was with a weary sigh that Major General Hammond started his walk towards his own front door. He loved his job as the head of the SGC, even if it had cost him the few hairs he'd had left at the start of his assignment here. He just wasn't particularly fond of having to go back to the mountain when he had his two granddaughters over. Why couldn't this crisis have cropped up tomorrow or yesterday?
No, scrap yesterday. Yesterday had had its own crises. Come to think of it, tomorrow probably would have plenty as well. Still, was one crisis-free day too much to ask?
Perhaps he should have anticipated it. With Jack on medical leave, Colonel Reynolds in the infirmary, leaving Dixon in charge, it was almost like taunting fate to expect an uninterrupted day with the girls.
And of course, this just happened to be one of those days that neither his daughter nor his son-in-law would be able to come back straight away. He'd hesitated for a moment, considering the Colonel's injuries, but still went ahead and called him. Tessa and Kayla trusted Jack, and more importantly, Hammond trusted him.
His musings had brought him to his front door, and he paused there for a moment. He wondered if Jack would have started dinner preparations yet. The few times the Colonel had ended up looking after the girls around dinnertime, he actually had. In this case, George thought the twisted knee and bruised ribs would have kept the man from making the effort. To be perfectly honest, George didn't feel much like cooking either today. They would probably order take-out.
Already running through a mental list of what kind of take-out the girls would like, he opened the door. Immediately a waft of a very recognisable dish came to greet him, along with the sounds of giggles and the gruff voice of his Second in Command.
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I is for Infirmary (Janet and Teal'c)
Those Who Wait
by stringertheory
Janet had never minded working the night shift. When she was first starting out, she was often assigned the late shift as the lowest member of the totem pole, so she had become accustomed to the hours. Even as she moved up the ranks, she would take on night shifts from other doctors and nurses who had children at home. She appreciated the quiet, the pervasive sense of rest and healing found in darkened wards after visiting hours.
Moving underground to the SGC, dozens of floors below daylight, hadn't changed that.
They set their timetable by the rotation of other planets, so 'night' came to be a relative term, but Janet strove to maintain - as nearly as possible - the normal operating hours of a military infirmary. And between 23:00 and 06:00, that meant lowered lights and lowered voices. Under her regime, nighttime in the SGC infirmary became hallowed ground that no one - lowliest private to highest general - dared sully. Night was her sanctuary, the time when it felt like the chaos of the day was contained, set right, and on its way to being better when the sun came up. It was one of the few times she felt completely in control, or at least not entirely out of control.
So much of what she came up against in the SGC was beyond her conventional medical training. Even with experimental treatments and an ever-expanding knowledge base, usually her instructions ended with "wait and see." When you were relying on untested methods to battle unfamiliar ailments, you just had to watch and see what happened. And as much as they dealt with the alien, there was still plenty of garden-variety military damage to go around. Add in the fact that the entire base seemed comprised of trouble magnets, and her hands - and beds - were usually full.
The only beds currently occupied held the human portion of SG-1, recuperating from a mixture of combat, escape, and alien narcotics. Janet ghosted past Jack, who she'd had to sedate two hours or so earlier to keep him from exacerbating his injuries, to check on Sam, who still hadn't come to. According to Daniel, she'd received the biggest dose of the drug and had lost consciousness about halfway back to the Gate. Her vitals were stable, though, and her brain scans indicated a deep sleep, so Janet refused to be worried. She shifted around Sam's bed to check on Daniel himself, who had finally fallen asleep. He was resting quietly, the pain medication having kicked in, and Janet let herself relax.
Nerves of steel - and the sanctity of the nighttime quiet - were the only reasons she didn't jump out of her skin when she turned back around and found Teal'c sitting between Jack and Sam. He was in the space she had vacated only minutes before and she marveled once again at how quietly someone his size could move when he chose to.
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J is for Jeopardy (Daniel and Jack)
by gategremlyn
Colonel Jack O'Neill: "We can back him up, sir. I'd like Daniel back on the team."
*
Daniel stood in the briefing room alone. Hammond had approved a return mission to P3R636 in three days. But after that piece of good news Jack, Sam, Teal'c, and General Hammond had all left without a word or a glance in his direction. Daniel swallowed hard. He expected nothing else-deserved nothing else-but it still hurt. He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking and made his way back to his office. He kept his head down, not wanting to see the disdain, or worse the pity, in the eyes of the passing personnel.
Once in his office, he closed his door and simply stood in the middle of the room. His books, artifacts, computer, they were all there looking as they had before his catastrophic addiction to the sarcophagus. He'd apologized to Sam, and Sam being Sam had accepted his apology. But the hurt was still there. He couldn't unsay the words, he could only ask to be forgiven. They hadn't spoken since. He'd apologized to Janet, and Janet being Janet had accepted his apology. Her understanding was almost worse than Sam's reticence: "You were under the influence of the sarcophagus, Daniel. That wasn't really you." But he knew the sarcophagus only amplified what was already there. Teal'c acknowledged his apology with a simple nod of his head.
He still hadn't moved from the middle of the room. He didn't know if he'd ever move again. With any luck the floor would open up and swallow him, saving him the trouble of making the decision. The floor didn't open up. Finally, Daniel pulled his hands out of his pockets, wiped the sweat on his pant leg, and walked to his desk. He touched the frame of Sha're's picture, Sha're his life and his hope. The only apology he could give her was to find her. He pulled out his notepad. If they were going back to the planet, he needed to have a well-thought-out plan.
Twelve hours later, Daniel came up for air. His back ached from long hours bending over his desk; his head ached too. He didn't know if the headache was from concentrating so hard or a leftover from withdrawal. It was from working too hard; it had to be. He dropped the pencil on the desk, shaking out his cramped fingers. He need to eat and then sleep for a few hours.
He stood in the center of the room again and turned: books, artifacts, computer, notepad, pencils, but no Sam or Teal'c. And definitely no Jack. No one had come by to drag him away to eat; no one had come by to see if he was okay. That too he expected, but it hurt.
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K is for Kismet (Cam and Ferguson)
having perhaps the better claim
by jedibuttercup
Cam paused outside the door of the conference room where the latest SG-1 to fall through the interdimensional wormhole had been temporarily set up, and smiled as their team leader looked up from his conference with anther Daniel, a Teal'c, and a lieutenant Cam hadn't met before.
Objectively, he knew their SGC had been taking less than a third of the teams who'd dialed in from other universes; it was just luck that the ones who'd been under fire at the time and were willing to try temporary exile over certain death were mostly SG-1s, and mostly SG-1s under the command of Lts. Colonel Cameron Mitchell. Something about the universes most likely to be pulled into the confluence being the ones with the fewest differences from their universe's timeline... which said a few things about his trouble-magnet status he could have done without having confirmed, and said a few more about the apparent inevitability of his place in the program that had been nagging at him.
He absolutely believed that God had a plan; but he'd also been raised in the school of faith that believed it was up to each person to take what they were given and make their own go of it. Free will; no such thing as kismet. And given all the possible things he could have said and done over the course of his life... no few of which had collided in seemingly unpredictable ways to bring him to the SGC... meeting so many near-identical Cameron Mitchells had been a little vertigo-inducing.
It was really nice to see that in at least one other universe, he'd been capable of learning a little restraint. He'd always thought Fergie would have beat him out for the 302 slot, if he hadn't been injured saving Cam's sorry ass first.
"Well if isn't Bryce Ferguson, as I live and breathe," Cam said, walking into the room.
"Funny you should put it that way," Bryce replied, quirking a smile as he shook Cam's hand. There was a twist to the corner of his mouth, though, and a tightening at the corners of his eyes that reminded Cam of Teal'c and Jackson meeting that Janet Frasier, earlier, or Sam greeting Martouf; a unique hazard of a job where 'multiverse theory of quantum physics' was even a thing.
"Ah," Cam replied, wincing. So it wasn't that he'd managed restraint; it was that Bryce hadn't taken that shrapnel for him, for whatever reason. "Wondered about that. There but for the grace went I, huh?"
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L is for Listening (Daniel and George)
by annieb1955
Daniel doesn't think he's ever known anyone who's really listened to him the way George Hammond does. Even when the General doesn't agree with most, or some, or all of what Daniel's saying he can tell just by that certain look in Hammond's eyes, or the tilt of his head that he's listening to what Daniel is trying to convey.
And on those days when Daniel has wanted to beat his head against any available hard surface in the SGC, when he feels that no one - not Teal'c or Sam or hell, even or maybe especially Jack, understands what he's trying to get across, he'll look up and catch George Hammond's eye and know that he's listening. Listening and doing his damndest to understand.
It means a lot to Daniel. He's been ignored and downright vilified for much of what he's said over his professional career. Hammond gets him though, even when some of what Daniel's saying sails right over that bald Texan head. And every time it happens it warms Daniel inside and he hangs onto every instance of it and stores each memory up against those days when George Hammond is gone and maybe there won't be anyone who listens in quite the same way.
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M is for Motorcycle (Teal'c and Sam)
by crazedturkey
He pulls the edge of his beanie further down across his forehead. People stare at him as he walks past and he worries that it has slipped upwards, betraying the metal burned into the skin of his forehead. Daniel Jackson, somehow noticing his discomfort on a previous excursion, had earnestly reassured him that it was more to do with his size and the colour of his skin. Teal'c still worries every time. Earth is new to him and right now it is his only home. His friends are kindly allowing him the privilege of these off base excursions. He will not risk them.
Today he is slightly more uncertain than usual, although he will not betray it. Daniel Jackson is reliable in that they will be certain to attend some form of museum or gallery. With Colonel O'Neill it is always bowling followed by beer or beer followed by bowling. However Major Samantha Carter is an unknown quality.
She smiles at his side, looking different out of her uniform but relaxed in a pair of jeans and a black leather jacket.
"I'm sorry I haven't found the time to take you out sooner, Teal'c," she says with a small smile. "I've just been so busy, you know, with all the stuff happening in the lab. I don't want you to think it doesn't mean I don't value our friendship, because I do, value our friendship, I mean." She closes her eyes and sighs. "I'm babbling aren't I?"
Teal'c has spent much of his life using as few words as possible to convey his meaning and is still not sure, even after several years, how to handle Samantha Carter's verbosity. He decides to incline his head and say, "Your dedication to your work is admirable, Samantha Carter. I value both that and our friendship."
By the beaming smile she returns him, he knows he has done well. That makes him happy, because even as she baffles him he enjoys the young warrior's energy.
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N is for Name (Cassie and Jack)
by madders_ahatter
SG-1 arrived at Janet Fraiser's front door with Cassie, who was holding her new dog.
"What's this then?" Janet queried, her puzzled frown soon belied by the upturned crinkle at the corners of her mouth.
"It's the rules," Cassie reiterated what she'd told Sam. It was strange that so many people here didn't seem to know their own rules. "Every Earth kid has to have a dog. Jack told me."
"Oh, well, if Colonel O'Neill said so, then I guess it must be true. You'd better bring him in."
She stood aside and Cassie led the team into her temporary - or possibly permanent if Sam had guessed right - home.
At a gesture from Janet, the others moved to take seats in her comfortable living room, while Cassie sat on the floor playing with her new pet.
Janet pulled Jack aside. "I thought I was taking in one stray, not two," she scolded good-naturedly.
"Hey, he's not a stray," Jack objected. "I picked him out from the pound myself this morning. He's got all his certificates. He's fit and healthy and ready to go." Jack pulled several sheets of paper out of his waterproof jacket pocket and handed them to Janet.
"Does he have a name?" Janet wanted to know, scanning the vaccine records and the report of his neutering operation. The puppy had evidently had a slight adverse reaction to the anesthetic and been sick for a couple of days, but other than that he seemed okay.
"Ooh, good point!" Jack moved over beside Cassie and squatted down, grimacing at the creaking of his knees. "We gotta give this little feller a name."
He addressed the whole group then, as if giving orders at a briefing session.
"It's very important that we find the perfect name. Any ideas?"
"You sound like T S Eliot on the naming of cats," Daniel observed with a grin.
"Oh, believe me, naming dogs is way trickier," Jack assured him, winking at Cassie and ruffling the pooch behind the ear.
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O is for O Club and Oval Office (George and Henry Hayes)
by ivorygates
The first time they met was in Korea (PACAF, 4 AF, flying the F-100 out of Osan AFB, with the bright lights and big city of Seoul about an hour away). Both Air Force, both newly-commissioned First Lieutenants, but aside from that they had nothing in common: Lieutenant George S. Hammond was by the book, West Texas, bootstrap education and wings through OTS. Lieutenant Henry R. H. Hayes was old Boston, old money, Academy ring and daredevil attitude. George was saving his money to go home and put a ring on his girl's finger. Henry'd left a bride behind in Back Bay (as he said frequently), but it didn't seem to slow him down in his attentions to the opposite sex. The two of them knew each other the way pilots in the same fighter group will: bought each other drinks, played some pickup basketball, bitched about flight time and missions and mechanics. Henry was a card player, and George wasn't, so that was about it: Academy boys tended to flock together. Some were doing their five-year hitch and getting out, some talked about making General. George wasn't one of the "ring and the book" set, but he was planning on the long haul, even if everybody knew it was tough to stay in and move up in peacetime.
And there wasn't going to be another war. Was there? Even Korea was a UN force, with the USA tossing some rolling thunder in to sweeten the pot. Not the same as a war. (Some of the boys bitched about that, but George's daddy had been at Pearl. One of the lucky ones.)
The first time George got to see the real Henry Hayes was that November. George didn't hear about Dallas that day until he got to the mess: the news had broken around 0330 local, and Armed Forces Radio was still pretending it hadn't happened, but everybody knew. Flags were at half-mast, everybody was in shock. He still doesn't remember much about that day, other than his feelings of disbelief. The President of the United States had been murdered.
That night, Henry came banging on his door, out of uniform, bottle in hand. He was very drunk. It was hard to make out what he was saying, other than to blame all of Texas (and George by extension: well, George was here) for JFK's death. All George knew was that he'd better get Henry out of sight before the CO had to write him up.
He didn't get much sleep that night, but he did get to know Henry Hayes.
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P is for Patches of Sunshine (Daniel and Vala)
by eilidh17
Light had not reached inside the old temple in hundreds of years. The upper floors were gone; sheared off, crumbled away in some ancient quake that had taken out a substantial part of the surrounding city. The room Daniel and Sam stood in was all that remained of an archive that once held thousands of tablets and scrolls, and given shelter to scribes who labored away to preserve the history of the Mekrit.
Even this room, which smelled of time and decay, had not escaped the encroachment of the forest that had all but grown over the old city. Only one wall was free, and that one had been split open at one time to form a grotesque doorway in place of one that had been lost. The other walls were mostly covered in a build-up of sand and clay, though in some places Daniel could just see a hint of what was hidden underneath.
The wall he was working on, gently teasing away centuries of grime and dirt, was in desperate need of preservation. What little of its fa?ade he could see was cracked and peeling away, and the once vibrant colors that washed across its surface were virtually faded beyond recognition. There was writing though, crude and almost totally worn away in places, most likely by time and exposure to the elements.
"Looks Greek to me," Sam said, peering over his shoulder and adding the light of her flashlight to his.
Daniel directed the beam of his light up to the very top of the wall, to where the writing was more uniform and recent, and slightly more preserved. "It is," he said with no real enthusiasm, because he was totally distracted with what little he had managed to translate so far. "At first glance it looks like whoever carved these inscriptions was taken from Earth around the Hellenistic era, despite some phrasing that seems a little out of place. However, I'm also seeing some Byzantine influences. Classical era. The writing is all over the place... historically."
"Can you compensate?"
"I have been," he said dryly. "Would be helpful if the lighting was a little better."
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Q is for Quintessential (Daniel and Oma)
by tallulah_rasa
What am I going to do with you, Daniel?" Oma sighed, gazing out across time and space. Still, she waited -- as patiently as if temporal reality mattered -- until a power generator on one particular planet exploded, until a single man on another planet drifted into sleep. Only then did she materialize; did she will walls and floors and tables into existence; did she slide into a booth; did she gently shepherd Daniel Jackson into the booth across from her.
Daniel looked around with a rueful smile, picked up his fork, and poked at the steaming plate of waffles in front of him. "I take it that's a rhetorical question," he said.
Oma gave him what was, in any dimension or level of existence, a look. "This isn't a joke, Daniel. The Others wouldn't be pleased if they knew what you'd done."
Daniel frowned. "I still don't really get how the Ascended can be all-powerful, but not all-knowing," he said.
"Nevertheless, the rules are--" Oma began.
"You probably aren't the best...uh being...to talk to me about rules," Daniel observed, reaching for the syrup.
"Has anyone ever been able to?"
"Also rhetorical, I'm assuming," Daniel said, wrinkling his nose as a thin amber stream trickled from the bottle. "I'm sorry, Oma, but you can't give someone unlimited power and then ask them not to use it."
"I ask that you use judgment, Daniel. Discretion. Understanding."
"I did," Daniel said. "Jack was in trouble."
"As are many people every day, Daniel."
"But right then," Daniel said mulishly, "it was Jack."
Oma took what was, in any dimension or level of existence, a deep breath. "Things unfold as they must," she said, enunciating each word clearly, carefully, seriously.
"Well, maybe this is what's meant to unfold. That I'm here, helping my friends. Who are, by the way, trying to help the universe."
Oma sighed again. Daniel went back to his waffles.
"He saw me," Daniel said. He carefully cut a waffle into precise sections, and then looked up. "Jack. He saw me."
Oma nodded.
"The others...never have. Is there a reason...?"
"If you know the window is open, then you are more likely to feel the breeze," Oma said after a moment.
Daniel narrowed his eyes and put down his fork. "You just say those things to make me crazy, don't you?"
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R is for Rapport (Daniel and Teal'c)
by fignewton
The first time Daniel Jackson meditated with Teal'c, it was more or less unplanned.
While he was deeply skeptical of Shau'nac's claim, the potential opportunity to suborn the Goa'uld's young to the Jaffa cause - not to mention his unspoken desire to ensure that Shau'nac survived - impelled Teal'c to risk his life. Unsure of the possibilities, Teal'c prudently asked his teammates to keep watch over him when he tried to disprove Shau'nac's claim that it was possible to communicate with a symbiote. Despite the gravity of the situation, he was inwardly amused that O'Neill considered the dangers he might pose to others due to the symbiote's influence, while Daniel Jackson questioned the threat to Teal'c's own life.
No matter. He placed his safety in their hands and turned his thoughts inward, focusing on his own heartbeat and slowing its steady flutter within his chest.
As his state of kel no reem gradually deepened, a small part of his mind was interested to note that his perception of the room began to narrow and fade. Normally, a Jaffa in kel no reem retained a keen awareness of his surroundings, even if outsider eyes might assume he was oblivious; it would be fatal, after all, if kel no reem left the Jaffa helpless and vulnerable to attack. In the first minutes, he was keenly aware of the movements of the others: Major Carter had taken a military stance at the doorway, shoulders squared and eyes alert. He could hear O'Neill's restless footsteps as he paced the small room. He sensed Daniel Jackson's breathing as the man settled on the floor opposite him, unconsciously mirroring Teal'c's own pose as they watched and waited. None of this surprised him. But as he plunged recklessly beyond the normal threshold to achieve a far deeper state of kel no reem than he had ever attempted before, he began to lose the ability to sense his surroundings. His discernment of Major Carter's presence, then O'Neill's, were lost to the rapidly dwindling focus outside his own self. Daniel Jackson's presence lingered a few moments longer, perhaps because he, too, was in a primitive meditative state by now. Even that welcoming reassurance was soon lost as his heartbeat stuttered and slowed, until there was nothing left but a sense of...
(death)
(father!)
Shaken by the unexpected flash of non-memory, Teal'c composed himself to try again.
Days later, with Tanith's betrayal laid bare and the bitter mourning rituals for Shau'nac complete, Daniel Jackson appeared at the door of his quarters late in the evening.
"May I join you when you kel no reem?" he asked.
Teal'c regarded him, puzzled. "Humans cannot kel no reem, Daniel Jackson."
"No," he agreed. "But they can meditate, and they do."
Teal'c tilted his head thoughtfully. "It is not a companionable activity."
"No," Daniel Jackson said again. "But I offer my company, just the same."
continued
S is for Second Chance (Jonas and Teal'c)
by stringertheory
Without looking up from his plate, Teal'c knew Jonas Quinn had entered the commissary. The shift in the air alerted him to Jonas's arrival, the impact of his presence rippling through the assembled personnel like a stone thrown into still water. Though obvious to anyone paying attention, the effect was subtle. There was no pause in conversation, and no gazes follow Jonas on his walk through the tables - though more than a few eyes flickered in his direction as he passed by. The feel of the room simply changed, a faint tone of blame, anger, and cool consideration settling over the crowd.
The familiar combination rang with memories for Teal'c, but he ignored their whispers to observe Jonas. He had no doubt that Jonas had felt the change in the room - he was as astute an observer of people as the man whose office he now occupied had been - but if the scrutiny bothered him, he didn't let it show. He approached the food line with his normal gait, back straight and a generically friendly expression on his face. As Jonas filled his tray and turned to find a seat, Teal'c watched the room closely.
No one made any motions to exclude Jonas from their tables, but none welcomed him, either. Instead, they avoided his eyes and gave no indication that they noticed him at all. If not for the fact that the room hummed with everyone's overwhelming awareness of Jonas, the overall impression of their actions would be that he simply did not exist.
Jonas, for his part, never faltered, walking decisively between the tables, expression still blandly pleasant. However, Teal'c could see in his eyes how much the rejection - or at least lack of invitation - bothered him. Not just because he wanted to belong, but because he genuinely wanted to interact with and get to know the people here, in his new home. And because he was concerned that such acceptance might be beyond him. Teal'c doubted that, though.
The majority of people, it seemed, had taken a neutral stance on Jonas, content to wait and see what he would do with himself now. Jonas had done much to help himself in that regard by returning to Earth with the naquadriah, and with his eagerness to learn and to help in any way possible. Many did not blame him for Daniel Jackson's choices, and those who felt he bore a measure of responsibility did not blatantly condemn him with their actions. There were even some who sympathized with him, who understood the weight of bad decisions and the burden of penance. Teal'c counted himself among them.
continued
T is for Trying Times (Daniel and Janet)
by topazowl
Janet managed to make it home before collapsing in floods of tears. How could she have done that? Committed one of her best friends to mental care. She lay on the sofa and cried until she threw up. Exhausted, she fell into an uneasy sleep and that was how Cassie found her when the child minder brought her home after school. Not understanding the distress but realising her mother was traumatised, Cassie grabbed the phone and dialled Sam at the mountain.
"Come on, come on," whispered Cassie, waiting for Captain Samantha Carter to pick up the phone. She was about to put the phone down and try Uncle Daniel or Uncle Jack when a subdued Sam answered with a very solemn "Hello."
"Sam, Sam, Mommy's so upset. What happened?" Cassie could hear Sam take a big breath.
"Can I speak to Janet, please Cassie?"
"She's too upset," was Cassie's reply which set Sam in motion and with "I'll be there as soon as possible," she put the phone down and went in search of reinforcements.
By the time Sam, Jack and Teal'c arrived, Janet had gained some semblance of control but the sight of her three friends set her off again and, as Sam comforted her, it was left to Jack to explain to Cassie that Daniel had had a bit of a breakdown and that her mom felt responsible, "even though she isn't," he hastened to add. Explanations over and Janet settled, three quarters of SG1 headed home. Emotional crisis abated for a while and Cassie in bed, Janet reflected on her friendship with Daniel and as to why it had affected her so much.
[Thoughts by Janet:]
- Daniel is a geek. A very friendly, fair-minded academic who is living in a soldier's world. Stubborn, argumentative, hot, a lousy patient, hot, a good friend.
- Why is he a good friend? He listens well, he cares, he would give his life for anyone or anything he believed in, he helps me ground myself, he's just nice!.
- Why do I think he's gone crazy? He is stressed, gate travel did this, he's a genius (which can border on madness), he's overwrought.
- Why did I agree to section him? I DON'T KNOW!!
Tears were flowing again and Janet was very pleased when Cassie had gone to school next morning and she was able to get back to the mountain.
continued
U is for Uninhabited Planets (Cam and Vala)
by magickmoons
Pain pulled Cam back to consciousness, and he kind of wished it hadn't. As far as he could tell, there wasn't any part of him that didn't hurt to some degree, ranging from an annoying twinge to agony. As agony seemed to center around his lower back and down his left leg, he decided to focus on something else.
He tried to look around, but had to stop almost immediately when his neck went from 'Ow' to 'On Fire.' He could see enough to know that he wasn't in the SGC infirmary, or any type of medical facility. Dark, jagged stone formed the walls and ceiling around him. The only light seemed to be daylight coming from somewhere on his right.
"Wha happ'n'd?"
Light footsteps brought Vala into his line of sight, and she crouched down beside him with a neutral expression that didn't quite cover the worry.
"You were caught in a rockslide. It was fairly impressive, really. Even more so that you survived. Once I found you, I pulled you into this lovely cave."
He grunted. "Not s'posed to..."
"Move you, I know. But I thought that you might prefer not to buried under a pile of rubble while waiting for certified medical professionals," she retorted defensively.
As if to emphasize her point, Cam could hear the sound of debris rolling somewhere outside. Scattered memories flashed through his mind: the flash of panic as he felt the ground give way beneath him, rocks hurling themselves against his body, dirt and dust clogging his nose and throat till he thought couldn't breathe.
"No, you did good. S'better in here." He heard the slurring in his own voice and wondered how many of those rocks had found his head.
continued
V is for Vegas Road Trip (Sam and Vala)
"When I've Got Nothing On But the Radio"
by splash_the_cat
The sound of the car door slamming shut jolted Sam awake. She blinked against the unexpected glare of sunlight until her eyes adjusted enough to see an advertisement for Fishlake National Forest on a dilapidated sign.
"Well, Sleeping Beauty, nice to see you join the party." Vala, whose return to the car had woken Sam, held out a bottle of water and the prescription bottle of Sam's painkillers.
Sam struggled to sit up, the pull of her skin around her wound making her hiss. She took the bottle of water and let Vala open the medication and tip the pills into her hand. "Do I dare ask where we are?"
"One of your states. I think it starts with a 'U'."
Sam choked down the mouthful of water she'd taken to chase the pills, which now felt like they were lodged in her throat. "We're in Utah? Why are we in Utah?"
"Because the map said this was the shortest route."
Sam sagged back into her seat. "Do I even want to know where we're going? You know, since when we got in the car, I was under the impression I was letting you drive me to the grocery store across town."
"That was your plan." Vala started the car, smoothly putting it into gear and backing out of the parking spot in front of the gas station. She'd gotten her driver's license only a week before, but had badgered Sam into teaching her the mechanics of "your inefficient combustion contraption" months ago. "I had a better one."
"In Utah."
"Please. While charming at points, Utah has nothing on Las Vegas." At a red light, Vala reached out and tipped Sam's chin up. "You look pale."
That was because Sam felt like crap. The painkillers made her sleepy and slow, and she avoided them as much as she could, but today had been bad and already exhausted from too little sleep, she'd swallowed them down before they left for the store and dozed off even before Vala had pulled out of the driveway. Forty year old bodies didn't bounce back from major trauma with quite so much verve as she had even a few years before.
Still, she hadn't expected she'd sleep right through a state line. "Being kidnapped doesn't agree with me."
Vala's grin didn't agree with that assessment. "It will once you are settled in a lounge chair by the side of the pool, with a delicious drink in your hand and the whole of Las Vegas to explore."
"Oh God. Just tell me it's not the Luxor."
continued
W is for Where There's a Will or an Or (Jack and Siler)
by thothmes
As far as Sgt. Siler was concerned, officers were like the weather, hard to predict with any accuracy, beyond the ordinary person's control, and capable of greatly affecting the tenor of a working man's day. And like the weather, most of the activity they generated was made way up high where the air was thin, and fell alike on the just and the unjust down below. His personal approach in dealing with all this was to try to keep his head down and keep going, regardless. What can't be changed must be endured, and in general, it wasn't worth having too much of an opinion about the weather.
Now no one had ever asserted that Sgt. Siler was the most adroit or lucky of men. He was no stranger to the infirmary, and he did seem to draw more than his share of stray electricity. He himself considered the number of shocks and jolts he had received to be the natural result of working with the Stargate and the massive electrical infrastructure that was needed to run it. The infirmary, where Siler found himself from time to time, was one of the places where officers and enlisted men encountered each other with regularity, and that was where he first encountered Col. O'Neill.
The Colonel was sitting on one of the beds, his right knee in a wrap-around brace, snugged tight with velcro. He had three rolls of gauze, still in their plastic packaging, which he was juggling to pass the time, and he looked up, without missing a pass, to see Sgt. Siler between two airmen, holding his own right wrist, showing the palm which bore a rapidly blistering electrical burn, and with a rather alarming set of black eyes from where the wrench had flown up to hit him between the eyes.
"Woah! Sparky! Next time duck!" the Colonel offered.
"Yes, sir," said the Sergeant, deadpan, as his fellows lead him to an available bed.
continued
X is for X-rays (Janet and Sam)
by aelfgyfu_mead
"The object continues to be reabsorbed at a regular rate. Just the way it grew in the first place. It should be gone by late morning." Janet saw reflections of her own relief in the tired faces of SG-1. They'd verified that the object was getting smaller before they could even move Cassandra out of the old nuclear facility. Here at the Air Force Academy Hospital, they had the equipment to observe it with more precision.
"And that process will continue to happen even if you all sleep for what's left of the night," Janet said firmly. "You've all been through the wringer, and you should go home now. Doctor's orders, sir," she added, singling out O'Neill. If he went, the rest of his team would follow. Most importantly, O'Neill didn't need to be at a hospital again worrying about yet another child.
She could see him wavering, about to protest despite his obvious discomfort at the place. She pitched her voice low. "I'll still be here, and it might be less frightening for Cassandra if everyone she knew on this planet did not hover around her."
O'Neill's eyes flickered between her, the nurses' station, and the room she wasn't letting them enter now. The little girl was exhausted too and didn't need that much company. "Okay," he said, and soon enough he was moving away, Daniel and Teal'c following after saying quick goodbyes.
Captain Carter did not move. "I know they're a little loud," she said quietly, "and that might be a bit much right now. But can I go back in and see her? I won't bother her."
Carter was no less tired than the others, but she didn't look like she would sleep any time soon. Daniel had told Janet about Carter's refusal to follow orders and leave Cassandra.
"I'm sure she'd like that," Janet said.
"I told her I wouldn't leave her," Carter said for the fifth or sixth time that night as Janet led her the short way down the hall. "Oh, she's asleep!" she whispered.
Sure enough, the girl's breathing was low and regular, and she didn't stir when they drew near her bedside. It had only been a few minutes since the last x-ray.
"Maybe I can just sit here with her?" Carter said so quietly that Janet could hardly hear her. The look on her face spoke louder: a mix of longing and fear. Or perhaps Janet could read it so well because she felt it herself, and she was afraid she knew what caused it.
continued
Y is for Yearling (Sha'uri and Skaara)
by draegonhawke
Ra's chariot had sunk beneath the ground and all of Abydos's children should have been curled in bed, their blankets pulled over their noses so that Apophis would not catch the scent of their breath. But Sha'uri woke to a small form burrowing under the covers beside her, body warm and lithe. A moment later, a grinning, breathless voice said "Sister. Come see!"
She hnnfed and swatted halfheartedly, but her brother ducked her hand. In any case, she couldn't be too angry at him: in a few more turns of the daughter moon she would be a woman - unwed, but a woman still - and this would be profane. But now they were children, and she could hold on to that, and try to enjoy her brother's visit and whatever mischief he had in mind.
Because it was always mischief, with Skaara.
"You must come," he said, and his voice had the absolute certainty of one his age. "Come on, sister, wake up."
"I am awake," she groused. "How could anyone sleep with you bothering them?" She found his shoulder under the blanket and gave him a shove, and he tumbled away and took the blanket with him. She stood up, into the night chill, and reached for her cloak.
"Sandals, sister," Skaara said, and rooted around in the darkness until he found them. They landed in front of her feet with two plops. "Come on, hurry!"
"Has Ra descended to Abydos?" Sha'uri muttered, slipping her feet into the sandals. Skaara had always been an enthusiastic boy. She just wished that his enthusiasm didn't extend to these dark patches of the night.
And, if she were honest, she wished that in part because she could have taken the darkness to sneak back into the caves Father had forbidden, light a torch, and watch the light flicker over the images on the wall. So illuminated, they would seem to move - and even though symbols beyond the was and the Eye were forbidden, Sha'uri could imagine that they would speak to her. Like her father's voice when he performed rites in the temple, the meaning was only muddled by distance, and if she was quiet enough and listened carefully enough she would have that secret knowledge shared by priests and gods. But she hadn't taken Skaara there - she doubted her brother could keep a secret - and so on nights when he woke her, her curiosity was put aside.
She stamped her feet to be sure the sandals held firm. "Go on, then," she whispered. Careful not to wake anyone who might hear. "What have you found?"
Skaara grinned at her and took of running, and Sha'uri rushed after him.
continued
Z is for Zebra (Jonas and Nyan)
Meeting of the Minds
by traycer_
As far as Jonas Quinn was concerned, differences made life interesting. Finding and discovering new concepts of life always gave him a distinct thrill. But now, after being on Earth for only a few days, the different life forms had him confused and lost for what seemed to be the first time in his life.
He had always felt confident in his knowledge of all things, living and dead, but now he faltered under the strangeness of the things his new neighbors took for granted. It was an experience he didn't like very much. It made him feel lost and alone, feelings that were compounded by the fact that he was no longer welcomed on his own planet, an outcast from old friends and allies.
He was determined to get past all that, though. He hoped to become more involved in SG-1, provided he could earn the trust of Colonel O'Neill. And he had an entire library of this world's inhabitants at his fingertips. It was called the Internet, and Jonas took advantage of this tool the moment he was given access. Between that and the fascinating information he found in Daniel Jackson's office, Jonas couldn't help but believe he would eventually be confident in whatever conversation he found himself in.
Having that knowledge would also be a boost in showing O'Neil he was qualified to be on his team.
He stared at the screen, watching the animals in the video graze in a green plateau of grass. There were a few trees in the background, but Jonas was mainly interested in the animals, trying to find a correlation to the species he was used to back on his planet. The body shape reminded him of the horses he had studied the day before, except these animals were white with black stripes. Zebras, the description stated. He watched them, thinking that if he had to come right out and compare it to anything, he'd have to say the animals closely resembled the...
"They're called zebras," a voice said from behind him. Jonas jerked with a start, then whirled around. His heart beat rapidly in his chest as he stared at the stranger in the doorway.
"Zebras," Jonas said, trying his best to calm down.
"Yes." The man gave a small smile. "Sorry to scare you."
"It's okay," Jonas said with a slight shake of his head. "I guess I was too involved in what I was watching."
The newcomer nodded, then stuck out his hand. "I'm Nyan," he said. "You must be Jonas."
continued