Fresh fic
I had this great idea for an SGA story but I promised myself I would write nothing else, nothing I tell you, until I finished the SG-1 WIP that had been sitting around for almost a year. Talk about your motivation...
It's long so it's in parts so as not to cause Lj to have a nervous breakdown and end fannish connectedness as we have come to know it.
Special thanks to Danvers who agreed to beta at the unGodly hours of 4:40am. Truly, she does not sleep.
Disclaimer: The characters of SG-1, yea even the entire SGC, are the intellectual property of Brad Wright and Jonathon Glassner who developed them for television where they then became part of Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp, and finally MGM Television. I acknowledge their ownership and assure them that I in no way intend to make a profit from this bit of writing. It was written solely for the personal enjoyment of myself and my friends. The GER, on the other hand, that's mine.
Rating: NC-17 eventually
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WHAT GOES AROUND...
by Teand
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"...tell you, Daniel! I can't believe you were so incredibly irresponsible..."
"Well, what's the verdict?" Jack came around the end of the curtain, interrupting Janet's tirade. He stopped short, smile vanishing, his gaze flicking from Dr. Fraser to Daniel and back again. The doctor looked annoyed - but then in Jack's experience she often did - and Daniel, still pale from the pain that had sent him to the infirmary, looked peeved. No. Past peeved. Pissy. "What? It's just an ulcer right?"
"No, Colonel, it's not," Janet snapped before Daniel could speak. Folding her arms over her clipboard, she turned. "It's a condition called Gastro Esophageal Reflux. In short, an excess of acid is fountaining up from Daniel's stomach into his esophagus. Over time it's eaten into the flesh creating a lesion, and now, when acid fountains up, it splashes into an open wound."
Jack winced, one hand clutching at the shirt over his stomach. Acid in an open wound certainly explained the way Daniel had been reacting when he'd found him pacing up and down the corridor outside his office. "Sounds like fun. But you can cure it, right?"
"We can control it."
"Couple of tums?"
"Something a little stronger and Daniel will have to watch what he eats."
"That'll be tricky since Daniel literally doesn't watch what he eats. He ate a bug on P7X 99D - landed in his soup while he was going over his notes and he scooped it up and ate it. Carter won a ten spot off me. It was a big bug," he explained as Janet's eyebrows rose. "Lots of legs. Very crunchy."
"This isn't about bugs," Daniel snapped.
"No kidding." Jack crossed to the bed and clapped one hand down on Daniel's gown covered shoulder, his fingers tightening in the only supportive embrace he could manage under the circumstances - where 'under the circumstances' could be defined as under a security camera and the eagle eye of Janet Fraser. "Look Daniel, whatever it's about, you're going to do exactly what Doc Fraser says because you can't go through another attack like the one that put you in here." Turning to Janet, he added, "He was punching walls."
"I saw his knuckles."
"She wants me to give up coffee, Jack."
"And then again, it's not like the walls feel it."
"Colonel…"
"Doctor, have you ever been around Daniel when he hasn't had his coffee? I have and it's… well, let's just say he's scary and, given a choice, I'd rather face a dozen Jaffa armed only with a squeegee."
"A squeegee?" The doctor's brows reached for her hairline.
"Some kid tried to wash my windows on the way to work but that's not the point." He took a deep breath and rearranged his face into his most sincere expression. "The point is: Daniel without coffee is not a happy camper. And when Daniel's not a happy camper the rest of the team suffers. Hell, the whole universe suffers." One hand rose to thump his chest. "I suffer. I don't suffer well."
"Or quietly," Daniel muttered.
Janet snorted. "Your suffering is not my problem, Colonel. Daniel's is. And even if he was willing to put up with the pain, if this isn't brought under control the damage to his esophagus will get worse and he'll eventually have to have reconstructive surgery. If he doesn't bleed to death internally first."
"Eventually. If." Daniel tried a smile but let it fade when it bounced off Janet's formidable it's-for-your-own-good shielding.
"I'm going to start you on Ranitidine to lower your acid production but it's not a cure. And before you say anything, Colonel…" She raised a hand as Jack opened his mouth. "…neither are those purple pills being flogged on television and over the internet. If the Ranitidine doesn't work I have another three or four medications I can try but he has to watch what he puts in his mouth. Small portions and no coffee until he's been pain free for a week." Turning on one heel she left the cubicle, shaking her head.
"Eventually? If?" Jack turned an enquiring eyebrow in Daniel's direction. "That was the best argument you could come up with?"
"Excuse me for being a little distracted. I'd just received some life altering news." Slipping off the end of the bed, he reached for his pants.
"I'm just saying that it was a pretty weak attempt from a guy who's negotiated peace treaties with half a dozen alien races."
Daniel shot Jack a tight smile as he pulled his work pants up over his hips. "Not without coffee I haven't."
"Good point." Hands in his pockets, Jack rocked back on his heels. "Just so you know, you'll be going through the gate unarmed for a while."
"Bite me."
"And it begins."
***
"Are you sure you're up to this, Dr. Jackson?"
Daniel stopped jumping forward and back through the visuals the MALP had shot of PCX 788, and turned just enough to frown down the briefing table at General Hammond. "Why wouldn't I be?"
The general laid his hand flat on the folder in front of him. "I have here a report from Dr. Fraser and…"
"General, I'm fine. It's just a little heart burn and she gave me pills. Also…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blister pack of tablets. "…these super antacids that fizz in your stomach. I've got it covered."
"As I understand it, Dr. Jackson, it's more than a little heartburn and the pain can be quite formidable."
Daniel twisted around and shot an accusatory look at Jack who raised both hands. "Hey, it wasn't me. I never said a thing."
"There are dents in the corridor on level 21," the general announced dryly. "So unless you've taken a dislike to our walls…" He let his voice trail off, clearly waiting for Daniel to explain.
"All right, it can be a bit painful but that was before these." Daniel waved the blister pack and then used it to point at the monitor. "More importantly, PCX 788 shows signs of a technological civilization and that figure in the bushes looks very much like an Unas. Now, since the every time we've had any kind of human interaction with the Unas things have gone less than smoothly and since I'm pretty much the entire Unas cultural studies department that means I have to go through the gate."
Hammond sighed, looking distinctly unhappy. "Colonel O'Neill, what's your take on this?"
"Well, sir, Daniel is our Unas specialist." Jack leaned past Daniel and peered at the monitor. "And that does look like one of his scaly buddies skulking in the underbrush."
"So you believe Dr. Jackson's condition won't endanger the mission?"
"I believe that Daniel's our best bet not to get our butts kicked by an Unas or three. Or six."
"Thank you, Jack."
"I also believe," Jack continued, ignoring the man beside him and maintaining eye contact with the general, "that, given his condition, we should head home at the first sign of trouble. I don't want him distracted by his gut if the bad guys drop in."
"And the bad guys would be…?" the general wondered.
Jack shrugged. "Jaffa. Goa'uld. Girl Scouts. Does it really matter, sir?"
One corner of the general's mouth twisted up into something approximating a smile. Or half a smile, at least. "I suppose not."
"And we have a bigger problem than Daniel's stomach. Doc Fraser's taken him off coffee. Completely. Cold turkey."
"Good lord!"
Hammond looked more than a little embarrassed by his outburst but Jack nodded. "Prayer is always an option, sir."
"Is this true DanielJackson?"
Becoming more than just a little annoyed - and Teal'c's distinctly nervous expression was not helping his mood -- Daniel rolled his eyes. "Yes, it's true but it's also taken care of." Shoving his chair away from the briefing table, he rummaged in his pockets pulling out a small screwdriver, a pencil stub, a pen cap, a rusty key, a piece of quartz, one cotton glove, a small tangle of thin copper wire, seventy-three cents, and finally half a roll of square lozenges. "Caffeine," he said, holding them up. "Janet says they'll tide me over until she lifts the coffee restriction."
Forearms planted on the table, Sam leaned forward and frowned. "When did she give them to you, Daniel?"
"This morning, on my way out of the infirmary." He returned her frown. With interest. Why?"
"They're half gone."
"And?"
She glanced down at her watch. "And it's only 10:47. You're not supposed to have more than four of those things a day. "I've taken them myself when I've been working late on a project and the label is quite specific about the safe quantity. Each lozenge contains the equivalent caffeine of two cups of coffee. If you've had six in two hours that's like having twelve cups of coffee in the same amount of time…"
"Carter." Jack rolled his eyes toward the man beside him. "It's Daniel."
"Point taken, sir. But regardless of his usual intake, these don't metabolize quite the same way."
"Look, I took enough to bring me up to speed and then I stopped. I needed to finish translating that plinth before SG-9 goes back to P7P 2R4, there's the continuing Goa'uld dialects project, I'm weeks behind cataloguing new artifacts, and I wanted to look in on that shattered tablet in the clean room before the briefing."
"You do remember you have a staff, Dr. Jackson?"
"Yes, sir."
The general opened his mouth to elaborate, visibly decided there wasn't much point, and closed it again.
"And speaking of Daniel's staff; that brings us back to him being the entire Unas department and well…" Jack paused and nodded toward the monitor. "…that. Frankly sir, he's more coherent and less…" A quick glance over at Daniel and a reconsideration of the next word. "…extreme than I would have expected under the circumstances so I'd have to say those caffeine things are working. As long as they keep working, I see no reason why he can't. Keep working that is."
"I got it, Colonel. Dr. Jackson?"
"I'm fine."
"And if I'd asked first thing this morning, what would you have told me?"
The other three members of SG-1 turned to shoot personal variations of 'he's got you there, Daniel' at their archeologist/linguist/Unas specialist.
Daniel waved the blister pack around the table and muttered. "I'm fine now."
"Uh huh." The general's tone suggested the jury was still out on that. "Major Carter?"
"Sir, the MALP did register some interesting energy readings."
"Teal'c?"
"If we refuse to confront our fears and face danger, we will never win the war against the Goa'uld."
"There's nothing that says these Unas will be dangerous," Daniel protested, frowning slightly.
Teal'c glanced down at the packet of caffeine pills. "I was not speaking of the Unas, DanielJackson."
***
The locker room door closed behind Teal'c with a faintly ominous click. The following silence was anticipatory and didn't last long.
"We need to talk." Jack said the words to the inside of his locker but since there was now only one other person in the room there was little room for misunderstandings.
"About what?"
"Daniel, you don't show pain. You're…" He turned, looking the other man up and down as though he could find the word written on his clothes. "…stoic."
Daniel sighed and shrugged into his shirt. "No, I'm usually distracted. Most times I've been injured there's been half a dozen or so other things to think about." Glancing up from his buttons, he smiled tightly. "Like, oh, the end of the world."
"You listed half a dozen things you had to do to the General at the briefing. They weren't enough to distract you this morning."
"I listed three. What's your point?"
Jack closed his eyes and counted to five. Answering Daniel's mood with one of his own would only accelerate the situation into a shouting match. Shouting matches were not a bad thing necessarily - they cleared the air and often spilled over into incredible make-up sex - but, right now, they didn't have the time to shout, they didn't have the privacy to fuck, and they did have things they needed to talk about. Then he opened his eyes to see Daniel wearing his 'I dare you to make something of this' expression and his resolve to play nice fled. "My point," he growled, "is that I'm worried about you!"
"You think I'll jeopardize the mission."
"Don't tell me what I think! I'm not worried about the mission - you've got the fizzy pills, you've got the caffeine, and you're not going more than twenty feet from the gate or I'll have Teal'c haul your ass back through the event horizon so fast it'll make your nose bleed! I'm worried about you!" Pivoting on one heel, he slammed his locker shut. The sound cleared his head a little. Taking a deep breath, he turned again and managed to sound fairly calm as he said, "If this has gotten to the hole in the esophagus level it must have been going on for some time. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought it was heartburn - not something I needed to bother you about." Daniel held up a hand to forestall Jack's next comment. "I swear that this morning was the first wall punching incident. It's never been that bad before. If you hadn't shown up when you did, I would have taken myself to the infirmary."
Jack snorted.
"Maybe not right away, but eventually… when I'd cleared my desk." His brow creased. "And maybe after I'd dealt with that dialects problem because there's few things worse than a misplaced glottal stop in a weapons negotiation and SG-9 are leaving in three days. And that tablet isn't going to put itself together…" Glancing up from buckling his belt, his frown deepened as he met Jack's gaze. "I'd have told you about it."
"When?"
"Well that depends on…"
"On whether I could tell the difference between screams of passion and screams of pain?"
"I don't scream - I verbalize loudly. And I didn't scream this morning, I…"
"You punched walls. Stop avoiding the question. If I hadn't shown up, when were you planning to tell me?"
"About the time you told me about the last set of tests Janet did on your knees."
"I told you…"
"You said they were fine."
Jack frowned at Daniel's tone. "You went into my file," he said slowly as Daniel folded his arms. "You had no right to do that, Daniel. No right! The pain is under control and Doc Fraser cleared me for duty and… and you didn't go into my file did you?"
"No. So, when were you planning to tell me about your knees?"
They stared at each other for a long moment then Jack sighed. "We really need to work on this talking thing." He ran his hand back through his hair and dragged his cap on. "Too god-damned much testosterone in this relationship."
Daniel's turn to snort but he smiled when he did it. "Ya think?"
"Hey, my line." Before Daniel could respond, Jack caught his gaze and held it. "Seriously, Daniel, as your… friend… " He hoped the emphasis was enough because he couldn't bring himself to say the word lover on SGC property. "… I want to know if you're in pain but as your CO I need to know. If you'd told me earlier, we might have stopped it before it got to the acid in an open wound point."
Daniel's eyes narrowed and Jack, braced to cut any argument off short, found himself floundering when all the other man said was, "You're right."
"I'm right?"
"Yeah. But don't get used to it."
***
Sam raised an eyebrow as she met Teal'c in the hall.
"Approximately seven minutes," he told her quietly.
"Think that's enough time?"
"I think that is all the time they can be allowed. You must ready yourself for the mission."
Ready herself? Sam grinned. "And it's always so hard to decide what to wear on these things."
Brows up, Teal'c folded his arms over his fatigues. "If I may suggest - green has become the new black."
Her grin broadened into a full smile. "Green?"
"So say the women of The View."
"Green it is then. Thank you." Some day, she'd examine why Teal'c's gentle teasing made her feel so disproportionately giddy. Some day. When they weren't constantly being thrown into the kind of life or death situations that made her question her emotional responses. Oh, who the hell was she kidding; she might just as well accept a life of unresolved sexual tension and buy shares in Duracell.
"Has something upset you, MajorCarter?"
"What? No! Sorry. Teal'c do you really think giving them a few minutes alone before we go through the gate does any good?"
There were no security cameras in the locker rooms and as long as the colonel and Daniel had a reason to be in there together, there were no rumors.
The Jaffa shrugged, a minimalist movement easy to miss. "Does having a few moments to speak alone together do them any good? There is no way of knowing. But I see that in spite of the best efforts of the universe we are, all four, still alive. I think that if it is not broken, we should not fix it."
"I get it. It's like a pre-game ritual now. Like always putting your left sock on first."
He nodded. "That is how it is done."
"How what is done?"
"The left sock is always first."
As Sam opened her mouth to explain, she saw the corners of Teal'c's eyes crinkle slightly and shook her head instead. "I'll just go and suit up now."
The crinkles deepened. "An excellent idea."
***
Cradling his P-90, Jack stood at the edge of the gate platform and swept a narrowed gaze over the ubiquitous clearing and his team. The clearing was surrounded by the ubiquitous trees and his team had spread out to scout the immediate area. "Whoever they are, they use this gate." He nodded toward the uniformly short grass. "Clipped."
"Cropped, sir," Sam sighed. She scrapped the bottom of one boot against the grass. "Watch where you walk."
Daniel dropped carefully to one knee over by the DHD. "Looks like deer," he said, picking up a brown pellet about the size of a marble. "Or really big rabbits."
"Daniel, put that down!"
"It's just herbivore shit, Jack." He dropped the pellet back where he found it, wiped his fingers on his pants, and stood. "DHD looks fine."
"Carter?"
"MALP checks out. Telemetry's reading the four of us, nothing else in the immediate area. Readings indicate nothing that resembles a technological signature."
"Teal'c?"
"I see no signs that anything but DanielJackson's really big rabbits have been near this gate for some time. The Unas has not been sent through as a messenger of a Goa'uld."
"Or not a recent messenger, at least." Jack swept another slow gaze around the edges of the clearing and finally relaxed his grip on his weapon. "All right, Daniel. Bait your trap."
"It isn't a trap," Daniel sighed as he dropped his pack and pulled a rolled piece of canvass out of the top section. "It's a way to entice the Unas to come close enough for me to have a few words."
"Because you only know a few words?"
Daniel paused on his way to the tree line and turned just far enough to look Jack in the face. His declaration, in Unas, was short and to the point.
"See, just exactly what I meant." Jack grinned. "Hardly any words at all."
"Sometimes it only takes a couple, Jack."
Carter snorted as Daniel continued toward the trees. "Care to guess what those words were, Major?"
Her smile broadened as she knelt to open the sample case. "No, sir."
"Glad to hear it. What about you, Teal'c?"
Just on the edge of his vision, the Jaffa shifted so that he could watch the opposite side of the gate. "I do not believe I would need to guess, O'Neill."
***
An offer of food was the traditional way to make contact with more primitive cultures. Until agriculture caught on, hand-to-mouth was the optimum description for hunter/gatherer societies. Power bars were perhaps not the traditional offering but, since it had worked before, Daniel decided not to mess with success.
He laid out six power bars on the small tarp, half unwrapped the first and laid it back down open end pointing away from him, then half unwrapped the sixth and laid it down facing the opposite direction. As the smell of honey and whatever else was in the bars - organic at Janet's insistence - wafted up into the air, he backed about a meter and a half away, checked the ground for shit, and sat, legs crossed, facing the tarp.
Specifically, facing the area of the surrounding woods where the fuzzy image of the Unas had been caught. Specifically far enough away from the tarp that he couldn't reach it easily. Specifically on enough of an angle so that if Jack had to shoot - and he'd damned well better have switched to the dart gun - he'd have a clear shot from the gate platform.
Nothing left to do but wait.
"Hey, Daniel! Best guess on how long this is going to take?"
Daniel fought the urge to flip Jack off and just barely won the battle. "Why? Do you have a pressing engagement earthside?"
"Yankees are playing the Red Sox at eight but mostly I was just asking because I'm your CO and your team leader…" Volume and sarcasm levels rose together. "…and the information might possibly have some bearing on me deciding what the hell the rest of us are going to do!"
"Right. Sorry." He dug a new roll of caffeine lozenges out of his pack, separated one with his thumbnail and flicked it up into his mouth. The damn things gave a fast hit but they wore off quickly. "Give me an hour of quiet then I'll reassess."
"Deal. T-man, you think you can be quiet for an hour?"
Since the only answer seemed to be a half smothered snicker from Sam, Daniel had to figure that Teal'c's response had been non-verbal. Grinning, he rested his hands on his thighs and scanned the underbrush for any indication that the Unas picked up by the MALP was still hanging around. It was, he knew, entirely possible that said Unas was sitting ten feet away in the underbrush observing him. Given how well they were camouflaged in this type of terrain and how long they could sit motionless, predator patient, he could only hope he'd intrigued it enough to bring it out of hiding. If it was even there.
Ten minutes in, he leaned forward, slowly lifted the unwrapped power bar off the tarp, and took as small a bite as was possible and still be obvious, chewing with what he hoped was the kind of enjoyment an Unas would recognize. He swallowed, grunted out the Unas word for 'good' and laid the power bar back down. Ten minutes later, he preformed whole act again. And ten minutes after that.
Something skittered through the underbrush - something far too small to be an Unas - and a couple of dozen birds sang a couple of dozen different songs. Daniel disregarded the skittering and winced at the birdsongs. One at a time, they might have been musical. Simultaneously, they were discordant noise.
Nine minutes in, a tiny brown and white bird with yellow wing flashes, landed at the edge of the tarp and stared at him with bright black eyes. When he reached for the bar a moment later, it bounced back then flew up to glare at him from a low branch.
And ten…
And ten…
"Daniel?"
He twisted around and scowled at Jack sitting on the edge of the gate platform. "I got nothing." Well, nothing except a persistent pressure in his gut. Standing, he gestured toward the edge of the woods. "I'm just going to step behind this tree."
"Why?"
"Why?" There were days… "Why do you think?"
"How's your stomach?"
"My stomach is fine!" It hurt but no more than it had and Daniel figured that was the question actually being asked. "But," he added as Jack indicated he should continue. "I'm thinking I might take a crap." Rolling his eyes, he dug a handful of tissues out of his pack, tossing the caffeine lozenges toward the tarp to get them out of his way. Ever since the incident on PY7 88K, he did not wipe his ass with the local fauna. "I hope that information helps with your decision making."
Jack turned his head forty five degrees to the left and bellowed, "Teal'c!"
"I don't need an escort!" Daniel protested as the Jaffa set down a piece of equipment, left Sam's side and started across the clearing. "I've been staring into these trees for an hour and there is nothing in there. Nada. Zilch. Zip."
"You willing to bet your life on that?"
"Yes, damn it!" He did not need Teal'c watching him - or more specifically watching over him while he strained to empty his colon.
Jack stared at him for a long moment, then raised a hand.
Teal'c stopped about ten feet from the trees. "I will wait here."
"Fine!" Pivoting on one heel, Daniel stomped into the underbrush and began unbuckling his belt.
***
"I think it's time he had another one of those magic lozenges," the colonel muttered as Sam set the sample case down on the edge of the gate platform.
She glanced toward the woods. "It's possible that he's having a little trouble, sir." When a raised eyebrow suggested she continue, she smacked herself mentally for opening her mouth. "It just that Daniel usually drinks a lot of coffee and caffeine is a laxative and the lozenges, because there's no actual liquid involved don't cause the body to respond in the same way. Add that to the somewhat binding effect of the antacids Janet has him on and… You really didn't want to know all that did you sir?"
"No, Carter. I didn't."
"Kind of kills the romance doesn't it." As he turned slowly to face her, she felt the blood rise up in her face until her cheeks burned. "Oh God. Did I say that out loud?" She read the answer off his expression and wondered why there was never an incoming wormhole around when she really needed to throw herself into one. "I'm so sorry, sir, I…"
He raised a hand, cutting her off. "We will never speak of this again."
"It's just I…"
"Carter."
"Right. Sorry."
***
Daniel was not having a good day. First the pain, then Janet cutting him off, then a total lack of any Unas indication, now this. Maybe if he was at home in his own bathroom with a copy of National Geographic and all the time in the world, he'd be able to get somewhere but here and now. Nothing.
Maybe he should just give up and... What was that? It wasn't a sound... it was an absence of sound. The birds had stopped singing. He started to rise out of his crouch and froze as the bushes directly in front of him rustled and a familiar horned face appeared amid the leaves. It took a moment for the Unas to notice him and when it did, its reaction was not the reaction Daniel had expected.
It screamed.
Kind of a high-pitched girly scream too.
***
The scream catapulted Jack off the edge of the gate platform and across the clearing, the P-90 in position by the second step, his finger on the trigger, and his 2IC on his six. When he reached the edge of the woods, he plunged through underbrush Teal'c had already trampled and rocked to a halt at the sight of the big guy loaming over a girl - looked ten or eleven - who was sitting on the ground with an Unas head in her lap. She looked terrified.
"Teal'c..."
"I did nothing O'Neill. The child was on the ground when I arrived."
"I... uh, I may have inadvertently flashed her," Daniel admitted, his cheeks crimson as he buckled his belt.
"Great, traumatized for life," Jack muttered as he slowly moved forward and dropped to one knee. They were just lucky she wasn't a few years older or there'd be yet another alien he had to beat off Daniel with a stick. And a full frontal was certainly more of an invitation than the usual eyelash batting. "Hey." He stretched out his hand. "Are you all right?"
Wide brown eyes turned from Teal'c to him. "I'm not scared."
"Of course you aren't. I'm Jack."
"Carli." She swiped a hand under her nose and Jack ratcheted her age down a year or so. "Are you raiders?"
"No," he began but before he could continue, Daniel stepped forward and knelt on her other side.
"We're peaceful explorers. We came through the Stargate. The chaapa'ai. I'm sorry if I startled you."
Carli turned toward Daniel and stared at him for a long moment. "I saw your..."
"Yeah. Sorry about that too."
"You were having a... You were..." She gulped in a lungful of air and buried her face in what Jack now saw was actually a rubber Unas mask.
Daniel shot a panicked look over her shaking shoulders at Jack.
Jack snickered but before he could explain that she wasn't crying, Carli lifted her head, pointed at Daniel and howled with laughter. He couldn't blame her - what could be funnier at her age than stumbling over an adult taking a dump?
"Is the child all right, O'Neill?"
He straightened, grinning at Daniel's indignant reaction, and turned to Teal'c. "Do archeologists shit in the woods?"
Teal'c glanced over at the archeologist in question and shrugged. "Apparently not."
***
"...but I'll be ten next moon and that'll mean I gotta wait a whole year until the next Ancient's Festival and that's not fair." Cali chewed and swallowed another bite of power bar and glanced up at Jack. "Is it?"
"Not at all."
"No, it isn't. So I borrowed Kendred's mask so I could get my first stone. Festival's over tomorrow, isn't it? It's not like I had a lot of time." Another chew. Another swallow. "These are good. Don't tell that I ate it, 'kay? During festival, if you're old enough for a stone, you're not supposed to eat in the day time."
Jack laid his hand on his heart and from her expression Daniel realized she understood the broad meaning if not the specifics of the gesture. "I won't say a word."
"So, Cali..." Daniel hid a sigh as she snickered. "...what exactly do you celebrate at this Ancient's Festival."
The girl shrugged. "Old stuff."
"What kind of old stuff?"
She rolled her eyes, set the remains of the power bar on the edge of the gate platform and stood, hands clasped in front of her stomach. "In the Ancient Days there was lots of hardship. Raiders sometimes came and took people away through the Ancient's Ring. Orglas..." She waved the mask. "...and people killed each other. Then raiders stopped coming. Then the people drove the Orglas away into the mountains." A wave behind the gate at the rising foothills of an impressive mountain range. "Then there was not so much hardship. Then there was none. The Ancient's Festival helps us to remember that there used to be hardship so we don't stop being glad there was none." Recitation finished, she beamed around the half-circle of watching adults. "I won first place at the speeching contest this year."
"That's a great speech," Daniel told her. "Do the Orlas ever come out of the mountains?"
"No." Carli looked at him like he was a total idiot - but at least she wasn't laughing so he figured it was an improvement. "No one's seen an Orlas for years and years and years and years. My Bahpa says they've been stinked nearly forever."
"Stinked?"
"Extinct," Jack translated, grinning.
"But the masks are part of the festival?" Daniel prodded.
Her sigh suggested she was going to say this once and that was it. "You wear the mask to get the stone to so the Orlas think you're a Orlas 'cept they don't exist no more."
"Did you need me to explain that, Dr. Jackson?" Jack wondered, rocking back on his heels, hands in his pockets.
Daniel shot him an exasperated glare, not at all surprised that Jack spoke ten year old. "No. Thanks. I got it." Directed his attention back to the girl. "Thank you, Cali. Can you excuse us for a minute?"
"Sure." She tossed the mask down onto the gate platform and picked up the powerbar. "I gotta find a good stone anyways."
"The MALP probably picked up Kendred or one of his friends wearing a mask, not an actual Unas at all," Daniel murmured as SG-1 moved away from the girl.
Jack snorted. "Ya think?"
"I have never heard the beasts referred to as an Orlas before," Teal'c pointed out.
"In a couple of thousand years, language drifts. Or maybe they had an early leader with a speech impediment and that's how he pronounced it and it stuck. There's a hundred possible reasons for the difference but that's not important. Jack..." He turned to face the other man, sketching his excitement in the air. "...this festival is a terrific example of how history becomes folklore and it's only on for one more day."
"Let me guess. You want to go to the festival?"
"This would be the perfect time to discover which Goa'uld brought them here and abandoned them. Not to mention the Unas..."
"Orlas.
Daniel shrugged. "You say potato."
"Most of the time. Carter?"
Sam glanced over at Carli, currently trying to chip one of the huge base blocks out of the gate platform. "The people here have obviously achieved a level of technology that allows them to mold rubber into intricate, mass-produced masks."
"Not to mention that Carli's shoes look remarkably like Nike's," Jack added.
"Not to mention," she nodded. "It wouldn't hurt to see what else they've developed."
"Teal'c?"
"Both DanielJackson and Major Carter make excellent arguments for remaining."
"And you don't really care either way?"
"I do not."
***
The path they were following emerged suddenly from under the trees and SG-1 found themselves standing at the edge of Percalis, the town nearest the stargate. It looked like...
"Canmore. It's a town up in the Rockies about two hours from Calgary," Jack went on as his team gazed at him blankly. "Calgary, Alberta? Canada? Oh for crying out loud. You know for intergalactic heroes, you guys have got to get out more."
"Wrong hemisphere," Daniel muttered, chewing on a hangnail by his thumb. "We end up someplace that looks like Thebes then I'm your man."
"I have heard of Canada," Teal'c announced. "It is large, cold, mostly empty, and the people are considered to be polite."
"Much like Minnesota," Jack agreed watching Cali bound up to a cluster of people on what was obviously a fairground. "Only without the lutefisk. Let's pick it up before she gets into too much trouble."
"Trouble?" Carter wondered as they headed down the hill.
"She's been gone for at least four hours." He gestured at the group of adults surrounding the child. "From the looks of things, mom and dad recently checked in with the parents of the friend she was supposed to be with, found out she wasn't there, knew damned well where she'd gone and were about to head up the mountain to haul her ass home."
Daniel's eyebrows made an appearance over the edge of his glasses. "You can tell all that from here?"
"She's being alternately yelled at and hugged so they know she was gone. They're not frantic so they haven't known it for long. They're lined up with the path and two of them are wearing packs. Some things are universal."
Teal'c nodded.
Jack almost heard the gears engage as the other two, the two who had never been parents, got it. A few moments later, he grinned as Daniel shifted enough to the left to bump their shoulders together as they walked. Charlie was the subtext to any reference he ever made to parenting and even though he'd come to the point where he could remember the joy of being a father without being overwhelmed by guilt, he appreciated the other man's silent support. To a point...
"Daniel, is there a reason you're trying to knock me over?"
"Sorry. It's just... I mean..." He pointed. "That dunk tank..."
The backdrop had been painted to resemble the Stargate and a teenage boy, encouraged by crowd around his own age, whacked a crude replica of the DHD with a rubber mallet while a man wearing flowing robes sat suspended over a clear container of water. Every few whacks, a bulb lit on one of the gate's painted chevrons. When the seventh lit, the seat tipped, dumping the man in the robe into the water. The crowd cheered.
"There is no way, no possible way, he could come up with a valid gate address by... by..."
"Whacking?" Jack snickered when his 2IC seemed at a loss for words. "I don't think they're trying for an actual address there, Carter. Probably pick a random seven every turn. I wonder if the guy in the seat was supposed to be Goa'uld?"
"One of the raiders at least," Daniel offered still frowning toward the fairground, fingers of his right hand drumming against his thigh. "Do the seats on that ride look like gliders to you?"
"Yes. Head's up, people; company's coming."
First Cali's family, all talking at once. Her mother and her father accompanied by her Bahma and her Bahpa - looked like the locals practised group marriage Daniel realized and shot Jack a look that suggested he not comment. Now was not the time for a smutty version of 'Who's on First'. Kendred, of the borrowed mask, turned out to be about thirteen and one of half a dozen siblings. Half a dozen and a half all told; Cali's Bahma had another on the way.
Then members of the local government, on the fairground for the Ancient's Festival, arrived also all talking at once. They pushed the family aside and crowded close only to be supplanted in turn by the local member of the regional government, dragged out of one of the tents and away from judging homebrew. He held a glass of dark liquid and his expression suggested that any problems with alien's arriving through the Ancient's Gate could be solved by them all sitting down to a beer. Jack bonded with him almost instantly.
***
Meanwhile, up at the gate, three large, long-eared herbivores froze as a clawed hand reached out of the underbrush and picked up a forgotten and nearly full package of square lozenges.
(continued in part 2)
It's long so it's in parts so as not to cause Lj to have a nervous breakdown and end fannish connectedness as we have come to know it.
Special thanks to Danvers who agreed to beta at the unGodly hours of 4:40am. Truly, she does not sleep.
Disclaimer: The characters of SG-1, yea even the entire SGC, are the intellectual property of Brad Wright and Jonathon Glassner who developed them for television where they then became part of Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp, and finally MGM Television. I acknowledge their ownership and assure them that I in no way intend to make a profit from this bit of writing. It was written solely for the personal enjoyment of myself and my friends. The GER, on the other hand, that's mine.
Rating: NC-17 eventually
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WHAT GOES AROUND...
by Teand
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"...tell you, Daniel! I can't believe you were so incredibly irresponsible..."
"Well, what's the verdict?" Jack came around the end of the curtain, interrupting Janet's tirade. He stopped short, smile vanishing, his gaze flicking from Dr. Fraser to Daniel and back again. The doctor looked annoyed - but then in Jack's experience she often did - and Daniel, still pale from the pain that had sent him to the infirmary, looked peeved. No. Past peeved. Pissy. "What? It's just an ulcer right?"
"No, Colonel, it's not," Janet snapped before Daniel could speak. Folding her arms over her clipboard, she turned. "It's a condition called Gastro Esophageal Reflux. In short, an excess of acid is fountaining up from Daniel's stomach into his esophagus. Over time it's eaten into the flesh creating a lesion, and now, when acid fountains up, it splashes into an open wound."
Jack winced, one hand clutching at the shirt over his stomach. Acid in an open wound certainly explained the way Daniel had been reacting when he'd found him pacing up and down the corridor outside his office. "Sounds like fun. But you can cure it, right?"
"We can control it."
"Couple of tums?"
"Something a little stronger and Daniel will have to watch what he eats."
"That'll be tricky since Daniel literally doesn't watch what he eats. He ate a bug on P7X 99D - landed in his soup while he was going over his notes and he scooped it up and ate it. Carter won a ten spot off me. It was a big bug," he explained as Janet's eyebrows rose. "Lots of legs. Very crunchy."
"This isn't about bugs," Daniel snapped.
"No kidding." Jack crossed to the bed and clapped one hand down on Daniel's gown covered shoulder, his fingers tightening in the only supportive embrace he could manage under the circumstances - where 'under the circumstances' could be defined as under a security camera and the eagle eye of Janet Fraser. "Look Daniel, whatever it's about, you're going to do exactly what Doc Fraser says because you can't go through another attack like the one that put you in here." Turning to Janet, he added, "He was punching walls."
"I saw his knuckles."
"She wants me to give up coffee, Jack."
"And then again, it's not like the walls feel it."
"Colonel…"
"Doctor, have you ever been around Daniel when he hasn't had his coffee? I have and it's… well, let's just say he's scary and, given a choice, I'd rather face a dozen Jaffa armed only with a squeegee."
"A squeegee?" The doctor's brows reached for her hairline.
"Some kid tried to wash my windows on the way to work but that's not the point." He took a deep breath and rearranged his face into his most sincere expression. "The point is: Daniel without coffee is not a happy camper. And when Daniel's not a happy camper the rest of the team suffers. Hell, the whole universe suffers." One hand rose to thump his chest. "I suffer. I don't suffer well."
"Or quietly," Daniel muttered.
Janet snorted. "Your suffering is not my problem, Colonel. Daniel's is. And even if he was willing to put up with the pain, if this isn't brought under control the damage to his esophagus will get worse and he'll eventually have to have reconstructive surgery. If he doesn't bleed to death internally first."
"Eventually. If." Daniel tried a smile but let it fade when it bounced off Janet's formidable it's-for-your-own-good shielding.
"I'm going to start you on Ranitidine to lower your acid production but it's not a cure. And before you say anything, Colonel…" She raised a hand as Jack opened his mouth. "…neither are those purple pills being flogged on television and over the internet. If the Ranitidine doesn't work I have another three or four medications I can try but he has to watch what he puts in his mouth. Small portions and no coffee until he's been pain free for a week." Turning on one heel she left the cubicle, shaking her head.
"Eventually? If?" Jack turned an enquiring eyebrow in Daniel's direction. "That was the best argument you could come up with?"
"Excuse me for being a little distracted. I'd just received some life altering news." Slipping off the end of the bed, he reached for his pants.
"I'm just saying that it was a pretty weak attempt from a guy who's negotiated peace treaties with half a dozen alien races."
Daniel shot Jack a tight smile as he pulled his work pants up over his hips. "Not without coffee I haven't."
"Good point." Hands in his pockets, Jack rocked back on his heels. "Just so you know, you'll be going through the gate unarmed for a while."
"Bite me."
"And it begins."
***
"Are you sure you're up to this, Dr. Jackson?"
Daniel stopped jumping forward and back through the visuals the MALP had shot of PCX 788, and turned just enough to frown down the briefing table at General Hammond. "Why wouldn't I be?"
The general laid his hand flat on the folder in front of him. "I have here a report from Dr. Fraser and…"
"General, I'm fine. It's just a little heart burn and she gave me pills. Also…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blister pack of tablets. "…these super antacids that fizz in your stomach. I've got it covered."
"As I understand it, Dr. Jackson, it's more than a little heartburn and the pain can be quite formidable."
Daniel twisted around and shot an accusatory look at Jack who raised both hands. "Hey, it wasn't me. I never said a thing."
"There are dents in the corridor on level 21," the general announced dryly. "So unless you've taken a dislike to our walls…" He let his voice trail off, clearly waiting for Daniel to explain.
"All right, it can be a bit painful but that was before these." Daniel waved the blister pack and then used it to point at the monitor. "More importantly, PCX 788 shows signs of a technological civilization and that figure in the bushes looks very much like an Unas. Now, since the every time we've had any kind of human interaction with the Unas things have gone less than smoothly and since I'm pretty much the entire Unas cultural studies department that means I have to go through the gate."
Hammond sighed, looking distinctly unhappy. "Colonel O'Neill, what's your take on this?"
"Well, sir, Daniel is our Unas specialist." Jack leaned past Daniel and peered at the monitor. "And that does look like one of his scaly buddies skulking in the underbrush."
"So you believe Dr. Jackson's condition won't endanger the mission?"
"I believe that Daniel's our best bet not to get our butts kicked by an Unas or three. Or six."
"Thank you, Jack."
"I also believe," Jack continued, ignoring the man beside him and maintaining eye contact with the general, "that, given his condition, we should head home at the first sign of trouble. I don't want him distracted by his gut if the bad guys drop in."
"And the bad guys would be…?" the general wondered.
Jack shrugged. "Jaffa. Goa'uld. Girl Scouts. Does it really matter, sir?"
One corner of the general's mouth twisted up into something approximating a smile. Or half a smile, at least. "I suppose not."
"And we have a bigger problem than Daniel's stomach. Doc Fraser's taken him off coffee. Completely. Cold turkey."
"Good lord!"
Hammond looked more than a little embarrassed by his outburst but Jack nodded. "Prayer is always an option, sir."
"Is this true DanielJackson?"
Becoming more than just a little annoyed - and Teal'c's distinctly nervous expression was not helping his mood -- Daniel rolled his eyes. "Yes, it's true but it's also taken care of." Shoving his chair away from the briefing table, he rummaged in his pockets pulling out a small screwdriver, a pencil stub, a pen cap, a rusty key, a piece of quartz, one cotton glove, a small tangle of thin copper wire, seventy-three cents, and finally half a roll of square lozenges. "Caffeine," he said, holding them up. "Janet says they'll tide me over until she lifts the coffee restriction."
Forearms planted on the table, Sam leaned forward and frowned. "When did she give them to you, Daniel?"
"This morning, on my way out of the infirmary." He returned her frown. With interest. Why?"
"They're half gone."
"And?"
She glanced down at her watch. "And it's only 10:47. You're not supposed to have more than four of those things a day. "I've taken them myself when I've been working late on a project and the label is quite specific about the safe quantity. Each lozenge contains the equivalent caffeine of two cups of coffee. If you've had six in two hours that's like having twelve cups of coffee in the same amount of time…"
"Carter." Jack rolled his eyes toward the man beside him. "It's Daniel."
"Point taken, sir. But regardless of his usual intake, these don't metabolize quite the same way."
"Look, I took enough to bring me up to speed and then I stopped. I needed to finish translating that plinth before SG-9 goes back to P7P 2R4, there's the continuing Goa'uld dialects project, I'm weeks behind cataloguing new artifacts, and I wanted to look in on that shattered tablet in the clean room before the briefing."
"You do remember you have a staff, Dr. Jackson?"
"Yes, sir."
The general opened his mouth to elaborate, visibly decided there wasn't much point, and closed it again.
"And speaking of Daniel's staff; that brings us back to him being the entire Unas department and well…" Jack paused and nodded toward the monitor. "…that. Frankly sir, he's more coherent and less…" A quick glance over at Daniel and a reconsideration of the next word. "…extreme than I would have expected under the circumstances so I'd have to say those caffeine things are working. As long as they keep working, I see no reason why he can't. Keep working that is."
"I got it, Colonel. Dr. Jackson?"
"I'm fine."
"And if I'd asked first thing this morning, what would you have told me?"
The other three members of SG-1 turned to shoot personal variations of 'he's got you there, Daniel' at their archeologist/linguist/Unas specialist.
Daniel waved the blister pack around the table and muttered. "I'm fine now."
"Uh huh." The general's tone suggested the jury was still out on that. "Major Carter?"
"Sir, the MALP did register some interesting energy readings."
"Teal'c?"
"If we refuse to confront our fears and face danger, we will never win the war against the Goa'uld."
"There's nothing that says these Unas will be dangerous," Daniel protested, frowning slightly.
Teal'c glanced down at the packet of caffeine pills. "I was not speaking of the Unas, DanielJackson."
***
The locker room door closed behind Teal'c with a faintly ominous click. The following silence was anticipatory and didn't last long.
"We need to talk." Jack said the words to the inside of his locker but since there was now only one other person in the room there was little room for misunderstandings.
"About what?"
"Daniel, you don't show pain. You're…" He turned, looking the other man up and down as though he could find the word written on his clothes. "…stoic."
Daniel sighed and shrugged into his shirt. "No, I'm usually distracted. Most times I've been injured there's been half a dozen or so other things to think about." Glancing up from his buttons, he smiled tightly. "Like, oh, the end of the world."
"You listed half a dozen things you had to do to the General at the briefing. They weren't enough to distract you this morning."
"I listed three. What's your point?"
Jack closed his eyes and counted to five. Answering Daniel's mood with one of his own would only accelerate the situation into a shouting match. Shouting matches were not a bad thing necessarily - they cleared the air and often spilled over into incredible make-up sex - but, right now, they didn't have the time to shout, they didn't have the privacy to fuck, and they did have things they needed to talk about. Then he opened his eyes to see Daniel wearing his 'I dare you to make something of this' expression and his resolve to play nice fled. "My point," he growled, "is that I'm worried about you!"
"You think I'll jeopardize the mission."
"Don't tell me what I think! I'm not worried about the mission - you've got the fizzy pills, you've got the caffeine, and you're not going more than twenty feet from the gate or I'll have Teal'c haul your ass back through the event horizon so fast it'll make your nose bleed! I'm worried about you!" Pivoting on one heel, he slammed his locker shut. The sound cleared his head a little. Taking a deep breath, he turned again and managed to sound fairly calm as he said, "If this has gotten to the hole in the esophagus level it must have been going on for some time. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought it was heartburn - not something I needed to bother you about." Daniel held up a hand to forestall Jack's next comment. "I swear that this morning was the first wall punching incident. It's never been that bad before. If you hadn't shown up when you did, I would have taken myself to the infirmary."
Jack snorted.
"Maybe not right away, but eventually… when I'd cleared my desk." His brow creased. "And maybe after I'd dealt with that dialects problem because there's few things worse than a misplaced glottal stop in a weapons negotiation and SG-9 are leaving in three days. And that tablet isn't going to put itself together…" Glancing up from buckling his belt, his frown deepened as he met Jack's gaze. "I'd have told you about it."
"When?"
"Well that depends on…"
"On whether I could tell the difference between screams of passion and screams of pain?"
"I don't scream - I verbalize loudly. And I didn't scream this morning, I…"
"You punched walls. Stop avoiding the question. If I hadn't shown up, when were you planning to tell me?"
"About the time you told me about the last set of tests Janet did on your knees."
"I told you…"
"You said they were fine."
Jack frowned at Daniel's tone. "You went into my file," he said slowly as Daniel folded his arms. "You had no right to do that, Daniel. No right! The pain is under control and Doc Fraser cleared me for duty and… and you didn't go into my file did you?"
"No. So, when were you planning to tell me about your knees?"
They stared at each other for a long moment then Jack sighed. "We really need to work on this talking thing." He ran his hand back through his hair and dragged his cap on. "Too god-damned much testosterone in this relationship."
Daniel's turn to snort but he smiled when he did it. "Ya think?"
"Hey, my line." Before Daniel could respond, Jack caught his gaze and held it. "Seriously, Daniel, as your… friend… " He hoped the emphasis was enough because he couldn't bring himself to say the word lover on SGC property. "… I want to know if you're in pain but as your CO I need to know. If you'd told me earlier, we might have stopped it before it got to the acid in an open wound point."
Daniel's eyes narrowed and Jack, braced to cut any argument off short, found himself floundering when all the other man said was, "You're right."
"I'm right?"
"Yeah. But don't get used to it."
***
Sam raised an eyebrow as she met Teal'c in the hall.
"Approximately seven minutes," he told her quietly.
"Think that's enough time?"
"I think that is all the time they can be allowed. You must ready yourself for the mission."
Ready herself? Sam grinned. "And it's always so hard to decide what to wear on these things."
Brows up, Teal'c folded his arms over his fatigues. "If I may suggest - green has become the new black."
Her grin broadened into a full smile. "Green?"
"So say the women of The View."
"Green it is then. Thank you." Some day, she'd examine why Teal'c's gentle teasing made her feel so disproportionately giddy. Some day. When they weren't constantly being thrown into the kind of life or death situations that made her question her emotional responses. Oh, who the hell was she kidding; she might just as well accept a life of unresolved sexual tension and buy shares in Duracell.
"Has something upset you, MajorCarter?"
"What? No! Sorry. Teal'c do you really think giving them a few minutes alone before we go through the gate does any good?"
There were no security cameras in the locker rooms and as long as the colonel and Daniel had a reason to be in there together, there were no rumors.
The Jaffa shrugged, a minimalist movement easy to miss. "Does having a few moments to speak alone together do them any good? There is no way of knowing. But I see that in spite of the best efforts of the universe we are, all four, still alive. I think that if it is not broken, we should not fix it."
"I get it. It's like a pre-game ritual now. Like always putting your left sock on first."
He nodded. "That is how it is done."
"How what is done?"
"The left sock is always first."
As Sam opened her mouth to explain, she saw the corners of Teal'c's eyes crinkle slightly and shook her head instead. "I'll just go and suit up now."
The crinkles deepened. "An excellent idea."
***
Cradling his P-90, Jack stood at the edge of the gate platform and swept a narrowed gaze over the ubiquitous clearing and his team. The clearing was surrounded by the ubiquitous trees and his team had spread out to scout the immediate area. "Whoever they are, they use this gate." He nodded toward the uniformly short grass. "Clipped."
"Cropped, sir," Sam sighed. She scrapped the bottom of one boot against the grass. "Watch where you walk."
Daniel dropped carefully to one knee over by the DHD. "Looks like deer," he said, picking up a brown pellet about the size of a marble. "Or really big rabbits."
"Daniel, put that down!"
"It's just herbivore shit, Jack." He dropped the pellet back where he found it, wiped his fingers on his pants, and stood. "DHD looks fine."
"Carter?"
"MALP checks out. Telemetry's reading the four of us, nothing else in the immediate area. Readings indicate nothing that resembles a technological signature."
"Teal'c?"
"I see no signs that anything but DanielJackson's really big rabbits have been near this gate for some time. The Unas has not been sent through as a messenger of a Goa'uld."
"Or not a recent messenger, at least." Jack swept another slow gaze around the edges of the clearing and finally relaxed his grip on his weapon. "All right, Daniel. Bait your trap."
"It isn't a trap," Daniel sighed as he dropped his pack and pulled a rolled piece of canvass out of the top section. "It's a way to entice the Unas to come close enough for me to have a few words."
"Because you only know a few words?"
Daniel paused on his way to the tree line and turned just far enough to look Jack in the face. His declaration, in Unas, was short and to the point.
"See, just exactly what I meant." Jack grinned. "Hardly any words at all."
"Sometimes it only takes a couple, Jack."
Carter snorted as Daniel continued toward the trees. "Care to guess what those words were, Major?"
Her smile broadened as she knelt to open the sample case. "No, sir."
"Glad to hear it. What about you, Teal'c?"
Just on the edge of his vision, the Jaffa shifted so that he could watch the opposite side of the gate. "I do not believe I would need to guess, O'Neill."
***
An offer of food was the traditional way to make contact with more primitive cultures. Until agriculture caught on, hand-to-mouth was the optimum description for hunter/gatherer societies. Power bars were perhaps not the traditional offering but, since it had worked before, Daniel decided not to mess with success.
He laid out six power bars on the small tarp, half unwrapped the first and laid it back down open end pointing away from him, then half unwrapped the sixth and laid it down facing the opposite direction. As the smell of honey and whatever else was in the bars - organic at Janet's insistence - wafted up into the air, he backed about a meter and a half away, checked the ground for shit, and sat, legs crossed, facing the tarp.
Specifically, facing the area of the surrounding woods where the fuzzy image of the Unas had been caught. Specifically far enough away from the tarp that he couldn't reach it easily. Specifically on enough of an angle so that if Jack had to shoot - and he'd damned well better have switched to the dart gun - he'd have a clear shot from the gate platform.
Nothing left to do but wait.
"Hey, Daniel! Best guess on how long this is going to take?"
Daniel fought the urge to flip Jack off and just barely won the battle. "Why? Do you have a pressing engagement earthside?"
"Yankees are playing the Red Sox at eight but mostly I was just asking because I'm your CO and your team leader…" Volume and sarcasm levels rose together. "…and the information might possibly have some bearing on me deciding what the hell the rest of us are going to do!"
"Right. Sorry." He dug a new roll of caffeine lozenges out of his pack, separated one with his thumbnail and flicked it up into his mouth. The damn things gave a fast hit but they wore off quickly. "Give me an hour of quiet then I'll reassess."
"Deal. T-man, you think you can be quiet for an hour?"
Since the only answer seemed to be a half smothered snicker from Sam, Daniel had to figure that Teal'c's response had been non-verbal. Grinning, he rested his hands on his thighs and scanned the underbrush for any indication that the Unas picked up by the MALP was still hanging around. It was, he knew, entirely possible that said Unas was sitting ten feet away in the underbrush observing him. Given how well they were camouflaged in this type of terrain and how long they could sit motionless, predator patient, he could only hope he'd intrigued it enough to bring it out of hiding. If it was even there.
Ten minutes in, he leaned forward, slowly lifted the unwrapped power bar off the tarp, and took as small a bite as was possible and still be obvious, chewing with what he hoped was the kind of enjoyment an Unas would recognize. He swallowed, grunted out the Unas word for 'good' and laid the power bar back down. Ten minutes later, he preformed whole act again. And ten minutes after that.
Something skittered through the underbrush - something far too small to be an Unas - and a couple of dozen birds sang a couple of dozen different songs. Daniel disregarded the skittering and winced at the birdsongs. One at a time, they might have been musical. Simultaneously, they were discordant noise.
Nine minutes in, a tiny brown and white bird with yellow wing flashes, landed at the edge of the tarp and stared at him with bright black eyes. When he reached for the bar a moment later, it bounced back then flew up to glare at him from a low branch.
And ten…
And ten…
"Daniel?"
He twisted around and scowled at Jack sitting on the edge of the gate platform. "I got nothing." Well, nothing except a persistent pressure in his gut. Standing, he gestured toward the edge of the woods. "I'm just going to step behind this tree."
"Why?"
"Why?" There were days… "Why do you think?"
"How's your stomach?"
"My stomach is fine!" It hurt but no more than it had and Daniel figured that was the question actually being asked. "But," he added as Jack indicated he should continue. "I'm thinking I might take a crap." Rolling his eyes, he dug a handful of tissues out of his pack, tossing the caffeine lozenges toward the tarp to get them out of his way. Ever since the incident on PY7 88K, he did not wipe his ass with the local fauna. "I hope that information helps with your decision making."
Jack turned his head forty five degrees to the left and bellowed, "Teal'c!"
"I don't need an escort!" Daniel protested as the Jaffa set down a piece of equipment, left Sam's side and started across the clearing. "I've been staring into these trees for an hour and there is nothing in there. Nada. Zilch. Zip."
"You willing to bet your life on that?"
"Yes, damn it!" He did not need Teal'c watching him - or more specifically watching over him while he strained to empty his colon.
Jack stared at him for a long moment, then raised a hand.
Teal'c stopped about ten feet from the trees. "I will wait here."
"Fine!" Pivoting on one heel, Daniel stomped into the underbrush and began unbuckling his belt.
***
"I think it's time he had another one of those magic lozenges," the colonel muttered as Sam set the sample case down on the edge of the gate platform.
She glanced toward the woods. "It's possible that he's having a little trouble, sir." When a raised eyebrow suggested she continue, she smacked herself mentally for opening her mouth. "It just that Daniel usually drinks a lot of coffee and caffeine is a laxative and the lozenges, because there's no actual liquid involved don't cause the body to respond in the same way. Add that to the somewhat binding effect of the antacids Janet has him on and… You really didn't want to know all that did you sir?"
"No, Carter. I didn't."
"Kind of kills the romance doesn't it." As he turned slowly to face her, she felt the blood rise up in her face until her cheeks burned. "Oh God. Did I say that out loud?" She read the answer off his expression and wondered why there was never an incoming wormhole around when she really needed to throw herself into one. "I'm so sorry, sir, I…"
He raised a hand, cutting her off. "We will never speak of this again."
"It's just I…"
"Carter."
"Right. Sorry."
***
Daniel was not having a good day. First the pain, then Janet cutting him off, then a total lack of any Unas indication, now this. Maybe if he was at home in his own bathroom with a copy of National Geographic and all the time in the world, he'd be able to get somewhere but here and now. Nothing.
Maybe he should just give up and... What was that? It wasn't a sound... it was an absence of sound. The birds had stopped singing. He started to rise out of his crouch and froze as the bushes directly in front of him rustled and a familiar horned face appeared amid the leaves. It took a moment for the Unas to notice him and when it did, its reaction was not the reaction Daniel had expected.
It screamed.
Kind of a high-pitched girly scream too.
***
The scream catapulted Jack off the edge of the gate platform and across the clearing, the P-90 in position by the second step, his finger on the trigger, and his 2IC on his six. When he reached the edge of the woods, he plunged through underbrush Teal'c had already trampled and rocked to a halt at the sight of the big guy loaming over a girl - looked ten or eleven - who was sitting on the ground with an Unas head in her lap. She looked terrified.
"Teal'c..."
"I did nothing O'Neill. The child was on the ground when I arrived."
"I... uh, I may have inadvertently flashed her," Daniel admitted, his cheeks crimson as he buckled his belt.
"Great, traumatized for life," Jack muttered as he slowly moved forward and dropped to one knee. They were just lucky she wasn't a few years older or there'd be yet another alien he had to beat off Daniel with a stick. And a full frontal was certainly more of an invitation than the usual eyelash batting. "Hey." He stretched out his hand. "Are you all right?"
Wide brown eyes turned from Teal'c to him. "I'm not scared."
"Of course you aren't. I'm Jack."
"Carli." She swiped a hand under her nose and Jack ratcheted her age down a year or so. "Are you raiders?"
"No," he began but before he could continue, Daniel stepped forward and knelt on her other side.
"We're peaceful explorers. We came through the Stargate. The chaapa'ai. I'm sorry if I startled you."
Carli turned toward Daniel and stared at him for a long moment. "I saw your..."
"Yeah. Sorry about that too."
"You were having a... You were..." She gulped in a lungful of air and buried her face in what Jack now saw was actually a rubber Unas mask.
Daniel shot a panicked look over her shaking shoulders at Jack.
Jack snickered but before he could explain that she wasn't crying, Carli lifted her head, pointed at Daniel and howled with laughter. He couldn't blame her - what could be funnier at her age than stumbling over an adult taking a dump?
"Is the child all right, O'Neill?"
He straightened, grinning at Daniel's indignant reaction, and turned to Teal'c. "Do archeologists shit in the woods?"
Teal'c glanced over at the archeologist in question and shrugged. "Apparently not."
***
"...but I'll be ten next moon and that'll mean I gotta wait a whole year until the next Ancient's Festival and that's not fair." Cali chewed and swallowed another bite of power bar and glanced up at Jack. "Is it?"
"Not at all."
"No, it isn't. So I borrowed Kendred's mask so I could get my first stone. Festival's over tomorrow, isn't it? It's not like I had a lot of time." Another chew. Another swallow. "These are good. Don't tell that I ate it, 'kay? During festival, if you're old enough for a stone, you're not supposed to eat in the day time."
Jack laid his hand on his heart and from her expression Daniel realized she understood the broad meaning if not the specifics of the gesture. "I won't say a word."
"So, Cali..." Daniel hid a sigh as she snickered. "...what exactly do you celebrate at this Ancient's Festival."
The girl shrugged. "Old stuff."
"What kind of old stuff?"
She rolled her eyes, set the remains of the power bar on the edge of the gate platform and stood, hands clasped in front of her stomach. "In the Ancient Days there was lots of hardship. Raiders sometimes came and took people away through the Ancient's Ring. Orglas..." She waved the mask. "...and people killed each other. Then raiders stopped coming. Then the people drove the Orglas away into the mountains." A wave behind the gate at the rising foothills of an impressive mountain range. "Then there was not so much hardship. Then there was none. The Ancient's Festival helps us to remember that there used to be hardship so we don't stop being glad there was none." Recitation finished, she beamed around the half-circle of watching adults. "I won first place at the speeching contest this year."
"That's a great speech," Daniel told her. "Do the Orlas ever come out of the mountains?"
"No." Carli looked at him like he was a total idiot - but at least she wasn't laughing so he figured it was an improvement. "No one's seen an Orlas for years and years and years and years. My Bahpa says they've been stinked nearly forever."
"Stinked?"
"Extinct," Jack translated, grinning.
"But the masks are part of the festival?" Daniel prodded.
Her sigh suggested she was going to say this once and that was it. "You wear the mask to get the stone to so the Orlas think you're a Orlas 'cept they don't exist no more."
"Did you need me to explain that, Dr. Jackson?" Jack wondered, rocking back on his heels, hands in his pockets.
Daniel shot him an exasperated glare, not at all surprised that Jack spoke ten year old. "No. Thanks. I got it." Directed his attention back to the girl. "Thank you, Cali. Can you excuse us for a minute?"
"Sure." She tossed the mask down onto the gate platform and picked up the powerbar. "I gotta find a good stone anyways."
"The MALP probably picked up Kendred or one of his friends wearing a mask, not an actual Unas at all," Daniel murmured as SG-1 moved away from the girl.
Jack snorted. "Ya think?"
"I have never heard the beasts referred to as an Orlas before," Teal'c pointed out.
"In a couple of thousand years, language drifts. Or maybe they had an early leader with a speech impediment and that's how he pronounced it and it stuck. There's a hundred possible reasons for the difference but that's not important. Jack..." He turned to face the other man, sketching his excitement in the air. "...this festival is a terrific example of how history becomes folklore and it's only on for one more day."
"Let me guess. You want to go to the festival?"
"This would be the perfect time to discover which Goa'uld brought them here and abandoned them. Not to mention the Unas..."
"Orlas.
Daniel shrugged. "You say potato."
"Most of the time. Carter?"
Sam glanced over at Carli, currently trying to chip one of the huge base blocks out of the gate platform. "The people here have obviously achieved a level of technology that allows them to mold rubber into intricate, mass-produced masks."
"Not to mention that Carli's shoes look remarkably like Nike's," Jack added.
"Not to mention," she nodded. "It wouldn't hurt to see what else they've developed."
"Teal'c?"
"Both DanielJackson and Major Carter make excellent arguments for remaining."
"And you don't really care either way?"
"I do not."
***
The path they were following emerged suddenly from under the trees and SG-1 found themselves standing at the edge of Percalis, the town nearest the stargate. It looked like...
"Canmore. It's a town up in the Rockies about two hours from Calgary," Jack went on as his team gazed at him blankly. "Calgary, Alberta? Canada? Oh for crying out loud. You know for intergalactic heroes, you guys have got to get out more."
"Wrong hemisphere," Daniel muttered, chewing on a hangnail by his thumb. "We end up someplace that looks like Thebes then I'm your man."
"I have heard of Canada," Teal'c announced. "It is large, cold, mostly empty, and the people are considered to be polite."
"Much like Minnesota," Jack agreed watching Cali bound up to a cluster of people on what was obviously a fairground. "Only without the lutefisk. Let's pick it up before she gets into too much trouble."
"Trouble?" Carter wondered as they headed down the hill.
"She's been gone for at least four hours." He gestured at the group of adults surrounding the child. "From the looks of things, mom and dad recently checked in with the parents of the friend she was supposed to be with, found out she wasn't there, knew damned well where she'd gone and were about to head up the mountain to haul her ass home."
Daniel's eyebrows made an appearance over the edge of his glasses. "You can tell all that from here?"
"She's being alternately yelled at and hugged so they know she was gone. They're not frantic so they haven't known it for long. They're lined up with the path and two of them are wearing packs. Some things are universal."
Teal'c nodded.
Jack almost heard the gears engage as the other two, the two who had never been parents, got it. A few moments later, he grinned as Daniel shifted enough to the left to bump their shoulders together as they walked. Charlie was the subtext to any reference he ever made to parenting and even though he'd come to the point where he could remember the joy of being a father without being overwhelmed by guilt, he appreciated the other man's silent support. To a point...
"Daniel, is there a reason you're trying to knock me over?"
"Sorry. It's just... I mean..." He pointed. "That dunk tank..."
The backdrop had been painted to resemble the Stargate and a teenage boy, encouraged by crowd around his own age, whacked a crude replica of the DHD with a rubber mallet while a man wearing flowing robes sat suspended over a clear container of water. Every few whacks, a bulb lit on one of the gate's painted chevrons. When the seventh lit, the seat tipped, dumping the man in the robe into the water. The crowd cheered.
"There is no way, no possible way, he could come up with a valid gate address by... by..."
"Whacking?" Jack snickered when his 2IC seemed at a loss for words. "I don't think they're trying for an actual address there, Carter. Probably pick a random seven every turn. I wonder if the guy in the seat was supposed to be Goa'uld?"
"One of the raiders at least," Daniel offered still frowning toward the fairground, fingers of his right hand drumming against his thigh. "Do the seats on that ride look like gliders to you?"
"Yes. Head's up, people; company's coming."
First Cali's family, all talking at once. Her mother and her father accompanied by her Bahma and her Bahpa - looked like the locals practised group marriage Daniel realized and shot Jack a look that suggested he not comment. Now was not the time for a smutty version of 'Who's on First'. Kendred, of the borrowed mask, turned out to be about thirteen and one of half a dozen siblings. Half a dozen and a half all told; Cali's Bahma had another on the way.
Then members of the local government, on the fairground for the Ancient's Festival, arrived also all talking at once. They pushed the family aside and crowded close only to be supplanted in turn by the local member of the regional government, dragged out of one of the tents and away from judging homebrew. He held a glass of dark liquid and his expression suggested that any problems with alien's arriving through the Ancient's Gate could be solved by them all sitting down to a beer. Jack bonded with him almost instantly.
***
Meanwhile, up at the gate, three large, long-eared herbivores froze as a clawed hand reached out of the underbrush and picked up a forgotten and nearly full package of square lozenges.
(continued in part 2)